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Early rainfall totals suggest that this seasons El Nino isnt shaping up to be as big a beast as those of 1997-98 and 1982-83, but theres still a long way to go before knowing definitively how it compares, forecasters said Friday.

Since October, rainfall totals for downtown San Francisco and San Jose were consistently lower than those of the last two strong El Nino seasons, according to charts released by the National Weather Service.

But for a water-starved state, there are signs to cheer: downtown San Francisco surpassed its normal season rainfall total, measuring at 102 percent of the 30-year average as of Thursday afternoon, according to Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the weather service.

Still, with 13.2 inches of rainfall in the downtown area since Oct. 1, theres a lot of catching up to do to match the last significant El Nino, which saw more than 20 inches of rain by this point in 1998 for the same zone.

With more storms expected to pound California into March and April and increase the snowpack in the Sierra, Benjamin said, theres plenty of time left to significantly boost reservoir levels.

Were a little bit behind where we were in other El Nino years, but were trending upwards, he said. We still have a ways to go.

As far as Bay Area cities go, San Jose is in the lead for percentage-of-normal figures, coming in at 115 percent, according to Benjamin. At 91 percent, Napa is the last in the pack. But Benjamin added that the differences among cities are not stark.

One good storm and you can make that up in a heartbeat, he said.

Moving farther south, Monterey County and neighboring areas have seen much higher above-normal percentages. Rainfall in Santa Cruz measured at 135 percent of normal, and Salinas is at 136 percent.

With a light rain forecast for this weekend, Benjamin said Bay Area residents can expect to see drier-than-usual weather over the next two weeks.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr refuse to fully cooperate with the district attorneys efforts to investigate police misconduct and bias, even as they claim to be committed to transparency and accountability in the wake of the killing of Mario Woods, according to a scathing letter written to the mayor by District Attorney George Gascon.

Representatives for Lee and Suhr disputed Gascons assertions, which further exposed long-standing tension between city police and prosecutors.

In the letter sent Thursday, Gascon suggested the mayor  who has joined a call for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Woods shooting  is not serious about his pledge to make changes to build trust between the Police Department and communities of color. If Lee were serious, the letter read, he would have cooperated with Gascons efforts to investigate the department.

Gascon is asking the mayor to reconsider his lack of support for the district attorneys investigation into racist and homophobic text messages allegedly exchanged between 14 officers. He said Lee refused to provide funding to analyze 4,000 police reports written by the officers. The mayor denied the very existence of the thousands of cases that had been called in to jeopardy, Gascon wrote.

If the promises you levied in your inauguration speech and in your letter to the Attorney General to repair the dissolution of trust between communities of color and law enforcement are genuine ... then I would ask that you demonstrate an actual commitment to these issues by taking steps now to support the existing investigation, Gascon wrote. These problems are far too serious and far too systemic to simply pay them lip service.

Blue-ribbon panel

After the mayor declined to fund the district attorneys police misconduct task force, Gascon launched a blue-ribbon panel to look into police practices. However, he said in the letter that the panel was having difficulty getting Suhr and his officers to cooperate.

The department and the police union have engaged in a dizzying array of stonewalling tactics, with Suhr deciding that all interviews with officers must be done on their personal time and demanding that the panel work through the union, Gascon said.

This is not the type of transparency and collaboration we would expect from a department and a chief eager to improve, Gascon said. He asked the mayor to direct Suhr to cooperate with the panel, saying, Public safety in San Francisco can no longer afford decision making that favors the interests of the Police Officers Association over the interests of the citizens you were elected to represent.

Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman, said Friday that the department was caught off guard by the letter.

Chief cooperating

The chief has been cooperating and we of course will continue to cooperate with the blue-ribbon panel, he said. We have provided a substantial amount of documents ... and we will continue to cooperate with the panel and provide documents as they are permissible by law.

This is not a situation where the department or the chief can compel members to participate or testify, Andraychak said. For this reason, (Suhr) asked that the district attorneys office and the blue-ribbon panel go through the various labor organizations. Its strictly on a voluntary basis.

Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said the office received the letter Thursday and that regardless of Gascons accusations, the mayor is dedicated to rebuilding trust and improving the police practices and policies.

Rebuilding trust

She said that while the mayor appreciates the district attorneys support for the mayors call for an objective review, he wants to make sure that all public safety agencies are involved in rebuilding trust in the community, including the district attorneys office.

Following the fatal Dec. 2 shooting of Woods  which drew public outcry when video of the encounter showed what critics said was excessive force by officers who werent being attacked  the mayor met with community groups, including the African American Advisory Forum, to get input on improving community relations with the police force, Falvey said.

Police officials said Woods, a suspect in an earlier stabbing, was armed with a knife and refused to drop it, despite officers attempting to disarm him with pepper spray and beanbag rounds.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the
With less than a year to go in office, President Obama  Nobel Peace Prize winner and wartime commander in chief  still doesnt have a distinct national security doctrine by which his presidency will be remembered. Perhaps this is because he has, for the most part, simply borrowed bits and pieces of his predecessors doctrines  and all too often the least effective parts.

For example, he has spoken of the containment concept from the Truman Doctrine, but the nimble networks at war with the United States and its allies today can and do strike anywhere in the world. They are hardly containable. Roguish nations interested in aggression can avoid containment by employing covert measures, such as those Comrade Putin has trotted out in Crimea and Donetsk. No, containment just will not do.

Then there is Obamas reboot of the Nixon Doctrine, which aimed at assisting others in the development of self-defense capabilities to a point at which no American military presence need be considered. Known best by the catastrophic failure of Vietnamization more than 40 years ago, the Nixon Doctrine still has a siren call for those with a distaste for having any boots on the ground. Indeed, the Obama defense team has tried very hard to form up effective Afghan and Iraqi armies  costly efforts that have proved quite problematic. So much so that it is hard to conceive of security, much less peace, returning to either country without the small but continuing presence of the American military. So much for the Nixon Doctrine and its descendants, Afghanization and Iraqization.

A third part of Obamas doctrinal triad was provided by his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, in the form of Ws belief in regime change as a tool for transforming the international environment. While this doctrine turned out badly, at heavy human and material cost in Iraq, Obama did not hesitate for a moment to support the overthrow of Moammar Khadafy in Libya. That country is now a hothouse for breeding terrorists. And Obama has doubled down when it comes to Syria, where he is still pushing, if no longer immediately, for the overthrow of Bashar Assad. So very odd that Ws strategic imprint has lasted, given that it works so poorly.

Clearly, Obama needs to come up with a fresh doctrine.

One clue to a workable way ahead that might prove useful in a number of settings can be found in his diplomatic success with Iran. While controversial, the agreement to de-nuke Iran appears to have gained sufficient support in and compliance from leaders in Tehran. The tacit cooperation with Iran in fighting the Islamic State is another sign that the open hand, extended toward even an adversary, may prove more effective than the mailed fist. In this respect, Obamas reaching out to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani seems very much a page taken out of President Ronald Reagans playbook for dealing with Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev 30 years ago. Not bad at all.

But there is one more thing Obama is doing that, at a strategic level, is unique to him and has very good chances of providing sustainable security in a world fraught with many diverse perils. This is his decision to build security networks, something the former head of Special Operations Command, Adm. William McRaven (now chancellor of the University of Texas), pushed for over many years. Now it is on the verge of becoming a reality in the form of the recently announced reconfiguration of American military bases around the world along hub-and-spoke network lines  with larger outposts (not envisioned to be more than 500 soldiers at any one site) centrally supporting widely dispersed smaller deployments. As Defense Secretary Ash Carter put it in an important (but little reported) speech last fall, these regional nodes  from Moron, Spain, to Jalalabad, Afghanistan  will provide forward presence to respond to a range of crises.

A good example of how this hub-and-spoke model can work is provided by the very light American military presence in Djibouti, which supports special operations across a range of settings from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, and in the dangerous seas between. This network has helped to defeat piracy in the region, beat back al-Shabab in Somalia, and keep the Yemeni civil war from burning out of control.

This strategic innovation recognizes the hopelessness of trying to contain adversaries. Instead, it provides rapid-response coverage around the world. And it does so at very low cost, given that many of the small-presence nodes in the network may consist of just a relative handful of special operations forces.

This networked approach  opposed by some on the right because of the worry that the forces will be too small and by some on the left because of its intent to foster an ability to intervene anywhere in the world  is the most unique aspect of the strategy. Despite such opposition, the president still has time to order and oversee creation of the global network, even though it wont be completed on his watch.

If historians one day write of an Obama Doctrine, it will happen only if the president jettisons his predecessors doctrines  they no longer work  and if his successor embraces the network concept. If so, the world will enjoy its best chance for security against a host of fresh perils  and prospects, perhaps, even for peace.

John Arquilla is professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. The views expressed are his alone. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com/submissions.
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DES MOINES, Iowa  Donald Trump wasnt onstage when Republican presidential candidates made their final appeals to Iowa voters in Thursday nights debate, and that gave the rest of the field a rare opportunity to frame the election in their own terms, at least for one night.

Trump boycotted the debate in a dispute with host Fox News. Instead, he was holding a competing rally a few miles away that is likely to draw significant attention  as well as the participation of some lower-polling candidates hoping to draft off the front-runners success.

Even with Trumps shadow hanging over the debate, his closest competitors were eager for an opportunity to break through in his absence. They also hoped his boycott would be viewed negatively by voters in Iowa, which kicks off voting in the 2016 presidential race Monday.

I think itll hurt him that hes not showing up in the Iowa debate four days before the Iowa caucuses, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told CNN.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Republicans dont have time for these kinds of distractions.

Trump has led the Republican race nationally for months, to the surprise of many. In Iowa, however, polls suggest hes locked in a tight race with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a favorite of the conservatives and evangelical Christians who hold significant sway in the states Republican caucuses.

Some campaigns were preparing for the possibility Trump could reverse course and take the stage in Des Moines after all. However, he moved forward with plans to host a rally a few miles away that his campaign said would raise money for wounded warriors.

On Thursday, he announced the launch of a new website for collecting donations to veterans ahead of the event. The link, which he posted on Twitter, includes the seal of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and a form for contributions.

Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, Iowa caucus winners in the past who have struggled to gain traction in the 2016 campaign, planned to join Trump at the event after appearing in an earlier undercard debate. They were relegated to that secondary contest because of low poll numbers.

I think its typical Trump, said Don Kass, chairman of Iowas Plymouth County GOP. Hes betting on him making a bigger splash.

While earlier debates have been instrumental in the rise and fall of several GOP candidates, they have had minimal apparent impact on Trumps standing. Hes preferred to make his case to potential voters in national television interviews and on Twitter, and has sometimes played a less forceful role in the debates.

Trumps absence was likely to turn attention to Cruz, a firebrand conservative disdained by many in his party, and Rubio, who is hoping a third-place finish in Iowa could help him establish him as the choice of more traditional Republicans.

Others on the debate stage had their eyes on New Hampshire, where theyre hoping a strong showing in the Feb. 9 primary will jump-start their White House hopes. Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have all devoted the bulk of their campaign resources to New Hampshire.

Also on the main debate stage Thursday: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has a loyal following in Iowa, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who was relegated to the undercard in the last debate.

Iowas fast-food workers, meanwhile, hoped to draw at least 1,000 low-wage workers to rally for change outside Thursdays debate venue.

Trumps Fox feud dates back to the first Republican primary debate, when moderator Megyn Kelly took the billionaire business mogul to task over derogatory statements he had made toward women. Trump had threatened to boycott Thursdays debate if Fox stuck with plans for Kelly to moderate again but later said it was a sarcastic statement from the network that was the final straw.

That statement said the leaders of Iran and Russia both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president and that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.
Republican presidential debates may be a lot less entertaining television without Donald Trump, but as Thursdays contest showed, they are also a lot more substantive.

With Trump skipping Thursdays Fox News debate because of a reality-TV-style backstage drama he orchestrated, voters got a glimpse of what the GOP race would be like without the insult-hurling political novice. It was like watching an alternate political universe where Trump existed in reputation only.

Without fear of being heckled with a cheap shot, the seven candidates trailing front-running Trump were emboldened to speak in ways they hadnt previously, about everything from prison reform to religion.

But first, moderator Megyn Kelly  whose pointed questioning of Trump at an August debate was his stated reason for ducking Thursdays contest  opened the debate by addressing what she called the elephant not in the room and tossed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz a softball about what Trumps absence meant.

Let me say, Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and, Ben (Carson), youre a terrible surgeon, Cruz, Trumps top rival in Iowa, said sarcastically. Now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way, I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up.

In the short term, Trumps debate dodge is unlikely to matter when voters cast ballots Monday in Iowas caucuses, as preferences are usually set this close to election day. Some commentators  among them Foxs Bill OReilly  called Trumps no-show a shrewd move, allowing the front-runner to protect his lead in Iowa from being damaged by a last-minute gaffe at the debate.

Trump has 32 percent of the vote among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers compared with 26 percent for Cruz and 14 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, according to the average of the latest major polls by RealClearPolitics.com. Even without showing up, Trump still managed to be mentioned in 36 percent of the conversation about the debate on Twitter, far outpacing his rivals.

The real value may have been to the candidates who did show up Thursday  and it raised questions about whether the race and future debates will be as substantive when Trump re-enters. Two of Trumps main foils during previous debates  former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul  thrived in his absence.

Bush sounded more confident than in the past, reminding the audience that he was one of the few to call out Trump for his disparaging remarks about women and Latinos.

The libertarian-leaning Paul  far behind in the polls  spent little time needling other candidates as he has in previous debates. Instead, he focused on what he was expected to do in the campaign: Expand his conservative appeal by talking about issues like criminal justice reform.

The war on drugs has disproportionately affected our African American community, Paul said, a line that is a staple of his stump speech but a topic rarely mentioned by his rivals.

Referring to faith

Several times, Rubio spoke openly about his Christian faith in ways he hadnt previously. Thats partially a nod to the 120,000 or so Iowa Republicans expected to vote in Mondays caucus  two-thirds of whom are evangelical Christians. It was also a subtle dig at the thrice-married Trump, whose religious piety and recent conversion to anti-abortion policies have been questioned in Iowas Bible belt.

When asked about a magazine cover years ago that proclaimed him the savior of the GOP, Rubio said, Theres only one savior, and its not me. Its Jesus Christ, who came down to Earth and died for our sins, and so Ive always made that clear about that cover story.

He promised that my faith will not just influence the way Ill govern as president, it will influence the way I live my life. Because in the end, my goal is not simply to live on this Earth for 80 years but to live an eternity with my creator. I will always allow my faith to influence everything I do.

Without naming Trump, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took on the New Yorkers proposal that all Muslims be temporarily banned from entering the United States in an attempt to prevent terrorism.

What people should do is use their common sense, Christie said. You see something thats suspicious, you call law enforcement. That can be done without you profiling.

In a new and effective twist, Foxs debate organizers prefaced a couple of questions on immigration by showing video clips of how Cruz and Rubio have flipped their positions over the years to more hard-line stances.

In a rare critique of Trump, Rubio followed a video montage of Cruz on immigration by saying The truth is, Ted, youll be willing to say and do anything to get a vote. Now you want to trump Trump on immigration.

While his rivals dueled, Trump headlined a fundraiser for veterans a few miles away at Drake University in Des Moines. Booked for a 700-seat venue, thousands who waited in the 31-degree night but couldnt get in watched outside on large screens.

Sharing the stage

Inside, Trump was joined by two GOP candidates, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who polled too low to make Foxs main stage debate.

Although they thanked Trump for the opportunity to share the stage, they made it clear they were there for the vets, not to endorse him. But the sight of the two also-rans hugging the front-runner couldnt be lost on their supporters  Santorum (in 2012) and Huckabee (in 2008) each rode the evangelical bloc to victory in Iowa.

Trump gave $1 million of the more than $6 million  much of it from friends of Trump  he said was raised for the event to a variety of veterans groups.

And after hearing from three veterans about their time in battle and their concerns about what happens when soldiers come home, Trump said, That was amazing. Isnt that better than that debate where everyone is sleeping?

Trumps snit with Fox reeked of reality TV drama, befitting the longtime reality show star. It began during the August debate on Fox, when Trump didnt like that Kelly asked him if he had the temperament to be commander-in-chief, given his history of calling women you dont like, fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. Trump responded on Twitter and elsewhere by calling Kelly a third-rate reporter, and alluded to her as a bimbo.

When he threatened to pull out of Thursdays debate unless Kelly was removed, Fox called his bluff and backed their employee.

Despite Trumps cries of bias against him, it isnt as though he has been starved for Foxs attention since that August debate: Fox host Sean Hannity said this week that Trump has appeared on Fox or Fox Business Channel programs 132 times since August. Thats show biz.

Joe Garofoli and John Wildermuth are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com, jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli, @jfwildermuth
(Inside Science) -- Lasers mounted on robot spacecraft or giant satellites could deflect asteroids away from Earth, suggest new orbital simulations exploring this defense strategy.

An impact from a comet or asteroid about 10 kilometers wide likely caused the most recent and familiar mass extinction that ended the Age of Dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Such giant impacts are rare, but smaller strikes can still wreak major havoc.

"In the last roughly 100 years, we've had two significant impacts that we know of," said experimental cosmologist Philip Lubin at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "One was the 1908 event in Tunguska, Russia, with an estimated yield equivalent to 10 to 15 megatons of TNT, essentially as large as the largest nuclear weapon the U.S. has ever detonated. The second was the Chelyabinsk event, also in Russia, in 2014, which had an estimated yield of about a half-megaton, equivalent to a medium-sized thermonuclear weapon in the U.S. and Russian arsenals."

Scientists have proposed a variety of ideas to deflect threatening near-Earth objects. For instance, kinetic impactors, perhaps armed with nuclear bombs, could slam into targets to shove them off course. Alternatively, spacecraft with sufficient mass could act like "gravity tractors," using their gravity to pull targets into new orbits. Some have proposed that thrusters mounted on targets can steadily nudge them away  maybe ion engines, or robots that mine rocks off targets and hurl them into space. Others have said that covering one side of a target with paint or mirrors can alter how much it gets warmed by the sun, which in turn can gradually shifts its trajectory.

Now, Lubin and his colleagues have proposed using solar-powered lasers to blast targets. The resulting plumes of vaporized or ablated rock can then push targets away from collision courses.

Lubin's team has run computer simulations to see how well lasers of different strengths might work against incoming asteroids of various sizes. One proposal is DE-STAR, or Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation, which consists of a large satellite in Earth orbit that blasts asteroids from afar. (Lubin is coy about whether DE-STAR is a reference to Star Wars' Death Star.)

"The fact that a system could deflect an incoming asteroid from Earth orbit is unique  all the other systems require a spacecraft to go out to the asteroid," said astronomer Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who did not take part in this research.

Lubin's other concept is DE-STARLITE, a much smaller robot spacecraft that flies to an asteroid to deflect it, holding position roughly 10 kilometers from its target. The researchers suggest that DE-STARLITE is the more practical option, because the smaller system could be built more rapidly and inexpensively.

For DE-STARLITE, the researchers modeled a spacecraft powered by a solar array. They simulated asteroids of varying sizes, from 20-meter Chelyabinsk-class and 80-meter Tunguska-class objects to Apophis, a 325-meter-wide asteroid in a potentially hazardous orbit, and larger.

For example, a 20-kilowatt version of DE-STARLITE operating for 15 years could deflect Apophis a distance equal to Earth's diameter. "The military is currently typically focused on 100-kilowatt-range lasers, so 20 kilowatts should eminently be doable," Lubin said.

A more powerful 1-megawatt (1,000 kilowatts) DE-STARLITE that could fit into the first of NASA's upcoming Space Launch System rockets could over the course of five years deflect threats up to 500 meters wide, and deflect Tunguska- or Chelyabinsk-class asteroids in under a year upon arriving at those rocks, the researchers said. "A megawatt sounds like a lot, but there's not any reason we couldn't scale up to a megawatt if we wanted to," Lubin said.

One key advantage of this laser-based strategy "is that it uses mass from the asteroid itself to push the asteroid, instead of bringing a lot of fuel or mass to the asteroid to move it," Lubin said. He added that a laser-based system would weigh less than other options while having as much or more effect on asteroids, and also offer a level of control as fine as the best alternatives.

However, DE-STARLITE does require time to work -- months for it to reach an incoming asteroid, and then years for it to deflect the asteroid a safe amount. Astronomers may not detect a dangerous asteroid in time for DE-STARLITE to intercept it. DE-STAR may then serve as a last line of defense on short notice.

DE-STAR is most effective when targets are relatively close to its lasers. To deflect targets to a safe trajectory, DE-STAR needs a very large, powerful array of lasers, one where the lasers are all in phase, or lockstep.

The researchers calculated that if DE-STAR had a 1-kilometer-wide phased laser array and an equally large solar power array, it could deflect an 80-meter Tunguska-class asteroid by about 1,900 kilometers over the course of four weeks  probably not enough to prevent an impact, but enough to potentially steer an asteroid to hit someplace uninhabited. A 2-kilometer array could deflect an asteroid more than 127,000 kilometers, or about 10 times Earth's diameter.

One set of targets DE-STAR could attack that DE-STARLITE probably could not are long-period comets, ones that take more than 200 years to complete an orbit. The nature of their orbits make it difficult for spacecraft launched from Earth to rendezvous with them and match their speeds and trajectories. "DE-STAR may be one of the few options to defend against long-period comets," Lubin said.

However, building DE-STAR would prove challenging. The International Space Station is currently the largest manmade object in space, and it is only about 110 meters wide. "The engineering involved with building such a large spacecraft is formidable to say the least," Chodas said.

Some people might fear that DE-STAR's powerful lasers could potentially be used as a weapon.

But Chodas noted there could be other peaceful applications for laser satellites besides asteroid defense, such as interstellar exploration.

"Lasers can be used to propel small probes to relativistic speeds, in what may be the only feasible way to get to the nearest stars," Lubin said.

Lubin and his colleagues detailed their findings in a paper accepted by the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Charles Q. Choi is a freelance science writer based in New York City who has written for The New York Times, Scientific American, Wired, Science, Nature, and many other news outlets. He tweets at @cqchoi.

Reprinted with permission from Inside Science, an editorially independent news product of the American Institute of Physics, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing, promoting and serving the physical sciences.
TEHRAN  Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and published video of the encounter Friday, the latest in a series of edgy naval incidents between the two countries in the Persian Gulf after the recent nuclear deal.

While the U.S. Navy stressed it knew the drone was unarmed and the flyover didnt interrupt U.S. operations in the war against the Islamic State group, the incident underlined the continued tension over control of waterways crucial to global oil supplies. It follows a rocket test last month by the Islamic republic near coalition warships and commercial traffic, as well as Irans brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

Iranian state television and the semiofficial Fars news agency, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, published identical images Friday that both said came from the drone. The footage, which the Associated Press could not independently verify, purported to show the drone being launched and then hovering over an unidentified aircraft carrier, a targeting bracket briefly passing over a jet parked on the deck below.

The Iranian reports suggested the footage was from Friday. However, Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and directly over the Harry S. Truman on Jan. 12 as the vessels were in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

He said the Navy launched a helicopter that determined the drone wasnt armed and posed no danger to the ship as the carrier wasnt conducting flight operations at the time. His comments implied that had there been active takeoffs and landings of U.S. aircraft, the situation might have changed.

Stephens called the drones flight abnormal and unprofessional. He added that the U.S. Navy was not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet.

The nuclear-powered Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Va., is in the Persian Gulf region launching air strikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of Irans navy, called the drone overflight a sign of bravery.

It allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces, he told state television.

Iran struck a nuclear deal with world powers, including the U.S., last year to limit its atomic program in exchange for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions. The sanctions ended this month, and many average Iranians continue to wait to feel the effect.
GENEVA  The United Nations reported Friday extremely disturbing new accusations of sexual abuse by European peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, adding to a long-running scandal that has reverberated at the highest levels of the world body.

The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, called for further investigation of reports that members of an EU peacekeeping contingent had raped two girls and had paid two others for sex. The girls were 14 to 16 at the time.

The acts took place in 2014 and 2015 and involved troops from Georgia and another European country, the girls told investigators. The other country has not been publicly identified.

In addition, U.N. human rights officials reported that a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl said they had been paid by French peacekeepers for oral sex and that they knew of other children who had been repeatedly abused by French troops.

These are extremely serious accusations, al-Hussein said. It is crucial that these cases are thoroughly and urgently investigated.

The latest cases, uncovered by investigators in early January, add to concerns about the failure of the United Nations to curb what Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, called the constant horror story of allegations that have dogged international peacekeeping troops.

Far too many of these crimes continue to go unpunished, with the perpetrators enjoying full impunity, al-Hussein said in a statement.

Al-Hussein said that he had discussed the latest accusations with French, Georgian and European Union authorities and that he was heartened by their initial responses.

He added, however, that there was no doubt that all foreign military forces, regardless of whether they serve under the U.N. umbrella, must employ much stronger and more effective actions to prevent further abuse and exploitation.

What is abundantly clear in the Central African Republic is that it has been rampant, Colville said, noting that around 10 international peacekeeping contingents had now been implicated in cases of sexual abuse. For whatever reason, not enough is being done to stop this happening.

The European Union said in a statement that it took the accusations very seriously and that it had sent an expert to the human rights office to discuss a response.
Flouting a law that could have jailed him for three years, a German teenager with a GoPro camera scampered up the Great Pyramid of Giza in broad daylight.

It took 18-year-old Andrej Ciesielski only eight minutes to reach the top of Khufu, the largest of the Giza pyramids, earlier this month outside of Cairo. He told Business Insider that he was about half way up the 455-foot monument before the authorities noticed.
Who stole Jennifer Rowland's almost-century-old Underwood typewriter after it was inadvertently left outside last Sunday night, in front of her Art.i.fact consignment clothing store on Baca Street?

In the unsuspecting town of Santa Fe, and in the mysterious world of theft, just about everybody's a suspect now.

She'd spotted the old black typewriter at a flea market in Las Vegas, just up the road, about a month before she opened her dream retail shop a little over a year ago, about a stone's throw from Counter Culture Cafe. She fell in love with the old thing immediately, and had no problem paying $20 for it.

It was built in the early 1920s, before the Great Depression. It suited the confines of her store perfectly, eventually becoming a sort of mascot when she placed it outside every day on top of a vintage food cart, "a way of saying, 'Look, we're open.'"

"It was emblematic of what we were all about," Rowland tells SFR earlier this week, after tweeting about the theft on Twitter, hoping someone might know something and that, miracles of miracles, somebody might find it and return it.

It's not that it's worth anything. Actually, Rowland has no clue what it's worth. She never thought to price it. But to her, well, it's priceless. It inspired her. Her store's very sign resembles the typewriter's famous font. Her business cards, too. In a day and age of computers and texts and iPhones, the lettering screams out manual.

Greats like Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald used some version of the Underwood as they banged their way to immortality. Senator Frank of the same last name used it in the House of Cards. And the great beatnik poet and short-story writer, Charles Bukowski, in one famous photo, clutches it to his chest, close to his heart, that trademark thin and brown cigarette dangling from his mouth, smoked to the butt.

Mess with Bukowski's typewriter, and he'd hunt you down to the ends of the earth.

Not Rowland so much. She says if the typewriter should mysteriously reappear in front of her store, no questions will be asked, because the reality is all she's got now is a plastic, miniature duplicate, which sits high on a shelf and is not exactly emblematic of what the store stands for: a funky, eclectic place where both men and women can drop off their old or vintage clothes and get some money in return as soon as they're sold.

Rowland and her Underwood duplicateThomas Ragan

Very few antiques inside her store, after all, are older than that solid little Underwood, a hunk of metal that was one of the very first modern typewriters; millions of them were sold in the 1920s and 1930s, one manufactured per minute in its heyday.

Just to look at it makes you think of that bygone era, of Model T Fords, silent movies, or that one famous photograph in which a bunch of construction workers nonchalantly sit on a beam high in the air, in "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" as they take a break from working on Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Which is why Rowland's customers would always marvel at it; many asked her if it was for sale, to which she would always say, "No, it's sentimental."

One day, a 12-year-old girl, who professed to be mechanically inclined, offered to fix the keys on it, but Rowland politely declined.

"That would just be like more bait, and more people would keep asking me if I was selling it," she said.

Now it's gone, somewhat of a sad solution to putting a stop to all the inquiries, like some stuck key.

Of course, if she could press backspace key, she'd probably make a note of reminding her helper to bring the machine inside, but it's nobody's fault, and she didn't want to make anyone feel bad.

"It's just one of those things," she says, her voice trailing off.

She and her husband moved here from Los Angeles three years ago, lured in part by the small town charm that convinces you that you don't really have to lock your doors or keep an eye on your bike.

"We fell in love with this place, and we both agreed that we would change our lives here, and really mean it," she says. "We'd become a part of the community. We would give back."

She was the director of marketing at a school in Los Angeles, and he's a fine artist and carpenter, who reclaimed the wood on the insides of the shop, in its shelves and racks. Since then, they've been true to their word; in fact, they were in the midst of a sock drive for the homeless this past month when the typewriter went missing sometime between late Sunday night and early Monday morning.

So far, they've collected more than their goal of 500 pairs and are now stretching the limit to 1,000. Bring them your own wool pair, either new or gently worn, and save 10 percent on any item in the store; the socks will go straight to St. Elizabeth Shelter's Casa Familia Urgent Transition Center.

The poster advertising the sock drive on the front of the door has a photo of the old Underwood. It might as well be a Wanted Poster, in the literal sense of the word.

It's all that remains, like in that old Simon and Garfunkle song:

"Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph, preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."

Santa Fe Reporter
Zika Alert

The New Mexico Department of Health says it has sent

to doctors and health care providers around the state information on the symptoms of the Zika virus and how to test anyone returning to New Mexico from areas affected by the virus.

No More Violence

Heath Haussamen reports, 

, the New Mexico rancher who joined armed protesters occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon last weekend, says he doesnt want violence. The fight, he says, is about the right people have to use public lands.

Pot Poll Shows Support for Legalization

A new state poll shows

for adult recreational use.

Drilling Permit Denied

A controversial plan to explore for oil outside Rio Rancho

Thursday. KOAT reports, Sandoval Countys Planning and Zoning Commission recommended the County Commission deny two requests from SandRidge Oil, an Oklahoma-based company, to drill an exploratory well west of the city limits.

Legislative News

Baca Claims Victory

Robert Nott reports, A former Santa Fe middle school teacher [principal] who was placed on administrative leave in October and has sought reinstatement is claiming a win after district officials late Thursday

.

The move comes after more than 14 hours of testimony over two days in an open hearing before the school board, in which former Ortiz Middle School Principal J. Steven Baca painted a portrait of himself as a man who had challenged his supervisor and paid the price, and district officials accused him of insubordination and unprofessionalism. Thursday night's decision came earlier than anticipated, as the board had said after testimony stretched late into the night Wednesday that it would rule Friday on Baca's fate.

Background Checks Missing

Dozens of educators still dont have

on file.

Employees at Los Alamos Public Schools and two Santa Fe-based charter schools  New Mexico School for the Arts and New Mexico Connections Academy, an online virtual school  were included in the Public Education Departments report. But a New Mexico School for the Arts administrator said that school is in compliance with all background checks for employees, and Kurt Steinhaus, superintendent of the Los Alamos school district, said in an email, We are in full compliance.

Solar Buzz

KRQE has a cool story about a New Mexico woman who has created a

in Truth or Consequences.

Santa Fe Reporter
Dairy Farms NZ has cleared Overseas Investment Office approval for the $47 million purchase of five central Southland dairy farms ahead of a further capital-raising and eventual listing on the New Zealand sharemarket.

Dairy Farms NZ chairman David Belcher said despite the current downturn in global dairy milk prices, it was a long-term investor and prepared to wait out the cycle moving up again.

The company was set up in 2014 to provide New Zealand investors the opportunity to directly invest in dairy farming and the latest five farms add to its existing portfolio of two owned and one leased farm in mid-Canterbury. With the latest additions, it will now milk more than 5,500 cows and its portfolio represents around 1.825 hectares.

Belcher said theyre currently raising a further $20 million to $25 million for more dairy farm acquisitions as the current downturn provides great buying opportunities.

Now is a great time to invest in dairy if you take a three-year to five-year view. The investment opportunities are now the best theyve been in the past five to eight years, he said.

Belcher said, like with the Auckland housing market, farm prices aren't likely to drop massively, but with an increase in forced sales as banks tighten up on non-performing loans there will be some good buys to be had.

The companys cornerstone shareholder is Chicago-based investor Sam Zell through his EGI-NZ Dairy LLC which lifted its stake to 55 percent from 49.51 percent in order to fund the acquisition of the five dairy farms in Otapiri.

Belcher said Zells stake will drop back to the 30s with the capital raising and then below 25 percent in an eventual initial public offering on the New Zealand stock exchange. Hes not sure what the timing for a listing will be, but said the enterprise value of Dairy Farms NZ would need to double to around $200 million before that occurs.

The company has more than 42 shareholders, most of whom are New Zealand citizens, and the plan is to be predominantly NZ-owned long-term.

Its business strategy is to buy high-quality dairy land in non-drought prone parts of Canterbury, Otago and Southland where Belcher said its research had shown were the best parts of the country for dairy farming long-term.

The company doesnt own the herd and has a 50:50 arrangement with sharemilkers and little or no debt. It means the required breakeven payout is around $1 less than the $5.40 per kilogram of milk solids average for most dairy farmers who have debt, Belcher said. Fonterra Cooperative Group is forecasting a $4.15/kgMS milk payout for the 2015/16 season.

Dairy Farms NZ is having to provide support to its sharemilkers at the current level, he said.

Belcher also remains confident the dairy payout for the 2016/17 season will be significantly higher.

Dairy Farms NZ will now start a $4.3 million development programme on the Southland properties, including environmental mitigation, draining, housing, and a new cow shed.

Its other farms supply both Fonterra and Synlait Milk with one farm having been recently converted to A2 milk to diversify its risk, he said.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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WASHINGTON: There is an "optimism and excitement" regarding the Indo-U.S. defence cooperation, a top American commander has said ahead of his visit to the country, underlining that improving military-to-military ties is his top priority.

"I see nothing but optimism and excitement with our military-to-military relationship with India on almost every level," Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) said in response to a question at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) .

Mr Harris, who is scheduled to visit India in March, said India-U.S. military to military relationship is important not because it's a counter to China.

"It is because we share democratic values and we share a common view of the imperative in the Indo-Asia Pacific region," he said.

Mr Harris said that before this job he was Pacific Fleet Commander and had the chance to go to India and visit Delhi and Goa, to see aviation training facilities there.

"They're very capable, very exciting. And the relationship between our President and their Prime Minister has moved the overall relationship forward in ways that are actually surprising. And in a good way," he said.

The Commander said he has made improving India-U.S. military-to-military relationship a formal line of effort at the PACOM.

"Each of my commanders have gone or will go, I will go as PACOM Commander," he said.

"So I've started to talk the last two years -- I may be the commander of PACOM, but this is really the Indo-Asia Pacific region and I try to use that acronym as much as I can," Mr Harris said.

READ ALSO: These Are the 20 Cities Nominated For Smart Cities Mission

India among 10 Largest IMF Members with Historic Reforms
BENGALURU: Picture this: Wind in your hair, sand at your feet, music in your ears and cocktail in your hand. Hello Mauritius! Nothing compares to the nightlife in Mauritius; thanks to the beautiful beaches that make this tiny island a hotspot. For years, party lovers have been flocking to Mauritius for its vibrant beach shacks, enigmatic pubs and ambient live music scenes, and who can blame them? It's non-stop fun. There's just something about the chilled out, laid back attitude of the African destination that makes you, want to let your hair down. It never lets you down. New concepts keep emerging - a dime a dozen, so a thrilling experience is obvious when these nine innovative clubs catches fancy.

Fifty Five Lounge Club:

For the modern guest who craves something bold, sleek and unique, Fifty Five Lounge Club offers a breath-taking design, with an urban look in an unrivaled setting, a buzzing bar and a musical scene that appeals a savvy crowd seeking a vibrant social experience. Chill out to the sounds of the DJ and join the trendy and the cosmopolitan with a Mushroom Brulee and Mezze platter.

Zoobar:

Wine, dine, and play! This is the motto at Zoobar. Situated in Quatre Bornes, Zoobar is a hotspot for the lovers of trance music. The club boasts of a psychedelic ambience which makes the perfect setting for a late night party with Bouillon Crabes Crab Bouillon and a glass of chilled beer.

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Lighting up the American flags When Simi Valley resident Hayden Kelly was in elementary school, she learned the proper etiquette when it comes to the American flag. She enjoyed looking at flags around town and...

Local racer makes a winning pass at auto championship Storied track pushes drivers to their limits

James Landry of Simi Valley., won the Honda Challenge 4 class championship Sept. 18 at the 2022 National Auto Sport Association Championships. Landry captured the title by making a pass...

Fall is a festive time of year at the farm READY FOR AUTUMN At right, 7-year-old Martin Segura of South Gate, drives a peddle tractor Oct. 9 during the Fall Harvest Festival at Underwood Farms in Moorpark. The festival runs...

Prost to the good times and fundraising Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise recently held Oktoberfest on Oct. 8 at Lemon Park (Rancho Tapo Community Park) in Simi Valley, More than 1,200 attendees spent an afternoon with music,...
'If the world ends in 2100, were probably OK' Posted on 29 January 2016 by howardlee Theres a myopia in the climate discourse today. Everyone is focused on what happens by 2100. But thats only 2 generations from today. Its like: If the world ends in 2100 were probably OK! says Professor Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii. But Its very clear that over a longer timescale there will be much bigger changes. If the next century seems impossibly far off, bear in mind that if you have a young child now, were talking about the world her or his grandchildren will be trying to raise their kids in. Scientists who take the long view on climate change see parallels between global warming today and mass extinctions in Earths past: Apart from the stupid space rock hitting the Earth, most mass extinctions were CO2-driven global warming things, says Professor Andy Ridgwell of Bristol University in the UK. It has been a consistent pattern throughout geological time: If you screw with the climate enough, you have huge extinctions, says Ridgwell. So much of what you read and hear about climate change is heavily based on instrument records that only go back 160 years or so. But Richard Zeebe and Andy Ridgwell are among a few scientists who look millions of years into Earths past to learn how the Earth responded to big additions of CO2 into the atmosphere before. I had the opportunity to chat with each of them about their work during the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco at the end of last year. Beyond the ice ages Its true that scientists can learn about the ice age climate going back 800,000 years from bubbles of air trapped in ancient ice drilled from Greenland and Antarctica. They reveal many swings from warm to cold to warm again, in a low-CO2 world mostly cooler than today. We went from very cold and low sea level to a mild climate with normal sea level, says Ridgwell. But it was a very different scenario than today - those cycles were mainly driven by Earths wobbles as it circles the Sun, and those same orbital wobbles mean we should be cooling, not warming, today. So both Ridgwell and Zeebe have been studying the best equivalent to modern climate change they have found so far, a relatively rapid global warming event that occurred 56 million years ago, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, mercifully shortened to PETM. For Ridgwell, its a better analog for the future: This is why I like the PETM, at least its a warming event. It had a peak global warming of about 5 or 6C, which is a little bit beyond the end-of-the-century worst case scenario. For Zeebe its also about data quality: We are focusing on the PETM is because we have relatively good sediment records. We are able to constrain timescales and ages relatively accurately. If you go further back in time, these constrains become very, very difficult. Unprecedented in 66 million years Scientists use a wide variety of data from rocks exposed and drilled at various locations around the globe. They look at geology, fossils, and the chemical makeup of sediments, particularly chemical isotopes - different atoms of the same element that differ minutely in their mass. As Zeebe says, We have two isotope systems that we can look at. One of those are oxygen isotopes and they are essentially a thermometer, they tell us about climate change. And the other isotope system were looking at is carbon isotopes and they tell us something about carbon release. Zeebe and colleagues compared isotope samples with computer models of the climate system. They stretched the models carbon emission timescale until they got a match with the isotope measurements. This showed that the carbon emissions which caused the PETM took about 4,000 years - remarkably similar to an estimate of about 3,000 years just published by Ridgwell and his colleague Sandy Kirtland Turner. They used a completely different approach from Zeebe, focusing on the differences in the carbon signal between marine and land sediments. Narrowing the PETM emissions timeframe to around 3,000 to 4,000 years shows that, like today, the global warming back then was caused by geologically-fast carbon emissions. But our emissions have taken just a couple of centuries so, as Zeebe points out: What were doing with our emissions is unprecedented in the past 66 million years! Even if the PETM isnt a perfect equivalent of todays climate (it was slower, and it happened in a world that was already warmer than today), it still tells us how the planet reacts to a sharp excess of carbon in the atmosphere. For example, the2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report says we can expect a warming of between 1.5C and 4.5C if we double atmospheric CO2levels, but also acknowledges that the longer term warming (over centuries to millennia) could be significantly higher than that. The PETM tells us it is. Zeebe notes: If we just try to explain the PETM with a climate sensitivity of 4.5C, we only get maybe 60% of the warming. So my conclusion would be that long term sensitivity must be more than 4.5C. Mass extinctions Ridgwell has also investigated global warming events going back deeper in geological time, including the big mass extinction events like the end-Permian and the end-Triassic, as well as so-called Ocean Anoxic Events in the Cretaceous. These involved profound and long-lived environmental disruption, with symptoms quite similar to todays climate change, such as global warming, rainfall changes, and ocean acidification. Overall these are relatively slow events, on timescales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, says Ridgwell. But recent advances in rock dating, and in tracing Earths magnetic field frozen into ancient lava, suggests that within those slow events there may well have been intense, rapid episodes that came closer to todays human emission rates. You might have very short pulses of CO2 release within them. Some of these pulses of CO2 could look like what were doing now in terms of amount and rate. Thats an area of active research, because the estimates of individual pulses are getting better, but the estimates of how much CO2 would be released associated with an individual pulse are still uncertain. The change already baked in

Ridgwell is skeptical about ambitions to limit warming to 1.5C: Click here to read the rest 1 0 Printable Version | Link to this page
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About Kate

Why this blog?

Until this moment I have been forced to listen while media and politicians alike have told me "what Canadians think". In all that time they never once asked.

This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio - "You don't speak for me."

(goes to a private mailserver in Europe) I can't answer or use every tip, but all are appreciated!



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What They Say About SDA

"Smalldeadanimals doesn't speak for the people of Saskatchewan" Former Sask Premier Lorne Calvert

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Holy hell, woman. When you send someone traffic, you send someone TRAFFIC. My hosting provider thought I was being DDoSed. - Sean McCormick

"The New York Times link to me yesterday [...] generated one-fifth of the traffic I normally get from a link from Small Dead Animals." Kathy Shaidle

"Thank you for your link. A wave of your Canadian readers came to my blog! Really impressive." Juan Giner - INNOVATION International Media Consulting Group

I got links from the Weekly Standard, Hot Air and Instapundit yesterday - but SDA was running at least equal to those in visitors clicking through to my blog. Jeff Dobbs

"You may be a nasty right winger, but you're not nasty all the time!" Warren Kinsella

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Jackson Converts To Islam

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Ukraine has enough funds to buy natural gas for the 2016-2017 heating season, Finance Minister of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko said in the parliament on Friday.

"First in the history of the country's independence we're ready financially for the next heating season," she said.

She welcomed the approval of bill No. 3388 by the parliament this week. Now the government is able to sign a program on the five year renewable guarantee for $500 million from the World Bank to buy gas.

"Jointly with the agreement worth $300 million earlier signed with the EBRD [the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] and the agreement worth $200 million with the International Finance Corporation we have a chance of attracting funds in the amount of up to $1 billion from international financial organizations to buy natural gas from European suppliers," Jaresko said.

She said that thanks to the funds raised Ukraine is able to buy gas at the lowest prices and completely use the reverse supplies from Europe.
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/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0238c00)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01feba0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0238c00)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01feba0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0219a70)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01feba0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01feba0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee5150b8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0233e18)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0233e18)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0844580)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08104a8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0844580)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08104a8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f073dc28)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08104a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08104a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e1dbd858)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0837f78)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0837f78)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
Regional NSW universities are admitting more than 70 per cent of students who have not scored the minimum marks required to get into courses such as business and law, new data from a Fairfax Media investigation into university admissions has revealed.

The latest set of statistics also shows that the University of Technology Sydney is routinely admitting students below the advertised cut-off. Most are being being admitted through bonus point schemes in courses such as business and combined law.

UTS' bachelor of advanced science course, which students undertake before entering the nation's top medical faculties, has offered 85 per cent of places to high school students who failed to score the minimum 96.9 ATAR.
He also accepted that Cr Mehajer "did not intentionally commit breaches" of the law and said that disqualification from office was not required.

Mr Patten took into account character references and the fact that Cr Mehajer did disclose his financial interest in other properties in John and Ann streets in Lidcombe, which also stood to benefit from the changes.

Mr Patten said the councillor's explanation that he did not believe he had to disclose the property because he did not intend to redevelop it "stretches credulity". Nevertheless, Cr Mehajer was "not challenged upon it and I accept it at face value".

Following the tribunal's earlier decision, Cr Mehajer was suspended from office for one month. But the penalty was overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court . He was instead issued with a reprimand and his monthly fees as a councillor were suspended for three months.

He said he would seek a stay of the decision to stop it from taking effect immediately and lodge an appeal "for the sake of my constituents".

"There should, however in my view, be a significant sanction to make clear to Mr Mehajer and other persons who offer themselves for, or are elected to, public office in local government, that they have statutory obligations which include obligations to act honestly and transparently in the performance of their responsibilities," Mr Patten said.

"These obligations are not to be undertaken casually or lightly. Ignorance is no excuse and each councillor, upon election, is required to acquaint herself or himself with the obligations, comply with them punctiliously and if necessary take advice upon them. In the circumstances, I believe that something more than counselling or a reprimand is required in this case."

The axe is already hanging over Auburn Council, which has been given notice by the state government to show cause why it should not be suspended ahead of a public inquiry led by Sydney silk Richard Beasley. It means Cr Mehajer's colleagues may also be suspended within days.

NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley said the "root of evil" was the Coalition government's law allowing local councillors to vote on their own development interests if they disclosed them.

"That was letting the kids into the candy shop," Mr Foley said. "Let's not pretend this is about one colourful character. He's just the personification of everything that's wrong with the system at the moment."
New York: There were stays at boutique hotels featuring rooftop pools, private soirees at members-only, jacket-and-tie clubs and fundraisers at the Four Seasons, the St Regis and the Mandarin Oriental.

In the world of Jeb Bush, the campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has at times been a whirl of private planes and high-end affairs, according to the federal filings of Mr Bush's campaign and his Super PAC, Right to Rise, which can raise unlimited funds for Mr Bush as long as it does not co-ordinate directly with him.

It is not unusual for US presidential candidates to fly private or even sometimes stay in luxury hotels. But some disgruntled donors say they are unhappy with Mr Bush's large outlays, which also include big spending on staff and tens of millions of dollars in ad buys.

Eleven of 16 major donors contacted by Reuters questioned whether it was money well spent, especially given how the former front runner has stumbled badly in the polls and is now facing questions about whether he should withdraw from the race.
Lock-out laws, operating hours and service of drunk punters could be included in a major reform package to be released by the ACT government as it seeks to deal with alcohol-fuelled violence.

Attorney-General Simon Corbell said the government's long-awaited response to anti-social and violent behaviour in entertainment precincts was due in a fortnight. His comments came a day after police released graphic images of another one-punch assault outside a Canberra nightspot.

CCTV footage shows the man in the white shirt seconds before he punched the man in the dark shirt to the ground. Credit:Screenshot

On Friday police said they were searching for a man who punched another man to the ground outside the PJ O'Reilly's pub in Greenway about 3am on Saturday, December 12.. Security footage showed the victim backing away from an argument, as a third man hit the victim in side of the head.

Another man is seen to rush to his aid as he lies on the footpath. He was later taken to hospital by ambulance crews.
Turboatom (Kharkiv), Ukraine's largest producer of turbine equipment, in 2015 saw a net profit of UAH 1.7 billion, which is 2.7 times higher than in 2014.

According to information on the website of the company, with reference to Director General Viktor Subotin, the company's sales last year amounted to UAH 2.8 billion that is equivalent to 4,000 kW of the installed capacity of shipped produce.

The report notes that these figures are the best for all the years of the enterprise's work.

As reported, in January-September 2015 Turboatom posted a net profit of UAH 1.288 billion, which is 56.5% more than in January-September 2014, its net income increased by 35%, to UAH 2.077 billion.

According to Turboatom, last year it produced and shipped to customers three steam turbines, two condensers, six driving wheels and four guide vanes of water turbines.

Over the year, eight steam and ten hydraulic turbines with a total capacity of 3.206 million kWh produced by Turboatom were put into operation at power plants.

Among the major events of 2015 Turboatom noted the signing of a contract with Paks NPP (Hungary) for more than $30 million, with Inkla Trading and Engineering GmbH (Austria) to supply power equipment for the reconstruction of Kozloduy NPP in Bulgaria, as well as an agreement with Holtec International (the United States) on the joint production of a repository for spent nuclear fuel in the Chornobyl zone.

In addition, as part of the program of import substitution, the company mastered a new kind of products and in September 2015 shipped the first batch of titanium blades for steam turbines to replace worn-out equipment of Russian production at five power units at Ukrainian nuclear power plants. Turboatom undertook the maintenance of these turbines, which previously was made by the manufacturer plant.

In addition, the plant has fully manufactured and shipped equipment to complete the first phase of construction of Dnistrovska hydroelectric pumped storage power plant.

According to the press service, over five years Turboatom had held a deep modernization of production, investing about $70 million, including UAH 64.2 million last year. As part of technical re-equipment, the company upgraded and overhauled ten units of the major production equipment and acquired 20 units.
He might be tiny and sausage shaped but the force is strong in this one.

Jedi dachshund, Obi-Wan, draped in his Star Wars-certified outfit, will join more than 60 sausage dogs taking part in the Canberra region's first ever dachshund races at the Bungendore Show.

Jedi dachshund Obi-Wan, who will be taking part in dachshund races at the Bungendore Show on the weekend. Credit:Kimberley Le Lievre

The races, dubbed the Werriwa Weiner Dash, will be held on Sunday, January 31.

There will also be a dachshund dress-up competition with dogs in their best (and most delightful) costumes. With their tiny legs and bellies that skim the ground, the amusing-looking animals will be the stars of the day.
Canberra's population is expected to surge past 400,000 in 2016 as the city shrugs off the worst of the public service cuts and decades-old demographic trends become things of the past.

And in further signs of changing times, some of the stereotypes associated with Canberra, the retiring public servants leaving for the coast, the graduating uni student following the work to the bigger cities, will have to be set aside, says Chief Minister Andrew Barr.

People gather for the Australia Day fireworks on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. Canberra's population was hovering around 392,000 in the middle of 2015 and will probably reach 400,000 within the next 12 months. Credit:Melissa Adams

The ACT government says the territory's population was hovering around 392,000 in the middle of 2015 and the present growth trend of about 6000 souls each year should tip the territory's population over 400,000 within the next 12 months.

Analysts believe the growth is being driven by young people looking to enter the workforce, who are less likely to leave town than in previous decades, and those coming to the end of their working lives, who are more likely to stay.
Canberra leads the nation for the number of people speeding, risking possible drink-driving, and being hospitalised due to traffic accidents, a new report has found.

Two-thirds of Canberrans who drove in the past six months sped at least 10 kilometres above the speed limit. This amount was higher than any other state or territory and about 10 per cent above the national average.

The vehicle was allegedly detected at 201km/h in the sign-posted 100km/h zone. Credit:Leanne Pickett

Nearly one-in-10 motorists got behind the wheel when possibly over the alcohol limit "rarely" or more often, while 7 per cent of all Australians did the same.

The figures were revealed on Friday in the Productivity Commission report on the performance of Australian governments.
The ACT continues to have the fastest ambulance response times in the country, responding to 90 per cent of critical cases within 12.5 minutes last financial year, despite more paramedics leaving the service and increasing demand.

Paramedics shaved off 0.4 minutes from the previous year's response times in 90 per cent of priority one incidents in 2014-15, the Productivity Commission's annual Report on Government Services reveals.

The ACT had the fastest ambulance response times in the country. Credit:Jamila Toderas.

In 50 per cent of cases ambulances responded within eight minutes, the quickest of any capital city in the country.

In the same period the total operational workforce decreased by 10 to 180 full time equivalent staff causing the staff attrition level to rise to 2.8 per cent from 1.7 per cent in 2013-14 when it was at a five-year low.
Violent attacks inside Canberra's chronically overcrowded prison have spiked placing additional pressure on staff, inmates and the ACT government.

Prisoner-on-prisoner assaults more than doubled last year with an extra 25 incidents reported inside the Alexander Maconochie Centre. The number of serious assaults also increased by three.

Inside the new special care facility, which opened in September and was at capacity within a month. Credit:Rohan Thomson

The jail's population also swelled to 126.8 per cent last year, placing additional stress on those tasked with separating prisoners in the territory's only prison.

The figures were revealed in a report on government services released by the Productivity Commission on Friday.
A controversial solar farm project near Williamsdale has been approved by the ACT government under Planning Minister Mick Gentleman's call-in powers.

The 29-hectare solar farm on the NSW border south of Canberra will be built by energy firm Elementus, which faced controversy over its original plans to build the farm on land adjacent to the Uriarra Village.

Policing minister Mick Gentleman said they had proceeded with the bill despite concerns expressed by the ACT Firearms Consultative Committee. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Under the new approval, the company will build a 11.18-megawatt array on 34 hectares of farm land beside the Monaro Highway and Angle Crossing Road.

About 116 mature trees will be removed from the site and stored for use in new conservation works by the ACT government, while half a hectare of native vegetation will be lost for the development.
Premiership-winning player Nick Smith has pledged his commitment to the Sydney Swans until 2018, after signing a two-year contract extension.

The 27-year-old defender has played 142 games in the red and white since being recruited from the 2007 rookie draft.

Nick Smith (left) has signed until the end of 2018. Credit:Getty Images

Apart from winning the premiership with the Swans in 2012, Smith was also included in the All-Australian side in 2014.

Swans general manager Tom Harley says they are rapt to have a player of Smith's calibre extend his contract.
Singapore Airlines plans to resume nearly 19-hour non-stop flights between Singapore and New York from 2018 and United Airlines announced on Friday plans for non-stop San Francisco-Singapore services, with a flying time of 16 hours and 20 minutes.

Emirates will maintain its current trans-Tasman schedule of three A380 and one Boeing 777-300ER flights a day, despite adding five weekly non-stop services between Auckland and Dubai on a 777-200LR. The Auckland-Dubai sector will rank ahead of Qantas' Dallas-Sydney flight as the longest in the world in distance and will have a flying time of 17 hours and 15 minutes.

Emirates will launch the first non-stop flights between Auckland and Dubai from March 2, in a move that will give it a brief crown as the longest flight in the world and effectively increase the capacity available for bookings on its trans-Tasman joint venture with Qantas.

Emirates' decision to announce the new route just a month before the first flights is unusual, and industry sources said it was probably part of an effort to beat rival Qatar to the market. Emirates said travellers booked on its existing services to Dubai and beyond via Australia would be able to switch to the new flight without additional fees, subject to seat availability. That will mean more trans-Tasman seats in the coming months.

Minimum level of capacity

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission required Qantas and Emirates to maintain a minimum level of trans-Tasman capacity as part of their joint venture approved in 2013, which allows the airlines to co-ordinate pricing and scheduling.

Emirates has improved its load factor, or the percentage of seats filled, on trans-Tasman flights through its relationship with Qantas. In October 2012 Emirates filled about 69 per cent of trans-Tasman seats but that increased to 75 per cent by October 2015. However, in October 2015 the Emirates load remained lower than Air New Zealand with 86 per cent, Qantas at 84 per cent, Virgin at 83 per cent and Jetstar at 81 per cent.

A Qantas spokesman said New Zealand has always been "central to the success" of its Emirates partnership, with the carriers combined contributing about 32,000 seats a week on trans-Tasman routes.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko believes that the biggest reforms are implemented in the energy sector, which allowed Ukraine to achieve energy independence from Russia.

"If to consider the field in which the largest reforms are carried out in the country, energy will be definitely among the first. The first thing we can be proud of is energy independence," the president said during his visit to Rivne nuclear power plant.

According to him, in just two years Ukraine has achieved the "fantastic result." The president noted bold steps made to increase the share of nuclear energy in the energy balance of Ukraine.

"Only a year ago the share of nuclear energy accounted for 48% and was steadily falling. In less than a year we have increased it from 48% to over 55%," Poroshenko added.

According to him, the Ukrainian power sector has become more competitive, ensured the energy security of Kyiv and Kyiv region, and reduced consumption of anthracite where there was a shortage of electricity.

"Today Kyiv receives cheap electricity from Rivne and Khmelnytsky nuclear power plants and does not use expensive anthracite coal," Poroshenko said.

He also noted that there have not been rolling blackouts this winter, despite the fears and predictions of many politicians.
Clive Palmer's Queensland Nickel will require a capital injection of "tens of millions of dollars" to avoid liquidation unless there is a rapid improvement in the price of nickel, a joint administrator of the company said on Friday.

The disclosure came as it emerged that the total debts of the company could exceed $110 million, with between $70-80 million owed to creditors and $30.8 million currently owed to employees, of which $16 million is owed to staff who were sacked this month.

Queensland Nickel creditors and observers signing on at the meeting in Townsville on Friday. The company sacked 237 workers at its Yabulu refinery near Townsville earlier in January and is now in administration. Credit:AAP

However Ben Swan, Queensland secretary of the Australian Workers Union, said if the company went into liquidation then the range of outstanding commitments to employees would soar to between $65 to $70 million. "So the scale of this is just gargantuan" he told Fairfax Media after the initial creditor's meeting held on Friday morning in Townsville.

Earlier this month 237 employees at the company were sacked, due to the deteriorating financial position of the company.
So I do the right thing and drive to Homebush and the waste recovery centre. I explain I have 10 cans of paint, each containing a dribble of paint.

At this time of the year, I attempt the big clean-up. I want everything ship-shape for the year ahead. This extends to the left-over cans of paint, which must not, I know, be thrown in the household garbage.

In the old days, many returned from the tip with more than they'd dropped off. Credit:Robert Pearce

It's a curiosity of Australian life that the typical bedroom requires 3.6 litres of paint and yet paint comes in a four-litre tin. This means every Australia house has  in the shed, in the garage, under the stairs  a dozen rusty cans, each containing a splash of leftover paint.

The woman at the weighbridge gives me a "brace yourself" look and explains the policy. They charge $4-a-litre for disposal, based on the size of the can, rather than how much paint it contains. She supplies an extreme example: if you had a 10-litre tin, with a spit of paint in the bottom, it would still cost $40 to throw away.

There are alternatives, of course. I could open all the tins and combine the dregs into one full tin, pay the $16 for the disposal of that tin, and then pay a minimum $63 general waste fee to get rid of the nine other cans. Then again, I'd have to go home and come back as they don't allow you to do the combining onsite.

Or I could go home, open all the cans, add Kitty Litter to dry out the paint  it's the liquid that's the problem  at which point I could slowly feed the cans into the household rubbish, having presumably poisoned the neighbourhood with the stink of evaporating paint.

Or there's a free service in Liverpool  not too long a drive  but they probably won't take the two spray paints that are part of my collection and no one is quite sure whether they happen to be open today.

That's fine. No worries. I'll worry about the paint later. I'll just put all the tins back in the shed. That way the kids can deal with them once I die, which  given my blood pressure right now  can't be far off.
Down a long road in Singapore rows of banners announce: "The joy of success is in sharing it. Share success. Give hope." These words might have been written by the organisers of Art Stage, now in its sixth year. When the Chinese sharemarket has torpedoed the global economy, one needs a serious injection of hope to imagine investors sharing their success at the art fair.

Since its inception in 2011, Art Stage has struggled to keep pace with its Hong Kong counterpart. When that fair became Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013, the gap turned into a chasm. At least Singapore can still boast that it has Asia's second most important fair.

Art Stage art fair in Singapore.

Art Stage is the brainchild of Swiss entrepreneur, Lorenzo Rudolf, who was involved in the early days of Art Basel. Some look at the world through rose-coloured glasses, but Rudolf's are tinted blue. In speech and manner he comes across as more curator than marketeer. He describes the art market as if it were a deeply mystical phenomenon.

A peculiar symptom of Rudolf's attempt to concentrate on art rather than money is the Joseph Balestier Award for Freedom in Art, co-sponsored by Art Stage and the US Embassy. It's only $S15,000, but is presented with the razzle dazzle of the Oscars. The fearless Singaporean performance artist, Lee Wen, was a worthy winner, but the thought of Singapore and the US combining to celebrate artistic freedom made me feel slightly queasy.
A US judge has ordered Australian publisher Amanda Hayward to pay more than $18.5 million in compensation, costs and interest to her former business partner in a long-running stoush over profits from the runaway erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey.

The huge award comes after a Texan jury last year found Hayward had cheated Jennifer Pedroza, a primary school teacher from Fort Worth, out of her share of the earnings from the book.

Pedroza's lawyer, Michael Farris, told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram his client was "very happy" with the outcome.
When it comes to Melbourne, Derrick May knows what's up. The veteran producer and DJ has been visiting regularly from Detroit for 20-odd years, and he knows where to eat  he names Mario's, Jim's Greek Tavern and Supernormal as favourites  and knows not to trust the sunshine when it appears momentarily. "It's an illusion, it's Melbourne, don't believe it," he says.

Closest to his heart are his memories of our clubbing culture of yesteryear, something he says just ain't what it used to be. "Honkytonks...god I used to love Honkytonks man, that was the joint!" he says.

Detroit techno producer Derrick May calls Melbourne "the Detroit of Australia". Credit:Wayne Taylor

He calls Melbourne "the Detroit of Australia" before correcting himself. "It used to be, for sure. It fell apart at some point, I don't know why."
Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), left, and Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) in Little Fockers. Credit:Glen Wilson It's rare, thank goodness, for a De Niro comedy to go quite as far as Rocky and Bullwinkle did, with its excruciating send-up of the "Are you talking to me?" monologue from Taxi Driver. But they're all built on an assumption that viewers will be steeped in, or at least dimly aware of, De Niro lore  his genius for playing violent, streetwise, wayward souls, and bringing plausibility and depth to hair-trigger maniacs. So if you could put a De Niro-brand sociopath in a film about a nervous young man trying to win over his prospective father-in-law, for example? Well, imagine the hilarity that would ensue. That was the thinking behind Meet the Parents, the 2000 film that was largely responsible for the De Niro comedy boom. It's a lot better than you probably remember: De Niro's Jack Byrnes, a retired CIA officer and fiercely protective father, is a brilliant comic creation, outrageous but just recognisable enough for Ben Stiller's anxiety to connect. Robert De Niro, left and Sylvester Stallone in Grudge Match. Credit:Ben Rothstein Take the scene in which Jack and Stiller's Greg Focker listen to Puff, The Magic Dragon. Hearing De Niro humming along to Peter, Paul and Mary is funny to start with, largely because he doesn't overplay it. Then Greg attempts to make small talk by bringing up the song's supposed drug references  and De Niro's increasingly appalled expression and Stiller's quiet dismay turn it into a glorious cringe-comedy vignette.

De Niro has a limited number of comedy moves, but Meet the Parents makes expert use of his best three: overt friendliness with an undertow of threat, an expression you might call "simmering volcano", and the wildly disproportionate outburst ("I will bring you down, baby! I will bring you down to Chinatown!"). But it also gets a few cheap laughs by undercutting De Niro's standing as a respectable actor  the scene in which a lorry's spinning tyres spray him with septic tank waste, for instance  and this is where the problems start to creep in. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle: From left, Rocky, Robert De Niro, Jason Alexander, Rene Russo, Bullwinkle. That particular comic tactic yields diminishing returns, not least because De Niro's standing droops a little every time you do it. So that's why the scripts of Meet the Parents' two awful sequels, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, had to go to much greater extremes to achieve the same effect. (The scene from Meet the Fockers in which the actor wears a strap-on breast-feeding device sums up Bad De Niro Comedy in a single blood-curdling image.) But that didn't stop all three Meet the Parents films from being wildly successful. The first one, about which Universal were quietly concerned (its $US55 million budget, pushed up in part by De Niro's fee, was expensive for a comedy) was covered in 11 days, and it went on to make $US330 million worldwide. The sequel took $US516 million, and the third $US310 million: a drop, but still no mean feat 10 years after the original. De Niro began the 21st century as Hollywood's most bankable comic star. That De Niro's comic style is often both broad and limited can't be helped: the films that work tend to be the ones that make a virtue of it. A year before Meet the Parents came Analyse This, in which De Niro played a mob boss in psychotherapy, and the role didn't require much more than judicious deployment of the same three moves above. The film's no masterpiece, but it works because Billy Crystal's nebbishy psychiatrist doodles wittily around De Niro's breeze-block blow-ups, providing the much-needed comic intricacy that's missing from many of the films that would follow. Yet De Niro's best comedy to date is the one which turned that dynamic on his head  and positioned him, improbably, as the straight man.

"You know why you have an ulcer?" Charles Grodin's wily mob accountant tells De Niro's bail agent Jack Walsh in Midnight Run. "Because you have two forms of expression: silence and rage." Like many of that film's best lines ("You ever have sex with an animal, Jack?") it's a Grodin improvisation  but it draws a circle around the soul of De Niro's enormous comic appeal. Though silence and rage are Jack's two main ways of engaging with the world, we know there's a rounded, even lovable, human being underneath. When we first meet Jack, he's slinking through an inner-city slum in a black leather jacket, and we could easily be in a serious De Niro film. In the late 1980s, De Niro was long-established as a great screen actor and Oscar-winning talent, but his films had never been licences to print money. (The Untouchables, released the previous year, had been his biggest hit to date, but that show's newly minted star was Kevin Costner.) But this addictively eccentric odd-couple road-movie buddy-comedy hybrid changed that. De Niro's streetwise spikiness and Grodin's deadpan psych-outs turned out to be a perfect comic mismatch, and the film made De Niro a commercial star. Tellingly, even though he's technically playing the straight man, De Niro doesn't have to be outrageous to be funny. In the scene in which he mockingly compliments the FBI agents on their sunglasses  "Are they government-issued, or do all you guys go, like, to the same store to get them?"  his fake sincerity is hilarious because it's almost indiscernible from the real thing. Back in 1983, his performance as the unhinged aspiring stand-up Rupert Pupkin in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy had showed De Niro understood the rhythms of comedy well enough to make it supremely unsettling. That film's climactic monologue wavers hair-raisingly between derangement and real comic proficiency, and is all the scarier for it. In Midnight Run, all he had to do was use those powers for good.
Edwina Bartholomew has broken down on air while ending her stint as Sunrise's roving weather presenter.

After three years on the road presenting the weather from every corner of the country, the 32-year-old is being replaced by comedian Sam Mac (Sam McMillan).

Sad goodbye ... but Edwina Bartholomew will join Sunrise back in Sydney for a new presenting role.

Mac was announced as Sunrise's newest recruit on Friday morning following short weather presenting stints on the Seven show. He has also appeared on Ten's The Project.
One billion dollars in extra funding would flow to Victorian schools over two years under Labor's plan to fund the full six years of the Gonski school funding deals.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took aim at Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's plan to spend an extra $37 billion on schools over the next decade on Friday, decrying it as "reckless" spending reminiscent of the Rudd-Gillard years.

Mr Turnbull backed his ability to win an election without lavish spending promises, warning voters not to expect a "fistful of dollars election campaign" this year.

According to Labor's school funding estimates, costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, $1 billion of Labor's $4.5 billion in extra Gonski funding for 2018 and 2019 would go to Victorian schools. This covers public, Catholic and private schools across the state.
Actor Samuel Johnson, who stars as Molly Meldrum in the upcoming mini-series Molly, is "dead broke, but happy".

The likeable and knock-about actor said that he has not been cast in any role since he walked off the set of Molly almost a year ago.

Samuel Johnson, as Molly, said he has not been cast in any role since he walked off the set of Molly almost a year ago.

Most of the past year he has spent working for his charity, Love Your Sister, which raises money for breast cancer research, or performing voice over work.
The future of the Family Court of Australia's only domestic violence support service in Sydney may have been handed a lifeline after the state government backtracked on its initial refusal to fund the embattled service.

The Women's Family Law Support Service, which has operated out of the Family Law Court in Sydney's CBD for almost a decade, had repeated requests for funding knocked back by the NSW government, prompting domestic violence services to scramble for ways to fund it.

Funding hope: Brad Hazzard. Credit:Dean Osland

The service, which has one full-time worker and a number of volunteers, is being kept afloat by the Marrickville Women's Refuge, a homelessness shelter, after charity provider Domestic Violence Management Service announced last September it could no longer fund the position.

Refuge manager Tracey Robinson said the shelter had reassigned Sruti Sinha, one of its three full-time staff members, to the Family Court office but couldn't afford to do so without jeopardising the shelter's day-to-day functions.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has stated that the reform of the industrial sector in Ukraine and the competitiveness of the Ukrainian economy should start with energy.

"Two components - energy and a competitive investment climate - enable us to attract investment. What you have done is a huge victory," he said, referring to the staff of Rivne nuclear power plant, during a visit to Rivne region.

Poroshenko believes the Ukrainian energy sector will have a new future in five years.

"I believe that the Ukrainian energy sector will have quite a different future in five years," he said.

"We will complete Novodnistrovska pumped storage station, this will also be the position to increase the level of nuclear energy. We will start negotiations on production of advanced energy storage technologies and then we'll have no problem of peak load," the president said.

According to the head of state, this would mean that "in the near future nuclear power plants will work for storage at night, and for consumers during day time."
NSW police have agreed to provide the families of Lindt Cafe siege victims Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson with a summary of highly sensitive documents setting out proposed tactics on the night of the siege.

But the families have reserved the right to ask NSW Coroner Michael Barnes to give them access to the documents in full if the summaries are inadequate.

The siege inquest, which started in January last year, is set to consider the adequacy of the police response to the tragedy. The final phase of hearings is due to start on March 21.

Ms Dawson, a mother of three young children, was killed by a stray police bullet when gunman Man Haron Monis, who executed Mr Johnson, became involved in a shoot-out with police in the final stages of the siege.
Mike Baird kyboshed the hopes of four of his most senior ministers in casting his deciding vote against a Sydney University rail station in favour of his social housing agenda at Waterloo.

The decision to build a station at Waterloo was made so the rail line could trigger the development of thousands of new apartments in the area, which would in turn pay for the reconstruction of low-cost housing.

At the Cabinet Infrastructure Committee meeting organised to make the decision, which was announced on December 16, the Premier sided with three other ministers who supported a Waterloo station, sources told the Herald.
UrbanGrowth NSW, the development agency under the responsibility of Planning Minister Rob Stokes, had made no secret of its desire to build thousands of new apartments around a Waterloo stop. The Social Housing Minister, Brad Hazzard, was also at the meeting. He could see how new apartments at Waterloo could pay for the reconstruction of 2000 existing dwellings in the area. And Stokes and Hazzard had the support of the Deputy Premier and Police Minister, Troy Grant, who reflected the cops' enthusiasm for dismantling the Waterloo towers. The eighth vote and the premier's prerogative, then, was Mike Baird's. And, according to multiple people in the room, it was the opportunity to rebuild the estate at Waterloo that swayed the premier's decision.

A better way for kids to grow up "Social housing, it wasn't - inverted commas  'social housing' when we were placed there," says Joanna Loko. Loko, a single mother, raised her four children for over 10 years at the housing estate at Claymore near Campbelltown, one of the Sydney's most disadvantaged areas. "I looked at it as a home for me and my children," says Loko. "It was a roof over our heads, and as a family you just make it a home. We were housed by government housing but that didn't define who we were  it didn't," she says. Loko grasped the opportunities around her. She volunteered. Through groups such as St Vincent de Paul, Kalon House of Welcome, and the Campbelltown Animation Project, Loko, who credits her church and her own mother for the support she needed, became a presence in the community.

She found paid work in a laundromat and coffee-shop she helped establish around Claymore. And she was able to gain TAFE qualifications while raising her kids, in no small part because of the sense of financial stability. "There's no pressure on your rent," she says. "You are able to manage because you are able to budget around it." But it was her experience in the years after moving out of Claymore, which she did to make it easier to take her sons to sport, that underscores the scale of the housing crisis in Sydney, and why government policy is desperately trying to catch up. On Sunday, the Social Housing Minister Hazzard announced the government's long-awaited policy on the future of the sector. Under the policy, not-for-profit providers would take over the management of a greater proportion of social housing.

There's a financial motive here: the transfer allows tenants access to Commonwealth rent assistance  worth more than $635 million over the next 10 years. But Hazzard's policy also promised 17,000 existing social housing dwellings would be rebuilt in the next 10 years, and an extra 6000 dwellings created. To pay for those dwellings, developers will be given the chance to build apartments for private sale on public estates. For Hazzard, the policy has a dual benefit: it raises money to pay for construction, and it changes the character of public estates. "The major plus of all this which is not necessarily given enough focus is that when you get a mixture of housing, private and public, you get an incredible drop in anti-social behaviour," says Hazzard.

"Also what appeals to me is that little kids growing up don't just see their parents and grandparents not going to work," he says. "They see people around them dressed for work, leaving home to go about their day, and they think 'Gee whiz that's what I can do.'" When Hazzard addressed a meeting of housing providers on Wednesday to discuss the changes, however, a theme immediately started to emerge. At one level, housing advocates appreciated Hazzard's apparent and refreshing concern for the sector. But at the same time, they wanted to know what the government was going to do to create more affordable properties  for people, like Loko, who might move out of social housing but who would struggle in Sydney's exorbitant rental market. "I just don't think that's enough at this stage," said Charles Northcote from BlueCHP housing of the 6000 promised extra dwellings.

Magnus Linder from Churches Housing cited UrbanGrowth projects such as the Central to Eveleigh Development and the Bays Precinct that currently have no specified level of affordable housing: "I'm wondering if we are not letting an opportunity go by," he said. Wendy Hayhurst, the chief executive of the NSW Federation of Housing Associations, cited research showing at least 30,000 new affordable dwellings were needed in Sydney: "There is an affordability crisis out there," she said. And almost identical concerns were voiced by Shelter NSW's Mary Jenkins ("For this to work we need to actually work out how to grow the affordable section of the private rental market); Andrea Galloway from Evolve Housing ("there has to be some sort of pathway to take people through, and I don't see that in the policy"); and Melissa Brooks from Address Housing ("What we find in transitioning tenants to the private market is that there is a real and well-founded fear about the lack of security in the private market.") In the years since Loko lived at Claymore, this insecurity has been real. "We've moved  I don't know how many times we've moved," she says. A few years ago, after her oldest three children moved out of home, she stopped working because of health concerns.

"My youngest daughter and I became homeless, because of the rent," she says. "So we got into Mission Australia housing." She is now working again, for an agency that provides disability carers. But she still does not earn enough for her own place. She's been living with her oldest son and his family since last year. Hazzard says he is aware of the need for more affordable housing, and views the 6000 new dwellings as a minimum. "To be aiming for thousands of new homes is almost a new lexicon for the sector," he says. "I think people have been very pleasantly surprised that a Liberal government wants to deliver on this  we are quite passionate about it. "But to get thousands of new homes  this is only the starting point, it's not the finish point. I've spoken again to the Minister for Planning again today and indicated we need to really pin down some key directions as to where the community and business sector would find it acceptable to look at the development of private housing."
Bronson Blessington, condemned to "never be released" from prison for his part in the rape and murder of Janine Balding has applied for clemency under the NSW governor's royal prerogative of mercy.

Blessington was only 14 years old when the crime was committed and the petition is his last avenue to end his indefinite incarceration, found by the United Nations to be "cruel, inhuman and degrading" due to his juvenile status and a failure to consider his prospects for rehabilitation..

He is the youngest person since NSW was a convict settlement to face prison for the term of his natural life, his lawyer, the former NSW MP Peter Breen, said.

In this weekend's Good Weekend, Blessington speaks of his remorse for his crimes, his troubled childhood and the events that led up to one of Sydney's most notorious crimes.
Toowoomba Regional Council's new $27 million library has been delayed after inspections revealed it was not fire compliant, shortly before it was due to be handed over to the council.

Hutchinson Builders area manager Robert Weymouth said the company was in the process of removing 780 copper panels on the building's facade to get access to defected insulation material behind the external cladding.

Artists' impression of the new, $27 million Toowoomba library.

"Despite assurances from the manufacturers, Hutchinson carried out extensive investigations and was not happy with the results, so full removal of this product will be undertaken as we will not compromise on quality," he said.

"The exterior cladding will be removed panel by panel, have a new insulation product installed, and then be re-attached to the building.
Brisbane may have avoided most of Friday's storms, but that is unlikely to continue for the weekend.

As the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and the Darling Downs were smashed by heavy rain on Friday, dry air in the upper atmosphere cut a swathe through storm conditions keeping the city relatively dry.

Less than 2 millimetres of rain was recorded in Brisbane while a massive 27 millimetres was recorded in Toowoomba in just 10 minutes.

On the Gold Coast heavy rain and strong winds belted the glitter strip in the afternoon as Noosa on the Sunshine Coast also copped a walloping.
One of the Gold Coast's key high rise developments on the Southport Spit, and widely seen as a test case for future development on the Spit, could be debated before the March 19 Gold Coast elections.

Council planning officers are now researching the complexities of twin 44-storey towers, now including an underwater aquarium and museum, on a site where the "desired height outcome" is still three storeys.

Proposed aquarium at at Sunland development at Southport Spit.

No date has been set for the application to come to Gold Coast City Council, however a decision is possible within the "caretaker" period.

Five of the Gold Coast's 14 councillors will retire on March 19.
Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is "likely" to grant approval, according to The Independent, though the embryos will not be allowed to develop beyond the seven-day stage. A licence for similar research could be given in Australia, said a spokeswoman for the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which regulates human-embryo testing. "Ambiguous" regulations at the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OTGR) governing organisms created using CRISPR-Cas9 are up for review, said a federal Department of Health spokeswoman. There was "no plan" to include matters relating to the genetic modification of human embryos. CRISPR-Cas9 was announced in January 2013 by two groups of researchers  at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard  who are in a dispute over patents. It is derived from an ancient bacterial immune-system response to attacking viruses. Chinese researchers used the technology to edit the genomes of human embryos, in a study published last April, investigating a cure for a potentially fatal blood disorder called beta-thalassemia.

The embryos had been obtained from local fertility clinics and were non-viable, so could not have been used to produce children. But the changes were "germline modification"  something which can be passed to offspring  rather than "somatic modification", which alters genes in a single person. The Chinese research showed the limitations of CRISPR-Cas9. Of 54 embryos, only four had the correct tweaks and all those reportedly had "off-target mutations" where the wrong part of the DNA had been altered as well. Basically, the technology doesn't always cut in the right place. But US scientist Feng Zhang, one of its originators, has already refined it to the point where the error rate is approaching the normal mutation rate of humans. Nature magazine reported last April that "at least four groups" in China were looking at gene-editing human embryos. Harvard University geneticist Professor George Church, a CRISPR-Cas9 pioneer, told Fairfax that it's "probably not" possible to contain the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in germline changes. He has said he thinks "enhancement will creep in the door" for humans.

Research into heritable changes is possible in Australia, said the NHMRC spokeswoman, though a licence would depend on factors including only utilising spare IVF embryos. Edited embryos must be discarded before 14 days of development. Professor Church is excited about two potential uses  the first, eliminating endogenous retroviruses in pigs. The animals could be used as organ donors for humans without our immune systems rejecting the transplants. The other is to eliminate invasive species and malaria using "gene drives", which allow edits to spread through entire populations. A scientist in CSIRO's vector-borne diseases team in Geelong, Victoria, is set to begin work in autumn 2016 with CRISPR-Cas9, studying how to reduce the ability of mosquitoes to transmit disease. They may utilise gene drives. But such an approach brings unknown risks if taken further and whole species are wiped out.

Dr Newson said, "Eradicating any species should only be done if we can be certain there are no knock-on effects. We can't be confident of that yet so gene-drive research should proceed cautiously." CSIRO researchers are also using it to investigate which genes are responsible for yield in agricultural staples such as wheat  and whether hardier, larger grains can be produced. Dr Marco Herold heads WEHI's CRISPR lab, one of the most advanced in Australia. He was one of Dr Kelly's two colleagues on the lymphoma study, the result of which was published in Cell Reports journal in March 2015. He said, "Although genome editing has been possible before, CRISPR-Cas9 has really opened up the field. It allows the rapid and highly efficient manipulation of the genome in many different ways." Herold's lab has been contacted from many research facilities around the country and worldwide to collaborate with him on the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which has sped up the pace of research as well as making it cheaper and more accessible.

He's employed it to generate genetically altered mouse models, which can mimic human diseases, in two to three months, as opposed to 10-15 months under the prior developmental regime. The lab produced about 60 different mouse models from late 2014 to December 2015, allowing research into areas such as cancer, autoimmunity and neurogenerative diseases. But the idea that 'designer babies' are within reach is still science-fiction  the genetic basis for human intelligence or strength, say, is yet to be determined. And editing human embryos and then implanting them to pregnancy remains a criminal offence in Australia. It is likely that CRISPR-Cas9 will be used first to research inherited diseases caused by single-gene mutations which can be easily targeted, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington's Disease. Schizophrenia develops from the interplay of dozens of genes  over 100 implicated to date  with the environment, making any possible treatment much harder to determine.

Editing genes brings other risks. The one responsible for sickle-cell anaemia, for example, also protects against malaria. And the link between genes and diseases isn't always precise. A recent study by the US National Centre for Genome Resources found the evidence for claims that 27 per cent of genetic mutations led to negative outcomes was shaky at best. Dr Newson said that visions of "'mad scientists', wishing to create engineered humans at any cost, will come up [in the debate] over gene editing just as they did for human cloning". But an outright ban would be "short-sighted"  she'd like to see oversight but with flexibility for the technology to develop responsibly. The first International Summit of Human Gene Editing was called in December 2015 by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which is holding another in February to discuss the implications of germline gene-editing.
"Facebook equates bullfighting with prostitution," declared ABC , the country's third-largest newspaper, on January 14. Days later, when Facebook inevitably backtracked and deleted its references to bullfighting  clarifying, in a statement to The Washington Post, that it had been included mistakenly  Spain's second-largest paper, El Mundo, rejoiced that the network had "rectified" the situation.

Bullfighting is a controversial sport; even within Spain, few people still follow it. But columnists from Madrid to Malaga bristled at the suggestion that a federally recognised piece of heritage could be branded offensive.

The dialogue box is part of Facebook's content-reporting process, the means by which users can request that the social network censor their friends. The six words appeared to invite Spanish users to report on a new category of things: Under the option "it's inappropriate, it annoys me, or I don't like it," Facebook listed Spain's millennium-old national pastime, bullfighting.

In the middle of January, in a change noticed nowhere but Spain, Facebook added six words to a single dialogue box  and inadvertently stumbled into a tortuous national debate.

But unfortunately for the suits at Facebook, who had suffered considerable headaches over the bullfighting mess, that situation was just the latest in a string of unintended clashes as inevitable as they are endless. As Facebook has tentacled out from California, gaining control of an ever-larger slice of the global commons, the network has found itself in a tenuous and culturally awkward position: how to determine a single standard of what is and is not acceptable  and apply it uniformly, from Maui to Morocco.

For Facebook and other platforms like it, incidents such as the bullfighting kerfuffle betray a larger, existential difficulty: How can you possibly impose a single moral framework on a vast and varying patchwork of global communities?

If you ask Facebook this question, the social-media behemoth will deny doing any such thing. Facebook says its community standards are inert, universal, agnostic to place and time. The site doesn't advance any worldview, it claims, besides the non-controversial opinion that people should "connect" online.

"Every day, people come to Facebook to connect with people and issues they care about," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "Given the diversity of the Facebook community, this means that sometimes people share information that is controversial or offends others. That's why we have a set of global Community Standards that explain what you can and cannot do on our service [...] We work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience."

Facebook has modified its standards several times in response to pressure from advocacy groups  although the site has deliberately obscured those edits, and the process by which Facebook determines its guidelines remains stubbornly obtuse. On top of that, at least some of the low-level contract workers who enforce Facebook's rules are embedded in the region  or at least the time zone  whose content they moderate. The social network staffs its moderation team in 24 languages, 24 hours a day.
A dramatic drop in Melbourne and Geelong's water storages has pushed the first order of water from the controversial Wonthaggi desalination plant closer.

And if an order of 50 gigalitres is made from the multibillion-dollar plant, taxpayers will see water bills rise by up to $15 a year. That order would cost the state $27 million.

Victorians pay $1.8 million a day to keep the plant ready.

Water storages in Melbourne have dropped significantly over the past four months.
French-Ukrainian investment forum to be held in early April in France

The French-Ukrainian investment forum, initially scheduled for November 18, 2015 in Paris and postponed due to terrorists' attacks in the city, will be held on April 5, 2016, Ukrainian Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister and Ukraine's Trade Representative Natalia Mykolska has said.

"On April 5 the forum in France that was postponed in 2015 will be held. The date is confirmed. We want to make a public announcement jointly with France," she said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

She said that the conference will be officially announced within a week.

She said that the holding of the similar forum with Canada is being discussed.

Mykolska added that it is planned to hold two more large conferences outside the country this year. One conference is devoted to the opportunities in trade with Ukraine and another one both to investment and trade.

As reported, in 2015, the Ukrainian government jointly with business organizations held two investment conferences in Washington and Berlin.
A man has died in a car crash near Marysville in central Victoria.

Police believe the vehicle was travelling east on Marysville Road in Narbethong when it left the road and struck a tree about 11.30am on Friday.

A man has died in a car crash near Marysville, while a motorcyclist has been seriously injured in St Albans.

The man died at the scene. There were no other passengers in the vehicle.

The cause of the crash is yet to be determined.
A series of hoax bomb threats led to the evacuation of several schools and learning centres across Victoria and interstate on Friday.

Victoria Police said the phone calls were not linked to terrorism and there was no imminent threats to schools.



Berwick Chase Primary School. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Berwick Chase Primary, Berwick Lodge Primary School, Aitken Creek Primary School in Craigieburn and Reservoir High School were among the schools.

Victoria Police spokeswoman Leonie Johnson said the origin of the calls was being investigated.
Police have confirmed that three men and a woman were on a light plane that crashed off the coast near Point Lonsdale on Friday afternoon.

A 68-year-old Noble Park man, a 63-year-old Black Rock woman, a 65-year-old Black Rock man and a 55-year-old Mordialloc man were on board the aircraft that took off from Moorabbin airport in the morning.

Three bodies have been recovered from the water. It is believed the fourth person was also killed, but their body is yet to be located.

Late on Friday night a Victoria Police spokeswoman said the families of the deceased people had been notified, but the bodies were yet to be formally identified.
A signage company charged over the fatal Swanston Street wall collapse says it should be held less culpable than the site's owner, Grocon, for failing to foresee grave structural dangers.

Aussie Signs, contracted by Grocon to attach an advertising sign to the wall that collapsed and killed three people in 2013, has pleaded guilty for failing to ensure people were not exposed to risk.

Firemen and workers frantically dig in the rubble of the fallen wall in March 2013. Three people died when the structure fell on them. Credit:Ken Irwin

In the County Court on Friday, the company handed up an apology expressing deep regret "on behalf of all past and present staff", and said it hoped that resolving the matter would bring some closure to grieving family and friends.
A 47-year-old Joondalup man, who led police on a dramatic two-hour car chase through Perth's northern coastal suburbs late last year has been jailed for more than two years.

The incident ended with Cahal McLaughlin ploughing a stolen vehicle into heavy waves off Yanchep Beach.



McLaughlin faced Perth Magistates court on Friday on a long string of charges, including stealing a motor vehicle, failure to stop, reckless driving, dangerous driving and driving without a licence.

The bizarre sequence of events began when police had tried to stop a 4WD, driven by McLaughlin, on Caridean Street in Heathridge at about 10.20am on October 6.

He evaded them, at one stage driving on the wrong side of Hodges Drive.
Kim Tucci before the birth. Credit:Erin Elizabeth Photography "It's getting harder as each day passes to push through the pain, every part of my body aches and sleeping is becoming very painful. No amount of pillows are helping support my back and belly. Sometimes I get so upset that I just want to throw my hands up and give in!" she wrote. "Mummy guilt has kicked up a level! I'm trying to get through all the pain just on Panadol alone if I can help it, I can't bare the thought of any drugs passing through to my babies. Sometimes my pelvis becomes so stiff I can barely walk and my hips feel like they are grinding away constantly. "I'm finding it hard to eat as I basically have no room left in my stomach and the way it is positioned it's pushed all the way back with the babies leaning against it. During a Quintuplet pregnancy Its recommended that I be taking in 6000 calories a day!! I'm struggling to eat and force feed myself leaving me with reflux for hours. I can't tolerate a lot of dairy and I can't keep protein drinks down, I'm starting to loose weight when I really need to be gaining it.

"My skin on my belly is so stretched its painful and hot to touch, it literally feels like I have hives!! No amount of cream helps relieve the discomfort. I have a lot of stretch marks now, dealing with such a huge change in my body is hard. My husband always reminds me I should wear my stripes with pride and that I should be proud of them and what my body has achieved. Without him I would have broken down along time ago  people always ask how am I so calm about everything, he is my reason. "Is it all worth it? Yes!!!! I will keep pushing through." Already a mother to Kurt, nine (from a previous relationship) and Aiva, four, and Indiana, two, with her husband, Ms Tucci decided to try for one more as she wanted to have a boy with her husband. "We'd always wanted three kids. Vaughn was happy with any gender, but I really wanted a boy for him," Kim previously said. She fell pregnant with quintuplets naturally in late July, the odds of which are one in 60 million.

But the superhuman effort of giving birth to five babies within a few minutes will soon need to be superseded when Ms Tucci heads home, where an army of random people from around Perth have offered to join a roster to provide practical support for her, her husband and their newborn miracles. Ms Tucci said she and her husband were thrilled with the arrival of "our five beautiful babies ... just shy of 30 weeks". Writing on her blog from KEMH on Friday, Mrs Tucci thanked Dr Jan Dickinson "for looking after me and the babies with such love and care". "I was very lucky to have an amazing medical team supporting me," she posted. "Thank you for giving me an exceptional birth!
American Airlines Flight 109, travelling to Los Angeles from London, was more than two hours into its journey and close to Keflavik, Iceland, when several passengers and crew members suddenly and mysteriously became ill.

Those aboard were startled, news reports said, and the pilot decided to fly back to London.

Passenger Eric Winter, Senior Vice President and GM for UFC FIGHT PASS, tweeted that the plane was surrounded by medical teams and fire engines when it landed. Credit:Eric Winter/Twitter

The plane landed safely.

But on Thursday, the mystery of what happened on the plane, which captured headlines around the world, remained unclear.
Al-Mukalla, Yemen: A bomb-packed car driven by a suicide attacker exploded at a checkpoint near the presidential palace in the southern city of Aden on Thursday, and security officials said at least eight people were killed.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the blast, the latest in a series of assaults that underscored the frail security in a part of the war-ravaged country that was triumphantly reclaimed by the government less than six months ago.

Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was unharmed in the explosion, according to a security official and a witness. Officials said the bomber appeared to have been targeting a convoy of senior officials who were driving toward the palace.

Mr Hadi was forced out of power last year by Yemen's Houthi rebels and exiled from Sanaa, the capital. After spending months in Saudi Arabia, he and other cabinet members returned to Yemen in September but stayed in Aden, proclaiming that it had been liberated from the Houthis.
Rome: Italian police arrested two fugitive mobsters on Friday in a bunker built on a steep slope and surrounded by dense brush where they were hiding out to avoid prosecution for mafia association, extortion and murder.

Flak-jacketed agents fought their way through undergrowth in the southern region of Calabria to the duo's lair, official video footage showed, where they found a "full-scale arsenal" of weapons, police said.

Giuseppe Ferraro is taken into custody after he was arrested in a bunker in southern Calabria. Ferraro, 48, was sentenced to life imprisonment, including for a murder conviction, and had eluded capture for 18 years.

The pair were both wanted for crimes committed as part of the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate, Europe's biggest cocaine broker which has eclipsed its Sicilian cousin Cosa Nostra and holds its native Calabria in a vice-like grip.

Giuseppe Crea, 37, the son of a jailed man police described as the "undisputed boss" of a local crime group, and Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, who was also wanted for murder, slept in bunk beds.
Princeton: A handful of armed protesters continuing their occupation of a wildlife refugee in Oregon, were on Thursday prepared to end their stand-off as long as no one was arrested.

Four armed anti-government militants remained in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after eight members of the group, including its leader Aamon Bundy, were arrested on Tuesday at an operation that also saw their self-appointed spokesman "LaVoy" Finicum shot dead. Another three were arrested on Wednesday.

Kim Rollins, 64, outside the Harney County Community Centre in Burns, Oregon, appeals for the release of a father and son jailed in California for arson prompted the refuge occupation. Credit:AP

"There's four of us here at the refuge. We're not really inside the refuge, we're in the driveway," said David Fry, 27, one of the occupiers, who explained that the group had been in contact with law enforcement officials.

"We're willing to leave," he said, as long as no one is arrested, "and if they want to check the guns, if it's stolen guns or what not, we're agreeing to that." One of the remaining activists, he said, faces a felony arrest.
Kyiv ready to file claim against Russia's violation of UN convention on law of sea, no political decision of authorities

The materials for filing claims to international courts by Ukraine against Russia's violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea due to the annexation of Crimea have been drawn up and only the political decision of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is left to launch the process, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine for European Integration Olena Zerkal has said.

"In October 2015, the Ukrainian delegation proposed that consultations are held with Russia, but there is still no response. This does not stop us in preparing the claim. We've been doing this recently. Now we're at the final stage of the preparations," she said in an interview with ZN.UA (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia. Ukraine).

She said that all claims of Ukraine could be narrowed down to four key points.

"First, the seizure of fields with mineral reserves and illegal oil and gas on the continental shelf of Ukraine in the Black Sea. Secondly, the unlawful seizure of power to regulate fish catch, unlawful fish catch and not allowing Ukrainian fishing companies to catch fish in the offshore zone near the Crimean peninsula. Third, construction of a gas pipeline, a power line and a bridge across the Kerch Strait without the consent of Ukraine, the unlawful blocking of transit of Ukrainian vessels across the Kerch Strait and the unlawful seizure of navigation rights. Fourth, the conducting of studies of archeological and historical sites in the Black Sea bed without the consent of Ukraine," Zerkal said.

She said that these are key points and Ukraine could expand the list of claims.

Zerkal said that in the past 18 months the ministry was collecting information on the infringements and drawing up the claim and all materials that are to be submitted to court.

She said that Poroshenko at the latest conference clearly formed his position regarding the issue that the interests and rights of Ukraine violated due to the annexation of Crimea and Russia's aggression Ukraine will protect in international courts.
Des Moines, Iowa: Whatever you think of his politics, you have to admit that Donald Trump has a genius for show business.

Four nights before the crucial first contest of the primary campaign, the Iowa caucuses, Trump managed to hijack the Republican Party's debate and turn it into a reality TV show starring himself.

Miffed that the debate's hosts, Fox News, refused to allow him to set the terms, and even had the temerity to mock him for doing so, Trump announced on Wednesday that he would boycott the event.
As a columnist who tests a lot of technology, I often write about my own experiences. But what happened last week was downright surreal.

It started on Thursday, when I began reporting a column about drones and the altercations they are causing among neighbours. The way these spats usually go, one neighbour gets a new drone (often around Christmas) and begins flying it around the backyard. Then, naturally, the drone flies over to the neighbour's yard. Then, the neighbour gets upset, especially because most recreational drones these days are equipped with cameras.

Spats over trespassing, privacy and air rights are heating up as drones become more popular. Credit:Taylor Callery/The New York Times

Some voice their outrage through social media. "My neighbour just flew a drone to my window and was recording me," a Twitter user wrote this month. "I have never talked to him in my life."

Others use their fists, or worse.
What's the Zika virus, and why should Australia worry? Airlines and cruise companies across the world are offering refunds or travel credits to pregnant women who are scheduled to visit countries struck by the devastating Zika virus. So far, 11 airlines and three cruise ship companies have changed their policies as the mosquito-born virus continues to spread. Scientists in Recife, Brazil, collect mosquitoes for study. Credit:AP ZIka is particularly dangerous for pregnant women and is suspected of being the cause of a rise in cases of microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with abnormally small heads.

Qantas does not fly directly to any of the affected countries but its partner, American Airlines, is offering refunds to pregnant women. Direct carriers including Southwest Airlines, Gol, Brazil, Lufthansa, British Airways and JetBlue Airways are either offering refunds, travel credits or the choice to reschedule flights to any of the affected destinations. The federal government's Smart Traveller website has warned pregnant women or those planning to conceive to reconsider plans to visit any of the affected countries. More than a dozen countries across South and Central America and the Caribbean have been impacted by the virus, including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Paraguay, Barbados, plus Samoa in the South Pacific. Loading
draft law was not discussed in any Council of Ministers.

PHILIPSBURG:--- The draft media law that was sent to the parliament of St. Maarten for debate was sent since 2011, therefore it was deemed outdated and needs to be sent to the education committee of parliament and the media council that is currently in place to further discuss the law before parliament could further debate the draft law.

Minister of Education Silveria Jacobs informed the parliament of St. Maarten that the draft media law was never discussed in any of the Council of Ministers meetings, therefore no decisions were taken by any Council of Ministers. Further to that the draft law is outdated and there needs to be more discussions which would include the stakeholders (media houses). Minister Jacobs said that the current draft law is repetitive since several of the articles are covered in the countrys constitution and the penal code.

Member of Parliament Frans Richardson proposed that the draft law be sent to the education committee of parliament and the media council and it should also follow the procedures like sending it to the Council of Advice and the SER before it can be debated in parliament. MP Richardson said he want this law in parliament because in his view the media cannot be allowed to print what they want because they supposedly have a free pen. He said another thing he wants to see happen is to have the live programs that are aired on radio stations be recorded. MP Richardson referred to the live programs that he said are not being recorded for reference. MP Richardson further stated that he wants media representative to report to Parliament in order for them to have a lively debate with parliament. I am not afraid of the media, they write what they want on elected officials now let us see how they will debate with us, this is not a means to muzzle the media but it is meant for putting in place some regulations when it comes to the media.

Some members of parliament felt that the media law is needed on St. Maarten especially to control internet media and bloggers.

MP Maurice Lake said he felt that the draft law should follow the procedures before parliament deals with it. He said he often speaks about the blogs because he is a victim of the blogs but felt the proposal presented by MP Frans Richardson is the way forward. The proposal by MP Richardson was seconded by MP George Pantophlet.

Chairlady of Parliament Sarah Wescot Williams explained to Members of Parliament and the Minister Silveria Jacobs that the draft media law was sent to Parliament late 2011 since the constitution of St. Maarten states that the country could take over some of the laws of Netherlands Antilles. She said all the laws that were not adopted was sent to the Parliament for handling and it is only now that the draft media law is being handled. Wescot Williams said when St. Maarten obtained its status in 2010 they had one year to adobt the laws of the Netherlands Antilles and draft media law was sent almost nearing the deadline, she said that parliament signed off on agreeing to handle the draft law on October 10th 2011, the deadline date. MP Theodorge Heyliger asked several questions as to who sent the law to Parliament for debate and when it was sent. He also felt the draft law is very much outdated, and needs amending so that it could include the internet and blogging.

The Parliament of St. Maarten have decided that more research be done, committee meetings and hearings must also be held with stakeholders, while the Council of Ministers will have to take a decision on the draft media law when it is amended to fit the current media trend of today.
CAYMAN ISLANDS:--- Four children from Honduras, each under the age of five, have new leases on their lives following open heart surgeries performed at no cost to their families by the specialist medical teams at Health City Cayman Islands.

Each of the children suffered from complex congenital heart disease with little chance of long- term survival until they were placed under the care of Dr. Binoy Chattuparambil, a leading cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon, along with a dedicated team of professionals at Health City Cayman Islands, who quickly diagnosed the children's needs and performed open heart surgery.

Less than three weeks after being evaluated and screened in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the children were flown to the Cayman Islands. The costs of the trip and medical care were covered thanks to the generous support of the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman, and Have a Heart Cayman Islands which provides cardiac procedures to children in need throughout the Caribbean and around the world.

"All the children treated had very complex cardiac diseases," said Dr. Binoy, as he is commonly called by his peers and patients. "Had they not received this treatment, they wouldn't have had much more time," asserted the heart specialist, who believes "every child deserves the opportunity to be healthy."

Dr. Binoy reported Marian Nahomy, a five-month old girl with Down syndrome, was having trouble gaining weight because of a large hole in her heart (Ventricular Septal Defect) and an abnormal communication between two major blood vessels (Patent Ductus Arteriosus), causing both defects to mix pure and impure blood together resulting in high lung pressure.

Marian's case was the most complex due to her chromosomal condition. However, Dr. Binoy was able to patch the hole with her body tissue, the abnormal connection was interrupted and Marian can now look forward to a longer life.

Sebastian Andres, a nine-month old boy, suffered from a rare and complex heart condition called Tetralogy Of Fallot, a combination of four heart defects that are present at birth, causing him to experience potentially lethal hypoxic tet spells or 'blue baby syndrome', which Dr. Binoy and his team surgically repaired. "Sebastian's blue colour complexion disappeared and he was able to play with his mother immediately after being discharged," Dr. Binoy reported.

Sodi Jair, a two-year old boy, arrived to Health City Cayman Islands with three defects in the heart - a large hole, blockage of blood in the right passage of the heart, and obstruction below the left sided valve. Four year-old Ever Giovani also had three heart defects (a large hole, severe obstruction of the passage that takes blood to the lungs and an abnormal connection between two major blood vessels). Both boys are doing well after the paediatric heart surgeries and have already returned home.

"The children were all discharged within days of the surgery and are experiencing a healthy recovery," said Dr. Binoy, who is in communication with their local paediatric cardiologists in Honduras to assist with follow-up care.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Foundation Catholic Education St. Maarten has been established since 1890. It is the competent authority for 8 schools. There are 6 Primary Schools ( 4 schools that have Dutch as language of instruction and 2 schools , English as language of instruction) and 1 English High School. The latest addition consists of 5 Early Childhood Stimulation Groups. The Foundation caters to a total of ........students and a dedicated staff of .......

The Foundation will be celebrating its annual Catholic Schools Week from February 1st through February 5th, 2016 to enhance the unity amongst our schools and to celebrate our 125th year of Catholic Education on St. Maarten

The theme this year is We are called to spread The Good News

During this week, students will be reminded that we are all children of God and thus brothers and sisters in Christ. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul and with all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves. ( Mathew 22: 37-39)Through this, we will be spreading The Good News

A series of activities have been planned to highlight this occasion. The celebration begins on the weekend of January 30, 2016. Students and staff members will wear their school /work uniform when attending Mass this weekend.

The program for the rest of the week is as follows:

Monday February 1, 2016

-Teachers Formation Day at St. Dominic High School.

( No school for our students)

The program begins with a prayer service lead by our Parish Priest, Rev. Fr. Adam Oleszczuk SVD.

The program continues with a keynote address by Dr. Francio Guadeloupe, followed by workshops and presentations. There are a total of 19 workshops that are being presented by our own local professionals. The Foundation Catholic Education is very appreciative and proud of our local experts.

Wednesday February 3, 2016

-Open House at all Catholic Schools.

There will be presentations, displays of students artwork etc...in connection with the theme.

Friday February 6th, 2015

-A Thanksgiving Mass with all students and staff of the Foundation Catholic Education.

Time: 7.30

Venue: The Festival Village

-Parade ( with all students ,staff and some parents)

Time: 10.00am- 11.30 am

Route: Route:

Festival Village-Soualiga Rd- Walter Nisbeth Rd- Hensy Beaujeon Rd- School Steeg- Front Street-

W.G. Buncamper Rd-Walter Nisbeth Rd- Soualiga Rd-Festival Village.

We are expecting about 2000 persons to be participating in this parade. We will have special performances during this parade by our students who are attending Steele Pan classes under the leadership of The Mighty Dow.

We are looking forward to a Spirit filled week.

Mrs. Carmen Bowers-Lake

Coordinator Religious Education

Foundation Catholic Education St. Maarten
Great Bay:---- On Thursday, February 4th 2016 the Sint Maarten Christian Party (SMCP) will be hosting a free lecture on electoral reform and specifically on the topic of Ship Jumping at the University of St. Martin, starting at 7:30 pm. Ship jumping in Parliament is the main reason why Sint Maarten has had five governments in five years which has led to instability in government, in our economy and in our society as a whole. Everybody is of the opinion that ship jumping must be stopped. But the big question is, how?

Mr. Romney is offering a concrete and immediate solution to stop ship jumping by amending a few articles in the Election Ordinance. In an effort to inform the people and to offer more clarity on the topic of ship jumping, the SMCP has asked Mr. Romney to share his knowledge and expertise pertaining to electoral reform and how to put an immediate end to ship jumping in the Parliament of Sint Maarten.

Mr. Romney, son of the soil, studied in Canada and in the United States. He is a political analyst and social science researcher in the field of Comparative Government and Politics and he has done a lot of political research on Sint Maarten.

The SMCP hereby extends an invitation to all voters, the entire population of Sint Maarten and the media to embrace this opportunity to be informed on this topic. A lively discussion concerning the controversial topic of ship jumping will follow. Through this lecture the Sint Maarten Christian Party seeks to continue serving you the people of Sint Maarten for a change.

For more information concerning the lecture or the Sint Maarten Christian Party kindly email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call the Boards President at 580-9474 or the Secretary at 522-5803 or 523-3858.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The urgent Central Committee meeting that was scheduled for January 29th has been postponed until further notice at the request of the Minister of Justice Edson Kirindongo.

Minister Kirindongo requested additional time in order for him to be briefed properly about the matter which would allow him to have a productive discussion when the meeting takes place.

The Central Committee meeting was scheduled for Friday at 10.00am in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelmina Straat #1 in Philipsburg.

The agenda point is the status of insurance coverage for Police Officers and their families and other related and affected issues.

This urgent meeting was requested by the United Peoples (UP) party faction Members of Parliament (MP) Tamara Leonard, (MP) Franklin Meyers, and Independent (MP) Leona Marlin-Romeo.
PHILIPSBURG:--- "With respect to the statement made by the Minister of Public Health Emil Lee about plagiarism, this alone tells what is important to Minister Lee, playing political games. First and foremost, I was providing general information to the people of the country about the Ovitraps. I did not have any quotation remarks around the statement but was provided as general information and was quoted wrongly by an editor, but this is not the point. The people's public health is at stake here, and this is the point! The minister is attempting to pass the buck, duck and dodge, and throw up a sand-screen in the eyes of the people for his lacklustre response to this very serious developing public health situation. The minister was off island attending Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association events again when I inquired about his presence.

"Minister Lee says I am fear mongering for political gain. Once again, this demonstrates that the Minister is not abreast of what is going on regionally and internationally. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that up to more than four million people could be infected with the Zika virus in the coming months. The WHO, not MP De Weever, has described the Zika threat 'one of alarming proportions,' and has therefore convened an Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations on the current epidemic for Monday to ascertain whether this outbreak in the Americas which includes the Caribbean islands which we are a part of, constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. This was the same response when Ebola presented such a case to the global community of nations.

"I still maintain that the Minister of Public Health should have been proactive which shows a lack of leadership on his part to take command. He has been in the current position for more than two months, and the Pan American Health Organization sent out warnings in December more than six weeks ago and we only now hear the minister making a public statement for the first time. I do commend the hardworking staff of the Ministry of Public Health for their continued efforts because they were indeed aware of this new mosquito-borne virus from in May 2015, long before the Minister was appointed to this position. The ministry between that time and up to the present has been active in keeping the public informed.

"When I was Minister of Public Health, along with the staff from the ministry, we developed a plan to deal with Chikungunya in late 2013 and throughout the first half of 2014. During that time we worked closely with our colleagues from French St. Martin. As MP, I will be monitoring closely Governments response with respect to this developing situation and will call out where I see government is not performing in the interests of public health."
Number of servicemen during seventh wave of mobilization to be known in late March

Chief of the General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Viktor Muzhenko has said that a number of men conscripted during the seventh wave of mobilization will be finally announced by the end of March.

"The seventh wave of mobilization foresees a significant growth of the number of personal staff of the Armed Forces of UkraineA necessary amount of mobilized will be finally known by the end of March 2016," Muzhenko said delivering a speech to the governing board of the military administration of the Armed Forces in Zhytomyr, on the basis of the 199th training unit of Airborne Forces, as the Defense Ministry's press service reported.

He said that at moment a great number of servicemen, who have been mobilized during previous waves under the volunteer basis, yet being conscripted for a military service.

Besides, according to the commander-in-chief, there are many of those, who wish to work under the volunteer military service, so that the seventh wave of mobilization is expected to be less numerous than previous ones.

Ihor Voronchenko, the chief of the main personnel department of the Ukrainian armed forces general staff, had said in November 2015 that the seventh wave of mobilization might be declared in the first quarter of 2016, "most likely in February or March."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on January 11, 2015 that he would submit a bill on declaring another wave of mobilization to the armed forces to the Verkhovna Rada after receiving the relevant request from the general staff.
Dia de los Muertos in South Bend: Here's how you can celebrate

Unlike the city's Day of the Dead events in the past, this one has broader community involvement.
Militants have violated the ceasefire in Donbas 71 times in the past 24 hours, the press center of Kyiv's army operation in eastern Ukraine has reported.

Ukrainian military checkpoints came under 82mm mortar fire in Zaitseve on the Svitlodarsk arch, while grenade launchers, large-caliber submachine guns, and fighting infantry vehicles were used against Ukrainian army positions in Novhorodske and Mayorsk, the press center said on its Facebook page on Friday.

Different kinds of weapons were fired at Ukrainian Armed Forces positions in Opytne, Pisky, Avdiyivka, and near the Butivka mine, near the city of Donetsk.

Ukrainian soldiers fired back in response to the militants forces' strikes near Maryinka, the press center said.

Militants' units also used an infantry fighting vehicle, and an automatic grenade launcher, against the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service's Maryinka entry and exit checkpoint at 9:10 p.m.

Similar provocations are also possible "at other entry and exit checkpoints, in particular in the Artemivsk area," the Ukrainian Armed Forces headquarters said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that 2,269 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed during the fighting in Donbas.

"A total of 2,269 of our warriors have been killed defending Ukraine from the Russian aggression," he said on Friday at the Ivan Bohun Kyiv Military Lyceum's 'Lesson of Courage' dedicated to Kruty Heroes Memory Day.

Poroshenko said that as of late 2015, there were 21 men younger 18 years and 650 persons from 18 to 25 years old among killed in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO).

Besides, it was said that for the ATO period, 121 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine obtained a status of the participant of military actions.

"Almost 10,000 men were awarded by decorations and medals. Twenty-six men and one woman, Nadia Savchenko, were conferred a title of the Hero of Ukraine, 14 of them  [were granted titled] after life," the president added.

The head of state also reiterated that there were times when "almost the whole Donbas was under enemy's control, but its bigger part was liberated."
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Suburban schools grow slightly, or lose less than state average

Numbers from the state Department of Public Instruction show that in suburban Milwaukee, about 27 school districts grew last year, or lost fewer students than average.
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The introduction of amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine to grant a special status to certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, under demand of the Russian envoys in Trilateral Contact Group, is fundamentally unacceptable, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.

"They now will endlessly play with the topic of a special status and how it should be assigned. And that thing that a special status should be for a year or more isn't a problem itself  they want to write some things into the Constitution. And as for me in principle it is unacceptable from the point of view of the logic of the process," Klimkin said in his interview with Den newspaper (Day) published on Friday.

"Of course, they will play with this topic. They aren't interested in Donbas, they're interested in shaking of the situation in the country [Ukraine]. And they will further do that," the minister added.

When asked about expectations of Germany's Chairmanship of OSCE, namely, if the German side could succeed with '57-1' formula (denial of access to the peace solution of the conflict of the party involved in Donbas aggression), the minister said that "as a consensus it would be difficult, but we're ready to talk on this topic, in particular as a part of the coordination of some parameters of strengthening of the OSCE mission."

"In reality, adoption of '57-1' formula would be a precedent since it might greatly change OSCE. Of course, it would be on our hand. I have a good attitude towards the capability of German to promote OSCE, but in general I'm skeptical towards the idea to change the principles of this international security organization, which is based on the consensus taking of the decisions," Klimkin stressed.
A new NASA organization dedicated to protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids has hit the ground running.

In early January, NASA announced the establishment of a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which will synchronize U.S. efforts to deal with threatening near-Earth objects (NEOs) and will supervise all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that visit Earth's neighborhood.

"There is no identified threat that we know of right now," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's new planetary defense officer. [Photos: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids in Space]

"Our job is to look for that and identify a NEO as far in advance as we can," Johnson told Space.com in an exclusive interview. "Doing so means we have the maximum amount of time to appropriately deal with the object, be it a small impactor or something that's larger, calling for a kinetic impactor mission, or whatever needs to be done."

NASA's Lindley Johnson is head of the space agency's new Planetary Defense Coordination Office. (Image credit: Leonard David)

Busy agenda

The PDCO is getting right to work. Next month, for example, the organization will conduct an open forum in Vienna, Austria, during a meeting of the United Nation's Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).

That UN subcommittee has formalized the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and a Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) of U.N. member states that have space agencies.

"Our intent is to work within the international forums," Johnson said, "and encourage more involvement by other countries."

Johnson said that he'll also be working closely with his European Space Agency (ESA) counterparts on NEOs.

"We congratulate NASA for the establishment of their planetary defense office," said Detlef Koschny, head of the NEO Segment within the Space Situational Awareness Program Office at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Center in Noordwijk, Netherlands.

ESA is active in the field of NEOs, Koschny said, citing the NEO Coordination Centre at ESA's European Space Research Institute in Italy.

"We are fully supporting the work on defending our planet from potential asteroid impacts," Koschny told Space.com. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

NASA's European colleagues are eager to coordinate on the planetary-defense effort, Koschny's NEO Segment colleague Gerhard Drolshagen told Space.com.

"We look forward to working with the new Planetary Defense Coordination Office, building on long-standing international and inter-agency cooperation in the domain of NEO detection, risk assessment and mitigation," Drolshagen said.

NASA also recently signed a charter with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to create a Planetary Impact Emergency Response Working Group, Johnson said.

The working group will meet regularly  initially, twice a year, Johnson said  with the goal of bringing more people up to speed on the NEO hazard, and discussing how best to handle a potential impact.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) 1 telescope on Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii, made the greatest number of near-Earth object discoveries in the NASA-funded NEO surveys from 2015. (Image credit: University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy/Rob Ratkowski)

Upcoming decisions

By the end of 2016, Johnson said, it should be clear whether ESA will go ahead with the proposed Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment mission (AIDA), and whether NASA will be a part of the project.

As it's currently envisioned, AIDA would launch two different spacecraft to the binary asteroid system Didymos: Europe's AIM probe and the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) craft, which would be built by the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. DART would slam into the smaller of the two asteroids in the Didymos system, and AIM would observe the results, as a way of gauging the effectiveness of this asteroid-deflection strategy.

Another decision expected this year is a go/no-go call on the Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) mission, which NASA selected in September 2015 as a finalist for its next Discovery-class mission.

NEOCam would survey the regions of space closest to Earth's orbit, where potentially hazardous asteroids are most likely to be found. Among other duties, the space telescope would assess the present-day risk of NEO impacts.

NEOCam is competing with four other mission concepts for a Discovery slot (though it's also possible NASA could pick two of these ideas, officials have said). A decision will likely be announced in September 2016.

The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission concept study is an international collaboration among ESA, NASA, the German Aerospace Center, France's Observatoire de la Cote dAzur and the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. (Image credit: ESA)

Last-chance warning system

Also this year, the second Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope is expected to be up and operating. The ATLAS project  developed by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii  is designed to spot dangerous asteroids shortly before their final plunge to Earth.

The first ATLAS instrument is at work on the Haleakala volcano, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The second telescope should be operational on the Big Island's Mauna Loa this year, Johnson said.

"ATLAS is funded by NASA's NEO Observations Program, which is now integral to the Planetary Defense Coordination Office," he said. "It makes sure nothing on the small end gets through without us knowing about it  at least days to weeks before the impact."

Johnson said that he is looking forward to a good year, "finding another 1,500 to 2,000 of these objects with the current capability  and getting a higher percentage of the NEO population in our catalog."

Currently, astronomers have identified and tracked nearly 14,000 NEOs, out of a population thought to number in the millions.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's 2013 book "Mission to Mars  My Vision for Space Exploration" published by National Geographic with a new updated paperback version released in May 2015. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Although its job is to search for powerful energies emanated by distant cosmic objects, ESA's INTEGRAL space observatory recently turned its eye toward Earth and saw our home planet's aurora glowing brightly with powerful X-rays.

PHOTOS: Epic Auroras Throughout the Solar System

The animation below is made from data acquired by INTEGRAL's IBIS/ISGRI instrument on Nov. 10, 2015. Although Earth isn't itself visible its position and northern rotational pole is noted by the light blue lines as the data were captured across 8-minute intervals. The X-ray emissions from auroras dancing above Russia, Canada, and Greenland are visible as bright red, yellow, and white flashes.

Coincidentally these same auroral displays were also captured from low-Earth orbit by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. The photo below was shared on Twitter by Kelly to mark one of the 15 sunrises ISS astronauts experience every day, as well as the completion of day 228 of his year-long mission aboard Station.

Aurora seen from the Space Station on Nov. 10, 2015. (Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly)

Auroras are the result of charged particles streaming out from the sun getting caught up in Earth's magnetic field and "funneled" back down toward the poles, from where the magnetic field lines originate. When these particles collide with atoms in the atmosphere radiation is emitted across a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light.

ANALYSIS: Getting Intimate with a Black Hole Behemoth

Launched Oct. 17, 2002, ESA's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) is a 4-ton, 16-foot (5-meter) -tall spacecraft designed to observe the universe in high-energy wavelengths, specifically gamma rays from supermassive black holes but also in X-ray and select optical wavelengths. It orbits Earth at distances ranging from 6,200 miles (10,000 km) to 87,000 (140,000 km), outside the most harmful and interfering energy of the radiation belts.

On rare occasions INTEGRAL is aimed toward Earth to block out the background field and allow scientists to calibrate the instruments. It just so happened that this time Earth put on an X-ray performance of its own.

ANALYSIS: Black Hole Wakes Up, Torments and Eats a Planet

"Auroras are transient, and cannot be predicted on the timeframe that satellite observations are planned, so it was certainly an unexpected observation," said INTEGRAL Project Scientist Erik Kuulkers. "Although the original background X-ray measurements didn't go quite to plan this time, it was exciting to capture such intense auroral activity by chance."

INTEGRAL is the result of an international collaboration between ESA and the U.S., Russia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, and includes instruments from research teams in Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, and Spain. Learn more about the INTEGRAL mission here.

Source: ESA

Originally published on Discovery News.
The law, which amends the procedure of the preliminary approval and adoption by the parliament of the bill to amend the Fundamental Law of Ukraine, was published in Holos Ukrainy (Voice of Ukraine) parliamentary newspaper on January 29.

Passed by Rada and signed by Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on Thursday, the law comes into effect on January 30, the following day after publishing.

As reported, during the morning sitting on January 28, the Verkhovna Rada amended its regulations over preliminary approval and adoption of the bill introducing changes into Ukraine's Fundamental Law. Poroshenko signed the document four hours later.

In particular, lawmakers have approved the following norm of the regulations: "In case the bill introducing amendments into the Constitutionwas preliminary approved by the Verkhovna Rada and following this was not considered on the next regular session, then this bill should be discussed by the parliament on the next regular session."

The Verkhovna Rada on August 31 preliminarily approved the bill (No. 2217 / P1) that names a bill introducing Constitutional amendments as enacted if it was preliminary approved by the majority of the parliament and received on its regular session not less than 300 votes of MPs. At the same time, experts say for now there are no 300 necessary votes, as the majority of deputies see this as a means to legalize the special status of the certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

According to the schedule, the last plenary week of the current session is January 25-29 and the closing of the third session of the eighth Rada's convocation will be held on February 2. An opening of the 4th session is planned on the same day.

On January 19, Ukraine's Constitutional Court received a constitutional petition from 51 MPs requesting as official interpretation of the provisions of Article 155 of the Fundamental Law, namely, "at the next regular session of the Verkhovna Rada." The Court will consider this petition on January 29.

As reported, deputies have appealed to the Court with regard to the lack of votes for the final vote on the president's bill (No. 2217a/P1) amending Ukraine's Constitution with respect to power decentralization. The adoption of constitutional changes is envisaged by Minsk Agreements that is why Poroshenko's bill contains a provision that requires a separate law to define peculiarities of the local self-governance in certain Donetsk and Luhansk districts.

However, the head of the Petro Poroshenko Block's parliamentary faction Yuriy Lutsenko said that the Verkhovna Rada has 300 votes, the minimum required for the final approval of the bill amending the Constitution in terms of decentralization, but it is unreasonable to vote for this as aggressor makes no steps to promote resolution of the situation in Donbas.
SMM OSCE registers some weapons still not pulled out of Donetsk People's Republic

The monitors of OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) registered heavy weapons of Donetsk People's Republic that haven't been withdrawn by Donetsk People's Republic.

"In the village of Ternove, which is under Donetsk People's Republic's control, we wanted to reach a definite territory on January 21, but we haven't been let in. Due to our drones we saw a numerous number of the military hardware on the territory of that unit: 40 tanks, 115 drones, 35 artillery guns and 50 trucks," OSCE First Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug said.
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His Most Successful Book in Turkey

Pamuk is a courageous man and a great writer. A little over 10 years ago, he was charged with "insulting Turkishness" after referring to the Armenian genocide in an interview. He was on the death list of extreme nationalists, as was his Armenian-Turkish friend Hrant Dink, who was shot to death in Istanbul in 2007. For a time, Pamuk was protected by three bodyguards provided by the Turkish government. These days he has only one, whom he can call when he wants to go out. "There isn't as much hatred against me at the moment," he says, "not as much political pressure as there was 10 years ago." His most recently published book, "A Strangeness in my Mind," has been his most successful in Turkey. (It will be published in German in a few days).

It's the story of Mevlut, a young man who comes to Istanbul from his village in Anatolia in the late 1960s and begins working as a street vendor, which he ends up doing for the rest of his life. He sells Boza, a beverage made from millet that contains so little alcohol that it was allowed during the period when alcohol was banned -- a trick beverage to circumvent strict religious rules, an alcoholic beverage for people who don't drink alcohol.

Mevlut is a poor boy when he arrives in Istanbul, and unlike most of the people who came with him, he will remain poor. He is a naive, optimistic protagonist with the gift of recognizing happiness and holding onto it when it is there. At his cousin's wedding, he falls in love with a young girl. He writes her letters for many years, and finally kidnaps her to spend his life with her. But he has been deceived. He kidnapped the wrong woman, the older sister of his beloved. His devious cousin had given him the wrong name from the beginning and sent his letters to the wrong woman. But now that he has kidnapped the sister, giving her back is not an option.

Mevlut is a pragmatist of happiness. He shows her his humble house, and she falls asleep immediately. "Mevlut went up to her quietly. For a long time, he looked at Rayiha lying on the bed, knowing that he would never forget this moment." It was because "he wasn't alone in the world." Besides, "she had even appreciated his letters."

Pamuk talks about the love story as he stands at the large window in his apartment. I say that it's completely clear why the couple are happy together, because it's the love story of a poet. Mevlut created this woman and this love with his letters and his words. The wrong woman becomes the right woman through the power of his words. "Oh, I don't know," says Pamuk, and laughs. "I think it's more about sex. They do it with each other for the first time. They're happy. He is a grateful, unassuming person. That's all."

For 44 years and 575 pages, we accompany Mevlut on his routes as a street vendor. During this period, Istanbul grows by 10 million people. The old city dies and a new one arises, new neighborhoods are built, and there are so many opportunities to become a self-made man. The opportunities are there for Mevlut, too, but he doesn't take them.

It is the first time Pamuk, who comes from a wealthy family, has written about a man from the lower class, "an everyman," as he puts it. Perhaps this is part of the reason the book has struck a chord with Turkish readers: Mevlut is one of them. And Pamuk doesn't look down on him, describes him with love and humanity. He is an apolitical protagonist. He is constantly drawn into political conversations as he sells his beverages, but refuses to allow himself to be pulled in any direction. He is a Turkish version of Hans Castorp, the protagonist of Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain." He believes that everything is worth listening to. "As a Boza vendor, you cannot have any political opinions," says Pamuk, because it would scare away potential customers.

Nevertheless, "A Strangeness in My Mind" is also a political novel -- it describes corruption, political battles, the war against the Kurds, gentrification, and the victims of destruction and reconstruction.

'It Was Supposed to be a Short Novel'

Pamuk worked on the book for six years, longer than on any other book before it. He did a lot of research, and he also had others do a lot of research for him. Assistants, friends and students he knows helped him, conducting conversations and interviews for him. A small group of six students met in his apartment once a month. They ate and drank wine and discussed issues like urban development, city planning and gentrification.

"Young people who opened new horizons for me, and who explored new topics. But I did most of the interviews myself, with all kinds of different people. Many were reserved and suspicious, while others were excited to be able to tell me their stories. They would call me and say: 'You know, I also have a cousin, and you really have to meet him! You wouldn't believe what he has to say.' Now I have enough material for a few more books. This was supposed to be short novel at first, but there was simply too much to tell. It was like 'Ulysses,' which Joyce had also planned as a short story."

It's fun to watch Pamuk build momentum as he talks about writing, about the book's English title and the fact that when he was in school, his classmates were already talking about his peculiar way of talking and thinking. In our conversation, Pamuk repeats in English what his schoolmates used to say: "You have a strange mind, Orhan." And when he discovered the phrase "a strangeness in the mind" in William Wordsworth's "The Prelude" a few years ago, he knew that he would use it as the title of a book one day.

The book is about a stranger's view of a familiar world. Mevlut enters Istanbul, a city that is constantly and rapidly changing. He never enters the same city as the same person. At the very end of the novel, Pamuk writes: "He came to understand a truth that a part of him had known all along: walking around the city at night made him feel as though he were wandering around his own head. That was why whenever he spoke to the walls, advertisements, shadows, and strange and mysterious shapes he couldn't see in the night, he always felt as if he were speaking with himself."

Later in our conversation, we step out onto Pamuk's balcony. The high-rise buildings on the Asian side are glowing in the reddish light of the setting sun. "You wouldn't believe how many poems there are about that light, about this view, so many poems," he says. The trick, he says, is to see things in new ways, as exotic and different. The same thing applies to his city, the city he has written about often and in most of his books, about its new buildings, its growth and destruction. Pamuk studied architecture, he says, which has helped him a great deal. At the beginning of each book, he says, he has a plan. "Only the last chapter," he says, making a whooshing sound and waving his arm in the air, is created "in a sweep of creativity, when nothing is planned anymore."

We go back inside, and he pulls out an old bell once used by a Boza vendor to attract customers. In the novel, the sound of the bell ends up being the sound of melancholy. In the end, Mevlut's only remaining customers are the ones who remember the old Istanbul at the sound of his bell.

Pamuk shows me his desk, and I ask whether the phone on the desk is the one with which he received the memorable call from the Nobel committee in 2006. "Oh no, that was in America," he says. Then we take the narrow elevator two floors up, where he owns another apartment with equally breathtaking views. At the moment, only books inhabit the apartment. They are packed into countless boxes, and empty shelves wait for their future residents. He searches for the German section and quickly finds a large box of books by Thomas Mann: "Royal Highness," and a 40-year-old edition of "Buddenbrooks." He has often said that he comes from a Buddenbrook family.

His grandfather was an energetic factory owner, his father was a wistful but unsuccessful poet, and then there was him, Hanno-Orhan, who transformed himself into a Thomas Mann, a Nobel laureate. When he was reading Mann for the first time, did he think of the parallels to his own life? "Oh, of course I did," he says, pulling a volume by Max Frisch from the first box, followed by a book by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

On the second-to-the-last page of his novel, Pamuk writes the following about his naive protagonist: "These people's happiness pleased Mevlut. Human beings were made to be happy, honest, and open." Pamuk, surrounded by boxes of books, says: "I'm not a happy person. It isn't my nature. But I also don't believe that we are in this world to be happy. Oh, I'm a happy writer, but I'm certain that I will never be a happy person."
The rent subsidy program has been just as hobbled. It was supposed to offer subsidies to 20,000 refugees to allow them to stay in proper homes in Greece. Tsipras had even said this would give a welcome boost to the depressed real estate market. But so far nothing has happened. SPIEGEL ONLINE was told that the Athens office of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is currently evaluating the proposals of NGOs who have applied to run the program.

Greek Lethargy

Many in Europe point the finger at Greece, arguing that the Tsipras government is intentionally dragging its feet, letting migrants continue their journey north to protect tourism and avoid the kind of political fallout now being faced by Angela Merkel.

The government rejects this criticism. There is genuine fear in Athens that a lack of progress will be an excuse by EU countries to raise more walls, close more borders. Greece could go from being a transit country to being a bottleneck, a "warehouse," as Tsipras has warned.

But even Greek officials claim that Greek bureaucracy is one reason for the slow progress. Greece can actually cut red tape in a minute -- when it wants to.

That's what Athens did ahead of the 2004 Olympics, which were well-staged -- at an astronomical cost -- through a combination of strong political will, popular support and a litany of special legislation and expedited processes. Parliamentary decorum and due process weren't big obstacles when parliamentarians had to vote to secure bailout loans in the dead of the night. Unfortunately, the humanitarian tragedy doesn't seem to merit the same kind of relentless efficiency.

Whatever its failings, though, Greece is an easy and convenient target. A country with few resources, battling recession and social strife, is being asked to handle a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions with little help from its friends. Greek officials often slam Europe for delays in sending more men, money and resources. They are also outraged both by Turkey for failing to clamp down on smuggling networks and by some of Greece's wealthier partners like Austria, who, safe in their geographical distance, decide to cap admissions and tighten border controls.

The way things stand, and as Greece braces for a spike in migrant arrivals in the spring, one thing is certain: There will be more deaths in the Aegean.




Kenneth Lonergans Manchester by the Sea opened to rave reviews at Sundance this week. The film follows Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), a brooding, irritable loner who works as a handyman in Boston. After his brother (Kyle Chandler) suddenly passes away, he is called back to his hometown north of the city, where hes given custody of his 16-year-old nephew (Lucas Hedges). In the midst of dealing with death and raising a teenager, Chandler is also forced to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his wife (Michelle Williams) and the community where he was raised.



Affleck is being hailed for his performance as a broken young man who must transition from barely holding it together to re-emerging from isolation and trying to connect with his nephew. Writer and director Lonergan (Analyze This, Gangs of New York screenwriter) has been praised for his use of subtle, small moments between the characters as they struggle to meet loss with integrity.



Matt Damon serves as a producer on the film. He told SpoilerTV he was first offered the role of Lee Chandler but had to pass it up because of timing issues.



Amazon bought the film during Sundance for around $10 million, outbidding traditional studio distributors like Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight and Lionsgate. The streaming service still intends to bring on a theatrical distributor.



Tonya Papanikolas got a chance to talk to Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Lonergan and Lucas Hedges about the film. Check out our interviews below:


































Sneak Peek 3









Source:

First, we questioned Rothenberg about that huh? City of Light moment, which is apparently going to be explained in digestible bites throughout Season 3.Its real, he confirmed. Its a real place, and it becomes a big deal this season, but the story simmers for a little while before it boils over. Were trying to get the audience used to this new story were telling; it has a whole new visual vocabulary, and its own language in many ways. Youve only just begun to see where that world is going and what its all about.
Clarke Griffin? If only all of my Earth Skills students were as good as her.

In the City of Light mankind will finally be free of pain, and hate, and disease. Here there will be no more suffering.

I'll fill this place. Starting with my people. You have my word.

I believe in you Thelonious. Together, we will save the human race

Places are not evil, brother. People are.

You're in disguise, same as me. You're on the run, same as me. In the wilderness, same as me

We can't lose Clarke.

Hello Clarke.

Part two of the third season premiere of CW'swas general improvement from last week's outing. While still perhaps slightly lacking in some areas when compared to the premieres that have preceded it, it's fair to say that introducing new key elements to the storyline is what "" set out to do, and achieved. Mairsee Almas directed this hour which was written by Aaron Ginsburg & Wade McIntyre.The episode wasted no time making a big play, with the revelation that the suspected enemies who had cornered Bellamy, Monty, Kane and Indra inside their 4x4 turned out to be members of the missing Farm Station, one of the modules from the doomed Ark. Leading the siege on the 4x4 was Charles Pike. Monty's mother also happened to be among the Farm Station members.We learn throughout the episode that Charles Pike was the Earth Skills teacher on board the Ark. This put the people he landed on Earth with in comparatively good hands, but a tale of significant hardship is told, with many members of Farm Station dying thanks to the icy region where they landed and the enemies they had faced. Monty's father was one of those who had succumbed, but as was recounted by his mother and Pike, he died a hero. Some tension between Indra and Pike was there for all to see.Pike wasn't too concerned about Clarke's ability to handle herself alone while she was being hunted. He would join Kane, Bellamy and Monty in their search for her. More to come on that later.Immediately after the title sequence, Jaha and Alie appear in the mysterious City of Light for the first time. The time spent in this oasis in the middle of nowhere was brief but impressive, even if it was in a dream Jaha was having during his meditation.The above exchange between Jaha and Alie in the dream is pretty significant. On the surface, the construction of an entire city by an artificial intelligence, combined with the promise of a lifestyle free of pain, hate and disease, is a pretty big ask.While Jaha remains convinced at this point that the City of Light is a thing, Murphy remains skeptical, and rightly avoids placing any trust with anyone who has yet to earn it.Jaha, Murphy and Emori, accompanied by Alie and two others, arrived at their destination on board the boat they left on in last week's hour. Their surroundings looked no different to where they left, minus the mansion of course.What happened next was quite surprising. We learn Emori and her accomplice were recruited, presumably by Alie. They obtain technology for her and take it to the 'big guy', who would die at Emori's hands moments later. They use the boat to get around, but they had been told Jaha needed a ride this time, so they obliged, resulting in their current situation.Things became even more interesting later on. Emori and Murphy opened the backpack which was obviously fairly important to Jaha. When Emori was held at knifepoint, a weary Murphy threw the backpack into the water and him and Emori made their escape on the boat. Suddenly, Jaha is back in the virtual City of Light, where Alie appears, along with the big guy who was supposedly dead, only this time his rather significant facial disfigurement wasn't present.I'll be honest - this did not make much sense to me at all. All I can say is I hope this whole storyline makes much more sense in the near future.Thankfully there was some other stuff in this episode that not only made more sense, but was more entertaining on the whole.Clarke featured in this episode much more than she did in last week's installment. The first we see of her this week is while she is being led by Roan alongside a river. A pretty spectacular and well directed fight scene occurs here when Clarke pretended to collapse from exhaustion. Clarke didn't win the contest in the end, however, but the water was enough to remove the paint which was obscuring Roan's Ice Nation brand on his right temple. Only then did Clarke fully understand who had captured her.Lincoln and Octavia had a comparatively quiet episode, but they did happen upon good friend Niko, who was critically wounded on horseback approaching Arkadia. Abby had to make the tough call, with Lincoln's approval, to source medical aid from the disused Mount Weather base.Fortunately Niko pulls through, but the attack on him is a sign that danger is never far away. The months of peace Arkadia has enjoyed could come to an end at any time.Deep inside Ice Nation territory, Bellamy, Kane, Pike, Indra and Monty left on foot to search for Clarke. It doesn't take long to become clear that Pike brings a more organized, strategic approach to the search. Where the likes of Kane and Bellamy - and even Clarke - tended to choose their next move in the form of a reaction, Pike is much more adept at playing the long game. This was apparent when Pike, despite having eyes on the fleeing Clarke and Roan at one point, took control of the others and instructed them to hide the bodies of Ice Nation members Roan had just ambushed, and wait in a cave for a significant army of Ice Nation to pass.Roan was wounded by Clarke in the skirmish, and the pair sought refuge in some ruins. It gave Clarke an opportunity to use her best weapon: her words. She had to try to understand Roan's motives, and they turned out to be rather interesting.A restless Bellamy ended up slipping away from his team, disguising himself as an Ice Nation soldier using the clothes from the bodies they moved earlier. It didn't take him long to catch up with Clarke and Roan, but a skirmish with Roan resulted in Bellamy escaping with his life by the slimmest of margins. He did sustain a reasonably serious stab wound to the thigh which he tried to push through in pursuit of Clarke and Roan, but fortunately Monty got through to him, talking him out of continuing with the chase.Bellamy's encounter with Roan was one of the highlights of this two part premiere in my book. Guest star Zach McGowan has been solid in both episodes but he was at his best here. Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley were excellent too - although Clarke and Bellamy were reunited for mere seconds, the unique connection this pair have is still remarkably strong, and was beautifully portrayed, especially when Clarke begged Roan to spare Bellamy's life.I wrote in-depth in last week's review on the subject of politics, and how it can have a detrimental effect on a series. Though hints of the subject were scattered through tonight's episode, the most spectacular instance was in the final scene, where we welcomed Lexa back into the fold in a game-changing role.In an exchange between her and Roan, during which Clarke was also present, we learn Roan had a deal with Lexa which involved capturing Clarke in exchange for the lifting of a banishment against him by the Grounders. Lexa has a vested interest in keeping Clarke under her control because she sees Clarke as a playing card in the impending war with the Ice Nation.It's a complex arrangement which hasn't been explained as well as it should have been, even though the whole storyline is in its infancy. Too much at this point is being left up to the viewer to guess, and that's not ideal. Just a couple of additional lines of dialog between the characters here could have dramatically improved the flow of the scene.Nevertheless, the foreshadowing in the final seconds of the premiere cannot be mistaken. We see a young, inexperienced Lexa visibly concerned for the future, looking out from the top of a crumbling, unstable skyscraper perched among a vast tree-covered wilderness. Though the tower may appear to be a fortress of strength, the truth of the matter is that it is a strategically poor place to be, and vulnerable to attack from all angles.In all, the introduction of survivors from Farm Station is probably the most significant takeaway from this episode. You'll be seeing plenty more from them in the next few weeks. Anything could happen with Clarke and Lexa, and the same can be said about Murphy, Emori, Alie and Jaha. We've got some good stuff to look forward to for the next wee while.Thanks so much for reading! The opinion poll is below for you to rate the episode ofyourself. As always, jump in the comments below and share your thoughts on the episode. It's always great to see what everyone thinks. Don't forget to give this article and the poll a like, tweet or +1. Keep an eye out for a preview for next week's episode in the coming days!
Kyiv reports wounding of two troops, exacerbation of situation in Donbas

Two Ukrainian troops have been wounded in Donbas in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian presidential administration official Andriy Lysenko said.

"None of our troops have been killed and two troops have been wounded in the past 24 hours," Lysenko told a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

He said the situation in the anti-terrorist operation zone is exacerbating and militants are increasingly using heavy weapons (mortars and armored vehicles).

"On the Donetsk track, attacks were registered along the entire frontline; it was especially intensive on the Svitlodar arch and in the Horlivka area. Most attacks were targeted," Lysenko said.

A presidential administration official also said militants have used guided anti-tank missiles in the Slovyanoserbsk area.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15ONE-HOUR SPECIALMortal Kombat X: Machinimas Chasing the Cup  (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)WHO WILL BE VICTORIOUS?  MORTAL KOMBAT X: MACHINIMAS CHASING THE CUP follows five of the worlds top-ranked players of the acclaimed fighting game Mortal Kombat X, vying to achieve their dream of being crowned the best in the world at the ESL Mortal Kombat X Pro League Finals. Viewers will be given a behind-the-scenes look at the passion, dedication, skill, and sacrifice required to be among the best e-sports competitors in the world. Original airdate 2/15/16.DCS LEGENDS OF TOMORROWWhite Knights  (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, DV) (HDTV)STEPHANIE CORNELIUSSEN (MR. ROBOT) GUEST STARS AS VALENTINA VOSTOCK  When Vandal Savage (guest star Casper Crump) retreats behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1980s, a string of nuclear scientists begins to mysteriously disappear. The team follows Vandals trail straight into the heart of the Soviet Union in an attempt to find his next target. Ray (Brandon Routh) tries to bond with a beautiful Soviet scientist, Valentina Vostock (guest star Stephanie Corneliussen), in the hopes of finding out Vandal's next move. When Valentina rejects him, its Snart (Wentworth Miller) to the rescue. Stein (Victor Garber) pushes Jax (Franz Drameh) to be better, which frustrates Jax and ultimately threatens the Firestorm matrix. Rip (Arthur Darvill) asks Sara (Caity Lotz) to train Kendra (Ciara Renee). Antonio Negret directed the episode written by Sarah Nicole Jones & Phil Klemmer (#104). Original airdate 2/11/16.TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16Escape from Earth-2  (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)THE EXCITING CONCLUSION TO THE EARTH-2 JOURNEY  On Earth-2, the team races to find Zooms lair and asks for help from the most unexpected source. Meanwhile, back on Earth-1, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) rushes to perfect Velocity-9 so that Jay (guest star Teddy Sears) can stop the Geomancer (guest star Adam Stafford). J.J. Makaro directed the episode with story by Todd Helbing & Aaron Helbing and teleplay by David Kob (#214). Original airdate 2/16/16.The Whopper  (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, DLV) (HDTV)LIV CONSUMES PATHOLOGICAL LIAR BRAIN  Liv (Rose McIver) and Detective Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) investigate the murder of Corey Big Fish Carp, who they learn got his nickname not because of his last name but because he was a well-known pathological liar. Ravi (Rahul Kohli) makes an unsettling discovery and Blaine (David Anders) is reunited with someone from his past. Meanwhile, Major (Robert Buckley) finds himself in a precarious situation. Michael Fields directed the episode written by Rob Thomas (#213). Original airdate 2/16/16.WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17Code of Silence  (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)SECRETS AND LIES  Oliver (Stephen Amell) and team uncover HIVEs plan to take out Team Arrow once and for all. With HIVEs next attack imminent, Lance (Paul Blackthorne) wonders if Donna (guest star Charlotte Ross) is safer without him in her life. Meanwhile, with the wedding fast approaching, Oliver begins to feel guilty that he hasnt told Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) about his son. James Bamford directed the episode written by Wendy Mericle & Oscar Balderrama (#414). Original airdate 2/17/16.The Vessel  (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)LUCIFER (AS CASTIEL) SENDS DEAN BACK IN TIME  Hoping to find a weapon powerful enough to defeat Amara (guest star Emily Swallow), Dean (Jensen Ackles) convinces Castiel, (Misha Collins) who is still Lucifer, to send him back in time to the last reported sighting of the Hand of God. Lucifer sees the potential in getting his hands on this weapon so goes along as Castiel and sends Dean to 1944 to the fated submarine mission that sunk the Hand of God. Meanwhile, continuing his charade with Sam (Jared Padalecki) while they wait for Deans return, Lucifer plans his next move. John Badham directed the episode written by Robert Berens (#1114). Original airdate 2/17/16.THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18Fail-Safe  (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, LV) (HDTV)THE TEAM ORCHESTRATES A PRISON BREAK  After some of the Legends are captured and thrown into a Russian gulag during the height of the Cold War of 1986, Snart (Wentworth Miller) leads the team in an elaborate escape plan to free their comrades. However, Rip (Arthur Darvill) gives Sara (Caity Lotz) a secret side mission that could prove not only to be a liability, but fatal to the team. Dermott Downs directed the episode written by Beth Schwartz & Grainne Godfree (#105). Original airdate 2/18/16.Hakeldama  (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, LV) (HDTV)MICHAEL BEACH (SONS OF ANARCHY) GUEST STARS  Clarkes (Eliza Taylor) hope for peace are dashed by a new threat. Raven (Lindsey Morgan) becomes a target. Meanwhile, Murphy (Richard Harmon) is running a dangerous con. Paige Turco, Henry Ian Cusack, Isaiah Washington, Bob Morley, Marie Avgeropoulos, Devon Bostick, Christopher Larkin, Ricky Whittle also star. Tim Scanlan directed the episode written by Charlie Craig (#305). Original airdate 2/18/16.FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19This Womans Work  (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)VAMPIRE HUNTER RAYNA CRUZ (GUEST STAR LESLIE-ANNE HUFF) ARRIVES TO MYSTIC FALLS -- When complications from her supernatural pregnancy leave Carolines (Candice King) life hanging in the balance, Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Valerie (guest star Elizabeth Blackmore) take extreme measures to try and save her and the babies. Meanwhile, after uncovering a dark secret about Damon (Ian Somerhalder), Enzo (Michael Malarkey) uses the information to force Damon into helping him track down Rayna Cruz (guest star Leslie-Anne Huff), a ruthless vampire hunter who is on the loose. However, when Damons actions inadvertently put everyone he loves in Raynas path, he is forced to make things right before its too late. Kat Graham and Matt Davis also star. Garreth Stover directed the episode written by Chad Fiveash & James Stoteraux (#713). Original airdate 2/19/16.Heart Shaped Box  (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)A VENGEFUL AURORA (GUEST STAR REBECCA BREEDS) MAKES HER MOVE - Determined to make her ultimate move against the Mikaelson brothers, Aurora (guest star Rebecca Breeds) uses Freya (Riley Voelkel) as bait to lure Klaus (Joseph Morgan) and Elijah (Daniel Gillies) into a dangerous trap. Meanwhile, after being recruited by The Strix's powerful coven of witches to perform a spell that could save the lives of her closest friends, Davina (Danielle Campbell) finds a way to conjure up Kol (guest star Nathaniel Buzolic), the only person who may know the key ingredient to completing the spell. Finally, Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) is forced to make a heartbreaking sacrifice. Charles Michael Davis also stars. Chris Grismer directed the episode written by Michelle Paradise & Christopher Hollier (#313). Original airdate 2/19/16.
Zoetis Area Veterinary Manager Charles Chavasse, who is one of Irelands well known veterinarians, has spoken at well attended farm meetings on calf rearing in Arklow, Co. Wicklow; Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow; Blarney, Bandon and Killeagh Co. Cork; Kilmacthomas, Co. Waterford; Cappamore, Co. Limerick; and in counties Galway, Longford and Tipperary.

Most recently Charles Chavasse, spoke to a group of dairy farmers on the farm of Glanbia milk supplier Philip Meaney near Kilkenny city. This meeting was held in conjunction with the Ormonde Veterinary Clinic.

More meetings are planned and next week, Charles will be speaking to milk producers in Kilmacthomas, Co. Waterford, in conjunction with the Comeragh Veterinary practice.

Charles outlined how pneumonia in the young, pre-weaned dairy heifer calf, can have a long term impact on the overall lifetime productivity of the individual animal. The first 8 weeks in the life of a dairy heifer are crucial. The growth rates at this early stage have long term effects on the ability of that animal to produce milk in the future.

This is in part due to the development of the mammary tissue in the young calf, which is highly responsive to nutrient intake. Anything that hinders nutrition and health in the young calf can have long term detrimental effects which contribute to a loss in production and farm profitability.

Discussing some recent Irish studies conducted by Dr Stephen Morrison in AFBI, the Northern Ireland Agricultural Research Institute, Charles detailed how pneumonia in young calves can reduce first lactation yield by 4% and second lactation yield by 8%. In animals that suffer pneumonia relapses, first and second lactation yields are reduced even further, by 5% and 10% respectively.

Other international researchers have demonstrated how pneumonia in young calves has been shown to reduce growth rates by 3%-9% which cannot be overcome by compensatory feeding. Good growth rates in young calves bodes well for the future as on average, for every additional 100g of average daily gain during the first 2 months of life, about 225kg of additional milk in the first lactation can be expected.

On the other hand when growth targets for dairy heifers are missed (due to ill health etc.) they are unlikely to be on target for breeding at 15 months of age and calving at 24 months of age. Heifer calves that develop pneumonia have a delayed age at first calving and are known not to last as long in the milking herd, with reduced days in milk over their lifetime compared with calves that never suffer from pneumonia.
Ned Gerard / Ned Gerard

A federal judge sentenced a former accountant in Norwalk to eight years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme that cost investors more than $1.6 million and stealing millions more from other investment accounts, with 10 victims addressing the court during a Thursday sentencing hearing.

Starting in 2006 and possibly beforehand, Neilsen solicited more than $1 million from numerous people to invest in Ulysses Partners and Neilsen Financial Services, according to the office of Deirdre Daly, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, promising investors a guaranteed rate of return of 9 percent to 10.5 percent. Instead, Neilsen used much of the money to pay back earlier investors and for personal expenditures, fabricating account statements to cover his tracks.
STAMFORD  A Massachusetts fire expert took the stand Thursday to defend Stamford landlord Anthony Manousos against arson charges and said the fire that damaged his apartment house was accidental.

Michael Higgins told a jury that the fire was started by an electric space heater.

Manousos, 34, is facing a first-degree arson charge for allegedly setting fire to his four-unit apartment house at 52 Highland Avenue while a tenant was inside on Dec. 3, 2014.

Higgins, whose company is K-Chem Laboratories, said the gasoline that Manousos claims to have accidentally spilled on the homes rear staircase was touched off by the heater inside a living room apartment on the first floor. He said that the fire burned inside a closet before it caught the rear stairwell of the house on fire.

His testimony contradicts that of a state trooper who investigated the blaze and said last week that it began in the stairwell and then spread into closet and storage area under the stairs.

Police investigators earlier testified that the fire was started by matches found at the scene, which they said were identical with matches found in Manousos pocket.

Those matches could have been there for months, said Higgins, calling them false data.

Manousos has turned down a deal that would have sent him to prison for seven years for a guilty plea to first-degree arson. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Higgins, who is being paid $150 per hour by defense attorneys Frank DiScala and Mike Skiber to prepare his report and testify in the case, said the heater could easily have touched off the blaze. He explained the heating element in a space heater, which gets to be 1,000 to about 1,200 degrees, was more than enough to ignite gasoline vapors that ignite at between 450 and 550 degrees.

There is no scientific data supporting the fact this was an intentionally set fire, Higgins said.

On cross examination by Senior Assistant States Attorney Paul Ferencek, Higgins said that he hadnt examined the home until August, eight months after the fire. When asked how he knew that nothing had been shifted around in the house over those intervening months, he said that he had been assured by Manousos and his attorneys that everything was in the same place. Plus he could see by the police and fire pictures that nothing had been moved.

By the time he got to the house, which had its power cut, Higgins said he found the space heater with its on button pushed. The electric plug to the appliance he said had been pulled out of the socket, but he said he had been told it had been plugged in at the time of the fire.

But under questioning by Ferencek, Higgins admitted that he never plugged it in to see if it worked. He said he did not even know which temperature setting it had been left on. Asked if he had done any experiments with the heater to test the hypothesis of his theory of the fire or take it apart to look at the heating elements, Higgins said there was no need to.

I went through it theoretically, he said. No I didnt do any experiments. I have done them in the past.

State and city fire investigators say the heater was in new condition, without any burn marks on it or around it that led them to believe it had anything to do with starting the fire.

The pat-down

Near the end of the days testimony, the defense called former police officer Donald Chen to the stand to challenge the states contention that police caught Manousos with the box of matches in his pocket. Chen, resigned from the force in December after he was allegedly caught taking a Hawaiian vacation with his girlfriend while he was supposed to be on maneuvers with his U.S. Army Reserves unit, but the jury didnt hear any mention of Chens background, or of the larceny charge pending against him.

Skiber led him through the early afternoon of Dec. 3, 2014 when he was called to the fire. Then about a month on the job, Chen said he pulled up to the scene with his training officer Chris Brown and saw Manousos standing there with Sgt. Russell Gladwin and patrol officer Jonathan Rizzitello.

Chen said Brown got out and patted Manousos down, but didnt pull any matches out of his pocket. That called into question Rizzitello and Gladwins testimony that Rizzitello did the pat-down for weapons and pulled the pack of matches out of one of the front pockets of his jeans.

But under cross examination, Chen told the jury that he knew Manousos had been patted down before he pulled up with Brown. Being a junior officer, Chen said he was not told of what was found in Manousos pockets at the time. Chen then walked out of the courtroom with his attoney John Gulash.
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DANBURY  Stew Leonard Jr. has never mixed himself into the debate about whether people should openly carry guns in his three Connecticut stores.

There is no reason to get involved now, he said, even if other grocery stores in the Danbury area face boycotts from people who want bans on guns while shopping.

We talked about this as a family, and we feel like we have a very safe environment at Stews with security guards and over 100 security cameras, said Leonard, CEO and president of the grocery chain with Connecticut locations in Danbury, Norwalk and Newington. Obviously, we dont want anyone coming in with an unconcealed weapon, but we are going to follow federal and state laws regarding guns.

State law allows people with a permit to openly carry firearms in public, but stores are free to set their own policies. Following the 2012 shootings of 26 students and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Starbucks asked customers to stop bringing guns to buy coffee, for example. Target and Whole Foods followed with similar policies.

The issue made headlines last week when a Redding woman began a boycott after she saw a man wearing a gun on his waist at Caraluzzis Bethel Food Market. The boycott spread to at least one other store  Big Y  and forced the 400-member Connecticut Food Association to promise to develop a policy that would keep supermarkets out of the divisive gun-control debate.

At the time, Leonard said he would discuss the issue with his family, even though no one had approached him in his Connecticut stores about guns.

He said one incident did occur in one of his Connecticut stores when a woman saw a man wearing a gun while he was reaching for some eggs. She told the store manager, who asked the man to conceal the weapon. The man turned out to be a local detective, Leonard said.

It hasnt been an issue, Leonard said. If it becomes an issue, we will address it in the future.

Meanwhile, the controversy between supporters of the Second Amendment right to bear arms and advocates for gun control continues on the Facebook pages of Caraluzzis and Big Y.

Caraluzzis posted a statement about the controversy on its website last week, saying its store aisles were the wrong place to fight over gun control.

Weve had a formal policy in place that specifically prohibits our employees from bringing arms into the workplace, and then followed the state law regarding the public, according to the statement by Mark Caraluzzi, president and CEO. While most non law-enforcement gun owners conceal their weapons and go about their business without generating a stir, we have had very few instances historically where an individual is openly carrying a gun, which caused a fellow shopper to feel uncomfortable.

The case that caused the controversy happened on Jan. 6, when a Redding woman was upset by a fellow shopper wearing a gun on his waist.

The individual was asked by the store manager to conceal it, and he did, the statement reads. However, both individuals got home and proceeded to post their experience on social media, which then dragged us into the debate with other retailers.

The debate in the Danbury area follows two high-profile armed-while-shopping incidents in southwestern Connecticut.

In December, a man wearing a handgun drew an armed police response when he walked into Macys in Milford. Earlier this month, a man with a gun in a holster got into a confrontation with three police officers when he tried to order a sandwich at Subway in Bridgeport.
On Wednesday, February 3, at 12.00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "Reorganization of Kyiv Investment Agency". The event is organized by the Ukrainian Real Estate Club. The participants will include Director General of Kyiv Investment Agency municipal enterprise Oleh Mistiuk, First Deputy General Director of Kyiv Investment Agency municipal enterprise Vitaliy Boiko, partner of Talent Advisers Tala Stetsenko, and state governance expert at Transparency International Ukraine Olesia Arkhypska (8/5-A Reitarska Street). Accreditation is required by phone: (044) 227 6753.
O n the TV panel show Would I Lie to You?, theres always that moment when the contestant claims to have done something. Theres a pause while the other panellists and audience look at them and take in what theyve just said. Is it possible, did they really do that? Then the quizzing begins.

I experienced a desire to interrogate this week when it was announced that Andrew Bailey is the next chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority. One newspaper reported he once had to support his wife as she faced down a bear that had got into their US home while simultaneously working out how to rescue the failed lender Northern Rock.

Please read that sentence slowly. Thats right. Bailey, 56, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, well padded, bespectacled, going one-on-one with a bear. Hes the son of a headmaster, a Leicester boy (Wyggeston Grammar School, same as Richard and David Attenborough) who went on to Cambridge, and then 31 years with the Old Lady (the banking supervisor, not his wife). Nowhere does it mention he was in the SAS.

Hes a West Brom supporter but since when have followers of the Baggies been qualified to take on fearsome mountain creatures? Try as I might, I cant get the quiz show out of my mind. I admit Im also influenced by having seen The Revenant, in which Leonardo DiCaprio gives a clue as to what its like to be attacked by a grizzly.

Im not saying that Bailey is fibbing. Hes not the sort. But I do wonder what exactly happened in Idaho where he and his American missus, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, an economist at the LSE (they have two children and a UK house in much more tranquil Kent) have their holiday home. Which room was the predator in? Did it open the fridge? Did it go upstairs?

"He looked at me and said: 'I need 25 billion today, can you do it?' I said: 'Yes, I can do that.'"

Also, tackling the furry monster is only part of the tale. Apparently, while Cheryl was fending it off, he and (Mervyn) King, the then Governor, were dealing with another dangerous beast in the shape of a Newcastle bank that got beyond itself and borrowed too much, only to come a cropper when credit suddenly dried up. Did Bailey shout through from the kitchen: Hang on Cheryl, love, keep talking to it. If it comes for you, I read somewhere you should punch it on the nose  Ill be with you in a minute, Im just on the phone to Mervyn.

What the shaggy-coated tale does is to emphasise that Bailey is no push-over. You may suppose hes completely institutionalised, having spent his entire career in the same place. But not a bit of it. He was the guy who introduced a new currency in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

He was chief cashier  signing his name on banknotes  during the 2008 crisis. When Royal Bank of Scotland was on the edge, its treasurer turned up in Baileys office asking for cash  25 billion  to stay afloat.

The treasurer, John Cummins, came in and I thought he was going to have a heart attack and he looked at me and said: I need 25 billion today, can you do it? I said: Yes, I can do that. Cool or what?

At the Prudential Regulation Authority, which he heads as part of his supervisory remit at the Bank, hes pushed banks to strengthen their balance sheets, advocated clawbacks on bonuses so the cash can be reclaimed years later, and argued for a new system under which bank executives are liable for failings while they were in charge.

None of this is exactly popular with the banks. Bailey, it is clear, is not a slouch. Then again, there are those who maintain hes not been tough enough, that his self-admitted fact-based approach errs towards caution, is not directional and relies too much on listening to the other side.

Certainly, Bailey is no stranger to high-level City schmoozing (although last week he eschewed the glittering lights of Davos in favour of North-East England and visits to a small bank and credit union). Unlike Tracey McDermott, the FCAs acting chief executive, who withdrew her application for the job, hes at ease with bank chairmen and chief executives.

Its true that he once called the Rev Paul Flowers, chairman of the Co-op Bank, pompous and he said Neville Richardson, head of Britannia, was in denial about the building societys troubles. And he did rail against Antony Jenkins, then running Barclays, in 2013 for suggesting that his bank should reduce business lending to boost its capital base.

Adversary: Ex-Barclays boss Antony Jenkins (Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures) / Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

However, Bailey is poles apart from his predecessor at the FCA, Martin Wheatley, who said he would shoot first and ask questions later. He is a lifelong mandarin, a former private secretary to the late Governor, Lord (Eddie) George, someone who has served his time and more in the strange court that is the Bank of England. Hes survived successive governors, continuing his rise to within touching distance of the top. You dont do that by bawling people out in meetings, by being confrontational.

A former colleague of Bailey said one characteristic, typical of a senior Bank employee, was that his letters were harsher in tone than meeting face to face. In meetings, he comes across as acceptable and approachable, a bit of a yes man. Then the letter with the follow-up actions arrives and its quite different. Like anyone at the Bank, hes terrified of the Governor and will always do his bidding. If the Governor says jump, Andrew will ask how high?.

Bailey did not originally want the FCA job. Even though it pays 460,000 a year against his current salary of 264,000, he was not interested. (Wheatley was on 701,000 and, unlike him, Bailey is deferring any bonus.) Part of the reason, possibly, was how the FCA is perceived within financial services. The Bank is the grande dame, moving in a gilded world of national and industry leaders, politicians and corporate titans. The FCA is the Cinderella organisation, clearing up the mess, pursuing bad behaviour, championing the little folk (an internal mantra is what have you done for the consumer today?).

Another conjecture, mooted by those who know him, is that he was holding out to be next Governor. But he took the plunge when it became clear Mark Carney was likely to lengthen his term from five to eight years. (The Canadian was thought to want to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberals in that country but Trudeau seems set to remain.)

Staying power: Mark Carney has extended his term as Bank of England Govenor (Picture: EPA) / EPA

Its complete coincidence, Bailey says, that both men will relinquish their roles in 2021. He would be free then to go for the governorship. Of course, he denies being so nakedly ambitious. I dont live to be Governor of the Bank of England, thats not what motivates me and it never will, and I recommend generally: dont live to do some job that youre not doing today.

He was asked only this month, coming back from holiday over Christmas, if he would consider the FCA post. The front runner was thought to be Greg Medcraft, head of the Australian financial regulator. Hed been house-hunting in London and started planning his relocation. But while the executive search agency was fixing on Medcraft, the Treasury was thinking differently, leaning towards less of a bruiser in Bailey.

A former senior official said: They were happy for Medcraft to think he was getting the job but Bailey was a known quantity; hes a secure, safe pair of hands. The staff at the Treasury, Bank, FCA  they all know him.

That said, he has a difficult task ahead of him. He inherits a watchdog that is shot to pieces. His very first job is to stabilise morale and to stop any more attrition, said the ex-official. Hes got to get a stable and talented team in place.

Key to that, they thought, was McDermott. Previously the head of enforcement, she is a popular figure within the authority. Shes regarded as having worked her way up, and not been parachuted in. She resolutely does not play the glad-handing game and kowtow to bankers and their advisers.

Bailey could do worse than persuade McDermott to be his deputy, to provide much-needed continuity and recognition for the work she has done.

Crucially, he needs to get the FCA out from under. At present its too much of a junior to the Treasury and Bank, subject to their influence and interference. He must stand his ground and provide independence and some desperately required confidence. He should keep reminding himself of how he helped Cheryl see off that bear.
L ike Google, LinkedIn is an extremely useful tool. Its great for journalists and lawyers to catch people telling porkies, and helps those in the corporate world get their next job too.

Also like Google, it makes oodles of money, raking in about $740 million (518 million) underlying global profit last year from members and advertisers.

To bring in all that cash requires brilliant brains. Which is why, youd have thought, LinkedIn pays its 186 workers in London an average wage of a whopping 112,034  not far shy of some investment banks.

But, according to the London accounts, these highly paid folks in the capital city of a country with a population of 64 million arent the real profit builders of the UK division.

The guys at LinkedIn who really drive the big bucks from the worlds fifth-biggest economy are in that global economic powerhouse of, er... Dublin.

Thats the story suggested by the tax structure of this business, anyway. For, according to the accounts, all the UK staff do is provide marketing support for LinkedIn Ireland.

In return for that support, the UK business got paid 46.6 million last year from LinkedIn Ireland, from which it paid the UK taxman 532,179.

Why so little? Because after that whopping wage bill and other costs including a big slug of share options, the UK business only made a profit of 6 million.

How convenient.

You cant tell from LinkedIns Irish filings how much tax it paid there but, thanks to its use of the double Irish tax avoidance trick, dont expect it to be much.

LinkedIn did not respond to specific questions about its taxes but said it abides by the rules.

"Theres some doubt governments keen to attract sexy US tech firms to their shores actually want to levy bigger taxes."

Its precisely this lack of transparency that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is trying to tackle with this weeks deal signed by 31 countries around the world.

The idea is that companies will have to disclose to their host nations how much profit they make and what tax they pay in the various countries they operate in.

Governments will then share the information with each other, building up a global picture of where companies pay their taxes. If a firm such as LinkedIn or Google books more revenue in a teeny country like Ireland than, say, the UK, the taxman will smell a rat.

The problem is, a rodenty odour is not enough to formulate a tax bill. It may provoke suspicion but companies with clever accountants will still claim that the UK office merely houses support staff.

Furthermore, theres some doubt governments keen to attract sexy US tech firms to their shores actually want to levy bigger taxes.

Only when politicians agree to tax companies on where their customers are based, rather than their supposed HQs, will an equitable share of the tax spoils be established. This shouldnt be too hard: in a digital world, its easy to locate customers from their servers or smartphones.

And if companies still cant trace where their customers are, they can always look them up on LinkedIn.
I n December 1516, Thomas More, a London lawyer, published a short dialogue in Latin with the intriguing title Utopia, a punning Greek word which can mean

both nowhere and good place. The little book immediately became an international bestseller and made More a European celebrity.

Travel and discovery were in the air: Amerigo Vespuccis voyages to the New World had been publicised a decade before, and Mores fantasy purported to be an eye-witness account of an island somewhere in the south Atlantic by one of Vespuccis companions, Raphael Hythloday. Utopia was a dream commonwealth ruled by elected officials, its population rationally distributed among 54 cities with identical street plans. No one was poor because goods were held in common and wealth despised. Gold and silver were made into pisspots, jewels given to children as toys, and there was no money.

In Utopia there were no aristocrats and no idlers. Everyone dressed simply, everyone learned a trade and worked for a living. The citizens dined together at communal tables; the sick and elderly were cared for in spacious hospitals; capital punishment was a rarity reserved for the gravest crimes; war was avoided as a calamity of last resort; and hunting for sport was despised as cruel.

The Utopians were rational pagans, and religious disagreement was tolerated, though all accepted that the world was governed by a benevolent God who rewarded virtue and punished vice; those who denied this were viewed as criminals whose opinions threatened moral anarchy.

'For More, Protestantism was a destructively irrational force, bringing war and social breakdown in its wake'

Priests in Utopia were universally respected because there were very few of them, and all were chosen for their wisdom and virtue.

Utopia was, of course, a satire on the real Europe and the real England, in which government was harsh, priests and rulers often corrupt, and the gulf between rich and poor widened every day. But not everything in Utopia represents Mores ideal alternative. The regimented life of the island is sometimes horribly reminiscent of an anthill, and Utopia sanctioned assisted suicide for the terminally ill, which More, a devout Catholic, certainly rejected. His book is a thought experiment, the ideas in which are voiced wittily by the characters, making it hard for us to know where playfulness stops and serious advocacy begins.

One of Europes seminal books, Utopia was the product of the so-called humanist movement, in which the newly rediscovered philosophy and culture of the classical world was deployed to reform and enrich Christian society. Its chief exponent was Mores friend, the Dutch priest and biblical scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmuss satirical masterpiece, In Praise of Folly, poking fun at corruption and stupidity in every institution, including the Church, was written in 1509 in Mores house, and the books Greek title, Moriae Encomium, was an affectionate pun on Mores name.

Erasmus and More hoped to reform the world and especially the Church by a mixture of instruction and laughter. Sound Greek learning and rational discussion, sharpened with a healthy dose of ridicule, would blow away the cobwebs of ignorance and vice and lead to a more just and Christian society.

Within months of Utopias publication, Martin Luther, a theology lecturer at the new University of Wittenberg, dropped a bombshell that shattered that vision for ever. Luther shared the humanist desire for reform but he had no confidence in human capacity to achieve it. Humanists believed Gods grace refined the best in human nature.

Luther thought pagan virtues were nothing but gilded sins, pride masquerading as goodness: only Gods alien righteousness, appropriated by faith in Christ, could save us from our corrupt natural selves. His initial attack on abuses such as the sale of religious blessings called indulgences broadened to a total rejection of the authority of Pope and hierarchy, opposing the teaching of the Bible to the traditions and religious practices of the previous 1,000 years.

More and Erasmus had looked for gradual change from within, seeing the Church as a God-given institution, the sacrament of unity in a divided world but Luther did not believe in gradual. Convinced that he had rediscovered true Christianity after centuries of deceit, he was certain that if the authorities rejected him it was because they were dupes of the Devil. A brilliant propagandist and master of the new medium of print, his message spread, and Germany divided into contending camps. By the mid-1520s social and religious unrest combined to trigger a revolt of the oppressed German peasantry, and a backlash by their rulers, in which tens of thousands died.

More watched all this with horror, blaming Luther for the social and religious chaos, and he was drawn into the campaign by Henry VIII, still a devout Catholic, to prevent the new Protestant teaching taking hold in England. Eventually appointed Lord Chancellor, More spearheaded the confiscation of Protestant books and the arrest of their promoters, six of whom were executed. This was a far cry from the religious toleration of Utopia, and there is no doubting Mores determination to halt the movement in its tracks. But he indignantly denied rumours that he tortured suspects, and he was never the grim-faced bigot dramatised in Wolf Hall.

For More, Protestantism was a destructively irrational force, bringing war and social breakdown in its wake. Like his friend Erasmus, he saw Luther as a violent dogmatist who valued his own opinions above the wisdom of the ages, at the cost of plunging Europe into bloodshed. Though he never repudiated his humanist beliefs, More came to regret his own part in unsettling

confidence in the Church. Before his arrest and execution for loyalty to Catholicism, he spent his last years as a free man writing fierce books against the new religion. Erasmus also attacked Luther but went on satirising the Church, hoping Protestant and Catholic reformers might still join hands.

More grasped more fully the tragic finality of Europes new divisions and foresaw the destruction of Catholicism in England and beyond. He went to his death knowing that the golden moment that had produced Utopia had passed for ever.


T he startling proposal by Richmond councils leader, Lord True, that broad limits should be set on Londons fast-growing population is one of two eye-catching contributions today to the debate about how best to address this citys housing problems and maintain the exciting mix of economic success and cultural vibrancy that makes it such a lure. The second idea, from the London Assembly, is for the spillover numbers of the future to be housed in the surrounding towns and villages of the South-East. The aim would be to stop this city reaching the even more crammed population densities seen in other world mega-cities.

Of the two plans, the first appears problematic. Setting population limits, however broad, would be impossible in a country with free movement and, by potentially stopping talented new arrivals from coming here, would risk undermining Londons future prosperity. Lord True makes valid points nonetheless about whether London can cope with the additional demand for housing, transport, health and other public services that millions more inhabitants would bring. Some of this could be addressed by better use of brownfield sites and other unused land for housing and the increased construction of high-density Continental style mid-rise apartments. Crossrail 2 and Tube extensions would further alleviate pressures. But ensuring London remains enjoyable and thriving will require other solutions too if, as appears likely, large numbers continue to flock here.

This is where todays spillover idea has merit. Many London workers already commute from outside the capital, spreading Londons prosperity to Kent, Sussex, Surrey and elsewhere, while enjoying their evenings and weekends in a more tranquil environment. Better rail services, now that TfL has been promised control of the suburban network, should make this option more attractive still. Meanwhile, the debate about Londons future must continue. Maintaining this citys remarkable success is essential.

The EU migrant brake

The emergency brake on migrant benefits being negotiated by David Cameron with Britains European partners will offer hope to the Prime Minister that he can offer a meaningful renegotiation of Britains position in the EU that will persuade voters to stay in when the promised in-out referendum is held, probably later this year. The details of how such a system might work are still unclear, although its inevitably temporary nature and suggestions that permission to implement the restrictions would be needed from the EU have already led to Mr Camerons critics denouncing the plan as an insult to this country, rather than a success.

Whatever the truth, the apparent complexity of the proposed brake is troubling. So too, for Mr Cameron, is the finding of the poll published today by this newspaper showing that only half the public now wants to stay in the EU and that the gap between the ins and outs is narrowing. The Prime Minister needs a clear message to sell to voters. He still has hard work to do.

Generous readers

The generosity with which readers have given to GOSH is quite staggering. The 3 million raised so far will directly benefit patients and their families at Great Ormond Street Hospital. While the record for our annual charity appeal may already have been smashed, the appeal still has a fortnight to run  during which time well announce a final round of exciting offers in our last online auction.
Famous families are fascinating. Partly, it is because families are comprehensible: everyone has one. We follow high-profile dynasties because we know that they too have their banal tensions and petty rivalries  we sense kinship with their kin.

On the other hand, your mum doesnt wear black leather to shop at Whole Foods on 3rd and Fairfax. So somewhere in the Venn diagram between the familiar and the otherworldly, there is the sweet spot of enduring appeal.

The most fascinating families in the world now are the Kardashians and the Hadids.

They could be rivals but instead, the golden child of each dynasty - Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid - are seemingly best friends and dating within the same boyband pool.

Off the back of their new alliance, this is what you need to know about the two families.

THE NEW STARS

The kurrent jewel in the Kardashian krown is Kendall Jenner, a 20-year-old model who has spent the past week in Paris modelling couture, notably walking the katwalk for Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel.

She has modelled in campaigns for Calvin Klein and Fendi; her estimated income in 2015 was $4 million, securing her 16th place on Forbes list of top earning models last year.

Her sunny friend Gigi Hadid was also in Paris walking in Lagerfelds Chanel show - the pair were spotted larking about afterwards.

Chanel Haute Couture SS16 1 /28 Chanel Haute Couture SS16 Chanel Couture Cara arrived at the venue carrying her dog AP Photo/Fancois Mori Chanel Couture Cara arriving with the dog AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer Chanel Couture Cara takes her seat with her dog AP Photo/Thibault Camus Chanel Couture Cara poses with her dog for photographers AP Photo/Fancois Mori Chanel Couture Anna Wintour arrives at the venue AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer Chanel Couture Diane Kruger poses for photographers AP Photo/Thibault Camus Chanel Couture Cara poses for photographers AP Photo/Thibault Camus Chanel Couture The eco-friendly set Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Chanel Couture A model walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway EPA/Ian Langsdon Chanel Couture A model walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Chanel Couture Kendall Jenner walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture Maria Clara Boscono walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture Lindsey Wixson walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture Lindsey Wixson walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Chanel Couture Bella Hadid walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture Vanessa Moody walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture A model walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Chanel Couture Gigi Hadid walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture Mica Arganaraz walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Chanel Couture Gigi Hadid walks the Haute Couture SS16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Chanel Couture Karl acknowledges his audience Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty

Other milestones shared include starring in their first Victorias Secret show together; when the brand announced the news, Kendall Instagrammed an illustration of the pair, captioned always been one of my biggest dreams to be on this catwalk. @victoriassecrets newest recruits: oh, and I get to do it with my best friend.

A photo posted by Kendall Jenner (@kendalljenner) on Nov 3, 2015 at 10:32am PST

This week, Hadid closed the Atelier Versace show and earlier this year she was on her first cover of British Vogue, in which she discussed her friendship with Kendall.

Kendalls more guarded. Im more feisty, she said. I dont want to say outgoing because she is really outgoing once you get to know her. And when were both having fun, she makes me a lot more spontaneous. Its a good balance. But neither of us likes to stay out past 11.

Nonetheless, they are often seen together (behaving) at LAs (latest) cool nightspot The Nice Guy.

On that theme, Kendall is rumoured to be dating 1D pop moppet Harry Styles (they were seen snogging on a yacht this month) and Gigi is going out with his ex-bandmate Zayn Malik.

Though obviously its babes before bros - last week Kendall uploaded a picture of a necklace reading KenGI. FYI: a portmanteau is entry-level BFF. They also like to get yoghurt together in LA.

THE MOMAGERS

Kris Jenner is the most famous matriarch in the world. For some reason this surprises and horrifies people, as though their mother is not the boss in their own family.

Kris masterminding her childrens success is broadly the same as your mother telling you that youre wasting the best years of your life with that sappy boyfriend and when she was your age she wouldnt have considered tying herself down, while your father tries to rearrange his expression to jovial. However, no one calls her a machinating harridan.

Kris knows what shes doing; go Kris. She drives the action on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and she delivers sage maternal advice (to Kim when Khloe is en route to jail: Kim, stop taking selfies. Youre sisters going to jail.)

Yolanda Hadid Foster is also a matriarch who has had some hand in the success of her children: she was one of the chief housewives in American reality television show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, on which Gigi and her siblings, Bella and Anwar, appeared semi-regularly, launching their profile.

She was born in the Netherlands, worked as a model in her youth and more recently as an interior designer. Last year she announced that she suffers from the bacterial condition Lyme disease.

THE LITTLE SISTERS

Behind many golden children are little sisters. Invariably, they are cooler and moodier; invariably, their beauty is their own - they are not simply a watered-down facsimile of older models.

In this case, quite literally: Kylie Jenner and Bella Hadid are also models. They have been shot together for US Vogue in a bare-faced, dreamy Nineties spread that also features another little sister, Lottie Moss, half-sister of Kate.

Kylie and Kendall have worked together: they created clothing lines for Topshop and PacSun, for which they both modelled, and last year they launched their own young adult fantasy novel, Rebels: City of Indra. Both appeared in Balmains high-octane sister-sister AW15 ad campaign.

Both Gigi and Bella appear in the campaign too, and Bella also walked for Chanels couture show this week.

Gigi is protective of her little sister (who like Yolanda, also suffers from Lyme disease). When British Vogue demanded What would you do if someone was being mean to Bella?, Gigi responded: Its like the end of your life pretty much, in a not serious but kind of serious tone.

Backstage at a show in Paris, for some reason they let photographers take pictures while girls were changing, which just pisses me off. My sisters changing next to me and I was like, If you dont put that camera away and stop shooting my sister, Im going to come over there, Im going to take that camera and throw it on the floor.

Both sisters like burgers.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA

The Kardashians have the edge here - theyre better known and there are far more of them.

Kim has almost 40 million followers on Twitter and almost 60 million on Instagram.

Khloe and Kourtney have almost 40 million on Twitter between them.

Kendall has 15 million on Twitter and 47.5 million on Instagram. Kylie has 13.8 million on Twitter and almost 50 million on Instagram.

A photo posted by Kendall Jenner (@kendalljenner) on Dec 8, 2015 at 7:31am PST

Matriarch Kris has more than 17 million across both.

The Hadids are trailling behind. Gigi has 1.34 million on Twitter and 12.3 million on Instagram; Bella has 224,000 on Twitter and 2.4 million on Instagram.

Yolanda is edging in on 1.5 million on Instagram.

THE REALITY CHECK

Both families are products of the very modern American dream: reality television.

Keeping Up With the Kardashians (KUWTK) is either the zenith or nadir of the format, depending on who you speak to: it charts the families fripperies, scandals and tantrums, and has been running for 11 seasons. Kendall and Kylie grew up on the show, which first aired just before the formers 12th birthday.

Best moments include any time that Kourtney and Khloe gang up on Kim (including giving her the secret nickname, Nancy), when Kourtney talks about Kims ugly cry face (generating a notable meme), and the time Kris has a chicken. Gigi Hadid has appeared as a guest in episodes of KUWTK.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (RHOBH) is on its sixth season; it focuses on the lives of a number of LA women.

Yolanda joined in series three. At points she has been a controversial figure - for example, the time she got divorced from second husband David Foster, and the time the other ladies said she was hamming up her Lyme disease for attention and sympathy.

To cut the ladies some slack - bear with me - one on the series of offshoot Real Housewives of Orange County did fake a cancer diagnosis. However, Yolanda has defended herself: Theres nothing worse than being an intelligent woman like me and people doubting what youre saying, including your family and friends. I pity them.

The time they were actually related for a while. SO: Yolandas ex-husband, David Foster, was once married to Caitlyn Jenners ex-wife Linda Thompson. If you squint, Gigi and Kendall are very tenuously related.

And then the world imploded and all you could hear was a ringing in your ears, in perpetuity.

@phoebeluckhurst
Review at a glance









H ow rare is this? A true story so much worth the telling that it needs no embellishment, no sideshow? To make it moving and compelling, all thats required is a good script, telling direction and uniformly good acting.

Spotlight makes all that look natural, even easy  but if it was, there would be much more of it out there. Matthew Arnold praised Drydens style as a prose such as we would all gladly use if we only knew how. Spotlights director and co-writer, Tom McCarthy, knows.

Spotlight is a great report on great reporting, a procedural in the best possible sense. In 2002, an investigative unit of just four journalists at The Boston Globe published an expose of how the paedophile activities of more than 70 priests in the city had been systematically covered up by the Catholic Church  news that not only had enormous impact locally, in a city where the papers readers were mostly Catholic themselves, but ultimately worldwide, as an astonishing list at the end of the film of the hundreds of cities where similar scandals were subsequently uncovered  elsewhere in the US and then around the world  demonstrates. It is also, incidentally, an elegy for how newspapers used to be able to work on sustained projects with patience and dedication, just before the internet and instantaneity became all-powerful.

Mark Ruffalo: I had "big shoes to fill" in Spotlight role

We meet the Spotlight team as they speculate about whether their newly appointed editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), a Jewish outsider in Bostons eyes, is planning cuts. The teams leader, Walter Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), meets Marty over lunch and asks him if thats the case. What Im more focused on now is making this paper essential to its readers, says Marty, the kind of blarney journalists everywhere have come to dread as the song that is sung while the axe is swung. But Marty, an imposing presence, intelligent, tough and undeterred, means it.

TODO: define component type brightcove

He sets the team onto investigating the background to an individual case of an abusive priest, so far covered in the paper only in a single column, saying theyll go to court if necessary to force disclosure of the records. You want to sue the Church? everyone at the Globe asks, incredulous. But Spotlights chief reporter, Mike Rezendes (an impassioned Mark Ruffalo), says: Sue the Church? Hey, thats great! He proves relentless in pursuit of the story, turning first to a prickly lawyer of Armenian descent, Mitch Garabedian (searingly played by Stanley Tucci), who, having represented many survivors of abuse, has become wary of the Boston establishment. Initially he doubts Mikes commitment but is impressed enough eventually to give him crucial help.

Meanwhile  cutting back and forth between similar, more or less simultaneous scenes of the investigation being one of the few structural flourishes the film allows itself  Robby and his other main reporter, Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams, rightly Oscar-nominated for the combination of tenderness and toughness she brings to this supporting role), go to see another lawyer, Eric Macleish (Billy Crudup), who works for the other side, privately settling abuse complaints on behalf of the Church for years, using not only the victims shame but a three-year statute of limitations and damages capped at $20,000 to keep them off the public record.

Old-school reporters: the Spotlight team played by, from left, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian dArcy James and Michael Keaton plus John Slattery as Globe deputy managing editor Ben Bradlee Jr / Open Road Films

Slowly, steadily, the team begins to realise both the scale of the scandal and its intricate intermeshing with the wheels of power in Boston. In a particularly touching scene, Sacha interviews, with great tact and responsive warmth, a fragile survivor of abuse, drawing out the full story. Language is going to be so important here  just saying molest isnt enough, people need to know what happened, she tells him gently  and he tells her in detail exactly how he was exploited. It really messed me up, he says tearfully. Did you ever try to tell anyone? she asks. What, like a priest? he retorts. Sacha also interviews a retired priest and abuser, not in the least penitent, telling her, as if it made sense, Sure, I fooled around but I never felt gratified myself.

Spotlight Exclusive Interview With Cast & Crew

Yet Spotlight makes no assault on Catholicism itself. McCarthy, an actor who first directed with The Station Agent of 2003, was raised a Catholic, as it happens. Rather, it lovingly details how it was that such a small team of reporters managed to bring such a vast institution to book for its abuses of power. The Church thinks in centuries  do you think your paper has the resources to take that on? Garabedian asks Mike sceptically. He proves that it does.

Theres just one scene thats a little over the top, when Robby wants more time to gather evidence, but Mike thinks theyve got enough to run the story, raging: They knew! And they let it happen! To kids! Weve got to show nobody can get away with this, not a priest, not a cardinal or a freaking Pope! Its one of those moments you get in films where you can see the scene has been calculated to be the killer clip to be shown in awards ceremonies (and Ruffalo has duly been Oscar-nominated).

Never mind. Spotlight, although set only 14 years ago, is potently nostalgic about the way things were in papers, on the cusp of social media undermining their power. Could you pull the relevant clips on that for me? Mike asks the papers archivist, who retrieving them from folders and microfiches, brings them around on a trolley. Without electronic retrieval, only late in the day is it discovered that the paper had run a significant report on abusive priests years before.

Then again, one of the main ways the reporters uncover how many priests have been quietly moved on by the Church is by spending days examining its own minutely printed official directories, going through them line by line with a ruler. And a key scene involves Mike having trouble getting access to a records office photocopier...

When the story is finally ready to go, one of the bright sparks at the paper suggests: We can run the URL at the end of the article  its pretty straightforward! But we see the presses running, the big Globe-branded trucks going out  and Marty saying: For me, this kind of story is why we do this. Spotlight is a classic newspaper film, then, up there with All The Presidents Men among other notable precursors. Will there ever be another?

Cert 15, 129 mins

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Review at a glance









M ichael Caine, Rachel Weisz and Harvey Keitel all have big parts in writer/director Paolo Sorrentinos latest art-house event: a magnificent-looking, meta-textual ode to friendship, family and, er, fit models.

Youth has much in common with the Italian directors Oscar-winning, Italian-language opus, The Great Beauty. Were no longer in Rome but the terrain, so to speak, is familiar. Its as if Sorrentino has been told by his backers: The same again but in English.

Caine, 82, has rightly won awards for his turn as retired composer Fred, staying in a grand hotel in the Swiss Alps with his daughter Lena (Weisz) and film-director best friend Mick (Keitel).

Fred is cursed with apathy. Just as The Great Beautys hero, Jep, is always being asked when hes going to write a second novel, Fred is plagued by publishers desperate for his memoir. Its tough at the top.

Rightly praised: Michael Caine as Fred / Gianna Fiorita

While refusing offers to play for the Queen, Fred muses on the power of memory with Mick. He also does his best to comfort Lena when shes dumped by her husband for another woman (pop star Paloma Faith, playing herself).

Interestingly, its the sequences involving Faith that prove most organic. Shes described by Mick as the most insignificant woman on the face of the planet and, in her first scene, thanks to the lighting, she does indeed look puny. Shortly afterwards, as part of Lenas dream/nightmare, we see Faith cavorting in a video to her real-life hit, Just Cant Rely On You. This time shes every inch the sex goddess and we understand why Lena wakes up screaming. Sorrentinos point is that love and dreams, as much as high art and pop culture, randomly elevate those around us to superstar status. Anyone can be significant if our emotions, and unconscious, say so.

Meshing striking images with music (theres also a great track from Smogs Bill Callahan) is what this director does best. And even without music, his wry eye proves piercing. Jane Fonda appears towards the end as Brenda, Micks rebellious, cynical muse. Fonda, famously, is a fan of plastic surgery. In her big scene with Keitel you can see the top of her left breast, which (here) resembles a sci-fi space pod. Brendas down to earth; her body isnt. And that disconnect creates genuine frisson.

If only the dialogue could keep up. Fred leaves the Alps to visit a crucial, disease-stricken female and melts in her presence. Whats meant to leave us shocked and awed is that he gets no response. Sorrentino wants to say something profound about illnesses that bury loved ones alive. But the pompous lines kill the mood. I took one look at the paralysed woman and thought: I second that emotion. Shes bored stiff.

Cert 15, 124 mins

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O n January 30 2016, after a stunning 149 years in business, iconic Soho restaurant Kettners closes its doors for good. Sort of.

The restaurants building has been bought from its owners Gondola Holdings by the Soho House & Co group, which runs restaurants including Dean Street Townhouse and Pizza East along with a portfolio of private members' clubs.

Its not quite the end, though.

A restaurant  called Kettners Townhouse  will open on the site in 2018, and will look to pay homage to Kettners history and reinstate some of its former grandeur, according to Soho House.

History: Many famous figures have walked through Kettner's door / Kettner's

However, it has already been confirmed that the restaurants famous upstairs private rooms  among its best known and loved attributes  will be lost as part of the development. And the Standard also understands that none of the restaurants current staff, at any level, will remain involved in the new site. Many of them believe it will be Kettners in name only.

So, as an era draws to an end it feels fitting to mark the passing of a London legend.

Heres a look through the years at a restaurant that outlived four kings and a queen and survived the blitz  but seemingly cant withstand Sohos current property market.

Kettners - a timeline

1867 - Kettner's is opened by Auguste Kettner, chef to Napoleon III. It becomes one of the first French restaurants in London, serving food which  although commonplace nowadays  was the height of exoticism.

1860s - 1890s - King Edward VII courted his mistress, actress Lillie Langtry, at Kettners and even ordered that a secret tunnel be built between Kettners and the Palace Theatre where she performed. Its rumoured they would take the tunnel to meet at Kettners during intermissions.

Oscar Wilde was also a regular, and described Kettners as his venue of choice.

1900 - 1980 - Kettners remains open through both wars and survives The Blitz unscathed. Meanwhile, Agatha Christie and Bing Crosby are among the celebrities considered regulars and it continues to pull in a fashionable crowd. Somewhat more curiously it also enjoys a reputation as somewhere to go to have an affair  it can thank King Edward VII for that.

1980 - Peter Boizot, the founder of Pizza Express, buys Kettners. Pizza Express subsequently starts supplying the restaurant and it becomes an extension of the chain  it serves a similar but expanded menu, with larger more luxurious pizzas and slightly higher prices. It premiered dough balls before they were available at other Pizza Express branches.

2002 - Pizza Express buys Kettners from founder Peter Boizot for 1.95m, fully incorporating it into the chain  it continues to serve an expanded menu. It also launches a new first floor Champagne bar.

2008 - The restaurant is refurbished and once again turned into a French brasserie, which it has remained until the present day. It no longer has the status it once did, but remains popular nonetheless.

2016 - Kettners closes on January 30 after 149 years. The building will reopen in 2018, but in exactly what form remains to be seen.

Follow Ben Norum on Twitter @BenNorum

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T he London restaurant scene is full of hidden gems, charming spots in secret corners where you can escape from the rest of the world with a glass of wine. But the city also showcases the opposite: the glittering jewels that people all over the world have heard whispers of, where a good table is a badge of honour and a visit an undeniable treat.

In recent years many restaurants have presented themselves as such a destination. But when the dishes are cleared and the bill is paid, there can be no denying that they cant compete with The Ivy. A short walk from Cambridge Circus, in the beating heart of the West End and only metres away from several of its theatres, is a restaurant so famous that it has attained almost mythical status. The food is delicious  the shepherds pie is the obvious choice for good reason  the service always excellent and the atmosphere unparalleled. But there is also the presence of something else: stardust in the air.

Those who have popped in for dinner after a night at the theatre in the past 12 months may have sat one table over from Benedict Cumberbatch and his wife, director Sophie Hunter. Damian Lewis took his bows onstage in American Buffalo and headed straight to West Street with American co-star John Goodman to show him what hed been missing across the pond. Dame Maggie Smith supped with Kathleen Turner, Glenn Close dropped in, and Bradley Cooper satisfied a post Elephant Man hunger pang with a visit.

Thats a mere drop in the luvvie ocean. Fans in the golden age of British glamour included Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Noel Coward and Harold Pinter, and the guests have kept on coming. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman used to love it (as did, a few years later, Cruise with Katie Holmes), while Madonna, David and Victoria Beckham, Angelina Jolie, Emma Thompson, Uma Thurman and Kate Hudson have all been on the reservation hotline. Geri Halliwell once checked her dog in to the cloakroom  what did I say about excellent service?  Princess Diana was permitted to flout the ban on bring-your-own-birthday-cake, and her former in-laws have dined there. Privately, of course. It may sound a cliche but it would be easier to write a list of who hadnt sought sanctuary behind its distinctive stained glass.

The night I saw Tony Curtis walk in and throw his arms around Omar Sharif was cool

For Fernando Peire, the Ivys director who has been an on-off fixture for more than 25 years, no night is the same, and he has fond memories of his esteemed clientele. The night I saw Tony Curtis walk in and throw his arms around Omar Sharif was cool, he recalls. And once Jeremy Irons and Claus von Bulow [the socialite once accused of attempted murder who Jeremy played in Reversal of Fortune] came in on the same night completely accidentally. And I remember having one of those evenings where there were Hollywood stars on three tables around the restaurant. And then Whoopi Goldberg walked in with Frank Langella. I asked which one of the A-listers already inside she was meeting but she wasnt there for them: she had just come in to see if we could squeeze her and Frank in. Of course we did.

The Ivys handy location goes some way to explain its place in celebrity history. But there is also, Peire says, something innately and wonderfully theatrical about the dining experience that he oversees as the quintessential puppeteer of hospitality. Im sort of a mini Orson Welles! he laughs. If I hadnt been encouraged to study law I may have preferred to go into the theatre. There are incredible parallels between that world and mine. The smoke and mirrors, the behind-the-scenes, the cues. And in a restaurant, just like with a play, youre only as good as your last show.

Big draw: private members haunt The Club at The Ivy Paul Winch-Furness / Paul Winch-Furness

Indeed, the restaurants long-held link with the industry was cemented in 2010, when celebrated playwright Ronald Harwood penned Heavenly Ivy, a play directed by Sean Mathias and performed for one week only in the restaurant itself, with the actors soliloquising amid those lucky enough to bag a table. Derek Jacobi, Imelda Staunton and Samantha Bond have all donned the uniforms, raising money for The Combined Theatrical Charities by working shifts alongside the full-timers. And then in November last year, the golden connection was sustained at The Old Vic, as the most important names to grace the London stage  Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen and James McAvoy among them  feasted on Ivy fare at The Evening Standards glittering Theatre Awards.

But behind the stories and the hazy memories of nights fuelled by champagne and bang bang chicken, there is a long history full of real-life characters as fascinating as those in any stage play. The restaurant was founded in 1917 as a small Italian cafe, and even its name has theatrical links: there is a long-held legend that French musical theatre actress Alice Delysia, a regular in the early days, told founder Abel Gandellini that they would cling together like the ivy. After that, it changed hands repeatedly until 1990, when restaurant power duo Chris Corbin and Jeremy King refurbished, renovated and reopened. The Ivy was, once again, the only place to be seen, and under the tenure of Richard Caring, who bought it in 2005, the plans have become only more ambitious and exciting.

I was one of the cynics, Peire admits as he recalls the decision to open The Club at The Ivy, the private members bar upstairs. But he was soon converted to Carings vision, and London has seen a city-wide roll-out of the brand to Chelseas Kings Road, Marylebone, Covent Garden Market and, most recently, Kensington High Street.

The original site, meanwhile, received a modern-yet-classic makeover that has seen a Sothebys auction of the old fixtures and fittings, and the installation of a new central bar. Soon well see the ongoing production of a documentary film about the restaurants history, and inevitably huge celebrations for next years centenary. Its obvious that, for The Ivy, a facelift can work wonders. You have to reinvent yourself, Peire says. Otherwise you end up running a restaurant museum. Look at The National Theatre or Soho House: all companies have to evolve.

This period of change is clearly exciting for Peire and the many diners who have walked through the hallowed doors. But those pulling its strings know that its best not to mess with a classic. Over the years The Ivys menu has been tweaked but its fan favourites remain. Its decor has altered but its sense of style has never faded. And its clientele, whether coming over from the stage or the stalls, are set to offer their applause for years to come. Surely thats cause for a standing ovation?

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C onsumers: greedy credit-card junkies or saviours of the economy? There is an odd duality to our view of consumption, from tutting over Black Friday bargain hunters (Tesco 2014: fights, arrests, one woman suffers minor injuries from falling TV) to joy at the seemingly unstoppable engine of retail sales growth. But as Frank Trentmann makes clear, this ambivalence is long-standing.

Critics  from the medieval church to modern environmentalists  have often seen consumption as wasteful, essentially sinful, feeding a cycle of artificial wants. Meanwhile, consumptions apologists, especially classical liberals, tend to see it as embodying the free choice that underpins democracy and prosperity. Yet neither view is limited to Left or Right. Thus the focus of this huge and ambitious book is far wider than merely shopping: it aims to follow the life cycle of consumption as fully as possible from demand and acquisition through to use, collection and, ultimately, disposal.

To do so, Trentmanns timeframe is much longer than the post-Second World War era focused on by many critics, and wider than the US, that periods archetypal consumer society. Thus he opens in early 19th-century Yangzhou, a prosperous Chinese city, with a contemporary observer marvelling at the range of fashions on sale.

The first half of the study traces the growth of consumption with a broadly thematic focus. Trentmann points out that trade was thriving long before European empires, a key driver for later mass consumption. Thus Indian-made cottons were so popular in 1719 that rioting silk weavers in Spitalfields tore calico dresses off women in protest at foreign competition.

Cities were a major boost to consumption before empire too, giving businesses early opportunities for product specialisation  and consumers new opportunities to identify themselves via their tastes.

But it was the integration of global trade from the 1870s, aided by new technologies, which drove the explosion of consumption, epitomised by the great department stores. Some Londoners may worry about food miles today but even in the late 19th century, their wheat, butter and cheese travelled thousands of miles.

By the early 20th century, industrial capitalism was flooding consumers homes with previously undreamt-off goods in the form of new home furnishings, gramophones and radios, the escalator of consumption. Even totalitarian regimes could not dare risk denying their citizens some consumer goodies.

More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics  the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review

In the second part, Trentmann turns to contemporary debates, examined through their historical background. He considers the effect of expanded credit; the acceleration of time; the Fair Trade movement; and the throwaway society. He also tackles non-market consumption: the state, for example, has become a major consumer in its own right, and we are consumers of its services.

Its a little exhausting at times, and despite  or perhaps because of  the weight of detail, Trentmann never quite nails some fundamental questions about causality. Where does the wealth that drives consumption originate? Nineteenth-century Britain enjoyed higher real wages  and had a bigger middle class  than most of the rest of Europe.

Yet he appears to side more with WS Jevons, the late 19th-century economist who theorised that consumption itself created value. How does that work in relation to the mildly terrifying statistic he quotes that in 1966, just five per cent of German men changed their underwear daily, rising to 45 per cent by 1986? Its hard to say.

Trentmann starts by eschewing moral judgments on consumerism  yet ends with a powerful environmental critique of over-consumption. In terms of waste alone, the impact of even a high-tech, services-based economy is shocking: even if production of many things we consume is outsourced around the world, we still consume those resources and produce CO2 as a result. Its difficult not to conclude, as he does, that we need a deeper and longer-lasting connection to fewer things.
A brave and experienced diver can look like a daredevil to us land people. Diver Michael Dornellas, 32, just put his hands into the mouth of a hypnotized shark to remove a fishing hook in Jupiter, Florida, U.S.

Michael used a hypnosis technique called tonic immobility, which allowed the shark to enter a natural state of paralysis for the small surgery.

Describing his experience with sharks, Dornellas said: It is never 100% safe, nothing guarantees your safety when youre swimming with predators."

In Florida, it is common to find sharks with hooks, since people would fish them for sport and release them with the hook still intact. As many of the hooks are stainless steel, it can take years for them to rust and usually requires human intervention to remove them.
A t the age of 36, a Stanford neurosurgeon called Paul Kalanithi discovered he had inoperable cancer. I flipped through the CT scan images, the diagnosis: the lungs were matted with innumerable tumours, the spine deformed, a full lobe of the liver obliterated. In March 2015, less than two years later, he died, leaving his fellow-doctor wife and eight-month-old daughter.

This account of his life  and dying  has already had rave reviews in the US and deserves the same here. Cancer memoirs  John Diamonds, Ruth Picardies, Tom Lubbocks and Oliver Sackss being among the better ones  may be a dime a dozen but theyre only as good as their authors, and Kalanithi proves to be exceptional.

The son of immigrant Indians, he grew up in Arizona, studied English literature and human biology at Stanford, philosophy at Cambridge and went to medical school at Yale. In spite of winning prizes he claims he was less driven by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful?

I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain.

For all his admiration of literature  the title of the book is paraphrased from a sonnet by Jacobean poet Baron Fulke Greville Kalanithi chose neurosurgery for its insights into how biology, literature and philosophy intersect. Working as a resident surgeon, he witnessed countless injuries and describes performing many operations, the mistakes and failures, as well as the successes, with death never far away. I had started in this career, in part to pursue death: to grasp it, uncloak it, and see it eye to eye, unblinking. He worried about his failure to empathise with his patients and their families. What he told them, and how he said it, mattered enormously. Yet he also thrilled at his superlative technical abilities. When he cut the dark gray rotting tumour cleanly out of the fleshy peach convolutions of the brain hed mutter Got you, you fucker.

But technical excellence was also a moral requirement. He was devastated when he learned that having damaging the hypothalamus of a child by a millimetre while removing a brain tumour, the boy had had to be institutionalised a few years later, or that locked-in syndrome would have been the result of cutting just two millimetres further into a mans damaged brain stem. As surgeons, we had assumed an onerous yoke, that of mortal responsibility.

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He brought this clear thinking and intellectual curiosity to his own terminal diagnosis, which had changed both nothing and everything. His carefully planned and hard-won future no longer existed, so the question was, what would replace it, since there was no knowing how long he would live. But facing mortality meant trying to understand what had made his life worth living. He and his wife went ahead with having a baby, who was conceived through intrauterine insemination.

As he neared the end, typing in seamless, silver-lined gloves to protect his fingertips from fissures caused by chemotherapy, he perceived that time had slowed down and lost its meaning, while the future had flattened into a perpetual present. The exception to all this was his daughter, a burbling baby who filled his days with a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In her existence he truly found the meaning of his life.
A teenager needed 12 stiches after being brutally attacked on a bus by a drug dealer for refusing to buy cocaine.

The victim, 18, was talking about Coca-Cola with friends when the dealer misunderstood and tried to sell them the Class A drug, police said.

Crack and heroin dealer Shahadat Hussain, 21, was told to go away but responded by grabbing one of the victims friends by the neck.

When the victim stepped in to help his friend, Hussain launched a savage attack, punching him repeatedly before slashing him in the face.

Jailed: Shahadat Hussain was sentenced to 17 years in prison / Metropolitan Police

The victim was taken to Whipps Cross hospital where he received 12 stitches to the "nasty" gash on his nose.

Hussain, of Malmesbury Terrace, Canning Town, was today jailed for 17 years over the assault in Romford Road, east London, on March 9 last year.

He was sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court after being found guilty of grievous bodily harm with intent.

Hussain previously admitted possession with intent to supply crack, heroin and cannabis, after being found with a large amount of the drugs.

Detective Chief Inspector Dave Hindmarsh, of the Mets Roads and Transport Policing Command, said: "This was a vicious, unprovoked attack on a man who refused to buy drugs from Hussain, leaving the victim with nasty injuries as a result.

"This sentence sends a strong message that crime on London's transport network will not be tolerated."
F ormer Dragons' Den star Doug Richard walked free from the Old Bailey today after being cleared of paying a 13-year-old girl for sex.

Father-of three Richard, 57, has said that since his arrest his School for StartUps business is near bankruptcy and he has undergone therapy for his sex addiction.

But he insisted he had no idea the schoolgirl he had met on a sugar daddy website was so young as she had told him she was 17.

He admitted having sex with the 13-year-old but said it had been consensual and he believed she was 16 or older.

The jury found him not guilty of three charges of sexual activity with a child without reasonable belief that she was over 16, one of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and a charge of paying for sexual services.

He wiped away tears as he was discharged from the dock by the Common Serjeant of London Richard Marks QC.

Richard, of Islington, said he had met around 100 young women for Fifty Shades of Grey experiences and dominance and submission role play.

The former business adviser to David Cameron told the court he chatted to hundreds of young women almost every day for more than four years about his sexual fantasies on a website called Seeking Arrangements.

He would meet about two women, known as sugar babies, every month to see if they wanted to take it further.

One of those he met was the 13-year-old, who the businessman spanked and had sex with as her 15-year-old friend waited in the next room of a Bishopsgate apartment he had rented for 145.

He described the relationship with the young teenager as lots of sexy texting and me being dominant and a Christian Grey figure and her being submissive.

Christian Grey is the fictional wealthy entrepreneur from the Fifty Shades of Grey books.

As mortifying as it is to say, I was looking for role play and fantasy relationships involving dominance and submission, he said. It was a Fifty Shades of Grey type of stuff.

It was secret, it was infidelity. I was cheating on my wife. It bothered me but I was also quite addicted to this.

Richard, who has two daughters and a son, had sex with the 13-year-old girl last year after exchanging a string of sexually graphic messages with her on the internet.

In one conversation, the technology entrepreneur asked her: Are you free to come to London after school?

Richard claims he thought the girl, who is barely 5ft tall and weighs less than six stone, was 17  despite her sending a naked picture  and says he was mortified to learn that she was 13.

He paid the two girls 360 but denied the money was for sex, adding: I was trying to be a sugar daddy type of guy. I was trying to be nice so gave her money to go shopping.

The entrepreneur, who received an award from the Queen for services to enterprise in 2006 and appeared in the first two series of the BBC's Dragons' Den, said his reputation had been shattered.
A Muslim convert has been jailed for trying to drum up support for Islamic State outside Topshop in Londons Oxford Street.

Ginger-bearded Ibrahim Anderson, 38, along with Shah Jahan Khan, 63, were among a group which set up a stall near the flagship fashion store on the afternoon of August 9 2014.

The pair, from Luton, Bedfordshire, denied inviting support for a proscribed organisation and Anderson also denied possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist on December 16 2014.

A jury deliberated for eight hours before finding them guilty at the Old Bailey last week.

Sentencing today, Judge Stephen Kramer QC jailed Anderson for three years and Khan for two years.

Convicted: Muslim convert Ibrahim Anderson, 38 (left) and Shah Jahah Khan, 62, / Metropolitan Police

The judge said their activities carried danger that young people may be lured to their deaths in Iraq and Syria.

The court heard that motor mechanic and father of five Anderson has previous convictions for assault and possessing an imitation firearm while Khan, a driving instructor, was previously of good character.

Muslim convert: Ibrahim Anderson / Yui Mok/PA

Prosecutor Mark Seymour had told jurors the defendants spent two-and-a-half hours speaking to passers-by and distributing a leaflet on the "so-called Caliphate" which had been re-established earlier that summer.

He said: "These defendants, who both played their part as members of the group which invited support for IS in Oxford Street on August 9 2014, would have been well aware that this is what they were doing."

When the witnesses challenged their point of view, they were told to "go and die", the court heard.

The defendants were arrested after two members of the public took photographs of them and reported their behaviour to police.

Anderson's home was later searched and a mini notebook computer was seized which contained three images that "formed part of a set of instructions for travel to Syria to support jihad", the prosecutor said.

The motor mechanic, who represented himself in court, appealed to jurors to see past the news and "see who I really am - a devoted father to my family".

He said he only wanted to practise his religion and exercise his freedom of speech, adding: "I have been brave enough to come and fight my corner because I know I am innocent and have done nothing wrong."

Neither defendants reacted as they were sent down to begin their sentences.
A man has been charged after two 12-year-old girls were attacked in the space of an hour, with one sexually assaulted at knifepoint, by a man claiming to be a police officer.

Apedelrazak Badram, 32, has been charged with three sex offences after the attacks on Wednesday in north London.

One of the girls was allegedly sexually assaulted in Sandhurst Road, Edmonton, at about 5.30pm by a man pretending to be an officer.

The other girl was attacked a few hundred yards away in Shirley Grove, about an hour earlier.

Badram, from Enfield, was also charged with two counts of impersonation of a police officer, two counts of breaching a sex offences prevention order and one count each of false imprisonment, theft and possession of a class B drug.

He will appear at Highbury Corner magistrates court on Saturday.
T he family of a financier whose murder has been linked to serial killer Levi Bellfield today welcomed any fresh inquiry into her death amid fears he may be responsible for up to 25 other unsolved crimes.

Judith Silver, 51, was found battered to death in a mews just 150 yards from her home in Hampstead High Street in October 1990 and despite a major police inquiry no-one was charged with the killing.

Now nine police forces across the UK are investigating a string of jail cell admissions by Bellfield, 47, who is serving whole-life terms for the murders of schoolgirl Milly Dowler, Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange.

Mrs Silvers brother Stan Kaye, 71, told the Standard of his shock at the news his sister may be among Bellfields victims as he welcomed the possibility of a fresh probe into her death.

He said : This is totally out of the blue. Its something we have always wanted  to find out what happened and bring us closure.

We get updates on the case occasionally because it has been reopened a couple of times but I cant remember the last time we heard from them.

New links: serial killer Levi Bellfield

Obviously there is a long way to go but if its true, this would finalise everything.

Mr Kaye, who lives in Cheshire, spoke as Bellfields half-sister said she feared the killer may have murdered at least two more women.

Anne-Marie Bellfield, 67, claimed Bellfield could have abducted two women in west London while working as a car clamper.

In April 1999 student Elizabeth Chau, 19, disappeared as she walked home near Ealing police station then in January 2000, US-born computer graduate Lola Shenkoya, 27, also disappeared near-by after getting off a bus. Both women vanished without trace.

Miss Bellfield said : At the time Levi had a clamping business in West Ealing and I do believe he is somehow linked to these cases.

She said Bellfield had rung her from jail later denying he was involved with their disappearance.

She told the Daily Mirror: Levi is manipulative, psychotic, cruel and unfeeling.

Bellfield is currently serving life for the murder of 13-year-old Milly Dowler

I am certain he is behind more horrific crimes. He is a monster.

Scotland Yard is co-ordinating a review of the confessions but has refused to commnent on which cases are being studied.

Senior detectives have warned that Bellfield is a pathological liar and may be trying to win prison privileges by attempting to co-operate.

Bellfield was convicted of killing Milly in Walton-on-Thames in 2011 nine years after her body was found.

He confessed to her killing for the first time this week ina jail cell admission to police officers investigating whether he had an accomplice.

Mrs Silver, a mother-of-three, was beaten to death a short distance from her home in the early hours on October 20, 1990. Her body, clothed in a business suit, was found by a paperboy.

There were no signs of sexual assault and her belongings, including a bag containing money, were untouched but a neck chain was stolen.
M inisters were today accused of risking the lives of young Londoners by scrapping a very important scheme set up to stop teenagers from being lured into gangs as a Labour MP called for a new drive to combat youth violence in the capital.

Chuka Umunna said he wanted to see more work in schools to counter the glamourised portrayal of gangs in some popular culture and greater efforts to protect girls from exploitation as he opened a parliamentary debate on the problem.

But as he also spoke of his personal experience in meeting gang victims bereaved families he singled out as a particular problem a Home Office decision to end funding for a Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation Peer Review Network created in the wake of the London riots.

Mr Umunna said the network, whose members include police, academics, ex-gang members and other experts, had played a valuable role in developing strategies for tackling gang culture and connected drug crime and denounced the decision to end it.

This is a retrograde step which will seriously compromise efforts to reduce gang and serious youth violence. If it is being done to cost cut, I say you cannot put a price on the lives of our young people, he said.

The MP said that the network would instead be replaced by a couple of a civil servants with no expert knowledge about gangs and a man with an email box and cited a Home Office email leaked to him confirming its closure.

The email, sent to local authority staff involved in anti-gang work, states that frontline team support and associated funding will be ending at the end of March and we [the Home Office] will not be offering any further centrally funded peer reviews or local assessment processes in the next financial year.

It goes on to claim that great progress has been made over the past four years in tackling gang and youth violence issu and adds that the Home Office will be setting up a new forum to harness the expertise of as many of you as possible as part of a changed emphasis focusing on exploitation and vulnerability.

In addition to his criticism of the decision to end funding for the anti-gang network, Mr Umunna said that an increased focus on the very hard to reach youngsters who are out of work was needed to reduce the likelihood of them being attracted by gangs.

He added that further intensive work was required in schools to counter the way in which a gang lifestyle was promoted and glamourised in popular culture and that more money should be given to local authorities to help grassroots efforts against gangs.

He said that his reason for staging todays Commons debate on gangs and serious youth violence in London was the continuing toll caused by gang violence in his Streatham constituency and elsewhere.

The victims whose families he had met included 15-year-old Zac Olumegbon, murdered in a planned attack close to his school in West Norwood in 2010, and Nana Darko-Frempong, 18, who was shot dead in Tulse Hill a year later.
T wo teenage boys were arrested after allegedly being found with an 18-inch sword in Hackney.

Police said the pair, aged 14 and 15, were held after being stopped in Wetherell Road near Victoria Park in the early hours of this morning.

After inspecting the surrounding area, officers found the terrifying weapon in nearby Lauriston Road.

The teenagers were arrested under the suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and taken to a police station in East London.

Look what #taskforceTSG #U234 found a chap carrying in @MPSHackney Thankfully they quickly detained & arrested him. pic.twitter.com/ft87uNguCk  Hackney MPS (@MPSHackney) January 29, 2016

Police posted a picture of the sword to Twitter this morning alongside the caption: "Look what #taskforceTSG #U234 found a chap carrying in @MPSHackney Thankfully they quickly detained & arrested him."

The 15-year-old was also alleged to be in possession of class B drugs.

The pair remained in custody today.
A man who sustained life-threatening injuries when he was beaten with a toaster has spoken for the first time about his terrifying ordeal.

Odacilio Moran was attacked by two men following a night out, weeks after he moved to London from Miami. He was found at his flat in Barnes with a brain bleed, fractured facial bones and damage to his throat, and was put in a medically-induced coma for 10 days.

Labourer Kamil Radkiewicz, 28, of Morden, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced on November 26 to more than 16 years.

Mr Moran, 45, who was also stabbed in the buttocks, was unconscious for 36 hours after the attack on Saturday, November 29, 2014 and was found on the Monday.

He has decided to speak out to renew appeals to trace the second evil attacker, who police fear could have fled the UK.

Kamil Radkiewicz (left) was jailed. Norbert Krzysztof Borysiewicz (right) is sought by police. / Metropolitan Police

He said: Ive always known in the back of my mind that homophobia was the main motivation. Because they somehow found out I was gay.

Although his memory of the night is hazy, he said he got talking to two men outside Charing Cross station on his way home and they invited him for a drink.

So were having a beer and then they say, lets go somewhere else, he said.

We ended up taking the train to East Ham, where we visited a park and they gave me more beer. After that I pretty much dont remember anything.

His partner Tim Sheppard, 42, was unable to get hold of him and contacted the Mayfair shop where he works, which sent a colleague to his home.

The colleague smelled smoke and banged on a window after spotting Mr Moran on the bed. Mr Moran managed to let him in and the colleague dialled 999.

Kamil Radkiewicz, 28, admitted attempted murder / Metropolitan Police

Radkiewicz was also charged with arson for a fire in the hallway of the flat but that charge was left to lie on file.

Mr Moran, who was born in Venezuela, collapsed on a Tube platform two weeks ago and doctors fear he may have epilepsy brought on by his brain injuries.

He said: I would tell anyone who knows something that speaking to the police would be a great favour for humanity. What they did to me theyll do it again. Theyre troubled, evil people.

At the time of sentencing, Detective Constable Paul Wright, of Richmond upon Thames CID, praised Mr Moran for his bravery, adding: The paramedic at the scene thought that the victim would be dead within the hour.

Police have appealed for information regarding the whereabouts of 26-year-old Norbert Krzysztof Borysiewicz.

Contact DC Paul Wright, at Richmond-upon-Thames CID on 020 8721 5840, or police on 101. Alternatively call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or at crimestoppers-uk.org.
J eremy Hunt today admitted that the NHS 111 non-emergency helpline may need more doctors and nurses after it was held partly responsible for the death of one-year-old William Mead.

The Health Secretary said he wanted airline levels of safety in the NHS plus a reduction in around 200 avoidable deaths every week  and said this could be partly achieved by changing junior doctors contracts.

Such a move is likely to inflame doctors as studies have failed to establish a link between staffing levels and the higher mortality rate at weekends.

Mr Hunt, in an interview with Anne McElvoy for Economist Radio, said Williams death in 2014 was a result of failings by GPs  one of whom saw the child six times in the two months before he died  and NHS 111 call handlers, most of whom are medically untrained.

He admitted NHS systems for helping patients in urgent need were very confusing but insisted he wanted to retain the 111 service. I think one lesson from the tragedy of what happened to William Mead is that the people handling calls need to be better trained to hand cases over to clinicians more quickly, he said.

Grief: Williams mother Melissa with his toy bear / PA

Mr Hunt said he wants greater awareness among NHS staff of how to spot sepsis, the infection that killed William, adding: We may need more doctors and nurses available on the 111 service.

A report by NHS England on the 111 helpline found that 16 mistakes contributed to the childs death. Williams parents Paul and Melissa called the report soul-destroying.

Mr Hunt also stressed the need to act on medics contracts as talks resumed today at Acas between the Government and the British Medical Association in a bid to avert a February 10 walk-out by junior doctors, including those giving emergency care.

We have around 200 avoid- able deaths every week in the NHS, he said. Its not something where we are particularly different to other healthcare systems.

But I am determined we blaze a trail across the world in developing a truly safe healthcare system with airline levels of safety. Part of that needs to be reflected in doctors contracts.
Malaysia is to grant a 15-day visa exemption to Chinese tourists from March 1 to December 31, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on Thursday.

The visa exemption is effective for Chinese tourists under certain condition, said the Prime Minister. The conditions have not been specified for the time being.

The measure is taken to boost the countrys tourism. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahamd Zahid Hamidi said that Malaysia aims to lure 8 million Chinese tourists each year in the next five years, and that these tourists will come with a spending power of about 5.3 billion USD.

Currently, Malaysia sees 1.3 million Chinese tourists each year, whose average spending on food, lodging, and shopping reaches 795 USD, said Zahid. With proper plan and effective promotion, the aim could be achieved, he added.
A black cab driver picked up a cyclist while he was mounted on his bike before hurling him to the ground during a rush hour road rage row, it was claimed today.

Witnesses said the taxi driver launched the shocking attack despite a crowd of bystanders urging him to calm down during the rush hour incident in Oxford Street this morning.

Personal assistant Lu Simons, 54, said she was exiting Oxford Circus Tube station at about 8.15am when she heard a commotion nearby.

"There was a group of five or six people trying to get the taxi driver to calm down," she told the Standard.

"The next thing I know the man picked up the cyclist and the bike and chucked him on the ground.

He wasnt bleeding and he managed to get up immediately but obviously he was very shaken. He said his shoulder hurt as well.

I rushed over to the cyclist and said Id be a witness if he wanted to call the police but he said there was no point.

Then the driver got back in his taxi and drove around the cyclist. I thought he shouldnt get away with it so I took some pictures."

She added: "It all happened so quickly. It was very unpleasant and unnerving to see it happen on the streets of London.

Witnesses said the cyclist was in his early 20s while the driver was in his 50s.

Mrs Simons said she planned to make a complaint to the Licensed Taxi Driver Association after the alleged incident.

The LTDA said the driver involved was not one of its members.

A police spokesman said the incident had not been reported but urged any witnesses to contact them on 101.
O ur campaign to raise money to help Great Ormond Street Hospital treat sick children and support their parents has raised more than 3 million, smashing all records for our seasonal appeal.

The milestone comes as the campaign enters its final two weeks, ending on GOSHs 164th birthday on February 14. A party will be held that week for the patients and staff who care for them.

Reaching 3 million means that all the 1.5 million in matchfunding provided from bank fines by the Chancellor, George Osborne, has been used.

A new backer, the Hunter Foundation, has now provided a further 100,000 in matchfunding to help boost donations in the appeals final stretch.

Thank you: Two-year-old patient Elliott Livingstone, who is being treated at GOSH while he waits for a heart transplant, with his parents Adrian (left) and Candace as well as Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev / Johnnie Shand-Kydd

Dr Peter Steer, the chief executive of GOSH, said everyone involved in the hospital had been touched by the publics generosity.

It has been a fantastic response, he said. The money is invaluable. It is also hard to overstate what it has meant to the staff. Thank you.

Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Evening Standard, said he wished to thank everyone who had backed the appeal. I have seen for myself the incredible work being done by the tireless and inspirational doctors and nurses at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and talked with parents who are going through an almost unimaginably difficult and emotional time, he said.

Every penny will go on essential projects to help them, and thats why the amount raised so far is such a fantastic achievement. More children will now be treated and their time in the hospital made much more comfortable. That is something we can all be proud of.

Mr Lebedev celebrated the milestone with GOSH patient Elliot Livingstone and the two-year-olds parents, Adrian and Candace. Elliot, who is on a Berlin Heart while he awaits a transplant, launched our appeal in November.

Mr Livingstone said: We are delighted how well the campaign has gone and really pleased to be part of it. We have had such support from all the staff at the hospital and it is a pleasure to be able to help GOSH. It is amazing to see how people have responded.

The money raised includes not only donations sent by post or made via our website but also from the hundreds of people who joined Give It Up For GOSH, which ends on Sunday. The initiative saw them sponsored to give up a treat for January through our partner, the fundraising website JustGiving.

Give it up for GOSH explainer

Corporate backing came from organisations including Morgan Stanley and Trailfinders, while Tescos ran a four-day fund-raising drive at all 500 of its London stores last week. Although the supermarket is finalising the amount raised, its initial estimate is that Londoners gave more than 100,000.

Rattling buckets: GOSH volunteers and staff including ex-patient Faiza Yasin, second from right, whose progress the Evening Standard followed as part of our Give to GOSH appeal / Great Ormond Street Hospital

Professor Martin Elliott, cardiothoracic surgeon at GOSH, said it was gobsmacking such a sum had been raised by the appeal, which is being run by the Standard with sister papers The Independent, i and Independent on Sunday.

I am astounded, he said. The response has been humbling. I travel on the Tube every day and see people reading the reports in the paper.

I cannot tell you what it means to me being able to witness how people want to be part of what we are trying to do for the children here at the hospital.

The Hunter Foundation, established by self-made billionaire, Sir Tom Hunter, will match every pound donated up to a combined total of 100,000. Sir Tom said: Great Ormond Street Hospital is an outstanding facility offering hope and help to thousands of young people and their families and thats why we are delighted to offer these new funds in a new match for GOSH. Lets hope everyone digs deep and doubles our support to help a tremendous cause.

The appeal is helping fund research programmes and the creation of a specialist unit for children waiting for a heart transplant. It will also support care programmes for patients and their families and will aid the hospitals Louis Dundas Centre for Childrens Palliative Care.
L ondon's desperate housing shortage sent property prices surging to an all-time high last month, with the biggest increases in the suburbs.

The average homes value shot up by 10,683 between November and December  one of the biggest monthly jumps on record  to a fresh peak of 514,097, according to the latest Land Registry data.

The dramatic acceleration after a relatively quiet year for the property market will intensify pressure on the next Mayor to get a grip on the citys deepening housing crisis.

It comes as a leading Conservative local government grandee said Londons population could explode by a further four million to 13 million by 2050. A separate report from the London Assembly today says the problem is so acute that the new Mayor will have to ask councils in the Home Counties to house the spillover from the capitals rapid population growth.

The 2.1 per cent monthly leap in values was the biggest rise seen since August 2014, while the 12.4 per cent annual rate is the fastest since last February. The hottest markets are all on the outer fringes of London, where price rises were more modest during the boom years.

The biggest year-on-year increase was in Barking and Dagenham, where the average home rose 15.3 per cent in a year to 309,760  leaving London without a single borough where house prices are below the 300,000 mark.

Other big annual rises were recorded in outer London boroughs such as Hillingdon (15.2 per cent), Havering (12.4 per cent), Bexley (12.3 per cent) and Croydon (12.2 per cent).

By contrast, increases in expensive central areas such as Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster or Hammersmith and Fulham have only risen modestly. Rob Weaver, director of investments at homes crowdfunding firm Property Partner, said: Buyers have been search- ing outside prime central London for more affordable housing, attracted also by regeneration in places like Woolwich and of course by Crossrail.

There are concerns the market will get another turbo-charge after Monday when George Osbornes Help to Buy London scheme is launched.

Stephen Smith, director of Legal & Generals mortgage arm Housing Partnerships, said: The gulf between supply and demand is continuing to drive up competition, pushing up prices.

Many first-time-buyers are being pushed out of the market. This lack of housing supply must be addressed before things deteriorate further.

Other new London records showed by the Land Registry figures include the average cost of a detached house topping 900,000 for the first time.

Separate Property Partner research found that the number of homes being built across London is falling short of demand in 27 out of the 32 boroughs.

If building continues at the current rate, London will be 350,000 homes short of its needs in 10 years time and almost 587,000 short by 2036.

There is little respite for renters either as new government figures today showed rents rising faster than anywhere in the country, at 3.9 per cent.
L ondon's population could soar by a further four million and irreversibly change the character of many parts of the city, one of the capitals most senior political leaders warned today.

Lord True, Conservative leader of Richmond council, called for a public debate on whether broad limits should be adopted for the capitals size. Do Londoners actually support a surge to an international megalopolis with building on demand? he asked.

He revealed that London town hall chiefs were recently briefed about population projections for the city and that upper-end yet feasible forecasts included 13 million by 2050.

This would be a rise of around 50 per cent on the current population of over 8.5 million. It could require 200,000 more homes in south-west London alone, Lord True added, or two boroughs the size of Sutton or Kingston.

Such population and housing growth would irreversibly change the character of many parts of London, he told Parliament. I do not mean in terms of people but in the quality and character of public services and the built environment.

"Where will we find the transport, health provision, schools and, indeed, the open spaces to support that growth?

The peer suggested it was high time that the consent of Londoners was sought over how big the city should become.

We need to know if the public wants to see broad limits on the growth of the population and the overall size of London, he also told the Standard.

His intervention sparked an immediate debate among mayoral candidates, City Hall and business chiefs.

Boris Johnson and Labours Sadiq Khan oppose limits on the capitals population.

The Mayor believes Londons incredible population boom is testament to the fact that it is one of the best cities in the world to live in, work and visit, with a thriving economy, a low crime rate and a roaring cultural scene.

A spokesman for him added: The Mayor is working tirelessly to deliver the infrastructure that the city will need in order to combine growth and prosperity with sustainability and a high quality of life.

Mr Khan said: The answer to our expanding population is not to discourage or stop people from working and pursuing their dreams here, but to ensure our housing and transport system is properly equipped for the next 50 years.

He warned, though, that if far more genuinely affordable homes were not built across the capital Londoners would be priced out of their own city.

Green Party candidate Sian Berry backed the capitals population growing to 10 million strong city, but added:Beyond that wed have to question whether further overheating London was the best thing for the city and for the UK.

She warned against moving towards extremes of high-rise living and said Germany has a much more evenly spread set of successful large cities.

Conservative Zac Goldsmith said: Lord True is absolutely correct that we must ensure new developments come alongside new provision of schools, hospitals and Tube links.

He pledged, if elected Mayor, that he would double the current rate of house-building to deliver desperately-needed homes.

Baroness Valentine, chief executive of business group London First, hailed London as the de facto capital of Europe and opposed artificial restraints which she argued would be in no-ones interest.

If we try to constrain the capital, we wont create some utopia but a low-energy economy that goes into decline, with jobs lost and living standards falling, she said.

Weve been there before in the post-war period.

Lord True is not suggesting a rigid cap but believes a public debate is needed on a sustainable London and whether a broad limit or target for the citys size is needed.

The Home Counties should also be consulted over London growth, he added, as the city may need to expand beyond the boundaries of Greater London and planning and fiscal measures would have to be considered.

Lib-Dem mayoral candidate Caroline Pidgeon said the City Hall election is the perfect place to have the debate Lord True wants.
T he prospect of Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe staying on as Metropolitan Police chief has received a mixed response from the main candidates in the race to be the next Mayor of London.

Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith said he was a big fan of the Scotland Yard Commissioner and that he had every confidence in his abilities, indicating he might keep him on.

His Labour rival Sadiq Khan, however, refused to offer his view on Britains top policeman while his future was still unclear, although he praised his campaign against police cuts.

It comes after Boris Johnson recommended that Sir Bernard should only be given a one-year extension to his contract, rather than the two or three it is believed the commissioner had hoped for - raising doubts about the future of Britain's top police officer.

The decision could be interpreted as a snub amid the controversy over his force's handling of historical sexual abuse allegations.

City Hall sources insist Mr Johnsons decision to opt for a one-year extension was motivated by courtesy towards the next mayor, rather than concern about the police chief's performance.

At the first mayoral hustings of the City Hall race last night, hosted by London Tomorrow and the London School of Economics, all the main candidates said Mr Johnson had done the "right thing" by asking for a year-long extension.

Mr Goldsmith told the audience: "I'm a big fan of Bernard Hogan Howe. I've worked quite closely with him He strikes me as someone who both commands the respect of politicians, who he is quite willing to duff up where he needs to, but also his own officers.

"He strikes a good balance. He puts London first and from a personal point of view I have every confidence in him."

Mr Khan added: "Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary could have very easily reappointed him for the four years without consulting any one of us. Boris deserves credit for only extending his contract by a year to give all of us a chance to see whether we would reappoint him."

The Labour MP said he would not talk publicly about Sir Bernard's merits, or otherwise, but that he "applauded" the police chief's campaign to protect the police budget from government spending cuts.

Labour sources said Mrs May should talk to Mr Khan and Mr Goldsmith, the frontrunners in the contest, before making a final decision.

Liberal Democrat candidate Caroline Pidgeon, an Assembly member for the last eight years, said she had "loads of confidence" in Sir Bernard and her only reservation was his decision to try to deploy water cannon.

"I personally very much support him I hope he continues to be the Commissioner," she added.

None of the panel at the London Chamber of Commerce-backed event - which also included Green Sian Berry and Ukip's Peter Whittle - said he should go.

The final decision will be taken by Home Secretary Theresa May who is required to take the mayors views into account.
S hop owners have condemned astronomical rent rises from a charity landlord that funds some of the capitals most exclusive private schools.

Traders in Herne Hill have complained that Dulwich Estate has pushed up rents by up to 70 per cent since they were set four to five years ago.

The charity, which receives more than 6 million of its 10 million income from its portfolio of local properties, counts Dulwich College, Alleyns and James Allens Girls among its beneficiaries. The schools were founded to educate deprived children but are now fee-paying.

A petition calling for it to charge reasonable rents has gained thousands of signatures, as well as backing from celebrities including Channel 4 newsreader Cathy Newman. She tweeted a picture of the Just Williams toy shop, which is closing after 10 years, saying: Much-loved local toy shop shut down after astronomical rent rises. Kids gutted. #greedylandlords.

Celebrity backer: Cathy Newman / Getty

Owner Vicky Brown said she is being forced out by a 70 per cent rent hike. At the Mimosa deli next door, where the rent is due to be renewed in 18 months, co-owner Ashley Davis said: Weve been in this area for 15 years and wed very much like to find a way to make it work, but it depends on what happens.

Children and parents will march in protest at 3.30pm tomorrow from Herne Hill station to the toy shop in Half Moon Lane. Giles Gibson, chairman of the Herne Hill Forum, which is organising the protest, said a 70 per cent hike will turn our community into another McHighSt.

Dulwich Estate was unavailable for comment.
H undreds of revellers were evacuated from a nightclub after a fire broke out in Soho in the early hours of this morning.

Eight engines and almost 60 firefighters were called to Panton Street after reports of a blaze at a restaurant just after 1am.

The London Fire Brigade said 12 people were cleared from adjoining properties and 274 from a nearby nightclub, after part of the restaurant's second and third floors and half of the roof caught fire.

The LFBs Rodney Vitalis, who was at the scene, said: The building was heavily smoke logged and initially it was difficult for crews to gain access and locate the fire. Firefighters worked hard to bring it under control.

The blaze was brought under control just after 4.30am by crews from Soho, Euston, Lambeth, Dowgate, Paddington and Shoreditch fire stations.

An investigation is now underway to establish the cause of the fire.
A rtist Ben Eine has criticised ridiculous people who steal street art works and sell them, because they are supposed to be enjoyed by everyone.

Eine, 46, a well-known London street artist, said keeping the pieces in situ was important because no one goes to art museums.

He spoke out days after thieves tried to prise the latest work by elusive artist Banksy from a shop wall opposite the French embassy in Knightsbridge.

The piece, which features the girl from the Les Miserables poster weeping in a cloud of gas, was created after French police used tear gas against residents of the Jungle refugee camp in Calais.

Banksy vox pops LL

The work has since been covered up by the owners of the shop.

Eine, who is known for his typographical work on many shop fronts in east London, said: I think it is ridiculous that street art is now being made a commodity and people are trying to take it down or cut it out of a wall and put it in museums or sell it.

People are putting Banksys work up at auction for millions. That is not what street art is supposed to be. Nobody goes to art museums. Street art is supposed to be on the street and seen and enjoyed by everyone. When I first started 10 years ago, work would go up and then be taken down. That was part of it. Now stuff that I made 10 years ago is being protected by councils  Thats a bit mad. But it shows how important street art is in London.

Eine also spoke about when David Cameron presented Barack Obama with his work Twenty First Century City at their first meeting in 2010. People were like, Overnight success and, Hes the next Banksy I have known him for years. But I had been working for years by then, he said.

Eine has collaborated with The Body Shop to repackage its hemp hand cream to feature the word CHANGE in his distinctive style. It will be launched on February 10, with 1.50 from each sale going to a charity nominated by the purchaser.
T housands of people are planning to take to the streets of east London to stage a protest in support of illegal raves.

Some 2,600 people have said they are going to the Freedom to Party event in Shoreditch on Saturday afternoon, which is being promoted on Facebook.

They say the aim is to fight for the right to hold free party warehouse raves across London.

The organisers say it will be a peaceful protest and will portray the complete definition of peace, love, unity and respect.

The Facebook invite says its time to take back our right in the underground scene Fight for what we believe in, let the Tory government understand our movement and culture and reasoning behind why we love the free party community.

Protesters are due to gather at Shoreditch Overground station at 2pm on Saturday.

The organisers also said they want a stop to the seizing [of equipment] and the shutdowns of their events by police.

Officers have often shut down unlicensed raves which are usually held in empty warehouses.

In November last year, police clashed with ravers as they tried to close the annual Scumoween rave, which was held without a licence in Lambeth.

More than a dozen police officers were injured and 28 people were arrested.

The invite to tomorrows event recalls a protest in Trafalgar Square on January 27, 1990, in which 10,000 ravers danced in a peaceful protest against the anti-party laws being introduced.

Its now out time as the new generation to take back our right in the underground scene, it says.

Scotland Yard said it was aware of the event but that attempts to speak to the organisers had so far been unsuccessful.

A spokesman said: Police are aware of a pre-planned protest due to commence at 2pm on Saturday outside Shoreditch Overground station.

Attempts by the Met's police liaison team to engage with the organisers have so far been unsuccessful.

An appropriate policing plan will be in place.
A mother from Birmingham has been found guilty of taking her toddler son to Syria to join Islamic State.

Tareena Shakil, 26, was also convicted of encouraging acts of terror in Twitter posts made before leaving the UK.

Shakil had denied the charges, claiming she only travelled to Syria because of a wish to live under the rule of sharia law.

However, the jury at Birmingham Crown Court did not believe her account after seeing tweets, messages and photographs, including images of the black flag of IS and passages calling on people to "take up arms", and stating her wish to become a "martyr".

During the trial the jury also heard that about 60 British females were thought to have gone to Syria.

Shakil caught a flight to Turkey on October 20 2014, and then crossed the border in to Syria before making her way to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the terror network.

She returned to the UK in February 2015, where she was immediately arrested.
LONDON Jan.28  According to the latest figures from VisitBritain, visits from China to UK were up 37% in the first nine months of 2015, smashing previous records. Chinese visitors are already some of the UKs highest spenders, spending on average 2,688 a head.

There were 214,000 visits from China from January to September, beating the number of visits for all of 2014, with figures for the last quarter of 2015 still to come. Spend was up 4% over the same period, to 435 million.

As Chinese New Year approaches on 8 February, Britain could expect another boost from China. Britain is gearing up to host some of the largest celebrations outside Asia from lantern parades in Manchester and Londons Chinatown to festivals and events in Glasgow, Birmingham, Newcastle and Bristol, among others.

The new visitor visa pilot scheme for Chinese nationals introduced earlier this month by the UK Government looks set to further position Britain as the destination of choice for this rapidly-growing market.

VisitBritain Director Patricia Yates said: China is the worlds largest outbound market and a huge tourism opportunity for Britain. Chinese New Year is traditionally one of the busiest travel times for Chinese travellers and we want Britain to be at the top of their list as a must-go now destination.

Latest figures also show that last summer set a record for the number of nights that visitors spent in the UK with 97m nights, up 6% on July to September 2014 and the highest since 2006 for any quarter three. This equates to an average length of stay per visitor of 9.2 nights in the UK, compared to 9.1 in 2014.
O ne of the last surviving members of the Great Train Robbery gang has died more than 50 years on from the famous heist.

Gordon Goody, 86, died in the south of Spain where he ran a bar in the town of Mojacar.

The town hall released a statement saying he died on Friday morning surrounded by friends. It did not reveal the cause of death.

Goody was jailed for 30 years for his part in the robbery, one of the most famous in British criminal history, which was dubbed the "crime of the century".

On August 8 1963 a gang masterminded by Bruce Reynolds stopped the Glasgow-Euston overnight mail train as it passed through the Buckinghamshire countryside close to Cheddington.

The train was driven a mile and a half to Bridego Bridge, where the gang unloaded 2,631,684 in used notes - worth around 46 million today.

But they were later captured and 12 were jailed for a total of more than 300 years.

More than one broke out of prison, including Ronnie Biggs, who spent over 30 years on the run before he finally returned to Britain in 2001 to face arrest.

Reynolds returned in 1968, five years after the crime, and was captured in Torquay and jailed for 25 years.

Goody, who had been a hairdresser before the robbery, was sentenced to 30 years but released in 1975, setting up his Spanish bar four years later.
D onald Trump was mocked by his Republican rivals on national TV after boycotting the partys last debate before the Iowa caucuses.

The candidates could not resist lampooning the billionaire as they took a rare chance to step out of the front-runners shadow four days before voting begins to choose the partys candidate to fight Novembers presidential election.

Texas senator Ted Cruz, locked in a tight contest with Mr Trump in Iowa, opened the Fox News debate with a sarcastic impression of the property moguls frequent insults of his opponents.

Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, Mr Cruz said. And Ben (Carson), youre a terrible surgeon. Then he thanked his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by turning up.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a frequent Trump target, said: I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me.

Trump skips debate

But, never one to go quietly, Mr Trump held a competing rally nearby at Drake University in Des Moines, an event his campaign said was raising money for military veterans.

When youre treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights, Mr Trump said, explaining he was skipping the debate because he felt Fox News had dealt with him unfairly.

Mr Trump has feuded with Fox News for months, particularly its anchor and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.

We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if were being mistreated, he told the rally.

Fox News Channel said that Mr Trump had demanded a $5million contribution to his charities in order to appear in the debate, which the network rejected.

With Mr Trump momentarily out of the picture, last nights debate was unusually heavy on policy.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio stood by a previous pledge to shut down mosques where radicalisation is taking place - and promised to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran on day one of being president. Meanwhile Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio argued over immigration, with the Florida senator accusing his rival of being willing to say or do anything to get votes.

Mr Cruz found himself booed by the audience when he accused the Fox presenters of encouraging his rivals to attack him.
T he presenting line-up for this years Academy Awards has been announced.

Amid the recent controversy over the lack of ethnic diversity among this years nominees, a host of A-list stars including Benicio Del Toro, Whoopi Goldberg and Ryan Gosling have been confirmed to take to the stage.

Announced via a telecast in Los Angeles on Thursday, the academy confirmed names such as Tina Fey, Charlize Theron and Kevin Hart.

Oscars producers David Hill and Reginald Hudlin said: Together they represent the many thrilling ways stories can be shared about the human experience, and we're honoured they will be part of the celebration.

The Oscars diversity problem explained

Hollywood has been split over this years diversity debate after it was revealed that all of this years 20 acting nominees are white for the second year running.

Many stars including Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee have decided to boycott the ceremony, which will be hosted by comedian Chris Rock.

Oscar nominations 2016 1 /13 Oscar nominations 2016 The Martian Matt Damon in The Martian. He plays a stranded botanist who must fend for himself on the Red Planet 20th Century Fox The Revenant Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass in The Revenant Carol Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in Carol Bridge of Spies Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies, the Spielberg film based on Charmans script Brooklyn Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen Steve Jobs Kate Winslett and Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs Joy Jennifer Lawrence as a mum on a manufacturing mission Room Ma (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old boy Jack Jacob (Tremblay) Mad Max: Fury Road Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron Warner Bros Spotlight This photo provided by Open Road Films shows, Michael Keaton, from left, as Walter "Robby" Robinson, Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron, Mark Ruffalo as Michael Rezendes, Rachel McAdams, as Sacha Pfeiffer, John Slattery as Ben Bradlee Jr., and Brian d'Arcy James as Matt Carroll, in a scene from the film, "Spotlight."

Goldberg, who has just been announced as a presenter, defended the Academy on The View earlier this week.

Insisting that the lack of black actors nominated for roles has more to do with the film industry in general, she said: I won once. So it cant be that racist.

Even if you fill the Academy with black and Latino and Asian members, if theres no one on the screen to vote for, youre not going to get the outcome that you want.


C raig David has admitted that his quest for self-validation through fast cars and living in America made him miserable.

Speaking about his return to the UK and comeback on the music scene, the 34-year-old told Jonathan Ross that he was happy to be home.

He told the chat show host: Sometimes it takes you to go all the way to Miami to realise that actually where you really want to be is back in the UK and to be home.

The thing is, you dont need a lamborghini, you dont need to move to Miami, you dont need the place.

I just realised that you dont need to go all the way to Miami, driving these cars and thinking youve got this lifestyle when actually all I really loved was being in the UK, making music and just having relationships with my friends and my family and enjoying being here.

David, who has just signed a record deal with Sony and is putting together his comeback album has also changed his perspective on body image, after spending years obsessively going to the gym.

When I look at that picture of me I look super gaunt, I look 40 years older, I look like ET in the basket on the way home with my finger up, he joked.

Also I wasnt socialising with my friends as well, that took over Just a lot of self realisation came with that, music, Miami, whats going on, just eat a meal bruv.

Jonathan Ross is also joined by rising star James Norton, Brenda Blethyn and Johnny Vegas.

The Jonathan Ross show is on Saturday January 9th at 9.15pm, ITV.
HANGZHOU, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- A container train linking China and Iran departed from Yiwu City in east China's Zhejiang Province loaded with Chinese small commodities on Thursday morning.

According to the train's operator, Yiwu Tianmeng industry investment company, it is the first regular container train linking China to the Middle East.

The train will exit China through Alataw Pass in Xinjiang, the westmost Chinese region, and pass through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan before reaching its destination Tehran.

Company president Feng Xubin said it will take the train 14 days to complete the 10,399 kilometers journey.

Catering to the Belt and Road Initiative, the train is expected to further promote China's cooperation with Middle Eastern countries.

Yiwu is a famous production base for small commodities and it has been keeping close foreign trade ties with countries in the Middle East.

There are currently about 4,000 Middle Eastern businessmen living in Yiwu and more than 180 companies set up by Middle Eastern investors. The city witnessed 58.3 billion yuan (8.8 billion U. S. dollars) of exports to the Middle East in 2015.
Chinese property giant Wanda Group has rejected the authenticity of a media report about its chairman Wang Jianlin's alleged comments on the Madrid government and said it is "seriously inaccurate".

Global Times reported on Thursday that Wang Jianlin complained about how he was treated by the Madrid government during business negotiations, quoting Wang as saying "they treated me like a dog."

On Thursday morning, Wanda issued a statement refuting the Global Times report, dismissing the existence of the negotiation with the Madrid government and denied that Wang had made such comments. Wanda also said its project in Spain is being re-assessed.

Wanda Group, China's major real estate developer, has been conducting tough negotiations with Spain over its plans to tear down and rebuild Edificio Espana, the landmark in Madrid. But the answer from Madrids municipal government is "definitely not", Global Times reports on Thursday.

Local media outlets in Spain reported last week that Wanda has begun to shed employees in charge of the reconstruction project of Edificio Espana, which was acquired by the Group at a cost of EUR265 million in 2014.

But Mayor of Madrid Manuela Carmena immediately denied the rumor and said Wanda is not leaving and the redevelopment of the building is under negotiation.

Both sides are negotiating, we are making efforts to find a feasible solution to give Wanda a guarantee as soon as we possibly can, according to Madrids head of urban sustainable development.

Edificio Espana, which occupies an entire city block, is a Madrid landmark in the commercial heart of the capital. Redevelopment must get approval from the government because it is a historic building.

Wanda's plan was initially welcomed by local authorities because it proposed to revitalize the area and generate about 3,400 construction jobs. However, Madrid's new mayor, former judge Manuela Carmena, has started a campaign to scrutinize the approval of big building projects approved during the former conservative administration.
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Japan has unveiled its first homemade stealth plane.

The experimental X-2 is expected to make its maiden test flight in February, and boasts radar-resistance features, including a canopy with special stealth-enhancing coating.

Defense officials said the aircraft is designed to test the stealth technology that would possibly be combined with the next-generation fighter jet, replacing the fleet of F-2 fighters as early as 2028.

The experimental X-2 is expected to make its maiden test flight in February and has radar-resistance features, including a canopy with special stealth-enhancing coating, and mobility.

It comes as Japan tries to catch up on the technology and enhance its reconnaissance and intelligence capabilities as China expands its own military presence in the region.

It would become the fourth nation to test fly its own stealth jet, a move that could further antagonize neighboring Asian countries who have opposed Prime Minister Shinzo Abes bid to strengthen the role of its armed forces.

Russia flew its first stealth fighter in 2010 and China followed a year later, though each countrys programs have experienced delays and other setbacks.

The U.S. has flown stealth aircraft since the 1980s.

The red-and-white aircraft, with a 14-meter (45-foot) -long fuselage and 9-meter (30-foot) -long wingspan, sat inside a hanger at the Nagoya Airport in central Japan.

Led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, the stealth plane comes with radar-resistance features, including a canopy with special stealth-enhancing coating, and mobility.

The red-and-white aircraft, with a 14-meter (45-foot) -long fuselage and 9-meter (30-foot) -long wingspan, sat inside a hanger at the Nagoya Airport in central Japan.

The X-2previously known as ATD-X, for Advanced Technology Demonstrator Xwas manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.

'I cannot go into details, but we recognize it is technologically at a very high level,' said Takahiro Yoshida, an official in charge of the project at the Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency of the Defense Ministry.

The 40 billion yen ($340 million) project began in 2009.

Defense Ministry officers stand in front of the first domestically-made stealth aircraft, X-2, at Nagoya Airport in Toyoyama town, central Japan.

The demonstration plane is expected to make its maiden flight sometime after mid-February.
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TOKYO, Jan. 29 -- Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday discussed the possibility that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may be gearing up to test a long-range rocket.

In talks held by phone, the pair agreed that the possibility of the DPRK launching a long-range rocket existed based on recent intelligence gathered and urged the DPRK to exercise restraint.

"We will work closely with the United Statesand other countries involved and take all possible measures to ensure the safety of our people," Kishida told local media after his call with Kerry.

Kishida and Kerry also discussed a possible UN Security Council resolution on the nuclear test that the DPRK carried out on Jan. 6 in contravention of past resolutions, local media reports said.

The DPRK last launched what was described as a long-range rocket in December 2012, although the DPRK maintained it was launching a satellite.
In December last year, China s export volumes of steel bars, angles/channels, wire rods and steel plates amounted to 4.57 million mt, 470,000 mt, 210,000 mt, and 4.36 million mt, up 21.1 percent, down 4.5 percent, rising by 3.5 percent, and decreasing by 1.6 percent, respectively, year on year, as announced by Chinese customs. In 2015, China s export volumes of steel bars, angles/channels, wire rods and steel plates totaled 43.90 million mt, 5.42 million mt, 2.29 million mt, and 48.46 million mt, increasing by 42.2 percent, 14.0 percent, 5.7 percent and 11.0 percent, respectively, year on year.
Rescuers aid people on board a sinking South Korean passenger ship in water off the southern coast in South Korea, April 16, 2014.[Photo: Xinhua]

The Shanghai Salvage Bureau has finished the first phase of salvage operations for the sunken South Korean ferry Sewol.

Zhang Jianxin, Deputy Director of the rescue bureau at the Ministry of Transport, explained further.

"So far, the salvage work has gone very smoothly. According to our salvage plan last year, the first phase of oil recovery work had been finished. Earlier, the South Korean government organized experts to do site acceptance examinations, and they confirmed our work is done."

A total of 954 cubic meters of oil-water mixture was extracted, and the installation work of safety nets on 136 windows and 16 doors have also been finished.

Zhang added that the salvage of Sewol still faces many obstacles.

The next step is to lift and dock the ferry, and the whole salvage operation is expected to be completed by July.

The over 6800-ton ferry capsized at the southwest coast of South Korea on April 2014, leaving nearly 300 passengers confirmed dead and 9 others still listed as missing.
Developers who want to replace Maryland School with townhouses continue to shrink their proposal, but Clayton residents nearby still prefer that the project go away.

The latest plan, filed with the city on Jan. 20, is for 25 townhouses along a new one-block School Lane on the nearly 3-acre site at 7501 Maryland Avenue.

When first proposed in late 2013, the plan called for 48 townhouses. Neighbors opposed the developers request to rezone the school site for multifamily housing. Developers behind the project subsequently reduced the number to 35, then 34 townhouses. Neighbors still objected, saying they preferred green space to townhouses.

The new plan eliminates the earlier plan for townhouses on Westmoreland Avenue on the north side of the site and reduces the overall number to 25.

Its been a long road, said Bruce Korn, who is part of the Maryland School Town Homes development team.

The developers said the $17 million project would put the site of the empty school back on property tax rolls and meet demand for low-maintenance, for-sale housing for empty nesters who want to downsize and others who want to live near the center of Clayton.

We feel very strongly the project is appropriate for the neighborhood and appropriate for the city of Clayton, Korn said.

Love Investment Co. has Maryland School under contract with the Clayton School Board for an undisclosed price. Love is a project partner with Higginbotham Custom Homes, where Korn is vice president. The design is by Gyo Obata, a founder of global architecture firm HOK.

Korn said the developers had tried to work with neighbors to come up with a project they would accept.

We just think the changes weve made are really good for everybody, he said.

Korn said Maryland School Town Homes would produce a suitable transition from the neighborhood of single-family homes on three sides of the projects site to commercial buildings along Forsyth Boulevard just to the south.

Every progressive city in the country does this, he said.

So far, the projects opponents are preventing the plan from proceeding. In May, the citys Plan Commission voted 6-1 to reject the rezoning request that would allow demolition of Maryland School and construction of townhouses.

Commissioners agreed with neighbors who contended the project was inappropriate for the area of stately homes, many built in the 1920s and 30s on tree-lined streets. Neighbors had previously asked the Clayton School Board to keep the school and green space. The board voted instead to sell the property to Love Investment.

Opponents have since focused efforts against the rezoning. Some said this week that their position on the development plan remained no way, no how.

Among them is Julie Murphy, who lives on Westmoreland near the vacant school. She said rezoning the school property would be wrong.

You cant spot zone, she said. Thats not what we do.

Murphy said she and other opponents would continue to try to block the plan.

Were still 100 percent opposed to rezoning a residential area to high-density housing, she added.

Another Westmoreland homeowner, Steven Rosenblum, disputed Korns position that the redevelopment would be a transition between single-family homes and business areas. He said he hoped Love and Higginbotham would abandon the project.

Rosenblum, a senior development director at Washington University, added that with hundreds of apartments planned or under construction in Clayton, the school district might need Maryland to accommodate an influx of students.

That wont happen, said Chris Tennill, a district spokesman. The presence of asbestos inside Maryland, opened in 1931, means that if Clayton schools needed more classrooms the district would have to demolish and replace Maryland with a new building, he said. In addition, significant enrollment growth would probably be spread across all grades, making the need for a new elementary school unlikely, Tennill said.

Korn said developers believed they had revised their plan sufficiently. He said they eliminated the plan for townhouses on Westmoreland as a response to objections by Rosenblum. Instead, that block of Westmoreland is set aside for five single-family homes.

The developer said he hoped the revised proposal would return to the Plan Commission in February. If the project wins approval, construction could begin this summer and be done in two years, Korn said. Attracting 25 households to the site would be good for the city, he added.

Were not shuffling Claytonians around, he said. Were moving new people into the community.
Hoping to replicate the success of St. Louis Cortex technology district, St. Louis County has begun work to create a similar high-tech district in Creve Coeur.

But instead of focusing on medical and life sciences, the Creve Coeur district will aim at plant sciences, taking advantage of research facilities such as the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center that are already there.

The county announced Thursday that Ayers Saint Gross, a Baltimore-based architectural and planning, has been hired to draft a master plan for the new plant science innovation district.

The district, spanning 575 acres, would be anchored by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Bio-Research & Development Growth (BRDG) Park, and the Helix Center Biotech Incubator. It would also include the corporate campus of Monsanto Co.

The St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, a collaborative development effort between the county and city of St. Louis, said Thursday that Ayers Saint Gross had already started mapping ideas for the district, which is designed to attract new companies and create jobs.

The firm has provided planning services for Harvard Medical School in Boston and Washington University in St. Louis, in addition to creating the master plan for the Cortex bioscience and technology research hub in the Central West End.

St. Louis County won a $500,000 grant last year from the U.S. Department of Commerces Economic Development Administration to fund the creation of the master plan.

This grant will allow us to develop a roadmap for a physical hub that supports ag-tech and other innovation-based industries, Sam Fiorello, chief operating officer of the Danforth Center and president of BRDG Park, said in a statement.

As the master plan takes shape, backers of the new district are soliciting comments online at bit.ly/1PWe7gz.

Dennis Lower, chief executive of Cortex, said the planning effort getting underway in Creve Coeur was similar to the one his technology district began years ago.

He noted that Cortex pivoted about five years ago to becoming more of a mixed-use district. The change has been highlighted by the opening of an Ikea store and a bevy of proposed residential projects.

Tim Bryant of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.EDITORS NOTE: This story was updated at 5:40 p.m. to correct the name of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership.
All hydropower station staff evacuated over bomb alert in Russia's Far East

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Jan. 29 -- All the 231 staff members were evacuated from the Novosibirsk Hydroelectric Plant in Russia's Far East region of Siberia over a bomb threat, the station said Friday.

A report was received in the morning suggesting that a bomb had probably been planted at the hydropower station in Novosibirsk."All the forces of the emergency response were alerted and mobilized," the station's press officer said.

So far, operation of the hydropower station has returned to normal, but all repairs have been suspended, according to the press officer.

The hydropower plant has a power generation capacity of 465 megawatts, and its average annual electricity generation stands at about 2 billion kwh.
One by one, the business owners walked up to the microphone in the Valley Park Lions Club.

Some were matter-of-fact. Others were outright angry.

Every one of them opposed annexation of the Tree Court Industrial Park by the city of Valley Park.

This is a cash grab by Valley Park, said lawyer Brian Wacker.

Theres a whole lot of things here that dont add up, said business owner Paul Ganninger. We all know whats going to happen here. Not a damn thing except theyre going to take our money.

About 80 people crowded the room for a public hearing held by the St. Louis Boundary Commission. Its an obscure public commission that hears proposals when cities seek to expand their boundaries. If the boundary commission approves a citys annexation proposal, then the plan goes to the ballot for a public vote.

In this case, Valley Park is seeking to annex about 430 acres to its north and west. The big prize is the industrial park, which will significantly boost the citys tax base. But city attorneys argue they are responding to residents who live in the Arbor Creek Condos and some other residential areas off Big Bend Boulevard in unincorporated St. Louis County.

Only a couple of residents tried to make the case for annexation, suggesting they wanted a greater sense of community. The overwhelming sentiment was for the status quo.

And thats what makes this meeting an important microcosm of a larger discussion that is facing the St. Louis region.

Over the past two years, the region appears to have grown closer to a consensus that were St. Louis redesigned today, it would look nothing like its current configuration, with its major city separated from its major county, and that county having 90 separate municipalities and 81 municipal courts and 57 police departments and 23 school districts.

Before Aug. 9, 2014, the discussion was being driven by the Better Together nonprofit group that is funded by a variety of wealthy St. Louisans, including mega-GOP donor Rex Sinquefield. There were other groups, such as St. Louis is a World Class City, that also were pushing grass-roots change to the regions governance.

When Ferguson became a hashtag recognized around the world, the local discussion intensified. For St. Louis, if not the world, the story of Ferguson has had two separate planes, one dealing with police standards and the treatment of African-Americans, and the other dealing with the mismanagement in small cities that too often leads to oppression of its poorest citizens.

Those two stories collided last week when Ferguson posted on its website the proposed federal consent decree that the Department of Justice is seeking to impose on the city.

The consent decree doesnt have much in it that should be surprising. Its an outline of the changing expectation of police practice, raising standards, respecting people of different races, adding cameras, and instituting procedures to stamp out the sort of racism that has been too prominently connected to law enforcement in north St. Louis County municipalities.

The question in Ferguson will be whether the city can afford its various provisions.

More than likely, the city cant.

Neither could many of the even smaller cities in north St. Louis County, and plenty in other parts of the county, which, as a matter of justice, should adopt the elements of the consent decree as standard police practice.

More than likely, the St. Louis Boundary Commission will become more important in coming weeks or months, as cities see the writing on the wall and seek to merge or otherwise grab commercial and industrial areas that might improve their financial bottom line.

Those discussions will help St. Louis get from point A to point B.

If our current fragmented governance makes no sense, what does the future look like? If not 90 cities, how many? Should the city and county merge? Should the whole area be consolidated as one large city with several boroughs, as proposed by Gene and Cole McNary?

When that discussion takes place, listening to the sentiments of the folks fighting a Valley Park annexation last Tuesday night will be instructive.

Taxpayers and business owners expect services and value for the taxes they pay. A change from the status quo has to improve their bottom line, or otherwise give them value that makes change possible. And government officials have to be upfront about why changes are being suggested.

The business owners in Tree Court Industrial Park dont lament the taxes they pay to St. Louis County government, but they arent willing to increase their taxes to join a municipality when the case cant be made that they will get something out of it.

As civic leaders mull a more united future with different boundaries than the ones we have now, that has to be a driving force. Give taxpayers value or theyll choose the status quo every time.
Columbia prosecutors have reached a deal with University of Missouri-Columbia assistant professor Melissa Click, in which she will avoid prosecution for a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from a November run-in with student journalists.

Clicks part of the deal requires her to complete 20 hours of community service work and not break the law for one year.

Based on the facts of this case, I believe this disposition to be appropriate, Columbia City Prosecutor Stephen Richey said in a news release.

The deal, he added, is in line with how his office has handled similar cases. He said it adequately serves the interest of justice by ensuring the defendant will not engage in similar conduct.

Click gained national attention last year after she was captured on video blocking student journalists and calling for muscle to keep the journalists from taking photos and videos of a campus demonstration.

Students had gathered on campus to celebrate the resignation of University of Missouri system President Timothy M. Wolfe.

Wolfe had angered students over the perception that he was indifferent to a number of racist incidents on campus.

The video prompted a strong backlash from members of the public, school officials and legislators, some of whom called for Click to be fired.

The universitys Board of Curators on Wednesday suspended Click until further notice while the universitys general counsel conducts an investigation to determine whether more discipline is necessary.

This week, interim Mizzou Chancellor Hank Foley resisted calls to fire Click. He said he would wait for due process to play out.
ST. LOUIS  Beginning immediately, any St. Louis police officer involved in a shooting or serious vehicle crash will be tested for alcohol and drugs, the department announced Friday.

The move comes days after tests revealed that an off-duty officer who wrecked a police vehicle was drunk and had cocaine in his system. That officer, who has resigned, had been involved in a controversial fatal shooting in 2014. An investigation found the shooting justified but did not include a toxicology test.

Chief Sam Dotson was attending a Police Executive Research Forum meeting in Washington on Friday and was not available for comment.

In a prepared statement, he said his department has been researching the matter since the formation of the Force Investigation Unit in 2014.

This procedural change will enhance our ability to conduct more thorough investigations when it involves officers, Dotson wrote. We hold our officers to the highest of standards and know that transparency is of the utmost importance in maintaining the publics trust in its police department. 

Currently, police must submit to random drug tests every three years, or two years in some special assignments, or if there is reasonable suspicion of a problem.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association considers the announcement abrupt, said Jeff Roorda, the business manager. He said union leaders have been in discussions with Dotson about it but had not signed off on the change as required by the collective bargaining agreement.

Officer's crash

Roorda speculated that news about former officer Jason Flanery expedited the policy.

Shortly after dawn on Dec. 19, Flanery was driving a police vehicle, several hours after the end of his shift, when he struck a parked vehicle and left the scene, officials said. Flanery, 33, resigned from the force that day.

Based on the return of a test that showed his blood alcohol level was 0.117 percent, he was charged Monday with driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene. A second test, made public Wednesday, detected cocaine, officials said.

On Oct. 8, 2014, Flanery was working a secondary job in uniform for a private security company hired to supplement police in the Shaw neighborhood when he fatally shot VonDerrit Myers Jr., 18, in a confrontation. Official investigations sustained his account that Myers fired at him first. But the incident became the subject of repeated protests by skeptics who claimed Myers was murdered.

Roorda said, We want a clean and sober department, and we want to be a partner in making sure guys are fit for duty, but that means being involved in the conversation. He suggested that this conversation is all about trying to rewrite what happened in the Shaw neighborhood when an armed felon tried to murder a police officer.

You cant rewrite history on that, but thats not stopping some of our elected officials from trying to do so.

Roorda said he was referring to the efforts of 1st Ward Alderman Sharon Tyus, who sought to introduce a resolution at Fridays Board of Aldermen meeting to mandate drug testing of an officer within an hour of discharging a gun.

The resolution says, After a police shooting, the person who is shot and killed is drug tested, and the police officer is not drug tested, and said victims drug test is often released to the public, leading the public to wonder what was the drug status of the police officer who shot and killed or maimed the person.

The resolution failed to get a two-thirds procedural vote required for introduction from the floor. Tyus indicated she would return next week and file it through the normal process.

'An issue of public trust'

Dotsons new policy requires testing as soon as its reasonably practical.

The practice has been gaining momentum nationally. Most local departments, including St. Louis County police, test only if there is reason to believe an officer was impaired.

The Missouri Highway Patrol mandates drug testing of any employee who causes a death by any means, or a death or serious injury with a firearm, or if there is suspicion of impairment.

In some industries, mandatory testing after significant incidents is standard. Metro, the regional transit agency, requires a driver to be tested after any accident or collision on the job.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires that airlines test a pilot within 32 hours if performance either contributed to an accident or cannot be completely discounted as a contributing factor 

Some policing experts, including University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist David Klinger, do not endorse it for cops.

This basically accuses a police officer of being involved in illegal activity with no indication that anything is wrong, Klinger said. If there is any indication of an officer being high or drunk, I have no problem with that, but Im not a big fan of having that as part of protocol with no indication that there is anything amiss.

He added, If an officer is on duty and is drunk or high, he or she is going to get fired and that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of a shooting. It may help us understand why an officer made a poor decision or why their shots missed and hit a baby in a carriage 20 feet away, but if its a good shooting, its good shooting.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a paper, last updated in 2012, which states: At some point following the incident, whether at the hospital or another facility, involved officers should be tested to determine if alcohol or drugs are in their system. This information will be essential to defend against any future allegations that the officers were impaired when the incident took place.

About 140 officers in Minneapolis have been subjected to toxicology screenings following shootings since at least 2007, said Deputy Chief Travis Glampe. He said he does not recall any resistance to what he called an issue of public trust.

Nick Pistor and Leah Thorsen of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
SPRINGFIELD, ILL.  Illinois Democrats approved $721.5 million for tuition grants and community colleges Thursday, a move Republicans called an empty promise because theres no budget and the spending measure likely will be vetoed.

The action from Democrats only served to highlight the chasm between the two parties when it comes to settling the states finances, one day after Gov. Bruce Rauner urged lawmakers to cast aside partisanship during his State of the State address.

The governors budget office said in a letter to lawmakers that Rauner is being advised to veto their idea because theres no revenue for it and its not connected to any spending cuts to make up for it.

Rep. Jim Durkin, the Republicans House leader, called the Democrats proposal a cruel hoax on students who think theyre going to get money.

Do we print money in this building? Durkin asked before the House voted 67-42 to pass the spending measure. The Senate later approved it on a 36-12 vote, sending it to Rauner. Durkin said he told House leaders the governor would veto the bill.

The funding measure would allocate $324.4 million to community colleges for operating costs and $397.1 million to the Monetary Award Program, which provides tuition assistance for low-income students.

Democrats say colleges and students are in desperate need of money because theyve gotten no state funding since July 1, when the budget shouldve taken effect. Instead, the parties have been clashing over how to proceed.

Democrats want a tax increase and spending cuts to close a multibillion-dollar budget hole. Rauner, meanwhile, maintains he wont support a tax increase without reforms, including term limits, limiting the power of unions and making it easier for businesses to operate in Illinois.

Some colleges have been providing students money for the tuition grants, expecting to be reimbursed by the state when a budget is passed, but many institutions said they cant do that any more.

I think whats important for us to note is that this budget impasse were in is affecting the lives of so many young people who really just need a start in life, said Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Westchester.

Last week, the presidents of nine Illinois public universities said in a letter to Rauner that the states higher education system will be damaged beyond repair if a budget isnt approved soon. The letter said there may be closings when funds for several universities and community colleges run out.

Republicans say they want to help colleges and students, but argue the state should pass a full budget.

Theres no money behind this, and this is nothing more than an empty gesture, Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine.

Republicans also pitched a funding measure for higher education Thursday, but it wasnt considered. It would budget $1.6 billion for the grants, community colleges and for four-year universities, which arent covered in the Democrats proposal.

But the GOPs proposal would also give Rauner the power during a budget crisis to make cuts and shift money around where he wants, an idea Democrats quickly dismissed.

Rep. Lou Lang, one of the Democratic leaders in the House, said that would amount to giving Rauner unprecedented and kinglike powers to play around with the budget any way he wishes.
Illustration: Shen Lan/GT

The Japanese Emperor Akihito and his wife Empress Michiko embarked on a five-day state visit to the Philippines on Tuesday. The historic visit, which is Akihito's first official trip to Manila as Japanese emperor, comes as the two nations commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties.

Although Japan's Emperor is the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people, he has little political power. Akihito's visit, arranged by the government, reflects Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's desire to forge an intimate relationship with Manila. Undoubtedly, countering China is one of his major purposes in moving closer to the Philippines.

Tokyo has long been eager to build a strategic fulcrum in the South China Sea. A closer relationship with Southeast Asian nations that have territorial disputes with Beijing will make Tokyo's aspirations easier to be realized.

Tokyo intends to take advantage of the South China Sea disputes to cause trouble for Beijing. Abe's government expects Manila and Hanoi to be its two pivots in the South China Sea to contain Beijing. Thus, Japan has offered substantial economic and military aid to the Philippines and Vietnam in exchange for their strategic support.

In addition, coveting more geopolitical benefits, Japan has been actively attempting to build an alliance with maritime countries, for instance, Australia and India. Although the Philippines is relatively weak compared with other maritime nations, it is still an important part of the alliance.

Akihito's Manila visit has been hailed by Japanese media as a sign of deepening ties of Japan and the Philippines. However, it's noticeable that Manila and Tokyo have disputes over historical issues such as "comfort women."

Japan and South Korea signed a landmark agreement to "finally and irreversibly" resolve the comfort women issue at the end of last year. There are also hopes in the Philippines to strike a similar deal with Japan despite the fact that so far, the Philippine government has made very little effort to push forward the issue.

Some Philippine citizens protested and demanded Japan to apologize for the WWII victims on Tuesday during Akihito's visit, but their voices have been disregarded by the government. They are not powerful enough to overturn the overall upward trend of Tokyo-Manila relationship.

Given its relatively weak status in the South China Sea disputes, the Philippines intends to rely on the US and Japan to counter China. Tokyo has been actively answering Manila's call. The two nations carried out joint military exercises in the region last year.

In addition, the Philippines has reportedly welcomed Japan's self-defense forces (SDF) into the region. The negotiations over allowing the SDF to enter into Philippine bases have been held. The two sides are expected to have more military cooperation this year.

Facing closer Japan-Philippines relationship, China should improve its national strength to counter any potential provocative actions.

The Chinese side firmly safeguards its vital interests in security and defense. At the current stage, strengthening its economy is one of the most urgent tasks for Beijing. Developing military clout alone is not enough. A stable and prosperous economy is a prerequisite for increased international influence.
BEIJING, Jan. 28 -- China's National Energy Administration (NEA) said Thursday that 171 people were killed in 45 coal mine gas accidents last year.

The accidents and causalities were down 8.2 percent and 37 percent from 2014, the NEA said in a statement following an inter-ministry meeting on the prevention of gas accidents.

Though the number of accidents has decreased each year, the statement said that there are still too many. More effort is needed in 2016 to avoid major accidents (those with over 30 deaths), reduce those that kill more than 10 and achieve a year-on-year reduction of casualties by over 10 percent.

Last year, China extracted 18 billion cubic meters of coalbed gas, up 5.5 percent from 2014, but only 860 million cubic meters were used, the NEA said. The government plans to increase the latter figure to 920 million cubic meters in 2016.

The NEA vowed to promote industry consolidation, eliminate outmoded production capacity and shut down coal mines that fail to meet safety standards, mired in long-term losses and with no prospect of making profits.
LONDON MARKET MIDDAY: Banks and oil majors support FTSE 100

Thursday, October 20, 2022 - 12:38

London's big banks and energy companies were keeping the FTSE 100 steady on Thursday at midday, even as investors watched with horror as the government at Westminster goes ever more off-kilter.

The mood over on Wall Street was no better either. Numbers from Tesla soured what had been a decent third-quarter earnings season so far.

The FTSE 100 index was down 7.08 points, 0.1%, at 6,917.91 midday Thursday. The FTSE 250 was up 26.48 points, 0.2%, at 17,274.03, and the AIM All-Share faded 3.68 points, 0.5%, at 782.29.

The Cboe UK 100 was down 0.2% at 691.17, the Cboe UK 250 was down 0.3% at 14,758.86, and the Cboe Small Companies lost 0.2% to 12,341.25.

In European equities on Thursday, the CAC 40 in Paris was flat, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt was down 0.7%.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss is battling to contain the fallout from a calamitous 24 hours for her premiership, which saw a Cabinet minister resign and an open revolt in the Commons.

Tory members of Parliament are wondering how long the prime minister can go on following the chaotic events, but a Cabinet ally said "at the moment" Truss will still lead the party into the next election, due in 2024.

Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said the government is seeking to provide stability, and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt should be given the time to set out his financial plans at the end of October.

But a senior MP said Truss has just hours to turn the situation around following the chaos in Parliament on Wednesday.

The pound, already under pressure by a dollar boosted by Fed rate hike expectations, slid again on Thursday.

Sterling was quoted at $1.1201 midday Thursday, lower than $1.1242 at the London equities close on Wednesday.

"Political infighting and the uncertainty of policy continue to demand a risk premium for sterling, where GBPUSD could easily slip back to the bottom end of its wide 1.10-1.15 range. The wild card is what happens to the top job and whether the re-emergence of former Chancellor Rishi Sunak would represent a steadying of the ship or merely split the Conservative party asunder. One can understand why foreign investors will want to steer clear of sterling until the political environment becomes a lot clearer," analysts at ING commented.

The euro traded at $0.9791 midday Thursday, up slightly from $0.9784 at the European equities close on Wednesday, Against the yen, the dollar was quoted at JP149.77, unchanged from the London equities close on Wednesday.

The greenback had spiked to JP150 earlier on Thursday, for the first time since 1990. It puts the Bank of Japan under the spotlight and also raises the prospect of another intervention by the Japanese government. The dollar had traded around JP146 when Japan intervened last month.

The dollar has enjoyed a blistering rise so far in 2022 against its fellow safe-haven currency. At the start of the year, the dollar had only fetched around JP115. A hawkish Federal Reserve has lifted the greenback this year, and the market expects aggressive rate hikes to continue as the central bank bids to cool rampant inflation.

"Remarks from the US central bank for the interest rate outlook, especially in the near term, remained hawkish," analysts at Lloyds commented.

In London, shares in banking stocks were on the up. They had fallen on Wednesday on the threat of an additional tax on profit not being reduced as planned by the UK government. Lloyds Banking rose 2.3%, NatWest added 1.3% while FTSE 250-listed OSB climbed 3.1%.

Among the stocks dragging on the FTSE 100 was Dechra Pharmaceuticals, down 3.1%.

Dechra said it is confident of delivering on market expectations for its financial year, as it looks ahead to its all-important second half.

The veterinary products firm said trading in its first quarter ended September 30 was below the prior year, as expected. This is due to a challenging comparator with higher demand levels during Covid-19 and the phasing of price increases.

"As the market growth slows, analysts have become more bearish on Dechra and moderating near-term growth expectations while waiting to see how it normalises and how sticky companion animal healthcare expenditure may be in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis," analysts at Liberum commented.

Dunelm lost 2.0%.

For the 13 weeks to October 1, total sales for the homewares retailer came in at 357 million, down 8% from the previous year.

Looking ahead, it noted a "challenging" macroeconomic environment, including recent volatility in exchange rate movements. It reiterated annual guidance, however.

Naked Wines surged 28% after announced a leadership re-jib and a restructuring. Chief Executive Nick Devlin struck a penitent tone. The CEO said the online wine seller made "mistakes" in the pursuit of fast growth.

Darryl Rawlings will step down as chair with immediate effect, with David Stead to take his place. Stead has been a director of the firm since 2017 and is currently chair of the audit committee. In addition, Deirdre Runnette will become senior independent director. Naked Wines said it was in active discussions with James Crawford to assume the role of chief financial officer on a permanent basis.

Gemfields fell 11%. It said a mine in Mozambique, neighbouring operations at 75%-owned Montepuez Ruby Mining, was attacked. The Cabo Delgado region in northern Mozambique has been hit by Islamist insurgency in recent years.

Gemfields said MRM has begun evacuating operational employees and contractors, so mining has ceased.

Elsewhere in the junior AIM market, shares in Baron Oil jumped 52%.

Oil and gas production in the North Sea should be boosted in the coming years through a number of measures, the regulating body has recommended.

In a report released on Thursday, the North Sea Transition Authority has said drilling activity remained low in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels.

It comes after the NSTA said it would expand oil and gas licences, a move which is facing a legal challenge from climate campaigners.

The NSTA's head of technology, Carlo Procaccini, said: "Amid the energy crisis, it is vital that North Sea industry works quickly to secure additional supplies of oil and gas, produced as cleanly as possible."

Baron Oil has a 32% interest in the Inner Moray Firth asset, a prospect that it describes as "one of the few remaining undrilled UK North Sea targets".

Gold was quoted at $1,637.66 an ounce midday Thursday in London, lower than $1,631.50 late Wednesday.

Brent oil was trading at $93.70 a barrel, higher than $90.83. BP was up 1.9%, Shell up 2.3% and Harbour Energy up 4.0%.

Stocks in the US are called largely lower. The Nasdaq Composite is called down 0.5%, and the S&P 500 down 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is called 0.1% higher, however.

Tesla was down 5.4% in pre-market trade. In the three months to September 30, net attributable income jumped to $3.29 billion from $1.62 billion a year prior. Total revenue rose 56% to $21.45 billion from $12.76 billion, with Automotive revenue up 55% to $18.69 billion from $12.06 billion.

"Investors had their first big disappointment of a US third quarter earnings season which, up until now, had been a qualified success, with Tesla missing expectations on revenue and car sales," AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould commented.

"The electric vehicle manufacturer's underpowered performance reflects continuing challenges around the supply chain and rising costs. It suggests expectations were pitched too high coming into this quarterly update."

Still to come in Thursday's economic calendar, there are US initial jobless claims at 1330 BST.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Op-ed: South China Sea issue cannot be used as excuse to undermine China-U.S. relations

The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently kicked off his first Asian trip in 2016. Western media, keeping a close eye on Kerrys agenda, believe the South China Sea issue will be one of the priorities during the trip taking him to Laos, Cambodia and China.

Their concerns were not raised out of nowhere. At the Davos World Economic Forum not long ago, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, claimed that Beijing is taking self-isolating steps in the South China Sea. He even urged other countries to seek help from the U.S.

As for Kerrys itinerary this time, comments from Reuters and other media suggest that the U.S. will urge ASEAN countries to contain China together.

A U.S. official even told the press that the ASEAN hopes to avoid militarization and conflicts by safeguarding maritime rights and interests.

Repeated voices from the U.S. are by no means unintentional. It is clearly motivated by three objectives.

First of all, the U.S. attempts to interfere in Chinas legitimate construction activities on the Nansha Islands.

In order to force China to halt construction, the U.S., ignoring Chinas sovereignty over the South China Sea, has made multiple groundless criticisms, and even accused China of militarizing the region.

Secondly, with the groundless excuse that China will bully small countries, the U.S. tried to undermine Chinas efforts to settle disputes through negotiations with the parties directly concerned.

In the meantime, the superpower has been stirring up the arena of the South China Sea. It instigated ASEAN countries to increase tensions by taking advantage of their concerns.

On the one hand, the U.S. adds pressure on China on the issue by urging other ASEAN members to support the Philippines territorial appeal. It helped the Philippines file a unilateral arbitration in the name of safeguarding international law.

The U.S., therefore, has become a backstage driving force for escalating tensions in the South China Sea.

Lastly, such acts by the U.S. aim to pave a way for demonstration of its military power.

Last October, the U.S. sent a military vessel to enter into waters near Chinas Nansha Islands in spite of Chinas opposition, and announced to regularly conduct such activities on the grounds of safeguarding freedom of navigation.

Realizing the freedom is not jeopardized, the U.S. has to justify its behaviors by hyping up so called China threats.

Encouraging ASEAN to patrol the sea is just another attempt to normalize its actions through numerical strength.

The diligent work of the U.S., however, did not work as it expected.

The U.S. cannot deny the historical and lawful evidence that proves Chinas sovereignty interests over the South China Sea, neither can it stop Chinas construction on the islands.

Its provocations will only further prove it is the U.S. that threatens regional stability and pushes forward the dangerous militarization.

Most ASEAN members are clear-headed when it comes to the South China Sea issue, and will not endorse the Philippines without any principles.

Despite incitement from the U.S., Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said that individual countries should settle disputes among themselves without the involvement of the ASEAN.

China also said previously that U.S. officials cannot speak for ASEAN countries.

As for patrolling the South China Sea, the ASEAN will not stand beside the U.S. since it fears that the Eagles actions will trigger military conflicts.

The ASEAN is also unwilling to get involved in the issue, let alone conduct patrols recklessly.

China has always advised the U.S. with kind words, hoping it can focus more on the big picture of bilateral ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that the enhanced China-U.S. cooperation will bring enormous benefits to the world during his meeting with Kerry on Wednesday, as he had stressed on many occasions.

Both countries agree to build a new type of major-country relations under the principles of peace, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. The South China Sea issue should not be used as excuse to undermine China-U.S. relations.

(The author is an expert on international studies.)
As we have since July 2006, each Friday well post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other items of interest. Below is our latest Friday Sampler.

1) Relations between Cuba and the United States continue to make incremental progress toward normalization. This week, the Obama administration announced new Cuban regulations that allow financing of authorized exports to the island and more exceptions to the embargo, reports the Miami Herald. The new regulations, which went into effect Wednesday, not only allow financing of authorized exports but also expand the types of exports that will generally be approved as well as those that may be sent to the island on a case-by-case basis if Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control determines such products meet the needs of the Cuban people. This development follows the formal restoration of diplomatic relations, including the re-establishment of embassies in Washington and Havana, and an executive order from President Obama making legal travel to Cuba easier. Obama has also called on Congress to end the trade embargo. Currently, legal visitors to Cuba are allowed to bring up to $100 worth of Cuban cigars back to the U.S.; an outright end to the embargo, however, would unquestionably herald drastic, long-lasting changes for the cigar industry, as well as present new challenges and opportunities.

2) Altadis has announced Yarguera H. Upmann, a blend named for a new hybrid tobacco seed thats exclusive to a Honduran farm of the same name. Three sizes will be available in the $8.50 to $9.25 range, each with a Yarguera 13 Tapado wrapper, Criollo 98 binder, and sun-grown Yarguera 13 and Criollo 98 fillers. We are thrilled to announce Yarguera H. Upmann, as the first project for this Honduran Estate Tobacco, said Altadis in a press release. There is such a heritage connection between both Yarguera and H. Upmann as they both originated from Cuba. Cigar enthusiasts will enjoy not only Yarguera H. Upmann, but the tobacco brand in general as this is just the start.

3) Wild Turkeys label has undergone a remake to show off a more mature fowl. The Wall Street Journal reports the turkeyknown internally as Jacobis really front and center along with the slogan Crafted With Conviction on new bourbon bottles. Its all part of a push by owner Campari to increase sales. We acquired a rather dusty brand, but we also felt that it was a real hidden gem, says Melanie Batchelor, Camparis vice president of global strategic marketing. On the old packaging, our turkey is kind of in the background, more of a watermark, and he looks a little sad. Hes not proud, Ms. Batchelor says. Also, a lot of consumers know a lot about turkeys, she says, adding that customer research found that the young-looking turkey conflicted with the idea that the bourbon is aged.
of this series, we highlighted some of the M&A activities with the large advertising holding companies, including WPPs GroupM, Havas, Publicis Groupe, and Interpublic Group. Staying abreast of these activities in the advertising landscape is crucial for marketers, and marketing sourcing professionals, since these mergers and acquisitions may have a trickle- down effect on the agency you are currently working with. Reflecting on the advertising agency landscape in 2015, we saw a number of key mergers and acquisitions and trends that shaped the landscape as we enter 2016. In the last post

The large holding companies are frequently adding to and changing their agency networks to remain competitive in the ever-growing advertising agency landscape. However, M&A activity isnt limited to these holding companies. In fact, this past year there was a rise in activities with independent advertising agencies, and as a result these independent advertising agencies are thriving.

But why are companies choosing to partner with independent agencies? Especially when a larger agency may have more name recognition and experience than an independent firm?

First, companies are becoming increasingly interested in transparency with their advertising partners. They want to know where their money is going and be able to calculate a clear return on investment for their marketing budget. Also, many organizations are not interested in being viewed as another client added to an agencys roster. With an independent agency, the client is able to get to know and build a strong relationship with the staff working on their account and be a focal point of the agencys efforts. These companies are also using technology to their advantage, creating ads that can reach hundreds of countries and eliminating the need for offices around the world.

Although there have always been independent advertising agencies, in the past these companies have had a difficult time competing against the larger holding companies. However, in 2015 we saw independent agencies on the rise. Here are some independent agencies to get to know.

Horizon Media, the largest standalone media agency in the U.S., with $4.5 billion in ad spend across 100 clients, gained additional recognition in 2015. The company continuously strives to deliver on its mission, to create the most meaningful brand connections within the lives of people everywhere. Horizon Media works with clients such as Geico, the History Channel, Corona, and they recently agreed to become an equal partner in a newly created media joint venture, Canvas Worldwide, which will take control of the nearly $700 million U.S. media business for Hyundai and Kia beginning this year. This past year, the company received two Adweek project Isaac Awards, an award that celebrates invention in media, advertising, and marketing and technology. Nominations were accepted across 35 categories and divided into four brackets: Advertising & Marketing, Media, Digital, and Best Practices. Horizon Media competed against companies such as Mindshare, 72andSunny, Leo Burnett Argentina, and J. Walter Thompson. Horizon took two awards for their partnership with iHeartMedia on a radio campaign and an internal invention-development program. Keeping the Horizon mission in mind, enabled these inventions to reach fruition, increasing the growth of this independent agency.

Similar to Horizon, two other independent advertising agencies, Merkle and Cummins & Partners, also expanded in 2015. Merkle, the largest independent agency in the U.S. for CRM, digital, and search, announced in 2015 that they have set aside $1 billion for acquisitions over the next 5 years. Merkle is looking to fill the gaps in their service offering by purchasing companies that enable emerging digital efforts like native advertising and video in order to compete against the larger holding companies. Merkle has clients spanning numerous industries such as insurance, retail & consumer goods, travel, and media and due to the number of acquisitions in the near future, will be a company to watch in 2016.

Along the same lines, Cummins & Partners, an independent agency founded in Australia, also gained popularity in 2015. Realizing it wasnt just the business that mattered, it was the quality of people, Cummins & Partners chose to acquire New York based creative agency, dc3. With companies becoming more focused on the individuals working on their advertising accounts, Cummins & Partners wanted to make sure they had an all-star employee roster. Todd Irwin, founder of dc3 produced work for brands such as Verizon, Nikon, and Coca-Cola, and this type of experience will likely persuade clients to choose Cummins & Partners, therefore enabling the independent agency to scale their brand.

What is the endgame for independent agencies such as Horizon, Merkle, and Cummins & Partners? For some agencies they may want to continue to grow and then sell to a conglomerate, such as WPP or Publicis; however, others, and what I expect to be the majority of independent agencies, will remain fiercely committed to their independence in 2016. These agencies will continue to enjoy the freedoms they have as an independent, such as a unique culture and the ability to choose the best talent and work with the best clients. I expect that in 2016 we continue to see more rising independent advertising agencies and an increase in the number of clients choosing to partner with these agencies.





For more insight into 2015 trends and outlooks for 2016, be on the lookout upcoming blogs in this series.



Source One's Marketing Spend Optimization experts will be at ISM2016, where Source One is the exclusive sponsor of the Exec IN forum. Want to save on registration costs to attend this landmark event? Learn more over at SourceOneInc.Com.





References

"Horizon Media." Horizon Media. Adbrands, 20 Aug. 2015. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

"Horizon Media Wins Two Adweek Project Isaac Awards, Recognizing Invention." Horizon Media. PR Newswire, 22 Sept. 2015. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

Kayne, Kate. "Merkle Will Spend $1 Billion on Acquisitions in Next Five Years." Advertising Age DataDriven Marketing RSS. AdvertisingAge, 16 Apr. 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2016.

Stilson, Janet. "Can Indie Ad Agencies Thrive in the Merger Era?" AdWeek. AdWeek, 20 May 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.
Russia has decided to abandon development of An-70, four-engine turboprop transport that began development in the 1980s in Ukraine when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The An-70 is dead because of the war with Ukraine which led to Russia cancelling its 2012 order for 60 An-70s. These were to be delivered between 2014 and 2020. The canceled An-70s will be replaced by a smaller number of the new Russian Il-76MD-90 transports. Thirty of these have already been delivered and the Russians are satisfied with the latest version of the elderly Il-76. Still the Russian Air Force believes it needs at least another fifty Il-76s to replace the cancelled An-70s and rapidly aging Cold War era Il-76s.

This is a sad end to Antonov, which is now bankrupt and being dissolved. In 2008, after two years of stalling, Russia agreed to put up the needed $300 million to revive the An-70 development program. Since the beginning the An-70 has been pitched as a low cost alternative for nations needing C-130 or A400M type medium military transports. The An-70 is a powerful prop-driven aircraft. While the C-130 can haul 20 tons and the A400M 37 tons, the AN-70 can carry 47 tons (for up to 1,350 kilometers). Carrying 20 tons, the An-70 can travel 7,400 kilometers. The aircraft also excels in one area the Russians were always good at: the ability to operate from unpaved, and short, runways. The Russian-Ukrainian company developing the AN-70 expected to sell lots of them to countries like India and China and others that want the most for their money in a rugged military transport.

Antonov, a Ukrainian company after 1991, kept An-70 development going from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 until mid-2006 and maintained good relations with the Russian government. But Russia said it wanted to concentrate on further developing its own Il-76 jet transport at the expense of the An-70. The Ukrainians pointed out that there was still a demand for propeller driven transports. Eventually the Ukrainians made their case that the An-70 was needed. Russia placed an order in 2012 that enabled development and plans for mass production to move forward. That ended in late 2014 when Russian turned on Ukraine (for ousting a pro-Russian government) and seized Crimea and attempted to do the same in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile in 2012, after several years of starting and stopping negotiations, the Russian Air Force decided to go ahead and buy 39 of the new Il-76MD-90 transports. While similar in appearance to the Il-76, the 76MD-90 is basically a new aircraft, with numerous new structural and electronic components as well as new engines. That was one reason that, during development, it was referred to as the Il-476. The Il-76MD-90 had its first test flights in 2012 and was to enter service in 2014 but that was delayed until late 2015. The Il-76MD-90 can carry up to 60 tons and is about 15 percent more fuel efficient. The Il-76MD-90 is seen as an excellent candidate for export sales.

Russia rolled the first upgraded Il-76 in 2007. New engines and electronics give the Il-76MD-90 eight percent better fuel efficiency and the ability to lift more cargo. Further improvements will increase fuel efficiency another 14 percent. Russia is trying to make the Il-76/Il-76ND-90 a contender in the military air transport market and the new Il-76ND-90 is being showcased to make that happen.

The Il-76 is somewhat similar in capability to the U.S. C-17 but uses older technology, more similar to the retired (in 2006) U.S. C-141. The Russians have also been buying a stretched version of the Il-76 (the Il-76MF). This version first flew in 1995, and has become popular with users of earlier Il-76 models. The Il-76MF had better engines and can carry 50 tons of cargo over 4,000 kilometers. Another popular Il-76 is the tanker version (called the Il-78).

There are far more Il-76's in use than all of America's four engine jet transports (C-5, C-141, C-17) put together. Nearly a thousand 900 Il-76s were manufactured since the 1970s, with over a hundred exported, so far, mainly to Cuba, Iraq, China, India, Libya, and Syria. With few foreign or domestic sales since the 1990s, the Il-76 manufacturer (Chkalov) survived by manufacturing wings and other components for the An-124, An-70, and An-225 transports. In addition, it made replacement parts for the Il-76 and Il-114 aircraft.

The new models of the Il-76 indicate a substantial R&D investment and an effort to make the Il-76 a serious competitor (mainly on price, at about $60 million each) with the C-17 (which costs about four times as much and is able to carry up to 100 tons). What the C-17 is best at is carrying about half that weight, half way around the world, non-stop. The Il-76 has a hard time matching that. The C-17 is also easier to maintain and more reliable. But the fuel-efficient Il-76ND-90 that can be refueled in the air has a price that's tough to beat.

A major customer for the new Il-76s is Russia. All 110 Russian Il-76s have been grounded several times in the past few years because of problems. In one case the engine fell off an Il-76 while it was preparing to takeoff. Now there is a suitable replacement and no competition from Antonov.
For two years the United States has delayed action on a Qatari attempt to buy 36 (and eventually 73) F-15E fighter bombers (for nearly $4 billion) and Kuwaiti efforts to buy 28 F-18E fighters (for $3 billion). The American Department of Defense and State Department approved the deal and there was support in Congress but for reasons unclear the American president refused to approve (or disapprove) the deal or even explain why not.

Kuwait has long used the older F-18A and wants the latest model to improve its defenses against an increasingly aggressive Iran next door. With a max weight of 29 tons, an F-18E can carry up to eight tons of bombs. Combat range is 720 kilometers, and the aircraft was designed as a fighter.

Qatar still wants the F-15E, which Israel and Saudi Arabia are both major users of but in the meantime has bought 24 Rafale fighters from France. It is still a mystery of how tiny Qatar (population 2.2 million) justifies the purchase of over 73 F-15Es.

Middle Eastern nations are major users of the F-15E. Saudi Arabia alone has 153 F-15SA fighter-bombers. This includes 84 new ones ordered in 2012 and 69 upgraded F-15S models. The F-15SA is a special models of the F-15, similar to the two-seater F-15E, and unlike the single seat F-15Cs the Saudis already have optimized for ground attack.

Israel protested selling the Saudis such advanced bomber technology, but the U.S. worked this out via secret discussions. The Saudi "F-15SA" is similar to the South Korean version of the F-15E, the F-15K. This is a customized version of the 36 ton U.S. F-15E (a two seat fighter bomber version of the single seat, 31 ton F-15C fighter). Already in service for over twenty years, the F-15E can carry up to 11 tons of bombs and missiles, along with a targeting pod and an internal 20mm cannon. The Saudi will begin receiving the new F-15SAs in 2016 and those will cost nearly $30 billion.

The F-15E is an all-weather aircraft that can fly one-way up to 3,900 kilometers. It uses in-flight refueling to hit targets anywhere on the planet. For the Saudis this means they can keep these bombers in the air longer, searching for targets. Smart bombs make the F-15E particularly efficient. The second crewman (the backseater) handles the electronics and bombing.

The F-15E remains a potent air-superiority fighter, making it an exceptional combat aircraft. This success prompted Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Singapore to buy it, paying about $100 million per aircraft. In the U.S. Air Force the F-15E is one of the most popular aircraft for combat pilots to fly, even more so than the new F-22.
At the end of 2015 China announced that it had changed its laws to allow Chinese military and police commandos to operate overseas. This came as a surprise to some in naval intelligence because it was known that for several years special operations teams had been seen on Chinese warships operating off the Somali coast as part of the international anti-piracy patrol. But as far anyone knows these commandos never saw any combat although they were observed training a lot. China is expected to use this new authority to offer commandos for sensitive peacekeeping emergencies.

China has a lot of different commando units to send overseas. China allows different services (including the paramilitary national police) and military regions to create and maintain their own special operations forces. Thus there are ten separate special operations forces (seven military regions, the navy and the national police have two). The capital (Beijing, also a military region) has the largest force with over 3,000 personnel. Since the late 1990s the total manpower was expanded from about 12,000 special operation troops nationwide to over 30,000.

Each military region has a special operations brigade with about 2,000 troops. In a few cases smaller forces of several hundred operators are organized for about half a dozen combat divisions plus a few more for some armies. The non-army special operations units tend to be smaller, with lots of them in the various provincial and special police forces. Same with the navy and two marine brigades and its equivalent of the American SEALs. The current plan is to form small (platoon or company size, that is 20-150 troops) special operations units in every division and navy squadron (unit of several warships). Thus the army actually has eleven special operations brigades or (smaller) regiments but the troops are scattered all over the army.

These variations also hide the fact that most of these troops, while elite, are more similar in capabilities to Western rangers, paratroopers or SWAT teams. There are few who are as capable as the American Special Forces or commandos (as created during World War II by the British in the SAS and SBS) After World War II there were similar but a bit different SAS variations like American SEALs and Special Forces units that focused on traditional commando ops. The Russians came up with Spetsnaz while the Germans and French and many former British colonies created quite impressive versions of SAS.

China did not get into forming special operations troops until the 1980s and each of the military regions and several major police organizations were allowed to develop their own versions of the basic idea (elite troops performing very difficult tasks). Naturally there is more emphasis on martial arts and physical conditioning, both Chinese traditions admired but not always practiced intensively by the military. Chinese special operations skills involve a lot of work on improving reconnaissance capabilities and the ability to track down and quickly kill or capture small groups of troublemakers (especially separatists or religious fanatics). In the 1990s Chinese special operations commanders began looking into using their elite troops for raiding key enemy targets to paralyze the enemy ability to move and react.

Chinese publicists made much of the fact that one of the two National Police special operations units (the Snow Leopards) won the annual International Warrior Competition (the Commando Olympics) two years in a row. This involved competing with troops from 17 other nations, including the United States. That said, each year the Americans were not able to send their best because most U.S. special operations troops are either in combat, getting ready for operations or recovering from their last tour. Still, the Snow Leopards did well and in other international operations (usually of a counter-terrorism nature) the Chinese operators always demonstrated a professional attitude and mastery of the skills needed to be an effective commando.

The Snow Leopards are one several commando units in the national police and are based in Beijing. Two of the four squadrons of the Snow Leopards specialize in commando operations (like hostage rescue or difficult raids), while another handles bomb disposal and exotic (nuclear, biological, complex bombs) weapons and the other squadron specializes in snipers. The Snow Leopards were formed in 2002 and trained for five years before going to work. There are several similar units in other parts of China. In general, these police commando units do not reveal much about themselves. Much is known about the Snow Leopards because they were the first and being in the capital are something of a showcase unit for Chinese special operations in general.

The Snow Leopards are, like many commando units, small (under 500 personnel) and very selective. The Snow Leopards are mainly a counter terrorism unit, of which there are several in the national police (called the PAP or People's Armed Police). In China, the line between the armed forces and the police is sometimes blurred, especially when it comes to paramilitary outfits like the PAP.
The 22,000 peacekeepers, 20,000 Somali soldiers and over 10,000 pro government militiamen have not been able to eradicate Islamic terrorists like al Shabaab or unruly clan leaders and warlords. Violence has been greatly reduced over the last few years but al Shabaab continues to stage high profile (likely to make the international or regional news) attacks, especially in the capital (Mogadishu). Corrupt government officials and clan leaders help keep the violence going by tolerating all manner of illegal activity as long as the bribe is large enough. Fortunately the neighbors (especially Ethiopia and Kenya) are tired of all this Somali lawlessness as neighboring countries have been victims of it for as long as anyone can remember. The UN agrees that something should be done but so far no one has been able to come up with a plan that will bring long-term peace.

The January 15th defeat of Kenyan peacekeepers in Somalia will have unpleasant repercussions for Somalis in Somalia as well as over 600,000 living as refugees in Kenya. Relations between Somalis and their neighbors have never been good and they are getting worse. While the UN and foreign aid groups urge peaceful means to bring peace to Somalia that has not worked after more than two decades of efforts. Historically force is the only thing that has worked in Somalia. British 19th century colonial administrators learned that the best way to deal with Somali outlaws was to "shoot on sight, shoot first, shoot to kill, keep shooting." Not unexpectedly, post-colonial Somalia proved unable to govern itself. The tribal rivalries kept the pot boiling, and even the rise of a "clean government" party (the Islamic Courts) after 2001, based on installing a religious dictatorship, backfired and turned into al Shabaab. That caused even more Somalis to flee their homeland. That caused other problems. Somali refugees throughout Africa and worldwide have acquired a reputation for violence and criminal behavior. This is one reason foreign aid for Somalia is decling, largely because of the corruption and violence against aid workers. Aid in 2015 was half of what it was in 2014 and the decline continues.

Kenya has had the worst problems with Somali refugees. In 2015 over 5,000 Somalis returned from Kenya as part of a Kenyan program to persuade Somali refugees to voluntarily return home. Kenya offered inducements it hoped would persuade at least 100,000 to go back by the end of 2015. That did not happen. This is a big step back from the original plan to expel all (over 600,000) legal and illegal Somali refugees in the country. The expulsion threat came in response to ever more horrendous al Shabaab attacks inside Kenya, including an April 2015 al Shabaab massacre of 148 Christian students at a university. The UN promised to help with refugee camp security and moving more of the refugees back to Somalia but strongly opposed expulsion. Nevertheless the UN has promised to get 50,000 Somali refugees to leave Kenya in 2016. That seems unlikely because in January only about 1,200 left. In Somalia politicians and al Shabaab agree that Kenya should stop mistreating Somalis in Kenya if only because this mistreatment is used by al Shabaab for recruiting. The Kenyan government recognizes this problem and talks about curbing violence against Somalis in Kenya but controlling popular hatred of and hostility towards murderous Somalis is difficult. This is particularly true because of the recent al Shabaab terror attacks in Kenya and the centuries of Somalis raiding into Kenya. Its an old problem that does not lend itself to quick or easy solutions. Meanwhile the UN has to cut food supplies to all the refugees in Kenya (mostly Somali but some from Sudan) because not enough donors could be found. There is only so much donor money out there and many donors seek areas where they believe their money will do the most good. Long term refugees (as with the Somalis in Kenya) are not seen as the best use of donor funds. Currently the UN spends about $115 million a year to feed the refugees in northern Kenya. Nearly half that money comes from the United States. Refugee officials continue having problems maintaining security in the Somali refugee camps and a growing number of foreign aid organizations are withdrawing from some camps because of the chronic violence.

Violence against aid workers in Somalia doubled in 2015 compared to 2014. In 2015 there were 140 attacks on aid workers in Somalia, leaving 17 dead. In 2014 there were 75 attacks and ten dead. Foreign aid workers have been demanding better security in Somalia for decades. They expected some improvement in 2014 because al Shabaab had been largely driven from Mogadishu and much of the countryside. But things got worse in large part because of the success in driving al Shabaab out of towns they had held for years. Typically the troops turn control over to local clans who pledge loyalty to the government. The clan gunmen are usually commanded by guys that foreigners describe as warlords and these rogue militias consider any unarmed foreigners they encounter fair prey. Bringing world class standards of law and order to Somalia is not something you do quickly, especially when you have few troops you can depend on. The Somali troops are not much better than the militiamen or al Shabaab fanatics when it comes to playing by the rules. There are not enough foreign peacekeepers to do it all. Not in a country where the custom is to take whatever you can get any way you can. The foreign aid groups have this idea that anywhere they are, even in places like Somalia they can demand that foreign troops to protect them. This causes diplomatic problems because the aid groups have better relationships with world media and get their version of reality out faster than the uglier but more accurate version can.

And then there is the corruption. This is one area where Somalia excels. Thus most recent (2015) international study found Somalia one of the two (along with North Korea) most corrupt nations in the world. Corruption in this Transparency International Corruption Perception Index is measured on a 1 (most corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt) scale. The two most corrupt nations have a rating of 8 (North Korea and Somalia) and the least corrupt is 91 (Denmark). A look at this index each year adds an element of reality to official government pronouncements. African nations are the most corrupt, followed by Middle Eastern ones.

Some Somali pirates are surviving by offering their services to foreign fishing ships (trawlers) illegally operating off the coast. For a fee the pirates will protect the trawlers from other pirates. So far this is working. While not as lucrative as taking large ships for multimillion dollar ransoms, it is keeping several piracy gangs in business. The pirates long justified their crimes by claiming to be protecting local fishermen from illegal foreign fishing ships. That was always a myth. The pirates only attacked the trawlers when they thought they could get a ransom (usually they could not) or to use the trawler and its crew as a mother ship for long range piracy operations. Many of the Somali pirates have gone back to fishing or smuggling and note with anger that anti-piracy aircraft and warships will pass right by foreign trawlers obviously fishing illegally in Somali waters. The foreign trawlers are often what is called "freezer trawlers." These ships are up to 100 meters (320 feet) long and have facilities on board to store hundreds of tons of frozen fish. These ships normally stay at sea months at a time and have crews of 14-30. The smaller (coastal) freezer trawlers are often old and worth less than half a million dollars each and almost impossible to get a ransom for. The owner cannot pay whatever ransom the pirates often demand for these ships. These trawlers are all over the Indian Ocean, between Africa and India and the anti-piracy patrol has been warning trawlers and the companies that own them to stay away from the Somali coast. When these trawlers are fishing illegally they are at risk despite the presence of the anti-piracy patrol. When under attack the trawlers can call for help but because trawlers move slowly while working and are close to shore there is rarely time for anti-piracy forces to reach them in time. Many observers (especially Somalis) see the illegal fishing as simply another form of piracy but there is no international outcry over it because the damage done is local and not multinational.

January 26, 2016: In the south, near the Kenyan border, Kenyan peacekeepers abandoned two camps near the towns of Badhadhe and el Adde and moved to new camps closer to the Kenyan border. Al Shabaab forces quickly moved into Badhadhe and took control. Kenya said the movement was a normal redeployment of troops in the area and not a retreat triggered by the January 15 al Shabaab capture of another Kenyan army camp near el Adde. Despite that defeat Kenyan troops soon returned and drove al Shabaab out of el Adde.

In northeast Kenya, near the coast and the Somali border an al Shabaab roadside bomb hit a vehicle full of police killing five policemen and wounding several others.

January 21, 2016: In Mogadishu al Shabaab gunmen attacked a seaside restaurant at night and killed 23 people before security forces were able to regain control of the area a day later. Suicide bombers and gunmen were used to overwhelm security, which is usually pretty strong for places like this.

January 15, 2016: In the southwest (550 kilometers from Mogadishu) al Shabaab attacked a peacekeeper camp near the Kenyan border and drove most of the 150 Kenyan soldiers there from the camp. At least a hundred Kenyan soldiers died or were captured during the attack. The Islamic terrorists looted the camp and took control of a nearby towns (el Adde and Ceel Cadde) the peacekeepers were protecting. Al Shabaab later announced that the captured Kenyan soldiers would be used as human shields for protection from Kenyan air strikes. Based on pictures later released it appears that many of the soldiers were killed after capture, especially if they were wounded. In response to this defeat the Kenyan government said Kenyan troops would remain with the Somali peacekeeping force.

January 14, 2016: In central Somalia (Galgadud) soldiers clashed with al Shabaab killing nine Islamic terrorists and losing one soldiers. Another ten al Shabaab men were wounded and captured.

January 13, 2016: Kenya sent over a hundred additional policemen to the Somali border to improve security there. This comes in response to several al Shabaab attacks in December along the border.

January 11, 2016: ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) released a video in which a former al Shabaab member urged Somalis to come join ISIL and help destroy al Shabaab. Most al Shabaab members have rejected ISIL and remained loyal to al Qaeda. But several dozen al Shabaab men did leave and join ISIL. There have been some skirmishes between this ISIL group and al Shabaab but with this video ISIL is openly declaring war on al Shabaab. The ISIL problem began in 2015 when a growing number of dissatisfied al Shabaab members responded to ISIL recruiting efforts and joined with other dissident al Shabaab men to create several small ISIL groups in Somalia. Al Shabaab has declared those who join ISIL are traitors and seeks to kill them. This has made all foreign members suspect because most Somali members want nothing to do with ISIL. Thats because al Shabaab was founded as a Somali nationalist organization and al Qaeda respected that. ISIL did not and wants to conquer the world. In late 2015 ISIL in Somalia clashed with al Shabaab several times and lost most of its new recruits to death (in battle) or desertion. This helped the security forces and peacekeepers but they dont like to publicize this. With more foreign al Shabaab members deserting and going public about it, the internal problems of al Shabaab were becoming more widely known. Now ISIL has decided to go public with the problem in Somalia.

January 10, 2016: In Mogadishu al Shabaab planted a bomb in a car belonging to a government official. The explosion killed the official and wounded another.

January 7, 2016: In Mogadishu al Shabaab fired two mortar shells towards the Presidential Palace but missed and killed two civilians and wounded three others in a nearby refugee camp.
Dirty Little Secrets

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An Offer Egypt Could Not Refuse

by James Dunnigan

January 28, 2016 In January 2015 Russia sold Egypt 46 Ka-52K attack helicopters to equip the two Mistral-class helicopter carriers recently purchased from France. The Russians had developed the Ka-52K for use on the Mistrals but after sanctions were imposed on Russia (for aggression in Ukraine) France cancelled delivery of the ships. Russia was left with some helicopters that had lost their customer. To solve this they got France to agree that anyone who purchased Mistral would be obliged to buy these helicopters as well. It took many months to work out that agreement. The Egyptian deal will include 46 helicopters as well as weapons, ammunition, spares and training for pilots and ground crews. The helicopters are to be delivered by the end of 2017. The Kamov Ka-52 is a two-seat version of the earlier Ka-50. It is a reconnaissance and attack helicopter. Its development started in 1994 while the first flight was conducted in 1997. Till now only Russia had been using it and in small number due budget restrictions. The helicopter design is pretty unique because it uses two coaxial contra-rotating main rotors in caparison to typical one main rotor and second small on tail which is responsible for flight stabilization. Egypt will receive the K version which differs from the standard Ka-52 by having folding rotors and folding stub wings. The Ka-52 has a side-by-side seat cockpit rather than typical tandem-seat design. This change is expected to make it easier for the helicopter crew to perform battlefield observation and coordination roles but on the other hand is worsening helicopter aerodynamics thus fuel consumption and speed is negatively affected. The Ka-52 armor is said to withstand 23mm rounds. Pilots have ejection-seats and can also fly when one engine is damaged. For situational awareness Ka-52 can use various passive or active optical and radar detection systems. The helicopter is powered by two 2400 horsepower engines, weighs about 8 tones empty and has nearly 11 tones maximum takeoff weight.Ka-52 has a top speed of 350 kilometers an hour and can carry up to two tons of weapons or additional fuel. Normal operating range is 260 kilometers, but with additional fuel tanks it can stay in the air for up to four hours. Ka-52 armament consist of a side-mounted 30-mm cannon with a capacity of 240 rounds, the six wing-mounted external hardpoints which can carry anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), unguided rocket pods, 23mm gun pods, SA-18 Igla air-to-air missile or AA-11 Archer. Furthermore is said that even Kh-35 medium-range anti-ship missiles or even supersonic Kh-31s can be carried. This is first export sale of this quite unique design. Egypt has been forced to buy these helicopters because they were part of mistral deal however it is not a bad thing because this version was developed precisely for these ships. -- PrzemysAaw Juraszek


In the West Bank a majority of Palestinians there still back the four month old knife terrorism campaign organized by the local leadership (Fatah). This was done mainly to make the corrupt and incompetent Fatah more popular in the West Bank but opinion polls show that most Palestinians would vote for Hamas if elections were held right now. While Hamas is hated by the people of Gaza, West Bank Palestinians dont experience Hamas cruelty daily while they do endure the corrupt and inept rule of Fatah. The Fatah pro-terror media campaign has also convinced most Palestinians it is Israel that is refusing to negotiate peace when in fact it is the Palestinians who turned down two peace deals in the 1990s and instead tried terror campaigns to get more. Both of these intifadas failed and Fatah has sold the illusion that the third intifada (the knife intifada) will succeed. Since 2000 Palestinian media constantly pushed the idea that Israel has no right to exist and must be destroyed. Palestinians who disagree with this must either emigrate or keep silent. For most Palestinians it is easier to simply praise the knife. The knife terrorism campaign has, since September, left 26 Israelis (and one American) dead and over 250 wounded. But 149 Palestinians have died (mostly in failed attacks). Palestinian media depicts unsuccessful attacks that result in attackers being killed or wounded as Israeli attacks against random (and innocent) Palestinians. Over all the knife tactic does nothing for the Palestinians except increase their poverty and Fatah propaganda about how glorious it is to die. Fatah and Hamas are supposed to hold another round of unifications talks in Qatar during February. Fatah and Hamas are supposed to hold another round of unifications talks in Qatar during February.

The Iranian Threat

Israel believes the Russian intervention in Syria will, in the short term, lessen the possibility that Hezbollah will start another war with Israel. Long-term the Russian presence means Hezbollah will get some modern weapons and useful training from the Russians, who do not consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The rest of the world does but for Russia Hezbollah is a useful ally in Syria. Russia was also a major force behind the July 2015 peace deal with Iran that is lifting most of the economic sanctions on Iran. This means Hezbollah will get more cash from Iran. The sanctions led to Iran reducing annual payments to Hezbollah over ten percent. Hezbollah understood that Iran was short of cash because of sanctions and low oil prices but pointed out that the missing cash was even more of a problem because Hezbollah had suffered over 8,000 casualties fighting for the Iranian-backed Assad government in Syria. This is actually bad news for Israel because over 10,000 Hezbollah militia men and hundreds of combat leaders have obtained valuable combat experience. More to the point a lot of that experience is gained fighting alongside Russian forces and learning how to fight a conventional war. This will cause Israel problems in the future. Meanwhile Hezbollah has not been ignoring its rockets (more than 50,000 of them) stored in portable or underground launch sites in over 200 Shia villages near the Israeli border.

There was joy among Hezbollah members as well as Iranians and Russians when the sanctions on Iran began to go away this month. That means more cash from Iran. Hezbollah needs that money badly because of the increasingly effective Israeli effort to uncover and cripple the many criminal activities (drugs, smuggling, fraud) that Hezbollah uses to finance its activities. While Iran supplies up to a billion dollars a year Hezbollah also depends on hundreds of million dollars a year from illegal activities. Many of these are outside Lebanon and Israel has intensified its effort to uncover details of these schemes and turn over the evidence to local authorities for prosecution. Since 2001 Israel has received a lot more assistance from the United States, who have more access in the international banking system and that is useful when seeking out Hezbollah misbehavior. The economic damage this intel effort has done to Hezbollah has been considerable. Israel can tell because there are more reports from Lebanon about Hezbollah cutting spending (payroll, bribes, purchases) a lot. Russia and Iran will not (and actually cannot) make up these losses and Hezbollah gets angrier at Israel because Moslems have been taught that if anything goes wrong it is probably the fault of Israel.

In addition to threats from Hezbollah and Hamas Israel also has to prepare for Islamic terrorist attacks on the Syrian border. So far Israel has managed to negotiate what amounts to truces with Islamic terror groups that control parts of the Syrian border. The peace on the Syrian frontier is fragile and Israel is working closely with Jordan (which faces a similar threat) to coordinate responses to any terrorist threats from Syria. Israel and Jordan have long cooperated in dealing with terrorist threats.

There are still some sanctions on Iran and more may be added because Iran refuses to halt its ballistic missile development. Iran says this is mainly for use in destroying Israel but the new missiles have longer range that threatens a lot of Europe. Iran also recently boasted of its growing number of underground missile launch, storage, maintenance and production facilities. Israel has made it clear that Iran is still a threat and will be closely watched by Israel. Meanwhile Israel has created the most effective anti-missile network in the world. Much of these systems are locally developed and made and proven in combat.

The main defense against Iranian long range missiles is the Arrow system. This has been in service since 2000 and has racked up an impressive string of successes in test launches. Originally designed to deal with short and medium range ballistic missiles, it was built to protect Israel from Syrian and Iranian attack. Israel now has three Arrow batteries in service. An Arrow battery has 4-8 launchers and each launcher carries six missiles in containers. The two ton Arrow 1 has been replaced with the 1.3 ton Arrow 2, which can shoot down ballistic missiles fired from Iran and these are being augmented with Arrow 3s. Shorter range Stunner missiles and Magic Wand are meant to complement the Iron Dome anti-rocket system, which can take down rockets with a range of up to 70 kilometers. Iron Dome has a unique feature in which the radar system computes where the incoming rocket will land. If the rocket will not hit an inhabited area, it will be ignored. Otherwise, an interceptor missile will be fired. Stunner will be used against larger rockets that will be aimed (by Syria or Hezbollah) at large urban areas, and these will almost always get a Stunner fired at them. This is part of the Magic Wand system for defending Israelis from aircraft and short range rocket attacks. Magic Wand is expected to eventually replace the 17 Hawk anti-aircraft batteries and, eventually, the six Patriot batteries. Because of the long range of the Stunner it only takes two Magic Wand batteries to cover all of Israel.

Egypt

Egypt continues to have problems with Islamic terrorists although the violence is confined to a few areas. A larger problem is the floundering economy. Terrorist attacks on tourism caused a lot of damage while corruption and government incompetence continue to cripple economic growth. The government has managed to keep a lid on public anger over economic problems by getting billions in loans (mostly from China and the West) and gifts (from Arab oil states) but those sources are running dry and the government must deal with the corruption and inept bureaucracy if there is to be any real improvement in the economy.

Most of the Islamic terrorist violence is found in a small portion of the Sinai Peninsula and, given the size of Egypt is not a major threat. Since 2013 about a thousand people a year have died from Islamic terrorism. About half the dead are terrorists (actual or suspected), most of the rest civilians. Most Egyptians oppose Islamic terrorism, if only because it tends to kill lots of innocent civilians and cripple the economy. But in a few rural areas, mainly in northern Sinai, there are populations willing to support Islamic terrorists. Outside of Sinai there a lot of people who are Islamic conservatives and are more tolerant of Islamic terrorism. But these terrorism supporters have to be careful because the neighbors are often willing to alert the police about any pro-Islamic terrorist activity in the neighborhood. There are about 10,000 members of the Islamic Brotherhood, from which most Islamic terrorists come (after denouncing the non-violent policies of the Brotherhood). While fewer than one percent of Egyptians support any form of terrorism, thats still more than half a million people. More worrisome is the growing activity of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) groups. Even other Islamic terror groups fear ISIL because ISIL is very lethal and considers anyone not ISIL a target. The security forces dont consider ISIL a long-term threat because ultra-violent groups like this are self-destructive and tend to burn out sooner rather than later.

January 27, 2016: Hamas admitted that seven of its men had died because of a recent tunnel collapse (the result of heavy rains). The seven were actually rebuilding a combat tunnel destroyed by Israel during the mid-2014 50 Day War. Fatah accused Hamas of wasting the lives of their members working on tunnels, especially the ones used mainly for smuggling goods (which Hamas taxes heavily).

That makes ten Hamas men killed so far this year in tunnel accidents. Israelis living near the Gaza border complain that they can sometimes hear (or feel) Hamas tunnel building efforts. In 2014 the Israeli military said they would erect a detection system to locate new tunnels so they could be destroyed. The detection system has been delayed because of defense spending cuts but now the government says the detection system is coming soon.

January 26, 2016: Israel accused Hamas of recruiting (via bribes or coercion) Gaza residents with travel permits (to the West Bank, Israel or elsewhere) to participate in terrorist attacks against Israel. Because of this Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza until Hamas agreed to stop this recruiting and actually did so. Israel issued over 100,000 of these travel permits to Gaza residents in 2015.

January 23, 2016: A rocket was fired from Gaza into Israel. There were no casualties or property damage in Israel because the rocket landed in Gaza and detonated. Increasingly rockets fired from Gaza fail to perform as expected. Israel responds to each attack with an air raid on a Hamas terrorist facility. There have been six rockets fired from Gaza so far in 2016.

In Jerusalem a 17 year old Palestinian died when the bomb he was carrying (to use against Israeli soldiers) went off prematurely, killing him. At his funeral Fatah declared the dead terrorist a hero. The father and grandfather of the dead bomber also died trying to kill Israelis.

January 20, 2016: Israel arrested five Palestinians in the West Bank and accused them of working for Hezbollah to carry out a terror attack in Israel. Hezbollah has been seeking, without much success, revenge for Israel killing Hezbollah commander Samir Kuntar in December 2015. Russia is demanding that Hezbollah cease the attacks on Israel. Iran is apparently saying the same thing, but not in public. Iran wants revenge as well because Kuntar was also working directly for them. Russia and Iran understand, where Hezbollah does not, that starting another war with Israel right now is not a good idea.

January 11, 2016: In Libya unidentified jets bombed ISIL facilities in the coastal city of Sirte. Some ISIL leaders blamed Egypt and in response Egypt sent more troops to the Libyan border to guard against any ISIL retaliation. Egypt supports peace in Libya, but generally does it peacefully.
Wellesbourne Airfield

Monies raised from the sales will be used to care for the core collection and acquire objects which better represent Shakespeares work, life and times.

Rosalyn Sklar, Museum Collections Officer at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust said: Over the past two years we have carried out research into the large collection of furniture held by the Trust. We hold some incredibly well preserved pieces which date from the late 17th up to the 20th century and although these can be support pieces for displays, they are more often kept in storage and not available for visitors to enjoy. As such, some of these items will be leaving the collection.

The collection, which is designated by Arts Council of being of outstanding resonance, includes over 1 million documents, 50,000 books and 10,000 other objects. The Trust is working to extend other parts of the furniture collection, specifically 16th and early 17th century items.

Rosalyn added: We are looking for more 16th and 17th Century artefacts and those which represent Stratfords history. Were keen to see objects which show off the construction methods and decorative features that typified that time period. For example, a decorative feature known as a 'caryatid' which is a standing figure (male or female) forming a support either to a cupboard mantle or other such supporting component.

Alongside improving and extending the collection, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is working on new and innovative ways to allow greater public access to the extraordinary array of documents. This includes collaborating with British Library, the National Archives and the Folger Shakespeare Library on Shakespeare Documented which launches this month.

This free and publicly-accessible online exhibition will allow even more people around the world to enjoy objects in the collection including manuscripts and printed references. http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/
Wellesbourne Airfield

The plant, which would cost several million pounds to complete, would consist of three domes measuring 17 metres high and three long four metre high traps, used to store crop matter before it is fed into the plant.

The fuel for the plant would be maize and rye, produced by farmers within 10 miles of the site, and would not produce a significant smell in the surrounding area.

John Scott Kerr, director of business development at Future Biogas, the company behind the project, said: We capture the gas that is produced so there is no smell, if there is a smell it is bad practice and we are losing money.

If you were to stand on top of the traps there is a localised sweet smell, but this isnt something that is going to be wafting across the village.

Anaerobic digestion plants are sustainable and renewable, providing power or heat 365 days a year and we dont need the wind to blow or the sun to shine. I believed we will be cost competitive with nuclear power within five years.

Mr Scott Kerr explained that obtaining the crop matter from local farms would allow those businesses to better rotate their crops, with the plant providing a market for maize and rye which are not always in huge demand.

He said the plant would run on maize and rye as a constant supply of food or vegetable waste could not be guaranteed.

Local resident Dave Benton said: Its something thats going to break down arable crops, I cant see the disadvantage, its good to see them doing something different.

Jane Spence, who lives on a nearby farm, was less than enthusiastic about the plan.

Mrs Spence said: I think it will affect the view from Wimpstone, you would be able to see it all from there. I dont think its good that it needs 2,500 acres of maize to fill the thing, if it was food waste that might be different.

Future Biogas say they will take in feedback from the consultation and hope to submit an application within 5-6 weeks.

If the application is successful, the company would look to have the site operational in 2017.
Griffin Securities analyst Keith Markey reiterated a Buy rating and $65 price target on Intrexon (NYSE: XON), citing the company's opportunity related to the Zika pandemic, which has been linked to serious brain damage in infants.

Markey notes the company's Oxitec subsidiary has an environmentally friendly answer to the Zika pandemic, which is largely transmitted via the Aedes aegypti and Aedes Albopictus mosquitoes, which also carry the dengue fever virus.

"The Companys genetically modified, male Aedes aegypti mosquito (OX513A) has demonstrated an ability to knock down local mosquito populations in a species-specific manner," the analyst explains. "It has undergone extensive testing in different environments (jungle, rural populated regions, and cities) where it has bred with wild-type females generating offspring that die at the pupa and larva stages. Moreover, it does not pose a threat to predators that may consume them or their offspring, and their impact on a local wild Aedes aegypti population is not accompanied by an increase in other mosquito species."

The analyst notes OX513A has already been approved for sale in Brazil, and they believe the Zika pandemic will motivate other countries, including the United States, to approve it.

"Indeed, President Obama addressed the need for a rapid solution last night. Intrexons product offers an environmentally friendly and possibly more effective alternative to toxic pesticides," the analyst said.

He added, "At this juncture, the Pan American Health Organization is advising countries that have not had cases yet to be on the alert for Zika symptoms and countries with the virus to take measures to monitor for geographic expansion and sudden disease outbreaks; implement vector control methods, including minimizing mosquito breeding habitats (e.g., standing water); and identify Zika virus lineages. The U.S. CDC has issued similar guidance that also includes avoiding travel presently to 22 countries."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Intrexon click here. For more ratings news on Intrexon click here.

Shares of Intrexon closed at $26.37 yesterday.
Pumpjacks and other infrastructure for producing oil dot fields outside of Watford City, North Dakota January 21, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Cullen

By Devika Krishna Kumar

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Friday, rebounding more than 25 percent from 12-year lows hit last week and cutting losses for the month, on prospects of a deal between major exporters to cut production and curb one of the biggest supply gluts in history.

Oil also drew support from firmer stock markets, lifted by weak U.S. gross domestic product growth data that raised hopes the Federal Reserve may slow any planned interest rate hikes.

The oil market rallied for four straight sessions after a renewed call from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for joint efforts with rival producers to cut supply triggered a volley of comments from Russia on a deal with the cartel, something it had been refusing to do for 15 years.

Brent March futures , which expired on Friday, closed at $34.74 a barrel, 85 cents or 2.5 percent higher. On Jan. 20, it hit $27.10, its lowest since November 2003.

U.S. crude settled up 40 cents or 1.2 percent, at$33.62 per barrel, having hit a high of $34.40 in the session.

For the week, Brent was 7.9 percent higher and U.S. crude 4.4 percent higher, paring their monthly losses to 6.8 percent and 9.3 percent respectively.

Both contracts briefly turned negative after the Wall Street Journal cited an Iranian oil official as saying the country would not join an immediate OPEC production cut.

Moscow has sent mixed signals, eventually saying veteran minister Sergei Lavrov, who almost never comments on oil policies, would visit the UAE and Oman to discuss oil markets.

Cash-strapped Venezuela is also sending its oil minister to Russia on a tour beginning on Saturday of non-OPEC and fellow OPEC states.

"The market has rewarded these statements about the possibility of a deal, even though I think it's ridiculous," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.

He noted that Iran and Iraq were determined to boost production, and were unlikely to come together with Saudi Arabia to cut OPEC output. The Saudis have made no official statement on a deal.

"This is a rally on false hopes, unfortunately"

Other analysts said prices may have found a bottom and could rally as high as $45 by year-end as non-OPEC supply is reduced and global demand improves.

U.S. oil production fell in November for the second straight month and U.S. shale producers, who have helped add to the glut, have slashed 2016 capital spending plans more than expected.

Meanwhile, the U.S. oil drilling rig count fell for the sixth straight week with more cuts seen, oil services company Baker Hughes Inc (NYSE: BHI) said.

"With more energy companies announcing cuts and OPEC contemplating a cut, it looks like oil is forming a bottom," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago.

"Now the question becomes how high can they go. The charts look like a test near $40 is on the cards."

In a sign that the market sentiment was improving, hedge funds raised their bullish bets on U.S. crude oil for the second straight week, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said.

"It's something that sub-$30 oil does. It makes some traders inclined to think that we are have reached or are near a bottom, so they want to be positioned ahead of it," said Gene McGillian, Senior Analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford Connecticut.

(Additional reporting Simon Falush and Dmitry Zhdannikov in London, Meeyoung Cho in Seoul and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio)
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) announced that a randomized Phase 3 study evaluating Opdivo (nivolumab) versus investigators choice in patients with recurrent or metastatic platinum-refractory squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) was stopped early because an assessment conducted by the independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) concluded that the study met its primary endpoint, demonstrating superior overall survival (OS) in patients receiving Opdivo compared to the control arm. The company looks forward to sharing these data with health authorities soon.

With the results of CheckMate -141, Opdivo moves closer to providing a potential treatment option for patients with head and neck cancer, a cancer with a high unmet need and limited treatment options, said Michael Giordano, M.D., senior vice president, head of Oncology Development, Bristol-Myers Squibb. We look forward to continuing to advance the Opdivo clinical development program in hard-to-treat cancers, such as head and neck cancer.

CheckMate -141 investigators have been informed of the decision to stop the trial early and Bristol-Myers Squibb is working to ensure that eligible patients be provided the opportunity to continue or start treatment with Opdivo as part of the companys commitment to providing patient access to Opdivo, and characterizing long-term survival. The company will complete a full evaluation of the final CheckMate -141 data, and work with investigators on the future presentation and publication of the results.

About CheckMate -141

CheckMate -141 is a Phase 3, open-label, randomized study of Opdivo versus investigators choice of therapy in previously treated patients with SCCHN who have tumor progression on or within 6 months of platinum therapy in the primary, recurrent, or metastatic setting. The trial randomized 361 patients 2:1 to receive either Opdivo 3 mg/kg intravenously every two weeks or investigators choice (cetuximab/methotrexate/docetaxel) until documented disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. The primary endpoint is OS. Secondary endpoints include objective response rate and progression free survival.

About Head & Neck Cancer

Head and neck cancer is the seventh most common cancer globally, with an estimated 400,000 to 600,000 new cases per year and 223,000 to 300,000 deaths per year. The five-year survival rate is reported as less than four percent for metastatic Stage IV disease. SCCHN accounts for approximately 90 percent of all head and neck cancers with global incidence expected to increase by 17 percent between 2012 and 2022. Risk factors for SCCHN include tobacco and alcohol consumption and the increasing role of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection leading to rapid increase in oropharyngeal SCCHN in Europe and North America. Quality of life is often impacted for SCCHN patients as physiological function (breathing, swallowing, eating, drinking), personal characteristics (appearance, speaking, voice), sensory function (taste, smell, hearing), and psychological/social function can be affected.
Westlake Chemical Corporation (NYSE: WLK) announced that it has submitted a proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Axiall Corporation (NYSE: AXLL) for $20.00 per share (comprised of $11.00 in cash and 0.1967 of a Westlake share, which represented a value of $9.00 based on Westlake's closing price on January 22, 2016, the last trading day before Westlake made its proposal).

The proposal, which has been summarily rejected by the Axiall Board, represented a significant premium of 108% to Axiall's closing price of $9.60 on January 22, 2016. The total value of the proposed transaction is approximately $2.9 billion, including the assumption of certain Axiall liabilities, which include approximately $1.5 billion of debt outstanding as of September 30, 2015.

Albert Chao, Westlake's President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We are surprised and disappointed by Axiall's summary rejection of our proposal, which provides Axiall shareholders with a significant premium and upside potential via their participation in the increased scale and synergies of the combined company. The combined company would be more diversified and have a stronger financial profile than Axiall, providing it with significant financial and operational flexibility, a greater ability to serve its customers, and improved ability to capitalize on future investment opportunities.

"We are confident that our proposed transaction represents the best way to maximize value for Axiall shareholders, but despite the attractiveness of our proposal, Axiall has rejected the proposal and refused to engage with us to discuss its merits. Instead, Axiall said it prefers to pursue a standalone strategic plan, but the market reaction to this plan does not suggest it will deliver anywhere near the value and upside of our proposal. In this challenging environment, we believe Axiall's unwillingness to even discuss our compelling proposal exposes its shareholders to significant risk and uncertainty. Given this response, we feel we have no choice but to bring this proposal to the attention of Axiall shareholders.

"We urge the Axiall Board to act in the best interests of its shareholders by meeting with us to begin negotiating a transaction without delay," Mr. Chao concluded.

Westlake has retained Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. as its financial advisors, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as its legal counsel, MacKenzie Partners, Inc., and other advisors. For additional information about Westlake's proposal, please visit www.WestlakeAxiall.AcquisitionProposal.com.

Below is the full text of a letter sent from Westlake to Axiall:

January 29, 2016

Board of DirectorsAxiall Corporation1000 Abernathy Road NESuite 1200Atlanta GA, 30328

Attention: Mark L. Noetzel, Chairman of the Board

Dear Members of the Board:

We were surprised and disappointed by your summary rejection of our proposal to acquire Axiall for $20.00 per share (comprised of $11.00 in cash and 0.1967 of a Westlake share, which represented a value of $9.00 based on Westlake's closing price on January 22, 2016, the last trading day before we made our proposal). The proposal represented a significant premium of 108% to Axiall's closing price of $9.60 on January 22, 2016. Importantly, the proposed structure provides your shareholders with an immediate cash premium and the Westlake share component provides upside via participation in the increased scale and synergies of the combined company.

Less than three days after we provided our written proposal, your management informed us that you remain committed to the continued implementation of your current standalone strategic plan. The market reaction to your plan does not suggest investors believe it will deliver anywhere near the value and upside of our proposal. In this challenging environment, we believe your unwillingness to even discuss our compelling proposal exposes your shareholders to significant risk and uncertainty.

The combination of Westlake and Axiall would create a more efficient, diversified and competitive company, far better positioned to succeed and grow in this challenging environment. With Westlake's Olefins business and a combined Westlake/Axiall Vinyls business, there would be an immediate opportunity to backward integrate into the ethylene market. The combined company would also benefit from Westlake's European vinyls business (Vinnolit), which is a global leader in vinyl technology and specialty PVC resins.

The combined company would also have a stronger financial profile than Axiall, providing it with significant financial and operational flexibility, a greater ability to serve its customers, and improved ability to capitalize on future investment opportunities. Based on our proposed consideration mix and strong track record, we believe that the combined company will maintain an investment grade credit rating.

We have already completed extensive analysis and due diligence based on publicly available information. Accordingly, our remaining diligence requirements are limited, confirmatory in nature and capable of being completed on an accelerated timeframe. Our proposal is not subject to a financing contingency and the transaction would be subject only to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of necessary regulatory approvals, which we do not anticipate will present any issues. As an indication of our commitment, we have acquired approximately 4.4% of Axiall's outstanding stock. We have retained Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. as our financial advisors and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as our legal counsel. We stand ready to negotiate a definitive merger agreement in parallel with final due diligence.

As we made clear to your management, we would have preferred to engage in a private dialogue regarding our proposal and strongly believe that it is in all parties' best interests to move forward with this transaction promptly. Unfortunately, given your rejection of our offer we feel we have no choice but to bring this proposal to the attention of your shareholders.

The proposed transaction is compelling from a strategic and financial point of view and we are confident that it will benefit each of our companies, our shareholders and our other constituencies. We value Axiall's employees and look forward to working with them in the combined company. We wish to emphasize again that we believe this proposal is clearly superior to your standalone strategy.

We hope that, in the best interests of your shareholders, we can begin negotiating a transaction without delay.

Sincerely yours,

Albert ChaoPresident and Chief Executive Officer
A Siemens logo is pictured on an office building of Siemens AG in Munich May 30, 2014. REUTERS/Lukas Barth

FRANKFURT/MADRID (Reuters) - German engineering group Siemens has hired Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to advise it on a possible deal to buy Spanish wind farm manufacturer and operator Gamesa (NYSE: GAM), two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

One of the people said it was still unclear what the structure of such a deal could be.

Siemens declined to comment on the matter.

Shares in Gamesa earlier jumped more than 20 percent after a media report that Siemens may be interested in making a takeover offer.

(Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Andres Gonzalez; Additional reporting by Jens Hack in Munich; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Victoria Bryan)
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Allianz Global Investors Fund Management LLC (the Investment Manager") announced today that Fund Cards, which contain statistical information on the funds listed below as of December 31, 2015, are now available at http://us.allianzgi.com/Literature/Pages/ClosedEndFunds.aspx?ProductLineID=CEF&Level1=ulLiterature&Center=ulLiterature&Level2=liulLiteratureClosedEndFunds

The Investment Manager is an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Allianz Asset Management of America L.P., a member of Munich-based Allianz Group.

Updated Fund Cards are available for the following funds:

AllianzGI Convertible & Income Fund (NYSE: NCV)

AllianzGI Convertible & Income Fund II (NYSE: NCZ)

AllianzGI Diversified Convertible & Income Fund (NYSE: ACV)

AllianzGI Equity & Convertible Income Fund (NYSE: NIE)

AllianzGI NFJ Dividend, Interest & Premium Strategy Fund (NYSE: NFJ)

The Funds' daily New York Stock Exchange closing prices, the latest available net asset values per share, as well as other information, is available by calling the Funds' shareholder servicing agent at 1-800-254-5197. In addition, this information plus updated portfolio statistics and performance numbers are available at http://us.allianzgi.com/closedendfunds.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160129005894/en/

For information on AllianzGI and NFJ Closed-End Funds:

Financial Advisors: (800) 926-4456 - Allianz Funds

Shareholders: (800) 254-5197

Media Relations: (212) 739-3501

Source: Allianz Global Investors Fund Management LLC
Washington, DC (PRWEB) January 29, 2016

Human Rights First today announced that nominations are open for the 2016 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award. The 2016 award will go to an individual or organization outside of the United States who has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to human rights advocacy in areas such as human trafficking, religious freedom, LGBT rights, refugee protection, and defense of civil society, among others.

The winner will be selected by a distinguished jury and will receive a trip to the United States to engage in advocacy and a $25,000 prize. Nominations for the 2016 award are due by March 10.

Named in honor of the principal founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and the International League for Human Rights, the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award was established in 1989 and is presented in alternating years by Human Rights First (awarded to international human rights advocates) and the ACLU (awarded to advocates in the United States). This year marks the 27th anniversary of the award. Previous winners of the Baldwin Medal of Liberty include Egyptian activist Kholoud Saber Barakat, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and Guatemalan activist Jesus Tecu Osorio. Additional information about the award, the nomination form, and the full list of past awardees is available on the award webpage.

Nominations can be made by an individual or an organization. Nominees will be judged based on the following criteria:





 The nominee's work is unique or particularly distinctive;

 The nominee's work has been effective in advancing human rights in a country other than the United States;

 The nominee faces risk or insecurity as a result of their work; and

 The nominee would benefit significantly from receiving the Baldwin Award, in the form of enhanced protection, or in any other way.

For further information about the award or the nomination process, please contact Rebecca Sheff at sheffr(at)humanrightsfirst(dot)org or (202) 888-7599.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/baldwinmedalofliberty/nominations/prweb13189059.htm
Company adds innovation to improve threat discrimination, cybersecurity and performance while reducing footprint and lifecycle cost

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Jan. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation's (NYSE: NOC) enhanced battle management capabilities successfully performed in the Jan. 28 flight test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. As the strategic partner of The Boeing Company for the GMD program, Northrop Grumman is responsible for the critical fire control system that coordinates sensor information and orchestrates GMD elements for target engagement.

"Our system determines which threat to engage, builds the threat picture, allocates resources and provides and updates the information guiding the kill vehicle," said Dan Verwiel, vice president and general manager, missile defense and protective systems division, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. "Today's test demonstrates our team's commitment to continuously improve this vital capability for protecting the United States."

Conducted by the Missile Defense Agency and the Boeing-Northrop Grumman team, the GMD flight test focused on collecting critical data to validate several component design improvements. The test included a ground-based interceptor launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, against an air-launched threat released from a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport aircraft. The test objective precluded an intercept, in order to collect engineering data that's not possible in an intercept test.

Northrop Grumman's GMD fire control system integrated data from several sensors to identify and track the target, and calculate and present the engagement solution. The company's in-flight interceptor communications system provided target updates to the kill vehicle. In addition, Northrop Grumman's command launch equipment effectively launched the interceptor.

"Over the past three years, we've made major hardware and software changes to the GMD fire control system resulting in important benefits ranging from significantly reducing hardware footprint to increasing system effectiveness and affordability," said Mark Thornton, GMD deputy program manager for the Boeing-Northrop Grumman team.

Northrop Grumman's modernization efforts on the GMD fire control system included an ability to utilize new discrimination data, fusing to select the lethal object from the threat complex. The system tasks radars more efficiently and constructs much improved data to the in-flight interceptor. Newer operating systems, interfaces, processors and data storage boosted computing power, security and reliability. GMD fire control system hardware changes decreased its volume to one-tenth and weight to one-twentieth of the previous components and lowered lifecycle maintenance costs.

Northrop Grumman designs and deploys the fire control capability for GMD, which includes the fire control system, in-flight interceptor communications system data terminal, communications network equipment and system managers, and command launch equipment. The company also performs a significant role in GMD systems engineering, missile silo refurbishment and operations and sustainment of the deployed system. All are under contract to Boeing, the GMD prime contractor.

Northrop Grumman supported the test through its prime contractor role at the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center (MDIOC) and participation in the Lockheed Martin-led Missile Defense National Team providing test execution in the Command and Control Battle Management and Communication (C2BMC) system. Company personnel at the MDIOC provided engineering, flight test execution, and communications expertise that helped the Mission Control Center Facility and the C2BMC System Test Operational Center monitor and assess the progress and success of the GMD flight test.

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in unmanned systems, cyber, C4ISR, and logistics and modernization to government and commercial customers worldwide. Please visit www.northropgrumman.com for more information.

Source: Northrop Grumman Corp.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Jan. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Many people suffer from cracks, chips or stains on the front teeth. While most stains can be cured with tooth whitening, some are permanent and cannot be fixed easily. Ultra-thin veneers made from porcelain are the simplest answer to all of these problems, especially since they require little to no alteration of the natural teeth.

Porcelain Veneers and You

Veneers are thin, custom-shaped pieces of ceramic that overlay the teeth. Originally, veneers always required the dentist to remove a certain amount of enamel to make room for this "tooth covering." For most clients, however, this procedure was worth it, as their smile looked perfect afterwards. The shaping of the tooth made veneers a permanent procedure, but most people were happy with the cosmetic results and did not mind making a lifetime decision.

For some patients, however, the idea of shaping their teeth and taking away enamel to make room for their veneers was an impossible consideration. Recognizing this concern, dental science developed ultra-thin veneers that range from .2 to .5 millimeters in thickness. This required designing ultra-strong ceramics that keep their strength despite being so thin. Ultra-thin veneers require little to no reduction in the tooth enamel, dealing with a major patient concern. Today, many dental companies provide either the base ceramic material, or the customized veneers themselves, so that patients have multiple choices in design, color, translucency, cost and durability.

Are Porcelain Veneers Right for Everyone?

Not all situations are best solved with porcelain veneers. Some cracks are should be handled by replacing the tooth, and certain stains are signs of major problems within the tooth that must be fixed with a root canal procedure. And even with the large number of options in ultra-thin veneers, some teeth have a shape better suited to standard veneers. The best way to determine suitability for veneers is to have a consultation with a local dentist. The Sacramento Dentistry Group is prepared to discuss the cost and value of all the many options in porcelain veneers, both standard and ultra-thin. Contact their dentists at 1105 E Street in downtown via the phone (916-538-6900) or on their website at sacramentodentistry.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-sacramento-dentistry-group-explains-ultra-thin-porcelain-veneers-300211887.html

SOURCE Sacramento Dentistry Group
By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Labor Department on Friday took the next step toward requiring brokers who provide retirement advice to follow a "fiduciary" standard of putting clients' interests first, a move that could roil the financial services industry.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget said on its website that it had received the department's final proposed rule. That follows an extended comment period for the proposal, which the Labor Department unveiled nine months ago.

"We're working aggressively to work through the process," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest at a briefing on Friday. The White House, however, does not have an exact timeframe for implementing the rule, Earnest said.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association trade group called for the OMB to conduct a comprehensive analysis of potential costs and benefits.

The proposal aims to end potential conflicts of interest by brokers who advise on individual retirement accounts and to protect consumers from buying unnecessary investment products that line brokers' pockets.

IRAs accounted for $7.3 trillion, or 30 percent, of U.S. retirement assets in September, according to trade group Investment Company Institute.

Under the plan, brokers would have to act in clients' best interests, or as "fiduciaries," when advising about IRAs. For example, brokers can receive significant fees when they advise clients to "roll over" assets from employer-sponsored retirement plans into IRAs.

Brokers now must recommend investments and strategies that are "suitable," based on factors such as investors' age.

The industry has fought the proposal since it was first proposed in 2010, saying strict rules could limit advice to small investors because fewer brokerages would offer them services.

The department, which regulates retirement plan advice, withdrew the initial proposal in 2011 after wide industry criticism.

A new version was proposed in April after a nudge from President Barack Obama and discussions with the industry and lawmakers, who considered blocking funds needed for a standard.

The text of the final proposal was not released on Friday but will become public after the OMB's review, which many expect to wrap up in the spring.

Critics want changes to when brokers should sign mandatory contracts in which they would pledge to uphold clients' best interests when giving retirement advice. They also want to extend an eight-month period for the rule's effective date that was part of the April version.

The department has received more than 3,000 comments about the plan, Earnest said.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert in Washington; Additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Bernard Orr)
Foreign visitors stand next to a model of the J-31 stealth fighter at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) booth at the Aviation Expo China 2015 in Beijing, China, in this September 16, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Jason Lee/Files

By Siva Govindasamy

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China has built a potent military machine over the past 30 years but is struggling to develop advanced engines that would allow its warplanes to match Western fighters in combat, foreign and Chinese industry sources said.

The country's engine technology lags that of United Technologies unit (NYSE: UTX) Pratt & Whitney, General Electric (NYSE: GE) and Rolls-Royce (NYSE: RR), said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

China's Defence Ministry, in a brief statement to Reuters, said there was a "definite gap" between Chinese military technology and some developed countries, adding Beijing would continue to strengthen its armed forces.

Western restrictions on arms exports to China prohibit the sale of Western engines for military use, forcing China to rely on homegrown designs or engines Russia has agreed to sell.

"Chinese engine-makers face a multitude of problems," said Michael Raska, assistant professor in the Military Transformations Programme at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Among the issues, China's J-20 and J-31 stealth fighters cannot super-cruise, or fly at supersonic speeds like their closest rivals, Lockheed Martin's (NYSE: LMT) F-22 and F-35 stealth planes, without using after-burners, said two industry sources who follow Beijing's military programs closely.

After-burners remove a warplane's stealthiness, a capability that allows them to escape radar detection.

Even the warplane engine that experts consider to be China's best has reliability issues, said the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

SOUTH CHINA SEA

A Chinese military expert, who has knowledge of the government's defense policy but who declined to be identified, said Chinese fighter jets could not perform as well as American warplanes because of inferior engine technology.

That puts China at a disadvantage should its warplanes be pitted against U.S. jet fighters or those from security ally Japan in Asia's disputed waters, the industry sources and security experts said.

Chinese warplanes are likely to come into increasing contact with U.S. fighters over the South China Sea in the years ahead after Beijing conducted its first test flights this month to one of three island runways it is building in the contested Spratly archipelago, security experts said.

In any conflict, China would likely rely on sheer numbers of fighters as well as a growing arsenal of sophisticated missiles that can be launched from warships or land, they added.

To be sure, China has made warplane engine development a priority in recent years, sources said.

The Shanghai-based Galleon group, which provides consulting services to the aerospace industry, estimates Beijing will spend $300 billion over the next 20 years on civil and military aircraft engine programs.

Some sources said China had hired several foreign engineers and former air force personnel to work on engine development, although this could not be independently confirmed. The Chinese Defence Ministry declined to comment.

"In 20 to 30 years time, given the amount of work they have done and the effort they are putting into it, they should have a viable military engine," said Greg Waldron, Asia Managing Editor at Flightglobal, an industry publication.

ENGINE MAKERS MERGED

China first manufactured warplanes under license from Russia in the 1950s. Its indigenous fighter jet program kicked into full swing in the 1980s.

The country's best warplane engine is the WS-10A Taihang, made by Shenyang Aeroengine Research Institute, a subsidiary of China's biggest state-owned aerospace and defense company, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the sources said.

In development since the late 1980s, Chinese state media reports say more than 250 have been fitted to some fourth-generation J-10s and J-11s.

But the engines don't produce enough thrust, or power, and need frequent repairs, added the sources.

"They are trying to improve the Taihang, but reliability is a major problem," said one source.

AVIC did not respond to a request for comment while Shenyang Aeroengine Research Institute could not be reached for comment.

In October, state media said three engine makers owned by AVIC would merge into one firm.

China will do more to integrate other engine-making firms in the coming years, said a Chinese source in the country's aerospace industry.

This would help coordination across civilian and military engine research and development and production, said the source.

The Defence Ministry declined to comment.

To cover gaps for now, China has fitted Russian engines on many of its warplanes.

In November, China held talks with Russian state-owned aircraft engine manufacturer United Engine Corp on the possible joint development and production of military engines at the same time it signed a deal to buy 24 Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, one of Moscow's most advanced warplanes.

The Chinese Defence Ministry declined to comment on the status of the discussions.

(Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Dean Yates)
U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Scot Marciel smiles during a meeting with Ouch Borith (not pictured), secretary of state at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, in Phnom Penh, November 4, 2013. REUTERS/Samrang Pring

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate committee approved President Barack Obama's nominee to be ambassador to Myanmar on Thursday, after the administration assured panel members it would not quickly change sanctions policy as the country moves from decades of military rule.

Republican Senator Cory Gardner said he had been concerned that the Obama administration would move too quickly to ease sanctions on Myanmar before it had made the transition to democratic government.

But Gardner said during Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting he had been assured that the sanctions policy had not changed, and that Congress would be "fully consulted" about any shift.

The Obama administration has continued deep concerns about human rights and other issues in Myanmar, also known as Burma. U.S. officials have said they would watch for the democratic process to move forward before lifting more sanctions, which target more than 100 individuals and businesses and limit U.S. investment in the country.

The 19-member panel approved the nomination of Scot Marciel unanimously by voice vote. He must still be confirmed by the full Senate before taking up his position as ambassador.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
*** Westlake Chemical Corporation (NYSE: WLK) announced today that it has submitted a proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Axiall Corporation (NYSE: AXLL) for $20.00 per share (comprised of $11.00 in cash and 0.1967 of a Westlake share, which represented a value of $9.00 based on Westlake's closing price on January 22, 2016, the last trading day before Westlake made its proposal).

The proposal, which has been summarily rejected by the Axiall Board, represented a significant premium of 108% to Axiall's closing price of $9.60 on January 22, 2016. The total value of the proposed transaction is approximately $2.9 billion, including the assumption of certain Axiall liabilities, which include approximately $1.5 billion of debt outstanding as of September 30, 2015.

Albert Chao, Westlake's President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We are surprised and disappointed by Axiall's summary rejection of our proposal, which provides Axiall shareholders with a significant premium and upside potential via their participation in the increased scale and synergies of the combined company. The combined company would be more diversified and have a stronger financial profile than Axiall, providing it with significant financial and operational flexibility, a greater ability to serve its customers, and improved ability to capitalize on future investment opportunities.

"We are confident that our proposed transaction represents the best way to maximize value for Axiall shareholders, but despite the attractiveness of our proposal, Axiall has rejected the proposal and refused to engage with us to discuss its merits. Instead, Axiall said it prefers to pursue a standalone strategic plan, but the market reaction to this plan does not suggest it will deliver anywhere near the value and upside of our proposal. In this challenging environment, we believe Axiall's unwillingness to even discuss our compelling proposal exposes its shareholders to significant risk and uncertainty. Given this response, we feel we have no choice but to bring this proposal to the attention of Axiall shareholders.

"We urge the Axiall Board to act in the best interests of its shareholders by meeting with us to begin negotiating a transaction without delay," Mr. Chao concluded.

Westlake has retained Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. as its financial advisors, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as its legal counsel, MacKenzie Partners, Inc., and other advisors. For additional information about Westlake's proposal, please visit www.WestlakeAxiall.AcquisitionProposal.com.

*** CenterPoint Energy Services, Inc., (CES) an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP), and Continuum Energy, LLC, along with its wholly-owned subsidiary, Continuum Energy Services, LLC, announced they have signed an agreement under which CES will acquire Continuum's retail energy services business through the acquisition of Continuum Retail Energy Services, LLC, including its wholly-owned subsidiary Lakeshore Energy Services, LLC. The acquisition also includes the natural gas wholesale assets of Continuum Energy Services, LLC. The aggregate purchase price for the acquisition is $77.5 million plus working capital, subject to customary post-closing purchase price adjustments. With the addition of these businesses, CES would operate in 26 states and serve nearly 24,000 commercial and industrial customers and more than 65,000 individual Choice customers.

"Continuum has built an impressive retail energy services business, which complements our overall natural gas business strategy," said Joe McGoldrick, executive vice president and president of CenterPoint Energy's Gas Division. "With similar business models, customer-focus and risk management practices, this transaction positions CES to have access to more markets and efficiently grow our customer base, and we expect it to increase our total gross margin by 40 percent. This transaction is projected to be earnings per share accretive in 2016 and subsequent years." CES and the Continuum businesses both operate with a low value-at-risk, mitigating potential high-risk exposure to gas price and supply market fluctuations. Their core functions are retail focused. "We are excited about the opportunity for our retail energy services business to become part of CenterPoint Energy, a company with substantial scale and diverse markets, focused on quality customer service at competitive prices," said Jason Few, president and chief executive officer of Continuum Energy. "This transaction allows Continuum to concentrate on growing its midstream business and solidifies an attractive business portfolio for our stakeholders as we move forward." CES is part of CenterPoint Energy, an electric and natural gas energy delivery company headquartered in Houston with more than 140 years of experience in the utility and retail energy industry. Ranked among the top 20 natural gas energy services companies in the country based on volume, CES complements the company's gas distribution business by providing gas purchase options to customers across multiple states. Combined, CES and the company's natural gas distribution business deliver more than 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year or 4 percent of the country's throughput. In 2014, CES marketed approximately 600 billion cubic feet of natural gas and related energy services and transportation to approximately 18,000 commercial and industrial customers in 19 states. Continuum marketed nearly 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas, related energy services and transportation to nearly 6,000 commercial and industrial customers in 2014. The acquisition includes Continuum's: Retail business, which includes commercial and industrial transport customers in 25 states

Choice customers in California, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio and Wyoming

Origination and logistics segment, which optimizes transport and storage capacity through its retail segment Continuum will continue to operate its midstream, crude oil logistics and producer services businesses primarily in the Mid-Continent, Appalachia, West Texas and New Mexico and the Utica with more than 1,000 miles of gathering pipeline, 656 million cubic feet system capacity and 44,000 horsepower of compression. Transaction Terms and Other DetailsThe transaction, financed from internally generated cash flow or borrowings under CenterPoint Energy's commercial paper programs, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions, the expiration of any Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period and receipt of certain third-party consents. The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of both companies. Wells Fargo Securities LLC acted as financial advisor to CenterPoint Energy and Baker Hostetler LLP acted as their outside legal counsel. Citi acted as financial advisor to Continuum and Winston & Strawn acted as their outside legal counsel.

*** Brookfield Asset Management Inc (NYSE: BAM) has been exploring an acquisition in recent months of General Growth Properties Inc (GGP) (NYSE: GGP), the U.S. mall operator with a market value of $24 billion, according to Reuters , citing people familiar with the matter. Click here for more color.

To keep up on all the Mergers & Acquisitions data in real-time, go to our M&A Insider page.
Students left out in the cold by the liquidation of a Southland-based tertiary education provider will now be able to complete their education.

Wellington-based Primary ITO announced on Friday it had contracted seven tutors to teach in Otago and Southland after Agribusiness Training Ltd (ABT) went into liquidation late last year.

Based in Invercargill, Agribusiness Training Ltd had six separate locations in New Zealand before it was liquidated. It was among six tertiary education providers selected for review by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) in November 2014, and a subsequent investigation found five of its programmes delivered fewer teaching hours than its NZQA programme approvals specified.

Agribusiness Training Ltd has disputed the findings that it under-delivered on programmes.

In October 2015, TEC chief executive Tim Fowler said Agribusiness Training Ltd knew the rules and needed to refund $6.24 million (GST-exclusive) of tuition subsidies for breaking them.

In November, a Primary ITO spokeswoman said it was planning to switch to a new provider to get tutors for courses Agribusiness Training Ltd previously provided.

Agribusiness Training Ltd had provided tutors for classroom instruction components of some of Primary ITO courses.

READ MORE:

* Former Agribusiness Training Ltd students left with few options

* Agribusiness Training Ltd told to repay $6.24m in tuition subsidies

* Agribusiness failure leaves Nelson beekeeping students in limbo

Primary ITO Otago and Southland regional manager Andrew Shepherd said the hiring of the tutors meant it was "back to business as usual" for students.

"The closure of ABT presented a challenging situation for us," he said.

"However, we've taken the opportunity to contract the tutors directly as we believe this will enhance the already successful working relationship we've shared with them in the past. We know they're committed to quality delivery, and the decision has the support of both local industry and our customers."

A letter sent to 1914 Primary ITO students nationwide on October 28 last year about the liquidation of Agribusiness Training Ltd said their training would not be affected.

However, a Primary ITO spokeswoman said the sudden liquidation of Agribusiness Training Ltd resulted in changes to class dates and times because they did not have Agribusiness Training Ltd tutors available to teach off-job classes.

Ben Mack: @benaroundearth
Waikato Regional Council staff are trying to confirm the owners of a large tyre stockpile in North Waikato.

Waikato Regional Council has launched an investigation into a tyre operation in North Waikato.

Council staff visited the site on Mangatawhiri Road in late December and discovered a large pile of tyres at the property.

Patrick Lynch, council's investigations and incident response manager, said inquiries are at an early stage and staff are still to identify the owner of the tyres.

The tyres appeared to be sorted by size and are in different states of process.

"On the face of it, there appears to be a risk to the environment from both the chronic and acute risks associated with bulk tyre storage," Lynch said.

"Tyres do leach over time and that's accelerated when exposed to water. And the problem grows with the volume of tyres. In other words, the more tyres there are, the more concerned we are."

Council staff would work closely with the Fire Service to manage any risks associated with the tyres.

Officers would also talk to Waikato District Council staff to determine if any consents had been obtained for the tyre operation.

Lynch said the owners of the Mangatawhiri Road property have been interviewed.

"It's at an early stage and we don't know where that's going to land and what any subsequent action might be," he said.

Lynch said the migration and stockpiling of used tyres has become a "burgeoning issue" in recent times, especially in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty.

In 2015, Hamilton City Council ratepayers were left with a $250,000 clean-up bill after 150,000 used tyres were abandoned at a Frankton depot.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council is weighing up its options in relation to tyre stockpiles at a Waihi Beach quarry and in Kawerau.

Regional councils from across the country met in December to discuss developing a consistent approach to dealing with the storage and stockpiling of tyres.

Lynch said the workshop discussion was productive and expected to produce a draft tyre policy within the next two months.

"What's come to light in recent times is the migration of tyres through regional and district boundaries. And each time they get moved on, someone is left with the cost."

Waikato Regional Council chairwoman Paula Southgate said there is political will behind a move to develop a consistent nationwide approach to dealing with end-of-life tyres.

Southgate will meet with Environment Minister Nick Smith in February and will update him on the issue.

"I think we've moved a long distance from where we were at the beginning of last year when we were all going, this is potentially a big problem and a disaster waiting to happen," she said.
The use of social media to nab criminals is paying off for the Cambridge Police.

Constable Tristan Gerritsen is the man in charge of the popular police Facebook page.

In January he posted a photo of two individuals suspected of stealing meat from New World. Within an hour, three people had named them, and the suspects themselves had messaged the police asking for their photo to be taken down.

New World owner Logan McKenzie said he was happy at the quick turnaround Facebook had offered.

"It's given me motivation to use it more often," he said.

The offenders have since been charged.

And just before Christmas, a post was up for just 10 minutes before those suspects were named.

Gerritsen set the page up in August 2013 with the intention of using it to find offenders, send out prevention messages, and share better work stories.

"It creates interest, so if we don't directly solve something from a post, people still talk about it and come in to see us with information. We probably solve about 50 per cent of what we put up, and most of that is within a day."

He adds a touch of humour to the page to make people more comfortable about approaching police.

"The big thing for me is to break down barriers between the police and the community ... people see us as unapproachable, and we're not."

Earlier in January he set up a live chat, inviting people to ask questions about police jargon and how they do things.

While Gerritsen was away over Christmas, the page's weekly posts dropped to 17,000 - now he's back and they're up to above 50,000.

He said although the Facebook page was good in some respects, people should still report crime through the usual channels - by phoning 111.
An Aedes aegypti mosquito that can transmit the Zika virus.

There has been 67 cases of the Zika virus in New Zealand since 2002, Ministry of Health figures show.

One man is in hospital after nine New Zealanders were diagnosed with the virus in 2016 after travelling travelling overseas.

The most widespread outbreak of Zika virus in history began in April 2015 in Brazil. According to Ministry figures, there were nine cases of the virus in New Zealand in 2015. This figure is provisional.

The 47-year-old man was admitted to Waikato Hospital with symptoms indicative of Guillain-Barre, a condition linked to the virus, which can cause paralysis. Most patients make a full recovery.

The man travelled to Tonga and arrived back in New Zealand on January 15.

* The Zika Virus: What you need to know

A Waikato spokesperson said the man was in a stable condition in a ward on Friday afternoon.

READ MORE:

* Zika fears an Olympic concern

* Ministry extends travel advice

* Zika virus outbreak raises Pacific, Americas travel concerns for pregnant women

* Six cases of Zika virus in Australia in 2015 as pregnant women warned not to travel

A 29-year-old Waikato woman was also infected and arrived in New Zealand from Samoa on January 17.

Four of the infected had been in Tonga, four in Samoa and it is not known where the other was infected.

Four of them were female. In two of those cases, the potential for pregnancy has been ruled out.

Further tests are underway for the two remaining women.

The Ministry of Health has extended its Pacific travel advice around the Zika virus to include Tonga as well as Samoa as an area of active transmission.

In the past four months, hundreds of Brazilian babies have been born with microcephaly - or abnormally small heads - believed to be linked to Zika.

At least four Zika deaths had been confirmed overseas, and dozens of others were suspected of being a result of the virus.

The eight New Zealands who have been confirmed as having the virus this year arrived in New Zealand from December 28, 2015 to January 21 this year.

The first recorded case in New Zealand was in 2002 and numbers have fluctuated since then.

THE NUMBERS

- 2002  1

- 2003/2013  none

- 2014  57

- 2015  9 (provisional)

THIS YEAR'S CASES

- A 50-year-old woman from Auckland arrived with the virus on 21 January after visiting Tonga. On the same day, an Auckland man, 63, arrived with the virus from Samoa.

- A Wellington woman, 41, arrived on 19 January from Samoa with the virus

- A Waikato woman, 29, caught the virus in Samoa, and came back to New Zealand with it on 17 January.

- A 12-year-old Auckland girl arrived from Tonga with the virus on 15 January. On the same day, a 47-year-old Waikato man also had it on his return from Tonga

- An Otago man, 49, arrived with it on 14 January. The country he was visiting was not recorded.

- Another Auckland man, 23, arrived from Tonga on 12 January carrying the virus.

- A Wellington man, 57, arrived on 28 December with the virus from Samoa.
Kulwant Singh at his trial in the High Court in Nelson in 2015. He was jailed for two years and one month.

A man described as "cooking up" stories about Indian workers being violently treated so they could gain refugee status has been sent to jail for two years.

Justice Robert Dobson described Kulwant Singh's actions as "critical" in arranging false refugee applications.

"I treat your involvement as cooking up these stories and the men going along with it as it was their best chance of staying in New Zealand," he said.

Kulwant was charged alongside Jaswinder Singh Sangha and Satnam Singh in a trial described as New Zealand's first human trafficking case.

Singh Sangha and his brother Satnam were found not guilty of human trafficking charges by a jury following the landmark trial that lasted 31 days and produced close to 2300 typed pages of evidence.

READ MORE:

* Brothers found not guilty of New Zealand's first human trafficking charges

* Trafficking trial: men accused of 'money making operation'

* Trio plead not guilty in New Zealand's first human trafficking trial

However, Jaswinder Singh Sangha and Kulwant Singh were found guilty of lesser charges of giving false statements to Immigration New Zealand officials. They were sentenced in the High Court at Nelson on Friday.

"Immigration fraud is treated very seriously by our courts," Justice Dobson said.

Dobson sentenced Kulwant to two years one month imprisonment for his "critical" involvement in the crime.

Jaswinder Singh Sangha was sentenced to 10 months home detention and 300 hours' community service.

During the trial the court heard from 11 Indian workers. They said they paid Jaswinder Singh Sanga and his brother large sums of money to help them live and work in New Zealand. Once in Blenheim Jaswinder Singh Sangha directed them to Kulwant Singh, an interpreter who worked for an immigration lawyer in Auckland. Kulwant created false stories about being subjected to violence in their homeland to improve their chances of gaining refugee status in New Zealand, the workers claimed.

The court heard that Kulwant had told them to lie in their interviews with the refugee status branch, and the workers paid Kulwant for his help.

The workers' applications for refugee status failed.

Justice Dobson described Jaswinder Singh Sangha's role in the crime as "the initiator" and that he encouraged the workers to participate in the lies.

He said the Refugee Status Branch was sensitive to the criticism that false claims could attract and this was considered in his sentencing of the men.

Dobson said despite Singh Sangha and his brother being found not guilty of the people-smuggling charges, he still believed the workers paid the brothers "large sums of money".

Crown prosecutor Mark O'Donoghue said Singh Sangha and Kulwant had "made a mockery of the whole refugee status process" and that the workers were "foreigners in a strange land".

"They followed advice and instruction from people they would have thought knew better than them," he said.

Singh Sangha's lawyer Ron Mansfield said his client owned a horticultural company based near Motueka which had "shrunk in size" as a result of the trial.

Mansfield said Singh Sangha would not likely be able to start another business to support he and his family if he was imprisoned.

The home detention sentence was "fair", Mansfield said afterwards.

Defence counsel Steven Zindel, who acted for Kulwant, said the sum his client received for his dealings with the Indian workers was no more than $3500.

Zindel said in his submission that Kulwant had once done "good work as an interpreter" but that had now been wasted as a result of the trial.

Stand Against Slavery chief executive officer Peter Mihaere questioned whether Singh Sangha's sentence would deter people from entering the country under false pretences in future.

"Without fully understanding the judgement by Justice Dobson I find the home detention and community service for Jaswinder Singh Sangha a perplexing result. The whole case has left me pondering a series of questions and the outcome today only adds to that list. I imagine those questions will only be answered outside the courtroom," he said.

He said while the brothers were found not guilty on the human trafficking charges, it would be "naive" to think trafficking doesn't happen in New Zealand.

"Rightfully or wrongfully this little battle was lost, but it is the tip of the iceberg and we must expose this issue here in New Zealand with every available resource to us," he said.

Immigration New Zealand manager of serious offences unit Cam Moore said in a statement the sentencings had shown they had done their job in bringing individuals "flouting the law" to justice.

"Any allegations of people trafficking and immigration fraud are taken seriously and will be fully investigated- it's a serious crime and ruins people's lives. I hope today's sentencing sends a clear message to others considering doing the same  act within the law or you will find yourself in court," he said.
A Hawera man's family who assumed he was dead have finally managed to make contact after 27 years.

Dennis Jones travelled to Wellington and lost contact with his family in the 1980's and now has terminal breast cancer, which is rare in men, so finding his family has come just in the nick of time.

Dennis' nephew Vaughan Jones called his estranged uncle several days ago and despite the joy at reconnecting with him he had to break the news only one of his four brothers was still alive.

Vaughan found out his uncle was still alive after a nationwide appeal for family members on Stuff last week, after attempts to find Dennis' family through Facebook were unsuccessful.

Vaughan said despite the length of time between them last seeing each other there was no awkwardness to their phone conversation.

READ MORE:

*Family responds to reunion plea from 'lost' former Hawera relation

*Dying Hawera man wants to find his family 'before it's too late'

"It was like we had just caught up last week," he said.

"It was mainly catching up about births and deaths in the family and it was hard telling him that only his brother Selwyn was still alive.

"He was pretty disappointed but he's almost 70 and getting to that age were that's just a fact of life.

"I think he thought he would have gone before the others though."

Vaughan said the wider Jones family were taking tentative steps towards meeting Dennis as they didn't want to all turn up at once and overwhelm him.

Dennis' sole surviving brother Selwyn Jones lives in Auckland now but was making the trip down to see his brother this weekend.

"The last time I saw him was just before he moved to Wellington he stayed at my house in Hamilton," he said. "I had no idea that would the last time I saw him in 27 years."

Selwyn said he had tried to track Dennis down several years ago when travelling through Wellington but they passed like ships in the night, Dennis having moved houses soon before his brothers arrival.

"Without hearing from him for so long the obvious thought that comes to your head is that he's dead," he said.

"But at the same time we hadn't heard that he was so it was always pretty 50/50."

Selwyn said he wasn't nervous to see his brother, just excited to catch up with him after not seeing him for more than half his life.
Daniel Ubertini's shot taken in late January at a marae in Rotorua  with the largest of the three unexplained objects circled. Two smaller, similarly-shaped objects were at the far left of the image.

Retired French photojournalist Daniel Ubertini, 67, had a slightly other-worldly experience in the Waikato 10 days ago.

As he uploaded shots taken at a Rotorua marae, he noticed something unusual.

There appeared to be three elongated objects in the sky  a larger one at the right side of the image, and two smaller ones on the left.

Viv Posselt/Fairfax NZ Daniel Ubertini with his 2009 UFO shot taken in Tonga (left), and his 1977 shot taken in Reunion Island.

"They are the shape of nothing I know," he said. "They were not aircraft, not birds  what were they?"

READ MORE:

* CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

* UFO sighting could be bees

* UFO sightings in Waikato skies

Ubertini has asked himself that question around several photographs he has taken over time  six to be exact. Most were taken before the day of the drone, where misidentification might be more plausible.

His first UFO shot was in Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

A subsequent photograph featuring a questionable image was taken in Tonga in 2009  then there were two in France during 2014, another in Tonga in 2015, and now the one in Rotorua in January.

The fact-driven photojournalist and aviation enthusiast is quick to deny anything akin to obsession around UFOs. But his tally is an unusual one.

"I took my first photo of a UFO in 1977," said the internationally-published Ubertini. "At that time I was not completely thinking of UFOs."

That incident was in Reunion Island, when he was photographing an Air France B747 taking off. When developing the shots, he noticed an object roughly the size of the engine flying above the wing, with an apparent 'tail' at the back.

In 2009, he discovered "a shape resembling a DVD with a hole in the middle" appearing above and behind a plane on the tarmac in Tonga.

He sent the shots to Arizona and to the French Space Agency investigations unit, Geipan - neither could identify the objects, and filed the images away.

Ubertini stayed with friends in Cambridge in late January en route to his home in the south of France. While here, he visited the Rotorua marae and took his most recent UFO shots.

"I never try to take those kinds of photographs  but I do photograph a lot of aircraft, and I do believe there are things happening that we cannot explain."
Feedback on the TECT proposal to build a custom community hub on Historic Village land closes on Sunday at 5pm.

About 70 people have shared their thoughts so far on the proposal to build a two story building on the swampy undeveloped land at the eastern end of the site.
UPDATED 2.40PM: The Zika virus scare is closer to New Zealand than most people think, after confirmation a man has been admitted to Waikato Hospital with an illness associated with the virus.

The Ministry of Health has received its first Zika notifications for 2016 involving nine travellers whove recently arrived home from the South Pacific.
Schools nationwide are all able to connect to fast, reliable broadband, Communications Minister Amy Adams announced today.

With the new term starting next week, teachers, parents and students across the country will be delighted to hear that all schools can now connect to the information superhighway that is our Government-funded broadband network, Ms Adams says.

We set ourselves a challenge in 2010 to give all state and state-integrated schools access to better broadband speeds by 2016. Weve done this  on time and within budget.

Around 782,000 students from almost 2500 schools have had fibre laid to their school gate under the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) and Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) programmes.

Just in time for Term One, 97 per cent of schools covering 99.7 per cent of students are now able to connect to Ultra-Fast Broadband.

The remaining three per cent of schools are our most remote, and they too have greatly improved broadband delivered via wireless connections, Ms Adams says.

This Government wants our schools to be among the most connected in the world and getting them connected to fast, reliable broadband is a key milestone in achieving this.

Ms Adams says schools were given priority in the rollout and have been leaders in terms of choosing to connect to fast broadband and learning how to make the most of it.

The first sod was turned in the UFB initiative at Manaia View School in Whangarei in December 2010. The final school connected was Kaitieke School in Owhango, in the Ruapehu district.

Since then, schools have actively sought Ultra-Fast Broadband connections. When combined with the thirst for professional development and skills for 21st century teaching and learning, schools are really maximising the use and potential this world-class technology brings, Ms Adams says.

According to a 2012 study, faster and more reliable broadband speeds will reduce the cost of course materials and save on field trips. The result is a $3.6 billion consumer surplus over 20 years. There are likely to be 25 million fewer days of missed school due to sickness and truancy, by using remote learning applications and better collaboration between parents and teachers.

The benefits of rolling out broadband to schools is wide-ranging, and part of the National-led Governments plan to deliver world-class education to our youngest New Zealanders.

Some 90 per cent of schools have also already connected to the Governments managed Network for Learning, which ensures schools have equitable access to safe, predictable and fast internet with uncapped data, as well as high quality teaching and learning resources.

Source: Office of Amy Adams.
Matthew Lock wore a beanie or a hat every time he left the house for seven years after his 11th birthday.

Now, the 25-year-old goes to Bayfair and people stare. Now Im just used to it, says Matthew. You just sort of smile back at them.
Shes cute and cuddly with dark sleepy eyes, a long slender nose and short stumpy legs  but what she doesnt have is a name.

The Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust is calling on people to help them name their new four-month-old baby kiwi chick who is set to be released at their Warrenheip Creche in Cambridge next week.
Police are asking for any information that may lead to the whereabouts of a Bay of Plenty man, who has three warrants for this arrest.

Tukotahi Williams, 33, is accused of assaulting a female and is also wanted on driving whilst disqualified matters.
The Australian-first Aerostructures Innovation Research Hub (AIR Hub) will bring together the best of Victorias aerospace research, design and manufacturing leaders to work with industry on the next generation of air mobility.
rome sex bars.jpg

Joseph Lamphier

(Provided photo)

Rome, NY - An Oneida County man has been arrested and charged with first-degree sexual abuse, a felony, in connection with an incident involving a 7-year-old girl, Oneida county sheriff's deputies said.

Joseph Lamphier, 19 of 365 Park Drive Manor 2, Rome, was arrested about 7 p.m. Thursday after an investigation by the Oneida County Child Advocacy Center and the Rome police department, police said.

He is being held in the Rome jail.

The investigation is continuing and deputies said there may be additional charges. The victim has been offered counseling.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Authorities will discuss the November 2015 murder of Kingston Ellis Friday morning at a news conference at police headquarters.

Chief Frank Fowler called the news conference for 9:30 a.m., immediately after a previously scheduled conference on an unsolved murder from 2001. It was not clear what Fowler would discuss, though he typically holds such news conferences to announce an arrest.

Ellis, 32, was shot around 2:30 a.m. Nov. 15 at a small apartment building at 206 Hawley Ave. in the Hawley-Green neighborhood. When police arrived they found Ellis wounded. He was rushed to the hospital where he died.

Police cordoned off both 206 and adjacent 210 Hawley Ave while officers investigated. Some donned moon suits at photographed and surveyed the scene.

Andy Samuel, who has lived in a nearby house for 10 years, said after the murder that he woke up around 2:30 a.m. that day after hearing a gunshot. But he didn't think much of it because gunshots are not unusual, he said.

Samuel acknowledged that the neighborhood has dealt with crime, but said the problems were largely caused by outsiders, not the people who actually live here.

"It's the people who come around the neighborhood," he said. "There's a lot of good people here."

Since the murder, police had not released any new information about the case.

Contact Ken Sturtz: 315-766-7833 | Email | Twitter | Facebook | Google+
Woodrow D. Holmes Jr.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A Syracuse man has been charged with murder after he shot and killed a man in November during a domestic dispute in Syracuse's Hawley-Green neighborhood, police announced today.

Woodrow D. Holmes Jr. was arrested Thursday in South Troy and charged with murdering Kingston Ellis in November 2015. Holmes, 30, was charged with second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies.

Holmes is accused of shooting Ellis three times, hitting him in the eye and head area, the torso and a thigh, according to the charges read aloud at his arraignment.

The argument that ended in Ellis' death was sparked by a domestic violence incident, Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler said during a news conference.

Ellis, 32, received phone calls a few hours after midnight on Nov. 14 about a domestic dispute at 206 Hawley Ave., Fowler said. The calls convinced Ellis to go to the home and speak to the people involved, Fowler said. He declined to say who was involved in the dispute or what happened during the fight.

When Ellis arrived at the Hawley Avenue home around 2:25 a.m., he and Holmes got into a fight, Fowler said. Holmes shot Ellis repeatedly before fleeing, Fowler said.

"This wasn't a random act," Fowler said.

When police arrived, they found an unconscious Ellis laying in a first-floor hallway, Fowler said. Ellis died soon after at Upstate University Hospital.

Witness interviews, neighborhood canvassing and physical evidence led police to Holmes, who had fled the city, Fowler said. Although a warrant for Holmes' arrest was issued Dec. 1, police couldn't find Holmes.

On Thursday, police learned Holmes was staying in a Troy apartment, Fowler said.

The Troy Police Department and New York State Police searched 823 Griswold Heights around 5:50 p.m. and found Holmes, Fowler said. Holmes was arrested without incident and transported to Syracuse.

Fowler said there are no other suspects.

At arraignment, City Court Judge Vanessa Bogan noted that Holmes had two prior felony convictions. Court records show he was found guilty in 2005 of attempted robbery and spent a year in jail. In 2007, he was convicted again of drugs and spent 3 1/2 years in state prison.

Syracuse police officials held news conferences today to discuss Ellis' murder and the cold-case murder of Jill-Lyn Euto, an 18 year old whose 2001 death remains unsolved.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Jill-Lyn Euto's family has spent 15 years mourning her death. During those grief-filled years, the Syracuse teenager's killer has remained free.

Her family and the Syracuse Police Department want to change that.

On the 15th anniversary of the day Euto's body was found, the department's cold case squad held a news conference to again ask the public for tips about her murder. Euto's sister, Jenna Euto, asked the community -- including the family of the unknown killer -- to help her family find justice.

"Whoever did this to her is still out there living their life while we have to go on living our lives without Jill," Jenna Euto said.

Standing near a photograph of a Euto smiling, Syracuse Detective Tom Murfitt provided an overview of how the teenager's death was discovered.

Euto, 18, made plans on Jan. 28, 2001 to watch the Super Bowl with her mother and sister. She never showed.

Jenna Euto and their mother, Joanne Browning, found Euto's body in her 600 James St. apartment the next day. The teenager had been stabbed repeatedly.

"It was apparent that she had been the victim of a brutal homicide," Murfitt said. "It is unthinkable what Jill's mother and sister were left to find that day."

Detectives have repeatedly interviewed the tenants who lived in the James Street apartment building when Euto was murdered, Murfitt said. They have kept an eye on "several" people and believe enough evidence exists for a DNA profile, he said.

But detectives need help from the community to find a suspect, he said.

Jenna Euto asked residents to call police with any information, even details that seem small. She also urged the killer's family to come forward -- asking them to imagine losing a loved one and waiting 15 years for justice.

"I know that you would want closure," she said.

Murfitt asked anyone with information about Euto's murder to call (315) 442-5234 or email coldcasesquad@syracusepolice.org.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- The layer of sand designed to keep toxic chemicals sealed at the bottom of Onondaga Lake is working well despite three small "disturbances," a state official said today.

Ken Lynch, regional director for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the three cap failures were small and are being cleaned up by Honeywell.

"It's a very small area, and that small area is easily addressed by modifying the cap," Lynch said. "The requirement is that Honeywell continue to monitor and implement the remedy."

According to DEC documents, a total of six acres of the cap slid off steep underwater slopes in the three separate capping failures in 2012 and 2014. The soft, contaminated muck beneath those areas contaminated nearly 40 acres of lake bottom that had been relatively clean. That's nearly 10 percent of the approximately 450 acres of lake bottom that will be capped..

The Onondaga Nation said today that the cap failures in 2012 and 2015 show that the plan to cover over, rather than remove, 9.5 million cubic yards of contaminated lake bottom is flawed.

In this 2013 file photo, state Department of Environmental Conservation Regional Director Ken Lynch answers a question from a Camillus resident concerning the air quality monitoring of the sludge being piped from Onondaga Lake.

Lynch said a 2015 Environmental Protection Agency report concluded that the cap will keep toxic chemicals from moving into the water.

"It's very clear in reading that report that despite the few disturbances in the cap, it is still protective and still serving its original purpose," he said.

As part of a 2005 cleanup order, Honeywell had to dredge 2.2 million cubic yards of lake bottom contaminated with mercury, PCBs and other chemicals dumped by industries along the lake. Honeywell also has to cover about 450 acres of lake bottom with a mixture of sand, carbon and other additives to seal in toxins left in the muck.

The Onondaga Nation said all of the toxic lake bottom should be removed. Lynch said that was considered before the 2005 order, but the combination of dredging and capping was considered the most feasible approach.

Honeywell spokesman Victoria Streitfeld said Honeywell has been working with EPA and DEC "to adjust the methods of placing the cap to address soft sediments." She declined to answer specific questions, and referred Syracuse.com to Honeywell's October report to DEC.

Nation officials also said they were not informed of the cap failures despite monthly phone calls with the EPA and DEC. Lynch said today that the DEC gave the Onondaga Nation details about the capping problems as soon as the DEC had them.

"I do know that we made them aware of the disturbances as early as May 2015, and since that time they have been a regular topic of discussion," he said. "They had expressed concern that we didn't let them know sooner, but I would say as soon as we knew the full extent of these disturbances we brought it to their attention."

Lynch said Honeywell has already started work on repairing the damage by applying more frequent but thinner layers of the sand mixture to cover the disturbed areas.

Streitfeld said the capping operation is 90 percent complete, and will be finished this year.

Lynch said Honeywell and DEC will continue to monitor the cap for years after it's completed.

Contact Glenn Coin: Email | Twitter | Google + | (315) 470-3251
Chobani yogurt.JPG

UTICA, N.Y. -- A federal judge today put the brakes on Chobani yogurt's advertising campaign that ridiculed the products of its top competitors.

The ads cite Chobani's commitment to natural sweeteners and make fun of the ingredients in the yogurt of two of its competitors -- Dannon and Yoplait. One ad cites Dannon's use of sucralose in its Light & Fit yogurt and says it contains chlorine.

Another ad says Yoplait's Greek 100 uses potassium sorbate and says it's used to killed bugs.

"Chobani is free to continue to spread its message about the value of selecting natural ingredients," U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote in a 25-page decision. "It is not, however, free to disseminate the false message that sucralose renders Dannon's products unsafe to consume."

Hurd also ruled Chobani's ad about Yoplait's ingredients was false. He granted a request from the yogurt's manufacturer, General Mills, to order Chobani to stop the ads.

Chobani, the Greek yogurt company headquartered in Norwich, Chenango County, started TV commercials three weeks ago for its Simply 100 reduced-calorie yogurt.

The ads ended last weekend, as scheduled, a Chobani spokesman said.

Peter McGuinness, Chobani's chief marketing and brand officer, said the company was disappointed but was awaiting its day in court for a final ruling on the matter.

"This is not a marketing campaign, it's a mindset campaign, and it outlines the difference between using only natural ingredients versus artificial ingredients," McGuinness said in a news release."We're committed to continuing the conversation and it's good to see big food companies like General Mills starting to remove artificial ingredients from some of their products, like their cereals."

Chobani posted a letter on Twitter today about its ingredients.

In one Chobani ad, a woman sitting by a pool throws a container of Dannon's Light & Fit into a trash can as an announcer says, "Sucralose? Why? That stuff has chlorine added to it."

In another ad, the woman throws a Yoplait Greek 100 yogurt out of her car. An announcer says, ""Potassium sorbate? Really? That stuff is used to kill bugs."

Dannon quickly sent a "cease and desist" letter to Chobani two weeks ago, demanding that it stop running the ads because it claimed they were false and misleading. Chobani responded with a federal lawsuit, asking a federal judge to decide the question.

Hurd granted Dannon's and General Mill's requests for a preliminary injunction, meaning Chobani cannot run the ads on TV or in print, at least until the dispute fully plays out in court.

Dannon, calling Chobani's ads false and misleading, hailed the ruling as a "victory for consumers who love Light & Fit.":

"Contrary to what Chobani has said, its Simply 100 ad campaign is not about providing consumers with choice," Dannon spokesman Michael Neuwirth. "We have always used only safe ingredients to make a wide variety of yogurts that are enjoyed every day by millions of people."

Contact John O'Brien anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-2187
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- In her State of the City address tonight, Mayor Stephanie Miner covered an array of topics, but infrastructure dominated the dialogue.

Miner delivered her 53-minute address to a crowd of politicians, community leaders and citizens at the Southwest Community Center Thursday night.

In the speech, she invoked Martin Luther King Jr., pointed to the issue of poverty in the city, touted increased graduation rates and decreased dropout rates in city schools and acknowledged the need for further economic growth.

She mostly avoided the hot topic of government consolidation, other than to thank the Consensus commission for its report and encourage public involvement. She did, however, raise several questions while discussing a "new era of local government."

"Both the troubling turn of events associated with the Inner Harbor project, and the work of the Consensus Commission on local government, highlight the difficult questions that surround these fundamental issues: How should a struggling community foster robust economic growth without allowing developers to take advantage of us? How do the most disadvantaged among us maintain a seat at the table when decisions are made about our collective economic future? How do we thoughtfully adapt our local government structures in ways that improve efficiency and service delivery, but also promise equitable representation across our entire community?"

She announced the recruitment of 25 new police officers and 25 new firefighters who will be sworn in this spring. Last year, she said, 36 police officers retired from the force.

She talked about new technology to improve the timing of traffic signals and reduce wait times. The second phase of a project that uses CCTV and fiber optic networks to improve 44 more traffic signals.

The bulk of the speech, however, focused on infrastructure solutions researched by her i-Team.

"I'm making you all care about infrastructure whether you want to or not," Miner said.

Miner described Syracuse as being "on the leading edge" with the new infrastructure technology. A device for mapping road deficiencies, for example, is currently only being used in New York City. Other gadgets, like sensors to detect leaky pipes, are being used in Boston and Montreal.

In attendance Thursday were city officials and state and county representatives, including County Executive Joanie Mahoney, Sen. John DeFrancisco, Sen. Dave Valesky, Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter, Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli and Assemblyman Al Stirpe.

Also in attendance was Rich Puchalski, executive director of Syracuse United Neighborhoods. Puchalski spent the evening silently protesting with a sign decrying drug and violence problems in Syracuse neighborhoods.

"Our neighborhoods are under siege - not enough is being done," the sign read.

Contact Chris Baker at cbaker@syracuse.com or follow him on Twitter
Donald Trump tweet Megyn Kelly

Donald Trump retweeted this photoshopped image of Megyn Kelly with a Saudi prince.

(Twitter | @realdonaldtrump)

Donald Trump didn't participate in Fox News' Republican presidential primary debate on Thursday, but he still dominated much of the conversation throughout the day.

The GOP candidate criticized the network again Thursday morning, including posting photos of Syracuse native and Syracuse University alumna Megyn Kelly. In one, he retweeted a supporter who called the "Kelly File" host a "bimbo" for criticizing Trump for objectifying women while posing seductively for GQ magazine in 2010. In another Twitter post, he shared a photo that shows Kelly standing between billionaire Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and a woman in traditional Islamic clothing that is supposedly his sister.

Syracuse native and Syracuse University alumna Megyn Kelly attends The 35 Most Powerful People in Media event hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, on Wednesday, April 16, 2014 in New York.

The Saudi prince photo is fake, Photoshopping a red carpet picture of Kelly attending The 35 Most Powerful People in Media event in 2014 next to Al-Waleed.

Time reports the caption on the meme, claiming Al-Waleed is a co-owner of Fox News ("Google it!"), is also incorrect. Fact-checking website Politifact says the billionaire only owns 7 percent of the company, though he does have a "healthy business relationship" with Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch. (The meme also misspells Megyn's first name as "Mygan.")

Al-Waleed, also a Syracuse University graduate, blasted Trump on Twitter.

"Trump:You base your statements on photoshopped pics?I bailed you out twice;a 3rd time,maybe?" he tweeted, referring to previous investments made in Trump's business.

Al-Waleed also previously criticized Trump after the presidential candidate called for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the country.

The New York Times also made waves Thursday when it compiled "the complete list" of every time Trump insulted someone or something on Twitter since he announced his candidacy in June. Targets included other presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat; media personalities and organizations; celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and Samuel L. Jackson; and entire countries like Germany, Mexico and Iran.

Trump told Time last year that he should not be held responsible for the content in his Twitter retweets.

"There's a big difference between a tweet and a retweet," Trump said. "It's for other people. Let them find out if it's correct or not."

Trump skipped the Republican debate moderated by Kelly on Thursday, telling supporters at a rally in Iowa that he was "treated badly" by Fox News.

When Kelly addressed "the elephant not in the room" with the other candidates, Ted Cruz did an impression of Trump and Jeb Bush said he "kinda" missed him.

"He was a little teddy bear to me," Bush joked Thursday night. "We always had such a loving relationship there in these debates and in between with the tweets. I kinda miss him. I wish he was here."
Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich

Republican presidential candidates Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich appear before a GOP primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

(Chris Carlson)

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Who do you think won the Republican presidential debate on Thursday night?

Without the boycotting Donald Trump, seven GOP presidential candidates debated each other for two hours in a prime-time event carried live by Fox News Channel at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines.

The lively debate included a mock threat from Ted Cruz to walk out in the middle of the debate, taking a jab at Trump. Cruz said questions from Fox moderators were unfairly aimed at prompting the other candidates to attack him.

"If you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage," Cruz told Fox moderator Chris Wallace.

Wallace replied, "It is a debate sir."

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., later took a jab at Cruz over his threat, saying, "Don't worry, I'm not leaving the stage no matter what questions you ask me."

It was the seventh Republican debate of the 2016 presidential election and the last before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

It was also the first debate without Trump, who leads GOP candidates in national polls. Trump boycotted the debate in the midst of a feud with Fox News Channel.

The earlier undercard debate before the prime-time event featured four candidates with the lowest poll numbers - Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, who had not qualified for a national televised debate since August.

In the prime-time debate, the candidates fielded questions about foreign policy, the fight against terrorism, their plans for replacing Obamacare, climate change, immigration reform, and their plans for cutting the federal budget.

Rubio and Bush feuded over whether they had changed their records about supporting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Rubio also took on Cruz , the Iowa frontrunner with Trump, over his positions on immigration.

During an exchange with Cruz, Rubio said the Texas senator was willing to do or say anything in order to be elected. The comment prompted boos from the audience.

In the end, who do you think won Thursday's Republican debate? Please vote in the informal, unscientific poll above.

Donald Trump is not included in the poll because he did not participate in the debate. If you think he won by boycotting the event, please leave your comments below.

Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
Aframaxes to be stars of the future

Limited supply growth in the Aframax segment of only 3.5% through the end of 2020 in addition to paradigm shifts in demand (US exports, Panama Canal) will enable this sector to outperform the larger crude tankers.

Aframax earnings may benefit from additional triangulation opportunities in the Atlantic Basin. Additional Caribbean exports to the US and Europe are likely to result in increased demand for tonnage and with a measured supply outlook; we anticipate owners will earn $28,396 per day on average through 2020 for Aframaxes. according to McQuilling Services in its 2016-2020 Tanker Market Outlook, published this week. Oil demand growth will continue to be driven by non-OECD economies. As a result, non-OECD countries will make up 54% of estimated oil consumption by the end of 2020. Chinas oil consumption will rise by roughly 1.7 mill b/d to just shy of 13 mill b/d through 2020. However, improving economic sentiment in both the US and to some extent, Europe, could provide further support from OECD countries. The relaxation on the US crude export ban will see about 200,000 b/d (in addition to Canadian exports) of US crude flows to Europe and South America. Combined with an expected production decline of 400,000 b/d in North America, US refiners will look to augment domestic feedstocks with increased foreign imports. US Gulf refiners will revitalise trade with Middle East and Caribbean producers, while US Atlantic Coast refiners seek supply from West Africa in larger quantities, McQuilling said. For the clean sector, the expected demand growth of 4.5% in 2016, will be slightly less than average inventory growth of 4.6%, providing minimal pressure on rates for the larger clean tankers, which are expected to increase market share of transported clean petroleum products. Clean tanker earnings on the TC1 and TC5 routes are forecast to be $30,462 per day and $23,750 per day, respectively in 2016. A continuation in MR2 fleet inventory growth, coupled with gradually slowing demand growth, will place moderate pressure on freight rates in 2016, before the balance tightens, enabling rates to flatten out and eventually turn north towards the end of the forecast. On a triangulated basis (TC2/TC14), owners are likely to see returns of $16,498 per day over the forecast period, the report said. Over the next five years, McQuilling maintained its belief that the 10-year old tanker sector is likely to exhibit the firmest price appreciation. By 2020, the consultancy expected values for 10-year old crude tankers to be around 35% higher than their 2015 average prices. Specifically for 2016, VLCC, Suezmaxes and Aframaxes are expected to rise by an average of 21%. LR2s are projected to average $37.5 mill, their highest level since 2008. LR1s and MR2s are forecast to reach $27.5 mill and $20 mill in 2016, 21% and 9% increases from January, 2016 levels. For potential investors, McQuilling estimated that a 10-year old VLCC would return 17% unlevered IRR per year, if acquired at January, 2016 levels and held to maturity. On the clean side, an LR1 is projected to offer investors the best returns at just over 17% on an unlevered basis. Suezmax and Aframax 10-year old vessels would return 13% and 14%, respectively. In this years 2016-2020 Tanker Market Outlook. McQuilling said that it had incorporated a variety of new features to provide a more robust view of global trade flows and major tanker trades. For example - *Expanded the five-year forecast for freight rates and TCEs by five additional trades, totalling 18. *Included a five-year outlook for one and three-year timecharter rates. *Increased coverage of global trade flows to provide a more reliable demand picture for tankers. *Introduced demand model, which focuses on position data overlaid with proprietary tanker fixture data to give a real-time view of trade dynamics. *An in-depth look at the North American market with more precise regional breakdowns for a more comprehensive view of tonne/mile demand. Some of the most challenging questions facing the tanker industry today are covered in the report, such as: *How will US crude exports impact the tanker markets? *What impact will the return of Iranian crude have on tankers? *Which tanker sector will yield investors the highest returns? *What impact will the Panama Canal expansion likely have on tanker markets? ***The global supply glut and declining Asian demand growth will limit the impact of US exports on the global market for the foreseeable future. A study from Thomson Reuters Oil Research & Forecasts finds tightening price spreads between US and international crude futures will result in more storage buying, particularly from onshore suppliers to mitigate traditionally higher transportation costs. The reports highlights are - *US production continues to decline, but slowly. US producers instead are focused on moving new barrels to US Gulf Coast storage for refining exports and opening up the US East Coast to more West African imports. *Shale crude demands from the US refining sector is down 25% from 2014 levels. An estimated 1 mill bpd of surplus crude is potentially for export. This surplus volume is likely to come from the Permian Basin in Texas, the Eagle Ford play in Texas, and the Bakken play in North Dakota. *Prohibitive inland transportation costs limit feasibility of US crude exports at current price levels with most grades requiring discounts of at least $8 relative to Brent to increase competitiveness. *Refinery economics suggests the Eagle Ford play in Texas is likely to be the crude of choice for import markets given higher demand and margins for gasoline and light end products. *A move towards more West African crudes will have a noticeable impact on US refined product production, stimulating greater output of heavier materials (fuel oil, diesel) at the cost of gasoline and jet production. Under current fundamentals, it will be some time yet before US crude becomes economically viable as a global supply, said Joshua Starnes, director of Americas, Oil Research & Forecasts at Thomson Reuters. Even a sudden price spike may not be enough to induce higher exports. If US supply levels are deemed too low or a price spike threatens the US economy, the President can decide to impose an export license again. Its not highly likely, but it remains a distinct possibility in a volatile oil market.




Bull run "could last another two years"

The tanker market has legs to last another couple of years, Tsakos Energys (TEN) Nikolas Tsakos said at a webinar organised by Capital Link this week.

Euronavs Paddy Rodgers said that at present, the oil market is supply led but demand is coming up and advised the industry not to sell the market down. Frontlines Robert Hvide Macleod said that even if the market is flat this year, 2016 will be a good year as 12-month timecharters were being quoted in January at close to last years levels. He later said that today oil majors and traders were locking into long term agreements and, as a result more period charters were being concluded than seen in the past two to three years put together. The webinar, involving the three industry heavyweights, was organised at a time when mounting criticism is being levelled by quoted shipowners against the reasoning for what was perceived as a shortfall in tanker shippings share prices when the market had been on a bull run for six or seven quarters. Rodgers said that assets values were falling which was good news for replacement tonnage and that the markets underlying values must be recognised. Macleod agreed that replacement values were going down. Tsakos pointed out that fuel costs had dropped by 60% resulting in vessel opex falling. He said that TEN currently enjoyed around $1 mill cash flow per day, which was not being reflected in the stock market. He was also of the opinion that some tankers would not last until their fourth special survey if charterers continued to insist on a maximum age of 15 years. Tsakos said that the market should remain positive for much longer, as long as owners kept their money in their pockets and didnt order newbuildings in the medium term. Rodgers said that the percentage of new orders was by no means extreme and the threat of the orderbook was over estimated. He also said that Euronav, together with Clarksons, had examined the orderbook and taken some tonnage out while other orders would slip into the following years, meaning that the figures were lower than quoted. Macleod stressed that there seemed to be a fear of believing in the market going forward. He said that crude oil production had been rising since early 2015 and if this continues, the strong market will be sustained. Raising capital was seen as a problem. Rodgers explained that when agreeing to buy four VLCCs from Metrostar there were options for another four. He said that Euronav decided to go ahead with the first four, as they could be immediately funded but that the company could not commit to pay money in two years time for the second four without raising capital and to achieve this, Euronav would need to see a 15% return by the end of 2017. The company did not believe that this would happen, so did not firm up the options. He warned his fellow shipowners to stay focused. In two examples, he warned that the South Korean Government appeared less willing to support its shipbuilding industry and the shipping banks have been hit by the offshore and other sector downturns. Tsakos warned that the owners needed longer memories. He thought that the tanker sector was under consolidation. It is up to us to spoil it, he said.




EC stance upsets Greek shipowners

Last week, The Union of Greek Shipowners responded to the European Commissions decision, which alleged that some provisions of the Greek shipping taxation regime are in breach of EU state aid provisions.

In particular, the EC cited the conditions set out in the current Community Guidelines on State Aid to Maritime Transport (SAG). The UGS said: As the official representative of the Greek shipping sector, the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS) has the duty to point out that there is no effective distortion of competition in the maritime field in the EU and that any fundamental changes to the institutional and fiscal framework in which the Greek shipping community is presently operating, would have unforeseeable consequences, which would be detrimental not only for Greece but also for the rest of the EU as they would seriously undermine one of its most important strategic sectors which remains prominent internationally in the face of fierce competition. During the informal investigation of the European Commission, which commenced in 2012, the main arguments put forward by the Greek authorities and the UGS were based on the following facts:  The Greek institutional shipping regime predates the State Aid Guidelines (SAG) by many years. In particular, the Greek institutional framework for shipping taxation and especially the Greek model of tonnage tax for ships was introduced in 1953 and re-established in 1975 and became more or less the precedent for the development of the SAG and of regimes in the EU and internationally. Hence, Greece is not exceptional in this respect.  The Greek maritime framework constitutes pre-accession law, which was recognised during the accession of Greece to the EEC in 1981 and has not been questioned until now and is an important part of the policy to attract inward investment in the maritime sector.  DG COMPs present investigation and decision are not the result of a formal complaint.  A large part of the Greek shipping taxation regime is underpinned by constitutional guarantees, which were put in place following the overturning in 1974 of the seven-year military dictatorship in Greece. It is significant that the 1997 Maritime SAG was not introduced in the form of an EU Directive or Regulation with a view to imposing uniformity of application across the member states. The SAG deliberately provides a flexible soft law, which can take account of the different characteristics, size and importance of shipping in the member states and the ability and willingness of member state governments to adopt its provisions. In this respect, they provide a framework, not a level playing field since even the levels of tonnage tax paid for vessels of the same size differ from member state to member state. Nevertheless, the SAG has been successful in stemming de-flagging from EU registers and in meeting intense international competition for the establishment of shipping companies. It is worth noting the severe demise of the EU commercial shipbuilding industry for lack of appropriate support to deal with international competition. The decision of the European Commission regarding the Greek shipping taxation system and its statement that it will be used as a precedent for the assessment of other EU shipping regimes will seriously disrupt the shipping sector in the EU after 20 years of successful growth without formal complaints and negligible intra-EU re-flagging or re-establishment of shipping companies. Greek shipping is engaged primarily in the bulk/tramp cross-trades worldwide, which are a textbook example of free and fair competition and one of the last remaining truly entrepreneurial sectors comprising primarily small and medium-sized unquoted private companies, mostly family businesses. It is important that the characteristics of this business model are understood and supported. The Greek shipping sector has provided and continues to provide multifaceted benefits to Greece of financial, social welfare and strategic importance. As reports by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) state, Greek shipping contributes over 7% of GDP, provides employment to 200,000 people and covers over 30% of the trade deficit. Equally important are the benefits for the European shipping (a percentage exceeding 46% of which is owned by Greek interests) and for the European maritime cluster and economy. The UGS is concerned that the negative climate created by the Decision regarding Greece risks severely undermining one of the Greek economys primary pillars at a time of exceptionally high unemployment and urgently needed growth prospects and the EU may lose a substantial part of its fleet and maritime cluster. Such developments are not in line with the Commissions declared policy agenda for growth, employment, improved competitiveness and better regulation, the statement concluded.




Latvians to take three MRs under management

In the first half of this year, JSC Latvijas kugnieciba subsidiary, LSC Shipmanagement (LSCSM) will take three newly built MRs under technical management.

The first of the three MRs was delivered on 11th January from South Korean shipbuilder SSP  Elandra Spruce. The next addition to the fleet is expected in April  Elandra Palm and in May, Elandra Oak will join the fleet. We are delighted that the tanker Elandra Spruce has been handed over for LSCSM to manage  that attests to the professionalism and skills of our crews and shipmanagement team. We will continue providing highly professional services to our clients in accordance with the highest international safety standards, emphasised Robert Kirkup, Chairman of the Board of JSC Latvijas kugnieciba.




Prestige Master blow

Spains Supreme Court this week sentenced the Master of the tanker Prestige to two years in prison.

The vessel sank off Spains northwestern coast in 2002, covering thousands of kilometres of coastline in fuel oil. The Master, Apostolos Mangouras, was convicted of recklessness resulting in catastrophic environmental damage, according to a statement by the court. This overturned a previous sentence, which cleared him of criminal responsibility. The sinking of the Greek tanker, which was sailing to Gibraltar, released an estimated 63,000 tonnes of black fuel along the Galicia coast forcing the closure of the countrys richest fishing grounds. The new ruling opens the door to damage claims against the Master and the insurer, The London Steamship Owners Mutual Insurance Association, with one prosecutor calling for more than 4 bill, according to Reuters. The Galician regional court had previously concluded it was impossible to establish criminal responsibility and that the disaster was partly due to the 26-year-old tankers poor state of repair. In Tuesdays ruling, Capt Mangouras was accused of guiding the tanker in treacherous conditions with full knowledge of its weakened structure while the ship was overloaded by at least 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil, Reuters reported. Responding to the Spanish Supreme Courts decision, ITF seafarers section chair, Dave Heindel, said: This decision represents the dying gasps of a 14-year old attempt to deflect blame onto the shoulders of an octogenarian man, who has been cleared in the court of world opinion and by his peers. Thankfully it is likely to be as unenforceable as it is illogical. This innocent man cannot again be made to sit needlessly in jail. The Mangouras case was one of the worse examples of the knee jerk criminalisation of seafarers. The ITF, like many other organisations and individuals, was able to support him during that ordeal. This latest piece of victimisation reminds us that we must all remain vigilant to protect seafarers from these injustices,he concluded.




Seventeen refugees were rescued by a Columbia Shipmanagement (CSM) Singapore-managed tanker on 15th January, 2016.

Whilst the vessel was on route to Kingston, Jamaica, the unnamed tanker responded to an alert from another vessel requesting assistance with the rescue of 17 persons from a raft.

CSM technical superintendent Nizamul Islam was immediately notified, and remained in close contact with the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and the vessels owner, the company said.

All 17 persons: five female, 12 male, were brought on board in good health. The refugees were given food and clothing, after being at sea for 15 days on the raft.

They were disembarked in Kingston, Jamaica by the local authorities a day later and were taken to a Red Cross institution until further repatriation to Cuba.

Tan Suan Jow, MPA director, expressed his thanks to CSM Singapore, Please accept our commendations and appreciation to the crew of the Columbia-managed tanker for their gallant deeds.
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Although Hilary McKeich is stepping down as executive director of the Indiantown Chamber of Commerce, she'll still remain active with the chamber, including continuing to run the Indiantown Rodeo. Shown is Cody Gornto, of Davie, as he ropes a steer at last year's rodeo. (FILE)

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By Paul Ivice

INDIANTOWN  The Chamber of Commerce is looking for a new executive director because Hilary McKeich announced her resignation Thursday.

During her five years in the job, the chamber increased membership by about 33 percent to 200 and now has two full-time employees compared with one part-time director.

"We've doubled the chamber's operating budget over the five years and opened more than a dozen new businesses," she said.

McKeich will remain on the chamber's board, a spot she held before taking the job as executive director.

She said she will stay involved in the community, including continuing to run the annual rodeo in October, one of Indiantown's biggest events.

"I'm back to a volunteer," McKeich said. "The chamber will get me for free now that someone else will be paying me."

KUDOS

McKeich starts her new job Monday as business development manager for Group One Safety & Security, a 32-year-old, Stuart-based company that provides commercial and residential security systems.

She was given a standing ovation by the 75 or so people who attended the chamber's first-ever luncheon Thursday at the Boys & Girls Clubs. McKeich said the chamber plans to begin having quarterly luncheons, and eventually having them monthly.

Chamber Vice President Shawn Keil, district executive director of the YMCA of the Treasure Coast, told McKeich, "You turned this town around and made this chamber one of the best."

Another board member, Indiantown Realtor David Powers, said, "You've done a phenomenal job."

Chamber President Vicky Yatsko, broker-owner of Monarch Realty Group, said of McKeich, "She's put Indiantown on the map. She brought the community and the local businesses into the spotlight, and has been the driving force in the success of the community.

"We'll never be able to fill her shoes, but we hope to find somebody that can carry on the responsibilities and still put the community and local businesses as a priority."
By Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm

VERO BEACH  Police detectives said the search for a murder suspect is taking them to North Carolina, where his girlfriend and his two children were found safe early Friday morning.

Maria Marisela Flores Lopez and her children went missing after a Jan. 21 fatal shooting in Vero Beach. Lopez's boyfriend, Edward "Geovani" Guardado Gamez, of Fellsmere, has warrants for his arrest and remained at large Friday.

Police Chief David Currey said Gamez dropped off Lopez and the children near an Interstate 95 interchange in Wade, North Carolina, about 5 a.m. Friday. He left in a white four-door Toyota sedan. Lopez and the children walked to a gas station for help.

Wade is more than 600 miles from Vero Beach.

Currey said Lopez is cooperating with detectives, who went to North Carolina on Wednesday based on tips Gamez would seek help from family and friends there.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement put out a missing and endangered child alert for the children, ages 4 and 1, on Monday.

Gamez is accused of shooting and killing Alejandro Baldanado, 26, in the driveway of the Baldanado family home on Highland Avenue, Vero Beach police said. His brother, Efrain Baldanado, 22, was shot and wounded.

Currey said the deceased brother had a romantic relationship with Lopez, which may have led to the shooting.

A co-worker at the roofing company Gamez previously worked said he let Gamez borrow his pickup on the afternoon of the shooting, Currey said. Police said Gamez used the pickup to drive to the Baldanado home. Police found the pickup that evening, Currey said.

Gamez is described as a Hispanic man who is 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighs 160 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.
Maison Martinique

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By Dan Garcia

VERO BEACH  Seven former employees of a barrier island restaurant have filed a federal lawsuit seeking compensation for what they claim was a percentage of their tips that was unlawfully denied them.

The former staffers of Maison Martinique claimed in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce the management of the restaurant unlawfully infringed on their tip money by claiming it had the right to do so.

But an attorney representing the employees said the siphoning of the employees' tip money violated a federal regulation.

"We filed in federal court pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act," said attorney Alan M. Aronson of West Palm Beach. "It is an unpaid wages claim."

The lawsuit was filed by the seven former restaurant employees against Carlisle Grand LLC, the restaurant's management company on South Ocean Drive in Vero Beach. The management company's attorney, J. Garry Rooney, did not return phone calls seeking comment about the complaint. The restaurant manager also declined to comment.

In the lawsuit, the former employees said they worked as bartenders and servers at the restaurant at 1603 S. Ocean Drive.

The lawsuit claims that even as the restaurant was making more than $500,000 in annual gross revenue, it withheld a portion of the employees' tip money.

"With respect to all plaintiffs, they discovered soon after starting employment with defendant that it was taking from their wages 14 percent of all tips earned. Four percent was being used to pay for the defendant's bank fees (credit card processing fees) and the remaining 10 percent was used to pay their manager's salary," the lawsuit claims.

"The plaintiffs, on numerous occasions, complained to the defendant about the arrangement and requested repayment of the 14 percent of tips that had been unilaterally taken from them," the petition claimed.

However, "defendant never ceased from taking 14 percent of plaintiffs' earned tips, nor did it reimburse them," the lawsuit claims.

Aronson said some of the service workers joined the restaurant in 2006, but all the complainants left the eatery in 2014.

"We're asking to go back a maximum of three years," Aronson said of the alleged denial of compensation. "The law allows us to go back two years, and if we can prove the violation was willful, we can go back three years.

"It's going to be a while before it winds up in front of a jury. We're very early in the litigation," Aronson said.

Although the lawsuit does not seek a specific amount of compensation for the former workers, it seeks payment for the unpaid tips, court costs and attorneys fees.

"Pursuant to Florida statute, a party prevailing on its claim for unpaid wages is entitled to cost of the action and reasonable attorneys fees," the action states.
TALLAHASSEE  A land and water conservation fund would continue to pay for routine expenses such as vehicle purchases under a proposal unveiled Thursday, despite two pending lawsuits over the issue.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government rolled out its proposal on how to allocate money for the environment, including $868 million of dollars available through Amendment 1, approved by voters in 2014 to set aside money to purchase, restore and improve land and water resources.

Here are some highlights of the proposal, which still needs to clear the full Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate floor before the chamber negotiates a final budget with the House. The Legislature has until the March 11 end of the legislative session to pass a budget.

$4.2 million: That's roughly how many Amendment 1 dollars would pay for routine expenses similar to the ones that were the target of two pending lawsuits filed by environmental groups over the Legislature's use of the measure last year. The proposal uses the amendment to pay for aircraft purchases in the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and replacement of wildfire equipment, vessels and vehicles at the Department of Environmental Protection. The budget proposal isn't detailed enough to show whether Amendment 1 dollars are used for salaries and benefits as last year, which conservation groups say violates the amendment's intent. Committee Chairman Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, said using Amendment 1 dollars for salaries and benefits is "absolutely" justified. He also rebutted environmentalists' cries that the amendment should go into buying more land for conservation, saying that takes those properties off the tax rolls.

$22.3 million: That's proposed for the Florida Forever program to buy land for state parks and habitat preservation. Although it's slightly more than the $17.4 million approved last year, that's still a disappointing figure for environmentalists who want at least $100 million. A total of $82.6 million goes to land acquisition, including land needed to restore the Everglades.

$82 million: This also is a disappointing figure for Everglades restoration, said Eric Draper, Audubon Florida executive director. But that number has to increase if the Legislature passes a bill by Rep. Gayle Harrell and Senate President-elect Joe Negron, both Stuart Republicans, to make sure the lesser of $200 million or 25 percent of Amendment 1 dollars go into Everglades restoration. The bill, backed by the House and Senate leadership, cleared its first House committee stop Thursday and gives priorities to projects that reduce Lake Okeechobee discharges into the St. Lucie River. Among the Everglades restoration projects that directly impact the Treasure Coast is the C-44 Canal reservoir to hold and clean water that flows into the river.

$2.8 million: Part of this money would pay for eight new employees at the Department of Agriculture to inspect whether farmers are following pollution-reduction procedures around Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie River. Hiring more inspectors is crucial to enforce a controversial law Gov. Rick Scott signed last week that changes how the state regulates pollution in the lake from a permitting program to a cleanup plan that relies heavily on farmers following the so-called "best management practices," such as reducing fertilizer.

$5 million: That's proposed for water farming, which is when the state pays ranchers to hold water on their land that would otherwise end up polluting estuaries. The proposal doesn't break down which farms will get the money. Negron wants to get about $13 million  $5.5 million of which would be recurring for 10 years  for the Caulkins Citrus Co. farm in Indiantown, which pumps water from the C-44 Canal.
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By Andrew Atterbury of TCPalm

Whether discussing school grades, standardized tests or guns in school, the three Republican candidates vying for a wide-open District 54 House seat said decisions affecting education should made locally, not in Tallahassee.

Candidates Dale Glading, Erin Grall and Lange Sykes focused their campaigns on education at a forum Thursday night hosted by the Indian River County Council PTA. The candidates are vying for the seat held by Rep. Debbie Mayfield, who will reach her House term limit in 2016.

School grades issued by the state  based on Florida Standards Assessments scores and graduation rates, among other factors  are not an accurate representation of a school's performance, said Glading, an ordained minister involved in prison ministry.

"We need to loosen the ties between funding and test results," Glading said. "We need to put school grading back in the hands of professional educators, the local school boards and the people in the know."

Sykes said he supports alternative assessments for students, citing a bill that passed through a pre-K through Grade 12 Senate committee on Thursday, that would allow districts to choose the ACT Aspire test or the FSA.

The bill doesn't repeal the FSA or the accountability faced by teachers, but it could give schools another option, said Sykes, the regional vice president of sales and marketing for WISEarth Organics, a Dallas-based company that produces organic fertilizer.

School grades based on the FSA were heavily scrutinized this year for lacking components to measure student improvement. But Grall, who supports the FSA, urged critics to give it time because regular changes to the education system often leave teachers scrambling to keep up.

"We must give these assessment tools some time to work," said Grall, who runs a personal injury law firm and has been endorsed by State Senator Joe Negron.

Grall added, although standardized tests are crucial, school officials and parents need to join forces to show legislators that tying test scores to school funding is not going to show high levels of achievement, she said.

Sykes, who mentioned he is opposed to common core curriculum, said teachers should not teach to tests but instead offer lessons that benefit students after high school.

"Standardized tests are important, and certainly should hold weight with school,"he said. "It's up to us to find out ... the best way to tackle that issue."

As for the issue of guns on school campuses, when asked if 21 year-old college students with concealed-carry permits should be allowed to carry guns on campus, Glading said his education plan calls for at least two armed public resources officers in every school. He also supported open carry for college students ages 21 and older with a concealed-carry permit.

Sykes said, based on funding, schools should employ armed resource officers as needed and also supported college students carrying weapons on campus.

For Grall, who was the only candidate to address educators carrying guns, she said they must be highly trained in stressful situations and there must be no risk for students involved. She also supported permitting college students to carry guns on campus.

Early voting for the Aug. 30 primary election begins Aug. 20.
Rep. Debbie Mayfield debating a bill on the House Floor during session.

By Isadora Rangel of TCPalm

TALLAHASSEE  Rep. Debbie Mayfield's fight against Vero Beach's electric provider cleared another hurdle Thursday after getting close to defeat earlier this month.

A House committee unanimously approved her bill to rein in the Florida Municipal Power Agency, which provides electricity to Vero Beach and Fort Pierce. The Republican has been trying for three years to pass legislation to increase regulations on the agency and her bill almost died Jan. 11, when another committee narrowly passed it with a 6-5 vote as the FMPA told lawmakers the legislation would cause rate increases for its municipalities.

HB 579 requires the FMPA, a cooperative of municipal utilities, to disclose its financial information to its 31 members. That includes disclosing the fair market value of its electricity generating assets, which must be determined assuming the "price that a willing buyer would pay a willing seller." That information is crucial for Vero Beach because the city wants to sell its utility to Florida Power & Light Co., which can provide lower rates, but can't get an exit price to leave its contract with the FMPA.

Mayfield drafted the bill after a state audit found the agency lost $247.6 million in the last year because of risky business practices, including overly-compensated employees. The bill also requires the FMPA board of director members to be elected officials of the municipalities part of it because that will hold the agency accountable to ratepayers, she said. Critics say elected officials often times don't have the expertise or time to serve on the board, which meets in Orlando.

The FMPA opposes the bill and told the House Government Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday it already spends more than $100,000 per year preparing financial statements and the agency's information already is public record. The agency also said some of its members municipalities enjoy the lowest power rates in the state.

Other FMPA municipalities , including Fort Pierce, also oppose the bill and accused Mayfield of trying to solve Vero Beach's issues with statewide legislation.

"I don't know what you've been told about the FMPA," said Havana Councilman Matt Thro. "The facts are indisputable. The FMPA is doing a great job keeping rates low."

Yet other municipalities have had similar issues as Vero Beach. Green Cove Springs has been trying to exit its FMPA contract for five years but cannot get an exact exit cost.

"I feel like we have very little transparency with FMPA and it's been that way since almost the beginning," said Green Cove Springs Mayor Van Royal.

The bill needs to clear one committee before it can be heard on the House floor. Its Senate companion SB 840, however, hasn't been scheduled for a committee hearing.

More than 60 percent of Vero Beach electric customers live outside the city and pay rate 25 percent higher than provided by FPL, yet they don't have representation before City Council.

Tweets about from:IsadoraRangel2 OR from:ArekSarkissian OR from:jeffschweersTBO
It wasn't surprising only four hands went up Monday afternoon in a packed Riverside Theatre when Dr. Eric Topol asked who had a Twitter account.

One of those hands belonged to me; another to a woman named Mary Carpenter, who responded to a tweet of mine less than an hour after Topol mesmerized about 700 folks with tales of the "democratization" of medicine.

Millennials, had any had been present, would have cheering Topol, 61, chair of Innovative Medicine and professor of genomics at The Scripps Research Institute (which has campuses in La Jolla, California, and Jupiter). Even older folks cracked up when Topol showed a clip of what happened two-plus years ago when he used his smartphone to shoot video of the healing inner ear of Stephen Colbert on his Comedy Central show.

But Topol's speech also was a wake-up call to digital immigrants and digital avoiders: If you're happy waiting 2.6 weeks to get an appointment with a primary care physician or spending 61 minutes in the waiting room  Topol's average numbers  do nothing. Otherwise, start doing some research on smartphone devices and applications you, theoretically, can use to bypass local doctor offices and diagnostic facilities.

It relates to the title of Topol's latest book, "The Patient Will See You Now," which spins an old axiom. Nowadays, the trained cardiologist said, you shouldn't have to wait on the doctor: You get your own data and send it to him.

That's assuming local physicians and insurers are prepared for this wave of technology, which could cut into their profits. And if your docs aren't up on some of the latest technology, they should be, Topol said.

After all, he said, the stethoscope was a key part of a physician's black bag in 1911 (The device was invented in 1816.). Today's medical tools, which can be carried around by laymen, fit into a plastic Publix bag and are effective with a charged smartphone.

Already, 81 million people, he said, are hooked up to body sensors  including Fitbits, devices he called primitive.

Topol showed several small devices on stage or in a PowerPoint presentation. Some of my favorites or their uses:

The tiny Band-aid-looking device he said has been used to predict Ebola in the bloodstream. Such patches have been used to monitor glucose, avoiding the need to draw blood. In August, Google announced a partnership to create noninvasive glucose sensors in a device smaller than a bandage and in a contact lens.

The small device you place on a finger to get instant vital signs, even a cardiogram, on your smartphone.

The ultrasound, smaller than a stethoscope, attached to your phone. Imagine not having to go to the doc to see your baby. Topol also addressed other medical advances for mothers-to-be, such as "fetal sequencing." These genetic tests, done through blood samples, have led to 80 percent fewer, risky amniocentesis procedures. These tests predict chromosomal abnormalities and fetal infections.

Testing for sleep apnea in your own bed, without all the wires, possibly using a ring and avoiding a $3,500 charge and uncomfortable night of sleep in a hospital.

"The future of medicine is testing bodily fluids at home," Topol said, adding you'll get better results at a fraction of the price.

And while some in the medical community might not be thrilled with the innovation, U.S. corporations blistered by higher costs of insurance should be. Ultimately, he said, they will use their clout to get insurers to cover these lower-cost options. Topol said he thinks the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is doing an effective job overseeing the many new innovations.

In the meantime, he said, there have been some amazing discoveries related to genes. Ultimately, there may be kits so you can edit your genes  to get rid of the potentially dangerous ones  at home.

For now, though, you'll have to stick to tools you can research on the Internet  or with your physician's help  for diagnosis and monitoring.

My advice: Get a Twitter account. Follow Dr. Topol @erictopol.

And while you're at it, follow me @laurencereisman and @tcpalm for the latest news.

It can be good for your health.
The letter rekindled hope of derailing All Aboard Florida.

It also opened another potential legal front in the fight to stop the train.

And so it goes.

Every time a crack seems to appear in the Miami-to-Orlando passenger rail project, which is scheduled to begin running trains through our region in late 2017, officials in Indian River and Martin counties rush in to pursue their legal options.

And taxpayers get stuck with the mounting tab.

On Tuesday, the Indian River County Commission will consider a proposal to hire an additional law firm for its fight against the rail company.

The focus this time? The permits All Aboard Florida needs from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and St. Johns Water Management District to move ahead with the rail project in Indian River and Brevard counties.

The proposed agreement would pay the law firm of Shubin & Bass $295 an hour to evaluate the propriety of the permitting process. The county also would be responsible for associated legal costs, such as filing fees, depositions, travel expenses, et al.

The proposal sets no caps on the county's legal expenses. It also makes clear there is no guarantee of success.

What fueled the county's new legal strategy? A Jan. 7 letter from the corps to All Aboard Florida that stated the former's reluctance to approve permits for the northern section of the project before a federal environmental review is completed.

The letter stated, in part: "You are cautioned that commencement of the proposed work in waters of the United States subject to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction, prior to authorization, would constitute a violation of federal laws and subject you to possible enforcement action."

All Aboard Florida opponents hailed the rebuke as a sign the project may be in trouble.

That's one interpretation. Here's another: The correspondence is merely procedural. The corps cannot authorize the project until it receives all necessary information.

Reality check. I Googled the corps' statement above. It is common, boilerplate language used in other correspondence from the federal agency.

Nevertheless, Indian River County officials are preparing to spend an indeterminate amount of taxpayer money in the hope they'll uncover something amiss in All Aboard Florida's permitting process.

Good luck with that.

Since 2013, Indian River County has allocated about $2.6 million to the All Aboard Florida fight.

Not to be outdone, the Martin County Commission meets Feb. 9 to discuss funding, and possibly hiring additional counsel, to fight the rail project, according to the commission's meeting agenda.

In February 2015, Martin County commissioners earmarked $1.4 million to fight All Aboard Florida.

Our elected officials are doubling down on their bad bets.

Las Vegas would love these folks.

"Our best bet now is to work with All Aboard Florida and get what we need with respect to the train," said Keith Kite, an Indian River County resident and fourth-generation Floridian who is advocating for a train stop in our region.

I agree.

And I agree with Kite that Fort Pierce, because of its central location in our three-county area, is the best place for a station.

Kite said he plans to champion this idea before the Fort Pierce City and St. Lucie County commissions.

Currently, no train stops are slated for the Treasure Coast.

Another area of agreement with Kite? Our elected officials should quit spending taxpayer money to fight a project that increasingly appears to be inevitable.

Ironically, Kite and I have arrived at similar conclusions from opposite starting points.

Kite has been enthusiastic about All Aboard Florida since the project was announced several years ago. By contrast, I've opposed the train from the beginning  and still do. However, if Treasure Coast residents are going to be burdened with 32 daily passenger trains  and all the attendant headaches this will bring to our region  I believe we should at least get the benefit of a train stop.

The counties' spending to fight All Aboard Florida has reached the point of absurdity. And with little or no pushback from taxpayers, it is likely to continue  right up to the bitter end.
Russell Pires, of Royal Palm Beach, moves voting equipment including, signs, ballots and privacy booths into the Woman's Club of Stuart on Aug. 25, 2014. (ALEX SLITZ/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

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By Vicki Davis

As the nation elects its 45th president, Florida will play a decisive role in the process. Now the third-most populous state in the union, our 29 electoral votes are a vital component in any candidate's plan to win the highest office in the land.

With Florida's diverse demographics and divided party registrations, all eyes will once again be on the Sunshine State.

The Presidential Preference Primary usually prompts many questions from voters to the Elections Center, so we wanted to provide as many answers as possible.

The vote takes place March 15. But actual voting begins even sooner.

To vote by mail: Please go online to www.MartinVotes.com, call 772-288-5637 or visit the Elections Center, at 135 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Stuart, to request your ballot. Ballots are mailed 35 days before the election and continue to be mailed as requests are received through Thursday, March 10.

For military and overseas voters: Ballots are mailed to anyone out of the country seeking a vote-by-mail ballot as early as Jan. 29  45 days before the election.

Deadlines: If you're returning your ballot by mail, affix a 49-cent stamp and make sure it is in the mail no later than March 10. All ballots must arrive at the Elections Center no later than 7 p.m. Election Day, March 15.

Early voting: Cast your Presidential Preference Primary vote in person anytime from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 5-12 at the Elections Center in Stuart, or at the County Line Civic Center, 12530 S.E. County Line Road in Tequesta.

Remember that your vote-by-mail ballot will not be mailed to an address other than the one we have on file. To receive a mail-in ballot at an address that's not listed on your voting record, you'll need to send us a request in writing  including your signature and date of birth.

Make sure all of your information is up-to-date with the Elections Center, including your address and signature.

Also, make sure your party registration is current. As a closed-primary state, only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote in their respective party primaries.

Safeguard: You can make sure your ballot has arrived at the Elections Center on time by clicking on the "Track Your Ballot" feature at our website, www.MartinVotes.com.

Martin County residents are proud participants in the electoral process, usually ranking among the top in the state in voter turnout.

As election officials, my staff and I are privileged to work in a community with such engaged citizens. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or my dedicated staff at the Elections Center.

Thank you Martin County for making your vote count in 2016.

Vicki Davis is the supervisor of elections for Martin County.
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As the U.S. retail industry puts another long holiday shopping season behind it, a few changes appear to be taking place.

For one thing, it appears theres a new recipe for success. Growing a business requires more than setting up a fancy website, placing inventory into a warehouse, and engaging a service to make speedy deliveries.

Thats in part because customer expectations have changed. There are severe costs and challenges involved in building a successful e-commerce operation, and todays customers have little patience for an online experience that falls short.

As more and more retailers roll out mobile payment services, its critically important that they ensure their mobile apps maintain the same digital performance experience that their retail websites offer, or risk losing customers who are trying to make purchases over their mobile devices, Dynatrace analyst David Jones told the E-Commerce Times.

Millennials, in particular, are rather unforgiving of mobile shopping sites that fail to deliver, suggest the results of a Dynatrace-commissioned multinational Harris Poll conducted just before Black Friday.

Eighty-one percent of millennials shopping with tablets or smartphones said they would walk away from a buggy, slow, or crash-prone mobile site or app.

Also 51 percent of them said they would broadcast their bad experiences across social media, which could result in great damage to a retailers reputation.

Overall, retailers must be ready to compete for millennial shoppers. Sixty percent of them planned to do more mobile shopping than they did a year ago, and 62 percent planned to use mobile apps in making in-store purchases, according to the survey, which included responses from 5,110 smartphone users in five countries  the U.S., UK, France, Germany and Australia.

Another key component of the mobile shopping experience is growing demand for retailers to offer a ship-to-store option. That typically involves a customer ordering from a home, office or laptop computer or smartphone app, and then picking up the order directly from the store. Some customers order on behalf of others from a remote location  parents for their kids away at college, for example.

For traditional stores to have both the proper inventory and the technology available to give customers the right product in a timely manner is often a difficult task, noted Curbside CEO Jarod Waldman.

Curbsides mobile app lets customers buy from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, and quickly and efficiently pick up their orders.

What weve developed at the core is a very noninvasive way to notify stores that the customer is waiting outside for pickup, said Waldman.

Sears, which is facing brutal competition with Target, has been a leader of the trend to let online customers pick up merchandise on the same day.

Sears, founded in 1886, started out as a major mail order department store, allowing customers both to buy in-house and order goods from the legendary Sears catalog  which, for many rural customers, was the only means of accessing essential goods.

Sears offers customers the option of making transactions online and then picking up or returning goods at a store, using the in-vehicle feature of the Sears app. They can drive to a designated parking area and pick up, exchange or return an item in five minutes.

Were taking the stress out of shopping and letting them shop with us wherever, whenever and however they choose, said Leena Munjal, senior vice president for customer experience and integrated retail at Sears Holdings.

Fulfilling the Order

Another problem that plagues e-commerce companies is achieving fast, accurate fulfillment. Many online companies have large regional distribution centers with millions of products stored in large warehouses.

To meet that need, Newegg deployed Honeywells Vocollect, which uses a combination of radio frequency and voice recognition-enabled headsets to achieve radical improvement in the performance of its warehouse workers, who process more than 10 million packages per year.

The Newegg Memphis distribution center, which processed about 30 percent of its orders, was transformed from one of its lowest-performing facilities to one of the best, as the technology helped reduce errors by 23 percent, according to the company. The devices  headsets that pick up SKU orders from warehouse workers  helped reduce training time for new employees in an environment that relies heavily on seasonal workers.

Were faced with the significant challenge of fulfilling customer orders on time, said Kunal Thakkar, senior vice president of operations at Newegg. Because we receive thousands of orders an hour, we need to invest in technologies to automate and optimize processes.

Honeywell has worked with a wide variety of companies to make warehouse operations more efficient using the Vocollect devices. It has been beta-testing the technology with grocers in the U.S. and Europe that want to expand their businesses to process online orders at the store, according to Honeywell spokesperson Eric Krantz.

Full versions of the Vocollect systems are expected to roll out during the first half of 2016, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Overnight Delivery

Delivery of packages to customers is one of the biggest nuts to crack in the e-commerce chain. It is not only costly and time consuming, but also chancy, in that it often requires the retailer give up control of the process to a third party.

Amazon most famously fell victim to that pitfall during recent holiday seasons, when millions of packages were delayed due to logistical problems and sheer overload at the U.S. Postal Service, UPS and FedEx.

Amazon has been testing various options to take control of its own delivery service. The company last year launched Amazon Flex, a two-hour delivery service that pays local delivery workers up to US$25 to deliver goods for Amazon Prime customers.

Flex currently is available in the Seattle, Richmond, Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Baltimore, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis metro areas.

The company also has begun looking into buying its own fleet of aircraft. It has begun testing its own truck fleet, and it recently acquired the remaining stake of Colis Prive, a France-based delivery company in which it held a 25 percent stake.

UPS enjoys a good working relationship with Amazon, said spokesperson Natalie Norrington, but she declined to get into specific details of their relationship. Amazon is only one of many e-commerce companies that uses UPS services.

Overall, UPS remains a massive distributor of e-commerce packages. The company delivered more than 300 million packages in 2014, Norrington told the E-Commerce Times, which averages out to more than 14.3 million per day.

Forty-five percent of UPS e-commerce deliveries went to residential addresses in 2014. Residential deliveries as a percentage of total business are expected to grow by 50 percent over the next five years, Norrington noted.

The company is aware that peak season delivery requires taking steps to expand capacity.

During peak 2015, UPS increased its use of advanced scanning and sorting technology in more facilities to improve processing capacity, said Norrington, and upgraded visibility systems so that we had a more precise knowledge of all transportation assets during the holidays.
Movidius on Wednesday announced that its working with Google to put deep learning on mobile devices.

Google will source Movidius latest flagship chip  the MA2450  and software development environment, and will contribute to Movidius neural network technology road map in return.

That could result in smartphones and other mobile devices that will be able to understand images and audio swiftly and accurately.

The Movidius Technology

The MA2450 is the most powerful iteration of Movidius Myriad 2 vision processor unit, which the company said is the only commercial solution available to perform complex neural network computations.

The Myriad 2 is the first always-on vision processor, Movidius said.

It has a programmable architecture and comes with the Myriad Development Kit, or MDK, which includes a software development framework. That lets developers incorporate proprietary functions and build arbitrary processing pipelines while leveraging the vision, imaging, and linear algebra software libraries and reference vision processing pipeline examples Movidius provides, all as source code.

The MDK includes all necessary programming and debugging tools.

Movidiuss Myriad VPU processor powers GooglesProject Tango.

What to Expect

We can expect to see run-time deep neural networks for speech-to-text, vision and many other smart machine applications running in phones, cameras, automobiles, medical devices and others because the DNN models can be downloaded and run disconnected from the cloud,Gartner Fellow Tom Austin said.

Remember that working with Google on a project doesnt necessarily translate into products, cautioned Jim McGregor, principal analyst atTirias Research. However, this has the potential for almost any device and extends well beyond just facial recognition; this is machine learning.

Facial recognition and retinal scans the technology enables could significantly increase the level of security over fingerprints and even help identify people, he told TechNewsWorld.

Facial recognition could be used in two-factor authentication, and Google could bake it into Android as it did with fingerprint IDs, suggested Wayne Lam, a principal analyst at IHS Technology.

Google also could apply the technology to home security platforms, he told TechNewsWorld. Think Nest and other IoT uses.

Potential Uses for the Technology

Banks will begin using smart machines widely, and a report Gartners Austin co-authored suggests most banks will invest in six main types of smart machines during the next few years.

The smart machines resulting from Googles team-up with Movidius could make wireless banking more secure, he told TechNewsWorld.

Other possible uses include authenticating users or admins signing in remotely to an enterprise network, and tracking and authenticating users for security purposes and for provisioning or deprovisioning as needed.

Facial recognition and retinal scans are much more secure and user-friendly than any of the more common security solutions, Tirias Researchs McGregor said. This could allow users to log in and begin using platforms in a secure manner effortlessly.

The technology also could be used in wearables and industrial applications in the medical and industrial automation fields, where the Internet of Things might come into play, he suggested.

A New Trend Emerges

This capability is not limited to the Movidius solution, McGregor pointed out. Qualcomm is doing it in conjunction with its image signal processor, and this could be done within most SoCs by leveraging the ISP, DSP, GPU, VPU and CPU resources.

Microsoft, Apple and a whole range of social sites like Facebook,  Amazon, Baidu, IBM and a few thousand other firms might follow suit, Gartners Austin suggested.

As global smartphone sales slow, noted IHSs Lam, well see more and more efforts to create differentiated value for platforms such as Android and iOS just to keep up with the furious pace of competition and innovations.
Sony this week announced its Multifunctional Light, a ceiling lamp thats kitted out with sensors to talk to smart things.

It includes sensors for motion, illumination, temperature and humidity. Theres also the requisite WiFi radio, a memory card slot, a condenser microphone, and an infrared controller for air conditioners.

The lamp form factor offers convenient placement, said Sony Electronics spokesperson John Dolak. The device will be used to control other appliances and detect various things in or about a room, and we gave thought to where we could install it so that it would work as well as possible.

Ultimately, we decided to bring the platform to life in the form of a ceiling light, since the ceiling generally has few obstructions that might impede the effective operation of the Multifunctional Light, he told TechNewsWorld.

As for details on Sonys strategy with the doughnut-shaped Multifunctional Light, Dolak declined to share specifics. The company plans to launch the smart hub in Japan during the first half of 2016.

For the time being, we will focus only on the Japanese market, given that this is a new business venture and a new market for us, he said. Therefore we have nothing to announce about other areas at this time.

In Its Place

Sonys approach of building a hub meant to hang out of the way on a ceiling makes a lot of sense, said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst atMoor Insights & Strategy. Its targeting the Japanese market, where square footage comes at a premium.

Being fixed to the ceiling, it has line of sight to other devices it can control, which means theres less of a chance that a signal would get blocked by a wall or thick piece of furniture, he told TechNewsWorld.

It also does a good job, unlike a Nest, determining if a person is in the room. It seems as if every tech company wants to create their own smart hub, Moorhead added.

Come Together

Amazon, Apple, EasyAcc, GE, Google, Huawei, Iris, Kingwin, Orico, Samsung, SmartThings, Telus, Vera and Wink are just some of the companies offering their own smart home hubs.

Getting all those smart hubs to play nice, or even talk to one another, is likely a major factor hindering the adoption of connected home ecosystems. Home automation still has a way to go, as its in the third inning of a nine-inning game, Moorhead noted.

Today, we have ecosystems of devices that can work together (HomeKit, AllSeen, Nest, Insteon), he said, but until we see improved interoperability between all devices, lower prices, guaranteed privacy and security, and improved simplicity, home automation will be for the home enthusiasts and technophiles, not the general consumer.
Worldwide downloads of Android apps in 2015 were double those for iOS, but revenues from iOS apps were nearly twice those of Android, according to anApp Annie report released this week.

First-time device owners in emerging markets drove the huge increase in Android downloads, researchers found.

This growth opens up avenues for publishers to create new markets by targeting unmet needs of users in a given region, the report says.Meanwhile, app revenue increased notably year over year as iOS cemented its position as app store revenue king.

Biggest Revenue Generator

While the growing download disparity doesnt seem to be closing the revenue gap between the two mobile operating systems, it could impact revenues in another area.

This massive disparity could mark the beginning of major changes in mobile marketing, including substantial increases of Androids share of mobile ad spend, the report says.

During the year, iOS revenue growth was driven by sales in China, the United States and Japan, which contributed to 90 percent of the revenues at Apples App Store, it notes.

Of all the app categories, games easily topped the list of revenue generators for both Google and Apple, the report says, producing 90 percent of the app revenue for Google Play and 75 percent of the app revenue for iOS.

People are always buying new games, unlike other applications, noted Tom Cummings, director of account management atFiksu.

Indies Thriving

As a gamer, you might be interested in 20 games a year, he told the E-Commerce Times. Youre not going to be interested in buying 20 notepads a year.

The brisk sale of games offers opportunities for developers absent from other app categories, according to the App Annie report.

Games continue to drive huge volumes of downloads and store revenue, yet we are seeing new trends emerge as indie developers challenge top publishers, it says.

However, games reach the end of their life cycle very fast, making it important for publishers to find success for new games faster than ever, the report notes.

You dont see a new Angry Birds popping up everywhere, but you still see indie games popping up and doing well, Fiksus Cummings pointed out. Long-term growth, though, is hard.

Reason for Revenue Gap

The revenue gap between iOS and Android app sales has existed for some time.

iOS users tend to be more affluent and as a result spend more on apps, Ross Rubin, senior director for industry analysis at App Annie, told the E-Commerce Times.

In addition, iPhone users are more likely to use apps on their phones than Android users are.

Google Play has many more users, but for many of them, those Android phones are used like feature phones, said Jonathan Godfrey, vice president of public affairs forACT | The App Association.

Its hard to buy a feature phone these days, so people at the low end of the market are buying smartphones and using them as feature phones, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Income Discrepancies

Phones priced at $50 are very popular in places like India and China because people dont have a lot of money to spend on them, noted Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst atMoor Insights & Strategy.

The less money you have to spend on hardware, the less money you have to spend on software, he told the E-Commerce Times.

However, the chasm in app revenue numbers on a per-unit basis might close if comparisons were made between owners of high-end Android phones and iPhones, Moorhead noted. I believe that if you looked at app purchases by premium Android phone users and Apple phone users, the numbers would be similar.

TV Opportunities

Theres a bright place for apps in the changing TV marketplace, the App Annie report suggests.

This long-standing money-making screen holds huge opportunity for app sales and advertising in 2016 and beyond, it says.

Its also an opportunity for consumers and developers, App Annies Rubin added.

Apple TV and Googles Nexus Player are relatively inexpensive ways to enter Apples and Googles app ecosystems, he said.

As those devices proliferate, it opens up new opportunities for developers and a mix of capabilities on TV that we havent really seen before, Rubin continued.

The new TV apps also can fill a gap in the gaming market, which has two extremes and no middle, observed ACTs Godfrey. You have this huge market between $10 apps on a mobile phone and $80 console games that TV apps can fill.
California State AssemblymanJim Cooper last week introduced a bill seeking to ban the sale of smartphones that include unbreakable encryption.

The bill would require smartphones made on or after Jan. 1, 2017, and sold in California to be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by their manufacturers or OS providers.

Knowingly failing to comply would subject a seller or lessor  meaning a carrier or other company such as Walmart, which supplies smartphones to end users  to a fine of $2,500 for each device sold or leased.

The seller or lessor would not be able to pass on any portion of the penalty to purchasers.

The bill would authorize only the California attorney general or a district attorney to bring a civil suit to enforce these provisions.

The legislation fails to recognize the broad, tangible benefits of encryption, and rather than making anyone safer, will only succeed in making most smartphone owners more vulnerable while doing nothing to limit the ability of criminals to operate outside the purview of law enforcement, Amie Stepanovich, U.S. policy manager atAccess Now, told TechNewsWorld.

Protecting Children

The bill would help fight human traffickers, who use smartphones as a tool, argued Cooper, a former sheriffs captain.

There are many convincing emotional appeals that can be made to justify enabling violations of peoples Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches, said John Gunn, VP of communications atVasco Data Security.

This is just one more, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Law Enforcement Efforts

The California bill and another in New York State reflect sentiment among law enforcement for such a move.

Last year, theInternational Association of Chiefs of Police and theNational District Attorneys Association held a summit on what they called Going Dark  the inability of law enforcement to address the problem encrypted communications pose to public safety.

The organizations want to ensure that its possible to collect evidence by court order, not expand governments surveillance authority, according to a report on the summit.

The report includes the following recommendations:

Provide guidance and recommended strategies to address the issue of Going Dark;

Create an electronic data and privacy policy framework;

Prepare an analysis of current legislation that relates to evidentiary collection of electronic data;

Work with domestic and international partners to continue dialogue about the effects; and

Focus on educating congressional and other policy leaders on the issue.

Senior federal officials met with Silicon Valley executives recently in whats been viewed as a bid to get high-tech firms to cooperate with government requests for data and, possibly, introduce encryption backdoors.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has rejectedcalls to weaken encryption, sparking a rejoinder from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that decision-making on encryption policy is Congress call. AT&T cooperated with the Bush administration in turning over details of calls made on its networks.

The Downside of Coopers Bill

The encryption genie is out of the bottle, and recent proposals to outlaw it wont stop criminals, said Dwayne Melancon, CTO ofTripwire.

Encryption protects electronic financial transactions, private Internet communication, and much of our national critical infrastructure, he told TechNewsWorld.

It is a fundamental requirement in a wide range of government regulations designed to protect sensitive data from hackers, nation-state attackers and others with malicious intentions, Melancon continued. Anything we do to restrict or weaken [it] would weaken the mechanisms we use to secure the Internet.

The Cooper bill will not remove readily available applications that do strong encryption, Christian Lees, CISO atInfoArmor, pointed out.

It would likely also drive government organizations to embrace secondary applications that support strong encryption, he told the E-Commerce Times.
NASA last week announced that it has established thePlanetary Defense Coordination Office to formalize its efforts to detect and track near-Earth objects.

The PDCO will supervise all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near Earths orbit around the sun.

It will issue notices of close passes and warnings of any detected potential impacts, and will work with the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other U.S. agencies and their international counterparts to respond to potential impacts.

About 1,500 near-Earth objects are detected each year, and more than 13,500 NEOs of all sizes have been discovered since NASA began funding surveys in 1998.

Weve found about 92 percent of objects larger than a kilometer in size out of an estimated population of a little over 1,000, said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA.

Our goal was updated in 2005 to find those 140 meters and larger, and weve found about 7,000 of those out of an estimated population of 25,000 to 26,000, he told TechNewsWorld.

An NEOs size is measured by its longest axis.

Not So Far Away

Potentially hazardous objects the PDCO tracks are asteroids and comets measuring 30 to 50 meters whose orbits are predicted to bring them within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth. An AU is about 93 million miles.

Now, 0.05 AUs translates to 4.65 million miles, which may seem a tad too far for concern, but this is based on definitions of the astronomical community that go back 20 years, Johnson explained. Anything that comes within a few million miles of the Earth would be affected by the Earths gravitational pull.

NASA is continually assessing what weve learned and may modify the definition of potentially hazardous objects over time as it learns more about them, he said.

The PDCO will prepare notification messages to be sent to the Executive Office of the President, Congress and other government organizations if a potentially hazardous object has a more than 1 percent chance over the next 100 years of impacting Earth.

We want to be seriously tracking an object that has that great a chance of an unwanted impact, Johnson remarked. Also, NASA wants to ensure that it has plenty of time to determine a potential response, which will depend on the objects size and how far ahead in the future its impact could be.

The Tracking Process

NEOs are detected using ground-based telescopes around the world as well as NASAs space-based NEOWISE infrared telescope.

Tracking data is sent to a global database maintained by theMinor Planet Center, which has been sanctioned by theInternational Astronomical Union.

Once an NEO is detected, the Center for NEO Studies at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory predicts and monitors its orbit.

Select NEOs are further characterized by NASAs Infrared Telescope Facility, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and interplanetary radar operated by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

These efforts are coordinated and funded by NASAs long-established NEO Observations Program, which will continue as a research program under the PDCO.

Unseen Dangers

Even though weve been attempting to map the really big objects that come close, there are approximately 10 percent that could be classified as civilization-enders that we dont know about, said Mike Jude, a research manager at Frost & Sullivan.

Your best bet is to detect these things early and then deflect them, he told TechNewsWorld.

NASA is working on the Asteroid Redirection Mission concept, which would use the mass of an object to pull a potentially hazardous object slightly out of its original orbit. This leverages the gravitational force all objects have in space.

Some of the technologies required for this are already under development in other NASA missions such as the one to Mars, Lindley said, and the redirection mission will pull all these technologies together in Phase A while contracts are being released for other parts of the mission.
Foxconn Technology Group has offered as much as US$5.3 billion to purchaseSharp, according to media reports this week.

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is said to have offered between $5.1 billion, or 600 billion yen, and $5.3 billion, or 625 million yen.

A response to the offer is not expected before the end of January, as the discussions are private.

Shares of Sharp were up last week amid reports that Foxconn was interested in making a major investment in the company. Sharp was expected to spin off its struggling LCD business as part of a plan to stem the bleeding at the company and work with theInnovation Network Corp. of Japan on a bailout deal, according to Japanese media reports.

That information was not based on reports from the company, Sharp President Kozo Takahashi said last week, adding that it was working with several parties to restructure the business.

In order to reconstruct our management, we have been continuing negotiations with other companies regarding fundamental structural reforms of LCD panel business and such, he said. However, nothing is determined as of yet.

Dependence on Apple

Foxconn is looking at a way to control its own fate by controlling the branding of the products it could sell under Sharp, said Kevin Krewell, principal analyst atTirias Research.

By buying Sharp, a well-known brand with respected products, Foxconn gains some measure of control, he told the E-Commerce Times. Having manufactured products for Apple and many other companies, Foxconn has a lot of knowledge on how to build high-quality consumer products.

The discussions mark the latest in a series of negotiations between the two companies in recent years.

In 2012, Foxconn and Sharp announced a strategic global partnership that involved Hon Hai procuring up to 50 percent of large-size LCD panels and modules at Sharps Sakai City plant in Osaka, Japan.

That agreement called for the companies to issue new shares under the partnership, which would have reallocated ownership from 93 percent Sharp and 7 percent Sony, to Sharp and Foxconn founder Terry Gou and affiliated companies each holding 46.5 percent and Sony holding the remaining 7 percent in return for a$1.6 billion investment.

The deal fell apart after the two sides failed to agree upon terms and concerns about the ownership stake by Gous company.

The companies renewed discussions in 2015 but failed to reach agreement amid Sharps concerns about how Hon Hai would manage its patents, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Sharp Decline

Sharp last spring negotiated a $1.7 billion rescue package from Mizuho Bank and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi amid losses from a deteriorating business environment for LCDs in the U.S. and the energy solution business.

Sharp also has been considering a bid by state-backed Innovation Network on a bailout deal that would rescue the electronics firm.

The bottom line is that Sharp is going to get bailed out by someone, King told the E-Commerce Times.

I doubt Apple will care about Sharp, but the Japanese are not happy about Sharp being owned by Foxconn, Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told the E-Commerce Times. I expect them to block the deal as a result.
T-Mobile on Thursday announced the addition of a handful of new services to its controversial Binge On program. The Un-carrier has also made it easier to manage Binge On settings, something that critics have been calling for since day one.

New to the Binge On family is Amazon Video, Fox News, Univision NOW and the WWE Network. What this means is that T-Mobile customers on a qualifying data plan can watch an unlimited amount of video from these service providers and others without eating into their monthly data allotment. The full list of participating Binge On partners can be found by clicking here.

Do note that video streamed with Binge On enabled will be reduced to DVD quality (480p), even if that provider - like YouTube, for example - doesn't participate in the Binge On program.

If you recall, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) concluded earlier this month that Binge On simply throttled all video to 1.5Mbps. The EFF recommended that T-Mobile set up Binge On as an opt-in service rather than an opt-out service and disclose that all video traffic is throttled when Binge On is enabled.

Fortunately, it would seem as though T-Mobile has taken some of the criticism into consideration.

Starting today, T-Mobile is making it easier to manage Binge On settings. Users can dial #BNG# (#264#) to check Binge On settings, #BOF# (#263#) to turn the service off and #BON# (#266#) to enable it.
Netflix has renewed political drama House of Cards for a fifth season which will air in 2017. That's no surprise considering the show's popularity and the number of accolades it's won over the years but there's a big change taking place behind the scenes.

House of Cards creator, executive producer and showrunner Beau Willimon will not be returning for season five.

Netflix said in a statement that it owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to Willimon for his strong narrative vision over the show's first four seasons.

Likewise, Willimon said he is grateful to Netflix and MRC (Media Rights Capital, the show's producer) as well as his fellow executive producers, the show's stars, its writers and the cast and crew with whom he's had the privilege to work with. After five years and four seasons, however, Willimon said it was time to move on to new endeavors.

House of Cards couldn't have arrived at a better time. The show debuted on February 1, 2013, as the company was reeling from missteps that included spinning off its DVD-by-mail business and an unwelcomed price hike. Since that time, Netflix stock has gone on to hit an all-time high last month. More importantly, it proved that Netflix was a true contender as a producer of original content and paved the way for other hits such as Orange is the New Black and Bojack Horseman.

The fourth season of House of Cards premiers in its entirety on March 4, 2106.
When Microsoft's Edge browser arrived last summer alongside Windows 10, it was hailed as a massive improvement over the much-derided Internet Explorer that it was replacing. But the lack of cross-platform and extension support has meant that most people who try Edge don't stick with it. Now, it looks as if another reason to avoid the browser has been discovered: its private browsing feature may not be very private at all.

According to an investigation by security researcher Ashish Singh, instead of wiping browsing data as soon as the InPrivate-enabled window is closed, the information is stored in the browser's WebCache file. Any sites that the user visited while in private mode can be found in the same "Container_n" table that stores tab history from conventional browsing, the investigation found.

"Plenty of artifacts are maintained by the browser, which makes examination quite easy. However, there are stages where evidence is not so easy to find. The not-so-private browsing featured by Edge makes its very purpose seem to fail," Singh wrote in Forensic Focus.

Singh's discovery dates back to October 2015, but Microsoft has only just confirmed that it's aware of the issue. "We recently became aware of a report that claims InPrivate tabs are not working as designed," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge, "and we are committed to resolving this as quickly as possible."

This isn't the first instance where a browser's private mode hasn't kept a user's web searches very secret. Earlier this month, it was reported that Chrome's Incognito mode can stop working properly if used with a Nvidia GPU on a Mac. The graphics card maker responded by saying that the issue is related to memory management in the Apple OS, not Nvidia graphics drivers.
Google's most recent partnership with Movidius will make our smartphones smarter.

More specifically, the cameras in our smartphones could soon be equipped with machine learning technology that could help assist the blind and quickly translate foreign signs.

Movidius has worked with Google before on one of the Alphabet-owned company's famed projects, Project Tango. Using a mix of cameras and sensors, Movidius' technology in Project Tango allows devices to create three-dimensional maps of indoor spaces. As a result, future smartphones could have the ability to not just know where it is, but know how it's moving through space, too.

Though this latest collaboration between Movidius and Google hasn't been branded with a project name yet, it has the potential to equip future devices to also know what they're looking at via the camera.

In some way, Google already allows for this ability in Android devices. Google's Photos app can already recognize people and objects in photos. Search "dog", for example, and the app will pull up all the photos of dogs a user has in their Google Photos library; search for "Paris" and a user will see pictures of themselves posing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The Photos app, however, needs to be connected to the Internet to perform these intelligent functions. That's because all of the complex computing to do so have to call back to a distant data center where algorithms do the entire grunt work analyzing our photos and processing our requests.

Movidius' tech packs those same machine learning abilities into a small chip that can fit inside the body of a smartphone. Called vision processing units or VPUs, Movidius' Myriad 2 line of these latest VPUs, will give next-generation devices autonomous abilities.

Combined with Google's already powerful machine learning infrastructure, Android phones, for example, would be free from the cloud to perform tasks like speech and image recognition without any latency and while cutting down on data usage. As Movidius' chip would already be a part of the device, all of this processing would happen in real-time  no loading times to wait for anymore.

Speech and image recognition on Android smartphones is just the beginning, too. Deeper integration into autonomous drones and vehicles could allow for a level of speedy intelligence that's required in such situations. A driverless car can't wait for instructions from the cloud, for example, when an accident could be waiting around the corner.

When exactly, however, we'll see this real-time intelligence in real life is unclear. "This collaboration is going to lead to a new generation of devices that Google will be launching. And they will launch in the not-too-distant future," says Movidius' CEO, Remi El-Ouazzane.

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Potentially curbing its intended global rollout, Netflix is being blocked in Indonesia  a move initiated by state-run telecommunications provider Telkom.

PT Telkom Indonesia, the largest telco in the country, announced that it had blocked access to the popular streaming service on all its Internet platforms starting 12 a.m. Wednesday.

Telkoms director of consumers Dian Rachmawan pointed to violations of Indonesias broadcast laws as well as violent and pornographic content as reasons behind the ban. The executive, however, did not specify the content that he believes is indecent, thus violating such laws.

Reports added that earlier this week, Netflix was given by the Indonesian government a one-month deadline to comply with broadcast regulations, such as establishing a local office, paying taxes, and hiring local staff.

Rachmawan, however, said in a separate interview that he did not want a total ban of Netflix in the county, but instead seeks compliance. "They [Netflix] are still small here. While they are still small, we will teach them to follow the rules here, he said.

AT CES 2016 earlier this month, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said they are entering over 130 countries around the world, excluding China. Netflix has since then been working with individual countries to offer its streaming content in line with local regulations and cultural considerations.

Netflix also announced it will crack down on virtual private network (VPN) use in order to prevent access of foreign content on the platform.

Indonesia is believed to represent a big chunk of Netflixs target global market  it is the fourth most populous nation after China, India, and the United States. eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna said that as it enters Asia, Netflix would have to not just produce creative content for the region but also restrict content that needs censorship.

In China, Indonesia, and the Middle East there are going to be all sorts of issues, said Verna in an interview.

The ban in Indonesia, Verna pointed out, signals the cultural and bureaucratic challenges that Netflix will come across with its global expansion, which fuels much of its current growth.

Photo: Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar | Flickr

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Despite technological trends across the globe, Samsung Electronics warned of weaker sales in 2016 compared to last year. The company is set to struggle with earnings because of decreased sales of gadgets such as smartphones.

The announcement follows that of Apple's decrease in sales for the first time in more than a decade. Apple announced that shares fell more than 6.5 percent, the biggest percentage drop in two years.

The South Korean firm, whose quarterly profit did not meet expected earnings by nearly 40 percent, said that the low sales were caused by the waning global economy. This led to decreased demand for most gadgets including smartphones and computers.

In a message to employees, Kwon Oh-hyun, Samsung's chief executive, warned that growth in the company will continue to be slow over the next 12 months. He blamed the company's expected decreased sales on weak economies and growing competition.

According to the company, they shipped 97 million handsets and 9 million tablets in the holiday quarter. Despite this, its shipment of handsets grew just about 0.8 percent due to rivals from both high-end and budget categories. Tough competitors such as Apple, Huawei Technologies and China's emerging Xiaomi Corp. added to the company's struggle.

"Expecting challenges in 2016 to maintain earnings due to a difficult business environment and slowing IT demand, the company will strive to improve performance in the second half, by capitalizing on strong seasonal demand for set business products and enhancing the product mix in components business," Samsung said in its 2015 year-end report press release.

To cope with the challenges in the next couple of months, Samsung plans to secure productivity for each of its business units. It plans to launch new areas in the business and boost sales of its mobile business, which includes its best-selling and flagship products. It also plans to improve and strengthen the competitiveness of its hardware, software services and wearable products.

The company predicts challenging business situations in the first quarter of 2016 due to feeble seasonal demand and struggles in the IT business. To address these, it plans to concentrate more on increasing the quantity of value-added merchandises and launching new products to boost sales and earnings.

Photo: Karlis Dambrans | Flickr

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has stepped in amid the rise of Zika virus cases across the world. The virus has spread widely, with scientists saying that it could infect four million people by the year's end because a vaccine is 10 years away.

On Thursday, WHO announced that it will hold an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Monday, Feb. 1. The meeting, which will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, aims to determine if the outbreak can be considered a public health emergency.

The organzation's move to convene a meeting signifies how great of a problem Zika has grown.

"The level of alarm is extremely high," says WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan

The disease, which the WHO described as "spreading explosively," had its first case in Brazil in May 2015. Since then, the virus has been transmitted all over the country and in 22 other nations within the region.

Zika virus is associated with birth defects such as microcephaly or abnormally small heads of newborns. Experts have also talked about how the virus is related to a rare but severe paralysis disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS).

Although a causal relationship between Zika and neurological disorders has not yet been confirmed, experts are strongly suspecting a link.

With all the seemingly grave effects of Zika, Chan worries that there is still no vaccine or specific diagnostic test developed for the disease.

Patients with Zika virus usually do not exhibit serious signs and symptoms. The disease typically causes mild fever, rash and muscle pains. Deaths are also rare.

Due to the self-limiting nature of the disease, researchers did not find utmost relevance to developing countermeasures. However, with the recent fetal complications and global dilemma, experts now deem vaccine development as urgent. They also think that determining individuals with the most risk of GBS could bring rise to specific antiviral therapies.

WHO says it is already working on it.

"WHO will also prioritize the development of vaccines and new tools to control mosquito populations, as well as improving diagnostic tests," the WHO statement reads.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci says his office is now on the early stages of vaccine development and diagnostics improvement. However, he admits that it may be impossible to come up with a vaccine this year or in the near future.

Daniel Lucey and Lawrence Gostin from Georgetown University agreed on the dire availability of the vaccine in the coming years. "A safe and effective Zika virus vaccine is probably 3 to 10 years away even with accelerated research," they write in a viewpoint piece published in JAMA.

Zika virus is caused by Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes, which also carry dengue fever. The first vaccine against dengue has been approved in the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico in 2015.

Photo: NIAID | Flickr

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Clay tablets dating back to between 350 and 50 B.C. have revealed that the Babylonians not only tracked the biggest planet in our solar system but also created the birth of calculus while they were calculating Jupiter's movements.

The discovery is crucial as it suggests that Babylonian astronomers were actually utilizing mathematical concepts that are believed to have been born centuries later. It is also the first to produce concrete evidence that the Babylonians used abstract calculations for space study.

The findings were published in the journal Science on Jan. 29.

Humboldt University of Berlin's Mathieu Ossendrijver unearthed the clay tablet while searching through British Museum's vast collection of artifacts. The tablet carvings showed a mathematical technique that can be used to calculate the distance Jupiter has moved across the sky in a given time. Ossendrijver is an ancient science history researcher who translated the ancient carvings.

Ironically, Ossendrijver didn't really set out to discover ancient origins of modern mathematics when he foraged through the British Museum's collections. He was just looking for astronomical tablets when he found an old tablet that had been waiting for decades to be translated.

Ossendrijver ended up finding three more tablets revealing the same mathematical concepts, one of which clearly showed its application in tracking Jupiter's movements. The researcher translated all five tablets.

"[The tablet] testifies to the revolutionary brilliance of the unknown Mesopotamian scholars who constructed Babylonian mathematical astronomy during the second half of the first millennium B.C.," says New York University's Alexander Jones.

Ossendrijver couldn't identify the author of the tablets, although these artifacts often contain signatures or dates of creation. He didn't find any, suggesting the part on which it could have been written might have broken off.

The tablets were first discovered near a temple dedicated to Marduk, a Babylonian god who is represented by the planet Jupiter. Marduk is a patron deity of the city of Babylon. Given such, Ossendrijver was certain the tablet author was probably one of the temple's astronomer-priests.

A few decades ago, scholar Otto Neugebauer also found Babylonian tablets that suggested the same mathematical concepts. However, the findings were inconclusive and the two tablets he found were incomplete and broken.

Ossendrijver didn't find any evidence if the method was used to track other planets, such as Mars and Venus which are easier to track but also move faster. Perhaps other clay tablets in other museums can reveal more ancient clues.

"We always make our objects freely available to scholars and researchers and are truly delighted when one of these valiant workers makes an important breakthrough," says a spokesperson for British Museum.

In October 2015, an assyriologist also discovered tablets from Sulaymaniyah Musuem that revealed new lines from the Epic of Gilgamesh. The tablets are believed to have been retrieved from Iraq (Mesopotamia) and Babel (Babylonia).

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The World Health Organization has called an emergency meeting on Feb. 1 to discuss the Zika virus, which has recently broken out in Central and South America, cascading through 23 countries and territories. The virus is spread by mosquito bite and has been implicated in rising rates of Guillain-Barre syndrome and potentially linked to infant microcephaly.

WHO must evaluate, and quickly, whether the outbreak constitutes a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern," a technical demarcation that immediately puts in place international actions to stop the disease. In the meantime, a concerned public struggles to understand what Zika is and how it so quickly entered our consciousness.

Here's a primer:

The Zika virus has been around a long time.

According to the The Society for Science and the Public, it was discovered in the Zika Forest in Uganda in 1947. There were already reports and studies on the virus in 1954, when the Virus Research Institute of Nigeria studied three cases of Zika infection in jaundice patients.

If you weren't bitten by a mosquito, you don't have it.

As far as we know, Zika comes exclusively from mosquito bites and mother-to-infant transmission. The mosquitos that transmit it tend to breed near water-holding containers, like buckets and wells, but can procreate even in the cap of a water bottle. There have been some suspected transmissions between sexual partners, but these are not confirmed.

We don't know exactly how dangerous it is.

We know that Zika has been linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can causes severe muscle weakness, and even temporary paralysis. But the virus has been making news lately not just for infecting millions, but for being potentially linked to microcephaly, a birth defect in which the infant is born with an abnormally small head. The concern, then, is for the child's brain. You might expect that a small skull would cause pressure to build up around the brain, but it is actually the reverse: as the baby's brain develops, the skull and head expand around it, to make room for and protect the brain. An abnormally small head, then, usually means an abnormally small brain. This can lead to seizures, developmental delays, intellectual disabilities, hearing and vision problems, and more. For many families, it is a tragic and life-altering diagnosis.

It is reasonable, then, to prevent pregnancy in areas currently experiencing Zika outbreaks, especially since an expectant mother could carry the virus without knowing it. However, the virus has not been conclusively linked to the birth defect; rather, the Brazilian government noted that they had had an unusually steep increase in microcephaly at the same time as a severe Zika outbreak.

But according to Scientific American, WHO says that there is no definite causal link. While there have been 4,000 cases of the defect in Brazil, there have been only six infants who both carry the disease and were, through laboratory testing, proven to carry information from the virus. Even so, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan says the link is "strongly suspected." In an abundance of caution, the government of El Salvador has encouraged women not to get pregnant until 2018. El Salvador has experienced more than 5,000 Zika cases in the last year.

We don't know how long the virus takes to incubate.

Incubation is the period of time between when the virus is transmitted (through an insect bite) to the host, and when symptoms present themselves. Understanding this is important, because once we know how long it takes for the virus to gain traction in the body, doctors can better diagnose patients. For example, if the incubation period is one week, and you have flu symptoms but haven't been to Brazil for six months, chances are that your trip is unrelated to your illness. However, if the incubation varies (say, can be up to six months), that window grows wider and wider. HIV, another RNA virus, famously has a 10-year incubation period. Most experts suspect that the incubation period for Zika is a few days.

Zika is primarily found in humid areas.

The virus spreads primarily in tropical and subtropical regions, though some mosquitos that may carry the disease can survive in cooler climates. Experts say the most at-risk regions in the U.S. are Florida and some regions of Texas.

If you get it, you will probably never know.

Eighty percent of people who get a Zika infection show no symptoms, and it passes through their system without the host ever knowing.

Zika fever looks a lot like the flu.

According to the CDC, the most common Zika symptoms are fever, rash, joint pain, and eye infections. Some people experience muscle pain or have headaches.

And you can treat it like the flu.

If you have traveled to an area where Zika is present, and you come down with flu symptoms, do not panic. Zika can be treated with regular fever reducers, pain medications, and the same R&R your mom recommended for the common cold. However, you may want to consider holding off on any plans for getting pregnant until your symptoms subside or you see your doctor.

Zika testing is not yet available to general practitioners.

If a doctor in the U.S. suspects that his or her patient has Zika, the doctor must send a specimen to the CDC for testing, as local laboratories do not have the proper testing for the disease. This process can take four to 14 days. While there is no reason to suspect an upcoming outbreak in the States, this could lower the ability of local doctors to make prompt diagnoses.

You will (almost definitely) not die of Zika.

Deaths from Zika are rare. If you catch Zika and are not pregnant, the only concern (other than transmission to others through mosquito bite) is the potential to develop Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Currently, Guillain-Barre affects 1 in 100,000 people in the United States. Although there is no cure, most people recover and live typical lives after the treatment for its acute onset.

There's no vaccine or cure for Zika.

The main job of the medical community, beyond treating those with Zika, will be to research its cure. However, financial incentives are low for major pharmaceutical companies. Perhaps the WHO's emergency meeting will shed light not only on the state of Zika, but on ways governments can work together to support the swift discovery of a vaccine.

The writer of this piece is a reporter, not a health professional. Nothing above should be taken as medical advice or diagnosis. See your doctor if you have questions or are concerned about symptoms.

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A long-standing, controversial theory suggests that species with larger brains relative to their body size are more intelligent. A new study found evidence that strongly supports this long-held belief.

A research team led by University of Wyoming's Sarah Benson-Amram found that carnivore species with relatively larger brains that are proportionate to their body size are better at completing problem-solving tasks. Benson-Amram is an assistant professor from the university's Department of Zoology and Physiology.

Along with fellow authors Eli Swanson (University of Minnesota), Kay Holekamp, Greg Stricker and Ben Dantzer (Michigan State University), Benson-Amram traveled to nine zoos across the United States. The team chose 140 animals from 39 different mammalian carnivore species and presented them with a new problem-solving task.

The animals involved in the study included arctic foxes, polar bears, tigers, spotted hyenas and wolves, among others. The team presented each animal with a metal box containing their favorite food. They were given only 30 minutes to extract it. The metal box can be opened by a sliding bolt latch.

Results showed that animals with larger brains that are proportionate to their body size were more successful in gaining access to the food compared to the animals with smaller brains. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This study offers a rare look at problem solving in carnivores, and the results provide important support for the claim that brain size reflects an animal's problem-solving abilities - and enhance our understanding of why larger brains evolved in some species," said Benson-Amram.

In total, 35 percent of the animal participants successfully finished the problem-solving task. They composed of 49 animals from 23 species. The bears, who topped the ranking, were able to solve the problem 70 percent of the time. The least successful participants were the mongooses and meerkats.

The team noted that overall, smaller-bodied animals were more successful than the larger ones. Moreover, manual dexterity has no effect on the animals' success rate in problem-solving.

The researchers also analyzed if species who live in larger groups are more intelligent when it comes to problem-solving tasks. The so-called "social brain hypothesis" suggests that larger brain sizes evolved in order to handle the social domain challenges.

It also says that intelligence progressed to help animals respond, anticipate and even manipulate others' actions in their social groups. The team didn't find any evidence that supports the "social brain hypothesis."

You can watch the video below to see how different animals performed.

Photo: NPS/K. Jalone | Flickr

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Many things have not yet been confirmed about Alzheimer's disease. One of the most intriguing aspects is whether the disease can be transmitted from one person to another. A new study solidifies this claim once again, reigniting fears that the disease may be spread through surgery.

Within a period of four months, two expert groups have already performed autopsies suggesting that Alzheimer's may be transmitted via medical or surgical treatments. Scientists, however, iterates that nothing is conclusive yet.

The latest study was performed by researchers from the University Hospital Zurich and Medical University Vienna. The scientists studied brains of seven patients aged 26-63 years old, all of whom died of neurological disease called iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

The patients were diagnosed of iCJD years after they received a growth hormone from a human cadaver.

Human cadaveric hormone has been recognized to be a source of Alzheimer-type amyloid- (A). Hence, the researchers analyzed the rate of A pathology among those who received brain grafts.

The findings show that A was deposited in the brain vessels of five out of seven brains studied.

The first study published in September 2015 also had similar results, with four out of eight found to have amyloid plaques after surgically receiving contaminated growth hormones.

"Our results are all consistent," says co-author John Collinge.

Both studies did not firmly conclude that Alzheimer's can indeed be transmitted through normal contact with patients. They also point out that synthetic cadavers and synthetic growth hormones are not being used anymore.

Amyloid- has not yet been found in preparations that were placed in growth hormone research. Aside from that, scientists were not yet able to look into the potential fact that the main indication of the neurosurgery could have contributed to the amyloid pathology detected.

If the theory is true, however, scientists say it is going to have vital clinical implications. For example, since amyloid- proteins are very sticky, it cannot be removed from surgical equipment even with standard sterilization techniques.

In the end, the researchers said more systematic investigations are needed to determine if the seeding hypothesis of Alzheimer's is indeed accurate.

Photo: Artur Bergman | Flickr

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BlackBerry and Google top executives are teaming up to host a series of free and half-day hands-on workshops aimed at demonstrating how BlackBerry software and Android can promote productivity and security on Android devices.

The said workshops are slated to take place at Google offices across North America.

Dubbed "Bring Android to Work With BlackBerry," the workshop will explain to attendees how Android for Work, powered by BlackBerry's BES12 EMM software, can help enhance the security and easily manage their employees' Android devices.

Employees will be able to enjoy the business-like features of their Android devices brought by Android for Work. These include a more simplified IT management encompassing all devices, corporate data security, user privacy protection and all types of needed apps.

"With BES12, you can say yes to the kind of productivity you know is possible - with the confidence that comes from industry-leading mobile security," said BlackBerry.

"BES12 allows you to securely manage mobile devices and other endpoints across different operating systems and ownership models. Manage your mobile workers' access to apps, data and content. And do it all from a single, easy-to-use console that offers a complete set of IT policies and profiles to address the mobility management challenges and opportunities that your business faces today and tomorrow."

Some of the notable features of the BES12 EMM software include a multi-OS EMM solution for any type of ownership model, mobile security that is best in the industry, a future-proof platform and reliable mobility management that's easy on the pocket.

With IT managers getting more interested in finding better ways on how they can manage and make Android devices more secure for work, the consolidation between BlackBerry's BES12 and Android for Work could just be the ultimate solution to enhance mobile data security.

BlackBerry believed early on that pairing its high-end enterprise security with Android, which is regarded as the most popular mobile OS, will receive a strong response. True enough, the workshop's first event reached its full target number of attendees even before the blog announcement was published.

The first among the series is scheduled in Toronto on Feb. 2, and BlackBerry said the event has reached full capacity already. The company encouraged interested attendees to check on the remaining events.

According to the blog post, the upcoming workshops will be at Chicago (Feb. 3), San Francisco (Feb. 9), Washington DC (Feb. 10) and New York City (Feb. 17). Interested attendees can check on the links to get an idea on the event's agenda and how they can register.

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Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies, explained his company's efforts to reinvent itself by manufacturing the first professional VR camera targeted at media production.

Haidamus points out that the VR headset niche is already a crowded place, with big players such as Samsung, Sony and HTC rolling out their wearable VR gadgets.

"The Head Mounted Display I saw was actually pretty good, but I felt like there was so much competition that was going to happen in the marketplace," he says in an interview with Engadget.

Nokia markets Ozo as the go-to solution for VR production due to the camera's extensive capabilities. Ozo can offer live monitoring, live streaming, 3D audio and video and automatic stitching. With such an array of functions, the device could secure the first place in the upcoming niche for the Finnish company.

To support the company's decision to invest all its efforts and resources into the Ozo, Haidamus points out that head-mounted displays will be commonly available in no time.

The advanced VR camera tackles many problems that VR content creators currently face. For example, it allows users to use a device such as the Oculus Rift to watch a live playback, recorded by Ozo.

"Ozo brings you the ability to do a live monitoring of live action on set," Haidamus notes.

This saves quite an amount of time, as directors who use existing VR recording solutions need to wait for the post-processing to be complete before viewing the final product.

Nokia's VR camera packs eight cameras, each of them able to record video clips in 2K x 2K resolution. Also, eight microphones sit next to the cameras in the smooth-lined gadget. Their positioning makes sure that Ozo can record the "sound sphere" of the environment where it is placed.

One neat feature of the Ozo is that it can incorporate object-based audio into its ambient mix by simply using a combo of RF tags and actor-carried microphones.

How much VR recording can Ozo handle? Nokia fitted the camera with a 500 GB SSD and a powerful battery, so that filmmakers can take up to 45 minutes of video footage before hot-swapping cartridges. This will allow the filming process to go on, unabated.

The general dimensions of the Ozo VR camera measure 10.4 x 6.7 x 6.3 inches, sans mount. The gadget received an Aluminum alloy structure putting the camera weight at 9.3 pounds, battery included.

"The unit itself is about the average size of the human head," says Haidamus.

As the VR era is just dawning, tech names refer to the 2016 as "Year One." The fact that the market still has room to grow encourages players to work together.

During the interview, Haidamus told Engadget that his company has a blooming partnership with 20th Century Fox, which put the pedal to the metal when it comes to VR space. When asked about what other tech names are working closely with Nokia to perfect the Ozo, Haidamus remained mum.

"[Ozo helps] if you are an artist and you want to create that connection between the viewer and your story," Haidamus states.

"We put you right there in the middle of that scene."

From the interview, it becomes apparent that the Finnish company evolved beyond the global smartphone manufacturer that it once was. In an ironic twist, the company that once was a mobile leader now carriers the flag banner for Virtual Reality.

"Knowing we're early but not too early, puts us exactly in terms of perfect timing to catch a ... technology that's disrupting an existing market," Haidamus further explains.

Nokia used to be a one dominating name in the telecom industry before Microsoft purchased its consistent mobile division for $7 billion, in 2014. Haidamus's bet on the company's virtual reality device might bring the company back in the platoon of global relevant electronics makers.

Should you be a professional filmmaker who wants to invest in the cutting-edge piece of technology, the Ozo VR camera from Nokia can be yours for "only" $60,000.

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Lenovo aims to expand its global presence in the mobile market, so it revealed plans to launch an improved and eye-catching Moto smartphone in the United States.

It certainly is an interesting time for Lenovo. The demand for PCs and notebooks in the OEM's national market slowed down significantly when compared to previous years. Lenovo is therefore focusing its attention on the smartphone segment of the market.

The company's Moto brand has a loyal fan base in both Europe and the United States, but things are less rosy in its own country. Xiaomi and Huawei, two up and coming handset manufacturers, deliver products that are more affordable than the Moto smartphones from Lenovo-owned Motorola.

Lenovo has a few ideas for extending its user base. First off, the company will rebrand the outdated "Motorola" name, leaving the edgy and contemporary sounding "Moto" in its place. You may read more about the transformations of Motorola into Moto, as explained by Motorola.

"'Moto' is synonymous with Motorola, and it conveys the Motorola brand to consumers in a contemporary and engaging way," said Motorola on its official blog. The post also adds that the OEM will put more effort into marketing efforts. The Lenovo-manufactured smartphones will fall into two categories: Moto, for high-end products, and Vibe, for affordable devices aimed at developing countries.

In a recent interview, Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang told the media about the enterprise's plans. The executive pointed out that he relies on Motorola's commended name to increase its foothold in the American market. According to Yang's statement to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the American market will see "more innovative, more attractive" handsets in July.

Although Apple dominates its local market, Yang seems convinced that Moto phones can get a slice of the pie and heat up the competition. He underlines that Apple reached its top potential in the field of device supremacy.

"Apple already has more than 50% share in the U.S. Can you expect more? I don't think so," Yang notes. He went on to add that Android devices will get more attention from U.S. clients.

We'll keep you posted on any new information on the July Moto phone destined for the U.S., so stay tuned.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
LG is widely expected to officially announce the LG Pay White Card at MWC 2016.

Designed to replace the credit card, the purported LG Pay White Card now surfaced online, revealing more details on the expected features.

Korean news site ETNews leaked photos of the card, noting that LG Electronics tried hard to keep the information unknown to the public until now.

According to the site, the upcoming LG Pay White Card is designed not only for making payments at partner retail stores, but also for withdrawing money from an ATM. Consumers can also use the LG Pay White Card akin to using a credit card.

One interesting feature of the card is how it allows users to easily switch between cards when they need to pay for their purchases at retail shops. Using this feature can be very helpful when a customer wants to take advantage of a card's exclusively offered benefits depending on which store it is used at.

The new LG Pay White Card may revolutionize the way credit cards are currently designed, if the leaked photos proved to be authentic. Probing closer, the card boasts a small liquid crystal display along with a power button and a Lock function. This gives the impression that the card would require charging using separate charging equipment.

The card's charging terminal is marked on the left side, as ETNews points out. LG Electronics plans to launch the so-called "White Card Charger" which will be solely designed to charge the upcoming LG Pay White Card.

In November, Tech Times reported on LG's recent partnership with card companies Kookmin Card and Shinhan Card as the company gears up for the launch of LG Pay.

However, LG seemed to deviate a bit from the tracks taken by Apple and Samsung when it comes to using a smartphone as an accompanying hardware in their respective mobile payment systems. Reports say that the LG system may simply depend on the use of its proprietary payment card.

LG is currently running a test on the payment linkage of its system with a number of VAN companies. The company is said to have preordered about 50,000 White Card units in preparation for the launch. Talks on mass-producing the White Card are currently in progress with a card company in South Korea.

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Led by a team from the Institute of Neuroscience at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, researchers have genetically modified monkeys to feature a gene associated with autism spectrum disorder in people, resulting in the most realistic animal model for the condition yet.

Detailing their work in a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers believe that a minimum of 100 genes play a role in the types and symptoms related to autism, which affects one in 45 kids today. Specifically, they turned to MECP2, a gene that people with autism symptoms have extra copies of. This isn't the first time autism-related genes have been engineered into monkeys, but the study is the first to show that there is a link between the genes and how the animals behaved.

The creation of the first batch of genetically modified monkeys occurred in 2010, with MECP2 genes being attached to a dormant virus, which was then injected into the eggs of crab-eating macaque monkeys. After the eggs were fertilized, they were implanted into female monkeys to develop.

This resulted into eight genetically modifed monkeys with one to seven extra copies of the MECP2 gene. Stillborn monkeys were also examined and the researchers found that the gene was also expressed in extra copies in their brains.

Next, the researchers observed a year later that the monkeys involved in the study were showing behaviors hinting at autism. Further tests proved that all of the monkeys were exhibiting at least one symptom related to autism, but this was not enough to say that monkeys were sound autism models.

"We needed to show where the gene makes a difference," said Zilong Qiu, a co-author of the study.

The researchers finally got their opportunity in the next generation of monkeys they genetically modified. The resulting offspring started showing asocial behavior when they were about 11 months old, proving that the MECP2 gene and autism symptoms were passed on to the second-generation macaques in the lab.

Mouse models exist but the macaque model is superior because it actually offers proof that autism-like behaviors are present in animals, although exhibited symptoms are still less severe compared to what human patients have.

For the next phase of their study, the researchers are using brain-imaging technology to pinpoint areas where an overexpression of the gene MECP2 causes trouble. They will then use gene-editing technique CRISPR to remove the extra copies of the gene in the affected region of the brain to see if autism-like symptoms will cease.

In partnership with a mental health hospital, the researchers are also looking to identify which genes linked to autism are most common in the Chinese population.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Early on into repairing the damages of its emissions scandal, it certainly appears that Volkswagen is having better luck in Germany than the United States.

On Wednesday, the embattled automaker was granted its first emissions-fix approval in Germany for one affected diesel model.

That came after the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) rejected VW's proposed fix for an estimated 580,000 vehicles affected in the country, stemming from the automaker's emissions crisis.

It's so bad that it led to VW's second-largest shareholder giving the company a three-month deadline to come clean about the origins of its compromising of vehicles to better help relations in the U.S.

Well, projections for an emissions fix approval in the U.S. are looking so grim that VW could resort to buying back some of the affected diesel vehicles in the country, the company's lawyer said.

The New York Times is reporting that Robert Giuffra, an attorney defending VW against class action lawsuits of compromised diesel vehicles, gave a clear indication of a possible buyback during a court hearing statement.

Although Giuffra said that the automaker could eventually find a resolution, he offered, "the question though is one of timing."

"And for some of the vehicles it may well be that the timing is too far into the future," he continued. "So we might have to do a buyback or some sort of a solution like that for some subset of the vehicles, but that hasn't been determined yet."

Volkswagen's official statement?

"We have no comment other than to say that Volkswagen continues to work cooperatively with EPA and CARB to resolve these issues as quickly as possible with approved remedies for the affected vehicles," VW said in a statement.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Online Hacking Collective Anonymous Hacks Michigan State Website To Avenge Flint Water Crisis

Calling it an act of revenge for the ongoing water crisis in Flint, the international hacking collective, Anonymous claimed on Wednesday to have launched a cyber-attack against the state of Michigans official website.

An ominous video was posted by Anonymous last Wednesday, on January 20, announcing a new Anonymous campaign, #OpFlint. The group in the 4 minute YouTube video promised action for the 2014 water switch to the Flint River, which lead to a spike in lead poisoning cases and a shortage of clean water in the city.

In the video, a person wearing a Guy Fawkes mask said Anonymous was supporting the citizens of Flint who had been affected by the water crisis.

We feel that there currently exists enough evidence to arrest Governor Snyder for either voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.

We encourage the city of Flint to be vocal and demand that Governor Snyder face criminal charges, Anonymous will stand beside you. We will amplify your voice where the mainstream media will surely fail you, as it has in the past.

It all stops now, we must remind the city officials of Flint we do not forget and we do not forgive.

https://twitter.com/AnonCorruption/status/692475607800741888

For the past two years, the city residents are being supplied sub-standard water filled with lead, a powerful neurotoxin. The states website came back online briefly early Wednesday evening after an apparent crash, but went down again later. However, there was no official confirmation for the cause of the website failure.

The recent weeks saw the death of 10 people from Legionnaires disease over the last year possibly due to the citys slow response to deal with the crisis became national news. Also, accusations that the state overlooked the crisis as the city is mainly full of poor people of African-American descent made headlines. After a state of emergency was declared by President Barack Obama on January 16, several residents in the city depend upon bottled water for drinking and cooking.

In a separate incident last week, officials at the Hurley Medical Center, a teaching hospital in downtown Flint, had confirmed their website was briefly down on Saturday after being targeted in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. However, the hackers were unable to take over any computer systems.

Hurley Medical Center has IT systems in place, which aid in detecting a virus or cyber-attack, the hospital spokeswoman, Ilene Cantor, told local Michigan news website MLive. As such, all policies and protocols were followed in relation to the most recent cyber-attack on our system. Patient care was not compromised and we are closely monitoring all systems to ensure IT security is consistently maintained.

The hospital official provided no other details of the attack or any person or has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, given Anonymouss vow to take action, the timing of the attack is suspicious.

The hacking group is using the hashtag #OpFlint to draw peoples attention to their campaign.
Security researcher paid $7500 for finding a Facebook account hijacking flaw

Facebook paid $7500 to a security researcher for finding a critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that allowed potential hackers to take over users Facebook accounts.

The vulnerability was discovered by UK-based security consultant Jack Whitton who immediately informed Facebook. Facebook engineers quickly took cognizance of the critical flaw and patched it within six hours.

The bug bounty hunter told SecurityWeek that he earned $7,500 for responsibly disclosing the issue, an amount confirmed by Facebook representatives.

As these sort of issues become harder to find on sites which have a mature bug bounty programme (Facebook & Google), the rewards increase quite a lot, which means the payouts are really worth your time, Whitton said via email.

Whitton has detailed the XSS flaw in his blog post and states that the attack consists of two vectors, content type and a DNS issue.

Whitton discovered that in some cases its possible to get an uploaded file to be interpreted as an HTML simply by changing its extension to .html. Thought the regular photo and video cant be modified, but Whitton found that advertising images uploaded through the Facebook Ads Manager could be modified.

Using a technique described in 2012, the expert managed to encode an XSS payload into a PNG images IDAT chunk. Unlike Exif and iTXt data, which are removed by Facebook from uploaded JPEG and PNG images, IDAT chunks are not. Once that was done, Whitton had to bypass the Link Shim system in Facebook and needed to find a way to move from the CDN hostname to a proper facebook.com domain.

He discovered that the DNS entries for the photo.facebook.com domain were pointing to the CDN, allowing him to get his payload executed by navigating to the uploaded HTML file on the photos.facebook.com domain.

Whitton found that several Facebook plugins are designed to be placed in an iframe, which bypasses such protections. Once this was done Whitton could easily steal users CSRF token and make requests on the victims behalf simply by getting the victim to click on a link.

In this case, because its a client-side issue, an attacker would need to persuade a user to click/visit a link they control, Whitton told Security Week. This could be by posting a status with the link, or sending an email.

This is a bit easier than it sounds, because the URL is a legitimate facebook.com URL, rather than a suspicious domain. Once theyd clicked it, then the script in the background could do anything with their account  post a status, read private messages. In addition, the script could post a link to itself to the victims Facebook account, which could trick their friends into opening it, and so on, he added.

Whitton told Security Week that Facebook quickly addressed the DNS issue, but left the content type weakness unpatched, most likely because it was a low risk flaw on its own.

Facebook however confirmed to SecurityWeek that it fixed the content type bug as well.
Google breaks its silence on how much it paid the guy who briefly owned Google.com

We had reported last October that a person named Sanmay Ved managed to own the worlds best known and popular website, Google.com for a brief one minute. But at that time we do not know how Google managed to get its domain back. The story has been finally revealed!

Ved had purchased the website out of curiosity and had no intentions of actually keeping the domain name, but Google decided to offer a financial reward anyway. Ved declined to share how much this reward was, but he did note that it was more than $10,000.

Ved had said while he awake late in the night and looking through Google domains, which is Googles website buying service, he noticed that Google.com was available for purchase. He was surprised to see a green happy face indicating that it was available instead of a gray sad face which means that the domain has an owner and he promptly snapped it up.

So, how much did it cost him to buy the most-trafficked domain in the world? Well, only $12. His midnight joust with Google domains earned him $6,006.13, which squintishly spells out Google.

Being a gent that he is, Ved decided to donate this money to charity. When Google heard about Veds charitable intents, it promptly doubled the amount.

One good deed begets another and domain goes back to Google!
Engineer plans a hypersonic jet that could fly from New York to London in 11 minutes at 20,000 km/h!

Charles Bombardier, the engineer behind the Skreemr jet has unveiled another radical, much faster design for future air travel.

Dubbed the Antipode, the latest concept jet is capable of reaching Mach 24, twice the speed of the Skreemr and 12 times faster than Concorde. Bombardier, who is affiliated with the Canadian aircraft company Bombardier Inc. claims that the hypersonic jet will take a mere 11 minutes to fly from New York to London, 24 minutes to travel from New York to Shanghai and 32 minutes to get from New York to Sydney.

Bombardier says the Antipode would be powered by liquid oxygen or kerosene rockets and in theory that the jet can carry 10 people for a distance of up to 20,000 km in less than an hour.

I wanted to create an aircraft concept capable of reaching its antipodeor diametrical oppositeas fast as possible, Bombardier told Forbes.

Bombardier worked on the Antipode design in collaboration with Abhishek Roy, the founder of Lunatic Koncepts, a design lab based in India.

This particular new-age jet Antipode is designed to have wing-mounted boosters that provide enough thrust to propel the aircraft to an altitude of 40,000 feet at Mach 5 before detaching from the accelerators. After separation, a supersonic combustion ramjet engine kicks in, pushing the plane to its top speed of Mach 24.

The airplane also incorporates a special design feature that enables it to withstand and dissipate the intense heat that is inherent to such extreme speeds: a nozzle at the front of the airplane enables a phenomenon called Long Penetration Mode (LPM,) which reduces heat build-up on the surface of the airplane while countering the build-up of shockwaves as it accelerates past the sound barrier.

The planes wings would have enough lift to glide and land on a 6,000 foot runway.

Last year, the Canadian engineer designed the Skreemr, a four-winged scramjet that he claimed could carry 75 passengers at speeds of up to Mach 10. One Mach averages 1195km/hour, a speed equal to that of sound. An aircraft flying at Mach 2 is flying at twice the speed of sound, in the air.

The Antipode could be used as business or military aircraft to transport two highly ranked officials across the globe (up to 20,000 km) in less than an hour, Bombardier told DailyMail.com.

I think the cost will be at least over $150 million per plane and it could become a reality if there is a demand. But first, further research needs to be conducted.

Interestingly, the images of the Antipode concept have been created by Roy, who has also created the renderings for the Subrocket car and the Korbiyor autonomous electric hearse concept.
Teen suffers second degree burns after an E-cigarette explodes in his face

A teen in Alberta, Canada suffered second degree burns and broken teeth after his e-cigarette spontaneously exploded just inches from his mouth while he was using it in his car.

The victim, Ty Greer, 16, was using the device in a car last week in Lethbridge when the e-cigarette exploded.

It lit my kids face on fire, busted two teeth out, Perry Greer, Tys father said Wednesday. It burned the back of his throat, burned his tongue very badly. If he wasnt wearing glasses, he possibly could have lost his eyes.

Greer said the family raced Ty to hospital. He remembers hugging his son as he squirmed in agony waiting for a dose of morphine to kick in.

He wanted to die. That is how much pain he was in.

Greer doesnt know why the device exploded.

He pushed the button and blew in, and then you wait a couple of seconds, and then you puff on it. It was about two inches from his mouth and it just blew apart.

Greer said his son has been treated for first- and second-degree burns.

Photos of Ty in the hospital show the skin around his mouth and cheeks blackened and bleeding. Hes received two root canals since the incident.

Greer said the model of electronic cigarette his son bought on his own is as large as a cigar and is popular because of the amount of vapour it produces.

The defective vape was a Wotofo Phantom, which is produced in China. Online reviews of the product on the marketplace Eciggity were mostly positive with no indication of such defects.

In a statement to Mic by the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, the industry shot back at the implication that e-cigarettes are dangerous.

Electronic cigarettes and vapor products are electronic devices and do not combust. They should be thought the same as other rechargeable electrical equipment such as laptops and cellphones, in terms of being battery powered, the statement read. We cannot speak to user error or on behalf of a manufacturer for their device. If there is truly an issue with a specific device, similar to a laptop or cell phone manufacturer, inquiries should be directed toward the individual company.

The manufacturer and its Canadian distributor were not immediately available for comment.

Greer said governments should not allow minors to buy such devices.

I would like to see these unregulated ones possibly banned, Greer said. It is horrific to see your kid with his face so burnt.

According to the Non-Smokers Rights Association, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only provinces that have not banned the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors. The decision is left to municipalities in Alberta.

Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman said the province has formed a working group with the federal government and is looking at regulating e-cigarettes.

Les Hagen of the Edmonton-based charity Action on Smoking and Health said what happened to Ty Greer is another reason why e-cigarettes need to be regulated federally and provincially.

We absolutely need product standards. For instance, they shouldnt explode in your mouth, Hagen said.

The other element with this particular incident is this product was sold to a minor, to a 16-year-old. We would like to see a ban on the sale of these products to minors, just like we have with cigarettes.

The Federal Standing Committee on Health last March issued a report that suggests funding independent research into the health effects of electronic cigarettes and the need to regulate them.

The report calls for rules that would forbid their sale to anyone under 18.

Hagen said the federal government has yet to respond to the report.

Tys uncle, Walter Zimmer said it is time for action.

They are dangerous, he said. This young guy is going to be scarred for life.

This young lad is never going to touch another e-Cigarette again!
A 40 anos de Malvinas

"Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo.
Jeremy Corbyn showed off a naked Diane Abbott to impress his Left-wing friends when he was a young Labour activist, a new book has revealed.

The Labour leader invited fellow activists to his London flat where they were shaken to find Ms Abbott in his bed, one of his friends recalled.

The incident took place in 1979 soon after Mr Corbyns first marriage broke down because of his near-obsessive dedication to his political activism.

It is described in Comrade Corbyn, a biography of the Labour leader by Rosa Prince, which is being serialised by The Telegraph.
Google should pay more tax in Britain in the "future", a Cabinet minister has said.

Patrick McLoughlin, the Conservative Transport Secretary, praised Googles 130million tax settlement to cover a five year period to 2011, but added that he hoped the company would pay more tax in the future.

His comments come as the Government is battling criticism from all sides over the tax deal with Google, which George Osborne has described as a "major success".
With only 45 days in office, she became the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. | Read More
Padma Bhushan Winner gives 1000 Rs for Mahesh

Bollywood actor Anupam Kher who has been awarded with the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government expressed gratitude to Mahesh Bhatt, the director of his debut film 'Saaransh'. The veteran actor has given the filmmaker a Rs.1,000 note, and thanked him for giving him a career in films. In an image shared by Anupam on Twitter, Bhatt can be seen kissing the actor's head as he bows down to his 'guru'.



'When the student outshines the teacher ' the teacher dances with joy. Anupam your Padma Bhushan award has made me so so proud,' Mahesh Bhatt posted. In response, Anupam tweeted: 'There can't be a bigger achievement/endorsement for a student. Thank you Mahesh Bhatt saab for 'Saaransh' and a career.'



Earlier in the day, Bhatt who was the director of Anupam Kher's first film Saarnash congratulated the 60-year-old actor for being named for the Padma Bhushan award.



In Saarnash the actor played the role of retired middle class Maharashtrian man in the film who had lost his son in 'Saaransh'.Anupam's stellar performance in the film won him his first Film fare best actor award. The film also chosen as India's official entry for the 1985 Academy Award for best foreign language film.













News Posted: 29 January, 2016








Cabinet Secretary holds meeting on Smart Cities

Hyderabad, Jan 29 (INN): Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary I.Y.R. Krishna Rao attended a meeting being convened by Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha with all the Chief Secretaries on implementing the Smart City Mission.



Smart City Mission is one of the flagship programmes of Government of India and has identified 98 cities across India in consultation with the States and Union Territories for implementing the programme in phased manner.



Pradeep Kumar Sinha appreciated the Chief Secretary for exercising on Smart City Programme and for its implementation. Based on the recommendations of Panel of Experts these cities are selected and going to be implemented with immediate effect under special purpose vehicle.



The Cabinet Secretary interacted with Krishna Rao to know the reaction on the selected cities of Visakhapatnam and Kakinada under this mission.



The Chief Secretary expressed that the Government of Andhra Pradesh worked very hard in preparing the proposals for three cities viz., Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Tirupati. Under Smart City Mission programme the Government of A.P. fully geared up for its implementation towards development and guidelines of Government of India awaited. Chief Secretary expressed thanks to the Government of India for its transparent method adopted in selecting the Smart Cities.



Spl. Chief Secretary Planning S.P. Tucker, Prl. Secretary MA&UD Karikala Valaven, Municipal Commissioner Tirupati Vinaychand participated in the video conference.









News Posted: 29 January, 2016








DGP issues alert against Jamtara fraudsters

Hyderabad, Jan 29 (INN): Telangana Director General of Police Anurag Sharma on Friday cautioned the public to beware of the criminal antics of youngsters from 'Jamtara' in Jharkhand state who were spreading across the country to cheat them of their valued savings.



In a statement today, the DGP appealed that people should not disclose the details of their bank accounts, pin numbers, CVV or any other details of their Debit, Credit cards and also LIC policies to unknown and unidentified callers on mobile or landlines. None of the Banks will ask such details telephonically or through Internet



He said the youth from 'Jamtara' in Jharkhand state were fishing out the people across the country by collecting various individual bank accounts, Debit and Credit card numbers and ATM card numbers and deceiving the people by withdrawing the amounts in a shortest possible time before the individuals woke up to the situation. 'The criminals changed their SIM cards after taking information number and also loot your accounts with details gathering and fake cards,' he said.



The DGP said these inter'state and cyber space criminals also defraud people even on Facebook or through social media. 'After collecting your valuable data, the criminals misuse them and draw money from your accounts without your knowledge and also become invisible by throwing away the SIM cards and also sometimes fake addresses.



The DGP also advised the people to alert the nearest police station about such calls and also the phone numbers, so that the criminals could be monitored and trapped before they cheat other gullible and innocent individuals.









News Posted: 29 January, 2016








MIM unveils "Hyderabad Action Plan"

Hyderabad, Jan 29 (INN): Probably for the first time in its 59-year-old history, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen has come up with a manifesto for Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections.



Titled "Hyderabad Action Plan for 2016-2021", the eight page MIM manifesto contains over 30 promises and brief history of party's role in city's development. The MIM has also released a fact-sheet of MIM's presence in MCH and GHMC from 1959-2014 and another document on party's achievements.



"MIM had emerged as single-largest party in 100-member MCH in 1986 and 2002. AIMIM retained this position in the old MCH limits (41 wards out of 100) though it ranked behind Congress and Telugu Desam Party in the 2009 GHMC polls. Out of the 15 years of the elected body, AIMIM held the mayor's post for eight years - during 1986-91 and 2012-2014," said the MIM in the introductory chapter.



"As the GHMC goes to the polls to elect a new body on 2nd February 2016, AIMIM has many ambitious plans on the anvil to ensure that all basic civic amenities are provided to every section of the citizens without burdening them with tax hikes. However, no effort will be spared to ensure that the GHMC realizes every rupee of tax that it should legitimately get from the citizens for the services they use. AIMIM has the vision and mission to make Hyderabad a world class city and in this direction it is making all-out efforts in every field - housing, poverty alleviation, development of infrastructure in all aspects of municipal activity and to make Hyderabad City clean and green with a safe and secure environment," said MIM President Asaduddin Owaisi.



Asaduddin Owaisi said that the MIM would take up comprehensive civic infrastructure development in GHMC by incorporating the components of Greater Hyderabad Development Programme (GHDP) approved by GHMC and the Strategic Road Development Plan formulated by the State Government. Under the GHDP and SRDP, new multi-level flyovers, grade separators, skyways, elevated corridors, junction improvement works, foot over bridges, subways, multi-level parking lots, service roads, and road widening and peripheral road works are envisaged.



"MIM will ensure expeditious completion of Old City Package, Charminar Pedestrianisation Project and Mir Alam Tank beautification and development project. It will facilitate expeditious implementation of Hyderabad Traffic Integrated Management System (H-TRIMS) project to ease traffic congestion," he said.



The party has also promised to construct more bus shelters and bus bays, replace existing streetlights with LEDs, revamp the solid waste management and construction and demolition waste management (garbage and debris clearance) with more mechanical sweeping units, modern transfer stations, waste-to-energy projects, C&DW processing plants etc., installation of 1500 RO (Reverse Osmosis) water plants in the slums and poor localities in GHMC to provide clean drinking water to the residents.









News Posted: 29 January, 2016








Four Southeast Asian countries  Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam  are represented in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement which the United States has concluded with 11 Asia-Pacific countries, also including Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Peru.

The benefits that the United States will derive from the TPP, once it is ratified, should deepen its gains in Southeast Asia in particular and the Asia-Pacific in general.The primary benefit to the United States is strategic.

Traditionally, statecraft and warfare belonged to the aristocratic sphere of high politics among nations; economic relations were consigned to the plebeian level of low politics. Globalization has inverted that condescending hierarchy.

While guns  the ability to go to war  are still important in international relations, butter  peaceful relations woven around trade and investment relations  has moved to the forefront of international engagement. In this context, the TPP is a strategic instrument.

It should help the United States write the economic rules of the emerging Asian order during a transitional era marked by the ascendancy of regional countries.

China has already embarked on its own initiatives. Witness its success in establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; its Silk Road initiatives covering land and maritime links with Eurasian countries; and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that seeks closer integration with other Asian countries.

The TPP will anchor the United States in the economically and strategically important Asia-Pacific region, and stop America from being shut out by a plethora of Asians-only initiatives. Furthermore, the TPP will strengthen links between the two sides of the Pacific.

The partnership will keep access to the United States open even as nations in the region respond to the more globalized role that China now plays.

In that way, the TPP can allay fears of occasional American apathy towards the region; instead, the entrenchment of Americas economic engagement and its political profile will enable it to be prominent in ways other than through military power.

Ideally, the World Trade Organization would have provided a global framework for the 21st century, but its stymied deliberations have made other arrangements necessary.

The TPP upholds collaborative American interests in the Asia-Pacific, and its ambit encompasses nearly 40 per cent of global GDP.

As a group, the TPP countries are the largest goods and services export market for the United States.

US goods exports to those countries totalled US$698 billion in 2013, representing 44 per cent of total US goods exports. US exports of agricultural products to TPP countries amounted to US$63 billion in 2013, 42 per cent of total US agricultural exports.

US private services exports to these same countries came to US$172 billion in 2012, 27 per cent of such exports to the world, according to figures released by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).

Several American agencies, including the USTR, point to the benefits that American workers and businesses would make under the partnership.

The TPP will make it easier for American entrepreneurs, farmers, and small business owners to sell their products abroad by eliminating more than 18,000 taxes on, and other trade barriers to, American products. Beneficiaries include producers of industrial goods, food and agricultural products, and textiles.

American gains would be pronounced in Southeast Asia as well. For example, certain American auto parts now face a 27 per cent tariff in entering Vietnam. By contrast, other countries that have a free-trade agreement with Vietnam  such as China, Thailand and Indonesia  can export their auto parts to Vietnam free of duty.

The TPP would level the playing field for the United States, increasing its competitiveness in the Vietnamese market in the process.

In the same vein, American poultry, which currently faces a 40 per cent tariff in Malaysia, would attract more Malaysian customers under a TPP agreement.Overall, passage of the TPP will signal American commitment to region in a concrete way, which will benefit both the United States and its regional partners.

For the former, there will be more access to market sectors in the region; for the region, there will be stronger reasons to welcome the American presence because of the resulting opportunities for enhanced trade relations with the United States.

The partnership, while rooted in dollars and cents, is important beyond them. It will serve to sustain and entrench Americas interests in Southeast Asia and position it as an Asia-Pacific power for the foreseeable future.

The opinions expressed herein are the views of the author. Asad Latif is with ISEAS  Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

Source: A Perspective from the Region: TPP Promises Huge Gains in Southeast Asia for the US | Asia Matters for America by the East-West Center
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has queried controversial euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke about his plans to invite audience members on stage to inhale gas from his suicide machine.

The show, called Dicing with Dr Death, was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2015, where the hackles of Scottish Police and the local council were raised over Nitschke's use of the machine on stage.



The gas canister attached to the machine would usually be used to administer a fatal mix of nitrogen and carbon monoxide, yet in the show Nitschke had planned to demonstrate the contraption on a volunteer audience member using non-toxic nitrogen. Following complaints to council, the machine was disabled for the Edinburgh shows.

Philip Nitschke performs Dicing with Dr Death at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Credit:Nick Miller

The press release advertising Nitschke's Melbourne show, sent out by Nitschke's pro-euthanasia organisation Exit International this week, says: "Audience members at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival show will be invited on stage to inhale gas from an updated version of the Deliverance machine that helped end the lives of four terminally people in the 1990s using intravenous drugs.
By the end of Thursday morning, less than 24 hours into Rouhani's visit to France, the carmaker Peugeot Citroen had signed a 400 million ($616 million) deal with the Iranian carmaker Khodro. The oil company, Total, said it would sign a deal for between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels a day. Airbus will sell 118 planes to the Iranians. A demonstrator holds up a sign reading "Stop Executions in Iran" as Iranian opposition protesters march in Paris during the Iranian President's visit. Credit:AP Even as analysts warn that the Iranian market may not be as easy to access as many here hope, and that it may not be the answer that Europe desires to its economic downturn, the allure is proving nearly irresistible. Rouhani represents one-stop shopping by himself: The Iranian government controls 80 percent of the country's economy. And with Iran's population of around 80 million, much of it young and eager to spend after years of cheap Chinese goods, Western companies cannot get there fast enough. Demonstrators pose with a symbolic rope around their necks as Iranian opposition protesters march during a rally against executions in Iran during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit to Paris. Credit:AP

Deals and potential deals, signed and promised - for cars, planes, metals, pharmaceuticals - have been cascading. French companies should "rush" to Iran and "not waste any time," said Pierre Gattaz, president of the French employer federation Medef. As French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Thursday: "France is available for Iran." France, he said - with Rouhani at his side at a meeting of the employers' federation - is "ready to mobilise its companies, its engineers and its technicians, its numerous resources, to contribute to the modernisation of your country". Later, when Hollande received Rouhani, the French leader was noticeably unsmiling after a day marked by human rights protests against the Iranian president in Paris. About 20 agreements were signed in the presence of the two presidents, from pledges to co-operate in health and agriculture to deals for planes, construction work and pharmaceuticals. Hollande said Syria had been discussed - Iran's support for President Bashar Assad has been unwavering while France insists he must go. "We spoke of everything," Hollande said. "I recalled the attachment of France to human rights," he added, as Rouhani looked on grimly.

Beyond the money, though, Rouhani's European visit has important political and symbolic overtones, experts said. Signing deals and meeting with Western politicians reinforces his own moderate faction in the face of powerful conservative elements in Iran - mostly because it shows the president taking an active role to turn around his country's troubled economy. "The logic of Rouhani, to get out of this difficult situation, is the normalisation of Iran's economic relations with the world," said Fereydoun Khavand, a professor of economics at L'Universite Paris Descartes. "He is supported by the middle classes, the urban population." Rouhani and the 11-odd ministers accompanying him on the state visit to Europe represent the moderate faction, "and they want to open up and go to the world, to assure the integration of Iran in the global economy", Khavand added. Rouhani's trip is a calculated gamble against the conservative elements - that he has the popular will on his side, analysts said.

"His opponents say, 'you've weakened Iran with the nuclear deal,'" said Thierry Coville, an Iran specialist at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques, a think tank. "And he says, 'my politics of normalisation reinforces the role of Iran in the world.'" "He's telling the Iranian population that, 'we are being taken seriously,'" Coville said. "And I think the population is receptive." To be sure, Rouhani's moderation is relative, and several substantial protests against his visit were mounted in Paris on Thursday to serve as reminders. A half-dressed woman harnessed herself by rope to a bridge as a reminder that Iran discriminates against women and is a leader in executions by hanging - carrying out at least 830 for last year by November 1, according to Human Rights Watch. Another Paris rally focused on repression and political prisoners in Iran, where, according to Human Rights Watch, scores of people are held for their affiliation with banned opposition parties, and journalists and bloggers are routinely jailed.
New York: The United Nations Security Council should place an arms embargo on South Sudan, and its president should be sanctioned over atrocities in the oil-rich country's two-year civil war, a confidential report has recommended.

The report by a UN panel that monitors the conflict in South Sudan said that President Salva Kiir, as well as rebel leader Riek Machar are still completely in charge of their forces and are therefore directly to blame for killing civilians and other actions that warrant sanctions.

A displaced child holds clay toys of a peacekeeper and a rifle, in the UN camp for displaced people in the capital Juba, South Sudan earlier this month. Credit:AP

The UN has long-threatened to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan, but Russia, which has veto power, and Angola  a member of the council  have been reluctant to support it. According to a UN report last year, China sold $US20 million ($28 million) worth of "arms, ammunition, and related materiel" to the South Sudan army in 2014, but had stopped supply. Israel was believed to have supplied assault rifles, and Russia millions of dollars worth of helicopters.

Russia's UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said this week he was concerned that an arms embargo would be one-sided because it would be easier to enforce on the government.
A construction company has been fined $82,500 for the death of a worker who was struck by a reversing road grader at a Macgregor building site in 2011.

Justice John Burns described the death of Wayne Vickery, 45, as tragic and avoidable as he sentenced Canberra Contractors in the ACT Supreme Court on Friday morning.

Fiona Vickery outside the ACT Supreme Court after Canberra Contractors was sentenced over her husband's death. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

The penalty came four years and 44 days after the accident and prompted Mr Vickery's widow Fiona to call for an urgent overhaul of the court system, describing the legal process as "unnecessarily protracted and arduous".

Mr Vickery, of Yass, was killed instantly while he was acting as a grade checker and had crouched down behind the heavy grader to check ground levels for a road in a new residential housing estate.
Peak iPhone Apple actually sold a record number of iPhones during the December quarter, which encompasses the key Christmas trading period. But that record number, 74.8 million units, was a paltry 1 per cent above the previous record, set a year earlier. It might seem strange that record unit sales and a record quarterly profit failed to impress investors, but Wall Street is obsessed with growth, and the worry is the iPhone has hit its peak. "It's too successful, that's their problem," Jason Sedawie, of Brisbane-based Decisive Asset Management, says of Apple and its iPhone. "Everyone's already got one." What's more, it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better. For the first time since before the iPod (the MP3 players, remember those?) was released in 2001, Apple said it expects to report a decline in quarterly revenue next time it reports results in April. Credit Suisse is even forecasting that the company's total revenue for the full financial year will shrink. Over the last couple of years, Apple has been able to juice up sales by introducing larger screen versions of the iPhone and by expanding into new markets like China. With the next iPhone not expected until September and China's economy looking shaky (Cook for the first time admitted the company was witnessing "softness" in that key market) it's not clear where, in the short term, growth will come from.

"The smartphone market at the high end is looking totally penetrated," Sedawie says. "The upgrade cycle is every two and a bit years and it's getting longer and longer. Now they've already got the bigger screen, what's going to convince you to get a new one?" Apple's first foray into wearable devices with the Apple Watch, and its impressive set top box, the Apple TV, are both selling well, but nowhere enough to pick up the slack from a stagnant iPhone. Rumours about an Apple foray into automobiles continue to abound, but they remain just that: rumours. Not a problem for everyone Ironically enough, while the smartphone is becoming a headache (of sorts) for Apple, it has been an absolute godsend for Facebook. The social media giant crushed expectations with its own earnings this week. The company revealed that more than a billion people use its core service now each day, 934 million of them on a mobile device.

And most importantly, while its base of users is absolutely enormous, the company is also making real money from them, posting a $US3.7 billion profit in 2015. Most of it comes from people using phones. It said 80 per cent of its revenue now comes from mobile advertising. This year, Facebook will attempt to prove it is more than just Facebook (its eponymous social network). The company is taking orders on Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets, which it expects to start shipping by March. It has a new strategy to make money from WhatsApp, the messaging service it acquired for $US17 billion in 2014, which is used by 900 million people in its own right. It could also stuff more ads into Instagram, its popular photo sharing smartphone app. The year the FANGs bite back? Last year, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet (Google) all soared on the US stockmarket. So stunning was their rise in an otherwise flat sharemarket that it spawned its own acronym: the FANG trade. There has been a big debate about whether the FANG stocks would be able to repeat last year's stunning performance in 2016. The jury's still out, but Facebook's strong performance suggests at least one of them could. (Amazon's results on Friday morning were less well received by investors, and Netflix shares have slipped about 10 per cent since its result, earlier in January).

Apple was notably not a member of this group. Its shares went backwards in 2015, just the second time that has happened on an annual basis since 2007, when the first iPhone was released. Plenty of people have looked ridiculous predicting the decline of Apple before. And that is certainly not the intention of this piece. The company is still in a position many others could only dream of. As the New York Times noted this week, Apple's annual revenue from the iPhone alone last year ($US154 billion) was greater than the economic output of two thirds of countries on earth. Even if iPhone sales stop growing, Apple could potentially make more money by selling iPhone users more online services, such as its subscription music service, Apple Music. Apple has an installed base of 1 billion users across all of its devices. A few bucks extra each month from them could turn out to be quite substantial. The stock is also starting to look undervalued on many measures. Which means Apple could begin to attract more value-oriented investors, who are less worried about growth and eager to buy assets for less than they're worth. Plus, Tim Cook has a warchest of more than $US150 billion to play with. He can use it to develop new products, or buy other companies, and to pay dividends and buy back stock, which should support the share price. As Benedict Evans, from the prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital fund Andreesen Horowitz, explained on Twitter: "Apple's market position is secure (until the next time everything changes) but it could only ever grow so far."
A class action brought by a shareholder in Downer EDI over the company's troubled Waratah train project will begin next week despite the discovery process in the case being frustrated by a cache of company documents contained on a hard-drive infected by "ransom-ware" going missing.

The class action has been brought in the Supreme Court of Victoria by Downer EDI shareholder Camping Warehouse Australia, which alleges the engineering firm mislead and deceived investors by not revealing the issues at its Waratah train project in a timely fashion.

Downer took a $585 million hit to its market capitalisation on June 1, 2010 when it wrote off $190 million associated with the Waratah contract to build rolling stock for Sydney's rail network due to cost overruns.

According to the class action claim, Downer EDI was aware it would have to write down the value of the Waratah contract on or before January 12, 2010.

The class action is being brought by serial class action litigant Mark Elliott on behalf of investors and is open to all shareholders who purchased shares ahead of Downer EDI's shock June 2010 announcement.
Recently, it was revealed that Queensland taxpayers might have to foot the bill for a $40 million environmental clean-up of the polluted Queensland Nickel refinery site if it closed.

That toxic, expensive legacy is just one example of a much broader failure which could leave taxpayers, regional communities, workers and our environment to suffer.

State governments across Australia, but especially in Queensland, are failing to require the payment of upfront bonds by resources companies to cover the rehabilitation of their sites when they close down.
Futurists and nature lovers alike were excited to learn that Australia's largest solar plants were officially opened recently. Considered to be a single project, the government-supported plants are located at Broken Hill and at Nyngan, and have a theoretical maximum capacity of 155MW.

To put that in perspective it's the equivalent of over 30,000 fairly large residential solar systems, and it is certainly a sight to behold. However, the project uses a different kind of photovoltaic panel from the one you might find on your roof. While silicon-based solar panels are very attractive for residential projects, the thin film panels used at Broken Hill have some serious advantages that should excite the industry in Australia.

Brett Redman says it's hard to make the economics work in most regions to get a large-scale renewable investment up.

In particular, the thin film cells retain their effectiveness at higher temperatures, and, due to a simpler manufacturing process, have consistently remained cost competitive with silicon for large scale projects. Historically at least, thin film has lagged slightly behind silicon in efficiency per square metre of panel. But theoretically these panels could be more efficient than silicon. Even then, though, the requirement that they are properly recycled may make them more appropriate for large projects.

Australia is lagging behind when it comes to the renewable energy industry, with many candidates for jobs in the industry forced to go overseas, or pick another career. In part, that's because the grants system, run by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, does not provide the same kind of certainty that would be provided by an ongoing system, such as a solar feed-in tariff. Such a tariff is why we long since surpassed the achievement of one million solar homes, but have lagged behind other wealthy countries when it comes to large solar farms like the one at Broken Hill.
International investors CBRE Global Investors and Universal-Investment have paid about $150 million for the South Wharf Tower, in Melbourne which was sold by the open-ended real estate fund Deka-ImmobilienGlobal managed by Deka Immobilien.

CBE Global Investors manages about $70 billion of direct property globally and will manage the new property on behalf of Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK), one of Germany's largest institutional investors. South Wharf Tower represents CBRE Global Investors first direct acquisition in Australia.

Investors have paid about $150 million for the South Wharf Tower on 2 Ceremonial Drive.

This comes as overseas cash continues to look for a home in Australia.

According to Colliers International, a survey of global property investors has found Melbourne and Sydney ranked second and third respectively as targets for offshore capital in the year ahead.
Nadella is trying to remake the company around cloud services, such as the Azure computing platform and the subscription-based Office 365, which are seeing strong growth. The company is also focusing on Windows 10 to restore momentum to the operating system business and slashing costs, seeking to make up for revenue lost when it scaled back its unprofitable smartphone efforts.

Profit excluding certain items in the fiscal second quarter through December was US78 a share, and sales adjusted for deferrals were $US25.7 billion ($36.3 billion), Microsoft said in a statement Thursday. Analysts on average estimated profit would be US71 on revenue of $US25.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Microsoft posted better-than-projected sales and profit, fuelled by cloud services and Office productivity programs, as its chief executive Satya Nadella's efforts to transform the software maker gain ground.

"They have two things going for them - one, the belief that Nadella is driving innovation towards the cloud, and No. 2, Amy Hood has had a blowtorch out on expenses," said Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS, referring to Microsoft's chief financial officer. "It's a totally different vibe coming out of that place that it was three years ago."

Microsoft shares rose more than 5 per cent in extended trading following the report, after closing at $US52.06. The stock climbed 25 per cent during the three months that ended in December on optimism about Nadella's turnaround, compared with a 6.5 per cent gain in Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Net income in the recent period declined to $US5 billion, or US62 a share. The Redmond, Washington-based company in July announced it would cut as many as 7800 jobs and take a massive writedown on its Nokia handset unit, plus take a restructuring charge as it scaled back its ambitions for making its own mobile phones.

Unearned revenue, a measure of future sales, was $US25.03 billion. Three analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected $US23.5 billion, on average.

Microsoft has pledged to reach annualised revenue of $US20 billion in its corporate cloud business by the fiscal year that ends in June 2018. As of the September quarter, that metric stood at $US8.2 billion. The company has been adding customers and workloads for its Azure services, which let clients run and store applications in Microsoft's cloud-data centres.
Feeding the House

"For the third year in succession, Mrs Helen Shaw and Miss Thelma Cazalet have been elected from the ranks of women members of Parliament to sit on the Kitchen Committee, the organisation which caters for the culinary requirements of Britain's House of Commons. With 17 places to supervise (including dining-rooms, tea-rooms and bars) their task is rather more than that of the average housewife!"

Sea Dog memories

"Tales of the early days of Australian film were told to the Sydney Movie Makers Club by former actor Eric Howell. In the melodrama Sea Dogs of Australia, while playing the villain he had to dive into the harbour to escape and was hailed as a hero, as the bay was infested with sharks but that had been carefully concealed from him. For that he received a bonus and the promise of a new suit if his own was ruined."

Fancy poultry club
Soon the world will witness a remarkable sight: a beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner presiding over 21st-century concentration camps. Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the world's genuine heroes, won democracy for her country, culminating in historic elections in November that her party won in a landslide. As winner, Suu Kyi is also inheriting the worst ethnic cleansing you've never heard of, Myanmar's destruction of a Muslim minority called the Rohingya.

A recent Yale study suggested that the abuse of the more than 1 million Rohingya may amount to genocide; at the least, a confidential UN report to the Security Council says it may constitute "crimes against humanity under international criminal law".

Yet Suu Kyi seems to plan to continue this Myanmar version of apartheid. She is now a politician and oppressing a minority such as the Rohingya is popular with mostly Buddhist voters.

What all this means in practical terms is that Muhammad Karim is dead at 14.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled 20 all-white acting nominees this month, the furore was immediate. The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, created last year, returned in force, and there was talk of an Oscars boycott. Then last week the academy declared it was doubling its diversity push and ending guaranteed lifelong voting rights.

This time it was academy members' turn to react in disbelief and outrage.

Sidney Poitier, the first black winner of an Academy Award.

The most common cri de coeur: the changes were ageist (a possibility) and insulting to blacks (if there's a black academy member out there who agrees, please do get in touch). Another: "I'm liberal, so I can't be racist"  a tautological cry that largely misses the point. For what it's worth, Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith did not utter the dreaded R-word when they announced they were not attending the awards; Smith wished the academy "grace and love".

There is, among older academy members, genuine bewilderment after this tidal shift. Sidney Furie, an 82-year-old member, noted that it was his brethren who made Sidney Poitier the first black man to win best actor, in 1963, and named In the Heat of the Night (1967) best picture.
Waves of thunderstorms have begun to hit Sydney, some of them potentially severe, as a complex low pressure system brings storm activity to much of eastern Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe thunderstorm warning for large hailstones and damaging winds for the Sydney region.

"Severe thunderstorms were detected on weather radar near Richmond, Penrith, Lake Burragorang and Wisemans Ferry [and were heading south-eastwards]," the bureau said.
Pragmatism over purity In his 2009 manifesto Battlelines, Abbott describes one of his political heroes, John Howard, as an "inspired pragmatist". Howard, Abbott wrote, was a leader whose government defied categorisation as either wholly liberal or conservative; rather, he was driven by the national interest. "For all his personal conservatism, Howard always insisted that a political party that wanted to win government had to have a broad-based political philosophy. To win elections, parties need politics that strike chords with voters, not theorists."

As opposition leader, Abbott famously told his then-senate leader Nick Minchin that facing a choice of "policy purity and pragmatic political pragmatism, I'll take pragmatism every time". Intellectual standard bearer for conservative right If you look back at his career, he [Abbott] has probably enjoyed being a bomb thrower most of all ... As leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister Abbott, at least sometimes, attempted to compromise. Think, for example, of his too-late retreats: dumping section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and after naming Prince Philip a knight.

But Abbott, a social conservative like Howard, never really succeeded in appealing to a broad cross section of the electorate. The 2014 budget became an ideological millstone around his neck and proved to be unsaleable. A little over two years after being elected, he was dumped by his party. And if the early signs are any indication, the former prime minister - unlike Howard, who slowly sailed back towards the political centre after losing the opposition leader's post in 1989 - has no intention of heading to the political middle ground. Instead, according to colleagues and allies of the former prime minister, he seems intent on becoming the intellectual standard bearer for the conservative right of the Liberal Party; an ideas man, a bomb thrower, and a regular contributor to public debate from the back bench.

'Next man' Morrison's lost support Fairfax Media spoke to a dozen Liberal MPs this week, including supporters and opponents of Abbott in the September leadership contest, in an attempt to understand the motivations of the former prime minister (attempts to contact Abbott directly were met with a stony silence; the former prime minister appears to have decided who his "friends" and "enemies" are in the media). The broad consensus view of Liberals is, mostly, that Immigration Minister Peter Dutton (convener of the Monkey Pod lunches) and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, sitting in the House and Senate respectively, are the new standard bearers for the socially conservative faction (Treasurer Scott Morrison, once seen as the "next man" by conservatives, has lost considerable support by serving under Turnbull). Both Dutton and Cormann are more economically dry than Abbott, though both are also socially conservative. The distinction is important.

In the Liberal Party, economic dries are found in the socially progressive wing, the centre right and in the hard right grouping arguably most closely aligned with Abbott. As one member of the conservative faction put it to Fairfax Media this week, the younger generation of socially conservative MPs like Alan Tudge, Angus Taylor and Zed Seselja are economic liberals, or dries, first and social conservatives second, "unlike Tony". 'People will get sick of him otherwise' Abbott, and former cabinet ministers Eric Abetz and Kevin Andrews, are seen as part of the previous generation; part of the hard right grouping, but no longer its leaders in a factional sense. That same MP says the conservative grouping embraces Abbott as someone who has a lot to contribute, but cautions:

"He [Abbott] has to work out how he is going to do it, because people will get sick of him otherwise. It's a difficult task for an ex-PM to stay and make a contribution and not be destructive." "If you look back at his career, he [Abbott] has probably enjoyed being a bomb thrower most of all so maybe he wants to keep doing that. But as an ex-PM you have to throw a different sort of bomb." A second conservative MP says it is "bizarre" that, now returned to the backbench, Abbott chooses to stand up for the conservatives after disappointing them while leader. "It doesn't look like Turnbull will put him back in the ministry. He is just going to end up a shag on a rock." 'I don't think Turnbull should care'

So what does the future hold for Abbott? "The new conservatives don't want him to be the leader, it's Dutton and Cormann," says a third MP who backed Abbott in the spill motion. "He [Abbott] will be a standard bearer in an intellectual, not factional sense. He never really got involved in factional stuff in New South Wales for example, that's not who he is. So I think he is going to keep doing what he is doing, he will keep putting ideas out." So is Abbott a threat to Turnbull? "I don't think Turnbull should care, at the moment. Tony is talking to a part of the base that Malcolm can't talk to. They need to know there is a place for him in the Liberal Party and I suspect Malcolm is relatively relaxed."

That analysis is backed by several MPs who backed Turnbull in the spill but who say it is important the twin pillars of the Liberal Party - the socially conservative and liberal wings - feel they have a place. Says one: "If anything, the [ADF] address reinforces the idea that Malcolm is now in charge." "It also demonstrates that the Liberal Party is a broad church. Malcolm couldn't stop Tony if he wanted to. But unlike previous iterations of government on both sides, Malcolm is demonstrating the idea that people feel better when they hear politicians talk about things they care about. I'm not even remotely worried and the people around Malcolm who are MPs aren't particularly concerned about it." Words chosen carefully Asked this week about Abbott's decision to re-contest his seat, and fly to the US, Turnbull carefully pointed out that he had no plans to censure Abbott.

Doubtless, he is aware that, as a former leader, Abbott must be given licence to speak and any attempt to circumscribe that would blow up in his face. "Tony is entitled to, he is obviously entitled to renominate for the seat of Warringah and I wish him all the best for that. And he is entitled to speak to such audiences as he wishes," he said.. "There are people in the Parliament, there are colleagues, there are, you know, fellow members of the Coalition, who have different views, and they are entitled to respect them - they are entitled to express them, and I respect their right to do so, just as they would respect my right to disagree with them." Senior ministers similarly chose their words carefully about Abbott his week. Morrison welcomed the decision because Abbott has been contributing to politics all his life, not just in Parliament and he is passionate about it and that is a good thing. Environment minister Greg Hunt said, of Abbott's decision to address the ADF, that "everybody is entitled to their views, as the Prime Minister himself has said".

And Tudge said he was "very pleased that Tony Abbott is staying in the Parliament. I think that he has got, still, an enormous amount to offer the Parliament in terms of his ideasas well as mentoring" but that, in line with indications from Turnbull, "I don't think he will be returning to the front bench". September wounds may be healing Ministers and backbenchers also chose their words carefully when discussing Abbott. Few are willing to go on the record to discuss in detail the former PM's future prospects, his reasons for staying in Parliament or his decision to address the ADF for fear of kicking along perceptions the government is internally divided. Even Abetz, a fellow ideological traveller, would say only that "before he even made his decision, I said I was hoping he [Abbott] would stay on and I am happy he has".

The fact that Abbott is staying in Parliament will, if anything, actually help unify the party, the dumped former senate leader argues. The general reluctance of conservatives to speak out in defence of Abbott, if anything, underscores the fact that the wounds of September may have begun to heal, at least for some conservative Liberal MPs. But still one of Turnbull's biggest challenges in 2016, aside from selling significant tax reform in an election year, will be holding his party together. The Nationals are more natural allies of Abbott and are likely to snare an extra cabinet post in a pending reshuffle; a section of the Liberal Party, albeit settling, is still aggrieved at the events of September. It is also almost unthinkable that at some level Abbott is not entertaining, one day, a return to the leadership of the Liberal Party and the country.
Two developments this week have exposed the rank cynicism of last year's Coalition manoeuvrings over gay marriage.

One is the new year's revelation from Australian Marriage Equality that, on its figuring, majorities in the House of Representative and the Senate would now pass the reform if freed of party diktat.

The other is the upwelling of fear on the conservative side, through names like Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Eric Abetz, and Cory Bernardi, that a public vote, whenever it is held, will simply approve the change.
Two years ago Amanda Ridden and her boyfriend embarked on a "Bonnie and Clyde" rampage across Sydney, robbing the Roseville Cinemas and a Revesby pub with a sawn-off shot gun and an axe.

Their crime spree ended at a southern Sydney McDonald's two days later but not without Ms Ridden biting, swearing, kicking and spitting at the police offices who arrested her.

Amanda Ridden's parents Wayne and his wife leave court after their daughter's sentencing. Credit:Kate Geraghty

When in custody the 23-year-old then kicked and scratched an officer and yelled, "f*** you, I am going to find out where you live and get [my boyfriend] to rape your wife," according to court documents.

Ridden was silent on Friday, her eyes welling with tears as she was sentenced to a maximum of nine years and six months for the crime spree she embarked on with then boyfriend Daniel Roach.
New statistics paint a damning picture of the NSW prison system, with overcrowding at record highs and inmates more likely to be back within two years than any other state.

One-in-three people behind bars in NSW is now on remand and not convicted of a crime, a growth of more than 10 percentage points in five years.

Corrections Minister David Elliott Credit:Marco Del Grande

The news on re-offending, released on Friday, also makes for difficult reading for the state government: it has gone up for every year the law-and-order focused coalition has been in power in NSW.

But in an interview, the Corrections Minister, David Elliott, who presides over the most crowded prison system in NSW's chequered correctional history, has outlined a plan to drop that figure.
The Liberal National Party has been accused of appropriating the Brisbane City Council's corporate identity in election material, seemingly in breach of regulations.

But Lord Mayor Graham Quirk's campaign insisted its election material was all above board.

Spot the difference? The Liberal National Party campaign insists its branding was sufficiently different to the Brisbane City Council's own. Credit:Cameron Atfield

The council incumbents have again come under fire for their long-standing practice of sending campaign material with a blue and gold "cleat" down the left-hand side.

The council's marketing, communication and advertising policy appears to clearly outlaw such electioneering.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29



By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) is ready to consider the possibility of increasing the loan issuance to Azerbaijan, IDB's office in Baku told Trend.

"No requests have been received from the Azerbaijani government to draw additional funding from the IDB," the bank's office said. "But we believe that after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has made a statement in which he has urged to increase the volume of foreign investments to Azerbaijan, the government will appeal to us with a request."

The bank's office said that the IDB is ready to give loans for financing the areas, which are traditional for the bank.

"These can be the infrastructure, agricultural and social projects," the bank's office said. "If the Azerbaijani government appeals to us with a request to deliver a loan, we are ready to consider it."

Azerbaijan became a member of IDB in 1992. The bank has invested over $1.2 billion in Azerbaijan for the implementation of projects in various spheres of economy.

The Islamic Development Bank is an international financial organization headquartered in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). IDB was founded on December 18, 1973 at the first conference of the finance ministers of the OIC member states.

IDB started operating on October 20, 1975.
A 30-year-old man allegedly trying to outrun police in two states on Thursday afternoon entered Queensland on just his wheel rims, after road spikes blew out all four of his car tyres.

The Gold Coast man was allegedly at the wheel of a stolen car that New South Wales police attempted to intercept on the Pacific Highway in northern New South Wales about 3pm.

The allegedly stolen car travelled into Queensland on just its wheel rims after road spikes wee laid, police said. Credit:Emma O'Rourke / Nine News

Road stingers were laid in an attempt to stop the car near Tweed Heads and it crossed into Queensland on four deflated tyres.

The car kept travelling north of the highway, before it was finally intercepted in Tugun, on the southern Gold Coast.
Sacked workers from Queensland Nickel have left the first creditors' meeting with their entitlements still in doubt.

Administrators FTI Consulting convened the 3+ hour long meeting in Townsville on Friday, two weeks after 237 workers were sacked from Clive Palmer's Yabulu refinery.

Sacked workers from Queensland Nickel have left the first creditors' meeting with their entitlements still in doubt. Credit:Bloomberg

They hadn't expected to be able to provide detailed financial information until later meetings.

But that's little comfort for Jolene Devow, whose husband Richard was supporting six children and a terminally ill mother before he was sacked.
A Metro train driver has no criminal case to answer over the death of a passenger who tried to board a moving train, after a magistrate dropped the charges against him.

Magistrate John Hardy told Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday that the evidence against train driver Russell Dickson, 41, was of an insufficient strength for him to be convicted by a jury in a higher court.

Mitchell Callaghan died when he fell between the train and the platform at Heyington Station. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Mr Dickson was accused of moving his train from Heyington Station, in Toorak, while knowing the doors were open as Mitchell Callaghan was trying to board.
A Perth family has thanked US surfing "legend" Kelly Slater after the star saved a mother and a young toddler from "a freak wave" in Hawaii.

Father Chris White, a photographer from WA, posted his thanks to the 11-time world surf champion on Instagram after his wife Sarah and 22-month old son Van were swamped by a huge wave as they walked along a footpath close to Rockpiles - situated in front of Ehukai Beach - renowned for its surf.

Kelly Slater, fresh from his struggles at a near by competition in Waimea, was unbelievably on hand to rescue the pair after North Beach mum Sarah lost grip on Van's pram.

Speaking to Seven News Perth Sarah re-lived the terrifying ordeal.
Jerusalem: The United States and Britain have monitored secret drone flights and communications by the Israeli air force in a hacking operation dating to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by the former US intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden.

Israel voiced disappointment but no great surprise at the disclosures, published by The Intercept, an online publication associated with Glenn Greenwald, who has collaborated with Snowden, and by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

Edward Snowden in Moscow in 2013. Credit:Getty Images

The disclosures raised the possibility of further strained ties between Israel and the United States, but the two close allies have traditionally had an understanding that they spy on each other despite pledging not to.

Israel has said it stopped spying on the United States after it employed the US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s. Pollard was released from a North Carolina prison in November after serving 30 years.
Atlantic Theater Company's upcoming production of David Yazbek and Itamar Moses' new musical The Band's Visit has found a new director.

Twenty-one-time Tony Award winner Harold Prince, who had signed on to direct the production, has bowed out due to scheduling conflicts. Lortel Award winner David Cromer (Our Town, The Effect) will take over the show, which is now scheduled to begin performances in the fall of 2016 (as opposed to the originally announced spring 2016).

Based on Eran Kolirin's film The Band's Visit, which won the Jury Coup de Couer prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the work tells the story of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Band. When they arrive in Israel to play at the opening of a cultural center, their hosts don't show, and an error in communication sends them in the wrong direction. Soon, the band finds themselves in a small settlement in the heart of the Negev desert with no transportation out until morning and no hotel in sight.

Yazbek is the Tony-nominated songwriter behind the musicals The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Moses' plays include Bach at Leipzig, The Four of Us, and Completeness.

Dates, casting, and other information about the production will be announced.
Sometimes, the circumstances of a play don't need to be completely obvious in order to tell a captivating story. Such is the case with Mfoniso Udofia's Sojourners, a world premiere from Playwrights Realm (at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater) that cleverly draws the viewer into its mystery. By the end, you'll be hooked.

It is 1978 and Abasiama (Chinasa Ogbuagu) and Ukpong (Hubert Point-Du Jour) are a young Nigerian couple in Houston, Texas. Even though she is eight months' pregnant and studying hard for her biology degree, Abasiama works at a gas station to support the family. Ukpong doesn't work, but he does occasionally disappear for several days, returning with Motown records and beer that he has purchased with Abasiama's hard-earned money. Abasiama gives birth during one of Ukpong's walkabouts, leaving her in the care of Moxie (Lakisha Michelle May), a young prostitute who happened to be filling out a job application at the gas station. Although a complete stranger, Abasiama's countryman, Disciple (Chinaza Uche), happens upon the two women and decides to accompany them to the hospital. He thinks this is a meeting ordained by God. Moxie thinks he is a creep and wishes he would go away. Throughout, Udofia paints a captivating portrait of an irresistible patriarchy in which men abandon their wives for wanderlust and other men arrive to plant a flag in them  with the women ambivalently accepting everything.

We tend to lump together all immigrants from a certain country, but Udofia subtly exposes fault lines of class, gender, and upbringing when it comes to Nigerian-Americans: Ukpong clearly has the family resources to dawdle (and fail) through his American adventure. By contrast, the less-well-off Disciple behaves like Cortes burning his ships on the Aztec coast: He has no other option but to conquer. Even though she's from a prosperous family, Abasiama worries what it will mean if she (the first of her family to study in America) returns to Nigeria with no degree. Through sensitive prose delivered in memorable performances, these sojourners seem real, their specific anxieties achingly familiar.

Chinasa Ogbuagu plays Abasiama and Lakisha Michelle May plays Moxie in Sojourners.

( Chasi Annexy)

Point-Du Jour is charming and sexy as Ukpong. At first, we cannot understand Abasiama's coldness toward him...until we get to know him better. The opposite is true for Moxie, who makes an extremely unpleasant first impression, but then wins us over. May naturally embodies the sharp-tongued hooker with a heart of gold, marching across the stage like she owns it. At one point, costume designer Loren Shaw audaciously outfits her in just a large sweater (no bottom), which May wears as if she is modeling the latest Versace dress.

His wild eyes peering from behind wire-rimmed glasses, Uche gives a performance befitting his character's name. His Disciple smiles through religious spasms and conversations with the spirit realm. He has a speech pattern that is simultaneously halting and deliberate, recalling Jeff Goldblum. When he waves his hand around Moxie's job application, he sends chills down our spines, making us believe that his magic is real.

Ogbuagu's performance is far more grounded, even world-weary, making Abasiama the most relatable character in the play. Her droopy eyelids speak of a lifetime of survival around charismatic and disappointing men.

Moxie (Lakisha Michelle May) and Abasiama (Chinasa Ogbuagu) look on in wonder and disbelief as Disciple (Chinaza Uche) works his magic on a job application.

( Chasi Annexy)

While the characters are crystal clear, the circumstances bringing them together are murkier. We know that Ukpong and Abasiama's marriage was arranged, but what is the relationship between their two families? How did Massachusetts-born Moxie end up walking the streets of Houston? How did Disciple scrounge enough cash to get a visa to study in the states? Key pieces of the story seem to be missing, lost to the fog of memory. Or perhaps they are still hiding, poised to reveal themselves in later installments (Sojourners is the first part of a multi-play cycle).

Ed Sylvanus Iskandar (famous for his intimate extravaganzas at the Flea Theater) re-creates the emotional truth (and factual unreliability) of memory onstage, directing the piece with a cinematic flair. Much of this is facilitated by scenic designer Jason Sherwood's rotating set and sound designer Jeremy S. Bloom's vintage soundtrack. Smokey Robinson's "Shop Around" plays as the stage spins, showing us several overlapping scenes: Ukpong joyously fritters away his student visa, Disciple madly hacks at the typewriter, and the far more sullen Abasiama puts on her uniform for a day of work at the gas station. "Welcome to Fiesta," she shouts with a forced cheer.

With clear-eyed determination, Udofia has penned an immigrant's tale that is neither triumphal (like the wildly popular Hamilton) nor a complete refutation of the American Dream (like nearly every play by Eugene O'Neill). Rather, it is something distinctly more honest about the tradeoffs and sacrifices one makes to settle in a new land. Since this is only the first part of a larger series, I can't wait to see what this country has in store for Abasiama and her budding family.
PORTLAND, OR -- January 28, 2016: Telefonix, Inc., manufacturer of the PowerPost commercial electric vehicle charging station (EVSE) product line, introduces its wall-mounted electric vehicle (EV) charging stations today at the Portland Auto Show.

MORE INFO The Best Car Research and Buyer's Guide

Both the L1 PowerPost EVSE and the L2 PowerPost charging stations are now available as wall-mounted units. Designed for inside or outside parking situations, this new product variation offers parking facilities with limited space another option for becoming equipped for the electric vehicle revolution. The units can be mounted on a wall or on a post and can be installed individually or in side by side configurations.

In long dwell parking situations where cars are parked for 2 hours or more, low current charging is the simplest and most cost effective option. Now with more installation options, it is even easier for parking facilities to enhance their image and support customers, employees and guests who are leading the charge in sustainability and energy reduction.

"We are thrilled to introduce our wall-mounted PowerPost EVSE at the Portland Auto Show, because of Portland's leadership in growing electric vehicle infrastructure," said Bill Williams, Business Development Manager at Telefonix Inc. "Major electric vehicle charging station installations, such as Portland International Airport's 42 PowerPost EVSE, the largest installation at a US airport, shows the city's commitment to green technology."

Tax credits, such as The U.S. Department of Energy's "Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Tax Credit" that was recently extended through December 31, 2016, may be available for all PowerPost products. Read More Report

About The PowerPost EVSE Product Line

The Telefonix PowerPost electric vehicle charging station product line is focused on low current solutions for commercial parking lots or garages where cars are parked for two or more hours. The L1 PowerPost EVSE led the way as the first commercial Level 1 EV charging station, and the L2 PowerPost EVSE is making an impact on the Level 2 product category as the first low current, commercial Level 2 EV charging station. The company has now introduced a wall-mounted version of the level 1 and level 2 PowerPost EV charging stations. All PowerPost chargers provide an economical charging solution that also features a retractable cord reel that eliminates the clutter and potential hazards of long cables as well as offering the potential for custom branding. Telefonix is delivering on electric vehicle charging innovations with a cost of ownership that creates a win-win for both the EV driver and the parking facility.

About Telefonix, Inc.

With over 25 years in business and more than 80 patents issued to date for its cable innovations, Telefonix is a leader in cord reel technology. In addition to its portfolio of cord reel products, the company also designs and manufactures custom electronics for customers in highly regulated industries. In 2011, the idea to leverage the company's capabilities to address unmet needs in the electric vehicle charging station market was born. Today, the same proven cord reel technology that flies on more than 80% of long-haul aircraft is designed and incorporated into the PowerPost commercial low-current electric vehicle charger product line. Based in Waukegan, Illinois, the Telefonix team is adept at delivering smart solutions to market. With a staff of highly skilled engineers, project managers, manufacturing experts and more, the Telefonix team delivers the quality product you expect and service you need for success.
Honda Engineers Are Who Makes a Honda







Video Highlights Teamwork on Walking Assist Project

MORE INFO Honda Research and Buyer's Guide Guide

MARYSVILLE, OH -- January 28, 2016: Two engineers leading Hondas Walking Assist program in the United States are the subject of the newest profile in the What Makes a Honda is Who Makes a Honda video series. The latest in the series highlights the inspiring relationship between Honda R&D associates Hideaki Takahashi and Kenton Williams as they collaborate to advance this Honda Robotics technology.

The Walking Assist Device, part of the family of Honda Robotics technologies, was created to help users walk more efficiently and is designed to be used in walking therapy and training under the guidance of a doctor or therapist. Striving to offer the joy of mobility to more people, Honda began the research and development of the Walking Assist Device in 1999. Honda has leveraged the theory of human walking amassed from the research and development of ASIMO, Honda's advanced humanoid robot.

Takahashi, a native of Japan, worked on Honda's ASIMO project prior to transferring to Honda R&D Americas in Raymond, Ohio to work on the Walking Assist Device project.

Williams is a graduate of MIT's Mechanical Engineering master's program with a specialization in robotics. He said his interest in robotics was fueled when, as an Ohio State University undergrad, he attended a demonstration of ASIMO on the Ohio State campus.

Williams was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Takahashi, and said he appreciates how their individual strengths and cultural differences make the Walking Assist Device project stronger.

"Synergy is the best way to describe it," Williams said of their relationship.

Takahashi said Williams brings a compassionate perspective and understanding to the project, which is necessary. "We have a language barrier, and we also come from different cultural backgrounds," Takahashi said. "But of course, the common language is technology."

Their shared desire to help people with disabilities transcends any differences, he said.

"Walking is the most primitive, fundamental form of mobility. That's why it is important for Honda to continue to work on this product," Takahashi said. "I would like everyone to be able to walk That is my wish."

The What Makes a Honda is Who Makes a Honda video series focuses on Honda's commitment to The Power of Dreams, a global theme that encourages Honda associates to conceive ideas that will create new value for customers and society and then show the determination to bring those dreams to life. In addition, the video series spotlights the varied careers within Honda and the inspiring efforts of Honda associates.

See the latest What Makes a Honda is Who Makes a Honda video on Honda's YouTube channel at Honda on YouTube.
Original Cast of "Our American Cousin" - Where Are They Now? +VIDEO







LOUISVILLE - January 29, 2016: Perhaps the most momentous stage play in American history is the three-act comedy farce by English playwright Tom Taylor. The aspect of this play that makes it so momentous is that it is the play that President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary were watching in Ford's Theater when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

The play's plot is based on the introduction of an awkward, boorish, but honest American, Asa Trenchard, to his aristocratic English relatives when he goes to England to claim the family estate.







Among the original cast was British actor Edward Askew Sothern, playing Lord Dundreary; a caricature of a brainless English nobleman. Sothern had already achieved fame on the New York stage in the play "Camille" in 1856, and had been reluctant to take on the role because he felt that it was too small and unimportant. He mentioned his qualms to his friend Joseph Jefferson, who had been cast in the lead role, and Jefferson supposedly responded with the famous line: "There are no small parts, only small actors."

"Our American Cousin" premiered in New York on October 15, 1858. After several weeks of performances, Sothern began portraying the role more broadly, as a lisping, skipping, eccentric, weak-minded fop prone to nonsensical references to sayings of his "bwother" Sam. His ad-libs were a sensation, earning good notices for his physical comedy and spawning much imitation and mockery in both the United States and England. Sothern gradually expanded the role, adding gags and business until it became the central figure of the play. The most famous scene involved Dundreary reading a letter from his even sillier brother. The play ran for 150 nights, which was very successful for a New York run at the time. Sothern made his London debut in the role when the play ran for 496 performances at the Haymarket Theatre in 1861, earning rave reviews. The Athenaeum wrote, "it is certainly the funniest thing in the world... a vile caricature of a vain nobleman, intensely ignorant, and extremely indolent".

"Dundrearyisms," twisted aphorisms in the style of Lord Dundreary (e.g. "birds of a feather gather no moss"), enjoyed a brief vogue. And the character's style of beard  long, bushy sideburns  gave the English language the word "dundrearies". Dundreary became a popular recurring character, and Sothern successfully revived the play many times, making Dundreary by far his most famous role.

The play's most famous performance was at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. Halfway through Act III, Scene 2, the character of Asa Trenchard, played that night by Harry Hawk, utters this line, considered one of the play's funniest, to Mrs. Mountchessington:

"Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal  you sockdologizing old man-trap."

During the ensuing laughter, John Wilkes Booth fatally shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of his head. Familiar with the play, Booth chose that moment in the hope that the sound of the audience's laughter would mask the sound of his gunshot. Booth later leapt from Lincoln's box to the stage and made his escape through the back of the theater to a horse he had left waiting in the alley. That night, the remainder of the play was suspended.

Curiously, John Wilkes Booth, and his cousin actor Edwin Booth, never appeared in the play.

So let's take a look at the entire original cast of "Our American Cousin" and learn where they are now:

Asa Trenchard (a rustic American)  Played by Joseph Jefferson

Where is he now: He's dead.

Sir Edward Trenchard (a baronet)  Played by Edwin Varrey

Where is he now: He's dead.

Florence Trenchard (his daughter)  Played by Laura Keene

Where is she now: She's dead.

Mary Meredith (a poor cousin)  Played by Sara Stevens

Where is she now: She's dead.

Lord Dundreary (an idiotic English nobleman)  Played by E. A. Sothern

Where is he now: He's dead.

Mr. Coyle (a businessman)  Played by J.G. Burnett

Where is he now: He's dead.

Abel Murcott (his clerk)  Played by C.W. Couldock

Where is he now: He's dead.

Lt. Harry Vernon (of the Royal Navy)  Played by M. Levick

Where is he now: He's dead.

Mr. Binny (a butler)  Played by Mr. Peters

Where is he now: He's dead.

Mrs. Mountchessington  Played by Mary Wells

Where is She now: She's dead.

Augusta (her daughter)  Played by E. Germon

Where is he now: She's dead.

Georgina (another daughter)  Played by Mrs. Sothern

Where is she now: She's dead, but rumors persist that she'll be appearing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in September 2016 in a revival of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes."

* Yes, the above article is meant to be funny and take the piss out of all the inane "Where Are They Now" stories that appear on USA Today, Yahoo and the Huffington Rag.

Special thanks to Wikipedia for all the historical information.

For you history buffs, you may find this interesting:
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

Trend:

Azerbaijani soldier Nahid Safarov was killed on the country's border with Armenia Jan. 29 at about 15:00 (GMT + 4 hours) as a result of an Armenian provocation, said Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry Jan. 29 on its website.

The ministry offered deep condolences and wished patience to the friends and relatives of the deceased, and said it is causing concern that international organizations react only when the Armenian side incurs losses.

The message also said the Azerbaijani armed forces will take retaliatory measures.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Heels on Wheels - 2016 Kia Sedona Minivan Review

HEELS ON WHEELS

By Katrina Ramser

San Francisco Bureau

The Auto Channel

INTRO TO THE SEDONA VEHICLE

The Kia Sedona with its many attributes can actually be quantified into a desirable three-row, seven-passenger vehicle  a minivan, yes, but one so smartly designed that it can help you overcome your stereotypes of what it means to be driving this often dreaded family vehicle.

I drove a 2016 Kia Sedona with the 290-horsepower 3.3-liter GDI V6 engine with 252 pound-feet of torque coupled with a standard six-speed automatic transmission with Sportmatic. Available in five trims  the base L, LX, EX, SX and SXL  my top-of-the-line SXL trim came with the following standard features: Nappa premium leather upholstery; tri-zone climate control; an upgraded Infinity audio system; UVO eServices; rear camera display; navigation; XM Radio; Bluetooth; power tailgate; push-button start; leather-wrapped steering wheel; rear park assist system; nineteen-inch chrome-alloy wheels. Total price as described without options came to $39,700.

Main competitors that have dominated the minivan class in the past include the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna and Chrysler Town and Country. (SEE SIDE BY SIDE TOP OF LINE COMPARISON) Mostly a carryover from 2015, the Sedona draws attention any for the segment staples by offering extensive technology, style and performance features.

HEELS ON WHEELS REVIEW CRITERIA

Stylish But Comfortable Results: Described first-class lounge seating, the Sedona does offer luxurious second-row seats with retractable lower leg rests; but also gives the choice of a practical Slid-n-Stow seating system perfect for hauling loads. Significant interior volume and versatility define the cabin environment, with a generous use of soft-touch materials on the SXL trim (but the standard YES Essentials fabric upholstery plays up the Sedonas practical and refined sides and is quite nice). One reason I steer friends and readers to Kia or Hyundai is the technology: the voice-activated UVO eServices has a fairly new integrated eight-inch touchscreen navigation system that supports Siri Eyes Free, Google searches, and apps like Pandora and iHeartRadio. Plus the Sedona is the first Kia vehicle to additionally offer four new eServices features including Geo-fencing, Speed Alert, Curfew Alert and Driving Score. I do recommend the optional $2,700 Tech Package which adds Land Departure Warning, a surround view monitor, and Forward Collision Alert.

Reliability & Safety Factor: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) names the 2016 Kia Sedona as a Top Safety Pick for a minivan with ratings of Good in all areas. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gives the vehicle a 5-Star rating. Standard safety equipment includes an advanced airbag system, traction control, electronic stability control, hill-start assist, and a revised independent front and rear suspension.

Cost Issues: The Sedona starts reasonable $26,400. A fully loaded SLX trim with a $2,700 optional Technology Package come in at $42,400. A top-of-the-line Kia Sorento SUV is $45,800.

Activity & Performance Ability: The Sedona features the same engine thats inside the Sorento, Kias three-row SUV, which adds to its performance appeal. Kia has been perfecting is powertrain over the years  combined with enhanced rigidity and higher strength steel, its a pretty robust ride, and one that is surprisingly maneuverable in tight spaces. Extra comfort and space is the reason for opting for the minivan rather than Kias SUV, especially if there will be high traffic to the third row.

The Green Concern: The Sedonas 3.3-liter V6 engine retains 17-city and 22-highway for a combined 19 miles-per-gallon. You could step down to the 2016 Kia Sorento L and LX trims 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine that produces 185 horsepower and 178 pound-feet of torque and a fuel economy of 20-city and 27-highway for a combined 23 miles-per-gallon.

FINAL PARTING WORDS

A flagship vehicle for the carmaker, the 2016 Kia Sedona uses alluring tech features, solid SUV-like performance, and loads of space to pursued those doubtful about the power of a minivan.

2016 Katrina Ramser

The Most In-Depth Kia Vehicle Shopper's Research - Anywhere!
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

The dynamic partnership between Estonia and Azerbaijan will develop in the future in all areas, said Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves at a meeting with Azerbaijan's new ambassador in Tallinn, Murad Najafbayli.

Stressing that Azerbaijan is a friendly country, Estonian president expressed satisfaction with the level of bilateral cooperation, saying he is confident that this cooperation will further develop in all the areas, Azerbaijan's Embassy to Estonia told Trend Jan. 29

Azerbaijani ambassador further presented his credentials to the president of Estonia.

The ceremony for presentation of the credentials took place at the Kadriorg Palace. During a meeting held after the official ceremony, the ambassador conveyed sincere greetings and best wishes of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev to his Estonian counterpart.

The diplomat further pointed to the high level of relations between Azerbaijan and Estonia, and said he will make efforts to further strengthen and develop this cooperation.

During the meeting, the sides also exchanged views on the current state and prospects of development of relations between Azerbaijan and Estonia, and the cooperation between the two countries at both bilateral and multilateral levels within international organizations.

Azerbaijani ambassador also informed the president of Estonia on social and political, social and economic situation, as well as Azerbaijan's success achieved under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev.

The diplomat further informed President Toomas Hendrik Ilves about the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the continuation of aggression from Armenia, occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories, and Armenia's acting as if it is engaged in talks on a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

The ambassador also stressed Azerbaijan's interest in further developing and strengthening relations with the friendly Estonia in all fields.

The Estonian president, in turn, wished success to the ambassador, and thanked him for the greetings conveyed by President Ilham Aliyev, and asked to convey his greetings and best wishes to the Azerbaijani president.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Uni signs 6.5m Middle East deal

THE University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has signed two international agreements worth a combined 6.5m to deliver courses in the Middle East.



The first of the contracts will see UCLan extend its long-term partnership with the International College of Engineering and Management (ICEM) in the Sultanate of Oman for a further five years.



It means students will be able to complete entire undergraduate degree courses in Oman, whereas they were previously required to study part of the programmes in Preston.



UCLan and ICEM have been partners in Oman for more than 15 years delivering unique undergraduate degree courses in fire safety engineering; well engineering; facilities management and health, safety and environmental management.

A separate deal with the Ministry of Interior of Qatar will see UCLan deliver fire safety engineering management courses from the new state-of-the-art Ras Laffan Emergency and Safety College in Doha.

UCLan will work closely with Qatar Civil Defence to develop a range of courses which will utilise the 302m facility, the Middle Easts main training institution for fire services and emergency responders.



The collaboration, the Universitys first in Qatar, will be led by a dedicated team of UCLan staff based at the college working in partnership with a vocational provider, Texas A & M Engineering.

It is also planned that existing UCLan students based in Preston will have the opportunity to visit the college and use its cutting edge facilities to expand their own knowledge and experience.

Pro chancellor and chair of the University board David Taylor, who led the visits to Qatar and Oman to agree the deals, said: The extension of our partnership with ICEM is a real milestone and evidence of its past success, while the new relationship with Qatar Civil Defence will complement this and the Universitys other global partnerships, such as those in China and Mauritius.
Leeds Chamber calls for politicians to work with business in "tipping point" year

LEEDS Chamber of Commerce president Gerald Jennings looked ahead to this year being a tipping point for the city.

Speaking at the organisations annual dinner, Mr Jennings looked forward to the successful completion of negotiations around a devolution deal, telling the audience I am told we are very close to want might be acceptable to Government.

The devolution of powers is just one factor in a busy year for the city.

2016 will be an important year for Leeds, he said. It could be a tipping point. We will see the arrival of John Lewis, completion of new office developments, increasing investor appetite, progress with the European Capital of Culture bid,and hopefully the Northern Powerhouse concept will move from rhetoric to reality and we want to see a devolution deal leading to an elected mayor.

Mr Jennings, addressing an audience which included Pudsey MP Stuart Andrew and Morley MP Andrea Jenkins, said the Chamber wants to work collectively with our MPs about what we have achieved and what we can achieve in the future.

He added: I understand there is much sensitivity, in particular over the geography to which these powers should be devolved. However, it is disappointing to see discussions have become political.

My message and plea to the politicians is please can we sort it out and ensure this region is not disadvantaged  and the clock is ticking.

2015 saw Leeds continue to grow and more cranes on the skyline than we have seen since 2008. There has been new investment and a renewed realisation that Leeds is a place that has an exciting and dynamic future.

Read next: Hotel group more than doubles profits
Grant advances CSUCI research Cal State Channel Islands assistant professor of computer science Scott Feister and assistant professor of mathematics Alona Kryshchenko recently received $112,480 from the National Science Foundation to continue a grant to support their research project, Enhancing Laser Based Ion Sources...

Healthcare agency recommends flu shots The Ventura County Health Care Agency offers options for the community to receive flu shots through its Ambulatory Care Clinic system, public health clinics and pop-up clinics. Although seasonal influenza viruses are detected year-round in the United States, they are...

Early detection is the best way to survive breast cancer Every October, we celebrate those men and women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. But what is breast cancer and how can it be diagnosed and managed? There are five basic warning signs that breast cancer may be present:...

Cal Lutheran University hosts Heart Walk The American Heart Association will host a Heart Walk Sat., Oct. 8 at Cal Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks. The event is expected to draw hundreds of people. Activities include a 2-mile walk, drum circle performances, Zumba demonstrations, live music and...
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Anakhanum Hidayatova - Trend:

Azerbaijan and Japan discussed bilateral relations during the meeting of Azerbaijan's Ambassador Gursel Ismayilzade with Japan's State Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoji Muto, said a message on the Facebook page of the country's Embassy in Japan Jan. 29.

The sides discussed perspectives of development of bilateral cooperation, economic and trade relations, as well as the issue on preparation of high-level visits during the meeting.

The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Japan increased by 2.3 times - up to $558.97 million in 2015, according to the Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee.

At the same time, exports decreased by 1.4 times, while imports increased by 2.3 times.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
In the Sundance charmer Southside With You hes the spitting image of a young Barack Obama. In real life, the actor who breathes swagger into POTUSs youthful idealism onscreen was once on track for a career in politics himself, raised in a family of Republicans.

Meet Parker Sawyers, the affably commanding Hollywood newcomer who makes his leading man debut as the future 44th President of the United States of America.

Sawyers, 32, had been acting for just four years when he landed the role of a young Obama opposite star and producer Tika Sumpter, whod fought for years to bring Southside With You to the screen.

In the film, scripted and directed by Richard Tanne, 28-year-old law intern Obama (Sawyers) woos his future wife, Michelle (Sumpter) over the course of a daylong date on Chicagos South Side that reveals shades of the leaders both would eventually become.

Hes our perfect Obama, Sumpter grinned as she and Sawyers sat down with The Daily Beast this week inside a crowded press tent at the Sundance Film Festival, where their Before Sunrise-esque indie romance debuted to warm reviews.

Sawyers first auditioned for the film with his best President Obama impersonation before giving producers a taste of the more relaxed, flirty, chain-smoking, and charismatic young Obama he plays onscreen. His voice is naturally higher in timbre than the Leader of the Free Worlds, but Sawyers been getting the Obama doppelganger comments since 2008, when he lived in Chicago for a brief time. Somebody was like, Hey, you look like [Obama] is he your brother? recalled Sawyer.

Ironically enough, Sawyers grew up Republican, the son of Paula Parker-Sawyers, the first female deputy mayor of Indianapolis under Republican Mayor William H. Hudnut III, and James Sawyers, who also served in the citys administration.

She was Republican, Sawyers noted of his mother. Now shes registered as Independent, and she voted for President Obamatwice. (For the record, Sawyerswho lives in London with his familynow describes himself as probably more of an Independent.)

He graduated college with a philosophy degree, then followed suit into state politics by working in Republican Gov. (and onetime presidential hopeful) Mitch Danielss administration. I worked for the [Republican] Lieutenant Governor of Indiana, Becky Skillman, he said, remembering the day he broke out a copy of Obamas memoir Dreams From My Father at work.

I was reading his book Dreams from My Father in 2006 in the Republican office and then I saw my parents, who said, You should not do that! he laughed. I said, Well, if anybody says anything, Ill just say hes the only black politician I have to look up to.

Sumpter turned to her co-star with a giant grin. You almost became a second Obama! she exclaimed.

Sawyers nodded, flashing back to those years. One thing I was struck by when I read Dreams from My Father, when I had just graduated college and I was still in party mode, was when I got to the point where he said he used to smoke weed and when you had money youd get some coke, he said. I was like, He said that in his book? Is he crazy? But its indicative of who he is and who they are as people. Michelle Obama was on Letterman or something like that, and she was like, No, he just knew he could do something else with his life. And then he stopped smoking weed. But he doesnt shy away from the fact.

Alas, a life in politics was not in the cards. I was 23, he said. I got disillusioned with politics. I just went into modeling. Eventually he moved to the U.K., where he stumbled into acting while working at a lobbying firm repping auto manufacturers. After landing the role as a trans woman on Netflixs Lilyhammer, bit parts in films like Zero Dark Thirty, Austenland, and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit followed. His upcoming roles include appearances in Oliver Stones Snowden and the Universal Pictures actioner Spectral.

Meanwhile Sumpter, whose films include Sparkle, Think Like A Man, Get On Up, and the Ride Along films, worked behind the scenes to get Southside With You made in a climate in whichmuch like Nate Parkers hugely successful Sundance hit The Birth Of A Nationnaysayers have long insisted theres no commercial market for films with black leads.

I think diversity includes women, black, Asian, Indian, everything other than just white, Sumpter said, applauding the Academys new measures to increase its female and minority membership. Its really important that were having the conversation and Im really glad that they decided to make some changes. Im looking forward to seeing the results of those changes, but I think it even starts before that.

But first, she said, Hollywoods studio execs and financiers have to start changing their way of thinking and take more risks on films like this.

Thats one of the reasons I did this, she said. "Michelle Obama to me means anythings possible. Shes a person who Im like, thats me. I didnt go to Princeton or Harvard, but goshshes a girl, shes smart, at the same time shes dancing to Beyonce! Were complex human beings. Were not one thing. And its important that people see themselves in media that way. Youve got to see yourself. People need representation.

And while the high-profile spotlight historically tends to shine on African-American-led movies about race and America or slavery, as Jezebels Kara Brown lamented in the aftermath of Birth of a Nations $17.5 million acquisition sale, movies like Southside With You offer an all-too rare alternative: normalcy. Its at once a day in the life of Americas trailblazing First Couple and the simple story of a man and a woman sparking the first seeds of romance over the course of one meandering summer day in Chicago.

Sumpter is also well aware of the criticism the film will attract from the right and downplays its partisanship. At the end of the day we were inspired by their love story, and I think anybody can relate to that regardless of what political affiliation you have, she said. Were stripping them down to the beginning, the human aspect. He smokes cigarettes. They talk about weed! There are so many real aspects that are relatable. Listen, you come in with any agenda and youre going to walk out thinking its not what you thought it was. There was no agenda when we filmed this.

I point out that the sexual chemistry between their Barack and Michelle crackles quite a bit onscreen, a most unusual way to see a sitting president. We see pictures and theyre touching each other, Sumpter smiled. Theres something going on.

They were 28, 25, and they werent being dissected by anybody, Sawyers added. He stopped himself short of analyzing the Obamas sex life too much. I do not want my passport revoked!

Both stars weighed in on the upcoming election, which Sumpter says is confusing for voters. She also brought up the heated anti-immigration rhetoric espoused by candidates like Donald Trump. I think there are a lot of crazy ideas going arounda lot of crazy condoned racismand its sad, she said. Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant and he built the banking system! If we dont have this mesh of ideas, were not taking advantage of all these amazing brains that come into the country.

Sawyers, meanwhile, says he tries to follow the 2016 circus from abroad. Politically, its hard to keep up from over there and it sucks when you get the sound bites, he mused. What are these people talking about? Theres got to be more to this story.

I wish there was more transparencyHeres what I think, this is why I think it, without necessarily pandering to this group or this group or this group, he added. Pausing, his voice assumed a downright presidential tone. I know a lot of people are going to miss the Obamas being in office.
Moments before Glenn Beck endorsed Ted Cruz for president in Iowa this weekend, he huddled to pray with his longtime friend, David Barton, whose super PAC, Keep the Promise, is supporting Cruz for president and sponsored the rally where Beck and Cruz would appear together.

As he speaks, Lord, let the words come off his mouth that you want said to these folks, Barton prayed. When they finished, Beck said to Barton, This is the moment. This is the moment that we prayed for.

Barton oversees Keep the Promise PAC, one of several multimillion-dollar super PACs supporting Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential bid, has never run a campaign, never run a super PAC, and never run for office. But the self-taught historian and evangelical Tea Party favorite may be the perfect man in 2016 to court and care for deep-pocketed evangelical GOP donors in a year when Cruz and the super PACs supporting him will rely on evangelicals for every voteand every dollarthey can get.

While Barton may be new to super PACs, he is not at all new to politics. The former Christian school principal and ordained minister was also the vice chairman of the Texas GOP for nearly 10 years. In 2004, he worked for the RNC to turn evangelicals in Texas out to for George W. Bush. In 2012, he was a member of the RNCs Platform Committee that called for a constitutional ban on abortion and defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. And since then, hes been courted and praised by Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, and nearly every other conservative presidential candidate looking to capture crucial evangelical voters.

Having David Barton running the super PAC gives it a lot of validity for evangelicals and pastors, said Mike Gonzalez, the South Carolina evangelical chair for the Cruz for President campaign.

A lot of times, Super PACs are viewed as kind of the bulldog in the campaign. They get nasty, they get dirty. But Gonzalez said having Barton at the helm gives the PAC instant integrity, with evangelicals in particular. Thats what I would say is the main reason they went with Barton. Hes not going to be attacking a persons family or attacking them personally. Hes going to make sure its on policy.

Bartons Keep the Promise PAC is one of four almost identically named super PACs supporting Cruz. The PACs can, and do, coordinate with each other, but not with Cruz or his campaign. Bartons PAC has raised more than $1.8 million from a small group of large donors, including the Houston Texans CEO Bob McNair. Veteran GOP strategist Kellyanne Conway manages Keep the Promise I, funded by a single $11 million contribution from New York hedge funder Robert Mercer.

Similarly, KTP II is the home for a $10 million donation from Toby Neugebauer, while KTP III is funded by $15 million from the Wilks brothers, the retired fracking billionaires from Cisco, Texas, who are also devotees of the right-leaning Assembly of Yahweh 7th Day church.

Bartons own politics are conservative and, as he describes them, bible centered. He is staunchly anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-second Amendment, and pro-free market. He has spoken extensively about his belief that Jesus was against capital gains taxes, the estate tax, and the minimum wage. He has called President Obama the most biblically hostile president in U.S. history and calls on Christians to vote for and elect righteous leaders.

Bartons involvement in politics, in the past and now, is a logical extension of Wallbuilders, the Aledo, Texas, company he founded whose mission is to encourage government officials to develop policies that reflect Biblical values. Wallbuilders also calls on Christians to involve themselves government and politics and creates DVDs and books that feature some of the thousands of original documents from the countrys founding that Barton has acquired, which he points to as proof that the United States was founded explicitly as a Christian nation.

As much as Bartons writings have drawn fans among the religious right, his work has received equally extensive criticism from scholars and historians that call his work deeply flawed and cherry-picked history.

David Barton has repeatedly said that portions of the Constitution are taken verbatim from the Bible, which is ludicrous and easily disproved, said Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow with People for the American Way, the progressive interest group that has devoted significant resources to following Barton and debunking his work. He says that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence came out of preachers sermons, so that we should look at them as Christian documents, even though the Constitution explicitly is not that and was chosen to not be that.

But not all of the criticism of Bartons work comes from the left. His 2012 book, The Jefferson Lies, Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, was pulled from bookshelves by its Christian publisher over multiple inaccuracies, an episode dismissed as a smear campaign from liberal bastards by Barton supporters, including Glenn Beck, who offered to re-publish the book himself.

The controversy appears to have done nothing to diminish Barton in the eyes of his supporters. You have to consider the source, Mike Gonzalez said. Who are you going to believe? The person who owns original documents or a professor who has none of those and is just basically going off of revised history? David Barton is a walking history book. He is a man of integrity.

That kind of personal loyalty to a leader among evangelicals is invaluable for any campaign, but is of particular importance to Cruz, who has made it clear that he is not looking to expand his appeal beyond the base of the Republican Party to new voters, particularly if theyre evangelicals.

To make sure that happens, Bartons KTP PAC hosted a gathering of 300 high-profile pastors in Cisco, Texas, last month to introduce faith leaders to Cruz. Conways KTP I has hired 14 field staff in South Carolina, 10 in Iowa, and staffers in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and in several of the SEC primary states. She has also plowed cash into phone banking, door knocking, digital and social outreach in early states, and recently made a $1 million ad buy in the four early states.

My philosophy is that our resources are ample but not unlimited, she said.

While Conways and Bartons Super PACs have been visibly active, KTP II and KTP III, the Naugebauer and Wilks Super PACs, have kept nearly every penny of their original $25 million hauls dormant, like two loaded guns just waiting to fire. This situation has caused heartburn for Cruz staffers and associates, who have no sayand no ideaabout when, how, or even if the money will be spent.

Conway said that the four Super PACs are affiliated so that we wont duplicate efforts. They coordinate strategy and messaging, but ultimately, the decision-making for each PAC lies within the PAC itself.

The path the super PACs settle on could make the difference for Cruz, whose momentum has stalled in the polls but is a clear second to Donald Trump in Iowa and South Carolina, and across the rest of the South, which will vote as a block in the SEC primary on March 1.

If anyone at the super PACs is worried, theyre not saying so. We are seeing growing support nationwide for Sen. Cruz throughout the evangelical community and we are confident they will turn out to support him, Barton told The Daily Beast.

For Barton, the man once dubbed the most influential evangelical youve never heard of by NPR, a successful Cruz campaign could catapult him and his candidate to the center of government, where Barton has said righteous leaders belong.
The U.S. militarys new F-35 stealth fighter is again falling behind schedule in its 16-year, $60 billion development. The problem this timethe radar-evading planes 8 million lines of computer code, amounting to arguably the most complex software suite ever installed on a warplane.

The code delay is the latestand possibly most damagingsetback for the Pentagons ambitious and controversial plan to replace almost all of its Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighters with three different versions of the F-35 at a cost of more than a trillion dollars over the next 50 years.

Damaging, because the military and F-35-maker Lockheed Martin have increasingly sold the F-35 as a sort of flying computer whose software can outthink enemy pilots even when the enemys own planes fly faster, maneuver better and carry more weaponry than the F-35 does.

The stealth fighters software is its last possible claim to being a first-class warplane. If the F-35s code doesnt work, then neither does the F-35. Saddled with thousands of dysfunctional F-35s, the Pentagon could lose command of the air.

J. Michael Gilmore, the Defense Departments top weapons tester, warned about the schedule slip in a Dec. 11 memo. The current official schedule to complete full development and testing of all Block 3F capabilities by 31 July 2017, is not realistic, Carter wrote, referring to the software update, or block, thats supposed to give the F-35 the basic ability to use its sensors and some weaponsalbeit with limitations.

According to Gilmore, the Block 3F code delay is a consequence of the F-35 developers rush to install the earlier Block 2B software, which is suitable only for testing and training but is supposed to form the basis of the later, combat-ready code. The developers hurry with Block 2B resulted in poor performance that slowed progress on subsequent code.

Realistically, there are only two ways to fix the Block 3F software, Gilmore noted. One is to triple the pace of testing. But caving to budget cuts and the enormoussome might say overwhelmingchallenge of developing a jack-of-all-trades stealth fighter, Lockheed and the military are actually planning on slowing testing by two-thirds.

The second possible solution is to strip some features from the Block 3F softwaresay, compatibility with certain high-tech weaponsand wait to add those capabilities back to the F-35 on later software blocks.

But either option means a very high risk of failing when the F-35 with Block 3F code undergoes its developmental final exam in 2018, Gilmore warned. In a move with more public relations value than military utility, in July the Marine Corps declared a single squadron of F-35s combat-ready with the Block 2B software. The Air Force plans to declare a squadron combat-ready in late 2016 with an interim software called Block 3I, but the flying branch is waiting until the Block 3F code is ready before it clears its F-35 squadrons to deploy to the most dangerous conflict zones.

And rushing the Block 3F software could have the same deleterious effect on the next batch of code that rushing the Block 2B software had on Block 3F. If the F-35 developers cant get the current software update right, they risk derailing the stealth fighters entire development. Its no exaggeration to say that the future of U.S. air power rests on these 8 million lines of code.

Theres a third potential fix that Gimore didnt mention in his memo. The Pentagon could preserve the Block 3Fs features, sustain or increase the pace of testing and delay the final exam in order to give the militarys coders enough time to finish the software, and finish it right.

The problem is Congress, which in 2012 pressured the Air Force to have some F-35s ready for combat no later than December 2016. Air Force leaders had wanted to wait until 2018 at the earliest for any declaration but were wary of the negative connotation of being two years behind the Marines with Congress breathing down their necks, according to the flying branchs official history for 2013. So the generals approved the current schedule with its interim software block and hard 2018 deadline for the final exam.

Delaying the F-35s war-readiness would look bad for the Air Force. But failing the final examor sending unready F-35s into combatwould look even worse.


Introduction

Wage is money being paid to the employee by the employer as the compensation for the job done also as one of the most fundamental and common sources of people income all over the world. The wage is of great importance for the economy of developed and developing countries. So that, the wage plays a key role in the creation and determination of a number of economic and legal relations. For example, the wage is the main determining factor in goods, product evaluation. In articles the wage will be approached from legal and economic aspects in light of the ILO Conventions and legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan and foreign countries. At the same time, it should be noted that this research issue will be published in three parts in terms of its relevance, materiality and broadness. In the first article, the concept of wages and its components, and the payment of wages in special cases will be discussed.

Legal aspects of the wage

We should take a look at proposed concept of the wages in the legislation firstly, if we approach it from legal aspect. It has been defined in article 154.1 of the Labour Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan as follows: "Wages are the total daily or monthly amounts paid in cash or check by the employer to the employee for work performed (or services rendered) while carrying out his duties during the work period in accordance with the employment contract as well as supplements, bonuses, and other payments".

As it can be seen from the concept, amendments, premium and other payments are included also included to wages, not only daily or monthly amount paid to the employee at the end of the work only.

Amendments to wages is additional payment defined to - tariff (official) salary, wages of the employee in order to pay the price or to encourage.

Premium is encouraging monetary means is being paid as stipulated in payment system of wages in order to increase the interest of employees for improving the quality and quantity of work.

If we say that, wage is a broad sphere and in particular is not conditional upon a single case therefore, we need to look at other concepts as well.

Minimum wage is one of these definitions, that it is a social norm defining the lowest level of monthly wages for unskilled labor and services by legislation taking into account economic and social conditions in accordance with article 155.2 of the Labour Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Average wage is a certain amount of paid wages and its incoming payments being paid to the employee for his position (duties) by the employer as stipulated by the Labour Code and other legal acts.

As a rule wages being paid at the workplace where the work is performed. Wages is being transferred to bank account at the request of the employee's or being sent to a specified address.

20 percent of wages proportionate to the kind of value with the consent of the employee can be replaced and given with other everyday consumer goods produced by the enterprise excluding alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, drugs and psychotropic substances, and other things which is not allowed in civil circulation (limited civil circulation).

In connection with certain situations payment of wages respectively is being paid in accordance with each case. Some of the cases will be mentioned below:

1. Wages imposed on special cases

2. Wages imposed on replacement

3. Payment of wages for work performed on days off, voting day, holidays and National Mourning Day that is not considered a working day

4. Payment of wages for overtime work hours

5. Payment of wages for night shift and multi-shift work regime

6. Remuneration for idle time

1. Wages imposed on special cases

So that, wages (rates) providing increases in high amounts are defined for employees working in difficult and hazardous working conditions, working at the workplace which is not suitable for work due to the climatic conditions. The increases are listed on decision no. 137 dated August 22, 2002 by Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan Republic.

2. Wages imposed on replacement

The extra to the wages should be defined and paid in cases of full or partial performance of duties by the employee with other relevant professions (positions) during regular working hours along with the duties stipulated in the labor contract. The difference between tariff (official) salary of the employee who was replaced and the employee who replaced is being paid to the employee who replaced the employee that could not work temporarily for certain reasons along with performing his own work. Extra to wages shall be defined and paid if tariff (official) salary of the employee who was replaced is same or less than the salary of the employee who replaced. This extra shall be determined by mutual agreement between the employee and the employer.

3. Payment of wages for work performed on days off, voting day, holidays and National Mourning Day that is not considered a working day

In connection with the above-mentioned cases wages being paid in the following manner:

 not less than two times of the daily standard wages in timely payment system of labor;

 not less than two times of the workly standard wages in workly payment system of labor;

 not less than the daily wage as extra to wage for the employees who get monthly salary if the work done within the limits of monthly working hours, and not less than two times of the daily wage as extra to wage for the employees if the work is done more than normal monthly working hours.

We also should note that, other days off can be offered for replacing wages with the consent of an employee who worked on days off, voting day, holidays and National Mourning Day that is not considered a working day.

4. Payment of wages for overtime work hours

Wages for every hour of work is being paid to employees working overtime as follows:

 not less than two times of hourly tariff (official) salaries in timely payment system of labor;

 in the amount of extra fee of hourly tariff (official) salaries of timely employee who has relevant degree (skilled) with paying full wages in workly payment system of labor;

 additional payment to employees can be envisaged due to performed overtime work in collective agreement, in labor contract;

 It is not allowed to replace overtime work to days off.

5. Payment of wages for night shift and multi-shift work regime

Payment of wages for night shift and multi-shift work regime is being paid in high amount by the employer not less than the amount defined by the relevant executive authority. 20 percent of hourly tariff (official) salaries of the employee is being paid for each hour who work on night shift, 20 percent of hourly tariff (official) salaries of the employee is being paid for each hour who work on multi-shift regime, and extra fee 40 percent who work on night shift. The working time that at least half of it falls to night time (from 22 pm in the evening until 6 o'clock in the morning) is considered to be night shift. Work shift before night shift is considered to be evening shift regardless of the commencement and completion hours of work shift. If, at least half of the daily working hours fall to night time then this part is being reduced for an hour and is being paid taking into account of these hours fully as defined by legislation in timely payment system of labor who work on working conditions defined by the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan Republic in heavy and hazardous workplaces, as well as employees who work in special nature.

6. Remuneration for idle time



If an employee warns the employer or supervisor at workplace (foreman, team master, other officials) about launching idle time then idle time remuneration shall be not less than two-thirds of the standard tariff (official) salary set for idle time if it is not fault of an employee.

Remuneration for idle time will not be paid if it is the fault of an employee.

Economic aspects of wages

Wages plays a key role in many economic relations in the public sector. Almost every economic calculations calculated and predicted in respect of wages existing on that period. Plays a key role in determination of produced products, unemployment allowance, also the amount of pensions.

Upon considering the economic aspects the interests of the employer, the employee and society will be considered separately.

Wages for the employer and its determination is of vital importance on establishment of the employer's business and its development. Each employer or businessman who set up a new business should define wages before the employees involved in the case to be established or set up.

The determination process of wages will tell us to what extent the employer is a professional. Because wages paid appropriate and fair to work performed will lead to the work done by employees honestly, in the perfect way and a more responsibly, and the employer will be exempted from additional costs. Consequently, each employee will focus on correct implementation of the work not calculation of wages at the end of each month, and it will ultimately serve the interests of the employer. A German engineer, businessman, the founder of Robert Bosch GmbH (generally Bosch) Robert Bosch who used the eight-hour work day regime for the first time in Germany has a popular opinion on wages as follows:

"I do not pay good salaries because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good salaries".

Wages is of great importance for the society. Wages manifests itself in the formation of the societya and relations between people. So that, if we take a look at the countries with high wages, we can see that they have the highest values from the level of living of the population in those countries to the culture. As an example, we can mention the name of Norway, there is very high wages in this country and the proportion of this there is only one or not any criminal case in this country in a year. Or Canada, here only 1,3 % of people call police within a year.

As you can see, there is the undeniable importance of wages in our lives. As the wage is a very broad sphere, we took a look at its key points above, we discussed its legal and economic aspects. Wages payment forms and rules, wage deductions and the average monthly salary will be included in the next articles. Also, information about the minimum, average salary limits in foreign countries will be given.

Amiraslan Yusifov

The Lawyer of "BSC" LTD

http://bsc.az/

https://www.facebook.com/bsc.group.ltd
Bestway launches ranges to fit wine trends

UK independent wholesaler Bestway is expanding its wine offer with new lines it says are designed to help on-trade operators capitalise on consumer trends.

Wine sales in the on-trade are valued at 3.9bn by the IWSR, with wine accounting for almost 20% of the value of drinks bought when consumers are out in pubs, bars and restaurants. Helping operators maximise the opportunity, Bestways new additions include Royal Prosecco and Toro Riendo, an own label everyday collection of Spanish wines, which will be sold exclusively by Bestway in the UK.

Prosecco overtook Champagne as the UKs favourite sparkling wine last year. Roopinder Toor, Bestway licensed category controller, says: We have seen triple digit growth in Prosecco sales at Bestway over the last year, and are delighted to be bringing Royal Prosecco to market.

It is a quality brand, produced in Treviso which has continually proven itself as the home of the best Prosecco, and offers bright and fresh fruit flavours that make it the perfect sparkler for a range of occasions, whether accompanying food in a restaurant or sharing with friends in the bar on a night out.

Spanish wine sales have grown across the board with Rioja achieving a 10% increase last year. A third of all wines from the Rioja region are exported to the UK. And with the growth of Rioja, consumers are exploring the wider Spanish wine offer  a trend which the Toro Riendo range of everyday wines caters for with its five variants: dry, medium and sweet whites, a medium bodied red and a medium dry rose.

Bill Creighton, Bestway wine category manager, says: The Toro Riendo (Laughing Bull) range presents a playful, modern image. Bar fridges are full of new world wines, but Europe still has a key role to play and Toro Riendo is the perfect opportunity for licensees to capitalise on the category.

29 January 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said his first leadership role was as a patrol leader of a Boy Scout troop in Kansas many years ago.

He said nothing teaches leadership skills like trying to get a bunch of 11- and 12-year-old boys to do what you tell them to do -- especially when you're only a year older than they are.

It was that experience, followed by the 50 years of public service at the Central Intelligence Agency, Texas A&M University and the Department of Defense, that Gates used to write his new book, A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service.

Gates came to Texas A&M Wednesday to promote the book, which he hopes will inspire young people to enter public service.

"I just felt like, at the end having led these three very different organizations, that there were lessons about how you can lead change and reform that were applicable across the board," he said during an interview with members of the media. "I didn't feel that there was really anything out there that had been written by anybody who'd actually done it, as opposed to academic or others, on how you lead change in any organization."

Gates said there were two aspects to his book. The first is to give a practical approach on how to lead change in a bureaucratic environment -- how to delegate authority, empower people and hold people accountable for performance.

The other side of the book, he said, are techniques for how to deal with stakeholders, community members, alumni, athletics fans -- all the people who have influence in the affairs of an organization.

He also discusses the personal leadership characteristics he believes are necessary for someone who intends to lead change.

Gates drew a distinction between leadership and management. He said education can make someone a good manager, which every organization needs, but it's hard to teach good leadership traits.

"If you don't like people, if you don't respect people, if you think you're superior to other people, you're not going to be a good leader," he said. "It is a matter of the heart, it is how you look at other people -- can you empathize, can you motivate, can you inspire? I think those are hard things to teach."

Gates was appointed the 22nd secretary of defense in 2006 by President George W. Bush and stayed until 2011 under President Barack Obama. He is the only secretary of defense in the country's history to be asked to remain in that office by a newly elected president.

Before becoming defense secretary, he served as the president of Texas A&M University from 2002 to 2006, and was director of Central Intelligence from 1991 to 1993.

He said one former president who embodies the leadership characteristics he writes about in his book is the one whose library and school of government and public service sits at Texas A&M -- President George H.W. Bush.

"If you read the chapter on personal characteristics of a leader, practically every sentence you can say, 'Yeah, that was Bush 41,'" Gates said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Foreign investors will not be negatively affected by a mandatory fee of 20 percent on remittances for sending money abroad, Tahir Taghizadeh, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the UK, wrote in the letter published in the Financial Times.

"Non-resident investors will continue to freely execute any trade or other transactions, export and import activities and have the rights to perform foreign exchange transactions through bank offices in support of such transactions," the diplomat wrote.

The diplomat wrote that cash/hard currency importation into Azerbaijan in excess of $50,000 equivalent is subject to reporting to the financial monitoring service.

"Repatriation of 100 per cent of a non-resident investment into Azerbaijan plus profit made on that investment after payment of all taxes (mainly a 20 percent profit tax and a 10 percent withholding tax) has been guaranteed to foreign investors by the law on the protection of foreign investments," he wrote.

A mandatory fee of 20 percent on remittances for sending money abroad, which exceeds $50,000 during a year, was introduced in Azerbaijan, according to the amendments to the Law on currency regulation adopted by the parliament.

This charge does not apply to transfers abroad in relation to the cost of medical treatment, education, execution of court decisions and law enforcement agencies outside of Azerbaijan.

Currency exported as direct investment for the purchase of securities, real estate and land, as well as for the maintenance of Azerbaijani companies' foreign missions also will be taxed with a mandatory fee of 20 percent.

This charge does not apply to legal entities, the state share in capital of which exceeds 50 percent.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

If oil prices rise, the US producers of shale oil will increase production immediately, which again will lead to excess in production and fall of prices, Head of the Energy markets sector of the Russian Institute for Energy and Finance Nikolai Ivanov told Trend.

"Therefore, such a stalemate emerged on the market that everyone accepts prices the way they are," said Ivanov.

He went on to add that the extraction of shale oil in the US has completely changed the view on the global energy market, because it is fundamentally different from conventional production.

"Conventional production requires large investments, followed by small operating costs," said Ivanov. "In case of shale oil it is all the way around - one can instantly start a project without prospecting and exploration stage, because it happens there during production, but shale extraction requires large operating costs."

Thus, the US shale companies may stop production at low oil prices and resume it at any time, as soon as market conditions seem right to them, said the expert.

He noted that shale companies note the possibility of reducing production at low oil prices even in the memorandums for investors.

In fact, America has become the second "balancing" supplier of the oil market after Saudi Arabia, he said.

"Previously, only Saudi Arabia could smoothly cut production, and then increase it. Features of this country's deposits allow doing this," said Ivanov.

He noted that five years ago, when a sharp rise in shale oil production began in the US, it was not as noticeable, because it was compensated by a production decline in Libya and Iraq.

"But in recent years it has become obvious that the US has increased production by 3-4 million barrels per day and is steadily moving towards energy independence," said the expert.

Moreover, Ivanov recalled that the US lifted a 40-year ban on the oil export in December 2015 and entered the global market with its high-quality, low-sulfur shale oil, by exaggerating the situation.

The expert also said that the US companies are actively increasing their efficiency and developing technologies.

Ivanov said that until recently the increase in their production efficiency was ahead of the fall in prices.

Ivanov said that moreover, the traditional oil producers can not coordinate their actions with the US because shale oil production is a rather independent phenomenon.

Ivanov added that it is not supported by the government and is not a topic of the international agreements.

"The production depends on the efforts of dozens and hundreds of large and small private companies," he said. "It is impossible to regulate it and somehow come to an agreement with them."

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the total oil production in the US, including shale oil in 2015 was 9.43 mbd.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
The unusually hot summers in Europe over the last three decades are further evidence that human activities are largely responsible for recent global warming, according to new research.

The scientists say they have found no 30-year periods in the last 2,000 years that have exceeded the mean average European summer temperature of the years from 1986 to 2015.

The new research says that already most of Europe has experienced strong summer warming in the past few decades, with severe heatwaves in 2003, as well as in 2010 and in 2015.

This new data adds to the fears expressed by scientists this week that parts of the Mediterranean and Arctic regions will heat up by 3.4C and 6C respectively above pre-industrial levels.

Sonia Seneviratne, head of the land-climate dynamics group at Switzerland's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (ETH Zurich), and colleagues reported in Nature on the meaning of a 2C global average warming. She says:

"We even see starkly different rates of extreme warming over land when global average temperatures reach just 1.5C, which is the limit to the rate of warming agreed to at the Paris climate talks. At 1.5C, we would still see temperature extremes in the Arctic rise by 4.4C, and a 2.2C warming of extremes around the Mediterranean basin."

Historical evidence

According to the new report, published in Environmental Research Letters "reconstructions indicate that the mean 20th century European summer temperature was not significantly different from some earlier centuries, including the 1st, 2nd, 8th and 10th centuries CE ...



"Recent summers, however, have been unusually warm in the context of the last two millennia and there are no 30 year periods in either reconstruction that exceed the mean average European summer temperature of the last three decades (1986-2015 CE)."

The 45 scientists, from 13 countries, say their research now puts the current warmth in the context of the last 2,100 years, using tree-ring information and historical documentary evidence. Their interdisciplinary study involved the collaboration of researchers from Past Global Changes (PAGES), a core project of the global sustainability science programme, Future Earth.
Tehran, Iran, Jan. 29

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Economic agreements gradually paved way for more political discussions as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani left Italy for France, political analyst Mehdi Motaharnia said.

"What is noteworthy is the way Rouhani was greeted in Rome and Paris, that is, these countries' approach to Iran's doctrine of constructive relations, which found strategic depth after the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka nuclear deal]," the political expert told Trend Jan. 29.

"Rouhani's trip was a genius choice for having included Rome and Paris. It carried a clear message. Iran wants to engage in effective cooperation with world according to a set outlook. It tries to put aside the pre-JCPOA risks, as well as that era's challenges with regional and other counties," Motaharnia underlined.

"Iran is keeping in mind those experiences and now has adopted a clear outlook for constructive cooperation aimed at creating mutual, effective relations, best exhibited in trips to places as special as Rome and Paris."

The analyst also said it was in Paris that world order issues were discussed, the most salient topic of the talks being Iran-France cooperation against terrorism.

"Rouhani's meeting with the Pope was especially important, for Rouhani is at the same time a cleric, a member of [Iran's] Assembly of Experts, as well as the second man in Iran according to the constitution," Motaharnia stated. "He is the executive representative of a government that claims religious rule in Iran."

"Meeting the Catholic leader, against the backdrop of a blind fundamentalism that tries to introduce religion as a narcotic and a violence-boosting phenomenon, can lay ground for more Tehran-Rome cooperation toward presenting a more official view of religion," he added.

President Rouhani wrapped up his four-day visit to Italy and France by leaving Paris for Tehran on Jan. 28 night.

During his visit to Italy, Rouhani kick-started the two countries' relations in political, economic, cultural, tourism, scientific and technological fields.

Iran and Italy signed a total of 14 memorandums of understanding (MOUs) and agreed on a joint cooperation roadmap.

The Iranian president met his Italian counterpart and prime minister in Rome, as well as the world's Catholic Leader Pope Francis in Vatican.

President Rouhani was accompanied by a group of representatives of Iran's private sector during his visit to Rome. He also met with Italian businessmen.

While on a visit to France, Rouhani met with his French counterpart Francois Hollande.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

The talks of OPEC with non-cartel oil producers won't give any results, said Nikolai Ivanov, head of the energy markets sector at Russian Institute for Energy and Finance, speaking to Trend Jan. 28.

This week, OPEC urged non-cartel countries to jointly solve the problem of oil excess on the market. On Jan. 28, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that in February, OPEC plans to hold a meeting with participation of the non-cartel oil producing countries, and Russia is ready to participate in it.

"OPEC is in fact on its last legs," Ivanov asserted. "Saudi Arabia is taking steps that other countries perceive as unfriendly. There are very strong contradictions within the OPEC itself."

The expert reminded that most of OPEC countries are not pleased with the current low oil price.

He added that Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Venezuela are among them.

"In particular, Arab countries do not suffer," he said. "The Arabs are able to reduce the price upon the long-term contracts."

Ivanov also said that currently OPEC must somehow save reputation and pretend that it is somehow trying to act in the common interests of the organization's members.

"Their actions are unlikely to result in anything," he said. "But it is necessary to imitate some activity. It is necessary to negotiate, meet in Vienna and make statements."

Ivanov added that OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri's initiative to negotiate with different oil producers contradicts to OPEC's previous actions.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said earlier that only efficient producers should stay in the market, Ivanov recalled, saying that in other words, Saudi Arabia didn't want to subsidize inefficient producers within OPEC.

"The Saudis didn't want to share their part in the market and told about it directly. After Saudi Arabia has showed its true intentions, it is unlikely that anyone would believe it," said Ivanov.

In addition, the majority of traditional fields in the world do not allow reducing oil production smoothly, according to him.

For example, he said, if the production is cut in Russia, the specifics of the old Siberian fields won't allow increasing the output later.

"Therefore, the negotiations between Russia and OPEC are absolutely meaningless," said Ivanov.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
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By Gleaner Staff

The Henderson County High School wind ensemble has accepted an invitation to perform at the National Memorial Day Concert Series in Washington, D.C. this May.

Approximately 35 student musicians from HCHS will travel to the nation's capital May 28-30 for the trip, which will include performances and sightseeing.

The students will attend the National Symphony Orchestra's concert at the Capitol building, which is hosted by actor Gary Sinise, and will participate in a Memorial Day wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery.

The wind ensemble will give one performance May 29 as part of a day long series of concerts at the National Air Force Memorial that will feature many different ensembles from around the country. They will perform their own concert May 30  Memorial Day  in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

The concert will feature mostly patriotic music, including "America the Beautiful" and Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," said Adam Thomas, HCHS band director.

The band will honor veterans, both living and lost, with the "Salute to America's Finest" and John Williams' "Hymn to the Fallen" from "Saving Private Ryan." They will also honor American victims of violence, from police officers to teachers to children, with Frank Ticheli's "An American Elegy."

The program will include a lighter side, as well, featuring more movie music from Williams, and a tribute to Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln that includes "Log Cabin Blues," a xylophone rag showcasing HCHS director of percussion Mary Williams, and "My Old Kentucky Home."

The HCHS band uses a special arrangement of the state song that is performed annually by the University of Louisville marching band at the Kentucky Derby.

Those who would like to catch this concert but can't travel to Washington are in luck. Thomas plans to schedule a preview concert here in Henderson a week or two before the group travels.

"One regret we have with this trip is that it means we aren't available for our usual performance at the Henderson Memorial Day service," he said. "That's always one of our most important performances and we will be sorry to miss it," said Thomas.

That performance will be covered by Henderson's Community Band, directed by Paul Metzger.

"We're thankful they are taking on the performance for us, and of course the Henderson ceremony will be on our minds while we are in D.C." said Thomas.

The band has put out a call for any assistance available. This is an expensive trip that costs each student more than $600.

Any local businesses or private donors that would like to make a donation that will be evenly split among the students are invited to contact Thomas at the high school at 270-831-8800.
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By Erin Schmitt of The Gleaner

Webster County Schools' Link2Learn program has been so successful that teachers are preparing additional assignments for nontraditional instructional days.

The school system has canceled classes five times this school year  all this month  because of snow. Students still learned their lessons, however, by logging online and accessing assignments prepared by their teachers.

The teachers were also in contact with their students during the day  available through email, phone or text to answer questions.

The Link2Learn program was made available through grants from the Kentucky Department of Education.

The state agency has approved 10 days as nontraditional instructional days that can be counted as school days. School systems must provide substantial documentation for KDE to approve the nontraditional instruction days.

The Webster County Board of Education opted initially to use only five Link2Learn days this year.

"No one would have predicted that we would have used all five of our Link2Learn days in January," said Carolyn Sholar, the district instructional support/public information coordinator.

Since the implementation of those five days was so successful, Superintendent Rachel Yarbrough asked teachers for their input on adding two more Link2Learn days if needed.

"The results were overwhelmingly in support of using the two additional days for Webster County students if we experience snow days or emergency situations which result in the closing of school," said Yarbrough.

Out of the 124 teachers surveyed, 117 were in full support of adding two additional days. There were four who marked "maybe" while three voted to stick to the five days already used.

One teacher commented that it's "better to use Link2Learn Days early in the school year versus tacking them on to the end of the school year after all assessments windows."

Another wrote that it "keeps students connected to learning while out of school." A third teacher stated that this increased "parent involvement in and awareness of their child's learning and content expectations."

Teachers are now expected to have Link2Learn day six posted by Feb. 1. and day seven by Feb. 5.

Henderson County Schools have missed six days, all in January, due to snow. The school system does not participate in nontraditional school days.

"We have not discussed online learning, because we know we have many students that do not have access to the web or a device during inclement weather," said Public Information Officer Julie Wischer. "This may change in a few years, but right now it is not feasible for all students, so we are not ready to try it."

The Kentucky Department of Education requires students attend a minimum of 170 instructional days.

Henderson County Schools schedules for 175 and plans to use five of those as banked-time days  extra days built into the schedule from longer school days which can be used to make up for missed days.

So far, the school system has used four banked days, which means one is still available before the school year is extended. The last day of classes for students is scheduled for May 19.

There are also two traditional make-up days that were built into the schedule. Those make-up days are Feb. 15 and April 8.
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By Special To The Gleaner

FRANKFORT  State arts leaders gathered Jan. 20 for Arts Day in Kentucky, an annual celebration of the commonwealth's arts community and the vital roles it plays in the state's livelihood.

The day is also an opportunity for arts leaders to thank members of the Kentucky General Assembly for their continued support of arts funding through the Kentucky Arts Council.

Sen. Dorsey Ridley and Rep. David Watkins presented the Henderson Area Arts Alliance with a check for $9,025 for a Kentucky Arts Partnership (KAP) grant awarded by the arts council in July 2015.

The funding awarded to Henderson Area Arts Alliance is part of $1.2 million the arts council awarded to 91 nonprofit arts organizations across the state for the 2016 fiscal year.

This year's Arts Day comes during the 50th anniversary year of the establishment of the arts council by the Kentucky General Assembly.

KAP grants provide operating support on a competitive basis to arts and cultural organizations and community arts programs to ensure participation in the arts is available to the people of Kentucky.
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The following information is based on public records from local and area law enforcement agencies and/or court systems:

HENDERSON CIRCUIT COURT

Nikita B. Carey, 30, 1400 block of Wright Street, pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of second-degree assault, one of which was amended from first-degree. She was sentenced to 10 years total.

Kylin R. Runyon, 20, 1300 block of Helm Street, pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree robbery, amended from first-degree robbery and/or complicity. Sentencing has been scheduled for Feb. 15.

Bear Hoskins, 30, address unavailable, pleaded guilty Monday to theft by failure to make required disposition of property between $500 and $10,000. Sentencing has been scheduled for Feb. 15.

Brittany L. Pirtle, 27, 100 block of North McKinley Street, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and public intoxication. She was sentenced to a total of three years.

Michael D. Cox, 38, 2700 block of Winding Creek Lane, entered an Alford plea Monday to third-degree burglary and falsely reporting an incident. He was given probation for five years and must pay $400 in restitution.

William Apka-Lord, 23, 400 block of Plum Street, was sentenced to a total of 11 years for use of a minor in a sexual performance, first-degree unlawful transaction with a minor under 16, possession of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor, prohibited use of electronic communication system to procure a minor to participate in a sexual offense and failure to comply with the sex offender registry.

HENDERSON POLICE DEPARTMENT

Ashley N. Ohrt, 30, 1100 block of Atkinson Street, was arrested Friday, Jan. 15 on four charges of second-degree unlawful transaction with minor, while Jesse H. Huff, 35, also a resident in the 1100 block of Atkinson Street, was charged with two counts of second-degree unlawful transaction with a minor. The charges stem from Ohrt allegedly providing marijuana to four minors and smoking it with them, police said. Huff was charged for allegedly knowing two of the teens had smoked marijuana, a news release said.

Both Ohrt and Huff were lodged at the Henderson County Detention Center.

Cecil Davis, 18, 2700 block of Zion Road, was arrested Jan. 16, on a charge of first-degree rape. The offense stems from Davis allegedly forcing a juvenile to have sex. He was lodged at the Henderson County Detention Center.

HENDERSON DISTRICT COURT

Several cases were recently bound over to the grand jury from district court.

J.T. Higgins, 21, Sebree, faces a charge of complicity to first-degree robbery.

Evan M. Pund, 28, Evansville, faces a charge of theft of more than $500, but less than $10,000.

Hannah R. Gerber, 26, Greenwood, Ind., faces charges of first-degree possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Elizabeth Heath, 52, 1600 block of South Main Street, faces three counts of first-degree arson.

Archie D. Turner, 50, 1200 block of Handy Avenue, faces charges of driving on a suspended/revoked license, failure to maintain required insurance and first-degree possession of a controlled substance.

Jarrett L. Smith, 39, 1900 block of Brenda Drive, faces a charge of second-degree burglary.

Christopher Williams, 26, Owensboro, faces charges of second-degree burglary, theft of a controlled substance under $10,000, violation of a Kentucky EPO, fourth-degree assault, third-degree terroristic threatening and falsely reporting an incident.

Justin W. Ralph, 22, address unavailable, faces a charge of theft of $500 or more, but under $10,000, and first-degree burglary.

Justin M. Rider, 25, Evansville, faces a charge of theft of $500 or more, but under $10,000.

Douglas K. Burke, 54, Waverly, faces charges of first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and tampering with physical evidence.

Nelson E. Detalente III, 25, Evansville, faces charges of first-degree fleeing/evading police, reckless driving, four counts of first-degree wanton endangerment and one count of first-degree possession of a controlled substance.

Jordan T. Buckman, 19, 1400 block of Arrow Way, faces charges of speeding, driving under the influence, trafficking in marijuana (enhanced), third-degree trafficking in a controlled substance (enhanced), possession of drug paraphernalia (enhanced) and possession of a defaced firearm.

Timothy R. Barron, 26, 100 block of Rankin, faces charges of first-degree wanton endangerment, first-degree criminal mischief and theft of a firearm.

Patrick C. Conley, 40, Sebree, faces charges of first-degree robbery and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Several cases were recently waived to the grand jury from district court.

Jayme L. Driesbach, 20, Sebree, faces a charge of complicity to first-degree robbery.

Joshua D. Downey, 38, 400 block of Meadow Street, faces a charge of theft of an identity without consent of another.

Marcus T. Quarles, 30, Hopkinsville, faces a charge of first-degree sexual abuse.

Danielle M. Walker, 30, 1400 block of Woodland Drive, faces five counts of theft of an identity without consent of another, and five counts of fraudulent use of a credit card under $10,000.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Those charged with crimes are considered innocent until they are found guilty in a court of law. Every effort is made by this newspaper to report the final disposition of each case. In the event we fail to do so, a call to our newsroom, 827-2000, will prompt a background check on those cases and, if necessary, a published report on the final disposition.
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The following information is based on public records from local and area law enforcement agencies and/or court systems:

HENDERSON POLICE DEPARTMENT

Sarah A. Satterfield, age unavailable, 800 block of Marywood Drive, was arrested Thursday and charged with second-degree burglary and theft of a controlled substance under $10,000. The charge stems from Satterfield allegedly breaking into someone's home and stealing prescription medication.

Taurus Tomlinson Jr., 23, Evansville, was charged Thursday with being a fugitive from another state. Authorities said he is wanted in Vanderburgh County, Indiana.

HENDERSON DISTRICT COURT

Several cases were recently waived to the grand jury from district court.

World F. McGuire, 23, 1700 block of South Main Street, faces charges of first-degree fleeing/evading police, driving under the influence, second-degree fleeing/evading police, reckless driving, third-degree criminal trespass, failure to or improper signal, failure to produce insurance cards and third-degree burglary.

Isaiah D. Johnson, 18, Waverly, faces three counts of theft of a controlled substance from a vehicle under $500, one count of second-degree burglary and two counts of theft of a controlled substance under $10,000.

Richard Brown, 33, 600 block of Sixth Street, faces charges of possession of marijuana, first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, second-degree fleeing/evading police (on foot) and third-degree criminal mischief.

Holli A. Vignone, 34, 900 block of Pebble Creek Drive, faces charges of disregarding a stop sign, failure to stop at the railroad crossings, first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving under the influence.

Heather Montgomery, 29, Peewee Valley, Kentucky, faces charges of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, fraudulent use of a credit card under $10,000 and receiving stolen property under $500.

Varek K. Morris, 18, Morganfield, faces charges of theft of a controlled substance from a vehicle $500 or more, but less than $10,000, two counts of theft of a controlled substance under $10,000 and one count of second-degree burglary.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Those charged with crimes are considered innocent until they are found guilty in a court of law. Every effort is made by this newspaper to report the final disposition of each case. In the event we fail to do so, a call to our newsroom, 827-2000, will prompt a background check on those cases and, if necessary, a published report on the final disposition.
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Bevins address exciting, he tells Rotary

By Erin Schmitt of The Gleaner

It's been a good week for supporters of completing I-69.

Kyndle CEO Brad Schneider tuned into Gov. Matt Bevin's State of the Commonwealth address Tuesday because he heard the governor might mention I-69.

Kyndle representatives had met with Bevin during his campaign to encourage support to build an interstate that stretches from the Canadian border in Michigan to the Mexican border in Texas.

Bevin not only endorsed completing I-69 in his address, he even namechecked Henderson on the importance of building a bridge that is the regional linchpin for the whole project.

"It was one of the greatest days in a long trek of helping many other people trying to get this road built," Schneider said. "A governor, someone in the position to really make a difference, endorses you to that extent. It's quite satisfying."

Bevin backed his talk with action on Wednesday when he announced a $6 billion road plan to Kentucky legislators that included earmarks for I-69.

The governor bumped up the environmental impact study on the bridge from 2018 to 2017. He also added $300,000 to the project and added $41 million for pre-construction work in years 2019-21.

Schneider thinks this signals that Bevin is going to update the environmental impact study on the old route, examine the new route and do a total revenue study that will jibe with the one done in Indiana last fall.

"That is great progress," he said. "That is a commitment and I don't think they are going to back off."

Schneider recapped this good news while giving an update on Kyndle and its projects at the Rotary Club of Henderson meeting held Thursday.

There's been some major progress with I-69 as of late.

The major focus right now is completing a large interchange between I-24 and the Purchase Parkway in Calvert City. It's similar in scope to a recent project that joined the Western and Pennyrile parkways.

Schneider said he's frequently asked about where the new bridge will be built. There is not a firm answer, but Kentucky is considering two primary corridors.

A route identified in 2004 swings well east of Henderson, crosses U.S. 60, Kentucky 351 and the Audubon Parkway before hooking up at the Pennyrile Parkway just south of the Kentucky 425 bypass.

A second route was identified a few years ago and was backed by BridgeLink  a nonprofit advocacy group that is pushing for the bridge to be built by 2020. It's a less expensive option and requires less new roadway, Schneider said.

This route heads east of existing twin bridges and Ellis Park, crosses east of Audubon Park, cuts around the Braxton Park subdivision, crosses U.S. 60, then heads along the railroad line right to the U.S. 41 bypass.

"It's basically hitting right in between the Cloverleaf and the Zion Road exit," he said.

Meanwhile, in other road-related developments, the newest Kyndle initiative is to support the efforts to turn the Natcher Parkway into an I-65 spur.

In other areas:

Economic development: As the lead economic development organization in Henderson, Union, Webster and McLean counties, Kyndle is tasked with growing jobs.

In 2015, Kyndle had a hand in 28 projects, bringing 455 jobs and $76.2 million investment to the area. This includes the 200-plus jobs Riverview Coal announced at the end of the year, but which are not yet hired.

Ignite 2021 is the name of Kyndle's next capital campaign. Kyndle has partnered with Convergent Nonprofit Solutions, which helped them raise $2.8 million in 2011 to fund economic development for five years.

Accomplishments: Kyndle often partners with organizations to lend support for community initiatives. Among the key accomplishments of 2015 were:

Encouraging the city of Henderson to update the alcohol ordinance so more flexible events can be held downtown that will bring in more people.

Backed Henderson County Schools' nickel tax initiative to generate revenue for capital investment in the school system.

Partnered with and supported the Henderson County Tourism Commission in its efforts to develop a branding process for the county.

Acting as one of the lead organizations behind Kentucky Community and Technical College System's Fuel the Force initiative for the state to invest more money in KCTCS.

Encouraged people and organizations to donate to Henderson Community College's successful BuildSmart campaign to fund a three to one state matched construction projects.

Recognition: Kyndle is one of only four chambers of commerce in the state that are certified Kentucky chambers of commerce.

Schneider is chairman of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Executives and sits on the board of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Donna Crooks, Kyndle's vice president of economic development, sits on the board of directors of the Kentucky Association for Economic Development.

"I think it's vitally important that people from Northwest Kentucky sit on state boards and have a seat at the table," Schneider said. "Especially in the Golden Triangle situation, where it's easy for them to forget about what our needs and desires are in northwestern Kentucky."
Most Iowans disapprove of Biden, believe US is on the wrong track

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NORWALK --The Settler, a Norwalk-based senior move management firm, announced its recent accreditation by The National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM) -- the national industry association for professional move managers.

"This recognition makes us one of a very few accredited move management organizations in the area," Pinny Randall, company owner and founder, said.

Mary Kay Buysse, executive director of NASMM, said the accreditation is the highest level of professional achievement that can be awarded to a senior move management compnay.

"An organization receiving a three-year NASMM A+ Accreditation has put itself through a rigorous peer review process and demonstrated to a team of reviewers its commitment to offering programs and services that are measurable, accountable, and of the highest quality," she said.

Moving at any age can be difficult and stressful. Recognizing and managing the stress of relocating older adults is the specialty of a senior move management firm.

"Our accreditation and attendance at NASMM's annual conferences means we are educated on different and even difficult situations like hoarding, handling people with Alzheimer's, how to approach older clients and any client who may be under stress in their move," Caroline Menchero, office and job manager at the firm, said.

The Settler has been in business for more than 13 years. Menchero said what sets the company apart from the average moving firm is the depth and breadth of the services. Whether it's a move in or move out, Menchero said The Settler handles complex situations, both within the U.S. and internationally, involving local and long-distance moves for adults going to a smaller space, people retiring to another location, vacation and second homes set-up, corporate relocations and other situations.

"Our universe revolves around individuals and families moving from a house to an apartment, or going from a big house to a smaller house in the case of families whose kids are gone," Randall said. "We call it 'right sizing' and we help our clients with everything -- from the planning of the move to managing the inventory, orchestrating the move, sorting possessions, giving away items, packing, unpacking and finishing touches in settling in again."

To successfully accomplish this task, she added, The Settler collaborates with a large pool of third-party providers, from stamp collectors, record album collectors, electricians, rug cleaners, and furniture restorers to independent dealers and auctions houses.

In December 2015, one of The Settler's Greenwich clients made headline news with the unearthing of a valuable piece of sheet music by Ludwig von Beethoven, which went to auction.

For more information, visit www.thesettlersusa.com or call (203) 810-4873.
Italian gas group Snam is working with UniCredit on the idea of buying a stake in Gas Connect Austria, the pipeline unit of Austrian energy group OMV's, two sources familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported.

One of the sources said the bank was assisting Snam to find out whether such a move might make sense but added nothing had been decided.

Earlier this month press reports cited Snam CEO Carlo Malacarne as saying the company could be interested in buying a stake in Gas Connect Austria, a central hub for gas flows from Eastern to Western Europe.

State-controlled Snam is spending more than 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) until 2018 to upgrade its grid and play a leading role in Europe's plans to make gas supplies more secure.

The company, which has a strategic alliance with Belgium's Fluxys, already controls the Trans Austria Gasleitung GmbH (TAG) pipeline carrying Russian gas into Italy.

Last December it bought a 20 percent stake in the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) that will bring Azerbaijani gas to Italy, as part of moves to grow its footprint and strengthen its ambition to create a southern European gas hub.

OMV, which is 31.5 percent owned by the state, is selling a 49 percent stake in Gas Connect Austria to raise cash to fund investments as oil prices fall.

The group has previously said potential buyers of the stake had expressed "strong interest" with a deal expected in 2016.

On Thursday OMV chief Rainer Seele said he was not ruling out anything in asset swap talks with Russian energy giant Gazprom except Gas Connect Austria.
DHAKA (TIP): Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, head of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was ordered on Monday to appear in court to answer the charge of sedition, a move her supporters said []
On Feb. 1, as the countrys gaze is firmly fixed on the Iowa caucuses, a first-ever straw poll will be held in Madison County which will provide a glimpse into how county Democrats feel about the partys three presidential aspirants: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin OMalley.

While the format is based on rules used in Iowa, delegates here wont actually be selected; that wont happen until the March 15 primary. But organizers see the event as a way to generate buzz and get the party energized at the local level.

The timing is great. Its something you hear about every time you turn on the news. People are paying attention right now to whos being chosen and where, said Rachelle Crowe, a member of the working committee helping to stage the event.

Edwardsville will be hosting one of the locations, at the Knights of Columbus Hall at 7132 Marine Road. Others are being staged in Collinsville, Marine, Alton, East Alton, and two in Granite City. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. with the caucus meeting starting an hour later.

Once they check in, participants can either congregate in an area for Clinton, Sanders or OMalley, or simply take a seat. At 6:30 local Democratic party leaders and elected officials will be introduced, and a facilitator will explain the process. Participants in each area will be encouraged to ask questions and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates.

Up until the bodies are counted, people can move through different areas until they decide where they actually want to be, Crowe said. Chairs will be set up at each location so that visitors who have already made up their minds can simply stay there until votes are counted.

After 10 minutes, each campaign has up to six minutes to make a speech in support of their candidate. Then undecided voters will have 10 minutes to approach candidate groups and ask questions privately.

At the conclusion, voters will choose a campaign by joining one of the groups, according to the Madison County Democratic Partys Facebook page.

The hope is that votes will be counted starting around 7:30 p.m.

Once the most common way of choosing a president, today only Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho rely on caucuses solely, according to information from the Federal Election Commission.

Votes are tallied by counting the number of people who decide on their favored candidate. A facilitator will announce the final count at which time the voters are locked in and a campaign representative will count the voters in their group. Caucus staff will verify the campaigns count before it is announced. After the facilitator announces the final count, the meeting will be closed.

Its exciting, Crowe said. Were hoping people will be interested. The idea is we want to include everyone.

Ron Foster is chairman of the Edwardsville Township Precinct Committeemen which is comprised of 29 precincts. The party, he said, is excited to be hosting the event.

Foster will be attending the Edwardsville K. of C. Hall that night, along with County Board Chairman Alan Dunstan and States Attorney Tom Gibbons.

The Madison County Democrats will be promoting the event using direct mail and press releases. They have also reached out to SIUE and other areas community colleges.

The party issued a press release on Thursday.

We believe Madison County Democrats will be energized by the opportunity to be among the first to pick their candidates in a presidential election year, Madison County Board member Kelly Tracy said in the release.

This is a great opportunity for rank and file Democrats to have a voice in the election. Barack Obamas win in Iowa eight years ago gave him national exposure and created momentum in the early nomination season, said Circuit Clerk Mark Von Nida. On Caucus night we will get to hear from voters in an industrial Midwestern county as well as Iowa.

The seven locations for the Feb. 1 straw poll include:

Granite City Township Building 2060 Delmar Ave, Granite City

Neighborhood Social Club, 4168 IL-Highway 162, Granite City

American Legion, 1022 Vandalia Street, Collinsville

Knights of Columbus, 7132 Marine Road, Edwardsville

Marine Township Senior Citizen Center, 101 West Silver Street, Marine

Machinist Hall Local 660, 161 North Shamrock, East Alton

IBEW Local 649, 3945 North Humbert, Alton
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

Russia will be able to ride out low oil prices and focus on ensuring Russia's long-term role in the global oil market, Energy Security Analysis (ESAI), which is the leading US-based independent research firm said.

"This perception reinforces the conventional wisdom that Russia will not agree to production cuts," ESAI said in a report, obtained by Trend.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak confirmed Russia's readiness to meet with producers to discuss oil production.

He said that the topic of discussion at the planned OPEC meeting in February with representatives of other oil-producing countries could be the question of oil production reducing for each producer country at the level of five percent, but a general agreement is needed for it.

The report stressed that the economics of Russian production provide a glimpse of how painful current prices are. According to ESAI Energy's analysis, when the Urals price is $30 per barrel, a producer's net revenue after paying the crude export duty and Mineral Extraction tax is $17.

Meanwhile, the report said that since the costs are paid in rubles, the value of which has plummeted, lifting costs and pipeline transport from West Siberia are roughly $8 per barrel.

These numbers indicate Russian producers can withstand prices as low as even $20 per barrel without them having a significant impact on production in 2016.

Nevertheless, the report said, Russia's government revenue from the oil sector is plummeting.

If OPEC proposes to Russia production limits that do not undermine Russia's long-term objectives, and key Russian producers back the deal, Russia may indeed agree to production limits, ESAI believes.

"Such a prospect seemed all but inconceivable until now. But then again the lower oil prices since the beginning of the year and little sign of a recovery may upend conventional wisdom. There is a real chance, however, that Russia is ready to bargain this time, eliminating one of the potential impediments to a grand bargain," the report said.

ESAI believes the absence of concessions by Iran and thus other Arabian Gulf producers will scuttle a grand bargain to cut output.

Russia's oil production amounted to 10.95 million barrels per day in 2015, according to the Energy Information Agency's (EIA) estimates.

EIA forecasts Russia's oil production to amount to 10.85 million barrels per day in 2016 and to 10.74 million barrels per day in 2017.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Diversified technology company PT 3M Indonesia aims to gain a bigger market share by targeting specific markets to better meet demand from various industries.



The company, whose market share is now less than 5 percent, did not disclose its market share growth target, but globally it aims to boost sales by around 2-3 percent.



3M Indonesia president director Karina Chaves Rodriguez said the company had divided its market into four groups: industrial and original equipment manufacturer (OEM); infrastructure, construction and energy; health care and consumer retail.



'This market-focus [strategy] is also in line with the country's strategic plan to achieve growth by providing better infrastructure to the population, better healthcare solutions and diversifying itself from the commodity based economy to industrial based. All of that will increase people's purchasing power,' she told a media gathering on Thursday.



The company, a subsidiary of the US-listed Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing (3M) Co., is known for its wide array of products, from Post-it sticky notes to 3M window film.



Karina added that the company initially marketed its products based on the 46 technology platforms they are made of, such as abrasive and adhesive. However, starting 2015, it compressed them into four market centers.



3M Indonesia, which entered the local market in 1975, sells 10,000 products, ranging from Scotch Brite kitchen sponges, Nexcare masks, oil-absorbing facial sheets, stethoscopes, industrial tape, cleaning liquid, vehicle sound absorbers, machine filters, cable joints to reflective sheeting for road signs, to businesses, individuals as well as the government for infrastructure projects.



The company is optimistic about sales growth in the country despite slowing demand, especially from the automotive sector last year. Local car production saw a decline from 1.2 million vehicles in 2014 to 1 million in 2015.



It believes that the government's goal to build 15 new airports, 172 seaports and 35,000 megawatt (MW) power plants by 2019 will help boost its industrial product sales and enliven other sectors.



The new strategy is also applied worldwide to achieve its 2 to 3 percent sales growth this year after booking US$30.3 billion sales, mostly from industrial products followed by infrastructure, consumer retail and health care, from the 200 countries in which it operates and sells 80,000 products.



For Indonesia itself, 3M refuses to disclose the firm's domestic target but said that it would comply with the government's local component regulation.



3M Indonesia country technical leader Audist Subekti said the state obliged the automotive sector to have 20 to 40 percent local content and a minimum of 40 percent for infrastructure.



'With such policy, the company will either outsource more local producers or prioritize marketing specific products,' she said.



The company's wide playing fields also face huge competition from present players, including thousands of Chinese products, ACE, Llumar, Solar Gard, Nexgard and Voksel Electric.



Audist said the company had one diversified manufacturing plant in Tambun, Bekasi, West Java that fabricated various goods, from automotive-related products to consumer retail. 3M Indonesia employs around 300 people.



'The rest of the items are imported from different countries but this year we're planning to make one of the countries in ASEAN our fabrication hub for consumer retail products. The choice depends on which country offers the proper incentives that will help save costs,' she said. (rbk)
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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Jepara, Central Java  Fri, January 29, 2016

The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) in cooperation with the Central Java and Yogyakarta customs and excise offices uncovered on Thursday the attempted smuggling of over 100 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine from China.



BNN head Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso said his officers arrested eight people suspected to be part of an international drug smuggling network based in Pakistan.



'Of the eight suspects, four are Pakistani citizens and four others are Indonesians,' Budi told reporters in a case expose held at a furniture warehouse belonging to CV Jepara Raya Internasional in Pekalongan subdistrict, Jepara, Central Java.



The Pakistani suspects were identified as Faiq, Amran Malik, Riaz and Toriq, while the Indonesian suspects were Yulian, Tommy, Kristiadi and Didit. Didit is a resident of Pekalongan who rented the warehouse from a person named Yunpelizar.



Didit allegedly disguised the warehouse as a furniture finishing factory, but it was reportedly used to store the smuggled meth. The drugs were then repacked for further distribution across the country.



The crystal meth was smuggled inside electricity generators. Of 194 generator sets found, the BNN had examined 94, from which they collected 100 kilograms of drugs.



Budi said the BNN team arrested the suspects on Wednesday as they were unloading machines that had arrived at the warehouse a day earlier.



He said the drugs were packed and covered in carbon paper to avoid X-ray detection.



'Don't mention the value. A gram of meth could be used by five people. Smugglers clearly destroy Indonesia's future generations,' Budi said, adding that the suspects worked with Indonesians and even married local women to ease their business.



He called on neighborhood units (RT), community units (RW) and all people to be more careful about foreigners wishing to marry Indonesian women.



Budi said the smugglers could face the death penalty according to articles 112, 114 and 122 of Law No. 35/2009 on narcotics and illicit drugs and the Money Laundering Law, which carried a minimum penalty of four years' imprisonment and a maximum sentence of death.



'We will develop further investigations on the findings,' Budi said.



Separately, the Finance Ministry's customs and excise director general Heru Pambudi said that the 194 generator sets were supplied by Shen Zhen Yang Feng Industrial Co. Ltd. in China.



According to shipping documents, 278 boxes were sent, with 192 containing generators and the remaining 86 containing air filters.



Heru said that at the end of December 2015, the BNN shared information with his office about illicit drugs being smuggled from China to Indonesia inside imported agricultural machines or diesel engines.



'We then coordinated with the customs and excise directorate general's Central Java and Yogyakarta offices,' Heru said, adding that the machines were smuggled through Semarang Tanjung Emas seaport.



The drugs were hidden inside the generators after the machines' spare parts had been removed. One generator set could reportedly accommodate 1.5 to 1.9 kilograms of meth.



The smuggling was allegedly coordinated by Riaz, who has been living in Indonesia for several years and is married to an Indonesian.



According to the BNN's investigations, the warehouse had received drug shipments several times.



Local people have said they did not realize the warehouse was used to store drugs. Warehouse owner Yunpelizar also claimed he had not suspected that his property had been used to trade narcotics.
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Linkedin Marcel Thee (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Go to a concert and chances are you'll run into Bramaditya 'PF' Dimas, a music-focused documentarian of rising prominence in the local music scene.

Photographer Bramaditya 'PF' Dimas' popularity has a lot to do with his published photographs as well as his diligent full-set video documenting of underground music shows.



His constant presence at shows has garnered him a large network and access to take official documentations of many local acts, new and old.



PF ' as he prefers to be known ' has been taking concert pictures since 2006, the days when concert photography wasn't as ubiquitous as it is today.



Then, mostly embedded within the emo/punk/post-hardcore music scene that revolved mostly around South Jakarta in the mid-2000s, PF made certain he was at as many shows as possible, not only as a clinging fan of sorts, but also as someone who played a crucial part, even if it wasn't on the music side.



As for the name, PF stands for Personifikasi Fiksi, which roughly means fictional personification.



'I just thought, you know, it would be great to document these bands and this moment,' he says of his beginnings.



PF knew that the thriving scene back then would someday be history and needed someone to capture the moment.



Still, it took a while for PF to find his own style. Not being 'very aware of the internet back then', the 26-year old didn't have much reference point aside from pressing the shoot button every time someone did something interesting on stage.



Fortunately, PF met a musician who was also a photographer with actual knowledge behind him.

Through that person, PF learned that there was more than just randomly pushing buttons on his camera.

He then discovered that there were many other musicians who dabbled in picture-taking and, in his own words, 'began stealing ideas and information from them to become better'.



By the time he learned of the internet, PF discovered professional music photographers, such as Todd Owyoung from the US, and saved up to buy the required gear to take outstanding pictures.



For PF, the goal isn't simply to make sure he gets pretty pictures, however. The photographer also wants the pictures to mean something to the musicians.



'What motivates me is the process of refreshing and remembering moments on stage and keep those moments for [the musicians] that they perhaps ' clichA as it sounds ' one day show their kids ' 'Hey, I was once a musician!'



He loves capturing moments of musicians interacting with fans and encouraging singalong moments.



The best moments visually, says PF, come when his pictures drive people to say: 'What a crazy looking concert! What a great moment!'



PF knows that the pictures are also a strong tool to promote his favorite bands, many of which reign only in the underground scene.



'People need to know that these [underground] musicians are actually the heart of this country's music scene, and it isn't just the big bands that can make waves and be the benchmark of what is good about this country's music,' PF says.



Even though he grew up in the underground rock community, PF has since honed his skills to take shots for mainstream stars as well. He's a regular at both underground and mainstream events. 'Music for me is life, memories, a feeling, and a symbol of fighting back. Anything can be united through music, and music and photography have such a close connection,' he says.



'Just think back to those great moments that feel real to us even though we were not there ' from Woodstock, Big Day Out, Java Rockin' Land. Photography made those moments available to all of us.'
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Linkedin Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

State-owned lender Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) plans to increase its e-money products this year on the back of growing utilization, its executive says.



BRI executive vice president for e-banking Dicky Rozano said the state lender aimed to see an increase in the issuance of its Brizzi e-money cards by around 25 percent to 33 percent this year. As of last year, the lender had issued nearly 4.2 million e-money cards, he said.



'We are optimistic because the growth will be driven by the card usage in many sectors, such as retail and culinary as well as toll road,' Dicky said on Thursday.



Dicky said BRI was prepared to facilitate road toll payments using Brizzi for the first time as part of an agreement between four state-owned banks last year on the integrated electronic payment system for toll roads.



In September 2015, four state-run lenders ' BRI, Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), Bank Mandiri and Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN) ' committed to adopting an electronic payment system to enable their customers to pay road tolls on roads operated by state-owned toll road operator Jasa Marga using e-money or prepaid cards issued by the banks.



The agreement changes the existing toll road electronic payment system operated exclusively by Mandiri with Jasa Marga through the 'e-toll' card since 2009.



According to Dicky, BRI, alongside three other state banks, will be ready to operate the new payment system at several toll gates in February as they are currently conducting a series of trials.



Dicky said there were currently 1,040 toll gates on all toll roads operated by Jasa Marga, but BRI and other state banks would start the new system only at dozens of gates.



'For example, some sections of the Jakarta Outer Ring Road [JORR], Tangerang and Karawaci [Banten] as well as Jati Asih and Jatiwarna in Bekasi,' he said.



Dicky said the four state banks were expected to complete the new system in all toll gates by the end of this year, but the implementation would depend on the infrastructure preparation by the participants, including Jasa Marga as the operator.



'We have to conduct hundreds of trials, including on the strength and capability of the cards as well as the reader,' he said, adding that the four state banks would conduct campaigns to raise people awareness on the new system. Dicky said BRI also expected the new payment system to help increase Brizzi's transactions to within the same growth range as the number of cards.



According to BRI data, the bank booked 5 million Brizzi transactions as of June 2015.



During the signing of the agreement between the four state banks, State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno said the ministry expected the state lenders to 'work hard' to expand the new electronic payment system at all toll roads, including those operated by private companies by the end of 2016.



The agreement was initially prompted by a revised Bank Indonesia (BI) regulation on e-money that bans 'exclusivity' in the public services sector, such as toll roads and parking, in a bid to promote non-cash transactions.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Beijing  Fri, January 29, 2016

Human rights monitoring groups say a Chinese court has sentenced three pro-democracy activists to as many as five years in prison on charges of inciting the overthrow of the communist government.

The groups say the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court in the southern city of Guangzhou on Friday gave the heaviest sentence to lawyer Tang Jingling following a closed-door trial.

Activists Wang Qingying and Yuan Xinting were sentenced to two-and-a half and three-and-a half years, respectively.

The three were taken into custody in May 2014 amid a sweeping crackdown on dissident surrounding the 25th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Tang's wife, Wang Yanfang, has said her husband downloaded Internet writings on non-violent resistance and distributed copies.

Calls to the court rang unanswered. (ags)
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Linkedin Djemi Amnifu (The Jakarta Post) Kupang  Fri, January 29, 2016

Amid soaring beef prices, farmers and businessmen in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) have finally agreed to use the government-run livestock vessel KM Camara Nusantara 1 to transport their cattle to Jakarta after securing a guarantee that they will be able to sell their stock directly to buyers in Jakarta.



Speaking to The Jakarta Post on Thursday, NTT Cattle Entrepreneurs Association head Decky Budyanto said the commitment had been made during a recent meeting in Jakarta attended by representatives from the provincial administration and the Agriculture Ministry. 'According to the agreement, local cattle entrepreneurs will only use KM Camara Nusantara's services [for livestock shipments]. They, however, are allowed to sell their cattle directly to buyers in Jakarta,' Decky said.



KM Camara Nusantara, operated by state shipping company PT Pelni, first arrived in NTT on Dec. 12 as part of the government's maritime highway program.



The vessel, serving the Jakarta-NTT route, was initially assigned to transport cattle bought by State

Logistics Agency (Bulog) from NTT farmers and businessmen to Jakarta in order to help stabilize beef supplies and prices.



The second voyage of the KM Camara Nusantara, at the end of December, however, reportedly returned empty after local farmers and businessmen refused to sell their cattle to Bulog at Rp 35,000 (US$2.50) per kilogram live weight, much lower than the price paid by private shippers.



The new agreement, Decky said, would allow local farmers and businesses to sell their cattle at market prices, currently ranging from Rp 41,000 to 43,000 per kg live weight.



Cattle supplier PT Bumi Tirta operational manager Buce Frans said his company was prepared to send 120 head of cattle on board the KM Camara Nusantara on Feb. 2.



'We're only being charged for the shipment services. We will personally handle the cattle sales in Jakarta,' said Buce, whose company manages thousands of head of cattle in Oesao subdistrict, Kupang regency.



Pelni has been assigned by the government to manage sea freight on six routes around the country as part of the maritime highway program, including one connecting Tanjung Perak, East Java, to Timika in Papua, as well as Tanjung Priok in Jakarta and Natuna in Riau Islands.



NTT Livestock Agency head Dany Sumadi, meanwhile, denied that KM Camara Nusantara had returned to Jakarta on Dec. 23, because of a lack of cattle. He said the ship had to turn around as the second consignment coincided with Christmas.



Dany said he was certain that the third cattle shipment to Jakarta would amount to 500 head of cattle, now that local suppliers would only pay for transportation and handle the sales themselves.



'There's no problem regarding price because the dealers will sell their cattle direct to Jakarta according to the market price,' he said.



Indonesian Beef Producer and Lot Feeder Association (Apfindo) estimates that Indonesia needs around 3.4 million head of cattle to fulfil the national demand for beef this year. Local farmers, meanwhile, can only supply some 2.4 million of this total.



Supply shortages and rumors regarding the duty levied on imported livestock have been blamed for the soaring price of beef from Rp 90,000 to around Rp 130,000 per kg over the past couple of weeks.
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Hundreds of fishermen from Muara Angke in North Jakarta staged a rally in front of the Jakarta City Council (DPRD) offices on Thursday against the ongoing man-made islet projects off the North Jakarta and a related plan to relocate them to Thousands Islands regency.



Khafiddin, head of community unit (RW) 11, said to the several Jakarta councillors who met them during the rally that the man-made islets stirred up mud from the seabed, polluting seawater and killing fish in the area.



'Fishermen in the area have seen decreasing catches [since the start of the projects],' he said, urging councillors to force Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama to stop the projects.



He also said one of the projects, the construction of Islet G, had violated the law because it began without an environmental impact analysis (Amdal), a legally required document before developers start a project.



Man-made Islet G, a project by Muara Wisesa Samudera, subsidiary of publicly listed developer Agung Podomoro Land (APL), is part of the administration's plan to build 17 artificial islands on 2,700 hectares of sea along Jakarta's 32-kilometer-long northern coast.



Other developers involved in the reclamation besides Muara Wisesa Samudera include city-owned PT Jakarta Propertindo and PT Pembangunan Jaya Ancol, publicly listed PT Intiland Development and developer Agung Sedayu Group's subsidiary PT Kapuk Naga Indah (KNI).



KNI is also involved, having built Islet D and half of Islet C.



Muara Angke fishermen filed a petition against Ahok's approval of the projects at the Jakarta State Administrative Court in September last year, claiming that they had decreased their catches and damaged the environment.



The legal battle is currently ongoing.



The fishermen particularly criticized Ahok's plan to relocate them to Thousand Islands. Ahok said the construction of low-cost rental apartments in Thousand Islands would begin next year.



He said the relocation was part of his effort to create order in North Jakarta.



'The relocation is a hasty plan. People in the islands want to come and stay here in the city. How can we in the city be relocated to the islands. That's a crazy idea,' said Muhammad Taher, a fisherman and head of the Association of Indonesian Traditional Fishermen (KNTI) in Jakarta.



He said thousands of traditional fishermen in the area could be impacted if the administration went ahead with the plan.



'The fishermen have been living in hardship so far. Now the governor wants to worsen our hard life by relocating us to Thousand Islands,' said another protester Rohidah.



She said she had been put through a number of relocations since she was born.



'I was born in Ancol. My house was destroyed and I was relocated to Muara Karang [also in North Jakarta] before I was moved to where I live now in Muara Angke. Now they want to move me to Thousand Islands,' she said.



'I am not an animal that can be kicked out whenever they like,' she added.



Muhammad Taufik, a Gerindra councillor and speaker of the Council, met with the group and said he would take the group's demands to a Council meeting, adding that the council needed to make a regulation regarding the reclamation to make it benefit fishermen.



'We have to have a regulation that says any company reclaiming land should contribute to fishermen. For example, they should regularly clean the market and dredge nearby canals. They should also ensure the well-being of local fishermen,' he said.



Regarding the administration's relocation plan, the Gerindra politician said that the council disagreed with it and assured that it would not happen.
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Linkedin Raras Cahyafitri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Copper mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia will see its exports halted starting Friday after failing to realize its commitment to smelter development.



The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry's mineral and coal director general, Bambang Gatot Ariyono, said his office had yet to issue a recommendation for the extension of Freeport's export license as the company had yet to meet the government's prerequisites for smelter development to process its products locally, as required by the 2009 Mining Law.



"We haven't issued the recommendation. They said that they would be cooperative [meeting the government's prerequisites]. However, they have yet to give details," Bambang said. The recommendation is necessary for the company to apply for an export permit with the Trade Ministry.



Freeport Indonesia, a subsidiary of the US-based Freeport-McMoRan Inc., had a six-month permit to export its semifinished copper concentrate that expired on Thursday. The permit is needed as the export of unprocessed minerals was banned at the start of 2014.



The government has asked Freeport to show progress on its planned smelter in Gresik, East Java, before it gives another recommendation for exports.



The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry proposed two conditions that would allow the firm to extend the permit for another six months: pay 5 percent in export tax and deposit US$530 million as a guarantee that the company will continue to make progress on the smelter.



"The company declines to pay US$530 million as a guarantee and has yet to propose options to replace the requirement," Bambang said.



Under a contract of work (CoW) signed in 1991 between the company and the government, Freeport Indonesia has the rights to export its product.



"If the company turns again to the contract of work, all points under the renegotiation will be canceled," Bambang added, referring to the government's attempt to adjust several matters in the previous contract to align with the 2009 Mining Law.



He also played down concerns that the miner would challenge the country in international arbitration.



The current export permit is the third Freeport has held since 2014. Previously, similar back-and-forth negotiations with the government also took place. The firm eventually found ways to obtain the permits.



'These points [5 percent duty and $530 million guarantee] are inconsistent with the agreement that we worked with the government in the beginning, in mid-2014, and our discussion with the government would continue,' Freeport McMoRan CEO Richard Adkerson said earlier.



'We have full confidence that the government will come up with a favorable decision and issue the export license to ensure continuity of our mining operations, and in doing so will serve the interest of Indonesia's mining industry in general," he added.



Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said stated earlier, "I've received report that the company is asking for further consideration as it is currently affected by low commodity prices and poor finance. So, if it cannot meet the requirements, let's find a solution regarding things that can be the warranty for its commitment to progress the smelter project."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Russia's Gazprom canceled a discount on gas for the Turkish private sector, Anadolu agency reported Jan. 29.

The discount on gas for the Turkish private sector has been in place since January 1, 2015.

Gazprom's recent decision is connected with the crisis in the relations between the two countries.

Earlier, Akfel, Bosphorusgaz and Kibar Enerji companies received licenses to import gas for 30 years.

The fourth company - Bat Hatt received a license for 23 years. The companies are to import six billion cubic meters of Russian gas into Turkey, annually.

According to the agreement, Akfel will import 2.25 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Russia, Bosphorus - 1.75 billion cubic meters, Bat Hatt and Kibar Enerji - one billion cubic meters annually, so around 22 percent of Russian gas imported to Turkey will be purchased by the Turkish private sector.

Gazprom made a 10.25-percent discount on the gas supplied to the Turkish private sector since January 2015.

Turkey is importing 6.6 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Azerbaijan on the basis of a 'take or pay' contract. Turkey also buys gas from Iran.

Ankara also has agreements with Algeria and Nigeria for the supply of 4.4 billion cubic meters and 1.2 billion cubic meters of liquefied gas per year, respectively.

Qatar is ready to ensure Turkey's gas demand and start exporting liquefied natural gas in the volumes required for Ankara, Qatar's ambassador to Turkey Salim Mubarak said Dec. 17.

Doha and Ankara signed an agreement on supplying some 1.2 bcm of liquefied gas to Turkey. The agreement was signed during the Turkish president's visit to Qatar in early December.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar)former members have demanded that the government compensate them for property that locals in Kalimantan forced them to abandon.

They are currently listing all the assets they want the government to compensate them for because they invested all of their wealth in the province, said Andi Pratama, the former leader of the Gafatar in Bengkulu, West Sumatra.

"We even built a house worth Rp 158 million [US$11,474], and there was a pickup to transport vegetables,' Andi said.

"To be honest, we are disappointed. We are not criminals and we did not bother the local community, yet we are being treated like this," Edward added.

Andi said his 4-hectare farm had been ready to harvest, but he had been forced to abandon it and return to his former hometown in Bengkulu, tempo.co reported.

Separately, Edward, who was forced to leave Samboja subdistrict in Kutai Kartanegara, East Kalimantan, said he had left behind all of his assets, including a 2-hectare plot of land and houses worth Rp 800 million.

'We spent Rp 1.3 billion on our property and the work we did, but we left it all there," Edward said as quoted by kompas.com in Balikpapan.

Edward claimed that for almost seven months since the end of August 2015, he and other Gafatar members had grown crops on 9 hectares of farmland, some of which was to be harvested and sold in March, Edward said.

Edward and a number of other evacuees said they accepted their relocation to Balikpapan and that they had willingly given up their lives in Samboja was proof that they obeyed the government and did not spread deviant religious teachings or misguided ideology.

'As to the assets we left behind, I hope there will be compensation. Please pay attention to our fate," Edward said.

Following the burning of houses belonging to Gafatar members in Mempawah regency, West Kalimantan, the government repatriated thousands of them to their former hometowns, such as Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Banyuwangi in East Java, Jakarta and Semarang in Central Java.

Gafatar members had moved to West Kalimantan to farm and build settlements to achieve food security and economic independence.

Andi denied that the group had spread deviant religious teachings or misleading ideology that sparked misperceptions among the local people, saying that all they did was farm.

"We always shared our crop yields with the animals. What have we done wrong?" Andi said, adding that the government should restore their image. (afr/bbn)
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Linkedin Slamet Susanto and Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta/Medan  Fri, January 29, 2016

Religious and regional administration leaders pledged to help members of the Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) secure legal protection and social acceptance, asserting that the latter are victims in the ongoing controversy.



Chairman of Yogyakarta's Bantul Interfaith Communication Forum, Yasmuri, views the Gafatar members as victims who had joined the organization due to various influences and said that alienating and intimidating them would only nurture hatred.



'This is dangerous. Let them interact normally and social order will prevail,' said Yasmuri, who is also chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulema (NU) Islamic organization's Bantul chapter, on Thursday.



Yogyakarta residents accounted for 106 of the 1,281 Gafatar members that arrived at the Donohudan haj dormitory in Boyolali, Central Java, on Wednesday night.



They belong to the third and final batch of Gafatar members to be sent back from West Kalimantan. Some of the families brought with them belongings such as bicycles, motorcycles and cars.



Thousands of local residents besieged the group's settlement last week, forcing police and military officers to evacuate more than 2,000 of its members and shelter them in military barracks in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. Local residents then burned down houses in the settlement and torched a car belonging to one of the group's members.



The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has condemned the police for failing to prevent the destruction of Gafatar members' property.



The group's neighbors were angered by increasing reports of missing persons having become Gafatar members and linked the organization to Al Qiyadah al Islamiyah, founded by Ahmad Musadeq. Musadeq, who claimed to be a new prophet, was sentenced to four years' prison for blasphemy by the South Jakarta District Court in 2008.



Gafatar executives have repeatedly denied that the organization is based on any religion, saying it is solely based on the state ideology Pancasila. Gafatar was dissolved in August 2015, the group claim, after the Home Ministry declined to extend their permit in 2012. Gafatar leaders said their former members migrated to West Kalimantan to engage in communal farming.



Meanwhile, 301 Gafatar members originally from North Sumatra are reported to be on their way home from West Kalimantan to Belawan, Medan, on board a military ship.



North Sumatra administration secretary Hasban Ritonga said that the provincial administration would offer special attention to Gafatar members returning to the province, especially those who had sold their property before joining Gafatar in West Kalimantan.



'If they have no wealth left, we will think of a solution,' he said.



Hasban said the 301 Gafatar members returning to North Sumatra comprised 135 people from Medan city, 36 from Binjai city, 25 from Deli Serdang regency, 24 from Batubara regency and the rest from various other areas. Upon their arrival, they will be sheltered at a military base.



In Makassar, South Sulawesi, residents who had left to join Gafatar were returned on Wednesday night, on board the ship KM Bukit Siguntang. Returnees numbered 232 people, from 66 families.



Those from outside Makassar will be picked up by their respective regency and city administrations after undergoing a mental and ideological counseling program. Residents in areas receiving returned Gafatar members have been asked to accept them into their communities and not let them be exiled.



Those originated from Makassar will stay at the local haj dormitory for several days. Makassar Mayor Mohammad Ramdhan Pomanto said they would be returned to their former homes only when their mental and ideological condition was considered stable. 'Those who no longer have jobs will be offered jobs,' the mayor said on Thursday.



He said his administration would propose budget allocations for building houses for those who no longer had a house in their city or regency.



In Karanganyar, Central Java, Regent Juliyatmono affirmed that his administration would guarantee the safety and security of Gafatar members returning to their respective home villages. He also guaranteed that his people would not refuse them entry.



'I have spoken with district and subdistrict heads. There will be no problem with Gafatar members,' he said.



' Andi Hajramurni from Makassar and Ganug Nugroho Adi from Boyolali also contributed to this story

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Linkedin Geir Moulson (The Jakarta Post) Berlin  Fri, January 29, 2016

Germany's governing coalition reached a deal Thursday to end prolonged squabbling over measures to streamline its handling of the migrant influx, a result that means some Syrians may face a longer wait to bring relatives to Germany.

The agreement foresees that refugees who didn't face "immediate personal persecution" won't be allowed to bring relatives to join them for two years, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavaria's governor, Horst Seehofer.

The coalition also plans to declare Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia safe countries of origin, Gabriel said, making it easier to send migrants back to those countries. Germany did the same last year for several Balkan nations whose citizens are barely ever granted asylum.

The package of measures, which was first tentatively agreed in early November, also foresees using special centers to quickly progress migrants who have little realistic chance of winning asylum. It has been held up since then as Merkel's and Seehofer's conservative parties squabbled with Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats over who should initially be blocked from bringing relatives to Germany.

The Social Democrats had taken the November agreement to mean that only a few people who receive "subsidiary protection" ' a status that falls short of formal asylum ' would face a two-year wait to be able to have relatives join them.

But the conservatives then argued that many Syrians ' some of whom came to Germany from neighboring countries rather than directly from Syria ' should get that status. Germany resumed closer checks of Syrians' cases at the beginning of the year.

Germany registered nearly 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers last year, among them nearly 430,000 Syrians. It is keen to ensure that this year's numbers are lower.

Gabriel said that about 20 percent of Syrians whose asylum applications have yet to be processed could be given "subsidiary protection" status, based on past experience.

But in future, still-to-be-negotiated quotas for bringing in refugees from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, family members of people already in Germany ' including those granted that status ' will be given priority, he added.

The deal still needs Cabinet and parliamentary approval.

German officials also have long stressed the importance of making sure that migrants who don't gain asylum leave the country. Merkel said later Thursday that Germany's federal and state governments will discuss "how we can conduct returns better and faster."

Merkel said her government will work "country by country" with migrants' countries of origin to move the issue forward. "We want those with prospects of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return," she said.

Earlier this week, the Cabinet approved measures meant to make it easier to deport foreign criminals ' a separate package that ministers drew up amid outrage over New Year's Eve assaults in Cologne blamed largely on foreigners. (kes)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Darmawan Salihin, the father of Wayan Mirna Salihin, is urging Jessica Kumala Wongso to cooperate with the Jakarta Police by telling them anything she may know about his daughter's death from drinking poison-laced coffee.



'Once more I remind her not to lie [to me and the police]. She claims she drank mineral water at the time,' Darmawan said on Tuesday after being questioned by the Jakarta Police. Darmawan said he saw the cafe bill and no mineral water was listed, only two cocktails and the coffee that killed Mirna.



Darmawan also rejected a recent report saying that Jessica was close to Mirna and her family. Darmawan claimed that he first met Jessica when he visited Mirna at the Abdi Waluyo Hospital in Menteng, Central Jakarta, moments before she passed away.



'The point is that my daughter died because of the coffee that she ordered and paid for. You all know who she is,' Darmawan said, indicating his suspicion of Jessica.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

A man brandishing a toy gun tried to rob a woman in Tamansari, West Jakarta, but was cornered and beaten black and blue by angry residents at the scene, the police said on Thursday.



Tamansari Police chief Sr. Adj. Comr. Suwarno told wartakotalive.com that the incident began when the 46-year-old woman, who was using the services of an unlicensed money changer, was accosted by the 39-year-old suspect, Wasidin, who reportedly snatched the woman's money.



'The victim shouted 'thief' and a crowd suddenly arrived at the scene,' he said, adding that the crowd cornered the suspect and beat him up.



The suspect told the police that it was the third time he had committed such a crime.
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Linkedin Zeina Karam (The Jakarta Post) Beirut  Fri, January 29, 2016

In a Middle East torn apart by war and conflict, fighters are increasingly using food as a weapon of war.

Millions of people across countries like Syria, Yemen and Iraq are gripped by hunger, struggling to survive with little help from the outside world. Children suffer from severe malnutrition, their parents often having to beg or sell possessions to get basic commodities including water, medicine and fuel.

The biggest humanitarian catastrophe by far is Syria, where a ruinous five-year civil war has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced half the population. All sides in the conflict have used punishing blockades to force submission and surrender from the other side ' a tactic that has proved effective particularly for government forces seeking to pacify opposition-held areas around the capital Damascus.

Since October, Russian airstrikes and the start of yet another winter have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis and led to deaths from starvation in some places.

Humanitarian teams who recently entered a besieged Syrian town witnessed scenes that "haunt the soul," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He accused both the government of President Bashar Assad and the rebels fighting to oust him of using starvation as a weapon, calling it a war crime. Although sieges are an accepted military practice that are often carried out by forces seeking to avoid intense urban conflict, the conduct of forces carrying them out and their behavior toward civilian populations are regulated by international humanitarian law. Past cases include the sieges of Gorazde and Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.

The UN and aid agencies have struggled with funding shortages and growing impediments to the delivery of humanitarian assistance despite Security Council resolutions insisting on the unconditional delivery of aid across front lines.

In Yemen, the Arab world's most impoverished nation, nearly half of the country's 22 provinces are ranked as one step away from famine conditions.

Here's a look at major areas in the Middle East under siege or suffering starvation:

SYRIA

The United Nations estimates more than 400,000 people are besieged in 15 communities across Syria, roughly half of them in areas controlled by the Islamic State group. In 2014, the UN was able to deliver food to about five percent of people in besieged areas, while today estimates show the organization is reaching less than one percent.

In 2015, the World Food Program was forced to reduce the size of the food rations it provides to families inside Syria by up to 25 percent because of a funding shortfall. The agency says it has to raise US$25 million every week to meet the basic food needs of people affected by the Syrian conflict.

Some of the hardest hit blockaded areas in Syria are:

Madaya: A town northeast of Damascus with a population of 40,000. The town has been besieged by government and allied militiamen for months and gained international attention after harrowing pictures emerged showing emaciated children. Doctors Without Borders says 28 people have died of starvation in Madaya since September. Two convoys of humanitarian aid were delivered to the town last week. Aid workers who entered described seeing skeletal figures; children who could barely talk or walk, and parents who gave their kids sleeping pills to calm their hunger.

Fouaa and Kfarya: Two Shiite villages in the northern province of Idlib with a combined population of around 20,000. The villages have been blockaded by rebels for more than a year. Pro-government fighters recently evacuated from the villages describe desperate conditions there with scarce food and medicine, saying some residents are eating grass to survive and undergoing surgery without anesthesia. Aid convoys entered the villages simultaneously with the aid to Madaya after months-long negotiations between the government and armed groups.

Deir el-Zour: An estimated 200,000 people living in government-held parts of this city in eastern Syria are besieged by the Islamic State group. The UN says most of the residents are women and children facing sharply deteriorating conditions due to the ban on all commercial or humanitarian access, as well as the inability of residents to move outside of the city. While government stocks continue to provide bread, there are severe shortages of food, medicine and basic commodities. Opposition activists say they have documented the death of 27 people from malnutrition. Water is available only once a week for few hours.

YEMEN

The humanitarian situation has dramatically deteriorated, nearly 300 days after the Saudi-led coalition began its air campaign aimed at driving Yemen's Shiite rebels from cities under their control. Coalition naval ships are blockading traffic in Yemen's ports and rebels are besieging several areas, particularly the southern city of Taiz.

Some 14.4 million Yemenis, more than half of the population, are food insecure, an increase of 12 percent in the last eight months, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said Thursday. In late December, the WFP said 7.8 million of Yemen's 24 million people are in even more dire condition, "facing life-threatening rates of acute malnutrition," up by more than 3 million in less than a year. It said 10 of the country's 22 provinces are in "the grip of severe food insecurity" at the "emergency" level, one step short of famine on the agency's 5-level scale of food security.

In Taiz, with a population of about 250,000, residents have been going hungry for weeks, the WFP said. The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said recently that basic services in Taiz are scarce, including access to water and fuel.

The severe shortage of food, fuel and medicine across Yemen led to an increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition while the destruction of health facilities treating them led to deaths.

Some 3 million children under five years require services to treat or prevent malnutrition, according to a UNICEF report on Jan. 13.

IRAQ

Massive population shifts in Iraq due to violence has made it more difficult for millions of people to access food, medicine and safe drinking water. More than 3 million Iraqis are displaced within the country by violence and instability. "They've lost their livelihoods, their jobs, and hunger and the inability to purchase food is a reality in their everyday life," said Marwa Awad, with the World Food Program. In total 8.2 million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance: food, water, shelter or medicine, she said.

Ongoing violence in many of Iraq's provinces that are also home to people who have been uprooted by conflict is of the greatest concern, Awad said. In Anbar, Ninevah and Salahuddin the price of food has risen by as much as 38 percent in the last month, and in some cases the Iraqi government has had to airlift families out of towns and villages besieged by fighting between Iraqi government forces and Islamic State group fighters.

In Ramadi, families who had been held by IS fighters as human shields said they survived for days on just rice and flour.

While conflict in Iraq hasn't led to cases of starvation, Awad said WFP has seen an increase in cases of malnutrition as people eat less to conserve the little food they do have.

SYRIAN REFUGEES IN NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES

According to the UN children's agency, malnutrition is a major threat among millions of refugees. A UNICEF report last year showed that almost 2,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and need immediate treatment to survive. It warned that situation could deteriorate even further as malnutrition is linked to such factors as poor hygiene, unsafe drinking water, lack of immunization, diseases and improper infant and young child feeding practices.

___

Associated Press writers Susannah George in Baghdad and Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

All parts of Indonesia is safe for tourists, including Chinese citizens who are seeking to celebrate Chinese New Year in the archipelago, a Tourism Ministry official has said.

Tourism Ministry deputy director of sales missions for Asia Pacific, Jordi Paliama, said despite the recent terrorist attack in Central Jakarta, the capital, as well as other regions in the country, were currently safe to visit.

The ministry expects to attract 1.7 million holidaymakers from China throughout this year.

China is said to be among Indonesia's main sources of foreign tourist arrivals, alongside Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

In 2015, over 1.14 million Chinese citizens visited the archipelago, an increase of 18.77 percent from the previous year.

"Indonesia has many attractive tourism destinations for Chinese tourists to visit apart from Bali. We're currently also developing 10 other main destinations," said Jordi as quoted by kompas.com. (nov/kes)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Fri, January 29, 2016

Jan. 27, 2016



The government should adhere to the 1945 Constitution in handling the Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar), an organization allegedly involved in recent missing person cases, and not issue any related regulations based on a fatwa from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), human rights activists have said.



Setara Institute deputy chairman Bonar Tigor Naipospos said that since Gafatar had never declared itself to be an organization affiliated with a particular religious group, including Islam, the government could not use MUI edicts to take measures against the organization's freedom of belief and association.



Your comments:



To my mind, the government can still use the MUI edicts as a lower consideration than the laws. Therefore, when the MUI edicts oppose the Indonesian Constitution, the MUI edicts must not be followed by the authorities.



Mr. Potential



So apparently, the reality is more like 'fatwasila'.



Randomthought



I agree, then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was a puppet for them and opened this path for the MUI to take charge.



An edict should have no bearing on law, but unfortunately with these edicts they know they get a bunch of radicals attacking and those Muslims who think the MUI means something.



The MUI is a social organization. It is not the law and should be completely ignored when it tries to enter into it.



It is no better than the likes of the Islamic Defenders Front, just maybe better organized.



Its path is plain: if it isn't Islam, it should be eliminated. Well, Islam in Indonesia would probably be a better Islam if the likes of the MUI were eliminated.



Xsimaging



Well, it's nice to know who is in charge. It's scary, but nice!



Bohongbohong



The government should never listen to Islamic organizations. For years they have been infected by radical teachings and can no longer be trusted to safeguard Indonesia or represent Islam as a fair and balanced majority.



Deddy K.



Explicitly you said that the MUI may have been infected by radicalism. What is the proof? As I know, the MUI is one of the biggest Islamic organizations that fights terrorism and radical Islam.



Maybe it is still a conservative Islam, but firmly it objects to terrorism and a radical approach as a way of Islam.



Pot



'The 1945 Constitution protected the rights of the Indonesian people to freedom of belief and of association as long as their beliefs did not involve violence and did not tend to make arbitrary interpretations over other religious teachings.'



And since when has the government followed the Constitution or Pancasila?



To the government, the minorities are nothing but a 'thorn in the side'.



The masses are where the votes are, so in essence the minorities have no protection or rights. Discrimination rules in the country and has done so since its independence.



Extremism and radicalism will never be stopped, in fear of retaliation, since these radicals (terrorists) are supported by a government that only 'claims' tolerance and diversity.



Willo1246



At least under Pak Harto if people didn't play by the rules they had to either leave or be taken out.



I guess soon those times will be regarded as the good old days.

BH
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The Jakarta administration plans to provide low-cost apartments for Jakarta citizens that are former members of the Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) following their repatriation from Kalimantan, Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama said on Friday.

However, the former members would not be accommodated together in one apartment, Ahok said.

"If that happened it could be like The Raid, they could face trouble if they stayed as one group," he told journalists citing the action movie that tells a story of a group of police officers raiding a building filled with criminals and drug dealers.

Moreover, the former members of Gafatar will not have to pay rent. The city administration only requires them to pay Rp 5,000 ($0.36) to Rp 15,000 per day to cover the service fees for apartments equipped with elevators.

The city administration would also give them city-based facilities such as the Jakarta Smart Card to help their children go to school and take public buses at no cost, Ahok said.

However, the city will first try to return former Gafatar members to their own families using information on their identity cards. If their identity cards have been lost, the city will track their data from the national database.

The government evacuated thousands of former members of Gafatar from West Kalimantan to their original areas. There are currently hundreds of people staying at Jakarta shelters as the majority of them are Jakartans.

Gafatar has faced claims of heresy and abduction following reports that hundreds of its members left their hometowns to go to Gafatar's headquarters in West Kalimantan.

Meanwhile, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin said that his ministry had cooperated with the Social Affairs Ministry and Law and Human Rights Ministry in handling the repatriation of the former members of the group.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has ordered his ministers to handle the issue well and ensure the safety of the former members of the controversial group.

The religious ministry also provided special shelters in several regions to accommodate the former members after they were evicted and forced to leave their farmland in Mempawah, West Kalimantan earlier this month.

Besides providing shelters, the government will also make efforts to return the assets given by the former members to Gafatar's leaders.

'We will take care of this matter legally, including in regard to assets and organization funds that came from the congregation. Such matters will be investigated by law enforcement officers,' Lukman told the journalists at City Hall while accompanying Jokowi at an event on Friday. (rin)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

Analysts of the US JP Morgan bank see a low probability of a deal on oil production cuts between OPEC and non-cartel countries in the near-term.

While the similar headlines on the possible OPEC-Russia cooperation have caused brief rallies in oil prices last year, the recent rhetoric is different in the matter of the involvement of parties from Russia, the analysts said in a report, obtained by Trend.

"From oil producer firms to now the involvement of the Russian oil pipeline operator, we note there is more weight in these talks now than there was before - at least from one side," they said.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak confirmed Russia's readiness to meet with producers to discuss oil production. He said that the topic of discussion at the planned OPEC meeting in February with representatives of other oil-producing countries could be the question of oil production reducing for each producer country at the level of five percent, but a general agreement is needed for it.

Regarding the Russia's involvement in the possible deal, analysts have two key concerns: how production will be cut with multiple oil producers and what magnitude of burden Russia will share with OPEC members.

As for the first concern, analysts think that the production can be reduced via the monopoly pipeline operator that can control the flows of oil from the country.

Regarding the burden that Russia could share with OPEC, analysts said that despite Russian production of crude being close to Saudi Arabia's, it is unlikely, that the country will effect the same level of production cut.

"Potentially, this will happen with Russia's cooperation limited to half the percentage reduction that OPEC members need to make for the adjustment," analysts said.

Analysts said that one of the main concerns on a possible deal is whether OPEC producers will reduce production and keep patience for markets to rebalance or will only make cuts symbolically.

That will be one of the biggest challenges for the cartel, they said.

Production cuts scenarios and potential reduction in production from JPM 2016 expected levels (kbd)
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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The Jakarta administration is preparing for the peak of the rainy season, which is expected to occur from Feb. 22 to 28, drawing up a contingency plan in readiness for any flooding.



Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) spokesman Harry Tirto said this year's rainy season peak was slightly later than last year, which fell at the end of January. 'The peak of the rainy season is usually from early January to mid February. However, this year will be slightly later due to the long El NiAo,' Harry said by phone on Thursday.



He explained that the precipitation would also be slightly less compared with 2015. The precipitation in 2015 was 400 millimeters to 500 mm per month during the peak of the rainy season, while this year it is expected to be about 300 to 400 mm per month, a high precipitation level. The BMKG categorizes low rainfall intensity as between 0-100 mm per month, mid-level is between 101-300 mm and a very high level is above 401 mm.



'However, we should not let our guard down because the peak of the rainy season has yet to start,' Harry said.



According to data from the Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) 34 subdistricts across the five municipalities are considered prone to flooding and need special attention. Those subdistricts were heavily flooded during the rainy seasons of the past three years.



'The peak of the rainy season is expected to begin on Feb. 22. Therefore, the 34 flood-prone subdistricts must participate in our contingency plan starting Feb. 12,' city secretary Saefullah said during a meeting with working units at City Hall on Thursday.



He said that he demanded full participation by relevant officials and staff, who are expected to delay taking leave until March 2016.



Saefullah said all subdistrict heads must begin preparing necessities for the peak of the rainy season. The seven necessities, he went on, were rescue facilities, health needs, logistics, locations for evacuation, facilities and infrastructure for evacuation, education and participation by residents.



Relevant working units, such as the BPBD, Social Agency, Health Agency and Education Agency must directly coordinate with subdistrict heads.



Saefullah explained that all subdistrict heads must report on the preparedness of their seven necessities to their district heads by 12 p.m. each day starting Feb. 12. The district heads must further report preparations in the subdistricts to municipal offices by 1 p.m.



'The reports must be submitted every day from Feb. 12 to Feb. 21. We expect all relevant officials who are directly responsible for any aspect of our plan to be present in their offices during the month of February and they may not participate in activities outside of Jakarta,' he said.



Separately, West Jakarta's Duri Kosambi subdistrict head Irwansyah said that he had begun to list all flood-prone areas. 'There are at least 12 areas in the Duri Kosambi subdistrict that are prone to flooding. The subdistrict is located near the Angke River, which often overflows. During heavy rains, flooding can reach up to 2 meters at worst,' Irwansyah told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the meeting.



He went on to say that the subdistrict had been identifying clogged drains and channels and had dispatched contract workers to clear the waterways.



Irwansyah added that he had also gathered residents in his area to inform them of the city administration's flooding contingencies.



'It's important to inform the residents so that they can begin preparing as well,' he said.
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The frequent conflicts between military and police personnel that occurred last year and in previous years have become a concern for President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, who has called on both parties to put an end to such disputes.



The President said personnel of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police should instead optimize cooperation in order to strengthen nation security.



"In 2016, we hope there will no longer be disputes between the military and the police that lead to physical violence between [them]," said Jokowi during a meeting with high ranking officers of both institutions on Friday.



"It is necessary to strengthen cooperation through joint education and training as well as in joint operations," the President added.



During the meeting, Jokowi also expressed his appreciation for the good performance of the military and the police in addressing the crisis in Poso, Central Sulawesi, in fighting forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan, in relocating the former members of Gerakan Fajar Nusantara (Gafatar) from West Kalimantan and in dealing with a recent terrorist attack in Jakarta.



He said the quick response to the Jakarta terrorist attack got a lot of appreciation from other countries. "Many other countries gave praise to the quick reaction of our security forces to immediately return the situation to normal," Jokowi said.



Jokowi also ordered the military to help the police provide security to the community and make sure that the people get protection from various kinds of crimes.



"The military and police should be the guardians of diversity within the framework of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia," he said, adding the leaders of both institutions should not be reluctant to get into the field so that they could know what happens in society.



"Give a quick solution if there are serious threats to national security," Jokowi said.



National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said the meeting was attended by 173 participants from both institutions. (bbn) (+)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The Jakarta administration unveiled its first mosque in the City Hall compound on Friday in an inauguration ceremony presided over by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo on Friday.

Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama initiated the development of the two-story mosque following inquiries from Jokowi back when he was the Jakarta governor and Ahok his deputy

After the two were installed in 2012 as the city's top officials, Jokowi asked why City Hall did not have a mosque. However, before any plans to build one could be made, Jokowi was installed as the president in 2014, Ahok told journalists at City Hall.

The construction of the mosque, which cost Rp 18.8 billion ($1.37 million), started on Sept. 18, 2015 and was completed on Dec. 28.

Ahok said he hoped that the mosque would act as a symbol to remind all civil servants of good religious teachings.

"I hope there will be no more corrupt behavior and they will be trustworthy and help others," he said.

Accompanied by Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, Jokowi inaugurated the mosque and later attended Friday prayers with Jakarta civil servants.

Jokowi praised Ahok for building the mosque.

"Alhamdulillah (thank God), under the administration of Ahok, the mosque can be established," Jokowi said.

Previous Jakarta governors had planned to establish a mosque at City Hall but were always hampered by location and space constraints, Jokowi said.

The mosque was initially a musholla (prayer room) with a capacity of 400 people. The new Fatahillah Mosque can accommodate more than 1,500 people.

He also praised his former deputy for building the first Jakarta-owned grand mosque in Daan Mogot, West Jakarta, which is scheduled for completion in October. (rin)(+)
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani and Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Former president director of state-owned port operator Pelindo II, RJ Lino, will challenge the results of a Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) report that have been used by the National Police to launch a fresh graft probe into his actions.



One of Lino's lawyers, Fredrich Yunadi, said that the BPK had violated its code of ethics by conducting a clandestine investigative audit at the police's request. Although the audit results were submitted by the BPK on Monday, it was police investigators who revealed some of the details the next day.



'The BPK has violated the ethics code because in the February 2015 audit it conducted, it declared that there were no state losses and then it secretly announced that [Pelindo II] had caused Rp 37.9 billion [US$2.7 million] in state losses. That was a total loss, meaning that the items procured were useless. However, in reality, [the cranes] were functional and fully made use of and brought in Rp 3.8 billion in a year,' he said after joining Lino during his witness questioning at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta.



The National Police are currently investigating an alleged graft case connected to the 2012 procurement of 10 mobile cranes for nine of Pelindo II's ports. Investigators have come to the conclusion that the procurement led to state losses as no cranes were operational when they checked.



Currently, only Pelindo II's operations and technical director Ferialdy Nurlan has been named a suspect.



Fredrich said that Lino's legal team was currently preparing to file a suit against the BPK at the State Administrative Court (PTUN).



Lino also filed a report with the agency's ethics council against the members who signed off on the report.



He also filed a complaint against the BPK to the ombudsman.



'We have also filed a complaint at the ombudsman and we will also file a police report over [the BPK's] violation of the Criminal Code and the Electronic Information and Transaction [ITE] Law by publishing slander electronically,' he said.



Lino himself said that during his five-hour questioning at the National Police headquarters, investigators handling the case were silent about alleged state losses.



'I have already submitted everything related to accounts and there was no problem,' he said.



Meanwhile, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said on Thursday that it would detain Lino after questioning him as a suspect on Friday in its investigation into the procurement of fixed crane-type loading and unloading equipment worth US$20 million in 2012.



The antigraft body has often decided to lock up graft suspects soon after questioning them on Fridays.



'We will make the decision [to detain him] tomorrow. However, the faster [he is detained] the better,' KPK deputy chairman Saut Situmorang told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.



The KPK expects to lock up Lino until his upcoming trial at the Jakarta Corruption Court where he will be tried for his alleged role directly procuring equipment from an unqualified company, namely Chinese company Wuxi Huadong Heavy Machinery (HDHM), without proper procedure.
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Linkedin Tama Salim, Ina Parlina and Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

In an attempt to end the drawn-out leadership dispute between the two rival camps of the Golkar Party, Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly issued on Thursday a decree extending the term of the leadership roster that evolved from the 2009 Golkar national congress in Riau.



The decree stipulates that the Riau management will be valid for a period of six months, within which the party's warring camps must get their act together to organize an extraordinary national congress (munaslub) and nominate a new chairman. 'This is the best decision and hopefully both camps can now sit together to organize another national congress,' Yasonna said in a press conference in Central Jakarta on Thursday.



The minister said the decision was based on Law No. 30/2014 on state administration, which stipulates that the government must provide legal certainty for political parties.



Leadership legitimacy in Golkar should have returned to the proponents of the Riau congress, which elected Aburizal Bakrie as chairman and Agung Laksono as his deputy, following a Supreme Court ruling that revoked a previous government decree recognizing the leadership of Agung, who became chairman at a national congress in Ancol, Jakarta, in December 2014.



The split persisted after the court ruling because it returned the leadership to the Riau management under Aburizal, whose tenure had expired in 2014.



As a remedy, the new ministerial decree stipulates that the Riau management board regains the authority to form a steering committee to organize the munaslub, which the ministry hopes will begin in three months.



Golkar lawmaker and Aburizal stalwart Firman Soebagyo expressed his hope that the ministry ruling would appease both camps and prevent further disputes.



Firman, who is deputy chairman of the House Legislative Body (Baleg), said the government was wise in bringing back the Riau roster, which included both Aburizal and Agung in leadership roles.



'If the leadership was handed back to [proponents of the] Bali congress, Agung's camp would protest. Bringing back the Riau roster was the right decision [...] because everyone is accommodated,' he said at the House complex on Thursday.



House of Representatives Speaker Ade Komarudin, another known proponent of Aburizal's camp, said the party should focus on hosting the national congress.



'What's most important is how we are able to unite all the elements of a party that has split into so many fragments ' that's the focus of the current debate. We can start discussing other matters [once we are united],' Ade told reporters on Thursday.



Separately, Agung's camp has also welcomed the decree, with officials saying that it paved the way for both camps to reunite in a forum that they both endorsed.



Agung supporter and deputy chairman of the central executive board, Priyo Budi Santoso, said the next step would be to form an organizing committee for the congress without any involvement from the government. Priyo said it was important to consolidate both camps at the regional branch level, which had also split following the leadership dispute.



He said Golkar must be able to determine whether the regional executive branches of both sides would retain their respective voting rights, or whether a merging of regional branch management rosters was in order.



In the meantime, Zainuddin Amali, secretary-general of Golkar under Agung's leadership, has asked the party elders who make up the recently established transition team to chaperone the passing of the leadership baton, despite the renewed legitimacy of the Riau management.



'It is the task of the transition team to ensure that the congress is fairly held, involves all stakeholders and most importantly, that the results will not lead to future legal disputes,' Zainuddin told reporters on Thursday.



'If they leave it all to [the Riau management] to resolve, problems may arise later on. We need the transition team.'



Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung confirmed a closed-door meeting on Thursday between President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and former president BJ Habibie who is also a member of a transition team established to pave the way for the munaslub, however Pramono declined to reveal what was on the table during the meeting.



Pramono also stopped short of commenting whether or not the meeting signaled that Golkar would support the pro-government coalition, but said that 'the government, particularly the President, wants the Golkar's [leadership] issue to be resolved as soon as possible'.



He later reiterated that the government would not meddle with the issue, saying that the government appreciated the formal decision made during the recent Golkar national leadership meeting that agreed to hold the extraordinary congress.

_____________________________________

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Linkedin David Koening (The Jakarta Post) Dallas, United States  Fri, January 29, 2016

More US airlines and cruise operators are offering refunds or letting pregnant women change itineraries if they booked a trip to places dealing with an outbreak of Zika virus.

While health officials say most people exposed to the virus suffer only mild symptoms, the risk is far greater for pregnant women. Brazilian officials have linked the mosquito-borne illness to babies born with small or deformed heads.

Zika has been detected mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Health Organization warns that the virus is likely to spread to most of the Americas.

United Airlines and American Airlines say that since early this week they have been giving some passengers going to affected areas the chance to delay their trip or get a refund. United spokesman Charles Hobart said the offer was intended for pregnant woman, or those expecting to become pregnant, and their travel companions. Others customers who are worried can call the airline, he said.

American's offer extends to pregnant women whose doctors recommend against travel, and it expanded the offer from a few countries in Central America to any Zika-hit destination outside the US.

On Thursday, a JetBlue Airways spokesman said the airline would give refunds or rebook passengers concerned about traveling to areas affected by the virus. Delta Air Lines posted a travel advisory on its website that passengers "may qualify" for a refund or change in itinerary if they contact the airline by Feb. 29. A spokesman declined to expand on the advisory.

Among other airlines and cruise companies:

' Spirit Airlines will refund or rebook customers who are pregnant or traveling with a pregnant woman to the affected regions, a spokesman said.. Others who don't want to fly to outbreak zones can get a credit with fees waived.

' Southwest Airlines is sticking to its regular policy of letting customers who cancel ahead of time use their ticket value on another trip.

' Carnival Cruise Line said it would let pregnant women get a credit, delay their trip, or rebook to destinations not on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list of Zika locales.

' Royal Caribbean Cruises said it too would let pregnant women reschedule their trips for a later date at no penalty.

' Norwegian Cruise Line said it is trying to rebook pregnant customers to later trips or to areas away from the outbreak.

Infectious diseases have caused serious disruption to travel before, including the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in Asia. The US government recommended then against nonessential travel to the region, and federal health officials met planes, cargo ships and cruise ships arriving from China in their effort to contain the spread of SARS.

It is unclear how many passengers will ask for their money back, given that many of the refund offers are limited to pregnant women.

United Airlines spokesman Charles Hobart said the company has given refunds to some customers but he didn't know how many. Spirit Airlines spokesman Stephen Schuler said that as of Wednesday "very few" passengers had asked for refunds or waivers.

An executive for JetBlue, which flies to many destinations in the Caribbean and a few in Central and South America, said Thursday that there has been little effect so far from the outbreak.

"We really see no measurable impact, either to advance bookings or customer refunds," JetBlue executive vice president Marty St. George said on a conference call with investors. "It's something that we're going to pay attention to with our footprint in Latin America."

Helane Becker, an analyst with Cowen and Co., said she didn't consider the Zika outbreak to pose the same threat to the travel industry as outbreaks of Ebola and SARS. She said the greatest fear of Zika is limited to a small group ' pregnant women or those looking to become pregnant. Still, she said, travel bookings might drop because of heavy media coverage and public fear.

The CDC advises pregnant women to ask their doctor before traveling to an area where Zika has been reported. Here are the areas covered by the CDC travel alert:

' Central and South America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela.

- Caribbean: Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, the US territory of Puerto Rico, St. Martin, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

' Also: Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa, and Samoa in the South Pacific.

___

AP Business Writer Sarah Sell in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The government's plan to waive visa requirements to a further 80 countries will come into effect next week, a ministry official said.



"Citizens from 90 countries currently enjoy access to the free visa-on-arrival when entering Indonesia. [The upgraded policy, due to be signed by the government next week, waives the fee and application process for] an additional 80 countries, including Australia," said Deputy Tourism Minister for overseas promotion, I Gde Pitana on Friday as quoted by Antara news agency.



The move is part of a plan to lure more visitors to Indonesia, as the government aims to attract a minimum of 20 million foreign tourists to the country over the next five years.



Previously, Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli said that Australia was among the countries listed, having been left out in the past due to an unwillingness to enforce any reciprocal policies. Australia implements a universal visa policy where every Indonesian citizen who wishes to enter Australia must have a visa, including governmental officials.



Australia reportedly topped the list of foreign tourist arrivals to Bali between January and November 2015, with 876,748 Australians arriving out of an overall of total of 3,631,195 tourist arrivals during the period.



The Law and Human Rights Ministry immigration directorate general spokesman, Heru Santoso Ananta Yudha, told thejakartapost.com on Friday that he was unable to confirm the exact number of countries included in the latest list and said to wait until the signing of the presidential regulation. (liz/kes)(+)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

As the deadline for the Supersemar Foundation to pay penalties approached on Friday, the Soeharto family claimed the scholarship institution would be unable to meet its obligations to the state.



A Supreme Court ruling has ordered the family of former president Soeharto to pay a total of Rp 4.4 trillion (US$321.7 million) in penalties to compensate for misuse of scholarship funds in 2008.



The youngest daughter of the former president, Titiek Soeharto, said the institution that her father had founded did not have enough money to pay the penalties.



'[The foundation's funds] are insufficient. There is no large sum of money,' she said as quoted by tribunnews.com.



She also claimed that the scholarship fund, supported by state-owned banks' profits during the New Order era, had been properly disbursed to around 2 million scholarship recipients, all from low-income families.



'[The Soeharto family] has used all of the funds for scholarships, we didn't take a penny,' she said.



The case dates back to 2008 when the Attorney General's Office (AGO) filed a lawsuit at the South Jakarta District Court accusing the Soeharto family and the foundation of misusing scholarship funds by diverting them to their own companies.



The Supreme Court found the Supersemar Foundation guilty in 2010 and demanded it pay the penalties.



The South Jakarta District Court gave an ultimatum of Friday for the foundation to make the payment or the court would start to confiscate its assets.
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Police investigators and prosecutors met for second time on Friday to discuss the case of the Wayan Mirda Salihin's death, following their first meeting on Tuesday at the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office.

Police believed Mirna died because of cyanide-tainted coffee she drank when she was at Olivier CafA, in Central Jakarta together with her two friends ' Jessica Kumala Wongso and Hani ' on Jan. 6.

The prosecutors have given advice to the police so they can build a strong case and gather solid documentation before the case is officially transferred to the prosecutor's office, said Jakarta Prosecutor's Office spokesman Waluyo in Jakarta on Friday.

'The point is, we want to arrange the facts that have been obtained by the police," Waluyo told journalists.

Police have questioned Jessica, Hani, Olivier CafA's workers and relatives of Mirna. They also sought the help of the Australian Federal Police to obtain information about Mirna when she lived in the country.

Waluyo stressed that his office had not received the case dossier from the police as it was not yet complete and a suspect was yet to be named at the time of the meeting.

Separately, Jakarta Police general crime division head Sr. Comr. Krishna Murti said investigators had received valuable advice from the prosecutor's office.

'We will follow up the prosecutors' suggestions to improve our investigations," Krishna said. (bbn)
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Linkedin Rafiqa Qurrata Aayun and Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The Jan. 14 terror attack in Jakarta has prompted the government and the House of Representatives to initiate the strengthening of security instruments against terrorism.



The most urgent measure, according to the government, is amending existing antiterrorism regulations (Government Regulation No. 15/2003) by extending the authority of law enforcement officials to carry out preemptive action.



Media reports say the initiative has public support, but in our opinion security measures go too far to defy terrorism for two reasons.



First, since the solution is based on a security-oriented analysis, it falsely sees terrorism as a product of the weak state in a democratic era, and thus a stronger capacity of the state is needed.



However, many terrorist actors in Indonesia are, in fact, the product of the previous authoritarian regime that represented a strong state.



During that period, many security measures were implemented, such as an anti-subversion law, but

the state faced the same problem of terrorism.



In addition, many recent terrorist actors have links to the old actors that emerged during the Soeharto era, such as Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.



That means terrorism has little to do with the capacity of the state. Both in a strong and a weak state, under authoritarian as under democratic rule, terrorism is still a problem.



Thus, instead of understanding terrorism as a security issue, any ideological movement that opposes state power is better understood as a reaction ' rather than an autonomous action ' to political-economic conditions. Hadiz and Teik (2011) found that in Muslim countries like Egypt and Algeria the rise of radical Islamic movements is a response aimed at seeking socio-political solutions amid failed economic development.

_______________________________



The counterterrorism discourse in Singapore is used to justify regulations enforced to silence adversaries.



In Malaysia, such an underground movement was prevented from growing through the New Economic Policy that enabled the state to absorb rural Malay-Muslims in the urban industrial sector (see Lubeck 1998 in Hadiz and Teik 2011), rather than through strong security instruments.



Second, from a critical legal perspective, extending the state's authority is problematic in terms of formal and material aspects of law. Regulations to arrest suspects of terrorism without trial could make the law an instrument of power instead of a tool to uphold justice. Actually, formal criminal law should limit the state's authority to prevent violations of due legal process.



Meanwhile, from the aspect of material law, any threat that is perceived as jeopardizing state security can be defined so extensively that it can violate citizen rights.



We should learn from our own history that the anti-subversion laws enforced to uphold the political order and prevent security threats were politically misused to criminalize government critics.



Indonesia's government has emphasized that the planned amendments would consider human rights principles and be more lenient than those in Malaysia and Singapore. However, the same argument was also stated by the Malaysian government when it proposed the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in April 2015.



The regulation was known to have similarities with the notorious Internal Security Act (ISA), which was repealed in 2012. Under the POTA, an accused person can be detained without trial for up to 60 days for investigation purposes.



Although the Indonesian government will propose a shorter period of detention, such authority can still be misused to silence the opposition. It can also be considered in line with the circular from the National Police on hate speech, which can justify with great efficacy suppression of criticism in the name of defamation.



It must be noted, however, that the political context behind the enactment of POTA in Malaysia was the Prime Minister's power that came under the threat from opposition movements.



Not long after the controversial law was enacted, the parliament passed an amendment to the draconian colonial-era Sedition Act.



Similar to Malaysia, the counterterrorism discourse in Singapore is also used to justify regulations enforced to silence adversaries, while in recent years they were applied in defamation cases (see Seow 2004 in Rodan and Hewison 2006).



The US government post-9/11 has also employed the global war-on-terror discourse to extend its power and legitimize the state surveillance that has led former NSA agent Edward Snowden to take action against privacy violations.



To conclude, the experience of many countries has taught us that terrorism can exist in different political contexts with different security measures. That is because terrorism has much to do with socio-political discontent, which fuels mobilization of dissent through the articulation of an Islamic identity where other ways of articulation, such as a leftist ideology, are absent.



Thus, the existence of 'hard' security instruments aimed at eradicating terrorism can potentially be misused for political purposes, such as extending state surveillance, that can violate privacy rights and suppress criticism.



Indonesian citizens should be aware of such possibilities and respond to the government's plan critically. Since the main purpose of the proposed revision is the strengthening of security instruments and the extension of state authority, the human rights of Indonesian citizens are at risk.



Rather than taking excessive security measures to defy terrorism, the government should prioritize economic programs to alleviate poverty and counter socio-political discontent as the roots of terrorism.

_____________________________________



Rafiqa Qurrata A'yun is an assistant lecturer in criminal law at the University of Indonesia. Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir is a sociologist from the Jakarta State University, now pursuing a PhD degree at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

A possible rapprochement between Russia and OPEC could be an option, only if Russia is willing to lower its overall production unilaterally, Cyril Widdershoven, Middle East geopolitical specialist and energy analyst told Trend.

The Gulf Cooperation Council leading by Saudi Arabia will not comply with agreed production cuts, Widdershoven believes.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak confirmed Russia's readiness to meet with producers to discuss oil production.

He said that the topic of discussion at the planned OPEC meeting in February with representatives of other oil-producing countries could be the question of oil production reducing for each producer country at the level of five percent, but a general agreement is needed for it.

With regard to the possibility of OPEC's cooperation with other non-cartel countries, Widdershoven believes that strategic and geopolitical-economical issues are the obstacle.

"The main question is why should OPEC cooperate with the non-OPEC producers, as this will only mean that both sides will need to cut production in the end," Widdershoven said.

For OPEC, he said, this is a struggle for survival, as oil and gas production is the main source of revenue for cartel member governments.

"It will also be much more difficult to coordinate with non-OPEC as most of this oil is in the hand of IOCs and independents," he said, adding that they are not able to agree on market cooperation, as this will be blocked by anti-cartel laws in the US-Canada and the EU, and some international organizations as well.

Earlier this week OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri called for cooperation between OPEC and non-cartel countries in order to jointly address the issue of the stock overhang.

"Once this overhang starts falling then prices start to rise. Given how this developed, it should be viewed as something OPEC and non-OPEC tackle together," al-Badri said.

In the issue of the cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC countries the current position of Iraq and Iran is not being taken into consideration, Widdershoven said.

"Iraq is OPEC, but doesn't fall under OPEC production quota yet, so they are producing as much as they can," he said.

"Iran wants to increase its oil production volumes, but is not able to, due to remaining sanctions and its position within OPEC," he added.

Market is in flux but there are no real options to change it, Widdershoven believes.

"OPEC will keep to production quota to get market share and stabilize market, non-OPEC will have to slow down and close large volume of production due to costs and extreme high financing levels," Widdershoven said.

In its recent summit on December 4, the OPEC failed to put a new ceiling to its output. The cartel members produced 32.182 million barrels per day in December, including some 693,000 barrels per day, produced by new member, Indonesia.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts the supplies from OPEC countries will increase up to 39.16 million barrels per day in 2016 and up to 40.01 million barrels per day in 2017.

The supplies from the countries-non-OPEC members are expected to reduce up to 56.77 million barrels per day in 2016 and up to 56.68 million barrels per day in 2017.
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Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The city administration is looking to extend its Jakarta Smart Card (KJP) education financial assistance program to cardholders who are accepted into public universities.



Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said that he wanted KJP recipients to be able to continue to use the program if they went to college.



'Many students fail to try as they assume that they cannot continue their studies beyond high school. The [planned] KJP [extension] program will encourage these students to study harder,' he said.



Ahok said that he wanted the extension program to help parents so that they would, in turn, be able to allocate money for the education of their younger children.



'Their old KJP cards will be reloaded. It is different from a scholarship,' he said.



Ahok said that high school graduates who are accepted into public universities will be eligible for the proposed extension. 'This may mean that not all recipients will be from Jakarta,' he said.



Currently, the city administration funds 611,000 KJP holders from elementary to senior high school at a cost allocation of Rp 2.6 trillion (US$187.2 million).



As school tuition is free in Jakarta, the fund is used to fulfill other school needs such as uniforms, books, bags, transportation and snacks.



Ahok recently allowed the KJP fund to be used to purchase beef.



Ahok said that he and his subordinates were still calculating the amount of funds needed for the program. 'I estimate Rp 1.5 million per month. This means around Rp 18 million per year per student,' he said.



Jakarta Education Agency head Sopan Adrianto said that his agency was in the midst of formulating the method for the new program as well as calculating the amount of funds per student.



'We are still considering what will be funded by the program, for example, whether funds will be in the form of pocket money or tuition fees,' he said.



Subsequently, the agency had yet to finalize an estimate of the total funds needed for the program. 'If the current fund is enough, we won't need to propose additional funds in the budget revision,' he said.



Sopan said that, after graduation, his agency would record the names of all KJP holders who are accepted into public universities.



He said that he was in the process of explaining the programs to the high school students so that they had additional encouragement to study.



He said that existing KJP holders should re-register themselves so that their KJP cards could be reloaded.



Education activist Retno Lisyarti said that she applauds the extension of the program to university level.



Retno said, however, that it was a shame that it was only for high school graduates accepted into public universities.



She added that poor students should be helped regardless of whether they were accepted into public or private universities.



Besides, students accepted into public universities are usually from rich families because they can afford private tutors and extra classes, she said, adding that they were also well-equipped and well-nourished.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Moscow  Fri, January 29, 2016

Syria's defense chief is visiting Moscow for talks on military cooperation with his nation's key ally, Russia.

The Russian military says Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Syrian counterpart, Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij, have underlined their "shared intention to further boost multi-faceted cooperation" between the two militaries.

During Thursday's talks, they discussed the results of the Russian air campaign in Syria and talked about prospects for "military and military-technical cooperation."

Russian warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 sorties since Moscow launched its air campaign in Syria on Sept. 30, helping the government troops to launch offensives and reclaim ground in several areas.

Russia says it has targeted the Islamic State and other extremist groups, but the U.S. and its allies have accused Moscow of also striking moderate rebel groups. (ags)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Fri, January 29, 2016

Your comments on several universities that have reportedly bowed to pressure from hard-line Islamic organizations:

Universities are about gaining knowledge and not about simple belief. That is why religion has no place at a university.



Taco Huh De Vries



There are no hard-line Islamic organizations in Yogyakarta.



Where is the evidence that such hard-line organizations exist?



Bagus Prabowo Aji



Regarding academic freedom and freedom of expression, all kinds of freedoms have to be limited.



E Nurdin



It is high time that universities in Yogyakarta adopt and recognize Pancasila and Bhineka Tunggal Eka.



I personally cannot believe that students in Yogyakarta would tolerate this move away academic freedom and freedom of expression. Have we gone back to the early part of our struggle for freedom? Let us not allow anything to dismantle our unity.



We fought to be free. Why should we allow a religion to colonize us now? Wake up, brothers.



Moeljono Adikoesoemo



With 4 percent of university students supporting the Islamic State (IS) movement and even higher percentages supporting extremists, this country faces a grim future.



Extremists have no place at institutions of higher education.



However, many universities actually invite radical imams for Friday sermons.



So long as the government does not take a firm stand against radical groups such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and others, universities have little choice but to bow to these terrorists who use threats and intimidation to get their way.



Many students are forced to join these organizations via peer pressure. If these radicals continue to operate with carte blanche and implicit government support, then the future of Indonesia will be a dark one.



Willo



This is a bad omen. Who are we and where are we going?



Willem Dolleman



_______________________________________

Topic of the day



Stabilizing the beef market



Amid soaring beef prices, the government announced on Wednesday the ninth economic stimulus package, which includes measures to stabilize beef supplies and prices by diversifying beef import sources and deregulating logistics. What do you think?



Send your thoughts by email, SMS, Twitter or Facebook. Include your name and city.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

The police held on Friday the third reconstruction of Wayan Mirna Salihin's death at a restaurant in Grand Indonesia, Central Jakarta, where she met up with two friends ' Jessica Kumala Wongso and Hani ' on Jan. 6 before she died as a result of drinking cyanide-laced coffee.



The reconstruction, which was part of the scene investigation, was held to learn the process of the making of the iced coffee thought to have caused Mirna's death, said Jakarta Police general crimes director Sr. Comr. Krishna Murti in Jakarta on Friday.



'The reconstruction is being held to learn about the making of the coffee from the beginning to when it was served on the table,' Krishna said as reported by kompas.com.



The process that was reconstructed included how the barista opened the coffee packet, how the coffee was made and the condition of the ice that was added to the coffee.



The police have not named a suspect. They have paid intense attention to Jessica, searching her house and questioning her several times.



Jessica visited the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) office on Wednesday. She told a Komnas HAM commissioner that she was being treated like a suspect in the investigation. Her lawyer also complained about 'unfair' media reports about Jessica.



Krishna said that from Thursday until early Friday, the police had questioned a number of Olivier employees to learn about the coffee-making process. 'The questioning of Olivier workers was conducted until 2:30 a.m. on Friday,' he said, adding that seven workers were questioned.



The case dossier has been handed to the prosecutor's office.



Besides Jessica, the police also questioned Hani and relatives of Mirna. They also sought the help of the Australian Federal Police to obtain information about Mirna when she lived in the country. (bbn)(+)
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Linkedin Hans David Tampubolon (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

Sofjan Wanandi, the chief economic advisor to Vice President Jusuf Kalla, has testified that tycoon Mochtar Riady is not just known for his great achievements in transforming small banks into major banks such as Bank Central Asia (BCA).



Sofjan, who has known the banker since the 1970s, has pointed out that quite apart from the banking industry, Mochtar has also succeeded in building other aspects of his business empire, which covers various sectors such as property, health and education.



'He [Mochtar] has had so many business ideas that have benefited Indonesia greatly ['] For a long time I knew him as a businessman in the banking sector but then to my surprise, he managed to successfully expand into the education and health sectors,' Sofjan said during the launch of Mochtar's Manusia Ide (Man of Ideas) autobiography in Jakarta on Wednesday.



During the event, the 86-year old Mochtar was accompanied by his family members, including his son in law Dato' Sri Prof. Dr. Tahir, who is also a business tycoon in his own right.



Prominent figures, ranging from former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to dozens of regional leaders and hundreds of business people from various associations and ventures, took a brief moment from their busy schedules to attend the launch and pay their respects to Mochtar, the founder and chief patron of the Lippo Group conglomerate.



Such a high-profile event required special security arrangements and it also caused considerable traffic congestion around the Aryaduta Hotel, where the launch was being hosted.



Inside the hotel, senior television presenter Jaya Suprana acted as moderator of the event and he invited several prominent figures from the assembly of high-profile guests to come to the stage and give their testimony about Mochtar.



Other speakers at the book launch included People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Zulkifli Hasan, former economic minister and former Regional Representatives Council (DPD) speaker Ginandjar Kartasasmita, and Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli.



Ginandjar complimented Mochtar for his resilience in dealing with crises that had brought many other businesses to their knees.



'During the 1998 financial crisis, there were many banks that received assistance from the government in the form of a blanket guarantee. Pak Mochtar's bank [Lippo Bank] was not one of those banks yet he managed to survive and bounced back even higher after the crisis was over,' said Ginandjar, who held various positions in former president Soeharto's Cabinet.



After the testimonials it was time for Mochtar to take the stage. With his usual dignity the 86-year-old tycoon took his time to thank his high-profile guests who had come to the book launch.





'When I was little, I never thought I would be able to gather so many prominent figures in a single place like this,' Mochtar said.



'I was born in Batu and grew up in Malang [which translates as 'misfortune' in English]. During the first 20 years of my existence, my life was just like that; filled with one misfortune after another,' he added.



'My mother passed away when I was nine. Two years later World War II began. My father was captured by the Japanese and I practically had to learn to take care of myself and lived without parents from when I was 11,' Mochtar said.



In the book, Mochtar writes in detail about how he used his talents to build several banks although he had little knowledge of the banking industry. He shares his experiences in his business partnership with the late Soedono Salim, or Liem Sioe Liong, including how they worked together to create the giant BCA.



'In June 1975, Pak Liem Sioe Liong and I began our joint work to develop BCA. As a man who was entrusted with being number one at BCA, I was always committed to our joint cooperation,' he writes on page 111 of the book.



Mochtar also recounted his experiences as a businessman who expanded his business to the US, including to Arkansas, where Bill Clinton was serving as state governor at the time.



'One day you [Clinton] will become the number one person of the US,' he recalled telling the governor. Clinton went on to serve as US president for two terms.



Their close relationship later became controversial as it was linked to a major scandal for Clinton.



Mochtar has also shared with his readers about his children, including James Riady and his eldest daughter Rosy, the wife of Tahir. He and his wife Li-mei, or Suryawaty Lidya, had to wait for eight years for their daughter to give them a grandson, although she had already provided them with three daughters, and then Jonathan was born.



' I name him Ta-Chuan/Jonathan. Ta-Chuan is a hard, smart and skilled worker. I believe he will be able to preserve his parents' major company [...] We are proud of the achivement and reputation of Tahir,' the senior banker writes on page 283.
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Linkedin Matthew Pennington (The Jakarta Post) Washington  Fri, January 29, 2016

North Korea may be preparing to launch a rocket or missile, according to a U.S. defense official and expert analysis of commercial satellite imagery.



The analysis published Thursday comes just three weeks after North Korea drew international condemnation for conducted its fourth nuclear test explosion.



The official told The Associated Press the U.S. has seen activity at a ballistic missile test site that is consistent with previous tests, but the official would not go into more detail. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.



The North Korea-focused website, 38 North, said it has detected what could be the early stages of preparation for launching a space launch vehicle at the nation's main rocket launch site at Sohae. It based its findings Thursday on satellite imagery taken this week.



North Korea fired its first rocket into space from Sohae, on its west coast, in December 2012, sending into orbit a satellite that soon malfunctioned. The North has said it has the right to launch rockets any time for its space program, but such long-range launches have drawn U.N. sanctions because similar technology can be used for development of ballistic missiles.



The U.N. Security Council is deliberating over how to respond to the Jan. 6 underground nuclear explosion. The U.S. is pressing for tighter sanctions ' a step that China, the North's only ally, appears reluctant to take.



Governments and experts have been skeptical about North Korea's claim it tested a hydrogen bomb, but whatever device the North detonated, it will likely push the country a step closer toward its goal of manufacturing a miniaturized warhead to place on a missile that can threaten the U.S. mainland. A major launch would only deepen those concerns.



Initial word of a possible launch came Wednesday. The Japanese news agency, Kyodo, cited an unnamed Japanese government source as saying that satellite imagery analysis showed the North may be readying to fire a long-range ballistic missile from Sohae, and that the launch could occur in about a week at the earliest.



The 38 North analysis said a rocket test in the coming week appeared unlikely. Imagery from Monday showed vehicles or equipment and personnel near the rocket launch tower, but a rocket wasn't visible.

The website said there's a high level of uncertainty about what snapshots of activity at the launch pad offered by the commercial imagery indicate.



State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to comment Thursday on the reports of preparations for a missile test, saying it was an intelligence matter. (ags)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Fri, January 29, 2016

Recent drug raids orchestrated by the Jakarta Police in several parts of Jakarta, some marred by fights between officers and drug dealers, have served to remind residents of an old National Narcotics Agency (BNN) survey that placed Jakarta among the most drug-plagued provinces in the country. There are five areas in the capital that are, or have been, notorious for drug-related crime.

Kampung Berlan



Although some of its residents have rejected the drug-ridden label, Kampung Berlan in Matraman, East Jakarta, has long been associated with drugs.



In an interview with tempo.co recently, Sumiyati, a resident, claimed that drug activities in Berlan began with juvenile delinquency, in places where youngsters used drugs. She said that, today, drug-related activity in the area was mostly conducted by newcomers and not long-term Berlan residents.



Police officers often raid the area to clean it of drug-related activity. One such raid, conducted last week, ended in the death of an officer and a police informant when a group of people launched an attack against on-duty officers. Berlan is also renowned for its brawls. More often than not, the brawls are between local Berlan residents and the residents of the neighboring Pal Meriam.



Kampung Ambon



Once regarded clean, Kampung Ambon in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, hit the headlines for drug-related activity last week when a police raid ended in the arrest of two alleged drug dealers.



Not only is it a place for small drug transactions, according to Jakarta Police narcotics director Sr. Comr. Eko Daniyanto, the area is known to be used for large deals conducted by major dealers.



An investigative report carried out by tempo.co in 2012 found that Kampung Ambon had transformed into a drug area in the 1990s. However, according to the report, marijuana had been the only drug available in the area from the 1990s until 2012.



In an attempt to free Kampung Ambon residents from their dependency on drug trafficking, BNN Jakarta spokesman Sr. Comr. Slamet Pribadi told The Jakarta Post recently that his agency had commenced skill-upgrade programs such as computer and cell phone repair courses for male residents and cake making classes for the women, he said.



Warakas



Once considered a drug hub of the capital, Warakas, North Jakarta, is currently thought to be drug-free. BNN declared it a drug-free zone in 2013 after the area won a BNN competition called Kampung Bebas Narkoba (drug-free village). Andi Firdaus, who had been a competition committee executive at the time, said they selected the area out of 26 other submissions because residents of Warakas had waged a hard battle against drugs.



Drug-wise, he said, Warakas was a 'red zone' back in the 1990s and early 2000s.



Warakas' resident, Tasimun Mudjiarto, 65, told the Post during the award ceremony in 2013 that residents had helped the authorities to eradicate the spread of drugs in the area because they had were fed up with the negative impact of drug-related activity.



He said that between 2002 and 2007 around 80 people had died as a result of drugs, many were not from the area but had been users who had come there to buy drugs.



Kebon Pala



Thought to be free from drug-related activity, Kebon Pala, East Jakarta, was, like Warakas, once labeled as a drug-riddled area.



Drug eradication efforts began in 2006 when the then Kebon Pala subdistrict chief, M. Ritonga, decided to rid the area of drugs and asked civil society organizations such as local youth organizations and the family's welfare movement (PKK) to monitor visitors to the area.



Many drug users were reported by residents and underwent a six-month rehabilitation. The initiative, along with police raids, effectively cleaned the area of drugs.



Kampung Bonang



Known as an area where brawls often occurred, Kampung Bonang, Central Jakarta, was a notoriously drug-plagued part of the capital. Drug activity in the area began to decline in 2000 when local authorities, along with several non-governmental organizations (NGO), created a series of initiatives involving the local community.



The resulting programs involved training ex-drug traffickers by providing them with a range of relevant courses aimed at upgrading their work skills.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Fri, January 29, 2016

There are several reasons why fast food grows quickly in Jakarta. The first reason is the changing lifestyles in society. In Jakarta, many people are working in offices or companies. The workers do not have much time to search for food because the working hours are very solid. Advertising is another reason. Jakarta is a big city that through advertising always informs society of new products. For example, the internet and television report every day about developments of different types of fast food. All of these ads influence people to buy fast food.



Moreover, the price of fast food is very cheap. Therefore, every day many people buy hamburgers, pizzas and other fast foods.



However, fast food has negative effects. The greatest influence is on health. It can be seen from many people in Jakarta who became fat because of these foods. As a result, these people will become less productive and have conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.



Another consequence of fast food is losing the tradition of eating together with family at home. Now, children and adults rarely eat together at home. As a result, parents and children seldom communicate with each other. The next effect is on the economy. Fast food is not too expensive. It is more expensive to cook at home. However, all fast food comes from foreign-owned franchise companies, so the benefits of these foods go to foreigners.



In general, I think that a lot of people consume fast food in Jakarta because of the lifestyle, the influence of advertising and low prices. However, I believe that these foods have serious consequences in the community such as health problems, loss of traditional family meals and economic problems. Therefore, people in Jakarta should leave fast food for a better life.



Heru Nugroho,

Jakarta
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, January 29, 2016

West Java's upcoming playhouse in Cikutra, Bandung, would be designed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, a provincial government official has said.

Hadid had been approached by Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil a while ago as the playhouse was expected to have a monumental and timeless design, said West Java Deputy Governor Deddy Mizwar after a meeting with Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil and Zaha Hadid's team in Bandung on Friday.

The design is said to have unique characteristics of West Java such as the megamendung cloud-patterned batik from Cirebon, among other.

Deddy said funds for the design would not come from the regional budget as it would be handled by a third party and the investor would later present it to the government as a gift (hibah).

In addition to the playhouse, the 4-hectare plot of land in Cikutra will also host commercial enterprises such as a shopping mall and hotel. (nov/kes)
The Daily News calls on Governor Cuomo to leave Sheldon Silvers Assembly seat open until the fall. The editorial board writes,The governor has 43,597 reasons to stand aside and let the contest be in the fall and just 100 to act and set it in April  43,597 being the number of Democratic voters who would get a say in the fall and 100 being the rough number of party insiders who otherwise will be empowered to, in essence, anoint Silvers successor in the spring.

The City Council has scheduled two hearings early next month to weigh Mayor de Blasios controversial rezoning plans, reports Politico New York.

Its been 11 years since Nicole DuFresne was murdered during a Lower East Side mugging. Her fiance reflects on the tragedy and speaks out about this countrys gun culture, reports Gothamist.

Suffolk Arms, the new cocktail bar from Giuseppe Gonzalez, finally revealed itself yesterday, notes EV Grieve.

Conde Nast Traveler says Fabian von Hauske Valtierra of Contra is one of 10 young chefs to watch in 2016.

At the 12C Outdoor Gallery on Avenue C, an artist will prepare 2,340 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as an exercise of empathy with her mother.

What happened to the old CBGB awnings? Gothamist investigates.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

Iran is more than willing to sell its gas to Europe but the country might not be able to do this very soon, US expert on Central Asia and energy issues Bruce Pannier believes.

"To export large volumes of gas, pipelines are required and currently there are no pipelines linking Iran to Europe," Pannier told Trend.

On January 16, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified Tehran's compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), opening the way for Iran's return to the global energy market. The same day, the US and the European Union announced that they were lifting their sanctions against Iran.

The removal of sanctions against Iran will allow the country not only to increase its oil production and export, but also to become one of the major gas exporter to the global markets. Iran holds 17 percent of the world's proved natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC's reserves, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). As of January 2015, Iran's estimated proved natural gas reserves were 1,201 trillion cubic feet.

The country is also the world's third-largest dry natural gas producer, after the US and Russia.

Pannier mentioned that Iran has expressed interest in joining the Trans Anatolian gas pipeline project, which is aimed at the transportation of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field's gas from Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey.

"SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) has expended significant time and resources toward realizing the project. I cannot imagine Baku would want to share pipeline capacity with anyone for the foreseeable future, so more pipelines need to be built," Pannier said.

Iran's ambassador to Azerbaijan Mohsen Pak Ayeen recently said that after the removal of sanctions, Tehran is capable of joining major regional projects such as TANAP. Meanwhile, SOCAR high representative said that the commercial supplies of Iranian gas via TANAP have not been discussed up till now.

There are also questions about the diplomacy involved in Iran joining a pipeline project through Turkey since Tehran and Ankara are not on the best of terms, according to Pannier.

Meanwhile he believes Tehran will attempt to improve relations with Ankara because Turkey is the best (quickest and most economical) route for Iran to ship anything to Europe.

"The EU would probably encourage better ties between Ankara and Tehran and any gas pipeline projects carrying Iranian gas through Turkey could qualify to be considered as part of the EU's Southern Gas Corridor," Pannier said.

"And yes, there is certainly a large amount of money to be made, and not just by Iran as transit countries such as Turkey stand to gain," he added.

At the same time, Pannier believes that LNG is probably Iran's best opportunity for exporting gas to Europe in the near future.

"In some ways, Iran is fortunate that many European countries have already constructed or are constructing terminals to receive LNG, although the plans envisioned receiving LNG from North Africa and possibly some Gulf states, and sometime in the next decade, possibly from the US also," he said.

"So some of the necessary infrastructure is already in place and more is currently under construction. These terminals could take Iranian LNG as well, and it's worth mentioning the current political situation in North Africa cast some doubts about supplies from that source," Pannier added.

Iranian officials have stated that export of LNG to Europe is a priority for the country.

Iran has already developed an LNG plant by 50 percent, which is expected to become operational in 2018 with 10.5 million tons annual production capacity. Within the next three years the country expects to launch five LNG projects.

Currently Iran reportedly is in talks with France, Germany and Belgium for construction of LNG tankers.

Pannier believes that Iran will be able to attract investments to develop necessary infrastructure in energy sphere.

"Reports said deals worth some $18 billion were signed when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was in Italy and billions more in contracts were expected to be signed during his visit to France," Pannier said.

"But if Iran really needs the investment now, and if it wants to continue receiving foreign investment in its projects, the country might have to learn to become an easier partner to deal with," Pannier added.
(lead article)

Washington joins Tehran, Moscow to seek Syria truce

The nuclear deal with Tehran implemented Jan. 16 represents a major advance in moves by the Barack Obama administration to put together a new political bloc in the Middle East to replace the shattered imperialist-imposed world order put in place after World War II. Washington aims to build on deepening collaboration with Tehran, as well as Moscow, to forge and police a cease-fire to end the five-year Syrian civil war and impose a semblance of stability. The U.S. government and its imperialist allies in Europe and elsewhere have no interest in continuing war in the region.

At the same time, they are using Islamic State-inspired terror attacks to scapegoat Muslims and cut away at political rights critical for working people. French President Francois Hollande announced Jan. 22 that he will extend the state of emergency and restrictions on protests and other rights he imposed after terrorists killed 130 people in Paris Nov. 13. Government officials said the extension would last as long as necessary.

Since the Iran deal was consummated, Tehran has sought to rebuild its economy. Iran is one of the largest countries in the Mideast, with a population of 82 million, a modern capitalist economy and high level of culture and education.

With the phasing out of imperialist sanctions, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been touring Europe. Italian officials announced the two governments will sign business agreements totaling more than $16 billion.

Washington and Moscow are pushing for United Nations-sponsored peace negotiations in an indirect format in Geneva Jan. 29. But obstacles to holding the gathering point to broader difficulties in the way of Washingtons plan.

While officials from Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime plan to attend, opposition groups called the High Negotiations Committee, cobbled together in Saudi Arabia, say they wont come unless Assads troops halt all attacks and sieges against civilian areas.

Khaled Khoja, president of the Syrian National Coalition, said that Washington, Tehran and Moscow have decided on imposing a national government and allowing Bashar al-Assad to stay in power and stand for re-election.

Moscow demands the U.N. invite the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which through its military wing  the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG)  with aid from U.S. bombing has driven rightist Islamic State forces out of Kurdish areas. Without this participant the talks cannot achieve the results that we want, a definitive political solution in Turkey, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

If the PYD is invited of course we will boycott, responded Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Ankara, which is conducting a murderous military operation against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey, views the PYD as terrorist.

Mass popular mobilizations against the Assad regime in 2011 were met with brutal retaliation, crushing them. This led to the civil war, killing more than 250,000 people and displacing millions.

Decades of betrayal by the Stalinist Syrian Communist Party left no revolutionary working-class leadership in the country capable of charting a course to defeat the regime and take power. In the vacuum this created, exacerbated by the brutal slaughter unleashed by Assad, Islamic State was able to seize territory and set up a reactionary caliphate.

More than 400,000 people live in areas besieged by Assad, cut off from access to food and supplies. An estimated 2.5 million Syrians have fled to Turkey; a million to Lebanon and about 630,000 to Jordan, according to the U.N.

Hundreds of thousands have fled to Europe. Their arrival coincides with a sharp capitalist economic downturn. Governments there have moved to increase border patrols, erecting barbed wire fences and other obstacles.

The Kurdish people have long been denied a homeland. In the 1916 Sykes-Picot pact, London and Paris, victors over Berlin and the Ottoman Empire, carved up the oil-rich region and imposed national borders. Kurds were divided into parts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The secret deal was exposed after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks released the pact made by the imperialist powers to divide the spoils they found in the files of the overthrown czarist regime.

Independent Kurdistan now closer

World leaders have come to this conclusion that the era of Sykes-Picot is over, said Masoud Barzani, president of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Barzani said Iraq and Syria would never be reconstructed with their former borders. He urged a new accord, saying an independent Kurdistan is now closer than at any other time.

The ongoing assault against the Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey by the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has received little coverage in the U.S. press. Dozens of civilians have been killed, villages destroyed and more than 100,000 people driven from their homes. Turkish authorities are bombing infrastructures and residential neighborhoods across Sirnak and Diyarbakir, two major cities in the area, Kurdish human rights lawyer Hoshin Ebdullah told ARA News Jan. 24.

Since the Islamic State-inspired terror attack in Paris, 31 U.S. governors have said they will try to keep Syrian refugees out of their states.

Severe restrictions and bureaucratic obstacles have made it extremely difficult for Syrian refugees to get into the U.S. Since 2012, authorities have admitted just 2,174 Syrian refugees  a grand total of 0.0007 percent of the U.S. population.

In New Jersey, with an estimated 200,000 Muslims, Gov. Chris Christie, who sought out relations with Muslim communities and groups when he ran for governor in 2010, has changed his tune. Now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he calls for stopping Syrian refugees, including orphans under age 5, from entering the United States.

In France, Hollande is calling for amending the constitution to allow the government to deny those with dual citizenship entry into the country and to revoke their French citizenship if they are deemed a terrorist risk.

A demonstration called by the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) and many human rights and labor organizations is being organized in Paris for Jan. 30 to protest the state of emergency and the constitutional reform.

The state of emergency causes fear that this and future governments will use it against workers and militants, said a CGT statement Dec. 29.





Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home




By Dr. Shamshad Akhtar

As the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus celebrate the 25th anniversary of their independence, structural reform has become critical. The key to meeting many of the challenges, and seizing the opportunities of the changing global environment is closer regional economic integration with the rest of Asia and the Pacific.

Much has already been achieved in the post-independence era. Market institutions are generally well established, and socio-economic progress has been significant, but this is threatened in 2016 by economic contractions, driven by steep declines in oil, gas and commodity prices, as well as by ongoing currency depreciations.

The deep and complex reforms necessary to build economies capable of weathering these storms have yet to be completed. As a result, according to the latest analyses by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the economies of North and Central Asia, excluding the Russian Federation, saw GDP growth fall to 3% last year, down from 5.1% in 2014. This is expected to improve only slightly in 2016, to 3.4%.

Some countries, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, have long-term diversification plans, but commodity dependence has increased during the last decade, driven by strong demand and high prices. The difference between commodity prices and their average production costs, for instance, has increased significantly and remained above 30% of GDP for the subregion over the past 25 years.

Job-generating growth, and wider prosperity in Central Asia and the Caucasus, therefore call for a renewed commitment to economic diversification, as well as accelerated regional economic cooperation and integration - specifically in priority areas such as cross-border infrastructure in transport, energy and ICT, as well as for additional policy reforms to support market-driven trade and investment-led diversification and integration.

A valuable window of opportunity now exists for the subregion to revisit its development trajectory, and to effectively implement the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These opportunities are driven by a number of emerging dynamics.

Enhanced political cooperation, to address issues of peace and security, including to counter the threats of extremism and terrorism, as well as closer collaboration to eradicate extreme poverty, will facilitate further stabilization.

Rebalancing and reviving growth and trade, with supportive diversification and structural transformation, will be particularly critical. North and Central Asia has the lowest share of intra-regional trade in Asia and the Pacific - just 6.6%. Stronger regional economic integration is therefore imperative to better link these economies to world markets and global value chains.

A number of key new subregional agreements and integration deals, in both transport and energy, lend greater hope for the deepening of regional connectivity and trade facilitation, which are together critical to revive trade growth in the short term.

Enhanced capitalization of the Multilateral Development Banks, as well as the recent establishment of China's Silk Road Fund and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, offer new vehicles and financing conduits for the infrastructure required for closer integration and sustainable development.

New momentum has also been generated for subregional integration - both East and South - by recent regional initiatives such as China's 'Belt and Road', the Republic of Korea's 'Eurasia Initiative', as well as discussion on South Asia-Central Asia transport connectivity. All of these aim to advance connectivity of Central Asia and the Caucasus to the wider Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

To support countries in taking advantage of this window of opportunity, ESCAP will host an unprecedented dialogue for the leaders of North and Central Asia on 17 May in Bangkok, as a focus of its annual Commission session.

By creating a platform for all leaders of the subregion to set a new vision and course for regional economic cooperation and integration, we aim to accelerate coherent structural reform and economic diversification, for a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable subregion.

Shamshad Akhtar is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP She has been the UN's Sherpa for the G20 and previously served as Governor of the Central Bank of Pakistan and Vice President of the MENA Region of the World Bank. She will be meeting with Heads of State and Government, as well as senior ministers across Central Asia and the Caucasus in early February to obtain their guidance on the parameters and focal areas for the ESCAP deliberations in May.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking Jan. 29 at the XVII extraordinary congress of Nur Otan Party has set the task to fully meet the internal market's demand for domestic oil products - gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and gas by 2018, the press service of the president reported.

"It is important to liberalize oil and gas market, return commercial functions to the refineries," the president said.

Nazarbayev also said that by 2021, oil production volumes in Kazakhstan will reach 92 million tons per year [79.5 million tons in 2015].

Kazakhstan has three major oil refineries - Atyrau, Shymkent and Pavlodar. All the three plants are being modernized, which will provide the domestic market of the country with own fuel and lubricants.

Gasoline production in 2015 in Kazakhstan amounted to 2.9 million tons, which is 4.9 percent less than in 2014. Kazakhstan annually imports about 1.1 million tons of gasoline mainly from Russia.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
A Hostel Hangover

With his wedding just a few days away Scott (Brian Hallisay) heads to Las Vegas with his friends Justin (John Hensley), Mike (Skyler Stone) and Carter (Kip Pardue) for his bachelor party. It is whilst there that they meet a couple of escorts who talk them in to go to a private party with them on the outskirts but when the following morning they discover Mike is missing things get crazy. They find themselves kidnapped and thrown in to this sadistic game for members of an elite hunting club who take pleasure out of inflicting pain.

I was never really much of a fan of the first two "Hostel" movies; I just didn't get what was so appealing about these movies and put it down to some dark desire thing which I didn't have. It is why I reluctantly sat down to watch "Hostel: Part III" fearing that it would be little more than another rehash of the first movie. Well the good news is that it isn't with there being some creativity to how the story unfolds, the bad news is that I get a sense that someone wrote this horror movie and when the studio bosses saw it they decided to manipulate it and make it a third movie in the "Hostel" series which means it doesn't have the same feel as the previous Eli Roth movies.

The thing is that whilst I like that "Hostel: Part III" didn't dump us back in Slovenia or where ever the first two movies were set what is delivered is not consistently entertaining. You sort of watch, plodding through a lot of ordinary scenes and then suddenly a decent idea will grab your attention. Okay I am waffling so basically when the concept of the "Wheel of Misfortune" is introduced it made me think perversely nice idea. Sadly the end result to this is that it is an idea which is left under explored as are others through out the movie.

What this all boil down to is that "Hostel: Part III" is a movie which most of the time struggles to keep you interested, thanks partly to the blandness of the characters. But every so often it throws a scene in to the mix which makes you sit up and pay attention due to its creativity. Sadly it doesn't use what creativity it has to its full potential and so "Hostel: Part III" is only ever sporadically entertaining.
Dan Mazer uses words like frankly, has a wife called Daisy and a daughter called Maisy (yes, yes - thatd be Maisie Mazer) and another called Mini Ivy, and harbours a penchant for very snazzy sweatshirts. So far, so comedy.

Its hardly surprising, with fellow comedian and The 11 OClock Show alum Daisy Donovan as a wife and university friends that include Sacha Baron Cohen, that the comedy director appears to live a life filled with lolz. Its hardly surprising, with fellow comedian and The 11 OClock Show alum Daisy Donovan as a wife and university friends that include Sacha Baron Cohen, that the comedy director appears to live a life filled with lolz.

As January closes with his latest offering, the Zac Efron vs. Robert De Niro gross-out/road-trip comedy Dirty Grandpa, we had a chat with him about mischief, making people laugh, and Michael Macintyre  amongst other things.

First up, we had to ask about possibly the most iconic comedy character that hes been involved in the creation of  Baron Cohens perceived Channel 4 Youth Correspondent, Staines-residing Ali G.

Ali G was of course followed by Borat, and by Bruno - characters that were successful in their aims to uncover prejudice of all sorts of different hues, according to Mazer, and whom most are likely to remember with an equal mix of hilarity and horror.

In explaining their creation, he says that It often starts with a voice... then well start to give that character a persona or a viewpoint. With Ali G it was to sort of expose what the older generation thought of the younger generation... they thought that young people could be this ignorant.

We would go and tell people that he was the Youth Correspondent of Channel 4, and the older generation, the establishment, would believe us, and would believe that Channel 4 was feckless and idiotic enough to give this fool a job.

Borat was just so extreme, and his views... and it opened people up, to be prepared to express their extreme opinions and prejudices to someone who was even more extreme than them.

And Bruno was there to largely expose homophobia.

Its not enough to just be funny without being clever, says Mazer  rather, at the heart of it is working alongside Baron Cohen to ensure that the characters created have a large dose of bite and relevance.

Mazer has previously said that when he and his long-time Cambridge friend get together they just run around creating mischief  something that still happens, and that hes still very willing to attest to.

My school friends always say to me, I cant believe it, you havent changed since you were 15 years old, he says. Youre doing the same things now as you did then, but this time youve got the greatest actor of his generation.

That actor is of course Robert De Niro, who in Dirty Grandpa we see in a whole host of unexpected situations alongside cast members (and love interests) almost half a century younger than him. The events that ensure might make you balk or might make you guffaw, depending on your taste in the ancient, dual arts of slapstick and women-chasing.

Mazer is fairly coy about the whole thing, considering the raunch of the film and the lewdness of the eponymous central character, describing getting Robert De Niro to do some of the things that he does as pretty mischievous.

We can only agree. From getting caught in the midst of a number three  well leave you to ponder that one yourself to talking (sort of) dirty with Aubrey Plaza to high-jacking his grandsons wedding plans, mischievous is the only word that can justifiably be used.

This mischief all stems from Mazers previous TV comedy, displaying an entirely natural progression from being naughty on the small screen to being naughty alongside Hollywood stars on a much larger one. When Sacha and I did all that stuff for 15 years, it was just going out and being naughty  it was like doing a bank heist; escaping, and getting away with it, he says.

I enjoy the danger, I enjoy the risk of doing stuff that is a bit unconventional, and Id like to think that Ill continue to do that.

Hes clear that he doesnt set out to make his comedy shocking or even particularly edgy  but after a childhood brought up on Mel Brooks and Airplane its probably in his DNA, and hes wired to make films that hell laugh at himself rather than trying to pander to an audience. It would be a tragedy, he says, to tailor what you do to produce things that you think people will laugh at, rather than just what you enjoy.

Ultimately he hopes that his films are Memorable, in some sense  hopefully not gratuitous and that they always come from a place of character and a place that makes me laugh.

Whilst were on the subject of comedy and its perceived edginess, it seems time to ask whether he believes that comedy in recent years has taken a turn for the  for want of a better word  vanilla?

Well, safe at least - I just feel like lot of what were given, of what we see in the cinema is so safe, and its so familiar, that Im keen to veer away from that path wherever I can - but despite his back catalogue, he doesnt necessarily see this as a bad thing.

I think its weird now, because if youre extreme you can find a forum online in a way that you never really could, he says. Everything is cyclical. You say that comedy has got safe  you look at someone like Dapper Laughs, who is clearly an abomination of a human being, and the comic creation, thats not remotely safe.

And somehow that  offensive, revolting  has somehow managed to find its way onto a mainstream TV channel. Extraordinarily, inexplicably. And Frankie Boyle isnt particularly safe, but hes brilliant, and really funny.

I just think its easy to be controversial without being funny, in order to grab attention and grab headlines. Its much more difficult to combine the two.

He laments that there is nobody at the moment who is doing that in a funny way, but is hopeful that someone will come along very soon, who is not safe, and is controversial.

Until then, hell be spending family Christmases watching Michael Macintyre on Comedy Central and Dave and loving it, because at the moment the much-maligned comedian is much funnier than anyone whos supposed to be young and dangerous, just because he is funny. And funny beats everything.

Its an unexpected admission from the man behind some of the most controversial comedy characters of the last decade, but its one that we can get on board with.

Dirty Grandpa is out in UK cinemas now.


Adam McKay's The Big Short is based on Michael Lewis' book about a group of Wall Streeters who predicted and profited from the the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

In 2005 Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovered that the housing market was extremely unstable due to sub-prime mortgages, which are risky loans made to people who are often unlikely to be able to pay them back. In predicting this collapse, Burry effectively bets against the housing market. In 2005 Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovered that the housing market was extremely unstable due to sub-prime mortgages, which are risky loans made to people who are often unlikely to be able to pay them back. In predicting this collapse, Burry effectively bets against the housing market.

The sole economic aspect of the film is very complicated, and ironically, the people who considered these bundles of mortgages safe investments did not even understand the underlying value of them.

However the film does an excellent job of presenting complicated issues in a simple and entertaining way. Celebrity appearances from the likes of Selena Gomez and Margot Robbie are used in humorous sketches to explain the key aspects of the film. These cut scenes, along with the comical and honest narration of Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) make the film engaging throughout, especially for the ordinary viewer who is struggling to keep up rapid pace of Wall Street business.

In the same way, editing and cinematography in the film works flawlessly with the narrative, as fast pace, quick edits underlines the nature of the issues presented. Although initially the film's montage sequences and quick editing made it look as if it was adopting a similar style to the Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short successfully has a unique and entertaining style of its own. Moreover, the soundtrack, which sometimes overpowers the dialogue, surprisingly enhances the idea of the nature of these conversations which are fast, ambiguous and unstable.

The characters are incredibly well crafted, and McKay succeeds in creating several unique and equally entertaining characters. Christian Bale in particular is fascinating in his quirky persona as an antisocial hedge fund manager who is often bare-foot and wears a baggy t-shirt in his office.

In the same way Ryan Gosling's wit and charm engages the audience and keeps the movie honest in moments of eye contact with the camera, in which he explains if something did or did not happen the way it has been portrayed. Steve Carell is a significant strength in the film, with an angry and fearless character who allows for comic relief during significant scenes. Brad Pitt's calm demeanour is a welcome addition in a sea of eccentric characters. Despite being involved in this money making scheme, Rickert is perhaps the moral centre of the film, being the only one who recognises that through economic gain, ordinary people will suffer.

Although some prior knowledge of the financial crisis would certainly allow audiences to get more out of this film, it ultimately does an excellent job of describing what is a very complicated number of issues, even for those involved. Adam McKay successfully presents Wall Street and its numerous characters in a unique way which informs and angers, yet entertains.

The Big Short is out in UK cinemas now.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

Kazakhstan's national carrier Air Astana signed a codeshare agreement with Chinese Hong Kong Airlines, the Kazakh airline said Jan. 29.

A codeshare agreement is an arrangement between airlines that agree to share space with each other on certain flights in their schedules. This means that each airline publishes and markets the flight under its own airline designator and flight number as part of its published timetable or schedule.

"From now on, the passengers of Air Astana will be able to book tickets of both airlines in order to travel to the destinations where Hong Kong Airlines flies, such as China, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam," said the airline.

Thus, the number of Air Astana's codeshare partners has increased to seven.

Air Astana has been operating since 2002, and today it has a fleet of 30 aircraft of western production.

Its route network includes over 60 international and regional destinations.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Tehran, Iran, January 29

By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend:

Iran and Azerbaijan have signed an agreement to launch a railroad transit system from Tehran to Nakhichevan, Iran Railroads International Affairs Director Abbas Nazari said.

He said the agreement was signed on the sidelines of the quadrilateral Baku summit, IRIB news agency reported.

The official further said experts from both sides are to meet in one month to discuss trains' timetable as well as fairs.

Nazari noted that the infrastructure for the railroad exist, explaining that passenger trains will use the Tehran-Tabriz-Jolfa-Nakhichevan route.

The quadrilateral meeting was held recently between Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine to make important decisions in the field of transportation.

The general theme of the summit was to create a composite transit route from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea and Europe.

It envisioned starting point of Mumbai in India, unified Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia base railroad tariffs, and created consensus among members to provide equipment, infrastructure maintenance service, etc.
Record I bond rates will drop soon. You can still get in but act fast.
Chinese tourist drowns during swimming trip off Phuket

PHUKET: A female Chinese tourist who was found unconscious in the sea while on a trip to Ao Koh Hong yesterday (Jan 28) died whilst being transported to hospital.

accidentsChinesedeath

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 29 January 2016, 12:17PM

The 27-year-old woman died whilst being transported to Krabi Hospital.

The woman, a 27-year-old whose name has withheld until her family has been informed of her death, was swimming with her friends at Ao Koh Hong, an island located northwest of Ao Nang in Krabi province, when she suddenly disappeared at around 3pm. Beach guards and park officials helped locate the victim and brought her, unconscious, to shore. CPR was administered before Marine police took her to Krabi Hospital where she was pronounced dead upon arrival. Than Bok Khorani National park officer, Champen Phompakdee, told police that the victim had gone on a trip with 12 friends and they had all gone swimming in a designated area. The water in the area was between 1-2 metre deep. Police are waiting for doctors to confirm the cause of death and have informed officials at the Krabi Tourist Rescue Centre to contact the Chinese Embassy.
Emergency road works begin at Phuket underpass site

PHUKET: The Phuket office of the Highways Department has closed the section of the bypass road that collapsed beside the Sam Kong Underpass during heavy rain last night so that emergency road repairs can begin.

transportconstructionweather

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Friday 29 January 2016, 06:26PM

The 50-metre section of the southbound side of the bypass road, starting from the Sam Kong Intersection, was reduced to one lane this afternoon.

Southbound traffic is now forced to either turn left toward Phuket Town or right toward Kathu.

Traffic lights will be installed as soon as possible, Phuket Highways Office Director Samak Luedwonghad told The Phuket News.

In the meantime, Phuket City Traffic Police are directing traffic at the busy intersection, he added.

The road was to be remade as part of completing the project anyway, but now we have to remake it earlier in order to fix the damage right away, he said.

While the road works are being carried out, we urge drivers of all heavy vehicles, such as big trucks and tour buses, to avoid the area.

Also, traffic from Yaowarat Rd intending to head southbound on the bypass road must now first pass through the Tesco Lotus car park in order to join the bypass road south of the road works, Mr Samak added.
Family of NZ mum Ariana Brown calls for support

PHUKET: The family of New Zealand mum Ariana Brown, killed in a motorbike crash last Saturday (Jan 23), has called for donations in order to repatriate Ms Browns body home for proper burial.

accidentsdeathtransporttourism

By The Phuket News

Friday 29 January 2016, 10:13AM

The family of New Zealand mum Ariana Brown, killed in a motorbike crash last Saturday (Jan 23), has called for donations in order to repatriate Ms Browns body home for proper burial. photo: Supplied

Ms Brown was returning from her first fight victory when the motorbike she was riding hit a roadside tree in Soi Ta-iad, Chalong, an area renowned for its many Muay Thai and MMA gyms and training centres. (See story here.)

Since then, tributes have flowed for the much-loved mum. (See story here.)

This page is for those who wish to help out Arianas family in bringing her home from Thailand and with the funeral costs, notes the family on the Give A Little support page. (See here.)

Any donation will be incredibly appreciated during this very difficult time. Ariana touched the lives of many and a number of people have been wanting to help out her family so we thought we would set this page up.

We, Arianas family, have decided to make this page to allow family, friends and anyone else who wishes to help out to do just that. Whether its to send love and appreciation for having known her or simply to help a good cause, we are very grateful for any contribution, said Liam Brown.

Ari was a beautiful and inspiring soul. Its wonderful to see everyone coming together to support her whanau, particularly her two sons, and to celebrate the life she had.

New Zealands national Channel 3 News paid tribute to Ms Brown with a report on her passing. To view the news segment, click here.
Tehran, Iran, January 28

By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend:

Italian insurance agency Servizi Assicurativi del Commercio Estero (SACE) has signed a line of credit insurance MoU with the Central Bank of Iran, worth 6 euros, said the CBI governor Valiollah Seif.

According to the CBI's official website, the MoU was signed during Seif's visit to Italy on Jan.27.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Italy in Jan 26-27, heading a big delegation. The sides signed up to  17 billion ($18.4 billion) contracts and a MoU.

Before in December 1, Iran announced that SACE has signed a short-term line of credit insurance MoUs with three Iranian banks, Parsian, Pasargad, and Saman.

The MoUs were signed in a meeting between an Italian delegation and representatives of Central Bank of Iran (CBI) in Tehran, the CBI Public Relations announced.

The Italian delegation included representatives from 11 Italian banks that count for 55 percent of the country's banking.

During the meeting, CBI Vice President for Currency Qolamali Kamyab said Iran and SACE have held talks on the way of settling the Italian insurance company's previous debts to Iran.

A day earlier, SACE President Giovanni Castellaneta said his company was ready to allocate insurance services worth 5 billion to Iran-Italy business deals.

In a trade conference held in Tehran on November 29 with 360 Italian economic representatives, a number of MoUs were signed in the fields of tourism and trade.

Iran-Italy trade turnover stands at $1.5 billion a year. The number had hit $7 billion before economic sanctions were set against Iran.
Floods wreak havoc at Phuket underpass site

PHUKET: Heavy downpours last night (Jan 28) brought traffic to a standstill at the Sam Kong Underpass construction site after a large section of road collapsed.

transportweatherconstruction

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 29 January 2016, 01:02PM

Many motorists were left stranded while big and small vehicles moved slowly through the area amid heavy rain. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The rift was 30 metres long, one metre wide and 1.5m deep. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The rift was 30 metres long, one metre wide and 1.5m deep. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Workers placed safety barriers to prevent passing vehicles from falling into the rift. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot

Workers continued to pump floodwater from the Sam Kong Underpass construction site this morning (Jan 29). Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot

The rift in the road alongside the underpass tunnel measured 30 metres long, one metre wide and 1.5m deep. A smaller section alongside Yaowarat Rd, near the entrance to the Tesco Lotus shopping centre, also subsided.

Traffic police were forced to direct motorists away from the danger zone, with smaller vehicles mainly diverted through Phuket Town. By 3:30am, Phuket City Police warned bus and truck drivers to avoid the area entirely.

Traffic was allowed to resume driving past the underpass tunnel rift this morning, though safety barriers have been placed to keep vehicles away from damaged section of road.

The heavy rains also affected Pra Phuket Kaew Rd, on the west side of the junction, with floodwaters reaching knee deep by 6:30pm. Many motorists were left stranded while big and small vehicles moved slowly through the area amid heavy rain.

Some people in the area waited after 9pm for the rain to stop to leave offices or home.

Phuket Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada and Phuket Provincial Police Chief Commander Col Teeraphol Thipjaroen inspected the site this morning (Jan 29).

The underpass construction has already suffered a slew of setbacks, resulting in contractor Vivat Construction Co Ltd being granted repeated extended deadlines for completing the project, with the final deadline passing on January 22.

Vivat Construction Co Ltd now faces fines of B2 million a day for failing to complete the project on time.

Heavy criticism resulting in an inspection visit by the Office of the Ombudsman yesterday, just hours before the deluges cracked the surrounding roads. (See story here.)

Vivat Construction Project Engineer Jirawut Thaenkum told The Phuket News that the floods last night presented yet another setback.

The heavy rains yesterday means we have a lot of water to pump out from the site, he said. Water at the site does not naturally drain well, as the flooding has been compounded by water came from the Kathu area and Bang Yai Canal.

Only last week did excavators at the site run into trouble when they struck the water table while digging the underpass tunnel. (See story here.)

Mr Jirawut told The Phuket News this week that his team knew that they would have to contend with the water table, but added, We had no idea just how much water would be naturally flowing into it at that point.

Regardless, Mr Jirawut remained confident that the underpass tunnel itself would be complete by the end of February.

We have to dig three metres deeper than planned, and we have teams pumping out water day and night, but the project is actually about 85 per cent complete. Despite the delays, which are very stressful, we are confident that the underpass will be open by April, he said.

Although Vivat Construction Co Ltd is facing a B2 million baht a day fine for failing to complete the project on time, Chalermpon Wongkietkun, the Project Engineer from the Highways Department Phuket office, explained that penalty is contracted to a maximum of B80 million.

Vivat Construction Co Ltd will be fined B2 million per day for only 40 days, but not more than B80 million in total, he said.

If they refuse to pay, then the penalty will be recovered through legal action, he added.

Yet Mr Jirawut argued that the two previous major setbacks  move power supply lines and underground water mains  had cost the contractor more time than any other delay.

Lets be honest, I want the Highways Department to recognise this. We are behind schedule by a year because we spent three months waiting for the electricity supply poles to be moved and another eight months waiting for the water supply pipes to me moved.

This should be recognised in applying the terms of the contract, Mr Jirawut said.

Meanwhile, Project Engineer Chalermpon of the Highways Department assured that the delays at the Sam Kong Underpass will in no way affect work on the Chalong Underpass, which Civil Engineering Co Ltd has won the contract to build and commenced installation of the roadside drains last week.

Its a separate project entirely, by a different contractor, he said.

Additional reporting by Tanyaluk Sakoot
Govt begins removing tigers from scandal-tainted temple

KANCHANABURI: Five tigers were seized late yesterday (Jan 28) from the scandal-tainted Tiger Temple, the first move by the government to take away big cats from monks facing renewed allegations of wildlife trafficking.

Friday 29 January 2016, 03:35PM

Staffers and monks at Kanchanaburis Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yanasampanno handle some of the 147 big cats in their care at the so-called Tiger Temple. (Photos by Piyarach Chongcharoen)

Officials from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation used tranquiliser guns to sedate and place the tigers from Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yanasampanno in two six-wheeled trucks which took them to wildlife conservation centres in Ratchaburi province. The trucks departed from the temple in Sai Yok district for the Khao Son and Khao Prathub Chang animal reserves, according to a source involved with the operation. Thanya Netithammakun, the departments deputy-director general, told Thai Rath Online this morning (Jan 29) that the five tigers had already been moved to Ratchaburi. The department will follow regulations governing care of the animals, he said. Thailand-based wildlife activists hailed the move. Edwin Wiek, founder of the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand, tweeted today that it is a positive, but small, step toward ending animal trafficking and abuse. Read original story here.
Guarding the ghost fleet of Mallows Bay

UNITED STATES: In a quiet inlet halfway down the Potomac River, Don Shomette pushes off a muddy landing in his weather-beaten canoe.

marine

By AFP

Friday 29 January 2016, 11:21AM

Marine archaeologist Don Shomette sits on the remains of a decaying sunken vessel left over from World War I in Mallows Bay, Maryland. Photo: Katharine Schubauer/AFP

Its a trip hes made thousands of times, but as he rounds the corner upon scores of decaying ships left over from World War I, he is reminded why he keeps coming back to Mallows Bay.

Its rather ironic that we have these ships which were engaged in a massive war of destruction now being reclaimed by nature, Mr Shomette says, as he rows out onto the water.

The skeletons of more than 185 wooden steamships are remnants of an ill-fated fleet, commissioned in 1917 when the United States entered the Great War. By the time Germany surrendered, not a single one had crossed the Atlantic.

After a Congressional probe revealed the ships to be poorly designed and too expensive to maintain, production was halted and the ships were bought by a salvage company to use for parts and transported to the bay, an hours drive south of the capital Washington.

After the Great Depression left the firm bankrupt in 1931, the vessels were left to decompose peacefully in the shallow waters of Mallows Bay.

Today, the rotted fleet is the largest group of historic watercraft visible in the Western Hemisphere.

A native of Maryland, the 72-year-old Mr Shomette first visited Mallows Bay as a teenager.

Mr Shomettes affinity for underwater archaeology and history took him over the years from the coast of Yorkshire, England, to the depths of Lake Michigan, working as a consultant for groups such as National Geographic.

But Mr Shomette kept returning to the eerie collection of ships laying untouched nearly in his backyard. Eventually he obtained a grant and turned his passion into a work pursuit.

Over a 10-year period, Mr Shomette collected and analysed data from the ships, compiling a 500-page dossier documenting in great detail each member of the fleet.

It is hard to say what my favourite projects are because all discovery is exciting, Mr Shomette says. But of course, Mallows Bay is incomparable.

We have here a laboratory which we can test and study, and bring tourists to see history in the flesh.

Environmentalists have come to value the ships as a plethora of wildlife make their homes aboard their wooden remains, dense with shrubs and nutrient-rich soil.

The forested cove is home to many species of fish, birds, deer and beaver, among others. Mr Shomette even recalls seeing a bald eagle land atop one of the ships spiky hulls.

Each ship has become a mini eco-system, said Joel Dunn, president of the Chesapeake Conservancy. So whether its an osprey to build a nest on, a striped bass to survive in or an oyster to cling onto, the ships provide structure for life to survive.

Mr Dunns non-profit organisation is one of the groups pushing for Mallows Bay to be designated a national marine sanctuary, a process that is currently underway.

There are just 14 such sanctuaries in the United States. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced its intent to expand the list for the first time since 2000. Mallows Bay is one of two locations up for consideration.

The Mallows Bay sanctuary would encompass the entire ghost fleet from World War I plus dozens of other shipwrecks from earlier centuries that were subsequently brought to the area during the salvage years.

NOAA describes the 14-square mile area as one of the most ecologically valuable sites in the state of Maryland.

Sammy Orlando, a NOAA coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay region, said the designation seeks to add an additional layer of protection to Mallows Bay, in addition to recognizing it for its historical and environmental value.

Its really about the protection of these areas for future generations and the sustainability of the communities that are tied to natural and heritage resources of this area, Mr Orlando said.

The proposal is undergoing public review, with local communities providing feedback to NOAA through a series of open hearings. President Barack Obama offered his support when the process first began, but Mallows Bay still has quite a way to go before it earns official recognition.

Once NOAA makes a final decision, the Governor of Maryland and Congress will have a chance to review it. The earliest Mallows Bay would receive its designation is the fall of 2017.

Though the rustic water-scape has always been free and open to the public, the Maryland community hopes making Mallows Bay a sanctuary will put it on the map.

We think that Mallows Bay Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary will become a major eco-tourism driver for Charles County and also the state of Maryland, Mr Dunn said.

And for Mr Shomette, the ships he has canoed around, scuba dived under, and written about for decades, would finally earn the recognition they deserve.
Myanmar woman arrested in Phuket in connection with human trafficking

PHUKET: A Myanmar woman was arrested yesterday (Jan 28) for assisting her husband detain 32 migrants at fishing pier in Koh Sirey. Her husband managed to escape arrest.

immigrationcrimepoliceMyanmar

By Darawan Naknakhon

Friday 29 January 2016, 05:47PM

The 32 Myanmar nationals claim they have been detained against their will and forced into the fishing industry.

38-year-old Ma Yo will face charges of assisting her husband detain people against their will.

The 32 men, all Myanmar nationals, are believed to be the victims of human trafficking and have been taken to Phuket City Police to be questioned.

Phuket City Police led by Lt Col Khunnadet Na Nongkhai together with human traffic crime suppression police, Mr Ko Tee from the Myanmar Embassy Thailand and officials from the Labour Right Promotion Network (LPN) yesterday arrested 38-year-old Ma Yo at a shelter at the entrance to the fishing pier in Rassda.

Officials rescued the 32 men who claim to have been tricked into coming to work as fishermen and have since been forced into the fishing industry by Ma Yo and her husband.

Lt Col Khunnadet said that the arrest came after one Myanmar migrant named Nai escaped from a fishing boat and managed to borrow a mobile phone from a local resident. He immediately called his family in Myanmar and requested they alert the embassy about the groups situation.

According to Nai, he and the other 32 men had been forced to work in the fishing industry. He also claimed the men had been abused and assaulted, did not receive any pay, and were locked in a shelter until they were sent to work.

This led police to raid the shelter where Nai alleged the men had been kept, and upon doing so they discovered the 32 men inside and were able to arrest Ma Yo. However, her husband 36-year-old husband Arpad or Ko Pae got away.

Ma Yo was taken to Phuket City Police station where she admitted that her husband is an agent who provides migrant workers for the fishing industry. She also told police that he would trick the workers into working in the fishing industry.

It is alleged that Arpad gets the workers from another agent in Prachuab Khirikhan before handing them over to people involved in the fishing industry in Phuket once a price for the men has been agreed.

Ma Yo claims that she is only involved in her husbands accounts and cooking for the migrants.

Ma Yo will face charges of assisting her husband detain people against their will.
New Zealander found dead on yacht in Phuket yet to be identified

PHUKET: The body of a foreign man found on New Zealand registered yacht last Saturday (Jan 23) has still not been formally identified by family members. The true cause of death has also yet to be confirmed say police.

deathmarinepolice

By Supatra Sutham

Friday 29 January 2016, 02:40PM

The body of the man was discovered on board the Waitane II moored off Nai Harn Beach. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Maj Thada Sodarat from Chalong Police told The Phuket News today (Jan 29) that he is still waiting for the deceaseds family to confirm the identity of the body. Family members have not yet arrived to identify the body, but the Embassy has been notified. Workers will clean the yacht at Chalong Pier today now that we have taken all relevant evidence. We are now waiting for doctors to confirm the cause of death, and following that we will conclude our investigation if the mans family do not want us to investigate further, he added. Maj Thada and his team last Saturday responded to a call to investigate the body of a foreign man found on the Waitane II moored off Nai Harn Beach. The body was only discovered after staff from a nearby hotel noticed that the boat had not moved for a week. (See story here)
Party ladyboy CCTV hunch leads Kamala police to two burglars, stolen booty

PHUKET: Kamala police have made two arrests, and recovered more than 70 items thought to have been stolen from the Phuket residences of several foreigners.

crimetourismpolice

By The Phuket News

Friday 29 January 2016, 10:25PM

Photo: Kamla Police

The two suspects were named as Mr Boonsit Unchaisri, a 28-year-old transgender resident of Kalasin province, and Mr Tirawat Boonumphol, a 29-year-old man from Uthai Thani.

The suspects were presented to the press at 4.30pm today (January 29) at the Kamala Police Station.

Presented along with the suspects were dozens of smartphones and digital cameras, which police believed had been stolen from various houses in Thalang and Kathu.

Moreover, police said they had also seized from the suspects one Yamaha Mio motorbike registered in Phuket, as well as a blue Ford Fiesta car with Bangkok plates.

Police said that the two suspects were tracked down in Phukets party scene, after officers had a hunch that one of the suspects seen in CCTV was a ladyboy.

The arrests follow a string of burglaries reported in Thalang and Kathu over the past two months.

The suspects had allegedly confessed to taking part in dozens of burglaries, specifically targeting unlocked homes of foreign residents and tourists.

According to police, the suspects claimed they had sold most of the items they stole in order to pay for drugs, partying and to afford the B18,000 monthly rent for their Sisunthon villa.

The suspects were charged with burglary, at night and using a vehicle to commit said crimes.








Patong Mayor lands first IHG Indigo hotel in Phuket

PHUKET: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), one of the worlds leading hotel companies, has signed a management agreement with Kebsup Group Co Ltd, headed by Patong Mayor Chalermluck Kebsup, to open the first Hotel Indigo in Phuket.

tourismpatongeconomics

By The Phuket News

Friday 29 January 2016, 02:00PM

Set to open its doors to guests in 2018, the 180-room hotel will be located in the northern end of the bustling town, renowned for its lively shopping scene and a wide variety of restaurants and bars peppering the busy streets.

Hotel Indigo is IHGs boutique brand. Each Hotel Indigo property is designed to reflect the culture, character and heritage of the local neighbourhood it is located in, so no two properties are the same.

Leanne Harwood, Vice President, Operations, South East Asia, IHG said, Phuket is one of the top resort destinations in Thailand, welcoming more than five million tourists in the first half of this year alone. We are delighted to be launching our Hotel Indigo brand in the Patong beach town with our partners Kebsup Group Company Limited to cater to the growing number of both domestic and international visitor arrivals to the island.

We are confident our guests will welcome the arrival of the new Hotel Indigo Phuket Patong where they can truly enjoy the individuality and style of a boutique hotel with the security and consistency of an international hotel company.



Mayor Chalermluck, Director, Kebsup Group Co Ltd, said, Phuket as a destination grows in popularity every year and tourists to the island are increasingly well travelled and savvy. Hotel Indigo Phuket Patong will cater to travellers who appreciate the unique tastes and cultures that make up the vibrant Patong neighbourhood, and we look forward to providing them with great guest experiences through the hotels locally-inspired architecture and cuisine when it opens in 2018.

This is the second hotel IHG is developing with Kebsup Group. The hotel company is currently also managing Holiday Inn Express Phuket Patong Beach Central, owned by Kebsup Group Co Ltd, which opened in 2012.

IHG has 18 hotels and resorts open in Thailand across five brands: InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Hotel Indigo.

There are 13 hotels in the companys development pipeline in Thailand, due to open in the next three to five years.
Country

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President Hassan Rouhani wrapped up his four-day visit to Italy and France by leaving Paris for Tehran on Thursday night, Irna reported.



During his visit to Italy, President Rouhani started a serious start-up in the two countries' relations in political, economic, cultural, tourism, scientific and technological fields.



Iran and Italy signed a total of 14 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and the two countries agreed on a cooperation roadmap for joint cooperation.



Before leaving Rome, President Rouhani told reporters that the scope of joint economic cooperation between Iran and Italy will be beyond the two countries and in the interest of the region.



The Iranian president met Italian president and prime minister in Rome and the world's Catholic Leader Pope Francis in Vatican.



President Rouhani was accompanied by a group of activists of Iran's private sector during his visit to Rome. He also met Italian activists and businessmen.



During his visit to France, the Iranian president met with his French counterpart Francois Hollande.



Iran and France signed 20 cooperation pacts while the two countries' private sectors signed over 10 cooperation pacts.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underlined that in today's world diplomacy works and President Hassan Rouhani's visit to France is only an example, Irna reported.



'Hassan Rouhani's France visit illustrated power of diplomacy. New era of mutually beneficial cooperation in economy, politics and culture,' Zarif wrote on his Twitter account on Thursday night.



President Rouhani wrapped up his four-day visit to Italy and France by leaving Paris for Tehran on Thursday night.



During his visit to Italy, President Rouhani started a serious start-up in the two countries' relations in political, economic, cultural, tourism, scientific and technological fields.



Iran and Italy signed a total of 14 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and the two countries agreed on a cooperation roadmap for joint cooperation.



Before leaving Rome, President Rouhani told reporters that the scope of joint economic cooperation between Iran and Italy will be beyond the two countries and in the interest of the region.



The Iranian president met Italian president and prime minister in Rome and the world's Catholic Leader Pope Francis in Vatican.



President Rouhani was accompanied by a group of activists of Iran's private sector during his visit to Rome. He also met Italian activists and businessmen.



During his visit to France, the Iranian president met with his French counterpart Francois Hollande.



Iran and France signed 20 cooperation pacts while the two countries' private sectors signed over 10 cooperation pacts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

Iran released photos and videos of Iran's naval forces participating in the country's "Velayat-94" naval drills near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The country's semi-official Fars News Agency published photos and videos of Iran launching the "Nour" cruise missiles, as well as footage of US navy boats recorded by Iranian drones.

According to Fars, Iran launched three cruise missiles, two of them from Alborz and Neizeh frigates and another one from the shore of the Persian Gulf.

Previously, Iranian side presented a 150-km radar, during the drills.

Iran's naval forces have staged a "massive" drill, dubbed "Velayat 94", near the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Jan.27.

In recent years, Iran's navy has been increasing its presence in international waters to protect maritime routes and provide security for merchant vessels and tankers.

In line with international efforts to combat piracy, the Iranian navy has also been conducting anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since November 2008 to safeguard the vessels involved in maritime trade, especially the ships and oil tankers owned or leased by Iran.
Watertown students who qualify for reduced meal plans eating for free

As of Oct. 11, students within the Watertown School District who qualify for reduced meal plans will eat for free for the 2022-23 school year.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has condemned a terrorist attack on a mosque in the Shia-populated region of al-Ahsa, in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, Press TV reported.

Hossein Jaberi Ansari, the ministry spokesman, said on Friday that the repetition of terrorist attacks on mosques and religious centers in eastern Saudi Arabia indicates worrying security situation in this region.

It also showed the negligence of Saudi security forces in fulfilling their responsibilities to provide security for people against attacks by terrorists, he added.

At least four people were killed and 18 wounded in the attacks, which targeted the Imam Reza Mosque in the town of Mahasen in al-Ahsa on Friday.

There was no early claim of responsibility for the attack but it resembled previous assaults by Daesh terrorist group.

Towns and cities in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province have been the site of peaceful demonstrations since February 2011. People have been voicing their protest at Riyadh's oppressive policies against the country's Shia minority.
8fest: As cinema becomes ever more digital in its second century, the mediums celluloid-based past becomes increasingly precious. Thats true not only of films 35mm and Tarantino-endorsed 70mm incarnations but the smaller-gauge formats that traditionally were (and remain) the domain of many adventurous talents, as well as countless amateurs who used their cameras to record their own lives.

Now in its ninth year, the 8fest presents a wealth of new and old works that could only have been realized on these narrow strips of film. The latest edition  which runs Jan. 29-31 at the SPK Polish Combatants Hall (206 Beverley St.)  includes six screenings, an artist talk and a Super 8 workshop with John Porter, whose recent book of photographs CineScenes documents Torontos rich history of fringe-film activity. (Its included in a special offer combo with a festival pass.)

Among the other programs are a spotlight on local artist and filmmaker Keith Lock (Jan. 29 at 9 p.m.) and a survey of feminist erotica on Super 8 (Jan. 30 at 9 p.m.). As for the marvels captured by amateurs, a home-movie program presents rare footage shot by a Vancouver family visiting the Chinese region of Guangzhou in the late 1940s and by an American serviceman during the early years of the Korean War. It plays Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. before the 8fest wraps up with a final spate of shorts by Porter, Guillermina Buzio and many more artists loyal to old-school movie-making.

Oscar Shorts: Criminally underexposed outside the festival circuit, short films and their makers certainly get a big boost thanks to the Oscars every year. All 10 nominees in the live-action and animation categories screen at TIFF Bell Lightbox starting Jan. 29. Highlights among the live-action fare include Everything Will Be Okay, an emotionally wrenching piece by Germanys Patrick Vollrath about a fathers desperate act, and Stutterer, a charmer by Irelands Benjamin Cleary about a young mans determination to not let a speech impediment impede a romance. As for the animated selection, the absolute must-see is Don Hertzfeldts ingenious World of Tomorrow, but of course, you should see the rest, too.

The Fear of 13 at Doc Soup: Hot Docs monthly Doc Soup series returns with the Canadian premiere of one of the most unconventional works of non-fiction filmmaking to debut in the last year. British director David Sington leaves audiences guessing what exactly they should believe in the story spun by The Fear of 13s sole speaker and subject: Nick Yarris, a convicted killer who recounts his life in and out of prison when not explaining his request for his execution. Sington may be a little more forthcoming than his film is about whats staged, speculative and true when he does Q&As after The Fear of 13s three screenings on Feb. 3 and 4 at the Bloor.

JeruZalem: The sibling filmmaker team of Doron and Yoav Paz were probably right to suspect that officials would object to the shooting of a biblically themed, found-footage thriller at some of the Holy Citys holiest sites. Thats why they pretended they were making a documentary when they applied for their location permits  no one needed to know theyd be adding zombie extras, right? In any case, the Paz brothers act of subterfuge was key to the creation of JeruZalem, a breakout hit on the genre-film circuit that opens at the Carlton on Jan. 29.

An Afternoon With Virginia Woolf: The Revue Cinema transforms itself into a literary salon for the latest edition of its Extraordinary Women Series this weekend. Titled An Afternoon with Virginia Woolf, the event on Jan. 31 at 4 p.m. explores the life and work of the great of modernist lit via a presentation of the doc The War Within: A Portrait of Virginia Woolf and a talk by scholar Janice Kulyk Keefer. Woolf neophytes who want to go deeper into the oeuvre can also join Keefer for two more lectures at the High Park Library on Feb. 25 and March 17.

Seijun Suzuki: One of Japanese cinemas greatest renegades provides TIFF Bell Lightboxs winter program with many of its wildest moments. Presented under the appropriate title of Action, Anarchy and Audacity, TIFFs 12-film retrospective of Seijun Suzuki launches Jan. 30 at 9 p.m. with Story of a Prostitute, a searing 1965 drama that establishes the directors eagerness to shock and awe. The series also includes the two deliriously weird crime flicks that established his cult following in the west: Tokyo Drifter (March 10 at 9 p.m.) and Branded to Kill (March 12 at 8:45 p.m.).

Kung Fu Fridays: Returning to the Royals big screen  where the series first made its home all the way back in 2000  Kung Fu Fridays springs back into action with a rare screening of a big favourite for programmer Colin Geddes. Made in 1978 by Jackie Chan and legendary action choreographer and director Yuen Poo-wing just before they teamed up on the more famous Drunken Master, Snake in the Eagles Shadow will deliver all the thrills that KFF vets could ever demand when it plays Jan. 29 at 8 p.m. after the customary hour of pre-show trailers and hijinks.

In brief

An Academy Award nominee for best animated feature by Brazils Ale Abreu, Boy and the World continues its run at the Lightbox this week.

Hollywood has rarely made a better sports comedy than White Men Cant Jump, which is why it deserves a screening at the Lightbox on Jan. 29 at 9:15 p.m.

A science-fiction comedy by the American comedy team Rooster Teeth, Lazer Team starts a run at the Carlton on Jan. 29.

The Bloor and POV magazines hard-hitting Cinema Politica series presents A Syrian Love Story with the filmmaker and subject in attendance on Feb. 2 at 6 p.m.

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Prepare to say goodbye to royal blue Belmonts, ruby red Du Mauriers, and burgundy Dunhills.

In hopes of curbing national smoking rates, Health Minister Jane Philpott has announced the federal government will introduce new plain-packaging requirements for tobacco products. These requirements could prohibit brand colours, logos, and graphics on cigarette boxes and cartons.

If the Liberals policy is fulfilled, every cigarette pack in Canada will have the same uniform look and colour; its only distinguishing feature will be a brand name, printed in small letters at the bottom of the product.

This anti-smoking initiative will almost certainly be annoying for convenience store owners who, having memorized every cigarette logo in their stocks, might one day be forced to squint at hundreds of labels in order to select the right box. But by all other accounts, the governments plan is ingenious. Heres why. Plain packaging wont likely convince Canadians to quit smoking, but it might dissuade them from taking up the habit to begin with.

This is because while the new mandate wont warn people about the dangers of smoking (which they already know by now) it does something more powerful. It erodes brand loyalty to tobacco companies, and chips away at the only thing that makes cigarettes appealing to first time smokers in the first place: their cool factor.

Teenagers dont start smoking to alleviate stress. They start smoking because they think its cool. And a big part of what makes cigarettes sexy and popularity-inducing is the box they arrive in. This is a reality well known to tobacco companies: the pack of cigarettes in your purse is a significant marker of social status and class.

Where I grew up, north of Toronto, Belmont cigarettes were the staple brand of the popular, affluent woman. When I attended Dalhousie University in Halifax, the same stereotype prevailed: if you smoked Belmonts you were assumed to be a wealthy, stuck up Toronto girl. If you smoked Canadians, on the other hand, you were assumed to be local and down to earth. If you smoked Dunhills, you were assumed to be sketchy, but rich; if you smoked Peter Jacksons, you were assumed to be sketchy and poor. If you smoked Vogues you were old, and probably Russian. And so on.

These perceptions do not die. In the words of Jonathan MacArthur, a 26-year-old native of P.E.I. who lives in Toronto, (The Belmont smoker) is a Torontonian who doesnt mind spending money on an expensive pack of king sized charcoal filtered smokes. She has no idea what a charcoal filter means, but she doesnt care. She likes to turn up on the weekends in Queen West; she probably only buys pink or black lighters.

These cigarette brand stereotypes are not merely the product of our imagination: According to a study by the National Cancer Institute in the United States, youth-popular (tobacco) brands convey an image of smokers of those brands as popular and admired. The companies believe that conveying that popular people smoke their brand motivates the choice of that brand.

But if you can no longer clearly identify a brand, the social cachet associated with it ceases to exist. If the government institutes a new model in which tobacco logos are near impossible to make out, the social markers associated with those logos might erode  and with them, the appeal of smoking for people driven and seduced by brand identity. This is a very good thing. So, too, is the fact that Australia, the first country to institute a plain packaging policy in 2012, saw a noticeable drop in tobacco consumption.

In the end, its unlikely that plain packaging will dissuade tried and true addicts from buying cigarettes, or teens committed to the act. Its also entirely possible that in the absence of explicit branding, young people will simply become more discriminating in the judgment of their peers. Who knows: maybe theyll begin inspecting brand names on packs of cigarettes the same way they inspect labels on hand bags.

But its also entirely possible that the new world of plain packaging will dismantle popular assumptions associated with cigarette brands. And for the teen whose interest in smoking is purely status-driven, the thrill of lighting up will dissipate. Vices without perks lose their lustre fast.

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Its everywhere you go, yet you have probably never noticed it. Glass with wire mesh inside, called wired glass, is a product that has been used for fire protection for decades in Canada. It looks strong but it is weaker than regular glass and when it breaks it can cause serious injuries, some that have brought people close to death.

The United States updated standards in the mid-2000s to prevent the use of traditional wired glass in areas where people could be hurt such as schools and hotels. But in Canada, wired glass continues to be installed widely.

Risks accompanying wired glass are well known to school boards, at least in Ontario. The provincial insurer for most school boards, the Ontario School Boards Insurance Exchange (OSBIE), told Globals 16x9 in an email that between 2001 and 2015, it has incurred a cost of more than $5.8 million for 114 claims arising from wired-glass injuries. Globals16x9 obtained a risk management advisory from OSBIE that shows that it has been warning school boards that that wired glass can cause horrible injuries since 2001.

Wired glass is half the strength of the regular glass you start with so by putting that in there, even though it looks all strong and great youre reducing the strength of that original glass by about a factor of two, says University of Toronto engineering professor Doug Perovic.

The wire holds shards together preventing the spread of flames but the wire also makes it weaker and more prone to breaking on impact.

At least one manufacturer has affixed a warning label to shipping boxes stating that wired glass is not a safety material and that it should not be used where human impact is possible.

The Canadian Glass Association has issued a similar warning saying that they are aware of hundreds of injuries related to wired glass. The association recommends standards and building codes be updated to eliminate its use in such areas.

In 2009, Devon Kings arm broke through a wired-glass panel while attending a wedding at a hotel in Kingston, Ont. Before this happened, I would never had a second thought about it, you know? I didnt notice wired glass. Nobody notices wired glass because you dont have a reason to, says King.

The glass severed one of Kings arteries and two of his nerves. He underwent an emergency nine-and-a-half hour surgery where he says his heart stopped multiple times on the table.

His life was radically transformed. At the time, he was studying at the Royal Military College to become a pilot but medical experts concluded the lasting damage was too severe. I was released from the military, had to find a new career, had to find new ways to do everything that I do because I wasnt able to use my arm for a long time, so it changed every facet of my life, he says.

The hotel said Kings injuries were a result of aggressive behaviour, stating in court documents that King punched the door while intoxicated. King admits he had been drinking but denies pushing the glass with an unusual amount of force.

One public health expert estimates there is as many as one wired-glass accident among school-aged children each day. Laura Rosella of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto used U.S. estimates to approximate as many as 368 wired glass injuries in Canadian schools each year.

Wired glass is problematic in schools because school-aged children and teens are so active. Its just a matter of time before children  being children will impact the glass and  and be severely injured, like they have already been, says Michael Smitiuch, a Toronto injury lawyer representing several injured students.

Tyler Dickie of Amherst, N.S., is one of his clients. In 2007, Dickies arm broke through a wired glass panel in a door causing serious lacerations and life threatening blood loss. Today, he suffers from permanent nerve damage and is unable to perform certain types of physical work.

Jaiden Hyland of Toronto has permanent facial scarring after he broke through a wired glass window in a door at his high school while roughhousing with a friend in 2013. Having to look in the mirror every day and just seeing some huge scars on your face, it would bother anyone, says Hyland.

Both are suing their school boards. The school boards both say the injuries were the results of acting recklessly at school.

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) says it will not use wired glass in new construction. But the changes will not affect wired glass already installed in most of its 600 schools, glass the board says has caused as many as nine injuries in the past five years.

Its just not possible financially to replace every single wired glass window in the Toronto District School Board, given the countless millions of dollars that it would cost, says Ryan Bird the spokesman for the TDSB.

Wired glass continues to be installed because it is permitted by building codes. Engineering professor Perovic says better alternatives have been available for 10 or 15 years.

The standards pertaining to wired glass havent changed since 1990. The organization charged with updating these guidelines, The Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) refused an interview but said in a statement that a review process is underway and that a new standard is expected mid to late 2016, a draft of the proposed changes was issued this week.

It could be years before wired glass is phased out to the degree it has been in the United States since new standards will need to be adopted by provincial building codes. Wired glass already installed across Canada will not be affected unless special action is taken.

Watch the full 16x9 story Clear Danger at 7 p.m. Saturday on Global.

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The meeting of the UN special envoy for Syria and the head of the country's government delegation to the Syria reconciliation talks ended, Sputnik reported Friday.

The negotiations between Staffan de Mistura and Bashar Jaafari lasted 2.5 hours.

In December, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on settling the Syrian conflict, which reaffirmed the goals of the Vienna agreements to bring the entire spectrum of political groups in the crisis-torn country to the negotiating table and stated that the next round of the talks would take place in January, 2016.

The talks between the Syrian government and the country's opposition are taking place on Friday evening.
How did U.S. politics reach this bizarre point, where so many are ready to vote for Donald Trump  a situation encapsulated in a Daily News shot of Sarah Palin endorsing him, under the headline, Im With Stupid.

Im not saying Trump is stupid nor is everything he expresses; his blasts against trade deals that undermine U.S. jobs are on point. Rather, its the willingness to unconditionally embrace someone so boorish, bullying, lacking self-awareness, childishly vain and demagogic  who says repeatedly: Dont bother thinking, Ill do it for you. (And Youll love it.) In their dreams his Canadian analogues  Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, Mike Harris  never came close.

A chunk of the answer lies in the state of public education in the U.S. and its obsession with testable, measurable skills in reading, writing and math. But isnt that what schools there were always about  the 3Rs? No, actually. The U.S. founding fathers were offspring of the Enlightenment. They believed public schools should allow everyone, regardless of station, to learn to think well, in order to act wisely as citizens and voters. That was their aim and main test.

An 1830 state report said poor kids needed more than simple acquaintance with words and ciphers  i.e., literacy and numeracy; above all they needed what wed today call a citizenship agenda. A century later educational philosopher John Dewey said it was important not just to be able to read but to distinguish between the demagogue and the statesman. Sounds vaguely useful in 2016. When did all that citizenship/thinking go out of vogue?

Recently. Mostly in the Bush and Obama years with their unholy stress on standardized tests in math and reading to the exclusion, often literally, of everything else, including phys-ed and thinking. It was the age of expanding inequality and the rise of the billionaires. They  with Bill Gates in the lead  promoted disruption of public schools and their replacement by publicly funded, basically private, charter schools. Netflix founder Reed Hastings is now pouring money in. He laments that California is only at 8 per cent of kids in charters while New Orleans, where he was CEO, is at 90 per cent. Meanwhile, all the evidence says the huge stress on testing failed; even Obama acknowledges it. His education secretary, Arne Duncan, recently resigned and returned to Chicago.

I used to be prone to conspiracy theories and I feel one coming on. These guys (Gates, Hastings) get the workforce they want, with math skills and a facility to be nimble on projects theyre assigned, but no impulse to challenge whos giving orders or who gains most as a result. What happens when good public education is destroyed? You get a battle of the billionaires for president  Trump vs. Bloomberg  and few question it because they havent learned its in the realm of whats questionable. The U.S. becomes post-Communist Russia!

How have we (so far) avoided this fate. In Canada 95 per cent of kids are in echt public schools. In the U.S., you cant get a proper number since so many are in bastardized public-private hybrids like charters. Annie Kidder of the redoubtable grassroots group People for Education says Canadians will brag (if grumpily) about our public health care, which is only 50 years old. But we take our schools, which predate Confederation, for granted. It makes them vulnerable. People for Education has begun a remarkable project called Measuring What Matters that aims to ensconce as educations main goals: health, citizenship, social-emotional skills and creativity. A true Back to the Basics movement. The 3Rs fit in somewhere.

Im trying not to idealize our schools. They can be hell for kids in them, especially at this time of year when it seems the yearll never end. But overall they do the job of safeguarding a decent level of democracy and encouraging students to think, more or less, at least sometimes about some things.

Nor am I saying people with a formal education are smart and those without it, arent. You can be very smart without formal schooling and some of the most glorious intellectual eras came before widespread formal education. But its hard to be smart if youve been through a system that forced you to use all your time prepping and taking tests while leaving little space for learning to think and practising thought. Thats increasingly the (so-called) public system in the U.S.

Take notes, folks.

Rick Salutins column appears Friday. ricksalutin@ca.inter.net

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Finland may reject some 60 percent of refugees who sought asylum in the country in 2015, which would amount to almost 20,000 people, the permanent secretary of the Finnish Interior Ministry said Thursday, Sputnik reported.



"In Finland the number of negative decisions [on asylum cases] should be around 60 percent," Paivi Nerg told the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.



The country received 32,000 applications in 2015, Nerg said, and they should be processed by May. This would lead to almost 20,000 people being rejected.





According to official estimates, most asylum seekers in Finland are from Iraq.



In 2014, a total of 3,600 migrants arrived in Finland.

Europe has been beset by a refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in Middle East to escape violence and poverty.



Finland ranks third among EU countries most popular with asylum seekers, according to the country's Immigration Service.


The UN Security Council voted Thursday to continue the organization's peacekeeping mission in Cyprus for another six months, Anadolu agency reported.



Through the unanimous adoption of a new resolution, the 15-member body welcomed the "progress of the leaders-led negotiations so far and the ongoing efforts of the leaders and their negotiators to reach a comprehensive and durable settlement".



Encouraging "the sides to grasp the current opportunity with determination to secure a comprehensive settlement", the resolution extended the mandate of UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus until July 31 and increased the force to 888 from the existing 860 troops.



The council also stressed "the importance, both political and financial, of the supporting role of the international community, and in particular that of all parties concerned in taking practical steps towards helping the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders to exploit fully the current opportunity".



The eastern Mediterranean island was divided into a Turkish Cypriot state in the north and a Greek Cypriot administration in the south after a 1974 military coup by Greece was followed by the intervention of Turkey as a guarantor power.



Long-stalled negotiations to settle the conflict resumed last year following Mustafa Akinci's election in April.



The talks that restarted last May are focused on establishing a federal model. "This adoption sends a positive message at a hopeful time for Cyprus," said Britain's UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.



He added that "the road ahead will be tough" and "the leaders will need to show continued courage to take difficult decisions."



"We have a real opportunity ahead to bring this long-running issue to an overdue conclusion," Rycroft said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 29

Trend:

Turkish military killed 5 terrorists of "Islamic State" group (IS) in the Turkish province of Gaziantep located on the border with Syria, Anadolu agency reported.

Troops were fired from a pickup truck when they were clearing the border area from mines.

Within the framework of the rules to address transboundary threats the army command subjected to fire area where the IS opened fire from.

Currently, residents of border regions are evacuated and the military have taken increased security measures and monitor the situation.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused hunger-striking opposition lawmakers of acting like the "servants" of PKK terrorists, Anadolu Agency reported.

Three Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputies have been on hunger strike in the Interior Ministry building since Wednesday in a protest against the alleged lack of ambulances in Cizre, southeast Turkey, where a military curfew has been in place since mid-December.

Rejecting the claims, Erdogan told reporters: "They can hold a hunger strike or do any [kind of protest]. The place for all this is the parliament. The parliament is the venue for such [complaints]. They are currently acting like servants of the terrorist organization."

Cizre is one of the towns at the center of counter-terrorism operations as security forces attempt to dislodge PKK terrorists.

Erdogan said ambulances are stationed in secure zones within 1,000 meters (1,100 yards) of the scene of fighting and claimed the terrorist organization PKK refused to take the injured to the ambulances, instead calling for medical teams to come into areas where they would be at risk.

"As you know, similar things happened before," the president said. "An ambulance driver was martyred. Then a nurse and a doctor were wounded."

Last September, an ambulance driver was killed and paramedics kidnapped while trying to help wounded security personnel during a terrorist attack in Sirnak, the province where Cizre is located.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu previously rejected the ambulance claims, saying that security forces and medical teams were striving to serve the local population despite the terrorist organization PKK shelling ambulances.

The PKK - also considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU - resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in late July 2015. Since then, more than 240 members of the security forces have been martyred.
The Royal Bank of Scotlandthis month provided investors with disturbing advice: "Sell everything."

The strategists at RBS are predicting what they call a "cataclysmic year" and they're advising investors to run -- not walk -- for the exits. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo predicted this month that China would continue to cast a deep shadow over the global economy, and Citigroup economists say the cumulative probability of a full-blown recession in 2016 is 65%.

Make no mistake: These warnings come from mainstream analysts, not the usual gang of alarmists on the fringe. If these predictions are even partly correct, several fundamentally flawed but overvalued stocks will collapse.

If you're more concerned right now about return of capital (as opposed to return on capital), you should be asking this question: If markets crash this year and a recession ensues, how safe are the banks?

About 650 banks failed in the immediate wake of the 1929 stock market crash. The number would rise to 1,300 in the following year, adding to the climate of fear in America.

The Great Recession of 2008-2009, which was the worst downturn since the 1930s, saw its share of bank failures as well. Now that the recession is over and the financial services industry is considerably stronger, you might be tempted to think that bank failures are a thing of the past.

Think again. As this chart shows, banks fail all the time, in any given year. But thanks to the efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt more than 80 years ago, protections are in place.

At the instigation of FDR, Congress in June 1933 created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insured customer deposits up to $5,000. Today, that FDIC limit stands at $250,000.

If your bank has failed, don't panic. Since the laissez-faire era that led up to the Great Depression, a complex safety net has evolved over the decades to protect consumers.

The FDIC coverage limit applies to each depositor at each insured bank. For the average retail bank customer, this means the total sum of a single account is completely covered up to $250,000 at each bank. The FDIC defines a single account as checking, savings and CD deposits. Other categories of accounts, such as trusts, joint accounts and retirement accounts each benefit from their own separate $250,000 limits at each bank.

Once a bank has more debts than assets, it's insolvent and therefore qualified for seizure by the FDIC. The FDIC can "sell" the failed bank to a solvent one, by auctioning the bank's assets and liabilities, or it can liquidate the failed bank by breaking up the assets, selling them off in chunks, and then paying depositors from the proceeds.

If depositors are still owed money, the FDIC makes up the difference from it own financial reserves, which derive from premiums the agency imposes on banks in return for the insurance.

If your bank fails, you'll receive an official notice from the FDIC that your bank is closing its doors and your deposit accounts will be shut down. About a week or so after the notice, you'll get a check from the FDIC for your insured money. It's a far cry from the frightening "bank runs" of the 1930s.

Once your bank is shuttered for good, its ATMs will stop working and your check, debit and credit cards with the bank will be inoperable. Any checks that haven't cleared will be returned to you, stamped with the words "Bank Closed."

Know that your loans, mortgages and credit accounts will definitely find a buyer. In the world of banking, debts are regarded as valuable assets and they don't vanish just because the originating bank has.

Don't make a common mistake, which is to blow off your debts and regular payments, just because stocks have tanked and your bank has closed. Rest assured, other people are keeping a close eye on what you owe, so stay on top of your payments. The new owners of your debt will soon contact you with details.

Here's what to look for:

Installment Loans, Such as Mortgages

Your mortgage loan remains in effect with existing balances and original terms intact, but with the new controlling bank now servicing it. Under federal regulations, the new owners have 15 days to notify you.

The bank ownership change won't affect your interest rate and terms of payment, but the name of the payee and the payee's address probably will change. Whether you use digital banking or mail paper checks via the postal service, make sure that you send the payments to the correct destination, with checks made out to the correct entity.

Federal law mandates a 60-day grace period after the transfer of bank ownership during which you can't be charged a late fee by the bank if you mistakenly send a mortgage payment to a wrong address or online destination.

Checking and Savings Accounts

Interest rates, fees and terms can all change. Scrutinize minimum required balances -- maybe your old bank didn't require them or they were low and now your new bank isn't so generous. Don't take anything for granted. If you don't like what you see, then shop around for a new bank.

Revolving Credit, Such as Credit Cards

Unlike your installment loans, the terms of which are nailed down, your new bank can change just about all aspects of your credit cards and lines of credit -- the whole gamut can be dramatically transformed, including interest rate, credit limit, due date, fees and grace period.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is warning investors that we face a "cataclysmic year." If this dire prediction comes to pass, you need to be forewarned about a certain group of weak stocks that are the worst places for your money today. In a market crash, you don't want to be left holding the bag. Click here now for a free report that lists these dangerous stocks, so you can either avoid or sell them now.

John Persinos is editorial manager and investment analyst at Investing Daily. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Once again United (UAL) will use the world's most advanced airplanes on one of commercial aviation's most aspirational routes from what is now the most important developing U.S. hub.

Starting June 1, United will fly the Boeing (BA) 787-9, the upgraded Dreamliner model, from San Francisco International Airport to Singapore. At 8,446 miles, the route will be the longest 787 route in the world as well as the longest scheduled flight by any U.S. carrier.

The flight will take 16 hours and 20 minutes westbound and 15 hours and 30 minutes eastbound.

Aspirational network planners "dream about services like this and wish we had the airplanes to do it," said Brian Znotins, United vice president of network. "So when we reach the confluence of an airplane with range capability and can fly the only non-stop from North America to Singapore, we will jump at that."

As a test of new frontiers in aviation, the SFO-Singapore flight compares with the SFO-Chengdu flight United began in June 2014, using a 787-8.

That was the first non-stop commercial flight ever from North America into the interior of China, and it was also enabled by the 787, because previously a bigger airplane was required to carry sufficient fuel. But a bigger airplane would have been too big for a new route.

When it started, the 6,857 mile SFO-Chengdu flight was the longest 787 flight to operate non-stop in both directions.

Boeing introduced the 787-8 in 2011; United partner All Nippon Airways flew the first flight. United put 219 seats on the aircraft, which has a range of 8,458 statute miles.

Boeing delivered the first 787-9 in July 2014 to Air New Zealand, but ANA moved more quickly and flew the first commercial flight. United put 252 seats in its 787-9, which has a range of 8,786 miles.

Boeing has now delivered 366 Dreamliners, including 74 of the 787-9. On the Boeing earnings call Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Greg Smith said, "As planned, 787-9 deliveries will notably exceed 787-8 deliveries in 2016."

United is putting the airplane together with its San Francisco hub in one of the U.S. airline industry's most dramatic hub buildups ever, recalling Continental's buildup of Newark as a trans-Atlantic hub and Delta's bankruptcy buildup of Atlanta as an international hub and not just a place to connect to Florida.



"San Francisco has replaced Narita" in Tokyo as the airport where U.S.-Asia passengers make connections," Znotins said. "San Francisco has long been a Pacific hub, but 20 years ago you flew to Tokyo and you went beyond. But {(U.S.} passengers want to fly non-stop from the U.S."

In San Francisco, United has 268 daily departures to 92 destinations. The 20 international destinations include nine in Asia (three in China plus Hong Kong and Seoul) five in Latin America and four in Europe and five in Canada.

When Singapore and Xi'an are added, United will fly 787s from SFO to nine cities, including Sydney, Chengdu, Houston, Osaka, Taipei, Tel Aviv and Tokyo Haneda. Both Beijing and Shanghai are served with 747s. In July, Auckland will become the 10th 787 destination.

At one time, Singapore Airlines flew non-stop from Singapore to both Newark and Los Angeles using an Airbus A340. Both flights were discontinued in 2013, partially because the four-engine aircraft was a gas guzzler.

At 9,534 miles, the 18-and-a-half Singapore-Newark flight was the longest in the world. Singapore plans to restart the route in 2018 using the Airbus A350.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
The Republican presidential candidates debated was without Donald Trump Thursday, and everyone made it through just fine.

The absence of the bombastic billionaire made for a more substantive, albeit slightly tamer, event. And although Trump was gone, he was not forgotten.

Ahead of his veterans rally, held in parallel with the Fox News debate, Trump sat down for an interview with CNN. He denied suspicions that he was skipping the official event in attempt to avoid answering hard questions. When asked if that was the case, he replied, "Not at all." He insisted he has nothing to hide and emphasized, "I've done more interviews than anybody."

Whatever his motivations, Trump's absence made a notable difference in Thursday's seventh Republican presidential debate -- the last before Iowans caucus on Monday.

In case you sat this one out, here are five moments that stood out.

1. Trump's Absence Trips Ted Up

No one missed Trump more Thursday night than Ted Cruz -- or at least he should have. It turns out the Texas senator who is running second in the polls in Iowa and nationally does best as a foil to the Donald.

Cruz started strong when moderator Megyn Kelly asked him to address the "elephant not in the room" and channeled Trump with a joke. "I am a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly," he said. "Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way."

It may have been his best moment of the night.

He fielded attacks from a number of his fellow contenders during the evening, at one point even complaining that questions were encouraging others to talk about him. "If you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage," he threatened.

Moderator Chris Wallace pushed back against his complaints telling him, "This is a debate, sir."

Marco Rubio responded to Cruz's Trump-esque threat as well. "Don't worry, I'm not leaving the stage no matter what you ask me," he said.

2. Fox Pulls Out Video Evidence on Immigration

Trump isn't the only Republican candidate Fox News is playing hardball with -- it's getting tough on all the contenders. And on Thursday, it utilized a new tactic: video.

Moderators played videos of past interviews and statements from both Rubio and Cruz, featuring them taking contradictory stances to those they claim to have today on immigration.

They featured interviews with Florida Senator Rubio from 2009 and 2010 in which he said he would never support amnesty. Just a couple of years later, he was part of the Gang of Eight, proposing comprehensive immigration reform. His response: "I do not support blanket amnesty." He went on to outline his current plan on immigration.

Fox also cited an amendment proposed by Cruz for the Gang of Eight bill, which the Texas senator has on the campaign trail tried to sell as a "poison pill." Video shows him touting the amendment, not treating it as a bill-killer.

"The amendment is 38 words," he said Thursday, defending his past actions. "I introduced a series of amendments, each designed to fix problems in the bill."

Rand Paul shot back, explaining that he had been in the Senate when the bill was being debated and jumping at the opportunity to attack Cruz's character. "It's a falseness, and that's an authenticity problem," he said.

3. Jeb! Makes the Case for Jeb

This election season has been tough on Jeb Bush, and he has struggled to make a splash in debates. Thursday, he turned in, arguably, his best performance yet.

Moderators at times questioned the former Florida governor's decision to remain in the race despite poor poll numbers. "We're just starting," he said. "Why don't we let the process work?"

He also touched on the criticism that he is too closely tied to the Republican establishment "I guess I'm part of the establishment because Barbara Bush is my mom," he said, reminding viewers that the election isn't about pedigree. He also called his father the greatest man alive.

He had a quip prepared on Trump as well. "I kind of miss Donald Trump, he was a little teddy bear to me," he said.

Perhaps Bush's strongest moments of the evening came on the issue of immigration. He espoused a welcoming, open attitude and stuck to his guns against a GOP whose rhetoric has been hyper anti-immigrant as of late.

"We should be a welcoming nation," he said, adding that America's identity is not based on race or ethnicity. "You can deal with the threat of terror and also recognize that in this country you can be aspirational across the board."

4. Rand Makes a Comeback

"Thanks for having me, it's great to be back," Kentucky Senator Paul said at the close of the debate. He clawed his way onto the primetime stage after skipping the last debate in protest of being relegated to the undercard event, and, on Thursday, he came ready for a fight.

The libertarian Paul discussed a wide range of issues throughout the evening, from the NSA to prison reform to Syria. In fact, the first part of the debate largely appeared a conversation between Rubio, Cruz and Paul.

Ben Carson, on the other hand, faded deeper into the background. At some moments, it was easy to forget he was there. At others, his words were indecipherable -- like when he described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "one-horse country...oil."

He also gave an awkward closing statement, reciting the preamble to the Constitution and closing with, "Folks, it's not too late, enough said."

5. Jim Gilmore Makes First Appearance in Iowa

No one puts Baby in a corner, or skips over Jim Gilmore. The former Virginia governor, who made only his second debate appearance this election cycle, made an ominous interjection in the undercard event. "Hey, did you miss me? Did you skip me?" he said.

He also attacked the moderators and the media for overlooking him on numerous occasions.

Thursday marked the former Virginia governor's second appearance on the debate stage, and he made his best efforts to make a splash in the undercard event.

Gilmore had a tough case to make, especially when debate moderators noted that Thursday was his first appearance in Iowa. "This is not the place where I'm choosing to begin my campaign," he said, explaining that he has instead chosen to focus on New Hampshire.

The only military veteran in the presidential race, he came armed with Trump-targeted attacks. He said he wouldn't be attending the billionaire's parallel event on "some sort of faux veterans issue," taking a swipe at Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, both of whom were scheduled to attend.
China plans to construct more nuclear reactors to provide energy for the country. (Photo : Reuters)

The Chinese government is planning to form a national nuclear emergency response task force that will be in charge of handling any serious accidents, as well as take part in overseas operations, reported China Daily.



Advertisement

According to Xu Dazhe, head of the China Atomic Energy Authority, the task force will be made up of 320 professionals and will work with the existing 25 nuclear emergency teams in order to conduct search and rescue operations in case of a nuclear accident.



The 25 teams have over 1,300 personnel.



China has eight technical support centers and three training bases involved in nuclear emergency response efforts, according to Xu.



Aside from increasing staffing levels, China is also drafting laws that deal with nuclear energy and nuclear security.



Xu made the remarks during a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday that marked the release of a white paper entitled "China's Nuclear Emergency Preparedness." The white paper is considered the first of its kind in the country.



The State Council Information Office hosted the press conference.



China currently has 30 reactors in operation with an installed capacity of 28.3 gigawatts. According to the China Atomic Energy Authority, another 24 are under construction.



China began building its first nuclear power station in 1985.



Currently, around 2 percent of China's electricity generation is provided by nuclear power, according to the China Electricity Council.



Xu said that in 2015, eight reactors became operational and work started on six new reactors.



The government is currently considering constructing offshore nuclear power plants, but only if under completely safe conditions, said Xu. He added that a "careful and scientific" feasibility review will be carried out before a decision can be made.



The government has placed great importance to nuclear safety and emergency response since the country established its nuclear industry in the 1950s.



The State Council set up a national committee to handle any nuclear emergencies in 1991.



In 1997, the government issued a national nuclear emergency plan and has revised it several times since then. The latest revision was made in June 2013.



In 2009 and 2015, national nuclear emergency response drills were organized. Xu said that a third will be staged soon.


With sales of 10.15 million vehicles in 2015, Japan's Toyota Motor (TM) has managed to keep its position as the world's top-selling automaker for the fourth consecutive year.

Not only did this figure surpass the 9.93 million vehicles sold by Volkswagen and the 9.8 million sold by General Motors, it even beat Toyota's own forecast for 10.098 million vehicles for the year.

TM data by YCharts

Some investors do not expect the automaker to see the same level of success in the future, however. Their reasons include diminishing positive effects of the weaker yen and disappointing sales in emerging markets and lukewarm response to new IMV vehicles launched for emerging markets, including sales of the new IMV vehicles.

But Toyota is preparing to align itself with an automobile market characterized by a switch to hybrid vehicles and artificial intelligence. We'll explain why it's a smart move to invest in Toyota, which is among a select group of momentum stocks that look strong despite the overall market's dicey prospects in the year ahead.

To lower manufacturing and development costs, Toyota has introduced Toyota New Global Architecture. Taking this approach involves using, as much as possible, common parts and platforms for developing several models.

With lower costs and more easily available resources, Toyota will be better equipped to build lighter, more fuel-efficient, and technologically rich cars.

By 2020, Toyota plans to move half of all its vehicles to the new cost-saving platforms. As an investor, you should always look for companies with competitive advantages, as exemplified by Toyota's New Global Architecture.

To equip itself better to compete in emerging markets, Toyota will likely make minivan manufacturer Daihatsu a wholly owned subsidiary. Right now Toyota has a 51.2% stake in the company. Daihatsu's low-cost production technology will be of immense importance to Toyota, which has a small 5% market share in emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China. Toyota will be able to better compete with rivals Volkswagen and General Motors, which are gaining ground in these markets. By taking full control of Daihatsu, Toyota can also standardize parts that had otherwise been separately sourced.

Owing to a weaker yen, Toyota's operating profit has been propped up by 115 billion yen this fiscal year. A weaker yen compared to the dollar translates to more earnings when converted to the home currency.

Toyota is putting these windfall gains to good use for the company's future by investing in research and development initiatives ranging from fuel cells to artificial intelligence to self-driving technology. The companies with the best long-term prospects are those that steadily invest in R&D.

Toyota is investing $1 billion to set up an institute in Silicon Valley that conducts research into artificial intelligence, according to the Financial Times, and by 2020, Toyota hopes to sell vehicles that will automatically change lanes on highways.

At the recently held Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toyota announced its initiatives for smartphone-connected cars and incorporating data communications and artificial intelligence in its vehicles.

For smartphone app services, Toyota has said that it would collaborate with Ford Motor and tech company Livio to install the Livio SmartDeviceLink in its cars.

Toyota decided to give a pass to similar services such as Apple's CarPlay and Alphabet's Android Auto to gain greater control over safety-related issues relating to apps.

Toyota has already established itself as the top-selling automaker, but with all its forward-thinking initiatives, it is also evident that Toyota is equipped to provide answers to an evolving automobile market.

With Volkswagen still coming to terms with its emission scandal, GM no longer using Indonesia for production, and Ford shutting international operations in Indonesia and Japan, citing profitability and competition as issues, Toyota seems to be the one auto stock that will deliver yet again.

As we've just explained, Toyota has momentum on its side. I've also found a small-cap tech stock that has the potential to surge 100% or more in the coming months. This is a growth story with major momentum, so it's important to learn the full details as soon as possible. The stock is trading at under $8 a share, and its long-term prospects have never been better, making it a great value. I expect this rocket could take off soon, so be sure to click here now and learn more.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
The list price for Merck's (MRK) newly approved hepatitis C drug is significantly lower than competing therapies offered by Gilead Sciences (GILD) and Abbvie (ABBV) , which means a new price war could be heating up.

On Thursday night, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Zepatier, a single, daily pill combining two medicines to treat two different forms of hepatitis C. Merck said the list, or gross, price for Zepatier (ZEH-pa-teer) will be $54,600 for a 12-week regimen.

The price of Merck's drug is 32% lower than Gilead's Harvoni, which has a blended sticker price of $80,000 for eight and 12-week regimens. The list price of Abbvie's Viekira Pak is $83,000 for 12 weeks.

"We expect this price -- as well as our comprehensive access strategy to seek broad coverage across commercial and public segments -- will help broaden and accelerate patient access to treatment," said Merck spokesperson Pam Eisele.

Merck wouldn't mind bringing home billions of dollars in new revenue from Zepatier as well, which is the real reason behind the decision to undercut Gilead and Abbvie on price.

There's a lot at stake here. Gilead's two hepatitis C drugs, Sovaldi and Harvoni, dominate the market currently. Together, the two drugs are expected to deliver approximately $18 billion in sales to Gilead in 2015. (The company reports 2015 earnings next week.)

Gilead's hepatitis C business has thrived despite tons of criticism about the high price of its drugs (most recently this week from the Massachusetts Attorney General) and despite efforts by Abbvie to negotiate exclusive, discounted access deals with some major insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers like Express Scripts.

Merck's Zepatier list price of $54,600 might look like a bargain and win praise from politicians, but it's also a bit misleading because almost no one pays the list price. A car dealer might try to sell you a new model for the sticker price of $29,999 but an educated buyer almost always drives away in his new car purchased at a negotiated, discount price.

The same goes for hepatitis C drugs. The list price of Gilead's Harvoni is $80,000 but insurance companies and government healthcare providers like Medicaid get discounts. The real, or net, price of Harvoni is 40-50% lower than the list price, Gilead has said.

Merck may also be compelled to offer similar discounts to win Zepatier customers.

"What I can tell you is that while we believe our list price is in the range of current net pricing in this market, we plan to be competitive in all segments of the market," said Merck spokesperson Eisele.

Whatever the actual, net price of Zepatier turns out to be, Merck's willingness to set a deeply discounted list price could pressure Gilead and Abbvie to lower the net prices of their competing hepatitis C drugs. This would be a dramatic, table-turning event for biotech and pharma because historically, companies have not competed on price.

It remains to be seen if price competition in hepatitis C bleeds into other disease areas. There's good reason to believe it won't just yet. All these new hepatitis C drugs cure nearly all patients in eight or 12 weeks. That means Gilead, Abbvie and now Merck are in a race to treat as many hepatitis C patients with their drugs before the pool of treatable patients runs out.

There is no race to patient zero in other highly competitive diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis because current drugs like Humira from Abbvie or Tecfidera, sold by Biogen, are not curative. Patients stay on these drugs for years as chronic therapy, so there's less incentive for companies to compete on price. They all benefit by keeping drug prices higher.

One more reason could be behind Zepatier's lower price, not mentioned by Merck: The drug may not be as effective or convenient as Gilead's Harvoni. The FDA label for Zepatier recommends doctors screen genotype 1a hepatitis C patients for mutations in the virus, which if present, lower the drug's cure rate. This genetic testing is not routinely done for hepatitis C patients today and is not included in the Harvoni or Viekira Pak labels.

The Zapatier label also recommends doctors test patients treated for elevated liver enzyme levels, a potential negative side effect. Viekira Pak's label also includes a recommendation for liver monitoring but Harvoni's does not.

Adam Feuerstein writes regularly for TheStreet. In keeping with company editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks, although he owns stock in TheStreet. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Feuerstein appreciates your feedback; click here to send him an email.
KaloBios Pharmaceuticalsundefined wants permission to pay out employee bonuses as it works to distance itself from former CEO Martin Shkreli.

The San Francisco biopharmaceutical company on Feb. 16 is set to appear before Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in Wilmington to request permission to make the payouts.

In a Tuesday, Jan. 26, motion, the debtor sought authority to implement a key employee retention plan that would pay eight workers up to $378,000 in bonuses over the next year. KaloBios said that given the highly competitive nature of its industry and the well-publicized ousting of Shkreli from the company, the bonuses are necessary.

"The debtor believes that this employee bonus plan is necessary given the extraordinary demands and stress being placed on the debtor's employees as a result of recent events and the debtor's restructuring effort," the motion said. "Further, although relatively modest, the program sends the appropriate signals of confidence and appreciation to the debtor's employees and is designed to incentivize the debtor's employees to remain with the debtor during this challenging period."

KaloBios did not identify the employees that would be subject to the bonus plan. The company, however, noted none of its employees are affiliated with Shkreli or his Turing Pharmaceuticals and said none of the payments would go to him or his family members.

Selber on Jan. 12 gave KaloBios permission to continue certain employee programs and pay prepetition obligations related to paid time off and business expenses.

The company submitted its Chapter 11 petition on Dec. 29.

KaloBios, which focuses on developing cancer treatments, blamed its filing on a number of disruptive events that have hampered its ability to address its liquidity concerns and implement an out-of-court restructuring. Among those disruptive events was Shkreli's Dec. 17 arrest -- and the subsequent negative publicity -- which the company feels distracted it from an out-of-court restructuring effort that included slashing its workforce by 61% in November.

"The debtor intends to make use of the breathing spell afforded it by the imposition of the automatic stay to further evaluate its strategic alternatives with input from its various stakeholders and to develop and implement a revised restructuring plan," the company said in a Dec. 29 court filing.

Shkreli and others acquired 70% of KaloBios after it announced in November that one of its key drugs failed in a crucial trial. Shkreli was tapped to be CEO on Nov. 19.

Before the investment, KaloBios had been struggling. In an Aug. 10 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, KaloBios said its lack of revenue and operating losses raised substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

The FBI arrested Shkreli for wire and securities conspiracy and securities fraud in connection withRetrophin (RTRX) , a biopharma company he founded, at his midtown Manhattan apartment on Dec. 17 after a seven-count indictment was unsealed.

Following Shkreli's arrest, Nasdaq suspended trading in KaloBios' stock, freezing shares at $23.59. (On Dec. 29, the company announced that it had appealed a delisting one day earlier. A hearing on the appeal is set for Feb. 25.)

KaloBios said Shkreli had resigned from its board, along with Tony Chase, who gained a seat in the takeover, on Dec. 21. David Moradi and Marek Biestek were appointed at the same time as Shkreli and Chase, but the company made no announcement about them. Moradi is associated with hedge fund Anthion Partners, and an Anthion vehicle is an investor in KaloBios as well. Moradi and Anthion hold a nearly 14% stake in KaloBios.

In the SEC's Dec. 17 civil complaint against Shkreli, his now-defunct hedge funds MSNB Capital Management and MSNB Healthcare, and Evan Greebel, the agency alleged Shkreli misappropriated $120,000 from Retrophin for his own use and to make payments to disgruntled MSNB investors.

Following his arrest, Shkreli resigned as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, another privately held biotechnology company that he founded. In September, controversy swirled around Shkreli when Turing raised the price of Daraprim, a treatment for parasitic infection and a drug used by some AIDS patients, from $13.50 a pill to $750 after acquiring the 62-year-old drug in August.

Two congressional investigations are under way over price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry, including the repricing of Daraprim.

In its petition, KaloBios reported $8.37 million in assets and $1.94 million in liabilities.
Editors' Pick: Originally published Jan. 29.

In early 1992, shares of Office Depot (ODP) traded for over $50 a share. No one knew it at the time, but that would be Office Depot stock's all time high.

Fast forward 24 years to today -- Office Depot stock is now trading for around $5 a share and is part of a group of distressed and "Stressed Out" stocks that TheStreet will be monitoring through these choppy markets. The company has lost around 90% of its value over the last 24 years.

Could the once-great retailer go the way of another former powerhouse, RadioShack? It's possible.

Despite massive declines over the last two decades, wealth destruction at Office Depot is likely not over.

Shares of Office Depot peaked in 1992, but they didn't lose the bulk of their value until the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

ODP

data by

YCharts

In June of 2008, shares of Office Depot were trading for around $35 per share. By October of 2008 (just five months later), shares of Office Depot were trading for around $5 -- the same level they are at today. While some stocks are recession-proof thanks to strong competitive advantages in stable industries, Office Depot is not one of them:

2007 earnings-per-share of $1.43

2008 earnings-per-share of negative $0.88

2009 earnings-per-share of negative $0.90

2010 earnings-per-share of negative $0.12

Office Depot did not return to profitability until 2014; it took the company half a decade to recover from the last recession.

The company suffers during recessions because its larger corporate clients slash spending -- resulting in falling revenues and earnings for Office Depot. Consumers and small businesses also cut back on purchasing office supplies during difficult times.

Office Depot's business is far more reliant on its sales force which makes deals with businesses and the government than one would expect. In total, 41% of Office Depot's operating income comes from its business solutions division -- not its retail operations.

Long-Term Decline

Office Depot's long-term decline is due to changes in the office supply industry.

The company has to compete with deep discount big-box stores like Walmart, Target, and Costco -- all of which have a price advantage over Office Depot. The company also has to compete with online retail giants Amazon and (to a lesser extent) Walmart's online operations. On top of this, Office Depot is competing with Staples for office supply sales both online and in store.

Office Depot is simply the weakest of any of the major players in its industry.

Speaking of the industry, the office supplies industry is changing rapidly. Printer and ink sales are down -- which used to drive traffic to Office Depot. The change toward digital and electronic products in work environments is a net negative for Office Depot. These goods can be easily purchased elsewhere; either online or in big box electronic stores like Best Buy.

The factors that are pushing Office Depot closer to its corporate grave are surely not stopping. They aren't even slowing.

If You Can't Beat Them...

Office Depot and Staples are planning to merge. Note that Office Depot already owns Office Max. The merger would create an office supply company with about 70% market share in North America -- it it ever happens.

The time the deal has to get finalized has been extended by Office Depot and Staples to May 16, 2016. The reason the deal had to be extended is because the Federal Trade Commission has raised litigation to block the merger.

At this point, it is unlikely that a merger between Office Depot and Staples occurs due to the combined company having too large a market share.

A similar ruling recently killed a deal betweenSysco and U.S. Foods -- who were Nos. 1 and 2 in their respective markets; just like Staples and Office Depot.

Office Depot Is Cheap for a Reason

Office Depot is currently trading for a forward price-to-earnings ratio of just 9.

The company appears cheap at current prices and as Warren Buffett says:

"Price is what you pay, value is what you get"

(Click here to see 17 of Warren Buffett's best quotes analyzed.)

There is not much value left in Office Depot. Long-term declines have greatly diminished this once-strong stock.

Further, Office Depot's performance during the last recession shows the company cannot handle recessions. The company has triple the long-term debt it had during the last recession.

When the next recession hits (and we could already be in the early stages), Office Depot could very well go the way of RadioShack and close its doors permanently.

For more articles on distressed stocks to avoid, read Real Money's "Stressed Out" stocks coverage. You can find more information on the index here.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author is long WMT.
2015 was the year of the FANG stock, a term coined by TheStreet's Jim Cramer to denote a group of powerful Internet stocks. This group of tech giants -- Facebook (FB) , Amazon (AMZN) , Netflix (NFLX) , and Google (now under parent company Alphabet) (GOOG) -- delivered outstanding returns last year, despite a mostly flat performance by the overall S&P 500. Is 2016 shaping up to be another banner year for these trendy tech companies? Or have the FANG stocks lost their bite in 2016?

While the S&P ended the year down around 1%, the four FANGs averaged yearly returns of 83% among themselves. They were among the top 10 performers on the index, with Netflix leading the way with 134% gains. Amazon also came in with triple-digit gains, 118%. And Alphabet and Facebook showed steady, market-beating returns of 47% and 34%, respectively.

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However, the first two weeks of 2016 proved not so rosy. Only Netflix outperformed the plunging S&P, but with losses of more than 2.5%. The other three stocks fell into the worst-performing half of the index, with Amazon's 10% loss placing it among the S&P's bottom 75.

With such a lousy start to the year, it looked as if the heady days of FANG optimism were coming to a quick close. As the overall markets spiraled toward a bear market, the stock market "saviors" of 2015 looked more likely to drag it down.

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However, earnings season has now hit full swing, and the FANG stocks are looking like a mixed bag. While they won't be the worst performers for 2016, these Internet stocks won't be the darlings of Wall Street, either.

Netflix missed on revenue (delivering $1.82 billion rather than the $1.83 billion expected), but won big-time with earnings-per-share of 10 cents, compared with the 2 cents analysts had forecast. The video-streaming company is still down since the beginning of the year.

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Amazon, the other triple-digit winner for 2015, widely missed on its earnings expectations this week, posting earnings per share of $1, versus the expected consensus estimate of $1.56. Its stock fell as much as 15% in after-hours trading yesterday.

So far the biggest positive light has been Facebook, whose surprise fourth-quarter results sent shares shooting up 15% on Thursday. The company announced estimate-beating revenue and earnings. Year over year, revenue increased 44%, to $17.93 billion, for all of 2015. Along with other stocks in the tech sector, Facebook's announcements lifted its fellow FANG stocks -- after the closing bell yesterday, Amazon gained nearly 4%, Netflix jumped by 2.5%, and Alphabet rose by nearly 2.7%.

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On Monday, Alphabet will reveal its quarterly results, and we'll wait with baited breath to see how the tech giant's stock will react. With a market value of $515 billion, Alphabet is on pace to oust Apple as the world's most valuable company.

Even the best possible news out of Alphabet, however, won't keep FANG at the top of the charts. In fact, based on the disappointing results from Amazon and Netflix, it appears that the band is breaking up. Facebook and Alphabet, which had been the group's lesser performers in 2015 -- are poised to be market leaders for 2016, leaving Amazon and Netflix in the dust.

If you're looking for new ideas, I've found a small company that has the potential to surge at least 100% in 2016. This is a growth story with major momentum, so it's important to learn the full details as soon as possible inside my free report. The stock is trading under $8 a share, and its long-term prospects have never been better, making it a great value at today's price. Make sure you click here now to learn more.

You see Jim Cramer on TV. Now, see where he invests his money and why Facebook stock is a core holding of his multi-million dollar portfolio. Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells FB? Learn more now.



This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Farmers stack cotton at a cotton purchase station in Hami, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in this Nov. 3, 2010 photo. (Photo : Reuters)

The agriculture industry and the vast Chinese population have great potential for economic growth, crucial in improving the countrys slow economy. Analysts revealed this on Wednesday, Jan. 27, after the release of a major document aimed at modernizing the sector and enhancing farmers' well-being.



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Based on the annual "No. 1 document" unveiled by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, implementation of reforms to modernize the agricultural sector and improving farmers' well-being will be top priority for the government.



The document, published by the Xinhua News Agency, outlines key issues the sector faces, and provides reforms and measures to tackle the problems.



According to the publication, quickly giving farmers higher and stable income, urgently changing the conventional agricultural development path to provide an ample supply of agricultural products, and enhancing the sector's competitiveness in the international market are "historic tasks and realistic challenges" that must be completed and resolved.



According to the Global Times, the associate dean of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the Renmin University of China, Zheng Fengtian, said that the government's move to improve the sector through modernization and increased farmers' income could help boost China's economy.



Furthermore, modernization of the agricultural sector could help farmers reduce production expenses and improve the quality of agricultural products, which in turn could improve market competitiveness.



Zheng said, "We all know there is a vast market for agricultural products in China."



It is evident that high production costs and backward capacity in China's agricultural sector are affecting its competitiveness negatively. Chinese consumers are increasingly turning to imported products because of the lower price/quality ration of local agricultural products.



Furthermore, Wang Sangui, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development in Renmin University, said that the vast rural population could be a major consumer market.



Wang said, "If farmers have money to spend, it's not only good for their well-being but for the national economy as well."


NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Axiall Corp. (AXLL) are soaring by 83.52% to $17.99 on heavy volume in early afternoon trading on Friday, as the company rejected a $1.4 billion cash-and-stock takeover offer from Westlake Chemical Corp. (WLK).

Atlanta-based Axiall is a manufacturer and international marketer of chemicals and building products.

Westlake offered $20 per share, comprised of $11 in cash and 0.1967 of its stock, to acquire all outstanding Axiall shares, according to a company statement today.

The proposal represents a premium of more than 100% to Axiall's closing share price as of January 22.

Axiall "summarily" rejected the offer and said it preferred to pursue a standalone strategic plan, Westlake added.

"In this challenging environment, we believe Axiall's unwillingness to even discuss our compelling proposal exposes its shareholders to significant risk and uncertainty," Westlake CEO Albert Chao said in a statement.

Houston-based Westlake is a manufacturer and marketer of basic chemicals, vinyls, polymers and fabricated building products.

About 8.39 million of Axiall's shares traded hands by this afternoon, well above its average volume of 1.66 million shares per day.

Shares of Westlake are dropping by 6.36% to $43.61 on Friday afternoon.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Sell" rating with a score of D on the stock.

This is driven by a number of negative factors, which should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks covered by the team.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, poor profit margins, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: AXLL

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Missing the deadline to purchase health insurance does not mean consumers have to forego coverage for nearly a year until the next open enrollment season starts.

Short-term health insurance plans are one method to manage not having health coverage. After all, one trip to the ER can be an expensive one that can set you back for months or longer since unpaid medical bills is one of the top reasons consumers file for bankruptcy.

Although neither short-term, accident or critical illness insurance will meet the requirement for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act and consumers are still subject to the tax penalty for being uninsured for two consecutive months or longer, these plans will put a cap on your financial liabilities, said Nate Purpura, vice president of consumer affairs at eHealth.com, an online health insurance exchange based in Mountain View, Calif. There are many qualifying life events that could make you eligible for buying health insurance under the special enrollment period such as moving to another state, getting married or divorced or turning 26 and aging out of your parents plan.

The short-term plans usually do not include coverage for preventive care like an annual physical or pre-existing medical conditions or prescription drugs. They can be a good option so that your expenses do not wind up unsurmountable in case you are injured or wind up sick.

The short-term plans are often significantly more affordable than standard health insurance plans, he said. The monthly premiums can range from $50 to $150.

The coverage typically does not last longer than 6 to 12 months, but you can usually apply again at the end of that period. While this option can serve as a backup plan, also ask your doctor for their cash value of a visit, which is often affordable if you need a checkup or have a minor illness.

Six states currently do not allow the sale of short-term insurance  Minnesota, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Maryland, said Noah Lang, CEO of Stride Health, the San Francisco health insurance exchange company. Other states such as California limit the length of the policy and consumers can only be covered for up to six months.

Accident insurance is designed to help consumers if they have a qualifying injury. The money is paid directly to consumers rather than to the doctor, which means you can do what you want with the payout such as paying medical bills or for your rent, said Purpura.

Critical illness insurance plans work similar to accident plans because consumers receive a payment if you are diagnosed with a qualifying illness such as cancer or heart disease.

It seems like a no-brainer to simply purchase a temporary plan and use it year-round if you are young and healthy, since you can save money each month, but there are a few catches:you are still liable for the tax penalty, they do not cover any pre-existing conditions and have payout limits of usually $1 million to $2 million, said Jack Hooper, CEO of Take Command Health, an online health insurance exchange based in Dallas.

In the eyes of Obamacare, temporary insurance counts as being uninsured, meaning youre liable for penalties and taxes, he said.

The tax penalty for not having health insurance coverage rose for 2016 and now consumers are liable for $695 or 2.5% of their income, whichever is greater.



When You Qualify for Special Enrollment

The deadline for consumers to purchase insurance under the Affordable Care Act is January 31, but many circumstances and life events qualify under special enrollment, so consumers can purchase health care coverage after the fact.

When a qualifying life event occurs, consumers trigger a 60-day special enrollment period to purchase a new health insurance plan.

The federal government this year is cracking down and making it harder to qualify for special enrollment periods, said Purpura.

In 2015, it was easy to abuse or manufacture special enrollment periods and Healthcare.gov largely relied on applicants being honest, said Hooper. Insurance companies are attempting to avoid consumers who only buying a plan when they get sick, which could in turn make it more expensive for people who buy coverage year-round.

If there were no limitations on when you could sign up for insurance, no one would purchase insurance until they were sick, he said. This would force the insurance companies to have to charge more to pay their members bills, who could just cancel as soon as they were well and then sign up again if and when it was needed.

Losing coverage from being laid off from a job is one of the legitimate reasons a person may need to purchase or change insurance during the year. Many of the reasons will require paperwork to prove the change. Some insurers require a letter from your former boss which confirms the loss of coverage with the date and the reason it occurred while other insurers will accept a letter showing eligibility for COBRA. Obtain documentation for other life changes such as a court-stamped copy of the divorce decree, copies of utility bills from both your former and the new residence, when you move to a new coverage area or adoption papers.

Some other life events do not qualify other such as if you did not have health insurance at your old address and move to a new coverage area, said Purpura. If you lost coverage because you did not make your payments, that is not an eligible reason.

Cancelling coverage under your old plan or COBRA coverage because it is too costly are not qualifying life events, he said. The loss of coverage under a short-term health insurance plan is not a qualifying life event.
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Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High 47F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

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Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 40F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph.


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Marvin Velasco, 15, practices music at his church in Los Angeles on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. With help from the son of Velasco's abusive sponsor, he escaped and sought sanctuary in this nearby church, where he met a parishioner who took him in and became his legal guardian. Now he lives with a Guatemalan immigrant family that is raising him as a son, and is thriving in school and leads the church's devotional band. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Didi Kuaidi Collaborates with China Merchants Bank; Didi Kuaidi Aims to be the Worlds Largest Online Ride-hailing Platform!

Didi and Uber, the leading rivals in the ride-hailing market of China, have announced new funding and market expansion plans, back-to-back. (Photo : YouTube)

On Tuesday, Didi Kuaidi, China's biggest ride-hailing company collaborates with China Merchants Bank (CMB), a leading Chinese private bank.



It is going to be an extensive strategic partnership which includes driver recruitment, automobile financing services, joint bank cards, in-app credit card payments and equity investments.



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This equity investment with CMB is the most recent addition to the mobile app's influential backers that already includes Alibaba, Ping An Ventures, China Investment Corporation, Tencent, CITIC Capital, China International Capital Corporation, Beijing Automotive Group and more.



Neither of the concerned parties unveiled the amount of investments. Didi Kuaidi was able to come up with a record braking three billion U.S. dollars in 2015.



President of Didi Kuaidi Jean Liu at a press conference announcing the partnership called their investment with CMB a heavyweight, as its relationship with them is strong and binding.



Liu said their partnership with CMB will enable the app to link its mobile online-to-offline and financial platforms to CMB's experience in the banking sector to create the world's biggest online ride-hailing platform.



CMB clients will be able to pay fares using their CMB credit cards. Both CMB and Didi Kuaidi will start accepting applications for credit and savings cards through Didi's app or CMB's sales channels in the second quarter of 2016.



Car owners and drivers working for Didi Kuaidi will be able to fund vehicle purchases via the bank, with payment and terms based on both companies' joint reviews. They will be sharing client information in line with its regulations.



As per data from the China Internet Network Information Center, in China alone, there are around 688 million Internet users and mostly spend their money through their handsets.



With 14 million registered drivers and more than 250 million registered app users, Didi Kuaidi will make one of the most renowned apps and online payment platform, reporting 1.43 billion rides in 2015.


In this Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 photo, a malnourished child lies in a bed waiting to receive treatment at a therapeutic feeding center in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. This child is one of millions of people across countries like Syria, Yemen and Iraq are gripped by hunger, struggling to survive with little help from the outside world. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)
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By Steven Aftergood

Secrecy News

1-19-16









The Department of Defense is organizing itself to address the effects of climate change on the U.S. military, some of which are already being felt.The DoD must be able to adapt current and future operations to address the impacts of climate change in order to maintain an effective and efficient U.S. military, according to a Pentagon directive that was issued last week. See Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience , DoD Directive 4715.21, January 14, 2016.Among other things, the new directive requires the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and the Director of National Intelligence to coordinate on risks, potential impacts, considerations, vulnerabilities, and effects [on defense intelligence programs] of altered operating environments related to climate change and environmental monitoring.The Department of Defense sees climate change as a present security threat, not strictly a long-term risk, DoD said last year in a report to Congress.We are already observing the impacts of climate change in shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities, including in the United States, and in the Arctic, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America. Although DoD and the Combatant Commands cannot prepare for every risk and situation, the Department is beginning to include the implications of a changing climate in its frameworks for managing operational and strategic risks prudently. See National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate, DoD report to Congress, July 2015. [...]
In June 2010, the India-Bangladesh border at Jaintia hills in Meghalaya was unusually tense after a senior officer of the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) asked his men to open fire on the Indian Border Security Force (BSF). The BSF did not retaliate because of an order from Delhi to desist from any sort of escalation. Home minister P. Chidambaram wanted peace to prevail on the border as there was an India-friendly government in power in Dhaka. There was a clear instruction to all border outposts along the 4,100-km Indo-Bangla border that the BSF would have to reduce the firing on the zero line even if they were attacked, said a senior BSF officer, who was in charge of the operation. The other side, however, did not reciprocate the sentiment of peace, he said. Although the Awami League government under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had asked the BGB not to open fire, the commanding officers on the border refused to listen.

We called up Delhi for permission to return fire as they had already fired more than 5,000 rounds. Next morning, we were told that there could be some mild retaliation. But, by then, we had suffered heavy casualties, said the officer. When the BSF officers in Shillong called up the colonel in charge of the BGB outpost, he said he would teach them a lesson. Dont expect from us what our government does for you, said the colonel. On June 24, when a peace meeting was convened, the BSF officer told his superiors that he would keep away if the BGB colonel was present. Senior army officials in Bangladesh persuaded the colonel not to attend the meeting, said the BSF officer.

Six years later, the mindset of the BGB and the Bangladesh army has not changed, although firing on the border has come down. Alarmed by a mutiny in 2009, the government had altered the structure of the BGB (then Bangladesh Rifles), giving the army more supervisory powers. Today there is no difference between the Bangladesh army and the BGB. That is why the BGB listens to the army headquarters rather than to the government, said the BSF officer. When we were there, we got the feeling that a majority of the army and the BGB were indifferent to India-Bangladesh friendship. Only a small section of the force supports the Awami League government.

Some senior pro-government army officers, in fact, expressed fear that the Bangladesh government could be brought down by radical groups with the support of a section of the army. THE WEEK has learned that the Bangladesh government has shared such an apprehension with New Delhi. The Indian Army and the pro-government officers of the Bangladesh army are working together on the issue by sharing intelligence. A team comprising members from Bangladeshs army, air force and navy visited the Indian Armys eastern command at Fort William in Kolkata on December 16 and reportedly discussed these issues. The senior officers of both sides met that day. But I have not got any such information regarding this, said Wing Commander S.S. Birdi, spokesperson for the eastern command.

But the Bangladesh government is clearly worried. Asaduzzaman Noor, Bangladesh's minister of information and culture, said the two countries were working together to ensure the stability of the Bangladesh government. Our government is working in tandem with the Indian government to offset all threats. We have agreed to defuse the activities of all terror outfits in Bangladesh, said Noor, who is known to be close to Sheikh Hasina.

THE WEEK ACCESSED a document, which revealed that terrorist outfits Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), patronised by the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI) were working in tandem with international terror outfits Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. The JMB has recently distributed an audio tape of JeM chief Masood Azhar to its cadres. Indian intelligence sources said Sahidul Alam Rahaman, head of the JMB, recently travelled to the US from Pakistan. Other top leaders of the JMB are fanned out all over the world. In a recent message, they have threatened to unleash major terror attacks in Bangladesh. Rahaman is also coordinating with the LeT and the JeM. In Bangladesh, radical forces are out to instigate the people, especially the youth, they said. These groups have recently set up a branch of the Islamic State in Bangladesh.

Major General (retired) K.K. Ganguly, an expert on Bangladesh, said the Arab world was the real financier of the JMB and the Jamaat. The JMB and other outfits have sent a number of Bangladeshi youth to Syria. They are now out to overthrow the Bangladesh government, said Ganguly.

An officer in the Indian Intelligence Bureau said the IS had radicalised a large number of people in Bangladesh. Terror outfits in Bangladesh feel that the IS tag would attract more youth. Bangladeshi sources said the IS unit was born out of several splinter groups of the Jamaat following the arrests and executions of its senior leaders for the 1971 war crimes. The IS branch, headed by a person called Mahmud Islam, has been circulating propaganda documents to prospective cadres in different parts of Bangladesh and in three districts of West BengalMalda, Murshidabad and Nadia, which have a significant Muslim population. Recently in Malda, radical Islamist forces used a remark by a Hindu right-wing activist to unleash arson and violence. They burned down the Kaliachak police station where police records of many terrorist leaders were kept. It could affect the National Investigation Agency's probe into the nexus between Kaliachaks terror network and its fake currency racket.

Graphics: Binesh Sreedharan

After the Burdwan blasts, we have seen how the JMB militants were operating deeply within India. Similarly, if the IS is successful in Bangladesh, it would be a catastrophe for the eastern part of India, said Ganguly.

AJOY ROY, father of Avijit Roy, the US-based blogger who was murdered on the streets of Dhaka, has no doubt that the IS is growing in Bangladesh. I am sure that my son was killed by terrorists who have now formed the Bangladesh branch of the Islamic State, he said. The way he was murdered, with his throat being slit, was an act of absolute cruelty. Yes, they have come and set up their units. I am sorry we have surrendered to them. We need to attack them to save ourselves, the people of Bangladesh, said Roy.

The document with THE WEEK, which is written in Bengali, quotes IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi extensively. We will have to stick to our policy of killing Muslims who are anti-Islamic. We are not at all bothered if our enemies come to fight us. In fact, it gives us strength that we are on the right direction. It called upon the people of Bangladesh to leave the country and attack it from outside.

While the Jamaat acknowledged that it was opposed to the Sheikh Hasina government, it denied the charge that it was behind the setting up of the IS branch. Said Shafiqul Rahaman, the acting chief of the Jamaat, No doubt the present government is a curse for us. It is eliminating our leadership through fake trials. It should go. But we are not carrying out any attacks now. We have no hand in setting up the IS branch. We also condemn the Pathankot attack. When asked about the murder of the four bloggers, Rahaman said the bloggers themselves were responsible. They demeaned Islam and wrote against the Prophet. But we do not support the murderers.

Caught in the act: Abdullah Al Galib, son of a former army officer, who was arrested on charges of floating an organisation like the Islamic State | Getty Images

AWAMI LEAGUE LEADER and former commerce minister Mohammed Farooq Khan said Bangladesh today was full of religious fanatics. The killings of the bloggers have shown that there are a number of religious fanatics who are intolerant and ready to kill people. He said the government was trying its best to control them. Look how many people were executed for the 1971 war crimes. This means we are serious. We are working closely with India as India, too, would suffer if we fail, said Farooq. Though he was not sure whether the IS had been launched locally, he said the government was working hard to negate the effects of radicalism. He said that after the Pathankot attacks, the Awami League was scared and the authorities were jittery. We are not ruling out anything. Our country is on a high alert and we are working with the Indian government to save our government and our people, he said.

According to Bangladesh strategists, a section of the army was against improving ties with India. They opposed the decision to hand over wanted men like Anup Chetia and Arvind Rajkhowa to India. Some of them were also against signing the extradition treaty with India. Moreover, the army has a number of Jamaat sympathisers, who would like to see a return of former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to power. With Jamaat as her coalition partner, a government under Khaleda Zia would enjoy huge support from the army and the paramilitary forces. It has become a major cause of concern for Indian policy makers and the defence and intelligence establishments.

But the Bangladeshi government remains steadfast in its resolve to fight back. Our prime minister has made it clear that our government would not bow down, said Asaduzzaman Noor. Just as we are punishing the human rights violators of 1971 now, Bangladesh will punish terror outfits. This time, the danger is that the name of the Islamic State is being used as a strategy by the terror groups. We are not taking it lightly. We are happy that India is with us in our war against terror.
Uber, an international transportation network company, announced that it aims to expand into 18 new cities in China by the end of February 2016. (Photo : Reuters)

Uber, an international transportation network company, announced that it aims to expand into 18 new cities in China by the end of February 2016.



They intend to expand across Southern China which is now widely spread, as Uber had started in 15 cities in Sichuan province before the start of Chinese New Year in early February. Upon combining the two separate expansions, the company should operate in around 55 cities by the end of next month.



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Hubei, Guangdong, and Hunan provinces are its target, especially in the Southern Chinese regions. Although Uber is already present in these provinces, it has not reached the second-tier and third-tier cities. The expansion will include areas like Xiangtan, Zhuzhou, and Dongguan.



Guangdong province is very important for the company's network. Uber says it noticed a 3,000 percent growth in the number of riders there in 2015. The provincial capital of Guangzhou was considered the busiest city globally for most of the second half of 2015.



Meanwhile, Didi Kuadi, a Chinese taxi hailing firm, is the top competitor of Uber here in China. Through its massive network, Didi Kuaidi operates like Uber in around 200 cities, while the latter is still struggling to operate in double-digits cities. Hopefully it should get there with its targeted expansion.



By the end of 2016, Uber aims to be in around 100 cities all throughout China. It may not be enough to rival Didi Kuaidi, but certainly it is going to be too big to get ignored.



Every new expansion they make may only be just a shadow of the next ones to come.



Uber China's regional general manager Luo Gang says they are expecting to quickly build a huge scale in these new regions. These cities will be based to further grow their network, especially around the southern provinces. So it's going to be great news once implemented.



Watch the video below to know the top competitors of Uber worldwide:







(Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Yibada.)


Syrian army and its allied NDF forces have engaged Al Nusra and Islamic State fighters in many areas of the country inflicting heavy losses on them. Several strategic locations also came under the full control of the regime.

Dozens of al-Nusra and Islamic State fighters have been killed in the Syrian Army assaults in the strategic provinces of Daraa, Deir ez Zor, Hama, Aleppo, Damascus, Homs and Idlib. The Syrian Army and allied NDF or National Defense Forces have mounted a string of offensives all across the country during the past twenty four hours.

These operations have resulted in severe losses for the Islamic State and al  Nusra Front both in terms of fighters and equipment. Scores have also been injured in the ensuing fights. Strongholds of these groups were destroyed in the provinces of Damascus, Aleppo, Daraa, Homs, Idlib and Deir ez Zor provinces.

In Daraa city, the Syrian army destroyed fortifications prepared by militants, vehicles and hideouts in al Balad and al Mahatta areas were also obliterated. Strikes were carried out in Rakham and al Karak areas located to the northeast of Daraa province. The Syrian army was able to drive fighters out of the important city of Sheikh Meskeen with the help of Russian and Syrian jets.

A military source revealed that the Syrian army and the NDF troops continued advancing against fighters in the city of Sheikh Meskeen taking complete control of the area. Scores of militants were killed and wounded in the fight.

Meanwhile in Aleppo city, Syrian jets razed Islamic State positions in Karem al-Maysar, al-Sheikh Said, Bustan al-Bacha, al-Rashedin, Bani Zaid and al-Lairamoun neighborhoods. Strategic areas lying in the eastern part of the province were also targeted.

Deir ez Zor also saw pitched battles between the Syrian army and Islamic state fighters. The clashes occurred in the Baqaliyeh village as well as in the al-Rushdiye neighborhood situated in Deir ez Zor.

In Damascus, the Syrian army backed by the NDF forces launched another attack on the al  Nusra Front checkpoints. This resulted in the re-establishment of army supply lines in Western Ghouta.

The Syrian army also launched an attack on al- Nura fighters over the Darayya  al-Moadhamiyah road. The connects the two strategic cities

In another development, rebel positions in the south of Idlib and north of Hama province were also severely bombarded by Syrian jets destroying their position in Tamanna and Kafr Zita.

The recent spectacular gains for the Syrian army have been accomplished with the help of Russian air support. Russia started its air campaign in Syria at the behest of Bashar al Assad. The first airstrikes were carried out against rebel positions towards the end of September Last year.

The current turn of events has been due to the renewed motivation of the Syrian army since Russians arrived in the country. A string of military successes have been recorded across the country where different rebel groups are facing the regime forces and its allied NDF troops.
YWN regrets to inform you of the Petira of Hagon HaRav Chaim Yisroel Belsky ZATZAL, one of the Roshei Yeshiva of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas in Flatbush, and a leading Posek in the United States. Rav Belsky is renowned as of the most brilliant Torah minds of our generation, with a grasp of virtually kol haTorah kulah and instant recall and knowledge all across the spectrum. He was 77-years-old.

Rabbi Belsky was diagnosed with a illness just a few months ago, and his condition began to deteriorate.

Jews around the globe as well as in his beloved Yeshiva had been Davening for his Refuah for the past few week as his condition deteriorated.

He was Niftar around 7:30PM on Thursday night.

The Niftar will be brought to the Yeshiva Torah Vodaas bais hamedrash on Thursday night where people will be able to say Tehillim. The Levaya will be held on Friday morning at 10:00AM at the yeshiva located at 425 East 9th Street between Cortelyou Road and Ditmas Avenue. The Niftar will be flown to Eretz Yisroel on Motzei Shabbos for the kevura on Sunday. Exact times will be updated when they become available.

Rabbi Belsky was born on August 22nd 1938 to Rabbi Berel and Chana Tzirel Belsky. His maternal grandfather is HaRav Binyomin Wilhelm, a founder of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas.

Rabbi Belsky received his semicha from Yeshiva Torah Vodaas in 1962, and from Hagaon HaRav Moshe Feinstein in 1965. He also studied in Beth Medrash Elyon for a number of years.

His first kashrus position was with the Kof-K. He then served as the Senior Halachic Consultant for the Orthodox Union [OU] since 1987.

He was also the Rov of Camp Agudah since 1967.

One of his daughters is married to Philanthropist R Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz.

In February 2012, rabbi Belsky was rushed to the hospital by Hatzolah, after first suffering from a ruptured esophagus, and a collapsed lung. He also went into cardiac arrest while in the hospital, and underwent numerous procedures. At the time, the name Chaim was added. He remained in the hospital for nearly three months and miraculously recovered, and was released home at the end of May 2012.

Watch the moving words Rabbi Belsky gave after returning home in 2012. (Video below at 2.10)

Boruch Dayan HaEmmes
[ COMMUNICATED CONTENT] Rochester, NY is an out of town community where Middos and Limud HaTorah are the focal point. Located in Western NY between Buffalo and Syracuse, being part of our close-knit kehilla means that you are not just another face in the crowd. Additionally, our community is only a 3 hour drive from Toronto and 4.5 hours from Monsey, making it easy to visit family and friends.

The cost of housing along with the quality of the neighborhood is hard to believe. You can purchase a 3 bedroom home for around $150,000 and a 4-5 bedroom home for between $200,000 and $225,000. Here is an example of a home purchased by a frum couple in the summer of 2014. A 5 bedroom home for $205,000!

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ROCHESTER, NY

Our neighborhood is very clean, quiet and full of wonderful people. Career opportunities are available in a variety of fields, and we are happy to aid in job searches using our local connections and relationships with staffing agencies. Rochester has strong education and medical fields and is full of many opportunities for professionals. Rochesters Yeshiva Elementary school Derech HaTorah is anticipating openings for a half-time kindergarten Morah position and a half-time second grade Morah or Rebbe position for the 2016-2017 school year. There may be limudei chol positions available as well. If you are interested and qualified, please email your resume to [email protected] or call the school office at 585-266-2920.

Whatever your stage in life, Rochester has something to offer. There are schools and Yeshivos to guide a person from preschool through Kollel, as well as many learning programs for adult men and women. Children receive personalized education from dedicated Morahs and Rabbeim who strive to help each student reach his or her potential through a variety of learning styles. Several Shuls and various Davening options for both weekdays and Shabbos, along with daily Shiurim round out the deal. Despite our size, Rochester is definitely a true Makom Torah.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ROCHESTER, NY

If all that isnt enough to pique your interest, here is one more incentive for considering Rochester. Derech HaTorah of Rochester, our Yeshiva elementary school, is currently offering a fantastic tuition break for new students. New families pay a flat rate of $1,000 per year for ALL of their childrens tuition for their first two years in Rochester. Whether you will be sending one child or eight to DHR, your expense will still be $1,000 total.

So, if you are looking to relocate your family to a community where you can make a difference, where your children will have wonderful, wholesome friends, and where Torah hashkafos guide your way of life, dont waste another day. We are waiting to welcome you.

See our website www.TorahRochester.com for more details or contact Jake Dan at [email protected] or 585-330-1270 to learn more or to schedule a visit.
[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

Following are Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahus recorded remarks for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day event at the Israeli Embassy in Washington:

President Obama,

Ambassador Dermer,

Rhoda,

Former Chief Rabbi Lau,

And all the family members whose relatives are being honored tonight,

Today marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Today, we remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. We remember the one-and-a-half million Jewish children who never had a chance to grow up. Today is also a day when we can be especially grateful for the establishment of the State of Israel.

The Jewish people were once powerless and stateless. Now we are again a sovereign, independent nation with the capacity to defend ourselves. But as we defend ourselves, we know that we do not stand alone.

While Israel counts other nations as friends, we know we have no better friend than the United States of America.On behalf of all the people of Israel, I want to thank you, President Obama, for coming to our Embassy to mark this important occasion .And I thank you for your commitment to continue to work with us to bolster Israels security over the coming decade. Your being here reflects the unbreakable bond of friendship between America and the Jewish state, and its a worthy tribute to the four brave individuals whom we honor tonight.

The Jewish people owe a profound debt of gratitude to Walery and Maryla Zibjewski, to Louis Gunden and to Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds. We are forever indebted to them because of the Jewish children and the Jewish soldiers who were saved thanks to their bravery. Their courage was a special courage. They not only risked their own lives, but the lives of their families and the life of their soldiers. There is no greater courage.

God bless you all.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The New York State Department of Health on Thursday confirmed two additional cases of Zika virus in New York, bringing the total to seven. All of the infected patients are travelers returning to New York from countries where Zika virus is ongoing.

Three of those cases are in New York City.

Zika virus cannot be transmitted by casual person-to-person contact. While there is concern that Zika virus may be sexually transmitted, officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have said the evidence of sexual transmission is insufficient.

Because Zika virus is primarily transmitted by infected mosquitos, there is very limited chance of local transmission in New York during the winter, Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said. Even so, the Department of Health is taking steps now to protect the health of all New Yorkers and to prepare for the warmer months when mosquitos will be active in New York.

The symptoms of Zika virus infection are usually very mild, and many people might not even realize they have been infected. However, there have been reports of increased cases of a birth defect known as microcephaly that may be associated with Zika virus infection among pregnant women. If you are pregnant and have travelled to a country where Zika is ongoing, contact your health care provider if you experience the following symptoms: fever, rash, joint pain, or conjunctivitis (red eyes). Symptoms typically begin two to seven days after being bitten by an infected mosquito.

Increasing Mosquito Surveillance

DOH regularly monitors mosquitos throughout New York State. Once warmer weather arrives, DOH will closely monitor mosquitos in regions where a certain mosquito species, Aedes albopictus, is present to identify the presence of Zika virus.

Aedes albopictus is a tropical mosquito that has difficulty surviving cold winters, which has limited its northward spread. The distribution of this mosquito is currently limited to New York City and the following counties: Nassau, Putnam, Orange, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester.

DOH is continuing to track the distribution of Aedes albopictus through enhanced mosquito surveillance. Additionally, other mosquito species collected and tested for West Nile virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus will also be tested for Zika virus.

Additional information on Zika is available on the DOH website.

Laboratory testing is available at NYSDOHs Wadsworth Laboratories

DOHs Wadsworth Laboratories is one of only a few state public health laboratories outside of the CDC that can test for Zika virus. DOH has reached out to medical providers via health advisories and informational messages to educate them on how to diagnose Zika virus, and how to submit samples to Wadsworth for testing. DOH will continue its outreach to medical providers.

The CDC has issued a travel alert (Level 2-Practice Enhanced Precautions) for people traveling to regions and certain countries where Zika virus transmission is ongoing.

Pregnant women in any trimester should consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing. Pregnant women who do travel to one of these areas should talk to their doctor or other healthcare provider first and strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites during the trip:

Dress in long-sleeved shirts and long pants

Stay indoors when mosquitoes are most active

Use repellant products registered with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Do not overuse repellant  only apply as much as you need to provide protection

Read and follow label directions before you use any kind of repellant

See your healthcare provider if you are pregnant and develop a fever, rash, joint pain, or red eyes within two weeks after traveling to a country where Zika virus cases have been reported. Be sure to tell your health care provider where you traveled.

Because specific areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing are difficult to determine and likely to change over time, CDC will update their travel notices as information becomes available. Travelers should check the CDC travel website frequently for the most up-to-date recommendations.

(AP)
Dozens of non-religious residents of the capital planned to arrive at the Jerusalem City Council on Thursday, 18 Shevat to protest the decision by Mayor Nir Barkat to shut grocery stores in the capital on Shabbos. Ofir Berkowitz, a deputy to the mayor, is leading the protest. He told the media that the decision to close the stores is a violation of the agreement made between the two.

Berkowitz explains he is not threatening to break from the coalition, admitting he has accomplished a great deal working alongside the mayor in recent years however he feels this latest decision is unacceptable. He adds that he and his colleagues are weighing their options.

The mayors decision pertains to a number of grocery stores in the center of the city that decided to begin opening on Shabbos during recent months. What is for certain is that even if the stores close, the mayor hasnt had the final word for his secular coalition partners are unwilling to accept the verdict.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Avi Roeh, who heads the Settlement Council, is calling on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan to block PA (Palestinian Authority) media broadcasting to bring an end to the ongoing incitement against Israel.

Roeh explains that after the 15-year-old terrorist murdered Mrs. Dafne Meir in Otniel, the ISA reported the youth told interrogators he was influenced to carry out the attack by the PA media. Roeh called to prohibit the broadcasts or alternatively, to interfere with their signal to block them. He explains government officials continue to decry PA incitement yet nothing is done to prevent it.

There are numerous channels that broadcast from the PA and Gaza, carrying a hate message and encouraging attacks against Israel.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Two people were killed HYD and others wounded in a shooting attack in a Dizengoff Street pub in Tel Aviv on January 1, 2016. The terrorist, Nashat Melhem, 28, also murdered an Israeli Arab taxi driver who drove him from the Dizengoff area as he was making his getaway. The manhunt to apprehend Melhem lasted for days until police shot and killed the fugitive terrorist as they tried to arrest him in northern Israel, but he fired at officers.

Now the questions many are asking is why Israel Police did not act on witness statements during the time the manhunt was taking place. Israel Radio reported that Noa and Ofir were on a bus after the attack and reported to police they saw Nashat on the bus as he was making his way back to Arara, in the Nachal Iron (Wadi Ara) area of northern Israel. The report states that only after correspondent Carmella Menashe made an issue of this did police decide to begin probing the legitimacy of the statements from the sisters. Until Menashe began making noise, the statements from the sisters were ignored by all police personnel they spoke with.

They sisters told police that they got onto the bus at 15:10 on the afternoon of the attack, an 826 bus heading north and the suspicious man got on a few stops later, sitting near them. They reported noticing he had a blood stain on his garment, strange glasses and carrying a suspicious backpack. The sisters were aware the attack occurred in the pub but they did not know the body of a taxi driver was discovered in northern Tel Aviv.

Acting appropriately the two approached the bus driver, suggesting he remove the man from the bus and when they told him We are scared, the driver responded I am scarier. When Nashat got off the bus in the Herzliya area, the driver even told him where to get the bus to Nachal Iron in response to his inquiry. This too did not seem to alarm anyone, despite the news reports that included his photo, age and place of residence, Nachal Iron.

That same evening, after seeing the photo on the news the girls realized their suspicions were justified and they called police. They were told investigators would contact them, but his never occurred.

Being a responsible person, Ofir called again a few days later and was given a different number to call. She was then told her information was irrelevant to the case. The following day Noa called again, and she too was told if her information is deemed relevant, someone would contact her. This never occurred.

Ultimately, Bchasdei Hashem the heinous terrorist was found and even eliminated before he could strike again.

In a related matter, three cousins of the terrorists and a friend were indicted this week for allegedly assisting Nashat in his plot. Indictments were handed down against Amin Melhem, 23, Muhammad Melhem, 22, and Ayoub Salama Rashid, 22, all from the Nachal Iron area.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The Women of the Wall (WoW) organization has been hosting rosh chodesh tefilos at the Kosel for decades but they only began receiving widespread media coverage when they defied the regulations. When the women began wearing tallis and tefilin and trying to take Sifrei Torah from the mens area of the Kosel they began receiving international media coverage. This led to additional support as an increasingly audible chareidi outcry amid a growing monthly support= base for their rosh chodesh davening.

It is now being reported that Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandelblit, who has been appointed to become Israels next attorney general, mediated the agreement that is being tolerated by the chareidi parties. This agreement is likely to be approved at the next cabinet meeting, scheduled for Sunday, 21 Shevat.

It is pointed out the current document is a draft and changes may occur but at present WoW has agreed to back down from its demands to permit egalitarian prayer at the Kosel. The agreement calls for the establishment of a new prayer area which will be at the southern area of the Kosel, north of Robinsons Arch and south of the Mughrabi Gate. This area will be for egalitarian prayer, for men and women without a mechitzah. The area in essence will be a continuation of the Kosel Plaza but not connected to it.

The agreement stipulates the women may have a minyan there every day while wearing tallis and tefilin and read from a Torah. To date this was prohibited and met with harsh objections from Kosel Rav Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz.

While some laud the draft agreement, others lament it, however not all for the same reason.

Rabbi Dr. Yuval Cherlow, a prominent name in the dati leumi community, fears the new area will have a negative impact on achdus of Am Yisrael. He explains that by the women agreeing to move to an area that is not under the jurisdiction of the Kosel rav, in essence they have handed the chareidim total control over the Kosel.

Rabbi Cherlow stresses the move will simply further divide Am Yisrael and this is an unwanted result of the agreement which many women feel represents a victory.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Absent Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidates strained to take advantage of a rare opportunity to step out of the front-runners shadow in Thursday nights debate  a staid, policy-heavy contest that offered a glimpse of what the GOP contest might have been without the unpredictable businessman.

Still, the candidates couldnt resist mocking Trump, who boycotted the final debate before Iowa kicks off voting in the 2016 campaign on Monday.

Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is competing with Trump for the lead in Iowa. Cruz then thanked his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by showing up.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a frequent target of Trump, said with a wry smile, I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me.

Never one to go quietly, Trump held a competing rally elsewhere in Des Moines, an event he said raised $6 million for military veterans.

When youre treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights, Trump said in explaining he was skipping the debate because he felt Fox News had dealt with him unfairly. Broadening his point, he said, We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if were being mistreated.

Trumps absence put the spotlight on Cruz, as well as on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who needs a strong showing in Iowa in order to stay in the top tier of candidates.

The two senators were confronted with video clips suggesting they had changed their positions on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans. While each insisted the other had flip-flopped, both denied they had switched their own views allowing some people in the U.S. illegally to stay.

Cruz accused Rubio of making a politically advantageous decision to support a 2013 Senate bill that included a pathway to citizenship, while the Florida senator said his rival was willing to say or do anything to get votes.

This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, Rubio said. That hes the most conservative guy.

In a rare standout debate moment for Bush, the former Florida governor sharply sided with Cruz in accusing Rubio of having cut and run on the Senate immigration bill.

He cut and ran because it wasnt popular with conservatives, said Bush.

Cruz was put on the spot over his opposition to ethanol subsidies that support Iowas powerful corn industry  a position that has long been considered politically untenable for presidential candidates in the state. The Texas senator cast his position as an effort to keep the government from picking economic winners and losers.

With their White House hopes on the line, the candidates worked hard to present themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats.

Rubio struck an aggressive posture, pledging that as president he would go after terrorists wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo. Rubio also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the U.S if there were indications that the Muslim religious centers were being used to radicalize terrorists.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul  back on the main debate stage after being downgraded to an undercard event because of low poll numbers earlier this month  warned against closing down mosques. A proponent of a more isolationist foreign policy, Paul also raised concerns about the U.S. getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State group has a stronghold.

The candidates focused some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

She is not qualified to be president of the United States, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.

Christie is part of a crowded field of more mainstream candidates who have struggled to break through in an election year where Trump, and increasingly Cruz, have tapped into voter anger with the political system. Party leaders have grown increasingly anxious for some of the more traditional candidates to step aside to allow one to rise up and challenge for the nomination.

Asked whether the crowded establishment lane was putting Trump in position to win, Bush said, Were just starting out. The first vote hasnt been counted. Why dont we let the process work?

Bush also defended the flurry of critical advertisements his well-funded super PAC has launched against Rubio and other rivals.

Its called politics, Bush said. Thats the way it is. Im running hard.

Bush and Christie, along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are looking beyond Iowa and hoping New Hampshires Feb. 9 primary jumpstarts their campaigns. In an election where a lengthy political resume has been a liability, Kasich defended governments ability to tackle big problems.

We serve you, Kasich said of government officials and voters. You dont serve us. We listen to you and then we act.

Cruz proudly claimed he was not the candidate of career politicians in Washington. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has a small but loyal base in Iowa, said that even though he hasnt been in government, hes made plenty of life-and-death decisions as a doctor.

I dont think you need to be a politician to tell the truth, he said.

Trump pulled out this week, citing unfair treatment from host Fox News. Hes feuded with the network for months, particularly anchor and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.

While Fox covered the debate, other cable channels aired portions of his rally at Drake University, likely pulling away at least some TV viewers.

Trump was joined by fellow candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who spoke briefly at the rally after appearing in an early undercard debate for low-polling candidates. Huckabee told the audience that he, Santorum and Trump are political competitors but tonight we are colleagues in supporting veterans.

(AP)
Agricultural Bank of China - one of Chinas leading banks - is facing losses amounting to 4 billion Yuan (around 600 million US dollars) on account of an in-house scandal. (Photo : Reuters)

Agricultural Bank of China - one of China's leading banks - is facing losses amounting to 4 billion Yuan (around 600 million US dollars) on account of an in-house scandal.



According to reports by China.org, two employees at Agricultural Bank of China's Beijing branch illegally sold bills to an agent in Chongqing. This agent then re-sold those bills to another bank.



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The employees then invested proceeds from sale in stock market and suffered huge losses due to a plunge in share prices. China.org reported that Shanghai Composite Index, which had earlier peaked at 5718 points, halved on day of unfortunate incident at 2916 points.



Bills of exchange work in a similar way as post-dated warrants. Once sold, they require the seller to pay a fixed sum to the buyer within a period of time.



Agricultural Bank of China has, however, remained tight lipped about the incident, and has not made any official comments to the press.



Agricultural Bank of China reported this incident in a filing to Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges in January this year. In its filing, Agricultural Bank of China mentioned that they were exposed to risks in 3.915 billion Yuan. Info Seek reported that Agricultural Bank of China has informed Beijing police about this incident, and investigation has already been initiated.



The publication also reported that Agricultural Bank of China has promised full co-operation with authorities during this investigation.



Agricultural Bank of China, also known as AgBank, is one of the four big banks in China, and ranked 3rd in Forbes 2015 list of Top 2000 companies in the world. The said bank is listed on Shanghai and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges.



It is a known fact that banks are no stranger to in-house embezzlements. It can be noted that in 2007 alone, it witnessed the largest robbery in Chinese history. This occurred when two vault managers at bank's Handan branch in Hebei province embezzled over 51 million Yuan.


Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and took precise photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state media reported Friday. The U.S. Navy said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near a French and American carrier earlier this month, but couldnt confirm it was the same incident.

The reported overflight by the unmanned aircraft came after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the U.S. in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

The U.S. Navy said it didnt open fire as the drone was unarmed and not threatening the ships safety, but the incident again highlighted that tensions remain between America and Iran in Gulf waters despite their recent diplomatic detente.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the footage, published by Iranian state television and the semi-official Fars news agency, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard.

Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and directly over the USS Harry S. Truman on Jan. 12 as the vessels were in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

He said the Navy launched a helicopter that determined the drone wasnt armed and posed no danger to the ship as the carrier wasnt conducting flight operations at the time. His comments implied that had there been active takeoffs and landings of U.S. aircraft, the situation might have changed.

Stephens called the drones flight abnormal and unprofessional. He added that the U.S. Navy was not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet.

The report by state television said the drone flight occurred on the third day of the naval exercise, suggesting it happened Friday.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of Irans navy, called the drone overflight a sign of bravery.

It allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces, he told state television.

State television and the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine also participated in the surveillance operation. When asked about the submarine report, Stephens said Iran has several submarines underway for its current exercise, but declined to discuss specifics.

The Iranian report did not name the U.S. vessel filmed by the drone. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

In Washington, U.S. Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Marks stressed America remains ready to use force if necessary.

We are confident in our forces ability to respond appropriately as the situation dictates and will defend ourselves should that prove necessary, he said.

Separately, state television said Irans navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill at mock targets. Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Irans navy began the naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer (1.16-million-square-mile) area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a U.S. warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The U.S. Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the U.S., its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The U.S. has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a highly provocative Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied launching rockets, though the U.S. later released footage showing the rocket fire.

The Strait of Hormuz, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran.

On April 18, 1988, the U.S. attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels, including two naval frigates, in Operation Praying Mantis. That came after the near-sinking of the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine, laid amid the Islamic Republics bloody 1980s war with Iraq.

A few months later, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the strait mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 passengers and crew onboard. The shoot-down of the jet came shortly after the U.S. vessel reported coming under fire from Iranian speedboats.

More recently, this January, Iranian forces captured 10 U.S. Navy sailors who entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s. The sailors were released within a day, though Iranian state media aired footage of the sailors capture, angering U.S. politicians.

(AP)
Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.

J.R.R. writes: I am a victim of Banc de Binary, a private bank in New York which took $25,000 (about 16,000) out of my Lloyds TSB account without my knowledge or authority.

Banc de Binary took the money in four separate withdrawals, keeping each withdrawal modest enough to stay under the radar and avoid detection.

Questions to answer: Banc de Binary founder Oren Laurent

Lets start with two simple facts. Banc de Binary is not a bank. And it is not in New York. In fact, US government watchdogs are taking the company to court for a list of alleged offences.

Yet bizarrely, it is fully authorised by our own Financial Conduct Authority to do business in Britain, thanks to a ridiculous ruling imposed by Brussels.

Banc de Binary is basically a betting firm. You can bet on whether commodity prices or a share index will rise or fall by a particular amount within a set time. You started dealing with the company in April last year after you retired and had savings to invest. You gave your debit card details and invested $10,000.

When most of this went down the drain, you refused to part with any more. However, over several days in December, Banc de Binary raked in 15,971 from your Lloyds TSB account. You believed Banc de Binary was based in Trump Tower, an impressive address on Wall Street. But it was not really there.

Late last year the American watchdog Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a public alert, warning that Banc de Binary was not licensed to do investment business. It dropped the Wall Street address, but debt-ridden Cyprus welcomed it and issued a licence last January.

This allowed Banc de Binary to passport itself under EU rules into almost every other member country without proper vetting. It now claims to have headquarters in Limassol, as well as offices in King Street in the City of London.

But because it has never been satisfactorily vetted by the FCA, customers who fall out with Banc de Binary cannot complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

And if the company were to collapse, investors could not claim from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

None of this appeared on the FCAs public register until I started asking questions. It does now.

But if that was misleading, what can you say about the announcement made by Banc de Binary, claiming it was in talks with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) about offering options trading from its so-called New York headquarters.

The truth was that it was under investigation by the CFTC for alleged illegal trading, and Banc de Binary later admitted its press release was inaccurate and it was not allowed to offer investments in the US. I asked the companys founder, Oren Laurent, whether this meant deals done through its New York office were unlawful.

I also asked him about your complaint that $25,000 was taken without permission. Laurent did not respond, but Banc de Binarys head of compliance, Lauren O Connor, told me: Mr Rs claims do not hold up and do not make sense. She did not comment on whether your New York trades were illegal, but she claimed: The company does not provide any services to US clients.

American authorities say this is untrue. OConnor offered a meeting to discuss your complaint. Fine, I said, lets meet at your London office. But she refused, with the nonsense explanation that King Street is available only for contacting specific not regulatory tasks, whatever that means.

Banc de Binarys London public relations firm then demanded that your signature be verified by a solicitor. OK, I said, but let me see something confirming that you represent Banc de Binary.

Next, the PR firm claimed you really had deposited the $25,000, but you had gambled and lost the lot. It told me: Mr R lost his money through trading that ended in mid to late December and then sought to recoup his losses by complaining to the card company.

All of this was totally false. When I challenged it, the PR firm suddenly admitted that Banc de Binary still had your money. But it added to the falsehoods by saying you had never asked for it back.

Banc de Binary knew you wanted your money back because it had emailed you asking you to change your mind. The email came from the very person I had been dealing with, Lauren OConnor! In fact though, you have got your money back.

Lloyds TSB accepted you did not authorise the debits and it replaced the $25,000 in your account. It is now up to you to ask Banc de Binary to return the same amount to Lloyds TSB. The basic question remains  did Banc de Binary ever have the right to take the money?

After a lot of pressing, I was told the bank transfers took place on your verbal instructions. Who did you speak to? When? And why a series of transfers on different days, rather than in one go?

Banc de Binary would not comment. So where are we now? Well, you have got your money back, thanks to Lloyds TSB. But Banc de Binary is facing legal action in America, where the SEC and CFTC complain the company was operating illegally and should refund everyone.

Court documents filed by the SEC allege that Banc de Binary claimed its entire staff was located in the US, yet its Trump Tower address was nothing more than a virtual office. Intriguingly, the SECs legal filings also refer to it as a Cypriot and Israeli company, rather than American or just Cypriot.

And who helped with the American investigation that has led to the courtroom steps? Our own FCA, which still allows Banc de Binary to do business with all of us in Britain!

If the US court rules against Banc de Binary, will the FCA kick the company out to safeguard British investors? Or will it stick to Brussels rules and turn a blind eye as long as Cypriot regulators do not cancel its licence there? I look forward to seeing which way the FCA jumps when the time comes.

Statement from Banc De Binary



Banc De Binary would like to make clear that at no point did J.R.R suffer any financial loss from the disputed transfers mentioned in this article. The balance of J.R.R.s funds remained, untouched, in his trading account which only J R. R. had access to. At no time did Banc De Binary attempt to prevent J.R.R. from withdrawing these funds and we received no formal complaint from J.R.R. on this matter.

Upon any deposit being made to a clients account, an automated email is sent to the client confirming the transaction keeping them fully appraised of activity. In addition, the balance of the clients account is displayed on screen at all times whenever clients log in.



Statement from the Mail on Sunday



On September 1, 2013, we said US authorities were saying the Banc de Binary was not truthful in declaring it was not providing services to US clients. In fact, at that date, the company had not been accepting trades from US clients. The article also incorrectly stated that a customer of the firm had been asked to change his mind about withdrawing funds. He had been asked to request a withdrawal rather than instituting a charge-back from his bank.

UPDATE: January 29, 2016

However, it has since admitted in court documents filed in the USA that at the time of our report, Banc de Binary in the US employees did in fact solicit business unlawfully in breach of a legal injunction and in contravention of its own public pledge not to do so.
Sympathy: TSB boss Paul Pester has waded into the Google tax row

The boss of challenger bank TSB has expressed sympathy with public anger about tax-dodging big businesses.

Paul Pester waded into the row which flared up this week following revelations of Googles controversial 130million tax deal with HMRC.

Speaking as TSB announced its annual results, Pester said: I understand the publics anger.

'I believe corporations have a wider role to play in society beyond making profits.

'Paying taxes is an important part of creating healthy communities.
James Murdoch, the younger son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, is to again take up the role of chairman of Sky after a four year absence, the broadcaster said today, as it reported solid trading.

Sky reported better-than-expected profits, helped by a record number of new customers, pushing its shares 2 per cent higher in morning trading.

The reappointment of James Murdoch may reignite speculation that his fathers 21st Century Fox empire - which owns 39 per cent of Sky - might again look to take over the satellite broadcaster.

Prodigal return: James Murdoch is to become chairman of Sky again, taking over the role from Nick Ferguson

James Murdoch, who is currently the chief executive of Fox, was chairman of Sky from 2007 to 2012, but was forced to step down following the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the Murdoch-owned tabloid paper News of the World.

Fox backed off from a bid for Sky in 2011 due to the phone hacking scandal, but a deal would finally crown Rupert Murdochs vision for a transatlantic media empire.

Analyst Roddy Davidson, at Shore Capital, said the return of Mr Murdoch was likely to rekindle speculation regarding 21st Century Fox's plans for its 39 per cent stake. The broker today upped its rating for Sky's shares to buy from hold.

By late morning, Sky shares on the FTSE 100 index were up 2 per cent, or 22p to 1,063p.

James Murdoch is, taking the place of Nick Ferguson, who steps down from the Sky board at the end of July after 12 years as a director.

The 43-year-old takes up his position after a short stint as chief executive of media giant 21st Century Fox, a role he only took up in July, succeeding his father.

Earlier this week it was announced that City grandee Ferguson has been appointed chairman of upmarkets property group Savills.

Aberdeen Asset boss Martin Gilbert has been appointed as Sky's deputy chairman, while Andrew Sukawaty becomes the firm's senior independent director.

During Murdochs absence, Sky bought all of Sky Italia from Fox and a 57 per cent stake in Sky Deutschland, expanding also into Austria and Ireland.

James Murdoch told the Hollywood Reporter newspaper in October last year that the integration of the Sky businesses in Europe was going well.

The Reporter quoted him as saying: Weve also been clear that over time, having 40 per cent of an unconsolidated asset is not an end state that is natural for us.

Sky chief executive Jeremy Darroch said: James' deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Sky's ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future.

Sky today reported a better-than-expected 12 per cent rise in operating profits to 747million for the six months to the end of December, ahead of the 727million expected by analysts. Revenues rose 5 per cent to 5.718million.

The increase came as Sky saw its highest customer growth in the UK and Ireland for 10 years, with 337,000 people joining the broadcaster in the second quarter.

Good subscriber growth was also seen in Germany, which the company sees as one of Europes fastest growing pay TV markets.

Plans: Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox empire could again be looking to take full control of Sky

Charlie Huggins, investment analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, noted that all Sky's key metrics in the UK and Ireland are heading in the right direction.

He said: Broadband additions are up strongly and churn, at c. 10 per cent, is at its lowest level for four years. This means a typical Sky customer stays with the group for 10 years on average, providing a recurring revenue stream for the length of that time.

The UK economy is recovering and Sky's customers are starting to find they have a little bit more to spend.

Huggins said that growth initiatives such as NOW TV, the group's pay-as-you go service for occasional viewers, were attracting a new type of customer.

A new premium TV service  Sky Q  will launch on 9 February and a consumer mobile launch is being prepared for the second half of 2016, to keep the momentum going,' Huggins noted.

But he warned that profit progression over the next few years could be lumpy, as Sky seeks to absorb 630million per annum of additional Premier League rights costs.

Huggins said: Sky has built a very strong brand in the UK. It is the clear market leader in Pay TV but it faces the challenge of margin pressure, as competitors like BT bid against it for key content rights.'

Sky looks to be shrugging off the mounting threat from main rival BT Group. In October, Sky notched up its best first-quarter UK customer growth for four years.
Supermarket giant Tesco will reduce opening hours at some of its 24-hour stores due to a lack of customers shopping through the night.

The company, which began operating 24-hour stores back in 1996, said 76 out of the 400 stores currently open around the clock would be affected by the change: they will now close at midnight and reopen again at 6am.

Instead of shopping at night, it is believed many customers are now heading online for their groceries, and the move is part of chief executive Dave Lewis's attempt to stem Tesco's recent profits slump by redesigning its operations.

Ghost town: The 24 hour Tesco in Kensington is usually empty, but tranquil, at 2am in the morning

He wants to improve the shopping experience, simplify the supermarket's range, improve relationships with suppliers and win shoppers' affection back for the supermarket.

Tesco has been under severe pressure over the last year, announcing big financial losses, while suffering accounting irregularities which have led to numerous litigation cases in the US.

It has also been hit by shifts in shopping habits and the loss of customers to discounters Aldi and Lidl. However, the supermarket recently reported that Christmas sales rose 1.3 per cent, well ahead of what industry experts had been predicting.

When Lewis joined in September 2014, poor replenishment of stock and product availability were major issues for the grocer.

According to Tesco the reduction in opening hours would free up staff to replenish more products on the shelves overnight, resulting in more item availability and stores looking better.

Tony Hoggett, Tesco's Retail Director, said: 'It makes much more sense for colleagues at those stores to focus on replenishing the shelves instead and making sure they're fully stocked when they open their doors at 6am.'

He added: 'With the growth of online grocery shopping, these stores saw very few customers during the night.

'We'll continue to make changes in store in ways that will make shopping at Tesco a better experience for our customers, at the times they want to shop.'

There will be a 'minimal' impact on jobs as a result of its decision.

But some industry experts believe that today's move is another sign of desperation by Tesco in the wake of stiff competition from discounters.

Hannah Maundrell, at money.co.uk, said: 'This is a controversial cost cutting move from the commander of the supermarket wars.

'Turbulent times mean drastic measures and Tesco are really having to review their entire business strategy to be in with a chance of fending off the likes of Aldi and Lidl who are nipping at their heels.'

She added: 'Not such great news for night owls or workers who were earning more between the hours of midnight and 6am. Staff hours will almost inevitably be cut, and night shift workers could see the amount they earn slashed.'

No more night owls: Tesco is calling time on 76 stores round-the-clock opening out of the 400 that are 24-hour

The news follows the findings of an investigation into Tesco's treatment of suppliers, earlier this week.

'Extensive evidence' revealed Tesco 'intentionally delayed' payments to suppliers in order to make its own financial position look better than it was, Groceries Code Adjudicator Christine Tacon's inquiry revealed.

Tesco escaped a financial penalty because this power was only given to the Adjudicator after she launched her investigation.

In the 84-page report, Ms Tacon said: 'The length of delays, their widespread nature and the range of Tesco's unreasonable practices and behaviours towards suppliers concerned me.

'I was also troubled to see Tesco at times prioritising its own finances over treating suppliers fairly.'

Delays to payments to suppliers emerged as a result of data input errors, duplicate invoicing and 'unilateral' deductions, all of which helped Tesco boost its profit margins, the report says.

Tesco's chief executive, Dave Lewis, apologised and said he accepted the findings.

'Over the last year we have worked hard to make Tesco a very different company from the one described in the GCA report. The absolute focus on operating margin had damaging consequences for the business and our relationship with suppliers. This has now been fundamentally changed.
HSBC customers were unable to access their accounts online today after the bank suffered a cyber-attack this morning - the second such attack inside a month.

The high street banking giant, which has roughly 17million business and personal current account customers, said it successfully defended itself against a 'denial of service attack' and that customers' details had not been compromised.

Today is payday for a large percentage of Britons and many HSBC customers were unable to check their balances or make payments.

HSBC online banking: This is the message many online customers get when they try to log in online

It says it is working closely with law enforcement authorities to pursue the criminals responsible.

This is the second time since the beginning of the year that HSBC customers have been blocked out of their online accounts.

In the first week of January, millions of business and personal customers with the high street giant were told they could not to log-in online because of a 'complex technical issue'  not because a cyber-attack. Customers were able to access their accounts again only after two days.

But today's problems were blamed on a 'distributed denial of service' attack, or DDoS, which consists of hackers bringing down websites by bombarding them with huge amounts of traffic.

HSBC has not said how many people have been affected or when customers will be able to access online banking again.

It has advised customers to visit their local branch for urgent transactions - but it will not be keeping any branches open for longer than usual tonight.

The latest outage happens on the last Friday of the month, which is payday for many people, and also just a few days before the tax return deadline for self-assessment on Sunday.

The bank said in a statement: 'HSBC has successfully defended against the attack, and customer transactions were not affected.

'We are working hard to restore services, and normal service is now being resumed.

'We apologise for any inconvenience this incident may have caused.'

Many customers vented their frustration on social media website Twitter.

Jas Sodhi (@jassodhi123) said: 'Online banking down @HSBC_UK on the last working day of the month! Seriously?'

James (@james_woodhead) said: '@HSBC...site down AGAIN. Twice in the same month. Useless!'

The issues with HSBC follow the high-profile cyber attack last year involving telecoms giant TalkTalk, which resulted in customers' personal details being accessed.

Security expert Richard Kirk from cyber security firm AlienVault said that people should feel assured that 'online banking is generally safe', but did add that there was still work to be done by the banks in order to improve responsibility to customers.

He said: 'Surely it is time for cyber security risk to become a regular board level discussion. I wonder if the HSBC board, or any bank for that matter, regularly discusses how it should approach preparing and responding to cyber attacks and the growing risk to the business.'

Robert Capps, vice president of business development at NuData Security, said: 'It's incredibly important to understand that DDoS are not direct attacks on the accounts at financial institutions, they are attacks on the public image and consumer good will towards those institutions.

'They are meant to harass, intimidate and embarrass a targeted institution, but the DDoS attacks rarely result in any last lasting impact on individual accounts at an institution.'




SIYENDLE  In an unprecedented move, Siyendle High School has turned away 42 pupils who failed their Junior Certificate (JC) examinations last year.



The school, which was counted among the worst performers in the JC results of 2015, recorded a total number of 42 failures, out of 63 candidates who sat for the examination.



This means only 21 pupils were able to make it to the next level. The 42 pupils, whose performance was not up to the mark in their assessment last year, were shown the exit by administration on Wednesday, during the morning assembly.



This publication gathered that the unexpected action by the school administration might render the affected pupils stranded for, at least, five weeks. A witness said the pupils were told to go back home because there was no space available for them at the school since the JC classroom would be occupied by pupils who were doing Form II in the previous year.



This was relayed to them in the presence of all the other pupils in the school. The distraught pupils told this publication that they felt the decision to turn them away was taken in haste, and considered the act of telling them in the midst of other pupils embarrassing. They were of the opinion that, at least, the administration should have discussed the matter with their parents first before taking the unprecedented action.



The head teacher also had the alternative to call us aside to a separate meeting, instead of subjecting us to such humiliation. It was like we were being treated as outcasts.



The whole school was told that we were not taking our work seriously, hence we did not deserve to be at the school, and let alone have a teacher to attend to us  it was so embarrassing, narrated one of the pupils, who said the decision by the school might spell doom for his future.
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By Gabriel Rom

Residents of central Queens say that after days of city negligence their streets have been plowed and their neighborhoods addressed by the mayor in the aftermath of a blizzard that blanketed New York with over two feet of snow. In Jackson Heights as much as 34 inches fell.

City Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) held a press conference Monday afternoon in which he accused the city of failing its duty in Queens.

We want to know why the city of New York and why Mayor DeBlasio did not dedicate the proper equipment, the proper manpower to cleaning the streets of this community and so many other neighborhoods in the borough of Queens, Ulrich said. The city failed.

Ulrich was part of a growing chorus of Queens lawmakers, civic leaders and residents who contend their streets, especially in central Queens, were neglected by city services after the second largest snowstorm in city history.

The mayor maintains that given difficult circumstances, the city addressed the cleanup in Queens as best it could.

Almost half of the citys snow-plowing equipment had been diverted to Queens by Monday, according to the mayors office.

At a press conference Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio reiterated that the clean-up effort in Queens could have been better.

Some areas of Queens were strong, others less so. I was out yesterday in Flushing, South Jamaica, Long Island City and Astoria, de Blasio said at the Manhattan news conference.

Queens was soon given additional plows totaling 920, more than in any other borough, according to Amy Spitalnik, a spokeswoman for de Blasio.

By Tuesday, the city had fully reallocated its resources to the borough and residents began reporting that clogged side streets were getting due attention.

Extremely pleased to find out that 88th Avenue in #Woodhaven is getting plowed, tweeted Alexander Blenkinsopp spokesman for the Woodhaven Residents Block Association.

Today, vast majority of #Woodhaven streets were very clear, he added Tuesday. Many others were sloppy & slushy, but safely passable. Ill accept that.

Even after the citys response, civic leaders from Central Queens remained frustrated.

The city has lost its institutional memory, said Vincent Arcuri, chairman of Community Board 5. They should have remembered our last storm and where the bad areas were in Queens. Thats where they should have sent their troops. But it seemed like they were just doing business as usual.

Amid the chaos, there were also stories of residents banding together to help one another. Numerous videos posted on social media showed Queens pedestrians helping cars stuck in snow to get free.
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By Madina Toure

At her annual State of the Borough Address last week, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz cited a plan to remove classroom trailers from borough schools, the reorganization of the Queens Library following a corruption scandal and the renovation of the New York State Pavilion as signs of the progress the borough has made.

Katz spoke before a crowd of more than 1,000 elected officials, city agency commissioners, community leaders and Queens residents in the Kupferberg Center for the Arts Colden Auditorium at Queens College Jan. 21.

Actor and model Branden Wellington, who is also an in-game host for the Mets, served as master of ceremonies.

The borough president remarked that while Queens has many high-performing schools, it also has the most overcrowded schools in the city.

Six classroom trailers at PS 19 in Corona, the largest elementary school in New York City, were supposed to be temporary but have been in use for decades, housing up to 600 schoolkids at a time, she said. Those trailers are now scheduled for removal by the end of this year.

Katz also noted that 15 trailers have been removed from six different elementary schools during her first two years in office, and that 59 more trailers are on the docket for removal across 20 different schools in the borough.

It is not an easy process but together, everyone in this room can do it, she said.

She also said the Queens Library has come a long way since its dark saga of 2014, referring to former CEO Thomas Galante, who was placed on indefinite leave for alleged misuse of funds.

She credited state Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry (D-Corona) and state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) for pushing forward legislation aimed at reforming the library system.

Since then and especially in the past year, the library has refocused full energy back to where it matters most: to our families, especially children and seniors, who rely on its services and deserve nothing less than a world-class library system, Katz said.

She also said the librarys board of trustees took into account recommendations issued in the audit by City Comptroller Scott Stringer and that she allocated more than $13 million last year in capital investments across a dozen branches.

Katz also touted her work in helping to save the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which she made a priority when she came into office.

She said that she and others have secured $10 million to date toward electrical and structural improvements for the towers.

For years, even when no one else wanted anything to do with it, volunteers of the New York State Pavilion Painting Project did their best to upkeep at least the base of the Pavilion, she said.

She also cited other accomplishments such as the Jamaica Now Action Plan to revitalize Jamaica, criticized the Common Core curriculum, shared some of her reservations about Mayor Bill de Blasios rezoning proposals and recognized the late NYPD Officers Brian Moore, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were murdered while on patrol.

At the end of her address, she brought out New York Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson, former player Edgardo Alfonzo and Mets Manager Terry Collins, who led the team into the World Series.
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By The Greater Astoria Historical Society

In conjunction with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, the TimesLedger Newspapers presents noteworthy events in the boroughs history

It was 1939, and the sixth anniversary of German Fuehrer Adolf Hitlers rise to power on Jan. 30, 1933 was at hand. The world was arming for war. In Washington, President Roosevelt proposed to Congress a $9,000,000,000 budget for 1940, to arm for defense and spend for recovery.

In Queens, Borough President George U. Harvey abandoned his duties in a rush to accompany the combined Atlantic and Pacific fleets on maneuvers in southern waters. Harvey, a lieutenant colonel in the 307th Infantry, would be gone six weeks or more, during which Borough Works Commissioner John J. Halleran would be acting borough president.

Dr. Kurt Rosenfeld, former minister of justice for Prussia, a former member of the Reichstag from 1919 to 1933 and a resident of Sunnyside, was to lecture at the Sunnyside Jewish Center, the topic being It Can Happen Here. Later in the month, this was followed by a debate on Should Jews Be Active in Politics in America? A committee was formed to distribute literature throughout Sunnyside and Astoria to aid in the fight against Fascism. An investigating committee reported that a German-American Bund meeting was held in Astoria and that the Jew was belittled, disgraced and discriminated against.

Mrs. Sarah E. Duffy, of Jackson Heights, became the first female city marshal, after being appointed by Mayor LaGuardia and sworn in immediately at City Hall. Mrs. Duffy was first made a marshal in Elmhurst in 1932 to fill an unexpired term. The appointment, coming as something of a surprise, was cheered by womens organizations and political clubs alike. Although Mrs. Duffy had not taken a leading part in political affairs, she was well known to community leaders because of her tenure as clerk for her husband in the Elmhurst Municipal Court District.

Grover A. Whalen, Commissioner of the New York Worlds Fair, announced that President Roosevelt would attend the opening of the fair April 30. This was to be Roosevelts first stop in Queens since he dedicated the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in Hunters Point in the summer of 1937.

Thousands of subway riders and sidewalk neck-craners got an eyeful when they looked up and saw the BMTs sample Worlds Fair train auguring the installation of a number of special train units painted in the deep blue and orange selected as the color scheme for Grover A. Whalens fantasy in Flushing Meadows

In Flushing, the funeral of James Stewart McGuinness, 86, was held. Serving under Mayor Patrick (Battle Axe) Gleason, Mr. McGuinness was the last police chief of Long Island City before consolidation. The death of McGuinness came less than two weeks after the passing of Charles M. Jensen, 74, chief of the old Long Island City Fire Department during Gleasons regime.

It was announced that the College Point ferry to the Bronx would cease operations on April 25, because of the opening of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. The ferry had been one of the most profitable in the city, but its decline began with the opening of the Triborough Bridge and ended with this event.

A little known British actress, Vivien Leigh, signed a contract to portray Scarlett OHara in David O. Selznicks film Gone With the Wind. Selznick interviewed more than 2,000 candidates over two years in his search for a leading lady. When I saw Miss Leigh, I knew my search was at an end. As far as I was concerned, Miss Leigh was Miss OHara, said Mr. Selznick.
Airport development adding to economy, jobs in the region

Pittsburgh may always be known as the Steel City, but a wave of new industries are popping up near its airport to redefine business in the region.
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By Times Record News

Another North Texas school district has removed a teacher from campus.

This time it happened in Seymour, but school officials are not providing details on what happened or which teacher was removed.

The school district released a notice to parents Thursday that said, "The District received a report which included allegations against a Seymour ISD teacher.

The notice, signed by Superintendent John Baker, said, "At this time the employee is not on campus and appropriate action has been taken as the result of the investigation thus far, including a report made to the appropriate authority."

Although the statement did not specify what campus was involved, the Baylor County Banner newspaper learned the incident involved the high school.

The release went on to say, "Please understand that the District's ability to share additional information is limited due to the ongoing investigation and the confidentiality of the concern's being addressed.

The Seymour case comes on the heels of incidents in the Wichita Falls ISD and the Graham ISD. In the Wichita Falls incident, a teacher lost her job. Although the school district did not provide a specific reason, social media reports indicated the dismissal was related to the duct taping of students' mouths,

In Graham, a female teacher's aide was fired and arrest on charges of sexually assaulting a male student.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Israel, Sunday, September 1, 2013. The sharpest rhetoric over any potential U.S. strike against Syria has come out of Iran, a close ally and patron of Syria. The head of Iranas powerful Revolutionary Guards warned Thursday that an attack on Syria would mean athe immediate destruction of Israel.a (AP Photo/Abir Sultan, Pool)

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By The Washington Post

Having announced in November that Syria could be "weeks away" from "a big transition," Secretary of State John F. Kerry appears determined to force the launch of something resembling peace negotiations this week. To do so, he and United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura have given up a lot. They are no longer proposing head-to-head discussions between the government of Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups but merely "proximity talks," in which the U.N. mediator would shuttle between them. Nor has the Assad regime been required to allow full humanitarian access into civilian areas it keeps under siege, though that was part of the negotiations road map endorsed by a Security Council resolution last month.

It remains unclear whether this watered-down process will get off the ground Friday in Geneva. Rebel representatives remain undecided whether to accept de Mistura's invitation, in part because of the regime's failure to respect the terms of the U.N. resolution. Even if the convocation goes forward, the concessions already made to the Assad regime and its backers in Russia and Iran probably will ensure that there is no progress in the foreseeable future.

This is not to suggest that Syrian diplomacy should not be pursued. While the "big transition" Kerry foresaw is likely a mirage, a simple cease-fire between the regime and the non-jihadist rebels would be a major success. U.N. officials, for their part, are hoping the Geneva talks will lead to a lifting of government sieges.

Yet Damascus and its backers show no sign of interest in a truce with rebel forces. On the contrary, they are pressing ahead with an offensive that has allowed them to recapture several rebel-held towns in both northern and southern Syria. The advances have been supported by heavy Russian bombing of civilian areas  though Security Council Resolution 2254 explicitly demanded that such attacks cease.

Moscow is meanwhile making demands likely intended to slow or sabotage the process. It has tried to exclude some Islamist groups backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, while pressing its own "opposition" delegation composed of figures acceptable to the Assads, including Syrian Kurds.

In his zeal to start the talks, Kerry has repeatedly accommodated Russia's demands  such as dropping the requirement that the Assad clique be removed from power  while failing to insist on even those conditions mandated by the Security Council, such as an end to the besiegement and bombing of civilians. Yet those are also the prerequisites for a workable political settlement.

Rather than seeking to start the talks at any price, the United States should be working to create the conditions under which they can succeed. That will require giving the opposition the military support it needs to stop and reverse the Syrian-Russian military offensive. And it should mean insisting that as a starting point, the regime's starve-or-surrender blockades, and Russia's bombing of hospitals and food stores, stop once and for all.
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Because of Donald Trump's decision to skip the last GOP debate before the Iowa Caucus, logic clearly leads to the inevitable conclusion that neither Iowa nor New Hampshire can possibly give us a true read on the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

Think about it. If Trump wins Iowa after skipping the debate, there will remain a lingering doubt of whether he could have pulled off the win had he been forced to answer tough questions. If he loses, there will be the issue of whether his decision to ditch the debate killed off the obvious momentum he was building there.

As for New Hampshire, Trump appears to be a prohibitive favorite to win. That likely victory still won't tell us much about the inevitability of a Trump nomination.

For all of the pundits and consultants and GOP "royalty" out there who want Trump out and by any possible means, South Carolina will be their one chance to possibly upend him. But it will be a very difficult task.

I've helped poll South Carolina for news organizations many times over the past few months, and Trump has consistently enjoyed a double-digit lead over the other candidates in the state. And some polls  such as the recent CBS/YouGov survey  have Trump leading by nearly 20 points there.

Understand that while some of the recent attacks on Trump by pundits and self-declared "defenders of true conservatism" are sincere, others are motivated by money and power. This same circle of people who promote one another and earn their way in life by being "in the know" will be cut totally out of the loop should Trump be the nominee. The same goes for most of the GOP "guns for hire" that produce ads, emails, or raise money. They too will be out.

South Carolina, with its more multifaceted GOP primary voter base, will be the last stand for the establishment. But can they do it? Can they stop Donald Trump before he follows a potential South Carolina win with what appears to be a string of southern states where his lead is growing by the day?

Perhaps.

Those who don't really know the state will assume that the South Carolina GOP is dominated by evangelical voters. That's not really true. The upper crescent of the state tends to vote for so-called "Christian right" candidates, but their numbers do not dominate. Others will assume that the GOP's old guard can control the primary vote there. Not really. The party is no longer a powerful force unto itself in the state,

What about Governor Nikki Haley, won't she hurt Trump by endorsing an establishment candidate? Again, Haley's popularity, like that of Senator Lindsey Graham, who until recently was a candidate for president himself, does not transfer to others. In fact, Graham was pulling a lowly 4 percent in the polls in his own state, despite being well liked there. Remember, it was Newt Gingrich, not the establishment darling Romney that carried South Carolina four years ago.

In order for the multitude of candidates and others who want to stop Trump to succeed, several things must happen.

First, there must emerge one and only one establishment candidate. That will likely be either Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. Rubio will likely place better than Bush in Iowa, but Bush is out polling Rubio in the latest New Hampshire poll and led Rubio in our most recent South Carolina survey.

But something will have to give because a race that still has Ted Cruz, Rubio, and Bush all vying to knock out Trump will end up with a Trump win.

Secondly, one of the anti-Trump gang needs to find a way to fire up the huge military and retired military vote in the state. Right now it appears that many of those voters are going for Trump. And while Trump's skipping a debate might hurt him in Iowa, his raising funds that same night for wounded veterans has South Carolina strategy written all over it.

Trump's decision to skip the Des Moines debate might or might not be a smart move. But it guarantees us that he won't "seal the deal" until he can prove himself in South Carolina. But if he does, the nomination will be his.

Matt Towery is a nationally syndicated columnist, pollster, author and attorney. He is the author of the new book "Newsvesting: Use News and Opinion to Grow Your Personal Wealth."
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Athens

Area produce farmers discussed agriculture in the Hudson Valley at an event that marked the official opening of a new base for distributor Field Goods.

Field Goods has operated its 18,000-square foot Athens space since May. The new facility includes 4,000 square feet of refrigerator and freezer storage. Field Goods purchased what was a former warehouse last February and has put $200,000 into renovating the space, founder and president Donna Williams said Friday.

Field Goods collects local farms' fruits and vegetables, bags them at the Athens facility and distributes them to its subscribers, which include businesses who subsidize bags of produce for employees.

The new facility has helped Field Goods double production to 2,200 bags per week over the last year, Williams said. Now, the company operates six vehicles for distribution; last year at this time, there were four, she said.

"Last winter, we were literally walking on top of each other," Williams said. "We really weren't going to be able to scale our business if we didn't move."

Several grants helped Field Goods move into the larger space, including a $100,000 consolidated funding application from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Empire State Development grant through the Capital Region Economic Development Council. The company also received funding from the Empire State Development Minority and Women-Owned Business Development and Lending Program and Greene County, Williams said.

State and local lawmakers attended Friday's event, and food writers including former New York Times food columnist Molly O'Neil and Modern Farmer editor Sarah Grey Miller participated in the afternoon roundtable with local farmers.

Up next for Field Goods will be partnering with wellness companies to supplement its product with nutritional information, Williams said.

lellis@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  @lindsayaellis
Chobani Inc. can no longer air advertisements painting two rival yogurt brands as potentially harmful to consumers, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The ad campaigns, launched Jan. 6, featured women choosing Chobani's Simply 100 cup of Greek yogurt over similar products made by two of the upstate New York yogurt maker's competitors, Yoplait Greek 100, owned by General Mills, and Dannon Light & Fit Greek.

General Mills and Dannon successfully challenged the Chobani ads in federal court in Utica.

In the ad targeting General Mills, a woman tosses a Yoplait cup out a car window as a voice-over says that the yogurt contains potassium sorbate, which it says is "used to kill bugs." She then opens a cup of Chobani's Simply 100, leaning back in the car's seat and holding a spoon.

General Mills said the ads convey the message that Yoplait Greek 100 is unsafe to consume.

It conducted a survey of 650 people that showed that 60 percent of respondents felt that way after watching the ads. Chobani said the campaign aimed to give customers more information about their food choices.

Judge David Hurd of the Northern District of New York granted a preliminary injunction in the dispute, which told Chobani to remove the advertisements and correct any "erroneous impression" that viewers may have taken away from the ad regarding Yoplait Greek 100 yogurt.

Potassium sorbate, which Chobani criticized in the General Mills campaign, is used in wine, cheese, yogurt and other foods to prevent mold and yeast from growing. Small amounts are used in some insect sprays, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it is generally recognized as safe.

"We are pleased by today's court ruling requiring Chobani to stop their false ad campaign attacking Yoplait Greek 100 yogurt," General Mills spokesman Mike Siemienas said in a statement. "General Mills supports fair and vigorous competition between companies, but false advertising only misleads and harms consumers."

In a statement the company said applies to both the General Mills and Dannon court actions Friday, Chobani characterized its marketing as a "mindset campaign" to differentiate between natural and artificial ingredients.

"In the end, if we can give more people more information while helping other food companies make better food, everybody wins," spokesman Peter McGuinness said in a written statement, noting that Chobani is disappointed by the preliminary ruling.

Also Friday, Hurd granted Dannon a preliminary injunction to stop Chobani advertising that criticized Dannon for using sucralose in its yogurt  the video ad tied the artificial sweetener to the fact that it is made with chlorine, implying that it is an unhealthy substance. Sucralose was approved by the FDA as a general purpose food sweetener in 1999.

Hurd said Chobani had to halt spreading misinformation about Dannon products in its ads.

"We have always used only safe ingredients to make a wide variety of yogurts that are enjoyed every day by millions of people," Dannon spokesman Michael Neuwirth said.

Chobani posted a statement to Twitter announcing that "the first part of our campaign has concluded" but that it will continue advocating for eliminating artificial sweeteners and preservatives, asking other U.S. food makers to use only natural ingredients. The statement did not reference the injunctions.

Both Dannon and General Mills filed their court actions under the Lanham Act, which can be used to defend against false or misleading advertising.

Larry Rulison contributed. lellis@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  @lindsayaellis
Greensboro, Vt.

In the snowy woods of northern New England and other forested parts of the country, the lumberjack is an endangered species.

As markets for forest products change and high-tech machinery replaces chain saws, which themselves replaced the ax, a generations-old way of life is disappearing, one that historically saw fathers pass on to their sons their love and knowledge of the woods and the independence that came from self-employment.

Ken Davis feels this keenly as he reaches retirement age after a half-century career.

Davis once employed 19 people full-time to cut the wood, haul it and then truck it, sometimes to his log yard, other times directly to the now-disappearing mills across Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and upstate New York that would turn it into lumber or process it into paper. He now employs seven, and has no sons. His daughter and son-in-law tried it for a while, but they didn't keep at it.

"I've got the sawdust in my veins, and they don't make a dialysis machine to get it out, so I'm still here," Davis said recently at his log yard in the town of Hardwick, in an especially rural region Vermonters call the Northeast Kingdom.

None of Davis' employees are showing interest in taking over his business. It's the same story across the region, said Michael Snyder, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation.

"It's dangerous, it's hard to make a living and everybody hates you," Snyder said of logging. "Who's signing up for that?"

The arguments for not becoming a logger are solid.

For one, there's just not as much demand for paper and other wood products because of low commodity prices and international competition, making it less secure than it once was. It's physically and intellectually demanding work that increasingly requires special skills to run hugely expensive, high-tech machinery. And because of that machinery, capital investments needed to get started can be prohibitive.

The renaissance that farming has undergone in recent years, with an emphasis on food systems and sustainable agriculture, hasn't brought the same energy to logging. In many quarters, loggers are still seen as despoilers of the land. But Snyder noted that while forests can do just fine on their own, logging can support their health by weeding out infestations and invasive species.

Logging entails a number of jobs, including fallers, who cut down trees by hand  essentially, lumberjacks; operators of machinery used to fell trees; and graders and scalers, who check the amount and quality of the wood. The number of all logging workers is expected to fall 4 percent from 2014 to 2024, from 53,700 to 51,700, according to Bureau of Labor projections.

Nationwide, the number of fallers is projected to decline 17 percent over the same period, from 8,200 in 2014 to 6,800 in 2024.

With the industry becoming more mechanized, the number of equipment operators is expected to stay about the same, with graders and scalers declining 2 percent and all other logging workers falling 7 percent.

"Today you are running a half-million, $600,000 machine, and not only do you need to operate it, you've got to read GPS and computer-based technology equipment, you've got to be able to service and maintain that equipment, you have to know forestry, environmental law, best management practices, tree identification," said Dana Doran, executive director of the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine.

Efforts are under way to bring along young loggers. The Vermont Technical College in Randolph helps train forest technicians. In Maine, the industry is backing a plan to train logging technicians in community colleges.

In the Northeast Kingdom, one of Davis' workers, 31-year-old Aaron Martin, said he likes the freedom of working outside in different places. He has been logging for 10 years, but few of his friends have been drawn to the life, he said: "They don't like being out in the cold."

But as much as he likes his work, he has no interest in being the boss.

"With that comes its own headaches," he said. "It's nice to be able to work for somebody else and not deal with all the stress that comes with paying all the bills and everything that goes with it, finding the next job.

"I just go to work and do what I'm told. It's a lot simpler that way."
Stillwater

The Stillwater Board of Education narrowed its search for a new superintendent down to two finalists  an in-house principal and a school administrator in North Colonie.

As part of the hiring process, Brian Dineen, assistant director of pupil services for North Colonie schools, and Stillwater Middle School Principal Patricia Morris will present individual entrance plans in the middle school cafeteria next week.

Dineen will present at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. Morris will present at 4:15 p.m. All community members, parents and staff are invited.

"After an in-depth process including a screening process, interviews with the board of education and subsequent interviews with two advisory committees, the board feels confident that both Mr. Dineen and Ms. Morris have the skills and attributes to connect with our community and lead our district into the future," said board president Timothy Hems.

The search for a new superintendent began in September and is being coordinated by Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES District Superintendent James Dexter.

Stanley Maziejka, Stillwater superintendent for nearly a decade, announced in December that he will retire June 30.

The board conducted interviews and received feedback on both candidates from two advisory committees, which were made up of 22 people, Dexter said. "Both committees conducted their assigned tasks in a professional and thoughtful manner," he said.
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Geneva

The Zika virus is "spreading explosively" in the Americas, which could see up to 4 million cases over the next year, international health officials said Thursday, announcing a special meeting next week to decide if they should declare an international health emergency.

The warning from the World Health Organization came amid a call to arms by officials on both sides of the Atlantic over the mosquito-borne virus, which has been linked to a spike in a rare birth defect in Brazil.

Brazil's president  noting there is no medical defense against the infection  called for a crusade against the mosquitoes spreading it. "As long as we don't have a vaccine against Zika virus, the war must be focused on exterminating the mosquito's breeding areas," said President Dilma Rousseff.

The U.N. health agency called the special session in part to convey its concern about an illness that has sown fear among many would-be mothers. It may also have acted quickly because the agency was criticized for its slow response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Seven New Yorkers have been diagnosed with Zika virus, the mosquito-borne illness that is wreaking havoc in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the state Health Department.

All of the infected residents have traveled to countries where the virus is spreading. Patients were diagnosed in New York City, as well as Orange, Nassau, Monroe and Suffolk counties.

Because the winter months keep mosquitoes at bay in New York, there is very limited chance of the virus spreading here, state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said. The virus does not spread through casual person-to-person contact. Concerns have been raised that the virus could be transmitted sexually, but federal health officials have said the evidence is insufficient.

Meanwhile, U.S. health officials said Thursday while they have not yet seen spread of the disease in the 50 states, the number of U.S. travelers infected over the last year in the Caribbean or Latin America has climbed to 31.

The Zika virus was first discovered in Africa in 1947. But until last year, when it was found in Brazil, it had never been a threat in the Western Hemisphere. The virus causes no more than a mild illness in most people. But there is mounting evidence from Brazil suggesting infection in pregnant women is linked to abnormally small heads in their babies  a birth defect called microcephaly.

Earlier this month, U.S. health officials advised pregnant women to postpone visits to Brazil and other countries in the region with outbreaks.

"For the average American who's not traveling, this is not something they need to worry about," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But "for people who are pregnant and considering travel to the affected areas, please take this seriously," she added. "It's very important for you to understand that we don't know as much as we want to know about this yet."

In Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan noted it had been less than a year since the virus arrived in the Americas, "where it is now spreading explosively."

Although there is no definitive proof that the Zika virus is behind the spike in brain defects in Brazil, "the level of alarm is extremely high," she added. "The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions," Chan said.

Researchers are also looking into a potential tie between Zika infections and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause temporary paralysis.

According to the CDC, the virus is in more than 20 countries, transmitted by the same mosquito that spreads other tropical illnesses such as dengue and yellow fever.

Sylvain Aldighieri, head of WHO's epidemic response team in the Americas, estimated there could be 3 million to 4 million Zika infections in the region over the next year.

Claire Hughes contributed to this report
The policeman was arrested while photographing a security checkpoint near the Giza pyramids

A Turkish policeman was arrested in Egypt early Thursday while photographing a security checkpoint near the Giza pyramids, a security source told Aswat Masriya.

The policeman was accompanied by two diplomats in a car carrying a diplomatic number plate in Cairo's neighbouring governorate of Giza.

The policeman was arrested and sent to a provincial police station while the diplomats were allowed to leave, the source said.

He arrived in Egypt on 25 January, the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. He told interrogators he is in the country for tourism purposes.

Photos of a subway station and a security post in Giza were found on the policeman's cell phone, the source added.

Many Egyptians and tourists have recently been stopped and questioned by police while photographing public places as authorities aim to boost security amid ongoing security threats following the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Ties between Egypt and Turkey have since soured, with Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan emerging as one of the fiercest critics of Morsi's removal.

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Albany

Jonathan Richmond was born on Dec. 4, 1988 at St. Peter's Hospital. He knows his birth mother was a white teenager who lost her own mother to cancer before he was born.

He knows little else. He desperately wants to find out who she is and whether she thinks about him. He feels a hole in his life that he can't fill without her.

"All I'm looking for is closure," Richmond said. "In my heart, I need to know that she is OK. I want to know where I came from, what she does now. I need to know she is out there and she still thinks about me."

Richmond, 27, lives in Worcester, Mass., where he co-owns a new restaurant called Wicked Wing Co. He has searched for his birth mother on and off for years. Just before Christmas, he posted a message on Facebook. It was a photo of himself holding a handwritten poster with all the information he knows about his biological mother and the family that fostered him for six months before he was adopted.

"My foster father was the town paramedic and Barber. His Barber Shop was attached to the foster home (146 Main St., Delhi, NY)," the poster said. "My birth mother was between the ages of 15-18 when she had me. She would be 42-45 years old TODAY! Her last known address was Albany, NY."

Hundreds of people shared it and within days, he received a call from the daughter of the foster family that cared for him after he left the hospital. He phoned his foster mother, Nora Fitch, the day before Christmas and cried for the first minute. He felt a connection immediately. As they spoke, she leafed through a photo album she had kept of his baby pictures. One of the photos had his birth name on the back.

"She said 'Your name is Joshua Simon,' " he said.

But Richmond still doesn't know the name of his biological mother.

"I feel like I have so much information but I'm still stuck," he said.

New York is one of about two dozen states that does not allow adopted adults to access their original birth certificate. Eight states allow unrestricted access  Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, Maine and most recently, Colorado  while about 20 states have limited access.

Richmond's numerous inquiries to Catholic Charities, the agency that handled his adoption when he was six months old, resulted in a new, unsettling details last week. The agency keeps tabs on its adoptees and birth parents, and a case worker emailed him the last known information about his birth mother. The case worker told him that she had walked away from an institutional facility for "victims of domestic violence, drug addicts and mentally ill/unstable patients." She left a year ago and fell off the radar.

"It was a little shocking and it was kind of a low blow," Richmond said.

Richmond considered giving up his search. After a few sleepless nights, he decided to push on.

"That email just took me from a high level of optimism to a very calm, serene level of realism," he said. He is glad the case worker told him the information.

He wonders if he could help her, or if his search has hurt her somehow, or if she simply does not want to be found.

"Maybe she is scared," he said.

Birth mothers may feel guilt and shame, said Karen Caffrey, a therapist and adoptee rights advocate from Connecticut. Birth mothers may have kept it secret from their spouse, their children and family, and may be afraid of being judged.

"They say to themselves, 'What kind of mother gives away their baby?' That is their perception," Caffrey said. "They feel they should have fought harder."

Caffrey was adopted and found her birth family when she was teenager.

"Part of what it means to be human is to know where you came from," she said.

Most people take it for granted. "Everybody in the Smith family laughs the same way or we all have a space between the front teeth or we get bronchitis very easily," she said. "There is this sense of tribe, this connection, that is just absorbed and not even thought about."

That is missing for an adoptee. "There is a big gap," she said.

Caffrey is a leader in the movement to open access to original birth certificates to help adoptees find their roots.

"It's insulting and maddening that the government, which is the legal voice of our community, deprives us of that as a matter of law," she said.

Last year, a bill in the New York legislature proposed giving New York adoptees unfettered access to their original birth certificates. But it was rewritten into what Caffrey called a "Mommy May I" bill that would have required birth parents to give their approval before the records were released. Adoption rights advocates withdrew their support for the bill. (The Assembly bill is on the floor calendar this legislative session and the Senate version is in committee.)

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Caffrey believes momentum is growing nationally to open the records.

"We've realized both psychologically and socially that depriving a human being of information about themselves is not morally correct," Caffrey said. "It's a human right to know who you are."

Even without access to records, adoptees are finding their birth families through social media and DNA banks where people voluntarily submit their DNA hoping to find relatives.

Richmond has put his name in the New York State Department of Health Adoption Information Registry, a more traditional adoption registry where adoptees can connect with birth parents and siblings that have also registered.

The registry was established in 1983 and since its inception, approximately 44,044 people have registered and 2,495 matches between adoptees and birth parents/biological siblings have been made, according to the Department of Health. Of the 44,044 registered, there are 31,509 adoptees, 10,762 birth parents and 1,773 biological siblings.

None are related to Richmond.

Catholic Charities has told Richmond that his birth mother was 17 when he was born, she was Polish Catholic, she was 5 feet 5 inches tall with hazel eyes and brown hair. She lived in a Catholic maternity home while she was pregnant. She liked to play volleyball, jog, write and dance.

Richmond, who is a tap dancer and teaches competitive tap, filed these tidbits into his mind and heart. Each one brings him a step closer to knowing where he came from but leaves him wanting more.

He is getting married in November and hopes to have children, but he feels incomplete.

"It is a terrible feeling that as I get older, it grows larger," he said.

He said he does not blame his birth mother for anything and feels she did what she had to do. He said, "I don't know her but I feel an immense amount of love for her."

He hopes to hear from her soon.

ccrowley@timesunion.com  518-454-5348  @townstu  http://facebook.com/cathleenFcrowley
THE ISSUE:

After moving too slowly, authorities are taking action in the Hoosick Falls water crisis.

THE STAKES:

They now must fulfill promises to fix the problem and address public health needs.

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Maybe you could call it the Flint effect. Almost overnight, potentially dangerous levels of a cancer-causing chemical in a Rensselaer County village's water supply have started to receive the high-level attention they deserve.

On Wednesday, leaders of the village of Hoosick Falls, the town of Hoosick and the local school district were summoned to the state Capitol for a meeting with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and top state health and environmental officials.

Immediately afterward, the state announced the site of a Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant, believed to be the source of the pollution, will be declared a state Superfund site. The move clears the way for increased state resources to begin remediation and to explore what impact this has had on public health. The state also issued an emergency regulation formally classifying the chemical involved  perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA  as a hazardous substance.

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That's good news for the 3,500 Hoosick Falls residents, many of whom have been in a near panic in recent weeks after disclosures of the water problem and its possible connection to cancer and other illnesses. Just as troubling was that village officials first learned of the elevated levels of PFOA in 2014 but failed to communicate the potential health risks to citizens or address the problem. Now, authorities are, as they say, all over it  trying to make up for the reasonable perception that officials weren't moving urgently enough.

The latest response could be partly attributable to a very different situation that is making nationwide headlines. To save money, the financially stressed city of Flint, Mich., switched to an unsafe water source contaminated with lead and other pollutants. Evidence has surfaced that Michigan officials had been aware for some time of the threat to public health, and children in particular, yet failed to address it and publicly disagreed when health experts raised concerns. Now Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is paying politically, with calls for his resignation, as his state rushes to implement costly remedies.

In New York, by contrast, it seems a necessary sense of urgency is taking hold. Health Commissioner Howard A. Zucker says the state will take blood samples from residents to assess the health risk, re-test private wells in the village and install filters at schools and other gathering places. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer on Thursday pressed Saint-Cobain to be proactive. A well-known personal injury law firm has descended on the community, seemingly ready to litigate.

What happens next will be the real test. The public deserves a full picture of the problem, not potentially deceptive assurances like Commissioner Zucker's observation that "there hasn't been any health effects that we've noticed," or Mr. Cuomo's suggestion that people's concerns have "nothing to do with reality." The reality is that they don't yet know what the reality is. The public looks to them to do all it takes to find out.
Jan. 25 marked the fifth anniversary of the Tahrir Square revolt  an uprising organized by young Facebook-savvy Egyptians that came to symbolize the Arab Spring.

At the time, I spent days in and around the square interviewing the revolt's youthful leaders as well as ordinary Cairenes. Those conversations were inspiring, as housewives, cabbies, laborers, office workers and students debated how to transform an authoritarian regime into some form of democracy.

We know how those hopes crumbled. Many of the revolt's organizers are languishing in prison or have fled abroad. In the runup to the fifth anniversary, thousands of police patrolled downtown Cairo, civil society activists were rounded up and blogs were shut down. Tahrir Square was bare of demonstrators, except for a few supporters of Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.

"We are now living under a more brutal regime than that of Hosni Mubarak," says Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, a young, attractive doctor who was one of the uprising's leaders. "The number of young people detained is enormous, in the thousands, and the crackdown is unbelievable. We never faced something like this, even in Mubarak's time, or in our parents' time under (Gamal Abdel) Nasser."

So what went wrong?

I put that question to Harb, with whom I had spent hours talking in 2011. Why had their youthful revolt failed so badly, and what did it tell us about the future prospects for Egypt?

"We were caught in the middle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the institutions of the state (including the Egyptian army)," he told me by phone from Cairo. "We were always the weakest because we didn't have an intact organization and we didn't have time to form one. Both of them had the tools to use against us, and we couldn't do much."

For those who don't know Egypt, let me elaborate. Most of the Tahrir Square organizers came from the educated middle class and represented a relatively small slice of Egyptian society. But their message  demanding that an autocratic regime give way to a less corrupt government that listens to the public  resonated with a wide swathe of Egyptians. It definitely appealed to young people; more than two-thirds of Egyptians are under 35, and their unemployment rate keeps climbing up.

But while they excelled at turning out crowds, the revolt's leaders had no experience in organizing political parties or mobilizing voters. Back in those heady days, I met Harb at Groppi's, a faded Belle Epoque teahouse that became the dissidents' meeting spot; he complained that liberals had to unite in one party and find one leader to gather around. Instead they split, backing several parties, which ensured that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won the presidency in 2012.

The Brotherhood overreached, seeking to control too many levers of power while governing badly. That unnerved many youthful leaders (and other sectors of the public). This enabled the army to rally them behind a coup against Morsi, and a massive, brutal crackdown on the Brotherhood. A weary public, and a low turnout, ensured that el-Sissi, a former general, won a presidential ballot; once in power, he felt free to crush the young democrats who made the 2011 revolt, lest one day they should challenge him.

I asked Harb whether the failure of the revolt indicated that democracy was an impossible dream for Egypt. On the contrary, he said, "The lesson of the past five years is that the only way for us to survive is to build a democratic, secular state."

His reasoning: Egyptians have had it with autocracy and theocracy.

The tumultuous year of Muslim Brotherhood rule disillusioned the Egyptian public with government by Islamists. "The Egyptian people won't accept them," he insists. Meantime, the return of an autocratic, military regime is too deja vu. "They are out of context, out of history; the younger generation won't tolerate it."

That argument has some holes. True, an Islamist government failed, but any future Egyptian democracy won't be able to exclude Islamist parties that play by legal rules in a country with a strong religious base. Moreover, the torture and jailing of thousands of Muslim Brothers could boomerang, unless some way is found to reintegrate them back into society.

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Yet Harb is correct in the long term.

Autocracy has failed, repeatedly, to meet Egyptians' needs. The el-Sissi government's economic performance has been dismal. It justifies its crackdown to the public by pointing to a growing Islamic State threat. But Egyptian youths have nothing to do with that threat. (Nor did it emerge from the Brotherhood.)

Only a more open system can galvanize the youthful energy that went into the Tahrir Square revolt and permit peaceful political parties to organize and develop. Only a more open system will enable Egypt's economy to grow.

"The only way out is democracy," Harb insists. But unless el-Sissi creates the space for peaceful political activism, that energy will falter or go underground. "If the government puts an end to peaceful protests," he adds, "I can see the country going into chaos. If we, the sane, rational opposition, are not in the picture, then the irrational opposition, calling for violence, will prevail."

In other words, the Tahrir Square revolution isn't over. We just don't know yet how it will end.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Stockholm

Now in his last year in office, President Barack Obama is in legacy mode. He has much to be proud of. But if he doesn't want his achievements muddied by foreign policy, he'll spend his last year redoubling his efforts to contain the Middle East refugee crisis before it goes from a giant humanitarian problem to a giant geostrategic problem that shatters America's most important ally: the European Union.

I know  putting "European Union" into the lead of a column published in America is like a "Do Not Read" sign. Maybe I should call it "Trump's European Union." That would go viral. But for the two of you still reading, this is really important.

The meltdowns of Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, Mali, Chad and Yemen and our takedowns of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan  without proper follow-up on our part, NATO's part or by local elites  has uncorked the worst refugee crisis since World War II. This tidal wave of migrants and refugees is a human tragedy, and their outflow from Syria and Libya in particular is destabilizing all the neighboring islands of decency: Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Kurdistan and Turkey. And now it is eating away at the fabric of the EU as well.

Why should Americans care? Because the EU is the United States of Europe  the world's other great center of democracy and economic opportunity. It has its military shortcomings, but with its wealth and liberal values, the EU has become America's primary partner in addressing climate change, managing Iran and Russia and containing disorder in the Middle East and Africa.

This partnership amplifies American power and, if the EU is hobbled or fractured, America will have to do so many more things around the world with much less help.

At a seminar in Davos, Switzerland, sponsored by the Wilson Center, I interviewed David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, which oversees relief operations in more than 30 war-affected countries. He made several key points.

First, one in every 122 people on the planet today is "fleeing a conflict" at a time when wars between nations "are at a record low," said Miliband, a former British foreign secretary. Why? Because we now have nearly 30 civil wars underway in weak states that are "unable to meet the basic needs of citizens or contain civil war."

Second, he said, last year the rescue committee assisted 23 million refugees and internally displaced individuals. Half of those going to Europe come directly out of Syria and most of the rest come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Eritrea. International humanitarian relief system "is now being overwhelmed by the numbers."

Last year, within the EU bloc there were 56 million truck crossings between countries and every day 1.7 million crossings by people. Preserving that free movement of trucks, trade and people, Miliband added, will not be sustained if EU countries feel swamped by refugees who can't be properly registered or absorbed.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was well intentioned when she opened her country to 1.1 million Arab, African and Afghan migrants last year, but it was also reckless of her to think that so many immigrants, primarily Muslims, could be properly absorbed so quickly into society in German  a country that took two decades and billions of dollars to absorb East Germans. Merkel's open-door policy drew even more refugees to the EU, and now that the Germans want to stop the flow, their neighbors won't take them.

"This refugee crisis is a real arrow pointed at the heart of the European Union," Miliband said. "There is no solution that confines itself within the borders of Europe." As long as there is "war without law and without end in Syria," the refugee flow will continue, with all its destabilizing implications.

Obama did not cause this Syria problem, and he can't fix it alone  but it's not going to get fixed without U.S. leadership. We need to take another look at establishing some kind of U.S./EU/NATO safe zone inside Syria and Libya to create space for refugees to remain in these countries. It's not cost-free, but letting this refugee disaster fracture the EU will be a lot more expensive.

Thomas L. Friedman writes for The New York Times.
Tipperary TD Noel Coonan has welcomed the announcement of 3.9million for Tipperary Housing Units from his Fine Gael colleague and Minister with Responsibility for Housing Paudie Coffey.

Only recently, Deputy Coonan and representatives of Thurles Lions Trust Housing Association met with Minister Coffey in Dublin to help progress their project. Now 700,000 has been announced for the group for six units.

"I want to compliment all voluntary housing groups for taking the initiative to promote and support the provision of housing units in our towns, and for their voluntary efforts. The value of this service is priceless to the local community.

"I also want to compliment Minister Coffey who was very responsive to Thurles Lions Trust Housing Association's submission for units and for his efforts in meeting us last week.

"1.1million has been allocated to Tipperary County Council for six units in Templetuohy and 2.1million for 12 units in Borrisoleigh and the efforts of the Council has also been very important in providing social housing units. In total, funding has been allocated for 24 units in this round of funding from Minister Coffey.

"More announcements are to follow and I am encouraging people in housing to put in their applications," concluded Deputy Coonan.
Doctors at Matariya Teaching Hospital have gone on strike after a colleague was assaulted by a policeman seeking treatment

Egypt's Doctors Syndicate has given its official support to a strike by doctors at Matariya Teaching Hospital after physicians at the hospital were assaulted by a group of policemen.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the syndicate announced that it had forwarded a complaint to Egypt's prosecutor-general about the alleged attack, which took place that morning.

A low-ranking policeman wearing civilian clothes went to the hospital on Thursday morning with a wound on his face, and asked the doctor examining him in the ER to include fake injuries in the medical report, which he refused, sources in the hospital said.

In retaliation, the policeman called a group of colleagues to the hospital who assaulted the doctor and some of his colleagues before taking them to the police station, where they were released.

Doctors at the hospital have said they will strike until legal action was taken against the policemen involved in the incident.

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U.S. Senate Votes Unanimously to Pass Resolution Recognizing Jan. 24-30, 2016 as "National School Choice Week"

The United States Senate tonight voted unanimously to recognize the week of January 24-30, 2016 as "National School Choice Week."

This is the second year in a row that the U.S. Senate has recognized National School Choice Week, which is the largest annual celebration of opportunity in K-12 education.

The primary sponsor of the resolution was U.S. Senator Tim Scott. Cosponsors included U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA (News - Alert)), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Cornyn (R-TX), David Vitter (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Roger Wicker (R-MS), David Perdue (R-GA), James Lankford (R-OK), and Mike Crapo (R-ID).

The resolution calls on all Americans to celebrate education options for children and families.

Held from Janary 24-30, National School Choice Week 2016 features 16,140 events across the country, including rallies and events at 20 state capitol buildings. Thirty-three U.S. governors, along with more than 240 mayors and county leaders have issued official proclamations commemorating National School Choice Week in 2016. State legislatures in Alaska, Delaware, South Carolina, and Michigan have also passed resolutions recognizing the Week.







"We are honored that the United States Senate has once again designated the last week in January as National School Choice Week," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are very grateful for Senator Tim Scott's leadership and persistence in authoring this resolution and in helping raise awareness -- in a bipartisan way -- about the many important education options that parents have, or want to be able to have, for their children's education, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling."

For more information about National School Choice Week, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160128006638/en/
[January 28, 2016] Biometric Sensors Market By Type By Application By End use Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023

LONDON, Jan. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Biometric sensors integrate physical traits of the human body with digital technology in order to provide biometric security. Semiconductor devices like biometric security systems contain algorithms and template database in order to match live biometric samples with the already stored samples in the database. Face metrics, fingerprints, and vein structures in hands among others are some of the physical traits used to prepare desired templates. Increasing concerns of privacy and security along with growing demand for smart gadgets with biometric security systems are some of the major driving factors for the market. A biometric sensor is a transducer that converts a biometric treat such as voice, face, and fingerprint etc. of a person into an electrical signal. Sensors generally measure temperature, pressure, light, electrical capacity, and speed. Biometric sensors are lightweight and compact in design. Furthermore, they can be installed in devices very conveniently. Some key attributes of biometric sensors include fast verification and identification. Biometric sensors are a breakthrough technology, which weed out various security-related issues from different domains.



Factors such as increasing emphasis on better security and safety, application of fingerprint scan, facial scan, hand scan, and voice scan are expected to see positive growth during the forecast period from 2015 to 2023. Increasing emergence of mobile and online financial transactions, biometric security solutions have found a huge opportunity in the financial sector. Biometric sensors technology can be used in a wide number of applications such as automotive, consumer electronics, commercial centers, and hospitality industries. In the sectors where safety, privacy, and security are of primary concern, biometric sensors are expected to find opportunities in applications such as making transactions and operations.



Biometric and fingerprint sensors have become a standard feature in consumer electronic products. Sensing the consumer preference for security and privacy, the key manufacturers of smarthones and other gadgets have started offering fingerprint sensors as a part of certain products. The demand for biometric security technology is on the rise due to the fact that the users of smartphones and other smart gadgets have become more familiar and comfortable with using tools such as fingerprint identification for gaining access. Growing demand for tablets, smartwatches, wearable devices, and other consumer electronic products is acting as one of the major drivers for this market. Furthermore, some of the factors acting as restraining factors for the market include limitation of application in different geographical regions due to cultural barriers and lack of standardization in the process of implementation and development of technical standards. However, graphene enable sensors are the future of the biometric sensors market.







Based on type, the market is segmented into capacitive sensors, optical sensors, thermal sensors, ultrasound sensors, and electric field sensors (eField). In terms of application, the market is segmented into voice scan, finger scan, hand scan, facial scan, iris scan, vein scan, and others. Furthermore, by end use, the market is segmented into consumer electronics, commercial centers and buildings, defense and security, medical and research labs, banking and financial services sector among others.



Geographically, the global biometric sensors market is categorized into North America , Europe , Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). The scope of the report offers an insight into biometric sensors market in these regions based on revenue (USD million) and volume (million units).





The report also includes competitive profiling of leading players in the industry and their market share to aid in strategic decision making. The market attractiveness analysis and company market share analysis included in the report provide insight into market dynamics, industry competition and strategies adopted by market leaders.



The report also breaks down and reviews the various factors impacting the market growth, which can be appropriately described as market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. These factors help to determine the various existing trends and their impact on the market growth. Overall, taking into consideration the various factors affecting the biometric sensors market, the report includes a holistic analysis of the global biometric sensor market, and provides an estimate of growth for the period 2015 to 2023.



Some of the leading players in the biometric sensors market are CrossMatch Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Fulcrum Biometrics (U.S.), Infineon Technologies AG ( Germany ), 3M (U.S.), ZKTeco Inc ( China ), NEC Corporation ( Japan ), Safran (France) , Precise Biometrics Ab ( Sweden ), Suprema Inc. ( South Korea ) and IDEX ASA ( Norway ) among others.

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[January 29, 2016] Tyco Reports First Quarter 2016 Earnings From Continuing Operations Before Special Items Of $0.42 Per Share And GAAP Earnings Of $0.17 Per Share

CORK, Ireland, Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Exceeds guidance for revenue and earnings per share before special items (EPS)

Announces strategic combination with Johnson Controls to create the leader in building products and technology, integrated solutions and energy storage

Enhances business portfolio with additional investment in Middle East business, acquisition of ShopperTrak to expand retail analytics solutions, and divestiture of Australian fire detection and protection business

business, acquisition of ShopperTrak to expand retail analytics solutions, and divestiture of Australian fire detection and protection business Reaches tentative resolution of legacy tax litigation by filing Stipulations of Settled Issues with the U.S. Tax Court

Provides guidance for second quarter 2016 EPS before special items of $0.44 - $0.46

Reaffirms full-year EPS before special items guidance of $2.05 - $2.20 Tyco (NYSE: TYC) today reported $0.17 in GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) from continuing operations for the fiscal first quarter of 2016. Diluted EPS from continuing operations before special items of $0.42 exceeded previous guidance of $0.40. Revenue of $2.4 billion in the quarter decreased 4% versus the prior year, primarily due to a 6% negative impact of the stronger U.S. dollar against foreign currencies. Organic revenue was flat in the quarter versus previous guidance of a decline of 1% to 3%. Acquisitions contributed 3 percentage points of growth, which was partially offset by the impact of a divestiture. "We are off to a solid start to our fiscal year. Although we operated under challenging macro-economic conditions around the globe, we continued to execute well on what was within our control," said Tyco Chief Executive Officer George R. Oliver. "Despite this environment, we remain focused on building our business for the long-term, and the announcement of our planned merger with Johnson Controls is a perfect example. I am thrilled with the prospect of bringing the unique strengths of two great companies together to deliver best-in-class building technologies and services to customers around the world. "We believe this transaction will allow us to better capture opportunities created by increased connectivity in homes, buildings and cities. Joining forces with Johnson Controls pairs our leading established businesses with robust innovation pipelines and extensive global footprints to deliver greater value to customers, shareholders and employees of both companies," Mr. Oliver added.



(Income and EPS amounts are attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders)

($ millions, except per-share amounts)



Q1 2016

Q1 2015

% Change

Revenue

$ 2,376



$ 2,478



(4) %

Segment Operating Income

$ 362



$ 323



12 %

Restructuring and Repositioning

$ (18)



$ (75)



(76) %

Operating Income

$ 293



$ 199



47 %

Income from Continuing Operations

$ 72



$ 164



(56) %

GAAP Diluted EPS from Continuing Operations

$ 0.17



$ 0.38



(55) %

Special Items

$ 0.25



$ -







Segment Operating Income Before Special Items

$ 306



$ 327



(6) %

Restructuring and Repositioning Before Special Items

$ (22)



$ (75)



(71) %

Income from Continuing Ops Before Special Items

$ 178



$ 162



10 %

Diluted EPS from Continuing Ops Before Special Items

$ 0.42



$ 0.38



11 %

Organic revenue, free cash flow, adjusted free cash flow, operating income, segment operating income, and diluted EPS from continuing operations before special items are non-GAAP financial measures and are described below. Special items in the quarter of $0.25 were primarily driven by a loss on early extinguishment of debt and a loss on divestiture, partially offset by a gain on the sale of an equity investment. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures, see the attached tables. Additional schedules as well as first quarter review slides can be found in the Investor Relations section of Tyco's website at http://investors.tyco.com . SEGMENT RESULTS The financial results presented in the tables below are in accordance with GAAP unless otherwise indicated. All dollar amounts are pre-tax and stated in millions. All comparisons are to the fiscal first quarter of 2015 unless otherwise indicated. North America Integrated Solutions & Services



Q1 2016

Q1 2015

% Change

Revenue

$ 953



$ 951



- %

Operating Income

$ 132



$ 129



2 %

Operating Margin

13.9 %

13.6 %





Special Items

$ -



$ (2)







Operating Income Before Special Items

$ 132



$ 131



1 %

Operating Margin Before Special Items

13.9 %

13.8 %





Revenue of $953 million was relatively flat compared to the prior year, as organic growth was offset by the weakening of the Canadian dollar. Organic revenue growth of 2% was driven by 1% growth in service and 2% growth in integrated solutions. Backlog of $2.51 billion increased 2% year over year and 1% on a quarter sequential basis, excluding the impact of foreign currency. Operating income for the quarter was $132 million and the operating margin before special items improved 10 basis points to 13.9%. Normalized for a $6 million charge in the prior year, the operating margin contracted 50 basis points year over year, as the benefits of productivity were offset by incremental investments. Rest of World Integrated Solutions & Services





Q1 2016

Q1 2015

% Change

Revenue

$ 812



$ 916



(11) %

Operating Income

$ 133



$ 89



49 %

Operating Margin

16.4 %

9.7 %





Special Items

$ 56



$ (2)







Operating Income Before Special Items

$ 77



$ 91



(15) %

Operating Margin Before Special Items

9.5 %

9.9 %





Revenue of $812 million decreased 11% compared to the prior year, driven by an 11% unfavorable impact from foreign currency exchange rates. Organic revenue declined 1%, as 1% growth in service was more than offset by a 4% decline in integrated solutions. Acquisition growth of 3% was partially offset by a 2% decline related to a divestiture. Backlog of $1.87 billion increased 9% both year over year and on a quarter sequential basis, excluding the impact of foreign currency and the divestiture, primarily driven by an acquisition in the quarter. Operating income for the quarter was $133 million and the operating margin was 16.4%. Special items primarily consisted of a gain related to an equity investment partially offset by a loss on divestiture, for a net benefit of $56 million. Before special items, operating income was $77 million and the operating margin was 9.5%. The operating margin declined 40 basis points, fully driven by non-cash purchase accounting. Excluding purchase accounting, the operating margin was up slightly year over year, as productivity benefits offset the revenue decline and investment. Global Products





Q1 2016

Q1 2015

% Change

Revenue

$ 611



$ 611



- %

Operating Income

$ 97



$ 105



(8) %

Operating Margin

15.9 %

17.2 %





Special Items

$ -



$ -







Operating Income Before Special Items

$ 97



$ 105



(8) %

Operating Margin Before Special Items

15.9 %

17.2 %





Revenue of $611 million was flat with the prior year. Organic revenue declined 1%, driven by Life Safety Products due to increased Air-Pak X3 shipments during the comparable quarter in the prior year. Acquisitions contributed 6 percentage points of growth, which was mostly offset by changes in foreign currency exchange rates. Operating income for the quarter was $97 million and the operating margin was 15.9%. The 130 basis point decline in operating margin included a 70 basis point headwind related to non-cash purchase accounting. The underlying margin decline of 60 basis points was primarily driven by product mix. OTHER ITEMS Cash from operating activities was $189 million and free cash flow was $117 million , which included a cash outflow of $52 million from special items primarily related to prior year restructuring and repositioning activities. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was $169 million . The company completed the quarter with $301 million in cash and cash equivalents.

and free cash flow was , which included a cash outflow of from special items primarily related to prior year restructuring and repositioning activities. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was . The company completed the quarter with in cash and cash equivalents. Corporate expense for the quarter was $52 million before special items and $51 million on a GAAP basis, compared to $55 million before special items for the prior year period.

before special items and on a GAAP basis, compared to before special items for the prior year period. Restructuring and repositioning charges were $22 million before special items, compared to $75 million for the prior year period.

before special items, compared to for the prior year period. The tax rate before special items was 17.2% for the quarter.

As previously disclosed, the company entered into Stipulations of Settled Issues with the IRS intended to resolve all outstanding disputes related to intercompany debt issues for the 1997-2000 audit cycle, which are currently before the U.S. Tax Court. The resolution is contingent upon the IRS Appeals Division applying the same settlement to all intercompany debt issues on appeal for subsequent audit cycles (2001-2007). If finalized, the tentative resolution would cover all aspects of the controversy before the U.S. Tax Court and the IRS Appeals Division, and would result in a total cash payment to the IRS in the range of $475 million to $525 million , which includes all interest and penalties. This payment would be shared among the company, Covidien plc and TE Connectivity Ltd., 27%, 42% and 31%, respectively. The company does not expect to recognize any additional charges related to the resolution, as the company had previously recorded sufficient reserves with respect to this matter and its obligations under the Tax Sharing Agreements. Payment is expected to be made to the IRS, and among the company, Covidien and TE Connectivity, within the next six months.

, which includes all interest and penalties. This payment would be shared among the company, Covidien plc and TE Connectivity Ltd., 27%, 42% and 31%, respectively. The company does not expect to recognize any additional charges related to the resolution, as the company had previously recorded sufficient reserves with respect to this matter and its obligations under the Tax Sharing Agreements. Payment is expected to be made to the IRS, and among the company, Covidien and TE Connectivity, within the next six months. As previously announced, during the quarter the company made an additional investment in its Tyco UAE joint venture with local partner Suwaidi Engineering Group. Tyco now fully consolidates the financial results of this business into its Rest of World Integrated Solutions & Services segment, which is expected to add approximately $130 million in revenue on an annualized basis.

in revenue on an annualized basis. As previously announced, during the quarter the company reached an agreement to acquire ShopperTrak, a leading global provider of retail traffic insights and location-based analytics, for approximately $175 million in cash. This business currently generates approximately $75 million in annual revenue. This transaction closed in late January 2016 .

in cash. This business currently generates approximately in annual revenue. This transaction closed in late . As previously announced, during the quarter the company reached an agreement to divest its fire detection and protection business in Australia . In fiscal year 2015, this business had revenue of approximately $260 million . This transaction closed in late January 2016 .

. In fiscal year 2015, this business had revenue of approximately . This transaction closed in late . During the quarter, the company redeemed its 7.0% notes due in 2019 and 6.875% notes due in 2021, which resulted in a loss from retirement of debt of $168 million . ABOUT TYCO Tyco (NYSE: TYC) is the world's largest pure-play fire protection and security company. Tyco provides more than three million customers around the globe with the latest fire protection and security products and services. Tyco has over 57,000 employees in more than 900 locations across 50 countries serving various end markets, including commercial, institutional, governmental, retail, industrial, energy, residential and small business. For more information, visit www.tyco.com . CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST Management will discuss the company's first quarter results for 2016 during a conference call and webcast today beginning at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time (ET). Today's conference call for investors can be accessed in the following ways: Live via webcast - through the Investor Relations section of Tyco's website at http://investors.tyco.com ,

, Live via telephone (for "listen-only" participants and those who would like to ask a question) - by dialing 800-857-9797 (in the United States ) or 517-308-9029 (outside the United States ), passcode "Tyco",

) or 517-308-9029 (outside ), passcode "Tyco", Replay via telephone - by dialing 800-568-4204 (in the United States ) or 203-369-3290 (outside the United States ), passcode 2577, from 10:00 a.m. (ET) on January 29, 2016 , until 11:59 p.m. (ET) on February 5, 2016 , and

) or 203-369-3290 (outside ), passcode 2577, from on , until on , and Replay via webcast - through the "Presentations & Webcasts" link on the Investor Relations section of Tyco's website: http://investors.tyco.com . NON-GAAP MEASURES Organic revenue, free cash flow (outflow) (FCF), and income from continuing operations, earnings per share (EPS) from continuing operations, operating income and segment operating income, in each case "before special items," are non-GAAP measures and should not be considered replacements for GAAP results. Organic revenue is a useful measure used by the company to measure the underlying results and trends in the business. The difference between reported net revenue (the most comparable GAAP measure) and organic revenue (the non-GAAP measure) consists of the impact from foreign currency, acquisitions and divestitures, and other changes that either do not reflect the underlying results and trends of the Company's businesses or are not completely under management's control. There are limitations associated with organic revenue, such as the fact that, as presented herein, the metric may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies. These limitations are best addressed by using organic revenue in combination with the GAAP numbers. Organic revenue may be used as a component in the company's incentive compensation plans. FCF is a useful measure of the company's cash that permits management and investors to gain insight into the number that management employs to measure cash that is free from any significant existing obligation and is available to service debt and make investments. The difference between Cash Flows from Operating Activities (the most comparable GAAP measure) and FCF (the non-GAAP measure) consists mainly of significant cash flows that the company believes are useful to identify. It, or a measure that is based on it, may be used as a component in the company's incentive compensation plans. The difference reflects the impact from: net capital expenditures,

dealer generated accounts and bulk accounts purchased,

cash paid for purchase accounting and holdback liabilities, and

voluntary pension contributions. Capital expenditures and dealer generated and bulk accounts purchased are subtracted because they represent long-term investments that are required for normal business activities. Cash paid for purchase accounting and holdback liabilities is subtracted because these cash outflows are not available for general corporate uses. Voluntary pension contributions are added because this activity is driven by economic financing decisions rather than operating activity. In addition, the company presents adjusted free cash flow, which is free cash flow, adjusted to exclude the cash impact of the special items highlighted below. This number provides information to investors regarding the cash impact of certain items management believes are useful to identify, as described below. The limitation associated with using these cash flow metrics is that they adjust for cash items that are ultimately within management's and the Board of Directors' discretion to direct and therefore may imply that there is less or more cash that is available for the company's programs than the most comparable GAAP measure. Furthermore, these non-GAAP metrics may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies. These limitations are best addressed by using FCF in combination with the GAAP cash flow numbers. The company has presented its income and EPS from continuing operations, operating income and segment operating income before special items. Special items include charges and gains related to divestitures, acquisitions, restructurings, impairments, certain changes to accounting methodologies, legacy legal and tax charges and other income or charges that may mask the underlying operating results and/or business trends of the company or business segment, as applicable. The company utilizes these measures to assess overall operating performance and segment level core operating performance, as well as to provide insight to management in evaluating overall and segment operating plan execution and underlying market conditions. The Company also presents its effective tax rate as adjusted for special items for consistency, and presents corporate expense excluding special items. One or more of these measures may be used as components in the company's incentive compensation plans. These measures are useful for investors because they may permit more meaningful comparisons of the company's underlying operating results and business trends between periods. The difference between income and EPS from continuing operations before special items and income and EPS from continuing operations (the most comparable GAAP measures) consists of the impact of the special items noted above on the applicable GAAP measure. The limitation of these measures is that they exclude the impact (which may be material) of items that increase or decrease the company's reported GAAP metrics, and these non-GAAP metrics may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies. These limitations are best addressed by using the non-GAAP measures in combination with the most comparable GAAP measures in order to better understand the amounts, character and impact of any increase or decrease on reported results. The company provides general corporate services to its segments and those costs are reported in the "Corporate and Other" segment. This segment's operating income (loss) is presented as "Corporate Expense." Segment Operating Income represents Tyco's operating income excluding the Corporate and Other segment, and reflects the results of Tyco's three operating segments. Segment Operating Income before special items reflects GAAP operating income adjusted for the special items noted in the paragraph above. NO OFFER OR SOLICITATION This communication is not intended to and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to subscribe for or buy or an invitation to purchase or subscribe for any securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction in contravention of applicable law. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND WHERE TO FIND IT In connection with the proposed transaction between Johnson Controls, Inc. ("Johnson Controls") and Tyco International plc ("Tyco"), Tyco will file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") a registration statement on Form S-4 that will include a joint proxy statement of Johnson Controls and Tyco that also constitutes a prospectus of Tyco (the "Joint Proxy Statement/Prospectus"). Johnson Controls and Tyco plan to mail to their respective shareholders the definitive Joint Proxy Statement/Prospectus in connection with the transaction. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS OF JOHNSON CONTROLS AND TYCO ARE URGED TO READ THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED OR TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC CAREFULLY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT JOHNSON CONTROLS, TYCO, THE TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the Joint Proxy Statement/Prospectus (when available) and other documents filed with the SEC by Johnson Controls and Tyco through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the documents filed with the SEC by Johnson Controls by contacting Johnson Controls Shareholder Services at [email protected] or by calling (800) 524-6220 and will be able to obtain free copies of the documents filed with the SEC by Tyco by contacting Tyco Investor Relations at [email protected] or by calling (609) 720-4333. PARTICIPANTS IN THE SOLICITATION Johnson Controls, Tyco and certain of their respective directors, executive officers and employees may be considered participants in the solicitation of proxies in connection with the proposed transaction. Information regarding the persons who may, under the rules of the SEC, be deemed participants in the solicitation of the respective shareholders of Johnson Controls and Tyco in connection with the proposed transactions, including a description of their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be set forth in the Joint Proxy Statement/Prospectus when it is filed with the SEC. Information regarding Johnson Controls' directors and executive officers is contained in Johnson Controls' proxy statement for its 2016 annual meeting of shareholders, which was filed with the SEC on December 14, 2015. Information regarding Tyco's directors and executive officers is contained in Tyco's proxy statement for its 2016 annual meeting of shareholders, which was filed with the SEC on January 15, 2016. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains a number of forward-looking statements. In many cases forward-looking statements are identified by words, and variations of words, such as "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "commit", "confident", "continue", "could", "intend", "may", "plan", "potential", "predict", "positioned", "should", "will", "expect", "objective", "projection", "forecast", "goal", "guidance", "outlook", "effort", "target", and other similar words. However, the absence of these words does not mean the statements are not forward-looking. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, revenue, operating income, earnings per share and other financial projections, statements regarding the health and growth prospects of the industries and end markets in which Tyco operates, the leadership, resources, potential, priorities, and opportunities for Tyco in the future, Tyco's credit profile, capital allocation priorities and other capital market related activities, statements regarding Tyco's acquisition, divestiture, restructuring and other productivity initiatives, and statements regarding Tyco's proposed merger with Johnson Controls and related transactions. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of our control, and could cause results to materially differ from expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: economic, business, competitive, technological or regulatory factors that adversely impact Tyco or the markets and industries in which it competes; unanticipated expenses such as litigation or legal settlement expenses; tax law changes; industry specific events or conditions that may adversely impact revenue or other financial projections; risks relating to the completion of the proposed transaction with Johnson Controls on anticipated terms and timing, including obtaining shareholder and regulatory approvals, anticipated tax treatment, unforeseen liabilities, future capital expenditures, revenues, expenses, earnings, synergies, economic performance, indebtedness, financial condition, losses, future prospects, business and management strategies for the management, expansion and growth of the new combined company's operations, the ability of Tyco and Johnson Controls to integrate their businesses successfully and to achieve anticipated synergies, changes in tax laws or interpretations, access to available financing, potential litigation relating to the proposed transaction, and the risk that disruptions from the proposed transaction will harm Tyco's business. Actual results could differ materially from anticipated results. Tyco is under no obligation (and expressly disclaims any obligation) to update its forward-looking statements. More information on potential factors that could affect the Company's financial results is included from time to time in the "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" sections of the Company's public reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 25, 2015, and subsequent filings with the SEC. STATEMENT REQUIRED BY THE IRISH TAKEOVER RULES The directors of Tyco International plc accept responsibility for the information contained in this communication. To the best of their knowledge and belief (having taken all reasonable care to ensure such is the case), the information contained in this communication is in accordance with the facts and does not omit anything likely to affect the import of such information. Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, which is a registered broker dealer with the SEC, is acting for Tyco International plc and no one else in connection with the proposed transaction and will not be responsible to anyone other than Tyco International plc for providing the protections afforded to clients of Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, or for giving advice in connection with the proposed transaction or any matter referred to herein. NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OR REGULATIONS OF SUCH JURISDICTION. This communication is not intended to be and is not a prospectus for the purposes of Part 23 of the Companies Act 2014 of Ireland (the "2014 Act"), Prospectus (Directive 2003/71/EC) Regulations 2005 (S.I. No. 324 of 2005) of Ireland (as amended from time to time) or the Prospectus Rules issued by the Central Bank of Ireland pursuant to section 1363 of the 2014 Act, and the Central Bank of Ireland ("CBI") has not approved this communication.

TYCO INTERNATIONAL PLC CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (in millions, except per share data) (Unaudited)





Quarters Ended

December 25,

2015

December 26,

2014



Revenue from product sales $ 1,408



$ 1,488

Service revenue 968



990

Net revenue 2,376



2,478

Cost of product sales 962



1,022

Cost of services 536



547

Selling, general and administrative expenses 573



652

Restructuring and asset impairment charges, net 12



58

Operating income 293



199

Interest income 4



3

Interest expense (24)



(24)

Other (expense) income, net (165)



4

Income from continuing operations before income taxes 108



182

Income tax expense (36)



(19)

Income from continuing operations 72



163

Income (loss) from discontinued operations, net of income taxes 4



(2)

Net income 76



161

Less: noncontrolling interest in subsidiaries net loss -



(1)

Net income attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders $ 76



$ 162

Amounts attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders:





Income from continuing operations $ 72



$ 164

Income (loss) from discontinued operations 4



(2)

Net income attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders $ 76



$ 162

Basic earnings per share attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders:





Income from continuing operations $ 0.17



$ 0.39

Income from discontinued operations 0.01



-

Net income attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders $ 0.18



$ 0.39

Diluted earnings per share attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders:





Income from continuing operations $ 0.17



$ 0.38

Income from discontinued operations 0.01



-

Net income attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders $ 0.18



$ 0.38

Weighted average number of shares outstanding:





Basic 424



420

Diluted 428



427













Note: These financial statements should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes contained in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on November 13, 2015 for the fiscal year ended September 25, 2015.

TYCO INTERNATIONAL PLC RESULTS OF SEGMENTS (in millions) (Unaudited)





Quarters Ended







December 25, 2015





December 26, 2014



Net Revenue















NA Integrated Solutions & Services

$ 953







$ 951





ROW Integrated Solutions & Services

812







916





Global Products

611







611





Total Net Revenue

$ 2,376







$ 2,478























Operating Income and Margin















NA Integrated Solutions & Services

$ 132



13.9 %

$ 129



13.6 % ROW Integrated Solutions & Services

133



16.4 %

89



9.7 % Global Products

97



15.9 %

105



17.2 % Segment operating income

362



15.2 %

323



13.0 % Corporate and Other expense

(51)



N/M

(49)



N/M Restructuring and repositioning charges, net

(18)



N/M

(75)



N/M Operating income

$ 293



12.3 %

$ 199



8.0 %

TYCO INTERNATIONAL PLC CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (in millions) (Unaudited)













December 25, 2015

September 25, 2015 Assets







Current Assets:







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 301



$ 1,401

Accounts receivable, net

1,719



1,732

Inventories

647



624

Prepaid expenses and other current assets

853



754

Deferred income taxes

62



62

Assets held for sale

83



102

Total Current Assets

3,665



4,675

Property, plant and equipment, net

1,167



1,177

Goodwill

4,365



4,234

Intangible assets, net

927



863

Other assets

1,307



1,372

Total Assets

$ 11,431



$ 12,321











Liabilities and Equity







Current Liabilities:







Loans payable and current maturities of long-term debt

$ 152



$ 987

Accounts payable

789



774

Accrued and other current liabilities

1,837



1,661

Deferred revenue

349



380

Liabilities held for sale

84



50

Total Current Liabilities

3,211



3,852

Long-term debt

2,146



2,159

Deferred revenue

292



303

Other liabilities

1,736



1,931

Total Liabilities

7,385



8,245











Total Tyco shareholders' equity

4,009



4,041

Nonredeemable noncontrolling interest

37



35

Total Equity

4,046



4,076

Total Liabilities and Equity

$ 11,431



$ 12,321



















Note: These financial statements should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes contained in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on November 13, 2015 for the fiscal year ended September 25, 2015. TYCO INTERNATIONAL PLC

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

(in millions)

(Unaudited)









For the Three Months Ended



December 25,

2015

December 26,

2014





Cash Flows From Operating Activities:







Net income attributable to Tyco ordinary shareholders

$ 76



$ 162

Noncontrolling interest in subsidiaries net income

-



(1)

(Income) loss from discontinued operations, net of income taxes

(4)



2

Income from continuing operations

72



163

Adjustments to reconcile net cash provided by operating activities:







Depreciation and amortization

83



90

Non-cash compensation expense

15



15

Deferred income taxes

17



(6)

Provision for losses on accounts receivable and inventory

12



16

Loss on extinguishment of debt

168



-

Loss on divestitures, net

52



1

Gain on investments, net

(115)



(4)

Other non-cash items

5



1

Changes in assets and liabilities, net of the effects of acquisitions and divestitures:







Accounts receivable, net

29



(7)

Contracts in progress

(9)



8

Inventories

(34)



(43)

Prepaid expenses and other assets

(48)



(25)

Asbestos insurance assets

5



22

Accounts payable

1



(41)

Accrued and other liabilities

(41)



(29)

Deferred revenue

(37)



(38)

Income taxes, net

11



(2)

Gross asbestos liabilities

(7)



(4)

Other

10



(22)

Net cash provided by operating activities

189



95

Net cash provided by discontinued operating activities

2



1

Cash Flows From Investing Activities:







Capital expenditures

(68)



(66)

Proceeds from disposal of assets

-



1

Acquisition of businesses, net of cash acquired

(138)



(152)

Acquisition of dealer generated customer accounts and bulk account purchases

(4)



(4)

Sales and maturities of investments

1



275

Purchases of investments

(7)



(1)

Decrease (increase) in restricted cash

5



(45)

Other

-



(1)

Net cash (used in) provided by investing activities

(211)



7

Net cash used in discontinued investing activities

-



(15)

Cash Flows From Financing Activities:







Proceeds from issuance of short-term debt

817



-

Repayment of short-term debt

(666)



-

Repayment of current portion of long-term debt

(1,134)



-

Proceeds from exercise of share options

11



33

Dividends paid

(87)



(75)

Repurchase of ordinary shares

-



(417)

Transfer from (to) discontinued operations

2



(14)

Payment of contingent consideration

-



(23)

Other

(12)



(15)

Net cash used in financing activities

(1,069)



(511)

Net cash (used in) provided by discontinued financing activities

(2)



14

Effect of currency translation on cash

(9)



(10)

Net decrease in cash and cash equivalents

(1,100)



(419)

Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period

1,401



892

Cash and cash equivalents at end of period

$ 301



$ 473



Reconciliation to "Free Cash Flow":







Net cash provided by operating activities

$ 189



$ 95

Capital expenditures, net

(68)



(65)

Acquisition of dealer generated customer accounts and bulk account purchases

(4)



(4)

Payment of contingent consideration

-



(23)

Free Cash Flow

$ 117



$ 3











Reconciliation to "Adjusted Free Cash Flow":







IRS litigation costs

3



-

Separation costs

-



3

Restructuring and repositioning costs (FY15 and prior)

45



34

Environmental remediation payments

1



7

Legal settlements

-



(12)

Net asbestos payments

2



5

Acquisition / integration costs

1



1

Special Items

$ 52



$ 38











Adjusted Free Cash Flow

$ 169



$ 41



















Note: Free cash flow is a non-GAAP measure. See description of non-GAAP measures contained in this release. TYCO INTERNATIONAL PLC

ORGANIC GROWTH RECONCILIATION - REVENUE

(in millions)

(Unaudited)

























Quarter Ended December 25, 2015





























































Base Year







































Net Revenue for the

Quarter Ended

December 26, 2014

Adjustments

Adjusted

Fiscal

2015 Base

Revenue

























Net Revenue for the

Quarter Ended

December 25, 2015





Divestitures /

Other



Foreign Currency

Acquisitions

Organic Revenue(1)

NA Integrated Solutions & Services

$ 951



$ -



- %

$ 951



$ (16)



(1.7) %

$ 3



0.3 %

$ 15



1.6 %

$ 953



0.2 % ROW Integrated Solutions & Services

916



(22)



(2.4) %

894



(101)



(11.0) %

29



3.2 %

(10)



(1.1) %

812



(11.4) % Global Products

611



(1)



(0.2) %

610



(35)



(5.7) %

39



6.4 %

(3)



(0.5) %

611



- % Total Net Revenue

$ 2,478



$ (23)



(0.9) %

$ 2,455



$ (152)



(6.1) %

$ 71



2.9 %

$ 2



0.1 %

$ 2,376



(4.1) %



(1) Organic revenue growth percentage based on adjusted fiscal 2015 base revenue.





Earnings Per Share Summary

(Unaudited)





Quarter Ended

Quarter Ended



December 25, 2015

December 26, 2014 Diluted EPS from Continuing Operations Attributable to Tyco Shareholders (GAAP)

$ 0.17



$ 0.38











expense / (benefit)

















Restructuring and repositioning reversals (FY15 and prior)

(0.01)



-











(Gains) / losses on divestitures, net included in SG&A

0.12



-











Gain on equity investment, net

(0.26)



-











Settlement with former management

-



(0.01)











Loss on extinguishment of debt

0.39



-











Total Before Special Items

$ 0.42



$ 0.38



















Note: Sum of Before Special Items may not equal total due to rounding. Tyco International plc

For the Quarter Ended December 25, 2015

(in millions, except per share data)

(Unaudited)

expense / (benefit)







































































Segments









































































NA

Integrated

Solutions

& Services





ROW

Integrated

Solutions

& Services





Global Products





Segment Revenue





Corporate and Other





Total Revenue

























Revenue (GAAP)

$953







$812







$611







$2,376







$-







$2,376







































































































Operating Income





























NA

Integrated

Solutions

& Services

Margin

ROW

Integrated

Solutions

& Services

Margin

Global Products

Margin

Segment Operating Income

Margin

Corporate and Other

Restructuring

and

Repositioning

Total Operating Income

Margin

Interest (Expense), net

Other (Expense)

Income, net

Income Tax (Expense)

Noncontrolling Interest

Income

from

Continuing

Operations Attributable to

Tyco Shareholders Diluted

EPS from

Continuing

Operations Attributable to Tyco

Shareholders Operating Income (GAAP)

$132



13.9 %

$133



16.4 %

$97



15.9 %

$362



15.2 %

($51)



($18)



$293



12.3 %

($20)



($165)



($36)



$-



$72

$0.17









































































Restructuring and repositioning

reversals (FY15 and prior)





































(4)



(4)















1







(3)

(0.01)









































































(Gains) / losses on divestitures,

net included in SG&A









54















54







(2)







52























52

0.12









































































Acquisition / integration costs









1















1















1























1

-









































































IRS litigation costs

































1







1















(1)







-

-









































































Gain on equity investment, net









(111)















(111)















(111)















(1)







(112)

(0.26)









































































Loss on extinguishment of debt





















































168











168

0.39









































































Total Before Special Items

$132



13.9 %

$77



9.5 %

$97



15.9 %

$306



12.9 %

($52)



($22)



$232



9.8 %

($20)



$3



($37)



$-



$178

$0.42









































































Note: Sum of EPS before special items does not equal total due to rounding.





































































































Diluted Shares Outstanding



428





























































Diluted Shares Outstanding - Before Special Items 428

Tyco International plc

For the Quarter Ended December 26, 2014

(in millions, except per share data)

(Unaudited)

expense / (benefit)

















































































































Segments









































































NA

Integrated

Solutions

& Services





ROW

Integrated

Solutions

& Services





Global Products





Segment Revenue





Corporate and Other





Total Revenue

























Revenue (GAAP)

$951







$916







$611







$2,478







$







$2,478















































































































































































Operating Income





























NA

Integrated

Solutions

& Services

Margin

ROW

Integrated

Solutions

& Services

Margin

Global Products

Margin

Segment Operating Income

Margin

Corporate and Other

Restructuring

and

Repositioning

Total Operating Income

Margin

Interest (Expense), net

Other Income, net

Income Tax (Expense)

Noncontrolling Interest

Income

from

Continuing

Operations Attributable to

Tyco

Shareholders Diluted

EPS from

Continuing

Operations Attributable to Tyco

Shareholders Operating Income (GAAP)

$129



13.6 %

$89



9.7 %

$105



17.2 %

$323



13.0 %

($49)



($75)



$199



8.0 %

($21)



$4



($19)



$1



$164

$0.38









































































Separation costs

included in SG&A

2























2















2















(1)







1

-









































































(Gains) / losses on

divestitures, net included

in SG&A









1















1















1























1

-









































































Acquisition /

integration costs









1















1















1























1

-









































































Settlement with former

management

































(7)







(7)















3







(4)

(0.01)









































































Asbestos

































3







3















(1)







2

-









































































IRS litigation costs

































(2)







(2)















1







(1)

-









































































2012 Tax Sharing Agreement





















































(2)











(2)

-









































































Total Before Special Items

$131



13.8 %

$91



9.9 %

$105



17.2 %

$327



13.2 %

($55)



($75)



$197



7.9 %

($21)



$2



($17)



$1



$162

$0.38









































































Note: Sum of EPS before special items does not equal total due to rounding.





































































































Diluted Shares Outstanding



427





























































Diluted Shares Outstanding - Before Special Items 427

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tyco-reports-first-quarter-2016-earnings-from-continuing-operations-before-special-items-of-042-per-share-and-gaap-earnings-of-017-per-share-300212065.html SOURCE Tyco

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[January 29, 2016] Court Grants Motion By Nonprofits And Sprint To Extend WiMax Service Through March

BOSTON, Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A Massachusetts state court today granted a joint motion to extend a preliminary injunction that temporarily saved Internet access to 1,820 nonprofits, 429 schools, and 61 libraries across the country. The motion was made by six nonprofit organizations who provide broadband access to more than 300,000 vulnerable Americans and Sprint Spectrum LP, though the telecommunications company remains a defendant in ongoing legal action with the nonprofits. "This request is a positive step forward for everyone involved. We've made great strides in our effort to migrate our users to Sprint's LTE network, but there's still more work to do," said Katherine Messier, founder and managing director of Mobile Beacon. "This extension will enable us to ensure that the students, seniors, disabled, and other vulnerable populations who rely on our service keep their broadband access. We're not going to stop until we've given every last person the chance to make the switch to LTE." The original preliminary injunction required Sprint to keep WiMax operating in 80 cities through February 2, 2016. The modifications to the injunction create a schedule for a phased WiMax shutdown with 16 cities shutting down by February 2nd, 39 cities by February 29th, and the remaining 25 cities by March 31st. The updated list of the WiMax decommissioning schedule by city is available here. For more than five years, Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen have provided unlimited broadband service for just $10 a month to schools, libraries and nonprofit organizations across the country on Clearwire's WiMax network, which was subsequently acquired by Sprint. Sprint had planned to shut down the WiMax network this past November, until a Massachusett state court stepped in on the eve of the shutdown to put a three-month hold on Sprint's plan and preserve Internet access for Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen's community of users.



Over the past three months, Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen have successfully migrated an estimated 40% of their joint customers, but more time is needed to give their remaining users an opportunity to move to LTE prior to losing WiMax service. "We remain committed to the customers we serve," said John Schwartz, the founder and president of Mobile Citizen. "And we will continue to do whatever we can, including continuing to hold Sprint accountable to make sure it continues to keep our community online."

The nonprofit entities that created Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon are among the largest Educational Broadband Service (EBS) providers in the United States. EBS refers to spectrum the Federal Communications Commission reserved to serve the public interest by providing wireless broadband services in support of education. The nonprofits that make up Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon leased a portion of their spectrum to Clearwire for 30 years in 2006 in exchange for the ability to provide high-speed broadband service to schools, libraries and nonprofit organizations across the United States. The preliminary injunction and the modifications made to it do not effect the lawsuit the nonprofits filed on October 14, 2015, which is ongoing. With more than 20 years remaining on the Clearwire/Sprint contract, the long-term resolution of this case will affect the level of broadband service available to hundreds of thousands of users over the next two decades. "I take it as a good sign that Sprint has joined us in making this request. Although it doesn't change anything that is yet to be determined in the overall lawsuit, finding some common ground in the short-term is a good first step," Messier added. "I'm hopeful we can build on this and work towards a long-term resolution." About Mobile Citizen

Mobile Citizen offers mobile broadband service exclusively to nonprofits and schools at remarkably low cost. For more information, visit mobilecitizen.org. Mobile Citizen is funded by Voqal, a consortium of five nonprofit organizations committed to bringing technology to the education and nonprofit communities for over 25 years. About Mobile Beacon

Mobile Beacon provides fourth generation (4G) mobile broadband services exclusively to schools, libraries and nonprofit organizations across the United States through an agreement with Sprint. Mobile Beacon was created by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is the second largest national educational broadband service (EBS) provider in the country. We help educators and nonprofits get the Internet access they need and extend access within their communities to those who need it most. Learn more at http://www.mobilebeacon.org, www.facebook.com/mobilebeacon, and www.twitter.com/mobilebeacon. Contact:

Kristen Perry  303-557-3616, [email protected]

Katherine Messier, 401-934-0500, [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/court-grants-motion-by-nonprofits-and-sprint-to-extend-wimax-service-through-march-300212269.html SOURCE Mobile Beacon

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Here's what IndyStar investigation of worker safety amid pandemic found

Factory workers that make up the backbone of Indiana's economy told a similar story: Managers pressured employees to show up even when they were sick.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi will present a report to the summit on the outcome of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris that was held between 30 November and 12 December 2015

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi arrived in Addis Ababa on Friday ahead of the 26th African Union Summit that will take place on Saturday and Sunday, where he will meet Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, according to Egypt's ambassador to Ethiopia.

El-Sisi will meet over 20 African leaders including the presidents of Togo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad, in addition to the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) on the sidelines of the summit, ambassador Abo Bakr Hanafy said on Thursday, according to MENA.

The summit will focus on questions of government, elections and commitment to constitutional principles, as well as the financing of the African Union.

Those two broad topics were decided upon in a closed session, attended by the presidents of African states ahead of the opening summit, MENA reported.

Ambassador Mohamed Hegazy, former assistant foreign minister for African matters, told MENA on Friday that this year's AU summit reveals that Africa is an important priority for Egypt. The evidence for this, Hehazy said, was that it was the third time Egypt had attended an AU summit, following the Malabo and Addis Ababa sessions.

Further indications of Egypts prioritisation of African affairs, according to Hegazy, can be seen in the Tripartite Free Trade Area Agreement that was signed last June in Sharm El-Sheikh between the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that comprises 26 countries.

Egypts membership in the African Union was frozen following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after mass protests in July 2013. However, Egypt was re-admitted in June 2014 two weeks after El-Sisi was elected president as a result of the progress made in the formal restoration of constitutional order.

Egypt's role in African security

Egypt's ambassador to Ethiopia Abo Bakr Hanafy said that this AU summit is important because it will confirm Egypt's stance -- supported by African countries  that it is necessary for two Security Council seats to be filled by African states in rotation and for them to be granted the power of veto.

African countries currently have three non-permanent Security Council seats that rotate between African member states. Last October, Egypt won a non-permanent member seat on the Security Council for 2016-2017.

During the AU Summit, there will also be a meeting for the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, less than two months before Egypt hosts a session for defense ministers from the member countries in March.

The Community of Sahel-Saharan States was created in 1998 and currently consists of 27 countries including Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Chad, Tunisia and Togo.

Hanafy said the community was expanded so that it could tackle military and security issues, in addition to its original purpose of creating a free trade area.

El-Sisi will also participate in the Peace and Security in Africa Council at the AU Summit where terrorism will be discussed, after Egypt was elected as a member on Thursday. Issues surrounding South Sudan and Burundi will also be examined.

Egypt as climate change African representative

On Sunday, El-Sisi will present a report to the summit on the outcome of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris that was held between 30 November and 12 December 2015, where he headed the committee representing African nations.

Ambassador Hanafy also said that El-Sisi will also present Africa's stance on environmental changes and their impact on the continents climate and economy.

El-Sisi will put forward two initiatives. First, to support renewable energy in Africa; and second, measures that need to be taken on an international and a continental level to allow the African continent to adapt to the climate change and rise in temperatures, Hanafy said.

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Two police officers were killed when an IED exploded inside an armoured vehicle in North Sinai's Al-Arish, the interior ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Five conscripts also suffered minor injuries in the explosion near Ahmed Orabi school, and were transferred to hospital.

The two officers who were killed held the ranks of first lieutenant and captain.

The ministry said investigations are underway to apprehend the perpetrators.

Egypt's army has been fighting an Islamist insurgency for decades, which spiked following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Hundreds of Islamist militants and security forces have been killed since.

The army said earlier this month that they had killed 26 terrorists in raids in North Sinai as part of the ongoing Martyrs Right operation to rid the area of terrorism, which began in September 2015.

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Four men were injured after pro-Morsi protestors allegedly shot birdshot and fireworks at them

Four people were injured in the Nile Deltas Sharqiya governorate after pro-Mohamed Morsi protestors allegedly fired birdshot at them during a demonstration on Friday, state news agency MENA reported.

A 52-year-old man, his 32-year-old son, a 28-year-old and 43-year-old man were injured when protestors passing through Al-Mahkama Street in Abo Hammad city fired birdshot and fireworks at residents.

The demonstrators chanted anti-police and anti-army slogans and displayed Rabba signs -- representing an affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood  and a defiance of the violent dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in in August 2013 following Morsis ouster.

The protest comes days after the 5th anniversary of the 25 January revolution, which saw tight security, limited protests and little violence.

Sharqiya's protestors fled to side streets when security forces arrived to disperse the rally.

Investigations are underway to find the perpetrators of the violence.

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Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence that the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, was brought down by terrorism

Russias Kremlin declined to comment on media reports on the identification of terrorists allegedly responsible for the crash of the Russian A321 over Egypts Sinai Peninsula by Russian and Egyptian intelligence services, Russian News Agency TASS reported on Friday.

"There is nothing I can tell you now. You should probably ask the intelligence services about that," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Commenting on the possibility of resuming flights, which were suspended between Russia and Egypt a week after the airliner crashed on 31 October, the Kremlin spokesman said that "work is underway by our respective representatives and their Egyptian counterparts."

"Since the very beginning, when flights were originally suspended, it was said that they would remain so until the necessary security conditions could be created for our citizens. The work to achieve this is still in progress," Peskov said.

Last Tuesday, Egypt parliaments speaker Ali Abdel-Al met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Naryshkin, where they discussed the necessity of restoring the influx of Russian tourists into Egypt and the resumption of Russian flights to Sharm El-Sheikh and other tourist destinations soon.

The Kremlin statements came after media reports on Friday claiming that intelligence service officers had established the identities of several persons involved in preparing the attack aboard the plane, including the perpetrator of the crime who smuggled explosives aboard the aircraft.

Reuters reported statements from sources saying that an EgyptAir mechanic, whose cousin joined the ISIS militant group in Syria, was suspected of planting the bomb on the Russian airliner.

The mechanic was detained, along with two airport policemen and a baggage handler, who were suspected of helping him put the bomb on board.

To date, Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence that the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, killing all 224 people on board, was brought down by terrorism.

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Although Egypt has repeatedly expressed concern over the dam's possible effect on the country, Ethiopia insists it will not negatively affect Egypt's share of Nile water

Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan received on Thursday a technical offer from French firms BRL and Artelia on studies related to the impact of Ethiopia's controversial Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the three countries, irrigation minister Hossam Moghazi said.

The Egyptian committee will study and review the offer ahead of a tripartite meeting where it will be discussed with the attendance of the two foreign consultancy firms' representatives, as agreed upon on in the roadmap approved in Sudan's Khartoum, Moghazi said.

Moghazi said that the offer involves two assessment studies- a risk assessment related to the effects of the dam on the water flowing to Egypt and Sudan, and another study that addresses environmental concerns.

In a previous TV interview, the Egyptian irrigation minister said that the two studies, which are not concerned with the redesign of the dam, would be finished in 11 months, with the first study starting in February.

Moghazi's statements came ahead of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi's visit to Ethiopia's Addis Ababa on Friday, where he is expected to hold talks with his counterparts from Sudan and Ethiopia over the dam, ahead of the upcoming African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

Prior to the AU summit, Egypt's ambassador to Ethiopia Abu Bakr Hanafi said that Ethiopia has not breached the declaration of principles signed by the leaders of the three countries in March 2015.

Hanafi said Ethiopia has not violated the 5th principle, which is related to the dam's storage reservoirs first filling, and dam operation policies. The principle also stipulates that an agreement should be reached on the guidelines for different scenarios of the first filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dams reservoir in parallel with its construction.

The Egyptian ambassador said that Egypt's new foreign policy in Africa has had a positive impact on an international level, where Egypt now obtains major support, especially on issues related to its right in Nile Water.

Hanafi refuted any Egyptian intention to launch a military operation against Ethiopia, affirming that such an option is never on the table, especially because the Ethiopian brothers said that they dont want to harm Egypt and its people.

"There would be an important move on an international level where Egypt could resort to international water laws that guarantee the downstream countries' right of water share from shared rivers with upstream countries," Hanafi said when asked about Egypt's response if Ethiopia breached the agreement.

Although Egypt has repeatedly expressed concern over the dam's possible effect on the country, Ethiopia insists it will not negatively affect Egypt's share of Nile water.

In December 2015, President El-Sisi addressed the public saying that there is no reason to worry about that dam and that the matter would be resolved.

"I totally understand the concern of Egyptians as water is a matter of life or death," El-Sisi assured Egyptians.

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The head of Egypts Doctors Syndicate said that policemen fabricated charges of assault against the doctors

Egypt's Doctors Syndicate have called for an emergency meeting on Saturday to decide on escalatory steps after Matariya Teaching Hospital physicians withdrew their complaints of assault under pressure against a group of policemen.

The syndicate's secretary Ehab El-Taher told Ahram Online that the two doctors, Ahmed Mahmoud and Moemen Abdel Azeem, who were assaulted by a group of policemen, were put under pressure to withdraw their complaints after they discovered in the prosecution that the policemen filed complaints against the doctors, claiming that they were assaulted by them.

El-Taher said that the policemen have fabricated charges of assault against the doctors.

"The prosecution told the doctors that all those involved in the incident were to be detained pending investigations; therefore the doctors unfortunately withdrew their complaints, which we completely portray as unacceptable" El-Taher said.

"This incident is a violation and degradation by the police against citizens," he added.

El-Taher said that a complete strike in hospitals in response to the incident might take place, depending on what the syndicate decides in its joint meeting with the syndicate's Cairo sub-committee.

On Thursday, the syndicate said it fully supports a strike by doctors at the hospital, adding that it had forwarded a complaint to Egypt's prosecutor-general about the alleged attack, which took place that morning.

A low-ranking policeman wearing civilian clothes went to the hospital on Thursday morning with a wound on his face, and asked the doctor examining him in the ER to include fake injuries in the medical report, which he refused, sources in the hospital said.

In retaliation, the policeman called a group of colleagues to the hospital who assaulted the doctor and some of his colleagues before taking them to the police station, where they were later released.

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The grassroots Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement responds to the stifling Gaza blockade by taking aim at Israel's economy

Last September marked the 10-year anniversary of the ostensible end of Gazas 38-year occupation. Following Israels "unilateral disengagement" in 2005, aspirations for greater independence for Gaza were swiftly crushed by a blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt after Hamass election in 2006.

The blockade, of course, remains in place today and has had profound social and economic ramifications for the 1.8 million Palestinians living in what is frequently described as the worlds largest open-air prison.

Out of Gaza's five border crossings, four of them are controlled by Israel. In the rare event that any of these crossings are opened, only a select few Gazans are allowed to travel, despite a provision in the Oslo Accords which requires Israel to allow the safe passage of Gazans to the West Bank.

The movement of Gazas population is heavily restricted and the exclaves airspace, maritime areas, and monetary market are controlled by Israel. Gaza is deprived of everything from the essential (fuel, medical supplies, building materials) to the absurd (the sale of processed hummus, baby wipes, and blankets was banned for some time before November 2009, meaning that Gazas population relied solely on humanitarian organisations to bring them in, although they could still be turned away at the border).

The Israeli occupation tries its best to justify its suffocating restrictions by convincing the West that the blockade is necessary to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hamas in Gaza, Isra Saleh Al-Namey, a journalist based in Gaza, said in an interview with Ahram Online. But the siege [is meant] to punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas in the legislative elections.



Israels ongoing blockade and biennial military assaults are responsible for Gazas de-development, what the UN describes as a process by which development is not merely hindered, but reversed.

Gazas unemployment rate is a stagnant 43 percent with no recovery in sight. The World Banks May 2015 Economic Monitoring Report on Gaza explains that the closure of tunnels with Egypt and in particular the 2014 summer war shaved some $460 million off Gazas economy, leading to a 14 percent contraction of its GDP.

The World Bank also reports that Gazas economy in the last few years has been roughly 250 percent worse than that of any relevant comparators.

Nothing has progressed since the last war. It is only a matter of deterioration on all fronts, says Al-Namey. The reconstruction process is very slow and construction materials are denied in Gaza under a pretext that they might be of dual use.

Sinai as a last resort

Imports of critically-needed supplies are restricted, with Israel routinely preventing the delivery by land and sea of basic goods, forcing Palestinians in Gaza to rely on a network of smuggling tunnels connecting the strip with Egypts Sinai.

According to the UNs 2015 report on economic developments in the occupied Palestinian territories, the tunnels are yet another mechanism to respond to the economic blockade of Gaza, [allowing Palestinians] to partially circumvent Israels restrictions on the importation of fuel, cement, construction materials, seeds, etc.

Access to these products is further restricted by Hamas, as the group controls the tunnels and wields the power to select who within the Gaza Strip will have access to essential goods.

With the unregulated flow of goods comes the fear that the tunnels will be used to smuggle weapons and militants, fears the Egyptian government has repeatedly echoed.

To stem the supposed flow of weapons and militant fighters, Egypts military has recently dug makeshift canals and flooded them with seawater along the border with Gaza. In doing so, Egypt has plugged up one of Gazas last remaining lifelines to the outside world.

In November alone, the Egyptian military declared that it had destroyed 20 tunnels. In October 2014, it announced that it had destroyed 1,813 tunnels since 2011, or what amounts to anywhere between 80-95 percent of the once-existing network.

A new type of strategic threat

Despite the massive blows dealt to Gazas economy and infrastructure, Palestine and its supporters have found an increasingly effective way to fight back.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, launched in 2005, is inspired by the fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa and is described as an inclusive, nonviolent human rights movement that seeks to hold Israels regime of occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid accountable to international law through boycott, divestment and sanctions in all fields  academic, cultural, economic, and military.

In interview with Ahram Online, Omar Barghouti, Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the BDS movement, emphasised that the rights of Palestinians cannot be achieved without strong internal resistance and effective external pressure, particularly in the form of BDS.

Israel is still getting away with murder, literally, of thousands of innocent Palestinians, including hundreds of children, only because of complicity from the US, EU, and other governments, including Arab regimes, Barghouti says.

The pressure that is being put on Israel through this global movement should not be underestimated. The efficacy of BDS is made evident by the Israeli governments repeated condemnations of it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasked the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs with fighting BDS, while Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has recently characterised the boycott of Israel as a first-rate strategic threat.

The 2012-13 report for the Jewish People Policy Institute lamented that, It took several years for Israel ... to fully grasp that [BDS] was not merely a piece of political theatre that could be ignored, but rather a new type of strategic threat.

Moodys credit rating agency has reported that BDS represents a potential threat to the Israeli economy, with a Rand Corporation study predicting that BDS could reduce Israels GDP by one to two percent over the next 10 years.

Companies buckle under pressure

Among the major corporations boycotting and divesting from Israel are Veolia, the French transnational company, PFA, the largest private pension and insurance fund in Denmark, and Norwegian insurance giant KLP.

French telecommunications company Orange has taken the first steps to end its licensing agreement with an Israeli company operating in illegal settlements after an intense BDS campaign in Egypt and France.

The list goes on. The Presbyterian Church in the US divested from three companies involved in the occupation while the Gates Foundation divested its entire stake of more than $180 million from security company G4S, which supplies equipment to Israeli prisons.

Whats next for BDS?

As a decentralised human rights movement, Barghouti explains, [BDS] activists anywhere decide what to target and what kind of coalition they can build.

In the US, there are a number of strategic partners, such as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Jewish Voice for Peace, Friends of Sabeel North America, etc. In Egypt, BDS Egypt is the most important entity doing campaigning.

Barghouti explains, however, that, authoritarian and repressive regimes are not the easiest to influence through grassroots campaigns [like BDS].

His personal view is that any governments willful participation in Israels medieval siege of Gaza is not just a crime against the Palestinian people; it is a violation of [its] obligations under international law.

In a year and a half, in June 2017, the Palestinian territories will have witnessed half a century of occupation. In 2020, the UN warns that Gaza, even if spared further military assaults, will be unlivable due to the current blockade and insufficient donor support.

So what do additional years of occupation and blockade hold for Gaza? It will be unlivable, answers Barghouti, We cannot afford to wait.

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The U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura will meet a Syrian government delegation in Geneva on Friday to kick off the first peace talks for almost two years and will later meet other participants in the talks, his office said in a statement.

"Mr. de Mistura will start by meeting the government's delegation today, headed by the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations, Mr. Bashar Jaafari.

"He will continue meetings with other participants in the talks and with representatives of the civil society subsequently," it said. "As indicated by Mr. de Mistura in his press conference on 25 January, these will be proximity talks, meaning that the parties will be meeting with him separately."

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Police are questioning whether the latest instalment of Rainbow Serpent festival, which recently concluded in Lexton, Victoria, should be the last, citing a number of cases of antisocial behaviour that took place at this years event.

A Victoria Police media release claims police caught 40 drivers leaving the festival under the influence of drugs and one driver leaving under the influence of alcohol, and arrested five people for drug trafficking offences.

However, as Tone Deaf has previously noted, road-side drug testing is an often inaccurate practice as it does not compare readings to a baseline of impairment but instead flags drivers regardless of the amount of drugs in their system.

Shockingly, police also claim four cases of sexual assault were reported over the course of the six-day festival, as well as several cases of theft and one case of unlawful assault upon two security staff.

Every year we see the event take place, every year we raise our concerns and every year we are left picking up the pieces, Victoria Police Inspector Bruce Thomas said in a statement.

Its painfully obvious that there are huge direct and indirect risks to the community as a result of the behaviour that takes place at the festival. It was a miracle that no one was killed on our roads given the number of drug drivers departing from the festival.

Insp Thomas acknowledged the economic benefits of hosting the festival in Lexton, but questioned whether such benefits supersede public safety. Something has to change, he said.

We intend to raise this discussion with both local government members and festival organisers at the annual event debrief.

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However, Rainbow Serpent organisers insist on-ground police praised the behaviour of this years patrons, with organiser Tim Harvey telling The Courier Mail that the vast majority of Rainbows 16,000 punters behaved appropriately.

Organisers addressed the cases of assault in a post to the official Rainbow Serpent Facebook page (via Music Feeds), writing, While there is always room for improvement and we abhor the terrible isolated cases of assault at Rainbow this year the vast majority of you were wonderful human beings.

Unfortunately it looks like some police feel Rainbow shouldnt continue because we face the exact same challenges the rest of society is facing.
Show-Me a bit of financial intrigue amid the ongoing debate over state sanctioned killing. Checkit: Missouri Paid Executioners $250,000 In Cash, Possibly Violating Tax Law
THE TREND IS CLEAR, KANSAS CITY STARTS 2016 ON A FIVE-YEAR-HIGH HOMICIDE TREND!!!













January 2016 has been one of the deadliest months for Kansas City in the past five years.Depending on who is doing the counting . . . This is either homicide 12 or 13 for Kansas City so far this year.Here's the breakdown for murders over the past five years for January and the year-end totals:And so . . .The answer to this crime spree has been a myriad of community commissions (that don't include police), political blame game tactics and theoretical debates . . . Meanwhile, the nice weather this weekend could bring increased local gun play.Here's the roundup of the latest local murder:Developing . . .
RIGHT NOW WE CELEBRATE THE REEMERGENCE OF THERESA GARZA AS A POLITICAL PLAYER IN KANSAS CITY WITH HER DEBUT ON RUCKUS!!!

"Mike Shanin talks to KCMO City Councilwoman Teresa Loar about the new renovation plan for KCI which she proposed. Then Gwen Grant, Patrick McInerney, Theresa Garza and Steve Mirakian give their thoughts on the new airport renovation proposal, decentralizing control of KCMO schools, new KCMO School Superintendent Mark Bedell and the race for the GOP nomination for president."

Kansas City politics is a strange mistress and tonight we celebrate a local Latina who continues to grind despite election disqualification amid a divisive campaign and a myriad of other issues that aren't as fun to gloat over . . . But I digress.To wit . . .Never mind that Council Lady Teresa Loar's appearance is probably far more important and discusses airport issues that mean a lot more to this town in terms of impact and cost.Credit where it's due . . . This evening Ruckus offers the most important Kansas City political discussion this evening.Description:Hopefully, more for the morning update . . .
Tourexpi, turizm haberleri, Reiseburos, tourism news, noticias de turismo, Tourismus Nachrichten,  , travel tourism news, international tourism news, Urlaub, urlaub in der turkei,  , holidays in Turkey,   , global tourism news, dunya turizm, dunya turizm haberleri, Seyahat Acentas,

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Forcing Greece to become a "warehouse" for migrants is no solution to Europe's crisis, Human Rights Watch said Friday, adding that it would be wrong to send asylum seekers back to Turkey.

"Greece has its fair share of responsibility for the situation on the ground, but turning the country into a warehouse is no solution to Europe's refugee crisis," HRW Greece specialist Eva Cosse said in a statement.

The European Union this week said Greece could face border controls with the rest of the passport-free Schengen zone if it fails to protect the bloc's frontier.

And a Belgian official has suggested that Greece should create camps for hundreds of thousands of migrants.

An EU report compiled in November said Greece was failing to properly register and fingerprint migrants, with security concerns high after revelations that jihadists behind the Paris attacks that month had slipped into Europe by posing as refugees.

Athens counters that the procedure has drastically improved in the last two months with the arrival of promised EU staff and registering equipment.

However, the basic needs and rights of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants were still being ignored, New York-based HRW said.

Cosse said the Greek government was failing to identify and support vulnerable individuals such as pregnant women, unaccompanied children and disabled persons.

And there were still "serious difficulties" for those seeking asylum, she said.

"The Greek asylum service has set up a system for appointments almost exclusively through Skype, but it's very difficult to get through and people can wait for weeks to book an appointment," Cosse said.

Cosse also criticised a Dutch proposal for the EU to accept up to 250,000 refugees a year from Turkey if Ankara takes back irregular migrants.

"Turkey cannot be considered a safe country for automatic returns," she said.

More than one million people reached Europe's shores last year -- the majority of them refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- in the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II.

Most cross by boat from Turkey to Greece and the United Nations said Thursday more than 50,000 people have turned up on the EU member's beaches so far this year, while 200 people died making the dangerous journey.

A two-day strike by sailors this week -- renewed for another two days on Friday -- is keeping new arrivals from sailing to the Greek mainland.

But London-based Amnesty International on Friday accused Greek police of causing hardship to thousands of migrants on the border with Macedonia by not allowing them access to a camp operated by aid groups.

"The camp can accommodate 1,200 people but currently is only a third full," the organisation said.

"Thousands of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants... are forced to spend the night outside, exposed to difficult weather conditions," Amnesty said, warning that below-zero temperatures threatened the health of infants and children present.

A Greek government source explained that police are allowing access to the border camp only to Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, the only nationalities allowed by Macedonia to continue their journey to northern Europe.

Other nationalities who have no hope of continuing their journey are encouraged to turn back.

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The second edition of ArtBahrain, an international art fair to promote Arab talent and boost the regional art industry, will be held in October this year.



Having witnessed remarkable success in its inaugural version last year, the art fair has already secured the support of regional and international artists and galleries as well as key sponsors and plans to showcase even more creative talent from across the Middle East and North Africa.



The 2015 edition of ArtBahrain hosted nearly 50 participants from 17 countries across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the Far East and Asia and witnessed a footfall of nearly 15,000 visitors over four days, with total sales topping BD170,000 ($447,958), said a statement.



The event featured the works of acclaimed Arab and international artists and galleries, and introduced diverse art aptitudes from classic acrylic to sculpture, digital photography and new age installation.



Our aim is to increase participation by 10-15 per cent this year and reach out to even more artists and art institutions both regionally and across the globe, said ArtBahrain co-founder Kaneka Subberwal. Based on the positive response we have received so far, we are confident we can achieve this target.



"The Mena region is fast emerging as a major player in arts and boasts tremendous creative talent; the flourishing arts scene in this part of the world holds great potential to drive investment and fuel industry growth, making it a viable economic contributor. Events such as ArtBahrain provide a vehicle to drive this development and encourage the next generation of Arab artists, Subberwal said.



This years ArtBahrain will form part of the calendar of events planned by the Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority to commemorate the countrys standing as Manama Gulf Capital of Tourism 2016. - TradeArabia News Service
Japan's JGC Corp has signed a $355-million deal with Bahrain's Banagas to build the expansion of a gas-processing plant in kingdom, Bahrain's state news agency reported on Wednesday.



The plant is expected to process 350 million cu ft of additional associated gas from the Bahrain oilfield, the agency reported.

A signing ceremony was held today under the patronage of Bahrain's Minister of Energy Dr Abdul Hussain bin Ali Mirza.



The agreement includes the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the Banagas Expansion Project.



The agreement was signed by Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, the chief executive of the Bahrain National Gas Company (Banagas), on behalf of Bahrain and Yoshihiro Shigehisa, the chairman emeritus of JGC Group, at a ceremony held at Four Seasons Bahrain Hotel, said the BNA report.



Dr Mirza said the agreement was a significant milestone for Banagas' expansion and added to the achievements of the energy sector in Bahrain. The project is among the many other National Oil and Gas Authority (Noga) strategic projects aimed at securing continued economic growth in the country, he said.



Dr Mirza said that setting up of the gas project by JGC further enhanced the historical relations between the company and the oil companies in Bahrain.



Three international companies had participated in the tendering process at the design and construction phase of the gas plant, a design which had to accommodate 350 million cu ft of associated gas from the Bahrain Oil Field and produce liquefied petroleum gas and naphtha, utilising re-injection pressure and excess gas. The plant will be equipped to process dry gas.



The project is expected to take 32 months to be ready for a trial run and start actual operations in September 2018. It is one of the largest projects implemented by the company in terms of capital, energy utilisation and providing job opportunities to Bahrainis. - TradeArabia News Service and Reuters
The Netherlands has agreed to join US-led air strikes in Syria extending its current mission over Iraq, Dutch officials announced Friday, bowing to a request from the United States.

"In order to make the fight against ISIS in Iraq more efficient, it has been decided to carry out air strikes against ISIS in eastern Syria," the foreign and defence ministries said in a statement.

Late last year in the wake of the November Paris attacks, the Dutch government received a request from allies the US and France to broaden its campaign of air support against the ISIS group.

The Netherlands is already participating in the coalition by carrying out air strikes in Iraq with four F-16 aircraft specialising in close air support of ground operations by Iraqi forces.

But it had insisted in the past that it would not extend the air strikes over Syria without a UN mandate.

"We are going to deploy the F-16s above Syria, in particular to stop the pipeline leading from Syria into Iraq," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters Friday.

The four Dutch F-16 jet fighters which have been pounding ISIS in Iraq since October 2014 would "remain active until July 1 over the enlarged zone," the government statement said.

"We are convinced that only a consistent approach to bring back stability in Iraq and Syria," said Foreign Minister Bert Koenders added in the statement.

But he insisted there had to be the utmost "care and accuracy."

After weeks of dallying, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, the Labour Party (PvdA), Tuesday finally agreed to back an extension of air strikes into Syria, paving the way for approval from parliament.

High-stakes peace talks aimed at ending the brutal, five-year-old Syrian conflict which has left over 260,000 dead and created millions of refugees were due to start later Friday in Geneva.

But there was uncertainty whether the key groups would attend, even though the Syrian government delegation had arrived in the Swiss city.

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Palestinian officials are waging a new campaign at the United Nations to revive peace prospects, with the starting point possibly a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, the Palestinian envoy said Friday.

Ambassador Riyad Mansour rejected the suggestion that prospects for progress were slim because of the US election campaign, which could make Washington more reluctant to put pressure on Israel to compromise.

"We will not accept that the year 2016 is a year when we cannot do anything," Mansour told reporters.

"We have to open some doors to keep the hope alive and keep the two-state solution alive."

Mansour said the success of the Iran nuclear deal and progress on the Syrian peace track highlighted the need for a "collective approach" to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ongoing violence on the ground is likely to worsen if nothing is done, he said, adding that the situation in August and September will be "much, much worse than what we see now."

According to AFP count, the Israeli use of force against Palestinian protests has killed 159 Palestinians since October 1. On the Israeli side, 25 people were killed.

The Palestinian ambassador recently met with the envoys from the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- to discuss the way forward.

Mansour declined to give details of the talks, including whether the United States, which as Israel's ally has blocked UN action, was open to a Security Council role in reviving the peace process.

The Palestinian envoy suggested that a resolution condemning Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements could be a first step, but he stressed that there should be a broader plan.

This could include the creation of an international support group, the deployment of observers to trouble spots or the convening of an international peace conference.

"The signal has to come from the Security Council," he said.

The United States used its veto in 2011 to block a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements, and it has rejected a UN role in the peace process.

The council has not adopted a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since 2009.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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Algeria's army on Friday killed four armed Islamists in the northern province of Ain Defla who allegedly belonged to a group that carried out a deadly attack last year, the defence ministry said.

It said they were part of "a bloody terrorist organisation which attacked our forces in the same region on July 17, 2015", killing nine soldiers.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for that attack.

The ministry said the four Islamists were killed during an army patrol in the Awlad Hamida area of Ain Defla and that automatic weapons and grenades were seized.

A total of "157 terrorists, including 10 commanders" were killed or arrested in such operations last year, according to the defence ministry.

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Germany's justice minister pledged Friday to take steps to crack down on anti-foreigner crime after an unidentified assailant threw a hand grenade at an asylum-seeker's home in the country's southwest.

Regional police spokesman Thomas Kalmbach said "it was just luck" the device did not explode and nobody was harmed in the early morning attack against the home for asylum-seekers in the town of Villingen-Schwenningen.

Germany took in nearly 1.1 million asylum-seekers last year and there have been multiple attacks on such residences, although most of them have been arson attacks against unoccupied buildings.

Justice Minister Heiko Maass said the grenade attack represented a new level of "hate and violence" and that he was summoning his state counterparts to better coordinate local and federal measures to prevent and prosecute anti-immigrant hate crimes.

"Grenades are already flying toward refugee homes; we can't wait until there is someone dead," he said. "We need to do everything we can to ensure xenophobic crimes are more rapidly solved and punished more severely."

Police formed a special task force to look for the person or people behind throwing the grenade toward the home at 1:15 a.m., Kalmbach said.

Police said the grenade still contained its explosives but it was not clear whether it still had a detonator. Forensics experts are investigating.

Security personnel spotted the grenade and kept residents away while police responded.

A bomb squad destroyed the device in a controlled explosion on the scene at about 5 a.m. after evacuating the 20 residents from the home.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron warned Friday of a lack of progress during talks in Brussels on a deal to curb migrant benefits, upping the ante in the battle to keep Britain in the EU.

Cameron held a crucial meeting with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to discuss a "migration brake" that would meet his key demand -- a four-year limit before EU workers in Britain can claim welfare payments.

The negotiations to prevent a so-called "Brexit" from the 28-nation EU come amid a series of crises for the bloc including the biggest influx of migrants and refugees to Europe since World War II.

But Cameron, well known for his brinkmanship, said it would take more work to reach a deal at a crucial summit on February 18, before a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, probably in June.

"We have made some progress today; it's not enough, it's going to be hard work" he told Sky News television after his talks with Juncker. "There is now a proposal on the table, it is not good enough, it needs more work."

Asked about the chances of a deal when he meets his EU counterparts next month, Cameron added: "I can't be certain we'll get there in February but I will work as hard as I can to deliver a good deal for the British people."

European Parliament head Martin Schulz, who also met briefly with Cameron, said he was "optimistic there will be a deal in February" but warned that the "devil is in the detail".

The pressure is now on ahead of a dinner that Cameron will host for European Council President Donald Tusk in London on Sunday at which they will further try to hammer out details.

Tusk is expected to table his proposals for a possible British deal on Monday, European sources told AFP.

In a sign of the urgency of Friday's talks, Cameron cancelled a visit to Denmark and Sweden to hold Friday's working lunch with Juncker, the head of the EU's powerful executive, whose appointment Cameron opposed in 2014.

Many EU nations, especially those in central Europe which have many nationals working in Britain, say a benefits limit would be discriminatory and harm the bloc's core principle of freedom of movement.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski was firm in his stance against any change to the welfare benefits currently enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of Polish workers in Britain.

"I want to stress that Polish authorities won't agree to the infringement of one of the EU's fundamental rights, namely its citizens' right to freedom of movement within the EU," Waszczykowski told parliament.

"We won't accept solutions that would result in discrimination against our countrymen in any EU member state."

Cameron has set out four key areas for a deal: migrant benefits, safeguards against more political integration in the EU, protection of countries that do not use the euro currency and the boosting of economic competitiveness.

The big sticking point has been Cameron's insistence that EU migrants employed in Britain must wait four years before claiming welfare payments such as tax credits or housing benefits.

A "migration brake" that would allow Britain or any other country to limit benefits to EU migrants, if it can show its welfare system is under strain, was the main option under discussion at the talks with Juncker, diplomatic sources told AFP.

Crucially it would be up to the other EU member states to decide on an application to do so -- not the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm and guardian of the bloc's treaties.

Cameron has insisted that he is in "no hurry" for a deal and will walk away if he does not get want he wants as his deadline for the referendum is not until the end of 2017.

But Cameron is also keen to get the deal through before any new flare-up in the migration crisis over summer, and before further strife erupts among the eurosceptic members of his own centre-right Conservative party, which was re-elected in May.

Former minister and leading eurosceptic John Redwood described the migration brake proposal Friday as an "insult to the United Kingdom."

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The German and Italian leaders Friday pledged to tackle Europe's migrant influx but failed to resolve discord on an EU deal with Turkey to limit arrivals, a day after Berlin moved to tighten asylum rules.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that, with 2,000 new asylum seekers entering the Balkans every day, the European Union "urgently" needs to implement a deal that asks Turkey to better protect its borders in return for financial support.

"We must fight illegality," combat human traffickers and avoid migrant deaths at sea, Merkel said at a Berlin press conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Renzi, who has stalled on signing off on the three-billion-euro ($3.3 billion) EU payment to Ankara and traded barbs with Brussels, said he was still seeking clarification about the details from the EU executive.

"We are still waiting for the answers to specific questions we sent to the (European) Commission," he said, adding that once there is clarity, "there can be no doubt that we will make our contribution".

Italy has questioned how much of the money should come from the EU budget, and how much control the bloc will have over how Ankara spends the funds.

Responding to recent German criticism that Italy has been slow to set up "hotspot" migrant registration centres, he said that Italian police were now "registering 100 percent of refugees" and taking their photos and fingerprints.

In a diplomatic show of unity after Renzi has repeatedly criticised "German dominance" in EU affairs, both leaders said that the migrant crisis can only be solved if the 28 members of the bloc work together.

Renzi added that "for many years it seemed that the problem of migration was a purely Italian problem. Today we know that it is a European problem. And I believe it will last for months, maybe years."

Merkel, after a decade in power, has come under fierce pressure to reverse her open-arms migrant policy, with emotions heightened after a rash of sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve police blamed mostly on North Africans and Arabs.

She has seen her long-stellar poll ratings slide ahead of three state elections in March. A poll published Friday by news weekly Focus found that 40 percent of respondents want Merkel to resign.

Late Thursday, Merkel's coalition government, after months of wrangling, hammered out a deal to limit numbers by blocking some family reunifications and declaring three North African nations "safe countries of origin."

The agreement means citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia will have little chance of gaining political asylum, mirroring steps Germany took for several Balkan countries last year.

Germany will also block family reunifications for two years for rejected asylum seekers who can't be deported because they face the threat of torture or the death penalty in their own country.

Across Europe, debate has raged on how to handle the biggest migrant wave since World War II, with Sweden and Finland announcing plans to deport tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers.

Several eastern European countries have sealed their borders, and Hungary's hardline Prime Minister Victor Orban reiterated Friday that "migration is a security issue", linking it to "the threat of terrorism and crime".

Bulgarian Prime Minister Bokyo Borisov demanded the closure of the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area, arguing that rather than spend money on migrants, Europe should stop them from coming.

With Greece under EU pressure to better control the bloc's outer borders, Human Rights Watch on Friday said that "turning the country into a warehouse (for migrants) is no solution to Europe's refugee crisis".

In Germany, the inflow has fallen from thousands to hundreds a day in recent weeks amid harsh winter weather, and the government is desperate to keep it that way.

"We must seize the window of opportunity that has opened," said Merkel's migrant policy coordinator Peter Altmaier.

"Our goal must be for refugee numbers not to rise again after the end of the winter storms but for them to keep going down."

So far this year, more than 55,500 people have reached Europe's shores, the International Organization of Migration said.

Of the total, 244 died on the way to Greece and Italy, a far higher toll than this time last year, the IOM's Joel Millman said, adding that perhaps traffickers were rushing as they feared more border clampdowns.

"Clearly something has changed, because these boats are less seaworthy, and they seem to be leaving packed in greater numbers," Millman said.

"So that speaks to perhaps a panic in the market that this is not going to last much longer."

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Inspired by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov's story 'Signs and Symbols,' Ahmed El-Gaafari wanders about the mind of a differently-abled child in his new exhibition

Young visual artist Ahmed El-Gaafaris sixth solo exhibition, currently showing at Etegah hall in the Palace of Arts, was inspired by Russian-American Vladimir Nabokov's story titled 'Signs and Symbols.'

Gaafaris exhibition was inaugurated in Etegah hall, a new governmental hall for visual art, which will only show exhibitions by young artists.

My father bought me a short story collection by Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov a few years ago. One specific story in the collection, about a differently-abled child who is admitted by his parents into a treatment center, caught my attention, El-Gaafari told Ahram Online.

El-Gaafari adds that the childs family would only visit him on his birthday, and failed to interact with him due to his violent attitude towards them and people in general. The child, El-Gaafari adds, saw human beings as demonic icons, and thus could only interact with plants.

I decided to enter the mind of this differently-abled child, and construct a metaphor for his vision towards signs and symbols, in an attempt to unearth such visions through visual art, by employing colour and strokes, El-Gaafari explains.

El-Gaafari prefers to use acrylic paint over oil pastel, and points to his passion for painting on huge expanses of canvas that allow him to move freely.

For his part, Khaled Sorour, head of the Fine Arts sector, called the inauguration of Etegah hall an important addition [to the visual arts scene], that is being inaugurated with an important exhibition by a talented artist, who is one of the Youth Salons sons, and who has an important idea to deliver.

This inauguration of a new governmental space is important especially given that we suffer from a shortage of exhibition halls, as a result of the [recent] closure of some for restoration purposes. As such, this new exhibition hall is an addition to the other government-operated spaces that give young artists the opportunity to exhibit their work, Sorour added.

Sorour also applauded El-Gaafaris exhibition, saying that it touches the heart, mainly because it is an exhibition based on a story.

Works that are inspired by stories and novels usually come out with remarkable passion, and exhibit much emotion.

Both the artists feelings and his artistic ability to employ a literary text have come to light in this exhibition. This is clear through the maturity of colour, and vivacity of shapes, which despite being abstract, can still be appreciated by the audience," Sorour asserted.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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(Beijing)  The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on January 29 it is punishing the former head of Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) over "violations of discipline," the Communist Party graft buster's preferred euphemism for corruption.

Zhang Yun, the former president and deputy party secretary of the country's third-largest lender by assets, was being demoted within the party and placed under two years of probation, the CCDI said in a statement on its website.

Probation is the second-most severe punishment after expulsion under the party's constitution. Officials on probation cannot vote at meetings or be promoted.

The bank announced in December that Zhang was resigning from his positions for "personal reasons." He had worked for ABC for 30 years, becoming president in 2009.

It is unclear what Zhang, a 56-year-old born in Weinan, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, did wrong. However, several people with knowledge of the matter said his downfall is linked to a probe into Xu Tao, the former head of the bank's operations in the southern city of Shenzhen.

Xu was detained on the suspicion of taking bribes in May, the country's top prosecutors said.

Also, Yang Kun, another disgraced former vice president of ABC, testified about alleged wrongdoing by Zhang during his trial in the eastern city of Nanjing in February last year, a person close to the bank said. Yang was found guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced to life in jail.

The Beijing-based lender has had other problems recently. Two employees were detained by police for allegedly stealing 3.8 billion yuan worth of bills of exchange from it, people familiar with the investigation into that matter said. The problem is so serious that the Ministry of Public Security and the banking regulator alerted the State Council about it, the sources said.

(Rewritten by Chen Na)
(Beijing)  China's drug safety body will stop cooperating with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. on a system intended to ensure medicines are authentic from production to patient, a person with knowledge of the matter says.

Sun Xianze, a vice director of China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), met with representatives of 20 pharmacy and drug companies and wholesalers on January 27 to announce the decision involving a subsidiary of the e-commerce behemoth called Alihealth, a person who attended the meeting told Caixin.

Earlier in 2014, the CFDA and Alihealth launched the system, which saw drug companies and pharmacies use bar codes linked to an official database in a bid to make sure drugs were authentic.

China has grappled with the problem of fake medicine for years. The CFDA said as recently as January 26 that it found 20 wholesalers had been selling unlicensed drugs since 2014. It did provide the names of the medicines.

Many people in the industry had opposed the new system because they said it did little to prevent the spread of fake drugs. Others complained about the extra costs to their firms.

Sun said at the meeting that the CFDA will continue pushing for the bar code authentication system, but would pick a non-profit institution as its partner, the source who spoke to Caixin said.

Alihealth said it could not comment on the matter because the CFDA had not made a public announcement.

On January 26, Yangtianhe Pharmacy, a company based in the central province of Hunan, filed a lawsuit against the CFDA in Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court that argued the administration broke the law by partnering with a for-profit company to create the system.

Yangtianhe's president, Li Neng, told Caixin that the CDFA was using the authentication system to collude with a company so that it could profit off the public.

He said Yangtianhe filed the lawsuit after the CFDA revoked its license because the company refused to upgrade its computer network to accommodate the new system.

Li said his company would have had to spend more than 12 million yuan on equipment such as barcode readers from the Alibaba subsidiary for its 540 outlets around the country.

An executive from another company in Hunan, Laobaixing Pharmacy, said the CFDA lacked a legal basis for introducing the system. The government broke the law by failing to hold open bidding for candidates to host the system, said the executive who asked not to be named.

The executive also complained that the CFDA did not disclose information about its partnership with Alihealth.

Laobaixing spent about 80 million yuan, a sum equal to one-third of its profits for last year, so that it could link itself to the Alihealth system, he said.

Hong Kong-listed Alihealth has said in financial reports that the authentication system was responsible for much of its revenues. And in a financial report for the April to September period it said that sales revenue related to the system rose by 14.6 percent year-on-year to HK$21.4 million.

(Rewritten by Li Rongde)
News Oct 19th, 2022 at 15:35

The cloud-native IT will continue to be offered as a stand-alone product as well as integrated with the Guestline platform
Seoul's Itaewon and Myeongdong shopping districts are a mecca for fake designer goods. They are sold in either underground shops to avoid police or from handcarts in the streets. Some luxury brands send out their own patrols. A special police task force at the Korean Intellectual Property Office charged with protecting trademarks detected 28,589 fake items last year that would have been worth about W14.5 billion if genuine.

The problem is not limited to Korea. U.S. Customs and Border Protection found US$179 million worth, which CNN reported would be worth W1 trillion if genuine.

Fakes reflect the popularity of a brand, and the fake markets in Korea and the U.S. show a stark contrast in terms of consumer preference. In Korea, 4,158 of the seized items were bags, topping the list, followed by 2,751 garments, 2,480 electrical and electronic goods, 1,443 pieces of jewelry and accessories, and 1,176 shoes.

But in the U.S., smart devices such as iPhones and iPads topped the list with 22 percent. There has been an increase of more sophisticated fake goods that look like an iPad but work on Android operating system. Shoes came second with 14 percent, worth US$97 million.

While low to mid-end products such as Nike dominated the fake market in the past, now it is high-end haute-couture designer shoes such as Christian Leboutin and Jimmy Choo. Third place went to prescription drugs like Viagra, followed by CDs and DVDs, clothing, perfume, and watches. Tobacco ranked eighth and computer hardware 10th.
Air Canada wants its own policy on handling stranded passengers to be kept secret



(TRAVPR.COM) CANADA - January 29th, 2016 - Lawyers for Air Canada are asking the federal regulator to keep the airline's internal policies on handling stranded passengers under wraps. Air Canada argues that public disclosure of the policies would cause it a competitive disadvantage.



The internal policies in question limit reimbursement of expenses incurred by stranded passengers to $100/night for accommodation and $32/day for meals. In sharp contrast, the Montreal Convention imposes a liability of up to approximately $9,000 per passenger in the case of delay. The Montreal Convention is an international treaty that has the force of law in Canada.



Air Canada has been shortchanging stranded passengers for years by following internal policies instead of the Montreal Convention, Col. Christopher Johnson and Halifax-based air passenger

rights advocate Dr. Gabor Lukacs allege in their joint complaint to the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA).



In 2013, Col. Johnson got stranded in London (UK) after his Air Canada flight to Toronto was cancelled due to mechanical problems. The incident cost him $500 in hotel and meals. Air Canada reimbursed him only $222, citing company policy. The response given to Col. Johnson was not an isolated incident, documents filed with the CTA show.

"Air Canada's request is absurd." says Dr. Lukacs. "Passengers have the right to know what the airline will do if they get stranded. Airlines are required by law to publish their policies. These are not nuclear secrets."



In 2015, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Dr. Lukacs and held that documents filed with the CTA must be available for public viewing unless the CTA grants a confidentiality request. The CTA was ordered to disclose to Dr. Lukacs complaints of passengers against Air Canada.



The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) is a federal quasi-judicial body and economic regulator of transportation by air.

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The World Health Organization warns the Zika virus, seen as a possible cause of severe birth defects, is spreading rapidly through the Americas and could affect as many as four million people.

WHO says the mosquito-borne virus was originally seen as a mild risk to humans, but it has since grown rapidly to a public-health threat of "alarming proportions."

The UN health agency's director general, Margaret Chan, said the Zika virus was discovered in Uganda in 1947, but has since spread throughout the world and in recent years has become associated with neurological complications. Thousands of pregnant women infected with the virus have given birth to severely or mortally disabled infants.

Chan told a special meeting of WHO in Geneva on Thursday that the Zika virus is "spreading explosively" in the Americas. She has called for an emergency meeting of experts Monday.

"As of today, cases have been reported in 23 countries and territories in the [Americas] region," Chan said. "The level of alarm is extremely high. Arrival of the virus has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads."

 Obama Calls for Tests, Vaccines

In the United States, President Barack Obama has called for the rapid development of tests, vaccines and treatments for Zika infections, which until now have resisted all treatment efforts.

Obama convened a meeting of senior health advisers to discuss the spread of the virus and its economic and developmental impact on the Americas.

WHO's Chan said a direct, causal relationship between the Zika virus and such birth defects has not yet been firmly established, but it is strongly suspected.
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 29

Hundreds of farmers staged a protest outside the Deputy Commissioners office here today demanding repealing of Damage to Public and Private Property Act passed by the state government.

Farmer leaders said the law was aimed at curbing the voice of the organisations that demanded their rights from the government.

Leader Rattan Singh Randhawa said the government was trying everything to suppress peoples rights.

The people are demanding what a government is expected to do on its own. Instead of addressing public issues, the government is devising such tools to stop them from staging protests, he said.

Others who addressed the gathering included Satnam Singh Ajnala of Jamhoori Kisan Sabha, Datar Singh of Kirti Kisan Union, Sarwan Singh Pandher of Kisan Sangarsh Committee, Harcharan Singh Madipura of BKU Ugrahan and Gurnam Singh Daud of Dehati Mazdoor Sabha.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 29

Sanitation workers, who have gone on indefinite strike in protest against not getting salaries, today dumped garbage outside the office of Transport Minister Gopal Rai.

They had yesterday done so outside the office of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.

However, Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra said that it is a salary scam of the BJP-ruled Municipal Corporations of Delhi.

He asked why the MCD is not making its account public. When the government has given all due amount for the purpose of salaries, where the money has gone. All the three corporations have already accepted that they have received all the due amount under the non-Plan budget.

Rajender Kumar, a leader of sanitation workers, said today all doctors, nurses, teachers ministerial staff, engineers and others have joined them in the strike following which the sanitation workers have decided to go on indefinite strike.

He said a group of workers and municipal corporation employees staged a protest outside Gopal Rai's office in Babarpur in east Delhi and dumped garbage there while another group, under the banner of United Front of MCD Employees, put garbage outside his residence in Civil Lines.

"We demand Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to pay our salary first and later settle scores with the municipal corporations," said Sanjay Gehlot, president of Swatantra Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukt Morcha.

He said that the protests will be stepped up and workers will hold a demonstration at Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel's residence in Vivek Vihar if their demands were not met.

The union leader said the workers also blocked the road leading to a traffic jam at Apsara border.

The striking workers had yesterday dumped garbage outside the office and residence of Sisodia.

Sisodia had later accused BJP leaders of the three corporations of "instigating" the workers to throw garbage outside the ministers' residences and offices.

In North Delhi, the zonal offices at Karol Bagh, Civil Lines and Rohini were locked down by the striking employees and workers.

The employees at headquarters of South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) at Civic Centre also boycotted work.

The workers launched the strike on January 27, demanding regular salaries, payment of arrears, regularisation of contractual workers and unification of three municipal corporations.

DPCC to protest against 'chaotic conditions'

The Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) today announced demonstrations in 14 districts on Sunday against the AAP and the BJP, holding them responsible for the present 'chaotic conditions'.

The DPCC president Ajay Maken said the sanitation workers, doctors, nurses and teachers of the MCD have gone on strike, but the AAP government and the BJP-ruled Central government have not taken any step to solve the problem. As a consequence, the people are suffering.

He said during the one-year rule of the AAP, sanitation workers have gone on strike four times. When the Congress was in power, the sanitation workers in the MCD and others did not have to resort to agitation to get their salaries.

Speaking on the Fourth Delhi Finance Commission report, Maken said that the AAP government had tabled the report in the assembly House, but would implement its recommendations only if the Central government gives funds. It is very strange that on the one hand the AAP government wants to act independently and on the other hand it wants financial allocations from the Centre.
S Nihal Singh

THE lonely figure of Omar Barghouti ploughing his furrow in India, courtesy the Jaipur literary festival, was a striking indication of how far downhill the Palestinian cause has fallen in India. For the urbane co-founder of the cause of Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) against Israel is gaining strength, unlike in India, around the world, in particular in the United States and Europe, giving Israels present rulers sleepless nights.

In immediate terms, its aim is to discriminate against Israeli goods produced in the Occupied Territories (OTs), prevent foreign investments in Israeli companies with connections to or manufacturing facilities in OTs. Some US educational and pension funds have withdrawn their investments in such companies.

The BDS is a civil rights movement, now 10 years old, and is not affiliated to the Palestinian Authority or any political group. It calls for the end to the 1967 occupation of Arab lands, including East Jerusalem, and an end to the institutional, legal and societal discrimination against its Palestinian citizens and an end to the denial of Palestinian refugees right to return to their homes from which they were displaced in 1948.

I asked Mr Barghouti during his stopover in Delhi what purpose the shell of the Palestinian Authority under Mr Mahmoud Abbas served, except to provide an excuse to Israel to continue and expand its unique enterprise of colonialism in the 21st century. He disarmed me by answering that he entirely agreed with me in his individual capacity that the Authority did not serve the Palestinian cause. But he chose to remain silent when I suggested that it continued to exist long past its chairmans electoral mandate because of the international funds it received. At the same time, he made it clear that the BDS did not take a political stance on the future of Palestine.

Later, at a press conference, Mr Barghouti expanded on the BDS. He said, We are fast approaching our South African moment, meaning the isolation of apartheid South Africa in the world, sharply reminding his audience that India then had taken the leading role in that endeavour. Today, he said that based on his interactions with Indians in Jaipur, many were taken up with the image of a macho Israel defying the world and seemed want to imitate it, with New Delhi being a principal buyer of Israeli arms.

Not far from Mr Barghoutis audiences mind was the recent visit to Israel of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj after an earlier presidential visit underlined by a panegyric by former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni to the head of the India-Israel parliamentary friendship association. She extolled the two visits as they reflect a strengthening of the relations India and Israel continue to develop.

On a wider canvas, the truth is that given the crises in the Middle East underlined by five years of civil war in Syria, the emergence of the Islamic State, chaos in Libya and fighting in Yemen, the Palestinian cause has receded to the background. At the same time, the Obama administration has thrown up its hands in despair in the last year of its term after Secretary of State John Kerry spent much time initially to try to find a compromise.

I asked Mr Barghouti whether it would take BDS 20 or 50 years to change Israels mind to dismantle its colonial venture. He did not answer, but explained later at the press conference that although other crises in the Middle East had diverted minds from the Palestinian crisis, Arab states and their peoples remained fully supportive of the Palestinian cause and would rise in support when the moment came.

While Mr Barghouti was giving an optimistic spin perhaps to keep his own spirits alive, it is beyond dispute that it is the mother of crises in the Middle East. The world has seen its different manifestations in civil disobedience and the Gaza wars, smoking the peace pipe, the Oslo accords. One consistent factor has been the consolidation and expansion of settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the incorporation of East Jerusalem into Israel.

The two-state solution has been interspersed with retaining one state while the present right-wing government shuts its eyes to the future, seemingly content with the present stalemate and subjugation of Palestinians. The cloud cuckoo land some of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus ministers are living in was deliciously illustrated by his minister of housing and construction, Mr Yoav Gallant. He wrote last week: Housing and construction, which falls under my rezsponsibility as a cabinet minister, are vitally important to improving the socio-economic status of the Arabs.

Palestinian Israelis have no vote in elections and cannot close their minds, as many Israeli Jews tend to. Palestinians are physically hemmed in, as in the Gaza Strip, but the levels of their frustrations are high with a make-believe Palestinian Authority and an Israeli administration apparently happy with the present situation. One consequence has been the rash of knifing by Palestinian teens of Israeli soldiers and civilians on streets resulting in the instant shootings of the knife-wielders.

It is not in Mr Barghoutis brief to dwell on these problems. But it is in a sense Israels moment to promote its foolish colonial venture. It is safe to assume that the Obama administration does not have the time or the inclination to untie the Palestinian knot and the new administration will take time to settle in; the Israelis have the US Senate and Congress in their pocket (to use Mr Barghoutis felicitous phrase); the murder and mayhem going on in the region will continue to distract the worlds chancelleries and Israelis will remain safe in their fortress.

Notwithstanding these realities, I found the picture of Mr Barghouti both heroic and boy scoutish. The thought of the death of apartheid in South Africa by isolating it in the world is psychologically comforting but not quite equivalent. Yet despite all odds, here is one Palestinian flying the BDS flag with great fortitude convinced in the rightness justice of his cause.
Kochi, January 29

The Kerala High court on Friday suspended a lower court order directing the state police to file an FIR against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his Cabinet colleagues in the solar panel scam case for two months.

The high courts order came after Chandy and Keralas Power Minister Aryadan Mohammed appealed the lower courts order.

Saritha Nair, the second suspect in the case, claimed before an inquiry commission on Wednesday that she gave Rs 1.90 crore to a person called Thomas Kuruvilla. She claimed the money was meant for Chandy. She also said Mohammed also was given Rs 40 lakh.

Later, activist P.D. Joseph approached the Thrissur Vigilance Court, which ordered an FIR to be registered against Chandy and his Cabinet colleague on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Saritha, having first dragged Chandy into the case, on Friday claimed his son Chandy Oommen was also involved in it.

Saritha made the disclosure on the third day of her deposition before the Solar Judicial Commission, and said she met the Chief Minister many times and not just three times as mentioned by Oommen Chandy before the commission.

She said there was a picture of hers that had come out at a function at Kottayam, where she met the Chief Minister, and on that day she was talking about a new company to be formed by his son Chandy Oommen and the Chief Minister agreed to that.

Saritha on Thursday alleged that she gave Rs 1.90 crore in bribes to the Chief Minister in two instalments through a person called Thomas Kuruvilla, based in Delhi.

On Friday, she added that the Chandys son was always available on Kuruvillas mobile phone when they discussed the solar panel business and the formation of a new company to import solar panels.

Saritha also claimed there were speculations about a relationship between her and Chandy Oommen. But she was not the woman mentioned in that story, but another one who was involved in the solar company.

Saritha said that Chief Minsters son had made trips with the other woman to Middle East.

She then said all the evidence of the relationship between Chandy Oomen and the other woman is in the custody of state Minister for Forests Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.

Saritha informed the commission that she would not make any revelation about the sleaze stories that were heard when the scam first surfaced involving her and top political leaders as that involved her privacy.

Saritha asked the commission that since she has some urgent work, she may be allowed to leave and she would appear again on Monday.

The Kerala governments counsel objected to this, stating that she was in a hurry to go only to brief the media and put the government in trouble by airing these allegations.

But the commission allowed Saritha to return on Monday and Tuesday for her further deposition.  IANS
R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 29

The Delhi High Court today restored the parity between the Special Frontier Force (SFF) and Army personnel by removing the January 2009 cut-off for the payment of retirement benefits and service pension.

A Bench comprising Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Deepa Sharma delivered the verdict on a PIL by the Ex-Servicemen Welfare Union.

Holding that the cut-off was an impermissible classification, the HC ruled that there was no justification why this differentia was introduced as SFF retirees had performed the same duties while in service and in fact they were being treated on a par with Army personnel since 1985. The SFF consists of Nepali and Tibetan nationals.

The mere ipse dixit that the Union government would be burdened with greater monetary liability rings hollow if seen from the perspective that lump sum payment meant a larger one-time payout, whereas monthly payment spreads liability rather than aggregates it, the HC said.

The high court directed the government to issue a circular to the effect that 45 per cent of the commuted equivalent of pension would be restored to all pre-January 1, 2009 retirees, upon the completion of 15 years from the date of their superannuation. The payments should be made within four months.

The Bench noted that the government had acknowledged that the SFF personnel had made outstanding contribution to the nations defence and security. Their service and sacrifice was of the same order as Indian nationals serving in the Army. About 5,730 SFF personnel were discharged after 15 years of service since 2008.
Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 29

Barely two weeks after the Panama boat tragedy, two youths  one from Jalandhar and the other from Kapurthala  were deported to Delhi after they were caught carrying fake Mexican visa at the Amsterdam airport in the Netherlands.

Police sources at the Indira Gandhi International Airport at New Delhi said that the two youths in their mid-20s said that they boarded a flight from Delhi to Dubai and paid around $8,000 to get a valid visa to Mexico.

They paid around Rs 80,000 at New Delhi to an agent and the rest at Dubai. However, during stopover at the Amsterdam airport, they went out of the airport and were caught by the immigration officials, who on investigation, found that their Mexican visa was fake, said an official.

The officials immediately deported the two youths back to India and they are now in the custody of the Delhi Police. The police are trying to ascertain which route the youths were going to take from Mexico to the US.
Berlin, January 29

Nearly 40 per cent of German voters think Chancellor Angela Merkel should quit over her liberal asylum policy after almost 1.1 million newcomers arrived last year, a poll showed today.

As the mood in Germany has shifted from a euphoric welcome for people fleeing war and persecution last September to growing doubts about the countrys ability to accommodate and integrate the record influx, the popular Merkel has come under increasing pressure.

However, the poll for Focus news magazine conducted by the independent opinion research institute Insa among 2,047 German citizens showed that a larger sharenearly 45 per centdid not think Merkel should resign.

Among members of her conservative Christian Union bloc, nearly 27 per cent said they wanted Merkel, who has been in power since 2005, to step down.

Merkel has pledged to tangibly reduce the number of migrants and asylum seekers arriving this year with a range of measures in Germany, on the European level and with the help of international partners such as Turkey.

She struck an accord late Thursday with her fractious left-right coalition to tighten asylum policies, notably by making it easier to send back arrivals from North Africa and by delaying family reunifications.

Meanwhile, Germany moved to tighten its asylum laws to slow a record migrant influx as Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to bridge deep European rifts over the crisis in talks with Italy's Matteo Renzi today.

Merkel's coalition government, after months of wrangling, hammered out a deal to limit numbers by blocking some migrant family reunifications and declaring three North African nations "safe countries of origin."  AFP
Islamabad, Jan 29

Pakistan's former defence secretaries want the government to be extra cautious in pursuing a normalisation process with India, saying they do not see a major shift in New Delhi's policy on its ties with the country, Dawn reported on Friday.

Speaking at a seminar on 'Impasse in Pak-India ties  Implications for Regional Diplomacy and Strategic Stability', former defence secretary retired Lt. General Asif Yasin Malik called for "open and extensive" debate within the country on its relations with India.

"There has to be a people-driven national vision, not a government-driven (one)," he added.

The seminar was held on the third anniversary of the Islamabad-based think tank, which specialises in security and strategic affairs.

Pakistan and India are on the verge of resuming their peace dialogue under the tag of 'Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue'.

The talks were delayed by the Pathankot attack, but high-level contact between the two countries which began with a meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Paris Climate Summit in November last year, has given the impression of new momentum in bilateral ties, the report said.

However, Malik cautioned that no radical shift in ties was expected, although there could be minor improvement caused by expediencies of the international environment.

For Pakistan, "bending is not an option; either forward or backwards. We bend and we get a kick," Malik, who retired as defence secretary in 2014, said.

He recalled Prime Minister Modi's belligerent posture towards Pakistan during his election campaign, when he talked about making Pakistan irrelevant in a geo-political context at both the regional and national levels. He said India continued to play "cat and mouse" in ties with Pakistan.

Malik listed a number of measures he expected the government to undertake  both internally and externally  in order to effectively deal with the challenge posed by India: de-linking Pak-Afghan ties from the Pak-India relationship, safeguarding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from sabotage, tackling political fissures over CPEC, pursuing water security more seriously, and appointing a full-time foreign minister.

Retired Lt. Gen Naeem Lodhi, another former defence secretary, echoed Malik when he noted that there was no detente in sight.

In his view, the answer lay in the leadership of both countries ending the "blame game" and approaching the relationship with fresh and open minds.

"The imbalance of size and political clout highly in favour of India begs third party facilitation to veer these two nuclear powers away from confrontational mode. There seems to be no other option," he said. IANS
Vienna, January 29

The head of the UN nuclear test ban treaty organisation says arch-enemies Iran and Israel are "the closest" of the eight holdout nations to ratifying the treaty and assuring the world they will never conduct a nuclear test explosion.

Lassina Zerbo said this week that having Iran and Israel ratify together would "certainly" lead to Egypt's ratification, and pave the way for a nuclear test-free zone in the Middle East.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, known as the CTBT, has 196 member states 183 that have signed the treaty and 164 that have ratified it.

But the treaty has not entered into force because it still needs ratification by eight countries that had nuclear power reactors or research reactors when the UN General Assembly adopted the treaty in 1996: the United States, China, Iran, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Zerbo, speaking during a week-long conference marking the 20th anniversary of the treaty being opened for signing, said he doesn't expect immediate results on ratification, but is hoping to visit both Iran and Israel and talk to their leaders because "I think that they're the ones who can unlock what is stopping the CTBT from moving."

In a briefing and an interview, he said that implementation of last summer's deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program and confirmation from Israeli and international scientists that Tehran can't produce nuclear weapons would mean "the biggest threat for Israel is gone and over."

Zerbo said the next step should then be to ratify the CTBT, which both Iran and Israel signed in 1996. He called this "a low-hanging fruit," toward the goal of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

"Israel and Iran can make a huge difference for this treaty, and they have nothing to lose ... absolutely nothing," Zerbo said. "Both of them can take leadership and show carte blanche to the world to say we have together decided to ratify the CTBT."

He said ratification by Iran and Israel would help defuse tensions between the countries, build trust, and provide momentum first for Egypt to ratify the CTBT and then to start negotiations for a nuclear test-free zone in the Middle East.

Zerbo said a nuclear test-free zone is an achievable step toward the much more difficult goal of establishing a nuclear-weapons-free-zone in the Middle East.

"You can't jump and get a weapon-free zone in the Middle East if the CTBT isn't ratified," he said.

Arab nations have been calling for a nuclear-free zone since the mid-1990s but efforts to hold a conference to discuss the possibility have failed. One key issue has been differences with Israel, which is widely believed to have an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons but has avoided confirming or denying their existence. AP
North Korea is preparing to launch a long-range ballistic missile, possibly within a week, the Japanese government believes.

Kyodo News on Thursday quoted a Japanese government source as saying that analysis of recent satellite images shows movement of vehicles and people near the North's missile launch pad at Tongchang-ri, North Pyongan Province.

The U.S. confirmed that preparations are taking place. "The indications are that they are preparing for some kind of launch," a US official said according to AFP. He added people on the ground seem to be readying for "a regular space launch."

But the official added it is unclear whether the launch will go ahead. "Could be for a satellite or a space vehicle -- there are a lot of guesses. North Korea does this periodically, they move things back and forth. Theres nothing to indicate its ballistic missile related," he said.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bill Urban urged the North to immediately stop actions and rhetoric that disturb peace and security in the region, but concentrate on taking solid measures to fulfill its international obligations.

Japan's National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met to discuss a response.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also urged the North not to take any rash action and to avoid a vicious cycle of tensions.

The North began modernizing the Tongchang-ri launch site after it launched a space rocket with an estimated range of 10,000 km there in December 2012. It reportedly finished building a new mobile prefabricated structure late last year. This will allow it to assemble a missile on site out of the view of spy satellites.

But the South Korean military said it has detected no signs that indicate an imminent launch of a long-range missile. But it believes that this is likely in the near future because the North may want to put pressure on the U.S. and seek internal unity ahead of the Workers Party congress in May.

"It's true that there is a possibility of a surprise launch, but there're no sign that indicates an imminent launch." a Defense Ministry official said.
Korean and Japanese civic groups have joined hands in submitting hundreds of documents to UNESCO about historic Korean peace missions to Japan. They want them included on the UNESCO World Heritage List next year.

The Chosun Tongsinsa, as they are called in Korean, were a series of diplomatic goodwill missions that the Korean court sent to Japan starting in the 14th century.

The Busan Cultural Foundation and a Japanese civic organization said Thursday they have chosen 333 documents to submit for inclusion on the list.

The documents are the records of 12 missions to Japan from 1607 to 1811. The Korean side is submitting 124 documents and the Japanese 209.

The two groups plan to submit the documents in March.

UNESCO will decide on whether to include the documents in July 2017.

Busan Mayor Suh Byung-soo said, "The joint submission of the records will be a great opportunity to show the world the spirit and tradition of peace and friendly relations between the two countries."
The 150-foot-long jet sitting outside the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium is as noticeable as it is huge.

 If nothing else, it has curb appeal, said U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, who, as a former Navy aviator, appreciates a good set of wings. If you drive by  you cant miss it.

On Thursday, members of the TASM launched a cant-miss component inside the American Airlines MD-80: Flight Theater.

There are a lot of aircraft all over the world and in museums on display, but not one of them that has a flight theater like this, said Jeff Sevart, Flight Theater project manager.

Its a one-of-a-kind venue, he said. It will be great for Tulsans and other folks in our area.

Nestled in the first-class section of the McDonnell Douglas aircraft, Flight Theater is designed to transport museum guests on a virtual journey using the latest projection technology and theater-quality sound.

A total of 15 video projectors are blended to create a 60-foot-long image in the cabin, whose 26-seat capacity includes two spots for disabled viewers. Aerial photography for the 24-minute show was captured by a lightweight experimental aircraft, helicopter and jet.

Since we got the plane in 2011, its just been an evolving process, TASM Board Chairman Lee Hubby said. The flight theater experience came up because we thought, Wouldnt thought be cool to immerse people in that? As far as we know, theres nothing like it anywhere in the world.

American Airlines donated the MD-80 to TASM as part of an education program linked to the decommissioning of the aircraft, which served as AAs domestic fleet nworkhouse for a quarter century.

After workers removed the planes overhead bins and most of its seats, added a new restroom, wet bar and other amenities, the exhibit opened as a Discovery Center in the spring of 2014.

It now serves as an educational facility for tours, as well as a rentable space for meetings, parties and weddings.

The goal that we have for the MD-80 is to let it perform multiple functions, Hubby said.

We want to be able to have people entertain, cocktail parties, board meetings, weddings. And of course, the mission of the museum is to educate the kids. How can we entertain, educate and engage kids.

As with anything you do at the museum, youre constantly evolving. You cant just remain static.
A 71-year-old woman facing criminal fraud charges testified in her own defense Thursday regarding a laser process she developed that she claims kills cancerous tumors.

Antonella Carpenter, under questioning from her public defender, explained her reason for a 100 percent effective claim she made about her laser treatment.

That was based upon the theory of what I did, coupled with her experience with the device in Mexico.

Carpenter said she successfully treated two people in Mexico who were expected to die from cancer.

I didnt expect it to be that good, Carpenter said.

She later brought her homemade laser to the United States, where she opened a business in Arkansas.

Carpenter, who has advanced education in physics and is not a medical doctor, faces 41 counts of fraud in connection with a business called Lase Med Inc. that she ran in Arkansas before relocating it to the Tulsa area.

In 2012, investigators with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raided an Owasso clinic Carpenter operated, seizing computer and financial records, patient files and $7,800 in cash.

A federal grand jury indicted Carpenter in August 2014. A superseding indictment was filed in October 2014.

The fraud counts focus on a period from November 2006 to December 2012, when Carpenter is alleged to have obtained money from patients by means of false and fraudulent representations.

Her trial began Jan. 11 before U.S. District Judge James Payne, who has the case docketed to run through Feb. 4.

Prosecutors have presented testimony from seven of Carpenters patients, five of whom have since died.

Carpenter recounted her treatments of the patients Thursday, with a common theme being that she told them to be not worry because the tumor was dead thanks to her treatment.

Its a healing process, Carpenter said. They have to be patient and not panic.

Several of the patients emailed and called Carpenter following their treatments to tell her that a tumor had continued to enlarge or that they were in extreme pain.

She explained why she appeared upset in an email to one of her patients because the patient had turned to traditional chemotherapy for her breast cancer.

If they get aggressive chemotherapy, they are not going to make it, Carpenter said.

In addition to her opposition to chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer, Carpenter said she also doesnt believe in biopsies as a diagnosis process.

She defended her use of the laser on a patient who had come to her with what he described in court as a non-cancerous growth in his jaw.

Carpenter testified the patient initially told her it was cancer, which she said she later confirmed when she injected the growth with a mixture of green food coloring and saline solution.

I injected the growth and it retained the stain, Carpenter said, an indication to her that it was cancer.

In another instance, Carpenter described how she was initially reluctant to treat a woman who had come to her with anal cancer.

I said, oooh Ive never done it, Carpenter recalled, referencing treating that type of cancer.

I was reluctant, but she was insistent, Carpenter testified.

The patient, who testified last week, said she later opted to undergo a colonoscopy, which revealed that the tumor was growing.

The patient later underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

Under cross examination, Carpenter was asked to comment on why a doctor said he successfully treated the patient with anal cancer.

I dont see how you could say it was successful, Carpenter said. The tumor was already dead.

Carpenter said the doctor did not use the right process to determine whether the tumor was dead or alive.

Carpenter also downplayed a point made by the prosecution that showed most of the doctors who had later cared for her former patients had many years of experience with traditional cancer treatment.

He had 20 years of doing what he learned in med school over and over again, Carpenter said. You see cancer, you do chemo.

Asked if she considered the traditional cancer doctors incompetent, Carpenter replied: It doesnt matter the number of years, it doesnt matter the degree you have. It matters what you do with it.

While many of Carpenters patients testifying during the trial referred to her formally as Doctor Carpenter, she said they knew she was not a medical doctor.

Most of the patients said the reason they came to me was because they knew I was not an M.D., Carpenter testified.

She said she has a doctorate in physics, an assertion disputed by prosecutors.

Defense attorneys have indicated they plan to call several former Lase Med patients as witnesses, who will testify they were pleased with the treatments they received from Carpenter.
SAPULPA  The man who died in a police shootout after robbing the Bank of Eufaula and killing its president Jan. 21 had been released from Texas prisons twice despite having a 60-year prison term to serve in Oklahoma, a Tulsa World analysis has found.

Officials from Creek and Tulsa counties, as well as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, maintain that they correctly followed procedure to get Cedric Lamont Norris into their custody to serve sentences for multiple robbery, burglary and property theft convictions he received in at least five counties among two states.

But a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman told the Tulsa World that Norris, 39, had been released on parole on Jan. 25, 2007, and March 22, 2012. At both times he should have been in an Oklahoma prison for 2006 robbery convictions in Tulsa and Creek counties.

Where the breakdown came at this point in time may be hard to determine, said Creek County District Attorney Max Cook, who was the prosecutor when a judge sentenced Norris on Dec. 14, 2006, to 60 years in prison for a 2005 Sapulpa jewelry store robbery.

Part of what were seeing here is the communication failed between Texas and Oklahoma, primarily. Im not going to say anybody failed, necessarily. The communication failed is all Im saying.

Freed the first time

Norris died in a shootout about 9:45 a.m. Jan. 21 after he fatally shot Randy Peterson, president of the Bank of Eufaula; took money from the bank; shot teller Betty Howell, who survived; and took customer Julie Huff hostage, authorities said. Huff was also shot during the shootout; although severely injured, she has survived.

The tragedy in Eufaula came almost exactly nine years after Norris was wrongfully freed for the first time in Texas after serving a two-year term on a Dallas County burglary conviction.

On Jan. 27, 2007, Norris was released from Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody on mandatory supervision when only three weeks earlier hed been in the Tulsa Jail after being handed sentences totaling 60 years in Oklahoma.

Cook said his office is rarely, if ever, notified about inmates serving sentences outside the state and said he had no contact with Texas authorities after Norris 60-year conviction was handed down. He did not indicate that anyone was monitoring Norris situation in Texas, despite his Oklahoma prison sentences being documented as running concurrently with his sentence in a Texas case.

Creek County entered his conviction and 60-year sentence paperwork in Norris file there on Feb. 1, 2007, not realizing that Norris had already been transported to Texas and subsequently released on parole a week earlier.

Texas and Oklahoma authorities have told the Tulsa World theyre unsure where the communication breakdown occurred, but they unanimously agreed in interviews with the World that Norris should not have been released from custody.

Trouble with transfers

The problem seems to stem from the documentation necessary to ensure proper inmate transfer from one state to another.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Robert Hurst said Tulsa County picked up Norris from a Texas prison on Dec. 15, 2005, after officials filed an interstate detainer agreement in July of that year so he could be held in Oklahoma custody to face trial. He was sentenced in Tulsa to a 10-year term in April 2006.

Creek County had no detainer agreement on Norris, instead using a writ  a legal order  to transfer him from custody in Tulsa a week after his sentencing so that legal proceedings could begin in the Sapulpa robbery case. After his 60-year sentence for that crime was handed down later that year, Norris was sent back to the Tulsa Jail on Dec. 15, 2006.

At that time Norris would, under normal circumstances, have been sent to Oklahoma Department of Corrections custody to start serving his 60 years, but due to the nature of a detainer, Tulsa County was required to send Norris back to the place where he was incarcerated before being brought to Oklahoma.

He returned to TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) on Jan. 2, 2007, Hurst said, correcting a July 2007 date he had provided to The Oklahoman last week. There were no other detainers from Oklahoma in our system. There was no judgment and sentencing paperwork in his file from (Oklahoma).

But Tulsa County Sheriffs Office spokesman Justin Green said Texas should have been aware of the 10-year prison term from Tulsa County because jailers would have handed his file, which includes the conviction and sentence, to prison staff there when they took him to Texas in 2007.

Green said he has found no record showing that Texas received the sentencing documentation in Tulsa County archives, which can be shredded after five years, but he maintained that we follow our protocol for our inmates.

They wouldnt have had a body if they didnt have paperwork, Green said of Norris transfer back to Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody. We cant just go and send somebody off without the papers that go along with them. Thats just irresponsible and impractical.

However, the only detainer Green found record of was the one completed for the purposes of Norris standing trial in Tulsa County. Hurst indicated that a new detainer would have been required if Oklahoma was to take custody of Norris on a prison sentence.

That detainer could have prevented Norris from being released on parole just three weeks after Tulsa County sent him back to Texas.

Freed the second time

Years later, the detainer issue came up again, this time while Norris was serving 12 years in Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody for yet another robbery. Creek County had filed no detainer with Texas, and Norris specifically requested that from the court so that he could be returned to Oklahoma for his 60-year sentence.

Norris, who had represented himself at both Oklahoma trials and subsequent failed appeals, sent a handwritten motion to Creek County in July 2010. In that letter, he asked Judge April Sellers White, who has since retired, to have him brought to an Oklahoma prison to serve his 60-year term because Texas had refused to send him back to Oklahoma without a detainer form from Creek County.

Court minutes and clerks notes show that the document was received but do not say who saw it, and apparently no action was taken.

In March 2012, Norris was freed for a second time from Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody. His Dallas parole officer logged Norris last visit on Jan. 13, a week before he killed Peterson in Eufaula.

Apparently there was a breakdown in communication, I guess, whether it was Texas fault or Oklahomas fault, Cook said.

As for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections role in Norris case, a Creek County clerk said a copy of his conviction and sentencing paperwork was sent to the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center, where male DOC inmates are held before receiving a permanent prison assignment.

DOC spokesman Alex Gerszewski said that document was not in Norris file, explaining that standard procedure is for that paperwork to accompany a prisoner when he arrives at the Lexington facility and to be brought by the deputy sheriff who is transporting him there.

The DOC receives judgment and sentence documents with offenders coming into custody, Gerszewski said. Since Norris was not coming into Oklahoma DOC custody, the department never received a judgment and sentence document.

Norris had served time in an Oklahoma prison for a 1993 Creek County conviction but had not been in the DOCs system since 1998.

Cook asserted that court records show that Norris Creek County judgment and sentence had been sent to Lexington by mail but said that whether it got there or not, we may never know.

The number of jurisdictions that sentenced Norris, Cook said, made the matter a once-in-a-lifetime situation, but he said the county would take steps to improve communication among agencies.

I do not know whose fault it is  if its the fault of a person or a system, the Creek County prosecutor said. But well deal with it, and well make it better should we be faced with this again.
No matter where I travel in the state, people want to talk about education. We are all concerned about our state budget deficit, but many Oklahomans are just as concerned about our states education deficit. As a parent of a child in our public schools, this is also a big deal to me. Fortunately, the first step to real education reform already has happened, transitioning more education control away from Washington, D.C.

For more than a decade, Oklahoma schools have been forced to operate under the failed federal law known as No Child Left Behind. When the law passed in 2001, it required states to achieve unrealistic federal mandates on annual standardized tests for reading and math by 2014. When any school or state did not meet the Washington, D.C. standard, it created chaos for parents, schools and states, including Oklahoma.

Certainly, every student and school ought to have standards and evaluation, but who sets those standards and who writes the test? Whoever controls the test, controls the school.

Until late last year, our state legislators and local school boards had their hands tied when it came to making any practical reforms to our education system. For the past several years, the federal Department of Education has acted as a national school board. The legal standards were set so high that very few states could achieve the standard, and those states that didnt had to go hat-in-hand to the Department of Education to request a waiver. Waivers were only given to states that changed their teaching and evaluation system to Washingtons preferences, which took authority away from Oklahomans. Centralized national decision-making on education reduces the role of the parent and the local districts. It also gives education authority to one group and responsibility to another  that will never work.

However, there is good news. In December, the Senate passed and the president signed into a law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which finally repealed No Child Left Behind and ended the federal waiver system. While there is more to be done in education, this is the essential first step to get our schools back on track. Now, Oklahoma has more authority and more responsibility to improve our schools.

Every schoolteacher will tell you that there is no substitute for engaged parents in the education of a child. When parents read to their kids, encourage their study and provide a safe and stable home environment, children have a much greater chance of school and life success. For the future of our kids, parents and teachers must team together and honor each other.

As our state Legislature begins its session, there is still more work to be done nationally to facilitate this work. As Congress debated the Every Student Succeeds Act last year, I supported the A-PLUS amendment, which would have provided states and local leaders even greater ability to completely opt out of federal programs and instead direct federal dollars toward the needs and programs determined by the state. I also supported much greater flexibility for school choice and parental decision-making. Unfortunately, both amendments failed in the Senate.

As many Americans recognized National School Choice Week this week, I believe the argument about school choice is not about the future of our schools, it is about the future of our children. School leaders might argue to keep more money and control so they can make education improvements, but children in the school do not have time for hoped-for future improvements, they need help today. Why would we ever tell a parent to sacrifice their childs future so we can protect a school today?

Our state will face a lot of tough decisions in the coming days, including education. I have the highest confidence that state legislators and Oklahomans will step up to the plate and make good decisions with their recaptured education authority. Practical quality education is possible and expected.

Oklahomans want a great future for their kids that will begin with empowered parents and expanded educational opportunities for every child, no matter where they live. In 2016, our state has an opportunity to lead and prove to all of America that strong families and a great education provide the best future for our kids.

James Lankford, a Republican, is Oklahomas junior U.S. senator.
Seven will screen a news special marking the 30th anniversary of the death of Anita Cobby, produced by journalist Steve Pennells.

It was the crime that outraged Australia.

Now, in a powerful special investigation on the 30th anniversary of Anita Cobbys death, her forgotten husband  once the prime suspect in her murder  gives his first television interview.

Gold Walkley Award-winning journalist Steve Pennells will reveal astonishing facts about the case, and we hear the explosive confessions of the killers.



9pm Monday February 8th on Seven.
Its been 14 years since Fox Mulder and Dana Scully closed The X-Files on the small screen. In the world of TV reboots and reprisals, its genuinely exciting to think David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are re-uniting with creator Chris Carter for more stories.

Their 2008 movie I Want to Believe was a disappointment. Bringing back such an iconic series and duo is a big risk, but the buzz for this 6 part revival is global. Whether that raises expectations to impossible heights may be too soon to know.

The new-look X-Files opens with a nifty backstory from Mulder (Duchovny) for millenials who are too young to remember the original history. He believes his sister was abducted, Scully (Anderson) is a pathologist and skeptic, they worked on hundreds of cases of the unexplained for the FBI. As any fan will tell you there was also fabulous unresolved sexual tension between the two leads, some trademark flashlights cutting through the dark and that spooky theme music.

All of these are back in 2016 along with contemporary touchstones from Carter: watch for references to Obama, Jimmy Kimmel, Uber, Snowden and more. Much is made of the new threats to the world post 9 / 11 without preachy references to terrorism and the Middle East.

In the first episode FBI boss Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) calls upon Scully to contact the elusive Mulder and meet a brash webcast host Tad OMalley (Joel McHale), a bearer of all things extra-terrestrial.

Mulder, viewing talk show gags about UFOs tells her, Our lifes become a punchline. Whats happening out there Scully?

OMalley introduces them to a young woman claiming to have experienced alien abductions (fascinatingly, Mulder even references the apparent true-life abduction of Australian Kelly Cahill in Victoria in 1993!).

Skeptic Scully isnt so keen to resume the work, telling OMalley, Weve moved on with our lives.

Yes we have. For better for worse, laments Mulder.

Naturally our dynamic duo take up the case which eventually leads to some far-fetched conspiracy theories that involve clunky dialogue required of two respectable performers. Youll know it when you see it. Its almost as if the episode is trying to justify its return by rooting it into modern-day conspiracy, whereas for faithful fans I suspect the premise of believer + non-believer is enough.

There is also a flashback to 1947 when government officials examined a huge UFO that crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico -this CGI is a visual highlight of the first episode, and is there to mark a technological footprint for the present-day story, I wont spoil.

Theres a concerted effort to weave the personal lives of our heroes into the jeopardy of the procedural that felt somewhat forced to me.

The second episode steps into the world of mutations, and includes an appearance by Doug Savant. It also highlights personal pain within Scullys life and reminds us how well Gillian Anderson juggles the emotion with the cool, distant medic. I was enjoying this episode until the preview video came to a dead halt at 33 minutes. conspiracy theory?

The reunion of Duchovny and Anderson works well and is the best asset here. They still look good (Andersons red wig is very convincing), their chemistry is obvious, they take me back to so many wonderful adventures. History will decide whether re-opening that file was worth the ride, not me. Its possible my expectations were of another world.

Carter has been faithful to the brand with his revival. Its still possible to believe, so Im happily down for more.

The X-Files airs 8:30pm Sunday, 9pm Monday on TEN.
10:10 a.m., Jan. 29, 2016--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent exhibitions, honors and presentations include the following:

Exhibitions

Aaron Keith Hoffer, a 2013 graduate of the University of Delaware with a bachelor of fine arts degree, will be featured in a Delaware Division of the Arts exhibition Feb. 5-26 in the Mezzanine Gallery in the Carvel State Office Building in Wilmington. The exhibition is titled Psychic Future and features abstract paintings created through the use of materials that repel, interact and converge on the surface. Hoffer said his aim is to achieve a sense of wholeness in an abstract context through sheer sensory overload. An opening reception will be held from 5-7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 5, at the gallery.

Honors

James M. Brophy, the Francis H. Squire Professor of History, has been appointed to the academic advisory board of the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of the Sciences. This definitive edition of the complete works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, begun in 1975 and reconstituted in 1989 after the fall of Soviet communism, has already published 64 of the planned 114 volumes. MEGA's team of editors expects to complete the monumental work in the next 15 years.

Presentations

Close to 200 graduate students, faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and industry representatives turned out for the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineerings Winter Research Review at the University of Delawares Clayton Hall on Jan. 27. The program included research presentations by 25 fourth-year graduate students as well as posters highlighting the work of third-year students. The presentations addressed a broad range of topics including bone regeneration, cancer treatment, drug transport, lung disease, catalysis, and self-healing polymers.

Troy Mix, policy scientist of the Institute for Public Administration at the University of Delaware, and Mark White, deputy director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, presented a webinar, "Analyzing Economic Diversity," to members of the Pennsylvania Economic Development Institute and the Pennsylvania Economic Development Association on Jan. 27. The presentation summarized research on economic diversity conducted for the Appalachian Regional Commission and highlighted implications for practitioners working to diversify their regional economies.

To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to publicaffairs@udel.edu.
8:36 a.m., Jan. 29, 2016--The University of Delaware Library has announced its partnership in a regional grant to increase access to medieval manuscripts held in the librarys Special Collections.

The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) has announced that member library Lehigh University has been awarded a $499,086 grant on PACSCLs behalf from the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives initiative of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for its project Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis: Toward a Comprehensive Online Library of Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts in PACSCL Libraries in Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The project, led by PACSCL members Lehigh University, Free Library of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and involving a total of 15 partner institutions, will complete the digitization and online presentation of virtually all of the regions medieval manuscripts  a total of almost 160,000 pages from more than 400 individual volumes.

The images, together with descriptive metadata, will be released into the public domain and easily downloadable at high resolution.

The University of Delaware Library is contributing 10 pre-1600 manuscripts to the project, including the Book of Hours: Use of Noyen, which was a gift from the University of Delaware Library Associates. This beautifully illuminated manuscript has been studied by many UD students, including doctoral student Gabrielle Parkin, for research in late medieval literature.

Special Collections is thrilled to be a part of this grant, which will yield the largest regional concentration of medieval manuscripts in North America. This is our third PACSCL project with CLIR, said L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin, head of Manuscripts and Archives Department, and we are excited to contribute open data and freely accessible images to the consortium.

PACSCL first showcased the variety and depth of the regions collections, one of the largest in any metropolitan region in the United States, in a 2001 exhibition, Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition and its associated catalogue drew heavily upon the manuscripts to be digitized in this project and sparked a surge in scholarly interest in the Philadelphia collections.

The manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis project range from simple but functional texts intended for the students of science, philosophy, and religion to jewel-like works of art in the collections of such institutions as Bryn Mawr College, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Rosenbach Museum and Library.

With the addition of materials previously digitized by member libraries, Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis will provide access to more than 2,000 manuscripts in total, notes PACSCL chairman Ronald Brashear. It will allow users to download the manuscripts, view them in almost-microscopic detail, and compare them with related works in collections across the country and abroad. Brashear is also director of the Othmer Library at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, which is contributing images of its medieval and early modern alchemical manuscripts to the project.

In addition to its Book of Hours, the University of Delaware Library is contributing early alchemical manuscripts that were acquired in the early 1970s with the Unidel History of Chemistry Collection. Books and manuscripts in the Unidel History of Chemistry Collection comprise some of the oldest materials housed in Special Collections.

The Leaves of Gold exhibition was a revelation, showing the range and depth of medieval manuscripts in the Delaware Valley region, said Lawrence Nees, professor and chair of the Department of Art History, and recently president of the International Center of Medieval Art. This new digital initiative will make it possible for scholars worldwide to access these riches in full, and students at the University of Delaware and elsewhere can use this digital tool to prepare themselves for direct in-person examination of this wonderful material. This project represents a decisive and exciting step forward.

The images and metadata will be hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries OPenn manuscript portal. They will be released to the public domain at high resolution and available for download  by the page, by the manuscript, or by the collection  together with descriptive metadata via anonymous FTP or anonymous rsync.

Many of the manuscripts to be digitized by the project are held in the collections of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

In addition to digitizing its own collections and serving as the projects fiscal agent, Lehigh will dark archive the projects images and metadata, providing a critical backup outside the city of Philadelphia.

The project participants include the following area libraries and museums: Bryn Mawr College, Chemical Heritage Foundation, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Franklin and Marshall College, Free Library of Philadelphia (lead contributor and co-principal investigator) Haverford College, Lehigh University (principal investigator, fiscal agent, and dark archive), Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Swarthmore College, Temple University, University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania (OPenn host and lead imaging/metadata center), and Villanova University.

Additional news about the project is available at the PACSCL website.

About Special Collections

Holdings of Special Collections of the University of Delaware Library include books, manuscripts, maps, prints, photographs, broadsides, periodicals, pamphlets, ephemera and realia from the 15th to the 21st century.

The collections complement the library's general collections with particular strengths in the subject areas of the arts; English, Irish and American literature; history and Delawareana; horticulture; and history of science and technology.

Special Collections is located on the second floor of the Morris Library.
Science the start of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in eastern Ukraine, a total of 2,269 Ukrainian soldiers died defending Ukraine from the Russian aggression.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said during a Lesson of Courage to students of Kyiv military lyceum named after Ivan Bohun and students of higher military establishments, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The president stressed that on the Day of Heroes of Kruty it becomes a tradition in Ukraine to commemorate ATO soldiers as well.

All of them were killed in the fight for independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, the President stressed.

The head of state also called on all those present at the event to observe a minute of silence.

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No Ukrainian servicemen were killed, but two our soldiers were wounded in the ATO area in eastern Ukraine over past 24 hours. In addition, the militants suffered significant losses.

Spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the anti-terrorist operation, Colonel Andriy Lysenko said this at a briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"No Ukrainian servicemen were killed, but two our soldiers were wounded over past day," Lysenko said.

Lysenko added that according to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Defense Ministry, eight militants were killed and another twenty were injured as a result of a clash near Zaitseve (67km north-north-east of Donetsk).

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Ukrainian companies are expected to lose USD 800-1100 million in revenue because of embargo, most favored nation treatment, transit restrictions imposed by Russia.

Economic Development and Trade Minister of Ukraine Aivaras Abromavicius said this during an hour of questions to the Government in the Parliament, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We expect that the Ukrainian companies will lose USD 800-1100 million in revenue because of embargo, most favored nation treatment, transit restrictions imposed by Russia," he said.

Abromavicius stressed that in this regard our economy cannot afford not improving the business climate, not attracting investment, and not closing corruption schemes.

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Ukraine may raise up to USD 1 billion from the international financial institutions to purchase natural gas from the European suppliers.

Finance Minister of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko said this during an hour of questions to the Government in the Parliament of Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"I welcome the Parliaments decision to pass this week the bill No.3388, elaborated by the Finance Ministry. Now we will be able to sign $500 million loan guarantee agreement with the World Bank. We have already signed $300 million loan agreement with EBRD and $200 million loan agreement with the International Financial Corporation. Now we have the opportunity to raise up to USD 1 billion from the international financial institutions to purchase natural gas from the European suppliers," Jaresko said.

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Mikhail Kasyanov, the leader of the Russian opposition, the chairman of the People's Freedom Party (PARNAS), assured Ukraines President Commissioner for Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Dzemilev that Crimea will be returned to Ukraine.

Dzemilev posted this on his Facebook page.

"According to estimable Mr. Kasyanov, the economic and political situation in Russia is escalating, and the populations euphoria of Putin's actions against Ukraine is declining," he wrote.

Earlier, Kasyanov, commenting on the unlawfulness of the so-called "referendum" in Crimea in 2014, noted that only the Crimean Tatars had the right to raise the question about self-determination of the peninsula in accordance with the UN Charter.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko held a telephone conversation with newly elected President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and congratulated him on winning the election.

This is reported by the press service of the Head of State.

"The Head of State expressed gratitude to Portugal for its consistent support for Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and European aspirations. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa noted that Portugal was a sincere ally and partner of Ukraine in its European integration aspirations," reads the statement.

The parties reaffirmed the intention to further enhance bilateral cooperation in all the fields of mutual interest. The presidents also paid attention to the issues of the Ukrainian community in Portugal.

Petro Poroshenko invited Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to pay a visit to Kyiv.

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This year Ukraine will sign a free trade agreement with Canada and will accelerate relevant talks with Turkey and Israel.

Economy Development and Trade Minister Aivaras Abromavicius said during an hour of questions to government meeting in the Verkhovna Rada, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The talks on free trade area with Canada have been completed. We are accelerating negotiations on free trade area with Israel and Turkey. This year it is 125 year since the arrival of first Ukrainians in Canada. On this date we will for sure sign agreement on free trade area with Canada, Abromavicius said.

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01/29/2016

By Karen Angelo

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, The New England Consortium (TNEC) researchers found that workers who were charged with the cleanup of materials and property were exposed to mold and other biological and chemical hazards.

With a five-year $7.6 million grant from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, TNEC will expand its traditional hazardous materials training program to include workers who respond to natural disasters caused by climate change.

Our goals have always been to reduce hazardous workplace exposures and prevent related injuries, illnesses, fatalities and costs associated with these outcomes, says Craig Slatin, a professor in UMass Lowells Division of Public Health who heads TNEC. The new emphasis on preparing workers for cleaning up after climate change-related extreme weather events is in line with our mission. Providing such services is a necessary component for protecting the health and safety of workers and the public as we adapt to the changing climate.

One of TNECs grant partners, the Civil Service Employees Association, will train 1,000 workers in building trades, sanitation, maintenance, health care, universities and school districts. When disaster strikes, these workers will serve as skilled support personnel for state, county and municipal governments.

TNEC will also provide training to workers around New England, including a collaboration with Coalitions for Occupational Safety and Health to offer programs in Spanish and Portuguese in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

As severe weather events continue to increase across our nation, our goal is to prepare public employers and their employees before response and recovery services are needed, says Slatin. We will train them to safely work in conditions that expose them to mold, carbon monoxide, chemicals, sewage, lead and asbestos  all hazards that could be encountered during clean-up after flooding and other catastrophes.

Partners on the grant include the Coalitions for Occupational Safety and Health of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire, along with the Civil Service Employees Association of New York State and Local 1000 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Funding Continues for Core Emergency Response Training Program

As it has for 29 years, TNEC will continue to train employees engaged in hazardous waste operations and emergency response.

In partnership with another grant partner, the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Agency (MIIA), TNEC will establish training for supervisors and managers of departments in municipal governments.

TNEC will also evaluate the effectiveness of the programs to see if the municipal departments that received training reduced hazardous workplace exposures and prevented injuries, illnesses, fatalities and whether the costs associated with these adverse outcomes have been reduced or prevented.

Innovative Training Techniques

TNECs computer-based simulation tool will be integrated into an application called HazReady, developed by educational technology provider InXsol. In a small group electronic classroom, students will be able to access custom simulation scenarios, training transcripts and more via tablets, phones and computers.

Long Legacy of Protecting Workers

Since 1987, TNEC has received funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences through the national Superfund program, which pays for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.

Over those 29 years, TNEC has provided training to more than 2,000 New England employers and many environmental and health and safety regulatory agencies. It also provides training grants to non-profit organizations that develop and deliver health and safety training.

TNEC is a program of UMass Lowell and a participant in the universitys Climate Change Initiative, which brings together faculty, staff, students and members of the community to address climate change through research and education.
Fighting in eastern DRC forces tens of thousands to flee homes

More than three years after a major rebel offensive was defeated by UN and government forces in Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province, the area remains extremely volatile and producing displacement.

Since November, waves of violence by Mai Mai militias and rebel groups including the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) of Uganda, have forced large numbers of people to flee. This only adds to a cycle of misery in an area rich in minerals but lacking in law and order. The displacement has also come at a time when the Congolese army has been conducting military operations against the FDLR and other rebel groups.

UNHCR believes it is urgently important for the authorities to address growing tensions in eastern DRC and scale up support to the newly displaced. This includes by ensuring they can find safety either in designated sites or with the local population. We are also increasingly concerned at the targeting of civilians as the clashes intensify, particularly given decades-long tensions between ethnic groups.

Since November, at least 15,000 people have sought shelter in sites for the displaced run by UNHCR or IOM. Tens of thousands more are estimated to be living with local families while others have returned to their homes. UNHCR is calling on the authorities to ensure security in the areas of return and to facilitate humanitarian access.

In the latest major forced mass movement, more than 21,000 people - mostly women and children - fled from Miriki village and surrounding areas in North Kivu's Lubero Territory on January 7 after the killing of at least 14 people in a night raid by suspected FDLR forces.

They fled to Luofu, Kaina, Kanyabayonga and Kirumba villages in the south of Lubero Territory. A substantial number have since returned home, but some remain displaced in the area.

The FDLR has also been battling Mai Mai groups in the province's Walikale Territory. Since November, this fighting has forced tens of thousands to flee to Lubero. In early January, different estimates put the number displaced from this fighting at 70,000-82,000. The fighting between the FDLR and militias has also forced people to seek shelter across the border in Uganda. Last year, more than 33,000 people fled to Uganda from eastern DRC.

Meanwhile the ADF continue to wage a campaign of terror and sporadic attacks and ambushes against the local population and Congolese armed forces in the north of the province.

Last month, according to our local protection partners, ADF clashes with the military left an estimated 20,000 people internally displaced in Beni Territory and raised fears of an imminent attack against the town of Beni.

A large number of these people fled to the Ituri province, neighbouring North Kivu, while the rest made their way to Beni or the district of Oicha, where they struggle to find shelter and assistance.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs earlier this month estimated that 7.5 million people in DR Congo, or 9 per cent of the population, were in need of food and other humanitarian aid after decades of crises.

OCHA also says 1.5 million people remain forcibly displaced in the eastern provinces, including some 600,000 in North Kivu, a figure which is now likely to have risen. UNHCR supports the displaced by running 31 displacement sites, providing shelter materials, coordinating protection and advocating for their rights.

For further information on this topic, please contact:
An internally displaced Congolese girl peels vegetables while taking care of her sister in Northern Kivu, DRC.  UNHCR/F. Noy

GENEVA, Jan 29 (UNHCR) - More than three years after a major rebel offensive was defeated by UN and government forces in Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province, the area remains extremely volatile and producing displacement.

Since November, waves of violence by Mai Mai militias and rebel groups including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, FDLR, and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) of Uganda, have forced large numbers of people to flee.

This only adds to a cycle of misery in an area rich in minerals but lacking in law and order. The displacement has also come at a time when the Congolese army has been conducting military operations against the FDLR and other rebel groups.

"We believe it is urgently important for the authorities to address growing tensions in eastern DRC and scale up support to the newly displaced," UNHCR spokesperson Leo Dobbs told reporters at a briefing in Geneva on Friday (January 29).

"This includes by ensuring they can find safety either in designated sites or with the local population. We are also increasingly concerned at the targeting of civilians as the clashes intensify, particularly given decades-long tensions between ethnic groups," he added.

Since November, at least 15,000 people have sought shelter in sites for the displaced run by the UN Refugee Agency or the International Organization for Migration, IOM. On top of these displaced, tens of thousands more who fled are estimated to be living with local families while others have returned to their homes. UNHCR is calling on the authorities to ensure security in the areas of return and to facilitate humanitarian access.

In the latest major forced mass movement, more than 21,000 people - mostly women and children - fled from Miriki village and surrounding areas in North Kivu's Lubero Territory on January 7 after the killing of at least 14 people in a night raid by suspected FDLR forces.

They fled to Luofu, Kaina, Kanyabayonga and Kirumba villages in the south of Lubero Territory. A substantial number have since returned home, but some remain displaced in the area.

The FDLR has also been battling Mai Mai groups in the province's Walikale Territory. Since November, this fighting has forced tens of thousands to flee to Lubero. In early January, different estimates put the number displaced from this fighting at 70,000-82,000.

The fighting between the FDLR and militias has also forced people to seek shelter across the border in Uganda. Last year, more than 33,000 people fled to Uganda from eastern DRC.

Meanwhile the ADF continue to wage a campaign of terror and sporadic attacks and ambushes against the local population and Congolese armed forces in the north of the province.

Last month, according to our local protection partners, ADF clashes with the military left an estimated 20,000 people internally displaced in Beni Territory and raised fears of an imminent attack against the town of Beni.

A large number of these people fled to the Ituri province, neighbouring North Kivu, while the rest made their way to Beni or the district of Oicha, where they struggle to find shelter and assistance.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs earlier this month estimated that 7.5 million people in DR Congo, or 9 per cent of the population, were in need of food and other humanitarian aid after decades of crises.

OCHA also says 1.5 million people remain forcibly displaced in the eastern provinces, including some 600,000 in North Kivu, a figure which is now likely to have risen. UNHCR supports the displaced by running 31 displacement sites, providing shelter materials, coordinating protection and advocating for their rights.
You're a civilian employee sitting in the break room and you've finished your lunch. You have a few minutes before returning to your desk, so you decide to check your Facebook page. You see a friend has linked to the fundraising site of your favorite presidential candidate and you press the like button because you want to support that candidate. Well, you'd better hide, because the Hatch Act police are on their way -- you've just violated federal law.I'm just kidding about the Hatch Act Police. The Hatch Act is a federal law governing the political activities of federal civilian employees. Uniformed Airmen have a similar set of rules in Air Force Instruction 51-902. Since we're headed into the heart of the election year, we should all be aware of the general "do's" and "don'ts" of political activity, any activity directed at the success or failure of a political party or partisan political group or candidate.Civilian employees and Airmen are encouraged to vote, to get others to vote and freely express their personal political views. We are allowed to join political clubs and attend meetings and fundraising events as long as we don't do so in uniform or on government time. We may even contribute to a political campaign or candidate.Civilians can make a political speech but service members cannot. We're all allowed to have a political bumper sticker on our car or wear a political button, but we can't wear that button with our uniform or at our job.In the "don't" category, we can't participate in a fundraising event (attending is not considered participating), march or ride in a political parade, or put huge political banners on our car. If we live on base, we're not allowed to put political signs in our yard.One important "don't" has to do with soliciting donations to a political party, candidate or cause. We can donate ourselves but can't encourage others to do so. That's why you got in trouble at lunch by liking a political fundraiser post on Facebook or retweeting such a post -- it's considered soliciting a donation.Social media brings its own set of rules for federal employees. Even if we're allowed to do something considered a political activity, we can't do it at work or inside a federal building. This applies to government teleworkers. If you intend to look at Facebook or Twitter on your lunch break, go outside or sit in your car if you're going to post, like or retweet anything to do with political activity. Remember, government employees are not allowed to engage in political activity on our government computers or in any official capacity.Please be part of the process of electing our national leaders. Educate yourself and others, debate, listen and learn, but make sure your political activity stays within the regulations. Watch out for the Hatch Act Police!For more information, visit www.osc.gov , refer to AFI 51-902 if you're a uniformed Airman, or call the Academy's ethics advisor at 333-3920.
Taking care of cadets: Military trainer speaks out on USAFA experience

Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series highlighting academy military trainers at the Air Force Academy.



Tech. Sgt. John Sinner is an Air Force Academy military trainer. He knows what it's like to be under fire.



"There were multiple things coming at us from three sides of the base from at least 50 attackers: an improvised explosive device at the gate and bullets," Sinner said, recalling an attack he survived in November 2010 while deployed to Afghanistan. "There was so much gunfire just over our heads, coming at us from over the barriers."



But more on this later, except to say Sinner knows what it's like to wrestle with an intense situation whether in a foreign country or on his home turf at the academy.



Sinner is one of nearly 60 military trainers at the academy who guide and instruct cadets from the moment they arrive for basic cadet training until they graduate with diploma in hand.



The AMTs are often specifically asked by these newly-minted officers to give them their first official salute at the commissioning ceremony before the academy's graduation ceremony at Falcon Stadium.



"Nothing is better than being asked to give a first salute to a new Air Force second lieutenant," Sinner said. "That's the moment you know you've done something right."



'Top priority'

Sinner is the AMT for Cadet Squadron 24. He often spends 60 hours a week with cadets.



"They have to be your top priority," he said. "You will not succeed as an AMT if they are not."



Sinner is from West Jordon, Utah. He enlisted in the Air Force in 2002 and became a civil engineer paving and heavy equipment operator. Before becoming an AMT in 2013, he supervised Airmen as a CE foreman.



"My last year in CE helped me lead larger groups," he said. "Before 2013, I would have found it more difficult to balance everything this job can throw at you. My experience benefits cadets. When it comes to my civil engineering cadets, they eat up all the information I have."



Sinner was in the sixth grade when he made up his mind to join the military. He came close to enlisting in the Army after high school but an Air Force recruiter put a stop to that.



"He changed my mind," Sinner said.



Cadets 1st Class Zachariah Jacques and Elizabeth Ramsey say Sinner made the right decision to join the Air Force.



"He's had a very positive effect on my cadet career, especially in my leadership opportunities," said Ramsey, the squadron commander for CS-24. "He helped me with tough decisions, not by making them for me, but by helping me think through them. He helped me grow as a leader and as a person, taught me to think through difficult choices and not to judge. I've learned countless lessons from him and I am very grateful."



Jacques is the support officer for CS-24.



"Sergeant Sinner has without a doubt made the greatest impact from an enlisted Airman in my cadet career," he said. "He's shown me how to take the good with the bad, and more importantly how to make good out of the bad. I wouldn't be as prepared to be an officer if it wasn't for him. Sergeant Sinner represents the best of the Air Force enlisted corps. He is always there to help others, constantly putting others before himself."



Sinner said AMTs must put cadets first if they want to be successful.



"Don't come to the academy if you're not ready to serve cadets," he said.



If Sinner seems passionate, he said it's because he recognizes cadets could never graduate or become officers if not for the influence and guidance of AMTs.



"Our AMTs here are all true professionals," he said. "They set a high standard our new officers can base a technical or master sergeant's performance on. AMTs are as fundamental to the cadets' learning curve as are their academic professors."



Cadets also influence Sinner.



"They inspire me to be a better NCO and a better AMT," he said. "It's amazing to think my fingerprint here could be on a cadet who eventually becomes the chief of staff of the Air Force."



Cadets have inspired Sinner to pursue higher education; he's now planning to finish his bachelor's degree.



"I thought my Community College of the Air Force Construction Technology degree was good enough, but seeing everything cadets have to balance while pursuing a degree, I have a new view of higher education," he said. "I had no ambitions toward a bachelor's degree until I became an AMT."



Lt. Col. Gerald Cook, the air officer commanding for CS-24, said cadets are lucky to have Sinner as their AMT.



"I'd be hard pressed to find a better role model of our enlisted professionals," he said. "Our cadets and I are truly fortunate to have John as our squadron's AMT. His performance is amazing and vital to CS-24's operations and to our cadets' development."



Under fire

Sinner deployed to Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan in 2010. He was leading a CE water well drilling team at a military combat outpost near Senjaray, in the Kandahr Province's Zhari District, when bullets began to fly on November 1. An improvised explosive devise carried along on a motorcycle detonated near the outpost's only gate, and an estimated enemy force of 50 insurgents began attacking the compound from seven fighting positions with small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades, according to Army award citation documents. Two soldiers were killed in the explosion and four others severely wounded.



Sinner's team quickly found themselves on security detail, armed with M4 carbine rifles during the hours-long attack.



"I felt more imminent danger that I ever had on the 100 convoys in Iraq I'd been on, but my team followed me to the letter," he said.



The battle began in the early afternoon and ended just before dark, thanks to close air support from a score of coalition aircraft and the Army's 101st Airborne Division, according to Sinner and the DOD documents.



Since then, Sinner has gathered information and worked to have his team recognized for helping protect the combat outpost during the attack.



"I know in my heart and soul we were a part of something significant and the fact that my team followed my direction without hesitation, even though some were very scared, is worth recognition."



Sinner regularly discusses the attack event with his cadets. He tells them that coming under enemy fire is a situation they could all one day face as officers, and how following the Air Force core values of integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do, can help them cope with an uncertain situation -- like the heat of battle.



"Once you are really able to embody those values, that's all you need to direct your actions and your life in an honorable way," he said. "Nothing changes when the bullets start flying."



Having faith in the core values will make cadets betters officers whether they lead at the squadron level or under fire, Sinner said.



"The most important thing is that when they're in a position of stress or facing something they've never dealt with before, they need to embrace the core values like my team did," he said. "As officers, they're never allowed to be scared or hungry, as retired Army Gen. Colin Powell [former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] once said. Once an officer shows weakness, it's going to reverberate through their subordinates."



An indelible imprint

Sinner knows he'll eventually leave the academy for another Air Force assignment.



"I'll miss the cadets and working so closely with commanders," he said. "It's an amazing feeling when a lieutenant colonel or major asks for your opinion and they roll with what you have to say."



Jaques said Sinner has left an indelible imprint on his life.



"Sergeant Sinner has shown me that Air Force NCOs are talented, hardworking and dedicated individuals who lead by example," he said. "With the academy being the first encounter I've had with the enlisted corps, he's provided more of a positive first impression than anything else. He's proven everything I've ever heard about how hard working the enlisted corps is. I wouldn't be the cadet, man or future officer I am today without Sergeant Sinner's mentorship."



Sinner is married to Master Sgt. Tiffany Sinner, the first sergeant of the 187th Aero Medical Evacuation Squadron, 153rd Airlift Wing, Wyoming Air National Guard. The Sinners are the parents of Olivia, 3, and Ryker, 1.



"My family is my foundation," Sinner said. "Tiffany takes care of our kids when I'm taking care of my cadets at the academy. Just like my own children, I love cadets when they're having a good day and I love them when they're having a bad day,"



Jaques and Ramsey are scheduled to graduate June 2.


Remembering Pearl Harbor: A 'body blow' to America

When the first bombs exploded on a nearby airfield, marking the start of the Japanese sneak attack on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Edward Davis and others scrambled from a chow hall.



The 94-year-old Army veteran said he and other Soldiers were having breakfast at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, when Japanese aircraft dive-bombed the adjacent Wheeler Army Airfield.



"We all ran outside and looked up at the sky to see what was going on," the retired first sergeant said before a Pearl Harbor remembrance ceremony Dec. 7 at the World War II Memorial.



At that point, a few Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters roared over the Army base and fired at them, killing and injuring several Soldiers from his unit.



"I couldn't believe it," he said, recalling how the attacks stoked fears of a looming Japanese invasion. "It was an unbelievable tragedy."



The attacks on the island of Oahu eventually left more than 2,400 dead and almost 1,200 wounded as it catapulted the U.S. into the war.



"It dealt us a body blow that I think was a rude awakening to Americans," said Herb Durham, a former Army Air Corps pilot. "The war had started and as a young man I was eager to get in."



During the war, Durham, one of about 20 WWII veterans at the ceremony, said he had some scary moments in Europe where he flew Republic P-47 Thunderbolts fighters.



One time while strafing German positions, a 20-mm round hit his canopy, causing shattered glass and shrapnel from the round to cut his face.



"I was lucky I had on my oxygen mask and goggles," he said of the March 1945 mission. "The doctor said I was lucky I didn't lose my left eye."



About a month later, Durham faced his biggest test when his aircraft was shot down behind enemy lines.



"I was dive-bombing a target and when I pulled off the target I got hit in the engine," the 91-year-old veteran recalled. "But I had a lot of air speed so I pulled up to about 6,000 feet and bailed out."



Durham was later caught by German soldiers who threw him in a prison camp. But a few weeks later, he said, the soldiers abandoned the camp as U.S. tanks approached it, freeing him and others.



In the Pacific Theater, former Marine Cpl. Ed Graham, who joined a dozen veterans on an honor flight from Texas for the ceremony, was sent to the tense Battle of Iwo Jima.



At first, Graham, 90, said he was part of a floating reserve until the battle turned fiercer than expected and ultimately had about 26,000 American casualties including 6,800 dead.



"We weren't supposed to go in but they tore them up so bad the first day," he said of how the Japanese forces pinned down his fellow Marines. "It was pretty bad for the whole crew."



Graham, assigned to the 3rd Marine Division, was later sent to the island to help purify water for combat-weary troops in the 36-day battle.



"All we had to worry about were mortars and snipers," he said.



But he and other troops received some motivation when U.S. troops raised the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi, which later became an iconic image of the war.



"I was on board the ship when they raised it and everybody clapped, yelled and screamed," he recalled. "It was quite a sight."



The attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent "a date which will live in infamy" speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired many young men to sign up and fight in the costly war, which left more than 400,000 American servicemen dead and forever shaped the world.



Navy veteran Ted Waller said he rushed to the recruiter's office following the attack.



"I went down the next day and tried to sign up but there were so many people there that they told us to go home until after Christmas so we could spend time with family," the 92-year-old veteran recalled. "I came back the day after (Christmas) and got sworn in."



Waller went on to take part in the world's first all-aircraft carrier naval clash, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and roughly a dozen other battles. He then witnessed the Japanese surrender some of its South Pacific territories while on board the USS Portland at Truk, Caroline Islands, on Sept. 2, 1945 -- an event often overshadowed by Japan's surrender on the USS Missouri in Toyko Bay, Japan, that same day.



"At the time it didn't mean anything, but now it does," he said of the formal surrender. "It was the beginning of changes in our American life."
Life after domestic assault: a survivor's tale

Doris Rivera-Black, a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, shared her story with cadets and Airmen Oct. 15 in Arnold Hall as part of the Air Force Academy's efforts to highlight Domestic Violence Awareness Month.



Rivera-Black had been a deputy sheriff for two years when on June 26, 2006 her then-husband kidnapped her at gunpoint, drove her to Boone, Colorado, and sexually assaulted her.



He was convicted of first-degree kidnapping and sexual assault with a weapon with injury involved, a Class 1 Felony in Colorado, and sentenced to life in prison.



"There are no demographics for domestic violence," she told her audience. "I was a good cop. I was tough, 'small and mighty' - but no one realized I was experiencing these issues at home. "I didn't feel strong or tough. I didn't want my coworkers to see weakness in me."



Rivera-Black said she grew-up in a loving family. Her parents were from Puerto Rico, and in keeping with Puerto Rican tradition, her father worked while her mother cooked, cleaned and took care of Rivera and her siblings. Rivera-Black understood her family's culture, but knew when she married, she wanted an equitable split between marital duties, she said.



All seemed well until her grandfather moved into the family home, she said. Rivera-Black was 6-years-old when she was molested by her grandfather.



"I was told I couldn't tell anyone about it. I was confused, but I tucked it away and didn't share it with anyone," she said. "My parents probably sensed something because [my grandfather] was there one day and then he was gone, but it was never discussed. Even though I decided to tuck the hurt away, it created a lot of issues. I became extremely insecure, I didn't like myself. I put on 'toughness' because I didn't want to show I was hurting."



'Prince Charming'

Rivera-Black married when she was 18 and gave birth to two daughters. Her husband joined the military to support the family, but the marriage collapsed. She was a single mother in Colorado when she met the man she calls "prince charming."



"He was perfect, he was handsome, had a good job and he told me such wonderful things," Rivera-Black said. '"You're beautiful,' 'You should be treated like a queen,' 'Your daughters deserve to have a good daddy.' I had never been told those things before. I fell in love."



"Prince Charming" was persistent about getting married so she agreed - but after the couple wed, things changed and he used jealousy as a means to control her.



"First, [he said] I didn't spend enough time with him and then it was the interrogation," Rivera-Black said. "'Who were you with?' and 'I know you're cheating on me.' I couldn't go to the gym because he thought I was trying to look good for someone else. He still had his good moments. He would tell me he loved me and tell the world how much he loved me. His control worsened, but he never laid a hand on me - never."



Rivera-Black said the emotional abuse and sexual coercion she endured in her marriage triggered the 'little girl' inside of her who tucked away all the hurt. She told her husband about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and he cried, telling her he was sorry and wouldn't do it again.



"I thought great, maybe we can make this work," Rivera Black said. "I didn't want to fail at another marriage. I wanted to fix him, but we all know we can't fix people who don't want to change."



It wasn't long before the abuse began again, she said.



Her husband tried to manipulate Rivera-Black by telling her she was crazy and needed counseling, she said. He relied on emotional and psychological coercion and was never physical, but that would change when the couple separated.



Rivera-Black applied for a restraining order against her husband after he threatened to burn their house down, but it was denied. She returned to the marriage for the final time.



'Enough'

Rivera-Black's oldest daughter approached her when her husband was at work.



"She was crying," Rivera-Black said. "She said, 'Mom, why are you still with him?' I was shocked and asked 'What do you mean?' [My daughter said], 'He's going to kill you.' I didn't realize [my daughters] knew what was going on. I thought we had hidden it, but they knew. They could feel and sense the tension."



The 11-year-old girl had been sitting outside the couple's bedroom door every night, waiting for them to fall asleep first so she could go to bed. She would hold the phone in her hand in case she had to call 911 if Rivera-Black was hurt by her husband.



This time, when Rivera-Black left her husband, she was serious.



"I said, 'Enough. I'm not doing this anymore,"' Rivera-Black said. "I won't let my daughters think this is what a relationship is supposed to be like."



She changed the locks and put safety plan together for her daughters, but her husband continued to stalk and harass her. Rivera-Black applied for another restraining order against her husband and prayed it would be granted.



"It was, but I forgot a restraining order is just a piece of paper," she said.



On June 26, 2006, Rivera-Black returned from work to find a water-filled trashcan blocking the driveway and the exterior lights of her home turned off. It was 10:30 p.m.



"I stumbled out of the car because I had a sprained ankle, but he knew this because he had been stalking me," she said. "A black silhouette came toward me. He grabbed my arm and I pulled it away, but then he pointed his gun at me. He grabbed me again and said, 'you are coming with me.'"



Rivera-Black had a split-second decision to make: scream and try to get away or go with her husband. She felt there was a 50 percent chance she would be shot and he would go after her family if she struggled, she said.



"He put me in the car and drove me to Boone, Colorado," she said. "He took me to some train tracks and raped me. I couldn't fight him. I remembered those feelings of being a little girl. I became that little girl that night and I sobbed until I said to myself 'I can't let him kill me. I know this is not what God intended for me, I know my girls need me,' so I used my most powerful weapon -- my mind. I was able to manipulate the situation and escape, because he said he was sorry he did this to me, loved me so much, and didn't know how else he'd get my attention."



Rivera-Black said it is extremely difficult for domestic or sexual assault victims to speak-out because they often wonder if they will be believed or blamed.



"Can you imagine [the situation] for someone wearing a uniform?" she asked the audience. "I think you all can probably relate to that. The uniform you wear signifies strength and courage. That is what it means and I didn't want to tarnish that with my personal issues. That was my thinking then, but I had some great people who supported me along the way and told me it was 'OK.'"



Life after domestic violence

In the aftermath of her sexual assault, Rivera-Black was angry and embarrassed.



"I said it would never happen to me," she said. "I experienced 'victim blame,' - people asking me 'aren't you trained to fight?' I used to hate it, but now I welcome it because my goal is to educate people who obviously have no idea what it is to be in a situation like that. They are not familiar with the dynamics of domestic abuse and sexual assault."



Against her Sheriff's recommendation, Rivera-Black returned to duty two weeks after the assault but realized she wasn't ready. She had not healed and wasn't able to make informed decisions. She was still broken, she said.



"The night it all happened, I prayed like I had never prayed before," she said. "I wanted to live. I made a promise to God that if I lived I would spend the rest of my days helping people who are going through this. I had been so angry I had forgotten about that. After the trial I began this healing journey and started seeking my faith again."



Rivera-Black realized she was unable to deal with her pain by herself and got the help she needed.



"I couldn't tuck my pain away anymore," she said. "Believe people when they tell you about abuse and listen to them and allow them to cry. There is life after domestic violence; there is life after any encounter."



Lt. Col. Daniel Watola, an associate professor in the Academy's Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department, said some people rarely hear about domestic violence and sexual assault.



"You don't really hear about it even if [the victim is a] close neighbor," he said. "This event gives us a first-hand account of what's going on and maybe it will allow us to observe different things in our neighborhoods, take action, and be more sympathetic and helpful when things like this happen."



Domestic Violence Awareness Month began in 1981 to connect advocates across the nation to stop violence, mourn victims and celebrating survivors. Domestic violence is an epidemic affecting individuals in every community, regardless of age, economic status, sexual orientation, or other qualifiers, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.



Rivera-Black has since remarried.



"I have my true 'Prince Charming now'," she said. "I was still not quite healed when we met, but he stuck with me, values me, respects me, and treats me like I should have been the entire time. My life is good, but that didn't happen without so many people who were there for me."


UWs Saturday U Program Returns to Sheridan Feb. 6

Merav Ben-David, UW Department of Zoology and Physiology professor, will discuss how climate change affects polar bears during UWs one-day education program, Saturday U, at Sheridan College Saturday, Feb. 6. (Merav Ben-David Photo)

Saturday University -- the University of Wyomings popular, free, one-day college education program -- returns to Sheridan Saturday, Feb. 6.

Area residents have the opportunity to go back to college for a day, with two UW professors and a Sheridan College faculty member lecturing. Wyoming immigration issues, understanding the meaning of poetry and how climate change affects polar bears are topics that will be discussed at Sheridan Colleges Whitney Academic Center Atrium. The program is free and open to the public.

The half-day of college classes and discussion begins with refreshments at 8:30 a.m., followed by a welcoming address at 8:50 a.m. The guest lectures begin at 9:10 a.m.

In its eighth year, Saturday U is a collaborative program that connects popular UW and Wyoming community college professors with lifelong learners. Offered six times a year -- twice each in Jackson, Gillette and Sheridan -- Saturday U is sponsored by the university, the UW Foundation and Wyoming Humanities Council, and is presented locally by Sheridan College and the UW Outreach School.

Participants may attend one, two or all three lectures in Sheridan, plus the final luncheon and roundtable discussion at 12:30 p.m.

Listed below are program topic descriptions and professors lecturing:

9:10 a.m. -- The Cowboy State in a World on the Move: Exploring Contemporary Immigration Issues in Wyoming, Suzan Pritchett, UW College of Law assistant professor and director of UWs International Human Rights Clinic.

Global migration is on the rise, and national immigration reform appears elusive. Many assume that Wyoming, as the nations least populous state, is insulated from the larger immigration debate, Pritchett says. However, immigrants continue to make Wyoming their home, and national and international immigration policies have an effect on local Wyoming communities.

Pritchett will give context to contemporary immigration issues in Wyoming and provide an opportunity to discuss the future of immigration in the Cowboy State.

10-10:10 a.m. -- Break.

10:15 a.m. -- What Makes Poetry Work? Jane Elkington Wohl, Sheridan College faculty member and poet.

Many people find poetry confusing and, usually, readers can understand the meaning of a poem. But the elements that create the meaning sometimes escape them, Elkington Wohl says.

Her presentation will concentrate on how a poem means rather than what the poem means by exploring sound, word choice, image and figurative language. Participants will examine a number of different poems during Elkington Wohls presentation.

11:15-11:25 a.m. -- Break.

11:30 a.m. -- Polar Bears and Climate Change: Walking on a Faster Treadmill, Merav Ben-David, UW Department of Zoology and Physiology professor.

Declines in sea ice extent and thickness increase its drift on ocean currents and, because drift in the Beaufort Sea is largely westward, polar bears are forced to walk eastward on a faster-moving "treadmill, Ben-David says.

The higher time allocation and increased energy expenditure associated with this new demand, in conjunction with reduced hunting opportunities, lead to reduced survival for polar bears, especially of dependent young, she says.

The spring Saturday U term continues with programs in Gillette Feb. 11 and Jackson March 12.

For more information, visit the Saturday U website at www.uwyo.edu/saturdayu/.
Wyoming Business Tips for Feb. 7-13

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Andrea Lewis, Wyoming Entrepreneur Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) procurement specialist

How do I find business opportunities within my city? Bill, Gillette

As a business owner, you are always on the lookout for a business lead. Start by perusing your local newspaper or surfing your towns website.

Local governments (cities, towns, counties, etc.) purchase many goods and services. Depending on the amount and other details of the procurement, cities and towns generally are required to advertise in the newspaper upcoming projects or purchases that are open for bid.

The website http://wyopublicnotices.com/ allows free access to statewide notices about hearings, advertisements for bids, financial reports, adoption of ordinances and other government activities requiring public notice.

More local government agencies are posting business opportunities on their websites. As each website is unique, there is no easy way to locate business opportunities. But, with a bit of careful sleuthing, they can be found.

Sometimes, available opportunities are on the home page under a heading such as Bid Postings, or they might be listed under a particular department, such as City Clerk Office, Parks & Recreation, Public Works, Purchasing, etc. Opportunity listings can have titles such as Advertisements & Invitations for Bid, Projects & RFQs, or Pending and Current Projects, RFPs & Public Notices, to name a few.

Once you find a posting, the next steps are to either register as a vendor with the local government or to respond to an open RFQ (request for quote or request for qualifications) or an RFP (request for proposal). Often, there are mandatory pre-bid meetings that will further describe the project and allow for questions.

Depending on the municipality and the type of opportunity, contract documents or plans and specifications may have a download fee. The Wyoming Association of Municipalities has a list of all 99 of its member cities and towns, with links to their websites, contact information and municipal codes.

Government procurement, even on a local level, can be a bit intimidating. If you are interested in learning more about how to market and sell to the government, consider attending the GRO-Biz Conference and Idea Expo in Gillette Feb. 17-18, where the Wyoming Entrepreneur PTAC will offer workshops on working with the Wyoming Department of Transportation, proposal preparation, marketing to the government, trends in government contracting and other procurement topics.

The GRO-Biz conference also is an opportunity for business owners to have one-on-one conversations with federal contracting officers from several agencies and several state agencies.

For more information and to register, visit the GRO-Biz website.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at http://wyen.biz/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
Former WWE World Heavyweight and WWE Champion Sheamus appears to have suffered an injury during his birthday celebrations this week, adding to the WWE's problems heading into Wrestlemania.

The Irishman tweeted out a photo of his left arm in a cast with the following: You know the celebrations went well when you wake up in a cast... any ideas how it got there? His official status is currently unknown.

Sheamus now joins a number of top superstars including John Cena, Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins on the injured superstar list as the WWE enters it's biggest part of the year, the Road to Wrestlemania, which is causing major headaches for the WWE officials.

The injuries continue to pile up for WWE, leaving a hole for other superstars to step up into, replacing the injured superstars spot, but the company hasn't been left with much time to build up new stars to the level needed for the biggest show of the year.

With WWE currently considering NXT talent call-ups to the main roster,this latest injury could force their hand into promoting talent earlier than first planned, but that would lead to issues with arguably their hottest product, as NXT creative would then be left in hot water.

WWE is yet to make a comment on the injury and its extent, so it is currently unknown as to what damage has actually been done, and for how long he will be out of action, but the fact his arm is in a cast isn't a good sign.

It's unlikely that officials will be impressed if Sheamus has suffered the injury whilst out celebrating, and given that it was his 38th birthday yesterday, the 'celebrations' he referred to on his tweet would likely have been for him.

This injury will continue to cast a shadow over the League of Nations stable, which is already struggling through a series of bad booking and injuries, with Wade Barrett currently also not fully fit, if the injury is severe it could end up having an impact on all the members and not just himself.

Make sure to follow - @Vavel_Wrestling to keep up to date with this ongoing story.
Argentinean farmers are facing the worst kind of locust plague ever in the last 60 years. Locust, a small grasshopper-like insect, which is generally found solitary, could be seen in swarms during specific seasons that cause serious infestation on crops. If the locust plague is not taken care of appropriately they could salvage the vegetation completely, paving way for devastating starvation and famine.

The locust plague has affected around 1.7m acres in Argentina and the country's agricultural inspection agency has reported that it has contained nearly 31 new outbreaks in at least three states, including, Cordoba, Santiago del Estero and Catamarca, according to The Guardian.

"It's the worst explosion in the last 60 years," Diego Quiroga, the agriculture agency's chief of vegetative protection, said in a telephone interview, noted The New York Times. "It's impossible to eradicate; the plague has already established itself. We're just acting to make sure it's the smallest it can be and does the least damage possible."

The locust plague is the first of its kind since 1954, said Juan Pablo Karnatz, president of a farmers' association in Santiago del Estero. He also said that the government was informed of the first incidence of locust in July, last year, however adequate measures to eradicate the outburst weren't taken back then.

The pockets of locust that first appeared in the southern hemisphere of Argentina during early winter is said to have spread across the northern hemisphere due to favorable climatic conditions. Water from mild rains helped locusts in breeding thereby resulting in extensive increase in the insect population. They reportedly multiplied in huge numbers before the authorities could outbeat the plague, reported Time.

The fumigators allegedly extinguished many pockets of young locusts putting them off from flying. The locusts, however, can hop on the ground even if they cannot fly. But it is not certain if there are any pockets present in the impenetrable, large, dry forests of Argentina.

"We don't know exactly where we're at," said Karnatz, "We may have contained some pockets, but it's not a definitive victory. If they fly, it could be disastrous," he added.

If there happen to be young locusts growing inside the forest it would be more complicated for the officials to control them. With just 10 days for the insects to grow, mature and attain their average size of 2 inches, it is very likely that they would parade off from the forest in search of food. Such large swarms are way too difficult to be combated and contained.
Former Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata has invested in a global India-and Singapore-based specialty tea online retailer Teabox. The amount of money went to this startup is undisclosed, as with his other investments.

Teabox is founded in 2012 by a financial analyst, Kaushal Dugar. He established this startup with his own personal savings. Teabox said that the investor money would be used mainly to expand its global coverage. Currently, the company exports fresh Indian tea to 93 countries and seeks to add the number to 100 and more, according to Tech Circle.

Founder and CEO Kaushal Dugar noted that the startup benefited from Ratan Tata's involvement in its business not only from the funding but also from his experience. "Ratan Tata's direct guidance and experience in the tea industry will surely help us grow as the first global premium tea brand from India," he said. Dugar also mentioned that he is delighted that the big businessman is interested in his startup. "It is unique that Ratan Tata, who is the architect of the Tetley acquisition, has invested in Teabox. For Mr Tata to invest in a 200-year-old industry that is seeing a change with Teabox means a lot to us. It validates not just Teabox but also innovation in an industry that continues to follow archaic ways of functioning," he said, as quoted by Domain B.

Tata is considered one of India's most active investors of last year, and his moves show that he would not cease to make investments in local companies this year. After he retired as the CEO of tea-to-steel Tata Group in 2012, he had scored more than 20 startups as an investor.

In this first month of 2016 alone, the Indian businessman has already made 5 investments, including Teabox. Earlier, he also gave fundings for baby products e-commerce site FirstCry, animal lovers' forum Dogspot, startup analytics firm Tracxn and coupon site CashKaro.

According to E27, Teabox secured $6 million in Series A last year, led by JAFCO Asia, involving Accel Partners, Keystone Group, and Dragoneer Investment Group. The premium tea retailer stated that they have delivered over 30 million cups' worth of tea to customers worldwide.

The tea online seller relies on their trusted suppliers in Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri and Nepal to deliver high-quality specialty teas. They have more that 200 growers and estates to support the supply chain.

Both Ratan Tata and Teabox CEO Kaushal Dugar is determined to improve the brand and raise its standards as well as its coverage and sales. Ratan Tata is also considered as a guide and advisor to the business, in addition to being an investor who helps with funding.
East Africa Business Network, along with GBS Africa and Anjarwalla and Khanna will organize the East Africa Islamic Finance Summit (EAIFS) on February 17, 2016. The meeting will hold discussions regarding the issues affecting Islamic Finance development, especially in East Africa.



According to the event's official website EAIFS, the event is carried out to provide a forum to discuss the potential of Islamic finance and investment in Africa, also to enable a platform to unite GCC and foreign investors with African companies and professionals. The discussion and meetings are considered highly important to form productive relationships and stimulate economic growth in East Africa specifically.



Islamic financial issues are uniquely important for East Africa region because they have potentially strong demand for Islamic Finance services and products, according to Citizen TV. That claim is backed by the fact that the Islamic Finance industry has registered a significant growth in recent years. The annual growth rate is estimated to be over 20 percent.



One of the key aspects to be discussed are available alternatives for the region to obtain finance sources. The finances are to be used in East Africa mainly for infrastructure projects and cope with the budget deficit.



Other important aspects to be covered in the meeting include regulatory framework, regional infrastructure projects, and Islamic bonds or Sukuk. Overall, the context of the discussions will be the opportunities and challenges that are shaping the Islamic banking, finance, and investment landscape in East Africa.



The summit will involve experts in Islamic Finance, regulators, and other related authorities, also senior executives from various financial sectors. The organizers expected that the summit will initiate dialogue as well as build network between the region's financial key players, including institutions, policy makers, and Islamic Finance institutions.



The Star noted that the booming African Islamic economy also provides an opportunity for deprived conditions in Africa. Moreover, Islamic finance is not only for the people of Islam but also for non-Muslim nations. The Islamic Finance support real economic activity without changing interest, cover project finance, trade finance, and the buying and selling of goods at a profit. It also endorses risk-sharing to both the lender and loanee, as well as ruling out hedging, derivatives and lending at interest.



The summit will be held in Kenya's capital Nairobi. The regional meeting is expected to help regulators, as well as financial key players, to identify the important issues regarding Islamic financial and deal with them properly, as well as finding alternative finance sources for the region's development.
Several European airlines, including Air France and Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM), announced that they are ready to resume direct flights to Tehran, Iran. Previously, European airlines agreed to stop their flights to Iran after the U.S imposed nuclear sanctions to the country.



Air France and KLM have already submitted their application to restore direct flights to Iran. After the application is processed, both the European airlines will start flying to and from Tehran in the next three months.



Besides Air France and KLM, British Airways has also stated that they are ready to reinstate flights between London and Tehran within the next two months, according to Sputnik News. Direct flights between the U.K and Iran has been suspended for more than five years.



Similar news also came from Iran aviation. Iran announced that it is considering direct flights to the U.S. The U.S is among the first countries to ban its airlines from flying to Iran. According to abcNews, direct flights between Iran and the U.S has stopped for 36 years after Iranian attacked the U.S Embassy in Tehran in 1979. The attack also ended all diplomatic relations between the two countries.



Iran even planned to buy new airplanes from Europe, as well as the U.S. Iranian officials are considering to buy 114 airplanes from European consortium Airbus, and also from Boeing, an American aircraft manufacturer.



Haaretz reported the statement from Foreign Ministry spokesman Jaber Ansari on the progress of the plan. "The matter is currently being examined, and the result of the negotiations will be announced at the appropriate time," Ansari said.



Earlier this month, UN, EU, and the U.S has lifted sanctions against Iran regarding their nuclear ambitions. The international sanctions were dismissed after Iran was confirmed to have complied with the agreement proposed by the international forum to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons.



Now that the sanctions have been lifted, Iran can resume selling oil on international markets. Iran has the fourth largest oil reserves on the planet and oil trade has been one of the country's main revenue. Iran can also now use global financial trade system. In addition to that, the country also received back their frozen assets overseas worth more than $100 billion.



The returning of direct flights between Iran and European countries and probably the U.S is seen as a pleasant improvement in the relationship between countries, especially for Iranian who live in Europe or the U.S. The plan is now working on progress and will be put into action in the next few months.
Job Today, an app that incorporates the yes-no swipe approach similar to Tinder to corporate recruitment has just secured $10 million in venture capital. The recruitment app has already been popular in Spain and is seeking to expand to other European countries using the funding it just received.



The $10 million venture capital came from Series A round led by Accel, with participation from Felix Capital and Mangrove Capital Partners. The app was launched in Spain in April last year is now nationwide and has just launched in London and Paris. The new funding will also be allocated to study specific market need of the new cities.



According to Bloomberg, Job Today has signed up more than 20,000 business and managed more than 2 million job application in Spain's big cities such as Barcelona and Madrid, also its two non-Spain cities, London and Paris.



Tech Crunch elaborated how the app works. Both employers and workers are required to create a profile, stating their informations. For workers, the profile would list language skills, availability and work experiences. The selection process is similar to dating app Tinder, where employers can view candidates' profile and select "yes" or "no" for every candidates the appeared on the app. Workers can also view employers' profile and choose the ones that interest them.

The interface also enables employers and workers to connect directly via chat once they got a match. The chat can be utilized to resolve questions from and for both parties, or arrange possible follow-up interview. To simplify the process and make it more effective, the app was designed to use a location-based search as a filter to find workers and employers.



Job Today targeted mostly blue collar workers especially in retail, hospitality, delivery drivers or logistics, and the beauty industry. As for the employers, the app aims to provides their service mainly for small business markets. The concept was developed from the observation and experience that regular business owners in the retail industry often don't really need a full CV. And so the app seeks to provide few relevant elements to be considered by employers to make the hiring process more simple and a lot easier.



Job Today was founded by Montano and Eugene Mizin, master's program student of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Luxembourg. Previously, they had worked as a product manager for EBay and Skype. According to the Job Today App website, more than 10,000 people have found a job since they first launched.



The app provides a convenient way both for workers to find a job and for employers to find workers. Montano and Eugene are feeling optimist about the opportunity they have in expanding their services and aim to use the funding they secure for further expansion as well as development.
Germany has accelerated the efforts to bring its gold back home, after being stored overseas for many decades. The country has released a statement which shows that during the calendar year 2015, it has moved back almost 210 tons of gold to Frankfurt, of which around 110 tons were brought back from Paris and a little under 100 tons from New York.

Apparently, Bundesbank is on some strange operation to get back as much as 300 tons of gold from Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and 374 tons from Banque de France in Paris. The timeline for the completion of this mission is 2013-2020. As Zero Hedge points out, the timeline is rather peculiar because Bundesbank is powerful enough a bank to make the entire transfer of 674 tons in a matter of few weeks. The fact that Germany chose to stretch this movement for nearly 7 years is a little odd.

However, this high-risk, sensitive mission is said to be quite organized and well under control. According to The Financial Times, Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, said, "The transfers are proceeding smoothly. We have succeeded in once again significantly increasing the transport volume compared with 2014. This means that operations are running very much according to schedule."

The 1950s were the years when Germany began to build its gold reserves when the yellow metal was used against the trade surpluses under the Bretton Woods system that linked gold with US dollar. This basically led to the creation of special vaults, mainly in New York, under Federal Reserve. These came to be of use when Bundesbank decided to shift its gold to the New York vaults, fearing a Soviet Union invasion during the Cold War.

As per Mining, since 2013, it has managed to get home around 366 tons to Frankfurt, which makes it only 50% of what needs to be repatriated. Now Bundesbank is planning to bring back further 307 tons by the next five years. By 2020, more than half of its total reserves will be stored domestically, about one-third will be kept with the Federal Reserve and around 13% will remain with the Bank of England. The Central Bank of France is surprisingly out of the equation as the euro zone sees the two countries as close political allies.

In October, the bank shared the 2300-page long report which accounts for every bar of gold stored in the vaults of Frankfurt, London, Paris and New York. Germany's gold valuation is currently the second largest in the world, after the US, and comes close to $130 billion.
World Health Organization (WHO) has warned on Sunday that the mosquito born Zika virus will soon be available across the US. The Zika virus causes a disease that shrinks the head and brains of fetuses inside mothers' wombs.

The Zika virus will continue to spread and likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are available. Aedes mosquitoes are available in America, Canada and Chile. Aedes mosquitoes are also transmitter of diseases like yellow fever and West Nile Virus, reports New York Magazine quoting officials from Who's Pan American chapter.

Meanwhile, the US scientists have urged WHO to take urgent actions against spread of the Zika Virus considering its explosive pandemic potential. They fear, a vaccine may be ready for testing in two years but may require a decade to make it available for the public. Zika has already caused panic in Brazil infecting thousands of people and has spread to some 20 countries, reports BBC.

Cases of Zika infections have already been discovered in Europe. Three cases have been detected in Great Britain, four in Italy, two in Switzerland and two in Spain's Catalonia region. The British travelers have picked up the disease while visiting Colombia, Suriname and Guyana, according to a report published in Mail Online.

The Zika infection is native to Africa and spread to the Western Hemisphere in 2015. The African people have natural immunity to the virus 80% of the Zika infected people have experienced no effects, while most others suffer only flue like symptoms.

The virus is profoundly damaging to the unborn. In Brazil, 3,500 microcephaly infected babies have born with shrunken heads and tiny brains since October. The epidemic of birth defects has led some governments to discourage women from getting pregnant. Meanwhile, El Salvador suggests delaying all pregnancies until 2018.
Wendy's delving deep into reports of a possible breach of credit card data used at its outlets. The fast-food giant began investigations as soon as it learned about a pattern of fraudulent activities on the credit cards right after they were used at a Wendy's outlet.

The company first received the news from its payment industry sources who noted the tell-tale signs of a possible breach and immediately warned the burger seller. Wendy's has now hired a security firm to probe into this matter.

As per KrebsOnSecurity, Bob Bertini, spokesperson for the Ohio-based outlet, said, "We have received this month from our payment industry contacts reports of unusual activity involving payment cards at some of our restaurant locations. Reports indicate that fraudulent charges may have occurred elsewhere after the cards were legitimately used at some of our restaurants. We've hired a cybersecurity firm and launched a comprehensive and active investigation that's underway to try to determine the facts."

The company is not sure exactly when the fraudulent activities took hold of the unsuspecting cardholders or to what extent the damages have been done. All they could do was to take immediate action to curb the matter. "We began investigating immediately, and the period of time we're looking at the incidents is late last year," said Bertini, according to International Business Times. "We know it's [affecting] some restaurants, but it's not appropriate just yet to speculate on anything in terms of scope."

The initial reports of the breach had seemed to indicate the Midwest, but lately the pattern was also traced to the East Coast of the US. Wendy's has some 6500 restaurants worldwide which include both company-owned and franchised outlets. Most of the US operations are reportedly franchises.

The fast-food chain mentioned that they came to know about the incident late last year, as represented by The Hill, but were unable to provide any concrete information regarding the findings of the investigation. "Until this investigation is completed, it is difficult to determine with certainty the nature or scope of any potential incident," the company explained.

Such hackings have become a serious issue over the years. Last year, Target had to implement new security policies after 42 million customers' debit and credit card information were stolen. The company had to pay up $10 million to settle the loss that occurred in 2013. Hopefully, data breach for Wendy's customers would not have spread to such an extent due to possible early detection.
LISA MCKINNON/THE STAR Cousins Maine Lobster is among the returning favorites for the Throwback Thursdays Food Truck Festival happening Jan. 28 at the Camarillo Ranch House.

SHARE LISA MCKINNON/THE STAR The grounds of the historic Camarillo Ranch House is the setting for Throwback Thursdays, a food truck festival scheduled for the final Thursday of each month now through October 2016.

By Lisa McKinnon

The first Throwback Thursdays Food Truck Festival of the year will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday on the grounds of the historic Camarillo Ranch House.

Seven food trucks are scheduled to appear. Attendees are asked to bring blankets and folding chairs for seating on the lawn in front of the house, a Queen Anne-style Victorian built in 1892.

The family film "Inside Out" will be shown at 6 p.m. in the barn.

Admission is free for the movie and the festival. Food, beer and wine will be available for purchase, with proceeds benefiting the Camarillo Ranch Foundation and its programs.

Participating on Thursday will be ConFusion Street Cuisine, Cousins Maine Lobster, Grilled Cheese Truck, It's in the Sauce BBQ, Rice Balls of Fire, Sweet Arleen's and the ice cream truck Mister Softee of Southern California.

The food truck festival will take place on the final Thursday of each month through October. Additional dates are Feb. 25, March 31, April 28, May 26, June 30, July 28, Aug. 25, Sept. 29 and Oct. 27.

The Camarillo Ranch House is at 201 Camarillo Ranch Road. For information, call 389-8182 or go to http://bit.ly/1NBKBLe.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/BRYAN PARRAS Lalo Alcaraz, creator of the comic strip La Cucaracha and consulting producer and writer of Bordertown, will be interviewed on stage at Oxnard College on Wednesday.

SHARE Najera

By Alicia Doyle

Writer, director and comedian Rick Najera is bringing comedy sketches to Oxnard College that feature both local performers and a diverse cast of Hollywood hopefuls.

Wednesday's free, two-hour show, part of the growing Latino Thought Makers Series, will take place at 7 p.m. in the Oxnard College Performing Arts Center.

During the second half, Najera will conduct a sit-down interview on stage with Lalo Alcaraz, creator of the syndicated daily comic strip, "La Cucaracha," and the consulting producer and writer for Fox Television's animated program, "Bordertown."

IF YOU GO

What: CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Show

When: Wednesday; doors open at 6:30 p.m., show is at 7 p.m.

Where: Oxnard Colleges Performing Arts Center, 4000 S. Rose Ave.

Admission: Free. A $5 donation is suggested to benefit the Oxnard College Foundation supporting students in the arts.

Reservations: Ocilpa@vcccd.edu for the best seats

Information: www.latinothoughtmakers.com

Najera directs the annual CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase in Hollywood. More than 4,000 apply each year, 2,500 audition, and about 13 make it to the final. Directed by Najera, they perform six shows over three days for audiences of casting directors, agents and managers in show business.

Some of this year's finalists will be in Wednesday's performance, along with students from the college. Together, they'll perform about a dozen comedic sketches.

"Diversity is important to me because growing up and working in the business, I always noticed a lack of it in front of the camera and behind the camera. I saw a world reflected in television and the media which didn't mirror the world that I saw," said Najera, of Encino. "Comedy is the cure  comedy that shows diversity and speaks and talks about real issues."

Since being hired three years ago as vice president of academic affairs and student learning at Oxnard College, Ken Sherwood has been working with Najera as part of the Oxnard College Institute for Latino Performing Arts.

"Rick decided to bring the showcase to Oxnard College as part of the Latino Thought Makers Series that we have been hosting for the last three years," Sherwood explained. "What makes it unique is that Oxnard College is the only place other than the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood that the showcase has been performed."

He said its purpose "is to provide opportunities for diverse performers to be directly exposed to major Hollywood talent agents, thus increasing the diversity of casting on television shows."

More than 32 individuals from earlier CBS diversity showcases are now working on television shows, and three have gone on to "Saturday Night Live" as cast members.

"I handpick the best sketches for Oxnard," said Najera. "We bring people that become the stars that we see today. So it's really the first opportunity to see this talent. The people who come through this program are really going to be the future of what Hollywood is."

Sherwood said Oxnard College is lucky to have someone of Najera's talents and abilities sharing his experience with local students.

"The Latino Thought Makers series has become a major point of pride for the college and has participated in raising our profile nationwide," Sherwood said.

Added Najera: "This is a great opportunity for students, educators and the local communities to come out to see this one-of-a-kind show in a beautiful theater. And it's free, so bring the family."
ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Attorney Stephen G. Larson (center) speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Ventura County Government Center on Thursday regarding a civil rights claim filed by two of his clients, Santa Clara Waste Water Co. Vice President Dean Poe and Transportation Manager David Wirsing.

SHARE ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Santa Clara Waste Water Co. Vice President Dean Poe (from left), attorney RC Harlan and Santa Clara Waste Water Transportation Manager David Wirsing listen during the news conference at the Ventura County Government Center on Thursday as attorney Stephen G. Larson discusses allegations. ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Photos depicting visits to the homes of Dean Poe and David Wirsing serve as a backdrop for the news conference on Thursday. ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Attorney Stephen G. Larson (right) speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Ventura County Government Center. David Wirsing

By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star

Two defendants arrested in a Santa Paula-area explosion case have filed a $27 million civil rights claim against the county, alleging misconduct by employees in the District Attorney's and Sheriff's offices.

David Wirsing and Dean Poe, along with Poe's family, filed the claim Thursday in Ventura. They also called for a federal investigation into what they described as harassment and abuses targeting employees of Santa Clara Waste Water Co.

Poe is vice president and Wirsing is transportation manager for the company, which owns a plant near Santa Paula that was the site of a chemical explosion and fire in November 2014.

Attorney Stephen Larson said the county actions went beyond heavy-handedness into unbridled harassment.

"This is complete dereliction and abrogation of constitutional rights," he said Thursday during a news conference at the Ventura County Government Center in Ventura.

If the county denies the claim, his clients will be filing a federal lawsuit, Larson said.

The allegations in the 59-page complaint were swiftly denied by the two law enforcement agencies. They disputed the facts cited in the complaint and denied they were retaliating against the defendants because of injuries suffered by firefighters.

Three Santa Paula firefighters who responded to the scene went out on disability leave and have sued the company over pulmonary and other injuries.

"The allegations are utterly fiction," said Miles Weiss, chief deputy district attorney.

Wirsing and Poe were named along with the company and seven other company officials in a 71-count indictment handed down in August by a Ventura County grand jury. The charges were related to the explosion as well as workplace practices.

Poe was accused of conspiracy to dispose of hazardous waste and disposal of hazardous waste, both felonies. Wirsing was accused of conspiracy to impede enforcement by an environmental regulator, a felony, and interference with enforcement, a misdemeanor.

Neither man has entered a plea.

County officials and the complaint were sharply at odds over the facts.

The complaint alleged Wirsing's wife and 6-year-old daughter were awakened about 6 a.m. Dec. 17, 2014, by two dozen personnel, some armed and wearing protective tactical gear. The family members were ordered out of the house and into the cold in their pajamas, held under armed guard for five hours and the girl was detained in a vehicle, allegedly to calm her down, according to the complaint.

Weiss said investigators knocked on the door after 7 a.m., and conducted the search professionally and courteously. Family members were removed with their cooperation and investigators had completed the search in 90 minutes, he said.

"With regard to the young girl, with the mother's consent, one of our commanders gave her his jacket and let her sit in the patrol car," he said.

Larson said his clients were subjected to strip and visual body cavity searches at county jail, even though they were due to be released on bail.

According to Undersheriff Gary Pentis, though, the defendants were set to go into jail at the time. Under sheriff's policy, inmates are searched to keep contraband, drugs and other items out of the jail, he said.

"We do not strip search everyone that comes into jail, only someone who is going to be housed there," he said. "It is done for the safety and security of inmates and for staff."

Larson said the searches were done in a communal or group setting. Pentis said no one other than staff would have seen the searches unless it was by accident.

Leroy Smith, chief attorney for the county, declined to comment on the claim.
STAR FILE PHOTO Fillmore Fire Chief Rigo Landeros in 2014.

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By Mike Harris of the Ventura County Star

Rigo Landeros, Fillmore's fire chief, assistant city manager and acting public works director, committed suicide this month while on duty in his city car, officials confirmed this week.

Landeros, 51, shot himself in the head in his fire chief's car on a rural section of Goodenough Road on Jan. 7, Ventura County sheriff's, coroner's and Fillmore officials said in response to inquiries from The Star.

A suicide note was found in the car, officials said.

The Sheriff's and County Counsel's offices declined to provide The Star with a copy of the note, saying it is exempt from disclosure under the state Public Records Act given its "highly private and sensitive nature."

The Star reported Landeros' death on Jan. 8, but did not know at the time that the suicide had occurred while he was on duty in his fire chief's car.

The death occurred two days after a Fillmore City Council goal-setting session on Jan. 5 during which Councilman Rick Neal asked Landeros about possible improprieties related to funds used by the Fillmore Firefighters Foundation.

Landeros created the nonprofit foundation in 2011 to help raise funds for the largely volunteer fire department.

City Attorney Tiffany Israel looked into Neal's concerns but determined there were no improprieties, City Manager Dave Rowlands said this week.

Israel said in an email Thursday that she spoke with Landeros on Jan. 6, the day before his death, about two questions "regarding the Fire Foundation that were raised at the study session. In that conversation I did tell Rigo that from the facts I was aware of, it didn't sound like anything inappropriate had happened."

Former Fillmore Councilman Steve Conaway, who was a close friend of Landeros, and current Fillmore Councilman Manuel Minjares, who attended the goal-setting session, said Landeros was upset by Neal's questions.

But neither said they believed that questioning directly led to or was the sole reason for Landeros' death.

"We had talked Wednesday (Jan. 6) and we talked again that Thursday morning (Jan. 7) and I knew that he was upset about the activity at the goal-setting session," Conaway said. "The challenges to his integrity just tore him up.

"But the part I will never have an answer to is how he came to the conclusion that (suicide) was his only option," he said. "It's a tragic event, and I'm just sick about the whole thing."

Minjares said Neal's questions "were pretty stressful" for Landeros.

"But at the same time, if you talk with any mental health professional on the topic of suicide, it's not any one issue that causes someone to go down that road," he said.

Neal said there was nothing inappropriate about his queries.

"I just asked Rigo some questions," said Neal, one of the city's volunteer firefighters. "There were some things I thought we could clean up the way we do business. And he seemed real agreeable. 'No problem, we can fix that.'

"Other council members were there. They were nodding their heads at the same time. Nobody said, 'You know, this is inappropriate questioning, Rick,'" he said.

Minjares disputed that. He said Wednesday he thought the line of questioning was inappropriate for a goal-setting session and essentially said so at the meeting.

"I said, 'Look, Rick, this is a goal-setting session. I don't hear you formulating your comments on this issue in the form of a goal,'" he said. "And that ended the whole line of questioning.

"I think the appropriate place to do that, when you think staff has done something inappropriate, is behind a closed door, not at a public meeting," Minjares said.

Unlike other council meetings, the goal-setting session was not videotaped and posted to the city's website. The minutes of the session won't be available until after the council's Feb. 9 meeting, Rowlands said.

At the council's Jan. 12 meeting, Fillmore Firefighters Foundation officials denied any improprieties in a statement.

"We understand that at last week's goal-setting session, the foundation's fundraising expenditures and accounting practices came into question, as well as Chief Landeros' participation in decision-making," the statement said. "We want to assure the council and the public that the foundation is following all accounting practices set forward by federal and state standards.

"Furthermore, Chief Landeros was not a voting member nor signed any checks to cover expenditures the board agreed and voted to fund," the statement said.

Neal said Wednesday he hadn't been trying to undermine Landeros.

"Absolutely untrue," he said. "I'm heartbroken. Rigo was my friend." The two played pool together the Saturday before his death, Neal said.

"I have no idea" why he committed suicide, Neal said. "It just doesn't make sense."
STAR FILE PHOTO

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By Megan Diskin of the Ventura County Star

State health officials announced Thursday that Ventura County Medical Center was issued a $50,000 fine in connection with a patient's 2014 suicide in its psychiatric unit.

The state Department of Public Health issued the administrative penalty and alleges staff members failed to adequately search the patient for harmful objects, thus not ensuring the health and safety of the suicidal patient.

Hospital policy at the time of the incident required that all harmful objects be removed from patients admitted to the unit if they had not been evaluated by a psychiatrist, according to findings in the state's report. The patient also was to be observed every 15 minutes and reassessed every two hours under hospital policy at the time, the report states.

"Facility policy did not contain instructions on how to complete a search, what precautions to take if patients refused to remove their clothes for a search and what might constitute objects of harm that should be removed from patients," the report states.

Kim Milstien, the hospital's chief executive officer, said the hospital reported the incident to state health officials as soon as it occurred.

As required by the state after the incident, the hospital has made significant changes by working with psychiatrists and aligning its policies with national best practices to train staff to make the unit "as suicide-preventative as possible," Milstien said.

Milstien joined the hospital about a year after the incident, and the staff was already beginning to implement the new plans to prevent further incidents. The plans include a definitive process for searching patients, a specific list of harmful objects, a procedure in case a patient refuses a search and a system for more detailed patient documentation, the report states.

"I feel very confident in the safety of the environment," Milstien said.

The patient was able to commit suicide in the hospital's psychiatric unit after arriving in the hospital's emergency room in early 2014 after a suicide attempt, the report states.

The patient told the nurse working in the psychiatric unit's admission clinic just outside the facility that another suicide attempt would occur if he or she was not admitted, the report states.

Records show the patient had been admitted to the facility the year before for depression after telling a physician of multiple suicide attempts, the report states.

The nurse searched the patient's clothes about 8 p.m. by feeling the patient's socks and having the patient flip out his or her pants pockets. Nothing was removed.

A second nurse, who conducted the admission assessment, said the patient refused to be searched but did not have a belt or string. The psychiatric nurse did not document the patient's refusal to be searched, the report states.

"Nurse 2 was ultimately responsible for the safety of (the patient) after admission to the locked unit," the report states.

Interviews with hospital officials revealed it was the facility's practice for the patient to remove his or her clothes and wear a gown during the search, the report states.

Nurse 2 documented the required two-hour assessments from 10 a.m. to 6 a.m., but the midnight and 4 a.m. assessments did not actually occur because hospital staff members told the nurse the patient was asleep, according to the report.

A third nurse assessed the patient at 8 a.m. and said the patient did not seem suicidal, the report states. The patient was found about 45 minutes later with a nylon cord tied like a noose around his or her neck, according to the report. The patient died 35 minutes later and the person who performed the autopsy told state officials the cord would not have been available at the facility, the report states.

This is the third penalty the hospital has faced in recent years. The hospital was fined in 2009 after a surgical towel was left inside a patient during a surgical procedure. The hospital was also fined in 2007 after a patient at its sister facility, Santa Paula Hospital, experienced complications after a surgery in which a surgical sponge was left inside the patient's abdomen.
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By Tom Kisken of the Ventura County Star

Spinal fusion procedures that triggered many of the 17 lawsuits lodged against a former Ventura neurosurgeon regularly spawn litigation and are sometimes used on patients who have little chance of benefiting, according to surgeon specialists at USCA andA UCLA.

In fusions, metal rods and screws are used to anchor the spine in place while grafted bone or other material is employed to generate bone growth that fuses the vertebrae. The procedures are used to treat fractures, excessive curvature or other injuries, usually in theA lowerA back.

The operations play a pivotal role in allegations facing Dr. Aria Sabit, a 36-year-old neurosurgeon who started operating at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura in summer 2009, fresh out of a seven-year residency in NewA Jersey.

In the flood of lawsuits, patients allege he performed fusions in which the anchoring hardware was misplaced and screws pulled out of bone. They said they suffered from postoperative infections, that some of the surgeries were unnecessary or too much hardware wasA used.

Sabit was fired by Ventura County Neurosurgical Associates Medical Group after 17 months, in December 2010, according to a lawsuit filed by the physician against the group and then withdrawn. All of the lawsuits filed individually by patients against Sabit came after he stopped practicing inA Ventura.

Now practicing in eastern Michigan, Sabit has refuted the allegations. Regulatory agencies reported no findings against him in Michigan, California or New Jersey. In his former lawsuit against the medical group, he disputed that his rates of complications and surgeries were high, blaming the group for generating untrue criticism againstA him.

Community Memorial officials said they initiated an investigation of Sabit by the California Medical Board. The hospital and a leader of the medical group ? both targeted in some of the patient lawsuits ? said they can't discuss the case but have defended themselves against accusations that they waited too long to take action againstA Sabit.

Tell Dr. Jeff Wang, a UCLA orthopedic surgeon who performs spinal fusion surgeries every week, about the 17 lawsuits and he offers an exclamation; the number surprises him. But fusion surgery is "very" litigious, and most doctors will face at least one lawsuit in their careers,A heA said.

"I think people have certain expectations," he said of patients with long histories of lower back pain. "The results can be mixed, and it's not necessarily the fault of the surgeon or the fault of the patients. We just don't have all the answers when it comes to nerves inA theA spine."

In the procedures, as many as a dozen vertebrae are fused together by bone. Pedicle screws, plates, small titanium or carbon fiber cages and other hardware are used to stabilize the spine in place until the graftA takesA hold.

The procedures are often used for fractured vertebrae or damage caused by scoliosis or tumors. But sometimes the procedures are used for patients with symptoms that show they are not likely to benefit from fusion, said Dr. Patrick Hsieh, a neurosurgeonA atA USC.

Elderly people who suffer from advanced conditions like heart problems, diabetes or some bone diseases like osteoporosis often are not the best candidates, HsiehA said.

Dr. Richard Deyo is an Oregon Health and Science University internist and researcher who studies back pain. He cited four studies from Europe that suggest patients who suffer from lower back pain because of worn-out disks in their spine but have no underlying spinal problems often see no more benefit from fusion than from nonsurgicalA care.

"And yet this is the fastest-growing reason for doing spinal fusions," he said, suggesting the procedures also push up the cost of care by generating more treatment that patients or insurers mustA cover.

"The U.S. does five times more spine surgery than the United Kingdom," he said. "We do twice as much spine surgery as other developing countries. There's no evidence that we're having betterA outcomes."

Hsieh said patients who suffer bone softening may not be good candidates forA fusion.

Wang said the condition increases risk but said fusion may, in certain situations, still beA appropriate.

"There are gray areas where you think it may be helpful or not helpful," said Dr. John Regan, a spine surgeon in Beverly Hills. "There are some physicians whoA overreach."

Sabit faces lawsuits filled with allegations that still must be proved in court. But if the cases reach trial, with one case set for an April start, spinal fusion could play a key role. His former patients allege he performed too many surgeries, relied on hardware that included rods, screws and interbody cages, and sometimes misused thatA equipment.

"He didn't know what he was doing," said Woodland Hills lawyer Steven Goldberg. He represents an Oxnard woman who underwent fusion surgery, only to have the screws pull away from her bone. "When I met her, she was totally bent over like a paperA clip."

Sabit's lawyer, Louis "Duke" DeHaas, branded the allegations of inappropriate procedures and faulty technique as common in malpracticeA litigation.

"That's what they allege in these lawsuits," he said. "It doesn't mean it's meritorious. You can allege anything you want. That's why we haveA trials."

Sabit has denied all the allegations. Once a refugee of Afghanistan whose father returned to the country and served two years as its attorney general, Sabit attended Virginia Commonwealth University. He went through seven years of neurosurgery residency at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, training at The University Hospital. In his final year, he served as chiefA resident.

"He successfully completed the residency," said Dr. Charles Prestigiacomo, who leads the neurosurgery residency program. "He didA aA fineA job."

After finishing his residency in July 2009, he began operating at Community Memorial in Ventura, partnering with a highly regarded neurosurgeon, Dr. Moustapha Abou-Samra. In court papers, Sabit said he started to do some of the most difficult operations at the hospital, earning a reputation as a "go-toA physician."

"He was introduced as the next generation of neurosurgery," said Dr. Jack Padour, a Ventura internist who has two patients who filed lawsuits against Sabit. "We thought, 'Great, we need a guyA likeA that.' "

Complaints against the doctor involve infections after surgery, screws or rods that were improperly placed on patients and procedures that resulted in extreme pain and had toA beA redone.

Olivia Sawyer, 53, of Santa Paula said a doctor at USC took out everything Sabit put into her because the rods used for her spine were crooked. She tried to file a lawsuit but was told the one-year statute of limitations hadA passed.

Charles Shinn, 46, of Ventura complained in court documents that Sabit told him he was going to do a minimally invasive procedure and then, without informing him, chose a much more involved procedure that included an interbody cage placed onA hisA spine.

Guanda Dusette, 71, of Oxnard said she paid an online service $15 to research Sabit before choosing him for a spinal fusion. She alleged the screws pulled away from the bone after surgery, contributing to nonstop pain and leading to corrective surgery at Cedars Sinai MedicalA Center.

"What happened to me shouldn't happen to people," DusetteA said.

But sometimes doctors can't prevent screws from loosening in the bone, said Wang of UCLA, adding that the problems can be caused by poor bone quality or a graft that failed to fully fuse theA vertebrae."Whenever you're putting the hardware in, there's always a certain risk," he said. "Even in the most skilled hands, the anatomy can cause the screws toA beA misplaced."

Surgeons fresh out of residency face a learning curve, said Hsieh, but a seven-year residency for neurosurgery means they should be ready to handle mostA fusions.

"Experience matters even if you're well trained," said Deyo, the researcher. "It's always true that the more you do, the more expert youA become."

Hsieh said fusion surgery problems usually stem from the planning ? choosing the right patients and figuring what strategy will bring theA bestA result.

"As surgeons, we are experts, but who we operate on and who we make better is not based on just how good we are. It's also based on if we pick an appropriate patient,"A heA said.


Soolin DeMaria, a well-known performer in Las Vegas stage productions, appears as Miss February 2016 in Playboy Magazine South Africa. (Pictured: Soolin DeMaria  Photo credit: John Zelezny for PBSA).

Her nude pictorial is featured in the January/February edition of the digital magazine, currently available online.

Miss DeMaria, 28, grew up in Northern California and began ballet, tap and jazz dance classes at age 7. At 18 she began traveling the world as a professional dancer aboard luxury cruise ships.

In 2009 she moved to Las Vegas where she became a featured dancer in numerous production shows on the Strip. She appeared in four casino productions  at Stratosphere, Las Vegas Hilton, the Flamingo, and Sahara  before landing her current role in FANTASY at Luxor, one of the highest-acclaimed adult shows in Vegas.

Miss DeMaria says she decided to pose for Playboy  her first-ever nude photo shoot  because I have myself in great shape right now, Playboy South Africa is a classy publication, and I figured the timing was right. Also, I knew the photographer, and I was confident of shooting beautiful photos.

She added, Secretly, Ive been hoping for this for years. Its such an honor to be selected as a Playboy centerfold model of the month.

Eventually Miss DeMaria aims to become a show host on television. But dancing is my current passion, she says, and I love performing for a live audience every night.


Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) will host three job fairs to fill nearly 75 positions. The job fairs will take place on Jan. 30, Feb. 20 and April 9.

The award-winning K-12 public charter school is seeking teachers, administrators and support staff members. CASLV recently announced it will be opening new campuses in the Centennial Hills area and Nellis Air Force Base for the 2016-17 school year.

The job fairs will take place at CASLVs Sandy Ridge campus from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The address for the job fairs is 1051 Sandy Ridge Ave., Henderson, NV 89052. Applicants are asked to bring resume, transcripts, credentials and any other supporting documents.
Flightlinez and the Fremont Street Experience will hold a day-long fundraiser with proceeds from all zipline rides benefitting the Professional Drivers Association and the family of slain cab driver Tesfaye Arze. A.N.L.V. cab driver, Arze, 30, was killed while on duty in the early morning hours on March 4, 2011 in an alleged attempted robbery.

Cab drivers are such a big part of the lifeline of Las Vegas and sometimes theyre faced with dangerous situations and often those situations end with injury or even death, as in this case. We wanted to honor both Tesfaye and support a group that helps drivers and families in similar situations, said Flightlinez President Rex Owen.

Flightlinez and Fremont Street Experience are committed to serving the Las Vegas community by hosting charitable fundraisers throughout the year. Most recently, the team donated $15,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation.

TIMES:

Monday, March 28, 2011

Noon until midnight

COST:

Noon until 6 p.m. Flightlinez Zipline rides are $15

6 p.m. until midnight Flightlinez Zipline rides are $20

100% of all proceeds will be split evenly to benefit the Professional Drivers Association and the family of Tesfaye Arze.

WHERE:

Flightlinez

Fremont Street Experience

425 Fremont Street

Downtown Las Vegas, Nev.

Flightlinez operates the zipline ride attraction located at the Fremont Street Experience and continuously puts forth fundraising efforts to support charities and worthwhile causes in Las Vegas. For more information on Flightlinez, please visit www.fremontstreetflightline.com.

In its continuing effort to help Las Vegas taxi drivers who have been the victims of crime while on duty, the Professional Drivers Association Board has raised more than $144,000 to date and have distributed more than $100,000 to drivers who have been killed or injured by criminal acts. www.pdalasvegas.com
2015 has been a tough year for the Asian region. With the dark cloud of Chinas economic recession hanging over emerging ASEAN markets, one remaining source of light seemed to be Vietnam. However, even within this beacon of growth, not all has been upbeat. In reality, many sectors of the Vietnamese economy remain highly exposed to regional market fluctuations and have suffered as a result of shifts in Chinese demand.

In spite of emergent challenges, Vietnam offers investors amazing opportunities for investment. The key to leveraging these openings lies in the development and maintenance of a firm understanding of Vietnamese market conditions, allowing investments to be structured in a manner that taps national advantages while avoiding the uncertainties associated with Chinese demand.

Helping investors to monitor sentiment within Vietnam, the Business Optimism Index (BOI)  produced by Dun & Bradstreet on a quarterly basis  takes a look at business confidence across the ASEAN region. Measuring investor optimism based on changes in net profit, sales volume, new orders, selling price, inventory and employment, Dun & Bradstreets BOI provides investors with the tools necessary to evaluate optimal entry strategies to the Vietnamese marketplace.

In this article, we highlight findings from the latest BOI update, released Q1 of 2016. For more detailed information, prospective investors and interested parties alike should consult the full report, available here.

Business Optimism in Vietnam: Finding Fire in the Eye of the Tiger

Although being the star performer of the ASEAN region in Q4 2015, Vietnam has struggled to retain its top position in Q1 2016 and is the only country in the region with six confidence indicators falling across all sectors monitored. As a result, this quarters BOI shows the Vietnamese composite score slashed in half  falling from 45 percent to 22 percent.

The Decline of Manufacturing and Raw materials

Net profits, which saw the largest declines on a quarter-to-quarter basis, registered particularly hard hits in the construction and manufacturing sectors  which fell from 90 percent to 30 percent and 70 percent to 20 respectively. Mining also struggled, with net profits decreasing from 70 percent in Q4 percent to just five percent in Q1.

Consequently, the volume of sales within these sectors show similar drops. For the construction industry, volume of sales fell to just 20 percent  down from a high of 90 percent in Q4. Manufacturing and mining posted sale volumes of 25 and seven percent respectively  down from 70 percent and 64 percent in Q4.

In conjunction with declines in net profits and sale volumes, BOI figures show the selling price of manufacturing and mining output declining as reduced demand increased competition among existing producers. A comparison between Q4 and Q1 shows exact figures on selling prices declining from 16 percent to -4 percent and 2 percent to -7 percent in manufacturing and mining respectively.

Emerging Opportunities in Services, Finance, and Wholesale

Contrary to the high levels of risk and gloomy outlook projected for manufacturers selling to the Chinese market, many sectors within Vietnam have avoided substantial declines and provide lucrative opportunities for investment.

Service sector net profits  dependent upon a rapidly increasing consumer base  faced little strain in Q1 and will likely remain protected from immediate changes in external demand into the near future. With commitments to liberalization under the TPP and a strengthening domestic sector, the finance industry also fared well, posting modest declines compared to more exposed sectors.

While services and finance present safe bets, the star of Q1 in Vietnam was the wholesale sector. Unlike their counterparts, wholesalers have seen their selling price increase from two percent in Q4 to approximately 12 percent in Q1. Having posted the highest selling price increase among all tracked sectors, wholesalers are likely to have benefited from the increasing purchasing power of the Vietnamese population which has shown a tendency towards high levels of spending in recent years.

Future outlook: A Return to Growth for 2016

Despite its dependence on China, the severity of Vietnams current conditions show signs of overstatement. Although pronounced, the BOIs downturn in Q1 largely follows cyclical corrections found during the first quarter. With this in mind, its is projected that the BOI will regain a position of strength in the months ahead.

Adding to its momentum, successful conclusion of free trade agreements during Q4 of 2015 will allow Vietnam to supplement falling Chinese demand with support from TPP and AEC member states in the near future. Signatories to these agreements are likely to find attractive investment opportunities in the rapidly improving investment climate within the communist state.

In the last year alone, adoption of the new investment and enterprise law, as well as the opening of the Vietnamese real estate sector, are likely to compound the impact of increasing integration into world trade. For more risk averse investors, the announcement of plans to create a local derivatives market paves a clear way for investors to reduce their risk.

The Business Optimism Index, released every quarter by Dun & Bradstreet, is considered a leading economic indicator for turning points in business activity and measuring business sentiment. The Index captures business expectations for the quarter ahead based on six parameters: sales volume, net profit, selling price, new orders, inventory, and employment. Sampling in the Index represents key business sectors including manufacturing, construction, wholesale, transportation, services, finance, mining and agriculture, according to their GDP contribution in each nation. The ASEAN Business Optimism Index for Q1 2016 is out now and available as a complimentary download in the Asia Briefing Bookstore.

The Asia Sourcing Guide 2015

In this issue of Asia Briefing, we explain how and why the Asian sourcing market is changing, compare wage overheads, and look at where certain types of products are being manufactured and exported. We discuss the impact of ASEANs Free Trade Agreements with China and India, and highlight the options available for establishing a sourcing and quality control model in three locations: Vietnam, China, and India. Finally, we examine the differences in quality control in each of these markets.

The 2015 Asia Tax Comparator

In this issue, we compare and contrast the most relevant tax laws applicable for businesses with a presence in Asia. We analyze the different tax rates of 13 jurisdictions in the region, including India, China, Hong Kong, and the 10 member states of ASEAN. We also take a look at some of the most important compliance issues that businesses should be aware of, and conclude by discussing some of the most important tax and finance concerns companies will face when entering Asia.

The Gateway to ASEAN: Singapore Holding Companies

In this issue of Asia Briefing Magazine, we highlight and explore Singapores position as a holding company location for outbound investment, most notably for companies seeking to enter ASEAN and other emerging markets in Asia. We explore the numerous FTAs, DTAs and tax incentive programs that make Singapore the preeminent destination for holding companies in Southeast Asia, in addition to the requirements and procedures foreign investors must follow to establish and incorporate a holding company.
The decree will make sure less buyers get their fingers burnt

Among the big projects to be launched is An Khanh New City Developments sale of its first phase this quarter. The mega $2 billion project is developed by South Koreas Posco E&C and Vietnams Vinaconex, located in Hanois Hoai Duc district, along the Thang Long Boulevard.

Scheduled for completion in 2013, the city is expected to supply 6,440 apartments, equivalent to 392,319 square metres of accommodation, enough for 30,000 people.

Even though Hoa Phat Group, the investor in a more than 1,000 apartment Mandarin Garden in Cau Giay districts Tran Duy Hung road, refused to release its launching time, real estate experts predicted the project would be soon launched.

At the beginning of this month the CT7D, located in Le Van Luong street and invested by Nam Cuong Group and the FLC Landmark Tower of FLC Group will also be launched, with a total of 200 units and prices ranging from VND23 million ($1,200) to VND28 million ($1,470) per square metre.

In Gia Lam district, over the Red River, the second lot of Rung Co Residentials belonging to the Eco Park is also being launched, with around 1,500 apartment units.

In addition, Victoria Van Phu, Star City, Diamond Tower and Song Da City View will also add apartments to the mix.

Real estate consultant CBRE Vietnam expected that there would be 3,000 units in Hanoi launched this quarter, compared to 1,950 units in the third quarter. There were more than 4,600 units launched in the second quarter.

This decline, according to CBRE Vietnam, could be due to the Decree 71, effective on August 8, 2010 providing guidance on the Housing Law, which caps the proportion of units sold via capital contribution contracts at 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent sold on transaction floors.

This decree, CBRE Vietnam said, had put a pressure on developers with low financial capabilities and enhanced market transparency.

However, CBRE Vietnam executive director Richard Leech said new project launches would continue trending towards more affordable options.

With the opening and improvement of major infrastructure routes, the capitals western and southern districts are attracting new residents with easier access for commuting into the core urban districts, Leech said.

He said that the Decree 71 was expected to benefit the market by enhancing transparency, placing pressures on developers with low financial capabilities, lessening the threat of price bubbles and limiting speculative forces.

Tran Nhu Trung, Savills Vietnam associate director, said the Decree 71 had showed off its advantages to clearly regulate five types of mobilising capital investment. However, Trung said the procedures to implement Decree 71 were still complicated and wasted customers time and energy.

The more simple it [decree] regulates, the more it is practical in the real life, Trung said.
In 2015, SRC revealed its plan to construct a shopping mall and luxury apartment complex on a 62,400-square metre area in Thanh Xuan district, Hanoi and relocate its existing factory to a new area. The plan propelled the companys share value to VND34,200 ($1.5) per share during the transaction session on November 24, 2015. However, the delay in implementing the plan brought shares down to VND28,300 ($1.2) per share.

SRC will cooperate with Hoanh Son Joint Stock Company from the central province of Ha Tinh, which operates in the trade, transportation, mineral, and construction sectors, to establish Sao Vang-Hoanh Son Joint Stock Company with a chartered capital of VND1.67 trillion ($74.5 million) to provide support for relocating its radial tyre factory to Chau Son Industrial Park in Ha Nam province.

In October 2015, SRC and Vietnam Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank) signed an agreement for the relocation project. According to the agreement, VietinBank pledged to arrange a credit limit of VND3.1 trillion ($138.3 million), or 80 per cent of the projects capital.

SRC has been harbouring the plan for four years, however, the plan has been delayed because a large majority of SRCs shareholders disagree with the choice of Hoanh Son Joint Stock Company as a strategic partner.

The delay in developing the radial tyre factory costs SRC in the competition with domestic rivals, namely Southern Rubber Industry Joint Stock Company (CSM) and Danang Rubber Joint Stock Company (DRC).

SRC, together with CSM and DRC, is a 50 per cent-owned subsidiary of Vietnam National Chemical Group (Vinachem).

The total output of the three companies currently makes up 68 per cent of the tyre and tube supply in Vietnam. 10 per cent of this is produced by SRC, 33 per cent by CSM, and 25 per cent by DRC, with the remaining 32 per cent made up of imported products.

SRC is strong in manufacturing tyres and tubes for bicycles, motorcycles, and small-sized cars and CSM produces mostly for motorcycles and medium-sized cars, while DRC targets trucks and specialised cars.

Regarding the radial tyre sector, in 2015 locally-produced radial tyres met only between 60 and 62 per cent of the domestic demand. The figure will increase to between 65 and 67 per cent by 2020, once DRC and CSM increase their maximum capacities to 600,000 and 1,000,000 items annually, respectively.

In the context of the rapid increase of demand for radial tyres, as well as CSMs and DRCs expansion plans, SRC has fallen behind in capital and key products. Notably, both rivals chartered capital exceeds VND1 trillion ($44.6 million) and are strong in manufacturing tyres for medium-sized cars and trucks, while SRCs chartered capital is VND182 billion ($8.1 million) only.
The Circular 01/2016/TT-BCA, issued by the Ministry of Public Security, will take effect on February 15.

According to the new regulations, traffic police will be authorized to pull vehicles over in the following circumstances:

- Officers or specialized devices and equipment detect acts that violate traffic law.

- Officers are following orders from the head of the Traffic Police Department or chiefs of provincial bureaus of police.

- Officers are following the schedule of patrol and inspection planned by the head of traffic police divisions at the district level and above.

- Officers are given documents issued by the heads or deputy heads of investigation authorities, or those of competent authorities, that allow traffic stops in order to ensure security and order and to fight against certain crimes.

The documents must state specific times and the routes and types of vehicles that traffic police can inspect.

- Officers conduct a vehicle search based on reports of traffic offenses which individuals are responsible for.

The new circular also stipulates the authority of traffic police, stated as follows:

- Officers are authorized to deal with administrative violations of road traffic regulations, social security, order, and safety.

- Officers are able to pull over vehicles to examine legitimate documents related to the vehicles and conduct body searches and ID inspections on the vehicles operator, as per law.

- Officers can temporarily confiscate drivers licenses, registration certificates, and other documents relevant to the vehicles, the drivers, and passengers if the individuals violate traffic laws.

- Traffic police can require individuals and organizations to cooperate and provide their assistance in solving traffic accidents, congestion, or other problems that affect traffic order and safety.

- Officers are given the right to commandeer from civilians any means of transportation, communication, and other technical equipment for certain purposes in accordance with the law.
Toronto hosts 'Happy Chinese New Year' concert

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-01-29 15:43

A poster advertises the "Happy Chinese New Year" concert at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, Jan 24, 2016. [Photo/Culturalink.gov.cn]

A "Happy Chinese New Year" concert was held at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto on Jan 24. The Chinese Artists Society of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children organized the concert.

Xue Bing, Chinese consul general in Toronto, and representatives from several institutions were present.

Artists of different ages and nations performed classic Western and Chinese folk music.

Xue expressed his New Year's best wishes to the artists and all Chinese people abroad. He praised their contribution to the promotion of Chinese culture.

The concert is part of the slate of "2016 Happy Chinese New Year" events.
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Cuba, China to shoot first film in collaboration

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-01-29 15:43

Cuba and China will begin shooting their first-ever film in collaboration in March on the Caribbean island, the Cuban News Agency reported.

A co-production of China's Moshan film company and Cuba's RTV Commercial, the film "Amores en la Habana" or "Loves in Havana" revolves around a young Chinese student's love story in Cuba. It explores trials and tribulations of relationships between people of different cultural backgrounds.

The film, to be on shooting from March 10, marks the first project to emerge from an agreement between the production houses to jointly create movies that touch on social and cultural aspects of the two countries, said RTV General Director Joel Ortega.

"Most importantly, this project will bring together Chinese and Cuban talent to make a movie that unites us," said Ortega.

Jorge Gomez, director of the Cuban musical group Moncada, musical director Roberto Perez and choreographer Juan Gomez will be arranging the film's music and dance numbers.

Related:

Top festival gives short films awards

Project based on Transformers planned
For many US voters, national security and the fight against terrorism are top concerns for the presidential race. However, in Long Beach, California, members of the Cambodian-American community say they are more concerned with issues of health care.

Long Beach is home to the largest enclave of Cambodians in the US, second in the world only to Paris. But members of the community here have struggled with mental health issues, many related to the trauma of Cambodias past.

That means they want a US leader who will help provide them with care, said David Ung, a member of the community here.

I want the president to help senior people to have good health, said Sath Um, who uses dance as a form of therapy. We former refugees have lived through a lot of difficulties.

Yes, health issues, said Phoung Houy, another dancer. And please help our senior center.

For leaders of Cambodia Town, which is in the middle of Long Beach, like Gary Ung, its vice president, health is important, but so too are jobs and education.

Were following closely which candidates policies we like and we then make our decision, he said.

Activists are working diligently to encourage illegible voters to go to polling stations, he said. Cambodia Town always educates them at every dinner reception, town hall meeting, and several other events, telling them to go vote, he said.
During this weeks visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry, officials mainly discussed economic and security issues, but Kerry also took time to tour the National Museum and to discuss the potential return of Cambodian antiquities.

The museum, founded in 1920, has on display around 1,600 artifacts, from a stored collection of some 17,000. But many of the countrys antiquities are scattered abroad, stolen and sold by looters during decades of conflict.

In an address to reporters Tuesday, Kerry touted the recent return of some artifacts to Cambodia from US museums and collectors and he praised the National Museum as, an extraordinary asset, a goldmine of treasure from the past that tells the story of human development in this part of the world.

Kerry was hosted at the museum by Culture Minister Chouch Phoeun and National Museum Director Kong Virak. On his visit, he paid special attention to the conservation of antiquities, some of which the US has helped bring back through an agreement with Cambodia.

Chouch Phoeun told VOA Khmer later that Kerry was interested in learning how well the statues and other antiquities are taken care of on their return to Cambodia. The artifacts are here and are in great care, the minister said.

Chouch Phoeun urged other countries to follow similar agreements and return Cambodian antiquities. But he also acknowledged that some of Cambodias lost history may never return. Some may stay forevermore in the hands of collectors, and some has already been irreparably destroyed, he said.
A Guangzhou, China court Friday handed down guilty verdicts for three Chinese rights activists  Tang Jingling, Yuan Xinting and Wang Qingying  who now face up to five years in prison for inciting subversion of state power.

Human rights groups call the courts decision unjust, arguing that the case has been marred by multiple procedural violations and reflected the Chinese governments increasing hostility toward peaceful dissent.

They also expressed concern the sentences handed out in the closely-watched trial do not bode well for many more human rights lawyers in detention, some of whom may soon stand trial for similar subversion charges.

Chinese officials have not yet commented on the verdicts.

After a 20-month detention, the three men, known as the three gentlemen of Guangzhou, were convicted for promoting non-violent civil disobedience and peaceful transformation to democratic rule in China.

The Guangzhou Intermediate Peoples Court sentenced Tang, Yuan and Wang to a jail-term of five, three-and-a-half and two-and-a-half years respectively.

Upon hearing the verdicts Friday morning, Tang's lawyer, Ge Yongxi said Overall, the three of them were very calm. Their calmness comes from their disregard and ridicule on the unlawful verdicts."

Ge also said the trio had long come to the realization that their verdicts would be finalized by higher-ups in the Communist Party, which gives little autonomy to the courts in China.

But the lawyer argued the case has set the worst example possible, as many of its legal procedures, including its arrests, gathering of evidence and court trials, were seriously flawed.

Most importantly, no reform-minded activists of the countrys civil rights community should have had been put behind bars in the first place, Ge said.

Tang Jingling advocates the idea of non-violent disobedience, which aims to build China as a free democracy," Ge said. "It poses no threat to the country at all, shall it become a free and democratic nation. Under such circumstances, how can the government arrest him?

In addition to the disobedience movement in 2006, the trio also participated in press freedom protests in Guangzhou in 2013 and commemorative activities for the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre in 2014.

No appeal

Tang has decided not to appeal their case.

If no justice can prevail in Chinese courts, itll be pointless to seek appeal," said Wang Yanfang, Tangs wife. "Tang Jingling said that he would only appeal his case to the people and the lord.

"My husband hopes to push China towards democracy by the peaceful means of civil disobedience," she later told VOA's Mandarin Service. "I support his reasons not to appeal. But as his wife, I hope Chinese authority abide by the law and respect the law.

Saddened by the verdict, Wang said that she still took pride in the courage of her husband, whom she called a man of integrity.

She also complained about the inhumane treatment the trio allegedly endured while in detention. One rights group cited a defense lawyer's claim that Wang Qingying was repeatedly beaten by fellow detainees and guards, forced to wear handcuffs and leg irons for 15 days, and subjected to forced labor each day.

Tang's other defense attorney, Yan Xin, said he respected his client's decision not to appeal.

"According to our understanding of the situation, even if he does appeal, the opportunity for a reduced sentence is only theoretical," he said. "Whether he appeals or not will not have a substantial impact on his sentencing. His decision not to appeal showed his decisive attitude toward the rulers of the system."

Subversion charge

What worries human rights groups even more is that Chinese authorities appear to have dramatically increased their use of subversion charges as a political tool to quash government critics, especially in the past year and a half.

In the past month alone, 11 rights lawyers and assistants have been arrested and charged with the more serious subversion charge, which carries up to a life sentence, said Frances Eve, a researcher with the rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Chinese laws permit various loopholes under the umbrella of national security," Eve said. "Its very serious that were seeing more cases of individuals being charged with this crime.

As of Friday, at least 317 rights lawyers, assistants and their family members have been arrested, detained or put under house arrest, according to another Hong Kong-based rights group, China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group.

Rights groups expressed concerns that, as some of those detained rights lawyers may stand trial soon, the trios sentences Friday may spell more bad news to come.

Its quite clear that the government is not backing down," Eve added. "Its persistently persecuting human rights defenders. And its an omen and its bad sign.
One in five Americans is Roman Catholic, and Catholic voters, like other Americans, are politically divided. What issues concern them in this election year? Church leaders and activists describe areas of consensus, and questions of strategy and focus that divide them.

Combating discrimination and violence and reforming the criminal justice system: these are among the goals of Catholic social teaching, according to Jonathan Reyes of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The issues, and the principles that help Roman Catholics make decisions, are outlined in document from the bishops, called Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.

Issues complex, principles clear

Reyes says a core concern is the sanctity of life, including opposition to abortion and euthanasia. In Catholic thought, both are called intrinsic evils, together with human cloning and the destruction of human embryos for research. The bishops also urge governments to end the death penalty, unjust wars and torture.

The issues are complex, but the principles behind them are clear, said Reyes.

If it helps human dignity, we support it and we want to advance it. If it harms human dignity, we oppose it, he said.

Church officials say Catholics give priority to society's most vulnerable members through a principle called the preferential option for the poor.

Monsignor Gregory Cox, executive director of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, says the focus comes from his faith's Judaic roots and the Jewish emphasis on helping the widow and orphan. On a recent morning, Cox visited one of 22 Catholic Charities centers in Los Angeles where the poor come for food and social services.

Sixteen percent of people in this country live below the poverty level, said Cox. That's a problem.

He says Catholics are seeking a resolution to the plight of undocumented U.S. residents, a problem he called pressing in California, where several million people live in the shadows, at risk of deportation. This is an issue that I think as a country, we also need to look at, he said.

Helping those in need

Catholics say they are concerned with the plight of migrants from the Middle East and with balancing the need for U.S. security with the need of refugees for humane resettlement. These themes are part of a consensus, but Catholic voters diverge in their focus.

The group of activist nuns called NETWORK highlights social problems through the Nuns on the Bus project. Since 2012, they have conducted multi-state tours to publicize issues such as immigration reform and the role of big money in politics. The group's leaders have also criticized the church's male-dominated hierarchy.

The Vatican censured NETWORK and a larger organization of American Catholic nuns in 2012, questioning what church officials called their radical feminist ideas and lack of emphasis on issues like abortion. The nuns remain outspoken, however.

Ordinary middle class folks and those at the bottom are losing ground in this economy, said Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK's executive director. The nuns reject the use of violence: the way we have guns, she said, the way we think our foreign policy should be about the military, not diplomacy. We have got to find other ways forward.

Political divisions

The U.S. visit of Pope Francis last September put many social issues into sharper focus and heartened American Catholics, including Campbell. U.S. Catholics, however, are politically divided. Slightly more than half lean toward Democrats, and just under half toward Republicans.

There is no perfect party, said Jonathan Reyes of the bishops' conference, noting that the parties are not going to carry the water [do as people wish] on all the issues. That's not a reason to step back. It's all the more reason to engage and be agents of change, he said.

Moreover, on policy questions, Reyes said there are legitimate debates about which approaches are effective.

American Catholics are as diverse as other Americans. For some, abortion and same-sex marriage are overriding issues, while others want policies that help the middle class and reduce poverty or reduce the size of government and empower business. Like other Americans, they are split over gun rights, health care and immigration.

The Pew Research Center finds that most American Catholics agree with their church leaders that abortion is sinful, but roughly six in 10 support gay marriage, despite official disapproval.

American Catholic leaders say that dialogue can shape the discussion and help achieve solutions, despite the divisions.
Although the numbers of Muslim Americans are comparatively small  just under one percent of the adult population  political analysts say Muslim voters can make a difference in this year's presidential election in states with closely divided electorates such as Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

At the Islamic Society of Orange County, the largest mosque in Southern California, a volunteer urges those U.S. citizens who have come for Friday prayer to register as voters.

Fareed Farukhi, an accountant and chairman of the Islamic Society of Orange County, is concerned about many issues, from improving education to global warming.

Asad Shafiq, a business professor, worries about racial disparities and income inequality, and how that gap has grown in the last 40 or 50 years. And what should we, as American people, do about it?

Overshadowing those issues, these Muslim voters say they feel they have become targets in the campaign.

Tired of fear-mongering

Ahmed Soboh was guest speaker at the mosque on a recent Friday, and he said American Muslims are politically diverse, but agree on one thing: that they are tired of the rhetoric and fear-mongering and Islamophobic comments that are being repeated by many of the candidates.

It's affecting our lives on a personal level, he said. At work, at school, when we're walking in the mall, when we're walking in the street, people are giving us that look.

Soboh, a local dentist and the religious director of a neighboring mosque, says he is talking about Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

Trump, the frontrunner among Republican contenders, has said that in light of terrorist acts, all Muslims should be temporarily barred from entering the country. Carson has said that Islam is incompatible with American politics.

At the school connected to this mosque, the Orange Crescent School, the children receive civics lessons. Vice Principal Leila Dakelbab says the students represent 32 different countries.

The only thing they all have in common is that they are Muslim, but we all share the same beliefs in democracy and liberty and freedom for all its peoples and citizens, she said.

Getting out the vote

At another Islamic school in an African American neighborhood of Los Angeles, called the Islah Academy, students recite Arabic and also get lessons in civic engagement. They learn character building and leadership traits, explains principal Azizah Ali-Regan.

Nearly two-thirds of American Muslims are immigrants. We are citizens by choice, explains Jordanian immigrant Haitham Bundakji, a real estate investor. We accepted and wanted to be here and serve this community because this country is a great country, he explained. It opened its gates for us.

Muslims are also an influential minority among African Americans, and near central Los Angeles, community activist Umar Hakim also worries about Donald Trump. Hakim says despite being native born, Muslims in his community feel the sting of prejudice.

So this year, we're really going to be focused on getting out the vote and raising our percentage of registered voters in America, so we can show the power of our voice, he said.

Farukhi, who was born in India, wants to hear from candidates who are inclusive.

We are all people of God, one humanity, one family, he said. So to say somebody's different, put them outside this country, doesn't quite fit well with American ideals.

Influential in swing states

Political analyst Dan Schnur of the University of Southern California says that while some American voters share a suspicion of Muslims, the best American leaders are those who articulate the strong stance and a smart plan to restrain terrorist activity while still making it clear that that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, both in the United States and elsewhere, are in fact peaceful people who hold no support for the terrorists.

He says it is becoming more difficult to find those leaders.

More than than 85 percent of Muslim voters voted for Democrat Barack Obama in the last presidential election, according to a 2012 survey by the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Dan Schnur says the small size of the Muslim electorate limits its impact to a handful of swing states, but Muslim voters can make a difference there in a close election. He adds that attracting minority voters should be a part of any winning political strategy.

The Pew Research Center projects that by 2050, Muslims will outnumber Jewish Americans, reaching just more than two percent of the population.
The human rights group Amnesty International says satellite images and witnesses point to possible mass graves in Burundi that appeared after security forces retaliated against rebel gunmen in Bujumbura.

"These images suggest a deliberate effort by authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out," Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty's director for East Africa, said Thursday.

Amnesty said police and security forces killed dozens of people on December 11 after rebels attacked three military bases in the capital.

The group said police stormed into homes and dragged out men, killing some on the spot. It said that while some of those shot may have taken part in the rebel raid, many did not.

At least 87 people were killed, with some sources putting the death toll much higher.

Amnesty said that while bodies were everywhere, almost none were brought to nearby morgues, with witnesses saying many bodies were dumped into at least five mass graves.

The United Nations also is investigating. There has been no comment from the Burundian government.

Political violence has raged in Burundi since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced last April that he was going to run for a third term. The opposition called that unconstitutional and said it broke the terms of a peace agreement to end the country's long civil war.

Nkurunziza was re-elected in July, and there are no signs of the violence easing.

The African Union has said it fears Burundi could sink into genocide.
Authorities in Burundi have released two foreign journalists a day after they were arrested in the capital.

VOA's Central Africa service reports that British photographer Phil Moore and the Africa chief for the French daily Le Monde, Jean-Philippe Remy, were released Friday.

It says none of the two men's equipment was returned after they refused to disclose the passwords to their smartphones. Their media accreditations have also been revoked.

Burundis security minister said the two men were arrested Thursday in Bujumbura in the company of armed criminals. Presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe said they were among 17 people arrested by police.

Le Monde says Moore and Remy were arrested while meeting with government opponents. It says both men were working for the paper and were doing their job by meeting with all parties involved in Burundi's political crisis.

U.S. 'deeply concerned'

The U.S. said the arrests raise concerns about human rights and transparency in the African nation.

"We're also deeply concerned by today's reports of arrest of independent journalists," said State Department Spokesperson John Kirby. "While the journalists have now, apparently, been released without charge, we understand that Burundian authorities have stripped their credentials and continue to retain their equipment.

"The government continues to restrict media freedoms in Burundi," Kirby said. "These restrictions, coupled with the government's refusal to allow independent human rights investigations, raise deep concerns about the government of Burundi's commitment to transparency and accountability for human rights violations and abuses."

Julia Steers, a Nairobi-based freelance reporter working in Burundi, visited the two journalists Friday morning at Burundis intelligence service headquarters where they were being held. She said the French ambassador and a representative from the British consulate also visited the pair.

Steers said the two men were arrested Thursday in the capital's Nyakabiga neighborhood, and they were held and questioned overnight.

"We were able to speak with them briefly, and to bring them some food and some water, and they said that they were treated fairly, that they were questioned extensively, but no evidence of mistreatment or torture."



Charges unclear



Steers said the charges remained somewhat unclear.



This morning, the police spokesman here said that Phil was arrested in the company of armed men, which is something that Phil denied when we were able to speak with him," she said. "He said that he was just walking alone in this neighborhood around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and was approached by a police officer and arrested shortly thereafter. Then his colleague Jean-Philippe was arrested after that, so were still not clear exactly what the charges are.

Ilya Gridneff, chairman of the Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa, had urged the Burundian authorities to release the journalists.



Both of them are consummate professionals, excellent journalists that have won awards, and have worked in tougher parts of the world, and essentially weve been pursuing all channels for their timely release, Gridneff said.



Burundi's political crisis began last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he was running for a controversial third term. Human rights groups have denounced the government for cracking down on journalists and protesters in a bid to suppress political dissent.

The African Union is considering a plan to send 5,000 peacekeepers to the country to contain violence that has killed more than 400 people. Burundi's government says it will fight any foreign troops who attempt to deploy in the Central African country.
China said Friday it has charged a Canadian national with spying and stealing state secrets.

Kevin Garratt was arrested in August 2014, along with his wife, Julia, who was released after six months in custody although not allowed to leave China. Her husband was indicted in Dandong, a city in northeastern China where the couple operated a coffee shop and conducted Christian aid work for North Koreans.

"During the investigation, authorities found that Kevin Garratt may also be involved in gathering information for Canadian information agencies," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing.

Garratt's parents said their son was arrested because of his religion, a contention Hua rejected.

"He was indicted because of spying and stealing Chinese state secrets," Hua said. "It has nothing to do with his religion."

Beijing's concept of state secrets can be very broad, while North Korea has often sharply punished Christian proselytizing activities.

Canada said it was concerned about the Garratt indictment and had raised the issue with the Chinese government "at high levels." A week ago, Canada accused Chinese hackers of breaking into a key computer network.

News of the indictment reached Ottawa a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior government officials attended a lavish party hosted by China in the Canadian capital to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The continued volatility in Chinas stock markets is making it difficult for authorities to go ahead with key aspects of their economic reforms program, and analysts say a major plunge may be near.



The recent slide, which has washed away over $3 trillion in stock value in recent months, is making it difficult for authorities to implement some key features of their economic reforms program, two economists and a financial consultant told VOA.



At stake is Chinese Premier Li Keqiangs plan to channel foreign investments through the stock market. China has traditionally relied on foreign direct investments, and restricted the flow of foreign capital through the stock/equity route.



Government interference

But that may prove to be extremely difficult. The credibility of the Chinese stock markets has been damaged due to regular government meddling to push up prices, according to economists.



Its unlikely that foreign institutional investors will be interested in participating in a market in which the government keeps interfering, said Oliver Rui, professor of finance and accounting with the Shanghai based China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). In sum, investors should focus on the banking sector instead of the stock market.



Sandra Heep, head of Program on Economic Policy and Financial System at Berlins Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) said, The aim of turning the stock market into a major pillar of corporate financing has receded into the far distance.

The governments bid to internationalize Chinas financial system and attract foreign portfolio investment has suffered a major setback: in the eyes of foreign investors, Chinas capital markets have lost much of their sparkle as a result of massive government intervention, she said.

A key aspect of the governments reform program is to restructure the State owned Enterprises (SOEs), which are have a widespread reputation for financial mismanagement and wasting of resources.

Chinese authorities expected stock prices to ride high, which would help in the SOE restructuring program. But a falling market, say the analysts, would prove to be frustrating for the government.



Polishing the balance sheet

High stock prices were not only meant to allow them to polish their balance sheets, but also to facilitate new funding via capital increases. This plan has been dealt a serious blow, Heep said.

Rui of CEIBS agreed saying, The weak stock market will slow down the SOE reforms."

The third cause of worry for the government are initial public offerings (IPOs) of a large number of companies, which were expected to raise over $60 billion through issue of fresh shares. A depressed market will make it difficult for them to raise as much as they had expected.



Besides, the China Securities Regulatory Commission is expected to slow down new issues of shares because a flood of IPOs has the potential of pushing the market further downwards.



CSRC is delaying IPOS, and the likely further control of the IPO frequency. It is doing so to stabilize the market. Traditionally, the extent of IPOs and market returns have very negative correlations, said Johnny Fang, an analyst at the consulting firm Z-Ben Advisors.

Dire predictions

The regulator has already taken some shrewd measures to soften the blow on the market once the IPOs start coming out. It revised a rule to control the flow of investors funds during IPO subscriptions. It also announced another rule under which only existing stock investors can apply for an IPO subscription. The more an investor holds shares, the more he can obtain through IPOs. The idea is to discourage them from selling, and protect the market.

These measures will greatly mitigate short-term liquidity pressure caused by IPO, Fang said.

As the market continued falling in January, even the state-owned Chinese media turned critical, complaining that regulators were not thinking through their moves.



The latest rout should bring an end to any illusion that the Chinese mainland's stock markets are still okay. Instead, the increasing fragile investor sentiment represents an urgent call for a thorough regulatory review to identify and fix the underlying problems that plague them, China Daily said recently in an editorial.



The most dire prediction came Wednesday in an email sent to clients by Gao Ting, head of China strategy at UBS in Shanghai. He warned that thousands of companies that have pledged their shares to take out loans are now being forced to sell their assets to repay the debts.

"If Chinas stock market continues to fall, equity pledging-related selling pressure could increase significantly, putting further pressure on the stock market," said Gao.
In Sri City, an industrial park in Indias southern state of Andhra Pradesh that houses several Chinese factories, Chinese company Xian LONGi is investing $225 million to set up a facility to make solar cells and components.



One of the worlds largest solar equipment manufacturers, LONGi is among a growing number of Chinese firms, such as Lenovo, Gionee, Vivo and Xiaomi, that have rolled out production facilities in India over the last year.



Ravindra Sannareddy, managing director of Sri City, said a large domestic market and lower wages are attracting these companies.

They see that Indian consumption is going up, so they want to put factories in India, and also some of the people are coming to India to make in India and export because wage levels in China are going up, according to Sannareddy.

The hourly labor cost for manufacturing in India is less than half that of China, attracting industries that are labor intensive, such as toy-maker Pals Plush, one of the Chinese units in Sri City.

Ranked by the World Bank as one of the most difficult places to do business, global firms had long bypassed India as a manufacturing base.

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been encouraging foreign investors, including the Chinese, to take another look at the country of 1.2 billion people under a campaign billed Made in India.

Industrial hub

Modi has ambitions to turn India into a global industrial hub to create millions of jobs needed for its young population  about one-half of India's population is under the age of 25. Those efforts are starting to yield some results.

Pankaj Mahindroo, who heads the Indian Cellular Association, expects Chinese mobile handset manufacturers to invest about $2 to $3 billion in the next two to three years to assemble phones in India and create more than 100,000 jobs.

The Chinese mobile phone companies are attracted by projections that India will be the worlds second largest smart phone market by 2017.

Besides the huge market and lower wages, the countrys skilled labor pool is a big draw for manufacturers. Software manpower is very, very good and people in design and testing are also extremely good, said Mahindroo.

However, economists warn that while India has made a start, ambitions of becoming an industrial hub could elude the country without more reforms and attention to its biggest drawback -- the countrys shoddy infrastructure. Over the last year, government efforts to usher in labor and land reforms have been stalled by an aggressive opposition.

Projects to expand transport networks are proceeding slowly. No one knows that better than Sannareddy, who established the Sri City industrial park close to Chennai port to give businesses easy connectivity. But he admits that hurdles remain.

We are expanding our ports, but still it is not like the cargo, if you send it today, it can go. There is congestion in some of the ports. And airport international connectivity can be improved, power situation still needs improvement. Sometimes we can debate whether the speed at which they are changing is ripe for more manufacturing to come or not, he cautioned.

Still, overall optimism about India, now the worlds fastest-growing major economy, is keeping investments flowing. Last week, Chinese real estate developer Wang Jianlin announced plans to invest up to $10 billion to develop in an industrial township in Haryana state in the north.
Seminar on 2016 World Situation Prospects and Chinas Role held in SH

By:Jiang Wenran | From:english.eastday.com | 2016-01-24 13:52

the scene during the meeting

Shanghai, January 23- Organized by Institute of International Relations (IIR), Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) and Shanghai Institute of American Studies (SIAS), Seminar on 2016 World Situation Prospects and Chinas Role was held today. Deputy dean of the SASS Huang Renwei attended the opening ceremony and gave an opening speech.

Member of Foreign Affairs Committee National Peoples Congress, former deputy director of the Central Foreign Affairs Office Chen Xiaogong and former deputy minister of International Department, Central Committee of CPC, vice chairman of Chinese Peoples Association for Peace and Disarmament Yu Hongjun showed their appearance on the seminar as specially invited representatives and both gave important speeches.

Tao Wenzhao, research fellow of American Studies Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Science,attended the discussions

Liu Ming, director of the IIR of SASS, Hu Hua, standing director of the SIAS, Tao Wenzhao, research fellow of American Studies Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Science, Xia Liping, dean of International and Public Affairs Institute, Tongji University, Yan Anlin, deputy dean of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), Ye Jiang, professor from the SIIS and Liu Zhongmin, director of Institute for Middle East Studies also attended and actively participated in the discussions.

Five issues are hotly discussed during the seminar which includes American Elections and China-US Relations Trends, Korean Peninsula Tensions and China-Japan Relations Development Situation, Europe, the Middle East Crisis and the Trend of Spreading Risks, Russia, South Asia and China G20 Diplomacy and Southeast Asian Countries, the Changing Political Situation and South China Sea Disputes.

Dozens of experts from Beijing and Shanghai spoke their bosom freely from various perspectives and had deep dialogue on not only current world situation and Chinas role, but also future international tendency and coping strategy. Huang Renwei noted in conclusion speech that China's domestic economic situation will determine China's role in international relations.

Chinese version

Japanese version


Negotiators meeting for Syrian peace talks that began Friday in Geneva are focusing on urgent goals: establishing a cease-fire, delivering humanitarian aid, and setting a course for long-term resolution of the nearly five-year conflict.

Theyre also confronting a crisis years in the making, rife with deep sectarian divisions, clashing regional and international interests, and a rising threat from the radical Islamic State militant group that has exploited Syrias instability.

What sparked the crisis?

In March 2011, a popular uprising began against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads authoritarian regime after the arrest, and alleged torture, of more than a dozen youngsters in the southern city of Daraa. Theyd scribbled anti-government slogans on a wall. Protesters took to the streets, demanding the youngsters release  as well as sweeping political reforms.

The government made some concessions  repealing a restrictive emergency law, for instance  but also responded with a bloody military crackdown, initially killing four demonstrators. Unrest spread from that flashpoint city, along with demands for Assads resignation. Rebel groups took up arms.

Since then, the conflict has left more than 250,000 people dead in Syria and displaced as many as 11 million others from a prewar population of about 22 million. Of those, at least 4 million have fled to neighboring countries. Tens of thousands have risked harrowing journeys to seek refuge in Europe, fueling a migrant crisis there.

Whos involved in the conflict?

There are multiple players and multiple spheres  local, regional and international. (The Financial Times news site sorts them out, along with their complicated allegiances, in graphic form.)

Assad belongs to Syrias ruling Alawite religious minority, a largely secular offshoot of Shia Islam. Regionally, Assads government is closely allied with heavily Shiite Iran and with neighboring Hezbollah in Lebanon. Support for Assad and the Syrian army has come from Irans Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and Russian airstrikes.

The opposition in Syria includes many Sunni Islamist rebel groups as well as secular ones. They include Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in the predominantly Arab country. The main Sunni and Kurdish groups collaborate in fighting not only the Assad regime but also IS militants. The opposition has the backing of the West, including the United States and the European Union.

Syria historically has been a bastion of religious tolerance in the Middle East, with Muslim sects, Christians and Jews living in close proximity, the On Faith website points out in examining faiths role in the conflict.

What are some of the key developments?

Initially, in late April 2011, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Syrias intelligence agency and two of Assads relatives  and pressed for European allies to use their greater influence to halt the bloodshed. That August, Obama called for Assads resignation.

By October 2012, the U.S. had given $200 million in humanitarian aid and $50 million to assist unarmed opposition groups. The following August, Obama sought congressional authorization to use military force against Syria.

US Involvement in Syria April 29, 2011: U.S. sanctions Syrias intelligence agency for Syrias crackdown on Arab Spring anti-government protests. Aug. 28, 2011: U.S. President Barack Obama calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to leave office. Aug. 20, 2012: Obama warns Assad against using chemical weapons in the conflict. April 2013: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announces the formation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (IS), an Islamic militant group. March 2013: Syria bombs the rebel-held northern city of Raqqa. The U.S. and Britain promise nonlethal support for moderate rebels. Aug. 30, 2013: The U.S. condemns the Syrian government for reportedly gassing roughly hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians. Aug. 31, 2013: Obama seeks congressional authorization to use military force against Syria. September 2013: UN weapons inspectors verify chemical weapons killed roughly 300 people in Damascus. December 2013: After IS fighters seize warehouses used by the Western-backed Free Syrian Army rebels, U.S. suspends aid. June 2014: IS militants seize Mosul and Tikrit in Iraq and announce plans to establish a caliphate. August 8, 2014: Obama authorizes targeted airstrikes, with two rounds of attacks hitting IS targets in northwestern Iraq. Aug. 20, 2014: IS releases a video showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley, 40, kidnapped a year earlier in northern Syria. His executioner warns the U.S. government that trying to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people. Sept. 2, 2014: IS releases a video showing the decapitation of American journalist Steven Sotloff, kidnapped in August 2013 near Aleppo, Syria. Sept. 22, 2014: A U.S.-led coalition  including Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates  begins a campaign of airstrikes against IS targets in Syria. Feb. 10, 2015: U.S. officials confirm the death of American aid worker Kayla Mueller, 26. Kidnapped in Aleppo in August 2013, she reportedly had been held by IS senior member Abu Sayyaf in eastern Syria and was repeatedly raped by IS leader Baghdadi. IS claims Mueller died Feb. 6 in a weapons warehouse near Raqqa. May 16, 2015: U.S. Special Operations forces kill Sayyaf and capture his wife, Umm Sayyaf, in a ground raid in eastern Syria. May 20, 2015: IS militants seize control of most of Palmyra, a central Syrian city with 2,000-year-old ruins designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. IS militants subsequently destroy two Roman-era temples. September 30, 2015: Russia begins airstrikes in support of Syrias Assad government. Moscow claims the campaign targets IS, but the Pentagon and Western officials note Western-backed rebels are also hit. Oct. 30, 2015: Obama authorizes fewer than 50 U.S. special operations forces to coordinate movements of Syrian local fighters with the U.S.-led coalition. Reuters news agency contributed to this report.

In April 2013, the militant extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant emerged, an outgrowth of al-Qaida, and by early 2014 it had seized the Syrian city of Raqqa, establishing it as the capital of its planned caliphate.

In May 2013, the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Assads forces, citing "grave concern" at Syrian authorities threat or actual use of chemical or biological weapons. Assads forces repeatedly have denied accusations of attacking civilians with sarin nerve gas and barrel bombs. Chemical weapons were used in subsequent attacks August 21 on several Damascus suburbs, U.N. inspectors later noted in a report that did not assign blame. But a White House report said the U.S. intelligence community had "high confidence" that Assads government was responsible for the chemical attacks, which killed an estimated 1,429 people. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to destroy Syrias chemical weapons arsenal.

In September 2014, after territorial gains by the Islamic State and confirmation that the group had beheaded two American journalists, the United States formed a multinational coalition and launched a bombing campaign against IS targets in Syria.

In late September 2015, Russia began its own airstrikes in Syria. The Kremlin said it was bombing IS targets, but its warplanes have repeatedly attacked other Assad opponents, including allies of the U.S.-led coalition.

Whats next?

Syrian peace talks began Friday afternoon despite a boycott by several anti-Assad groups, including the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee. Rebels had set a condition of halting airstrikes and sieges on towns before they would participate in talks. They said they were focused on fighting off the Syrian government forces closing in on their ranks in the Damascus suburbs.

Also missing from the table were Kurds, who  despite showing effective fighting skills against Islamic State  were excluded at Turkeys insistence, Reuters news service reported. But a delegation from the Syrian government was there.

Given the sensitivities of talks, U.N. organizers said theyre holding indirect "proximity talks," meeting with some stakeholders in separate rooms.
There were several heated exchanges and accusations during the Republican presidential debate Thursday night in Des Moines, Iowa, even without front-runner Donald Trump at the event.

Among the most contentious issues for the candidates is immigration.

FOX News moderator Megyn Kelly played several video clips that appeared to show Florida Senator Marco Rubio changing his position on immigration.

He was asked to reconcile his opposition to granting amnesty for undocumented immigrants in the United States, a position he held during his 2010 Senate bid, and his sponsorship of a bill in the Senate in 2013 that would grant those people a path to U.S. citizenship.

Kelly asked, Havent you already proven you cannot be trusted on this issue?

Rubio denied he had changed his position on the issue, despite former Florida Governor Jeb Bushs claim that Rubio sought his support for the legislation. He also quibbled with Kellys use of terminology and the wording he used in the video clip.

Dismissing his previous statements, Rubio instead stated his current position on immigration issues: he does not support a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio said he is not anti-immigrant but supports legal immigration.

Same question to Cruz

After the testy exchange with Rubio, Kelly next showed video clips of Texas Senator Ted Cruz voicing his support for Rubios 2013 legislation -- as well as several amendments he offered for the bill -- against his current claims to have never supported it.

In response, Cruz claimed his amendments were an attempt to ensure that undocumented immigrants did not gain legal status in the U.S. The fact that each amendment didnt fix every problem (of the bill) didnt mean I supported the rest of the bill, he said, defending himself against the questioning.

The candidates made several broad statements regarding the U.S. and its fight against the Islamic State militant group.

Rubio and Cruz both admonished the Obama administration; Rubio accusing the president of reducing the size of the military and Cruz saying Obama has dramatically degraded the military.

The comments have become a standard refrain by Republican candidates during the primary season. But, the amounts spent on weapons modernization are about the same as they were during former president George W. Bushs term, The Associated Press reported.

While the Department of Defense has seen military budget cuts in recent years, those cuts were the result of sequestration  a budget tool that kicked in when lawmakers from both parties could not agree on a spending bill, meaning both parties share in the blame, according to Politifact.com.

The cuts were also approved based on suggestions by the Defense Department, which identified bases and equipment it says it no longer needs, the Associated Press reported.

Arming the Kurds

Also regarding the fight against IS, Cruz accused President Barack Obama of not arming the Kurds.

But, according to AP, the U.S. has allocated a substantial amount of weapons and other military equipment to help the Kurds fight the Islamic State group, and is sending the aid. However, under a deal with the Iraqi government, the materials are required to be sent to the Iraq government, which then doles out the resources to both Iraqi and Kurdish troops.

Regarding the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, Cruz reiterated several common refrains heard during the campaign, that it is a job-killer and that people have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket.

Regarding jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said earlier this month that the U.S. unemployment rate was holding steady at 5 percent. When Obama signed the health care law in March 2010, the nation's jobless rate was 9.9 percent. The economy has added more than 13 million jobs over that period.

Regarding health insurance, the number of Americans without coverage reached a historic low of 9 percent in 2015, according to the government's National Health Interview Survey.

More than 16 million people have gained coverage since 2013, before the law's big coverage expansion got under way, the AP reported.

Trump accusation

Even though he wasnt on stage with his fellow Republican candidates, Trump made his own accusation regarding the U.S. trade deficit with China.

China, this year in trade, will make over $500 billion in terms of our trade deficit. $500 billion. That's no partnership, and I'm a free trader. I love free trade. But we have to use our head. And we use political hacks to negotiate with the Chinese, he said, according to the AP.

However, AP reported that Trump should re-check his numbers. The billionaire businessman appeared to be referring to the total U.S. trade deficit with every country in the world -- which totaled about $508 billion in 2014.

That number is about a quarter less than it was in 2006, when the trade deficit was $762 billion, according to the Census Bureau.

In 2014, the trade deficit with China was $343 billion  still substantial, but significantly below what Trump claimed, according to the AP.
Guinea Bissau's parliament approved the 2016 spending program Thursday, saving the government from dissolution and lending the fragile West African democracy some stability after a turbulent few weeks.

Prime Minister Carlos Correia's budget, which includes spending on roads, electricity, health and education, was passed with 59 votes in favor and none against. The vote was boycotted by the opposition PRS party, which opposed the plan.

"We deserve this victory, especially since it cost us sleepless nights," said Califa Seidi, parliamentary chief of the ruling PAIGC party. "Therefore no one has the right to question the fate of this country and its people."

The vote capped a turbulent month for Guinea Bissau in which 15 PAIGC members denounced the plan and joined the opposition, leaving the prime minister without the votes to pass it.

Those 15 members were expelled from parliament, however, and replaced Thursday before the vote. If parliament had failed for a second time to approve the plan, the constitution would have required the government's dismissal.

Democracy has been wobbly in Guinea Bissau, which has not seen a democratically elected leader serve a full term since independence from Portugal in 1974, and has suffered nine coups or attempted coups since 1980. Three different governments served between August and October.
On the issue of immigration, the only thing Democrats and Republicans really agree on is that the U.S. system is broken.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic presidential candidates support comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship. But Republican candidates see any granting of legal status as "illegal amnesty."

The immigration issue has unexpectedly taken center stage in the 2016 presidential campaign, mainly because of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who currently leads party preference polls.

Trump and his Republican rivals have merged the issue of illegal immigration with economic anxieties and national security fears. This is clear in political ads, like one by Senator Ted Cruz in which he says the mainstream media don't often see immigration as "an economic issue. But I can tell you, it is a very personal economic issue.

In one Trump ad, a narrator says the billionaire candidate "will stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.

Trump raised the issue last June, making it the centerpiece of his campaign. He said in one campaign speech that "when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They are rapists.

Many were outraged by Trumps language, but he is tapping into real concerns many Americans have, said John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

There is a strong portion of the Republican Party which is worried about immigration," he said, "and Donald Trump seized his lead by making that his issue. And others may echo what he has to say, but he is the one who really stood up on that issue where others did not stand up as strongly.

Other Republican candidates have followed Trumps lead on immigration and on rejecting Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

'Toward the extreme'

But on the Democratic side of the race, the candidates are competing to denounce what they call "anti-immigrant rhetoric" from Republicans.

"Not a single Republican candidate  not one  clearly and consistently supports a real path to citizenship," Hillary Clinton said in one campaign speech. "[Senator Marco] Rubio actually helped write the 2013 immigration bill. Now he renounces it. They're all moving toward the extreme and away from the rest of America."

Another Democratic candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, has expressed dismay "that so many voices, including some within the Democratic Party, were insisting that large numbers of immigrant children at the [Mexican] border, caught in a humanitarian crisis, be sent back. The United States has an international responsibility to children and families seeking refugee status."

A recent poll found that 80 percent of Americans consider immigration to be an important factor in choosing whom to vote for  on either side of this divisive issue.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday that deaths of refugees and migrants crossing the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece were "increasing at an alarming rate."

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, IOM spokesman Joel Millman said 218 people died in January on that eastern Mediterranean route. "What Is important to mention is that the deaths on this route are increasing at an alarming rate," he said.

"Just looking at my notes from the last three briefings, two weeks ago we reported 50 had died on this route; a week later 95, a few days after that almost 160, so it's doubling almost every time I come here, and as of today, 218," he said. "As point reference, there weren't this many deaths on the Aegean side of the Mediterranean last year until the middle of September."

Friday morning alone, six bodies were found on a boat that had been rescued at sea, Millman said.

The statement came following two fatal shipwrecks earlier this week off the Greek islands of Kos and Samos, where more than 30 people died, including 15 children, according to the IOM.

The IOM estimates 26 more people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea on the traditionally more deadly route between Libya and Italy, raising the total number of deaths to 244 for January.

IOM also estimates that during the first 28 days of 2016 more than 55,500 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to enter Europe.

Meanwhile, the European destination countries are under increased pressure to deal with the high rate of asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees. Tensions among the local population have been on the rise.

Unknown assailants threw a hand grenade at a shelter for asylum seekers in southern Germany Friday, but the device did not explode and no one was injured, police said. That was the 10th case reported in January.

The Federal Crime Office reported Thursday that 173 similar attacks were carried out against refugee shelters in 2015, more than six times the number recorded in 2014.

More than one million people from war-torn and poverty-ridden countries of the Middle East, Africa and Asia flooded into Europe last year, making it the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II. Germany sheltered most of them.
Iran is open for business. Thats the message from President Hassan Rouhani during his milestone visit to Europe.

With most sanctions lifted as a result of its agreement to dismantle its nuclear program, Iran has embarked on a charm offensive to extol the economic opportunities on its territory and to free itself from years of international isolation.

But some Middle East experts dont expect American companies to jump in too soon.

Arriving in France this week, President Rouhani said his visit aims to strengthen Iran's ties with the European Union and enhance international relations. He wasted no time, buying more than 100 Airbus passenger planes worth $27 billion and signing additional multi-billion dollar deals with France and Italy.

Its a charm offensive aimed at softening the Wests hardline image of Iran, says market economist Peter Cardillo.

I think what were going to see here is a rush of companies trying to get their share of the market in Iran," he said.

Despite the opportunities, American companies may want to proceed with caution. Speaking with VOAs Persian Service, Middle East expert Ken Weinstein, at the Hudson Institute, says some U.S. sanctions remain to prevent future nuclear violations by Iran.

[US companies'] general counsels have to be concerned, because some of these sanctions could have potential impact on their operations in Iran and elsewhere," he said.

U.S. rhetoric in an election year could also add to the uncertainty in US-Iran relations. Weinstein says much will depend on how Irans government proceeds.



If the Iranian regime moves away from the ballistic missile program, if it moves away from aggressive actions in neighboring countries, if it begins to respect human rights  rights of women, rights of minorities  the issue of sanctions becomes much less of a problem," he said.

Analysts say Iran may be adding to the uncertainty by engaging with European companies, perhaps to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Europe. But with the price of oil, its major source of revenue, likely to remain low, economist Cardillo says Iran will do whats best for Iran.



Its probably going to take time for them to really get production up to the point where theyre going to have major revenues coming in as far as the oil side is concerned, so theyre out there trying to make deals," he said.

After years of isolation, Iran is eager to sell its attributes. With a market of 80 million people and an annual output of $400 billion, Iran is the biggest economy to rejoin the global trading system since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The borders of the Islamic States self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria are steadily eroding, but it will likely be months before U.S. and coalition-backed forces are ready to take on the terror groups strongholds in Mosul or Raqqa.

New estimates from U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) show Islamic State (IS) fighters have lost 40 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and five percent of the territory they once held in Syria.

Weve seen small dust-ups in both the Euphrates and Tigris River valleys but no significant tactical action, OIR spokesman Col. Steve Warren told Pentagon reporters from Baghdad regarding IS activity in Iraq.

Warren said in Syria, IS fighters were carrying out limited offensive operations along the so-called Mara line in the countrys northwest, making some small gains against regime forces in Aleppo.

The U.S.-led coalition has also been pressuring IS from the air, focusing the majority of its airstrikes in and around Ramadi and Mosul in Iraq and around the terror groups de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria.

Waiting for Mosul

Since Iraqi forces retook Ramadi from Islamic State fighters last month, there have been growing expectations that Mosul would be next, with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters moving on the city from the north while Iraqi forces attacked from the south.

Yet despite the progress, Col. Warren cautioned a move on Mosul is not imminent.

Nobodys ready to really slap the table yet and say, This is it. Were moving out, he said. This is going to be many months before were going to see actual operations for Mosul begin.

The Pentagon estimates it will need 10 brigades with 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers each to retake Mosul from Islamic State. Two of the brigades are likely to be Kurdish Peshmerga and some will come from the force used to recapture Ramadi. But the others need to be built from scratch, with soldiers going through an average of eight weeks of training before they would be ready for combat.

Another factor behind the wait to retake Mosul: U.S. military officials have recommended that the brigades that helped retake Ramadi go through another cycle of training before taking part in what is expected to be a bigger and more complex battle.

In the meantime, U.S. officials say they are ramping up efforts to degrade Islamic States capabilities by continuing to target the terror groups oil facilities, its cash reserves and also key officials, especially in and around Raqqa.

Slow approach to Raqqa

Col. Warren said U.S. and coalition-backed forces have also slowly been moving on Raqqa, taking key points to the west and east of the city, forcing Islamic State fighters to expose themselves to airstrikes.

Its a process right now of isolation and degradation, Warren said. It is certainly feasible that Raqqa can be pressured or even assaulted in the next year.

But Warren cautioned a lot still depends on the ability to build relationships with anti-Islamic State forces on the ground.

We have to see how rapidly we can develop some of these partner forces, some of these moderate Syrian opposition forces."

Pentagon officials say the U.S. currently has 3,700 troops in Iraq as part of the ongoing train, advise and assist mission. U.S. special forces, including a specialized expeditionary targeting force, are also on the ground in Iraq and Syria, helping to gather intelligence and to target high ranking Islamic State leaders.

U.S. President Barack Obama recently instructed his national security team to intensify efforts to destroy Islamic Sate cells no matter where they are.
Mali's elephants, one of just two remaining desert herds in the world, will be gone in three years unless the government does more to protect them, a conservation group said Thursday.

Poachers have taken advantage of the chaos from a growing Islamist insurgency and other unrest in the lawless north to step up ivory trafficking  a trade that the United Nations says funds militants.

Sixteen elephants have been killed so far this month, adding to more than 80 slaughtered in 2015, said Susan Canney, director of Mali Elephant Project for the WILD Foundation.

"We have 50 rangers waiting to be deployed but they are held up waiting for official approval and firearms from the government," she told Reuters.

"Mali is standing by while the elephants are being slaughtered. ... If we continue at this rate, they will all be gone in three years."

The last aerial census in 2007 showed 350 animals.

The West African country's government could not immediately be reached for comment. The army has deployed some forces to the Gourma region in recent weeks to boost surveillance.

Malian tusks are thought to be sold on the black market for up to 3 million CFA Francs ($5,000), according to Canney.

The African deserts and savannahs stretching between the Gulf of Guinea and the Nile Basin once held tens of thousands of elephants, but poaching and loss of habitat has dramatically cut their numbers. Most now live in small, scattered groups. Namibia is home to the world's only other known desert herd.

Suspects arrested

Separately, police in Gabon this week arrested three men on suspicion of ivory trafficking after a search that lasted for weeks, the Conservation Justice campaign group said Thursday.

The three Gabonese men were caught in Tchibanga with 43 kg (95 lb) of ivory, it added. Last month, Gabon seized around 200 kg of ivory in what may have been its largest catch ever.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing mounting political pressure over the number of migrants arriving in her country  with regional authorities demanding that Berlin provide more resources to cope with the crisis.



More than 1.1 million migrants are being resettled across Germany. At a meeting Thursday with Chancellor Merkel, the leaders of Germanys 16 federal states demanded a doubling of financial aid and support for housing and schools. Hannelore Kraft is president of the North Rhine-Westphalia region.



"I and other regional leaders cannot see any great progress against the mountain of asylum applications, which continues to grow," said Kraft. "German citizens are worried, partly because we dont really know who is here."



On Thursday, Chancellor Merkel struck a deal with her governing coalition partners that would facilitate deportations and restrict the rights of migrants to bring their families to Germany.



"The government wants those with the prospect of remaining to be integrated, but those who have no prospect of remaining should return," said Merkel.



Germany anticipates the migrant influx could cost the state an extra $3.7 billion in extra social benefits during 2016. Its hoped German language classes will speed the migrants' entry into the labor market and cut the benefits bill.



Its uncertain therell be enough jobs, says the head of integration for the Berlin regional senate, Andreas Germershausen.



There is some capacity that can be absorbed," said Germershausen. "There is also a need for specific fields of the labor market. However, on the lower end of the labor market, there is, of course, the danger of competition."



German lawmakers fear a second wave of migrants as family members attempt to join those already in Germany. Figures from the United Nations show a sharp increase in the number of women and children arriving on Europes shores in 2016.
A new online database is fighting medical quackery in Nigeria by helping people easily find out if their doctor has a license.

The website, called Dodgy Doctors, is a searchable database of Nigeria's licensed medical professionals.

Temi Adeoye, a strategist with civic technology group Code for Nigeria, which helped develop the database, said he got the idea from a similar tool in Kenya.

"Quackery is a major pain in Nigeria, Adeoye said.

To check a doctors legitimacy, users go to the news website Sahara Reporters, which is hosting Dodgy Doctors, and type in their doctors name to see if it appears in the database of the Medical and Dental Council, Nigeria's regulatory body for licensed practitioners.

"Why should I use this doctor? Adeoye said. Because he's a doctor? Oh no, because he's a licensed doctor, and how do I know he's a licensed doctor? This tool tells me he's a licensed doctor."

Code for Nigeria also developed tools that help people locate the nearest hospital and determine the market price of pharmaceuticals.

Massive problem

Henry Okwuokenye, head of the inspectorate for the Medical and Dental Council, called the issue of fake doctors "massive."

He said there are at least 30 open cases against alleged fake doctors nationwide. But, he said, the data used by Code for Nigeria is from 2006, and the group should have waited for more up-to-date information.

"It's a lovely idea to have people know who's a doctor at the click of the phone, Okwuokenye said. It's very laudable. But there needs to be an agreement reached with the Medical and Dental Association of Nigeria as to deploying this tool."

Adeoye said the data used by Dodgy Doctors is the most recent available from the association. He says he plans to seek more recent data from the association if it is available, and update the database accordingly.
President Barack Obama met with his defense chief at the White House on Friday as the White House ramps up its strategy to defeat Islamic State and the groups attempts to expand beyond Iraq and Syria into Libya.



The president met with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter after directing his security team to intensify those elements of our strategy that are showing progress, said spokesman Josh Earnest. That includes the use of U.S. special expeditionary forces to carry out raids, free hostages, capture IS leaders and gather intelligence.



We need to accelerate the defeat of ISIL [Islamic State], said Carter during an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on Friday. The Pentagon has said IS fighters have moved into Libya to train and recruit fighters and warned they may be plotting to capture large swaths of territory, as they did in Syria and Iraq.



The U.S. has sent some of its forces into Libya to assess what is happening on the ground and is open to sending more personnel.



During the NPR interview, Carter said Obama is willing to consider proposals to do more to combat Islamic State.



He has granted every proposal weve asked him, said Carter. And do I expect more in the future? Yes. Were looking for opportunities to do more.



Earnest said the White House had no announcement to make on Friday regarding the possible deployment of additional expeditionary forces into Iraq, Syria or Libya.



However, he added, the White House is mindful of the Islamic State strategy to establish a foothold in areas where there is chaos, such as in Libya. There is much turmoil and violence, and Libya is struggling to put together a central government, said the White House spokesman.



The U.S. supports a U.N.-backed plan to build a united Libyan government. But power struggles and regional rivalries are threatening the effort.
On the eve of the African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Burundi has again said it will not accept AU peacekeepers in the country.

On Thursday, Burundis main opposition coalition CNARED urged the African Union and the international community to send an AU peacekeeping force.

CNARED leader Leonard Nyangoma said a failure by the international community to support the Burundian people would lead to the resurgence of armed groups to fight what he called the aggression of [President] Pierre Nkurunziza.

Burundi had already said any AU peacekeepers in Burundi would be considered an invasion force. Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe said the AU cannot send troops to any member country without the approval of that country.

It is one thing to ask for AU to send troops; it is another thing for the AU to operationalize that request. What we all know is that the AU is not going to send troops to countries that have not expressed their consent of sending the troops. That was the conclusion of the ministerial meeting of the East African Standby Force. Now, if that was the conclusion of the ministerial meeting, I doubt that the AU Peace and Security Council will do otherwise, he said.

Nyamitwe said Burundi will tell African leaders that Burundi is opened to principled cooperation.

The matter is not simply saying we want to deploy, but why do you have to deploy in the first place. So we are going to tell the Peace and Security Council how committed to peace and stability we are, what are the steps that we have already undertaken towards peace in Bujumbura, Nyamitwe said.

He said he will tell the African Union that the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza has never opposed any kind of international presence in Bujumbura and Burundi in general.

Nyamitwe referenced his governments acceptance of human rights monitors. Now, he said the African Union and the government will need to sit together to work out the modalities of the deployment of additional monitors.

Erastus Mwencha, the African Union deputy chairman of the African Union Commission, told VOA recently that the job of any government is to protect its citizens. But he said the Burundian government has not shown it can protect all its citizens.

Nyamitwe said Burundi enjoys the support of most members of the African Union as evidenced by Burundi election this week to the AU Peace and Security Council for the next two years.

It is a demonstration that they recognize that in Burundi there is a legitimate government which has participated fully in peacekeeping in Africa and beyond and is delivering in that area. And they have acknowledged that in re-electing Burundi as one of the 15 member states to spearhead the matter of peace and security on the continent, Nyamitwe said.

Meanwhile, the human rights group Amnesty International said satellite images and witnesses point to possible mass graves in Burundi that appeared after security forces retaliated against rebel gunmen in Bujumbura.

Amnesty's director for East Africa, Muthoni Wanyeki, said Thursday, "These images suggest a deliberate effort by authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out."

Amnesty said police and security forces killed dozens of people on December 11 after rebels attacked three military bases in the capital.

Nyamitwe refused to comment on the report.

Im not a specialist of satellite imaging. So, I wouldnt like to comment on this one way or the others, and I am not, unfortunately a technology whiz, he said.
A video released Thursday by the FBI of the shooting death of a spokesman for the armed occupiers of a wildlife refuge shows the man reaching into his jacket before he fell into the snow. The FBI said the man had a gun in his pocket.

The FBI showed the video at a news conference to counter claims that the man killed in the Tuesday confrontation on a remote road, Robert Finicum, did nothing to provoke officers.

During that confrontation, the FBI and Oregon State Police arrested five main figures in the occupation, including Ammon Bundy, their main leader.

The video, shot by the FBI from an airplane, shows a vehicle being driven by Bundy by stopped by police on a road. A white truck driven by Finicum was stopped but took off, with officers in pursuit. The video shows Finicum's vehicle going into a snowbank when encountering a roadblock.

A man identified as Finicum gets out of the truck, there is gunfire as he reaches into his jacket, and he falls into the snow.

"On at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket,'' said Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge for the FBI in Portland. "He did have a loaded 9 millimeter semiautomatic handgun in the pocket.''

Bretzing also said Finicum's truck nearly hit an FBI agent before it got stuck in the snow.

"Actions have consequences,'' Bretzing said. "The FBI and OSP tried to effect these arrests peacefully.''

The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office on Thursday confirmed the person shot in the Tuesday confrontation was Finicum, 54, an Arizona rancher.

Four holdouts

Meanwhile, four occupiers remained at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, demanding assurances they not be arrested.

The occupation by ranchers and others began January 2, and at one point there were a couple dozen people holed up, demanding that the federal government turn public lands over to local control. But the compound has been emptying out since the arrest of Bundy, and 10 others over the past few days, and with the death of Finicum.

Oregon Public Broadcasting spoke with the holdouts and identified them as David Fry, who is from Ohio; husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson of Idaho; and Jeff Banta of Nevada. Fry told the station that Sean Anderson faces a federal arrest warrant.

All 11 people under arrest have been charged with a felony count of conspiring to impede federal officers from carrying out their duties through force or intimidation. Three of the 11 were arrested Wednesday night when they left the refuge.

Ammon Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The group came to the desert of eastern Oregon to decry what it calls onerous federal land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.

In a criminal complaint Wednesday, federal authorities said the armed group had explosives and night-vision goggles and was prepared to fight.

The charges against Bundy and others say that the refuge's 16 employees have been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence.
U.S. President Barack Obama has told fellow party members he is certain a Democrat will be the next president of the United States.

Speaking Thursday in Baltimore, just north of Washington, the president said, "Democrats will win in November and we will have a Democratic president succeeding me -- just in case there's any confusion about that."

Obama said he was confident of his prediction because Democrats "focus on the things that matter in the lives of American people."

The U.S. leader was addressing Democratic Party lawmakers at their annual retreat.

Obama, in a jab against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, said at the gathering, "We're not going to strengthen our leadership around the world by allowing politicians to insult Muslims or pit groups of Americans against each other."

Republican front-runner Trump has called for a moratorium on allowing Muslims into the United States and has also caused a rupture in the Republican Party.
South Korean legislators failed to hold a vote this week on a proposed North Korean Human Rights Act, despite an agreement between the two major political parties to consider the measure.

The legislation, first proposed in 2005, reportedly mandated that future humanitarian aid and cooperation projects be linked to human rights improvements in the North. But it remains a divisive issue in the South Korean parliament where opponents argue it would obstruct any possibility for improving inter-Korean relations.

Divisive aspects of bill

Earlier this week, it appeared a consensus had been reached when reports said the ruling Saenuri Party of President Park Geun-hye and the opposition Minjoo Party had reached a breakthrough deal to consider legislation intended to hold the Kim Jong Un government accountable for alleged widespread abuses.



One of the reasons the bill was not on the [legislative] agenda is that there is a gap in positions between the majority party and the opposition party on whether inter-Korean relations should be addressed in the bill or not, said activist Choi Yong-sang, with the Network for North Korean Human Rights.



Another controversial aspect of the bill was that it would include financial support for organizations that actively work to undermine the Kim Jong Un government, including North Korean defector groups that regularly send anti-Kim propaganda leaflets across the border.

Everybody around the world has been getting tough on North Korea, and in South Korea there has been this political divide that prevents them from taking the sort of actions you would expect to have occurred a long time ago, said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch's deputy director for Asia.



In 2014, the U.N. General Assembly backed a resolution to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, based on an extensive U.N. human rights report that documented ongoing and systematic atrocities including a network of political prisons, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence.



Critics of the bill recognize the extreme severity of the atrocities committed by the highly restrictive, authoritarian North Korean government, but disagree that publicly confronting the leadership on this issue will force them to change.



It is impossible to improve the situation by the idea of calling Kim Jong Un to the ICC. It is necessary to approach North Korea with specific action plans such as proposing to demolish the criminal camps owned and operated by North Korea within five years, step by step, said political analyst Cheong Seong-chang with the Sejong Institute.

Inter-Korean relations

However, any prospects for improving inter-Korean relations have faded in the wake of North Koreas fourth nuclear test conducted on January 6. And there is increased public support in South Korea for harsh economic sanctions to further isolate and punish Pyongyang and heighten military readiness to respond to any provocations.



I think the people who have been arguing for engagement with North Korea have frankly very little to show either in terms of peace or in terms of improvement of human rights, said Robertson.



Parliamentary procedures may have also played a part in undermining the legislative initiative. Even though the Saenuri Party holds 158 of the 300 seats in the Assembly, the speaker needs the support of 60 percent of lawmakers to bring a bill up for a vote. Also, analysts speculate that with elections pending in April, the opposition could be holding up the human rights bill and other measures supported by the Park government until it agrees to pass redistricting legislation.
A South Korean court has sentenced a U.S. man to 20 years in prison for the 1997 murder of a Korean man at a restaurant in the capital, Seoul.

Arthur Patterson, 36, was extradited to South Korea in September, to face charges of stabbing to death 22-year-old student Cho Choong-pil in a Burger King restroom.

Patterson, who was 17 at the time of the murder, had denied any involvement in the crime.

He was initially tried as an accomplice to his friend, Edward Lee, who was with him at the time of the murder. Both said they were innocent and accused the other of killing Cho.

Lee was sentenced to life in prison, while Patterson received 18 months for destroying evidence.

In 1998, Patterson was freed on a special amnesty program and fled to the United States while the case was being reinvestigated. Lee was also acquitted on appeal for lack of evidence and a new investigation centered on Patterson as the main perpetrator.

A South Korean movie depicting the murder was made in 2009 re-igniting public anger over the crime.

Patterson was in South Korea at the time of the killing because his father was a civilian employee working for the U.S. military. The crime occurred in a popular nightlife district.
The ability to accurately predict earthquakes is a holy grail of geology. Now, a group of researchers says it has found a previously unrecognized pattern just before larger earthquakes, observed with the devastating magnitude-9.0 tremor in northeastern Japan in 2011.

This has the potential to help refine time-dependent earthquake forecasts, according to an article published Friday in the journal Science.

Although it will be a long way to make earthquake predictions that are useful for society, I believe this is a significant step toward that, lead author Naoki Uchida, an assistant professor at Tohoku Universitys Research Center for the Prediction of Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions, told VOA.

But several prominent scientists told VOA they had issues with the methodology and did not see this as a major breakthrough.

Slips prior to quake

Uchida, two Japanese colleagues and two University of California-Berkeley scientists have outlined data they said reveals that subtle slips began accelerating a few days before the massive quake on March 11, 2011, which unleashed a devastating tsunami.

The quake and resulting tsunami waves killed an estimated 18,000 people and triggered the meltdowns of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan.

The offshore quake was the largest ever known to hit the seismically active island nation.

Uchida and his colleagues analyzed the data of more than 6,000 seismic moments over a period of 28 years to detect slip-rate fluctuations in northeastern Japan.

The results suggest the possibility of an earthquake is larger when slow slips are occurring, Uchida told VOA. By taking account of such relationships, the probability forecast of earthquakes can be improved.

Slow (or aseismic) slips displace rocks much more slowly than earthquakes and without generating seismic waves. But these slow slips can increase stress in adjacent areas and may trigger damaging earthquakes.

The analysis done by Uchida and his colleagues revealed that intervals of slow slips range from one to six years  often coinciding with clusters of large magnitude earthquakes, according to the paper published Friday.

Some have doubts

There are doubts among others, however, that detecting these slow slips can lead to reliable quake forecasting.

I think the best we could hope for from slow-slip events would be the same sort of modest probability gain, said David Jackson, professor emeritus of Earth and space sciences at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Until scientists make testable predictions, however, they have an interesting anecdote, not a fundamental discovery, said Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at California-Berkeley who was not involved in the research.

Stark, speaking to VOA, also criticized the lack of statistical care in the Science paper, adding the periodic slip model clearly does not fit the data well, but it's treated as ground truth.

Looking backward

A prominent critic of quake prediction theories asserted that after big quakes it is easy to retrospectively say a particular movement was a foreshock.

Despite 100 years of work, no one has ever found a way [going forward] to distinguish foreshocks from random small quakes, said Robert Geller, a geophysics professor at Tokyo University. So, unless you issue an alarm after every small quake, there's no way to use possible foreshocks to reliably predict big quakes.

Hundreds or thousands of false alarms for every successful alarm is not something the public would tolerate, Geller told VOA.

Jackson at UCLA said he agrees fully with Stark and Geller.

Readers will be drawn to the idea of earthquake prediction, but they will be much better informed if they are led to the logical constraints on the problem, Jackson told VOA. Meanwhile, let's wait for a track record of successful statements about future location, time and size limits for earthquakes after their predictions.
U.N. talks aimed at ending the five-year-old Syrian civil war started Friday in Geneva, with the main opposition group fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad belatedly saying it would send a delegation to the gathering.

The U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, met first with the Damascus delegation, led by Syria's ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jaafari. A spokeswoman for the U.N. diplomat said he would later meet with other participants in the talks, including civil society representatives affected by the conflict that has killed more than a quarter-million people and left millions displaced.

U.N. organizers say they are conducting indirect proximity talks, meetings in separate rooms, aiming to lay the groundwork for negotiations to end the civil war. It is the U.N.'s first attempt at Syrian peace talks in two years.

The United States had urged the Saudi-backed opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee, to accept the "historic opportunity" to join the talks without preconditions. At first, the group said it would stay away after its demands for an end to airstrikes on civilians and a lifting of the siege in Syria were not met. It relented later Friday and said it would send a delegation of 30 to 35 people to Geneva for "discussions," not "negotiations."

The war pits the Assad government against the rebels  both moderates and militants. Both the government and the moderate opposition have, at the same time, been battling extremists that include Islamic State militants.

The U.N. did not invite the Islamic State group because the U.N. considers IS a terrorist organization. Kurds who control much of northeast Syria are also missing from the talks, at the demand of Turkey, which says they are aligned with Kurdish fighters who have waged a 30-year battle with Ankara for autonomy in southeastern Turkey.

The talks are part of a plan outlined by the U.N. that calls for an 18-month timetable for transition in Syria, including drafting a new constitution and elections.

Confusion over who should represent the opposition, and the oppositions demands for its conditions to be met prior to the start of talks, showed how difficult the road to peace will be.

In the final hours before the start of talks Friday, organizers worked to smooth differences enough to get all parties to attend.

De Mistura: 'Talks cannot fail'

In a video message to the Syrian people Thursday night, de Mistura said the talks cannot fail. He said five years of the conflict have been too much and that the Syrian people have had enough.



Pressure to enter into negotiations is largely external, with the United States, the European Union, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all pushing for a solution.

In the West, that urgency has been fueled by terrorist attacks in Paris and the United States, and by the migrant crisis. Four million people, largely from Syria, are expected to arrive in western Europe this year.

The battles in Syria have intensified since September, when Russia began airstrikes in support of Assad, countering the efforts of opposition groups supported by the United States, some members of the European Union, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The complicated backdrop makes the peace process especially difficult.

With Russian support, Assads forces have made significant gains. Analysts say the government has little incentive to negotiate with an opposition that is weak and fractured.

Nadim Shehadi, director of the Fares Center at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, is pessimistic.

We are pressuring the opposition to prove that they are united, coherent, that they have a strong leadership and that they have a vision, and a policy and a certain consensus on what the future will be, and I dont think they do, I dont think they will in the near future, and I dont think they can, he said.



The talks had been set to begin last Monday but were delayed to Friday by discussions on who should represent the opposition.

WATCH: Syrian Civil War explained
U.N. officials in Geneva went ahead with peace talks Friday on ending the war in Syria, despite a boycott by the main Syrian opposition group.

The talks started with a meeting at the U.N. offices in Geneva between U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura and a Syrian government delegation headed by the Syrian ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jaafari.

After the meeting, de Mistura told reporters he hoped to meet with representatives of the opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee, on Sunday.

"I have good reasons to believe that they are actually considering this very seriously, and therefore to be in a position on probably Sunday, to actually start the discussion with them, in order to be able to proceed with the intra-Syrian talks," de Mistura said.

The group, which has been meeting in Riyadh, said it would send a small team of representatives to Geneva late Saturday to talk with U.N. officials, but not to negotiate.

The HNC had earlier said it would not join the negotiations after its demands were not met for an end to airstrikes on civilians by the Syrian government and Russia and a lifting of the sieges in areas they control.

On Friday, the group said it decided to send a delegation after receiving assurances. A spokesperson gave no details of what those assurances were.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement, "The United States welcomes the important decision by the High Negotiations Committee of the Syrian opposition to attend negotiations hosted by the United Nations in Geneva."

The talks are the first attempt at peace since negotiations collapsed in 2014.

Difficult process

The civil war in Syria has dragged for nearly five years, killed a quarter-million people and displaced millions more. The conflict has also seen the birth of the Islamic State militant group and triggered a massive wave of refugees to Western Europe.

The battles in Syria have intensified since September, when Russia began airstrikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad, countering the efforts of opposition groups supported by the United States, some members of the European Union, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The complicated backdrop makes the peace process especially difficult.

With Russian support, Assads forces have made significant gains. Analysts say the government has little incentive to negotiate with an opposition that is weak and fractured.

Even with the opposition joining the talks, analysts are pessimistic. Nadim Shehadi, director of the Fares Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, sees little chance of success.

We are pressuring the opposition to prove that they are united, coherent, that they have a strong leadership and that they have a vision and a policy and a certain consensus on what the future will be, and I dont think they do," he said. "I dont think they will in the near future, and I dont think they can.

The talks had been set to begin on January 25, but discussions about who should represent the opposition delayed them to Friday.

WATCH: Syrian Civil War explained
"In the beginning, the war wasnt near our city, but it kept moving from city to city and getting closer to us," said Waed Alhamoud, reflecting on what drove her family to seek out a new life halfway across the world.

"We felt we couldn't take it anymore," she told VOA. "Thats when we realized we needed to travel."

That was the beginning of a journey that began in the spring of 2011, when Syria became embroiled in an uprising that culminated in civil war.

Since then, more than half of Syrias 11 million people have either been killed or fled in search of refuge, sometimes in nearby countries, and sometimes farther west in Europe or the United States.

But for most refugees, getting away from the violence that engulfed their home is only the beginning of a lengthy journey filled with uncertainty, danger, and even death.

Since the civil war began, the U.S. has only allowed 1,500 Syrians to resettle within its borders, and Alhamoud's family is one of the lucky few.

Entering their home, one is struck by how typically American is seems. The kids are on their tablets or doing homework as Alhamoud cooks in the kitchen. But scratch the surface and you'll hear a harrowing and tragically common tale of how they escaped civil war with only the clothes on their backs.

Searching for safety

Waed Alhamouds husband, Fadi Lababidi, owned a small business. When the war began, he realized his family needed to move. His work allowed him to travel to Jordan, where he was able to find a temporary safe haven for them.

But initially, it meant leaving his family behind in Syria, and getting them out of the country proved difficult. After repeatedly being turned down by the authorities, Lababidi resorted to bribery to get his wife and children out of the country as well.

From Jordan, they watched as their home, Lababidi's business, and nearly everything in their city was turned to rubble.

They could never go back home again. As life for the thousands of Syrians fleeing into Jordan became more difficult, Lababidi applied to the UN for refugee status.

"My concern was to take my family anyplace good," he said.

Finding a new home, with help

What followed is typical for refugees: three years in limbo. During their last year in Jordan, the adults underwent a series of six interviews, each lasting five hours. Then the call came. Exodus Refugee Immigration would help them move to Indianapolis, Indiana. They had just six days to prepare, and knew little English.

Sara Hindi, then an intern with the social service group, met them at the Indianapolis airport to act as their interpreter. She ultimately became the family's mentor.

"I kind of took on the opportunity to be a friend for them, to be a family member for them," she said. Hindi "knew what life was like being Arab and Muslim in the United States."

The kids quickly picked up English, happy to be back in school. Lababidi got a job. And for the most part the community was helpful and welcoming.

Terror attack backlash

Then came Novembers terror attacks in France. In response, governors of more than half of the states, including Indiana, signed a petition to stop Syrian refugees from resettling in the United States.

Lababidi says he understands the governors fear and need to keep their people safe, but says terror comes from everywhere and that it's wrong to single out and punish Syrian refugees.

"This problem in Syria, not just from Syrian people," he said. Terror comes "from every country, from Iran, from Iraq, from America, from Europe, from Lebanon, from Jordan, from every people."

For their part, the family has made it their mission to counter the widespread perception of a link between Syrian refugees and terrorism. They've extended an invitation to anyone to come to their home for a cup of Ahlamouds deliciously rich Arabian coffee, to hear their story, and learn first hand that terror and Islam do not go together.

"People who commit all these horrible acts in the name of Islam, dont know Islam at all. Islam does not order killing," Lababidi stressed. "Those people dont represent Muslims at all."

The family hopes that someday even Indiana Governor Mike Pence will visit their home to see they truly are like any other American family: kids on their smart phones, Mom in the kitchen, Dad working hard. Theyve just been through a little more to find their American dream.
An American media watchdog group is urging Ugandan authorities to allow a privately owned radio station in the country to resume broadcasts.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Endigyito FM was forced off the air last week when officials revoked the station's license and confiscated its broadcasting equipment.

An employee at the station said the move came a day after the station aired an interview with opposition presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi. Uganda is scheduled to hold presidential elections on February 18.

"It is absolutely vital that Ugandan citizens can get information from a range of sources, particularly ahead of elections," the CPJ's Africa Program Coordinator Sue Valentine said in a statement released Thursday.

The CPJ has documented several cases of Ugandan journalists being harassed this month. Police on January 8 released two newspaper editors they had held for 24 hours without allowing them contact with the outside world, according to news reports.
Democratic Republic of Congo's army and U.N. peacekeepers agreed Thursday to resume military cooperation against Rwandan Hutu rebels, the U.N. mission said, beefing up efforts to root out one of the region's most notorious rebel groups.

The U.N. mission pulled out of a planned joint offensive against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) a year ago after the government named two generals the U.N. suspects of widespread human rights abuses to command it.

The FDLR includes former Hutu militiamen responsible for Rwanda's 1994 genocide who then fled into eastern Congo. Its presence on Congolese soil has been cited as a reason for a series of military interventions by Rwanda.

Millions died of conflict, hunger and disease during a 1998-2003 war in eastern Congo, fueled by Rwandan intervention, and the region remains plagued by dozens of armed groups that exploit its vast reserves of gold, diamonds and other minerals.

Logistical aid, troops

Thursday's agreement was signed in the capital Kinshasa by Congo Defense Minister Crispin Atama Tabe and U.N. deputy mission chief David Gressly, the latter told Reuters.

"Where we jointly agree that there is a common objective, we will work in a coordinated way using whatever assets we determine, collectively, make the most sense," Gressly said.

Assistance, he said, could range from logistical aid to armed support by troops from MONUSCO, as the U.N. mission is known.

The Congo army's spokesman said he was not aware of the agreement. The government spokesman and defense minister could not be immediately reached for comment.

Gressly said the two sides agreed to establish a formal mechanism to address allegations of human rights abuses by commanders and that MONUSCO had also put in place a new internal assessment system to reduce the risk of rights violations.

After the government refused to withdraw the generals and launched unilateral operations against the FDLR last February, MONUSCO said it would accept other measures to guard against abuses. But talks about resuming cooperation stalled for months.

While the government says its ongoing military efforts have decimated the FDLR, U.N. officials and independent analysts say the offensive has been hampered by poor logistics and has failed to kill or capture key rebel leaders.
A U.S. government auditor says despite more than a decade of reconstruction and development efforts, Afghanistans economy remains in fragile and worsening condition.

Intractable insurgents, cutbacks in foreign military personnel, persistent emigration of people and capital, and a slowing global economy are shifting Afghanistans economic prospects from troubling to bleak, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) said in its quarterly report released on Friday.

It went on to warn that Afghanistan proved even more dangerous than it was a year ago, saying the Taliban is now in control of more territory than at any time since 2001. It quoted a U.S. military report that said approximately 71.7 percent of the countrys districts are under Afghan government control or influence.

The lack of security has made it almost impossible for many U.S. and even some Afghan officials to get out to manage and inspect U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, SIGAR added.

The dangers of absent oversight were exposed when a task force appointed by President Ashraf Ghani reportedly found that millions of dollars were being embezzled while Afghanistan pays for numerous nonexistent ghost schools, ghost teachers, and ghost students, it said.

The inspector general said Afghanistans domestic revenues covered only 40 percent of budget expenditures through the first 11 months of the fiscal year. He predicted the countrys large budget deficits and trade imbalances will require substantial donor aid for the foreseeable future.

SIGAR said cumulative funding for Afghanistan reconstruction increased to approximately $113.1 billion, with approximately $11.5 billion of this amount available for potential disbursement. A total of $8.4 billion of the reconstruction funding has been provided for counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.
The United States Treasury blacklisted two Lebanese men Thursday, accusing them of laundering money for the Lebanese-based terror group Hezbollah.

The Treasury says Mohamad Noureddine and Hamdi Zaher El Dine used Noureddine's company, called Trade Point International, to launder money for Hezbollah and others already on the U.S. blacklist.

"Noureddine has utilized an extensive network across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to provide money laundering, bulk cash shipment, black market currency exchange and other financial services for a variety of clients, including Hezbollah members," the Treasury said in a statement.

About 100 individuals and companies with ties to Hezbollah are on the U.S. Treasury's blacklist.

Their U.S. assets are frozen, and U.S. citizens are barred from doing business with them.
U.S. and British intelligence cracked the codes of Israeli drone operations in the Middle East and monitored Israeli Air Force communications dating back to 1998, several media outlets reported Friday.

The investigative website The Intercept, the German magazine Der Spiegel, and Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth daily attributed the disclosures they published Friday to former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked millions of documents about U.S. government surveillance in 2013.

The Intercept, an online publication associated with journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has collaborated with Snowden, said the hacking gave intelligence agencies a virtual seat in the cockpit' as Israeli drones hit militant targets.

Yedioth Ahronoth said that the hacking operation, codenamed "Anarchist," began in 1998 at a British facility in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus and an NSA site at Menwith Hill, in northern England.

Israel did not officially comment on the reports, but Israeli Minister of Energy Yuval Steinitz expressed disappointment.

Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet who previously held the post of minister of intelligence affairs, said Israelis were not surprised by the reports, adding that the Americans spy on every country in the world and on us as well, on their friends.''

Steinitz told Israeli Army Radio the reported hacking is "disappointing" given that, in his words, we haven't been spying or collecting intelligence or cracking codes in the United States for decades.''

The U.S. and Britain declined to comment on the issue. The spokespersons for the respective embassies in Tel Aviv said that they do not publicly discuss intelligence matters.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell visited Kruger National Park in South Africa this week as part of a trip to encourage international cooperation to combat wildlife trafficking. Jewell also visited a crime scene where a rhino was killed by poachers and stopped at the park's command center for anti-poaching operations.

Secretary Jewell kicked off her tour of Kruger National Park on Friday by holding a closed door meeting with her South African counterpart, Minister of Water and Environment Edna Molewa.

When Jewell emerged from the meeting, she expressed confidence on the measures being taken by South Africa to combat poaching.

The two ministers were then taken to a crime scene where a white bull rhino was brutally killed by poachers for its horn.

A visibly shaken Jewell expressed great disappointment and called for a united effort to fight poaching.

Eliminating the trade of ivory in China as we are doing in the United States is a step in that direction and political will is really important and leadership from the top is really important, but also grassroots support to change minds, to change habits, she said.

Her South African counterpart pleaded with those involved in illicit rhino trade to stop the brutality.

The rhino horn does not cure whatever people say it cures, so it is important that we dont continue to believe in that myth," said Molewa. "So lets stop killing our rhino.

Forensic experts were also on the scene to gather evidence that could help prosecute the suspects once they are caught.

South Africa is already using high-tech equipment to fight poaching, thanks to the United States for donations in cash and kind.

At the Parks Joint Operations Center, fitted with a well-equipped two-way radio control room, Jewell was shown helicopters being used in the fight against poaching. She donated night vision goggles to help rangers spot poachers at night.

In 2015, the park experienced a 27 percent increase in rhino poaching incidents; however, the number of rhinos killed decreased when compared to that of 2014.

South Africa has the world's largest rhino population. The Kruger National Park alone is home to more than 9,000 white rhinos.

Secretary Jewell will conclude her tour of the park on Saturday before returning to the U.S.
The U.S. Department of State is warning American citizens, especially Iranian-Americans, of the risks of travel to Iran.

The travel warning issued Friday replaces what was in effect since August 5, 2015. It reiterates the risk of arrest and detention of U.S. citizens, particularly dual national Iranian-Americans, in Iran.

The alert was issued only days after five Americans, including four dual Iranian nationals, were released by Iran in a prisoner swap, following the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, while the Islamic Republic began the implementation of a deal to curb its nuclear program.

The warning says that various elements'' in Iran remain hostile to the U.S., although Iran and six other countries, including the U.S. reached an agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program last July. The State Department warning says that Iranian authorities continue to "harass, arrest and detain U.S. citizens."

Because the United States does not have diplomatic or consular relations with Iran, the U.S. has limited ability to help American citizens there in the event of an emergency.

The Department of State urges U.S. citizens in Iran to ensure that they have up-to-date documentation at all times and make their own plans in the event of an emergency.



Presently, the Embassy of Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran, but Iran has often denied the Swiss consular access to dual nationals.
The United States military for the first time has categorically stated its counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan are not targeting the Haqqani network of militants, which is fighting alongside the Taliban.

The comment this week by Lieutenant General John Mick Nicholson, picked to lead US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has come as a surprise to regional analysts who say it could be signaling a shift in Washingtons policy to promote Afghan peace and reconciliation efforts.

They are not part of that designation right nowThe Haqqanis are principally a focus of the Afghan security forces, Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday when asked wether U.S. forces target the Haqqanis as part of their counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan.

Nicholson went on to explain that the focus of U.S. counterterrorism actions are militants linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State group to prevent them from becoming a threat to the United States. Around 10,000 U.S. forces are stationed in Afghanistan as part of NATO-led Resolute Support mission to train and advise Afghan security forces and conduct counterterrorism operations.

But he reiterated the Haqqani network is the number one threat to American forces in the country and a severe threat to the Afghan government.

U.S. and Afghan officials have long alleged that Haqqanis together with the Taliban are using their bases in Pakistani border territory for attacks inside Afghanistan.

Nicholson reiterated those concerns in his testimony, saying the United States has not been satisfied that Pakistan has put enough pressure on the Haqqanis to prevent cross-border attacks.

I view it as a serious problem and this has been one of the principal challenges. It is a sanctuary that our enemies and particularly the Haqqani network have enjoyed inside Pakistan, he said.

The head of Islamabad-based Institute of Strategic Studies, Masood Khan, while commenting on the U.S. generals comments regarding the Haqqani network says principal interlocutors need to signal flexibility.

Afghan, Pakistani, U.S. and Chinese officials have recently initiated a four-way peace process aimed at resurrecting stated talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban.

The contract group has held two meetings this month while a third is scheduled for February 6 in Islamabad.

It is absolutely imperative to bring Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. Pakistan believes that the best way to do this is through well-considered incentivization and inducement. Neither coercion nor weak blandishments would work, said Khan.

Nicholson praised the quadrilateral talks as a great leap forward, saying it should result in a road map for further Afghan peace talks.

These talks are encouraging; I see reconciliation as the path towards a negotiated settlement that brings about the end of conflict in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network has carried out some of the most sophisticated guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings in Afghanistan against both local as well as foreign targets.

Lately, it has focused its raids on targets in Kabul. The group's leadership U.S. officials believe has links to the Pakistani spy agency, charges Islamabad denies.
A U.S. court has sentenced a Somali national to nine years in prison for providing material support to the Islamist militant group al-Shabab.

U.S. prosecutors said Mahdi Hashi, who was born in Somalia, had abandoned his home in Britain to return to the country of his birth and join al-Shabab.

Hashi, 26, was sentenced in Brooklyn, New York Friday after pleading guilty in May to conspiring to help support the Islamist group.

The court also sentenced two Swedish citizens last week for working alongside Hashi to help al-Shabab.

Hashi was arrested in 2012 in East Africa and was transferred to the United States for prosecution.

Prosecutors say he was affiliated with American jihadist Omar Hamami and his group of U.S.-born fighters. Hamami was on Washington's most wanted list until he died in a gun battle in 2013.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement Friday that al-Shabab seeks to recruit Western fighters because they have the potential to more easily cross international borders.

"Al-Shabab frequently made Western foreign fighters the face of its fundraising and propaganda efforts as part of a broader strategy emphasizing that the conflict in Somali was part of a global jihad aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate."

The group controlled most of southern Somalia as recently as 2010, but was pushed into the countryside by African Union and Somali government forces.

The militants, which have links to al-Qaida carry out frequent attacks, often targeting government officials and African Union troops.

Al-Shabab, which seeks to impose a strict form of Islamic law Somalia, has also carried out attacks outside their borders, including in Kenya and Uganda.
The bellicose leader of Russia's republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, rules with aggressive rhetoric and an iron fist that sparks outcries from liberal politicians but no rebuke from the Kremlin.

In fact, authorities in Moscow earlier this month stopped a one-man protest by an opposition party calling for Kadyrovs resignation, after city officials refused an earlier request for a larger demonstration.

"It's simply the authorities' reaction to criticism of Kadyrov, said Galina Mikhailova, 1st deputy chairman of Yabloko Party's Moscow Branch. Our authorities like Kadyrov very much. And very much dislike the liberal opposition."

The strongman of Chechnya had called politicians opposed to President Vladimir Putin "enemies of the people" who should be judged as traitors.

Political analysts say Kadyrov's target audience was not so much the opposition, but Putin himself.

"So, it's a bit of carrot and stick, said Mark Galeotti of New York University. It's a bit of I could be a really useful friend to you, Putin; I could also be a real problem. So, basically, make sure that our particular budget donations come."

Chechnya depends on Moscow financially, but the Kremlin relies on Kadyrov for stability, fearing a third Chechen War without him.

Iron fist

The notoriously outspoken Kadyrov has told his top law enforcement personnel they can open fire at officers from other parts of Russia.

The Chechen leader maintains peace with an iron fist, ruling the republic as his own, with disregard for all Russian authorities except Putin.

"And Ramzan [Kadyrov has] repeated many times, by the way, that Putin must stay president of Russia forever, because he understands very well that without Putin, he will encounter a lot of problems, said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center. This is his red line. 

Kadyrov is linked to Chechens charged in the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, calling the main suspect a "true patriot."

As the investigation turned to Chechnya, Putin very publicly presented Kadyrov with the "Order of Honor," one of Russia's highest awards.

"Even though almost everyone else within the government loathes Kadyrov with an absolute passion, and regard him as a dangerous, loose cannon, so long as Putin himself is willing to be Kadyrov's protector, Kadyrov is untouchable," Galeotti said.

As Russia's budget shrinks with the economy, though, the Chechen leader could become a liability.

With less money to go around, Galeotti said other regions may start asking why they are feeding Kadyrov.
Recent hotel attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali have prompted concerns and increased vigilance in countries across West Africa.

Sierra Leone, for example, has stepped up security not only around hotels popular with foreigners, but also at the airport, at land borders and on the waterways.

Francis Langumba Kelli, spokesperson for the Office of National Security (ONS) in Sierra Leone, said there has been no direct threat from any terrorist organization, but that the country is not taking any chances.

"So as a precautionary measure, we think we should start stepping up our security efforts, because we have come to realize that the nature of attacks look at vulnerable countries and areas frequented by foreigners, especially Westerners, Kelli said.

This is not the first time the country has increased security due to other attacks on the continent. In 2013, when the Somali-based militant group al-Shabab attacked the Westgate mall in Kenya, Sierra Leone took similar protective measures.

The ONS also wants to develop anti-terrorism legislation.

'No cause for alarm'

Sierra Leone's security forces are working with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is offering technical input, Kelli said, while cautioning against overreaction.

"There's no cause for alarm, he said. I'm seeing a lot misconceptions, messaging going around on social media, saying don't go to the Radisson Blu, don't go to [hotel] lobby, lock yourself in the room. Those are panicking situations that will not help at all."

Hotel manager Nuno Nueves at the Radisson Blu in Freetown echoed the views of the ONS, saying the key is prevention. The hotel has stepped up security with more guards on patrol and new metal detectors, he said. The hotel will also be installing more security cameras.

Nueves said he realizes people may be concerned about visiting Sierra Leone, but the right precautions have been taken. In addition, he said, he is in touch with embassies and the president's office to exchange ideas on additional security measures.

"As long as this country is open for business, we should make it possible that people come here to feel comfortable and safe," he said.
Without Republican front-runner Donald Trump at center stage, the seven Republican candidates who participated in Thursday night's main debate were able to delve more deeply into issues such as immigration and U.S. foreign policy.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who are polling in the double-digits behind Trump, exchanged several heated exchanges throughout the night.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has had several lackluster debate performances and is a frequent target of Trump's barbs, seemed more relaxed Thursday and engaged in a few quick retorts with Rubio as well.

One of the lengthiest exchanges of the night occurred when Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly, using video clips of previous statements, questioned several candidates regarding their seeming flip-flops on the immigration issue.

WATCH: Candidates on national security

Rubio campaigned for the Senate in 2010 on a tough immigration stance, saying he would never support blanket amnesty. He later became part of a bipartisan group of senators called the gang of eight, who crafted a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013 that contained a pathway to citizenship. The bill passed in the Senate but failed in the House of Representatives.

In a testy exchange with Kelly, Rubio denied he had changed his position on immigration issues, easily one of the most contentious among the Republican candidates. What Ive always said is this issue needs to be solved, he said.

He said while hes not for deporting the millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. -- as Trump has suggested he would do -- were not for handing out citizenship either.

Bush attacked Rubio, saying the senator had sought his support as governor on legislation that would allow a pathway to citizenship. But "then he cut and run because it wasn't popular with conservatives," he chided.

Rubio fired back, saying Bush "used to support" a path to citizenship.

The former governor responded: "So did you, Marco."

Attacks on Cruz

Cruz also had to answer video clips that showed him saying he would support immigration reform legislation, if some of the amendments he had offered were approved.

He denied he had changed his position, saying his amendments were not to fix all of the legislation's problems but to ensure undocumented immigrants in the U.S. couldn't gain legal status.

Cruz's reply brought attacks from both Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Rubio. They accused Cruz of trying to position himself as the only "true" conservative on the immigration issue, and painting the other candidates as "for amnesty."

Throughout the debate, Fox, which partnered with Google for the event, also posed questions to the candidates from average Americans.

One such question came from Dulce Candy, an Iraq war veteran who was brought to this country from Mexico as a child.

Appearing via YouTube, Candy asked how immigrants should feel welcome in this country, given the harsh rhetoric regarding immigrants and refugees by the party's candidates during the past few months.

Bush responded, saying Candy "deserves our respect," while Rubio, again calling for reforming the immigration system, told her, "we will always celebrate legal immigration."

Foreign policy, national security

According to Google, ISIS  an acronym for the Islamic State group -- was by far the most searched foreign policy topic over the past year.

Google also said its searches reflecting the question Is America safe? have increased 400 percent since 2008, leading to questions posed about the candidates' views on foreign policy and national security.

Rubio and Paul had a heated exchange over how far the government can go in anticipating domestic terrorism.

Rubio, warning the U.S. faces an unprecedented threat from the Islamic State group, said he would go after terrorists "wherever they are" and if caught, "we're sending them to Guantanamo," referring to the detention center for prisoners in Cuba.

He has called for shutting down mosques, which he said are being used to radicalize terrorists.

Paul called Rubios plan a wrong idea. ... If you want to defend the country, it begins with border security."

NSA, bulk data collection

A Libertarian, Paul has been one of the most vocal opponents of the National Security Agency's bulk data phone collection program, a program that Rubio supports.

"When Im president, we are going to rebuild our intelligence capabilities. And theyre going to tell us where the terrorists are. And a rebuilt U.S. military is going to destroy these terrorists," Rubio said.

Paul sought to rebut the statement, saying, "The bulk collection of your phone data, the invasion of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack. I dont think you have to give up your liberty for a false sense of security."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who shared a personal tale from the 2001 terror attacks in New York, again voiced his support for the NSA's collection program.

Bush, whose brother former President George W. Bush involved the U.S. in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, called for establishing a no-fly zone in Syria as well as creating safe zones for dealing with refugees from the conflict.

WATCH: Talking about the 'elephant not in the room'

Ohio Governor John Kasich said to win the battle against IS would require a coalition of allies in the Arab world as well as Europe, a coalition similar to one the U.S. established "when we went to the first Gulf War."

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has seen his popularity among potential Republican voters slip in recent polls, was asked a general foreign policy question -- what would he do, if elected president, if Russian forces invaded NATO ally Estonia?

"Look, first of all, I recognize that Vladimir Putin is an opportunist and hes a bully, and we have to face him down ... face him down in that whole region, the whole Baltic region," Carson said. "I think we need to put in some armored brigades there. ... We need to be doing military exercises if not only Estonia but Latvia and Lithuania. Theyre terrified by the saber rattling. I think we ought to put in our missile defense system."

He also referenced the conflict in Ukraine, where pro-Russian forces control territory in the east and where Russia annexed Crimea in 2015, suggesting the U.S. should arm Kyiv forces.

Two debates

Because of the large number of candidates  11  host Fox News split the debates in Des Moines, Iowa, between the seven candidates leading polls and the four bringing up the rear.

Earlier Thursday, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former business executive Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore participated in the "undercard" debate.

At the start of the main debate, several of the candidates chided Trump for missing the debate after Kelly offered them the opportunity to address the elephant not in the room.

Trump boycotted Thursday's debate after FOX News refused to prevent anchor Kelly from moderating the event. The billionaire developer has been feuding with Kelly since an August debate where she asked him about slurs he has made over the years about women.

Trump rally

Trump held a separate event at Drake University for U.S. veterans that coincided with the GOP debate. He said he decided not to appear out of respect for myself. ... I wanted to be at the debate tonight, but you have to stick up for whats right."

He told the crowd gathered at his rally: "When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," adding that "we have to stick up for our country if we're being mistreated."

Trump said his foundation already has raised $5 million for Americas vets. He said he's putting up $1 million of his own money, and that many of his wealthy friends are giving large contributions as well.

Huckabee and Santorum showed up at the Trump event. Each was invited by Trump to speak briefly.
Opposition and civil society groups accuse the Zambian police of bias and violating the constitution after clamping down on their rights to free speech and assembly as stipulated in the bill of rights.

The groups said the police often use the controversial Public Order Act to suppress their meetings and their planned demonstrations against unfavorable government policies.

They also said the police are to blame for the ongoing inter-party violence because of the preferential treatment they give governing Patriotic Party (PF) supporters.

But the Zambia police say the Public Order Act underscores the importance of groups and political parties coordinating their planned activities with the police to ensure there is peace and stability. The law, police also say, regulates the holding of public processions or demonstrations.

Charity Chanda, spokesperson for the police, says groups that plan to protest must notify the police at least 7 business days in advance.

"People don't really understand the provisions of the Public Order Act, she said. This law is actually very good when well followed and observed. ... You will find that there are some political parties that would not give the necessary notification period.  You find that at times they will notify you two days before the day.

"As Zambia police, we are also ready to apprehend and take to court all the perpetrators of violence. We are not just concentrating on political violence but also any forms of violence," Chanda said.

Priests weigh in

Chanda's comments came after the Catholic Bishops Conference called on the police to be impartial and to rise above partisan politics ahead of presidential, parliamentary and local elections.

In an episcopal letter about the state of the nation, the priests said the enforcement of the Public Order Act has often been selective.

Opposition parties say the priests' letter bolsters their stance that the police do the bidding of the PF by stifling their meetings.

"Yes, we are aware that those concerns have come through, but to tell you the truth, as Zambian police we try to be as professional as possible," Chanda said. "When we joined the police, we were recruited as Zambians that are ready to serve the interest of the country, not the interest of any political party, and this is what people have to understand.

"It's unfortunate that they are lining us up with certain parties, but as far as we are concerned, we are not partisan, she said. We are civil servants and our interest is to serve the people of Zambia, [to protect] their lives as well as their property."
The explosion of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in the Americas comes as tens of thousands of people are poised to descend on Brazil later this year for the Olympics, possibly making the international games a springboard to transmit the virus around the world when visitors return home.

Dr. Beth Bell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told VOA "For most people, the Zika virus is not a problem. It can cause mild, flu-like symptoms, but the virus can also cause babies to be born with a serious condition called microcephaly."

Zika virus has been tentatively linked to 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil, a condition that results in abnormally small heads and brains in newborns. There is no treatment for microcephaly.

Infographic: Areas With Active Zika Virus Transmission (click to expand)

4 million could be affected

The World Health Organization warns the Zika virus is spreading rapidly through the Americas and could affect as many as four million people.

The WHO says the virus has grown rapidly to a public-health threat of "alarming proportions." Julius Lutwana a virologist at the Uganda Virus Research Institute told VOA that the virus, which was first identified in Uganda in 1947, was long thought to pose only a small risk to humans.

The WHO says people with the Zika virus have a mild fever, skin rash and conjunctivitis (red eye) with symptoms lasting between two to seven days. The best prevention against Zika virus, experts say, is protection against mosquito bites as no vaccine or treatment is available.

Brazil reported its first Zika case in 2015.

Margaret Chan, the WHO's director general, said Thursday at a special meeting in Geneva that 23 countries and territories in the Americas region have reported Zika virus cases.

She said the Zika virus is spreading explosively in the Americas. She has called for an emergency meeting of experts Monday to determine measures to combat the spread of the virus.

Factbox: Prevent the Spread of Zika The Zika virus is spread through mosquito bites and there are no vaccines to prevent the spread and no drugs to treat those affected. If you are traveling to countries where the Zika virus is found, take the following precautions: *Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. *Stay in places with air conditioning or that use window and door screens to keep mosquitoes outside. *Sleep under a mosquito bed net to protect yourself from mosquito bites. Use Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents. *Always follow the product label instructions. *Reapply insect repellent, as directed. *Do not spray repellent on the skin under clothing. *If you are also using sunscreen, apply sunscreen before applying insect repellent. If you have a baby or child: *Do not use insect repellent on babies younger than two months of age. *Dress your child in clothing that covers arms and legs, or *Cover crib, stroller and baby carrier with mosquito netting. *Do not apply insect repellent onto a child's hands, eyes, mouth, or cut/ irritated skin. *Spray insect repellent onto your hands and then apply to child's face. Source: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Obama calls for quick response

In the United States, President Barack Obama has called for the rapid development of tests, vaccines and treatments for Zika infections.

Obama convened a meeting of senior health advisers to discuss the spread of the virus and its economic and developmental impact on the Americas.

The virus is named for the Zika forest in Uganda where the virus was first discovered in a monkey nearly 70 years ago. It was first believed to affect only primates, and when it was detected in humans, it seemed to cause only mild illness.

Outbreaks in Brazil and elsewhere in southern and central America have led to extensive spraying of insecticides to eradicate mosquitos.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has warned pregnant women against traveling to areas with Zika virus outbreaks.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said the NIH is "working with partners to accelerate research, disease diagnosis, vaccines and therapeutics."

He says that an existing vaccine platform that was proven safe with the West Nile virus could be repurposed for use in developing a vaccine for Zika. He added, however, that a completed vaccine is several years away.

New cases reported

Health officials in the U.S. state of Virginia said Tuesday a man there tested positive for the virus, but that there was no risk of it spreading to others because it is not mosquito season there.

On Wednesday, a hospital in Denmark said a tourist who had traveled to South and Central America has tested positive for the incurable disease.

Watch: CDC Expert Discuss Zika

Controversy has arisen in El Salvador and Colombia, where authorities have said women of child-bearing age should postpone getting pregnant. In Brazil, 200,000 troops are traveling to homes to distribute pamphlets offering advice on eradicating mosquitos, while crews are also fumigating areas that will be used for upcoming carnival celebrations and this year's Olympics.

The WHO's regional office in the Americas said Monday the most effective ways to stop the virus from spreading are to reduce mosquito breeding sites and for people to protect themselves from bites with insect repellent, nets, screens and clothing that covers as much of the body as possible.
To date, 25 countries have reported locally-transmitted cases of Zika  a virus spread through mosquito bites with no known vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) has yet to declare the virus a public health emergency, although its director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan said it is spreading explosively across the Americas.

The virus has been linked to a medical condition known as microcephaly, a disabling birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains. In many cases, the babies do not survive.

VOA spoke with Dr. Beth Bell of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to clarify what we know so far about the virus and its potential effects on the worlds population.

Very large outbreak

Zika, first identified in Brazil last May, began spreading across the Americas over the last six months with a very large outbreak, according to Bell. The WHO has said that as many as four million people could be infected this year in the Americas alone.

Dr. Bell said most people who are infected with Zika have no symptoms. Only one-in-five experience mild symptoms, including flu, headache, fever, and rash. This has prompted an increase in health screenings and a CDC-issued travel advisory to affected countries, particularly among pregnant women at risk of passing the virus to their children.

At this point, Bell said there are more questions than answers. Were doing everything we can to understand a little bit more about many of the basics: How often does it happen? What are the risk factors? Are there certain things that make this transmission from pregnant women to babies more likely?

Based on other infectious causes of congenital malformations and available information on fetal brain development, Bell said the first trimester is likely the highest-risk period during pregnancy.

Potential spread to Africa, Asia

Zika has been identified in many parts of Africa and Asia in past decades, according to Bell, but never in the form of a large outbreak. She said it is possible that other regions outside of the Americas could be at risk.

These kind of mosquito-borne viruses, unfortunately, they have this capacity for very rapid spread, and there are some modern day factors  urbanization, large cities, international travel that tend to promote this sort of spread, said Bell.

Already, the Pan American Health Health Organization (PAHO) has reported cases in two countries outside the Americas: Samoa and Cape Verde.

Bell said microbes are always surprising the global health community. "This is, of course, a reason for us as a global community to improve our ability to detect new infections as they emerge, and to be able to quickly identify clusters so that we can begin preventive measures early on.

Global health preparedness

The CDC, according to Bell, has been working closely with health partners in Brazil and across the Americas, including PAHO.

Weve been helping the Brazilians and other countries in South and Central America with laboratory testing," she said. "This, of course, is a very important component of being able to detect and respond, is having the laboratory capacity to be able to diagnose.

The CDC is working to better understand the association between Zika virus and microcephaly, in addition to another condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome  a neurological condition causing temporary paralysis  which Bell said has been associated with a number of other infections. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) says the disorder is not contagious. Most individuals fully recover from infection, although it can be life-threatening in extreme cases.

Key to prevention

Zika virus is spread from the same mosquito, called Aedes, that is known to cause Dengue fever and chikungunya virus. They live both indoors and outside, and can breed in very small amounts of water.

Bell noted that global efforts to reduce Dengue have been challenging, with little success. As such, she said the number one prevention technique is mosquito control.

There are some things that we can do, and are done to reduce breeding sites for these mosquitoes and some application of insecticides," she said. "But its unfortunate that vector control is not a solution to these mosquito-borne infections.

In addition, certain basic precautions can be taken to prevent mosquito bites, including the use of long-sleeved clothing and Environmental Protection Agency-approved repellents.

For more useful tips on how to prevent the spread of Zika, VOA has compiled a comprehensive list, which you can view here.
Permanent secretary and presidential spokesman, George Charamba, and Education Minister Jonathan Moyo trade barbs over President Mugabes complex succession with Charamba telling Moyo that his days are numbered in Zanu PF.

Some Zimbabweans say President Mugabe failed to stir the African Union in the right direction during his one-year tenure as the AU chairperson while others believe that he cannot be blamed for all political and armed conflicts on the continent.

A Labour Court judge dismisses a case filed by the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, which was challenging the recent recall of teachers from leave, claiming that the move violated their rights.

And as promised we will take a closer look at Zimbabwe-Equatorial Guinea relations that have been strengthening since Zimbabwe blocked a coup attempt targeting President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Stay tuned for these stories and more coming up on Studio 7 at 7:30 pm on 9-0-9 Medium Wave and on the 4-9-3-0, 5-9-4-0 and 1-5-4-6-0 shortwave frequencies. We also broadcast on www.channelzim.net. Please check us out on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

Today on LiveTalk our hosts will be talking with listeners and experts about President Robert Mugabes term as African Union chairperson. Send us your numbers on our WhatsApp number 001 202 465 0318. The number again 001 202 465 0318. Stay tuned!!!!!!
Labour Court judge Justice Godfrey Musariri on Friday dismissed a case in which the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) was challenging a move by the government to recall teachers currently on leave.

Sources said Justice Musariri noted that the case was not fit for a group action, meaning to say that PTUZ availed itself instead of individual teachers affected by the move.

The judge also said the matter did not qualify to be heard as an urgent case.

This coincided with the announcement by Labour Minister Priscah Mupfumira that no teachers should go on leave until the government finds money to pay relief staff.

PTUZ general secretary Raymond Majongwe said even though they are disappointed with the outcome, their lawyer will file fresh papers containing the names of the affected teachers on Monday.

This is a set-back but what we want to make known is that as workers we are ready to take them head-on, said Majongwe.
A United States senator has urged the Obama administration to use its influence in preventing international finance institutions premature opening of lines of credit to Zimbabwe until the country shows progress on respecting the rule of law and human rights.

In a letter on Thursday to Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said lines of credit to Zimbabwe should be open only if there is meaningful progress in the countrys democratization process.

Recent reports indicate that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and African Development Bank may clear Zimbabwe of its $1.9 billion in unpaid debt obligations prematurely, granting the country access to credit without clear evidence of governance and economic reforms.

While the willingness of a country to meet its debt obligations should normally be embraced, in this case arrears clearance will allow for new lending to the Government of Zimbabwe. Without meaningful progress toward long awaited reforms by the Mugabe regime, new lending could significantly alter internal political dynamics and help entrench the very same individuals responsible for the countrys economic collapse and gross human rights violations.

This is a moment when Zimbabwes political future is highly uncertain but history has shown little prospect for genuine progress and great likelihood of further repression and mis-governance.

Senator Corker said the Obama administration should use its voice and vote at these international financial institutions as well as its influence with creditors to ensure that any new lending to the Government of Zimbabwe, including lending intended to relieve existing barriers to lending, be preceded by meaningful progress toward clear benchmarks for the restoration of the rule of law in Zimbabwe, including respect for private property, free press, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly.

He said there should also be a credible process of accountability for missing revenues from diamonds and a monitored plan for capturing future revenues; and official acknowledgement of past gross human rights abuses and a demonstration that the Government of Zimbabwe is prepared to make an earnest effort to remedy those abuses, such as clear steps to hold accountable those responsible for the massacres of more than twenty thousand people in Matabeleland in the 1980s, and for the disappearance in March, 2015, of human rights activist Itai Dzamara.

Without progress toward these goals, I fear new lending will not help Zimbabwe but hinder progress toward democratic governance and economic growth. In this instance, premature lending without conditions would likely empower those who have created the countrys political and economic crises in the first place.

Senator Corker noted that current law requires the president to make a number of certifications including the restoration of the rule of law in Zimbabwe; satisfactory election conditions in that country; equitable, legal, and transparent land reform; and the subordination of the security forces to civilian authority as the necessary conditions for a U.S. vote in support of Zimbabwes arrears clearance at any international financial institution.

We urge the Treasury Department to act quickly to raise the lack of clear and meaningful governance and economic reforms with the IMF, World Bank, and African Development Bank, and to encourage creditors to require such reforms before supporting any new lending to the Government of Zimbabwe.

The United States and European Union imposed restrictive measures on President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle following what they termed gross human rights violations and election rigging.
Background:

Colima volcano is one of the most active in North America and one of the potentially most dangerous ones. It has had more than 30 periods of eruptions since 1585, including several significant eruptions in the late 1990s. Scientific monitoring of the volcano began 20 years ago.The Colima volcanic complex is the most prominent volcanic center of the western Mexican Volcanic Belt. It consists of two southward-younging volcanoes, Nevado de Colima (the 4320 m high point of the complex) on the north and the 3850-m-high historically active Volcan de Colima at the south.A group of cinder cones of probable late-Pleistocene age is located on the floor of the Colima graben west and east of the Colima complex. Volcan de Colima (also known as Volcan Fuego) is a youthful stratovolcano constructed within a 5-km-wide caldera, breached to the south, that has been the source of large debris avalanches. Major slope failures have occurred repeatedly from both the Nevado and Colima cones, and have produced a thick apron of debris-avalanche deposits on three sides of the complex. Frequent historical eruptions date back to the 16th century. Occasional major explosive eruptions (most recently in 1913) have destroyed the summit and left a deep, steep-sided crater that was slowly refilled and then overtopped by lava dome growth.---
Photo: Getty Images

This has been an Oscar season full of landscape-shifting surprises, but this Saturdays Screen Actors Guild Awards may be less shocking than earlier awards shows: Were now at the point when the conventional wisdom starts to be codified, and the SAG Awards tend to go to front-runners on their path to Oscar. Still, while I expect Rooms Brie Larson and The Revenants Leonardo DiCaprio to take home Best Actress and Best Actor at the SAGs  which will at least give me another excuse to break out the portmanteau Brio  there are three other races in which a surprise winner still could emerge. Lets break them down.

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

When this season began, SAGs top ensemble award was earmarked for Spotlight, which boasts a deep bench of movie stars and character actors and is impeccably cast down to its smallest roles. Lately, though, The Big Short has been coming on strong  it took home top honors from the Producers Guild of America last weekend  and it has just as sprawling a cast as Spotlight, with far flashier performances. (And trust me, SAG voters love flash: The last two top winners were Birdman and American Hustle.) So it should be a runoff between The Big Short and Spotlight, right? Perhaps, but theres a spoiler I wouldnt count out: Straight Outta Compton was nominated in this category, too, and as SAG voters cast their ballots, the #OscarsSoWhite controversy was in full bloom. While Compton wasnt nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, this might be just the place for Hollywood to fix its mistake.



Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Of the four acting categories, this one least resembles its Oscar counterpart: Only two of the men in this category were also nominated for Academy Awards this year, and among the men SAG snubbed is the expected Oscar front-runner, Creeds Sylvester Stallone. So without that gimme in the mix, wholl win with SAG? My best is The Big Shorts Christian Bale, who dominates the first act of the film that could run the rest of the awards-season table. (The only other man nominated by both SAG and the Academy is Bridge of Spies actor Mark Rylance, but his films awards heat has cooled considerably.) What will be really interesting to see is whether Bale can then mount a credible threat to Stallone at the Oscars, too. Its very rare that a film wins Best Picture without at least two other Oscar wins, and while The Big Short is looking good for that top prize and Best Adapted Screenplay, a Bale upset over Stallone could make its eventual dominance a no-brainer.



Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

Compare this SAG field to the final five that the Academy voters picked, and you might have to suppress a yawn: Aside from The Hateful Eights Jennifer Jason Leigh, who made it into the Oscar lineup over Trumbos Helen Mirren, youve got the same four women: The Danish Girls Alicia Vikander, Carols Rooney Mara, Spotlights Rachel McAdams, and Steve Jobs star Kate Winslet. Most of my pundits think that Vikander will triumph here after a phenomenal breakout year, but really, you could make a case for any of them! Mara is an industry favorite in a very acclaimed film (and shes actually the lead in her movie, which gives her a lot more screen time than her competition), McAdams is the only contender whose movie was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and its Winslet who won the high-profile Golden Globe in this category. Helen Mirren can relax with a nice glass of wine, but every other nominee ought to be on the edge of her seat with a speech ready.

For more about The Big Short and the latest in the Oscar race, listen to Vulture and The Frames The Awards Show Show podcast below  and be sure to subscribe to stay on top of this years awards conversation.
Katie knows shes in over her head, but the last person she can confide in is her husband, Will. I know what Im doing, he insists, trying to calm his panic-stricken wife, who rues the day they ever encountered Proxy Snyder. Problem is, Will doesnt know what Katie does while hes off playing cops-and-insurgents with the occupation.

They share common goals: finding their son Charlie and, at all costs, avoiding Carloss fate in the Factory. Theyve merely chosen wildly different means to those ends. Will feels confident that they can infiltrate the authoritarian regime at his pace. Hes discovered that his boss, Phyllis, relies on a pre-Arrival database she calls the Rolodex (referring to simpler times and all), which helps snuff out members of the Resistance. He also successfully sabotages the rebels armory and confiscates half their weapons.

Suffice to say, Katie has a much less uplifting day. Her first operation with the Resistance  meant to time how quickly drones respond to Red Hats  goes terribly wrong. In the wake of their botched dry run, officers and civilians lay strewn on the asphalt. More disconcertingly, a young Resistance pledge named Justin Kim (Jay Lee) gets hit in the leg and chest, making him dead weight, at which point he is promptly executed by Broussard. Its Justins corpse  and the telltale signs that he was with the Resistance, which justifies a search of his home  that ultimately leads Will and his team to the armory. If Katies man stormed in a few hours earlier, he would have caught the entire rebel cell dead to rights. Katie probably wishes he had, because now Broussard gives her an ultimatum: Either provide better intel from Will, or risk him being considered a hazard.

Ever a man of the people, Proxy Snyder knows that Katie and Will are just two of many worried, stressed citizens prone to subversive behavior  if theyre not begged off with some simple pleasures. Thus, he sanctions the Yonks official reopening. Or, as he giddily enunciates it upon bursting through the door, the Yonk-Nah-Paw-Tafa. (Hed been practicing.) Katie need not worry for now; Snyders not there to kill the buzz. Hes on hand to explicitly encourage this bit of reverie while implicitly reminding the Encino throngs that he can both giveth and taketh away. So its shots of Kentucky bourbon and chargrilled oysters all around, though not on the house, especially not for Broussard.

Will doesnt realize what a threat Broussard is just yet, but hes starting to size up the occupations staff and determine who else might be working within the system to undermine it. While tossing back an umpteenth glass of whiskey with running mate Beau (lets hear it again for Carl Weathers!), Will wonders aloud about goody-goody Jennifers ulterior motives. Beau doesnt see it. Then again, Beau pretty much keeps his head down and tries to get through the day. Hell, he wasnt even supposed to be in L.A. on the day of the Occupation. He was just passing through town to get an O-ring for his dishwasher. Some guys have all the luck. He can laugh about it now, though its hard to imagine how. Things have become that surreal in the 341 days since those enigmatic Raps besieged Los Angeles and divided the city in two.

For the kids stuck studying from propagandized textbooks  and the educators whove been mandated to instill an Occupation-approved curriculum  theres not much to do with free time but ponder what (or whom) is divining all this from above. Who is responsible for the launches that light up Los Angeless skies? Are the drones man-made tools, or some extraterrestrial auxiliary force? Bram doesnt want to wait for answers. Nor does his science teacher (Adam Busch, late of TBSs Men at Work), with whom he trades tapes of an enigmatic DJ in the vein of Do the Right Things Mister Senor Love Daddy, who takes and articulates the pulse of the people from his traveling pirate frequency. And, naturally, he leaves no trail for frustrated Red Hats, aside from cryptic notes announcing, I am Geronimo.

Is this insurgent in panhandlers rags actually the Resistances almighty? Or given that he espouses the tale of radical Tom, who detonated the bomb inside Santa Monicas gateway, is he the voice of an even more extreme minority? Who is it, exactly, that Bram and a growing underclass are following down the philosophical rabbit hole? Bram may find bigger answers before too long, now that his girlfriend Pia and her friend Pedro (Erick Lopez) have made him privy to their little secret. Pias dad used to work for the Department of Water and Power, and she still holds the key to an abandoned station with a tunnel that wends its way directly underneath the wall. Out on the other side, Pia and Pedro have yet to encounter a soul. They just grab whatever supplies they can and bring them back to Encino. Their mission has become so routine, though, that they seem nonplussed by the inhuman noises echoing around the tunnel as it intersects with the wall above.

Nearly one year after the Arrival, their unperturbed attitude seems like its spread throughout the city. People cope by clinging to new obsessions, or some semblance of the daily grind. But there are signs of stress everywhere you look: Housemaids keenly tuning in for the mobile DJs sermons, looters eager to pounce on cargo being moved to and from the Green Zone, an anxious Resistance inching closer toward a perilous uprising. Something momentous seems to be looming as day 365 approaches, and everyone knows it. Maybe Katie had the right idea. At least she gets laid.

Apart From All That:
This is not Natalie Dormer. Photo: Ian Gavan/2011 Getty Images

Did you think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy had too many lead characters and also too many British spies? You are wrong. Also, this is not the movie for you! Harrison Ford, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Dormer, Paul Bettany, and Martin Freeman have joined the cast of Official Secrets, which will apparently be one of those spy movies where you give up on remembering all the characters names in the first 15 minutes. Based on Marcia Mitchells book, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, the film centers on Katharine Gun (Dormer), a British intelligence officer who leaked information to the press about an alleged NSA operation to push the U.N. to sanction the invasion of Iraq. Bettany and Freeman will play journalists at the London Observer, while Hopkins will be a retired U.K. general (so basically himself), and Ford will play a CIA agent. Official Secrets starts filming in May.
In time-travel stories, its common for characters to meet their former selves. I guess it was only a matter of time before Legends of Tomorrow played with a paradox, but I didnt think it would happen this soon.

I dont expect this show to be too graceful, but it appears to handle its central theme  destiny  in wildly contradictory ways. On the one hand, Professor Stein meets his 1975 self after the teams first confrontation with Vandal Savage fails spectacularly. (Putting a small piece of the Atoms suit in Savages hands.) The dynamic between Professor Stein and his younger self suggests that fate isnt fixed and history can be changed, which Sara alluded to toward the end of the first episode. On the other hand, Hawkman and Hawkgirl treat destiny as an immutable fact that should be embraced.

So, which is it? Can these characters change their destinies, or are their fates sealed?

The main plot for our newly formed ragtag group, still in 1975, involves two attempts to capture Vandal Savage. The first involves Professor Stein, Leonard, Mick, and Sara conning their way into an arms deal, where Arrows Damien Darhk makes a cameo appearance. The second plan involves Leonard, Mick, and Ray (who has an uncanny ability to tag along uninvited) sneaking into the home of a millionaire to swipe an ancient blade, which Kendra recognized from a newspaper clipping as a weapon that can kill Savage. Got all that?

These narratives are intermittently interesting. The large-scale fight scene that unfurls at the arms deal is definitely expansive, full of sound and fury  but it feels more messy than epic. The fallout from these failures, however, is when things get good.

The first attempt leads Professor Stein to see his past self  lets call him Young Stein  with Sara and Jax in tow. Theyre looking for a piece of technology that can track the missing piece of the Atoms suit. (If they dont recover the piece before Savage reverse-engineers it, the timeline will face imminent disaster.) Sara and Jax are ultimately accessories to the scene, as Professor Stein comes face-to-face with his illusions about himself. He realizes his ego is a bit of a problem  during the arms deal, after all, he insisted that he could get the gang out of trouble when it probably wouldve been smarter to let Leonard handle things. Unfortunately, Young Stein only seems interested in smoking weed and hitting on Sara. Or in Professor Steins words, his younger self is an arrogant little snot.

When Professor Stein isnt able to get the technology from a suspicious Young Stein, Sara hits him over the head with his bong and they move on. Theyre able to recover the Atoms suit piece from Savages scientist. But the timeline still isnt safe: Professor Stein notices his wedding ring fading in and out of existence. Younger Stein is supposed to meet his future wife that evening, so he either didnt wake up or decided to forgo the party altogether. As they head back to the time ship, it becomes clear its the latter: How did nobody notice Younger Stein following them?

Professor Stein patches things up with his younger self without fully explaining who he is or what is going on, repairing both the timeline and his marriage. The scenes between Professor Stein and his younger self bring up interesting questions about identity and self-perception, but I never really believed Professor Stein was all that arrogant before this episode.

Leonard, Mick, and Rays mission fares much worse. Ray may be smart, but hes got the emotional intelligence of a walnut. He ignores Leonard or Mick, who have a ton of experience with burglary, and accidentally trips the homes dummy alarm. We do get a touching moment between Leonard and Ray, which develops some of the tension we saw on The Flash. The show is obviously gearing up to a point where Leonard becomes a hero, or at least acts more openly as an antihero. But Rays presence still doesnt make sense. The only reason hes in the scene is because the plot requires him to be there.

The episodes plotting betrays the biggest issue with Legends of Tomorrow: These characters dont feel like a team yet. When they interact, it feels jarring. The trio of Leonard, Mick, and Ray actually gets to the ancient blade, but their victory is short-lived. The owner of the mansion appears  and its Vandal Savage.

The whole team arrives to take down Savage, but the plan mostly relies on Kendra and Carter. Carter stabs Savage with the ancient blade, but surprise, surprise! It doesnt kill him. Then, Savage turns the weapon on Carter, killing Carter. Apparently, only Kendra can properly wield the blade and kill Savage with it.

Considering that Carter has been positioned as someone far more familiar with their past lives than Kendra, this is an interesting development. Why didnt he recognize the blade in Dr. Beardmans newspaper clipping? Why didnt he know that the blade could only be wielded by Kendra? When will this show stop with the cheesy Ancient Egypt flashbacks?

Carter dies, and I couldnt be happier. What Im not happy about, though, is Kendras inept behavior as Hawkgirl. She charges at Savage, but apparently lacks the skills to land a single blow. Savage easily subdues her. Proving himself to be a Nice Guy whose grossness spans centuries, he tells her he loves her, then stabs her. Sure.

The team saves Kendra when they bring her back to the ship, but they still end up worse off than they began. Carter is dead. Savage is stronger. And, on top of all that, he knows theyre time travelers. Great job, everyone.

Nevertheless, the episode ends with the heroes more bonded than ever. For Carter! they all exclaim. The camaraderie feels empty to me, since we didnt get to know Carter too well  and what we did learn hadnt really endeared him to us. He vacillated between undercutting Kendra and acting like a blowhard. He tried to force Kendra to adopt the personality of her past self. When shes on the verge of saying she does indeed love him, it feels unearned.

Which brings us back to the shows major contradiction: Were supposed to believe that these not-quite heroes can create their own destiny, but Kendra has no choice but to accept her fate as Hawkgirl and her relationship with Carter.

Thanks to reincarnation and time travel, Carter will most definitely come back. However, the length of his absence will tell us a lot about this shows appetite for risk. Maybe this is supposed to embody what Rip Hunter says earlier in the episode: Time changes. People dont. I just wish Kendra were allowed to choose. What if her and Carter arent meant to be together? The relationship doesnt feel healthy and they lack chemistry.

Legends of Tomorrow has a lot of potential, but the writers dont seem to know what to do with it yet. The premise is zany enough to draw attention. The characters and casting are generally good, despite the ones that fall flat. But so far, the show is too unfocused. It flies in so many directions, which frustrates me more than anything else. Still, theres a lot of charm here and enough good ideas, so Im hopeful that it will rebound from a lackluster start. Like The Flash and Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow is a thoroughly middlebrow show. That doesnt mean it shouldnt be well-crafted.
Before we get to the episode, theres an elephant in the room that I should acknowledge. The elephant is elegant and extremely talented and forbidding and has said some well-publicized and very stupid things and is named Charlotte Rampling.

In a cosmically terrible instance of bad timing, the second half of the second episode of London Spy is dominated by Charlotte Rampling, who plays the mother of the late, lamented Alistair (or Alex, or whatever this most confusing spys name was). You cant help but watch her and think, OMG, shes so good and gaaah she probably had unbelievably antiquated thoughts about black people and Hollywood while she filmed this. So lets get it out of the way: Rampling is typically great in this episode, and its also very awkward to watch her right at this moment.

As with more and more of this show, Ramplings performance is a triumph of style above all. Two episodes in, London Spy takes shape as a gorgeous, chilly, oft-mesmerizing piece of television that uses its atmosphere and its all-star team of players to hide its flaws. It holds you with a certain haunting power, but ultimately, its slightly less than the sum of its parts.

One big problem? The dialogue. Writer and creator Tom Rob Smith seems to be under the impression that scripting acres of conversation wherein characters never respond directly to each other is a good idea. It is not a good idea. In this episode, Ben Whishaws Danny tells Ramplings Frances, Your son was murdered. The attic was staged. Everything you read about his death is a lie. She replies, After dinner, perhaps you will join me for a drink. Wha? There are tons of moments like that. Repression is a big theme of the show, but theres a limit to how much clipped, elliptical verbal jousting we can take.

That odd chat comes towards the end of an episode in which Danny gets progressively more obsessed with his lovers gruesome death. You will recall that Alistair/Alex wound up stuffed in a trunk in the middle of a spooky S&M attic. The common assumption seems to be that he died after some horrible mishap. (SEX GAME GONE WRONG? blares a tabloid headline.) Danny is convinced, as he tells Frances, that this is all rubbish  that his partner was killed and that all of the leather stuff was planted there for some mysterious reason. He doesnt know why, but Danny is sure that unsavory forces are responsible. Alistair/Alex was a spy, after all. Spies can get themselves into serious trouble.

Danny brings his theory to a newspaper, where the journalists treat him with barely-concealed contempt. The story they produce is littered with homophobic dog whistles, and causes Danny to lose his job. He also produces the requisite crazy bulletin board littered with thumbtacks and threads and bits of paper that always appear in fiction, but have never once been encountered in real life. Some of the paper has LIES LIES LIES written on it, which seems like a particularly unhelpful way to solve a mystery. Also, Danny is prone to crying at the drop of a hat. Hes cracking up a bit.

Not that he doesnt have reasons to crack up or suspect some nefarious plot. Of course something is going on! Hes getting followed by mysterious men on the Tube. Hes trying to figure out the code to open the cylinder he stole from Alistair/Alexs attic. (He doesnt know the right numbers, so its socked away in a secret porthole in a random pipe room. Revelations, it would appear, are for later episodes.) Hes being approached by strange men like Clarke Peters unnamed character, who approaches him at the episodes end, makes cryptic comments about saving his life, and hands him a piece of candy with a pill hidden inside.

And, above all, hes being summoned to meet Frances, who lives in one of those austere, crumbling mansions that seem to be a staple of spy stories. Her place is like Manderley on steroids, all ghosts and high ceilings and silences and blaring visual metaphors. Theres even a claustrophobic hedge maze. The only evidence that mansion has electricity is one little lamp in the dining room, which is otherwise lit by a ludicrous amount of candlelight.

Dannys arrival at this most novelistic of scenes is preceded by a lengthy (and ultimately pointless) stint at the house of two people who present themselves as Alistair/Alexs parents, but turn out to be Francess employees. Their scene is filled with even more vague dialogue. Your son was murdered, he tells the fake parents. Lets go for a walk, the father replies.

You get the sense that were being put through these machinations purely for the sake of what happens nest, when Danny realizes that hes talking to frauds. When Frances finally meets him, she pronounces herself impressed by his sharp instincts, which she chalks up to something like female intuition. Dannys ability to suss out the truth certainly belies his down-and-out naif image.

He and Frances then have the kind of heart-to-heart a crocodile might have with an especially intelligent puppy. The conversation is played to evoke racy noir; at one point, a looming Frances is reflected in a gleaming black mantle that seems to pop up out of nowhere. Rampling, imperious and snazzy in slacks, is effortlessly captivating.

Frances tells Danny that her son wasnt gay, just a hyper-brilliant sociopath who gave people what they wanted. She says he was as precocious sexually as he was intellectually. Danny politely tells her that shes full of it  you cant fake the kind of inexperience Alistair had in bed. She suggests that no fuss is the best piece of advice you will ever be given. Translation: Stop digging. It seems obvious that she isnt telling him this out of motherly concern. Later, he finds kinship with Francess maid, who he instinctively sizes up as the only one in the mansion who ever cared for Alistair. She even called him Alex.

By episodes end, were marginally closer to figuring out what the hell is going on. It is clear, though, that Danny is onto something.

I havent even mentioned the finest part of the episode, which comes relatively early. Danny is talking to Scottie, played by Jim Broadbent in what might be the most towering performance of the series. Scottie realizes that Danny considers him part of the faceless establishment that hes going up against, and he explodes, shouting, Do you know just how fucking far I am from being part of the establishment? He then takes Danny into the woods and reveals that he, too, was a spy  which explains a lot  but he was entrapped by MI6 after the agency went on a fag hunt to root out gay men within its ranks. (Out of everything in this series, this is by far the most real.) Traumatized by the experience, Scottie nearly killed himself. As he recounts this story, London Spy loses its outre affectations and gains a true sense of mournful majesty. I hope more like that is coming.

Random Thoughts:
Pay me what you owe me: Nothing. Photo: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images

Late Wednesday night, just shy of 10 p.m., Rihanna did the unthinkable: She released an album. It was an event that, given her track record, shouldve happened in 2013 (from 2005 to 2012, she released an album every year, save for 2008). But Rihanna was not interested in playing par for the course. With Anti, she took her sweet time, likely surveying the changing music landscape poolside in Barbados, blunt inevitably in hand. Not that she hasnt been work, work, working: Rihanna has used her mid-20s to build one of the most profitable multihyphenate empires  in 2015 alone, she became the first black woman to star in a Dior campaign, launched an apparel line with Puma, took co-ownership of a little something called Tidal, and tried out some Anti singles that ultimately didnt make the cut.

Like a lot of pop giants whove been playing this game for at least a decade, Rihanna has been on the fence about music streaming in the past. She denied Spotify of 2012s Unapologetic for weeks, instead favoring the traditional pay-me-what-you-owe-me route, which led to her first No. 1 album. Putting her faith (and dollars) in her trusted mentor Jay Zs latest business risk, it turns out, has not meant a full embrace of streaming just yet. Throughout 2015, Rihanna granted Tidal considerable access, releasing some songs and videos exclusively for paid subscribers  but not all her work. While Tidal continues to carve out its place in the streaming wars, Rihanna seems done waiting. Hours after the site appeared to bungle her albums surprise drop  putting it live on the site then yanking it immediately  Rihanna did something even more unthinkable for someone in her position: She gave it away for free.

All too many disgruntled artists have been in a similar situation. Theyre tangled in an impossible web of industry bureaucracy; their major label wont effectively market their album; or, in some dire cases, it wont release it all. So theyll pull an Azealia Banks and kick and scream their way out of a contract, later releasing an album on their own terms. Or they might do what Jeremih did late last year and tap out, quietly releasing their years-overdue album in the middle of the night with virtually no press or promotion (and then proceeding to low-key trash the label). But those are the beleaguered efforts of an artist backed into a corner with not nearly as much clout or coins as Rihanna. Why, then, would she release Anti for free  personally tweet out the code to download it, even  at a time when one of her biggest competitors is penning op-eds with the rigid message music should not be free, while another has refused streaming altogether and sold more than anyone else this decade while doing so? For the first time in Rihannas career, her primary concern isnt commercial bragging rights (though Anti has already gone platinum). Shes got legacy on the brain, and Antis more subdued and cohesive sound isnt the only reflection of that.

First, keep in mind that Rihanna is not the total rule-breaker her zero-fucks-given attitude would suggest: On the same day she made Anti a freebie, she also revealed its first single, Work, featuring Drake, having scrapped all previous singles from the album, as we later learned. The song went to Tidal and, eventually, iTunes and Apple Music (though not Spotify), but it debuted on global radio. In the U.S., it was the most-played song on Wednesday, outperforming Justin Biebers Sorry and Adeles Hello (which have both gone No. 1). So even if Antis shoddy release and initial free price point hurts her overall first-week sales, her decision to drop a single the traditional way should make for a strong debut on the Hot 100, where she has long dominated. Not that Rihanna couldnt pull off a No. 1 debut for Anti anyway, seeing as its now available on iTunes. (Also, the album was streamed 13 million times in less than a day on Tidal, which does factor into the Billboard 200 album tally, but at an adjusted rate; the free downloads dont factor into Antis charting position.)

But Rihanna is also a savvy rule manipulator. Months into Antis inconsistent album cycle, reportedly around April 2015, she struck a deal with Samsung, which would sponsor her upcoming world tour with Live Nation and promote the album for little in return. Unlike Jay Z, who agreed to release 2013s Magna Carta Holy Grail exclusively on Samsung devices for a fraction of what Rihanna reportedly made overall, her commitments  as far as whats been made public  werent nearly as invasive. All she had to do was film a series of creepy commercials, partner with the company on her ANTIdiaRy app (which gives fans behind-the-scenes content), and, on the day of the albums release, allow around 1 million Samsung users the opportunity to unlock free-download codes if they could find them in Room 8 on the app (or, you know, just look at her tweet).

The business of this particular free download was also cleverly opportunistic. On the surface, it seems like itd do a disservice to Tidal: Who would want to pay to stream or download the album when shes already made it so simple to take it free of charge? Wednesday night, when I clicked on her link, Tidal didnt even prompt me for a code. I just filled in my name and email, and boom, one of the most sought-after albums of this year and last was all mine. But theres always fine print: That download didnt just give you an album, it offered you a free 60-day trial subscription to Tidal. Rihanna, via Samsung, has essentially bought you her album and two months worth of Tidal content, a probable attempt at softening Tidals image as some greedy oligarch. And, as others have pointed out, its a great way for Tidal to keep tabs on every single person who downloaded her album but isnt signed up. Tidal now has your email; it can spam you with all the promo it wants without even having to ask for permission.

But like Adele, Rihanna isnt actually all that concerned with doing favors for big companies, even the ones she has stake in. For Rihanna, giving Anti away for free for a day is more a statement of control. Around this same time last year, Drake reportedly attempted to drop If Youre Reading This Its Too Late as a free DJ Dramahosted release on popular mixtape site DatPiff. That plan derailed, however, when his parent label, Cash Money, intervened and forced an iTunes sale (Drake has been partnered with Apple ever since). Rihanna couldve similarly been at the mercy of Tidal, even after it blew her release, were she not equipped with an incomparable mastery of fan service: She worked on offense and seemingly self-managed the damage control, knowing that the most effective response to a leak is not to stick to the plan and hope for the best, but to own it. Rihanna mightve escaped a release-day disaster just by understanding that music fans care the most about access; rather than allow leakers (in this case, Tidal) to hijack that access, she took what will likely be a short-term sales hit to give the album away herself under her conditions, not Samsungs or Tidals.

Its a measure of authority shes been plotting for some time. Leaving Def Jam for Roc Nation (though not entirely) two years ago was a step toward creative autonomy, as has been her ability to reportedly run point on her career going forward, much like Beyonce has. But brokering a deal to retain all past and future master recordings, as well as self-releasing music on her own label, Westbury Road? That is the move of someone whom Nicki Minaj would describe as a boss-ass bitch. Jay Z said it best himself, telling Vanity Fair last year, What took me 15 or 20 years to get has taken her 10, and will take the next person 5 years. By following his lead but also forging her own path, Rihanna is, as she says, calling the shots, shots, shots.
Karam in rehearsal for The Humans. Photo: Jenny Anderson

Stephen Karams Chinatown apartment, which he moved into after the success of his 2011 play Sons of the Prophet, is a huge step up from his last place. Yes, the elevator is tetchy, and the door to the sixth-floor landing features a graffitied penis that someone has attempted to disguise with more scratches. The sort-of-one-bedroom layout is small and irregular, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that fell off a table. Still, its the kind of place a parent, noticing the scripts organized by color, the cheerful troll statuettes, and the light streaming in everywhere, might call surprisingly nice. No one would have ventured that phrase to describe his old place, the subterranean lower half of a duplex on the Upper West Side whose one window looked onto the bottom of an air shaft. It was spooky, he says, in an effortless way. There was no outer world except when it rained. Then, as the drain backed up, he could perceive in the darkness a rising lake of cigarette butts.

It was there that Karam began to think about the dark play, set in a near-replica apartment, that would eventually become The Humans. As its title suggests, The Humans is about old human issues: health and money and lodging and love, and the overriding fear of losing them. And yet, in its mash-up of genres  family drama meets psychological thriller over Thanksgiving dinner  it is also nervily modern. Along with many critics who saw it Off Broadway at the Roundabouts Laura Pels Theatre, I thought it was the best play of 2015, and thus sadly likely to disappear from New York by 2016.

That it is nevertheless headed intact to Broadway is surreal, Karam marvels over coffee in the Chinatown apartment: an experience I dont think will ever happen to me again. The producer Scott Rudin saw the play at a Sunday matinee before its October opening  a performance at which patrons hearing aids were going off everywhere and we were still tinkering and fine-tuning. Three days later, Karams agent called to say that Rudin had put down a deposit to secure the rights for a transfer. That actually didnt make sense to me, Karam says, because in what world did a new play  neither a revival, a musical, a star vehicle, nor a comedy  get picked up for Broadway before it was even reviewed? I thought that in writing it as I did, and in making the decision to go with our favorite actors instead of killing ourselves trying to find TV or film stars, we had specifically chosen to take care of the show and say good-bye to Broadway.

But the same thing, on a smaller scale, had happened to him before. Karam first came to attention Off Broadway in 2006 as the co-author of columbinus, a gripping drama suggested by the Columbine High School massacre. He was 26. After that, the Roundabout, specifically to produce his next play, inaugurated a new black-box space in a sub-basement beneath the Pels and a commissioning program to go with it. Karam has since become a kind of poster boy for that program; even before Speech & Debate opened in October 2007, the theater signed up his next work, committing themselves to me, he says, even if the reviews were terrible. (They were excellent.) That commission turned into Sons of the Prophet, which was short-listed for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; the next commission became The Humans. This linkage of production and support is part of a hopeful new trend in play development, but if such policies have created a new track for some extraordinary young writers, Broadway is not on the itinerary.

Yet for Karam, now a boyish 36, it is. This is not solely because he is among the very best of his generation of playwrights. Indeed, sitting neatly folded on his junior-size sofa, he seems to regard his success as cautionary. It wasnt until Sons of the Prophet that he gave up his day job as a paralegal, which had provided health insurance and printer paper and freed him from worry about the success of his writing. Much as his father combined dregs of stale Cheerios and cornflakes and Lucky Charms into one box so as not to waste any, Karam wasted as little of himself as possible, hoping to avoid the golden handcuffs of a mortgage, a lifestyle, or a job writing for Gossip Girl. (Being single helps.) Thanks to the intervention of friends, he did eventually acknowledge that jeans cost more than $30. Still, such upgrades make him anxious: I worry that I will lose control over the projects I get to work on. If you take on these upgrades, you have to maintain them. Theres no going back.

That anxiety drips down, Karam says. Its dripping all over the play. And although he finds talking about autobiographical aspects of his work pointless  Am I a lesbian lawyer? Am I a composer? he asks, referring to two of the characters in The Humans  it is important in understanding his achievement to note that he comes to the theater as an outsider. Like the Blake family in The Humans, he is from hardscrabble Scranton, Pennsylvania; like the Douaihy brothers in Sons of the Prophet, he grew up gay in a Maronite Lebanese-American family with its fair share of problems and prejudices. He doesnt have to dig very hard for the themes that have always animated the most powerful theater; for him, theyre exposed. At talk-backs, Ive been asked: Why did you have so many terrible things happen to one family? he says. And I think: What family do you live in?

Still, if his expectations for The Humans (and the humans) are modest, Karam is anything but dour. I think its scary to be alive, but also exhilarating and joyful. He has begun work on another play and is awaiting the release of his first two movies: an indie realization of Speech & Debate and an adaptation of Chekhovs The Seagull, starring Annette Bening and Saoirse Ronan. Beyond that, waking up each morning to write only what he wants is living large, he says. This is as good as it gets.

The Humans opens at the Helen Hayes Theatre on February 18.

*This article appears in the January 25, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Photo: Jeffrey Mayer/Getty Images

Makeup artist Holly Hartman filed a restraining order against Orange Is the New Blacks Taryn Manning Thursday, after an alleged violent incident between the pair in November 2015. Though Mannings lawyers deny the incident even happened, according to TMZ, Hartman claims the actress headbutted her in the face, whipped her with a wet towel, sprayed Windex in her eyes and mouth and put her in a headlock at Mannings New York City home. During the fight, Manning allegedly declared, Pick a knife. Im wearing a white shirt there will be a lot of blood. You will be famous for killing Taryn Manning. Mannings lawyers told Us Weekly, The court has already denied the request by Ms. Hartman for a temporary restraining order. The application for the order is suspect because Ms. Manning has had no contact with Ms. Hartman in many months due to Ms. Hartmans actions against Ms. Manning which are currently under criminal investigation in multiple jurisdictions. Manning was previously arrested in November 2014 for making criminal threats against former friend Jeanine Heller. Those charges were subsequently dropped.
Waco-based Balcones Distilling has hired industry veteran Mark McKethan to spread the word about its award-winning whiskey and spirits to all 50 states as the company moves into a larger distillery downtown this year.

McKethan has already been to 45 states representing the makers of such headliners as Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Canadian Mist and a vodka that an investment group from the Ukraine launched with a $750,000 party in New York.

Ive been in this business for more than 30 years, and unfortunately Ive sold some bad product, he said with a laugh from his home in Wichita Falls. But there is nothing bad about this whiskey. Ive seen the wonderful things happening at Balcones, the artistry that goes into making the product, and it is incredible.

McKethan, 59, said he spent the last two years managing a food bank in Wichita Falls, where his father retired after a career in the military. McKethan said he cared for his ailing dad while serving as CEO of the Wichita Falls Area Food Bank, adding he had always wanted to oversee a nonprofit to hone his marketing skills.

He now has rejoined forces with Keith Bellinger, president and chief operating officer at Balcones Distilling. They worked together at Allied Domecq, an international liquor company based in the United Kingdom that in 2005 was acquired by French-based rival Pernod Ricard in a multibillion-dollar deal.

At the time of the sale, Allied Domecq was the parent of Makers Mark, Ballantines and Canadian Club whiskeys and Beefeater gin, among other spirits.

Ive been in the industry since 1987, and he was a trusted team member of mine from way back, Bellinger said of McKethan. More importantly, he had the right qualifications for the job. A lot of people applied, and it was a tough decision because they all had great resumes. But we had teamwork and chemistry from the past.

Bellinger said McKethan brings a wealth of industry knowledge to the position, which involves setting up a distribution network for Balcones whiskeys, production of which will increase tenfold in the next few years as the distillery relocates from beneath a bridge on South 17th Street to the former Texas Fireproof Storage building on 11th Street.

Financial backers of Balcones are spending $14.5 million to renovate the 65,000-square-foot, century-old structure in downtown Waco. The four-story edifice will house three-story-tall copper stills from Scotland, a tasting room and a retail section for novelties and gift items.

Its really looking good, Bellinger said. Weve now begun commissioning the stills, and we should occupy the building in a couple of weeks. Then its full steam ahead on production by middle March. We will be able to produce 50,000 cases of whiskey per year, with 12 9-liter bottles in each case.

Room to expand

The building affords plenty of room for expansion, and Bellinger said Balcones likely will double the 50,000-case capacity as demand dictates.

He said the company now makes 5,000 cases annually and sells every bottle it crafts without putting a dent in demand for its products that have received 160 awards and accolades since 2009  one year after the company was founded  and raked in more than 50 awards in 2015 alone.

Last December, it was named the Grand American Whiskey Maker at the Spirits Masters Awards in London for its Texas Blue Corn Special Release Bourbon. It earned Texas Distillery of the year at the New York International Spirits Competition in 2013 and 2015 and was named Craft Whisky Distillery of the Year by Whisky Magazines Icons of Whisky in 2012 and 2014, according to the company website, which includes a lengthy list of other honors bestowed on Balcones.

Balcones whiskeys and spirits are distributed in Texas, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, California, Washington, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Tennessee. It does business with Dallas-based Glazers, a distributor and wholesaler of wine and spirits with a location at 2525 Texas Central Parkway.

Spreading its area of service to include all 50 states will take several years, McKethan said, adding that expansion will not take place until Balcones can rest assured it can meet client demand nationwide without compromising either the quality or aging time of its whiskeys.

We will always remain a craft whiskey, never a bulk whiskey, McKethan said. We will always make as much as we can, but under the careful eyes of head distiller Jared Himstedt and his team. I consider it a true work of art. The way they mesh alcohol and flavor together is incredibly interesting and wonderful to taste.

McKethan said he will live in the Dallas suburb of McKinney, which will give him timely access to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He will do a lot of flying, he said, to ensure that sales staffs and distributors are familiar with Balcones and well versed in the individual spirits people want to know about.

McKethan said he will create a profile for distributors that includes standards they must meet to offer the Balcones brand.

We want you to look a certain way, and we definitely want you to have a craft spirits division, he said.

New territories

McKethan said he has a goal of making Balcones available in all 50 states simply because it is so good, and I want everyone to have the opportunity to enjoy it. A list of states that should be given priority already is in the making and includes California, Oregon, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.

Entering some locations will take more persistence and patience than others because of control over the liquor industry.

Were already getting calls from some of the states in which we dont have a presence, McKethan said.

McKethan said he enjoyed his time at the food bank in Wichita Falls, where he was feted at a goodbye lunch Thursday.

But after a career that has included stints as a Coors distributor, a distributor for Glazier Wholesale in New Orleans and with such heavyweights in the wine and spirits world as Brown-Forman, Hiram Walker and Allied Domecq, he was ready to return to his cup of tea, so to speak.

He said he knows the fate that befell that unnamed Ukraine company he worked with many years ago will not claim Balcones.

They wanted to promote a premium vodka in the United States, but their eyes were bigger than their billfold, McKethan said. They spent $750,000 to host a launch party in New York City. I begged them not to do it. It was a total waste of money. But it was something they wanted to do, thought it was the right thing to do.

They created a presence in 26 U.S. markets, but they didnt have the back-end financial support and were out of business within six months.
More than 30 people representing wide-ranging support for a Waco Cultural District put a physical form to that supportThursday afternoon, showing up at the Waco Suspension Bridge for a send-off of a letter of intent that organizers hope will lead to state approval of such a district later this year.

The four-page letter of intent, featuring a four-page addendum of 27 signatures from supporters, goes to the Texas Commission on the Arts, the state agency that grants cultural district designation, for consideration. Twenty-nine Texas cities have official cultural districts, which are designated areas in a city or community known for a clustering of historic buildings, arts venues, restaurants, shops and the like.

Official cultural district status can open the door to tax breaks, economic incentives and financial grants for businesses and organizations in the district.

Wacos proposed cultural district will use the same boundaries as the citys Public Improvement District, said Fiona Bond, executive director of Creative Waco and the leader of Waco efforts to create a cultural district. That downtown-centered district extends to Interstate 35 and includes parts of East Waco.

At Thursdays ceremony, Bond praised the cooperative effort that has gone into the Waco Cultural District proposal, representing a convergence of Waco arts and culture, downtown development and economic growth.

The makeup of the send-off attendees illustrated the cooperation that has gotten the proposal this far. Waco artists, Waco arts organizations and economic development officials attended, including the 21-member Cultural District task force, the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, Main Street Waco and the citys Convention Center and Visitors Bureau. State and local government officials also attended, including state Rep. Charles Doc Anderson, R-Waco; Mayor Malcolm Duncan Jr.; former Waco mayor Virginia DuPuy; and City Manager Dale Fisseler.

After the letter send-off, Bond said her conversations with Texas Commission on the Arts officers about the proposed Waco Cultural District had been positive and she is optimistic Wacos letter would lead to a formal request for application by the end of February. That formal application, due in June, would detail how Wacos Cultural District would work and be marketed, with a video component submitted along with the paperwork. If Wacos application wins TCA approval, organizers will be informed in September.
Nearly 100 years after images of Jesse Washingtons public lynching stained the towns history, community advocates began the commemoration of the Waco Horror on Thursday in hopes of moving toward justice for all in the community.

A crowd filed into the St. Albans Episcopal Church for a dinner and presentation titled Wacos Unfinished Legacy: 100 Years After Jesse Washington. Patricia Bernstein, author of the book The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP, joined the dinner and discussed the lynching of Washington and how lessons from the atrocious incidents should not be forgotten.

It is so disturbing to me that we arent talking about the Middle Ages, they werent yelling for the gladiators to kill each other, but we are talking about the time of our grandparents or great-grandparents and 100 years ago this year, Bernstein said. Its very common for people to say, and people still in Waco ask, Why are we still talking about this? Because we dont act or behave this way.

But what they dont understand is that in an African-American community, this story never went away.

In 1916, Washington, a 17-year-old mentally handicapped black man, was accused of raping and murdering the wife of his white employer in Robinson. Washington was tried and entered a guilty plea that led to a documented, public lynching near Wacos City Hall.

At Thursdays event co-hosted by the Community Race Relations Coalition and the Waco NAACP, Bernstein discussed the history of the lynching and said conversations can make a positive change in the present.

But what can happen when you talk about it and you make it a part of our history, you can understand the present by understanding the past, Bernstein said. Its true that you dont have mobs of 10,000 people cheering while someone gets hideously done-to-death on the towns square anymore, but you still see a straight line to modern day lynchings.

Relatives of Washington also listened to the presentation alongside Nona Baker El-Amin, the great-niece of Sank Majors, a 20-year-old black man who was accused of raping a white woman in 1905. Majors was hanged by a mob in 1905 from the Suspension Bridge over the Brazos River in Waco.

My mother and her sisters would not talk about this and were very ashamed of it, El-Amin said about growing up in Waco. (Society) has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

The Rev. Valda Jean Combs, an itinerant preacher in Waco, also spoke to the crowd about the impact of modern-day society and local communities. She said while the area has made significant improvements in taking steps to eliminate oppression, organizations and residents need to continue positive movement.

If any part of our citizenry is vulnerable just by the color of their black skin, then we need to do something, Combs said. This is why we cant stop talking about it.
Some newsroom colleagues and I were talking recently when the issue of religion in politics came up. As is our wont in speaking of most things politic, labels began to be tossed about. Evangelicals, fundamentalists and other terms were used, often interchangeably. At that moment, I thought I needed to clarify the differences between the terms and I now offer that same service to you.

At the outset, the definitions and explanations I offer are thumbnail sketches that I have found to be of good use for distinguishing between the religious groups. It may be that my definitions are not academically correct. Fortunately, we live in a part of the world that is home to the largest Baptist university in Texas with learned church historians on campus. Im sure theyll set us straight should I err in my descriptions.

Lets look at the term evangelical. In Christendom, there are numerous denominations, conventions, synods and assemblies. Broadly, they can be divided into Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and evangelical. Since evangelicals and Protestants are generally lumped together, it is here where I will focus my distinctions.

Protestants are members of churches that, for the most part, can trace their founding to a particular person or event. Presbyterians trace their roots to John Calvin and John Knox. Methodists look back to John and Charles Wesley. Lutherans, of course, look to Martin Luther. Generally speaking, Protestant churches have similar forms of worship, more formal than evangelical churches. The practice of infant baptism is practiced in most Protestant churches. Here the baptism involves bringing the child into the family of the church, with a pledge from the parents to raise their child with Christian values and a pledge from the church to assist the parents and child in Christian growth.

As the child approaches a certain age, usually late pre-teens, the child attends catechism classes. Upon completion of the classes, the child is then given the option of becoming a full member of the church and a Christian.

In contrast, evangelicals do not generally trace their history back to a specific person but rather to a group of people who have held to the same basic beliefs. For instance, Baptists do not have a specific founder but generally trace their roots to the Anabaptists that were around in the mid-16th century.

Evangelical churches for the most part reject the idea of infant baptism, instead holding to a believers baptism. They believe that an individual can only become Christian by coming to a salvation experience, a point where they are confronted about their sinfulness and need for salvation through the ministry of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary. Evangelicals have less formal forms of worship and looser ties to one another than do Protestants.

That in a nutshell is the difference between Protestants and evangelicals. It is possible to be evangelical and Protestant (witness the Evangelical Lutherans, for example), just as its possible to be a fundamentalist evangelical.

So whats a fundamentalist? Good question. Again, using my thumbnail description, a fundamentalist is someone who has a firm belief in the Bible as Gods inerrant Word. Usually, fundamentalists insist that the only true English version of the Bible is the King James Version. Fundamentalists have a starker view of the world than do non-fundamentalists. Their world is more black-and-white, with a strong sense of right and wrong, of sin and obedience.

The fundamentalist world view is shaped by a specific interpretation of the End Times, generally seen in the Scofield Bible and interpreted more popularly in the Left Behind series of books and films by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Fundamentalists are generally very conservative in their theology and world view, including their politics. Many in the religious right movement are fundamentalist in outlook.

Not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. There are plenty of us who believe more recent translations of the Bible are as good as or better than the King James. We see the world in greater shades of gray, recognizing that sin is real in our world but that grace is also very real in our world. Its not unusual for such evangelicals to be more moderate in their world view and in their politics.

Allow me to wrap this up with the elusiveness of labels. I began seminary in Fort Worth at the same time the Southern Baptist Convention began their great battle of who will have control. I identified with the moderate crowd and was not happy that the more conservative side came out on top. I considered leaving the Baptist church entirely and sought out the Cumberland Presbyterians where my mother grew up. After studying their doctrine, I came to the conclusion that I was and am Baptist not just by birth but by choice, and I would always remain a Baptist.

Still, not happy with the way the Southern Baptist Convention was heading, I moved my growing family to Cincinnati, Ohio, while I began attending seminary in Louisville to eventually earn a doctorate. Southern Seminary in Louisville was definitely in the moderate camp and I would be planting my flag in that camp with a degree from there. To those in charge of the SBC, I was a liberal.

While serving a church in Cincinnati, I looked into the possibility of moving from the Southern Baptists to the American Baptist Churches. I spoke to one of their leaders, explaining my beliefs in the Scripture and in Christ. I explained that I believed in the virgin birth of Christ, that the miracles attributed to Christ actually happened in the way that they were described in the Bible.

After hearing my spiel, the leader explained that I would need to be brought before a committee of ABC pastors and leaders to be interviewed. In the meantime, he told me, I should get him a resume because he knew of several conservative churches in the area that would be interested in a pastor such as me.

I hadnt moved from my positions or understanding of Scripture, but to one I was liberal, to the other I was conservative. Ultimately, its not the label that matters; its what one truly believes and follows that counts.

A bankruptcy attorney, Glynn Beaty began his professional career as a Baptist minister in 1985. He is pastor of Mosheim Baptist Church outside Valley Mills.
A real choice

Im a tea party, small-government, constitutional conservative. And may I join those on the far left in saying the sooner Establishment RINOs drop out of the GOP presidential nomination race, the better. This fight for Americas soul has been long coming. Since the radicalization of America in the late 1960s weve had a non-stop tug-of-war struggle trying to define who we really are as a nation. The only GOP nominees up for this battle are Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz. And it doesnt matter much whether the Democrats nominate Sen. Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. One is a self-proclaimed socialist; the other is a far more politically cunning socialist.

We as a nation must reverse this march to the left that was only paused by the Reagan Revolution. The upward trajectory of our $19 trillion debt  real money owed to real people  threatens to collapse our childrens economy. Open borders and non-existent immigration policies threaten our nations safety and culture unlike legal immigrants who yearn to embrace America. And so many cultural issues deemed abhorrent only a generation or two ago are now commonplace or, worse, considered constitutionally protected rights.

This political showdown is long overdue. Now is the time for a black or white electoral choice.

Marty Esposito, Robinson

Politically correct?

It appears that Baylor University has been bitten by the politically correct diversity bug with the possible implementation of a chief diversity officer. In theory, diversity will cure all evils and correct all wrongs. But in practice, diversity often leaves an institution divided and in conflict because it alters its core values.

I served four different Baylor administrations. Two guided Baylor based on its historic Christian core values; neither deviated to the left or right. And they left Baylor stronger, more united. The other two instituted their own or others ambitious goals, thus altering the historic core values, and left the university divided and with internal conflicts.

Any institution that tries to be all things to all people will soon become nothing to no one. Baylor is at a crossroad. It can return to its core Christian values in all areas, thus retaining its unique place among universities, or become another institution among many that has lost its historic identity.

Don Hardcastle, Speegleville

n n n

Those such as Mr. W. Richard Turner [Baylor should drop religious test to attract best faculty, research dollars, Jan. 21] reveal intellectual elitism when they suggest only they can define the parameters of diversity and tolerance which they paradoxically wish to impose on others. On the other hand, many brilliant professional candidates around the world (including in Africa, Asia and Latin America) who happen to be Christians would love to contribute to a unique, unapologetic Christian university if such a place existed. Does it?

Ron Wolske, Waco
SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C.  Christina Olds, daughter of late Brig. Gen. Robin Olds, one of the Air Forces most iconic fighter pilots, visited Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, Jan. 22, 2016, to speak about her fathers accomplishments in the Air Force. Airmen from around the base came to the 334th Fighter Squadron to hear Olds recount stories of her fathers adventures during World War II and the Vietnam War, as well as the type of commander he was. The general is rated a triple ace, having shot down a total of 17 enemy aircraft during WWII and the Vietnam War and has held the positions of squadron, base, group and wing commander as well as staff assignments in a numbered Air Force, Headquarters U.S. Air Force and the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He got shipped off to Vietnam in late September of 1966, Olds recalled. His first briefing there, he just stood at the front of the room and said, Im here to lead you into combat, so you better teach me everything you know because I will be leading you in three weeks, and one guy said Yea, right and my dad zeroed in on him and said, And you are going to be my wingman.

Robin Olds was the type of leader that led from the front, according to his daughter. She told of how he had a different tactical approach to everything. One of the first things he did after arriving in Vietnam was devise what came to be known as the first tactics conference in December 1966. This conference was also the birthplace of the River Rats, the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association. Olds said part of her fathers tremendous appeal was how much he loved and appreciated everyone around him. The very first thing hed do when hed get to a new assignment was go out on the flightline and meet all the crews on the aircraft, she said. Then hed go into the BX, the hospital, the barber shop and the commissary. He would tromp through every single shop on the base and introduce himself to people; hed learn their names, where they were from, and learn about their families.

Olds also shared family photos and spoke of the relationship she and her sister had with their father and what it was like growing up in various places throughout his career.I appreciated Ms. Olds sharing her fathers story with a new generation of fighter aircrew, said Lt. Col. Ernesto DiVittorio, 4th Operations Support Squadron commander. Brigadier General Olds was a true warrior leader with a passion for the mission and his Airmen; officer and enlisted. As the father of two girls myself, I also appreciated Ms. Olds sharing insight into the relationship she shared with [her father].

Olds ended her presentation by answering questions from the audience.What stunned me the most was the amount of respect toward him from all these people that had flown and worked with my dad, said Olds. Some of them got really teary-eyed talking about him and what it meant to fly with him, that he was leading them and getting them home safely.
The Zika virus spreading "explosively" through the Americas is likely to reach Australia through a return traveller at some stage, experts say, but there is hope it will be swiftly contained if it does arrive on our shores.

While dozens of mosquitoes in Australia are capable of spreading viruses such as Ross River, only one - the Aedes aegypti or yellow fever mosquito in far north Queensland - is capable of transmitting Zika.

Despite fears Zika can also be spread through sex and the bite of an infected monkey (rare isolated cases have been reported), Cameron Webb, an expert on mosquito-borne viruses, said the yellow fever mosquito would play the most important role in its transmission if it does arrive here this year.

Dr Webb said that for Australia's yellow fever mosquito to spread Zika, one of the insects would have to bite an infected traveller shortly after that person returned from a country where the virus is circulating. The same mosquito could then bite other people who have never left the country. This is the same process that occurs with dengue fever outbreaks in far north Queensland.
Treasurer Curtis Pitt will on Friday announce work will finally begin on one of Labor's flagship election policies - the $25 million Cairns Special School  for hundreds of disabled children.

It has been heavily backed by Cairns MP Rob Pyne, himself a quadriplegic, as a "must" special needs project for Cairns.

Queensland Treasurer Curtis Pitt. Credit:Chris Hyde

There are an estimated 800 to 1000 special needs children and young adults in Cairns who education planners anticipate could use the facility to be built at Woree in Cairns' south.
Police fear a serial sex predator may be targeting Perth train stations after three women fell victim to violent attacks in two days.

Two women were believed to have been attacked by the same man, who appeared to be operating out of stations along the Joondalup train line.

A 25-year-old woman was walking the few hundred metres from Glendalough train station to her home around 6.30pm on Tuesday when she noticed a man following her, police said.

Sex assault squad Detective Sergeant Jim August said the woman was then chased by the attacker, who grabbed her as she got to the door of her apartment.
A man was in critical condition at a Perth hospital on Thursday night after losing his arm in a machinery accident at a Bayswater workplace.

Emergency services were called about 4pm to Instant Waste Management on Clune Street to free the 24-year-old, whose arm was trapped.

Paramedics rushed him to Royal Perth Hospital, which is yet to provide an update on his condition.

WorkSafe investigators attended the site immediately after the incident and were expected to continue their investigations there on Friday morning.
Volunteers help an elderly woman from Afghanistan from a dinghy in the village of Skala Sykaminias, on the north-eastern Greek island of Lesbos on January 27, 2016. Credit:AP "No matter what happens in the next couple of years, Afghanistan is going to have wide ungoverned spaces that violent extremist organisations can take advantage of," Shoffner said. "The camp that developed in south-eastern Kandahar is an example of what can happen." There are now 9800 US troops in Afghanistan, some of them advising local forces and some focused on hunting down al-Qaeda and other hard-line militants. Plans call for Obama to halve that force by the time he leaves office, but he could defer the decision to the next president. Elders from Pashtun and Baluchi tribes in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province after talks with US troops in 2010. Credit:Getty Images Painful lessons from Iraq

The US military's current thinking reflects its painful experience in Iraq, where Iraqi army forces collapsed less than three years after US forces left in 2011. US soldiers patrol into a village near Pul-i-Alam, Afghanistan, in March 2014. Credit:Getty Images And it is echoed in the arguments - made by many Republican and Democrat foreign policy advisers looking beyond the Obama presidency - for a significant long-term American presence. "This is not a region you want to abandon," said Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon official who would probably be considered a top candidate for defence secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration. "So the question is what do we need going forward given our interests?" An Afghan policeman searches a passenger at a checkpoint in Kandahar earlier this month. Credit:AP

In Helmand province, where US troops suffered the heaviest losses of the war, Afghan units have struggled to hold on to territory taken by coalition forces from the Taliban in 2011 and 2012. "There's a real will-to-fight issue there," said a senior military official in Kabul. Senior US commanders said that the Afghan troops in the province have lacked effective leaders as well as the necessary weapons and ammunition to hold off persistent Taliban attacks. Some Afghan soldiers in Helmand have been fighting in tough conditions for years without a break to see their family, leading to poor morale and high desertion rates. An Afghan policeman stands guard at his checkpoint in Kandahar earlier this month. Credit:AP General John Campbell, the top US commander, has sent Special Operations forces to the province to help direct airstrikes and provide help with planning. An American soldier was killed and two others were wounded this month fighting alongside the Afghans. In addition, about 300 US troops in Helmand are advising Afghan commanders at the corps level, well removed from the front lines.

General John Nicholson, seen here speaking to his senior leaders at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is the White House's nominee to serve as the next leader of US troops in Afghanistan. Credit:US Army via AP The US support is designed to arrest the immediate losses, but building an effective and sustainable fighting force that can manage contested areas such as Helmand will take many years, US military officials said. On Wednesday the Pentagon announced that Obama will nominate Lieutenant-General John Nicholson to replace Campbell. A soldier of the 170th US Army Infantry Brigade is greeted upon his return from Afghanistan at a US Army base in Germany in 2012. Credit:Getty Images Nicholson is currently the commander of NATO's allied land command. Before holding that position, he was the head of the 82nd Airborne Division. In Afghanistan, where he has spent 3 years, he has been the chief of staff of operations for the allied forces and a deputy commander for the southern part of the country.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said that Nicholson "knows what it means to lead a responsive and nimble force, and how to build the capacity of our partners to respond to immediate and long-term threats and remain adaptable to confront evolving challenges". Foreign officials say the Afghan units lack effective mid-level officers and sergeants who can lead troops in combat and are not captive to patronage networks that dominate the country and sap soldier morale. Seeding the force with mid-level officers often requires bringing in young leaders from outside the current system and training them from scratch. "I think a generational approach has value," Shoffner said. Senior US officials point to improvements in areas such as evacuating wounded troops from the battlefield. As recently as 2013, it took the Afghan army 24 hours on average to get medical assistance to wounded troops. Now help usually arrives in four hours, still longer than desired. But other critical goals, such as building an effective resupply system for the country or a capable air force, cannot be accomplished in a few years. Many of the American pilots flying in Afghanistan have 10 to 15 years of experience.

"How long does it take to grow a 15-year pilot? It takes about 15 years," Shoffner said. "We're starting a little late with the air force." Afghanistan and South Korea - a troublesome analogy Senior US military officials and some former Obama administration officials increasingly compare US plans for Afghanistan with its approach to South Korea, where the United States has maintained tens of thousands of troops for decades. Other top officials cite the example of Colombia, where the US has long provided training, money and contractors. "Our presence right now helps serve as a significant bulwark against instability and at a cost that I think is reasonable to bear," said Daniel Feldman, who until recently served as the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Particularly if we're not proposing a significant combat role, I think the American people would be open to the argument of sticking with Afghanistan." US officials said that in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani they have a willing and reliable partner who can provide bases to attack terrorist groups, not just in Afghanistan but also throughout South Asia, for as long as the threat in the chronically unstable region persists.

The difference between Afghanistan and other long-term US commitments in South Korea and Colombia is that Afghanistan remains a far more dangerous and unstable place for American personnel. Even though Afghan troops have assumed the lead combat role throughout the country, with US troops in an advisory role, coalition troops still face real dangers and have taken recent casualties there. In some cases, senior US officials have been surprised by the Taliban comeback in the past year. Emboldened by the departure of most foreign forces, Taliban fighters have seized district centres, inflicted heavy losses on government forces and temporarily overrun a provincial capital. Now, Afghan forces must also grapple with an aggressive local branch of the so-called Islamic State. Some officials hold out hope that a long-term military presence might be unnecessary if hoped-for peace talks with the Taliban make progress. The Afghan government has asked Pakistan, home to many Taliban leaders, to push the militants into talks. A generational US footprint "doesn't need to be the case", said Jeff Eggers, a former senior White House official with long experience working on Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The Korea model is not necessary if the peace process moves forward - that's the preferred path for all parties." The obstacles to peace talks, though, are huge. Senior officials in Kabul and Islamabad are riven by suspicion, and the Taliban remains deeply fractured following the revelation that its longtime inspiration and leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has been dead for several years.
Speaking to the media, Truss accepted that she could not deliver the promises she made when she was running for Conservative leader, having lost the faith of her party.
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By Matt McClain, West Kentucky Star Staff

Jan. 28, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By Matt McClain, West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 28, 2016 | 04:59 PM | PADUCAH, KY

A surgeon at Baptist Health Paducah was arrested after allegedly having a "melt down" during surgery.



According to a police report by Paducah Police, Dr. Ted Jefferson, 49 of Mayfield, was in surgery on Tuesday at around 5:30 pm, when he apparently had what's being described in the report as a "melt down" and began using profane language. The police report indicates other employees inside the surgery suite heard Jefferson state "I guess administration will be happy if I come in here with an assault rifle."



Jefferson, who is reported to have a history of having a temper while at work, according to the police report, was initially allowed to "cool off" for around 30 minutes after being confronted by members of the hospital administration.



After the 30 minutes was up, administration officials deemed Jefferson calm enough to go back into surgery and continue. The police report states that as soon as he went back into the surgery suite, he immediately stated "Who's the weasel who called administration to complain about me?"



Police say at this point two members of the hospital administration once again confronted Jefferson about his actions being intolerable. Hospital administration told police that Jefferson became belligerent with them and made another reference to an assault rifle. He then mentioned something about "not knowing when."



Jefferson was suspended for 3 days and escorted out of the hospital by security. Paducah Police then report that officers were patrolling around Baptist Health the following morning and they spotted Jefferson at around 3:15 am (Wednesday) in the parking lot of the hospital. Jefferson told police he was going to his office to write the hospital administration an email.



The police report states two officers wearing body cameras recorded Jefferson indicating that he was upset over apparent medical supplies that were "unsanitary." He went on to tell police that he was acting out of anger the previous day at the hospital, and then went on to tell the two officers that the only way to "get anything done is to go home and get a pistol or rifle."



Jefferson was arrested on Terroristic Threatening and Disorderly Conduct charges. He has since posted bail.



Calls to Jefferson's attorney from WestKentuckyStar.com were not returned Friday.




US awards $2.8B in grants for EV batteries in 12 states including Kentucky
Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
You wait all year for a feelgood Ajax story and then two come along at once.

After featuring yesterday for rewarding a hardy band of 15 travelling Heracles supporters with a cracking gesture, the Eredivisie giants have once again proved that they look after fans by agreeing to lay on special matchday travel for an elderly fan.

It all began when a lady named Esther put out an SOS call on Twitter looking for any Ajax fans who drive to home games from the nearby city of Leiden.

She was asking on behalf of 80-year-old supporter Willem, who could do with a lift to the stadium these days as he is too old to make the 30-mile train journey to the Amsterdam Arena.

It was at this point that the official Ajax Twitter account chimed in and announced that they would help Willem, a fan for 60 years, in his hour of need by laying on a complimentary taxi service

Beste @esther_305 , Ajax en @MercedesBenz_NL brengen Ajacied Willem graag de rest van het seizoen van en naar de ArenA. Je hoort van ons.  AFC Ajax (@AFCAjax) January 27, 2016

How awesome is that? Very awesome, is the answer.
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In October 2015, Jennifer Lawrence penned an open letter to Hollywood, questioning why she made less money than her male co-stars.

A month later, the New York Times ran a feature on women in Hollywood, in which Maureen Dowd interviewed more than 100 women about the pervasive sexism that holds them back  and keeps critical perspectives and stories off-screen.

Those two pieces sparked renewed discussion about an age-old problem: the lack of representation of women in film, whether onscreen or behind the camera.

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press Local female filmmakers and videomakers on the rooftop of ArtSpace.

This disproportionate representation isnt just a Hollywood thing. Women in View, a Toronto-based group that studies womens participation in Canadian film, released a sobering study in October 2015: of the 91 feature films financed by Telefilm Canada, only 17 per cent were directed by women. Of the 84 television directors helming English dramas, 14 were women.

But women are making moving pictures  they are just finding alternative means to do so.

In Winnipeg, an independent film and video scene that is populated by a diverse group of dynamic, adventurous women, is trying to tell womens stories while adding female representation in filmmaking.

These women do not always get the recognition, the accolades and the funding. But they have two tireless champions in Jennifer Smith, who leads the distribution department at Video Pool Media Arts Centre, and Monica Lowe, who heads the distribution department at Winnipeg Film Group.

Their organizations provide several supports for local female film and video makers, including the Womens Film and Video Network, which offers women the chance to connect with one another.

Both are energized by what they see in the Winnipeg scene.

Women are messing things up  they are doing what they want, especially in video, Smith says, pointing to groundbreakers such as Freya Bjorg Olafson and Divya Mehra as examples.

You have Danishka Esterhazy making prairie gothic narratives, and Michelle Elrich translating her poems into film and Leslie Supnet doing these wonderful film experiments and hand-drawn animations, Lowe adds. Then you get into the doc makers, like the Rahman sisters and Janelle Wookey, who are really telling the stories of their culture. Its really varied.

DIY ethos

Winnipegs arts scene is known for its scrappy resourcefulness. Its precisely that DIY ethos that has made Winnipeg a hotbed for female creators.

Few people exemplify the collaborative spirit better than pioneers Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. Theyve been working together on feminist performance-art pieces, videos and films since 1989. (The award-winning A Day in the Life of a Bull-Dyke and the music video Were Talking Vulva are but two of their greatest hits.)

Both say the film industry remains a sexist and hostile place for women, forcing them to adjust.

As a result, I think we end up creating our own work environments, Millan says. Even if we do decide to make a feature-length film, we often do so outside of normal venues and avenues.

Winnipegs art scene is pretty good, as a rule, about just doing things our own way. We just go ahead and make the work we want to make. Its a great place to make work and not get hung up on conventional notions of success and to express our visions on our own terms.

As Millan points out, women dont have to do  or be  just one thing here. Olafson is proof. The artist works with video, audio, painting and performance to address representation and the gendered body as informed through the machines, technology and lens of the camera.

Her works have been shown internationally, and shes unveiling a new performance work called CPA (Consistent Partial Attention) at the Asper Centre for Theatre & Film Feb. 18-20.

A classically trained dancer, Olafson found new homes in Graffiti Gallery and Video Pool when she made her transition into film. She found her artistic voice in those spaces. I learned you can have autonomy, and that theres interest in what you have to say.

And these points of view matter. Representation and visibility matter. Its as Dempsey says: Its very important to see oneself in ones culture, to feel validated and a part of that culture. To be made to feel like you exist.

Weve always made funny, feminist films and videos that show our reality, she says. Because we look around pop culture, and we dont see women who look like us. We dont see women who have the same life experiences we do  and there are a lot of us. In many ways, we made moving images for ourselves as a way to see ourselves  and as a way to create better endings for women.

Combating sterotypes

Indigenous filmmaker Sonya Ballantyne also knows what its like to feel invisible in popular culture. The 30-year-old grew up near Easterville and Grand Rapids and searched for role models wherever she could. It got really bothersome that there werent girls like me on TV  or native people in general, she says.

North of 60 was pretty much it, and even then, the people in positions of power were white and the show smacked of what Ballantyne calls poverty porn.

So, like Dempsey and Millan before her, she decided to make her own media. In 2014, Ballantyne won the RBC Emerging Filmmakers Competition at the Gimli Film Festival. She used the $10,000 prize that went along with it to make Crash Site  a comic-book-inspired film about two sisters and a superhero who unites them.

photos by Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press Envelope-pushing local filmmaker Freya Bjorg Olafson got her start as a dancer.

A lot of her work focuses on combating negative stereotypes against indigenous girls and women.

I dont want people to see those red ties on the bridges and have that be their only interaction with native culture, she says of the memorials for missing and murdered women.

Likewise, she doesnt want news stories about the missing and murdered to be the only stories about indigenous girls and women. Native girls need to feel awesome and strong.

Ballantyne is pursuing narrative film, an area in which women are chronically under-represented. No one knows this better than Winnipeg filmmaker Shereen Jerrett, who is also a professor at the University of Manitoba.

Jerrett, 52, has been working in the industry since she was 17, and has seen her share of sexism  from being told her voice was too squeaky to be taken seriously to a group of male writers joking about her being proposed as a showrunner, as if her qualifications were less than theirs.

Shes frustrated by the chronically grim statistics when it comes to women working in directing and technical roles, but what angers her is the fact women are blamed for the problem. Its easy to gaslight women into thinking this is their fault that they arent good enough or working hard enough.

Its not just women who have to create opportunities for women, she said. People should be saying, This energy is missing. This perspective is missing. 

Streaming opens doors

Streaming sites are revolutionizing how we get our media, but they also have provided opportunities for women  check out how many Netflix original shows are led by or are starring women.

Vimeo, the video-sharing website, recently announced its Share the Screen initiative, which will help fund and promote the projects by female filmmakers. Darby Forever, by Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant, will be Share the Screens debut.

Locally, both the Winnipeg Film Group and Video Pool have also created opportunities for women. In addition to the Womens Film and Video Network, the film group also established the Womens Mosaic Film Project, which assists women of indigenous or diverse cultural backgrounds in producing a first or second short film.

Winnipegs Saira Rahman is a past recipient of the Womens Mosaic Film Project, and along with her sister, Nilufer, are local documentary filmmakers whose credits include a feature-length doc, Arctic Mosque, as well as a number of shorts, including Sairas Mosaic film Not Just a Funny Girl and Nilufers Letter to a Terrorist.

They credit the mentorship opportunities that exist in Winnipeg with keeping them energized and inspired.

There are some really intelligent, powerful, experienced women producers in Winnipeg that are so helpful, Saira says, singling out the women of Buffalo Gal Pictures, Merit Jensen-Carr of Merit Motion Pictures and Elise Swerhone at the National Screen Institute.

These women are still our mentors, Nilufer adds. They are very supportive. Thats been a great support for us and continues to be as we continue along our path.





jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca Twitter:@JenZoratti

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OTTAWA  Former Manitoba MP Steven Fletcher told a Parliamentary committee Thursday the first thing he did when he was able to speak again after the accident that left him a quadriplegic was ask for a lawyer so he could write a living will and outline the circumstances in which he wanted to be allowed to die.

Fletcher painted a stark picture of his own suffering for Special Joint Committee on Physician Assisted Dying as he implored the government to act quickly on developing legislation or regulations to respond to the Supreme Court ruling legalizing assisted suicide.

Ottawa can really screw this up by putting too much red tape, Fletcher said.

Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press files Former Conservative MP Steven Fletcher.

In February 2015, the high court struck down a blanket ban on assisted suicide, saying it should now be legal for competent adults who were terminally ill or a grievous and incurable condition that causes great suffering. The government has until June before that ruling takes effect, and this committee of MPs and senators is tasked with advising the government how to proceed.

Fletcher told the committee he spent months in the hospital on a ventilator after the 1996 car accident that left him as a quadriplegic. He said he endured massive amounts of pain, was unable to speak and terrified he would drown in his own phlegm.

He said when he finally got off the ventilator, the only thing he wanted to do was make sure he never had to endure such suffering again.

His lawyer said a living will asking to be left to die was likely not legal but they wrote it out anyway.

Fletcher made a similar request in 2012, when he needed surgery to repair the rod in his neck, telling doctors they should leave me on the table if he had brain damage.

Im disabled enough, he said.

Fletcher told the committee one of their priorities should be to make living wills legal so people can outline years in advance when they would like to die in cases of brain damage or dementia.

He said the only other aspect that Parliament should address is the criminal code, which currently makes assisted suicide of any kind illegal.

Any regulations affecting the health system, such as rules for doctors, should be left to the provinces, he said.

He also had stark words for doctors who believe there is a conflict between treating patients and helping them die.

This is going to be tough love, he said. Doctors, medical profession  be professional. Be tough. Its not about you. Its not about the medical profession. Its about the individual and their medical choices.

And for advocates for people with disabilities such as the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, which was also presenting to the committee Thursday, Fletcher said they need to be more empathetic to the people who are suffering.

Having someone suffer, starve themselves to death having them live in pain and terror doesnt make my life better as a Canadian with a disability. It just makes me sad.

Rhonda Wiebe and Dean Richert, co-chairs of the Councils Ending of Life Ethics Committee, said the council would like to see the government disallow assisted suicide for anyone in the first two years after their diagnosis, when they are particularly vulnerable to thoughts of suicide. They also want to ensure palliative care and other health care supports are improved so people arent choosing suicide because they cant get any other help, and to establish a panel, led by a federal judge, that will review requests for an assisted death to ensure they meet specific requirements.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
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Inspirational words spoken a century ago went home Thursday with the winners of the 2016 Nellie Awards.

Honouring the spirit of Nellie McClungs lifes work by recognizing 12 women who have contributed to social justice, the arts and promoted democracy, the awards were presented at the glitzy Centennial Gala, celebrating 100 years of Manitoba womens right to vote, at the RBC Convention Centre.

Recipients received awards featuring the inscription of a McClung quote. I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some word that will shine in a dark place.

Women in Manitoba were the first to win the right to vote 100 years ago on Jan. 28, 1916, thanks to Manitoba suffragettes like McClung, E. Cora Hind, Francis Beynon and her sister Lillian Beynon Thomas and others. Other provinces followed but it wasnt until 1960, when voting rights were extended to First Nations people, that voting was universal in Canada.

Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Nellie's granddaughter Marcia McClung speaks to the Centennial Women's Gala. Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon and Gail Asper were the recipients of the Nellie Legacy Award while Filmon, founding chairwoman of the Nellie McClung Foundation and the second woman to be appointed to the ceremonial post of Lieutenant Governor, served as the keynote speaker for the Centennial Gala.

Its been a very meaningful and inspiring day and this evening is really capping it off, Filmon said in an interview prior to the gala. I hope that the women and men at the gala are leaving inspired knowing that there is a place for them, for those that feel they can mentor, and that the words that are spoken find a place in somebodys heart. Its never one big thing. Its a series of choices, a series of small decisions that lead to the big one. Maybe thats a thousand hearts that were changed at one point, I dont know, but I do know that we must celebrate these kinds of milestones.

Filmon reflected on what it must have been like 100 years ago when the current legislative building did not stand where it is today and when the provincial government was housed in a building on the corner of Broadway Avenue and Kennedy Street.

Those women, at the time, they knew they were working on something important . I dont know that they could have known the important part it plays from a historical point of view because it really opened up, once that went through, that women could vote, be in elected office, own property.

Earlier in the day, Filmon and former prime minister Kim Campbell participated in a special day of programming with students at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Manitoba Museum.

Filmon spoke about the responsibilities of voting to the students in her keynote address at lunch.

Voting rights are protection against injustice and incompetence, Filmon said Thursday. But, she added, they only work if you use them.

Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Lt-Gov. Janice Filmon at the Centennial Women's Gala, celebrating 100 Years of Manitoba women's right to vote. A single piece of legislation did not bring social equality, or economic equality or political equality for women, but if you look around the world you can see the effect of Nellie McClung and her allies.

She reviewed the suffrage battle a century ago, noting women were ridiculed for seeking the same voting rights as men who owned property until McClungs knack for humour turned the tables and made the premier of the day, Rodmond Roblin, eat his words.

Mans place is on the farm, said Filmon, paraphrasing McClungs remarks at a mock legislature, a piece of political theatre that suffragettes used a century ago. Who knows what they would do if they got the vote? Its hard enough now to keep them at home.

McClungs famous remarks mocked the premier whod dismissed women voting rights, insisting they belonged at home, quietly supporting their men. The mock parliament helped turned the tide for advocates of womens suffrage, gaining them valuable political allies and public support.

Students in attendance indicated they understood the importance of the milestone.

In 50 years I will look back at this and say, I was there to mark the 100 years since women won the right to vote,  said Quynhanh Nguyen, 11, in Grade 6 at Winnipegs Oakenwald Elementary School.

Womens rights are a basic mark of respect people owe each other, added classmate Dorsa Nourmohammadi, who wore a hijab.

It means respect for everyone  no one should bug each other because of their religions or stereotypes, she said.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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The opposition Tories are alleging foul play and bullying on the part of the Selinger government in the awarding of over $16 million in single-sourced contracts to one company during the 2011 and 2012 floods.

At a news conference Friday, Progressive Conservative leader Brian Pallister said 60 untendered contracts, worth millions, were given to Impact Security Group for flood zone security contracts.

Several rural municipalities, including the RM of St. Laurent, allegedly questioned the prices offered by the company but were bullied by the NDP into sticking with them, Pallister said.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Earl Zotter, former reeve of St Laurent

It was only through repeated freedom of information requests that these other untendered contracts came to light.

The former reeve of the RM of St. Laurent, Earl Zotter, claims government workers within the governments Emergency Measures Organization threatened to penalize the RM if they switched companies, despite the issues Zotter said had arisen with Impact Security, a privately owned security provider with offices in Winnipeg and Thompson.

We became increasingly unhappy with the performance of Impact, lots of issues with general conduct, we tried to relieve ourselves of them twice, which brought an immediate visit with a government contact, he said. They basically said if you dont have security, you will not be covered by EMO or DFA (the federal governments disaster financial assistance program) you are not going to get paid.

Zotter alleges the company made about $9 million off the RM through the contract, which lasted from June until December of 2011. The security was meant to provide protection for abandoned homes, security at check points and other services during the disastrous 1 in 300-year flood of 2011.

This is worse than Tiger dams, Pallister said, referencing the controversy surrounding an untendered deal for $5-million worth of flood-fighting equipment for several First Nations.

The controversy surrounding the $5-million contract helped spark the cabinet rebellion of 2014, with documents obtained by the Free Press showing three of the five rebel ministers were upset Selinger and Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton had allegedly tried to get the $5-million package approved without going to tender and finding the lowest price.

The Selinger government is expected to comment on the allegations later today.

Impact Security is also expected to give comment today.
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More than two years after an inquest heard medical staff didnt help Brian Sinclair when he threw up in an emergency department waiting room, and a year after a judge recommended a policy be set up to address it, the province and regional health authorities are still working to ensure a similar situation is handled better in the future.

Almost a year after the provinces health minister set up an implementation team to put in place the 63 recommendations put forward by inquest Judge Tim Preston, recommendation number 17, which says regional health authorities should review their policies and procedures to ensure that staff intervenes when a person is vomiting in an ER, is still not completed and implemented.

Health Minister Sharon Blady said it is one of 15 policy-related recommendations reviewed last year the health authorities are hoping to have in place by this spring.

WAYNE GLOWACKi / winnipeg free press files Brian Sinclair (above and left) died in September 2008 after waiting 34 hours in the emergency room of Health Sciences Centre. The province is working to bring about recommendations that followed the incident.

Blady said the province will audit the health authorities at the end of the year to see if the policy was implemented and do regular followup audits in future.

It might sound a middling thing, but even small definitely matters, Blady said. I want to make sure everyone in any emergency department is getting treatment.

I dont want to check off any (recommendation as implemented) until we are 100 per cent certain. I just want to make sure it is done right.

Vilko Zbogar, the Sinclair familys lawyer, said he cant believe a recommendation that appears to be so simple is still not in place.

You dont even need a policy on that, Zbogar said.

Everyone already knows you have to follow up when that happens. All the medical people we asked at the inquest said throwing up is a sign of a medical problem.

It already is a part of professional obligations.

Sinclair, 45, died in September 2008 after waiting 34 hours with a treatable bladder infection in Health Sciences Centres emergency waiting room. He had a blocked urinary catheter.

An autopsy found Sinclair, a double amputee who used a wheelchair, died up to seven hours before he was discovered, and rigour mortis was setting in.

An inquest into his death began in 2013 and ended in 2014 with the release of a 195-page inquest report by the judge.

The inquest heard after Sinclair threw up, cleaning staff mopped the floor and witnesses later saw him with a bowl under him.

Zbogar said the family also wants the province and the regional health authorities to address the underlying issues that came up during the inquest but werent fully explored.

Bias, false assumptions of people looking a certain way, and assumptions based on race, social status and position, he said. These have always been issues and why the inquest needed to happen if you turn a blind eye to it, the issue wont go away.

Zbogar said the Sinclair family is upset the only time they hear about how the province is working on recommendations is through the media.

Brian Sinclair at Health Sciences Centres ER.

There has been absolutely no communication with the family, he said.

All we hear is what we see in the newspaper.

Blady said the province has been working on all of the judges recommendations for months.

We have six recommendations that have been completed, she said. They are up and running.

These include reviewing the feasibility of expanding the primary-care network and taking a look at expanding the nurse practitioner-operated QuickCare Clinics to ease wait times at emergency rooms and primary-care physician offices.

Its about making things done right, she said.

Any Manitoban that goes into an ER wants the fastest and best care Im happy with the progress were making.

Its not something taken lightly, she said. What happened to Mr. Sinclair was a tragedy. I dont want that happening to anyones family member again. Id rather do it prudently and thoughtfully.

 with files from The Canadian Press

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
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Environmental advocates are upset the province has allowed Manitoba Hydro to begin work to relocate transmission lines across its right-of-way through the Parker lands  despite an appeal of environmental licences for all transit corridor-related work there.

Cal Dueck, spokesman for the Parker Wetlands Conservation Committee, said he questions the validity of Manitoba Conservations appeal process and the land thats subject to the environmental licence.

This is a backwards process, Dueck said. Once (Hydro and the City of Winnipeg) start, the damage they do cant be undone.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Cal Dueck, a member of the Parker Wetlands Conservation committee, walks through the Parker Land forest.

The city recently posted signs near Brenda Leipsic Park, stating the off-leash dog park was being closed to the public to allow Manitoba Hydro to relocate transmission lines  part of the work that must be done before construction starts on the southwest transit corridor.

The city expects to start construction work on the controversial $590-million transit corridor and Jubilee Avenue underpass projects in the spring.

Manitoba Hydro said work in the area will begin Feb. 8. A temporary dog park has been established north of Brenda Leipsic Park, the spokesman said, but access there could be restricted during construction.

Several individuals and organizations filed appeals to the environmental licences granted to the city and Hydro for work in the area  located west of Pembina Highway and south of CN Railways Rivers line.

After the appeals were launched, both the city and Hydro were instructed by Conservation that, before any work could begin, they were required to submit reports to the department detailing the potential impact on the wetlands and a survey of plant life to determine the presence of endangered or at-risk species.

However, a senior provincial official said despite the licences being under review, the licences remain valid, and the city and Hydro can legally begin work at their own risk.

Tracey Braun, the director of the environmental approvals branch, said the legislation allows proponents to initiate construction work even when licences are being reviewed, but said they would face repercussions if the licences are eventually quashed.

Braun said Hydro had submitted its reports and there appears to be no endangered plant species in its right-of-way. Braun said the city has submitted its impact report, but the plant survey will be done in the spring ahead of construction, adding its doubtful anything of significance will be found there.

Weve never found (endangered wetland plant species) in the area, Braun said. In fact, in both of these situations, before the licence was even issued, we went through a technical advisory committee review within government, and there was nothing raised through that review by our specialists that this would be an area of concern.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The contested area west of Pembina Highway and south of the rail line is used primarily as an off-leash dog park.

Braun said Conservation considers the potential wetland at risk to be north of Hydros right-of-way, on land owned by developer Andrew Marquess, and not where the construction work will take place.

A spokesman for Conservation Minister Thomas Nevakshonoff said the licence appeals remain under consideration, and a decision is expected soon.

Dueck said he is disappointed with Conservations approach to the wetlands and the publics concern over their fate. He said Hydros plant survey was done in the summer, when it should have occurred in the spring, adding Conservations decision to refuse to acknowledge the area under construction as part of the wetland is an abdication of its environmental responsibility.

Its all wetland, even under the hydro lines, Dueck said.

Just because Hydro mows that land on a regular basis doesnt mean the wetland stops there.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 28/01/2016 (2457 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A rap song posted to YouTube, which includes malicious and threatening comments towards Kildonan East Collegiate students, has prompted Winnipeg police to make an arrest.

The video, entitled Wiping out Kildonan East features a male voice over a still black and white image of the school.

Police did not provide any details about the suspect arrested.

Kildonan East Collegiate

Among some sexually explicit verses, the male voice is heard saying in the song Ill take the whole school down cause you know Im the man and youre building is weak and thats all that Ive said, until youve guys hit me back, boom, school dead, followed by machine gun fire.

Administration at the River East Transcona School Division were tipped off to the video Thursday morning.

The school then went into high alert meaning all but the front door was locked and had staff looking for strangers in the building or on the property, according to River East Transcona School Division superintendent Kelly Barkman.

Parents also received an email and administration notified the police.

Obviously the safety of all of the staff and students at the school is paramount for us, Barkman said, referring to the video as a threat to the school.

We are going to have counselors there for any staff or students that need to debrief any concerns or worries they may have.

The incident comes just a week after two staff members were fatally shot and seven other people injured at a school in La Loche, Sask., along with two brothers at a residence in the town.

In that case, a 17-year-old boy, who cant be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has been charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.

Barkman said he has not often encountered threats in his career as a superintendent.

But there have been different times when its been a different type of threat. Anytime we go into any type of lockdown or we do a hold-and-secure or high alert, its for a good reason.

 With files from the Canadian Press
A pair of Minnesota organizations are teaming up to facilitate a dialogue on shifting climate patterns in Winona County, and theyre looking for county residents to serve as citizen jurors.

The dialogue, hosted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the Jefferson Center, will take place in Winona March 3-5. Its the third in a series of dialogues on the topic, with prior events in Morris, Minn. in 2014, and Grand Rapids, Minn. in 2015.

Organizers said the dialogues are set up as an opportunity for ordinary folks to get the facts from local experts and have a conversation with other county residents, where all opinions are welcome.

IATP climate and rural communities program associate Tara Ritter said the dialogues focus on rural areas because rural communities are at risk of disproportionately bearing the burden of extreme weather and shifting climate patterns.

For example, weather events such as floods, hailstorms and frequent freeze-thaw cycles can cause expensive damage to property and wear down aging infrastructure. In addition, agricultural crops and natural resources such as forests could be susceptible to pests and diseases because of warming trends.

And because of their distance from services, rural residents have to spend more of their income on transportation, Ritter said. At the same time, rural homes tend to be older and less energy-efficient, so rising fossil fuel costs would affect residents of rural areas more drastically.

Ritter said the climate dialogue is aimed at getting the rural voice into the conversation at the state level, because though they tend to be overlooked, rural communities are well suited to providing many of the renewable resources the world will need, including agriculture and forestry, along with solar and wind power.

The challenges in rural communities generally arent integrated into policy solutions, Ritter said. Most importantly, (the dialogue) is to bring up that voice on how rural areas are leading the way.

The jury will consist of 18 people, randomly selected from those who apply, but balanced to represent the demographics of the county. All are welcome to apply, especially those who dont normally engage in politics, Ritter said.

Participants are paid $375 for the three-day commitment, plus reimbursement for travel and childcare expenses.

Throughout the dialogue, the jury will hear from a variety of local experts on weather trends and their impacts on agriculture, infrastructure, tourism, and other community issues. Then the jury will craft a statement of recommendations to ensure Winona County is prepared for future changes.

Local leaders said theyre happy the dialogue is coming to Winona.

Anne Morse, Winona Countys sustainability coordinator, said given the potentially polarizing nature of the term climate change, it will be good to have a conversation about it in a neutral setting.

From my experience, its been hard for people to talk about climate change, for a number of reasons, she said.

Morse said Winona County, with its unique bluffland topography, is particularly vulnerable to heavy rain events, such as the 2007 flood.

In addition, Winona County is home to many agricultural producers, and agricultural land makes up roughly 60 percent of the countys total land area. Morse said with that in mind, the next edition of the countys hazard mitigation plan will address drought and other weather events that could threaten agricultural production.

There are a lot of people in Winona County who are concerned about the prospect of dramatic change in weather, she said. I think this (dialogue) is a great opportunity.

Glen Groth, president of the Winona County Farm Bureau, grows corn and soybeans and raises dairy cattle and horses with his wife Melinda on their farms in Winona and Fillmore counties.

Groth said he, too, is pleased about the prospect of a conversation on climate change specific to residents of rural areas.

Policy is being developed around the issue of climate change all the time, he said. Its important that were going to be at the table.

And of course, weather plays a big role in Groths business as a farmer. His crops and livestock are exposed to extreme weather all the time, he said, from heat and cold to severe storms and drought. And every year is different, so its hard to plan ahead.

Farmers are among the first to feel the effects of change in the weather, he said.

IATP director of rural strategies Anna Claussen said the public is welcome to observe the jury proceedings but wont be involved in the process of drafting recommendations. The recommendations will be published after the dialogue.

This is not the first time a citizen jury has been held in Winona. In 1994, a citizen jury of 18 First Congressional District residents studied the federal welfare system and made recommendations for reform. U.S. Representative Tim Penny, who represented the area at the time, sponsored the jury.
BROWNSVILLE, Minn.  A Canadian Pacific freight train derailed Tuesday night in Houston County, Minn., sending six cars into the Mississippi River and spilling food-grade oil into the water.

The southbound train derailed around 10 p.m. about three miles south of Brownsville. There were no injuries reported.

CP spokesman Andy Cummings said a small amount of sodium chlorate powder spilled from one of the 15 derailed cars but none of the chemical reached the river.

Primarily used in a bleaching agent for the pulp and paper industry, sodium chlorate can cause fire or explosions when mixed with other materials, according to the manufacturer.

It could kill algae and other aquatic plants if spilled into the river, said Mark Sandheinrich, a professor of biology and director of the River Studies Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

CP has not said what other materials the mixed-freight train was carrying.

Dozens of contractors and government officials were on the scene Wednesday removing overturned cars and repairing the damaged track.

Crews were cutting through ice to install wooden barriers downstream after discovering a sheen consistent with soybean oil, according to the railroad. CP said Monday afternoon that it planned to empty the tanker cars before pulling them from the river.

Canadian Pacific takes this incident extremely seriously, Cummings said. Safety will be our top priority.

The railroad said it anticipated the line, which carries about six trains per day, would reopen Wednesday night. Removal of the oil tankers depends on how quickly it could get empty cars to the site to hold the oil.

The Federal Railroad Administration had inspectors on the scene, though it could take months to determine a cause, said deputy regional administrator Michael Bodah.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Coast Guard and Mississippi River Basin Association were also at the site.

Sabrina Chandler, refuge manager for the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, said oil can coat fish and mussels, preventing them from absorbing oxygen.

We always have a concern if theres anything going in the river thats not supposed to be there, Chandler said.

The derailment occurred under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service overlook that is a popular spot for watching tundra swans and other migratory birds. Chandler said it wasnt clear what impact the activity might have on future migrations but noted the oil itself would not pose a risk.

Its certainly not the same situation as if it was crude oil, Chandler said.

Canadian Pacific had two derailments in Minnesota during 2015, according to the FRAs accident database, which includes incidents through the end of October. Both occurred at relatively slow speeds and did not result in major damages or hazardous material spills.

About 31,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer and an unknown amount of diesel fuel leaked into the Mississippi River when two CP trains collided in 2008 near Dresbach, Minn.

Railroads have come under increased scrutiny in recent years with the rapid growth of crude oil shipments. According to the latest available reports, an average of nine trains per week run on the CP line through Houston County carrying more than a million gallons of crude. Most cross the Mississippi River at La Crescent, continuing east through La Crosse County.

Last year the railroad launched four projects on its southeastern Minnesota line, including a bridge replacement and new sidings to allow trains to pass on the Marquette line, which continues south through Iowa and west to Kansas City.

A CP train carrying crude oil derailed Nov. 8 in Watertown, Wis., one day after a BNSF train derailed near Alma, Wis., spilling ethanol into the Mississippi River. No injuries were reported in either of those accidents.

Citizens Acting for Rail Safety issued a statement Tuesday saying the derailment brings to light the potential for serious accidents that can cause disastrous consequences to our communities and environment. The rail safety group noted that hazardous materials besides oil and ethanol traverse the area daily.
The city of Winona has chosen a candidate with deep local ties for its next city manager.

The Winona City Council voted Friday to offer the job to Steve Sarvi, current administrator for the city of Rushford. The vote was split 4-3, with council members Gerry Krage, Al Thurley, George Borzyskowski and Paul Double voting for the appointment.

Sarvi said he accepted the offer Friday and said the contract is being negotiated.

Im completely honored to be asked, Sarvi said.

The vote succeeded after Double changed from leaning toward the second choice, Donovan Olson.

Those two candidates were the most-debated after the council heard presentations from the four finalists and interviewed all of them Friday morning.

The candidates presented on a problem they thought Winona was facing or would need to address, and created solutions and ways of dealing with it.

Sarvis presentation dealt with a dwindling workforce and how to remain a competitive business area.

Its the perfect storm, Sarvi said of the generational overlap in the area. Retiring boomers, and we dont have enough millennials to replace them.

Among solutions he identified were steps like encouraging people to keep working longer and appealing to younger people to draw them into or keep them in the community, and also seeking out underemployed people and the long-term unemployed.

Sarvi said Winona will need to work on long-term goals with steps and individual projects that show successes.

Referring to how he would establish himself as city manager, Sarvi said that he is not one to come in with an its my way or the highway attitude.

I think (residents will) see the open, caring, honest person in me who wants to do the best for the community, Sarvi said.

The city council briefly debated postponing the vote since it was split so closely, having Sarvi and Olson come back in, or restarting the process altogether, but ultimately decided to go ahead with the vote.

David Drowns Associate consultant Gary Weiers, who was running the process, said that in general postponing a vote doesnt serve to change minds. He didnt know if the pool of candidates that the city gathered, originally 29, would change much given the time between the end of the applications period in late December and now.

Borzyskowski also said dragging the process out further would do little.

I feel we should vote today, one way or another, he said. Starting over, I dont think, solves anything.

In the end, the vote did happen, and Sarvi came in just ahead.

Mayor Mark Peterson and several of the council members said that the closeness of the race reflected a competitive group of candidates.

I think we had four very intelligent people here, all successful and motivated, Peterson said.

Before becoming Rushford administrator in 2011, Sarvi served in top administrator positions in other cities for more than 20 years; he was hired as city administrator for Lanesboro in 1994, and previously worked in both Victoria and Watertown.

Sarvi was also elected three consecutive times as mayor of Watertown. Sarvi has also served in the Army, and worked with the National Guard until 2012.

Krage cited Sarvis previous leadership experience and military history as reasons for his vote, particularly in dealing with strong personalities in the city government and community.

Mr. Sarvi has a command presence, Krage said. (He) would represent us.

Thurley credited Sarvis personal connection, investment and involvement in the Winona area.

I believe with his knowledge, his presence in the state of Minnesota  in Rushford  we would have a much smoother transition with Mr. Sarvi, Thurley said. Mr. Sarvi would hit the ground running.

The timeline for hiring has been on schedule so far, and the hope is for Sarvi to come into the position at the end of February.
My Name is Sabah Haq. I am doing my masters in leadership education in Winona State University. It wasnt an easy way from Bangladesh to Winona. Convincing my family and relatives to allow me to come to United States to pursue my higher studies was very difficult. But finally I convinced them and came to Winona State University.

It was a long journey from Bangladesh to Winona. It took almost 43 hours to reach Winona, in August 2013. The real challenge was understanding the culture, adjusting with the food. But everyone was very helpful and supportive. I fell in love with Winona on my first day when I went for a walk beside the lake and people smiled at me asked me how I was doing. Some asked me if I needed any guidance.

In my first semester I was the only international graduate student who was enrolled in WSU who did not do her undergrad work in the U.S. Fortunately I had an awesome roommate, Emily, in my dorm, who was very supportive.

Then I started applying for on-campus jobs and for that time my dream job was to become a graduate assistant in my department. So I applied for that. On my interview day I didnt even have a proper dress for the interview. It was almost an hour-long interview. Then I was waiting and waiting for the result.

Finally, Robert Howman, Theresa Waterbury and George Morrow, especially Nadia Miranda, said yes to me and I joined as a graduate assistant in the Leadership Education department. This was a very big achievement for me. They waived my tuition and also gave me a stipend for my living expense. Then gradually I started involving with clubs and volunteer activities.

After a year I became a student senate member at Winona State University. This was one more achievement. I started working on improving Winona State students lives. Every week participating in meetings and giving my ideas, saying I in support of the motions in the meeting, student senate president Josh Hanson listening to my opinions, was all like a dream.

When all these were happening in my life a big change came in my life: I was elected as a treasurer for the Minnesota State University Student Association. This was the first time in Winonas history that an international student was elected in MSUSA. This organization is a voice of all college students in Minnesota. Everyone in my department and international office of Winona State said they were proud of me.

I also started a program where international students will be connected with people in the Winona community to share culture and love. This will make the bonds more strong among Winona State and Winona-area residents.

I am thankful to all my friends, faculty, President Scott Olson, VP Denise McDowell, Dean Tarrell Portman, Director of International Services Kemale Pinar, Mr. Ramsdell, everyone in MSUSA, my dad Saif, mom Naheed, my sister Saira and Siene, my brother-in-law, and Grandma Lorena.

Winona made an ordinary girl extraordinary. Before coming to Winona I always thought that dreams are meant to be watched while sleeping, but now I know dreams come true.

Winona is and will always be my first home in the U.S., and I would love to spend the rest of my life in Winona.

I promise to the people of Winona County that I will always be there whenever they need me. I love you all.
MADISON  A state appeals court Thursday denied a Reedsburg womans request for a new trial, concluding that police did not coerce statements used to convict her of causing the death of an infant under her care.

Jeanette Janusiak, 28, is serving a life sentence for first-degree intentional homicide for the June 2014 death of Payten Rain Shearer. Janusiak frequently baby-sat for the 4-month-old daughter of her then best friend Angela Shearer.

Janusiaks appeals attorney, Steven Zaleski, said he will continue to contest the conviction.

I disagree totally with the opinion and I plan to file a petition with the Wisconsin Supreme Court and pursue this as far as we can, Zaleski said.

Janusiak called 911 after she said she was awakened by a choking noise she traced to Payten who she had placed in a bed in a different room hours earlier.

Janusiak made similar statements to Reedsburg police when they first spoke with her, telling them she was not aware of any problem with the baby when she put her to bed.

The next day, Janusiak was handcuffed and taken to the police station where she was interviewed for about seven hours. During that time, her account changed from not knowing how the baby was injured to saying Payten was injured when the baby accidentally fell off the bed, striking her head on a table, according to the appeals opinion.

Before the 10-day trial, Circuit Judge Patrick Taggart listened a recording of Janusiaks interrogation. He permitted jurors to hear Janusiaks statements, concluding that they were not coerced as there were sufficient breaks during the seven-hour session and she did not appear to be over tired, despite being pregnant with her fifth child.

After being sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility in 40 years, Zaleski appealed, contending that although his client did not confess to any crime, police used subtle psychological pressure on a vulnerable person to get Janusiak to say things that would be used against her at trial.

Zaleski was critical of the role Sauk County Department of Human Services Supervisor Hazel Coppernoll played in the interrogation.

Zaleski said Coppernoll told Janusiak that, at this point Im not taking them (Janusiaks children) into custody, Im very concerned about your own children if this happened at your own home I want you to be aware of that.

While Coppernoll did not say she was taking Janusiaks children from her, Coppernolls presence and words suggested she could, Zaleski said.

Its hard to imagine that would not be considered coercive, Zaleski said.

The District IV Court of Appeals called some of Zaleskis account of the police interrogation a distortion of the facts and noted that Janusiak has five prior convictions, including lying to police.

The court also disagreed that being pregnant made Janusiak particularly vulnerable to police pressure tactics.

Janusiak also contributed to the length of the interrogation, according to the opinion.

(W)e see no basis in the record for a potential argument, that at any time during the interview she sought to put a stop to the questioning, or appeared reluctant to speak with the officers. Indeed, she expressed a desire to continue talking when the officers said it was time to end the interview, Judge Brian Blanchard wrote in the 16-page opinion.

District Attorney Kevin Calkins agreed that Reedsburg police properly conducted Janusiaks interview, saying she kept it going after the officers did not think it was worthwhile.

The video showed that an officer tried to shut it down by the two-hour point, as she wasnt saying anything. However, she insisted on telling them more but it didnt match the medical evidence. She continued to offer further explanations of what happened, slowly revealing more details which lengthen the interview, Calkins said.

Janusiak is an inmate at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, according to online state records.
Back in 1855, two years before Juneau County became a separate county from Adams, the United States government hired the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency to find a kidnapped Menominee Indian boy from Wisconsin.

Pinkerton,who guarded Abraham Lincoln as he journeyed from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D. C. to serve as President, and the boy remained lost. The mystery continued on  far longer than any of the principal figures in the drama could have lived themselves.

Prior to Pinkertons investigation, a Wisconsin family by the name of Partridge had a son disappear without a trace. It seemed young Caspar Partridge became lost forever in the vast forest near his home. Before long, a young Indian boy, about the same age as Caspar, went missing. This is when the federal government stepped in on the search. Could the Partridges have claimed an Indian boy as their own, kidnapped him, and vanish, as they had left Wisconsin without a trace?

In 1974, the Genealogical Research section of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin set out to solve the mystery. Initially, a fresh look at the story and mountains of related documents, especially federal records was undertaken.

Research traced the Partridge family to Steuben County, Indiana. Through census records of 1860, 1870 and 1880 it was discovered Caspar had been renamed Joseph. It was further discovered he was a Civil War veteran. Those service and pension records detailed a remarkable story of bigamy and a quandary about the legal recipient of his pension.

Researchers located a nephew of Josephs widow who ultimately won the pension. Without mentioning anything about the alleged kidnapping or Indian question, the nephew described Joseph as an Indian, He told me so, as did his sons. Without hesitation, the nephew added that Partridge had a ninety year old sister-in-law.

Researchers shifted back to Wisconsin, and located the woman who claimed she knew Joe very well, and he had died during a visit to her home at Camp Douglas in 1916, and that he was Indian. Descendants and heirs confirmed her story. They revealed a picture of a complex man, very social, loved children, and he was perpetually unemployed. He was kind, but a scrapper when provoked and he knew he was an Indian.

This encounter led to an obit for the senior Mrs. Partridge, then directly to the last surviving Partridge nephew in El Paso, Texas. He made known, his awareness of Joe Partridge being a kidnapped Indian boy. He claimed Mrs. Partridge could not accept the idea her son Casper had died, so she seized Joe as her own.

Joe was buried in the Camp Douglas cemetery without a grave marker. Years later, persons interested in honoring Civil War veterans approached the neighbor who recalled the burial site. The neighbor had forgotten Joes last name, when given a list of possibilities, he selected the wrong one. Thus the kidnapped Indian boy, who became Joseph Partridge, lies buried in the Camp Douglas cemetery as Joseph F. Parker.
After a series of life-changing surgeries in 2002, Dennis Erickson doesnt take life for granted.

Erickson, a Town of Armenia resident, was given both a new kidney and pancreas and a new opportunity at life, through the generosity of others. Erickson never forgot the kind gesture of strangers, so after those fateful transplants in 02, Erickson has devoted his life to helping others.

Erickson was recently named the American Red Cross January Volunteer of the Month for the Wisconsin region. He has served as a Red Cross volunteer for more than a decade, along with serving as an EMT in the Necedah area, and has devoted time to several other organizations. A few years ago, Erickson co-founded Transplant Wisconsin Inc., an organization that helps save lives through organ donation.

While he certainly doesnt lend a helping hand to receive praise and accolades, Erickson was both surprised and humbled upon receiving the Volunteer of the Month award. Ericksons interest in the Red Cross really peaked after attending a health fair in Milwaukee more than a decade ago.

I didnt know that they were so involved and in-depth in disasters; I figured it was just the blood donation and medical part of it, so I had no clue about all the other entities that they are involved in, Erickson said. After my transplant, I had to go on disability and walk away from my job, so I figured why not? I had free time and thought, Hey, I have a second chance on life from somebodys daughter who had donated their organs to me after being killed in a car accident and was totally thankful for that. I knew this was a way I could give back and help people in what they go through in a disaster.

Ericksons valuable training as an EMT was put to the test about a month ago. After responding to a call in Juneau County, Erickson had to administer CPR on a woman who had collapsed in her truck alongside a roadway.

I immediately started doing CPR on her while the rest of my team was getting the AED shock pads going. We shocked her twice and continued doing CPR and she came right out of it, Erickson said. She sat right back up again and we were able to transport her in another ambulance. She had basically flat-lined and this happened just before Christmas, so she was very fortunate. We were able to save her so shell be able to spend another Christmas with her family.

Through the Red Cross, Erickson has traveled across the country to help residents displaced by floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters. He received his first experience with the Red Cross in September 2005, helping out New Orleans residents displaced by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Erickson volunteered to help families flown into Milwaukee, setting up a camp at State Fair Park.

We occupied this center for over three months, Erickson said. There were more than 680 people staying there. The City of Milwaukee and Wisconsin really came through. They provided clothes and shoes for these people, it was great.

After helping out with the recovery from Katrina, Erickson became a Red Cross case work supervisor.

I sit down with clients, listen to their stories, hold their hands and talk to them. Just try to do what I can to get them in touch with the right people to help them get back on their feet, Erickson said. We have grief counselors, social workers, mental health people and a whole bunch of people associated with the Red Cross. Ive been doing it the past 10 years and it makes me feel good that I can help people and still be around to do what I can do for them.

For the past few years, Erickson has helped flood victims in Kentucky and has spent weeks assisting the Red Cross in tornado relief efforts in Texas. Recently, Erickson returned from a flood recovery trip in St. Louis, Missouri.

Theres a lot of agencies that come together to help these people, Erickson said. Its pretty remarkable when you see what the Red Cross is and how they help people. Its not government subsidized in any way, shape or form. Its totally relied on donations. About 93 cents per dollar goes toward the disaster relief and about seven or eight cents go toward administrative costs, so its pretty cool.

Marytha Blanchard, a disaster program officer with the Red Cross, said Erickson commits to three shifts every week and has taken on new roles with the organization through a dedication to learning, training and managing both people and processes.

He is reliable, compassionate, dedicated, and literally a true life-saver, Blanchard said.

For more information or to donate to the Red Cross, go to www.redcross.org.
Access to data from so-called vehicle black boxes, capable of tracking how a motorist drives, would be restricted under a bill being circulated by a trio of GOP state lawmakers.

Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, and Reps. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, and Romaine Quinn, R-Rice Lake, are seeking support for the bill among fellow lawmakers.

It gives vehicle owners control of data collected by their vehicles black box  known in the industry as event data recorders, or EDRs  specifying that others could access it only with the owners permission.

Most newer vehicles have such boxes, capable of tracking things like a vehicles speed, whether the driver brakes or accelerates and whether that person is wearing a seat belt.

Currently, the boxes record such data only in the seconds before, during and after a crash. But critics worry about how much more information the devices might collect as they become more sophisticated.

As EDRs develop in complexity and interactivity, this legislation will ensure that Wisconsins motorists are sufficiently protected from unauthorized data access and transmission, the lawmakers wrote in a memo to their colleagues.

Who owns EDR data is a state-by-state question. Wisconsin law is silent on the matter, bill supporters told the Wisconsin State Journal. Kremer said its a typical case of state law not keeping pace with technology.

At least 23 other states have passed laws defining who owns EDR data, according to Steve Panten, a spokesman for ABATE of Wisconsin, a motorcyclists rights advocacy group that supports the bill.

We need to start addressing some of these privacy issues, Kremer said.

The bill says insurance companies would not be able to link the issuance or renewal of a liability policy to whether the vehicle has such a box, or whether the motorist allows the insurer to access or use data it collects.

Some insurers have begun offering safe driver discounts contingent on motorists installing a device that tracks how they drive. The bill lifts its data-access restrictions for motorists who consent to share the data with their insurer for such a policy.

The bill faces a steep climb to become law this year, as its on course to be introduced near the close of the current two-year session.

If nothing else, Quinn said he hopes the bill makes more Wisconsinites aware that their vehicles may collect data on how they drive  and that they should be conscious of who obtains it.

Technology today really can be more invasive than you think, and potentially can be used against you, Quinn said.
A dozen or more corrections staff were on hand in a Columbia County courtroom Wednesday for a hearing lasting less than 10 minutes.

Over the past few months inmate Cesar DeLeon has written Judge W. Andrew Voigt requesting a psychological analysis in preparation for trial, testimony from a witness who has since died to be addressed and releasing his attorney who he accused of failing to act on his behalf.

DeLeon, who is accused of first-degree attempted homicide and battery by a prisoner for the repeated stabbing of a librarian, and assault of an intervening inmate at Columbia Correctional Institution in October 2014, appeared via video, secured in a restraint chair, from Waupun Correctional Institution.

Voigt allowed defense attorney David Karpe to withdraw from the case, telling DeLeon that the Wisconsin Public Defenders Office would appoint another attorney, but that they tend to limit to three appointments in a case.

In June, DeLeon asked for Public Defender Ronald Benavides to withdraw from his defense, saying that Benavides had failed to act in not objecting to the showing of security footage of the assault during DeLeons preliminary hearing, a hearing which, DeLeon wrote, he wished to have waived entirely. Waiving a preliminary hearing is within a defendants rights, if there is a reason for the prosecution to not go through with calling a witness to establish probable cause, and thus proceeding to the next stage of scheduling a pre-trial conference, or entering a plea.

During the past few months while he was represented by Karpe, DeLeon wrote Voigt, his letters and calls to Karpes office went unanswered and he had not received psychiatric evaluation that would be pertinent to the case.

In the letters to the court DeLeon explained that he has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following a period he was in segregation at CCI between July and September 2014, during which he says he was subject to a behavior modification program that he described as abusive and comparable to brainwashing.

DeLeon provided the Daily Register with copies of what appear to be Department of Corrections reports from the time leading up to and following the 2014 assault.

The timeline begins with a form titled Segregation Follow-Up, signed by Dr. Gary Maier, dated Aug. 6, 2014, in which Maier writes, He may be in the situation where given his persistent depressive order that now appears to be showing some psychotic features he should be civilly committed, and I will participate in the discussion later today at the weekly multidisciplinary team meeting in that regard.

In a Psychological Service Request, DeLeon writes in a document dated Aug. 20, 2014 that, beginning the week of July 20, he was involuntarily subjected to a very sadistic behavior modification treatment, going on to say that I am no longer suicidal, however I am extremely depressed and have fell into a coercive sense of confusion and anger. I need your mental health.

Over the next two months, the documents show DeLeon submitting further requests for psychological service, asking for help and for information on mental health treatment, while at the same time, refusing appointments with staff psychiatrists.

In the request form dated Oct. 20, 2014, DeLeon again writes a staff psychiatrist that he is suffering side effects of earlier program, such as PTSD entailing recurring nightmares, outbursts of rage and uncontrollable bursts of laughter, and fantasizing violent situations.

During an interview at Waupun Correctional Institution, DeLeon said that at that time he was increasingly paranoid, taking a pair of craft scissors, breaking it in half, and sharpening one half to make a shank, which he said that he carried, worried about being attacked at any time.

Then on Oct. 27, he entered the CCI library, walked around the front desk and grabbed the librarian around the neck, hoisting her out of her seat and stabbing her with the broken scissors. Inmate Reginald Big Mo Moton tackled DeLeon and held onto him until officers arrived and restrained him. Later that day DeLeon was transferred to Waupun. Moton died in CCI of reported natural causes the day before Thanksgiving.

Held in Waupun Correctionals segregation unit, DeLeon spoke through the video phone visitors can use in a room opposite the visitors room.

DeLeon said that he didnt attack the librarian  at least not in that sense. It was him in the video, granted, but he described snapping and blacking out at the time.

Treatment of inmates in the DOCs segregation units has been criticized as at times crossing into territory tantamount to a violation of human rights, specifically at Waupun, according to a 2014 series of stories published by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Complicating the situation is that people who have worked in those units, such as current and former correctional officers, social workers and mental health support staff agree that among those inmates are some exceptionally intelligent men who are certainly worth listening to, but more common are exceptionally intelligent men who apply their energy to manipulating people around them.

Given the opacity of the Department of Corrections and especially so of segregation units, knowing the difference between the two is difficult.

In Wednesdays hearing Voigt told Karpe that since their last hearing DeLeon had written him requesting that this be some kind of evidentiary hearing. Besides not being clear on the basis of the request  how Motons death would alter the state of affairs  Voigt said he was not sure it would be appropriate to accept such a request while Karpe was still technically representing DeLeon.

Voigt recommended that DeLeon bring up any questions about evidence with his next attorney, who might be able to form that concern into a proper motion.

If that doesnt work out, for whatever reason, it will be exceptionally difficult to convince them to appoint a fourth attorney, Voigt said. I would caution you to be very careful with that relationship.

DeLeons trial, originally scheduled for Jan. 26, has been taken off of the calendar.
Columbia Countys new canal-side buildings are coming in at about $500,000 under budget, according to tentative bid figures.

We had a good day, said John Feller of J.H. Findorff and Son, the Madison firm that county officials hired to oversee construction for most of the $45.51 million building project.

The County Boards Ad Hoc Building Committee spent one hour Thursday afternoon monitoring the opening of five boxes of sealed bids, for 18 aspects of construction of the three-story administration building on the Portage Canals northwest side and the two-story Health and Human Services building on the canals southeast side.

All totaled, Findorff officials had estimated the construction costs at $23.5 million. The bids came in at about $23 million.

Based solely on raw numbers  that is, if the lowest bid in each category were accepted  the savings come in closer to $700,000.

But Feller said he wouldnt advise county officials to count their windfall just yet.

There are several questions that need to be answered, he said, before Findorff officials can advise the county as to which contractors have submitted the lowest responsible bids.

For one thing, Thursdays bid opening did not include reading of bids for two aspects of construction: floor coverings and elevators.

One bid came in for floor coverings, but County Clerk Susan Moll  who read the bids  said the bid did not include the required bid bond, meaning it could not be read into the record.

The same was true for elevators, where Moll could not locate a bid bond for the one bid received.

Also, Feller noted, there are questions remaining about the apparent low bidder for earthwork.

The Ad Hoc Building Committee had planned to award just the earthwork and structure bids Thursday, to allow the successful bidders time to order materials.

The remaining bids were to be awarded Feb. 9.

However, the apparent low-bidding earthwork contractor  who, like most contractors, submitted bids for just the administration building, just the HHS building and both buildings combined  submitted a bid for the HHS building that was significantly lower than that of other bidders.

The committee opted to wait on awarding the earthwork bid until Findorff officials can get some clarification on the bid.

It did, however, award the bid for structure to Findorff, which submitted the lowest combined bid, $3.41 million, of four bidders.

When Findorff officials evaluate bids from their own company, Feller said, they treat them the same as any other contractor.

All bids, including Findorffs, had to arrive in sealed envelopes to the county clerks office no later than noon Thursday. Also, Feller said, all bids are subject to scrutiny by Findorff, to determine if they included all the required information or if there are any variations from the specifications.

Ad Hoc Building Committee Member Teresa Sumnicht asked whether there were assurances that all bids in any particular construction area could be assumed to be comparable.

Are we comparing apples to apples, in terms of quality of materials? she asked.

Feller said that the specifications in each construction area, regarding materials and building methods, were spelled out for every contractor.

The Ad Hoc Committee, and by extension the County Board, are required to award the contract to the lowest responsible bidder, Feller said.

But whether they award bids in a particular area of construction to the same firm for both buildings, or whether they award the bids to the lowest bidder for each individual building, would be a decision for the committee, though Findorff would make recommendations.

All told, 70 bids were received, including those that lacked a bid bond, for the following aspects of construction: earthwork, structure, masonry, glass and glazing, roofing and flashing, steel studs and drywall, rough and finish carpentry, floor coverings, terrazzo, acoustical ceilings, painting and wall covering, architectural metal, elevators, fire protection, plumbing, heating ventilation and air conditioning, electrical and landscaping.

The area that got the largest number of bids was fire protection, with eight bids. Six areas of construction got five or more bids.

Besides elevators and floor coverings, the only other area receiving just one bid was architectural metal.

In some specific areas, Feller said, the bids were higher than Findorffs estimate, while in other areas, they were lower.

Moll said that all bids, and the names of the contractors that submitted them, will be posted on the countys website, www.co.columbia.wi.us, either this afternoon or Monday.
A recent proposed change in federal law governing salary and overtime rules for white collar workers could soon bring profound challenges for the tourism business owners in Wisconsin Dells who employ such workers.

This sober warning came from two Milwaukee-based attorneys who specialize in labor laws, during a 90-minute presentation Thursday to an audience of almost two dozen local business owners, resort managers and human resources professionals at Chula Vista Resorts conference center.

A 2015 rule by the U.S. Department of Labor updating the salary requirements for employees exempt from overtime rules would mean not only increased compensation requirements but also potentially dramatic changes in job classifications and time reporting, the two attorneys  Thomas Godar and Tiffany Hutchens, of Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C., told the group.

The proposed rule change will affect many employers with currently exempt, non-overtime pay employees who are paid less than $50,440 a year, said one of the presentations slides. The rule change will require overtime compensation to an additional five million employees across the U.S. during the first year of its implementation.

That means the hundreds of Dells-area employees who manage food and beverage operations, guest and aquatic services, and attraction and housekeeping operations on a salaried-versus-hourly basis could either require an increase in compensation, a job reclassification or both.

The impact of that change could affect how companies manage both salaried and hourly employees, with financial and operational implications well beyond the tourism businesses in the Wisconsin Dells region.

The rule of unintended consequences is huge here, Godar told the group.

The resulting effect on the bottom line for local hotels and attractions  many of which were represented at Thursdays seminar by owners, managers and human resources professionals  could be as daunting for local businesses as those wrought during the Great Recession.

I think as business owners, were all going to have to go back and take a look at how we do business  like we did several years ago when business dropped off (during the recession), said Chula Vista owner and AmericInn Lodge and Suites general manager Ann Kaminski following the presentation. Were all going to have to redesign how we work.

I just see chaos, said Kevin Ricks, owner and operator of seven stores  including Gnome Depot, Ripleys Believe It or Not and Wizard Quest  in downtown Dells. My biggest question is, where does that money come from? If Im forced to increase my hourly pay or my salaries, where do I pull from for that?

Ricks said most businesses  especially those of the entrepreneurial kind like his  dont have a lot of financial wiggle room, and such drastic changes in employee compensation and job classifications will have monumental effects.

Its going to result in (having to) get rid of employees or youre going to pass these costs on to the consumer  and nobody wants to do either of those, he said. Thats whats going to hurt us.

Ricks said owning a business in the Dells does not automatically equal buckets of cash above and beyond what it costs to run that business.

I think the general assumption out there is that if you own a business youre just rolling in cash and not sharing that revenue or that profit with employees, he said. I have a very small net profit, and that net profit usually is a reinvestment back into my business.

Simply interpreting the new rules  whose enforcement Godar predicted would be pushed through by the Department of Labor prior to the 2016 election  will bring added costs to business owners, Ricks said.

We usually have to hire an accountant or tax lawyer or labor law lawyer to tell us what to do, so those are additional costs, he said. Theyre not cheap at all, believe me.

One local tourism business owner who already has hired such an attorney is Kaminski, who fully admitted that smaller businesses will be hard pressed to follow suit. She strongly recommended utilizing the services of the various state and national trade organizations that support tourism-oriented businesses, such as the Wisconsin Hotel and Lodging Association and the National Restaurant Association.

Those associations are going to be so important for everyone in helping to navigate the coming changes in labor laws, Kaminski said.
Isaac Alty '16 to receive Jefferson Prize in Natural Philosophy

Isaac Alty '16 always wanted to be a scientist. He came to William & Mary to pursue a pre-med path and ended up majoring in chemistry and ancient Greek. He is interviewing at medical schools, and has already been accepted at two. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Photo - of - Hide Caption

Isaac Altys mother is a biochemist and his father is a general surgeon, and the enthusiasm they brought to their professions had a formative effect on their son.

You can only imagine how crazy our dinner-table conversations were, between gall bladders and protein folding, he said.

Alty 16 followed the footsteps of both parents during his time at William & Mary, pursuing a chemistry major along a pre-med path. He also has a second major, in ancient Greek.

Alty is the co-recipient of William & Marys Thomas Jefferson Prize in Natural Philosophy for 2016, along with Andrew Halleran. Endowed by the trustees of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, the award recognizes excellence in the sciences and mathematics and commemorates Jeffersons relationship with Professor William Small. The namesake of the William Small Physical Laboratory, Prof. Small was Jeffersons science and mathematics tutor at William & Mary. The Jefferson Prize is one of the awards traditionally bestowed at Charter Day, which commemorates the founding of the institution in 1693.

It is especially apt for Alty to be awarded the Jefferson Prize, as his choice of majors  layered atop William & Marys liberal arts-based curriculum  has given him the most Jeffersonian undergraduate experience imaginable. Alty says he didnt start out to walk in Jeffersons footsteps, but the comparison isnt lost on him.

It has occurred to me a couple of times. Jefferson was very much a Renaissance man. He did a little bit of everything and he did it pretty well, too, Alty explained. I enjoy the idea of not focusing my education in one specific place, being able to learn about a broad variety of things that tie back to each other, and not necessarily in ways that you would expect, but which are beautiful nonetheless.

Not to mention that there is really no better place to have a Jeffersonian undergraduate experience than at Jeffersons own alma mater, he added.

Like Jefferson, Alty did pretty well at William & Mary. Associate Professor of Chemistry Randolph A. Coleman is Altys academic advisor as well as health professions advisor for the department. In a letter of support for Altys nomination for the Jefferson Prize, Coleman pointed out Altys grades placed him in the top one percent of his class.

This outstanding record has been achieved while pursuing a challenging program of premedical studies along with his chemistry and Ancient Greek double major, Coleman wrote.

Lisa Landino, the Garrett-Robb-Guy Professor of Chemistry, said that Alty scored a hundred percent in her advanced biochemistry class without attending a single class. Alty explained that he had a Greek class scheduled in the same time slot as the biochem class, so he devised his own distance-learning protocol.

I videotaped my biochemistry lecture to watch later in the day, he said. He even managed to maintain a presence in class. Landino would often introduce a term, explaining to the class its Greek or Latin derivation. After each bit of Greek- or Latin-based nomenclature was explained, Landino would peer at the videocamera and say, But Isaac already knows that.

Beyond terminology and a propensity for scientists to use Greek letters, Alty acknowledges that his two majors dont have a great deal of content overlap. The chemistry major was his chosen path to fulfill pre-med requirements. Alty enjoyed his four years of high school Latin and his Latin teacher advised him to try ancient Greek in college.

Alty enrolled in Greek 101 in his first semester at William & Mary, learning enough, he said, to read a little bit of Homer, and liking it enough to sign up for the next Greek course.

One thing led to another, Alty said. Before I knew it, I had two years of Greek under my belt. I thought, you know, this is a lot of fun. I should just make a major out of it.

He did, and he excelled in both majors. He had one semester without a Greek class, and I felt that there was something missing in my life, he said. I realized that what was missing was the three or four hours I would spend on translation. He gathered fans in the Department of Chemistry as well as the Department of Classical Studies.

Isaac is affable, earnest, and positive. He approaches everything with an enthusiasm and openness that I find particularly refreshing and contagious, wrote Vassiliki Panoussi, associate professor in the classical studies department. Difficulty just doesnt seem to faze Isaac: Very few students have taken four semesters of advanced Greek  arguably the toughest courses at William & Mary  while also achieving excellence in a field as demanding as chemistry!

The academic demands of two majors did not prevent Alty from making time to engage in research. He worked in the laboratory of Chemistry Chair Christopher Abelt for two years, including working full time over the past two summers. Abelt wrote in letter supporting Altys nomination for the Jefferson Prize that Alty is operating at the level of a fourth-year Ph.D. chemistry student.

Isaac has been an absolute pleasure to have in lab. He came up to speed in research extremely quickly, Abelt wrote. He is one of only a handful of students I have had who has moved a project forward by digging deep into the chemical literature to solve synthesis problems. He was able to accomplish in lab in two months last summer what would take most other good students at least one year. 

Abelt said that Alty achieved a number of successes in the lab, including the formulation of a synthetic route to a molecule that was highly congested, and therefore a challenge to make. After figuring out the route, Alty went on to carry out the actual synthesis of the molecule, Abelt said.

Alty has applied to a number of medical schools and has already been accepted at the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University and has interviewed at Harvard and Washington University in St. Louis. He said that he always wanted to pursue some sort of a career in science.

I really started getting geared up for science in middle school. I got interested in the space race, Alty said. I watched October Sky. That movie inspired me: Some kid from Coalwood, West Virginia, could become a NASA engineer. I wanted to be an astronaut until I decided to be a doctor in the 10th grade.

He got a look at the surgeons craft when he accompanied his father on a number of medical missions to Africa. Alty scrubbed up and assisted in operations, but I didnt cut anything, unless you count sutures.

Alty said that although he is leaning towards surgery, he hasnt fully decided on a medical specialty: Ill let medical school decide that for me.




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Bulgaria agrees Kozloduy 6 life extension plan with Russia

29 January 2016

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Russian and Bulgarian companies have signed a contract to extend the operating life of unit 6 of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant to 60 years. The agreement - between Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant plc and a consortium of Russia's Rusatom Services and Bulgaria's Risk Engineering Ltd - was signed during a meeting of the Bulgarian-Russian intergovernmental commission on economic and scientific-technical cooperation in Sofia yesterday, by Evgeny Sal'kov, general director of Rusatom Services, and Dimitar Angelov, executive director of Kozloduy NPP plc.

In a statement yesterday, Rosatom said the contracted work includes an assessment of the "technical condition and justification of the residual service life" of the reactor equipment, the thermal and mechanical equipment of the first and second circuits, the diesel generator power units, and other equipment, buildings and structures of Kozloduy 6. The work is expected to take 30 months.

Kozloduy NPP plc manages Bulgaria's sole nuclear power plant, which covers more than one-third of the country's total annual electricity generation. Rusatom Services is a subsidiary of Russia state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

The Rosatom statement quoted Sal'kov as saying that Russia and Bulgaria has cooperated in the nuclear sector for more than 40 years. "We are delighted that our cooperation is not only successfully being continued, but is expanding in promising and important projects such as the extension of the operation and modernization of nuclear power plants," he said.

The Kozloduy site is home to two operating Russian-designed VVER-1000 pressurised water reactors, Kozloduy 5 and 6, as well as four shut-down VVER-440s. The units are currently licensed to 2017 and 2019.

The plan to extend the operating lives of these reactors was initiated in April 2012 when Kozloduy NPP plc signed a contract with a consortium of Rosenergoatom and EDF. Early in 2013 a further contract was signed with Rusatom Services to upgrade the turbine generator of unit 6, taking it to 1100 MWe by installing a new stator, with work completed in November 2015.

In October 2014 an agreement for refurbishment and life extension of unit 5 was signed with the three companies. A 24.7 million agreement with Rosatom in October 2015 was for upgrading the turbine generator of unit 5 by May 2018. It involves Rosenergoatom, Rusatom Services and EDF. The government is committed to their life extension and uprate to 104% of original capacity.

Proposals for a seventh and eighth unit at Kozloduy date back to the 1980s, when possible sites were reserved. Finally, in November 2013, Bulgaria's government gave the go-ahead for a new unit at Kozloduy and announced it would begin exclusive talks with Westinghouse on building an AP1000 reactor on the site.

In April last year, Westinghouse Electric Company and the Bulgarian government announced they were in talks to set a structure and timeline for their agreement to build a seventh reactor at the Kozloduy plant. The discussions follow the expiry on 31 March of a shareholder agreement the US-based company signed with the previous government in August 2014. Under that agreement, Westinghouse would be responsible for providing all of the plant equipment, design, engineering and fuel for the new unit.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Hualong One fuel assembly undergoes irradiation testing

29 January 2016

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A prototype fuel assembly for use in China's Hualong One reactor design has completed the first fuel cycle irradiation test. Construction of three Hualong One units has already begun in China.

The China Fuel 3 (CF3) fuel assembly completed the first irradiation test on 28 January, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced today. The assembly had been loaded into the core of unit 2 of CNNC's Qinshan nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province.

The irradiated CF3 fuel assembly is removed from Qinshan 2's core (Image: CNNC)

CNNC noted that, in accordance with international practice, following the design and manufacture of a new type of nuclear fuel assembly, the fuel must undergo irradiation tests in a reactor to validate its overall performance. These tests, it said, check the irradiation, corrosion and mechanical properties of the assembly.

In 2012 central planners in Beijing directed CNNC and the other large nuclear builder and operator, China General Nuclear (CGN), to 'rationalise' their reactor programs. This meant CNNC's ACP1000 and CGN's ACPR1000 were 'merged' into one standardised design - the Hualong One.

Construction of two Hualong One units is already under way at CNNC's Fuqing plant in Fujian province, as well as the first of two such units at CGN's Fangchenggang plant in Guangxi province.

In December, CNNC and CGN agreed to create a 50-50 joint venture to promote the Hualong One in overseas markets.

CGN agreed in October to form a joint venture company with EDF Energy to seek regulatory approval for a UK version of the Hualong One design. The following month, China and Argentina signed an agreement to build a Hualong One reactor as the South American country's fifth nuclear power unit.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
Tara McNeill Palajac

By: Wayne Morin

(Scroll down for video) A community is shocked over the arrest of a well-known woman.

51-year-old Tara McNeill Palajac of California, is a businesswoman and the a homeowner association chief financial officer.

She was well-known and respected in her community in Santa Clara. According to neighbors, Palajac adopted two children from Hungary.

The children flew to Hungary during the summer vacation to see their biological parents, a neighbor said.

Although she seemed to be a loving mother, police said that Palajac admitted to killing her 12-year-old son by holding him down in the bathtub until he was lifeless.

Police said that at first, Palajac claimed that she found her son emerged in the water inside the bathtub and she performed CPR to revive him.

However, during questioning, she admitted to causing his death, police said.

Palajac was placed on suicide watch. She is being held without bail at the county jail in the psychiatric ward.
Chicken (illustration)

By: Mahesh Sarin

A mother is accused of burning her sonas mouth after eating her dinner.

The woman of Malawi, was arrested for allegedly burning her sonas hands and then forcing hot coal into his mouth as punishment for stealing her piece of chicken.

38-year-old Julita Matias of Mulanje, went out with her husband and left their 9-year-old son Kingsley Mame at home.

When they returned home, Matias discovered that a piece of chicken that she had prepared for herself before leaving her house was missing.

She accused her son of taking the chicken. She beat him, and burned his hand and mouth with hot coal, Mulanje police spokesperson Gresham Nkhwazi said.

The 9-year-old boy was only taken to the hospital three days later when his older brother told someone what happened and that person informed the police.

Matias was arrested on a charge of child abuse.
The door

By: Tanya Malhotra

A woman in the Netherlands, was surprised to see police officers in her house.

She was even more surprised when she learned that her bad opera singing caused people to believe that she was in trouble.

Police in Amsterdam, said that they received a call from a worried citizen who reported hearing aterrifying screamsa coming from the womanas home in Buitenveldert.

Police confirmed that the concerned person believed that the sounds were that of a woman in agony. When officers arrived and knocked on the door, they did not get a response.

Police said on Facebook, that when officers entered the house, they found the woman alistening to music with headphones on and was singing along with an opera.a

Police reported their findings to the concerned citizen and they all had a good laugh, police wrote on Facebook.
Heroin (illustration)

By: Chan Yuan

A teenage drug dealer was busted by police after being caught with heroin, which was concealed inside a transparent bag, police in the United Kingdom said.

Now, 19-year-old Jordan Ricketts of St. Albans, has been sentenced to serve 12 months in prison after pleading guilty to possession with intent to supply.

According to the police investigation, Ricketts became nervous after being asked if he had anything on him during traffic stop.

The officers then observed a blue transparent bag that had heroin inside. When he was asked what was in the bag, Ricketts said that it was heroin.

He had two previous convictions, one for possessing heroin and another for robbery. Investigators said that the teen was selling the drugs to buyers who were known to the police.
The Australian political establishment used the national Australia day celebrations on Tuesday to further elevate the military to centre stage in social and political life, bestowing Australian of the Year honours on former army chief David Morrison.

The decision, made by the National Australia Day Council, a body appointed by the federal government, was highly political. It took place amid US-led provocations against China in the South China Sea and followed the release of a report commissioned by the Pentagon, outlining detailed plans for a US-led war against China in which Australia would be required to play a central role.

Morrisons appointment is of a piece with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by successive federal governments on the celebration of the centenary of World War I. The campaign, which is particularly directed at school children and youth, is aimed at rewriting the history of Australias predatory military operations over the past hundred years, and overcoming the deep-seated opposition to war in the working class in preparation for new and even bloodier conflicts.

A significant aspect of this ideological and political offensive is the deployment of the reactionary nostrums of identity politics, aimed at enlisting the political support of sections of the upper-middle-class and providing the promotion of militarism with a faux-progressive veneer.

Accordingly, Morrisona 36-year military veteran who retired as chief of the army in 2015has been recast in the unlikely role of a champion of womens rights and diversity. One of the other finalists widely tipped to win the award was Catherine McGregor, the highest ranking transgender individual in the armed forces.

Morrison came to media prominence in 2013 with a carefully crafted speech responding to revelations of sexual misdemeanours, exploitative relations and backward behavior in the army. In the course of the speech, he declared that he would be ruthless in ridding the army of people who cannot live up to its values.

The entire affair was an exercise in damage control, aimed at defending the army, which Morrison called a great national institution. It was also aimed at obscuring the fact that backward and degrading behavior within the army is the inevitable product of the essential character of the military itselfa machine honed for the express purpose of violently subjugating and oppressing entire populations. In order to be prepared to kill and be killed, recruits are thoroughly brutalised, with all the attendant consequences.

The speech was nevertheless hailed as a triumph by a significant layer of feminists and progressive journalists. Morrison was feted, and invited to join panel discussions with the likes of feminist author Anne Summers.

In his Australia Day acceptance speech, Morrison played to the specific concerns of this upper middle-class layer, declaring that too many of our fellow Australians are denied the opportunity to reach their potential, because of race, gender, religious discrimination and sexual orientation. Morrison stated that pay inequality, domestic violence and the establishment of a republic were his priorities for the year.

All the major parties backed Morrisons appointment. Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull presented the award, while Labor leader Bill Shorten and Greens leader Richard Di Natale extended their congratulations online.

A host of commentators likewise hailed the former army chief. Peter FitzSimons, a prominent media pundit and chairman of the Australian Republican Movement gave a fawning response that was typical of the general tenor of the media coverage. FitzSimons, who has written a series of popular books glorifying Australian involvement in the first and second world wars, declared that Morrison would make an outstanding president or prime minister in a future Republic.

Morrisons role as a senior figure in the military during its involvement for the past 15 years in one criminal US-led war after another has been predictably absent from the official media coverage. Also overlooked have been the profoundly anti-democratic implications of the promotion of military, and ex-military, figures to top civilian positions.

Morrison joined the army in 1979, just four years after the US defeat in Vietnam, amid widespread anti-war sentiment among students and youth. In 1999, he served as commander of operations for the Australian-led International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), which carried out a predatory military occupation aimed at securing control of the tiny nations oil and natural gas resources.

Having served as deputy chief of the army in 2008, Morrison was elevated to chief of the army in 2011, an appointment that coincided with a major shift in geo-politics. In 2011, Julia Gillards Labor government formally embraced the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, a US-led military, economic and diplomatic campaign in the Asia-Pacific region directed against China. Gillard signed a military deal with Obama, allowing the expansion of US basing arrangements, heightened interoperability between the Australian and American armed forces, and a host of other measures in preparation for a US war against China.

The following year, in 2012, Morrison launched an extraordinary intervention into political life, campaigning publicly against the prospect of any cut to the countrys defence budget under conditions of deepening economic crisis, and major cuts to social services. In one speech, delivered at the University of Canberra, he declared, The strategic environment in our region in the aftermath of Vietnam was actually much less ominous than it is now  This is not the time to reduce our deployable military capability.

Continuing this theme, Morrison bluntly stated, We cannot assume that state-on-state conventional war is a thing of the past. In other words, Canberra had to commit all the necessary resources for a war between major powers that would, inevitably, pose the risk of a global conflagration. The tectonic shifts in the global system associated with the rise of China, he emphasised, were a factor in military planning.

Morrisons speeches in 2012 reveal the real agenda behind his sudden rise to public prominence. The far greater press coverage given to his 2013 anti-sexism speech has been aimed at creating a constituency of support among progressive, affluent pseudo-left layers for this particularly conscious representative of the Australian military establishment.

Morrisons elevation follows that of a series of other retired military personnel. In 2014, Peter Cosgrove, former chief of the Australian Defence Force, was appointed governor-general. As such, he is effectively the head of state with powers to command the armed forces and dismiss sitting governments.

In 2011, Angus Houston, another former chief of the military, was appointed to head the Anzac Centenary Advisory Board, which oversaw the planning of the government-funded celebration of the centenary of World War One, and in 2012, he was appointed by the Gillard Labor government to chair an expert group to advise the government on its mandatory detention of asylum seekers.

A host of lesser military figures, including Ben Roberts-Smith, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for killing two Taliban machine-gunners in 2010, have also been widely promoted. Roberts-Smith is chief of the National Australia Day Council, which selected Morrison for the 2016 award.

The promotion of Morrison and other such military figures to the heights of public life constitutes a warning of the advanced stage of the preparations for war. Above all, it is aimed at marginalising and silencing the mass anti-war sentiment that exists among millions of ordinary workers and young people, who have no voice whatsoever within the official political establishment.
The death toll from last weekends blizzard in the eastern United States climbed to 49 on Wednesday, according to the latest press reports, as the region struggles to bring its decaying infrastructure, devastated by repeated budget cuts, to something like working order.

The fatalities over the weekend follow closely the deaths of more than two dozen people from flooding along the Mississippi River at the beginning of the year, as well as the deaths of eleven people from tornadoes in the Dallas, Texas area late last December. The fact that such severe (but not uncommon) weather in the wealthiest country in the world routinely results in such widespread death and destruction exposes the rot of official American society, which spares no expense when it comes to criminal wars abroad but which is somehow unable to provide for needed infrastructure for the American population as a whole.

The majority of the deaths, which were documented by the Associated Press, were entirely preventable, some of them even senseless. At least fifteen people died of cardiac arrest while shoveling snow outside their homes. Most of these people were middle-aged or elderly, but the figure also includes a pregnant 18-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. Three people were killed after being either being covered in snow or struck by snowplows.

Seven people were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning while seeking shelter from the cold. At least five people died of carbon monoxide poisoning after retreating to their cars for warmth, when the exhaust pipes became clogged with snow. In South Carolina, an elderly couple died of carbon monoxide poisoning after resorting to a generator to heat their home, which had lost power during the storm. Seven people in Northern Virginia were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning in their own apartments after the vents for the buildings ground floor furnace became blocked with snow.

The response of the political establishment was not to prepare ahead of time for what is becoming, in part due to man-made global warming, an increasingly routine event in this part of the country. Instead, as always during a public emergency in the United States, they deployed the military. Thousands of National Guard troops were mobilized as part of the states of emergency declared in 11 states last week, including 1,200 in Virginia and Maryland alone. Some states issued travel bans and threatened people with arrest if they were found attempting to drive motor vehicles. Days after the storm itself, states of emergency still remain in force in eight states. A state of emergency in Washington, DC was lifted at 6:30 Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, an ongoing commuter nightmare continues in the nations capital. As of this writing, Washingtons public transit system, the Metro, still remains at much reduced service levels, five days after being shut down entirely in anticipation of the storm. While all lines of the Metros subway system were finally restored by Wednesday morning, almost half of the citys 300 bus lines remained closed. However, even on the open lines officials warned of possible delays and detours, according to the Washington Post. Conditions for DC motorists are little better. While the city hoped to have at least one lane open on all streets by Wednesday morning, officials conceded that they may not get to all of them, the Post reported.

The Metros infrastructure has become increasingly decrepit and unsafe due to constant cuts to maintenance and improvements. In January of last year one person was killed and more than 80 injured when smoke filled a stalled Metro subway car after an electrical failure. Last August, an unoccupied train derailed during the morning rush hour, resulting in the closure of three of the systems six subway lines.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the Metro system a D in its 2013 Report Card, citing a then-$16 billion dollar funding gap (the nation as a whole received a D+ in the report). Instead of fully funding the citys public transit network, however, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill last summer that would have slashed federal funding for the subway system by $50 million, or one-third. While these cuts were restored to their previous levels in the eventual five-year transportation bill signed by President Obama in December, overall spending on infrastructure remains well below the $3.6 trillion needed by 2020, according to the ASCE.

Twenty Washington, DC-area school districts remained closed on Wednesday, with seven school districts announcing closures for Thursday as well. While DC Public Schools reopened on Wednesday, school officials told parents to use discretion when deciding whether to send their children to school, and said that it would excuse all absences.

However, cafeterias at ten DC schools opened on Monday in order to feed impoverished students, many of whom would otherwise have struggled to find a meal. One school official estimated that between 75 and 80 percent of all public school students in the city qualified for free or reduced-price meals, an indication of the extreme levels of poverty facing working-class youth.

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[25 January 2016]
New evidence has emerged that challenges the official explanation of why Flints state-appointed emergency manager decided to end the citys half-century practice of buying water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD). While the move was explained as a cost-cutting measure, an April 2013 email surfaced this week revealing that DWSD officials offered to sharply reduce rates to Flint, with a potential cost saving of hundreds of millions.

With the approval of then-state treasurer Andy Dillon, Flints emergency manager rejected Detroits offer and decided to join a competing multi-county body called Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), which had a multi-year plan to construct of 70-mile pipeline to link Flint directly to Lake Huron. The April 2013 decision set into motion the citys switch to the highly polluted Flint River in April 2014, a move that was supposed to be temporary, until the pipeline was completed.

The highly corrosive water caused lead to leach from the citys antiquated pipe system, resulting in the poisoning of city residents and irreparable neurological damage, particularly to thousands of children, which will have multi-generational effects.

Dillon made the ultimate decision to switch Flint from Detroit water, according to released emails from Governor Snyders office. While the former state treasurer claimed the switch to the Flint River was not linked to his decision, Snyders former chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, recently told the Detroit News, I think the Flint River was always part of the KWA plan.

Earlier this week, Bill Johnson, the former public affairs director of the Detroit water system, released an April 15, 2013 email from then-DWSD director Susan McCormick. The email sent by McCormick to her board describes a proposal for an immediate 48 percent rate reduction from $20 to $10.46 per 7,500 gallons. When compared over the 30-year horizon the DWSD proposal saves $800 million, or said differentlysaves 20 percent over the KWA proposal, she wrote.

The very next dayApril 16, 2013then Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz, along with Genesee County officials, signed the agreement to join the KWA and informed the DWSD that they would stop buying its water by April 2014. Then-mayor Dayne Walling stated publicly, This is going to be a great chance to start over. Flint and Genesee County are best served by joining this pipeline.

On June 28, 2013, the much-publicized beginning of the pipelines construction was described by the state news web site Mlive.com as a veritable whos who of politicians, business leaders, chamber of commerce officials and state department heads gathered  to celebrate the groundbreaking.

As early as March 2012 Dillon had met with Flint city officials to discuss switching from Detroit to KWA. A study by the engineering firm Tucker, Young, Jackson and Tull, which was commissioned by Dillon, found it was far more cost-effective to stay with DWSD. Their results were ignored, based on claims by Dillon that their numbers were wrong.

The decision to switch to the KWA despite potential cost-savings for Flint raises several questions about the real motivation of state and local officials for the move.

Did then-state treasurer Andy Dillon make the decision to sever FlintDetroits largest customerfrom Detroit in order to deliberately exacerbate the financial crisis in Detroit?

In the year before the April 2013 decision, Snyder and Dillon were deeply involved in the conspiracy to declare a financial emergency in Michigans largest city and set in motion the installation of an unelected emergency manager in Detroit who would throw the city into bankruptcy. In March 2013, using highly dubious estimates of the citys liabilitiesparticularly in regards to pensions and other so-called legacy costsSnyder announced an emergency and installed the new EM, Kevyn Orr, a partner in the Jones Day law firm.

There was ample warning that the Flint switch would have disastrous effects, from the warning by Oakland County officials that the loss of the city would result in higher costs for remaining suburban customers, to the warning of DWSDs Bill Johnson, who said it would lead to the greatest water war in Michigans history.

Was the move part of a wider plan to privatize publicly owned water system and monetize the DWSD, which was viewed by private investors as the most valuable asset in the city of Detroit?

Attorneys at Washington, DC-based Jones Day had previously written on using the federal bankruptcy courts to overturn state constitutional protections for public employee pensions and city charters and other legal obstacles to the sell-off of public assets. Dillon, a former investment banker, played a key role in bringing in Jones Day to do just that.

In early 2014, Kevyn Orr made public that he had been actively seeking a buyer for the century-old municipally owned water system in Detroit for some time. Orr contracted Veolia North America (VNA), a branch of the massive French transnational known as the worlds leader in water services, to downsize DWSD, slash costs and maximize payments to the big bondholders who controlled the water departments debt. This coincided with a campaign to shut off water to tens of thousands of residents behind on their bills.

It is noteworthy that in April 2011, two workers died and millions of gallons of sewage were dumped into a nearby river after a catastrophic mechanical failure at a wastewater treatment plant in Gatlinburg, Tennessee owned by the local municipality and operated by Veolia Water.

In February 2015, Flint officials hired Veolia to do a study of the citys water. This was during the period when the city was in violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act because of excess trihalomethanes and E.coli in the water. Residents had been up in arms over the water quality since the April 2014 switch to Flint River water.

In March 2015, Veolia announced that the water met federal and state standards, echoing the lies of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). VNA did not reveal the high lead levels, although the toxin had been flowing into the citys water for 10-11 months without any corrosion control. Veolias recommendation was to use chemical treatments to alleviate complaints about the discoloration of the water.

Was the plan to turn KWA into a revenue-generating authority to funnel money to private companies and wealthy bondholders? In the 1980s and 1990s deindustrialized cities built casinos to cover a portion of their debts. Water has now become a major source of money for distressed cities like Detroit. Were the rate hikes and mass water shutoffs in Flint leading up to the crisis aimed at attracting private investors for a similar plan?

Getting away from DWSD and getting towards a quasi-private operation was the idea all along, Steve Paraski, a former DWSD Master Plumber, told the WSWS. The KWA is just a front for Veolia North America and Veolia is a big-time Jones Day client.

Speaking on the influence of Veolia on the DWSD operation, Paraski said, The DWSD said they needed only 100 employees to function. With five 24-7 water treatment plants in the region, serving 4 million people, how is that possible?

VNA was in on this. They said 1,300 civil servants were too many. But you really need that many to run the operation. How would they do this? With low wages and in-house training.

Flints system has $500 million of future debt. Their water plant is over 100 years old and hasnt been functioning for decades. Flint knew in the 1960s that their water plant was antiquated.

So why did Flint leave? To create a crisis within the DWSD to enable the GLWA [Great Lakes Water Authority, the entity that currently controls what once were DWSDs regional assets] to take over and eventually be run privately.

President Obama, whose appointee at the Environmental Protection Agency was complicit in covering up the lead poisoning of Flint residents, has deliberately pushed for the privatization of essential social services, from public education to water systems. While handing trillions to Wall Street and the Pentagon, the administration has systematically starved states and municipalities of federal funding, forcing them deeper and deeper into debt. The administration then promotes Public Private Partnerships to begin the process of privatization.

The White House has provided an insulting $80 million to Flint under conditions in which a massive marshaling of resources is needed to provide children with lifelong health care and education. Weeks after Governor Snyder and Obama announced states of emergency not a single lead water pipe has been replaced in Flint. University of Michigan Earth and Resource Scientist Dr. Martin Kaufman is working with the city to create a database of 15-20,000 Flint homes that have lead service lines. Although more than 200 local plumbers are available to start the job of replacing the pipes, no one has called them, a plumbers union official said.
Europe

Widespread strikes and protests across France

Strikes by taxi drivers, aircraft control staff, civil servants and teachers took place this week on Black Tuesday, with 120 demonstrations being held across the country.

More than 2,000 taxi drivers in Paris blockaded major roads with piles of burning tyres. Their demonstration continued throughout the day into the following day. The taxi drivers were protesting against drivers working for the phone app taxi hailing service Uber. They accuse the service of undermining their livelihoods. Ibrahima Sylla, a spokesman for the Taxis de France collective, stated on Yahoo news service, Today our service is at stake, we are fed up of meetings and negotiations.

Air traffic control staff at Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports held a one-day strike over pay and working conditions, which led to the cancellation of 20 percent of flights.

Around 5.5 million civil servants reportedly joined the action in opposition to austerity cuts. Those involved included creche workers, hospital staff and doctors. Around 10 percent of primary school teachers and 20 percent of secondary school teachers took part in the one-day strike.

Farmers joined the action protesting against falling prices for their produce. They used their tractors to block roads in rural areas and dumped manure outside tax offices.

Around 10,000 protesting workers took part in a march in Paris. They carried placards reading Enough of austerity and Increase wages, not shareholders. The unions say 150,000 jobs have been wiped out since 2007 and that hospitals had been particularly badly hit.

One-day strike of Greek advice staff

Staff working for the Greek Citizens Information Centres (KEPs) held a 24-hour strike last Thursday. They were protesting at an increased workload and demanded staff increases and more training to meet the extra demands on their service. They held a march to the Interior Ministry.

Further protests in Greece against the attacks on pensions

Hospital workers held a protest outside the Finance Ministry Tuesday against the Syriza-led governments pension reform plans. Later, other unions held anti-government protests outside parliament to coincide with a speech to parliament by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Greek small farmers went on strike Wednesday, protesting the governments plans to reform the pension system. They held a protest at a market in the centre of Athens and gave out free fruit and vegetables to desperate people.

Farmers have been involved in nationwide actions blocking roads with their tractors as part of their protests against the ongoing attacks.

Strike of Portuguese public-sector workers

Portuguese public sector workers represented by Common Front, an umbrella organization, began a 24-hour strike today. The strike by Common Front which represents around half of the 600,000 government workers is expected to have a nationwide impact with schools, hospitals, courts and other public services affected.

They are demanding the newly elected centre-left minority government move quickly to roll back austerity measures imposed by previous governments.

Wildcat action at Irish construction site

Construction workers on the West Pharma building site in the southern Irish city of Waterford walked off the site Monday in a wildcat action. They had a series of grievances. Some of the employees are Portuguese and were reportedly being paid only 7.50 for 12-hour shifts. Other grievances included payment for wet time (when it is raining) and overtime.

Employing around 150 workers, it is one of the biggest building sites in the country. The main contractor is Sisk, but it has contracted work to some 30 subcontractors.

The strikers returned to work Tuesday following the intervention of the Union of Construction Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) and Services Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) which held talks with Sisk.

The unions were keen to regain control of the situation. A press release by SIPTU on Monday stated, Disquiet among the workforce  has led to unofficial action by workers.  This action is not authorized or supported by SIPTU.  it indicates the level of frustration  due to the intransigence shown by management

Irish supermarket staff threatened with pay cuts

Long-serving staff working for the supermarket chain Tesco in Ireland are facing a cut in pay and conditions. Currently, staff are employed under a two-tier system. Any staff who joined the company 20 or more years ago are employed under a more beneficial contract. For example, they get premium pay rates for working on Sunday. Around 6 percent of the 14,500 staff working for Tesco in Ireland will be affected.

The company, which is facing financial difficulties, is seeking to scrap the enhanced contract paid to employees taken on before 1996 and transfer them to a contract agreed with the Mandate union in 2006. According to Mandate, workers forced off the old contact could lose up to 2 an hour as well as being expected to accept a more flexible working pattern.

All-out strike of Slovakian teachers

An all-out strike began Monday by Slovakian teachers organised by the Initiative of Slovak Teachers (ISU). More than 11,000 teachers reportedly took part, leading to the closure of 300 schools with other schools operating on a limited basis. They are demanding increased pay, dismissing a recent 4 percent pay increase as too little. They are also demanding greater resources for the education system in Slovakia, saying it is underfunded.

A Reuters report quotes an ISU representative saying: Many teachers work two jobs to make ends meet. Schools lack money to buy proper teaching aids. We will stay on strike until our requests are met.

A demonstration of some 2,000 striking teachers was held in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava Monday. It was supported by school pupils and others.

Financial Times journalists to strike

Journalists working for the UK-published Financial Times (FT) newspaper voted by a 92 percent margin to hold a 24-hour strike. They are members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).

The local chapel (branch) of the NUJ at the paper is asking management to pledge it will honour its 4 million pension commitment, following the takeover of the FT by the Japanese media firm Nikkei. Nikkei bought the FT in July last year.

The NUJ say the 24-hour strike will take place in February unless an agreement is reached by Friday. The NUJ is willing to take part in further talks with the FT management and would agree to the intervention of the government reconciliation service, ACAS.

Planned strike of London underground rail workers called off

A 24-hour strike due to have begun Tuesday evening by London Underground (LU) rail workers was called off. All four unions involved, the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT), the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) the drivers union, Unite and the Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA), representing clerical and ticket staff, called off the action.

The strike had been called in the long-running dispute over LUs plans to introduce 24-hour services in part of the underground rail system.

The unions suspended the strike on the pretext of allowing further negotiations with LU management over the issue. Currently, two planned 24-hour strikes on February 15 and 17 are scheduled to go ahead.

Middle East

Job threat to Israeli supermarket staff

The jobs of the 2,500 staff working for the supermarket chain Mega are under threat. The company has gone into receivership, but last week the receivers were given 30 days to try to sell the business as a going concern.

The chain runs 126 stores. Workers were angry that Avigdor Kaplan, the chairman of Alon Blue Square, Megas parent company, was recently awarded a $140,000 bonus. Kaplan claimed the bonus was in connection with a separate company with which he is involved. However, he has agreed to give the bonus to the Mega workforce. He presented a cheque for the amount to the trade union federation Histadrut to share out the money.

Other major shareholders who shared a $25 million dividend shortly before the company was declared bankrupt have shown no such inclination towards a token gesture.

Africa

South African university workers oppose casual labour

Workers at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), South Africa, went on strike Monday over the use of casual labour. TUT staff protested outside the universitys administrative headquarters in Pretoria, demanding the end to outsourcing work to contractors. The campaign against contract labour is being organised by a body calling itself Outsourcing-must-fall (Omf).

Management met with campaigners and contractors later in the day, after which the strikers returned to work.

Registration for the new term was interrupted by the action at the university under protest, but two other north Pretoria campuses remained unaffected.

South African parliamentary staff end strike

South African parliamentary staff have ended their strike, which began in December, and have entered into negotiations. They began their strike action over the unfair distribution of bonus payments.

The National Education Health and Allied Workers Union has returned to the CCMA, the labour mediation service, in an attempt to get the bonus paid.

The parliamentary workers line management have downgraded some workers status excluding their eligibility for a bonus payment. The strike was drawn out over four weeks and a bonus deal was accepted, supposedly giving workers from 3.5 percent to 9 percent on a performance rating. As part of the settlement, the union agreed that workers would put in extra time for time lost in the strike. Other issues such as outsourcing went unresolved.

Nigerian university staff strike

Members of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, (SSANU), have been on strike against job losses since December 24. They held a demonstration on January 19 calling for a threat to 2,000 jobs to be lifted.

A senior staff member met with the Nigerian Education Minister January 12 in an attempt to get an agreement on a return to work.

Two thousand jobs of Universities Staff School workers had been removed from the Education Authoritys books. Directly following the meeting, vice chancellors at the universities had put SSANU jobs up as vacancies, scuppering any possibility to return to work.

Strike of Nigerian water workers

Nigerian Water Corporation workers in Kwara State began an indefinite strike Tuesday, protesting the nonpayment of wages for the last four months. They are members of the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE).

They were also protesting that the union dues automatically taken from their wages have not been remitted for the period of February to July 2015. They are opposing a lack of promotion opportunities and that money deducted for the housing fund has not been forwarded among other grievances.

Strike by Kenyan nurses banned

A strike by Kenyan nurses in Kakamega state planned for next Monday has been banned. Nurses put in a strike notice two weeks ago.

The nurses demands are for everyone to be brought onto state contract, better working conditions and overdue promotions to be made. The state spokesperson said any nurse striking will be sacked.
Technology giant Googles pathetically small British tax payment confirms once again that major corporations operate virtually unhindered by national governments.

Google will pay Her Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC) just 130 million to settle their back taxes for the 10-year period, 2005-2015. During the more than five years prior to the settlement between Google and HMRC, with the then Labour government beginning negotiations in 2009, Google secured meetings with government ministers on no less than 25 occasions.

Google billionaire executive Eric Schmidt is said to enjoy close links with the Conservative Party leadership and sits on the partys Business Advisory Board. Google is staffed by a raft of former government figures like Rachel Whetstone, one-time Tory aide, a friend of Prime Minister David Cameron and until last year Googles PR Chief.

Tim Chatwin moved straight from serving as Camerons head of strategic communications to a post as Googles senior director of communications in 2012. Camerons Internet Security Minister, ennobled by the prime minister, Joanna Shields, is a former managing director of Google.

Forced to respond to a public outcry over letting Google off virtually scot-free, the House of Commons Treasury committee had to launch an inquiry into the UK tax system after the weekend announcement. The agreement between Google and HMRC is opaque and closed to public scrutiny.

The tiny amount Google will pay represents just 13 million per year. Over the past 10 years Google reported worldwide revenues of 40 billion and 11 billion in profit. Between 2006 and 2011, Google had revenues in the UK of 11.5 billion, on which it paid a grand sum total of 10 million in tax, i.e., a rate of less than 1 percent. Googles annual British income is said to be in excess of 4 billion, roughly a tenth of its global sales.

Google claim their UK business is actually in Ireland and so the British treasury should receive profits only on UK transactions. Google employee and whistle-blower Barney Jones has provided 100,000 emails with details that question the truthfulness and accuracy of Googles assertions.

The settlement will allow Google to continue to book almost all of its 4.6 billion UK sales through Ireland. In addition, Google UK, a subsidiary which employs 2,000, will only be required to pay just a little more tax to HMRC.

Tax experts agree this amounts to an effective tax rate of 3 percent. The official UK corporation tax rate stands at 20 percent.

In 2014, the British government announced the Diverted Profits Tax (DPT) scheme, effective from April 2015, which was meant to deter and counteract companies who sought to avoid making a UK permanent establishment in order to avoid paying UK Corporation tax.

The Diverted Profits Tax was said to be deliberately established at 5 percent above the 20 percent Corporation Tax to act as a deterrent to tax avoidance. At the time it was dubbed The Google Tax, because it was aimed at corporations who book their profits through other European Union states and then claim to have no UK presence.

Google employs hundreds of London-based staff, but claims it has no fixed base in the UK. Photographs online reveal the interior of Googles London business premises decorated with giant floor-to-ceiling Union flags.

The tax deal was first announced in a tweet last weekend, suitably enough from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Chancellor George Osborne told the Guardian it represented a major success of our tax policy.

Osborne continued, I hope to see more firms follow suit and of course Ive introduced a diverted profits tax which will require this going forward. So I think its a big step forward and a victory for the government.

Google have avoided paying the Diverted Profits Tax as part of their secret deal with Osborne.

Camerons spokeswomen described Osbornes deal only as a step forward.

Only days later, at Prime Ministers Question Time and with Googles tax arrangement firmly established in the headlines, Cameron deflected criticism from the Labour opposition benches about Googles derisory taxes by arguing his administration was correcting the faults of Labours previous administrations. Labour had failed to force Google to pay sufficient taxation, he said.

The prime minister alluded to Labours own close relationship with international finance by telling current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Maybe you should start by calling Tony Blair. You can get him at JP Morgan. Call Gordon Brown. Apparently you can get him at a Californian bond dealer called Pimco. You can call Alistair Darling. I think hes at Morgan Stanley, but its hard to keep up.

The probable Tory leadership candidate Boris Johnson denounced the Google tax deal, as did the Sun newspaper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. In his column in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson was careful not to criticise big business corporations, but rather the tax system, when he described Googles payment as derisory.

Johnson, the mayor of London, a capital city given over wholesale to the interests and lifestyles of the international super-rich, adopted a stance of defending small business people, writing, It has never seemed fair that some of these companies no matter how wonderful the service they provide should be paying so much less in tax than the high-street tea rooms and bookshops they have pulverised. It would be a good thing, both for the UK finances and for the image of these great companies, if they paid more.

Some critics accuse the British government of fighting shy of Google, whilst the French and Italian governments have taken a more robust attitude towards the often borderline criminal actions of corporations. The treasury in Paris is reportedly set to demand and receive approximately 500 million, three times what HMRC received, from Googleeven though the tech companys UK profits are said to be greater.

Officials in Paris and Rome are said to have refused to accept Googles ruse of funneling all European sales through Dublin to benefit from lower Irish taxes. Authorities in France are thought to have opened audits on many prominent online businesses, in inquiries that sometimes involved dawn raids by tax police.

Italy is presently demanding 15 percent of Googles 1 billion profits. Rules to stop companies using complex tax arrangements to avoid paying corporate tax have since been agreed by 31 OECD members, supposedly to make companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook pay tax in the country where the profits are made. But the agreement is limited to sharing information rather than a new law or taxand the UK has seen no problems in signing up. And, as the Financial Times so delicately put it in relation to France, In the UK, relations between the tax authority and big companies were a lot more cordial.

A number of technology corporations that have been watching developments will be able to breathe more easily on news of Googles settlement. Some, like Facebook, eBay and LinkedIn, feared the DPT would force them to radically reorganise their European business operations. The Google settlement means that most technology firms will continue to route their UK sales overseas, as part of their perfectly legal tax avoidance plans.
More than one hundred workers and youth participated in an emergency meeting on the crisis in Detroit and Flint held at Wayne State University on Wednesday. The meeting was called by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).

The diverse audience, which represented a broad section of the working class throughout the Detroit Metropolitan area, participated in an intense discussion and debate. Present were teachers, city workers, retirees and other workers, as well as students from Wayne State University, University of Michigan, Monroe County Community College and Cass Technical High School in Detroit. Dozens more, including many auto workers from throughout the country, participated by remote connection.

Jerry White, a leading SEP member and editor of the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, gave the opening report. His remarks focused on the water crisis in Flint, which has poisoned thousands with lead and contributed to the deaths of at least 10 people, and the eruption of opposition to the attack on public education in Detroit. White said there was not lack of determination to fight, but that a strategy to address the crisis could only begin with an understanding of its causes and the political forces behind it.

White noted that the meeting was an extraordinary and unique event, providing workers with a forum to discuss a political strategy to oppose the assault on their rights by the ruling class and the entire political establishment. This meeting gives expression to the growing militancy, social opposition and the unity of the working class, he said. He pointed to the fact that after decades of wage cuts, factory closures and cuts to social spending, a new movement of the working class was beginning to emerge and take form independent of the trade unions, which have for so long suppressed the class struggle.

White called attention to the struggles by Detroit teachers, who staged sickouts independent of the Detroit Federation of Teachers earlier this month to protest the deplorable conditions and lack of basic educational supplies within the citys public school system. He also pointed to the actions by high school students, who staged walkouts earlier this week in support of their teachers.

White read an excerpt from an interview a representative of the group We The Students gave to the World Socialist Web Site: When the injunctions were filed in an attempt to prevent further sickouts, it angered not only the teachers, but the students as well. We collectively decided that enough was enough! White added: Indeed, a sense that enough is enough is growing amongst tens of millions of workers.

Despite the official proclamations from the Democratic Party establishment over the Flint water crisis, White noted that not a single lead pipe has been replaced. He denounced comments by Democratic Party supporters such as filmmaker Michael Moore and MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow. Their efforts to place blame for the disaster on racism are aimed at covering up the role of the Democratic Party and obscuring the primary division in capitalist society: class.

The great question we believe that workers have to understand, White said, is that we have completely independent interests from those of the corporations and their political representatives, Democrat and Republican. He argued that workers have suffered defeat after defeat over the past three decades not because of a lack of will to fight, but because the trade unions have abandoned any opposition to the banks and corporations and have become businesses in their own right.

White closed by arguing that the working class needed its own program in order to be prepared to defend itself. The struggle for social rights places the working class on a collision course with the capitalist class and its political representatives.

Two seniors from Cass Technical High School, Jonea and Natalya, addressed the audience during the discussion period. As representatives of We The Students, the group that organized the student walkout at Cass Tech earlier this week, they called on those in attendance to support the struggle of the students and the teachers.

We want to stand for Detroit Public Schools as a whole, Jonea said. We dont want our schools to become charter schools. We dont want politics to run our schools. Natalya added, Cass Tech is an excellent school, but we are facing a lot of different problems and thats why were doing thisfor all students, because not everyone is fortunate to be able to go to Cass Tech.

DAndre, a student, said, A lot of people dont realize that the US constitution doesnt prohibit discrimination on class. It protects you for religious or racial reasons, but it doesnt protect you from class discrimination This is class war.

Angie, a student from Wayne State, placed the Flint water crisis within a global context. Theyve been doing the same thing in countries all over the world, like Bolivia for example, she said. They privatized the water and raised the prices so that nobody could afford it. This thing thats been going on in Third World countries is happening here. Governments and these huge corporations are trying to take as much control of the water supply as they possibly can.

The discussion raised many of the central political issues facing the working class. One speaker said that she thought that while class was important, racism was a principal motivating factor in the attack on workers in Detroit. A local trade union official in attendance defended the unions as important instruments for supporting working class interests. The significance of the campaign of Bernie Sanders was also discussed.

Addressing the issue of race, SEP Assistant National Secretary Lawrence Porter noted that many of the workers affected by the disaster in Flint were white, and that workers of all races throughout the country and internationally are affected by mass unemployment, poverty and social inequality. This issue of race, he said, has been continuously injected into the working class to keep it divided!

White explained that while the word unions may invoke for the older generations the struggles of the working class during the 1930s, many of which were led by socialists, the unions today are deeply hostile to the interests of workers. They operate under corporatist policies aimed at containing working class opposition while carrying out the interests of the bankers and CEOs. He pointed out that the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) had collaborated with the Democratic Party in attacking teachers and expanding charter schools.

Speaking on the Sanders campaign, White noted that widespread support for someone who claims to be a democratic socialist had immense significance. This is a country where anti-communism, anti-socialism has been something of a state religion. Suddenly, socialism is a popular issue. A large section of voters, mostly young people, consider themselves socialists.

White explained that the SEP was opposed to the campaign of Sanders, which is aimed at keeping popular opposition within the framework of the Democratic Party. He claims to be against the billionaire class but is a member of the Democratic Party, which is owned and controlled by the billionaire class. He also has no criticism of the war policy of his President Obama. How can you claim to be against the billionaire class but not be against the wars the billionaire class wage to enslave the rest of the world?

The issue, White said, is whether workers turn to political establishment, which is controlled by the wealthy, or to the broad mass of working people who have the very same interests to build a movement to take political power.

Porter gave closing remarks, emphasizing the significance of the emerging movement of workers and youth. The teachers could not depend on the DFT, he said. So they began to organize independently. The autoworkers could not depend on the UAW. So they began to organize independently. We are saying that we should follow that logic. We should ask: who are our friends and who are our enemies? Were saying today what is necessary is the building of new forms of organizations of the working class.

Many attendees stayed another hour after the meeting adjourned for informal discussion with SEP members over a wide range of political issues.

The WSWS will publish in the coming days further reports on the meeting, including interviews with those who attended and video coverage.
UK Prime Minister David Camerons attack on refugees in Calais and Dunkirk, France as a bunch of migrants during Prime Ministers Question Time in parliament Wednesday was deliberately inflammatory.

Some 9,000 peoplemost fleeing wars and instability instigated and fanned by British imperialism in their home countries-are currently trapped in the French ports. Refused entry to France and Britain, many live in make-shift shanty towns, eking out an existence on charitable handouts, or trying to make often life-claiming attempts to cross the Channel to the UK.

In the furore that followed Camerons comment, many pointed to the fact that it was made on January 27, Holocaust Memorial Day, as if it were an unfortunate coincidence. It is nothing of the sort.

Just as in the 1930s, capitalism in crisis threatens to drag humanity into a new and even greater catastrophe, poisoning the atmosphere with nationalist and racist filth in order to legitimise the turn to war and dictatorship.

Camerons remark must be placed in the context of the demand of European governments for the sealing of borders with armed guards, and the resort to other police-state measures. Only last week, under the banner of clamping down on migration and tackling extremism, Cameron announced that he intended to introduce a language test for all migrants and said that Muslim women should be forced to remove face veils, like hijabs and niqabs, when asked by public officials.

Cameron presented this as less draconian than the blanket ban enforced in France, but this week the chief inspector of schools announced that schools could be marked as inadequate if they allow staff or pupils to wear veils in the classroom. This induces head teachers to implement a ban, lest their school be penalised and placed in special measures.

As for Camerons reference to the Calais migrants, he is known to prepare carefully with a team of advisers for Prime Ministers Question Time every Wednesday at midday, with his responses scripted to achieve the maximum effect.

All of which makes the full content of his response politically revealing.

Cameron was answering a question from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the tax settlement reached by Her Majestys Revenues and Customs (HMRC) with Google. Seven years after HMRC began investigating its complex tax arrangements, the internet giant has agreed to pay a paltry 130 million on years of back taxes.

At the equivalent of a 3 percent tax rate, the deal has been condemned by other European governments who regard it as proof that the UK is setting itself up as a tax haven.

More fundamentally, the arrangement has caused public anger after seven years of government-mandated austerity that includes savage cuts in vital social and welfare provision. On the same day as Camerons questioning, a legal challenge in the High Court to the bedroom tax--the withdrawal of housing benefit for those deemed to have too many bedrooms--exposed how people face losing their homes as a consequence.

In parliament, Corbyn cited a question from Geoff, a working man over the age of 30 who wanted to ask the prime minister if there is a scheme that I can join that has the same rate of tax as Google?

Criticising HMRC for failing to get a better deal, Corbyn went on, Many people will say this: Why is there one rule for big multinational companies and another for ordinary self-employed people and small businesses?

Refusing to answer the question, Cameron retorted instead, pointing at Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, that the idea that those two right honourable gentlemen would stand up to anyone in this regard is laughable. Look at their record over the last week.

They met with the unions and gave them flying pickets. They met with the Argentineans, they gave them the Falkland Islands. They met with a bunch of migrants in Calais, they said they could all come to Britain. The only people they never stand up for are the British people and hardworking taxpayers.

Camerons answer makes plain that anti-immigrant propaganda is an integral part of his governments defence of corporate interests based on austerity and militarism. In bringing together in one attack the hot button issues of the far right, he underscored that these interests are inseparably bound to the mobilisation of the most reactionary social layers. And, in raising the spectre of flying pickets, last seen in Britain in the 1984-85 miners strike, he exposed the secret fear of the bourgeoisie--an insurrectionary movement of the working class.

All of which makes Labours mealy-mouthed protestations over the prime ministers remarks even more pathetic.

Yvette Cooper, who leads Labours taskforce on refugees, complained that Camerons lack of statesmanship like language risked undermining cross party consensus on such a sensitive issue.

This consensus only exists because, outside of rhetoric, little separates Labours policy on migration from that of the Tories. The policy of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and organisations such as Save the Children, is to pressure Cameron to allow just 3,000 unaccompanied children to be admitted to the UK.

In fact, visiting the French camps at the weekend, Corbyn pointedly refused to put a figure on the number of refugees he believed should be admitted to the UK. While arguing for politicians to be a bit more human, he said only that Britain should do more to process the asylum claims of those with a British family connection.

Corbyns actual statement on flying pickets is also a fudge. Cameron was referring to the Labour leaders remark that he would repeal aspects of the anti-trade union legislation first introduced under the Conservative-administration of Margaret Thatcher should Labour win office. Corbyn said that sympathy strike action should be allowed, while stating that a Labour government would leave closed shop lawswhere every worker must be a union memberin place. Asked if he would support the use of flying pickets as a part of this sympathy action, Corbyn avoided answering directly, implying that the issue was irrelevant as the number of strikes [is] actually very small.

Pressed on whether he would support other workers in the National Health Service joining the junior doctors strikecurrently suspendedthe Labour leader again refused to be drawn.

As for the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, which Thatcher went to war over in 1982, Corbyn has merely called for dialogue with Argentina over their fate--suggesting a Northern Ireland-style power-sharing deal that would supposedly accommodate the interests of all sides.

Such pronouncements make clear the dangers posed to working people by the claimpromoted by the pseudo-leftthat Corbyns leadership of the Labour Party provides a means of defending workers interests.

While the bourgeoisie determinedly marshals its resources, Corbynin the rotten time-honoured tradition of the Labour leftacts to demobilise workers and youth by concealing the real state of class tensions beneath soothing homilies of how everything can be resolved peacefully and to the satisfaction of all if only notions of human decency and wiser heads can prevail.
A little less than five years after launching a war against Libya on the humanitarian pretext of preventing a supposedly imminent massacre, the United States and its European allies are preparing a new military assault against the oil-rich North African country under the bloodstained banner of the war on terrorism.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook confirmed Wednesday that Washington is looking at military options in relation to Libya and acknowledged that US special operations troops are operating on the ground there in a bid to get a sense of who the players are, who might be worthy of US support and support from some of our partners as we go forward.

The Pentagon spokesmans remarks echoed earlier comments by the US militarys senior commander. Its fair to say that were looking to take decisive military action against ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] in conjunction with the political process in Libya, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last Friday. The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.

As for the presence of special operations troops, that story too was no secret, though largely blacked out by the corporate media. A photograph posted on the Facebook page of the Libyan air force last month showed about 20 American commandos dressed in civilian clothes and carrying automatic weapons. According to the caption that accompanied the photograph, the Libyan forces in charge of the air base refused their intervention, disarmed them and forced them off Libyan lands.

Pentagon officials confirmed the incident, while telling NBC News that similar US units have been in and out of Libya for some time now.

The human rights pretext foisted on the public in 2011 and the terror pretext being employed today are equally fraudulent. They are both designed to conceal the predatory objectives of military interventions carried out with the aim of imposing US semi-colonial hegemony over countries and regions sitting on top of vast energy resourcesin Libyas case the largest oil reserves on the entire African continent.

It is, however, a measure of the uninterrupted growth of American militarism and the corresponding degradation of American democracy that, while in 2011 Obama delivered a televised speech to the nation providing his phony justifications for the war and then secured a UN Security Council resolution as a legal fig leaf for naked aggression, in 2016 a Marine Corps general casually remarks that he has the authority to launch a new war whenever he sees fit.

In 2011, the story was put out that Libyas longtime ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, was on the brink of carrying out a wholesale massacre of peaceful political protesters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Only Western intervention could save lives, Obama and his NATO allies insisted, and there was no time to waste.

These assertions were echoed and amplified by an entire coterie of pseudo-lefts. Some of them, like the French New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) embellished upon the arguments of the imperialist powers, insisting that the defense of the Libyan revolution was the paramount issue. In the words of the NPAs prominent spokesman, academic Gilbert Achcar, You cant in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.

Similarly, the University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, whose left credentials stemmed from his rather qualified opposition to the Iraq war, declared, To make anti-imperialism trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions. For emphasis, he added, If NATO needs me, Im there.

With such support, US imperialism and its European allies, invoking the neocolonialist doctrine of R2P (responsibility to protect), turned the UNs resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to prevent the bombardment of Benghazi into a carte blanche for a war for regime change that saw massive US-NATO bombardments, the deaths of some 30,000 Libyans and the lynch mob torture and murder of Gaddafi in October 2011.

After it was all over, NGOs and human rights groups like the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International acknowledged that there were no factual grounds for claiming that Benghazi had been threatened with a massacre.

In the five years that have followed, however, the Libyan people have been plunged into a real and hellish humanitarian catastrophe. As many as two million Libyans, roughly a third of the prewar population, have been forced into exile in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. Those who remain face catastrophic conditions, with hundreds of thousands internally displaced by the fighting that has raged between rival militias ever since the toppling of Gaddafi.

Human Rights Watch, which supported the US-NATO war of 2011, reported this month that the militias that rule the country have indiscriminately shelled civilian areas, arbitrarily seized people, tortured and looted, burned, and otherwise destroyed civilian property in attacks that in some cases amounted to war crimes. It adds that these forces attack, abduct and disappear, and forcefully displace people from their homes, while [t]he domestic criminal justice system collapsed in most parts of the country, exacerbating the human rights crisis. Thousands of Libyans, as well as foreigners, are imprisoned without charges or trials, many since 2011, in a system of militia-run jails where torture is endemic.

No one, of course, is invoking R2P today, under conditions that are indescribably worse than what existed in March of 2011. On the contrary, the pretext for the war now being prepared is combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has established a stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte, the former hometown of Gaddafi that was largely demolished in a protracted siege in 2011.

Those within the political establishment and the media who bother connecting the growth of ISIS in Libya to the US-NATO intervention of 2011 habitually present the matter as a sin of omission: Washington and its allies failed to follow up the bombing campaign with a nation-building occupation.

This is, of course, a deliberate cover-up for very real crimes that were committed. ISIS is not some accidental beneficiary of chaos in Libya. Its own growth and development were intimately bound up with the US-NATO war, in which similar Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias were lavishly armed and funded to serve as ground troops.

After the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi, these same elements, along with vast quantities of arms looted from Libyan government stockpiles, were funneled into Syria as part of a CIA-orchestrated effort to stoke a war for regime change in that country. This operation greatly strengthened ISIS and similar outfits, while Libyans who had been sent to fight in Syria returned home, resulting in the Islamist groups spread along Libyas northern coastline.

Thus, the source of the supposed ISIS terrorism threat in Libyawhich is the pretext for yet another waris the endless and escalating succession of military interventions by US imperialism itself, which have plunged the entire region into bloodshed and chaos, while threatening to ignite a global conflagration.
In recent weeks, leading figures in the German government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble (both of the Christian Democratic Union, CDU) have held out the prospect of a major increase to the countrys defence budget. Now the minister of defence, Ursula von der Leyen (also CDU) has provided additional details of these plans. Germany will commit at least 130 billion in additional military spending by the year 2030.

In a post entitled Investing Billions in the Coming Years on the official website of the ministry of defence, Von der Leyen pledges to raise spending on the equipment of the armed forces by around 130 billion euros over the next 15 years to ensure a flexible functionality. The plan is no longer as it was in previous years, oriented towards a lowering of defence spending, but rather to increasing it.

On Wednesday morning, Von der Leyen made public the plans of the German government on ARD televisions morning news show. She announced the defence budget would now gradually and steadily go up. This was not a matter of taking a big gulp from the bottle just for this year, but of increasing the defence budget and then maintaining it at that level over a longer period.

The days of tightening our belt are over, according to Von der Leyen. For too long the German military had lived on the bare necessities, she said. In the last 25 years, the gap between the funds available and the tasks to be performed had only increased. This large backlog would now have to be made up for. From now on, the ministry would no longer operate by the concept that the army would have to make due with just 70 percent of the equipment needed. A fully equipped military would again have to become a priority.

Von der Leyen explained exactly what this means at a defence committee meeting in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon. Media reports on the document submitted to the committee by Von der Leyen show that the militarys heavy machinery, in particular, will be upgraded by 2030. There is talk of additional armoured scout vehicles, howitzer tanks, marine helicopters, transport helicopters and ships.

The numbers go far beyond those previously made public. The number of Fennek scout vehicles, for example, has been raised from 217 to 248 and howitzer tanks have been increased from 89 to 101. The Fennek, named after the desert fox, is produced by German weapons manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and has been used in Afghanistan. Beginning in May, it will also be used in the German militarys next combat mission in Mali.

Furthermore, 36 new Sea Lion marine helicopters will be purchased, six more than previously planned. The document also lists for the first time the quantities of a new heavy lift helicopter to be purchased. The defence ministry will acquire at least 59 of them.

Other plans detailed in the paper had already been announced by the defence minister. Among other things, the number of Leopard 2 combat tanks will increase from 225 to 320. In addition to this, the ministry will determine whether 196 older Marder infantry fighting vehicles are still in stock. Three hundred forty-two Puma tanks, the successor to the Marder, will also be purchased. The Leopard 2, as well as the Puma, are built by KMW and Rheinmetall, the second German arms manufacturing giant.

The planned upgrade to the fleet of tanks is breathtaking. Von der Leyen aims to acquire a total of 1,300 Boxer (KMW and Rheinmetall) and Fox (Rheinmetall) heavy armoured transport vehicles, a number which could still go up, according to the paper. Included in this are close to 900 older Fox transport vehicles and approximately 400 newer Boxer armoured transports.

The figures announced are not simply the proposals of a megalomaniacal defence minister. They represent the policy of the entire government. On Wednesday, Spiegel Online reported that the minister of finance had already declared his readiness to increase the budget of the defence ministry. With regard to Von der Leyens plans, finance minister Schauble was open to investing a total of 130 billion euros in armaments by 2030.

To help demonstrate the scale of these sums: 130 billion is almost double the combined amount set aside in one year for education and research (16.4 billion); families, seniors, women and youth (9.1 billion); health (14.5 billion); nutrition and agriculture (5.6 billion); economy and energy (7.6 billion); and traffic and digital infrastructure (24.5 billion).

The official propaganda justifies this massive military buildup with the supposedly deficient combat readiness of the German military due to inadequate and dilapidated equipment. Significantly, just one day before Von der Leyens appearance before the military commission in parliament, Hans-Peter Bartels (Social Democratic Party) presented his annual report.

The troops are suffering, lamented Bartels, too much is lacking. The economy of scarcity jeopardises the training, exercises and missions of the soldiers. The military is at a turning point. Still more reductions wont work. Like Von der Leyen, Bartels spoke in favour of a massive buildup of the military and called for a change in defence policy.

The real reason for the buildup, however, is not the allegedly desperate condition of the army, but rather the turn in German foreign policy proclaimed by President Joachim Gauck, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) and Von der Leyen herself more than two years ago at the 2014 Munich Security Conference. Germany was too big just to comment on foreign policy from the sidelines and would have to be prepared to intervene earlier, more decisively and more substantially in foreign and security policy, they declared at the time.

Von der Leyen explicitly based her plans for military buildup on these demands. On the ARD morning show, she explained that Germany was a country that has great political and economic significance and must bear that responsibility. She then added, If we dont pay attention to Syria and Iraq, if we dont pay attention to Afghanistan and Africa  if we dont do our part there, then the problems will come to us and it will be even worse and thats exactly what we dont want. We want to take on our share of the responsibility and, for that, the troops must be well equipped.

In other words: in order to take on responsibility worldwide, i.e. to enforce militarily the economic and geopolitical interests of German imperialism all over the world, the German elite, just as they did in the past, needs a large, highly equipped army. According to reports in the media, in March an increase in military personnel is also to be decided on. To prepare a large-scale recruiting campaign, politicians and journalists will repeat the refrain that since 1990 the military has shrunk from almost 600,000 soldiers to 177,000.

The massive rearmament plan, and the propaganda campaign that accompanies it, evokes historical parallels. Before the German Reich began the enormous buildup of the military under the Nazis, defence minister Werner von Blomberg prepared a memorandum describing the condition of the German army as hopeless. Similar to the current defence report, the critique declared that the military was lacking in every areapersonnel, combat equipment and munitions. The Navy did not even have available the material guaranteed by the Versailles Treaty. Armoured ships were not delivered and the air force was virtually non-existent.

The terrible events which followed are well-known. In the 1930s, practically the entire German economy was placed in the service of German militarism and vast military machinery was built from the ground up to fulfil Hitlers war plans. In 1939, the German military, armed to the teeth, began the Second World War and reduced large parts of Europe to rubble and ash.

If the German elite now believe that after the terrible crimes of two world wars they can once more set a course for war, they are deceiving themselves. Workers and youth, who will have to bear the costs of militarismin the form of social cuts to finance the buildup, as cannon fodder in war and in the suppression of their democratic rightswill not permit a third such catastrophe.
Declaring that the Zika virus is spreading explosively, the World Health Organization announced it will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts in Geneva on February 1 to decide if the outbreak should be declared an international health emergency.

At a meeting Thursday in Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said the Zika virus was becoming more of a threat. One WHO scientist estimates there could be up to 4 million cases of the virus in the Americas in the next year. Since Brazil reported its first case in May, the virus has now been detected in more than 23 countries and territories in the Americas.

Zika has been linked to birth defects in babies born to infected pregnant women. Chan said that although there was no definitive proof that the virus was responsible for a spike in the number of babies being born with abnormally small heads in Brazil, The level of alarm is extremely high. She also noted a possible association between Zika infection and Guillain-Barre syndrome, sometimes resulting in paralysis.

The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions, Chan said. The increased incidence of microcephaly is particularly alarming, as it places a heart-breaking burden on families and communities.

Zika is spread by Aedes mosquitos, which also spread dengue and yellow fever. It could also be spread by the Asian Tiger mosquito in the US. There is some evidence that Zika can be transmitted through saliva and semen, although scientists do not believe this to be common. Chan said that this years el Nino weather patterns are expected to spread mosquito populations, increasing the Zika threat.

In addition to Zikas possible link to birth malformations and neurological syndromes, WHO points to other main reasons for concern: potential for further international spread due to the wide geographical distribution of the mosquito vector, lack of population immunity, and the absence of vaccines, specific treatments and rapid diagnostic tests.

WHO was criticized for its slow response to the Ebola outbreak in 2013; nearly 1,000 people died before the agency declared it to be an international emergency. Ashish K. Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said, The most egregious failure was by WHO in the delay in sounding the alarm. People at WHO were aware that there was an Ebola outbreak that was getting out of control by spring ... and yet, it took until August to declare a public health emergency. The cost of the delay was enormous.

In Brazil, there have been an estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million people infected by Zika as of early January, and nearly 4,000 children have been born with congenital microcephaly, compared to only 150 cases in 2014. Microcephaly is a rare condition that can cause babies to have small heads and severe neurological impairment.

El Salvador has taken the unusual step of advising women to hold off on getting pregnant until 2018, while officials in Colombia and Ecuador have urged women to delay becoming pregnant until the dangers of the virus are better understood.

The US Centers for Disease Control has reported 31 cases of Zika cases in the Continental US among women who have recently traveled to affected regions in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America and other regions outside the US. WHO reports 19 locally acquired cases of Zika in Puerto Rico.

The CDC is now advising pregnant women: Consider postponing travel to any area where Zika virus transmission is ongoing. If you must travel to one of these areas, talk to your doctor first and strictly follow steps to prevent mosquito bites during your trip.

Testing for Zika is difficult and there are no commercially produced tests for the virus. In the US, there are only a handful of labs that can diagnose the infection, including one at the CDC, as well as facilities in California, Florida, New York, Puerto Rico and Hawaii.

In Brazil, which is set to host the 2016 Summer Olympics August 5-21 in Rio de Janeiro, the Zika outbreak and spike in microcephaly cases have been concentrated in the countrys poor northeast region. But the southeast, which includes Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, is the second hardest-hit region.

Speaking to the BBC, Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert from Georgetown University, warned, With the Rio Olympics on our doorstep I can certainly see this having a pandemic potential.

Gostin commented before Chans announcement, Im disappointed that the WHO has not been acting proactively. They have not issued any advice about travel, about surveillance, about mosquito control.

In addition to the possibility of a pandemic and widespread birth defects, the Zika viruss spread also carries the potential of widespread economic impacts for the countries affected.

Nuno Antunes, an analyst at Decision Resources Group, told BioPharma Dive: This will require heavy economic and social efforts; there will be direct expenditures associated with their care, but also a significant economic and social impact as they will require a full-time care taker, most likely a parent who will have to stop working to do so given that these countries are not prepared to offer support to so many children.

As there is no vaccine, the only present protection against Zika is to avoid the mosquito that carries the virus, a prospect that is much more difficult in poorer regions of the world. Guidelines for avoiding the virus include not travelling to Zika-endemic areas or, if in one of these places, wearing mosquito repellant and long-sleeved shirts, and sleeping in screened-in, air conditioned rooms.

Until recently, there has been little interest on the part of pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine for Zika. GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi are now likely to become involved in international vaccine efforts, seeing the profit-making potential.

Sanofi recently introduced Dengvaxia, the worlds first vaccine against the dengue virus, which killed 22,000 people last year. Dengvaxia was approved for use in Mexico, the Philippines and Brazil last year. According to Bloomberg, Dengvaxia is expected to generate $1.4 billion in revenues for Sanofi by 2020.

Anvisa, the Brazilian regulatory body, has guaranteed priority review to any product contributing to the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of Zika. And Instituto Butantan, the largest biopharmaceutical company in Latin America, announced that it is looking for pharmaceutical partners to collaborate on a vaccine.

However, the development and approval of such a vaccine is a long way off. Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch, who have visited Brazil to collect samples and carry out research, are currently analyzing them in laboratories in Galveston in pursuit of a Zika vaccine. They warn that although a vaccine could be ready for testing in two years, it might take another decade for it to be approved by regulators.

Professor Scott Weaver, speaking from inside the Galveston facility, told the BBC that people were right to be frightened by Zika: Its certainly a very significant risk, and if infection of the fetus does occur and microcephaly develops we have no ability to alter the outcome of that very bad disease which is sometimes fatal or leaves children mentally incapacitated for the remainder of their life.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) -- Drivers who renew their vehicle registration may have one less license plate to pick in their local tax collector's office.

The American Red Cross specialty plate may be removed from the list of non-standard license tags by Feb. 1.

Sharon Tyler, chief executive officer of the Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, said in a statement Friday that 960 American Red Cross license plates were sold in 2015. This number was just below the 1,000 tags required for the specialty design to be automatically renewed by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

Tyler adds that office turnover in the Orlando branch of the Red Cross, and possible missed communications related to it, contributed to the tag's placement into probation.

The American Red Cross specialty tag entered into circulation July 1, 2002. Proceeds from the $28 fee added to regular vehicle registration rates go toward Red Cross volunteer training, disaster relief, and conference attendance efforts for Florida Red Cross chapters.

Tyler states around $10,000 to $12,000 were raised annually by the sale of these plates.
The state's business-recruitment agency has discarded its somewhat controversial "tie" to tell employers that "the future" has arrived in Florida.

Enterprise Florida, the state's public-private economic development agency, introduced a new brand Friday that will be featured in a $10 million global advertising campaign that declares, "Florida --- The Future is Here."

Enterprise Florida President & CEO Bill Johnson, who took over leadership of the agency a year ago, said during a board of directors meeting at Florida State University that the "business friendly" and "business forward" brand will be seen as "the best of any state in the nation."

"Every single day in the trade magazines, I rip out boring ads. From Pennsylvania, New York, they're boring. Texas, it's boring," Johnson said. "We're going to be fresh. We're going to show we're --- what? --- multicultural, multilingual. We have an unbelievable number of assets to sell, and we're going to do just that."

The new brand, which was selected from more than a dozen concepts in less than six months, replaces the often-criticized "Florida --- the perfect climate for business" brand.

The older brand was introduced in 2013 and featured an orange tie in the letter "i" of Florida. The argument against the brand was that the men's apparel seemed to exclude women.

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a member of the Enterprise Florida board, said after the meeting that the new design is an improvement.

"I found it (the new brand) to be much more reflective of the dynamic nature of our economy than orange ties and sand castles," Putnam said.

The new brand will first start to appear in business journals and in online ads, before going out on radio and television. A webpage --- FloridaTheFutureisHere.com --- was launched Friday morning.

"The goal is when you're sitting in an airline seat to Geneva and you'll pull open your airline magazine and you'll open it and see an ad, the first thing you'll see is a picture," said Joe Hice, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Enterprise Florida. "You won't even need to read the copy. You'll know that is Florida business. It will be that image that you'll recognize almost instantly as Florida."

Hice also said Enterprise Florida will be able to measure the success of the ads through business inquiries and job creation.

Florida lawmakers gave $8.5 million to the public-private agency during the current fiscal year for the new brand and marketing. The agency has put up an additional $1.5 million for the effort. Gov. Rick Scott wants lawmakers to set aside $250 million next year for business-recruitment incentives through Enterprise Florida

The new brand was developed by Jacksonville-based St. John & Partners, working on a $580,000 contract from Enterprise Florida.

--END--

1/29/2016

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Leading senators linked an effort to hold down an increase in local property taxes to Gov. Rick Scott's pitch for tax cuts Thursday, potentially complicating one of the governor's key priorities for the 2016 legislative session.

Meanwhile, House and Senate budget-writers remain divided at least for now on Scott's other major agenda item for the Legislature: whether to set aside $250 million for a "Florida Enterprise Fund" as part of a change in how the state lures economic-development projects.

The differing approaches, which emerged as lawmakers began rolling out initial budget proposals for the year that begins July 1, confronted Scott with the possibility of a two-front battle for his priorities in the weeks ahead.

The potential increase in local property tax bills --- driven by rising property values and not an increase in the tax rate --- has become a target for Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who chairs his chamber's education budget committee, and other lawmakers.

In the plans being considered by lawmakers, much of a record amount of spending on schools would come from more than $500 million in increased property tax bills. Gaetz suggested Thursday during a committee meeting that holding down that increase should be part of any discussion about Scott's drive to provide $1 billion in tax cuts.

"If we do nothing and simply allow the formula to take effect and approve the governor's proposal, there's a $500 million property tax increase in the state of Florida," Gaetz said. "Pretty hard to sustain that kind of an increase when we're talking about tax cuts."

Speaking to reporters later Thursday, Senate President Andy Gardiner declined to explicitly link the two proposals even as he backed up Gaetz on describing a change to the education taxes, known as the required local effort.

"I certainly would believe that if we are taking on some of that local requirement, that would be a tax cut in my mind," said Gardiner, R-Orlando.

But House leaders have shied away from casting the increase in property values as a tax hike. Rep. Erik Fresen, a Miami Republican and Gaetz's House education-budget counterpart, said total property tax revenues dropped sharply following the financial crisis and haven't fully recovered.

That would amount to "essentially a tax cut, if you're going to have that mentality," Fresen said.

There are lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol who are hesitant about their respective chambers' approach. Senate Rules Chairman David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, said properties increased in value for different reasons.

"If something was just five acres of raw land, pastureland, whatever, and then it's turned into homes, that's not something that we can say is inappropriate to increase the amount of the required local effort (on)," Simmons said.

Rep. Fred Costello, R-Ormond Beach, drew a connection between Scott's tax ideas and the increase in local revenues.

"If we cut taxes here $1 billion and raise them $500 million at home, we need to call it a $500 million tax decrease and not a $1 billion tax decrease," Costello said.

Scott has brushed off the idea of using some of his proposed tax cuts to hold down the property taxes, telling a Senate committee earlier this month that he preferred his ideas, which would reduce state levies on things like commercial real-estate leases and corporate income.

"I think the important thing this year is to focus on the tax cuts that we've proposed. ... I think these are going to help continue to grow our economy, help get people jobs," Scott said at the time.

That would create economic growth that could lead to future cuts, including one on property taxes, Scott said. A spokesman said Thursday that the statement to the Senate Finance and Tax Committee still summed up the governor's views.

The Senate, meanwhile, backed up Scott on his proposal for the Florida Enterprise Fund. However, budget-writers would use $100 million in money from a legal settlement tied to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to help bankroll the proposal.

Senators said using that portion of the $400 million the state is set to receive this year would follow the terms of the settlement, but at least one lawmaker on the committee that oversees the economic development budget was wary about tapping the funds that way.

"I would hate to see them go be used on the other coast when the effect of that was (on) the Gulf Coast," said Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg.

The House left the enterprise fund out of its budget altogether, though Transportation & Economic Development Appropriations Chairman Clay Ingram, R-Pensacola, said House members were still working with Scott on the overhaul for incentives.

"I can say for one that I'm in support of reforming the process along with the governor," Ingram said. "We're not quite in agreement on policy language, but there's plenty of time left in the process."

Elsewhere, lawmakers wrestled with the health-care issues that caused the last regular legislative session to collapse. Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Chairman Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, said lawmakers have to deal with losing about $400 million in the Low Income Pool program, with the total going from $1 billion to $608 million.

He said the federal government also "tied our hands" on how the money could be distributed, requiring that the money go to covering the costs of charity care.

Garcia said the Senate budget plan creates four tiers in the LIP program, with hospitals receiving money based on the amounts of charity care they provide. The effect would be to send the largest shares of the money to safety-net hospitals that provide the most charity care.

Garcia said the proposal tries to "mitigate" LIP cuts, but doesn't use an infusion of state general revenue to help make up the lost LIP funding.

Among other parts of the health-care proposal, Garcia said it includes $36 million to help move about 1,300 people off a waiting list for services at the Agency for Persons with Disabilities.

"Sounds good, but the devil's in the details,'' said Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, before Garcia's subcommittee approved the health budget plan.

The full House and Senate budgets will be released Friday.

News Service of Florida Executive Editor Jim Saunders contributed to this report.

--END--

1/28/2016

For comprehensive coverage of the political landscape, demographics, and voting statistics of Florida House districts, purchase The News Service of Florida's 2015-2016 Political Almanac of Florida

 2016 The News Service of Florida. All rights reserved. Posting or forwarding this material without permission is prohibited. You can view the Terms of Use on our website.

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Teachers alert youth to decline in reading culture





Students prefer playing games, accessing Facebook, attending parties and going to discotheque halls.





VietNamNet Bridge - Educators say that students are not reading books, resulting in increased violence, poor understanding of people and the world, and less empathy.The decline in reading culture of Vietnamese in general and students in particular has become worrying, Do Tan Ngoc, a teacher, wrote in an email to Giao Duc Viet Nam editorial board.A report released on the occasion of the 2013 Book Day showed that each Vietnamese reads 0.8 books a year, a very low level compared with other regional countries.Reasons cited to explain the problem included the high prices of books, the low quality of books and scarcity of books at libraries (0.35 copies per head).However, Ngoc believes the major problem lies in the fact that students nowadays dont think they need to read books to accumulate knowledge.Students prefer playing games, accessing Facebook, attending parties and going to discotheque halls.Ngoc said his school has a large library with thousands of books to serve 1,300 students, but the library is always deserted.The library manager said the library received tens of students on the first days since it opened, but now only several students come daily.In fact, deserted libraries not only can be seen at Ngocs school, but at most general schools in all cities and provinces.A university lecturer in Hanoi said many universities and junior colleges spent hundreds of billions of dong to build modern libraries and reading rooms, but still cannot attract students.Students only go to libraries in June and December, when they have to prepare for semester exams. They do not go there in the other months, because they are busy going to parties and doing extra work to earn money, he commented.Internet rooms at libraries are the places which can attract students. However, most students go there just to use internet free of charge. They access the internet to seek information about restaurants, festivals, not to read for knowledge, he said.Truong Khac Tra, a renowned educator, commented that while Vietnamese do not regret spending money on beer, they think carefully before spending money on books.A report released by the Publishing, Printing & Distribution Agency showed that the revenue from publications last year was VND2 trillion, just equal to 1/33 of revenue from beer sales.Tra also cited other statistics to show the real situation in Vietnam: nearly 30 million Vietnamese never read books, and 44 percent read books occasionally. This occurs in a country with 480 universities and hundreds of research institutes.GDVN
TALLAHASSEE, Fl. (WTXL) -- The Tallahassee Fire Department is getting more gear for all of their fire fighters in hopes of helping to fight contamination.

After a fire emergency, fire fighters head back to their stations. Sometimes covered in debris, soot, and chemicals. But when there is another call, its time to put back on the protective layers, which, if still dirty, can hinder their ability to save the day.

"We spend a lot of time with that gear on the fire scene", said Mike Bellamy, public information officer of the Tallahassee Fire Department. "After a fire, the gear is wet and contaminated," he added.

"Anytime you have that, the smoke, all the water, we use a lot of foam sometimes so every time that gets on your bunker gear, it weighs it down, it gets a bunch of non-essential chemicals and stuff like that on it," said fire fighter Clinton Henderson.

And those contaminants can potentially cause problems as serious as cancer. That is why the department requested to get the additional set of gear for its fighters. Now, after a call, each fighter will soon have a spare ready to go, that is clean and safe to use. This allows time for the used suits to be cleaned and DE-contaminated. "So we have special gear washers and driers at several of the stations", said Bellamy. "So after a fire, that gear has to be sent to that station that has the washing machine."

The entire process cleaning bunker gear can take some time. After an hour and a half in the wash, and then another four to five hours in the dryer, it can potentially take an entire shift [to complete]. All the more reason to have a second batch, which can help protect you quicker and more efficiently.

"We're happy to see another set of bunker gear come out", said Henderson. "It helps us a lot having a second set."

"The bunker gear protects the most valuable resource that we have, which is our firefighter," added Bellamy.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - In a Friday morning statement, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum said he will not be running for Congress.

The mayor released this statement on his decision:

"These last few months I have had the opportunity to think back on all that we have accomplished in our first year. From investing in the needs of children and families, to building an inclusive and vibrant quality of life, to growing a new economy where innovation thrives and hardworking people can work to get ahead.

My reflections have shown me that my heart is with the City of Tallahassee. I will continue to assess how I can best serve our community and state in the future, but I am committed to fulfilling my term and building on the tremendous progress we have already made.

In making this decision, I realize that there may still be major shifts in the race for the 5th Congressional District. Despite this anticipated change, my decision is final, as is my pledge to continue serving the citizens of Tallahassee.

I believe that our City needs a strong voice at the state and national level that can represent our best interests, and I look forward to continuing to use my role as Mayor to fight every day on behalf of my community."

In December, the Mayor's Office said they had been reached out to regarding a possible Congressional run.

"People are reaching out to Mayor Gillum because Washington desperately needs the type of energy and focus he brings every day as Mayor, creating new jobs and opportunities to get ahead. He's listening and will make his decision on how he can best continue creating new jobs and opportunities, while also being a great husband and father," said Mayoral adviser Kevin Cate in December.

Gillum made national headlines in November after saying that Syrian refugees were welcome in Tallahassee. This went directly against Governor Rick Scott's message to Congress that the state would refuse to allow the refugees within its borders.

Gillum was elected Mayor of Tallahassee in August of 2014. Prior to his election, Gillum served on the Tallahassee City Commission. He was the youngest person ever to be elected to the commission at the age of 23.

The mayor grew up in Gainesville and came to Tallahassee for college, attending Florida A&M University.
THOMASVILLE, GA (WTXL) - Caterpillar Inc. announced Friday that it is closing its fuel manufacturing facility in Thomasville.

According to the company, the decision comes as part of a global restructuring and cost reduction effort.

An estimated 200 jobs will be lost in the Thomasville closure, says Caterpillar officials. Those jobs range from office and production employees to production staff.

The company says it expects the closure in Thomasville to be completed within the next 12 to 18 months.

Other U.S. locations being closed by the company include facilities in New Mexico, Wisconsin and Illinois, according to Caterpillar.
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Hamas has been intensifying its attempts to smuggle materials and goods from Israel into the Gaza Strip, but Israel has managed to foil 107 attempted smugglings through the Erez border crossing and 740 attempts through Kerem Shalom.

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Among the confiscated items were chemical solutions used to make rockets, GoPro cameras which can be used to spy on IDF forces near the border, laser markers for weaponry, electrodes that can be used to make rockets and explosive devices, pipes and tin boards used to manufacture rockets, firecrackers hidden behind flowers that could be used by rioters during protests at the border fence, industrial coal, also used in rocket production, liquids to produce rocket propellant fuel which were hidden inside paint thinners and dishwashing liquid, soldering coils for rocket production hidden inside blow heaters, and disassembled motorcycles and trucks.

The smuggling attempts were stopped by a coordinated effort of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Administration of Border Crossings, and the Shin Bet.

Hundreds of additional smuggling attempts were foiled before the contraband could even reach any crossing using intelligence measures.

Following the rise in smuggling attempts, most of it through the Erez crossing, COGAT Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, warned that Israel might close the border crossings with Gaza completely if Hamas does not stop using merchants and laborers with permits to leave the Strip for the West Bank for its own purposes.

Palestinians at the Erez Crossing. (Archive Photo: Roi Idan)

Mordechai described an instance in which a cancer patient from Khan Yunis, who was traveling to Nablus for medical treatment, was asked to pass on information to terror operatives in the city. In another case, a resident of the al-Shati refugee camp who was doing business in Israel was caught attempting to smuggle contraband for Hamas.

"Hamas is trying to recruit merchants, and this puts a spoke in the wheels of Israel's economic plans, and of permissions given to Gaza residents to enter Israel to pray," Mordechai said.

After Operation Protective Edge, a joint mechanism of the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the UN was put in place in order to supervise the transfer of construction materials into the Gaza Strip in order to rebuild the private homes and public structures destroyed during the war.

Following Operation Protective Edge, and as part of a financial aid plan for the Gaza Strip, Israel issued over 100,000 entry permits for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip for trade, medical treatments, and prayer at the al-Aqsa mosque.

Hamas, however, is taking advantage of these entry permits in order to smuggle contraband and pass on information between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The jump in smuggling attempts comes alongside the significant rise in the number of trucks entering Gaza with Israel's approval in the past year, following the significant hardships in the area after Operation Protective Edge ended in 2014. Hamas also lost about 80 percent of its smuggling tunnels on the Egyptian border in the summer of 2014.

Maj.-Gen. Mordechai. "Hamas is trying to recruit merchants." (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)

According to Crossing Authority figures, there has been a 33 percent rise in the number of pedestrians entering Israel, with 11.4 million entries, compared to about 8.6 million in 2014. In addition, there was an increase of 18 percent in the number of trucks moving to and from the Gaza area (their number reaching 508,000), and a daily average of 41,000 Gazan pedestrian entries into Israel for various purposes (work, commerce, medical treatments, etc.).

The Defense Ministry says that the largest increase in activity occurred at the Kerem Shalom Crossing: it saw an increase of 121 percent in the amount of merchandise moving in and out of the strips, averaging about 800 trucks a day. 43 percent of the trucks were carrying construction materials, with 36 percent carrying assorted merchandise.

Head of the Crossing Authority, Major-General (res.) Camil Abu-Rokon, commented, "In the Judea and Samaria crossings, the Crossing Authority prepares for the entry of more than 50,000 Palestinians into Israel for work purposes every day. Meanwhile, the tough fight security authorities are conducting against the smugglers is already bearing fruit by preventing and delaying the strengthening of Gaza terror organizations. We will tighten security checks even more, implement new technologies, and chase the smugglers down with every tool we have at out disposal."
Statistics for 2015 indicate that over 8,000 new participants visited the 20 employment centers set up for the Arab, Druze, and Circassian populations throughout Israel. According to the figures released by the Ministry of Economy, 13,600 people have found employment through the centers and 24,000 have received assistance.

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In total, 68% of those who visited the Ministry of Economys Arab employment centers found work. This percentage far exceeds the government targets which had aimed for 56% over the three-and-a-half years since the centers were established in 2012.

Palestinian nurses working in an Israeli hospital (Photo: Andrew McIntire, TPS)

Various programs offer assistance to the minority groups with the aim of helping them find employment. The Imtiaz program, for example, assists people up to the age of 35 with admission to academic studies specializing in fields in high demand, such as physics, electrical engineering, computer science, medical laboratory science, civil engineering, transportation engineering, chemistry, dentistry, medicine, mathematics and more.

Concluding its first year at the end of 2015, the program offered 74 courses, including academic Hebrew, in order to encourage the integration of Arab communities. Last year, 1,313 individuals participated in Imtiaz while 354 people completed their courses.

The high success rate received an extra boost by a three-year program with a budget of NIS 10 million designed to integrate Arab academics into hi-tech. The program in its first year ensured the placement of 250 Arabs at leading companies, such as Amdocs, Intel, IBM and HP. Over 100 new Arab students enrolled in courses such as application development as part of the initiative.

Eshbal, another program established to assist the Bedouin population in the south, provides full funding for the study of engineering and also covers the cost of living expenses and travel until graduates find employment. A total of 85 male and female engineers began their studies this year as part of the program at a total cost of NIS 40,000 per participant.

The initiative did not merely focus on providing academic credentials, but also on providing improved means of transportation for Arabs living in remote areas and for women in particular. For example, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Transportation made a joint investment of NIS 48 million towards the construction of eight new routes and the updating of 23 bus lines.

This is a permanent and long-term solution to the difficulty caused by the lack of sufficient public transportation services from remote Arab communities to workplaces, a Ministry of Economy spokesperson said.

Eastern Jerusalem, however, still requires improvement. Statistics show that 60% of eastern Jerusalem residents are unemployed. A Ministry of Economy spokesperson explained to Tazpit Press Service (TPS) that the high rate of unemployment in this sector was due to a lack of basic Hebrew among many of the Arab residents and that the state is seeking to remedy the situation.

The spokesperson said that eastern Jerusalem residents complete the Jordanian-Palestinian matriculation program in Arabic before seeking admission to higher education or employment, which leaves them with very poor and sometimes non-existent Hebrew language skills.

This represents a significant barrier for these residents who are looking to enter the workforce as they must first study spoken and written Hebrew. Hebrew and English language courses are among those offered to participants attending the east Jerusalem employment center in an attempt to address this issue, the spokesman told TPS.
US Customs passed recently issued a reminder notice to importers in the US to not label products that come from the West Bank as "Made in Israel" and made it clear that those who do not comply would be sanctioned, according to a Channel 1 News report.

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This is not a new guideline, but rather a reissuing of one from 1995 - which is a byproduct of the Paris Agreement and the Oslo Accords - that set different customs regulations for Israel and the West Bank. Human rights groups complained to US Customs that it was not enforcing its own guidelines, so that products from the settlements are sold in the United States under label "Made in Israel".

US Customs issued a message last week to all US importers under the title "West Bank Country of Origin Marking Requirements. The message reads: "The purpose of this message is to provide guidance to the trade community regarding the country of origin marking requirements for goods that are manufactured in the West Bank.

West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and the US Customs reminder notice regarding labeling (Photo: AP)

Per Treasury Decisions goods produced in the West Bank or Gaza Strip shall be marked as originating from West Bank, Gaza, Gaza Strip, West Bank/Gaza, West Bank/Gaza Strip, West Bank and Gaza, or West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is not acceptable to mark the aforementioned goods with the words Israel, Made in Israel, Occupied Territories-Israel, or any variation thereof. Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Goods entering the United States must conform to the U.S. marking statute and regulations promulgated thereunder.

This message in no way supersedes prior rulings or regulations, nor does it impose additional requirements with respect to merchandise imported from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or Israel."

State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Thursday, responding to questions regarding the guidelines, said that "this guidance was simply a restatement of previous requirements that the Customs and Border Protection has made clear that it in no way supersedes prior rulings or regulations, nor does it impose additional requirements with respect to merchandise imported from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or Israel. So theres nothing new. This is simply a reissuance of guidance."

US officials stated that this is not a political directive that came from the White House or the State Department. But in Jerusalem the directive came as a complete surprise and caused embarrassment to the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Economy, which both refrained from any reference to the notice.

An Israeli official said that "it is hard to believe that customs officials would randomly decide to publish a notice just because someone complained that guidelines are not being enforced. It's convenient for them to present it as being a technical issue but in the US things never happen just by chance."

He went on to say that "under the guise of a technical notice the Americans are taking a political step. Israel will have to decide whether this is a technical reissuing of guidelines or a politically important directive.
Deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday that the organization is digging new tunnels and testing rockets in order to develop and improve them. "The resistance is digging east of Gaza and conducting rocket tests west of Gaza on a daily basis," he said.

Haniyeh, who is Khaled Mashal's deputy at Hamas's political bureau, made the comments in a speech during Friday prayers ahead of the funerals of seven Hamas military operatives killed this week in a tunnel collapse in Gaza, not far from the border with Israel.

Inside a Hamas tunnel (Photo: Reuters)

Haniyeh's remarks constitute the first hint since the end of Operation Protective Edge by a senior Hamas official that Hamas is building offensive tunnels

"Tunnels underground, and rocket above the ground," said Haniyeh. "We are continuing on the path of jihad and towards the territories' liberation. The resistance is in a state of preparation, improvement and equipping of all its weapons in order to be ready for the any conflict with Israel."

Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh (Photo: AP)

The Hamas official also said that "there are those who believe that the calm silenced the cannons, but there is a campaign silently led by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades for the purpose of readiness and preparedness."

Meanwhile, Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon's handling of the terrorist group. "The sounds of digging from deep underground heard by the residents of the Gaza border area, like the wave of terror attacks, are a direct result of Operation Protective Edge's failure and the immunity Hamas got from Netanyahu and Ya'alon," Lieberman said.

Lieberman stated that Hamas is acting with impunity in the Gaza Strip  rebuilding its tunnel system, of which dozens allegedly reach Israeli territory, replenishing its rocket supplies and building more by the day, and all this without any intervention by Israel, allowing Hamas members to plan and execute terror attacks in Israel and particularly in the West Bank.

"This asymmetry made possible by the Israeli government, according to which Hamas unhesitatingly operates within Israel territory while the IDF avoids operating in the Gaza Strip, is a failure that allows Hamas to not only commit these acts of terror, but now also to choose the most convenient timing for it to renew fighting in Gaza," Lieberman said. "It's a failure for which those responsible will not be forgiven."
While the international community on Thursday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei chose the occasion to upload a video onto his website in which he publicly denied that the Jewish people's Holocaust occurred.

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The video accuses the international community of supporting the "fake Zionist regime" and censoring discussion of the Holocaust. Images of wounded or dead Palestinian children and grief-stricken adults are shown without any context. Intercut between these images, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen delivering a speech at the US Congress and embracing US President Barack Obama.

WARNING - Video contains graphic images:

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A voiceover by Khamenei (or an actor imitating him) accompanies dramatic music: "Who assists the fake Israeli regime? Who supports them? Who clears the road for them? Who stands behind them? It is western powers  headed by America  that are doing so. This is while they say in their slogans that they are opposed to terrorism and ISIS. They are lying. They say things which are not true. This is Ignorance (sic)."

Khamenei then turns his attention to the countries of Europe, which he says refuse to discuss the Holocaust and question it, while  according to Khamenei  it's unclear whether the event was real, and "even if it is a reality, it is not clear how it happened."

Khamenei also claims that anyone who raises doubts about the Holocaust is immediately arrested and sued. "This is while they claim to be the supporters of freedom," he says. "This is the Ignorance (sic) that exists in today's world. We should be awake. You dear brothers, dear people of Iran, Muslims in the Great Islamic Ummah and officials in different countries, should know that we can stand up against the Ignorance (sic)."

The statements in the video are very similar to comments made by Khamenei in a 2014 speech, when he claimed that the Holocaust was not certain to have occurred, and that if it had, it was unclear how it had occurred.

Iran holds an annual contest for cartoons using the theme of Holocaust denial. This year, the first prize is $50,000  four times the amount in previous contests. Israel complained to the UN secretary general, who condemned the contest during his speech on Thursday marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Defense Ministry's Merkava Tank Administration on Thursday unveiled the first Namer armored personal carrier (APC) with the new "windbreaker" active defense system installed.

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Namer APC with the new 'windbreaker' active defense system ( "  )

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The "windbreaker" active defense system was developed by Rafael and has so far been used with Merkava 4 tanks, proving its efficacy in dozens of operational activities and especially during Operation Protective Edge.

The system can quickly, automatically and independently identify the firing of anti-tank missiles towards armored vehicles.

Once identified it launches its own weapon that neutralizes the incoming missile mid-flight; at the same time, within seconds it directs the tank's barrel towards the exact point from which the missile was shot.

A Namer APC with the new 'windbreaker' active defense system (Photo: Courtesy of the Ministry of Defense)

The Merkava Tank Administration stated in a press release that "after a series of tests the 'windbreaker' system will be installed on every Namer APC that comes off the production line.

"Together with engineers from the Tank Administration at the Defense Ministry, the first operational testing of the Namer (Merkava APC) equipped with the new system began this week," the announcement continued.

Brig. Gen. Baruch Matzliah, head of the Merkava Tank Administration, said: "The Namer with the 'windbreaker' will provide IDF soldiers with the highest level of protection there is and grant them security and a significant edge on the field of battle."

The IDF's Golani Brigade has been using Namer APCs over the last few years. The security establishment's aim is for other regular infantry divisions to be equipped with them as well, so that they can be deployed in the next war in the north or in Gaza.

The strength of the Namer lies not only in its upgraded active protection but also in its high speed and ability to navigate open, rough terrain.
A French prosecutor says terrorism has been ruled out in the arrest of a man who tried to bring two handguns into a hotel at Disneyland Paris.

The Meaux prosecutor Dominique Laurens said Friday that searches of the man's phone records and various locations turned up no link with terrorism. She said the man was moving house and feared his weapons would be misplaced or taken.

The man was detained Thursday along with his female partner, who was cleared of complicity, the statement said. He remained jailed Friday.

No one was hurt, and the park -- Europe's most-visited tourist attraction -- remained open after the arrests at the New York Hotel.
Up to ten people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday at a busy market in a town in northern Nigeria where the jihadist Boko Haram group is waging an insurgency, residents and a Red Cross official said.

Boko Haram has been waging an almost seven-year campaign in Nigeria's remote north to build an Islamic state. Thousands have been killed and more than two million people displaced by the campaign.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the attack bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which has been using suicide bombers since the army, helped by neighbours Chad and Cameroon, expelled the group from territory it had captured previously.
The Dutch government on Friday agreed to extend its role in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State to include the bombing of targets in Syria, it said in a statement.

A Dutch squadron of six F-16 warplanes is already stationed in the region, but has been limited to striking Islamic State positions in Iraq.

The aircraft will now also target sites in eastern Syria, it said.

"The progress that has been made in Iraq won't stand if IS remains in a position to support the fight in Iraq from eastern Syria," Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said.
As the Israeli wine industry continues to expand, more international markets are opening up to the variety of wines that Israels winemakers have to offer.

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The 2016 Sommelier Wine Exhibition, organized by the Israel Export Institute (IEI) featured 80 different Israeli wineries that displayed their goods in Tel Avivs Culture Palace on Wednesday, January 27. The exhibition drew representatives from around the world who attended the event, with several signing contracts with Israeli wineries.

A sommelier pouring Israeli wine (Photo: Kobi Richter, TPS)

According to IEI data, Israeli wine and spirits exports grew to $39 million in 2015, a six percent increase compared to the previous year, as new markets opened up.

Traditionally, the Israeli wine export was based on the demand for kosher wine by Jewish communities around the world. However, a recent trend sees Israeli wines gaining international recognition and respect also in countries where the kosher issue is irrelevant, Yaara Shimoni, the IEI wine and fresh produce manager told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

Such markets include countries like China, Japan and Korea. Shimoni also noted the rise in exports to Asian markets over the past year.

The Japanese market is now our third largest export destination. We are talking about a very discerning palate, the Japanese only seek out super premium rated products. We were just notified that our Yarden Chardonnay wine will now be served to Japan Airlines first class passengers, for example,  Anat Levi, CEO of the Golan Heights Winery told TPS.

The Golan Heights Winery is Israels largest commercial winery, whose wines have won many international awards. However, it was not only the well known and large Israeli wineries that impressed Asian wine experts.

For example SPHERA, is a small Israeli winery which specializes in white wines and has signed an extensive deal with a large Hong Kong-based client.

Hong Kong is not looking for wines just because they are kosher, they look for great quality and taste, and we are very proud that such a client was so impressed with our product, Doron Rav Hon, SPHERAs head winemaker told TPS.

We are a rather small boutique winery; we specialize in one field, but we execute it well. To be noticed and liked by the Hong Kong consumers is a great achievement for us, said Rav Hon.

The Sommelier exhibition in Tel Aviv drew representatives from Japans wine and spirits industry as well. Experts from the Niigata based Shirataki Sake Company arrived to experience Israeli spirits and share their Japanese rice wine.

According to Daijiro Hosaka, Shiratakis import and export manager, Israel was discovered by Japan about one year ago. Its a very open and diverse industry we find fascinating and impressive.

In addition to interest from the Asian market, representatives of the veteran South American wine industry also visited the Sommelier exhibition and had high praise for Israeli wines.

There are very interesting new but indigenous grapes to discover in Israel. We were especially surprised with the quality of the white wines in Israel, Martin Duran, a sommelier and wine expert from Chile, told TPS.

European markets are also interested in Israeli wines. The Golan Heights Winery counts among its buyers several European nations, including Scandinavian countries. In Sweden, Norway and Finland the government has a monopoly on the sale of alcoholic products.

By now we applied to, and won governmental monopoly bids in Finland, Norway and Denmark. We were constantly surprised by this, since these countries are not the biggest fans of Israel, explained Anat Levi, CEO of the Golan Heights Winery.

While Scandinavian countries are politically known to be in the forefront of the campaign to boycott Israeli goods made in the Golan Heights, Levi revealed to TPS that the extent of her winerys export to those countries has only expanded in the past four years.

Politics aside, I believe their experts choose the wines solely on the basis of quality and tasting, concluded Levi.
Five civilians were killed and eight wounded during US-coalition air strikes targeting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria between July 27 and Oct. 15, the coalition leading the military operations said in a statement on Friday.

It was the fifth time the coalition has issued a statement acknowledging civilian casualties in the campaign against Islamic State, which began in August 2014. The deaths bring to at least 21 the number of civilians likely killed in the air strikes.

"We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes and express our deepest sympathies to the victims' families and those affected," the US-led coalition said in a statement.
Indirect peace talks aimed at resolving Syria's five-year conflict began Friday at the UN headquarters in Geneva, without the participation of the main opposition group.

The talks are the first since two rounds of negotiations collapsed in 2014. Syria's conflict has killed more than 250,000 people, displaced millions and sent hundreds of thousands as refugees to Europe.

The first meeting was between the UN Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura and a government delegation headed by the country's ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja'afari. A UN spokesman said that he would later meet with other delegates, including civil society representatives.
France will recognize a Palestinian state if its efforts in coming weeks to try to break the deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians fail, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday.

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"France will engage in the coming weeks in the preparation of an international conference bringing together the parties and their main partners, American, European, Arab, notably to preserve and make happen the solution of two states," he said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (Photo: AFP)

Fabius said that as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, France had a responsibility to try to keep up efforts to find a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Responding to Fabius' statement, the Palestinians said on Friday evening, "We welcome the call made by France for an inclusive and serious international involvement towards ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and the full realization of a free, independent and sovereign State of Palestine on the 1967 borders."

French President Francois Hollande and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Photo: AFP)

Following France's announcement, US President Barack Obama's government said it was aware of the French foreign minister's statement, a senior administration official said on Friday.

"We are aware of Foreign Minister Fabius' remarks," the US official said. "We are not going to speculate about the proposed conference. We obviously continue to engage with our partners to find a constructive way forward in terms of advancing our shared goal of a two-state solution."

"The US position on this issue has been clear. We continue to believe that the preferred path to resolve this conflict is for the parties to reach an agreement on final status issues directly," the official said.

At the same time, the Palestinians announced that they are relaunching their efforts in the UN Security Council to try and overcome the current diplomatic impasse. The first step will involve pushing for a resolution against Israeli setlements, according to a statement that Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour delivered on Friday.

"We cannot accept he idea that 2016 will be a year in which nothing is done... We want to open the doors to peace in order to maintain the hope for and possibility of a two-state solution," Mansour said.

Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour (Photo: EPA)

Mansour indicated that there had been contact over the last few days with the five permanent members of the security council (the US, France, Russia, China and the UK).

"A resolution on (Israelis in the West Bank) is one of the possibilities," Mansour said. "We are consulting Council members on their willingness to take measures in this regard."

Mansour also reminded the international community that the settlements are considered illegal and an obstacle to peace.
A 26-year-old mother who took her toddler son to Syria and posted pictures of him next to a weapon has been convicted of belonging to Islamic State (IS).

Tareena Shakil was found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court on Friday of joining IS and encouraging terrorism on social media.

The 26-year-old boarded a plane to Turkey in October 2014 with her one-year-old boy, crossed the border into Syria and spent three months there, West Midlands police said in a statement.

She denied joining IS but detectives said Shakil had become a member of the extremist group and was set to become a jihadi bride.

A photograph uncovered by police showed her posing in Syria underneath an IS flag. She left the country in January 2015, although it is not known why, the statement added.
The academic boycott against Israel continues to broaden, with a new petition signed by 168 academics and researchers in Italy calling to suspend all agreements with Israeli universities as well as the Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology in Haifa.

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The petition comes three months after 343 British academics signed another petition calling for an academic boycott of Israeli universities on the grounds that they participate in violations of international law and support the occupation.

The Italian call for an academic boycott of Israel

The Italian academics and researchers, who belong to seven separate universities across Italy, claimed in their petition that the Technion engages in military research and develops weapons that the IDF uses to "repress the Palestinian people."

The petition continues: "We, the undersigned scholars and researchers at Italian universities are deeply troubled by the collaboration between the Israel Institute of Technology Technion and Italian universities.

"Israeli universities collaborate on military research and development of weapons used by the Israeli army against the Palestinian population, providing undeniable support to the military occupation and colonization of Palestine," the petition continues.

"Technion is involved more than any other university in the Israeli military-industrial complex. The Institute carries out research in a wide range of technologies and weapons used to oppress and attack Palestinians."

The petitioners also claim that a Technion development project contributed to the development of the Caterpillar D9 bulldozer "used by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian homes and the implementation of a method for detecting underground tunnels, developed specifically to maintain Israels siege on the Gaza Strip.

"Technion develops joint research programs and collaborates with the Israeli army and the main weapons manufacturing companies in Israel, including Elbit Systems," the petition continues.

"Among the largest private weapons producers, Elbit Systems manufactures the drones used by the Israeli army to fire on civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2008-2009 and in 2014 and provides surveillance equipment for Israels Apartheid Wall."

The Technion in Haifa. Italian academics are calling ot boycott the institute because of its 'involvement in military research.' (Photo: Elad Gershgoren)

The petition further claims that "Technion also has close relations with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, a major government-sponsored weapons manufacturer, which developed an advanced system of protection for Israeli Merkava tanks.

"The institute has also promoted a masters degree in business management adapted specifically for Rafael managers, further strengthening the relationship between academia and Israels military-industrial complex," the petition says.

Among the boycott measures proposed by the petition are the cessation of all collaboration with the Technion and other Israeli universities, including academic and cultural projects. The petitioners also announced that they will no longer attend visits and conferences that they are invited to in Israel.

The petitioners also stated that they will not be severing ties with individual Israeli academics, but solely with the institutions they belong to.

The committee of university heads in Israel responded: "Israeli universities are under attack from the BDS movement as well as other parties, who are distributing deceitful and inciting material against Israel and its higher academic institutions.

"The committee of university heads is acting with everything it has against this ugly phenomenon. But it's not quite enough. We request the involvement of the state to act via all possible means to stop this dangerous process."
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

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The first accounts of mammoths were documented as far back as the late 17th century. Initially, fossils were discovered mostly near the North Sea. However at present not only has there been recent strides to recreate the animal using found DNA, but a few more complete specimens have been found. In fact just this week, bones from the ancient animal have been found in a rather peculiar setting.

A few days ago in January 27, 2016, several news outlets reported about a group of construction workers unearthing what is now believed to be the femur from a woolly mammoth. The crew is working on an expansion project for Oregon State's Resar Stadium when they stumbled upon the remains which dates back to the ice age. Additionally, several other remnants of extinct animals were found alongside the mammoth.

"We believe we have an intact femur from a mammoth. There also appear to be bones from other species, including possibly a bison and a camel" announced Oregon State University spokesman Steve Clark.

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Loren Davis, an associate professor of anthropology at OSU, has since been summoned to examine the fossils.

There are quite a few bones, and dozens of pieces. Some of the bones are not in very good shape, but some are actually quite well preserved" quipped Davis.

Davis claimed that the area where the arena is located used to be a bog or marsh so according to him the discovery is not all that rare.

"Animals who were sick would often go to a body of water and die there, so it's not unusual to find a group of bones like this" explained Davis.

The professor has further explained that no evidence of human bones were found in the area. Because of this, the bones are not considered an archeological site and is not protected by any statutes under Oregon Law.
IMPORTANT NOTE: As of January 2015 MGWCC is a subscribers-only crossword. The cost is $26 per year, and you can subscribe (or get a free trial month first) here:

www.mgwcc.com

LAST WEEKS RESULTS:

Simple, but not easy! Instructions asked for a six-syllable word whose fourth syllable is stressed. Peculiar, and it wasnt clear whether the two 9s in the grid were theme (they were). So our six theme entries were:

12-A [Shade similar to aqua] = OCEAN BLUE

16-A [Hunter vehicle of note] = RAISING ARIZONA, which starred Holly Hunter.

32-A [Capital city with an apostrophe] = SANAA, YEMEN

40-A [Connery commanded it] = RED OCTOBER

56-A [Shes feeling the Bern] = HILLARY CLINTON

60-A [Algebra class instructions] = SOLVE FOR X

Tough to spot the pattern here, but that pattern is: the final word in each entry is the third-to-last, or ANTEPENULTIMATE, member in a series: BLUE is the 5th of the 7 colors in the rainbow; ARIZONA was the 48th of 50 states admitted to the Union; YEMEN is followed by only Zambia and Zimbabwe in an alphabetical list of the worlds countries; October is the 10th of 12 months; Bill CLINTON is currently the 42nd of 44 U.S. presidents; and X is the 24th of 26 letters. The title is essentially another theme entry, since The Force Awakens is the 7th of the 9 planned Star Wars movies.

My original instructions asked for a 15-letter word whose 13th letter is A, slyly mentioning the antepenultimate letter of the answer in the clues. But a clever tester pointed out that this, surprisingly, made the meta not that difficult to backsolve. There arent very many common 15-letter words, and lists of ????????????A?? words (such as at onelook.com) cough up ANTEPENULTIMATE on the first page. Its obviously a suggestive meta-word, so I had to scrap those instructions.

Fortunately the same clever tester who pointed out that problem also pointed out its elegant solution, since the syllable-based backsolve is much more difficult.

Al suggests:



This would have been a good one for the 29th! 

It was certainly Week 5 difficulty!

pgw asks:

couldnt wait to run this one as mgwcc #998, huh?

slubduck writes:

OMG!! I am on an incredible high, knowing this is correct with so few correct answers so far  BUT  my heart has plummeted after one minute of rejoicing, because I cannot for the life of me guess why the title is Episode 399 unless it means the Gaffney Meta Series will end at #401?????? Please, please, please say that isnt so. I will cry for a year if this surmise proves so.



No way  were going to four digits with this thing! See below.

And xhixen suggests:



There should be a bonus prize for the antepenultimate correct submission this week!

This weeks winner, whose name was chosen randomly from the 77 correct entries received, is Deepak Bal of Montclair, N.J. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Deepak will also receive a 1-year subscription to MGDX.

400!

Were 40% of the way through MGWCC, which will end with puzzle #1000 in August of 2027. Thanks very much for solving  you keep doing what youre doing and Ill keep doing what Im doing!

THIS WEEKS INSTRUCTIONS:

This weeks contest answer is the letter that goes in box 29. NOTE: in order to receive credit for this meta, you must provide a sentence or two explaining your logic along with the correct answer!

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

IMPORTANT NOTE: As of January 2015 MGWCC is a subscribers-only crossword. The cost is $26 per year, and you can subscribe (or get a free trial month first) here:

www.mgwcc.com


The article/blog entry below from the JTA reminds me of the arguments about Lenin's Jewish ancestry. Now that we can look at the records, we know that Leni...

11 years ago
Hi, There is a new center in mumbai at JJ Hospital. However not enough information is available about the same. Here are some Traveler t...
New Delhi: With truck loads of filth and garbage lying on the roads and colonies, the national capital continues to stink and face health hazards as the Municipal Corporation of Delhi Sanitation Workers' strike entered its third day on Friday.

As per reports, the agitating MCD employees are expected to stage a protest march in the Laxmi Nagar locality in east Delhi today.

The protesters are also likely to gherao the residence of Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai.

The striking MCD employees had yesterday blocked the road outside the residence of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and ruling AAP leader Manish Sisodia.

The agitators also threw garbage outside Sisodia's office.

The Deputy Chief Minister, meanwhile, defended the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, claiming that funds have already been released but were not disbursed by the MCD.

Sisodia also asked the protesting workers to question the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on why the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which comes under the Central government, did not pay outstanding dues of Rs 1200 crore to the MCD.

The workers had also threatened to suspend work for an "indefinite" period if their demands were not met.

Workers attached to East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) had gone on strike making similar demands in October 2015. But the strike was called off in the wake of a High Court order.

Over 1.5 lakh MCD employees have gone on an indefinite strike this time.
Geneva: The Zika virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is "spreading explosively" and could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Director-General Margaret Chan told members of the U.N. health agency`s executive board the spread of the mosquito-borne disease had gone from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions. The WHO would convene an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response, she said.

"The level of alarm is extremely high," Chan told the Geneva gathering.

"Last year, the virus was detected in the Americas, where it is now spreading explosively. As of today, cases have been reported in 23 countries and territories in the region," Chan said, promising quick action from the WHO.

The agency was criticised last year for reacting too slowly to West Africa`s Ebola epidemic, which killed more than 10,000 people, and it promised to cut its response time.

"We are not going to wait for the science to tell us there is a link (with birth defects). We need to take actions now," Chan said, referring to the condition called microcephaly in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains that have not developed properly.

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is like dengue and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms. Much of the effort against the illness focuses on protecting people from mosquitoes and reducing mosquito populations.

Developing a safe and effective vaccine could take a year, WHO Assistant Director Bruce Aylward said, and it would take six to nine months just to confirm whether Zika is the actual cause of the birth defects, or if the two are just associated.

"In the area of vaccines, I do know that there has been some work done by some groups looking at the feasibility of a Zika virus vaccine. Now something like that, as people know, is going to be a 12-month-plus time frame," he said.

U.S. health officials said the United States has two potential candidates for a Zika vaccine and may begin human clinical trials by the end of this year, but there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years.

Marcos Espinal, head of communicable diseases at the Pan American Health Organization, the WHO`s Americas arm, forecast 3 to 4 million Zika cases in the Americas.

As the virus spreads from Brazil, other countries in the Americas are likely to see cases of babies with Zika-linked birth defects, according to Carissa Etienne, regional director for the Pan American Health Organization.

Brazil has reported around 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly, vastly more than in an average year and equivalent to 1 to 2 percent of all newborns in the state of Pernambuco, one of the worst-hit areas.

The WHO`s Chan said that while a direct causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth malformations has not yet been established, it is strongly suspected.

"The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions," she said.

Health and law expert Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University in Washington, who had urged the WHO to act, welcomed Chan`s decision to convene an expert meeting, calling it "a critical first step in recognising the seriousness of an emerging epidemic."

OLYMPICS CONCERNS

With Rio de Janeiro set to host the Olympics from Aug. 5 to Aug. 21, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the IOC will issue guidelines this week concerning Zika.

"We will do everything to ensure the health of the athletes and all the visitors," Bach told reporters in Athens.

Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there have been 31 cases of Zika infection among U.S. citizens who travelled to areas affected by the virus.

"It`s possible and even likely that we will see limited outbreaks in the United States," Schuchat said.

In Washington, U.S. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts called on the WHO and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to explain how they were tackling the virus because many Americans visit the affected region and more are expected to attend the Olympics.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama`s administration`s concern was focussed mostly on pregnant women or women who could become pregnant, given the link to microcephaly.

Lufthansa , British Airways and JetBlue became the latest international carriers to offer rebookings or refunds for tickets to areas impacted by the virus.

Lufthansa and British Airways said they would offer pregnant women the opportunity to change their reservations to another destination or delay travel. They stopped short of offering complete refunds as several U.S. airlines have.
Mumbai: A 40-foot long dead whale washed ashore Juhu beach in Mumbai on Thursday night. The dead mammal was spotted by locals who later informed the police. It has been identified as a Bryde's Whale.

Hundreds of people descended on Juhu beach in the north of the teeming western Indian city to catch a glimpse of the Bryde`s whale after it washed ashore late Thursday.

"It's 11.3 metres (37 feet) long and weighs around 20 tonnes," said Makrand Ghodke, an official at the Maharashtra Forest Department who identified the type of whale.

"There is no sign of any wounds. We think it died three or four days back and we will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death," he told AFP.

Ghodke said joggers had first spotted the dead mammal on Thursday night and called his department.

He added that a crane was being readied to help move the massive whale from the beach, which rests against the Arabian Sea. This month 45 whales died after stranding themselves on a beach in Tamil Nadu in southern India.

In June, a 42-foot-long blue whale washed ashore near Alibaug, a coastal town lying around 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra.

Beaches line Mumbai`s coast and although extremely popular with locals and tourists, they are often home to piles of rubbish, particularly during the monsoon months when high tides spew out tonnes of waste.

About two weeks ago, carcasses of 38 baleen whales were washed ashore near the Tiruchendur beach in Tuticorin on January 13. While more than 250 whales, which were stranded in shallow waters were pushed back into the deep sea.
New Delhi: An Indian terror module pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) is a reorganised group of the virtually defunct Indian Mujahideen and SIMI elements, recruiting new members to carry out a string of terror strikes across the country, highly placed intelligence sources said.

This fact came out during the questioning of 14 suspected Islamic State (IS) sympathisers who were arrested last week from 12 places in six cities in a synchronised raid conducted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the sources added.

Those inspired by the IS ideology were hooked by Yusuf-al-Hind who, the Indian security agencies believe, is former Indian Mujahideen (IM) member Shafi Armar, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka.

Armar, now believed to be in the Islamic State-held area along the border of Iraq and Syria, formed 'Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind' and recruited Mumbai-based 33-year-old Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh as 'Amir' (chief) of the group.

Official sources privy to the investigation told IANS that Armar also recruited his brother Sultan and others who had worked for Indian Mujahideen and the now-banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Apart from former IM and SIMI members, Armar chose those who are basically inspired by the IS ideology. He first recruited his close aides and then inspired them to recruit more supporters," an official, on condition of anonymity, told IANS.

"They used social networking sites and made calls through the internet (using VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol) to activate the sleeper cells of IM and SIMI, the official said.

Another intelligence source declining to be identified said that the outfit members were directed to carry out strikes across multiple cities, including Hyderabad in Telangana, Bengaluru, Manglore and Tumkur in Karnataka, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, and Aurangabad and Mumbai in Maharashtra.

They were asked to organise training camps -- like how to use fire arms -- before the attack. They were also trying to establish channels for procuring explosives and weapons," the official source told IANS.

The leadership of Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind, active since April 2015, was following the IM and SIMI set-ups by choosing their organised central, state and city level core groups, the official said.

The 14 men, allegedly influenced by IS and arrested by the NIA, are also said to have revealed that the 20-year-old Uttar Pradesh-based Mohammed Aleem was chosen as Naib Amir, the second-in-command of the group after Mudabbir.

The sources said Karnataka resident Najmul Huda was the military commander and 24-year-old Hyderabadi Mohammed Nafees Khan was the finance chief of the outfit.

All these major group leaders were arrested along with their aides Mohammed Shareef Moinuddin Khan, Mohammed Afzal, Syed Mujahid, Mohammed Obedullah Khan, Abu Anas, Asif Ali, Suhail Ahmed, Muhammad Abdul Ahad, Mohammad Hussain Khan, and Imran Khan.
New Delhi: Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi received a threat letter from terror outfit ISIS on Friday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader's office in the national capital alleged to have received a threat letter from the Islamic State.

Intelligence Bureau Director Syed Asif Ibrahim and Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi have been apprised of the matter.

More details are awaited.

In a nationwide crackdown, the National Investigation Agency had recently arrested at least 14 ISIS sympathisers.

The NIA said that these suspects were under surveillance for quite some time, however the decision to arrest them came at a time after the agency received inputs of possible terror attacks in the country on the 67th Republic Day.
Hyderabad: There seems to be no end in sight to politics over Hyderabad University's Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide.

The varsity campus on Friday midnight witnessed drama after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi reached the university and participated in a candle light march by the students to mark the birth anniversary of Rohith Vemula.

Here are 10 latest developments:-

- Rahul Gandhi, who landed at Hyderabad airport around midnight, drove straight to the university to express solidarity with the students protesting over the suicide; this is Rahul's second visit to Hyderabad since Vemula was found hanging in the varsity's hostel room.

- Immediately after reaching the shopping complex where students were staging the protest for the last 12 days, Rahul paid tributes to Rohith at the memorial constructed by the students. He then sat with Rohith's mother, brother and other students.

- Just hours before Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's visit and amid continuing protests, the interim Vice Chancellor of the university Vipin Srivastava went on leave.

- Reportedly, the next seniormost professor, AM Periasamy, will perform the duties of the vice chancellor of the university till further orders.

- At least 50 Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists were detained by the local police for protesting against Rahul Gandhi's visit

- The protesting students have will launch a mass hunger strike to seek justice for Rohith Vemula; the strike will begin on Saturday at 6 AM

- Rahul Gandhi will address the protesting students prior to launch of mass hunger strike on Saturday morning

- Saturday will mark the birth anniversary of Rohith Vemula

- The protesting students are demanding dismissal of university's V-C Apparao Podile

- Rohith's mother had also join the midnight candlelight protest
New Delhi: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to make sincere efforts to improve the Indo-Pak relations, Zee Media reported that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has joined hands with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's dreaded Islamic State to carry out terror attacks in India.

Pakistans notorious intelligence agency which has, for decades, exported terror into India through groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammd, SIMI, Indian Mujahideen and Jamaat-ud-Dawa is now trying to infiltrate into the India via Syria and Iraq.

Because of growing international pressure, Pakistan has been forced to act on the home-grown terror groups. So, in order to tackle this problem, the ISI has now joined hands with Baghdadi to continue to sponsor terrorism into India.

According to sources, over 30,000 people in India are in contact with the ISIS. Also, these 30,000 people are ready to work for ISIS to wage a war against their own country i.e. India.

The ISIS is desperately looking for Indian youths who can hack the government's data and pass on crucial information to them. ISIS handlers are contacting such distracted youths through social networking websites.

The terror group is willing to shell out as much as USD 60,000 for every government information which is passed on to them.

In a nationwide crackdown, the National Investigation Agency had recently arrested at least 14 ISIS sympathisers.

The NIA said that these suspects were under surveillance for quite some time, however the decision to arrest them came at a time after the agency received inputs of possible terror attacks in the country on the 67th Republic Day.
Jammu: The process of government formation remains stalled in Jammu and Kashmir amid reports that PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti wants the BJP to agree to her demands before the parties share power again in the state.

As per media reports, Mehooba has sought assurance from the BJP top brass that she will be given as free hand in running the government. Among her specific demands, Mehbooba wants the Centre to engage the separatists in the talks process, vacation of private lands by the security forces.

Mehbooba also wants Centre-owned projects to be handed over to the state government.

However, if media reports are to be believed then the Modi government is in no mood to concede to the demands set by the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to directly speak to Mehbooba.

Also, the PDP chief is scheduled to meet all office bearers of the party to gauge the public mood on continuation of the alliance with the BJP.

Meanwhile, former CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's family have given up their security and vacated his official residence, returned government vehicles.
Thiruvanathapuram: Even as Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy moved the Kerala High Court against a vigilance court's order on filing FIR against him in the Solar Scam case, opposition parties, Friday, intensified their protests demanding his reignation.

Activists of DYFI, the youth-wing of CPI (M), clashed with the police outside the Kerala Secretariat, creating a riot-like situation in the heart of the state capital.

The police resorted to lathi charge and lobbed tear gas after DYFI activists started to pelt stones.

Dramatic TV visuals from the scene show policemen in riot gear trying hard to prevent the DYFI men from entering the secretariat.

The Left parties have been at the forefront in protesting against Chandy ever since the Thrissur vigilance court ordered an FIR against the CM yesterday afternoon.

The BJP, which is emerging as a third force in Kerala politics, also held protests against the Chief Minister.

However, Chandy appears in no mood to quit as CM, especially now that the Congress high command is backing him.
Imphal: The mother of Chungkham Sanjit, a former insurgent who was allegedly shot dead in a fake gunfight on the directions of a top police officer, has demanded a fresh CBI probe into the killing, family sources said on Friday.

Chungkham Taratombi on late Thursday filed a fresh petition to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the light of Head Constable Thounaojam Herojit`s revelation that he shot dead an unarmed Sanjit in 2009.

"My son had gone to the town on the fateful day to buy medicine for his ailing father. However, after some hours, I was told that he was killed in an encounter," said Taratombi.

Sanjit, who had given up militancy, was allegedly trapped inside a chemist`s shop on B.T. Road in Imphal, and a few minutes later his body was dragged out by security personnel on July 23, 2009.

Police had produced one hand gun they said to have been recovered from Sanjit.

Sources said that on the basis of assurance by union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, the CBI indicated that it would take a relook at the case.

However, the officials whose names were disclosed in the confessional statement are yet to be questioned.

Akoijam Jhalajit, the Imphal West district police superintendent, who allegedly gave the orders to kill Sanjit clarified that the allegations against him were "concocted, motivated and baseless".
Islamabad: Pakistani lawmakers' lack of political will to pass the pending Hindu marriage bill despite a Supreme Court directive came in for criticism on Friday, with a leading newspaper questioning the government's commitment to minority rights, especially for Hindu women.

"While many politicians are quick to issue public statements about the rights of minorities in Pakistan, when it comes to taking practical steps to secure these rights, there is very little to show," Dawn newspaper said in a scathing editorial.

"A prime example of this strange paradox is the decades-old issue of legislation related to Hindu marriage," it said, highlighting that the "legal vacuum that created a multitude of issues especially for minority communities."

A bill on Hindu marriage was jointly presented in the Parliament in 2014 by Ramesh Lal of opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Darshan of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). A separate but similar government bill was tabled in Parliament by Law Minister Pervaiz Rashid in March 2015.

The Hindu women have to face problems in proving their relationships when dealing with officials, while widows are particularly disadvantaged, it said.

The editorial noted that this issue was highlighted by the chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Law and Justice at a seminar in Islamabad on Wednesday which is supposed to approve the pending Hindu marriage bill to be tabled in the house.

"Without official proof of relationships, getting government documents issued or moving forward on any other activity which involves documentation from opening bank accounts to applying for visas becomes next to impossible for any citizen," it said.

It said that these issues were a reason for conversion as some experts point out that forced conversions are also facilitated by the lack of documentation of Hindu marriages.

Despite the fact that even the Supreme Court has ordered the state to enact the law, lawmakers have failed to do the needful, the editorial noted.

Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have passed the requisite resolutions, but the Sindh and Punjab assemblies have not yet done so.

"This tardiness and lack of political will are inexcusable. If the parties leading the Sindh and Punjab

governments are serious about their commitment to minority rights, they should pass the resolutions without further delay in order to do away with the hurdles in the way of a Hindu marriage law," it said.

Sindh should show particular alacrity, as most of Pakistan's Hindus reside in this province.
London: A 26-year-old mother who took her toddler son to Syria and posted pictures of him next to a weapon has been convicted of belonging to Islamic State (IS).

Tareena Shakil was found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court on Friday of joining IS and encouraging terrorism on social media.

The 26-year-old boarded a plane to Turkey in October 2014 with her one-year-old boy, crossed the border into Syria and spent three months there, West Midlands police said in a statement.

She denied joining IS but detectives said Shakil had become a member of the extremist group and was set to become a jihadi bride.

A photograph uncovered by police showed her posing in Syria underneath an IS flag. She left the country in January 2015, although it is not known why, the statement added.

She was arrested by counter-terrorism officers when she returned to Britain on Feb. 18 after landing at Heathrow Airport. The child was taken into care.

Tareena Shakil had self-radicalised by viewing extremist material on the internet, before leaving the UK," said Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale in the statement.

"Our assessment is that she was not naive. She had absolutely clear intentions when she left the UK, sending tweets encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism here and then taking her young child to join Daesh (IS) in Syria.

Photographs seized from her phone showed Ms Shakil posing with a firearm and wearing a Daesh balaclava. Another showed a rucksack with a Daesh logo and person holding a handgun. These were taken while she was in Syria."

Security services estmate some 600 Britons have joined the ranks of Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq, many of them crossing via Turkey. About half are believed to have returned to Britain.

Shakil will be sentenced on Monday.
Nairobe: Burundi police said Friday they had arrested two respected foreign journalists and Africa experts as they reported on gunmen opposed to the government in the volatile nation.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested on Thursday afternoon, they said.

Both have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work.

"The two foreigners were arrested in the company of armed criminals," the security ministry said in a statement.

Presidential press chief Willy Nyamitwe said the pair were among 17 people arrested by police.

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were also seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

"They have not been charged, we are still at the investigation stage," said police deputy spokesman Moise Nkurunziza.

"If there is no evidence against them, they will be released, of course," he added.

An official in the communications ministry told AFP the two journalists had been questioned overnight and were being "detained in a secret location" while enquiries continue.

The Foreign Correspondents` Association of East Africa (FCAEA) said it was, "extremely concerned about the arrests of our esteemed and dear colleagues, Phil Moore and Jean-Philippe Remy yesterday in Burundi".

Moore has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy is a correspondent for Le Monde who has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.
Pyong Yang: Facing a US-led push for tough United Nations sanctions over its latest nuclear test, North Korea appeared to be looking for Security Council allies Friday, sending top diplomats to Moscow and possibly Beijing.

China and Russia, both veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, have helped temper the international reaction to North Korean provocations in the past.

Although the patience of both has been tested to its limits by North Korea`s nuclear weapons ambitions, neither wants to see the chaotic collapse of a nuclear-armed state on its border.

The North`s official KCNA news agency said a delegation led by Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-Guk had departed for Russia on Friday.

No details were given of the itinerary, but the visit comes as Washington is seeking to build a regional and international consensus on the need for harsh sanctions after the North carried out its fourth nuclear test earlier this month.

Meanwhile, South Korea`s Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified sources, said a top North Korean foreign ministry official had been spotted arriving at Beijing`s international airport.

The official, Choi Son-Hui, was a former deputy head of delegation to the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea`s nuclear programme, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

There was no information on Choi`s itinerary and it was not immediately clear if she was planning to visit China or transit to a third country.
Seoul: Former South Korean prime minister Lee Wan-Koo was handed an eight-month suspended jail sentence on Friday following his conviction on corruption charges.

The Seoul Central District Court found Lee guilty of receiving 30 million won ($27,400) from a businessman in 2013.

The eight-month prison term was suspended for two years.

Lee stepped down in April last year after the businessman, Sung Wan-Jong, revealed in a newspaper interview that he had given the 30 million won to the future prime minister while he was still just an MP.

Sung later committed suicide, leaving a note in which he listed the names of other officials, including current and former senior aides to President Park Geun-Hye -- suggesting he had also given them money.

Bribery scandals involving politicians and rich businessmen have been a fixture in South Korean politics for decades.

Two former presidents served prison terms for taking bribes and dozens of heads of major business groups have been convicted of forming slush funds to lobby politicians.
New York: Iran`s Revolutionary Guards has recruited thousands of Afghans, some by coercion, to fight in Syria`s war alongside forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

"Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the New York-based HRW.

"Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe." Shiite Iran is a staunch supporter of Assad and provides financial and military support to his regime.

Tehran says its Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised of Afghan recruits, are volunteers to defend sacred Shiite sites in Syria and Iraq against Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group.

The brigade, which is backed by the powerful Revolutionary Guards, is named after the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed whose mausoleum near Damascus is venerated by Shiites.

But some reports say the Afghans have been offered residency and a monthly salary to fight for Iran. The Islamic republic denies having any boots on the ground and insists its commanders and generals act as "military advisers" in Syria and Iraq.

However, funerals are regularly held across Iran for "volunteer" fighters from Iran, Afghanistan, and sometimes Pakistan.

Iran hosts an estimated three million Afghans, many of whom have fled persecution and repeated bouts of armed conflict in their homeland, said HRW.

Only 950,000 have refugee status in Iran and the rest have been deemed unqualified for asylum.

At least two dozen Afghans interviewed by the watchdog said they or their relatives had been recruited or coerced by the Iranian authorities to fight in Syria.

Six of them said Iranian forces had trained them or their relatives in military camps near Tehran and Shiraz in 2015.
Paris: A lunch between French President Francois Hollande and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani was cancelled after France refused to remove wine from the menu.

An Iranian delegation, which is on a business trip of Europe after economic sanctions were lifted, has requested a halal menu. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was due to lunch with Hollande in the French capital.

Iran had made a similar request to Italy also, which was accepted and the Italians ensured a halal menu without wine.

Apart from discourse on food menu, France and Iran inked $25 billion (22 billion euros) deals under which Iran will purchase 73 long-haul and 45 medium-haul Airbus passenger planes to update its ageing fleet.

The countries signed a memorandum of understanding because the aircraft deal cannot be finalised until sanctions are fully lifted.

A commitment for Tehran to buy 118 Airbus aircraft was the most eye-catching of the deals that also included agreements for carmaker Peugeot to return to Iran and for Total to buy Iranian crude oil.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani and his French counterpart Francois Hollande hailed a "new relationship" between their countries Thursday as the leader of the Islamic Republic visited Paris to seal a host of post-sanctions deals.

The Iranian president called earlier for both countries to take advantage of the "positive atmosphere" following the lifting of sanctions over the Islamic Republic`s nuclear programme.

"Let us forget the resentment," Rouhani said. "We are ready to turn the page" and establish a "new relationship", he said.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Iran "can count on France".

Rouhani was welcomed to Paris with military honours and national anthems before addressing business leaders.
Tokyo: Japan has ordered its military to be ready to destroy any missile fired by North Korea that threatens the country, local media reported Friday, as concerns mount that Pyongyang is preparing a rocket launch.

Defence Minister Gen Nakatani issued the order, the Nikkei daily and Kyodo News reported, after reports of suspicious activity at Pyongyang`s main satellite complex fuelled speculation a launch could come as early as next week.

A Japanese defence ministry spokeswoman declined to confirm the report when contacted by AFP, saying that "would reveal our strategy".

"But we are taking all possible measures to respond (to a missile launch) by collecting information and coordinating with countries concerned," she added.

North Korea is banned from using ballistic missile technology by UN Security Council resolutions, so any launch would further raise tensions among the international community only weeks after its latest nuclear test.

Two US defence officials confirmed to AFP on Friday there was ongoing activity at the North`s Sohae satellite complex, which Pyongyang has been upgrading to handle larger, longer-range rockets since 2013.

Their comments came after Japan`s Kyodo News, citing an anonymous government source, said satellite imagery showed increased movement at Sohae that could suggest a launch as early as next week.

Also on Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida held telephone talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry about the possible launch.

"We can`t deny the possibility that North Korea will take further provocative action," Kishida told reporters, adding that he and Kerry had "exchanged information on how to cooperate from now on".

Japan deployed surface-to-air missile defences in 2012, the same year North Korea put a satellite into orbit with its Unha-3 carrier.

Although Pyongyang insisted it was a purely scientific operation, that launch was condemned by the international community as a disguised ballistic missile test and resulted in a tightening of UN sanctions.
Colombo: The Maldives said Friday it could extend the prison leave granted to former president Mohamed Nasheed to go to London for medical treatment after he hinted at delaying his return.

Nasheed, who is serving a 13-year jail term after being convicted on controversial terrorism-related charges, arrived in London last week.

He has hinted he may stay beyond the 30 days` leave the government granted him in a deal brokered by Sri Lanka, India and former colonial power Britain.

"Our belief is he would return. He is a man of great stature. I don`t think there is a question of him not returning," the minister for legal affairs in the president`s office Aishath Azima Shakoor told reporters in Colombo.

"If he requests an extension of medical leave, he will certainly get it."

Nasheed was accorded a red carpet welcome and received by Prime Minister David Cameron when he arrived in Britain last Thursday for spinal cord surgery.

The 48-year-old told reporters in London that he had not yet decided whether to return to the Maldives after his leave.

"I know the question you all want to ask is will I go back. This has been more eloquently answered by The Clash in 1982 when I was doing my A-Levels -- `Should I Stay Or Should I Go?`" said Nasheed, who was educated in Britain.

"Let me be clear. I will go to the Maldives. I will definitely go to the Maldives, there is no doubt about that. But only the question is how and when."

Nasheed became the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives in 2008 and served for four years before he was toppled in what he called a coup backed by the military and police.

Last year, a court sentenced him to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges that were widely seen as politically motivated.

His high-profile lawyer, Amal Clooney, has argued for targeted sanctions including asset freezes in the European Union and US and travel bans against leaders in the Maldives allegedly responsible for human rights abuses.

Foreign Secretary Ali Naseer Mohamed said the Maldives did not have an extradition treaty with Britain and would not be able to force Nasheed to return.
Veracruz: For more than two weeks, the parents of five missing young people have been living inside a Mexican state prosecutor`s office in an attempt to pressure authorities to find their children.

The parents spent the first night sitting on cold plastic chairs. Then they brought mattresses, a microwave oven and a television set inside the government building.

"It`s our home now," said Columba Arroniz Gonzalez as she heated up some tortillas and soup for her gaunt-looking husband in the patio of the prosecutor`s office in Tierra Blanca, in the eastern state of Veracruz.

Their son, Bernardo Benitez, 25, is among the five young people, including a 16-year-old girl, who disappeared after state police officers detained them in gang-plagued Tierra Blanca on January 11.

The case has become a symbol of Mexico`s growing number of "forced disappearances" -- a term used for abductions committed by authorities.

Their plight has been compared to the disappearance of 43 students in southern Guerrero state in September 2014, when municipal police attacked the young men and delivered them to a drug cartel, which allegedly killed them.

At least 275 complaints of forced disappearances were lodged between 2006 and September 2015, according to figures from the attorney general`s office obtained by AFP though a freedom of information request.

It started with four complaints in 2006, when the government declared a war against drug trafficking, and soared to 68 in 2014. There were 41 complaints in the first nine months of 2015.

But the attorney general`s office has launched only 15 legal proceedings.

In the case of the 43 students, the police who were detained were charged with kidnapping instead of forced disappearance.In Veracruz, seven state police officers, including a regional commander, have been charged with the forced disappearances of the five young people.

The officers told investigators that they delivered the five -- Susana Tapia, 16, Bernardo Benitez, 25, Jose Benitez, 24, Mario Arturo Orozco Sanchez, 28, and Jose Alfredo Gonzalez, 25 -- to a gang.

Last weekend, the local leader of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel was arrested in connection with the case.

The reason behind the disappearance remains a mystery.

A half-dozen bodies have been found in the search. While none belonged to the five missing young people, the discoveries highlighted the extent of violence in Veracruz, a state plagued by cartel turf wars for years.

The five are now among the more than 26,600 people who are reported missing across Mexico.

Since their families took over the prosecutor`s office, mothers of other missing people have come to visit them in solidarity with their cause.The five victims, who lived in Playa Vicente, had spent a weekend in the port of Veracruz to celebrate a birthday.
Sydney: China is set to join the underwater search for a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet missing for almost two years by providing a sonar-equipped vessel by the end of February, Australia`s deputy prime minister Warren Truss said on Friday.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014, sparking one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.

The Chinese vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101 was offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in November and will be deployed to join search operations in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have gone down in March 2014.

At the time, China valued its contribution to the search at A$20 million ($14.2 million).

The Australian-led underwater search is one of the most expensive ever conducted. An initial hunt along a rugged 60,000-sq km (23,000 sq miles) patch of sea floor off the coast of Perth cost A$120 million but yielded no sign of the plane.

The presence of Dong Hai Jiu will take to four the number of vessels scouring a search area that has been expanded to 120,000 square km (46,330 square miles) of ocean floor.
Washington: A top US general has said it is difficult to destroy the "enemy" in Afghanistan if terror groups like the Haqqani network and Taliban have sanctuaries in Pakistan. "When an enemy enjoys sanctuary like that, it's very difficult to defeat them," General John "Mick" Nicholson, who has been nominated by the Pentagon as Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during confirmation hearing yesterday.

Nicholson said he views the terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan as a serious problem. "This (terrorist safe havens) has been one of the principal challenges. It's a sanctuary that our enemies, in particular the Haqqani Network, have enjoyed inside Pakistan," he said responding to a question from Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Committee.

Critical of the Af-Pak policy of the Obama Administration, McCain also demanded an immediately halt to US troop withdrawals and eliminate any target date for withdrawal.

Responding to the question, Nicholson said it is difficult to defeat the Taliban and Haqqani network when they enjoy terrorist safe haven, and as such, it is important to "enlist" Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.

"In this case, Pakistan, to go after those sanctuaries, and then the other important piece is to build up the defence capacity of the Afghans so that they can keep that level of violence down to a manageable level," the general said. Earlier, in a written response to questions, Nicholson asked Pakistan to take persistent action against the Taliban, particularly the Haqqani Network.

"Pakistan's pressure on the Taliban combined with its support to the reconciliation process are mutually reinforcing," he added.

Haqqani network, which is linked to al-Qaeda has also been blamed for several deadly attacks against Western and Indian interests in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul.
Geneva: The UN insisted that high-stakes peace talks aimed at ending the brutal, five-year-old Syrian conflict would still begin in Switzerland later Friday despite uncertainty over whether key groups would even attend.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura "will start by meeting the government`s delegation today (Friday)" in Geneva, followed by talks with "other participants", the United Nations said in a statement.

The Syrian government delegation, headed by Syria`s envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari, arrived in Geneva early afternoon, a source said.

Opposition figures not part of the umbrella group High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said they would be present.

However, despite Western pressure on the HNC, it has yet to decide whether to come and was engaged in a fourth day of discussions in Saudi Arabia on Friday.

The talks, backed by all the external powers embroiled in the war, are the biggest push yet to end a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and facilitated the meteoric rise of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group.

The highly complex conflict, now almost five years old, has also destabilised the already restive Middle East and drawn in not only regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey but also the United States and Russia.

It has also forced millions of Syrians from their homes, many of them into neighbouring states and further afield, causing a major political headache for the European Union which received around a million migrants in 2015.

De Mistura issued on Thursday an emotional video message to the Syrian people both inside and outside the country saying that after previous failures, this new effort "cannot fail".

"Five years of this conflict have been too much. The horror is in front of everyone`s eyes," de Mistura said. "You must know also that we count on you to raise your voice to say `khalas` ("stop" in Arabic)."The Geneva negotiations, if they happen, would not be a face-to-face conversation between the regime and its opponents. Instead they are "proximity talks" when go-betweens shuttle between the different participants.

They are part of an ambitious plan launched in Vienna in November by a raft of key actors including Russia, the United States, Gulf states, Iran and Turkey that foresees elections within 18 months.

Despite Western pressure, the HNC is refusing to show up in Switzerland before an agreement is reached on aid reaching hundreds of thousands of people stuck in besieged towns.

With such an agreement highly unlikely in the immediate term, a senior delegate for the HNC told AFP that it may still decide later in the day to travel to the negotiations.

The HNC, which named Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist rebel group Army of Islam as its chief negotiator, has also asked for "clarifications" after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures.

Individual invitations were reportedly issued to a list of figures opposed to the regime but who are thought to have closer ties to Moscow and have limited influence on the ground.

Randa Kassis, a member of that list, told AFP in Geneva on Friday that despite the uncertainty on who would attend, "something has to start. We have to think of the Syrian people."

The HNC and its Saudi and Turkish backers have also objected to the participation of Syrian Kurdish groups that have made key advances against IS in northern Syria in recent months.

Russia, however, which has helped the regime of President Bashar al-Assad make inroads against rebels with air strikes since September, says Kurdish involvement is essential.Haytham Manna, a longstanding opposition figure who is co-chair of the political wing of a Kurdish-Arab alliance, told AFP in Geneva he did not expect the discussions to begin until Monday.

France-based Middle East analyst Agnes Levallois said the opposition was growing increasingly frustrated that the question of Assad`s fate, a key stumbling block in previous talks, was being put off.

"Assad is feeling stronger and stronger so is being inflexible," she said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose Shiite country also backs Assad and is at daggers drawn with Sunni regional rival Saudi Arabia, said in a visit to Paris on Thursday that the process would take time.

"We hope that these talks will succeed as soon as possible. But I would be surprised if they succeed very quickly because in Syria there are groups who are at war with the central government and also amongst themselves," French media quoted him as saying.

"There is interference in the internal affairs of Syria," he added.
Jerusalem: The United States and Britain have monitored secret sorties and communications by Israel`s air force in a hacking operation dating back to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Israel voiced disappointment at the disclosures, which were published on Friday in three media outlets and might further strain relations with Washington after years of feuding over strategies on Iran and the Palestinians.

Israel`s Yedioth Ahronoth daily said the US National Security Agency, which specialises in electronic surveillance, and its British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air force missions against the Palestinian enclave Gaza, Syria and Iran.

The spy operation, codenamed "Anarchist", was run out of a Cyprus base and targeted other Middle East states too, it said. Its findings were mirrored by stories in Germany`s Der Spiegel newsmagazine and the online publication The Intercept, which lists Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald among its associates.

"This access is indispensable for maintaining an understanding of Israeli military training and operations and thus an insight to possible future developments in the region, The Intercept quoted a classified GCHQ report as saying in 2008.

That year, Israel went to war against Hamas guerrillas in Gaza and began issuing increasingly vocal threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities if it deemed international diplomacy insufficient to deny its arch-foe the means of making a bomb.

Asked for comment, the United States and Britain said through spokespeople for their embassies in Israel that they do not publicly discuss intelligence matters.

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu`s security cabinet, sought to play down the potential damage but said lessons would be learned.

"I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant," he told Israel`s Army Radio. "We will now have to look and consider changing the encryption, certainly."

With the Netanyahu government and Obama administration at loggerheads over the US-led nuclear agreement with Iran, there have been a series of high-profile media exposes in recent months alleging mutual espionage between the allies.

Israel insists that it ceased such missions since it ran U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s.

"We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us, also on their friends," Steinitz said. "But still, it is disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in the United States."

The Intercept report included what it said were images of armed Israeli drones hacked from onboard cameras` live feeds.

Israel neither confirms nor denies having armed drones, though one of its senior military officers was quoted as acknowledging their existence in a 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable that was previously disseminated by WikiLeaks.

Yedioth said that the hacking revelations could hurt Israeli drone sales to Germany should Berlin worry about the aircraft networks` security. But Steinitz brushed off that possibility.

"Every country carries out its own encryption," he said.

Germany said on Jan 12 it would lease Heron TP drones from state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
Washington: In an apparent criticism of controversial Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, President Barack Obama has said the US cannot build progress with a "bunch of phony tough talk" or strengthen its global leadership by allowing politicians to insult Muslims.

"We're not going to strengthen our leadership around the world by allowing politicians to insult Muslims or pit groups of Americans against each other. That's not who we are. That's

not keeping America safe," Obama said.

His remarks were seen by many as a criticism of Trump, the leading contender to become the Republican party's nominee for US presidential candidate.

Trump has called for a "total and complete shutdown" of American borders to Muslims in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack in which 14 people were killed.

Obama said during election season there is a lot of talk about America in decline. "I don't believe in it and the acts don't show it. We're doing a lot better than seven years ago."

"We are on the right side of those debate and we are not cynical", he said.

In an address to the House Democratic Issues Conference in Baltimore yesterday, Obama outlined what he called the top national security priority for Democrats -- protection of the

American people and keeping them safe from terrorist attacks.

For more than a year, America has led a coalition of more than 60 countries to hunt down and destroy the Islamic State group, including with nearly 10,000 airstrikes, Obama said.

"We're not going to build progress with a bunch of phony tough talk, and bluster, and over-the-top claims that just play into ISIL's hands," he said, using an acronym for the

terrorist group.

Obama said keeping the US safe and strong and respected requires using every element of the American power.

"That's how we worked to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. And, again, you will recall that the other side was claiming this would never work, they were going to cheat," he said.

"And yet, a few months later, we now know have certified that massive amounts of existing nuclear stockpiles and their infrastructure have been dismantled or shipped out," he added.

Obama also said that the Democrats believe in innovation and the country was making good progress in generating clean energy.

"We've cut our oil imports by nearly 60 per cent, and we've cut our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth. That's what we've done," he said.

Obama said at times he gets frustrated that "they don't run back the tape to what the Republicans said back then". "Because at each juncture, every single one of the steps

we took, they said the opposite. Wanted to go in a different direction, claimed that our policies would crush jobs and destroy the economy. Do people remember that?" he said.
Washington: The US will continue to counter terror plotters of Islamic State militant group in any country where necessary, President Barack Obama has said while directing his national security team to intensify its ongoing counter-terrorism campaign to destroy the terror outfit. In a meeting with his National Security Council, Obama discussed intensification of US campaign to degrade and destroy Islamic State (ISIS).

"The President emphasised that the US will continue to counter ISIL (another name of ISIS) terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary," the White House said.

Noting that ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) affiliates and other violent extremists attempt to find safe haven in areas with limited or poor governance, he directed his national security team to continue efforts to strengthen governance and support ongoing counter-terrorism efforts in Libya and other countries where ISIL has sought to establish a presence.

"Degrading and destroying ISIL will continue to require coordination and cooperation among a wide range of global partners, and the US is strongly committed to continuing to lead the shared efforts of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL," the White House said.

Obama was briefed on ways the US and its partners in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL continue to accelerate and integrate the military campaign and diplomatic efforts on all possible fronts, including working with international partners to counter ISIL's stated goal of expansion beyond Iraq and Syria, the White House added.

Meanwhile, GOP presidential candidates continued to slam Obama administration for its ISIS policies. "We have to have an honest discussion with the American people about the nature of the threat that we confront. This president says that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, and as a result has put together a strategy that doesn't take care of what the reality is, which is ISIS has established a caliphate," Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate said during the undercard debate.

Another presidential aspirant Carly Fiorina described ISIS as the main threat to the US. "Let me tell you this: news flash, President Obama, news flash, Mrs Clinton -- climate change is not our most pressing national security threat. Actually it is ISIS, followed closely by Iran," she said.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called for a comprehensive ISIS policy. "First of all, take away their access to social media platforms. They are using the same social media platforms to recruit, and to train, and to direct people as I use to see pictures of my grandkids. That's ridiculous," he said.
By Matthew Smith LA LOCHE, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - Residents of the remote Canadian town of La Loche, having softened frozen cemetery ground with bonfires, prepared to bury their loved ones as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived on Friday at the site of Canada's worst mass shooting in a decade. Trudeau's visit comes a week after a shooter killed four people and wounded seven at a home and high school, and a day before funerals were to begin in the aboriginal Saskatchewan town. "It was an extremely touching visit for me," Trudeau said, in a soft voice choked with emotion. "We met an extraordinarily resilient community of people here in La Loche." The prime minister laid flowers at a makeshift memorial in snow outside the school, and met privately with family members of victims. Trudeau, elected in October, has pledged to repair relations with Canada's 1.4 million aboriginals, who make up 5 percent of the population but are disproportionately victims of violent crime and incarceration. A 17-year-old boy has been charged in the shootings. Local media said the teen had been taunted about his large ears, and during the shootings spared students who had been kind to him. Two brothers, a teacher and teaching assistant were killed. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in Quebec City for meetings, offered Canada his country's prayers. "But we also take heart from the knowledge that Canadians are a very brave and resilient people. No gunman can change that and we are very proud to have you as friends." La Loche's population of 2,600 is about 90 percent Metis and Dene, and the Dene language is widely spoken in addition to English. The shooting has sparked debate about how to improve life in communities like La Loche, where the legacy of colonization and an abusive residential school system have fueled high rates of suicide, addiction, and unemployment, despite nearby oil and mining projects. Asked by reporters about aid for La Loche and communities like it, Trudeau said he came to listen and had brought several cabinet ministers to see the needs firsthand. Trudeau's first budget is expected in March or April. "It's a big tragic situation right now and it takes this kind of a thing to open our eyes," said Gilbert Benjamin, a relative of one shooting victim. "We've been crying for so many years. We are struggling, we need help and nobody seems to look at it." (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins in Toronto; Additional reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Lesley Wroughton in Quebec City; Editing by Bill Trott and Sandra Maler)
Catherine McKenna, Canada's minister of environment and climate change, told reporters she has "concerns" about the impending transfer of 24 hectares of land from the Central Experimental Farm to The Ottawa Hospital, and said it's not too late to revisit the decision.

"I have concerns the former minister [John] Baird did this, I think, without a lot of consultation, so I'm exploring what happened," McKenna said following question period at the House of Commons Thursday.

The decision to lease the land to the hospital was made official in November 2014 during an announcement at The Ottawa Hospital by Baird, who was joined by the hospital's CEO Dr. Jack Kitts.

The hospital needed the land "for the construction of a world class hospital and teaching facility," according to a media release issued at the time.

McKenna's comments came in response to a letter signed by close to 50 agriculture and climate change scientists and heritage advocates. It's addressed to McKenna, Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly.

'Not just any land'

"This land is not just any land," the coalition wrote. "The fields proposed for transfer are the historically and scientifically most significant."

McKenna met with the group Jan. 6.

Retired Agriculture Canada scientist Harvey Voldengh is a member of the coalition, and has carried out a number of scientific experiments on crops in that particular section of the farm.

"We think they should look for another site," said Voldengh in an interview. "It's rather special for research in climate change and food security."

Voldengh said some of those experiments have been going on for decades, so transferring the land now would set the research back considerably.

An access to information request filed by the coalition revealed scientists at the Experimental Farm had not been informed of the decision to hand the land over to the hospital before the public announcement.

Story continues

An email on the very day of the announcement, sent from scientist Edward Gregorich to Marc Savard, Agriculture Canada's associate director of research, development and technology, described his experiments as "irreplaceable."

"These plots are part of a tillage trial established more than 20 years ago," Gregorich wrote.

"I know. They didn't care," Savard responded.

Missing paperwork

"As a representative of Ottawa Centre, I've heard concerns about the fact that the land was transferred by former minister Baird," said McKenna. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of paper work, which is worrying."

McKenna said it's not too late to reconsider the decision because the land hasn't been transferred to the hospital yet.

"I think we need to look at all the options," said McKenna.

The National Trust for Canada listed the experimental farm lands as one of the country's 10 most endangered sites in 2015 because of the impending transfer.

The Ottawa Hospital was not ready to respond to requests for comment Thursday night.
C-Level View | Feature

Using Data for Smart Choices: The Hobsons Acquisition of the PAR Framework

A Q&A with Ellen Wagner and Stephen Smith

We've followed the growth of the PAR (Predictive Analytics Reporting) Framework from its beginnings as a research project in 2011 on how to support student success with shared data resources. Initially involving a handful of institutions, today PAR is a mature framework with a massive federated dataset, many research assets and sophisticated tools, and dozens of participating member institutions. Hobsons announced its acquisition of PAR this month, and the PAR team is already in Arlington for the onboarding process. CT spoke with Ellen Wagner, who is now Chief Research Officer for the PAR Framework and VP for Research at Hobsons; and Stephen M. Smith, President of Advising and Admissions Solutions at Hobsons, for their views on the acquisition.

Mary Grush: Ellen, could you describe in very general terms what PAR has been able to accomplish over these past few years?

Ellen Wagner: PAR began as a big, audacious idea  a small group of educators, chatting informally after a conference wondered "how cool" it would be if only we could start leveraging data for education in ways similar to what we were seeing in other sectors. We decided to try to create a single federated dataset to use predictive analytics to learn more about student loss and momentum. PAR started with data from 6 higher education institutions then another 10 institutions then even more additional schools, and so on, as we grew our dataset. In addition to providing predictive models and benchmarks, we began looking at intervention measurement, and we undertook research projects with several institutions in order to learn how to get real about our data expectations.

Yes, we were able to create that huge dataset  frankly, this was something that some people didn't think we as practicing educators could do  and yes, we were able to do some amazing predictive modeling. But we learned so much. Perhaps our most important lesson was, that even if you can do great predictive modeling, you must have an action plan  or what you have discovered is of limited value.

Of course, building the federated dataset was the first major accomplishment, but along with that, we created and openly published common data definitions with our members, so that as new institutions joined PAR, they would already have a common framework they could readily use. I don't think we truly realized initially just how important that point would be.

Another thing that we did was to focus on readily available data, from our members. We looked for data variables that could be found for all the students at each institution with which we were working. Then, we commonly defined them. This normalized data and ensured fidelity across the dataset. Because we had data for everyone, and due to the fact that we had common data definitions, we found ourselves in a really good position to create generalizable findings  generalizable and useful for many multiple institutions.

So, for example, when we worked with University of Maryland University College, which was interested in finding ways to predict the 4-year college success of community college transfer students, we asked the University of Hawaii system if they could replicate UMUC's findings. Lo and behold, they could, because the PAR data was generalizable. What normally would have needed to be done with inferential statistics now could be done by simply identifying patterns in the PAR data. Institutional comparisons became possible with new reliability. We don't have to infer outcomes and results  we can see what's actually going on. Long term, this gives us the opportunity to scale more effectively. And this will have significant implications now that PAR assets will be used in Hobsons's work.

And the PAR accomplishment that I think I am most proud of is that we created a space where educators who know that they have to use data differently, and are trying figure out where to leverage data, now have a safe place to approach this work. And, they can work with other institutions and colleagues at other institutions  colleagues who all care about student success. When you have institutions working toward the the same overall objective  student success  and partnering on how to get there, you can do amazing things. Data is opening up for educators in new ways that were not seen previously.
US Dollar Fell after FOMC: Pound and New Zealand Dollar Rose

(Continued from Prior Part)

Pound posts strong gains

The pound to US dollar currency pair was on a positive trajectory on January 28, 2016. The currency pair posted gains close to 0.88% for the day. The GDP (gross domestic product) coming out on a decent note was one of the primary reasons for the rise.

The currency pair had risen to a high of 1.4 before ending the day at 1.4. With no major data release from the United Kingdom scheduled for this week, the currency is expected to wait for the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) release scheduled for February 1, 2016, for further direction.

British preliminary GDP meets market expectations

The Office for National Statistics published the UK preliminary fourth-quarter GDP on January 28, 2016. The report suggested a rise of 0.5%, which was in line with the forecasts. The rise in GDP in 2015 was 2.2%. Even though it was less than the previous years rise, it was among the highest in terms of developed economies.

According to the report, the rise was primarily attributed to the services industry, which grew by 0.52%. Construction and industrial production fell by 0.01% and 0.03%, respectively. Among other data, the Confederation of British Industry published the realized sales data at 16, slightly below the forecast of 18.

Impact on the market

The iShares MSCI United Kingdom ETF (EWU) reacted positively to the strong GDP release. It ended the day 1.3% higher on January 28, 2016. The First Trust United Kingdom AlphaDEX ETF (FKU) also rose by 0.87%.

Looking at British ADRs (American depositary receipts) and mining companies, BHP Billiton (BBL) was on a positive trajectory, rising 3.4%. Amec Foster Wheeler (AMFW), a construction company, rose by a significant 7.2%. Vodafone (VOD) fell by 1.1%, while Prudential (PUK) rose by 1.2%.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Tanking Oil: Oversupply in the Shadow of Civil War and Peace Talks

(Continued from Prior Part)

The civil war in Syria and crude prices

Many experts feel that although the civil war in Syria is based on a political and religious factors, the related conflicts around the region may be responsible for the recent tailspin in the price of crude oil. Investors would do well to note that, at least to some extent, the proxy wars that are being waged on Syrian soil (see Part 2 of this series) are among the top exporters of crude oil in the region. The conflict on the whole, in any case, has divided the Middle East into two groupsone led by Saudi Arabia, the other in collaboration with Russia and Iran.

Understanding Russias hand in the matter

Some experts also believe that Saudi Arabia has pressured Russia to withdraw support from Bashar al-Assad, Syrias president and military commander-in-chief, by lowering crude oil prices. When Russia got involved in Syria on the ground, it led to a larger fiscal deficit for Saudi Arabia as Russias powerful hand has caused the kingdoms expenditure in support of the groups fighting in opposition to al-Assad to increase. This has caused Saudi Arabia to put increasing amounts of crude on the market to fund its expenditure in the Syrian conflict.

With such a volume of crude on the market, crude prices have gone down. And at such a low price for crude, we have to remember that only volume will drive revenues. This helps explain the high stockpiles around the world over the past four months. But Russian involvement on the Syrian front has divided OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Companies) nations, leaving its members struggling for market share. Meanwhile, Iraqs oil production has reached record high levels, and with the sanctions against it being rolled back, Iran is planning to put more oil on the market.

US inventory data for crude as of January 15

The US (SPY) inventory data released for the week ending January 15 shows crude inventory at 486.5 million barrels100 million barrel more than its five-year seasonal average. As of January 26, the United States Oil Fund (USO) rose by 5.04% on the hope of a deal between top crude oil exporters to cut production, closing on $8.97. Stocks of ConocoPhillips (COP), Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD), and Apache Corporation (APA), meanwhile, rose by approximately 3.4%, 5.4%, and 1.6%, respectively. The graph above shows the MTD performance of Apache Corporation (APA).

Story continues

Now lets go deeper into the details of why Russia is so invested in Syria.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
donald trump

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump began his Thursday-night charity event by touting all of the people including himself  who wrote big checks for it.

Trump announced that he would suddenly host a fundraiser for veterans as an alternative to going to the Fox News primary debate.

Trump boycotted the event after repeatedly complaining about Fox host Megyn Kelly, one of the moderators at the debate, as well as the network overall.

"First, we have to talk about people that made a lot of money," Trump began. "They wouldn't have made a lot of money, they wouldn't even be here, if it weren't for the vets and our great military."

"Carl Icahn gave $500,000. One quick phone call," Trump said, referring to his fellow billionaire whose support he frequently touts on the campaign trail.

He continued:

Richard LeFrak, a great builder in New York, gave $100,000. Donald Trump, another great builder in New York  now a politician, I can't stand this, a politician, I don't want to be called a politician, all talk, no action, I refuse to be called a politician  Donald Trump gave $1 million.

Trump then ticked off a number of other people who wrote big checks, which he said amounted to more than $5 million.

NOW WATCH: Watch Trump praise Megyn Kellys moderating skills in this 2011 clip





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CLEARWATER, Fla., Jan. 28, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Scientology Information Center was honored to host fourteen women from a local ladies society for its first High-Tea since opening in July 2015. It was hosted in the historic Clearwater building and was followed by a tour of some of the humanitarian program centers which the Church of Scientology supports.



During the event the ladies enjoyed a selection of teas, fresh-baked scones with fruit jams and cookies. There they had a chance to catch up, socialize and make plans for future group events and outings.

They also had an opportunity to learn about Mr. L. Ron Hubbards life. Mr. Hubbard is the Founder of Scientology and his areas of expertise also included writing, photography, sailing and flying. One guest commented He lived an extraordinary life. Its amazing that he did so much in one life!

After the High Tea, just steps from the Scientology Information Center, the women visited United for Human Rights, Foundation for a Drug-Free World and The Way to Happiness centers. There they were introduced to the programs which provide solutions and tools used by drug prevention educators, school resource officers, human trafficking watch groups, and mentoring programs. These tools assist the community in addressing societal ills such as drug and human rights abuses and immorality.

The women each received copies of the Truth About Drugs booklets which provide documented information on the short-term and long-term effects of street drugs, the Youth for Human Rights booklets which educate youth about their 30 rights, and other complimentary information about the church sponsored programs. One woman decided to give the drug booklets she received to her grandchild. One guest summed up their experience stating, We really enjoyed ourselves, the food was great and we had the opportunity to learn about interesting programs that are helping the community.

We welcome visitors from all social, educational or religious groups to visit, stated Amber Skjelset, the Manager for the Scientology Information Center.

The Scientology Information Center offers guests the opportunity to peruse 4 audio-visual informational displays covering basic Scientology concepts, as well as a full biographical display on the life and legacy of L. Ron Hubbard, Scientologys Founder. The interactive displays feature nearly 300 videos, all of which can be viewed in 17 languages, with subtitles for the hearing impaired. It is open every day from 10am-10pm.

For more information, or to schedule a group reception or tour please contact Amber Skjelset at 727-467-6966 or e-mail her at amber@cos.flag.org.

About the Church of Scientology:

The Scientology religion was founded by humanitarian and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard. The first Church of Scientology was formed in the United States in 1954 and has expanded to more than 11,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups, with millions of members in 167 nations. Scientologists are optimistic about life and believe there is hope for a saner world and better civilization, and actively do all they can to help achieve this. Based on L. Ron Hubbards words, A community that pulls together can make a better society for all, the Church of Scientology regularly engages in many humanitarian programs and community events.
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UConn Becomes Founding Member of Flexible Electronics Institute

UConn has become a founding member of Nextflex, a flexible electronics manufacturing research institute that will spur national development in this emerging field. UConn will host a Nextflex Industry Workshop on February 18, 2016 to introduce Connecticut companies to the institutes activities.

Flexible electronics refers to a new generation of bendable and wearable electronic sensors and components that can be used in a wide range of applications. These electronics can be used in smart bandages, high-tech military uniforms, or a variety of building structures for structural health monitoring. One of Nextflexs primary goals is to expand the development and use of this technology.

The Nextflex Industry Workshop will highlight different uses for this versatile technology, with sessions on medical devices and human monitoring systems; asset monitoring systems; and device integration, packaging and manufacturing. The workshop will run from 9:00 a.m.  1:00 p.m.

There will be two project calls from Nextflex in April and July 2016. Connecticut businesses and educational institutions can work together to develop project proposals to request funding from Nextflex.

Nextflex is the seventh public-private research consortium created by President Obamas administration to ensure that the United States continues its leadership in manufacturing. There are over 145 contributors to the institute from industry, state governments and educational institutions from 27 states. By becoming a founding member, UConn is in a position to expand flexible electronics research, which will allow Connecticut to take advantage of the anticipated growth in this expanding field and further reinforce Connecticuts innovation economy. Members of the institute will have access to workforce development activities that expand skills important to this emerging industry.

To date, UConn, the Department of Economic and Community Development, and United Technologies Corporation have acted as leaders in organizing the Connecticut effort. Procedures are being created to allow all interested Connecticut companies, agencies and universities who are not a part of Nextflex to participate.

For additional information about the industry workshop or project proposals, please email nextflex@engr.uconn.edu.
Berlin (AFP) - Germany's coalition partners agreed new measures Thursday to tighten asylum policies in an effort to stem an unprecedented influx of migrants, notably by making it easier to send back arrivals from North Africa and by delaying family reunifications.

The measures are part of a package announced by Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats, after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democrats and Horst Seehofer of Bavaria's Christian Social Union.

The tough new restrictions are intended to reduce the number of asylum seekers in Germany, which saw an influx of around 1.1 million migrants and refugees in 2015.

Under the new rules, some migrants will be blocked from bringing their families to join them in Germany for two years, Gabriel said.

The measure would apply to migrants who currently qualify for so-called "subsidiary protection", a status just below that of refugee which is granted to some rejected asylum seekers who still cannot be expelled because they risk torture or the death penalty in their own country.

The move is expected to also affect some Syrians who had enjoyed an almost automatic right to asylum in Germany but for whom individual scrutiny of their applications was reintroduced on January 1.

Germany will also add Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to the list of "safe countries of origin", Gabriel said, meaning that their nationals would have little chance of winning asylum.

The different measures "are there and can very quickly be presented to the cabinet," Gabriel added.

Berlin hopes that the measure will curb the number of migrants from North Africa, who have arrived in increasing numbers in recent months.

Germany has already classified Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo as safe, after tens of thousands of asylum seekers arrived from there.

The arrivals have since dropped as a result of media campaigns in those countries to explain that the chances of obtaining a residency permit in Germany were minimal.

Story continues

Calls have multiplied in recent weeks to step up expulsions of migrants from North Africa after a rash of sex assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve blamed by police partly on Algerians and Moroccans.

The attacks had coincided with a sharp rise in asylum requests from those countries.

Berlin is also pressing Algiers and Rabat to take back their nationals who have failed to win asylum, to free up resources to deal with bona fide refugees.
By Thomas Escritt THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The Netherlands will broaden its role in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State to include the bombing of IS targets in Syria, the government said on Friday. A Dutch squadron of six F-16 fighter jets is already stationed in the region, but was hitherto limited to striking Islamic State positions in Iraq. The aircraft will now be active over Syria until July 1, targeting Islamic State insurgent operations and training camps, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told journalists in The Hague. Islamic State's bombing and shooting attacks on Paris that killed 130 people in November had already led France and Britain to step up their bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq. "We have decided to heed the call of our allies for expansion of the operational area of our F-16s to the east of Syria to further weaken ISIS's supply lines and ability to advance," Rutte said, using another acronym for Islamic State. "Only by taking away ISIS's safe havens in Iraq and Syria can we prevent more attacks." The Netherlands is also considering providing more military equipment and training to Iraqi soldiers battling the militants. It will fund moderate, armed Syrian opposition groups and assist the reconstruction of schools and hospitals, the statement said. In a statement on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter welcomed the expanded role for the Netherlands, and said it set a strong example ahead of a planned February gathering in Brussels among members of the U.S.-led military coalition. Carter met with Dutch Minister of Defense Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and other defense chiefs in Paris last week to discuss the campaign against Islamic State. A joint statement by the ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition "to accelerate and intensify the campaign." "I am grateful for Minister Hennis-Plasschaert's immediate action following last week's meeting, and for the continuing commitment from the Dutch people to this fight," Carter said in the Friday statement. Extending the military operation became possible when the Dutch Labour Party, junior partner in the coalition government, said this week it was open to the idea, creating a parliamentary majority for it. Foreign military interventions are especially sensitive in the Netherlands, which led a disastrous U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1995 during which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces. A previous Dutch government collapsed in 2010 in a controversy over participation in military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, where 2,000 troops were active. (Writing by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Hay)
New York (AFP) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards has recruited thousands of Afghans, some by coercion, to fight in Syria's war alongside forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

"Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the New York-based HRW.

"Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe."

Shiite Iran is a staunch supporter of Assad and provides financial and military support to his regime.

Tehran says its Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised of Afghan recruits, are volunteers to defend sacred Shiite sites in Syria and Iraq against Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group.

The brigade, which is backed by the powerful Revolutionary Guards, is named after the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed whose mausoleum near Damascus is venerated by Shiites.

But some reports say the Afghans have been offered residency and a monthly salary to fight for Iran.

The Islamic republic denies having any boots on the ground and insists its commanders and generals act as "military advisers" in Syria and Iraq.

However, funerals are regularly held across Iran for "volunteer" fighters from Iran, Afghanistan, and sometimes Pakistan.

Iran hosts an estimated three million Afghans, many of whom have fled persecution and repeated bouts of armed conflict in their homeland, said HRW.

Only 950,000 have refugee status in Iran and the rest have been deemed unqualified for asylum.

At least two dozen Afghans interviewed by the watchdog said they or their relatives had been recruited or coerced by the Iranian authorities to fight in Syria.

Six of them said Iranian forces had trained them or their relatives in military camps near Tehran and Shiraz in 2015.

Two of the six had joined voluntarily, while the other four said they or their relatives had been coerced or forced to fight.

Afghans were fighting in many areas of Syria, including Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Deir Ezzor, Hama, Latakia, and in areas near the Syrian border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, they said.
Octopuses are well-known masters of camouflage and skillful escape artists, but they aren't exactly famous for their social skills. Scientists have long thought that this many-armed denizen of the deep was strictly solitary and didn't interact much with its fellows, reserving its color-shifting ability for intimidating predators  or hiding from them. But a new study reveals that both male and female octopuses frequently communicate with each other in challenging displays that include posturing and changing color.

And certain behavior patterns emerged that accompanied different color-shifting displays. If two octopuses approached each other and displayed dark colors, the encounter was likely to escalate aggressively and lead to physical confrontation. But an octopus displaying paler colors usually indicated that it was preparing to retreat, the researchers found.

A diver in Jervis Bay, Australia, initially spotted the unusual octopus behavior, writing about it in an online post that attracted the scientists' attention. To decode the octopuses' social "language," the scientists captured and screened 52 hours of footage of the Octopus tetricus species, a mottled, grayish-brown cephalopod known as the common Sydney octopus and also  somewhat more amusingly  the gloomy octopus. Despite its mopey-sounding name, what the scientists observed wasn't a community of isolated sulkers, but a highly engaged and interactive bunch. [Video: Watch Octopuses Argue Through Body Patterns And Postures]

"Because octopuses were known to kill each other at times and be cannibalistic, the general sense is that they wouldn't interact a lot and wouldn't use signals," David Scheel, the study's first author, told Live Science. But Scheel, who is a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University, had already found a scattering of reports from prior studies that suggested "there was another story going on," he said.

"Some octopuses have been seen in displays that may have occurred to woo potential mates, and some have [been] found in aggregations. So, there have been hints in the literature that suggest this may have been possible, but no focused reports that looked just at signaling among octopuses." What Scheel and his colleagues observed was novel  a site where the gloomy octopuses would visit and confront each other, over and over again.

"One of the early bits of video that I saw showed one octopus approaching another in a fairly dramatic way  dark and standing very tall, and the other one crouched down, turned pale and then fled," Scheel told Live Science. "It just looked to me like they were signaling, so we just followed from there to try and explore that idea."

Anywhere from three to 10 octopuses appeared at the site on a given day, the researchers noted. In the 52 hours of recorded footage, over 7 hours showed octopus interactions, with 345 instances of changing colors and 512 examples of physical movements, such as grappling or reaching toward each other. Reaching was the most common interaction the scientists saw, making up 72 percent of all the physical interplay; the octopuses touched each other very infrequently, the scientists recorded.

They observed one posture repeatedly  when the octopus would "stand tall," extending its arms outward and drawing itself upward. An octopus that was standing tall would usually also display a dark color and raise its mantle, all of which, the researchers said, appeared to signify aggression toward another octopus. Other cephalopods, like cuttlefish, are known to assume a darker color during disputes, with males displaying a "dark face." If two male cuttlefish show each other dark faces, the confrontation usually turns physical, while if only one of the males puts on his dark face, the paler-faced cuttlefish typically backs down, a behavior pattern strikingly similar to the one the researchers observed in the octopuses' color displays.

"Signaling is well-documented in cuttlefish and squids," Scheel said, "so in that way it isn't really surprising to suggest that octopuses do the same thing." [Cuttlefish Cuties: Photos of Color-Changing Cephalopods]

One of the most surprising things that Scheel saw in the videos was how the octopuses used a piece of flotsam embedded in the silt at the study site, he said. It stuck up higher than the surrounding seafloor, and a displaying octopus would sometimes climb up on top of it to perform the "stand tall" posture. "That's something that's kind of interesting that makes use of the particular layout of the environment," Scheel said. The structure stood at the center of the site, so perhaps the presence of that "high ground" was what drew displaying octopuses to that area in the first place, Scheel suggested.

The next step, Scheel said, is to look more closely at the context of all the signaling, in which both octopus sexes participated. "Males interacted with females, males interacted with other males, females interacted with males, and we're pretty sure that females were interacting with other females as well," Scheel said. But whether all the signaling is part of a complex mating system or some other form of behavior entirely remains to be seen, he added.

The findings were published online today (Jan. 28) in the journal Current Biology.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Geneva (AFP) - The UN insisted that high-stakes peace talks aimed at ending the brutal, five-year-old Syrian conflict would still begin in Switzerland later Friday despite uncertainty over whether key groups would even attend.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura "will start by meeting the government's delegation today (Friday)" in Geneva, followed by talks with "other participants", the United Nations said in a statement.

The Syrian government delegation, headed by Syria's envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari, arrived in Geneva early afternoon, a source said.

Opposition figures not part of the umbrella group High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said they would be present.

However, despite Western pressure on the HNC, it has yet to decide whether to come and was engaged in a fourth day of discussions in Saudi Arabia on Friday.

The talks, backed by all the external powers embroiled in the war, are the biggest push yet to end a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and facilitated the meteoric rise of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group.

The highly complex conflict, now almost five years old, has also destabilised the already restive Middle East and drawn in not only regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey but also the United States and Russia.

It has also forced millions of Syrians from their homes, many of them into neighbouring states and further afield, causing a major political headache for the European Union which received around a million migrants in 2015.

De Mistura issued on Thursday an emotional video message to the Syrian people both inside and outside the country saying that after previous failures, this new effort "cannot fail".

"Five years of this conflict have been too much. The horror is in front of everyone's eyes," de Mistura said. "You must know also that we count on you to raise your voice to say 'khalas' ("stop" in Arabic)."

Story continues

- Vienna Process -

The Geneva negotiations, if they happen, would not be a face-to-face conversation between the regime and its opponents. Instead they are "proximity talks" when go-betweens shuttle between the different participants.

They are part of an ambitious plan launched in Vienna in November by a raft of key actors including Russia, the United States, Gulf states, Iran and Turkey that foresees elections within 18 months.

Despite Western pressure, the HNC is refusing to show up in Switzerland before an agreement is reached on aid reaching hundreds of thousands of people stuck in besieged towns.

With such an agreement highly unlikely in the immediate term, a senior delegate for the HNC told AFP that it may still decide later in the day to travel to the negotiations.

The HNC, which named Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist rebel group Army of Islam as its chief negotiator, has also asked for "clarifications" after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures.

Individual invitations were reportedly issued to a list of figures opposed to the regime but who are thought to have closer ties to Moscow and have limited influence on the ground.

Randa Kassis, a member of that list, told AFP in Geneva on Friday that despite the uncertainty on who would attend, "something has to start. We have to think of the Syrian people."

The HNC and its Saudi and Turkish backers have also objected to the participation of Syrian Kurdish groups that have made key advances against IS in northern Syria in recent months.

Russia, however, which has helped the regime of President Bashar al-Assad make inroads against rebels with air strikes since September, says Kurdish involvement is essential.

- 'Inflexible' Assad -

Haytham Manna, a longstanding opposition figure who is co-chair of the political wing of a Kurdish-Arab alliance, told AFP in Geneva he did not expect the discussions to begin until Monday.

France-based Middle East analyst Agnes Levallois said the opposition was growing increasingly frustrated that the question of Assad's fate, a key stumbling block in previous talks, was being put off.

"Assad is feeling stronger and stronger so is being inflexible," she said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose Shiite country also backs Assad and is at daggers drawn with Sunni regional rival Saudi Arabia, said in a visit to Paris on Thursday that the process would take time.

"We hope that these talks will succeed as soon as possible. But I would be surprised if they succeed very quickly because in Syria there are groups who are at war with the central government and also amongst themselves," French media quoted him as saying.

"There is interference in the internal affairs of Syria," he added.
Two TransAsia Airways pilots caused a 2014 plane crash that left 48 people dead by flying too low as they attempted to land on an island during a typhoon, Taiwan's aviation authorities said Friday.

Taiwan's aviation body said the pilots flew below the minimum altitude required in poor visibility caused by Typhoon Matmo on July 23, 2014, in its final report into the airline's second fatal accident in a year.

The procedural mistake was widespread among TransAsia's pilots at the time, an aviation official said, endangering passenger and crew safety.

Ill-fated Flight GE222 was carrying 54 passengers and four crew when it slammed into trees and houses near Magong city airport in the Taiwan Strait's scenic Penghu islands, leaving just 10 survivors.

Two French nationals were among those killed in the island's worst air disaster in a decade.

"An airworthy aircraft under the control of the flight crew was flown unintentionally into terrain with limited awareness by the crew of the aircraft's proximity to terrain," the Aviation Safety Council said in the investigation report.

The ATR 72-500 propeller plane had deviated off course during thunder and heavy rain as Typhoon Matmo pounded Taiwan.

"They were not visual with the runway environment, contrary to standard operating procedures," the report said.

According to flight safety regulations, the pilots were required to maintain their altitude when their plane descended to 330 feet (100 metres), but the aircraft continued to descend.

"We found the pilots did not follow the standard operating procedure," council director Thomas Wang told reporters.

"Then we discovered TransAsia's team of pilots flying the ATR fleet also had similar problems, and we wanted to know why the carrier tolerated this among its pilots, and why the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) did not discover this while carrying out regular inspections," he said.

Wang said "the company's pilots were flying without abiding by standard procedures, part of a workplace culture which endangered flight safety".

Story continues

According to transcripts of the plane's two black boxes, which record voices in the cockpit and other in-flight data, the co-pilot twice replied "no" when asked by the pilot whether he had seen the runway.

The investigation report identified a range of other aggravating factors, including poor communication of weather information to the flight crew, and coordination issues at Magong airport.

The Flight GE222 crash came seven months before TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 clipped a bridge and plunged into a river in Taipei shortly after take-off with 53 passengers and five crew on board. Forty-three people died.

Disturbing cockpit transcripts from the second crash revealed by the council showed pilots trying to deal with an engine which had lost power, but then reducing the thrust of the other, functioning engine.

cty/jom/cah
The Netherlands is working with some EU members on a plan to send migrants back to Turkish soil in exchange for giving asylum to up to 250,000 others already hosted by Turkey, a top Dutch politician said Thursday. All migrants arriving through the Greek islands would be sent back to Turkey, Diederik Samsom, parliamentary leader of the coalition Labour Party (PvdA), told a Dutch daily in an interview. They would be dealt with under UN agreements for handling refugees, Samsom told the respected Volkskrant daily. In exchange EU nations would take in up to 250,000 people already in Turkey, he said, adding Turkey would be labelled "a safe third country." Samsom did not specify how many of the migrants who reached Europe's shores last year would be sent back under the proposed plan. The Netherlands currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, and Samsom said the scheme had Prime Minister Mark Rutte's support. But it quickly came under fire from rights groups for abandoning those fleeing conflict and persecution. A spokesman for Rutte did not confirm or deny the existence of a plan, but cautioned there was a difference between a member of parliament "and the position and responsibility of the Dutch government." "As holder of the presidency the Netherlands is working hard to reach a common solution," Rutte's spokesman Paul Van Nunen told AFP. "Therefore the influx must be stemmed and resettlement within Europe must improve," he said. Rutte's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is the majority partner in the ruling coalition with Labour. A spokesman for the European Commission told AFP that any such plan could run counter to the Geneva Convention and EU policy. "If someone enters the territory of the EU or presents himself at the border of a member state and requests asylum we will never turn them away and we will always proceed," the commission spokesman said. - 'Bartering in human lives' - Amnesty International criticised it as "morally bankrupt" and said it could amount to "illegal push-backs under international law". "A large-scale resettlement scheme for refugees from Turkey to the EU is a good idea, but making it conditional on the swift return of those crossing the border irregularly is tantamount to bartering in human lives," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's Europe and central Asia director. Samsom said the scheme would be voluntary, adding "mandatory quotas do not work" after the EU drew up a plan late last year to share out the refugees among all its members. The proposal has been under consideration since December and Samsom said he had been working with social democrat parties in about 10 countries, including Austria, Germany, and Sweden. The EU is under pressure to resolve its worst migrant crisis since World War II with a million refugees having arrived on its shores in 2015. Rutte warned last week the 28-nation bloc only had about six to eight weeks to find a solution with the imminent arrival of spring, meaning numbers would likely spike again.
Touchtens Anton Soeharyo reveals what the new gaming industry roadmap will entail  and why even the Ministry of Education should be involved

In 2015, Indonesias Ministry of Industrial first announced its plans to draw up a gaming industry roadmap, calling for industry players to submit a proposal for its development.

This month, industry players represented by the Indonesia Gaming Association (AGI) met with the Ministry of Communications and Informatics, the Creative Economy Agency, as well as the Coordinating Ministry of Economy to discuss the first steps that need to be taken.

As a delegate at the meeting, Anton Soeharyo, CEO of Jakarta-based game developer Touchten spilled the beans to e27 about the challenges faced by the industry and how the roadmap can maximise its full potential.

Here is the edited excerpt of the interview.

Also Read: Japans Adways invests in Singapores gaming company Daylight Studios

First of all, can you tell me about the recent meeting to discuss the gaming industry roadmap?

We began by explaining that gaming is a big industry in the world, even bigger than film industry. We gave an example of Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time. Meanwhile, in the gaming industry, there is Grand Theft Auto, which produced approximately the same amount of money but is only ranked in the top-ten rank [highest grossing games ever].

Asia contributes more than the US and UK [in terms of income], with China being the number one market. Apart from China, the biggest [region] is Southeast Asia, with Indonesia having the second highest revenue, after Thailand.

There are three things that we aim to achieve through this roadmap: Quality, quantity, and help from government.

We realised that in Indonesia there are only 150 to a few thousands published game developers. We want to increase this number, possibly until it reaches more than ten thousand.

Second, look at the market potential, with US$300 million net worth per year; from this number only 1.6 per cent are ruled by local players. The rest is from China and Korea. So our plan is that by 2020 we want to be able to conquer 40 to 50 per cent of the market.

Story continues

We need to be kings in our own land.

Third, wed also like grants or funding, [though] not necessarily from the government  Another thing wed like to propose is for foreign game companies to work together with local game companies  Be it in form of investment, a private company, all that matter is that there is a knowledge transfer process. We dont want to tell them to get lost, since the ASEAN Economic Community is coming anyway  unlike China or Vietnam, who implement closed market policy.

In February, we will meet again to discuss in more detail what the government can do. Perhaps a tax holiday or something.

Also Read: Online gaming marketplace itemku raises seed funding from 500 Startups

How is the human resource situation in Indonesias gaming industry? Are we competitive enough?

The reality is that the industry is very new, about seven to eight years old, especially for smartphones. Even for console games, the industry tends to be closed. Only after Apple iOS and Android showed up that indie developers can [say] Hey, turns out we can publish it ourselves!

All over the world, the demand for talent overrides the supply. Then there is [the problem of] brain drain. Many left to Singapore because they have better salary, and better appreciation.

This is why I expect the government to work with Ministry of Education  for Unity programming to be taught in vocational schools.

There has to be a balance between funding and human resource management. It takes two to three years to master programming. If we begin with vocational schools, then within these years we can already have new developers. Better than simply providing grants.



Also Read: Chinese gaming studio buys majority stake in Grindr

What are the other issues that we are facing?

Infrastructure. Such as Internet connection. But were not too worried because its getting better with time.

The bigger concern are payment gateways. Its not that Indonesians are not paying, but they dont know how to pay. Credit card penetration is very low, and the average person use only about US$4 per month for phone credits. So how can they pay for games?

But the greatest challenge of all is the peoples mentality. We are used to buying pirated softwares for years. But I think the government can help by creating campaigns to stop people from buying pirated products.

Im fascinated by the fact that Indonesia is the second largest market in Southeast Asia, but the local industry only contributes less than two per cent.

We are being invaded. Thats what we told the government. They were like, Seriously!?

This is why we need to work together to build the locals, so that they can help in contributing tax to the country.

Frankly speaking, Im quite certain those who come from abroad dont pay taxes for operating here.

Also Read: Mobile gaming startup Mech Mocha gets funding from Blume Ventures, Flipkart

Speaking of marketing, does the industry aim to market its products domestically? Or are we aiming for international expansion?

Indonesia is a very big country. Like China, we are actually able to self-sustain. But we believe that the sky is the limit, dont restrict ourselves only to Indonesia.

Of course we have bigger focus in Indonesia because this is our country, but we also propose for international existence. We need to send delegations to GDC, the Tokyo Game Show. So they know that we exist.

There is a tendency for Indonesian audience to look down on local-made products. What do we need to do to tackle this?

My advice would be to make it as good as possible. Use the outside world as a benchmark, not your own self. Dont think Whats the best that I can do?

See whats out there, and how you can beat them.

Echelon Indonesia returns to Jakarta this April! Save over 35% off your tickets with promo code Empower10 exclusive to e27 readers only! Tickets available here.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Thousands of supporters of Haiti's outgoing President Michel Martelly have been taking to the streets in the capital, demanding speedy elections to end a crisis of power in the Caribbean nation. The latest protest came on Thursday, with demonstrators demanding a new date for a runoff presidential election. Martelly is due to leave office on Feb. 7 but has no elected replacement and says he will not leave without a clear path to succession. "I could not, as president, wake up on Feb. 7 and depart while leaving the country in an uncertain situation. Uncertainty, no! Consensus, yes! Dialogue, yes!" Martelly told reporters. Haiti was due to choose Martelly's replacement last Sunday, but the runoff vote was postponed indefinitely after opposition candidate Jude Celestin refused to participate over alleged fraud that sparked anti-government protests and violence. Since then, thousands of supporters of the ruling party candidate Jovenel Moise have taken to the streets demanding the election go ahead. The opposition wants a short-term interim government to take control after Feb. 7 to organise the election. Some government supporters say Martelly can stay in office longer to hand over to an elected replacement. "We want a date for the runoff election, we don't want any transition government," said protester Jacques Saint-Fleur, 27. The Organization of American States has agreed to send a special mission to Haiti to help find a solution to the political impasse. (Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
By Rod Nickel and Natalie Grover (Reuters) - Companies and scientists are racing to create a Zika vaccine as concern grows over the mosquito-borne virus that has been linked to severe birth defects and is spreading quickly through the Americas. Zika is now present in 23 countries and territories in the Americas. Brazil, the hardest-hit country, has reported around 3,700 cases of the devastating birth defect called microcephaly that are strongly suspected to be related to Zika. The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), stung by criticism that it reacted too slowly to West Africa's Ebola epidemic, is convening an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response to the spread of the virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated an emergency operations centre staffed around the clock to address Zika, agency officials told Reuters. On Thursday, the WHO forecast that as many as 4 million people in the Americas may become infected by Zika, lending new urgency to research efforts already under way. Vaccine developers made clear that a vaccine for widespread public use is at least months, if not years, away. The closest prospect may be from a consortium including drugmaker Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc that could have a vaccine ready for emergency use before year-end, according to one of its lead developers. Inovio's share price gained more than 15 percent in Friday trading. Canadian scientist Gary Kobinger told Reuters on Thursday the first stage of testing on humans could begin as early as August. If successful, the vaccine might be used during a public health emergency by October or November, said Kobinger, who helped develop a trial vaccine for the Ebola virus. Privately owned vaccine developer Hawaii Biotech Inc said it began a formal programme to test a Zika vaccine last fall as the virus started to gain traction in Brazil, although it has no timetable yet for clinical trials. "Right now, we are in the pre-clinical stage, as I suspect everyone is," Chief Executive Officer Dr. Elliot Parks told Reuters. Another private vaccine developer, Boston-based Replikins Ltd, said it was preparing to start animal studies on a Zika vaccine in the next 10 days. Data from the trials on mice and rabbits would likely be out in the next couple of months, Replikins Chairman Samuel Bogoch told Reuters. "No one has the $500 million on hand to take it (a vaccine) all the way to human trials. Somewhere along the course we hope to have big pockets join us," Bogoch said. 'FIGHT THE MOSQUITO' Zika had been viewed as a relatively mild illness until Brazilian health officials identified it as a matter of concern for pregnant women. While a direct causal relationship has not been established, scientists strongly suspect a link between Zika and thousands of children born in Brazil with abnormally small heads, brain defects and impaired vision. There is no treatment for Zika infection. About 80 percent of those infected experience no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected. Efforts to combat Zika are focused on protecting people from being bitten and on eradicating mosquitoes, a tough task in many parts of Latin America, where people live in poverty and there are plentiful breeding grounds for the insect. "We do not have a vaccine for Zika yet. The only thing we can do is fight the mosquito," Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday, reiterating her call for a national eradication effort. Rousseff said tests for the development of a vaccine would begin next week at the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil's leading biomedical research centres in Sao Paulo. Zika has hit Brazil just as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5-21, an event that draws hundreds of thousands of athletes, team officials and spectators. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured teams on Friday the Olympics would be safe from Zika, but urged visitors to carefully protect themselves. U.S. lawmakers have begun to press the Obama administration for details of its response to Zika. At least 31 people in the country have been infected, all of them after travel to affected countries. The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is planning a hearing on Zika "very soon," said Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who called the threat posed by the virus to the United States a "big concern." "We need to ensure that federal agencies are working closely together and with the international community to stop its rapid spread," added Republican Ron Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he did not expect the United States to be hit hard like other some countries in South America and the Caribbean. "We prepare for the possibility of a major outbreak but we believe it is unlikely to happen," Fauci said. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Toni Clarke in Washington, Karolos Grohmann in Berlin, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Will Dunham and Lisa Shumaker)
By Hanna Knutson BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition said conflict in the country's largely Kurdish southeast had grown into an international problem, feeding into war in neighbouring Syria, and urged allies to do more to push for a ceasefire. Unrest in the NATO member state, which is negotiating to join the European Union, has turned parts of the southeast into a war zone. Kurdish militants have dug trenches and erected barricades in towns and cities, and the death toll has climbed into the hundreds as the security forces try to flush them out. It is also complicating efforts to stage Syrian peace talks. "The international community should call on both the Turkish government and the PKK for a ceasefire and a return to healthy negotiations, and they must make this call repeatedly," Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament, told Reuters. "Turkey's domestic peace is not an issue for Turkey alone. It is directly related to the resolution of the Syrian conflict and to the migration problem in Europe," he said in an interview on Wednesday in Brussels, where he was participating in a Kurdish conference in the European parliament. Ankara's army, the second largest in NATO, is fighting on two fronts, against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters and the threat from Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, both bordering Turkey. The country has seen a series of bombings, most recently an Istanbul suicide attack that killed ten German tourists. CURFEW WIDENED The conflict with the PKK, after the breakdown of a two-and- a-half-year ceasefire, has complicated efforts by a U.S.-led international coalition, of which Turkey is a member, to fight Islamic State. Turkey, the United States and European Union all classify the PKK - which says it is fighting for Kurdish autonomy - as a terrorist organisation. But Washington sees the Syrian Kurdish PYD, which has links to the PKK, as a useful ally. Ankara views it as a terrorist group and does not want it making territorial gains that could stoke Kurdish separatism at home. Demirtas described Turkey's opposition to the PYD taking part in Syrian peace talks planned in Geneva as an "emotional reflex", saying the group was vital to the negotiations. Turkey is sheltering more than 2.5 million Syrian migrants, according to U.N. and government figures, and has agreed with the EU to do more to stop their exodus to Europe. Demirtas, who denies accusations that his party has links to the militants, said the latest military operations had killed around 200 civilians, 70 of them children. Hundreds of thousands of civilians had been affected, many having to leave their homes or shut their businesses. The EU has called for an immediate ceasfire. The government says civilians are not being targeted in the operation and blames the PKK for bringing its campaign, which has killed over 40,000 since 1984, to city centres. President Tayyip Erdogan, who eased some restrictions on Kurdish culture in his early years in power, has vowed to destroy the PKK. Authorities widened a curfew in the region's largest city Diyarbakir on Wednesday. Hundreds, including children and the elderly, fled curfew-bound areas of its historic Sur district as gunfire and blasts resounded. (Additional reporting by Melih Aslan in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Daren Butler)
Three Hills Capital Partners has soared past 1bn for the final close of its fourth flagship fund, almost doubling the total it collected for its predecessor vehicle.
Yep, that's a "hurricane status" wind you can hear outside your window there. And would you believe that we've "only experienced the tail end" of Storm Gertrude. Met Eireann's Siobhan Ryan said via Ireland AM this morning that "the worst of the weather is going to hit Norway, with red status weather warnings."





While Met Eireann's Status Orange weather warning technically lapses at 9am today, Ryan added that "the north and north west" will still experience very "windy episodes." As for the hurricane level winds experienced; Gertrude's "gusts readily reached 69 - 70 knots and that's hurricane status", with gusts generally "around 50 or 60 knots."

#StormGertrude hitting tonight bringing large ocean swell & gale/storm force gusts upto 120/130kph @IrelandAMTV3 pic.twitter.com/rTUbSCj3UR  Deric O h'Artagain (@deric_hartigan) January 28, 2016

There are currently approximately 5,000 people across the country without electricity reportedly in Donegal, Achill, and parts of Wicklow, but no extreme damage has been reported.

In some good news, it's set to become much sunnier as the day progresses. And then Storm Henry will hit.
Modified On Jan 29, 2016 09:06 PM By Sumit

Honda has recorded a 22.3% fall in operating profits for the third quarter of the financial year 2015-16. The decline is caused by the escalated quality costs and recalls that resulted from airbag defects. Fluctuating value of the Indian rupee against dollar also had an impact over the gains of the third largest carmaker of Japan.

The company posted a net profit of $1.03 billion (124.1 billion yen) for the quarter, which is 18.5 percent less than the last year for the corresponding time. The operating profit was 163 billion yen, 22.3% less than 210 billion yen, which was the profit for the same period last year.

Last year, Honda had recalled more than two lac cars in the month of September after it discovered a fault in the airbag inflators. The recall included cars like Honda City (2007-2012), Honda Civic (2003-2012) and Honda CR-V (2004-2011). Most of the cars recalled were Honda Citys, which accounted for approximately 1.4 lac units from 2,23,578 cars.

The Japanese automaker is all set to dazzle the automobile enthusiasts at the upcoming 2016 Auto Expo. Its lineup include cars like BR-V and Accord. Honda launched the BR-V in Thailand today, where it was made available in two layouts viz. 5-seater and 7-seater variants. The petrol version of the car comes with an optional automatic transmission while the 5-speed manual comes as standard.

Also Read: Honda City Sedan And Mobilio MPV Recalled by HCIL
Modified On Jan 29, 2016 01:22 PM By Sumit

Maruti has registered a net profit of Rs. 1,019 crore in the 3rd quarter of financial year 2015-16. Although the profits rose 27.1%, the Indo-Japanese carmaker missed its target of Rs. 1,330 crore profit, estimated by various analysts, by approximately Rs. 311 crore. Missing its profit target brought some bad news for the company, as its shares fall 4% today morning. This comes at a time when company increased its cost on advertisement and launches.

Marutis executives on an occasion said that margins were reduced because of a series of launches which resulted in an increase in the marketing cost. Advertising costs went up by Rs.70 crore last quarter, which saw launches of premium hatchback Baleno, WagonR AGS, and a facelifted edition of the Ertiga, amongst others.

There was also an exception during the quarter. Conversion costs on inventory gets reduced from material costs. We could convert only 4,000 units in stocks last quarter as we were clearing 2015 vehicles, as against a normal of 20,000-25,000 units. This impacted profits margins, said Ajay Sheth, chief financial officer of Maruti Suzuki.

Maruti launched some great cars like Baleno last year. It invoked enormous sales and has dominated its segment so far. The carmaker is ready to nail the 2016 Auto Expo with its refreshed lineup, including cars like Vitara Brezza, Suzuki Ignis and Baleno RS.

Also Read: Maruti Suzuki Announces Auto Expo 2016 Lineup
Charlie Cox says his return as Daredevil "still feels too good to be true"
Current world events seen through the clarifying lens of the LORD's inerrant prophetic word. The Lord's Word proclaims a series of 'latter days' events leading to the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His Kingdom upon the earth in this generation.
For official diocesan information please click the diocesan logo on the right.

to Bishop David's blog. Here you can find news, information, articles and pictures about the Church of England Diocese in Europe. We have over 300 congregations or worship centres serving Anglican and (mostly) English-speaking people in Europe, Morocco, Turkey, Russia and some central Asian countries.
NAFCU Director of Regulatory Affairs Alicia Nealon is urging credit unions to send NCUA their field-of-membership comment letters before the Feb. 8 due date. In a NAFCUs Compliance Blog post today, she details the resources available to assist that effort.

NAFCU has talking points available to credit unions to help them put their comment letters together. It has also drafted individual letter templates for comments on the types of charters affected. There are also multiple posts on the NAFCU Compliance Blog detailing these (community, multiple-common bond and TIP charters).

NAFCU believes NCUAs proposal will help many credit unions reach more potential members who want and need affordable financial services, and I encourage you to write a comment letter to NCUA explaining how the proposal will provide much-needed relief to your credit union and membership, Nealon writes.

The bankers continue their campaign against NCUAs proposal. American Banker on Wednesday detailed the bankers claims about the proposal along with NAFCUs input. NAFCU members believe that the federal credit union charter must keep pace with changes in state laws, technology, and the progressiveness of the financial services industry, NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger told House and Senate leaders last week in a letter that was also quoted by American Banker.
Weve all heard the remark, You are your own worst critic. Its often directed at nitpickers and perfectionists. But if youre striving for success, being self-critical can be a good thing, so says a major headhunter.

Krisi Rossi ODonnell, chief recruiting officer at Chicago-based recruiting firm LaSalle Network, says being self-critical can actually help someone achieve their goals. Inc.com contributor Mindy Zetlin draws on ODonnells observations in a recent post:

 Youre always getting better. Youre not happy with your current situation or yourself, so you are continually working on ways to improve.

 You listen to others. Because you always want to improve, ODonnell explains, you constantly seek feedback and hear other peoples suggestions.

 Youre self-aware. You know what areas of your life need improvement.

 Your ego never runs away with you. Always questioning your processes keeps you from developing an ego, ODonnell says.

Zetlin summarizes a few more of ODonnells points here, and she pulled out one example that I particularly liked.
Gamesa shares up 20% amid Siemens bid rumours

Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa's share price soared 20% today amid reports that German conglomerate Siemens is mulling a takeover bid.

It was reported that Siemens has hired Goldman Sachs to advise it on a swoop.

Gamesa released a statement that acknowledged the "news and rumours regarding a potential corporate transaction between Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica ... and Siemens", but said "no resolution has been approved, nor has any agreement been materialised".

It added that the company "regularly analyses any strategic opportunities that the group identifies from time to time".

One industry insider told Environmental Finance: "Gamesa's is the kind of statement you make when you're in talks".

Solarcentury sells first solar farm in Germany

London-based renewables developer Solarcentury has sold its first solar farm in Germany, saying the market in the country is picking up.

The firm constructed the 4.7MW plant, which was sold for an undisclosed price, over a five-week period, securing debt and an unnamed investor. It is the first of 25 projects supported via Germany's new renewables auction system to become operational.

Solarcentury, which operates in Europe, Africa and the Americas, has previously developed rooftop solar in Germany, but this is the biggest project it has completed in the market. "We believe the outlook for solar in Germany is getting brighter, despite mixed fortunes of the recent past," said CEO Frans van den Heuvel.

It recently sold its entire UK portfolio to Magnetar Solar.

Australian carbon credits break through the 20m mark, as new regime hailed a success

Australia's Clean Energy Regulator has issued its 20 millionth carbon credit, and said offsetting in the country is gathering pace.

It said 8 million Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) were last year issued in the first two rounds of auctions under its Emissions Reduction Fund, which was brought in to replace the Carbon Farming Initiative.

In 2012, shortly after ACCUs were launched, just 350,000 ACCUs were issued.

The Emissions Reduction Fund awards credits to projects that can offer carbon dioxide savings at the cheapest rate, via a 'reverse-auction' process. Examples of projects include EDL's landfill gas project in Queensland and various vegetation and regeneration projects.

"Reaching this milestone shows the Emissions Reduction Fund is accelerating carbon abatement in Australia," said Chloe Munro, chair of the Clean Energy Regulator. The regime's third round is slated for 27 and 28 April.

Solar venture seeks $100m

A solar venture is hoping to raise $100 million over the next three years to help it expand its home-lighting installation business across India, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The fundraising was announced by disruptive technology investor Kohli Ventures and Indian solar projects and services company Zynergy Group, which formed a partnership last month.

The capital will help Zynergy, which specialises in solar-based applications for homes in rural communities, expand into new markets and develop its manufacturing and research and development operations.

Kohli last month said it invested $10 million into Zynergy to support a new manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu, India, which will make kit such as cells, modules and inverters.

United Photovoltaics Group places share options

Chinese solar firm United Photovoltaics Group has placed 36,568,319 share options.

The company, which invests in and operates solar across China, will offer 36,568,319 ordinary shares at HK$0.564 ($0.07) each  the average closing price based on the five days prior to the announcement. At the time of writing, shares were trading at HK$0.57, up 3.64% since opening.

The share options will be granted to directors and other employees and are valid for five years. 30% will be exercisable after one year, with a further 30% exercisable after two years and the remaining 40% exercisable after three years.
Farmers are being urged to recognise the risk of bluetongue spreading to British shores and should carefully consider whether to invest in vaccinating livestock against the virus, says the British Veterinary Association (BVA).

This message was reiterated by the NFU, which says there is a fairly good risk of bluetongue spreading to England from France  where a total of 154 cases of bluetongue serotype virus 8 (BTV-8) have been reported since August.

NFU livestock board chairman Charles Sercombe says it is therefore only prudent to warn farmers there is a possibility the virus could spread to UK shores.

(See what it means for the UK and take part in our poll below)

Vaccine availability

BVA senior vice-president John Blackwell tells Farmers Weekly pharmaceutical manufacturers will only begin to produce doses of the bluetongue vaccine again if there is a guaranteed market for them.

Mr Sercombe says the NFU is lobbying Defra and the APHA to push for the vaccine to be made available to farmers.

In the meantime, pharmaceutical manufacturers need to be convinced there is a need for these vaccinations and that there will be demand, he adds.

That is the main challenge  to gauge the likely uptake of vaccinations, says Mr Sercombe.

See also: Fears grow over bluetongue threat to UK

Mr Blackwell branded it a chicken-and-egg situation.

Manufacturers are only going to produce vaccinations if there is a market for them. So we have to engage with the sector to determine what uptake there will be, says Mr Blackwell. We have to recognise the risk we face. We need to set out all the information so we can make a decision on whether there will be a cost benefit.

According to Mr Blackwell, bluetongue vaccinations cost farmers about 80p/dose during the previous UK outbreak in 2007, with cows requiring two doses and sheep one.

He acknowledges, however, that given current challenges, such as low milk prices, there has to be a robust business case for farmers to vaccinate against the disease.

Its more than just the cost of the dose, he says. There is the handling costs to factor in and the time it takes. Its more than just the straight unit cost of the vaccine.

The outbreak in France and what it means for the UK

According to the French ministry of agriculture, 154 cases of BTV-8 have been detected in central France since August  in what is the first outbreak of bluetongue in the EU since 2011.

Clinical symptoms were first found in a single sheep on a farm in the Allier region of France in August 2015.

In response, French authorities introduced a raft of disease-control measures, including a restriction on animal movements in an exclusion zone 150km around the affected farm, which has since been extended to cover a significant area of the country.

If the adult midges responsible for its transmission survive the winter and reappear in late spring  as is expected  BTV-8 will likely reach the northern cost of France, says Peter Mertens, head of vector-borne diseases at the Pirbright Institute.

In this case, infected midges are likely to be blown across the Channel, potentially infecting livestock and starting an outbreak of disease in the UK, possibly in mid- to late 2016, although it is difficult to be certain about timing, he says.

The level of similarity  greater than 99.9%  between the BTV-8 strains behind the recent French cases and those across Europe starting 2006 indicates the vaccines used to fight the previous outbreak will still be effective.

However, this high level of similarity poses a number of questions, says Professor Mertens.

In particular, it is unclear where this virus has been for the past five years, with no apparent cases, suddenly re-emerging to cause disease. Has it managed to persist undetected in the region, or is this a reintroduction from an unknown source? he adds.
A group of farmers has spoken out after its 50,000 proposal to promote British beef was rejected by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB).

Ladies in Beef asked for 25,000 to cover core publicity costs and 25,000 for a consumer campaign, called Save Our Sucklers, over the coming financial year.

But AHDB Beef & Lamb better said value for money could be obtained by supporting the campaign using in-house resources rather than paying for the work to be done externally.

Support would include communications, resource production and marketing, to help cut external spend by the group, said the AHDB Beef & Lamb board.

Ladies in Beef said it felt its application for the funding had been justified because it had a strong track record when it came to promoting beef.

See also: Ladies in Beef campaign to counter suckler herd decline

In a statement, after the proposal was rejected, Ladies in Beef said it had asked for the money having already achieved a notable return on investment on a very small budget.

We are a group of 150 voluntary, like-minded female beef farmers, the majority of whom are AHDB levy-payers and Red Tractor assured, it said.

During 2014 and 2015, Ladies in Beef had achieved coverage of more than 18 million viewers, listeners and readers though national and regional broadcast media.

This included coverage on BBC Countryfile as well as in the Sun and Daily Mail newspapers.

Ladies in Beef said Save our Sucklers aimed to raise industry awareness about the importance of suckler beef.

We hope that after further consumer research in the spring, the AHDB Beef & Lamb board will look at product differentiation, it said.

It added: We strongly believe it is possible to promote the benefits of grass-fed, traditional suckler beef without product differentiation being detrimental to dairy beef.

A premium image for suckler beef could have a positive halo effect on all beef, including dairy beef, said the group.

AHDB Beef & Lamb chairman Adam Quinney said: It was felt by the board that we could offer better value for money by supporting in-kind with expertise through our communications know-how rather than specifically allocating levy spend to the campaign.

Our approach to this kind of request needs to be consistent and we have already changed the way we support the Mutton Renaissance campaign, for example, by bringing support in-house rather than using levy funds to pay an agency to do it.

As with any other investment, the beef and lamb board must demonstrate return on this investment, while also being transparent about exactly where beef and lamb levy is being spent.

We have a huge amount of talent in our organisation, offering a wide skillset across communications, technical and marketing.

We believe it is through this we can add most value to Ladies in Beef.

This might include activities such as communications support, help in producing resources and ensuring the groups activity aligns with our current campaigns.
Farm defenders disrupt destruction of farmland and inauguration of supermarket in the East Bay occupyfarmmedia [at] gmail.com) by Occupy the Farm

On Monday, January 11, contractors with the UC administration began construction work on the southern portion of the Gill Tract, a historical farm sold to the University of California in 1928 under the condition it would be used for agricultural research and education. Contractors Ghilotti Bros. laid surveying stakes on the ground, pulled down fencing with an excavator, and began trampling the land with a bulldozer.





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The next day after working hours, about fifteen individuals entered the Gill Tract to remove surveying stakes marking the paths for the heavy machinery brought to pave over the last large-scale plot of high-quality urban farmland still available on the East Bay. The mobilization by the group Occupy the Farm was led by senior citizens from the community.



The UC is privatizing this section of the Gill Tract for the construction of a high-end senior assisted living facility by the Belmont Village corporation, alongside construction of a Sprouts supermarket and a parking lot.



On a separate location, senior residents of Albany gave interviews for a short film on the issue. "Strong popular opinion in favor of keeping this land for farming was consistently disregarded at City hearings," explained Signe Mattson. "There has always been clear alternatives and strong opposition to paving over this land." Ed Fields, another senior resident of Albany who has consistently challenged the project at public hearings explained: "I think the UC is being very short sighted in leasing this land to an assisted living facility and a supermarket... This land was set aside for agriculture and research. That's needed now more than ever."



Senior Albany resident Jackie Hermes-Fletcher explained that the monthly costs of the proposed assisted living facility far exceed the income of local residents. "Me as a retired teacher, I could never afford something like that... Its not about affordability, its about profitability." When asked if he would consider living in the facility to be constructed, senior Albany resident Rafael Gonzalez stated: No, I dont want to be locked up in one of those things even if I could [afford it], that is not a wise use of the land.



Then on Wednesday, January 13, Sprouts inaugurated a new store in Oakland. From 7am to 10pm, farmers and community members organized a meditation sit-in, held banners and distributed flyers calling for a boycott of Sprouts until they cancel construction over the Gill Tract. By early evening, over twenty five people had gathered to protest Sprouts. They set up a projector to screen the Occupy the Farm film, distributing popcorn and snacks, and informing Sprouts employees and community members about the history and struggle over the Gill Tract.



Protest at the new Sprouts store in Oakland continued daily. On Friday, January 15, store managers called Oakland Police Department to remove the protesters. A contingent of about 20 police officers who went to the location determined that the protesters were fully within the law, and even asked them to move their banners and sit-in further towards the entrance of the store in order to leave the sidewalk open.



Community members, students, and UC faculty have put forth an alternative proposal to use all twenty acres of the historic Gill Tract as a Center for Urban Agriculture and Food Justice, serving the University of Californias mission of research and education for the public good, while also operating as a productive urban farm that provides students, workers, and community members with access to affordable local produce. This proposal better aligns with UC President Napolitanos Global Food Initiative as well as the sustainability and climate mitigation policies of the state of California.



We have tried every formal and institutional route for a more democratic decision on the fate of this land, explains Gustavo Oliveira, a spokesperson for Occupy the Farm. But the UC administration and their corporate partners only reconsider their plans for privatization when opposed by organized direct action.



This coming weekend, the Indigenous Land Access Committee along with Occupy the Farm and other groups are calling for a Walk on the Land on January 24 at 3pm on the Gill Tract (on the corner of San Pablo Ave. and Marin Ave. in Albany, CA).





Background:



The privatization and construction launched on the site has been contested by students, faculty, and members of the community for almost two decades. In 2004, the UC Regents approved commercial development despite years of campaigning by students, faculty, and community members for the preservation of the land for urban agriculture and food justice, and proceeded bulldozing greenhouses in 2008 and contracting with Whole Foods for development of the site.



In April 2012, Occupy the Farm reenergized this struggle by camping on the land and planting a publicly-accessible farm on the Gill Tract. Under pressure, Whole Foods pulled out of the proposed development, and the UC administration granted protection for a portion of the land, some of which is now the vibrant Gill Tract Community Farm.



However, the 7 acres of the southern portion of the Gill Tract remains slated for development with a shopping center anchored by Sprouts supermarket, a hihg-end senior housing complex, and a parking lot. UC Capital Projects now seeks to implement this project despite another occupation in May 2013 and other mobilizations on the land in 2014 and 2015, two lawsuits, an Albany City referendum effort, broad based and constant community participation at the Albany City Council in favor of preserving the farmland for agricultural use, and an ongoing campaign for Sprouts to drop its proposed construction project over the Gill Tract.



occupythefarm.org

boycottsprouts.com
INDYRADIO (28jan16) On Wednesday, a small portion of 18 terabytes of data obtained from the Fraternal Order of Police was publicly released.The release itself is news, and gains credibility when you consider who has been re-tweeting @ CthulhuSec. The package dropped just about 2 hours ago, Twitter had a serious hiccup and threw me a server error, but quickly recovered. That's where the story is breaking - https://twitter.com/CthulhuSec Last week, after some uncomfortable moments with UK security personnel, Cthulhu released an encrypted "insurance file" and distributed keys to a select group of people. The full text follows below.

The text from his "insurance release" follows below:

"Many have asked for a comment concerning my most recent Insurance release. Unfortunately at this moment in time, I cant comment further on it. I am hoping it never needs to be released and that it will fade away over time, but I also need a guarantee I can pull the trigger on a particular issue should I need to resort to drastic measures.

As I posted on my Twitter, today I was in the custody of a UK intelligence agency/law enforcement. Legally speaking, I have been advised not to make further comment on the matter for now. Should the circumstances change on that front, I will do my best to update everyone.

For everyone on Twitter  many thanks for everyone sharing the file and taking a copy for reference in future should it be released. I do not believe in giving control of material to a single group of journalists, for it does not allow for proper interrogation of the data, nor do I believe any one group of people should be entitled to privileged access in a matter of public interest. For that reason, I made it distributed in a way I believe to be fairest to all.

Following Snowdens retweet of my post, my servers have been struggling to keep up. As a result, accessing the links are difficult now, so I suggest using the torrent or magnet link. To download using the magnet, you can click below:

As I have time to review my situation and other matters, I will post what I can. But for now, after a long night and day, I need to rest. So I thank everyone who has sent messages of support today  they really do wonders for my morale when it gets tough."

original posts, with links - https://www.thecthulhu.com/insurance-release/
James Hartwell of Healthygulf.org and 350Louisiana.org discusses #TaylorEnergy leak by wtulnews

James Hartwell reveals the secret of the eternal leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the Taylor Energy disaster. Although the company was forced to present information on its 11-year leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the meeting spurred more questions than answers. Lt Gen Russel Honore of the GreenArmy, a statewide environmental movement in Louisiana, excused himself after a Taylor representative threatened to shut down the meeting after the General asked questions concerning the environmental impacts of the oil.

Listen now: Copy the code below to embed this audio into a web page: <audio preload="none" src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/01/28/wtul-2016-01-22_james_hartwell_taylor_energy.mp3" controls="controls"></audio>

[ Audio: 18:58 ]
The Leuser Ecosystem is the only place on earth where Sumatran tigers, orangutans, rhinos and elephants all still coexist. Other species include the sun bear, white-handed gibbon, siamang, macaque, loris, lutung, clouded leopard, Asian golden cat, binturong, hornbills, falcons, pheasants, parrots, king cobra, python, turtles and tortoises. Of over 170,000 protected sites worldwide, the Leuser Ecosystem ranked 14th most irreplaceable for mammals in general, and 21st for threatened mammals according to the journal Science. Approximately 50% of Sumatran orangutan habitat is inside conservation areas directly managed by the Ministry of Forestry, and 78% lies within the boundaries of the vast Leuser Ecosystem Conservation Area. All this is under attack by 9 palm oil plantations. A renewed huge global effort has begun....

Zero Deforestation Commitments In The Leuser EcosystemSign petition at end of article by 'Rainforest Action Network' to Protect The Leuser Ecosystem in Aceh, Indoneisa, at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.The Orangutan Capital of the World as its known, (the Tripa peatland  on the western coast of the Island of Sumatra) is of special importance, providing habitat for some of the highest densities of critically endangered Sumatran orangutans in the world. Today there are an estimated 6,600 individual Sumatran orangutans left in the wild. The Sumatran orangutan is at extreme risk of becoming the first great ape to go extinct in the wild. It is estimated that the expansion of palm oil plantations into Tripa has reduced the local orangutan population to as few as 100 individuals. The situation is dire. In the past two decades, roughly 84 percent of Tripas forested areas have been lost.In November 2014, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) exposed the links between the 'Big Three Buyers' of palm oil and the destruction of the Leuser Ecosystem.The Singkil peatland is the largest, deepest and most intact peatland in Aceh, with the deepest peat deposits measuring up to 8 meters in depth and the remaining forest covering over203,990 acres. This peatland, an area known as the Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve and protected under Indonesian law, is increasingly under siege from palm oil expansion and new roads that are being built in a way that will damage the peatland beyond repair.One of the last vestiges of wilderness on the island of Sumatra, for the past three decades, has been heavily ravaged by logging, fires, and conversion to industrial timber and oil palm plantations. The area, known as the Leuser Ecosystem, is today a battleground between business-as-usual interests seeking to mine its forests and a collection of conservationists, local communities (see end of article for regional map)The Last Place on Earth by Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows clearly how some companies that have established zero-deforestation, zero-conflict policies  but it also lists more than two dozen plantations that have been established within the boundaries of the Leuser Ecosystem.The destruction of the Leuser Ecosystem will be disastrous for millions of Acehnese people and would push endangered species even closer to the brink of extinction. (Gemma Tillack, Agribusiness Campaign Director for Rainforest Action Network)Two reports, one year apart1) The Last Place on Earth - Exposing the Threats to the Leuser Ecosystem: A Global Biodiversity Hotspot Deserving Protection: (PDF 3MB and 40 pages)The Leuser Ecosystem, is located on the island of Sumatra, and covers over 6.5 million acres and is described as being like nowhere else on Earth. The region boasts some of the highest levels of plant and animal diversity worldwide, with at least 105 mammal species, 382 bird species, and 95 reptile and amphibian species.View 15 stunning photos of the Leuser Ecosystem  forests, tigers, elephants, rhinos, orangutans and more!2) The November 2015 RAN report; titled The Last Place on Earth: Tracking Progress and New Opportunities to Protect the Leuser Ecosystem - cites evidence of continued clearance by palm oil growers supplying palm oil to mills in the region. It highlights Wilmar International, Musim Mas Group and Golden Agri Resources, dubbed the 'Big Three Buyers' of palm oil currently at risk of sourcing from the region.Another article at Common Dreams, gives a detailed summary of the RAN report: Rampant Plantation Expansion Devastates Deep Peatlands and Major Sumatran Elephant Habitat; Fate of Region Depends on Collective Action by Industry Giants and Local, National Governments (November 2015)Consumer goods manufacturing companies that buy palm oil are at risk of purchasing conflict palm oil grown in the Leuser Ecosystem. The report lists what it terms the Snack Food 20  companies who have not adopted and implemented responsible palm oil procurement policies. The list includes PepsiCo, Kraft Foods Group, The H.J. Heinz Company, The Campbell Soup Company, Hillshire Brands, Grupo Bimbo, Nissin Foods and Toyo Suisan Kaisha Ltd.Boycott these companies and their products!As always, author Annette Gartland presents the situation at great length and detail, in,Climate Conference: Environmentalists Urge Action To End Forest Destruction In IndonesiaBy Annette Gartland - December 2, 2015The Leuser Ecosystem Alliance says the Ecosystem supports the lives and livelihoods of more than four million people, and protects them from environmental disasters. In Paris, at the COP21, the alliance launched a report entitled Leuser at a Crossroads, which states that the natural forests of Leuser are still being cleared, and the integrity of the ecosystem is at risk of collapsing. If decisive action is not taken immediately the impacts on the entire ecosystem and the surrounding population will be disastrous and irreversible, the report states.At least two million hectares of land burned in the recent fires, releasing millions of tonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere. The added burden on the global environment is huge, and it is also delivering a devastating blow to Indonesias biodiversity, much of which is already on the edge of extinction. It is essential that the world helps Indonesia to prevent future fires by blocking the drainage canals in peat swamps, which are lowering the water-table. Wet peat does not burn.The Leuser Ecosystem Alliance is comprised of Forum Konservasi Leuser, Hutan Alam dan Lingkungan Aceh, the Orangutan Information Centre, the PanEco Foundation, the Sumatran Orangutan Society, and Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari.Please read The Leuser Ecosystem Alliance Report: Leuser at a Crossroads(PDF 11 MB and just 7 brilliant pages)The Leuser Ecosystem is both spectacular and globally unique. Ranging from coastal mangrove swamp to high altitude cloud forests, it is one of the largest continuous expanses of forest in Asia, and the only place in the world that is home to Sumatran orangutans, tigers, rhinoceros, elephants, clouded leopards and sun bears. It provides vital resources and services for the human population that lives within and around it, and has huge potential for tourism, research, carbon trading and other income generating opportunities.Located at the northern end of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, 85% of the Leuser Ecosystem falls within the province of Aceh with the remainder in North Sumatra province. Covering a total of over 2.6 million hectares it mostly consists of rainforest from the sea level coastal peat swamps of Tripa, Singkil and Kluet up to the summit of Mt Leuser at over 3,000m. It also encompasses large areas of lowland rainforest as well as beaches, mangrove forests, meadows, heathlands, lakes and rivers, and crucial transition zones between the main habitat types.In RAN's latest report, The Last Place On Earth: Tracking Progress And New Opportunities To Protect The Leuser Ecosystem, RAN says the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP) companies must work with suppliers and government to establish a moratorium on the destruction of rainforests and peatlands in the Leuser Ecosystem. (PDF 5 MB and 32 pages)  a must read!URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!Wildlife Asia is teaming up with 'Racing Extinction', Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) to launch Racing Extinction in the Leuser Ecosystem, a bold mission to shine a global spotlight on the destruction of the last place on Earth where orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and elephants still live together in the wild, and produce the tools that will enable action to save it.Their goal of raising fifty thousand dollars (indiegogo campaign) was recently celebrated!Add your name! Join Rainforest Action Network in calling on palm oil companies to immediately halt the destruction of the Leuser Ecosystem.In Racing Extinction, a team of artists and activists exposes the hidden world of extinction with never-before-seen images that will change the way we see the planet. Two worlds drive extinction across the globe, potentially resulting in the loss of half of all species. The international wildlife trade creates bogus markets at the expense of creatures that have survived on this planet for millions of years. And the other surrounds us, hiding in plain sight...Where to see the film Racing ExtinctionRacing Extinction (2015) has already become the top must see movie in almost all Asia movie theaters. Here's a really well written review!Gunung Leuser National Park is one of the two remaining habitats for Sumatran Orangutans. In 1971, Herman Rijksen established the Ketambe Research Station, a specially designated research area for the orangutan. Other mammals found in the park are the Sumatran elephant, Sumatran tiger, Sumatran rhinoceros, siamang, Sumatran serow, sambar deer and leopard cat.What does poaching in the Leuser Ecosystem look like? Here is a sensitive pictorial: What hit me hardest was seeing the extent of the elephants struggle, so clear from the scene of battered vegetation and splintered trees. How long had this elephant thrashed around trying to break free from the tightening rope? When did its panic give way to exhaustion? How long did it take to die? And were other elephants there to see it?Aceh citizens sue government to save Leuser Ecosystem  January 22, 2016The filing of a class-action lawsuit in Jakarta, moves the bitter fight over the future of one of Sumatras last intact rainforests into the courts. Registered by nine Indonesian citizens from the countrys westernmost province of Aceh, the suit is lodged three months after a warning letter sent to the home affairs ministry went unanswered, and challenges the legality of a set of zoning laws passed by the Aceh parliament at the end of 2013. Those land-use laws, known collectively as a spatial plan, were ordered to be revised by the home ministry back in February of 2014. More than two years later, the unrevised spatial plan remains in force. This case is clear-cut.Where is Aceh? Where is Gunung Leuser National Park and the Leuser Ecosystem?Lowland forests and carbon-rich peat bogs, the most vital landscapes in Southeast Asias last great swath of intact rainforest, are the most at risk of clearing by oil palm firms in the 2.6 million hectare block of Sumatran forests and peatlands known as the Leuser Ecosystem, the only place on earth where Sumatran tigers, orangutans, rhinos and elephants all still coexist.Other species include the sun bear, white-handed gibbon, siamang, macaque, loris, lutung, clouded leopard, Asian golden cat, binturong, hornbills, falcons, pheasants, parrots, king cobra, python, turtles and tortoises. Of over 170,000 protected sites worldwide, the Leuser Ecosystem ranked 14th most irreplaceable for mammals in general, and 21st for threatened mammals according to the journal Science. Approximately 50% of Sumatran orangutan habitat is inside conservation areas directly managed by the Ministry of Forestry, and 78% lies within the boundaries of the vast Leuser Ecosystem Conservation Area.PIC Two Orangutan Ecological ZonesKids, tell your parents! Today, youth activists in schools around the world are taking action to cut conflict palm oil from our lives, said Elle OBrien from GS Green Generation, a group of student activists from the Green School in Bali, Indonesia.Kids Cut Palm Oil is an international group of school students who want to see an end to the destruction of our forests. We want this destruction to stop killing critically endangered animals. We want the destruction to stop because it is killing people, and leading to tremendous global carbon emissions that have never been seen before on this scale.We know how to stop it. We can stop it. And we will stop it. We can challenge this by becoming educated on the issue and boycotting products containing conflict palm oil.Visit Kids Cut Palm Oil on Facebook, and support their vision for a better world.Give your support to on-the-ground efforts to protect the natural world. Help enable 'No Kill, No Cut' protection for endangered national parks and world heritage sites with Global Park Defense:The next three years is focused on wildlife habitat protection, removal of illegal plantations and logging operations, SMART ranger patrols and lobbying and legal actions to enforce Leuser Ecosystems existing protection as a national park and UNESCO World Heritage site.We provide funding and technology for a proven methodology for park transformation to achieve No Kill, No Cut. Global Conservation works alongside park authorities with local communities to implement a Global Park Defense - border demarcation, informant rewards system, advanced surveillance and communications and SMART Ranger Patrols to enable national parks to combat and eliminate illegal poaching, logging and mining.Sign the petition (link provided below) by 'Rainforest Action Network' to Protect The Leuser Ecosystem.The people of Aceh have long fought to protect the Leuser Ecosystem as it provides them with clean water for downstream irrigation, agriculture and food production and helps avoid soil erosion, flooding, landslides and pest outbreaks. The Leuser Ecosystem is also home to the densest population of orangutans remaining anywhere in the world and is the only place where orangutans, tigers, elephants, rhinos and sun bears live in the same forest together.... am writing to let you know that people all across the world understand the value of Acehs forests to the people and communities who live there and to encourage you to nominate the Leuser Ecosystem as a new UNESCO World Heritage Site.To be delivered to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of Indonesia, Zulfiki Hasan, Minister of Forestry, Zaini Abdullah, Governor of Aceh, Ir. Iman Soedradjat, Giovanni Seritella, His Excellency Juniarta Sastrawan, Stig Traavik, Martin Billie Herman, Elina Dakash, UNESCO World Heritage Center, and World Bank Headquarters. (RAN)Tomas DiFioreBy invoking the 'Copyright Disclaimer' Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use." 107. Limitations on exclusive rights- Fair use: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.If you or anyone wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.Tomas DiFioreSaying No To Palm OilAceh, Boycott Palm Oil, Conflict Palm Oil, elephants, Forests, Last Place on Earth, Leuser Ecosystem, orangutans, Palm Oil plantations, peatlands, Racing Extinction, rhinos, Sumatra, tigers,
Freeman Foundation Awards $400,000 Grant to Illinois Wesleyan

Jan. 28, 2016

The famed rice terraces in the Philippines seen in this photo from the blog of 2015 Freeman Asia Intern Kirsten Slaughter '16

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Thanks to the success of 17 Illinois Wesleyan University students interning in Asia last year, the Freeman Foundation has approved a grant of $400,000, payable over two years, to provide the same opportunity to nearly double the number of students.

The Freeman Foundation grant covers airfare, housing, a living allowance, and all internship placement and visa costs for up to 32 students to intern in Asia this summer or while studying abroad at Lingnan University in Hong Kong during the next academic year. The program is open to current sophomores or juniors of any major who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

The principal goal of the IWU Freeman Asia Internship Program is to provide Illinois Wesleyan students with experience working and interacting with Asians in a real work environment, said Professor of Sociology Teddy Amoloza, who has served as director of the project from its inception. This grant will provide a large number of students the opportunity to experience Asia not as tourists or short-time travelers, but as workers who rolled up their sleeves and did the nitty-gritty work their on-site supervisors assigned to them. They will learn and experience both the culture of the work place and that of larger society.

She added, This will be a transforming experience in their undergraduate careers. Amoloza has worked closely with staff at the Hart Career Center and the International Office and with Asian studies and International studies faculty to implement the program.

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Green noted the IWU Freeman Asia Internship program engages three core tenets (social justice, environmental sustainability and global citizenship) of the Universitys mission within the context of experiential learning.

Hong Kong

In addition to increasing the number of students who can participate, the additional funds will allow Illinois Wesleyan to expand to more locations. Additional placement opportunities under the new grant include the Institute of East and West Studies at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea; Akita (Japan) International University; the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, the Philippine governments principal food and nutrition research arm; and Human Nature, a top Filipino brand of natural and organic cosmetics and personal products.

Because of the success of last years program, the following organizations again will participate: the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Los Banos, Philippines; Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm, a social business incubator in Bulacan, Philippines; Lingnan University in Hong Kong; and Technos International College in Tokyo.

With offices in New York and Honolulu, the Freeman Foundation works to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the United States and countries of east Asia. An additional benefit of the program introduces Illinois Wesleyan students to work and live alongside people from other nationalities as well as those from the host country. Nicole Chlebek 16, an environmental studies and sociology double major who interned last year, wrote of the international experience in her blog: From just walking down the hallways of my dorm, we have met people from India, London, France, all over the States, Iran, Korea, and Australia.which has made for deep, fun, and intellectual conversations I never thought I would haveIts crazy how fast a group of people can become your family away from home.
Illinois Wesleyan Physics Major Presents Research at Harvard Conference

Jan. 28, 2016

Lunjun (Simon) Liu '17



BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Illinois Wesleyan University physics major Lunjun (Simon) Liu 17 (Wuhan, China) recently presented his research on cosmic dust at a highly selective undergraduate research conference at Harvard University.

With an interest in astronomy and astrophysics, Liu became involved in research Associate Professor of Physics Thushara Pereras lab after reading about Pereras National Science Foundation grant to study cosmic dust. I went to his office right away, Liu recalled I was fascinated by the project. I was interested in delving into seemingly common things such as dust and gas, believing they can reveal uncommon features such as star formation and supernovae.

Even though Liu was a first-year student at the time, he was welcome in Pereras lab. Lius experience is not unique; seven in 10 Illinois Wesleyan students engage in research or creative activity. Pereras research focuses on the study of cosmic dust analogs in the lab. Lius work in Pereras lab led to his presentation at Harvard, entitled A New Laboratory for Millimeter/Sub-millimeter-wavelength Characterization of Cosmic Dust Analogs. In his poster presenation, Liu discussed building a novel design for experiments to reduce systemic errors and using the set-up to study optical properties of cosmic dust analogs at millimeter/sub-millimeter wavelengths.

I love this project because once we figure out the precise properties of dusts, we can provide better interpretation of astronomical data related to cosmic dust, said Liu. This enhances our understanding of some astronomical interesting regions, especially in star forming regions and how prebiotic molecules form.

The Harvard National Collegiate Research Conference (NCRC), held this year Jan. 21-23, is a platform for undergraduates across the nation to share their interest in research in fields ranging from biology and chemistry to political science, history and music. Liu said he was one of four students presenting posters in astrophysics; the others were students at Harvard. Liu said his most important takeaway from the conference was the opportunity to talk at length with Daniel Eisenstein, the director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-111), creators of the most detailed, three-dimensional maps ever made of the universe.

In discussions with Eisenstein, I learned advanced methods utilized in cosmology, and his words inspired me to delve deeper and deeper into astrophysics, Liu said.

He said the opportunity to get involved in research as a first-year student was an important initial step in his ultimate goal of becoming an astronomer. At first, I was just like a blank paper with regard to astrophysical concepts and experiments, said Liu. So it was quite significant to work closely with Dr. Perera. Now, our conversations tend to be discussions because I am able to provide solutions and suggestions. After graduation from Illinois Wesleyan, Liu plans to pursue a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
Mohaymen Stirs Hype in Holy Bull at Gulfstream: Racings newest star, Mohaymen, makes his 2016 debut in the $350,000 Holy Bull Stakes (GII) at Gulfstream Park on Saturday. After studying the past performances and watching videos, it appears nothing will stop him.

Kiaran McLaughlin conditions the son of Tapit and Justwhistledixie for Shadwell Stable. He won his first three starts, including two graded stakes races over decent competition. Will the Holy Bull turn into a romp?

They make the turn for home and Mohaymen begins to pull away by five  now by 10 

While the above call seems like a joke, why not? Mohaymen won his first stakes race in early November, the Nashua Stakes (GII) at Aqueduct. He defeated Flexibility and Sail Ahoy, earning a 110 TimeformUS Speed Figure in the process. To compare, Breeders Cup Juvenile (GI) champion Nyquist scored a 104.

In the Remsen (GII) the same month, Mohaymen finished ahead of Flexibility again and the talented GIft Box. He earned a 115 TimeformUS Speed Figure, which means he ran 11 points faster than Nyquists Breeders Cup victory. Flexibility returned to win the Jerome Stakes (GII) easily, showcasing the quality of Mohaymens win. Plus, the September maiden win came over King Kranz, runner-up in the Futurity (GII) at Belmont Park.

McLaughlin spoke to Thoroughbred Racing Commentarys Karen M. Johnson about Mohaymen.

With everything combined, its a huge edge for a trainer going forward to have a well-bred horse, who has won going a mile and an eighth in November as a 2-year-old, and who doesnt get tired. He has it all, McLaughlin said.

The rest of the field ranges from uninspiring to sloppy-track specialists.

From the rail, Perfect Saint attempts to pull off the upset for trainer Dale Romans and the storied Calumet Farm. It is not clear why this horse is in the field though. He recently lost an optional claimer by 16 lengths and the Kentucky Jockey Club (GII) by 13 lengths. Is it possible Calumet Farm has Derby fever?

In post position three, Fellowship takes a shot and it is puzzling why as well. He lost an ungraded stakes race by 16 lengths in his last start. Before that, he lost another ungraded race at Gulfstream Park West by two lengths.

Conquest Big E might mount a challenge from the fourth slot. He won an optional claimer over a sloppy track at Churchill Downs. Runner-up Unexplained then ran an unexplainable fourth in an Oaklawn Park optional claimer. To be fair, Conquest Big E also won another sloppy-track race at the strong Keeneland meet. The second-place horse Deep in a Dream actually returned to win  a maiden claiming event, before losing his next two races.

To the right, his sloppy-track specialist twin Greenpointcrusader attempts to capture his second win on fast dirt. At least, his first one came at the always strong Saratoga meet while breaking his maiden. Greenpointcrusader also won the Champagne (GI) in a powerful fashion, although the sloppy track helped him. He then regressed in the Breeders Cup Juvenile (GI) finishing seventh. Other handicappers are willing to excuse the performance.

Frontier Ranger rounds out the field in the outside post. It will be quite the battle between him, Fellowship and Perfect Saint for fourth place, which still awards one Kentucky Derby qualifying point! The winner gets 10 points.

On a somewhat unrelated note, a conversation on why horses with no chance enter the Derby came up on Facebook one time. Someone explained how owners love seeing their horse running with the Derby field, even if competitive for just a few moments. It means more to them than winning a smaller race.

No other horse besides Mohaymen, Conquest Big E and Greenpointcrusader holds even a one-percent chance to capture the Holy Bull on Saturday, unless lightning strikes them all, but it is understandable why the connections of super longshots place their horse in a spot like this. They want to chase the ultimate dream and enter the Derby.

Regardless, bettors who single Mohaymen will feel relieved when he crushes this field. Use Mohaymen with Conquest Big E and Greenpointcrusader in horizontals if necessary and key him on top in verticals. If a brigejumping situation occurs in the show pools, then consider betting a different horse to show.

Related Links:

Ready Dancer Back to Dirt in Swale at Gulfstream Park

Holy Bull Stakes 2016 Post Positions & Odds

Race 11 5:05 PM ET

1 Perfect Saint 20-1 Lanerie/Romans

2 Mohaymen 6-5 Alvarado/McLaughlin

3 Fellowship 20-1 Caraballo/Gold

4 Conquest Big E 7-2 Smith/Casse

5 Greenpointcrusader 8-5 Velazquez/Schettino

6 Frontier Ranger 15-1 Zayas/Pellegrini
Washington, DC The United States Supreme Court has decided it will not hear Johnson & Johnsons appeal of a $124 million judgment against it in a The United States Supreme Court has decided it will not hear Johnson & Johnsons appeal of a $124 million judgment against it in a Risperdal lawsuit . The lawsuit was filed by the state of South Carolina, alleging Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals illegally marketed its antipsychotic medication.

The lawsuit was initially filed in 2007 by the state of South Carolina, which alleged that Janssen deceptively marketed Risperdal by hiding risks on labels that were attached to sample packs and by sending letters to doctors that claimed Risperdal was safer than other antipsychotic drugs. A South Carolina state judge found Janssen liable and ordered $327 million in civil penalties, which a higher court later reduced to $136 million. That award was later reduced by another $12 million.By 1997, Janssen also had information that Risperdal posed a serious risk of stroke, cardiac arrest, and sudden death in the elderly, Justice Kittredge wrote for the Supreme Court of South Carolina in its decision (7/8/15). Despite this clinical information, it was several years before Janssen updated the Risperdal label to accurately reflect the frequency and severity of the risk of hyperprolactinemia, weight gain and diabetes, or stroke, cardiac arrest, and sudden death in the elderly.Those judges further found that Janssen had information suggesting patients taking Risperdal were at an increased risk of developing diabetes mellitus and only shared results of a favorable study to the FDA, rather than sharing results of all studies. The Supreme Court of South Carolina also found that Janssen sent a Dear Doctor Letter that stated Risperdal was associated with a lower risk of diabetes than some other atypical antipsychotic medications.The judges were not impressed. To put it mildly, the November 2003 DDL [Dear Doctor Letter] contained false information, Justice Kittredge wrote in the decision. Although the Supreme Court of South Carolina reduced the award, it did so based on the statute of limitations, finding that the statute of limitations regarding the warning label was limited to a three-year period. As a result, the award was decreased from $327 million to $136 million.Although Janssen still appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court has rejected the motion to appeal and will not hear Janssens arguments.Janssen has defended its drug saying it is safe and effective to use.The lawsuit isNo. 15-600.
- Olusegun Obasanjo has written a strong-worded letter to the National Asembly leadership

- Obasanjo faulted plans by the lawmakers to buy 469 cars with about N4.7 billion

- Obasanjo challenged the National Assembly to redeem itself

Former president, Olusegun Obasanjo has returned to letter writing again. The former president has accused the leadership of the national assembly of not being sensitive to economic plights of Nigeria by planning to buy cars for themselves.

In the letter dated January 13, 2016, seen by The Cable, Obasanjo said a pool cars would have been sufficient to do the committee work, given all the allowances the lawmakers have already collected since their inauguration in June 2015.

The letter was addressed to the Senate president, Bukola Saraki and speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara.

While in government, I was threatened with impeachment by the members of the National Assembly for not releasing some money they had appropriated for themselves which were odious and for which there were no incomes to support. The recent issue of cars for legislators would fall into the same category. Whatever name it is disguised as, it is unnecessary and insensitive. A pool of a few cars for each Chamber will suffice for any Committee Chairman or members for any specific duty. The waste that has gone into cars, furniture, housing renovation in the past was mind-boggling and these were veritable sources of waste and corruption. That was why they were abolished. Bringing them back is inimical to the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians, he wrote.

READ ALSO: Obasanjo welcomed by Algeria's Prime Minister

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Obasanjo asked the lawmakers to be transparent in their finances by publishing its recurrent budgets for the years 2000, 2005, 20 10 and 2015 recurrent expenditure and opening their books to an external auditor from 1999 till date.

He added that governance without transparency will be a mockery of democracy.

The present economic situation that the country has found itself in is the climax of the steady erosion of good financial and economic management which grew from bad to worse in the last six years or so. The executive and the legislative arms of government must accept and share responsibility in this regard. And if there will be a redress of the situation as early as possible, the two arms must also bear the responsibility proportionally . The two arms ran the affairs of the country unmindful of the rainy day. The rainy day is now here. It would not work that the two arms should stand side by side with one arm pulling and without the support of the other one for good and efficient management of the economy.

The purpose of election into the Legislative Assembly particularly at the national level is to give service to the nation and not for the personal service and interest of members at the expense of the nation which seemed to have been the mentality, psychology, mindset and practice within the National Assembly since the beginning of this present democratic dispensation. Where is patriotism? Where is commitment? Where is service? Obasanjo wrote.

On the budget which was predicated on $38 per barrel of oil with estimated 2 million barrels per day despite the continuous fall in oil price, he said there was a need for caution, sober reflection and sacrifice with innovation at the level of executive and legislative arms of government.

READ ALSO: How NASS stopped Obasanjo's 3rd term bid  Dogara

The letter read in part: If production and price projected on the budget stand, we would have to borrow almost one third of the 6 trillion naira budget. Now beginning with the reality of the budget, there is need for sober reflection and sacrifice with innovation at the level of executive and legislative arms of government. The soberness, the sacrifice and seriousness must be patient and apparent.

It must not be seen and said that those who, as leaders, call for sacrifice from the citizenry are living in obscene opulence. It will not only be insensitive but callously so. It would seem that it is becoming a culture that election into the legislative arm of government at the national level in particular is a licence for financial misconduct and that should not be.

The way of proposing budget should be for the executive to discuss every detail of the budget, in preparation, with different Committees and sub-Committees of the National Assembly and the National Assembly to discuss its budget with the Ministry of Finance. Then, the budget should be brought together as consolidated budget and formally presented to the National Assembly, to be deliberated and debated upon and passed into law. It would then be implemented as revenues are available. Where budget proposals are extremely ambitious like the current budget and revenue sources are so uncertain, more borrowing may have to be embarked upon, almost up to 50% of the budget or the budget may be grossly unimplementable and unimplemented. Neither is a choice as both are bad.

READ ALSO: Buhari Is Cleaning Jonathan, Obasanjo's Mess - Mbadinuju

Management of the economy is one of the key responsibilities of the President as prescribed in the Constitution. He cannot do so if he does not have his hands on the budget. Management of the economy is shared responsibility where the Presidency has the lion share of the responsibility. But if the National Assembly becomes a clog in the wheel, the executive efforts will not yield much reward or progress. The two have to work synchronisingly together to provide the impetus and the conducive environment for the private sector to play its active vanguard role. Management of the budget is the first step to manage the economy. It will be interesting if the National Assembly will be honourable enough and begin the process of transparency, responsibility and realism by publishing its recurrent budgets for 2016 as it should normally be done.

Obasanjo called on the National Assembly to redeem itself by doing what is right which will bring a new and better image for them and also bring a new dawn to democracy in Nigeria.

Source: Legit.ng
Editor's note: Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was invited to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg on February 3, Wednesday.

The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the director of the Radio Biafra Nnamdi Kanu, who was arrested in the mid of October last year, writes an open letter to European Parliament. Kanu asks the global community for fair assessment of Buhari and justice in his case.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Legit.ng.

Founder of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu during his appearance on treasonable charges at the Federal High Court Abuja. Photo: The Punch

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I am that Biafran locked up in DSS custody for 98 days without trial

Firstly, I wish to thank this honorable parliament, representatives of member nations and all her leaders. On the defense of rule of law and human right this parliament thrived. The making of a better world where mankind shall be free, easy life and prosperous world had been the banner of this parliament and never shall diplomacy or any form of tie cause a deviation or severe the cause of this great parliament.

READ ALSO: Sagir Muhammad reveals Kanu's secret plan

I am a Biafran, I am that Biafran locked up in Buharis DSS dungeon for 98 days without trial, given inhuman treatments, tortured and abused. I am that Biafran competent courts of jurisdiction freed but Buhari by his powers held me illegally. I am that Biafran that left his wife suffers the pains of child birth alone. I am that Biafran his newly delivered wife is still having emotional trauma and mental torture of losing her husband to time or death.

I am that Biafran that never killed a man or man killed for me

I am that Biafran this parliament gave right to agitate for freedom, UN charter told to demand for freedom, Nigerian constitution also told to agitate for Biafra, when I did what the law said I should do, I was thrown into the prison without asking me what I want or how my want can be addressed. I am that Biafran that never killed a man or man killed for me, that Biafran that only stood a radio station as a weapon to fight for freedom, that Biafran that cherished freedom of speech, that Biafran that is persecuted because of truth. I am Nnamdi Kanu that Biafran Nigerian government under Buhari unlawfully oppressed.

READ ALSO: Heavens will strike if Nnamdi Kanu is not released - prophet

I am that Biafran his 7 years old child was shot to death in Aba, that Biafran his brothers and sisters were massacred in Onitsha. I am that Biafran his people were again massacred in Aba, that Biafran his people are being kidnapped, extra-judiciary killed and illegally imprisoned by Buhari. I am that Biafran who Buhari illegally ordered soldiers of Gowon to invade my land and slaughter my children, sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers in their millions in 1967. I am that Biafran his people are being marginalized, subjugated and enslaved just because they fought a war and lost, instead of healing and forgiving us, they chose to keep punishing us.

Biafrans are losing their lives for lawfully asking a legal course

Before Buhari addresses this honorable parliament, let him be assessed and subjected to scrutiny, that he may not infect this honorable parliament with dishonor, lawlessness and primitive tendencies. Under his words, over 1000 innocent men and women lost their lives because of his political ambition in 2011 and today more Biafrans are losing their lives for lawfully asking a legal course.

READ ALSO: Kanu's wife speaks on her husband detention

This parliament having warned of human right abuses by Nigeria, Buhari has gone on without discretion in handling of call for Biafran independence which fully contradicts the ethics of this honorable parliament, hence I call for a discrete advise or compel him to respect human life and do the needful- referendum for Biafra and release his prisoner of conscience or a political prison without odds or record of unlawful act.

We are Biafrans condemned by Nigerian government

The treatment of Kanu represents how Biafrans are treated in Nigeria, we are Biafrans, condemned by Nigerian government and deprived of right to live, speech, belong, freedom and thrive. Even-though our land feed the country, our land is marginalized as diseases, contaminated land, bad roads, lack of infrastructure and social amenities bedevil us as virtually removed from federation. This federal absence left our land in decay that we today seek freedom to have a nation to call a home and enjoy human right which gives meaning to life. Thanks, yours faithfully, Nnamdi Kanu in Ifeanyi Chijioke of Family Writers.

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Source: Legit.ng
- Toyin Aimakhu has been estranged from her husband

- She was alleged to be dating Seun Egbegbe

- Why her fan accused her of double dating

Toyin Aimakhu and her estranged husband

It seems controversial Nollywood actress Toyin Aimakhu is tired of the hide and seek game concerning the state of her relationship with her socialite lover Seun Egbegbe.

The actress who is having trouble with her marriage was alleged to have been dating popular socialite who also sponsors movie production Seun Egbegbe. Despite all the tell tales, pictures and other things pointing to her dating Egbegbe, Aimakhu never agreed to dating him. The closest she had come with the state their relation was when she agreed that they are just friends and that she does visit him.

Toyin Aimakhu and alleged lover Seun Egbegbe

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But recently, a fan of Aimakhu on Instagram threw the question at her and she had no other option than to agree to dating Seun Egbegbe. The fan went further when he accused her of double dating. See screenshot of their conversation below:

READ ALSO: Lagos Big Boy Romancing Aimhaku May Soon Dump Her

Meanwhile, Seun Egbegbe has for long acknowledge there is something between him and Toyin Aimakhu. He also agreed to beating her but that it was over reported as it was not as serious as taking her to the hospital.

Aimakhu was married to fellow actor Adeniyi Johnson. Their marriage hit the rocks within a short time and no one knows if they will reconcile as it is taking too long to bring them back together.

Source: Legit.ng
COSCO charts course for entry into Cyprus Updated: 2016-01-29 08:36 By Maria Petrakis(China Daily)

View from the dockside of the Santiago in the port of Limassol, Cyprus. [Photo/Agencies]

Shipping group joins 13 others in bidding for Limassol Port

Fresh from its success in securing control of Greece's Piraeus Port Authority SA, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company, better known as COSCO, is now bidding to run the port of Limassol on the island of Cyprus, in a bid to extend its reach in the Mediterranean Sea.

China's newly combined and largest shipping company by capacity is among 14 investors who expressed interest in placing bids for three concession opportunities, according to a senior source in the Cypriot government.

COSCO is one of the six bidders for the port's container terminal and one of five vying for the multipurpose terminal, according to the source. Another three companies have placed bids to run a marine services concession, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works said on Jan 21.

Other companies interested in the concession opportunities are DB World of Dubai and Phillipines-based International Container Terminal Services Inc, the source said.

COSCO's interest in the Limassol port came after it was declared the preferred, and only, bidder for a controlling stake in Piraeus Port, Greece's biggest harbor, and one of the largest in the Mediterranean.

COSCO consolidated its hold over Piraeus Port Authority SA on Jan 20, agreeing to pay 368.5 million euros ($402 million) for a 67 percent stake after increasing its offer to clinch control of what is seen as a key thoroughfare into Europe.

Limassol Port is the main port in Cyprus, serving most of the island's seaborne cargo and passenger traffic. The port accounts for nearly all container traffic, about half of total cargo and 75 percent of passenger traffic on the island, according to the tender documents.

Andreas Michaelides, general director of the transport ministry, said in an earlier statement that the country's aim was to make the port of Limassol a "gateway for development for the future".

The Cypriots hope to draw investment to a port that may well be able to offer hydrocarbon support services in the future to support a burgeoning offshore oil and gas industry in the region, considered instrumental to Cyprus's future economic development.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Nicosia last month that China is interested in operating Cypriot ports and wants to help turn the eastern Mediterranean island nation into a regional shipping hub.

Chinese investment in the region is a key part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, which envisages creating the 21st century land and maritime equivalent of the Silk Road.

Since the Chinese shipping behemoth started container operations in Greece in 2009, traffic has surged at Piraeus, making the harbor one of the fastest-growing ports in the world.
- James Ibori has denied having any loot any part of the world

- He faulted the minister of justice for making a misleading statement

- He wished President Buhari well

Chief James Ibori, a former governor of Delta state has reacted to claims by the Abubakar Malami, minister of justice and attorney-general of the federation (AGF) that the federal government will soon recover 6.9million stolen funds frittered away by him.

Ibori, who is currently serving a jail sentence in the United Kingdom, debunked the report, saying he does not have any loot in any part of the world, Vanguard reports.

File photo of James Ibori

He expressed shock and disappointment that a top government official could make such misleading statement.

A statement issued on his behalf by Tony Eluemunr, his media aide read: There is no Ibori loot anywhere in the world. Such money, whether in British pounds, American dollars or the Nigerian naira just does not exist. This is because the Ibori London trial is not yet over. It is an incontrovertible fact that the confiscation hearing has not started at all, and remains months away into the future.

This makes it disappointing that a high official of state such as the Attorney-General may have been misled into believing that an Ibori loot not only exists anywhere, but he even put a figure (6.9 million pounds) to it.

READ ALSO: How Okowa, Others Prepare For Iboris Release From Prison

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With all due respect to the Minister and the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, it is curious that such a misleading statement could have come less than a week that dozens of well-respected foreign media organisations, including the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, The Times of London, The Guardian of London, and a host of Nigerian news outlets reported that the case against Ibori and his associates have become shaky as some operatives of the London Metropolitan Police have been accused of bribery and corruption in the course of their investigations. Thus, at the January 21, 2016 hearing, the prosecution was forced to withdraw its case against one of Iboris counsel, Mr. Bradesh Gohil."

According to Eluemunor, he had assumed the minister was misquoted but when he failed to retract the statement after 24 hours that he had to inform Nigerians, including the minister of the true perspective of the Ibori London trial.

He noted that the so called Ibori Loot Malami saw must have been a terrible mirage.

Ibori wished President Muhammadu Buhari, his administration and ministers, well in their stated bid to leave Nigeria better than they found it.

Earlier this month, British High Commissioner, Paul Arkwright said the British government was still possession of Iboris stolen loot and that they were working with Nigerian authorities to deliver an effective mechanism for the return of stolen funds and assets from Nigeria.

Ibori was jailed in 2012, two years after he was arrested by the Interpol in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where he was hiding after fleeing Nigeria. He pled guilty to ten counts of money laundering and conspiracy to commit fraud in February 2012 and was sentenced to 13 years in jail.

Meanwhile, there are indications that the former governor may be making an early return to Nigeria from the United Kingdom prison and he may face further trial in Nigeria when he returns.

Source: Legit.ng
- Court decides Kanu's bail application

- Kanu sacks his lawyer, Udechukwu

- Court declines Kanu's bail

The Radio Biafra director Nnamdi Kanu is currently in the Federal High Court Abuja for consideration of his bail application.

After a long wait and expectation, the court has announced the commencement of the ruling which will be coming in next 30 minutes.

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The director of the Radio Biafra has withdrawn one of his lawyers, M. U Udechukwu from representing him in court.

Following the call for appearances, Udechukwu who argued the bail application in favour of kanu drew the attention of the court to letter said to have been addressed to the judge, John Tsoho.

While Tsoho confirmed the letter, he said he believed it was a domestic matter and not to be on record.

He said: "There is a handwritten letter addressed to my humble self by the first defendant.

The judge added that the first defendant had stated in the letter that during the last hearing, the lawyer that argued his case was not who he instructed to represent him.

Meanwhile, the lead counsel, Chuks Muoma addressing the court said he did not see the need for the controversy in the courtroom.

His words: "As embarrassing as this appears, I will advise that he take the ruling of the summons of bail which he led and argued and then handover."

On his own part, Udechukwu addressing the court said it was important to be on record.

"My lord, it is already on record that I represented the defendant without an instruction from him, I don't want to implicate my matter and also avoid been summoned by the disciplinary committee," Udechukwu said.

Udechukwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) further announced to the court that he is standing down and apologizing for his actions.

Following Udechukwu's stand down, the lead counsel announced his appearance and that of another SAN, Ifeanyi Ejiofor for the first defendant.

Kanu had earlier expressed his reservation for the Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the same court, saying he has no confidence in him.

So the case was transferred to Justice John Tsoho.

READ ALSO: I am being tortured, abused by Buharis DSS  Kanu writes open letter to EU

During the last sitting on January 25, Kanus counsel, Chuks Mouma had asked the court to postpone the consideration of bail request.

After the application, Justice John Tsoho had suspended the trial till today for ruling on Kanus bail.

Federal High Court declined the bail application by pro-Biafra agitator, Nnamdi Kanu and his associates, Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi, orderd accelerated hearing.

At his ruling Tsoho said that as submitted by the respondent, the fact that Kanu has two passports - Nigerian and British - indicates the possibility of his escaping trial.

Watch the video from court below:

Udechukwu had represented the accused persons at the last bail application hearing.

Before now, another lawyer, Vincent Obetta had represented Kanu during his arraignment at the Magistrate Court and susequteubly at the Federal High Court.

Obetta had also succeeded in securing three different bail applications for Kanu in various courts.

While all the bail conditions were perfected, the defendants have remained in the custody of the State Security Services (SSS).

Obetta at some point accused the federal government of fraudulently obtaining a court order to detain his client for 90 days.

The Federal government recently filed fresh six-count charges against the embattled leader of Indigenous People of Biafra.

The government is blaming Kanu for plotting to divide Nigeria, by creating a Biafra Republic with south-east, south-south states, and parts of Kogi and Benue states, as component units.

Source: Legit.ng
Agricultural Bank blocks P2P transaction access: report Updated: 2016-01-29 15:08 By Dai Tian(chinadaily.com.cn)

Customers of Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) may find they can no longer buy peer-to-peer (P2P) investments via some third-party online payment platforms, as the bank is withdrawing such transaction access, reported Beijing Times on Thursday.

Four third-party payment platforms including ebatong.com and allinpay.com said they have received a notice from the bank, announcing the shutdown of the access, said the newspaper.

Spokesperson of the ABC declined to comment, according to the paper, while staff close to the matter confirmed the bank has started an inspection on P2P transactions.

The move comes as regulators seek to tighten supervision on China's booming P2P lending industry. According to statistics released by independent P2P portal wdzj.com, there were 2,595 P2P lending platforms in normal operation and 896 others with problems as of the end of last year.

The State Council unveiled a long-awaited draft regulation on P2P lending in December, while seeking one-month public consultation. Under the draft rules, P2P platforms will be banned from accepting public deposits, pooling investors' money to fund their own projects, or providing any kind of guarantee for lenders.

The new rules also require P2P platforms to deposit investors' money with banking institutions

The Agricultural Bank has been under the spotlight recently as two employees of its Beijing branch were reported last week to be under investigation for allegedly taking 3.9 billion yuan ($592.8 million) of bank's acceptance bills out of the branch's safe and cashing the same through repurchase transactions.
Dragonair rebranded as Cathay Dragon Updated: 2016-01-29 15:51 By Wang Ying in Shanghai(chinadaily.com.cn)

Cathay Pacific group announced on Thursday that it is rebranding its wholly-owned subsidiary, Dragonair, into Cathay Dragon, in an effort to tighten brand awareness of its two airlines' among consumers.

Dragonair was acquired by Cathay Pacific Airways in 2006, and both carriers are wholly owned by Cathay Pacific group.

"In the decision it is hoped to combine Cathay Pacific brand's international recognition and Cathay Dragon's unique connection to travelers from the Chinese mainland," said Suzanne Wong, manager of Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd in Eastern China.

It is also a response to the rising demand for transfers between the group's two airline brands, Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon, Wong added.

Among the 34 million passengers who traveled on the two carriers in 2015, more than 7 million made transfers between the airlines, five times as many from a decade ago.
- Counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, Udechukwu, steps down

- Udechukwu represented Kanu from inception of the case

- He was hired by Kanu's father in-law

A Federal High Court in Abuja has granted leave to one of the counsels represented the leader of the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, M. Udechukwu.

The judge over the case, John Tsoho said the court was granting leave to Udechukwu to the effect of the letter presented by the first defendant, Kanu.

Nnamdi Kanu is facing charges of treasonable felony from the federal government.

Udechukwu had today, January 29 informed the court that he was standing down from the case following a letter by Kanu.

He said a continued representation of the defendant could possibly lead to a summon by the judicial disciplinary committee.

READ ALSO: Why Abuja federal high court denied Kanu bail today

Also, speaking to journalists, one of the members of Udechukwu's team, Vincent Obetta said his team now ceases to represent kanu.

"I just want to use this opportunity to say that my team - a team of 10 counsels - led by M. Udechukwu ceases to represent Nnamdi Kanu," Obetta said.

Udechukwu and his team had represented the accused persons at the last bail application hearing.

Sources within the family told Legit.ng that Udechukwu was employed by the defendant's inlaw (the father of Kanu's wife) to represent the accused person.

Before now, Obetta had stood as the lead counsel representing Kanu, since his arraignment at the magistrate court.

He subsequently followed suit to represent the accused person at the Federal High Court.

Obetta had also succeeded in securing three different bails for Kanu in various courts.

While all the bail conditions were perfected, the defendant has remained in the custody of the State Security Services (SSS).

READ ALSO: Kanu writes open letter to EU

Obetta at some point accused the federal government of fraudulently obtaining a court order to detain his client for 90 days pending completion of investigation on allegations of terrorism and terrorism financing.

However, Justice John Tsoho today, January 29 denied Kanu bail.

He also ordered for an accelerated trial of the matter.

Tsoho ruled that should Kanu remain in the custody of Kuje prison throughout his trial.

The trial is expected to commence on Tuesday, February 9 through Friday, February 12.

Source: Legit.ng
A famous Islamic cleric Ahmadiyya Muslim Jumaat in Nigeria, Dr. Mashood Aderinle Fashola, has given his reasons for the Boko Haram insurgency.

He stated that the insurgency Nigeria is witnessing today is the handiwork of politicians who brew terrorism to achieve their selfish political drive.

Daily Post reports that the scholar during his inspection tour of Ahmadiyya facilities in Kano, defined the insurgency as a fight for political power which politicians use to effect themselves into significance.

READ ALSO: Bomb blast rocks Gombi market

Aderinle Fashola added that Nigerians should be wary of the antics of politicians, whose stock in trade is to deceive the masses.

He said: Lack of moral discipline, selfish interest and religious intolerance has been the major bane of the country.

The cleric further said that those who claim to be Christians and Muslim leaders only want to enrich themselves against struggle for humanity.

Fashola blamed politicians for generating the hardship people are currently suffering, continuing that if Nigerians swallow religious tolerance, we will be able to fight politicians, who want to destroy the nation.

Politicians are fond of deceiving the people if they want to loot the treasury, as you notice them coming together, but if some of them fall by the way side, you see they are employing religious sentiments to curry favour from the public.

READ ALSO: Boko Haram: Jonathan sheds light on African polity at Geneva

He asked Nigerians to support and pray for the success of President Muhammadu Buharis anti-corruption war, concluding that the only problem of the country is the lack of sincerity of purpose among its leaders.

In fresh attack in Adamawa state the Boko Haram suicide bomber has killed at least 20 people, leaving many others injured.

Source: Legit.ng
A fairy tale impact Updated: 2016-01-29 07:51 By Wu Yiyao in Shanghai(China Daily Europe)

More than 10 million people are expected to visit the highly anticipated Shanghai Disneyland in 2016, which will feature a theme park, two hotels and a range of lifestyle and retail options. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The opening of the Disney Resort in Pudong is set to give Shanghai's retail and property sectors a massive boost

The start of the new year has been a busy time for Lu Jianxin, a real estate agent with Shanghai Huayu Property. He has been getting about 50 phone calls a day as hundreds of people have been eager to find out if he can help them find retail properties near Shanghai Disney Resort, which is scheduled to open this summer.

Lu's response to most of them has largely been the same - that they should have acted earlier.

"Supplies of retail properties are really limited now and prices have more than doubled in the past 12 months. Obviously, investors believe that even a 10-square-meter space for a noodle stand will be really profitable if it is close enough to the Disney resort," says Lu.

After more than six years of construction and preparation, Shanghai Disney Resort is set to welcome its first visitors on June 16. This particular date was chosen because the number six - deemed as auspicious and symbolizing success -appears several times.

According to data from Centaline Property Agency, the average price of commercial properties within a 5-kilometer radius around Shanghai Disney Resort have grown more than 300 percent in the past five years, from some 20,000 yuan ($3,000; 2,700 euros) per square meter in 2011 to a peak of 72,000 yuan in January. This phenomenal growth rate was among the highest in Shanghai, similar to those in prime locations such as Nanjing Road, Huaihai Road and Lujiazui.

In comparison, the average price of residential properties in the same area doubled from 20,000 yuan per square meter to 40,000 yuan per square meter in the same period.

"Surging prices of commercial properties are a result of limited supplies and high demand. We estimate that the prices may grow further but at a more steady pace in the second half of 2016 after the opening of the resort," says Joe Zhou, head of research for JLL East China.
- Seeks technical assistance to deepen democracy in Nigeria

- He said the party has adequate internal mechanisms to resolve all issues within its fold

- Hon. Mark Field advised the party to ensure that it does not trash its brand in the face of challenges

logo of opposition party, PDP

The national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olisa Metuh says the party has since overcome the initial trauma that accompanied the electoral setback of the 2015 general elections, and is now poised to regain power at the center in 2019.

The PDP spokesmans view was contained in his opening remark at a meeting of the partys publicity directorate with some visiting parliamentarians from the United Kingdom, led by Rt. Hon. Mark Field, member of Parliament and Chairman of International Office of the Conservative Party, and Colin Bloom, director of outreach-BCP in Abuja on Friday.

READ ALSO: Olisa Metuhs Trial: You need to read what this new witness has to say

He told the visitors that the PDP faced serious challenges soon after it lost in the elections, culminating in the resignation of its National Chairman, a development that created some challenges within the party, but assured that every issue would be resolved by the party leadership by next week.

In his remark, Rt. Hon. Mark Field advised the party to ensure that it does not trash its brand in the face of challenges. He noted that while it is common for some party members to demand the removal of leaders after electoral defeat, care must be taken not to jeopardize institutional memory in the party.

"Never trash your brand no matter whatever the government of the day is saying about you", he admonished the PDP.

READ ALSO: Again! Court adjourns Metuhs case till next month

The interaction was attended by PDP publicity staff, social media operatives of the party and officials of the International Republican Institute (IRI), who facilitated the visit.

Chief Metuh said the recent variance of voices from its members is as a result of the partys foundation of liberal democracy, which he described as a mark of strength, adding that the party has adequate internal mechanisms to resolve all issues within its fold.

Recall that Metuh was only released on bail yesterday, January 28.

Source: Legit.ng
- 18 core revenue generating agencies, such as NNPC, will be audited by KPMG

- SIAO will audit other non-core revenue generating agencies

- As at Dec. 31, 2015 the Excess Crude Account stood at $2.26 billion

NNPC, One of the agencies the FG will probe

The federal governments anti-corruption war has been extended to 81 government agencies, News Agency of Nigeria is reporting.

The agencies, which are revenue generating will undergo forensic audit following the approval of the National Economic Council (NEC) yesterday, Thursday, January 28 in Abuja.

According to Mr Ambode, 18 core revenue generating agencies, such as NNPC, will be audited by KPMG, an international audit firm, while an indigenous firm, SIAO, will audit other non-core revenue generating agencies.

READ ALSO: You need to read what Nigerians are saying about Ineffectual Buffoon tag on Jonathan

The governor said that NEC would take further action on the agencies after the firms had completed the forensic auditing.

The Jigawa governor said that the accountant-general of the federation reported to council that as at Dec. 31, 2015 the Excess Crude Account stood at $2.26 billion.

The governor said that the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, informed the council of the standing of the bailout funds given to states.

He said that 23 states had benefitted from N10 billion each, Excess Crude Account-backed soft loan, while 28 states benefitted from the presidential bailout for the payment of salaries and gratuities.

Governor Obiano gave a report concerning some MDAs collecting revenue in foreign currency and remitting in local currency into the Federation Account.

Mr Obiano said the permanent secretary, Ministry of Finance, reported that besides NNPC, NIMASA and NPA, other agencies involved in such practice were FIRS, Shippers Council, Airport Authority and Nigeria Immigration Service.

He added that the official reported that the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) had resolved the problem as all account was now under the CBN.

He also said that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who presided at the NEC, reiterated the Federal Governments policy that NNPC and other agencies must present budget for approval before spending in line with the TSA.

Mr. Udoma hinted on the 2016 budget focus of the administration, saying that plans were on to foster macro-economic stability conducive to the grow of the GDP at 4.2 per cent.

READ ALSO: Dasukigate: How an elder statesman disgraced himself

He said the budgets objective was to deliver inclusive growth to Nigerians, create sufficient jobs and build an economy less vulnerable to oil price shocks.

According to Mr. Udoma, while the government intends to ensure more revenue drive, it will not increase taxes, but strive to raise the collection of VAT from its 20 per cent level.

Source: Legit.ng
CGN forges French links to reach new markets Updated: 2016-01-29 07:51 By Tuo Yannan in Paris, France(China Daily Europe)

China General Nuclear Power Group has outlined plans to become the largest solar energy distributor in France and extend its partnership with French companies in third-party markets.

In line with China's Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to boost connectivity and trade between China and Europe, CGN has accelerated efforts in recent years to link up with French partners and explore foreign renewable energy markets.

This year, the Chinese state-owned enterprise has said it will work with French companies to develop projects in Europe and Africa.

The company says it will enter the French solar power sector through its subsidiary, CGN Europe Energy, and join hands with French company Inovia Concept Development to build solar generators in the next few years.

Inovia will handle construction and maintenance of the solar facilities, according to Johnny Schlomacher, the company's chief executive.

"The cooperation has great significance to Chinese enterprises and is a milestone for the China-France renewable energy partnership," says Lu Wei, general manager of CGN Europe Energy. "It will enable us to build power stations with an installed capacity of 500 megawatts of solar energy and create as many as 3,000 direct and indirect jobs in France."
Cushman & Wakefield today announces that David M Johnston MRICS, Head of Office Agency in Budapest, has accepted the invitation from the EMEA Board and has been promoted to Partner with the effect from Friday 1 January 2016.

David M Johnston joined Cushman & Wakefields Budapest Office Agency team...

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The University of Mainz has agreed leases of around 3,700 sq m of office space with Internos Global Investors, acting on behalf of the Euro Property 1 fund. They include a new ten-year lease on a total of 1,565 sq m of office space on the ground floor and second

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The customisations were done by Pune-based Ace Customs Motorcycles

Motorcycle customisation is an active form of business in Indias automotive scenario. Over the years, we have come across many interesting modifications done to popular names on the two-wheeler market. Some of these examples are exceptionally good as well  such as the recent creations based on Royal Enfields 650 Twins. Vehicle customisation is no easy process and is often done to express ones creativity and engineering expertise.

Pune-based Ace Customs Motorcycles has chosen a few Bajaj products and tried to bring their aesthetics as close as possible to popular Harley-Davidson models. The donor motorcycles mostly include the Bajaj Pulsar 180, Avenger 180 and Avenger 220. Rohit Wahurwagha, who owns Ace Customs Motorcycles, shared that his firm is presently working on a few projects, held up due to COVID-19 lockdown.

Rohit is confident that Ace Customs Motorcycles can mod any motorcycle according to the clients requirement. Outside the field of motorcycle customisation, Rohit works in the IT sector. He engages in his motorcycle projects mostly over the weekend and plans to grow the passion for bike modification into a full-time profession. Coming from a non-automotive background, his works have been decently executed (especially considering there was not much external help). One of these projects was documented in a video.

As mentioned before, Ace Customs Motorcycles have mostly undertaken customisations based on Bajaj products. The firm has modified a Bajaj Pulsar 180 into a Harley Bobber, complete with the factory fuel tank of a Harley-Davidson Street 750. The motorcycle sports USD front forks and a rear monoshock suspension among other custom body components. The styling definitely turns some heads since the only single-cylinder or affordable bobber on the market is Jawa Motorcycles Perak.

Ace Customs has also modified a Bajaj Avenger 220 into a conventional Harley-Davidson design. The cruising characteristics of the Avenger were retained but in a different approach. Either Avenger model differs from each other just by their seating configuration. The yellow fuel tank is the same unit from Harleys Street 750.

Finally, Ace Customs Motorcycles has converted another Bajaj Avenger (this time its a Street 180) to what seems like a Harley-Davidson Forty-Eight. The tank was borrowed from a Harley-Davidson Iron 883. The wheels are much bigger and theres an exposed air-intake which takes inspiration from the American motorcycle makers custom parts. Ace Customs Motorcycles are eagerly looking forward to the withdrawal of COVID-19 lockdown protocols to continue with its pending projects.
Horizons expand for Chinese companies in France Updated: 2016-01-29 07:49 By Tuo Yannan(China Daily Europe)

Chinese companies investing in France are entering a new era of opportunity, one that is likely to continue with government officials and industry leaders expressing optimism for surging Chinese investment in France in 2016.

While both countries can build on a remarkable history and culture, it is their modern-day role, with China as the largest developing and emerging market and France as a core member of the European Union that gives rise to optimism about the future.

"In the past half century, the China-France relationship has been strategic, in the forefront of China's relationship with Western countries," says Gao Yuanyuan, counselor of economic and commercial affairs in the Chinese embassy in France. "Chinese-French economic and trade relations are an important part of this strategic partnership and both countries have an important impact on the world economy."

Bank of China's office building in Paris. The bank works with many French companies, such as Renault and Airbus, on renminbi transactions and trades. Photos Provided to China Daily

Since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1964, Gao says, both countries have forged a mutually beneficial relationship in many fields.

But in recent years, the promotion of business ties has seen remarkable progress and Gao notes that China has become France's largest trading partner in Asia, while France is China's fourth-largest trading partner in the European Union.

Indeed, Chinese investment in France has been rising and the combined direct investment was more than $4.4 billion by the end of 2013, up more than 12.6 percent year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

France has seen several significant Chinese investment projects in the past two years. Chinese giant Fosun clinched control of Club Mediterranee, the French holiday group, for $1.3 billion, and China General Nuclear Power Group, the country's biggest nuclear power reactor operator, signed a partnership deal with French energy giant EDF to build a nuclear power plant in the United Kingdom.

When China and France established diplomatic relations in 1964, bilateral trade volume was only $100 million, while in 2014, this figure had surged to $56 billion. Cooperation spans many sectors, such as nuclear energy, high-speed rail, aviation and aerospace, Gao adds, pointing to further investment in green energy, healthcare, agriculture, food, finance and e-commerce.

This means that Chinese companies have a bigger presence in the country, according to Phan Nhay, president of Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in France, and country head of Bank of China France.

"I have witnessed Chinese enterprise groups establish an ever-increasing presence over the past 10 years in France. In 2007 when we initiated the chamber, we only had about 20 Chinese members. The number increased to 62 in 2015."

Gao says that in the past 40 years "since China's reform and opening-up, French investment in the Chinese market has grown significantly, covering all areas of industry and services. Chinese investment in France has also seen a rapid increase in recent years. By the end of September 2015, cumulative investment from China to France had reached $8.64 billion, and large investments and cooperation projects continue to emerge.

The trend is obvious, says Phan. "Especially in the past two or three years, the pace of investment has risen sharply and is increasing. Many projects are worth more than $1 billion in investment terms".

Phan points out that a decade ago, Chinese companies had entered the French market in just a few areas such as nuclear energy, finance and aviation. But now Chinese investment covers a multitude of sectors, including chemicals, public services, vehicle manufacturing, aerospace, nuclear power plants, telecommunications, hotels, tourist facilities, as well as shipping and other industries.

Some emerging industries such as financial services, industrial machinery and equipment, renewable energy, airport facilities, agriculture, food and environmental protection have also benefited from Chinese investment.

Chinese advantages

China enjoys a number of advantages in building its partnership with France, according to Gao.

Chinese production capacity and manufacturing output lead the world, while France has advantages in terms of innovation, research and design.

Coupled with this has been a change in perceptions, Phan says. The image of Chinese brands and products has been transformed in the past 10 years. French consumers considered Chinese products cheap in price and also low in quality, but they now enjoy better reputation with obvious quality improvements and increasing technology giving added value. This has led to a major shift in European consumer sentiment.

As the world's biggest telecommunication equipment provider, China's telecommunication giant Huawei has been present in France since 2003. Song Kai, general director of Huawei France, says that at the outset, when selling Huawei's smartphone in France, local telecom carriers were not willing to let the Chinese company print its logo on phones as they thought it might hinder sales.

"Now we have our logo front and back," says Song. "After we built up our brand base on good quality and services, local consumers recognized our brand, and are willing to pay a premium for our products." In 2014 the company became the only Chinese brand to enter the French International Brand Rank.

Huawei is not the only Chinese company to have witnessed the change in perceptions. Sichuan Changhong Electric Co Ltd manufactured China's first TV sets in 1972.

But when the company established its European office in 2005 it encountered a negative brand perception.

"In the early stages when French customers were buying our products, they asked us to remove our logo, because they thought it would be embarrassing having a Chinese brand in front of their friends in their living room," recalls Ning Ken, general manager of the company in Europe.

So we tested the market with our 32-inch set, which can be put in the bedroom and that was more readily accepted by customers. Now our brand is welcomed by customers and can be found at many electronic equipment stores.

"In 2000, just 150,000 sets were sold in Europe but in 2014 we sold 1 million. Now overseas sales account for around 20 percent of our sales," Ning says, stating that the goal is to reach 2 million sets in sales annually in the next three years.

The French service industry has also attracted many Chinese companies. As the largest bank for renminbi overseas trading, Bank of China works with many French companies, such as Renault and Airbus, on renminbi transactions and trades.

The yuan is used in more than 44 percent of bilateral transactions between the two countries and will become an increasingly important currency in the near future, the bank's president Chen Siqing says. This is a major turnaround, he added, as only three years ago just 6.5 percent of transactions between France and China were settled using the yuan.

To cater to growing market needs, a Bank of China renminbi clearing center opened in Paris in 2014, and it became the first Chinese bank in France providing yuan clearing services.

Last year, during Premier Li Keqiang's visit to France, the countries decided to launch a third-party market cooperation agreement, marking a new stage for Chinese-French cooperation.

This means that through joint development, investment, and production in some third-country markets, both countries will bring more products made by both countries to the global market, and the codevelopment model will become a prime example for other Western countries to working with China in the future, Gao says.

Challenges remain

Even though the French have introduced more favorable policies for Chinese investors, such as faster processing for visas and local residency permits, there are still many challenges for Chinese companies entering the French market, says Phan.

Labor and tax laws are very different from Chinese ones, he explains. For example, French tax law has more than 1,000 pages and changes every year, but every company must understand it when entering the market.

"Due diligence is very important for a Chinese company considering entering the European market. Some Chinese companies encounter difficulties or are even forced to exit the French market due to lack of due diligence," Phan adds.

This viewpoint is echoed by Wu Shaohua, head of the French division of the Export-Import Bank of China. Wu stresses the importance of Chinese companies being up to date on the French legal framework and conducting due diligence before rushing into unfamiliar market territory.

tuoyannan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 01/29/2016 page1)
Renault Kwid based electric small car has made its debut at the Auto Expo 2020.

Already launched in China, the new Renault Kwid electric hatchback is expected to be launched in India later this year. It has now been showcased at the 2020 Auto Expo to gauge customer interest. Once launched, Kwid electric will be the perfect rival to the upcoming Maruti WagonR electric.

Compared to the regular Kwid, the electric Kwid gets a new bumper design and full LED headlamps. It also receives a new grille, new LED tail lamps and redesigned rear bumper while front air intake and rear air outlets are just for design with no real function since it gets an EV powertrain.

In terms of charging, Renault is expected to offer the Kwid EV with multiple charging options, making charging possible via both domestic and public chargers. Charging updates will be seen on the instrument clustering indicating remaining battery charge, distance to empty and the nearest charging station.

The electric motor is developed in association with DongFeng of China and will have a driving range of 250 kms in the NEDC cycle. In compliance with new safety regulations, the Renault Kwid EV will also get more airbags, 4 disc brakes, a sun roof and rear parking sensors.

Renault India also awaits the Government policy on electric vehicle charging in India ahead of official launch of the Kwid EV in the country. The launch of this new electric vehicle in India follows electric vehicles being tested by other automakers.

The Maruti Suzuki WagonR EV is currently under test along with the electric version of the Mahindra KUV100. Tata is also expected to launch Tiago electric in the future, which is a potential rival to the Kwid EV.

At the moment, there is no word from Renault about a potential launch date for the EV in India. However, considering the recent developments and the increasing push from government to move towards EVs, it is safe to presume that the car will be in launched sooner than expected.
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d6MA8ARiO4" target="_blank">YouTube/Nordens Ark</a></p>

Staff at Nordens Ark, a zoo in Sweden, suddenly found themselves caring for two maned wolf cubs when their mother tragically passed away from tumors just six days after they were born. Because their mother had taken such good care of them the first few days, the staff decided to try bottle feeding the cubs, and the results were successful (and adorable). YouTube/Nordens Ark

Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Couple Meets A Beach Dog In Mexico Who Changes Their Life

As the cubs continued to be bottle fed they grew bigger, stronger ... YouTube/Nordens Ark

And of course, more playful.

Sadly, they were still without a role model or someone to care for them, but there was one person that staff thought maybe be able to help ... their father. "Maned wolves are solitary and live alone even though the male and female share the same living area, so the female takes sole care of the cubs," a staff member at Nordens Ark told The Dodo. "Our male has been very involved from the beginning and has stayed outside the den to guard the cubs." Since the dad of the pups seemed unusually invested in them, the staff decided to try introducing him to the cubs ... with the sweetest results.
Jeffrey Menendez may be behind bars, but he has a reason to smile. Menendez, who is homeless and living in Colorado, was charged with misdemeanors and ordered to serve 30 days in a Denver County jail - though that nearly resulted in a lifetime sentence of heartache. At the time of his arrest, for starting an illegal campfire, he was torn away from his only companion in the world: his dog, Bonnie. As Menendez headed to jail, she was taken to a "kill" shelter run by the county. Denver County Sheriff's Office

Denver County Sheriff's Office

Once behind bars, Menendez was inconsolable, and it soon became clear as to why. After failing to abide by one of the jail's rules, he was sent to speak with the jail captain, who noticed Menendez was in distress and offered a sympathetic ear. "He was upset about his dog, because he didn't know what was going to happen to her," Simon Crittle, a Denver Sheriff Department spokesman, told The Dodo. "The inmate was very concerned that he'd never see his dog again. He was even more concerned that the dog might be put down." That's when the officers at the jail decided to step in and help him. "They just realized that this dog means everything to this man," said Crittle. Denver County Sheriff's Office

Denver County Sheriff's Office

Bonnie, it turns out, was still alive - and authorities saw fit to make sure she stayed that way. "The officers contacted the animal shelter, which is also a city run facility. They spoke to the folks that run the shelter and made arrangements for the dog to be held there for this inmate until he got out," Crittle said. "Apparently this is unusual for them to hold an animal like this, but they made an exception." To fulfill the request to keep Bonnie, the shelter required that the cost of her care, $246 for the month, be paid for. For that, the officers contacted New Hope Cattle Dogs Rescue of Colorado, a non-profit group who offered to cover the fee. Menendez was ecstatic to hear this news. "The dog goes everywhere with him. He's a guy who's fallen on hard times, so I think that's a big reason why the dog is so important to him," Crittle said. "Now he's going to get out this weekend and get his dog back." This isn't the first time officers have teamed up with the rescue group to make sure an inmates dog is looked after until they are released, says Crittle, describing them as dog lovers, too: "We want to do the right thing." For folks interested in pitching in, here's a link to New Hope Cattle Dogs Rescue of Colorado's donation page.
It was a little after 8 o'clock, on a bright, typically sunny morning in a Florida suburb. Gillian Palacios was loading her car and getting her little boy ready for school. Then came a knock at the door. Duchess, the family dog, leapt to the door, her tail whirring like a helicopter.

Gillian Palacios

Palacios opened the door, just a little at first. The officer was passing by her home in Florida City. He thought the open car door was suspicious and wanted to check up on the homeowner. Duchess poked her nose out. "From the moment he saw she was sticking out of the door, he was already putting his hand on his gun," Palacios tells The Dodo. Duchess slipped outside. "The first shot hit her when she was a couple of feet from my front door," Palacios says, her voice raw with grief. Two more shots followed. When the woman's daughter leaned over Duchess, her tail was still wagging.

Gillian Palacios

"What the hell did you do?" a distraught Palacios screamed. But he was already returning to his car, where he immediately got on the radio. On the surveillance video that captured the incident, her daughter is seen weeping over Duchess, the dog the family took home after finding her abandoned at a gas station. "I just never would have imagined that in a million years," Palacios says. "She wasn't barking. She wasn't growling. It wasn't in any kind of way an aggressive approach."

Gillian Palacios

The Florida City Police Department did not return The Dodo's request for comment, but since the incident happened last October, it has steadfastly supported the officer, identified as Detective Marcus Terry. "We don't have the luxury of hindsight," spokesman Ken Armenteros told Local 10 Newsin October. "We have to use the information that is given to us in a split second. So, the officer has to make that decision with the information that he has available." Duchess weighed around 40 pounds, and while her breed wasn't entirely clear, Palacios says she may have had some pit bull in her.

Dodo Shows Odd Couples Dog Is So Gentle And Patient With Her Foster Kittens

Gillian Palacios

A loose designation at best, the label can cover any dog from an American Staffordshire terrier to a English bull terrier. What's clear, however, is a disturbing theme in police encounters with these dogs. A family pit bull was shot by officers in Spokane, Washington, this week after the dog reportedly escaped from a house and attacked a police dog. Earlier this year, a pit bull puppy in Clayton County, Georgia, was killed by police in front of neighbors and family. Another police shooting, this time in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, ended a pit bull's life. Indeed, the cases of dogs being killed by police are so numerous, a Facebook group has been set up to document them. So far, Dogs Shot By Police has drawn more than 15,000 members. And, time and time again, pit bulls in particular are at the wrong end of those encounters.

While officers maintain they're protecting themselves, others suggest the breed is being unfairly singled out. "There has never been a case of a police officer being fatally injured by a dog to our knowledge," Janis Bradley, director of communications and publications for the National Canine Research Council (NCRC), tells The Dodo.

But then again, an irrational fear of pit bulls may transcend law enforcement. In an Arizona State University study, subjects were given two pictures of the same dog. They were told the dog in just one of those pictures is a pit bull. The result? The dog with the pit bull label was invariably deemed more menacing. "Once a dog is labelled as a pit bull," Bradley says, "People in general will perceive that dog more negatively than if that label had not been there with the exactly the same dog." Being wary of a certain kind of dog is one thing, but when those humans are armed police officers, the outcome can all-too-easily take a turn for the tragic.

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice reached out to the NCRC, asking the organization to create a series of educational materials for police officers to help them navigate encounters with dogs - a shrewd move considering that at least one in three U.S. households owns a dog. "There has not historically been any specific training for police in how to deal with dogs that they encounter in the performance of their duty," Bradley notes.

"A very, very large percentage of people regard their dogs as a member of their family," Bradley adds, "which means that when there is an incident like a police officer shooting a dog, it causes a great deal of disruption, both for that particular family and within the community. It drives a wedge between the police and community." The result of the NCRC's collaboration with the Department of Justice? A five-part video series designed for use in daily police briefings that aims to help officers recognize dog behavior and defuse situations - without resorting to violence.

"I think one of the most effective segments in the videos is the one where the trainer is teaching officers to adjust their own body language and it completely changes the response of the dog," Bradley says. "It's like turning on a switch. If you change your own body language, you can defuse the threat of the dog." Of course, another key factor is simply an officer's natural affinity for animals. "If you have an officer who grew up with very little value for companion animals, you have a long road to try to teach them better," Jim Crosby, a former police lieutenant in Jacksonville, Florida, tells The Dodo. "If you have an officer who was an animal lover, they are probably not the ones shooting a dog."

While Crosby admits there may be a "certain amount of bias" against so-called bully breeds, he recalls one case in which a Florida officer shot an 11-pound Lhasa apso. "There are degrees of stupid," he says.

And, increasingly, that poor judgment could end up costly. Recently a police department in Commerce City, Colorado, learned that lesson the hard way. The city was forced to pay a family $262,500 - hailed as the biggest settlement of its kind - after police shot and killed a pit bull mix. "Some departments have not trained their officers to do anything but shoot a threat," Crosby explains. "They have been through training for humans kind of grudgingly but they have never addressed the idea of using less than just shooting towards a dog. "Part of the problem we have," he adds, "is that police officers see something that looks to them like a pit bull and make behavioral and threat assessments simply based on physical appearance - and on myths that are not correct but are persistent." Myths like a pit bull's so-called locking jaw. Or the animal's mythical bite pressure.

Since retiring, Crosby has become a renowned expert on dog behavior, working with police officers to help them read situations involving dogs. He recently produced a video series as well, collaborating with the National Sheriffs' Association, to build dog awareness programs for police.

Crosby admits that during his days as an officer, he saw the occasional "twistos who get their jollies off by shooting dogs." "That's disturbing," he says. "That's really messed up."

But the times, despite headline-snatching headlines, may be changing. "There is a better way of doing things and we don't need to shoot," he adds. The key to getting that message across to police departments? "Sometimes you have to sue them or cost them a bunch of money," he says. But there are other, more proactive ways agencies are starting to show their dog sensitivities. In one remarkable case, a police department in Poughkeepsie, New York, has hired a pit bull named Kiah. She covers all the usual police dog duties - drug sniffing, tracking missing people - but also doubles as a goodwill ambassador for the department as well as the breed.

"The breed isn't important," trainer Brad Croft told the Associated Press. "It's what's inside of the dog that's important." For Gillian Palacios and her family, the effort comes terribly, too late. The memory of losing Duchess on her doorstep at the hands of a police officer remains seared in her memory. But Duchess does leave a legacy. Palacios and her daughter have been rescuing dogs for years through a local organization. But after they lost their own dog, they decided to open their own animal rescue. It's in the process of being registered as a nonprofit charity. But the name is locked in: Duchess Bully Rescue.

Gillian Palacios
Jacques Rivette, a French director who was a secretive pioneer of convention-bashing New Wave film and was renowned for creating rich roles for women such as Emmanuelle Beart, died Jan. 29 in Paris. He was 87.

He reportedly had Alzheimers disease. French President Francois Hollande, in a statement announcing Mr. Rivettes death, hailed him as a cineaste of the woman. Serge Toubiana of the Cinematheque museum in Paris described Mr. Rivettes sense of conspiracy, sense of secrecy and the magnificent place he provided to female characters.

Mr. Rivettes films epitomized the French New Wave, a cinematic style that relied on unconventional storytelling. His works appeared at elite film festivals and had a devoted following, although they did not always enjoy commercial success.

Among his most noted films were La Religieuse (The Nun), adapted from a novel by Diderot and censored when it was released in 1966; the award-winning, nearly four-hour La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker) with Beart, about a painter and his nude model, released in 1991; and a 1994 version of the Joan of Arc story called Jeanne la Pucelle starring Sandrine Bonnaire.

Mr. Rivette also was known for Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), once described in the Boston Globe as a three-hour comic fantasia on fiction and reality. The critic Dave Kehr, writing in the New York Times, described that film and Noroit and Duelle, also directed by Mr. Rivette in the 1970s, as feminist fantasy films.

Mr. Rivette worked without scripts, told stories within stories and disregarded rules of commercial cinema, notably with his 12 hour, 40 minute Out 1 (1971), a film made all the more legendary because few have seen it in its entirety. Speaking with the New York Post, Mr. Rivette once remarked that it could be traumatizing to read reviews of his work.

With often-tousled hair and a slight stature, Mr. Rivette was less widely known than other New Wave icons Francois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard. Like them, he started out as a film critic and was the first of the group to make his own movies.

Jacques Pierre Louis Rivette was born in Rouen, France, on March 1, 1928. In the early years of his career, he was a critic for Cahiers du Cinema, a Paris film journal where he was editor-in-chief from 1963 to 1965.

He was a cameraman for filmmakers including Truffaut and Eric Rohmer before directing his first feature-length film, Paris Nous Appartient (Paris Belongs to Us), the story of a young woman on Pariss Left Bank, in 1961. His last film was 2009s 36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup (Around a Small Mountain).

He was the most experimental of the French New Wave directors, filmmaker Martin Scorsese said in a statement. Mr. Rivette was a fascinating artist, and its strange to think that hes gone. Because if you came of age when I did, the New Wave still seems new. I suppose it always will.

A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

More than half a century ago, Mr. Rivette wrote in the Cahiers du Cinema that there are things that should only be faced with fear and trembling; death, without a doubt, is one of them.
More of the same: Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra show the joys of the familiar as they prepare for their European tour. (photo: Scott Suchman) (Scott Suchman)

People often ask me if I write parts of my Thursday night reviews of the National Symphony Orchestra ahead of time, since I have to file within 90 minutes of the concerts end. I never do, but I might have been tempted to this week for the NSOs performance of Schuberts Unfinished Symphony and Beethovens Seventh Symphony.

There is a story, or several stories, to be told. Christoph Eschenbach and the orchestra are leaving Tuesday to play, for two weeks, a predominantly Central European program in Europe, bringing Brahms and Beethoven to Munich and Vienna and Berlin. Is the NSO really able to compete with the cream of Europes orchestras in their best-known repertory? Has it given up on the idea of being American, apart from the token presence of Christopher Rouses Phaethon on four of the 12 tour programs? Do audiences really want to hear the same works over and over  something supported by the timidity of the current crop of orchestral season announcements but belied by the empty seats in the concert hall Thursday night? And has the NSO become Eschenbachs orchestra  a question given poignancy by Eschenbachs sudden lame-duck status since the announcement of Gianandrea Noseda as the orchestras next music director?

But the music is most important. And a good part of the story of Thursdays performance, it turned out, is the way that great pieces remain great and remind you of what made you fall in love with music in the first place. The Schubert, certainly, showed moments of Eschenbach at his best.

Eschenbach brings intensity to the podium. Even when he walks on the lighter side  like the overture to Webers Der Freischutz that opened the program  Im often left feeling that weve taken a long journey together. For some people, this is an asset. To me, in this overture, it seemed like more effort than necessary: lots of starts and stops, lots of slowing and speeding up, rushing through the quick passages and drawing out the long ones.

But Schuberts Unfinished Symphony is a journey indeed, and here Eschenbachs approach  delving deeply into the music, probing and questioning each note, and being swamped, time and again, in waves of emotion  paid off. It took a little while. At the start, Eschenbach made space for some gorgeous horn playing, but then slowed everything down so much around them that the phrase fizzled away and yielded to anticlimax rather than delivering on a promise.

But toward the end of the movement, in the complex, dark, frenzied tangles Schubert wove out of one of the most beautiful melodies in the repertoire, Eschenbach found an ache and anger and savage beauty that seemed at once completely of our time and completely the way the music was supposed to go. Can even the loveliest cello playing of the most gorgeous music, the music seemed to ask, assuage this?

The Beethoven bore Eschenbachs stamp from the start: the chords at the beginning were explosive, exciting and a little late. It continued with other Eschenbach hallmarks, including his habit of eliding the break between movements (with impressive, turn-on-a-dime shifts from one musical chapter into another) and a general tendency toward an appealing exuberance that can sometimes run into heaviness, or sloppiness. Overall, the appealing part won out, and the orchestra sounded bright and eager and ready. Just because youre bringing coals to Newcastle doesnt mean you cant start your own vivid fire.

The orchestra will perform slightly different programs on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.


Bernie Sanders greets supporters at a campaign rally in Fairfield, Iowa, on Thursday afternoon. (Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters)

Every morning and every evening, and sometimes in between, this rural community appears to undergo a massive outbreak of narcolepsy. Gathering in giant domes or sitting in the privacy of their own homes, hundreds of men and women will take the time to close their eyes, bow their heads and sit motionless for 20 minutes.

With the caucuses just days away, this unlikely mecca for practitioners of Transcendental Meditation is getting a jolt of activity. There have been visits from Hillary Clinton, as well as HUD Secretary Julian Castro, her who-knows-maybe potential running mate. Ted Cruz drew a big crowd to the small convention center here on a Tuesday night.

But it was Bernie Sanders whose visit Thursday got the most buzz about town  and its he who might benefit most from the Maharishi effect.

He represents a higher level of cognitive development, said Sam Farling, a volunteer organizer here for Sanders. Hillary Clinton may have the almost militaristic level of organizing  but we have the passion.

Farling, a Vietnam veteran originally from Ohio, migrated here decades ago for the same reason as many Fairfield residents: the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

The gloriously bearded guru, who died in 2008 at age 90 , launched the Beatles and Mia Farrow on spiritual quests and made the ancient Indian tradition of meditation hip. He also helped transform a sleepy farm town into the enlightenment capital of southeastern Iowa: When a group of his acolytes outgrew their digs in California in t he early 1970s, they came here, snapping up a newly defunct liberal arts college at a bargain price.

Now the Maharishi University of Management dominates the town with its 1,000 students, two 25,000-square-foot meditation domes (over one million hours of transcending has occurred here)  and a bountiful crop of Bernie 2016 stickers in the parking lot.

I think in general its a weird school, so people here tend to be more open-minded to new and different things, said student Kennidy Stood. Bernie represents a certain ideal, and people arent as afraid here to go for that.



Students practicing meditation at Maharihi University with teacher Siggi Lamothe in 2004. (Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on an early visit to the Fairfield school named for him. (United Press International)

As a consciousness-based learning institution, Maharishi requires students to practice TM; they are encouraged to get brain scans as they start at the university and right before they leave, to see how meditation has affected them. While many other spiritual fads of the 70s have petered out or been deemed too cultish, TM has held steady, even gaining in popularity as the ancient art of yoga has also entered the mainstream.

Its unlikely the Army and National Institutes of Health would fund a cult, said Maharishis executive vice president, Craig Pearson, noting various grants the school has received.

The schools sensibilities have taken hold in Fairfield, as a number of TM practitioners (who call each other Ru, short for guru) have put down roots. Even the mayor, Ed Malloy (Im caucusing for Hillary, and my wife is caucusing for Bernie), is a Long Island transplant who came here for the meditation.

Many homes face east, their roofs topped with golden Hersheys Kiss-shaped ornaments; the town boasts a hip coffee shop, an upcycled goods center, vegetarian joints and six Indian restaurants.

But still, this is small-town Iowa, home to farmers and foundry workers and the Iowa Cattle Associations best burger of 2015. And for all his old-hippie credentials, not everyone here is in the tank for Sanders.

A lot of our community is really hard-wired to look at the most idealistic version of everything, said Holly Moore, a 1979 Maharishi graduate who is volunteering for Clinton. But Im so pragmatic. I dont think life is all about sitting somewhere with my eyes closed, and not all about a level of activity. Its a combination of the two.

There are even TMers who vote Republican.

Its really about being against the establishment, said Doug Stewart, a Cruz supporter. Its more typical for a GOP TMer to lean libertarian, though. This is, after all, the only county in Iowa that Ron Paul won in 2008.

If I dont vote for Rand Paul, I might vote for Bernie, said David Ballou, who is helping run one of the caucus locations in town.

Jeff Shipley, the 27-year-old chairman of the county GOP, says hes not your typical Republican  hes as keen on legalization and the antiwar movement as he is on fiscal conservatism  and even he can almost feel the Bern.

The point of the meditation is to create world peace, said Shipley, who is himself not a meditator. You had thousands of people come here with the idea of creating a better world, and they like Bernie for that. If I was a Democrat, Id support him without a doubt.



Voters look on as Sanders speaks in Fairfield. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

Two hours before the Vermont senator showed up, the line to the convention center had begun to snake through town. Its like Hillary 2.0, said a local photographer shooting the scene.

I had to move a dentist appointment up to early this afternoon to make this, said David Goodman, a Transcendental Meditationist. The Novocain is just wearing off.

The actress Gaby Hoffmann (Transparent) stood in the back wearing a shirt with a stenciled rendering of Sanderss face, having come to Iowa for 24 hours to support a candidate she has never met. (But he shops at the same health-food store as my best friends mom.) Susan Sarandon opened the show for him.

I came from New York, the Oscar winner said to knowing applause. For me, the one thing that is important is consistency and moral courage.

When Sanders took the stage, his voice hoarse from repeating his mantra about income inequality at stops across the state, the crowd broke their reverie and screamed approval for their honorary Ru.

Theres an open question about whether Sanders is going to be able to turn this enthusiasm into actual caucus-goers. Its Clinton who has a downtown phone-bank operation here and a field organizer as well as a klatch of volunteers.

But Fairfield residents are highly trained at keeping cool. If the candidate they adore cant pull it off, theyll find peace somehow.

People who meditate get in the harmony with the deepest flow of life, Farling said, and we already know that overall everything is going to turn out wonderful.
Despite scattered reports of travelers being required to pass through the TSAs scanners, the agency insists that theres only a small chance youll be screened by the controversial machines if you dont want to be. (ERIK S. LESSER/European Pressphoto Agency)

These are confusing times for airline passengers.

In recent weeks, the government has made two surprising policy changes: First, the Transportation Security Administration announced that screening with a full-body scanner would no longer be optional for some passengers, and then the Department of Homeland Security said that soon your state-issued drivers license might not be sufficient ID for you to pass through the airport screening area.

The result? Travelers are less certain about the airport screening experience than theyve been in years.

Despite scattered reports of travelers being required to pass through the TSAs scanners, the agency insists that theres only a small chance youll be screened by the controversial machines if you dont want to be. In other words, you can generally still opt out and receive what the agency refers to as an enhanced pat-down from an agent. And your state-issued ID will continue to work until 2018, and probably long after that, even if it doesnt comply with the new federal standards.

The full-body scanners represent the most high-profile public concern. Since the agency assigned to protect Americas transportation systems implemented its new no-opt-out policy Dec. 18, there have been a few media reports of agents insisting that passengers use the scanners.

[What the TSAs new body-scanner rules mean for you]

A passenger with the TSAs PreCheck designation in Akron, Ohio, complained in a comment on a civil rights blog that shed been selected for a mandatory scanning. PreCheck is an expedited-screening program that costs $85 for a five-year membership and allows you to bypass the full-body scanners.

The agent handed me a laminated green sheet and told me I was randomly selected for additional screening and needed to go through the full-body screening machine, said Tara MacLaren, a marketing consultant who works for a Houston-based software company. When I tried to opt out, I was told that was no longer an option for those with TSA PreCheck.

MacLaren reports that she pushed back, telling the agents she was pregnant. Only then did the agents relent, allowing her to be screened with a metal detector.

I was not given any assurance that my pregnancy will be sufficient opt-out justification in the future, just told that the rules had changed and those with TSA PreCheck are not eligible for opting out, she said.

Ann Hobbs, a retired lawyer from Silver Spring, Md., also had a PreCheck notation on her boarding pass when she flew out of Baltimore-Washington International Airport in late December. Initially, she walked through a metal detector. I was then told to go through the full-body scanner, having been randomly selected, she says. This seemed rather odd to me. Why wouldnt the selection have been made before I went through the metal detector?

Hobbs says shes worried about the long-term health effects of the scanners, a technology that she believes has not been adequately tested. We are the guinea pigs, she says.

In another incident, a TSA agent in Seattle told a London-based privacy advocate named Sai that he would be required to go through the scanner. A lengthy argument, captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, ensued. Eventually, a manager overruled a supervisor, allowing Sai to undergo a pat-down instead.

The TSA refused to comment on the incidents. A representative said that generally, passengers undergoing screening will have the opportunity to decline being screened by a full-body scanner. However, some passengers will be required to undergo screening [with a scanner] if their boarding pass indicates that they have been selected for enhanced screening, said Bruce Anderson, a TSA spokesman.

It remains unclear how someone might be selected for mandatory full-body screening. When I flew from San Antonio to Orlando recently, an agent told me that only travelers in the Terrorist Screening Database, a registry of more than 1 million names, would be required to go through the machine. But other passengers are also being randomly sent through the scanners, notably air travelers with PreCheck privileges.

The random selection process can work both ways. In Orlando on a busy Monday, I witnessed an agent allowing four passengers at a time to skip the full-body scanners and get screened by a metal detector, an apparent effort to reduce wait times.

Passenger advocates dont like the scanners because they say they were deployed without giving the public a chance to comment, a process required by federal law. They claim the devices violate the Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. And they believe the scanners have not been adequately tested and may present health risks.

[Department of Transportation shifts to advocacy as airline complaints rise]

Adding to the uncertainty is the possibility that Congress could act soon to rein in the TSA. An influential coalition of civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Consumer Federation of America and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently sent a letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking him to take immediate action to stop the scans. They demanded that the government suspend funding for full-body scanners until a public rulemaking process has been completed and that the TSA evaluate the cost, including lost time to passengers, of screening procedures using full-body scanners.

As if thats not enough, the DHS on Jan. 8 also announced the final implementation of the REAL ID Act. The law established minimum security standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as drivers licenses, and prohibited federal agencies from accepting for certain purposes drivers licenses and ID cards from states not meeting the acts minimum standards.

Soon, air travelers with a drivers license or ID card issued by a state that doesnt meet the requirements of the act will have to present an alternative form of identification, such as a passport, to board a domestic commercial flight.

Although the deadline isnt for another two years  Jan. 22, 2018, to be exact  travelers are nervous about their IDs not working. Only 23 states (including the District and Maryland) are compliant or certified as making progress toward being compliant with the REAL ID Act. Another 27 states and territories (including Virginia) have been granted extensions. Six states and territories  Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Washington and American Samoa  are noncompliant and do not currently have extensions. You can find a full list of compliant states and territories on the DHS website (dhs.gov/real-id-enforcement-brief).

[Uniteds effort to regain air travelers trust gets off the ground  slowly]

It gives the states that want to be compliant  and there are only a few that arent  time to either adopt or figure out an alternative before the deadline, says Jeffrey Price, author of Practical Aviation Security: Predicting and Preventing Future Threats.

The actual deadline for REAL ID wont come until at least Oct. 1, 2020, when every air traveler will need a REAL

ID-compliant license or another acceptable form of identification for domestic air travel.

But that is by no means a hard deadline, according to author and consumer advocate Edward Hasbrouck. He says the ambiguous scanning rules and the national ID requirements amount to an overreach of the TSAs authority. The governments recent actions are not only baffling to air travelers, he says, but they also violate an American legal right to freedom of transit through the navigable airspace.

If the government tries to carry out its latest threats to harass, delay or prevent people without an ID it deems acceptable from flying, those actions are certain to be challenged in court and likely to be overturned as unconstitutional, Hasbrouck says.

In other words, air travel may be about to get even more confusing.

Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Email him at chris@elliott.org.
The Arlington County Board agreed Thursday night to kick in $35,000 to study the possibility of a Georgetown-to-Rosslyn gondola, which supporters hope will ease traffic on Key Bridge and zip visitors more easily across the Potomac River.

I started out really skeptical, and Im still skeptical, but I want to have an open mind, said board chair Libby Garvey (D), just before the unanimous vote supporting the study. This doesnt mean its a done deal by any means, but well take a look at it.

Joe Sternlieb, president of the Georgetown Business Improvement District, told the board that an urban gondola, or cable-propelled transit, could be faster and far cheaper than building a new Metro tunnel to Georgetown, which lacks a subway stop.

[DC takes step to link Georgetown, Rosslyn by gondola]

The proposal has been floated for the past year. In May 2015, the District government put in $35,000. Other contributions will come from Georgetown businesses, $75,000; Georgetown University $25,000; the Rosslyn business improvement district $20,000; developer JBG $5,000; and developers Gould Properties/Vornado $5,000.

The six-tenths of a mile between D.C.s Georgetown neighborhood and the Rosslyn Metro stop attracts 50,000 vehicles per day over the Key Bridge and the bridges sidewalks are Arlington Countys busiest. Currently, DC Circulator buses, Georgetown University and hospital buses as well as Metro and Arlington County buses congregate around the Rosslyn Metro entrances multiple times per day.

When some board members said a gondola would benefit the District far more than Arlington, the countys economic development director Victor Hoskins disagreed.

Rosslyn has nine hotels, more than 2,100 rooms, he said. Visitors, he said, are headed to the Marine Corps Memorial or Arlington National Cemetery, and the easier it is for people to get to those places, the better off we are. Its a symbiotic benefit.

The board members said they arent sure a gondola is a good idea, but they agreed a study of it is a good idea. They also didnt want the proposal to distract the local transportation staff from other priorities. But board members also said they wanted to collaborate with other governments in the region and have a voice in decision-making.

The money would go toward hiring a contractor to do the study, Sternlieb and county officials said. The study would look at costs, ridership, design and other issues. Board member John Vihstadt (I) said the National Park Service, which owns land on the Arlington side of the river, and the National Capital Planning Commission may also have opinions on the impact of a gondola on existing views.

The study is expected to take about 10 months.
Davos doubters won over by China Updated: 2016-01-29 07:50 By Fu Jing(China Daily Europe)

While participants at forum expressed concern, it soon became clear that Chinese economy is fundamentally sound

For years, China's economy has been center stage at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. This year's gathering from Jan 20 to 23 was no exception.

While also focusing on new global trends, the EU's migrant crisis, terrorism, regional conflicts and other issues, China was still a primary subject.

The participants even showed their concerns in a straightforward way.

"Is China's economy still OK?" I was repeatedly asked.

Other Chinese participants and journalists were asked the same question.

This is not the first time that the world has been gripped with anxiety about the state of the Chinese economy. Fortunately, past forecasts of doom, which predicted a hard landing and economic collapse, have never come true, and they are unlikely to materialize this time, either.

Vice-President Li Yuanchao provided figures and told vivid stories in his speech to answer the question and convince attendees at this year's gathering that China's economy is still doing well and has sound fundamentals.

For example, he said China has boosted entrepreneurship by cutting the red tape for business startups, which has resulted in up to 12,000 new businesses every day and is promoting the fourth industrial revolution. Putting Internet technology and connectivity at the heart of transformations was the theme of this year's forum, and it is set to become a new driving force of China's economy in the coming years.

During Li's speech, a friend of mine posted a comment via the instant messaging app WeChat saying the vice-president was talking about whether China will be OK economically. After hearing the speech, she posted another comment saying that China will "always be OK".

Klaus Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum, also said he was convinced by Li's confidence when he chaired the talks

But not all the Chinese participants had the same optimism. Many from academia urged the government to speed up the implementation of its reform agenda, which was formulated two years ago. They are concerned about the delay in pushing forward reforms and how the unfolding geopolitical challenges are affecting China's economic development.

In Davos, some opinion leaders said the world faced unprecedented challenges and risks last year.

When asked to respond to that, Jin Liqun, president of the recently launched Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, while not going into details, said that the worst time in history was even tougher than what happened last year. He said that those saying it was the worst of times were doing so because their memories of last year are still fresh. He concluded with an upbeat assessment of the future prospects for China's economy.

Such optimism was shared by the executives of the so-called BAT companies (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), which are dominant Chinese tech giants, and other fast-growing private enterprises.

Tian Ning, 39, is the founder of Panshi, a listed Internet company that manages advertisements on a majority of Chinese language websites. He expressed the same optimism about the Chinese economy as Alibaba's Jack Ma.

Although some traditional companies may be struggling, Tian says, Chinese companies are among those leading the so-called fourth industrial revolution. The revenues and profits of his company have been growing for years, adding that his company's overseas offices will reach 50 by the end of this year. At present it has 16 overseas offices.

"China is a big market but the world is even bigger," Tian says, encapsulating his confidence in his company's global expansion plans.

Challenges will continue to emerge as China makes the transition from an economy driven by exports and investment to one driven by innovation and consumption. But while the road ahead might be difficult, the road map is clear - and the journey has begun.

The author is China Daily chief correspondent in Brussels. Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 01/29/2016 page11)
A school bus makes its run in Ellicott City, Md.. A racially charged viral video made by a Mount Hebron High School Video high school student has drawn a strong response from Howard County schools officials. (Evy Mages/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)

A viral video of a suburban white Maryland teenager disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement with inflammatory racist pronouncements has prompted a swift response from local school officials, who described the recording as disturbing.

The 30-second video, which quickly gained momentum in recent days on social media, shows a student at Mount Hebron High School, in Ellicott City, saying who the [expletive] cares about some black man who dies? The student goes on to say that black lives do not matter because they are an inferior race, okay?

The video ends with the student grabbing a five-dollar bill and holding it up to the camera to display the face of President Abraham Lincoln, saying: This guy is a traitor to the white race.

[Minority students in a Maryland school district make a video about their struggles]

The video emerged amid a nationwide discussion on race in Americas public classrooms and college campuses, one that gained steam after racial tensions at the University of Missouri last fall led to massive protests, a near-boycott by the schools football team and the resignation of the administrations president and chancellor. Students at colleges nationwide in recent months have been vocal about pushing for meaningful change to what they see as institutional racism.

And the concern has arisen at the nations public high schools, too. Earlier this month, schools officials in Phoenix suspended six white high school students who posed for a photograph wearing T-shirts with gold letters that alluded to the n-word; in Berkeley, Calif., hundreds of high school students staged a protest in November after threats of a public lynching and references to the Ku Klux Klan were discovered on a school computer.

The demonstrations by teens and college students have come as the Black Lives Matter movement has influenced the political conversation during an election year. Inspired by police-involved shootings of young black men, the movement has spurred demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., where 18 year-old Michael Brown died in a scuffle with a white police officer; and Baltimore, where Freddie Gray, 25, died from injuries he suffered in a transport van while in police custody.

Mount Hebron High School, at which the student who made the video this week is also an athlete, is about 14 miles from Baltimore, in Howard County.

Howard County Schools Superintendent Renee Foose wrote in a letter to parents that the Mount Hebron students video has been offending many people of all races, and reflecting poorly on students directly involved and those who chose to stand silent. This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

The video shows the student being goaded by a team member into discussing his racial beliefs. After the video caught the attention of school officials, the student featured in it posted an apologetic message on social media.

I am learning from this mistake, and hope to gain forgiveness from those who I hurt with my words, he said. The student did not respond to requests for comment.

School Board member Ann De Lacy  who is African American and grew up in the South, attending segregated schools until ninth grade  said she had never heard anything like what appears in the video.

Nobody ever said anything like that to me, she said. I was absolutely stunned. I dont think Ive seen anything as angry and demeaning before. It was so hate-filled. It was just shocking that a child that young could harbor such hate.

Referring to the teens reference to Lincoln, she asked: Is he sorry that we dont have slavery anymore?

De Lacy said that she would like to see a town hall as soon as possible at Mount Hebron that would bring all students together. She said that Mount Hebron has had a problem with racial tensions, and she had met with the principal about it two or three times this school year.

This is not a laughing matter, De Lacy said. This is not a prank.

[Berkeley High student admits to posting racist message that prompted protest]

DeRay McKesson, a prominent Black Lives Matter movement leader who was born in Baltimore, said that he saw the video and viewed its aftermath as an opportunity for a discussion in schools.

Hopefully, this video will lead to robust conversations about racism and its impact in classrooms and amongst students and families, McKesson said.

Students told The Washington Post that Mount Hebron,which was 49.8 percent white last year, has struggled with racist behavior in the past, tensions that were brought to light because of the video.

An area of the school where black students often congregate between classes is referred to as the jungle, they said. The students said it was not out of the ordinary to hear white students say racial epithets in the hallways.

One junior said that the video is just the latest instance of simmering racism at the school, where last year another student compared black people to savages and where white students sometimes overtly refer to black students as monkeys  or worse.

It was not shocking because I know the type of people that go to my school, said the junior, who The Post is not identifying because she is a minor. It was just the first time theyve gotten caught.

Kwame Rose, another prominent Baltimore activist, said that the video showed that racism is prevalent even in suburban Maryland.

It just goes to show the ignorance inside of the school system in Howard County, Rose said. It will take a different type of education for them to understand whats wrong with that language.

Foose said that the school is investigating the circumstances surrounding the video, which was made during a party at a students home in recent days.

In a call to action, Foose encouraged students to delete the video and refrain from sharing it.

This is more than an example of irresponsible use of social media, Foose wrote. It is hateful. No Howard County public school student should engage in this type of conduct, nor do they need to be exposed to it.

But Fooses message appeared to come too late. The video, she said in her letter, had already been shared hundreds of times online.

It also is not the first time that the school has been forced to address overt forms of racism. In 2009, vandals broke into the school and scrawled KKK and drew Nazi swastikas on the walls.

In a letter to Mount Hebron parents, principal Andrew Cockley wrote that he planned to meet with the teenagers involved in the video.

This is an incident when students were engaging in hateful conversations, Cockley wrote.

Howard County spokesman John White said that no decision has been made yet about disciplinary action but that the student code of conduct covers offenses that take place away from school. A provision in the code notes that disciplinary action may be taken for off-campus incidents if the action could have an adverse effect on the order and general welfare of the schools.

White said that the Mount Hebron principal is planning to meet with the students involved in the video and their families next week to discuss the incident and any possibile disciplinary action.

Reg Avery, president of the PTA Council of Howard County, said the incident does not reflect the greater community or its values. Thats not us, he said. This shocks me to the core. If someone espouses this kind of rhetoric, they have some very deep-seated issues and issues that need to be taken care of now.

Avery said that he hopes parents would sit down with their children and talk about what it means to live in a culturally diverse society. This is something that needs to be discussed, he said.

Emma Brown contributed to this report.
Wine retailer David Trone, the newest Democratic candidate in the primary for Marylands 8th Congressional District seat, has contributed more than $150,000 to Republicans in states across the country since 2000, according to a nonpartisan site that tracks money in politics.

Most of Trones contributions went to candidates and officeholders in states where he sought legislation or regulatory changes favorable to his company, Total Wine & More. The firm, the nations largest privately held retailer of wine, beer and spirits, operates more than 100 stores in 18 states, including Maryland and Virginia. Among the Republicans who received funds were Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory.

Trone has also donated to Democratic state officials during the same period, although not nearly as much, according to FollowThe Money.org, a database operated by the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics. Data shows more than $90,000 in contributions. Trone also has raised millions for Democratic candidates and donated tens of thousands of dollars, under his own name and through family members and companies, to Democratic candidates for national office.

Trone, who this week became the eighth entrant into the Democratic field in the 8th Congressional District, said the contributions represented the cost of doing business, especially in states with Republican-controlled state houses and governors mansions.

I sign my checks to buy access, he said in an interview Thursday. Trone said that he did not believe the contributions undercut his legitimacy as a Democratic candidate. Of the Republicans he has financed, he said, We disagree categorically with their political positions on everything social and economic.

Trone has promised to largely self-fund his campaign, limiting individual contributions to $10 and refusing donations from PACs or lobbyists.

Although he may be comfortable with the idea that he keeps his business and partisan identities separate, that may take some explaining to 8th District Democrats.

Another Democratic primary candidate, former news anchor and Marriott executive Kathleen Matthews, took heat last year for a $2,600 contribution to Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who supported legislation favorable to the hotel industry. Matthews, who said it was the only donation she had ever made to a Republican, said she was making that contribution on behalf of my company saluting what I think is somebody who is willing to work across the aisle to create jobs.

[Trone airs first television spot]

Trone, whose donations make Matthewss contribution to Blunt look like pocket change, made much the same argument in interviews Wednesday and Thursday. He said one of the reasons Congress is held in such low esteem is the refusal of Democrats and Republicans to work together.

We need to work as Americans, not as Democrats and Republicans, Trone said.

Much of his money went toward initiatives to gain broader markets for beer and wine consumption. In North Carolina, for example, he supported a successful push a decade ago to raise the limit on the alcohol content of beer, opening the way for sales of craft beers. In 2012, McCrory, who has received $8,000 from Trone, signed into law legislation allowing retailers to sell growlers, or 64-ounce jugs for beer. Trone has also spent heavily to gain advantage in the lucrative Texas market, donating $8,941 to Abbott, $15,000 to Patrick, and $11,000 to Attorney General Kenneth Paxton (R).

Ive passed more laws than most politicians, he said in an interview Wednesday, later correcting himself to say that he had lobbied to pass numerous laws.

Clarification: Earlier versions of this story should have specified that David Trone contributed about $90,000 to Democratic state officials between 2000 and 2015, rather than just Democrats. The story also should have said that Trone has raised millions for Democratic candidates and donated tens of thousands of dollars, under his own name and through family members and companies, to Democratic candidates for national office. That information has been added.
Maryland Del. Richard Impallaria , right, has a word with Del. Pat McDonough, left, at the Statehouse in Annapolis on Feb. 18, 2004. (Matt Houston/AP)

Maryland state Del. Patrick L. McDonough (R-Baltimore County) will run against Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D) this fall, McDonough announced Friday afternoon at a news conference in Annapolis.

McDonough, who also hosts an AM talk radio show, is a conservative known for his provocative comments. Last year, he suggested taking food stamps away from the parents of teenagers in Baltimore who rioted after the death of Freddie Gray. After Baltimore settled with Grays family for $6.4 million, McDonough called for a $3 million cut in state funding for the city.

[Maryland lawmaker entertains idea of no more food stamps ]

In 2012, he suggested the government send the Maryland State Police to Baltimores Inner Harbor to control roving mobs of black youths. And in 2011, he led the battle against allowing undocumented immigrants to receive in-state tuition at public colleges. He has also fought vociferously against the immigrant rights group CASA.

Ruppersbergers oddly shaped 2nd Congressional District is comfortably Democratic, and for years he has been returned to Capitol Hill with more than 60 percent of the vote. His district includes part of Baltimore City and some of the surrounding suburbs. However, his constituents did help vote in Gov. Larry Hogan (R) in 2014, giving McDonough some hope.

The former ranking Democrat of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Ruppersberger was first elected in 2002. He considered running for governor in 2014 and for Senate this year, but he ultimately bowed out off both races.

First elected from 1978 to 1982 and again in 2002, McDonough almost ran against Ruppersberger in 2012. He also ran unsuccessfully against then-Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D) in 1996.
The Maryland Department of the Environment has launched an investigation into whether hundreds of rental properties across the state that were deemed lead-free are indeed free of the material.

State officials said Thursday that they are working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine the validity of hundreds of lead-free certificates that were issued between 2010 and 2014 by a private inspector.

The Department of the Environment sent letters on Thursday to nearly 400 homes in Prince Georges, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Calvert, Charles, Howard, Montgomery and St. Marys counties and Baltimore City to make residents aware of the investigation.

The state said the majority of the homes were in Prince Georges County.

We intend to expand it, depending on what we find, said Horacio Tablada, a deputy secretary of the department.

Tablada said the inspector was accredited from 1996 to 2014. The investigation could eventually involve 1,000 more homes, Tablada said.

The Department and EPA are investigating whether the contractor followed the correct inspection protocols and whether the properties inspected are, in fact, lead free, the letter reads. At this time, it has not been determined that there are lead paint hazards in your home. . . . The Department is advising you of this investigation out of an abundance of caution.

The inspectors work was called into question after a resident filed a complaint in 2014 with the state about possible lead paint in the home. The state determined that lead paint existed and that the lead-free certification, which was done in 2010, was not valid.

The state ordered American Homeowner Services LLC of Lusby, the company with which the inspector was affiliated, to provide test results from 10 other properties inspected by the contractor. Seven of those inspections were invalidated after a review.

The company was issued a notice of violation and fined $5,000.

The company owner did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The department would not release the name of the inspector because the investigation is ongoing, said Jay Apperson, a spokesman for the department.

The letter suggests that if property owners have a child younger than 6 in their home that they contact their primary care physician on whether the child should be tested for lead exposure.

[Maryland delegates call for top housing officials resignation]

Advocates have pointed to lead exposure as a contributor to aggression and diminished cognitive function among some children living in inner-city communities with poor housing quality. For years, most Maryland children known to have lead poisoning lived in Baltimore rental homes built before 1950. The state recently passed regulations calling for all 1- and 2-year-olds in the state to be tested, regardless of where they live. State health officials have said an increased number of lead-poisoning cases are now linked to newer rental homes and owner-occupied units in other parts of the state.
Gov.-elect Larry Hogan (R) is greeted by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D-Calvert) as he addresses the Senate on Jan. 14, 2015 in Annapolis. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) asked Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for a second time this week: When are you going to fill the empty Senate seat?

We still have an empty seat back there, Miller said before votes were taken during Fridays session. All we need is a letter.

The Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee last week voted to nominate Del. Craig J. Zucker (D-Montomery) to fill the state Senate seat vacated by Karen S. Montgomery, who resigned this month.

[Montgomery Democrats nominate Del. Zucker to fill empty Senate seat]

Hogan hasnt acted on the nomination. He has until Feb. 5.

Were reviewing the nomination, said Matt Clark, a spokesman for Hogan.

Miller said earlier this week that the residents of District 14 in Montgomery County are not represented as votes continue to be taken.

Last week Miller postponed a vote on a veto override of a bill that would allow felons who are on parole and probation to vote. He said that the chamber would probably need Montgomerys successor in place to muster the 29 votes necessary to overturn the veto. The bill passed the Senate last year with 29 votes.

On Friday, Miller said the seat needed to be filled not for any one bill, but for all bills.

[Maryland House overrides three of Gov. Hogans vetoes]

Minority Whip Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Kent) said he is certain the appointment will be made. But, he said, the nomination might not be the top item on Hogans agenda, given the recent snowstorm and preparing administration bills for introduction.

Hershey also said Hogan shouldnt be accused of dragging his feet with the nomination when the countys Democratic Central Committee took 21 days to send over its selection.

Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) said the committee could not advertise for the position until Montgomerys seat was officially vacant. Montgomery resigned in December, but her resignation did not become effective on Jan. 1.

Also on Friday, Alan Gross, the former U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor who was imprisoned in Cuba for five years, received a citation from the Maryland Senate.

[Held 5 years by Cuba, Alan Gross calls his first year of freedom surreal]

Gross, a former resident of Potomac, Md., said that people often ask him about his imprisonment.

Im focusing on the next five years, not the last five, he said.

But Gross said that he is pleased that the United States has reestablished ties with Cuba after a more than 50-year embargo.

He said if the purpose of his imprisonment helped to improve diplomatic relations, then Im satisfied.
Bilal Ahmed covers his face as he leaves D.C. Superior Court with his attorneys, Peggy Bennett and Barry Coburn. The Georgetown dentist pleaded not guilty to charges that he sexually assaulted a patient who was under anesthesia. (Keith Alexander/The Washington Post)

A Georgetown dentist pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday to charges that he sexually assaulted a man who was under anesthesia to have a tooth removed.

Bilal Ahmed was arrested by New York authorities Jan. 7 at John F. Kennedy International Airport after deplaning a flight from Pakistan. Ahmed, 43, of Rockville, Md., was released after posting $50,000 bail in New York to return to the District for his first court appearance.

In court records, prosecutors say the alleged offense occurred May 21, 2014, at Ahmeds practice, Universal Smiles, at 2311 M St. NW. According to documents, the man went to Ahmeds practice for a cracked tooth. Ahmed told the patient that the tooth had to be extracted and that he had to use nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, to sedate the patient during the procedure. The patient was told that his insurance did not cover the nitrous oxide and that he would have to pay out of pocket.

According to the documents, Ahmed had an assistant in the room with them when the gas was being administered. But later, the assistant left the room and closed the door, leaving Ahmed and the patient in the office.

The patient said he woke to find his mask askew and the dentist forcing him into oral sex, according to the court papers. Ahmed then escorted the patient back to the recovery room, the papers said, and the man left Ahmeds practice two hours later.

After contacting police, the patient called Ahmed six days later in a recorded phone call arranged by a detective. During the call, Ahmed asked the patient how he was feeling. The two spoke about meeting for lunch. The patient, with two officers listening, described what he remembered happening. You know Im not crazy, the patient told Ahmed. No, not crazy, Ahmed responded, according to the documents.

At one point, the dentist laughed and said hallucinations can happen when using nitrous oxide, the documents say. At another point, when the patient asked whether he had been hallucinating at the time of the alleged incident, Ahmed said, No.

At the hearing, Judge Renee Raymond ordered Ahmeds release but required him sign up for GPS monitoring as part of the courts intensive supervision.

Raymond also ordered Ahmed, the married father of six children, to have no contact with the victim and not to practice dentistry.Ahmeds next hearing is scheduled for Feb. 17.

After the hearing, Ahmed, his wife and his attorneys declined to comment.

D.C. police are asking anyone with information about Ahmed to call the sexual assault unit at 202-727-3700 or the police command center at 202-727-9099.
In 1994, a low-key hotel manager in Rwanda became an international hero for sheltering and saving the lives of more than 1,200 people from horrific ethnic slaughter. His display of courage was later portrayed by actor Don Cheadle in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda.

On Thursday, that former manager, Paul Rusesabagina, visited Washington and announced that he is launching a political campaign against the current Rwandan government, which he called a dictatorship. He hinted strongly that he hopes to run for president, but said he is not yet ready to risk returning because his life would be in danger.

If things change there today, I will go back tomorrow, he told a small group of journalists on the anniversary of Rwandas 1961 independence from Belgium. He said he wanted to inspire hope in all Rwandans for change, and he called on Western officials and donors to pressure the government in Kigali to restore political freedoms and allow fair elections.

Rusesabagina, 62, has only been back home once since the genocide by ethnic Hutu militias that left some 800,000 people dead in just three months, most of them ethnic Tutsis who were hacked to death with machetes. He sought political asylum in Belgium in 1996 and divides his time between homes in Brussels and San Antonio, Tex.

[A lesson in heroism]

But the one-time seminary student, whose 2006 autobiography is titled An Ordinary Man, has been a tireless crusader for international human rights and democracy. He has won numerous honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which President George W. Bush awarded him in 2005.

He also has become a bitter adversary of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, 52, the former Tutsi rebel leader whose forces liberated the country in 1994. Kagame took power soon afterward and has twice won reelection. Kagames government has been supported by Western donors and praised for bringing economic modernization and stability to the deeply impoverished nation.

At the same time, reports from the State Department and human rights groups have repeatedly criticized state suppression of political dissidents and the news media, including disappearances and extrajudicial executions, and questioned the legitimacy of Kagames landslide electoral victories. In 2010, he won a second term with 93 percent of the vote, and last month, the constitution was changed to allow him to serve in office again.

The government we had in 1994 was a horrible dictatorship. It has been replaced by an equally cruel but more polished dictatorship, Rusesabagina said Thursday. He accused Kagame of creating a powerful Tutsi ruling clique and said the West has supported him largely out of guilt over the genocide, in which the United Nations and the international community did little to intervene.

Rusesabagina said his own political organization, the Party for Democracy in Rwanda, is not able to operate openly in the country. It is based in Brussels, which has a large Rwandan exile community. He is of mixed Hutu and Tutsi parentage and said he seeks to build a society based on ethnic harmony and equity.

Rwandan officials dismissed his criticisms, saying that the Kagame government has worked hard to build a modern economy and democracy but has sought political consensus rather than antagonism to prevent a resurgence of the ethnic hatred and bloodshed that led to the genocide.

We dont boast that we are 100 percent democratic, but we have been building a good foundation for 20 years, and the governments intent has been to give a good life to people from a policy and legal framework, said Lawrence Manzi, first counselor at the Rwandan Embassy in Washington.

Manzi disparaged Rusesabagina as a person made by Hollywood and said he had no credibility, even with people who were in the hotel during the massacres. He got a Hollywood persona and thinks he can exploit it politically.

[Movie honors hotelier who helped to shelter his compatriots]

Some of Rusesabaginas actions during the massacre have been criticized, such as entertaining Rwandan officials and selling rooms and liquor at the hotel where hundreds of desperate people sought refuge from marauding gangs. But in his book, he asserted that only by using his wits, perks and connections was he able to shelter so many people from what would otherwise be almost certain death.

At one point, an army captain threatened to kill everyone who had taken shelter inside the luxury Hotel des Mille Collines, and the manager quickly offered him a large sum of cash from the hotel safe. As the officer drove away with his death squad, Rusesabagina wrote, he realized I was not powerless in the face of the murderous insanity. . . . I might be able to negotiate with the devil.


Nancy Fassett, 83, Margaret Sugg and Barbara Fletcher, 75, have been roommates for almost 50 years. They are seen at their home in Asbury Methodist Village in Gaithersburg, Md. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

There was nothing remarkable about them when they first began living together. Margaret Sugg moved into a Georgetown group house in 1967 that already included Nancy Fassett. A few years later, Barbara Fletcher joined them.

The part that amazes people: Almost five decades later, the three women are still roommates.

Theyve aged as a threesome, best friends in their 70s and 80s who continue to share their lives in a tidy brick duplex in Asbury Methodist Village, a retirement community in Gaithersburg, Md.

Its a relationship that has cemented into something as solid as any marriage, or any family.

It really does feel like were sisters, says Sugg, who stops to think, then adds, Except that I always fought with my sister.

Friends and strangers alike are quick to dub them The Golden Girls, the 1985 to 1992 sitcom starring Betty White, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty about four older women sharing a home in Miami.

Yet despite the shows entertaining vision of female togetherness, older friends/roomies like these are not exactly peppering the senior-living landscape. Among Asburys approximately 1,400 residents, there are no other groups or pairs of friends sharing homes, says Cathy Canning, the communitys marketing and communications manager.

I think that people have a need for privacy, says Richard Schwartz, co-author of The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the 20th Century and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Theres also a set-in-your-ways aspect to getting older, where it would take a lot to make such a big change  and to ask someone else to make it as well. Its a very big leap to say to a friend, What do you think about living together? 

Mary Riedlin, a former roommate from the womens long-ago Georgetown days, calls her friends wonderful and unusual. When she mentions their living arrangement to others, Immediately they think, Well, theyre gay. But they really arent.



From left, Barbara Fletcher, Margaret Sugg and Nancy Fassett have been roommates for nearly 50 years. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

Betsy Barnett, Fletchers younger sister, says shes thought often about how three unrelated people in a platonic relationship can be compatible enough to weather the years so gracefully together.

I dont really know, Barnett says. But they are all kind, clever, thoughtful, fun people, with mutual interests  politics, music, books, travel. Theyre just good people who decided theyd make it work.

[Meet two amazing women who are still working at the age of 102. Yes, 102.]

A lot of people are awed by it, Sugg acknowledges, and have told me theyre envious  a lot of married friends included.

The years just went by

Their life together began when Lyndon Johnson still occupied the White House. Sugg, then a congressional staffer from rural North Carolina, moved into the group house on P Street and met Fassett, a school librarian from Minnesota.

Fletcher, another North Carolinian, joined them after she was hired by Sugg to work for then-Rep. Nick Galifianakis (D-N.C.). (Sugg, who still retains her Southern accent, says Fletcher came for an interview, dressed like Jackie-O, and as soon as we started talking to her, I thought, Mercy! We cant let this girl go! )

Eventually, the other P Street roommates moved out, leaving the three friends in sole possession of the Georgetown rowhouse. In 1975, the practical Fassett convinced Sugg and Fletcher, with no small amount of effort, that it would be financially prudent to buy a home together rather than continue renting.



Fassett, Sugg and Fletcher are seen at their annual Christmas Party in 1974 at their then home in Georgetown. The women have been roommates for nearly 50 years. (Family photo)

Fassett, Sugg and Fletcher at their home in Asbury Methodist Village. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

We decided we wanted off-street parking for our three cars, Fassett says, a darkroom Sugg and Fletcher were into photographyand a pool. In Georgetown. For $100,000. We didnt know how ridiculous that was.

They compromised, settling on an affordable five-bedroom house with a pool on a tree-lined street in Bethesda, Md. Fassetts father, a lawyer, wrote up a one-page agreement for them on how to handle the property if  or, more realistically, when  any of the three wanted to move out.

We thought wed be there two or three years and somebody would get married or maybe buy a house by themselves, says Sugg, whos in her 80s. But that just didnt happen.

They all grew close to each others families  acting as doting aunts to various nieces and nephewsand became famous among their friends and neighbors for their frequent house parties, as well as their Magical Mystery Weekends.

Theyd plan trips for themselves and other friends, keeping the destination a secret. Once they brought everyone to National Airport, and boarded a flight where theyd somehow convinced the pilot not to mention the destination. They ended up in Winston-Salem in North Carolina, where they had arranged for friends there to host a cocktail party, and stayed at a resort nearby.

The years just went by. Fassett, now 84, worked for Montgomery County public schools, Fletcher and Sugg eventually got into real estate sales. They each portray their lifetime cohabitation as not so much a decision made at a particular moment but rather as an arrangement that simply grew too comfortable to leave.



Fassett, Sugg and Fletcher are seen at their annual Christmas Party in 1980 at their home in Bethesda. (Family photo)

Fassett, Sugg and Fletcher at their home in Asbury Methodist Village. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

At one point Sugg was offered a plum marketing job in New York, which she accepted. Then, she says, One morning I got up and said, I cant do it. 

That was the closest any of them got to leaving. And as for marriage, says Fassett, We all dated, but not that seriously. We were having too much fun together.

Each retired at different points in the 1990s, and they now have a routine that includes long summers in Duck on the Outer Banks, where they have a spacious house that they all chipped in to build. Every March they go to their timeshare in Aruba. In October they splurged on a cruise from New York City to Southampton, England, on the Queen Mary II to celebrate Fletchers 75th birthday, along with her brother and sister.

I wanted to do something fabulous, Fletcher explains.

When theyve had to make decisions about minor things  where to go out for dinner, say  their strategy is two-person majority rule. But big decisions, such as their move from Bethesda to their retirement community, require complete consensus.

It took some time to persuade Fassett to leave their Bethesda home, but, says Sugg, Barb and I finally persuaded her. Theyve been in Gaithersburg since October 2014, joined by their two cats, Mandy and Max.



Fassett, Sugg and Fletcher have been roommates for nearly 50 years. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

At their duplex, they each have their own bedrooms and share an office set up with three desks, as well as small living room upstairs and a large, open common space on the lower floor.

Life is definitely slower these days. As the youngest in the trio, Fletcher tends to be the cruise director, financial organizer and chauffeur. She bought a boxy new Ford Flex to drive them to restaurants, their retirement communitys on-site classes (Fassett took one on Movies That Should Have Won an Oscar but Didnt), and to feed frequent Starbucks cravings. Evenings they read, or watch the news, PBS dramas or favorite shows like Project Runway and The Good Wife.

They grow quiet when asked over lunch about next steps  what happens if, for instance, one of them has health issues requiring more care than the others can provide? Sugg already struggles with back pain, while Fassett has knee problems. Theyve installed a motorized chair on their stairway, in case negotiating steps becomes impossible.

Whatever comes, Fletcher says, theyll face it together: We are a family.
Huawei invests in research and design in France Updated: 2016-01-29 07:51 By Tuo Yannan(China Daily Europe)

The huge Chinese telecommunications company has made the nation a large part of its European and global strategy

The French flair for style and expertise in research and development are finding their way into the global products and services of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which is investing large sums and creating jobs in France.

According to Song Kai, general director of Huawei France, the country plays an important role in Huawei's European ecosystem. Song spoke to China Daily in Paris recently.

Hostesses hold the Huawei smartphone Ascend P7, launched by China's Huawei Technologies during a presentation in Paris, in 2014.

"The opening of our R&D centers marks a further step in Huawei's European strategy, which places a key focus on R&D investment," Song says.

The company has established four research and development centers in France, including a chipset design and embedded electronics research center in southern France, a mathematics center, and the company's first global aesthetics research center in Paris.

Huawei CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei announced a plan last year to invest $1.9 billion in France by 2018. Ren had earlier announced plans to recruit 170 researchers in France by 2017.

Huawei has been present in France since 2003. About four years ago, the company started to tap into the smartphone industry in France, and now has more than 30 percent growth in that sector annually.

"Our R&D site represents perfectly what France can provide in terms of skills in the global IT market," Song said at the opening of the European R&D site in Sophia Antipolis, a technology park in southern France. "This inauguration is a symbolic step for Huawei in France, a sign of its increasing collaboration with the French digital ecosystem. Huawei has great ambitions for the coming months and Sophia Antipolis is only the first step in its French R&D development strategy."

The chipset design center in Sophia Antipolis is mainly in charge of improving Huawei smartphones' image processing quality and ability, while the mathematics center aims to make a breakthrough in fifth-generation network technology, and solve the bottleneck problem of Internet data connection.

"Our Paris aesthetics research center helps us to design our products to be more appealing, to boost our sales," Song says.

Since fashion design and mathematics are strong points of France, the Chinese company built R&D centers there aiming to take advantage of those strong points.

"We had a pink P6 smartphone, but it didn't sell well," he says. "But after it was redesigned by our Paris aesthetics research center, it become popular on our P7 and P8 models."

The center brings creative ideas in color and style to Huawei products, integrating innovative technologies with aesthetics, he adds. The center contributed in the design of Huawei's first group of wearable gear, the Huawei Watch W1 and TalkBand B2, which were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2015.

The Paris aesthetics center is staffed by 10 designers specializing in luxury design, fashion, automotive, 3D, digital and brand strategy. Mathieu Lehanneur, a noted French designer, is the chief designer of the center.

The company's mobile phone sales reached 75 million units 2014, and 100 million units globally in 2015, Song says. The French-designed watch has also received a good reception from consumers, he says, although it is priced at around 399 euros ($431), which puts it within the premium market.

( China Daily European Weekly 01/29/2016 page16)
Virginia legislators on Friday decided to take a closer look at a bill to make sure that it would not let court clerks deny marriage licenses to interracial couples.

The measure, which passed out of a committee to the full Senate this week, was intended to protect clerks who object to issuing licenses to same-sex couples, something the bills Republican sponsor promoted as a matter of religious freedom.

But the legislation provided such wide latitude to refuse licenses that Sen. Charles W. Carrico Sr. (R-Grayson) initially said that it would cover clerks who objected to marriages on any grounds, including those based on objections to interracial marriage.

He later said he did not think it would apply in such cases because race is a protected class under anti-discrimination laws. But on Friday, he asked to have his bill sent back to the Senate Courts of Justice Committee for further study.

I know that we say and do some things after long days here, he said. I made the mistake of saying something, and we want to make sure and have the clerks review this and the constitutionality. It was never intended for anything of that nature to violate anything of a protected class.

[Clerks could deny marriage licenses to gays under bill advanced in Virginia]

The bill would give clerks or deputy clerks the freedom to refuse to issue licenses to couples if they object to their unions on personal, ethical, moral, or religious grounds. Those they turn away could be issued marriage licenses at a Department of Motor Vehicle office  an option that critics liken to the separate-but-equal justification for segregated schools that was ultimately declared unconstitutional.

The legislation does not specify any class of couples that could be denied licenses from clerks, but Democrats dubbed it the Kim Davis bill, a reference to the Kentucky clerk who was jailed last year after refusing to issue licenses to same-sex couples.

[ Kentucky clerk Kim Davis seeks exemption on gay marriage licenses ]

Carrico volunteered examples of clerks who objected to issuing licenses to same-sex couples or couples who had been previously divorced.

Whether it be homosexual marriage or two heterosexuals who were divorced before, whatever that religious reason is . . . they would have an option to be able to allow those individuals to go to the DMV, Carrico said.

When asked hypothetically whether the measure would cover clerks who object to granting licenses to interracial couples, Carrico initially said it would. He later said that, upon reflection, it would not apply because race is a protected class under anti-discrimination laws.

Opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, contend that the measure  even as intended  is unconstitutional. But supporters, including the Family Foundation of Virginia, said it is needed to protect religious liberties in the wake of the Supreme Courts ruling in June that legalized gay marriage.

The bill passed the Senate Courts of Justice Committee on Wednesday night over the objections of all six Democrats and one Republican, freshman Sen. Glen Sturtevant of Richmond.

If the committee passes it again, it is unlikely to make it out of the Senate given Sturtevants opposition, because Republicans control the chamber by a slim 21-to-19 majority. Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) vowed to veto the measure if it reaches his desk.
In December, Virginia's attorney general announced it would no longer honor concealed-carry handgun permits from 25 states. Now thanks to a bipartisan deal with the governor, that declaration won't got into effect on Feb. 1st. Heres why. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

In December, Virginia's attorney general announced it would no longer honor concealed-carry handgun permits from 25 states. Now thanks to a bipartisan deal with the governor, that declaration won't got into effect on Feb. 1st. Heres why. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

Gun-safety activists reacted angrily on Friday to a deal Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) struck with Republicans to recognize most out-of-state concealed-handgun permits. They fanned out across the Capitol, placed hundreds of calls and wrote to the governor who won office two years ago bragging about his F rating from the National Rifle Association.

Governor McAuliffe should reconsider this dangerous gift to the gun lobby, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, which in the fall poured more than $2 million into two state Senate races at McAuliffes request.

The gun agreement, which still needs General Assembly approval, would reverse Democratic Attorney General Mark R. Herrings decision last month to sever reciprocity rights of gun owners in 25 states with standards looser than Virginias.

Herring was conspicuously absent from a bipartisan event heralding the deal. The governors office told him that it was in the works about a week ago and kept him updated on negotiations, but Herring was not involved, his spokesman Michael Kelly said.

But the deal nearly fell apart early Friday morning after a senior Republican said on a radio program that the agreement was a huge expansion of gun rights.

When they laid it out to me, Id make that deal every day of the week and twice on Sunday, Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) said on the Jimmy Barrett Show on Richmonds WRVA radio. And then when I saw how folks on the other side of the aisle . . . theyre pretty upset with the governor this morning. Thats a pretty good barometer for me.

[Listen: Del. C. Todd Gilbert on the Jimmy Barrett Show]

McAuliffe and his secretary of public safety, furious because negotiators had agreed to portray the deal as a win for all sides, told Republicans Friday morning that the deal was off, according to two people close to the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The deal came back together hours later after each side coughed up one more concession. The gun rights side agreed to raise the penalty for possession of a gun by someone subject to a two-year protective order, upping it from a misdemeanor to a felony. And the gun-safety side agreed to make sure the attorney general, who would be directed by the deal to enter into reciprocity agreements with every state that offers them, moves quickly on the agreement. The plan now would require him to do so within 60 days.

Both sides declined to publicly discuss the last-minute drama. But Sen. Bryce E. Reeves (R-Spotsylvania), credited by many for leading negotiations in recent weeks and salvaging the deal Monday, hinted at the stress when the deal was formally announced on Capitol Square.

I think Ive aged 40 years in two weeks, he told the crowd.

McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy declined to discuss the last-minute upset, except to say that it ultimately benefited the governor.

The deal that was struck got stronger than it was yesterday, he said.

Matthew Moran, spokesman for House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), said: Compromise is a fragile thing. . . . But at the end of the day, we got there.

Gilbert did not respond to a request for comment, but he spoke contritely at the announcement.

For those of you who, along with the governor, may have heard me get a little ahead of myself on this issue this morning, I am here to say that I truly believe this to be a genuine compromise in the Virginia way. This is not about winners and losers. . . . Its about doing the best thing for the commonwealth.

Despite the swift backlash from gun-control activists, the deal would require gun rights groups to give on a couple fronts. The state could take guns away from anyone under a two-year protective order for domestic-violence offenses. And state police would have to attend all gun shows to provide background checks for private sellers who choose to vet potential buyers.

McAuliffe suggested that those who were upset signaled that he was charting a sensible, middle course.

When you have the right upset, the left upset, he said, shrugging as his voice trailed off.

You have to compromise constantly, he said. You do it in business. You do it in politics. You do it in life. This is a big, big win for Virginia.

[McAuliffe strikes deal with GOP to restore handgun reciprocity]

Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRAs Institute for Legislative Action, the organizations lobbying arm, issued a statement in support of the deal.

The National Rifle Association commends leaders in the Commonwealth for moving forward on a bipartisan package that will benefit Virginia citizens, Cox said.

But gun-safety advocates, who just the week before had rallied on Capitol Square with the governor, described it as a betrayal. Everytown, which is bankrolled by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, released a letter signed by more than a dozen Virginia shooting victims or their relatives, including those affected by the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

Andy Parker, the father of a Roanoke journalist killed on live television in August, had stood beside McAuliffe at the recent rally, cheering Herrings recent action on guns. On Friday, he silently stood in the back of a Capitol Square meeting room as McAuliffe trumpeted a deal that would reverse Herrings move.

I think its giving the store away, Parker told reporters afterward. Its not a good deal.

In the letter that Parker and other gun-safety advocates wrote, they told the governor: You have been a leader who has shown the greatest courage on this issue and been an inspiration to so many of us. Until today.

[Gun-rights, gun-safety activists flock to Capitol on lobby day]

Perhaps you dont realize that North Dakota authorities will grant concealed carry permits to people whove been convicted of stalking, the letter continued. Or that Alabama lacks any training requirements whatsoever in its permitting process. Or that Tennessee allows individuals with numerous assault convictions to acquire permits. Or that Florida does not run a full background check on permit applicants and will issue permits to non-Florida residents  so any nonresident not up to Virginia permitting standards could just apply for a Florida permit through the mail.
Nuclear to power change in energy mix Updated: 2016-01-29 07:52 By Lyu Chang(China Daily Europe)

China looks to the atom to grow and export its technology, as well as generating up to 10% of its power from nuclear energy by 2030

Last year's big-ticket developments in China's nuclear power industry signify two key themes: the country's inexorable shift toward clean energy, in line with its commitment to be a responsible, climate-conscious economic giant, and its determination to be a leading global nuclear player in the decades to come.

As many as six nuclear reactors went online in China in 2015. The authorities gave permits for the construction of eight more domestic reactors.

The China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group pavilion at a recent nuclear power equipment expo in Shanghai. Provided to China Daily

As for exports of nuclear technology, in November the country signed a $6 billion deal with Argentina to build a nuclear plant, the South American country's fourth. In the United Kingdom, three nuclear power plants are likely to be built with possible Chinese nuclear technologies.

China recently signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to develop Chinese fourth-generation nuclear technology in the Middle Eastern country.

But what helps China stand out from the nuclear crowd is its stress on innovation, safety and popularization of its technologies, experts say.

Nuclear power is firmly etched into China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). According to the National Energy Administration, China's 28 nuclear reactors in operation have an installed capacity of about 25.5 gigawatts. The nuclear plants now under construction and those approved for construction would collectively generate an additional 30 gW.

Xu Yuming, deputy director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, says the current program would see the country emerging as the largest market for nuclear power plants. But the priority is safe development of nuclear power and increasing the percentage of its homegrown nuclear technology in the global market.

"Speed (of executing nuclear power projects) is not the goal. We should put safety above everything, and improve our ability to innovate and develop our own technologies for use domestically, while at the same time paving the way for their export, as per the new five-year plan," Xu says.

The safety-first principle became paramount after China suspended approvals for new reactors in 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan in order to conduct a review of safety standards at existing nuclear facilities.

In March last year, the government approved construction of units 5 and 6 of Hongyan River nuclear power plant in northeastern Liaoning province, the first such project to receive approvals in four years.

Since then, China started to ramp up electricity generation at its nuclear power plants, which gained currency as clean, abundant sources of energy with potential to fuel a high-growth economy.

Starting in May 2015, the government issued construction permits to units 5 and 6 of Fuqing nuclear power plant in southeastern Fujian province, units 3 and 4 of Fangchenggang nuclear project in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and units 5 and 6 of Tianwan nuclear power plant in eastern Jiangsu province.

Experts say China's pledge to the international community to reduce carbon emissions and generate 20 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2030 will push the country to use more nuclear power in the coming decades.

Xu says China, the world's largest energy consumer, is likely to add five or six nuclear reactors every year from 2016 to 2030, according to estimates in the draft 13th Five-Year Plan.

"By then, nuclear power will account for 8 to 10 percent of the total energy mix," he says. Its current share is about 2 percent.

China is planning to have at least 110 nuclear reactors running by 2030. That would make it one of the largest nuclear energy users in the world.

China also aspires to be a strong nuclear industry. Hence, it is seeking to develop indigenous reactor technologies. Its three nuclear power companies are working to adapt the third-generation nuclear technology to the domestic market.

The first unit of Hualong One nuclear power plant already runs on homegrown third-generation technology developed jointly by China National Nuclear Corp and China General Nuclear Power Group. Some 85 percent of such reactors can be made domestically, with a design life of 60 years.

"It is clear localization will play an increasingly important role. Domestic use of indigenous technology is a prerequisite for its export," says Yu Peigen, deputy general manager of CNNC. "If the design, software and even the fuel cannot be made domestically, how could we export our technology?"

Nestor, a Chinese-built software program for designing nuclear reactors, was tailor-made for Hualong One to increase efficiency and quality of the plant construction and engineering, he says.

Nestor, he says, is analogous to the iOS operating system that powers iPhones, and is key to the third-generation nuclear technology. The software is expected to give a fillip to efforts to export China's nuclear technology.

Both CGN and CNNC have their own supply chains. So their versions of Hualong One will differ but only slightly as the reactor design is standardized, which means 28 technical features remain the same.

CNNC is also developing a fast-neutron reactor, corresponding to fourth-generation technology. This would enable China to depend less on imported supplies of uranium.

The state-backed company was behind China's first fast-neutron reactor, the China Experimental Fast Reactor, in 2011, whose operations reached full capacity in 2014.

The pool-type fast-neutron reactor has a thermal capacity of 65 mW and can produce 20 mW of electricity.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute designed CAP1400, another third-generation nuclear reactor technology, based on the AP1000 reactor technology developed by the United States-based Westinghouse Electric Co. China has promoted CAP1400 both domestically and abroad.

Zheng Mingguang, head of the Shanghai institute, has said that construction of the pilot project of the Shidaowan power plant in Shandong province, which will use CAP1400 technology, is likely to start this year. There also is a good chance the technology will be used in South Africa's new-generation nuclear power stations.

"We have an edge over our competitors in terms of cost, reliability and security. Our technology incorporates both imported aspects and latest homegrown advances," he says.

lvchang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 01/29/2016 page26)
TEXAS

Affluenza teen may

move to adult jail

The teenager who used an affluenza defense in a fatal drunken-driving crash was booked into a juvenile detention center in Texas after his deportation from Mexico on Thursday, more than a month after he and his mother fled the United States as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

Ethan Couch, 18, arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Thursday morning. Couch and his mother were apprehended in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Dec. 28.

Couch is scheduled for a court hearing Friday when a judge could decide to move him to an adult jail, which Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said he would support given the severity of Couchs offenses. Couch was sentenced to 10 years probation in juvenile court for the 2013 drunken-driving crash that killed four people and injured several others. The terms prohibit him from drinking or leaving the county.

During the trial in the juvenile case, a defense witness argued that Couch had been coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents. The expert deemed the condition affluenza.

 Associated Press

ILLINOIS

Hasterts sentencing

delayed after illness

A federal judge agreed Thursday to delay Dennis Hasterts sentencing in a hush-money case after his attorney said the former U.S. House speaker nearly died in November from severe sepsis just days after changing his plea to guilty.

U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin set April 8 as the new sentencing date, replacing Feb. 29, after a defense attorney said Hastert (R-Ill.) is now largely immobile.

Six days after pleading guilty on Oct. 28 to violating bank laws in seeking to pay someone $3.5 million in hush money, Hastert was hospitalized for a blood infection that spread to his spine and nearly died that week, attorney John Gallo said.

The Associated Press and other media outlets have reported that Hastert wanted to hide claims that he sexually molested someone decades earlier.

 Associated Press

PENNSYLVANIA

Dad charged after

constable shot child

The father of a 12-year-old Pennsylvania girl accidentally shot by a constable serving eviction papers was charged Thursday with homicide in her death.

Donald Meyer, 57, pointed a loaded rifle at Constable Clark Steele on Jan. 11, and Steele fired a single shot in return. The bullet traveled through Meyers arm and struck Ciara Meyer, who was standing behind her father.

Meyers extremely reckless actions in leveling a rifle at Steeles chest led to his daughters death, Perry County District Attorney Andrew Bender said Thursday. Steele shot at Meyer in self-defense and will not face charges, the prosecutor said.

 Associated Press

Suspected sonic booms blamed for quakelike shaking in N.J.: Residents from New Jersey to Connecticut reported feeling earthquakelike shaking on Thursday afternoon, but the U.S. Geological Survey said a series of sonic booms could be the reason. The surveys website said the booms occurred near Hammonton, N.J., about 30 miles southeast of Philadelphia. USGS geophysicist Bruce Presgrave said nine booms were recorded over the span of 90 minutes. The source of the booms is not known, he said. A spokesman from the nearby Joint Base McGuire-DixLakehurst said none of its planes are capable of creating a sonic boom.

Mich. lawmakers approve more funds for Flint: Michigan lawmakers directed an additional $28 million on Thursday to address Flints lead-contaminated water supply, allocating money for bottled water, medical assessments and other costs for the financially struggling city. The quick and unanimous approval by the House and Senate came just over a week after the funding was proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder (R),. This brings the total funds allocated to nearly $39 million.

 From news services
A security check point is set up at the entrance of the Disneyland Paris amusement park, near the 'New York Hotel' in Chessy, east of Paris. (Victor Raison/EPA)

THE HAGUE

Ivory Coasts Gbagbo pleads not guilty

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo pleaded not guilty Thursday to four counts of crimes against humanity at the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court.

Gbagbo is the first former head of state to go on trial at the ICC. He is accused together with a former youth minister, Charles Ble Goude, of involvement in atrocities that left 3,000 people dead in the aftermath of a disputed 2010 presidential election runoff in their country.

Ble Goude also pleaded not guilty to four charges.

Dozens of Ivorians massed outside the court ahead of the trial  which is expected to last months  to support Gbagbo.

Gbagbo and Ble Goude each face four charges of crimes against humanity, including murder and rape allegedly committed by pro-Gbagbo forces in late 2010 and early 2011 as Gbagbo tried to cling to power after losing the presidential runoff to Alassane Ouattara.

Workers hang on safety cables as they clean window panels of a hotel in Pasay city, metro Manila January 28, 2016. (Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

 Associated Press

MIGRANT CRISIS

Artist Ai Weiwei slams Denmarks asset law

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei said Thursday he has decided to withdraw his works from two Danish museums out of deep anger at a new law allowing Denmark to seize valuables from migrants.

Ai said he wanted to give a clear statement on what he considered an absurd law. He spoke on Greeces Lesbos island, the main point of entry for refugees and economic migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

Ai has set up a studio there, and said that the project will last at least a year. The studio will produce several projects with refugee-related themes.

On Thursday, he joined with aid workers helping migrants who had just arrived at a beach in inflatable rubber boats.

 Associated Press

FRANCE

Armed man arrested at Disneyland Paris

A man with two handguns was detained Thursday along with his female partner at Disneyland Paris, Europes most visited tourist attraction, police said.

No one was hurt in the incident, and the park remained open after the arrests. They come as France remains on edge and under a state of emergency after Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November.

The man, 28, was detained at the New York Hotel, part of the Disneyland complex, according to a police official who wasnt authorized to be publicly identified. The man was also found to have a Koran. His motive for trying to enter the hotel with weapons was unclear.

His partner was detained later at the park, the official said. The woman didnt appear to be armed, and no other suspects are being pursued, the official said.

During a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels, weapons were discovered in a guests luggage through our X-ray machine. The police were immediately notified, said Francois Banon, the parks communications chief.

About a dozen police officers surrounded the hotel Thursday evening, and a car was towed from the parking lot, though it was unclear whether the car was linked to the arrests.

 Associated Press

Germany tightens asylum rules: German Chancellor Angela Merkels conservatives and their left-leaning Social Democrat coalition partners agreed to tighten asylum rules, reaching a compromise on how to stem an influx of migrants that topped 1 million last year. The new measures include a two-year ban on family reunions for asylum seekers who are granted limited refugee protection and speeding up the deportations of failed applicants, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in announcing the deal. A dispute over tighter immigration rules has been straining the ruling coalition, which includes Merkels Christian Democrats and their Bavaria-based Christian Social Union sister party, as well Gabriels Social Democrats.

Somalia agrees to elections model: The U.N. envoy for Somalia said the countrys cabinet has agreed on a model for elections later this year, calling the long-awaited decision an important milestone for the impoverished nation grappling with Islamist insurgents. Michael Keating told the U.N. Security Council that the cabinet decision took almost six months of intense consultations. The new electoral model envisions a 275-member lower house that maintains a power-sharing formula among clans and a 54-member upper house based on equal representation of existing, emerging and prospective federal states plus additional seats for Puntland and Somaliland. It also requires at least 30 percent of seats be reserved for women.

 From news services
Mumbai municipal workers use cranes to lift carcass of Bryde whale at the Juhu beach, in Mumbai, India, Friday. (Rajanish Kakade/AP)

NIGERIA

10 slain in suicide attack, witness says

At least 10 people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a market in the northeastern Nigerian town of Gombi in Adamawa state Friday, according to a witness.

We have evacuated 10 dead bodies from the scene of the attack, Kabiru Mustapha said from Gombi. A teenage boy carried out the attack at a grain market in the town about 1 p.m., he said. Red Cross official Abdullahi Maikano put the number of slain at eight and said 25 were wounded.

The explosion in Gombi happened two days after three suicide bombers attacked the northeastern town of Chibok, where more than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamist militants in April 2014, causing an international outcry. Nine people were killed in Wednesdays attack.

The group, which since 2009 has killed thousands of people during its campaign to establish its version of Islamic law in Africas biggest economy, has been beaten back from territory it held in the northeast early last year but continues to carry out suicide bombings and hit-and-run attacks.

 Bloomberg News

A South Korean court handed down a 20-year jail sentence on Arthur J. Patterson. (Yonhap/AFP/Getty Images)

SOUTH KOREA

Calif. man sentenced in 1997 Seoul slaying

A South Korean court sentenced a U.S. citizen on Friday to 20 years in prison in a slaying committed in the bathroom of a Burger King restaurant in Seoul in 1997.

The case was sensational at the time, fueling discontent in South Korea about the heavy U.S. military presence, but was unresolved for almost 20 years.

Arthur J. Patterson of California was convicted Friday of murder in the killing of a

22-year-old South Korean student, Cho Joong-pil, who was found dead in the blood-spattered bathroom in Itaewon, a part of Seoul close to a huge U.S. military base. Patterson was extradited to Seoul from the United States 18 years after the killing.

Patterson was the 17-year-old son of a U.S. military contractor at the time. He and an 18-year-old friend, Korean American Edward Lee, were in the restaurant bathroom at the same time and emerged after the killing, bloodstained.

Cho, the student, was found dead on the floor with knife wounds to his neck. Patterson and Lee later blamed each other for the killing.

 Anna Fifield

BRAZIL

Former president Lula is subpoenaed

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been subpoenaed as part of an investigation into a suspected money-laundering scheme involving an apartment he once thought of buying, the Sao Paulo state prosecutors office said Friday.

Earlier this week, prosecutors said they were investigating whether some of the money from the big corruption scandal buffeting state owned-oil company Petrobras was laundered through illegal real estate transactions involving the OAS construction company.

OAS built the building where Lula considered buying the apartment. The office of prosecutor Cassio Conserino said that there were indications that there was an attempt to hide the identity of the apartments owner, which if proven, would mean the crime of money laundering had been committed.

 Associated Press

Towing effort fails for listing cargo ship: A cargo ship listing nearly 90 degrees in the water was being tossed by rough seas Friday off the coast of France, forcing rescue workers to postpone efforts to tow it to shore. The captain of the capsized Modern Express, sailing in the Bay of Biscay, 180 miles off the coast of France, sent out a distress call Tuesday, and its crew of 22 was evacuated by Spanish helicopters. Frances coastal authority said that a team of four experts boarded the vessel Friday afternoon but that a towing operation failed because of large waves.

Iran flies unarmed drone over U.S. carrier: Iran flew an unarmed surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and published video of the event Friday, the latest in a series of edgy incidents between the two countries in the Persian Gulf. The incident underlined the continued tension over control of waterways crucial to global oil supplies.

 From news services
Arne M. Sorenson is president and chief executive of Marriott International.

Ever since I was a kid, people have been talking about how the world is getting smaller and more interconnected. Not so long ago, traveling to see world-famous sights and experience different cultures was an opportunity reserved largely for the elite. Today, middle-class families around the world journey to places their ancestors could only have dreamed of visiting.

There have been stops and starts along the way, but it has long felt as though, together, we have been pushing in the direction of more openness, understanding and hospitality toward each other.

So its alarming, to say the least, to watch as some people try to capitalize on fears of terrorism by proposing remarkably bad ideas that would turn back the clock on this progress, including banning millions from traveling to the United States because they belong to a certain faith.

While fear is understandable given the backdrop of terrorism  especially the recent attacks in Paris, Indonesia, and San Bernardino, Calif.  it is nonsense to direct that fear into a generalized hostility toward Muslims. It goes against what we stand for in the United States, a nation of immigrants and tolerance. By fanning the flames of hatred, it makes us not more safe but much more at risk.

Instead of falling for the superficial appeal of the politics of exclusion and hate, governments should use this moment to work together to enhance security while easing the burdens and costs for most who want to travel. For far too long, we have relied on a legacy system of state-issued passports and visas to determine an individuals eligibility to travel.

This system hasnt changed much since I received my first passport in 1958, when I was born in Japan to American parents. Or course, we now have more information about applicants for passports and visas, but that information is seldom shared easily among governments. A labyrinth of rules and regulations and differing data-collection systems hinders our ability to exchange information in real time. Todays challenges simply cannot be met by yesterdays bureaucratic systems.

This year, more than a billion international trips will be taken worldwide. With the rising middle classes of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America eager to travel, these numbers are expected to grow by nearly 5 percent annually, according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization. It shouldnt surprise anyone to hear that many new travelers put the United States and Europe highest on their lists of places to see. Their visits are good for local economies  and for my company, of course  and they are also good for creating stronger bonds among peoples around the world.

The good news is that we have better technology and access to more sophisticated tools than before. Governments have the means to share security information and data across borders, and it is that cooperation that will create the next generation of travel: an integrated network of governments and trusted travelers.

We have seen success in recent years with visa agreements between countries and other programs intended to streamline the various bureaucracies, such as TSA Precheck and Global Entry, that offer pre-approval for low-risk travelers.

By scaling up these concepts and applying them to broader populations, we can create a truly modern system. All travelers might apply for a form of global access and submit information as determined by the participating governments, including through a background check and personal interview. If a person is permitted into the program, he or she then would enjoy visa-free travel and an expedited travel experience among partner countries. Security would be enhanced because we would know more about those people and have verified their trusted status, and because governments could redeploy resources to focus on the few who might pose real threats. The traveler would get a smoother process.

Our best defense against the true threats, and our own fears, is to confront them with a united front of coordination and cooperation. Reacting to fear with misguided policies that indiscriminately close borders or target groups of people harms our economies and societies and breeds more mistrust. Lets not fall for the twisted arguments of those who sow hatred.
Freed reporter Jason Rezaian composes himself as he receives a standing ovation during dedication ceremonies for the new Washington Post offices on Thursday. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Of the 545 days my colleague Jason Rezaian spent in an Iranian prison, perhaps the most unusual was the time his captors let him watch The Shawshank Redemption on Iranian state television.

The next day, a hulking man who was guarding Rezaian asked if hed watched the film, in which the Tim Robbins character wrongfully imprisoned for 19 years escapes by digging a tunnel.

Rezaian, The Posts Tehran bureau chief who was being held on bogus charges, said he had. Isnt it kind of weird that Im able to see that in here? Rezaian teased. You know, it might give me some ideas.

The jailor replied: You can dig all you want. As far as you get in 20 years, youll still be inside this prison.

Two weeks ago, Rezaian got out of that hellhole  not by digging but by dogged diplomacy, and a prisoner deal, negotiated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry. Rezaian stopped in Washington this week before returning home to California. Hes not yet doing interviews, but I had the pleasure of sitting down with him Thursday in his suite at the St. Regis  rather better surroundings than his cell in the notorious Evin Prison  to talk about his confinement.

Post reporter Jason Rezaian, recently freed from an Iranian prison, thanks his family, colleagues and government officials at The Washington Posts grand-opening event. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)

[The Posts View: Jason Rezaian is free at last]

A couple of hours earlier, he had taken the stage at the dedication of The Washington Posts new headquarters, holding back tears as he spoke: For much of the 18 months I was in prison, my Iranian interrogators told me that The Washington Post did not exist, that no one knew of my plight, and that the United States government would not lift a finger for my release. Today Im here in this room with the very people who helped prove the Iranians wrong in so many ways.

Among those was the secretary of state, who wept with joy when he met Rezaian for the first time backstage Thursday. Kerry said Rezaians release was really one of the days that I enjoyed the most as secretary of state. It was, indeed, one of Kerrys finest hours. Though the White House demonstrated a maddening lack of urgency on Rezaians release, Kerry pursued the matter vigorously.

In prison, Rezaian saw Iranian reports of the nuclear talks and became hopeful he would be released as part of the deal. When he wasnt, he hit rock bottom. He got a small boost when his mother, allowed a brief visit, told him how CBS Newss Major Garrett infuriated President Obama by asking why he was content to celebrate the nuclear deal without securing the release of Rezaian and others.

Rezaian arrived in Washington during a feel-good moment for The Post, when its glitzy new offices were christened. Owner Jeffrey P. Bezos (who gave Rezaian a ride back to the United States on his private jet) and editor Martin Baron (lionized in the movie Spotlight) have led The Post past all competitors, including the New York Times, in online readership. I think The Post is just a little more swashbuckling, Bezos said at the dedication. Theres a little more swagger. Theres a tiny bit of badassness here at The Post.

And now, after an 18-month campaign by the paper to keep Rezaians case in the public consciousness, his release has been deeply gratifying to his colleagues.

Rezaian recounted for me Thursday how he and his wife were taken from their home at gunpoint, blindfolded and handcuffed, and thrown into solitary confinement. He considered himself a prisoner at first, but his captors made clear he was a hostage, a bargaining chip.

Freed Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, left, hugs Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos during an opening ceremony for the new headquarters of The Washington Post on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

He lost 45 pounds on prison food, largely a nasty flatbread, then regained some when he bargained for use of a hot plate and cooked what he called prison chili with ingredients he was allowed to buy. For a time, guards let him use an exercise bike and weights in their staff room. He never feared for his life, but he wondered if he would languish for years.

Since his release, he has reunited with family in Florida. Hes had sushi twice, and there was a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in his hotel suite. He turned on cable news to catch up on politics  and, aghast, turned it off. Hes heading home to Northern California, where hell play Legos with his nephew. Hes free in time to celebrate his 40th birthday and to catch his Oakland As in spring training.

Rezaian feels well but wonders whether confinement changed his outgoing personality. He doesnt know whats next (the man who cut his hair in Florida recognized him from TV news and advised him to find a fat book contract), but he knows he wants to tell the story of his captivity, to make sure that it wasnt in vain.

Undoubtedly Rezaian will, again, prevail.

Twitter: @Milbank

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Five years ago, President Obama made a decision that helped topple Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. His policy represented a bet that the democratic surge of the Arab Spring could lead to a stable political transition in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Obamas embrace of the Tahrir Square protesters demand for Mubaraks immediate departure was idealistic, popular and understandable at the time. But it was arguably among the biggest mistakes of Obamas presidency. And, interestingly, its an issue where Hillary Clinton was much closer to being right than the president.

Because these events helped shape the Middle East turmoil that has increased year by year since 2011, its worth reviewing them. This is not just a history lesson: The story bolsters Clintons case that she analyzed major foreign policy issues correctly during her time as secretary of state. The record suggests that if her advice had been followed, the United States might be in a stronger position in the Arab world today.

Clinton sent Obama a prophetic warning in January 2011 as the Egyptian crisis was beginning, which she quotes in Hard Choices, her 2014 book: It all may work out fine in 25 years, but I think the period between now and then will be quite rocky for the Egyptian people, for the region, and for us.

Clinton narrates the basic story in her memoir: With protesters occupying Tahrir Square, Obama sent Frank Wisner, a respected former ambassador to Egypt, to meet with Mubarak on Jan. 31, 2011. The message was that Mubarak must pledge not to run again for president and begin a peaceful transition. In a televised speech the next night, Clinton writes, Mubarak had actually come around to much of what Wisner had asked of him, but it was too little, too late  both for the crowds in the streets and the team in the Situation Room.

The question then became whether to push Mubarak publicly toward an immediate transition. Senior Cabinet officials, including me, counseled caution, Clinton recalls. But other members of the team appealed once again to the presidents idealism and argued that events on the ground were moving too quickly for us to wait. He was swayed.

Obama went on television the night of Feb. 1 and said the transition must begin now. With that, the die was cast: The Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest opposition force in Egypt, had been late to join the uprising but now moved to take advantage of it. Clinton and Wisner continued to urge caution, but Obama chided them for sending mixed messages that undercut the White House line. The Tahrir protests escalated, the army refused to intervene, and Mubarak resigned on Feb. 11.

Those of us who favored the stodgy-sounding orderly transition position were concerned that the only organized forces after Mubarak were the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, Clinton writes. She had that exactly right, as the past five years have demonstrated.

The exuberant protesters in Tahrir Square were irresistible, not just for Obama but for most of the world. But even in the streets, it was obvious that Egypt (with U.S. backing) was taking a risk. The Egyptian people are making a bet that the Brotherhood wont wreck their new experiment in democracy. But as is always the case with real political change, its impossible to be sure, I wrote at the time, after watching hundreds of thousands of Egyptian Muslims in celebratory mass prayers in Tahrir Square, an image that evokes Tehran more than Cairo.

One of historys what ifs is what might have happened had Wisner been allowed to continue talking with Mubarak about a gradual change of power. In an interview Thursday, Wisner argued: We ought to have been calling for an orderly transition, rather than telling Mubarak get out of town, get out of government, with no strategy for what happens next. We needed a responsible path to stability and evolution, not revolution.

Nobody could have forecast the catastrophic chain of events that followed the Tahrir Square uprising. The coup in the streets led to the election of (now-former) President Mohamed Morsi; his abuses triggered a counter-coup by the Egyptian military. Emboldened by events in Egypt, Muslim revolutionaries (with U.S. help) toppled a dictator in Libya and are still trying to overthrow one in Syria. And the rulers of Saudi Arabia are still traumatized by the United States abandonment of Mubarak.

Many people got Egypt wrong. One of the few people who got the basics right is Clinton. Thats a card she should play more effectively in this campaign.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
To understand why the current conservative crack-up so confounds the Republican establishment, you have to recognize that the party is facing two separate but simultaneous revolts: one led by Ted Cruz, the other by Donald Trump.

The first is well described by E.J. Dionne Jr. in his important new book, Why the Right Went Wrong. For six decades, he explains, conservatives promised their voters that they were going to roll back big government. In the 1950s and early 60s, they ran against the New Deal (Social Security). Then they railed against the Great Society (Medicare). Today it is Obamacare.

But they never actually did anything. Despite nominating Goldwater and electing Nixon, Reagan and two Bushes, despite a congressional revolution led by Newt Gingrich, these programs endured, and new ones were created.

[E.J. Dionne: The monumental fall of the Republican Party]

The simple reason for this is that while Americans might oppose the welfare state in theory, in practice they like it. And the bulk of government spending is on the middle class, not the poor. Social Security and Medicare take up more than twice as much of the federal budget as all non-defense discretionary spending . One middle-class tax exemption  for employer-based health care  costs the federal government more than three times the total for the food stamp program.

Republican presidential candidates weighed in on immigration, the Islamic State, criminal justice reform and - of course - Donald Trump at the Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 28. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Whatever the reality, Republicans kept promising something to their base but never delivered. This has led to what Dionne calls the great betrayal. Party activists are enraged, feel hoodwinked and view those in Washington as a bunch of corrupt compromisers. They want someone who will finally deliver on the promise of repeal and rollback.

Enter Cruz. How did a first-term senator, despised within his party both in Washington and Texas, get so far so fast? By promising to take on the party elites and finally throttle big government. Cruz has said that he will repeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS and propose a constitutional amendment to balance the budget  which would mean hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts.

Trumps supporters, on the other hand, are old-fashioned economic liberals. In a powerful analysis, drawing on recent survey data from the Rand Corp., Michael Tesler shows that the Trump voter is very different from the Cruz voter. Cruz outperforms Trump by about 15 percentage points among the most economically conservative Republicans, he writes. But Cruz loses to Trump by over 30 points among the quarter of Republicans who hold progressive positions on health care, taxes, the minimum wage and unions. Trump is well aware of this fact, which explains why he has said repeatedly he wont touch Social Security or Medicare, spoke fondly of the Canadian single-payer system, denounces high chief executive salaries, promises to build infrastructure and opposes free-trade deals.

[For the sake of the GOP, both Trump and Cruz must lose]

Trumps voters reflect an entirely different revolt. Since the 1960s, some members of the United States white middle and working classes have felt uncomfortable with the changes afoot in the country. They were uneasy with the social revolutions of the 1960s, dismayed by black protests and urban violence, and enraged by the increasing tide of immigrants, many of them Hispanic. In recent years, they have expressed hostility toward Muslims. It is this group of Americans  many of them registered Democrats and independents  who make up the core of support for Trump. (Obviously there are overlaps between the two candidates supporters, but the divergences are striking.)

In his analysis, Tesler shows that, statistically, Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups. The New York Timess Nate Cohn points out that Trumps support geographically is almost the opposite of that of the last major populist businessman to run for president, Ross Perot. Perot did well in the West and New England, but poorly in the South and industrial North. Trumps support follows a different but familiar pattern. Cohn writes: It is similar to a map of the tendency toward racism by region. To be clear, many people back Trump for reasons entirely unrelated to race, religion or ethnicity, but the correlations shown by scholars are striking.

Could these revolts have been prevented? Perhaps, if the Republican Party had been honest with its voters and explained that the welfare state was here to stay, that free markets need government regulation, and that the empowerment of minorities and women was inevitable and beneficial. Its role was to manage these changes so that they develop organically, are not excessive and preserve enduring American values. But that is the role for a party that is genuinely conservative, rather than radical.

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Journey to the spicy west Updated: 2016-01-29 07:51 By Pauline D. Loh(China Daily Europe)



(Above) Goose intestine, beef tripe, bean curd and vegetables are most commonly used in Sichuan hotpot. (Below) Scores of people sit and eat around a giant hotpot.

"For the people, food is heaven," said Sima Qian, an historian from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24). Today, these words still ring true. The Chinese people's respect and passion for food is firmly entrenched in the cultural landscape, with a culinary scene that reflects the vast geographical footprint of the world's most populous country.offers a view from the table.

The heat rises as the galloping gourmet travels west in China. Chuan cuisine of Sichuan province and its southwestern neighbor, Yunnan, uses copious amounts of China's only native spice, the tongue-numbing prickly ash berry known to the world as Sichuan peppercorn.

Together with the red chili pepper, which was introduced to China in the late 16th century, prickly ash berries became synonymous with the predominant mala flavors here.

In fact, mala sums it all up. It means "numbingly spicy", which only begins to describe the dishes in this region encompassing the provincial capital, Chengdu, and the nearby city of Chongqing.

And no dish is more representative than hotpot, with its simmering layer of red oil. Platters of thinly sliced food are placed around a communal pot of boiling stock and diners select their choice of meat or vegetables and cook it to their liking.

The secret is in the spice mix used to flavor the oil, and individual chefs jealously guard their own special blends.

Generally, at least two different varieties of dried red chili peppers are used, one for the color and one for the heat. Chefs have been known to add even more varieties to layer and add depth of flavor.

Then, the most important ingredient is added - Sichuan peppercorns, of which there are just as many varieties. The dried red berries, a lovely dark maroon, are more mellow, while the green berries are chosen for their almost anesthetic qualities. They all numb the mouth. More spices, such as fennel, cumin, nutmeg or star anise, go into the mix, which is then toasted and cooked in rendered beef fat.

This sizzling oil is prepared at the end of the day and allowed to mature overnight, ready for the hotpots to be served the next day. The rest of the kitchen does the slicing and dicing of ingredients.

The hongyou huoguo, or red oil hotpot, is served all over Sichuan, although there are countless regional variations when it comes to heat levels and the food that is finally cooked in the broth.

Beef is a popular protein, cut into paper-thin slices for easy cooking, as is beef tripe. Sichuan diners love tripe so much they name them according to the stomachs they come from.

Another unusual off-cut is the lining of the esophagus, a crisp layer of beef muscle that is enjoyed purely for its texture. It has little taste, although that matters little in a highly spiced hotpot.

Goose or duck intestines are also happily dunked into the pot. They take a lot of cleaning, but Sichuan kitchens have perfected this art.

Hotpot lovers also enjoy cooking cubes of duck blood in the pot, especially since the black pudding soaks up the spicy broth like a sponge.

All is not lost for those with zero tolerance for spice, though. These days, most hotpot restaurants offer a yuanyang pot, named after the inseparable mandarin ducks. Shaped like the Taoist yin and yang symbol, twin pots spoon lovingly next to each other, one with a mild white broth, the other holding the famous red stock.

Not every dish in Sichuan is centered on hotpot. There is also the famous bean curd dish called mapo doufu. Reputedly created by a lady who suffered from a serious attack of acne, which left its marks, this tofu dish is another classic with an international reputation. Tender cubes of soft tofu are cooked in a mala mix of peppers and Sichuan berries. Sometimes, minced meat is added to fortify the dish.

Just as popular are gongbao chicken, prawns or pork dishes. Gongbao describes a style of cooking that creates a sweet and spicy sauce. Fat chili peppers are deep-fried to release their smoky fragrance, added to the meat and stir-fried over a fiery wok with the rest of the condiments. A scattering of peanuts add crunch.

Sichuan cooking has been much tempered in its long journey from home to the Chinese restaurants abroad. While Cantonese dishes are best known in gourmet circles, chuan cuisine is also finding addicts abroad.

A Sichuan native would sniff at the watered down heat of the menu, but it is a gradual introduction until the serious gourmets can head to the land of the pandas for the real thing.

Dishes to try in Sichuan:

Hotpot

Do not be intimidated by the glowing layer of floating red oil. It flavors the soup and keeps it bubbling, and you are not drinking it up, only using it to cook. If there is just the two of you, order the twin pot so you have a choice of mild or spicy. If there is a group, most restaurants thoughtfully offer a pot with partitions so you each have your own little piece of heaven.

In a hotpot meal, diners normally cook the meat first, adding the various bean curd products next, and finish up with the vegetables.

Gongbao chicken

Probably the most popular dish on the menu. This sweet and spicy dish has found international acclaim. Cubes of chicken breast are blasted over high heat and tossed with deep fried chili and peanuts. In Sichuan, the locals prefer a more down-to-earth version. Chicken is chopped into bite-sized chunks, bones and all, and stir-fried with lots of chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns. They call it lazi ji, or pepper chicken.

Mapo doufu

Arguably the most famous bean curd dish from Sichuan, this dish is a study in taste and texture contrasts. The bland-tasting tofu is spiced up with a numbingly hot sauce, while barely perceptible grains of minced meat deliver a satisfactory crunch as the tofu melts in the mouth.

Next week: An eastern renaissance of art in food




Amr Hamzawy was a member of the Egyptian parliament from 2011 until the body was dissolved in 2012. He is a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Michael McFaul, a former special assistant to President Obama at the National Security Council and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, is a Hoover fellow and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

Five years after the Arab Spring, democracy seems a distant dream in the Middle East. Arab ruling elites, royal families, militaries, security services and some businesspeople welcome this outcome. Restoring stability, the argument goes, is more important than democracy.

Many Western governments have embraced this logic as well. Threatened as a result of state failure and an accompanying terrorist upsurge, U.S. and European officials now argue that the most urgent need in the Middle East is fighting the Islamic State and its affiliates  a fight that requires collaboration with autocratic rulers. Strengthening Arab autocrats  including, for some, even the mass murderer Bashar al-Assad  is an evil necessary to defeating the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and the rest of the region.

This logic is flawed. A return to supporting Arab autocrats may produce some short-term gains, but at the price of long-term disaster. Arab ruling elites and their Western supporters must resist the false promise of autocratic stability  not in the name of lofty ideas about democracy but simply in pursuit of stability. Incremental, political changes are the only way to prevent violent, radical changes in the future.

Aside from Tunisia, the Arab Spring did not produce the kind of regimes that we both hoped for in 2011. Lessons need to be learned, and mistakes must be studied, but it is naive to argue for a return to practices that predate 2011. Which is the more fanciful prediction: that Middle East autocracies will be stable and strong in 20 years or that these regimes will face new, bigger challenges in the coming two decades?

Egypt, the most populous Arab country, is celebrated as the place where restoration of autocracy has been most successful. To reestablish the culture of fear that was broken by Egyptian citizens in 2011, Egypts new authoritarian regime has enacted laws aimed at demonstrations and terrorism. Egyptians are bombarded with messages about the need to prioritize stability over human rights.

Egypts new autocracy, however, is not providing stability but sowing the seeds of even greater insecurity. Since the coup that brought him to power, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has prosecuted students, human rights activists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood , and at times even resorted to mass killing as a means to holding on to power. Egypts inhumane prisons are full, a well-known recipe for radicalization. Indiscriminate killing in the Sinai boosts Islamic State recruitment. Any regime that must rely on such methods is weak and unstable.

The regime also has failed to stabilize the economy. More than 22 million Egyptians live in poverty, the unemployment rate hovers around 13 percent and economic growth rates remain below 3 percent. Protests are on the rise, especially among students, workers and civil servants. Sissis repressive strategy for governing can work for a while, but not for years or decades. The regime lacks the sources of legitimacy that have sustained autocracies historically and in other parts of the world, such as economic growth, a monarchy or an ideology. Without reform, this system will fail.

The Egyptian regime and its external backers must pursue a new strategy for generating regime legitimacy: power-sharing. Full-blown democracy is not realistic right now. But political liberalization  opening up spaces for safe participation in politics  should be embraced.

First, the Egyptian regime should release the tens of thousands of political prisoners it is holding, some of whom have been jailed for the most trivial of offenses. Second, it should revoke the repressive security laws it has passed since 2013 and establish a framework for transitional justice, including establishing a truth-and-reconciliation commission and reforming the security services. Third, the regime should allow all actors to enter the political process, provided they credibly commit to rule of law and nonviolence and refrain from hate speech. Fourth, at some point in the not-too-distant future, the regime must hold parliamentary elections. Because of widescale vote-buying and low voter turnout in 2015, the newly constituted House of Representatives has little legitimacy. Only a new election can begin a slow, evolutionary process of restoring parliamentary legitimacy, which would be a first, small step toward checking presidential power.

Improbable? Maybe. But it is also the only plausible strategy for regime survival. For regime supporters, these incremental steps toward political liberalization would offer reduced societal tensions, enhanced governmental legitimacy and greater likelihood of long-term stability. For regime opponents, power-sharing with the government is the only way they can stop human rights violations, participate in politics again and gradually push for longer-term goals regarding the rotation of power, rule of law and democratizing civilian-military relations.

The alternative  doing nothing  guarantees more violence, greater radicalization and, eventually, the breakdown of the state. Small positive changes now can avoid big negative changes later in this most important country in the Arab world.
INDIANA, HARDLY a bastion of bleeding-heart liberalism, became on Wednesday the latest state to curb the use in prisons of solitary confinement, an extreme, hellish and overused punishment. It follows President Obama, who on Monday announced reforms to prisoner isolation practices in federal prisons, and it joins California and New York as one of the latest states to submit to a legal settlement requiring changes. Indianas move is another sign of progress in ending a national scandal: the routine overuse of a practice that is akin to torture. But it took a class-action lawsuit to prompt the decision, and even then it promises insufficient change.

[Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement]

The case against Indianas Department of Correction centered on three inmates with mental illnesses who were placed in solitary confinement  or, per the states preferred euphemism, restricted status housing  which meant almost no out-of-cell time, limited contact with other inmates and prison staff, and punishments that exacerbate or give rise to mental problems. Except in a few, exceptional circumstances, prisoners with various types of mental illness will no longer have to endure the barbarity of solitary. Crucially, this is a broadly defined group, including not only people who are schizophrenic or bipolar but also those who suffer from anxiety disorders and other mental maladies that can lead to self-harm or functional impairment.

Mental-health experts will have much more leeway in determining the conditions in which their patients must live. The goal is to get them out of solitary and into an environment that might help  or at least not hinder  their treatment. To that end, the settlement requires that mentally ill inmates receive at least 10 hours of therapeutic out-of-cell time per week, a dramatic shift in current practice, and frequent in-cell visits from clinicians. These prisoners will also get more unstructured, recreational time outside their cells. The American Civil Liberties Unions Amy Fettig says that these changes, particularly the out-of-cell requirements, match what many other states have done  either by choice or in response to a lawsuit  and are emerging as de facto national standards.

Even so, declining to torture the mentally ill is a low bar. Other states have done much more. Colorado, for example, scaled back its old solitary confinement system, significantly reducing the number of people the state isolates. The states head of prisons reports that disorder has not resulted. Instead, Colorado has shown that corrections officers have any number of more humane ways to keep order.

Protecting particularly vulnerable inmates is important, but so is reducing the use of solitary as a general, routine punishment for minor rule-breaking. Also essential is providing step-down programs that prepare those who have been isolated for life in the general prison population  or in larger society after their terms are up.

Every state may have a few inmates who are too dangerous to house with other people. But that is no excuse to continue the rank, rampant overuse of solitary confinement.
Regarding President Obamas Jan. 26 op-ed, Rethinking solitary confinement:

Two years ago, I met my own Kalief Browder, whose tragic story is emblematic of why we must rethink solitary confinement. Ojore Lutalo spent 22 years in solitary confinement. Since his release, Mr. Lutalo has spread awareness of an overused and unproductive practice. He inspired me to advocate for prison reform. I am a student worker at Kean Universitys Human Rights Institute. An upcoming conference on the business of incarceration in the United States will include a solitary-confinement replica that will let people experience briefly the indignity of isolation.

Against all odds, enduring unimaginable pain, Mr. Lutalo found redemption through his art. Now I can join him to help shine a light on suffering endured for far too long by prisoners denied basic human rights. Thanks to Mr. Obamas vision and leadership, I hope that U.S. prisons become a model of rehabilitation, producing citizens prepared to pursue happiness in a land of second chances.

Obinna Woko, Irvington, N.J.

President Obamas charge to ban solitary confinement for juveniles is encouraging, but Im concerned about why many of those juveniles were confined in the first place. They were confined for their own protection from adult inmates. Now we need to ban the prosecution of children as adults in this country. Thirteen- and 16-year-olds are forced to share horrible adult facilities with the general prison population.

So much is broken, and the suggestion that Congress might reform sentencing laws or expand reentry programs offers much-needed hope. But it isnt enough. A ban on sentencing children as adults must immediately be invoked.

Christy Shick, Berkeley, Calif.

The potential psychiatric consequences of prolonged solitary confinement are well-recognized. They include depression, anxiety and psychosis. Juveniles and people with preexisting psychiatric disorders are particularly vulnerable to such adverse reactions. Research also demonstrates that the majority of suicides in juvenile correctional facilities occur when the person is in solitary confinement or otherwise isolated.

In his powerful op-ed, President Obama highlighted these risks. He also correctly observed that solitary confinement doesnt make us safer and concluded that the practice is an affront to our common humanity. His decision to ban the use of solitary confinement for juveniles in the federal prison system sends a timely and important message. I hope the presidents initiative encourages state legislators and correctional administrators to institute similar reforms.

David Fassler, Burlington, Vt.

The writer is a clinical professor of psychiatry

at the University of Vermont.

We applaud President Obama for banning the practice of holding juveniles in solitary confinement in federal prisons. Research demonstrates that adolescents are still developing in neurological, cognitive and emotional domains. As a result, solitary confinement can have especially devastating consequences for them. It is associated with increased risk of self-mutilation, suicidal ideation, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, paranoia and aggression.

Because of the significant negative effects of solitary confinement on psychological development, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child has stated that juvenile solitary confinement should be considered cruel and unusual treatment. We at the American Psychological Association look forward to the implementation of the Justice Departments recommendations and call on Congress to ensure that it fulfills the promise of its bipartisan efforts to reform the federal criminal-justice system. We also call on states to follow suit if they have not already.

Susan H. McDaniel, Washington

The writer is president of the American Psychological Association.

President Obama admirably wants to reduce the use of solitary confinement and improve mental-health services for prisoners. But a smarter approach would be to reduce the number of people with mental illness who are incarcerated. That could be achieved by removing the Institutions for Mental Disease Exclusion from Medicaid. The exclusion prevents states from receiving Medicaid reimbursement for seriously mentally ill adults who need long-term hospital care. It is federally sanctioned discrimination against the seriously mentally ill and forces communities to incarcerate the mentally ill after they become violent, rather than treat them before.

D.J. Jaffe, New York

The writer is executive director

of Mental Illness Policy Org.
E.J. Dionne Jr. is the author of Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, from which this essay is adapted. He is a Washington Post columnist, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and a professor at Georgetown University.

The Republican campaign for the 2016 presidential nomination has become a carnival, a comedy hour and, for many in the party, a horror show. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the two leading candidates in Mondays Iowa caucuses, are despised by most of the partys leaders. The GOPs so-called establishment has, so far at least, been hapless in bringing them down. The closing days of the campaign here have been dominated by high-school-level hijinks around Trumps refusal to participate in a debate because he didnt like one of the moderators. Oh yes, and the debate was sponsored by Fox News, the GOPs sacred cable network.

Democrats can be forgiven for being gleeful. At last, it seems, the GOPs extremism and obstructionism throughout the Obama years are catching up with it.

But at the risk of spoiling the fun, the crisis of conservatism is actually a problem for all of us  and I say that as an unabashed liberal. An intellectually vibrant conservatism is essential to a healthy democracy. The United States needs conservatives willing to criticize the grand plans we liberals sometimes offer, to remind us that traditional institutions should not be overturned lightly and to challenge those who believe that politics can remold human nature.

Republican presidential candidates weighed in on immigration, the Islamic State, criminal justice reform and - of course - Donald Trump at the Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 28. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

At its best, as Philip Wallach and Justus Myers argued in National Affairs , conservatism is a disposition that has the most to offer societies that have much worth conserving. Even those of us who are critical of our nations injustices and inequalities can agree that the United States is such a society. The task of conservatives, Wallach and Myers write, is to offer incremental adaptation as an alternative to radical change.

The trouble is that large parts of the American right are not interested in incremental adaptation, and they certainly dont want to compromise with Democrats. In a two-party system that frequently divides a government with separated powers, this produces exactly the sort of dysfunction that voters are so angry about. In the meantime, working-class Republicans are increasingly (and justifiably) indignant that their loyalty in election after election has brought them no material benefits and few satisfactions of any kind.

The rise of Trump is not an accident. Erick Erickson of the popular RedState blog was succinct: The Republican Party created Donald Trump, because they made a lot of promises to their base and never kept them.

Its a problem that goes a long way back  to conservatisms embrace of Barry Goldwater. Not the avuncular Goldwater who developed real doubts about the far right late in life, but the firebrand who built his 1964 candidacy on the conviction that the Republican Partys establishment had betrayed its conservative loyalists. The Goldwater who taught his followers that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

For half a century, the history of American conservatism has been a story of disappointment and betrayal. Conservative leaders have denounced decades of change, pledging what would amount to a return to the government and economy of the 1890s, the cultural norms of the 1950s and, in more recent times, the ethnic makeup of the country in the 1940s. But no conservative administration  not Richard Nixons, not Ronald Reagans and neither of the Bush presidencies  could live up to the rhetoric that conservative politicians regularly deploy to rally their supporters.

Conservatives in power could never materially reduce the size of government, because so much of what it does and spends money on  from supporting the elderly to protecting consumers to providing for the common defense  is so popular. Conservatives havent been able to roll back cultural changes, because most Americans dont want to return where we were before the rights revolutions on behalf of African Americans, women and gays. And politicians cant reverse the fact that white Americans gradually are losing their majority status in an increasingly diverse nation. The absurdity of Trumps promise to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants is obvious to most Americans, if not to Trumps supporters.

Conservatives have still managed to win elections, of course. It helps that they can count on older Republican voters to turn out, even in non-presidential years. That aging base, however, bodes ill for the partys long-term prospects.

And the victories Republicans have won over the decades have produced neither the lasting electoral realignment that conservative prophets keep predicting nor the broad policy changes that the faithful hope for. For the rank-and-file right, the sense that their leaders have failed them and the political system shortchanged them has created a cycle of radicalization.

With each disappointment, movement conservatives have blamed moderation and advanced an ever-purer ideology, certain that doing so will eventually bring them the triumphs that have eluded them over and over. Nixon infuriated conservatives who believed he harvested their votes only to pursue liberal policies on a host of issues  from regulatory and environmental legislation to a realist foreign policy that took him to communist China. The collapse of Nixons presidency led to the rise of Reagan. Reagan, in turn, left intact many of the legacies of the New Deal and the most important elements of Lyndon Johnsons Great Society. Conservatives rarely confess to disappointment over this. Instead, they hold these apostasies against his successor, and the defeat of George H.W. Bush led to Newt Gingrichs revolution.

The partial exception to this pattern is George W. Bush, who briefly preached compassionate conservatism. But the idea never took hold in his party. It became at best a sideshow after the 9/11 attacks. And when the country turned on the Bush administration, conservatives said his problem was that he had not been conservative enough on spending, immigration, education and Medicare. A return to the true faith was the only prescription on order. The result was the tea party, which was a reaction as much to Bush as to the election of Barack Obama.

In trying to explain the rise of Trump, many conservatives insist that the self-involved billionaires unforgivable sin is his failure to be true to the conservative creed. The case for constitutional limited government is the case against Donald Trump, Ben Domenech argued in National Review, while the editors of that magazine declared, Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones. My colleague George Will has suggested that a Trump nomination would mean the loss of what Taft and then Goldwater made possible  a conservative party as a constant presence in U.S. politics.

Theyre right, of course, that Trumps overriding ideology is opportunism. But in a perverse way, his rise embodies the phenomenal success of Goldwaters war on moderation. If the GOP front-runners are uncompromising, this is exactly what most of those who remain in the Republican primary electorate want them to be. And this distinguishes Republicans from Democrats. A typical and important poll finding: In 2013, the Pew Research Center asked Americans whether they preferred elected officials who make compromises with people they disagree with or those who stick to their positions. Among Democrats, 59 percent preferred compromise-seekers; among Republicans, only 36 percent did. Its no wonder that to chase the voters who have repaired to Trump and Cruz, Marco Rubio has been willing to blur his image as an optimist by ratcheting up the anger in his rhetoric.

The spectacle of what is happening in this years nominating contest already alarms many Republicans, but it will probably take a third consecutive presidential election defeat to force a real reckoning. Political movements, after all, tend not to change course until they have no alternative. The British Conservative Party turned to moderation and modernization under Prime Minister David Cameron only after three losses. The rule of three may apply here, too. And if the GOP lost again after picking a nominee who represented an unvarnished version of the conservative creed  Cruz comes to mind  it would no longer be possible to blame defeat on a lack of ideological purity, a charge conservatives leveled against both John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Would a Cameron-like course correction amount to selling out conservative principles? Well, yes, if conservatism is defined as resistance to all change  or at least to any changes that were once or are now being proposed by those seen as liberal or progressive.

But this is not conservatism. It is reaction rooted in deep pessimism that is entirely out of keeping with the American character.

With their take our country back rhetoric, conservatives these days do not seem to like the raucously and creatively diverse United States that actually exists. They refuse to acknowledge that certain reforms were adopted and then broadly accepted precisely because they better reflected the purposes of the American creed  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the idea that all are created equal  than did the status quo.

They should realize that their forebears eventually embraced what reformers achieved. Many conservatives in the pre-Civil War period opposed the abolition of slavery; many conservatives in the 1930s opposed Social Security; many conservatives in the 1960s opposed civil rights laws. But the justice of these measures became obvious over time, and the values behind them became part of the American way of life. In this moment, conservatives need to ponder whether 10, 20 or 50 years from now, Americans  including conservatives  will feel the same way about same-sex marriage or the guaranteed, universal availability of health insurance.

Conservatives certainly do not have to acquiesce to every liberal reform, wrote the political theorist Greg Weiner, an admirer of the first conservative, Edmund Burke. But in examining the order that progressives have brought into being over the past three-quarters of a century, he argued that they do need to approach its modification with a degree of caution and regard. Undoing the entire New Deal/Great Society legacy is not, in the end, conservative.

The rise of Trump has called forth some useful soul-searching on the right. Conservatives need to look candidly at the roles of racial reaction and white backlash in building their movement and their continuing roles today, as witnessed in Trumps xenophobia. They should recognize that todays dynamic, tolerant and diverse America arose out of the very concepts of liberty and opportunity that conservatives have always extolled.

And they should acknowledge that a conservatism focused so obsessively on lower taxes for the wealthy and deregulation of the economy has little to say to the Americans with modest incomes who form Trumps base. National Review, the founding magazine of Goldwater conservatism, acknowledged this month in its widely debated Against Trump editorial that if conservatives cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by demagogues. Thats true. But if conservatives continue to put relief for the makers and job creators at the heart of their governing program  as all their presidential candidates are doing this year  such voters will continue to wonder how seriously the rights politicians are taking their struggles, their fears and their aspirations.

The country and not just the Republican Party would be better off if this very strange election year marked the beginning of a large-scale reassessment by conservatives of the trajectory their movement has been on since Goldwater transformed it in 1964. It is common for conservatives to say that liberals need to free themselves from the 1960s. This is now imperative for the American right.

Twitter: @EJDionne

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Why conservatives start culture wars and liberals win them

Memo to Sanders and Clinton: Even insurgents need an inside game

Five myths Donald Trump tells about Donald Trump

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Bertrand Olotara, a Senate cafeteria worker, is one of several cafeteria workers whom advocates say were cheated out of a negotiated pay raise. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

This story was supposed to have a happy ending.

Last year, about 60 low-wage federal contract workers at the Senate cafeteria staged a series of strikes to demand a living wage and a union. Some were on food stamps; one was moonlighting as a stripper to make ends meet; another was homeless. Their stories, and their bravery, soon attracted powerful allies to their cause.

Senators and their staff organized boycotts of the cafeteria. Dozens of senators signed letters brimming with righteous indignation over the treatment of the hard-working people who cook their lunches and clean their toilets. Some legislators held private meetings with the workers, offering attaboys and never-give-up-the-fights.

One presidential candidate (Ill give you one Bern-ing guess who) even spoke at five of the workers walkouts, once in the pouring rain.

Finally, after months of negotiations with the legislative agency that handles procurement at the Capitol, the company that runs the cafeteria agreed to a new contract giving its employees a sizable raise. It wasnt everything the workers wanted, but it was still a big win. Some workers who had seen their pay stagnate for years would get a bump of about $5 per hour.

A round of self-congratulations commenced.

I am thankful for the employees that do so much for the Senate day in and day out, and I am glad their concerns were heard and taken into consideration in the new contract, crowed Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees Capitol campus matters.

But it appears some workers were shortchanged, right under the noses of their Senate champions.

Days after the new contract was signed, a cafeteria manager quietly began calling some workers into his office. He demanded they sign paperwork acknowledging new job titles.

Im a cook, and Ive always been a cook, said 45-year-old Bertrand Olotara. Now suddenly hes telling me Im a food service worker. 

Olotaras duties didnt change; hes still cooking burgers, eggs and Philly cheesesteaks, just as he always had.

But his title matters.

See, wages in the new contract were occupation-specific. And lo and behold, food service worker falls into a lower tier than cook.

Rather than getting the big raise Olotara expected as a cook  which would have upped his pay to $17.45  he was entitled to just $13.80 as a food service worker.

Sure, thats better than his old pay (which was $12.30). But its nowhere near what he was promised  or what senators proclaimed workers such as Olotara were entitled to.

Maybe the difference between $13.80 and $17.45 doesnt sound like much. To Olotara, a single father of five children, it would have meant everything.

It would have allowed him to quit his second job, working weekends at Whole Foods, where hes been moonlighting for more than a decade.

Which in turn would have given him more time to spend with his children, the eldest of whom will attend college in the fall.

And maybe to go back to writing poetry. Or to school. Or to compose the book bouncing around in his head (tentative title: Under the Shadow of the Senate).

There are many things Olotara would like to do, but now, working seven days a week, he just doesnt have time.

At least six others were reclassified in to lower-wage titles without any change in job duties, according to Good Jobs Nation, a labor organization that has been trying to unionize these workers. Good Jobs Nation recently filed a complaint with the Labor Department on the workers behalf. It argues that these effective demotions violate not only the new contract, but federal law, too.

Under the Service Contract Act, the occupations of government contract workers are narrowly defined according to the tasks they perform, as laid out in the Labor Departments directory of occupations. Employers dont get to just change definitions willy-nilly, even if doing so protects profit margins.

Maybe theres an innocent explanation for why workers including Olotara got suddenly demoted in title but not in job responsibilities. If there is, no one has publicly offered it.

Restaurant Associates, the private contractor involved, said only that it has been notified by the Department of Labor and are looking into the matter. The Architect of the Capitol, the agency that handled the contract, declined to release any details about the contract itself, which has not been made public. A spokeswoman said the agency is aware of existing concerns and is working to get them resolved.

And near as I can tell, none of the senators who boasted last year about how they were looking out for the little people have said anything about how those little people never got their big raises.

Do they not know or do they not care?
When the FDA approved a drug to reduce the risk of HIV infections in July 2012, gay men rejoiced. If taken daily, Truvada works like a vaccine against HIV, effectively halting its spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hailed it as an important new tool in the fight against the disease. Slate described it as a miracle drug. President Obama imagined an AIDS-free generation.

It hasnt worked out that way. Truvada isnt making gay men healthier and safer; few are using the drug at all. And after years of decline, sexually transmitted diseases are spreading fast across the United States. From 2005 to 2014, HIV diagnoses jumped 6 percent among men who have sex with men, with spikes of 101 percent among Asians, 24 percent among Latinos and 22 percent among blacks. Six in 10 gay African American men will be HIV-positive by their 40th birthday, according to some estimates. Transmission continued to climb even after Truvada hit the market.

Doctors worry that were heading toward a health mega-crisis, fueled by the fantasy that sex in 2016 is safer than it was in 1986. And gay rights groups are largely to blame. Rather than educating men about Truvada, theyve focused on stamping out the stigma around HIV. Not only do these campaigns minimize the dangers of the disease, they tiptoe around strategies for prevention. After all, why worry about catching something that isnt a big deal?

Truvada has tumbled into a culture of careless cheerleading that is putting gay men in danger.

In 2004, Truvada hit the market as an HIV treatment called PEP, or post-exposure prophylaxis. But scientists quickly saw the drugs potential. With a couple of tweaks, PEP became PrEP  pre-exposure prophylaxis. It works like birth control: Users who pop a pill every day are up to 99 percent protected against HIV, even if they have unprotected sex with someone whos positive.

The FDA approved Truvadas use as PrEP in 2012. It was precipitous timing. The rise of successful HIV treatments and broader cultural acceptance of gay life had turned HIV from grim reaper to nagging doctor, emboldening gay men to view condoms as cliche or passe, fear-mongering hetero-normative shackles bullying their inner unicorn spirit animals. Indeed, gay slang for condom-less sex is uninhibited. Unprotected sex among gay men jumped 20 percent between 2005 and 2013; 57 percent of gay men said they had had unprotected anal sex at least once in 2011. As national sex-advice columnist Dan Savage told me, People are acting like its 1978 again and were all at the Mineshaft.

Truvada, researchers figured, would offer another form of protection against HIV, which 492,000 gay U.S. men are at high risk of contracting, according to the CDC. Yet so far, only 21,000 prescriptions have been written.

One problem is cost: Truvada runs about $1,300 a month. But its covered by most insurance plans, and Medicaid and many municipalities regularly distribute the drug for free. Gilead, Truvadas maker, offers discounts, too.

Additionally, many men are reluctant to take on the burden of a daily medication regimen. Others are just bad at keeping up with a daily pill. From 2012 through 2015, one set of researchers tried to get 557 men and transgender women who have sex with men to take the pill for 48 weeks and attend a handful of study visits. A fifth didnt stick with it. In another 48-week study, 200 young men were given Truvada and told to take it daily. By the end, only 35 percent were regularly doing so. An additional 30 percent had stopped their intake entirely. In other words: Though Truvada saves us from HIV, we still need saving from ourselves.

Theres also the stigma. While Truvada is gay Americas guardian angel, its users are persistently labeled Truvada whores: men who sleep around, unsafely. Others worry that theyll be pegged as HIV-positive, since Truvada can be used as a treatment for those already infected. One ongoing study of young gay men found that 79 percent knew about Truvada but only 11 percent had tried it. Many non-users said stigma kept them away.

Even doctors are reluctant to prescribe it. Melanie Thompson, the principal investigator of the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, told NPR in 2014 that some medical professionals worry that their patients will stop using condoms if they take PrEP. In that same story, a CDC spokeswoman cautioned that health-care providers lack of awareness is one of the major challenges to PrEPs success.

Meanwhile, the number of new HIV infections has begun to rise among gay men, even though it is declining in the overall population. In some cities, the numbers are downright apocalyptic: Gay black men under 25 in Atlanta have one of the highest incidences of HIV ever recorded in the developed world. One in 3 people there learn that theyre HIV-positive only after they already have AIDS. Young people  that is, under 30, younger than the epidemic itself  are the largest group of new HIV cases, especially young minorities. In the past decade, diagnoses among black and Latino men younger than 24 who have sex with men rose 87 percent, compared with 56 percent among their white peers.

In other words, HIV is bubbling into an epidemic again.

While the crisis isnt exactly in spite of the work gay groups are doing, they enable it. Some, such as the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, actively opposed FDA approval of Truvada, arguing that it gives users a false sense of security because most users dont take the drug consistently, making it less effective.

Others pretend that the hard, important mission around HIV is not preventing people from getting it but rather the more familiar battle of accepting those who are infected, of sharing stories and cloying hashtag slacktivism. Rather than trying to destigmatize Truvada, in other words, theyre destigmatizing HIV. Since the 90s, HIV education has been about awareness and demystifying, destigmatizing the virus, much, much more than actual prevention, Savage says. Theyre mostly [HIV-positive] guys themselves who are in it to reclaim their place in society. They talk about gay men like theyre all smart and rational, ignoring the fact that people with erections are often reckless.

Take the bewildering social-media campaign in which gay men and allies posed with glasses  trendy!  next to the phrase HIV Smar+ (see what they did there?). The posters offered no information about what smart might be. Or HIV Equal, which operates under the slogan, Everybody has an HIV status. We are all HIV equal. Sample ads show shirtless men with the words Status: Fly and Status: Fun. The campaigns stated mission is to help end stigma against people living with HIV (PLWHIV), and to link or relink HIV-positive individuals into proper care and treatment.

The sunny froth reflects a broader shift in gay culture  a focus on celebration over investigation. The Out 100, an annual whos who of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender influencers (and straight allies) that was published in November, included 15 activists, two YouTube stars, one meteorologist, one president of Food Network and zero doctors, researchers or public health officials. In an interview with Obama, Outs Ally of the Year, HIV came up once, briefly, as a nod to the presidents early days fighting housing discrimination in 1980s Chicago. It felt as long-ago as Angels in America, Philadelphia, Rent or any other artifacts of the 90s heyday of AIDS awareness.

Of course, nobody should be ashamed of having HIV. Its not a death sentence, but its not a new lease on life, either. Everyone who has HIV wishes they didnt. Todays power-of-positive-thinking optimists ignore that, leading by example with a model that aims to be laissez faire but ends up as plain lazy.



Even when gay groups embrace Truvada education, their efforts seem silly. Take Public Health Solutions, a nonprofit whose self-described mission is to help illuminate critical public health issues. In November, it debuted a profanity-laden public-service announcement on YouTube ending with the tagline WTF is PrEP. So street! So effective! If thats what the group went with, what were the ideas it rejected?

I happen to know, because, as luck would have it, in April I was part of a Public Health Solutions focus group. Twenty-five gay men, almost all white, were assembled to give feedback on some scripts and share general thoughts about Truvada. The session was managed by Kenny Shults, a comedian who told HIV+ magazine (which goes by Plus, of course): Why get tested? Whats the point if testing has no impact on how I live my sex life. His day job, for the record, is working for a health consultancy.

At the focus group (full disclosure: they gave me $50 and a sandwich), one script involved a gay man readying for a big night out  getting dressed, fussing with his hair and popping a Truvada. The line was something like: I like to party. But I like to be safe, too. The slogan was something like: Prep for life. Prep for possibilities.

No, no, we all told Shults; maybe the scriptwriters were too corporate and out-of-touch to know this, we explained, but party is gay slang for lots of dangerous activity, including the use of crystal meth, sometimes with needles. Shults nodded, made notes and thanked us for our input.

But later, along with the WTF ad came another one: It shows a blond white man dancing shirtless at a club and saying, I like to party. Then it cuts to him sitting on a couch, prowling Grindr, when an alert pops up on his phone: Time to prep! Its not just that he uses the line we in the focus group all warned against. Its that the very title of the video is I Like To Party. It was the activism equivalent of using the AIDS Memorial Quilt for a boys-will-be-boys toweling off after sex with a stranger.

These ads, Shults and others say, are supposed to reach people who arent motivated by the this can protect you message. Really, though, they just turn safe sex into a joke. Thats a mistake. More than 60 percent of new HIV infections in the United States are transmitted by people who know they have the disease. An additional 30 percent are transmitted by the 13 percent of HIV-positive Americans who dont know their status.

With numbers this serious, the time for sunny slogans has passed. Its time to make knowledge infectious. It has side effects we can live with.

outlook@washpost.com

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Donald Trump is often credited with distilling Jeb Bushs main electoral challenge: that he is low energy. It fits Bush well enough (more accurately, he is a cerebral introvert) to be damaging. But it is Bush, in turn, who has captured the essence of Trump as the chaos candidate. We have yet to determine if Trumps approach is a drawback or a disturbingly effective new method of presidential campaigning.

Since the summer, Trump has advanced in a series of taunts, outlandish statements and feuds that have kept him center stage in American life. They reflect the persona he developed on not only The Apprentice, but also his Battle of the Billionaires against Vince McMahon at WrestleMania in 2007. Im taller than you, he told McMahon. Im better-looking than you. I think Im stronger than you.

Sometimes a columnist must step back, breathe in, breathe out and consider where the journey has brought us. Days away from the first votes of the presidential nomination process, the prohibitive Republican front-runner is successfully applying the lessons of his pro wrestling career to dominate media coverage and prevent opponents from gaining attention and traction. God help us.

The feud this time is with Megyn Kelly, Roger Ailes and Fox News  illustrating the distinction between Trumps populism and movement conservatism (a gap that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz seeks to exploit). But it is worth recalling how it all started. Mr. Trump, asked Kelly in an earlier debate, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you dont use a politicians filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women. Youve called women you dont like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. . . . Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?

This is the word  temperament  that will eventually sink the Trump campaign, if it is eventually sunk. We are witnessing what happens when a narcissist who thinks he is at the center of the universe is actually placed at the center of the universe. There is the need for adulation. There are the fantasies of unlimited power  see Trumps admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is the expectation of special treatment  see his debate boycott. There is the lack of empathy  see his cruel mocking of a disabled reporter.

Leadership is often evidenced in relatively small things. Shortly after his election in 2000, I was with President George W. Bush in the family theater at the White House where he was practicing his first address to Congress. For whatever reason, the military is charged with teleprompter operation, and the operator had messed up his job. An angry Bush said, Call me when you get your act together and stalked out of the room. The young man was distraught. But a few minutes later, Bush returned and apologized to the operator, saying: That is not the way the president of the United States should act.

A small thing, but I remember it. The office confers an awesome power to elevate the lives of those around a president, or to destroy them.

I thought of this when Trump delivered his rant earlier this month in Pensacola, Fla., at a rally where his microphone was malfunctioning. Whoever the hell brought this mic system, dont pay the son of a bitch who put it in, he told the crowd. I believe in paying, but when somebody does a bad job, like this stupid mic, you shouldnt pay the bastard.

My point is not that Trump should be more polite to the help. It is that the temperament and character of a man or woman gets magnified and amplified by the power of the presidency. There must be some inner check to avoid the abuse of power. Chuck Colson said it was Richard Nixons us-versus-them mentality that led to the creation of the plumbers  the group charged with plugging press leaks, eventually triggering the Watergate scandal. The attitudes and leadership style of a president inspire or infect his entire administration.

It is a tribute to the seriousness of the Trump candidacy that we should be considering the real-world consequences of his temperament. But his feud-seeking, his personal insults, his shock-jock transgressiveness, his sexism, his mocking of those with disabilities, his clumsy deceptions, his toxic leadership style, his cultivation of chaos should be issues in this campaign. And they should be disqualifying in a prospective president.

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Megan McDonough is a weddings and obituary writer for The Washington Post.

Since the dawn of civilization, people have been fascinated with wild horses. Our prehistoric cave paintings and stone carvings show this, as do modern films, songs and novels.

Long before horses became our tools, long before the bit and the bridle were invented, humans have adored watching horses, writes science journalist and equestrian Wendy Williams.

Horses have been around for about 56 million years, yet we still have a minimal understanding of them.

For decades, equine scientists have studied the best way to train show horses, the best way to feed race horses, the best way to heal the delicate bones in a lame horses foot. . . . But the natural behavior of horses was rarely considered to be of scientific interest, Williams explains. Thats beginning to change.

The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion by Wendy Williams (Scientific American /FSG)

Her new book, The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion, looks at these new developments, adeptly blending scientific research and anecdotal evidence into a comprehensive account of the animals evolutionary history and natural behavior  or what we know of it so far.

[Looking back at the best books of 2015]

Since horses cant talk (except Mister Ed), Williams uses archeological records and research from scientists around the world to explore the rich history, social development and behavioral characteristics of wild horses. She also sets out on her own investigation  observing mustangs in the Pryor Mountains of Montana, graceful Lipizzan stallions in Austria, mustachioed Garrano horses in Spain and free-roaming Takhi horses in Mongolia to better comprehend equine evolution and the human-horse relationship.

Understanding the complexities of horse psychology and behavior will not only improve our abilities to work and communicate with the animals, Williams argues, but also will help us make sense of our emotional and evolutionary connection to them. A relationship that has been traditionally seen as unidirectional  we command and they obey  can now become much more nuanced and sensitive, she writes.

Our appreciation of the animals complex cognitive and perceptual capabilities is slowly broadening and deepening, thanks to increased scientific attention and research. Studies have shown, for example, that horses can understand two dimensions and apply that understanding to the world around them. They are also much more sensitive to movement, sounds, tastes and smells than humans are but, unlike us, possess a limited perception of color and detail. Horses and riders take cues from one another to have a more comprehensive vision.

Williams explains that horses, like humans, are social creatures that crave companionship, form strong attachments and display their emotions through body language and facial expressions. They have also proved resilient, adapting to an ever-changing planet and evolving from small, doglike creatures to the long-legged, majestic equines of today.

The book ends with a stark reminder of the distressing challenges horses face: A growing human population and shifting global landscape have severely diminished their range and resources. But Williams remains optimistic, pointing to the successful reintroduction, or rewilding, of Takhi horses in Mongolia as proof that there is still promise for wild horses to exist in harmony in a world filled with people.

Williamss book is an informative and engaging account of an animal thats both familiar and mysterious. Darwin saw only the tip of the iceberg, Williams writes, and now we see a few feet below. There is, as Williams notes, so much more to understand. But for now, her book provides an illuminating glimpse at what we know  and what we may someday learn.
Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and the author of Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections), from which this essay is adapted.

For a time, it was fashionable to declare that Americas culture wars were over. Culture wars issues not only had a very low profile in the [2008] campaign, the Center for American Progresss Ruy Teixeira wrote in 2013, but, where conservatives did attempt to raise them, these issues did them little good. . . . There will be diminishing incentives for politicians to take up these causes for the very simple reason that they are losers.

And yet here we are, in 2016, with the culture wars still going strong. Gun control, religious liberty, Black Lives Matter and funding for Planned Parenthood are all high-profile issues in the presidential campaign. Perhaps the most intense battle, though, is the one over immigration, which National Reviews Reihan Salam correctly identifies as a fight over the future of American national identity in the face of rapid and accelerating demographic change.

As a historian, Im not optimistic that our culture wars will end anytime soon. These angry disputes about the meaning of America, and who is a true American, have been raging since the early days of our nation. Weve lurched from one cultural conflict to the next. A loss in one battle further convinces culture warriors that our society is going to hell. So they cast about for another grievance  another them to blame for what is happening to us. In this way, the culture wars are perpetually rising from the dead.

As I investigated Americas culture wars from Jefferson to Obama, I found that they follow a predictable pattern. They tend to start on the right, with conservatives anxious about some cultural change. Yet conservatives almost always lose, because they lash themselves to lost causes. Thats how this latest round in our culture wars is likely to conclude, too. If you fear (as I do) what a President Trump might do, remember that the promise to build a Mexico-financed border wall or to ban Muslims from entering the country are as lost as causes can be.

Culture-war histories typically start with the 1960s. The radical political mobilizations of the sixties  civil rights, Black and Chicano Power, feminism, gay liberation, the antiwar movement, the legal push for secularization  destabilized the America that millions knew, Andrew Hartman writes in his book A War for the Soul of America. It was only after the sixties that many, particularly conservatives, recognize the threat to their once great nation.

But Americas culture wars go back much further than what conservatives sometimes call the bad 60s.

Although early Americans were united in their hatred of the British and their love of George Washington, as soon as Washington retired from public service, they turned on one another in a series of disputes about the propriety of the French Revolution and the meanings and ends of their new nation.

Many of the attacks on the moral relativism of the 60s reprised attacks on the multiculturalism of the Roaring Twenties. Many anti-Catholic tropes of the 1928 presidential election, in which a vote for Catholic Democrat Al Smith was said to be a vote for the Antichrist, were recycled from 19th-century smears of Catholic immigrants as shock troops for a foreign despot. Claims that President Obama is a closet Muslim are not novel, either. In the nasty election of 1800, now being staged in the Broadway hit Hamilton, Thomas Jeffersons Federalist opponents accused him of believing in the alcoran.

In almost every case, these culture wars have been conservative projects, instigated and waged by people anxious about the loss of old orders and the emergence of new ones. Their anxiety finds expression first as a complaint about a particular policy, and second as a broader lament about how far the nation has fallen from its founding glory and how desperately we need to restore whatever is passing away. Or, to put it in Trumpian terms: The nation has been schlonged, but it will be great again.

Anti-Catholicism and anti-Mormonism were right-wing reactions to 19th-century Catholic immigration and Mormon migration, and to the moral, theological, social and economic threats those communities posed to Protestant power. Similarly, the culture wars of the 1920s and 1930s were conservative responses to the rise of the saloon and the speakeasy  and to the cultural pluralism brought on by rapid urbanization and immigration waves. In the contemporary culture wars, conservatives give voice to their anxieties about the loss of the traditional family and a homogeneous society. Cultural politics are always a politics of nostalgia, driven by those who are determined to return to what they remember (rightly or wrongly) as a better way of life.

Conservatives often blame liberals for the losses they are experiencing and for threatening the health and welfare of the nation. They say liberals started the culture wars by banning prayer from schools or agitating for feminism or black power. But conservative anxiety usually has little to do with liberal activism. It can be triggered by demographic trends. Or a Supreme Court ruling. Or a reality-television star.

To be sure, culture wars are battles between conservatives and liberals over conflicting cultural, moral and religious ideas. But at a deeper level, they are conservative dramas in which liberals are merely props. If liberals werent there, conservatives would have to invent them  and they often do.

Many people now view the culture of victimhood so visible on the right  in Bill OReillys war on the so-called war on Christmas, for example  as a pale imitation of the victimhood culture of left-wing identity politics. But this tradition goes back to Protestants who saw themselves as victims of Deism in 1800, of Catholicism in the 1830s and 1840s, and of Mormonism before and after the Civil War.

Even though conservatives tend to start the culture wars, liberals almost always win them. The infidel Jefferson and papist John Kennedy become president. Prohibition is repealed. Marijuana becomes legal. Gays and lesbians get marriage rights. Conservatives manage an occasional victory  on guns, for example. But in almost every arena where the contemporary culture wars have been fought, liberals now control the agenda.

Liberals may win our culture wars for philosophical reasons (because the constitutional principle of liberty is on their side) or for practical ones (because the nation is becoming more Catholic or more brown). But the most important reason they win is because their opponents fixate on lost causes. Conservatives instigated the Philadelphia Bible wars of 1844 when the Catholic population there was growing too quickly to remain on the margins. They attacked same-sex marriage most fiercely when attitudes toward gays were gravitating toward acceptance. All conservatism begins with loss, writes journalist Andrew Sullivan. When it comes to the culture wars, conservatism ends with loss, too.

What can these culture wars past tell us about the conflicts of 2016?

These, too, shall pass. The culture wars cycle may be eternal, but individual battles end.

To look at our culture wars over the long haul is to see not only how poisonous our politics can get but also how inclusive our nation has become. Conflicts give way to consensus. Causes once labeled liberal become American values, embraced by liberals and conservatives alike. Same-sex marriage becomes just marriage. Islam is recognized as part of our shared Abrahamic tradition. We cease to view particular immigrant groups as threats  as drug dealers, rapists and terrorists  and instead appreciate their contributions to our society.

Trump could still win the presidency. But electoral victories are often distinct from culture-war victories. Indeed, culture warriors often win by losing, as their gospel of salvation to the fallen and the lost yields enthusiasm on the campaign trail and votes on Election Day.

But no matter how this presidential election turns out, the arc of American history should continue to bend toward tolerance and inclusion.

Twitter: @sprothero

Read more from Outlook:

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Republican self-destruction is fun to watch, but bad for us all

Carlos Lozada: Could you trade your political beliefs for their exact opposite?

Memo to Sanders and Clinton: Even insurgents need an inside game

Five myths about Donald Trump perpetuated by Donald Trump

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Chinese artist finds success with melancholy scenes Updated: 2016-01-29 07:51 By Cecily Liu(China Daily Europe)



Song Yige's works, praised for her universal themes, are on display at London's Marlborough Fine Art gallery. Provided to China Daily

Song Yige's paintings may not be cheerful, but her deeply emotional depictions of the modern world are certainly powerful.

The 35-year-old Chinese artist often partially obscures the subjects of her work - people, animals and objects - to create scenes of deep melancholy.

"My works aren't political or critical, but they do address emotions like loneliness," says Song, whose paintings are on display at London's Marlborough Fine Art gallery until Feb 27.

The solo exhibition is her first outside of Asia and is curated by Zeng Fanzhi, one of China's best-known contemporary artists.

Among the works on display will be Dance Party, in which six figures in long dressing gowns stand in a row against a dark background, their arms tightly linked and their faces mostly blocked by balloons. Another, 43 Matchsticks, shows upright matchsticks positioned loosely in the shape of a heart.

Similar examples of dark and melancholic scenes are easy to find in her work. Most objects look out of place, arranged in a way that reflect Song's sense of humor.

The artist says her paintings simply jump out of her mind. "Like memories, they're just some sort of abstract extract, a purification of real life."

Born in 1980, Song grew up in the northeastern industrial city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province. As a child, she would forgo candy in order to instead buy water colors, brushes and drawing paper.

Now the child's-eye view of the world continues to influence and inform her work.

"I've enjoyed painting ever since I was little. Every time my grandmother asked me what gift I wanted, the answer was painting books and crayons," she recalls. "While at university, I gained a real understanding of art. A love of art is instinctive and very natural for me."

Song graduated from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, Liaoning province, in 2007 before moving to Beijing where she now lives and works. Over the years, her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions and galleries across Asia, including the Artmia Foundation in Beijing, Gallery Hyundai in Seoul, and Hanart TZ gallery in Hong Kong.

Song suggests the reason her work is popular among Chinese and non-Chinese audiences is her ability to address universal themes.

"There are no distinct regional characteristics or prevalent national symbols. I've always created work using my own distant visual language rather than to please others, and it seems to appeal to both Western and Asian audiences."

Alexander Platon, senior director at Marlborough Fine Art, says he came across Song's work while visiting Zeng in Beijing and immediately found it "magical and arresting".

"He (Zeng) was showing me new work in his studio and I saw a painting by Song that was part of his personal collection," he recalls. "Although much smaller than the monumental canvases that Zeng was working on, it was powerful and intriguing, and it really captured me."

Marlborough Fine Art has been engaged with Chinese artists since it opened in 1946. The gallery was one of the first in Europe to show contemporary Chinese art, and in 1953 it hosted Chinese Paintings, an exhibition by Chao Shao-an and his student, Lydia Chao Ling-Fang.

"Looking at a painting by Song doesn't necessarily reveal her nationality, and I think that's a great quality," Platon adds. "Song is an exceptional painter; her works are powerful and leave a long-lasting impression."

cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com


Donald Trump, with reality-show flair, sliced American politics into a split screen on Thursday night.

On one screen, Trump stood before a cheering crowd in a debate-night stage built-for-one and shouted, This is like the Academy Awards!

On the other, standing before a panel of tough questioners, seven candidates fought each other for airtime in a GOP presidential debate sapped of its biggest draw.

The Trump Show, an alternative event spawned by the Republican front-runners spat with Fox News and carried live on the cable networks rival, CNN, arrived in Iowa with all the buildup of a made-for-TV spectacle: the breathless wait for the arrival of his jet, the will-he-or-wont-he speculation, the uncertainty of it all.

Fox News  playing by the conventional rules of television journalism  would have to share the spotlight of a nation with a suddenly and sharply divided attention span.

Republican presidential candidates weighed in on immigration, the Islamic State, criminal justice reform and - of course - Donald Trump at the Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 28. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

The night belonged to Trump.

The real estate mogul-turned-politician made sure of that with days of hints that he would skip the Fox debate, a supposedly crucial showdown just days before the Iowa caucuses.

An hour-and-a-half before Foxs official debate, the conservative network was airing a low-profile undercard debate of four struggling candidates. CNN was offering views of idling SUVs outside a plane with the word TRUMP on the fuselage. Fox had Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, talking about losing jobs to Mexico; CNN had excitement. Trump was on the ground, and everyone wanted to know whether he would change his mind at the last minute and head to the Fox debate anyway. Trump was the story.

Once the Fox debate began, even Trumps foil, the star Fox anchor, Megyn Kelly, acknowledged as much in her opening question to the Republican candidates arrayed, somewhat awkwardly, in front of her: Lets address the elephant NOT in the room, she said to Trumps chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Given that opening, Cruz declared, Im a maniac, and went on to say the others on the stage were fat and ugly.

Now that weve got the Donald Trump portion of the way . . .  he deadpanned.

What was missing as the crowd laughed at one side of Americas split-screen on Fox was any sign of a real-time Trump on CNN or any of the Internet sites hungrily streaming his event. About six minutes in, Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, tried to diminish Trump, quipping that he was the greatest show on earth.

CNN could only roll tape. Awaiting Trump event.

For a while on Fox, it started to look like what the Republican race might have been had Trump decided not to run after all. It was a glimpse at the GOP field that a year or two ago many thought would be strong and popular.

But then came the reality check.

Fifteen minutes into the Fox debate, as Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, gave a rambling answer about finding smart people to solve problems, the other side of Americas dueling screens lit up.

Trump, who had dragged out the suspense, came onstage to roars. On the live-streams, the red hats of his fans  the Make America Great Again headgear of choice  bobbed up and down on screen.

Oh, wow, Trump said. Wow!

From then on, American voters had a choice: Trump, ticking through the names of rich friends who were donating millions to help wounded veterans, and then introducing his supermodel wife; or Cruz talking about military spending or jousting with Rubio over amendments to an immigration bill. Trump telling the audience that he hopes his pregnant daughter, on hand for the event, will have her baby in Iowa; or Jeb Bush  the former governor of Florida  complaining.

On one side, Rubio was talking about armageddon; on the other Trump talked about raising millions for veterans.

Rubio lamented to the Fox audience that the United States has the smallest air force in our history, Trump was plugging his website.

At one point, Rubio warned about the dangers of terrorism. On the other screen, the billionaire who had once body-slammed wrestling impresario Vince McMahon on camera was bringing on stage Huckabee and another foundering candidate, Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator. The two stars of the earlier undercard had gone across town, at Trumps invitation, they said, to stand up for veterans.

Rubio was talking about threats to America. Trump was introducing two men who posed no threat  at least not to him.
The first Republican presidential debate without Donald Trump still took on a Trumpian tone at times, with the seven other top candidates here Thursday night voicing anger, talking tough and vowing to do away with political correctness.

But with the defiant GOP front-runner staging his own counter-program by rallying supporters a few miles away, Trumps absence left a vacuum on the debate stage and fewer fireworks than Republicans had grown accustomed to.

From the opening question, it was mostly filled by Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), who has been locked in an intensifying duel with Trump for dominance in Iowas first-in-the-nation caucuses, only four days away.

Cruz began by mocking Trumps reputation for insults: Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben [Carson], youre a terrible surgeon. Now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way . . .

From there, however, little more was said about Trump, few direct attacks were leveled at him and the overall atmosphere was notably calmer than in previous debate. That left Cruz as the top target as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and other opponents sought to puncture the Texas senators appeal by trying to depict him as an inauthentic conservative.

Republican presidential candidates weighed in on immigration, the Islamic State, criminal justice reform and - of course - Donald Trump at the Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 28. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign youve been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes, Rubio said. You want to trump Trump on immigration.

Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) both attacked Cruz for having once supported an amendment that would have granted legal status, not citizenship, to illegal immigrants  though Cruz maintains that it was a poison pill and that he has always opposed amnesty.

He is the king of saying, Oh, youre for amnesty. Everybodys for amnesty except for Ted Cruz,  Paul said. But its a falseness, and thats an authenticity problem.

Cruz was not the only candidate on the defensive on immigration, however. Rubio also came under fire for his role as one of the Gang of Eight senators who crafted comprehensive reform legislation in 2013.

After giving Rubio a backhanded compliment for being charming and smooth, Cruz hammered him for having aligned with President Obama and Democratic Senate leaders Harry Reid (Nev.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).

The Fox News Channel moderators tried to challenge both Cruz and Rubio by playing archival video footage of the two senators. After showing the Cruz videos, co-moderator Megyn Kelly asked: Was that all an act? It was pretty convincing.

In the absence of Trump, Cruz and Rubio had the most to gain or lose in Thursday nights debate. The two are the second- and third-polling candidates in Iowa, and their strategies are predicated on being the last non-Trump candidate left standing to face off with the mogul in a long-slog primary season.

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Both men emerged with scars.

Rubio appeared to struggle explaining why he advocated a hard-line immigration approach as a Senate candidate, then pursued comprehensive reform that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, then reverted.

Rubio said he does not support blanket amnesty and focused on the need to seal the border with Mexico and improve security there.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush used the exchange to portray Rubio  his onetime protege when Rubio was a Florida state lawmaker  as weak for having reversed positions on immigration. After noting that he supported Rubios work in the Gang of Eight, Bush said, He cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess.

You shouldnt cut and run, Bush said. You should stick with it. Thats exactly what happened. He cut and run, and thats a tragedy.

Rubio countered by saying that Bush had reversed his own position on citizenship and legal status in a book he wrote.

So did you, Bush snapped back.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie used the back-and-forth over Senate votes and amendments to show the leadership differences between legislators and executives, and he repeated his call for a governor in the White House.

I feel like I need a Washingtonese-English dictionary converter, Christie joked.

Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who once led the polls but has seen his lead falter among heavy scrutiny of his policy knowhow, invoked his medical career as a credential for the White House: Ive had more 2 a.m. phone calls than everybody here put together, making life and death decisions.

The immigration exchange was one of the few moments of direct confrontation onstage between the candidates. The debate lacked a central focus, with Kelly and her co-moderators, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, asking many one-off questions that focused on the vulnerabilities of individual candidates.

In return, the candidates gave many of the canned lines that have become familiar on the campaign trail, avoiding taking big risks with the Iowa caucuses so close.

The seventh Republican debate of the 2016 campaign cycle was the first not to include Trump, the billionaire mogul whose bombast and showmanship dominated the previous events.

Trump boycotted the debate, escalating his feud with Fox and its star anchor, Kelly, because he believed he would not be treated fairly. He has long harbored disdain for Kelly because of her aggressive line of questioning during the first GOP debate in August, and he has argued that the network was taking advantage of his popularity with viewers to boost its ratings and thus its advertising revenue.

In her opening question, Kelly said, Lets address the elephant not in the room tonight.

Trump staged a competing rally Thursday night on the Des Moines campus of Drake University, where he raised money for and honored veterans.

Much of the debate centered on foreign policy, with the candidates competing to show who would be the toughest commander in chief.

You claim it is tough talk to discuss carpet bombing,  Cruz said. It is not tough talk. It is a different fundamental military strategy than what weve seen from President Obama.

Early in the debate, Cruz took fire on multiple fronts. Paul went after him for refusing to show support for a vote to audit the Federal Reserve and for not voicing strong enough opposition to the governments surveillance efforts.

I dont think Ted can have it both ways. They want to say theyre getting some of the liberty vote, Paul said. But we dont see it happening at all. We think were going to do very well in Iowa with the liberty vote.

Rubio, as he has for months, portrayed Cruz as weak on national security.

As already has been pointed out, the only budget that Ted has ever voted for is a budget that Rand Paul sponsored that brags about cutting defense spending, Rubio said. And I think thats a bad idea.

The closing days of the race have been nasty here in Iowa. The campaigns and allied super PACs are blanketing television and radio airwaves with attack ads, while the candidates have laced their stump speeches with sharp barbs.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is banking his hopes on the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary, sought to position himself above the fray.

We cannot fix things in this country  the Social Security, the border, balancing the budget, getting wages to grow faster  unless we lead as conservatives, but we also invite people in from the other party, Kasich said. We have to come together as a country. And we have to stop all the divisions.

Kasichs call for unity went unheeded, and he was a non-factor through significant stretches of the debate as other candidates sparred.

As in previous debates, the candidates harshly attacked Hillary Clinton and sought to position themselves as best equipped to lead the Republican Party into the general election against Clinton, whom they see as the most likely Democratic nominee.

She is not qualified to be president of the United States, Christie said, drawing loud cheers from the audience. The fact is, what we need is someone on that stage who has been tested, who has been through it, who has made decisions, who has sat in the chair of consequence and can prosecute the case against Hillary Clinton.

Bush made a similar pitch.

This is an election about people that are really hurting, he said. We need a leader that will fix things and have a proven record to do it. And we need someone who will take on Hillary Clinton in November.

David A. Fahrenthold in Washington contributed to this report.
Republican presidential candidates weighed in on immigration, the Islamic State, criminal justice reform and - of course - Donald Trump at the Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 28. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Republican presidential candidates weighed in on immigration, the Islamic State, criminal justice reform and - of course - Donald Trump at the Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 28. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump was a no-show for the final Republican debate before Mondays Iowa presidential caucuses, not just physically absent from the stage but also barely mentioned by seven candidates who are fighting to deny him the partys nomination. It was an unreal moment in what has been an unreal campaign.

The evening offered an almost perfect reflection of the state of the Republican race, with Trump occupying his own space and the rest of the candidates competing with one another to emerge as his principal rival. In his absence, the other hopefuls struggled with only limited success to distinguish themselves as the best of the rest.

What might have been a lively and spirited evening turned into a mostly tepid affair, one that neither stoked the anti-establishment disaffection that has been so talked about throughout the campaign nor provided energy to Republican voters on the eve of the caucuses. Trump may have lost little by skipping the debate  unless Iowans feel used by his feud with Fox News.

What was most striking was the degree to which the candidates chose to ignore Trump  even though he has led the national polls for months, he could win here on Monday, and he holds bigger leads in New Hampshire and South Carolina. No one even bothered to make a case as to why Trump should not be the nominee.

The two candidates with the most to gain were Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. Cruz is battling Trump for first place in Iowa. Rubio is looking for a strong third-place finish as a way to separate himself from the other mainstream conservatives in the race. But instead of seizing the moment, both Rubio and Cruz found themselves under attack and on the defensive.

Both sought to square past statements and votes with their claims that they now oppose amnesty for immigrants who are in the United States illegally. Each sought to undermine the other, and both came under attack from the others on stage. The exchanges reinforced how muddled and fluid the Republican race remains as the voting is about to begin.

Cruz and Rubio were practiced as always  perhaps overly so  using language from their stump speeches or in Cruzs case trying to reprise an attack on the moderators from an earlier debate.

Rubio may have gained ground on Cruz, but by failing to fully take command of the stage, the two provided an opening to others, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quickly jumped to take it.

Bush went after Rubio for cutting and running on immigration reform when Republican Party sentiment shifted against a path to citizenship. Christie played the governor card, chastising both Cruz and Rubio as double-talking legislators who were unwilling to admit they changed their minds.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the other mainstream conservative fighting for establishment support, tried anew to set himself apart as a pragmatic and compassionate Republican. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky needled the others and tried to draw as much libertarian support as possible to give his candidacy a boost. Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who once led the polls in Iowa, was barely a presence for much of the evening.

The competition between Cruz and Rubio played out throughout the debate. With Cruz seeking to consolidate religious conservatives, who have made up a majority of GOP caucus attendees in the past, Rubio took every opportunity to talk about his Christian faith.

Asked about a Time magazine cover from several years ago that described him as the potential savior of the Republican Party, Rubio responded by talking about Jesus Christ as the only savior he knows. His answer underscored the direct appeal to Christian conservatives he has made in his television advertising here in the past few weeks.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the GOP debate in Des Moines, Iowa to protest for a $15 minimum wage on Thursday, January 28. (The Washington Post)

Though much was at stake, the debate lacked some of the expected fireworks. There were long stretches in which the candidates settled into predictable answers and safe comments. The candidates appeared to have come to the stage with strategies designed primarily not to make mistakes rather than to score points.

Thursday provided a preview of some of the battles that could unfold in the coming weeks. But with Trump absent from the stage, the event lacked the drama and finality that debates on the eve of critical caucuses and primaries have sometimes offered in the past. In that sense, the forum was artificial in framing the Republican race as it now stands.

The focus at Thursdays debate was on the seven candidates who shared the stage more than one who wasnt there. Between now and Monday, however, there will be a different, narrower, focus in Iowa, one in which Trump and Cruz will be the principal actors. All the others will be fighting for respectability and whatever marginal advantage they can squeeze out against their rivals.

The battle between Trump and Cruz for supremacy in Iowa will consume most of the attention over the final days of campaigning here. A loss for either, given what has happened over the past month, will be a setback no matter how the results are spun by their advisers.

Some of the other candidates will clear out of the state by the time voters assemble Monday evening to declare their preferences. A few candidates have skipped Iowa in past campaigns, but there has been nothing to compare to the 2016 contest, which amounts to two campaigns at once, with a handful of candidates focused here and many others on New Hampshire.

A Republican field that began with 17 candidates has suffered a handful of casualties even before the voting begins  candidates buried by Trumps presence and lacking the financial resources to continue to compete effectively. Among those still competing, the undercard debates have highlighted the cruel power of the polls to separate candidates into an upstairs-downstairs hierarchy.

For many of the candidates still campaigning, the end of the line is near. Iowa and New Hampshire will winnow the field significantly, if history is any guide (though history has been an unreliable guide for much of the past eight months). South Carolina and Nevada will narrow it more. By this time next month, the once-gigantic field could be reduced to three or four viable candidates.

In a matter of days, the voters of Iowa will begin to provide some clarity to the Republican race. The blizzard of polls that have provided fodder for months will pale in comparison with the power of the voters, however large or small the turnout in the caucuses Monday night. The past months have provided an orgy of speculation and ever-changing assessments of the state of the race. After Monday, there will be concrete results that will shape the strategies and the conversation.
Bernie Sanders arrives at the Capital Hilton to meet with Hillary Clinton in D.C.

June 14, 2016 Bernie Sanders arrives at the Capital Hilton to meet with Hillary Clinton in D.C. Matt McClain/The Washington Post

The senator from Vermont is Hillary Clintons rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clintons chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination.

The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clintons chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination.

 In coming days, students who surf the Web here at Iowa State University are likely to encounter a digital ad running along the side of their screens. Hey Cyclones! it says. Head Home For Bernie.

It may be a tall order.

The invitation by the Democratic presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders is meant to maximize the impact of one of his strongest constituencies in his battle against Hillary Clinton: young voters. But four days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, it also exposes one of his central vulnerabilities  the difficulty of drawing those young voters to the polls.

Adding to the challenge are the complicated rules of Mondays caucuses, where all votes do not have equal impact. Much of Sanderss support in Iowa is concentrated in the states college towns. There is strategic advantage in persuading college students to vote in the communities where they grew up rather than on campus, to spread out his support across the state and win more delegates.

But can these voters be bothered?

The Fix's Chris Cillizza previews the Iowa caucuses, looking at what the outcome could mean for both Democrats and Republicans. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

I think college kids want things to be as easy as possible, said Ryan Thornton, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering at Iowa State who counts himself as a Sanders supporter and plans to caucus on campus.

Like other students interviewed for this story, Thornton, whose home is about 90 miles north of school, was skeptical that his peers would take the Sanders campaign up on its offer.

On a Monday night, for me personally, thats a 2 1/ 2 -hour drive Id have to make, said Alex Doser, a senior majoring in mathematics, a Sanders supporter and president of the Iowa State University College Democrats. I think thats going to be a hard thing to get students to do for the most part.

The effort is one of numerous ways the candidates are trying to game the system. In this case, it underscores how crucial the turnout of millennials is to the fate of Sanderss bid. The unreliable nature of their vote is one of the reasons the outcome of Mondays key contest remains so much in doubt.

[Sanders: Clinton is running a desperate campaign]

Some of Sanderss biggest and most boisterous crowds on the campaign trail have been at rallies in college towns, and his campaign says it now has operations set up on 38 campuses across Iowa to boost turnout.

A Quinnipiac Poll this week was among the latest to show the race between Clinton and Sanders to be a statistical dead heat in Iowa. But among likely caucus-goers under age 45, Sanders held a commanding lead, 78 percent to 21 percent.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to students at Roosevelt High School during a campaign event Jan. 28. (Joshua Lott /For The Washington Post)

Sanderss aides freely acknowledge that theyll need a big showing from those voters  as well as some other demographics that dont typically show up in large numbers  to topple Clinton.

The polling shows, and the evidence on the ground bears out, that both campaigns have enough people to win, said Jeff Weaver, Sanderss campaign manager. The challenge is to get your people out.

To that end, the campaign is also making a big push among high school seniors. Under the caucus rules, 17-year-olds are allowed to participate if they will turn 18 by the November election.

On Thursday, Sanders held his latest in a series of forums at a high school, appearing in a packed auditorium at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Des Moines. He offered a ready-made response for anyone who was mocked by their peers for caring about politics.

Tell them, I am fighting for the future of my country, and if youre not concerned about that, youre the dumb guy, not me, Sanders said.

The Clinton campaign is also trying to make sure its younger supporters turn out but is pursuing a different approach. Michelle Kleppe, the campaigns organizing director, said the Clinton operation is relying on people with deep roots in the community to mobilize supporters of all ages.

[In Iowas final stretch, Clinton pivots away from attacking rival Sanders]

The Sanders campaigns gamesmanship regarding college students underscores one of the quirky aspects of the Iowa caucus system. The goal of the night is to win delegates, which are awarded based on the results in each of the states 1,681 precincts.

Each precinct has a set number of delegates available, and in some cases, a campaign will get the same number of delegates whether they win by 10 votes or many times that. Given how strong Sanders is in college towns, theres an incentive to send some of those supporters to precincts where hes more in need of the help.

A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll this month showed that Sanderss supporters are disproportionately concentrated in several counties with large college campuses.

Pete DAlesandro, Sanderss campaign coordinator in Iowa, said the campaign is not leaning on college students to head home  but is making it an option.

Its not a matter of enticing a kid, said DAlesandro. Were encouraging them to caucus where theyre most comfortable. The important thing is that folks dont wind up falling through the cracks and just sitting in their dorm room.

The digital ads  which are tailored to individual campuses  invite students to click on a Learn More button. At that point, students are given two options to select: I will caucus for Bernie in my home town or I will caucus for Bernie at my school.

Under both scenarios, students are asked for contact information and whether theyll need a ride on caucus night.

The ads also make an appeal based on the reputation for apathy among students: They say you dont care. They say you wont caucus. They say Bernie cant win. Prove them wrong.

The campaign has even set up a separate website  provethemwrongandcaucus.com  playing on that sentiment.

Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University, said the Sanders go home strategy is largely untested but makes sense to try given the intensity of his college support.

Is this a Hail Mary? No, he said. I think its a reasonably grounded turnout strategy.

In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) benefited from an unusually strong turnout among young voters, a dynamic Sanders is trying to replicate. But the calendar was different that cycle, Goldford said. The caucuses were held nearly a month earlier, on Jan. 3, a time when most students were still home on winter break.

As a college professor himself, Goldford said he will cut students some slack on Monday if they miss class. Such reassurances might not be enough for some Sanders supporters, including John Fisher, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, who is also a student teacher.

I have a lot of stuff to do at night, said Fisher, whos majoring in math education. If I spend three hours driving, I might not get it all done.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum , businesswoman Carly Fiorina , former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore at the Republican presidential primary debate Thursday in Des Moines. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

An undercard debate Thursday for low-polling Republican presidential candidates was focused for much of the time on the highest-polling hopeful who was not onstage: billionaire Donald Trump.

In a Des Moines event that preceded the main GOP debate of the night, the participants lamented that Trump had taken so much of the medias attention away from them. On Thursday, for example, Trumps decision to boycott the main debate was once again dominating cable news headlines.

This debate was called the undercard debate. The undercard debate. It wasnt advertised significantly, said former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) in his first chance to speak in the debate.

He complained that Fox News had spent the previous hour talking about whether Trump would follow up on a threat to stay away. An entertainer had captured everyones attention, Santorum said. The entire lead-up to this debate was about whether Donald Trump was going to show up for the next debate.

Santorum, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, expressed frustration that he had not had the same success this time around. He blamed the media, who he said had marginalized him by refusing to ask voters about him in opinion polls, and by relegating him to undercard debates such as this one. Trying to segregate and take Iowans out of the process, Santorum said, meaning that the media had not allowed Iowans a fair chance to evaluate him this time around.

Later, Santorum said he had made 700 political appearances in Iowa over the last five years.

Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, the lowest-polling candidate in the undercard, complained of a conspiracy to sideline him, to benefit other candidates on the undercard stage.

There are powerful forces that are really controlling our lives, Gilmore said. The biggest one is the organized establishment media. And I just noticed, just now, you gave Carly Fiorina two one-minute answers in a row.

Gilmore had been kept out of the past five undercards because his poll numbers were so low. But moderator Bill Hemmer pointed out that Gilmore had not even appeared in Iowa to campaign until a week ago.

This is not the place where I choose to begin my campaign. I am beginning my campaign in New Hampshire, Gilmore said.

He also took a shot at Santorum and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who were both scheduled to appear at the Trump rally later in the evening. Gilmore said that he came from a humble background: His father was a meat-cutter at Safeway; his mother, a secretary. Im not about to go across and carry the coat for some billionaire, Gilmore said.

Rather than addressing Trumps absence, Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard executive, attacked Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, calling her dishonest and saying that Clinton deserved to be in the big house  a euphemism for prison  for her use of a personal e-mail server to handle government data.

Fiorina, Gilmore, Huckabee and Santorum are all polling below 5 percent and have little chance to win the Iowa caucuses. Each has been overshadowed by Trump, the bombastic billionaire who rose to the top of the GOP field with promises to erect a giant wall on the border with Mexico and to bar Muslim foreigners from entering the country.
Reducing waste can boost food security Updated: 2016-01-29 07:50 By Cecilia Tortajada, Mat Thew J. Kastner and Asit K. Biswas(China Daily Europe)

More cold storage and better roads can cut post-harvest losses, but consumers need to be less profligate

During the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), China intends to pursue a new development mode that is "higher in quality, more efficient, fairer, and more sustainable". Agriculture will be fundamental to this, given its significance to food and environmental security.

China produces about 75 percent of the combined value of production of Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Globally, it is the largest producer of food such as potatoes, wheat, tomatoes, rice and apples. Its own agricultural products are supplemented by imports of agrofood products from all over the world to ensure food security.

But food security not only means enough food is available, but also that the food that is available is not overconsumed or wasted. At present, industrialized Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) contributes 28 percent of the food wasted in the world, an estimated 1.3 billion metric tons a year.

For industrialized Asia, three stages of the supply chain need special attention: post-harvest handling and storage, distribution and consumption. The handling and storage stage accounts for 20 percent of the food wasted in the region, while another 14 percent of food is lost at the distribution stage, and 31 percent is wasted during consumption.

That vegetable losses in industrialized Asia account for about 11 percent of global food losses is of special concern, as this region accounts for more than 50 percent of global production and consumption.
Captive tigers roam at the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, in 2014. (Qilai Shen/For The Washington Post)

Bears, tigers, pangolins and a range of other endangered animals are facing bleaker prospects than ever.

A draft amendment to Chinas wildlife protection law has infuriated conservationists by confirming that it is legal to breed endangered species in captivity for commercial use and for performances  and even for body parts to be used in traditional medicine, health-care products and food.

And for the first time, it also gives provincial and municipal government the power to license commercial trade in endangered species. The proposed legislation was made public Jan. 1 and was open for public consultation or comment until Friday.

China already has some 200 tiger farms, with more than 5,000 big cats kept in often cramped conditions for public exhibition and to feed a thriving underground industry in tiger-bone wine and pelts.

[Tiger farms stoke Chinese demand for tiger wine and rugs, putting wild cats in peril]

Pangolin scales seized by the Hong Kong Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department are displayed at the AFCD Operation Center in Hong Kong. (Jerome Favre/EPA)

More than 10,000 bears are also farmed, most kept in small cages, with their bile periodically  and painfully  extracted for use in household products and traditional Chinese medicine. Pangolins face extinction because of their use in Chinese medicine.

Conservationists had hoped that the revised law, eagerly anticipated and years in the making, would put a stop to those practices and emphasize wildlife protection rather than commercial exploitation. Instead, they say, their pleas have been largely ignored, and they call the new law not just a missed opportunity but in many ways a step backward.

China needs a wildlife protection law, not a wildlife utilization law, said Iris Ho, of Humane Society International in Washington. Legitimizing commercial breeding facilities that have no conservation benefit is akin to giving animal cruelty a stamp of approval.

Grace Gabriel, Asia regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said wildlife farming in China was already stimulating demand, providing a cover for poaching and helping to wipe out many species in the wild. The revised law would exacerbate that situation, she added.

At a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese conservationists expressed frustration and disappointment.

Mang Ping, a professor in ecological ethics at the Central Institute of Socialist Studies in Beijing, said she was among only a few conservationists invited to provide input on the legislation at a seminar organized by the State Forestry Administration.

Around 40 guests were there, but only four were from animal protection institutions, while the rest were from the wildlife industry, she said. They were powerful and loud. Our voice was swamped.

Although the draft law does authorize strong criminal sanctions for the illegal purchase and sale of endangered species, it does not criminalize possession, making it hard to enforce.

It also authorizes provincial or municipal governments to issue permits for captive breeding and public exhibition or performances.

That provision reduces the level of central government oversight of the captive breeding industry, experts said, further empowering local, commercial interests at the expense of a national vision of wildlife protection.

Already, conservationists argue, the governments system for licensing trade in ivory, tiger skins and other wildlife products is opaque, poorly enforced and widely abused.

The bill not only fails to plug the loopholes in the existing law, but it creates more, said An Xiang, a lawyer in Beijing. It reflects the fact that lawmaking has been kidnapped by powerful and rich wild-animal commercial groups.

Debbie Banks, a tiger expert at the Environmental Investigation Agency in London, said the draft law would, if adopted, further entrench policies of captive breeding for commercial use of parts and derivatives of captive tigers.

Conservationists say the tiger-farming industry is stimulating demand for tiger-bone wine  which is used to treat rheumatism and impotence  as well as for tiger-skin rugs, a status symbol for the wealthy. That, in turn, encourages more poaching of wild tigers in neighboring countries.

This increases the risk of trade and demand for tiger parts and products spiraling out of control, Banks said.

[Watch: a tiger and her cubs caught on camera in China]

Dave Neale, animal welfare director at Animals Asia, said legislators missed an opportunity to tackle bear-bile farming by failing to include specific provisions that would have demanded that animals physical and behavioral needs are met  something that is effectively impossible during bile farming.

The draft law also allows for endangered wildlife to be used in traditional Chinese medicine, health-care supplements and foodstuffs, as long as it is in line with other laws, public order and good morals.

Already, Chinese demand for wildlife parts and products has pushed many animals close to extinction. Among them is the Chinese pangolin, a scaly anteater whose meat is considered a delicacy and whose scales are used in traditional medicine in China and Vietnam.

With few pangolins left in China, there has been a surge in poaching and trafficking from Southeast Asia and even Africa: The pangolin may now be the most heavily trafficked mammal in the world. Its blood, scales and body parts are used to stimulate lactation, enhance virility and treat ailments from arthritis to cancer.

The revision of the law that allows use of wildlife products for health-care supplements use could open the floodgates to pangolin use and spells doom for the already imperiled animal, said Ho, of Humane Society International.

Conservationists welcomed some clauses in the new law.

WildAid, which has helped lead efforts to change attitudes toward shark-fin, ivory and rhino-horn use among Chinese consumers, noted a new focus on raising public awareness of wildlife protection with the support of civil society. Some welcomed the fact that the new legislation mentions habitat protection, although others said those provisions were too vague.

Many endangered animals are at the top of the food chain, said Xie Yan, founder of the Protected Area Friendly System. They cannot survive if their food is not protected. The bill should have aimed to protect the entire ecosystem, not some particular species.

Xu Jing contributed to this report.

Read more:

Chinas growing panda population is fragmenting, and thats a problem

Ivory price halves in China after Xi pledges ban

Heres how to start breaking down the illegal wildlife trade

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Arthur Patterson, center, an American sentenced to more than 20 years for a 1997 killing in Seoul, South Korea. (Lim Hun-Jung/Yonhap/AP)

A South Korea court sentenced an American man Friday to 20 years in jail over a murder committed in the bathroom of a Burger King restaurant in Seoul in 1997.

The case was sensational at the time, fueling discontent in South Korea about the heavy American military presence, but went unresolved for almost two decades.

Arthur John Patterson, from California, was found guilty Friday of the murder of 22-year-old South Korean student Cho Joong-pil, who was found dead in the blood-splattered Burger King bathroom in Itaewon, a part of Seoul close to a huge American military base. He was extradited to Seoul from the United States 18 years after the crime.

"The court decided on a life sentence, but in view of the defendant's age, of being under 18 at the time, the sentence will be 20 years in prison," Judge Shim Kyu-hong said, according to the Reuters news agency.

Patterson was the 17-year-old son of a U.S. military contractor at the time. He and a friend, 18-year-old Korean-American Edward Lee, were in the restaurant bathroom at the same time.

Cho, the student, was found dead on the floor with knife wounds to his neck. The bathroom was splattered with blood.

Patterson emerged from the bathroom covered with blood from head to toe. He burned his clothes afterwards, while Lee had blood sprayed over him and washed his clothes when he got home, according to local reports.

The men blamed each other for the murder.

Lee was initially charged with murder and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, which was later reduced to 20 years. Patterson was convicted of possessing an illegal weapon and destroying evidence, and given 18 months in prison, although he was quickly pardoned.

But South Korea's Supreme Court exonerated Lee in 1998, citing a lack of evidence, putting the focus back on Patterson. By that time, however, Patterson was back in the United States.

The case faded from the publics attention until 2009 when a movie called The Case of the Itaewon Homicide was released, encouraging prosecutors to reopen the case.

A local television station found Patterson was living in Sunnyvale, California and he was indicted for murder in 2011. He was extradited back to South Korea to face trial last September and has continually protested his innocence.

There is credibility in statements made by Edward Lee, an accomplice, that (he) witnessed Patterson stabbing the victim," the judge said in Fridays verdict, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

"(Lee) incited Patterson to murder (Cho) and led the way into the bathroom (where the incident took place)," he said.

But during the trial, Pattersons lawyer said that it was Lee who killed the victim.

Lee came into the restroom first with the knife just like the prosecutors explained, said Oh Byeong-ju, according to a report in the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. But its not true that Lee suggested that Patterson stab Cho.
Jasim Abed of Iraq shows his arrival certificate, obtained as part of a pilot program launched in Heidelberg, Germany, to speed up the asylum process. (Uli Deck/AFP/Getty Images)

At the center of Europes refugee crisis, Germany is drowning under a backlog of hundreds of thousands of asylum requests. But this picturesque city on the River Neckar could hold the answer: a fast-track system that rules on who gets to stay  and who doesnt  in as little as two days.

The program being rolled out on a former U.S. military base here aims to bring a dose of German efficiency to the task of coping with Europes largest wave of migrants since World War II. Germany alone saw 1.1 million newcomers in 2015, with thousands more arriving each week.

The program puts state and federal bureaucrats involved in assessing applications largely under one roof. Candidates then go from table to table, effectively creating a refugee assembly line with benefits and risks for asylum seekers, depending on where they come from.

For those from countries with high acceptance rates  largely Syrians, but also Iraqis, Eritreans and Afghans  the new system is eliminating months-long waits spent in crowded processing centers, granting them faster access to state benefits. But for groups with low acceptance rates  principally ethnic Roma and others coming from Balkan countries  it could mean rapid-fire rejections and speedier deportations.

If successful, the program could be rolled out to more German states in the coming months.

The long procedures, which can take months, even years, are a big problem. So this is generally a good thing, said Bernward Ostrop, a German lawyer who represents asylum seekers in court. But I am afraid that it will also lead to too-rapid rejections of people from West Balkan countries.

[More European nations are barring their doors to migrants]

The project kicks off at a time when German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing mounting skepticism over her open-door policy toward migrants. According to a newly published survey commissioned by the newsmagazine Focus, almost 40 percent of Germans asked said the chancellor should step down for what they consider a far too welcoming stance.

In an effort to appease critics and to stem the influx, the German government recently took steps to tighten asylum rules. On Thursday, Merkels governing coalition, following months of internal dispute, reached a deal on a new legislative package aimed at stemming the flow of migrants. If approved by Parliament, it would bar accepted refugees from bringing in close relatives for a period of two years. The government also plans to declare a number of nations  including Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria  safe countries of origin, which would make it easier to reject and deport asylum seekers from those countries.

[German chancellor pledges crackdown on criminal asylum seekers]

But even if the new measures succeed, Germany will still face a massive task  ruling on the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers who have already arrived, as well as what is still likely to be a steady flow of newcomers this year.

The accelerated procedures in Heidelberg could offer an answer. An experiment between the national migration office and the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, the system is partly aimed at separating migrants fleeing war from those coming for economic reasons.





When they arrive, asylum seekers are divided into three groups. The first is for those from war-torn nations such as Syria or Iraq. The second is for asylum seekers from Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia, who are likely to be rejected. The third is for everyone else.

On a recent visit, groups of asylum seekers were waiting at various stations in the former military compound. Refugees start by undergoing background checks and obtaining a special identification document before moving on to a medical check. Then, they are counseled on their rights and obligations as asylum seekers before heading into official interviews. Ideally, they get a decision within 48 hours.

But not everyone is getting processed that fast. Officials were not able to say how quickly all asylum seekers are being processed, but they said that about 60 percent of those likely to be granted refugee status are being assessed within the 48-hour window.

Others, they say, are still getting decisions far faster than in the general German system. Routinely, asylum seekers are waiting months for answers as applications bounce between federal and state officials. For would-be refugees from war-torn nations, the program amounts to a blessing.

Jasim Abed, a 27-year-old Iraqi who was plucked out of the Aegean Sea by the Greek coast guard only a week ago, was standing Thursday in what used to be an elementary school for the children of U.S. service members. He said he hoped for a rapid approval so he could start his new life in Germany.

I am so happy, he said. I arrived here at 8 in the morning and it was my turn so quickly. Germany is the best country.

But not everyone is thrilled about the new system. Miroslav Nikolic, a 34-year-old Serbian who said he was discriminated against at home because he is an ethnic Roma, was still waiting to find out the result of his application. He called the system in Heidelberg confusing and said he had not been offered legal assistance that might help him boost his claim.

They told me that the Balkan countries are safe, he said. . . . But there is a war in Serbia against the Roma people. I have been in a war since I was born.

Read more:

Germany confirms asylum seekers are suspected in New Years Eve assaults

Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants

This is our last hope: Six Syrians on the hardest part of their journey to Europe

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
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Employees work at the offices of Breaking the Silence in Tel Aviv in December 2015. An ultra-nationalist Israeli group has accused the heads of Israeli human rights groups, including Breaking the Silence, of being foreign agents. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Israeli right-wing politicians and their allies are going after human rights activists, artists and pro-Palestinian voices on the left with tough new laws and scorching ad campaigns that reveal how deep and bitter the divide between the two camps is these days.

Officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus conservative government are attempting to pass legislation seeking something akin to loyalty oaths from artists who receive state money. They also want members of nonprofit groups who get money from foreign governments to wear special badges in parliament.

Meanwhile, a once obscure but now viral ultranationalist group called Im Tirtzu has launched a social media campaign attacking artists, including two of Israels best-known (and liberal) authors, Amos Oz and David Grossman, calling them foreign agents in the cultural world and moles.

[Israels new security minister and his 4 ideas for stopping violence]

Im Tirtzu on Wednesday began naming people in film, theater, television and the arts that it says are provocateurs supported by foreign governments and such groups as the U.S.-based New Israel Fund, working against the interests of the state of Israel.

Opponents of Im Tirtzu described its actions as an Israeli version of McCarthyism. Im Tirtzu said, essentially, that McCarthy was right.

Yet even Netanyahu and national religious pro-settler Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a vocal opponent of liberal nongovernmental organizations, said Im Tirtzu had gone too far. The campaign against the artists is embarrassing, needless and disgraceful, Bennett said on Twitter.

All this heated rhetoric comes as the Israeli parliament prepares to debate a contentious bill next week that supporters say will bring needed transparency to Israeli NGOs, especially those critical of the Israeli military and its operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

Opponents of the bill warn that it could undermine Israels democratic principles and stigmatize human rights advocates.

The proposed transparency bill would require Israeli organizations that get more than half their funding from foreign government entities, including U.S. aid, to be labeled as such in media and reports. It may also obligate members of those groups to wear special badges when they appear in the Israeli parliament.

The sponsor of the bill, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, told The Washington Post that her legislation has nothing to do with left and right but is merely an attempt to force such groups to reveal from whom they get their money.

Shaked said that Israel is fighting against a global campaign aimed at undermining its legitimacy and that some NGOs funded by foreign governments are used to hurt Israel in international forums, such as the United Nations. When asked for an example, Shaked pointed to Israeli human rights reports that were used as source material for the U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict, which found breaches of international law on both sides. (The United Nations relied on nongovernment reports in part because the Israeli government refused to allow the commission to enter Gaza and refused to cooperate.)

European nations support hundreds of large and small pro-Palestinian projects, anti-occupation and human rights groups in Israel; the European Union is pressing Israel these days to go back to negotiations with the Palestinians and has ramped up criticism of the ongoing expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank  settlements that Europe considers illegal, though Israel disputes this.

Many Israelis are put out by what they see as Europes meddling and point to what they see as soaring anti-Semitism on the continent.

In a recent editorial, Shaked said: We have discovered in recent years the danger posed by the existence of forces financed by foreign money. We have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars are sent to NGOs in Israel from countries that seek to decide the existing dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Leaders of the Israeli groups targeted by the proposed law, such as Gisha, Peace Now, BTselem and Breaking the Silence, say the legislation is designed to punish them for opposing Israels 49-year military occupation of the West Bank and for highlighting mistreatment of Palestinians.

Breaking the Silence is perhaps the most popular target. The group is composed of current and former Israeli soldiers who say their mission is to present testimony, often anonymous, to Israelis about the reality of war and occupation.

Shaked said the group exists to smear Israel abroad and expose the country and its soldiers to war-crimes charges.

Im Tirtzu, the group that charged that Israeli artists were disloyal to the state, recently accused the leaders of the left-wing groups of being moles in the employ of foreign governments.

Daniel Sokatch, head of the New Israel Fund, a U.S. organization that donates around $25 million a year to about 100 progressive and civil society organizations in Israel, called the bill an ugly anti-democratic piece of legislation that does not provide any more transparency than already exists.

Sokatch charged that right-wing organizations such as Im Tirtzu are colluding with the Netanyahu government to incite against the liberal groups.

[U.S. ambassadors comments ignite diplomatic row with Israel]

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, took the unusual step of wading into this fray, meeting with Shaked earlier this month to express American concerns about her legislation and suggesting the bill could undercut Israels standing as a thriving democracy.

Netanyahu has waved away such concerns and said he supports the legislation but wants to remove the special badges requirement (as Jews being forced to wear badges created a stir here and struck some as an eerie if unintended echo of the Holocaust).

I fail to understand how greater transparency is undemocratic, Netanyahu told reporters earlier this month.

The legislation appears likely to pass, though it could be amended in committee meetings.

Roy Folkman, a parliament member from the center-right Kulanu party, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he would vote for the bill  even though he thinks it stokes the atmosphere of a witch hunt.

We think the law is superfluous, unnecessary and will cause international harm to Israel, Folkman said.

Gerald Steinberg, founder of a watchdog group called NGO Monitor, said that the debate is actually more important than any bill passed.

Although he called the bill toothless and symbolic, Steinberg argued that the millions of dollars that pass through a handful of liberal Israeli organizations were worthy of scrutiny.

Sharon Abraham-Weiss, the executive director of Association of Civil Rights in Israel, said the bills sponsors may be surprised that some of the NGOs they are targeting do not receive the majority of their funding from foreign governments.

Her organization, for instance, gets 20 percent of its budget from friendly governments.

That aside, she said one flaw of the bill is that it focuses exclusively on the alleged undue influence of foreign governments  but not the funding provided to right-wing NGOs from private sources, including wealthy Americans.

She suggested that it might be better to look at the influence wielded by billionaire casino magnate and GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, for example, who funds dozens of projects in Israel, including a free pro-Netanyahu newspaper with the largest circulation in Israel.

Israeli government projects getting foreign funding is fine, Israeli organizations getting private money from abroad is fine, but only Israeli NGOs are being singled out, she said.

Read more:

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Staffan de Mistura, U.N. special envoy for Syria, has urged Syrian opposition groups to attend the talks in Geneva. (Ronald Zak/AP)

Peace talks aimed at ending the Syrian war got off to a rocky start Friday, with the opposition saying it would send a team to consult on the goal of the negotiations but still refusing to commit to attend them.

The announcement by the opposition that it would send a fact-finding team to consult with the United Nations came at the end of a confusing day during which U.N. officials declared that the talks had officially opened even though the delegation opposed to President Bashar al-Assad had not shown up.

The disarray cast into doubt prospects for a successful outcome to a process that has been touted by the Obama administration as a foreign policy priority for the year ahead.

Theres a lot riding on this diplomatic process, and its why the United States is so invested in it, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said shortly before the oppositions decision to send the team was announced, reflecting growing impatience within the Obama administration at the oppositions hesitation.

[Russian airstrikes pave way for Syrian government gains]

1 of 16 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Picture home: Syrian refugees show sadness and hope View Photos At a camps in Turkey, kids draw what they remember about their homeland. Caption At a camps in Turkey, kids draw what they remember about their homeland. Rahaf Hasan, 10, who is living at Midyat refugee camp in Turkey, holds a drawing last month of her home in Syria. Conflict in that Middle Eastern country has left hundreds of thousands dead and forced millions out of their homes. Umit Bektas/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

The United States has been pinning hopes on the talks because, for the first time in Syrias nearly five-year-old crisis, Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran  the chief sponsors of the rival groups on the battlefield in Syria  had agreed on a road map for negotiations that was subsequently endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution in December.

The talks snagged even before they began, however, on a range of issues that go to the heart of the complexities of the war.

Central to the oppositions reluctance to attend is the failure so far to implement two clauses in the U.N. resolution calling on all the parties to immediately allow humanitarian agencies access to people living in besieged communities, release political prisoners and halt airstrikes against civilian areas.

Instead, Russian and Syrian government forces have stepped up their attacks on opposition territory and people have begun dying of starvation in some of the communities under siege by government forces.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders announced that since a single delivery of aid to the besieged town of Madaya, outside Damascus, nearly three months ago, 16 more people had died of starvation, bringing to 51 the number who have died from lack of food since December.

[In a besieged Syrian town: Were still starving, and its getting colder]

The opposition decision to send at least an advance team of delegates followed intense pressure from U.S., U.N. and other international figures, including telephone calls on Friday by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the head of the oppositions negotiating committee, Riyad Hijab.

Kerry made clear that implementation of those articles is necessary by all parties, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. Kerry believes that it is important for these talks to happen, and important for the HNC to attend . . . without preconditions, Kirby repeated several times, referring to the High Negotiating Committee, the group formed to represent the opposition in Geneva.

The talks, he said, will provide an opportunity to test regime intentions.

The team is expected to arrive on Saturday, opposition officials said, and although the opposition delegation still has not agreed to participate in the talks, the decision to send some representatives opened the door to fuller participation in the days ahead.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who is leading the negotiation effort, told reporters that he hoped by Sunday to be able to meet with the delegation.

My feeling is  I may be wrong  that their internal discussion is leading towards accepting to participate in the talks, he said.

De Mistura, meanwhile, met with the official Syrian government delegation, which showed up Friday morning headed by Bashar Jaafari, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.

Jaafari did not speak to reporters as he swept into the Palais des Nations, as the U.N. headquarters in Geneva is called, trailed by other members of the Syrian delegation.

But the official Syrian news agency SANA quoted him as saying that he had focused his discussions with de Mistura on the question of defining who is a terrorist in Syrias war.

Jaafari noted that there are sides which use the label moderate opposition to describe foreign terrorists, SANA said, suggesting that it is still not certain the government will agree to negotiate with members of the opposition, if they show up.

Russia, Syria and Iran have repeatedly labeled the opposition delegation terrorists, prompting de Mistura to downgrade the format of the negotiations to proximity talks. That means there will be no face-to-face meetings in any case between the government and the opposition.

Rather, they will gather in separate rooms with U.N. officials shuttling between them, a formula that could make it harder to create meaningful breakthroughs, at least in the near term.

DeYoung reported from Washington.

Read more:

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world.
The FBI has begun using malware to ensare people who use child-porn sites. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

Over the past week, two federal judges have found that the governments use of software in a mass hacking of child-porn websites to identify users is constitutional.

The findings by judges in Tacoma, Wash., and Milwaukee are the first in an uncharted and technically complex area of law.

The two cases involved a child-porn website, Playpen, that was reachable only through the installation of special software called Tor, the worlds most widely used tool to give users anonymity online.

[This is how the government is catching people who use porn sites]

Because users who gravitate to Playpen were able to hide their tracks using Tor, the FBI in both cases obtained search warrants to hack the website and surreptitiously place computer code, or malware, on computers logging into certain forums on the site. When a user logs in and clicks on the forum, the malware exploits a flaw in their browser, forcing the computer to reveal its true Internet protocol address.

The defendant in the Tacoma case, Keith Michaud, argued that by hacking a website and infecting possibly thousands of computers in unknown locations  the site had 215,000 members  the governments action violated the Fourth Amendments requirement that a warrant particularly describe the place to be searched.

Michaud, who has been charged with receipt and possession of child pornography, also argued it amounted to a general warrant, a reference to the British practice during the Colonial era of allowing government searches without individualized suspicion.

But U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan, in the Western District of Washington, denied Michauds motion to throw out his charges on constitutional grounds.

Although the FBI may have anticipated tens of thousands of potential suspects as a result of deploying the [Network Investigative Technique], that does not [violate the Constitution] because it would be highly unlikely that Website A would be stumbled upon accidentally, Bryan said in an order issued Thursday.

What was done here was ultimately reasonable, Bryan wrote. The [hacking] warrant was supported by probable cause and particularly described the places to be searched and the things to be seized.

Michauds defense attorney, Colin Fieman, took issue with the ruling. We have tremendous regard for Judge Bryan, but in this case respectfully and profoundly disagree with the courts decision not to suppress evidence seized as part of the FBIs operation of a massive child-pornography website and use of investigatory methods that we believe violate the Fourth Amendment and erode the privacy rights of everyone.

In a separate but related case in Milwaukee, a judge similarly found that the FBI had probable cause to issue a warrant to deploy the malware  what the bureau calls the Network Investigative Technique (NIT)  and rejected the defendants motion to dismiss the charges. That finding by Judge David E. Jones was disclosed by Justice Department trial attorney Keith Becker at a Jan. 22 hearing in Michauds case, according to a transcript of the hearing. But Joness report, which is a recommendation to the district judge, has not yet been made public.

Michaud also argued that the government violated Rule 41, a regulation established by the federal courts that requires that a warrant be deployed in the district in which it is issued. The NIT warrant in his case was issued in the Eastern District of Virginia. Michauds computer was in Vancouver, Wash.

Bryan ruled that the warrant technically violates the letter, but not the spirit, of Rule 41. And the technical violation, he said, did not warrant suppression of the evidence.

The courts are in the process of weighing a change to Rule 41, which would make clear that a judge can issue a warrant to deploy a hacking tool in an unknown district to discover the location of a suspects computer.

The technical complexity of the issue was evident in the Jan. 22 hearing in Michauds case. At the hearing, Bryan spent time trying to understand exactly how the NIT worked.

When somebody got the authority to attach the NIT to the website, how do you do that? Does somebody sit down on a computer and make keystrokes to make that happen? he asked, according to the transcript.

When advised by Becker that the warrant explained the NITs operation, Bryan replied: It doesn't explain the things I am asking about. The back-and-forth went on for some time when the judge decided it was time for a break.

But before breaking, he reiterated: I want to know what the user has to do to trigger this NIT, if anything. Then . . . the information that the NIT provides, how does [the FBI] get that? I suppose there is somebody sitting in a cubicle somewhere with a keyboard doing this stuff. I dont know that. It may be they seed the clouds, and the clouds rain information. I dont know that.

The defendants in each case plans to appeal.
A federal judge on Friday sentenced a civilian Navy intelligence official  at the center of a mysterious, and apparently criminal, scheme to make hundreds of rifle silencers for a supposedly secret military project  to six months in prison and a California hot-rod mechanic who helped him to 60 days.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she took no pleasure in sending Lee M. Hall, a civilian Navy intelligence official, to prison, but she believed she must to deter others who might act as he did. Earlier she sentenced Mark S. Landersman, the mechanic, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

Both men were convicted in late 2014 of conspiring to build 349 untraceable silencers and shipping them across state lines for a sensitive mission that was never fully explained in court. Prosecutors asserted the arrangement was a $1.6 million sweetheart deal to enrich Landersman, whose brother, David Landersman, was Halls boss in the Navy and has also been charged in the case.

Defense attorneys for both men argued that their clients believed the project was legitimate. In court Friday, Hall apologized to the Navy and the U.S. government for having to deal with this very difficult issue, but he maintained that he never thought he was doing wrong.

At the time I took my actions, I truly believed there was a need for these materials, he said.

Brinkema said in court that she would put Halls sentence on hold if he appealed his case.
An image of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is seen on a car parked in front of damaged buildings in the town of Rabiya. (Omar Sanadiki/Reuters)

On the eve of Syrian peace talks scheduled to begin Friday in Geneva, it remained unclear whether the government or the opposition would show up, or what they would talk about if they do.

Opposition leaders meeting for the fourth day in Saudi Arabia debated whether they should enter negotiations without some indication that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers are prepared to halt bombardments of civilian areas or take other confidence-building steps.

As opposition leaders expressed growing doubt about whether the U.S-led international coalition that supports them is ready to press their demands, the United States voiced growing exasperation at their hesitation.

We believe that the opportunity that is presented by these talks should be sweetener enough for the HNC to come to the table and talk without preconditions, State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said, referring to the High Negotiating Committee, the group formed to represent the opposition in Geneva.

In addition to concerns about confidence-building steps that the opposition says it believed would take place before the talks began  including the release of some prisoners and a lifting of government sieges that have prevented humanitarian aid from reaching numerous population areas, as well as an end to the bombing  the opposition is increasingly uneasy about what it sees as U.S. backtracking on Assads future.

[Russian airstrikes in Syria are generating gains for government forces]

In a resolution passed last month, the United Nations called for the negotiations on a political transition process to begin in January. Backed by Russia and the United States, the resolution also expressed support for a nationwide cease-fire to take effect as soon as initial transition steps had been taken.

In recent days, however, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy shepherding the talks, have indicated they want to begin negotiations with cease-fire talks, and have played down the urgency of a transition that would remove Assad from power.

Last weekend, Kerry denied opposition charges that the United States would settle for a unity government, in which both Assad and the opposition would take part, rather than the transition called for in the U.N. resolution and other preparatory documents.

The difference, he indicated, was one of semantics, with Russia backing what they call a unity government, but everybody else calls a transitional government.

We support getting a cease-fire, we support getting humanitarian access. . . . Weve said 100,000 times Assad cannot be part of the long-term future of Syria, Kerry said. Its very simple. Nothing has changed.

What has changed, however, are conditions on the ground. In the weeks since the talks were outlined, Assad forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, have made significant progress in retaking key areas of opposition control. The rebels are being pulverized, said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Hadi al-Bahra, an opposition spokesman in Istanbul, said the military advances suggest that neither Russia nor Syria is serious about peacemaking. They are expending their military operations on the ground and using the political process to give the image that they are seeking a political solution, while in actuality . . . they are pushing for a military solution, Bahra said.

Assads government has made little comment while the opposition, acutely conscious that it is likely to be blamed if the talks fail to start, tries to decide what to do.

As the scheduled Geneva start time approached, opposition leaders reached for outside support. On Tuesday, the HNC sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon asking for assurances that humanitarian measures would be implemented. Opposition representatives said the reply came from de Mistura, who said that it was up to U.N. Security Council members to ensure implementation of the resolution.

In a video message to the Syrian people Thursday, de Mistura urged them to press their representatives to attend. You must know that we count on you to raise your voice to say . . . enough, to say to everyone who is actually coming, from Syria and abroad, to this conference that there are expectations on them to make sure that their vision, their capacity of compromise in discussion for reaching a peaceful solution in Syria is now, and they need to produce that. The Geneva conference, he said, cannot fail.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described the tremendous frustration of the Syrian opposition, expressed to him in a Wednesday telephone call from Riyad Hijab, the former Syrian prime minister who is head of the HNC.

From their perspective, Corker said in an interview, by not insisting that some confidence-building measures be taken, the administration is trying very much to align itself with Russia and other entities to [the oppositions] disadvantage. . . . A process that prematurely forces the Syrian opposition to the table without taking into consideration their concerns  such as humanitarian access and the release of women and children wrongly imprisoned in Syria  will not produce the desired outcome.

They were not railing against Secretary Kerry, they were not railing against anyone in the call, Corker said. They were just making their point. If they go to the talks under the situation as it exists, it is destined for failure. . . . I do not think theyre being unreasonable.

Invitations to the talks have been issued by de Mistura to the HNC and to the government, each of which is to send 15 representatives. The two sides will not meet face-to-face, he said this week, but in proximity, in separate rooms with U.N. representatives passing back and forth between them.

In an effort to resolve disputes over who would be on the opposition team  with Russia and opposition backers demanding that other Syrian actors participate  de Mistura issued separate invitations to other groups to attend as advisers, who would sit apart from the two delegation rooms.

Sly reported from Geneva.
The visit by MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow to Flint on January 27 reflected the deep crisis of the US ruling establishment over the lead poisoning disaster in Flint, which has discredited government at all levelsstate, federal and local.

Maddow is a principal spokesperson for the left-liberal section of the US corporate media and hosts her own nightly television program. Her programs generally reflect the concerns of a privileged and complacent upper middle class layer (Maddow herself earns some $7 million annually) and rarely deal with social issues such as poverty and unemployment.

The hosting by Maddow of a town hall meeting in Flint Wednesday night therefore represented something of a departure for the news host. She was sent to Flint evidently in an effort at damage control under conditions, where the credibility of government authorities is in shreds after nearly two years of lies and evasions over the lead contamination of Flint drinking water that has poisoned 100,000 of the citys residents and a whole generation of children.

The event was a tightly choreographed and controlled affair, with attendees allowed in by invitation only and questions pre-screened. Despite this there was an evident restlessness in the audience and a decidedly cool response to the various Democratic Party hucksters invited to appear by Maddow.

The show opened with a pre-recorded segment containing interviews with Flint residents on the water disaster. It then shifted to the town hall meeting hosted by Maddow, held at a local high school gym. During the course of the next hour Maddow brought on camera several groups of panelists, including Virginia Tech environmental engineer Marc Edwards, who first brought the issue of lead contamination in Flint water to light, and pediatrics doctor Mona Hanna-Attisha, who exposed elevated lead levels in Flint children.

The state authorities have roped in these professionals to provide a veneer of legitimacy to their efforts to appease public anger. Edwards is currently heading lead testing efforts in Flint, and both Hanna-Attisha and Edwards have been appointed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder to a state task force on the Flint water crisis.

Maddows main purpose, however, was to provide a platform for a series of Democratic politicians to profess feigned outrage over the lead poisoning of Flint residents and false sympathy for the plight of the victims.

The first group of panelists included Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, Edwards, and Martin Kaufman, a professor at the University of Michigan who is working to map all of Flints pipes. Maddow began by noting that no pipes had yet actually been replaced. During the ensuing discussion on the costs and practicality of replacing Flints outdated lead piping, Mayor Weaver nervously warned that further delays would undermine public confidence. Our trust has been broken in the city of Flint. If we dont get new pipes, people arent going to trust that, Weaver declared.

The next group of panelists included Dr. Hanna-Attisha and Democratic State Representative Sheldon Neeley. In her remarks the doctor stressed the immediate need for massive resources to assist the thousands of Flint children who suffered irreversible damage due to exposure to lead-tainted drinking water. In the course of the discussion it emerged that there was only one school nurse for the entire Flint public school system, and that Michigan ranked last in the United States in the ratio of children to school nurses.

For his part, Neeley attempted to focus blame solely on Governor Rick Snyder for the lack of resources reaching Flint. Neeley claimed that Democratic state legislators would make sure that the needed assistance was made available to help Flints children. However, all Neeley proposed was a miserable $16 million loan forgiveness, not even a grant, to Flints cash starved schools.

In fact the horrific conditions existing in Flint and major cities across the United States are the product of decades of a social counterrevolution carried out by Republican and Democratic politicians alike at the federal, state and local level. The city of Flint has been presided over by a series of Democratic administrations, including the administration of former mayor Dayne Walling, who gave his OK to the switching of Flints water supplies from the Detroit water system to the polluted Flint River. The highly corrosive Flint River water leached lead from the citys piping, leading to the poisoning of Flint residents.

The final segment of the program included Democratic Michigan US Senator Debbie Stabenow and Charles Williams, head of the Michigan chapter of the Reverend Al Sharptons National Action Network, along with Mayor Weaver again. Maddow began by advancing the position, eagerly taken up by panelists, that responsibility for the disaster in Flint could be entirely laid at the doorstep of Michigans emergency manager law and, by implication, the Snyder administration.

The emergency manager law, which strips elected local officials of decision-making powers, is entirely anti-democratic. Indeed, when Michigan voters decisively repealed the states emergency manager law in a popular referendum in November 2012, the Snyder administration imposed a new, in some ways even more draconian and referendum-proof emergency manager law.

That being said, the attempt to lay the blame for the disaster in Flint wholly at the feet of Snyder is entirely self-serving. Emergency manager measures, first adopted under a Democratic governor in the 1980s, have been employed by both Democratic and Republican state administrations to carry out massive cuts in cities and school districts across the state. Darnell Earley, the Snyder appointee who presided over the Flint water crisis and is now decimating the Detroit Public Schools, is a Democrat, as have been the majority of the states emergency managers.

Democratic former Michigan Treasurer Andy Dillon played a key role in redrafting the emergency manager law after it was defeated in 2012. A year later, Dillon signed off on the decision to shift the Flint water supply to the Flint River.

In his contribution to the discussion Williams inevitably introduced a dose of racial politics, declaring that Snyder had taken over every black city in Michigan. As always the politics of race is introduced to obscure the fundamental class questions involved in the poisoning of Flint.

As was evident from the audience at the town hall, the city is a highly integrated working class community. The political establishment is clearly alarmed by the fact that all sections of the Flint working classwhite, black and immigranthave come together to oppose the attack on their right to clean and safe water. The role of forces such as Williams and his mentor Sharpton is to disrupt that unity.

For her part Stabenow defended the miserly response by the Obama administration to the Flint disaster. The White House has committed $80 million, not all of which is even specifically earmarked for Flint, in comparison to an estimate of as much as $1.5 billion needed to upgrade Flints water infrastructure alone.

Maddow interjected to argue against more federal aid to Flint, claiming that this would let the state of Michigan off the hook.

Continuing her apologetics for the White House, Stabenow went on to claim to have spoken to President Obama that morning, declaring, he would like me to tell you he loves you and has your back.

During her closing remarks Maddow cynically assured Flint residents that the city would be restored. America is with you, she declared. I am convinced it is going to happen. We as a country will not let things like this lie.

Maddow is lying and she knows it. While there is a deep sense of shared outraged with the people of Flint from workers throughout the US and the world, the American ruling elite, after decades of bleeding US infrastructure to pay for handouts to Wall Street and endless wars, is not about to change its spots and provide the billions needed to restore Flint and working class cities across the United States. All of those Democratic politicians Maddow presents as saviors are implacable enemies of the working class, no less ruthless than their Republican counterparts.

Social discontent is mounting across the United States, as evidenced, among other developments, by recent opposition of autoworkers and the wave of teacher sickouts in Detroit, which have emerged outside of the control of the Democratic Party-aligned trade unions. That movement requires direction, leadership and political clarification. This means a struggle to expose the reactionary essence of liberal apologists for the Democratic Party like Maddow.
The Swedish government has announced its intention to deport 80,000 refugees whose asylum applications have been rejected in the coming months. The Social Democratic-Green coalition in Stockholm, which enforced stricter asylum laws and border controls last year, is pursuing a vicious policy of deterrence against refugees and transforming the country, which boasted of its liberal refugee policy for decades, into a police state.

The same day as these measures were announced, Human Rights Watch published a report sharply criticising the drift toward authoritarianism throughout Europe, which European governments have justified as a response to the migrant crisis.

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote that the arrival of refugees from the Middle East is driving many Western governments to roll back human rights protections, adding, these backward steps threaten the rights of all sections of the population, not just refugees.

This tendency is exemplified by the policies of the German government, which, despite Chancellor Angela Merkels proclamations last year of a welcoming culture, is in the midst of intensive preparations to further seal its countrys borders and establish processing centresi.e. internment campsfor refuges.

The publication of the 659-page Human Rights Watch report followed just one day after at least 24 refugees, including ten children, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, adding to the 3,811 people who died last year attempting to seek refuge in Europe from war and violence in their native countries stoked up by decades of Western military intervention.

Social Democratic Swedish interior minister Anders Ygeman told television broadcaster SVT that the government had already ordered the police and immigration authorities to implement mass deportations. Swedish daily Dagens Industri quoted the minister as saying, I expect 60,000 people will be affected, but it could be 80,000.

Ygeman noted that the government would first aim at a voluntary return of refugees, but then added, If this does not work, it will be necessary to carry out their return by force. Since the government anticipated that large groups of people will disappear underground, the security apparatus is to be massively strengthened. An additional 1,000 positions are to be created with the border police, and the security agencies will be ordered to carry through arbitrary controls on foreign looking people, i.e. racial profiling.

The head of Swedens border police, Patrick Engstrom, stated that collaboration between the border police and immigration authorities would be intensified in order to strictly enforce deportations. Asylum seekers will only be informed about the rejection of their asylum application in the presence of a police officer.

Since the scale of the planned deportations would overwhelm the currently existing airline routes, the government plans to charter planes to carry out the deportations. According to Dagens Industri, government officials are in talks with both countries to establish a repatriation agreement with Morocco and Afghanistan.

Although Sweden seeks to portray itself as a humanitarian great power, it has repeatedly tightened the screws on refugees over the past year. Mass accommodation centres were systematically overcrowded, and refugees have been housed in churches and mosques. New arrivals were ultimately compelled to sleep in the snow-covered streets.

The Social Democratic-Green government imposed the first restrictions on asylum regulations in November, whereby Sweden adjusted to the minimum standards of the EU, as Prime Minister Stefan Lofven put it. Since then, successful asylum seekers have been granted only a maximum of three years residency. Family reunification was restricted, together with the right to health care.

The Social Democrat-Green government exploited the hysteria after the Paris terrorist attacks to introduce identification requirements at the border and biometric checks on refugees. A particularly despicable role was played by the Greens as the smaller partner in the coalition. Green chairwoman Asa Romson, who is also deputy prime minister, announced last years asylum limits in tears and claimed her party would not support any further restriction of the rights of refugees.

But this was utter hypocrisy. At the beginning of January, Sweden told transport companies to check the IDs of travellers entering the country. Since then, the borders have been practically closed for refugees. Now, the mass deportations have been supported by the Greens.

The shift to the right in Swedens refugee policy is the result of a weeks-long hysterical campaign in which, as in Germany, refugees have been accused of committing sexual assaults on a wide scale and constantly denounced as criminals. Swedish police came under particular criticism by the far right for allegedly sweeping criminal acts by refugees under the carpet.

This racist campaign reached a high point when a 15-year-old Syrian refugee, obviously struggling with the trauma of his experiences during the civil war, stabbed and fatally injured a carer at a mass accommodation centre for refugees.

The debate was driven by the right-wing extremist and anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, which urged the government to go further in its crackdown on refugees. They saw a huge demand for personnel in order to overcome the refugee problem, as the Frankfurter Rundschau put it.

The advance of the far right is above all the result of the disastrous policies pursued by Social Democracy over the past two decades. Unprecedented privatisation programmes and drastic cuts to public spending and welfare have plunged the suburbs of many urban centres into poverty. In some suburbs of Stockholm and Malmo, unemployment is over 15 percent, twice as high as the countrys average. Immigrants are disproportionately affected by mass unemployment. The increasing social tensions exploded in violent riots in the suburbs of Stockholm in the summer of 2014, after the police shot a Portuguese immigrant.

Swedens ruling elite, like those across the continent, has responded to the sharpening social tensions with national chauvinism and the stoking up of anti-immigrant sentiment so as to divide society, prepare the way for the far right and strengthen the police state. The creation of a pogrom-like atmosphere is accompanied by increased militarism. Although Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom announced that due to the influx of refugees the country faces collapse and could not adequately care for the tens of thousands of refugees, the 10 percent increase in defence spending adopted at the beginning of 2014 has been retained.

Wallstrom also supports the reintroduction of compulsory military service, which was eliminated in 2010. Such a policy would have been, according to Wallstrom, helpful last autumn in dealing with the refugee influx.

The utter bankruptcy of the Swedish Social Democrats and Greens has above all strengthened the far right. Immediately after the asylum restrictions, they celebrated because the government had adopted the line of the Sweden Democrats. The Sweden Democrats, who are aligned with other European parties like Frances neo-fascist National Front, enjoy the support of 18 percent of voters according to recent polls. Last year there were at least two-dozen cases of arson directed at refugee accommodations in Sweden.

Throughout Europe, the political left, including the Social Democrats, Greens, and organizations such as the NPA in France and the Left Party in Germany, have fully swallowed the nostrums of the far right, demanding the curtailment of the social rights of refugees and mass deportations.

The effect of these policies has been a humanitarian disaster for refugees and the move toward police-state forms of rule throughout Europe. In its report released Thursday Human Rights Watch declared, Blatant Islamophobia and shameless demonizing of refugees have become the currency of an increasingly assertive politics of intolerance.

In a damning admission veiled as a humanitarian appeal, the report declared, The Western governments threatening to curtail rights include many of the strongest traditional allies of the human rights cause.

In other words, the very European governments that have championed the violation of human rights as a cause to bomb and invade defenceless countries in Africa and the Middle East, are completely indifferent to human rights abuses within their own borders, and are using the refugee crisis to impose police-state measures against their own working populations.
Single mom Sarah Ellett knows shes breaking the law every day when she gives her chronically ill daughter Remie, 3, two tiny drops of cannabis oil. Shes determined to continue, as the treatment has brought her child a quality of life thats not only tolerable but also often joyful. But now child caseworkers have gotten involved, and Ellett is scared.

STORY: Game-Changer School Is First to Allow Students Right to Medical Marijuana

They told me they needed to make sure that Remie wasnt in any danger, Ellett (pictured above with Remi), who lives in Nephi, Utah, told People Wednesday about the recent surprise visit from Utah Division of Child and Family Services reps, who she believes were tipped off. I told them they would have to leave and talk to my lawyer. They were polite and said they were sorry they had to be there, but it did cause me concern. My biggest worry is being unable to continue to treat Remie without being in violation of Utah law. There are a lot of risks there.

STORY: Controversial Cannabis Treatment Helps 9-Year-Old Boy Speak His First Words

This week Ellett  who herself suffers from a debilitating colon disorder, as do four of her seven other children  went into hiding with her family to try to figure out her next move. Im not sure what to do, Ellett told the Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday. One thing I want to do is continue treating Remie, and if I stay in Utah, I cant keep treating her.  I cant take that chance because they will take her.

Ellett did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Parenting, but on her Facebook page, she posted on Thursday, We are safe & Remie is doing well. There will be a public statement later today.

Remie (Photo: GoFundMe)

In Utah, possession of as little as an ounce or less of marijuana can result in a six-month jail sentence. In 2015 state Sen. Mark Madsens medical cannabis bill was one vote shy of clearing the Utah Senate. Since then, according to the D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, momentum has continued to build with Gov. Gary Herbert, who has said he would sign compassionate medical cannabis legislation. But nothing is imminent, leaving Ellett to make the difficult decision of whether to move to Colorado or another state where medical cannabis is legal for children  like so many other desperate families around the country have chosen to do for their sick kids.

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Remi, whom doctors did not expect to live through gestation, has been diagnosed with several disorders, including thyroid disease, respiratory issues, digestive problems that require a feeding tube, and panhypopituitarism, which interferes with the function of the pituitary gland, causing blurred vision, low blood sugar, stunted growth, and vomiting. After researching the potential benefits of cannabis oil, Ellett registered her daughter with the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, the only state that permitted out-of-state patients, though that policy has now been discontinued.

The daily doses of oil brought dramatic changes to the young girls condition: She was able to walk with a walker, take swimming lessons, sit and focus on activities such as reading a book, and eat enough without a feeding tube to gain a few healthy pounds.

She started jumping on the trampoline, Ellett told the Salt Lake Tribune. She just started being able to make movements. Instead of sitting there, being the observer, she started being a participant in the family.

Six of Elletts children. (Photo: GoFundMe)

According to Michael Backes, a cannabis researcher and author of Cannabis Pharmacy: The Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana, such wild improvements likely have something to do with the marijuanas phytocannabinoids, or natural compounds, and how they react with the bodys endocannabinoid receptors, which are a series of physical regulatory mechanisms.

The current thinking is that the phytocannabinoids kind of adjust the thermostat for a range of physiological processes, Backes tells Yahoo Parenting. In other words, you can get things shifted toward a normal baseline and have it help with a whole host of conditions.

He adds, Ive heard over and over again from parents, My kid is back. I think a lot of it is real and a lot of it may be parents who so desperately want to have their kid healthy. But the truth is that it is providing hope to a lot of these parents with very sick kids.

The tricky part in this whole equation, Backes explains, is that until these cannabis products can transcend the black market and become studied and regulated, theres no way to get a consistent dose. So Ellet doesnt know what it is, but she knows its working, he says. We need to know more and to know that were not doing any additional harm. Dose, purity, and cleanliness are all important.

Ellett, for now, is considering her options. Donations to a GoFundMe page will help defray medical and possible moving expenses. (She has been struggling to make ends meet with a part-time, remote job.) She told the Tribune, Im a stable person. I dont want to just up and leave with my children, move them away from the state, move them away from their father. I know her health is more important than our location. Ive been trying to be patient with the state of Utah, but the more this is going on, the more I know Im going to be forced into not giving [Remie] the oil.

(Top photo: Facebook)





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DES MOINES, Iowa  The Republican presidential debate at the Iowa Events Center on Thursday night began with Sen. Ted Cruz taking shots at Donald Trump.

Cruzs comments came after Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly asked him to address the elephant not in the room, the fact Trump chose not to participate. The senator mocked Trumps propensity for throwing insults at rivals and critics.

SLIDESHOW  The 7th GOP debate (the one without Trump) >>>

Im a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, Cruz quipped before turning to former neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Ben, youre a terrible surgeon, Cruz said. Now that weve got the Donald Trump portion out of the way, I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up and make the case to the people of this state and the people of the country why each of us believe we would make the best commander in chief.

Trump, who is currently the frontrunner in polls of the Republican primary field, scheduled a last-minute event at Drake University in Des Moines at the same time as the debate. His decision to boycott the event came after reports surfaced that he had asked Fox News to remove Kelly as a moderator. In an interview with CNNs Brianna Keilar prior to the debate, however, he said that he never made such a request. Trump has accused Kelly of being biased against him and criticized her handling of an earlier debate.


The seventh Republican debate (and the last one before the Iowa caucuses) was missing Donald Trump but still included plenty of sharp exchanges among the rest of the GOP frontrunners. The most heated moments dealt with immigration, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush attacking Sen. Marco Rubio, who returned the favor before turning his fire on his Senate colleague Ted Cruz over the same issue. Check out the other standout moments from Des Moines, Iowa.

Cruz takes a jab (or two) at Trump

Moderator Megyn Kelly asked Sen. Cruz to address the elephant not in the room, referring to his absent rival. Im a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, replied Cruz, getting the Trump portion out of the way.

Cruz later criticized the moderators, suggesting that they were trying to incite his rivals to gang up on him. If you ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage, said the Texas senator, in another mocking reference to the absent GOP frontrunner.

Kasich sidesteps encryption question

Ohio Gov. John Kasich was asked about his previous statement that data encryption was a big problem that the FBI should be authorized to penetrate. Itll get solved, he eventually replied, suggesting that it would be better for the issue to be discussed behind closed doors.

Gilmore-mentum

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, who had been excluded from many of the prior debates due to his low poll numbers, made the most of his time in the undercard debate. He was a trending topic on Twitter and saw a surge in search-engine traffic compared to his rivals.

Huckabee shows his softer side

The former Arkansas governor and 2008 Iowa caucus winner criticized government programs that he said actually keep people in poverty, and he delivered an eloquent defense of those struggling to work their way out of it.
The 2016 election cycle officially kicks off on Monday with that bizarre specimen of American democracy known as the Iowa caucuses. To get in the spirit of things, this edition of The Queue presents five political and election-themed movies you can get via subscription streaming at Netflix and Amazon  or completely free at the Internet Archive. Digital distribution plus democracy equals good times for everyone. America! What a country!

Election

The 1999 comedy Election is President Obamas favorite political movie, according to director Alexander Payne, and its easy to see why. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, Election is a ferocious satire of the political process, set in a suburban American high school. Witherspoon plays sunny and possibly psychotic overachiever Tracy Flick, who will do anything to win the post of class president. Broderick is the teacher out to stop her at any cost.

Holy moly, this movie is funny. Witherspoon is an ace comic actress and Broderick is, of course, an old pro at bringing the funny. But the films real selling point is the clever script, with its mischievous ruminations on the adolescent nature of the political election process.

Netflix

Recount

The 2000 presidential election was an infamously messy affair. You may recall the Florida recounts, the hanging chads, and the panicky exchange of litigation that ultimately escalated to the Supreme Court. If elections are inherently dramatic, then contested U.S. presidential elections are about as dramatic as it gets.

HBOs excellent television movie on the affair, Recount, chronicles the madness and delivers some interesting insights on how it all went down behind the scenes. Kevin Spacey leads the strong ensemble cast, which includes John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Denis Leary, Bob Balaban, and Laura Dern as former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Recount won the 2008 Emmy for best TV movie.

Amazon Prime

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Director Frank Capras classic 1939 political fable stars Jimmy Stewart as a naive junior senator taking on the corrupt political machine of Washington, D.C. Its a fascinating historical artifact and was hugely controversial upon its release. Capras depiction of a crooked Congress prompted the Powers That Be in both Washington and Hollywood to attempt to ban the film outright.

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It all looks adorably quaint now, of course, but keep in mind that the film was released in 1939. Mr. Smith is the movie that made Jimmy Stewart a star, and his evocation of old-fashioned American earnestness is the perfect antidote for yet another poisonous election season. A good-quality digital version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is available to view free of charge at the Internet Archive.

Internet Archive

Game Change

Another critically acclaimed HBO TV movie, Game Change digs into the controversy surrounding John McCains 2008 presidential run, particularly his campaigns dubious decision to bring on Alaska governor Sarah Palin as running mate.

The movie is filled with compelling personalities, and we get great performances from Julianne Moore as Palin and Ed Harris as John McCain. But the films real achievement is depicting the incredible complexities of a 21st century presidential campaign, where sound bytes are endlessly recycled online and the news cycle never stops tumbling.

Amazon Prime

The West Wing

NBCs late, great television drama The West Wing isnt a movie, of course. But it often played like a big-budget film, thanks to its high production values, a powerhouse cast, and most importantly  the intricately crafted rat-a-tat dialogue from marquee screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The West Wing is a glorious binge-watching opportunity on Netflix, whether youve seen the show before or not. The serial TV format allows the scripts to take time and dig deep into the nuts, blots, and money wrenches of American politics. Sorkins famously dense dialogue really is musical, in the sense that you can listen to individual scenes and episodes over and over  like revisiting your favorite Beatles records. Actually, it might not be a bad idea to put The West Wing in your Netflix queue for the next several months, as a musical counterpoint to the incessant noise of the actual election.

Netflix

Double Secret Bonus Tip: Keep in mind that the selections listed here are all free to stream, assuming you have a Netflix and/or Amazon Prime subscription. If you want to rent or purchase a digital title, you can find a lot more choices via iTunes or through your cable/satellite on-demand listings. For election-themed movies, thats a whole nother list. But might I suggest the underrated 2012 comedy The Campaign, which features the pure comedy wattage of Will Ferrell and Zack Galifianakis? Cant argue with that.

Read these other great stories on Yahoo Tech:



Glenn McDonald writes about the intersections of technology and culture at glenn-mcdonald.com and via Twitter @glennmcdonald1.
The updated livery and logo on Alaska Airlines, including the Eskimo logo that has been there since 1972. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)



A company rebranding campaign turned into a P.R. mess for Alaska Airlines this week, leading its CEO to apologize for a website reference to the Alaska Native face on its planes tail as our Eskimo, while other Alaska Natives complained about the use of the image entirely.

The airline has long referred to the face, which debuted on its planes in 1972, as the Eskimo, and theres a video on Alaska Airlines website about it and how its inspired by the states Native heritage. But the most recent brand refresh, including a slight redesign to the plane, included the phrase meet our Eskimo on the company website.

The implication of possession upset Alaska Natives, who voiced their displeasure on Facebook and Twitter, including a #NotYourEskimo hashtag, as well as an online petition. The phrasing was later removed.

When Alaska Airlines unveiled our refreshed brand earlier this week, a reference we used, Meet our Eskimo, offended many in the Alaska Native community, and likely others, Alaska Air Group CEO Brad Tilden said in a statement. We apologize and take full responsibility for this insensitive reference.

Related: Spirit Airlines Makes Tasteless Miss Universe Joke (Naturally)



Annie Wilcoxson Wenstrup, an Alaska Native, voiced her displeasure on Facebook, posting, I want to like your new rebranding campaign Claiming the image of an indigenous person is troubling enough. The possessiveness of your Meet Our Eskimo is dehumanizing.

In an interview with the Alaska Dispatch News, Wenstrup added, I think its time to start phasing (the Eskimo logo) out, she said. I think it has a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings because were used to it, but youre using a minoritys image to support a corporate brand, and theyre profiting off that.

Other Alaska Natives on social media have supported the use of the term Eskimo, and Alaska Airlines says they decided to keep using the term after conducting focus groups with Native leaders in the state.

Story continues

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British Jews might have to reevaluate their presence in the UK because the British government is putting circumcision, religious schools and kosher slaughter under increasing scrutiny, a prominent Orthodox Jewish community member told the media.

Above: David Frei

Government Scrutiny Of Kosher Slaughter, Circumcision And Religious Schools May Force Jews To Leave Britain, Prominent Orthodox Jewish Community Member Says

Shmarya Rosenberg  FailedMessiah.com

British Jews might have to reevaluate their presence in the UK because the British government is putting circumcision, religious schools and kosher slaughter under increasing scrutiny, a prominent Orthodox Jewish community member told the International Business Times.

David Frei, a lawyer who has been a registrar at the haredi-controlled London Beth Din since 1999, said record levels of atheism along with Islamist terrorism have turned people against religion, and that has in turn pushed the government into increasing its scrutiny over kosher and halal slaughter, religious schools funded by the government, and circumcision and may lead to government moves to ban any or all of them.

"I think there are genuine fears at the moment in any number of areas  including circumcision and ritual slaughter  that the state may one day take a more interventionist role and it is very disturbing. At one point or another Jews will have to evaluate their future in the country if this was to happen. There is a very secular wave that is washing over this country at the moment. There is no question that fewer people than ever before believe in God. The opinion polls will show you that 30 or 40 years ago, the vast majority of people believed in God and now the vast majority dont, Frei reportedly said.

The IBT spoke to Frei as part of an investigative report into the role of Muslim sharia courts in Britain. Those courts have faced increasing scrutiny and criticism from the government and politicians. But so far, the London Beth Din has avoided both that scrutiny and that criticism, even though many of the problems that plague sharia courts also plague Orthodox Jewish courts like the London Beit Din.

One reason for that might be that the London Beth Din has existed in some form for about 400 years while sharia courts are more recent introductions to the city.

But lawmakers and policy makers, who have become increasingly concerned with the perceived misogyny of sharia courts in divorce cases, are starting to to turn their attentions to similar issues with the London Beth Din and other Orthodox rabbinical courts because of the problem of agunahs  women who are left chained in unwanted marriages while their recalcitrant husbands use halakha (Orthodox Jewish law) to extort and coerce them into paying large sums of money to be released from their unwanted marriages or agree to custody arrangements favorable to their abusive husbands but not to them. And sometimes these recalcitrant husbands simply refuse to divorce their wives out of spite.

No matter the reason, the men are essentially free to start new relationships and even father children with other women while their wives are forbidden to date or cohabitate with any man until their recalcitrant husbands grant them the Jewish bill of divorce known as a get. Any children conceived with another man during this period of halakhic limbo are deemed to be mamzers (bastards). Orthodox Jewish law forbids mamzers and their descendants to marry pure Jews. That ban lasts forever  although there were ways for a mamzers lineage to become lost and for the mamzer to quietly blend in with the pure Jewish community.

For centuries rabbis were trained to work hard to avoid naming someone as a mamzer and to work very hard to allow people identified as mamzers to quietly sneak back into the pool of pure Jews.

But in recent years haredi rabbis have reversed centuries of rabbinic behavior regarding this issue, and in Israel have even used the state apparatus to maintain lists of mamzers and ban them from marrying pure Jews.

Frei defended the system that creates these chained women and said that Jews were accepting this system voluntarily. Therefore, Frei claims, the British government shouldnt interfere, even if some women are discriminated against and grievously damaged by what his haredi-controlled Orthodox Jewish court does.

"People are voluntarily taking upon themselves additional restrictions [i.e., to follow Orthodox Jewish law as his haredi-controlled court enforces it] because they believe in it, Frei said. The reality is that if you are a religious Jew, the way that you think marriage is performed is platform X and divorce platform Y. And what is wrong with that? That is a restriction that [they have] taken upon [themselves]. That is what you believe in, your value system. That is not a threat to any society.

Frei made similar claims about Jewish religious circumcision (which can have specific safety issues) and kosher slaughter (which has animal welfare and humane slaughter issues which trouble many Britons).

The purpose of the state in my view [is] not to impose cultural values on a minority which has its own cultural values and which does not clash, fight or inflict violence on anybody else. We are a law-abiding community. We are people who have given a full and valued contribution to British society, so why should the state come barging in and tell us what we can and can't do in terms of matters of personal religious belief?

Frei also holds similar beliefs about the British governments stricter enforcement of education law for religious schools  including haredi Jewish schools  which was prompted by a string of radical Islamic terror attacks across Western Europe.

"Very shortly after the most recent attacks in Paris, the first letter [in the paper] I read was about chucking out religious schools and I thought is there any evidence that any of these terrorists had ever actually attended a religious school? I don't think so. They are better off asking to shut down the internet, because that is causing it rather than religious schools, Frei said.

The British government recently issued a closure order for an illegal non-compliant haredi school, Talmud Torah Tashbar, for essentially failing to teach secular subjects to its more than 200 students. The haredi school did not even teach students proper English.
Above: Yehoshua Nachison

The New York State Police press release:

NEW YORK STATE POLICE

Major Joseph A. Tripodo, Troop F Commander

Pomona Resident Arrested For Sexual Abuse Of Child

On January 26, 2016 the New York State Police in Haverstraw arrested YEHOSHUA NACHISON, age 32, of Pomona for subjecting a female child to sexual contact. Nachison inappropriately fondled the child while she was visiting his residence in October of 2015. He was charged with Sexual Abuse in the first degree (class D Felony), Forcible Touching (class A misdemeanor) and Endangering the Welfare of a Child (class A misdemeanor). Nachison was arraigned in the Village of West Haverstraw Court and was released on his own recognizance. He was ordered to surrender his passport and reappear in the Town of Haverstraw court on 02/01/16. An Order of Protection was issued for Nachison to stay away from the victim and her family.
A bottle of Irn-Bru is seen in Edinburgh, Scotland in this May 2, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/Files

(Reuters) - AG Barr (BAG.L), the maker of Irn-Bru and Rubicon fizzy drinks, said it expected fourth-quarter revenue growth in excess of 2.5 percent, after a robust performance in the Christmas period.

The Cumbernauld, Scotland-based soft drinks maker said its trading strategy and brand execution helped it offset a challenging and highly competitive UK market.

Soft drink makers around the world such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Co have been introducing beverages with less sugar and more natural ingredients as consumers turn calorie-conscious and opt for products perceived as healthier.

Barr, whose Irn-Bru fizzy orange drink outsells Coca-Cola in Scotland, bought cocktail mixer business Funkin last year for about 21 million pounds, to expand its drinks portfolio.

The firm's main rival in the UK is Britvic (BVIC.L), which makes Robinsons squash and Tango, said in November it expected full-year 2016 profit growth after a slow start to the year.

"In a challenging market, Barr has delivered the improved second half we hoped to see. Growth returned, rounded off with a soundly executed Christmas," analysts at Investec Securities wrote in a note.

AG Barr said on Friday it now expects revenue for the 53 weeks ending Jan. 30 to be around 257 million pounds. It reported revenue of 260.9 million pounds last year.

Analysts expect the company to report a full-year pretax profit of 41.39 million pounds on revenue of 260.11 million pounds, according to a Reuters estimate.

(Reporting by Aastha Agnihotri in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)
Airbus's company logo is pictured at the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, December 4, 2014. REUTERS/ Regis Duvignau

PARIS (Reuters) - Iran agreed on Thursday to buy 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion (19 billion pounds) at list prices, including a dozen A380 superjumbos, after international sanctions were lifted against Tehran this month.

The planemaker said the deal, signed amid a raft of others during a visit by President Hassan Rouhani, was conditional on getting U.S. export licences because more than 10 percent of Airbus jetliner parts come from the United States.

The order for 73 wide-body and 45 narrow-body jets allows Airbus to steal a march on US rival Boeing as Iran seeks to renovate and expand its worn-out fleet of 225 planes.

The inclusion of A380s - the world's largest jetliner - sends a commercial signal to established carriers in the Gulf, and is a boost for Airbus, which has been struggling to sell them. However, they will not be delivered before end-decade as Iran expands its airports and focuses on urgent needs.

Boeing has so far held back from Iran amid what industry sources and diplomats describe as political and legal concerns, but Iranian officials are urging it to mimic its European rival.

The Airbus deal depends on unravelling a knot of financial issues including whether and how Iran can avoid using the U.S. financial system for the jets, usually priced in dollars.

Deputy transport minister Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan told Reuters the deal would be financed using a mixture of European export credits  which guarantee loans by commercial banks  and lease financing.

In an unusual move, Iran plans to set up a national leasing company with foreign investors invited to take a stake and no automatic restriction on basing it outside Iran.

But problems need to be ironed out on rules for export credit deals amid quibbles over collateral.

The deal was negotiated partly on the sidelines of a major CAPA aviation conference in Tehran this week, where Iran outlined requirements for 400-500 planes and offered flexible new regulations.

"It was the first international platform for Iran to say we are back in business" since implementation of the deal ending sanctions on Jan 17, Bertrand Grabowski, a managing director of DVB Bank, said.

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Other models ordered include 45 A320-family jets and 45 longer-haul A330s. Both those sets of orders included current and revamped models and helped lift the catalogue value of the deal from earlier estimates of $25 billion.

Iran also ordered 16 long-range A350-1000 twin-engined jets.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Cyril Altmeyer; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Michel Rose, Leigh Thomas)
What Anthem's 4Q15 Results Suggest about the Future of Healthcare

(Continued from Prior Part)

Anthems Commercial and Specialty division in 4Q15

Anthems (ANTM) Commercial and Specialty business earned revenues worth $37.6 billion in 2015, which represents a YoY (year-over-year) decline of 4.2%. The divisions revenues came in at $9.4 billion in 4Q15, which represents a YoY drop of about 3.3%.

Notably, the company added approximately 0.31 million new commercial enrollments in 2015. (Anthems commercial and specialty business is further differentiated into national, local group, specialty, and individual businesses. To know more about Anthems commercial business, please refer to Market Realists Anthem Enjoys Steady Commercial Business.)

The above graph shows that Anthems commercial enrollments rose by about 1.1 %, from 29.4 million in 4Q14 to 29.7 million in 4Q15. This growth is attributed to increases in enrollments in the national and local group markets by 328,000 and 104,000, respectively.

Anthems commercial membership growth, however, was negatively affected by a decrease of 118,000 members from the companys individual business segment. Peers including UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Aetna (AET), and Cigna Corporation (CI) are also witnessing declines in their ACA (Affordable Care Act) compliant individual and small-group exchange business.

Anthems national membership in 4Q15 and fiscal 2015

In 2015, Anthems total national membership accounted for 43% of the companys total commercial enrollments and 33.1% of Anthems total membership. The companys total national membership increased by 2.6%, from 12.4 million in 4Q14 to 12.7 million in 4Q15. National membership is further categorized into national accounts and BlueCard members.

Anthems commercial enrollments

Anthems national account membership rose by 2.8% YoY, from approximately 7.1 million in 4Q14 to about 7.4 million in 4Q15, mainly due to several large contracts such as that with Bank of America Corporation, which included contracts won by the company in 2015. Anthems local group business also witnessed a rise in total enrollments of about 0.7%, from 15.1 million in 4Q14 to 15.2 million in 4Q15.

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Individual business enrollments declined by 6.6%, from 1.8 million in 4Q14 to 1.7 million in 4Q15. In 2015, Anthem added about 84,000 members through its public exchange offerings and concluded the year with approximately 791,000 individual exchange enrollments. The companys small group business, however, suffered a loss of about 100,000 enrollments in 4Q15.

Why are Anthems revenues down?

Despite the rise in total commercial enrollments, Anthems revenues have suffered. This is on account of the increasing number of employer-sponsored members who continue to shift from fully insured to administrative services only or self-insured plans. Additionally, the company also failed to meet revenue targets in its public and private exchange businesses in 4Q15. (To learn more about fully insured and self-insured enrollments, please refer Market Realists Shift to Self-Insurance Plans Affects Health Insurance Stocks.)

Investors can invest in the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV) and thereby reduce the excessive company-specific risks of investing directly in Anthem. Anthem accounts for about 1.4% of XLVs total holdings.

Now lets look at Anthems 4Q15 government enrollments.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
warren buffett berkshire hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway is planning to stream its annual meeting for the first time ever, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The meeting in Omaha, Nebraska is like a pilgrimage for some shareholders, and attracts several thousands from all over the world who want to hear from company CEO Warren Buffett.

Citing sources in the know, the Journal reports that Berkshire would likely only stream the Q&A portion with Buffett and his vice chairman.

But the company has not made a final decision on the webcast, and everyone may still have to fly out to Omaha, according to the report.

This year's meeting is on April 29.

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jim gilmore fox news debate

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) is finally receiving the attention for which he's been pining.

Gilmore made his second appearance on the presidential debate stage Thursday night, in the so-called undercard, lower-tier affair.

He had not garnered enough support in national or early-state polling to qualify for all but one of the other six debate series.

The governor's appearance on the debate stage was clearly a boon for his name recognition.

As soon as Thursday's debate started, Gilmore became one of the top-Googled candidates. Google said searches for Gilmore were up more than 700%.

Spike in Google searches of Jim Gilmore, but some of these questions aren't necessarily positive.... #nprdebate pic.twitter.com/fuNRhgl7bS  Jessica Taylor (@JessicaTaylor) January 29, 2016

Gilmore wasn't just popular on Google  the former governor also dominated the social media conversation.

Twitter was abuzz about Gilmore, who a Twitter spokesman said become the No. 3 US trend on the social-media site during the undercard debate.

I'm not watching the undercard debate, so lemme tell ya this sudden interest in Jim Gilmore is inexplicable and intriguing. What happened?  Jeff B/DDHQ (@EsotericCD) January 29, 2016

Who is Jim Gilmore and when did he join the race? #GOPDebate  Tranae Felicien (@TheOnlyTrain) January 29, 2016

Pass the popcorn...the warm up act has taken the stage. BTW who is Jim Gilmore and where has he been? #GOPDebate  Pam Ressler (@pamressler) January 29, 2016

The Washington Post's Philip Bump also noted that more people have begun searching Gilmore's name on Google than rockstar Johnny Marr.

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Over the past 90 days, Jim Gilmore has sometimes attracted more search interest than Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr! pic.twitter.com/tsCQGcmmyK  Philip Bump (@pbump) January 29, 2016

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Carly Fiorina

When Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was questioned on Thursday about a personal dig against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, she did not back down.

Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, fired off a series of zingers aimed at Clinton and her relationship with her husband, former US President Bill Clinton.

Fox moderator Martha MacCallum pointed out that, in a previous debate, Fiorina said that "unlike the other woman candidate in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband"  to which Fiorina smiled and pointed at her husband, saying, "He's right there."

"But back in September, in an interview, you said that you would stick only to the record  your record vs. Hillary Clinton's record  and never resort to personal attacks," MacCallum continued. "What changed?"

Fiorina responded that her previous comments were not "a personal attack."

"I was pointing out the fact that Hillary Clinton will do anything to gain and hang on to power. Anything," Fiorina said. "Listen, if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago."

The crowd cheered, but Fiorina didn't stop there.

"Here's the deal: Hillary Clinton has been climbing the ladder to try to get power and here now she is trying for the White House," Fiorina said. "She's probably more qualified for the big house."

Fiorina then compared Clinton to the recently reapprehended Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"She's escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo," Fiorina said.

"Perhaps Sean Penn should interview her," she continued, referring to the actor's interview with the drug lord that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. The FBI is currently investigating Clinton's use of a private email server while she was US secretary of state to determine whether any protocol was violated.

Fiorina went on to attack Clinton's foreign-policy record.

Fiorina said to cheers:

The woman should be prosecuted. And while Mrs. Clinton has flown hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe, I have too, and I know that flying is an activity, not an accomplishment. While I know that she has held many positions and many titles, she has not accomplished much of anything in her life. She's gotten every single foreign policy challenge wrong, and she continues to lie to the American people.

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She then went back to blasting Hillary and Bill Clinton.

"You see, it's called the 'Clinton way,'" Fiorina said. "Both Bill and Hillary practice it  the Clinton way, say whatever you have to say, do whatever you have to say, lie as long as you can get away with it. Hillary Clinton cannot be the president of these United States."

Watch the first part of Fiorina's attack below:

.@CarlyFiorina: "Listen, if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago" pic.twitter.com/m59leQpfa0  POLITICO Video (@POLITICOvideo) January 29, 2016





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By Samuel Shen and Pete Sweeney SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese shares closed sharply higher on Friday, recovering some of the week's losses, but still recorded their biggest monthly fall in about seven years, which has knocked 12 trillion yuan (1.2 trillion pounds) off the value of its benchmark indexes. The Shanghai Composite Index <.SSEC> closed up 3.1 percent, but it lost twice that over the week and 22.6 percent since the beginning of January, its worst month since October 2008, when global financial markets were sent into a tailspin after the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank. The CSI300 index <.CSI300> of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen ended up 3.2 percent for the day, but lost 21 percent for the month, its biggest decline since August 2009. Trading was light throughout the month, as many investors are giving the market a wide berth, burnt not just by January's slump, which has taken indexes back to 2014 levels, but also last summer's 40 percent crash. Beijing orchestrated a "National Team" response to the previous crash, taking regulatory action to arrest the selling and urging state-linked buyers to support the market, but there has been little sign of that in January. "Market bulls have failed to organise meaningful resistance, the 'National Team' didn't inspire investors, while speculators chose to stand on the sidelines," said Zhang Mingyu, chairman of hedge fund house Shanghai YJ Investment Management Co. "The market has been overwhelmed by gloom and looks like a bottomless pit," he added. China's faltering economic growth, which slowed to a 25-year low last year, is giving investors pause, putting pressure on the yuan currency, and encouraging capital to flow out of the country. The Finance Ministry said on Friday its fiscal revenue grew 8.4 percent last year, its slowest pace since 1988, but its expenditure jumped 15.8 percent as it increases spending to cushion the slowdown. YUAN FEARS ON HOLD At the beginning of the month, the yuan was of greater concern to investors than fragile Chinese stocks after the People's Bank of China (PBOC) spooked markets and emerging market rivals with its second sharp depreciation in the currency in six months. It has since calmed fears of an imminent and much larger devaluation by holding the yuan's daily midpoint rock steady day after day, though many analysts still suspect the currency will be allowed to trickle lower over time. The PBOC has also kept the banking system flush with cash, pumping out a huge 690 billion yuan this week to avoid a liquidity crunch ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations beginning in early February. Late on Thursday, the central bank announced it would conduct more liquidity operations than usual between Jan. 29 and Feb. 19 to cover the holiday period. In the latest move to stem pressure on the currency from capital flight, the authorities on Thursday asked several domestic funds to postpone issuing new outbound investment products, sources told Reuters. Premier Li Keqiang also phoned International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde to pledge Beijing would keep the yuan "basically stable" and improve communication with financial markets on the currency. "The Chinese government has no intention to promote exports through currency depreciation, nor will it launch a trade war," Li told Lagarde in the call, according to remarks published on a central government website. Likewise, speculation that Hong Kong might be forced to give up its peg to the U.S. dollar has waned in recent days. Ratings agency Moody's on Friday said it believed Hong Kong's large fiscal and foreign-exchange reserves would allow policy makers to handle any pressure on the peg. ($1 = 6.5755 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Writing by Wayne Cole and Will Waterman; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Ian Geoghegan)
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign stop at a bowling alley in Adel, Iowa on January 27, 2016 (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

Adel, Iowa (United States) (AFP) - Hillary Clinton made a campaign stop at an Iowa bowling alley Wednesday, a must in this US state that will kick off the presidential nominations process next week.

But the Democrat -- who leads her party nationally in the race for the White House -- didn't actually go bowling.

Instead, she sought to convince potential voters she was a better pick than surging rival Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist urging a "political revolution" in America.

Clinton's pitch in the town of Adel came as a new poll showed Sanders leading Clinton by four percentage points among likely Democrat participants in Monday's much-anticipated Iowa caucuses.

The Quinnipiac University poll showed the former secretary of state at 45 percent with Sanders, a senator from Vermont, nudging ahead with 49 percent.

Only two percent of Democrats say they are undecided, but 19 percent of those who expressed a preference said they could still change their minds, according to the poll.

Sanders is also making further inroads among younger people, grabbing 78 percent of support among the 18-44 group, the poll said. Clinton, in contrast, largely dominates those older than 45, a group that encompasses most voters.

Clinton, speaking to dozens of Democrats at the bowling alley, often mentioned Sanders by name, saying the two had the same aims in fighting abuse by Wall Street or boosting the number of Americans who have health insurance.

"Senator Sanders and I share the same goal, we both want universal coverage," she said of her health care plan.

But she added: "He has a different idea, and I fear it would lead to gridlock, not action."

As for big banks, "me and my opponents agree and are clear on this: we are not going to let Wall Street wreck Main Street again," Clinton added.

"Where we differ: "I don't think that's enough."

As Clinton campaigned in Iowa, Sanders met President Barack Obama at the White House, several days after the US leader had some high praise for the former first lady, describing her in an interview as ready to govern from day one.

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While Obama is unlikely to formally endorse a Democrat before he votes in the Illinois primary in March, his comments seemed to tip the scales in Clinton's favor.

Sanders didn't seem to think so.

"I think he and the vice president have tried to be fair and even-handed in the process, and I expect this would remain to be so," Sanders told reporters after the encounter.

Sanders also said he could win the caucuses -- if many people are mobilized.

"I think what the Iowa campaign ends up being about is one word, and that is turnout," he said. "If there is a large turnout, I think we win."
DES MOINES, IA--(Marketwired - January 29, 2016) - Leaders from The Republic of Kosovo and the State of Iowa celebrated the opening of the first diplomatic office located in Iowa: The Consulate of the Republic of Kosovo.

The announcement of the opening was made this morning at a press conference held at the Greater Des Moines Partnership Conference Center in Downtown Des Moines, Iowa. The Consulate is located in the Court Avenue Business Suites in the Saddlery Building in Downtown Des Moines.

"We chose Des Moines, Iowa because of our robust ties to the state and the ease of conducting business here," said Hashim Thaci, Deputy Prime Minister of The Republic of Kosovo. "We have been received in Iowa with the utmost hospitality and we see great opportunity here. As a flourishing democracy, our focus will be on strengthening our political and business relationships between Kosovo and the U.S."

"It is our great pleasure to welcome The Consulate of the Republic of Kosovo to Iowa," said Iowa Governor Terry Branstad. "This is our state's first foreign consulate, and its physical location is a symbolic representation of both our strong military and civilian ties and the rich history that we share together. I am grateful to Maj. Gen. Tim Orr, Adjutant General of the Iowa National Guard, who envisioned a 'Whole of Iowa to the Whole of Kosovo' approach, and who helped facilitate this important partnership."

"Today is a significant event in our region's history," said Jay Byers, CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. "Greater Des Moines is a player in the global community, and the opening of The Consulate of the Republic of Kosovo highlights the continuing importance of Central Iowa in our nation and in our world. We believe this opens the door for other nations with an agriculture-based economy to consider Des Moines for a consulate."

The Iowa/Kosovo relationship began in 2011 when the Iowa National Guard was partnered with the Kosovo Security Force via the National Guard Bureau's State Partnership Program. In 2013, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Kosovo's President Atifete Jahjaga signed a sister state agreement joining the State of Iowa and the Republic of Kosovo. It is expected that the Consulate will further expand Iowa/Kosovo relationships and offer the opportunity for more in depth partnerships and opportunities.

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About Iowa Sister States

Iowa Sister States (ISS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 to manage Iowa's official relationship with foreign states, as established by the Governor of Iowa. There are 9 of these, including: Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan (1960), Yucatan, Mexico (1965), Hebei Province, China (1983), Terengganu, Malaysia (1987), Stavropol Krai, Russia (1988), Taiwan (1989), Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine (1996), Veneto Region, Italy (1997), and Kosovo (2013). ISS is a volunteer organization dedicated to connecting Iowans with the world community. To learn more about ISS, visit iowasisterstates.org.

About the Greater Des Moines Partnership

The Greater Des Moines Partnership is the economic and community development organization serving Central Iowa for more than 125 years. Together with 21 Affiliate Chambers of Commerce and 5,700 business members, The Partnership drives economic growth and careers through innovation, strategic planning and global collaboration. We foster an environment where residents are empowered to live their passions and shape our community, making Greater Des Moines the best place in the world to build a business and life. For more information, visit DesMoinesMetro.com.
Donald Trump

Donald Trump wasn't onstage at the Thursday Fox News Republican debate.

But his presence was certainly felt.

He was, quite literally, right down the road, hosting his own event. He dominated the social-media conversation. And from the minute the debate started, Trump's rivals were forced to confront Trump's absence amid a high-profile boycott.

"For one night, he beat Fox News," wrote NBC senior political editor Mark Murray on Twitter.

The debate began with Fox News host Megyn Kelly questioning Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), whom she asked how Trump's decision to boycott the debate reflected on his view of Iowa voters.

Cruz immediately mocked Trump's aggressive, below-the-belt rhetorical punches.

"Let me say that I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid fat and ugly, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz said, gesturing at retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

"Now that we've got the Donald Trump portion out of the way, I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up and make the case to the people of this state why each of us would make the best commander in chief," he continued. "There's a difference between personal insults and attacks  between going into the mud with ad-hominems and focusing on issues and substance."

Later in the debate, Cruz managed to sneak in a jab at Trump while complaining about what Cruz asserted were unfairly pointed questions.

"Gosh, if you guys ask me one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage," Cruz quipped.

Responding to the first question directed at him, meanwhile, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) joked that he "missed" Trump.

"I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me," said Bush, who has famously feuded with Trump on the campaign trail. "We always had a loving relationship during these debates and in between, in the tweets. I kind of miss him. I wish he was here. Everyone else was in the witness-protection program when I went after him on behalf of what the Republican cause should be: conservative principles, limited government."

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Though Trump was mentioned and referred to occasionally throughout the debate, he dominated the online conversation surrounding it.

Halfway through the debate, Twitter said 37% of the conversation about candidates was dedicated to Trump. Cruz placed second with 18%.

Trump also garnered the most searches in Google.

And Trump's alternative event, his fundraiser for veterans held at nearby Drake University in Des Moines, also drew plenty of attention.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R)  the respective 2008 and 2012 winners of the Iowa GOP caucus  both showed up after participating in the lower-tier, "undercard" debate. They spoke in support of the fundraiser (but not of Trump's candidacy) from behind a podium with a large "TRUMP" placard.

Trump had veteran John Wayne Walding  who lost a leg in battle and proceeded to reattach his leg and return fire for four hours during a mission in Iraq  give a lengthy speech about the problems veterans face upon returning home.

This vet, John Wayne Walding, is currently speaking at the Trump rally https://t.co/lXYiPkcixU pic.twitter.com/t3FY2pL3Jc  Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) January 29, 2016

The business mogul also made sure to mention all of the major donations he received for his event, such as a $500,000 donation from billionaire Carl Icahn. He touted a total of $6 million raised  $1 million of which, Trump said, came from the real-estate mogul himself.

An unbelievable night in Iowa with our great Veterans! We raised $6,000,000.00 while the politicians talked! #GOPDebate  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2016

For his part, Trump mostly had positive things to say about Fox. But he did throw in a quick jab at the debate, which he boycotted after complaining about supposed unfair treatment by the network and one of its moderators, Megyn Kelly.

"Isn't this better than the debate that's going on?" he said. "Right? They're all sleeping. They're all sleeping. Everybody."

NOW WATCH: Donald Trump was mentioned 10 times in the first 8 minutes of the debate





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Ted Cruz

Without attending the Thursday-night Fox News Republican debate amid a high-profile boycott, Donald Trump dominated the early conversation.

Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly posed the debate's first question to US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), asking the senator to address the "elephant not in the room." She asked what it said to Iowa voters that Trump decided to skip the debate.

After asking Iowans directly for their votes in the upcoming caucuses next Monday, Cruz made light of Trump's absence from the debate, mocking his scorched-earth criticisms of his opponents.

"Let me say that I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid fat and ugly, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz said, referring to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

"Now that we've got the Donald Trump portion out of the way, I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up and make the case to the people of this state why each of us would make the best commander in chief," he continued.

He said: "There's a difference between personal insults and attacks  between going into the mud with ad-hominems and focusing on issues and substance."

Protesting Kelly's supposedly unfair questions during a previous debate, Trump announced this week that he would skip the Republican debate, announcing a rally at the same time only about a mile away.

But the second question of the debate was also about Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) answered the inquiry about Republican intra-party struggling by attempting to cast Trump as simply an "entertainer," not a serious candidate.

"Let's begin by being clear about what this campaign about. It's not about Donald Trump  he's a very entertaining guy, he's the greatest show on earth," Rubio said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) also addressed Trump in the opening question posed to him. He joked that he "kind of miss[ed] him."

Bush said:

I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me. We always had a loving relationship during these debates and in between in the tweets. I kind of miss him. I wish he was here. Everyone else was in the witness protection program when I went after him on behalf on what the Republican cause should be: conservative principles, limited government.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Donald Trump was mentioned 10 times in the first 8 minutes of the debate





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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has removed Chinese solar panel maker Trina Solar and related companies from a scheme providing duty-free access to European markets after a request from the company. The European Union concluded an investigation in 2013 into alleged dumping and illegal subsidies for Chinese solar panel producers by allowing a limited amount of panels and key components such as cells free of import duties, on condition of minimum prices. Outside of that system, Trina would face anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties of 44.7 and 3.5 percent. Trina has said that the undertaking limited its growth potential in Europe and that a review by the European Commission into extending the period beyond an initial two years was contrary to the principles of free and fair trade. Some companies, including Canadian Solar , ReneSola , have been removed from the undertaking, while others have voluntarily withdrawn. Critics say this allows them to sell at even lower prices, even with the import tariff in place. The European Commission's inquiry into Chinese solar import panels in 2012-2013 was its biggest to date in terms of value. Imports of Chinese solar panels and related components into the European Union were some 21 billion euros ($22.9 billion) in 2011, though the market has since shrunk. The case stemmed from a complaint lodged by a group of European companies led by Germany's SolarWorld , which said Chinese competitors were dumping product on EU markets, propped up by hefty illegal subsidies. Responding to the EU's initial move to impose tariffs, Chinahit European wine producers with retaliatory duties and the trade dispute threatened to widen into other sectors, including steel. China and the European Union eventually resolved the dispute in July 2013, with a deal allowing China to meet about half of Europe's solar panel demand.($1 = 0.9174 euros) (Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek)
The prevailing theme of the 2016 election, so far, has been the appeal of rogue candidates and the defenestration of establishment politicians. Once the voting actually starts, however, the angry rumbling might settle down.

Voters will finally head to the polls for primary elections in Iowa on Feb. 1 and in New Hampshire on Feb. 9. The nations first two primaries are always make-or-break events for candidates on the edge, which this year includes Democrat Martin OMalley and Republicans Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina and a few others. A poor showing in one or both states will raise doubts about electability and prompt donors to throw in the towel, except for the most dogged and best-funded candidates.

If the state of the economy still dominates voter behavioras polls suggest it doesthen voters in Iowa and New Hampshire will be more docile than Americans overall. Both states have an unemployment rate below 4%, compared with 5% for the nation as a whole. The New York Times recently described the difficulty employers have finding workers in Iowa, which of course creates stronger demand for labor. New Hampshire is tied to the vibrant economy near Boston and typically outperforms the nation as a whole.

Here are some key economic indicators for Iowa and New Hampshire, plus South Carolina, which will hold the third Republican primary on Feb. 20, and the third Democratic contest on Feb. 27:

Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, St. Louis Federal Reserve

By most measures, Iowa and New Hampshire are in better economic shape than America overall. Theres one other important economic factor that will influence voterslow gas prices, which been below $2 per gallon for nearly a month. That makes everybody feel better, even though no politician can credibly claim credit for an economic matter determined by global supply and demand.

The question is how this relative prosperity in two small states will influence voters. In general, voters reward incumbents when they feel financially secure, while punishing incumbents when they feel like theyre falling behind. Strong job security, relatively high incomes and a stable housing sector in both states suggest voters will worry less about throwing the bums out and more on keeping the party going.

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Donald Trump is the leading Republican in both Iowa and New Hampshire polls, leading No. 2 Ted Cruz by a range of 7 to 19 percentage points. Since both are considered anti-establishment bomb-throwers, a prosperity vote might benefit Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Chris Christie, all considered more mainstream. If the economy is, in fact, a calming factor in Iowa and New Hampshire, it would mean a less than impressive showing for Trump and Cruz, below where they stand in the polls.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders in Iowa while trailing him in New Hampshire. Clinton is the very face of incumbency, since her husband was president, her party holds the White House and she served in the current Obama administration as Secretary of State. If Democratic voters feel the nations current leadership has made them better off, look for Clinton to outperform in both states.

South Carolina is a different story, with unemployment and household income numbers that are worse than the national average. Yet even there, things arent so bad. Incomes are growing, the cost of living is low and compared with other parts of Dixie, South Carolina is thriving.

By next November, the overall economy may be improving just enough to allow Obamas Democrats to win a third consecutive term in the White House, according to an election model developed by Moodys Analytics that has accurately predicted every presidential outcome since 1980. The Moodys model predicts that Iowa and New Hampshire, which Obama won in 2008 and 2012, will back the blue candidate once again in 2016, though by slim margins. South Carolina will vote Republican, as it has for every presidential election since 1980.

Overall, Moodys predicts that Democrats will rack up 270 electoral votes in Novemberthe bare minimum required to winwith the Republican nominee falling just short, with 268 votes. The key swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will go Democratic; Republicans will snag the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Colorado and North Carolina.

Something unforeseen could easily throw that prediction off, such as a sudden surge in gas prices, a flirtation with recession, an unnerving terrorist event or an unforeseen scandal involving Clinton, Trump or another heavyweight candidate. It all starts in Iowa, and at least well finally have some actual voting to place next to the ubiquitous polls.

Rick Newmans latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
* Freeport copper export licence expired Thursday

* Govt wants deposit on new smelter before extending permit

* Talks on issue expected to continue on Friday

* Freeport says "everything is normal" at massive mine (Releads, adds value of copper concentrate exports)

By Bernadette Christina Munthe and Fergus Jensen

JAKARTA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Freeport McMoRan Inc on Friday lost its right to export copper concentrate, valued at more than $1 billion, from one of the world's biggest mines as talks with Indonesia's government remained deadlocked over payment for a new metal smelter.

Freeport's six-month licence to export concentrate expired on Thursday and it was unclear how soon a new one would be issued as the two sides have yet to resolve a government demand that the U.S. firm first pay a $530 million deposit.

"Without an export permit, there can be no exports. The exporter knows that," Didi Sumedi, Indonesia's director of mining and industrial products told Reuters via text message.

However, it was not clear if exports had actually stopped at Freeport's Grasberg mine in the province of Papua, one of the world's largest copper and gold mines.

Asked if overseas shipments had ceased, a Freeport spokesman said "everything is normal", without elaborating.

Last year, Freeport sold 744 million pounds of copper concentrate from Grasberg, valued at around $1.73 billion, according to the company's fourth-quarter financial results.

A prolonged stoppage in exports would hit Freeport's profits and deny the Indonesian government desperately needed revenue from one of its biggest taxpayers. It could also buoy global copper prices, which have slipped more than 3 percent so far this year on worries about oversupply.

But in the short-term, traders do not expect any major market reaction.

"If it lasts a couple of months, sure we may see an impact. But with the new mines and mine expansions this year, the market is fairly well covered at the minute," said a concentrates trader in Asia.

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Indonesia has said it was open to negotiations with Freeport on the $530-million deposit and that if the company did not want to pay, it must provide an alternative to demonstrate its commitment to expanding the country's smelter capacity.

Indonesia wants the deposit as a guarantee that the Phoenix, Arizona-based company will complete construction of another local smelter. The amount would add to an estimated $80 million that Freeport set aside in July 2015 to obtain its current export permit.

Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson said late on Tuesday the government's demand for a smelter deposit was "inconsistent" with an agreement reached between the two sides in mid-2014.

According to that agreement, Freeport must sell the government a greater share of the Grasberg mine, and invest in domestic processing to win an extension of its mining contract beyond 2021.

The U.S. mining giant wants to invest $18 billion to expand its operations at Grasberg, but is seeking government assurances first that it will get a contract extension.

Freeport's long-held desire to continue mining in Indonesia beyond 2021 has been beset by controversy, including cabinet infighting, resignations and a major political scandal that led to the resignation of the parliamentary speaker.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Burton in Melbourne, writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Joseph Radford)
By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) - The Syrian people must be left to decide their own future, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday, adding that defeating terrorism was Syria's main problem and not who is running the country.

On the first official visit to France by an Iranian president since 1999, Rouhani also said Tehran would keep to commitments it made under a nuclear agreement with major powers, but that major powers would also have to keep their end of the bargain.

The visit came as global diplomats are trying to arrange the first peace talks in two years to end the Syrian civil war.

Shi'ite Muslim Iran is the strongest ally of President Bashar al-Assad, while European countries back his mainly Sunni Muslim opponents, and want the Syrian leader to step aside.

"It is up to the Syrian people to make decisions for their country," Rouhani said at a news conference with President Francois Hollande when asked whether he was ready to compromise on the future of Assad.

"Today, the problem in Syria is not a question of people, but terrorism, Islamic State and the people who are buying oil from it, the same ones who are giving them weapons and supporting them politically."

France took a hard line in the nuclear negotiations, has been outspoken in its condemnation of Iranian support for Assad, and has close ties with Sunni Arab states, so the Paris leg of Rouhani's European trip was lower key than his trip to Italy earlier in the week.

While Hollande urged French firms to return to Iran and called for a new era in their relationship, he said it did not mean the countries did not have differences which he said was their joint responsibility to help resolve.

"We spoke about everything because that's the rule in France," Hollande said, adding he had reminded Rouhani of "France's attachment to human rights and freedoms."

Paris has been a key backer of Syrian opponents to Assad. It has been advising them ahead of the talks with the government in Geneva that had been due to begin on Friday. Hollande said it was urgent to put in place humanitarian measures and also negotiate a political solution.

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"It is possible ... We must support this discussion," he said.

In an interview with France Culture radio, Rouhani appeared pessimistic.

"I would be surprised if these negotiations succeeded quickly," he said. "I think the solution must be political, but it's difficult to reach a conclusion in a few weeks or a few meetings. It's too complicated."

(Reporting By John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus/Ruth Pitchford)
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese state-backed fund said on Friday it had yet to decide on its potential rescue plan for Sharp Corp, while a media report said Taiwan's Foxconn had raised its offer in a rival move for the struggling electronics maker.

Innovation Network Corp of Japan (INCJ) officials have been discussing a capital injection of more than 300 billion yen ($1.7 billion) into Sharp and up to 350 billion yen of financial assistance from the company's two main lenders, sources have told Reuters.

The fund had been expected to agree on a basic bailout plan on Friday, but INCJ Executive Director Tetsuya Hamabe told reporters after a meeting of the fund's executives that "no formal decision has been made".

Sharp is weighing the INCJ plan against a rival proposal from Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry. The Wall Street Journal reported Foxconn had raised its offer to 659 billion yen from an earlier offer of around 625 billion.

Sharp declined to comment on the report, while Foxconn officials were not immediately available for comment.

Sources have said the INCJ offer had been favored as the government would like to keep its technology in Japanese hands.

But Foxconn recently offered more details about its offer including a promise to not slash jobs, and its plan was being carefully considered by Sharp and its bankers, a person with direct knowledge of the talks said this week.

INCJ aims to merge Sharp's liquid-crystal display business with rival Japan Display Inc, in which the fund is the top shareholder. Japan Display and Sharp supply high-resolution smartphone screens to Apple. Both face stiff competition from Asian rivals such as South Korea's LG Display Co Ltd.

The fund also hopes to integrate Sharp's white goods unit with that of Toshiba Corp, which is struggling to recover from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal, sources have told Reuters.

Sharp was once known as a major supplier of high-end TV and smartphone displays, but has come under heavy pricing pressure from Asian rivals. It is seeking its third rescue in less than four years, after a bank-led plan in May failed to turn it around.

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Miral Fahmy and Mark Potter)
Plaxen & Adler, P.A., One of Maryland's Premier Personal Injury Law Firms, Is Pleased to Announce That Joshua A. Plaxen Has Joined the Firm as an Associate Attorney

COLUMBIA, MD / ACCESSWIRE / January 29, 2016 / Plaxen & Adler, P.A., one of Maryland's premier personal injury law firms, is pleased to announce that Joshua A. Plaxen has joined the firm as an Associate Attorney.

Firm founder Bruce Plaxen said, "As a parent, I am excited to work with my son. As an employer, I am fortunate to have a talented and accomplished young lawyer join our firm."

Plaxen & Adler, P.A. is an elite law firm serving personal injury and medical malpractice victims throughout the state of Maryland. By purposely remaining small, the firm is able to offer clients personalized attention, and to ensure that every matter of their case is thoroughly attended to from the beginning.

About Joshua A. Plaxen

Joshua Plaxen joined Plaxen & Adler, P.A. in January of 2016 after working for the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His previous experience was as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable William V. Tucker, of the Circuit Court of Howard County. Joshua is a graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude and in the top 10% of his class. During his time there, he was inducted into the Heuisler Honor Society, and served Executive Board of the University of Baltimore Law Review. He also holds a B.S. in Business from the University of Maryland, College Park.

In his role as an Associate Attorney at the firm, Joshua Plaxen will handle personal injury, Social Security Disability and workers' compensation claims.

Plaxen & Adler, P.A. serves clients throughout the entire state of Maryland. The firm's attorneys focus on:

- Personal injury

- Medical malpractice

- Defective product litigation

- Social Security Disability

- Workers' compensation

For more information about us, please visit http://www.plaxenadler.com.

Contact Info:

Name: Bruce M. Plaxen

Organization: Plaxen & Adler, P.A.

Address: 10211 Wincopin Cir, Suite 620, Columbia, MD 21044

Phone: (410) 730-7737

SOURCE: Plaxen & Adler, P.A.
The multiplicity of exchanges is birthing blind spots, MAS says.

Singapores central bank is looking to relieve the city-states exchanges of a portion of their regulatory burden as they enhance their surveillance capabilities both within and across markets.

In a speech by Ong Chong Tee, deputy managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), he highlighted that the presence of multiple exchanges which are focused on their own markets can give rise to blind spots as the exchanges may not have the complete picture of common members exposure and activities.

There are also certain markets such as in the OTC derivatives space that are not under the direct surveillance of exchanges, Ong said.

As a result, as the statutory regulator, Ong said the MAS will be in a better position to aggregate different pools of information in the activities across exchanges and market sectors. This includes anticipating possible risk and to investigate potential misconduct and market abuses.

Advancement in technology, particularly in the field of data analytics, has brought about enhanced surveillance techniques. In terms of capacity building, the MAS will enhance our analytics and thematic studies of big datasets to detect hitherto complex patterns, for potential market misconduct and abuses, Ong added.

The increased role of the MAS in regulation will also be beneficial for the market, as both the exchange and the central bank will be looking out for potential risks, though on different parameters.

This will increase the robustness of the overall oversight of market activities, Ong said.

Additionally, the enhancements will complement the MAS actions against market misconduct, with a premium on early detection, expedient investigations, and tough enforcement.

This will also augment our toolkit to combat misdemeanors such as market manipulation and insider trading. MAS has and will spare no effort to investigate any serious market misconduct and to take appropriate enforcement action. This is not always an easy task because investigations into market misconduct often involve complex and large scale relationships, which will necessitate considerable investigation resources, Ong added.







More From Singapore Business Review


By Christine Murray

MEXICO CITY, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Mexico will on Friday launch a long-delayed tender for one of the largest infrastructure projects under President Enrique Pena Nieto, a wholesale telecoms network that will cover most of the country.

The project, which was meant to be up and running by 2014, is part of a sweeping telecoms reform aimed at curbing the dominance of Carlos Slim's America Movil and improving Mexicos low levels of cell phone penetration and network coverage.

It offers the winner cheap, high quality spectrum in the 700MHz band to build a mobile network that operators and virtual network operators can rent. However, the winner will not be able to sublet spectrum and the network will have to cover a minimum of 85 percent of the population, the government said on Thursday.

Mexicos telecoms minister told Reuters last year it expected a capital investment of around $7 billion in the project.

(Reporting by Christine Murray; Editing by Simon Gardner)
* Project was meant to be launched by 2014 in sweeping reforms

* Looks to curb dominance of Carlos Slim's America Movil network

* Aims to boost low levels of cell penetration, network cover (Updates with interview)

By Christine Murray and Tomas Sarmiento

MEXICO CITY, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Mexico will launch on Friday a long-delayed tender for one of the largest infrastructure projects under President Enrique Pena Nieto, a wholesale telecoms network that will cover most of the country.

The project, which was meant to be launched by 2014, is part of a sweeping telecoms reform aimed at curbing the dominance of Carlos Slim's America Movil and improving Mexicos low levels of cell phone penetration and network coverage.

It offers the winner cheap use of high quality spectrum in the 700MHz band and a 20-year public-private partnership contract to build a 4G LTE mobile network that operators and virtual network operators can rent.

"Its a change in the rules of the game," telecoms minister Monica Aspe said in an interview late on Thursday.

However, in a move unlikely to please operators America Movil, Telefonica and AT&T, the winner will not be able to sublet spectrum, Communications and Transport Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said on Thursday.

The network would have to cover a minimum of 85 percent of the population, he added. About 45 percent of Mexicans have mobile broadband subscriptions, regulator IFT says. Just 22 percent of all mobile data goes through 4G LTE networks.

The government estimates that 85 percent coverage would require an investment of around $3.5 billion, while 95 percent would cost around $7 billion.

To help speed the rollout and cut costs, the federal government aims to make thousands of sites on its buildings available for rent to the telecoms industry in 2016, Aspes team said.

The network could also rent infrastructure from the likes of America Movil spin-off Telesites and American Tower , rather than compete with them, Aspe said.

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However, in order for the network to be profitable, mobile operators, which in private have been largely skeptical of the project and would prefer to have had the spectrum sold in an auction, will need to agree to be clients of the network.

Aspe said the ministry had held talks with the operators and she believed it was "natural" they would be interested in using it.

There is no limit on anyone participating, but operators will have to pass a competition test and another to check they do not have "influence" over the network.

Companies or consortia would have to submit to those tests in mid-May, Aspe said.

(Reporting by Christine Murray and Tomas Sarmiento; Editing by Simon Gardner and Clarence Fernandez)
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 29, 2016) - Millrock Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE:MRO) ("Millrock") announces that First Quantum Minerals has elected not to renew its option to acquire a joint venture interest in the Alaska Peninsula property. No mineralization of significance was discovered in drilling at the Mallard Duck Bay prospect. Mineralization intersected at the Dry Creek prospect, while highly anomalous, was not strong enough to encourage further drilling. Millrock is discussing an extension of the option to lease agreement concerning the lands with the underlying subsurface land owner, Bristol Bay Native Corporation.

Millrock President & CEO Gregory Beischer commented, "The Dry Creek and Mallard Duck Bay prospects at the Alaska Peninsula project presented excellent opportunities for exploration success. Although the best targets were tested, no mineral deposit of economic significance was discovered. This is the nature of early-stage exploration. Most early-stage exploration drill targets do not result in discovery. However, if we keep drilling quality targets we will eventually succeed in discovering a valuable metallic mineral deposit. The Kawisgag prospect at the south end of the Alaska Peninsula project remains a strong target for drill testing."

The technical information within this document has been reviewed and approved by Gregory A. Beischer, President, CEO and a director of Millrock Resources. Mr. Beischer is a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101.

About Millrock Resources Inc.

Millrock Resources Inc. is a premier project generator to the mining industry. In the search for world-class metallic mineral deposits in mineral-rich Alaska, southwest USA, and Mexico, Millrock identifies, packages and operates large-scale projects for joint venture, thereby exposing its shareholders to the benefits of mineral discovery without the usual financial risk taken on by most exploration companies. The company is active in Alaska, British Columbia, the southwest USA and Sonora State, Mexico. Funding for drilling at Millrock's exploration projects primarily comes from its joint venture partners. Business partners of Millrock have included some of the leading names in the mining industry: First Quantum, Teck, Kinross, Vale, Inmet and Altius.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Gregory Beischer, President & CEO

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include without limitation the completion of planned expenditures, the ability to complete exploration programs on schedule and the success of exploration programs.

"NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE."
Two new gold discoveries in Ecuador promise significant boosts to global supplies. But will they come online?

New supplies and the metals market

Political disfunction

Untapped potential

As with any commodity, supply and demand play a key role in gold prices. If demand goes up, prices do too. If supply goes up, prices fall.

Common thinking is that high prices for metals will spur exploration and development of new resources. While there have been only a few major gold discoveries in the most recent bull cycle, a few are starting to make their way onto the books, and investors are starting to talk about them. Two of the most important are in Ecuador, a country with no formal metals mining industry.

Aurelian's Fruta Del Norte discovery located at the edge of the Amazon basin is potentially one of the most important new gold deposits discovered in recent years. While no formal figures have been released regarding projected yields, at its highest concentration the deposit has 75 g/t of gold over 5.7m.[i]

Iamgold's Quimsacocha deposit, although not as prolific as Fruta Del Norte, is still extremely significant. It has a projected yield of 2.8 million ounces of gold and 18.2 million ounces of silver thus far, and exploration is not finished.[ii] Twenty other companifes are presently exploring in Ecuador, but none have made discoveries as noteworthy or potentially profitable as those made by Aurelian and Iamgold.

Several factors, including political instability, local opposition, and shifting laws and regfulations have kept mining companies out of Ecuador for years, but new president Rafael Correa has promised to make mining a top priority in his economic development agenda. Will foreign mining companies be able to benefit from Ecuador's large proven gold and copper deposits?

Sandwiched In The Middle

Sandwiched between two major gold-producing nations (Colombia and Peru), Ecuador has had almost no mining exploration and less mine development, even though its geology is similar to its neighbors. Currently, one of the underlying probflems with Ecuadorian mine development is political stagnationwithout effective leadership, changing the climate on mining development is difficult, if not impossible. Unfortunately, Ecuador's move towards a new constitution will take until spring of 2008, meaning mining companies are going to have to wait at least until then to decide whether or not mine development in Ecuador is even practical.

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Thus far, political uncertainty has played an important role in keeping foreign mining companies from entering Ecuador. The country has had eight presidents in the past ten years, making long-term planning difficult.

Other factors, however, have also come into play. After all, political instability has not prevented large foreign investments in the oil industry, which constitutes the main source of income for the country. There are at least two factors that help explain why industrial mining has not taken off in Ecuadorfand which remain as challenges to the new discoveries.

First, Ecuador has very strong and well-organized indigenous and environmental organizations that so far have successfully opposed large-scale mining. Since this is still a nascent industry, with no large interests being affected, local opposition has proven to be a large barrier to entry for newcomers. Ecuador is the fifth largest oil producer in South America, and has had a formal oil industry since the 1940s. Indigenous and environmental pressure has forced the industry to improve its operations in order to mitigate environmental and social impact, but it has not been able to derail major projects.

The second reason for the lack of growth can be attributed to the mining companies themselves. There are no large scale mining companies in Ecuador. Most players in Ecuador are Canadian companies funded by venture capital, and they concentrate mostly on exploration, with the hopes of finding large deposits that will allow them to go public and cash out. These small startups are ill-prepared to invest the necessary resources and time to gain government approval and local support to actually develop these resources.

A law passed in 2006 requires most major infrastructure projects to be negotiated with local communities. Regulations set in place by the Ministry of Energy and Mines makes this process cumbersome, giving local stakeholders (indigenous and local communitiefs, environmental activists, and local politicians) many opportunities to slow down the approval process.

According to Mark Thurber, who heads Walsh-Ecuador, the Ecuadorian subsidiary of a U.S. envifronmental consulting firm that provides services to foreign mining and oil companies, most mining companies are not addressing the whole lifecycle of the mining project appropriately. Operating in haste, many companies hire unethical or simply overly optimistic local advisors, who promise to get projects approved in unrealistic time frames. Many companies take a legalistic approach and, some would say, arrogant stance in their dealings with the local, regional and national stakeholders; they hire lawyers and try to move the process along through the legal system. Even when the courts agree with them, they end up alienating government officials and local stakeholders, and their projects get buried.

Oil companies, on the other hand, are much more sophisticated in their approach. Most hire teams of local anthropologists, biologists and environmental consultants to work together with communities and politicians to gain support for the projects. They can afford to do so because they are usually large, well-established companies with long time horizons. Venture-backed startups looking for a relatively quick exit strategy cannot cope well with the complicated bureaucracy and negotiations that are often required.

In a way, mining companies should have an easier time gaining local support for projects since mining can provide employment to hundreds of people for large periods, usually twenty or thirty years. Oil fields, on the contrary, employ many people during the exploration phase, but once a field is in production, only a handful of people are needed to operate it, and the impact to local economies is minimal.

The biggest problem facing mining companies is the fact that open-pit mining is hugely destructive, destroying local environments and often contaminating ground water. According to Thurber, mining companies will need to "think outside the box and look at creative ways to mitigate their impact". The current high price of minerals should be a good incentive for foreign companies to invest in technology and social programs, much like oil companies do today.

The question remains whether President Correa will encourage foreign direct investment in large scale mining projects. This is a big uncertainty. On the one hand, Correa's rhetoric is anti-American and pro-Chavez. On the other, he has so far not taken any radical steps that would indicate that Ecuador is headed down the same path as Venezuela. Correa's aides have been deployed to New York and Washington to assuage the fears of U.S. investors and politicians. As is the case with oil, the most likely scenario is that Correa will seek to renegotiate mining concessions to increase the government's stake in revenues.

What is certain is that mining in Ecuador is stalled at the moment. "Although officials from the Ministry of Energy and Mines in private seem favorable to moving forward with large mining projects," says Thurber, "the fact is that no one will move a finger until the new Constitutional Assembly drafts the new constitution. We can expect nothing to go on for the next nine months."

Despite his rhetoric, Correa is an American-educated economist - he holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbanaand he understands the importance of the foreign investment to developing economies. The large amounts of capital and highly specialized skills needed to mine could push Correa to allow foreign companies to develop Ecuador's mining industry. He has shown that he is willing to stand up to local opposition when it comes to projects that are vital to national interests. In one example, after local protests slowed down the work of a Chinese oil company, Correa sent in the military to protect the operations and many of the protest leaders were sent to jail. However, until the new Constitutional Assembly is elected, we should not expect Correa to alienate his core constituency of indigenous groups and environmentalists and risk a loss for his party.

Oil, bananas, shrimp flowers, and remittances from Ecuadorian emigrants are presently the main staples of Ecuador's economy. With little diversification and a declining oil industry, Ecuador has little chance for economic growth without exploring new industries, and potential for expansion in gold is high. Should Correa allow foreign companies to develop Ecuador's mining industry, it could add stability to the Ecuadorian economyf and the increasingly volatile gold market. Although the results of current exploration will not be seen for a few years, it will be interesting to see if Ecuador's mining industry will flourish or flounder under new president Raphael Correa.

[i] Sillitoe, Richard, "Further Comments on Geology and Potential of the Fruta Del Norte Epithermal Gold Deposit, Ecuador" (February 2007), Aurelian Resources Inc, http://www.aurelian.ca/investors/reports/Fruta%20del%20Norte%2002-07_Sillitoe.pdf.

[ii] "Iamgold Quimsacocha Overview," http://www.iamgold.com/quimsacocha.php.

Ecuador Resources

CountryMine|InfoMine

http://www.infomine.com/countries/ecuador.asp

Corriente Resources

http://www.corriente.com/

Ascendant Copper Corporation

http://www.ascendantcopper.com/

Iamgold Corporation

http://www.iamgold.com/

Decoin - Main NGO opposed to mining in Ecuador

http://www.decoin.org/

EcuadorInvest

http://www.ecuadorinvest.org/ecuador-invest_new/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=38?=en

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OSLO, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Norway's parliament is expected to change the investment strategy of the country's $800 billion sovereign wealth fund to better spread its risk, the leader of the parliamentary finance committee told Reuters.

Last month the central bank, which manages the fund, recommended the fund should be allowed to invest in unlisted infrastructure projects and put a higher share of its assets in real estate, changes that represent the biggest shift in strategy since it was allowed to invest in real estate in 2010.

"My understanding is that there is broad agreement on the need for adjustments that contribute to increased diversification of the fund, to improve the distribution of risk," finance committee leader Hans Olav Syversen told Reuters.

"It's my impression that all parties in parliament are open to making these changes," he said, adding that reforms had to be implemented gradually.

Some adjustments to the central bank's proposals are expected, however, with members of the committee bringing their own suggestions to the negotiations.

(Reporting by Joachim Dagenborg and Henrik Stolen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Gwladys Fouche)
A Deep Dive into Some Japan-Focused Mutual Funds in 2015

(Continued from Prior Part)

Hennessy Japan Fund

The Hennessy Japan Fund  Investor Class (HJPNX) notes that it seeks long-term capital appreciation by investing in stocks of Japanese companies. It states that it intends to do that by screening for companies with strong businesses and management, trading at an attractive price, regardless of market capitalization. Through in-depth and rigorous analysis and onsite research, the portfolio managers identify stocks with a significant value gap.

The fund is quite concentrated, with only 21 holdings as of the end of December 2015. The funds literature states that the fund has a concentrated number of holdings. Due to this concentration, the top ten holdings of the fund form over 54.5% of the funds assets.

Speaking of assets, the Hennessy Japan Fund  Investor Class (HJPNX) was managing $128 million in assets at the end of December 2015. As of the funds September portfolio, the latest available with complete holdings, the fund was invested in Nidec Corporation (NJ), SoftBank Group Corp. (SFTBY), Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (SMFG), Toyota Motor (TM), and Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. (MFG), forming a combined 16.5% of the funds portfolio.

Historical portfolios

For this analysis, we will be considering HJPNXs holdings as of September 2015, which is the latest available sectoral breakdown. The post-September holdings reflect valuation-driven changes to the portfolio, not the actual holdings.

Industrials and consumer discretionary stocks form the core of the portfolio. Combined, these two sectors command 46% of the funds assets. Healthcare and consumer staples follow, in that order, and are the only other sectors whose weights are in double digits. The fund has only recently initiated a position in the telecom services sector with the addition of SFTBY. Interestingly, financials form only 3% of the funds portfolio, unlike any of its peers.

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With such a concentrated portfolio, it would not be germane to look at the sectoral holding through the year. The reason is that this concentrated strategy indicates a complete focus on stocks, with no role of industries or sectors they belong to figuring in the portfolio construction decision.

As can be seen from the graph above, there has been a change in allocation to a few sectors. This has primarily been because the fund has deployed assets invested in liquid funds into stocks. Except for industrials, fund managers have stuck to their holdings through the year.

Performance in 2015

The Hennessy Japan Fund  Investor Class (HJPNX) did not have a great December 2015. However, 2015 was better for HJPNX for its performance, placing it third in a group of six funds chosen for this review. The fund returned 12.9% in the year.

This fund is suitable for those investors who are comfortable investing in Japan. If youre looking for a casual exposure to Japanese equities, this funds strategy is not for you.

In the next article, lets take a look at the Voya Japan TOPIX Index Portfolio  Class A (IJIAX).

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
A Deep Dive into Some Japan-Focused Mutual Funds in 2015

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation

The Fidelity Japan Fund (FJPNX) fell 0.6% in December 2015 from the previous month. In the three- and six-month periods ended December 31, 2015, the fund has risen 8.7% and fallen 2.5%, respectively. In the one-year period that we will analyze, the fund has risen 8.6%. From the end of December 2015 until January 28, 2106, the fund has declined 7.5%.

Among the six funds in this review, FJPNX was the only one whose returns for 2015 were in the single digits. It ranked last among these funds with respect to its returns. Lets look at what held the fund back in 2015.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

Launched in September 1992, the Fidelity Japan Fund (FJPNX) has a substantial track record. Because the latest available complete portfolio of the fund is as of November 2015, we will consider that as our base. For December 2015, we will consider the valuation changes for our analysis. All portfolio percentages refer to their weights according to changes in valuation from November to December 2015.

The consumer discretionary sector was the biggest positive contributor to the funds returns in 2015. E-commerce company Rakuten, Inc. was by far the biggest positive individual contributor from the sector, followed by Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (HMC). Sony Corporation (SNE) also contributed positively. However, Mazda Motor Corporation (MZDAF) was a sizable detractor.

Consumer loan company Acom Co. Ltd. was the biggest positive contributor to financials. ORIX Corporation (IX) and Tokio Marine Holdings Inc. (TKOMY) also contributed a sizable portion to the sectors returns. However, negative contributions from Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) and Mitsui Fudosan, among others, reduced some of the positive contributions.

The information technology sector was the biggest drag on the funds returns. Even after positive contributions from Shimadzu Corp. and Kakaku.com, among a few others, negative contributions by Hitachi Ltd. (HTHIY) and SUMCO Corporation core Sanken Electric Co. overpowered the positive contributors. Materials were also negative contributors for 2015 for the same reason.

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Reasons for poor performance

The Fidelity Japan Fund (FJPNX) did not have a good 2015 as its stock picks from the information technology and materials sectors did badly during the year. Although its core sectors contributed positively, their contributions were reduced due to the presence of detractors. Coupled with negative sector contributions, this influenced the funds poor performance for 2015.

Lets move on to the Hennessy Japan Fund  Investor Class (HJPNX) in the next article.

Continue to Next Part

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kim jong un

North Korea's claim that it detonated a hydrogen bomb during an apparent nuclear-weapons test on January 6 were widely dismissed by experts and the US government as well. But it turns out that Pyongyang might have tested components from a hydrogen bomb after all.

According to CNN, inconclusive sampling of air near the test site by US spy aircraft, along with the unusual depth at which the test is believed to have occurred, have led some US officials to suspect that North Korea actually did test elements of a hydrogen device.

"The test was conducted more than two times deeper underground than originally assessed  at a depth consistent with what might be needed for a hydrogen bomb," CNN reports, while cautioning that "the size of the seismic event and other intelligence indicates it was not likely a fully functioning device."

Seismic information indicates that North Korea tested a weapon with a comparable explosive yield to the nuclear device the country detonated during its last previous test in 2013  a 10-kiloton bomb that created a fireball one-fifth of a mile wide. After the January 6 test, numerous arms-control experts said it was highly unlikely that North Korea had tested a hydrogen bomb, though possible it had tested a more typical fission-based atomic weapon "boosted" with hydrogen isotopes for increased yield.

Even a failed test of hydrogen-bomb components could signal an alarming shift in North Korea's weapons capabilities.

A hydrogen bomb, aka a thermonuclear weapon, uses a plutonium- or uranium-based reaction to heat hydrogen isotopes, creating a kind of nuclear-feedback loop with the potential to dramatically boost the amount of energy that reaction ends up releasing. A thermonuclear weapon is more complicated and destructive than a typical atomic bomb.

As Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Steven Institute of Technology and creator of Nuke Map, told Business Insider on January 6, a country that's mastered thermonuclear-weapons design suddenly has a number of possible options open to it.

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For instance, a country with a thermonuclear capability could build "a very thin-cased bomb of low yield [in this case 1 to 10 kilotons, or 1,000 to 10,000 tons of TNT] that would emit a lot of radiation relative to its blast power."

The so-called neutron bomb, or "enhanced radiation," weapon isn't all that hard to develop once a country has mastered more basic hydrogen-bomb technology.

north korea nuclear map

North Korea would still face the technical hurdle of miniaturizing a hydrogen device for delivery by ballistic missile. The US wasn't able to construct a functioning neutron bomb of any size or weight without extensive testing, and North Korea may not have the testing data or carried out the trial-and-error process needed to actually build a functioning hydrogen device.

But if North Korea really did test hydrogen-bomb components, it could signal an interest in eventually developing far more destructive weaponry  bombs of horrifically high yield whose development might not remain outside Pyongyang's technological grasp for long.

The CNN report provides some of the most direct evidence that the January 6 test might have been carried out with this goal in mind.

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saudi arabia russia putin

The global oil situation continues to drag on.

Powerhouse oil producers are still being squeezed financially by lower prices and some of the more unstable OPEC members have seen upticks in violence and political chaos.

And in this environment, Russia increasingly looks like "the single biggest swing factor for oil prices in 2016," according to RBC Capital Markets' global head of commodity strategy Helima Croft.

Last spring the Saudis repeatedly stated that if there were a coordinated cut, then the entire cartel and non-OPEC players like Russia would need to join and bear the burden  just like in 1986 and 1998.

Screen Shot 2016 01 28 at 3.23.22 PM

However, Russia showed no signs of joining such an endeavor, and analysts argued that Putin had a "less-than-favorable view of the Saudi leadership."

But that was last year, and things have changed now. Big time.

For starters, both Russia and the Saudis saw their economic conditions deteriorate significantly over the year following super-low oil.

Moreover, "there indeed are new ties along which Saudi Arabia and Russia could negotiate a cut," observed Croft.

Chief among them:

Russia's president Vladimir Putin recently held a series of bilateral meetings with the de-facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, regarding security and economic issues. Putin and Mohammad bin Salaman signed a $10 billion economic agreement last year. The Saudis expressed interest in buying Russian weapons. And even though the Saudis and the Russians are on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict, there were some reports that Putin might be open to Syrian President Assad's stepping down. (Some experts are skeptical that this is true.)

"Hence, we believe that there is an existing dialogue channel that could be used to coordinate joint action," argues Croft.

Screen Shot 2016 01 29 at 7.29.24 AM

Rumors that such a potential joint venture might actually happen sent oil prices into a tizzy on Thursday.

Story continues

Oil prices jumped as much as 8% after Reuters reported that Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said there was talk of a possible meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC countries, and that the Saudis proposed a 5% production cut for each OPEC member.

"As headlines continue to pile onto the possibility of a coordinated cut between OPEC and Russia, its swing factor status appears justified," Croft noted.

However, an OPEC delegate later contradicted the report, saying that the Saudis made no such proposal. And oil prices fell again.

On Friday, a spokesman for the state oil giant Rosneft, Mikhail Leontyev, told the Financial Times that the rally in prices was "idiotic." Notably, Leontyev didn't actually rule out the possibility of a production cut.

"Everything is possible in theory. It was possible a year ago, a month ago. Nothing new has happened. This frenzy is idiotic. It stems from the fact that people cant read," Leontyev told the FT.

Vladimir Putin Igor Sechin

Another interesting dynamic in all of this is what's actually happening behind the scenes in Russia.

"While there certainly have been signals of a softening in the Russian position, the key figures to watch are Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft, and President Vladimir Putin himself," wrote Croft. "Sechin is in Putins inner circle and has thus far taken the lead in rebuffing calls for a coordinated production cut."

But it is "worth noting that Sechin was reportedly absent from this week's meetings between energy executives and government officials in which OPEC cooperation was discussed," she continued.

"While it is unclear at the moment whether Putin is prepared to overrule his close ally and order production cuts, Putin did seemingly side with his Finance Minister over Sechin back in the fall when the previously proposed round of additional tax cuts to crude exports were rescinded."

In any case, there's ultimately no guarantee that we'll see a Russia-Saudi joint cut in the near term, even though things seem to have lined up for it. After all, Russia-OPEC coordination hasn't had the greatest record.

But it does look as if Russia is the big player to keep an eye on right now.

As Croft wrote, "The cracks are certainly beginning to show."

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Gone South: Latin AmericaFocused Mutual Funds Have a Rough 2015

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation

The BlackRock Latin America Fund  A (MDLTX) fell 5.2% in December 2015 from a month prior. In the three- and six-month periods ended December 31, the fund fell 4.0% and 24.6%, respectively. In the one-year period, the one well be analyzing, it dived by 30.6%. Meanwhile, from the end of December to January 25, the fund fell by 11.4%.

For 2015, the fund ranked fifth among the eight funds in this review. Lets look at what contributed to this funds below-average performance.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

Launched way back in September 1991, MDLTX has the longest track record among the funds in this review. According to its latest geographical disclosure, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru are the top three geographies it invests in, in that order, making up 94% of the funds assets.

Since the latest complete portfolio of the fund available is from November 2015, well consider that as our base. For December, well consider valuation changes for our analysis. All portfolio percentages mentioned from here on refer to weights according to changes in valuation from November to December.

Financials were the biggest negative contributors to the fund in 2015. They were led down by the ADR ( American depositary receipt) of Banco Bradesco (BBDO) and the sponsored ADR of Itau Unibanco Holding (ITUB), in that order. BB Seguridade Participacoes and Credicorp (BAP) also contributed sizably to the funds poor performance.

A comparatively large exposure to materials was also detrimental to the fund. CEMEX (CX) contributed the lions share of the sectors returns. Distant, yet sizable negative contributors included Compania de Minas Buenaventura (BVA) and Vale (VALE). Any further fall of returns from the sector was averted by positive contributions from the regular shares and the sponsored ADR of Fibria Celulose (FBR).

Story continues

The ADR of BRF (BRFS) had quite a large negative impact on the consumer staples sector. However, there was support from Wal-Mart de Mexico and Fomento Economico Mexicano (FMX). Meanwhile, Kroton Educacional and Grupo Televisa (TV) led the consumer discretionary sector down, and America Movil (AMX) and the preference shares of Telefonica Brasil (VIV) drove the telecom services sector into negative territory.

Reasons for the below-average performance

The top three sectors of MDLTX turned out to be the top three negative contributors to returns. However, because of a few stock picks, the fund was able to reduce its negative returns and place fifth among eight funds. Well discuss the T. Rowe Price Latin America Fund (PRLAX) in the next article.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down North Dakota's last-ditch efforts to save a strict "fetal heartbeat" law that banned many abortions, weeks before another highly contentious case.

The midwestern state had hoped the top court in Washington would back the Republican-inspired law adopted in 2013 which forbids abortions as soon as a heartbeat is detected in a fetus.

A heartbeat can be detected just six weeks after conception, at a time when many women are not even sure yet that they are pregnant.

By refusing to review a lower court's ruling overturning the measures, the Supreme Court permanently blocked the law. The lower court had referred to the high court's rulings making clear that abortions are allowed until the fetus is deemed viable, around the 23rd or 24th week of pregnancy.

"We knew just going in it was going to be a long shot," the state's Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told The Bismarck Tribune. "This is the end of what we can do."

Calling North Dakota's ban the "earliest and most extreme" in the nation, Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northup hailed the decision.

"Whether in North Dakota, Arkansas or Texas, politicians simply cannot rob women of their constitutional rights," she said in a statement.

"This utterly cruel and unconstitutional ban would have made North Dakota the first state since Roe v. Wade to effectively ban abortion -- with countless women left to pay the price."

North Dakota's bid is part of a series of conservative efforts seeking to challenge the historic "Roe v. Wade" Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in 1973.

From 2011 to 2014, US states adopted no less than 231 new abortion restrictions while the number of states considered hostile to abortion rights -- with at least four types of abortion restrictions -- more than doubled from 13 in 2000 to 27 in 2014, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The high court has also agreed to take up on March 2 a highly fraught Texas case over the legality of state restrictions on abortion clinics. Its ruling in that case could have major implications on other measures limiting abortion rights.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Switzerland's chief prosecutor said on Friday he has formally asked Malaysia for help with his probe into possible violations of Swiss law by the state-owned fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) involving suspected misappropriations of about $4 billion.

The office of Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber said in a statement that it had asked Malaysia for help in pursuing possible violations of Swiss laws related to bribery of foreign officials, misconduct in public office, money laundering and criminal mismanagement related to 1MDB.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech)
R._Bowen_Loftin_outside_Mizzou_Arena

Former chancellor of the University of Missouri, R. Bowen Loftin, is hitting back at an inflammatory leaked email written by former Mizzou president Tim Wolfe.

Wolfe sent the email to his friends after he departed Mizzou in the fall amid claims that he failed to address serious incidents of racism on campus.

In the email, he said Loftin "shifted the focus" of students concerned about racism towards Wolfe. Loftin characterized these comments as untruthful, ad hominem attacks.

"To think that students would be manipulated or somehow be used as pawns by me against him is absolutely ludicrous," Loftin told Business Insider. "I just can't believe that that was a charge he leveled against me."

Wolfe says the former chancellor's job was on the line shortly before the protests on campus, but that Loftin used the Concerned Student 1950 student-led protest group to shift focus onto Wolfe. He later writes he "made the mistake of hiring Bowen Loftin" in the first place.

"This kind of attack was unexpected," Loftin said.

Tim Wolfe

Here's the major section about Loftin from Bowen's email:

"In Bowens short time at MU as Chancellor he had angered the Greeks over proposed changes to women in fraternities, disrupted the health system by pressuring Vice Chancellor Hal Williamson to retire, angered the graduate students by taking away their health insurance and then reinstating it, his decision and testimony on Planned Parenthood upset the faculty, every Dean at MU demanded his removal and he shifted the focus of Concerned Student 1950 to me from him once he discovered his job was in jeopardy in late September."

Loftin takes fault with the assertion that he was failing at his job and used protests to transfer the focus off of him. He said he and Wolfe spoke daily and there was never any indication his job was in jeopardy. He also said that he went through a formal review process and was praised by Wolfe in late September.

Story continues

Still, there was some indication of discord in the chancellor's office. In the beginning of November, nine deans from schools across the University of Missouri (MU) system sent a letter to the board of curators calling for Loftin's removal, according to The Maneater, MU's student newspaper.

Protesters celebrate after the resignation resignation of Missouri University president Timothy M. Wolfe on the Missouri University Campus November 9, 2015 in Columbia, Missouri. Wolfe resigned after pressure from students and student athletes over his perceived insensitivity to racism on the university campus. (Photo by Brian Davidson/Getty Images)

The deans' letter cites Loftins handling of race and cultural issues on our campus, but also other issues, such as the firing of the dean of the School of Medicine and health insurance issues for graduate students, according to The Maneater.

On November 9, 2015, both Wolfe and Loftin resigned from their positions. Wolfe is no longer formally employed by the University of Missouri system. Loftin, however, is still employed by MU and is in a role that develops new research facilities at Mizzou.

For its part, The University of Missouri responded to Wolfe's letter by saying it's currently discussing the former president's compensation package. "Since Mr. Wolfe resigned voluntarily last November, discussions have been on-going aimed at reaching an acceptable post-resignation agreement," a statement online read.

Racial tensions on the Columbia, Missouri, campus started when Payton Head, president of the Missouri Students Association, said he was abused with racial epithets while walking on campus in the beginning of September.

Tensions accelerated when another group of students said it was targeted with hate speech in October. Wolfe eventually resigned as president after students accused him of being an ineffectual leader who mishandled the instances of racism on campus.

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Ties to global warming

Salvage efforts

Time to invest? Vast forest lands in Canada have been lost to the insect, greatly affecting the supply of valuable timber.

Vast forest lands in Canada have been lost to the insect, greatly affecting the supply of valuable timber.

Ties to global warming

Salvage efforts

Time to invest?

When you think about it, money does grow on trees. Lumber and pulp and paper markets, for instance, have been known to make investors a pretty penny from time to time. And so, when billions of the trees start dying, it can create some big challenges for environmentalists and market players alike.

Over the past four years, lumber futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have declined from highs near $460 per 1,000 board feet, to current levels of roughly half that.

The downturn in the U.S. housing sector is mostly to blame, given that so much timber is used to put a roof on top of our heads. But an infestation of mountain pine beetles in Western Canada is also doing its part to weigh on values. The reason: Millions of hectares of forest land have been decimated by the pesky little creatures, converting what would have been a controlled supply of wood into a sudden surplus of altered and less-valued timber ... which is being harvested en masse before it becomes useless.

The beetles are killing vast stretches of pine forest in the British Columbia interior. About 30% of all the lumber used in the United States comes from Canada, the bulk from B.C. Entomologists believe the beetle will have killed 76% of B.C.'s pine by 2013. About half of the pine forests have already been killed by the epidemic. That's a mind-boggling 3.5 billion trees.

There are fears the infestation will spread eastward into the forests of neighboring Alberta, but so far only about 5 million trees have been lost to the beetle in that province. Extreme cold temperatures are one of the few things that kill them, and temperatures below minus 40 degrees Celsius during the past winter in Alberta likely slowed, if not stopped, the progress of the beetles across the Rocky Mountains and into Alberta's northern forests.

Story continues

Record Outbreak

Mountain pine beetles, each about the size of a grain of rice, are native to the western forests of North America, from Mexico up into Canada. They are a normal part of the forest ecosystem, although they are usually limited to older, highly stressed trees. The beetles burrow underneath the bark and release a fungal toxin, which eventually kills the tree. While there have been outbreaks in the past, the current infestation is the largest in recorded history.

Human efforts to protect those trees from forest fires are one of the main reasons behind the current beetle infestation. Fire suppression in the interior region of British Columbia, while protecting valuable timber assets, has also produced enormous continuous stands of mature lodgepole pine trees, which are especially susceptible to the beetles. Lodgepole pine tends to grow in abundance when there is a lack of natural disturbances like forest fires. The total lodgepole pine stock in 2003 totalled 14.9 million hectares, a nearly sixfold increase since 1910.

Global warming is also taking some of the blame, as a string of milder winters and hot summers provided ideal conditions for the beetles.

(Ironically, the pine beetle outbreak could also be contributing to global warming, according to some research, as the dead trees release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.)

Maps provided by the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range show the sheer size of the area affected by the mountain pine beetle outbreak: 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2016.

It is estimated that 68 million to 78 million cubic meters of timber are being lost per year in the B.C. interior as a result of the mountain pine beetle. Those yearly numbers are eventually expected to decline, with current data pointing toward an end to the outbreak by 2018/2019. To put it in context, the average annual harvest in the region has been around 53.5 million cubic meters.

So what does this all mean for the average investor? Basically, too much supply hitting the market now, and - quite possibly - too little in future years when the U.S. housing market may have fully recovered from the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown.

The forest industry is trying to salvage as much of that dead timber as they can, despite the current environment of low demand and prices. The dead trees will only be salvageable as usable lumber for a few years before they become too cracked. That's been pushing already-depressed prices lower.

The United States certainly hasn't been anxious to take all that extra wood, and the recent gains in the Canadian currency against the greenback have made Canadian lumber even less attractive. Lumber exports from the B.C. interior to the U.S. during the first five months of 2008 are down 36% from the previous year, according to David Elstone, a forestry industry analyst with Equity Research Associates, in Gibsons, B.C.

Quality Jeopardized?

Canada has been busy trying to find some additional markets. Beetle-attacked timber can still be used for things such as standard framing lumber to even energy generation. West Fraser Timber and EPCOR Utilities said recently they are contemplating building a power plant near Houston, B.C. that could be fueled by pine-beetle-killed wood. Beetle infection results in a blue stain in the wood, and while most believe this does not impact strength properties, there have been complaints that some of the logs now being processed have more breakage than normal.

There is a danger here, as Elstone points out. Canada might be tapping into too many alternative markets given that current supply levels are unsustainable in the long run. Once the initial oversupply of wood evaporates, the country might not have enough timber to go around.

Elstone, in an interview with HardAssetsInvestor.com, doesn't expect to see any significant improvement in the U.S. housing market until 2010. At that time, the question becomes whether or not Canada will still have the lumber supplies to meet any increased demand.

As it will take many years for the forests devastated by the mountain pine beetles to recover, there will be less wood available from the region. Workers will also likely leave the industry, which means rising demand could eventually lead to supply shocks and sporadic price increases.

Elstone suggests the time may be right to invest in the forestry sector, as stock prices for forestry firms, and lumber futures, are probably the lowest they'll get for awhile. Canadian timber supplies will likely be tight when the U.S. starts buying lumber again, driving up prices for lumber futures and forestry-related stocks.

Of course, a lot of that may depend on how quickly the U.S. housing market recovers. The important thing is for investors to remember a little life lesson about all creatures big and small: Even the largest of trees can be brought down by the tiniest of insects.

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(Adds comment from White House spokesman)

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Labor Department on Friday took the next step toward requiring brokers who provide retirement advice to follow a "fiduciary" standard of putting clients' interests first, a move that could roil the financial services industry.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget said on its website that it had received the department's final proposed rule. That follows an extended comment period for the proposal, which the Labor Department unveiled nine months ago.

"We're working aggressively to work through the process," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest at a briefing on Friday. The White House, however, does not have an exact timeframe for implementing the rule, Earnest said.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association trade group called for the OMB to conduct a comprehensive analysis of potential costs and benefits.

The proposal aims to end potential conflicts of interest by brokers who advise on individual retirement accounts and to protect consumers from buying unnecessary investment products that line brokers' pockets.

IRAs accounted for $7.3 trillion, or 30 percent, of U.S. retirement assets in September, according to trade group Investment Company Institute.

Under the plan, brokers would have to act in clients' best interests, or as "fiduciaries," when advising about IRAs. For example, brokers can receive significant fees when they advise clients to "roll over" assets from employer-sponsored retirement plans into IRAs.

Brokers now must recommend investments and strategies that are "suitable," based on factors such as investors' age.

The industry has fought the proposal since it was first proposed in 2010, saying strict rules could limit advice to small investors because fewer brokerages would offer them services.

The department, which regulates retirement plan advice, withdrew the initial proposal in 2011 after wide industry criticism.

Story continues

A new version was proposed in April after a nudge from President Barack Obama and discussions with the industry and lawmakers, who considered blocking funds needed for a standard.

The text of the final proposal was not released on Friday but will become public after the OMB's review, which many expect to wrap up in the spring.

Critics want changes to when brokers should sign mandatory contracts in which they would pledge to uphold clients' best interests when giving retirement advice. They also want to extend an eight-month period for the rule's effective date that was part of the April version.

The department has received more than 3,000 comments about the plan, Earnest said.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert in Washington; Additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Bernard Orr)
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USDCAD Movement

For the 24 hours to 23:00 GMT, the USD declined 0.42% against the CAD and closed at 1.4034.

In the Asian session, at GMT0400, the pair is trading at 1.4044, with the USD trading 0.07% higher from yesterdays close.

The pair is expected to find support at 1.3953, and a fall through could take it to the next support level of 1.3862. The pair is expected to find its first resistance at 1.4130, and a rise through could take it to the next resistance level of 1.4216.

Looking ahead, investors will keep a close watch on Canadas GDP, scheduled to be released in a few hours.

The currency pair is showing convergence with its 20 Hr moving average and trading above its 50 Hr moving average.
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Mostly Louisiana shit here! Find my rap reviewz, promotional commercials & more! I DO NOT give people other people's music!!! If viewing on a mobile device, to access tha blog in its entirety, scroll down and click "View web version."
Joey Spellerberg was immersed in the Moostash Joe Tour business long before he became the businesses second president in early January.

In fact, in 1990 when he was 6 weeks old his parents loaded him up in a car seat for the first-ever domestic tour to Pioneer Village in Minden.

At the time, Spellerbergs father, Moostash Joe Spellerberg, was president of the operation, but his son was right beside him for all the adventures that took place.

During an interview in his office, Joey Spellerberg recalled his many experiences with the company growing up.

From scouting tour locations, to watching Old Faithful burst in Yellowstone National Park, to going to the Grand Canyon and seeing the White House in Washington, D.C., many life-long memories were made in his early years.

Now, since taking over the Family business on Jan. 1, Spellerberg looks forward to helping others make everlasting memories with the assistance of his brother John, vice president of the company.

Spellerberg knows he has big shoes to fill, but says he looks forward to helping the company continue to thrive.

Johnny and I grew up in this business and were very passionate about it, Spellerberg said. We really just want to continue to see it serve many more people for another 40 years.

Moostash Joe Tours was established in 1975, and for the next 15 years served as a tour company that served people wishing to travel abroad.

The first tour  in 1975  happened because Moostash Joe was approached by members of the travel group Intertrav to promote a tour to Oktoberfest in Germany through his band, The Mootash Joe Polka Band.

He promoted it through his band and he had a huge following with his band, Spellerberg said. He used his name for that and it worked. The first year they got 50 people to go, and the next year he got 150 and then in 1977 he got 300 for the same tour.

And just like that, Moostash Joe Tours was born.

Throughout the following years, Moostash Joe searched for tours he felt people would enjoy. And as more people started going on tours, more locations continued being added.

People traveled to Czechoslovakia, Australia, China and all throughout Europe.

A following was created, and while business was thriving by simply designing tours abroad, Moostash Joe believed there could be an equal appeal for taking tours in the United States.

He saw this opportunity to promote destinations around where we live, Spellerberg said. He already had a following of loyal customers and clients, so I think it took off pretty quickly once he decided he wanted to pursue that idea.

Since taking on domestic tours, Spellerberg said there has been a complete 180-degree turn in the numbers of people who travel domestically versus abroad.

From 1975-1990, 95 percent of all customers traveled to foreign countries. Now, the number has flip-flopped, with 95 percent of people traveling in the United states.

Moostash Joe Tours now offers 109 tours which is a company record, Spellerberg said.

In its 40 years of business, Moostash Joe Tours has booked more than 100,000 reservations and served more than 30,000 tours, information on the company website says.

Spellerberg attributes much of the companys success to treating people the right way.

The company slogan, More for Less, is just as true today as it was four decades ago, he said.

Our goal is always to give you the best tour for the least amount of money, Spellerberg said. That is our mission, when we work with our suppliers  our hotels and restaurants  we will try to work our best to get the price down as low as possible to where it is affordable for anyone to go on any of these tours we think it is so important for our people to get out and experience the world, because there is so much to see out there.

Spellerberg said that while taking over as the companys leader has been a lot of work, he has been having a blast sitting in the captains chair.

He said he and his brother want to continue doing everything in their power to honor and recognize the legacy their father created.

At 82 years old, Moostash Joe finally stepped down from the business he created from the ground up, but Spellerberg said he will always have an impact on the business.

Just because he retired doesnt mean that anybody will forget what he has done, Spellerberg said. I always say that his name is on the sign outside and that isnt going anywhere. We have the utmost respect for dad and what was already established for us. Its a big responsibility for me, and its something I feel every day, because I want to maintain and continue what was already established.
As 8:30 a.m. neared Thursday morning, the Main Street 7 theater was about as calm as could be expected.

A few employees kept busy by making popcorn, sweeping the floors and setting up tables in the lobby.

Soon, 156 Trinity Lutheran School students accompanied by 50 adults flooded the lobby to see The Incredibles.

But these students werent wearing their everyday attire, they were dressed up in their favorite superhero apparel.

There were numerous Captain Americas, Batmans, Spider-Mans and princesses.

Dozens of students  and some faculty and parents  dressed as their favorite heroes as part of Superhero Day to help celebrate National Lutheran Schools Week.

Starting Monday, students, faculty and parents have all been involved in fun-filled school days drawing attention to their faith and Lutheran school education.

The national event originally was held in March, but the past few years it has been in January, said Michele Synovec, kindergarten teacher at Trinity and co-event coordinator with second-grade instructor Brenda Gerken.

It allows all the Lutheran elementary schools and high schools to come together to celebrate teaching the faith and being with our kids, she said. We are excited about being a part of a Lutheran school, and its good exposure for people in the community to see what we do here at Trinity.

The week started with a School Spirit Day Monday, followed by a Teachers Choice Day Tuesday.

On Teachers Choice Day, teachers from different classes picked a theme they wanted to do for the day.

One class dressed in pajamas, one class built forts and one class even had a 1980s-themed day.

Wednesday was dedicated to the theme of doing everything backward.

Parents dropped off their kids backward and then parents got a drive-thru breakfast before they left, Synovec said. Many teachers wore their clothing backward, and even taught that days curriculum backward. It was a lot of fun.

While seeing the movie on Thursday was a lot of fun for the students, a greater message was conveyed when they returned to school.

We discussed how Jesus is our superhero, and how he does everything for us, she said. We are here to keep the faith and show that no one is better than god.

While many fun things were done during the week, and many important lessons were addressed, one of Synovecs favorite parts of the week was seeing how happy the students were.

Weve had so many opportunities to see our kids smile this week, she said. We have also had a lot of contact with parents and the community, too. Its just a really fun week for the kids, and for us, too.
We will go to 12 of the possible 17 islands one can visit in the Galapagos, said Juan Salcedo, naturalist and owner of our boat, the Samba.

Before we get onto the boat, we will make a stop to see the giant tortoises, one of the iconic symbols of the islands, Salcedo continued.

Spanish explorers, who discovered the islands in the 16th century, named them after the Spanish word galapago, meaning tortoise. Ten of the original subspecies of turtles still exist on the islands. But it has not been an easy task to survive, and the population has declined dramatically.

When Europeans first landed on the islands, it is estimated there were over 250,000 tortoises; now, the number stands at 19,000.

The tortoises had two things working against them. They could live a long time on a ship without food and water and they tasted good. Both were valuable assets for seafaring men who spent many days on ships during voyages.

The largest male tortoises can weigh up to 500 pounds and are estimated to live more than 100 years. Because they move slowly, this made easy pickings for the early visitors.

As I walked around, I got a little too close to one giant tortoise. As I attempted to take a photo, the giant tortoise pulled in its head and made a long, drawn out hissing sound. Apparently, it hadnt forgotten it once was a favorite meal of mariners.

The tortoises on Santa Cruz Island migrate. The tortoises journey begins in the humid highlands of the island where they load up on grass and perennial plants. Once the rainy season starts in December, they migrate to the lowlands where herbs and shrubs thrive.

The grassy field where I stood had migrating tortoises everywhere. In a week, they will all be gone as they slowly make their way to lower elevations, Salcedo explained.

Come June or July, when the rains stop and the vegetation dries up, they return to the highlands.

Its not the mass migration like the wildebeest in Africa but still impressive. Migrations have always impressed me. Every year I stand in awe as the Nebraska sky is filled with migrating geese or sandhill cranes.

I stood in awe once again as I watched these giants slowly move around trees and over the grass.

After a couple of hours, we headed to the port and climbed onto an inflatable dingy that took us out to the Samba.

For the next seven nights, this would be my home. A live aboard, which is what they call a boat the tourists stay on, is one of the best ways to explore the Galapagos Islands. It allows access to islands and locations that are otherwise almost impossible to reach. In addition, it offers more time to spend on site instead of traveling from town and back to one of the destinations.

The crew welcomed us with warm, big smiles. We are all family on this boat. Most of us have been working together for years and we treat each other like family. We welcome you to be a part of our family, Salcedo said.

My fellow passengers came from locations all over the world. But we all had one thing in common  the dream to explore the Galapagos Islands.

Tonight we will have dinner and review our upcoming week, Salcedo said. In the middle of the night, the captain will motor to our first destination. This way we can start exploring first thing in the morning.

Salcedo explained how he liked to be at the locations early before other tour boats arrived. The animals on the Galapagos are not tame, but they dont run away either.

Getting there early allows for the best viewing and for better light for photos, Salcedo said.

A guide who understands and appreciates photography. Im going to like this.
The Nebraska Alpha Delta Kappa Sorority for women educators held their state executive board meeting on Jan. 16 at College Park in Grand Island.

Alpha Delta Kappa is an international organization whose mission is to support outstanding women educators and promote educational excellence, altruism, and world understanding. The Nebraska state organization is made up of 29 chapters from across the state.

After a social brunch, the Council of Chapter Presidents met with Kathleen Ockinga for a brief meeting. The general business meeting was then called to order and presided over by State President Mary Ann Gerdes.

The business meeting included reports by state officers and committee chairmen presenting information to be dispersed by those present to their home chapters. The state convention will be held April 9 at Divots Conference Center in Norfolk. Meetings will start at 8:30 a.m. and the general session will begin at 9:10 a.m.

Bus transportation to the North Central Regional Conference on July 7-9 in Indianapolis is being organized. Gerdes reminded everyone about the membership challenge. Special recognition will be given at the state convention if a chapter maintains membership plus one.

A second altruistic state project will be voted on at the state convention for the 2016-2018 biennium. These altruistic project choices are Camp Catch-up, Quilts of Valor Foundation, and Rett Syndrome.

Everyone was reminded of several scholarship deadlines due later this winter and spring with one scholarship winner already announced from Alpha Nu Chapter. Susan Rodda reminded members about the amended chapter bylaws that are due by March 1.

Representatives from Lambda Chapter present at this meeting were Jane Petersen and Nancy Morris, Lambda secretary.
For the past five years, Fremont Middle School students, who have shown advanced mathematics abilities, have had the opportunity to complete high school-level math before graduation eighth grade.

Mike Ronspies, registrar at Fremont High School, said FMS eighth-grade students were given this opportunity because certain parents and faculty members felt that certain students werent being adequately challenged with grade-level math.

Its not something they actually test in to, Ronspies said. Parents request it for their kids and then the middle school teachers and administrators have to approve it.

I think they do look at student assessments, test scores and student recommendations when determining whether a student is ready to take on the new math challenge, Principal Chuck Story added.

This year, two FMS eighth-graders have completed honors geometry, and are currently enrolled in honors Algebra II.

One new aspect to this years program, though, is that math instructor Andrea Wagner splits her days at the middle school and the high school because select seventh-graders now have the opportunity to take Algebra I  a ninth-grade level course.

Story said her experience teaching at both levels was one factor that led to her teaching the course at the middle school.

It helps her with going from one building and knowing the procedures, to going to another and knowing the procedures, he said. It makes her comfortable with it and that allows her to be more efficient with the students.

The program, though, is being altered for the 2016-2017 school year.

One or two high school instructors will travel to the middle school for portions of their day teaching seventh-graders Algebra I, and eighth-graders honors geometry.

This means that the high school will no longer host middle school students.

Many factors went into the decision, said Scott Wagner, high school math instructor who teaches the Algebra II course the two eighth-graders are enrolled in.

One of the biggest factors is that middle school students dont operate on a block schedule like the high school does.

They are not on a block. They dont have the hour and a half classes, Wagner said. They are in a class all year so their math, English, science and social studies. They are in those classes all year long. So now they will be in Algebra I all year as a seventh-grader, and then in honors geometry all year as eighth-graders all year long.

Wagner said the honors Algebra II likely will not be available for middle school students any longer because if they are completing sophomore-level math courses by the time they enter high school, it wont allow them to adequately progress as they move through their high school career. They will run out of courses to take.

Even though the eighth-graders we have had in Algebra II have done great, we dont know how important it is for them to be that far ahead when they get here, he said. Because then they are already in Algebra III as a ninth-grader, so we have to look at how far ahead we really want them to get.

Students who have been taking the Algebra II course have been integrated directly into the high school class setting, taking the course with three ninth-graders and numerous sophomores.

Wagner said that the class dynamic has been good.

They have handled it very well, he said. This is their first high school class, and while they dont get to come and have their first class with all their friends, and come to high school together that first day, I think that they have fit in just fine.

Having the opportunity to work with this years two students has been an enjoyable experience for Wagner.

Its great to know that these kids are motivated and driven, he said. They have this great opportunity in front of them, and I have really enjoyed doing what I can to help them grow in something they are really good at at a young age.
Most people desire a return which doubles their investment.

Fremont high schools offer that option, dual credit.

Since the 1980s, American high schools have been encouraged to connect with post-secondary institutions to ease the transition from high school to college.

As a result, courses resulting in simultaneous credit from both the high school and the college started to dot the curricular guides at both levels. Today, those entries have become standard reading.

On our campus, eight dual credit courses are offered to our students, said Fremont High School Counselor Mark Williams. Most of these classes are taken by juniors and seniors because the younger students have schedules filled with required courses. But any student can begin their post-secondary work as long as the college allows it.

On average, 175 FHS students enroll in dual credit courses annually. Early dual credit classes centered upon the language arts and history. Current options include statistics, sociology, speech, entrepreneurship and computer applications among others.

One of the changes we have experienced over the years is the move toward dual credit in areas of trades and skilled labor, noted FHS Principal Chuck Story. Another option for our local students is to take classes at Metropolitan Community College and Midland University. Both of these institutions have welcomed our students by reducing tuition costs which encourages early enrollment; in some cases, the tuition is forgiven.

Interest from the private entities, most notably the health and material production sectors, has spurred the advent of courses leading to careers in the nursing field and welding. Both Story and Williams credited Metropolitan Community College Executive Director Todd Hansen as a driving force in opening the local door of dual credit opportunities.

We had students who graduated last year sign on with Valmont right out of our program, Story said. Full-time employment immediately following graduation. So many of the boomer generation are retiring. Manufacturers need qualified applicants.

Across town on Clarkson, Archbishop Bergan students enroll in college level courses as often as they can.

Midland and Metro offer our students a unique opportunity. There are not many high schools our size that have the opportunity to take classes (online or on campus) through a two-year or four-year college that are just right down the street from our school. Our students have used this to their advantage in the past and we will continue to benefit from this great opportunity in the future, said Doug Moore, Bergan counselor, I want to thank Midland University and Metro Community College for giving this opportunity to our students.

For its part, Midland University wishes to intensify recruitment of home town students. Enrolling in dual credit course is just one avenue to get students on campus.

We know the high school graduate usually wants to get out of town, laughed Eliza Ferzely, Midlands vice-president for admissions and enrollment management. We get that. But we would like to grow your own and keep your own also. We want our local students to give us a look. Through our tuition forgiveness program (tuition paid for a class taken as dual credit in high school is credited back upon full-time college enrollment) we can lower the overall cost of college education and everyone wants that.

Midland offers concentrations in the popular areas of nursing, business and education. These areas are most commonly cited as needing employees in the next decade, according to Ferzely.

Midland University extends corporate sponsorships to several Omaha schools. (North, South, Benson, Bryan, Mercy, Skutt, and Roncalli)

We need to present our university to the greater area. Our size and focus on student participation plays well across Nebraska. And if we can help students get an early start here, all the better.
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Indonesias national airline Garuda Indonesia is to begin services from London to Jakarta, will be the first and only non-stop flight to connect the UK and Indonesia.

The new service will be operated from their new UK base at Terminal 3 of Londons Heathrow Airport and service is beginning Thursday 31 March 2016. It is expected that seats will be on sale from the third week of February.

As part of the move, the Indonesian flag carrier will increase its service frequency to five times per week, departing every day except Mondays and Fridays. Cutting out the previous stopover at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, the service will cater to business travelers travelling to Jakarta and leisure travelers stopping over on their way to the countrys many paradisiacal locations, including Bali. Return flights to the UK will be direct via Singapore.

The move to Heathrow is part of Garuda Indonesias strategy to strengthen its presence in Europe and meet its commitment as the national flag carrier, to connect Indonesia to the world.

Jubi Prasetyo, General Manager UK & Ireland says: Making the move to Heathrow Airport has been an ambition of ours since joining SkyTeam in March 2014. Heathrows pivotal role in servicing the alliances 1,052 destinations makes it an ideal departure airport for our passengers. Flying non-stop direct to Jakarta means we will truly be the most efficient way to reach Indonesia from the UK.

Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: We are delighted to welcome Garuda Indonesia to Heathrow, securing a regular direct service to one of the largest growth economies in the world. As the UK's only hub, Heathrow is able to support regular direct flights to 75 long haul destinations not served by any other UK airport. With expansion, we can bring the world to Britain's doorstep by adding up to 40 more long haul routes to high growth markets and more than doubling the number of UK cities served. Britain will be the best connected country in the world, at the heart of the global economy. Let's make it happen.

The non-stop route from Heathrow will continue to utilise the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft in a three-class configuration. In 2015, the airlines in-flight service team was awarded Worlds Best Cabin Staff by Skytrax for the second consecutive year.

To book flights, visit www.garuda-indonesia.com.
Turkish Airlines (TK) has signed a Codeshare Agreement with Hawaiian Airlines (HA). The carrier, which operates seven weekly flights between Istanbul and Osaka and eleven weekly flights between Istanbul and Seoul, will expand options for its customers to travel more conveniently from Turkey to Hawaii via Far East points.

The agreement allows Turkish Airlines to put its TK booking code on Hawaiians daily flights between Osaka, Japan and Honolulu and HAs five-times weekly service between Honolulu and Seoul, Korea.

The agreement provides a seamless experience for customers traveling between the modern, attractive city of Istanbul and the beautiful Hawaiian Islands.

The announcement was made by TK and HA representatives with a ceremony in San Francisco, USA. Ilker Ayc, Chairman of Turkish Airlines has been accompanied by Dr. Ahmet Bolat, Turkish Airlines Chief Investment & Technology Officer and Ahmet Olmustur, Chief Marketing Officer who expressed their satisfaction of that enhanced cooperation between both airlines.

Mr. Ayc stated that As Turkish Airlines, we are extremely pleased to sign this codeshare agreement with Hawaiian Airlines, which will improve our partnership to maximize the travel opportunities offered to our passengers through the networks of both airlines.

We look forward to introducing more Turkish Airlines customers to our authentic Hawaiian hospitality, award-winning on-time performance and quality of service on their journey from Istanbul to our island home, said Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian Airlines CEO and President.

Flights will be available for purchase following the necessary approvals from the respective countries civil aviation authorities. Turkish and Hawaiian are also considering an extension of their codeshare agreement to include each carriers flights from New Yorks John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK).
The East Mediterranean Tourism and Travel Exhibition  EMITT opened its doors today at Tuyap Fair and Congress Center in Istanbul, Turkey.

Celebrating its 20th year, EMITT opened today with the participation of senior local and international government representatives and representatives of the tourism industry. Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister also attended the opening ceremony and gave a speech for the local and international guests.

Turkish tourism suffers from recent terrorism events. Minister Mahir Unal at his speech criticized terror in Turkey. Unal said, Terrorism is a problem faced by every country. It is not acceptable to use terror as a competition tool in the industry. It is not moral and internationally accepted to use terror as a tool against Turkey.

Organized by Ekin Fuarclk and EUF  E Uluslararas Fuarclk, the affiliates of ITE Turkey, which is the organizer of leading exhibitions for leading industries of Turkey, East Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Exhibition  EMITT continues to be the meeting point of vacation enthusiasts in its 20th year. This years event is taking place in 11 halls and attracts a total of 4.500 companies, organizations and resorts from around 70 countries.

ITE Turkey Tourism & Travel & Fashion Group Director Hacer Aydn who spoke today at the opening said, EMITT Tourism Exhibition is one of the biggest meeting points for not only the Turkish tourism industry but also for the global tourism industry. In our 20th year well be hosting our visitors with a participant profile representing 70 countries. Mrs. Aydn foresees that 2016 will be a more difficult year than 2015 especially for Turkish tourism industry.

ftnNEWS is participating EMITT at S&M Publication stand at Hall 2 Stand D201.
We do not know if we will ever again see the equivalent of the siberian traps. We can see a super volcano at work, but that is likely to be...
WALLINGFORD, CT / Memphis TN, Jan. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - Z-Medica, LLC, a leading developer and marketer of hemostatic devices, announces today that the Mid-South Emergency Planning Coalition, as well as the Shelby County School System, have adopted the use of the Company's QuikClot Bleeding Control Bags (BCB), QuikClot Bleeding Control Kits (BCK) and QuikClot Belt Trauma Kits (BTK), making the City of Memphis, TN and surrounding region the first major U.S. city to follow the Hartford Consensus guidelines.

According to the Office of Homeland Security, uncontrolled bleeding injuries can result from both manmade and natural disasters. This can be from a planned attack or resulting from everyday accidents or natural disasters. Regardless of the reason, if someone is severely bleeding, the individual could possibly die before emergency medical responders can arrive.

"With the unfortunate increase in active shooter and other mass casualty events across the nation, the Mid-South Emergency Coalition recognizes the importance of equipping medical staff with basic tools and information on the simple steps they can take in the event of a bleeding emergency, we can help save lives," said Ashton Anderson, Regional Hospital Coordinator for the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Program of the Shelby County Health Department. "Just as it has been done with the use of automatic external defibrillators, Coalition members believe the installation of QuikClot Bleeding Control Bags will improve capabilities and can improve survival rates of those injured in such events."

The safety of Shelby County school students and staff also benefit from having hemorrhage control at arms-reach, according to the Hartford Consensus guidelines.

"Shelby County Schools is proud to be the first school district in Tennessee to utilize QuikClot to support School Resource Officers," said Dorsey Hopson, Superintendent. "Now, more than ever, it is important that we remain highly proactive in regards to the safety of our students and staff. In addition to the intensive, ongoing training our officers receive, the utilization of QuikClot will help arm them with one more potentially life-saving resource.

"The region-wide deployment of hemorrhage control bags and kits ensures that there is a continuum of coverage when it comes to saving lives when seconds count," said Z-Medica's President and CEO Stephen J. Fanning. "Memphis and surrounding Shelby County is the first major region in the country to comply with the life-saving guidelines as spelled out in the Hartford Consensus."

Over 60 representatives made up from all the Memphis-area hospitals and Shelby County School Safety Officers are receiving their initial training. Over 200 QuikClot Bleeding Control Bags, QuikClot Bleeding Control Kits and QuikClot Belt Trauma Kits are being distributed throughout Shelby County between Coalition members and the schools. The purchase was made possible through a grant provided by (ASPR) Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response via the (HPP) Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) grant and the Safe Schools Grant.

About the Hartford Consensus

The Joint Committee to Create a National Policy to Enhance Survivability from Intentional Mass-Casualty and Active Shooter Events, founded by the American College of Surgeons, developed the Hartford Consensus, which focuses on implementation of strategies for effective hemorrhage control. Stemming from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the overarching principle of the Hartford Consensus is that in intentional mass-casualty and active shooter events, no one should die from uncontrolled bleeding. Recent events have shown that, despite the lessons learned from more than 6,800 U.S. combat fatalities over the last 13 years, opportunities exist to improve the control of external hemorrhage in the civilian sector. These opportunities exist in the form of interventions that should be performed by immediate responders and professional first responders, such as law enforcement officers, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), paramedics, and firefighters (EMS/fire/rescue), at the scene of the incident.

About Mid-South Emergency Planning Coalition

The Mid-South Emergency Planning Coalition represents a partnership between eighteen area hospitals across a two state, four county region, the Shelby County Health Department's Public Health Emergency Preparedness Program, and local Fire/EMS. The Coalition's primary function is to work as a regional unit to create and implement effective frameworks to respond to local emergency incidents and public health issues that affect the residents of Shelby, Tipton, and Lauderdale counties in Tennessee and DeSoto County, Mississippi. To achieve this, the Coalition uses grant funds to identify healthcare emergency preparedness needs for the community and sets goals in which to meet those needs. As partners, the Coalition members work together on community hazard assessments, drills, exercises, resource sharing, and acquiring equipment and technology that can better serve them as healthcare providers and emergency responders.

Hospital members of the Coalition include : Regional One; Delta Medical; St. Francis Memphis; St. Francis Bartlett; Baptist Memphis; Baptist Women's and Pediatrics; Baptist Desoto; Baptist Tipton; Baptist Collierville; Methodist University; Methodist Germantown; Methodist North; Methodist South; Methodist LeBonhuer; Methodist Olive Branch; Veterans Affairs; St. Jude; and Lauderdale Community Hospital.

About Z-Medica, LLC

Z-Medica, LLC is a medical device company founded in 2002 that develops fast acting, easy to use hemostatic products that stop bleeding wherever it occurs, making it possible to save lives and improve patient outcomes. Based on tests conducted by the Naval Medical Research Center and the U.S. Army Institute for Surgical Research, the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (CoTCCC) chose QuikClot Combat Gauze as the hemostatic dressing of choice on the battlefield for compressible hemorrhage not amenable to tourniquet use or as an adjunct to tourniquet removal if evacuation time is anticipated to be longer than 2 hours.

QuikClot products are developed and manufactured in the United States. Z-Medica, LLC is a privately-held company based in Wallingford, CT. For more information, visit http://www.quikclot.com and http://www.Z-Medica.com

Company Contact:

Dave Schemelia / EVC Group

dave(at)evcgoup(dot)com / 609-468-9325

Shelby County Health Department

Heather Fortner

heather(dot)fortner(at)shelbycountytn(dot)gov / 901-270-7179

Shelby County Schools

Christian Ross

ROSSC3(at)scsk12(dot)org / 901-416-5628

###

This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/01/prweb13186586.htm
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Are you relatively new to this bustling metropolis? Don't be shy about it, everyone was new to New York once upon a time, except, of course, those battle-hardened residents who've lived here their whole lives and Know It All. One of these lifers works among us at Gothamistpublisher Jake Dobkin grew up in Park Slope and still resides there. He is now fielding questionsask him anything by sending an email here, but be advised that Dobkin is "not sure you guys will be able to handle my realness." We can keep you anonymous if you prefer; just let us know what neighborhood you live in.

This week's question comes from a New Yorker who's frustrated about "losing" a parking spot he spent hours digging out after the blizzard.

Dear Jake,

I drive to work and after the blizzard I had to go out and spend an hour shoveling out my car while nearly contracting frostbite. This was serious worksnow plows kept coming by and re-snowing me in! So like all the locals on my block I took a couple of chairs and put them out in the space, to hold it for when I got back. But when I got back that night someone had moved the chairs and taken my spot!



What's the right thing to do here? Am I allowed to slash their tires or what?

Sincerely,

Queens Snow Job

A native New Yorker responds:

Dear Snow Job,

While I sympathize with your frozen suffering, you are in the wrong here in several ways. First, you own a car in New York City, home of greatest mass transit system in the world. Second, you decided to use this car the day after the second-worst snowstorm in the history of the city. Third, you fundamentally misunderstood the system by which native New Yorkers defend parking spaces. And fourth, you are contemplating a potentially suicidal attack on a stranger's car, instead of dealing with the root of the problem, which is your increasingly poor decision making.

Yes, there are transit deserts in Queens from which it is still inconvenient to get to and from work without a car. You may legitimately be saving yourself 90 minutes of commuting time if you live in College Point and work in the Rockaways or something. But shoveling your car out took you 60 minutes, and you probably wasted at least another 60 looking for a new spot and shoveling it outif you could even find one and didn't end up parking at a garage. The rational choice here would've been to take mass transit: you're really telling me there was no way to get to work in less time on some combination of bus, subway, LIRR, and taxi?



Every winter Jake Dobkin makes a extra few bucks shoveling Park Slope stoops, with the help of his roommate. (Courtesy Jake Dobkin Private Collection)

Nothing compelled you to shovel out your car: alternate side of the street parking has been suspended all week. I see plenty of cars on my block whose owners made the smart decision to shelter in place, and by early this morning they had mostly melted out of their ice tombs and seemed no worse for wear. Or certainly not worse off than the cars whose cruel masters forced them out on to the ice covered streets, to play roller derby with Sanitation Department snowplows. Do you even have chains for your tires, bro? If you don't feel sorry for your car, feel sorry for the pedestrian you'll splatter all over Queens Boulevard when you go skidding out of control.

You correctly noted that some people on your block successfully defend their storm spaces, but you only noticed the iceberg tip of our complex native space saving system. It's not simply enough to throw out a couple of chairs and waltz off to work. You've got to have a whole team of people on the block ready to scream at interlopers. You know, your loudmouth grandma who just loves to spend the whole day glaring out of her window at passersby, or your shifty uncle who never seems to work except when he picks up a few bucks shoveling out sidewalks for the neighbors. Without this kind of serious backup, your flimsy chairs mean nothing!

It's highly likely that as soon as you drove off, some of your neighbors, correctly observing that you were a recent arrival who hadn't earned snow privileges yet, quickly called around to see if any of their friends needed a space, and ganked your precious spot. You should keep this in mind before you declare jihad and go slashing anyone's tires. The block has eyes! Sometimes things other than tires get slashed. Like your face, maybe.

Sure, a system of saving shoveled-out spaces backed by an implicit threat of violence is a medieval, tribal code that has no place in a modern city like New York. A fairer rule would require everyone to shovel out their own car by the morning after a storm, just like the city requires for residential sidewalks, so there aren't a deficit of shoveled-out spaces. We could combine it with a rule that says private cars have to stay off the road for 24 or 48 hours after a storm to give everyone time to shovel out, and for the snow moved out to melt. But I have a feeling that the natives, who seem to be doing fine under the current regime, may oppose modifications like that, and who's going to change their minds? You, Mr. Joe "Subaru Forrester" Gentrifier?

No, the change you need to make is an internal one. You must meditate on your own selfish dependence on a gas-guzzling, environment-polluting, free parking-dependent, unused 97% of the time, waste of money means of conveyance, and ask yourself if, in the spirit of generosity to your neighbors and to Mother Earth, can you find a better way to get to work? If you can't, can you at least feel a sense of positive satisfaction that you helped someone out by delivering them a snow-cleared space, instead of embittered indignation over a theft of a space you never had any right to own?

Try it! It's a lot less painful than getting stabbed!

NB.: This is yet another New York problem that will be solved once we replace our terribly wasteful system of private cars with a civic fleet of communally owned RobotUbers sometime in the next 10 years. Before a storm, the robot fleet can simply be programmed to seek shelter in indoor garages, or at easily defrosted lots at the city outskirts, ready for service again as soon as the plows have cleared the streets.

Ask a Native New Yorker anything via email. Anonymity is assured.
Uber announced on Friday morning that it has reduced Uber X fares by 15% citywide, meaning that an Uber from Midtown to LGA will now cost $37.12 on average, compared to $43.67 under the old pricing scale.

According to the company, which was recently valued at $62.5 billion, the motivation for the fare reduction is to decrease idling time for drivers who tend to experience a lag in trips after the onslaught of holiday tourists dies down. But Uber's announcement also makes sure to troll the competition: "With prices lower than a New York City taxi, Uber is now more affordable and accessible for residents across the five boroughs."

And in a e-mail sent to Uber users, "Today we're dropping uberX rates by 15%. Enjoy the same comfort and convenience of UberBLACK, but at prices that are cheaper than a taxi." The new rates apply to UberPool, the carpool option, as well. Granted, surge pricing still applies.

According to the TLC, taxis charge an initial $2.50, plus 50 cents per half mile or 60 seconds in slow traffic. Under the new rates, Uber X's base fare drops from $3 to $2.55, and the per-minute rate from 40 cents to 35 cents.

According to Uber, in 2012 Uber drivers in NYC carried passengers an average 16 minutes per hour. Now drivers are on the clock 32 minutes per hour, and hourly earnings have increased 33%. Uber credits this to its decision to cut fares in summer of 2014. "If drivers aren't busier as a result of these reductions, prices will go back up again," they said.

Earlier this month, the city quietly released a long-awaited study of the impact of Uber and other for-hire vehicles on traffic, congestion, and pollution in NYC. The findings were mild, and did not recommend a growth cap for the industry, concluding that Uber was not to blame for traffic and pollution issues in the busiest parts of Manhattan.

These findings marked an about-face for the cityas recently as July, Mayor de Blasio was warning New Yorkers about an impending "Uber flood" unless he took swift measures to regulate the industry.

While the startup maintains the right to adjust its fares at will, taxi drivers must charge fares set by the Taxi and Limousine commission. "Uber is keeping its drivers in poverty wages just so that the company can try to monopolize," New York Taxi Workers Alliance Director Bhairavi Desai said in a statement. "This is horrible."

McGuinness Management Corporation, a taxi dispatcher at the corner of McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, had little recourse last year during the notoriously-slow summer months. As parked taxis gathered dust across the lot and along the surrounding side streets, owner Gus Kodogiannis said he could only hope for an uptick in business come Labor Day.
News

84 per cent of Indians think global warming is happening: Survey

The survey also revealed that 54 per cent of Indians either know just a little about global warming or have never heard of it while 9 per cent stated that they knew a lot about global warming.
-- Thomas JeffersonSyndicated columnist Charley Reese (1937-2013): "Gun control by definition affects only honest people. When a politician tells you he wants to forbid you from owning a firearm or force you to get a license, he is telling you he doesnt trust you. Thats an insult. ... Gun control is not about guns or crime. It is about an elite that fears and despises the common people."The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles -- Jeff Cooper (1920-2006)Note for non-American readers: Crime reports from America which describe an offender just as a "teen" or "teenager" almost invariably mean a BLACK teenager.We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."How much do you know about Trayvon Martin? It's all here (Backups here and here An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. -- Robert A. HeinleinAfter all the serious stuff here, maybe we need a funny picture of a cantankerous cat
Living amidst violence rapidly constricting hope for a safer, sustainable, more equitable, and happier community and nation, what is to be done?There's more to be done than I can envision or perhaps even imagine. People who suffer -- whether for being different, for trying to control their bodies, for randomly encountering some gun fetishist, from climate disruption, or simply for lacking cash -- need to be cared for. In some places and moments, some people have to raise a ruckus in the streets.But also, what experience with actual, existing U.S. political power has taught me: in the mid-term elections in the fall of 2022, there are some contests that are vital. Here is a useful list of articles to help you figure out which elections are most important.Or hit me up about volunteer and paid opportunities to join campaigns in Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania: jan.uhreno@gmail
Nicholas Vrooman has been invited to participate in the 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which wraps up Saturday in Elko, Nevada.

Vrooman is one of the originating folklorists of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an international arts and cultural festival that celebrates what it means to be connected to earth, land and big sky country of the American West.

The 32nd Gathering is spotlighting the flowing grasslands, vast open spaces and indigo skies of the Northern Plains, famous for short summers and punishing winters, but also for hardy people, excellent cattle, and fine bucking horses and bronc riders.

Vrooman, who earned his doctorate in History at the University of Montana, runs Northern Plains Folklife Resources based in Helena. A recognized authority on borderlands history, Vrooman was asked to be this years Humanities Scholar, writing an essay for The Gatherings publication and delivering two highlighted addresses titled, Tipping our Hats to the Northern Plains and Sun Dance in Silver Bow: Urban Indian Poverty in the Shadow of the Richest Hill on Earth. Both presentations were sponsored by Nevada Humanities, sister organization of Humanities Montana.

The North Plains has multiple narratives of who we are and from where we come, some of which are concealed, says Vrooman. Finding a voice for these little known stories brings to light narrative threads that flesh out and enhance a deeper meaning for life in the North American West.
A majority of Carroll College faculty supporting unionization voted to appeal a National Labor Relations Board Regional Directors decision that prevents them from organizing.

In his Jan. 19 ruling, NLRB regional director Ronald Hooks found the NLRB does not have jurisdiction over Carroll College because it is a religiously operated institution and the faculty are managerial employees.

"We have decided to appeal the decision, said faculty spokeswoman and English professor Kay Satre Thursday afternoon.

There really was very strong support from a great majority of people out of the 72 percent who had originally signed cards in support of a union, she added. We realize this case raises a lot of difficult questions around the two main issues: whether faculty perform a religious function and whether they carry out managerial duties in enough areas of the college, she said.

We think there is a fair chance of success because, as we interpreted the decision, the administration prevailed by only a slender margin on these two main issues.

The Carroll College administration has opposed the formation of a faculty union.

Carroll President Tom Evans was unavailable to comment when called by a reporter.

Carroll spokesperson Sarah Lawlor, however, sent an email statement that says In terms of the appeal, we believe the national director should uphold the regional directors decision because it is based on law and fact.

Satre said the decision to appeal took a while to reach. We wanted to hear from the majority of those supportive of the union, she said. We polled everybody.

We are one of the first private religious colleges ... after the PLU decision ... (where) tenured, full time faculty are petitioning to unionize, she said. This is somewhat trailblazing.

An NLRB decision in December 2014 regarding Pacific Lutheran University was seen as a promising sign that it could be easier for faculty at private colleges to form unions, according to a Jan. 21 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In fact, Satre has cited the PLU ruling in earlier interviews as a major spur for Carrolls unionizing efforts.

However, the Carroll decision is now being seen as a setback.

As part of that (PLU) ruling, the NLRB held that it would no longer accept at face value colleges assertions that faculty members have managerial roles, the CHE article states, but managerial roles have to be proven.

Prior to the PLU decision, a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision found tenure-line faculty members at private colleges to be de facto managers and therefore ineligible to unionize, according to an article in Inside Higher Education.

The PLU decision also indicated that religious colleges couldnt just automatically block unions on religious grounds, but would have to prove their mission conflicts with collective bargaining.

Thats why the Carroll union bid is so significant, because it is the first major test of these new guidelines, and its getting national attention in higher education circles.

(I)n contrast to a recent string of regional NLRB approvals of adjunct union bids at religious institutions, the Carroll decision backed the colleges claim that its Roman Catholic identity put it outside NLRB jurisdiction, wrote IHE.

In contrast, other NLRB regional director decisions favored proposed bargaining units at Duquesne University, Manhattan College, Saint Xavier University and Seattle University, according to IHE.

The Associated Faculty of Carroll College and MEA-MFT will appeal the NLRB decision to a full NLRB panel in Washington, D.C., Satre said. They can accept or not accept the appeal.

If the panel hears the appeal, its uncertain how long it would be before a decision, she said.

The union, which would be affiliated with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, would represent more than 90 full-time faculty members, including professors, along with assistant and associate professors and instructors.
















So if this guy is going to do 20 tell me...









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SAN DIEGO  A Navy commander accused of diverting ships to Asian ports for a Malaysian contractor offering prostitution services and other gifts pleaded guilty to bribery charges Thursday, marking the eighth conviction in the massive scandal.





Michael Misiewicz is one of the highest ranking Naval officers charged in the case, which is centered on businessman Leonard Francis, nicknamed "Fat Leonard" because of his wide girth. Misiewicz pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery of a public official at a hearing in federal court in San Diego.





He faces up to 20 years in prison if sentenced to the maximum amount for both charges.





His defense lawyers said in a statement that Misiewicz regrets his actions from 2011 to 2012. They went on to say that they plan to show at his sentencing hearing this was an "extreme departure from his otherwise distinguished and honorable 30 plus year career."





Only one defendant of the nine named in the case is still fighting the charges. Prosecutors say the investigation is ongoing and there could be more arrests.





Francis has admitted to providing an exhaustive list of gifts in exchange for classified information that helped his Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., or GDMA, overbill the Navy by at least $20 million. He is awaiting sentencing.





Misiewicz accepted theater tickets, prostitution services and other items, according to the criminal complaint. He provided ship routes to Francis and then they moved ships like chess pieces, diverting them to Pacific ports with lax oversight where GDMA submitted fake tariffs and other fees, prosecutors said.





In 2010, Misiewicz caught the world's attention when he made an emotional return as a U.S. Naval commander to his native Cambodia, where he had been rescued as a child from the violence of the Khmer Rouge and adopted by an American woman. His homecoming was widely covered by international media.





A sentencing hearing was set for April 29.





Lt. Commander Todd Malaki, who has pleaded guilty in the same case, and is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.
























The wait is over for Decatur Brew Works, especially for the first customer who waited in line.

Dreux Lewandowski, one of four partners in the new business, said Brian Bell of Decatur stood outside 101 N. Main St. about an hour to be first through the door at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

We were slammed, Lewandowski said. Our mission is to bring the best American and European craft beers to Decatur, and people are looking for that.

The project started more than a year ago and Lewandowski said it took time to remodel the space and obtain the necessary permits. He said it will be the first time since 1916 Decatur has its own brewing company.

It's long overdue, Lewandowski said. The community didn't have this before. We anticipated a good response.

The grand opening, including a drawing for a free glass of beer every hour, is noon to 10 p.m. Saturday.

Offerings from the 24 taps at the Brew Works include cider and mead and three creations of the brewery's own: D-Town Brown, Bob the Belgian and a Knoweisser wheat beer. Six taps for Decatur-made beer will be used in the future, Lewandowski said.

Beyond that and a few wine choices, however, it's BYOF. Customers are welcome to bring food from home or from a neighboring restaurant.

The trick will be to keep enough beer brewed to meet demand, Lewandowski said. Each batch takes about six hours to brew in the basement of the building, he said.

Lewandowski's partners are Micah Koll, Renee Manring and Stan Rives. Hours are 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 10 p.m. Saturday.

For more, find the brewery on Facebook or call (217) 330-8683.

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A restaurant on Decatur's east side is returning to its original feel after changes in name and ownership.

Shelly's Homestyle Grill opened last month at 566 N. Brush College Road in the former location of Jan's East End Grill. But new owner Shelly Svoboda had worked at the restaurant when Jan Elliott owned it and liked what Elliott had started before retiring in 2014 after 24 years.

I always had a feel for it, said Svoboda, who now owns the business with her husband, Brian.

Svoboda is looking to provide home-cooked meals with fast, friendly service. Daily specials are offered for breakfast and lunch, she said.

Some of the aspects of owning a business are new to Svoboda, but she likes how the changes have gone. Changing the name of the business gives it a fresh start while providing the atmosphere customers had come to enjoy, Svoboda said.

The restaurant is available for private parties and offers catering, she said.

Svoboda said several members of her family are helping out and some of the previous staff has returned.

Hours are 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday when a buffet is served. Call (217) 330-8931 or find the business on Facebook.

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The Korn Krib bar and restaurant in Latham is back up and running with familiar owners.

Greg and Connie Burgett have owned the business at 2371 N. Illinois 121 for about 20 years but with different managers throughout that time.

Now, they've reopened it themselves and are ready to welcome back customers.

A video gaming area has been added, Connie Burgett said. A full menu for lunch and dinner is offered, with specials throughout the week including walleye on Wednesdays and catfish on Fridays, she said.

Parties for various occasions can be booked in advance, Connie Burgett said. She said the place was booked throughout the holiday season.

They've been pleased with how the business has been going, Connie Burgett said.

It's been going pretty good, she said.

The restaurant's Facebook page is updated with the latest specials and events.

Orders for dine-in and carry-out can be placed in advance.

The business opens at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday-Saturday and closes at 11 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and 2 a.m. Friday-Saturday. Lunch is served 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with dinner from 5 to 8:30 p.m.

It is currently closed Sunday and Monday. Call (217) 674-3444.

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On Biz Bits: The Burger King restaurant on East Eldorado Street in Decatur has reopened after being temporarily closed for part of this month for a remodeling project.  Town and Country Bank has reached an agreement to acquire Centrue Bank's facility in Fairview Heights. The deal, part of Town and Country's expansion in the metro-east market of St. Louis, is expected to close late in the second quarter of 2016.
THUMBS UP! To the Macon County Conservation District, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The district was first formed in 1966 with the hopes of turning the Oakley Reservoir into a recreation area. That didnt happen, but since then the district has acquired 3,200 total acres and hosts 35,000 visitors a year. There is currently an exhibit, 50 Years of Conservation, on display at the Rock Springs Nature Center.

THUMBS UP! To the Decatur School Districts Inspired Futures, program, which is adeptly placing high school students in real-world work situations. The program features interns who can gather real world work experience and make sure their selected career fits them. Students work for various companies and in various industries for up to three days a week.

THUMBS UP! To substitute teachers, which fill a vital role in our educational system. As outlined in a story by reporter Valerie Wells last week, substitute teachers not only fill in at the last minute for teachers who are ill, but are also called upon for longer-term assignments. Many of the substitute teachers in the Decatur district and others are well-known and are viewed as valuable, if temporary, members of the education staff. The days of students harassing a substitute teacher may not have disappeared completely, but occur less often when the teachers are regulars.

THUMBS DOWN! To Reps. Adam Brown and Bill Mitchell, both local Republicans, who want to require a photo ID Link card. The two have long contended that the cards, which people on welfare use to buy groceries, are the subject of massive fraud. But they also consistently fail to provide anything but anecdotal evidence, mostly based on hearsay. According to the federal government, the fraud rate in the program is about 1 percent. Its safe to say that if the duo wants to look for fraud in government, there are more productive targets in Illinois.

THUMBS UP! To the Decatur School District, which is rolling out a program where every student in the district will have an iPad device. The districts technology department has worked for months on the program and students are now receiving their new devices. Younger students are receiving iPad Minis and older student get iPad Airs. High school students each received a laptop after their buildings were renovated.

THUMBS UP! To the reopening soon of a ReStore in Decatur. The store, to be located at 932 E. Wood St., will open soon and is already accepting donations. The original store, located on Cerro Gordo Street has been closed for more than year. The store accepts donations of building materials that it then sells to support Habitat for Humanity.
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Laura Baghdasaryan

Director, Region Research Center

AIISA partner expert

We are all hostages of media intoxication, induced to believe in the war, and confined to the simulacrum of war as though confined to quarters. We are already all strategic hostages in situ (Latin-in its original place); our site is the screen on which we are virtually bombarded day by day.

This description by Jean Baudrillard, famous philosopher and culturologist, of real war and its images spreading around, until recently could have been presumed as a classic formula for public perception of not here, but now. Meanwhile times of hot and real wars fell back recently, when different societies in different countries are getting acknowledged on the course and existence of wars not only from video plots, but for instance, from after-effects in their countries of origin.

In terms of facing the real threat of ongoing war not here, but now, even terrorist acts in Paris at last years fall didnt have the same impact, as diverse mass of refugees, flowing from hot countries to theirs. Terrorist acts have certain starting and ending pointsthey can precisely be dated, cant they? But refugee flow is a lasting process bringing financial, interethnic, mental, intercultural, and many other in-depth issues, able to shake systems, sharped for decades. What is crucial, they localize former not here, but now reality.

In this messy and dynamic era every threat is reexamined and redefined that is sometimes accompanied by polar justifications. Especially, when thanks to time peculiarities and wider internet access, from Armenias lookout even events happening in farther corners of the globe are perceived on emotional level, leaving just a net remnant like it is dangerous everywhere.

The situation has changed now. War, as a method to solve geopolitical, geo-economic and domestic policy issues has been decriminalized internationally, and nobody knows when the so-called new international order will be shaped. Additionally two developments (de facto breaking of 20-year ceasefire regime on Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict zone and escalation of Russia-Turkey political relations) have already thickened processes that previously were observed as contiguous, thus, in public discourse actualizing security issues to unprecedented extent as compared to others.

Especially in the second half of 2015 clashes on Armenia-Azerbaijan border, resembling not single firings, but complete acts of war (military operations), marginalized the widely-spread thesis on necessity of peaceful settlement of the conflict with Azerbaijan in Armenian public discourse. However, expectations from political negotiations under successful maintenance of ceasefire regime at large were turned into a manifestation of political romanticism. This can supposedly be marked as Azerbaijans propaganda, but not strategic and real political achievement.

In the aftermath of increase in number of combat losses by 1.5 time both for Armenian and Azerbaijani sides by late 2015 as compared to 2014, we faced a situation described as tensions that reached to the peak (RA Defence Minister S. Ohanyan, 9 December), as a war, since, actually we have no more ceasefire (RA Defence Ministers spokesman A.Hovhannisyan, 22 December), and as a conflict at quite an active phase (CSTO Secretary-general N.Bordyuzha, 28 December).

Against the background of Russia-Turkey tension its Armenian aspect has actively been deliberated after shooting down of Russian SU-24 jet by Turkey (24 November), especially at the first shocking phase:  shock that was reflected in Russian mass media in form of zealous trespassing over almost all Armenia-Turkey controversies and sore spots. As if Russian-Turkish rapprochement was rather intensifying under the imperative of exclusively Armenian and not Russian interests, and as if this rapprochement would have been greeted in Armenian side with welcoming information fireworks.

Meanwhile, Russia-Turkey escalation of November 2015 met the same tension in Armenia, as Russia-Turkey rapid rapprochement was perceived before. And if that rapprochement (that reached its peak in December 2014, by a range of Turkish-Russian bilateral accords signed against the background of sanctions on Russia by the West) bothered Armenia in terms of Russia-Azerbaijan-Turkey likely conspiracy, then ongoing escalations can simply turn Armenia into an arena for Russia-Turkey hostilities. In this case, avoiding others war and clashes will be impossible, in which Armenia succeeded previously (08.08.08 Russia-Georgia and 2014 Russia-Ukraine wars).

Moreover, if prior to November 2015 Turkeys engagement with hostilities against Armenia seemed possible from the so-called secondary positions (Turkey would appear as a strategic and brotherly state of Azerbaijan if the latter waged a war against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh), then under more sharpening of Russia-Turkey relations it may turn into the first actor in military actions against Armenia.

New accords on joint Armenian-Russian air defence, reached in December of the last year by Armenias and Russias Defence Ministers, rather strengthen than console fears on adding alien (Russian-Turkish) disorder to Armenias own war (Karabakh).

There is also another curious metamorphosis with respect to collective security systems. Against the background of scandalous and obviously complete defamation of CSTO in the eyes of Armenian public in December of the same year, NATO still keeps its former reputation for Turkeys deterrence.

In the end, under more tense Russia-Turkey relations the NATO itself will be obliged to stand before the Russian army. Recent developments in the Middle East, first and foremost, Irans unsanctioning internationally speaks that such a scenario is regarded as the last option for NATO.

Improving Security Policy Debates in Armenia Programme (NED)

The Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA)
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Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com and on Twitter @DaveZweifel
A Milwaukee teen who last month led Racine County sheriff deputies and Wisconsin State Patrol troopers on an early-morning chase that reached 130 mph faces three charges in connection to the high-speed incident.

Zyterrius O. Taylor, 16, of the 2500 block of North 36th Street, Milwaukee, appeared in Racine County Circuit Court Thursday after being charged with operating a motor vehicle without owners consent, a felony, attempting to flee officers and obstructing officers, court records showed.

If convicted of the felony, Taylor could face three years in prison.

According to the criminal complaint, Taylor was driving a gold Audi, later found to be stolen from Illinois, on Interstate 94 near Highway C at 8 a.m. on Dec. 20. The car was speeding, so the Racine County sheriffs office pursued the vehicle as it headed north.

Taylor accelerated, reaching 103 and then 110 mph as he reached Highway K, the complaint said. Taylor then hit 130 mph as the car approached Highway G.

The Wisconsin State Patrol and an additional sheriff squad joined the chase, and Taylor finally slowed and stopped near Highway G, the complaint said.

Officers drew their weapons and apprehended Taylor without incident, the complaint said.

Upon investigation, deputies discovered the car Taylor was driving had been reported stolen from Park City, Ill., the complaint said. Taylor allegedly told police he did not know the car was stolen.

Taylor was in Racine County Jail Thursday, online records showed. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Feb. 4.
The Wisconsin Historical Society holds millions of items.

They include Civil War documents, Wisconsin maps, Native American pottery, a carbon fiber Trek bicycle, Holocaust survivor oral histories, childrens clothing from the 1800s and a patch worn into space by Sparta astronaut Deke Slayton on a 1975 Apollo mission.

So when Paul Bourcier, the societys lead curator, laid out boxes last week filled with wooden contraptions made more than 150 years ago by a Marquette County farm boy, it was clear that the pieces were of importance. Each box was affixed with an orange piece of paper that lets curators quickly know which item out of the massive collection should be saved first in the event of a fire or other calamity.

The boxes held the wooden and metal pieces of a clock fashioned in the shape of a scythe; a wooden barometer and parts to a thermometer made up of wooden sprockets that somehow, its not entirely clear, indicated temperature. There was also a less complex dolly jig designed to make a small doll dance.

He had a very scientific mind, said Bourcier. But he also had a sense of humor.

John Muir may be best known for his environmental activism that led to the creation of national parks and the founding of the Sierra Club, but his time in Wisconsin was consumed with farming and tinkering.

Throughout this year, Muirs story will be shared in 25 state communities that have agreed to host a traveling exhibit on the man credited with convincing the U.S. government to protect and establish Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon and Mount Rainier as national parks.

Michael Edmonds, deputy director of the Historical Societys library and archives division, made a point of getting the exhibit into northern Wisconsin, home to the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway.

The people who live there and care about history, and the local historical societies, often are neglected, Edmonds said. The number of exhibits they get asked to host are minuscule.

Wisconsins John Muir explores Muirs youth on two Wisconsin farms, his studies at UW-Madison, his advocacy for national parks and his views on environmental issues such as logging, hunting and climate change in an eight-panel pictorial.

Each community that takes part receives free copies of Muirs memoir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, for a book club discussion. The exhibit runs through Tuesday at the W. J. Niederkorn Library in Port Washington before it traipses through the state over the next 11 months.

Muir was born in 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland, and immigrated to Wisconsin with his father 11 years later. They first settled on a 160-acre farmstead they dubbed Fountain Lake Farm (now Ennis Lake and part of John Muir Memorial County Park) between Montello and Portage. This is where Muirs appreciation for nature began to take root, thanks to woods overlooking a flowery glacial meadow and a lake rimmed with water lilies, according to the Sierra Club.

In his later teens, Muirs family moved to Hickory Hill Farm near Portage where Muir continued making wooden mechanisms. But because his father was such a harsh disciplinarian, he ordered all of the family to go to bed after chores were completed at dusk. He also had little tolerance for his sons inventions.

His father didnt care what time he got up, said Matt Blessing, an archivist who has written about Muir. So what does Muir do? He goes to bed at 8 p.m. and quickly discovers he can get by on four or five hours of sleep. He gets himself up at midnight and goes down into the cellar and (by candle light) begins making inventions he thinks his father will support because theyre going to improve the efficiency of the farm.

One of his creations was a saw blade out of a womens corset that he used in a table saw. A Scottish neighbor encouraged Muir to take his inventions to the 1860 Wisconsin State Fair, at that time held near Camp Randall in Madison. This is where Muir is first publicly noted in an article in the Wisconsin State Journal.

That same year, Muir enrolled at UW-Madison where he lived in North Hall and his room became a curiosity.

Muir had a device that at a set time tipped him out of bed and then lit a lamp. He also invented a clockwork desk that automatically dispensed books from a rack below and kept them on the desk for a set period of time before it would switch to another book. The unconventional-looking desk has been on display in the lobby of the Historical Society since the 1920s.

Its very famous, Edmonds said. You would think the amount of time he put into building it should have been spent on studying.

In an effort to pay for his education, Muir, during the winter of 1861-62, taught in a small log schoolhouse at the intersection of Storytown Road and Sun Valley Parkway about two miles west of Oregon that would later be home to the Lake Harriet School. One of his students described Muir as having an ungroomed look with hair reaching to his shoulders, an unkempt bearing, and poor clothes, according to account by the Oregon Area Historical Society.

Muir left Madison in 1863 for the University of the Wilderness as he called it, and spent time in woodworking factories in Canada and Indianapolis and conducting botanical studies in his spare time. In 1867, he was nearly blinded in an industrial accident and bedridden for nearly a month. The traumatic experience led him to devote the rest of his life to the inventions of God, and to leave his days of inventing behind.

Its travel, its natural science, its the environment, its poetry and a lot of American and European history, Blessing said.

Muir walked to the Gulf of Mexico, before he sailed to Cuba and then to Panama where he crossed the isthmus of Central America and sailed up the West Coast, landing in San Francisco in 1868, according to his Sierra Club biography. Muir herded sheep in Yosemite and by 1874 had launched a writing career that led to hundreds of articles and several critically acclaimed books.

Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and in 1901 wrote Our National Parks, a book that drew the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who signed legislation between 1901 and 1909 creating five national parks. In 1916, Congress created the National Park Service that now oversees more than 400 units.

Muir died in 1914 in Los Angeles.

These are in the crown jewel category for us, Edmonds said as he surveyed some of Muirs work, spread out on a conference table in the Sellery Room of the Societys grand building at State and Park streets and across Langdon Street from Memorial Union.

The walls of the room, named after George Sellery, a former history professor and dean of the UW-Madison College of Letters and Science, are covered with historic images. They include an H.H. Bennett photograph from 1880 of Stand Rock in Wisconsin Dells, a poster from the 1900 Wisconsin State Fair and a painting from 1833 of Nasheakusk, the son of Black Hawk.

John Muir didnt make the walls of the conference room but his years in Wisconsin are seen as formidable and allow us to claim one of the most influential environmentalists in history as our own.
Congress has historically treated drug abuse as a malady afflicting mostly poor, minority communities, best dealt with by locking people up for long periods of time. The epidemic of drug overdose deaths currently ravaging white populations in cities and towns across the country has altered this line of thinking, and forced lawmakers to acknowledge that addiction is a problem that knows no racial barriers and can be best addressed with treatment.

This realization is driving bipartisan support in Washington for saner, less punitive drug policies, some of which Congress had steadfastly resisted for decades.

Recently, Congress effectively lifted a destructive, longstanding ban that prevented state and local governments from using federal money on needle exchange programs. These programs have been shown to slow the spread of HIV and other infections by giving intravenous drug users access to clean needles. A similar shift in attitude is reflected in bills such as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which is pending in both houses of Congress. Its purpose is to expand and improve drug treatment services nationwide.

The need for such services was underscored in a recent Times analysis based on data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It shows that drug overdose deaths driven primarily by addiction to prescription painkillers and heroin had increased in nearly every county between 2002 and 2014, a year when more than 47,000 people  an average of about 125 a day  died of overdoses. Some medical experts likened the toll to the HIV epidemic in the 1990s, but with this difference: Then, HIV deaths were mainly centered in urban centers; now, rural areas have higher drug overdose death rates than large cities.

Drug addiction has been especially visible in New Hampshire, where voters have been raising the issue with visiting presidential candidates. The deadly drug of choice in New Hampshire is a brand of heroin mixed with a highly potent painkiller called fentanyl. ...In Appalachia, deaths frequently occur among injured workers who become addicted to widely prescribed painkillers.

In addition to driving up mortality rates, excessive use of painkillers costs the country tens of billions of dollars in lost productivity, medical complications and higher insurance costs.

The Recovery Act would attack these problems on several fronts. For starters, it would direct the secretary of health and human services to convene an interagency task force to develop a system of best practices for prescribing pain medications that would then be conveyed to doctors. It would authorize the attorney general to make grants to state and local governments, nonprofit agencies, and other entities to assist them on several fronts: expanding or developing alternatives to incarceration, such as treatment, for defendants who meet certain criteria; improving educational opportunities for offenders in jails, prisons and juvenile detention facilities; making more widely available the drug naloxone, which reverses the effects of an overdose; creating high-quality drug treatment programs; and establishing places where people with unused medications can safely dispose of them.

A particularly important provision in the bill would help states strengthen prescription drug monitoring systems. Insurers would be able to track pharmacies that illegally dispense drugs, as well as consumers who get unnecessary prescriptions from multiple doctors, either to satisfy their own habits or to sell them to other parties. The prescription data would also allow addiction treatment programs to make sure that patients take only the drugs required for their treatment regimens.

The act represents a rational approach to drug policy. It would be a first step in a long and difficult struggle to get the national addiction crisis under control. ...
Cyprus PIO: Turkish Cypriot and Turkish Media Review, 16-01-28 Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office Server at <http://www.pio.gov.cy/> TURKISH CYPRIOT AND TURKISH MEDIA REVIEW No. 18/16 28.01.2016 [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Siber: "The Turkish Cypriots will not accept a solution that will not envisage Turkey's guarantees in Cyprus" [02] Elcil: "The ambassador speaks the language of CHP and MHP" [03] Kalyoncu: We shall finalizing the water issue after meeting with Turkish officials [04] Excavations are taking place today in two military zones in occupied Mia Milia and Agios Georgios Keryneia villages [05] Number of vehicles registered in the breakaway regime for 2015 [06] The occupation regime participated in a tourism fair in Dublin [07] Illegal YDU received European Network of Engineering Education [08] Turkey's NSC discussed Syrian crisis, Turkey-EU relations and Cyprus issue [09] Columnist: "Is the Cyprus problem nearing a solution?" [10] Erdogan to visit South America [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Siber: "The Turkish Cypriots will not accept a solution that will not envisage Turkey's guarantees in Cyprus" Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (28.01.16) under the title: "Turkey undertakes all the necessary steps towards the solution of the Cyprus problem", reports on statements by the "speaker" of the so-called assembly Sibel Siber who evaluated to Ankara Anatolia news agency the latest stage of the Cyprus negotiation process and Turkey's role to the process as a guarantor country. Referring to the contacts she held yesterday with high level officials in Ankara and with Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for Cyprus Affairs Tugrul Turkes, Siber alleged that Turkey has always supported the solution of the Cyprus problem and it has shown a clear and lucid stance. "Turkey always sent positive messages; it supports the negotiation process and it undertakes steps towards the solution. Turkey is always by our side and its support is important", Siber said. Referring to the issue of "guarantees", Siber argued: "Turkey's guarantees are a security for us and the stance of the Turkish Cypriots towards this is clear. A solution which will not envisage Turkey's guarantees will not be accepted by the Turkish Cypriot people". Siber added further that that the guarantees issue will be discussed at the end of the talks by the Greek Cypriot side, the Turkish Cypriot side, Turkey, Greece and the UK in a five-partite summit. Asked to evaluate the interconnection of Turkey's EU bid with the Cyprus problem and the fact that the "Greek Cypriot administration", as the Republic of Cyprus is called, blocks the opening of chapters for Turkey, Siber said: "In fact, it shouldn't be like this. It is unacceptable the connection of the Cyprus problem with Turkey's ties with the EU". "We demand by the Greek Cypriot side, which is a member of the EU, not to put obstacles in Turkey's EU bid and not to block Turkey's EU bid, since, Turkey is at present in favor of the solution of the Cyprus problem", she added. Referring to the issue of the energy sources in the Eastern Mediterranean, Siber expressed the wish that these would not bring pain and create distress in the region. On the ongoing Cyprus negotiation process, Siber reminded of the fact that the process is carryied out on the basis of the federation model and added that in this framework, the two founding states to be, will be established under the umbrella of a "federal state" and will have their own "government" and "assembly". "We wish a fair and viable solution of the Cyprus problem. Our wish is the rotating presidency. Without a rotating presidency, we will not consider ourselves as equal partners. We want the president of the federal state to be, to be elected by turns", Siber also said. Siber added further that due to the so-called embargoes, the voice of the "TRNC" is not possible to be heart in the international community and called for the lifting of the "embargoes". (AK) [02] Elcil: "The ambassador speaks the language of CHP and MHP" Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (28.01.16) under the above title, reports that the chairman of the Turkish Cypriot Teacher's Trade Union (KTOS) Sener Elcil, in a written statement yesterday, condemned strongly the so-called Turkish ambassador to the occupied area of Cyprus Derya Kanbay and supported that the "ambassador" speaks the language of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Elcil added that Kanbay's views are opposite to the views of the AKP towards the issue of the federal solution in Cyprus. Supporting that Turkey implements a colonial policy in the "northern part of the island", Elcil accused Turkey of its imposition policies in the "TRNC". (AK) [03] Kalyoncu: We shall finalizing the water issue after meeting with Turkish officials According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 27.01.16), self-styled prime minister Omer Kalyoncu said that work on determining how the water being pumped from Turkey is to be managed is expected to be finalized in the coming days. Commenting on the issue before entering a "council of ministers" meeting, Kalyoncu said that the careful and detailed deliberations on a sensitive and crucial issue such as water are only natural. He said that work to ensure that the water is brought to the people at the highest possible standard and quality is continuing. "We shall be finalizing the issue in the coming days after meeting with officials from Turkey" he said. Also commenting on the escalation of the war of words between self-styled communication minister Tahsin Ertugruloglu and the "ombudsperson" Emine Dizdarl? over a tender awarded to a company to audit services at occupied airport of Tymbou, Kalyoncu said that it is wrong for the issue to be handled this way. "From journalists to ordinary citizens, everyone is involved and has taken sides. This is not the way to go about it. Our legal experts are looking into the matter", he said. [04] Excavations are taking place today in two military zones in occupied Mia Milia and Agios Georgios Keryneia villages Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (28.01.16) reports that the office of the Turkish Cypriot Member of the Committee of the Missing Persons announced that excavations are taking place today in two military zones in occupied Mia Milia and Agios Georgios Keryneia villages. According to the Committee, the excavations are taking place in areas that there is information that can lead to findings of new evidence for missing persons. In occupied Mia Milia there is information about the remains of a Greek Cypriot soldier and in occupied Agios Georgios Keryneia about the remains of three Greek Cypriot soldiers. (CS) [05] Number of vehicles registered in the breakaway regime for 2015 Turkish Cypriot daily Havadis newspaper (28.01.16) reports that the system of renewing the road tax license faces many problems leading the breakaway regime to lose millions. According to the paper, around 25,000 vehicles did not renew its road tax in 2015 while 102,000 other deleted their registration. The paper adds that 175,982 vehicles were registered in 2015 and only 135,406 of them pay for the road tax and as a result the breakaway regime received only 80, 316,270 Turkish Lira. In statements to the paper, the chairman of the "vehicles importers and sellers" Ibrahim Akin, stated that the breakaway regime must adopt the European standards on the issue noting that this is the only solution for clearing things up. (CS) [06] The occupation regime participated in a tourism fair in Dublin Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (28.01.16) reports that the so-called ministry of tourism represented the occupation regime in "The Holiday World Show 2016" fair which took place in Dublin, Ireland on January 22-24. According to a statement issued by the so-called ministry, in the framework of the fair, "officials" of the so-called ministry and "representatives" of the "tourism sector" held contacts with several tour operators from the EU, Ireland and the UK. [07] Illegal YDU received European Network of Engineering Education Turkish Cypriot daily Havadis newspaper (28.01.16) reports that the Faculty of engineering of the illegal Near East University (YDU) has been given the accreditation of the European Network of Engineering Education (ENAEE). According to the paper this is the highest accreditation for this field of study. (CS) [08] Turkey's NSC discussed Syrian crisis, Turkey-EU relations and Cyprus issue Turkish daily Milliyet (28.01.16) reports that the first regular meeting of the National Security Council (MGK) in 2016, which brings together top civilian and military officials, lasted for almost seven hours on Jan. 27, as Ankara has been increasingly alarmed over the prospects of the inclusion of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in planned U.N.-backed talks on Syria. Turkish top officials also discussed other critical matters mainly focusing on the anti-terror operations against the PKK and Daesh, Turkey-EU relations and the Cyprus problem. According to Turkish daily Sabah (online, 27.01.16), the National Security Council concluded that Turkey's determination to continue its support to the Turkmens in North-western Syria who are being targeted by the Russian airstrikes will continue. The Council reiterated determination to fight against terror and Turkey's stance on the Syrian crisis, adding that a solution to the atrocities in the country cannot be achieved with the President Bashar al-Assad, or the Democratic Union Party (PYD) terrorist organization, which is the Syrian wing of the PKK. [09] Columnist: "Is the Cyprus problem nearing a solution?" Columnist and former Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis, writing in Turkish daily Today's Zaman (online, 27.01.16), pointed out the two main reasons of being difficult to find a solution to the Cyprus problem in the following commentary: "There have been signs of optimism coming from officials deeply involved in the Cyprus problem. They have re-emphasized their hope that a solution is likely in 2016. This hope was also expressed last week by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu during his talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron. One of the differences in the present attitudes of the Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders, Mustafa Akinci and Nikos Anastasiades, respectively, from previous attitudes is that they seem to be more target-oriented. In the words of someone closely involved in the process, 'The leaders and their teams do not defend positions but actively seek solutions'. The intricacies of the problem are the same as in the past. Some of the major thorny issues include security and guarantees, property, power-sharing and a rotating presidency. I will discuss only two of these issues in order to point out the difficulty in overcoming them: property and security. Property The property issue constitutes one of the most difficult topics. Tens of thousands of Cypriots on both sides had to leave their homes after Turkey's military intervention in 1974. Turkish Cypriots living in the south of the island had to move to the north and settled in houses vacated by Greek Cypriots. Similarly, Greek Cypriots moved into houses vacated in the south by Turkish Cypriots. Some of the houses were sold by the original owners to the new occupants. Therefore, the problem seems to be solved, but only for this group that constitutes a small number, as a bigger unsolved property issue still remains. A new group will find themselves dealing with this property issue when the border delineating the boundary between Turkish and Greek parts of the island is redrawn. Turkish Cypriots who will have to be evicted from their ancestral homes or from the homes they have lived in for more than 40 years will have to be resettled in a new place and be provided the opportunity for livelihood. This will require more than $10 billion. Such a huge sum is not readily available. The European Union and the international community are expected to come forward and cover at least part of this cost. Furthermore, Cyprus may take long-term loans from international financial institutions, which would be paid back with money that the solution of the Cyprus problem could generate. But Cypriots of neither side will find any incentive to vote in favor of this solution in a referendum if the money is not promised to be paid back immediately. Security Security is another serious issue in the solution process. There is a general understanding that this topic will be left until the end of the talks because it is what lies behind the mutual distrust between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. This issue has three parts: The first is the guarantees enshrined in the 1960 and 1961 London and Zurich agreements. These guarantees are provided by the three guarantor powers that established the Republic of Cyprus, which are Turkey, the United Kingdom and Greece. The second is the question of the presence of the Turkish military unit in Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots attach great importance to the Turkish military presence because the atrocities they suffered at the hands of Greek Cypriot activists are still fresh in their minds. They perceive the insistence of the Greek Cypriots on getting rid of the Turkish military presence as an indication of their intention to attack the Turks again in the future. Similarly, the Greek Cypriots perceive Turkey's insistence to keep its military presence on the island as an indication of its intention to intervene again militarily in the future. The third part of the security issue is the separate police force for Turkish and Greek Cypriots in addition to a federal police force. Reaching an agreement on these and other issues is not impossible, but it needs hard work and determination. After the leaders reach an agreement, they will have the harder task of persuading their respective electorates to vote in favour of the solution in a referendum to be held at the end of the process. There are reasons for optimism this time, but mine is still a cautious optimism." [10] Erdogan to visit South America Turkish state channel TRT (online, 27.01.16) broadcast that Turkey's President Press Office on Wednesday issued an official statement saying that Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is going to visit South American countries in order to strengthen economic relations. The Turkish President will visit Chile, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador from Jan. 31 to Feb. 5. Erdogan's three-nation Latin America tour will be very important for the development of Turkey's bilateral relations with these countries, according to Turkish officials. The President will first head to Chile on Jan. 31 and will stay there until Feb. 2, when he will go to Peru. On Feb 3, he will go to Ecuador. "On the visits, bilateral political and economic issues will be discussed as well as regional and international developments," the statement said. Erdogan's trip to Chile will be the second visit to the country in nearly 20 years. It will be the first visit to Peru and Ecuador by a Turkish President, the statement added. The President will preside over the signing of a series of important agreements which are expected to cover areas such as economic and technical assistance, industrial investment, infrastructure development and technical and scientific exchanges among the countries. Erdogan is also expected to address Turkish and South American business people on his visit. The trade volume between Turkey and Chile was $417 million in the first 11 months of last year, a decrease from $921 million in the same period of 2014. Chile's former President, Sebastian Pinera, visited Turkey in 2012, when he signed a number of agreements as part of a strategic partnership framework. Chile was the first Latin American country with which Turkey signed a free trade agreement. TURKISH AFFAIRS SECTION http://www.moi.gov.cy/pio (AK/ AM) Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-29 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Greek bank deposits up in Dec.; down 23% in 2015 [02] PM receives EIB president Werner Hoyer; discusses SME financing, growth [01] Greek bank deposits up in Dec.; down 23% in 2015 Bank deposits by individuals and enterprises grew by around 3.0 billion euros in December 2015 to 123.4 billion, from 120.9 billion euros a month earlier, the Bank of Greece said on Friday. The central bank, in a monthly report, said that bank deposits amounted to 160.3 billion euros in December 2014, losing 23 pct in 12 months. The Bank of Greece also said that in December 2015, the annual growth rate of total credit extended to the domestic private sector stood at -2.0 pct from -2.2 pct in the previous month. The monthly net flow of total credit to the domestic private sector was positive at 210 million euros, compared with a negative net flow of 458 million in the previous month. In December 2015, the monthly net flow of credit to corporations was positive at 355 million euros, compared with a negative net flow of 176 million in the previous month, while the annual growth rate of credit stood at -0.9 pct, against -1.4 pct in the previous month. In December 2015, the monthly net flow of credit to individuals and private non-profit institutions was negative at 98 million euros, compared with a negative net flow of 256 million in the previous month, and its annual growth rate stood at -3.1 pct, from -3.2 pct in the previous month. [02] PM receives EIB president Werner Hoyer; discusses SME financing, growth Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday received European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer, who is visiting Athens. They discussed development issues and the EIB's contribution to the financing of small and medium-sized businesses in Greece. Specifically, they examined the activation of a second pillar of the Institute for Growth (IfG), also known as the Hellenic Investment Fund, which calls for the IfG's participation in SME share capital, as well as the transfer of knowhow concerning the absorption of funds from the Juncker programme. Finally, the meeting also raised issues linked to the creation of a state-run development bank in Greece that is underway, initiated by the current government. The meeting was also attended by Economy Minister George Stathakis. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
In August 2008 Bun Rany, the wife of the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, led Buddhist monks and soldiers to the site of the historic Hindu temple Preah Vihear to call upon their ancestors to protect the temple.

The site of this temple is located on disputed land, perched atop a cliff on Cambodian soil but with the most accessible entrance to the site located on the Thai side of the border.

This 11th century temple is located on the border between the two countries, but the borderline itself has never been clearly demarcated because the area is littered with landmines left over from decades of war.

Ownership of the temple was originally awarded to Cambodia, but dispute between the two countries flared up when Preah Vihear was granted United Nations World Heritage status.

Desperate to resolve the issue, both sides deployed military forces  but when they were unable to reach a solution to the conflict, Cambodia and Thailand resorted to supernatural means.

Fearing that the magical abilities of Cambodias Buddhist monks would weaken Thailand, residents throughout the province of Si Sa Ket wore yellow to help protect Thailand from Cambodian magic.

Though Buddhism is not often thought of as a religion that practices magic, in such communities as those found in Thailand and Cambodia, there can be no doubt that Buddhism shares common ground with belief systems that are primarily associated with the use of magic.

Both countries have a long history of engagement in spiritualist and animistic magical practices. When Buddhism first arrived in these areas it came into contact with pre-existent traditions that believed in spirits, both benevolent and malevolent, and a developed system of magic which was to be feared or revered, depending on whether or not it was used for good or ill.

For Buddhism to flourish under such conditions in Thailand, it was necessary to develop a complex system of interaction between Buddhism and what has been called the Spirit religions.

Debate still exists as to whether or not the two systems have become completely integrated or not, although the interaction of the two systems is sometimes referred to as an example of syncretism.

On the subject of interaction between Buddhism and the Spirit religions in Thailand, the academician B.J. Terwiel says the following:

When I interviewed villagers in Central Thailand on the relationship between Buddhist and non-Buddhist aspects of their religion, a variety of reactions were observed. The more sophisticated informants generally stated that the Lord Buddha had never forbidden rituals of ancient origin.

Other persons hesitatingly made up their minds with regard to the orthodoxy of the ritual, but on subsequent occasions contradicted their own judgment. Many were at a loss to classify rituals or beliefs under rubrics such as Buddhist and non-Buddhist.1

It would appear from this statement that the boundary between the use of magic by the indigenous tradition of Thailand and the practice of Buddhism is not apparent to many of the inhabitants of Thailand themselves.

This is most likely due to the fact that the people of rural Thailand are raised in a society where the two systems are found closely entwined together.

The religious traditions of Thailand have always included the belief in spirits and the ability to manipulate them by means of magic.

For example in Thailand preservation of the spirit of life (khwan) is considered to be of the utmost importance, as is ensuring that malevolent spirits (phii) do not enter the body.

Control of these spirits is greatly emphasised in rural Thai culture, as the service of these spirits can be employed to improve the qualities of day to day existence.

Magic and the Sangha

In the lives of ordinary Thai people, more value is placed upon the improvement of their current existence than on transcending the cycle of rebirth, as is advocated by Buddhism.

The relationship between the members of the Sangha (community of Buddhist monks) and the practitioners of magic in Thailand combine in a variety of ways, as one system (the Spirit religions) deals with the aspects of gain in this world (laukika), whilst the other (Buddhism) advocates the importance of salvation and ideas of transcendence (lokottara).

This relationship is complicated even further by the fact that in Thailand almost every adult male will become a member of the Sangha at some stage in his life, for in rural areas the taking of vows is considered to be an essential element in preparation for adult life.

Given the wide range of magic and animistic beliefs which operate within rural Thailand, these men will carry a variety of beliefs and practices with them into the Sangha, not all compatible with the ethics of Buddhism.

In accordance with this, religious opinions are not questioned during ordination. As a direct result, villagers can be found entering the Sangha for a variety of reasons, as is reflected in the following Thai rhyme:

Ordination to fulfil a promise to the Gods,

Ordination to escape poverty,

Ordination to flee from a wife,

Ordination to save money,

Ordination to eat better food than at home,

Ordination to join ones friends in the monastery.2

Thai belief does not only consist of beneficial Gods and spirits. It also abounds with belief in ferocious spirits of pure malevolence, from who the villagers seek magical protection.

Amongst these classes of malevolent spirits are such beings as the preed (a giant, looming shape with a small head that emits a sharp, piercing sound, as a reflection of its past sins), the phii krasy (a type of parasite which inhabits human bodies, feeds on excrement, and is shaped like a human head with entrails protruding from beneath), and the phii baan (the ghosts of ancestors that hover around their previous home and watch their descendants with malignant jealousy).

Whilst it is possible for these spirits to be exorcised, Buddhism chooses to deal with their interfering presence in another way; the correct approach for a Buddhist to cause these spirits to cease meddling in the affairs of their human victims is to preach to them, thus converting the spirits involved to a more benign nature.

There are certain canonical texts which serve this purpose of protection, which can also be recited at specific times in order to avert misfortune.

These texts are known as the phraa parit. The source of the magical power of these texts has not yet been clearly identified, but Y. Ishii, author of Sangha, State & Society: Thai Buddhism in History, claims that whilst some possessed a magical content from the beginning, as modifications of Hindu rites, others such as the Mangalasutta originally had no magical connotations.3

Indeed, for most people, including some who chant them, the parit are incomprehensible, being in Pali. Rather, I believe, the magic of the parit stems from three factors: the social recognition that parit should be chanted for certain purposes (e.g. blessing); the existence of an established formula for their chanting; and the sanctity attributed to the chanter.4

The use of parit is a means by which to ensure protection; it provides good luck and disperses misfortune whether caused by the presence of spirits or not.

As is seen in the above passage the presence of magic being used by the Sangha is not overtly explicit in the parit texts, rather it is interpreted to be so by the lay audience.

They do not understand the words the monks recite, but because of the respected state of the Sangha in Thailand, the lay community assumes that it must be not only beneficial, but also powerful.

Amulets

Another type of magic practiced by the Thai Sangha is the manufacture of amulets. These amulets are employed for a variety of reasons, including protection from diseases, black magic and accidents.

Of these amulets the ones portraying the Buddha are the most popular, although some also are made in the likeness of famous monks and King Chulalongkorn (also known as Rama V, one of Thailands most revered kings).

The sanctity of the subjects portrayed upon the amulets is a reflection of the beneficial powers they are thought to contain.

The Buddha images vary in size, from anywhere between two and eight centimetres, and can be manufactured from wood, metal, ivory or resin, although frequently they are made from a selected combination of these elements, pressed into a mould and baked.5

To create a pressed or printed image (phraaphim), a monk needs not only a mould, recipe and the proper ingredients; he also requires an advanced knowledge of spells and sacred script.6

The inherent sanctity of the amulet is not always thought to be sufficient; hence its power needs to be enhanced by means of the correct recitation of spells and sacred scripts. The most simple of these sacralisation rites is known as plugseeg.7

At the culmination of plugseeg the monk will either blow upon the Buddha image or draw over the amulet with the index finger of his right hand.8

During the manufacture of amulets the Sangha is also invited to perform a consecration rite known as phutthaphisek.9

The use of magic within the phuttaphisek is illustrated by the fact that it is desirable for at least one of the monks participating in the phutthaphiseek to be either advanced in meditative technique or in the Brahmanic rites known as saiyasat.10

These rites are intimately entwined with another type of Thai ritual, namely the ceremony held to consecrate Buddha images which infuse the representation with the auspicious wisdom and power associated with Prince Siddharthas victory over the demon Mara and the obtainment of enlightenment by Siddhartha.

During this ritual monks chant in Pali or preach in Northern Thai several texts including the Buddha Abhiseka (Consecrating the Buddha [Image]).11 This text focuses on the powers of the mind attained by the Buddha that are associated with his enlightenment. Both the consecration of images and amulets draws their impetus from this core idea.

One specific example of a text dealing with the extraordinary supernatural powers of the Buddha that occupies a position of prominence in Thailand is Bimbas Lament. (Bimba is the Buddhas wife, who he left to pursue the life of an ascetic.)

By his magical power he created a crystal path in the sky from the eastern boundary of the city of Kapilavastu to its western perimeter. Then, ascending into the air, the Tathagata, surrounded by many previous Buddhas, walked on the sky-bridge he had miraculously created he also preformed other miracles, such as appearing to walk above the heads of the Sakyans.12

Tattooing is another magical practice that is widespread throughout Thailand. At some stage in their adult life many Thai males will receive a tattoo of some description or another.

This is of significance because in the culture of rural Thailand tattoos are representative of magical power. The magical power of these tattoos stems in part from the tattooist, for whilst both layman and monk may be a tattooist, there is vast difference in the scope of their work and the designs used.

The types which may be employed by the monk are restricted. As a monk, he is limited to tattooing the upper parts of the body, for not only would it be seen as sexual misconduct on the part of the monk to tattoo the lower areas, the upper parts of the body represent the higher, more spiritual aspects of humanity, whereas the lower regions represent mankinds more base, animalistic attributes.

The tattoos done by the monk are also limited in application. The monk may bestow tattoos that are of a beneficial or protective nature. Other tattoos, such as those which bestow things such as sexual virility, can only be performed by members of the lay community.

Another Thai rite involving magical skills of the members of the Sangha is the Wong Dai Sai (Encircling with Holy Thread).13 This is a type of consecration rite designed to protect a place from evil.

It is believed that the consecrated place will be protected by the power of the Three Gems and the phraa parit.14 During this rite cotton is affixed to an image of the Buddha, stretched clockwise (as is the way of beneficial magic; anticlockwise is considered to be used for evil purposes) around the place to be consecrated, and finally wound back to its point of origin, at the Buddha image.15

If the thread should snap at any stage, it is considered to be an ill omen.

The main doctrinal link between Buddhism and the Spirit religions is found in the incidences where magic is employed by the Sangha as a transfer of merit.

The theory of the transference of merit is based upon the concept that when a member of the lay community performs a virtuous deed, such as making a donation or feeding a monk, the Gods witness the act and empathise with the process. The Sangha themselves are referred to as being a field for merit (na bun), as is found in the Sanghnussati-bhavana.

Well practiced is the Exalted Ones Order of Disciples, practiced in integrity, practiced in intellectual methods, in right lines of action  to wit the four pairs, the eight groups of persons  this is the Exalted Ones Order of Disciples, worthy of offerings, oblations, gifts, salutations, the worlds peerless field for merit.16

Monks Superior Magical Status

The greater the purity of the monk, the more magical power/merit he is said to generate. The sanctity of the monk himself is the source of belief in the efficacy of his magical power. The magical power that is generated by the monk is also classed as being superior to that of the layman, but by its very nature it is also more limited in its application.

A monk is also deemed to be superior to a spirit, and thus a monk should never be seen to supplicate himself before a spirit. When a member of the Sangha addresses a spirit, he never raises his hands in supplication, in contrast to the layman who will raise his hands when requesting a favour from a spirit.

The superior magical status of the monk stems from his purity; the monk must not do anything to compromise his superior position.

Part of the magical power which results from the monks purity is derived from celibacy. A monk should never touch a female (human or animal), and is forbidden to even receive an object that is directly given to him by a woman.17

In order to receive an object given by a woman, the monk must first take a piece of cloth and place it upon the floor, upon which the woman will then place the gift in whilst the monk holds the edges of the cloth.18

The cloth is used as a medium by which to transfer merit since there can be no direct contact between a monk and a woman. The merit flows from the fingers of the monk holding the cloth, to the woman who has donated the cloth.

The medium of cloth must be used so as not to deprive the female donor of the merit she would otherwise not receive.

One of the reasons for which a monk may not have contact with women is not only due to the temptation of sexual misconduct, but also because women are believed to be associated with a type of magical power said to be diametrically opposed to that of the monk.19

This is due to the fact that menstruation is associated with dangerous magical power, and is classed as being capable of destroying some of the beneficial power of the Sangha.20

Another aspect of magic in Thailand which needs to be considered is the import of magical systems via India. The branch of Buddhism found in Thailand is an older form known as Theravada, and its links to Hinduism are much stronger than those of the later Buddhist schools.

For example, in the book A Summary of the Seven Books of the Abhidhamma (Abhidhamma Chet Khamphi Ruam) there are elements of cosmology, cosmogony, buddhology, ethics, epistemology and language that are integrated into a yantric/mantric system.21

This system is very much similar to that found in Indian magic, and it is reasonable to assume that many of the formulas found within are directly based on the use of Hindu mantras. These are broken down into component syllables for recitation by the Buddhist practitioner.

The mantra Namo Buddhaya (Homage to the Buddha), is correlated with the five vowels, symbolising the five elements (dhatu)  water, earth, fire, air and atmosphere.

Furthermore, in the following passage from the Seven Books of Abhidahamma, we also find a formula which contains correlations with the Hindu Tantric Yoga techniques, dividing the body into a solar right and lunar left, and creating what appears to be Buddhist chakra centres.

This integration of the occult, Tantra and Buddhism is by no means unique for it is prolific in Tibetan Buddhist texts and practices.

Na = the Buddha Kakusandha at the right eye

Mo = the Buddha Konagamana at the left eye

Bhud = the Buddha Kassapa at the back

Dha = the Buddha Gotama at the naval

Ya = the Buddha Ariya Metteyya at the forehead 22

Transmission of Occult Techniques

One possible explanation of how this similarity between Thai Buddhist and Hindu occult techniques occurred can be found by examining the magical history of a third South East Asian country  namely Myanmar (Burma).

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Burmese kings imported large numbers of Sanskrit texts from India on topics such as medicine, alchemy, incantation and astrology.23

In Burma, these Buddhist wizards are practitioners of what is called the weikza-lam (path of occult knowledge). This tradition still exists today in Burma, and the largest of the groups practicing this occult path is based in the city of Pegy, and is called the Manosetopad Gaing.

Like their Thai counterparts, this organisation bases an interest in the occult on the powers attained by the Buddha on the path to enlightenment. They also believe that the relics of the Buddha (Burmese dat-daw) (Pali dhatu) are possessed of a kind of majestic power that he infused in them through the force of his samadhi.24

The similarity between this branch of Burmese magic with that of the Thai people is amply illustrated in the following extract from a magical treatise by the Manosetopad Gaing:

A person wishing to practice the path must first suffuse his mind with thoughts of the Three Jewels, and cultivate loving kindness toward the various grades of nats the nats referred to here include powerful nature spirits dwelling in trees, the earth, and mountains, minor deities who preside over the use of magical incantations and diagrams, and medicine spirits whose domain includes the well-known herbs and minerals of alchemical lore.25

From this passage it is clear that the Manosetopad Gaing not only use Buddhist motifs, they are also drawing upon a much older tradition of Spirit religions and animistic world views.

These Buddhist wizards, however, are also drawing upon Hindu texts on supernatural lore; and if such texts entered the Burmese magico-religious system then it is entirely possible that influences from India may help to explain what appears to be a yantric/mantric tradition within the Thai Seven Books of Abhidahamma.

With their magical prowess and the protection of the Sangha, why do the Thai people fear the magic of the Cambodians? Cambodia is also a country with a long history of occult practices.

For instance, in the Khmer book The Tale of Ancient History there is a legend of Prince Chey Ahca who led a ghost army against the Siamese  Siam being an earlier name for Thailand.

More recently, we also find record of Po Kambo, who in 1866 protested against French colonial rule and was alleged to know a magical formula that deflected bullets.

Even as recently as the 1970s and 1990s, Khmer soldiers utilised magical tattoos, in a similar manner to that of their Thai enemies, and used mantras written in Pali and Sanskrit, the holy languages of Buddhism and Hinduism, to protect them in battle.

All of the magic employed by the Sangha in Thailand is based on one important concept: the sanctity and purity of the Sangha themselves.

The forms of magic the Sangha use is limited in scope by this fact, for they can use only what is generally referred to as white magic: that which benefits another and causes no harm. Use of magic to harm another or for personal gain would result in expulsion from the Sangha.

Similarly, a monk may not use magic that serves to improve the virility of a layman or create love charms, as this could severely impair the powers of the monk which stem from his sexual abstention.

A monk may not request the spirit world for aid, for this would compromise the superior status of the monk who is deemed to be beyond the mundane affairs of this world.

Whilst the power of the Sangha is more limited in application than that of laymen, it is also deemed as stronger for it stems from other worldly sources, as opposed to the spirits who remain bound to this world.

As such, villagers come to the monk knowing that when they treat the monk with a proper attitude of respect, the cosmic forces shall share their merit and transfer it to demonstrate approval. The transfer of merit thus benefits not only the Sangha, but the laity as well  even providing protection in times of conflict.

By Gwendolyn Toynton, New Dawn Magazine | References:

1. B.J. Terwiel, Monks and Magic: An Analysis of Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand (Curzon Press, 1975), 3.

2. Ibid., 20.

3. Y. Ishii, Sangha, State & Society: Thai Buddhism in History (University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 21.

4. Ibid., 21.

5. B.J. Terwiel, Monks and Magic: An Analysis of Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand, 74.

6. Ibid., 75.

7. Ibid., 77.

8. Ibid., 78

9. Y. Ishii, Sangha, State & Society: Thai Buddhism in History, 23.

10. Ibid., 25.

11. D. K. Swearer, Consecrating the Buddha, in ed. D. S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism in Practice (Princeton University Press, 1995), 50.

12. D. K. Swearer, Bimbas Lament, in ed. D. S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism in Practice (Princeton University Press, 1995), 543.

13. Y. Ishii, Sangha, State and Society: Thai Buddhism in History, 22.

14. Ibid., 22.

15. Ibid., 22.

16. Ibid., 14.

17. B.J. Terwiel, Monks and Magic: An Analysis of Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand, 114.

18. Ibid., 114.

19. Ibid., 115.

20. Ibid., 115.

21. D. K. Swearer, A Summary of the Seven Books of Abhidamma, in ed. D. S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism in Practice (Princeton University Press, 1995), 336-7.

22. Ibid., 340.

23. P. Pranke, On Becoming a Buddhist Wizard, in ed. D. S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism in Practice (Princeton University Press, 1995), 343.

24. Ibid., 345.

25. Ibid., 351.

Copyright New Dawn Magazine. If you appreciated this article, please consider a digital subscription. | Image source: GETTY
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Either way, what Springfield needs to do is to break up the CPS into more manageable independent school districts with separately elected school boards and taxing authority.

As it currently looks, an absolutely golden opportunity to strengthen our democracy as Al Smith would have approved is being presented to Governor Rauner in the form of the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) financial crisis. According to recent reports CPS is facing an $800 Million funding gap for the upcoming school year. Mayor Emanuel might even categorize this as a crisis. If so, it should not be wasted.

One of my favorite governors in US History is Democratic Governor Al Smith of New York. Not only does he have a compelling slum to governors mansion story, but he was a true Jeffersonian. One of his more famous statements on our political system is that all the ills of democracy can be fixed with more democracy."

This is not a radical idea. Other large urban areas have either seriously considered it in the past like Philadelphia or had petitions circulated to put the questions before the voters as in Los Angeles. In Florida, a constitutional amendment was recently proposed that would allow the break-up of large bureaucratic school districts like Broward County. The usual complaints regarding these large districts, and this applies to CPS as well, lack of responsiveness along with the high costs of a centralized bureaucracy.

But the biggest advantage to breaking up these districts is the increased democracy that would follow. CPS right now has a seven member board that is appointed by the mayor. Most of the other nearly 900 school districts in Illinois have elected Boards. In a city like Chicago, a parent might as well go talk to the monolith considering there are only 7 members and the odds of personally knowing them are small. Such personal contact is an intangible factor that could increase parental involvement and thus improve educational outcomes.

Yes, the CPS has LSCs or Local School Councils which are elected and include parental input on certain issues like selection of the principal and the budget for the school. But these are a far cry from real power and responsibility that comes with being an elected official accountable to the people. When one has to levy a tax on ones fellow neighbors every year, this really crystallizes the responsibility entailed with holding the elected office. Illinois used to have thousands of school districts  over 12000 at its high point in 1942. After WWII there was much consolidation so that by 1963 the total was down to 1463 districts. Ever since then it has been more and more consolidation. Why?

The economics of consolidation versus breaking up the districts is debatable. I would argue that greater oversight by more school boards will lead to better cost controls in the long run. There is the counterargument that more districts will require more employees but I really think this can be minimized by utilizing existing personnel in the CPS but spreading them across the new districts.

Unfortunately, Governor Rauner and Republican legislators are calling for a new bill to be passed that will have the state take over the CPS and allow the district to declare bankruptcy if necessary. It also calls for reforms in collective bargaining  a non-starter. What ultimately comes out of this mess is anybodys guess but I bet in the end it will be more centralization and standardization, even if a single school board is later elected rather than appointed as now. So how about more than one school district with more than one elected school board instead?

State government is also considering further consolidation of other districts. What is the logic of this? Economies of scale? That has not worked thus far, what makes one think it will work in the future? It is clear that smaller districts are better as the elected officials come from a smaller geographical area and parents are more likely to personally know Board members or be involved themselves. Governor Rauner and his allies should rethink the urge to consolidate districts and drive to centralization. Has his hard-nosed approach worked so far in his first year? Not really. The ummmseparation of powers thing has stopped him from achieving many of his goals  at least thus far.

In my opinion, Governor Rauner needs to make adjustments to his approach here. It may go against the grain of everything he learned in business school, but he can be the Reaganesque governor that gave the government back to the people and one way he can do so is by a leading reform effort to break up the CPS into many smaller districts and encouraging the same in other districts across Illinois.

Responses to Mr. Biga's views are welcomed via email at info@illinoisreview.com, or feel free to comment below.
We have only one vote, so we think of our own lives, and the possible ways that the candidates might want to control our lives, and we think about what we personally like to do, and so we study the candidates to see which ones seem most open-minded about allowing us our freedom, vs. which ones want to take it away...

When faced with a choice between different politicians at election time, our natural instinct is to ask Which one will let me do what I want to do?

We have good reason to fear, with government growing by leaps and bounds over the past century doubling the national debt in just the past eight years watching ranchers arrested journalists indicted and ninety million jobless people living outside the workforce because of an economy that has been squashed or driven abroad by a malevolent Leviathan. The Bill of Rights has been under assault in the past eight years like never before in American history.

Oh yes, it makes sense to fear government encroachments on our personal freedoms.

There is, however, another set of freedoms that we ought be equally concerned about:

Other peoples freedom.

I know, that doesnt sound different, does it? Dont we all have, and fear losing, the very same freedoms?

Well, oddly enough, we dont.

There are some rights, privileges and freedoms (yes, lets treat these together, for the subject at hand) that may not mean a great deal to us personally , one way or the other, if someone else has them, but other rights, privileges and freedoms that do.

And these  the rights, privileges and freedoms of other people  must be among the primary concerns we address when selecting a candidate.

Slavery

We can begin with the most famous one. From the very foundation of the United States, the issue of slavery tore us apart. Our greatest Founding Fathers were abolitionists (or manumissionists, as they were more likely to say back then)  Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Gouverneur Morris  who worked hard throughout their public lives to end the practice.

In 1787, the Framers built rules into the Constitution  such as the oft-misunderstood Three-Fifths Rule  that were designed to reduce the slaveholding souths power in the federal government and, hopefully, set slavery on a natural path toward termination.

Philosophically, the Founders of a free nation could not consider themselves true to their libertarian souls as long as the enslavement of innocent fellow human beings was allowed. The position of candidates on the slavery issue was to become the primary foundation of our two-party system throughout our nations first century.

Enslavement Today

Today, we have a different kind of enslavement  subtler, far less blatant, but enslavement nonetheless. The entrapment of an underclass in the Welfare State  through food stamps, public housing, and a myriad of different government-dependency programs  has set a ceiling in place on the people trapped in that underclass, little different from the ceilings placed on the advancement of southern blacks before the Civil War.

The American Dream is  or was intended to be!  that there is no ceiling on what an individual can accomplish, apart from his own ability and work ethic.

Think and work, strive toward a goal, and you can rise from poverty to the middle class add great ability, great luck, or both to that equation, and you can rise to great wealth indeed.

But the Welfare State puts a ceiling on everyone trapped in it. You cant rise in a career if you never start one and the Welfare State traps millions and millions of people  of all colors, by the way; its not prejudiced  by holding onto them with checks and WIC cards that hold, for many, just as tight a grip as the heavy iron chains of old.

So first, we must ask, Where does a candidate stand on the Welfare State?

Whether you are yourself trapped in it or not, it does matter to you whether your candidate supports the enslavement of a population through intoxicating government largesse, or if your candidate opposes such destruction of cultures and people with every fiber of his being.

In short, does your candidate stand for the American Ceiling, or the American Dream?

Commerce

Are you an entrepreneur?

You may not be. Most of us arent. Most of us work for someone else, whether at a large firm or a small one, a little office or a huge multi-site international conglomerate. And thats fine. In a free economy as large as this one, there should  theoretically  be a job and a career for everybody in fact, in a robust economy, there should be an array of jobs, and an array of careers.

But even if you arent inclined to start a business yourself, it matters to you how much freedom someone else has to start and grow a business, doesnt it?

So we must ask, Where does each candidate stand on business issues? even if we are not businessmen.

After all, how would you  or your spouse or child or parent or friend  get a job, if the job is never created in the first place, because the entrepreneur who would have created it is dissuaded by barriers to entry that are placed in his way by a Leviathan state?

Our nation was founded by businessmen  farmers and merchants, ship-owners and manufacturers, shopkeepers and bankers, publishers and innkeepers. Our Founders had chafed under the limitations that King George III and his pawns in Parliament had placed upon their economic activities, from oppressive taxes to red tape to forced management by London factors to outright bans, and the Founders designed an economic system that would facilitate commerce, not frustrate it.

This isnt just a matter for the owner of the business. It matters to everyone that business employs, from clerk and janitor to middle-management, from stockholders to the boardroom. If a business isnt there, then all those jobs, bonuses, and dividends are gone.

And talk about career advancement every step upon the ladder of a career is dependent upon the steps before. You may be hired to be CEO of one company because of your tenure as sales VP or Supply VP of where you worked before, and you gained that job because of your success as marketing manager or purchasing director at the job before that. Lose one of those opportunities along your path, and you might never have been able to move up.

Our nation needs every business, every job, every career not just the one were working at today.

Much has been said of the lost nation of the abortion industry. In the 42 years since a destructive Supreme Court majority illegally legalized abortion in this country, some 55 million children have been aborted. What would this world be like if we had allowed those 55 million American children to have their chance at life? More students, more adults, more neighbors, more friends, more families, more entrepreneurs, more inventions, more cures When government steps in to terminate a birth, it is indeed the most destructive thing that any tyranny can do.

And this same lesson applies  not so horrifyingly, but still, in the same way, mathematically, geometrically  to any other valuable human activity that the short-sightedness or malice of government may choose to stamp out.

When government sets tax rates too high, when rogue federal agents implement crippling regulations, when an out-of-control judiciary empowers class action lawsuits and thuggish unions to overwhelm the business community, these policies have a similar effect. They drive many businesses out of business entirely, and others, they discourage from ever starting up.

People have always had business ideas at the home workbench, while working in the yard, while talking at the kitchen. But in the past, they acted on these ideas; today, the ideas are more likely to get no further than an idea over coffee.

There is a reason why business start-ups are down. There is a reason why mergers result in conglomerates moving to new foreign headquarters, more often than not (they call it corporate inversion its actually just fleeing from a fleecing).

There is a reason why the go-getter you knew as a youth never started that business, or started and then gave up, and settled into a corporate job instead. The Leviathan state discourages the entrepreneurship that America so desperately needs.

So you dont have to be entrepreneurial yourself to see how much it matters that others be free to start businesses in this country. It may be a freedom you never indulge in yourself, but if your neighbor cant, then you too will suffer.

Where does your candidate stand on business growth? Does he stand for oppressive regulations that keep people out, so you need to bribe the regulators or hire big name attorneys to gain access/ Does he stand for costly licensing, union-friendly work rules, massive corporate taxes so the entrepreneur is beaten before he begins?

Does your candidate stand for tying the hands of the entrepreneur, or finally chopping off the hands of the Leviathan that threatens him?

We could say the same of so many specific issues:

Energy:

We may never invest in oil wells or work as roughnecks on an oil rig ourselves, to enjoy the benefits of the full utilization of our nations natural resources and we all suffer from high energy prices, vast unemployment, and dependence on the middle east when the government restricts such activity.

Religion:

We may not be particularly devout ourselves, but we benefit from a nation that remembers its Judeo-Christian traditions and protects their practice and we all suffer from the dangers of sloth, robbery, rape and terrorism when the nation undermines those traditions, encourages a Welfare State, and welcomes the immigration of islamofascist terrorists.

Firearms:

We may never own or concealed-carry a handgun ourselves, but we benefit from living in a neighborhood, or shopping at a mall, or attending a theater, where potential muggers, rapists or mass killers fear that some of their potential marks might shoot back and we all suffer from counterproductive restrictions on these rights, telegraphing to the muggers, rapists and mass killers that they need not fear armed defense by their victims.

There are indeed hundreds of such specific issues we could name if needed. Every precious freedom  in commerce, education, agriculture, society in general  has an effect on not only the practitioner but everyone else as well.

As we go to the polls this primary season and in particular, as we go to the polls in November let us remember that the candidate who respects the freedoms that our Founding Fathers secured for our neighbors is looking out for us too, whether we personally choose to start a church, carry a gun, open a shop, or read a book ourselves

 and that the candidate who places a ceiling on our neighbors proper liberty restricts our liberty as well.

Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based international trade compliance professional, writer, and actor. A former County Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has now been a recovering politician for over 18 years (but, like any addiction, youre never fully cured).

Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo.
STREATOR - State Representative John Anthony (R-Joliet) announced this week that he is making a pick in the Republican primary for the neighboring 76th House District. Anthony tapped Streator union truck driver Jerry Long as his favorite over GOP opponent Jacob Brame l from Marseilles.

"Jerry is one of the hardest-working people I've ever met," Anthony said. "Last election, he proved his ability to run an extremely effective campaign as a heavy underdog while going up against the Chicago Machine. I am confident that he has what it takes to win the 76th District for the Republican Party."

Long nearly unseated 23-year incumbent Frank Mautino, who has since left the house to become Auditor General. Mautino's appointed replacement was also a Democrat - Andy Skoog of LaSalle.

"I am both humbled and excited by Rep. Anthony's endorsement," Long said. "I admire his commitment to his values and his willingness to serve others. I look forward to winning this seat so I can begin working alongside him in the General Assembly."

The 2016 GOP primary is March 15th, and early voting starts February 4th.
WASHINGTON  The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails with material requiring one of the highest levels of classification, AP is reporting. The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate.

Department officials also said the agency's Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus will investigate whether any of the information was classified at the time of transmission, going to the heart of one of Clinton's primary defenses of her email practices.
The Legacy Wall reminds us of the progress the LGBT community has made and the continued struggle for full acceptance and equality throughout our society, he said.

Department of Human Rights' director Rocco Claps said the state agency is "honored" to promote "the inspiring history of LGBT people and their contributions to modern culture."

CHICAGO  All week long at the James R. Thompson Center, the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) and the Chicago-based Legacy Project have hosted The Legacy Wall, a traveling interactive history exhibit honoring the contributions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people to world history and culture. The display will close Friday.

But not everyone is so thrilled with the contents of the project, which displays the LGBT community's interpretation of 125 historical figures which they claim as having led either lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender lifestyles.

Although anthropologist Margaret Mead was married three times, the LGBT community points to Mead's relationship with fellow anthropologist Ruth Benedict in her later years as proof that Mead was a lesbian.

The same type of assumption is made about George Washington Carver, who never married, and had an employee with which he worked closely that the gay community identifies as Carver's lover.

Such an assumption was distressing to Babette Holder, who leads the Frederick Douglass Foundation Illinois, a group of black Illinoisans that celebrate conservative heritage.

"During those times many intellectuals socialized with those that were quietly gay, it was not acceptable to be openly gay," Holder told Illinois Review. "There are a great number of historic Black people, make that people of all races and ethnicities that were some of the greatest contributors to American society that worked, studied, invented, and advocated with others that were gay, there is no real proof that Carver was gay."

The idea stemmed from one persons biography, Holder said, in which the author implied there as a relationship between Carver and Austin W. Curtiss.

"Particularly a professor of history - Christina Vella, Ph.D. - who wrote in the book "George Washington Carver: A Life," that he had an ambivalent sexuality, the implication because he never married, had a friendship and fondness for Curtiss.

"Curtiss was someone that he employed, so in her view, that equated Carver to being gay. Sexuality and ones sexual behaviors were not discussed in those days - at least not openly in society - but that still did not make one gay," Holder said.

"Its as if to give a history that was never absent but to force a historic past for todays LGBTQ to have some sort of credence that was never denied. But they feel it was purposely overlooked or ignored."

The Legacy Wall is an extremely moving tribute to an aspect of shared human history that most people arent aware exists, the Legacy Project Executive Director Victor Salvo says.

It's about opening the way for young LGBTQ persons to accept their own alternative sexual behavior.

We hope it will lead to conversations about the importance of inclusiveness, especially for LGBTQ youth who are most often forced to grow up without ever learning anything positive about historically significant people like themselves.

The Legacy Project, a non-profit organization known for displaying memorial plaques along North Halsted Street in Chicagos Lakeview neighborhood, is also collaborating with the Illinois Secretary of State, the Illinois Department of Tourism, the Illinois Municipal Relations Association, and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.

From the Legacy Project's website:
DES MOINES - Presidential candidate Donald Trump demanded $5 million from Fox News in order for him to appear at the scheduled GOP debate Thursday night. Trump's campaign also surmised that the debate viewer ratings would plummet as a result of him not participating.

"...Trump offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that FOX News contribute $5 million to his charities. We explained that was not possible and we could not engage in a quid pro quo, nor could any money change hands for any reason," Fox News said in a release.

Fox News said there were three conversations between Trump and Roger Ailes, and they could not negotiate an agreeable arrangement - so Trump set up a competing event for a veterans' charity.

Thursday's ratings were not as high as the Fox News debate in August, which had a 25 rating. Thursday's ratings were 8.4, meaning 8.4% of American metered market homes with TV sets were watching. Fox's ratings held pretty steady between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET -- which means the audience was loyal even though Trump was absent.

However, Trump's event at nearby Drake University - shown on CNN and MSNBC, combined - drew in about a quarter of Fox's audience. The auditorium held 900 people, while a thousand or so stood outside and watched via a big screen.

Trump's name was mentioned several times during the GOP debate as moderator Megyn Kelly said, the "elephant not in the room."

"... Let me say I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Ted Cruz said. "Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way..." he went on.

Marco Rubio said Trump is "an entertaining guy. He's the greatest show on earth."

"I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me," Jeb Bush said.

Iowa's party caucuses will be held next Monday, February 1.
Sales for the fiscal third quarter edged up 3.4 per cent to 3.617 trillion yen ($30 billion).

Nine people in the US and 10 worldwide have been killed because of defective air-bag inflators.

By AP: Honda's quarterly profit slipped 19 per cent as costs related to air-bag recalls eroded the benefits from growing sales.

Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co. reported Friday an October-December profit of 124.1 billion yen ($1 billion).

Sales for the fiscal third quarter edged up 3.4 per cent to 3.617 trillion yen ($30 billion).

ALSO READ: Honda to offer new fuel cell vehicle in California in 2016

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Tokyo-based Honda is the biggest customer for Japanese air bag maker Takata Corp., which is behind the massive global recalls spanning nearly all the major automakers, over air bag inflators that can explode.

Nine people in the US and 10 worldwide have been killed because of defective air-bag inflators.

Another death has been reported in a crash in which a Takata air bag exploded, but it's unclear whether that was the cause of death.

More than 20 million vehicles in the US with defective Takata air bags are already under recall and the worldwide total is likely at least double that. And it's possible millions more vehicles will need to be recalled.

ALSO READ: Honda says not considering new lending to Takata

Speculation has bubbled in the Japanese media that some kind of bailout by Japanese automakers will be needed to rescue Takata, but that would come only on condition of a managerial change, including the resignation of the top executive. Takata denied the reports.

Honda, which makes the Odyssey minivan, Civic sedan and Asimo humanoid robot, stuck to its forecast for profit to rise 3 per cent to 525 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 2016.

For the third quarter, Honda's auto sales jumped nearly 5 per cent year-on-year, helped by introducing the Greiz sedan in China. Motorcycle sales slipped by about 3 per cent as fewer were sold in Indonesia and China.

Honda acknowledged future costs from class action litigation related to the Takata air bags remained uncertain.

Among the more positive news for the company, Honda began deliveries of its HondaJet corporate aircraft and the leasing of robotic legs called Honda Walking Assist.

ALSO READ: Honda confirms ninth death linked to Takata airbag

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's top automaker in global vehicle sales, outselling Volkswagen AG of Germany and US rival General Motors Co., reports earnings Feb. 5. Nissan Motor Co. reports February 10.

--- ENDS ---
The move will allow Toyota and Daihatsu to work more closely together and pool resources on future technologies, while maintaining their separate brands.

By AP: Toyota is planning to raise its half stake in mini-car maker Daihatsu to full ownership, a move both sides said was aimed at becoming globally more competitive.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Friday that it will carry out a share exchange, to be completed in August. Toyota now owns 51.2 per cent of Daihatsu Motor Co.

Daihatsu shareholders will get 0.26 Toyota shares for each Daihatsu share they own. More than 54 million Toyota shares are expected to be involved in the share exchange, the companies said, which values the deal at $3.2 billion based on Toyota's closing share price on Friday.

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ALSO READ: Toyota considers Daihatsu buyout, denies Suzuki tie-up talks

Both sides said the move will allow Toyota and Daihatsu to work more closely together and pool resources on future technologies, while maintaining their separate brands.

"This is an opportunity for us both to stop feeling that we need to go it alone, and trust each other to take full advantage of our respective strengths. In other words, we can now focus on our core competencies," Toyota President Akio Toyoda said.

It needs shareholder support in a general meeting set for June.

The move highlights Toyota's ambitions to keep growing after outpacing Volkswagen AG of Germany and U.S. rival General Motors Co. in global vehicle sales, selling 10.15 million vehicles around the world last year.

Mini-cars continue to be a strong seller not only in Japan but other Asian nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia. In Japan, cars 3.4 meters (11 feet) or shorter in length with an engine size of 660 cc or smaller qualify for hefty tax breaks.

Daihatsu President Masanori Mitsui said the deal would secure the automaker's ability to grow in the long term.

ALSO READ: Toyota to showcase hybrid vehicles at Auto Expo 2016

The last day of stock market trading for Daihatsu is planned for July 26, and its delisting July 27.

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In a data released Bangkok based Thai Rice Exporters Association, India has beaten Thailand to become the largest exporter of rice in the world.

By India Today Web Desk: In a data released by the Bangkok based Thai Rice Exporters Association, India has beaten Thailand to become the largest exporter of rice in the world. According to the reports, India has exported 10.23 million tons of rice in the year 2015 as compared to Thailand's 9.8 million tons. In terms of imports, China remains the number one importer of rice.

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Let's look at a list of some other largest agricultural commodities exporting countries:

The United Kingdom

World's 11th largest export economy in the world and the 5th most complex economy, in 2013, the United Kingdom exported 453 billion USD of products and imported products worth 628 billion USD. The top exports of the United Kingdom are Cars, Refined Petroleum, Crude Petroleum, Packaged Medicament and Gas Turbines.

China

World's second largest economy is also the largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods in terms of nominal GDP. It mainly exports electrical machinery, data processing equipment, apparel, textiles, iron, steel, optical and medical equipment.



The United States

The United States has the largest economy in the world. One of the wealthiest nations on earth, the United States exports include capital goods, industrial supplies and materials, consumer goods, automobiles and its machineries, food, feed, beverages, fuel and petroleum products and aircraft and its associated components.

Germany

Germany is the third largest export economy in the world. In the year 2013, Germany exported 1.38 trillion USD of products and imported products worth 1.15 trillion USD. The top exports of Germany are Cars, Vehicle Parts, Packaged Medicaments, Planes, Helicopters, and/or Spacecraft and Petroleum Gas



Japan

The top exports of the fourth largest export economy in the world are Cars, Vehicle Parts, Integrated Circuits, Industrial Printers and Refined Petroleum.

Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section.



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With more than 600 farm fire counts on October 19, there has been a sharp rise in stubble-burning cases in north Indian states, mostly in Punjab (436). Consequentially, AQI levels in the NCR have also turned poor. The Centre has expressed concerns about the Punjab government's not taking coordinated actions to contain farm fires in the state.
The arrests came months after TalkTalk was hit by a high-profile hacking in October last year.

By Press Trust of India: Three employees of a call centre run by Wipro for UK telecom firm TalkTalk have been arrested over security breach allegations, according to British media.



The Kolkata-based workers were arrested earlier this month following a data security review by the London-based firm, which then alerted Indian police.



The arrests came months after TalkTalk was hit by a high-profile hacking in October last year when personal details of its customers were compromised.



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But the company have indicated that the latest arrests in India are not related to last year's data breach.



"Following the October 2015 cyber-attack, we have been conducting a forensic review to ensure that all aspects of our security are as robust as possible - including that of our suppliers. Acting on information supplied by TalkTalk, the local police have arrested three individuals who have breached our policies and the terms of our contract with Wipro. We are also reviewing our relationship with Wipro," TalkTalk said in a statement.



"We are determined to identify and deal effectively with these issues and we will continue to devote significant resource to keeping our customers' data safe," the phone and broadband service provider added.



News of the arrests was first reported on Britain's 'Channel 4 News' last evening.



It reported that Indian police had made the arrests over the last fortnight in relation to allegations of theft of customers' data and using it to con them out of thousands of pounds.



"Wipro is committed to maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of all customer data and has a zero tolerance policy on security breaches," Wipro said in a statement.



"Wipro is working closely with the customer in the investigation and will continue to extend its full cooperation to the investigating authorities. We are unable to comment on the matter that is currently under investigation," it added.



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By Esha Mahajan/Harper's Bazaar: She may write and produce documentaries for a living, but it's probably more accurate to call South African filmmaker Anita Khanna an activist. Case in point, Miners Shot Down, which addresses the bloodiest massacre in the country since the end of apartheid and has won 21 international awards, including the International Emmy Award 2015.

But the film was only the first step in an ongoing campaign for justice. "We are raised to believe that inequality is somehow natural and that some people deserve more than others. So once I realised that the world I was living in was based on an economic system unable to sustain most of its inhabitants, I became an activist," says Khanna, 52, who has written multi award-winning documentaries like Born Into Struggle. "I am attracted to stories that expose the excessive lengths those who have wealth and power will go to sustain their privilege."

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Also read: A documentary that discusses India's tryst with independent music

Though she was born in Delhi-to an Irish mother and Indian father-Khanna lived most of her life in London. "My father would take me for Indian movies when I was a kid; he was a great storyteller, and entertained us with stories from his own head. My fascination with the role stories have in developing qualities like empathy, humour, and imagination came from those early years," she says. Even now, she loves a good drama series (these days, she's bingeing on Homeland).

Yet, she has built a career filming real people narratives, approaching each as if it were fiction-from the way it is structured to how she introduces characters. "Documentary is fiction on steroids, if you get it right," says Khanna, who studied social science, and has a teaching qualification from London University.

In London, she taught the humanities, took a few screenwriting courses, and raised her son as a single mom before moving to South Africa 13 years ago, when she remarried the father of her child, director Rehad Desai, a former political exile who returned to South Africa in 1990.

Also read: Meet filmmaker and men's rights activist, Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj



While London was where her passion for stories took root, South Africa is where it flourished. Within her first year, she directed Looting the Nation, a film about corruption in Mozambique; helped start the TriContinental Human Rights Film Festival, of which she is now the director; got involved with Desai's projects, and they set up Uhuru Productions film and television company. "I fell in love with South Africa? the openness of the people, hope for the future, hope for social change," says Khanna, who has spent over a decade fighting for that very dream. It's also why Miners Shot Down exists. She and Desai were filming mining communities back in 2012, when miners in the town of Marikana went on strike for higher wages. The police opened fire, killing 34, injuring about 78. Their film follows this strike from day one, from the miners' perspective.

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"The more you look into what happened at Marikana, as we had to do to make the film, the more you discover how cruel people can be to protect their interests. This is the biggest challenge for me personally," says Khanna. "But the vast majority of people have a deep sense of humanity and that's at the heart of the stories I seek to tell."

Despite years in the business of social justice through film, Khanna's career milestone lies in a drama series, The Mating Game, she wrote for television in 2010. A comedy with serious undertones, it looked at the difference in expectations between men and women when it comes to relationships. "The rage that had built up in me about sexism and the things women have to put up with spewed out on the page," says Khanna.

These ideas also guide her current project: A film on the women of Marikana. "People think that the Marikana story is all about the men, not so. The women are articulate, they are funny, they are warriors, but they have remained in the background. This film intends to turn that narrative around," she says. Contesting the norm is what she does best.

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Apple is reportedly working on a new wireless technology to charge its iPhones and iPads from a distance. And hence, the true purpose of wireless charging shall be met, if Apple has its way.

By Saurabh Singh: No one challenges industry norms as blatantly as Apple. And it must, for necessity is the mother of all invention. The Cupertino giant is looking to ditch the long-standing 3.5 mm audio jack in its upcoming iPhones. All this just so it can make them slimmer. The company has at least one more trick up its sleeve, if a new report is to be gone by, although it might not be ready by the time the iPhone 7 starts flooding the shelves. Apple is reportedly working on a new wireless technology to charge its iPhones and iPads from a distance. And hence, the true purpose of wireless charging shall be met, if Apple has its way.

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According to Bloomberg , Apple is hard at work with its partners both in the US and in Asia on a technology that would be able to charge its devices from afar than the charging mats used with current-gen smartphones. By afar we mean a considerable distance, for if we were talking about a smaller distance, the company already has a tech for that. Apple's charging dock can charge the Apple Watch from a few millimeters away. We are talking about something big here, or more precisely, long-distance.

To be able to achieve something of this caliber Apple must find a way to prevent the accompanying power loss when distance between a mobile device and its charging platform increases. Apple is reportedly working on just that. It is working on minimising the power loss that inadvertently entails in longer charging times.

The new charging tech should take some time in the making. The report adds that Apple wouldn't be ready with it anytime before 2017. This means the iPhone 7 (and iPhone 7 Plus) probably wouldn't include this feature. But then, they will most likely be missing out on a 3.5 mm audio jack, so that's something to look forward to. As for the new wireless tech, it could very well be the next new feature of the iPhone 7S or iPhone 8, for that matter. We never know.



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The political problem in Arunachal Pradesh has not only ballooned into a constitutional crisis but for some it has also become an act of defiance of the Supreme Court.

By India Today Web Desk: President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday had given his assent to Union Cabinet's decision to impose the President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The six month mandatory period to have an Assembly session in the state had lapsed on January 21.

The political problem in Arunachal Pradesh has not only ballooned into a constitutional crisis but for some it has also become an act of defiance of the Supreme Court.

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Some of the observations made by the top judges suggest that a very serious issue is in the making. What questions the imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh raise over our political functioning?

Speaking on behalf of the BJP, GVL Narasimha Rao, asserted that President's Rule was imposed in Arunachal Pradesh only after the Guwahati High Court upheld decision of the governor of pre-poning the Assembly session.

"The government could not have watched helplessly. There was a constitutional breakdown," Rao said.

"The Arunachal chief minister was unable to convene the Assembly for six months and when the Governor asked them to take a floor test, they locked up the Assembly.

Congress's CR Kesavan countered the BJP saying, "The action of the Governor has very clearly violated the assurance given to the Supreme Court. They have kept the Supreme Court in the dark and misled it. This crisis is engineered by the governor."

Talking to Karan Thapar on the show To The Point, senior Supreme Court lawyer, Sanjay Hegde underlined that the Supreme Court certainly knows how to enforce what is told to it.

Some big questions:

1. Why did the govt not wait for the Supreme Court's decision?

2. Is imposing President's Rule a disrespect of Supreme COurt?

3. How will Arunachal deadlock impact budget session?

4. Is President's Rule justified in this scenario?

5. What is the role of the Governor in Arunachal deadlock?

6. Is Congress also to blamed for the crisis?

7. Why did the Governor call for President's Rule?

8. Are reasons given by Governor justified?

9. Does China benefit from the ongoing instability?

10. Will state Congress government recover from the setback?

Former Home Secretary GK Pillai added that there were no solid reasons for the government push for President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer C Aryama Sundaram pointed out that the Assembly session was to be called in January and it was duly notified by the governor.

"But the govenor preponed the Assembly meeting without even consulting the chief minister," Sundaram said.

The Central Government today submitted a reply in the Supreme Court justifying the imposition of President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

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In its reply, the Centre said that Congress Government in Arunachal Pradesh is in a minority. Arunachal Pradesh Governor JP Rajkhowa had submitted his reply to the apex court on Thursday in which he had claimed that former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki and his ministers had made it impossible for him to discharge his duties.

According to reports, Rajkhowa accused Tuki of communal politics by provoking local tribesmen and funding public protests to seek his ouster. He also alleged that he was abused, threatened and nearly assaulted by some ministers.

Meanwhile, Tuki has filed a fresh petition in the Supreme Court challenging the promulgation.

See the entire show here:



Also read:

Nabam Tuki files fresh plea in SC against President's Rule in Arunachal

Central govt's 5 points on Governor's rule in Arunachal Pradesh

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The consortium working on the vaccine includes University of Pennsylvania, led by scientist David Weiner, University of Laval, led by Gary Kobinger, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc and South Korea's GeneOne Life Science.

By Reuters: A vaccine for the deadly Zika virus in development by US and Canadian scientists could be available for emergency use before the end of the year, possibly making it the first, one of the lead scientists said on Thursday.

The consortium working on the vaccine includes University of Pennsylvania, led by scientist David Weiner, University of Laval, led by Gary Kobinger, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc and South Korea's GeneOne Life Science, Kobinger told Reuters in an interview.

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He hopes to start trials by September to test its safety on humans, pending regulator approval. A month later it could be ready for emergency use.

ALSO READ:

Zika Virus: Things you should know about virus and fever



Caught off-guard by Zika, Brazil struggles with deformed babies



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The 93rd Amendment, which empowers states to provide reservation in all educational institutions, was passed by Parliament. But the private sector part was discarded.

By PS Krishnan: Close on the heels of the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU)-the latest in a series of nine student suicides in the varsity-comes the news of three girls belonging to the socially and educationally backward classes, students of the SVS Yoga Medical College at Kallakurichi in Tamil Nadu, ending their lives on January 23, after being charged exorbitant fees and "tortured".

PS Krishnan

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All these deaths could have been avoided if the government had done its duty diligently and the political elite behaved with alertness and human sympathy. The sensitivities of governments, parties and upper caste society to untouchability, discriminations and other forms of inhuman behavior have been blunted. They take these cruelties as normal, and they only respond to suicides.

The Tamil Nadu tragedy could have been avoided if the state had passed legislation providing reservation for Dalits in private educational institutions pursuant to the Constitution (93rd Amendment) Act 2005, inserting clause (5) in Article 15, which empowered it to provide reservation in all educational institutions.

The 93rd Amendment was passed with near unanimity by Parliament following the Supreme Court judgement in 2005 in the Inamdar case which held that the existing Constitutional provisions did not empower the state to enforce reservation in private educational institutions. In its aftermath, then Union HRD minister Arjun Singh moved a draft bill for reservation covering government and private educational institutions.

Former PM Manmohan Singh has a duty to explain why he and his PMO deleted the private sector part of the Bill. Senior ministers in the UPA P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal were also part of the discussions.

The Tamil Nadu government has an act, and a fee-fixation committee under it, to regulate fees in private professional educational institutions. But it covers only 50 per cent of the seats, the rest are left to the management quota. It is backed by government orders giving fee concessions to SC, ST and MBC students and facilities for other SEBC students. But in the absence of a monitoring committee, the fees concessions and facilities are flouted.

The HRD ministry had sought my help as advisor to defend the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006, which was truncated and limited to public educational institutions. The Supreme Court in 2008 upheld the Constitutional validity of this act and the 93rd Amendment to the extent it concerned public sector educational institutions. I moved for enactment of reservation in private educational institutions with successive HRD ministers in UPA-2 and with the NDAs Smriti Irani, at three meetings of the national monitoring committee for educational development of Dalits.

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Everything is ready for moving the bill. Only a political decision is missing, the usual tactics of delay and erroneous replies to the assurance committee of Parliament that the matter is subjudice (it is not, the May 6, 2014 judgement of a constitution bench of the Supreme Court in the case of Pramati Educational & Cultural Trust & others vs Union of India, upheld the validity of the 93rd Amendment and Clause (5) of Article 15).

To prevent recurrence of such tragedies, the Central government must move to get enacted legislation for reservation for SCs, STs and SEdBCs, covering all private educational institutions in the country, which should contain provisions for fee regulations and a monitoring system, prohibition of collection of fees from SC and ST students, and reimbursement directly and promptly by the government to private institutions, and also appropriate concessions and facilities for different categories of SEdBCs with a similar regulatory and monitoring system. There should be severe punishment in the Act for those who breach these provisions.

The tragedy in the HCU could also have been prevented if lessons had been learned from the previous nine suicides. Rohith Vemula's suicide could have been prevented by implementing all the recommendations of the committee headed by Prof. V. Krishna, set up following the suicide of Venkatesh in 2013.

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Fortunately, with the huge efforts made by SC/ST social organisations, we have managed to get through the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act 2015 in which there are strong provisions such as punishment for social and economic boycott, which may apply in this case.

Governments must realize that caste and untouchability is still rampant in the country. It must be visibly confronted by the entire state, from the PM and CMs down to the collectors and SPs. Baseless and erroneous issues like questioning the SC identify of Dalit victims should be totally avoided, following the PM's lead in his Lucknow speech on January 23.

(The author, a retired IAS officer, is a former member-secretary, NCBC)

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DD Sharma, a resident of Yamuna Vihar in Delhi, said he and his wife Shakuntla have been falsely implicated in the case.

By Sneha Agrawal: Dejected and traumatised after being caught in a protracted legal battle defending themselves against allegations of their daughter-in-law and her family, an elderly couple has sought mercy killing from the President.

The couple, retired central government employee DD Sharma and his wife Shakuntla who are both 68, is unable to meet their daily expenses, thanks to the court proceedings that have dragged on for a decade now.

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"Please give me the permission for mercy killing or send me some poison so that I can free myself and my wife from the wrath of the draconian law of domestic violence," pleaded Sharma in a letter to the President and the Chief Justice of India (CJI). The couple wrote to the President on January 14 this year, but is yet to get a reply.

Sharma, a resident of Yamuna Vihar in Delhi, said he and his wife have been falsely implicated in the case. He said there has been no development in the case despite it dragging for 10 years. He further alleged that despite lodging a complaint with the National Commission for Women (NCW), nobody has come to their rescue.

"We are bearing the brunt of an offence not committed by us and no authority has come forward to help us," Sharma said, adding: "Our daughter-in-law, who is the main source of this harassment, is moving around freely, why this discrimination against us?"

In her complaint, the couple's daughter-inlaw has mentioned that they used to torture her by hitting her and throwing hot water on her. However, the senior citizens claimed they couldn't have assaulted their daughter-in-law as she never lived with them for several years.

"Our son is in the Air Force. After the marriage, our daughter-in-law went to live with him at the location where he was posted. After just a year of marriage, she started forcing us to transfer our house to our son's name. Her parents also started pressuring us to transfer our property in our son's name. We told them that after us, our son is the legal heir of our property, but we would not transfer it under any pressure. While the issue was settled for a while, we did not know that it would again come to haunt us. A case of domestic violence was filed against us. Whenever our daughter came back to Delhi, she barely visited us and instead lived with her parents. In such a situation, when she never lived with her in-laws, how can she file a case of domestic violence against us," Sharma asked.

He claimed that when they approached police officers and the NCW, they returned disappointed. "The law to protect women is being used against a woman. Is there no law in India to protect the interests of the senior citizens? My wife and I have faced immense pain in handling this issue. People who are at fault need to be punished, but those who have been falsely implicated should be rescued," he said.

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Surprisingly, this is not the only such case. Six similar petitions have been filed before the President where harassed men and their families have sought mercy killing.

MAIL TODAY spoke to more such families. Lucknow-based petitioner Jitendra Gupta called it 'legal terrorism' while seeking permission from the President to kill himself. In his plea he said the harassment of dealing with a false case is equivalent to slow death.

The 33-year-old is facing a case of Section 498A. "Although my family and I are out on bail, we are puzzled with the kind of allegations levelled against us. Despite a complaint against me, I have been fulfiling all my responsibilities towards my wife. This fake case has caused me immense humiliation in the society with no way to get out of this legal mess," Gupta told MAIL TODAY.

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Activists too, blamed it on the slow progress in court cases and said it led to acute mental torture. "Lives are being ruined because of false cases. The reputation of these families is gone forever. Long trials take a toll on one's life. It is essential that the judiciary fast-track cases related to matrimonial disputes and punish the wrong," said Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, filmmaker and men's rights activist.

ALSO READ:

Vanangana helps women of Chitrakoot break the shackles of dowry and abuse



Delhi man alleges he was misled by in-laws to marry a transgender

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The order, issued by Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain, has upset the medical fraternity with many claiming it would leave senior officials in a fix.

By Astha Saxena: An order issued by Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain prohibiting senior officers from issuing any orders or circulars has left babus in a fix.

In latest directives, the health minister has ordered all secretaries - principal, special, joint and deputy - to refrain from issuing any order without the concurrence of the minister.

"?no notification or order or circular or any other instrument would be issued by the Health & Family Welfare department, without the concurrence of the minister-in-charge," an order undersigned by Jain said. A copy of the order dated January 21 is with Mail Today.

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The development assumes significance in the wake of a bitter relationship between the political leadership and bureaucracy under the Aam Aadmi Party government. Associations of DANICS and IAS officers have even criticised the treatment meted out to officers by the Arvind Kejriwal government.

The order, which has been sent to all secretary level officers and marked to Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, has upset the medical fraternity. Sources in the health department said that with the implementation of these orders, the minister has made senior officers paralysed.

"Now for every minor issue, we will have to seek permission from the minister. Though, we don't have any issue but the process of getting issues cleared will become cumbersome. The minister is already busy with many other things. It will now take more time to get even a single order passed as files would require to be routed through his office," a senior government official told Mail Today.

The minister has also decided and re-allocated work of all secretary-level officers. Health officials said that this is the first time that a minister has interfered with the functioning of the health department in this manner.

The order by Delhi government has quoted Rule-15 and 16 of the Transaction of Business of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Rules, 1993.

From maintenance and planning to taking decisions on human resources, the minister has reallocated the duty of every secretary. There was no comment from Jain's office despite repeated attempts.

"We, government servants, work under secretaries and not under any minister. The administrative head is the secretary. This is basically dictatorship," another government official told Mail Today.

As per the official process, all policies and decisions are first decided at administrative level and then sent to the minister-incharge for approval. Most of the work is basically done by secretary-level officers.

In the bureaucratic setup, officials cannot bypass their administrative boss and report to the minister directly. "This is a constitutional issue where permanent civil servants are traumatised by the state and central government. In an emergency department like health, there should be a cordial relationship between the secretary and minister. Health should be a national agenda and all officers should serve citizens to the best of possibility," retired bureaucrat and former health secretary Prasanna Hota told Mail Today.

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"We have received the orders from the minister and are working accordingly," Madhu K Garg, Special Secretary, Heath and Family Welfare told Mail Today.



ALSO READ:

Delhi resident docs call off strike as govt promises more security

AAP govt's app diktat draws flak from Delhi doctors



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Trump dominated social media during the debate, leading the entire Republican pack in Twitter mentions throughout the first half of the debate.

By Reuters: Republican front-runner Donald Trump skipped a presidential debate in Iowa on Thursday after a flurry of last-minute negotiations with host Fox News, holding his own rally a few miles away four days before the first nominating contest of the 2016 race.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes had three phone conversations with the billionaire real estate mogul on the day of the debate, a network spokesperson said, but the two failed to resolve a simmering feud that surfaced this week after Trump demanded that the network remove anchor Megyn Kelly as a debate moderator.

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Trump offered to appear at the debate if Fox contributed $5 million to his charities, the network said. Fox said it refused.

Trump filled to capacity a 700-seat hall at Drake University, where he told the crowd he raised $6 million for a veterans' group in a single day. His campaign did not say which group was getting the funds.

At the debate, Trump's rivals mocked his brash style and criticized his decision to sit out the debate.

"I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said to rival Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, as the debate opened, saying he had now "gotten the Donald Trump portion of the program out of the way."

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has been a frequent target of Trump's attacks, said he "kind of missed Donald Trump," adding: "He was such a teddy bear to me."

Trump was able to garner a tremendous amount of attention on Thursday without having to share much of the spotlight. Cable news networks CNN and MSNBC provided extensive coverage of his event.

"I didn't want to be here, to be honest, I wanted to be about five minutes away" at the debate, he told the crowd.

Trump, who has accused Fox News, and particularly Kelly, of treating him unfairly, said: "When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights - whether we like it or not."

Trump dominated social media during the debate, leading the entire Republican pack in Twitter mentions throughout the first half of the debate, according to data from social media analytics firm Zoomph.

Trump was by far the most-searched-for candidate on Google during the first half of the debate, at one point outpacing the second-most-searched-for candidate, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, by nearly four-to-one, according to Google Trends data.

Trump's move to skip the debate could be a risky gamble ahead of Monday's Iowa caucuses, which kick off the state-by-state race to pick the nominees in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

But his support in opinion polls, much of it from blue-collar men, has not wavered for months despite him insulting Mexican immigrants, threatening to deny Muslims entry to the United States and clashing with Republican establishment figures like Senator John McCain.

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Two of Trump's Republican rivals, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, attended his alternative event after participating in the "undercard" debate for low-polling candidates who did not make the main stage.

But Trump was a target at the main debate despite his absence, as his rivals took turns reminding debate viewers about his spat with Kelly.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to leave the stage no matter what you ask me," Rubio said.

Cruz, after a series of questions, said: "If you ask me one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage."

Also read:

Donald Trump says Fox apologised to him in feud

India is doing great but no one is talking about it: Donald Trump



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The European Union on Friday delivered some of its strongest criticism yet of China's human rights record, calling the televised broadcasts of confessions by Chinese and European citizens "unacceptable".

European Union on Friday delivered some of its strongest criticism yet of China's human rights record

By Reuters: The European Union on Friday delivered some of its strongest criticism yet of China's human rights record, calling the televised broadcasts of confessions by Chinese and European citizens "unacceptable".

The comments prompted a rebuke from China, which consistently rejects any criticism of its human rights record.

In a statement on its website, the 28-member bloc's delegation to China said the disappearance of several Hong Kong booksellers, including a British and a Swedish passport holder, was part of a "worrying trend".

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China this week expelled Peter Dahlin, a Swedish national who had been taken into custody this month on suspicion of acts detrimental to the country's national security, after rights groups criticised his televised confession, saying it appeared to have been made under duress.

The footage of Dahlin came two days after naturalised Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, who had vanished in October in Thailand, appeared on Chinese state television, saying he had surrendered to authorities over a fatal drink-driving offence more than a decade ago.

Gui's colleague, Lee Bo, a dual Hong Kong and British passport holder, vanished in late December amid widespread speculation that Chinese authorities may have abducted him.

On Sunday, Lee's wife said he was "assisting in an investigation in the capacity of a witness" in the mainland.

The EU said the cases called "into question China's respect for the rule of law and for its international human rights obligations, not least freedom of speech".

"The public broadcasting of so-called 'confessions' by Chinese and EU citizens is unacceptable," the EU said.

Asked to respond to the EU statement, China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said she had not seen it, but added that it was "not constructive".

"We firmly oppose foreign delegations making statements with irresponsible criticism about China's handling of judicial matters," Hua said at a daily news briefing.

Critics say a series of recent televised confessions of detained suspects deprive the accused of the right to a fair trial.

Chinese authorities have not responded to multiple requests for comment from Reuters, nor have they made any substantial statements explaining Beijing's role in the disappearances nor the fate of the men.

China's foreign minister has insisted that Lee is first and foremost a Chinese citizen, and sources have told Reuters that efforts by foreign governments to get information on Lee and Gui have been met with silence.

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Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, former imam of Grand Mosque in Mecca, said the Islamic State and Salafists in Saudi Arabia follow the same thoughts, but apply in different ways.

By India Today Web Desk: Saudi Arabia follows the Sharia law, derived from the Quran. A former imam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca said the ideology of Salafists in Saudi Arabia is not very different from the brand of Islam the Islamic State follows.

Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, in an interview with Dubai-based channel MBC, is seen explaining what he believes are the roots of IS. A British think tank Integrity UK translated the footage and uploaded on its YouTube channel day before yesterday.

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Adel Kalbani said, "We follow the same thought [as IS] but apply it in a refined way," and that "they [IS] draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, from our own principles."

The cleric even said, "we do not criticise the thought on which it (IS) is based".



When asked whether he believes the rise of IS is a result of Islamist revivalism, he replied with an affirmative. He also said "Intelligence agencies and other countries might have [helped] Daesh to develop, providing them with weapons and ammunitions, and directing them,"

In 2013, Kalbani was denied a visa to visit the UK and the reason behind this is believed to be his stand about the Shia Muslims, who he called apostates (Muslims who have left Islam). In the interview with MBC he said IS and the Salafists in Saudi Arabia agreed on the thought Muslims who leave Islam should be executed.

On the numerous killings of journalists by IS, Kalbani said, "their blood was shed according to Salafist fatwas (religious edicts) not outside the Salafist framework."



You can watch the interview with subtitles here.



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Sanmay Ved, an ex-employee of Google, could have never thought that one day he would own Google.com.

By Priya Pathak: Sanmay Ved, an ex-employee of Google, could have never thought that one day he would own Google.com, one of the world's most visited sites. Even strange for him probably would have been the thought that he would also be paid a whopping Rs 8 Lakh for it, even though he was the owner of the Google.com domain for just one minute.

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In a blog post on Google's security practices, Google Security's Eduardo Vela Nava writes that the company paid over Rs 8 lakh to Ved, who is from Kutch region, after he managed to buy Google.com for a minute. Actually, initially the amount that company paid was around Rs 4 lakh but then later doubled it when Ved said he would donate the money to a charity.

It all happened on a night in September 2015 when Ved was idly scrolling through domain names. He saw that Google.com was available for purchase. Ved clicked and added it to his virtual cart. To his shock he saw the domain name was actually added to his cart.

Sharing his experience in a LinkedIn post , Ved wrote, "I clicked the add to cart icon beside the domain (which should not appear if the domain is not for sale). The domain actually got added to my cart as seen by the green check-box and the domain appeared in my cart."

Ved decided to purchase the domain names, assured of the fact that this transaction would be interrupted in the midway. To his surprise, he managed to purchase the domain name and his credit card was actually charged a small amount of $12.

Ved confirmed that the domain also appeared in his Google Domains order history and his Google Webmaster Tools was updated with webmaster related messages for the Google.com. His Google Domains order history page also showed the domain name confirming that Ved had actually bought it.

However, it all lasted one minute. He received message confirming his ownership along with his name reflecting in the Google Search Console for websites that are powered by Google sites. But then soon another message followed.



In no time, Google had apparently realised the glitch and had sent an order cancellation email from its domains. Google's security team later contacted Ved, offering him $ 6,006.13 for his adventure. Why the unusual figure? The figure actually looked like GOOGLE -- as in the doodle -- the security team said. Ved, who holds an MBA degree from Babson College, wrote back to Google apparently telling the company that it was never about money. He reportedly told Google that the money should be donated to Art of Living Foundation. The good gesture from Ved was met by Google with another good gesture. The company doubled the amount and donated it to the foundation.



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The information about the money paid to Ved was revealed by Google in a blog post that detailed company's security work with freelancer (also called bug-bounty hunters). The company said that in total it awarded over $2 million to security researchers in 2015. Here are the figures Google has shared.

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The Dutch government says it plans to join the US-led coalition targeting the so-called Islamic State group in Syria with airstrikes.

By AP: The Dutch government says it plans to join the US-led coalition targeting the so-called Islamic State group in Syria with airstrikes.

The Dutch have for months been carrying out air raids in neighboring Iraq using four F-16 jets, but have balked at extending the mission to Syria.

Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaer said the decision means the coalition will "make more progress" against IS.

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The Cabinet will outline Friday's' decision in Parliament where it will likely be discussed in coming days. A majority of Dutch legislators supports airstrikes in Syria.

The Dutch change of course comes after both France and the United States asked the government to join the campaign.





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By India Today Web Desk: TV actress Dalljiet Kaur's shocking revelation of domestic abuse by her husband Shaleen Bhanot took everyone by surprise in 2015. The actors, who looked very much in love before their marriage, even sharing a birthday, were known to be quite compatible. So when Dalljiet accused her Shaleen of physical abuse and infidelity, it came as a rude shock.

Shaleen, who had refused to comment on the issue so far, has finally broken his silence. The actor denies reports that he physically abused Dalljiet for dowry, and cheated on her. "She is a retired army officer's daughter. So, why would I marry someone who wasn't financially very strong if I wanted dowry?" he told the Times Of India, adding, "I didn't ask for a penny during our wedding. I have never cheated on her and there has been no physical abuse."

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In an interview with TOI, the actress had said last year that she took the final decision to separate from her husband when he attacked her while she was holding their newborn son Shaarav. She had also reportedly caught Shaleen kissing another woman. Dalljiet also said that her husband was never there for their son Shaarav, and she went alone for all the routine vaccinations for the baby.

"I didn't want to blame Dalljiet because that would spoil my son's life. But now, I have to or else he will grow up grudging and hating me. He is two now and I don't know if he talks yet. Does he say 'Papa'? I met him six months ago in court. I couldn't even meet him on his birthday. I want to meet him every day, but I fear that I will be charged for another offense if I try to reach him."

"I hope to show the videos I have made for him, some day. Dalljiet said that I wasn't there for our son. On the contrary, he took his first steps with me and I have a video of it. I remember holding my wife's hand through her C-section, I was with her throughout. It is painful to be accused of not being there for them," he adds.

Shaleen also says that unlike the reports, Dalljiet has not filed for a divorce yet. "It has been widely reported that the divorce proceedings are happening. Let me tell you that she has not filed for a divorce till date. I am still trying to figure out what wrong I did that my family has to go through so much. My family and I are being judged every second. She is still staying in my father's flat without permission. I left because I am scared for myself."

If not abuse, what led to their separation? "After Shaarav's birth, she told me that she has no love left for me and didn't wish to drag on the marriage. Maybe I didn't meet her expectations of an ideal husband. I am willing to apologise if I hurt her by any means."


By Jairaj Singh: It's almost 10 on a frosty morning in Jaipur and the air is sharp as a scalpel. The thunderous claps of dandiya sticks jolt you as you enter the courtly embrace of Diggi Palace. The azure sky is bedecked with hundreds of puppets suspended mid-air, gently swirling like dervishes. The crowd intuitively veers to the left, as strains of Hindustani classical music beckon from the front lawns. More than a thousand have gathered, and it feels that at any moment the venue may burst at its seams as more trickle in; the scramble to look for a place to sit has been replaced by a jostling for a place to stand. Young girls are standing on their toes in the far corner on the right, hoping to catch a glimpse of the acclaimed writer and poet Margaret Atwood, who sits with her partner, Canadian novelist Graeme Gibson, in the front row. She keeps turning back to get a glimpse of the sea of humanity looming behind her. The security personnel, unable to discern the excitement, look befuddled. The ninth edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) is about to begin.

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Each year, some of the most acclaimed and revered writers, thinkers and artists descend to attend what is now known as the "world's greatest literary party". A carnival that has gone well beyond the realm of books and reading, and now hosts multiple platforms for political and intellectual debates as well as music, arts and theatre. It's an extravaganza to go see, and be seen at-where stimulating talks and conversations steer the day and the nights are reserved for music concerts, book publisher parties at the Rambagh Palace and after-parties in Pink City's many discreet havelis.

This year the lit fest saw a formidable cast of more than 350 including four Booker nominees, along with Pulitzer and Samuel Johnson prize writers, each more riveting and profound than the other. From award-winning photographer Steve McCurry talking about how he stumbled upon the "Afghan girl", the "world's greatest war photographer" Don McCullin on being haunted by the "smell of blood", Helen MacDonald on how training her hawk helped her come to terms with grief, Alexander McCall Smith quipping "for most writers, dying is a great move" to Gulzar and Javed Akhtar swaying the audience with their dazzling couplets, poet and Hindi writer Ashok Vajpeyi on why writers must protest, and Sunil Khilnani on challenging Indian history-there was something for everyone.

The festival has come to be known for the controversies it sparks. This year, it was the turn of Bollywood director and producer, Karan Johar. In a bare-all session for his forthcoming memoir, An Unsuitable Boy, he said that India is a "tough country", where talking about your personal life can land you in jail. "Freedom of expression is the biggest joke in India," he said. "Democracy is the second-biggest joke." The statements ricocheted into a full-fledged controversy in the wake of the intolerance debate, and it didn't help with Union minister Gen V.K. Singh reportedly telling journalists that "they should go beat him (Johar) up".

Actor Kajol, who came to launch Ashwin Sanghi's book on day three, said there's no intolerance. "Our industry will always keep reflecting on what is happening in society. It will keep on going and everyone is welcome. There are no dividing lines, no caste, no creed and no intolerance in Bollywood." When the question was posed to BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha, who was releasing his biography, he was evasive. He said there is dilution and pollution. "While we are going ahead in technology, we are going behind in our thinking.... Some people have said big things, in emotion, and in a childish manner. On intolerance, I stand by what Kajol said."

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"The Jaipur Literature Festival has kept the debate 'Is Freedom of Speech Absolute and Unconditional?', which I'm part of, as the last session to create a controversy," said Anupam Kher. "It is a joke that the people who are speaking about it (intolerance) are people who are rich, influential and who surround themselves with bodyguards," he added.

At the debate which saw AAP member Kapil Mishra, Pavan K. Varma, Madhu Trehan and Suhel Seth, among others, Kher made a dig that festivals such as this are creating a perception that there is no freedom of speech. Organiser Sanjoy K. Roy refuted the claim. It was a fiery debate, but not a cogent one-and like all good debates, it seemed inconclusive, though the raucous crowd, sadly, voted for the side that stood for the motion that it shouldn't be absolute.

Here are six authors who wowed JLF.

Margaret Atwood

Doyenne of dystopia

"She's like a wicked grandmother," a young woman was overheard saying after waiting for an hour to get her book signed. The acclaimed 76-year-old Canadian writer, novelist and poet won over the crowd by her electrifying guest of honour speech. "To be invited to give the keynote here," she said, "I must either be very important or very old. I suspect the latter." This was Atwood's fourth visit to India. That she was old, she said, could be gauged from the fact that she had last visited India 27 years ago. Talking about the importance of literature festivals, she said it is here the author finds their other half, the reader. "Writers are cheap dates. You don't need a grand orchestra or even an audience to have them over." In a session the next day, she not only spoke of the "cool, hip and sexy" Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau but also how Game of Thrones's dragons fall flat before Ursula Le Guin's mythical creatures.

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Stephen Fry

Wilde and wondrous

The inimitable wit and arresting charm of British actor Stephen Fry won him two standing ovations after his session on Oscar Wilde. It also left some unable to suppress their tears. On day three of the festival, we saw Fry twice in different sessions. In the first, he quipped that today writers are "content providers". He spoke about his long-lasting friendship with fellow comic actor Hugh Laurie, who he first met in Cambridge. "We fell in love, in a comic way." He made the crowd laugh when he spoke about how he had trouble reading a line in the third Harry Potter book-"Harry pocketed it". Fry went on to say J.K. Rowling made sure she added that line in the next four books, when he called her and asked if she would replace it. In the session on Wilde, Fry said the "prime minister of Bohemia" died thinking his name would be forever associated with disgrace. "If only he could come back alive, just for five minutes."

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Marlon James. Photo: Rohit Chawla

Reggae raja

The winner of the Man Booker 2015 got off in India on the wrong foot. James had let out a rant on Facebook about his "first impression of India", filled with invectives, after he landed at Delhi domestic airport and faced issues for not carrying a printed e-ticket, having excess baggage, and not paying for a recliner seat. "You can't judge a country by its airport," he was quoted as saying later, a meek consolation for what was obviously his own fault. In a session on his award-winning book, A Brief History of Seven Killings, he spoke about the violence in his book, but also how it had nothing to do with his own middle-class upbringing. "If you're a writer of the diaspora, it is assumed you're either a witness or a journalist," he said. "You don't have to see violence to be affected by it. It is the threat and fear of it."

Colm Toibin

The master

It was illuminating to hear the Irish writer and three-time Man Booker Prize nominee talk about his novel The Master, in which he deftly imagines and recreates the four later years of novelist Henry James, which were also his most prolific. "We have no recordings of his voice. We have some photographs of him. But he never appeared in public life, well at least not at the time my book is set in. He never gave any readings of his work. So we have no sense of what his work sounded like. But what he really wanted... was a success in the theatre." Toibin recounts that James, after being catcalled, abused and laughed on stage for a rather "dreadful play", at 52, decided to commit himself to producing his finest work and reshaping the 20th century novel. In the session on 'Coming Out', Toibin spoke about his homosexuality and how Ireland, ahead of the referendum last year, went against the church with a peaceful campaign and won. He was particularly pleased to be at the lit fest. "I met a reader who reminded me of a book I had written, but long forgotten," he told india today.

Atul Gawande

Staying alive

How does medicine deal with mortality? The acclaimed surgeon and writer held the audience enthralled as he spoke in depth on the theme of his book Being Mortal. Gawande was posed with a question on his experiences as a doctor and a son considering healthcare options for his ailing and aged parents. "The story of mortality is that we have medicalised it," he said. Gawande stresses that life expectancy has grown, but we have somehow lost sight of the idea that well-being is bigger than survival.

Thomas Piketty

Rock star economist

Economists are not "rock stars", but the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and The Economics of Inequality, Thomas Piketty, is a rare and worthy exception. The French economist made a case for why the Indian elite must start paying higher taxes to reduce inequality. "This would allow more money to enter the government treasury, and be re-invested in public welfare, such as education and health services that everyone could access, leading to redistribution of wealth," he said. Piketty also said India needs to be more transparent. Ten years ago, India passed the Right to Information Act, he said, but paradoxically stopped publishing income tax data. The Hindi translation of his book was also released in Jaipur.

Follow the writer on Twitter @jairajsinghr

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The protests were a response to Chandy moving a petition to HC seeking quashing of the FIR ordered against him in solar scam.

By India Today Web Desk: Massive protests were staged in front of Kerala Secretariat by the youth wing of the CPI(M) today in response to Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy moving petition to HC seeking quashing of the FIR ordered against him by Thrissur court in the solar scam.

This development comes after increased pressure on CM Chandy as the prime accused in the solar scam, Saritha S Nair on Wednesday claimed that she had paid bribes of Rs 1.90 crore to set up mega power projects in the state.

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Alleging "political conspiracy" behind the bribery allegations made against him, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy yesterday blamed a section of the bar owners for it.

"The new allegations are part of a political conspiracy hatched in connivance with the liquor lobby. The government had taken a bold decision to close down several liquor bars. Because they (bar owners) lost their battle in various courts -- high court and Supreme Court, they have come with new allegations to hit out at the government," he said.

"The government has the exact evidence in this regard," Chandy said.

Chandy said former government chief whip PC George had also played a role in Wednesday's allegations.

Maintaining that there was no truth in the allegations, Chandy said the government had not lost even a rupee as alleged by the opposition in the scam and had not helped a company to gain even a rupee.

Noting that two weeks ago Saritha had told the solar commission that the Chief Minister was like a "father figure", Chandy said, "How has it changed so soon? What happened?"

In 2014, Saritha had alleged that CPI(M) had offered her Rs 10 crore to topple the government. "We had not reacted then," Chandy said.

Also read:

Kerala solar scam: Court orders FIR against CM Oommen Chandy



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Earlier in the day the youth wing of the CPI(M) staged protests in front of the Kerala Secretariat against CM Chandy moving a petition against the FIR in the solar scam.

By India Today Web Desk: The Kerala High Court today stayed filing of FIR against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the solar scam for two months. Chandy had moved high court against a Thrissur vigilance court order which allowed an FIR to be filed against him in the scam.

Meanwhile, in a latest development, the Vigilance Court judge who ordered filing an FIR against Chandy has applied for voluntary retirement. Judge SS Vassan has submitted his request to the HC registrar. Vassan has requested for retirement with immediate effect.

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Earlier in the day, the youth wing of the CPI(M) staged protests in front of the Kerala Secretariat against Chandy, who has ruled out resigning from his post in the wake of the scam. The police had to lathicharge and use teargas against the protesters.

Saritha Nair, one of the main accused in the case, claimed that she had paid a bribe of Rs 1.9 crore to Chandy through an aide. In recent days, Chandy has removed three official aides after they were named as alleged middlemen in the scam which dates back to 2013.

Alleging "political conspiracy" behind the bribery allegations made against him, Oommen Chandy had yesterday blamed a section of the bar owners for it.

"The new allegations are part of a political conspiracy hatched in connivance with the liquor lobby. The government had taken a bold decision to close down several liquor bars. Because they (bar owners) lost their battle in various courts -- high court and Supreme Court, they have come with new allegations to hit out at the government," he said.

"The government has the exact evidence in this regard," Chandy said.

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Selvaraghavan in a tweet said that the project would have not been possible possible without Gautham Menon.

By India Today Web Desk: Selvaraghavan is all set to start his new project, Nenjam Marappathillai. The film has brought together three renowned Tamil filmmakers. Popular director Gautham Vasudev Menon will bankroll the project, which will go on floors this month.

Watch Achcham Yenbathu Madamaiyada trailer: It is Simbu, Gautham Menon and AR Rahman's magic again!

Another Tamil director SJ Suryah, who is best known for his films like New and Khushi, will play the protagonist of Nenjam Marappathillai. The filmmakers have already claimed that the film is no way related to the Tamil classic, which goes by the same name.

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Selvaraghavan took to twitter to thank Gautham Menon. He said that the this project would have not been possible without Gautham. He also added that it is not an easy job to bring in three filmmakers for a film.

This whole thing would not have been possible without @menongautham its not easy to make 3 film makers come together in 1 film. Thank you! selvaraghavan (@selvaraghavan) January 28, 2016

Gautham in turn thanked Selvaraghavan in a tweet. He said that he is happy to be part of the director's vision. The film unit recently performed the muhurat pooja for the film.

Happy to be a part of selva's vision Thank you SjSuryah for coming on board. And welcome back Madan. pic.twitter.com/J4pFeT9LOH Gauthamvasudevmenon (@menongautham) January 28, 2016

Regina Cassandra, who has acted in Tamil films Rajathandhiram and Kedi Billa Killadi Renga, will be playing the female lead in the horror flick.

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A declassification drive publicises what the government was afraid to say so far: Netaji Subhas Bose died in an air crash 70 years ago. But political gamesmanship over his 'disappearance' refuses to go away.

By Sandeep Unnithan : Publicly at least, the government of India believes Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose 'disappeared' on August 18, 1945. This is because the freedom fighter's fate continues to be among India's single biggest unresolved political mysteries. Three inquires have failed to put the issue to rest and every prime minister from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh has bequeathed this contentious issue to his successors. One reason why the classified 'Netaji Files' are held by the Prime Minister's Office, some of them dating back to India's independence. On January 23, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pressed a button at the National Archives in New Delhi to release 100 classified Netaji files with over 15,000 pages in them. The overarching conclusion of these yellowing pages is that the government almost unanimously believed that Subhas Chandra Bose died in an air crash at Taihoku, Taiwan, on August 18, 1945. They hesitated to say this with certainty, fearing a controversy. Guarding the political authority's decisions at every step, files released on the 119th birth anniversary of Bose show, was an overcautious bureaucracy which constantly warned of the incendiary potential of either declaring Bose's death in public or, worse, even accepting the remains placed in Tokyo's Renkoji Temple were those of the departed leader.

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The impetus for the release of this trove of classified files was an April 10, 2015 india today story that uncovered a discrete but rigorous 20-year surveillance of the Bose family by the Intelligence Bureau. The PM met family members last October, when he announced the declassification would start from the freedom fighter's 119th birth anniversary on January 23.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, who seized the initiative by declassifying 64 Netaji files in the state government archives last September, responded by demanding the title of 'Leader of the Nation' for Bose at his birth anniversary celebrations.

PM Modi with the Declassified Netaji files

Bose's revival is not incidental. With the West Bengal elections just four months away, both the Trinamool Congress and the BJP have staked a not-so-subtle claim to the freedom fighter's legacy, recasting him as a powerful Bengali icon denied his due by the Congress.

The newly declassified papers, most of them government correspondence from the PMO, and the home and foreign ministries, reveal a flurry of government correspondence over the demise of Bose. Two inquiries ordered by the government-the Shah Nawaz committee in 1956 and the Justice G.D. Khosla commission in 1977-concluded that Bose had indeed died after sustaining grievous burn injuries in an air crash in Taiwan. "There seems to be no scope for doubt that he died in the air crash on 18th August at Taihoku," read a cabinet note of February 6, 1995, signed by then home secretary K. Padmanabaiah. "The government of India has already accepted this position. There is no evidence whatsoever to the contrary."

But the Justice Mukherjee commission of inquiry caused a stir in the government when it concluded in 2005 that there was no crash in Taiwan. Netaji Bose was dead, the commission said, not in the plane crash, but probably of old age.

The government struck back. A nine-page note of the ministry of home affairs in January 2006 included a point-by-point rebuttal of Justice Mukherjee's findings. The note listed in detail why the commission had not given sufficient reasons for concluding that Netaji did not die in the plane crash.

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Acceptance of the Mukherjee commission report, the MHA note said, would not solve the mystery of Netaji. The official note said, "on the contrary, it would only make the issue more mysterious". The government rejected the commission's findings. Publicly, however, the mystery continued. The Mukherjee commission findings added fresh fuel to the Netaji controversy, convincing a section of the large Bose family that they were not being told the truth about their relative's demise. Some inconsistencies in eyewitness testimonies of the air crash, the lack of documentation around the freedom fighter's death, and the failure to provide the clincher-a photograph of his body-only added to their disbelief.

With his death remaining a 'mystery', there was no question of the government bringing back the most contentious wooden object in Indian politics-an eight-inch-wide casket believed to contain his remains. This wooden cube, filled with the remnants from his cremation in Formosa (present day Taiwan) on August 23, 1945, was transported to Japan by the INA and placed in the temple. Since then, successive governments have hesitated to bring them back.

'Favourable opportunity'

A top secret note from then Joint Director T.V. Rajeshwar (later IB Chief) on August 19, 1976, said bringing the ashes back would create further complications because members of the family and Bose's political party, Forward Bloc, did not recognise them as belonging to their leader and the ongoing Emergency would make people feel a false story was being planted on them by the government. "Consequently, the ashes have to remain in Japan till a more favourable opportunity comes up."

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The closest the government came to bringing the ashes back was in 2007. Prime minister Manmohan Singh was prepared to ask the Japanese government to transfer the ashes kept in the Renkoji Temple to India. This followed an impassioned appeal to the PM from Netaji's daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff, who wanted it to be brought back to India and a part of the remains to be immersed in the Ganga. Then foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee suggested the government continue to maintain the ashes at the temple and explore other options, such as increasing the maintenance it paid the temple. Between 1967 and 2005, the MEA had paid the temple Rs 53.66 lakh for preserving the ashes. The government briefly considered, but abandoned a plan to shift the ashes to the Indian mission in Tokyo. Even that move, the government realised, would imply recognition that they were Netaji's ashes.

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A 1995 reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on what the government was planning to do with the ashes of Bose received a detailed response. "The issue of Netaji's death is charged with emotion and opinions remain divided. Government of India is of the view that bringing the ashes back to India in the absence of a consensus on the issue might prove divisive and create tensions."

Indian government officials remained non-committal when Netaji's former Japanese associates asked about the return of the ashes even at a golden jubilee celebration of Indian independence at the temple in August 1997. It was also the Netaji's birth centenary year. The government held fast-the time was not ripe to bring the ashes back. Some of these concerns were reflected in a two-page letter Netaji's daughter wrote in a letter to then prime minister I.K. Gujral on February 24, 1998, where she asked the Indian government to aid the return of his ashes to India and the construction of a Netaji memorial in Delhi. Believing that her father died after the air crash, Anita Bose Pfaff explained- the inconsistencies in reports of the air accident to the turmoil in the Far East after the end of World War II.

She explained the myriad conspiracy theories around his fate after the air crash. (one says Bose escaped to the Soviet Union, later returning to India to live as a mendicant). "Following the first reports of the crash, many people, including my mother and uncle Sarat Chandra Bose, thought that in view of his previous escapes (from house arrest in Kolkata to Germany and by submarine to the Far East) this may be but another of his fantastic getaways," Pfaff wrote to Gujral. "Ultimately, their great affection for him let them hope that he had survived and would yet again return to India. As time passed, this became less and less likely?"

"The papers that have been declassified are hardly earth-shattering," says Ashis Ray, who posted what he calls clinching evidence of the demise of his grand uncle in the air crash on a website just days before the declassification. "A lot of the information was already known to scholars and a section of Subhas Bose's relatives."

Files declassified by the government have also revealed pictures of the charred gold ornaments, remnants of over 100 kg of gold, the "INA treasure" carried in two suitcases by Bose on his final plane journey in August 1945. Mixed with aircraft debris, the 11 kg of burnt jewellery in the vaults of the National Museum in Delhi are the only evidence of the plane crash. But like the ashes, it remains contentious.

The political battle

On January 23, Prime Minister Modi also assured the Bose family that the government would release 25 Netaji Files every month. Senior government officials told Bose family members that there are no huge surprises in the files that are yet to be declassified.

The PM's move has been hailed by Right to Information activists. "Prime Minister Modi has done in one go what the Congress did not do for decades," says Anuj Dhar, part of 'Mission Netaji', a team of activists that has fought to declassify the Netaji files for over a decade. "The Congress has an obsession with dark secrets," Dhar says. "In 2007, it took me two years to even get the file names of the Netaji files from the PMO."

Mridula Mukherjee, chairperson of JNU's Centre for Historical Studies blames the Congress's reluctance on a culture of secrecy in government where no bureaucrat wants to take responsibility to reveal documents under the 30-year declassification rule. "The government has not declassified anything from the Nehru era, or even the Emergency papers," she says.

The Congress which welcomed the declassification, warns of what it calls a sinister BJP gameplan. "There are forces within the present BJP government that are trying to create imaginary divides between freedom fighters like Sardar Patel, Pandit Nehru and Netaji Subhas Bose. This when no one in the RSS contributed to the freedom struggle," says Congress leader Sachin Pilot.

Political analysts say the NDA's transparency exercise is the first round in the West Bengal assembly elections just four months away. Last September, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee preempted the centre by declassifying all the Netaji files held by the state government and publicly questioned the insensitivity of governments at the centre towards Bose. "There is a competitive scuffle between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) to use Bose as a political tool to chip away at the Congress," says political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, who questions the vote-catching abilities of the Netaji issue. The issue has cleaved the large Bose family. Sugata Bose, a Netaji grand-nephew and TMC MP, believes in the aircrash. A majority of the family, present at the declassification at the National Archives in Delhi, do not. This group is represented by another Netaji grand-nephew, Chandra Kumar Bose. On January 25, Bose joined the BJP at party president Amit Shah's rally in Kolkata and is tipped to get a ticket in the upcoming assembly elections. The next round in the Bose saga, clearly, will be fought in West Bengal.

Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan

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By Sandeep Unnithan : Netaji Subhas Bose's only child Anita Bose Pfaff, 73, an economist based in Augsburg, Germany, spoke to Sandeep Unnithan about the declassification of documents by the Indian government. She hints at a division within the Bose family over her father's final moments and asks for a DNA test to conclusively prove that the remains at the temple in Tokyo belong to Netaji and bring them back to India to end the controversy.

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Q. How satisfied are you by the declassification of the Netaji files?

A. Many historians and scholars had been campaiging for the declassification for several years and it was high time it was done. Now having seen some of them, I find it hard to understand why a selected few were classified at all.

Q. Is the declassification going to end the controversy over your father's death?

A. It won't end the controversy because you can present any amount of proof but certain people will not believe it. All the available evidence point to the fact that my father survived for a few hours after the crash. As far as I know, there will be nothing terribly spectacular in the files that are yet to come out, but let's see what the further revelations will bring out.

Q. What about the controversy over the ashes of your father in Japan?

A. I feel they should be tested for DNA. Nowadays, DNA technology has advanced to such an extent that it will be possible to tell whose ashes they are. For at least the rational people, this would put the case to rest and they will accept it (that they belong to Netaji), especially people in my family. The priests at the temple will not agree to do this without both the governments, of India and Japan, agreeing. The issue of DNA testing was mentioned by the Justice Mukherjee Commission. Of course, if they are not his remains, it still does not prove that the plane crash did not occur.

Q. Researchers say that Netaji lived in India as a holy man.

A. I don't believe in this nonsensical Gumnami Baba thing. If my father was not in touch with the family members, why would he have come back to India at all? Even the Justice Mukherjee commission concluded that Gumnami Baba was not Netaji.

Q. Is there something you want answers to?

A. Yes, there is something which interests me a lot. Why and whose decision was it to discriminate against the INA veterans? It was an unfair decision. Even the East German Army was absorbed into the German army after the unification. The INA men were not declared freedom fighters until the late 1970s.

--- ENDS ---

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China's Defence Ministry, in a brief statement to Reuters, said there was a "definite gap" between Chinese military technology and some developed countries.

Foreign visitors stand next to a model of the J-31 stealth fighter at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) booth at the Aviation Expo China 2015 in Beijing, China. Photo: Reuters

By Reuters: China has built a potent military machine over the past 30 years but is struggling to develop advanced engines that would allow its warplanes to match Western fighters in combat, foreign and Chinese industry sources said.

The country's engine technology lags that of United Technologies unit (UTX.N) Pratt & Whitney, General Electric (GE.N) and Rolls-Royce (RR.L), said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

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China's Defence Ministry, in a brief statement to Reuters, said there was a "definite gap" between Chinese military technology and some developed countries, adding Beijing would continue to strengthen its armed forces.

Western restrictions on arms exports to China prohibit the sale of Western engines for military use, forcing China to rely on homegrown designs or engines Russia has agreed to sell.

"Chinese engine-makers face a multitude of problems," said Michael Raska, assistant professor in the Military Transformations Programme at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Among the issues, China's J-20 and J-31 stealth fighters cannot super-cruise, or fly at supersonic speeds like their closest rivals, Lockheed Martin's (LMT.N) F-22 and F-35 stealth planes, without using after-burners, said two industry sources who follow Beijing's military programs closely.

After-burners remove a warplane's stealthiness, a capability that allows them to escape radar detection.

Even the warplane engine that experts consider to be China's best has reliability issues, said the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

South China sea



A Chinese military expert, who has knowledge of the government's defense policy but who declined to be identified, said Chinese fighter jets could not perform as well as American warplanes because of inferior engine technology.

That puts China at a disadvantage should its warplanes be pitted against U.S. jet fighters or those from security ally Japan in Asia's disputed waters, the industry sources and security experts said.

Chinese warplanes are likely to come into increasing contact with U.S. fighters over the South China Sea in the years ahead after Beijing conducted its first test flights this month to one of three island runways it is building in the contested Spratly archipelago, security experts said.

In any conflict, China would likely rely on sheer numbers of fighters as well as a growing arsenal of sophisticated missiles that can be launched from warships or land, they added.

To be sure, China has made warplane engine development a priority in recent years, sources said.

The Shanghai-based Galleon group, which provides consulting services to the aerospace industry, estimates Beijing will spend $300 billion over the next 20 years on civil and military aircraft engine programs.

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Some sources said China had hired several foreign engineers and former air force personnel to work on engine development, although this could not be independently confirmed. The Chinese Defence Ministry declined to comment.

"In 20 to 30 years time, given the amount of work they have done and the effort they are putting into it, they should have a viable military engine," said Greg Waldron, Asia Managing Editor at Flightglobal, an industry publication.

Engine makers merged



China first manufactured warplanes under license from Russia in the 1950s. Its indigenous fighter jet program kicked into full swing in the 1980s.

The country's best warplane engine is the WS-10A Taihang, made by Shenyang Aeroengine Research Institute, a subsidiary of China's biggest state-owned aerospace and defense company, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the sources said.

In development since the late 1980s, Chinese state media reports say more than 250 have been fitted to some fourth-generation J-10s and J-11s.

But the engines don't produce enough thrust, or power, and need frequent repairs, added the sources.

"They are trying to improve the Taihang, but reliability is a major problem," said one source.

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AVIC did not respond to a request for comment while Shenyang Aeroengine Research Institute could not be reached for comment.

In October, state media said three engine makers owned by AVIC would merge into one firm.

China will do more to integrate other engine-making firms in the coming years, said a Chinese source in the country's aerospace industry.

This would help coordination across civilian and military engine research and development and production, said the source.

The Defence Ministry declined to comment.

To cover gaps for now, China has fitted Russian engines on many of its warplanes.

In November, China held talks with Russian state-owned aircraft engine manufacturer United Engine Corp on the possible joint development and production of military engines at the same time it signed a deal to buy 24 Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, one of Moscow's most advanced warplanes.

The Chinese Defence Ministry declined to comment on the status of the discussions.

Also read:

China warns against provoking confrontation on India Japan naval drills



--- ENDS ---
Aniket Ambhore was found dead in the IIT-B campus in September 2014. Authorities called it a freak accident, but Aniket's parents suspected he committed suicide since he was subjected to caste discrimination. After Rohith Vemula suicide, Aniket's mother, Sunita Ambhore writes an open letter to Rohith's family and friends.

By Vivek Surendran: On September 4, 2014 Aniket Ambhore, made a leap he rather shouldn't have, and that ended in his death. He was a student of Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay, pursuing a dual degree in electrical engineering and communication and signal processing. Aniket was found dead in the campus, and the officials maintained he slipped and fell off the sixth floor of hostel building number-13.

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They called it a 'freak accident'. He was not doing well in academics and was quite unhappy about it, they said.



Aniket's family saw no reason to believe the incident was a 'freak accident', but did accept he was worried due to backlogs. Aniket's father told the Times of India that since Aniket had taken admission under the SC/ST quota, he had to face derogatory comments and frequent taunts, both from fellow students and staff members. Aniket's parents Sunita Ambhore and Sanjay Ambhore submitted a 10-page testimony to the IIT-B director explaining various forms of caste discrimination their son faced in the campus. An inquiry committee was setup by the institute to inquire about his death. Despite persistent demands, the report of this committee has not been made public till date, nor was it shared within the IIT-B community.

On January 17, Rohith Vemula, a 26-year-old PhD scholar, committed suicide hanging himself inside a hostel room in the Hyderabad Central University campus, and left a note that said no one is responsible for his act. But friends and family say Rohith was forced to end his life due to constant harassment from authorities since he was a Dalit.

Here's a letter from Sunita Ambhore, Aniket's mother, to family and friends of Rohith. (SIC)



23 January, 2015

To the family and friends of Rohith,

After going through the last letter written by Rohith Vemula, I am feeling very restless, very suffocated. A researcher who in the name of punishment did not receive his fellowship for seven months and was thrown out of the hostel, all in an attempt to break him to his core.

Though Rohith has not blamed anybody in his letter, it is very heart wrenching. I can see the similarities between the thoughts of the two, Aniket and Rohith, and I am trying to understand what pain they must have gone through. Aniket did not leave behind any letter, but from the sentences scattered here and there in his diary, in poetries I found that both of them had the same state of mind towards the end of their lives.

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Aniket also talked about equality, and even supported and whole heartedly empathized with the struggles of transgender or his 'Saathi' friends. He also had a lot of concern for his parents. He was struggling to find answers about caste, reservation, god etc. He was fighting against the discriminatory mindset which he had to face ever since he started preparing for IIT entrance exam.

When a person gets tired of fighting with powerful forces, only then is he overcome with an emptiness, which can be seen in my son's and Rohith's life. This is frightening for one who is sensitive, thinks a lot and wants to realize his dreams. Such people due to their nature do not blame others but come to a point when they are unable to go on any more, they feel empty.

Why would Aniket think so much? We always saw him laughing, performing mimicry, singing. What was there in IIT that my son forgot to smile. After his death the doctor told us that Aniket was confused. But Science and Mathematics were his favorite subjects from the beginning, then how could he have become confused?

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In IIT, Aniket must have suffered the emptiness and hidden insult a lot. This was not in a direct but an indirect way, for he faced it in everyday discussions and in the name of advice, sometimes by peers and sometimes by faculty members.

Not only IIT but other prestigious higher educational institutions also possess this egoistic way of thinking.

Those who befriend students who come to these institutes through reservations keep saying, "Look, you and I have a similar economic background, yet you have received special facilities because of your caste...reservation is wrong" and other such things.

That is why Aniket had started searching for the roots of caste. Vedic religion, books and such knowledge are shown to be true and given a scientific form in these prestigious institutions and their ideas are drilled into the heads of the students even now. But when the students face a problem due to caste bias, there is no support system that the institute provides. There is no counseling for these problems, they are not even recognised as a problem, but put across as a fact that a category student has to face.

Availing reservation is treated as a crime. If you have availed of reservation then you are expected to face the arguments and judgments of people, this is the mentality of the 'savarnas'. Aniket and other children are not treated empathetically, their problems are instead framed as issues of low academic ability, parental pressure, high self-expectation so that savarnas do not have to deal with the actual issue on hand.

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Aniket had lost his identity. "Who am I" - why would such a question trouble him? Why did Aniket become concerned about graha, stars, soul - supreme soul or the other world after coming to IIT?



We don't know where his positive thinking, creative mind and his smile disappeared. Our only crime was that we sent him to IIT-B with a category certificate. If he had studied in ordinary institutions then at least he would not have to listen to so many discussions and advice which weakened his mind.

That he is incapable, who gave such a feeling to my able, sensible, jolly Aniket?

We have not yet received any replies to the letters we sent to various important official authorities like MHRD and Scheduled Castes Commission. After our request, IIT Bombay did set up an inquiry committee but no changes were brought about in its institutional functioning, nobody has even informed us about the inquiry report. Perhaps they do not think it necessary to give answers.

We feel very small in our own eyes. But Rohith's incident has once again highlighted the matter. Both Aniket and Rohith faced different conditions, but the reason they had to struggle was the same. I don't know till when will our children fight this hidden casteism. We too are fighting it.

Students, agitation is the only remaining hope!

Perhaps only the students will be able to wake up the dormant system. We are waiting to see some solace for the pain suffered by Rohith's family and the Dalit society.

Aniket's mother,

Sunita Ambhore

"Perhaps only students will be able to wake up the dormant system!"

Photo: Aniket's and Rohith's Facebook profiles.



--- ENDS ---
The petition has been filed by the Naz Foundation, the leading gay rights NGO, and several eminent personalities, including film director Shyam Benegal, on February 23, 2014.

By Harish V Nair: There is a glimmer of hope for India's gay and lesbian community after an almost two-year wait. The Supreme Court on Thursday listed for hearing on February 2, the curative petition (the last legal recourse after the review plea for decriminalising Article 377, which makes gay sex, irrespective of age and consent, a punishable offence, was dismissed) for legalising homosexual acts.

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The petition has been filed by the Naz Foundation, the leading gay rights NGO, and several eminent personalities, including film director Shyam Benegal, on February 23, 2014.

The case titled Naz Foundation Trust Vs Suresh Kumar Koushal has been listed as item 12 in the 'advance list' of cases on February 2 published on the Supreme Court website www.supremecourtofindia. nic.in. Allocation of a bench for the case is still awaited.

Community members, meanwhile, are keeping their fingers crossed. The past two years have been a harrowing time for many of them. Some time back, when Rocky (name changed), a gay rights activist, was returning home from a Christmas party, he was trailed by three men and forced inside an abandoned building near Dhaula Kuan and forced to perform oral sex on them. He realised that the law that protected those like him was no longer there and he had to give in.

It was his fourth such experience in the past two years.

"They said they knew I was gay. One of them was filming the act and they threatened to inform the police. They took away Rs 2,000 I was carrying," he said.

The 34-year-old IT professional is taking counselling sessions after the horrid experiences.

Rocky's suffering symbolises the difficulties India's gay and lesbian community passed through ever since the Supreme Court re-criminalised homosexual acts in December 2013, sanctioning up to 10 years in jail for the "offence". This came four years after the Delhi High Court had legalised homosexual acts.

The community members are aware that only two such curative petitions have succeeded so far in the history of the apex court.

In March 2013, the SC allowed a curative petition against its 2009 judgment which held that if a woman kicked her daughterin-law or threatened her with divorce, it would not amount to cruelty under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. In April 2010, the SC also corrected a mistake in its verdict that had led to wrongful detention of four accused in a 21-year-old murder case without any hearing.

Naz claims after the re-criminalisation of gay sex, blackmail for extorting money (in many cases threatening to complain to police or parents after filming the act), intimidation, and harassment of gay and lesbian community members by organised gangs and police, have increased manifold - as have rapes and other kinds of torture.

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The 2014-15 report recently released by Naz proves this.

Based on the calls that flood their helpline seeking counselling, the report for the first time categorised the kinds of harassment faced by members of the community and their grievances under various heads.

According to the report, 38 per cent of callers were confused or had problems with their sexuality and feelings. Thirty-five per cent of them suffered blackmail and intimidation from gangs and police, who extorted money. They also had problems dealing with break-ups and were not able to find a trustworthy partner.

Twenty-eight per cent of them wondered if they could have safe sex, and were under the fear that they would contract HIV after engaging in homosexual acts.

Highlighting the fundamental principles of 'justice is above all' and 'no party should suffer because of mistake of the Court', the curative (which means a plea filed in the court to give it a chance to correct its earlier error) petition points out that this remains a fit case for the exercise of curative jurisdiction by the Supreme Court.

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ALSO READ:

Gay couple files a case against the right of same-sex marriage

'You do realise you're gay,' said my friend, and the penny dropped



--- ENDS ---
John Abraham, Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandez and the Dishoom team were treated to a royal welcome in Abu Dhabi.

The Dishoom team is in Abu Dhabi

By India Today Web Desk: John Abraham, Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandez and the team of Dishoom are having a gala time in Abu Dhabi. The actors, along with the entire team of the film, is in the UAE capital and the city is walking the extra mile to make the Bollywood stars feel at home in Abu Dhabi.

UAE Culture Minister Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan welcomed John, Varun and Jacqueline to his palace in the city.

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While the Rohit Dhawan project is currently under production in Abu Dhabi, Nahyan welcomed the cast members John, Varun and Jacqueline, along with the director, to his palace on Wednesday (January 27), a statement said.

The Dishoom team in Abu Dhabi

They are said to have conversed for long about India and Abu Dhabi - and cinema too.

The Dishoom team will be shooting for about 40 days at various locations in the UAE capital. Nahyan is said to have been more than generous in extending all the support he could for the team to have a smooth schedule there.

Meanwhile, John took to Twitter to share a photo from Abu Dhabi:

Having a great time on set at #YasMarinaAD. Amazing location with so much to see & do.@YasMarinaAD #Dishoom pic.twitter.com/qmDcjWtuvo John Abraham (@TheJohnAbraham) January 23, 2016

Jacqueline too seemed ecstatic filming Dishoom with her co-stars in Abu Dhabi:

#marhaba #abudhabi ? this was an experience to remember!! #dishoom ?????? @varundvn @thejohnabraham A video posted by Jacqueline Fernandez (@jacquelinef143) on Jan 28, 2016 at 9:47am PST

Varun Dhawan, on his part, shared a photo along with his trainer from the sets of Dishoom:

That's me with my trainer tony. Solid guy. Bringing the speed #Dishoom pic.twitter.com/TNhxF8cHaj Varun Dhawan (@Varun_dvn) January 26, 2016

The film is slated for a July release.

--- ENDS ---
This heart-warming video captures the fear-free laughter of Syrian refugee children, enjoying their first winter in Canada.

By India Today Web Desk: Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old child whose dead body washed up on a Turkish beach last year, may have ripped away his chance to laugh again, and nothing can undo that tragedy.

But those who mourned Aylan's death can seek some relief through this video that captures the fear-free laughter of Syrian refugee children enjoying their first winter in Canada.

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Filled with the laughing voices of kids enjoying their first toboggan rides on Armour Hill in Ontario, the video was shot and posted on YouTube by an Ontario police constable David McNab.

McNab, along with his wife Kristy Hiltz, are supporting Amal and her children, who fled the civil war in Syria.

"This is the video that has gone viral, showing the world the delight, the gratitude and the laughter of these children," writes McNab in the description.

Amal and her family have been in Canada for about two weeks, and it seems like they have taken to the new climate and tobogganing.

Watch them enjoying themselves free of fear:



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A gunfight ensued between the security forces and terrorists in which a militant was killed. Combing operations are still on.

By India Today Web Desk: A terrorist has been killed in encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara.

According to reports, a joint team of 28 Rashtriya Rifles and police launched a manhunt in Dardpora area of Lolab valley in Kupwara after receiving reports about 1-2 terrorists hiding in the region.

A gunfight ensued between the security forces and terrorists in which a militant was killed. Combing operations are still on.

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An Army Colonel was killed in Kupwara during an encounter with the terrorists in November last year.

The Commanding Officer of 41 Rashtriya Rifles Colonel Santosh, who was leading a search party, was critically injured when terrorists hiding in a dense forest area of Haji Naka opened fire.

Santosh, who was from the elite regiment of Para Commandos, was rushed to the hospital but he succumbed to injuries.

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The tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad Central University has cast a shadow over allegation of caste discrimination on educational campuses of the country.Is this the reality or it is an exaggeration? Amid the politics over the tragic incident, the question which has remained unanswered is what actually drove Rohith Vemula to take such an extreme step?

By India Today Web Desk: The tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad Central University has triggered the issue of caste discrimination on educational campuses of the country.

Amid the politics over the tragic incident, the question which has remained unanswered is what actually drove Rohith to take such an extreme step?

Was Rohith driven to suicide by the Hyderabad University administration and secondly by the general anti-Dalit atmosphere or is his suicide better explained by his suicide note which suggests that the reason for his step was much deeper and further than the recent events?

To debate over these questions, were present student representatives from various groups.

According to Dalit activist Gurinder Azad, it was not exaggeration at all but sheer caste discrimination. " A Dalit in any educational institute faces a lot of realities. Rohith had seen a similar kind of atmosphere around. It is important to see the background of Rohith and how he has been confronting this caste system which is Brahamanical in nature.

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"Reservation has to be based on caste system as discrimination too is on the basis of caste," Gurinder Azad said.

A fact of matter being that Rohit Vemula did not belong to the Scheduled Caste but to the OBC and that he had acquired admission in the Hyderabad university on a general seat makes it clear that it is not a case of caste discrimination.

Saket Bahugana, Delhi state secretary of the ABVP, the students wing of BJP said, " I agree that there are instances of caste discrimination on the campus, but Rohith Vemula's case is different. It is not a case of caste discrimination. He had been working with the Ambedkar Student Union for a long time, and Ambedkar Student Union activists have been involved in a lot of violent activities on the campus."

According to Bahugana, students from all castes are committing suicides and it has nothing to do with caste but is instead related to our education system.

"Ultra left people have formed this Ambedkar Students Group, they uphold the ideas of Marx and Lenin Stalin and Mao but not of Ambedkar. It is a deliberate attempt to polarise the campus" Bahuguna said.

Rahul Gandhi was the first leader to reach Hyderabad after Rohith's suicide. His visit is being viewed as a move by many to gather the votes of the Dalit community. So another important question in the debate was if it is about garnering the support of the Dalit vote bank or about empowering students so that there is no caste discrimination.

Roji John, President of the NSUI representing Congress was of the opinion that this is a clear case of caste discrimination. "Government has issued a caste certificate to Rohith Vemula, there should be no ambiguity on this.ASA isn't formed by left students, it has been formed by Dalit students present on campus."

He also pointed fingers at the Vice Chancellor who ordered there suspension by drawing attention to his history where in the past he had suspended 10 Dalit students for three years on a minor issue.

"Government is cutting down on budget allocation for higher education, We completely support the caste based reservation, it must continue. Let the government release the caste census data and then we will know what is the status of Dalits and OBCs in the country," Roji John said.

Sunand, central secretarial member of the SFI argued that there was no outrage in the case of suicide of the three medical students in Tamil Nadu who were fighting against the fee hikes and the absence of basic amenities in the college.

"Caste and capital are killing students. No protest over fee hikes, or quality of infrastructure... why only Rohith Vemula's case has prompted leaders to go to Hyderbad while no one went to Tamil Nadu," questioned Sunand.

Watch full debate :


Trump was holding a competing event in Iowa that Fox rivals CNN and MSNBC were broadcasting.

Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, waves, at event in support of veterans at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Photo: AP

By AP: Donald Trump says Fox News Channel apologized in their feud leading up to Thursday's presidential debate in Iowa, but he was still a no-show for the last scheduled forum before voters begin to make their voices heard.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, in conversations with Trump, "acknowledged his concerns" about a statement the network had made in the days leading up to the debate, Fox said. But Fox said Trump had demanded a $5 million contribution to his charities in order to appear, which the network rejected.

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The network and presidential contender had been feuding since Trump demanded Megyn Kelly be removed as a debate moderator.

Trump was holding a competing event in Iowa that Fox rivals CNN and MSNBC were broadcasting.

Also read:

Donald Trump takes calculated risk with decision to skip debate

India is doing great but no one is talking about it: Donald Trump



--- ENDS ---
Major General Ashok Kumar, General Officer Commanding Kolkata sub area, and Major General SS Lamba, posted in Delhi as additional director general Ordnance, allegedly amassed wealth beyond their known sources of income.

Two serving Army Generals will face the Central Bureau of Investigation probe over allegations of corruption. The Generals are in the dock after the defence ministry asked the CBI to probe the allegation that the officers amassed wealth beyond their known sources of income.

As first reported by Aaj Tak, Major General Ashok Kumar, General Officer Commanding Kolkata sub area, and Major General SS Lamba, posted in Delhi as additional director general Ordnance, are in a fix.

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Both of them are decorated officers. Kumar was awarded the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and Lamba was a recipient of Sena medal last year.

An allegation was made against the Generals in September last year that they paid bribe for promotion to the rank of lieutenant general.

The defence ministry noted that despite the allegation, the Army headquarter cleared them for promotion.

A final approval on their elevation was pending with the Appointments Committee of the Union Cabinet.

The allegation pertained to the time when Lieutenant General R Bhalla, who retired recently, was Military Secretary, who is responsible for promotions and postings.

Sources said that Lieutenant General Bhalla (retired) can also face CBI questioning. An internal inquiry was conducted by the defence ministry on the allegation, stating that the officers had paid bribes to get promoted. The ministry had then decided to refer the matter to the CBI for a detailed investigation.

The ministry had, in September, red-flagged the promotion of certain officers following allegations of impropriety.

The Army's promotion policy has been under scanner for some time. The manner of selection of certain officers had raised eyebrows in Army's internal circles. The issue was debated intensely on social media as well. After going through all the records and considering the gravity of the allegations, the defence ministry decided to hand over the investigation to the CBI.

ALSO READ:

Manohar Parrikar: Necessary steps being taken to prevent honey trap cases



--- ENDS ---
In Malda, fake currency is easily delivered at your door step, it is as easy as ordering lemonade.

On Thursday, India Today Television showed you how paddy has been replaced with opium as the main crop in West Bengal's Malda. In few parts of India opium farming is permitted for medicinal purposes. But in Malda it is neither legal nor regulated. That hasn't stopped farmers from shifting en masse from cultivating rice and wheat to growing poppy. Today, opium farming is the most lucrative cottage industry in Malda worth almost Rs 3200 crore.

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In the second part of our investigative series on Malda, which has now earned the dubious moniker of India's Afghanistan due to the thriving opium farming, fake currency and arms trade, we focus on the huge fake currency racket being run from this region.



Getting fake currency as easy as ordering lemonade

In Malda, fake currency is easily delivered at your door step. One doesn't have to travel to some far flung village and encounter several risks to be able to penetrate the fake currency network. The fake currency racket is so widespread that buying fake notes is as easy as ordering food in a restaurant.

India Today's special investigation team was waiting for dinner to arrive in the hotel room in Malda, when one of our correspondents casually asked the waiter if he could arrange some fake currency. Of course he could, was the young waiter's reply. He made it sound as if we had just ordered a glass of lemon soda. Within 15 minutes, there was a man named Aslam in the room.

"Yes, you can get it very easily. The Rs 500 note is easy to catch. I can also arrange Rs 50 and Rs 100 notes for you," was Aslam's reply when asked whether he could arrange some fake Indian currency for us?

AK-47 or 9 MM pistol - Malda's arms market has them all

Not only fake Indian currency, Aslam also assured India Today reporters of arranging arms. "Can you arrange a 9MM pistol for us," Aslam was asked. His response will shock you.

"Why just a 9 MM pistol, I can also get you an AK-47 from Kaliachak, no problem. I have even delivered weapons from here to Ghaziabad," Aslam said.

90 per cent of fake currency entering through Malda

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) estimates that 90 per cent of all the fake currency entering India from Bangladesh is routed through Malda, the district which has a long and porous border with Bangladesh.

A note prepared by the NIA on the efforts to curb fake Indian currency notes, which has been accessed by India Today, says, "Over a period of time, Malda has emerged as a major transit route for Fake Indian Currency couriers. The Fake India Currency Notes or FICN produced outside India is brought into the country by couriers, principally through Malda via Bangladesh."

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The note goes on to add,"From a number of cases investigated by NIA, ample evidence has emerged that this region of the country is a major conduit for pumping counterfeit currency into the country. This region because of geopolitical factors and demographics has become a hub for smugglers of Fake Indian Currency."

"Malda has emerged as a major transit zone along with Murshidabad in West Bengal. A lot of the couriers are from Malda. They are in touch with suppliers from Bangladesh. Actual users come and collect fake currency from them. This is very high quality fake currency," IG NIA Alok Mittal said.

On January 14, a team of the NIA in a joint operation with the crime branch in Maharashtra's Buldhana arrested a person with Rs 1,95,000 of fake currency. This fake currency had been supplied to him by a courier from Malda in West Bengal.

Four days before that on January 10, the NIA in a joint operation with the Bihar Police seized fake currency worth Rs 4,00,000 from West Champaran. This consignment too had been brought from Malda. A case has been registered under FIR no 12/2016 at the Majuhaulia district of Betia in Bihar.

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"It is clear that the money comes from Pakistan and from there to Bangladesh and then to India. It is a big racket in Bangladesh. In recent times, Bangladeshi authorities have seized big consignments of fake currency and it is clear that is coming from Pakistan," Mittal added.

According to a report prepared by India's intelligence agencies High quality fake Indian currency notes are published in printing presses run by the ISI inside Pakistan The ink and the multi-colour offset machines used to print these fake notes are those which can only be purchased by sovereign nations and not by private individuals These notes are first sold to Pakistan based wholesalers at 5 per cent of the actual value This means a Rs 1000 fake note is sold by the ISI to a Pakistani wholesaler for Rs 50 The Pakistan-based wholesaler sells the fake Rs 1000 note to a wholesaler in a country like Bangladesh for Rs 150, making a profit of Rs 100 on every note The Bangladeshi wholesaler then sells the fake notes to India-based wholesalers for Rs 350 each. This means that by the time the fake Rs 1000 note enters India it is worth Rs 350 The wholesaler then sells the note to retailers like Aslam who met us in Malda for Rs 450 People like Aslam then sell the fake currency at 55 per cent of it's real value, which means you can buy a Rs 1000 note in Malda for Rs 550

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A recent study commissioned by government agencies suggests that at any point in time about Rs 2500 crore of fake currency is in circulation in the Indian market. Because of lax control, smugglers find it easy to operate out of places like Malda. These fake notes are an attempt by the ISI to destabilise the Indian economy.

Also read:

How opium, fake currency and illegal arms trade are turning Malda into India's Afghanistan



--- ENDS ---
Apple has issued a recall for some iPad and Mac chargers sold between 2003 to 2015.

By Javed Anwer: Apple has issued a recall for some iPad and Mac chargers that it sold between 2003 to 2015. The company said that some of these chargers may give electric shock when touched and hence need to be recalled.

"Apple today announced a voluntary recall of AC wall plug adapters designed for use in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Continental Europe, New Zealand and South Korea. In very rare cases, affected Apple two-prong wall plug adapters may break and create a risk of electrical shock if touched. These wall plug adapters shipped with Mac and certain iOS devices between 2003 and 2015 and were also included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. Apple is aware of 12 incidents worldwide," the company said in a statement.

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While the recall doesn't mention India, it is possible that the iPad or the Mac that you bought here may have one the "recalled" charger. Apple has created a web page (http://www.apple.com/sg/support/ac-wallplug-adapter ) that users can visit to see if they need to send the charger(s) that they have for a replacement.

"Customer safety is always Apple's top priority, and we have voluntarily decided to exchange affected wall plug adapters with a new, redesigned adapter, free of charge. We encourage customers to exchange any affected parts," the company informs consumers.

Apple's recall comes just days after Microsoft announced that it was recalling some chargers shipped with the Surface tablets due to faulty cables.

"As a result of damage caused by AC power cords being wound too tightly, twisted or pinched over an extended period of time, a very small proportion of Surface Pro customers have reported issues with their AC power cord. We will be releasing details of how customers can obtain a free replacement cable shortly," Microsoft had told Zdnet website.

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The Priv might just be ailing BlackBerry's one last shot at redemption. The question is...is the Canadian handset manufacturer actually looking for one?

By Saurabh Singh: Priv: A BlackBerry phone that runs Android. Now, who saw that coming? Not our forefathers. But wait, there's more. Priv: A BlackBerry phone that runs Android and costs Rs 62,990 . Ok, that's all we got but did you notice anything peculiar? Well, irony just died a thousand deaths.

The Priv might just be ailing BlackBerry's one last shot at redemption. The question is...is the Canadian handset manufacturer actually looking for one? The company long known for its home-brewed BlackBerry OS is for the first time looking up to Android -- a sprawling mobile platform owned by Google -- to set the record straight. The message is loud and clear: BlackBerry won't be taken for granted. It will be back with vengeance and whatnot. And it will be back on its own terms and conditions, say what you will. Priv stands for both privilege and privacy. If the privilege part failed to register, the pricing bit more than compensates for it.

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We spent some time with the BlackBerry Priv and here's what we think about it based on first impressions:



While rivals are busy taking inspiration from here and there, it's nice to see BlackBerry stay clear of all the fiasco. The Priv is characteristic BlackBerry in that there's no fooling around. It's all about the seriousness and the sophistication, the executive feel if you may. It's a class apart when you look at it for the first time. And then, there's no looking back.

The phone essentially has a candy bar form factor with curved sides and slightly rounded edges. The build material is all-plastic, which is disappointing considering the mammoth price tag. Some metal would have done wonders. But then this is a BlackBerry phone and BlackBerry phones don't experiment. They normally stick to one colour and material scheme and go about their business. The Priv is no different. While having a plastic build isn't exactly a deal breaker, its build quality could be one. The back is flimsy to the touch. A phone that costs Rs 63,000 cannot afford to wobble around. The Priv's back panel does quite a bit. Also the camera module on the rear sticks out like an anomaly, not something we normally associate with BlackBerry phones.

The Priv packs in quite the surprise underneath the main display unit. The lower end of this unit has a raised lip and pushing it up instantly brings out a hardware 4-row QWERTY keyboard. The phone employs a slider mechanism wherein the keyboard stays put underneath the main display at all times unless needed. A gentle slide out from the lower end of the screen pulls out the keyboard for all intends and purposes. Moreover, the entire keyboard can be transformed into a scrollable trackpad at will. The keys themselves are a little jam-packed though and will need some time getting used to.



Talking about the screen, the Priv comes with a 5.4-inch QuadHD AMOLED display with a 1440x2560 pixels resolution and 540 ppi pixel density. The screen is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 4 and is curved at both ends. The display here is top-notch with bright and punchy colours and good viewing angles. The screen is a smudge/fingerprint magnet though. BlackBerry has used the bezels well so that the phone has excellent screen-to-body-ratio.

The Priv is powered by a 1.8GHz hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor with Adreno 418 GPU and 3GB RAM. It comes with 32GB of internal memory which is further expandable by up to 2TB via microSD card. While a Snapdragon 810 would have been a better choice at its price, it's not surprising that BlackBerry decided to cram in Qualcomm's second best processor of the current generation inside the Priv. The Snapdragon 810 has heating issues. The Snapdragon 808 is a much safer bet.



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The singleSIM phone runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box and comes with BlackBerry's own secure and productivity modifications up top. Key additions by BlackBerry include: pop-up widgets, productivity tab and the Hub notification aggregator. Pop-up widgets give you quick glance inside apps without actually opening them. App widgets that are compatible come with three dots so you know you can swipe down to reveal further information. Meanwhile, productivity tab is a tab that sits comfortably on the right curved edge and is accessible via a swipe toward the left. The approach is similar to what Samsung employs in its Galaxy Edge phones.

The in-house DTEK by BlackBerry app for Android monitors and reports on application access to the microphone, camera, location and personal information and lets you know when your privacy could be at risk.



On the camera front, the Priv has an 18-megapixel rear-facing shooter with f/2.2 aperture lens and Schneider-Kreuznach optics. The camera is aided by Optical Image Stabilisation, phase detection autofocus and dual-LED (dual tone) flash. 4K video recording is supported. There's also a 2-megapixel camera on the front. While our full review will divulge more about its camera prowess, we found an evident shutter lag while taking pictures with the phone in our brief usage.

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The Priv supports 4G LTE connectivity and uses a 3,410 mAh battery which is rated to deliver up to 22.5 hours of mixed usage.



The Priv isn't for everyone, but for a select few. Then again, BlackBerry has always been about the select few. And the select few have embraced it like no other. But times have changed and BlackBerry is down in the dumps. It's not business as usual. Why then is it such a privilege to own something like the Priv? For one, it's a mashup of Google's Android operating system with BlackBerry's security and productivity aspects. Secondly, it sees the return of the prodigal son, aka the QWERTY keyboard, which is something of a lost art in this time and age. The Priv -- despite its ludicrous pricing -- looks like a tough cookie on paper. Will that be enough though is something only time will tell. So will our full review.



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During the four years in which thewas in operation - announced with great fanfare by former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner - little was known about its operation and financing. A 12-page PDF file containing 10 sightings reports was presented in December 2015: The Kirchnerian "Blue Book".The administration of Christina Kirchner created a Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena (CEFAE, in Spanish) attached to the Argentinean Air Force. After four years without official information, almost everything about the project is a mystery, especially the expenses it caused when the commission itself is practically defunct.A group of researchers representing the State was formed in mid-2011 to approach the UFO phenomenon in a scientific manner. For the first time, and at the official level, there was talk of the need to study the growing number of unidentified flying object sightings in the national airspace, representing an interesting news item if nothing else, taking into consideration [Argentina's] scant history in this field. The announcement, made with great fanfare, promised that the commission would be comprised by experts from the National Weather Service, engineers, pilots, radar technicians, computer experts and geologists. An army of specialists from whom no further word was heard.Captain Mariano Mohaupt was CEFAE's first director - a man of terse words whose tenure was brief. He was replaced by Commodore Guillermo Aloi and then by Ruben Lianza, a retired AAF officer. The fact is that faced with the paucity of news interviews granted by the members of that strange commission, questions increased among the fans and followers of the phenomenon. What did they do? Why had they not presented any documents analyzing photographs, eyewitness accounts or videos? What were they looking for, and with what funding?The first CEFAE report was finally published in December 2015 after 54 months of mystery and not presenting the slightest evidence of work or activity. The thin, 12-page PDF, lacking anyone's signature, offers the end result: 10 cases studied in over 4 years, sightings from November 2014 to November 2015. No explanation was offered for what they did during all the previous years. The report appeared, by chance, at the end of the Kirchner Administration. As an example, the U.S. Project Blue Book covered 12,618 cases for the years between 1947 and 1969, when the project ended.Thewas created by Resolution No. 414/2011 of the Chief of staff of the Argentinean Air Force in order to organize, coordinate, and execute a methodical investigation of the possible causes for Unidentified Flying Objects specifically reported within Argentinean air space, publishing the results of those cases for which a certain and exact conclusion had been reached.It consisted of permanent staff members of the Argentinean Air Force and specialists of proven experience in different fields of research, offering invaluable support in the analysis of each case from different perspectives.In order to reach certain and exact conclusions, having truthful information that accurately describes the phenomenon witnessed is essential. The Commission has an office in Retiro, where it welcomes citizens who wish to submit their cases.The report published in December accounts for the 10 cases mentioned, accompanied by explanatory photos and screen caps from an astronomy software package.Explanations for the cases mostly involve known objects in the sky, such as stars, planets or the moon itself; aircraft photographed at a distance; birds, and even a ball thrown into the air.The report can be seen (in Spanish) at:
Investigative reporting from the inner city to Wall Street to the United Nations This is the blogspot version InnerCityPress.com
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/05/al_gore.jpgTen years ago, Rush Limbaugh started a countdown clock after Al Gore reportedly claimed there were only 10 years left to save the world from the ravages of global warming.Actor and activist Larry David was quoted as saying, You know, Al is a funny guy, but hes also a very serious guy who believes humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.For 10 years, the Al Gore Armageddon clock counted down at Rush Limbaughs website, heading toward its expiration at midnight Tuesday.And it looks like civilization still is here.Well, here we are and nothings changed, scoffed Limbaugh on Tuesdays program. It isnt any hotter than it was.Limbaugh said hes still working on what he and his team will do when the clock officially hits zero as they hadnt thought about it until this week.What do we do when the thing hits zero? he joked. We started this 10 years ago, who thinks 10 years down the road, other than we knew that Gore was full of it and that whatever he was saying wasnt gonna happen, wasnt gonna be true.Marc Fitch, author of Shmexperts: How Ideology and Power Politics Are Disguised As Science, says even the collapse of these kinds of doomsday predictions wont do anything to discredit radical environmentalism among the faithful believers of global warming any time soon.The unfortunate truth of the matter is that environmentalists will only lose credibility with those who are already skeptical of the global warming movement, Fitch told WND. I think time will ultimately make the difference. The global warming movement in general seems to be grasping at any and everything these days to make their case, but the more they try to tie everything (ISIS, immigration, disease, war) to global warming, the more it just falls on deaf ears.Average temperature has remained steady for 15 years and some climate scientists suggest the Earth is on the verge of another ice age. Yet Fitch observed environmentalists keep deploying hysterical rhetoric to win over Americans to their cause.One of the problems with the environmental movement is that no good news is ever good news, said Fitch. The fact that the polar ice caps havent melted is seen as a reason to fight harder for their cause rather than give pause for consideration. One would figure that their dire predictions not materializing would be seen as a ray of hope, but instead activists see it as just further reason to preach doom and gloom.The bad-news-is-great-for-the-agenda strategy doesnt seem to be working. A recent poll suggested Americans are relatively unconcerned about climate change, compared to the rest of the developed world.Part of the problem for radical environmentalists, Fitch suggested, is their grim predictions dont match up with the facts on the ground.There is always an explanation for why their models havent been correct or their dire predictions havent materialized, he said. In fact, there are usually many explanations. Weve seen coal usage simultaneously cited as the cause of global warming and the reason that the Earth hasnt warmed enough. With such a massively complex system like the climate, nearly any explanation can be made; its like playing connect the dots with the stars in the sky, there are probably millions of different lines of reasoning that can be drawn to make whatever picture you like.Limbaugh also mocked the inability of global warming activists to predict the future.Theyre having to make excuses for the heat that never happened by claiming the ocean ate it, he laughed. Oh, yeah, the ocean ate the heat. Its way down there at 700 feet below the surface. Well, 700 meters. So that would be almost a half a mile down there. Thats where all the heat is, and its gonna come bubbling up there. Its gonna heat the saltwater, and the heat that the oceans ate is gonna heat up the saltwater, the saltwater is gonna flood and thats how were gonna get the rising sea. This was in all of the pro-global warming, climate change analysis of last week.Unfortunately, Fitch said the global warming hysteria will continue for the foreseeable future, regardless of the facts, and skeptics may not live to see themselves vindicated.The public may grow even less concerned than they are now and politicians may eventually start to shy away from the global warming panic, but global warming activists do have time on their side, he said.We know that the climate changes because it has done so in the past. We also know that it changes slowly but it does, sooner or later, shift. When that happens  whether we go into another ice age or become like the surface of Venus  some small cadre of activists will still be standing there with a sign saying that it is because of Big Oil.Its like the sidewalk preacher who constantly warns, The end is near. He doesnt have to be right tomorrow, just right eventually. Thats the biggest asset that the activists have; they are warning about things 200 years in the future. Whether they are right or wrong doesnt matter here and now and so they never have to admit to being wrong, just being a bit early in their predictions.
World

For the first time in decades, Hezbollah is now focused on fighting other Muslims rather than its sworn enemy, Israel. This new endeavor is also unique in that Hezbollah is fighting primarily in another country. Hezbollah has staged terrorist attacks in other countries before, but in Syria it's operating more or less as a traditional army rather than a guerrilla and terror group. While committing to a foreign conflict is an unprecedented move for Hezbollah, it was not completely unpredictable. Hezbollah draws much of its financial and military support from Syria and Iran, so it makes sense that it would want to do everything it can to ensure the Assad regime remains in power. Also, the prospect

The Week
Time to reveal my first investment in a truly Japanese company (that is bought with Yen and only listed in Japan). What really triggered me to pull the gun...
I WRITE NEWS ABOUT AND PUT NEWS ARTICLES ABOUT ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM PERTAINING TO BIBLE PROPHESY HAPPENINGS.JOEL 3:20 But Judah (ISRAEL) shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.(THATS ISRAEL-JERUSALEM WILL NEVER BE DESTROYED AGAIN)-WE CHRISTIANS ARE ALL WAITING PATIENTLY FOR THE PRE-TRIBULATION RAPTURE TO OCCUR.SO WE CAN GO TO JESUS AND GET OUR NEVER DYING BODIES.SO WE CAN RULE OVER CITIES OURSELVES.WHILE JESUS RULES FROM DAVIDS THRONE FOREVER IN JERUSALEM.
[January 29, 2016] Food Processing Major Signs with Zycus for Complete Procurement Solutions Suite

Zycus, a global leader in source-to-pay procurement technology solutions, announced today that a leading food ingredients manufacturer will soon commence implementation of its complete, integrated suite of procurement automation solutions, including eSourcing, Contract Management, Supplier Information and Performance Management, Spend Analysis (with advanced commodity tracking), and Financial Savings Management. With ambitious objectives for enterprise-wide strategic sourcing transformation, the company's procurement team leader made a strong case to corporate leadership in favor of upgrading the company's procurement technology to a fully integrated suite of next-generation solutions. "We strive to maintain an exceptionally lean and efficient organization. For our team to meet its' objectives, it was clear that we would need state-of-the-art, integrated procurement solutions that would be easy for our teams around the world to learn and adopt." Through a competitive RFP in which the company evaluated both incumbent and leading procurement solution providers, they were attracted to Zycus for its responsiveness during the evaluation and the solution's unique consistency across applications both in terms of functionality and user interface. "Zycus was patient during the evaluation and very interested in helping us learn how to maximize user adoption, use, and utilization of the solutions throughout our global sourcing and procurement organization," says the team lead. As a provider of food & beverage ingredients, there are rigorous requirements for managing supplier certifications, documentation, chain of custody, and other information components. As uch, it will begin its suite implementation with the Supplier Management and e-Sourcing modules, moving on to Contract Management, Spend Analysis, and Financial Savings Management from there. "As a large player in global commodity markets, we were also excited to learn that Zycus could offer, through its iCost solution, up-to-date and consistent tracking of global commodity price indices. The system-generated alerts to significant market shifts will help drive purchase decisions and realize contractual savings opportunities. This is an important differentiator for Zycus and will reduce some of the burden placed on our lean procurement teams," adds a senior procurement executive.



"The global agribusiness firm joins a growing population of enterprise sourcing organizations that are focused on equipping talented - yet very lean - teams to deliver global competitive advantage via integrated process automation and access to superior business intelligence," observes Zycus founder and CEO Aatish Dedhia. "By moving over to a next-generation, fully integrated platform, they will be capable of moving faster, with far better information than their counterparts in competitive companies that have been slower to invest in developing their capabilities. The time for fully integrated procurement technology suites has most definitely arrived." About Zycus

Zycus is a leading global provider of procurement solutions suite across the source-to-pay and procure-to-pay cycles. Our product portfolio includes applications for strategic procurement- Spend Analysis, eSourcing, Contract Management, Supplier Management and Financial Savings Management and operational procurement- eProcurement, eInvoicing. Our spirit of innovation and our passion to help procurement create greater business impact is reflected among the hundreds of procurement solution deployments that we have undertaken over the years. We are proud to have as our clients, some of the best-of-breed companies across verticals like Manufacturing, Automotive, Banking and Finance, Oil and Gas, Food Processing, Electronics, Telecommunications, Chemicals, Health and Pharma, Education and more. We currently cater to over 300 customers worldwide in 20 countries. To learn more about the Zycus, address e-mail to [email protected] or visit http://www.zycus.com/ View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160129005511/en/

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In todays business environment, companies must be ready to analyze and leverage business data that accumulates with every business step they take. Real-time data changes the way companies do business, making some analytics methods obsolete and creating space for new solutions and strategies. It goes without saying that real-time data is too valuable to be ignored. The extent to which companies will be able to benefit from it depends on the kind of resources they already have and their willingness to face new challenges.

Test various options and choose the best one

In todays data-driven business environment actionable real-time data gives us the possibility to spot our mistakes and act on them quicker than ever. We can enjoy the freedom of making mistakes and learning from them  to realize which strategies work best and should be pursued. In practice it translates to running AB tests on two different variations of product features, campaigns or website design to compare them in parallel and learn which one works best. The test will provide you with solid real-time data on what option has yielded the expected result. For testing websites and landing pages you can use online tools, for example Google Website Optimizer. Having conducted an AB test, you can follow the more successful strategy immediately, without the danger of discovering only after few weeks or months that your actions dont bring any result and youve been throwing money down the drain.

Get your hands on data

Two heads are better than one  give access to real-time data to all your employees not just data scientists or IT department. Create a beneficial dashboard culture in your company so that any employee can monitor their performance, discover weak points and find a field of improvement. Allow your employees to see step by step what failed on the way to goal completion and empower them to learn from their own experience. You can speed up the decision making process in your team by giving your employees an easy access to KPI dashboards. With solid data about what areas need improvement and what strategies work best, they can make fast and confident data-driven decisions.

Remove barriers to data you need

The time when only the privileged employees were given access to data is long gone. In order to make the whole team capable of analyzing data, it must be easy to reach regardless of source, format, size, whether it is structured, semi-structured or unstructured, static or dynamic. Advanced programming skills shouldnt be a prerequisite to view data. Many business analytics tools available online have already developed methods to avoid these barriers. Users can connect their data sources and perform cross-database analysis via an easy-to-use interface even without IT engineer-equal skills. The resulting powerful visuals will constitute a perfect basis for informed and fast decision-making as well as a ready-to-use presentation material.

Access data on the fly

In certain parts of the world, it seems that everybody has a smartphone, tablet, or both, and these devices aren't used just for games or Web surfing  we use them to manage work-related tasks on the go and use our time in the most effective way. It is estimated that by 2016 the number of smartphone users worldwide will surpass 2 billion. What does it mean for the business landscape? Business owners must make sure that their websites comply with the rules of responsive web design. On the other hand, Business Intelligence software vendors must face the challenge of providing mobile optimized tools that enable workers to view business analytics reports and dashboards on mobile endpoints. Real-time access to critical data insights translates to faster decision making, regardless of where employees are located.

Moreover, companies often apply bring-your-own-device policy which means that every employee should be prepared to access data and perform tasks on their personal device. It has given organizations even more incentive to implement comprehensive mobile data access to their websites and tools. Both businesses and users benefit from more flexibility and easier cross-teams cooperation allowed by mobile endpoints.

Self-service tools for fast and hands-on business analytics

The avalanche of inputs from social media and other unstructured information that is characteristic of big data doesnt fit into the spreadsheets any longer. The volume, variety and velocity of data have made it too complex to analyze data using old-school tools. The majority of them cannot afford a separate data analytics department stacked with servers and a team of highly qualified data scientists.

Thats where data analytics as a service will help. Self-service business intelligence is a great solution for companies who dont want to take on a big fixed expanse of employing an IT department, but want to enjoy the advantage of advanced business analytics, data visualization and safe data storage. In a self-service model all the resources are delivered by the tool provider and they usually are reduced to comprehensive software that allows users to analyze data on their own, without any programming skills at all. An added value is automated reporting functionality or data warehousing  when you choose to entrust your data to external servers. Leveraging self-service BI tools facilitates swift data management, analytics and reporting and allows you to turn unstructured data from different databases into meaningful business dashboards.

Alex Ivanovs has been covering technology for over a decade, with extensive experience in web development and web design. His experience in business, data, and technology stems from having opened several large content publications himself, as well as working with industry leading names like MediaTemple, HostGator and Huffington Post (News - Alert). When not working on technological topics, Alex likes to share his thoughts and ideas on open-minded thinking at his project SkillCode. You can follow him on Twitter (News - Alert) @skillcode.

Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
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Karma and Rebirth Reconsidered

A thorough reconsideration of the myths of the afterlife (rebirth) and just world (karma) in Buddhism. The book shows that from an evolutionary point of view such myths are understandable, but that Buddhists have never produced a coherent theory of either that can stand scrutiny. Indeed we now know that neither myth is realistic and that there is no afterlife and the universe is not fair. However, as human beings we can live on in memory or leave works, and we can live ethically.





Talking to the Kalamas

A new translation of the Kalama Sutta along with a commentary which explores the meaning of the text, and explodes some myths about it. 34 p. 4.50





A resource for visualising and calligraphy of Buddhist mantras. Commons mantras and seed-syllables in various fonts and scripts, including Devanagari, Tibetan Uchen, and Siddham.
President Barack Obama will return next month to the place where his political career began to address the Illinois General Assembly.

The presidents Feb. 10 visit comes amid an unprecedented budget deadlock between his fellow Democrats and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Obama called for creating a more civil political environment, which will be the subject of his speech to lawmakers in his home state.

Obama, who served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, will speak to lawmakers about what we can do, together, to build a better politics  one that reflects our better selves, according to the White House.

In his State of the State address Wednesday, Rauner cited the presidents support for changing the way legislative districts are drawn, one of the first-term governors policy priorities.

Rauners office issued a statement Friday welcoming the presidents visit.

Despite our political differences, the President and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans, Rauner said.

I know we can achieve great things for Illinois by having mutual respect for one another and focusing on bipartisan compromise to achieve whats best for the long-term future of our great state.

Republican state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, who served with Obama in the Senate for two years, said the presidents call for civility is one thats needed everywhere, every state.

I dont care who the president is, Brady said, Illinois will always welcome the president of the United States.

Republican Sen. Dave Luechtefeld of Okawville served with Obama throughout his tenure and played cards with him regularly.

As for Obamas message, however, I dont know if hes set a very good example as president, Luechtefeld said.

Weve had Republican and Democratic presidents off and on for my whole life, and Ive never seen it more divided than it is now, he said.

Democratic Sen. Andy Manar of Bunker Hill was on the Senate Democratic staff when Obama was in the General Assembly.

The fact that Obama will be addressing the body where his path to the presidency began gives the event a heightened importance, he said.

Hes a product of the Illinois Senate in many ways, Manar said. ** No Magazine Use, No Broadcast Use **
CHARLESTON -- Starting and continuing her career since 1980 at CCAR Industries, which is a non-profit organization that helps support East Central Illinois people with developmental disabilities and/or other functional limitations, Lyla McGuire sought to help strengthen services available in the community.

McGuire, executive director of CCAR Industries, has been named the Charleston Area Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Citizen of the Year.

She was nominated by several people from CCAR and others from Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center and the Charleston Rotary Club.

Any accomplishments she took part in had nothing to do with an eye toward winning an award for her, but the honor was humbling nonetheless, she said.

I've tried to do as many things as I can and have an effect on people, but you don't do it to get an award, McGuire said. It is such a nice wonderful surprise (getting the award).

McGuire said it was especially surprising knowing the amount good done by others in the community.

We live in a really wonderful community that is very generous, and we have lots of wonderful services that people have really worked hard to develop, McGuire said.

Along with spending 35 years in various positions within CCAR, McGuire has served on several boards, including Area Agency on Aging Corporate Board, Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System, Planned Giving Information Consortium of East Central Illinois and the Institute on Public Policy for People with Disabilities.

She has also held memberships in many groups mostly in relation to support services within Illinois, namely Charleston Rotary Club, a local volunteer agency.

McGuire said she ultimately didn't want to turn down a potentially rewarding opportunity, so when asked she often got involved in several local groups across the city.

Chastity Parker, CCAR vocational evaluator, said in a letter that McGuire has been a key reason why CCAR, a non-profit which serves approximately 350 individuals and families, remains in good financial standing.

Parker said that even when the state was not providing payments as a result of the ongoing budget impasse, McGuire was able to ensure CCARs services would not be reduced.

While other agencies were making plans to reduce services, Lyla was on the phone and speaking with legislators and organizations to clarify the situation, Parker explained. With that information, she worked to develop a plan to present to our board of directors that would allow the agency to continue to provide services to individuals and families.

Parker said because of McGuire's efforts, the agency was able to continue long enough to eventually get money from the state, as McGuire predicted.

Douglas Bock of the CCAR Board of Directors said McGuire is an integral part of CCARs impact in the community.

The economic impact can be measured in dollars, but the real impact has been on providing meaningful work for persons with disabilities, Bock said in a letter.

Outside of CCAR, McGuire has also made her mark from within Charleston Rotary.

McGuire said while she has had several proud moments throughout her life, conceiving the backpack project for foster children in which foster kids are given a backpack was one of her proudest moments. The idea sprung from seeing and knowing of kids who had to use garbage bags to hold their things, she said.

Bock will be presenting the outstanding citizen award to McGuire at the annual Chamber dinner Saturday.
SPRINGFIELD -- What central and southern Illinois legislators heard during Gov. Bruce Rauners State of the State address Wednesday depended on which side of the House chamber they were sitting on.

Rauners staff and Republican lawmakers billed the speech as an attempt to highlight areas of possible bipartisan compromise amid a months-long deadlock with the Democrats who control the General Assembly. Democrats, however, largely heard more of the same from the first-term Republican, who has insisted on passing portions of his policy agenda before agreeing to raise taxes to balance the budget.

In the speech, Rauner pointed out areas where compromises have been reached, such as changes to unemployment insurance and law enforcement reforms, and areas where he believes further compromises can be reached, including a pension reform plan proposed by Democratic Senate President John Cullerton and changes to the states education funding structure.

But for Democratic Sen. Gary Forby of Benton, there was too much talk of changes to collective bargaining rights and other issues on which his party has made its opposition clear.

If youre going to be a governor, youve got to be able to work with people, Forby said after the speech. Its not, My way or the highway. 

Republican Sen. Jason Barickman of Bloomington thought Rauner did a good job of continuing to present his ideas for reform, including term limits and changes to the way legislative districts are drawn, while underlining the areas for compromise.

Barickman said it was telling that the governor singled out Cullerton as the person with whom he can compromise on issues such as pensions. If deals are reached, that could put pressure on Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan to reach agreements as well, he said.

If theres an agreement between the governor and President Cullerton on pension reform, then theres only one person whos going to stop that, and thats Speaker Madigan, if the Democrats allow it, Barickman said.

Despite his repetition of points of his turnaround agenda, some Democrats took it as a good sign that Rauner mentioned school funding reform in his speech, something Cullerton stressed earlier this week in his own speech at the City Club of Chicago.

Sen. Andy Manar of Bunker Hill has been leading the charge for Senate Democrats on school funding reform. He introduced a bill last year that would send more money to districts with higher poverty rates and lower property values.

During the speech, we heard many of the things that weve heard from the governor now for 12 months, but I think one clear difference is that hes embracing the idea that, without a doubt, school funding in the state has to change, Manar said. I heard that in a very strong way from the governor today.

Democratic Rep. Sue Scherer of Decatur, a former teacher, also was pleased to hear Rauner talk about the issue.

Reading between the lines, I felt that there was support for Senate Bill 1, she said, referring to Manars bill.

However, Republicans werent reading the governors remarks the same way.

Sen. Dale Righter of Mattoon said he doesnt believe Rauner was endorsing Manars plan.

He was very specific that we needed to try to find a way to direct more funds into the lower-income, lower-property value areas without taking money from other areas, Righter said. The plans that have been put out by Sen. Manar, supported by the Senate president, did exactly that.

Righter said he believes Rauner was talking about new money for education, which the senator believes could come from cuts to Medicaid and other public assistance programs, where the spending has grown immensely over the last decade.

Now that Rauner has laid out his priorities, Republican Rep. Dan Brady of Bloomington said, its time for rank-and-file lawmakers to put forward legislation that presents options for moving forward with the budget and other issues.

Thats what its going to take to undo this logjam, he said.
SOS Childrens Villages Ethiopia is a national member association to the International Federation of SOS Childrens Villages. It is non- political, not-for-profit, and non-religious social development organization focused on the wellbeing and development of children. It was founded in 1974 and has been a development partner since then with positive outcomes in the lives of many children, families and communities.

The SOS Childrens Village Program Harar, Hamaresa is looking for a competent and able Two Community Development Officers that meet the requirements stated bellow.

Position summary

The Community development Officer is responsible for guiding and supporting the work with individual families participating in the programme, for whom s/he has been allocated responsibility. This involves directly assessing the family situation of potential child participants and facilitating the development of a familys first family development plan (FDP). Beyond the holder works closely with co-workers of the community-based partners (key implementation partners), to realise the programmes commitments towards the development of the family vis-a-vis the familys own contributions, and to support the community-based partner in its role as the first line of contact and support for the family.

Priority tasks & responsibilities

1. Lead the initial assessment of families of potential child participants

2. Facilitate the preparation of a familys first family development plan (FDP)

3. Support co-workers of the community-based partner(s) in their work with families

4. Support the effective delivery of support services by the programme

5. Support monitoring & evaluation within the programme

6. Planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting of the project activities

Mobilization and management of the resources




Job Description



1: Participate in defining new construction operations:

Participate in targeting villages and selecting locations for construction ;



Collect the GPS data of new structures ;



Make situation drawings ;



Computerize construction designs using CAD.

2: Implement the construction activities:

Ensure implementation of the activities defined by the WASH Program Manager.



Prepare detail BoQ, rate analysis, construction work plan.



Prepare the planning, coordinate and supervise the work on the worksites with well-organized field level implementation strategy.



Lead in selecting the local construction materials;



Ensure proper use of equipment and their consumption ;



Prepare work orders and check supplies;.



Calculate the consumption of construction materials ; and facilitate the request for the supplies to avoid interruption of construction activity.



Check the quality of construction as per the specification and design drawings ;



Record in a report the precise characteristics of each construction site: design, bill of quantity, etc.



Write weekly activity reports and transmit them to the WASH Program Manager.



Make water safety plan, water quality testing and sanitary survey.



Manage the constructions material supply, record and proper utilization, and storage at the project locations.



Calculate the work volume accomplished and prepare payment certificate for the labour contracts.



Facilitate the skilled and none skilled labourers monthly salary payment and provide the payroll data to HR

3: Supervise the project team:

Participate in the technical recruitment of the project team ;



Elaborate the content of the required training and organize it ;



Train the construction team ;



Check the quality of the work performed ;



Organize the work of the team: optimize distribution of tasks according to the team members potentials.



Manage the field construction skilled (Forman, Masson, Plumber, Bar bender, Carpenter) and none skilled team as required.



Educational Qualifications and Skills Required:Qualification/Level of studies: Degree in Hydraulics /Water resource/ Civil Engineering

Degree in Hydraulics /Water resource/ Civil Engineering Required skills: : Analytical mind and global approach  Capable of supervising a team  organizational skills  Diplomacy  Relational qualities  Flexibility  Dynamism  Creativity  Computer skills  Knowledge of English, AUTO CAD, EPANET software.

Salary and Benefits: According to ACF salary scale and Social benefits policy

Closing date: Feb 03, 2016











Your rating: none



Rating: 0  0 votes



How to Apply

If you are interested, please send your application composed of: none returnable CV, Covering Letter with Application for Assistant Logistician written in the subject line, and two references to the following addresses:

Action Contre la Faim  Addis Ababa  Human Resources Department, P.O. Box 2357, (Nearby Dinberwa Hospital, Behind Mulmul Bakery): or Through www.ethiojobs.net ; or Directly In Person to ACFs Sekota, Kabri Dahar, Gambella and Mega Offices;

Deadline: Wednesday 3 February 2016 before 5:00pm

NB: Only short listed applicants will be communicated on and selection process includes technical test and an interview.

Women are Highly Encouraged to Apply

3 total views, 3 today
Term of Employment: Fixed term

Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa

Required Number: One

Salary & Benefits: Competitive

Application Deadline: February 08, 2016

BACKGROUND:

The Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has been established by the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) to identify and address systemic bottlenecks to Ethiopias agricultural development. The Agency does this through problem-solving, implementation support, and capacity building of stakeholders involved in implementation of interventions that address the systemic bottlenecks. The Agency reports to a Transformation Council chaired by the Prime Minister and whose co-chair is the Minister of Agriculture.

The programmatic focus of the Agency responds to a core set of needs identified by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Transformation Council. Within the Agency, issues are divided into three different groups: Production and Productivity which includes Inputs and Crop Protection, Livestock, Research and Extension, Mechanization and Rural Finance; Agribusiness and Markets including Market Support Services, Commercial Farming, Agro-processing & Market Development, and Cooperatives Development; and Environmentally Sustainable and Inclusive Agricultural Growth including Natural Resource Management, Sustainable Land Management, Gender Equality and Nutrition, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management, and Planning and MLE. Across the programs, the ATA engages public, private and non-governmental stakeholders to support strategic planning, manage and strengthen implementation capacity and test innovative models.

Our Culture

We have an exceptional team of employees with a proven track record of success in managing complex activities and achieving transformational results. Our culture is one where talented individuals are committed to doing their best and work together to achieve excellent results.

At ATA, we provide an exceptional platform for people who want to achieve their highest potential and make a meaningful contribution in changing the countrys agricultural sector. We offer rewarding work in a young, fast-paced growing organization with passionate, motivated colleagues and excellent career development and training. We recognize our most valuable assets are our people and are committed to providing our employees with the tools and training necessary to achieve their career goals.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Director, research & Extension will have a primary responsibility of developing, aligning, coordinating and supporting implementation of a portfolio of integrated initiatives to improve research and extension services for small-holder farmers. The Director will seek to strengthen the research system through the strengthening of the collaboration and capabilities of federal and regional research institutions. The Director will also work with research institutions in Ethiopia and abroad to ensure that high quality and relevant research is easily and quickly adapted to meet the needs of smallholder farmers of Ethiopia. The Director will likewise seek to enhance frontline farmer productivity by supporting efforts: that closely align extension services with farmer needs; integrate extension services with cooperatives, research and market forces; and strengthen regional planning as a driver for coordinated interventions at Kebele-level, among other efforts.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES:
Friday, January 29, 2016 A Friday Edition Of Vox Populi



The Spaceport needs more operating funds. What for? Where are the tenants or clients? And if the state budget is tight, let's sell the Spaceport. Yes, sell the Spaceport. Put out a request for proposals and then start the auction. Since there are around 10 or so existing state launch sites, most of which are active, the NM Spaceport really has no clients and no mission--unless being a site for commercials for auto companies is a "mission."



At least one state senator has advocated selling the Spaceport.



Richard de Uriarte, the former press secretary to former Governor Jerry Apodaca who was elected to a four year term in 1974, writes from Phoenix:

Joe, This video was made for the Hispanic Roundtable, which honored Jerry Apodaca this week in Santa Fe. The narrator is his son Jeff, who works for Entravision in the Mountain States region and is a potential candidate for governor of New Mexico in 2018. Or so I am told. Seeing us all that young is. . .well ... unnerving.



Former Governor Apodaca is 81 and lives in Santa Fe.



Stephanie DuBois writes of the suggestion that members of the often troubled Public Regulation Commission be appointed instead of elected:



Joe, I dont ever think it is a good idea to take power away from the people by having a board that is elected by the people and give all the power to one individual, say like a Governor. That resembles a dictatorship. The PRC is there to regulate public utilities and I believe it should stay elected by the people who pay the bills.



DRIVER'S LICENSES FOREVER



ABQ Attorney Jeff Baker writes:



A drivers privilege card (Republican House Bill 99 that passed the House this week) requires applicants for these cards--which would be good for only one year--to be fingerprinted. When I renew my drivers license, which is good for 8 years, all I have to do is provide a current photo.



Getting the balance right between freedom and security is challenging, but it seems as if Governor Martinez and the House Republicans want more than security. The road they are traveling does not lead to Ronald Reagans shining city upon a hill. The road they are following leads to a much darker place.



WEIRD POLITICS



Bob Gurule, who was a top administrator for the city of Albuquerque, writes:



Weird politics nowadays! ABQ Police Chief Eden speaks to the Economic Forum and gets a standing ovation. Morale at APD is worse than over and the city's solution is to bring back police officers and raid our pension fund, which only worsen the morale for obvious reasons.



BERRY'S BUSES



Blogging with Berry Reader Antonio Lopez responds to comments made here by former ABQ Mayor Marty Chavez last week regarding the proposed ABQ Rapid Transit plan for Central Ave:



I'm sorry to hear the former mayor is selling our future short by trying to undercut a project he once supported. The federal studies clearly show the link between reliable rapid transit and sustainable economic growth in a project that would bring $80 million in federal funds and countless jobs to our double-dipped recession victim of an economy.



Light rail would be wonderful but New Mexico cannot afford it. Neither can ABQ. It's in appropriate for him to sit on the sideline like a DC fat cat he has become and take cheap shots at the likes of City Councilor Pat Davis and the current mayor who are trying to work together for the good of ABQ.



Reader Nat Chakeres writes:



I want to respond to Mayor Chavez's comments about street cars and light rail. There's a big difference between the two. In Atlanta, a streetcar was pushed through and touted as an engine of economic development. It turned out to be an extravagant boondoggle that opened years behind schedule. Construction dragged on for so long that it killed off the businesses along the route that it was supposed to help. The businesses along Central Avenue in ABQ don't need years of orange cones and construction headaches.



A light rail along the lines of Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, and Seattle is a different beast and could actually improve the livability of the city, but only if it's designed to relieve congestion by connecting to the West Side, Rio Rancho, and the airport. Those systems aren't cheap, though, and building one would require a lot of money from the feds.



OPIATE EPIDEMIC



Reader Ken Tabish writes:



I wanted to pass on a great read on the Opiate/Black Tar Heroin epidemic that is impacting New Mexico and the US. I highly recommend "Dreamland by Sam Quinones, which follows the connection between the prescription drug OxyContin and black tar heroin. The author highlights its impact on Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Chimayo and the Espanola Valley. If anyone has an interest on how heroin and opiate usage is impacting our youth, then this is a must read. Also, it's interesting that there is no talk about drug intervention/treatment programs in this legislative session when it will be devoted to crime intervention/prevention.



NOT A RAINY DAY FUND



Reader Kristin Haase, the former State Land Office Assistant Commissioner for Communication during the administration of Republican Pat Lyons, writes:



Hi Joe, As you know, the Land Grant Permanent Fund is an endowment created by our states founding fathers to help support public schools, seven universities, the New Mexico Military Institute, the School for the Deaf, the School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and a handful of other vital public institutions, in perpetuity  that means forever. It is not a rainy day fund" and tapping into it to solve the states financial crisis will cripple its ability to fund public education for generations to come. Who gets what is based on a funding formula, but public schools receive 95 percent of the distribution.



The stability of the fund is subject to the world economy. When the market tanked the LGPF lost $3 billion in one year. Plus, all new money that flows into the LGPF comes almost entirely from the oil and gas industry  need I say more? When the integrity of the fund is so badly eroded - which will happen - the burden to fill the gap will fall on all of us. The powers that be need to put on their thinking caps and find another solution.



We disagree, but thanks for writing, Kristin.



BOOSTING PATTY







If the Dems should win back the House this year there will be big changes next legislative session. There would be new committee chair for the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The likely heir, Rep. Lucky Varela, is retiring, leaving a new breed of leader in Patty Lundstrom. Patty has served 15 years on House Appropriations and as Vice Chair for 6 of those years. She would likely be the next Democratic chair in 2017. She is the most knowledgeable and is perhaps the one person in the House that understands the budget process. There would be many other changes if the Dems regain the House but this would be a big one.



Meantime, a reader writes of the legislative session:



What initiative does the Governor have in this legislative session to address the most critical needs of our state: child poverty, drug addiction, education.....? Instead it is all about fighting crime, with no additional resources, or decreased resources, to get it done. Does she not understand all these problems are the root cause of crime? She is pretending to "fix" a problem that she is complicit in creating. Is the public so stupid as not to appreciate this? She thinks they are. I hope not!



Thanks for stopping by this week.



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( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2016 The readers write. First up is George Richmond:At least one state senator has advocated selling the Spaceport.Richard de Uriarte, the former press secretary to former Governor Jerry Apodaca who was elected to a four year term in 1974, writes from Phoenix:Former Governor Apodaca is 81 and lives in Santa Fe.Stephanie DuBois writes of the suggestion that members of the often troubled Public Regulation Commission be appointed instead of elected:ABQ Attorney Jeff Baker writes:Bob Gurule, who was a top administrator for the city of Albuquerque, writes:Reader Antonio Lopez responds to comments made here by former ABQ Mayor Marty Chavez last week regarding the proposed ABQ Rapid Transit plan for Central Ave:Reader Nat Chakeres writes:Reader Ken Tabish writes:Reader Kristin Haase, the former State Land Office Assistant Commissioner for Communication during the administration of Republican Pat Lyons, writes:We disagree, but thanks for writing, Kristin.A fan of Dem State Rep. Patty Lundstrom of Gallup writes:Meantime, a reader writes of the legislative session:Thanks for stopping by this week.This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com) Links HOME

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A before and after of the Hollister brothers' marker in a Middle Haddam, Conn., cemetery. Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Tw...
In 1962, French New Wave film director Francois Truffaut made a pilgrimage to Hollywood for a week-long series of conversations with Alfred Hitchcock, the man he and a few others at the time considered a cinematic master.

Those conversations, edited of course, were compiled into Hitchcock/Truffaut, an indispensable book that remains one of the most illuminated looks into filmmaking nearly 50 years after it was published.

Now, those conversations and the photographs taken of the directors and their translator have come to the screen, along with commentary from leading filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson and David Fincher, in the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut.

Smartly assembled by director Kent Jones, the film sets up the conversation while sketching their biographies -- Truffaut had made three films at the time of the talks, while Hitchcock was 63 and had created a lifes worth of movies beginning with silent films and working up to his just-released masterpiece, Psycho.

Playing the recorded conversations between the two men, Jones intercuts scenes from their movies -- 90 percent of them by Hitchcock -- to illustrate the points being made, and adds commentary from contemporary filmmakers. Those include veteran Peter Bogdanovich, who knew Hitchcock, and admirers from around the world, including Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Olivier Assayas.

Those discussions are beyond enlightening. Hitchcocks famous actors are cattle quip turns up, triggering a discussion on the changes in acting from the '40s and '50s, when Hitchcock forced actors to play scenes precisely as he had written and imagined them, to the personal, emotional, oft-improvised style initially brought to the screen by Marlon Brando and James Dean.

Clips from Vertigo are the trigger to examine the dark personal explorations of Hitchcock in his films -- What I love about Vertigo is just that its so perverted. So perverted, Fincher says -- with the clips backing him up.

And techniques are revealed. A high shot from The Birds demonstrates how to create a feeling and carry the narrative without dwelling on dull specifics. Images from Hitchcocks earliest movie showing how he used his silent film background to keep his movies visual. They, Richard Linklater said, could be run with no sound and still tell the story.

The picture also brings the two directors to life. Their conversations were lively, sometimes intense, and always punctuated by Hitchcocks wit, right down to posing for the final photographs in which Hitch says they shouldnt have cigars because it would make them look like movie directors.

The conversations went on for hours over a week and their friendship continued until Hitchcocks death in 1980. The film runs just 80 minutes -- I would have been happy to listen and watch the clips for another hour or two.

Its somehow appropriate that Hitchcock/Truffaut is playing at the Ross Media Arts Center, the University of Nebraska-Lincolns film theater that's in the same building as the schools film and new media program. Students in those programs should be required to see the film. Its that instructive about filmmaking.

Scorsese even acknowledges that movies have changed in the past five decades -- to climaxes every few seconds, lots of noise and, perhaps, less artistry.

But the films of Hitchcock and Truffaut endure and so does their conversation in this film. Anyone who loves movies should see and savor this.
The works of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh have worked their way into Lincolns theater scene, with the Nebraska Repertory Theatre enjoying a successful run of The Cripple of Inishmaan in the summer of 2008.

But McDonaghs The Pillowman is something of a risk admitted Jen Luke, Haymarket Theatre managing artistic director.

Theatrix, the student-run theater company at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, staged it in 2012, but no Lincoln community theater has produced the 2005 Tony Award nominee for best play.

Until now.

Luke will direct McDonaghs dark comedy about a young writer in a totalitarian state who is interrogated by two detectives about the gruesome content of his short stories and their connections to a series of child murders in town.

In this place where fantasy and reality blur and where torture and compassion intertwine, the writer may be a monster, a victim or a hero -- if, that is, there is any difference among those things.

The play begins a four-performance run Thursday at the Haymarket Theatre.

Were trying to see if people in Lincoln are interested in this, said Luke, who directed the musicals Into the Woods and Urinetown at Haymarket Theatre since arriving in Lincoln a year and a half ago. This is a gamble. I had to fight for and advocate for it with the board, and say Hey, why not?

This isnt the first time the Haymarket Theatre has pushed the envelope. In recent years, director Bobby Bonaventura directed Closer, an edgy romance drama, and director Bob Hall brought a Flatwater Shakespeare Company productions of Angels in America to the Haymarket stage.

Still, Pillowman cast member Dillon Kirby said the McDonagh play is not really the kind of show you see performed in Lincoln.

Its a wonderful script, said the 22-year-old Kirby, who plays the writer and was last seen on stage in Urinetown as Hot Blades Harry. Its really challenging, so when I heard the Haymarket Theatre was going to do 'The Pillowman,' I thought I needed to be a part of that.

The cast includes Matthew Schwan and Roy Gonzalez Lobato as the detectives and Walter J. McDowell III as the writers brother. Aden Marshall and Summer Elizabeth Smeester are puppeteers, which is Lukes twist to the play.

The visual is as important as the verbal, she said.
Actress Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie Tanner on the comedy "Full House," will talk about her recovery from drug and alcohol addiction at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11 in the Nebraska Union Centennial Room on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.

Her lecture, "Jodie Sweetin: A Young Star's Road to Recovery," is presented by the University Program Council.

Sweetin, 34, will engage audiences with insight from her journey through struggles and triumphs, the vicious cycle of abuse and recovery, and strategies for facing personal demons and finding ones self.

After her time as Stephanie Tanner, Jodie attended high school and went on to earn an academic scholarship to Chapman University. At Chapman, she rarely attended classes, and her hard-partying ways earned her a .9 GPA, staunching her scholarship.

Focused on recovery, she returned to her parents' house to gain traction of her life, only to find herself dependent on methamphetamines at age 22. This led to a long and devastating battle with drug and alcohol addiction. In 2009, she wrote, "unSweetined," a memoir chronicling her downward spiral of substance abuse and how becoming a mother gave her the determination and courage to get sober.

Sweetin recently celebrated five years of sobriety and is set to reprise her role as Stephanie alongside her "Full House" costars in the 2016 Netflix series "Fuller House." The streaming service will release the episodes on Feb. 26.

Sweetin's talk is free for UNL students with valid NCards. Limited seating is available to the public. Tickets are $10 at the door.
Omaha police shot and killed a 33-year-old man in central Omaha on Thursday.

Officers went to 3705 S. 67th Plaza at 4:50 p.m. on a call about a disturbance over a stolen vehicle, Omaha police said in a news release.

They found the stolen vehicle, set up a perimeter and then found William A. Adams in an apartment in the Grover Square complex, the release said.

Adams barricaded himself inside, and shots were fired around 7:15 p.m., including by an Omaha police officer. Adams was hit and died in the emergency room at Nebraska Medicine, police said. No officers were hit.

The shooting is being investigated by the Omaha Police Departments Officer-Involved Investigations Squad, and according to policy, the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the criminal investigation and the Internal Affairs investigation.
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a prosecutor's comments to the jury were not misconduct and shouldn't mean a new trial for a Lincoln man convicted of abducting and raping a Waverly woman in 2012.

The high court's split decision reversed a Court of Appeals decision in March that found the attorney's statements in Frederick McSwine's case misled the jury and prejudiced his right to a fair trial.

"We conclude that the statements were not misleading and did not unduly influence the jury," Chief Justice Michael Heavican wrote for the majority. "As such, they were not misconduct."

Justice William Connolly offered the lone dissent.

"I believe it is always misconduct for a prosecuting attorney to knowingly make false statements of fact in a case, whether the court admitted the evidence or not," he wrote.

The disagreement on appeal was over what Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Eric Miller told the jury in closing arguments about text messages McSwine sent to his wife about being in big trouble for something he had done.

McSwine had denied the allegations from the start, saying the woman willingly had sex with him Oct. 13, 2012, then got angry when she learned he didn't want a relationship.

In stark contrast, the Waverly woman testified that he forced her from her home, the blade of a pocket knife to her back, and forced sex on her in wooded rural areas during the hours that followed.

In closing arguments, Miller said it was implausible that McSwine would have thought he was in trouble for trespassing at a home in Eagle, as McSwine had said on the stand.

The prosecutor told jurors it was "unsupported by any evidence at all. It's just him saying that that happened."

But the Cass County Sheriff's office had reports to corroborate the trespassing, and Miller knew it.

At the end of the "he said, she said" trial, the jury found McSwine guilty. He appealed, and the Court of Appeals found that Miller had misled the jury and committed prosecutorial misconduct, and that McSwine's attorney, Jeff Pickens of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, erred when he failed to object to it.

But on Friday, the Supreme Court majority came to a different conclusion.

Heavican said the jury only could consider evidence offered and admitted at trial, and the police reports about the trespassing never went before the jury, so there was no evidence presented at trial that corroborated what McSwine said.

Even if the prosecutor's statements were misconduct, the chief justice wrote, they wouldn't have violated McSwine's right to a fair trial.

Heavican said when taken in context of the trial it seemed clear that the state hadn't strongly contested McSwine's story that he had trespassed that day at a house in Eagle, but rather that it was what McSwine was referring to in the texts.

In his dissent, Connolly said because the false statements were crucial to McSwine's only defense and were made when he couldn't rebut them, he should get a new trial.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Court of Appeals to consider the other trial errors McSwine had alleged.

McSwine, 29, is serving 66 to 101 years at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.
More than 60 Nebraska high school and college students gathered at the state Capitol Thursday because they want to use their passion about climate change to move from debate to action.

We wanted to get something real done, Claire Hinrichs, a sophomore in Lincoln Highs International Baccalaureate program, told the group. Not just talking about how much climate change totally sucks, but whats the most pressing issue, what needs to be done.

Her fellow participants at the summit organized by state Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm agreed.

Its really a pressing issue thats going to affect us a lot more than Senator Haar and those making decisions, said Reuben Erickson, a student in the Lincoln Public Schools science focus program. We need to take up the mantle.

In small-group sessions, students discussed how best to do that, stressing the need to educate people about how their actions can affect climate change and focusing on how changes will affect people in Nebraska.

It's important, they said, to take the media to task for continuing to treat the human effect on climate change as a debate rather than scientific consensus.

Its also important, they said, to realize the worlds most vulnerable populations will feel the effects most.

Lilian Turcios, who works at the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department, said they must work cross-culturally and focus outreach efforts on all communities, including the poor and disenfranchised.

Climate change isnt just a white problem, she said. People of color are suffering through this with us.

Creighton University student Haley Ourada said they shouldn't be afraid to talk to their friends about their behavior -- and to speak up when businesses dont follow responsible practices.

Its important for all of us to use our voices as consumers, she said.

Erickson, with the science focus program, said they need to follow research and pay attention to the little guys who have amazing ideas that can make a big difference.

The Nebraska Youth Summit on Climate is the brainchild of Haar, who has been a champion of climate issues in the Legislature.

He said he was struck by how few young people attended a series of roundtable discussions this fall on the effects of climate change in Nebraska -- and that it was important to get them involved.

Many of the effects of climate change will be apparent by the middle to the end of the century. Most of the adults at the roundtable discussions will no longer be around then, but the young people will.

So we need to listen to them because for them its more than academic, it's the world theyll be living in.

Thursday's gathering was designed not just to listen to young people but to give them a voice. To that end, the group learned about the legislative process, how to have effective meetings with lawmakers, how to testify and get the media involved.

A member of the Hip Hop Caucus, a national nonprofit that connects the hip hop community to the civic process to develop community leaders and work for solutions, spoke to students.

So did Don Wilhite, professor of applied climate sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and one of the authors of a climate change report that led to the roundtable discussions last fall.

Students said they went to the Capitol Thursday for reasons including their love of the outdoors and their desire to preserve it for future generations, to educate themselves on the issues, to help mobilize efforts.

Bryan Petersen, a high school student from Tekamah who grew up on a farm, was drawn by his passion for agriculture.

Lincoln High student Alex Hamann said hes been fortunate enough to travel and was struck by how some societies are plagued by the effects of pollution.

Fellow Lincoln High student Hinrichs said they shouldnt underestimate the power of their voices.

"Companies are more likely to listen to people rather than the government telling them what to do."
When gun rights supporter return with another attempt to nullify local restrictions enacted by elected officials. Lets hope they can avoid some of the excesses that marred this years legislative debate.

For starters they ought to abandon the lame attempt to dragoon state senators into support for the measure by the use of robocalls.

Whichever political mastermind thought that would work ought to go back for some remedial training in the dark political arts.

The most flagrant misuse of robocalls was by an organization called Save or States Nebraska, which placed calls with a recorded message to 23,000 Nebraskans in 10 districts.

Also in sponsoring a robocall effort was the National Rifle Association, which suggested that voters politely urge their senator to support LB289, which would have required gun laws to be uniform statewide.

Even if implemented properly the robocalls would have accomplished little beyond annoying recipients, but it made things worse that the organizers seemed to have had their wires crossed.

One of those received constituent calls and emails triggered by the robocalls was Sen. Les Seiler, who already had announced support for the measure.

Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete, who introduced the bill, said having uniform gun restrictions statewide would protect gun owners from unintentionally violating by visiting a city with local gun laws.

Ebke has a point, to be sure, but that the urge to provide that level of protection to gun owners is outweighed by the responsibility of local officials to take effective measures to protect the residents who live in those cities permanently.

In Lincoln a local ordinance takes away the right to gun ownership for people of convicted of certain crimes. The ordinance was passed in part by the Lincoln City Council to take guns out of the hands of convicted stalkers, according to Public Safety Director Tom Casady.

John Wells, president of the Omaha Police Officers Association, said the bill would mean more guns for gangs in Omaha. And because it would remove a local restriction on handguns for juveniles younger than 21, it would enable gangs to assign violent crimes to young members, because penalties for juveniles are more lenient.

Frankly, the proposed changes arguably come across not as pro-gun, but pro-gang, Wells wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

Nothing, of course, will stop gun rights advocates from the habit of wrapping their arguments in the U.S. Constitution.

Nonetheless, to characterize local gun restrictions in place in Nebraska as a violation of the Second Amendment is a glaring overstatement. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2008 landmark case that struck down a local ban on handguns, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.
Girl Scout Cookies are great, but what your local Girl Scout learns and what she does with the funds she earns is even greater.

When you buy Girl Scout Cookies, you enjoy a once-a-year treat and make an important investment in your community. Girls and troops use their cookie proceeds to reinvest in their neighborhoods through community service projects and to fund their Girl Scout activities throughout the year. Through their participation, girls also develop key life skills like decision-making, money management, goal-setting, business ethics and people skills.

In addition to door-to-door and Cookie Booth sales, girls can reach customers online using an enhanced digital platform, bringing 21st-century technology to the nearly 100-year-old Girl Scout Cookie Program. This will increase girls selling prospects and augment the skills necessary for their ongoing success in the digital age.

Girl Scout Cookies go on sale Friday (Feb. 5). Cookie booths open statewide Feb. 12. Cookies will be $4 per box and all of the net proceeds stay in Nebraska.

The 2016 Girl Scout Cookie line-up: Thin Mints, Caramel deLites, Peanut Butter Patties, Shortbread, Peanut Butter Sandwich, Thanks-a-Lot, Cranberry Citrus Crisps, Lemonades and gluten-free Trios ($5 per package, Trios only).

To find Girl Scout Cookies near you, or to connect with a troop to order cookies online, visit GirlScoutsNebraska.org.
RACINE  A Milwaukee teen who last month led Racine County sheriff deputies and Wisconsin State Patrol troopers on an early-morning chase that reached 130 mph faces three charges in connection to the high-speed incident.

Zyterrius O. Taylor, 16, of the 2500 block of North 36th Street, Milwaukee, appeared in Racine County Circuit Court Thursday after being charged with operating a motor vehicle without owners consent, a felony, attempting to flee officers and obstructing officers, court records showed.

If convicted of the felony, Taylor could face three years in prison.

According to the criminal complaint, Taylor was driving a gold Audi, later found to be stolen from Illinois, on Interstate 94 near Highway C at 8 a.m. on Dec. 20. The car was speeding, so the Racine County sheriffs office pursued the vehicle as it headed north.

Taylor accelerated, reaching 103 and then 110 mph as he reached Highway K, the complaint said. Taylor then hit 130 mph as the car approached Highway G.

The Wisconsin State Patrol and an additional sheriff squad joined the chase, and Taylor finally slowed and stopped near Highway G, the complaint said.

Officers drew their weapons and apprehended Taylor without incident, the complaint said.

Upon investigation, deputies discovered the car Taylor was driving had been reported stolen from Park City, Ill., the complaint said. Taylor allegedly told police he did not know the car was stolen.

Taylor was in Racine County Jail Thursday, online records showed. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Feb. 4.
RACINE COUNTY  Those little red mailbox flags are a signal to criminals that its that time of year again: tax scam season.

Thats a big red flag for scammers to know something is here, Racine Police Officer Kristy Brietchaft said Thursday.

And the mail thats whetting their appetites are Racine County residents tax returns  thicker envelopes chock-full of personally identifying information such as full names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

Employers have until Jan. 31 to send workers W-2 earning statements. Corporations must file their tax returns by March 15, and individuals must file their tax returns by April 18.

Typically individuals tax returns are due on April 15, but Emancipation Day will be celebrated in Washington, D.C., that day, so the new deadline is April 18, according to the Internal Revenue Service. In Massachusetts and Maine, the deadline is April 19, because of Patriots Day.

Brietchaft said usually about this time of year, tax-related scams and tax return-related identity thefts start occurring.

I havent heard of anything so far yet, she said. However, people are just now getting their W-2s.

But not all incidents occur when scam artists plunder mailboxes searching for tax documents. Many occur because hackers target companies, resulting in data breaches, said City of Burlington-based accountant Kevin Schuerman.

Last year we had about 10 clients who became victims, he said. The Aurora (Health Care) database was hacked, Target was hacked, and a couple insurance companies. I had a couple clients actually go to the police department and file reports.

Before those data breaches, it might have been once or twice a year in the preceding decade or more that clients identities were stolen and they received a reject code trying to file their taxes, Schuerman said. That means someone already has filed a tax return using the persons Social Security number.

Such fraudsters want the refunds, he said. I would say 90 percent of the time (residents) dont know until we try to e-file their tax return.

Some of the scams

Cons and scams resulting from the Target data breach include residents receiving phone calls from people purporting to work for the residents bank. The caller claims the persons accounts were affected by the breach, and want to set up new accounts for them, Brietchaft explained.

She said residents should call their banks to verify callers claims before providing personal information.

Con artists also may send letters, which look like official Internal Revenue Service documents, and are very intimidating, she said. Residents may contact the IRS to determine if any letters, calls or emails such as this are legitimate, Brietchaft said, or call their police agency.

These fake IRS agents may turn threatening or aggressive if the person they call or email doesnt take the bait, according to the IRS. Some may threaten to have the taxpayer arrested, revoke various licenses, or be deported.

This is a significant problem, said Christopher Miller, IRS spokesman for Wisconsin. That is not the way the IRS does business. We will send you a notice in the mail first (if taxes are owed). We will not threaten you or use abusive language. We dont call to demand immediate payment on a prepaid debit card, preventing a residents right to appeal.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration states that since October 2013, more than 5,000 victims have paid more than $26.5 million as a result of this particular scheme.
As a Muslim American, I am disgusted to see that a Milwaukee resident, Samy Mohamed Hamzeh, had allegedly planned out an attack in the name of Islam, an inherently peaceful religion, that teaches no such action. Moreover, as someone who has called Milwaukee home her entire life, every new detail about his plans and beliefs leaves me feeling rattled and filled with concern.

At a time like this, I believe it is crucial for me as a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to explain that Hamzeh's actions are not based on the correct understanding of Islam taught by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

True Islam teaches people to completely reject all forms of terrorism and promotes dialogue to resolve any conflict. True Islam instructs Muslims to be loyal to their country of residence. Any teaching that contradicts these precepts is extremist ideology and a threat to national security.

I am incredibly grateful for the brave work of the FBI in preventing this attack on humanity. I hope that we will not become divided at a time in need of unity and dialogue. By standing together as one, regardless of faith, we can send a very powerful message to extremists, that we are all united against extremism.

Aneela Nasir

Franklin
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel on Friday asked a federal judge to stay out of a matter related to the halted John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walkers recall campaign, marking the first time his office has taken sides in court in the politically fraught legal battle.

Lawyers representing the John Doe investigators issued a statement Friday afternoon calling Schimels comments on the matter false and defamatory.

Schimel filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit that could affect a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision requiring investigators to turn over evidence they collected during the so-called John Doe I and II investigations into Walkers Milwaukee County office and his 2012 recall campaign.

Schimel, a Republican elected in 2014, asked the court to deny the investigators motion to block the state Supreme Courts decision out of respect for the separation of state and federal court authority. He noted the court determined investigators obtained numerous documents as part of an unlawful state-law investigation, meaning that they have no right to possess such documents.

The defendants in this case are requesting that the federal court directly contradict the Wisconsin Supreme Courts order requiring that the evidence unlawfully seized by the John Doe investigators be kept under seal, Schimel said in a statement. The defendants request ignores well-settled law which provides that federal courts may not interfere with state court decisions.

Douglas Knott, a lawyer representing Milwaukee County investigators David Budde, Robert Stelter and Aaron Weiss, issued a statement saying Schimel misrepresented their position. They are asking for the John Doe records to be available to the investigators as they defend themselves against lawsuits, but not that they be unsealed for the public.

We are surprised that the Attorney Generals office, after declining to participate previously due to conflicts of interest, would involve itself now in such a partisan and ill-informed manner, Knott said. We question whose interest is being served by Mr. Schimels sudden appearance in favor of (plaintiff Cindy) Archers position and his accompanying media statements.

Scot Ross, executive director of liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, chastised Schimels move, noting the political arm of the state chamber of commerce, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, spent $1.5 million to help get Schimel elected. The John Doe probe was investigating coordination between Walkers recall campaign and so-called issue advocacy groups such as WMC and Wisconsin Club for Growth.

Brad Schimel is turning DOJ into a legal defense fund for his campaign backers, Ross said.

Asked for a response, Schimel said in an email the brief is self-explanatory.

As Attorney General, I represent the state and have an obligation to protect the sovereignty of our state and the validity of the decision of our state Supreme Court, he said.

Schimels predecessor, J.B. Van Hollen, also a Republican, declined to lead the John Doe II investigation after a more than five-month review of a request by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. But instead of shutting it down, he cited the perception that my office can not act impartially and referred the matter to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board.

Chisholm, the GAB and Republican and Democratic district attorneys in four other counties consolidated the case in 2013 under special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, a self-described Republican. After Schmitz served dozens of subpoenas in fall 2013, the subjects of the investigation fought back in court and Judge Gregory Petersen, who was overseeing the case, quashed the subpoenas in January 2014.

Schimel represented Petersen in the case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. However, Schimel maintained neutrality on the core legal issues and primarily defended the appointment of the judges who oversaw the case.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in July the investigation had no basis in law and denied a reconsideration motion in December. Chisholm and the two Democratic district attorneys involved in the case are trying to appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In December, Schimel declined to intervene on behalf of those being investigated, but discouraged Schmitz from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling the case a long, unfortunate chapter in Wisconsins history.

The federal lawsuit filed by former Walker aide Cindy Archer alleges Milwaukee County investigators violated her civil rights when they served search warrants at her Madison home in September 2011 as part of the first John Doe investigation, which yielded six convictions of former Walker aides and associates.

The lawsuit is being heard by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a former Democratic state senator appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton.
Angela Merkel Must Go

Ross Douthat









ON New Years Eve, in the shadow of Colognes cathedral, crowds of North African and Middle Eastern men accosted women out for the nights festivities. They surrounded them, groped them, robbed them. Two women were reportedly raped.









The underlying controversy here is not a new one. For decades conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that Europes generous immigration policies, often pursued in defiance of ordinary Europeans wishes, threaten to destabilize the continent. The conservatives have made important points about the difficulty of assimilation, the threat of radicalization, and the likelihood of Paris-style and Cologne-style violence in European cities.





But they have also trafficked in more apocalyptic predictions  fears of a Eurabia, of mass Islamification  that were somewhat harder to credit . Until recently, Europes assimilation challenge looked unpleasant but not insurmountable, and the likelihood of Yugoslavian-style balkanization relatively remote.





With the current migration, though, were in uncharted territory.





As Hudson notes, these trends have immediate implications for civil order  young men are, well, young men; societies with skewed sex ratios tend to be unstable; and many of these men carry assumptions about womens roles that are diametrically opposed to the values of contemporary Europe.





But theres also a longer term issue, beyond the need to persuade new arrivals that  to quote from a Norwegian curriculum for migrants  in Europe to force someone into sex is not permitted. When immigration proceeds at a steady but modest clip, deep change comes slowly, and theres time for assimilation to do its work. Thats why the Muslim population in Europe has been growing only at one percentage point a decade ; its why many of the Turkish and North African immigrants who arrived in Germany and France decades ago are reasonably Europeanized today.

In the German case the important number here isnt the countrys total population, currently 82 million. Its the twentysomething population, which was less than 10 million in 2013 (and of course already included many immigrants). In that cohort and every cohort afterward, the current influx could have a transformative effect.





How transformative depends on whether these men eventually find a way to bring brides and families to Europe as well. In terms of immediate civil peace, family formation or unification offers promise, since men with wives and children are less likely to grope revelers or graffiti synagogues or seek the solidarity of radicalism.





But it could also double or treble this migrations demographic impact, pushing Germany toward a possible future in which half the under-40 population would consist of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants and their children. If you believe that an aging, secularized, heretofore-mostly-homogeneous society is likely to peacefully absorb a migration of that size and scale of cultural difference, then you have a bright future as a spokesman for the current German government.





Youre also a fool. Such a transformation promises increasing polarization among natives and new arrivals alike. It threatens not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930s-style political violence. The still-imaginary France Michel Houellebecq conjured up in his novel Submission, in which nativists and Islamists brawl in the streets, would have a very good chance of being realized in the German future.





This need not happen. But prudence requires doing everything possible to prevent it. That means closing Germanys borders to new arrivals for the time being. It means beginning an orderly deportation process for able-bodied young men. It means giving up the fond illusion that Germanys past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present.





It means that Angela Merkel must go  so that her country, and the continent it bestrides, can avoid paying too high a price for her high-minded folly.
About My Gap Year

This blog is a way of recording my time abroad during this next year. I will be heading to Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Peru in the fall on service trip with Rustic Pathways, and then studying in Granada in the spring. I'll be updating roughly every week, as some of the places I will be will have limited internet access. Hope you enjoy!
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana (ACLU) [advocacy website] and the Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services Commission (IPAS) [advocacy website] reached a settlement agreement [document, PDF] on Wednesday with the Department of Corrections [official website] over the treatment of mentally ill prisoners. The ACLU of Indiana and IPAS filed suit [complaint, PDF] in 2008 alleging violations of the Eight Amendment [text], the Americans with Disabilities Act [text, PDF], and the Rehabilitation Act [official website]. IPAS and the ACLU claimed that prisoners in Indiana State correctional facilities had infrequent and ineffective contact with mental health professionals and were violently removed from their cells and placed in solitary confinement. The settlement agreement includes [Indiana Lawyer report] not placing seriously mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement and outlines adequate treatment for the prisoners. According to IPAS there are over 5,000 inmates with a mental health diagnosis.

The treatment of prisoners and prison reform [JURIST podcast] has been a growing concern in the US for years. In August, the Department of Justice reached a settlement [JURIST report] with LA prisons on mentally ill inmate care. In May, Human Rights Watch released [JURIST report] a report stating that mentally disabled prisoners experience unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force at the hands of prison staff across the US. In April, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments [JURIST report] in Kingsley v. Hendrickson over the standard that should be applied to excessive-force claims brought by pre-trial detainees. A federal court in February approved [JURIST report] a settlement agreement between the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) and the ACLU in a class action lawsuit over the health care system within Arizona prisons. Also in February rights group Equal Justice Under Law filed suit [JURIST report] against the cities of Ferguson and Jennings, Missouri, for their practice of jailing citizens who fail to pay debts owed to the city for minor offenses and traffic tickets. The ACLU and the ACLU of Texas released a report in 2014 exposing [JURIST report] the results of a multi-year investigation into conditions at five Criminal Alien Requirement prisons in Texas.
[JURIST] Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] reported [press release] Friday that satellite images show five possible mass graves in Buringa, Burundi, which may be connected to last months infamous massacre. On December 11, security forces killed [Newsweek report] at least 87 armed protesters who stormed military barracks in the capital of Bujumbura. Witnesses told AI that authorities retrieved bodies from the streets the following day and dumped them in several undisclosed locations. Local reports suggest that there may be nine more mass graves in Mpanda and Kanyosha. AI has called on African leaders to demand further investigation into the matter during the African Union summit [official website] taking place this weekend.

Violence in Burundi began in the wake of President Pierre Nkurunzizas announcement that he would seek a third term of office, which he was voted into [JURIST report] in July. Earlier this month UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein expressed his concerns [JURIST report] regarding rising conflicts in Burundi that have given rise to gang rapes, torture, ethnic repression, mass graves, and secret detentions and disappearances. The UN Human Rights Council has approved a resolution [JURIST report] to dispatch experts to investigate human rights violations in Burundi, condemning violence in the country, use of excessive force by officials and restrictions on freedoms. In November Zeid condemned [JURIST report] the suspension of 10 NGOs in Burundi. Also in November the UN Security Council unanimously adopted [JURIST report] a resolution condemning the political violence and killings currently afflicting Burundi. Shortly before, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement calling for [JURIST report] an end to the political violence and killings in Burundi. In October the UN human rights office shared concerns [JURIST report] over the rapidly worsening security and human rights situation in Burundi, noting that 198 people have been killed in the nation since April.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] urged the Chinese government on Friday to overturn [press release] a verdict sentencing three human rights activists, including a lawyer, in the Guangdong province to up to five years in prison. The individuals were convicted for inciting subversion of state power. HRW argues that the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping has been cracking down human rights activists to encourage adherence to the Communist Party. The group claims that the government has been exercising a broad interpretation of what constitutes subversion in an effort to eliminate peaceful dissent, conflicting with Chinas Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression.

Earlier this month, Chinese authorities arrested high profile human rights lawyer Wang Yu and her husband on charges of political subversion. Authorities accused [NYT report] Wang of subversion of state power and her husband Bao Longjun, a trainee lawyer, of inciting subversion of state power. It is believed by rights groups that the detention is part of a crackdown [BBC report] on rights lawyers and members of groups seeking reforms of the countrys legal system. Chinese state media recently criticized [JURIST report] detained human rights lawyers for undermining the rule of law. Last month prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was released [JURIST report] after receiving a suspended sentence. Pu was detained [JURIST report] in 2014 on a charge of causing a disturbance after he attended a weekend meeting that urged an investigation into the 1989 crackdown of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and was subsequently denied [JURIST report] bail.
[JURIST] A Hungarian court on Thursday acquitted [press release, in Hungarian] 15 employees of the Mal Corp for their role in the toxic red sludge spill that killed 10 people in 2010 after a reservoir burst. The spill, which was one of the worst environmental disasters of the nation, with more 1 million cubic meters [AP report] of the sludge destroying hundreds of homes, took years of clean-up and cost 40 billion forints (USD $140 million). Many neighborhoods had to be demolished and rebuilt. After the spill, Mal Corp, facing blame for the incident, was taken over by the government. Several have expressed discontent with the ruling, such as Greenpeace [advocacy website] saying that while no one has been held responsible for the spill, it is obvious that human negligence led to the catastrophe. It is unclear whether the ruling will be appealed.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban [official website, in Hungarian] announced in 2010 that police had arrested [JURIST report] Mal Corp CEO Zoltan Bakonyi on criminal negligence charges for the companys role in the chemical spill [CNN backgrounder]. Orban also announced an emergency law [MTI-ECO report] that was easily passed [Reuters report] allowing the government to take control of Mal Corp, which owned the plant from which the spill originated.
An Indiana legislative committee approved a bill [SB 344] Wednesday that would repeal the controversial religious freedom law [SB 101] passed last year [JURIST report] that allowed businesses to deny service based on sexual orientation. The Senate Rules committee voted 7-5 to approve the bill, which will grant civil rights protections to gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals. The amendment is still facing criticism, however, because it does not protect transgender individuals. As a result of the controversial law [Chicago Tribune article], Indiana has reportedly lost as much as $60 million in profit, tax revenue and other economic benefits resulting from many conventions being canceled in Indianapolis.

Discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity has been a controversial issue in the US. In July 2014 US President Barack Obama signed an executive order [text] barring federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity [JURIST report] but, despite pressure, did not include any exemptions for religious organizations. In November 2013 the US Senate approved [JURIST report] the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [text], a bill outlawing workplace discrimination against gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, by a vote of 64 to 32, but it has made no progress in the House of Representatives. The US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) [official website] in July 2013 approved a version [JURIST report] of ENDA. Also in 2013, the Virginia Senate initially approved legislation [JURIST report] that would prohibit the state government from discriminating against its employees based on sexual orientation.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood [official website] stated Wednesday that he plans to ask lawmakers to approve the firing squad, electrocution or nitrogen gas as alternate methods of execution [press release] if the state prohibits lethal injections. States access to execution drugs has been hindered as a result of companies refusing the use of their products for execution purposes. Currently Mississippi has put all executions on hold due to its exhausted supply of drugs to perform lethal injections. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi [advocacy website] has strongly apposed the suggestion, arguing [press release] the proposed methods are barbaric.

Use of the death penalty remains a controversial issue throughout the US. In a recent JURIST op-ed, guest columnist John Bessler discussed new changes in the evolution of capital punishment [JURIST op-ed]. Last month a judge for the US District Court for the District of Utah denied an appeal [JURIST report] by 74-year-old death row inmate Ron Lafferty to place a hold on his federal case to challenge his execution by firing squad. In September an Oklahoma appeals court granted an emergency stay of execution [JURIST report] for inmate Richard Glossip several hours before he was scheduled for his sentence. In June the US Supreme Court held that the use of the drug midazolam may be used in executions [JURIST report] without violating the constitution. In April the Tennessee Supreme Court postponed the execution [JURIST report] of four inmates on death row while it determines whether current protocols are constitutional, effectively halting all executions in the state. Also in April the Delaware Senate voted to repeal the death penalty [JURIST report], but the legislation includes an exemption for the 15 inmates currently on death row.
Representatives from 29 states on Tuesday asked [application, PDF] the US Supreme Court [official website] to block the he implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Power Plan (CPP) [materials]. The plan seeks to eliminate the amount of carbon emissions through reducing coal and oil production by shifting to other forms of clean energy. West Virginia, Texas and Oklahoma, which lead the nation in oil and coal production, and the 26 other states argue that the final rule amounts to extensive overreach of EPA power and irreparable harm to the states and their economies. In their motion the states insist that not only is there currently a reduction in carbon emission but also a shift to the new forms of energy would create burden on states to create new technologies, update facilities, and educate or retire staff:

Absent a stay, the Power Plan will have massive and immediate impacts on both sides of the generation shifting equation, none of which is in the public interest. As noted above, EPAs own modeling demonstrates that that the shift the Power Plan portends will lead to closures of numerous coal-fired power plants in 2016 alone.  This modeling is based upon the well-accepted understanding that owners and operators of coal-fired power plants, including those plants already straining under Section 112 requirements, will not make the additional costly investments necessary to keep operations running in the face of the Plans effective mandate that those owners shift to competitor industries. The shutdown of these plants will cause the closures of related coal mines,resulting in the loss of jobs in some of this countrys most economically depressed, rural communities

Chief Justice John Roberts requested [SCOTUSblog report] that the EPA respond to the petition by February 4.

The petition comes after a federal appeals court refused [JURIST report] last week to block the plans implementation. Regulating power plant emissions has been a contentious issue. A highly divided US Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-4 last June that the EPA could not make regulations [JURIST report] regarding the toxic emissions of power plants without considering costs. In August the EPA proposed new rules [JURIST report] to cut methane emissions by the oil and gas industry, as part of the Obama administrations commitment to taking action on climate change.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein [official profile] said Friday his office is investigating allegations of sexual abuse [press release] against children in the Central African Republic (CAR) by EU forces. Most of the alleged abuse took place in 2014, near the MPoko camp for displaced persons, but was not uncovered until recently. During UN investigations, four children attached their abusers to the EU, while three of those children specifically named their abusers as belonging to Georgian contingents of the EU operation. Two additional children recounted French Sangaris soldiers giving them bottled water and cookies in exchange for the performance of sexual acts. Zeid addressed the accusations with officials from the EU, Georgia and France, as well as another unnamed nation that requires further corroboration. All of the nations have since launched their own investigations. The High Commissioner has called the allegations extremely serious, and said that [s]tates have an obligation to investigate, prosecute and ensure that the victims receive the redress to which they are entitled.

Violence has persisted in the CAR since the predominately Muslim-based Seleka rebels ousted former president Francois Bozize [BBC profile] in March 2013. More than 400,000 people remain displaced due to the violent overthrow, with over a half million more people seeking refuge in other countries. In November UNICEF called for [press release] aid to approximately 1.2 million children distressed by conflict [JURIST report] in the CAR. Last January members of a UN investigatory commission reported that crimes against humanity have been widely committed by all parties to the conflict in the CAR, prompting the commission to call for [JURIST report] the establishment of an international court to objectively investigate and prosecute crimes. Earlier that month the UN published a report [JURIST report] stating that violent acts committed in the CAR constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. Despite this finding, members of the international community maintain that there is much work to be done [JURIST op-ed] in the nation. In 2014 the International Criminal Court [official website] opened [JURIST report] a second investigation into CAR war crimes.
Dr. Jennifer Veilleux is a geographer and water scientist. This blog shares news, research, and fieldwork experiences from the Nile, Mekong, and Missouri river basins. She analyzes the impact development has on water and river communities.
Beware of Portugal jobs offered through email

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) cautions overseas job applicants to be extra careful in considering employment offers through e-mail. Administrator Hans Leo J. Cacdac said the Philippine Embassy in Lisbon has reported continuing cases of Filipinos who have been victimized or received e-mails from entities offering jobs and promising to process entry visas or work permits.



Cacdac said these unscrupulous individuals have represented real and even reputable companies in Portugal by using information on their websites but replacing their contact information. They require payment of fees for Entry Clearance Certificates, International Overseas Employment Certificates (IOEC), and Affidavits of Guarantee Fund, all of which are not required by the Portuguese authorities.



In other cases, the email recipient is asked to transact with designated travel agency that will process the necessary documents and visa required for the job contract for a fee. Cacdac said the public should be aware that prestigious companies have their own human resource department that always require personal interviews and rarely hire employees through the internet.



If presented with a job offer for Portugal, workers are advised to request for a copy, which usually specifies employment details such as number of workers to be hired, the type of work with full description and complete information on the employer. Any unsolicited job offer through e-mail which requires payment of fees for testing, language seminar, documentation, and processing of visa and other travel documents is a sure sign of a scam, Cacdac added.



He advised applicants to validate the authenticity of job offers with the POEA through its verification system at poea.gov.ph, hotlines 7221144 and 7221155; POEA Mobile Phone Application (downloadable via Google Play or App Store); Facebook and Twitter accounts; or visit its offices in Manila and the provinces
POEA lists 2016 overseas employment prospects

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said overseas employment prospects for Filipinos remain positive in 2016 as it lines up opportunities for OFWs in various parts of the world. In his report of DOLE Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, Administrator Hans Leo J. Cacdac said overall demand for overseas Filipino workers remains strong as indicated by continuing job orders of various occupations.



Cacdac said that in terms of volumes and diversity of skills required, Middle East remains to be biggest prospect employer of OFWs in 2016 and onwards. Other than household workers, nurses, engineers, construction workers, medical and laboratory technicians, cooks, waiters and food servers, electricians, welders are the most common skills and professions needed by employers in the Middle East. Cacdac said Africas requirement for highly skilled and professional workers in mining and construction related industries remains high. Health workers including nurses, medics and doctors are needed in facilities operated by international health organizations.



The possibility of deployment facilitation and protection of migrant workers from the Philippines to the region is being explored where bilateral labor agreements are in their initial stages with Kenya, Morocco, Seychelles and Tunisia Cacdac said there is continuing demand for computer-related workers, and healthcare professionals in the United States of America. In Canada, occupations for business, finance and administrative, natural and applied sciences and related occupations, health, social science, education, government service, trades, transport an equipment operators and related occupations, oil and gas, processing, manufacturing and utilities are in demand.



The Administrator said there are current job orders of nurses for Belize; engineers for Bolivia; and domestic workers, electrical technicians, and engineers for Brazil. Canada has continuing demand for meat cutters, food attendants and agricultural technicians. Certified public accountants are needed in Cayman Islands; and pipe fitters and welders in Chile. Construction workers are also needed in Sta. Lucia, Guam, Panama and Venezuela. @poeaNews /myPOEA In Asia, Japan is further opening up opportunities for semi-skilled labor in the construction, ship-building and domestic work in economic zones and care workers. South Korea and Taiwan will continue to be the major destination for factory workers.



Despite the high unemployment situation, European Union faces skills mismatch and labor shortages and the demand for foreign workers is expected to grow at a faster rate (around 13%), compared to the previous decade, due to continuing skill intensive economic and technological changes. Germany, Finland, United Kingdom will continue to feel shortages for health workers in the next few years. Private recruitment agencies have yet to fill up existing job orders of nurses for Ireland, Malta, United Kingdom and Finland. UK also needs assistant caregivers and other construction related workers like welders, pipefitters and engineers.



Malta also has job orders of aircraft technicians and aircraft cabin mechanics. Cyprus needs cooks and household workers. Thousands of construction-related jobs are opening up for Filipino workers in New Zealand as Christchurch Rebuild is getting into full swing starting 2016 with immediate to long-term construction projects to complete. Australias planned migration program continues to welcome skilled and professional workers into the country.



The deployment of seafarers will continue to grow in 2016 with shipping companies expecting aggregate year-over-year growth earnings of around 5%-7% from May 2015 to November 2016 which spells a stable outlook for the industry over the same period. Cacdac also reported that the demand for Filipino seafarers will increase with the continued hiring of shipping employers for tankers, cruise ships, and offshore oil rigs. ###
POEA okays partial lifting of OFW deployment to South Sudan

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration has allowed the deployment of a group of Filipino workers to a company in South Sudan, but only upon recommendation by the Department of Foreign Affairs.



In Resolution No. 3, Series of 2016, the POEA Governing Board approved the deployment of OFWs to Pacific Architects and Engineers, Incorporated (PAE) which has projects with the US State Department in South Sudan under the Flight Ops Support Program. In a letter to the POEA Governing Board Chairman, Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, the DFA reiterated that South Sudan is under Alert Level 3 (Voluntary Repatriation Phase) and as such, the travel and deployment ban on all OFWs is maintained.



However, the DFA said Filipinos working for the United Nations, and other international organizations and international NGOs with travel clearance may travel and temporarily stay in South Sudan. The deployment of OFWs to PAE was allowed subject to employers assumption of responsibility for the timely and safe evacuation of the workers should the security situation demand the same and issuance of travel clearance from the DFA. In another resolution, the POEA Governing Board also reaffirmed the Crisis Alert Level 1 issued by the DFA for Pakistan after an attack by alleged Taliban forces in a university, which killed at least 20 people.



There is no deployment or travel ban but Filipinos are advised to take necessary precautions during their stay in Pakistan particular in areas such as Balochistan Province, Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Khybere Pakhtunwa, and Kashmir-Jammu.
5 cargo trucks enter Nepal via Birgunj after 4 months of obstruction

Five cargo trucks entered Nepal through the Birgunj customs on Friday since the agitating Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha supporters began their sit-in protest at the border entry point on September 24, 2015.
About 100 youth leaders, cadres desert Samajbadi Forum Nepal

Ninety-six youth leaders and cadres of the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal have quit the party en masse, hardly seven months after the party was formed.
Dilma Roussef calls on Brazil society to unite against Zika virus

President Dilma Rousseff has called on the whole of Brazilian society to help combat the spread of the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects.
Flawed agency relationship

Increase in remittance has for now partly solved the issues of employment and balance of payment
Food for thought

The value of agricultural import now exceeds that of petroleum products
Frosty relations headed for thaw after 4 months

Nepal-India ties seem to be headed for a thaw after four months frosty relationship following promulgation of the constitution in Nepal.
Mahendranagar-New Delhi bus services launched

In a major boost to connectivity between Nepal and India, two bus services from Mahendranagar to New Delhi were flagged off on Wednesday
Nepal to chair South Asian Association of Architects

Society of Nepalese Architects is hosting the 14th regional assembly of South Asian architects from the first week of February in which Nepal is taking over as the chair of Saarc Association of Architects.
Raxaul-Birgunj border shut again

The Raxaul-Birgunj border entry point that opened for a few hours on Friday morning was shut again later in the day after Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha obstructed it.
Shipping companies refuse to take back containers

Nearly 700 empty cargo containers are piled up at Kolkata port as international shipping companies have refused to take them back because Nepali importers are yet to settle old detention charges.
Tents pitched by protesters at Mahottari border points removed

Tents pitched at the different points on the Nepal-India border in Mahottari for five months by the agitators have been removed.
The ministry of education has released the 2015 O Level results indicating a slight improvement in performance compared to 2014. According to the UNEB Secretary Matthew Bukenya, more students passed in division 1, 2, and 3.

He says Biology and Agriculture were the worst done subjects, while for Physics and Chemistry, 60% of the candidates failed because they could not comprehend the questions.

The girls excelled in English and CRE while boys performed generally well in all subjects. The high failure rate in Math and Science subjects has been blamed on the shortage of science teachers especially in rural schools which has also been cited as one of the factors that affected the setting up of apparatus.

Meanwhile results of 2,060 candidates in 86 centers have been withheld. This figure is up from the 1,900 results held in 2014 over alleged malpractice. UNEB secretary Matthew Bukenya says the highest cases of malpractice were registered in Math and Sciences. He cites Boston High school in Entebbe which has had two cases of impersonation that are being investigated. Bukenya also notes that Elnino rains affected movement of supervisors and examination material in many parts of the country.

Earlier, UNEB chairperson Prof Mary Okwakol announced that the gap between the female and the male candidates had finally closed. She also noted an improvement in the passes.

While officially releasing the results Education Minister Jessica Alupo has condemned in the strongest terms the growing trend of exam malpractice. She says government is in the process of amending the UNEB Act to provide for punitive measures against those who abate such crimes.

Alupo however noted an improvement in candidate enrollment which he attributes to the governments Universal Primary Education Program. She has also commended the Uganda National Examinations Board for releasing the UCE results 3 weeks earlier than planned.

Story By Dianah
The ruling NRM party has defended the Electoral Commission chairman over the decision not open a consignment of ballot papers for verification.

Representatives of the opposition and independent presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi who witnessed the arrival of the first consignment of presidential and parliamentary ballots at Entebbe International Airport yesterday expressed concern that as agents, they could not verify the number of ballots delivered.

However, the NRM deputy Secretary General Richard Todwong tells KFM that they are satisfied with the explanation given by the commission about security concerns. While addressing the media yesterday, the Electoral Commission chairman Eng Badru Kiggundu said the consignment would only be opened on polling day.

Hon Todwong also allays fears that the ruling NRM party could be given undue advantage to access the stored ballots.

Story By Benjamin Jumbe
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Trollfest '09

Trollfest '07 was such a success that Jackson Jambalaya will once again host Trollfest '09. Catch this great event which will leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Othor Cain and his band, The Black Power Structure headline the night while Sonjay Poontang returns for an encore performance. Former Frank Melton bodyguard Marcus Wright makes his premier appearance at Trollfest singing "I'm a Sweet Transvestite" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Kamikaze will sing his new hit, How I sold out to da Man. Robbie Bell again performs: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Bells and Any friend of Ed Peters is a friend of mine. After the show, Ms. Bell will autograph copies of her mug shot photos. In a salute to Dancing with the Stars, Ms. Bell and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith will dance the Wango Tango.



Wrestling returns, except this time it will be a Battle Royal with Othor Cain, Ben Allen, Kim Wade, Haley Fisackerly, Alan Lange, and Big Cat Donna Ladd all in the ring at the same time. The Battle Royal will be in a steel cage, no time limit, no referee, and the losers must leave town. Marshand Crisler will be the honorary referee (as it gives him a title without actually having to do anything).



Meet KIM Waaaaaade at the Entergy Tent. For five pesos, Kim will sell you a chance to win a deed to a crack house on Ridgeway Street stuffed in the Howard Industries pinata. Don't worry if the pinata is beaten to shreds, as Mr. Wade has Jose, Emmanuel, and Carlos, all illegal immigrants, available as replacements for the it. Upon leaving the Entergy tent, fig leaves will be available in case Entergy literally takes everything you have as part of its Trollfest ticket price adjustment charge.



Donna Ladd of The Jackson Free Press will give several classes on learning how to write. Smearing, writing without factchecking, and reporting only one side of a story will be covered. A donation to pay their taxes will be accepted and she will be signing copies of their former federal tax liens. Ms. Ladd will give a dramatic reading of her two award-winning essays (They received The Jackson Free Press "Best Of" awards.) "Why everything is always about me" and "Why I cover murders better than anyone else in Jackson".



In the spirit of helping those who are less fortunate, Trollfest '09 adopts a cause for which a portion of the proceeds and donations will be donated: Keeping Frank Melton in his home. The Keep Frank Melton From Being Homeless booth will sell chances for five dollars to pin the tail on the jackass. John Reeves has graciously volunteered to be the jackass for this honorable excursion into saving Frank's ass. What's an ass between two friends after all? If Mr. Reeves is unable to um, perform, Speaker Billy McCoy has also volunteered as when the word jackass was mentioned he immediately ran as fast as he could to sign up.



In order to help clean up the legal profession, Adam Kilgore of the Mississippi Bar will be giving away free, round-trip plane tickets to the North Pole where they keep their bar complaint forms (which are NOT available online). If you don't want to go to the North Pole, you can enjoy Brant Brantley's (of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance) free guided tours of the quicksand field over by High Street where all complaints against judges disappear. If for some reason you are unable to control yourself, never fear; Judge Houston Patton will operate his jail where no lawyers are needed or allowed as you just sit there for minutes... hours.... months...years until he decides he is tired of you sitting in his jail. Do not think Judge Patton is a bad judge however as he plans to serve free Mad Dog 20/20 to all inmates.



Trollfest '09 is a pet-friendly event as well. Feel free to bring your dog with you and do not worry if your pet gets hungry, as employees of the Jackson Zoo will be on hand to provide some of their animals as food when it gets to be feeding time for your little loved one.



Relax at the Fox News Tent. Since there are only three blonde reporters in Jackson (being blonde is a requirement for working at Fox News), Megan and Kathryn from WAPT and Wendy from WLBT will be on loan to Fox. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both and a torn-up Obama yard sign will entitle you to free drinks served by Megan, Wendy, and Kathryn. Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required. Just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '09 is for EVERYONE!!!



This is definitely a Beaver production.



Note: Security provided by INS.


South Korea has agreed to repatriate a new set of remains of Chinese soldiers who were killed in the Korean War and had remained buried in this country, the Ministry of National Defense said Thursday.



South Korea will send the remains of 36 Chinese soldiers back to their home country in a ceremony scheduled for March 31, the third repatriation since the first in 2014, according to the ministry.



South Korean and Chinese working-level officials held talks in Beijing on Wednesday to agree on the latest round of repatriations.



Through the two previous repatriations, South Korea sent home the remains of 505 Chinese soldiers.



Many Chinese soldiers fought alongside North Korea against the South and United Nations forces during the three-year war that ended in a truce in 1953.



An enemy cemetery in South Korea's border city of Paju is home to the soldiers of the enemy side who perished during the war. (Yonhap)




Recent satellite imagery shows a range of low-level activities at North Korea's main long-range rocket launch site in an indication that Pyongyang may be in the early stages of preparations for a rocket launch, a U.S. research institute said Thursday.



The analysis by the North Korea-monitoring website 38 North followed a series of media reports citing government officials and sources in Japan and the U.S. that the North appears to be making preparations for a long-range rocket launch that could take place as early as in a week.



Commercial satellite imagery taken of the North's Sohae Satellite Launching Station, also known as the "Dongchang-ri" site in the country's northwest, between Dec. 28 and Jan. 25 shows low-level activities at the launch pad, covered railway station, VIP housing area and other places at the site, 38 North said.



Those activities suggest Pyongyang "may be in the early stages of preparation for launching a space launch vehicle," 38 North said. It also said that a launch does not appear imminent, and is unlikely to take place in the coming week.



38 North said, however, that there is a high level of uncertainty about its judgment because the gantry tower work platforms are covered by an environmental cover, which obscures any view of whether a rocket is inside or not. In addition, the movable transfer structure at the site could easily allow for rocket stages to be assembled and transferred to the tower when it's dark or heavily clouded, it said



"If North Korea follows previous pre-launch preparation practices, we would expect to see in the coming days increased site-wide activity, traffic at the fuel/oxidizer storage bunkers, activity at the launch pad and the presence of tracking equipment," 38 North said.



A long-range rocket launch would add to international outrage over the North's Jan. 6 nuclear test. The U.N. Security Council is working on a new set of sanctions on Pyongyang, and the U.S. is also working on unilateral sanctions to punish the regime.



The North's missile program has long been a key security concern in the region and beyond.



The communist nation is believed to have developed advanced ballistic missile technologies through a series of test launches, including the most recent and successful launch in 2012.



That test sparked fears that the North has moved closer to ultimately developing nuclear-tipped missiles that could potentially reach the mainland United States. The country has so far conducted four underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013 and this month.



Pyongyang claimed that the latest nuclear test involved a hydrogen bomb, a more sophisticated type of nuclear weapon with much greater yields than ordinary atomic weapons. But the U.S. has cast doubts about the claim, saying initial analysis is not consistent with a thermonuclear explosion.




North Korea could have tested some components of a hydrogen bomb in its Jan. 6 nuclear test, CNN reported Thursday, citing a U.S. official directly familiar with the latest U.S. assessment.

The assessment comes after careful examination of the latest intelligence analysis of the test data, CNN said.

CNN cited the unidentified official as saying that there may have been a partial, failed test of some type of components associated with a hydrogen bomb.

The test was conducted more than two times deeper underground than originally assessed, a depth consistent with what might be needed for a hydrogen bomb, but the size of the seismic event and other intelligence indicates it was not likely a fully functioning device, the report said.

The official was also quoted as saying that it is possible the North Koreans believe they conducted a full hydrogen bomb test, but the U.S. believes it was likely only some components, perhaps a detonator, that exploded.

North Korea claimed it successfully carried out its first hydrogen bomb test.

But the White House expressed strong skepticism, saying "initial analysis is not consistent" with the North's claims. U.S. nuclear experts also have expressed doubts, saying its yield was too low for such an advanced bomb, way more powerful than conventional nuclear weapons. (Yonhap)
A delegation led by a top North Korean diplomat left for Russia on Friday, the North's media reported, amid the U.N. Security Council's move to slap stronger sanctions against the North over its latest nuke test.



An unspecified number of North Korean officials led by Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-guk left Pyongyang earlier in the day heading to Russia, according to the Korean Central News Agency.



The KCNA did not reveal an itinerary or other details such as the purpose of the visit to Russia.



Pak is seen as trying to seek consultations with Russia over the international community's push for a U.N. resolution to punish Pyongyang during his visit to Moscow.



Earlier in the day, Choi Son-hui, deputy director-general of the North Korean foreign ministry's American affairs bureau, was found to have entered China through the airport in Beijing, according to sources. She may have a similar mission as Pak's, experts say.



The U.N. Security Council is working on a fresh resolution for "stronger and more comprehensive" sanctions against the North over its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6.

China and Russia, two permanent veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, have firmly opposed the North's nuclear provocations, but they remain reserved over how strongly the Security Council should impose sanctions against Pyongyang.



(Yonhap)




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Sheriff: Woman shoots, kills man who broke into home -- LUMBERTON, N.C.  North Carolina authorities say a woman shot and killed a man who had broken into her home. The Fayetteville Observer reports the shooting occurred Friday morning at a home in Robeson County. Maj. Anthony Thompson is a spokesman for the Robeson County Sheriff's Office. He said the woman had left home to run an errand, and when she returned, she saw an unfamiliar Jeep parked in her driveway. Thompson said the woman entered the house with her gun, and she confronted a man who was carrying her iPad before she opened fire. The spokesman did not specify the exact circumstances that led her to shoot. No one returned a phone call to the sheriff's office Friday afternoon. Neither the woman nor the intruder has been identified.

Fugitive found in 'elaborate tunnel system' at trailer park -- SITKA, Alaska  Authorities arrested a fugitive convicted on drug and theft charges after finding him hiding this week in what they called an "elaborate tunnel system" dug underneath a trailer home in Alaska. The tunnels narrowed as officers walked further in, forcing them to trudge through on their knees and then on their stomachs. Police in the city of Sitka say they eventually spotted Jeremy Beebe's foot sticking out of another hidden entrance, catching him after an officer pulled back the skirting around the trailer. Police Lt. Lance Ewers said Beebe, 42, had failed to report to the police department on Jan. 12 after he was sentenced to nearly two years in prison, the Sitka Sentinel reported. Acting on a tip, officers staked out a trailer park Wednesday and saw Beebe heading in to one of the units. A woman who answered the door said Beebe was not there. Police then used a battering ram to get through a plywood door they found on the outside of the trailer, which led to the tunnel system.

Conviction for molesting 2 girls at deaf school reversed -- BALTIMORE (AP)  Maryland's second-highest court has reversed the conviction of a deaf-school aide charged with molesting two girls because he wasn't allowed to question an American Sign Language interpreter who assisted police. The Baltimore Sun reports that the Court of Special Appeals ruled Wednesday in the case involving former Maryland School for the Deaf aide Clarence Taylor. Howard County state's attorney's spokesman Wayne Kirwan says the state plans to appeal. The appellate court found that Taylor, who is deaf, was denied his constitutional right to cross-examine the interpreter at his 2013 trial. Taylor claimed the interpreter incorrectly translated his statements.

Satanists to do invocation at City Council meeting -- PHOENIX  Members of a satanic group will give the opening prayer at an upcoming Phoenix City Council meeting. Some council members have objected, but city attorney Brad Holm says the government cannot exclude a religion from praying under such circumstances. Satanic Temple member Stu de Haan says the group doesn't intend to do anything offensive. He says the Satanic Temple doesn't believe in a literal Satan but see the biblical Satan as a metaphor for rebellion against tyranny. The Arizona Republic reports that the temple will perform the invocation on Feb. 17. The city's invocation has been delivered by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and people of other faiths. The temple submitted a request in December to give the prayer.
MADISON  A bill to make it easier for private companies from outside Wisconsin to buy ailing public drinking water systems is coming under fire from critics who say it would hamstring the ability of citizens to block sales of vital public assets.

The proposal would make a public referendum on the sale of water and sewage disposal systems optional instead of mandatory as is currently the case.

And if residents gathered enough signatures to force a vote, it would take place before the terms and conditions of a sale are known.

I dont know why we would want to go out of our way to make it easier for private, for-profit companies to come in and own our water utilities, said Amber Meyer Smith, a lobbyist for Clean Wisconsin. I would think we would want the highest and best level of accountability with something as important as water quality.

The legislation was introduced at the request of a private water and sewer corporation based in Pennsylvania that may wish to acquire water utilities here, said Rep. Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva, the proposals lead author.

August said he was surprised by opposition because the state would continue to regulate water quality, sewage discharges and rates paid by customers for private systems just as it does for public ones.

This idea that these companies can come in and do whatever they want to is just factually incorrect, August said.

August said he wasnt aware of any municipalities that are interested in selling, but this would streamline a path for any that wanted to unload failing systems that required costly maintenance and repairs.

Making votes by the public optional would cut down on the wasteful expense of having a referendum even when there is no opposition to a sale, Tyler said.

But opponents noted that the state provides loans and grants to municipalities that need to make repairs, and they scoffed at the idea that private owners would simply absorb costs instead of passing them on to ratepayers.

If a private utility is going to buy a municipal system, they arent doing it to break even, which is what these systems do, said David Lawrence, executive director of the Wisconsin Rural Water Association. They are going to do it to make money.

Aqua America representative Jim Bilotta told legislators the company can be especially helpful to smaller communities because its assets create economies of scale that can result in lower rates.

The Assembly has already passed its version of the legislation, Assembly Bill 554.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Scott Walker didnt respond to a request for comment.

Republicans control both houses of the Legislature, but a Democratic senator said he would fight the bill.

This means that out-of-state water barons and corporations could control our shared, public water, Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, said in a statement.

Larson noted that loss of local control preceded lead-poisoning of water in Flint, Michigan, but August said the Flint case was irrelevant because a state-appointed emergency manager, not a private water company, had taken control from locally elected officials.

Under current law, a municipality that wants to sell a water or sewer utility goes to the state Public Service Commission, which sets the terms of sale. Then the deal must be approved by the majority of voters.

Current law allows Wisconsin companies to buy utilities, but there are none in the market now, August said.

PSC records indicate Superior has the only major water system in the state that is privately owned. There are about 100 major publicly owned systems.

Beloits water system was owned by Alliant Energy until 2005 when the city purchased it, said PSC spokeswoman Elise Nelson.

Aqua America Inc., Associated Builders and Contractors and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities registered in favor of the legislation.

Curt Witynski, assistant director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, said the group supports the legislation because it typically pushes for laws that put decision-making in elected officials hands instead of referendums.

Investor information published by Aqua America indicates that the corporation increased earnings 15 consecutive years through 2014. It operates water and sewer utilities serving 3 million people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, New Jersey, Indiana and Virginia.
Its hard being a teen today. Theres lots of pressure to succeed at school and extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, there are new tobacco products that make it tempting for teens to try. Some of these products have flavors such as cotton candy, tropical, grape and strawberry.

One way we can take some of the pressure off of young people is by limiting their access to things like tobacco. For the past year, Ive been involved in the Wisconsin Wins program and for the past five years, Ive been a teen member of FACT. Im doing my part to help retailers not sell tobacco to people my age, and helping my peers to be healthier as a result.

Wisconsin Wins compliance checks inspect tobacco retailers to make sure they check identification and dont sell to minors trying to buy tobacco products. I was nervous the first few checks, and knowing I was making a difference helped.

Wisconsin tobacco sales to minors have dropped in the last 10 years thanks to young people standing up for the health of their communities. La Crosse County is healthier as a result. This year, about one retailer out of every 20 checks sold a tobacco product to me.

Im happy to report that most of the retailers are making a difference and not selling to teens like me. When retailers dont pass inspections, they get information to help them not sell again in the future. Retailers can get free tobacco sales training at www.smokecheck.org.
The Canadian Pacific railroad has repaired track damaged in Tuesday's derailment in southern Minnesota and removed vegetable oil from three tank cars that remained submerged in the Mississippi River Thursday.

The railroad reopened the line running south from La Crescent into Iowa around 4:30 a.m. Thursday, a little more than 30 hours since 15 cars of a freight train derailed, sending six tank cars into the river.

After finding a sheen on the water Wednesday, crews sealed damaged valves on two of the tank cars, which were carrying soybean oil. One of the three tankers emptied Thursday was estimated to have leaked about 850 gallons into the river, according to CP spokesman Andy Cummings.

Cummings said there was no evidence of additional leakage, and barriers have been placed downstream of the submerged tankers to contain any spilled oil.

CP planned to unload the other three tank cars Friday. Once emptied the cars will be pulled from the river.

The railroad also plans to unload material from the other derailed cars, including sodium chlorate. A small amount of the hazardous material spilled during the derailment but did not reach the river, according to CP.

Cummings said cleanup crews would likely be on scene through the weekend.

Traffic on Hwy. 26 remained limited to one lane while the dozens of contractors and other responders work to clear the scene, which is about three miles south of Brownsville at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife overlook.

Cummings said train traffic is flowing intermittently on the line, which typically sees about six trains per day.

The Federal Railroad Administration had inspectors on the scene, though it could take months to determine a cause, said deputy regional administrator Michael Bodah.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Coast Guard and Mississippi River Basin Association are also at the site.

Though it's not considered a hazardous material, vegetable oil can coat aquatic animals and prevent them from absorbing oxygen, said Sabrina Chandler, refuge manager for the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
As a Muslim American, I am disgusted to see that a Milwaukee resident, Samy Mohamed Hamzeh, has been accused of planning an attack in the name of Islam, an inherently peaceful religion that teaches no such action.

Moreover, as someone who has called Milwaukee home her entire life, every new detail about his plans and beliefs leaves me feeling rattled and filled with concern.

At a time like this, I believe it is crucial for me as a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to explain that the suspect's actions are not based on the correct understanding of Islam taught by Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him). True Islam teaches to reject completely all forms of terrorism and promotes dialogue to resolve any conflict. True Islam instructs Muslims to be loyal to their country of residence. Any teaching that contradicts these precepts is extremist ideology and a threat to national security.

I am incredibly grateful for the brave work of the FBI in preventing this attack on humanity. I hope that we will not become divided at a time in need of unity and dialogue. By standing together as one, regardless of faith, we can send a very powerful message to extremists, that we are all united against extremism.
Two years ago, after the train wreck and fireball outside of Casselton, N.D., Houston County Protectors held a town hall meeting to discuss our deep concerns about increased rail traffic  an increase that is all about frac sand mining and fracking.

We invited U.S. Rep. Tim Walzs transportation specialist, first responders and fire departments, emergency management, county commissioners and conservation officers.

There were recommendations to improve rail safety. Sadly, because of our obstructionist Congress, these were not adopted.

We learned that booms to contain" oil spills in water must be delivered from a distant storage location  and they only remove about 10 percent to 20 percent of oil from the water.

When someone asked an emergency management worker what happens if a train derails in the winter, crashes through the ice and spills oil, he said: "That is my worst nightmare. There is basically nothing you can do.

Tuesday night, a train derailed in our National Wildlife Refuge near Reno in Houston County. Rail cars crashed through the ice into the Mississippi. If this had been crude oil leaking under the ice, like the man said, there is basically nothing you can do. Or, like in Casselton with a Bakken crude oil-induced fireball, there's nothing you can do. Emergency responders would not even approach the inferno because of the heat.

Houston County emergency responders cannot prepare for these train wrecks, no matter how well-intentioned. We can stop enabling the problem, though. We can ban frac sand mining. Feeding the fracking industry leads to increased train traffic and further damage to this infrastructure.
FDA OKs Merck hepatitis C drug  TRENTON, N.J.  Patients with hepatitis C have yet another advanced treatment option, as the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new once-a-day pill developed by drugmaker Merck. The FDA said Merck can begin marketing Zepatier for patients with two of the subtypes the liver-destroying virus, types 1 and 4. The combination pill includes the medications elbasvir and grazoprevir, which attack the virus in two different ways. Merck & Co. said the price will be $54,600 for a 12-week treatment regimen. Insurers will likely still demand some discounts on that price. The approval is good news for patients, because the growing competition should crimp the sky-high prices for hepatitis C drugs.

Panel proposes ban on air shipments of batteries  WASHINGTON  A U.N. panel has recommended that cargo shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries be banned from passenger airliners because the batteries can create fires capable of destroying planes, said aviation officials familiar with the decision. The International Civilian Aviation Organizations air navigation commission, the agencys highest technical body, also proposed that the ban be lifted if new packaging can be developed that provides an acceptable level of safety. Lithium-ion batteries are used to power everything from cellphones and laptops to hybrid and all-electric cars.

More airlines offer Zika refunds to pregnant women  DALLAS  More U.S. airlines and cruise operators are offering refunds or letting pregnant women change itineraries if they booked a trip to places dealing with an outbreak of Zika virus. While health officials say most people exposed to the virus suffer only mild symptoms, the risk is far greater for pregnant women. The mosquito-borne illness has been linked to babies born with small or deformed heads. The World Health Organization warns that the virus is likely to spread to most of the Americas. United Airlines and American Airlines say that since early this week they have been giving some passengers going to affected areas the chance to delay their trip or get a refund.

National conservative groups oppose online tax bill  SALT LAKE CITY  An effort by Utah lawmakers to collect sales tax for online purchases has drawn opposition from national conservative groups. Utah law already requires residents to pay the tax by voluntarily adding it to their state income tax returns, but few people do, reported The Salt Lake Tribune. This bill would create a more proactive approach to collecting those taxes. Twenty-one conservative groups wrote to lawmakers Wednesday to oppose that bill, calling it constitutionally suspect and practically unwise.

Facebook updates with live video for iPhone users  SAN DIEGO, Calif.  Oversharers, rejoice. Facebook is now offering you a way to share even more of your life on the social network  for those times when a photo or recorded video wont suffice. The company Thursday introduced the ability for its U.S. users on iPhone to broadcast video live from their smartphones to friends (or the broader public) on the service. The launch expands a late 2015 test of the feature to a more widespread audience, and pits Facebook directly against live-streaming app Periscope, which is owned by Twitter.
RINGSTED, Iowa (AP)  Lagging Republicans struggled to climb higher in their crowded field, while Hillary Clinton faced more email troubles on Friday as the presidential contenders barreled toward a final weekend of campaigning before Iowas crucial caucuses.

Most of the candidates were scattered across Iowa in a last-chance try to gin up enthusiasm, sharpen attacks and set expectations  all part of efforts to emerge from Mondays voting with momentum and a slice of the spotlight.

Some were also burdened with playing defense.

Clintons campaign tried to deflect fresh suggestions that the former secretary of states use of a private email server for government business may have posed a security risk. The news heightened some Democrats fears that the email controversy could dog their front-runner well into this years campaign.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz found himself a prime target for a field that long ago let go of any hopes of coming in first in Iowa. With Donald Trump seeming secure in the lead, the fight for second or third  or just better than expected  was underway. In that second-tier fight, all the knives were out for Cruz, whos campaigned as the one true conservative in the race.

The Texas senators rivals spent Friday trying to poke holes in that claim. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Cruz, as well as Sen. Marco Rubio, to just tell the truth on flip-flopping on immigration.

Not to be left out, Trump called Cruz an anchor baby, a new twist on his persistent claims that Cruz, who was born in Canada to a U.S. citizen, may not be eligible to hold the presidency.

Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada, but Canada doesnt accept anchor babies. ... I think thats one of the reasons hes a nervous wreck, too, Trump said at a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, where the real estate magnate was already looking past Iowa.

Cruz fired back at his rivals, warning Iowans not to be duped by false promises or intimidated by a powerful establishment. In his signature pugnacious style, he showed no deference for other contenders or for party elder Bob Dole, who has spoken out against a possible independent run by Michael Bloomberg because he fears that could result in a win for Cruz.

You want to put your finger on why the American people are so frustrated? Cruz said. Its because people who say they are on our team are fighting for the other guys.
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Police have arrested a woman who worked at Men's Central Jail in Orange County for allegedly helping the three escaped inmates make their getaway. Nooshafarian Ravaghi, 44, has been accused of helping Jonathan Tieu, Bac Duong and Hossein Neyeri escape from Men's Central Jail on January 22, according to City News Service. All three men are still at large, and are considered armed and dangerous.

Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesperson Lt. Jeffrey Hallock said that Ravaghi was an ESL teacher at Rancho Santiago Community College who had been a contracted employee at the jail for the past six months. Neyerithat's the one that was in prison for allegedly kidnapping a marijuana clinic owner, torturing him with a blow torch, chopping off his penis and leaving him in the desert to dietook one of Ravaghi's classes. The two apparently became friends, and police now believe that Ravaghi gave the men maps and other information they used to escape, though Hallock said she denies giving them the tools used to cut through metal grates and bars. Hallock also said that they're not sure what type of relationship the pair had, or how much Ravaghi knew about Nayeri's plans.

In addition to Ravaghi, police have arrested 10 others, some of whom were involved with the same gang as Tieu, according to the L.A. Times.

Authorities also believe the men might be hiding in a White GMC Savannah van. Investigators believe that Duong responded to a Craigslist ad selling the van, and then later stole it. This happened in South L.A. earlier in the week. Though Duong was the only person spotted during the alleged theft, Hallock said they have reason to believe that the three escapees are still all together.

The van had a paper license plate from Felix Chevrolet, number 8U66466, though it is possible that the men have removed the paper or replaced it with something else.

The three men made their escape after 5 a.m. on Friday, January 22, shortly after the first of two physical bodycounts that day. Authorities say the men first cut through multiple metal barriers, then made their way through plumbing tunnels, before rappelling down from the roof using ropes made from sheets and clothing. No one discovered the inmates were missing until about 9 p.m. that night. The second physical bodycount scheduled for 8 p.m. was delayed due to a fight that broke out among inmates. Authorities believe that fight may have been orchestrated as a distraction to aid the escapees.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, is accused of murder and is a documented member of a Vietnamese gang. Investigators believe that at 16, Tieu was involved in the 2011 murder of a rival gang member. Bac Duong, 43, had been charged with attempted murder, carjacking, domestic violence and a number of weapons violations.

Nayeri, 37, had been accused of kidnapping a marijuana clinic owner and his girlfriend in 2012, and brutally torturing him with the aid of two others. Deputy D.A. Heather Brown said that when she heard of Nayeri's escape, "My first reaction was: Oh, my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out. He is sophisticated, incredibly violent and cunning."

At one point, Nayeri and his cohort allegedly cut off the man's penis and took it with them so that it could not be reattached before leaving him in the desert to die. The man and his girlfriend both survived, and Nayeri briefly evaded capture in Iran before being arrested in Prague while on his way to Spain.

There is currently a reward of $200,000 being offered for information that leads to the men's capture. Anyone who sees them should call 9-1-1. You may also call 714-628-7085 with any tips, or submit anonymous tips to Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS.
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The Los Angeles Times' front page Wednesday declared, provocatively, that despite the billions of dollars invested into Southern California mass-transit, fewer people are using the system than were in the 1980s.

The piece touched off a firestorm of conjecture asking why this might be the case, and whether or not we should continue collectively pouring billions into a transit system people seem to be leaving. This is not a new issue. L.A. Weekly covered the issue briefly last October, with similar conclusions as the L.A. Times piece yesterday.

But the Times' piece did spur advocates of Los Angeles' transit ecosystem to rise to the defense of public transit, explain why there might be a decline and point out faults with the Times' reporting.

What the Times Missed

Ethan Elkind, a faculty member at UCLA Law School and author of the seminal transit history of Los Angeles Railtown, argues that the Times' reporting amounts to climate-change deniers who pick an artificially warm year in the 1990s as evidence of the phenomena's absence. By picking a year in the mid-80s as a high-water mark, the Times headline could alternatively have read "Metro Ridership up nearly 30% in past 20 years."

Elkind continues, arguing that the Times; claim that "billions have been spent" misses the point:

In addition, the article is a bit unfair to Metro in citing the billions of dollars that have been invested in rail during this period of declining ridership. Sure, since 2006 the region has been spending a lot of money on rail, but those investments have not yet resulted in actual, open rail lines. Since that year, only the East Side Gold Line and half of the Expo Line (to Culver City) have opened.

Projects funded by these "billions" that have not opened yet include the Expo Line extension to Santa Monica, the Gold Line extension to Azuza, the Purple Line extension to Westwood, the Downtown L.A. Regional Connector (connecting the Expo/Blue Lines to the Gold Line), and the Crenshaw Line which bridges the gap between the Expo Line and LAX.

Steve Hymon, editor of Metro's blog entitled The Source, made the case that decreased transit ridership is an indication that, more so than ever before, we need to be investing in a robust transportation system that isn't car-centered.

Hymon takes serious issue with a quote from the Times' piece from James Moore, a USC professor who was quoted as saying "it's the dream of every bus rider to own a car. And as soon as they can afford one, that's the first purchase they'll make."

For Hymon, and undoubtedly several others, this signals nostalgia for a bygone era when cars ruled supreme. Cars still lord over Los Angeles, but saying everyone on the bus dreams of purchasing a car and parking on the 10 Freeway for an hour-and-a-half each day is, shall we say, unwise.

Hymon hammers his point home, underscoring how dangerous Moore's claim is. "You think traffic stinks now?" he writes. "How do you think traffic would be with even a small fraction of Metro's 453 million boardings behind the wheel of a car on your local freeway/arterial/residential street? "

The dream of Angelenos has nothing to do with cars or buses, bikes or trains. Angelenos, just like people in other cities, dream of being able to get from point A to point B with minimal inconvenience. Whether this is in a buses with their own dedicated lanes, or in computer controlled cars smart enough to make traffic a thing of the past, we aren't picky. Pledging allegiance to cars or transit as superior naively ignores that the future will depend on both.

So why the recent decrease?

L.A.'s transit history is complicated and contradictory. Ridership peaked in the mid-1980s when the then-Rapid Transit District Agency operated a network exclusively composed of buses. A decade of price increases and service cuts caused a decline in ridership until 1996, when the Bus Riders Union successfully litigated Metro in a civil rights lawsuit. A federal court decreed the agency halt fare increases and dramatically increase bus service.

As the Times points out, transit ridership following the court decision increased until it began falling again in the mid-2010s. This new decline can at once be explained by Metro's recent fare increases, service cuts to several heavily-used bus lines, an improving economy, cheaper gasoline, and ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.

Yet these explanations fall short of describing any substantive trend away from transit ridership. Each one on its own undoubtedly has some effect on the overall numbers, but to make a significant dent in 500 million annual boardings demands a better explanation. The decline is somewhat of a paradox since Los Angeles' interior is increasingly better connected by transit than ever before.

Could gentrification be to blame?

One condition that the Times didn't particularly pay attention to is the demographics of most transit riders themselves. There is no data readily available on this issue, but it might be worth investigating how rising rent prices affect transportation habits.

The average household income of a typical L.A. bus rider is less than $17,000 annually, according to a 2014 survey by Metro. People who live in households making less than $17,000 annually don't take Uber. They ride transit because it is the only option they can afford. Given that income inequality is increasing in Los Angeles, it's not likely that the working class suddenly became affluent and can now afford to drive instead of taking the bus.

Could gentrification be the culprit? Over the past few decades, working class families have been getting priced out of neighborhoods like Silver Lake, Hollywood, Venice, Palms, East Hollywood, University Park, North Hollywood and Highland Park. Taking public transportation to work within Los Angeles proper might be doable from these neighborhoods, and owning a car seems like a luxury. But as this class get priced out to far-flung parts of the city, like Pacoima, or suburbs like Cudahy, public transportation becomes increasingly impractical. A worker not only won't want to sit on a bus for four hours a day, it might be impossible if they need to get to a second or third job to pay the bills. The car, while previously an expensive luxury, has become a necessity in this case.

The pace of gentrification shows no signs of stopping. Los Angeles needs more housing and most of the housing being built is hardly accessible to the demographics who ride transit; much of this housing actually often displaces them.

More research is needed on this issue. Without serious attention to who actually rides transitand for what reasonthe city's push for building dense housing and making public transportation service more regular may not solve L.A.'s impending gridlock.
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About us

Chris and Denise Lamsdell



We have both been birders for about 40 years based in South Bucks near the West London reservoir complexes.



Since September 2021 we have been based in North Norfolk. We have done our bit of twitching in the past, but with other priorities this has become a much reduced activity with a preference for seeing new birds where ever our travels take us.







We both have been ringing since 2005. Our local group was the Runnymede RG while based in Buckinghamshire. Since moving to Norfolk we have started a new group called The Iceni Bird Monitoring Group, aimed at increasing public engagement through colour ringing projects. We ring at several sites including Wild Ken Hill, Deepdale Farm and Sculthorpe Moor. We also do ringing at home and support with foreign projects when opportunities allow. Chris also has an interest in Butterflies and Dragonflies and contains his limited photographic skill to them.


The Beat is New Mexico!---Do we have to be stuck at the bottom of the barrel?--- Perspectives from Southern NM and the border region
Eurnekian bets on IPOs: Argentine businessman Eduardo Eurnekian is reported to be planning up to four IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) this year, arguing that conditions could be ideal for such a move if Argentina successfully resolves its long legal dispute with the hold-out creditors. Reuters said that Eurnekian, one of the countrys most successful businessmen, was thinking of floating shares in his airports operating company, in his energy unit Compania General de Combustibles (CGC), in his nanotechnology group (which trades as Unitec Blue in Argentina and as Unitec in Brazil), and in his agricultural company as well. He said launching the IPOs would be a complex process, but he hoped it could develop in tandem with Argentinas gradual re-insertion into global capital markets. He would use proceeds from the IPOs to fund expansion of his holding group, Corporacion America, into other South American markets such as Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. Corporacion America, which has overseas interests as far away as Italy, Morocco, and Armenia, has an estimated annual revenue of US$2bn. Eurnekian said he was optimistic about the long term outlook for gas  through GGC he has an interest in gas fields in Patagonia.

Foreign companies betting on Brazil: When things get really bad, then its time to buy. That may  or may not  be a thought going through the minds of Brazil-focused corporate investors. What is clear, according to two separate studies, is that last year foreign companies were more active in Brazilian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) than the Brazilians themselves. According to KPMG, in 2015 there were 773 M&A transactions. Of the total, more than half  396  involved purchases by foreign companies. According to KPMG partner Luis Motta: The current state of the economy and the depreciation of the real may have been accelerating the arrival and expansion of foreign companies in Brazil, despite worsening growth expectations and rising country risk. According to a separate report by PwC, foreign investors accounted for 51% of a total of 672 acquisitions and capital increases that it analysed last year, up from 38% in 2014. PwC expects the proportion to rise a little further to 55% this year. PwC Brasil partner Rogerio Gollo said Foreigners are going to remain interested in Brazil while domestic companies will continue to have financing difficulties. One of the biggest transactions last year was the US$3.37bn purchase of the Jupia and Ilha Solteira hydroelectric generators by Three Gorges Corp of China. New York-based Coty Inc also agreed to pay US$1bn for the beauty-care unit of Hypermarcas of Sao Paulo. Gollo said the sectors likely to attract most interest in 2016 are information technology, trade, agribusiness, and renewable energies.

Ford plans new plant in San Luis Potosi: According to press reports  yet to be formally confirmed  Ford Motor Co will in the first quarter of this year announce a major new investment in an assembly plant in the state of San Luis Potosi in Mexico. It is believed the plant will be used to launch a new model in the car companys range. It is thought to involve investment of US$1.5bn and would produce some 350,000 units per annum. Earlier, in April 2015, the company said it was investing US$2.5bn to expand its engine and transmission manufacturing in central and north Mexico. The Mexican automobile industry continues on a strong growth trajectory. Last year Mexico produced an all-time record of 3.4m vehicles, up 5.6% on 2014. Exports rose by 4.4% to 2.76m vehicles. This consolidated its position as Latin Americas leading carmaker, ahead of Brazil (where production slumped by 21.6% to 2.33m vehicles). Globally Mexico is the seventh largest car producer; some estimate that this year it could overtake India and move up to sixth position. North of the border, a new agreement with one of the main US auto industry trade unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW), may also be positive for Mexico. Under its terms companies such as General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler have offered improved pay and health care to their US workforce in return for the right to boost output of some cheaper, lower-margin passenger cars in Mexico. Average wage costs in the Mexican industry are around $5 an hour compared to $29 in the US. The agreement may therefore lead to further relocation of plants from the US to Mexico.

Trouble with the Isagen sale: The Colombian governments long-running plans to divest a majority stake in power generator Isagen have finally concluded with a sale  but a legal challenge is on the way. In January the government sold 57.6% of the companys shares to Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management for COP6.49trn  around US$2bn. Formally this was a sale by auction, but Brookfield was the only bidder after Chiles Colbun, the only other company left in the race, decided to drop out after the government raised the minimum share price. Brookfields bid came in at the minimum and was accepted. The government says it has met all legal requirements for a successful privatisation. Medellin-based Isagen operates six hydroelectric and one thermal power station, with an installed capacity of 3,032MW. It generates about 16% of total electricity supply in Colombia. It is regarded as well-run and profitable. But an unusual alliance of left and right wing opposition members of Congress is mounting a legal challenge on the grounds that the sale was not competitive. On the right, former President Alvaro Uribe, using a calculation based on the cost of acquiring new generating capacity, claims Colombian tax payers have been short-changed by as much as US$1.5bn. But local brokers say the sale price actually exceeded fair value. On the left Clara Lopez Obregon of Polo Democratico has claimed electricity tariffs are likely to go up as a result of the privatisation. The government intends to use the proceeds from the sale to fund its Fourth Generation (4G) road-building programme.

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Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the series in Dover, New Hampshire. The negatives for that first comic, printed in 1984, have surfaced and the owner, a Colorado collector, came to Biddeford In September to look around.


Eight Egyptians may go to trial for their bad repairs on the gold mask of ancient King Tutankhamun.

Known as King Tut, the ancient Kings famous golden burial mask was damaged by museum workers in 2014.

News reports said that Egyptian prosecutors allege the employees of Cairos Egyptian Museum dealt recklessly with the mask. The well-known object is 3,300 years old.

Reports say museum workers accidentally broke the blue and gold braided beard off the mask while fixing a light in its case. The staff then glued the piece back onto the young pharaohs burial mask with a lot of epoxy, a type of glue. It left a ring of glue around the edge of the beard that could be seen clearly.

When workers tried to remove the ring of glue, they made fine scratches, or marks, on the mask.

German Christian Eckmann was brought in as the lead restoration specialist. The damage to King Tuts mask has since been repaired by Eckmann and his team. It was put back on in its place at the museum last month. Reports say the fine scratches cannot be seen by most people.

The New York Times reported the German experts carefully removed the epoxy and restored the solid gold mask using beeswax, the adhesive used by the ancient Egyptians.

Investigators want to know how the beard came off, and why the workers used too much epoxy.

The former museum director and former head of restoration are two of the eight people facing charges. The charges include negligence and violating professional and scientific rules.

The accused officials have been suspended from their jobs, but will not go to prison, said the New York Times. However, they could lose those jobs and have to pay large fines.

The mask and other items related to the famous pharaoh bring many tourists to Egypt and Cairos Egyptian Museum. The museum houses ancient Egyptian objects and mummies. The mask is one of the best-known pieces in the museum.

Monica Hanna is an archaeologist and a member of Egypts Heritage Task Force. She told the New York Times that the museum has become increasingly neglected in recent years.

Theres been a shift in the people working there, she told The New York Times. The experience people have retired, and the new ones do not have adequate training.

A new museum called the Grand Egyptian Museum near the famous pyramids is behind schedule for its opening. Another museum, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization is finished, but not yet open to the public.

British archaeologists discovered King Tuts tomb in 1922. It was a great find. Unlike many other royaltys tombs, the burial room had not been touched since King Tut died, more than 3,000 years ago.

The discovery made King Tut famous. Objects from his tomb have traveled around the world. It gave people the chance to see the ancient pieces up close.

But in recent years, Egypts all-important tourism has suffered badly. It started with the unrest after President Hosni Mubarks fall in 2011. Then, there has been more unrest in 2013 after the military took over the government.

Tourists have also been attacked by Islamist extremists. Last October a suspected bomb brought down a Russian airliner near a Red Sea resort, killing 224 people.

However, interest in ancient Egypt increased recently. British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves said he believes that tomb of Queen Nefertiti may lie behind a wall in King Tuts tomb. Researchers are still working to find out if the famous queen was buried there, or not.

I'm Jim Tedder.

This story was based on reports from VOANews.com. Anne Ball adapted the story for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

alleged  adj. accused of having done something wrong or illegal but not yet proven guilty

recklessly  adv. not showing proper concern about the possible bad results of your actions

glue n. a substance used to stick things tightly together

negligence n. lack of normal care or attention

mummies n. (plural) a dead body of a person or animal prepared for burial in the manner of the ancient Egyptians by treating it with oils and wrapping it in strips of cloth

neglected adj. not given enough attention or care

adequate  adj. enough for some need or requirement


The president of Taiwan flew to the South China Sea Thursday to send a signal that reached as far as Washington.

President Ma Ying-jeou flew on a military aircraft to Itu Aba, a disputed island also known as Taiping Island. About 200 people live there. Some are members of Taiwans coast guard. The other people are mainly medical workers and scientific researchers.

Ma returned to Taipei Thursday night. His visit again brings attention to the major territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Taiwan has developed Taiping Island, a land formation in the Spratley Islands. Taiwan has set up a coast guard base with solar energy projects there. The medical workers are available to help crews from ships that pass through the waterway.

President Ma emphasizes that Taiping Island is an inherent territory of the Republic of China, said a presidential spokesman. The Republic of China is Taiwans legal name.

Five other governments claim all or part of the South China Sea. Mas trip comes while China continues to develop other islands there with landfill materials. Vietnam has built man-made islands in the sea. Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines also claim parts of the area.

Taiping Island is 1,600 kilometers from Taiwan. The island is less than a square kilometer in area and has been used mainly as a coast guard base.

The Reuters news service reports that Taiwan just completed a port improvement project and built a new lighthouse on the island.

Wednesday, the U.S. State Department called the Taiwanese leaders trip unhelpful to easing disputes in the South China Sea.

Ma called the trip to Taiping one of his biggest personal successes while president. He must leave office in May because of term limits.

Im Jim Dresbach.

Ralph Jennings reported on this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

landfill  n. an area where waste is buried under the ground or dumped in a sea or ocean

lighthouse  n. a tower with a powerful light that is built on or near the shore to guide ships away from danger

solar  adj. of or related to the sun

inherent  adj. existing in something


A Texas grand jury decided this week to clear the health care organization Planned Parenthood of charges that it sells body parts from aborted fetuses. The decision has angered those who oppose abortion.

A grand jury in Harris County, Texas, refused to file charges against Planned Parenthood. Instead, it filed charges against two people who made a secret video of Planned Parenthood employees. Those responsible for the video said they showed Planned Parenthood employees willing to sell body parts.

Planned Parenthood and their supporters have said the video showed no illegal or unethical behavior.

David Daleiden is one of the two people charged. The 27-year-old is the director of the anti-abortion group, Center for Medical Progress. He was charged with damaging a government record, because he allegedly created a fake drivers license. He was also charged with illegally purchasing human organs. In the video, Daleiden posed as a medical research employee interested in buying fetal tissue.

Another Center for Medical Progress employee, Sandra Merritt, was also charged with damaging a government record.

The grand jurys decision came after months of emotional debate, followed by the groups release of its secret videotapes last summer.

Republicans in Congress have tried to end all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but have failed. Republican presidential candidates promise to end funding for Planned Parenthood if they are elected.

After the secret videos were released to the public, Planned Parenthood apologized for the casual way in which an employee discussed the transfer of fetal tissue and body parts.

But the organization said the discussion centered on fees to cover Planned Parenthood costs, not profits. And it said the employee believed she was discussing a transfer with a real medical research company.

Planned Parenthood said the grand jurys decision showed the charges against it were false.

These anti-abortion extremists spent three years creating a fake company, creating fake identities, lying, and breaking the law, said Eric Ferrero, a Planned Parenthood vice president. When they couldnt find any improper or illegal activity, they made it up.

Daleiden, the director of the Center for Medical Progress, defended his actions.

The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and the press, and follows all applicable laws, he said.

Melissa Hamilton is a legal scholar at the University of Texas. She explains the reasons for the charges both Daleiden and Merrit face.

If you are purporting to use a drivers license, which is a public record, that is beyond the pale -- because there are reasons for society to want to protect the legitimacy of purported government records.

Supporters and opponents of abortion rights had different reactions to the grand jurys decision.

Greg Abbot is the Governor of Texas, and a Republican who opposes abortion.

He said, Nothing about todays announcement in Harris County impacts the states ongoing investigation. The State of Texas will continue to protect life, and I will continue to support legislation prohibiting the sale or transfer of fetal tissue.

But Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said the decision shows that Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood are wrong.

The Texas grand jury decision undercuts the entire Republican attack on Planned Parenthood, Sanders said. Planned Parenthood is doing an excellent job and should be supported and expanded, not defunded.

I'm Kathleen Struck.

Greg Flakus reported on this story from Houston, Texas. Bruce Alpert adapted this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or share your views on our Facebook Page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

abortion  n. a medical procedure used to end a pregnancy

unethical  adj. morally bad

pose  v. to pretend to be (someone or something) in order to deceive people

casual  adj. done without much thought, effort, or concern

journalist  n. a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news to be broadcast on radio or television.

purport  v. to claim to be or do a particular thing when this claim may not be true

pale  (n). an area or the limits within which one is protected

prohibit  v. to order people not to use or do something

transfer  v. to move something from one place to another

undercut  v. to show a position or point of view is not correct
scholarship, news and new ideas in legal history
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An analysis of the latest happenings in the area of Elementary/Secondary education with emphasis on state level policies as they affect teachers and school administrators. Send any comments or suggestions to louisianaeducator@gmail.com By: Michael Deshotels
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Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who was booked for allegedly assaulting and misbehaving with a woman over a dispute on parking space in their housing society in Versova, Mumbai, has said that he was an easy target and had never met the complainant.

It was reported in January that Siddiqui had allegedly slapped the complainant which led her to file an assault case. However, in a press conference held on Friday afternoon, the Gangs of Wasseypur actor completely denied the charge.

"I was an easy target. It was planned," said Siddiqui, at the press conference.

He further went on to say, "The incident was planned. Many people have seen the video, I was provoked. I don't know who this complainant Heena Sheikh is, I've never seen her."

Days after the FIR was registered, Siddiqui's wife filed a counter charge against the complainant.

She claimed that the 24-year-old girl and her family members forcibly entered their home in Versova and misbehaved with them, reports The Indian Express.

Siddiqui later went to the police station to record his statement, claiming he has done his job as a responsible citizen.
New Delhi/Bengaluru: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday said that it has solved the 28 December, 2014, Bengaluru Church Street blast case with the arrest of a 30-year-old prime accused.

Alam Jeb Afridi alias Javed Rafeeq, who was a member of banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) outfit, has reportedly confessed to his involvement in the Church Street blast that took place outside Coconut Grove Bar and Restaurant around 2:30 pm., killing one person and injuring others.

The NIA official said that Rafeeq wanted to plant the bomb inside the restaurant but was deterred by the presence of staff and therefore he planted it outside.

Rafeeq was also on the run in another case of organising a terrorist camp for the outfit at Waghamon in Kerala and was declared an absconder with a Rs 3 lakh bounty on his head for at least five years now. He was close to several top SIMI leaders.

Rafeeq, a resident of Ahmedabad, has been sent to 10 days' custody by the NIA Special Court.

IANS
Pranab Mukherjee became the third President to reject the provisions in the Gujarat Terror Bill or Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Act (GCTOC) and ask for a clarification seeking additional information on provisions that are not in sync with the special provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2004.

The contentious Bill was first introduced by then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in 2003 and according to a report in The Indian Express the Gujarat government still has the controversial provisions which had led to the rejection of the bill by two Presidents earlier.

The Gujarat government introduced the Bill with the same clauses, including increasing the period to file chargesheet from 90 to 180 days, and laying down strict conditions for bail to be given to the accused. President APJ Abdul Kalam rejected the bill in 2004, demanding that the clause relating to interception of communication related to telephone interception and confessions made before police officers being considered as evidence in court  be removed. The NDA was in power at the time.

The state Assembly passed the Bill again twice after that, each time under Modi as CM. In 2008, it was without the clause objected to by Kalam. But President Pratibha Patil also refused to clear the Bill, seeking more changes, including deletion of the provision allowing confessions before a police officer as evidence in court.

It was UPA government at the Centre then. The Gujarat government, however, ignored Patils suggestions and cleared the Bill for the third time in 2009. This Bill is still pending clearance by the President.

The bill was first introduced by the Gujarat government in April 2003 and ever since has been awaiting President's nod. The Gujarat Legislative Assembly passed the contentious bill in March 2015.

So what are the controversial provisions that the GCTOC bill has?

- It allows a confession to be recorded before a police official of Superintendent of Police rank to be admissible in the trial against the accused or any of the other accused in a case

- It allows evidence collected through the "interception of wire, electronic or oral communication admissible in the court against accused

- It allows for the period of investigation to be extended to 180 days so that the police have more time to keep an accused in custody

- It provides immunity to the state government officials so that no suit or prosecution can be initiated against it for anything which is done in "good faith"

- It prevents an accused from getting bail while in custody

The bill, in its present avatar has been criticised for being politically motivated. Political parties, other than the BJP, have cried foul saying it subverts freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Shankersinh Vaghela in April 2015 had criticised the Bill and said that it was not for protection of the people but for the protection of the BJP.

The BJP, on the other hand, has been trying to hard sell the bill. It said that passing the bill will be taking the right step towards fighting terrorism and organised crime.

Other laws, that the GCTOC is basing itself on, are hardly similar and Gujarat in its hurried wisdom is trying to bring in blind laws to contain organised crime. For example, MCOCA which was enacted by the Maharashtra government in 1999, too has similar provisions. The Act allows confessions before senior police officers as admissible in the court of law. The Karnataka Control of Organised Crimes Act, which came into effect in January 2002, authorises investing officers to go about arresting suspects without warrants.

However, there are differences between MCOCA and GCTOC and they are crucial. An earlier story on Firstpost points out, "The MCOCA allows for the court to grant bail as long as the accused wasn't on bail in any other case, while the GUJTOC seems to draw its inspiration from the now repealed Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) which didn't allow for an accused to be granted bail if a public prosecutor were to oppose it."

Writing for DailyO, Pawan Khera says, "While tyrannical acts like Pota and Tada have been repealed amidst fears of abuse and constitutional violation, GCTOC is a Pandora's box of unfair propositions that pretends to hard sell the threat of terror cells and criminal syndicates."

Under GCTOC, both investigation and prosecution end up becoming a tool to prove a theory instead of looking for the truth.

The Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Bill, 2015
It seems there is a divide between President Pranab Mukherjee and Union Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani. The two have differed over appointments at three Central universities  the latest being over Jawaharlal Nehru University, according to The Indian Express.

There were four finalists for the position of JNU's vice-chancellor and Irani made it clear that she prefers VS Chauhan, a scientist, but the president chose M Jagadesh Kumar from IIT-Delhi instead, reported The Indian Express. The two universities over which the two leaders previously butted heads are Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad and Visva Bharati University in West Bengal.

This is not the first time that appointment of college heads by Iranis HRD ministry has been mired in controversy. There was speculation in September 2015, that the HRD ministry had spoken to Subramanian Swamy about taking over the JNU vice-chancellor position. Swamy even tweeted about it, saying he has preconditions that needed to be met before the ministry could make an offer.

In January 2015, Zafar Sareshwala was appointed the chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University. Sareshwala, who owns a Ahmedabad-based business identified as Parsoli Corp and is said to be an expert in Islamic finance, beat others shortlisted by the universitys executive council. Allegations of favouritism were made as he was one of the most prominent faces of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign team in the run up to the 2014 General Election, and frequently appeared on news channel debates to defend government policy.

However, as Mohammad Sajjad, a historian at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) told Firstpost , Without going into the merits of this argument, I must say there is a section which feels that Zafar Sareshwala may do something good for the university and the community. And if not Sareshwala, then who? There is a total vacuum.

In April 2015, IIT-Kanpur professor Dheeraj Sanghi called into question the HRD ministrys selection process for the directors of IIT-Bhubaneswar, IIT-Patna and IIT-Ropar, Telegraph India reported. The ministry had earlier claimed that they had interviewed 36 candidates for the three posts in six hours on a Sunday, which, according to Sanghi, meant each candidate was interviewed for 10 minutes. He alleged to Telegraph India that the only way a selection panel could make a decision in 10 minutes was if they already knew the candidate previously, which meant that other candidates didnt have much of a chance to prove their competency.

Irani admitted that she has been accused of saffronising education institutions but she dismissed the charge in June 2015 saying, "I never ask students about their religion as we do not discriminate against the rights of a student to education on the basis of caste or religion."

To buttress the point that discrimination on religious lines was not being conducted, Irani referred to the appointment of the vice-chancellor of the Central University of Gujarat, Syed Bari.

She also asserted at an education conclave in July 2015 that she is actually in the process of depoliticising her ministry's functioning. Her goal was to serve in the best interests of the students, India Today quoted her as saying.

With inputs from PTI
Hyderabad: Stepping up the offensive on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide issue, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi arrived at the Hyderabad University campus on Saturday to participate in a candle march by students. Rahul is supposed to spend the night with the protesting students in the campus along with the family members of Rohith Vemula.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said Gandhi would participate in the candle march and also in the sit-in organized by the students on the Hyderabad University campus.

"Yes, he is participating in the candle march with the students and would participate in dharna till 6pm tomorrow evening," Singh said.

Congress has been demanding the sacking of HRD minister Smriti Irani and Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya and also removal of vice chancellor Appa Rao in the wake of the suicide by the Dalit scholar.

This is Rahul's second visit to Hyderabad since Vemula was found hanging in the varsity's hostel room.

The Congress vice-president had visited the University on January 19 following the suicide by the Dalit scholar and met the agitating students and the family members of Vemula.

In a dramatic turn of events, Dr Vipin Srivastava who took charge as the interim Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) amid protests over the alleged suicide by a Dalit scholar here gone on leave Friday afternoon.

"Dr Vipin Srivastava who took charge as the interim Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University has proceeded for leave from the afternoon of January 29 and the next senior most professor Dr M Pariasamy will perform the duties of the V-C till further orders," a university official said.

The reasons behind his leave are not immediately clear, the official said.

Srivastava could not be contacted for comments.

He was appointed as the interim VC on January 24 after V-C Appa Rao Podile went on leave amid protest from the student community over the death of Rohith Vemula.

Meanwhile, AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit the campus tomorrow. He is expected to offer his solidarity to the agitating students by participating in a mass hunger strike.

It will be the Congress leader's second visit to the city since the death of the research scholar. Gandhi had last visited the campus on January 19.

About 2,000 students organised a candle light march tonight on the campus ahead of Vemula's birthday tomorrow. They shouted slogans against Podile and Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani and demanded their resignations.

Vemula was found hanging inside a hostel room in the university on January 17.

PTI
In yet another incident of dead whales washing ashore, the carcass of a nearly 30-foot-long whale, identified as a Bryde Whale, was found at the popular Juhu beach in Mumbai on Thursday night.

The massive carcass was beached last at night and was reportedly spotted by locals, who informed the police and the forest department.

"It is about 50 feet. It must have died one or two days ago. It died at sea and was washed ashore. The body has not completely degenerated, but it has become bloated. We have the challenge of disposal of the carcass, which could be around 25,000 kg," Vasudevan, Chief Conservator of Forests, Mangrove Cell told The Hindu.

The sheer size and wight of the mammal makes transporting and disposing the carcass a difficult job for local authorities. The Hindu reports that officials are looking for a burial place, as the administration lacks the expertise to preserve whales carcass. Vasudevan also adds that the organs cannot be preserved due to the risk of explosion as the body is bloated and filled with gas. Two hydraulic cranes will be deployed to move the whale, reports DNA

"We will deflate the carcass on the beach itself, otherwise it could explode," Assistant Conservator of Forest (Mangroves Protection Cell) Makrand Ghodke was quoted as saying by DNA. Ghodke added that this was the second biggest whale to have beached on India's West coast after the Giant Blue Whale that was washed ashore in Alibaug in 2015.

Due to the size of the whale, an autopsy will be performed at Juhu beach itself, according to the DNA report. Four veterinarians who will perform the autopsy and then move the carcass to the forest departments conservatory in Airoli. Officials also plan to preserve its skeletal structure at the information centre in Airoli of Navi Mumbai, continues the report.

The Juhu Beach incident is latest in a list of beaching incidents in India. Recently, carcasses of 38 Baleen whales were washed ashore near the Tiruchendur beach in Tamil Nadu while more than 250 whales stranded in shallow waters were pushed back into the deep sea. In June 2015, a 42-foot-long blue whale was washed ashore at the Revdanda coast, about 17 kms south of Alibaug in the neighbouring Raigad district. Forest officials had contacted marine biologists after spotting it when it was still alive and struggling to survive. However, the whale had later died.

The reasons for this are not yet precisely known. "There could be many reasons - sound pollution under water, pollution from industries, plastic consumption, or even disease, since the animal has no external injuries," said Animesh Limaye, an expert from Reefwatch India told NDTV.

As expected, hundreds of people swarmed to Juhu beach trying to catch a glimpse of the carcass and soon several photographs of the whale were shared on social media.

40 foot #whale found dead at #juhu beach in #mumbai #sea #environment A photo posted by Manoj Singh (@myinstashots) on Jan 28, 2016 at 8:31pm PST

30 feet Whale on juhu beach .. What's happening in Mumbai ??? pic.twitter.com/0KBzND1zbB  Sameera Gawandi (@sameeratweeter) January 29, 2016

35 feet long dead whale washed ashore on Juhu Beach last night....quite a site pic.twitter.com/hC1yNZD5wi  Faridoon Shahryar (@iFaridoon) January 29, 2016

A large 50-foot long Bryde's whale was washed on the shore of the Juhu beach on Thursday midnight. pic.twitter.com/ZBVsjmm8iP  Mahesh Suryawanshi (@geekyms4) January 29, 2016

With inputs from PTI
By Debendra Prusty

When the Union Minister for Urban Development Vekaiah Naidu was reading out the first list of Smart Cities officials in Bhubaneswar were in for a big surprise- the city got the top spot. Even the minister himself was surprised. He said it aloud. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was overjoyed in expressing his feeling on Twitter.

But what is that smart city? What difference will it bring to the residents of Bhubaneswar? Not many are convinced with the concept. Bhubaneswar being the new capital cityit is only six decade oldhow smart will it be after this announcement?

Just before 1 April 1948 Bhubaneswar was a nowhere in the map of Odisha. It was known as Ekamra Kshetra surrounded by historical places like Shishupalgarh, Dhauli, Khandagir and Udaygiri. It was also known as temple city with more than hundred temples, the biggest being the Lingaraj Temple. Besides these places were many villages surrounded by dense forest and separated by river Daya, Kuakhai, Kushbhadra and Gangua. The area was known in history by various names-Toshali, Kalinga Nagari,Nagar Kalinga, Ekamra Kanan, Ekamra Kshetra etc. The place has a history of more than 3,000 years. The place was associated with the King Kharvela and Ashoka.

It was one of the first modern cities of Independent India. It was designed by the German architect Otto Konningsberger along with Chandigarh and developed after Independence. When in 1948 the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru laid its foundation, the city was planned to accommodate only 10 thousand people. Now the population of Bhubaneswar is well above 10 lakh.

Being the capital city and of late developed as an IT hub of the country it has everything including an international airport, a modern rail station, a national highway, a wildlife sanctuary and a zoological park of national importance. Still, the city lacks in many things. Be it the environment, the traffic, the transport, the parking, the drainage system, the recreation centres or the parks all are in shambles. Urban planning, waste management and citizen friendly administration are in disarray.

So when Prime Minister Modi announced his idea of smart cities, the Bhubaneswar Muncipal Corporation and Bhubaneswar Development Authority took the challenge and prepared a smart plan for the city. This plan got 78.83 points and got the top place in the Central list of first 20 smart cities.

The state government and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) had unveiled a series of public campaigns over the last one year to bring in people to participate in the smart city campaigns so that their feedbacks could form the basis of its plan. The online and offline polls conducted by the BMC had at least three lakh people voting strongly in favour of an improved urban transport and mobility system. Close to two lakh participants wanted reforms in drinking water supply, waste and energy management systems of the City. Many others pitched in for more open spaces and plans for heritage hubs of Bhubaneswar.

BMC Commissioner Krishan Kumar said this campaign based plan has put Bhubaneswar on the national stage. "With Bhubaneswar emerging topper in the first list of 20 cities selected under the Smart City Mission, the Temple City has come to the national stage. Now people will closely watch every activity of the project and the real challenge will be to achieve the milestones in time," he said.

Terming the result a big surprise, Housing and Urban Development Minister Puspendra Singhdeo said though the government was confident that Bhubaneswar will find a place in the first list, it did not expect the top slot. Mayor of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Ananta Jena said now it is the responsibility of all stakeholders to make the Smart City happen.

The BMC plan, already submitted to the government, is a Rs 4,537.15 crore proposal for the Smart City project. The major component of the proposal is construction of the Bhubaneswar Town Centre District (BTCD), a 985-acre project which will be developed as a model area with better urban mobility and waste management system.

The budget requirement for BTCD has been estimated at RS 4,094.89 crore and for the pan city solutions, Rs 442.26 crore has been estimated. The Housing and Urban Development Department will set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to execute plans for development of BTDC. While the city will get Rs 1,000 crore over next five years with the Centre funding half of it, the real test will be to get finance from different sources to implement the project.

The project funds will be sourced from Smart City Mission Fund, Central schemes, public-private partnerships, Infrastructure Development Funds and through commercial borrowings Asian Development Bank. To monitor the spending of fund, a vigilance and monitoring committee will be set up. The BTDC will be taken up as pilot project for implementing smart ideas and later, the plans would be replicated across the city. The city will get Rs 200 crore from the government of India in the first year to begin the process of converting it into a smart entity. Thereafter, it will get Rs 100 crore each over three years.

The city administration will build cycle tracks along the town centre and will also open cycle rental centres in the area. Development of facilities such as drinking water and sewerage has already been taken up under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut) scheme. Besides planning to roll out a fleet of 565 buses to connect all the 67 wards of the city, the administration is also promoting non-motorised mode of transport. The corporation has already started organising events such as Raahgiri to promote no-car days. Pedestrian-friendly traffic signals will also be introduced. Open spaces and parks to be developed to make the city ecologically sustainable.

Safe refuse points will also be introduced for female commuters. By pressing a particular button, those in need of help can inform police. The city administration will also install at least five surveillance cameras at 26 major traffic junctions to check crime. An online parking ticket system will also be introduced at three multi-level parking lots here.
Evenings replete with thrill, excitement and new-age rhythmic music from across the country can also be for a good cause  Seagrams 100 Pipers proved it with their #PlayforaCause initiative. Not only did the concerts held across 10 cities in India bring together music lovers who shared their enthusiasm, they also dedicatedly raised aid to send food supplies to the underprivileged.

With powerful performances from renowned classical rock bands like Parikrama and other artists like Ehsaan Noorani, Rudy Wallang, Tipriti, Shilpa Rao, Luke Kenny, Mohan, Koco, Abhaya, Adrian, Suraj Jagan and Bruce Lee Mani, the music rooters got a chance to unwind, enjoy as well as #BeRememberedForGood as they supported a noble cause of sponsoring meals to the less fortunate.

Jaipur, Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore witnessed a major crowd frenzy for the spectacular musical event on 25th, 28th, 29th and 30th October, followed by Delhi, Hyderabad and Vizag on the 4th, 6th and 7th of November, 2015.

Eastern and North-Eastern India became a part of the act more recently. Kolkata, Shillong and Guwahati had these acclaimed musicians play for a cause on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of November, where the stage brimmed with energy and the crowd went crazy.

Even the city of dreams, Mumbai, was not far behind in expressing their excitement on the night of the event. The luxury club, Blue Frog in Mumbai that often features live acts and hosts regular parties, witnessed major footfall this time for gigs by Parikrama, Ehsaan Noorani, Shilpa Rao, Tipriti and Rudy Wallang (Soulmate) while the Blue Frog in Bangalore brought Parikrama, Mohan, Koco and Shilpa Rao on stage for the electrifying musical night.

The successful events tapped onto the idea that humanity is still alive in the hearts of the people who donated generously for the underprivileged masses and made this musical extravaganza a huge hit. The audiences along with the musicians themselves will certainly #BeRememberedForGood.

In case you havent been able to be a part of it already, the next three months (February, March & April) will witness refreshing artists stepping into your town to use music as a medium to reach out to the lesser fortunate. If you share some affinity for the cause, join in with us. Hope you are ready!

This is a sponsored post.
Itanagar: The BJP in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday alleged that many of its MLAs have been receiving threat calls from supporters of Congress. "Security threats are looming large with fear psychosis prevailing in the state capital. Our MLAs and leaders have been threatened," BJP state unit president Tai Tagak told reporters at Arunachal Press Club (APC) in Itanagar.

Denying allegations that BJP has engineered political crisis in the state, Tagak said the Congress was responsible for the current political crisis which compelled the Centre to promulgate President's rule in the state.

"Infighting and factional feud among the Congress which started from 2 November, 2014 is responsible for the current political turmoil in the state and we have nothing to do with affairs of other parties," Tagak said.

"Where was the AICC leadership which could resolve the issue through negotiation? Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi denied appointments to the rival party leaders in the last one year," Tagak alleged.

"The Congress leaders of the state should seek public apology for the current political mess," he said.

Dwelling on the circumstances which led to imposition of Central rule in the state, the BJP president while quoting Constitutional experts, said there was a failure of the constitutional machinery after the state assembly failed to meet for over six months.

"There is a constitutional requirement that there should not be a gap of more than six months between two sessions of a state assembly. If there is a gap of more than six months, there is certainly a constitutional crisis," Tagak said quoting former Lok Sabha secretary general P T D Achari.

He said the last session was held in May last year and the next session should be convened by the second week of November last.

"According to Article 174 (1) of the Constitution, there should not be a gap of more than six months between the assembly's last sitting in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session," he said.

"The legality of the session conducted on December 16 and 17 last by Deputy Speaker T N Thongdok is under question before a constitution bench of the Supreme Court," he pointed.

He said, when people of the state were suffering, being the responsible opposition party, the BJP was compelled to bring an impeachment motion against Speaker Nabam Rebia, he clarified responding to the allegations that the party had supported the rival Congress camp to destabilise the government.

Tagak disclosed that a high level delegation of the party yesterday called on Governor J P Rajkhowa and urged him to overhaul and streamline the administration and to initiate an enquiry of financial mis-management by the government regarding fund diversion from plan to non-plan and civil deposits including fund received from the 14th Finance Commission.

The delegation also submitted 16-point suggestions to the governor, he added.

Meanwhile, the party has appealed to the Governor and the chief secretary to strictly implement the office memorandum issued by the Governor after promulgation of Central rule in the state.

Responding to a query, Tagak added that the party was ready to face mid-term poll if the situation compelled.

PTI
New Delhi: BJP on Friday attacked Congress' top brass over solar scam in poll-bound Kerala, alleging Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were protecting "corrupt" Chief Minister Oommen Chandy as they lacked moral authority to act against him since they too were facing graft charges in National Herald case.

Party spokesperson M J Akbar referred to reports that Chandy allegedly sent emissaries to Saritha S Nair, an accused in the case, to persuade her from speaking against him, and asserted that the chief minister to had no moral and political right to continue in his office for even a minute. Her statement that she paid bribe to Chandy "proved" his corruption, Akbar told the media.

"We are shocked by the Congress high command decision to protect a proven corrupt chief minister despite the evidence. Perhaps, the reason for this is that high command is also facing charges of severe corruption of thousands of crores in the National Herald case.

"When the high command is standing in the court facing corruption charges, perhaps they have no longer any moral authority to ask one of their chief ministers to resign for the same reason. Otherwise they would have to probably resign themselves," he said.

Referring to the coming polls, he said the ongoing year will be a "year of justice" in Kerala as people will "erase the corrupt government".

Akbar said the Congress government is Kerala is cracking up as he spoke about the resignation of an RSP MLA over these charges.

Demanding Chandy's resignation, he said, "If chief minister does not listen to the voice of people, then the voice of people already growing louder will become an uproar."

Akbar was referring to the National Herald case based on a private criminal complaint lodged by Subramanian Swamy for cheating, conspiracy and criminal breach of trust against Congress leaders in acquiring ownership of the now-defunct daily. Congress has denied the charges.

Sonia and Rahul Gandhi along with others were granted bail by a Delhi court last month in the case.

BJP general secretary P Muralidhar Rao accused Congress of being synonymous with scandals and scams.

"Congress is synonymous with scandals & scams. Solar scam in Kerala is now added to the long list of Congress scams," he said.

He also attacked Rahul Gandhi for visiting every other place but not addressing his own party's problems in Kerala.

"Rahul Gandhi before touring elsewhere should visit Kerala. Before raising any other issue, shd address concerns ofKerala people on Solar Scam(sic)," he tweeted.

PTI
Los Angeles: Actor Taron Egerton says Kingsman: The Secret Service 2 would feature an "international story," unlike the first one which was shot entirely in Britain.

While promoting his new film Eddie the Eagle with actor Hugh Jackman, Egerton shared a little bit about the Kingsman sequel.

He said that the movie would start filming in summer and it would introduce a new villain that would face off against actor Samuel L. Jackson's character. He also added that the script was ready.

"With Kingsman, we're shooting in the summer at present," Egerton said.

He also said that the sequel would go international and his character would probably embark on a globe-trotting adventure.

"Obviously there's only so much I can say but what I can say is that we shot (the first) one all in the U.K., that won't be the case with the next one.

"It's a far more international story, we're going to some incredible places, and we have a villain to rival Samuel L. Jackson - this new one is so brilliantly written I wish I could play it. It's amazing," he said.

Egerton and Jackson will reprise their roles as Gary Eggsy Unwin and Valentine respectively.

There is no detail yet on whether Colin Firth will be back to reprise his role as Harry Hart.

Directed by Matthew Vaugn, Kingsman 2 will release in North America next year.

IANS
Latest reports coming in have said that Kerala High Court ruled out any police case against Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in solar scam. DYFI and Left protesters held massive demonstration across Kerala against Chandy as the Chief Minister turned defiant in the ongoing solar scam.

Chandy had moved petition in High Court seeking quashing of FIR ordered against him by Thrissur court, ANI reported.

Police deployed tear gas to disperse the crowd, CNN-IBN report said. Initially it was just stone pelting, but CNN-IBN reported that protesters are throwing petrol bombs at the police. Situation is getting more violent, reports said.

Speaking to CNN-IBN, Chandy said he was not worried as he has not taken a single penny. "Left and BJP targeting me because they are scared," Chandy told CNN IBN. "People of Kerala are smart, they know the truth."

Congress leader KV Thomas also said that Chandy was heading the probe team of the Solar scam. "Whenever allegations have been leveled against Cong ministers, they have stepped down even when no crime against have been proven. Under Oommen Chandy, we will return to power in Kerala."

Kerala's ruling Congress-led UDF suffered a blow on Thursday as a court ordered an FIR to be filed in the solar panel scam against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who claimed innocence and rejected opposition calls to resign. Chandy is all set to challenge with an appeal in the High Court Friday as the Congress high command in New Delhi comes to grips with the "serious" issue.

DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam pic.twitter.com/9BTtRViuq4  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

WATCH: DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam https://t.co/kqng2D80YO  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam pic.twitter.com/C80qUt7xPG  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

Thursdays court order comes on a petition by an activist after Saritha Nair, one of the main accused, alleged she had paid a bribe of Rs 1.9 crore to the Chief Minister through an aide. In recent days, Chandy has chucked out three official aides after they were named as alleged middlemen in the scam which traces its roots to 2013.

Television channels in Kerala on Wednesday aired the audio of a purported conversation between Congress state general secretary Thampanoor Ravi and Saritha S Nair in which Ravi can be heard tutoring her ahead of her deposition before a judicial commission. In the audio, Ravi, a loyalist of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, can be purportedly heard telling Nair that her statement before the commission should be in line with what Chandy had said. In his statement, Chandy had told the commission that he had met Saritha three times.

"The Chief Ministers resignation would virtually mean acceptance of guilt. His continuation would fuel the Oppositions agitation, Congress insiders told The Indian Express.

And even as Saritha Nair, one of the main accused in the scandal who hurled bribery allegations against the chief minister on Wednesday, threatened on Thursday to prove that Chandy was guilty, the UDF lost a RSP legislator, who said he was disgusted with Chandy's government. Police investigators estimate that around Rs 6 crore has been swindled in this scam.

If there is an iota of substance in the allegation, I will quit public life, Chandy said. After holding discussions with party leaders and legal experts in Kochi, Chandy said he would file an appeal in the High Court on Friday against the order of the Vigilance court in Thrissur, reports The Indian Express.

A court in Thrissur told Kerala's vigilance department to file a First Information Report (FIR) against Chandy on corruption charges in what has come to be known as the "solar scam".

The genesis of the scam goes back to 2013 when a fake solar energy company named Team Solar -- floated by Biju Radhakrishnan and Saritha S. Nair -- duped several influential people of about 70 million rupees by offering to make them business partners. They also allegedly received advance payments by offering to install solar power units . The company used two women to create political contacts with links leading up to the Chief Minister's office. CNN IBN has the lowdown.

An editorial comment in The Hindu says Chandy has no option but to fight his case legally. "By doing so politically, and perhaps by pleading his case to his party in the run-up to Assembly elections a few months from now, he would risk drawing Kerala into a constitutional crisis," says the newspaper.

The BJP is firing on all cylinders after the latest details blew up: "One cannot hope much from the Congress high command because it has looked the other way on corruption. Congress moves from one issue to another (to target BJP) but will somebody from its high command go to Kerala and speak on corruption?," said Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

"The charges against the chief minister and the power minister are of very serious nature and we demand their resignations."

The Thrissur Vigilance Court also directed a FIR to be registered against Power Minister Aryadan Mohammed.

This followed a petition by activist P.D. Joseph after Saritha Nair told a judicial commission that she gave Rs.1.90 crore in bribes to Chandy in two instalments.

The developments have come at a time when the United Democratic Front faces assembly elections only months away. The opposition Left immediately asked Chandy to resign.



CPI-M leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said: "The court has made its intentions clear through the FIR, and Chandy has only one way now to go forward and that is to quit at the earliest."

Chandy maintained in Malappuram that he had a clear conscience.

"I have done no wrong. I will face the probe and cooperate with it," he said. Asked if would resign, Chandy shot back: "For what?"

The scam erupted in 2013 when a company, Team Solar, allegedly used two women to weave political contacts and duped several influential people of large sums of money by offering to make them business partners or by setting up solar panels.

Saritha Nair said on Wednesday that the money she paid to Chandy was part of the Rs.7 crore demanded by him. She said she also gave Rs.40 lakh to minister Mohammed.

Even as Chandy said he had done no wrong, she said the truth was otherwise.

"After the unbearable tension of carrying all this on my head for the past more than three years, now I feel very relaxed as I am speaking the truth. I will prove through evidence that Chandy is wrong and I am right."

Nair and her live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan were arrested in the scandal in 2013 on charges of cheating numerous investors, who paid money for solar panels. While Saritha Nair is out on bail, Radhakrishnan is in jail after being accused of murdering his first wife.

In Thiruvananthapuram, RSP's Kovoor Kunjumon quit the Kerala assembly, saying he was disgusted with the UDF government, and pledged to rejoin the Left.

The Revolutionary Socialist Party has three legislators. With Kunjumon leaving, the strength of the house has come down to 138 and Chandy now has the support of 72 legislators. The Left commands 66 legislators in the 140-seat house.

Kunjumon said: "For seven months, I am unable to show my face to cashew factory workers (in my constituency) as all the factories are closed.

"Others may not know their feelings, but I know it because I am the son of a cashew factory worker. Along with our supporters, we will form the real RSP and will align with the Left," he said.

Kunjumon was elected to the assembly in 2001, 2006 and 2011 when his party was with the Left. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he joined the UDF.

With inputs from IANS
Karachi: Four policemen have been killed by suspected Taliban militants in the restive Balochistan's capital Quetta in Pakistan, police said.

The armed militants riding motorcycles opened fire on a police mobile van yesterday, killing two policemen on the spot and injuring two others before fleeing from the scene, they said.

A senior official said the two injured policemen were rushed to the civil hospital but succumbed to their injuries.

The Tehreek-i-Taliban later claimed the responsibility of the attack in an e-mail sent to the media. Security officials reached the spot soon after the attack and an investigation has been launched into it.

The frequency of targeted attacks on policemen has increased in the troubled province of Balochistan.

Earlier this month a suicide bomber blew himself outside a polio centre in Quetta's satellite town area, killing 15 people, including 12 policemen.

PTI
Stockholm: Finland joined Sweden today in announcing plans to deport tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers in a bid to contain the migrant crisis, as at least 31 more people died trying to reach the European Union.

The two Nordic countries are both struggling to cope with an influx of refugees and migrants fleeing misery in the Middle East and elsewhere  receiving amongst the highest numbers of arrivals per capita in the EU.

The Finnish government expects to deport around two thirds of the 32,000 asylum seekers that arrived in 2015, Paivi Nerg, administrative director of the interior ministry, told AFP. "In principle we speak of about two thirds, meaning approximately 65 percent of the 32,000 will get a negative decision (on their asylum applications)," he told AFP.

In neighbouring Sweden, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said yesterday that the government is planning over several years to deport up to 80,000 people whose asylum applications are set to be rejected. "We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000," he told Swedish media, adding that, as in Finland, the operation would require the use of specially chartered aircraft.

He estimated that Sweden would reject around half of the 163,000 asylum requests received in 2015. Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson said authorities faced a difficult task in deporting such large numbers, but insisted failed asylum seekers had to return home. "Otherwise we would basically have free immigration and we can't manage that," he told news agency TT.

The clampdown came as 25 bodies, including those of 10 children, were discovered off the Greek island of Samos, in the latest tragedy to strike migrants risking the dangerous Mediterranean crossing in a bid to start new lives in Europe.

The Italian navy meanwhile said it had recovered six bodies from a sinking dinghy off Libya  and in Bulgaria, the frozen bodies of two men, believed to be migrants, were found near the border with Serbia. More than one million people travelled to Europe in 2015  the majority of them refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan  in the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II.

Nearly 4,000 people died trying to reach Europe by sea last year, according to the International Organization for Migration.

As Europe struggles to respond to the unprecedented influx, a top Dutch politician said the Netherlands was working with some EU members on a plan to send migrants back to Turkish soil. The proposal would see asylum granted to up to 250,000 others already hosted by Turkey, Diederik Samsom said.

AFP
CHICAGO In the two weeks since bird flu reappeared in Indiana, U.S. veterinarians have swabbed the mouths of chickens and turkeys across the country, racing to uncover any more infections and contain the virus before it causes mass death and damage like last year.

Biologists also are running tests on feces collected from wild birds, which are suspected of spreading the disease to farms.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed on Jan. 15 that a turkey flock in Dubois County, Indiana, was infected with the H7N8 strain of the virus. It was the first new case of bird flu in U.S. poultry flocks since June.

More poultry flocks will likely fall ill in the coming months, veterinarians said, following an unprecedented outbreak last year that caused more than 48 million chickens and turkeys to die from sickness or because they had to be culled to contain the disease.

Anxiety over that risk is fuelling vigilance among U.S. poultry producers and government officials looking for signs of infections. Increased testing could help limit the spread if new cases are detected quickly.

"Everybody's testing everything," said John Glisson, vice-president of research for the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association, an industry group.

In the days after the latest outbreak, when winter weather was hampering travel, the USDA arranged for a plane to fly poultry samples from farms near the infected site in Indiana to an Iowa lab to speed up testing, said Denise Derrer, spokeswoman for the Indiana Board of Animal Health.

Typically, the samples would be driven across Illinois.

State and federal authorities culled more than 400,000 birds near the infected farm to contain the outbreak. About 350,000 in the area were killed even though they were diagnosed with a less lethal form of bird flu or tested negative for the disease.

Officials said they wanted to be aggressive to avoid a repeat of last year's losses. USDA believes the less lethal virus type mutated into a more deadly strain in one flock.

Indiana has required testing in flocks as far as 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the infected farm at least every five to seven days, exceeding the USDA's standard requirement for testing confined to a zone half that size.

Last year showed the passage of a few weeks without a new infection did not mean the end of the virus.

Minnesota, the nation's top turkey producing state, confirmed its first infection in poultry on March 5. Its next case was not detected until March 27, and the state subsequently lost 5 million turkeys.

"We're constantly reminded of what happened in Minnesota last year," Derrer said.

(Editing by Jo Winterbottom and Matthew Lewis)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON A U.S. Senate committee approved legislation on Thursday that would broaden sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear programme, human rights record and cyber activities, the latest bid by U.S. lawmakers to crack down on Pyongyang after its fourth nuclear test.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the measure by unanimous voice vote and members said they expected it would be approved by the full Senate within weeks, and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

U.S. lawmakers have been clamouring for a clampdown on North Korea since Pyongyang earlier this month tested a nuclear device which it said was a hydrogen bomb. The U.N. Security Council is also discussing more action against the country, although it is not clear what would be supported by China, North Korea's lone major ally and main business partner.

The Senate bill would sanction anyone who engages in, facilitates or contributes to North Korea's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, arms-related materials, luxury goods, human rights abuses, activities undermining cyber security and the provision of metals or coal for use in such activities.

Penalties include the seizure of assets, visa bans and denial of government contracts.

Committee members said they wanted to make Washington's resolve clear not just to Pyongyang, but to other governments. They said they expected the House of Representatives would back the Senate legislation.

"We must also send a strong message to China," said Republican Senator Cory Gardner, chairman of the panel's Asia subcommittee and co-author of the legislation.

An Obama administration official said the administration does not oppose the legislation, saying it is deeply concerned about North Korea's recent actions and sees the most recent test as a "serious setback."

U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday the United States had seen increased activity around a North Korean site suggesting preparations for a possible space launch in the near future, raising concerns that the country was seeking to develop an inter-continental ballistic missile.

North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Jan. 6 that it said was the explosion of a hydrogen bomb, although the United States and other governments and experts voiced scepticism that it had made such a technological advance.

The House passed its own, less extensive, bill to broaden sanctions on Jan. 12 by a near unanimous 418-2 vote.

The Senate is due to begin considering the bill approved by the foreign relations committee during the week of Feb. 8.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Mohammad Zargham, Bernard Orr and Alistair Bell)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has told a conservative Christian group in the United States that allowing same-sex couples to wed will contribute to "the erosion of family", a stance that drew a swift rebuke from his openly gay sister Christine Forster.

Fairfax Media revealed this week that Mr Abbott would travel to New York to speak on "the importance of family" to the far right Alliance Defending Freedom group.

In the speech Mr Abbott declared that "we need less ideology and more common sense" but reaffirmed his strong opposition to same-sex marriage. He urged policy makers to pass on the institution of marriage "undamaged" to future generations and said most children would prefer to be raised by a mother and father.
LEWISTON  Anglers can expect fewer spring chinook to return to the Snake River and its tributaries later this year, according to a joint forecast from the Washington and Oregon departments of fish and wildlife.

The agencies are predicting 124,800 spring chinook bound for the Snake River will return at least as far as the mouth of the Columbia River. An estimated 23,700 of those will be wild fish. Last year, 162,700 chinook bound for the Snake River entered the mouth of the Columbia, about 22,000 more than predicted.

In total, the agencies are forecasting a spring chinook run of 299,200, which includes returns to lower Columbia River tributaries and the upper Columbia, as well as the Snake River basin. Last years forecast called for 312,600, and the actual return was more than 415,000.

According to fisheries management guidelines, recreational anglers below Bonneville Dam will be allowed to catch 7,515 upriver fish, or spring chinook bound for areas above the dam. Those fishing between Bonneville and the mouth of the Snake River will be allowed to catch 1,002 fish. Anglers in the Snake River between its mouth and Clarkston will be allocated a harvest of 1,005 chinook.

Idaho sets its harvest shares based on actual returns measured at Snake and Columbia river dams. That typically happens in April.

Regional fisheries managers are calling for a steep plunge in the return of sockeye salmon headed to the Wenatchee and Okanogan rivers, but a slight bump in the number of fish bound for the Snake River. According to the forecast, an estimated 2,100 sockeye bound for the Snake River will return to the Columbia River mouth this summer. Last year, the forecast called for a return of 1,800, and the actual return was 1,700. However, those fish were beset by high water temperatures and low flows. Most didnt make it to the Stanley Basin, where they are either allowed to spawn in Redfish Lake or taken into hatcheries. Just more than 1,000 sockeye were counted at Ice Harbor Dam, the first dam they encounter on the Snake River. Only 440 were counted at Lower Granite Dam.

Snake River sockeye are listed as endangered and are the most imperiled of Idahos anadromous fish runs. Sockeye are generally healthier in the upper Columbia River, where the numbers can exceed half a million fish. But that is not expected this year. The forecast calls for 57,800 to the Wenatchee River and 41,700 to the Okanogan.
TWIN FALLS  Two inmates at the Twin Falls County Jail are charged with severely beating another inmate and robbing him of his meal tray.

Prosecutors say Timothy Lee Haney, 22, of Twin Falls robbed the other inmate while Austin Joseph Worring, 21, of Jerome beat the man Jan. 17.

Haney was arraigned Thursday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court on a felony count of robbery. Worring was arraigned on a felony count of aiding and abetting robbery.

The behavior in this, if you watch the clips, is pretty egregious, Twin Falls County Prosecuting Attorney Grant Loebs said. Given what theyve done in the past and where they are, it seemed the best charge.

Prosecutors say surveillance video showed Haney fighting with Casey Denton Bruderer, 26, of Paul in a bathroom about 6:20 p.m. Jan. 17. A few minutes after the fight ended, surveillance video showed Bruderer sit in front of a TV and Haney patted him on the back.

About 20 minutes later, Bruderer sat at a table in front of the TV with his meal tray when Haney suddenly grabbed the tray and tried pulling it away, court documents said. Bruderer hung on to the tray until Worring punched him in the face several times, allowing Haney to take the tray.

As this is going on, other inmates could be heard on surveillance video laughing and Bruderer asked Worring, what the (expletive) did I do to you, bro? court documents said. When a deputy who didnt know about the fight walked into the area where the inmates were and asked Haney why he had two trays, Haney told him, someone didnt want to eat, sir.

Bruderers face began bruising after the robbery and he was transferred to a different part of the jail, court documents said. He was later taken to the hospital for medical treatment after telling jail staff he fell in the shower; at the hospital he admitted Worring beat him and Haney stole his tray.

In the criminal complaint, prosecutors say the crime was robbery because Haney did by means of force or fear take from the person of Casey Bruderer certain personal property.

They beat him severely, Loebs said. Thats the definition of robbery.

Haney was in the jail awaiting a Feb. 16 sentencing after pleading guilty last month to felony possession of a controlled substance. He was also sentenced Dec. 29 to serve 90 days in the jail after pleading guilty to misdemeanor counts of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Worring pleaded guilty Jan. 15  just two days before the alleged robbery  to eluding police in a stolen car. He was sentenced to a year-long therapeutic and educational program directed by the Idaho Department of Corrections.

Bruderer is awaiting a court trial on possession of drug paraphernalia with intent to use and was sentenced late last year to probation for several burglary, theft and drug charges.

Haney and Worring are each being held in lieu of $10,000 bond on the new robbery charge, and preliminary hearings for both men are scheduled for Feb. 5.
BURNS, Ore. (AP)  The armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge dwindled Thursday to just four holdouts demanding assurances they will not be arrested by the FBI if they surrender.

"We're still stuck here, four of us. They're telling us it's safe to leave, but it's not safe," a spokesman believed to be occupier David Fry said in a video posted on YouTube nearly four weeks into the standoff in the frozen high desert.

The FBI had no immediate comment on the negotiations or the holdouts' demands, saying only that it was trying to "empty the refuge of the armed occupiers in the safest way possible."

The occupation by ranchers and others began on Jan. 2, and at one point there were a couple of dozen people holed up, demanding that the federal government turn public lands over to local control. But the compound has been emptying out since the arrest of their leader, Ammon Bundy, and 10 others over the past few days.

With the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge surrounded by the FBI, the occupiers have been posting videos on YouTube showing them around a campfire, along with pickup trucks, an American flag, guns, an old car and assorted clutter.

"We want to live. We want to go home peacefully," one of the men, who was not identified, said in a video posted on Thursday. He was also shown dancing outdoors to a country-western tune with a woman identified as his wife.

Oregon Public Broadcasting spoke with the holdouts and identified them as Fry, who is from Ohio, husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson of Idaho, and Jeff Banta of Nevada. Fry told the station that Sean Anderson faces a federal arrest warrant.

In one of the videos posted Thursday, the speaker  believed to be Fry  said: "We're asking, just drop the charges and we're willing to go. But if they're not willing to do that, we're all just willing to stay here and see what happens."

All 11 people under arrest have been charged with a felony count of conspiring to impede federal officers from carrying out their duties through force or intimidation.

Bundy and seven other main figures in the takeover were arrested earlier in the week, most of them in a traffic stop Tuesday night that erupted in gunfire and left one follower dead. On Wednesday, three more followers surrendered after Bundy pleaded in a statement from jail: "Please stand down. Go home and hug your families."

Meanwhile, Bundy followers gave conflicting accounts of how Robert Finicum, a spokesman for the group, died in the clash on a remote highway during an operation led by the FBI.

One said Finicum charged at officers, who then shot him. A member of the Bundy family said Finicum did nothing to provoke the officers.

Finicum's daughter called him a martyr. "He loved freedom obviously more than his life," Challice Finch told Dallas-Fort Worth TV station KXAS.

The FBI has refused to release details of the confrontation.

In a statement issued through his lawyer, Bundy said FBI agents told him the shooting was recorded on video. He said he is waiting to review the footage because "questions must be answered."

Bundy also reiterated his appeal to the last holdouts to give up: "Turn yourselves in and do not use physical force."

Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The group came to the desert of eastern Oregon in the dead of winter to decry what it calls onerous federal land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.

In a criminal complaint Wednesday, federal authorities said the armed group had explosives and night-vision goggles and was prepared to fight.

The charges against Bundy and others say that the refuge's 16 employees have been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence.

___

Petty reported from Portland. Associated Press writers Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, and Martha Bellisle and Lisa Baumann in Seattle contributed to this report.
RUPERT  The city of Rupert wont be joining a Mini-Cassia airport task force, for now.

On Tuesday night, Mike Pape, administrator of the Idaho Division of Aeronautics, unsuccessfully tried to sell the Council members on joining a task force, organized by the city of Burley, which would study new locations in Mini-Cassia for a single-runway airport.

Mayor Mike Brown and the Council expressed interest in having the Burley airport relocate but were concerned with a lack of exact figures on the cost.

I just want to know how much the airport is going to cost and really how much is supported by the FAA and how much is going to be needed from our community, Brown said.

The estimated total cost for a new airport could be between $15 million and $45 million, Pape said at the meeting.

The Federal Aviation Administration is willing to pay for 90 percent of the airports infrastructure, Pape said. This includes a runway, taxiways, aprons where the planes park, lights and markings and access roads.

The remaining 10 percent will be covered by the cities in the task force.

The Burley Development Authority is willing to buy the existing airport property. Per FAA regulations, money from the sale would fund the new airport.

But in order for plans to move forward, the FAA is requiring the support of the community. Burley officials organized a task force, hoping to get representation from Minidoka and Cassia counties along with Rupert, Heyburn and Paul in an effort to find a new location.

The Burley airport, wedged between silos, a railroad and the river, has no room to expand, Pape said. The runway is small to the point where its not safe to land there, he said.

Pape said a new airport would not only address safety issues with the existing airport, but it would be able to service 35,000 people who need one for business, agriculture support and medical use.

Councilman Todd McGhie was concerned with a lack of results from the money spent on site selections. Over the years, the FAA has spent more than $1 million.

It looks like were throwing it away at this point, he said.

Pape said that while Ruperts refusal to join the task force does make support for a new airport difficult, he will have to continue to educate citizens and businesses on the benefits of having a new airport.
TWIN FALLS  Death by Chocolate can bring out the competitive edge in even the sweetest people.

For the past 11 years, the event organized by the Rotary Club of Twin Falls has put the Magic Valleys best chocolatiers in one room and let them duke it out piece by chocolaty piece.

Participants prepare 25,000 samples of chocolate desserts and compete against each other in five categories: best chocolate, brownie, cake, candy and unique dessert. Proceeds from the popular event benefit local charities and projects.

Take Cyndi Arno for instance.

For most of the year, Cyndi is laid back in the kitchen. Shes been making batches of chocolate bark sent out to companies like Twitter and the Boise Whole Foods for years.

But once Death By Chocolate rolls around, her husband, Rob Arno, notices a little glint in her eye. Last year, judges gave Arno Chocolates first place for its Cinnamon Love bark. This year, they brought the decadence with their pineapple-coconut-almond variety.

Its hilarious, Rob teased. Its funny. Normally she is so sweet,

Im still sweet, Cyndi replied with a laugh. Its exciting. You want to call your chocolate award-winning.

Nearby, at the unique desserts table, Ben Knowles could relate to Cyndis passion. Knowles, executive director at Brookdale Twin Falls, was hoping the crowds would like their Brookdale poppers, a truffle-style chocolate featuring chopped jalapenos and strawberries.

Im pretty excited. I put a lot of time in this, he said. We want to do well and our goal is first place.

Still dont think chocolate can be as serious as it is delicious?

The judges arent even allowed to enter the room where Death by Chocolate is held until after they are done judging.

The judges even declined to let a Times-News reporter and photographer into the room while they taste tested, even if their identities were kept anonymous. Tasked with a big decision, they feared they wouldnt be able to speak honestly with each other to select a winner.

No one knows who the judges are, except for two people: Organizer Jill Skeem and fellow Rotarian April Swisher.

Swisher has been in charge of judging since the beginning. She takes the items to the judges upstairs one category at a time. She is the only person allowed in the room. Not even Skeem goes in there while judging takes place.

I want people to feel its a fair process, Skeem said. Weve gone out of the way to make it as blind as possible. I dont want people to feel slighted in any way.

The bottom of each plate is marked with letters so judges dont know which business or school made them. At 5 p.m. the judges are already in the room, an hour before the event, ready to sample.

They stay up there the whole time, Swisher said. They do have culinary experience. Some of them eat more than others, depending on what they like, but usually they take small bites.

The judges select their winners by the time the doors are opened at 6 p.m.

Down below, the anticipation was building as competitors were reminded time was ticking down.

Thirty minutes, said a voice over an intercom.

The voice also reminded participants to move their vehicles they pulled close to the building while unloading their desserts.

Youve been here before. You know how crazy it gets, the voice said.

Mike Jardine, co-owner of Sips N Sweet Treats, a new competitor this year, said they almost didnt make it. By time they found out about Death by Chocolate, the cookie category was full. But when someone canceled in the cake category, they got their shot.

I would absolutely like to win, but I see we are against some tough competition, Jardine said looking around. I hope we can keep up.
For most of us, imagining life without access to instant information is almost impossible. We can get the news and the weather, access our email, find the lyrics to our favorite songs, let YouTube teach us how to knit, text privately or comment publicly on social media with our family and friends from our cellphones, laptops and computers. What's more, we're infuriated when our cellphones are out of data, our 4G coverage shrinks to nothing, or our Internet connection has been lost.

In the good old days, though, it took human determination, ingenuity and trust to move information from one place, and from one era, to another.

For instance, in the early 1970s, the Minidoka County Historical Society members preserved individual histories from as many remaining original settlers to this area as they could by recording the interviews on cassette tapes that require a cassette player. Those interviews have survived for 40 years, and from them, we can see how easy communicating wasn't.

Alvin and Rosa Holmes in 1975 interviewed Julia (Sears) Cook, who arrived in the village of Minidoka in 1894. Her father bought the small hotel there, the mail franchise and the stage line to Albion. At the time, the Sears children belonged to one of the three families whose children attended the first school there.

To move people and mail from Minidoka to Albion meant the stage, freight and mail drivers needed to change their teams of horses three times and use one of the ferries to cross the Snake River. Julia remembered how, during winter, her brothers delivered the mail to men waiting on the other side by carrying the mail on their backs across the iced-over river, and when the ice wasn't thick enough to carry a human, a dog pulled the registered mail over the ice.

The mail was carried daily, whatever the weather, and the people responsible for getting mail across the river trusted those on the other side would be there to finish the task.

Over the years, the hotel expanded by a few feet here and there, always eastward, as her father added more rooms. Students often stayed overnight at the Sears Hotel and waited for the stage to the Albion Normal School where they studied to become teachers.

Freight as well as people and mail stopped first in Minidoka before being delivered to Albion. Julia spoke about how the gallows built in American Falls for the execution of Diamondfield Jack fell off the ferry into the river and had to be fished out and repaired before being delivered to Albion.

We can't imagine waiting weeks or months for the news or a response from our friends and family. We also have trouble imagining the excitement of receiving long-awaited updates from those we miss. To our pioneers and technology, we owe tremendous thanks for keeping us connected over time and in spite of the weather.
The tickets have been bought, the plane has boarded and everyone is waiting to take off. But Cassia County commissioners are about to miss their flight.

In a remarkable display of alienation, distrust and noncooperation, the commissioners unleashed a firehose of skepticism Monday against the city of Burley, the governors office, the media, the Federal Aviation Administration and, well, just about anyone whose name isnt Dennis Crane and Paul Christensen, the two chief commissioners in doubt.

Expected to lose Federal Aviation Administration funding if it doesnt lengthen its runways or move to a new location, the Burley airport may be forced to close soon, jeopardizing millions of dollars in regional commerce. In a last ditch effort to save the airport  and all that money that gets pumped into the Mini-Cassia area  the city of Burley has called for a joint task force made up of representatives from all the surrounding communities to help find a fix.

We completely support the effort to find a regional solution to a regional problem. The city may manage the airport, but its benefits are reaped by all. So it only makes sense that everyone should have a say in what happens next.

Cassia County, though, seems unwilling to even take a seat on the plane.

Even if the joint task force ultimately fails in its mission to find an airport solution, the fact that Cassia County seems unwilling to participate speaks volumes about its relationship with surrounding communities. The county has the opportunity to play a leadership role as the regional superpower, like the United States on the world stage. But driven by paranoia, secrecy (remember all those open meeting violations last year?) and downright rudeness, Cassia County government is behaving more like a rogue regime. And not just on the airport issue. The county has consistently dragged its heels over its joint law-enforcement arrangement with the city of Burley.

To be clear, no one is suggesting a mega airport designed for passenger travel. This is about finding a suitable location that can support area businesses and medical flights. Economic development leaders will tell you that when a new big business is thinking about moving to the area, the first question they ask is about airport availability. Companies want accessible airports for their leadership teams to fly in and out. Its one major factor in why Twin Falls has been able to land Chobani and Clif Bar.

This could be a legacy issue for the three commissioners. Do they truly want to handicap the future economic development of the region over their own egos?

Crane and Christensen dont trust studies that have shown the economic power the airport contributes to the region, calling Mike Pape, director of the Idaho Division of Aeronautics, a hotshot from the governors office.

I dont trust the newspaper or the city of Burley, either, Crane added for good measure.

Christensen said he doubts the validity of the data gathered about the airport, work done by an engineering firm, the FAA and the city  not some yokel with a tape measure.

And he also doubts whether Burley will even have to abandon the airport if a solution cant be found, even though the FAA has said it will no longer fund the airport because the runways are too short.

Bob Kunau is the lone reasonable voice left on board, but Crane and Christensen dont seem to trust him either, at least on this issue. Unless the Cassia County board abruptly reverses course, the effort to find a new regional airport is sure to crash and burn.
I have gone to Idaho Virtual Academy for seven years and am in eighth grade. Thanks to school choice I am able to complete my daily work earlier and am able to go at my own pace on assignments. Kids should be able to choose what kind of education they get and with school choice they can!

When I went to public school for two years I couldnt keep up with the other kids and often fell behind. I wasnt exactly in with the best crowd and I got in trouble often. But then my mom pulled me out of public school and put me in IDVA. At first I thought it was going to be like my other school, but after about a week I was hooked! The schedule was way more flexible and there were less social distractions.

Now it has been seven years and Im still happy. I no longer get behind in assignments, and am always done by 2 p.m. Also, I can join online school clubs based on my favorite activities like: science, engineering and robotics. Thanks to school choice I have been able to find a school that I enjoy!

Cyrus Nash

Burley
Indian navy western fleet ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Indian navy)





Author- Commdore RS Vasan IN (Retd) /SAAG





The IFR 2016 will indeed be a grand spectacle as more than one hundred ships from the navies of over fifty countries will participate in this exercise that is carried out every five years. The event which in the initial years was mostly limited to the participation of ships from the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard and the merchant navy transformed in to an international event with a major maritime event conducted in 2001 under the initiative of then Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Susheel Kumar. The marching of the naval officers and sailors from ships around the world along the marine drive in Mumbai and the presence of many ships from around the world signaled a new era in maritime diplomacy. The intentions of a maritime India to occupy center stage in both regional and global missions by using the Indian Navy as an instrument of national policy were explicit.





As the participants of the IFR then witnessed scores of indigenous ships of the Indian Navy, it was evident that the Indian Navy was in the process of transforming from a buyers navy to a builders navy. The process was a prerequisite to assuming greater regional leadership role and responsibilities. This did not escape the attention of the participant nations and motivated them to engage with India at many levels. It is not to be forgotten that this initiative was taken under the leadership of Admiral Susheel Kumar who succeeded Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. Admiral Bhagwat was relieved of his duties as CNS on 30 December 1998 by the NDA Government under certain debatable circumstances. The Navys morale which was dented had to be built up brick by brick and the IFR of 2001 from that point of view provided a launching pad for the navy which was fast becoming a Blue water Navy. The theme Bridges of Friendship was very well received and created an environment that facilitated the process of integration of a regional navy in to a global matrix.





While both the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard have conducted the Fleet Reviews on the east coast (The very first Indian Coast Guard Fleet Review by the Raksha Mantri was conducted off the east coast when the author was the Regional Commander of the Indian Coast Guard, Region East); this is the first time that an international fleet review of this scale is being conducted in the Bay of Bengal. By design this also complements the look East policy of the Government of India. It also adds value to other maritime initiatives such as the biannual Milan (which is established as an initiative for meeting of the naval minds in Port Blair), the Indian Ocean Symposium (IONS) which is now a well-established forum amongs Navies of not just the Indian Ocean but also the rest of the world.





By all expectations, China will be a first time participant in the Indian Fleet Review. From the point of view of PLA-Navy; it signals its intention to be a part of the global initiatives in the Indian Ocean in any form. The anti-piracy patrols by PLA-N units which are still underway off the coast of Somalia since 2008 provided ample opportunity to the Chinese Navy to assert its intention to be part of the international mechanisms to combat piracy.





Both Indian Navy and Chinese Navy worked shoulder to shoulder in warding off this threat though India was concerned about the presence of another extra regional player in its traditional back yard. The visit of the Chinese submarines both conventional and nuclear last year again caused ripples in Delhi. There are no doubts that India and China will jostle for power and influence in the Indian Ocean Region. While India does have geography on its side, the surplus funds that can be channeled for initiatives such as the Maritime Silk Road and the One Belt One Road will change the strategic Maritimescape of Indian Ocean Region. The IFR also comes at a time when there are great initiatives being taken by China in Asia, Africa and Europe in terms of connectivity. The fact that it plans to build a naval base in Djibouti and has huge investments in the maritime sector in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Pakistan are of concern to India which appears to have conceded strategic space to China in its areas of influence.





The presence of INS Vikramaditya and nuclear submarines of Indian Navy would send a message to the observers about the might of the Indian Navy that can be brought to bear as and when required in areas of interest. The P8i surveillance aircraft that would fly past will also generate interest in the capability of this newly acquired platform that will be able to locate and track submarines and other surface assets of extra regional powers in the Indian Ocean. The visiting navies of the world who would have done their homework would have noticed that the Indian Navy is now net centric warfare capable as a result of plenty of indigenous efforts.





Coming back to the IFR 2016, the tradition as for as the Royal Navy is concerned itself is more than seven decades old. The Indian Navy has inherited many of the traditions and practices from the Royal Indian Navy and has added its own local flavor. The President of India by virtue of being the Supreme Commander of the Armed forces has been reviewing the fleet invariably before he or she demits office during the tenure of five years as the President. It is a mega event by any standards and even the state Government has committed more than 83 crores in beautifying the city of Vizag which houses the Eastern Naval Command and important maintenance facilities of the Navy. It is also the base for the nuclear submarines of the Indian Navy including strategic assets.





All the arrangements have been reviewed at the level of the Raksha Mantri and the Navy and Nation are geared up for this event in the first week of February that will showcase the prowess of the Indian Navy. A successful conclusion of the IFR will reinforce the position of Indian Navy as a professional arm that can be used as a powerful instrument of national policy both in war and peace.





The action of the Indian Navy particularly after the spectacular missile attacks on ships and oil tank farms Karachi in 1971 and the role of the only Asian carrier Vikrant at that time in enforcing a blockade off then East Pakistan indicated how it is important to possess and use a strong navy for furthering national objectives. The fact that the Indian Navy was not used at all during the war in 1965 therefore comes as a surprise. The role of Indian Navy during the Tsunami of 2004, evacuation of Indian Nationals from war torn areas, providing of relief and succor to the flood and cyclone affected victims on many occasions and similar acts have brought to fore the strength of the Indian Navy that has proved its mettle.





The Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 changed the way maritime threats were perceived and brought about a paradigm shift in the maritime security architecture (MSA). The Indian Navy was placed at the apex of the MSA and made responsible for both coastal and oceanic security. Without going in to the details, suffice to say that the entire gamut of maritime threats and response mechanisms have undergone a sea change.





It is not out of place to recollect that it was the Indian Navy that first brought out a National Maritime Doctrine in 2004 revised it in 2007, 2009 and has now updated the document last year. Even in terms of indigenization, the Indian Navy is way ahead of its sister services having embarked on indigenization in the late 60s. The first indigenous frigate Nilgiri and the follow ons have provided the nation with options for ship building in both PSUs and private yards. The fact that Indian Navy was able to even design a carrier and is building it in the Cochin Shipyard Limited is a tribute to the leadership, the naval designers and in-house capability to produce war ships of different size. The design of stealth ships such as the Shivalik and the large destroyers such as the INS Kochi, construction of Corvettes, and the completion of the Naval off Shore Vessels are praiseworthy. The most notable feature of the Indian Navyss indigenization process is in terms of the addition of INS Arihant which provides that strategic deterrence capability that eluded India for many decades. The construction of improved versions of Arihant and also the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) are logical conclusion to the aspirations of a blue water navy that has both regional and global roles. However, the dwindling strength of conventional submarines has been a source of great concern to the planners in Delhi. There are some recent efforts to ensure that this serious deficiency is overcome both by accelerating the Scorpene production and also embarking on the indigenous production of project 75A submarines for which more than 60,000 crores has been earmarked.





The shape and size of the Indian Navy is a formidable one as India moves in to the next century. With geography and a growing economy on its side, Indian Navy will continue to complement the ambitions of a maritime India. A powerful Navy will promote maritime safety and security in the Indian Ocean. As a guarantor of net security provider at sea, safeguarding the global commons, maritime interests and the Sea Lines of Communications which are the life lines and arteries of global trade and commerce will be a top priority for the Indian Navy.





India is conscious of the fact that there are rich dividends in forging strategic alliance with other likeminded nations on a case to case basis while retaining its strategic autonomy. The tri-lateral treaty with Sri Lanka and Maldives, Exercise Malabar or other such exercises are all measures to ensure that the maritime domain remains manageable and Indian Navy is in a position to control the happenings in areas of interest. The maritime engagement with Mauritius, Seychelles, Mombasa, Oman and other maritime nations are all significant in ensuring that there is seamless integration of maritime domain and all the maritime nations in the region are under one umbrella to work in unison to serve the interests of the century of the seas. The IFR will be a keenly watched event around the world and the navies who are part of this Indian initiative will carry back cherished memories from this mega event. From the point of Indian Navy it will again provide an opportunity to take the initiative from Building Bridges of Friendship in 2001 to an architecture that is United through Oceans in 2016 and beyond.





About the author- Commdore RS Vasan IN (Retd) is the Director C3S and Head Strategy and Security Studies CAS





 EURASIA REVIEW ( ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)




PRESIDENT Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to move operations to the Sagana State Lodge in two weeks, as part of his plan to govern from outside Nairobi.

The President travels to Addis Ababa for the African Union Summit today and is expected back on Sunday. Next week, sources within the Presidency say the President will be working from Nairobi and will chair a Cabinet meeting on the 2016/17 Budget.

The Budget Policy Statement for the next financial year is to be tabled in Parliament by February 15, according to the National Treasurys calendar.

After this, the President will go to Sagana, where he will deal with matters relating to the Mt Kenya region for about a month.

However, his stay in the region is likely to be interrupted by two foreign trips that are scheduled for February and March. According to State House Spokesman Manoah Esipisu, Uhuru will travel to Israel in February and then visit France in March.

Last week, Esipisu confirmed a story carried in the Star that the President plans to works from outside the capital for most of this year. As well, in the coming months, the President will continue to work from other counties outside of our nations capital Nairobi.

So, expect to see the President in a town and county near you soon, Esipisu said in Mombasa. The President had stayed in the Coastal region for almost a month, having worked from there starting December 24 last year.

The plan is to have Uhuru interact with opinion leaders from all regions at the grassroots level and initiate several overdue development projects that were integral in Jubilees 2013 campaigns.

This is in response to concerns among Jubilee MPs, who are staring at losing their seats if the government fails to implement key projects, among them roads, on whose campaign agenda they were elected. During a meeting between Jubilee MPs and the President at State House, Nairobi, in December, the legislators complained that the government had delayed the rollout of crucial projects, upsetting the electorate.

While at the Sagana State Lodge Uhuru is expected to tour Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Laikipia, Nyandarua, Meru, Embu and Isiolo during his planned one-month stay in the region. The President is expected to tour the refurbished Karatina Open-air Market and other markets established under Economic Stimulus Programme.

Ministry of Housing officials led by Principal Secretary Aidah Njeri have been touring the projects to evaluate progress. Road improvement programmes in the region will also be a key focus for the President. The President will also visit Isiolo and inspect the upgrading of the Isiolo Airport.
Religious leaders from around the world, including Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as prominent scholars and decisions-makers have called for tolerance and for the protection of religious minorities rights in Muslim countries.

In a historical Declaration issued at the end of their meeting convened in Marrakech (January 25-27) participants called upon Muslim scholars and intellectuals to develop a jurisprudence of the concept of citizenship inclusive of diverse groups.

Such jurisprudence shall be rooted in Islamic tradition and principles taking into account global changes, said the religious leaders in their joint document.

They urged Muslim educational institutions and authorities to conduct a courageous review of educational curricula and address any material that instigates hatred and extremism.

The Marrakech Declaration also called on politicians and decision- makers to support all initiatives seeking to strengthen relations and understanding among the various religious groups in the Muslim World.

The educated, artistic, and creative members of society, as well as organizations of civil society should also endeavor to establish a broad movement for the just treatment of religious minorities in Muslim countries and raise awareness to the need to respect their rights, said the joint document.

It called upon representatives of the various religions, sects and denominations to confront all forms of religious bigotry, vilification, and denigration of what people deem as sacred, as well as all discourses that promote hatred and bigotry.

Religious leaders were also unanimous to reject the use of religion as a pretext to violate the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries.

It is worth mentioning that President Barack Obama has praised the Marrakech conference. In his remarks at a ceremony held Wednesday in Washington to honor Righteous among Nations Award winners, President Obama said We know that there were Muslims  from Albanians to Arabs  who protected Jews from Nazis. In Morocco, leaders from Muslim-majority countries around the world just held a summit on protecting religious minorities, including Jews and Christians.

King Mohammed VI also addressed the Marrakech conference, stressing Moroccos leading role in promoting interfaith dialogue and fostering religious tolerance.

Morocco has always been an outstanding model of cultural coexistence and interaction between Islam and other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, said the Monarch.

As Commander of the Faithful and defender of the faith, I am committed to protecting the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, stressed the Sovereign, affirming that Moroccan Jews enjoy the same constitutional and political rights as their fellow Muslim citizens, and play a key role in the countrys economy.

We, in the Kingdom of Morocco, see no reason for denying religious minorities any of their rights. We do not tolerate a violation of this kind being perpetrated in the name of Islam, nor do we tolerate any Muslim being involved in such an infringement, added King Mohammed VI.
Talks between the Syrian government and the opposition initially scheduled for Monday would finally kick-off on Friday but the coalition of major opposition groups known as the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) will not be attending unless its demands are met.

The Syrian government and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are expected to be at the talks. Analysts believe that talks without the participation of the HNC would certainly not end the fighting in Syria.

HNC spokesman Salem al-Meslet said the coalition is serious about participating in the negotiations but wants humanitarian issues to be solved first recalling that the UN Security Council resolution in December which demanded civilians access to humanitarian aid in areas under siege is non-negotiable. He added that the ones who are hindering the start are those who are bombing and starving civilians. HNC wants Damascus to halt attacks on civilians, release detainees and lift blockades before it can attend the Geneva talks.

Diplomats are hopeful that the talks would be a sign of progress compared to that of 2014 because the Assad government seems to be flexible on certain matters while the rebels are much more organized with an agenda. UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said five years of this conflict have been too much and this conference must be an opportunity not to be missed.

HNC has not ruled out participating in the talks as Meslat stated that we will send a delegation as soon as we get an answer from Ban Ki-moon concerning our demands. At least we want to hear a promise, something to encourage us, he said.

Turkey is against the participation of PYD because of its ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK.)
Iran concluded a multi-billion dollar deal with Airbus for the acquisition of 73 wide-body and 45 narrow-body jets including a dozen A380 superjumbos.

The deal also covers maintenance of aircrafts and training of Iranian pilots.

The 118 aircrafts are expected to boost the countrys aviation sector that has been paralyzed by sanctions and also prepare it for competition as it seeks to renovate and expand its worn-out fleet of 225 planes.

The agreement was signed during Rouhanis visit to France. Airbus is to deliver the aircrafts within four years while Tehran should conclude the payment estimated at around $20 billion within a decade. Iranian officials said funding would be obtained using European export credits and lease financing.

There are concerns over the delivery of the aircrafts because Airbus, a European manufacturer, gets more than 10% of its parts from the US where sanctions on Iran have not been lifted.

The European Union lifted its sanctions on Iran after it abided by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action fondly called the nuclear agreement. The announcement was made two weeks ago in a joint statement by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif.

During his visit to France, place after a trip to Italy, President Rouhani and his 120-member accompanying delegation urged foreign investors to venture into Iran.

His five-day tour of the two European countries was mainly focused on reviving economic and trade ties as Iran is making its comeback on the global economic scene.

After the removal of sanctions, the government seems to be determined to make the countrys economy vibrant as soon as possible.
A suicide car bomb attack exploded Thursday at a checkpoint less than a kilometer from the presidential palace in Aden, killing at least eight people and injuring 15.

President Hadi and Prime Minister Khalid Bahah were in the palace at the moment of the attack but were unhurt although buildings close to the explosion site suffered some damages.

Bahah returned from Saudi Arabia on Monday with some ministers after they fled their base, the Al Qasr hotel, following an attack in October by the Islamic State group. Thursdays attack was also carried out by the extremist group and the suicide bomber was identified as Abu Hanifa al-hollandi in a statement posted on Twitter.

Bahah had stated that the palace in Aden will be used as a base by the government and he held a meeting there on Wednesday with local chiefs of Yemeni armed forces and commanders of the coalition forces from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan.

Xinhua quoted an intelligence officer under the condition of anonymity saying that the suicide bomber was targeting the governors motorcade. Adens governor Gen. Aidarous Zubaidi was heading to the Presidential Palace for a meeting when the explosion occurred but he was able to escape unharmed, the officer explained. Last month, IS claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed Adens governor, Jaafar Mohammed Saad.

The Hadi-led government is using Aden as the temporal capital while waiting to return to Sanaa, still under the control of the Houthis. The coalition and pro-Hadi militants declared Aden liberated after battling out the rebels but they are still struggling to control the city and government spokesperson Rageh Badi admitted that the main challenge continues to be security concerns.
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A helping hand. Credit: www.shutterstock.com

One of the best-known indictments of the medical profession  which though over 100 years old still applies today  is found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's 1906 play, "The Doctor's Dilemma."

Shaw (1856-1950), an Irish playwright and critic, sought to dramatize the tensions in medicine between making money and serving the best interests of patients.

Shaw focuses his attack on the fact that doctors are generally paid for the care they provide, such as prescribing medicines and performing surgeries. He believes that this places doctors in an irresolvable conflict of interest:

That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity . I cannot knock my shins severely without forcing on some surgeon the difficult question, "Could I not make a better use of a pocketful of guineas than this man is making of his leg?"

The financial incentives for doctors to do something they can bill for, Shaw asserts, are so strong that they will forever be "performing unnecessary operations and manufacturing and prolonging lucrative illnesses." They are abetted in this, he says, by the great need of patients and families to have something done for them:

You have a wildly urgent feeling that something must be done; and the doctor does something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient; but you do not know that; and the doctor assures you that all that human skill could do has been done.

Shaw is not singling out the doctor as lower than other tradesmen and professionals. "I do not blame him: I would do the same myself," he says. He attributes the abuse of the patient's trust to the way in which doctors and other health professionals are compensated. In fact, his indictment extends to all professions  law, clergy, teaching, art, business and so on  all of which he brands "conspiracies against the laity."

A prescription for profit

Sadly, a number of well-publicized cases tend to support Shaw's argument. Two doctors, an oncologist in the Detroit area and a spine surgeon in Cincinnati, have recently been indicted for misdiagnosing and overtreating patients in schemes to generate millions of dollars that often made their patients only sicker.

Even the nation's largest medical association, the AMA, was embroiled in scandal 20 years ago when it attempted to profit by endorsing products of appliance manufacturer Sunbeam that it never tested.

An observer could be forgiven for concluding that the problems Shaw describes are still with us.

Helping patients comes first

Yet I personally know many doctors who put the interests of patients far ahead of their own pocketbooks. Most of the young medical students I work with every year sincerely want to provide their patients with the very best care, irrespective of profit. And this dedication is not confined to physicians.

In fact, some of the most admirable people I know are found in places Shaw would regard as highly unlikely, including the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, where the profit motive seems to reign unchallenged.

Consider the case of Bill Cook (1931-2011), founder of the world's largest privately held medical device manufacturer. In connection with a scholarly project last year, I interviewed a number of Cook's colleagues, family and friends.

In 1963, Cook and his wife Gayle started their business in the second bedroom of a two-bedroom apartment in Bloomington, Indiana, with an initial investment of US$1,500. They manufactured and sold wire guides, catheters and other devices that enable doctors to diagnose and treat diseases without surgery, using x-ray guidance. Cook recognized early on that such techniques would revolutionize medicine, and he wanted to play a role in making it happen. Today the Cook fortune amounts to $5.9 billion.

But it would be a grave mistake to say that they did it for the money.For the first several decades, Cook's business ran without a budget. Bill Cook declared over and over again that "the patient is the ultimate standard of whether you are doing the right thing," His goal was not to make money, but "to come to work every day excited by a problem, get busy working on a solution, and make a difference in the life of a patient."

One day an employee told Cook that the company could not begin developing a new device because the profit margin was not there. He responded, "What you just said to me, I don't want to hear it again. What matters is this  will it help patients?"

More interested in making a difference

The Cook story also includes a doctor. Charles Dotter, M.D., longtime department chair at the University of Oregon, is often called the "father of interventional medicine." It was Dotter who was featured in a 1964 Life magazine story touting medicine's revolutionary new ability to open up narrowed arteries, in which he is pictured using devices made by Cook. In many cases, it was Dotter's new ideas that led to new Cook products. Dotter was the first doctor to whom Cook offered a royalty, but he always refused  he too was not interested in making money but in making a difference.

Such aspirations may seem quixotic in today's money-saturated health care environment, but Cook clearly believed in them, and they served as the moral bedrock for a company that has enjoyed over 50 years of continuous growth in products, employees and profits.

To those who might dismiss Cook's approach as a facade, it is important to point out how the Cooks used their money. Instead of buying extravagant cars and houses, for many years Bill Cook drove an old Pontiac, and despite has vast fortune, he died in the same three-bedroom house that he and his wife purchased in 1967.

The Cooks were not interested in drawing money out of their business to support a lavish lifestyle. Instead they wanted to reinvest profits back into the company to keep it growing and making even bigger contributions to patients' lives. In stark contrast to Shaw's unflattering portrait of the denizens of health care, Bill Cook stands as an exemplar who never looked at patients as a way to make money. Instead, like Dotter, he saw money as a means to improve the lives of patients.

Recent reports of doctor misconduct and betrayals of patient trust make it clear that Shaw's critique is still relevant. The temptation to put money before people is an ever-present one, and health care professionals need to be regularly reminded of it.

But it is a temptation to which many do not succumb. The Cook story provides an important reminder that, even at a time when money exerts unprecedented sway in health care, the moral compasses of the best doctors still point true north  to the welfare of patients.

Explore further Apple chief Cook to give his wealth away: Fortune

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


Three Canadians have been infected with the Zika virus while traveling abroad, Canadian health authorities said Thursday, raising the possibility of new blood donor restrictions to prevent the disease's spread.

"There are three cases in Canada," a spokesman for the health ministry told AFP.

Two cases involved people who live in westernmost British Columbia province and were infected in El Salvador and Colombia respectively. Another involved an Alberta resident. Officials did not specify where the person had traveled.

None of the three was pregnant and all have recovered.

"We have no reason to believe that local transmission is a concern for Canadians," said Health Minister Jane Philpott, while urging travelers to take precautions.

Meanwhile, she said Canadian Blood Services, which is responsible for collecting blood donations in the country, is looking into whether to restrict persons who recently traveled to certain countries from giving blood.

"Canadian Blood Services is re-evaluating whether there need to be changes to their policy in terms of a possible travel deferral period for this," the minister said.

"As you know, the organizations already have intake information about the travel patterns of those who have donated blood. But we expect further modifications to their donor program and will announce those as soon as we can."

The mosquito-borne virus has been linked to serious birth defects, including microcephaly, a condition in which a newborn's brain and skull are abnormally small. Developmental problems often result.

Earlier in the day, the World Health Organization (WHO) set an emergency meeting for February 1 on the Zika virus, which is spreading "explosively" in the Americas, with three to four million cases expected this year.

No cases of direct infection have yet been registered inside the United States or Canada.

WHO has previously said that it expects Zika to spread to every country in the Americas except Canada and Chile.

 2016 AFP
People hospitalized due to an encounter with a law enforcement officer are more likely to have a mental illness, have longer hospitalizations, more injuries to the back and spine, and greater need for extended care than those hospitalized due to altercations with other civilians. The findings, based on 10 years of Illinois hospitalization data, are published in the journal Injury Epidemiology.

Lee Friedman, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and senior author on the paper, and his colleagues wanted to find out how many and what kinds of encounters with police led to hospital admissions for civilians in Illinois.

They identified 836 people injured by contact with law enforcement officers after reviewing the medical records of all patients admitted to Illinois hospitals or treated in emergency rooms between 2000 and 2009. They compared those patients to 836 civilians of the same age and sex who were were treated in hospitals over the same period for injuries due to physical altercations with other civilians.

Civilians injured by law enforcement had 27 percent longer hospital stays (4.7 vs. 3.7 days) and twice as many back and spine injuries (7.4 percent of those injured by cops vs. 3.3 percent of those injured by civilians). They were nearly 2.5 times more likely to need extended care following discharge from the hospital (20 percent vs. 8 percent).

Although the injury severity (a numerical score of multiple factors) of those injured by police did not differ from the comparison group, the number of spine and back injuries is disturbing, Friedman said, because such injuries "indicate that the person was already on the ground face-down or turned away from the officer when they occurred."

Equally troubling, the researchers also found that only 10 percent of the people injured by law enforcement were sent to jail after being discharged from a hospital.

"While we didn't have information on any associated excessive-use-of-force claims by patients, the fact that these people weren't arrested or taken into custody after being dischargedin combination with the severity of the clinical featuresindicates that many of the patient injuries resulted from excessive force," Friedman said.

"But it is important to distinguish between excessive force and unjustified force, since excessive force can be mitigated by providing law enforcement personnel with the tools and training that minimize both lethality and severity of injury," he added.

The researchers found that of those injured by encounters with law enforcement, nearly 40 percent had psychiatric conditions that can impair judgment, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse or major depressive disorder. These mental disorders were 2.3 times more prevalent among people injured by a law enforcement officer than among those injured by a general assault.

The researchers also noted that a disproportionate number of persons with pre-existing paralytic disorders were among those injured during contact with law enforcement.

"These are people who would be unable to physically comply with police officer commands to lay on the ground or put their hands up or defend themselves when force is used," Friedman said. About 3.5 percent of injuries caused by encounters with cops involved people with paralytic injuries compared to 1.3 percent in the comparison group.

"The issue of excessive use of force by police officers is difficult to research, because there are no policy directives that require publicly accessible repositories for such information, such as those that mandate reporting of child or elder abuse," Friedman said. "This kind of data should be compiled, analyzed and publicly distributed on an annual basis in an effort to identify ways to reduce injuriesas is done in Australia."

More information: Alfreda Holloway-Beth et al. Risk factors associated with legal interventions, Injury Epidemiology (2016). Alfreda Holloway-Beth et al. Risk factors associated with legal interventions,(2016). DOI: 10.1186/s40621-016-0067-6
Food imported into the United States from countries with a low gross domestic product (GDP) poses higher risks than food from richer countries, according to a new study from University of Wisconsin-Madison industrial and systems engineering researchers and a collaborator from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

The new study, which analyzes 10 years' worth of U.S. Food and Drug Administration data on food import violations, comes amid concerns as the United States imports increasingly large amounts of fish, meat, vegetables, and other products.

The novel analysis of FDA's 2002-2007 data on food import violations suggests that "the size of a country's economy appears to be a more important determinant of food safety than its wealth," or GDP per capita, according to the study, "Import Security: Assessing the Risks of Imported Food." The research was published in the online version of Risk Analysis, a publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

"We present a novel use of existing data to provide partial answers on food import risks that are not easy to obtain by other means," says Jonathan Welburn, lead author on the study and graduate student in the UW-Madison Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. "Our results suggest that the risk level of imported food is higher for foods from low-GDP countries. High-GDP countries, on the other hand, may be better able to reduce risks through standards and regulations. Consequently, importers may wish to pay more for products from high-GDP countries, or work closely with suppliers from low-GDP countries to ensure good safety practices."

"The results should be useful to supply-chain managers in determining whether the cost savings associated with a change to a lower cost source country are worthwhile given possible increases in risk, and also in assessing the need for risk-reduction measures such as producer safety training for some product types and source countries," according to the authors. The results should also help FDA target inspections, they add.

To quantify imported food risks, the researchers used FDA Inspection Refusal Report (IRR) data. FDA generates an IRR when its inspectors refuse to admit a shipment into the United States. Imports can be refused for botulism, filth, rotting foods, or other blatant food-safety concerns, as well as for "less dramatic violations," such as the lack of required documentation. FDA only needs to prove the appearance of a violation, not an actual violation, so a refusal is "not an absolute measure of risk, and is interpreted as a proxy for risk," according to the paper.

In closely examining the FDA violations data by country, the researchers concluded, "refusals alone are not a good indicator of risk." The data showed that the top 15 violators were all major U.S. trading partners, such as Mexico, China, and the United Kingdom, suggesting that the number of refusals is driven by food import volume. But when the refusals were normalized using the volume of imports (measured in millions of dollars), major trading partners were no longer exclusively identified as the high-risk countries and the list no longer included high-income countries. For example, the normalized analysis found that the highest-risk country, Iraq, has averaged 204 refusals per million dollars of imports and Somalia has averaged 191 refusals per million dollars of imports. As an example of a low-risk, low-GDP country, Costa Rica averaged 41 refusals per billion dollars of imports. China exemplifies a high-GDP nation that is better able to manage risks. Normalizing refusals data helps put the data into perspective, and the "rate of refusals is clearly a better risk measure than refusals alone," the authors conclude.

The researchers call for improved data management and transparency. "In particular, import violations data must be collated with separate trade data to quantify risks," says Welburn, urging improved data management and transparency. "To facilitate this analysis, it would be helpful if the database on import violations corresponded more closely with the database on trade volumes."

Explore further Testing of seafood imported into the US is inadequate

More information: Jonathan Welburn et al. Import Security: Assessing the Risks of Imported Food, Risk Analysis (2016). Journal information: Risk Analysis Jonathan Welburn et al. Import Security: Assessing the Risks of Imported Food,(2016). DOI: 10.1111/risa.12560
What if polycystic kidney disease (PKD) could be combatted with a strategy as simple as dieting? Such a finding would surely be welcome news to the 12 million people worldwide with the genetic disease.

New research from UC Santa Barbara suggests that reducing food intake may slow the growth of the cysts that are symptomatic of PKD, an inherited disorder in which clusters of cysts develop in the kidneys.

A study by biologist Thomas Weimbs and colleagues has demonstrated that in mouse models, a modest decrease in food intake resulted in substantially diminished cyst growth. The findings appear in the American Journal of Physiology - Renal Physiology.

"Amazingly, the growth of polycystic kidneys was quite strongly inhibited with the reduced food intake, suggesting that these organs are much more sensitive to nutrients than the rest of the body," said Weimbs, a professor in UCSB's Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. "That's very interesting because if we translate this to a human population, the regimen should be something that would be potentially feasible for PKD patients to follow."

The researchers were particularly interested in the mTOR pathway, the mechanistic target of a drug called rapamycin, which has been studied as a potential treatment for PKD. When nutrients are abundant, the mTOR pathwayimportant in regulating cell growth and proliferationis highly active. So the investigators hypothesized that limiting nutrient supply might affect the pathway's activity and tested their theory in mice with polycystic kidneys.

Animals in the control group had free access to food and showed a kidney weight increase of 151 percent during the study period. Those in the experimental group, in which food intake was reduced 23 percent, experienced only a 41 percent gain in kidney weight. "That's pretty substantial," said Weimbs. "The reduction is similar to what we would see with rapamycin treatment but without the side effects."

The researchers also looked at other parameters, such as proliferation of the cysts and the inhibition of other molecular pathways. "Not only did the size of cysts decrease significantly but pathways were inhibited as we expected them to be," Weimbs said. "All of this made sense with our initial hypothesis."

Moving from animal to human studies, however, would require additional research as well as clinical trials. Still to be determined is whether the sizable effects seen in this study are due to simply decreasing caloric intake or to a reduction in a particular nutrient group, such as carbohydrates, lipids or proteins.

"That's something we really don't know, but it's something that can be easily tested and should be, because potentially we only have to reduce one nutrient group and not all of the others," Weimbs explained. "Or maybe it's just the caloric intake. We need to know which before it makes sense to move forward with a clinical trial."

The results of the Weimbs Lab's research are similar to another recent study conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. While that group used slightly different mouse models and a more severe level of food restriction40 percentthe results also demonstrated a reduction in cyst growth.

"Two groups using different protocols and different models that come to the same conclusion strengthens the overall findings and makes a clinical trial much more justifiable," Weimbs concluded.

Explore further Delivering drugs to the right place

More information: Kevin R Kipp et al. A mild reduction of food intake slows disease progression in an orthologous mouse model of polycystic kidney disease, American Journal of Physiology - Renal Physiology (2016). Kevin R Kipp et al. A mild reduction of food intake slows disease progression in an orthologous mouse model of polycystic kidney disease,(2016). DOI: 10.1152/ajprenal.00551.2015
UI researchers are reminding US doctors to watch for two vector-borne and potentially life-threatening diseases -- Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis -- that can be passed from mother to child through the placenta. The child in this photo suffers from Leishmaniasis, which is characterized by irregular bouts of fever, substantial weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver, and anemia. If the disease is not treated, the fatality rate in developing countries can be as high as 100 percent within two years. Credit: World Health Organization.

While world health leaders race to contain the spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in the Americas, researchers at the University of Iowa are reminding doctors in the United States to be on the lookout for two other vector-borne and potentially life-threatening diseases that can be passed from mother to child through the placenta.

Chagas' disease and Leishmaniasis are parasitic diseases found in Mexico, Central America, and South America. In addition, Leishmaniasis also is found in some parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and southern Europe. Blood-sucking insects are blamed for transmitting both diseases.

Now that scientists know the pathogens can also be passed congenitally, global travel and migration have made people in the U.S. vulnerable.

The problem is that most American doctors don't think of parasites from far away places when a sick baby arrives in their office.

That needs to change, says Christine Petersen, associate professor of epidemiology at the UI College of Public Health and corresponding author of the paper "A Mother's Gift: Congenital Transmission of Trypanosoma and Leishmania Species," which appeared online Jan. 28 in PLOS Pathogens.

"Congenital transmission will be the predominant way that kids in the United States get these diseases because we don't have the bug problem," Petersen says. "So, you might have a child going into heart failure or with an enlarged liver and spleen, and the doctors can't figure out what's going on, and the child is on death's doorstep."

Petersen's concern comes at a time when public health and infectious-disease experts are scrambling to understand the impacts of infection with the Zika virus, which has been connected to a neurological disorder cropping up in Brazil that results in babies being born with abnormally small heads. There is neither a vaccine to prevent Zika nor medicine to treat it.

The newly published paper is a review of previous studies about Chagas' disease and Leishmaniasis and serves as a reminder for U.S. health care workers to remember these diseases when examining sick children whose mothers have come from areas where such illnesses are more common.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 8 million people in Mexico, Central America, and South America have Chagas' disease, and most of them do not know they are infected. In those areas, the triatomine beetlesthe so-called "kissing bugs" usually pass on the disease. If untreated, the infection can be life threatening. In the acute phase of the disease, a patient can suffer fever, fatigue, body aches, headache, rash, loss of appetite, diarrhea, and vomitingsigns that are also common to other illnesses, which is why doctors often overlook Chagas' disease. But once a patient reaches the chronic phase of the disease, he or she can experience serious cardiac and intestinal complications.

Leishmaniasis, which usually affects the spleen, liver, and bone marrow, is spread by sand flies infected with Leishmania infantum parasites. According to the CDC, the number of cases ranges from 200,000 to 400,000 worldwide.

Dogs, it seems, are a reservoir host for both diseases.

Research involving infected dogs proved that Leishmaniasis could pass across the placenta, something that was considered possible by some medical doctors and veterinarians but not widely accepted. Petersen and other UI researchers were the first to confirm five years ago that Leishmaniasis could be passed congenitally.

Petersen says there are drugs to treat Chagas' disease and Leishmaniasis, but they are somewhat toxic and have significant side effects, especially in children. Most countries where these parasitic diseases are common take preventative measures instead, such as soaking bed nets with insecticides, to deter infected blood-sucking bugs.

The next step for UI researchers is an 18-month vaccine trial on 600 dogs, funded by the Morris Animal Foundation, a nonprofit organization that invests in science to advance animal health. But the researchers' goal is to also prevent the spread of these diseases between animals and people.

"This is a whole new ballgame," Petersen says. "Those who have the disease but aren't sick yet, can we turn the tide for them? If we do find that the vaccine does make the dogs better, then the question is, 'Does it help not passing it on to their puppies?'"

Explore further Zika virus: US issues travel warning for pregnant women
What results did Davos 2016 bring to Georgia?

Global financial institutions will help Georgia fulfill its ambitious reform agenda.Georgias Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili was promised international support at Davos, Switzerland, where world leaders participated in the World Economic Forum.Kvirikashvili summed up the results of the event and clamed that foreign financial institutions would help Georgia implement four of its biggest reforms: Tax liberalisation; Governance system reform; Infrastructural and regional development; and Educational reforms.During the past three days at Davos, the Georgian Prime Minister met a number of world leaders, who confirmed their firm support to Georgia.Kvirikashvili met the Dutch, Swiss and Kazakh Prime Ministers, as well as the Azerbaijani President. Also, bilateral meetings were held with the presidents of the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.Georgias Prime Minister met NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and discussed what steps Georgia needed to take to be properly recognised at the upcoming Warsaw Summit.Kvirikashvili also met former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the two sides agreed on cooperation through Georgias reform agenda.Summing up the bilateral meetings, Kvirikashvili stressed "a very friendly atmosphere at the meeting with Azerbaijans President and said IlhanAliyev would soon visit Georgia.Looking ahead, the Prime Minister said he expected 2016 to be a "pretty good economic year for Georgia.
National currency hits its peak of devaluation against USD

By Messenger Staff

Georgias national currency Lari is continuing todepreciate against the US dollar, hitting a record low against the American currency.Currently, 1 USD costs 2.46 GEL.The Georgian national currency has lost 3% of its value against dollar since the beginning of this year, and more than 25% since January 2015.GEL started depreciation in November, 2014 falling by about 40% against dollar since then.Georgias Prime Minister, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, commented on the record lowest rate of the Georgian national currency since 1999 from the Davos economic forum.This is the correction of the GELs exchange rate due the recent devaluation of the national currencies of our neighbouring countries. There is nothing alarming; we have every reason to be optimistic.""We expect quite positive economic growth in Georgia this year and we do not have negative expectations for either the middle or long term, Kvirikashvili said.It should be noted that the current Georgian Government has made the same statements since November last year and claims that these currency fluctuations are no cause for concern.It might not be alarming for the Government, but for the ordinary people the situation is dire, as most people in Georgia have very low incomes.Prices are increasing and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the population to live on their meagre incomes.The recent depreciation of the national currency seems to be becoming the most important challenge for the current authorities in the view of the upcoming parliamentary elections this autumn.In the event that the Government fails to improve the situation, it will become difficult for them to win votes.No recent Georgian governments have succeeded in improving the living conditions for the majority of the Georgian people.
Here is where you'll learn more about the artists who create the crafts, plus I share some useful information about travel and culture in fascinating Michoacan, Mexico.

Welcome, and thanks for stopping by!
@ByKristenMClark

Despite "an army of small-dollar progressive donors," U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson continues to lag well behind fellow U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy in fundraising for the Democratic primary of Florida's high-profile U.S. Senate contest.

Grayson's campaign told the Herald/Times today the Orlando congressman took in $591,000 for the three-month filing period between October and December, with average donations around $28 from 9,300 individuals representing more than 240 Florida communities and all 50 states.

The total includes a new $100,000 loan Grayson gave his campaign, which is in addition to previous personal loans he's made, the campaign said.

Spokesman David Damron said the campaign is still calculating exactly how much Grayson had in cash on hand as of Dec. 31, but Damron said it's around the same amount "or slightly less" than what Grayson had heading into October.

Grayson reported $258,700 in the bank, as of Sept. 30.

Meanwhile, Murphy -- the party establishment's favored candidate -- announced his fourth-quarter fundraising totals last week.

The Jupiter congressman said he raised $1.46 million from October through December -- which, by comparison, is about 2.5 times as much as Grayson said he took in during the same time-frame. Murphy said he had nearly $4.3 million on hand in his U.S. Senate campaign, as of Dec. 31.

Fourth-quarter fundraising reports are due to the Federal Election Commission by Jan. 31. Senate campaigns typically file paper copies through the secretary of the Senate, so specific details on Grayson's and Murphy's most-recent fundraising aren't yet available.

Grayson's campaign expressed optimism for 2016, saying it "already set a new, one-month record for contributions in January" and has new, continuing pledges that total $60,000 a month going forward.

This campaign is fueled by retirees and veterans, and people who work in classrooms or drive buses, not wealthy lobbyists and special interests," political director Mario Piscatella said in a campaign statement.

North Palm Beach attorney Pam Keith is also seeking the Democratic nomination. Her fundraising has been nominal.

The Murphy-Grayson contest is drawing a lot of national attention, as Murphy has built momentum off support from key Democrats and union groups, while Grayson has picked up endorsements from notable progressives and grassroots supporters, including both the state and national Progressive Democrats of America.

Florida's U.S. Senate race is seen as one of the pivotal seats for both Republicans and Democrats to win, because it could decide which party controls the upper chamber of Congress next year.

Four candidates are running in the Republican primary: U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach, U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami, and Orlando businessman Todd Wilcox.

Photo credit: AP
@PatriciaMazzei

DES MOINES -- Just how strange the Republican presidential race has gotten was on full display in Iowas capital Thursday, when the last debate before voting begins was held without the partys front-runner.

Donald Trump boycotted the FOX News Channel debate in Des Moines, holding a rival fundraiser for military veterans not far from the hall where seven of his opponents took the stage for the first time without him.

Despite his absence, Trump loomed large.

In her very first question, moderator Megyn Kelly  Trumps bogeywoman  asked his chief competitor, Ted Cruz, to weigh in on the elephant not in the room tonight.

The Texas senator had an answer ready.

Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben, youre a terrible surgeon, he told retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way

They hadnt.

I kind of miss Donald Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whom Trump famously labeled low-energy, said with a wry smile. He was a little teddy bear to me. We always had such a loving relationship in these debates. I kind of miss him. I wish he was here.

Even Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who studiously avoids mentioning Trump on the campaign trail, brought him up unprompted: Lets begin by being clear what this campaign is about: Its not Donald Trump. Hes an entertaining guy. Hes the greatest show on Earth. This campaign is about the greatest country in the world, and a president who has systematically destroyed many of the things that made America special.

Cruz relished being the center of attention, at least at first. But he lost his hold on the debate when he debated rules with moderator Chris Wallace  and delivered an apparently scripted line that fell flat.

More here.

Photo credit: Charlie Neibergall, Associated Press
@ByKristenMClark

The Florida House is also seeking a big boost in K-12 education funding next year, proposing an extra $601 million more for schools.

Both the House and Senate are seeking to increase K-12 education funding even more so than what Republican Gov. Rick Scott has proposed.

Scott called for $500 million in extra funding. The House would increase that by another $100 million, while the Senate has pitched an extra $650 million, or $150 million more than Scott's plan.

But the the point of contention continues to be how much of those new dollars will come from the state versus growing revenues from local property taxes.

Some Republicans in both chambers argue increasing the required local effort constitutes a "tax increase," and they're not on board with that -- especially in the Senate.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who chairs the Senate budget subcommittee for education, said his panel would consider several alternatives early next week, including replacing local property taxes with state tax revenue. More here.

Some lawmakers would prefer scaling back the local dollars and counting that toward the $1 billion in tax cuts that Scott wants, or even just simply acknowledging that the increase in education spending would cut into the overall tax cuts.

"If we cut taxes here a billion dollars and raise them $500 million at home, we need to call it a $500 million tax decrease, not $1 billion," said Rep. Fred Costello, R-Ormond Beach, a member of the House education budget committee.

That chamber's plan uses Scott's method of predominantly relying on local property tax revenue -- which House Education Budget Committee Chairman Erik Fresen, R-Miami, describes as an "adjustment with no actual increase in the millage."

But even if the tax rate doesn't change, property owners' tax bills will likely still be higher because of improved property values statewide.

Fresen said the proportion of local taxes toward education declined from 2009 to 2013, "so during a time of declining tax rolls, it was essentially a tax cut," so he said this adjusts for that now that property values are rebounding.

Fresen rolled out the House proposal during a swift discussion on Thursday. The chamber unveiled its full budget plan this morning.

For K-12 education, the House recommends a total budget of $20.3 billion, with $7,232 in per-pupil funding. The current level is about $7,107 per student this year.

To fund the House's plan of an extra $601 million in K-12 education, about 78 percent of that -- or $505 million -- would come from required and discretionary local dollars. About $95 million would come from the state.

By comparison, Scott's budget proposal called for a $20.2 billion education budget with funding of $7,221 per student. He wants to increase K-12 dollars by $507.3 million in 2016-17. But only about $80 million of that would be extra state aide, while $427.3 million  85 percent  would come from property taxes that homeowners and businesses pay

Meanwhile, the Senate's budget plan is about $50 million more than the House's and $150 million more than the governor's. It's roughly $20.3 billion, with $7,249 in per-pupil funding.

To fund its $650 million increase -- for now -- the Senate has penciled in similar proportions of local and state funding as the House and governor, but Gaetz expects that to change given his and his colleagues' discontent with that calculation.
@MichaelAuslen

The House and Senate are saying no to Gov. Rick Scotts proposal that would penalize hospitals that earned a profit in 2014.

Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, and Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, on Thursday unveiled parts of the legislative chambers health and human services budgets for the 2016-17 fiscal year. Although the Houses plan is similar to Scotts in some ways, its clear the Legislature has no interest in a 9.3 percent profit cap.

That issue is off the table, said Hudson, who chairs the House Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee.

After federal regulators shrunk the Low Income Pool to $608 million this year and changed some of its rules, lawmakers have to find a new model to reimburse hospitals for uncompensated charity care. The House plan is substantially similar to one proposed by the governor, Hudson said. It has three tiers, based on the percentage of charity care each hospital performs.

Full details of the Houses LIP model, including how much each hospital in the state would receive under the budget plan, will be available Friday when the chambers budget is released.

The House proposal sets aside $4.9 million for rural hospitals to offset their losses through LIP and $198 million for physicians at medical schools.

In the wake of reporting by the Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune highlighting violence at the states crowded, underfunded mental hospitals, the House is asking for $3.8 million to expand the number of forensic beds and increase staff by 43.

Nevertheless, under the plan, deep personnel cuts recommended by the governor would hit several agencies, most severely the Department of Health. Nearly all of those positions were never filled by agencies after the Legislature authorized them, or they have been vacant for years, Hudson said.

Clearly the organization has figured out how to make up for that and how to compensate for that, he said.

County health departments, for example are kind of out of the primary care business, Hudson said. They could take the brunt of hundreds of position cuts in this years budget alone.

Democrats on the committee pushed back against Hudson, asking whether there was more the Legislature could do to ensure jobs they authorize executive agencies to fill actually get used.

Frankly, I think whatll happen if they dont is well take them right away from them, Hudson said. I think thats where the appropriate check and balance is supposed to be.

The Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee released its budget proposal earlier Thursday. The two chambers have not yet started their negotiations to finalize a budget.

And lets not forget Scott wields the power of the veto pen.
@ByKristenMClark

U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Jupiter, picked up another high-profile endorsement on Friday in his bid to be the Democratic Party's candidate in Florida's U.S. Senate race to replace Marco Rubio.

The Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) announced its support for Murphy during a campaign event in Pompano Beach.

"He supports our working families and we believe that his commonsense approach to leadership is exactly what Florida needs right now," Glenn Farner, business manager of LIUNAs Southeast Laborers' District Council, said in a statement provided by the campaign. "Time and again, Patrick has proven that he will fight to protect our workers rights, fight for their hard-earned, high-quality union health benefits, and fight to raise the minimum wage.

Murphy has continued to rack up endorsements from the party establishment and key interest groups in the competitive primary against fellow U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, of Orlando.

Grayson, meanwhile, is drawing his support from state and national progressives and grassroots donors. North Palm Beach attorney Pam Keith is also seeking the Democratic nomination.

National experts say the outcome of Florida's race could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate a year from now.

The Republican Party of Florida had this to say on Murphy's latest announcement:

While Patrick Murphy attempts to hide the rapidly growing support behind Alan Grayson with the endorsements of a job-killing union, the truth remains that he is more focused on advancing his personal political ambitions than the best interest of Florida families," RPOF spokesman Wadi Gaitan said in a statement.

It's an example of one of the party's efforts to drive a greater wedge between Grayson and Murphy and add fuel to their rivalry.

Four candidates are running in the Republican primary: U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach, U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami, and Orlando businessman Todd Wilcox.

Photo credit: @gslayen / Patrick Murphy campaign
@PatriciaMazzei

DES MOINES -- Cindy Tanner lived in Colorado before she moved four years ago to Coral, Florida -- near Fort Myers -- so what happened to her a recent morning in Iowa wasn't entirely unfamiliar.

"I had to scrape ice off my windshield!" she said.

Tanner, 54, is bearing the Iowa winter by choice: She volunteered to campaign for her favorite Republican running for president, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. They took her up on her offer.

So she hopped on a flight to Houston on Monday, then flew to Denver, and then, finally, to Des Moines -- all for a candidate she didn't meet until Wednesday. She also met his wife, Heidi Cruz.

"I just couldn't stay on my lounge chair in Florida, in the sunshine," she said. "I'm hoping it will make a little difference."

Tanner has been a fan of Cruz's since he staged a filibuster against Obamacare on the U.S. Senate floor. She's been engaged with his campaign in Florida, even though there are two Floridians also seeking the GOP nomination, Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush.

"I would love for a Cruz-Rubio team," she said. "That would be ideal, because I like Rubio too, and I just think that if he was vice president, that would be amazing."

The Cruz campaign has so many out-of-state volunteers in Iowa ahead of Monday's caucuses that it's rented a dormitory for them. "Camp Cruz" is home this week to Tanner, a retired electronics manufacturing consultant who was assigned a roommate, college-style.

"It's not a resort feel," she said wryly. "I didn't come for the accommodation."
@PatriciaMazzei

Note to Chris Matthews: When you dismiss two Republican presidential candidates as "Cubans," the largest Cuban-American community in the country might take offense. Starting with its mayor.

Carlos Gimenez, the Cuban-born Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County, wrote the MSNBC anchor Thursday to object to Matthews' comment earlier this week that Thursday night's GOP primary debate would be boring without Donald Trump.

"Who's going to watch a debate between the two Cuban guys?" Matthews said on his Hardball show Tuesday night.

He was referring to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Neither is Gimenez's candidate -- he's backing Jeb Bush -- but the mayor nevertheless told Matthews he was "deeply offended."

"Your comments displayed bigotry and ignorance about nationality and what it means to be an American in the 21st century," Gimenez wrote. "Politics aside, Senators Cruz and Rubio are both highly qualified Presidential candidates. They are Americans. Period. And your questioning of their heritage (American, Hispanic or otherwise) is unbecoming and frankly unacceptable in this day and age -- especially of someone in your position."

Gimenez, who's running for reelection this fall, didn't ask Matthews to respond. Matthews apologized on air Thursday. ("I'm sorry I said it. I mean it," he said.)

"I don't expect you to retract your commentary or apologize," Gimenez concluded, "but I hope that my words have at least made you reconsider your antiquated and appalling remarks."

This post has been updated to note Matthews' apology.
@NewsbySmiley

This week, school board member and Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado came out hard against Mami-Dade County's proposal to redevelop Liberty Square, Miami's oldest and largest housing project. Chief among her criticisms was that, in an area surrounded by neighborhood schools that are significantly under-enrolled and undergoing millions in renovations, the developers competing for the job have both proposed to build charter schools in excess of 70,000 square feet.

"Where did we get the idea that what we need there is another school?" she said.

But Regalado was on the receiving end of similar criticisms just a few years ago when she was one of the chief proponents of building a new downtown public school. The idea was pitched despite the fact that Booker T Washington Senior High, an Overtown institution serving downtown families, was only about half-full.

"Booker T is an icon, a beacon in Overtown," School Board member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall told the Miami Times in November 2014. "Our job as a board is to spend our time focused on curriculum. If Booker T. is not good enough for the children in Brickell, why not? I will not have anyone denigrate any school in my district. We dont need another school; we need to do something to increase enrollment.

Is Regalado flip-flopping?
@jamesmartinrose

Gov. Rick Scott hasn't written off one of his famous predecessor's chances of becoming president.

Scott, in Washington to deliver an address on reforming hospital pricing practices at the American Enterprise Institute, put on his politics hat after the talk.

Scott, governor since 2011, said it's too soon to give up on former Gov. Jeb Bush despite his failure to gain traction in polls.

"I still think it's early," Scott told the Miami Herald. "I mean, we haven't even done the first primary yet."

Scott said that Bush "was a very successful governor" when he headed the state from 1999 to 2007, noting in particular his education reforms.

"We're at a 12-year high in our K-12 graduation rate," Scott said.

Adding that "Jeb is working hard," Scott said, "The person that works the hardest generally wins."

Despite praising Bush's record in Florida, Scott declined to endorse him. Neither is he endorsing -- yet -- fellow Floridian Marco Rubio, the first-term U.S. senator, nor any of the other Republican presidential hopefuls.

"Like a lot of voters in Florida, I'm watching the candidates," the governor said.

Four days before the Feb.1 Iowa caucuses, Bush tallied just 4 percent in a NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of that state's Republican voters released Thursday. He was far behind businessman Donald Trump and U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio of Florida, while also trailing neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Bush is faring better in New Hampshire, which will hold its primary Feb. 9, according to a poll released Thursday by Suffolk University. Bush broke out of the single digits with 11 percent, putting him in a second-place tie with Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Rubio, with all four men well behind Trump's 27 percent standing.

In addition to Bush, Scott said he has personal relationships with Rubio, along with Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie through the Republican Governors Association.

Scott criticized the Republican National Committee for having scheduled just nine presidential debates this year.

"I wish the national party hadn't limited the number of debates and limited the locations," he said.

The RNC is weighing three additional possible Republican presidential debates.

The March 10 GOP debate will be at the University of Miami, nine days after Super Tuesday, when 14 states will hold Republican primaries or caucuses. Florida will hold its primary on March 15.

Scott declined to comment directly on Trump's decision to skip Thursday night's Fox News debate because of his ongoing feud with Megyn Kelly, one of its moderators.

"Every candidate's got to think about what's the best forum for them to get their message out, whether it's debates, whether it's town halls," Scott said.
@MrMikeVasquez

After a three-month wait, Floridas for-profit college oversight agency has decided to go after Dade Medical College owner Ernesto Perez for the disruptive way he shut down his school.

In a unanimous vote on Thursday, the states Commission for Independent Education asked its legal staff to refer Perez to law enforcement for an improper school closure, which is a second-degree misdemeanor.

Student records werent provided. There was no closure plan provided, said the CIEs attorney, Judy Bone.

In addition to sending Perezs name to prosecutors, the CIE board also asked Bone to pursue $20,000 in fines against Dade Medical and its smaller affiliate school, the University of Southernmost Florida, which also shut down at the same time. Additionally, the CIE voted to prohibit Dade Medical and USMF owners/directors from ever operating again in Florida.
A prototype of the latest version of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle will be headed to Europe soon for a series of demonstrations, according to the ...
Positive reviews for "Certain Women," the first Montana feature at the Sundance Film Festival in just over a decade, are rolling in.

Not only have critics responded to director Kelly Reichardt's subtle touch, they've made note of Missoula actress Lily Gladstone, who stars opposite Kristen Stewart in the last third of the movie. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, for one, called her "radiant."

Reichardt, known as a director's director, cast the film with top-flight actresses like Laura Dern and Michelle Williams and Stewart, and shot the movie in the Livingston area last spring.

The ensemble piece, based on short stories by Helena-raised Guggenheim fellow Maile Meloy, forms a triptych that relies on quiet ensemble work to relay stories about loneliness and struggle in the lives of everyday women.

Gladstone stars as a solitary ranch-hand who develops a connection with Stewart, who plays a disenchanted law school graduate who teaches and adult-education class.

Writing for Variety, Guy Lodge said the third section was "the most bittersweetly open-hearted."

"Stumbling by chance into a class on educational law for teachers, (Gladstone) develops an intense but innocent fascination with its young tutor, Beth (Stewart), a socially awkward law graduate who lives many towns over. The two develop a mutually bemused rapport over post-class diner meals, though when Beth abruptly quits the job, the terms of their new, ambiguously platonic romance become harder to parse," he wrote.

Guardian film critic Nigel Smith called the third section "the most nakedly emotional of the trio," describing Gladstone as "wonderfully expressive."

"Gladstone conveys a heartbreaking sense of yearning, while never verbally stating as much," he said.

Writing for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico referred to Gladstone as a "breakthrough."

The actress grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation before her family moved to Seattle, where she began acting.

She studied theater at the University of Montana and has worked with the Montana Repertory Theatre on touring productions. She's acted and been involved with numerous Montana films, including the Smith brothers' adaptation of James Welch's "Winter in the Blood," in addition to social-justice work with youths, particularly Native children.

"Certain Women" is the first feature shot in Montana selected for Sundance since Travis Wilkerson's "Who Killed Cock Robin?" in 2005 and the Smith Brothers' "The Slaughter Rule" in 2002, according to the Montana Film Office.
Whats probably the longest-running land-use case in Missoula County history has taken a step toward resolution, but theres more to come.

Retired District Judge Ed McLean ruled earlier this month that the county violated the Montana Subdivision and Platting Act by failing to require a plat and infrastructure bond when it reconfigured the Gleneagle subdivision in lower Grant Creek into fewer, larger tracts in 1999.

The county then helped a developer sell the 25 undeveloped lots for nearly $2 million and received a fixed percentage for each totaling $480,000.

The lots were never developed and sit barren of roads and other infrastructure today.

Missoula County actively participated in a clear violation of Montana law by providing deeds to (Kenneth) Knie to facilitate the sale of tracts not platted, with no infrastructure and no guarantee of infrastructure, McLean wrote in an order on a motion for partial summary judgment dated Jan. 13.

***

McLean consolidated separate lawsuits filed by Mark Denton and 14 co-plaintiffs against the county before his retirement last year and elected to retain jurisdiction over them.

His ruling this month, however, pertained only to the 14-plaintiff suit, denoted as Gilbert R. Johnston and Judith A. Johnston, et al. v. Missoula County ... and the Missoula County Commissioners.

McLean set a trial for Nov. 29 to determine damages owed the plaintiffs, allotting eight days for it.

David Cotner of Datsopoulos, MacDonald and Lind, who represented the winning side in the Johnston case, said his clients are out a total of more than $2 million for their investments gone bad. Most of them bought tracts in Gleneagle in 2006.

It was always our belief that the county should have done more to protect our clients, Cotner said, adding that McLeans ruling gives our clients hope theres an end in sight, that theyll be compensated for harm, or at least something meaningful will come out of their investments.

McLean looks at Dentons case differently.

The Missoula businessman owns 27 lots on 17 acres in the Gleneagle subdivision that were part of a different agreement with the county. In a suit filed against the county after mediation attempts broke down in 2013, Denton demands more than $6 million and that the county take back the 17 acres that it traded for a conservation easement.

In an order from the bench before his decision in the Johnston case, McLean said Dentons request for a summary judgment will be denied.

The question of whether Missoula County is liable to Mr. Denton should go before a jury, McLean said.

He set that trial for Sept. 23.

The county has retained Steve Carey and Andy Huppert of Carey Law Firm to work on the Gleneagle cases. Denton is represented by Michael Sol of Sol and Wolfe Attorneys.

***

According to previous Missoulian stories, Knie started the Gleneagle subdivision project with some partners in 1982, but it soon bogged down with lawsuits, unpaid taxes and unfinished development plans. McLeans order said Missoula County acquired ownership in 1989 through tax deeds. A dispute between the county and Knie resulted in litigation that was resolved in the 1999 agreement.

Set on one of the last undeveloped ridges in the Missoula area and near prime elk range, the county wanted a plan of less density. The 67 lots on Knies side of the street were reduced to 25, according to McLeans order, though no new plat was filed. Only a drawing showing the new layout was attached to deeds approved by the county when the lots were sold in 2006.

Missoula County maintained that the 1999 agreement did not create a new subdivision and that it obligated Knie and Denton to provide infrastructure at Gleneagle. It pointed to two decisions in 2004 by District Judge John Larson to back up its argument.

McLean disagreed, saying the county breached its duty by failing to require a new plat and failing to require a bond before it authorized and participated in the sale of the Knie tracts.

Cotner said it remains to be seen how much the 14 family units involved as plaintiffs in the Johnston suit will ask for.

Were analyzing damages that are recoverable, he said. Weve hired experts to assist us in the evaluation, and well be making that determination now that we know were going to be trying the damage case in November.
A final decision on the Marshall Woods Restoration Project gives a little to critics who thought it went too far and not far enough.

I have decided to authorize a mix of actions under Alternatives C and D, Missoula District Ranger Jen Hensiek wrote Thursday. My decision precludes commercial timber harvest and temporary road construction within the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area(.)

Hensiek did not return phone messages or emails requesting further comment. In her cover letter on the decision, she added that she dropped plans for thinning trees on 271 acres along the main Rattlesnake trail corridor because it wouldnt meet goals for disease, insect and fire resiliency.

While this decision does not address what I believe to be the full extent of the ecological and wildland-urban interface issues and needs, I believe this decision strikes a balance between the social and ecological concerns, Hensiek wrote.

The project affects 3,678 acres in the Marshall and Rattlesnake creek drainages north of Missoula. It would do some commercial logging on about 266 acres in the Marshall side on land the U.S. Forest Service acquired from Plum Creek Timber Co. And it will prescribe thinning, burning and piling on more than 2,000 acres along Rattlesnake Creek and the hillsides surrounding the upper end of the Rattlesnake neighborhood. It also calls for cutting back the conifers and boosting aspen groves around Poe and Homestead meadows  about 40 acres in total.

The project drew lengthy objections from wilderness advocates in Missoula who argued earlier versions applied illegal levels of logging in the congressionally designated national recreation area. A local forester also objected that the project didnt do enough logging and thinning to meet the stated goals of improved fire safety and forest health.

I think the Forest Service is doing what the community will tolerate at this point, retired Forest Service forester Dave Atkins said Thursday. In my objection, I described it as a church with a leaky roof and damaged rafters. Were repairing the roof but not taking care of the rafters. I hope at least that the work on the Marshall side will show the benefits of this kind of treatment for the future.

***

The wilderness advocates were less pleased with the results, although they said some of their biggest concerns were addressed.

Its moved more toward what weve been proposing, said Mike Bader, an independent natural resource consultant working with objectors Friends of the Rattlesnake, Wild West Institute and Wilderness Watch. Theyve removed some units and clarified there will be no commercial activity inside the NRA. Thats important. But were still going to go through it with a fine-tooth comb.

Bader said the bigger problem was the Forest Services insistence on doing work in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area that opponents claim is counter to the rules Congress wrote for the place and what Missoulians are willing to accept. Earlier versions of the project that concentrated on the Marshall Creek side  outside the national recreation area  had received strong support from the Lolo Restoration Committee, a group of conservationists, timber companies and other stakeholders. Adding the Rattlesnake portions cracked that consensus.

Tonight, we will have this on the agenda, said Jake Kreilick of the Wild West Institute, who also chairs the Lolo Restoration Committee. It appears theyve taken out the most controversial stuff. The LRC as a whole is fine with where theyre going. As far as Wild West is concerned, I need to talk more with the members.

That includes Cass Chinske, a Rattlesnake resident who helped get the original Rattlesnake Wilderness and National Recreation Area legislation passed through Congress. Chinske was also studying the decision Thursday, but remained concerned the Friends of the Rattlesnake might have to take legal action.

We didnt care what was done in the Marshall Creek drainage outside of the NRA, Chinske said. It was hammered by past logging, and doing restoration of roads was a good idea up there. But from the Friends of the Rattlesnake point of view, were not going to accept any of the types of thinning theyre proposing unless we know exactly how many trees theyre going to take out, where and how theyre going to dispose of them. This is really a very serious situation for the future of the Rattlesnake.

Chinske said the Rattlesnakes congressional legislation and past treatment by the Forest Service was aimed at keeping it in a wild, primitive state. Those rules give the agency very limited ability to work there, even for purported recreational or safety benefits.

A lot of people dont buy this idea of manipulative management, as if theyre going to restore the forest to something that was there before, Chinske said. Nature doesnt do things in a neat order. It never has.
The Missoula County Public Schools district is investigating whether the most recent edition of the Willard Wire, a publication produced by Willard Alternative High School students, violated district policy by including photos of topless men and women.

The district is also recalling the edition, removing copies from shelves and angering the students who produced it. The paper is distributed to Willard, Hellgate, Sentinel and Big Sky high schools, as well as to businesses that advertise in the paper.

The Wire's January issue features a cover story titled "Free the Nipple" by Willard junior Chase Boehmler, accompanied by a photo of five shirtless women and one shirtless man. Their nipples are obscured by red dots, and they are fully clothed from the waist down. Their faces are cropped out of the photo.

On a page labeled "Editorial & Opinions" inside the edition, the article is accompanied by a picture taken by editor Kylie Hoedel of a topless woman and a topless man. Their faces are cropped out, but their nipples are bare.

Boehmler's article questioned society's premise that gender should define the appropriateness of revealing one's chest.

"We originally developed (breasts) to feed our offspring, and that was their main purpose, but they've become something different, something dirty and shameful," Boehmler wrote. "They've been overwhelmingly fetishized and feminized in western culture. And we need to put the kibosh on that. People all over the world are wrapped up in this illusion that we have created."

***

Hatton Littman, director of communications at MCPS, said Superintendent Mark Thane's office hasn't received any complaints about the edition.

Nonetheless, "an active investigation is being conducted and the district will not make other statements with regard to editorial freedom until the investigation is complete," Littman said.

She said the district also hasn't determined whether the newspaper violated a policy regarding publications and distribution or postings of materials.

The policy states "school-sponsored publications and productions are part of the curriculum and are not a public forum for general student use. ... Such materials may not be libelous, obscene, or profane nor may they cause a substantial disruption of the school, invade the privacy of others ... or advocate the violation of a law."

Littman said the district is also examining prior case law to determine precedent.

Hoedel said a long research-and-planning process went into the article, and staffers all knew it would be a "head turner."

"I feel the school board should prove some sort of law that we broke," she said. "I feel if they had read the article before they took it out of students' hands or had the janitor throw it away without confronting us about it, they would realize the reason why we printed it was backed up by the article."

Hoedel said she understands why some people would have a problem with the distribution of nude photos.

"If you see a picture of (female) breasts you are going to think sexualization," Hoedel said. "That's how our society has taught us to feel. We wanted people to think they shouldn't be sexualized and treated just as normal as male breasts."

Sarah Donald, a graduating junior at Willard, said she made sure that all the models for the photos were older than 18 years and that they signed consent forms.

"All of them signed a release form saying they understand they were giving permission for the photo to be taken, and we made sure all the people involved were over 18 so nothing was considered child pornography," she said. "I am extremely upset about (the recall) because the Willard Wire became something that I was able to write about things that I am passionate about. And everyone was extremely passionate about the Free the Nipple piece and making sure it was getting to the public."

The Wire contains an editorial message on the third page that states "Willard Wire is a completely student-run paper based on freedom of expression and opinion. Unlike the other high schools in Missoula, we do not receive any funding from the school district, which means we are funded entirely by advertisements. This limits what we can do with our paper but also gives us the freedom to write what you (the readers) would like to hear. The ethic of the Willard Wire is one of inherent integrity due to our independent journalistic nature. Fight censorship and help support our right to free speech, expression, and full liberty of the press."

Littman said the district, in fact, partially funds the publication.

"The Willard Wire is a school publication and is in fact a school-sponsored and funded publication, so there is an investigation underway," she said. "I can't give a lot of details right now, but that statement (in the Wire) is probably likely to be corrected. All student publications are governed by board policy with regard to publications."

Littman said district policy states that the paper's faculty adviser, Lisa Waller, and Willard Principal Jane Bennett would have needed to approve the publication before it went to press. Waller was not in the office Thursday, and Bennett did not return a phone call seeking comment.

***

Boehmler, the author of the article, said the Free the Nipple movement is about ending the shame associated with having a body that is perceived as feminine.

"I feel pretty strongly about the Free the Nipple movement, because me and a lot of girls and women have experienced large amounts of sexual harassment just for having breasts. And it's completely unfair and hypocritical that gender identity is the basis of whether or not you can remove your shirt," she said. "And it's unfair to breast-feeding mothers that breast-feeding in public has to be such a controversy when it's what you should be doing. I felt like I needed to take a stance on it and did something that was risky."

Boehmler said Free the Nipple, which has gained nationwide traction, is about equality.

"The Free the Nipple movement is an equality movement for everyone to feel like everyone's body is equal," she said. "Your body feels like this trap. No matter what, you're a sexualized object. It's a movement for all people really."

She said the pictures were necessary  having an article laying out her case without them wouldn't have had as much impact.

"They show the innocence of toplessness," she said of the photos. "We put it in because it's a powerful message to show we believe in the Free the Nipple movement this much, and being topless is innocent no matter who you are."

Hoedel said the Wire has pushed a lot of aspiring young journalists to explore topics they are nervous about.

"Having the freedom for the students to write what they feel is important because it helps them learn more," she said. "If they are not passionate about it, it's not going to be well-written. I feel it was too much censorship on (the district's) part."
Mountain Water Co. this week defended the decision to sell the water utility to Liberty Utilities without state regulatory approval.

The responses came at the request of the Montana Public Service Commission, which reviews utility transfers and expected to review the sale from The Carlyle Group to Liberty, a subsidiary of Algonquin Public Utilities Corp. of Canada.

A response from Carlyle, the seller, was not on file online with the PSC docket.

In its response, Mountain Water called into question the authority of the PSC, and the company said it was not obligated to wait for a green light from the commission.

"The Joint Application was only filed with the Commission as a result of Western Waters (Carlyle's) and Liberty Utilities decision to include Commission approval as a contractual contingency to the closing of the sale and transfer of Western Water," Mountain Water stated.

"And, because the Joint Application was only filed due to the terms of a private contract (and not pursuant to the provisions of Montana law), Western Water and Liberty Utilities were free to waive the contractual condition and close the sale of Western Water without the Commissions approval."

In a separate proceeding, Missoula County District Court ruled in June 2015 that Missoula could use its powers of eminent domain to buy Mountain Water in a case the city filed against Carlyle. Mayor John Engen has said he intends to buy the water system once court sale proceedings come to a close, and he has disputed the legality of the sale to Liberty.

Mountain Water asserts action by the commission "is unnecessary" for several reasons because the sale:

Has no impact on the ownership of Mountain Water and its assets.

Has no impact on Mountain Waters assets that are and will continue to be used in full in Missoula County and deployed to serve the public.

Has no impact on the commissions jurisdiction over Mountain Water.

Has no impact on Mountain Waters operations in Montana.

Has no impact on the rates Mountain Water is authorized to charge its customers.

Will not increase the risk that Mountain Waters customers will receive inadequate service.

The water company also noted the Montana Legislature itself has weighed in on the commission's authority, and the commission has questioned its own powers.

"Indeed, the Montana Legislature has declined to grant the Commission express authority over mergers, sales, and transfers of regulated utilities and utility assets despite the fact the Commission requested legislation giving the Commission jurisdiction over such sales and transfers on at least three occasions," Mountain Water stated. "The commission has historically had enough doubt regarding its jurisdiction over mergers, sales, and transfers that it felt it was necessary to request express authority from the Montana Legislature."

On Friday, the Montana Public Service Commission will hold a work session to discuss the recent sale.

The city, the Montana Consumer Counsel and the Clark Fork Coalition also filed responses with the PSC.
For the first time ever, the Lake County Conservation District will be hosting its annual winter grazing seminar in Missoula.

The two-day event will take place Tuesday and Wednesday at the DoubleTree Hotel, 100 Madison St., and will feature more than a dozen experts on topics like livestock management, reducing winter feeding costs, alternative forage, financial management and animal nutrition.

This will be one of the largest events of its kind ever held in western Montana and promises to be truly exceptional, said Ben Montgomery, a district conservationist with the National Resource Conservation Service and the U.S. Department of Agricultures Ronan Field Office.

There will be discussions dormant season grazing, adding flexible stocking rates, plant biology and productivity, managing grazed forest lands and wildlife habitat.

On Tuesday, participants will hear from Steve Kenyon, a rancher and the owner/operator of Greeer Pastures Ranching in Busby, Alberta. Kenyon writes monthly articles in the Stockman Grass Farmer magazine.

Steven Fransen, a forage and extension agronomist with Washington State University, also will speak. There also will be a panel discussion on numerous winter grazing topics, and public participation and questions will be encouraged.

This workshop if for you, the producer, and we want to do our best to ensure that we make the most of your valuable time, Montgomery said.

Tuesday evening will be spent at KettleHouse Brewing North enjoying hors d'ourves, local beer and soda, and socializing.

Wednesday will feature breakout sessions, and 10 presenters will each give a 45-minute lecture on a variety of topics. Participants can choose from four presentations.

The cost of the seminar is $35 and includes a light breakfast each day along with lunch the first day and appetizers at KettleHouse. The DoubleTree Hotel has a block of rooms available.

To register, visit swcdmi.org/winter-grazing-seminar. Montgomery said people who register do not need a PayPal account, and can just close the web page that asks for a PayPal login.

For more information, call Montgomery at (406) 676-2841, Ext. 111.
Transparency. Montana voters are likely to hear that pledge time and time again in the coming months. Campaign finance law is complicated, with a lot of loopholes, and the voters and the media should demand that each candidate define publicly what he or she means by a pledge of transparency. Even then, I suggest that whatever the candidates definition, voters should take the pledge with a good deal of skepticism.

Heres the problem: First, according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United, contributions paid directly to a candidate breed corruption quid pro quoin other words, I give you money; I buy your votei.e. bribery. Thats why contributions and coordinated communications are subject to limits imposed by law.

However, that same court decreed that expenditures made on behalf of a candidate do not have any such corruptive effect because the individual or entity expending the money is simply providing the public with information about a candidate or issue. These sorts of independent expenditures are unlimited.

Second, under Buckley v. Valeo, a decision pre-dating Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court held that money is a form of, and counts as, speech. The court stated that: A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. And, [t]he electorates increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech.

Third, the law provides that with respect to these independent expenditures those cannot be made in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidates authorized committee, or their agents, or a political party or its agents."

Now, if a candidate wants to tear up or return direct contributions lawfully made to his or her campaign, so be it.

But, when it comes to expenditures made on behalf of his or her campaign by individuals, corporations, special interests or super PACs, Citizens United guarantees that the candidates wishes, pledges, promises or disavowals dont mean much.

Why? Because the law requires that the candidate have absolutely nothing to do with the independent expenditurethats why its independent. If he or she violates this law, then the commissioner of political practices gets involved.

Moreover, if XYZ Corporation, or super PAC Americans for Motherhood and Apple Pie want to make an independent expenditure to fund a slick TV campaign for Candidate A, Candidate As disavowal and pledge not to accept institutional or PAC money is smoke and mirrors. The reason? Because, under Citizens United, the independent expender has a First Amendment right to inform the electorate, and the electorate has a right to be informedirrespective of whether Candidate A agrees or not. Indeed, if its a true independent expenditure, the candidate cant stop iteven if he or she is self-funding his or her own campaign. And, if there is no disclosure of the names of the individuals actually behind the independent expender, then we have dark money.

The Supreme Court can say that contributions corrupt but, in the reality of the information age, it is a dichotomy grounded in a consummate fiction. By either definition, the contributor or expender is using money to influence an election and to secure a vote in favor of or against a candidate.

Does anyone actually believe that candidates are oblivious to who is expending money for or against them? And can any thinking person doubt that when millions upon millions of dollars are expended on behalf of a candidate, that he or she is bought (bribed) as surely as if the office-seeker were handed a bushel basket of cash under the table?

In short, voters should be skeptical of a candidates pledge to not accept PAC and special interest money. Frequently, wrapping oneself in the mantle of transparency is a cloak that is anything but transparent.
BROWNING  Friday may be the last day on the job for Browning's seven employees.

I can tell you with knowing whats in the bank, knowing what we have, knowing the revenue stream coming in, I cant keep them on, Mayor William Morris said at a town council meeting Wednesday night. Friday is the last day I think we can keep them going.

Morris had asked a few employees to work reduced hours over the past few weeks, but most have been without full paychecks in January.

Last month, the town posted a news release online telling its residents it was at risk of disincorporation. The town blames its financial troubles on the Blackfeet Tribe and the tribes Two Medicine Water Co., which it has clashed with for years over management of the water utility that serves residents.

The tribe says the town must accept responsibility for its own poor fiscal management, dismissing the suggestion that the utility dispute caused Brownings problems. The tribe says the town owes it money, a share of water bill collections that Browning agreed to contribute so the tribe could pay debts it incurred to build the water system.

Morris looked around the crowded meeting room in the town hall building Wednesday and told his employees  six of the town's seven were at there  not to wait for the town to bring them back to work.

Its my personal opinion, and I really hate to say this, because the town can not guarantee your wages, Im willing to write letters of recommendation, whatever it takes, but Id seek employment elsewhere, he said.

If the unemployment is not covering your personal financial burdens, please do not hesitate. Dont let the town get you in a credit bind to where your credit is getting bad. Seek employment, if you have to go across the street. I dont want to see your families suffer.

***

Two weeks ago, the towns aldermen discussed options at a regular bimonthly meeting. The four men left that night planning to meet with the tribe to discuss the water bills and look at options for declaring bankruptcy.

The meeting with the tribe never happened. Morris said hes discussed the process of bankruptcy with an attorney, but the town has not retained legal representation and doesnt have a staff lawyer.

Trash is piling up for some residents  garbage service is paid with water bills in Browning  but is being picked up by the tribe for others. Glacier County paid the power bill at town hall this month so it can continue to operate satellite offices out of the building.

Morris said the town wont get its quarterly tax payment from the state for a few months and generates hardly any revenue from people paying their water bills.

The town has previously said Two Medicine Water is sending out and collecting water bills the town should be receiving. The tribe says the town owes it that money to pay debts the tribe took on in 2009 to build a pipeline to bring water down from Two Medicine Lake.

Its unclear exactly how many residents have switched over to the tribes water company.

Each day, were losing people, Alderman Kelly Edwards said.

Morris said Were probably only at a handful (of people paying water bills to the city) right now. Some people and businesses, including Glacier County, are paying their bills into escrow accounts until the situation is resolved.

As we sit here today, we have no revenues, Morris said.

Earlier in January, the town sent out notices that it couldnt pay to keep street lights on, but the tribe has picked up those payments for the next six months.

People are confused on where were at, Alderman Leo Kennerly said. Weve been living on the edge so long we dont know day to day. We do need to make a decision on what were going to do, what services were going to serve.

The options on the table are bankruptcy, disincorporation or exploring a consolidation with the county.

The aldermen are in a holding pattern until the town can get legal advice, but employees can't be kept waiting, Morris said.

***

Jeri Lee LaTray, the town clerk, said payroll is about $8,000 every two weeks. Shes worked for the town for a decade and doesnt want to quit, but is struggling without a regular paycheck.

I cant make it on unemployment only, said LaTray, who just had a baby. I dont want to quit, but thats where its learning toward. I need to know whats going to happen.

Field supervisor Dan Madden asked how long the town could go on operating.

Its a day-to-day operation, and its getting pretty tough to work that way, he said. That aint going to make car payments, it isnt going to pay nothing. We either need to know if were going to work or not.

Morris, who has worked for the town more than 20 years and said its employees have always acted as family, told people hed help them pursue other jobs.

The council wants to talk with Glacier County about a possible consolidation, but at this point its not much more than an idea. Once the town has found a lawyer, Morris said, the future will be more clear. The next town council meeting is at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 10.

This all hinges on how this council moves forward from here, Morris said.
HELENA  Montanas commissioner of political practices has dismissed a complaint of campaign violations against a Montana political action committee.

Will Deschamps, on behalf of the Montana Republican Party, filed the complaint against the Montana League of Rural Voters on April 30.

Deschamps' complaint was the second filed against the league for its actions in the 2014 elections. A similar complaint was filed by Steve Gibson in December 2014. That complaint found the league violated campaign practice laws; it paid a $2,700 fine.

Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl wrote in his decision that items in Deschamps' complaint addressed issues already resolved in Gibson's complaint, including failure to list its support or opposition of candidates, not registering on time, not filing financial reports on time and not properly disclosing contributions.

Deschamps' complaint also claimed coordination between the league and certain candidates, but Motl wrote that the complaint offered no evidence of coordination in the form of joint activities, just a shared location.

Motl noted that while the league failed to properly report independent expenditures, it was "somewhat understandable given the expanded independent expenditure role allowed corporations in Montana's elections following the Citizens United decision."

In 2014, Motl ordered the Billings-based group to file a report listing its donors that supported $83,000 in spending on independent expenditures.

Richard Parks of Gardiner, president of the group, said in 2014 the group thought it had been operating as an incidental political committee, which reports its spending but often doesnt have to reveal its donors.

Parks statement also said the groups donors are mostly members of the group, nearly all of whom are Montana citizens.

The league has ties to the Northern Plains Resource Council, a long-standing agriculture and conservation group based in Billings. While the two groups maintain separate bank accounts, the leagues treasurer and board of directors include current and former NPRC staffers and board members.

Former Republican Rep. Gibson lost a close race to Democrat Mary Ann Dunwell in House District 84. The league mailed out last-minute fliers attacking Gibson.

Gibson said the group failed to give him the required advance notice of attack fliers, and that it should be required to disclose its donors.

Motl said the group didnt have to notify Gibson because it appeared to send the mailers more than 10 days before the Nov. 4 election.

However, he did say the league failed initially to list all candidates it planned to oppose and filed late reports on its campaign spending  as well as failing to report its donors.
Radio Free Asia, which is financed by the United States government, reported on Thursday that the attack had taken place at a road construction site and that work on the project stopped afterward. The blast was the third in the area in a month, the report said, and soldiers defused a roadside bomb in the area on Dec. 30.

One witness reported driving past the bomb site shortly after the attack and seeing about 10 soldiers inspecting a damaged truck with the dead and wounded Chinese inside, Radio Free Asia said. The report also quoted an official with the road construction company saying it was removing its equipment from the construction zone.

Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said in a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing on Monday that consular officials from the embassy in Vientiane had visited with the wounded person, and that China had urged the Laotian government to solve the case as soon as possible. The ministry also advised Chinese citizens in Laos to take more precautions. Ms. Hua did not offer any potential motives for the attack.

China is one of the biggest trade partners and foreign investors in Laos, a landlocked country ruled by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, which is Communist. A growing number of Chinese businesspeople are working in Laos, and that has led to resentment among some Laotians.

One signature investment project by China is a 260-mile China-Laos railway that is expected to cost more than $6 billion and that will connect Vientiane with Chinese cities. China has a 70 percent stake in the project, which officials say will be in operation by 2020. Chinas long-term goal is for the train to connect Kunming, in Yunnan Province, with Singapore, which is far south of Laos.
Not All Bastards Are from Vienna, winner of Italys 2011 Campiello Prize, is Andrea Molesinis first novel for adults  though it still possesses the straightforward narrative line and colorful characters of a story for children. Set during World War I, events are related by 17-year-old Paolo Spada, recently orphaned and now living with a menagerie of relations and servants in the Villa Spada, in a small town north of Venice.

First, though not foremost, among the Spadas is Grandpa Gugliemo, Paolos anticlerical, acerbic-tongued great-uncle. He is married to Grandma Nancy, a white-haired panther of a woman, a mathematician and a devotee of enemas. Then there is Aunt Maria, the victim of a haughty manner, a powerhouse who runs the place. The family is served by Teresa, blocky, resourceful and loyal, and by her daughter Loretta, resentful and moonstruck by the estates steward, Renato. He is a wily character and, as we discover, an Italian intelligence officer. Other key players include lush-bosomed, high-spirited Giulia, six years older than Paolo and the object of his urgent passion; the village priest, Don Lorenzo, well fed and authoritarian; and, finally, a lurking presence attached to Grandma Nancy known as the Third Paramour.

A German officers monocle glinting in the night sets off the plot. It distinguishes the horse-mounted person of Captain Korpium, fresh from victory at Caporetto, Italys humiliating defeat by combined German and Austro-Hungarian forces in November 1917. He has come to requisition the Villa Spada for his fellow officers and to quarter his troops in the village. The family is forced to squeeze itself into a couple of rooms, and there is much German smashing of furniture and seizing of valuables, though Grandmas cache of jewels and coins in an enema bag remains undetected.
In a controversial 1999 New Yorker review of Alan Hollinghursts novel The Spell, John Updike summed up a common prejudice about gay stories: namely, that they have nothing to interest straight readers.

Updike, the author of the sex romp Couples (among other sexually frank novels), complained that Hollinghursts relentlessly gay fiction bored him because in gay stories nothing is at stake but self-gratification. In contrast, stories with heterosexual characters involve perpetuation of the species and the ancient, sacralized structures of the family.

Essentially, Updike is asking: Whats the big deal? Its just sex.

Garth Greenwells masterly debut novel, What Belongs to You, provides a ringing answer to Updikes willfully dense question. The book is set in contemporary Bulgaria, still struggling to move on from its Communist past. Here, gay desire remains a cultural taboo, so that expressing one of the most basic of human emotions is quite a big deal, with plenty at stake beyond self-gratification.

Because the novel opens with a man cruising for sex in a public bathroom, some readers may initially be tempted to write off What Belongs to You as gay fiction. The cruising man in question, Greenwells unnamed narrator, resembles the author: a gay American poet teaching abroad at a college in Sofia.
Public primary school students were given the chance to deposit money weekly into a lockbox, and they were informed that their accumulated savings would be returned to them at a school-supplies fair at the beginning of the next trimester. Schools were randomly assigned to one of three groups. In the first group, students were offered a hard commitment: Their accumulated savings would be returned in the form of a voucher that had to be spent on school supplies. In the second group, students got a soft commitment: Their savings would be returned in cash, and could be spent as they wished. The third group of schools continued as normal, serving as a comparison group whose savings and spending money were also observed.

You might think that the hard commitment would be the best strategy, since it forces the money to be spent on school supplies. But surprisingly, as we report in a working paper, the soft commitment worked better. Students who got their savings back in cash saved more, and when the program was combined with parental involvement (which was also randomized), the students also bought more school supplies and achieved higher test scores.

The second study took place in Zambia. One problem there, as in other low-income countries, is how to recruit the right kind of workers for jobs like teachers and health workers  where right refers to those who are capable and genuinely interested in helping the community, not just looking for money and a steppingstone to another job. There is often resistance to increasing what these jobs pay, or otherwise improving their benefits, for fear of attracting opportunists.

The researchers Nava Ashraf and Scott Lee from Harvard Business School and Oriana Bandiera from the London School of Economics and Political Science tested this conventional wisdom by varying whether one particular job benefit  opportunities for career advancement  was advertised in a government recruitment drive for a nationwide health-worker program. The researchers randomly assigned some rural communities to receive advertisements for the jobs that announced opportunities for career advancement, whereas in other areas, the advertisements were silent on this issue.

Contrary to expectation, the researchers reported in a working paper released last year, those recruited with career advertisements were more qualified and scored higher on exams during training, and also exhibited the same degree of emphasis on community service. The go-getters also outperformed the do-gooders on the job, seeing the same number of patients in their health clinics while conducting 29 percent more home visits and twice as many community health meetings. (After being recruited, everyone was told about the opportunities for career advancement, so that no differences in performance could be attributed to differing incentives.)
Berkshire Hathaway Completes Acquisition of Precision Castparts

OMAHA, Neb. & PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Berkshire) (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B) and Precision Castparts Corp. (PCC) (NYSE:PCP) today announced the completion of the acquisition of PCC for $235 per share in an all-cash transaction. The transaction having been approved by PCC shareholders and having met all U.S. and non-U.S. regulatory filing requirements, is valued at approximately $37.2 billion, including outstanding PCC net debt. The transaction was announced on August 10, 2015.



With the closing of this transaction, PCC is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire. PCCs headquarters remain located in Portland, Oregon and the company continues to be led by Mark Donegan.

About Berkshire Hathaway (www.berkshirehathaway.com):

Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries engage in diverse business activities including insurance and reinsurance, utilities and energy, freight rail transportation, finance, manufacturing, retailing and services. Berkshire Hathaways common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, trading symbols BRK.A and BRK.B.

About Precision Castparts Corp. (www.precast.com):

Precision Castparts Corp. is a worldwide, diversified manufacturer of complex metal components and products. It serves the aerospace, power, and general industrial markets. PCC is a market leader in manufacturing complex structural investment castings and forged components for aerospace markets, machined airframe components, and highly engineered, critical fasteners for aerospace applications, and in manufacturing airfoil castings for the aerospace and industrial gas turbine markets. PCC also is a leading producer of titanium and nickel superalloy melted and mill products for the aerospace, chemical processing, oil and gas, and pollution control industries, and manufactures extruded seamless pipe, fittings, and forgings for power generation and oil and gas applications.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects of the board or management of Precision Castparts Corp. constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words expects, intends, anticipates, estimates, predicts, believes, should, potential, may, forecast, objective, plan, or targets, and other similar expressions) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including: the potential impact of the consummation of the proposed transaction on relationships, including with employees, suppliers, customers and competitors; and the other factors and financial, operational and legal risks or uncertainties described in Precision Castparts Corp.s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 29, 2015. Berkshire Hathaway and Precision Castparts Corp. disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document except as required by law.

In addition, please refer to the documents that Precision Castparts Corp. files with the SEC on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K. These filings identify and address other important factors that could cause Precision Castparts Corp.s operational and other results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements set forth in this document.

Contact Information Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Marc D. Hamburg Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President (402) 346-1400 Precision Castparts Corp. Jay Khetani Vice President, Investor Relations (503) 946-4700
Authorities are investigating yet another bomb scare at the Butte-Silver Bow County courthouse  this one reported shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday.

Police and fire personnel temporarily closed Granite Street from Montana to Hamilton streets. The courthouse was evacuated and by 4:10 was cleared, and people returned to work.

The threat was similar to the other recent threats and was handled in the same way, Sheriff Ed Lester said in a news release. No other information was released.

About the same time on Wednesday, two bomb threats  the fifth and sixth in Butte within two weeks  resulted in the courthouse being evacuated. The threat was phoned into the courthouse, 155 W. Granite St., and the Butte-Silver Bow Law Enforcement Center, next door at Quartz and Alaska.

Officers conducted a search of the courthouse and the law enforcement center, where no items of concern were located. The emergency dispatch center and all 911 communications remained operable throughout the incident.

People with information are asked to call police at 406-497-1120.
MISSOULA  The Clark Fork River has more specialists poking and prodding it like an Olympic athlete as it transitions from a river ruined to a river rebuilt.

About 60 experts from state, federal and private agencies gathered Wednesday to compare notes on the upper rivers progress. Their focus ranged from microscopic algae to lunker brown trout and bald eagles.

This is the first annual Upper Clark Fork monitoring meeting, said Brian Bartkowiak of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, who convened the meeting in Helena. We finally have enough data to have a meeting to talk about it. And we want to know: what are we seeing in terms of cleanup? Are we trending in the right directions? Is there more information to gather? Can we do things better?

The Upper Clark Fork River Basin suffered from more than a century of accumulated toxic waste from the Butte and Anaconda mining operations. Much of it got distributed when a massive flood in 1908 flushed mine tailings from Silver Bow Creek into the Clark Fork headwaters near Galen and downstream. Millions of tons of heavy-metal sediments piled up behind a dam at Milltown, just east of Missoula. But lots more deposited in slickens along the upper reaches, especially between Warm Springs and Deer Lodge.

A court settlement between the state of Montana and Atlantic Richfield Co., the legacy mine owner, provided a multi-million-dollar fund to clean up the river basin. About $120 million went to excavating the toxic sediments trapped behind Milltown Dam and restoring its reservoir to a floodplain. Silver Bow Creek got 16 years of work, costing about $125 million. Another $96 million is set aside for rehabilitating 47 miles of the Upper Clark Fork. That project is expected to last another 10 to 15 years.

Major work on Milltown ended in 2012, although small crews have been toiling on its streamside vegetation ever since. The first stages of Upper Clark Fork work started in 2013.

Determining the health of a river takes a variety of tools and possibly the invention of some new ones. For example, macroinvertebrate expert Wease Bollman of Rhithron Associates said the existing rating system for insect health may be missing crucial information. Mayfly, caddis fly and stonefly populations have changed dramatically between 2010 and 2015, but the system isnt built to reflect that well. Plus, it converts specific measurements  like how much toxic material insects are absorbing  into a report-card grade.

Thats like going to a doctor and being told youre at a 7, Bollman said. Should I write my will or book that round-the-world trip for next year? Every index over time has an opportunity for re-calibration.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Nathan Cook reported another challenge he has found in studying Clark Fork fisheries. For several years, his workers placed special cages stocked with hatchery trout in the river to measure the water quality. But they noticed after a while that dead fish had higher concentrations of heavy metals in their body tissue than live ones that had been in the same water for longer times.

They eventually concluded that the fish tissue absorbed copper 10 to 32 times faster after death than living tissue did, which made several years of information from the cages suspect. Cook said hes still not sure what makes that happen.

But thats enough to really bias your study, Cook said. We had to throw out all our dead-fish tissue burden data.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature keeps complicating the picture. 2014 was a high-water year, while 2015 was one of the lowest on record. A new fungus infection appears to be hurting some trout populations in parts of the river. Ongoing riverbank restoration work changes the amount of shade along the waters edge, which in turn changes stream temperature readings.

On the other hand, the removal of slickens and other mine waste deposits has had a noticeable improvement in water quality. Bird species are returning to the area.

What were mainly doing now is setting baseline measurements and looking for positive trends as the cleanup moves downstream, Bartkowiak said. Its a great place to visit, and its only going to get better.
The Student Assistance Foundation will guide parents and college-bound seniors through the annual free financial aid process in Butte, Anaconda, Dillon, Deer Lodge and Philipsburg.

Students who attend College Goal Montana events can register to win high-tech giveaways, including one of four statewide $500 scholarships or a grand prize of $1,000, said Schylar Canfield-Baber, outreach manager headquartered at Butte High School, 401 S. Wyoming St., room 408.

Experts guide parents and seniors through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process.

Butte High hosts its FAFSA night on Wednesday, Feb. 3, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the library computer lab. Details: Canfield-Baber at 406-533-2132, 877-265-4463 (options 1 and 2), or scanfield@safmt.org.

FAFSA nights are also scheduled at the following schools:

Monday, Feb. 1, 6 to 8 p.m. at Beaverhead High School library computer lab in Dillon.

Tues., Feb. 2, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Anaconda High School library computer lab.

Monday, Feb. 8, 6 to 8 p.m. at Powell County High School first floor computer lab in Deer Lodge.

Wednesday, Feb. 10, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Granite County High School computer lab in Philipsburg.
Promises to commissioners are keeping the polluted Superfund site of the old Montana Pole Plant in the running as a possible new home to the countys vehicle and maintenance shops.

At least until next week.

Planning Director Jon Sesso told wary commissioners Wednesday night that the shops wont be moved to the pole site near Montana Street and Interstate 15-90 unless state regulators make their own promises.

They must assure the county and its residents the site is safe for the shops, its workers and other uses and must pledge that money and resources will be spent if later discoveries uncover more pollution or health risks, Sesso said.

Sesso said if the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) cant make those pledges in the next 30 to 45 days  preferably in person  the pole site would be dropped and the shops likely would be relocated to an area by the Metro Sewer Plant in west-central Butte.

We want those questions answered, Sesso said to council members. We would be remiss to make a recommendation to you without those answers.

We werent just going to leave you guys hanging.

Even if those assurances are made in a timely manner, its not clear whether enough commissioners will go along with the proposed pole site.

The shops now sit on 13 acres behind the Butte Civic Center, 1340 Harrison Ave., but they must be relocated if the Parrot mine tailings beneath them are removed as planned. Gov. Steve Bullock, who is seeking re-election this year, says he wants removal work to begin this summer.

Pioneer Technical Services of Butte, paid $52,700 with state restoration money, studied several possible sites for the shops. It considered factors such as upfront and ongoing costs, location, power and other utilities, and any environmental concerns.

County officials narrowed the list to two top choices, the first being the pole site and the other a 19-acre site just north of the Butte treatment lagoons and Centennial Avenue. That land belongs to Gilman Construction in Butte, but county officials say the business is willing to sell.

The pole site barely nudged its way into the top spot primarily because it is under the DEQs jurisdiction and could simply be deeded to the state for nothing.

But several commissioners raised concerns about the pole site last week, saying it would be moving the shops from one polluted site to another.

The pole plant operated from 1946 to 1984, when it was shut down after oil was discovered leaching into Silver Bow Creek. Officials later determined that a 42-acre plume of byproducts from chemicals used to treat fence posts and railroad ties was polluting the creek, soil and groundwater. The byproducts included dioxins.

The state has treated the site for 20 years, and though groundwater will need to be treated for years to come, the DEQ says the soil is clean enough to be spread out over the site and capped. It has indicated that its work could be completed soon and the area turned over to Butte-Silver Bow.

But commissioners want more assurances.

Commissioner Dan Foley noted Wednesday night that John Ray, a liberal studies professor at Montana Tech who has spent years trying to shape Superfund cleanup actions in Butte, continues to raise concerns about the pole site.

Foley asked Pat Cunneen, an environmental scientist with the states Natural Resource Damage Program, if he believed the site would be safe for the county shop and its workers. The state will foot the bill to have the shops replicated at another site.

Cunneen said he could not speak for the DEQ but said dioxins are a carcinogen only if they enter the food chain and are digested, and the amounts at the pole site are so small, they barely register on equipment used to detect them. The material would have to be capped, but it shouldnt pose human dangers after that.

If you are asking me if I would work there, I would tell you yes, he said.

Sesso said when commissioners raised pollution concerns about the pole site last week, county officials called DEQ officials the next day and told them, These guys are not going to pick this site unless it is safe.

We have heard you loud and clear, Sesso told the council.

Chief Executive Matt Vincent wants to start negotiations needed to secure either the pole site or the Gilman property. He would be able to pursue both possible sites if the council gives him the OK next week with a final site contingent on DEQ assurances and perhaps other steps.

But a few commissioners raised concerns about pursuing parallel tracks, suggesting the council settle on one final site before going further.

Sesso said he would put the request to move forward in a detailed memo to all commissioners before the next council meeting, including the assurances it wants from the DEQ.

Commissioner John Morgan said that was a good idea.

I need something in writing on the pole plant for me even to look at it, he told Sesso. Unless it is in writing, Im not buying into it.
A Butte-Silver Bow commissioner is angry over a resolution the council nearly voted on Wednesday night, saying it indicates a decision has been made to relocate county shops even though a formal review is pending and the public hasnt weighed in yet.

Commissioner Dan Foley demanded to know Thursday who wrote the resolution or which county officials directed staff to write its specific language.

Commissioner Dennis Henderson also was irked, and longtime Superfund watchdog Fritz Daily said the provision in question screws things up and creates public distrust.

Chief Executive Matt Vincent said Thursday he was embarrassed the provision ended up in the resolution, but it did not mean or even imply a decision on a location for the shops has been made. At this point, he said, only three possible sites have been discussed and any decision is far off.

When asked who was responsible for the provision, Vincent said, Ill take the heat for not giving the resolution a comprehensive, final review before forwarding it to a council committee last week.

Im the chief executive, and the people who put that together are under me, he said.

The provision, part of a resolution designed to show county governments support for cleaning up Silver Bow Creek, said the council and county support a plan to relocate the Butte-Silver Bow County shops to the soon-to-be completed, remediated Montana Pole Treatment site.

The county shops, where various vehicles and equipment are stored, cover about 20 acres of a 35-acre tailings plume behind the Butte Civic Center, 1340 Harrison Ave. The Parrot Tailings are poisoning groundwater in the middle of Butte, but if they are to be removed, the county shops must be moved first.

The council was about to vote on, and presumably approve, the resolution when Henderson noted the provision and said it might affect Foleys constituents who live near the pole plant, located west of south Montana Street. Foley thanked him for catching it and the council decided to send the resolution back to committee.

Foley said after the meeting that three potential relocation sites have been presented for discussion, but no formal review has been done and nobody has even had a chance to weigh in. The other sites are near the KOA campgrounds on Kaw Avenue and the Maroon Activities Center on East Mercury, he said.

We were going to hire a firm and someone internally was going to evaluate these sites  and then come back with a recommendation and then have further discussion, he said. Obviously that (provision) is someones personal opinion written in there and Im going to get to the bottom of it.

He sent an email Thursday to all commissioners, Vincent, Planning Director Jon Sesso, Public Works Director Dave Schultz and several other county employees saying hes had several communications that would explain why this is so troubling to me.

But, he said in the email, he just wants those who wrote the resolution or directed its provisions to step forward and explain.

Most importantly, provide an explanation to the residents of the Willamsburg and Boulevard neighborhoods on why their public input is not being considered, he wrote.

Clearly, it appears a decision has already been made and the credibility of the formal review of the 3 possible sites for the BSB shops, which to my knowledge has not been completed, is thrown out the door.

Henderson shared similar concerns, saying a review process hadnt even started to his knowledge.

Daily said it is important the county present a united front on Silver Bow Creek cleanup issues that should include removal of the Parrot smelter, Diggings East and North Side tailings. The county also should make a strong statement to federal regulators that contaminated soils at the Montana Pole site not be stored there.

Daily said the resolution is weak because it does not demand those actions, and the provision on the county shops creates public distrust.

The fact of the matter is, once you put something out there like this, its out there, he said. The people who live in the Boulevard area (near the Pole Plant) havent had a chance to weigh in on this. We are putting the cart way before the horse.

Julia Crain, a special projects planner for the county, sent an email to all commissioners and several county officials Thursday saying she worked on the resolution by contributing overarching language to show the councils support for environmental cleanup in the county.

Our input was to ensure the Resolutions language was clear that the site-selection process was ongoing and would not be finalized until after an engineering analysis and project cost estimates were completed, she wrote.

She said an engineering analysis of possible shop locations is just getting started, although public input has been gathered on the future of the pole site. But the analysis itself will take at least 60 days, and after it is paired with public feedback, a formal recommendation for the shops will be made.

That recommendation will be subject to a public hearing before the council, Crain said, and a final decision will rest with the council.

She would be glad to set up follow-up meetings with residents near the Pole area, she said, and attend the next Judiciary Committee meeting to address any disconnect between the resolution and overall site selection. She also said I regret my mistake in print.

Vincent said the evaluation process is only getting started.

We might have our own individual ideas on what might be best, he said, but the process has a long way to go.

He sent an email to Foley later Thursday, saying I again want to apologize for the oversight on my part that allowed this draft to be presented.

It was not anyones intent and I hope there is no lasting damage of the publics trust as well, he wrote.

He said the Democratic process of checks and balances had worked just as it should on this one, although I do want to apologize that it had to come in the final stage in order to prevent Resolution 15-4 from moving ahead.
Three cases of the H3N2 dog flu have been confirmed in Butte, a local veterinary clinic reported Thursday.

All three of the infected dogs belong to the same family, said Amherst Animal Hospital veterinarian Dr. Ed Peretti.

The virus is highly contagious between dogs but rarely fatal. There is no evidence to suggest that the virus can jump from dogs to humans, but Amherst physicians recommend avoiding direct contact with secretions from infected dogs.

Peretti said the owners noticed the dogs were sick on Sunday after they picked the pets up from a boarding facility in Helena. On Monday the family brought the dogs to the Amherst clinic, where they were treated by Peretti, who later confirmed that all three had the H3N2 virus.

Peretti said he immediately suspected H3N2 because of the dogs' stay in Helena.

Earlier this month, the Helena Independent Record reported one case of dog flu had been confirmed in the capital city. According to Tahnee Szymanski, a veterinarian with the Montana State Department of Livestock, there has been one additional confirmed case of H3N2 in Helena since the time of the article.

Because dog flu is often confused with kennel cough and veterinarians are not required to report H3N2 to the state department, Szymanski said there could be more sick dogs in Helena. Szymanski said she has spoken with several Helena physicians who have reported an uptick in respiratory illnesses among dogs that use boarding facilities.

Because it's so contagious, Peretti said, "80 percent of the dogs that have contact with it become symptomatic."

He added that animals who are at risk are those who habitually come in contact with other dogs, such as at kennels, dog parks, pet-grooming facilities or other social events where dogs are present. Elderly, sick and very young dogs are especially vulnerable to the virus.

Although the mortality rate of the virus is less than 10 percent, Peretti said owners should be on the lookout for symptoms. These include a fever above 103 degrees, coughing, loss of appetite, sneezing, and nasal and eye discharge.

Pet owners can take steps to avoid the virus by employing some simple hygiene techniques. According to an Amherst fact sheet, pet owners are advised to do the following:

Wash hands after contact with infected pets.

Clean up feces, urine and saliva in a timely matter.

Disinfect surfaces that come in contact with excretions.

Don't allow infected animals to lick your face.

Regularly clean your pet's bedding, bowls, toys and leashes.

As Peretti pointed out, the best way to protect your dog is to get a vaccination. He recommends getting both the H3N2 and H3N8 vaccinations, which are available from your local veterinarian.

"If (pet owners') dogs are in high-risk situations," said Peretti, "then they should consider vaccinating their pets for flu."

If you suspect your dog has the flu, Amherst advises you to contact your veterinarian, keep your pet hydrated, and quarantine your animal for two to three weeks in order to avoid spreading the virus.

Peretti also said the boarding facility in Helena has been notified but did not provide the name of the facility.
WASHINGTON -- I adore Bernie Sanders.

I agree with his message of fairness and I share his outrage over inequality and corporate abuses. I think his righteous populism has captured the moment perfectly. I respect the uplifting campaign he has run. I admire his authenticity.

And I am convinced Democrats would be insane to nominate him.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a dreary candidate. She has, again, failed to connect with voters. Her policy positions are cautious and uninspiring. Her reflexive secrecy causes a whiff of scandal to follow her everywhere. She seems calculating and phony.

And yet if Democrats hope to hold the presidency in November, they'll need to hold their noses and nominate Clinton.

Ultimately, I expect that's what Democrats will do -- because as much as they love Sanders, they loathe Donald Trump more. It seems more evident each day that Republicans have lost their collective reason and are beginning to accept the notion that Trump will be their nominee. And I doubt Democrats will make an anti-immigrant bigot the president by nominating a socialist to run against him.

Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.

Watching Sanders at Monday night's Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump -- or another Republican nominee -- would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the "socialist" label and requested that Sanders define it "so that it doesn't concern the rest of us citizens."

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don't want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: "Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top -- that's my definition of democratic socialism."

But that's not how Republicans will define socialism -- and they'll have the dictionary on their side. They'll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They'll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn't be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don't win national elections in the United States.

Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases -- "one of the biggest tax hikes in history," as moderator Chris Cuomo put it -- to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that "hypothetically, you're going to pay $5,000 more in taxes," and declared, "We will raise taxes, yes we will." He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that "it's demagogic to say, oh, you're paying more in taxes."

Well, yes -- and Trump is a demagogue.

When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government "bigger than ever," Sanders didn't quarrel, saying, "People want to criticize me, OK," and "Fine, if that's the criticism, I accept it."

Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York mayor who floated a trial balloon over the weekend about an independent run, knows this. As The New York Times reported: "If Republicans were to nominate Mr. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a hard-line conservative, and Democrats chose Mr. Sanders, Mr. Bloomberg ... has told allies he would be likely to run."

President Obama seems to know this, too -- which would explain why he tiptoed beyond his official neutrality to praise Clinton in an interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush. "I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics," he said. He portrayed Sanders as "the bright, shiny object that people haven't seen before."

It doesn't speak well of Clinton that, next to her, a 74-year-old guy who has been in politics for four decades is a bright and shiny object. The phenomenon has at least as much to do with Clinton as with Sanders: Democrats are eager for an alternative to her inauthentic politics and cautious policies.

I share their frustration with Clinton. But that doesn't make Sanders a rational choice.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
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The Muscatine County Board of Supervisors met in special session at 9:00 A.M. with Howard, Kelly, Sorensen, Sauer and Bonebrake present. Chairperson Sorensen presiding.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Howard, the agenda was approved as amended. Ayes: All.

Richard Townsend, 201 E. 8th Street, appeared before the Board representing his Uncle Marvin Haller who is trying to buy a piece of land from the County that is otherwise inaccessible. Administrative Services Director Nancy Schreiber stated the Board has placed a moratorium on issuing quit claim deeds for unknown owner parcels until the County Attorney and other affected offices develop a new policy. Chairperson Sorensen stated the Board is waiting for direction from the County Attorney before they proceed.

Christy Roby-Williams, Trinity Public Health Manager, reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for the Board of Health stating the proposed budget asks for a 5% increase over last year. Roby-Williams stated Muscatine County only spends $4.79 per resident by contracting with Trinity for Public Health Services, whereas Washington County spends $19.75 per resident, Louisa County spends $29.28 per person and Lee County spends $12.84 per person.

Sheriff C. J. Ryan reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for the Sheriff's Office and Jail stating there is a slight raise in education & training to reflect more what's in line with what they are spending. Sheriff Ryan stated there are three new squad cars in the FY16/17 budget. Sheriff Ryan stated all squads have video surveillance, but about 1/3 of the squads have been upgraded from ICOP to Watchguard video systems. In response to a question from Kelly, Sheriff Ryan stated whether to move forward with body cams is a monetary issue as well as the policies which must be developed to address privacy issues. Bonebrake stated he does not think the County Deputies need body cams. Howard stated he is agreeable with body cams when it makes sense but budget constraints are always a factor. Sheriff Ryan stated cameras in squads have been helpful and body cams may be a next step, but there are legal issues to address and the ongoing cost of the use of body cams is very expensive. Sheriff Ryan stated there is no privacy issue with a camera in a squad as everything happens in public, but with a body cam an officer may be entering a private residence so policies need to be in place.

Sheriff Ryan stated Jail revenue reflects a change in what Johnson County is being charged for housing their inmates. Sheriff Ryan stated Johnson County was paying $43 per day per inmate, but is now paying the following rates: $45 per day per inmate when Johnson County inmates are in excess of 50, $50 when the number of Johnson County inmates drops below 50 and $55 when Johnson County inmates drops below 40. Sheriff Ryan stated the Jail had an average of 25 federal prisoners last Spring, but he has had ongoing conversations with federal government officials which resulted in Jail population increasing to 80+ federal prisoners. Sheriff Ryan stated he also raised the price slightly on commissary items. Administrative Services Director Nancy Schreiber stated that the Jail has approximately 12 part-time employees who work in excess of 30 hours a week which under the Affordable Care Act will be considered full time. Schreiber stated Sheriff Ryan would like the Board to consider eliminating part time corrections officers and replacing them with full-time employees. Board consensus was for Schreiber and Sheriff Ryan to proceed with developing a proposal for the Board to consider.

Tom Summitt, Chief Medical Examiner Investigator, stated the EMS Grant for FY16/17 is budgeted at $8,000 which covers training including a countywide drill involving either a school or theatre shooting.

Summitt reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for Medical Examiner stating his department is still working towards a single countywide medical director for EMS. Summitt stated Muscatine County had 79 investigative deaths covered by 6 investigators last year. In response to a question from Bonebrake, Summitt stated he is the only investigator currently licensed, so he has increased education & training in his budget to allow for licensing two more investigators.

The Board reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for Administration/Board of Supervisors, Court Services, Non-Departmental and General Services with Budget Administrator Sherry Seright and Administrative Services Director Nancy Schreiber. Seright stated the General Services budget includes $26,200 to replace the current truck purchased in 2006.

Discussion was held regarding the difficulty of hiring a contractor for small construction projects. The Board directed Administration to develop a possible proposal for Board consideration for entering into an agreement with a local contractor to be on call for completion of small construction projects.

The Board recessed at 11:41 A.M. and reconvened at 1:03 P.M.

Veterans Affairs Director Jennifer Watkins-Schoenig reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for Veteran Affairs stating her Board requested more funds for outreach. Watkins-Schoenig stated she also added a temporary employee to the budget due to her upcoming maternity leave.

Community Services Director Mike Johannsen reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for General Assistance stating the proposed budget reflects an overall 7% decrease. Johannsen stated the reduction is due to Title XIX covering a lot of the medical expenses.

Johannsen reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for Mental Health stating the County is levying at the same level as last year. Johannsen stated the region just signed an agreement with Robert Young for crisis stabilization services throughout the region which the County is already utilizing through Unity Hospital Emergency Department. Johannsen stated he has had funds donated through the Almoner's Fund to provide transportation for those receiving crisis stabilization services from Unity Hospital Emergency Department to their residence. Johannsen stated work with the County Attorney's Office on substance abuse commitments has been a positive experience. Johannsen stated Muscatine County is providing trust services for the entire region and being reimbursed by the region for those services. Sorensen stated the County should reduce the levy to generate $1,887,637 to equal FY15/16 expenditures. Johannsen stated that amount would cover what he has budgeted for FY16/17 expenditures.

County Attorney Alan Ostergren reviewed the FY16/17 budget request for the Attorney's Office stating increases for mileage and training. Ostergren stated the budget request reflects an increase in litigation expenses, but is dependent on the actual number of big trials. Ostergren stated Fine Collection Revenue is running higher than last year. Ostergren stated he has not asked to revisit the support staff issue although his staff is still unable to keep up with the notifications through EDMS, especially with juvenile cases where a lot more documents are generated. Ostergren stated similar sized counties have more lawyers and support staff than Muscatine County.

Kelly asked if the County Supervisors should have an email address through the County's server rather than using personal email. Ostergren stated it depends how comfortable the Supervisor is with providing information for an open records request rather than Information Services providing the information. Ostergren stated best practice would be to have an email address through the County's server.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:51 P.M.

ATTEST:

Leslie A. Soule, County Auditor Jeff Sorensen, Chairperson

Board of Supervisors
Competitive Bids will be received by the duly appointed representative of the Board of Water, Electric, and Communications Trustees of the City of Muscatine, Iowa, at 3205 Cedar Street, Muscatine, Iowa, until 3:00 P.M. CST, on February 9, 2016, for the furnishing of all labor, materials, tools, equipment, and supervision necessary to provide and install the 161 X 69 kV transformer foundation (F16-A), 69 kV breaker foundation (F16-B), ground grid connection, oil containment system including piping, crushed stone surfacing, and final grading for a complete installation , at Muscatine Power and Water's 2700 Oglivie Street South Substation, Muscatine, Iowa. At said time and place, bids shall be opened publicly and read aloud.

Work shall be in accordance with the Bidding Documents, including the Project Manual, and Drawings, which are on file at the office of the Secretary of the Board of Water, Electric, and Communications Trustees of the City of Muscatine. A base set of Bidding Documents consisting of one Project Manual and one set of drawings may be obtained from Nicole Wade, Project Specialist, Muscatine Power and Water, 3205 Cedar St., Muscatine, Iowa, telephone 563 262 3342. No deposit is required for these Competitive Bid Documents.

A pre-bid meeting will be held at 10:30 A.M. CST on February 1, 2016, at Muscatine Power and Water's A/O Center, 3205 Cedar St., Auditorium Conference Room, Muscatine, Iowa. Representatives of Owner will be present to discuss the Project. Proper PPE will be required to access the work site.

Bid security shall accompany all bids as specified in the Instructions to Bidders as security that the successful Bidder will enter a Contract for Work bid upon. Bid Documents provide for a 30-day evaluation period between bid opening and Contract award. All bid securities are retained until a Contract award is finalized with the successful Bidder. The successful Bidder will be required to furnish, after award, a performance and payment bond for the faithful performance of the Contract in an amount equal to one hundred percent of the Contract.

Total approved project expenditure is $3,475,000.

Estimated cost of this Work is $99,000.

Commencement of Contract shall start within 15 calendar days of written authorization to proceed with completion thereof on or before April 1, 2016.

BOARD OF WATER, ELECTRIC, AND

COMMUNICATIONS TRUSTEES OF

THE CITY OF MUSCATINE, IOWA

BY: Steven Bradford

Chairperson

ATTEST:

Jerry Gowey

Secretary
The Board of Education of the Muscatine Community School District, in the County of Muscatine, State of Iowa, met in planning session on Monday, January 25, 2016 at 7:05 p.m. at the Administration Center. President Tammi Drawbaugh called the meeting to order. Directors Tim Bower, John DaBeet, Nathan Mather, Randy Naber, and Mary Wildermuth were present. Director Aaron Finn was absent. Also present were Superintendent Jerry Riibe and Director of Finance Jean Garner.

The Board recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

A motion was made by Director Mather and seconded by Director Naber to open the public hearing for the proposed plans, specifications, proposed form of contract, and the estimated cost of said improvements of the Jefferson Elementary Demolition and Deconstruction Project. Roll Call: Ayes: Bower, DaBeet, Drawbaugh, Mather, Naber, and Wildermuth. There were no nays. Motion carried. Time: 7:05 p.m.

There were no oral or written comments submitted.

Jeff Miller, Facilities Supervisor, noted that approximately 11 construction firms submitted bids for the project. He also discussed the two alternate bids concerning salvaging bricks for resale. Administration will be recommending that the alternate bids not be considered as the price was quite substantial.

A motion was made by Director Naber and seconded by Director Bower to close the public hearing. Roll Call: Ayes: Bower, DaBeet, Drawbaugh, Mather, Naber, and Wildermuth. There were no nays. Motion carried. Time: 7:15 p.m.

No one spoke during Citizens Speak.

A motion was made by Director Bower and seconded by Director DaBeet to approve the consent agenda which included: the minutes of the January 11, 2016 regular meeting, the student teacher placement agreement with the University of Iowa, and the bills and claims against the district dated January 25, 2016. All ayes; motion carried.

A motion was made by Director Naber and seconded by Director Bower with regret to approve the early retirees for FY 15 as follows:

Deb Castle - MHS Special Education Teacher

Gerald Teel - WMS Special Education Teacher

Judy Dindinger - Mulberry 2nd Grade Teacher

Monika Boyer - McKinley 3rd Grade Teacher

Lisa Sturms - CMS 6th Grade Teacher

Michael Fladlien - MHS Economics Teacher

Jean Garner - Director of Finance

Perry Rodocker - WMS Principal

All ayes; motion carried.

Superintendent Riibe recommended that the board approve the low bid of D.W. Zinser of Walford, Iowa for the demolition and deconstruction of Jefferson Elementary. He also recommended that the board not approve any of the alternates due to cost.

A motion was made by Director Bower and seconded by Director Mather to approve the low bid submitted by D.W. Zinser of Walford, Iowa in the amount of $475,400 which is the base bid only with no alternates for the Demolition and Deconstruction of Jefferson Elementary. All ayes; motion carried.

Mrs. Jessi Freers, Early Childhood Coordinator, and Mrs. Alison Daufeldt, Parents as Teachers Coordinator, provided information on the Iowa Family Support Credential that the Parents as Teachers program is seeking. Parents as Teachers is an in-home parenting program for children aged birth to 5 years-old in Muscatine County. Currently the program serves 28 families and 36 children and involves weekly or every-other week meetings with the families to discuss milestones, family wellbeing, and parent-child interaction (reading, playing age-appropriate developmental games, etc.). The program will be reviewed by the state in early March and must meet 32 standards along with 138 first and second order standards in order to receive the credential and be eligible for funding from Shared Visions and Early Childhood Iowa.

President Drawbaugh provided the following announcements regarding future meetings and/or events:

January 29 26th Annual Muskie Booster Club Cake Auction - 6 p.m. - MHS Cafeteria

February 6 Legislative Forum at 9 a.m. at Muscatine Community College's Student Union

February 8 IASB Day on the Hill in Des Moines at the Capitol Building

February 8 Regular Board Meeting - 7 p.m. - City Hall

February 15 No School - President's Day

February 22 Board Work Session (6 p.m.) and Regular Session (7 p.m.) - Admin. Ctr.

A motion was made by Director Naber and seconded by Director Bower to adjourn the meeting. All ayes; motion carried. Time 7:45 p.m.

Tammi Drawbaugh, President

Lisa Mosier Bunn, Secretary
The Board of Education of the Muscatine Community School District, in the County of Muscatine, State of Iowa, met in special session on Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 6 p.m. at the Administration Center to discuss the Iowa Association of School Board's revision of Muscatine School's board policy manual. President Tammi Drawbaugh called the meeting to order. Directors Tim Bower (arrived at 6:45 p.m.), John DaBeet, Aaron Finn, Randy Naber, and Mary Wildermuth were present. Director Nathan Mather was absent. Also present were Superintendent Jerry Riibe, Director of Finance Jean Garner, Director of Human Resources Jill Bourquin, and Director of Special Programs Jan Collinson.

Ms. Josie Lewis, Policy/Legal Services Director for Iowa Association of School Boards, shared an overview of the process used to review the district's policy manual. She then discussed several policies in the 200 series - Board of Directors and talked about different ways that the board can review policy in order to meet state law.

Ms. Lewis will draft a document that will delineate which policies are mandatory and either need revision or added to the manual, those policies that are strongly recommended with changes or additions, and those that she requires clarification from the board and/or administration or where there are multiple polices addressing the same issue. The board will take this document and use it as a starting point in the revision process.

Ms. Lewis noted that she is happy to continue to work with the board as it begins the task of reviewing her recommendations and is willing to meet with the board in the near future should the board desire to do so.

The meeting adjourned at 8:30 p.m.

Tammi Drawbaugh, President

Lisa Mosier Bunn, Secretary
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Florida Sen. Marco Rubio energized an overflow crowd at the Riverview Center.

"You will be the first people in the country to answer the question, 'What happens after Barack Obama?'" he told several hundred people at a rally in Muscatine during the noon hour.

"I can only tell you this: If you make me president of the United States, I will do everything possible to bring this country back together. That doesn't mean we are going to agree on everything, that's not what unity means," Rubio said. "I will never pit you against other Americans in order to win an election. I will never ask Americans to fight with one another so I can win. ...I will seek to unite us."

Rubio, seeking the GOP nomination, vowed that if elected he would repeal Obamacare, repeal all executive orders signed by President Obama and cancel the treaty signed recently with Iran.

"We can't be a great nation if we leave anybody behind. You know all those people that are going to say nasty things about me or put mean things about me on Twitter, the people that will never vote for me, I am going to cut their taxes, too. I will be a president for all Americans," he said to applause from the crowd.

Rubio was asked about the national debt, term limits and abortion.

"I don't think there's been a single question asked about abortion to the Democrats," he said.

Rubio said Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton has "radical views" on abortion.

He didn't mention any of his Republican challengers by name during the event taking aim straight at Clinton and fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

"It can't be Bernie Sanders," Rubio said.

Sanders refers to himself as a socialist. Rubio joked that that made him a great candidate for president of Sweden but not the United States.

"Of all the choices, I know that I can unify this party. I know that I can take our movement and reach people that haven't voted for us before," Rubio said. "People who are living the way I grew up. People who are facing the struggles I faced."

Brothers Paul and Joseph DeGregorio, of St. Loius, Missouri, made the four-hour trip to see Rubio in Muscatine.

"I've been following Sen. Rubio for a couple years. I read his books, following him on television and on the internet. And I just think he's the right person to lead this country in the future. I have four daughters, four son-in-laws, six grandchildren and I am concerned about the future of the country and I really think Marco Rubio is the right person to lead this nation," Paul said.

The brothers stopped by the Rubio campaign bus for a photo as they left the the Riverview Center to follow the candidate to a stop in Clinton.

"We can win this election and then we will have a chance to turn this country around. And that's why I need you to caucus for me on Monday. If I am your nominee, we win. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders lose and America has a chance to be better than its ever been," Rubio said in closing to the crowd.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Alzheimer's Association is offering a set of free classes to address community concerns about dementia. Both classes will be presented in the McAvoy Center on the Muscatine Community College campus, 1403 Park Ave.

The set begins with a class on recognizing the 10 most common warning signs of Alzheimer's and related diseases and how to distinguish between normal aging and the onset of dementia, and is followed with a class, two weeks later, on the most effective ways to communicate with a person with dementia.

"10 Warning Signs" will be 4:30-6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 10.

"Communication Tips" will be 3-4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24.

Association spokesperson Jerry Schroeder stresses the importance of attending the classes.

"Understanding the difference between normal aging and dementia and knowing how to communicate effectively with people who are diagnosed are very important to anyone concerned about possibly getting dementia, of for anyone presently caring for someone diagnosed who needs sound advice about how to keep that person safe and happy," Schroeder stated in a press release.

All classes are free, open to the public, and relevant for personal and professional care partners.

To register, call 1-800-272-3900. For more information call Schroeder at the local Alzheimer's Association office at 563-324-1022, ext. 8212.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The city's proposed property tax rate for fiscal year 2017 would remain unchanged at $15.672 per $1,000 taxable valuation, according to a budget review presented to City Council Thursday night.

City Administrator Gregg Mandsager presented the review of the general fund budget. The tax rate has been the same since the 2012-2013 fiscal year.

While the tax rate will remain the same, the taxes paid by homeowners will decrease minimally due to changes in the state rollback for residential property, according to Mandsager. The rollback decreased from 55.73 percent to 55.62 percent.

The impact of the rollback decrease on a home valued at $100,000 would be a $1 reduction in city taxes. On a home valued at $150,000, the savings would be $2.

Taxable valuations in Muscatine increased by $42.49 million, about 5.44 percent.

The proposed 2017 budget also includes two new firefighter positions. It was possible to add those positions without a tax increase.

Fire Chief Jerry Ewers requested a total four additional firefighters. To fund the other two additional positions, the city's tax rate would need to increase by 1.07 percent. The two additional positions would cost the city $137,600, according to Mandsager.

That would mean an additional $8 in annual taxes for the owner of the home valued at $100,000 and $12 in taxes for the owner of home valued at $150,000.

The City Council will meet with department heads at 8 a.m. Saturday. Among the departments scheduled for Saturday are legal services, finance, police, airport, Muscatine Art Center, fire operations and ambulance. The session is set to run until 4 p.m.

Budget sessions resume at 5:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. The council will meet from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3; 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4; 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6; 5:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9; 5:30-8:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 10; and 8 a.m.- 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13.

The public hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 3. The budget must be filed with the Muscatine County auditor by March 15.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The United Way of Muscatine Women's Leadership Council is hosting a Red, White & Chocolate event from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19, at Pearl Plaza, 208 W. Second St.

The event will be an opportunity to learn more about the Women's Leadership Council's partnership with Muscatine Community School District to improve student attendance.

There will be food, wine and shopping at the event. Those attending are asked to bring a new or gently used children's book to be handed out at the Fourth of July parade.

For more information or to RSVP for this event, call Kim Warren at 563-263-5963 or email kim@unitedwaymuscatine.org.
WEST LIBERTY, Iowa  Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre presents its 18th annual Puppets and Pastries: Dessert Theatre For Adults, at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, and Saturday, Feb. 27.

Heres an opportunity for lovers of puppet theatre to see cutting edge puppetry directed toward adults while listening to music and eating desserts, including the Acapulco Bakerys famous tres leches cake. The event takes place at Owl Glass Puppetry Center, 319 N. Calhoun St. Eulenspiegel elves will transform the Center into a softly lit bistro for the weekend. Tickets are $15 advance ($20.00 at the door) and include desserts and beverages.

Thanks to support from the Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine, Eulenspiegel will present Liz Schachterle, a prominent Minneapolis puppeteer, as a special guest. Schacterle, a highly regarded member of the upcoming generation of puppet artists, got her start in puppetry as a child, when she met the Eulenspiegel puppeteers and presented original shows at the annual Young Puppeteers Festivals.

Eulenspiegels Monica Leo and Angela Polowy will also present short pieces. Susan Short Gilbert will also present a play. Al Zimmerman will provide some music. Laura Kittrell will also sing.

Reservations or advanced sales are required due to limited space. For reservations or more information, call 319-627-2487 or email monica@puppetspuppets.com.
ILLINOIS CITY  Toni JoAnn (Heller) Ross, 51, of Illinois City, went to her Heavenly home Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, as Jesus won the ultimate battle over her cancer.

Times of visitation and fellowship will be 2-4 p.m. and 5-7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1, at Camp Milan, 1328 127th Ave., Milan, with a time of sharing at 6:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family invites people to bring a picture of them with Toni since she was so many things to so many people. Pictures and memories will be made into a scrapbook for the family. Following visitation, her body will be cremated, and a memorial service will be held at a later date.

During her teen years, Pastor Toni was involved in the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, in which she was a grand officer. Because of her late fathers commitment to education, she graduated from high school a semester early with honors. She attended Sauk Valley College, receiving her associates degree after teaching herself college-level chemistry. After her marriage to Howard, she worked as a sales associate, and then for the East Moline School District, arranging for substitute teachers.

She began her pastoral ministry in 1998, first with Hampton and East Moline Grace United Methodist Churches, and then with the Illinois City and Pine Bluff United Methodist Churches in 2008. Both Toni and Howard graduated from theological Course of Study School in 2012, and they helped many others through their own Course of Study journey. She has served many times in the Quad-Cities Emmaus and Chrysalis Communities, both as a lay person and as clergy, most recently serving as the Chrysalis Community Spiritual Director. She especially enjoyed serving on Chrysalis weekends because she loved welcoming new kids into the family, both to Christs family and her own.

In her down time, Toni enjoyed quiet nights at home, reading, listening to contemporary Christian music, watching movies and doing puzzles. But what she treasured the most was times with family and friends, especially her kids and grandkids.

Survivors include her husband of 31 years, Howard; children, Nathan Anthony Ross, Ames, Iowa, and Nicole Marie (James Aaron) Ross Bishop, East Moline; grandchildren, Aaron and Alaina; mom and stepfather, JoAnn and Doug Seelye, Morrison, Ill.; brothers, Kevin Heller (Kelli Rodriguez), Sterling, Ill., and Rory (Pam) Heller, Mahomet, Ill.; stepbrothers, Scott (Sherri) Seelye, Eureka, Calif., Steve (Shawn) Seelye, Highland, Mich., and Mark (Donna) Seelye, Waterloo, Wis.; many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and the many young men and women who referred to her as Mom.

She was preceded in death by her father, Tony Heller.

Online condolences may be left for the family at www.vanhoe.com.
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Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
A weak education system is creating a culture of entitlement, human rights activist Rhoda Kadalie said on Thursday.

When I was a student, I worked to pay for my own admission fees, she said referring to the Fees Must Fall protests.

But because our education system is so pathetic we compensate for what is going on at universities and breeding a culture of entitlement.

Kadalie was speaking at a seminar hosted by the University of Stellenbosch Business School and the Institute for Future Research at the Medical Research Council in Parow.

She said if she was a vice-chancellor she would have told protesting students to go study.

The year has hardly started and the students are marching about admission fees.

Kadalie said uneducated parents were adding to the problem.

Too many parents cant help their children with homework because they are illiterate.

Many could not parent properly because they were too poor and had to struggle to find work.

On the economy, Kadalie said that after 22 years of running the country the ANC had wrecked the economy.

There were high unemployment rates but the majority of young people were too uneducated to be employed, she said.

We also have a culture of political intolerance. People are being fired left right and centre for expressing their opinions.

President [Jacob] Zumas contempt for us was demonstrated by the unceremonious way he got rid of Minister Nene, Kadalie said.

After the Nkandla saga, the Passenger Rail Agency of SA, the proposed nuclear deal with Russia and SA Airways, it became evident that Zuma was impervious to criticism and an accountable government.

But Kadalie said there were many reasons to remain optimistic and South Africa was worth saving.

It was up to the countrys civil society and watchdog institutions to do this.

News24

More on education

Behind the scenes at South Africas revolutionary new coding school

School system a national catastrophe: minister
ABC News(RIO DE JANEIRO) -- As the Zika virus outbreak spreads in Central and South America, pregnant women in Brazil are the focus of concern because the virus could potentially lead to dangerous birth defects for their newborns.



The virus has been associated with a risk of an alarming birth defect called microcephaly, which is characterized by an abnormally small head and brain. A rise of microcephaly cases in Brazil led global health officials to jump into action in an attempt to stop the ongoing outbreak. The virus is new to the country, with the first documented case reported in May 2015. By the end of the year, officials from the Pan American Health Organization estimated more than 1 million people had become sick with the virus.



ABC News' Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser talked with a pregnant woman in Rio de Janeiro about her fears and how she handles living at the center of an outbreak.



Fabiola Barbosa, a physical therapist, is five months pregnant with her third child. She told ABC News there was not much her doctor could do for her other than advise her to use insect repellent. Barbosa has multiple candles and liquid repellents throughout her home to reduce the risk of mosquito exposure. She also covered a well near her house and overturned the bucket so that no standing water could accumulate.



"I spend 100 [Brazilian] reals with the liquid repellent," every month, Barbosa told ABC News through an interpreter. That's about US$25. "I could be buying diapers but I am buying repellent."



That number did not take into account the insect repellent she applies to exposed skin every two hours.



As a physical therapist, Barbosa said she has worked with children with similar birth defects as microcephaly and seen how difficult that can be on families.



"You have this invisible threat around you and you might get a son a child with this disease," she said. "For people who dont know, microcephaly is a word, but for me Im in the business. For me, its twice as threatening."



Barbosa said for other women in the area, she would advise them to avoid getting pregnant until it was clear that the outbreak was diminishing.



With her due date in June, Barbosa is doing as much as she can to protect herself and her children. But without any treatment or vaccine for the virus or for microcephaly, she said she is also relying on "the hands of God."



Its crazy. Its such a tiny insect," she said. It "can change the life of someone who is inside me."



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
My thoughts, assertions and observations on issues important to me as a Jew, a Zionist, a Revenant in Yesha and as an inquisitive human being.


ARBOR ALLIANCE

Join us Sundays at 5 p.m. Child care will be available. We share the Christian & Missionary Alliance Church at 721 Trancas St., Napa. Come get acquainted and be refreshed. Info, thearborchurch.org, 530-304-4704.

BEIT ABBA

Messianic Jewish ministry of The Fathers House is held the first Friday of each month at 7 p.m. Child care provided for ages infant to 7 years old. Join us Feb. 5 for a Shabbat service at our Vacaville Campus with special guest Rabbi Jonathan Bernis. Join us Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. at the Napa Campus for our mid-month Havurah: Our Hebrew Legacy, Rediscovering Our Covenant Roots. The Fathers House, 2557 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, Napa. Info, tfh.org/beitabba.

CARMELITE MONASTERY

Mass times: Sunday, 9 a.m.; Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. (except for the first Saturday of the month, Mass will be at 11 a.m.). Morning of recollection every first Saturday of the month: Spiritual Talk, 9-10 a.m.; Confessions, 10-11 a.m.; Mass, 11 a.m. Bible study, on Tuesdays with Father Michael Buckley: Tuesdays, 8:30-9:30 a.m. following the 8 a.m. Mass (Contact the office to confirm time and day at 944-2454, ext. 103). Confessions-English: Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 10 a.m.-noon, 3-5 p.m., 8-9 p.m. Confessions-Spanish: Wednesday, 10 a.m.-noon., 3-5 p.m., 8-9 p.m. 20 Mount Carmel Drive, 0.9 miles west of Highway 29, off the Oakville Grade; Info, 944-2454; oakvillecarmelites.org.

CENTER FOR SPIRITUAL LIVING

Services are 9 and 10:30 a.m. with youth program at 10:30 and Teen Group at noon. Rev. Jay Lang speaks on Living in Alignment with Truth. Annual Community Meeting this Sunday 12:15-1:15 p.m. (Please sign up for light lunch) Open Meditation on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. followed by Life Talks at 7:15. Topic Knowing God: Good to Great. Mandala Workshop Saturday, Feb. 6 from 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Info, 1249 Coombs, 252-4847.

CHRISTIAN & MISSIONARY ALLIANCE CHURCH

Adult Sunday School class begins at 9:30 a.m., (coffee available) in the fellowship hall. Morning worship for the whole family starts at 10:45 a.m. and our congregation sings mainly from traditional hymnals  a rare treat. Located at 721 Trancas St., Napa. Info, 224-6717.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CHURCH

Sunday service and Sunday school for youths up to age 20 at 10 a.m. The Wednesday evening service is at 7:30. Child care provided at all services. New hours for the Reading Room, located in our church building,: open to the public weekdays except Wednesdays, 1-4 p.m. All current Christian Science literature, including the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and the renowned Christian Science Monitor are available to all to read or purchase; 2210 Second St., Napa. Info, 255-5255.

CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, NAPA  SECOND WARD

Sacrament meeting is Sunday at 9 a.m. Young mens and young womens programs are on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Twelve-step addiction program is on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. 2590 Trower Ave., Napa. Info, 758-8085.

COMMUNITY CHURCH OF LAKE BERRYESSA

This Sunday at the Community Church of Lake Berryessa, Pastor Bob will begin a series on the books of the Bible starting with Genesis. Join us as we look at Gods word and find its meaning in our life today. We are a non- denominational Christian church welcoming all to enjoy the life changing power of Jesus Christ. A weekly food distribution is available along with groups and activities. Address is 6008 Steele Canyon Road at Moskowite Corners. Info, 252-4488.

CONGREGATION BETH SHALOM

On Jan. 29 from 7-8:30 p.m., Rabbi Lee Bycel will conduct Friday Night Shabbat Services. He will be accompanied by our Music Director Gordon Lustig. The following morning at 9:15 in the sanctuary, Torah Study with Rabbi Lee will examine the weeks portion and how it impacts our daily life. This is for everyone who wants the connection between reality and spirit Following up on Wednesday at 11:45 a.m. Feb 3 is our lunch and learn with Leslie Medine. She takes on the mantle of the recently celebrated Martin Luther Kings teachings on how to take action to make a difference. Located at 1455 Elm St., Napa. Info, cbsnapa.org.

CORNERSTONE MINISTRIES

Sunday service at Cornerstone Ministries is at 10:15 a.m. Our Spanish Church begins at 1:30 p.m. Sunday school and childcare is available. Middle School and High School Study is on Wednesday nights at 6:30. On Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. at 3305 Vista Ave. Freedom From Bondage meets. Info, cmnv.org, 252-2909.

COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Join us for worship at 10:30 a.m. at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1226 Salvador Ave., on the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany. Guest preacher will be the Rev. Elizabeth McCord, a member of the San Francisco Theological Seminary staff. The liturgist will be Calvin Groeneweg. The Covenant Choir, under the direction of Mark Teeters, will present I Dream a World, composed by Andre Thomas. Weekly Sunday School class for preschool  8th grade students. Learn more about Covenant at cpcnapa.org; facebook.com/cpcnapa; or call 255-9426.

CREEKSIDE COMMUNITY CHURCH

Weekly worship service is Sunday at 10:30 a.m. Services and attire are casual with a blend of fellowship, music and teaching. Child care and childrens church offered during service. At 1050 Hagen Road, Napa. Info, CreeksideChurchNapa.org; 255-7266.

CROSSWALK COMMUNITY CHURCH

Join us at CrossWalk Community Church for our series on Making Sense of the Bible. Services at 9 and at 10 a.m. with Childrens programs available during the 10 a.m. service. CrossWalk also has CrossWalk Food Pantry offering fresh produce and providing grocery bags with several meals once a month at 2590 First St. Info, 226-1812.

FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH

First Christian Church of Napa welcomes you to attend our service this Sunday. At 8:45 and 10:30 a.m., Pastor Allen continues our series The Voice: Tune Out the Noise, Tune in to God. Swerve Student Ministry: Middle SchoolWednesday 7-8:30 p.m., High SchoolThursday 6:30-8:30 p.m. At 2659 First St., Napa. Church website: fccnapa.org.

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Jesus, the Son of God from The Story is the study Pastor David will lead us through this week. Please join us in the gym at 9 a.m. for the traditional service, with choir and special music; the contemporary service with a variety of praise music is at 10:30 a.m. Our guest musician at 9 a.m. is Shelby Bailey. Sunday School: 9 a.m. for Youth, 10:30 for elementary-school age children. Birth through kindergarten-age childcare at both services. The Coffee Meet-and-Greet is at 10 a.m. 1333 Third St., Napa. Info, 224-8693 or fpcnapa.org.

GRACE CHURCH OF NAPA VALLEY

Sunday services: Worship service at 9 and 10:40 a.m. Adult Sunday school classes at 9 a.m. Childrens service at 9 and 10:40 a.m. Nursery and preschool care available. Junior high ministry meets Tuesday, 7 p.m.; high school meets Wednesday at 7 p.m. 3765 Solano Ave., Napa. Info, 255-4033, GraceNapa.org.

HILLSIDE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

We meet at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., and 6:30 p.m. at 100 Anderson Road, Napa. Info, 255-3036.

HOLY GROUND CHRISTIAN CENTER

Sunday worship begins at 10 a.m., and Bible study is Wednesday at 7 p.m. 3860 Broadway, Suite 111, American Canyon. Info, 373-2015.

MEMORIAL CHAPEL AT VETERANS HOME OF CALIFORNIA, YOUNTVILLE

Sunday worship service, 10:15 a.m. Coffee fellowship one hour before the service. Bible study on Wednesday at 1 p.m., Fellowship Room, with refreshments served; prayer meetings Thursday, 1 p.m. The memorial chapel is on the Veterans Home  Yountville campus on California Drive, across from the administration building. Info, 944-4840.

NAPA COMMUNITY SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH

Saturday, 11:15 a.m. service. 1105 G St., Napa. Education Day with Napa Christian Campus of Education. The sermon will be Essentials: Service by Pastor Marvin Wray. Info, 252-2444.

NAPA METHODIST CHURCH

Napa Methodist Church holds two Sunday morning services: a 9:30 a.m. Traditional service in the sanctuary and an 11 a.m. Fusion Worship service held in the Asbury Room. This Sunday, we invite you to hear Pastor Lee Neish preach the message: Give My Regards to Broadway; The Gift of Life at our 9:30 a.m. Sanctuary service. At our 11 a.m. Fusion Worship service, we invite you to hear Austin Eikenberry preach on David as part of our continuing series: Covenants. GRAPE Express Childrens Worship and Nursery are available during both services. Childrens Carol Choir meets Sundays at 10:30 a.m., between our two Sunday services. Silent Meditation is Mondays at 5:30 p.m. in the Sanctuary. 625 Randolph Street. Info, napamethodist.org or 253-1411.

NAPA-SONOMA FRIENDS MEETING (QUAKERS)

Sunday worship at 10 a.m. Silent meeting in the custom of Friends. Meet at the VOICES Youth Center, 780 Lincoln Ave. Enter at parking lot on left side of building, using door at end of wheelchair ramp. Quaker signs will be posted on Sunday mornings. We welcome visiting friends or those who are new to Quaker practice. Info, nvquaker@napanet.net; 257-0509.

NAPA VALLEY BAPTIST CHURCH

Sunday Bible study for all ages at 9:30 a.m. Worship service, along with a kids program, begins at 10:30 a.m. Info, NapaValleyBaptist.org; 252-2100.

NAPA VALLEY BIBLE CHAPEL

Bill Davis will continue his series in the book of Romans for our 11 a.m. service Sunday, Jan. 31. We start Sunday services by remembering the Lords death, burial and resurrection during a time of worship and thanksgiving at 9:30 a.m., followed by a fellowship and coffee time starting at 10:30 a.m. At 11 a.m., we enjoy a time of Bible teaching. Classes are available during this service for children and young teens. On Wednesdays at 6 p.m., we meet for a brief Bible study and a time of prayer. At 1559 Second St., Napa. Info, napavalleybiblechapel.com or 258-8606.

NAPA VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH

Is church attendance necessary for the believer? Some say yes, and some say I can be a believer of Jesus Christ and not go to church. This Sunday, the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippian church addresses the critical nature of the church family. You might want to join us for this very important study of Gods Word. Service at 10 a.m., also Sunday School for children. Potluck after the service. napavalleychurch.org. At 4149 Linda Vista Avenue, Napa.

NAPA VALLEY LUTHERAN

Sunday worship at 10 a.m. Annual Meeting with lunch follows. All are welcome because all belong to God. The church is at 1796 Elm St., Napa. Info, 226-8166, napavalleylutheran.org.

NAPA VALLEY UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS

Sunday, Jan. 31, 9:30 a.m.: Faith with Rev. Bonnie Dlott; presentation and informal discussion. 11 a.m.: Faith with Rev. Bonnie Dlott and Worship Associate Anne Jungerman. The word faith makes some UUs queasy. The notion that we should believe in or trust in something in the absence of any evidence flies in the face of our tradition and makes us suspicious, for good reason. Is there a way we can re-imagine faith in a way that is helpful to us as Unitarian Universalists? Infant care, child care, and religious education provided. 1625 Salvador Ave., Napa; Info, nvuu.org; 226-9220.

NEW LIFE TABERNACLE

Sunday school at 10 a.m., followed by worship service at 11 a.m. Sunday evening service the first Sunday of every month. Bible study on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. at 2625 First St., Napa. Info, 255-1062; NewLifeNapa.com.

ST. JOHNS LUTHERAN CHURCH

Sunday, 8:30 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. Childrens Church during the 10:15 a.m. service. 3521 Linda Vista Ave., Napa. Info, 255-0119; StJohnsLutheran.net.

ST. MARYS EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Worship on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. or Sundays at 8 a.m. or 10 a.m. (organ and choir). Childrens Chapel (Sunday school) is at 9:50 a.m. Sunday. Nursery care is provided during the 10 a.m. service. Coffee hour follows the worship services on Sunday. 1917 Third St., Napa. Info, 255-0991; StMarysNapa.org.

ST. STEPHENS ANGLICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH

We hope you all will come and worship with us at 1250 Oakville Grade Road, Oakville. Info, 953-9369.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS CHURCH

Mass times are Saturday 4 p.m. (English), Sunday 8 a.m. (English), 11 a.m. (English) and 1:30 p.m. (Spanish). Daily mass is 9 a.m. except on the first Friday, which is at noon and in English. 2725 Elm St, Napa. Info, 255-2949.

SALVATION ARMY

Join us for services Sundays at 10 a.m. 590 Franklin St., Napa. Info, napasalarmy.org.

THE FATHERS HOUSE

Sunday Service times are 8:30, 10 and 11:45 a.m. Child care and Kids Church are available (ages infant through sixth grade). Youth ministry Encounter meets every Wednesday Night at 7 p.m. The Fathers House, 2557 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, Napa. Info, tfh.org.

UNITY SPIRITUAL CENTER IN NAPA VALLEY

Sunday, 10 a.m. Service. Join us as we celebrate Unity and spiritual growth. Temporary Spiritual Leader Juanita Hoover, LUT delivers this Sundays Message titled Gods Greatest Gift. Music for our Service selected and performed by Lon Eakes. No Forum will be conducted on this fifth Sunday of the month. Sunday Service held at the historic Grange Hall, 3275 Hagen Road (1/2 mile east of the Silverado Trail), Napa. Parking next to the building. Information: UnityinNapaValley.org, 255-6881.

YOUNTVILLE COMMUNITY CHURCH

Sunday, Jan. 31, Contemporary Worship, 9:30 a.m. and Traditional Worship, 11 a.m. Associate Pastor Lloyd Whitford continues with the series looking into the book of Revelation entitled: God Wins! By the Blood of the Lamb. An Adult Bible Class, 9:30 a.m. in the Callison Ministry Center, Room 3. Childrens classes, 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. Jesus and Me. (birth-kindergarten), and first-fifth grades are offered. Vertical Student Ministry 11 a.m.; fifth-eighth grades and high school students. Church office hours, Monday-Thursday 8 a.m.-4 p.m.; 6619 Yount St., Yountville; 944-2179.

Pastors and church staffneed to update your listing, or add your church? Please contact Register Editor Sean Scully at 256-2246 or sscully@napanews.com. Weekly deadline is Wednesdays by 5 p.m.
A forum for solvers of cryptic crossword puzzles published in the National Post
THE BLOG OF NEVILLE STEPHENS TO WARN PEOPLE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COMING BACK TO EARTH SOON, AND THAT THE RAPTURE OF THE CHURCH TO HEAVEN IS VERY CLOSE AT HAND.YESHUA IS COMING SOON AND IS NOW SHAKING THE WORLD (HAGGAI 2:6) TO DRAW PEOPLE UNTO HIMSELF. IT IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD FOR ANY PERSON TO PERISH, SO NOW IS THE TIME TO TURN TO JESUS FOR SALVATION!
YEREVAN.  The adoption of Milica Markovics anti-Armenian report at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Winter Session obstructs a positive movement in the process of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov, told the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

In his words, there are two extreme points of view in this respect.

One assumes that sanctions will be imposed on Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh [as a result of this report], Sharmazanov stressed. [And] according to the other version, its just a piece of paper. If its a piece of paper, why were we [i.e. the Armenian side] fighting so much [against its adoption]? Naturally, both one and the other viewpoints are wrong.

Deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament added, however, that the PACE resolutions are not legally binding.

But, naturally, the adoption of this report does not contribute to the strengthening of peace, and it creates an adverse political backdrop from the viewpoint of humanitarian issues, Eduard Sharmazanov stated. [But] we [i.e. the Armenian side] must continue the fight, especially since we proved we can achieve results, in case of right and productive work.

PACE on Tuesday voted against MP Robert Walters (UK) anti-Armenian report entitled Escalation of Violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and Other Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan, but adopted MP Milica Markovics (Bosnia and Herzegovina) anti-Armenian report about Sarsang Reservoir in Nagorno-Karabakh, and entitled Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water.

To note, representatives of the PACE Unified European Left Group, the Socialist Group, and the European Peoples Party voted against both anti-Armenian reports.
Baku calls OSCE mission to assess situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border 'private visit'

On fourth day of IRGC military exercises on border with Azerbaijan, artillery destroys planned targets

Dollar falls, euro rises in Armenia

Russias Putin ratifies agreement on simplification of payments for goods transit within EEU territory

Stoltenberg: Almost all NATO countries have agreed to Sweden and Finland joining the alliance

Ombudswoman of Armenia: Azerbaijan prevents removal of remains of fallen soldiers

Zakharova: Matter of holding CSTO Collective Security Council meeting being worked out

Ombudswoman of Armenia: I received video materials from EU special representative about Azerbaijanis

Armenia Security Council chief, UK army general discuss cooperation in security

Armenia and Kazakhstan discuss bilateral military cooperation

Iran says U.S. and Israel won't be able to split the republic

201 bodies are identified of Armenia soldiers who died as result of September military aggression by Azerbaijan

Iran FM to arrive in Armenia today

Turkey, Azerbaijan presidents officially open international airport in occupied Artsakh territory

Armenia President visits several leading Bulgaria IT companies

Ruben Vardanyan: I will assume Artsakh State Minister position at beginning of November

Armenia PM on making EU observation mission permanent: I'm not sure about that

US State Dept.: Our ultimate goal is peaceful resolution between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenia, Qatar to collaborate in tourism sector

Turkey president travels to Azerbaijan

President of Armenia, mayor of Bulgarias Plovdiv discuss avenues for deepening of cooperation

Armenia has new customs attache at Upper Lars checkpoint on Russia-Georgia border

Karabakh official: Baku goes for gradual escalation, provocation of situation

Armenia to get 33mn grant from EU for police, migration service, business development in Syunik Province

Lacote: OSCE observation mission deployment will contribute to respect of Armenia territorial integrity

World oil prices going up

Russia extends flight restrictions at 11 airports

Newspaper: Karabakh delegation to head for Moscow, meeting with Putin considered probable

Newspaper: Azerbaijan aggression on September 13 paralyzes Armenia public administration for some time

Azerbaijan army opens fire towards Armenia positions at midnight

Retired US Air Force general is offered consulting job in Azerbaijan at rate of $5,000 a day

White House is puzzling over how to avoid meeting between Putin and Biden at G-20 summit

Eduard Aghajanyan: Once again I remind that Armenia was deprived of opportunity to protect rights of people of Artsakh

U.S. says that limiting Russian oil prices is not aimed at OPEC

OSCE sends mission to Armenia to assess situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border

Jeff Bezos warns that U.S. economy may face recession

Kiev says nearly 40% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been damaged

Raisi: Iran will use all its capabilities and potential to end war in Ukraine

Qatar gets first pandas in Middle East

Armenian president delivers lecture at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia

More than half of Britons think Liz Truss should resign

Bloomberg: Putin and Erdogan's cordial relationship arouses Western anger

Dutch government invests up to 3.5 billion in military procurement

Erdogan discusses latest developments in Ukraine with Zelenskyy

School in Paris expels student from class for denying Armenian Genocide

Germany would like to participate in EU observer mission to Armenia

U.S. is considering plan to co-produce weapons with Taiwan

Poland to buy K239 Chunmoo from South Korea

Air defense system repels several missile attacks by Ukrainian troops at Kakhovskaya HPP

Baku court does not definitively terminate criminal prosecution of Yunus spouses

Liz Truss has no plans to resign

CSTO countries agree on draft agreement on standardization of military equipment

EU countries agree to sanction eight people and organizations over Iranian drones

Congressman David Price meets with rector of Yerevan State University

Chairman of Amsterdam City Court visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan

ASPU supports process of unification of universities

Deputy Chief of Police on new draft law: 'Citizen of Azerbaijan' is extremely relative notion

Benny Gantz: Israel will not supply weapons to Ukraine

Saudi Arabia lifts ban on Turkish soap operas

Armenia lawyer arrested

Remains discovered during renovation of Ministry of Culture building in Tbilisi are transferred to Armenian Pantheon

Dollar goes up, euro falls in Armenia

IRGC special forces conduct helicopter operations on third day of exercises on border with Azerbaijan

MFA: France position on achieving Armenia-Azerbaijan peace is unchanged

Foreign Minister: Iran will not allow blocking its communications with Armenia

Kremlin: Russia does not intend to close borders amid introduction of martial law in four regions

EU mission delegation visits some border communities of Armenias Gegharkunik Province (PHOTOS)

Armenias Papikyan attends defense ministers assembly in India

Brusov university rector: Armenia education minister offered me a high position in new university, I declined

Putin imposes martial law in new territories of Russia

Yerevan to host Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting

Putin holds meeting of Security Council

Armenia MOD spox: Azerbaijan still preventing search operations

Iran announces retaliatory sanctions against EU

Russian Defense Ministry reports on strike on military facilities in Ukraine

Artsakh Foreign Minister receives Ruben Vardanyan

Israel calls Australia's refusal to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel 'pathetic decision'

Armenia to tighten penalties for overloading of trucks

Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey army elite units conduct demonstration military drills

Luxembourg parliament speaker: Azerbaijan aggression is direct attack on Armenia sovereignty

Russia Investigative Committee chief confirms theory of Crimean Bridge explosion accomplices

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Ruling Republican Party of Armenia MP Samvel Farmanyan, who is also Co-Chair of the European Union-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and member of the Armenian National Assembly delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), on Thursday delivered remarks at the PACE Winter Session discussions on the situation of human rights in Azerbaijan.

Farmanyans remarks are as follows:

Mr. Chair,

Dear Colleagues,

May I thank the both rapporteurs, Mrs. Mailis REPS and Mr. Yves Cruchten for the massive work laying behind the reports and draft resolutions submitted to our consideration and this joint debate today. It is another example that this House is consistent to address its core values unless they are safeguarded in a sustainable manner across the Council of Europe.

It is evident that the existence of dynamic civil society is crucial to a democratic state, and respect for fundamental rights, particularly, the right of free expression, the right to freedom of assembly and the right to freedom of association is vital to the proper functioning of civil society. In this respect, the growing tendency to limit NGOs activities and attacking and politically prosecuting or jailing human rights defenders in a couple of member states, more drastically in the neighboring Azerbaijan, an increasing black spot on the human rights map of Europe, is more than concerning.

The both reports illustrate in the way best possible where we stay there in Azerbaijan in terms of democracy: heavily increased legal and administrative restrictions for NGOs, ongoing crackdown of the germs of civil society, dozens of politically motivated cases of prosecution and jailing of all those who are critical of the Azerbaijani government and Aliev family. One may become surprised at this House of Democracy to hear about the legal restrictions posed on civil society organizations in Azerbaijan. In order to establish a local branch the international NGOs are legally oppressed to conclude an agreement with the Ministry of Justice about respecting national moral values and not getting involved in political propaganda. It is obvious and the rapporteurs confirm it, that it is impossible to define these provisions clearly, which in fact serves a pretext for criminal prosecution of all those who demonstrate any criticism towards Aliyev regime.

All the proactive international NGOs, which have done a lot, along with the Council of Europe and European Union for nursing the germs of civil society in post-soviet area, including Armenia, namely Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Transparency International and others are labeled by the government and our Azerbaijani colleagues sitting next to us here at the Assembly to use double standards towards Azerbaijan, making false claims in their reports thus trying to argue the validness of the harsh restrictions of their activities in Azerbaijan. Even more, civil society organizations are deliberately denied of access to foreign funding: it is legally binding to get the permission of the Minister of Justice to get funding exceeding the amount of 180 Euros let alone the policy of turning down applications of all those NGOs for registration which are critical of the government of Alievs autocratic regime.

Colleagues,

Making reference to our region, one may say that the reports are not about the inappropriate restrictions on NGOs activities and the human rights defenders being prosecuted but also about the perspectives of peace. In the case of our region democracy means more. Let me be clear. The dominating Goebbels-style state propaganda, when Armenians are declared to be the enemies of the Azerbaijani nation world-over, and having murderer Ramil Safarov declared to be a national hero and an true example for younger generations, all those who speak about peace and the need to find a diplomatically negotiated solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem are labeled and treated as betrayers of Azerbaijan spying for Armenia. State propaganda puts all these people to be betrayers of Azerbaijan refreshing our memory back from the brutal Stalin era. My time will not be enough to name all these victims.

We should send a clear message President Aliev, one of the last dictators in our continent, to put an end to systematic repression of human rights defenders, the media and those critical of his government and his family.

Colleagues, again, democracy means more in our region.

Many thanks for your attention.
YEREVAN.  The Minister of Justice of Armenia, Arpine Hovhannisyan, does not yet wish to comment on the fact that the governments of Azerbaijan and Hungary have been asked by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to respond formally to the case brought by the relatives of Armenian army officer Gurgen Margaryan, who was murdered by Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov in Budapest in 2004.

I will refrain from giving any comments, since there is no final decision at this moment, Hovhannisyan on Friday told reporters, and in response to the query on whether Armenia will be a third party in this court case.

Gurgen Margaryan and Ramil Safarov were attending a NATO-sponsored English-language course in Budapest. On 19 February 2004, Safarov murdered Margaryan by decapitating him with an axe. In April 2006, Safarov was found guilty of murder by the Budapest City Court, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the possibility of conditional release after 30 years. The court found that Safarov had intended to kill two Armenian participants at the course on the anniversary of the beginning of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. After the Court of Appeal upheld this judgment in February 2007, Safarov began serving his sentence in a Hungarian prison.

In August 2012, the Hungarian Minister of Justice approved Safarovs transfer to Azerbaijan with a view to his serving his sentence there. A few hours after, however, Safarov was transferred on 31 August 2012, he was granted a pardon by the Azerbaijani President and set free. He was also promoted to major, awarded eight years salary arrears, and offered an apartment.

In response to this development, Armenia suspended its diplomatic ties with Hungary.

Ramil Safarovs pardoning was condemned by virtually all international organizations.
YEREVAN.  The report entitled Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water, and which passed by voting at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), causes no risk to the Armenian side, and the latter can also benefit from it.

Member of the Armenian National Assembly, Aragats Akhoyan, stated the aforementioned at a press conference on Friday.

We [i.e. the Armenian side] can show the international community that Artsakh [i.e. the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR)] is ready for talks, whereas Azerbaijan is not, said Akhoyan. If they [i.e. the Azerbaijanis] have been deprived of water, let them come, negotiate with the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities. In this case, they shall reckon with the fact of the NKRs position.

In the MPs words, the two anti-Armenian reports at PACE were a political directive by Azerbaijan.

This was a result of diplomacy based solely on bribery and lies, he added.

In addition, Aragats Akhoyan lauded the activities which the Armenian delegation at PACE conducted in this respect.

PACE on Tuesday voted against MP Robert Walters (UK) anti-Armenian report entitled Escalation of Violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and Other Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan, but adopted MP Milica Markovics (Bosnia and Herzegovina) anti-Armenian report about Sarsang Reservoir in Nagorno-Karabakh, and entitled Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water.

To note, representatives of the PACE Unified European Left Group, the Socialist Group, and the European Peoples Party voted against both anti-Armenian reports.
YEREVAN. - No final decision on government coalition and appointments of Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) members have been made during the supreme body session of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA).

The party spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov told the aforementioned to Armenian News  NEWS.am after the session, noting that the news on these issues will come out by the end of next week.

We are not closing the doors: we are a political force which supports cooperation. The latter should be related to program and ideological issues. The discussion on the format of the cooperation is underway, and Ill probably be able to tell you news on this at the next session. The RPA executive body hasnt yet discussed who we will cooperate with and what the format of that cooperation will be, as well as whether there will be a governmental coalition or not, Sharmazanov said.

He also noted that the issue on the candidacy of the Human Rights Defender hasnt been discussed either.

We discussed inter-party, interpolitical, and foreign policy issues, mainly related to the new Electoral Code. The issues on a more efficient organization of the coming four-day parliamentary session, as well as the format of the candidates participation in the election of self-government authorities to be held in the first quarter of the year were also discussed, the Spokesman said.
In a room in Rollins School of Public Health, about 50 Emory employees sit quietly. The only sounds are the gentle voice of their instructor and peaceful breathing, interrupted occasionally by muffled noise from a nearby conference room.

In that conference room, no doubt, employees are hard at work on projects and deadlines. But here, for an hour, participants are learning to focus inward. As students in "Mindfulness Meditation 101," they are learning how to use meditation to relieve stress and improve their physical, mental and spiritual health.

Held in the busy last week of the fall semester, the introductory information session was conducted by Sue Matthews, part-time psychologist with the Faculty Staff Assistance Program, as part of FSAP's "Success with Stress" workshop series. The idea was to learn how to concentrate on the breath and notice what is happening in the moment, but not feel pressure to do anything about it.

After experiencing guided meditation, participants offered a variety of reactions:

"I struggled to cancel out the voices but realized I had to accept them."

"I found it easier to do this in a group than by myself."

"So peaceful and present."

Matthews explains that meditation, like any new skill, requires repetition. "If you practice it, you will get better," she says. "You'll find you can get it when you need it."

Luckily, Emory staff, faculty and students have many opportunities to practice meditation on campus. Due to the high registration for December's workshop, FSAP plans to offer the class again in early 2016, this time at an Emory Healthcare location.

"We have received increased requests for mindfulness workshops over the past few years, and as research continues to highlight the benefits of meditation, we are incorporating mindfulness into more of our programming," says Robin Huskey, manager of education and outreach at FSAP, noting that they have also offered a "Mindfulness for Caregivers" workshop as part of the Emory Caregiver Wellness Workshop Series, co-sponsored with the Emory WorkLife Resource Center.

There are multiple meditation groups meeting across the university, with opportunities available every day in locations ranging from Cannon Chapel to the School of Medicine. The Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies maintains a list of meditation options, while the Emory-Tibet Partnership offers more in-depth opportunities for cognitively-based compassion training (CBCT), which also draws on meditative practices.

Both allow practitioners to experience "a restorative break," notes Bobbi Patterson, professor of pedagogy and a longtime participant and instructor in meditation.

"Science is catching up to what religious communities hypothesized, experimented with, and learned: stilling the mind for compassion is fruitful for self, others, all living beings," Patterson explains.

Mindfulness and compassion

Mindfulness meditation focuses on being present in the moment and aware of one's own thoughts and feelings, without judging them to be good or bad. A growing body of research supports the use of mindfulness to benefit physical and mental health.

Cognitive-based compassion training includes elements of mindfulness, with a specific focus on relationships with other people. Emory studies have shown that a CBCT protocol developed by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership, can significantly increase the ability to interpret other people's facial expressions, leading to increased empathy, and that it can reduce emotional distress and improve resilience for both healthy young adults and high-risk adolescents.

"Training in compassion begins with stilling the mind through keeping the attention in the present moment  following the breath, for example," says Timothy Harrison, CBCT assistant director for the Emory-Tibet Partnership.

"Such practices improve our ability to maintain attention on one thing and not have it drawn off by endless distractions," Harrison continues. "From this more stable and calm state, we can expand our compassion by directing attention to the important truths that we tend to forget in the daily hustle and bustle of life, such as the common humanity we share with others, or the fact that our own well-being is deeply dependent on the well-being of others."

Meditation opportunities on campus



A variety of free options for meditation are available on the Emory campus each week, with some focused mainly on mindfulness and others incorporating elements of CBCT. Drop-ins and beginners are welcome for these ongoing groups, which are open to anyone in the university community.

 Cultivating Compassion: Meditation

Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m.

Cannon Chapel, Room 106

Free and open to everyone, this meditation gathering started 10 years ago as a control group for a study, says Patterson, who leads it and was one of CBCT's first certified teachers. The group practices for 30-45 minutes, followed by a short discussion. "We're an 'all comers' group  including everyone from first year students, to staff, to administrators, to grad students, to faculty and community members," she says.

 Graduate Student Meditation

Mondays, 5-6:30 p.m.

Cannon Chapel, Room 106

These weekly sessions provide meditation instruction for individuals at all levels of experience. Coordinators facilitate dialogue about meditation practice and the incorporation of mindfulness into everyday life, and you do not have to be a graduate student to participate. "We now generally offer three to four daylong sessions throughout the year and one or two overnight residential retreats, as well as periodically screen meditation-related films," says Amanda Brown, one of the coordinators.



 Emory Buddhist Club

Self-guided meditation, Mondays, 8-9 a.m.

Group meetings, Thursdays, 6 p.m.

Cannon Chapel, Room 106

The Emory Buddhist Club welcomes students, faculty, staff and friends for meditation instruction and practice. The club, led by Emory Hsu, hosted guided meditation led by experienced teachers 48 times during 2015 on the Emory campus, plus twice at Oxford College. "Our goal is not to convert people to Buddhism," Hsu notes. "We aim to bring diversity to our university, to expose students to different cultures and viewpoints, to foster an appreciation for healthy contemplation  through meditation and universal practices of tolerance, contentment and compassion."

 School of Medicine

Meditation space, weekdays, 12-1 p.m.

Guided meditation, Wednesdays, 12:15-12:45 p.m.

James B. Williams SOM Building, Room B03

The daily meditation space is available Monday through Friday. Each Wednesday, a visiting instructor from the Emory-Tibet Partnership's CBCT program attends and leads a guided introduction to meditation basics.

Other chances to learn meditation at Emory

In addition to ongoing groups that are open to all, meditation and Cognitively Based Compassion Training are featured in several other Emory classes and programs.

Emory's Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) incorporates mindfulness meditation into a number of its programs for students, including a stress management clinic and the "Act on Anxiety" and "Emotional Fitness" groups, according to Wanda Collins, assistant vice president and director of CAPS.

The Emory-Tibet Partnership provides CBCT classes for medical students, faculty and staff each semester, Harrison says. And in collaboration with the Carlos Museum and CAPS, CBCT is offered free to students each term at museum. Also, at the Marcus Autism Center, CBCT is offered regularly to faculty, staff, and parents of autistic children.

Meanwhile, Spiritual Health plans to begin offering meditation opportunities this year focused on patients, family members and Emory Healthcare staff at all Emory Healthcare facilities, according to Eloise L. Reid, administrative manager, Spiritual Health Administration.

Finally, Emory's annual Tibet Week, held in March, features daily meditations led by CBCT-certified teachers, and the 2016 celebration will include a special four-part mediation series led by Negi.

"You don't have to change your belief system to cultivate a more stable mind and a more generous sense of compassion," Harrison says. "Caring for others, with less prejudice, is a human capability valued by all major faith traditions. And science is finding that being compassionate fosters mental and physical health.

"We all have the seeds of compassion, but it takes thoughtful and sustained effort to cultivate and expand this compassion throughout one's life. Meditation is one way to do that."
Members performing a Libation Ceremony file into Becker Amphitheater during the launch of last year's Black History Month.

WHAT:

Exhibits, panel discussions, film screenings and presentations are planned throughout February to commemorate Black History Month at Cal State Fullerton.

The theme is Black Power: Reclaiming Our Voice Through Resistance, said Fnann Keflezighi, coordinator at the African American Resource Center.

Scheduled events include a screening of Straight Outta Compton, Wednesday, Feb. 17, followed by a Q & A with a panel including Natalie Graham, assistant professor of African American studies; Gregory Chris Brown, associate professor of criminal justice; Torrell Foree, a graduate student; and Shakeyla Mitchell, chair of the Black Student Union.

Events are free.

WHERE:

Cal State Fullerton

800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, 92831

WHEN:

Feb. 1  28

Among the events planned are:

Monday, Feb. 1 African American Concert Dance Legacy: 1930s-1970s Exhibit Opening Reception

4 p.m. Portola Pavilion, Titan Student Union

This exhibit, sponsored by the Pollak Library, features African American concert dances and choreographers from the 1930s to the 1970s as part of the social protest movements for civil rights. It illustrates through pictures, print media, costumes, videos, oral history, audio and live performances, the contributions black artists made to the cultural, political and social context of life in America.

Thursday, Feb. 4

AARC Spotlight: Dawn Person

(exclusive to students) Noon in Humanities-Social Sciences Building, Room 222

Dawn Person Hampton, professor of educational leadership, discusses Access & Equity: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same  on concepts and systematic structures, such as equality and affirmative, and equal access opportunities through dialogue. The event is sponsored by the African American Resource Center.

Wednesday, Feb. 10

Betty & Coretta film screening

6 p.m. University Hall Room 205

After the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. (Malik Yoba) and Malcolm X (Lindsay Owen Pierre), their widows, Coretta Scott King (Angela Bassett) and Betty Shabazz (Mary J. Blige), continue to raise their children and fight for the cause. The event is sponsored by the campus club Sistertalk, the WoMens Center and the Adult Reentry Center.

Thursday, Feb. 11

Thrones of Black Kings

6-10 p.m. Portola Pavilion, Titan Student Union

Members of the CSUF club Sistertalk invite the campus community to the fourth annual Thrones of Black Kings. The semi-formal dinner and award event was created to appreciate the men of color on campus and recognize all their hard work. The keynote speaker is Tami Foy, interim director of research and development at CSUF. Reservations are required and can be completed online.

Wednesday, Feb. 17

Straight Outta Compton film screening with Q & A panel

59 p.m. Portola Pavilion, Titan Student Union

Watch and discuss the film nominated for an Academy Award for best writing, screenplay. The film documents the members of the group NWA who emerge from the streets of Compton in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s and revolutionize hip-hop culture, plus their takes on life in the hood.

Six cast members were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards in the category of outstanding performance by a cast. The film screening is sponsored by the African American Resource Center, Black Student Union and Associated Students Inc. Productions.

Thursday, Feb. 18

President Garcias Black History Month Reception

5:30-7:30 p.m. Fullerton Marriott

President Mildred Garcia and the CSUF African American Faculty & Staff Association celebrate the diversity of the campus community. ALelia Bundles, journalist, author and great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, will be the keynote speaker. The theme of this event is Black Lives Matter: Past, Present and Future.

For more information, and a complete list of events, contact the African American Resource Center at 657-278-3230.

Media Contact:

Cerise Valenzuela Metzger, 657-278-3708
Above Capricorn Technologies - agricultural and environmental consultants /managers focussing on agriculture, horticulture, turf, sportsturf, livestock, land and land rehabilitation, erosion management, bioremediation, phytoremediation, water/wastewater and waste management [especially organics] in the tropics
The Express Tribune quoted that Sharif said 'Wiping out terrorism from the motherland is the collective resolve of the state of Pakistan, its government and people of the land,'during a consultative meeting to review overall security and economic situation in Islamabad on Friday.

PM Nawaz was briefed in detail about the last week's terror attack on the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and subsequent investigations made during the meeting.

Sharif said that 'perpetrators and facilitators of the heinous act of killing our innocent children in the place of their studies will be brought to justice'.

He added that the ongoing military operation, Zarb-e-Azb, has broken the backbone of terrorists who have resorted to attacking soft targets out of sheer frustration.

Sharif futher appreciated the the ongoing Karachi operation and informed that it has yielded positive results.(ANI)
"Since the last week of December 2015, Idea has rolled out 4G LTE network to cover seven major markets in India. By March 2016, our services will extend to three more key markets namely, Maharashtra and Goa, North East and Orissa," said deputy MD Ambrish Jain in a statement.

By June 2016, Idea's 4G footprint will cover 750 cities across 10 telecom circles, he said.

Starting from Thursday, Channarayapatna, Udyavara (CT), Harihar, Kunigal, Mulbagal, and Toranagal towns will also receive Idea 4G LTE services.

By the end of March 2016, Idea aims to spread 4G LTE services to 18 more towns to raise the total count to 61 towns in Karnataka state, the statement said.

The telecom player has 8.6 million customers in Karnataka.

Currently, Idea Cellular owns 1,800 MHz of 4G spectrum in 10 telecom circles, it recently signed up to acquire 1,800 MHz more spectrum from Videocon Telecommunications Ltd under 'Spectrum Trading Agreement' to further extend services.

--Indo-Asian News Service

sth/vd

( 203 Words)

2016-01-28-23:19:34 (IANS)
Kathleen Wynne, the Premier of Ontario, Canada, is travelling to India today to strengthen economic, political and cultural ties between the two regions. Ahead of her visit, Wynne said, " "Ontario and India have much in common - we are both committed to making record-breaking infrastructure investments that will create jobs and strengthen our economies, we both understand the urgency and necessity of creating a sustainable future, and we both know that we need a well-educated workforce to meet the challenges of the future. I look forward to meeting with political and business leaders to share Ontario's expertise in priority areas so that we can strengthen our existing partnerships and look for new ways to work together." From January 31 to February 5, the Premier will lead a delegation of experts from Ontario's sustainable development and urban infrastructure, business, and higher education sectors across India to promote Ontario's business advantage and create opportunities for new partnerships. The delegation will visit four cities - New Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Mumbai - and will formalize agreements and memorandums of understanding within the research, infrastructure, technology, science, film and health sectors. While in India, Premier Wynne will also meet with political and cultural leaders to build new relationships, strengthen existing ones and examine areas for future cooperation. Joining the Premier on the mission are Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure Brad Duguid, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and International Trade Michael Chan, and Associate Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Dipika Damerla, as well as Members of Provincial Parliament Harinder Takhar, Amrit Mangat, Vic Dhillon, Indira Naidoo-Harris and Bob Delaney. Ontario's business environment is designed for global success and Ontario is a North American hub for international investment and trade. It offers direct access to the USD 20-trillion NAFTA market; a multicultural workforce; streamlined regulations; a low-risk investment climate; competitive business costs; and a great quality of life. World-leading companies have invested billions to start or expand their operations in Ontario, including Honda, Magna, Sodexo, Alcatel-Lucent, AXA, DuPont, MDS, Huawei, IBM, and Dell. Ontario has a population of over 13 million (the largest of any province in Canada), generates 37 per cent of Canada's GDP, and boasts an export-oriented GDP that is larger than that of Belgium, Switzerland or any of the Scandinavian countries. (ANI)
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday exhorted the Indian IT industry to develop a software application that would automatically translate into English words spoken in their mother tongue by those who had no formal education in the English language. "Could we think of innovative approaches or disruptive technologies that can automatically translate what people speak in mother tongue into English and vice-versa," he asked doyens of IT industry at conclave 'Vision 2020', organised by Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) here. Observing that there was some kind of elitism in the information technology (IT), the chief minister admitted that knowledge of English was an advantage to understand hardware and software and to communicate with overseas clients in the US and Europe. "Yet, we have a large number of people in India, who, owing to historical reasons, are not exposed to English education the way affluent children from metros and cities are," Siddaramaiah pointed out. Assuring the industry that such customised applications would enhance outsourcing from India, he said an automatic translation software or app would also help artisans, traditional designers and others hamstrung by language barriers to market their skills and products. Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy was among those present at the day-long event on increasing Indo-US trade to $500 billion over the next decade from $100 billion currently. --Indo-Asian News Service fb/vd ( 234 Words) 2016-01-29-23:23:34 (IANS)
Seems like actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui is too 'image-conscious' to keep mum about the FIR registered against him for allegedly assaulting a woman over a parking dispute. "I held this press conference so that no such negative image goes to the society," he told the media here. When asked about whether or not the 'Badlapur' actor will take any action against the complainant, he said, "I don't want to take any action against her. I just want to get things clarified to the society. Why will I take any action? She did a mistake." Thinking the whole incident to be a planned one, the 41-year-old actor said he was the easiest target to get in news. "I was the easiest target in the society and hence I was victimized...I am the easiest way for them to get in news," he said. The Versova Police Station had on January 17 registered an FIR against the actor after a 24-year-old woman residing in the same housing society, approached them alleging that he had pushed her and behaved inappropriately following a dispute over parking space. The actor was charged under Section 354 of the IPC that deals with assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty. (ANI)
A Kolkata court is likely to pronounce the quantum of punishment today for six of the accused guilty of gangraping and murdering a woman at Kamduni village in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district. The court had yesterday found six out of the eight accused guilty in the gang-rape case out of which two accused were let off due to lack of evidence. On June 7, 2013, a B.A. second year student was allegedly gang-raped and murdered by few local miscreants inside an isolated compound at Kamduni village, while she was returning home from her college. Her body was found the next day. Nine were arrested in connection with this case. Gopal Naskar, one of the arrested persons, died of fever and septicaemia in custody on August 1 last year while the other eight are in judicial custody. (ANI)
The Congress Party on Friday alleged that the Centre has insulted both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with motive of 'political vendetta' after none of the cities in both the states could make it to the first Smart City contest. "The list of Smart City clearly reveals that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not able to digest his loss in Bihar and there is no chance of BJP in Uttar Pradesh and that is why with a motive of 'political vendetta' the Smart City contest has insulted both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh," Congress leader Pramod Tiwari told ANI. "That is why none of the cities from both the states have been able to make it to the Smart City contest," he added. Tiwari further said that he would be raising this issue in both houses of Parliament. Populous states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Jharkhand have missed the Centre's Smart City, where Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar tops the list of 20 cities as part of the first batch of the Smart City initiative that will attract investment of over Rs 50,000 crore to leap into a modern and dynamic landscape. Congratulating the winners, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "I wish the cities the very best as they move forward with implementation and transform urban India." Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu clarified that the final selection of cities was based on 'bottoms up' approach with the involvement of citizens in formulation of vision and plan. Urban local bodies and state governments piloted the mission. He added the ministry did not play any role in the selection. The Centre will give each city Rs 500 crore over five years under the Modi government's smart city mission. The Centre had pledged to spend Rs 48,000 crore in five years to elevate 100 localities to the status of smart cities. Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davanagere, Indore, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belagavi, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal are the other cities selected in the first batch. (ANI)
: The University of Mysore (UoM) will set-up a film and television school to offer certificates, diplomas and masters degree in film-making on the lines of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). The University had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Franco-Indian Film Society to promote International School for Cinema and Television. The Vice Chancellor K S Rangappa said the Board of Studies will design and finalise the course curriculum in association with Franco-Indian Film Society. Prof Rangappa said, in all probability, admissions for the course may commence from 2016-17 academic year. The initiative is perhaps the first of its kind by any university in the country. It will help creative students, who are keen to enter film and documentary making, but lack avenues to hone their interest. The courses offered by the proposed institution will be similar to those offered by FTII and similar international schools to match global standards, he said, adding, the move was to create a world class film school that will offer specialised training and courses in the art of film making. The curriculum concept envisages a one-year certificate course in film-making and two-year diplomas in scriptwriting, screen-play and sound, producing, directing, cinematography, art direction, production design and editing. The masters degree is envisaged to be a three-year course in art direction, cinematography, directing, editing, television, producing, scriptwriting and sound. The proposal states that the concept envisages educating the students to become film makers first by making a number of short projects, before specialising in different professional disciplines. Before launching the course, there are plans to research the existing curricula, besides consulting with the industry professionals in the U.S. and Europe. There will also be meetings with film schools in France, Denmark, Belgium, the U.S. and England before inking an MoU with each of the schools, he added.UNI BSP KVV RSS 1050 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-562382.Xml
The 25-year-old was on his way from Srinagar when he had an altercation with a passenger over travelling without a ticket.

The police was called after the scuffle broke out and the man was handed over to the police, where after questioning he revealed that he was from Kabul.

The man came to India in 2013 and doubts remain over the validity of his Visa.

Meanwhile, two mobile phones and a laptop have been recovered from him and an investigation is underway.

Pathankot has turned into a fortress since the deadly terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force Base earlier this year and security has been heightened in the area. (ANI)
A bemused Congress Party on Friday asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his NDA Government has a Pakistan-centric policy at all, given the time being taken to fix a convenient date for foreign secretary-level talks. "I fail to understand, if at all, whether the Modi Government has a policy on Pakistan. The present government has no policy or ambition to deal with Pakistan, and that is why they keep overturning their decisions," Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar told ANI. Aiyar also questioned the need for Modi to take a sudden detour to Lahore to greet Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday on December 25. "On December 25, 2015, it was uncertain where the prosecution of 26/11 would head and suddenly the Prime Minister goes to Raiwind and greets happy birthday to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and tries to create an atmosphere aimed that there would be something great happening soon, but just after a month, things fall back to the point where they were," he added. He said Prime Minister Modi always makes tall promises only to leave everyone disappointed later. Aiyar's broadside against the NDA regime came a day after the External Affairs Ministry had said that both nations are yet to agree on a mutually convenient date for foreign secretary-level talks. "We see Mumbai terror attack trial in Islamabad as a test of Pakistan's sincerity in combating terrorism directed against India," MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup had said on Thursday. "The planning, training and financing of the Mumbai attack was done in Pakistan where 99% of the evidence is. It is Pakistan's responsibility to unearth and present the requisite evidences so that the perpetrators are brought to justice," he added. The MEA was responding to a Pakistan court dismissing a government petition that sought voice samples of 26/11 mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects in the case. In 2011 and 2015, the issue of obtaining voice samples of Lakhvi had been dismissed by the trial court on the grounds that "no such law exists that allows obtaining of voice sample of an accused". The prosecution's petition said the Indian intelligence agencies had intercepted communication between the suspects and the terrorists in connection with the Mumbai attack in 2008. (ANI)
Working president of the National Conference (NC) Omar Abdullah questioned the cooperative federalism and said Raj Bhavans are being used to engineer defections or bully states by threatening to withhold their funds. Taking to micro blogging site Twitter, former Chief Minister Mr Abdullah said, Amazing model of "cooperative federalism" use Raj Bhavans to engineer defections or bully states by threatening to withhold funds. He was reacting to a tweet which said Straight forward blackmail by @BJP4India J&K won't get central funds unless it's part of the Govt. The tweet was referring to formation of new government in Jammu and Kashmir, where Governor's Rule has been imposed after the death of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in AIIMS, New Delhi on January 7. Sayeed was heading Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state since March last year before his death. However, Mr Abdullahs tweet got different reactions on the twitter. Some said you (Omar)failed during his regime while others asked him not to misguide people as Jammu and Kashmir is a sensitive state. A Tweet wanted to know how much funds were given to Gujarat during UPA rule of which NC was a partner. A tweet wanted to know Does NC's offer of unconditional support to PDP for government formation stand today as wel.UNI BAS SV RK1355 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-562544.Xml
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allowed foreign institutional investors (FIIs) or registered foreign portfolios investors (RFPIs) to invest up to 49 percent of the paid up capital of PC Jeweller under the Portfolio Investment Scheme (PIS). Earlier the company has passed resolutions at its Board of Directors' level and a special resolution by the shareholders, agreeing for enhancing the limit for the purchase of its equity shares by FIIs/RFPIs.'' ''The purchases could be made through primary market and stock exchanges and would be subject to Regulation 5(2) of FEMA Notification No.20/2000-RB dated May 03, 2000 (as amended from time to time) and other terms and conditions stipulated by the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank has notified this under FEMA 1999,'' the RBI said. Reacting to the news the shares of the company gained Rs 5.10, or 1.22 percnt, to trade at Rs 422.85 at 1330 hrs.It hasrecorded the day high of Rs 433.40 and low of Rs 420.50 so far during the day UNI JS NV SM1347 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-562652.Xml
As protests gather pace across Kerala over allegations against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the solar scam case, police and opposition activists clashed on streets of the capital. Kerala solar scam: Protests, pressure pile up *The youth wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) - Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) is protesting outside the Kerala Secretariat on Friday. *The police used lathi-charge and teargas on protesters who tried to march towards the government headquarters. *Protestors have been pelting stones and violent clashes are taking place in Thiruvananthapuram. *Security forces have been trying to restrict the protestors from advancing towards the secretariat by using tear gas shells and by barricading the area but the situation is still tense. *The scam relates to the duping of several persons by the two prime accused -- S Saritha Nair and Radhakrishnan -- who had promised to install solar power panels for them. *Deposing before the Justice Sivarajan Commission which is probing the solar scam, Nair accused Chandy, and his Cabinet colleague Arayadan Mohammed of accepting bribe of Rs 1.90-crore. *Nair deposed before justice G Sivarajan's panel, and claimed the money was handed over to Chandy's Delhi-based aide Thomas Kuruvila in two instalments. *A vigilance court ordered the vigilance director to file an FIR and conduct an inquiry against Chandy and power minister Aryadan Mohammed on a petition alleging that they had taken bribes of Rs 1.90 crore and Rs 40 lakh respectively from solar scam accused Saritha S. Nair. *The Chief Minister spent nearly 11 hours on Monday being questioned by the inquiry panel. He has refused to take a lie-detector test as suggested by Saritha Nair's lawyer. *Facing a heat of demands for his resignation, Chandy said : "Why should I resign? I am telling the people of Kerala that even if there is one per cent truth in what is being claimed, forget about resigning as Chief Minister, I will quit politics". *Chandy has moved High Court against the vigilance court order which allowed an FIR to be filed against him. *It is probably the biggest scandal to have rocked any government in Kerala so far. (ANI)
Yadav, who is a legislator from Vikaspuri constitunecy, was arrested along with four AAP workers for rioting while protesting the alleged rape of a three-year-old girl in Nihal Vihar in west Delhi on Thursday.

The alleged rape took place about two days ago.

Police said there were around 100- 150 AAP supporters in the protest and they even tried to disrupt traffic movement.

"We have arrested Yadav and four AAP workers. They went on to protest despite the rape accused been arrested.

"They pelted stones at police in which at least two officials were injured. They have been booked for rioting and causing hurt to public servant," said a police official.

--Indo-Asian News Service rak-sid-gsh/pku/vm

( 147 Words)

2016-01-29-15:43:42 (IANS)
According to AAP leader Sanjay Singh, Mr Yadav was arrested by the police as he was protesting against the alleged rape of three-year-old child and clashed with a police officer.

However, Mr Yadav has accused the police of not filing the case.

Earlier, the Delhi Police also arrested AAP MLA Akhilesh Tripathi in connection with 2013 riot case. Tripathi an MLA from the Model Town constituency, was the fifth AAP legislator to be arrested by the police. Earlier, four AAP MLAs -- Somnath Bharti, Manoj Kumar, Surender Singh Commando and Jitendra Singh Tomar -- have been arrested in connection with different cases.UNI SM SW AE1452

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India need to strengthen economic engagementwith United States to achieve the goal of touching a trade of USD500 billion by 2020, between the two largest Democracies can beachieved through fast growth in investment, technology transfer,joint research, marketing and others, Karnataka Chief MinisterSiddaramaiah today said. Speaking at the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) Conclavehere, he said the Karnataka government had been the flag bearer ofpromoting Startups in the country and will remain a leader inpromoting the highly talented techies who want to turn entrepreneurs. ''Let me flag mark an important area that holds considerable scopefor enhancing our exports. That is Startups, which can open up newervistas for employment also. The Government of India, last weekannounced the Startup Policy mainly to encourage self- employmentand to ease doing business. I wish the scheme the very best,'' headded. Advocating opening up of agriculture and giving it an industrystatus, Mr Siddaramaiah said India had a bigger responsibility tohelp the farmers. Karnataka had taken a significant step and theAmendment of APMC Act was an example which was being implemented inother States in the country. ''When all States come around leading to creation of a largenational common market for agricultural products. Such changes canbring about great transformations in our agricultural practices,food processing industry, packaging segment and importantly inenhancing our exports of food products and grains,'' he said. He said outsourcing from India should be enhanced that will helplarge number of artisans, traditional designers and many others whowere hamstrung by language barriers to market their skills. He said the City of Bengaluru had a special relationship with theUS and this could been seen in the Information Technology industryclusters are located, which resembled Boston and the Silicon Valley.Large American corporations were being here for long and have becomea part of cultural and social milieu of this great city. The city isthe first one in the country that carved out a unique mind spaceamong the IT fraternity in the US. This should be emulated in othercities, he added.MORE UNI RS MSP VV AK1523 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0285-562755.Xml
Congress today expressed concern over the Modi government's actions leading to dilution and weakening of the Forest Rights Act 2006 -- a key legislation enacted under the party-led UPA regime that provided for empowerment of tribal people and land rights to them in forest areas. Party spokesman and former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh told a news conference at the AICC headquarters here this afternoon,'' The Act is one of the outstanding achievements of the previous UPA government that provided to 16.7 lakh forest dwellers, predominantly tribals, legal title for the lands they have been residing on and cultivating for decades...each patta(title) is about 4 acres...thousands of villages have received community forest resource rights, ownership rights over non-timber forest produce like bamboo strengthening their livelihoods and also food security. "This is nothing short of a revolution made possible by this far-reaching legislation passed by Parliament in December 2006," Mr Ramesh asserted. Now, however, a series of actions of the Modi government had diluted and weakened the Act..the actions particularly include notification of rules under the colonial Indian Forests Act, guidelines for privatisation of forests, diversion of forest lands without consent of the gram sabhas, massive plantation in tribal lands among many others, he pointed out. "These moves have greatly affected the early gains made by the FRA to empower the tribals and even halted the process of implementation in many states...all these exhibit intolerance towards the democratic governance of forests in the country and the protective legislations (FRA, Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas Act,1996) enacted after a long struggle by the tribal and forest dwellers. ''The Ministry of Environment and the Forest Department had obstructed and undermined the Community Forest Rights and authorities of Gram Sabhas through various programmes, schemes, policies,'' he added. Elaborating, Mr Ramesh said: "the decision taken by the Forest Ministry to open up40 per cent of the forests in India for private sector has created huge uproar...in August 2015, the Ministry issued guidelines to handing over degraded forests to private companies for afforestation. The guidelines specify that, aside from fodder, local communities' rights will be restricted to "10-15 per cent" of the allotted plots. ''The guidelines require the state governments to initiate the process of identification of the forest lands which can be handed over to private companies through MoUs...state governments have already swung into action to actualise this as was reported from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh,'' he added. Privatisation of forests was clearly antagonistic and violative of the legal democratic governance and management framework established under the Forest Rights Act which extends to all forest lands accessed and used by tribal and forest dwellers in India. Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have brought into effect the Village Forest Rules under the Indian Forest Act 1927, thereby undermining the 2006 law and Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, by an Act of the colonial government, the Congress leader quipped. Support to anti-Forest Act Rules such as village forest rules by the Central government has now encouraged the forest department to implement similar programmes in other states...though community forest rights (CFRs) are now recognised as a new legal category of forest to be governed and managed by the Gram Sabhas but the forest department continue to carry out forestry operations in the CFR areas in violation with the FRA provisions, Mr Ramesh said. There is a strong resistance in implementation and even violation of the Act in forest areas proposed for diversion for various projects. Since NDA came to power, he added, the Ministry has issued number of guidelines and circulars exempting compliance of FRA and consent of Gram Sabhas in the process of diversion of forest land...this is despite the fact that the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has pointed out that such exemptions are illegal and that the Forest Ministry or no other government agency has the authority to exempt legal requirements under FRA. However the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change guidelines still operate and continue to violate Act in the forest diversion process in many states. Likewise, rights recognition processes were delayed and stagnated where development projects are in the pipeline such as in states like Goa, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, he said.MORE UNI AR-SS SW-RP1640 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-562922.Xml
The crime happened around 0700 hrs when Illias Shaikh was moving towards his shop for reopening for the day's business, some six to seven youths on motor cycles came close to him and shot at Kaliachak under English Bazar police station.

The injured was first taken to Kaliachak medical facility from where he was taken to Malda Medical College and Hospital where he was declared brought dead.

Tariq Shaikh, nephew of the victim, said five-six bullets pierced through his uncle's body.

No arrest had been so far in the crime.

The deceased was a relative of a local Trinamool Congress leader, police added. UNI XC-PC AKM AE GC1728

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The arrested was identified as Mohd Rafeeq alias Jaweed aliasAlam Jeb Afridi, resident of Ahmedabad, according to NIA release.

A woman, native of Chennai, was killed and eight others injuredin a bomb blast on December 28-2014 in front of Coconut Grove Bar &Restaurant at Church Street here.

Rafeeq, a member of banned SIMI organisation, was also wanted inconnection with running a terrorist training camp at Waghamon inKerala. He had been absconding for more than five years and a rewardof Rs 3 lakhs had been announced by NIA for any information leadingto his arrest.

Working as a Aircondition Mechanic, he had been living in theoutskirts of Bangalore for nearly three years.

During interrogation he has confessed to his involvement in theChurch Street Blast. He had intended to plant bomb inside theCoconut Grove Bar and Restaurant but was deterred by the presence ofstaff and therefore he planted it outside near the wall. He haddone so as per his handler who had informed him about the probablevisit of an Israeli delegation to the caf for dinner that night. MORE UNI MSP VV AK1630

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While giving this information today, Additional Chief Secretary, Cultural Affairs Department, Vijai Vardhan said cultural troops of different countries would visit Haryana and share their cultural heritage.

He said cultural shows, exhibitions and literary activities would also be organised with the help of ICCR.

This would also provide an opportunity to the artistes of Haryana to visit other countries to give their performance which would help them in further improving their performance. UNI NC AE GC1630

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Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar who will hold a road show in Kolkata tomorrow, would also have a special interactive session with industrialists of Haryana origin based in Kolkata the same day and invite them to invest in their native state. While stating this in Kolkata today, a spokesman for Haryana Industries Department said Haryana Industries and Commerce Minister Capt Abhimanyu and President Haryana Nagrik Sangh Babulal Dhanania will also address the session. He said while Haryana Additional Chief Secretary Ram Niwas will deliver introductory remarks of Pravasi Haryana Divas, Principal Secretary Industries and Commerce Devender Singh would give a presentation on Opportunities for investment in Haryana. UNI NC AE BD1719 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-563070.Xml
Lilting martial tunes, and a colourful pageant of military bands with their rhythmic movements today enthralled the audience gathered here for Beating the Retreat ceremony held in the back drop of the majestic Raisina Hills, marking the culmination of the three-day Republic Day celebrations. The function presided over by President Pranab Mukherjee was attended by Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and other senior members of the Cabinet besides distinguished figures from different walks of life and leaders of different political parties. The ceremony started after the tricolor was unfurled by the President, who arrived in the traditional buggy, escorted by a grand cavalcade. A major highlight of this years ceremony was the dominance of Indian tunes. The annual feast of sound and colour, which has emerged as an event of national pride, traces its origins to the early 1950s when Major Roberts of the Indian Army indigenously developed the unique ceremony of display. The ceremony reminds one of a centuries old military tradition, when the troops after ceasing fighting, withdrew from the battlefield and returned to their camps at sunset at the sounding of the Retreat. A sense of nostalgia for the past deepened as the sun went down, and the melodies retreated. The Rashtrapati Bhawan, North Block and the South Block were illuminated, and the breathtaking scene doubled in the water bodies at the foot of the historic Hills. This year for the first time bands from the State Police and Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) performed.The bands comprising Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibet Border Police (ITBP) and Delhi Police played the tunes Samvidhan, Abhinandan and Carriappa. The Tri-Services Military Band, Indian classical instruments Sinfonietta and Jazz Symphonic Orchestra played the tune Agyat Youvana and the Indian Classical Instruments Sinfonietta played the tune Bharat Humko Jaan Se Pyara Hai, adding patriotic flavour to the ceremony. The ever-popular Sare Jahan Se Acha enchanted those present besides keeping the patriotic fervor alive. Indian Navy and Air Force bands also provided visual treat to the audience . The brilliant spectacle is credited to ceremony's showman, principal conductor Cdr VC DCruz, for military bands Subedar Major Ramesh Singh, the Navy and Air Force bands by Master Chief Petty Officer (Musician-I) Ramesh Chand and Junior Warrant Officer Ashok Kumar, respectively. The buglers performed under the leadership of Nb Sub Jagdish Giri and pipes and drums bands played under the instructions of Sub Maj EV. This year, 15 Military Bands, 18 Pipes and Drums Bands from Regimental Centres and Battalions participated in the ceremony .UNI PR/SY/NAZ SW AE 1814 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-563363.Xml
Several persons were injured in stone-pelting and police action as agitations by pro-Marxist and pro-BJP workers, demanding the resignation of Chief Minster Oommen Chandy for his alleged involvement in the solar scam, turned violent in many parts of Kerala today. Five police personnel including Peroorkada Circle Inspector Suresh Babu were injured when the DYFI and the SFI activists threw petrol bombs at the police here. Police burst teargas shells and resorted to lathicharge to disperse the crowd. Reports from different parts of the state said several party activists were injured in police action. Police resorted to lathicharge at agitating DYFI and Yuvamorcha activists when they tried to remove the barricades in front of the State Secretariat here and the Collectorates at Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta and Kozhikode. The protestors burnt chief ministers effigy. Many agitators and media persons including Mathrubhumi cameraman Arun also injured in the police action in many places in the State. UNI DS VV AK1905 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0324-563325.Xml
Nearly 100 people are expected to take part in the conference being organised by National Crime Records Bureau and Madhya Pradesh police. NCRB Director General Archana Ram Sundaram will take part in the conference, said Additional Director General of Police (State Crime Records Bureau) Rajeev Tandon today.

Directors of state finger print bureau and their technical staff will take part in the conference. Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta PP Naolekar will inaugurate the conference. The programme will be concluded in Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaurs presence.UNI PKJ-PS AE AS1820

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Congress must apologise as they were themselves responsible for creating situation like imposition of Presidents Rule in the state, said Arunachal Pradesh unit president of BJP Tai Tagak. He said imposition of 356(I) by the President was only due to their internal feud which was continuing for past over one year. The problem inside the Congress has gone to such a stage when a group of 21 dissident MLAs deserted the party and camped in Delhi for couple of months to meet the AICC president and vice-president, he said in a press meet here. The problem could have been nipped in the bud if the top brass of Congress high-command had met the dissident members and heard their complaints against the ruling government, he said. However, instead solving the political imbroglio, the Congress was unnecessarily blaming the BJP for creating the whole situation, he asserted. The internal problem turned worse in the ruling Congress after the alleged forceful resignation of two MLAs from the party on September 16. There was no role of the BJP in the internal rivalry of the Congress, Tagak categorically said. President's Rule was imposed only due to Constitutional crisis, he said. Referring to observations of noted Constitutional experts, Tagak said, Constitutions Article 174(1) prescribes that there should not be a gap of more than six months between two sessions of a state legislative assembly. And If there was more than six months gap between two Assembly sittings that will be certainly considered as Constitutional crisis, he quoted. The last session of Assembly was concluded on July 18 and next session was due till January 18, he said. Who is responsible for that ? he questioned. BJP is being blamed and its legislators are receiving threats from various quarters, the BJP state president alleged. More UNI PB AKM RSA AE 1844 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-563295.Xml
The Health Minister gave this assurance to president of Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Avtar Singh Makkar after his meeting with him in Amritsar.

Mr Vij said the issues concerning the construction of the college building would soon be resolved at administrative level and thereafter, the construction could be completed and admissions could also be started.

The Health Minister said the previous Congress government did not let the religious organisation to go ahead with the proposal of the medical college. He said that his todays meeting with Mr Makkar aimed at resolving the issues concerning the medical college at the government level.

Mr Vij had also held a meeting with Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim to set up a medical college and had agreed to the proposal.UNI NC AE GC1935

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The Border Security Force (BSF) on Friday expressed its gratitude to the Indian Air Force for airlifting two of their personnel who got injured in an accidental mortar blast to a hospital in Jodhpur. Two BSF personnel have been killed in the explosion. "At around 1.30 pm, an incident took place at Kishangarh Field firing range. During practice, a barrel of a mortar exploded, and two people close to the barrel died almost instantly. The other two injured have been brought to the hospital in Jodhpur," BSF IG BR Meghwal told ANI. "The moment the incident took place, we informed the Air Force. They helped us without a second's delay. And, because of them we could reach the hospital in three hours whereas normally it could have taken up to eight hours," he added. Two BSF men were killed and five others injured in an accidental blast in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer district on Friday. The jawans are said to be from 161 Battalion of the BSF. The incident took place when a mortar shell exploded in a barrel during a training exercise in a firing range in Kishangarh. (ANI)
India was the Partner Country in one of the World's largest public trade fairs for Tourism, Leisure Caravan, Motoring , the Caravan, Motor, Touristik (CMT), Stuttgart 2016 held from January 16-24. The Ministry of Tourism participated in the fair through the India Tourism Office in Frankfurt. The India Pavilion was inaugurated by Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tourism. Suman Billa, Consul General of India in Munich, Sevala Naik, and CEO Messe Stuttgart Richard Bleinroth.Indias presence at CMT Stuttgart as a Partner Country was announced at a colourful opening ceremony on January 16 which was attended by around 1000 invited guests, comprising journalists, travel writers, important personalities from around Stuttgart, exhibitors etc. The event was organised in conjunction with a TV Station (SWR) and hosted by them. During the 20 minute slot given to India, a 5-minute visual presentation of the Film Find what you seek was followed by a speech made by Mr Suman Billa, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tourism and a spectacular performance by the Cultural Troupe from Rajasthan (sponsored by ICCR), which was appreciated by one and all.While addressing a Press Conference for the accredited journalists of the fair, both Mr Billa and Mr Naik stressed on the importance of Germany as an important tourism source market for India and how the Government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi attaches special importance to the relationship with Germany. Indias presence was covered extensively in the local media, both print and electronic. Ms Roma Singh, Regional Director of India Tourism Frankfurt also met journalists from various Television and Radio stations and spoke about India as a major travel destination for the German market. Prior to the commencement of the Fair, India Tourism Office, Frankfurt had sponsored the visit of 10 travel journalists on a familiarisation trip to India. The articles written by these journalists were published before the Fair in various newspapers which not only enhanced the visibility of India as a tourist destination, but also contributed towards instilling the consumers confidence in the destination.To announce Indias presence and attract visitors to the India Stand at fair, the India Tourism Office, Frankfurt had launched an outdoor advertising campaign on buses, bus stops, railway stations as well as at the fair ground in and around Stuttgart. The India Tourism stand at the Fair (Stand number 4 B -10) was a crowd puller. The India stand reflected the theme of Meena Bazaar, with the ambience of the famous bazaar at Delhis Red Fort. A variety of activities like henna painting (Mehandi), palm reading, food tasting, arts and crafts display, Yoga, Ayurveda, Bollywood dances and performances by Rajasthan folk dance artistes sponsored by ICCR, gave the visitors a true taste of India. The consumers that visited the India Pavilion were given information on the diverse tourism products and packages by the eight co-exhibitors (tourism stakeholders from India and Germany) who participated at the India Stand. To appeal to the younger audience, a Photo Booth was set up which enabled the visitors to get their pictures taken against the backdrop of various Indian scenes enabling them to make a virtual tour of India. This was combined with a contest on Facebook where people from various parts of Germany can send their pictures from India with the hash tag #IncredibleIndiaStuttgart to win prizes including the grand prize of two tickets to India sponsored by Air India.There were many activities held on the sidelines of the fair which included a Seminar on Wellness and Ayurveda under Make in India organised by the Consulate General of India in Munich. This seminar was attended by experts in Ayurveda based in Germany. Mr Suman Billa during his address, gave an account of how Ayurveda and Yoga are Indias stellar contributions to human civilisation. As a tradition with CMT fair to organise an event every year themed on one partner country at the fair, the Commerzbank organised an India evening themed on India for their clients which attracted the largest ever audience with the Rajasthani folk troupe enthralling all those present with their great music and colourful dances.The India Tourism stand at the Fair (Stand number 4 B -10) reflected the theme of Meena Bazaar. This concept had been applied in the India Tourism stand by recreating the ambience of a Meena Bazaar to present and market the Indian Tourism products to the visitors at the Fair and allow prospective tourists to experience a bit of what India has to offer in their own country and break down any media generated clichs that stop them from travelling to India. The idea behind the Meena Bazaar was to showcase various aspects of tourism products from India by linking them with tangible Indian products. The India Tourism stand at the Fair carried out a variety of activities like henna painting, palm reading, food tasting, arts and crafts display, Yoga, Ayurveda, folk dances from Rajasthan and many more. There are 8 co-exhibitors in the India Tourism stand comprising tourism stakeholders from India and Germany who were showcasing their diverse tourism products and services. UNI AR RSA 2037 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-563835.Xml
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur today landed in yet another controversy as he commented that it is sufficient if women worship at home. It would be more than sufficient if they worship at home, said Mr Gaur while replying to a query by media over the ongoing controversy related to women trying to break the tradition that prevents them from worshipping at Shani Shingnapur Temple in Maharashtra. Women are barred from worshipping at the Shani Shingnapur Temple. Recently, a woman devotee offered oil to the idol of Shanidev leading to a widespread public outrage. UNI SN-PS RSA AS2050 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-563724.Xml
According to the police the accused were identified as Ramaya (42and Lata (45), both were native of Mudobol village .. the accusedhad confessed that the notes were smuggled from Hyderabad and theywere circulating around their village from last two months . Theseized notes were in the denominations of Rs. 500. worth total valueRs 4,500, police also seized real notes of denomination of Rs 100worth Rs 1000 .

The officials also mentioned that accused was arrested under theprovisions of the Customs Act 1962..

Further investigation is on, police added.UNI SD VV AK2036

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According to information on getting a secret information about the illegal activities of Ram Mehar of Karora village, CMO Dr Vandana Bhatia constituted a team headed by Deputy CMO Dr Neelam Kakkar.

The team, accompanied by police reached the village and a decoy customer was sent to the quack.

The quack received Rs 200 from the decoy customer and gave him three doses of medicine to be given to his wife on three consecutive days for a male child.

The decoy signaled the awaiting team, which caught the quack and recovered signed notes from him and took him in to custody.UNI XC AE NS2002

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Condoling the passing away of Arindam Sen Gupta, Managing Editor of The Times of India, President Pranab Mukherjee in a message to his wife Swati Mitra on Friday said that an accomplished editor who was widely admired, Sen Gupta impacted many lives through journalism - pained by his demise - RIP. "I am sad to learn about his passing away, and I pray to the Almighty to give your family and you the strength and courage to bear this irreparable loss. Please accept my heartfelt condolences and convey the same to all members of your family," writes the President. "Arindam Sen Gupta was a much loved and admired personality in the world of media. He had a long and distinguished career, especially with the Times of India group. During a long and productive career, Sen Gupta made his mark through his writings on a range of issues, including national politics, international affairs, popular films and music," noted President Mukherjee in his letter. "He was warm, friendly, approachable and a source of inspiration to the younger generation of journalists. And, in his death, the nation has lost an eminent journalist, who made significant contribution to establishing new standards for quality journalism in the country," the President added. Sen Gupta passed away early on Thursday after a brief battle against cancer. Meanwhile, condoling the demise of Sen Gupta, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: "An accomplished editor who was widely admired, Arindam Sengupta impacted many lives through journalism. Pained by his demise. RIP." Union Finance Minister and Minister for Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley noted in his tweet, "Arindam Sengupta's passing away is as great loss to Journalism. A complete professional and a perfect gentleman." After completing his Masters from Delhi University, Sen Gupta taught at Delhi University, but later switched to journalism and started workingt with Probe magazine (1982 to 1984). He then joined The Patriot, where he launched the first business page in any daily newspaper. He moved to The Sunday Observer in 1986, and joined The Times of India in 1988 for the first time. However, he returned to The Sunday Observer in 1990 as chief of bureau. He returned to Bennett Coleman and Company Ltd in 1991 when he joined The Economic Times. His rise in the Times Group was swift, and became political editor and editor of ET's Delhi edition, and then moved to The Times of India as editor in 2004. He became the executive editor in 2008, and was redesignated as managing editor recently. (ANI)
This year, 15 Military Bands, 18 Pipes and Drums Bands from Regimental Centres and Battalions participated in the ceremony. Besides, one each of Indian Navy and Indian Air Force band also took part in the event.

For the first time bands from Delhi Police and Central Armed Police Forces participated at the ceremony.

More than thousand bandsmen played music and marched in a synchronised manner at the ceremony.

The melodious sound of the ceremony was quite different this year as 20 tunes out of the 26 were by Indian composers.

The bands comprising BSF and ITBP and Delhi Police played the tunes Samvidhan, Abhinandan and Carriappa. The Tri-Services Military Band, Indian classical instruments Sinfonietta and Jazz Symphonic Orchestra played a Rhapsody.

Indian Classical Instruments Sinfonietta played the tune Bharat Humko Jaan Se Pyara Hai, which added a different flavour to the ceremony.

Other Indian tunes were 'Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja', 'Senani', 'Jai Bharati', 'Sam Bahadur', 'Taqat Watan Ki Hamse Hai'. In the international tunes, 'Lounden's Bonnie Woods' and 'Braes', 'the High Road to Linton', 'Grandeur', 'Redetzky', 'Galaxy Raiders', 'Inspirato', 'Air Born', 'Admirals Ensignia-II' and' Marching Through Georgia' were played.

The event ended with the ever-popular 'Sare Jahan Se Acha'.

The principal conductor of the ceremony was Cdr V.C. D'Cruz. After the ceremony the whole central vista in the Raisina Hill was illuminated.

The function presided over by President Pranab Mukherjee, who was attended by Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, three services Chiefs, several Union Ministers, senior BJP leader L.K. Advani, Congress president Sonia Gandhi among others. (ANI)
The government is expected to take a feedback from the people on the scheme, which would help them decide whether to implement it in future or not.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Friday chaired preparatory meeting with officials and MLAs to work out modalities on how to conduct the exercise.

According to reports, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had last week said his government would seek public opinion on the second phase of the scheme through various means which included phone line surveys and 'jan sabhas' in each constituency to gather feedback.

With Delhi becoming one of the most polluted cities in the world, the government had introduced Odd-Even car rationing scheme for a 15-day trial period, which ended on January 15.

According to the state government, the pollution level of particulate matter across the national capital has shown a declining trend after the implementation of the scheme.

Delhi High Court had backed the scheme, saying that the scheme was a success to some extent, as the idea had appealed to the people. (ANI)
MSGEF president Maxmilian Lyngdoh told reporters that the federation will also set up a Sub-Committee to study the report of the 7th Central Pay Commission and other relevant reports of other states.

After studying the report, Mr Lyngdoh said that the federation, a conglomerate of 36 state government associations, will submit its suggestion to the Meghalaya government to consider the pay revision which should be at par with the Central government.

The revision of pay for the state government employees is due and it is up to the state government to decide and how to implement our demand, Mr Lyngdoh said after holding the 13th federal council meeting.

Mr Lyngdoh informed that the meeting also opposed the extension of service to retired government employees as well as re-employment of retired government officials since it affects the promotional avenues for the existing officials and other government imployees.

In some cases, it was found that the re-employed people were made even to occupy the higher rank but in-service people, continue to serve in the lower post, Mr Lyngdoh said. UNI RRK KK RSA BD2143

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Employees of three civic bodies here on Friday announced to extend their strike for an indefinite time period against the Delhi government over the non-payment of dues, while the AAP government termed the entire sequence of events "an indication towards a massive salary scam". "It was a symbolic strike for three days but since no one from the government assured us that our demands would be considered, we have decided to boycott work for indefinite time period," Sanjay Gehlot, president of the Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukta Morcha, told IANS. "Tomorrow (Saturday), we will protest at Delhi assembly speaker Ram Niwas Goel's home in Vivek Vihar (in east Delhi) and dump garbage there," he said. Over 1.5 lakh workers of three civic bodies had begun their three-day strike on Wednesday. Earlier in the day the striking employees of the three MCDs had dumped garbage outside the residence of Transport Minister Gopal Rai. "We will continue to dump garbage on roads till they (government) feel ashamed," a protester said. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in a statement said that the three corporations have themselves admitted having received 100 percent of the non-plan funds - Rs.892.92 crore for North MCD, Rs.465.53 crore for East MCD and Rs.830 crore for South MCD for the current financial year. "It is clear that 90 percent of the non-planned allocation is for payment of salaries, then why the MCD employees have not been paid their salaries?" it asked. "The sequence of events indicates towards a massive salary scam in these corporations, the statement added. Meanwhile, the Delhi unit of Bharatiya Janata Party wrote an open letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on the financial crisis of municipal corporations, with state unit chief Satish Upadhyay urging him to rise above party politics and discharge his responsibilities to the people of Delhi. Upadhyay also requested Kejriwal to release about Rs. 3000 crores to the municipal corporations pending on the basis of the recommendations of 3rd Delhi Finance Commission. He also announced that the BJP workers on Saturday would assemble at Nirman Vihar Metro Station in east Delhi and march towards Delhi Secretariat in support of agitating employees. Striking employees of Delhi's three civic bodies on Thursday had protested and dumped garbage outside Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's office, while Kejriwal had sought fresh election to the three civic bodies. --Indo-Asian News Service am/vd ( 406 Words) 2016-01-29-22:29:34 (IANS)
Police today virtually gave a clean chit to Congress MLA from Bikram, Siddharth in a kidnapping case of girl when she claimed before police that she had willingly married his driver and the legislator was not involved in the case. Senior Police Superintendent Manu Maharaj told UNI that the girl and Deepak, the driver of the Congress MLA appeared today before local Sachivalaya police station where she claimed that she had married with the MLA`s driver willingly. He said the Congress MLA, who was accused of eloping with the girl also reached the police station sometime later. Mr Maharaj said the police investigation had not found the Congress MLA guilty in the case so far and hence he was allowed to leave the police station. He said now the girl and the driver of MLA would be produced in a local court tomorrow, adding that the girl was a major and not a minor as reported in a section of media. The girl told newspersons at the police station that she had a love affair with Pankaj but it was not liked by her father since he wanted to marry her with an old person for money. Abhay Singh, father of the girl, a native of Sonkujra village, had lodged an FIR with Mashaurhi police station yesterday, alleging that MLA Mr Siddharth had kidnapped his daughter with an intention to marry her. Incidentally, Congress MLA Siddarth is the son of eminent child specialist Dr Utpal Kant who was convicted for killing a boy in Rajendra Nagar locality of Patna in ninetees.UNI DH BM RSA AS2200 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-563673.Xml
Police Superintendent (Rail) P N Mishra told newspersons today that dog squads and bomb disposal squads were pressed into service to detect any objectionable materials concealed below berths, inside toilets and other places.

He said that no incriminating object was found from both trains during the frisking.

Jawans of Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) had arrested two suspects from Bihar- Mohammed Fazal Ahmed and Shamsher Ahmed from a bogie of Mahabodhi Express at Vindhyachal Express yesterday.

Nearly 20 batteries were recovered from their possession, giving rise to the suspicion that they might be operatives of some outlawed organisation.

An intensive interrogation of nabbed suspects was on get vital clues from them, sources added.UNI DH BM RSA NS2213

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Senior BJP leader and MLA Nand Kishore Yadav told newspersons here that the Grand Alliance government did not send proposals to the Centre in accordance with the criteria fixed for the purpose, resulting in the denial of smart city to the state.

He said it was still not too late if the government could send a fresh proposal to Union Urban Development Ministry by April 15 for a smart city in the state.

Mr Yadav said that complete transparency was maintained when proposals of various states were considered.

He said these proposals had to pass through a rigorous test but it was unfortunate that proposals sent by the state government could not clear the test. UNI DH AKM RSA AS2259

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The United States has two potential candidates for a vaccine for the Zika virus and may begin clinical trials in people by the end of this year, but there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years, US officials said today. Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said one of the vaccines was based on work done on the West Nile virus. Fauci said that vaccine was never developed because a drug company partner could not be found, but he did not see this as an issue for Zika. "We're already talking to a few companies who are able to partner with us in advanced development," he told a news conference. Zika, a mosquito-transmitted virus, has been linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is like dengue and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, meaning it can be hard to tell if a pregnant woman has been infected. Dr Anne Schuchat of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there have been 31 cases of Zika infection among US citizens who traveled to areas affected by the virus. So far, there have been no cases of transmission of the virus through mosquitoes in the United States, she said. In Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today that Zika is spreading "explosively" and could affect as many as four million people in the Americas. REUTERS SHS PR2300 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-562220.Xml
Australian counter-terrorism police today morning said they had raided multiple properties in Melbourne amid heightened fears of attacks by home-grown militants inspired by Islamic State. "The Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team can confirm it has conducted operational activity in Craigieburn and Meadow Heights, Victoria," the Australian Federal Police said in a press release. Authorities say they have thwarted a number of potential attacks, although there have been several "lone wolf" assaults in recent months, including the shooting death of a police accountant in Sydney in October last year. No further details were immediately available of the raids in the two Melbourne suburbs. REUTERS MI JW PR0603 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-562308.Xml
A fighter jet from a US Navy base in Maryland may have caused a series of sonic booms near the New Jersey coast that prompted hundreds of residents to report earthquake-like tremors. A spokeswoman for Naval Air Station Patuxent River said in her statement yesterday that an F-35C was conducting routine flight testing over the Atlantic Ocean yasterday afternoon that may have created sonic booms. People from New Jersey to Connecticut posted on social media and called local police departments to report a series of tremors starting just before 1:30 pm The US Geological Survey, which monitors earthquake activity, said no quake had struck. The agency reported at least nine sonic booms had been recorded over 90 minutes starting at 1:24 pm near Hammonton, New Jersey, about (56 km) southeast of Philadelphia. A sonic boom is produced when an airplane travels faster than the speed of sound, or 768 miles per hour (1,236 kph). The sound waves can hit the Earth and cause shaking, which is sometimes mistaken for an earthquake, according to the USGS. Two days ago, residents in Charleston, South Carolina, also reported feeling tremors, likely caused by sonic booms from F-18 fighter jets on a training run from a nearby military base, according to media reports. In New York, seismologists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University confirmed no earthquake had occurred in the region on Thursday. The observatory measured vibrations and low-frequency sound waves consistent with about eight sonic booms from approximately 1:20 pm to 2:40 pm, said Won-Young Kim, a research professor there. He said residents on the ground likely would not have heard the booms but would have experienced 15 to 20 seconds of shaking during each one. The tremors produced numerous emergency calls to local police departments, some of which took to Twitter to ask residents not to flood their lines with more reports. No serious damage was immediately reported. Test aircraft from the naval air station fly almost daily along the same route, according to the base's spokeswoman, but most sonic booms are never heard on land. Certain atmospheric conditions, however, can make the sound travel. Some Twitter users offered a lighthearted response. One person using the handle @VixenRogue quipped: "Aliens are invading New Jersey. What's the best way to let them know the other 49 states are just fine with this?" REUTERS MI JW PR0600 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-562310.Xml
The United States has seen increased activity around a North Korean missile site, suggesting preparations for a possible space launch in the near future, US officials told Reuters. The finding was revealed as Washington shows growing concern that Pyongyang could use space technology to enhance its missile capability and while United Nations Security Council members discuss fresh sanctions against North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6. The officials cited intelligence suggesting movement of components and propellant at North Korea's Sohae satellite launch facility. A test could take place within a couple of weeks, they said. "Our concern though is ... it's the same technology to develop ICBMs" (inter-continental ballistic missiles), one of the officials said yesterday. Joe Bermudez, chief analytics officer at commercial intelligence firm AllSource Analysis, said open source imagery showed increased activity, especially at night, at the site in northwestern North Korea. Movement of vehicles, construction and other activities suggested test preparations. North Korea could test a rocket engine alone or as part of rocket launch, Bermudez said. He said North Korea was concealing activities on the site - a new cover obscures satellite views of the gantry tower next to the launch pad. "This is the first time leading up to a potential launch that all the concealment shelters are in place," said Stephen Wood, chief executive officer of AllSource. An analysis by 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, said the cover near the gantry tower could conceal a rocket, and a rail-mounted shelter has been moved adjacent to the engine-test stand on the site. The shelter could allow for rocket stages to be assembled and moved to the tower under cover of darkness of heavy clouds, 38 North found. It is large enough to conceal the first stage of North Korea's Musudan intermediate range ballistic missile, its Unha space-launch vehicle, or a new rocket engine. The analysis said commercial satellite images, taken as a series of "snapshots" from December 28 to January 25, showed "low-level activities" throughout the Sohae Rocket Launch Facility. North Korea last conducted a long-range rocket launch in late 2012, sending an object it described as a communications satellite into orbit. Western and Asian experts said it was part of an effort to build an ICBM. South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok declined to comment on possible pre-launch activities by North Korea, citing a policy of not discussing intelligence matters. North Korea has not yet warned about potential interference with navigation, a step it has taken ahead of previous launches, he said. US Secretary of State John Kerry during a trip to China this week warned against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's declared intention to develop an ICBM with the capacity to carry a nuclear warhead. "It is a threat the United States must take extremely seriously," Kerry told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday. "The United States will do what is necessary to protect people in our country and our friends and allies in the world," Kerry said. The US Missile Defense Agency was slated to carry out a test of ground-based interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California later yesterday. The test is aimed at improving the reliability of US interceptors based in Alaska and California after recent technical challenges. The US military is adding 14 interceptors to the 30 already in place, and defense advocates have called for increasing the number of interceptors. Meanwhile,yeterday the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation to broaden existing sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program, human rights record and cyber activities. REUTERS MI JW PR0558 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-562312.Xml
The head of China's National Bureau of Statistics has been sacked after authorities announced an anti-corruption investigation against him this week, state media reported today. The ruling Communist Party's top anti-graft watchdog said on Tuesday that Wang Bao'an was "suspected of serious violation of discipline", a euphemism for corruption. Wang was deputy finance minister from 2012 to April 2015, when he took up the powerful post of statistics bureau chief, according to the party's anti-corruption watchdog. Wang could not be reached for comment, and it is unclear whether he had retained a lawyer. State media cited information from the Organisation Department of the Communist Party's Central Committee in reporting he had been sacked. A sweeping anti-corruption campaign by President Xi Jinping has targeted a broad swath of high-ranking officials in industry and government, including many of his formidable political opponents. Military brass, judicial officials and leaders of state-owned companies have been caught up in the crackdown. This month, a former vice public security minister, Li Dongsheng, was jailed for 15 years on corruption charges. REUTERS PY GC1406 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-562661.Xml
The United States and Britain have monitored secret sorties and communications by Israel's air force in a hacking operation dating back to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.Israel voiced disappointment at the disclosures, published on Friday in at least two media outlets and which might further strains ties with Washington after years of feuding over strategies on Iran and the Palestinians.Israel's best-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said the US National Security Agency, which specialises in electronic surveillance, and its British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air force missions against Gaza, Syria and Iran.The spy operation, codenamed "Anarchist", was run out of a Cyprus base and targeted other Middle East states too, Yedioth said.Online publication The Intercept, which lists Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald among its associates, ran a similar report, with what it said were hacked pictures of armed Israeli drones taken from cameras aboard the aircraft.Yedioth said German news-magazine Der Spiegel, whose publication day is Saturday, also planned to run an article based on Snowden's leak.Israel neither confirms nor denies having armed drones, though one of its senior military officers was quoted as acknowledging them in a secret US diplomatic cable from 2010 that was published by Wikileaks.The US embassy in Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Snowden allegations.A British embassy spokeswoman said it did not comment on intelligence matters, and there was no immediate response from the Foreign Office in London.Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, sought to play down the issue but said lessons would be learned."I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant," he told Israel's Army Radio. "We will now have to look and consider changing the encryption, certainly."With the Netanyahu government and Obama administration at loggerheads over US-led nuclear diplomacy with Iran, there have been a series of high-profile media exposes in recent months alleging mutual espionage between the allies.Israel insists that it ceased such missions since it ran US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s.Steinitz said Israel was "not surprised" by the hacking described in the latest Snowden leak."We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us, also on their friends," he said. "But still, it is disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in the United States."Yedioth said that the revelations could hurt Israeli drone sales to Germany should Berlin worry about the aircraft networks' security. Steinitz brushed off that possibility."Every country carries out its own encryption," he said.Germany said on January 12 it would lease Heron TP drones from state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). REUTERS PS VP1502 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-562794.Xml
The United States and Britain have monitored secret sorties and communications by Israel's air force in a hacking operation dating back to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.Israel voiced disappointment at the disclosures, which were published today in three media outlets and might further strain relations with Washington after years of feuding over strategies on Iran and the Palestinians.Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth daily said the US National Security Agency, which specialises in electronic surveillance, and its British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air force missions against the Palestinian enclave Gaza, Syria and Iran.The spy operation, codenamed "Anarchist", was run out of a Cyprus base and targeted other Middle East states too, it said. Its findings were mirrored by stories in Germany's Der Spiegel newsmagazine and the online publication The Intercept, which lists Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald among its associates."This access is indispensable for maintaining an understanding of Israeli military training and operations and thus an insight to possible future developments in the region," The Intercept quoted a classified GCHQ report as saying in 2008.That year, Israel went to war against Hamas guerrillas in Gaza and began issuing increasingly vocal threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities if it deemed international diplomacy insufficient to deny its arch-foe the means of making a bomb.Asked for comment, the United States and Britain said through spokespeople for their embassies in Israel that they do not publicly discuss intelligence matters.NOT "DEEPEST KINGDOM OF SECRETS"Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, sought to play down the potential damage but said lessons would be learned."I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant," he told Israel's Army Radio. "We will now have to look and consider changing the encryption, certainly."With the Netanyahu government and Obama administration at loggerheads over the US-led nuclear agreement with Iran, there have been a series of high-profile media exposes in recent months alleging mutual espionage between the allies.Israel insists that it ceased such missions since it ran US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s."We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us, also on their friends," Steinitz said. "But still, it is disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in the United States."The Intercept report included what it said were images of armed Israeli drones hacked from onboard cameras' live feeds.Israel neither confirms nor denies having armed drones, though one of its senior military officers was quoted as acknowledging their existence in a 2010 US diplomatic cable that was previously disseminated by WikiLeaks.Yedioth said that the hacking revelations could hurt Israeli drone sales to Germany should Berlin worry about the aircraft networks' security. But Steinitz brushed off that possibility. "Every country carries out its own encryption," he said.Germany said on Jan 12 it would lease Heron TP drones from state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). REUTERS PS VP1717 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-563202.Xml
Poland does not support "emergency brake" proposals that could help curb immigration from other European Union states to Britain, Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said today.Sources have told Reuters the European Union was offering Britain a plan under which any member that could convince EU governments its welfare system was under excessive strain would have the right to deny benefits to new workers arriving from other EU countries for up to four years.Asked about the proposal, Waszczykowski told a news conference:"No, Poland will accept this mechanism. It will not accept a mechanism that denies social benefits to Poles living in the European Union."Commenting on Poland's ongoing negotiations with the US on a 5 billion dollars tender for Raytheon's Patriot missile defence system, Waszczykowski said: "Today everything points towards Poland having to reopen the tender for a missile defence, and we'll talk again with several countries."REUTERS PS VP1724 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-563222.Xml
Germany's population likely increased by its largest amount in over two decades last year as an influx of migrants more than compensated for a rise in deaths, the Federal Statistics Office said today. The office estimated that the population climbed to 81.9 million in 2015, up from 81.2 million the year before. It was the biggest year-on-year rise since 1992. In a breakdown of the numbers, the office said that at least 900,000 more people came to Germany last year than left. That more than offset the so-called "birth deficit" -- the difference between the number of births and deaths, which was estimated at between 190,000 and 215,000. This deficit was driven by a strong rise in deaths to between 905,000 and 930,000, compared to 868,000 in 2014. Births were estimated to have totalled between 705,000 and 730,000 last year. REUTERS PS BD1835 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-563417.Xml
Italy and Germany are united in opposing political populism as they seek to tackle Europe's economic and immigration problems, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said today."We don't agree on everything naturally," Renzi told reporters following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "But we believe together that fighting unemployment today in Europe means combating populism. We have the same adversary: Populism."Renzi has repeatedly challenged Germany's insistence on austerity in the European Union as a way of weathering slow growth, urging more state spending. Both countries are also struggling to manage Europe's biggest immigration crisis since World War Two. REUTERS PS AS1958 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-563758.Xml
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed his indignation to US Secretary of State John Kerry today over "made up accusations" against Russia's leadership by senior officials from the US administration, Russia's Foreign Ministry said."It was stressed that the guilt for the deliberate escalation of tension in bilateral relations fully rests with Washington," the ministry said.A White House spokesman had said that earlier comments by a US Treasury Department official alleging Russian President Vladimir Putin Putin was corrupt were "a reflection of the administration's view".The Kremlin said earlier today that these comments were outrageous and insulting, aiming to influence Russia's next presidential election. REUTERS PS AS2002 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-563772.Xml
Even in boycotting a debate with his Republican rivals for the White House, front-runner Donald Trump managed to upstage the event with a typical dramatic flourish.Instead of attending a seventh debate, the former reality TV star held a competing event across town that he said raised 6 million dollars for US military veterans. In doing so, he cast a shadow over his rivals, who frequently tossed barbs his way.Trump's gamble that he could leave the battlefield to his rivals for one night appeared to pay off, with just days to go before Iowa holds the first nominating contest of the 2016 election season. No one appeared to emerge as a central challenger to him during the two-hour face-off in Des Moines.Trump's refusal to participate in the debate out of anger that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was a moderator prompted a flurry of last-minute phone calls with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes that failed to resolve their dispute.A Fox News statement said Trump requested that Fox contribute 5 million dollars to his charities in exchange for his attendance, which the network turned down.The debate was the type of event Republicans would routinely have without the flamboyant Trump on stage, and it lacked the electricity that he brings to the party's search for a nominee for the November 8 election.Without Trump on stage, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie found themselves with more room to make their case to voters seeking a more mainstream candidate.Both men have an eye on the Feb. 9 first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, which comes on the heels of the Iowa caucuses on Monday and where an establishment Republican like them might have a better chance of standing out.Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, the two top challengers to Trump in Iowa, engaged in squabbles over immigration and national security and did not appear to threaten Trump's lead. He holds the edge over Cruz in polls of Iowa Republicans.Trump's rivals mocked his decision to sit out the debate and found ways to criticize him."I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz told his rivals, including Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, as the debate opened. His next sentence began: "Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way."Bush, who has been a frequent target of Trump's attacks, turned a question about religious tolerance into an attack on Trump's proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States."Donald Trump, for example - I mentioned his name again if anybody was missing him - Mr Trump believed in reaction to people's fears that we should ban all Muslims. Well, that creates an environment that's toxic in our own country," Bush said.Cruz, after a series of questions, said: "If you ask me one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage."In a swipe at both Trump and Cruz, Rubio chimed in: "Don't worry, I'm not going to leave the stage no matter what you ask me."SOCIAL MEDIA FAVORITEWith his veterans' event drawing live TV news coverage on Fox News competitors CNN and MSNBC, Trump had plenty of media attention.He clung to his insistence that Fox News had treated him badly. He has complained that Kelly insulted him at a debate in August and that a statement from the network earlier this week belittled him.Two other Republican candidates, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, joined Trump on stage after participating in a debate of low-polling candidates.Not so former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore."I'm not about to go across town tonight to carry the coat for some billionaire," he said at the "undercard" debate.There was initially some mystery as to which veterans' groups would receive the money raised at the event, which included 1 million dollars from Trump himself. His campaign, in a statement, said the funds would go to 22 different groups it listed online (http:it.ly/1OTKtuJ).Trump, with just one day's notice on a weeknight, was able to fill to capacity a Drake University hall that holds 700."I didn't want to be here, to be honest, I wanted to be about five minutes away" at the debate, Trump told the crowd. "When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights - whether we like it or not."Trump dominated social media during the debate, leading the entire Republican pack in Twitter mentions throughout the first half of the debate, according to data from social media analytics firm Zoomph.He was by far the most-searched-for candidate on Google during the first half of the debate, at one point outpacing the second-most-searched-for candidate, Rubio, by nearly four-to-one, according to Google Trends data.Trump's support in opinion polls, much of it from blue-collar men, has not wavered for months despite him insulting Mexican immigrants and Muslims and clashing with Republican establishment figures like Senator John McCain.REUTERS SHS NS2123 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-563904.Xml
The Netherlands will broaden its role in the US-led coalition against Islamic State to include the bombing of IS targets in Syria, the government said today.A Dutch squadron of six F-16 fighter jets is already stationed in the region, but was hitherto limited to striking Islamic State positions in Iraq.The aircraft will now be active over Syria until July 1, targeting Islamic State insurgent operations and training camps, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told journalists in The Hague.Islamic State's bombing and shooting attacks on Paris that killed 130 people in November had already led France and Britain to step up their bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq."We have decided to heed the call of our allies for expansion of the operational area of our F-16s to the east of Syria to further weaken ISIS's supply lines and ability to advance," Rutte said, using another of Islamic State's acronyms."Only by taking away ISIS's safe havens in Iraq and Syria can we prevent more attacks."The Netherlands is also considering providing more military equipment and training to Iraqi soldiers battling the militants. It will fund moderate, armed Syrian opposition groups and assist the reconstruction of schools and hospitals, the statement said.Extending the military operation became possible when the Dutch Labour Party, junior partner in the coalition government, said this week it was open to the idea, creating a parliamentary majority for it.Foreign military interventions are especially sensitive in the Netherlands, which led a disastrous U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1995 during which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces.A previous Dutch government collapsed in 2010 in a controversy over participation in military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, where 2,000 troops were active. REUTERS SHS NS2215 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-563949.Xml
Russia said today it was opposed to placing a United Nations arms embargo on South Sudan or blacklisting President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar as such moves were not helpful to the implementation of a peace deal agreed by the pair in August.UN sanctions monitors said in a report, seen by Reuters on Monday, that the UN Security Council should put an arms embargo on South Sudan and sanction the oil-rich country's rival leaders over atrocities in a two-year civil war."(It's) not conducive, not conducive for the peace process," said Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador Petr Iliichev, confirming that Kiir and Machar were among several names proposed for targeted sanctions by the UN experts in a confidential annex.A political dispute between Kiir and Machar, who was once Kiir's deputy, sparked the civil war. But it has widened and reopened ethnic fault lines between Kiir's Dinka and Machar's Nuer people. More than 10,000 people have been killed.On a possible UN arms embargo, Iliichev said: "For us it's a no go, the region is already inundated with arms, so what we need is to control the arms that are there."Iliichev said it would be hard to enforce an arms embargo on opposition fighters, putting the government at a disadvantage.The conflict in South Sudan, whose 2011 secession from Sudan had long enjoyed the support of the United States, has torn apart the world's youngest country. The UN experts said some 2.3 million people have been displaced since war broke out in December 2013, and 3.9 million face severe food shortages.Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal in August but both sides have consistently broken a ceasefire, while human rights violations have "continued unabated and with full impunity," the UN experts reported.US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said yesterday that implementation of the peace deal had stalled.She said the 15-member Security Council would need to look at whether an arms embargo and targeted sanctions could be "a means of stabilizing the situation on the ground or getting the implementation of the agreement back on track.""The stakes ... could not be higher for the people of South Sudan for us to figure out next steps in a hurry," she said. REUTERS SHS NS2356 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-564002.Xml
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There are three months until Election Day, and anti-Trump Republicans finally have their maneven if theyve never heard of him.

On August 8, Evan McMullin announced he is running as an independent for president. If youre not familiar, dont feel bad: McMullin is an almost entirely unknown quantity. A Mormon from Utah, he went to Brigham Young University and later got an MBA from the Wharton School of Businessan alma mater he shares with Donald Trump. He joined the CIA and after serving a stint in intelligence went to work for Goldman Sachs. More recently, he served as chief policy director of the House Republican Conference. McMullin, 40, may not be well known, but its hard to imagine a more establishment resume.

He says hes running out of disgust with the two major-party candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Like millions of Americans, I had hoped this year would bring us better nominees who, despite party differences, could offer compelling visions of a better future, he writes in an announcement letter. Instead, we have been left with two candidates who are fundamentally unfit for the profound responsibilities they seek.

Recommended: Trump Denies Calling For the Assassination of Hillary Clinton

McMullin will have the backing of some anti-Trump Republicans, including the wily veteran strategist Rick Wilson. But he doesnt have a prayer. Even if McMullin succeeds in getting on the ballot in a large number of states, his public profile is nil, and hes unlikely to have the time or money to do much to change that. Some reporters and pundits guffawed at the prospect of National Review writer David French, a previous anti-Trump hope, running for president, but next to McMullin, French looks like  um, whos a widely known celebrity running for president?

Theres a bitter irony to McMullin as the last hope. Anti-Trump Republicans have rejected Trump for many reasonsincluding his policy views, his temperament, and his personal lifebut many have cited his lack of qualifications. In McMullin and before that French, however, the anti-Trumpers have set their sights on two men who, whatever their moral or intellectual qualifications, have never run for office or won a single vote from Americans. (Trump is fond of pointing out that he won more votes than any Republican candidate ever.)

Story continues

McMullins late entry might represent conservatives backing away from Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee. Hes tried to court Republicans who cant stand to vote for Trump, even bringing on former Massachusetts GOP Governor Bill Weld as a running mate, to the consternation of some Libertarians. But Johnsons freewheeling style and peculiar comments about religious freedom seem to have dampened any movement toward him on the right.

Recommended: 15 Years After 9/11, Is America Any Safer?

This cheat sheet has nearly reached the end of its useful life, but well keep updating it with the last few touches. Meanwhile, check out our guides to the Trump veepstakes and the Republicans and conservatives who areor are notbacking him. Heres how things look right now.

* * *

The Republicans

Gage Skidmore

DONALD TRUMP

Who is he?

A brash real-estate heir turned real-estate failure turned recovered mogul turned reality-TV star turned politician.

Is he running?

And how.

Who wants him to run?

A plurality of the Republican primary electorate, but especially a large Caucasian bloc, from white supremacists to aging white people who feel their clout is being lost and the country they know is being taken over by minorities. Even now, many of the Republican Partys leaders and luminaries remain appalled.

Can he win the nomination?

What else do we know?

He cheats at golfprobably.

* * *

The Democrats

Wikimedia

HILLARY CLINTON

Who is she?

As if we have to tell you, but: Shes a trained attorney, former secretary of state in the Obama administration, former senator from New York, and former first lady.

Is she running?

Yes.

Who wants her to run?

A majority of the Democratic Party.

Can she win the nomination?

She has won it, surviving a far more serious challenge from Bernie Sanders than expected.

What else do we know?

The real puzzler, after so many years with Clinton on the national scene, is what we dont know.

Recommended: The Narcissist

Does her website have a good 404 page?

Updated April 12: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you bad swipes in the subway, make a new 404. (h/t David and Adam)

* * *

Third Party and Independent

Wikimedia

JILL STEIN

Who is she?

A Massachusetts resident and physician, she is a candidate of nearly Stassen-like frequency, having run for president in 2012 and a slew of other offices before that.

Is she running?

Yes. Stein announced in June 2015 that she would again seek the nomination of the Green Party, which she won in 2012. The Green Party will formally select its candidate in Houston, this year at their Presidential Nominating Convention on August 6.

Who wants her to run?

Stein seems to have strong support with the Green Party. She managed to collect nearly 500,000 votes in 2012the partys strongest showing since Ralph Naders disastrous 2000 run but well short of the 2.9 million votes he got.

What are her prospects?

Stein hopes to capitalize on the presence of Sanders backers who wont back Clinton. So far, her attempts have been rocky. Most Sanders backers say theyll vote for Clinton, and shes hit turbulence over her flirtation with vaxers.

Who is her running mate? Ajamu Baraka, who doesnt like Bernie, Barack, or Beyonce.

Does her website have a good 404 page?

Possibly not original, but kind of soothing and on-message.

Wikimedia

GARY JOHNSON

Who is he?

Oh come on, you remember Gary! He ran for the GOP nomination in 2012 and then got the Libertarian Party nod after that didnt work out. He was previously a two-term governor of New Mexico. More recently he ran a company that sells THC lozenges.

Is he running?

Sure is. On May 29, Johnson won the 2016 nomination at the Libertarian convention, edging candidates from the highly touted newcomer Austin Petersen to outlandish oddball former tech titan John McAfee.

Who wants him to run?

As his companys site notes, Now that hes associated with what is being hailed the best legal cannabis product on the market, Gary may be drafted for President of the United States by a grateful nation one day. Johnson is also an unusually talented and successful politician to vie for the Libertarian line. The 1.3 million votes he collected in 2012 were the partys all-time highso to speak.

What are his prospects?

Earlier this year, he told my colleague Nora Kelly, I have no delusions of grandeur here. I know what happened last time. But with a sizable chunk of Republicans rejecting Donald Trump, many analysts believe the LP will turn in its strongest performance ever.

Who is his running mate? William Weld, the former moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts.

Does his website have a good 404 page?

No.

EVAN MCMULLIN

Who is he?

Great question. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business and former CIA operative and Goldman Sachs banker, McMullin was until recently chief policy director of the House Republican Conference.

Is he running?

Yes. McMullin announced his independent candidacy on August 8, 2016.

Who wants him to run?

McMullin is backed by some leading anti-Trump Republicans, including the colorful-quote-dispensing strategist Rick Wilson. McMullin says he offers a choice to voters who reject Clinton and Trump.

What are his prospects?

Non-existent. McMullin is the latest in a string of hopes for anti-Trump Republicans. Skeptics pointed out that David French, the last such prospect, who declined to run, had nearly no profile outside of conservative media. But McMullin is an even lesser-known quantity; McKay Coppins reports he had just 135 Twitter followers before he announced his run. Being a CIA and Goldman alum may not be an asset either. The good news is that he is, at 40 years old, old enough to be president.

* * *

Out of the Running

Republicans

Wikimedia

JOHN KASICH

Who is he?

The current Ohio governor ran once before, in 2000, after a stint as Republican budget guru in the House. Between then and his election in 2010, he worked at Lehman Brothers. Molly Ball wrote a definitive profile in April 2015.

Is he running?

No. Kasich announced his departure on May 4 in Columbus. Thats the same place where he jumped in, on July 21, 2015, at the Ohio State University in Columbus.

Who wanted him to run?

At the outset, some white-collar and moderate Republicans. By the end, maybe a few #NeverTrump dead-enders. Kasichs pitch was that he had fiscal-conservative bona fides, could win blue-collar voters, and he has won twice in a crucial swing state. That just never caught on outside of Ohio, though.

Could he have won the nomination?

No.

What else do we know?

John Kasich bought a Roots CD and hated it so much he threw it out of his car window. John Kasich hated the Coen brothers classic Fargo so much, he tried to get his local Blockbuster to quit renting it. George Will laughed at him. John Kasich is the Bill Brasky of philistinism. John Kasich probably hated that skit, too.

Does his website have a good 404 page?

Nope.

Wikimedia

TED CRUZ

Who is he?

Cruz served as deputy assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed Texas solicitor general in 2003. In 2012, he ran an insurgent campaign to beat a heavily favored establishment Republican for Senate.

Is he running?

No. Cruz launched his campaign March 23, 2015, at Liberty University in Virginia but dropped out on May 3, 2016, after losing Indiana and concluding that he had no path to the nomination.

Who wanted him to run?

Hard-core conservatives; social conservatives; and, as the field winnowed, a growing group of Republicans who detested Cruz but still liked him better than Trump, perhaps best personified by Lindsey Graham.

Could he have won the nomination?

In retrospect its easy to explain why he didnt. For one thing, Cruz would have been the most conservative candidate his party had nominatedprobably ever, and certainly since Barry Goldwater. For another, its very hard to win when many members of your party detest you and voters dont like you much either. But because he was the last man really standing against Trump, it seemed like he might be able to marshal a motley coalition to win. He was not.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Wikimedia

PAUL RYAN

Who is he?

The U.S. representative from Wisconsin is speaker of the House, an intellectual leader of the Republican Party, and the GOPs 2012 vice-presidential nominee.

Is he running?

No. Or yes. It depends who you ask. After a surge of draft-Ryan pleas and accusations that he was running a shadow campaign, Ryan held a press conference April 12 to shut the door definitively. Or try to. Can anyone really rule Ryan out until someone else is formally named the nominee?

Who wants him to run?

Desperate Republican insiders. They fear and loathe Donald Trump, who is a loose cannon with barely any tether to conservative principles, much less the Republican Party; but they also personally despise Ted Cruz, who they also think would lose a general election. Ryans the most obvious figure left on the board.

Can he win the nomination?

Since hes not running, it would require a very different kind of campaign. First, Trump would have to fail to win the nomination outright with delegates. Then, he and Cruz (and John Kasich) would all have to fail to win on subsequent ballots at the Republican National Convention. Then someone would have to put him forth, hed have to agree, and the fractious party would have to align around him. Its not impossible to imagine, but its not an easy path in any way.

What else do we know?

Mike Allens Politico Playbook, a favorite inside-the-Beltway tipsheet, has been on the frontlines of pumping up a Ryan bid. For a more skeptical view, read Liam Donovan at National Review.

Does his website have a good 404 page?

He doesnt have one. Yet.

Wikimedia

MARCO RUBIO

Who is he?

A second-generation Cuban American and former speaker of the Florida House, Rubio was catapulted to national fame in the 2010 Senate election, after he unexpectedly upset Governor Charlie Crist to win the GOP nomination.

Is he running?

No. He announced on April 13, 2015, but dropped out on March 15, 2016, after losing his home stage of Florida.

Who wanted him to run?

In the end, not nearly enough people. Rubio was seen as a candidate who could bridge solid conservative orthodoxy with a young, charismatic demeanor. As Donald Trump rose, the party establishment coalesced around Rubio, but as it became clear he couldnt win, his support collapsed.

Could he have won the nomination?

Until Super Tuesday, Rubio seemed to hold the second-choice slot, right behind Trump. But his stumble that day is causing many observers to reassess whether he can actually win. In withdrawing, Rubio suggested he was simply not well-suited to the negative tone of this years primary.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Its decent.

Gage Skidmore

BEN CARSON

Who is he?

A celebrated former head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, Carson became a conservative folk hero after a broadside against Obamacare at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast.

Is he running?

No. He skipped the March 3 GOP debate and suspended his campaign on March 4.

Who wanted him to run?

Grassroots conservatives. Carson has an incredibly appealing personal storya voyage from poverty to pathbreaking neurosurgeryand none of the taint of politics.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Carson was undone by his own lack of knowledge and interest in policy and his failure to hire the right people to get him up to speed. If its any consolation, history weighed heavily against Carsons chances all along: Not since Dwight Eisenhower has either party nominated anyone without prior elected experience for the presidency.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Gage Skidmore

JEB BUSH

Who is he?

The brother and son of presidents, Bush served two terms as governor of Florida, from 1999 to 2007.

Is he running?

No. Bush suspended his campaign on February 20 after coming in fourth in South Carolina.

Who wanted him to run?

Establishment Republicans; George W. Bush; major Wall Street donors.

Could he have won the nomination?

When he entered the race, Bush became an instant front-runner, but when Donald Trump jumped in, he displaced Bush, and Bush never recovered. Could he have done things differently and ended up with a win? Its possible. But Bush had great connections, the staff he wanted, and stupendous fundraising, and he still botched itwhich strongly suggests he just wasnt a candidate who ever had a chance.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Yesy en espanol tambien.

Gage Skidmore

JIM GILMORE

Who is he?

Right? Gilmore was governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002. Before that, he chaired the Republican National Committee for a year. In 2008, he ran for Senate in Virginia and lost to Mark Warner by 31 points.

Is he running?

No. He announced on February 12 that he would end his campaign.

Who wanted him to run?

Who knows?

Could he have won the nomination?

Nah.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Holy Freudian slip, Batman!

Gage Skidmore

CARLY FIORINA

Who is she?

Fiorina rose through the ranks to become CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, before being ousted in an acrimonious struggle. She advised John McCains 2008 presidential campaign and unsuccessfully challenged Senator Barbara Boxer of California in 2010.

Is she running?

No longer. Fiorina dropped out on February 10, following a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary. Fiorina also spent seven days in late April and early May as Ted Cruzs running mateby some measures, the shortest such stint ever.

Who wanted her to run?

She was a business-friendly candidate with a talent for a sharp turn of phrase or jab. But it was never exactly clear what Fiorinas constituency was going to be, and a strong following never materialized.

Could she have won the nomination?

No. Fiorina couldnt crack 5 percent in New Hampshire and was already off the debate stage when she dropped out.

What else do we know?

Fiorinas unsuccessful 2010 Senate race against Barbara Boxer produced two of the most entertaining and wacky political ads ever, Demon Sheep and the nearly eight-minute epic commonly known as The Boxer Blimp.

Did her website have a good 404 page?

No.

David Shankbone

CHRIS CHRISTIE

Who is he?

Whats it to you, buddy? The combative New Jerseyan is in his second term as governor and previously served as a U.S. attorney.

Is he running?

No longer. He suspended his campaign on February 10.

Who wanted him to run?

Moderate and establishment Republicans who dont like Jeb Bush or John Kasich; top businessmen, led by Home Depot founder Ken Langone.

Could he have won the nomination?

Maybe in 2012. This year, Christie staked his chances on New Hampshire, and he ended up a distant eighth. On the evening of February 9, he suggested he might drop out soon. But Christie was already probably toast. The tide of opinion had turned against Christie even before the Bridgegate indictments. Citing his horrific favorability numbers, FiveThirtyEight bluntly punned that Christie's access lanes to the GOP nomination are closed.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

We would have gone with the GIF, but sure.

Gage Skidmore

RICK SANTORUM

Who is he?

Santorum represented Pennsylvania in the Senate from 1995 until his defeat in 2006. He was the runner-up for the GOP nomination in 2012.

Is he running?

No. He dropped out on February 3.

Who wanted him to run?

Social conservatives. The former Pennsylvania senator didn't have an obvious constituency in 2012, yet he still went a long way, and Foster Friess, who bankrolled much of Santorums campaign then, was ready for another round.

Could he have won the nomination?

Never. As much as Santorum felt he deserved more respect for his 2012 showing, neither voters nor the press seemed inclined to give it to him, and he remained trapped in the basement. Even in Iowa, which he narrowly won in 2012, he came in almost last, ahead of only Jim Gilmore.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Wikimedia

RAND PAUL

Who is he?

An ophthalmologist and the son of libertarian icon Ron Paul, he rode the 2010 Republican wave into the Senate, representing Kentucky.

Is he running?

No. He suspended his campaign on February 3.

Who wanted him to run?

Some Ron Paul fans; Tea Partiers; libertarians; civil libertarians; noninterventionist Republicans.

Could he have won the nomination?

Once tabbed by Time as the most interesting man in politics, he failed to elicit much interest from voters. The deathwatch stories in December (and September and October) were clearly premature, but they werent wrong.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Gage Skidmore

MIKE HUCKABEE

Who is he?

An ordained preacher, a former governor of Arkansas, and a Fox News host, he ran a strong campaign in 2008, finishing third but sat out in 2012.

Is he running?

No. Huckabee dropped out on February 1 after pulling less than 2 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Who wanted him to run?

Social conservatives; evangelical Christians.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Evangelicals, his old base, flocked to Ted Cruz instead. Huckabees answer was to play a populist, but that never really took.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Its pretty good.

Wikimedia

LINDSEY GRAHAM

Who is he?

A senator from South Carolina, hes John McCains closest ally in the small caucus of Republicans who are moderate on many issues but very hawkish on foreign policy.

Is he running?

No sir. Graham kicked off the campaign June 1, 2015, but suspended it on December 21.

Who wanted him to run?

John McCain, naturally; Senator Kelly Ayotte, possibly; Joe Lieberman, maybe?

Could he have won the nomination?

No. But he had some fun in losing it.

What else do we know?

Graham promised to have a rotating first lady if he won. We were rooting for Lana del Rey.

Gage Skidmore

BOBBY JINDAL

Who is he?

A Rhodes Scholar, hes the former governor of Louisiana. He previously served in the U.S. House.

Is he running?

No. He kicked off his campaign on June 24, 2015, but suspended it on November 17.

Who wanted him to run?

It was hard to say. Jindal assiduously courted conservative Christians, both with a powerful conversion story (he was raised Hindu but converted to Catholicism in high school) and policies (after other governors reversed course, he charged forward with a religious-freedom law). But he still trailed other social conservatives like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Jindal never gained traction at the national level, faced an overcrowded field of social conservatives, and his stewardship of Louisiana came in for harsh criticism even from staunch fiscal conservatives.

What else do we know?

In 1994, he wrote an article called Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare, in which he described a friends apparent exorcism.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Meh. Good joke, but past its expiration date.

Gage Skidmore

RICK PERRY

Who is he?

George W. Bushs successor as governor of Texas, he entered the 2012 race with high expectations but sputtered out quickly. He left office in 2014 as the Lone Star States longest-serving governor.

Is he running?

No. He announced on June 4, 2015, but dropped out of the race on September 11, 2015.

Who wanted him to run?

Bueller?

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Perry promoters insisted that Rick 2016 was a polished, smart campaigner, totally different from the meandering, spacey Perry of 2012. It didnt seem to matter. Perry had to quit paying his staff in South Carolina and New Hampshire, and was down to a single staffer in Iowa when he dropped out.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

That depends. Is this an oops joke? If so, yes.

Gage Skidmore

SARAH PALIN

Who is she?

If you have to ask now, you must not have been around in 2008. Thats when John McCain selected the then-unknown Alaska governor as his running mate. After the ticket lost, she resigned her term early and became a television personality.

Is she running?

No. Despite a bizarre speech in January 2015 that made a compelling case both ways.

Who wanted her to run?

Palin still has diehard grassroots fans, but there are fewer than ever.

Could she have won the nomination?

No.

Gage Skidmore

MITT ROMNEY

Who is he?

The Republican nominee in 2012 was also governor of Massachusetts and a successful businessman.

Is he running?

Probably not, but who knows! He announced in late January 2015 that he would step aside, but now New York claims that the Trump boom has him reconsidering.

Who wanted him to run?

Former staffers; prominent Mormons; Hillary Clintons team. Romney polled well, but its hard to tell what his base would have been. Republican voters werent exactly ecstatic about him in 2012, and that was before he ran a listless, unsuccessful campaign. Party leaders and past donors were skeptical at best of a third try.

Could he have won the nomination?

He proved the answer was yes, but it didn't seem likely to happen again.

Gage Skidmore

JOHN BOLTON

Who is he?

A strident critic of the United Nations and a leading hawk, he was George W. Bushs ambassador to the United Nations for 17 months.

Is he running?

Nope. After announcing his announcement, in the style of the big-time candidates, he posted on Facebook that he wasnt running.

Who wanted him to run?

Even among super-hawks, he didnt seem to be a popular pick, likely because he had no political experience.

Could he have won the nomination?

They say anything is possible in politics, but this would test the rule. A likelier outcome could be a plum foreign-policy role in a hawkish GOP presidency.

Gage Skidmore

SCOTT WALKER

Who is he?

Elected governor of Wisconsin in 2010, Walker earned conservative love and liberal hate for his anti-union policies. In 2013, he defeated a recall effort, and he won reelection the following year.

Is he running?

No. Walker dropped out of the race on September 21, 2015.

Who wanted him to run?

Walker was a favorite of conservatives who detest the labor movement because of his union-busting in Wisconsin. He attracted interest from the Koch brothers, and some establishment Republicans saw him as the perfect marriage of executive know-how, business-friendly credentials, and social conservatism without culture-warrior baggage.

Could he have won the nomination?

For months, Walker was consideredalong with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubioa top-tier contender for the nomination. Hurricane Trump hurt all three, but none more than Walker. After largely fading from view during the second presidential debate, he polled below 1 percent in a national CNN poll. Perhaps a radically different campaign would have produced a different result, but Walker didnt seem ready for national prime time.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Aye, matey.

Michael Vadon

GEORGE PATAKI

Who is he?

Pataki ousted incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo in 1994 and served three terms as governor of New York.

Is he running?

No. He announced his entry on May 28, 2015, but dropped out on December 29using the free TV time hed won to compensate for Donald Trumps Saturday Night Live appearance.

Who wanted him to run?

Apparently no one: His RealClearPolitics average by the time he dropped out was a neat 0.0. Establishment Northeastern Republicans once held significant sway over the party, but those days have long since passed.

Could have have won the nomination?

Nope.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

* * *

Democrats

Wikimedia

MARTIN O'MALLEY

Who is he?

Hes a former governor of Maryland and former mayor of Baltimore.

Is he running?

No. OMalley announced he was suspending his campaign after getting less than 1 percent in the February 1 Iowa caucuses.

Who wanted him to run?

Not clear. He has some of the leftism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren but without the same grassroots excitement.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Why OMalleywho says all the right progressive thingscouldnt gain any momentum among progressives who seem eager for Sanders, for Warren, really for anyone but Clinton, is a fascinating conundrum.

What else do we know?

Have you heard that he plays in a Celtic rock band? You have? Oh.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Wikimedia

LAWRENCE LESSIG

Who is he?

Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School, a political activist, and an occasional Atlantic contributor.

Is he running?

No. Having announced a run in early September, he dropped out on November 2, 2015.

Who wanted him to run?

Lessigs campaign was designed to cater almost exclusively to the many Americans who are upset about the influence of money in politics. He pitched himself as a referendum president who would pass his proposed Citizens Equality Act of 2017, which would enact universal voting registration, campaign-finance limits, and anti-gerrymandering provisions.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. In dropping out, he cited his inability to break into the Democratic debates, but given his lack of electoral experience, his idiosyncratic platform, and the track record of his Mayday PAC in the 2014 election, he never really had a shot.

What else do we know?

In a season six episode of The West Wing, a fictional Lessig (played by Christopher Lloyd) worked with the White House to write a new constitution for Belarus.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Sorry, were too busy fixing democracy to design a clever 404 page! You have time now!

Steven Senne / AP

LINCOLN CHAFEE

Who is he?

The son of beloved Rhode Island politician John Chafee, Linc took his late fathers seat in the U.S. Senate, serving as a Republican. He was governor, first as an Independent and then as a Democrat.

Is he running?

No. Chafee announced his run on June 3, 2015, but ended it October 23.

Who wanted him to run?

You can meet all 10 of them in this great NPR piece.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Chafees showing in the first debate was so bad that even Wolf Blitzer begged him to get out for his own reputations sake.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Wikimedia

JOE BIDEN

Who is he?

Biden is the vice president and the foremost American advocate for aviator sunglasses and passenger rail.

Is he running?

No. After lengthy deliberation, Biden ruled out a run on October 21, 2015.

Who wanted him to run?

The original driving force for the run seems to have been the late Beau Biden, along with his brother, Hunter. An outside group called Draft Biden (slogan: Im Ridin With Biden) tried to coax him in.

Could he have won the nomination?

Its highly doubtful. Even when Hillary Clinton was at her weakest, she had huge organizational advantages. And past presidential campaigns showed that Biden, while compelling, could be an undisciplined, self-defeating candidate.

Wikimedia

ELIZABETH WARREN

Who is she?

Warren has taken an improbable path from Oklahoma, to Harvard Law School, to progressive heartthrob, to Massachusetts senator.

Is she running?

Are you still scrolling down here to check? Not a chance, amigo.

Who wanted her to run?

Progressive Democrats; economic populists; disaffected Obamans; disaffected Bushites.

Could she have won the nomination?

No, because shes not running.

Wikimedia

BERNIE SANDERS

Who is he?

A self-professed socialist, Sanders represented Vermont in the U.S. House from 1991 to 2007, when he won a seat in the Senate.

Is he running?

No. He endorsed Clinton July 12 and his campaign formally ended at the Democratic National Convention later that month.

Who wanted him to run?

Far-left Democrats; Brooklyn-accent aficionados; progressives who worry that a second Clinton administration would be too friendly to the wealthy.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination on either June 6 or June 7, depending on who you believe. Even so, hes one of the most successful insurgent Democratic candidates ever.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Yes, and it is quintessentially Sanders.

* * *

Independents

Gage Skidmore

DAVID FRENCH

Who is he?

A lawyer and longtime conservative activist, French is a staff writer at National Review and served in Iraq.

Is he running?

No. He responded to a Draft French campaign on June 5, saying he would not jump in.

Who wanted him to run?

Bill Kristol, mostly. #NeverTrump conservatives have been desperately casting about for a protest candidate, and Kristols attention alighted on French, who remains largely unknown out of movement-conservative circles.

Could he have won the nomination?

Of what party? French was never likely to win many votes. The question was whether he could get on the ballot in enough states to really offer much of an alternative. Kristol and French say he could have; most people disagree.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

N/A, alas.

Jim Mone / AP

JESSE VENTURA

Who is he?

A Navy veteran, former professional wrestler, and author, The Body was elected as governor of Minnesota on the Reform Party ticket in 1999 and served one term.

Is he running?

No. He announced on May 26 that he would not run. Ventura previously told CNN on March 3 that he was considering a third-party presidential bid.

Who wanted him to run?

Just Jesse, it seems. He argued that people are fed up with Democrats and Republicans and want a middle path. I want to see the revolution continue, he said.

Could he have won?

No. Venturas politics are eclectichis 2012 book praised Occupy Wall Street and blasted the Citizens United decision, but he tends toward conservative-libertarian views on other matters. His biggest problem might be his Trutherism: He believes the 9/11 attacks were a hoax. Then again, no one thought hed ever win his gubernatorial election in Minnesota, either.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Did he have a website?

Wikimedia

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Who is he?

The billionaire finance-and-technology entrepreneur was benevolent dictator mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013.

Is he running?

No. After months of trial balloons, he announced on March 7 that he would not run. Dont say we didnt tell you.

Who wanted him to run?

If the past is any indication, it was mostly Bloomberg aides.

Could he have won the nomination?

Bloomberg himself repeatedly belittled his own electability for years, either as an individual or, in the abstract, as a third-party candidate. When I look at the data, its clear to me that if I entered the race, I could not win, he wrote when he decided not to run. And he was almost certainly right. Its hard to imagine who would vote for him, especially if Clinton wins the Democratic nod: Hes slightly to the right of her, but Republicans hate him, and he makes her seem like Miss Congeniality.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

Please. This is a guy who doesnt even think websites are necessary.

Wikimedia

JIM WEBB

Who is he?

Webb is a Vietnam War hero, author, and former secretary of the Navy. He served as a senator from Virginia from 2007 to 2013.

Is he running?

No. Webb launched a Democratic bid July 2, 2015, but dropped it October 20, 2015. He has since made noises about mounting an Independent campaign, but on February 11 said he would not run. He now says he wont vote for Clinton but might support Trump.

Who wanted him to run?

As a Democrat, doves; the Anybody-But-Hillary camp; my colleague James Fallows. As an Independent? Maybe some of the same socially conservative, economically populist Democrats who backed him before. But he barely registered in the race the first time around.

Could he have won the nomination?

No. Every Independent candidate is at best a very long shot, and Webbs weaknessesdislike for campaigning, weak fundraising, heterodox viewswere on clear display during his Democratic bid.

Did his website have a good 404 page?

No.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard, a 69-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk, has been called the "world's happiest man."

That's because he participated in part of a 12-year brain study on meditation and compassion led by University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson. And Davidson found his brain waves and activity to be off the happiness charts.

In 2008, Davidson had a group of expert meditators (including Ricard) and a group of controls (people who were not experienced in meditation) meditate on compassion, he reported in Scientific American.

Then he had them listen to the sounds of several stressed-out voices. Davidson found that two brain areas known to be involved in empathy showed more activity for the meditators than for the non-meditators, suggesting that people like Ricard have an enhanced ability to respond to the feelings of others and empathize without feeling overwhelmed.

He also noted that when he exposed Ricard to an outside stimulus meant to startle him  like an alarm going off unexpectedly or a stranger accosting you in the street  while he was meditating, he was far less put-off by the stimulus compared with someone who was not meditating.

So, how does the "world's happiest man" feel happy all the time and get rid of anger and stress?

We spoke with Ricard at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last Thursday. He says feeling happy comes down to being altruistic and benevolent. He also believes the mind can be trained to be happy through meditation.

And as for dealing with stress? Ricard says the key is let things go.

Most things you think are problems aren't actually problems

Ricard admits that sometimes, feeling stressed is warranted. "Sometimes there's legitimate stress, like if a rhinoceros is running behind you, it is maximum stress," he says.

Sometimes there's legitimate stress, like if a rhinoceros is running behind you, it is maximum stress.

"Or if you are in a situation that is really oppressing and there's a sense you can't move out of that and you feel so powerless  mentally and physically it's not very pleasant."

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Most other kinds of stress  ones that don't cause actual physical or mental harm, Ricard says  should be shrugged off.

"This idea of constantly feeling like there's a rhinoceros running behind you is very unhealthy," Ricard explains. "It will destroy your neurons, it destroys your immune system. Basically it happens when we put too much emphasis on our outer condition. 'If I don't have that I can't be happy.' 'If that thing remains, it's just like hell breaking on me.' So it's underestimating that we can say to those things, 'Oh, you know, okay  no big deal.'"

Living a stress-free life just comes down to the way you deal with perceived problems.

Don't worry about things you can't change or control

Ricard admits that of course, problems pop up in life. The trick is to not worry about the ones you can't control, and to focus on solutions for the ones you can.

"Having some kind of inner resources to deal with the ups and downs of life, whether that's resilience or inner strength  that's a huge advantage against stress," Ricard says.

"If something unpleasant happens, just say: 'First, it won't last. Second, I can deal with that because I know I can keep my balance. And after all, it's not such a big deal so okay, no problem.' Or if people criticize you just say, 'So what? Why is this going to prevent me from being healthy and from sleeping?'

"The stress doubles the problem. First you have the worry, then you have to worry about the problem, which is totally unnecessary because if there is a solution then just do it. If there is no solution, then why worry? That's just adding to your problems."

NOW WATCH: The simplest way to get  and stay  happy, according to psychologists





More From Business Insider


If you're barely getting by, it may seem crazy to try to emulate a millionaire. After all, millionaires have a ton of money, and you don't. And while some millionaires used their wisdom and wit to get where they are, there are presumably plenty out there who were born wealthy and had numerous advantages growing up.

But advice for the rich is often universal, and there's a lot we can learn from the wealthiest of the wealthy. With that in mind, we tapped some financial advisors who represent millionaires and asked them to share advice they give their clients that also applies to the rest of us.

1. Make your money work for you. Don't work for your money. In other words, invest in stocks, says Matt Papazian, a financial advisor at Cardan Capital, based in Denver.

Why it matters. Papazian says the wealthiest people generally own their own businesses. "This allows them to generate income or grow assets even when they are not sitting in the office," he says.

And if you don't have the resources to start your own business? Invest in one. "The best way to replicate the ownership of a business is by owning securities in businesses that are already in existence. These companies can be selling iPhones, computers, candy bars, detergent, cars -- globally, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. It's the next best thing," Papazian says.

2. Keep an emergency fund. Michael Rose, managing partner with Rose Capital Advisors in Miami Beach, Florida, stresses this to his clients, many of whom are wealthy athletes and entertainers.

Why it matters. Even the wildly rich need to keep money saved for emergencies, Rose says. They simply need more money put aside than the rest of us. Rose says this is especially important for entertainers and athletes, who may make a lot of money but are self-employed.

"It's a boom-and-bust industry," Rose says, adding that without a lot of money put aside, athletes and entertainers are often one injury or unproduced movie away from bust.

Story continues

3. Plan for a health emergency. This tip comes from John Voltaggio, senior wealth advisor at Northern Trust in New York City.

Why it matters. If you have a spouse and kids, they're likely depending on you to stay in good health. "What happens in the event of a medical emergency, incapacity or even death? Does the client have appropriate medical, disability and/or life insurance in place, which, when combined with others assets, will provide for surviving family members?" Voltaggio asks.

Even if you don't have many assets and aren't concerned who will get your mansion and three cars because you live in an apartment and take the bus to work, as long as you have an income that supports your family, you should have life insurance.

4. Review your finances periodically. So says Anne O'Brien, an estate planning advisor with Caplin & Drysdale in the District of Columbia. She represents athletes, entertainers, political figures and wealthy business owners.

Why it matters. Because money is complicated, and the rules, especially with taxes, often change. "A year-end meeting of the client and advisors is essential," O'Brien says.

Of course, you may not have a team in place in the way O'Brien suggests. "At a minimum, the attorney, an accountant and a financial advisor," she recommends.

But even if you're huddling with your spouse and a money management software program, it's better than never looking at your money and hoping everything works out OK.

5. Don't lend people money. This is according to Jimmy Lee, CEO of the Wealth Consulting Group, a wealth management firm in Las Vegas.

Why it matters. It might sound cold, but Lee says he has seen too many wealthy people lose a lot money because they "fall victim to 'friends' who have their own financial interests in mind."

So think about how much fun you'll have if you don't have much -- and still loan out money.

Lee tells his clients, "when people come to you for money, send them to me. I'm perfectly fine saying 'no,' and ruffling a few feathers if need be."

6. Teach your kids about money. This tip is from Michael Chadwick, a certified financial planner from Unionville, Connecticut.

Why it matters. It really doesn't matter how rich or poor you are. If you don't teach your kids how to handle money, they're going to have problems.

"Don't enable your kids to be financially illiterate or mentally weak. Make them face financial reality ... Don't bail them out or fight their battles for them," Chadwick advises. "Kids need to know life has winners and losers. Don't be afraid to hurt their feelings. They'll get over it and be stronger because of it."

7. The earlier you get into the habit of saving, the more money you'll have. So says Scott Laue, a Rockford, Illinois-based senior financial advisor at Savant Capital Management.

Why it matters. It's familiar advice but still important to remember. "Even average Joes and Josephines can reach millionaire status. You just need to follow certain guidelines," Laue says. "Compound interest has been called the eighth wonder of the world -- the more you save, the more compound interest you earn."

8. Understand what drives you to spend your money. This is key, says Kathleen Grace, a wealth manager and managing director of United Capital Financial Advisers as well as author of the financial planning novel, "Prince Not So Charming."

Why it matters. Whether you're in the top 1 percent of income or the bottom 1 percent, we have reasons for the way we spend our money.

"Don't be an emotional spender," Grace warns, adding that it's important to understand why you tend to spend money. For instance, maybe fear drives you to spend more than you should, so you stock up on grocery items you don't need. Or maybe you spend recklessly simply because spending and buying makes you happy.

"If you understand what your biases are in making money decisions, you have greater insight and are better able to possibly prevent yourself from making financial decisions based upon emotion," she says.
PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus said on Friday it had accepted the resignation of chief technical officer Jean Botti who will leave the planemaker in April after almost 10 years in the company. The planemaker said that Botti's succession is "subject to the outcome of a comprehensive review on the future set-up and structure for innovation and research and technology at Airbus Group". Botti joined Airbus in May 2006. He has notably been pushing through a pioneering project of all-electric aircrafts. (Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva; editing by Michel Rose)
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian troops killed four Islamist gunmen west of the capital on Friday, the defense ministry said, adding they were part of a group who left nine soldiers dead in an ambush last year. A ministry statement cited by state news agency APS said the four were "neutralized" in Ain Defla province and arms, munitions and grenades were recovered. "The four terrorists who were taken out today were part of the same group who carried out the attack on our soldiers," it said in a reference to the July 2015 attack. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for that attack, also in Ain Defla. Algeria emerged as one of the most stable countries in the region after its 1990s war with Islamist groups and has become a key ally in the Western campaign against Islamist militancy in the region. But al Qaeda-allied fighters and a splinter group loyal to Islamic State are still active, mostly in remote mountain areas and desert border regions. (Reporting by Patrick Markey; editing by Andrew Roche)
By Deborah M. Todd and Subrat Patnaik (Reuters) - Hoping to provide greater clarity into the performance of its many holdings, Alphabet Inc said it would report financial results under two segments, Google and "Other Bets," when it releases fourth-quarter earnings on Monday. Under Google, Alphabet will report the results of its main Internet and related businesses such as search, ads, maps, YouTube, Android, Chrome and Google Play, and hardware products such as Chromecast, Chromebooks and Nexus, as well as its virtual reality offerings. (http://bit.ly/1PlN7uS) "Other Bets" will detail Alphabet's other businesses including Access/Google Fiber, Calico, Nest, Verily (formerly known as Google Life Sciences), GV (once known as Google Ventures), Google Capital and X, better known as Google X. Alphabet said there would be no changes to its consolidated financial reporting but some changes would be made to how it breaks out revenue. Investors and analysts had praised the move to the Alphabet structure as a shift toward greater transparency and fiscal discipline when it was announced in August. It will provide investors their first detailed peek into the finances of the parts of Google outside its highly profitable search engine. In a blog post announcing the changes, Alphabet's chief executive, Larry Page, said the change allows the company to take the "long-term view" of its holdings and invest "at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see." "Fundamentally we believe this (structure) allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren't very related." Since the Aug. 10 announcement, Alphabet's stock price has climbed almost 13 percent, closing at $748.30 on Thursday. In addition, the company is close to displacing Apple Inc as the most valuable U.S. tech company. (Reporting by Deborah M. Todd in San Francisco and Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey, Stephen R. Trousdale and Leslie Adler)
On Thursday Alpina, the German boutique bespoke car company that takes unsuspecting BMWs and turns them into subtle supercars suitable for daily use, announced it has sold a phenomenal 1600 cars over 2015.

While Ford, one of the world's biggest and best-known automotive brands, is preparing to close its dealerships and to stop importing its cars into Japan over the course of the coming year, one very small, very exclusive sportscar brand is celebrating a huge success in the same territory.

While 1600 cars is 100 down on 2014's all-time record, it is still a huge achievement for a tiny firm with a tiny model range topped by its special 50th anniversary edition B5 and B6 models.

Those Edition 50 cars were restricted to 50 sedans, station wagons, coupes and convertibles (200 cars in all). And despite prices ranging from 114,200 to 142,400 the majority were sold to Japanese and German clients.

"There is a steady interest in sophisticated and individual small series automobiles," said Alpina CEO Andreas Bovensiepen. "Our products constantly receive excellent press reviews for their technology and handling. The awareness for BMW Alpina models is growing, and we are proud of our customers' feedback."

And that awareness is about to step up a gear. At this year's Geneva motor show the company will be taking the wraps off its new flagship, the B7. It will be based on BMW's own flagship 7 Series but it promises to blend the standard car's technological wizardry with a ferocious turn of speed.

Alpina is staying tight-lipped about what exactly to expect from the car. It has posted a teaser video showing a camouflaged version of the car being pushed to its limits on the track, but that is all the company is willing to share for the moment.

However, the car is most likely to use a twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V8 engine that Alpina has been developing and improving upon for several years. In its Edition 50 models, that powerplant delivered 591bhp and a top speed of 204mph. But expect even more for the new car.

This will be crucial because the B7 will be the firm's most important car for the US market and its initial calling card in China. Alpina's goal for the coming year is to break into the Chinese luxury sportscar market. So the B7 needs to something special.
By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc shares' unusual roller-coaster move before and after the world's No. 1 online retailer reported quarterly results on Thursday helped some traders make money shorting the stock. From Wednesday's close of trading to Friday afternoon, Amazon shares are only about 1 percent lower, trading at $579.50. In between, the stock was all over the place, hitting a Thursday high of $638.06 and falling to a low of $540 in the action after Thursday's close. The stock rallied 9 percent on Thursday before results were released. It was bolstered by solid earnings Wednesday from social media giant Facebook, and traders hoped for big gains for Amazon post-earnings, as the previous four quarterly releases had been celebrated by investors. Thursday's rally, the largest on the day of results over the last two years, invited shorts to capitalize on the spike, and they reaped gains when the shares slumped after the close. "I am a big fan of Amazon the company," said Kathryn Venator, a Annapolis, Maryland-based independent trader who runs Katwerks Ventures, a consulting business. "(But the) rally was out of control." Venator expected profit-taking at the day's end. She shorted 60 shares of Amazon for $628.33 apiece at around 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT). But the trade did not work as expected. Shares kept rallying into the close, and Venator tried to close her short, to no avail. "I immediately began planning how I would exit on Friday with a loss," she said. Fortunately for her, Amazon shares plunged in after-hours action. The company posted its most profitable quarter ever but its per-share profit of $1.00 fell short of analysts' average forecast of $1.56. Shares dropped 15 percent, hitting a low of $540 in trading after the bell. Venator was able to cover her short position on Friday. Ali Banai, 20, a New York-based trader, says he largely depended on technical signals to put on his trade. "If you draw a trendline you see a bearish trend after it reached the $630 mark. That's when I started to do a short," he said. On Wednesday and Thursday, Banai shorted Amazon shares for an average price of $625. Banai, who is in the process of getting a license for his own investment firm, said his position was between 100 and 500 shares. He said the average post-earnings jump of 10 percent for the shares over the last four quarters meant the shares were overvalued. "There always has to be a pullback." (Editing by Bernadette Baum)
By Jeffrey Dastin NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Airlines' president on Friday said it is too early to tell if the rapidly spreading Zika virus will impact travel, but so far the airline has seen no material change to flight bookings. American Airlines Group Inc, the world's largest airline, and other U.S. carriers are facing mounting concern about the mosquito-borne virus as investors mull a slump in demand to the Caribbean and other tourist hotspots. "Zika is not airborne, so there is not a danger of it being transmitted between passengers," American's President Scott Kirby said on a call with investors Friday. "As a result, you wouldn't expect it to have as big an impact as something like SARS." Zika, linked to birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, could nonetheless become a challenge for American. Kirby said flight sales to Brazil on the airline, which has the widest Latin American network among U.S. peers, had fallen to about 2.0 percent of its revenue from 6.1 percent in roughly the past two years. While airlines have yet to report a bookings drop because of Zika, a warning from the World Health Organization that four million people in the Americas could get the virus has exacerbated jitters for the travel industry, hurt by outbreaks of SARS and Ebola in years past. "People incrementally are starting to pay a little more attention to Zika than they were before," said Sterne Agee CRT analyst Adam Hackel. "(They) freak out when it comes to airlines." New York-traded airline stocks <.XAL> dropped 3.1 percent Thursday, which analysts attributed to Zika fears and an uptick in oil prices, before rebounding 1.4 percent in Friday afternoon trade. American saw the sector's biggest stock decline Friday with shares falling more than 1.0 percent. It forecast a passenger unit revenue decline in the first quarter between 6.0 percent and 8.0 percent, not accounting for any potential Zika impact. On Thursday, shares of another top U.S. airline in the Caribbean, JetBlue Airways Corp , tumbled more than 6.0 percent even though it reported no measurable impact from the virus. "Short-term especially, these stocks will react," Hackel said, recalling the sharp, if short-lived selloff in October 2014, when highly contagious Ebola was reported in the United States. American is offering pregnant customers, who appear most vulnerable to the virus, and their companions refunds for tickets to Zika-impacted regions. United , Delta and JetBlue have also announced refunds. (Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Christian Plumb)
LONDON (Reuters) - Angolan oil moved into the spotlight, with only a handful of March loading cargoes left available, traders said on Thursday. The rapid trading, less than two weeks into the cycle, reflected open arbitrage going east and a buyer desire to book cargoes while prices were low. "Angola seems to have cleared out," one trader said. "Freights are down, and people were happy to buy at these prices." Crude futures spiked during the day's trading on news that Russia and Saudi Arabia were ready to cooperate on production cuts. The details of any plan were disputed, and Iran, which is trying to regain market share, was an obstacle, but the volatility did little to temper interest in physical cargoes. Tenders from Taiwan's CPC took two Angolan cargoes, while India's BPCL took as much as 3 million barrels of Nigerian crude. Buyers in the United States had begun booking both Angolan and Nigerian cargoes, as well as some Cameroonian crude, which also helped accelerate Asia's interest in booking the cargoes they need. "All buyers are coming back - China, U.S., Europe and Indian," another trader said. The arbitrage window to the United States was closing, however, and most traders said new bookings would be limited. While the buying interest included the crudes of several West African nations, the slowdown had impacted Nigeria the most, as returning Asian buyers cleared Angolan crudes. "Nigeria's March programme has hardly traded at all," another trader said. "The offers are still relatively high." NIGERIA * Just over a handful of February-loading crude oil cargoes were available, partly down to what buyers said were too-high offers. * The overhang was smaller than at the same point in recent months, but March cargoes were slow to trade. * The Erha programme for March included four cargoes of 1 million barrels each, pressing exports up to 1.96 million barrels per day (bpd). * Exxon was offering Qua Iboe at $1.50 above dated Brent, which traders said was at least 60 cents above the real value. * Loading delays continued on a number of Nigerian grades including Bonny Light, Qua Iboe, Brass River and Forcados. ANGOLA * March cargoes sold rapidly, with roughly a handful left just 12 days into the trading cycle. * Cheaper freight rates going east and strong buying interest in China and India helped clear out the cargoes. * The grades left included Kissanje, Nemba, Cabinda and Saturno and Pazflor, though it is possible that others that had traded would be re-sold. * Differentials found support, with Girassol inching up to a discount of around 40 cents versus dated Brent. ASIAN TENDERS * Taiwan's CPC bought a cargo of Palanca from Total and a cargo of Cabinda from Chevron, both expected to load in March. * Indian refiner BPCL bought a cargo each of Agbami and Qua Iboe from Chevron, and traders said it also took a second cargo of Agbami from Shell. * Uruguay's Ancap had also issued a tender to buy crude, but the details were not immediately clear. (Reporting by Libby George; editing by Susan Thomas)
Quebec City (AFP) - The US-led coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group is to meet next week in Rome, the State Department said, confirming Secretary of State John Kerry will attend.

"Coalition partners will review progress to date and discuss ways to further intensify commitments across all lines of effort to degrade and defeat this terrorist group," the department said.

Kerry is due in Rome on Tuesday for the conference.

The coalition of mainly Western and Arab powers is training and arming Iraqi government and Syrian rebel forces to fight the IS group, while carrying out its own air strikes.

Officials are also considering a possible intervention against the jihadist group in Libya, perhaps led by Italy, the host of next week's conference.

According to the State Department, the members of the coalition to be represented will include Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, the European Union, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.

The United Nations will send observers.

After Tuesday's conference, Kerry will head on to London for a conference of donor countries looking to support aid and reconstruction in Libya, hosted by Britain, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations.
Its a rough state of affairs when news of the Earths impending destruction isnt the worst thing that happens to you in a given day, yet thats where the members of You, Me and the Apocalypses doomsday bunch are at the outset of NBCs new comedy.

In a moment, well want to know what you thought of the premiere of the series (which has already aired in the United Kingdom). But first, a brief recap:

The hour opens just as a giant asteroid is about to make impact with our planet in what the American president calls a extinction-level event. In a bunker buried deep in the ground, we meet Jamie (Matthew Baynton, the UKs Gavin and Stacey), who is baffled that he wound up there with a bunch of strangers.

PHOTOSFriends Reunion at NBCs James Burrows Tribute  See the First Photo

And just like that, a title card informs us, were back to 34 days before the end of the world. We find out that Jamie is a British bank manager whose wife went missing soon after their honeymoon; shes been gone for seven years, but his anguish over her disappearance continues. The cops are watching him, and when they arrest him for hundreds of counts of robbery, it becomes clear they think hes White Horse, the leader of a group of cyberterrorists known as Deus Ex Machina.

Jamie is not White Horse, but he sure looks like him. And when a surveillance photo proves that not only is Jamies wife alive (!), but shes been palling around with his doppelganger (!!), his mother reluctantly admits that he could have a twin, because he was adopted and she doesnt know anything about his birth family.

Meanwhile, in New Mexico, new inmate Rhonda (Jenna Fischer, The Office) tries to avoid trouble  and Leanne (Megan Mullally, Will & Grace), the swastika-tattooed white supremacist who keeps trying to befriend her  on her first day in prison. Rhonda is covering for her 14-year-old son, who hacked into both the White House and the Pentagon but didnt steal or leak any information.

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RELATEDNBC Sets Dates for Carmichaels Return, 3 New Series Premieres

Across the ocean, young nun Sister Celine (Gaia Scodellaro) has a job interview as researcher for Father Jude, the Vaticans devils advocate (Rob Lowe, Parks and Recreation); the office exists as quality control for canonization, he explains. After a rough interview, Celine runs from his office crying, but returns to dump a flower vase over his head and assert how good she wouldve been in the position.

Just then, news of impending doom breaks. As the world grapples with the idea that everything will end in 34 days, the core characters take action. Sister Celine agrees to help Father Jude protect the scared citizens from charlatans whod prey on their fears. Jamie decides to search for his wife on his own. And when White Horse takes control of the New Mexico prison, Rhonda busts out  only to be picked up by Jamies twin, with a persistent Leanna along for the ride, as well.

Flash forward to the bunker: Many of the people weve met during the hour are there with Jamie. Were hardly the A-Team, he notes, but they may be all thats left of humanity when the asteroid hits.

Now its your turn. What did you think of the premiere? Grade the episode below, then hit the comments to expand on your thoughts!

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Ratings: GOP Debate Steady Without Trump, Apocalypse Begins OK for NBC
DES MOINES, Iowa  They had seen a crowd like this before: a few hundred Iowans, up on their feet, hands in the air and cheering wildly. Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, two former winners of the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses (in 2012 and 2008, respectively) stood in the warm glow of the stage lights, clearly thrilled at the reception. But their smiles soon turned wistful. The audience wasnt there for them.

The Republican presidential hopefuls, now political long shots in their second bids for the GOP nomination, stood in the shadow of the man to beat, Donald Trump, who had enlisted his rivals in his counter-programming for the GOP debate Thursday night  a fundraiser for military veterans that was alternately sincere and surreal.

SLIDESHOW  The 7th GOP debate (the one without Trump) >>>

Taking the stage at an auditorium on the campus of Drake University, a few miles from where his Republican rivals were participating in the last debate before Mondays caucuses, Trump told the crowd that Fox News had been extremely nice to him that afternoon, calling him and asking up until the last minute if hed change his mind and come to the debate. But he refused, because, he said, they hadnt been fair to him.

You have to stick up for your rights, Trump said, comparing his feud with Fox News to the tempestuous relationship between the United States and Iran.

Donald Trump invites former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania to the podium at his campaign event Thursday night in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Khue Bui for Yahoo News)



In the front row sat Huckabee and Santorum, fresh from their appearance in the so-called undercard debate, awkward smiles on their faces as Trump rambled through a version of his stump speech. At one point, he suddenly seemed to remember that hed invited two of his rivals to join him to honor military veterans, and he summoned Huckabee and Santorum to the stage, reminding his audience that they had just come from a debate.

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I heard they did really well, these two. I mean, who the hell knows? I didnt get to see very much of it, Trump said. Turning to his rivals, who wore frozen smiles, he said, I think if they had booed, you probably wouldnt be here right now. Youd go back and be depressed, right?

Slideshow: On the trail and down to the wire in Iowa >>>



Trump pushed his rivals to speak, and Santorum walked to the microphone first, standing awkwardly to the left of the podium. Not to be offensive, the former Pennsylvania senator said, but I am going to stand a little bit over here so I am not photographed with the Trump sign.

As the audience laughed, Santorum added, Um, I am supporting another candidate for president, but that doesnt mean we cant work together when it comes to helping our veterans.



When Huckabee spoke, he didnt bother to hide from the Trump sign. I figure youre going to get the photo anyway, so I might as well just stand here, he said. I want to say how grateful I am for Donald Trump inviting us here. I think you would have let any of the other candidates come. But for reasons that maybe I dont understand, they are not here. Maybe because they have a slot at 8 oclock, but I had nothing to do at 8 oclock tonight. This worked great for me.

A supporter with an anti-Fox News sticker listens to Donald Trump at a campaign event Thursday night in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Khue Bui for Yahoo News)



Behind him, Trump laughed.

In the crowd, nobody seemed to be sad about missing the last GOP debate here.

It didnt bother me a bit. Ive watched the debates. After a couple of them, theres not a whole lot more they can ask, said Suellen Seaba, who came to the Trump event with her husband, a Vietnam veteran, and their friend Wesley Jacoby, a 90-year-old who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. "I thought this was a very good alternative.

Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
Thousands of students were evacuated from schools in two Australian states Friday following hoax bomb threats, with local media saying they could be linked to similar scares in Europe.

Several schools in New South Wales, home to Australia's largest city Sydney, and Victoria reportedly received bomb threats and were either evacuated or locked down.

On Thursday more than 20 schools in France, Italy and Britain were placed on alert after receiving threatening phone calls.

On Tuesday six Paris schools and 14 in Britain were evacuated after hoax bomb threats.

"Victoria Police can confirm it is treating the threatening phone calls received by a number of Victorian schools today as a hoax," Victoria Police said in a statement, without naming the schools or stating how many were affected.

"We are aware that schools in a number of other states and countries have received similar phone calls in the past 24 hours."

Victoria Police added that there was no immediate threat to schools and the threats were not terrorism-related.

A NSW Police spokesman told AFP they were investigating the matter but made no further remarks. An Australian Federal Police spokeswoman would not comment on the incidents.

Assistant principal Rod McKenzie of Cowes Primary School, on an island off Victoria, told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper a receptionist received a "computerised" message through a phone call which said there was a "bomb in a backpack but no more specifics".

The threats to the French and British schools on Tuesday were claimed by a Twitter account calling itself the Evacuation Squad, with a profile picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But the Sydney Morning Herald said an email it purportedly received from the group denied they were behind the Australian hoaxes.

"We have only targeted schools in Europe, Canada, The United States, South Africa, and Japan," Fairfax reported the email as saying, citing the user name Viktor Olyavich.

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"We are unsure of who it is (behind the Australian attacks). It is most likely a 'copycat' incident."

Australia raised its terror alert level to high in 2014, introduced new national security laws and conducted several counter-terrorism raids across the country amid growing fears of home-grown extremism.

A 17-year-old was last week charged with making threats on social media that led to Sydney's iconic Opera House being evacuated in a security scare.
Android users who want to (and really should) keep their phones secure got a bit of a bonus today (Jan. 28), as antivirus maker Avast removed premium pricing from Avast Mobile Security and made all of the app's features free.

Avast Mobile Security has been our Editor's Choice among Android antivirus apps for the past two years, but until today, users had to pay $2 per month, or $20 per year, to access all its features.

Those premium features had included a privacy advisor that checks apps for leakage of personal data, and an "app lock" that prevents use of designated apps without a PIN. Both are now free. But other premium features, such as an on-device firewall and a network usage meter, have been discontinued. (In an FAQ on its website, Avast said the firewall worked only on rooted devices, and the network meter was rarely used.)

MORE: Best Android Antivirus Apps

In our most recent review of Avast Mobile Security, we wrote that the app offered "an unparalleled level of user control, excellent malware protection and a truly staggering number of anti-theft and privacy-protection features." Unlike most Android security-app makers, Avast has specialized features for rooted Android phones, such as a lost-or-stolen device tracker that will survive a factory reset.

However, we also noted that Avast's security solutions were unusually modular and complex, and that's still the case. Avast Mobile Security primarily protects against malware infection; a separate app, Avast Anti-Theft handles the securing and retrieval of lost or stolen phones. Another app, Avast Mobile Backup, used to automatically back up devices; it has disappeared from Google Play, and we've asked Avast representatives what happened to it.

Also available to Android users are Avast Battery Saver, Avast Cleanup & Boost, the password manager Avast Passwords, Avast Ransomware Removal, which removes certain kinds of Android ransomware, and Avast Wi-Fi Finder, which locates reasonably safe open networks. (A similar app for iPhones is called Avast SecureMe.)

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Like Avast Avast Mobile Security and Avast Anti-Theft, all are completely free and can be installed and used individually, yet integrate well with each other. But if you're not an Android power user, the sheer number of options and configurations might be overwhelming.

The only paid mobile offering the company retains is Avast SecureLine, a virtual-private-network (VPN) client app that can be tried out for a 7-day free trial. After that, it's $2.59 per month, or $20 per year, for each mobile device (including iOS ones). SecureLine is also available for Windows PCs and Macs, but that'll cost $80 per year (currently discounted to $60) for each computer.

Customers who'd paid for the premium version of Avast Mobile Security will receive a compensatory subscription to SecureLine for Android for the length of their remaining Avast Mobile Security premium subscription.

Copyright 2016 Toms Guides , a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BERLIN  For a text that may rewrite the history of mathematics, it looks rather sloppy.

The brown clay tablet, which could fit in the palm of your hand, is scrawled with hasty, highly abbreviated cuneiform characters. And, according to science historian Mathieu Ossendrijver, it proves that the ancient Babylonians used a complex geometrical model that looks like a rudimentary form of integral calculus to calculate the path of Jupiter. Scientists previously thought this mathematical technique was invented in medieval Europe.

"It sounds minute for a layperson, but this geometry is of a very special kind that is not found anywhere else, for instance, in ancient Greek astronomy," Ossendrijver said. "It is an application in astronomy that was totally new. Thus far everybody thought Babylonian scholars only computed with numbers." [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

A sophisticated invention

The tablet has long been in the collection at the British Museum in London, and it was likely created in Babylon (located in modern-day Iraq) between 350 and 50 B.C. Ossendrijver recently deciphered the text, and he described his discovery in an article that's featured on the cover of the journal Science this week.

From his office at Humboldt University here in Berlin, which is decorated with posters of both the Ishtar Gate and the Antikythera mechanism (thought to be the world's oldest known computer), he explained that the tablet plots the apparent decreasing velocity of Jupiter from the planet's first appearance along the horizon, to 60 days later, and then 120 days later. If drawn on a graph, this relationship is represented in the shape of two conjoined trapezoids. The area of each trapezoid describes Jupiter's total displacement (measured in degrees) along the ecliptic, or the path of the sun.

"It's not an actual trapezoid that describes the shape of a field, or some configuration of the planets in space," Ossendrijver told Live Science. "It's a configuration in a mathematical space. It's a highly abstract application."

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Ancient Greek mathematicians and astronomers were using geometry around the same time, but only to make calculations involving real, 3D space, such as using circles torepresent the orbits of planets around Earth. Students of math might take it for granted today, but the abstract use of geometry was, until now, unheard of at the time.

"Anyone who has studied physics or a little bit of math is familiar with making graphs  plotting one quantity against time  but actually this had to be invented once," Ossendrijver said.

Current textbooks on the history of math say this invention took place around A.D. 1350. In the mid-14th century, mathematicians at Merton College in England who were referred to as the "Oxford Calculators," and another scholar collaborating with them in Paris, were interested in understanding the velocity and displacement of an object over time. They came up with the Merton mean speed theorem, which holds that the distance a uniformly accelerating body travels in a given interval of time is the same distance it would travel if it were moving at a constant velocity (with that constant velocity being the average of the accelerating body's initial and final velocity). [Images: The World's 11 Most Beautiful Calculations]

But the mean speed theorem now seems to be a reinvention of a lost model; about 1,400 years earlier, it seems the Babylonians had their own technique to make calculations based on this principle.

"When I looked at the text, I was immediately convinced," said Jens Hyrup, an expert in Babylonian mathematics at Roskilde University in Denmark, who was not involved in the new study. "There are words that indisputably point to geometric understanding  not a geometric model of how the planets move, but a geometric technique to make some arithmetic calculations."

Missing piece

To build its collection in the 19th century, the British Museum gathered crates of clay tablets by methods that would not be considered scientifically sound today; namely, buying artifacts that had been dug up around Babylon and Uruk without any archaeological context. Since the 1880s, scholars have been making sense of the astronomical concepts described on many of the tablets. [See Images of Ancient Babylonian Cuneiform Texts]

Four of these astronomical tablets had stumped historians, because they included computations mentioning trapezoids, even though the Babylonians had never been known to use geometry in their astronomical calculations.

The newly deciphered tablet was essentially the missing piece in the puzzle. Last year, a colleague handed Ossendrijver a stack of photographs, including an image of a tablet he had never seen before in the British Museum. In September, Ossendrijver went to London to hold it in his hand and read it himself, confirming what he already suspected the calculations describe.

"Actually, this particular tablet has ugly handwriting," Ossendrijver said. "It's slanted. It's like cursive if it were written very rapidly. It's very abbreviated. He left out everything that is not absolutely necessary to follow the computation."

Jupiter is not even mentioned in the newly deciphered tablet, but the computations it describes were already partly known from the other trapezoid tablets that do mention Jupiter, Ossendrijver said.

Scholar-priests reading the skies

The period between 400 and 200 B.C. might be considered the last period of innovations in Babylonian science, Ossendrijver said, and this is the time the zodiac and the horoscope were invented.

In general, the question of what the ancient Babylonians did with their astronomy is not fully answered, Ossendrijversaid. But they believed everything that happened on Earth was connected to whatever was happening in the sky.

"It was thought that if you are able to predict the motion of Jupiter, you would also be able to predict the price of grain, the weather, the level of the river Euphrates," Ossendrijver said. Part of his work also involves trying to understand the social context of Babylonian astronomers, and learning more about the kind of families and elite clans they belonged to. Certainly, the job description for an astronomer was much different 2,000 years ago.

Before the rise of personal horoscopes, astrology was a state affair. A court astrologer would have been called upon to interpret omens and predict plagues or other events, which could have real-world consequences. For instance, Hyrup said, if the astrologer was certain the king was going to die, the Babylonians could install a proxy king for six months, kill him at the end of his service, and let the original king return to the throne.

"The purpose of all this refined astronomy is astrology," Hyrup said. "They never speak about themselves in a way that suggests that they were pure astronomers or mathematicians; their profession was to be scholar-priests."

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally in Mason City, Iowa, on Wednesday. (Photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)



Bernie Sanders has released a letter from his doctor declaring that the 74-year-old Democratic presidential hopeful is in very good health.

Sanders was examined in November by Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the U.S. Congress who has served as the Vermont senators doctor for the last 26 years.

The exam showed the 6-foot, 179-pound Sanders had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, a normal blood count and thyroid profile and no history of cardiovascular disease.



Sanders had previously been treated for gout, mild hypercholesterolemia, diverticulitis, hypothyroidism, laryngitis secondary to esophageal reflux, lumbar strain and complete removal of superficial skin tumors.

His past surgical history includes the removal of a cyst from his vocal cord and an elective hernia repair procedure, which he had done in late November.

Sanders takes Levothyroxine  a medication that treats hypothyroidism  daily, and Indomethacin, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, intermittently, according to Monahan.

Brian Monahans letter. (Courtesy of Bernie Sanders campaign)



The senator doesnt smoke, [uses] alcohol infrequently and is up-to-date on recommended vaccinations.

You are in overall very good health and active in your professional work, and recreational lifestyle without limitation, Monahans letter concludes.

Sanders, who at 75 would become the oldest person to be elected U.S. president, was asked last year if he had the stamina for the job.

I dont think Ive taken a day off because of sickness in several years, he told ABCs This Week in June. So I believe as somebody who has  when he was a kid, a long-distance runner  Im blessed with endurance. Im blessed with health.
By Ron Bousso LONDON (Reuters) - BG Group shareholders overwhelmingly approved Royal Dutch Shell's $52 billion (36 billion pounds) takeover on Thursday, clearing the way for the two firms to create the world's biggest trader of liquefied natural gas (LNG). BG will now merge with Shell on Feb. 15, nearly two decades after the company was born from British Gas and just a few months after it reached record oil and gas output thanks to new projects in Australia and Brazil. At a meeting in London, 99.53 percent of BG shareholders voted in favour of the merger, a day after 83 percent of Shell's shareholders approved the deal first announced on April 8 last year. Shell shareholders are putting their faith in CEO Ben van Beurden's decision to focus the Anglo-Dutch company's operations in liquefied natural gas (LNG) and deep water oil production over the coming decades as the industry undergoes one of its worse downturns in decades. Low oil prices will remain a challenge for the combined company in the short term, however, as crude has fallen 75 percent over the past 18 months to around $30 a barrel. While the oil price is expected to stage a gradual recovery, Shell has said the combined group needs crude to be above $60 a barrel to break even. "I very strongly believe in what Shell is trying to do long term ... The idea that they try to specialise in their strengths being deepwater and LNG is absolutely the right thing to do," BG Chairman Andrew Gould told reporters. NUMBER TWO BG Chief Executive Officer Helge Lund, who joined BG weeksbefore the merger was announced, is set to step down. Shell executive Huibert Vigeveno, who headed the integration planning in recent months, will become transitional CEO. Lund, who previously led Norway's Statoil through a period of spectacular growth, has yet to indicate his plans. BG shares were up 3.4 percent while Shell B shares were trading 5.4 percent higher after the vote, compared with the sector index that 4.2 percent higher. The acquisition will boost Shell's oil and gas production by 20 percent and bring it closer to challenging the world's top international oil company ExxonMobil. Combined, Shell and BG will overtake Chevron as the world's second-biggest publicly-traded oil and gas company measured by market value. The combined company is also set to topple Exxon as the largest publicly-traded oil and gas producer by 2020, according to analysts at Simmons and Company. Once the two companies merge, Shell will start a complex integration process that will include thousands of job cuts, tens of billions of dollars in asset sales and the harmonising of the companies' trading and production operations as they overlap in many parts of the world. Shell has promised to find $3.5 billion from cost savingsand overlaps by 2018, from various areas including its corporate, administrative and IT operations. BG was created in 1997 when British Gas split into twoseparate companies. In 2000, another change saw the creationof BG Group, focused on international oil and gas production.
BALTIMORE (Reuters) - The U.S.-led battle against Islamic State militants controlling parts of Iraq and Syria is gaining steam and will show more progress by year's end, Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday. Biden touted the recent success of U.S. efforts backing Iraqi troops against the Islamic State in Iraq as part of a broad defense of Obama administration foreign policy. "I promise you, after Ramadi, watch what happens now in Raqqa in Syria and what happens in Mosul (Iraq), by end of this year," he told U.S. House of Representatives Democrats, in Baltimore for a three-day retreat. Iraqi forces, boosted by U.S. training, have evicted insurgents from large parts of Ramadi, leading to speculation that they could have success elsewhere against the Islamic State. "We've taken back collectively 40 percent of the territory they occupy," Biden said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest, asked about Biden's remarks, said he had not yet heard them. But he added, "Obviously, we're going to need to get ISIL leaders out of Mosul and out of Raqqa and that's a significant task. We know that they've been dug into those cities for a while now, and that means it's going to be hard to dig them out. ISIL is one of the acronyms referring to Islamic State. The Democratic vice president attributed recent successes to more engagement by European countries and Turkey. "The president has finally got the attention of Europeans to pony up because they haven't been doing much of anything," Biden said, adding, "I spend too much time probably with President Erdogan, but Erdogan has seen the Lord. Things are changing because of self-interest." Biden and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed ways to deepen cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in a meeting in Istanbul on Saturday, according to a White House statement on Sunday. (Reporting By Richard Cowan and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
By Eric M. Johnson SEATTLE (Reuters) - A massive luxury yacht owned by Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen destroyed most of a protected coral reef during a visit to the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean earlier this month, media reported. An anchor chain from the vessel damaged nearly 14,000 square feet (1,300 square meters), or about 80 percent, of reef near two scuba diving sites in the West Bay, the islands' environment department said, according to the Cayman News Service. Allen's Seattle-based Vulcan Inc organization, which manages his fortune, said on Wednesday that the M/V Tatoosh was moored on Jan. 14 in a "position explicitly directed" by the local port authority and that his team was cooperating with the investigation. "When its crew was alerted by a diver that her anchor chain may have impacted coral in the area, the crew promptly, and on their own accord, relocated their position to ensure the reef was protected," Vulcan said. The damage to the coral, which is vital for marine life, comes five months after the billionaire philanthropist announced support for research to stabilize and restore coral reefs. Allen, who owns the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers, is also a massive benefactor in Seattle and beyond, funding everything from libraries to healthcare initiatives and oceanic exploration projects. At 92.42 meters (303.21 feet), Allen's five-deck Tatoosh is the 49th largest yacht in the world, and has twin helicopter landing pads, an observation lounge, and a gymnasium, according to BoatInternational.com. Allen was not on board at the time of the incident, Vulcan said. CNN reported that Allen could face a maximum fine of roughly $600,000, not counting civil damages. The Cayman News Service reported that divers surveyed the damage last week and that the environment department expects to issue its investigative findings next week. The service reported that shifting winds may have pushed Allen's vessel toward the coral reserve near the island, south of Cuba and home to some 58,400 residents. It also reported that the Cayman government has been unable to collect fines after a number of similar incidents over the last few years. The Cayman Department of Environment did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though an employee said the agency's director and staff were meeting about the incident on Thursday. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Diane Craft)
Cairo (AFP) - A bomb blast killed two Egyptian police officers and wounded five others in an attack on their armoured vehicle in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday, the interior ministry said.

The vehicle was targeted near a school in the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish, it said in a statement, in the second such attack in recent days.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the region is a stronghold of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

IS claimed a roadside bombing that killed a colonel and three soldiers on the outskirts of El-Arish on Wednesday.

Jihadists have regularly attacked security forces in the peninsula since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

They say their attacks are in retaliation for a government crackdown targeting Morsi supporters that has left hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned.

The authorities say hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed in attacks, mainly in North Sinai, since 2013.

Egypt's branch of IS also said it planted a bomb that caused the crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai in October, killing all 224 people on board.
LONDON (Reuters) - A 26-year-old mother who took her toddler son to Syria and posted pictures of him next to a weapon has been convicted of belonging to Islamic State (IS). Tareena Shakil was found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court on Friday of joining IS and encouraging terrorism on social media. The 26-year-old boarded a plane to Turkey in October 2014 with her one-year-old boy, crossed the border into Syria and spent three months there, West Midlands police said in a statement. She denied joining IS but detectives said Shakil had become a member of the extremist group and was set to become a jihadi bride. A photograph uncovered by police showed her posing in Syria underneath an IS flag. She left the country in January 2015, although it is not known why, the statement added. She was arrested by counter-terrorism officers when she returned to Britain on Feb. 18 after landing at Heathrow Airport. The child was taken into care. Tareena Shakil had self-radicalized by viewing extremist material on the internet, before leaving the UK," said Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale in the statement. "Our assessment is that she was not naive. She had absolutely clear intentions when she left the UK, sending tweets encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism here and then taking her young child to join Daesh (IS) in Syria. Photographs seized from her phone showed Ms Shakil posing with a firearm and wearing a Daesh balaclava. Another showed a rucksack with a Daesh logo and person holding a handgun. These were taken while she was in Syria." Security services estimate some 600 Britons have joined the ranks of Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq, many of them crossing via Turkey. About half are believed to have returned to Britain. Shakil will be sentenced on Monday. (Reporting by Stephen Addison; editing by Andrew Roche)
London (AFP) - A British immigration court ruling allowing four Syrian migrants to come to Britain from the "Jungle" camp in northern France was a "unique situation", the full judgment published on Friday said.

Referring to the camp in the port city of Calais, the ruling also said "the conditions prevailing in this desolate part of the Earth are about as deplorable as any citizen of the developed nations could imagine".

It said the four -- three teenagers and a 26-year-old with mental problems who were granted leave to travel to Britain while their asylum claims were being considered -- were in a "special, indeed unique situation" citing factors such as their age, vulnerability, psychologically-traumatised conditions and the dangers they faced in the "Jungle".

Campaigners had hoped last week's ruling would open the way for many more migrant children with family ties in Britain to be allowed to travel.

But the ruling said many of those living in the camp "are probably not refugees in any general sense or any sense entitled to recognition".

"Rather, they are migrant nationals of a number of countries outside the European Union, who, while intending to make a claim for refugee status, declined to make the claim in France," it said.

The court last week ordered the interior ministry to allow the four to enter Britain, which they did the following day.

Citizens UK, which was involved in bringing the legal action, had said it hoped the ruling "will allow other families to be reunited".
Nairobi (AFP) - Two foreign journalists working in volatile Burundi were released without charge Friday, 24 hours after police arrested them in a raid, the French ambassador said.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested on Thursday afternoon during a raid in which 15 others were also held, police said.

Both journalists have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work. Their arrest sparked widespread condemnation from rights groups and diplomats.

"They were released, no charges were brought against them," French ambassador Gerrit Van Rossum told AFP, but added they had not been given their equipment and notebooks back.

The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA), who described the journalists as "consummate professionals", said that while their release was "a big relief... the incident bodes ill for our work in Burundi."

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

Moore, 34, has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy, 49, has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.
NAIROBI (Reuters) - A British and a French journalist arrested during a sweep for rebels in flashpoint districts of the capital were released on Friday, a witness said. Moise Nkurunziza, deputy police spokesman, said the police had picked up British photojournalist Phil Moore and Jean Philippe Remy, a French journalist, during raids in Jabe and Nyakabiga neighborhoods in Bujumbura on Thursday. A Reuters witnesss said the two men were seen leaving the courthouse on Friday. They made no comment to reporters. In a statement on its website, Le Monde newspaper had demanded the release of both journalists, saying they were the newspaper's special correspondents in Burundi. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had also called for the immediate release of the journalists, while the British Foreign Office said it was "urgently looking into reports" about the detention of a UK national. Remy is the Africa bureau chief for the French newspaper Le Monde, while Moore, a freelance photographer, has often reported from conflict zones in the region. Both men have won awards for their coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. Burundi has been in turmoil since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans to run for a third term in office, sparking weeks of street protests by the opposition who said his bid was unconstitutional. Nkurunziza's government foiled an attempted coup in May, but continued clashes and gun attacks in the central African nation have unnerved a region where memories of the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda are still raw. The United States and European nations have criticized the government's clampdown on media, including the shuttering of private radio stations. The government has also expelled foreign journalists, including Sonia Rolley from France's RFI radio who was reporting on sexual violence committed by police officers. In a statement calling for the release of Remy and Moore, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the arrests had occurred "in the context of severe government repression against journalists, with all the main Burundian private radio stations suspended since April/May 2015". (Writing by Drazen Jorgic and Edith Honan; Additional reporting by Andrew Callus in Paris and Sarah Young in London; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Montreal (AFP) - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promise to legalize marijuana for recreational use could generate up to Can$5 billion (US$3.6 billion) in taxes for Canada's federal and provincial governments, a study says.

CIBC World Markets said its assessment is not comprehensive, but that with Ottawa and provincial governments facing revenue crunches in the wake of falling commodity prices, it was worthwhile exploring how much new revenue could be generated from legal marijuana.

The study ignored broader health, social policy and criminal justice issues.

In it, analyst Avery Shenfeld put forth various scenarios to try to pinpoint the size of the Canadian market for cannabis, using Statistics Canada surveys and a study in the International Journal of Drug Policy on the estimated number of pot smokers in this country, as well as Colorado's experience.

"Given that marijuana has to this point been illegal for recreational use, hard data for Canada is lacking," Shenfeld commented.

Extrapolating from the International Journal of Drug Policy research, total Canadian spending on marijuana would be Can$3 billion, he said.

"If so, dividing that pie among governments and producers would not appear to leave a lot of room for a fiscal boost unless prices were raised substantially," Shenfeld said.

But he noted that in Colorado the size of the market had been underestimated, and if the same is true here, the market for cannabis in Canada could be worth as much as Can$10 billion.

Other reports have pegged the size of the market at half that, noting that other US states did not see a similar bump in cannabis usage post-legalization. Shenfeld suggests tourists may have been behind the higher Colorado figures.

If marijuana is taxed at the same rate as other economic activities, the governments' combined take would be about 30 percent, or up to Can$3 billion. If it is taxed at the same higher rate as cigarettes and alcohol, however, the amount would rise to Can$5 billion.

Trudeau has appointed former Toronto police chief Bill Blair to sort out new regulations for the distribution of marijuana post-legalization.

No timeline has been provided, but when Canada moves to legalize the drug it will have been the first G7 nation to do so.
By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - A vaccine for the Zika virus in development by U.S. and Canadian scientists could be available for emergency use before the end of the year, possibly making it the first, one of the lead scientists said on Thursday. The consortium working on the vaccine includes University of Pennsylvania, led by scientist David Weiner, University of Laval, led by Gary Kobinger, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc and South Korea's GeneOne Life Science, Kobinger told Reuters in an interview. He hopes to start trials by September to test its safety on humans, pending regulator approval. A month later it could be ready for emergency use. (Reporting by Rod Nickel; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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Thirty years ago, the space shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean just 73 seconds after launching. All seven crew members were killed instantly on live television; the view of the space program altered forever less than 20 years after the moon landing, its most triumphant and unifying televised moment.

In an age that predates cell phones and social media, its estimated that more than 85 percent of the U.S. had heard about the explosion within an hour of it happening. The significance of this rapid spread of information speaks to the shell-shocked reactions of those who watched the launch. Indeed, the loss of the Challenger was one of those rare, historic moments where everyone remembers exactly where they were when the explosion happened.

Prior to the explosion, 1986 was slated to be the Year of the Shuttle, with NASA scheduling launches almost monthly. However, NASAs hectic schedule led to scores of technical oversights, as well as go fever, a term first coined after the Apollo disaster of 1967, referring to a kind of fast-paced, end-game only methodology where deadlines seemingly mattered more than safety.

Suddenly, the once frequent shuttle launches (there were nine in 1985) came to an abrupt halt. While the enthusiasm for space travel had waned prior to the Challenger explosion, suddenly at the beginning of NASAs most ambitious year, the public was left in shock. All shuttle missions were put on a 32-month hiatus while the Rogers Commission, a federally-appointed investigative team, went looking to find out what exactly went wrong. The commission, which included Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, and Sally Ride, the first woman in space (who did so on the Challenger shuttle), found that internal problems at NASA were responsible and that crucial warnings had been ignored.

While the root of the problem was still being sorted out, the death of Christa McAulliffe, the first civilian astronaut, and inaugural participant of Teachers in Space, dealt the biggest blow to the public. The program was intended to spark childrens interest in an over-budgeted space program, and McAulliffes charm and enthusiasm had made her something of a celebrity. After years of inactivity following McAulliffes death, the Teachers in Space program was officially discontinued in 1990. It would be 21 years before another civilian was permitted aboard a space shuttle.

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That night was to be then-President Ronald Reagans State of the Union address. Originally set to tout the launch of the craft as a spirited reminder of Americas commitment to the space program, as well as the Teachers In Space initiative. Instead, the State of the Union was postponed one week in favor of him instead delivering a speech about the tragedy itself. Its still considered to be one of the 20th centurys most significant speeches, helping to console a country hours after the tragedy.

Almost three years later, with redesigned shuttles and more oversight crews in place to avoid a repeat of the disaster, a veteran crew boarded the space shuttle Discovery on September 29, 1988, billed as NASAs return-to-flight. Launches quickly resumed their frequency with some promotional gimmicks  like John Glenns return to space flight at the age of 77  going toward restoring the public faith and interest. Though as the missions continued on, they again simply faded into the background.

The shuttle program was halted again in 2003 after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry, killing all seven crew members. Operations would resume in 2005, though it was known at the time that the entire program would be retired in 2011 to make way for new endeavors. Not long after the programs retirement, Rogers Commission member Alton Keel told the Houston Chronicle that NASA had lost its way and its vision, ultimately costing them public support.

In the post-shuttle era, NASA has focused its intentions on working toward sending astronauts beyond low-orbit, with unmanned missions  such as the Curiosity rovers crawl across Martian soil  allowing space exploration to make positive headlines once more. Add to that the presence of pop culture/science rockstars like Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the continuing impact of science fiction (like well received space-based films The Martian and Interstellar), as well as private investors like Elon Musk with his Space X program, and the long climb back to a point of high public interest feels as though it is in progress.

Why does that matter and why should we mourn that once-lost enthusiasm as a non-human but still important casualty of the Challenger explosion? We are, of course, mired in a complex moment (arent we always?) where space exploration is obviously nowhere near our collective top priority, but to look toward the dark and mysterious expanse gives us a kind of purpose and a kind of hope for a future far different than that which we know. The astronauts that were lost in the Challenger explosion and the Columbia explosion  as well as all others who have perished in our long pursuit of discovery  knew the risk and the worth of their endeavors. To be scared by that cost is natural, but our turning back toward awe and interest at the possibility of exploration is the truest way that we can honor those lost to the pursuit of knowledge.
It will be operated by United Airlines.

Changi Airport Group (CAG) welcomed United Airlines plan to launch non-stop flights between Singapore and San Francisco, California starting June this year.

The inaugural direct flight will take off from San Francisco on June 1, with the return flight departing from Changi Airport on June 3.

The daily service will utilise a 252-seat Boeing 787-900 Dreamliner aircraft in a two-class configuration. The total flight length stands at 16 hours and 20 minutes westbound, and 15 hours and 30 minutes eastbound.

United Airlines and Changi Airport said that this service will save travellers up to four hours each way, as compared to the airlines existing service which requires a transfer stop in Tokyo, Japan.

With the new service, Singapore will be linked to the United States, with 54 weekly services connecting to six American cities.

In terms of passenger movements, point-to-point traffic between the United States and Southeast Asia has also grown steadily over the past three years.

More than 4.9 million passengers travelled between these two regions in the 12 months ending November 2015, an increase of about 29% from the corresponding period three years ago.





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TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada said on Thursday it was monitoring developments closely after China indicted a Canadian citizen detained since 2014 on charges of spying and stealing state secrets. Kevin Garratt was detained in August 2014 near China's sensitive border with North Korea along with his wife, who was also detained for months before being released last year. Xinhua state news agency said Garratt was indicted in Dandong, a city in China's northeast where the Garratts had operated a cafe since 2008. "During the investigation, Chinese authorities also found evidence which implicates Garratt in accepting tasks from Canadian espionage agencies to gather intelligence in China," Xinhua reported. The Garratts ran a Christian coffee shop on the sensitive border with North Korea. China strictly regulates religious activities within its borders but its Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the case had nothing to do with Garratt's faith. "China's judicial authorities will handle the case strictly according to law and Kevin Garratt's legal rights will be fully guaranteed," ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters. The case has inflamed tension between Ottawa and Beijing. The arrest happened less than a week after Canada accused Chinese hackers of breaking into a key computer network. "Canada finds the indictment of Kevin Garratt by China concerning," said foreign ministry spokesman Francois Lasalle. The indictment was announced the day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior cabinet ministers attended a lavish party in Ottawa hosted by China to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Diplomatic ties began under former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeaus father. China invited Justin Trudeau for a state visit shortly after he won power in October. Garratt's son, Simeon Garratt, a Vancouver resident, said he was waiting for an update from his family's legal team in China. "We don't really have any more word on it other than that. We haven't had access to anything to this point. It's a waiting game to be honest," Garratt said in an interview. He said his mother was still not able to leave China. Julia Garratt was released in February but barred from leaving. James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based lawyer for the Garratt family, declined to comment and said he was waiting to receive official documents from the court. Brock University professor Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who served two tours in China, said the indictment could signal the start of a process to expel the couple. The main opposition Conservative Party demanded Ottawa act to secure Garrett's release. "It is the height of irony, that as the Prime Minister ... (was) celebrating with Chinese diplomats at an event in Ottawa last night, Kevin Garratt sat in a Chinese jail," it said in a statement. (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins in Toronto, Julie Gordon in Vancouver, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Megha Rajagopalan and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Macfie)
Beijing (AFP) - A Chinese court sentenced three activists to prison on Friday for allegedly attempting to start a non-violent civil rights movement, family members and campaign groups said, the latest example of the Communist Party's intensifying crackdown on dissent.

Tang Jingling received a five-year sentence, while Yuan Xinting and Wang Qingying were given three-and-a-half and two-and-a-half-year terms respectively, Amnesty International said in a press release.

The conviction for "inciting subversion of state power" was handed down by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, the London-based group said.

"This is a ridiculous verdict," said Tang's wife Wang Yanfang, who confirmed the sentences.

"They are not guilty of any crime. They just upheld values of justice," she told AFP.

China's Communist party does not tolerate anything it perceives as a potential threat to its rule, and dozens of activists have been imprisoned since President Xi Jinping took office two years ago.

During the trial, police accused the Guangzhou trio of distributing the books about non-violent resistance and "wilfully incited the subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system".

They added in a statement to prosecutors posted online by the activists' lawyers that the men had rented an office to study, print, and mail several books including one titled "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking about the Fundamentals".

They were also accused of disseminating "From Dictatorship to Democracy" by Gene Sharp, an expert on non-violent social movements.

The books "have been confirmed to have serious political transgressions", police added.

Tang's wife said the defendants were accused of opposing the Communist party and government, but all the evidence was "related to five books".

"In China, even spreading the ideas of non-violent civil disobedience will lead to a criminal prosecution", she said.

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A court official declined to comment to AFP.

The trial in July came as China's state security detained or called in for questioning more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists, in what analysts have called one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent in years. Several were formally arrested on subversion charges two weeks ago after being held in secret for six months.

"The sentences for Tang, Yuan, and Wang don't bode well for the more than a dozen human rights lawyers likely to stand trial soon for similar 'subversion' charges," Sophie Richardson, China director for US-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Friday.

"The Chinese government needs to stop equating peaceful criticism with subversion if it is to make any progress towards respecting rights."

Tang, 44, was himself a prominent human rights lawyer who had aided farmers attempting to take local officials accused of illegal land seizures to court.

He announced the founding of a small-scale "Non-violent Civil Disobedience Movement" in 2006, according to US-based group Human Rights in China.
By Megha Rajagopalan BEIJING (Reuters) - A new Chinese military outfit will lead the country's push to enhance its cyber warfare, space security and online espionage capabilities, Chinese military observers and analysts said. Senior People's Liberation Army (PLA) officials and other observers have begun to give details of the country's new Strategic Support Force (SSF), whose establishment was announced at the end of last year as part of a major overhaul of the armed forces. "It's going to make them far more effective," said John Costello, a Washington-based analyst who focuses on China's cyber capabilities. "It will most likely increase the sophistication of cyber intrusions and cyber reconnaissance over the long term. It will make them a lot more formidable to sustain cyber operations in a contested environment." The new outfit will also be charged with assisting civilian government departments with cyber defense, analysts said. "(China is) facing many hackers on the Internet engaging in illegal activities against our country, for example online attacks against important government facilities, military facilities, and important civilian facilities," Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, director of the PLA Navy's Expert Consultation Committee, told the official People's Daily online. "So it's imperative that we're equipped with defensive strength accordingly." Yin, who according to his official biography is considered an expert on communications technology in the military, added that the force would also focus on space assets and global positioning operations. China's growing cyber security prowess has been a source of tension in its relationship with the United States, which has repeatedly accused China of sponsoring hackers to steal data from its companies. Beijing vehemently denies it engages in cyber theft, saying China itself is a victim of such attacks. The Pentagon sees cyber espionage as a top national security concern. A 2014 U.S. indictment accused five Chinese military officers of hacking into American nuclear, metal and solar companies to steal trade secrets. The indictment singled out Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army, which was "hired" to assemble corporate intelligence. China called the charges "made up." "HACKER TROOPS" In an interview with a regional Chinese newspaper that was re-posted on the state-backed Global Times website, Song Zhongping, a respected Beijing-based military expert, said the SSF was more than a support force, and should be considered a military branch in its own right. He added the force was comprised of three parts, including one made up of of "hacker troops" for cyber attacks and defense, as well as space and electronic warfare. The space force will focus on all types of reconnaissance and satellite navigation, Song added. The electronic warfare unit would work on interference with enemy radar and communications. Speaking about the military reforms on state television at the end of last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping called the support force a "new-type combat force to maintain national security and an important growth point of the PLA's combat capabilities." The force would facilitate cooperation between defense and civilian sectors, Xi added. The new force could also incorporate civilian technology including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, state media reported this month. Senior Colonel Shao Yongling, a professor at the PLA Rocket Force Command College in the central province of Hubei, told the official China Daily that the SSF would serve to reduce duplication of tasks in the military and improve the PLA's ability to carry out joint operations. "As for the Strategic Support Force, it better coordinates the cooperation between forces on the battlefield and logistic support," Major General Du Wenlong, PLA Academy of Military Science, told state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV). (Reporting By Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
A Chinese ship is set to join the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370, Australia's deputy prime minister said Friday, as the jet's fate remains a mystery almost two years after it vanished.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will join three other vessels contracted from Dutch firm Fugro -- Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Havila Harmony -- currently scouring the depths of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia where the plane is believed to have crashed after diverting from its flight path.

Carrying 239 passengers and crew, the plane disappeared during a Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight on March 8, 2014.

So far, only a two-metre-long (almost seven-foot) flaperon wing part that washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July has been confirmed to have come from aircraft.

"The ship, offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by Premier Li Keqiang of the People's Republic of China in November 2015, will undertake search operations in the southern Indian Ocean," Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.

"The total value of the contribution by the People's Republic of China, including the ship, is around Aus$20 million (US$14 million)."

Truss said the Chinese vessel would be equipped with a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) long towed sonar system, which searchers will use to take a closer look at the rugged seabed.

Dong Hai Jiu 101 is set to depart Singapore for Australia on Sunday and join the hunt -- which has so far covered 85,000 square kilometres (32,820 square miles) of the 120,000 square kilometres search zone -- in late February, Truss added.

Australian authorities have said that if after the 120,000 square kilometres is scoured and there are no new leads to pinpoint the location of the missing aircraft, the search zone would not be expanded.

Relatives of those aboard MH370 have bitterly criticised the airline and the Malaysian government for failing to provide answers, while the disappearance has become one of aviation's greatest riddles and spawned numerous conspiracy theories.
LONDON - The four bronze lions of London's central Trafalgar Square got a temporary addition on Thursday, with a clockwork sculpture of the animal unveiled to highlight the plight of big cats. The statue, made of clockwork mechanics, will stand in the square for just a day before being auctioned off to raise money for National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative, which says it aims to halt the decline of big cats in the wild. According to the initiatives website, there are likely some 30,000 lions in the wild. Among their threats are poaching and loss of both prey and habitat. "I think most people don't believe actually lions are in danger," said Jeff Ford of television channel Nat Geo Wild, which during Feb. 1-7 hosts its "Big Cat Week". "I think they think there's a lot of them about. But just last month they were put on the endangered species list." Sculptor Iain Prendergast, whose works have appeared on television show "Game of Thrones" as well as in artist Banksy's "Dismaland" theme park, said the statue's body was made to look like "the inner workings of a clock". Clock hands make up the lion's mane while the eyes were made with small clocks.
In case you dont know, Comcast is starting to get more aggressive in rolling out its data caps across the country. Many of its customers have complained loudly about the unfairness of these data caps despite the fact that Comcast insists theyre all about fairness. In a new Bloomberg article about Comcasts data caps, the company tries to explain why these caps are really about fairness to its customers, although in reality this justification is a giant pile of nonsense.

FROM EARLIER: How much Google paid the man who owned Google.com for exactly one minute

The company says usage-based billing, which is common in the wireless industry, is about fairness, Bloomberg explains. Customers who only use the Internet to check e-mail shouldnt pay the same as subscribers with bandwidth-heavy web habits like online video games, file-sharing or binge-watching web videos.

Im sorry, but this is preposterous.

Comcast customers in capped areas who are light Internet users arent seeing their prices go dramatically down. Instead, as the Bloomberg piece notes, Comcast is paying customers back $5 each month if they use less than 5GB. Wow-wee, a whole five smackers! And all I have to do is never watch YouTube or stream music for a lengthy period! Thanks, Comcast!

This $5 monthly refund is doubly ridiculous when you consider that the cost of going over the caps in the markets where theyve been introduced is $10 per every 50GB. Additionally, customers in some markets who want to keep their unlimited data plans can do so if they pony up between $30 and $35 more per month.

I am not at all a fan of any data caps but there are much fairer ways to implement them than the way Comcast has chosen. Googles Project Fi, for example, pays you back for any unused data you have left over a billing cycle. T-Mobile and AT&T also let you roll over unused data to future billing cycles. Comcast, on the other hand, does neither of those things.

Additionally, one person watching lots of Netflix doesnt hurt the experience of a person checking their email unless all that binge watching is causing lots of network congestion but Comcast has explicitly said that its data caps have nothing to do with network congestion.

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So what is this really about? In a way, it is about fairness, but not to customers. Instead, its about Comcast taking what it thinks it deserves.

Were just trialing ways to have a balanced relationship, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the Business Insider Ignition conference last month. I dont think its illogical or something people should be paranoid about.

The balanced relationship hes talking about is between Comcast and Netflix. Essentially, he sees Netflix swiping away Comcast TV customers by riding over the top of Comcasts cable Internet service and he wants to make sure Netflix pays the appropriate price. If Comcast customers are the ones who have to bear the cost of this balanced relationship by paying extra for their Netflix binge watching, then so be it.

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By Joseph Menn SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional probe into the impact of a hack of Juniper Networks Inc software will examine the possibility that it was initially altered at the behest of the National Security Agency, a lawmaker said in an interview on Thursday. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this month sent letters asking some two dozen agencies to provide documents showing whether they used Juniper devices running ScreenOS software. The company said in December ScreenOS had been compromised by hackers using a so-called back door in the software. Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican who heads the committee's technology subcommittee and formerly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, said his initial goal in pursuing the probe was to determine whether government agencies, many of which use Juniper gear, had been compromised by the hackers. But Hurd, a key player in the investigation, said the committee would also probe the origins of the breach. If it turns out that a back door was included at a U.S. government agency's request, he said, that should help change the policy debate. The earliest Juniper back door identified by researchers used a technique widely attributed to the NSA. The NSA did not respond to a request for comment. Juniper declined to comment. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have long lobbied in vain for legislation that would require technology companies to provide back doors in equipment that use encryption technology. They say they need such access to conduct authorized wiretaps and other types or surveillance. The technology industry has fiercely opposed any such policy, arguing that back doors could be exploited by criminals or foreign intelligence services. The debate has heated up in the wake of recent attacks by Islamic militants, who make heavy use of digital communications networks. "How do we understand the vulnerabilities that created this problem and ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen in the future?" Hurd said. "I don't think the government should be requesting anything that weakens the security of anything that is used by the federal government or American businesses." Juniper said in December it had found two unauthorized pieces of code inserted into ScreenOS that would have allowed whoever planted them to read email sent over supposedly secure connections known as virtual private networks, or VPNs. After outside researchers picked apart the software patches Juniper issued to fix the problem, they concluded that one back door had been inserted in 2014 and one in 2012. The 2012 version, though, merely changed the formulation of a piece of software known as a random number generator, which is part of most encryption products. The random number generator used in the Juniper products, known as Dual Elliptic Curve, has long been suspected by security professionals of containing a back door engineered by the U.S. National Security Agency. Those suspicions were largely confirmed by leaks from former agency contractor Edward Snowden. Juniper said this month it would remove Dual Elliptic Curve entirely in future versions of its products. Juniper has not said how the code got there in the first place. It sells into defense and intelligence agencies, however, and major customers could have requested that the code be modified as part of a contract, former employees told Reuters this month. That is how Dual Elliptic Curve made it into a software kit distributed by security company RSA. The NSA is a logical suspect for the 2008 code insertion, said security researcher Nicholas Weaver of the International Computer Science Institute, while the offenders in both 2012 and 2014 are more likely to have been other countries. (Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Richard Chang)
Chesapeake Bay crabbers took it hard in 2008 when the blue crab industry was officially declared a commercial failure. Blue crabs are to the Chesapeake what lobsters are to Mainenot just a major contributor to the economy but also the object of a venerable culture, based on crab pots in warmer weather and dredging in winter.

Faced with the decline of this iconic industry, Virginia opted to shut down the winter crab harvest in its waters. Scientific studies had shown that it dredged up a disproportionately large number of reproductive females, meaning fewer crabs to catch in future years. The crabbers were skeptical, at best, when the state offered to put them back to work during the winter retrieving derelict and abandoned crab pots. Pulling up empty crab pots in winter is nobodys idea of a good time.

But the pots werent empty, and thats the headline, said Kirk Havens, a biologist at William & Marys Virginia Institute of Marine Science. In the middle of winter, the pots were loaded with bycatch, almost all of it deadnot just crabs but striped bass, perch, catfish, even drowned muskrats and diving ducks.

That got crabbers, who had considered lost pots irrelevant to the fishery, thinking differently. It also led to a new study in the journal Scientific Reports projecting that a program to recover as little as 10 percent of derelict crab and lobster pots worldwide could increase crustacean landings by almost 300,000 metric tons, worth $831 million annually, in addition to the benefit to other wildlife.

The idea for the program arose when Havens and coauthor Donna Bilkovic, a VIMS marine ecologist, were mapping the bay bottom with the help of side-scan sonar. We kept seeing these weird rectangular shapes, Havens said. They turned out, on closer inspection, to be abandoned crab pots. A lot of them. Chesapeake Bay crabbers put out up to 800,000 pots every year and routinely lose 20 percent of them to storms, boat propellers, and other causes. Because the pots are metal, they can last and continue ghost fishing for years, with the bodies of their victims serving as a form of continual self-baiting for other victims.

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Federal disaster-relief funding for the fishery meant a chance to see if stopping or at least reducing this bycatch could make a difference, Havens said. Beginning in 2008, the recovery program put 70 crabbers to work searching along a systematic grid for lost pots. Havens and his colleagues had toyed with some sort of grappling device to recover the pots. But the watermen looked at that and said, Hmm, well just do something else,  he said. Instead, they put bent nails through rope at one-foot intervals and snagged a total of 34,408 derelict crab pots over six years.

Removing the traps cost $4.2 million total. But according to the study in Scientific Reports, it resulted in a 27 percent increase in catchroughly one extra crab in every working potfor an economic benefit of $21.3 million over what would have happened had the abandoned pots remained in place.

People will argue about the amount, said Chris Moore, Virginia senior scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, who was not involved in the study. But one of the great things about this study is that it attempts to commoditize what our losses are from this derelict fishing gear. We generally talk about these kinds of programs as doing good work, but we seldom get to quantify how they contribute dollars to the economy. This study starts to put the question in cost-benefit terms.

The recovery program has ended in Virginia because disaster-relief funding ran out. But this study obliges the state to ask whether we should start putting money toward these programs so we will reap the benefit of a greater fishery later on, Moore said. The same question ought to be debated elsewhere, from Maine with its lobsters to Southeast India and its crabs, according to Havens and his coauthors.

Both the local and global benefit estimates in the study are based on the goal of recovering 10 percent of derelict pots. But what about the 90 percent of lost pots that would remain on the bottom? Researchers at VIMS have also tested a biodegradable escape hatch suitable for any pot now in use. It costs about $1 per pot and uses PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates), a family of naturally occurring biopolyesters, which marine bacteria break down over the course of a year. After that, any crab or lobster pot still on the bottom would be harmless.

Will crabbers take up the escape-hatch idea? Its too soon to say, according to Havens, but he says he is seeing changes in attitude about derelict pots.

This past summer, I saw a crabber with a load of derelict traps in his truck, and I asked him about it. He said, Oh, some of my buddies were throwing them in the water. But Im taking them to the dump. That wouldnt have happened in the past, Havens said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Criminal, not political motives likely were behind the kidnapping of three American contractors in Iraq this month, U.S. officials familiar with investigations into their disappearance said on Thursday. Those possible motives could include ransom or a prisoner swap and the officials said investigators still did not know which of three Iranian-backed Islamist militant groups kidnapped the contractors or of any demands from them. Kidnapping for ransom or other criminal purposes has become a common tactic among Shiite militia groups in Iraq. On Thursday, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, explicitly accused Iran of involvement in the kidnapping, but cited no evidence to back the claim. He went on to criticize Secretary of State John Kerry for last week asking Iran's foreign minister about the missing contractors. Two U.S. officials said U.S. agencies had no evidence the Iranian government had any role in the kidnappings. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by Grant McCool)
Here's a question: If they held a Republican presidential debate and Donald Trump wasn't there, did it actually make a sound?

Thursday night's GOP event  number seven, count 'em, seven so far  proved the answer is a qualified yes. Sure, the Donald was missed at first, with moderator Megyn Kelly cleverly referring to him as "the elephant not in the room" with her very first question. It was naturally addressed to Ted Cruz, simply because he was the resident alpha male by default.

Before answering, Cruz lavishly praised the people of Iowa, promising that when he becomes president it will not be part of flyover, but rather "fly-to" territory (OK, but are there any good restaurants?). For a while he pretended to be likeable, but finally got around to the question.

"I'm a maniac," he announced, and for one blissful second it seemed like he was having a Howard Beale moment and telling the truth. But no such luck. "And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," he continued. "And now that we've got the Donald Trump portion out of the way"

The answer got the expected laugh, but the Trump portion wasn't out of the way yet, as several of the others joined in with their sarcasm dripping.

"He's the greatest show on earth," admitted Rubio. "I kind of miss Donald Trump, he was a little teddy bear to me," joked Bush, although since he smiles all the time it's hard to tell when he's joking or not.

But after everyone got that off their chests, the evening proceeded apace, with the remaining candidates (including Rand Paul, obviously thrilled to be let back in the room with the grown-ups) delivering their patented shtick without missing a beat.

But a little later something wonderful happened. Megyn Kelly teased it before a commercial break, promising the viewing audience "something you've never seen before." What was it, the nation wondered? Trump suddenly riding in on a white horse? The candidates engaging in a dirty dancing contest? Chris Christie in a speedo?

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Better. It was the use of "gotcha" videos first of Marco Rubio and then of Ted Cruz, showing them blatantly contradicting themselves on policy positions throughout the years. Rubio was particularly flustered by this new and highly effective brand of attack, which concentrated on his flip-flopping on immigration and amnesty, responding with a litany of tough steps he would take, including tracking immigrants like Federal Express packages. And he didn't even give credit for the idea to Chris Christie.

This led to a mini-debate within the debate, with Rubio and Jeb protractedly fighting with each other to essentially determine which one had changed his positions more. Bush stressed that anyone could read his thoughts on the matter in his book on immigration, for which he gave the least compelling plug ever: "It's $2.99 on Amazon, it wasn't a best-seller," he admitted. "It's affordable for everybody."

Megyn Kelly pointedly asked Cruz about his contradictory positions, revealed on video, regarding his amendment to the immigration bill. "Was that an act? It was pretty convincing," she said with a sly grin on her face. (Translation: "Liar, liar, pants on fire!").

Between this new Meet the Press-inspired form of questioning and Fox News' refusal to kowtow to Donald Trump (he reportedly asked them for $5 million to participate in the debate, as if he were negotiating a hotel deal in Atlantic City), this member of the lamestream media is forced to make an admission he never thought he'd make: Fox News, you complete me!

One of the bigger fights of the evening broke out between Ted Cruz and moderator Chris Wallace. Cruz pointed out that nearly every question asked in the first part was actually an invitation for one of the other candidates to attack him. "If you guys ask one more mean question I may have to leave the stage," he announced, attempting to get another jab in at Trump.

Later, Wallace, referring to Cruz's lack of support from fellow Republicans, asked, "Does your style get in the way of your ability to get things done?" (Translation: "Do you think being hated by everyone in your own party is a problem?"). The senator's answer seemed to indicate that his dinner parties weren't terribly overcrowded.

As always, the candidates provided plenty of fun moments. Christie announced that President Obama had not been held accountable for his decisions, apparently forgetting that he had been re-elected. John Kasich, still operating under the theory that acting like the most reasonable person on the ballot would actually mean something this day and age, somehow managed to deny that he was an "establishment candidate." Cruz basically said that he would defeat ISIS by cutting taxes.

Speaking of ISIS, the terrorist organization has become an obsession for Rubio, who strongly implied that if he was president, torturing would resume at Guantanamo. The longer the primary season goes on, the more angry and vitriolic he seems to get. He was so pleasant last week chatting and joking with Jimmy Fallon, but put a podium in front of him and he begins to rant and rave as if his underwear were too tight.

This was the second debate to include questions from YouTube celebrities, and please, make it stop. Responding to a question posed by a woman named Dulcy Candy, Bush once again revealed his leering propensities, referring to her as a "beautiful young woman" and declaring, "That's a pretty cool name!"

Later, Bush, responding to a question about Hillary Clinton, revealed that he'd seen polls in which he would beat her in a general election. He didn't say that they'd been taken in his own home.

Rubio, who at one point graciously conceded that it was Jesus Christ, and not himself, who was the actual Savior, gave Bernie Sanders one of the few, if not only, mentions in the debate. "I think Bernie Sanders is a good candidate for presidentof Sweden," he announced with perfect comic timing, forgetting only to add, "Oh, snap!"

Christie seemed to be in robotic mode, responding to every question, including one about Bridgegate, with an attack on Hillary. "The days of the Clintons in public housing are over!" he thundered, even while Bill was probably measuring drapes.

Carson (who actually responded to one question by gleefully saying, "Oh, that's great!") demonstrated his skill at memorization by rattling off the names of several Baltic countries, as if expecting bonus points for Lithuania. Later, in his closing statement, he bizarrely recited the opening passage of the Constitution.

The other candidates were equally eccentric in their closing statements, with Paul saying that he misses performing eye surgery (dont worry, Rand, you'll have plenty of time for that soon); Christie once again evoking 9/11 and implying that his secret crime-fighting identity was Batman: Rubio acting as if he were personally chosen by God to lead us out of the wilderness; and Cruz informing us that there were only 93 hours to the Iowa caucuses.

More importantly, it's only 214 hours until the next Republican debate.
Adam Hadhazy, writer and editor for The Kavli Foundation, contributed this article to Space.com'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Astronomers are increasingly enlisting volunteer "citizen scientists" to help them examine a seemingly endless stream of images and measurements of the universe, and their combined efforts are having a powerful impact on the study of the cosmos.

Just last November, a citizen science project called Space Warps announced the discovery of 29 new gravitational lenses, regions in the universe where massive objects bend the paths of photons (from galaxies and other light sources) as they travel toward Earth. As cosmic phenomena go, the lenses are highly prized by scientists because they offer tantalizing glimpses of objects too distant, and dim, to be seen through existing telescopes, and information on the objects that are acting as lenses.

The Space Warps' haul of lenses is all the more impressive because of how it was obtained. During an eight-month period, about 37,000 volunteers individually combed more than 430,000 digital images in a huge, online photo library of deep space. Automated computer programs have identified most of the 500 gravitational lenses on astronomers books. However, computers failed to flag the 29 lenses the Space Warps volunteers spotted, speaking to unique skills we humans possess.

The Kavli Foundation spoke with three researchers, all co-authors of two papers published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (SPACE WARPS  I. Crowdsourcing the discovery of gravitational lenses SPACE WARPS II. New gravitational lens candidates from the CFHTLS discovered through citizen science) describing the Space Warps findings. In our roundtable, the researchers discussed the findings and the critical role citizen science is playing in furthering astronomical discovery. The participants were:

Anupreeta More is a project researcher at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) at the University of Tokyo. More is a co-principal investigator for Space Warps, a citizen project dedicated to identifying gravitational lenses.

Aprajita Verma is a senior researcher in the department of physics at the University of Oxford. Verma is also a co-principal investigator for Space Warps.

Chris Lintott is a professor of astrophysics and the citizen science lead at the University of Oxford. Lintott is a co-founder of Galaxy Zoo, a citizen science project in which volunteers classify types of galaxies, and the principal investigator for the Zooniverse citizen science web portal.

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The following is an edited transcript of the roundtable discussion. The participants have been provided the opportunity to amend or edit their remarks.

The Kavli Foundation: Anupreeta and Aprajita, where did you get the idea  along with your co-principal investigator Phil Marshall of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University  to put volunteers to work on identifying gravitational lenses starting back in 2013?

Anupreeta More: A few years ago, Chris Lintott gave a talk on citizen science at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics in Chicago, where I was working at the time. It got me thinking about a lens search by citizen scientists.

Aprajita Verma: For Phil Marshall and I, Space Warps grew out of Galaxy Zoo. Soon after Galaxy Zoo launched, I started to look at some of the galaxies that were being posted on the Galaxy Zoo user forum that had potential lensed features surrounding them. This was a great by product of the core Galaxy Zoo project. However, we realized that to find these incredibly rare sources, which are often confused with other objects, we really needed a tailored interface to efficiently find lenses. This grew into Space Warps.

TKF: Chris, Galaxy Zoo itself was inspired by Stardust@home, the first astronomy-based citizen science project in which people played an active role. Until then, citizen scientists were often computer owners who offered up free processing power on their devices to aid in machine-driven data analysis. Were you concerned when you started Galaxy Zoo in 2007 that it would be hard to attract volunteers?

Chris Lintott: Since Stardust@home involved people looking at images of a comet's dust grains brought back by NASA's Stardust space probe, we thought "Well, if people are willing to look at dust grains, then surely they'd be happy to look at our galaxies!" But that turned out to be almost beside the point. As we've done many of these citizen science projects over the years, we've discovered it's not the quality of the images that matter. After all, our galaxies aren't typically beautiful. They are not the Hubble Space Telescope shots that youd expect to find on the front page of the New York Times. Our galaxies are often fuzzy, little, enigmatic blobs. The Space Warps images are pretty, but again they're not the kind of thing you would sell as a poster in the gift shop at the Kennedy Space Center.

It's actually the ideas that get people excited. I think Space Warps and Galaxy Zoo have been successful because they have done a great job of explaining to people why we need their help. We're saying to them: "Look, if you do this simple task, it allows us to do science." This idea is best shown by Planet Hunters, a citizen science project that searches for exoplanets in data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Users are looking at graphs for fun. But because the idea is the discovery of exoplanets, people will put up with looking at data.

TKF: What sort of unique science is made possible because of Space Warps?

Verma: Gravitational lenses allow us to look at objects, such as very distant galaxies, that are fainter and in much more detail than with the telescopes we have now. It's enabling the kind of science we'll be routinely doing with extremely large telescopes in the future.

More: That's right. Something unique about gravitational lensing is that it acts like a natural telescope and allows us to study some really faint, distant galaxies which we wouldn't get to study otherwise. We're seeing these distant galaxies in the early stages of their life cycle, which helps us understand how galaxies evolve over time.

Also, in a gravitational lens system, it's possible for us to study the properties of the foreground galaxies or galaxy groups that are gravitationally lensing the background sources. For example, we can measure the mass of these foreground galaxies and also study how mass is distributed in them.

TKF: Space Warps and other citizen science projects flourish because computer programs sometimes struggle at identifying features in data. Why do computers have trouble spotting the characteristic arc or blobby shapes of gravitational lenses that humans can?

More: The problem is that these arc-like images of distant galaxies can have very different shapes and profiles. The process of lensing magnifies these galaxies' images and can distort them. Also, these distant galaxies emit light at different wavelengths and can appear to have different colors. Furthermore, there are structures in these galaxies that can change the shape of the arcs.

Verma: Also, lots of spiral galaxies have bluish spiral arms that can look like lenses. We call these objects "lens impostors" and we find many more of these false positives compared to rare, true gravitational lenses.

More: All these differences make it difficult to automate the process for finding lenses. But human beings are very good at pattern recognition. The dynamic range that our eyes and our brains offer is much greater than a computer algorithm.

Lintott: Another thing to bear in mind in astronomy, particularly in Space Warps, is that we're often looking for rare objects. A computer's performance depends very strongly on how many examples you have to "train" it with. When you're dealing with rare things, that's often very difficult to do. We can't assemble large collections of hundreds of thousands of examples of gravitational lenses because we don't have them yet.

Also, people  unlike computers  check beyond what we are telling them to look for when they review images. One of the great Space Warps examples is the discovery of a "red ring" gravitational lens. All the example lenses on the Space Warps site are blue in color. But because we have human classifiers, they had no trouble noticing this red thing that looks a little like these blue things they've been taught to keep an eye out for. Humans have an ability to make intuitive leaps like that, and that's very important.

Verma: I echo the point that it's very difficult to program diversity and adaptability into any computer algorithm, whereas we kind of get it for free from the citizen scientists! [Laughter]

TKF: Aprajita and Anupreeta, whats the importance of the red ring object Chris just mentioned that the Space Warps community discovered in 2014 and has nicknamed 9io9?

Verma: This object was a really exciting find, and it's a classic example of something we hadn't seen before that citizen scientists quickly found. We think that inside the background galaxy there's both an active black hole, which is producing radio wave emissions, as well as regions of star-formation. They're both stretched by the lensing into these spectacular arcs. It's just a really nice example of what lensing can do. We're still putting in further observations to try and really understand what this object is like.

More: In this particular case with 9io9, there is the usual, main lensing galaxy, but then there is also another, small, satellite galaxy, whose mass and gravity are also contributing to the lensing. The satellite galaxy produces visible effects on the lensed images and we can use this to study its mass distribution. There are no other methods besides gravitational lensing which can provide as accurate a mass estimate for galaxies at such great distances.

TKF: Besides 9io9, citizen astrophysicists have turned up other bizarre, previously unknown phenomena. One example is Hannys Voorwerp, a galaxy-size gas cloud discovered in 2007 in Galaxy Zoo. More recently, in 2015, Planet Hunters spotted huge decreases in the starlight coming from a star called KIC 8462. The cause could be an eclipsing swarm of comets; another, albeit unlikely, possibility that has set off rampant speculation on the Internet is that an alien megastructure is blocking light from the star. Why does citizen science seemingly work so well at making completely unexpected discoveries?

Lintott: I often talk about the human ability to be distracted as a good thing. If we're doing a routine task and something unusual comes along, we stop to pay attention to it. That's rather hard to develop with automated computer systems. They can look for anomalies, but in astronomy, most anomalies are boring, such as satellites crossing in front of the telescope, or the telescope's camera malfunctions.

However, humans are really good at spotting interesting anomalies like Hanny's Voorwerp, which looks like either an amorphous green blob or an evil Kermit the Frog, depending on how you squint at it. [Laughter] The point is, it's something you want to pay attention to.

The other great thing about citizen science is that the volunteers who find these unusual things start to investigate and become advocates for them. Citizen scientists will jump up and down and tell us professional scientists we should pay attention to something. The great Zooniverse discoveries have always been from that combination of somebody who's distracted and then asks questions about what he or she has found.

TKF: Aprajita and Chris, you are both working on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). It will conduct the largest-ever scan of the sky starting in 2022 and should turn up tons of new gravitational lenses. Do you envision a Space Warps-style citizen science project for LSST?

Verma: Citizens will play a huge role in the LSST, which is a game-changer for lensing. We know of about 500 lenses currently. LSST will find on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands of lenses. We will potentially require the skill that citizen scientists have in looking for exotic and challenging objects.

Also, LSSTs dataset will have a time dimension. We're really going to make a movie of the universe, and this will turn up a number of surprises. I can see citizen scientists being instrumental in a lot of the discoveries LSST will make.

Lintott: One thing that's challenging about LSST is the sheer size of the dataset. If you were a citizen scientist, say, who had subscribed to receive text message alerts for when objects change in the sky as LSST makes its movie of the universe, then you would end up with a couple of billion text messages a night. Obviously that would not work. So that means we need to filter the data. We'll dynamically decide whether to assign a task to a machine or to a citizen scientist, or indeed to a professional scientist.

TKF: Chris, that comment reminds me of something you said to TIME magazine in 2008: "In many parts of science, we're not constrained by what data we can get, we're constrained by what we can do with the data we have. Citizen science is a very powerful way of solving that problem. In this era of Big Data, how important do you all see citizen science being moving forward, given that computers will surely get better at visual recognition tasks?

Lintott: In astronomy, if you're looking at things that are routine, like a spiral galaxy or a common type of supernova, I think the machines will take over. They will do so having been trained on the large datasets that citizen scientists will provide. But I think there will be citizen involvement for a long while and it will become more interesting as we use machines to do more of the routine work and filter the data. The tasks for citizen scientists will involve more varied things  more of the unusual, Hanny's Voorwerp-type of discoveries. Plus, a lot of unusual discoveries will need to be followed up, and I'd like to see citizen scientists get further into the process of analysis. Without them, I think we're going to end up with a pile of interesting objects which professional scientists just don't have time to deal with.

Verma: We have already seen a huge commitment from citizen scientists, particularly those who've spent a long time on Galaxy Zoo and Space Warps. For example, on Space Warps, we have a group of people who are interested in doing gravitational lens modeling, which has long been the domain of the professional astronomer. So we know that there's an appetite there to do further analysis with the objects theyve found. I think in the future, the citizen science community will work hand-in-hand with professional astronomers.

TKF: Are there new citizen astrophysicist opportunities on the horizon related to your projects?

Lintott: Galaxy Zoo has a new lease on life, actually. We just added in new galaxies from a telescope in Chile. These galaxies are relatively close and their images are beautiful. It's our first proper look at the southern sky, so we have an all-new part of the universe to explore. It gives users a chance to be the first to see galaxies  if they get over to Galaxy Zoo quickly!

Verma: For Space Warps, we are expecting new data and new projects to be online next year.

More: Here in Japan, we are leading an imaging survey called the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey and it's going to be much larger and deeper than what we have been looking at so far. We expect to find more than an order of magnitude increase in the number of lenses. Currently, we are preparing images of the candidates from the HSC survey and hope to start a new lens search with Space Warps soon.

TKF: Is it the thrill of discovery that entices most citizen scientist volunteers? Some of the images in Galaxy Zoo have never been seen before because they were taken by a robotic telescope and stored away. Volunteers therefore have the chance to see something no one else ever has.

More: That discovery aspect is personal. I think it's always exciting for anyone.

Lintott: When we set up Galaxy Zoo, we thought it would be a huge motivation to see something that's yours and be the first human to lay eyes on a galaxy. Exploring space in that way is something that until Galaxy Zoo only happened on "Star Trek." [Laughter]

In the years since, we've also come to realize that citizen science is a collective endeavor. The people who've been through 10,000 images without finding anything have contributed to the discovery of something like the red ring galaxy just as much as the person who happens to stumble across it. You need to get rid of the empty data as well. I've been surprised by how much our volunteers believe that. It's a far cry from the traditional, public view of scientific discovery in which the lone genius makes the discovery and gets all the credit.

Verma: We set out with Space Warps for citizen scientists to be part of our collaboration and they've really enabled us to produce important findings. They've inspired us with their dedication and productivity. We've learned from our analysis that basically anyone who joins Space Warps has an impact on the results. We are also especially grateful for a very dedicated, diligent group that has made most of the lens classifications. We look forward to welcoming everyone back in our future projects!

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Belting out the lyrics "dreams may come true" in a jaunty a capella, a former top general serenaded lawmakers Friday as Myanmar's long-dominant military elite marked their exit from parliament with song and dance.

Swept from their seats by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, outgoing army-backed MPs took a good-natured approach to their historic power transfer via a karaoke machine.

Parliament welcomed the handover to the Nobel laureate's MPs by throwing a party after its closing session Friday afternoon, complete with energetic dance routines by ethnic minority MPs and a host of voluble vocalists.

"May you be healthy/May you be strong/ May you be joyful all your life long," crooned parliament speaker Shwe Mann, the junta's former number three who has become an unlikely ally of Suu Kyi's in the legislature despite his erstwhile position as leader of the rival ruling party.

"Dreams may come true," his English language song continued as he encouraged fellow MPs old and new to sing along to a tune he said he learned at school.

Suu Kyi had a front row seat and kicked off the festivities with a speech of warm congratulations to the outgoing lawmakers for paving the way for her party to take power.

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), an army proxy stuffed with former generals that has run Myanmar since 2011, has sought to respond with grace to stunning victory for Suu Kyi and her party in the November polls.

- 'The Lady' did not sing -

Its camaraderie is in stark contrast to the repression that characterised the junta years when Suu Kyi's party saw its 1990 election win snatched away by the generals and thousands of democracy activists faced prison and bloody crackdowns.

"The most important thing is unity. So I wrote a song about that, even though I have been very busy recently," Saw Hla Tun, a lower house USDP MP, told AFP before the event.

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Other top performers included upper house speaker Khin Aung Myint, a USDP heavyweight who regaled parliament with jokes in his parting speech Friday, even complimenting "The Lady" as Suu Kyi is known in Myanmar on her looks.

Even the scores of unelected army MPs, who prop up the military's continuing political clout with a quarter of parliament seats, were not left out of the festivities.

One uniformed soldier took to the stage to sing a classic Myanmar song of chivalry and adventure, to the entertainment of the crowd.

While the vast majority of new NLD lawmakers who will take their seats on Monday have no previous experience in parliament, the party does boast poets and a rapper among the diverse professions of its MPs.

Some NLD members took to the stage Friday for a colourful dance performance by ethnic minority MPs.

But while the afternoon did draw to a genial close, it was not over when "the Lady" sung -- Suu Kyi did not put her musical talents on display.
Mike Brown was bagging coffee beans out of his mother's basement only two years ago. Now, his small-town small business, Death Wish Coffee, is about to go very big: It will have a 30-second commercial air in the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

The company, based in Round Lake, N.Y., is the winner of Intuit (INTU) QuickBooks' small business contest. They were one of 15,000 companies to enter. A panel of judges at Intuit then chose 10 finalists based on the owners' passion, authenticity, and other "entrepreneurial benchmarks," an Intuit spokesperson says.

After the 10 finalists were selected, the vote went to the public to choose the top three. Chubbies, a San Francisco-based men's apparel brand, and Vidler's 5 & 10, a general store in upstate New York, rounded out the top three and will each receive $25,000 and local advertising. The seven other finalists each receive a $10,000 prize. But none of that can compare to the dramatic impact of a (free) Super Bowl ad. (A 30-second ad during the Super Bowl costs $5 million this year.)

In fact, if you ask Bill Rancic, winner of the first season of "The Apprentice" and Intuit's celebrity spokesperson for the contest, the ad could help Brown's business explode. "It's going to change his life," Rancic tells Yahoo Finance. "This year, he will probably sell millions of pounds of coffee from that one ad. That's pretty amazing to think about."

Brown certainly hopes that will be the result, and he's gearing up to prepare for it. "We bought hundreds and hundreds of pounds of green coffee to get ready," he says, "and we have some bigger local roasters helping us out." Using different roasters brings up the risk of inconsistency in the coffee, so Brown says his main focus of late has been quality control and testing to ensure the product stays the same. He is expecting, understandably, a slew of orders after the ad goes live.

The ad shows vikings rowing a ship through a dramatic storm. It's clever without being silly, and it ends with a subtle twist. For most of the 30-second ad, you think you're watching a movie trailer, or perhaps a videogame commercial. A coffee ad is the last thing you're expecting. Here's the clip:







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What Brown loves is the way the feel of the ad fits his company's brand. Death Wish's tagline is "The world's strongest coffee." It's meant to be intense. The back of Brown's business card reads: "Coffee should be black as hell and strong as death." His first customers, he says, were truck drivers, construction workers, and people who worked night shifts.



The company, which did $6 million in sales last year, does not have any of its own stores, but it is sold at some local grocery stores in the Albany area. It does most of its sales online, through its website or on Amazon, and it sells internationally on Amazon Europe. It's in talks to sell at Target (TGT). As it has grown its customer base, Brown says, "People who I never thought would try my coffee -- sweet little old ladies -- are saying they love it. That's not who I had in mind initially, but they like it." Some of Death Wish's drinkers are so loyal they've etched the brand's name onto their skin. (Brown says he's met four people with Death Wish Coffee tattoos.)



Mike Brown, owner of Death Wish Coffee, stands with his roaster.

Small-brew success



Intuit has chosen to back a coffee ad at a time when smaller coffee chains are exploding. Starbucks (SBUX), Peet's and Le Pain Quotidien have all launched cold brew in the past two years. Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and other so-called "third wave" roasters have grown their brick-and-mortar footprint.

Brown says Death Wish isn't about those trends. "We don't fall under any of the trendy coffeesit's not third wave, or fourth wave," he says. "It's a throwback, I'd say, it's a working man's coffee. It's that deep, dark brew you drink in the morning just to get your butt out the door and get you moving." Indeed, that's the image the end of the Super Bowl ad projects.

This is the second year of Intuit's contest. Last year's winner was GoldieBlox, which makes educational toys for girls; their ad was extremely well-received. When Brown envisions the water-cooler chatter about his ad on the day after the big game, he hopes people will say it was "epic."

And in case you're wondering where the coffee entrepreneur will be when he sees the ad air live during the big game on Feb. 7he and his girlfriend, and all 10 of Death Wish's full-time employees, will be at an Intuit watching party right near the stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

--

Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology.



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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Aviation officials said on Friday a metal object recovered from Malaysia's east coast a day earlier was not from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. It was the second time in a week authorities have dismissed speculation that wreckage from the jet had been found, after a similar piece of ocean debris recovered from a beach in Southern Thailand on Jan 23 proved not to be from MH370. Malaysia's transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said the two-meter-long object found in the eastern state of Terengganu on Thursday had been examined by officials from the ministry, the Department of Civil Aviation and Malaysia Airlines. "The assessment found that the debris does not match those of a Boeing 777, thus confirming that the debris is not from MH370," he said in a statement. Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014. (Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
The question we have to ask is not Do people deserve to die for the crimes theyve committed?,  lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson said Thursday morning in front of the Delaware Legislative Hall. The question we have to ask is Do we deserve to kill? We really can free ourselves in this state to do some amazing things if we put the death penalty behind us.

Stevenson, a Delaware native, was joined by a crowd of antideath penalty supporters. The group awaited an afternoon vote by the state House of Representatives that could make Delaware the 20th state to repeal capital punishment. The bill had been blocked in the House Judiciary Committee for the second time in two years after passing the Senate in April, but Rep. Larry Mitchell, the Democrat who chairs the committee and opposes the bill, relented and released the bill for a full hearing. Mitchell told Delaware Online that he believed the issue deserved a hearing in spite of his opposition.

In May, Gov. Jack Markell said he wouldnt hesitate to sign the bill into law if it passed, describing the death penalty as an instrument of imperfect justice, according to Delaware Online. The states Supreme Court has overturned three death row convictions in the past two years, citing prosecutorial misconduct and failures by state-appointed defense counsel.

Delawares progress toward abolishment reflects a broader national shift away from capital punishment. Since 1996, public support for the death penalty in the U.S. has fallen by 20 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. As that support has fallen, so have the number of new death sentences. In 1994, three hundred new death sentences were assigned, and in 2013 the number of new sentences dropped to 83.

Its not like people are swimming against the tide, Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, told TakePart. Whats happening [in Delaware] is following the course of whats happening in other states.

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In Kansas on Thursday, a group of bipartisan legislators and activists gathered at the state capitol to rally for repeal legislation introduced on Jan. 22. Floyd Bledsoe, exonerated after spending 16 years in a Kansas prison for a murder he didnt commit, told the crowd that the states death penalty must end because tomorrow it might be too late for one person.

The Kansas bill boasts 10 Republican and six Democratic sponsors, exemplifying the growing bipartisan movement to abolish capital punishment. That across-the-aisle alliance was on display last May in conservative Nebraska, where political foes set aside differences and voted to override the governors veto of a successful repeal bill.

Were transcending these left-right boxes that weve put ourselves in, said Rust-Tierney. The force behind the conservative and progressive alliance is a cautious view of government and a moral conviction that everybody should retain the opportunity for redemption and grace, even as they are held accountable.

Even in Missouria state that executes an average of one person per month, more than any other statea Republican-led repeal effort is under way. On Monday, a bill sponsored by state Sen. Paul Wieland became the first repeal legislation to move to the Senate floor, according to The Missouri Times. Wieland attributed his antideath penalty stance to his staunch pro-life views, a common refrain among conservative death penalty abolitionists. The Missouri Catholic Conference, the NAACP, and Missouri Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty are all backing Wielands bill.

The reality is that everywhere the death penalty is on the books and where its in play, its coming under greater scrutiny, said Rust-Tierney. Each time a state like Delaware or Kansas takes these steps, it prompts lawmakers elsewhere to say, Wait a minute. The system is crumbling, and people are noticing. 

Related stories on TakePart:





 Juries Get the Last Word in Floridas Death Penalty, Supreme Court Says

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Original article from TakePart
Dar es Salaam (AFP) - Diplomats in Tanzania criticised Friday a planned election re-run on Zanzibar, urging a "peaceful outcome" and warning of "intimidation and tensions" amid an opposition boycott.

Last year's elections in Tanzania's semi-autonomous islands were scrapped, but diplomats from 15 nations expressed concern that the election commission annulled the vote "without having provided evidence to substantiate its claim that irregularities had taken place."

"We are deeply concerned that the unilateral declaration of a re-run may lead to an escalation of intimidation and tensions," said the statement signed by ambassadors in Tanzania including the European Union and the United States envoys.

The October 25 elections, which were held across Tanzania, were scrapped on Zanzibar after the islands' election commission reported "violations of electoral law", claims dismissed by the opposition.

Zanzibar has experienced sectarian and political tensions in recent years -- including recent grenade explosions -- with the unrest affecting the islands' key tourist industry.

Others who signed the statement were Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

"We regret that an election re-run was announced, while a dialogue between parties was still ongoing," the statement read.

"For the benefit of all Tanzanians, we reaffirm our belief that the current political impasse in Zanzibar would be best addressed through a mutually acceptable and negotiated solution."

The annulment came after opposition Civic United Front (CUF) candidate, Seif Sharif Hamad, declared himself the winner before the results were officially announced. Zanzibar's election commission announced last week that fresh polls would be held on March 20 and the CUF have said it would boycott the vote.

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Zanzibar's 500,000 registered voters also cast ballots for Tanzania's national president, and despite the cancellation of the vote on the islands, new Tanzanian President John Magufuli was sworn into office last year.

The diplomats called on Magufuli to "pursue his previous calls for a negotiated solution between parties, so as to ensure a peaceful outcome."

Zanzibar President Ali Mohamed Shien of the long-ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) -- the same party as Magufuli -- remains in power until the polls are held.
(Reuters) - Dozens of Boston-area residents linked to the Central American-based MS-13 street gang were being rounded up by law enforcement authorities on Friday after their indictments on racketeering conspiracy charges related to murders and other crimes, federal prosecutors said.

The indictment of 56 members, leaders and associates of "one of the largest criminal organizations in the United States" alleges that several of the accused played a role in the murders of at least five people since 2014 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and East Boston, as well as at least 14 attempted murders.

In Massachusetts, MS-13 is largely composed of immigrants and descendants of immigrants from El Salvador, recruited through intimidation in local high schools in towns with heavy concentrations of residents with ties to Central America, prosecutors said.

"Violence is a central tenet of MS-13, as evidenced by its core motto - 'mata, viola, control,' translated as, 'kill, rape, control,'" the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement.

The indictment also accuses Massachusetts-based members of MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, of selling narcotics and committing robberies to raise money to send to leaders of the gang jailed in El Salvador.

It was not immediately clear how many of the 56 people indicted were under arrest on Friday afternoon. The statement said that 15 of the accused were already in custody on federal, state or immigration charges.

A representative of the U.S. attorney's office could not be reached immediately for comment.

The racketeering conspiracy charge - under the federal law known as RICO - alone carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, or even life if the underlying criminal activity carries the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, prosecutors said.

(Reporting By Frank McGurty in New York)
QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador has confirmed 22 cases of the mosquito-borne Zika virus and suspects 67 more, the government said, stressing it would intensify prevention campaigns in high-risk areas. The cases were detected in six provinces of the largely Andean country, including in the Galapagos Islands. So far, there are no reports of pregnant women with symptoms of the virus, which has been linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil. "We're prepared," Health Minister Margarita Guevara told journalists late on Thursday. "As soon as the virus started to circulate, we activated plans in endemic areas." The virus is spreading "explosively" and could affect as many as four million people in the Americas, according to the WHO. [L8N15C37P] (Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Rome (AFP) - Brazil-born Italy striker Eder has joined Inter Milan on a two-year loan deal from Sampdoria, the Serie A title challengers announced on Friday.

"Im delighted to be here. Ive worked hard for years to play for a big club like Inter," Eder said in a statement on the club's website.

The 29-year-old made his Italy debut last year having arrived in the country in 2005 when he joined Empoli before spells at Frosinone, Brescia and Cesena.

Eder, who moved to Sampdoria in 2012, scored 12 goals in 19 league appearances for the Genoa-based team this season.

Inter are chasing a first Italian league title since 2010 but have slipped from first to fourth after winning just once in their last five games, leaving them six points behind leaders Napoli.
ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A pipeline for gas used to generate around half the electricity in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region was blown up on Friday, knocking out power, a police chief and electricity official told Reuters. The explosion struck the pipeline in the Qader Karam district of Kirkuk, according to police chief Serhad Qader, who said it was caused by two homemade bombs. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack. The pipeline feeds gas from the Khor Mor field to two power plants in the Erbil and Sulaimaniyah provinces of the Kurdistan region, which already suffers from electricity shortages. The head of electricity distribution in Kurdistan, Omid Ahmed Mohammed, said the blast had initially reduced the region's total electricity supply to around 400 megawatts (MW) from 2,850 MW, but authorities later managed to return it to around 2,000 MW by drawing on other sources. (Reporting by Isabel Coles; editing by Andrew Roche)
Caliraya (Philippines) (AFP) - Japanese Emperor Akihito offered flowers Friday at a shrine built in the Philippines for Japanese soldiers killed during Japan's brutal World War II occupation of the Southeast Asian nation.

The 82-year-old monarch and his wife, Empress Michiko, bowed twice while laying white bouquets at a table in front of the grey marble shrine, located in the lake town of Caliraya about three hours' drive from Manila.

In a half-hour event aired live in Japan by public broadcaster NHK, the imperial couple spoke and shook hands with former Japanese soldiers as well as relatives of their comrades killed in the Philippines.

"You have survived difficult times," Michiko said to one of the the soldiers in attendance.

Akihito, meanwhile, told another: "Take care of yourself, stay well."

The royals are winding up a five-day visit to the Philippines to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic ties as well as to honour those who died during the Japanese occupation.

Akihito has made honouring Japanese and non-Japanese who died in World War II a touchstone of his near three-decade reign -- known as Heisei, or "achieving peace" -- and now in its twilight.

He has previously journeyed to other Pacific battle sites where Japanese troops and civilians made desperate last stands in the name of his father Hirohito.

On Wednesday he bowed his head in sorrow during a sombre ceremony at the Philippines' biggest war cemetery in Manila, vowing later never to forget the many Filipinos killed during the occupation.

Tens of thousands of Philippine and allied US troops died marching to Japanese concentration camps or in confinement during Japan's World War II occupation.

An estimated 100,000 Filipinos also died during the month-long campaign to liberate Manila in 1945, which saw aerial bombings and artillery flatten the city.

Akihito's visit is the first by a Japanese emperor to the Philippines and comes as the two countries strengthen economic and defence ties, partly to counter China's increasingly assertive actions in disputed regional waters.

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Japan's perceived failure to properly atone for its wartime actions has been a constant source of friction with China and South Korea.

But the Philippines has been much more accepting, partly because Japan has given billions of dollars in aid.

President Benigno Aquino gave Akihito a red-carpet welcome and hosted a banquet at the presidential palace for him on Wednesday.

"The state visit of their Imperial Majesties... serves to strengthen the friendship between the Filipino and Japanese peoples as both nations mark the completion of six decades of harmonious relationship," presidential spokesman Herminio Coloma said Friday.

But the visit has been marked by small protests by women forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese occupation troops who are demanding a belated apology and compensation.

"The emperor's visit to the shrine is improper. Their soldiers committed many crimes in our country," Isabelita Vinuya, 84, told AFP as she and nine other ex-sex slaves held candles outside the Japanese embassy in Manila on Friday.
By Foo Yun Chee and Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European and U.S. officials are rushing to finalize a key data transfer pact days before a meeting of EU regulators who are poised to start restricting transatlantic flows of personal data used by firms in the billion dollar online advertising industry. A new deal is crucial for the many thousands of businesses that until late last year relied on "Safe Harbour", a framework which protected Europeans' data moving to the United States, when it was struck down by an EU court over concerns about U.S. Internet surveillance. European Union data protection law says companies cannot transfer EU citizens' personal data to countries outside the bloc deemed to have insufficient privacy safeguards -- like the United States. Revelations of mass U.S. surveillance programs in 2013 prompted the European Commission to demand that Safe Harbour, which helped over 4,000 companies avoid cumbersome EU data transferral rules, be strengthened. Since the Oct. 6 ruling companies have been in legal limbo. While they can set up alternative legal structures to transfer data to the United States, these have been called into question by the EU's data protection regulators. The regulators meet in Brussels on Feb. 2-3 to decide whether they should restrict the use of alternative measures as well, such as binding corporate rules and model clauses between companies, causing particular panic in the technology world where companies such as Facebook and Google rely on moving and analyzing reams of users' data to sell targeted advertising. "I do think that we can reach an agreement before February 2," said Robert Litt, general counsel for the U.S. Director of National Intelligence at a briefing with reporters on Friday. U.S. officials met a group of EU data protection authorities on Tuesday to discuss the future of Safe Harbour, said a spokeswoman for the French regulator, which chairs the group. One person familiar with the matter said U.S. ideas for improving oversight of the new data transfer framework - such as creating an "ombudsman" - could change the authorities' view of U.S. rules governing its surveillance practices. However, the two sides are still at odds over the powers of the new office, whose role would be to respond to complaints from EU citizens and data protection authorities over U.S. surveillance practices. Max Schrems, the Austrian law student whose complaints against Facebook in Ireland led to Safe Harbor being ruled invalid, sent a letter to European data protection authorities late Thursday urging them to reject claims that U.S. protections against surveillance are essentially equivalent to those found in Europe. Attempts by lobby groups and the US government to 'reinterpret' or 'overturn the clear judgment of the Union's highest court are fundamentally flawed, Schrems wrote. The European Commission is pushing for the ombudsman to have the authority to make findings about U.S. surveillance as opposed to just fielding complaints, according to one person familiar with the talks. Another issue is agreeing on the role European data protection authorities should play in ensuring companies abide by the privacy principles in the new data transfer agreement. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, responsible for enforcing privacy laws in the United States, does not have to take up each individual complaint, something that is required by the European Court of Justice in its Oct. 6 ruling. "Ultimately the DPAs are going to have to be involved," said Julie Brill, U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner, at a conference in Brussels on Thursday. Negotiators hope to reach a deal by Monday, when the European Commission will inform the European Parliament and member states. That will enable the Commission to present the new framework to EU data protection regulators at the meeting on Tuesday, said Paul Nemitz, European Commission Director for Fundamental Rights. (Writing by Julia Fioretti, editing by David Evans and David Gregorio)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Europe launched the first part of a new space "data highway" on Friday night that will pave the way for faster than ever monitoring of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The EDRS-A node is the first building block of the European Data Relay Satellite (EDRS), a "big data highway" costing nearly 500 million euros ($545 million) that will harness new laser-based communications technology. The EDRS will considerably improve transmission of large amounts of data, such as pictures and radar images, from satellites in orbit to Earth as they will no longer have to wait for a ground station on Earth to come into view. The EDRS-A node, riding piggyback on a Eutelsat communications satellite, blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on board a Proton rocket at 1720 ET (4.20 am local time). EDRS-A, which is to orbit Earth at an altitude of around 36,000 kilometers (22,400 miles), houses a laser terminal that works essentially like an autonomous telescope capable of locking on to moving targets on Earth. It will send data to and from Earth or between satellites at a rate of 1.8 Gigabits per second, which is about equivalent to sending all the data that could be printed in a one-meter long shelf of books in one second, according to generally accepted industry measures. The EDRS will relay data on sea ice, oil spills or floods from Europe's multi-billion euro Copernicus Earth observation project to users in Europe, Africa and the Atlantic area, but its services will also be available to other paying customers. The EDRS is a public-private partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus Defence and Space. Pairing EDRS-A with the Eutelsat 9B satellite, which will beam TV images to Europe, cuts down on costs for both satellite operator Eutelsat and the ESA as they share the expenses of the launch and joint systems. A second satellite, EDRS-C, is to be launched in mid-2017. Eventually further ones could follow, which could also be coupled with commercial crafts. "We are open to pairing a third EDRS payload with a future Eutelsat satellite," Yohann Leroy, Eutelsat's Chief Technical Officer, told Reuters. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Gareth Jones and Grant McCool)
The Hague (AFP) - European police forces Friday launched a "most wanted" website of 45 notorious criminal suspects, including Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in last year's Paris attacks.

"The website will share information on high-profile internationally-wanted criminals, convicted of -- or suspected of having committed -- serious crimes or terrorist acts in Europe," Europol said.

"This is the first initiative on a pan-European level to jointly present a most wanted list on a common platform," the European police agency added in a statement.

People are encouraged to provide tip-offs -- anonymously if they want -- at www.eumostwanted.eu

The site's launch comes after sharp criticism of the coordination between European authorities in the wake of the November 13 jihadist Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.

Despite some of the assailants being sought by police they managed to cross into France unnoticed. Abdeslam fled back across the border to Belgium hours after the mass killings, after passing through a police checkpoint.

- 'Increasing security' -

Europol said the website aimed "at increasing security" across the European Union by having the public "help police trace Europe's most wanted fugitives".

Each of the nations initially involved, 23 of the 28 EU members, will select a number of key fugitives for the list, which will be regularly updated, the agency added.`

On the new website a picture of each of the suspects is prominently displayed, along with a description of the allegations against them and a phone number of the police force hunting for them.

Abdeslam, 26, is "responsible for the terrorist attacks that took place in November 2015 in France, and more precisely in Paris," the website says.

He is described as a "very dangerous, armed individual."

An international manhunt is underway for Abdeslam following the Paris attacks.

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There is one woman on the list, Cecilia Kettunen, 29, from Finland, who is accused of "aggravated fraud of significant amount of money" without further details.

Another fugitive is Ernesto Fazzalari, 45, wanted by the Italian police as a "key figure of a mafia clan dubbed Avignone-Zagari-Viola" which is "at war with another clan".

Described as a "ruthless killer," he is accused of three murders.

In a few cases, a reward is offered for vital information. Some 10,000 euros ($11,000) is offered for a tip-off leading to the arrest and extradition from Kosovo of Hime Lufaj wanted by Austria for the attempted murder of a police officer in 2009.

Some of the unresolved crimes stretch back years. Romanian "yoga teacher and spiritual mentor" Gregorian Bivolaru, 63, is wanted for exploiting children and child pornography between 2002 and 2004.

"Keeping his victim in a state of servitude, he recruited an underaged yoga student, for sexual exploitation," the website says.

Available in 17 languages, the website was launched by ENFAST1, a Europe-wide police network specialised in hunting down and arresting fugitives with Europol's help.
The seven leading Republican presidential candidates, minus frontrunner Donald Trump, descended on Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday night for their seventh debate of the 2016 cycle.

With the Iowa caucuses just four days away, Thursday's event came with the highest stakes yet. As Trump continues to dominate national polls and moves into a lead in Iowa, the prospect that the GOP might nominate the businessman is seen as increasingly likely. For his rivals, the debate presents one of the few remaining opportunities to shake up the race.

Trump's absence was notable, and the debate was much more low-key than previous Republican debates. With Trump not on the stage, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas became the target of many of the other candidates' fire, most notably Sen. Marco Rubio, who is struggling to find a foothold for his candidacy.

Here are the 10 most important exchanges and takeaways from the seventh Republican debate:

1. Ted Cruz started things off with a lame joke at Trump's expense.

Asked by co-moderator Megyn Kelly about Trump's decision to skip the event  in retaliation for what Trump believed was Kelly's unfair questioning of him in the first GOP debate  Cruz tried his hand at humor.

"Let me say I am a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben [Carson], you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz said. "Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way, I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up and make the case to the people of this state and the people of the country why each of us believe we would make the best commander in chief."

An old college try, at the very least.  Luke Brinker

2. Straight out of the gate, Sen. Marco Rubio pushed extremely hard for a tough foreign policy.

The first two times he spoke, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) went out of his way to make it extremely clear that he believes in American exceptionalism and muscular foreign policy  an emphasis that likely stemmed from polling data showing Republican voters consider national security a top concern.

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First when asked about how he's going to unite a fractious party, the Florida senator chose to use the question to launch into a tirade about how Obama is making the country weaker:

"We usually elect presidents in America that want to change the things that are wrong in America  Barack Obama wants to change America," Rubio said. "Barack Obama wants America to be more like the rest of the world. We don't want to be like the rest of the world."

The second time he spoke, Rubio again shifted the topic to American power unprompted:

"I believe the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest power in the world, I believe only with a strong America will we defeat this radical group called ISIS," Rubio said. "If we capture any of these ISIS killers alive, they are going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and we'll find out everything they know."

Rubio's eagerness to lean into the issues telegraphed a clear agenda: to make it clear that he was one of the most unapologetic hawks on stage. While it can often seem like the Republican candidates are all trying to sound tougher than the other, there isn't uniformity in their views. Trump has made it clear that he has an aversion to intervention through his forceful critiques of the Iraq War, and Cruz too has expressed skepticism of the neoconservative ideology that pervaded the Republican response to 9/11. Rubio very much sounds like a throwback to the Bush era.  Zeeshan Aleem

3. Cruz pulled a Trump and threatened to walk off the stage.

Accusing the moderators of trying to undermine him, Cruz sounded positively Trumpian when he suggested he may have to walk off the stage.

"Chris, I would note that the last four questions have been 'Rand, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted,'" Cruz began, prompting Wallace to push back and note, "It's a debate, sir."

"No, a debate is a policy issue," Cruz fired back. "But I will say this, though, if you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage."

That's one way to woo Trump's supporters.  Luke Brinker

4. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made a great point about the problems plaguing Ferguson.

When Paul was asked what can be done to improve police accountability and public safety in places like Ferguson, Missouri, he offered suggestions across a variety of policy domains. That wasn't surprising  he's made it clear he's an ally of the criminal justice reform movement for some time now. But he pointed out one particularly important feature of how Ferguson functions that is often neglected in debates about police reform that tend to stay limited to questions surrounding use of force.

"I've been to Ferguson. One thing I discovered in Ferguson was that a third of the budget for the city of Ferguson was being reaped by civil fines," Paul said. "People were just being fined to death. You and I ... we get a $100 fine, we can survive it  if you're on the edge of poverty and you get a $100 fine, you can lose your job."

Paul's decision to highlight an overbearing, financially predatory criminal justice system in Ferguson was a smart policy point about the systemic issues that breed mistrust of the police  and one that speaks to classic conservative principles of small government. Paul's no defender of the social safety net, but his sympathy for the way the poor can be discriminated against had a compassionate edge to it.  Zeeshan Aleem

5. Chris Christie bragged about defunding Planned Parenthood.

Asked by Wallace about "one thing that the federal government does now that it should not do at all," Christie quickly responded, "Yeah, you want one? How about one that I've done in New Jersey for the last six years: get rid of Planned Parenthood funding from the United States of America."

The governor's answer earned him quite the applause. Christie's choice to single out the women's health care provider over other cuts he's made to the budget during his time in office was significant. Despite indictments of the anti-abortion activists from the Center for Medical Progress responsible for the heavily edited videos alleging the organization was harvesting fetal tissue by a grand jury in Texas, Christie is doubling down on cutting funding for Planned Parenthood.

"When you see thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Americans being murdered in the womb, I can't think of anything better than that," he said.  Liz Plank

6. Megyn Kelly demolished Rubio over his inconsistencies on immigration.

In a particularly tough moment for Rubio, Fox played various clips from Rubio's 2010 Senate bid, in which he campaigned vigorously against immigration reform and said that a pathway to citizenship was code for "amnesty."

"Within two years of getting elected you were co-sponsoring legislation to create a path to citizenship  in your words, amnesty. Haven't you already proven you cannot be trusted on this issue?" Kelly asked.

"No, because if you look at the quote, it's very specific, it says blanket amnesty. I do not support " Rubio began.

After Kelly noted that Rubio had specifically called any path to citizenship "amnesty," Rubio said, "At the time and context of that was in 2009 and 2010 where the last effort for legalization was an effort done in the Senate, an effort led by several people that provided almost an instant path, with very little obstacles moving forward."

The bill he supported in 2013, Rubio said, imposed more stringent standards.

Since helping author that bill, Rubio has backtracked on his support for reform, seeking to accommodate himself to the GOP's more restrictionist base.

But in highlighting his waffling on the issue, Kelly gave conservatives reason to doubt Rubio's sincerity.  Luke Brinker

7. And Cruz came in for a flaying on immigration, too.

Cruz wants to capitalize on conservative unease over Rubio's immigration history, but the Texan also has a spotty record on the issue, and Kelly didn't let him forget it.

"Sen. Cruz, when Sen. Rubio proposed that bill creating path to citizenship, you proposed an amendment. It would have allowed for legalization but not citizenship," Kelly noted.

Cruz explained his record thusly: "The fact that each amendment [I proposed] didn't fix every problem [in the 2013 immigration bill] didn't mean that I supported the rest of the bill. And I'll tell you who supported my amendment. Jeff Sessions, the strongest opponent of amnesty in the United States Congress, and he did so because taking citizenship off the table was important and it revealed the hypocrisy of the proponents of this bill who were looking for votes."

The exchange provided fodder for Cruz's opponents, including Paul, who said Cruz's record pointed to an "authenticity problem," despite his carefully cultivated image as a consistent and true-believing conservative.  Luke Brinker

8. Kelly asked a question everybody's been dying to know the answer to.

Kelly wielded a hammer the whole night, and one of her best strikes was against Jeb Bush.

"Poll after poll shows you running among the worst in your party against Hillary Clinton ... yet still you and the super PACs supporting you continue to blanket the airwaves with cutting ads, not against Mrs. Clinton but against your fellow Republicans especially Sen. Rubio," Kelly said. "Do these attacks do more harm than good by targeting those candidates who appear to have the best chance of defeating Mrs. Clinton?"

Bush's rambling response revealed nothing, but Kelly's question did. She cut to the heart of the crisis rocking the Republican Party right now  an extremely crowded field with no clear challenger to a powerful outsider who performs poorly in head-to-head match ups against Democrats in the general election. Despite the fact that there's plenty of ideological overlap between many of the lowest-polling candidates, most of which seem to be keen on sniping at each other and waiting until Iowa and New Hampshire to make decisions about whether to suspend their longshot campaigns. All the while, Trump has continued to climb in the polls. In the end, their desperate bids at self-advancement could end up coming at the expense of the party they claim to represent.  Zeeshan Aleem

9. Ben Carson: "Putin is a one-horse country: oil, and energy."

Carson woke up from a nap toward the end of the debate to field a question about Russia and Vladimir Putin. He made a valiant effort to sound knowledgeable on Eastern European affairs, dropping lines about armored brigades in the Baltic states and military exercises in Estonia and Lithuania.

Carson stumbled, as he tends to do when speaking longer than 60 seconds. In an attempt to make a point about fighting Putin "on an economic basis," Carson made the bizarre claim that "Putin is a one-horse country: oil, and energy," which is incorrect on several levels.

As everyone knows, there are at least seven horses in Russia.  Stefan Becket

10. Rubio made a dumb joke about Bernie Sanders.

Not to be outdone by Cruz's lame maniac joke, Rubio made his own attempt at proving that he had a sense of humor by bringing up the idea of a Sanders presidency.

"Bernie Sanders is a socialist. I think Bernie Sanders is a good candidate for president  of Sweden!" Rubio quipped. "We don't want to be Sweden. We want to be the United States of America!"

Witness his fierce wit yourself:

 Zeeshan Aleem

11. Carson had the best closing statement of any debate so far.

He recited the preamble to the Constitution. Enough said.

 Stefan Becket
By Paul Taylor, Alastair Macdonald and Kylie MacLellan BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union is offering Britain a new "emergency brake" rule that could help curb immigration from other EU states in a reform package before a British referendum on EU membership, sources close to the negotiations told Reuters on Thursday. The proposal would give any member state that could convince EU governments its welfare system was under excessive strain a right to deny benefits to new workers arriving from other EU countries for up to four years. That has been a key demand of Prime Minister David Cameron and one which many EU leaders have said risks conflict with citizens' treaty rights. It would seem to offer the British leader a headline win in Brussels on which he could campaign to remain in the EU in a vote that may be held as early as June. However, Cameron would still need to persuade EU leaders that a wave of labour migration to Britain over the last 12 years justified applying the emergency brake. Several east European leaders, whose citizens have been the main focus of British unease at an influx of workers benefiting from income top-ups in low paid jobs, have said this month they could support some kind of brake. Importantly, the proposal would not affect Poles, Romanians and others already working in Britain. A spokesman for Cameron, who will meet the heads of European Union institutions on Friday and Sunday, declined direct comment on the proposal and said the prime minister for now stuck by his election campaign pledge to bar EU immigrants from in-work benefits for at least their first four years in Britain. Saying there was "still more work to do", he welcomed the "constructive spirit" in which alternatives have been offered but played down any urgency in reaching a deal, noting that the deadline for holding the referendum is the end of next year. EU spokespeople maintained their public silence on the talks and sources close to the negotiations stressed that no final deal was yet on the table, with a variety of issues unresolved. But if Cameron's talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday and European Council President Donald Tusk on Sunday go well, a draft package may emerge early next week, raising the prospect of an accord at an EU summit on Feb. 18-19, which Tusk will chair. REFERENDUM TIMING With opinion polls tight and his Conservative party bitterly divided on Europe, many believe Cameron aims to hold the referendum sooner rather than later. Sources familiar with the negotiations said he wanted the option of a vote in late June. He says he wants Britain to stay in the EU but has not ruled out campaigning to leave if he fails to secure changes he wants. Other EU leaders, with their own electoral timetables, are keen to help Cameron win a vote and end the distraction that the "Brexit" debate has entailed for a Union struggling to cope with other divisive crises, including a refugee influx. Cameron laid out in writing in November and in person at a summit in mid-December demands for EU reforms in four areas. The right to deter migration from other member states by withholding in-work benefits is by far the toughest sell and fraught with legal difficulties. Officials have said simply allowing Britain to deny equal treatment on benefits to EU citizens exercising a fundamental right to work in other countries in Europe is flagrant discrimination in breach of treaty rights. But legal language that could protect Britain from EU court action might gain leaders' support if the overall impact appeared limited. Cameron will discuss the emergency brake proposal over lunch on Friday with Juncker, whose executive institution would have to initiate any such legislation, the sources said. One of the sources close to the negotiations said Cameron was keen to have a Commission proposal issued before the referendum, to demonstrate an urgency to voters for whom immigration is a priority issue. "They're looking for something that will be usable quickly," this source said. "Theyd like to claim what has happened already justifies taking emergency measures. They would like to paint the situation as already dramatic. The devil is in the detail." "RED CARD", EURO ZONE If Cameron and Juncker agree, then a broader draft package could be approved at the dinner with Tusk in London on Sunday. Much of the rest of the package has already been broadly agreed, the sources said. Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, would then circulate written proposals on reform to the other 27 EU governments early next week aiming to settle remaining disagreements over the next two weeks. Among the other elements, the sources said, is a mechanism to allow a group of countries like Britain that do not use the euro currency to raise concerns about any measures taken by the 19-nation euro zone that they regard as discriminating against them. There would then be a special deliberation in the council of all 28 EU finance ministers. However, Britain would not have a veto over euro zone decisions. London has said it does not seek one, but wants to defend the vital interests of its global financial centre. The draft as it stands also offers a "red card" for groups of national parliaments to block EU legislation. A legally binding statement by EU leaders would spell out that an EU treaty commitment to the "ever closer union" of peoples does not oblige countries to integrate their political and economic systems any further with the bloc. Negotiators say none of the proposals requires an immediate change in EU treaties but the draft will meet British concerns for a legally binding deal by promising to enshrine the text in any future treaty overhaul. (Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Paul Taylor and Peter Graff)
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to renegotiate Britain's ties with Europe and then give voters a referendum on European Union membership by the end of 2017. Cameron could reach a deal at an EU summit in February, paving the way for a public vote as soon as June. Following are the views of business leaders: AEROSPACE AND AIRLINES Chief executive of airline easyJet Carolyn McCall said: "We will do everything we can to make sure that consumers understand that they are far better off within the EU when it comes to connectivity and low fares." "We think it would be very difficult for our government to negotiate with 27 other member states to get the flying rights that we have today within the EU." Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O'Leary: "We're very actively supporting the campaign to keep the UK in the European Union. There's absolutely no doubt that the UK economy is better off in Europe than outside of Europe." Rolls-Royce President of Aerospace Tony Wood: "Uncertainty is unhelpful in any businessman's mind. This is a very long-term business. It takes us 10 years to design an engine, we make it for 15 to 20 and we continue to service it for another 15 to 20. Any kind of uncertainty politically is not good." Aircraft parts maker Meggitt CFO Doug Webb: "We want the business environment to be as supportive as possible and being able to easily trade across borders is important. Equally, being able to trade in an efficient way with as little red tape as possible is important. I guess what we would like to see is the best balance across that." AUTOMOTIVE Ian Robertson, BMW Director for Sales and Marketing: "The UK has the most diverse car industry in Europe and is the fourth largest market of BMW Group worldwide. From an industry perspective we would therefore regret seeing the UK leave the EU." Chief Executive of carmaker Opel, which owns the Vauxhall brand, Karl-Thomas Neumann: "We have plants in Luton and Ellesmere port. We will not turn our back on England. If Britons voted to leave the EU, life would carry on. We would continue to find ways to invest." CEO of Volkswagen-owned British brand Bentley Wolfgang Duerheimer: "Volkswagen Group has 110 locations around the world where they produce cars. That means they are not in any case reliant on the UK so if the situation changes dramatically, future decisions need to be considered among the circumstances you face." BANKING AND FINANCE Colm Kelleher, President of Morgan Stanley: "If Britain were to leave Europe you would see a significant backlash against London as a financial centre." Citi's UK head James Bardrick on what could happen post-Brexit: "We would have to operationally change the business and reallocate certain businesses back into the EU. That's not technically impossible ... but enormously costly and enormously inefficient ... and will mean the scale of our activities here will reduce." British Bankers Association Chief Executive Anthony Browne: "Some banks have recently moved operations and jobs out of the UK due to punitive hikes in bank taxes. Other banks have deferred decisions about whether to invest in Britain until after the referendum." Standard Life Investments Chief Executive Keith Skeoch: "This would be a shock that would register about 15 on the Richter scale," he said, referring to the possibility that Britons might vote to leave the EU. You want to make sure the rights you have today will persist for the next 20-30 years." (NB - the highest Richter scale earthquake ever recorded was 9.5) CONSUMER GOODS Paul Polman, the head of consumer goods company Unilever: "If there is uncertainty around things business is at its worst. So Im very much into how can we maintain the spirit of Europe, how can we make Europe work even better." ENERGY, OIL AND GAS Chief Executive of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Ben van Beurden was quoted as saying by The Sunday Times newspaper: "We are a company with a strong heritage in the UK and on the Continent. There would be a real break between the two, which would affect freedom of movement of staff, trade  we would be impacted. "There will be a path of divergence, and that will have all sorts of inefficiencies. Thats not good for companies like ours that thrive by there being no barriers. That is a fundamental economic aspect of it." BG Group Chairman Andrew Gould said: I am not in favour of Brexit. From an economic-business point of view I think it makes no sense at all. To create difficulties with a market as large as the EU doesnt seem to make a lot of economic sense to me Chief Executive of BP Bob Dudley told the BBC: "Being outside the EU would be worse for the country as many of the rules would still apply and Britain would be in danger of losing influence on the world stage. "There are lots of technical tax reasons, trade flows, regulation, that would make it better for our business and the energy business in general, the oil and gas business, (if Britain) were a part of Europe." National Grid Chief Executive Steve Holliday: "We cannot afford to lose the access to (European) energy supplies and interconnection, whatever the framework is eventually. Being part of the European energy market is unquestionably essential for the UK." HOUSEBUILDERS AND ESTATE AGENTS Managing Director of London-focused housebuilder Berkeley on what could happen if Britain leaves: "My concern would be around inward investment into London and it would slow down the growth of jobs and its influence." "If it retained less influence and less jobs, it will grow less quickly so it would actually need less homes built." Head of Commercial Research at real estate group Savills Mat Oakley: "The biggest risk to the commercial markets is that pre-vote period. Is it going to be three months, six months, nine months of speculation and the market may just go slightly quieter. "We have spoken to a number of people who've said we'll seriously consider moving our headquarters functions ... and our growth over the medium term to long term may well be more skewed to the EU ... if the UK were to leave." INDUSTRIALS AND CHEMICALS MANUFACTURERS Chief Executive of industrial equipment hire group Ashtead Geoff Drabble: "We have an ageing population in a small nation that needs to have skills in order to be globally competitive. And in a market that is becoming ever more global, I really struggle to see how increased isolation improves that situation." JCB Chief Executive Graeme MacDonald: "I really dont think it would make a blind bit of difference to trade with Europe. There has been far too much scaremongering about things like jobs. I dont think its in anyones interest to stop trade. I dont think we or Brussels will put up trade barriers. "What is needed is a lot less red tape and bureaucracy. Some of it is costly for us and quite frankly ridiculous. Whether that means renegotiating or exiting, I dont think it can carry on as it is. Its a burden on our business and its easier selling to North America than to Europe sometimes." INSURANCE Chief executive of the Association of British Insurers Paul Evans: "In the UK, the real political uncertainty for our sector comes from the dual and interconnected possibility that the UK could leave the EU and that the UK could dissolve if Scotland voted to become independent. Even five years ago, the likelihood of both would have seemed far more remote than they do now and so we certainly cannot be complacent." RECRUITMENT Steve Ingham, chief executive of one of Europe's largest recruitment firms Michael Page, told Reuters: "I am concerned about the disruption, because it causes uncertainty and uncertainty means that people are unprepared to make decisions. It's not good for a candidate thinking about moving job, and it's not good for a client and that's more a concern." RETAIL Chief executive of fashion retailer Next Simon Wolfson: "My view is that if we have Brexit then what will make a difference isnt so much the fact of coming out of Europe but whether the policies pursued by the government post Brexit are ... free trade, open, positive, embracing a global trade view or a protectionist one. I havent made my mind up yet. Im going to wait and see what deal the Prime Minister is able to secure. That matters." Marks & Spencer Chief Executive Marc Bolland: "I feel that some of those (European) reforms can be done and should be done. Actually, I think the best judgement call for Britain to take is to see what the result of the reforms are before they take a point of view (on EU membership)." "Europe is very important for Marks & Spencer because we have over 100 stores within the EU." TELECOMS Vodafone Chief Executive Vittorio Colao in a letter to Italian newspaper La Repubblica: "I think (Cameron) is right to say these reforms would be good for the entire EU and not just the UK, showing clearly the advantages all Europeans would get from them. "European companies have been asking for these reforms for years, sadly with limited results, while our competitors in the United States and Asia continue to grow more quickly." (Reporting By UK bureau and EMEA corporate finance team; compiled by Costas Pitas)
(Reuters) - A draft EU reform package to help keep Britain in the European Union could be circulated on Monday following meetings between Prime Minister David Cameron and top EU officials. The following are key points of what Reuters has been told by sources close to the negotiations could be the proposal European Council President Donald Tusk will send to EU governments after talks over dinner with Cameron in London on Sunday: THE FORM Negotiators will work through the weekend to craft a single document laying out legislative and other measures responding to Cameron's November demands for reforms so he campaigns to keep Britain in the EU in a referendum by the end of next year. Depending on how Friday's talks in Brussels with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker have gone, and on the Cameron-Tusk meeting, the document could set out in more or less detail a classic EU negotiating text, including blank spaces and alternative wordings in brackets, to be haggled over up to and during a summit chaired by Tusk in Brussels on Feb. 18-19. Nothing is done until everything is. A deal, needing all 28 national leaders' assent, could pave the way for a referendum as early as June. Impasse would probably mean more talks. The EU sees its proposals as legally watertight, safe from challenges in court and not requiring amendments to treaties now - something hard to pull off quickly across all 28 EU states. On some issues, it will offer binding guarantees that treaties will be amended later if that is required to enact proposals. MIGRATION Cameron wants to discourage other Europeans coming to Britain by excluding them from the tax credits, child allowances and other non-contributory social benefits attached to low paid British jobs for at least four years. Without changing EU treaties guaranteeing free movement of labor and barring national discrimination, EU lawyers propose an "emergency brake", limiting those fundamental rights where vital national interests or economic stability are at risk. Legislation would give any state to curb in-work benefits for up to four years - if agreed to the European Council of fellow governments. Normally, Council decisions are by consensus - in effect, unanimity - but easier terms might be negotiated. Allowances for children could also be reduced long term. EU negotiators speak of "indexing" so that workers whose children live in cheaper states than the parent would receive less. EURO ZONE Cameron wants more legal safeguards for Britain's sterling-based economy and big financial industry from a risk of the euro zone countries writing EU rules to suit them. The EU proposes another "emergency brake" where Britain could object in the Council of all EU ministers. How far Britain may block measures and how far it would need allies is unclear yet. London and euro zone leaders all say Britain should not have a blanket veto. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY Cameron wants assurances Britain need not hand more power to Brussels and to enhance the say of nations in the EU. The EU will be proposing a "red card", letting national parliaments acting in concert block EU legislation. How few legislatures could obstruct how much is still being negotiated. Britain wants it made clear that an EU treaty phrase calling for "ever closer union" among peoples does not mean more political integration. The EU will offer a binding decision by the European Council, echoing a reassurance it gave in 2014. COMPETITIVENESS The least contentious area of Cameron's four reform "baskets", calling for less red tape and more economic dynamism has broad backing so a set of declarations will echo EU policy, but with elements to show Britain Brussels is listening. (Reporting by Paul Taylor and Alastair Macdonald; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
(Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday the Zika virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is "spreading explosively" and may infect 3 to 4 million people in the Americas, including 1.5 million in Brazil. Here are some facts about the virus and the current outbreak. - The virus is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female Aedes mosquitoes, the same type of mosquito that spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. Efforts to control the spread of the virus include eliminating mosquito breeding sites and taking precautions against mosquito bites such as using insect repellent and mosquito nets. - There is no treatment or vaccine available for Zika infection. People who get Zika virus disease typically have a mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain and fatigue, with symptoms normally lasting for two to seven days. Most people never develop symptoms. U.S. health officials say the United States has two potential vaccine candidates and may begin human clinical trials by the end of 2016, but there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years. - The virus has been linked to a devastating birth defect called microcephaly in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains that have not developed properly. The WHO said a direct causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth defects has not yet been established but is strongly suspected. Local health authorities in Brazil in 2015 observed an increase in babies born with microcephaly at the same time as a Zika outbreak. About 4,000 cases of microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since September. Given an estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, it can be hard to tell if a pregnant woman has been infected. Research by Brazilian authorities indicates the greatest risk of microcephaly appears to be associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy. - The WHO said Zika cases have been reported in 23 countries and territories in the Americas in the current outbreak. Brazil has been the nation most affected. The Pan American Health Organization said Aedes mosquitoes are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and continental Chile, and the virus will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found. - Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations. Outbreaks of Zika virus disease have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and Western Pacific. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys and was first identified in people in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, according to the WHO. - One case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission has been described but the Pan American Health Organization said more evidence is needed to confirm whether sexual contact is a means of Zika transmission. PAHO said there is currently no evidence the virus can be transmitted to babies through breast milk. PAHO said Zika can be transmitted through blood, but this is an infrequent transmission mechanism. - The WHO says that because no big Zika outbreaks were recorded before 2007, little is known about complications caused by infection. Long-term health consequences remain unclear. It is uncertain whether in pregnant women the virus crosses the placenta and causes microcephaly. During an outbreak of Zika from 2013-2014 in French Polynesia, national health authorities reported an unusual increase in Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the nervous system. Health authorities in Brazil have also reported an increase in Guillain-Barre syndrome. Other uncertainties surround the incubation period of the virus and how Zika interacts with other viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes such as dengue. (Compiled by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry)
By Reuters Staff (Reuters) - Global health officials say the Zika virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is spreading rapidly in the Americas and could infect 3 million to 4 million people. The race is on to develop a Zika vaccine. Here are some questions and answers about the virus and the current outbreak. How do people become infected? The virus is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female Aedes mosquitoes, the same type of mosquito that spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Aedes mosquitoes are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and continental Chile, and the virus will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found. How do you treat Zika infection? There is no treatment or vaccine available for Zika infection. Companies and scientists are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for Zika, but one is not expected to be ready for months or years. How dangerous is it? The PAHO said there is no evidence that Zika can cause death but some cases have been reported with more serious complications in patients with pre-existing medical conditions. The virus has been linked to microcephaly, a condition in newborns marked by abnormally small heads and brains that have not developed properly. It also has been associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the nervous system. Scientists are studying whether there is a causal link between Zika and these two disorders. How is Zika related to microcephaly? Health officials have yet to establish a direct causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth defects, but it is strongly suspected. Brazil has reported 3,700 cases of suspected microcephaly that may be linked to Zika. It is unclear whether in pregnant women the virus crosses the placenta and causes microcephaly. Research in Brazil indicates the greatest microcephaly risk appears to be associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy. What are the symptoms of Zika infection? People who get Zika virus disease typically have a mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain and fatigue that can last for two to seven days. But as many as 80 percent of people infected never develop symptoms. The symptoms are similar to those of dengue or chikungunya, which are transmitted by the same type of mosquito. How can Zika be contained? Efforts to control the spread of the virus focus on eliminating mosquito breeding sites and taking precautions against mosquito bites such as using insect repellent and mosquito nets. U.S. health officials have advised pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin American and Caribbean countries where they may be exposed to Zika. How widespread is the outbreak in the Americas? The World Health Organization said Zika cases have been reported in 23 countries and territories in the Americas in the current outbreak. Brazil has been the nation most affected. Other nations and territories include Barbados, Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, Venezuela and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the PAHO. (http://tinyurl.com/hoq6qqo) What is the history of the Zika virus? The Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations. Outbreaks of Zika virus disease have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and Western Pacific. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys and was first identified in people in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, according to the WHO. Can Zika be transmitted through sexual contact? One case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission has been described but the PAHO said more evidence is needed to confirm whether sexual contact is a means of Zika transmission. The PAHO also said Zika can be transmitted through blood, but this is an infrequent transmission mechanism. There is no evidence the virus can be transmitted to babies through breast milk. What other complications are associated with Zika? The WHO says because no big Zika outbreaks were recorded before 2007, little is known about complications caused by infection. During an outbreak of Zika from 2013-2014 in French Polynesia, national health authorities reported an unusual increase in Guillain-Barre syndrome. Health authorities in Brazil have also reported an increase in Guillain-Barre syndrome. Long-term health consequences of Zika infection remain unclear. Other uncertainties surround the incubation period of the virus and how Zika interacts with other viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes such as dengue.
Anyone experiencing fatigue over millennial bashing may find actor Matt Damons take refreshing.

My generation had our heads up our own asses. That was Gen X. Todays generation is so much smarter and interested in fixing these issues, he told journalists at the Sundance Film Festival this week.

The issue the Bourne Identity actor is interested in is a water crisis that has left 663 million people without access to clean drinking water. Damon spoke of becoming a cofounder of Water.org in 2009, a nonprofit that delivers microfinance loans to water-deprived communities.

Women often bear the brunt of the water crisis, Damon explained, having to walk long distances to bring water to their familiestime that could be spent at school or work. During a visit to Zambia, Damon said he was particularly inspired by a 14-year-old girl whose dreams of big-city success reminded him of his own early days.

After Damon asked if she planned to stay in her village, she responded, No, Im going to go to the big city, Lusaka. Im going to become a nurse.

Damon loved her spunk.

Something about her reminded me of Ben Affleck and myself when we were teenagers. It was like us saying were going to go to New York City and become actors, Damon said, laughing.

Jokes aside, he noted that the girl's dreams were only possible because she had access to clean water.

RELATED: See the Hacks That Can Help You Stop Wasting Water

It just struck me that if this well was not a mile away from her house, shed spend most of her day scavenging for water instead of going to school, he said.

Thats why the Oscar-nominated actor announced Buy a Lady a Drink, a new campaign, in partnership with the Belgian brewery Stella Artois, that focuses on water and women in the developing world.

Damon said that an initiative that would simplify a complex issue was needed. Hence for each purchase of a Stella Artois chalicethe glasses feature women-centric designs by artists in Kenya, Peru, and HaitiWater.org will receive funds to provide clean water to an individual for five years.

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Damon started Water.org with Gary White, and the two have traveled around the world together to promote an alternative to charity.

Gary is too modest to talk about this. But water credit has been revolutionary, Damon said, nudging his cofounder.

Instead of personally digging wells and planting water infrastructure in communities, Damon and White provide loans that enable locals to build the facilities themselves. To date, they say theyve provided 3 million people with water credits, more than 90 percent of which go to women. The repayment rates are 99 percent, he said.

Why water, of all the issues that Damon could support? Its a wonderfully bipartisan issue, and there are solutions that show that it can work," he said. "Thats what people want, despite the politicsstuff that works.

See more of TakeParts interview with Matt Damon (and his spot-on impression of former President Bill Clinton):

Related stories on TakePart:





 See the Hacks That Can Help You Stop Wasting Water

 India Launches Its First Public Toilet-to-Tap Water Project

 Flint Lawsuit Demands Federal Intervention for Safe Water

Original article from TakePart
Paris (AFP) - French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has ordered a probe into allegations of sexual abuse of children by French soldiers in the Central African Republic, aides said Friday.

The minister instructed French investigators to pursue the probe "as soon as he became aware of documents issued on January 19 by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights", an aide told AFP.

The High Commissioner, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, earlier Friday expressed alarm at new claims of abuse by foreign peacekeepers in the country, including cases involving European Union troops.

The allegations relate to 2014 but have only come to light in recent weeks, UN officials said.

French soldiers serving in France's Sangaris force are already being investigated in France over allegations that they forced children in CAR to perform sexual acts in exchange for food.

The accusations revealed in Geneva on Friday mainly concern peacekeepers from Georgia serving as part of the European Union peacekeeping force EUFOR.

Two girls said they were raped and two others said they were paid to have sex with other EUFOR soldiers. The four girls were aged between 14 and 16 at the time of the alleged abuse, according to a UN statement.

The French defence ministry said it had passed on the new information it had received from the United Nations to French investigators to allow them to establish whether they were different allegations from those already made.

"The United Nations and France are cooperating fully in order to shed all the light possible on these very serious allegations," the Le Drian aide said.

"If wrongdoing is proved, disciplinary measures will be taken against those responsible," the aide added.
By John Irish PARIS (Reuters) - France will recognise a Palestinian state if a final push that Paris plans to lead for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians fails, its foreign minister said on Friday. U.S.-led efforts to broker peace for a two-state solution collapsed in April 2014 and since then there have been no serious efforts to resume talks. Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has repeatedly warned that letting the status quo continue risks killing off a two-state solution and playing into the hands of Islamic State militants. Last year he failed in efforts to get the United States on board to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution to set parameters for talks between the two sides and set a final deadline for a deal. The expansions of settlements by Israel since then have been described by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as "provocative acts" that raise questions about its commitment to a two-state solution. "We cannot let the two-state solution disintegrate. It is our responsibility as a U.N. Security Council member and a power seeking peace," Fabius told an annual gathering of foreign diplomats. Fabius has previously called for an international support group comprising Arab states, the European Union and U.N. Security Council members that would essentially force the two sides to compromise. He said Paris would begin preparing in the "coming weeks" an international conference bringing together the parties and their main partners, American, European and Arab. If this last attempt at finding a solution hits a wall, "well ... in this case, we need to face our responsibilities by recognising the Palestinian state", he said. A French diplomatic source said the aim was to launch the conference before the summer and that it would not be accompanied by a U.N. Security Council resolution, which would inevitably fail. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously criticised recent French initiatives, calling them "counter-productive". Despite anger in the U.S. administration over Israeli settlements, there is little prospect of U.S. President Barack Obama supporting any initiative that could upset the U.S. Jewish lobby 10 months before an election. A U.S. official responded cautiously to Fabius' statement. "The U.S. position on this issue has been clear. We continue to believe that the preferred path to resolve this conflict is for the parties to reach an agreement on final status issues directly," the official said. Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said he welcomed the move. "There is no doubt that a French recognition of the Palestinian state will contribute to building peace and stability in the region," he said. An Israeli official, who declined to be identified, said: "The foreign minister of France says up front that if his initiative reaches a dead end, France will recognise a Palestinian state. This statement constitutes an incentive for the Palestinians to bring about a dead end. Negotiations cannot be held nor peace achieved in this manner." Palestine has non-member observer status at the United Nations and its flag flies with those of member states at UN headquarters in New York. Sweden became the first EU member nation to recognise the Palestinian state in 2014 and has been followed by several others. Palestinians seek a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, parts of which have been occupied by Israel since a 1967 war. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Luke Baker in Jerusalem and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Andrew Roche and James Dalgleish)
Paris (AFP) - A Paris court on Thursday ordered rock legend Eric Clapton to hand over 15,000 euros ($16,400) to the family of a painter for modifying a picture used on the cover of a collector's edition of the iconic album "Layla".

Clapton, one of Britain's most influential musicians in recent decades, was taken to court by the family of French-Danish artist Emile Frandsen, who died in 1969.

They accused Clapton of using an altered version of Frandsen's painting as part of a collector's edition in 2011, the 40th anniversary of the album's initial release by the musician's band Derek and the Dominos, the court sentence read.

The cover of the anniversary edition featured a new three-dimensional, cardboard pop-up version of the original work named "La Jeune Fille au Bouquet" (Young Girl with Bouquet), which the painter's son had given to Clapton in 1970.

"It's a clear distortion of Emile Frandsen's work," the court said.

The original had been used on the album cover of "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" several months later.

The court meanwhile struck down the family's demands for compensation over the musician's use of the painting on the original cover.

Antoine Gitton, the lawyer for Frandsen's daughter, said she would appeal the decision.

He said she believes the court should punish Clapton more severely for using the painting in the first place without the artist's consent.

"Layla" is one of Clapton's signature songs, along with other hits such as "I Shot the Sheriff" and "Tears in Heaven."

The 70-year-old was named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the greatest musicians of all times in 2004.
French director Jacques Rivette, famed for his influence on the New Wave movement of the 1950s and '60s, has died. He was 87.

Rivette's death was confirmed by French cultural minister Fleur Pellerin on Twitter. French president Francois Hollande released a statement on the director's death.

"Jacques Rivette was one of the greatest filmmakers. He marked several generations," he said, citing his works such as Diderot, L'Amour Fou and The Beautiful Troublemaker (La Belle Noiseuse) and his penchant for creating characters for women actors.

"The President of the Republic expresses its sincere condolences to his family and loved ones," he added.

Before directing his first film, Rivette served as a writer for the famed Cahiers du Cinema beginning in 1952 and as editor of the magazine from 1963-65. Though he had dabbled in film during his tenure, he began full-time filmmaking after leaving the magazine, going on to direct 30 films over the next half-century.

He is known for his influence on the French New Wave movement alongside collaborators and legends Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol. His influential short film Le Coup de Berger, shot in Chabrol's apartment, is considered one of the first films of the movement. Paris Belongs to Us followed, then the controversial The Nun starring Anna Karina, which was banned in France until 1975.

Though he started with a short film, Rivette became known for the length of his films, peaking with 1971s Out 1, a 12-hour-and-53-minute opus following a modern theater troupe based on the writings of Honore de Balzac.

His most famous films were 1974s Celine and Julie Go Boating, which was recognized at the Locarno Film Festival, and the four-hour-long The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991), starring Jane Birkin.

He followed with an epic two-part film about Joan of Arc in 1994, starring Sandrine Bonnaire, which earned her a Cesar nomination.

His final film was 2009s Around a Small Mountain, again starring Birkin, which premiered in Venice.

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The news of Jacques Rivettes passing is a reminder that so much time has passed since that remarkable moment in the late 50s and early 60s when so many directors were redrawing the boundaries of cinema," director Martin Scorsese said in a statement. "Rivette was one of them. He was the most experimental of the French New Wave directors, probably the least known in those early years.

I vividly remember the shock of seeing his first two films, Paris Belongs to Us and The Nun. Two very different experiences, both uniquely troubling and powerful, quite unlike anything else around. Rivette was a fascinating artist, and its strange to think that hes gone. Because if you came of age when I did, the New Wave still seems new. I suppose it always will.

Updated at 11:50 a.m. on Jan. 29 to add Scorsese reaction.

Read More: French New Wave Icon Agnes Varda's 'Jane B.' Gets U.S. Premiere
Tanking Oil: Oversupply in the Shadow of Civil War and Peace Talks

(Continued from Prior Part)

The Middle East is undergoing a transformation

Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others are sensing the need to diversify their economies from being oil-dependent to being more viable on the global stage. As renewable energy uses have grown in the recent past, these nations are starting to see that the trend could lower the demand for crude in the future. The top oil exporter cant keep high reserves in a future where the demand for crude may fall. So these nations are putting their oil on the market now and all at once.

Saudi Arabias plan to grab more market share

Saudi Arabia hasnt recently signaled any production cuts. This simply points toward Saudi Arabias plan to grab more market share, even at lower cost. It also gives the kingdom the following two advantages:

to make revenue from crude oil, as entry barriers in the energy sector can be influenced by new technology

to lower crude oil, thus affecting the financial stability of its close competitors like Russia (RSX) and Iran

We should note here that Saudi Arabia derives more than 85% of its revenue from exports related to crude oil.

Stocks are already taking the heat off production

The graph above shows the month-to-date performance of Kosmos Energy (KOS). The US-based (SPY) upstream stocks of Kosmos and Denbury Resources (DNR) have fallen 26% and 48%, respectively, on a month-to-date basis as of January 26, 2016. These stocks operate with a production mix thats greater than 90% in crude oil. On average, all the constituents of XOP that operate with a production mix thats greater than 90% in crude oil fell by about 30.4% on an MTD (month-to-date basis). Notably, Anadarko Petro (APC) fell by 29% on an MTD basis.

So for investors in the energy sector, the next question should be this: After all this turmoil, how are these companies moving averages and analyst estimates looking? Continue to the next part to find out.

Story continues

Continue to the next part to find out.

Continue to Next Part

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The Hague (AFP) - Dramatic video footage of armed clashes in Abidjan and bloodied corpses lining the streets on Friday opened the second day of the landmark trial of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo.

The prosecution accuses Gbagbo, 70, and his former youth militia leader Charles Ble Goude, 44, of orchestrating a plan to ensure the west African strongman remained in power despite being narrowly defeated by his bitter rival Alassane Ouattara in November 2010 elections.

Pro-Gbagbo forces "shot at the crowds... causing death and grievous bodily injuries," ICC senior trial lawyer Eric MacDonald told the three-judge bench at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

- 'Get an ambulance' -

"They were shot simply for showing Ouattara support," he added.

Gbagbo on Thursday became the first ex-head of state to stand trial at the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal.

He and Ble Goude have denied four charges of crimes against humanity for his role in deadly post-election violence that prosecutors say killed some 3,000 people.

Prosecutors are focusing on four specific incidents in a five-month orgy of violence in the world's top cocoa producer until Gbagbo's eventual arrest in April 2011.

One incident focuses on a march on a pro-Gbagbo television station in December 2010 during which 45 people were killed and 16 women and girls were raped.

A video shot on December 16, 2010, shows a loud explosion followed by more shots.

- Six witnesses -

"Two people were killed by a hand grenade. Get an ambulance!" one protester calls out as limp and bloodied bodies are dragged out of the line of fire.

Another video of a women's march in the northern Abobo suburb on March 3, 2011, shows how pro-Gbagbo forces opened fire on unarmed women, leaving bloodied bodies on the streets.

Seven women were killed and three others injured.

"These women were unarmed. They only carried tree branches," MacDonald said.

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He played yet more videos including one of the alleged shelling of the Abobo market quarter on March 17, 2011 in which at least 40 people died.

Several bodies were seen sprawled on tables and next to market stalls.

"Mr Gbagbo failed to take all the necessary measures to prevent these crimes and investigate them," MacDonald said.

"On the contrary, the evidence will show that Mr Gbagbo made attempts to cover up these crimes."

Closing his opening statement, MacDonald told the judges the prosecution would call six material witnesses when it starts presenting its evidence -- likely some time next week.

"We will call six Ivorian men and women ... who will tell their stories of suffering," MacDonald said.

"The prosecution's evidence in this case, and nothing else, will speak for itself."

Wearing a black suit, white shirt and dark striped tie, Gbagbo sat motionless as the videos were played, but calls of disbelief rang out from the public gallery where some of his supporters had gathered for a second day.

At the end of proceedings, Gbagbo smiled and waved to the supporters, who sang the Ivorian national anthem, many with clenched fists.

"We don't care what so-called evidence gets presented," said one who declined to be named.

"In the end our president Gbagbo will walk free," the man said.

The defence is set to give its opening statement on Monday in the trial likely to last three to four years.

Ble Goude has indicated he wants to make a statement, but it was unclear whether Gbagbo will also address the courtroom.
By Andreas Rinke BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German politicians and auto executives will discuss creating incentives worth up to 5,000 euros ($5,500) to boost sales of electric and hybrid cars, a senior ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday. Germany has set itself a goal of bringing 1 million electric cars onto its roads by 2020, but has so far made little progress in encouraging drivers to switch from more-polluting - but also generally cheaper - diesel and petrol vehicles. The heads of the three parties in Merkel's ruling coalition have weighed introducing a subsidy for electric car buyers, said Horst Seehofer, head of the Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He added that the government was looking into whether car companies could co-finance the new incentive and that Merkel would discuss the issue with company executives next week. Asked whether he was backing proposals to introduce an incentive of up to 5,000 euros, Seehofer said: "Bavaria is very much in favor of the buyer's premium." Seehofer is premier of Bavaria, the southern German state where carmaker BMW is based. Calls for supporting electric cars have grown since the Volkswagen emissions scandal erupted last year. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks, both senior members of the Social Democrats (SPD), are both pushing for a rapid introduction of a so-called Kaufpraemie. But Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a senior member of Merkel's center-right party, so far has thwarted any efforts to agree on such a subsidy for buyers of electric cars. An Economy Ministry spokeswoman said on Friday: "Talks within the German government are constructive. We are counting on arriving at a good solution to help achieve our goals." Under the proposal being discussed, carmakers may contribute between 1,500 and 2,000 euros of the incentive, which would be paid into a common fund, German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported, without citing sources. Germany will also pledge to invest in the construction of 16,000 electric car-charging stations and to push municipalities to buy electric vehicles for their own fleets, Der Spiegel said. In 2015, 23,500 electric and plug-in vehicles were registered in Germany. Of these, only 12,300 were pure electric cars, according to Stefan Bratzel at the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach. (Additional reporting by Caroline Copley in Berlin and Edward Taylor in Frankfurt; Writing by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Rina Chandran MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Clothing companies H&M, Inditex, C&A and PVH have committed to improving the lives of workers in Bengaluru, after a report said employees lived in appalling conditions and were denied decent wages and freedom of movement. Gap Inc., which also sources apparel from Bengaluru, did not respond to the report by the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN), according to a statement by the Dutch non-governmental group late on Thursday. A draft of the report, Unfree and Unfair, was presented to the companies last November. The conditions of garment workers in South Asia have come under sharp scrutiny following the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, in which 1,135 workers were killed, many of them employed by suppliers to Western retailers. The ICN report said hostels run by the Bengaluru factories lacked basic amenities such as beds and clean water, and that workers earned between 95 euros($104) and 115 euros per month, just above the official minimum wage of 93 euros to 103 euros. Bengaluru, a hub for apparel exporters, is also known as India's Silicon Valley for its numerous information technology companies, and draws migrants seeking better economic prospects from its home Karnataka state, as well as from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and the country's north and east. There are an estimated 1,200 garment factories in and around Bengaluru, making apparel for large global brands. Many of the workers are women from poor backgrounds who do not know the local language and are unaware of their rights, making them more vulnerable to exploitation, according to the report based on interviews with 110 migrant workers at four garment factories in the city. "Global companies have a responsibility to ensure better conditions for the workers, as they are directly benefiting from their labour," Raphel Jose, vice president of supply-chain sustainability at the Centre for Responsible Business in Bengaluru, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "This is an area where the brands can come together and collaborate with a local agency and pressurise the industry to improve conditions." Dutch clothing retailer C&A, Swedish retailer H&M and Spain's Inditex, which owns the Zara and Massimo Dutti brands, will work together and liaise with local trade unions to provide training and address workers' grievances, ICN said. Inditex will evaluate the state of workers at its suppliers and factories across India, while PVH Corp., which owns brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, is developing new guidelines for its suppliers, ICN said. "If the brands commit to these issues and their plan of action, we expect that considerable progress can be made in addressing the working and living conditions of young migrant garment workers in Bangalore," ICN said in the statement. ($1 = 0.9176 euros) (Reporting by Rina Chandran, Editing by Katie Nguyen; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.)
By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Four Canadians have been infected with the Zika virus from traveling to affected countries, government health officials said on Friday, one more than Health Minister Jane Philpott reported a day earlier. The mosquito-transmitted virus has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil. There is no proven vaccine or treatment. Aedes mosquitoes that transmit the virus are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and Chile, according to the Pan American Health Organization. For that reason, the risk to Canadians is "very low," although becoming infected during travel is possible, said Greg Taylor, Canada's chief public health officer. Two of the infected Canadians are from the province of British Columbia and one each are from Alberta and Quebec. The virus has been linked to a devastating birth defect called microcephaly in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains that have not developed properly. Taylor said he was not aware of any pregnant women in Canada infected. Some of the travel by infected Canadians was to Colombia and El Salvador, said Rebecca Gilman of the Canadian health department. Health officials did not say when they returned to Canada. A consortium of Canadian and U.S. scientists is working on a vaccine, but those efforts do not involve Canada's Public Health Agency. Taylor said the agency is looking into a possible role in the project. He said there have been a few reports suggesting the possibility that Zika can be transmitted through blood transfusions or sex. Canadian Blood Services has asked potential donors who have traveled outside of Canada, the United States and Europe to postpone donations for one month after returning. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editing by Bill Rigby, Bernard Orr)
Tehran (AFP) - Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic republic of Iran, said Friday he would appeal being barred from running in polls for its powerful Assembly of Experts.

Khomeini, a cleric who has ties to reformist politicians, is among hundreds who have been excluded from elections next month for the assembly, which monitors the work of Iran's supreme leader.

The Guardian Council, a conservative-dominated committee that decides who can run for public office, said only 166 of 800 candidates were approved.

"It's a surprise to me and to many others that some of the honourable gentlemen in the Guardian Council couldn't establish I am qualified," Khomeini said on his official website.

The 43-year-old -- grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who led the 1979 Islamic revolution that ended the reign of US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi -- said he would appeal the decision even if he believed it would be in vain.

"If the gentlemen couldn't establish I am qualified through the testimonies of grand ayatollahs, and my lectures and writings, then it's unlikely they will in the future," he said.

But he would appeal "at the request of the public" and some religious and political figures, he said.

Khomeini, who failed to attend a qualifying exam, said other candidates had been vetted even without taking the test.

The rejected candidates have until Saturday to appeal.

So far 80 have appealed, state television quoted an official as saying Friday.

Voting for the 88-member assembly will take place on February 26, the same day as parliamentary polls.

The Guardian Council said last week that 60 percent of 12,000 candidates for those elections had been excluded. Only one percent of reformist hopefuls won approval.
Riyadh (AFP) - A suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Shiite-populated eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers, killing four people before worshippers disarmed and tied up his accomplice who had fired on them.

The state Al-Ekhbariya news channel quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying four people died and 18 were wounded.

An initial ministry toll said two people were killed and seven hurt in the attack at the Al-Rida mosque in Mahasen, a neighbourhood in the eastern Al-Ahsa region.

"We started to pray, and then we were surprised to hear shooting," said Mohammad bin Salman al-Ahmadi, 25, who was slightly injured in the attack.

"We rushed and closed the doors. After that they shot at the door trying to break in. The suicide bomber blew himself up and the door flew open."

Power inside went out, leaving the mosque in darkness and filled with smoke as a second attacker "randomly" shot at worshippers, who tried to hide, Ahmadi said.

"Eventually the worshippers attacked him and took away his gun and took off his suicide belt. We tied him up using our 'shemaghs' and held him till police came," he said, referring to a traditional cloth head covering.

Friday's incident was the latest assault on members of the Sunni-dominated kingdom's Shiite minority, after a string of shootings and bombings claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The interior ministry said two suicide bombers were prevented from entering the mosque by security personnel.

"When security approached to intercept them, one of them responded by blowing himself up at the mosque entrance while an exchange of fire took place with another," it said.

The ministry said the second suspect was injured, and arrested with help from citizens.

"A suicide belt was found in his possession," it said, adding that automatic weapons were also recovered.

- Increased security -

Since deadly attacks claimed by IS last year against Shiite mosques in the kingdom's east, security has been increased and community guards now inspect visitors to houses of worship.

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Friday's attack happened in an area largely populated by employees of the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil company, a resident said.

Most of Saudi Arabia's Shiites live in the kingdom's Eastern Province which includes Al-Ahsa, an oasis region where much of the kingdom's oil reserves are located.

A video circulated on social media purportedly showed the aftermath of the attack, where several people lay still on a carpet, surrounded by broken glass.

One man could be seen applying a tourniquet to the thigh of a victim whose white robe was soaked with blood.

"People were so angry," and apprehended one of the alleged suspects themselves, the resident told AFP, asking for anonymity.

"Police started shooting in the air so they could take him away."

Another resident said Mahasen is a mostly Sunni neighbourhood, and the mosque that was attacked "is a house that they turned into a mosque."

IS, a Sunni extremist group, has claimed several deadly attacks against Saudi Shiites, whom the jihadists consider heretics, since late 2014.

Friday's bombing was the first against Eastern Province Shiites since October, when a gunman fired on faithful commemorating Ashura in the Qatif area, killing five before police shot him dead.

Ashura is one of the holiest occasions for the Shiite faith.

In June, four Shiites died preventing a suicide bomber from entering the hall of Al-Anoud mosque in Dammam city.

Days earlier, 21 people were killed in another Shiite mosque bombing in Eastern Province.

Groups claiming affiliation with IS said they carried out those blasts and the Ashura shooting.

During Ashura in 2014, gunmen killed seven Shiite worshippers, including children, in the eastern town of Al-Dalwa. The interior ministry said the suspects had links to IS.

The group has also claimed deadly attacks on Saudi security forces.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hamas is ready for a new confrontation with Israel thanks in part to the reconstruction of tunnels to fight the Jewish state, the Islamist Palestinian movement's Gaza chief said on Friday.

Ismail Haniya said the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades -- Hamas's military wing -- were preparing "for any future clashes with the Zionist (Israeli) enemy".

"East of Gaza City, underground heroes build tunnels" along the border with Israel, while west of the city they are "testing rockets every day," said Haniya.

He was speaking to thousands of mourners gathered at the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City for the funeral of seven Al-Qassam fighters killed this week in a tunnel collapse.

Al-Qassam Brigades said the seven had been preparing "for fighting with the enemy".

Wrapped in green Hamas flags, the seven bodies were carried to the mosque while crowds chanted slogans calling for violence against Israel.

In a rare move, several Hamas chiefs went to the cemetery located near the border with Israel to place flowers by the graves of the seven fighters.

Haniya described the tunnels as a "strategic weapons" against Israel, and said Hamas fighters are also training and acquiring "all the means to fight and resist".

Israel has been accusing Hamas of rebuilding tunnels destroyed during the 2014 Gaza war with the aim of launching fresh attacks against it.

The 50-day war in July-August 2014 killed 2,200 Palestinians, 73 people on the Israeli side, and destroyed or damaged thousands of homes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The tunnels have been used in the past to store weapons or stage attacks.

In June 2006, a group of Hamas fighters and other militants entered Israel through a cross-border tunnel, seized Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and took him back to Gaza.

He was then held for five years and eventually returned in a prisoner exchange which saw over 1,000 Palestinians released.

Gaza has remained largely calm since a wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks began in October in the West Bank, Jerusalem and across Israel, though a number of people have been killed by Israeli forces during violent protests along the Gaza border.
According to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite, home prices in just five metros had monthly price drops in November. The worst among them: Chicago.



The third most populous metro in the U.S., Chicago has experienced significant home price depreciation -- in fact, its the third consecutive month the city has fallen the most.



Chicago was down 0.7% from October to November, while increasing 2% over the year. Meanwhile, markets like Portland, Ore., saw a 0.3% monthly increase and were up 11.1% over a one-year period.



Stan Humphries, chief economist of Zillow Group, says the Midwest has experienced the slowest, most difficult recovery in the U.S. A lack of key investor groups -- international buyers, retirees and second-home buyers -- puts the Midwest at a huge disadvantage. Humphries says, If you look at Chicago, Cleveland, Akron or Dayton -- as nice as they are -- theyre not where people are looking to buy.



He says the horseshoe -- starting in Washington, going down California, across the sand states like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, down to Florida and back up to Washington, D.C. -- is where demand is strongest. Indeed, Seattle home prices saw a 0.5% increase month over month, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix 0.3%, Miami 0.8%, and Washington D.C. climbed 0.1%.



Spiking home prices in hot markets may be locking out young adults, who are also seeking good jobs -- not bogged down by long commutes.



Take Silicon Valley, for example -- rather than having to commute over an hour between the office and where you can afford to live (like Oakland), other cities start to look attractive, he says. Last month the U.S. logged a 5% unemployment rate -- the lowest since February 2008. But cities like Austin and Denver, in particular, seem to be burgeoning with job opportunities, with unemployment rates of 3.3% and 3.9%, respectively.



Now could be the prime opportunity for young adults to ditch the horseshoe and take advantage of Chicagos sluggish home price growth. Cheaper cost of living, check. Drivable highways, check. Chicago winters are looking more and more tolerable.
Honda on Friday reported a fall in nine-month operating profit due to "quality-related" costs, seen as linked to an exploding airbag crisis at parts supplier Takata, but said net profit rose.

Net profit in the nine months through December rose 2.4 percent to 437.9 billion yen ($3.62 billion), as sales jumped 11.3 percent to 10.94 trillion yen, the company said in a statement.

But operating profit fell 3.0 percent to 567.2 billion yen, "due to an increase in sales costs, including quality-related ones", Honda said, trimming its full-year sales forecast to 14.55 trillion yen from the previous 14.60 trillion yen.

Despite growth in sales, "the negative impact of US dollar valuations against other currencies" also led to the weak operating profit, Honda said.

For the full-year to March, the maker of the Civic sedan kept forecasts for net profit and operating profit at 525 billion yen, up 3.1 percent year-on-year, and 685 billion yen, up 2.1 percent compared to the previous year, respectively.

"Honda is recovering steadily," Shigeru Matsumura, analyst at SMBC Friend Research Center, told AFP ahead of the carmaker's latest earnings report.

"We assess that Honda is turning the corner from the negative impact of the airbag accidents and is now able to concentrate on its primary sales operation."

Sales in Japan, however, have been sluggish after a sales tax rise last year dented consumer spending and as younger urban residents delay buying vehicles.

In June, Honda revised down its annual earnings for the previous fiscal year, blaming the expanding recalls of faulty airbags made by embattled supplier Takata, which have been linked to 10 deaths and scores of injuries.

Of the dozen global automakers affected by the airbag crisis, Honda has been the hardest hit, with the company recalling more than 24 million vehicles to fix the defect.

Honda's earnings announcement came as reports said Takata's president, Shigehisa Takada, was set to resign on Friday over the crisis, which the company later denied in a statement.

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The reports "are not what we have announced, and at this point he has no intention of resigning," the statement said.

In the same statement, Takata said that it held a meeting Friday to explain its current situation to automakers, though refrained from disclosing details of the discussions.

The costs of millions of recalls will likely surpass 500 billion yen, and Japanese automakers are planning to demand that Takata cover the cost once they determine the cause of the defect, the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun said in a report Friday.
By Sinead Cruise LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC is working with law enforcement to catch those behind a cyber attack that forced its personal banking websites in the UK to shutdown, its second major service outage this month, the bank said on Friday. Europe's largest lender said it had "successfully defended" its systems against a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack but it was experiencing fresh threats, impeding full restoration of its services. "HSBC's internet and mobile services have partially recovered, and we continue to work to restore a full service," John Hackett, UK Chief Operating Officer, said in a statement. "We are closely monitoring the situation with the authorities," he added. The outage began on Friday morning and online services were still down by 1630 GMT (11:30 a.m. ET). DDoS attacks are often used by cyber criminals trying to disrupt businesses and companies with significant online activities. HSBC has declined to estimate when its online services might resume. Its Twitter feed said all major branches will be open on Saturday to help manage urgent transactions. Dozens of customers took to social media to vent their anger. They were advised to use the bank's mobile banking application but some reported access difficulties due to high demand. The attack coincides with the first full pay-day of the year for many Britons and runs close to a deadline for the submission of personal tax returns. Several technology failures have hit Britain's retail banks in recent years, prompting lawmakers to call for improvement. "Bank IT systems just don't seem to be up to the job," Andrew Tyrie, Conservative lawmaker and chairman of the Treasury Committee, said in a statement. "It could be leaving the banking system, and with it the economy, exposed to the risk of systemic failures." Thousands of HSBC's UK customers were affected by a blackout on its personal banking online services in the first week of January. HSBC gave no explanation for that glitch but confirmed it was not due to a cyber-attack or malicious act. Technicians restored service after two days. The bank said customer transactions were not affected by Friday's breach, which appeared to be aimed at disrupting and causing embarrassment to HSBC. "DDoS attacks are not attacks meant to directly steal from consumers, they are meant to deny them access to the institution," said Robert Capps, vice president of business development at NuData Security. However, some breaches can be a cover for other types of cyber attack, Capps said. "We've seen DDoS attacks against banks used as a smoke screen and cover for other nefarious activities such as cyber-heists ... large value money transfers, or the bulk theft and removal of consumer account data," he said. Financial crime costs the UK economy 52 billion pounds ($73.69 billion) a year, delegates at the Wealth Management Association's financial crime conference heard earlier this week. Special Inspector James Phipson, commercial director of the economic crime directorate at City of London Police, also told the event that only 12 per cent of cyber-crime is ever reported. (Additional reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Katharine Houreld)
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum have found a way to wring one more headline mentioning their names out of the Republican presidential primary. That is, before the inevitable ones announcing the end of their struggling campaigns.

Both have said that they will appear at frontrunner Donald Trumps last-minute event at Drake University in Des Moines, which is being held in direct competition with the Republican National Committee-sanctioned debate on Fox News.

Related: Trump Hits the Trifecta in His Battle with Fox News

Huckabee and Santorum, who didnt qualify for the main event tonight, will apparently participate in the so-called undercard debate earlier in the evening, and then head across town to the Trump event.

The unprecedented decision by Trump to boycott the debate tonight came just days before the Iowa caucuses this coming Monday, and were sparked by the billionaires ongoing feud with Fox News in general and debate moderator Megyn Kelly in particular. After Fox responded to repeated provocations from Trump with a press release mocking the former reality television star for being afraid to face Kelly, Trump said that he had decided to hold a separate event, ostensibly to raise money for wounded veterans.

After the #GOPDebate Ill join @realDonaldTrump in Des Moines to support our vets whove been abandoned by @BarackObama. Hope you join us!  Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) January 28, 2016

The event will start an hour before the GOP debate with a sort of warm-up, and the main event is supposed to kick off at 9 ET, the same time as the Republican debate. Trump has been gleefully predicting a ratings disaster for Fox, and has continued disparaging Kelly on various social media platforms.

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The addition of Huckabee and Santorum is interesting, because they are the last two candidates to win the Republican caucuses in Iowa (Huckabee in 2008 and Santorum in 2012).

However, their addition to the line-up probably wont do a whole lot for the Trumps ratings. Huckabee right now is polling at between 2 and 3 percent in Iowa, and Santorum is polling at less than one percent.

And on the topic of of ratings, its unclear exactly who will be able to watch the Trump event. On Thursday morning, the Internet was spilling over with rumors. One website reported that Oprah Winfrey had paid $8 million to secure the exclusive broadcast rights to the event. Of course, the same website also reported that the residents of Flint, Michigan, which is suffering from contaminated water, have begun growing gills. However, that didnt stop people from believing it.

Related: Donald Trump Exposes the GOPs Religion Problem

Oh my god this is going to be so good shes a genius https://t.co/uLLSwX1cgI   (@plantblogger) January 28, 2016

More widespread was a rumor that CNN had announced it would carry the event live. Numerous right-wing websites on Thursday were reporting that the news network had agreed to host the Trump rally, but most appeared to trace the claim to the same tweet, from conservative pundit Ann Coulter on Wednesday. CNN had, as of early Thursday afternoon, not made any statement regarding its coverage of the event.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Indian counter-terror police have arrested three alleged Islamist radicals suspected of conspiring to stage an attack on India, after they were deported from the United Arab Emirates, an official said Friday.

The three Indian nationals were arrested on arrival at New Delhi airport from Abu Dhabi by investigators from the National Investigation Agency (NIA), a federal police unit that probes terror offences.

"The NIA has registered a case against Sheikh Azhar Al Islam, Mohammad Farhan and Adnan Hussain," an NIA official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"They have been charged with conspiracy to carry out strikes in India and outside," he added. He did not say when the arrests took place.

Indian authorities have expressed fears that the Islamic State group could strike the country and recruit youths, with reports of at least 20 Indians currently fighting for the group in Iraq and Syria.

Earlier Friday, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the country's security agencies were capable of dealing with any threat posed by the group in India, which has a large but traditionally moderate Muslim population.

"We have the capacity to meet any threat. We will face it," he told reporters in Greater Noida, a suburb of Delhi.

Last week, NIA arrested a group of suspected Islamist radicals and seized bomb-making material in a series of nationwide raids.
Rome (AFP) - Italian anti-mafia police nabbed two fugitive mobster bosses on Friday, after discovering them "living like animals" in a mountain hideout stocked with an arsenal of weapons.

Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, and Giuseppe Crea, 37, both high-ranking members of the powerful and immensely wealthy 'Ndrangheta organised crime group, are both on Italy's most dangerous fugitives list, police told AFP.

Ferraro, found guilty in absentia of a string of brutal murders and described as "extremely dangerous" by police, had been on the run for 18 years. Crea, wanted for mafia association and extortion, disappeared 10 years ago.

Ferraro's clan is also believed to have been involved in the gunning down of rival boss Domenico Bonarrigo in a turf war.

Bonarrigo's men took their revenge by feeding the suspected gunman, Ferraro ally Francesco Raccosta, alive to pigs in 2013.

"They were living in a concrete bunker hidden by dense bushes and trees," said prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho, describing the hideout in the mountains near the town of Maropati in the Reggio Calabria region of southern Italy.

Maropati was founded in the 10th century after being used as a hideout by people fleeing Saracen pirates on the coast.

- Submachine gun, rifles -

"They were living like animals, a cold life cut off from society" but with enough contact with the underworld to rule on gang matters when necessary, Cafiero De Raho told a press conference.

Police raiding the bunker after a year's surveillance of the area surprised the men while they were sleeping and discovered a submachine gun as well as a collection of rifles and pistols hung on the wall.

"Those of us who were there today (at the arrest) knew how difficult it was, but probably only fully realised afterwards how dangerous it was," police commissioner Raffaele Grassi said.

The men were "still actively managing the clan's affairs and had a military control over the territory," said Rosy Bindi, head of the parliamentary anti-mafia commission.

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- Killer 'known to Vatican spy' -

Crea is suspected of having gunned down Francesco Inzitari, the teenage son of a rival, in 2009.

The murder returned to the headlines in 2014 after Italy's L'Espresso magazine claimed that Inzitari's killer was known to a local priest who worked as a spy for the Vatican's secret services.

"Now that the territory has been freed of these two dangerous fugitives, I invite people to come forward and collaborate to throw light on their crimes, like the murder of Francesco Inzitari," the prosecutor said.

Photographs released by the police showed one of the men in a black jumper and brown fleece at the moment of his arrest, with boxes of cherry tomatoes and a flask visible next to the kitchen sink behind him.

Life had become increasingly difficult for the pair since June last year, when a police crackdown severely weakened the network of clan members helping them survive in the woods, investigators said.

The 'Ndrangheta is credited with controlling much of the world's cocaine trade and police describe the group as the most active, richest and most powerful syndicate in Europe.

"Today is another great day for the country, because today justice once again has won, and done so impressively," Italy's Justice Minister Angelino Alfano said in a statement.
By Thomas Escritt THE HAGUE (Reuters) - War crimes prosecutors accused ex-Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo of orchestrating "unspeakable violence", including murder and gang rape, to cling to power after losing an election, pitching his country into civil war. Rising stiffly on the opening day of his trial at the International Criminal Court, Gbagbo, 70, pleaded not guilty to all charges. His co-accused, youth leader Charles Ble Goude, 44, also pleaded innocence and said he did not recognise the charges. Four months of conflict ravaged Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa grower, in early 2011 after Gbagbo refused to step down. Around 3,000 people were killed and the fighting ended only when former colonial power France intervened militarily, allowing election winner Alessane Ouattara to take office. The trial could ramp up tensions in Ivory Coast, where Gbagbo, the highest-ranked politician ever to appear before the 13-year-old ICC, remains influential. The gallery was packed with rowdy supporters, many of them Ivorians who had travelled to The Hague from Paris. Some rushed to a bulletproof glass barrier and chanted: "Gbagbo! President!" as the accused was led out of the courtroom. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Gbagbo and his inner circle had targeted Muslims and ethnic groups they assumed had supported Ouattara. "Cote d'Ivoire succumbed to chaos and was subjected to unspeakable violence," she said, using the country's French name. "Nothing would be allowed to defeat Mr. Gbagbo: If politics failed, violence was seen as politics by other means." TEST OF CREDIBILITY Bensouda related the account of one witness who had been arrested at a pro-Ouattara rally and subjected, along with other women, to three days of gang rapes by armed gendarmes. Seven were killed when state security agents opened fire from an armoured car on a demonstration in a marketplace in an immigrant neighbourhood of the capital Abidjan, she added. In Ivory Coast, the trial was closely watched by supporters and opponents alike. Gbagbo's supporters, hundreds of whom demonstrated outside the courthouse on Thursday, say he is a victim of neo-colonial meddling by France and accuse prosecutors of ignoring alleged crimes by Ouattara's camp. "We want him released," said Paris-based Ivorian Michele, demonstrating in the windswept street in front of the court in The Hague. Ouattara was a "rebel chief" who had been helped by France to usurp power, she added. On Friday the prosecution will continue to outline its case, and on Monday the defence takes its turn. The trial is expected to last at least a year in all. The case is a test of the credibility of the global war crimes court. Its last attempt to press charges against a top politician, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, ended in disarray amid fierce diplomatic lobbying by Kenya and its African allies. [L8N15B3M7] The court has so far handed down just two convictions, both against little-known African warlords. It opened its first investigation outside the continent on Wednesday, into the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Andrew Roche)
Pan-European pay TV giant Sky on Friday said that James Murdoch has been tapped to become its chairman in the spring as it reported improved operating earnings for the first half of its fiscal year and subscriber growth for the fiscal second quarter that ended in December.

Murdoch, who is CEO of 21st Century Fox, Sky's largest shareholder, was previously CEO of Sky's U.K.-only predecessor BSkyB between 2003 and 2007 and then chairman until April 2012 before becoming a non-executive director on the board. In late 2014, after BSkyB acquired Fox's Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the bigger company changed its name to Sky, which now operates in the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria. Fox owns a 39 percent stake in Sky.

"Nick Ferguson, our chairman since 2012, will step down from the Sky board at the end of April after 12 years as a director," Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch said on Friday. "The entire board offers its warmest thanks to Nick for his leadership as chairman and the major contribution he has made to Sky over many years. We're delighted that James Murdoch has agreed to step into the role of chairman.James' deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Sky's ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future."

Read More: Pan-European Pay TV Giant Sky Strikes Exclusive Deal for Showtime Programming

On an earnings conference call, the CEO called Murdoch "a huge asset" and said he was named chairman with the unanimous support of the board. Asked if the Murdoch's appointment could lead to a new Fox offer to acquire control of Sky, he said the news shows that Murdoch and Fox remain "passionate" about Sky and its outlook.

"From time to time, there is speculation about what Fox's intentions are," Darroch said. "The management, we just don't get distracted by that. I can't speak for Fox, but what I would read into James' acceptance of the role is that he and they continue to be passionate supporters of Sky's ongoing success." What was then-News Corp. had offered to buy full control of Sky, but abandoned the bid amid the phone-hacking scandal. News Corp. later split into Fox and News Corp.

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The Sky management team was focused on executing its growth strategy, Darroch added. "Without a doubt, he is the right man for the job," he said when asked if the hacking scandal at News Corp's U.K. newspaper unit, which Murdoch oversaw as chairman in the past, had caused Sky any concerns about naming Murdoch chair. "And the board has been unanimous [in] James' support, by the way, throughout his tenure at Sky." Darroch also said that Murdoch at the time of the hacking scandal put the interest of Sky ahead of his own.

The CEO also cited Murdoch's "passion" for Sky and highlighted that he has been "consistently reelected" as a board member by shareholders. Will Murdoch's chairman role affect the way Sky runs the business? "I think you shouldn't read anything specifically into business strategy from James' appointment today," Darroch said.

Read More: Sky Unveils Premium Service Sky Q to Allow "Fluid Viewing" Across Screens

"I am proud to have been asked by the board to serve as chairman of Sky, one of the worlds leading pay TV companies," James Murdoch said. "Jeremy and the team at Sky have done an outstanding job in building a dynamic and successful company. As chairman, I look forward to working with the board and management as they continue to deliver a great service for Skys customers and create value for all shareholders over the years to come."

Sky signed up 337,000 new customers in the latest quarter, exceeding analysts' expectations. Operating profit for the first half of the fiscal year rose 12 percent to $1.07 billion (747 million pounds), compared with 667 million pounds. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 8 percent, and earnings per share rose 10 percent. The earnings exceeded analysts forecasts.

In terms of retail subscribers, the company added 205,000 in the U.K. and Ireland, making it the strongest fiscal second-quarter performance in 10 years for the company. The U.K. and Ireland growth included 146,000 TV subscriber additions. In Germany and Austria, Sky added 120,000 customers, and even in Italy, it added 12,000. Analysts' consensus expectations had been for overall company customer additions of 276,000, led by 155,000 in the U.K. and Ireland, and 134,000 in Germany and Austria, with a net customer loss of 14,000 forecast for Italy.

Sky ended 2015 with 21.48 million total retail customers, including 12.28 million in U.K. and Ireland, 4.49 million in Italy and 4.70 million in Germany and Austria.

We have had another very strong half as we continue to transform Sky, broadening our business and expanding into new markets and customer segments. This strategy is delivering today and opening up significant growth opportunities for the future, Darroch said. We are pursuing those opportunities with energy and purpose. Today's results show that our approach is working and customers are responding in record numbers.

He added: We're excited about 2016 and we start the year with good momentum. With an outstanding set of new initiatives and products for our customers, we are well positioned to deliver further strong growth and returns for shareholders."

Sky's stock rose on Friday. It was up 2 percent as of 1:30 p.m. London time.

Read More: Sky Invests $10 Million in Programmatic Ad Tech Firm DataXu
Japan's two-biggest airlines reported soaring profits Friday as a surge in tourism and lower fuel costs beefed-up their bottom line.

Japan Airlines (JAL) and rival All Nippon Airways (ANA) credited a weak yen for helping boost tourism into Japan as it makes a country often seen as too expensive much cheaper for visitors.

Plunging oil prices have also been good for carriers as it cuts down on what is often their single-biggest expense.

"The Japanese aviation industry is enjoying a sharp decline in oil prices and the growing number of visitors to Japan, which continued to sustain its bottom-line," said Hiroshi Hasegawa, an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities.

"If oil prices remain low for now, JAL and ANA will likely show sizable profit gains for the next fiscal year."

The parent company of ANA said its nine-month net profit jumped 40 percent thanks to growth in its international business, while it also announced it would buy three Airbus A380s for $1.25 billion as it expands its overseas routes.

ANA Holdings' net profit in the April-December period rose to 73.3 billion yen ($606 billion), and the company revised up its fiscal year profit forecast by about a quarter.

JAL said net profit for the same period soared 20 percent to 143.69 billion yen, thanks to an increase in the number of international visitors to Japan.

"Passenger traffic increased as a result of capturing the robust demand from inbound travellers especially on North America, China and Southeast Asia routes," JAL said in a statement.

ANA said its international demand "on certain routes from Japan" were dented temporarily after the jihadist attacks in Paris in November, but it added that the impact was limited.

JAL has suspended flights between Narita airport and Paris after demand took a hit following the November attacks in the French capital.

The carrier has said it will extend the suspension until March 15.

The airline had operated one round trip a day between Paris and each of the two main Tokyo airports -- Narita and Haneda.

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JAL has continued the normal operations of flights between Haneda and Paris.

The two airlines have been locked in a spat over the allocation of landing slots at Haneda, after JAL emerged from one of the nation's biggest-ever bankruptcies following a government rescue.

"JAL is steadily on course to a full recovery," Hasegawa said.

The airline re-listed its shares in Tokyo in 2012 to mark a spectacular turnaround three years after it went bankrupt with massive debts and saw its stock delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
By Naomi Tajitsu and Maki Shiraki TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese air bag maker Takata Corp <7312.T>, mired in a long-running safety recall crisis, said on Friday its Chairman and CEO Shigehisa Takada had no intention as of now to resign. Citing two people close to Takata, Reuters earlier reported the company would tell its automaker customers at a meeting on Friday that Takada, grandson of the group's founder, was willing to step down and take responsibility for the recalls. "There are plans for management reforms," said one of the individuals, adding this would involve expressing the willingness of Takada and other executives to resign. The sources said Takata has not taken any formal decision on Takada's future and no successor has been designated. In a brief statement to the stock market, Takata said it had not announced Takada's resignation and "as of now he has no intention to resign." It confirmed the meeting to update its automaker customers, but said it had nothing to disclose following those talks. The company apologised to customers and investors for "inconveniences and uncertainties" from the recalls. Pressure has been building on the Tokyo-based company for almost two years over defective air bags that can explode with excessive force and shoot shrapnel inside the car - a problem that has ballooned into a crisis affecting tens of millions of cars. Takata said on Tuesday that an 11th death could be linked to a faulty air bag. After the Reuters article, Takata shares rose nearly 11 percent on Friday - their biggest one-day gain in 4 weeks - in a market <.N225> that closed 2.8 percent higher. At the meeting, Takata was expected to outline its plans for supplying replacement air bag parts to its customers, the sources said. As part of that, Takata is looking to team up with Daicel Corp <4202.T> to make air bag inflators, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters previously. Tetsuo Iwamura, executive vice president of Honda Motor <7267.T>, which has been hardest hit by the air bag crisis, said he attended the meeting with Takata. He offered no further comment on those talks. REPORT Takata may come under renewed pressure when Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute reports on its investigation into the causes of air bag inflator failures. Japanese media have reported that the findings, commissioned by Takata, are due in the coming weeks. Fraunhofer was not immediately available to comment on when the final results would be ready. Partial results of its inquiry released last June showed that the air bag explosions appeared to result from damaged or improperly assembled inflators, and when ammonium nitrate, the chemical compound used to inflate the air bag, came into contact with moisture, a particular concern in humid regions. Takata said then that it was still unclear what were the root causes of the air bag failures. If the final report finds Takata liable for defective air bags, it could leave the company with a recall bill already estimated at more than $3 billion. Automakers, including Honda and Toyota Motor <7203.T>, which have to date been paying for replacement air bags, could also take it as a cue to cut off financial lifelines to Takata. FAMILY FIRM Takada, 49, joined the family business straight from university in 1988 and has been CEO since 2013. He has been widely criticised for keeping a low profile even as the air bag crisis escalated, and automakers accused Takata of mishandling and manipulating safety data. In his first media appearance in June 2015, more than a year after the recall crisis erupted, Takada apologised for the defective air bag inflators, saying that staying on to lead the company was the appropriate way for him to take responsibility. Those who have worked with him describe Takada as quiet, thoughtful and analytical - in contrast to his ebullient father, Juichiro, who built Takata into Japan's leading auto safety manufacturer. He died in 2011. "If your dad was a legend and one of the founding fathers of the global auto safety industry, that's a lot to live up to," said Scott Upham, president of Valiant Market Research who worked at Takata in the 1990s. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu, Ritsuko Ando, Maki Shiraki and Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques and Ian Geoghegan)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend a gathering in Rome on Tuesday of countries fighting Islamic State militants and then go on to London the next day for an aid conference on Syria, the State Department said. Kerry makes the trip as the United Nations is having trouble starting indirect peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition to try to end the nearly five-year civil war in which more than 250,000 people have been killed. The so-called proximity talks, in which U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura would speak separately to each side in Geneva, were supposed to begin on Monday but were postponed amid uncertainty about whether the opposition would attend. Syria's opposition High Negotiations Committee would go to Geneva to meet de Mistura, an independent activist said on Friday on behalf of the group, but it would not get involved in negotiations with the Syrian government. Kerry has pushed hard for the talks to try to end the conflict, which has been intensified by the Islamic State militant group's seizure of swathes of Syrian territory. Tuesday's meeting in Rome "will review progress to date and discuss ways to further intensify commitments across all lines of effort to degrade and defeat" the militant group, State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. Other nations at the Rome gathering will include Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, Kirby said. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Grant McCool)
Quebec City (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday welcomed a late decision by the main Syrian opposition coalition to take part in UN-backed talks designed to end their country's bloody civil war.

"The United States welcomes the important decision by the High Negotiations Committee of the Syrian opposition to attend negotiations hosted by the United Nations in Geneva," Kerry said in a statement.

"The United States also reiterates that UN Security Council Resolution 2254 must be fully implemented by all parties to the talks, including with regard to the urgent need for humanitarian access for besieged areas of Syria," he added.

This had been a key demand of the rebel coalition, which had insisted that Syrian government forces and their Russian allies halt the bombing of besieged enclaves and allow humanitarian convoys to reach starving families.

"The United States further expects that both sides in these negotiations will participate in good faith and achieve early, measurable progress in the days ahead," Kerry said.

Next week, Kerry is to attend a fundraising meeting with donor states in London to support humanitarian efforts to ease the plight of refugees and displaced people caught up in Syria's civil war.
Moscow (AFP) - The Kremlin on Friday lashed out at the White House after it backed up an allegation from the US Treasury that President Vladimir Putin is corrupt.

US Treasury acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Adam Szubin said in a BBC documentary aired Monday that Putin was a "picture of corruption".

White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Thursday backed up that line, saying that the Treasury's assessment "best reflects the administration view."

The Kremlin has already dismissed the US Treasury claim that it said amounted to an "official accusation", but ratcheted up the rhetoric after the White House got involved.

"We consider this statement outrageous and offensive," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

"We really need further explanation because such a statement is absolutely unprecedented."

Ties between Moscow and Washington have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War over Russia's meddling in Ukraine.

The two sides, however, are currently engaged in an international peace push on the conflict in Syria, although they support different sides in the civil war.

Peskov accused Washington of firing the starting gun on attempts to discredit Putin ahead of Russia's next presidential elections in 2018, even though he insisted Putin has not yet decided to run.

In a sign that the allegations could further damage ties between the two countries, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov raised the issue with his counterpart John Kerry in a phone call Friday.

"Lavrov expressed outrage at the contrived and unforgivable allegations against the Russian leadership," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.

"It was emphasised that the blame for the deliberate whipping up of tension in bilateral affairs falls squarely on Washington," the statement said.

Russian authorities have repeatedly accused the West of plotting to overthrow Putin, but critics insist an elite around the strongman is whipping up public fears as they cement their grip over the country's vast wealth.
By Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan heads to Latin America on Sunday with the aim of boosting trade ties as Turkey seeks to diversify away from its traditional export markets in the troubled economies of Europe and the Middle East. In his first visit to the region in a year, Erdogan will lead a large business delegation to Chile, Peru and Ecuador. Turkey has been slowly strengthening its relationship with Latin America since the late 1990s, when one of his predecessors, Suleyman Demirel, became the first Turkish president to make an official visit. The search for new markets has become more important as conflict ravages neighboring Iraq and Syria, long two of its major trading partners. A diplomatic row with Moscow, which slapped economic sanctions on Turkey after Ankara downed a Russian warplane last year, has exacerbated its woes. "The fundamental idea behind Erdogan's visit to Latin America is Turkey's push to search for new markets and diversify," said an official from the economy ministry who is helping to prepare for the visit. "Turkey does a great deal of business with its neighbors but is experiencing difficulties because of rising problems in the Middle East." Turkey's latest trade data released on Friday showed exports dropped 11 percent in December, suggesting those tensions were taking their toll. Latin America will not plug the gap any time soon, but it is one of relatively few major emerging market regions which Turkish businesses - actively pushing into new markets in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia in recent years - have by and large failed to tap. Trade with Latin America was nearly $10 billion in 2014, according to official figures, up from around $1 billion in 2000, but still just a sliver of Turkey's overall commerce. Central, South America and the Caribbean accounted for just 1.8 percent of Turkish exports in 2014, according to government data. The top Latin American destination for Turkish exports that year was Mexico, although it ranked 45th overall, behind the likes of Malta and Yemen. Peru was the next biggest destination, in 78th place. NEW TURKEY, NEW MARKETS Erdogan, prime minister for more than a decade before winning the first direct election for head of state in 2014, has championed a vision of a "New Turkey" with a bigger diplomatic and trade presence on the world stage. Turkish companies - in sectors ranging from food to construction - have built a reputation for being at the forefront of investment in challenging markets from Libya and Yemen to Somalia and Kazakhstan. Major Turkish exports to South America include iron and steel, machinery, autos and vegetable and animal oils. Turkey has also made some inroads with cultural exports, with some of its daytime soap operas becoming hits in Chile. But its exports still tend to be lower down the value chain than those of some Asian rivals. "Turkey doesn't have many high-tech exports. This creates a restriction in how much it can expand its markets, but there may be opportunities," Mehmet Yegin of the Ankara-based USAK think tank said of the Latin America trip. "There will absolutely be expansion for the Turkish market. But I don't expect really big, ground-breaking expansion." (Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan; editing by Anna Willard)
BERLIN, Germany  Six months ago, Moustafa Abdulhay, 29, a Syrian born in Aleppo, gave up everything to come to Germany.

Abdulhay still vividly recalls the fateful conversation he had with his father in August 2015 when he decided to abandon his life in Syria, due to the increasing threat of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. He fled the country, leaving behind his well-paying job teaching Arabic for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

"My father told me to come to Germany, because I would be able to find safety, work and build a new life for myself," Abdulhay told Mic in an interview outside a tent located on the grounds of Berlin's State Office for Health and Social Affairs, known by its acronym . The facility is the first point of contact for refugees once they reach the German capital, and has been described as the country's version of Ellis Island.

Abdulhay embarked on the dangerous journey taken by thousands of refugees entering Europe, traveling from Turkey to Greece, then up through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria before finally reaching Germany. He said the entire trip took 20 days.

From the moment Abdulhay set foot in Germany, reality sank in. He said he was shocked to discover the miserable conditions at Lageso.

"When I arrived in Berlin, it was shocking to see what things are really like," Abdulhay told Mic.

The scene at Lageso is miserable. On a recent visit to the facility, refugees stood shivering as they waited outdoors for hours in long lines to receive food, tea and basic medical supplies. Barbed wire fences surrounded makeshift tents that served as temporary shelter for the refugees. Hundreds of new refugees gather each day in Lageso's main courtyard to submit their asylum applications, but many have been forced to wait weeks and even months for the German government to process their applications. Fights frequently break out amidst the confusion and chaos.

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Migrants arrive on a cold and snowy early morning at Lageso in Berlin, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016

"These people have been through so much. And here is where we break them," Christiane Beckmann, a volunteer coordinator for the German refugee resettlement organization Moabit Hilft, told Mic dejectedly.

Abdulhay said conditions have been so bad since he arrived that part of him wishes he had never left Syria, despite the danger posed by ISIS.

"I gave up everything to come here from Syria," Abdulhay told Mic. "This is not what I was promised. Some days, I wish I had never come in the first place."

The looming battle over integration in Europe: Abdulhay is just one of over 1 million refugees who entered Germany last year, all with their own unique set of circumstances.

But his story serves as a cautionary tale of the severe challenges associated with the integration of refugees in Germany and across Europe, a looming crisis which German President Joachim Gauck described as the "biggest-ever test" the European Union has ever faced during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Until now, Germany has pursued a remarkably open-door policy toward refugees under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, taking in over 1 million refugees in 2015, by far the most in Europe. That influx has earned Germany praise as the leader on the refugee crisis in Europe but has also placed extreme strain on the country's resources, a fact that is immediately evident in places like Lageso. Germany's approach comes in stark contrast to countries like the United States, which has accepted a mere fraction of that number, in large part due to stark opposition from the Republican Party.

But Germany's days of openness are likely numbered, based on interviews with several policymakers and business leaders in Berlin. There is a growing feeling  among journalists, entrepreneurs and young people on the street  that the country is teetering on the brink, as Merkel faces increasingly vocal political opposition to her openness toward refugees.

That opposition is in part driven by real concerns about the German economy, which has slowed in recent months. Merkel's detractors argue that the country simply cannot sustain another influx of 1 million refugees in 2016.

There is also growing frustration that other countries, particularly in Central Europe, have turned away refugees and failed to share the burden of responsibility, despite Merkel's repeated calls for a unified European solution to the crisis.

The tide has also shifted in the wake of New Year's Eve attacks in the city of Cologne, where scores of German women were sexually assaulted in a series of coordinated attacks across the city, allegedly perpetrated by North African and Muslim migrants. In the wake of that attack, the far-right, anti-immigrant party Alternative fur Deutschland called for Merkel's resignation, and Merkel has faced growing demands that the country take a harsher stance and close its doors to refugees and migrants.

Beckmann, the resettlement worker, says Germany must resist the urge to turn inward, particularly given the country's troubled history.

"We are the country that had the Nazis," Beckmann told Mic. "Despite that period of our history, people did not turn their back on us. So, now we too need to do more. We cannot turn our back on these people."

Dark days: But all signs indicate that Germany is likely to start to reverse its open-door policy in favor of a more restrictive approach in the coming days. Gauck, the German president, intimated as much in Davos, where he told a plenary session that the German government is "extremely likely" to introduce measures to limit the numbers of refugees entering the country this year.

For his part, Abdulhay says he will do everything in his power to prevent Germany from turning its back on refugees, despite the challenges he has faced trying to integrate in Berlin.

"I want to change Germans' perceptions of refugees, and show them that that they don't have to be afraid," Abdulhay told Mic. "We are smart. We are educated. We want to work."

Indeed, according to a United Nations Refugee Agency survey , the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees who enter Europe  69%  are millennials between the age of 18 to 35. Eighty-six percent also have secondary or university-level education.

Indeed, according to a United Nations Refugee Agency survey from 2015, 71% of Syrian refugees in Greece  the primary entry point for refugees coming to Europe  are millennials between the age of 18 to 35. Eighty-six percent have secondary or university-level education.

Abdulhay also said he remains optimistic about the future, even in light of the harsh climate for refugees which has emerged in the wake of the Cologne attacks. He says he dreams about one day learning German fluently enough to become a language teacher again in Berlin.

In the meantime, he has one message that he wants everyone in the country to hear.

"Don't turn your back on refugees."
It's likely that the United States will face small outbreaks of Zika virus, but widespread transmission of the virus here is not expected, health officials said today.

Zika virus is spreading rapidly in Central and South America, and there have been a few cases in the United States among travelers who caught the virus overseas. Although the virus isn't spreading locally in the United States yet, it is possible that it will, because the mosquitoes that transmit the virus are common in some parts of the country, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ("Spreading locally" means that mosquito bites an infected person, and then spreads the virus to another person in the vicinity.)

"It's possible, even likely, that we will see limited Zika virus outbreaks" in the United States, Schuchat said today (Jan. 28) in a news conference.

The United States has seen limited outbreaks of other mosquito-borne diseases that are more common in the world's tropical regions, including dengue fever and chikungunya virus. But the United States never had large outbreaks of these viruses, and the CDC said it does not expect large outbreaks of Zika virus here either.

That's because differences between the United States and Central and South America limit the spread of mosquito-borne viruses here. [Zika Virus - What You Need to Know (Video)]

For example, urban areas in the United States aren't as density populated as cities in Central and South America, Schuchat said. A densely populated area makes it easier for infected mosquitos to hop from person to person and spread the disease, she said.

Houses in the United States are also more likely to have window screens and air conditioning, and so people have less exposure to mosquitoes here, Schuchat said.

And the U.S. mosquito populations aren't as bad, though it can be hard to knock them out completely, Schuchat said.

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Infection with the Zika virus usually causes no symptoms, but can lead to mild illness in some people, including fever, rash, joint pain or red eyes. Historically, outbreaks of the virus occurred in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands, but last year, outbreaks began to occur in the Americas.

Health officials are concerned about a link between Zika virus in pregnant women and microcephaly, a birth defect in which the baby's head is abnormally small. In Brazil, there were more than 3,500 cases of microcephaly between October 2015 and January 2016, a significant increase from the average of about 150 cases per year. Researchers have also found Zika virus in the brain tissue of infants born with microcephaly, but the scientists are still investigating that link.

The CDC recently recommended that all U.S. pregnant women consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus is spreading, including 24 Latin American countries. These are Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Venezuela, Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde, Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic.

Researchers in the United States are working to better understand the disease and its effects on the body by developing animal models of the illness, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They're also working on new diagnostic tests and treatments for the disease, Fauci said.

There is no vaccine against Zika, and health officials don't expect to have a vaccine ready in the next few years. But an initial trial of an experimental Zika vaccine could begin later this year, Fauci said.

"We already have existing vaccine platforms to serve as a jumping-off point" for a Zika virus vaccine, Fauci said. Researchers can use a technique similar to the one used for developing a vaccine against West Nile virus, which is in the same family as Zika, Fauci said.

Experts emphasized that, right now, the Zika virus doesn't pose much of a risk to people living in the United States. "For the average American who's not traveling, this is not something they need to worry about," Schuchat said. But it is an important concern for people traveling, and health officials urge those who visit affected areas to take steps to prevent mosquito bites.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On Thursday night, just days before the Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush stood on the debate stage tussling over who had the stronger stance on immigration. The issue provided the signature moment of a debate that Donald Trump skippeda mark of how profoundly Trumps candidacy has shifted the discussion of immigration.

Fox News, in an unprecedented move, prepared footage of the candidates reversals on the issue, asking them to explain their inconsistencies. First up was Marco Rubio. In 2013, the Florida senator sponsored the Gang of Eight bill, a reform package that included a path to citizenship for some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country. Rubio has since reversed his stance and has said that he opposes amnesty. On Thursday night, Bush said Rubio had decided to cut and run because it wasnt popular. Rubio quipped that Bush had also supported a path to citizenship, referring to a book Bush wrote on immigration. To which the former Florida governor shot back, so did you.

Next up were clips of Cruz on the Senate floor proposing to add an amendment to the Gang of Eight immigration-reform bill. Cruz argues that the amendment was meant to kill the bill. Rand Paul didnt buy it, accusing Cruz of hypocrisy. What is particularly insulting, though, is that he is kind of saying, Oh, youre for amnesty. Everybody is for amnesty but Ted Cruz. But its a falseness, adding thats an authenticity problem, that everybody he knows is not as perfect as him.

Recommended: How Secret Was the Information in Hillary Clinton's Emails?

But for all the heat, there was very little light shed on what actions the candidates would actually take on immigration. And this is where Donald Trump comes in.

On Thursday night, Rubio accused Cruz of wanting to trump Trump on immigration, even as he vied to do precisely that himself.

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The Republican frontrunner has tapped into voters anger on the issue. Though absent from the stage on Thursday, Trumps aggressive rhetoric has set him apart on immigration. Rewind a few months, to Trumps announcement of his candidacy, when he remarked that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. That fueled his rise and, as a result, redefined the debate on immigration.

On Thursday night, Rubio accused Cruz of wanting to trump Trump on immigration, even as he vied to do precisely that himself. The Gang of Eight bill had been Rubios signature legislative initiative in the Senate. But, as my colleague Peter Beinart noted earlier this month, the people Rubio needs to win are strongly opposed to undocumented immigration, illuminating the disconnect between his position then and now.

Candidates have loudly proclaimed their opposition to amnesty, but campaign-trail pledges have often given way to the practicalities of legislative compromise before. Rubio and Cruz were involved in such efforts in 2013, but theyve now reversed their positions, as they try to appeal to voters resentments. All the candidates have denounced Obamas executive actions that would shield undocumented immigrants from deportation. But how they would actually resolve the challenges of immigration remains an open question.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
The Maldives said Friday it could extend the prison leave granted to former president Mohamed Nasheed to go to London for medical treatment after he hinted at delaying his return.

Nasheed, who is serving a 13-year jail term after being convicted on controversial terrorism-related charges, arrived in London last week.

He has hinted he may stay beyond the 30 days' leave the government granted him in a deal brokered by Sri Lanka, India and former colonial power Britain.

"Our belief is he would return. He is a man of great stature. I don't think there is a question of him not returning," the minister for legal affairs in the president's office Aishath Azima Shakoor told reporters in Colombo.

"If he requests an extension of medical leave, he will certainly get it."

Nasheed was accorded a red carpet welcome and received by Prime Minister David Cameron when he arrived in Britain last Thursday for spinal cord surgery.

The 48-year-old told reporters in London that he had not yet decided whether to return to the Maldives after his leave.

"I know the question you all want to ask is will I go back. This has been more eloquently answered by The Clash in 1982 when I was doing my A-Levels -- 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?'" said Nasheed, who was educated in Britain.

"Let me be clear. I will go to the Maldives. I will definitely go to the Maldives, there is no doubt about that. But only the question is how and when."

- Sanctions threat -

Nasheed became the first democratically elected president of the Maldives in 2008 and served for four years before he was toppled in what he called a coup backed by the military and police.

Last year, a court sentenced him to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges that were widely seen as politically motivated.

Maldives Foreign Secretary Ali Naseer Mohamed said his government did not have an extradition treaty with Britain and would not be able to force Nasheed to return.

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Nasheed's high-profile lawyer, Amal Clooney, has argued for targeted sanctions including asset freezes in the European Union and United States and travel bans against leaders in the Maldives allegedly responsible for human rights abuses.

Nasheed's release had come about as a "direct result of the threat of sanctions", said another of his lawyers, Jared Genser.

But Maldives Foreign Secretary Mohamed said Friday it was "unfair" to impose sanctions on his country of 340,000 people.

"Those people who are in jail are there because they violated our laws," Mohamed said. "The Maldives cannot be penalised for upholding the rule of law."

Environment Minister Thoriq Ibrahim said international sanctions would affect the government's attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change on the nation of 1,192 tiny low-lying coral islands.

"In the case of sanctions, then definitely, the work we are doing (on climate change) will be hampered because we are also depending a lot on the international community, apart from our own funding," Ibrahim said.
Washington (AFP) - An assault to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State group won't start for many months, a spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the jihadists said Friday.

Iraq's second largest city fell to IS fighters in June 2014 as they overran vast regions in northern and north-central Iraq, as well as in Syria.

Iraqi security forces who were supposed to secure the city collapsed in the face of the extremists' advance.

It "is going to be many months before we see actual operations for Mosul begin," Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the coalition told reporters

"Right now, our focus is let's start training some brigades, let's start building some combat power, let's continue to train some police," he said via videoconference from Baghdad.

When the offensive can be launched will depend on the speed of the training effort, he added.

US officials -- who have been pushing Iraq to launch an assault on Mosul following recent successes including the recapture of the city of Ramadi -- have repeatedly highlighted the need to increase the number of Western military trainers in Iraq.

The question is expected to be taken up during a February 11 Brussels meeting of coalition defense ministers.

Warren said the coalition currently envisioned launching roughly 10 brigades for the Mosul assault, with each one representing about 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers.

"These are all to be trained," Warren said of the soldiers.

Some of the brigades have already been trained by the coalition but "we want to give them additional training," he added.

The United States has deployed some 3,500 soldiers in Iraq, with the mission to train and advise local troops.

Mosul, in northern Iraq, lies some 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the Kurdish capital, Arbil.

The city holds special significance for the IS group, as it was where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed his "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently said that the main objective of the anti-IS coalition was to destroy its power centers in Syria and Iraq -- Raqa and Mosul.
(Reuters) - A University of Missouri professor who called for "some muscle" to get a student journalist to back off during campus protests in November, was spared potential jail time for assault in a deal hashed out with prosecutors, authorities said on Friday.

Melissa Click, who was suspended from her position as an assistant professor in the school's communications department and charged with misdemeanor assault over the incident, will instead face 20 hours of community service work, the Columbia City Prosecutor's Office said.

Click did not enter a plea, but instead reached a deferred prosecution agreement, the prosecutor's office said. If she violates the terms of the agreement or gets in trouble with the law again within a year, the case will be reopened, the office said.

Click could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

She can be seen on a student journalist's video calling on protesters during an anti-racism demonstration to remove the reporter and a student photographer from a spot in the school quad that demonstrators had claimed as private space.

"Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?" Click yells on camera. "I need some muscle over here."

Click's hand can be seen blocking the video image at least twice. She issued an apology for her actions. The student journalist filed a complaint against Click with university police, whose reports were turned over to the city attorney.

The university's board of curators suspended Click with pay on Wednesday pending further investigation and ordered an investigation to determine whether additional discipline would be appropriate.

Click resigned a courtesy appointment with the university's journalism school after the incident.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Tom Brown)
London (AFP) - A mother who took her toddler to Syria and joined the Islamic State (IS) group is thought to have become Friday the first British woman to be convicted after returning home.

Tareena Shakil, 26, was found guilty of IS membership and encouraging terrorism in posts on Twitter before leaving Britain.

The court in Birmingham, central England, heard she was radicalised on the Internet and in October 2014 told her family she was going to Turkey for a beach holiday.

Instead, she crossed the border into Syria and then went to IS stronghold Raqqa.

"I left to build us all a house in heaven, allah promised us heaven if we sacrifice our worldly life x," she wrote in a message to a relative. "I'm not coming back."

In Raqqa, she was kept in a large house with other single women and posed with her son for a selfie while wearing a black balaclava branded with the IS symbol.

Other pictures found on her phone showed her posing with an AK-47 assault rifle and a hand gun.

However, Shakil found life under IS rules too strict.

In January 2015, after repeatedly looking up "I want to leave ISIS" on the Internet, she and her son travelled by road to the Turkish border.

They ran one kilometre to escape into Turkey, dodging a three-man IS patrol before handing themselves into the Turkish military, she told the court.

She was arrested when police boarded her flight home at London's Heathrow Airport last February.

During her trial, Shakil claimed she only travelled to Syria because she wanted to live under sharia law.

She will be sentenced on Monday.
London (AFP) - Tottenham midfielder Mousa Dembele has signed a new contract that will keep him with the Premier League side until 2019, the club said on Friday.

Dembele, 28, joined Spurs from Fulham in 2012 and has started 16 league games for Mauricio Pochettino's side this season, scoring three goals.

The Belgium international told the club's official website: "I am very happy I've signed and I'm happy to be part of our future.

"The way we're playing, the way the club is developing, everything is very good and everyone wants to be part of this team and this club.

"That's why I'm proud to extend my contract."

Spurs, who won their last top-flight title in 1961, are fourth in the table and just five points behind surprise league leaders Leicester City.
The markets have taken some pretty wild swings lately. But is now the right time to revisit your 401(k) investments? Ill tell you in this weeks Money Minute:

Theres nothing wrong wanting to check things out. If youre nervous about your investments, ask your plan administrator to take a look under the hood. Jeanne Thompson, VP of investments for Fidelity, says 401(k) investors should work with a financial advisor at least once a year to rebalance their holdings anyway. There are advantages to making changes both when the market is high or low, Thompson says. A lot of times people pick the beginning of the year to call [and rebalance] but there isnt one particular time of year thats best. The point of rebalancing is to make sure youre taking on the right amount of risk given your age and retirement goals. Just dont forget about your emotional tolerance as well. If youre waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night every time the markets get shaky, maybe its not wise to put 90% of your 401(k) in stock funds. You want to be able to sleep at night, says Thompson.

Younger workers probably have less to worry about. If youre decades away from retirement, don't be surprised if your advisor tells you to hang tight. Younger workers are advised to take on more risk early because they have a longer time to recover from any market setbacksand more time to reap the rewards when markets bounce back. Given the way most young workers are investing these days, they may have even less to worry about. According to Fidelity, nearly two-thirds of millennial 401(k) investors are 100% invested in target-date funds, a type of fund that picks your holdings based on your age. Target-date funds are meant to be left alone. They automatically shift away from stock-heavy investments to the safety of bonds as you age.

Just remember -- youre probably better in the market than out of it. Sometimes the best time to get in the market is when things are looking bleak -- read: cheap. Just ask the folks who pulled their money out of the market back in 2008. Fidelity, one of the largest investment firms in the U.S., found that people who stayed in the market saw their accounts grow by 88% five years after the recession. People who turned to cash saw their balances grow by just 15%.



Whats important is thateven when youre watching the value of your holdings fluctuateyou keep contributing to your account. Retirement plans are meant to be long-term investment vehicles, and making moves based on short-term volatility has proven a bad idea many times over.

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Fidelity

The bottom line: You cant time the market. What you can do is work with a financial advisor to come up with a retirement plan you dont have to worry about every time the market gets shaky.

More money questions? Shoot us an email at yfmoneymailbag@yahoo.com.



Mandi Woodruff is a reporter for Yahoo Finance and host of Brown Ambition, a new podcast about career and finance.

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After decades of military control, Myanmar enters a new era on Monday when a parliament led by Aung San Suu Kyi's victorious National League for Democracy (NLD) party takes office.

Here is a timeline of a nation that went from a colony to a military dictatorship, but is now beginning to see a democratic future on the horizon.

-- 1885 --

Centuries of rule by a Buddhist monarchy ends with the defeat and exile of Burma's last king by the British. A lengthy period of Western colonialism begins and Burma (as it was then known) becomes a province of British India.

-- 1941-1945 --

Japan occupies Burma during World War II. Nationalist hero Aung San fights with the Japanese, but swaps sides in the war's closing stages in the hope of achieving independence.

His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi, who would go on to lead the pro-democracy movement, is born in 1945.

-- 1948 --

Burma attains full independence from the British on January 4, a dream Aung San never lived to see following his assassination months earlier.

-- 1962 --

After years of factional infighting, General Ne Win seizes power in a coup, turning the country from a multi-party federal union into an authoritarian one-party state ordered to follow his "Burmese Path to Socialism".

-- 1988 --

Years of disastrous economic mismanagement and political repression see Burma erupt in protest. The military responds brutally, killing an estimated 3,000 people. Suu Kyi emerges as a key opposition leader.

-- 1989 --

Junta changes the country's name to Myanmar.

-- 1990 --

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) wins a landslide victory in elections but the result is ignored by the military who launch a new crackdown. Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest for much of the next 20 years. Many other opposition leaders are jailed or flee.

-- 1991 --

Suu Kyi wins the Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest.

-- 1992 --

Than Shwe becomes the new junta chief.

-- 2005 --

A new isolated city Naypyidaw ("Abode of Kings") is revealed as the country's capital after being built in secret by the paranoid junta.

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-- 2007 --

Major protests dubbed the "Saffron revolution" break out over the summer, partially led by Buddhist monks. The junta eventually responds once more with violence, killing scores of protesters.

-- 2008 --

Vast swathes of the Irrawaddy Delta are devastated by Cyclone Nargis, which leaves some 138,000 people dead. The junta's lacklustre response draws widespread criticism.

-- 2010 --

The junta holds elections in early November and the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claims victory. The NLD and many other parties refuse to take part. Observers do not consider the poll free or fair.

Less than a week after the election, Suu Kyi is released after spending 15 of the last 20 years under house arrest.

-- 2011 --

In a surprise move, the junta relinquishes power to a quasi-civilian government under former general Thein Sein who pursues reforms. Many basic rights are restored, including the lifting of restrictions on assembly and expression, while hundreds of political prisoners are freed.

A ceasefire collapses in northern Kachin state and fighting resumes forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes.

-- 2012 --

The NLD wins 43 out of 45 seats in April by-elections. Suu Kyi becomes an MP. Western powers lift most sanctions. Sectarian violence flares in western Rakhine state, mainly aimed at the Rohingya Muslim minority.

-- 2015 --

Suu Kyi's NLD win a landslide November victory in the first free and fair elections in decades, prompting scenes of jubilation on the streets of Yangon.

-- 2016 --

Lame duck USDP-led parliament holds it final session on January 29. The NLD prepares to take power on February 1. Suu Kyi is still barred from the presidency under the constitution and the military retains significant power with 25 percent of parliamentary seats and key ministries under its control.
Update: Late in the afternoon, the U.S. Navy released a statement suggesting flight testing of their fighter jets may have caused the sonic booms. Read the full story on the explanation.

At least 10 sonic booms have been reported this afternoon (Jan. 28) from southern New Jersey along the East Coast to Long Island, New York, say scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The first sonic boom was recorded at 1:24 p.m. EST (18:24:05 UTC), about 2 miles (3 kilometers) north-northeast of Hammonton, New Jersey, and 37 miles (60 km) south of Trenton, New Jersey. In the following hour and a half, seismometers picked up at least nine other sonic booms along the Eastern Seaboard all the way to Long Island, according to the USGS.

A spokesperson for the USGS said agency scientists there have no other information except that these were sonic booms and not earthquakes that were detected today.

A sonic boom occurs when an object (or an explosion) travels faster than the speed of sound (761.2 mph, or 1,225 km/h, at sea-level), sending out a shockwave that also travels faster than sound, according to John Bellini, a geophysicist with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado. [Photos: See Aircraft Breaking the Sound Barrier]

The cause of today's sonic booms remains mysterious. Bellini noted, however, that if an explosion had caused these booms, someone likely would have seen it.

Officials have also ruled out NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island in Virginia, which routinely launches small rockets and jet test flights from its Eastern Shore site. But today, no rocket launches or jet flights occurred at the NASA center, spokesman Keith Kohler said in an email.

Scientists knew these were seismic waves from sonic booms and not earthquakes because of their speed. "An earthquake moves through the ground and it moves 10,000 feet per second [3,048 meters per second]," Bellini told Live Science. In today's instance, the waves were moving away from the seismometers in New Jersey at speeds that would suggest they were moving faster than sound in the air. A seismometer that tracks waves moving through the ground can pick up a sonic boom, whose waves move through the air, Bellini said. But the seismometers usually have to be pretty close to where the boom occurs, because sound doesn't transfer well into the ground.

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ABC News reported that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command had both confirmed they didn't have any planes operating nearby that could have generated the sonic booms.

No aircraft capable of sonic booms were operating at nearby naval air bases either, according to officials.

"We have reports of ground shaking in S. Jersey  currently our training ranges are clear and no MDL aircraft are capable of sonic booms," officials at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Trenton, New Jersey, wrote on Twitter. "We're working with local authorities to determine the cause and will have an update ASAP."

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Race to Erase MS has tapped Carolyn Rafaelian  founder, CEO and chief creative officer of accessories brand Alex and Ani  to receive this year's Medal of Hope Award at the 23rd annual Race to Erase MS event hosted by Nancy Davis. The event is scheduled for April 15 at the Beverly Hilton.

The honor comes after Rafaelian and her Alex and Ani company created a Cupcake Bangle exclusively for the cause in 2012. She donated 20 percent of the purchase price to the organization to the tune of $905,000, to date. Her company creates products using recycled materials and eco-conscious processes and maintains a philanthropic side, courtesy of a Charity by Design collection. Alex and Ani also participate in "Orange You Happy to Erase MS" awareness month each May.

Read More: Tommy Hilfiger Honored at Race to Erase MS Gala

Davis said she's honored and proud to recognize Rafaelian and her work on behalf of the org. "Through the Cupcake Bangle, designed exclusively for Race to Erase MS, her company has been instrumental in accelerating our mission to find a cure for multiple sclerosis as well as providing inspiration and hope to so many with this disease. She is an unsung hero to so many causes around the world as she continues to fund millions of dollars towards worthy missions," she added.

Davis' legendary gala has raised $36 million for Race to Erase MS and its Center Without Walls program, a collaboration of the worlds leading MS research scientists currently representing Harvard, Yale, Cedars Sinai, University of Southern California, Oregon Health Science University, UC San Francisco and Johns Hopkins. More info can be found here.
By Kevin Murphy KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Nearly 400 people have reported feeling ill after recently dining at a suburban Kansas City dinner theater, with some testing positive for norovirus, health officials said on Thursday. The diners who fell ill had eaten at the New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas since Jan. 15, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in a news release. Laboratory tests confirmed that four people who became ill had norovirus, which commonly causes stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting, health officials said. Representatives for New Theatre could not be reached immediately for comment on Thursday. Rob McGraw, vice president of sales and marketing for the theater, told the Kansas City Star newspaper that three employees and one customer they served had tested positive for norovirus but no employees who worked since Jan. 17 had reported becoming ill. Norovirus has been linked to illnesses suffered recently by dinners at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in California and several other states. The U.S. Justice Department said earlier this month that its consumer protection unit was looking into a norovirus outbreak at a Chipotle restaurant in California. The Kansas state health department urged anyone who went to the theater to fill out a survey as part of its investigation into the outbreak. Norovirus is spread from one person to another through contaminated food or water or by touching a contaminated surface, the department said. (Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; Editing by Paul Tait)
LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC and non-OPEC countries have not yet agreed any date to hold a meeting to discuss action to support oil prices, two OPEC delegates said on Friday.

One of the delegates said such a meeting would be a better idea than holding a standalone gathering of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and ministers were discussing whether to hold one.

"The best idea is to have a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC," the delegate said. "There is no date. Maybe in February, maybe the beginning of March."

Another OPEC delegate said such a meeting would be at an expert rather than ministerial level.

(Reporting by Alex Lawler and Rania El Gamal; Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Phil Stewart and Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has seen increased activity around a North Korean missile site, suggesting preparations for a possible space launch in the near future, U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday. The finding was revealed as Washington shows growing concern that Pyongyang could use space technology to enhance its missile capability and while United Nations Security Council members discuss fresh sanctions against North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6. The officials cited intelligence suggesting movement of components and propellant at North Korea's Sohae satellite launch facility. A test could take place within a couple of weeks, they said. "Our concern though is ... it's the same technology to develop ICBMs" (inter-continental ballistic missiles), one of the officials said. "We are keeping a close eye on these activities by the North Koreans. We're watching 24/7," a second official said. Joe Bermudez, chief analytics officer at commercial intelligence firm AllSource Analysis, said open source imagery showed increased activity at the site in northwestern North Korea. Movement of vehicles, construction and other activities suggested test preparations for a rocket engine test soon, Bermudez said. Activities were also noted at the launch pad, however, but it was not clear whether a rocket had already been delivered to the site. North Korea was concealing activities on the site through construction of new buildings and a cover that obscures satellite views of the gantry tower next to the launch pad. "This is the first time leading up to a potential launch that all the concealment shelters are in place," said Stephen Wood, chief executive officer of AllSource. An analysis by 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, said the cover near the gantry tower could conceal a rocket, and a rail-mounted shelter has been moved adjacent to the engine-test stand on the site. The shelter could allow for rocket stages to be assembled and moved to the tower under cover of darkness of heavy clouds, 38 North found. It is large enough to conceal the first stage of North Koreas Musudan intermediate range ballistic missile, its Unha space-launch vehicle, or a new rocket engine. The analysis said commercial satellite images, taken as a series of "snapshots" from Dec. 28 to Jan. 25, showed low-level activities throughout the Sohae Rocket Launch Facility. North Korea last conducted a long-range rocket launch in late 2012, sending an object it described as a communications satellite into orbit. Western and Asian experts said it was part of an effort to build an ICBM. South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok declined to comment on possible pre-launch activities by North Korea, citing a policy of not discussing intelligence matters. North Korea has not yet warned about potential interference with navigation, a step it has taken ahead of previous launches, he said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during a trip to China this week warned against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's declared intention to develop an ICBM with the capacity to carry a nuclear warhead. "It is a threat the United States must take extremely seriously," Kerry told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday. "The United States will do what is necessary to protect people in our country and our friends and allies in the world," Kerry said. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency on Thursday carried out a test of ground-based interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a source with knowledge of the test said. The test, aimed at improving the reliability of U.S. interceptors based in Alaska and California, met the agency's objectives, the source said. The U.S. military is adding 14 interceptors to the 30 already in place, and defense advocates have called for increasing the number of interceptors. Meanwhile, on Thursday the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation to broaden existing sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear programme, human rights record and cyber activities. (Reporting by Phil Stewart and Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Ju-min Park and Jack Kim; Editing by David Greising and Grant McCool)
By Siva Govindasamy SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China has built a potent military machine over the past 30 years but is struggling to develop advanced engines that would allow its warplanes to match Western fighters in combat, foreign and Chinese industry sources said. The country's engine technology lags that of United Technologies unit Pratt & Whitney, General Electric and Rolls-Royce , said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. China's Defence Ministry, in a brief statement to Reuters, said there was a "definite gap" between Chinese military technology and some developed countries, adding Beijing would continue to strengthen its armed forces. Western restrictions on arms exports to China prohibit the sale of Western engines for military use, forcing China to rely on homegrown designs or engines Russia has agreed to sell. "Chinese engine-makers face a multitude of problems," said Michael Raska, assistant professor in the Military Transformations Programme at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Among the issues, China's J-20 and J-31 stealth fighters cannot super-cruise, or fly at supersonic speeds like their closest rivals, Lockheed Martin's F-22 and F-35 stealth planes, without using after-burners, said two industry sources who follow Beijing's military programs closely. After-burners remove a warplane's stealthiness, a capability that allows them to escape radar detection. Even the warplane engine that experts consider to be China's best has reliability issues, said the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. SOUTH CHINA SEA A Chinese military expert, who has knowledge of the government's defense policy but who declined to be identified, said Chinese fighter jets could not perform as well as American warplanes because of inferior engine technology. That puts China at a disadvantage should its warplanes be pitted against U.S. jet fighters or those from security ally Japan in Asia's disputed waters, the industry sources and security experts said. Chinese warplanes are likely to come into increasing contact with U.S. fighters over the South China Sea in the years ahead after Beijing conducted its first test flights this month to one of three island runways it is building in the contested Spratly archipelago, security experts said. In any conflict, China would likely rely on sheer numbers of fighters as well as a growing arsenal of sophisticated missiles that can be launched from warships or land, they added. To be sure, China has made warplane engine development a priority in recent years, sources said. The Shanghai-based Galleon group, which provides consulting services to the aerospace industry, estimates Beijing will spend $300 billion over the next 20 years on civil and military aircraft engine programs. Some sources said China had hired several foreign engineers and former air force personnel to work on engine development, although this could not be independently confirmed. The Chinese Defence Ministry declined to comment. "In 20 to 30 years time, given the amount of work they have done and the effort they are putting into it, they should have a viable military engine," said Greg Waldron, Asia Managing Editor at Flightglobal, an industry publication. ENGINE MAKERS MERGED China first manufactured warplanes under license from Russia in the 1950s. Its indigenous fighter jet program kicked into full swing in the 1980s. The country's best warplane engine is the WS-10A Taihang, made by Shenyang Aeroengine Research Institute, a subsidiary of China's biggest state-owned aerospace and defense company, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the sources said. In development since the late 1980s, Chinese state media reports say more than 250 have been fitted to some fourth-generation J-10s and J-11s. But the engines don't produce enough thrust, or power, and need frequent repairs, added the sources. "They are trying to improve the Taihang, but reliability is a major problem," said one source. AVIC did not respond to a request for comment while Shenyang Aeroengine Research Institute could not be reached for comment. In October, state media said three engine makers owned by AVIC would merge into one firm. China will do more to integrate other engine-making firms in the coming years, said a Chinese source in the country's aerospace industry. This would help coordination across civilian and military engine research and development and production, said the source. The Defence Ministry declined to comment. To cover gaps for now, China has fitted Russian engines on many of its warplanes. In November, China held talks with Russian state-owned aircraft engine manufacturer United Engine Corp on the possible joint development and production of military engines at the same time it signed a deal to buy 24 Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, one of Moscow's most advanced warplanes. The Chinese Defence Ministry declined to comment on the status of the discussions. (Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Dean Yates)
Four days before the Iowa caucuses, the two parties' outsider candidates look poised to exceed initial expectations. Donald Trump has moved into a modest but sustained lead over Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the Republican contest, while Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is locked in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side.

But voter registration figures suggest Sanders and Trump may have difficulty converting grassroots enthusiasm into actual turnout on caucus night.

As the New York Times' Nate Cohn details, Iowa hasn't seen a big spike in voter registration ahead of Monday's caucuses; in recent months, Cohn reports, the Hawkeye State's voter pool has increased by only about 10,000. By contrast, Cohn notes, voter registration increased by 17,000 people over a similar period in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama rocketed to victory on strong turnout in the Democratic caucuses.

Why it matters: The slower pace of voter registration growth could portend bad news for Trump and Sanders, given that both candidates draw their support heavily from

A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday projected that if 170,000 people participated in the GOP caucuses, Trump would win with 30% support, followed by Cruz at 23%, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at 16% and Ben Carson at 10%. But if turnout were only 130,000  still more than 122,000 who caucused on the GOP side four years ago  Trump and Cruz would be tied at 26%, followed by Rubio at 15% and Carson at 12%.

Sanders is also counting on a surge in turnout, particularly from younger voters. The most recent Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers found that Sanders bested Clinton 52% to 34% among first-time caucusgoers, while she won 45% to 36% among those who said they'd caucused before, a strong predictor of future turnout.

In encouraging news for Trump, Cohn noted that new Republican registrations have occurred at a much faster clip than Democratic ones.

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Bernie Sanders

A few caveats: The modest increase in voter registrations doesn't prove turnout will be low Monday night. For one thing, it's quite plausible that turnout will be higher than usual among those who have already registered to vote. What's more, Iowa allows same-day registration for caucus participants.

And while a surge in turnout would be a boon to Sanders and Trump, they don't exactly need record-breaking numbers to pull off victories: If Sanders is within single digits of Clinton among previous caucusgoers, as the Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register survey suggests, then he can't be discounted as a real threat to her. And if Trump more or less ties Cruz even in a low-turnout scenario, as the Monmouth poll indicates he would, then he may well come out of the caucuses ahead in the delegate count.

So the voter registration statistics haven't given Sanders and Trump the morale boost they'd like. But writing them off would be, as they both might say, a yuge mistake.

Jan. 28, 2015, 11:30 a.m.: Citing the New York Times' original reporting, this post initially stated that new Democratic registrations were outpacing new Republican registrations. This has been updated to reflect the Times' correction.
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A New York judge on Friday blocked an animal rights group from pursuing a new lawsuit in Manhattan to free the chimpanzee Kiko from a Niagara Falls sanctuary, despite support from world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall.

State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe refused to sign an order sought by the nonprofit Nonhuman Rights Project to force directors of The Primate Sanctuary into her Manhattan court to defend keeping Kiko in captivity.

The animal rights group has argued for many years in various courts that chimpanzees are intelligent animals that share many traits with humans, and that holding them captive amounts to unlawful imprisonment.

But Jaffe said the group previously filed four similar petitions in other state courts and, despite the new affidavits from Goodall and others, did not show why its latest request to free Kiko belonged in Manhattan.

Issues bearing on Kiko's fate "are best addressed" in upstate courts that have handled similar cases, Jaffe wrote.

Steven Wise, a lawyer for Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group plans to appeal. He also said state law lets the group bring its claims on Kiko's behalf in trial courts throughout New York, even though the chimpanzee is upstate.

The Primate Sanctuary did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last July, Jaffe rejected the Nonhuman Rights Project's bid to free two other chimpanzees from a state university on Long Island, while acknowledging that the animals may in the future win limited legal rights.

In her affidavit, Goodall said there is ample proof that chimpanzees "have well-defined duties and responsibilities," and that "common law personhood" should be afforded to them.

The case is Nonhuman Rights Project Inc ex rel Kiko v Presti et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 150149/2016.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr)
By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will meet for the first time on Tuesday with Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, to discuss budget priorities and ways to work together this year, the White House said on Friday. The get-together with Ryan, which also will include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will provide a gauge of how much or how little legislative common ground the three leaders share as Obama completes his final year in office. "We certainly believe that there are areas of cooperation for the year ahead," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. It will be Obama's first formal face-to-face meeting with Ryan since he was elected speaker three months ago. "While the House is focused on a bold agenda for 2017, the speaker appreciates the opportunity to see if we can find any areas of common ground in the year ahead," Doug Andres, a spokesman for Ryan, said. During a closed-door meeting on Thursday with Democratic lawmakers, Obama said he does not expect Congress to get much done this year, according to an aide who was in the room. The White House has said there are only a few items on Obama's legislative wish-list that have any chance of passing through the Republican-controlled Congress. They include reforming mandatory minimum prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses and taking steps to address an epidemic of heroin addiction and prescription drug abuse. Obama also wants Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, but he faces resistance from Democratic lawmakers concerned about the TPP's impact on jobs and the environment. The White House announced on Friday that Obama's top legislative aide Katie Beirne Fallon, who was popular among Republicans and Democrats alike on Capitol Hill, is leaving after helping Obama secure enough votes for fast-track trade negotiating authority, the Iran nuclear deal and a budget deal. Fallon will be replaced by her deputy Amy Rosenbaum, a former aide to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Obama's meeting with Republicans comes one week before Obama delivers his final budget proposal to Congress. It also comes as Obama tries to make good on a pledge he made during his 2008 campaign to close the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama is set to deliver a plan to Congress about closing the prison that will include measures to house a small number of detainees in facilities in the United States. Lawmakers strongly oppose that idea. (Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Jeff Mason; Editing by Tom Brown and Leslie Adler)
By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One of three inmates who escaped a week ago from a maximum-security jail in Southern California has been taken into custody after surrendering to law enforcement, police said on Friday.

Bac Duong, 43, gave himself up to police in Santa Ana, California, shortly before noon, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens told a news conference.

The other two escapees remained at large on Friday afternoon.

Carrie Braun, a sheriff's spokeswoman, said Duong apparently surrendered "because of the pressure that was being put on him by the general community" during an exhaustive, week-long manhunt.

Duong broke out of the Orange County Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana on Jan. 22 along with 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu, 20. Hutchens said Duong approached a woman on the street in Santa Ana and said he wanted to turn himself in.

Nooshafarin Ravaghi, a community college instructor who taught at the jail and had befriended Nayeri, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of assisting in the escape by furnishing the inmates with Google Maps information that included overviews of the jail rooftop and surrounding areas.

Ravaghi and Nayeri had also exchanged handwritten letters outside of class that were personal in nature, sheriff's office spokesman Lieutenant Jeff Hallock told a news conference earlier on Friday.

Nayeri, the presumed mastermind of the breakout, was in jail on charges stemming from the 2012 mutilation torture of a kidnap victim.

Duong and Tieu are both reputed to be connected with Vietnamese-American street gangs. Tieu was facing murder charges and Duong charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, among other crimes.

Hallock said it was Duong who on Sunday took what was supposed to be a test drive in a utility van advertised for sale in south Los Angeles and never returned.

Authorities say the men made their getaway by cutting through steel grating inside the jail, climbing through a plumbing conduit to the roof and lowering themselves four floors with bedsheets to the ground. Their disappearance went unnoticed for about 16 hours.

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Ravaghi is expected to be arraigned on Monday.

The breakout marks the first jail escape in Orange County since the 1980s, sheriff's officials have said.

In a high profile New York prison break last year, the fugitive inmates had help from a female prison employee who allegedly had sexual relations with one of them. She was sentenced to seven years for her role.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Tom Brown and Sandra Maler)
Portland, Ore. (Reuters) - Ammon Bundy, organizer of the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge, will remain in custody pending his trial on felony conspiracy charges, a U.S. District Court judge ruled on Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Stacie Beckerman said she believed Bundy might attempt to occupy other federal property if she allowed him to be released on bail before his trial on charges of conspiracy to use force, intimidation or threats to impede federal officers from discharging their duties.

Bundy's brother, Ryan Bundy, was also ordered held.

(Reporting by Shelby Sebens in Portland; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Tom Brown)
By Peter Henderson

BURNS, Ore. (Reuters) - The FBI released a video on Thursday investigators say shows one occupier of an Oregon wildlife refuge reach for his jacket pocket before being shot dead by law enforcement, after speeding away from a traffic stop where the group's leader was arrested.

Authorities said 54-year-old Robert LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, was armed when he was stopped by police and killed on Tuesday afternoon.

The aerial video taken by a law enforcement aircraft showed Finicum speed away from authorities in a white truck and nearly strike a law officer, while trying to evade a police barricade before barreling into a snowbank and exiting the car.

The grainy aerial footage shows Finicum raise his hands in the air and then turn and flail his arms, which lower down to his body moments before he is shot by Oregon State Police troopers, according to the FBI.

Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI's Portland office who narrated the video for reporters, said Finicum can be seen reaching for his jacket pocket, where law enforcement found a handgun. But a lack of focus in the video makes it difficult to discern Finicum's precise movements before the shooting.

Bretzing told reporters at an evening news conference in Burns, Oregon, that, while the video showing Finicum's death was potentially upsetting, it was released "in the interest of transparency."

The video release came hours after a lawyer for Finicum's family claimed other evidence may exist that shows the Arizona rancher was not threatening authorities.

"Based on some things that I've seen, I think there is potentially a completely different side to the story compared to what is being represented," Finicum family attorney Todd Macfarlane told Reuters earlier in the afternoon. He could not be reached for reaction to the FBI video release.

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Macfarlane said one of the sources for his view was the version of events from Victoria Sharp, who says she was at the scene and watched Finicum die.

Sharp said in an interview with Reuters Finicum was shot with his gun in his holster and his hands in the air, shouting and walking toward police.

Neither state nor federal law enforcement would comment on whether Sharp was at the scene or on her own detailed description. Reuters was not able to independently confirm her version of the events beyond the video released on Thursday.

"HANDS IN THE AIR"

A second occupier detained in Tuesday's action and subsequently released said an 18-year-old woman was in the car with Finicum and gave a similar description of the start of the police stop.

He stepped out, and he started walking, with his hands in the air. And they actually didnt shoot him immediately. It took, Im guessing, they didnt shoot him for maybe 15 seconds, she said. He started walking out on the snow and he was shouting. He was saying, if youre going to shoot me, then just shoot me.

Finicum was one of the most vocal and colorful faces of the occupiers, a father and rancher who wore a cowboy hat and carried a gun on his hip. He usually wore a gun in a holster, and he did that day, Sharp said.

Im not sure if it was a hip holster or a leg holster, but I know the gun was holstered and he did not touch it. He had his hands in the air, she said.

The occupation began when leader Ammon Bundy and at least a dozen followers took over a small cluster of buildings at the refuge on Jan. 2, in a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in the West.

Police and federal agents kept their distance from the site, 30 miles (48 km) from Burns, a small rural town in Oregon's rural southeast, in an effort to avoid a violent confrontation.

But on Tuesday, Bundy and his leadership team left the refuge to speak at a community meeting in John Day, Oregon, and were stopped by law enforcement. The stop led to Finicum's fatal shooting and the arrest of Bundy, along with four others.

Bretzing said four occupiers remained holed up at the refuge compound on Thursday night, as authorities sought to negotiate with them to leave. According to the FBI, three of the nine people to have left the refuge have been taken into custody.

Following his initial court appearance in Portland on Wednesday, Ammon Bundy urged the holdouts to stand down, saying he would continue the fight in court.

Reactions to the takeover by Burns residents have ranged from sympathy for two imprisoned local ranchers whose plight began the protest, to dismay at the armed occupation by individuals seen as outsiders.

(Additional reporting Gina Cherelus in New York, Daniel Wallis in Denver, Victoria Cavaliere and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, and Julia Edwards in Washington; Writing by Dan Whitcomb and Curtis Skinner; Editing by Edward Tobin, Gareth Jones and Clarence Fernandez)
By Estelle Shirbon LONDON (Reuters) - An Oxford University college has announced it will keep a statue of 19th century colonialist Cecil Rhodes on display, resisting pressure to remove it from student campaigners who say it glorifies a brutal racist. Inspired by protests at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, which led to its statue of Rhodes being removed last April, the "Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford" campaign has sparked a heated debate about how Britain remembers its imperialist past. Rhodes, a fervent imperialist and mining magnate, was a central figure in Britain's colonial project in southern Africa, giving his name to Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe, and founding the De Beers diamond empire. Oriel College, one of 38 that make up Oxford University, said the statue would remain in place in a niche on the facade of a building partly funded by a donation from Rhodes. It said it would add an explanation of the historical context. "The recent debate has underlined that the continuing presence of these historical artifacts is an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today," Oriel said in a statement. "By adding context, we can help draw attention to this history, do justice to the complexity of the debate and be true to our educational mission." The 'Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford' campaigners said on Facebook they would redouble their efforts to secure the removal of the statue and a separate plaque bearing a political tribute to Rhodes. They labeled Oriel's statement "outrageous, dishonest and cynical" because it indicated that the plaque would also remain in place, even though the college had described it as "inconsistent with our principles" in a statement in December. A student at Oriel in his youth, Rhodes left the college money when he died and also endowed the Rhodes Scholarships, which have allowed 8,000 students from countries around the world to study at Oxford over the past century. The student campaigners say it is wrong to honor a man who made his fortune from the exploitation of African miners, secured power through bloody imperial wars, and paved the way to apartheid with his beliefs and measures on racial segregation. The debate over Rhodes has made front-page headlines in Britain and attracted comment from far and wide, including from former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, a onetime Rhodes scholar, who supported keeping the statue. (Editing by Gareth Jones)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Palestinian officials are waging a new campaign at the United Nations to revive peace prospects, with the starting point possibly a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, the Palestinian envoy said Friday.

Ambassador Riyad Mansour rejected the suggestion that prospects for progress were slim because of the US election campaign, which could make Washington more reluctant to put pressure on Israel to compromise.

"We will not accept that the year 2016 is a year when we cannot do anything," Mansour told reporters.

"We have to open some doors to keep the hope alive and keep the two-state solution alive."

Mansour said the success of the Iran nuclear deal and progress on the Syrian peace track highlighted the need for a "collective approach" to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ongoing violence on the ground is likely to worsen if nothing is done, he said, adding that the situation in August and September will be "much, much worse than what we see now."

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks since October 1 has killed 25 Israelis, according to an AFP count.

Over the same period, 159 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks and others during clashes and demonstrations.

The Palestinian ambassador recently met with the envoys from the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- to discuss the way forward.

Mansour declined to give details of the talks, including whether the United States, which as Israel's ally has blocked UN action, was open to a Security Council role in reviving the peace process.

The Palestinian envoy suggested that a resolution condemning Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements could be a first step, but he stressed that there should be a broader plan.

This could include the creation of an international support group, the deployment of observers to trouble spots or the convening of an international peace conference.

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"The signal has to come from the Security Council," he said.

The United States used its veto in 2011 to block a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements, and it has rejected a UN role in the peace process.

The council has not adopted a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since 2009.
Paris (AFP) - The French government, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Le Monde newspaper on Friday demanded that Burundi immediately free a French journalist and a British photographer arrested while reporting in the volatile central African nation.

"We were concerned to learn of the arrests of French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy and British photographer Philip Moore," Fabius said in a statement.

"I call on Burundi's authorities to proceed with their immediate release. Diplomatic procedures are underway."

The two men were covering the crisis triggered in April last year by President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a controversial third term in office.

His quest to remain in power sparked weeks of street protests, a failed coup, frequent killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the media, forcing independent outlets to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.

Remy, a correspondent for Le Monde newspaper has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

Moore, a freelance photographer, has frequently worked for AFP, Le Monde and other international publications, winning widespread acclaim for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Le Monde demanded the release of the two men, who it said were arrested on Thursday afternoon while meeting with government opponents.

AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog said the reporters "were arrested while carrying out their mission to inform" and demanded they "be released as soon as possible."

Hoog recalled that AFP's correspondent in Burundi, Esdras Ndikumana, who also worked for Radio France Internationale (RFI), was forced into exile after being arrested and beaten by government forces in August 2015.

"This new serious incident, after that suffered by our correspondent Esdras Ndikumana, indicates the extreme difficulty in reporting on the Burundi situation and the permanent threats to journalists' security," added Hoog.

Le Monde said Remy had entered the country on January 19, and Moore on January 21.

"Both had visas and were only doing their job by meeting all parties involved in the tensions in Burundi," said the paper.
By Stephanie Nebehay and Michelle Nichols GENEVA/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Twelve more children in the Central African Republic have accused European soldiers and United Nations peacekeepers of sexual abuse, the United Nations said on Friday, with one senior official saying such abuse was "rampant" there. Foreign troops were deployed in Central African Republic after mainly Muslim rebels seized power in the majority Christian country in 2013, provoking reprisals and fuelling religious and inter-communal violence that has killed thousands. French troops have been in the country since December 2013. European Union troops were there from April 2014 to March 2015. A United Nations peacekeeping mission assumed authority from African Union troops in September 2014. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support, Anthony Banbury, appeared emotional while announcing the new U.N. cases. "It's hard to imagine the outrage that people working for the United Nations and for the causes of peace and security feel when these kinds of allegations come to light, particularly involving minors, which is so hard to understand," Banbury said. "The United Nations is doing everything we possibly can to assist the victims, to bring accountability and justice ... and hopefully to prevent any such cases from recurring," he told reporters in New York. Six children accused troops from France, Georgia and an unidentified European country of sexual abuse, said to have occurred mostly in 2014 in or near a camp for displaced people next to the airport in Central African Republic's capital Bangui. Those three countries and the European Union are investigating the accusations, the United Nations said. Another six children accused U.N. troops from Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Morocco and U.N. police from Senegal of sex abuse. The number of allegations made in 2015 against U.N. peacekeepers is now 22. Bangladesh and Morocco are investigating, while the United Nations is investigating the cases involving Democratic Republic and Niger after those states failed to respond to the allegations. The United Nations is investigating the Senegal case, in line with standard procedure involving police. "What is abundantly clear in the Central African Republic is that it has been rampant," U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva. "All these peacekeeping forces have played a very important role, and we shouldn't ignore that. But ... we can't ignore the fact that hopefully a small number in these armies are committing appalling abuses," Colville said. Convictions have been "far, far too few", Colville said. Last month, an independent review panel accused the United Nations and its agencies of grossly mishandling allegations of child sexual abuse by international peacekeepers in Central African Republic in 2013 and 2014. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Michelle Nichols; Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Louise Ireland, Toni Reinhold)
By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Friday it had allegations that peacekeepers from Georgia, France and another unnamed European country sexually abused children while deployed in the Central African Republic. The alleged crimes, including rapes, mostly committed in 2014, came to light only in recent weeks and the national authorities concerned, as well as the European Union, have been informed and are investigating, it said. U.N. staff interviewed a girl and a boy who were aged 7 and 9 respectively when they were allegedly abused in 2014 by French "Sangari" troops, the statement said. The girl said she had performed sexual acts on French soldiers "in exchange for a bottle of water and a sachet of cookies". "These are extremely serious accusations and it is crucial that these cases are thoroughly and urgently investigated," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement. "Far too many of these crimes continue to go unpunished, with the perpetrators enjoying full impunity." Last month, an independent review panel accused the United Nations and its agencies of grossly mishandling allegations of child sexual abuse in 2013 and 2014 by international peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. In interviews by U.N. human rights officials with minors in CAR, new allegations also emerged concerning soldiers of "troop-contributing countries" to U.N. peacekeeping forces, and details will be given later in the day in New York, U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said. "What is abundantly clear in CAR is it has been rampant. I don't know the exact number of contingents involved, something like 10, both U.N. and non-UN, which is something truly shocking," Colville told a news briefing in Geneva. "What this does show is this a problem with the armies, with the military forces, for whatever reason not enough is being done to stop this," he said. Georgia's Defence Ministry said it would investigate the allegations as quickly as possible. The European Union said it followed a zero-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct and criminal activity. Mainly Muslim rebels from a group called the Seleka seized power in the majority Christian nation in early 2013, forcing President Francois Bozize to flee and provoking reprisals from Christian anti-balaka militias. Leaders have since fuelled a cycle of religious and inter-communal violence that has killed thousands. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazilian petroleum giant Petrobras said Thursday it will cut 30 percent of its senior executives as part of a restructuring plan aimed at saving $450 million a year.

The flagship state-owned company has been in deep trouble since 2014, with plunging oil prices, depreciation of the Brazilian real against the US dollar, and a huge corruption scandal.

Petrobras CEO Aldemir Bendine told reporters that the company had to adapt not only to the new realities facing the industry but to "irregularities" within the company that contributed to its crisis.

Bendine, who has headed the company since last year, said Petrobras was working to tighten its governance, eliminate "political nominations" and achieve a "meritocracy."

He said the staff reductions would involve both dismissals and attrition, but should not affect production. Deep-water offshore operations would remain a priority.

Bendine said the company was completing work on a "profoundly" changed business plan that would prepare it for crude-oil prices as low as $20.15 per barrel.

Oil prices have dropped from $100 per barrel 18 months ago to $33 today.

Petrobras recently slashed the investments it plans through 2019 by $32 billion, or 24.5 percent, and lowered its 2016 production targets from 2.18 million barrels a day to 2.14 million barrels.
They say a picture's worth a thousand words. But, in the case of Pakistan's International New York Times' front page on Friday, it would seem a blank space is worth even more.

The publication decided to omit the front page photograph of two gay men kissing for a story on a pioneering same-sex marriage lawsuit in China.

Pakistani critics of the censorship  echoed by others around the world  were quick to respond on social media. Many criticized the move on the already stifled freedom of expression and press. And some saw the decision as part of a larger effort to suppress human rights.

@nytimes front page #censored in #Pakistan this morning pic.twitter.com/O4KIq4g9QO https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ3fdfvWEAA8djA.jpg:large

The front page of the NYT distributed to its readers in Pakistan today - taken out was a pic of two men kissing pic.twitter.com/h3GFPgwTwh https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ4l65YWIAAxSIG.jpg:large

Int'l New York Times frontpage this morning. #Pakistan #censorship pic.twitter.com/7141SF7vj0 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ2yETrWIAAWfLH.jpg:large

Pakistan doesn't like gay love. My pic on INYT today's front page censored. via @ppberson @declanwalsh pic.twitter.com/ZtEVvxvu6N https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ3649kWYAAzMfv.jpg:large

What photo did Pakistan ban from front page of NY Times today? See it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/world/asia/couples-lawsuit-is-first-test-for-same-sex-marriage-in-china.html ... cc: @GillSabrie pic.twitter.com/sHgs8mUHvN https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ4fiKEUMAA0f7y.png:large

Today's @nytimes front page censored in Pakistan. Showed a man kissing another. #tolerance #freedomofexpression pic.twitter.com/dkAfavrIjp https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ3a7ZrWYAASUi5.jpg:large

"I don't think a censored edition of an international newspaper should exist in the first place  if they have such an issue with some of the content, don't bother printing the rest of it either," one 28-year-old Pakistani woman, who wished to remain anonymous out of concerns she might be targeted, told Mic.

"They seem to do this often. It's not really the New York Times without that front page photo, is it?" she queried.

However, as evidenced by the decision to censor the picture in the first place, some Pakistanis believed removing the image was the right decision.

"Well, I agree. I surely do," Farhan Khan Virk, a millennial Muslim social and political activist in Pakistan, told Mic. "There are certain rules in different parts of the world which we don't agree to but we respect. What the world needs to do now is understand that Pakistan is a not secular country. We are governed by a legal framework that adheres to Islamic law. This is the democracy of the people of Pakistan  they chose an Islamic constitution and the world needs to respect that."

"Even if there was a man and woman kissing on the front page they would not have allowed it," Virk added. "Mostly Pakistani people are socially conservative. They are not extremists, they just don't want their children to see such images."

The problem arises, when censorship extends beyond images relating to sexuality. And this is not the first time pages of major newspapers have been left blank, for a host of reasons extending far beyond the expression of sexual identity.

On Jan. 2, the International New York Times' front and second page were left with large blank spaces after printers decided to remove an article on the barbarous murders and attacks on secular bloggers in Bangladesh, who defend human rights through their writing.

New York Times in Pakistan removes article on brutal killings of secular bloggers, leaving front page & page 2 blank pic.twitter.com/hXXwHCQzf8 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXxibJ6UsAAhC1v.png:large

W , the two were at one time a fractured country, until 1971, then respectively termed East and West Pakistan. They are both Islamic nations and both, in recent years,

The sociopolitical volatility  and associated insecurity  rocking Pakistan has quelled pluralism in myriad ways, such that just the sensitive subject of gay rights.

"We are peace-loving," Virk concluded on the matter of Friday's front page. "We are not fanatics but we have a few values and some cultural differences and a way of living which need to be respected. There are things we don't like about America, but it doesn't stop us from respecting the country."
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland's parliament adopted a law giving the justice ministry control over the prosecutor's office, further stoking concerns about the state of democracy in the EU member.

The conservative-dominated parliament voted in favour of handing the justice ministry direct control over the prosecutor's office, a move the opposition says would once again "politicise" the institution.

The prosecutor's office has been independent from political leadership since a 2009 reform introduced by the previous liberal government.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party conservatives said the new law would put an end to a "failed experiment" that diminished accountability for the actions of the prosecutor's office.

Since sweeping back to power in October after eight years in opposition, the PiS has taken several controversial steps that critics have denounced as undermining the independence of both the media and the judiciary.

The legislation giving the government control over Poland's top court and public broadcasters has prompted a series of demonstrations and harsh criticisms both at home and across Europe.

The EU recently launched an unprecedented probe to see if the Polish government violates the bloc's democracy rules and merits punitive measures.

Under the law adopted Thursday, the justice minister will serve as attorney general and will notably be able to intervene in any investigation led by any prosecutor.

The law also modifies prosecutorial structure at the regional and national levels, which the opposition says will give the PiS an excuse to verify the political leanings of prosecutors.

Eight lawmakers abstained from Thursday's vote, 236 voted in favour, while 209 voted against.
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland's senate on Friday approved a controversial amendment making it easier for the secret service and police to access Internet data, stoking concerns about the state of democracy in the EU member.

The new measure will notably give the police direct permanent access to a whole host of metadata regarding the online activity of Poles. The police will no longer have to ask Internet service providers for access each time.

It is the latest controversial step taken by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party conservatives since they swept back to power in October after eight years in opposition.

New laws giving the government control over Poland's top court, the prosecutor's office and public broadcasters have prompted a series of demonstrations and harsh criticisms both at home and across Europe.

The EU recently launched an unprecedented probe into whether the Polish government is violating the bloc's democracy rules and merits punitive measures.

According to the ruling party, Friday's amendment includes limits on how the police can use the Internet data and for how long.

But the opposition expressed concern over the lack of judicial oversight under the amendment approved by 56 senators, while 28 voted against and three abstained.

The measure was also denounced by the inspector general for personal data protection, the Polish ombudsman, lawyers and non-profit organisations.

Critics fear that the amendment will lead to the exploitation of information subject to professional secrecy in law, journalism, medicine and other fields.
Mexico City (AFP) - Pope Francis will call for justice for victims of violence during his visit to Mexico and plead for a more humane treatment of migrants, the country's archbishop said Thursday.

Cardinal Norberto Rivera told AFP that while Francis may not meet privately with the parents of 43 missing students whose case caused international outrage, he will address the plight of all victims during his February 12-17 visit.

The disappearance of the trainee teachers in 2014 was "a tragic event for Mexico. What happened was terrible and the families are still suffering, but the problem is not limited to 43," Rivera said in an interview in his office when asked why such a meeting was not planned.

The archbishop noted that more than 26,000 people are reported missing in the country.

"I think that the (parents of the) 43 would have the right (for a private audience), but all of those who have loved ones missing also have the right for a message of hope, a message of justice," the 73-year-old cardinal said.

"First of all, he will address those who are suffering from violence so that they don't lose hope, so that they can keep demanding justice and truth," he said.

"I think it's very important that the pope come to ask that citizens and those who govern speak the truth."

- Victims seek audience -

Vidulfo Rosales, an attorney representing parents of the 43 students, told AFP that they have requested an audience but have not received an answer and that it will be "very hard" to have a meeting.

Families of hundreds of other missing people have requested an audience as well.

But the secretary general of the Mexican Episcopal Conference, Eugenio Lira, said in December that it would be "difficult" for Francis to find time in his busy agenda.

But Lira said they could attend the pontiff's final mass in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where he will address victims of violence and the plight of migrants.

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Turning to violence against priests, Rivera said that more than 50 have been killed in the past 25 years.

"Many priests continue to be affected by organized crime. Here in (Mexico City) at least 400 priests have suffered from extortion, threats, etcetera, because there are people who see priests as a symbol of values that they (the assailants) don't want to see disseminated," Rivera said.

- Humane migration -

In addition to Ciudad Juarez, Francis will visit Mexico City, the crime-plagued regions of Michoacan and Mexico State, and the impoverished southern state of Chiapas.

Mexico launched a crackdown against illegal migration at the Chiapas-Guatemala border region in 2014 following a crisis of unaccompanied child migrants who flooded into the United States that year. Human rights groups say the operation has led to human rights abuses.

"With his moral quality, the pope can touch many doors, many hearts, many powers in this world so that migration can be more humane," said Rivera, whose parents migrated to the United States when he was a child.

"What we ask of the north (the United States), we must also offer in the south in the case of migration. It wouldn't be wise for Mexico to demand respect and human rights for our compatriots and badly treat the migrants who come from the south," he said.

In the wide-ranging interview, Rivera also defended the pope's religious pardon in October of the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ movement, whose late Mexican-born founded Marcial Maciel stepped down in 2005 amid pedophilia allegations.

"The plenary indulgence is for all Christians who repent from their sins and who want to start a new life," Rivera said. "I don't understand why someone would want to exclude some people from God's mercy."
Berlin (AFP) - A 13-year-old Russian-German girl who ignited an international row by saying she was raped by migrants was actually sleeping at a friend's house on the night in question, Berlin prosecutors said Friday.

Authorities in the German capital said their investigation had concluded that the account of the girl's kidnapping and sexual assault this month by three men from "southern countries" had no basis in fact, despite high-level Russian claims to the contrary.

"Using data from her broken mobile phone, we were able to access information about a young German man aged 19 -- an acquaintance of the 13-year-old girl," prosecutor's office spokesman Martin Steltner told AFP.

"The young girl wanted to hide at his house because she was having problems in school."

The incident has exacerbated tensions between Germany and Russia already strained over the conflict in Syria and European Union sanctions imposed on Moscow over Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had complained that Moscow initially heard about the incident not from Germany officials "but from the Russian-speaking community, then from the family's lawyer".

On Tuesday he tried to lend credence to the girl's allegations by saying that she had disappeared "absolutely for sure" against her will and that details of the incident had "been hidden."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday accused Lavrov of "exploiting" the case of the girl, named as Liza by Russia, and "inflaming" an already heated national debate about migrants.

- 'Political pressure' -

Friday's findings "clearly defuse the propaganda that had developed recently around this case," Frank Henkel, the German capital's top security official, said in a statement.

Without mentioning Moscow, he said Germany is a "state based on the rule of law" and no "political pressure from abroad" would alter its "constitutional principles".

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The teenager went missing on January 11, reportedly on her way to school.

She subsequently returned and filed a police report, with her parents telling investigators she was kidnapped by three apparently foreign men at a railway station in eastern Berlin and taken to a flat where they raped and beat her.

German police last week rejected the teenager's account but nevertheless passed the case to the prosecutor's office.

Berlin prosecutors had said there was no evidence that the girl was forced to have sexual relations but opened a probe against at least one man on possible statutory rape charges stemming from a separate incident since she was under the age of consent (14 in Germany).

Steltner said Friday that investigators now believe that the girl had had sex with two men in their 20s, "a Turkish citizen and a German of Turkish origin" who may now be charged with abusing a minor.

The incident came to light with Germany in an uproar over a spate of New Year's Eve sexual assaults on women in Cologne allegedly carried out, for the most part, by Arab and North African men, that was initially met with silence from the police.

Last year, nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived in Germany, most of them from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, with Chancellor Angela Merkel under increasing pressure over her welcoming stance toward refugees fleeing war.
The real-life stories of UFOs would be enough for the fictional "X-Files" FBI agents Mulder and Scully to spend a lifetime investigating.

With a nod to the new "X-Files" reboot (which airs on Fox on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET), the Central Intelligence Agency has released a trove of once classified documents on several real-life unidentified flying objects.

Not surprisingly, many of these UFO sightings emerged in the early 1950s. The space race was on, the Cold War fears had reached a fever pitch, and science-fiction movies like "The Flying Saucer" (1950) catapulted schlocky depictions of aliens and their flying machines into the popular consciousness. In fact, by 1953, UFO mania had reached such heights that the CIA marshaled a team of scientific consultants to investigate all of the reports and review the "Unidentified Flying Object Problem," according to a 1953 memorandum by the agency.

While most of these encounters were likely weird cloud formations, lightning or even missile tests rather than little green men, they still inspire countless conspiracy theories. From the flying frying pan of West Germany to the mysterious craft hovering over uranium mines in Africa, here are some of the CIA's most mysterious X-files. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]

The flying pan of West Germany

In 1952, Oscar Linke, the 48-year-old former mayor of Gleimershausen, Germany, and his 11-year-old daughter Gabriella were traveling home, when his tire blew out near the town of Hasselbach. His daughter noticed something in the distance, which he initially thought was a deer.

When Linke got closer, however, he saw two men peering at what looked like a massive frying pan, between 42 and 49 feet (13 to 15 meters) in diameter, he reported. Around the rim were two rows of holes, each about 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter, and a large, conical tower, about 10 feet (3 m) high, loomed at the top of the object.

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When his daughter called back to him, she startled the two men, who immediately jumped inside the mysterious frying pan, according to the CIA report.

One of the men, according to Linke, had a round protrusion on his chest that glowed green and then red. While he was watching, the conical structure fell down to the ground, the saucer began rising in the air and its rim was encircled with flames from below. Then, it turned horizontally and took off above the trees, disappearing into the distance.

"I would have thought that both my daughter and I were dreaming if it were not for the following element involved: When the object had disappeared, I went to the place where it had been. I found a circular opening in the ground, and it was quite evident that it was freshly dug. It was exactly the same shape as the conical tower," Linke testified to a West German judge at the time.

Linke, who had recently escaped from East Germany, claimed he had never heard of flying saucers when in the Soviet Zone. He was convinced that the flying machine was a Soviet military apparatus. Other people in the area reported seeing what looked like a comet at the time. [Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets]

Uranium mine surveys?

That same year, in what was then the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), two fiery discs were spotted hovering over the uranium mines in the Elisabethville district, according to a news report from the local newspaper Die Presse.

"The disks glided in elegant curves and changed their positions many times, so that from below, they sometimes appeared as plates, ovals and simply lines," the article said.

According to the article, Cmdr. Pierre, who worked at the Elisabethville airfield, pursued the two flying discs in a fighter plane, but gave up after 15 minutes. He said he estimated the discs were flying at 932 mph (1,500 km/h). The saucer zoomed off, disappearing over Lake Tanganyika. [Supersonic! The 10 Fastest Military Planes]

According to Pierre, the discs were aluminum-colored metal, between 39 and 49 feet (12 to 15 m) in diameter, and had a central knob that seemed to stay absolutely still as the outer disc rotated at tremendous speeds. The outer circumference was "veiled in fire," according to the report. Like the one in the previous report, this saucer seemed capable of flying both vertically and horizontally, and often "shot down" to within a few hundred feet of the treetops. The pilot thought it was unlikely that the mysterious machine was manned, as the disc's erratic motion and high heat would not allow someone to stay inside. (The dubious aerodynamics of such an object were not mentioned.)

Though Pierre is noted as a reliable officer, no one else confirmed his sighting. Based on his report, however, the CIA produced a sketch of the purported saucer's dimensions and potential operating principles.

Smoke trail over Barcelona

It turned out that 1952 was a hot year for unidentified-object sightings.

Several people reported seeing lightning-fast objects streaking through the sky over North Africa and Spain. For instance, newspaper reporter Valentin Garcia noticed a smoke trail coming from a strange, rocketlike object flying near Barcelona. After he reported on the object, his office was flooded with calls about the enigmatic object, and one of his friends even captured a photo of the smoke trail, Garcia reported.

That same year, people in Sousse, Tunisia, reported seeing "a flying object traveling at dizzying speed from west to east emitting a pale green light."

And in Morocco, witnesses reported a flying saucer shooting silently through the sky. In comparison, the flights of nearby T-33 fighter planes seemed slow. The object traced a parabola in the sky, paused, and then streaked off toward a town in the south.

The CIA did not release documents to show exactly how all of those investigations were resolved, but other documents suggest that most seem to be hoaxes or misidentified objects.

In a 1953 report by a scientific advisory panel to investigate UFOs, agency officials noted that "the Panel members were impressed by the lack of sound data in the great majority of case histories."

For most of the cases, expert investigators uncovered reasonable explanations for the sightings, and for others, a process of induction suggested similar reports could be dismissed as well, the panel found.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
You can learn a lot from the words politicians use, and even more from the words they dont. At last nights Republican debate, candidates and moderators mentioned immigration 27 times. No surprise there. It may the single biggest issue in the GOP race. The word Mexican, however, wasnt mentioned once, even though in recent years Mexicans have constituted Americas largest immigrant group. Neither did anyone mention Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese or El Salvadoran, the other most common nationalities of recent immigrants. Latino was never mentioned. Neither was Asian. Hispanic was mentioned once.

Muslim, by contrast, was mentioned 15 times, often preceded by the adjective radical. The word Islam was cited nine times. ISIS came up a whopping 45 times.

This is partly because the candidates were asked about events in the Middle East. But its also because they repeatedly turned questions about immigration into questions about Muslims and ISIS. A Mexican American businesswoman asked Ben Carson, If America does not seem like a welcoming place for immigrant entrepreneurs, will the American economy suffer? Carson replied that, We have to be intelligent about the way that we form our immigration policies, and thats one of the reasons that I have called on us to declare war on the Islamic State because we need to reorient our immigration policies and our visa policies for people who are coming into this country because there are many people out there who want to destroy us.

Megyn Kelly asked Marco Rubio about the problem of undocumented immigrants. He responded that, Im going to tell you exactly how were going to deal with it when I am president. Number one, were going to keep ISIS out of America.

Recommended: How Secret Was the Information in Hillary Clinton's Emails?

Its been like this at every GOP debate. On December 15, Donald Trump declared that, People are pouring across the southern border. I will build a wall ... As far as other people like in the migration, where theyre going, tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them? I dont think so. On January 14, moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Rubio why he cosponsored a Senate bill that would have distributed 10 million new green cards. He responded that, The issue is a dramatically different issue than it was 24 months ago. Twenty-four months ago, 36 months ago, you did not have a group of radical crazies named ISIS ... The entire system of legal immigration must now be reexamined for security first and foremost.

As public policy, this makes little sense. Obviously, the United States should take care not to admit jihadist terrorists. But since would-be terrorists constitute a miniscule percentage of newcomers to the United States, drastically reducing legal immigrationor not granting the undocumented citizenshipin order to prevent ISIS members from entering America is like using a sledgehammer to squash a fly. Its the equivalent of declaring that because terrorists could put a bomb in a cargo bin, the U.S. will slash its import of foreign goods.

Its one thing to depict immigrants as people who depress wages and crowd schools. Its another to depict them as potential killers.

But politically, it serves a purpose. By putting ISIS at the center of their immigration rhetoric, Republican candidates make immigration seem more threatening and less ambiguous. Its one thing to depict immigrants as people who depress wages and crowd schools. Its another to depict them as potential killers. That utterly dehumanizes them.

The answers by GOP candidates also play into a larger conservative effort to depict Mexican immigrants as, if not ISIS members, then at least dangerous. Immigrants actually commit crime at a lower rate than native-born Americans. Still, Donald Trump last year called Mexican immigrants rapists, a charge he gleaned from Ann Coulters book, Adios America, which in grizzly detail recounts example after example of swarthy immigrants committing acts of violence. There is so much fixation on, for example, beheadings by ISIS, Coulter declared last summer. Well, the champion beheaders are Mexicans. They pioneered the practice of putting videotaped beheadings on television.

In 2014, Jeb Bush got into trouble for calling immigration an act of love. No Republican contender would say that now. But todays candidates arent even content to depict it as an act of self-interest. By constantly invoking ISIS and terrorism, they associate immigration with violence and hatred. And in so doing, they make it easier for Americans to respond with hatred of their own.Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Miami (AFP) - Zika virus is spreading rapidly through the Americas leaving researchers scrambling to understand the very basics, including how to prevent, treat and diagnose the emerging mosquito-borne threat.

There is no vaccine against Zika, which top US health authorities described Thursday as a "brand new" virus that has expanded swiftly in recent years and been linked to brain damage in babies.

No matter how fast the world acts, it will be years before a vaccine is widely available, said Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

"This is a brand-new virus so we, prior to this time, have really not spent anything on Zika," Fauci said.

Nor is there any vaccine on the market yet against dengue virus, which comes from the same family of flaviviruses.

The US government is appealing for all kinds of research on Zika and will draw from a pool of $97 million to fund studies on everything from how it spreads to how it causes disease to how to control the mosquitoes that spread it.

"NIAID researchers are working on vaccine candidates to prevent Zika virus infection," he added.

"It is to our advantage that we already have existing vaccine platforms to use as a sort of jumping off point," he said, mentioning two avenues of study based on prior research into West Nile and dengue vaccines.

"While these approaches are promising, it is important to understand that we will not have a widely available, safe and effective Zika vaccine this year and probably not even in the next few years."

- Mild to severe -

Zika was first identified in 1947, causing its first human case in 1952 in Uganda. However, most cases were mild, resulting in rash, fever, and red eyes in a small fraction of cases.

Health authorities barely took notice until an outbreak on the Micronesian island of Yap in 2007.

An outbreak that began last year in Brazil has been blamed for a surge in birth defects in Brazil, where thousands of babies have been born with small heads, an incurable and sometimes fatal condition known as microcephaly.

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"Zika virus's spread in the Americas and its effect on pregnancy are new developments that we are working with partners to better understand," said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health authorities are also probing an increase in Guillain Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder in which a person's own immune system damages nerve cells, leading to muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis, she said.

"The virus is spreading throughout the Americas and we expect more countries to be affected," warned Schuchat.

- Sexual transmission? -

Researchers are also aware of two cases in the past several years which suggest the virus could be spread through sexual contact -- one case in which Zika was detected in a man's semen after it disappeared from his bloodstream, and another in which a man infected in Senegal may have infected his wife back in Colorado.

However, Schuchat added that "the science is very clear to date: that Zika virus is primarily transmitted to people through the bite of an infected mosquito. So that is really where we are putting the emphasis right now."

Other researchers are calling for an increased focus on preventing mosquito bites, particularly in impoverished areas.

"We need to look at historical successes to embark on similar programs in Zika-affected countries," said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Hotez called for new studies on technologies -- such as insecticides, genetically modified mosquitoes, bed net use and mass drug treatment with antiparasitic ivermectin -- as potential ways to prevent the virus and kill the Aedes aegypti mosquito which carries it.
London (AFP) - A statue at Oxford University of 19th century British imperialist Cecil Rhodes will not be taken down despite protests, the college at the centre of the dispute said Friday, to the fury of campaigners.

"Following careful consideration, the college's governing body has decided that the statue should remain in place," Oriel College said in a statement.

But it denied newspaper reports that it feared losing donations worth some A100 million (130 million euros, $140 million) if it did take the statue down.

Rhodes -- a white supremacist like many builders of the British empire -- gave his name to the territories of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and founded the De Beers diamond company.

The tycoon was also a donor to Oriel, one of Oxford's 38 colleges, and endowed the Rhodes Scholarship, which has helped non-British students like former US president Bill Clinton and ex-Australian prime minister Tony Abbott study at the prestigious university.

Inspired by the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaign which prompted the removal of the University of Cape Town's Rhodes statue last year, many current students objected to the presence of his statue in the heart of the historic English city.

The "Rhodes Must Fall" group on Friday called Oriel's decision "outrageous, dishonest, and cynical.

"This is not over. We will be redoubling our efforts and meeting over the weekend to discuss our next actions."

Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African 2014 Rhodes Scholar who has campaigned to remove the statue, said on Facebook that the decision "reminds us that black lives are cheap at Oxford".

"Oriel has basically said: Who cares about black lives and the concerns of BME (black and minority ethnic) Oxford students anyways?"

Others have warned against taking the statue down, saying that to do so would be to rewrite history.

- 'Complexity of history' -

South Africa's last white president, F. W. de Klerk, wrote to Britain's Times newspaper last month calling the plan "folly" and adding: "If the political correctness of today were applied consistently, very few of Oxford's great figures would pass scrutiny."

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Oriel's statement said that "the overwhelming message we have received has been in support of the statue remaining in place".

"The recent debate has underlined that the continuing presence of these historical artefacts is an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today."

Anti-apartheid veteran Denis Goldberg, who was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela in 1964, said the statue's fate was trivial.

"Reshape your campaign to expose what Rhodes did and how the legacy continues in South Africa today. That's what you must fight," he told BBC radio.

Removing the Cape Town statue "hasn't changed the systemic exploitation.

"The removal of it takes away the right to expose, to debate," he added. "We cut into our right to free speech."

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Oriel had already seen A1.5 million in donations cancelled due to the ambiguity over the statue and that some alumni had cut the college out of their wills.

But an Oriel spokesman insisted: "The financial implications were absolutely not the overriding consideration -- not even a major factor."

The Telegraph welcomed the "rational" decision.

"The past cannot be rewritten. And it is not the responsibility of Oxford students to try," the broadsheet said, criticising "attempts by a self-righteous lobby to purge the university of any blemish of historical bigotry".

"Rhodes stands, hopefully, for a more intellectually curious future."
Riyadh (AFP) - Syria's largest mainstream opposition group on Friday said it would take part in the Geneva "political process", after four days of suspense over whether it would join UN-lead peace talks.

The negotiations began in Geneva at about the same time the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee made its decision.

"We have decided to take part in the political process to test the seriousness of the other side through discussions with the UN team to implement international obligations and humanitarian demands," the HNC said in a statement, which came after Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir met with the Committee on Friday evening at a Riyadh hotel.

Despite Western pressures for it to attend, the HNC had said it would not take part in the Geneva process without an agreement on relief reaching hundreds of thousands of people stuck in besieged towns.

It also wanted assurances the international community will move to end regime attacks on civilians, in accordance with a United Nations Security Council resolution backing a political transition to end Syria's nearly five-year-old conflict.

The HNC statement said it has received support "especially... related to the humanitarian situation" from United States Secretary of State John Kerry, foreign ministers of "sisterly countries," as well as from the UN's Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.

A senior HNC delegate earlier confirmed to AFP that the Committee will send "about 30, 35 people" to Geneva.

Asaad al-Zoabi, head of the HNC delegation, told Sky News Arabia that the opposition had received the guarantees it sought for an end to bombardment of civilians, and aid access to besieged areas.

- Saudi welcomes decision -

He said the delegation would arrive Saturday evening or Sunday morning in Switzerland.

In a tweet, however, the HNC said it would not be taking part in actual peace negotiations.

"HNC confirms it is coming to #Genevaiii to participate in discussions with the @UN, not for negotiations," the tweet said.

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The Saudi foreign ministry issued a statement saying it welcomed the Committee's decision "to take part in the Geneva negotiations to implement UN Security Council resolution 2254".

Earlier Friday before confirmation of the HNC involvement, Fuad Aliko, who is to represent the HNC in any formal talks, said only a small delegation would travel to the Swiss city.

"A media delegation from the HNC has decided to go to Geneva," Aliko said, adding that it would be made up of three HNC members who also serve as the group's spokesmen.

The HNC had also asked for "clarifications" after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures.

The Committee insists that it is the sole permitted representative of Syria's opposition, despite objections from others.

The HNC was formed in December when the main Syrian political opposition and armed factions came together in Riyadh for an unprecedented bid at unity, after months of Saudi efforts.

De Mistura on Friday met representatives of President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Geneva at the start of a scheduled six months of peace talks, an AFP reporter said.

Opposition figures not part of the HNC said they would also be present in the Swiss city.
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio greets members of the audience after speaking at Wellmans Pub & Rooftop in West Des Moines, Iowa, Wednesday. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa  At a crowded bar here Wednesday night, Sen. Marco Rubio mock-sternly told the crowd to tip their servers.

My dad was a bartender, he said, as the crowd hooted and clapped.

Rubio has stressed his humble roots in appearances all over the state in the final days before the caucuses, describing to hundreds of curious Iowans the story of his Cuban immigrant parents working their fingers to the bone to provide for their children.

The Democrats cannot lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck because I grew up living paycheck to paycheck, Rubio said.

At another appearance in rural Marshalltown, Iowa, Tuesday, Rubio said the fact that his parents were able to go from poor immigrants to homeowners in just 10 years showed him that America is special.

To some voters, the senators background stands in sharp contrast to that of real estate tycoon Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the state, whom they see as arrogant about his wealth. Trump has pitched himself as a self-made man whose wealth will make him immune from special interests and lobbyists when in office.

Hes not sitting on billions, said Liz Jennison, a 28-year-old Marine Corps veteran, of Rubio. Whereas Trump is like, Look at all this money I have to throw around. Ill say whatever I want because I have money. I dont like that.

Rubio is seemingly humble, she added.

I like that he didnt come from money, said Bobbie Fontenot, adding that shes 99 percent decided on caucusing for Rubio after his West Des Moines event Wednesday night.

Marco has the ability to see and relate to almost anybody in the country, said Fontenots friend Michelle Henamen.

Rubios likability thus far hasnt been enough to boost him into the top tier in Iowa; he still trails Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz by more than 10 points in polls of likely caucus-goers.
Istanbul (AFP) - The number of Russians visiting Turkey almost halved in December from the same period a year earlier as the crisis in relations over the shooting down of a Russian warplane hit the country's crucial tourism industry.

The Turkish tourism ministry said in its monthly figures late Thursday that 25,485 arrivals were recorded from Russia last month, down 46.9 percent from the comparable figure of 47,954 in December 2014.

The shooting down by Turkey's air force of a Russian warplane on the border with Syria on November 24 has led to the most bitter dispute between the two countries since the Cold War.

It also prompted Moscow to swiftly warn Russians against visiting Turkey and Russian tour operators to stop selling tours to the country.

Russian tourism is key to the sector in Turkey, especially on the Mediterranean coast, although figures had already been in decline due to Russia's economic problems.

Arrivals from Russia for the whole of 2015 dropped to 3.65 million in 2015 from around 4.5 million in the previous year, the tourism ministry said.

A total of 36.2 million foreigners travelled to Turkey last year, down 1.61 percent from a year earlier, it said.

But the industry will be waiting anxiously for the January figures so see how badly tourism in Turkey was hit by the January 12 attack by a suicide bomber linked to Islamic State (IS) jihadists who killed 11 German tourists in Istanbul.

The assault on the historic Sultanahmet Square was the first time in recent memory that extremists had directly targeted tourists in Turkey.

It came just three months after double suicide bombings in Ankara killed 103 people, mostly pro-Kurdish activists in an attack blamed on IS.

Tourism is one of the mainstays in a country which was the world's sixth-most visited in 2014.

Culture and Tourism Minister Mahir Unal said the decline in tourist numbers was "unavoidable" in the face of a "terror problem facing the world."

"We need to prevent any negative factor that damages Turkey's safe and secure country image," he said on Thursday.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, a major European cruise company, announced last week that it would cancel calls in Turkey for the rest of 2016 over security concerns.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Workers at a Siberian hydro-electric power station were evacuated after a bomb scare on Friday but returned to work when a report that an explosive device had been planted proved false, RusHydro which owns the station said. A total of 231 station workers were evacuated from the Novosibirsk power station in western Siberia, about 3,000 km (1,900 miles) east of Moscow, after a telephone call warning of a bomb. "Information that the place had been mined was not confirmed," RusHydro said in a statement. "A decision was taken ... to let staff return to their jobs." The station continued working while its area was inspected, the statement said. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Anastasia Lyrchikova; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov and Richard Balmforth)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Satellite images show five possible mass graves on the outskirts of Burundi's capital at sites consistent with testimony by witnesses who accused security forces of killing dozens of people in December, Amnesty International said on Friday. Witnesses said graves were dug on the afternoon of Dec. 11, and before and after images and video footage show disturbed earth at five sites in the Buringa area on the edge of Bujumbura, rights group Amnesty said in statement. "These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out," said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty's regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. A spokesman for Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza was not immediately available for comment on the Amnesty report. On Dec. 11 gunmen attacked military bases. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the authorities responded with house searches, arrests and alleged summary executions. The fighting killed at least 87 people, but Zeid said figures from other sources were considerably higher. The United Nations said it is also analyzing satellite images to investigate witness reports of at least nine mass graves in and around the capital Bujumbura, including one in a military camp, containing more than 100 bodies in total. African states are trying to push Nkurunziza to accept peacekeeping troops at a summit this week to prevent Burundi sliding back into ethnic conflict but there is little hope that he will agree, officials said. If the African Union sent in the force without Burundi's consent it would have to invoke Article 4 of the union charter, which gives it the right to intervene "in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity." The African Union would also seek U.N. Security Council approval for such a deployment. Nkurunziza's re-election for a third term last year sparked the crisis, which has raised fears of an ethnic conflict in a region where memories of neighboring Rwanda's 1994 genocide remain fresh. The U.N. Security Council traveled to Burundi last week. The United Nations estimates the death toll at 439 but says it could be higher. More than 240,000 people have fled abroad and the country's economy is in crisis. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Richard Chang)
Isolated, lonely, alone: Each word means something different for seniors. But the three can merge when blizzards, cold snaps, snow-blocked streets, icy sidewalks and shuttered services virtually trap older adults in their homes. Staying connected in rough conditions is important for physical and mental health. Here's how people reach out, for themselves and to others, in stormy winter weather.

Isolated by Ice and Snow

In Vermont, winter isolation is a familiar foe. "When the weather starts getting cold and snow starts flying, people start worrying about, 'Am I going to be able to get out? Am I going to be able to get to the store?'" says Christine McAvoy, executive director of Brattleboro Senior Meals.

In a largely rural state with limited transportation for seniors, it can be difficult to get out to a doctor or just to see other people, McAvoy says: "So isolation is a major concern for us." Her group runs the local Meals on Wheels program, which brings nutritious meals to the homebound. Maybe just as important, it brings human contact as well.

"The nice thing about [the program] is that we go to visit people five days a week," McAvoy says. "Every day, someone on our program gets a visitor. It's not always the same person, but it's still someone that checks in on them and makes sure they're OK."

Some seniors live alone with no regular contact; others have family members nearby to check on them in the evening after work. "A lot of them, the only contact they get during the day is the postman and the Meals on Wheels driver," McAvoy says. She encourages volunteers, many of whom are retired, to take time to chat with the people on the routes.

Once in a while, volunteers come upon urgent situations when they go to a home. "We've found people lying on the floor because of a fall," McAvoy says. "It doesn't happen every day, and part of the reason [it doesn't] is because we check on them every day. Sometimes, over a long weekend, you worry about who's going to be OK on Monday."

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Neighbors can help ease isolation among seniors -- when they can reach them. "I try to keep track of my elderly neighbors," McAvoy says. "If I see they haven't been out of their house in while, I'll ask around to make sure they're OK. It's a small enough community that we can do that here."

Older adults should know services are out there, she says. "There are places they can phone and people they can talk to," she says. "They shouldn't feel like they're trapped in their home." Vermont has a senior help line, she notes, and when people call, "they can actually speak to a person" instead of dealing with a frustrating voicemail menu.

Senior centers are great foils against isolation. For instance, Brattleboro Senior Center, where McAvoy works, has a snow-cleared parking lot and a van to pick people up and bring them onsite for lunch. "So they can meet people; so they can be with other people," she says. "It's a warm place. We just got a new carpet. And we have lots of things to do down here."

Lonely at Risk

There's loneliness, and there's extreme loneliness, says John Cacioppo, a professor at the University of Chicago and director of the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. The more intense and long-lasting your loneliness is, he says, the more it can harm your health.

Loneliness worsens depression, causes fragmented sleep and is tied to a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, studies show. Loneliness has several physiological effects, Cacioppo says, like making blood vessels more resistant to blood flow. The resulting rise in blood pressure shows up in older adults a few years later, says Cacioppo, who explains further in his TEDx talk on the lethality of loneliness.

Choice is the difference between being alone and being lonely, Cacioppo says -- loneliness happens when people are forced to be alone. In his long-term studies of older adults, he says, "What we find is when they start losing the capability of being mobile, when they can no longer see their friends, their level of loneliness rises significantly."

Harsh winter weather that shuts down transit systems and turns pavements into ice rinks reduces mobility even more, of course. It's tempting to flee the cold and retire somewhere warm and sunny, but people may also leave their strong social networks of family and friends behind -- a recipe for loneliness.

You can move and reestablish friendships, Cacioppo says, but it's not as automatic as meeting a colleague daily for lunch. One study for retirees to consider, he says: "We found that those people who maintain contact with co-workers were less lonely that those who did not."

Acquaintances aren't enough, however. Among older women, for instance, it's important to spend time with trusted women friends. "It's not really the number of friends you have," he says. "It's really having that confidante."

Alone, and That's OK

With snowstorms on the horizon, people need to be prepared, says Jim Firman, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging. "They need to have a backup plan, a communication plan; some way to get in touch," he says. "Landlines go down, and that's really dangerous -- people have no way of communicating."

NCOA is making an effort help seniors stay connected by bridging the digital divide, Firman says. "We're doing a project now where we've been taking homebound and isolated older adults across the country and giving them tablets and broadband access," he says. "That can really ameliorate conditions, even in a situation like that."

One option for older adults who want to stay in the community where they have friends and connections is to find a smaller, more accessible place, Firman says, "rather than gutting it out for the rest of their lives in their three- or four-bedroom home, where they're now all by themselves."

If you're concerned about your parents, he suggests starting a conversation: "Does it really make sense for you to tough it out in the old homestead for the rest of your life? Or should you be thinking about a place where there's less house to take care of, less yardwork to do? But also, where it would be easier to get help if you need it.'"

Many seniors do well living alone, Firman stresses. "All older people are lonely" is a stereotype, he says, one "that's simply not true." Loneliness is harder on 20-somethings than older adults, he adds. With maturity comes more ease being alone, he says -- it's a matter of being comfortable in your own skin.

Lisa Esposito is a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at lesposito@usnews.com.
By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Seven Hamas gunmen were killed when a tunnel collapsed close to the Gaza Strip's eastern border with Israel, the Islamist militant group's armed wing said on Thursday. It said the collapse occurred on Tuesday night as a result of heavy rain and it took two days to find the bodies and announce the deaths. Mosques across the Palestinian enclave mourned those killed, calling them "Martyrs of the Preparation", a reference to their work digging tunnels used to attack Israel. "The Mujahedin martyrs were repairing an old tunnel, from which a number of operations were executed in the (2014) war," a statement issued by the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades said. "The fathers of these martyrs should be proud. The whole world will witness the deeds of their tunnels against the (Israeli) occupier should they dare (to attack) our people and our land," it added. Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007, when it seized power after a brief civil war with the rival Fatah movement. Hamas's armed wing is one of several militant groups that operate in the territory, which is blockaded by Israel and Egypt. During July and August 2014, Israel fought a 50-day war against Hamas, with the militants making widespread use of deep tunnels to launch surprise attacks on Israeli forces. Israel heavily bombed the tunnels, but not all were destroyed. As well as the seven militants killed in the tunnel collapse, Hamas's armed wing said four survived. Israeli officials have repeatedly warned about the rebuilding of the tunnels, with some politicians calling for pre-emptive action to neutralize the threat. "The next conflict in the north or south of Israel is just a matter of time," Yair Lapid, the leader of Yesh Atid, an Israeli opposition party, told the foreign press this week. "As we sit here, there are around 1,000 people digging terror tunnels in Gaza, some of them under the border and into Israel." Last August, Israeli security sources said they were testing new techniques to detect hidden passages but they have yet to announce that they have developed a working system. Egypt, whose government is deeply hostile to Islamists, has taken steps to destroy a network of tunnels along its border with Gaza, mostly used for smuggling. As well as blowing many of them up, it has flooded the area with seawater. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
FRANKFURT/MADRID (Reuters) - German engineering group Siemens has hired Goldman Sachs to advise it on a possible deal to buy Spanish wind farm manufacturer and operator Gamesa , two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. One of the people said it was still unclear what the structure of such a deal could be. Siemens declined to comment on the matter. Shares in Gamesa earlier jumped more than 20 percent after a media report that Siemens may be interested in making a takeover offer. (Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Andres Gonzalez; Additional reporting by Jens Hack in Munich; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Victoria Bryan)
A Singapore shipping firm was fined Friday for its role in an attempt to smuggle Soviet-era weapons and fighter jets from Cuba to North Korea in 2013.

Chinpo Shipping Company Pte Ltd was found guilty by a Singapore district court of paying for a North Korean freighter to transit through the Panama Canal, in violation of UN sanctions.

A UN report quoted in 2014 said Chinpo Shipping had acted as an agent for a Pyongyang-based company that operated the intercepted vessel.

Chinpo Shipping "transferred financial assets or resources that may reasonably be used to contribute to the nuclear-related programmes or activities of" North Korea, a charge sheet said.

This was in breach of UN sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear programme.

Chinpo Shipping was found guilty in December of wiring $72,000 to a shipping agent in Panama on July 8, 2013 to facilitate the passage of the North Korean freighter, Chong Chon Gang, through the Panama Canal.

The Singapore court also convicted Chinpo Shipping of a second charge of conducting a remittance business without a licence.

The ship, bound for North Korea from Cuba, was intercepted and searched while navigating the Panama Canal on July 10, 2013.

Authorities discovered 25 containers of military hardware, including two Soviet-era MiG-21 fighters, air defence systems, missiles and command and control vehicles, buried under 200,000 bags of sugar.

Cuba had argued that the weapons were "obsolete" which the communist island had sent to Pyongyang for repair. But the find raised concerns about Cuba's military cooperation with North Korea.

In June last year, a court in Panama jailed two of the ship's North Korean officers for 12 years in relation to the smuggling attempt.

Captain Ri Yong-Il and first mate Hong Yong-Hyon were convicted of arms trafficking over the undeclared cache.

The rest of the crew of more than 30 on the Chong Chon Gang were earlier acquitted.
The bright star Sirius presides over an ancient burial mound in a dazzling new photo by project nightflight, taken at the Grossmugl Star Walk in Austria.

Project nightflight is an initiative that promotes interest in and conservation of the night sky, led by astrophotographers Karoline Mrazek and Erwin Matys. The group captured this view of Sirius, the brightest star in Earth's night sky, about a half hour's drive from Vienna. The project's work is online at www.project-nightflight.net.

"This image, shot on January 22, 2016, shows Sirius rising above the Leeberg tumulus, a 2500 years old ancient burial mound at the endpoint of the Grossmugl Star Walk," project nightflight wrote in an email to Space.com. [Gallery: Amazing Skywatcher Photos from Around the World]

The Grossmugl Star Walk, set up by project nightflight, is self-guided tour that's nearly 1 mile long (1.5 kilometers). Visitors learn how to spot different astronomical features over the course of a 90-minute walk. The burial mound acts as the tour's finale, and is featured in this new image, called "Frozen Farmland."

"The image was shot one day before full moon on a very cold and crisp winter's night," the photographers wrote. "The near full moon illuminated the frozen farmland surrounding the tumulus and gave the sky a distinct bluish hue."

Editor's note: If you capture an amazing photo of the night sky and you'd like to share it with us and our partners for a story or image gallery, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
North Korea, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran  The pages in Morrie Ericksons passport read like a whos who of geopolitical troublemakers. But this 68-year-old lawyer from Indiana is no U.N. employee or foreign correspondent. Rather, Erickson is just one of a small but growing group of people who thinks that besides buying tacky souvenirs and getting a tan, tourism should help make the world a more peaceful place.

Forget suits, working papers and negotiation rooms  tourists may be the new diplomats. State Department travel warnings and government-sponsored minders notwithstanding, the market for those wanting to witness current affairs firsthand is booming, according to industry experts. Iran, for instance, has witnessed a more than 70 percent growth in the number of foreign tourists visiting since 2014. Even the ultimate international bad boy, North Korea, has invested $200 million into a new international airport in a bid to double the number of tourists by 2017. Whether tourism in these politically sensitive  and sometimes outright repressive  regions will relax the bunker mind-set is uncertain, but many academics and tourism operators are banking on change.

On the surface the formula seems pretty straightforward: A neutral presence, an economic boost and cross-cultural exchange equals greater peace. But it goes deeper than that. Tourism is a good way for civil society to influence foreign policy-making, says Akihiro Iwashita, professor of border studies at Hokkaido University in Japan. Developing people-to-people relations beyond borders can help ease tensions. Political tourism, for example, is playing an important role as part of the grassroots peace process between Israel and Palestine, notes Julia Chaitin, a researcher at Sapir Academic College in Israel.

One outfit is offering tours to Tsushima, a disputed island between Japan and South Korea.

Its good business, too, as it turns out. Political Tours, the U.K.-based company that Erickson traveled with, says it has doubled the number of clients in a year. Meanwhile, Lupine Travel, which sends clients to places like North Korea and Ukraine, has reported a 150 percent increase in bookings over the same period  and it plans to expand to the Central African Republic or Afghanistan. Newer companies or excursions are also popping up, including some that may feature political tours to Ukraine and Kosovo. The Japan Center for Borderlands Studies, for one, aims to transform its countrys contested isles from fortified outposts to peaceful destinations by offering tours to Tsushima, a disputed island between Japan and South Korea.

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While the growth of tourism seems unstoppable (the U.N.s World Tourism Organization estimates there will be 1.8 billion international tourists annually by 2030), other traditional methods of geopolitical maneuvering continue to face challenges. From Palestine to North Korea, good old diplomacy has become synonymous with dead ends. Even the recent deal with Iran has proven to be tenuous. And on this volatile planet, any military move, no matter how well-intended, risks sparking war.

On the other hand, tourism boosts trade and cooperation in much subtler ways. Lara McKean, an American who loved visiting Cuba during spring break, argues normal people are clearly much better at getting along than politicians. That, in turn, can be an important political force, says Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, professor of politics of tourism at the University of South Australia. Besides being an engine of economic growth, tourism is a tool of soft diplomacy that falls beyond the grasp of conventional power structures  one that, Higgins-Desbiolles says, governments cannot fully control or employ as they plan, because it is unpredictable.

To be sure, sending hordes of unsuspecting, camera-wielding visitors into geopolitically complex regions can also be a recipe for disaster. According to sociocultural anthropologist Noel B. Salazar, tourism can be deeply eroding for local cultures and contribute to increased competition when the economic benefits that it generates are not shared equally among stakeholders. Thats the case for Lake Victoria, where longtime rivals Zimbabwe and Zambia fight over the spoils of tourism. And travelers visiting disputed borderlands or ostracized regimes shouldnt expect the usual comforts of more established destinations, of course. Pristina is no London when it comes to museums, and Starbucks addicts will need to go cold turkey in North Korea.

Tourism also has a long way to go to change its image from that of consumerist swarms to a force of peace, but theres some evidence of change. Take the case of Cyprus, a divided island held together by the prosperity that tourism brings to both sides. Even governments are trying to leverage it. In the disputed Spratly archipelago, between Vietnam and the Philippines, the Filipino government says its hoping to build peace by bringing tourists instead of building military bases. So choosing where to go on your next vacation could be an important geopolitical decision. No pressure.

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JOHANNESBURG -- Early one morning last year a handful of students gathered to block the main entrance to the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to protest the university's proposed 10 percent tuition fee hike.

Their intention: to physically illustrate the economic barriers faced by those attempting to get into the South Africa's institutions of knowledge. Protests quickly spread, shutting down lectures nationwide and, on some campuses, leading to violent outbreaks between police and protesters. In marches on Cape Town's Parliament and the Union Buildings in Pretoria, students were met with tear gas, stun grenades and Nyalas -- the armored police vehicles that during the apartheid era were the government's mobile suppression units of choice.

The protests -- dubbed "Fees Must Fall," which quickly became a popular hash tag -- began to die down after President Jacob Zuma said there would be no fee increases for 2016. But they didn't go away. When universities re-opened in January, protesters gathered yet again. Private security police in riot gear were called to some universities, and for now calm is the prevailing mood on the country's campuses.

Yet, more protests are likely this year. The country's "born free" generation, the group of black South Africans born after the end of apartheid in 1994, are growing increasingly impatient. In a country that has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor, the students are angry over what they say is unequal access to education as well as a colonial legacy that continues to confront the majority black population.

"The calls for decolonization can't be separated from 'fees must fall'," says Shaeera Kalla, the University of the Witwatersrand student who, along with Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, helped organize the protests. "Because fundamentally these are all part of the same problem: our universities are anti-poor, anti-black."

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Kalla and Mkhatshwa come from middle-class families, both attended some of the best high schools in the country and both are members of the ruling African National Congress. They and other students say they want the ANC to deliver on promises it made when it came to power in 1994: free education.

"We are not 'Burn, burn, burn'," says Mkhatshwa. "This is what we are saying: 'We put you into power, we trusted you as leaders. And we are reminding you, we need you to deliver.'"

A year of protest

The year of student protest began in March at the University of Cape Town when a young man named Chumani Maxwele threw a bucket of excrement over a 1934 statue of Cecil John Rhodes, the British imperialist who colonized Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

[READ: Youth unemployment, income inequality major challenges for South Africa.]

The "Rhodes must fall" protests spread to universities across the country, leading to removal of the statue a month later. The rally cry was decolonization and the transformation of the white professoriate and its Western-based curriculum, particularly at the country's "elite" universities, code for the handful of well-resourced, "historically white" universities like UCT and Wits.

On a Sunday afternoon last November two dozen young men and women gathered for a Johannesburg meeting of the Nzinga Collective, a black consciousness feminist group that was discussing the university fees issue. Before them on a screen was Nomalanga Mkhize, dialed in on Skype. A history lecturer at Rhodes, Mkhize is interested in how the use of African languages in academia can shift the white teaching culture embedded in South Africa's institutions.

She is not one to mince words.

"Five percent of the population can pay fees. Caitlin's dad can pay fees," Mkhize says, using a name that in South Africa is a euphemism for white privilege.

The top 5 percent of households in South Africa, where many white South Africans find themselves, have an annual income that starts at about $35,000. It's not much on the global scale, but it far exceeds the national household income average of just $2,100 a year. Many in South Africa, with an official unemployment rate of 25 percent, live on small government grants.

These upper-income families can shoulder the costs of $3,000 in annual tuition fees for one of those elite institutions, where the student body has become far more racially reflective of the nation. According to a recent study by South Africa's department of higher education, a full 75 percent of students are non-white at Wits. Meanwhile, at "historically black" institutions like Tshwane University of Technology, where 95 percent of the student body is non-white, the campuses are more likely to be poorly run and poorly resourced, according to the report.

"To say we are a non-racial democracy is to misread the moment," Ferial Haffajee recently told a crowd gathered for the launch of her book, "What if There Were No Whites in South Africa?" Haffajee is one of the country's most respected journalists. She grew up poor in Bosmont, a so-called "colored" -- people with mixed racial ancestry -- township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and was schooled at Wits, immersed in anti-apartheid activism. The Fees Must Fall movement dominated conversation at her launch.

"Our next generation believes they are living in overwhelming whiteness and white supremacy," she told the predominantly white crowd at the Troyville Hotel, an old hippie liberal hangout in Johannesburg. Such a view presents one of the contradictions of South Africa, where blacks fully control the levers of government but white corporate capital dominates the economic landscape.

Haffajee spoke of the "invisibility" of black people, how they feel overlooked in social interactions and workplaces, where many top bosses remain white. She spoke of the "black tax," referring to the extended family of six to eight people which black professionals are expected to support. The demand for a national contrition for apartheid -- an apology for what was done and the crippling effect it continues to have -- is essential, she said. But, she said, they might settle for a wealth tax.

'Are we not important enough in the government's eyes?'

In the Wits Art Museum Cafe, Natasha Ndlebe sits, a grey wool cap pulled tight to her head despite the heaving heat of a South African summer. She's a shy person and was a bit bewildered when she was asked to speak at a Fees Must Fall discussion.

Ndlebe, a graduate of Tshwane University of Technology, was covering the protests as an intern at a digital magazine. But after the march on the Union buildings, when TUT students were called hooligans and accused of the protest violence, Ndeble responded in an opinion piece.

"There were no convenient hashtags or journalists from all over the country live-tweeting from our campus about our struggles," she wrote. "Are we not important enough in the government's eyes to be heard on our own without support from Wits, Stellenbosch and UCT?"

But why did they have to break things and throw rocks and light things on fire?

"There is no protest that will be resolved without violence," she says. "It's the only way the management listens."

Before the close of 2015, the middle classes had appropriated the students' anger, as well as their hashtag convention. The cries for "Zuma Must Fall" began after the president sacked his well-respected finance minister and replaced him with someone completely unknown, only to reappoint someone else just days -- and massive market repercussions -- later.

Tanya Pampalone is a Johannesburg-based journalist. You can follow her on Twitter here.
SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court jailed an American for 20 years on Friday for the murder of a South Korean student at a Burger King restaurant in 1997, after he was extradited from the United States following the acquittal of another American. The murder of Cho Joong-pil, 22, in the Itaewon nightlife district, which is popular with expatriates in the South Korean capital, fueled discontent towards U.S. military bases in the country. South Korean officials said Arthur John Patterson, whose father was a civilian contractor to the U.S. military, fled to the United States after Cho was found dead on the floor of the restaurant bathroom with stab wounds to his neck and body. Patterson, 36, was extradited to South Korea last year. He told the court he had been living in Los Angeles. "The court decided on a life sentence, but in view of the defendant's age, of being under 18 at the time, the sentence will be 20 years in prison," Judge Shim Kyu-hong said. The case has drawn intense public interest in South Korea, where the conduct of U.S. military personnel is scrutinized. This month, Patterson repeated his claim of innocence in the closing arguments of his trial. Patterson's friend, Edward Lee, also a U.S. citizen, was initially sentenced to life in prison for the murder but was later acquitted on appeal due to lack of evidence. Both men admitted to witnessing the murder but accused each other of killing Cho. Patterson's lawyer could not immediately be reached after the verdict for comment on whether he would appeal. There are some 28,500 U.S. troops based in South Korea. (Reporting by Dahee Kim; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Seoul (AFP) - A South Korean court on Friday handed down a 20-year jail sentence on a US citizen charged while still a teenager with brutally murdering a Korean man nearly two decades ago.

Arthur Patterson, now 36, was extradited from the United States in September last year to face trial in Seoul on charges of murdering Jo Jung-Pil, who was stabbed multiple times with a knife in a fast-food restaurant toilet.

Patterson, who was the 17-year-old son of a US military contractor at the time, had denied any involvement in the crime in the nightlife district of Itaewon, close to the US military base in Seoul.

Prosecutors, however, argued that Patterson had shown a "devil-like brutality" in stabbing Jo, who appeared to be a complete stranger to him, to death for no apparent reason.

Twenty years in jail is a maximum penalty in South Korea for an offender under the age of 18.

Patterson was initially tried in 1997 as an accomplice, while Edward Lee, a Korean-American man who was at the scene, was charged with murder. Both accused the other of killing Jo.

Patterson served 18 months in prison for lesser charges including obstruction of justice, while Lee was sentenced to 20 years in jail for murder.

In 1998, Patterson was released as part of an amnesty programme, only to find himself a murder suspect again after Lee was acquitted on appeal for lack of evidence.

He fled to the United States a year later after investigators failed to renew his travel ban -- a mistake that sparked a storm of criticism.

The murder was made into a hit movie in 2009, refuelling public anger over the crime and forcing South Korean prosecutors to reopen the case.

Patterson was formally charged in absentia with Jo's murder in 2011, and extradition proceedings began.
As state legislative sessions shift into high gear, lawmakers are proposing significant new ethics and transparency laws in nearly a dozen states, in part as a result of the Centers State Integrity Investigation.

Many of these states have suffered recent statehouse scandals. But elected officials, advocates and editorial boards have also seized on the State Integrity Investigation report to argue for changes in how business is done in their capitals.

The State Integrity Investigation is a data-driven evaluation of state government accountability and transparency, published in November by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. The best score, a C, went to Alaska, while 11 states received failing grades.

The project found that in most states, ethics and open records laws are riddled with loopholes while the government agencies meant to enforce them are often toothless and underfunded. Many states that earned poor grades could see improvement if the new proposals are enacted. The barriers are significant, and calls for reform arent new, but the mood appears right in several states, where scandal and public outcry have put significant pressure on officials to act.

In Missouri, which has no limits on the size of campaign contributions or lobbyist gifts, a series of scandals has helped push several single-issue ethics bills through the Legislature. This week, the House passed a bill that would prohibit lawmakers from accepting gifts offered by lobbyists. The state earned a D- in the Centers report, which spurred a long editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in November. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has said that ethics reforms would be his top priority this year, his last in office. But despite the moves so far, Republicans in the legislature appear unlikely to advance broader reforms such as a cap on campaign contributions.

In New York, where successive rounds of ethics reforms in recent years have failed to slow a wave of prosecutions of public officials, Gov. Andrew Cuomo once again called for major changes to the states campaign finance and ethics laws. Last year, publication of the states D- grade came amid the convictions of the former speaker of the Assembly and former leader of the Senate in separate federal corruption trials. Both scandals and the Centers report highlighted Albanys infamous political culture, where many lawmakers earn substantial incomes working as private lawyers or consultants for some of the same industries that contribute millions of dollars to their political campaigns.

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In his state of the state speech this month, Cuomo called for closing a major loophole in the states campaign finance law that allows for essentially unlimited contributions from corporate entities and also for a cap on lawmakers outside income. Many lawmakers have called for similar changes, but because of the nature of New York politics, the effort will likely live or die as part of budget negotiations later this year.

Reformers in other states may face longer odds. Lawmakers in Minnesota and Colorado and Washingtons attorney general have all cited their states grades in proposing bills that would make government more transparent and implement stronger conflicts-of-interest rules. The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Seattle Times cited the State Integrity Investigation grades in editorials praising those efforts.

In Vermont, one of eight states without an independent ethics commission, Sen. Anthony Pollina introduced a bill to change that. The move is backed by Secretary of State Jim Condos, who has cited the states D- grade as evidence of the need for such a commission. But some lawmakers have questioned the costs associated with creating and staffing the commission and also whether the state constitution would even allow for it. Several scandals have helped build support for reforms, including an investigation into the states attorney general for allegedly violating campaign finance rules and the recent suspension of a senator who has been charged with sexually assaulting two women.

This story is part of State Integrity 2015. How do each state's laws and practices deter corruption, promote transparency and enforce accountability?. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

Don't miss another Accountability investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

Lawmakers from both parties have also proposed creating an ethics commission in New Mexico, where former Secretary of State Dianna Duran recently completed a 30-day sentence after pleading guilty last year to stealing campaign funds. While Gov. Susana Martinez has not indicated whether she supports the move, she did recently call for improving campaign finance reporting and closing the revolving door between public office and lobbying. New Mexico earned an overall grade of D-, scoring failing grades in the categories of ethics enforcement agencies, political financing and legislative accountability. Earlier this month, the nonprofit news organization New Mexico In Depth published a special report on the new session focusing on transparency and accountability and drawing extensively on the State Integrity Investigation.

South Dakotans will not have to wait for their representatives to pass tougher laws. This month, the secretary of state approved a measure for this years ballot that would enact sweeping changes, including creating an independent ethics commission and limiting gifts from lobbyists. The measure is the result of a bipartisan campaign that was inspired by the states failing grade in the first State Integrity Investigation, published in 2012. After the state earned another F in November, the leaders of the ballot drive penned a column in the Argus Leader to build support for their campaign.

Nine states have yet to open their legislative sessions, while four do not meet for regular sessions at all this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

This story is part of State Integrity 2015. How do each state's laws and practices deter corruption, promote transparency and enforce accountability?. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

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Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
As the residents of Flint, Michigan, continue to rely on the private sector to help temporarily undo the injury of Flints water crisis, the insults keep coming.

According to documents obtained by Progress Michigan on Thursday, state employees in Flint were provided coolers filled with bottled water in January of 2015 as concerns continued grew about the quality of the water there.

Progress Michigan

The notice above was issued months before the state officials first demonstrated awareness of the problem. Six months later, in July, Dennis Muchmore, Michigan Governor Rick Snyders former chief of staff, wrote an email to a health official in which he expressed frustration that Flint residents are basically getting blown off by us over their concerns about the water. That was still two months before a lead advisory was issued in Flint when researchers found high lead levels in the residents bloodstreams.

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As Bryce Covert at ThinkProgress notes, only then were residents told not to drink the water and a public health emergency was declared by the Genesee County Health Department in October. As we noted earlier, the city of Flint issued a state of emergency in December.

It wasnt until earlier this monthover a year after the sending of bottled water to state employees had been approvedthat Snyder also declared a state of emergency for Flint. While blame for the crisis has been abundant, much of it has fallen on Snyders office since he appointed Flints emergency managers. Calls for comment to Snyders office about the release of documents on Thursday were not immediately returned.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
London (AFP) - A heterosexual couple who want to enter a civil partnership -- created for gay couples -- lost their legal challenge Friday at England's High Court, but were given the right to appeal.

Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld, both academics who live in London, argued that civil partnerships only being available to same-sex couples was incompatible with equality law.

Civil partnerships, which confer essentially the same rights and responsibilities as civil marriage, came into force in England in 2005.

Though full same-sex civil marriage was eventually introduced in 2014, civil partnerships remain available to gay couples.

Judge Geraldine Andrews dismissed Keidan and Steinfeld's judicial review action, but gave the couple permission to take their case on to the higher Court of Appeal, because the case raised issues of "wider importance".

Steinfeld, 34, said afterwards they wished to go to the Court of Appeal and challenge Andrews' decision on behalf of the 36,000 people who have signed a petition backing their case.

"We made this claim because the UK government is barring us, and many thousands of opposite-sex couples like us, from the choice of forming a civil partnership, and we want this to change," she said.

Keidan, 39, said it was "now time for parliament to demonstrate its commitment to creating a level playing field for all its citizens by opening up civil partnerships to same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike".

During the hearings, their lawyer claimed that without a civil partnership, the couple would be either forced into a marriage against their consciences or go without the legal privileges they need to bring up their child.

Some countries including France and the Netherlands allow heterosexual couples as well as same-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships.
Aden (AFP) - A suicide bombing killed seven people and wounded seven others Friday night in Aden, the second deadly attack in as many days in Yemen's second city, medics and security sources said.

The bombing targeted a police checkpoint not far from Thursday's suicide attack that killed eight people, including soldiers and civilians, outside the presidential palace in the city, the sources said.

A hospital spokesman confirmed that seven people were killed in Friday's bombing.

There was no immediate claim of responsiblity for the attack but the jihadist Islamic State group said it was responsible for Thursday's bombing.

Al-Qaeda and the rival jihadist IS group both have a presence in Aden, where jihadists occupy government buildings and are seen patrolling several districts and intimidating civilians.

They have claimed a string of attacks and assassinations in recent months.

President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi was in the palace at the time of Thursday's attack but unharmed, a government official said.

Aden has become the temporary headquarters of Hadi's government as it battles to retake large parts of Yemen from Shiite Huthi rebels.

Hadi fled to Aden after escaping house arrest in the capital Sanaa, which was overran by the Huthis in September 2014.

The rebels then moved south forcing Hadi to flee in March to Riyadh.

But Hadi loyalists backed by Saudi-led air strikes recaptured the port city of Aden but they are still battling to retake other provinces and push toward the rebel-held capital.

The United Nations says more than 5,800 people have been killed in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, about half of them civilians, since the coalition air campaign was launched 10 months ago.
Bangkok (AFP) - Swedish detectives have travelled to Thailand to look into the disappearance of a Hong Kong-based bookseller who vanished in the kingdom and later resurfaced in Chinese custody, Thai police said Friday.

Gui Minhai, a Swedish national, went missing from his seaside apartment in the resort city of Pattaya in October.

He was one of five people from a Hong Kong publishing house known for producing salacious titles critical of Chinese leaders to have disappeared in recent months as Beijing pursues dissidents far beyond its borders.

Major General Apichart Suriboonya, head of Thai Foreign Affairs Police, told AFP Swedish officers had arrived in the kingdom.

"They came here, not for investigation because they have no legal rights to do so. But they have been sent to help expedite the Thai police investigation," he said.

Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily reported that Swedish detectives visited Gui's apartment on Wednesday, interviewing residents and taking copies of the building's surveillance footage.

Major General Apichart did not comment on the reports, nor did the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok.

Gui is one of at least three Beijing critics who have disappeared in recent months in Thailand, raising alarms that Thai military rulers are secretly sending dissidents back to China or allowing the Chinese free reign to pursue them on Thai soil.

Thailand's junta, which has cosied up to Beijing since seizing power in May 2014, has remained largely silent on what their policy is towards refoulement to China.

In the summer they forcibly returned 109 Uighur refugees, only announcing the move after it had taken place, causing widespread international condemnation, including from the UN.

The New York Times has also reported that a fourth man, Chinese dissident journalist Li Xin, also went missing a little over a fortnight ago while trying to seek refuge in Thailand.

The paper reported that he was last heard of making his way to the Laos border from where he intended to re-enter Thailand and claim asylum.

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Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told AFP it had no information on Li Xin but said that Thai and Swedish officials were "cooperating" on Gui's disappearance.

After nearly two months of silence, Chinese state TV earlier this month broadcast a video of Gui confessing to a years-old mainland drink-driving offence and saying he did not want Stockholm to interfere with his case.

Sweden has previously condemned China's detention of Gui, and the recent arrest and eventual release of Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin, as "unacceptable".

China-born Gui and his four missing colleagues were rumoured to be preparing a tell-all book about the love life of President Xi Jinping.

One of his publishing house co-workers, British citizen Lee Bo, disappeared from Hong Kong, fuelling concerns freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city are being eroded.

The others are believed to have been apprehended in southern China.
Geneva (AFP) - Multiple attempts to resolve the Syrian conflict since 2011 have failed.

With new peace talks to open on Friday in Geneva, here is a recap of previous efforts:

ARAB INITIATIVES

- November 2, 2011: The Arab League says it has reached an agreement with Syria to end the fighting, free detainees and get troops to pull out of cities. None of the clauses is respected. The League eventually suspends Syria and approves unprecedented sanctions against it. In early 2012, Damascus formally rejects the plan and says it is determined to crush the rebellion.

ANNAN PLAN

- April 12, 2012: UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan manages to establish a truce, but it collapses within just a few hours.

GENEVA I

- June 30, 2012: A so-called action group meeting in Geneva says it has reached agreement on a Syrian transition of power, but quickly reveals differing interpretations of the deal.

The group consists of Arab states, Britain, China, France, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Washington says it marks the start of a "post-Assad" period, in reference to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Beijing and Moscow maintain that it is up to Syrians to determine their own future.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGREEMENT

- September 14, 2013: Russia and the United States agree in Geneva to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons, after an attack using the banned arsenal and attributed to Assad's regime kills hundreds near Damascus.

The deal averts a threatened US-led strike against Syria at the last minute.

GENEVA II

- January 22-31, 2014: Negotiations take place in Switzerland between representatives of the Syrian government, backed by Russia, and opposition figures, backed by the United States. They end without results.

On February 15 UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who has replaced Annan, puts an end to the talks. He resigns on May 13, after more than 20 months of fruitless efforts. In July he is replaced by Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura.

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RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE/VIENNA TALKS

- October 30, 2015: A month after the start of Russian air strikes in Syria at the request of Damascus, 17 countries, including Russia, the United States, France, and for the first time Iran, meet in Vienna to find a political solution. The regime and opposition are absent from the talks. The meeting breaks up with participants in deep disagreement over the fate of Assad.

- November 14: World diplomats gathered in Vienna agree on a fixed calendar for Syria but remain sharply at odds over Assad.

- December 10: The main Syrian opposition groups, meeting in Riyadh, say they are open to talks with the regime but demand that Assad step down at the start of a transitional period.

- December 18: For the first time, the 15 members of the UN Security Council unanimously adopt a plan for a political solution, including negotiations between the opposition and the regime as well as a ceasefire.

GENEVA III

- January 20, 2016: Syria's largest opposition coalition names Mohammed Alloush, a political leader of the Saudi-backed armed group Jaish al-Islam, as its chief negotiator for talks with the regime. The tolerated domestic opposition criticises the appointment, while Russia describes his group as "terrorist".

- January 28: The Saudi-backed opposition High Negotiations Committee says it will not attend Geneva negotiations until an agreement is reached on aid entering besieged towns.

- January 29: The HNC continues, however, debates in Riyadh on attending the peace talks that are due to start in the afternoon in Geneva. The UN says De Mistura will meet first with a Syrian government delegation and then with other participants.
By Lesley Wroughton QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday he expects Canada to announce in the coming weeks what role it will play in an international coalition fighting Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who won an election last October promising to withdraw six fighter jets from a U.S.-led coalition attacking the militants, has yet to state what Canada plans to do once those planes are pulled out. "I am absolutely confident that the prime minister and his security team are working on ways to continue their significant contribution" to the coalition, Kerry told reporters after meeting his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Quebec City. "While they may have made a choice with respect to one particular component of that effort, that does not reflect on their overall commitment and capacity to contribute significantly to the road ahead, and we are confident they will," Kerry said. Kerry added, "I look forward in the next weeks to the prime minister's notification to us of what the plan going forward will be." Stephane Dion, Canada's foreign minister, said Canada was exploring other ways it could contribute to the coalition. "We have received a number of requests, in particular from our American friends, and this helps us better understand how we can deploy our efforts," Dion said. Kerry and Dion said they would have further discussions on the issue at a meeting of coalition partners in Rome next week. The three ministers discussed Haiti's leadership crisis and called on Haitian politicians to move ahead "as quickly and properly as possible." Thousands of supporters of Michel Martelly, Haiti's outgoing president, have been taking to the streets in the capital, demanding speedy elections. Martelly is due to leave office on Feb. 7 but has no elected replacement. The meeting also addressed ways to collaborate in fighting the Zika virus, which has been linked to severe birth defects and is spreading quickly through the Americas. Kerry congratulated Mexico on the arrest of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, although he did not say when Mexico would extradite him to the United States. Guzman was caught this month after six months on the run. He had led a cartel that smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States and fought vicious turf wars with other Mexican gangs. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Will Dunham)
By Tom Miles and Tom Perry GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's main opposition group agreed to travel to Geneva, where the United Nations on Friday opened peace talks to end the country's five-year-old war, but said it wanted to discuss humanitarian issues before engaging in political negotiations. On the ground, opponents of President Bashar al-Assad said they were facing a Russian-backed military onslaught, with hundreds of civilians reported to be fleeing as the Syrian army and allied militia tried to capture a suburb of Damascus and finish off rebels defending it. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura had invited the Syrian government and an opposition umbrella group to Geneva for "proximity talks", in which they would meet in separate rooms. Until the last minute, the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) had refused to go. The group, which includes both armed and political opponents of Assad, had insisted it wanted an end to air strikes and sieges of towns and the release of detainees before talks could start. Late on Friday, the HNC said it was going to Geneva, having received guarantees that its demands, outlined in a U.N. Security Council resolution last month, would be met, but it made clear its engagement in the process would initially be limited. "The HNC will go to Geneva tomorrow to discuss these humanitarian issues which will pave the way into the political process of negotiations," spokesman Salim al-Muslat told the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath. The HNC said it had drawn up a list of 3,000 Syrian women and children in government prisons who should be released. SUNDAY MEETING De Mistura opened the talks on Friday by meeting the Syrian government delegation. He said that while he had not yet received formal notice that the HNC would attend, he expected to meet its delegation on Sunday. "Theyve raised an important point of their concern, they would like to see a gesture from the government authorities regarding some kind of improvement for the people of Syria during the talks, for instance release of prisoners, or some lifting of sieges," de Mistura said. But he added this was a human rights point and "not even an issue to negotiate", and had strongly suggested the best way to get such measures implemented would be to start negotiating in Geneva, by proxy or directly. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had made a major push to get the HNC delegation to Geneva, and the group said he had contacted it by phone to urge it to attend. "Secretary Kerry has been in touch with all of his counterparts, including this morning with (Russian Foreign Minister) Sergei Lavrov ... and with others, trying to find a way, a formula, in which we can urge the delegation or some version of the delegation to show up here," a senior U.S. official said. The Syrian government delegation, headed by United Nations ambassador Bashar al Jaafari, arrived at the talks on Friday afternoon but made no statement. Another major force, the Kurds who control much of northeast Syria and have proven one of the few groups capable of winning territory from Islamic State, were excluded from the talks after Turkey demanded they be kept away. The Kurds say their absence means the talks are doomed to fail. GOVERNMENT MOMENTUM International diplomacy has so far seen only failures in a 5-year-old multi-sided ethno-sectarian civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes while drawing in regional states and global powers. De Mistura's two predecessors both quit in apparent frustration after staging failed peace conferences. Since the last talks collapsed in 2014, Islamic State fighters surged across Syria and Iraq declaring a "caliphate", the United States and its European and Arab allies launched air strikes against them, and Russia joined in last year with a separate air campaign to support Assad. Moscow's intervention in particular has altered the balance of power on the ground, giving strong momentum to government forces and reversing months of rebel gains. The Syrian military and allied militia are seeking to build on gains in western Syria, and have turned their focus to opposition-held suburbs southwest of Damascus. The aim is to crush rebels in the district of Daraya to secure the nearby military airport at Mezzeh, said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with sources on the ground. Rebels had rejected a government deadline for them to withdraw from the suburb of Mouadamiya - home to 45,000 people - by Friday, said Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for rebel group Alwiyat Seif al-Sham. More than 500 families had fled, he said. "They are suffering a shortage of food, medicine, milk - there is no power, nothing," he said, adding that 16 barrel bombs had been dropped on Friday. A Syrian military source denied the use of barrel bombs, which have been widely documented in the war, and accused the opposition of exaggerating the conditions. "There has been progress by the army in the last days, some successes particularly in the Daraya area," the source said. Rebels say the fighting is of more concern to them than the fate of the negotiations. Asked about the future of the talks, Shami told Reuters he was "a bit busy" dealing with the fighting. (Addional reporting by Lisa Barrington, Ali Abdelaty and Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's main opposition body has agreed to travel to Geneva, where peace talks began on Friday, following a phone call from the U.S. Secretary of State and after receiving guarantees that their demands would be met, its spokesman said on Friday. The High Negotiations Committee (HNC) has repeatedly said the Syrian government and its allies must first halt bombing and lift blockades of besieged areas before it will join the talks, which have been delayed by four days, and signalled it would still leave the process if these measures are not implemented. "Guarantees came that (United Nations) Resolution 2254 would be implemented in full ... so we will go to Geneva to discuss humanitarian issues," spokesman Salim al-Muslat told the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on Friday. "The HNC will go to Geneva tomorrow to discuss these humanitarian issues which will pave the way into the political process of negotiations," al-Muslat said. After receiving invitations to the talks this week, the Saudi-backed HNC wrote to the U.N. secretary general requesting clarification on the implementation of steps outlined in a December U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the peace process. These included the lifting of blockades on besieged areas, a halt to attacks on civilian areas, and a release of arbitrarily detained people. The decision to travel from Riyadh, where the HNC has been meeting to debate their attendance, came after a telephone call with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and after receiving an answer from the U.N. to their letter. "We have agreed on a certain time period, which I cannot disclose now," al-Muslat said. "Perhaps the coming days will show a serious approach to this issue. If there is then we will continue. If we don't see a serious approach then there will be a different decision." The Syrian government's delegation arrived on Friday at the talks that U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura hopes to convene in an indirect format with the aim of ending the five-year-old war that has killed 250,000 people. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Geneva (AFP) - Syria's largest mainstream opposition group said Friday that it would attend UN-led peace talks in Switzerland, easing fears that it would boycott a process aimed at ending the tangled civil war.

The Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC) said it would "take part in the political process to test the seriousness of the other side through discussions with the UN team", after four days of suspense over whether it would join.

Despite Western pressure to attend, the HNC had previously said it would not take part in the Geneva talks without an agreement on relief reaching hundreds of thousands of people stuck in besieged Syrian towns.

A senior HNC delegate told AFP the Committee will send "about 30, 35 people" to the talks, which got under way on Friday in the biggest political push yet to end Syria's almost five-year war.

In a tweet, however, the HNC stressed that the group would be there "to participate in discussions with the @UN, not for negotiations".

Backed by external powers embroiled in Syria's war, the talks are seeking to end a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and fuelled the meteoric rise of the extremist Islamic State group.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, France and Saudi Arabia, where the HNC is based, welcomed the late decision to send a delegation.

Representatives from the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived earlier on Friday for their first meeting with UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura.

The 16-member delegation met with the UN mediator for nearly three hours, and left the body's headquarters without speaking to media.

- US, Saudi guarantees -

De Mistura said his preliminary talks with the HNC could happen on either Saturday or Sunday, telling reporters they would have "some work... certainly on Monday".

The HNC had previously demanded an end to bombardments of civilians, as well as an agreement on humanitarian aid to ease suffering in besieged towns, before agreeing to take part in the talks.

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And the group asked for "clarifications" after the UN invited other opposition figures who are thought to have closer ties to Moscow and limited influence on the ground.

The HNC and its Saudi and Turkish backers have also objected to the participation of Syrian Kurdish groups that have made key advances against Islamic State extremists in northern Syria in recent months.

Asaad al-Zoabi, head of the HNC delegation, told Sky News Arabia the group had received the guarantees it wanted from Washington and Saudi Arabia, adding the delegation would arrive Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

The HNC did not announce who it would send to Geneva, but it had earlier said that a future delegation would include women and members of religious minorities.

In a controversial move, the alliance has named Mohammed Alloush, member of the Army of Islam rebel group, as its chief negotiator.

Formed in December after months of Saudi efforts, the HNC is the largest alliance of mainstream opposition groups in Syria.

- 'Proximity talks' -

Syria's civil war, which has been raging for almost five years, has destabilised the already restive Middle East and drawn in regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey but also the United States and Russia.

It has also forced millions of Syrians from their homes, many of them into neighbouring states and further afield, causing a major political headache for the European Union which received more than one million migrants in 2015.

The negotiations would not be face-to-face between the regime and its opponents. Instead they are "proximity talks" where go-betweens shuttle between the different participants.

They are part of an ambitious plan launched in Vienna in November by a raft of key actors including Russia, the United States, Gulf states, Iran and Turkey that foresees elections within 18 months.

Russia, however, which has helped Assad's regime make inroads against rebels with air strikes since September, says Kurdish involvement is essential.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose Shiite country also backs Assad and is at daggers drawn with Sunni regional rival Saudi Arabia, said during a visit to Paris on Thursday that he hoped the process would be successful.

"But I would be surprised if they succeed very quickly because in Syria there are groups who are at war with the central government and also amongst themselves," French media quoted him as saying.
By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of al Qaeda's Syrian wing tried unsuccessfully at a recent meeting to convince rival Islamist factions to merge into one unit, several insurgency sources have told Reuters. Abu Mohamad al-Golani, head of the Nusra Front, even suggested he was willing to change the name of his group if the others, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham organization, agreed to the deal, the sources said. But he made clear that Nusra would not cut its ties with al Qaeda, and its allegiance would remain to Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over as leader after U.S. Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. Much was riding on the outcome of the meeting, which the sources said took place about 10 days ago. Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham are the most powerful groups in northern Syria: when they briefly teamed up with other Islamists last year in an alliance called the Fatah Army, the rebels scored one of their biggest victories by seizing the city of Idlib. Some rebels believed a merger would create a stronger rival to Islamic State and might attract much-needed military support and recognition from regional and international powers. But the leaders left without an agreement, and the sources said the atmosphere was tense, with Nusra blaming Ahrar al-Sham for the failure. A few days later, members of the two groups clashed in the towns of Salqin and Harem in Idlib province, near the border with Turkey. Several fighters were killed on both sides, but other insurgent groups brokered a quick ceasefire. Jihadi sources, including some from Ahrar al-Sham, say it is only a matter of time before another battle between the two erupts. They say the rift between them is getting deeper, although mediation continues. One restraining factor has been an imminent assault by the Syrian army and its allied forces in northwestern Syria. "The situation is charged, the failure of initiatives could cause an explosion," said a jihadi in Idlib who is close to the two groups. "What happened just avoided all-out conflict, all-out battle. But it will be hard to tell what will happen in the future." Outright war between Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham would still further complicate the five-year Syrian conflict, in which rebel groups are mushrooming under different slogans and sometimes fighting each other. It would come hard on the heels of the United Nations' failure this week to bring rival parties together for peace talks in Geneva, the first attempt in two years to end a war that has killed a quarter of a million people. LACK OF TRUST Distrust between Nusra and Ahrar is mutual. Nusra accuses its Islamist rival of being a front for Turkey, addressing not the "interests of Muslims" but the agenda of Ankara in order to be part of a future political deal to rule Syria. Ahrar presents itself as a Syrian nationalist force, in contrast to al Qaeda's global jihadist ideology. It recently joined a Saudi-backed Syrian opposition council set up to join the U.N. peace talks, although the council is demanding an end to air strikes and blockades by the Syrian government and its allies before it will take part. Ahrar and other groups are pushing Nusra to cut its ties with al Qaeda as a step towards becoming more fully engaged in the struggle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "The problem is with the Qaeda link and its ideological implications. Nusra insists on its agenda, it doesn't want to maneuver at all," said a frustrated Ahrar commander, accusing it of "damaging the revolution". In the first few weeks after last year's capture of Idlib, the two groups divided responsibilities and territory without problems. But gradually divisions began to surface, as Ahrar and other insurgents became wary of Nusra and accused it of trying to seize power and sidelining them. "Nusra cannot work with others, they have a dominating project, they do not accept the others," said a fighter from Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib via the Internet. Some insurgents are suspicious of Nusra's long-term agenda in the region and globally, distrusting its declaration that it has no ambitions outside Lebanon and Syria. "This declared goal is an interim one. After it wins and establishes itself in Syria, they will move to the next step, which objects to the goal of the revolution," said an Islamist rebel who is allied with Ahrar al-Sham. "They will join the global jihad and this is against our revolution. Our revolution is limited to Syria." NO JEANS On the ground, Nusra imposes strict Islamic rules in villages and towns where it shares power. It has banned women from wearing make-up, showing their hair or wearing tight clothes like jeans, and applied a policy of segregation between the sexes. All these moves have served to assert its dominance, while provoking other groups. "There is no group on the ground that actually objects to having an Islamic government but the implementation and methods are different," said another Islamist fighter from a group that is allied with Ahrar. Highlighting the dilemma facing Syrian rebels, a local commander of an Islamist brigade that works closely with Ahrar al-Sham said: "It will be difficult for Nusra to disengage from Qaeda and it will be difficult for us to work with them. The situation is really difficult. Things are complicated and interlocked all together." Asked how long the groups could avoid hostilities, an Ahrar al-Sham military commander said: "We can avoid fighting with Nusra for now. For how long? That is a difficult question. Only God knows." (Writing by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - The main opposition party in Tanzania's semi-autonomous Zanzibar islands called for a boycott of a planned re-run of disputed presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections on the Indian Ocean archipelago on March 20. Zanzibar's electoral body annulled a previous ballot on Oct. 25 on grounds of fraud. The opposition Civic United Front (CUF) says it won those elections and has warned of violence on the islands if the rescheduled ballot goes ahead. Tanzania has been one of Africa's most politically stable nations but Zanzibar has been a hotbed of opposition to central government, with strong secessionist and Islamist voices. Polls on the islands are usually closely fought and often disputed. "The Civic United Front (CUF) will not take part in the vote re-run ... because it is illegal. A lawful election has already been conducted (in October)," the party said late on Thursday. "We urge all the people of Zanzibar ... to boycott this unlawful re-run election," it said in a statement. Zanzibar's President Ali Mohamed Shein of the ruling CCM party stood in the previous polls against his main challenger, Seif Sharrif Hamad of the CUF party, who has lost four elections since 1995 by narrow margins. There were other presidential candidates from smaller parties, but elections in Zanzibar have always been a tight two-horse race between the CCM, which has ruled mainland Tanzania for more than five decades, and the CUF. The CUF has warned that violence could erupt on the islands if fresh elections are held. It says a dialogue to form a government of all parties under its leadership should be held rather than a new vote. (Reporting by Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala; Editing by Drazen Jorgic and Gareth Jones)
(Photo Illustration: Yahoo News, photo: AP)

From his prison cell, Ted Kaczynski  the Unabomber, who terrified the nation in the 1980s and early 1990s  has carried on a remarkable correspondence with thousands of people all over the world. As the 20th anniversary of his arrest approaches, Yahoo News is publishing a series of articles based on his letters and other writings, housed in an archive at the University of Michigan. They shed unprecedented light on the mind of Kaczynski  genius, madman and murderer.

They were workout buddies who had little in common  except for infamous reputations and a skill with explosives.

But housed in neighboring cells on the same secluded wing at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colo., Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, struck up an odd friendship with two other notorious terrorists of the 1990s: Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Ramzi Yousef, who planted a bomb in the World Trade Center in 1993 that killed six people, a precursor to the 9/11 attacks.

Locked in their tiny cells 23 hours a day, the three at one point shared the same recreation time. Outdoors, the environment was bleak: an all-concrete yard so deeply recessed that some former prisoners have likened it to standing in an empty swimming pool. But inmates were escorted to individual wire-mesh cages  about 12 by 18 feet, Kaczynski estimated  where they could speak to each other under the watch of guards.

Ramzi Yousef, Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh. (AP Photo)

In his early months in prison, Kaczynski became close enough to McVeigh and Yousef that they shared books and talked religion and politics. He even came to know their birthdays, according to letters he wrote about them to others.

You may be interested to know that your birthday, April 27, is the same as that of Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, Kaczynski wrote to a pen pal in 1999, according to a letter on file at his archive of personal papers at the University of Michigan Library. I mentioned this to Ramzi, and he wants me to tell you that since your birthday is the same as his, you and he must have similar personalities.  He may have some degree of belief in astrology.

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Slideshow: Unabomber  Ted Kaczynski >>>

Known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, ADX is considered to be Americas toughest prison, where the nations most dangerous criminals are locked away and meant to be forgotten. But for Kaczynski, who had lived as a hermit for more than 20 years in his remote cabin in the backwoods of Montana, prison was, in many ways, a social awakening. For the first time he had regular, daily contact with other people, even though it was largely with prisoners who had committed equally horrible crimes.

Kaczynskis letters offer an unprecedented glimpse into what life is like inside ADX, a so-called supermax prison that has been widely criticized for its use of solitary confinement. Kaczynski arrived there in May 1998, shortly after he was given eight life sentences without parole for his 17-year bombing spree, which killed three and left dozens injured. According to his personal papers, Kaczynski so detested the idea of spending the rest of his life in prison that he actually wanted the death penalty.

Though he longed for freedom and mourned the loss of his beloved Montana, Kaczynski admitted to pen pals that ADX wasnt so terrible as far as prisons went  though he might have been better equipped than most for the lonely existence of a small, enclosed space. (His 12-by-7-foot jail cell is not much smaller than his 12-by-10-foot cabin, which didnt have running water or electricity.)

I consider myself to be in a (relatively) fortunate situation here, Kaczynski wrote in a February 2000 letter. As correctional institutions go, this place is well-administered. Its clean, the food is good, and its quiet, so that I can sleep, think and write (usually) without being distracted by a lot of banging and shouting.

The prisoners on his cell block, he added, are easy to get along with. He had particular praise for Yousef and McVeigh, whom he described in another letter as very intelligent  friendly and considerate of others. Actually, Kaczynski told another pen pal, the people I am acquainted with in this range of cells  are nicer than the majority of people Ive known on the outside.

In July 1999, McVeigh was moved to federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., and though prison rules blocked him from exchanging letters with Kaczynski, they kept up their friendship. Through a journalist at the Buffalo News, McVeigh sent Kaczynski a copy of Into the Wild, writer Jon Krakauers account of a young mans hike into the Alaskan wilderness. (Kaczynski, who is particular about his books, liked it.) Meanwhile, the Unabomber asked his pen pals to send McVeigh magazines and articles, including a subscription to Green Anarchy magazine.

Unabomber Letters

In his archive of personal papers in Ann Arbor, Kaczynski has meticulously documented his time in Colorado. He has filed copies of his annual prisoner evaluations (hes a model inmate with good behavior); book reports for the rare learning courses hes taken, including one in psychology; and even prison newsletters, which offer puzzles to help the inmates bide their time.

Though Kaczynzki mostly offers praise for ADX, he has filed a few complaints or cop outs over the years, mostly about noise and food. The prison, in his view, does not serve enough fresh vegetables. And hes complained repeatedly about food prep. Today, again  I received an undercooked hamburger. Like some other inmates, I refuse to eat undercooked hamburgers, he wrote in a complaint to food services in February 2002. Undercooked meat can transmit diseases, for example, salmonella and tapeworm.  Yet we often get undercooked hamburgers. Would appreciate it if you would make sure the hamburgers are fully cooked.

According to Kaczynskis letters, he wakes up before dawn  around 6 a.m., when his breakfast tray is slid through a slot near the door of his cell. An hour later, in the warm months, hes let outside for roughly an hour of recreation time. I cover about five miles running back and forth in one of my tiny areas that were allowed to exercise in, he wrote in a February 2000 letter, in which he recounted his daily routine.

Back inside, he reads or writes letters or essays until lunch is served, between 10 and 11 a.m. After lunch, he sometimes exercises in his cell  push-ups, sit-ups and so forth  before going back to writing. Sometimes he takes a nap. Dinner is served between 4 and 5 p.m., after which Kaczynski turns back to reading and writing. For a while he was focused on improving his foreign language skills, studying Russian, German and Italian dictionaries at night. He goes to bed around 10 p.m., sometimes listening to a classical music show on a radio station based out of nearby Colorado Springs.

Florence ADMAX USP, where Kaczynski is incarcerated. (Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons)

Though he has no access to the Internet, Kaczynski does read the daily newspaper  often the Denver Post, though at one point he had a subscription to the Los Angeles Times, courtesy of his former attorneys Judy Clarke and Quin Denvir. He also subscribes to a variety of magazines, including the New Yorker, Time magazine and the New York Review of Books. Between that and letters from his extensive list of pen pals, who send him articles printed from the Internet, Kaczynski appears to maintain a close eye on politics and current affairs from his prison cell, constantly opining on current events in his letters.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the lead-up to the war in Iraq, Kaczynski wrote several letters somewhat supportive of the American campaign against Saddam Hussein, calling it warranted. I dont think all these petty little dictators around the world should be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, he wrote in December 2002.

But in the spring of 2003, after the invasion of Iraq had turned up no evidence of weapons-making, the Unabomber changed his tune. Though hed thought the intelligence made a good case for disarming Saddam, now he felt reasonably sure (whatever they may tell themselves or the public) the politicians motives for invading Iraq had more to do with their own egos and their own drive for power than any unselfish desire to prevent the harm that Saddam might do with his weapons programs.

But he pushed back on a correspondents suggestion that the United States was worse than any other superpower in this department. If Russia or China or some other country were top dog, would they behave any better than the U.S.? he said. Besides, he added, everyone was ignoring the real root of the problem: the technology society, his lifelong nemesis.

Still, Kaczynski offered some qualified support for President George W. Bush the following year as he ran for reelection. Though Bush was incompetent, the one good thing is that he is opposed to stem-cell research, Kaczynski wrote. And if the Unabomber could vote, I would seriously consider voting for Bush and his quasi-criminal group.

Why? Well, apart from the stem-cell issue, I figure the re-election of an incompetent president and his irresponsible gang will help weaken the system.

In July 2009, Kaczynski responded to a letter asking him about prison life. Im an atypical prisoner in an atypical prison, he wrote. Prison life is probably boring and monotonous for most prisoners in a maximum-security prison like this one, but it is not so far for me because I have too much, rather than too little to keep me occupied.

Read more in this Yahoo News Special Report: >>
Smartphone game "Color Switch" continues to wow iPhone gamers around the world, while social networking apps "KakaoStory" and "Same" provide new ways to connect with friends and make new ones respectively.

More details on these and other top iPhone apps by country for the week, by number of downloads and recorded on January 28, 2015, can be found below.

USA

Color Switch (Games)

Guide a ball through differently colored geometric shapes with judicious tapping and careful timing. Somewhat similar in concept to the taptastic "Flappy Bird" and Mac & PC game "Flywrench." 105 new challenges, 12 achievements, 10 new obstacles, a 50-character shop among additions in a January 21 update.

itunes.apple.com/app/id1053533457

United Kingdom

Color Switch (Games)

itunes.apple.com/app/id1053533457

Australia

Chrome web browser (Internet)

Google's Chrome browser, including syncing of tabs and bookmarks across multiple devices, voice search, auto-loading of results based on partial entries, machine translation, and leveraging of search history. Latest update switches to using Apple's WKWebView for stability, plus redesigned New Tab page icons and Spotlight integration.

itunes.apple.com/app/id535886823

China

same (Social Networking)

Photo, video, text and music sharing app that allows users to find and join communities of likeminded people.

itunes.apple.com/app/id531761928

Germany

Firefox web browser (Internet)

The Mozilla foundation's contribution to web surfing, emphasizing the security of personal data in conjunction with the usual syncing between devices and visual design quality.

itunes.apple.com/app/id989804926

France

Google app - Search (Utilities)

Combined use app built on voice recognition that can find knowledge or location-based information, set calendar reminders, and use Google Now to keep users up to date with their to-do lists and interests.

itunes.apple.com/app/id284815942

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South Korea

KakaoStory (Social Networking)

Built around photo sharing and based on the existing KakaoTalk company, pulling in status updates, mood buttons, stickers, filters, cover photos and a friend feed.

itunes.apple.com/app/id486244601

Canada

Color Switch (Games)

itunes.apple.com/app/id1053533457

Singapore

Color Switch (Games)

itunes.apple.com/app/id1053533457

India

WhatsApp Messenger (Social Networking)

Multimedia messaging via wifi or carrier data connection, instant integration with existing phone contacts lists, group chats, and recently updated to support voice calls.

itunes.apple.com/app/id310633997

Store rankings courtesy of App Annie.
Paris (AFP) - Home-trained Bold Eagle is a short-priced favourite to star in Sunday's Prix d'Amerique, the trotting showpiece named in hommage to the help the United States' gave France in World War One.

The 95th edition of trotting's equivalent to Australia's Melbourne Cup, England's Epsom Derby or the USA's Breeders Cup Classic, boasts a purse this year of one million euros ($1 million, 761,000).

Staged at French trotting's headquarters at Vincennes on the edge of Paris the Prix d'Amerique's roll of honour reads like a who's who of trotting greats since its first running in 1920.

The 2016 edition, due to be played out in front of a sell-out 40,000-crowd, is destined for Bold Eagle, judging by his cramped odds.

The five-year-old owes his position at the head of the betting to a scintillating display in the Prix du Belgique, where he outclassed his older rivals.

The son of Ready Cash, Prix d'Amerique winner in 2011 and 2012, he is trained by Sebastien Guarato in Normandy with Franck Nivard in the sulky.

The winner of 20 of his 23 starts and just short change shy of one million euros in prize money is a class apart, according to his trainer.

"Bold Eagle is a horse that understands everything," Guarato told AFP.

"He knows his work to the letter, I've never come across a horse like him. He's been racing for a long time at the highest level and stands above the rest.

"He can go in front just as well as coming from behind," he said, although adding that the plan on Sunday was for Nivard to hold him up and come with a late rattle down the straight.

If he succeeds Bold Eagle will be the first winner to start from stall 10 in 30 years.

Bold Eagle's opposition is headed by Up and Quick, last year's French winner driven by Jean-Michel Bazire who was claiming his third Prix d'Amerique.

Norway is doubly represented by Lionel, so named by his breeder Terje Jensen in honour of Barcelona's five time Ballon d'Or superstar Lionel Messi, and Support Justice.

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Italian contender Voltiguer de Myrt returns to try to go one better. He is joined by compatriot Oasis Bi.

Also figuring in the 18-strong cast is Timoko.

The winner of a dozen Grade Is and a survivor of Lyme disease he is out to improve on last year's third in his fifth attempt at cracking trotting's blue riband.
Des Moines (United States) (AFP) - Donald Trump visibly delighted in the drama unleashed by his snub of Thursday's Republican presidential debate -- taunting his rivals and host channel Fox News from a nearby charity event designed to steal their thunder.

The billionaire Republican frontrunner boycotted the debate in Des Moines, Iowa as part of a simmering feud with the conservative news network and went on to schedule a competing event for military veterans, broadcast at the same time and in the same city.

"When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," the 69-year-old mogul said as he opened the event, doubling down on his claim that Fox News -- and particularly its anchor Megyn Kelly -- has shown bias against him.

"I have to go a step further and say that Fox has been extremely nice in the last number of hours," he added. "They called a few minutes ago. Can you come over? I say, hasn't it already started?" he mused.

"They've been very nice and wanted me to go, and apologized and everything," he said. "But once this started, it's for our vets, there was nothing I could do."

Fox News issued a statement saying its chief, Roger Ailes, had spoken to Trump and "acknowledged his concerns." It added that Trump had offered to appear at the debate upon condition Fox News contribute $5 million to his charities, which it refused to do.

Trump had taunted Fox and his rivals before the main debate, saying it would be a "total disaster" with low ratings.

On stage he gloated at the turnout for his dueling charity fundraiser for veterans -- pulled together just a few miles (kilometers) from the Fox News event in just 24 hours, he claimed.

"Look at all the cameras. This is like the Academy Awards. We're actually told we have more cameras than they do by quite a bit."

"We have thousands of people outside trying to get in."

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"For me personally is it a good thing? A bad thing? Will I get more votes? Nobody knows. You're going to like it because we raised over $5 million (for charity) in one day. That's not so bad," he quipped.

Trump's no-show plunged the presidential race into uncharted waters just days before Iowans vote on February 1, opening the months-long nomination process to pick the Democratic and Republican candidates for the November election.

Adding to the spectacle, rival Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who is languishing in polls and attended an undercard event before the main debate, joined Trump at his veterans event, as did low-polling former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
By Megan Cassella, Susan Heavey and Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday escalated a fight with Fox News, using the word "bimbo" in a derogatory tweet about anchorwoman Megyn Kelly after pulling out of a debate only days before the first nominating contest of the 2016 campaign. Trump on Tuesday withdrew from the televised encounter, scheduled for Thursday night in Des Moines, Iowa, in irritation at host Fox News for allowing Kelly to moderate after her questioning angered him in a debate last year. The real estate magnate, who is the Republican front-runner to win the nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, followed up with another round of insults on Wednesday. "I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct," he wrote on Twitter. "Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!" In a later interview on Fox Newss The OReilly Factor, he told host Bill O'Reilly that she was "highly overrated." "I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly. I dont think shes very good at what she does," Trump said. Trump's Republican presidential rivals were quick to criticize the former reality TV star, with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas blistering him in a series of tweets and accusing him of "trembling at being questioned by Kelly." At an event in West Des Moines, Iowa, Cruz openly mocked Trump, calling him a "fragile soul" and "gentle," and renewed his offer to debate Trump one-on-one Saturday evening. "It's not that he's afraid of me," Cruz said to the crowd. "He's afraid of you. He doesn't want to answer questions from the men and women of Iowa about how his record doesn't match what he's selling." Another Republican hopeful, U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, told Fox News that he welcomed Trumps absence from the debate stage because it means "we dont have to put up with a lot of empty blather and boastfulness and calling people names. Trump's decision means the last televised debate before Monday's Iowa caucuses - which kick off the state-by-state nominating race to choose candidates for the presidential election - will not feature the man who has dominated the Republican race for months and leads many opinion polls. It was seen as a bold gamble. 'A RISKY MOVE' Trump has said that in lieu of his debate participation he will hold a fundraiser for veterans. It will be held at Drake University in Des Moines and begin at the same time Thursday as the Fox debate, according to an invitation his campaign circulated Wednesday evening. "It's a risky move; it's very high profile," said Craig Robinson, a former Iowa state party official. "But I'm not sure it will really change anyone's mind about Trump." Trump has been feuding with Fox News since the network hosted the first Republican debate in August, in which Kelly asked Trump about his treatment of women, prompting a stream of insults from the candidate and complaints he was not being treated fairly. He did not renew his attacks on Kelly during an evening rally in Gilbert, South Carolina, but told supporters to watch a rerun of the Fox interview, which he called a "tough interview," when they got home. Cruz, Trump's main rival in Iowa, used the hashtag #DuckingDonald to make fun of Trump for ducking out of the debate and tweeted a mocked-up picture of Trump's head on Scrooge McDuck's body sitting on a pile of money. Cruz, a conservative and a debating champion in college, tweeted a link to "duckingdonald.com," which asked visitors to sign a petition in favor of Cruz and Trump having a side debate. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, another Republican presidential contender, described Trumps decision at such a crucial time as a big mistake that calls into question his ability to be president. Anytime you get a podium and a microphone and 15-20 million people watching in an election campaign, you should take it, Christie told Boston Herald Radio. Another Republican candidate, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said he wanted to focus on keeping the party united in order to beat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, if she becomes the Democratic nominee. "These kinds of theatrics by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are an entertaining sideshow, but they have nothing to do with defeating Hillary Clinton," Rubio said. Not every candidate was convinced Trump would follow through on his pledge to stay away. "He apparently is not going to come to the debate, although Ive got a $20 bet hell show up, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said at a town hall meeting in response to a question. "Poor little Donald, being treated unfairly, he said. Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said Trump was not afraid to debate his rivals or take reporters' questions. He added that Trump would be happy to debate Cruz if the contest, in which 12 Republicans are vying for their party's nomination, narrows. "If it comes down to a two-person race, Donald Trump would be happy to debate him," Lewandowski told ABC's "Good Morning America" program. Fox News, in a statement on Tuesday, said it would not "give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees," but left the door open to Trump attending the debate. The event will be co-hosted by Alphabet Inc's Google. "At the end of the day, Mr. Trump is going to have the last laugh," Lewandowski told MSNBC. (This version of the story corrects 17th paragraph to say Scrooge McDuck, not Donald Duck) (Additional reporting by Steve Holland and James Oliphant in Iowa and Eric Beech and Dustin Volz in Washington; Writing by John Whitesides and Alistair Bell; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Leslie Adler and Lisa Shumaker)
By John Whitesides, Ginger Gibson and Steve Holland DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Even in boycotting a debate with his Republican rivals for the White House, front-runner Donald Trump managed to upstage the event on Thursday with a typical dramatic flourish. Instead of attending a seventh debate, the former reality TV star held a competing event across town that he said raised $6 million for U.S. military veterans. In doing so, he cast a shadow over his rivals, who frequently tossed barbs his way. Trump's gamble that he could leave the battlefield to his rivals for one night appeared to pay off, with just days to go before Iowa holds the first nominating contest of the 2016 election season. No one appeared to emerge as a central challenger to him during the two-hour face-off in Des Moines. Trump's refusal to participate in the debate out of anger that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was a moderator prompted a flurry of last-minute phone calls with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes that failed to resolve their dispute. A Fox News statement said Trump requested that Fox contribute $5 million to his charities in exchange for his attendance, which the network turned down. The debate was the type of event Republicans would routinely have without the flamboyant Trump on stage, and it lacked the electricity that he brings to the party's search for a nominee for the Nov. 8 election. Without Trump on stage, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie found themselves with more room to make their case to voters seeking a more mainstream candidate. Both men have an eye on the Feb. 9 first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, which comes on the heels of the Iowa caucuses on Monday and where an establishment Republican like them might have a better chance of standing out. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, the two top challengers to Trump in Iowa, engaged in squabbles over immigration and national security and did not appear to threaten Trump's lead. He holds the edge over Cruz in polls of Iowa Republicans. Trump's rivals mocked his decision to sit out the debate and found ways to criticize him. "Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz told his rivals, including Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, as the debate opened. His next sentence began: "Now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way." Bush, who has been a frequent target of Trump's attacks, turned a question about religious tolerance into an attack on Trump's proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. "Donald Trump, for example  I mentioned his name again if anybody was missing him  Mr. Trump believed in reaction to peoples fears that we should ban all Muslims. Well, that creates an environment thats toxic in our own country," Bush said. Cruz, after a series of questions, said: "If you ask me one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage." In a swipe at both Trump and Cruz, Rubio chimed in: "Don't worry, I'm not going to leave the stage no matter what you ask me." SOCIAL MEDIA FAVORITE With his veterans' event drawing live TV news coverage on Fox News competitors CNN and MSNBC, Trump had plenty of media attention. He clung to his insistence that Fox News had treated him badly. He has complained that Kelly insulted him at a debate in August and that a statement from the network earlier this week belittled him. Two other Republican candidates, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, joined Trump on stage after participating in a debate of low-polling candidates. Not so former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore. "Im not about to go across town tonight to carry the coat for some billionaire," he said at the "undercard" debate. There was initially some mystery as to which veterans' groups would receive the money raised at the event, which included $1 million from Trump himself. His campaign, in a statement, said the funds would go to 22 different groups it listed online (http://bit.ly/1OTKtuJ). Trump, with just one day's notice on a weeknight, was able to fill to capacity a Drake University hall that holds 700. "I didnt want to be here, to be honest, I wanted to be about five minutes away" at the debate, Trump told the crowd. "When youre treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights - whether we like it or not." Trump dominated social media during the debate, leading the entire Republican pack in Twitter mentions throughout the first half of the debate, according to data from social media analytics firm Zoomph. He was by far the most-searched-for candidate on Google during the first half of the debate, at one point outpacing the second-most-searched-for candidate, Rubio, by nearly four-to-one, according to Google Trends data. Trump's support in opinion polls, much of it from blue-collar men, has not wavered for months despite him insulting Mexican immigrants and Muslims and clashing with Republican establishment figures like Senator John McCain. (Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Iowa, Doina Chiacu and Valerie Volcovici in Washington, Richard Valdmanis in Boston and Emily Flitter in New York; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Peter Cooney and Frances Kerry)
By John Whitesides, Ginger Gibson and Steve Holland DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Even in boycotting a debate with his Republican rivals for the White House, front-runner Donald Trump managed to upstage the event on Thursday with a typical dramatic flourish. Instead of attending a seventh debate, the former reality TV star held a competing event across town that he said raised $6 million for U.S. military veterans. In doing so, he cast a shadow over his rivals, who frequently tossed barbs his way. Trump's gamble that he could leave the battlefield to his rivals for one night appeared to pay off, with just days to go before Iowa holds the first nominating contest of the 2016 election season. No one appeared to emerge as a central challenger to him during the two-hour face-off in Des Moines. Trump's refusal to participate in the debate out of anger that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was a moderator prompted a flurry of last-minute phone calls with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes that failed to resolve their dispute. A Fox News statement said Trump requested that Fox contribute $5 million to his charities in exchange for his attendance, which the network turned down. The debate was the type of event Republicans would routinely have without the flamboyant Trump on stage, and it lacked the electricity that he brings to the party's search for a nominee for the Nov. 8 election. Without Trump on stage, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie found themselves with more room to make their case to voters seeking a more mainstream candidate. Both men have an eye on the Feb. 9 first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, which comes on the heels of the Iowa caucuses on Monday and where an establishment Republican like them might have a better chance of standing out. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, the two top challengers to Trump in Iowa, engaged in squabbles over immigration and national security and did not appear to threaten Trump's lead. He holds the edge over Cruz in polls of Iowa Republicans. Trump's rivals mocked his decision to sit out the debate and found ways to criticize him. "Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz told his rivals, including Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, as the debate opened. His next sentence began: "Now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way." Bush, who has been a frequent target of Trump's attacks, turned a question about religious tolerance into an attack on Trump's proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. "Donald Trump, for example  I mentioned his name again if anybody was missing him  Mr. Trump believed in reaction to peoples fears that we should ban all Muslims. Well, that creates an environment thats toxic in our own country," Bush said. Cruz, after a series of questions, said: "If you ask me one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage." In a swipe at both Trump and Cruz, Rubio chimed in: "Don't worry, I'm not going to leave the stage no matter what you ask me." SOCIAL MEDIA FAVORITE With his veterans' event drawing live TV news coverage on Fox News competitors CNN and MSNBC, Trump had plenty of media attention. He clung to his insistence that Fox News had treated him badly. He has complained that Kelly insulted him at a debate in August and that a statement from the network earlier this week belittled him. Two other Republican candidates, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, joined Trump on stage after participating in a debate of low-polling candidates. Not so former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore. "Im not about to go across town tonight to carry the coat for some billionaire," he said at the "undercard" debate. There was initially some mystery as to which veterans' groups would receive the money raised at the event, which included $1 million from Trump himself. His campaign, in a statement, said the funds would go to 22 different groups it listed online (http://bit.ly/1OTKtuJ). [nL2N15D059] Trump, with just one day's notice on a weeknight, was able to fill to capacity a Drake University hall that holds 700. "I didnt want to be here, to be honest, I wanted to be about five minutes away" at the debate, Trump told the crowd. "When youre treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights - whether we like it or not." Trump dominated social media during the debate, leading the entire Republican pack in Twitter mentions throughout the first half of the debate, according to data from social media analytics firm Zoomph. He was by far the most-searched-for candidate on Google during the first half of the debate, at one point outpacing the second-most-searched-for candidate, Rubio, by nearly four-to-one, according to Google Trends data. Trump's support in opinion polls, much of it from blue-collar men, has not wavered for months despite him insulting Mexican immigrants and Muslims and clashing with Republican establishment figures like Senator John McCain. (Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Iowa, Doina Chiacu and Valerie Volcovici in Washington, Richard Valdmanis in Boston and Emily Flitter in New York; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Peter Cooney and Frances Kerry)
A fight over the future of television is quickly becoming nasty with the industry establishment summoning the involvement of a tech colossus in an effort to stop government interference in the delivery of programming.

On Wednesday, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler put forward a proposal to unlock the cable set-top box and "tear down anti-competitive barriers" that have led to consumers paying on average $231 a year in rental fees. If the FCC votes to accept the plan, and if it survives possible litigation, cable and satellite providers will have to deliver video programming to app and device makers in a format that conforms to specifications set by an independent, open standards body. The proposal is being issued with the goal of having new TV devices enter the market that could give consumers a cheaper way to access and search content.

Wheeler insists that the proposal doesn't amount to a government-mandate and that it won't upset contracts between cable companies and content owners spelling out such features as channel placement, on-demand access and place- and time-shifting. He also has asserted that intellectual property, security and privacy will be sacrosanct in the new system.

But that's not stopping a dubious industry from unleashing the power of the poison pen to cut down Wheeler's plan.

The MPAA, cable and satellite companies and other opposers of the proposal have coalesced into an organization called The Future of TV. On Friday, this group sent out a press release titled, "Secret Google Field Trip To Demonstrate Technology the FCC Says Doesnt Exist."

According to the letter, Congressional staffers "received an unusual off-the-record email Thursday, inviting them to an invite-only meeting at Googles DC office to 'test drive' something called the competitive video solution."

The coalition is suspicious of the timing, wondering how exactly it is that Google is demonstrating a new set-top box just days after the FCC proposal was announced and before any open standards body has gotten a chance to come up with specifications.

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Going just a few inches short of straight-out accusing Google of having some sort of corrupting insider access at the FCC, the coalition muses, "If we didnt know better, we might think Google had a sneak preview of the FCCs new proposal. Or maybe theyre just amazingly confident they will be able to dominate the supposedly 'open' standards setting process, ramming through specs cooked up in Googles Silicon Valley labs."

The invective hardly stops there.

After raising doubts about the prospect of a truly open regulatory process, Google is flat-out charged with spying on its users. The press release speaks about TV viewers who "already endure Google reading their email and tracking their Internet searches  and could now be hoodwinked into handing over detailed, individualized records of what they watch on TV without having to live by any of the privacy protections that Congress requires of other pay TV providers."

Google hasn't yet responded to a request for comment, but it would hardly be much of a surprise if the tech giant addresses word of its "invitation-only, Top Secret meetings" in Washington D.C. with tales of how Hollywood and the telecom behemoths are lobbying in their own right. Interestingly, though, the missive about Google's endeavors comes the morning after frenemies Fox and Google worked together to air a televised debate of Republican presidential contenders.
By Jeffrey Gogo HARARE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Health officials in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, have detected several cases of typhoid fever in the past week, adding to fears that a water crisis will fuel the spread of infectious diseases. The city's health director, Prosper Chonzi, said six cases of typhoid had been confirmed, with more expected to emerge. "The conditions on the ground - frequent water cuts and poor sanitation - are conducive to a typhoid outbreak," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Last year, more than 40 people in Harare were hospitalised due to typhoid, a bacteral infection that causes fever, headaches and constipation or diarrhoea. Health officials have been deployed to affected areas including Hopley, a sprawling township without sewers and tap water, to contain the situation and identify suspected cases. "As long as there is no constant supply of water to residents, we will continue to have sporadic cases of such outbreaks," Chonzi warned. Separately, at Roosevelt High School, nearly 50 students were recently hospitalised due to shigellosis, a diarrhoeal disease that thrives in places with poor water and sanitation. In Zimbabwes biggest referral hospital Parirenyatwa, a 32-year-old nurse who did not want to be named, said she feared the citys worsening water problems could lead to her own two young children falling sick with a deadly waterborne disease. I live in the townships, and there we do not have water four days of the week from 4am to 10pm, and no water at all for the other three days, she said, tending to a child suffering from severe diarrhoea. When available, the water is visibly dirty, brownish or greenish in colour, and smells like raw sewage, she added. The city authorities deny the water coming from Harare's taps is polluted. But it is clear that frequent and prolonged droughts - including the current dry spell linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon - have wreaked havoc on Zimbabwes water supplies. POLLUTED LAKE As Harare struggles through its third drought since 2013, the citys main reservoir, Lake Chivero, cannot keep up with water demand for domestic use and irrigation. In December, the city was forced to cut its already inadequate household water supply by 18 percent to 450 million litres a day, just over half of daily needs, leaving thousands of residents without enough safe water for drinking and washing. As a result, Harares inhabitants fear an impending epidemic, like the 2008-2009 cholera crisis that originated in the capital, killing 4,000 people and affecting 100,000 more across the country. As drought has shrunk Chiveros water levels, siltation is making things worse. The lakes capacity has shrunk one fifth in the last 60 years, the Environmental Management Agency says. In late 2015, Chivero was only 40 percent full, before a bout of heavy rain raised it to just over 70 percent, according to the Zimbabwe National Water Authority. But water volume isn't the only problem. City spokesman Michael Chideme said the lake was also heavily polluted with raw sewage and industrial chemical waste, as well as fertiliser and pesticide run-off from urban farming. A 2014 ministerial committee report blamed Harare for pumping 3,885 megalitres of raw sewage into Lake Chivero each month. Several industrial and mining companies discharge harmful chemical waste into the Manyame and Mukuvisi rivers and other tributaries that feed the lake, degrading water resources and corroding pipelines, the report said. The pollution has pushed the lakes pH levels above 8, an alkaline state that increases water treatment costs. Harare now spends $4 million on chemicals and power each month to purify water - about $800,000 more than it would cost for less polluted water. So for us to treat water to required standards, the logical thing was to reduce the amount treated, Chideme told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. CLEAN WATER ACCESS PLUNGES A combination of drought, ageing infrastructure, pollution and a ballooning population makes it almost impossible for the city to adapt to a water crisis it has suffered for 15 years. A 2014 survey by the government and international aid agencies showed the number of Harare households with access to clean drinking water and sanitation had plummeted to just below 40 percent, from 95 percent in 2009 - the fastest decline among Zimbabwes 10 provinces. Chideme said the city has sunk 240 boreholes in the worst-affected areas to try to bridge the deficit, but experts say it will not be enough. The 20-litre minimum water requirement per capita which the World Health Organisation recommends for basic daily hygiene has been a challenge, Khumbulani Murenga, head of the independent Institute of Water and Sanitation Development, said by email. Water cuts will further deepen this challenge. With the water supply to some townships, such as Mabvuku and Hatcliffe, completely cut off since early December, health experts warn Harare is sitting on a time bomb. Untreated or poorly treated drinking water may contain traces of dangerous pathogens... that cause diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid, said Vivek Solanki, a doctor at Harares Trauma Centre. And it could be years or even decades before the citys 2.1 million residents get safe drinking water again. Water scarcity is predicted to worsen across southern Africa, with a 2012 World Bank report predicting that dam and lakes levels will fall by up to 50 percent by 2080 due to the effects of climate change. For nurse Simukai, the threat is more immediate. The risk of the spread of waterborne diseases, particularly among children, is probably at its highest since 2008, she said, checking the sick boys temperature as another nurse fitted him with a saline drip. "The only way we can help contain it is through public education, health promotion and changing attitudes - and improving sanitation and waste management," said Harare health director Chonzi. (Reporting by Jeffrey Gogo; editing by Jumana Farouky and Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials monitoring the Zika virus are most concerned about its potential impact on women who are pregnant or could become pregnant, the White House said on Thursday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest, speaking to reporters at a daily press briefing, added that the nation's response to the virus so far has been "consistent with the kind of threat that could be out there." (Reporting by Jeff Mason, Doina Chiacu and Mohammad Zargham; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Rigby)
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura hopes to talk with the Syrian opposition delegation on Sunday, he said on Friday, and the main opposition body said it had agreed to travel to Geneva to meet him. The opposition's High Negotiating Committee (HNC) has been meeting in Riyadh for several days to debate whether to join the talks or insist the government of President Bashar al-Assad first stop bombing civilian areas and allow in humanitarian aid. "Theyve raised an important point of their concern, they would like to see a gesture from the government authorities regarding some kind of improvement for the people of Syria during the talks, for instance release of prisoners, or some lifting of sieges," de Mistura said. But he added this was a human rights point and "not even an issue to negotiate", and had strongly suggested the best way to get such measures implemented would be to start negotiating in Geneva, by proxy or directly. The HNC spokesman said the decision to go to Geneva followed a phone call from the U.S. Secretary of State and guarantees that their demands would be met. The Geneva talks are the first attempt in two years at a diplomatic solution to a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people. The previous talks in 2014 failed partly because Syria's government insisted on discussing "terrorism" before anything else, a label that it applied to all its opponents. De Mistura said the government delegation, led by Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari, had again brought up terrorism in the first session on Friday. But he indicated he would not take up that argument, saying it should be discussed by the U.N. Security Council. De Mistura said the talks would follow his clear instructions from the Security Council, which meant focusing on governance, a new constitution and new elections under U.N. supervision. (Editing by Andrew Roche/Ruth Pitchford)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States strongly supports efforts to diplomatically resolve political issues in Libya as part of its strategy toward Islamic State, the White House said on Friday. In a briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States is concerned about security in Libya and mindful of the risk Islamic State poses to areas of political chaos. "We're going to confront (Islamic State) and continue to confront it in the way that we have now for many months," he said. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey; Writing by Megan Cassella)
London (AFP) - A Maoist cult leader who brainwashed and raped followers in his London commune, and kept his own daughter imprisoned for three decades, was jailed Friday for 23 years.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, known as Comrade Bala, ruled his tiny south London cult with an iron fist.

He made followers believe he had God-like powers and subjected them to decades of abuse.

"You were ruthless in your exploitation of them," judge Deborah Taylor told him as she passed sentence at Southwark Crown Court in London.

"You engendered a climate of fear, jealousy and competition for your approval."

The judge said India-born Balakrishnan had treated his daughter more like "an experiment" than a human being. She was effectively kept prisoner in the commune.

"Your treatment of her from her birth ... was a catalogue of mental and physical abuse," the judge said.

The court case over, his 33-year-old daughter waived her right to anonymity to speak out about her ordeal, and establish a new identity for herself.

"I've been a non-person all my life and now is my chance to be myself," said Katy Morgan-Davies -- a new name of her choosing.

She said she had lived "like a caged bird".

Morgan-Davies said her tyrant father idolised Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein but wanted to be superior to them.

- Daughter's break for freedom -

Balakrishnan's cult was exposed when, facing death through either untreated diabetes or suicide, his daughter managed to escape in 2013.

At her previous freedom attempt in 2005, police had persuaded her to return home.

Balakrishnan was at the height of his influence in the 1970s but his group later dwindled to six women including his wife Chanda.

Balakrishnan convinced followers he controlled the sun, moon, wind and fire. They believed he had a mind control machine monitoring their thoughts.

Morgan-Davies said her father kept her from knowing that a comrade, who never showed her any affection, was actually her mother.

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Looking at other children outside the windows, she was told they were fascist agents.

Enjoying her first years of liberty, she is relishing the simple things in life, such as having a key, making friends, having a drink, choosing her own clothes, walking outdoors and speaking to people without permission.

"Something just small might not mean much to most people but for me it does, just having that choice," she said.

Jurors found him guilty of six counts of indecent assault and four counts of rape.

He was also convicted of two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, cruelty to a child under 16, and false imprisonment.

Some of his cult members blamed his conviction on political persecution by a fascist state.

"It's all a pack of lies, it's a miscarriage of justice it's the state taking revenge," his wife told reporters outside court.

For her part, Morgan-Davies has decided to forgive her father.

She said: "I don't wish for him to suffer, but yes, I want him to recognise what he did was wrong."
Geneva (AFP) - A UN-led push to chart a way out of Syria's tangled civil war got off to a shaky start Friday, with only representatives of Bashar al-Assad's regime attending the first day of supposed peace talks in Switzerland.

The main umbrella body representing the myriad opposition and rebel groups in the five-year-old conflict were refusing to take part at the start of what are meant to be six months of intra-Syrian negotiations in Geneva.

A member of this group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), told AFP however that a small, low-level team of three spokesmen were en route for Geneva where they might meet with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura.

"The media delegation... might meet with de Mistura, with the Americans, but the programme is not clear yet," Fuad Aliko said. "But not as negotiators."

Neither de Mistura nor Syria's UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari commented to reporters as they began discussions inside Geneva's Palais des Nations, the European UN headquarters.

The talks, backed by all the external powers embroiled in the war, are the biggest push yet to end a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and facilitated the meteoric rise of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group.

The highly complex conflict, which has been raging for almost five years, has also destabilised the already restive Middle East and drawn in not only regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey but also the United States and Russia.

It has also forced millions of Syrians from their homes, many of them into neighbouring states and further afield, causing a major political headache for the European Union which received more than one million migrants in 2015.

De Mistura issued an emotional video message on Thursday to Syrians both inside and outside the country saying that after previous failures, this new effort "cannot fail".

- 'Historic opportunity' -

The Geneva negotiations, if they happen properly, would not be face-to-face between the regime and its opponents. Instead they are "proximity talks" where go-betweens shuttle between the different participants.

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They are part of an ambitious plan launched in Vienna in November by a raft of key actors including Russia, the United States, Gulf states, Iran and Turkey that foresees elections within 18 months.

Despite Western pressure, the HNC umbrella group has been refusing to show up in Switzerland before an agreement is reached on aid reaching hundreds of thousands of people stuck in besieged towns.

The US State Department said Thursday these demands were "legitimate" but called on the opposition to take part in what it called "an historic opportunity."

"And we still believe they should do so without preconditions," spokesman Mark Toner said. "We believe these demands, while legitimate, shouldn't keep the talks from moving forward."

The HNC, which engaged in a fourth day of talks in Riyadh on whether to attend, has also asked for "clarifications" after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures.

De Mistura reportedly issued individual invitations to a list of figures opposed to the regime but who are thought to have closer ties to Moscow and have limited influence on the ground.

Randa Kassis, a member of that list, told AFP in Geneva on Friday that despite the uncertainty on who would attend, "something has to start. We have to think of the Syrian people."

The HNC and its Saudi and Turkish backers have also objected to the participation of Syrian Kurdish groups that have made key advances against IS in northern Syria in recent months.

Russia, however, which has helped the regime of President Assad make inroads against rebels with air strikes since September, says Kurdish involvement is essential.

- 'Inflexible' Assad -

France-based Middle East analyst Agnes Levallois said the opposition was growing increasingly frustrated that the question of Assad's fate, a key stumbling block in previous talks, was being put off.

"Assad is feeling stronger and stronger so is being inflexible," she said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose Shiite country also backs Assad and is at daggers drawn with Sunni regional rival Saudi Arabia, said during a visit to Paris on Thursday that the process would take time.

"We hope that these talks will succeed as soon as possible. But I would be surprised if they succeed very quickly because in Syria there are groups who are at war with the central government and also amongst themselves," French media quoted him as saying.

"There is interference in the internal affairs of Syria," he added.
Jerusalem (AFP) - A vulture captured in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel has been returned home with the help of the United Nations, Israeli authorities said Friday.

"In a discreet operation with the Lebanese and with the great help of UN forces and the UN liaison unit, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority was able to return the vulture that was caught a few days ago by villagers of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon," the authority said in a statement.

The UN acted as a go-between in negotiations between the Lebanese and the Gamla Nature Reserve where the bird lived before it flew across the border, it added.

"The attempts were successful and yesterday evening at a meeting at the border at Rosh Hanikra the vulture was returned in reasonable health by UN officers," the statement said, referring to an area in northern Israel.

The bird was "said to be weak and with minor injuries" and had been taken for treatment.

The Nature and Parks Authority issued a photograph of the bird being handed over by uniformed members of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.

It had first raised concerns over the vulture on Tuesday after images shared on social media appeared to show the bird with an Israeli identification ring and location transmitter captured by the villagers.

The authority at the time said the villagers had suspected espionage due to the transmitter but the bintjbeil.org news portal said the bird had been freed after it was deemed not to pose any threat.

The vulture had crossed the border some days before and flown about four kilometres (2.5 miles) into Lebanon, the authority said.

Israel and Lebanon are technically at war and the UNIFIL peacekeepers monitor their disputed border. Citizens of the two countries are banned from communicating by law.

Conspiracy theories are endemic in the Middle East, particularly when it comes to Israel's spying activities.

Last summer, Palestinian media reported claims by the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers that they had apprehended a dolphin off their Mediterranean coastline, equipped with video cameras for an Israeli spying mission.

In 2011, Saudi media reported that a vulture carrying a GPS transmitter and an identification ring from Tel Aviv University had been detained by security forces who suspected it was being used for espionage.

And in 2010, Israel's foreign ministry dismissed Egyptian reports linking a spate of Red Sea shark attacks to the country's Mossad intelligence agency.
Geneva (AFP) - New allegations surfaced Friday of child sexual abuse in the Central African Republic involving UN peacekeepers as well as troops serving in a European mission and in France's Sangaris operation.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein described the latest claims to come to light as "extremely serious allegations" and said it was "crucial that these cases are thoroughly and urgently investigated."

The new cases linking EU and French troops are said to date to 2014 but have only been discovered in recent weeks as a result of a UN investigation.

The allegations against UN peacekeepers mostly date back to last year and in a first, the United Nations revealed the nationalities of the troops involved.

They are from Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Niger and Senegal.

There has been a wave of allegations against UN peacekeepers serving in the Central African Republic, but the latest probe brought to light possible crimes committed by European Union (EUFOR) forces.

Two girls said they were raped by EUFOR soldiers, while two others said they were paid to have sexual relations with other EUFOR soldiers, a UN statement said.

The four were aged between 14 and 16 at the time.

Three girls told UN investigators that they believed their abusers were from Georgia.

In Brussels, an EU source said the allegations were "totally unprecedented" for an EU mission.

Some 150 Georgian soldiers were deployed with the EUFOR contingent, which at its peak counted some 700 soldiers sent to Bangui to help restore order.

Reacting to the allegations, EUFOR said in a statement that "the EU takes these allegations very seriously."

Georgia's defence ministry said it would "do everything possible to ensure that those individuals committing such crimes are held responsible."

- Sex for cookies -

UN staff also interviewed two children allegedly abused in 2014 by soldiers from the French Sangaris force.

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The girl and boy were aged seven and nine respectively at the time.

"The girl said she had performed oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for a bottle of water and a sachet of cookies.

"Both she and the nine-year-old boy said that other children were abused in a similar fashion in repeated incidents involving several French soldiers," the statement said.

The six cases of alleged abuse by foreign troops took place at a sprawling camp for displaced people at M'Poko, near Bangui's airport.

French soldiers serving in the Sangaris force are already being investigated in France over allegations that they forced children in CAR to perform sexual acts in exchange for food.

On Friday, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian ordered a fresh probe following the latest allegations.

- New claims against UN peacekeepers -

In the latest wave of allegations facing the troubled UN mission in the Central African Republic, eight soldiers and two police were accused of having sex with minors.

Four of the soldiers are from Niger, two from Bangladesh, one from Morocco and one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, along with two police from Senegal.

The latest claims bring to 22 the number of cases of sexual abuse involving peacekeepers from the UN mission in the Central African Republic.

The new cases follow a hard-hitting report released last month that found the United Nations had grossly mishandled allegations of child sex abuse in CAR.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the head of the 10,000-strong MINUSCA force last year over the mounting number of cases, but the allegations have continued to surface.
Geneva (AFP) - The United Nations said on Friday it still expects Syria peace talks in Geneva to begin later in the day, despite uncertainty over whether key opposition groups would attend.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura "will start by meeting the government's delegation today (Friday)" headed by Syria's UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari, the UN said in a statement.

"He will continue meetings with other participants in the talks and with representatives of the civil society subsequently," the UN said.

"As indicated by Mr. de Mistura in his press conference on 25 January, these will be proximity talks, meaning that the parties will be meeting with him separately."

Despite Western pressure the main opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), has yet to decide whether to come to Geneva and was holding a fourth day of talks in Saudi Arabia on Friday.

On Thursday the Saudi-backed HNC, formed only last month, said it would not take part before an agreement is reached on aid reaching hundreds of thousands of people stuck in besieged towns.

The HNC has also asked for "clarifications" after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures.

The HNC and its Saudi and Turkish backers have objected to the participation of Syrian Kurdish groups that have made key advances against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in northern Syria in recent months.

Russia, however, which has been assisting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad with air strikes against rebels since September, says Kurdish involvement is essential.

The planned talks are the biggest push to date to end a five-year-old conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people, driven millions from their homes and facilitated the meteoric rise of IS.
Quebec City (AFP) - The United States and Canada vowed Friday to work together in the fight against the Islamic State, even if Ottawa plans to withdraw its jets from the campaign.

Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers Stephane Dion of Canada and Claudia Ruiz Massieu of Mexico struck an upbeat tone at their annual get-together.

But Dion made it clear that when Canada's new Liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announces his war plan, his country's six CF-18 jets will leave Syrian skies.

Dion will now travel to Rome next week to join Kerry and two dozen more leaders from the US-led coalition to discuss new ways to work together against the threat.

"Air strikes will continue even if Canada invests its efforts in other areas that are also necessary, and soon we will announce what these efforts will be," Dion said.

"We will continue our discussion on this in Rome soon."

Kerry appeared satisfied by Canada's promise, acknowledging its effort in the fight so far and predicting a strong future coalition effort.

"And Canada has played an outsized role really already in many different ways in both the military and the humanitarian component of the counter-Daesh struggle," Kerry said.

"And I am absolutely confident from my conversation with Stephane that the prime minister and his security team are working on ways to continue the contribution and to continue to make a significant contribution to our efforts."

The talks also formed part of preparations Trudeau's state visit to Washington on March 10 as US President Barack Obama's guest.

"I know President Obama is very excited about welcoming Prime Minister Trudeau to Washington," Kerry said.

"This is the first official visit of a Canadian head of government in nearly two decades, long overdue and much anticipated."

The young Canadian leader's government is expected to have more in common with the Democratic administration south of the border than did its Conservative predecessor, but there are points of concern.

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Ottawa's plans to withdraw its warplanes from the US-led coalition targeting IS fighters in Syria is a symbolic blow against allied unity in the fight.

And the Liberal government also expects to review the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a 12-country deal that Kerry and Obama see as key to the US trade agenda in their final year in office -- before ratifying it.

On the TPP treaty, the American side hopes it will have more success, despite concerns raised by some of the Liberal lawmakers who now form a majority in the Canadian parliament.

Canada's government said Monday that it would sign the free trade deal next week at a meeting of the 12 partner countries from around the Pacific basin.

- 'Still have questions' -

But, before the treaty is ratified, the Canadian parliament will want to debate it, and Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland has acknowledged that some have concerns.

"Many Canadians still have not made up their minds and many more still have questions," she said on Monday.

A US official traveling with Kerry said Washington was aware of the concerns, but still confident the deal would be approved in Ottawa.

"That was pretty clear, even in the campaign, and so we're looking forward to being able to move ahead," she said.

And, with Ruiz Massieu, the US delegation is keen to discuss the case of recaptured drug cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, whom Washington is keen to see extradited as soon as possible to face charges in the US.
Washington (AFP) - The United States has not decided whether to launch military action in Libya, where the Islamic State group is exploiting political instability to expand its operations, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Thursday.

Washington is "developing options for what we might do in the future," Carter told reporters.

But he added: "We're watching the situation very carefully, and there's a lot going on there right now. But we haven't made any decisions to take military action there."

"We're looking to help them (the Libyans) get control over their own country and, of course, the United States will support the Libyan government when it forms," he said.

World powers have urged Libya's warring factions to endorse the unity government formed last week under a UN-brokered deal aimed at ending the political paralysis that has fueled the rise of IS jihadists.

Libya has been in political turmoil and rocked by violence since the ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a 2011 revolution.

It now has two governments and parliaments, with the recognized authorities based in the eastern city of Tobruk and a militia-backed authority in Tripoli.

The internationally recognized parliament on Monday rejected an initial cabinet line-up, in a major setback to peace efforts. A new government is expected to be proposed in 10 days, an official said Tuesday.

The Islamic State jihadists have exploited the turmoil in Libya to expand their influence in the country and launch attacks on key oil facilities.

The group first appeared in the North African nation in 2014 and has since claimed responsibility for beheadings and suicide bombings.

It has established a stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte, Kadhafi's hometown, and is reported to have at least 3,000 fighters in Libya.

The United States, reluctant to extend its 17-month air campaign against the IS group in Iraq and Syria to a third country, has repeatedly stressed the importance of finding cooperative local partners in Libya, and international allies such as France and Italy to help lead any operations there.

"We don't want to be on a glide slope to a situation like Syria and Iraq," Carter said. "That's the reason why we're watching it that closely."
Jerusalem (AFP) - US and British intelligence agencies for years hacked into Israeli drones carrying out surveillance to prepare for a potential strike on Iran, Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported on Friday.

Citing documents leaked by rogue US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Yediot said that the operation, codenamed "Anarchist", began in 1998 at a British facility in the Troodos mountains of Cyprus and a US National Security Agency (NSA) site at Menwith Hill, in northern England.

"From the documents it emerges that Israel operates a large fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles," the paper wrote.

"They collect intelligence in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and throughout the Middle East and were even used according to the editors (of the Snowden files) for gathering intelligence to plan the bombing of Iran."

Snowden, who had worked for the NSA, leaked a hoard of documents in 2013 revealing a worldwide US surveillance programme.

The Yediot report, which the paper says was submitted to the Israeli military censor before publication, does not give details of the Jewish state's surveillance of Iran but it shows what are purportedly the first published images of armed Israeli drones.

It also tells of Anarchist's penetration of F16 fighter pilots' heads-up display, in one case showing the aircraft tracking a target on the ground.

"It's as if they sat with them in the cockpit," the paper wrote.

"It's a look into the secret Israeli combat world," it said. "Potential targets, aims, priorities and capabilities, from Israel's view of its enemies. The United States and Britain profited from Israel's superb intelligence abilities and saw everything that Israel saw."

Israel's foreign ministry declined to comment but Yuval Steinitz, minister of energy and a former intelligence minister, said he was disappointed.

"We are not surprised. We know that the Americans spy on everyone including us, their friends," he told Israeli army radio.

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"It's disappointing nonetheless because of the fact that for decades we haven't spied or gathered intelligence or broken codes in the United States."

After the 1985 arrest in Washington of US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard, for passing US secrets to Israel, the Jewish state pledged never to spy on its ally again.

Yediot quoted an unnamed senior Israeli intelligence official describing the latest report as "an earthquake."

"Apparently none of our encoded communications devices are safe from them," he said.
By Gary Robertson RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) - Virginia lawmakers reached a bipartisan deal on Friday that would rescind the attorney generals decision to stop honoring permits for concealed weapons issued by 25 states in exchange for concessions from Republican supporters of gun ownership rights. The move last month to undo reciprocity agreements with more than two dozen states with requirements that fall short of Virginia's infuriated many gun-rights advocates, who argued it infringed the constitutional rights of gun owners. In return for reinstating the agreements, Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe said the leaders of the Republican-dominated legislature had agreed to a requirement to make state police available for voluntary background checks for private sales at all gun shows. The issue of gun control has become heated in recent years after a series of mass shootings at schools, shopping malls and other public venues across the country. Advocates of tighter controls say the government must do more to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, while opponents say new restrictions would violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Of 77 firearms shows in Virginia last year, state police were present to run voluntary checks at only 42, the governor said. McAuliffe, who supports tighter gun control, pledged to make more money available to expand police background check efforts. He said expanding background checks had always been his primary issue in gun control legislation. The bipartisan compromise would also prohibit individuals with permanent protective orders from possessing a firearm. McAuliffe said it was an effort to remove guns from domestic violence situations. The proposal had previously been a non-starter among Republicans. "The measures we announce here today will save lives, McAuliffe said, emphasizing that the compromise struck a balance between public safety and individual rights. In a prepared statement, Democratic Attorney General Mark R. Herring expressed approval but he did not attend the press conference at the state Capitol announcing the deal. "Im encouraged to finally see a bipartisan conversation about how we can reduce gun violence and keep guns away from dangerous individuals, Herring said. He added that the measure of success for the agreement, when it finally emerges from the legislative process, is whether it makes Virginians safer. William J. Howell, the powerful Republican speaker of the House of Delegates, said the agreement was not about who won and who lost. Virginia won, and thats all there is to it, Howell said, standing behind a podium flanked by Republican and Democratic lawmakers as well as representatives from domestic violence groups. (Editing by Frank McGurty and James Dalgleish)
(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co and Bank of America Corp are working to integrate mobile payment system Apple Pay into their ATMs, technology news website TechCrunch reported. The banks have deployed engineers to build the Apple Pay options, TechCrunch reported on Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter. BofA told Reuters it is currently working on a new cardless ATM solution, and plans to unveil it in late February to associates at select ATMs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Charlotte, New York and Boston, followed by a broader customer launch mid-year. It is unclear how Apple Pay will work at ATMs, TechCrunch said. Apple declined to comment. Wells Fargo, which currently supports Google's Android Pay mobile wallet, said it is in plans to roll out technology to connect ATMs to digital wallets in the second quarter of this year. The bank also said, in an e-mail, that it is evaluating additional wallets. JPMorgan Chase & Co also has plans to roll out card-free ATMs this year, CNBC reported on Tuesday. (Reporting by Rishika Sadam and Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Andrew Hay)
Will Smith made headlines when he announced that he would be joining his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in her boycott of this years Academy Awards. Will, like Jada, was troubled by the absence of diversity in many of the major nomination categories. While in the United Kingdom, Smith elaborated on his thoughts to the BBCs Charlie Stayt.

This is far beyond me, Smith said. This has nothing to do with me. This has nothing to do with awards. You know? Awards, thats really a frivolous reason for me to put my hand up and make a statement. This is much more about diversity and inclusion.

On Jan. 27, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and CEO Dawn Hudson told The Hollywood Reporter their plans for diversification. As it stands now, the academy, with its 6,261 members is 93 percent white and 76 percent male. Smith thinks the academy should reflect the direction the country at large is taking. The images that come out of Hollywood are supposed to be painting the pictures of a rainbow future, he told ITV. So if the images coming out of Hollywood narrows, its almost criminal. Its like were narrowing the collective American imagination, and that to me is the issue.

The Hollywood icon made it a point to accept responsibility himself. Its not us and them, he told the BBC. Its we. Im a member of the academy. So its much more a domestic family issue than it is a civil rights issue. So its a problem that we all have to solve.

What to Stream: 3 Snubs in the #OscarsSoWhite Controversy:

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By Joseph Ax and Daniel Bases

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York and New Jersey's cargo terminals shut down on Friday after more than a thousand longshoremen walked off the job, shuttering one of the United States' busiest port networks.

Employees stopped working around 11 a.m. (1600 GMT). The reason was unclear.

"To run a picket you need a permit and there wasn't one issued by the Port Authority," said a Port Authority official who requested anonymity.

The work stoppage was a surprise because "there were no major issues that we knew of to precipitate this," the official said, adding that more than a thousand people had walked out.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the terminals and leases them to port operators, issued a statement urging members of the International Longshoremen's Association to "return to work immediately and resolve their differences after they return."

Over $200 billion worth of cargo moved through the port in 2014, according to the agency. About a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product is accounted for in an area within a 200 to 250 mile radius of the ports.

Port Authority police were sent to the terminals to ensure public safety, according to the statement. The Port Authority official said there had been no word of any arrests by evening.

Beverly Fedorko, a spokeswoman for the New York Shipping Association (NYSA), which represents the terminal operators and ocean carriers, said the longshoremen had not informed management of the "illegal" walkout. "We don't even know why," she said.

"The Contract Board (of the NYSA) called an emergency meeting. Representatives of the Contract Board are members of management and of the union. The management showed up and the union did not," Fedorko told Reuters late Friday afternoon.

The NYSA is weighing legal options, she said.

Attempts to contact officials and a spokesman for the International Longshoremen's Association were unsuccessful.

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New York and New Jersey ports are a major entry point for crude oil and an exit for refined products such as gasoline and heating oil. It was unclear if energy sector workers in the ports were participating in the walkout.

"I have not seen or heard anything yet that the strike was affecting the gasoline or heating oil futures markets," said Dominick Chirichella, senior partner at the Energy Management Institute in New York. Prices for both commodities were higher, in line with market fundamentals.

A text message from Port Authority's mobile alert system at 11:20 a.m. EST said that as a result of the work stoppage "no new trucks would be allowed to queue on the port roadways. Do not send trucks to the port."

The walkout affects several terminals, including Port Newark and terminals in Elizabeth and Bayonne, New Jersey, and the New York City borough of Staten Island.

Another text at 3:13 p.m. said the marine terminals had been safely cleared, and thanked operators for their cooperation.

The port system is the third busiest in the United States and has 3,500 registered longshoremen, Fedorko said, although the number of workers on duty per day fluctuates depending on ships and other factors.

The terminals annually handle nearly six million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containerized cargo, according to the Port Authority. A standard 40-foot container equals two TEUs.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Daniel Bases; Additional reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
For anyone who remembers the millions of Americans dying in the streets from Ebola in 2014, the news about the Zika virus this week must have conveyed a chilling sense of deja vu: another obscure virus originating in the forests of Africa, spreading explosively, this time not an ocean away but right in our own hemisphere. Even for those who dont remember Americas Ebola epidemic  because it didnt happen  there were echoes of that nondisaster: the cautiously hedged official warnings, the dots spreading ominously over the maps in newspapers, and the fifth horseman of every 21st-century apocalypse, a sell-off in airline stocks. Who will be the first Republican candidate to blame it on Barack Obama?

For most Americans, what Zika  at least in our current understanding  has in common with Ebola is this: a remote risk of a horrendous outcome, which, in a quirk of human psychology, may translate into an instinctual, not entirely rational, panic. In Zika  generally a disease so mild that it may not even be recognized by those infected  the risk is of a particularly ghastly birth defect: microcephaly, characterized by an abnormally small head and impaired brain development. (In an unknown fraction of cases, infection with Zika may also lead to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a severe but usually temporary paralysis.) When the number of newborns with microcephaly unexpectedly shot up in Brazil last year, public-health officials found a statistical, and later a clinical, correlation with an epidemic of Zika, a virus that was first identified in East Africa in 1952 and named after the Uganda forest where it was found. The relationship is still unproven, and it is almost impossible to quantify the danger. But the evidence was enough for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to warn pregnant women to consider postponing travel to the areas of Central and South America affected by Zika.

In a move virtually unprecedented in the annals of public health, the government of El Salvador  a country with one of the most stringent antiabortion laws in the world  advised women to put off having babies for at least the next two years.

Story continues

The other thing about Zika that reminds people of Ebola is that there is no vaccine or specific treatment for the infection (although that may be changing in the case of Ebola). But whereas Ebola spreads with frightening ease by direct contact, Zika is transmitted largely, if not entirely, by way of mosquitoes. One, or possibly two, cases of sexual transmission have been reported, says Justin Lessler, PhD, associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, but if it happens, it is massively less efficient than by mosquito. Thats bad news  because mosquitoes fly, infecting people over a wide area  but good news in the sense that even lacking drugs to attack the virus directly, we do know how to kill mosquitoes.

A health ministry worker fumigates a house to kill mosquitoes during a campaign against dengue and chikungunya and to prevent the entry of Zika virus in Managua, Nicaragua January 26, 2016. (Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)

Slideshow: Battling the Zika virus >>>

Right now, with much of the Midwest and Northeast covered with snow, the threat to Americans from the two species implicated in spreading Zika  Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, better known as the Asian tiger mosquito  is probably confined to the Florida Keys, southern Texas and possibly the southernmost parts of California. Thats the assessment of Kenneth J. Linthicum, who as director of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology is  along with his counterparts at the CDC a major player in the fight against Zika. Peak transmission periods in the Northeast and Midwest would probably be May to September, he says, adding that this peak transmission period could be expanded if temperatures in a given year warm early and/or stay warm longer. In a warming world, this is likely to occur more in the future. Theres some evidence that aegypti is expanding its range into hot, drier climates  as long as it can find a small container of water in which to lay its eggs  and by this summer, around 60 percent of the American population may be living in areas where Zika has the potential to spread.

But, as Lessler points out, Aedes mosquitoes also transmit other viral diseases, notably dengue and chikungunya fevers. So far, he notes, outbreaks of Zika seem to track the spread of those two viruses through South America and Central America. But even without a wall at the southern border, dengue and chikungunya havent made much progress beyond the Rio Grande, a puzzle that mosquito experts think may reflect cultural and economic disparities: greater use of air conditioning and window screens, less time spent outdoors in the summer and a predilection for dwellings surrounded by lawns and pavement rather than ceramic pots and planters that hold water. And, of course, intensive disease surveillance and aggressive mosquito control by local, state and national officials.

So while epidemiologists agree that caution is warranted  most especially in women who are pregnant  based on what we know so far, Zika doesnt seem to pose an existential threat to the United States any more than Ebola did. The unanswerable question is whether we have just been lucky so far, and how long our luck can hold. We need to have a better infrastructure for checking people coming into the country, says Joseph Conlon, a retired Navy entomologist who is a spokesman for the American Mosquito Control Association. Weve got the mosquitoes; theyve got the disease. Malaria, yellow fever, even dengue  these used to be common in the United States, all up and down the East Coast. We dont need global warming for this to happen.

There are viruses we dont even know exist. Ecotourism is bringing stuff back here, and people think, if I get sick, Ill go to the hospital and theyll cure me. Not with these things: Either you get better on your own, or you die.

If you ask a mosquito-control expert what keeps him up at night, theres a good chance hell bring up Rift Valley virus, endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, where it primarily infects livestock and wild animals. Fatal [sometimes] to people, extraordinarily fatal to cattle and horses, says Conlon. If it got loose here, where theres no natural immunity, it could be devastating. In recent years, it has spread beyond its traditional range into the Middle East and Madagascar. Like Ebola, it could jump borders in the body of an unsuspecting host, or even a mosquito. Ive flown out of the airport in Nairobi any number of times, says Linthicum, which is right in the middle of a Rift Valley endemic zone. Aircraft sit on the tarmac all evening with the lights on and the doors open, and then they take off and they go to Europe, all over the world.

So its probably only a matter of time. Linthicums USDA lab has worked for the last decade to correct that precise vulnerability on which the health of millions of people, and animals, may depend: a mosquito a few millimeters long traveling undetected in a 747. It is, he says, no easy task.
BURGLAR SMOKED OUT

However, three other suspects managed to escape the police dragnet which included a National Security helicopter which hovered overhead.

A Chaguanas man, aged 38, was taken into custody after the burglary at Town Restaurant and Bar and 51 Degrees nighclub. When Newsday arrived, the area was still cordoned off as officers continued a door-to-door search for the suspects who are believed to have made off with a quantity of liquor and cash. According to the police, four men broke into the restaurant at five oclock yesterday morning and with quick response of officers, they were able to apprehend one of the culprits.

Acting Superintendent Mc Donald Jacob, in charge of the Portof- Spain Division, said officers received a call at about 5.13 am from a security firm contracted to provide security service to the businessplaces, about the breakin.

Jacob said when the police arrived, they were able to tell that someone was still in the building, after viewing footage captured from a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera inside the building. In addition, officers also detected strange sounds coming from the metal aircondition vents.

According to Jacob, the culprits were armed with house-breaking implements such as pigfoots, power saws and screw -drivers. He noted that three of the burglars escaped through an abandoned building at the back of the nightclub.

We responded to the call, he said, and we found that one person was concealed in the ceiling of the building.

Efforts were made by the K-9 to get him out, but when that failed, the Guard and Emergency Branch was deployed and officers using teargas, were able to flush him out of his hiding place, Jacob said.

Jacob said during the exercise, no shots were fired and no injuries were reported.

No shots were fired and the exercise was conducted in a safe manner.

We were happy for the help of the Fire Services who assisted us in getting into the ceiling of the building. Also, the Transit Police and other security officers played a role in the exercise, he added.

Inspector Drakes from the Guard and Emergency Branch, Acting Sgt John from the Woodbrook CID, Acting Fire Sub-Officer Kervin Dolly from the Northern Division and crime scene officers came out and got fingerprints from the building.

No one was hurt and the exercise went well. After the police apprehended the intruder, he was placed in the back of a police vehicle.

The man was seen sending kisses to the media followed by verbal threats as he told reporters and photographers, when I come out...I coming for allyuh! Efforts were made to contact the owner of the nightclub, but all calls to her cellphone went unanswered. However, Newsday was told by someone at the restaurant that it was business as usual after the arrest.

The suspect remained in custody up to last night assisting officers in their investigations.
PoS vendors must move

The vendors were not comfortable with the situation but, he said, Unfortunately, that is the reality. In the interim, Tim Kee said the city corporation was looking at options to accommodate the vendors, including the Central Market where over 200 slots were available for vending, and the New City Mall (formerly the Drag Mall).

In a background to the vending on Salvatori Site, he said permission was initially given for vending during the Christmas season, but it has snowballed. Tim Kee also said the Charlotte Street vendors will also have to move from their current location.

Their contracts have come to an end, he said, noting that the current plans will not allow them to continue vending on Charlotte Street. The Central Market, he said, was available to them, and they have refused to occupy it.

Tim Kee said he has met with the management of the Public Transportation Services Corporation to provide a shuttle for shoppers from Broadway to the Central Market. The capital city, he said does not have the luxury of space, and the space allocated for vending will have to be utilised.

Calling on vendors and citizens to understand the situation and support the relocation of vendors, Tim Kee said at present the vendors in Charlotte Street pose a hazard to businesses and residents in the area.
POLITICS F.B.I. Evidence Is Often Mishandled, an Internal Inquiry Finds By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT DEC. 19, 2014 Photo The J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. building in Washington. Auditors have found many problems with how the bureau handles evidence. Credit Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Share This Page Email Share Tweet Save More Continue reading the main story F.B.I. agents in every region of the country have mishandled, mislabeled and lost evidence, according to a highly critical internal investigation that discovered errors with nearly half the pieces of evidence it reviewed. The evidence collection and retention system is the backbone of the F.B.I. s investigative process, and the report said it is beset by problems. It also found that the F.B.I. was storing more weapons, less money and valuables, and two tons more drugs than its records had indicated. The report
What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames

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A prototype of the first Japan-made stealth fighter was unveiled to the media Thursday at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. factory in central Japan.

The fighter will first undergo ground tests before making its maiden flight in mid-February or later.

The countrys first domestically made stealth fighter  14.2 meters long, 9.1 meters wide and 4.5 meters high  is scheduled to fly from Nagoya airport, which is adjacent to the factory, to the Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces Gifu Air Base in Kakamigahara in neighboring Gifu Prefecture.

The agency said the development of a full-scale test model began in fiscal 2009, with costs for the program totaling about 39.4 billion (about $331 million).

The fighter features stealth capabilities, with the use of carbon fiber absorbing radio waves and making it difficult for radar to detect the aircraft.

A prototype of the first Japan-made stealth fighter is shown to the media Thursday at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. factory in Aichi Prefecture. | KYODO

Japan plans to assess data obtained from the prototype and decide by fiscal 2018 whether to develop domestically or engage in joint international development of aircraft to replace the ASDFs F-2 fighter.

SOURCE  Japan Times
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" ... How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public... "

[From George Washington's farewell address.]

Other Quotes:

"Don't worry about genius and don't worry about not being clever. Trust rather to hard work, perseverance and determination. The best motto for a long march is ' Don't grumble. Plug on.'....Be honest. Be loyal. Be kind. Remember that the hardest thing to acquire is the faculty of being unselfish. As a quality it is one of the finest attributes of manliness." Sir Frederick Treves

"...To be clear, the Constitution of the United States of America is the United States of America. They are one and the same. Any individual or agency which seeks to subvert the Constitution and wage political and/or rhetorical war on it, are self-declared enemies of the United States of America, as they are subverting and waging war on the United States of America." - Pat Dollard

The truth to the matter is that Obama lies but he does it with such finess that the easily fooled are easily fooled. ~ Norman E. Hooben

"Going for the grandest illusion of all, [Obama] ... told the New York Times: 'We've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles.' Excuse me while I pick my jaw off the ground. Everyone knows -- or should know -- that putting more and more of the government in charge of more and more of the economy is entirely inconsistent with free-market principles. This means that the president's statement to the contrary is what is known as a big lie." --columnist Diana West



When you trust a stranger more so than your friend, you become stranger than the stranger; Barrack Husein Obama is a stranger. - Norman E. Hooben

We the peopleWe the people now have a New World Order that we the people did not order. Norman E. Hooben

"We are now in a great civil war of words and you have the honor of participating as a true patriot. The battle has not been won but you will be there when we are victorious. The pen is mightier than the sword and you will inscribe your name in the book of freedomand that, my friend is an honor

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves ." -

Winston Churchill

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

-

Ronald Reagan

Thomas Sowell

For those who promote a race they are called, "racists". For those that promote American they are called "American". For 'American' is a 'concept' and no racial tones are tolerated either in shades or sounds. -Norman E. Hooben

(In reference to Lourdes Galvan of San Antonio, Texas racial bigotry regarding American military heroes.)

Note to NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA (

Hola! I know you are watching):

Will Rogers never met Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. -

N. E. Hooben, July 2008

Harvard University was once an all boys school...today they have no balls at all. - N. E. Hooben

I will stand with the Constitution For The United States of America should the political winds shift in an ugly direction

Politicians are like vampires...

Whether its blood or money they want to suck it out of you till you die. ~ N. E. Hooben

(Norman E. Hooben in response to a writer who complained of not having the honor of serving in the U.S. Military)Back in the days of "The Lone Ranger" program, someone would ask, "Who is that masked man?" People need to start asking that question about Barack Obama. -N.E. HoobenThe Police State of Massachusetts is now imposing laws against nature. Massachusetts is by far the most un-Constitutional government of the State, by the State, and for the State than any among the the fifty that hold a star on the banner of freedom. It is run by Socialists and hypocritical so-called Christiansthe worst among them are the Catholics who go to Church on Sunday and forget what they Prayed for on Monday. - Norman E. Hooben - "A proud Catholic proud of my Faith. A proud Catholic NOT so proud of my Church!" - July 16th 2008 N. E. Hooben

When a people are satisfied with receiving gifts paid with their own taxes as a way of life Anarchy is sure to follow. - Fred Boutin 2008

From the first time I heard about the boogey-man as a child to the first time I got shot at in Vietnam, nothing in my entire lifetime, THAT'S NOTHING! has put more fear into me than this man Obama. - Norman E. Hooben - July 2008

We are here for only a mini-second in the sands of time. Then we become the dust that makes the sand; and the Hand of God molds us anew. Take care my friend and may God Bless... - Norman E. Hooben on the death of our dearly beloved pet dog, Stirling

The evidence is overwhelming!

In order to save America we must destroy the Socialst Marxist Party... - N. E. Hooben

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." -- Josef Stalin --

When it comes to lying, prudent people are guided by a Higher Authority driven by thou shall not written in stone. Whereas Bill Clinton has no Higher Authority to guide him, thou shall not has no conscious objections; for without a conscience there is no guilt. - Norman Hooben

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. - Adolph Hitler

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. - James Madison, the Federalists Papers

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some Exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back And stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked,'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly, the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America.

The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time.

One should always remember 'There is no such thing as a free Lunch!' Also, 'You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

You apparently don't share a sense of patriotism, Americanism, freedomism, or whatever kind of 'ism' that true Americans believe in... You do however, display a bit of socialism, communism, marxism or whatever kind of 'ism' that you make excuses for... ~ Norman E. Hooben (in response to an Obama supporter's views about the ACS census)

A nation that knows not from where it came, knows not where it is going! Today, Americans know too little about the foundations of our nation. The result is a nation now in chaos, its people unable to discern what is wrong with the transformation (paradigm shift) of our society and form of government that, if left unchecked, will destroy every facet of freedom, liberty and justice. The price of freedom is vigilance; the price of vigilance is knowledge. Many of America's founding documents are now available on the web. ~

Learn USA
Egyptian authorities charged on Thursday a 16-year old boy for plotting to overthrow the government.

Omar al-Brashi, a first year high school student was arrested while he was sitting for an exam at his high school in the northern port city of Damietta.

He has been charged with international espionage, affiliation to a prohibited group and plotting to overthrow the government, reports explained.

Judicial authorities ordered his detention for 15 days for interrogation, according to al-Brashis family.

Security forces stormed the exam hall to the surprise of Omars schoolmates who tried to convince the forces to allow Omar to finish sitting his exam, said Magdy Ahmad, one of al-Bashris relatives.

An altercation took place outside the school between security forces and students because of the arrest, added Ahmad.

Egyptian authorities reportedly have arrested more than 1,000 since November 2014. Eight among the minor detainees have also been handed death sentences or life in prison sentences.

Rights groups have stood against the arrest of minors by the regime which recently announced it would allow 3,462 detained students to sit for their mid-term exams. Rights groups claim that the actual number of detained students is much higher if you add the number of missing persons.

According to the International Coalition for Freedoms and Rights (ICFR) over 2,170 minors between the ages of nine and seventeen were arrested following the overthrow of the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

In a different report, The New Arab citing local sources in the Sinai announced that four children died Thursday near Rafah as casualties of fighting between Egyptian troops and militants. Eight other children have been also reported wounded when a building hit by shells collapsed.

Sinai Monitor for Human rights said Thursday that 86 children have been killed due to Egyptian security operations against militants in Sinai over the past two years.

The Monitory group explained that the children were killed in indiscriminate shelling by the army and airstrikes against residential areas in the restive region.

The group which incriminates Egyptian authorities for the forced disappearance of children under the age of 18 demands protection for children and civilians and calls for probes into the death of the 86 children in military operations.
US President Barack Obama Thursday expressed his determination to tackle IS in Libya following Pentagons announcement of possible military action against the terrorist group in former Libyan ruler Gaddafis country.

President Obama convened his National Security Council to discuss with his security aids the Libyan issue which is taking a serious turn following recent gains of the Islamic group while the UN-backed unity government is up the creek and the intensification of Washingtons campaign to degrade and destroy ISIL.

The President emphasized that the United States will continue to counter ISIL terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary, the White House said.

The President directed his national security team to continue efforts to strengthen governance and support ongoing counterterrorism efforts in Libya and other countries where ISIL has sought to establish a presence.

The President was briefed on ways the US and its partners in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL continue to accelerate and integrate the military campaign and diplomatic efforts on all possible fronts, including working with international partners to counter ISILs stated goal of expansion beyond Iraq and Syria, the White house said.

The meeting was held after the Pentagon on Wednesday announced it was mulling military strategies for an intervention in Libya against IS.

Other reports announced earlier this week the setting up of an international coalition led by the US and supported by France and other European countries, with potential military actions against IS to take place in March.

ISs recent gains including the attacks on Libyan main oil terminal and territory advances have raised eyebrows in the western camp which was reluctant to take military actions against the terrorist group that it is already fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Some official voices in Libya are wary about an international intervention at this time as they believe that it will further divide the country and set it on fire.
With EDCA in place, the Philippines can now play an important role in preventing Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region that spans more than 12,000 miles across the globe  from the coast of East Africa to the shores of California. The Philippines, which was the weakest link in the First Island Chain that forms the first line of defense against Chinese intrusion into the Pacific Ocean, is now going to be a fortified 1,100-mile retaining wall against Chinas nine-dash line  which U.S. Admiral Harry Harris calls the Berlin Wall of the Sea  that runs parallel to the Philippines 12-mile territorial boundary and the First Island Chain. And at both ends of that retaining wall are the Bashi Channel in the Batanes Islands in the north and the Tawi-Tawi Strait in the Sulu archipelago in the south. Its no surprise then that the U.S. has requested access to Batanes Island and the Laoag Airport in Ilocos Norte where movements in the Bashi Channel could be monitored, and blocked if a conflict with China occurs.
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The familiar emergency alert system, the one where we in the U.S. occasionally hear a radio or television broadcast interruption that...
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Earlier this month, the Treasury Department began a new initiative to identify and track buyers of Manhattan (and Miami) real estate who make those purchases through anonymous LLCs. It turns out the program, which will run from March through August, has a big loophole: The Real Deal reports that it won't track wire transfers.

The Treasury Department will track all-cash transactions of more than $3 million, but only those made with actual papere.g. checks, or good old-fashioned dollar bills. But transactions at that level are most commonly done with wire transfers, according to experts. "We don't have people coming to closings with suitcases full of cash," Stuart Saft, who heads Holland & Knight's real estate practice, told TRD.

The feds, for their part, say they're ready for the future. "We adapt in the future accordingly," a FinCEN spokesperson said. They elaborated further on why the initiative will be run this way, which comes down to paperwork:

"We're asking the title insurers to use an existing form with existing definitions," a FinCEN spokesperson said. "A covered transaction is triggered only when 'such purchase is made, at least in part, using currency or a cashier's check, a certified check, a traveler's check, or a money order in any form.' This generally conforms to existing Form 8300 requirements (which are not triggered by wire transfers), which reduces burden on covered businesses because they are already familiar with the Form 8300 filing requirements and have filed Form 8300's in the past." Got it? The tracking begins in March.

 The biggest weakness in the Treasury's new LLC order? Wire transfers [TRD]

 Feds Will Now ID Anonymous Buyers of Manhattan Real Estate [Curbed]

 All LLC coverage [Curbed]
Despite the fact that Jeanne Gang, the founder of Chicago-based architecture firm Studio Gang, has plenty of projects in progress all over the world, only a few of those are in New York City. The firm is working on the controversial expansion of the American Museum of Natural History, along with the angular "Solar Curve" near the High Line. And today, Dezeen highlights the firm's third NYC commission: a 20,000-square-foot FDNY facility in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which will function as a training center for "an elite force of firefighters and specialized rescue workers."

The building certainly looks like a firehouseit has red accents and the typical sign above the entrancebut has a far more open feel than you'd expect from a traditional hook-and-ladder. According to the firm's website, the openness is intentional, for several reasons. The building's main feature is "a large interior void," which allows the firefighters working there to "practice rescue scenarios that mimic conditions common to the city." (And obviously, there's room for a couple of fire engines,which will be able to exit on either side of the building.)

The openness is also meant to enhance the social lives of the firefighters, many of whom will be working and staying in the building. Large windows let in light and air, and there are several communal spaces, including a large kitchen, backyard, an exercise center, and porches on different levels.

On its website, Studio Gang calls the firehouse "both a neighborhood fixture and important piece of infrastructure," and as far as civic buildings in New York City go, this could very well set a new precedent.

 Fire Rescue 2 [Studio Gang]

 Studio Gang designs Brooklyn fire station with bright red details [Dezeen]

 All Studio Gang Coverage [Curbed]
Why should any of these gents drop out when theres a favorable poll and a donor at hand? Photo: Getty Images

In New Hampshire  the battle for supremacy and survival for would-be Establishment Republican presidential favorites Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio  recent polls have been a lot like what Mark Twain once said of New England weather: If you dont like it now, wait a few minutes.

There have been some constants: In the last ten published surveys, Donald Trump has been the leader in every one, by an average of 17 points. Non-Establishment candidate Ted Cruz has run second in five of them.

In the crowded Establishment lane, John Kasich and Jeb Bush each have one poll in the last week showing a big, sudden surge into second place. How each of these candidates performs in Iowa (with Marco Rubio the only one even remotely threatening the Big Two of Trump and Cruz there) could affect their viability in the eight days that will remain before New Hampshire votes. And nobodys holding back on spending. Kasich and Christie have put all their chips on New Hampshire, with more than $10 million each in ads. Team Rubio has spent a bit less in the Granite State but has put about $12 million into Iowa. And Bushs Right to Rise super-pac has outspent everybody in both states.

The irony is that the viability of any of these candidates depends on the early demise of the rest of them, and then a three-way race against Trump and Cruz (or, if they are really lucky, a one-on-one with one of them). Barring total disaster, though, Bush and Rubio are likely to hold on until the potential safe haven (or final resting place) of their home state of Florida with its winner-take-all delegate haul on March 15. Kasich will try to survive until the same day, when his own home state of Ohio also has a winner-take-all contest. None of them has any reason to drop out after Iowa  so much for the usual three tickets out of Iowa cliches  and even New Hampshire may only be a sudden-death proposition for Christie (whos running a pretty consistent sixth in polls there). How the various candidates perform in Nevada, South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday primaries on March 1 will depend on money, candidate stamina, and how they and everybody else fare in the first two states  and in the remaining candidate debates that always hold out the promise of a star turn and then a media and donor windfall.

And speaking of debates, Thursday nights Fox News tilt, dominated as it was by Trumps refusal to attend, could either intensify the Establishment gridlock or show the way to a resolution. Bush was generally viewed as having one of the better performances. Kasich and Christie also had their moments, as did Rubio, seen by a plurality of observers as the winner in an uneven and sometimes underwhelming event. The one clear loser was Cruz, and that could continue to sap his recently formidable momentum, both in Iowa (where Rubios not far behind him in most late polls) and in New Hampshire. The most galvanizing possibility is that Rubio could edge out Cruz for second place in Iowa, use the bounce to move to the front of the line in New Hampshire, and then get the one-on-one competition (with Trump in this case) all of the Establishment candidates crave. On the other hand, if Cruz, with his great Iowa organization, hangs on to second place but trails Trump handily, Republicans will face the specter of a Trump run-the-table scenario.

When comparing these candidates and contrasting them to Trump and Cruz, its important not to lose your bearings and consider them moderates. All of them favor significantly more regressive taxes. All of them are on record supporting big negative changes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, among other domestic spending cuts. And, as a matter of fact, all of them are significantly more likely than Trump or Cruz (or the nonviable Rand Paul) to get the U.S. into a Middle Eastern land war by suppertime on Inaugural Day. One of them, Marco Rubio, has a voting record hard to distinguish from Cruzs, and actually joined the fiery Texan in many of his gestures of defiance against the Senate GOP leadership.

But substance aside, they are all more acceptable to Republicans who arent highly self-conscious movement conservatives (and thus likely to be fond of Cruz) and who havent fallen into Trumps rabbit hole. There are many theories as to why the Establishment has been unable to unite behind one of them early enough to avoid a traffic jam in the same lane; Ross Douthat has just penned a column offering multiple reasons the most obvious choice, Marco Rubio, has been unable to seal the deal after Jeb Bush faltered so badly. It may well be that, despite the prevailing wisdom that the party decides nominees via elected official endorsements, donor pressure, and signals to the rank and file, the Establishment actually doesnt have the power to winnow the field among its own favorites so long as each has a super-pac, a promising poll, and the abiding reflection of the Next President of the United States in every mirror.
Nooshafarin Ravaghi taught English classes at the Santa Ana jail. Photo: Orange County Sheriffs Department

Three very dangerous inmates who escaped a California prison by rappelling from the roof with bedsheet ropes are still on the run, but officials have tracked down at least one of their accomplices. Forty-four-year-old Nooshafarin Ravaghi was arrested Thursday afternoon and accused of aiding in the escape of Jonathan Tieu, Bac Duong, and Hossein Nayeri, all of whom were in prison either for murder or attempted murder. (Nayeri in particular stood accused of driving some guy into the middle of a desert, chopping off his penis, soaking him in bleach, and setting him on fire.)

Ravaghi taught English As a Second Language classes at the prison. She reportedly developed a friendly relationship with Nayeri, and is charged with giving him Google Maps and information that helped him escape.

Based on the sophisticated nature of the getaway, which involved cutting through steel bars with professional tools and wriggling through feet of plumbing, police told NBC its clear now that there was some assistance on the inside. Ravaghi denies supplying the convicts with anything besides maps  police cant even say definitively whether she knew about the planned escape  but investigators told the Los Angeles Times they absolutely could not rule out the possibility she provided them with physical tools.

Stolen Vehicle ACTUAL 2008 White GMC Savana Utility Lic: 8U66466 plates/stickers may have been removed pic.twitter.com/MASIlWnYxe  OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD) January 29, 2016

The three men are thought to be living out of a white GMC van that they stole on Sunday in Los Angeles. The reward for information leading to their recapture has been upped from $50,000 to $200,000.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes Photo: Kimberly White/2015 Getty Images

Theranos, the Silicon Valley laboratory-testing company whose practices federal regulators deemed to pose immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety earlier this week, is now in trouble with its main retail partner in California, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Walgreens, the countrys largest drugstore chain, announced on Thursday that it was temporarily closing its Theranos Wellness Center in Palo Alto after the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a letter saying that the companys Newark, California, lab has already caused or is likely to cause serious injury, harm, or death to patients, giving it ten days to correct the deficiencies or risk losing its certification.

While the suspension does not affect most of Theranoss business with the chain  of the 41 Walgreens pharmacies where the company operates wellness centers, 40 are in Arizona and send their tests to a different lab in Phoenix  a further breakdown in relations between the two companies could spell trouble for Theranos, which derives most of its sales to the public from its partnership with Walgreens.

Walgreens spokeperson Michael Polzin said the businesses were currently in discussions about the next phase of our relationship, which the Journal reports has not yet generated revenue for Walgreens.

Theranos spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said that the Arizona lab handles 90 percent of lab tests from the companys wellness centers and that the CMS findings do not reflect the current state of the lab.

This is an issue that many other labs have faced, and we will fix it quickly and completely, working with our regulators as we always do, she said.

In October, Walgreens suspended plans to set up more wellness centers at its pharmacies after the reliability of Theranoss proprietary testing methods were called into question.
Donald Trump pretends to box  lets say Roger Ailes. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/2016 Bloomberg Finance LP

After completely transforming the 2016 GOP primary, Donald Trump, on Thursday night, pulled off the seasons most dramatic showdown so far simply by refusing to show up for an event. Everyone agreed that Trumps competing rally was boring, but perhaps that wasnt the performance we were meant to focus on. As The New York Times Frank Bruni noted, Trumps absence was the most compelling presence on the Fox News debate stage. Trump was remembered. Trump was invoked, Bruni said. His ghost was there, because hed reshaped his Republican rivals images, reconfigured the challenges in front of them, rewritten the rules of this extraordinary race.

Making your ghostly presence felt is obviously an impressive feat, but that doesnt necessarily mean Trumps stunt was successful politically. According to the pundits, the TrumpFox News debacle either proved that the front-runner is a political savant, or that he committed one of the greatest tactical errors by a politician ever.

Many commentators agreed with Bruni and gave the night to Trump. Voxs Matthew Yglesias said Trump put on a bravura debate performance, though he wasnt on stage:

The spirit of Trump and Trumpism was the dominant force of the evening even without Trump in the room. Ted Cruz reiterated his promise to carpet bomb ISIS regardless of the civilian casualty. Marco Rubio archly referred to his desire to bring back torture as a matter of American policy. Asked if he was worried about a rising tide of Islamophobic incidents in the United States, Ben Carson said simply that we need to stop allowing political correctness to dictate our policies. Every candidate in the race  even the once sunny and multicultural Rubio  has adopted Trumps essentially dark and pessimistic worldview. Theres no sense in this field that the economy is stronger than it was three or seven years ago, and theres no sense that the world beyond Americas shores offers anything other than danger.

Another point for Trump: Days before the Iowa caucus, he forced his rivals to attack each other, while he emerged unscathed. The Nations John Nichols said it was obvious that Trump was smart to skip the debate  and not just because his own event generated wall-to-wall coverage on the other cable news networks.

Had he taken the stage with the rest of the candidates, Trump would have taken hits directly from them. He also would have had to stand by while they took shots at one another. They did just that: Cruz took shots at Rubio, Rubio took shots at Cruz, Bush took shots at Rubio, and Rand Paul took shots at everyone. By skipping the debate, and letting the rest of the candidates argue among themselves, Trump avoided any potential damage  and he made it harder for the other contenders, especially Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich, to build on whatever momentum they might be accumulating as the key tests approach.

Speaking of the other candidates, most pundits felt they failed to fill the Trump-sized hole at the center of the debate. Joan Walsh, Nicholss colleague at The Nation, wrote:

The debate illuminated the vacuum at the heart of the Republican Party that has been filled by Trump. None of the candidates have the combination of smarts, charisma, and backbone that leading the country usually requires. Their massive cave-in on immigration, a sop to their nativist base, was the clearest example of their abdication of responsibility to govern, but foreign policy, where everyone pledged to kill ISIS deader than the other, but nobody said how, was a close second. Trumps absence is likely to make GOP hearts grow fonder. At any rate, nobody did anything to stop his momentum on Thursday night.

Bruni added that Rubio missed yet another opportunity to become the candidate everyone predicted he would be:

Political observers have been waiting for Rubios breakout moment, and many predicted that hed have it at this debate. He didnt. Put frequently on the defensive, he reverted to lines hed used before and nuggets from his stump speech, and he kept returning to ISIS and military might, military might and ISIS. He came across as overly programmed, one-dimensional and itchy to go to war.

Others, like Slates Jim Newell, said Ted Cruz was the most disappointing candidate onstage:

Cruz had his worst debate at a time when polls suggest hes fallen well behind Trump in Iowa. Unless organizing can make up the shortfall, he needs to make something happen in the few days left. But instead of commanding the stage and hammering the absent front-runner, Cruz turned in a sloppy performance consisting of flat jokes, whining to the moderators, whining to the moderators as a set up for flat jokes, and taking substantive poundings from his rivalsand from Fox News itself  Cruz on Thursday night wasnt the dominating presence he needed to be. He was just another one of the people losing to Donald Trump.

And dont forget about the two candidates who actually sided with Trump in his war on Fox News. On Newsmax TV, Michael Reagan panned undercard debaters Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who won the last two GOP Iowa caucuses, for playing along. Theyre not going to win another caucus at all, he said. They shouldnt even be in the debates  and then to go and give credibility, or try to give credibility to Trump, Trump had to be laughing all the way back to his plane.

There was one candidate who was almost universally praised for turning in a good  er, less-bad performance than usual: Jeb Bush. The Washington Posts Chris Cillizza summed up his night:

If you had any doubt about how much Donald Trump is in Jebs head, this debate should have cleared it up. The former Florida governor was, from the get go, more relaxed and more forceful in this Trump-less debate than he has been in the previous six debates where Trump was included. He owned his familys political legacy unapologetically. He fought Rubio to a draw in an immigration back and forth. He regularly was the only candidate  aside from Paul  who answered the questions asked of him. Jeb is still a somewhat (ok, very) awkward candidate  his halting closing statement was painful  who doesnt really like going on the attack. But, without Trump looming over him, Bush looked positively presidential.

Fellow Post journalist Stephen Stromberg agreed that Bush was the only candidate who put on a halfway decent show. Though, he couldnt say exactly why:

Maybe Donald Trumps absence gave Bush a confidence boost  or at least permitted him to get a word in edgewise. Perhaps Bush, with little to lose at this point, relaxed. Or maybe he is just more polished after months of campaigning. Whatever the reason, he spoke with more conviction and dominated the stage at several points in the debate. And he used some of those moments to bring policy specifics and high principles into an otherwise dismal conversation.

And he thinks its too late for Bush to rescue his flailing candidacy.

The Weekly Standards Jonathan V. Last felt the candidates generally mediocre performances were actually Fox Newss fault:

 the Fox crew ran a strange debate: They asked very few questions about the frontrunner; they queued up flip-flop highlight reels for some candidates, but not others; they paid homage to liberal shibboleths like climate change and Kim Davis; they devoted time to silly YouTube question about Americas supposed climate of Islamophobia from a Bernie Sanders supporter. The result was something of a muddle, with none of the candidates prosecuting the case against Trump. Instead, they all acted as if they were in an interregnum which had nothing to do with the campaign both behind it and in front of it. Its as if they thought that because Trump was gone for a night, he was vanquished from the field. This seems like a terrible miscalculation.

Though most commentators felt Megyn Kelly, the journalist at the center of this weeks debacle, came off well. Writing (perhaps not coincidentally) for Fox News, Erick Erickson called Kelly the debates ultimate winner:

After days of being beaten up by the Trump forces, she showed she is a sharp, credible journalist who is willing to ask tough questions and hold the candidates accountable for their prior statements. The video montages and prior records of the candidates were fair game and she forced them to answer.

And the Posts Chris Cillizza noted that she managed to perform under a tremendous amount of pressure:

There has rarely been a debate moderator who has come under as much scrutiny as Kelly has during the course of this campaign. Despite all of that negative attention, Kelly showed why she is the face of Fox News on Thursday night. She was pointed, tough and well versed on the issues. And, more important to me? She showed her sense of humor and a willingness to not take herself too seriously. That she performed so well with so many eyes on her speaks incredibly highly of her abilities.

But if Fox News won, doesnt that mean Trump lost? A handful of pundits argued that point, noting that Trumps competing event was tremendously dull, despite all the publicity. The Atlantics Yoni Appelbaum said:

It might have been interesting to watch Trumps grimaces and facial contortions as his own flip-flop reel played. But he avoided awkward questions on his own, far-longer list of substantive reversals. Standing alone on stage at his veterans event across town, though, Trump appeared equally diminished by the absence of his rivals. He brought Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee up to join him, before yielding the podium to veterans for half an hour. The other cable-news networks cut away from their live coverage, and the rally wound down to its anti-climactic end while the debate remained in full swing.

Dick Morris took the most extreme anti-Trump stance, declaring on Newsmax TV that he missed a huge opportunity and allowed Cruz to consolidate his position as the front-runner. He wondered why Trump let the debate go on without him, since hes not stupid, and speculated that Trump was worried that hed be hit hard on his abortion flip-flop.He has a good chance to win, he said, but he committed one of the greatest tactical errors Ive ever seen a candidate do in a campaign.

So, is there anything positive to say about the GOPs chaotic display? The Weekly Standards Bill Kristol tried to find a silver lining:

Could the consequence of the debate be to begin the deflation of the Trump balloon? Ill grant that I may be indulging in wishful thinking, but I think so. If you were an undecided Iowa voter, or a leaner one way or another, I think you saw something to like in one or more of the candidates on the stage. I dont think you recoiled from the spectacle and said, I want Donald. The national media is enraptured with the narrative of The Triumph of Trump, so theyll want to say that he was the winner in absentia. But I think for actual Republican voters, especially in Iowa, he was simply in absentia. And I dont think absence made the heart grow fonder. I suspect absence made the heart start to question why it was interested in Trump in the first place.

This time, we only have to wait until Monday to find out if hes right.
Tiny puppy Photo: Southeastern Guide Dogs/Facebook

Its the last weekend of January, and there are only 50 days until spring (ugh). All right, here are eight actually good things that happened this week that will hopefully cheer you up more than that.

1. A 9-year-old girl is on a mission to collect 1,000 Barbie dolls for 1,000 homeless girls. So far shes collected 700, which shes going to donate to shelters so homeless girls her age have Barbies to play with, too.

2. President Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison. In addition to potentially causing psychological issues, isolation is also correlated with recidivism, studies have shown.

3. Police in Ecuador saved an adorable but terrified sloth who tried to cross the road. The sloth was found on the side of the road hugging a signpost. He was given a bill of good health by a vet and returned to his habitat.

4. The Army will finally give female soldiers 12 weeks paid maternity leave. Cant believe they didnt have it already, but yay?

5. Professional surfer Kelly Slater saved a woman and her baby from a freak wave. The woman and her baby carriage were knocked over when a wave in Oahu surprisingly crashed across the road. Luckily, Slater was nearby to rescue them, and theyre both recovering.

6. Expert thirst trapper the Game donated $1 million worth of clean water to Flint, Michigan. Hes also challenged other celebrities to donate during the water crisis.

7. Obama announced plans to shame corporations into providing equal pay. Companies with more than 100 employees will be required to disclose what they pay their employees by race, gender, and ethnicity.

8. Tiny puppies wore tiny harnesses. Theyre training to be guide dogs, and its adorable.
Elementary has, so far, steered away from any romance between Holmes and Watson.

"... There are some things you can play with and some you cant. The fact that ones a man and ones a woman is irrelevant ... The original Holmes and Watson were not romantically involved and, therefore, neither should we [be romantically involved]. ... That wont change unless someone else swoops in and takes over and turns the ship upside-down."



Good, although there's something about a lack of contrived sexual tension between characters that don't suck that makes me want to ship them. I've only read one Joanlock fic and it was so good I probably won't read anymore.

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Link to that fic please?

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http://archiveofourown.org/works/3760270 Warning that it's explicit.

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I liked Tamara Tunie's character in this episode. Marissa Cooper's dad was all right as well. His lawyers on the other hand.









^ That's just a waste of perfectly good honey smh.



Edited at 2016-01-29 05:37 am (UTC) They must have repeated that answer a thousand times. All least this time it's not phrased as a question.I liked Tamara Tunie's character in this episode. Marissa Cooper's dad was all right as well. His lawyers on the other hand.^ That's just a waste of perfectly good honey smh.

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Omg, that scene annoyed me so much, lol. Like, dude, it does not take that much time to squeeze honey out of a bottle!

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The honey bear was very distracting. I felt like Winnie the Pooh. I couldn't concentrate on their conversation the first time and had to rewind that scene lol.

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Nemesis cop returns!



I'm annoyed that people are still asking them if Joan and Sherlock are gonna bone. They're not. It's been three and a half years, ENOUGH

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I want Joan to beat the shit out of that cop tbh.

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Me too. Her hatred of Joan is such bullshit. I was sad we didn't get their fight on screen.

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I think it's about time for another My Dearest Watson letter from Jamie.



As much as she annoys Joan, I kinda want her to stick around for a couple more episodes.

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i want them to hate fuck tbh

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Same. I despise her.

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glad to see them say in plain writing there will be no Holmes/Watson if only because it subverts Sherlock's assumption she's into him as as well as provides a nice/stable adult mixed sex friendship without that 'will they/won't they' mess. Not to mention - she already had a romance with his brother so I doubt she would ever want to see Sherlock in a sexual way.



Tonight's ep was really nice

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Joan and Mycroft grossed me out though TBH.

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that was the only time I just couldn't buy Lucy's performance. Her acting so ~into him when there was just nothing there chemistry-wise.

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it was sooooooo awful. I don't think anyone liked it.

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It ruined that whole season for me. I get grossed out just thinking about it.

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the worst part about it that it was so out of character. Joan would never do that considering her relationship with Sherlock, and the fact that she started as his sober companion and knew about boundaries much more than normal people.

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It is funny. My mom totally ship them and ask why they aren't together. XD While I ship Bell/Joan...I regret nothing.



urgh...creepy detective lady is back. Kick her ass this time, Joan.

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I ship Bell/Everyone. I love Marcus.

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i'm glad they're not hooking up i just finished season one and it was SO. GOOD. i can't wait to watch it all



Edited at 2016-01-29 05:06 am (UTC)

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lol this is me 100%

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Maybe Sherlock can have some confusing dreams wherein making out with Joan is symbolic of something else.



He can act awkward then finally confess to her, figure out what it was really about, end of episode! lol

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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lmaoooo, perf. (But she was watching the first two Godfathers back-to-back???? That's like seven straight hours, girl!)

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can't wait for joan's cop nemesis to be back! she's more interesting than papa holmes to me.

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Watson needs to end up with Detective Bell. I cant believe they teased us with it in that episode and didnt deliver.

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I'm so sick of hearing this question of ~"Will they or won't they?"~ It's been 4 seasons already. If the writers were going to go in that direction, they would have written it in by now.



Even though I ship them in fics, I don't ship them on the show. I wouldn't take the show seriously anymore if they did. This is what makes the show so great to me is that it sticks to the original and true relationship of Holmes and Watson - that it's a very deep and everlasting love through friendship, which imo can be just as powerful as any romantic relationship.

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I believe in the power of love... through friendship! It's why people shipping Frodo and Sam bothers me so much; it totally devalues their friendship and reduces Sam's loyalty. Wanting them to hook up cheapens the deepness of emotion that friendship can bring.

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mte. What makes Frodo and Sam's relationship so great is because of their friendship. It's sad how friendship love is not as appreciated or valued as much as romantic love.

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I don't want them to hook up and I def don't want them together...... though I wouldn't mind some ambiguous romantic tension.

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I'm glad Joanlock will never happen. I like that their dynamic isn't sexual.

I actually like that Ichabod and Abbie from Sleepy Hollow have also not boned. I liked that they weren't sexual with each other. The rest of fandom disagrees with me vehemently though. :(

I'm rooting for Miss Corinth and Ichabod. I'm alone in it. I've made peace with it.

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I like Miss Corinth & Ichabod too! I kind of assumed Abbie/Ichabod were endgame, though, but now that the show's moving to Friday (i.e., likely canceled soon) I wonder if they're gonna speed that up or end it kind of ~ambiguously or whatever.

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Ugh, my shipping Holmes/Watson is frustrated at every turn.

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The rumors of a coordinated production cut between OPEC and Russia continue to grow more serious. The latest comes from the Russian energy minister Alexander Novak, who insisted that Russia will hold talks with OPEC in February on a possible agreement to reduce output.

There are very many questions, on checking cuts, from what base to count from. In order to start working through these issues, we need general agreement, its too early to talk about that. Thats the subject of the meeting and discussion (in February), Novak told reporters, according to TASS.

The headline figure: a 5 percent production cut across the board for all participants. Thats what Saudi Arabia floated last year. When asked if that was still on the table, Novak replied, That is precisely the subject for debate. The meeting could tentatively take place in February. It was originally proposed by Venezuela, which has pleaded for emergency measures to stabilize oil prices. Related: Only Recession Can Prevent An Oil Price Spike

Oil prices skyrocketed on Wednesday and Thursday after the comments from Novak. During intraday trading on January 28, prices shot up by more than 8 percent. By midday, WTI and Brent fell back a bit, but were still up more than 3 percent. That is the highest level since the first week of January.

Coordination on production cuts between OPEC and Russia has always been a long shot, and probably still remains an unlikely development. The big difference this time around, though, is Russias change in tone. Saudi Arabia had hinted at its willingness last year to undertake a 5 percent production cut if Russia did the same, but up until now Moscow never really took the idea seriously.

On January 26, however, Russian oil executives met with Russian government officials in Moscow to discuss their predicament. Reuters reported that the meeting resulted in an openness, if not complete agreement, to begin talking with OPEC about cooperation.

"At the meeting there was discussion in particular about the oil price and what steps we should take collectively to change the situation for the better, including negotiations within the framework of OPEC as a whole, and bilaterally," Nikolai Tokarev, chief of state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft, said according to Russian media outlets.

"The main initiative is being shown by, of course, our Saudi partners. They are the main negotiators. That means that they are the ones we need to discuss this with first of all, Tokarev added. Related: Oil Prices in 2016 Will Be Determined By These 6 Factors

Russias oil production hit another post-Soviet record in December, climbing to 10.8 million barrels per day (mb/d).

There seems to be a newfound openness from many different oil producers to look at ways of stabilizing the market. Sub-$30 oil tends to do that. Iraqs finance minister told Reuters on Wednesday that his country would be willing to participate in talks on production cuts.

However, dont get too excited. Shortly after the comments made from Russias energy minister, some OPEC officials shot down the speculation. Four OPEC officials said that they had no knowledge of a February meeting, insisting that the next OPEC summit was still scheduled for June.

Moreover, even if Russian officials are open to discussion on cuts in output, they face serious obstacles on following through on actual reductions. Russias main oil fields are already facing natural decline, and many in the industry would balk at throttling back on production. Also, there are technical obstacles. Russia is largely unable to reduce output in winter months.

Perhaps more important is the fact that Russias oil sector is not dominated by one state-owned company like Saudi Aramco. It would be more difficult to corral an array of semi-private companies, many of which are partially owned by international oil companies like BP. Investors may be placing too much faith in the state if they think Russia can adjust production as easily as, say, Saudi Arabia. Related: Oil Up 3% But Bearish News Is On The Way

Yet another obstacle is Iran. Iran has shown a dogged determination to return to the oil market, with pledges to ramp up output by 500,000 barrels per day in the near-term. It is hard to imagine Iran being willing to slash output just as it finally has reached its goal of ridding itself of sanctions.

To complicate matters even further is how to measure what a 5 percent production cut would look like. What is the baseline? 5 percent below what level? Production levels for OPEC members are constantly shifting, and some have even made significant gains as of late. For example, Iraq managed to increase output by 300,000 barrels per day between October and December, hitting a high of 4.3 mb/d by the end of 2015. A 5 percent cut would merely bring it back to October levels. That would be less painful than, say, a 5 percent cut in Venezuela, which saw a slight erosion of output over the same time period.

In other words, until something more concrete emerges, the speculation of a coordinated production cut between OPEC and Russia is just that: speculation.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
In an unexpected geopolitical twist to a new phase of Turkish-Israeli relations, Israel has called for an independent Kurdish nation, which can only be based on crude oil discoveries and production bypassing Baghdad.

But its a bad time for anyone to make an independence bid on oil thats sliding, and the question of which Kurds would be included risks major chaos.



Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has called for an independent Kurdish state, renewing the debate on the consequences of the birth of a new Kurdish nation and the feasibility of independence funded by oil at rock-bottom prices.

Which Kurds, exactly, would make up this potential new nation is a subject that could dictate the future geopolitical chaos to come. Israel has for the most part made it clear that it is referring to the Iraqi Kurds and the Syrian Kurds, not the Turkish Kurds of the PKK (Workers Party of Kurdistan) variety. This speaks volumes about where Israeli-Turkish relations could be going, but it removes none of the complications. Related: Oil Prices in 2016 Will Be Determined By These 6 Factors

Having deteriorated over the past decade, Israeli-Turkey relations are now on the mend by geopolitical default. Turkey has alienated just about everyone else, including Iran, and the downing of a Russian war plane means it needs to make some new friends, and fast. But the rapprochement is a cat-and-mouse game, and Israels quiet call for an independent Kurdish nation is both a veiled threat and an olive branch, depending on Turkeys next move.

Israel keeps dangling carrots and swinging sticks, and Turkey keeps taking the bait. Turkey has been hitting the air waves of late indicating that it needs Israel, and Israel has also been courting Turkey in new ways.

The friends Turkey has alienated have natural gasso does Israel. The fact that reports are being leaked out of Israel about the potential to see Israeli gas exported to Turkey are significant. Most likely this is an Israeli gimmick to push Turkey to a deal sooner rather than later, sensing Ankaras growing desperation. The leak has also been followed by convenient surveys that claim to show that Turks view Russia as a greater enemy than Israel at this point.

But Israel is also accusing Turkey of buying oil from ISIS and helping it to fund its terrorist operations. Related: 60 Reasons Why Oil Investors Should Hang On

For Israel, which has made some amazing natural gas discoveries in the Levant Basin, Turkey is another good export market. It could also be a transport hub for Israeli gas. But Israel will be calling the shots here because Turkey is more desperate to wean itself off of Russian gas than Israel is to find a new market and transport route.

So where do the Kurds fit in? Geopolitically, theres nowhere to fit all three nation groups without major consequences.

The Kurdish population in Turkey is estimated to be around 12-16 million, and through the PKK, the Kurds have been engaged in an uprising against the Turkish government since 1978. Without a brokered deal between the PKK and the Turkish government, some experts believe that the formation of a separate Kurdish state might lead to more unrest among the Kurds of Turkey, which might add to the unrest in the region. This is Turkeys greatest fear, so the Israel dangling of a Kurdish nation is a veiled threat in general, but toned down with the inclusion of only Iraqi and Syrian Kurds.

Its a tricky relationship for Turkey, which receives oil from the Iraqi Kurds and has a strong business footprint in Iraqi Kurdistan, which could not support a nation of Kurds from Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Related: Oil Up 3% But Bearish News Is On The Way

The Iran element also suggests that Israel may be insincere in its apparent call for an independent Kurdish nation. Iran wants greater influence in the Middle East, and an independent Kurdish state will likely help it along. Keep in mind, too, that with a stronger Iran, any consensus among the OPEC nations will remain a dream.

The outstanding question is whether the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is strong enough to go it alone. The budget is taking a hit thanks both to its expenditures in fighting of the Islamic State and weak oil prices.

But producers still continue to impress investors with two resounding facts: The KRG controls around 45 billion barrels of known oil reserves and has a direct market to Turkey; and its one of the cheapest places on Earth to produce. Genel says it produces as low as $1 a barrel.

Can it fund nationhood? Investors seem to think so, but geopolitics may decide otherwise.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com
Back in November, before the flames were even extinguished on the Su-24 Ankara shot down near the Syrian border, Vladimir Putin made a startling assertion.

Turkey, he said, is funding ISIS.

The startling part about Putins contention wasnt that Turkey effectively functions as a state sponsor of terror. We already knew that. Rather, the surprising part was that a world leader was prepared to cast aside all diplomatic decorum and openly accuse a democratic country of aiding and abetting the group that the world at large knows as the greatest scourge to humanity since the Reich.



Related: Only Recession Can Prevent An Oil Price Spike

Of course Putin was provoked and, under the circumstances, one might reasonably have expected him to react even more angrily than he did. After all, Turkey had just shot down a Russian warplane in what marked the first instance of a NATO member engaging a Soviet or Russian aircraft in more than a half century.

But rather than respond militarily, Putin decided to simply expose Recep Tayyip Erdogans Turkey for what it is: a dictatorship that funds terrorism while masquerading as a democracy and enjoying the perks of NATO membership.

In the days and weeks that followed, Moscow embarked on a truly epic PR campaign involving reels of footage depicting what The Kremlin said were ISIS oil trucks barreling across the Turkish border seemingly unimpeded. Deputy Minister of Defence Anatoly Antonov even went so far as to mock Erdogans brilliant family [oil] business, a nod to reports that suggest the Turkish President may be knowingly involved with the ISIS crude trade.



Related: No-Holds-Barred Price War Brings Gas Down To 47 Cents In Michigan

Turkey sought to downplay the accusations by suggesting that no one took Putin seriously, but little by little, the world began to question whether it is in fact Ankara that acts as Islamic States greatest regional benefactor.

In a testament to the fact that the world is waking up to the stunning reality that a NATO member may be Islamic States de facto finance arm, Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon today accused Turkey of backing the terrorists in a series of surprisingly candid statements to reporters in Athens where Yaalon was meeting his Greek counterpart Panos Kammenos.

(Yaalon and Kammenos on Tuesday)

"As you know, Daesh (Islamic State) enjoyed Turkish money for oil for a very, very long period of time. I hope that it will be ended," Yaalon said.



Related: OPECs Trillion Dollar Mistake

"It's up to Turkey, the Turkish government, the Turkish leadership, to decide whether they want to be part of any kind of cooperation to fight terrorism. This is not the case so far.

No, it's not the case so far, unless you count Erdogan's absurdly transparent attempt to eradicate the Kurds in Turkey by waging a war of attrition against the PKK.

As Reuters dryly notes, Yaalon's "assertion could hinder attempts to mend fences between Israel and Turkey after years of estrangement." Yes, it very well could and you can bet it will prompt a decidedly indignant response from what's sure to be a furious Erodgan.

Now we'll just hold our breath for Washington to follow suit and admit that America's "ally" in Ankara is the reason ISIS stays in business.

By Zerohedge

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Earlier this week, FBI agents arrested Samy Mohamed Hamzeh who was allegedly planning a mass shooting inside the Humphrey Scottish Rite Masonic Center in Downtown Milwaukee.

Hamzeh had taken a tour of the 1883-built building earlier in the month, and it is believed he did so to understand the floorplan.

The high-profile story has people asking many questions, including who exactly are the Masons?

Briefly, they are a fraternity of men  and there are about 11,000 Masons in Wisconsin  that was once made up of stonemasons (craftspeople who cut and built with stone). Masons are required to show tolerance, respect and kindness, as well as practice charity, care for the community and maintain high moral standards in their personal life.

This evening, I had a phone conversation with Frank Struble, the Grand Master of Masons in Wisconsin and asked a litany of questions, including what the Masons do in Milwaukee, why there are so many conspiracies about the group, if women will ever be inducted and why his group was allegedly targeted by Hamzeh.

OnMilwaukee: So why do you think the Masons were targeted?

Frank Struble: I have no idea. You cant understand a twisted mind or try to make sense of it. We are a society of men who believe it is our job to practice brotherly love and make the world a better place.

OnMilwaukee: Do you think it had anything to do with religion?

Struble: If it did, that doesnt make sense, either. Every Mason believes in a Spiritual Being, but it is a non-denominational organization. Masons are Christians, Jews, Muslims. In fact, the Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons in Minnesota is a Muslim and an Iraqi vet.

There is a "G" in the center of our logo, and it stands for Geometry and God. How you choose to worship God is up to you. We do not have a pathway to heaven. We are simply concerned with mens behavior while they are here on earth, and we promote well-being and happiness.

OnMilwaukee: Are African Americans welcome to join the Masons?

Struble: Absolutely. At one time, they were required to join a separate group, called the Prince Hall Masons, which still exists. However, black men today are allowed to choose either group and are welcome in both.

OnMilwaukee: What about women? Think well ever be welcome to the group?

Struble: The Masons are a fraternity, not a sorority. There is a group for women called the Eastern Star.

OnMilwaukee: Why do you think there are so many conspiracy theories or misconceptions about the Masons?

Struble: Freemasonry has been around since 1717 and untruths about the Order started around the same time. The United States was consumed by anti-Masonic hysteria in the late 1820s, and the Internet has resurrected a lot of these myths.

Freemasons do not ride goats in our lodges. Originally, we referred to the Supreme Being as God Of All Things, which may be where this started. But the goat is considered a symbol of the devil by some, and they have used this myth to say we worship the devil which is simply not true, either. There are a lot of urban legends, but thats all they are.

OnMilwaukee: Is there a secret Freemason handshake?

Struble: You have to understand our history in order for me to answer this. We grew out of European traditions during the Dark Ages. At that time, freemasons were building cathedrals and temples, and because of the need for their skills, they were allowed to travel from country to country which most people were not allowed to do at the time. There werent any records of anything, so in order to prove who they were, they used signs and grips to ensure they were who they said they were and not an imposter. There were also different levels of workers, based on knowledge and skill, and this is how they identified their rank as well.

You can find a lot of "secret" information on the Internet, but as a Mason, you are not going to find them out from me. I took an oath. So you could say there are things that are private, but not secret. People like to make more out of it, though. Our lodges are clearly marked, and addresses and phone numbers are available.

OnMilwaukee: What are some of the things the Masons do in Milwaukee?

Struble: We are very supportive of public schools, veterans, medical research, our own widows and orphans, and we operate senior care facilities. We have multiple dyslexic learning centers for kids with dyslexia. We also train public school teachers how to teach dyslexic kids. There is a dyslexic learning center in the temple on Van Buren, which is one of the most chilling aspects of what could have happened if the FBI had not caught that guy. There could have been children present in the building.

OnMilwaukee: Has it been difficult to attract younger Masons?

Struble: Actually, were seeing a surge with millennials. I couldnt have told you that five years ago, but I can now. They want to find something bigger than themselves.

OnMilwaukee: Is the Milwaukee Mason community rattled over what almost happened?

Strubel: I wouldn't say rattled, but there is concern. Were all asking the same question you are: Why would someone target an organization thats dedicated to making the world a better place?
The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the opinions of OnMilwaukee.com, its advertisers or editorial staff.

Susan Phillips was like a whirlwind that dropped out of the sky full of promise and pledges of big, big change.

When she disappeared into another burst of wind, nothing had changed. Nothing.

Let me explain.

Almost three decades ago, I was intimately involved in efforts to improve the performance of students in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

I operated at the highest levels of the reform efforts under Superintendent Robert Peterkin and several forward-thinking members of the school board.

One of the key elements of any reform plan was to involve the Milwaukee community. MPS needed money, expertise and human capital to make things work better for students.

Enter Susan Phillips, the point person designated by the Greater Milwaukee Committee  an organization of movers and shakers, most of whom were white and lived outside the city, but who pledged to support MPS however they could.

We had meetings organized by Phillips. Did we ever have meetings! Phillips pulled groups of power brokers to the table to meet with MPS officials to develop ideas and plans to make them work. These were big-time guys, like Tom Hefty, who was the president of Blue Cross of Wisconsin.

I crossed swords with Hefty occasionally because I thought it might be helpful to have his organization commit human resources for mentoring programs and money to support advanced training opportunities for teachers.

But almost as suddenly as Phillips arrived, she was gone. The ideas disappeared. Hefty was reduced to such a petty level of politics that he demanded I be fired in exchange for his support of Dr. Howard Fuller as the new superintendent to replace Peterkin. Fuller did fire me.

All of this is to provide some perspective to the statement from former US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that the Milwaukee Public Schools are a "national disgrace."

Jay Bullock, a colleague and teacher in MPS, responded to Duncans column with the kind of predictable disdain that is so damaging to real fundamental reform.

Bullocks column blamed the state of MPS on different tests, too much testing, charter and voucher schools, shrinking school budgets and a general lack of support.

In the current Greater Milwaukee Committee website, they say this: "By the mid-1980s, the GMC began taking on more complex social issues such as education and inner city development. These projects are less visible, but their impact in the community is equally dramatic."

All of this is just to say that Duncan is absolutely right when he calls the Milwaukee Public Schools a "national disgrace."

Im not saying that people arent trying. Most teachers work like devils, many without support from lousy principals. The GMC has programs to enable high-achieving black high school students to go to college.

But holy cow, about 80 percent of the black students in third grade in MPS are not proficient in reading or math. Think about these kids. They arent going to get better as they get older. They are going to get worse or drop out.

Its all well and good to reward the hard-workers who are poor and need help to keep going. But somewhere along the line, we have to focus on the most troubled of our children.

As an example, look at the recent spate of carjacking incidents in Milwaukee, many of them featuring teenagers  some as young as 13  as the culprits. You cant tell me that their failure to get a good education doesnt have something to do with that.

There is such a long list of little failures for reform that it boggles the mind.

For example, the big selling point for voucher schools was that the competition would make MPS better. Thats not even close. Voucher schools have taken funds away from MPS with what can generously be called mixed results.

Sure, the schools need more money. Sure, the kids dont get the kind of support they need at home. Sure, poverty plays a role. Sure, the school board needs to stop being so protective of their elective seats and be willing to try outrageous ideas.

And we certainly need a mayor who is not almost disgustingly silent about what is happening to so many of the children in his city. He may not have legal authority, but he has a moral responsibility to rattle cages and rally the troops.

But we cant change all of those conditions right away. What we can change is what happens inside the classroom.

If the Greater Milwaukee Committee wants to do something truly meaningful, lets give a leave of absence to a mid- or high-level executive and have them sit with principals to help them learn how to run an organization.

Over 30 years, I have become convinced that the single, most important thing in any school building is a great principal. Milwaukee has some, like Jennifer Doucette at Cooper School and Joe DiCarlo at Maryland Montessori.

One overwhelming fact is that until MPS gets an outstanding and dedicated principal in every building, the school system is likely to continue to be a "national disgrace."
Nonhuman people (euphemisms for corporations) that front for a tiny number of successful (euphemism for the one percent) human people, who want to own everything (euphemistically called 'privatization'), have made Hillary Clinton fabulously rich. They have put over $125 million since 2001 into her own, personal bank account. [1]

CEOs of these mega-corporations (euphemisms for Masters of the Universe) appear to value her presence so much that they are willing to pay obscene amounts of money to hear her speak.

Apparently, anyway.

Neither the mega-corporations nor Hillary have said what makes her talks so valuable. Her 'speeches' were closed to the media and contractually required to have no recordings or transcripts. When asked recently if she would be willing to release the transcript of her speeches to Goldman Sachs (which paid her more than $600,000), she just laughed scornfully. [2] (Laughing being a euphemism for 'don't make me laugh'.)

But wasn't the request valid?

After all, 600 thousand dollars is nothing to laugh about, if there was a speech, it must have been some hot damn speech. Shouldn't she share what she knows with the American people too? After all she is running for president of the American people, isn't she? Not for the Presidency of Goldman Sachs.

Her secrecy about the speeches and the untoward, obscene payments (a quick calculation reveals they paid her an average of $9,571 per minute) puzzle some of us. Even those of us who are trying their best to trust her, and might even vote for her because of the dangers of electing a Republican president, that is if Sanders loses the primary to her. One might wonder why she should command such astounding fees when truth be told, she's no Winston Churchill, no Martin Luther King", no John F. Kennedy.

Hillary "earned" a total of $21.7 million for a total of 53 hours [3] of work over the last two years. This figure does not include "honoraria" from the Clinton Foundation (foundations being euphemisms for organizations dedicated to protecting the wealth and power of the one percent). Since the Clinton Foundation is a so-called charitable foundation, it does not have to disclose to the IRS what it pays to speakers (even if the fees are paid to her).

When asked by a reporter to see manuscripts of the speeches, Hillary could have said, "Sure! I'm so happy you're interested in them. I will also provide transcripts of my other speeches to Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, other Wall Street firms, big banks, and big pharma because I have absolutely nothing to hide."

But she didn't say that. And she won't release the transcripts.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Reprinted from Campaign For America's Future

Ford Motor Company announced this week that it will close all operations in Japan and Indonesia this year, because it sees "no reasonable path to profitability." Last year GM pulled out of Indonesia. What does it say that they are doing this with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the horizon?

Ford is giving up on trying to crack the Japanese and Indonesian automobile markets, saying that the upcoming TPP does not address such problems as currency manipulation and other non-tariff barriers. the BBC reported, in "Ford pulls out of Japan and Indonesia":

"In 2015, Ford sales accounted for just 0.1% of the Japanese market and only 0.6% in Indonesia. "In a statement, Ford spokesman Neal McCarthy said: 'Japan is the most closed, developed auto economy in the world, with all imported brands accounting for less than 6% of Japan's annual new car market.' "'The 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement in its current form would not improve Ford's ability to compete there,' he added."

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) also blamed TPP. The Hill reports in, "Dems blame trade deal as Ford exits Japan":

"The TPP's lack of any meaningful currency protections means that it will be more of the same... We need our government to fight for companies in the global marketplace in the same manner as some other countries do. This business decision by Ford is further evidence of the impact of unfair currency manipulation.... "'The ink isn't even dry and we are already seeing proof that this massive agreement will sell out American workers and roll back the remarkable recovery of our auto industry,' Brown said."

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) joined Brown:

"Dingell said that 'this business decision by Ford is further evidence of the impact of unfair currency manipulation.' "'Until our trade agreements meaningfully address currency manipulation, the mother of all trade barriers, American companies will continue to be threatened and disadvantaged by foreign governments who attempt to tilt the global playing field in favor of their industries and against the United States,' Dingell said."

In fact Steve Biegun, Ford's vice president of international government affairs, said TPP would "lock in" our auto trade deficit:

"'By our assessment, this TPP would lock in place a $50 billion annual auto trade deficit with Japan,' he said at a hearing held by House Ways and Means Committee Democrats on Jan. 7. "'We do not expect that any global automaker will meaningfully increase exports to Japan as a result of this TPP agreement,' he said."

TPP Opens U.S. Market While Not Helping U.S. Carmakers In Other TPP Countries
"They shot him right there, he was just walking -- I saw it," says Victoria Sharp . "I swear to God, he was just walking with his hands in the air." She's describing the January 26 killing of LaVoy Finicum, a member of the "Bundy Gang" of the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, shot by FBI agents and an Oregon State Police SWAT team.

Sharp's account doesn't go uncontested. Mark McConnell, described as a "witness", even though he was a mile away at the time of the shooting and was just "told" what happened, describes Finicum as "charging" the police. And unidentified "law enforcement sources" tell CNN that Finicum "reached down toward his waistband where he had a gun."

Grainy overhead video of the shooting, subsequently released by the FBI, does more to stir the pot than to resolve the conflicts of the stories.

Sound familiar? It should. There are a pair of competing legends in the making, both of which will incorporate preferred truths and discard inconvenient facts to reach the pre-desired conclusions. One legend being made by many of those who decried police actions to evict the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and wanted Ferguson, Missouri police officer Daren Wilson's head on a platter for the killing of Michael Brown, are writing the "Bundy Gang" off as "terrorists" and pigeonholing Finicum's death as "suicide by cop."

Another legend is being made by many who thought that the Occupy Wall Street movement was a bunch of "smelly hippies" and wanted them swept from the streets. Many are the same ones that also made a hero out of police officer Darren Wilson who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Now those same people are portraying the "Bundy Gang" as heroes and Finicum as a martyr.

It is a strange contradiction of legends by the left and the right. I find myself in a strange position. For once, I am in the middle.



I don't know exactly what happened on Canfield Drive in Ferguson on August 9, 2014, or along US 395 in rural Oregon on January 26, 2016. Neither, in all likelihood, do you. We weren't there. One thing we can do is choose which lense to see those events through. There's another thing we can do. We can reaffirm the basic American principle that law enforcement personnel and other government employees are not special.

When a cop shoots someone under suspicious circumstances, brought into question by credible evidence or testimony, then that cop should be charged and tried for a crime just like you and I would be. Being a cop is not a license to kill.

Culpability in Finicum's death and the deaths from any other "killer cops" should be sorted out, taken before a grand jury if their is reasonable cause, and if so brought before a court of law to determine if there is reasonable doubt or proof of guilt, beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that a killer or killers wear badges and collect government paychecks is irrelevant to the matter.
Reprinted from Truthdig

The Obama administration imposed new sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities on Jan. 17 -- the day after all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran were lifted in conjunction with "Implementation Day" of the nuclear agreement. The reason was supposedly that an Iranian missile test had violated a United Nations Security Council resolution. But by the time the new sanctions were imposed, the U.N. resolution in question was no longer legally valid or relevant to the concern that had prompted it.

That contradiction is only one of a set of false and misleading claims surrounding U.S. policy on sanctions and the ballistic missile test Iran carried out in October 2015. The arguments that the test was somehow illegitimate or threatening turn out, on closer examination, to be both dishonest and hypocritical.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the two leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, have clashed over Iran policy, but not over the new sanctions announced immediately after Implementation Day. Clinton called for new sanctions against Iran over its missile test after the lifting of the old sanctions. Sanders has not made a specific statement on the issue.

The Obama administration had planned to punish Iran for its October missile test from the beginning. Echoing the arguments by opponents of the administration's nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) administration officials claimed in December that the Iranian missile test violated Security Council Resolution 1929, adopted in 2010. That resolution banned any "activity" by Iran "related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons."

But on Jan. 16 -- Implementation Day -- all Security Council resolutions related to Iran's nuclear program that had been passed in previous years were officially null and void under the agreement. In negotiating the JCPOA, the United States and the other powers involved were acknowledging that Security Council Resolution 1929 and all the other nuclear-related resolutions would cease to be relevant when the agreement was implemented.

In explaining on Jan. 17 why the United States had adopted new sanctions on Iranians in conjunction with its missile program, President Obama said, "Iran's recent missile test, for example, was a violation of its international obligations" -- an obvious reference to Security Council Resolution 1929. "And as a result," he continued, "the United States is imposing sanctions on individuals and companies working to advance Iran's ballistic missile program."

But the suggestion that Security Council Resolution 1929 was the reason for the new sanctions was false and misleading. The Treasury Department did not base its "designations" of 11 Iranian entities or individuals for helping procurement for the Iranian ballistic missile program on any U.N. resolution. The Treasury Department announcement cited only Executive Order 13382 of June 28, 2005, issued by President George W. Bush, which was directed broadly at the Iranian missile program in general. It authorizes sanctions on any foreigner deemed to have contributed to "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery (including ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons). ..."

Executive Order 13382 was part of the Bush administration's campaign to isolate Iran over its nuclear program, based on the claim that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons. However, now that the International Atomic Energy Agency has acknowledged that it has no evidence of any ongoing Iranian nuclear weapons program, the Bush executive order is directly at odds with the basic premise of the JCPOA and the lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.

The entire administration effort to get the Security Council to impose new sanctions against Iran employed an argument about the missile test in question that was also false and misleading. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power declared that an "independent panel of experts" associated with the Security Council Sanctions Committee had "concluded definitively" that Iran's missile test was a violation of Security Council Resolution 1929.

In fact, however, the expert panel had not done any technical analysis of whether the Emad missile tested was "capable of delivering nuclear weapons." As British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft revealed at the Dec. 15, 2015, Security Council meeting, the expert panel report had relied on criteria from the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) to reach that conclusion. The criteria used were whether the missile has a range of more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) and a payload of more than 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds). The Emad exceeded both criteria and was therefore deemed capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, according to Rycroft.

But the MTCR, an informal arrangement of states providing missile technology, has never used those criteria to determine whether a specific missile is capable of delivering a nuclear weapon. The purpose of those criteria has always been to determine whether an export license for a generic missile technology should be approved. The MTCR simply assumes that any missile with sufficient range and lift is capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.

In fact, the United States has ignored those criteria when the missile at issue belongs to a U.S. ally. In 2012, for example, the Obama administration agreed to allow South Korea to extend the range of its ballistic missiles from the previous limit of 300 kilometers to 800 kilometers (500 miles) and to have a 500-kilogram payload. That meant that South Korean missiles could reach all of North Korean territory from anywhere on South Korean territory and that it could also reach Chinese, Russian and Japanese territory for the first time. But the administration approved the change despite the fact that the South Korean missile would violate the MTCR criteria.

A similar exception has been made for Saudi Arabia more than once. In 1987, the Saudis purchased DF-3 (also known as CSS-2) missiles from China. With a range of about 3,000 kilometers or more and a payload of 2,000 kilograms, the missile far exceeded the MTCR criteria for allowable exports. Furthermore, it was well known that China had designed the DF-3 to carry nuclear weapons. But the United States took no action against the Saudis. The Chinese had also designed a warhead with a conventional payload to go with the missile sold to the Saudis, and the United States accepted that South Korea had purchased the non-nuclear variant of the missile.

In 2007, the Bush administration secretly supported the Saudi purchase of the more advanced Chinese DF-21 missiles, which also have both nuclear-capable and conventional warhead variants. The administration accepted the deal, with the sole condition that the CIA could verify that the model purchased was the one designed to carry conventional payloads.

If the administration had treated Iran's missile test the same way it treated South Korean and Saudi missile purchases, it would have concluded that it did not violate either Security Council Resolution 1929 or Executive Order 13382. Although U.S. officials have long demonized the Iranian ballistic missile program as linked to nuclear weapons, its history belies that political line. Uzi Rubin, who ran Israel's anti-missile program throughout the 1990s, has long pointed out that Iran's missile strategy is aimed at fighting a conventional war. He told me in a 2012 interview that Iran was developing missiles that would eventually be accurate enough to attack Israeli air bases, as well as economic and administrative targets. Such accuracy would have been irrelevant had Iran been planning to use them for delivery of a nuclear weapon.
Tens of thousand of protesters in the streets of Haiti and their supporters abroad want U.S. puppet Haiti president, Michel Martelly, out of the country by or before February 7, 2016. The G8 opposition have released a proposition for his exile/removal. This is it. If time permits we'll summarize that also. Matters are developing as I write. Below is the G8 proposition. I am putting it here for now to get a quick link. You all know the Ezili Network website has been taken down by traditional enemies of liberty and the dangerous idiots who want the people's voice silenced. But victory is for the people today. We will not be silenced. (See, New York Times, Jan 24, 2016: Protesters in Haiti Demand That President Quit.)



Haiti lawyers, grassroots organizations, civil society and pro-democracy activists are demanding for US superpower accountability. For the US-EU-UN-OAS to stop supporting and emboldening drug dealers and death squad leaders like Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain, paramilitary groups like FRAPH, Lame Timanchet, the Ninjas and Martelly's legal bandit crew while simultaneously waxing lyrically to the public about urging good governance, non-violence, democracy and justice.



***

Photo of US plane Haitians hope will take U.S. puppet president, Michel Martelly, out of Haiti. But Martelly wants to extend his term.



Copyrighted Image? DMCA





Haiti photo - Wanted DEA fugitive, Guy Philippe, campaigns with handpicked Michel Martelly candidate, Jovenel Moise. But neither the DEA nor the UN can find Philippe!





(Guy Philippe campaigning with Martelly candidate, Jovenel Moise, 2015)

Guy Philippe, the death squad leader, hired by US intelligence to take out the democratically elected Aristide-Neptune government in 2004, is reported to say in a recording, he will go to war with the people and political opposition to stop the Duvalierist-Martelly's immediate resignations.



Philippe's Dominican Republic-launched death squads helped return dictatorship to Haiti. It was returned under an electoral facade.



Today, the Duvalierists' rule, with US occupation behind a UN front, has been in Haiti since 2004. Philippe was campaigning for a Senate seat and for Martelly's replica, Jovenel Moise, to take the presidential office. His authoritarian dreams have gone up in Haiti resistance smoke.



2016 is not 2004. Martelly and Guy Philippe are livid. Say they won't bow to the people's democratic will as expressed through the massive demonstrations and the people clamoring for US imperialism with Martelly and foreign militaries to end. This is a real popular rebellion, not the fake one created by Empire and its media forces back in 2004. Guy Philippe is desperately threatening the use of his bosses' weapons to stop the people's resistance to occupation. These US-supported Haiti government forces are reportedly using the state treasury to sponsor militarized police attacks on the people, to fund violent infiltrators to sabotage the democratic sector demonstrations and to fund violent counter-demonstrations to keep the corrupt Martelly crew in office. (See, The ABCs of Election Violence in Haiti: The Colonial Game is Called "killed the bandits".)



This is the same Guy Philippe, that, in 2007 the DEA attempted to arrest in Haiti for drug dealing and money laundering. In the broadcast, it appears that the death squad leader says he will take over Grand Anse as a separate nation. He won't accept the will of the Haiti people to remove Martelly. This one guy's interference falls right into the hands of the imperialist who already want Haiti Northern, Central and Southern resources and have pushed nearly 129,000 deported Haitians from the Dominican Republic into the border areas for exactly this purpose of division to plunder Haiti riches in the North, the Artibonite and the South. We can't let that happen.



The absolute impunity of the Imperialist and their Haiti minions should not continue. Haiti oil, gold, iridium, are why the United States pushes fake aid, fake elections, dictatorship, chaos and the likes of Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chambain terrorists on the defenseless Haiti majority.



Free Haiti appeals to law abiding U.S. congressional members, to US citizens to use their influence. Demand to know why the DEA and the UN mission in Haiti allow a wanted US fugitive, with a sealed drug and money-laundering indictment in Miami, to freely run for office in elections, paid for, by $30 million U.S. tax-payer dollars?





This is a red alert. Guy Philippe, the US-trained and ISIL-like death squad

leader, is threatening to separate parts of Haiti, wage war to stop the

resistance to dictatorship and imperialism.




For years, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has repeatedly complained about the D.C. orthodoxy-enforcing tactic of labeling only those who subscribe to Washington pieties as "Very Serious People," or "VSPs." It's a term Krugman borrowed (with credit) from the liberal blogger Atrios, who first coined it to illustrate how Iraq War opponents were instantly marginalized in establishment discourse and only war advocates were deemed to be Serious. Krugman mockingly uses it so often that the New York Times created a special tag for the term. The primary purpose of the "VSP" tactic is to malign anyone who dissents from D.C. establishment pieties as non-Serious or un-Serious, thus demeaning the person as someone who can (and should) be ignored as residing on the fringe, unworthy of engagement or a real platform regardless of the merits of their position.

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Yesterday, one of the purest and most noxious examples of this tactic was invoked -- by Paul Krugman. The longtime Clinton defender announced that all Serious policy experts "lean Hillary"; he even used the term "serious" unironically to advance his claim:

Meanwhile, the Sanders skepticism of the wonks continues: Paul Starr lays out the case. As far as I can tell, every serious progressive policy expert on either health care or financial reform who has weighed in on the primary seems to lean Hillary.

Let's repeat that: "Every serious progressive policy expert on either health care or financial reform who has weighed in on the primary seems to lean Hillary."

The economist Dean Baker -- previously cited as a financial reform and economic policy expert by Krugman, but who now most assuredly does not "lean Hillary" -- quickly reacted to his formal exclusion by Krugman from the Club of Seriousness:
Everyone, at times, feels sad, alone, hopeless. For the majority of people these feelings are situational. They are a natural response to a bad event or a series of bad events. Over time the feelings pass and the individuals return to their normal emotional state.



For others, however, depression is a lifelong battle, something that must be dealt with every day. There are a number of treatments for depression. Not all treatments work the same for all people. If you, or someone you know, is clinically depressed, encourage that person to seek the care of a professional.



Warning Signs: What To Look For



Sometimes depression, be it chronic or situational, can lead to thoughts of suicide. While often viewed as a mark of insanity by the general populous, for those contemplating a life ending action it is a rational choice given what they are confronting. According to information complied by the Centers for Disease Control in 2010 (the most recent data set), suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. There are a number of socio-economic risk factors which influence the likelihood of someone taking his or her life. In general, males are more at risk for successful suicide attempts despite a higher instance of attempts by females. This is mostly likely a result of males relying on more lethal methods (firearms and hanging vs overdose and exsanguination).













It is equally important to recognize that you can not do everything yourself. Another excellent way to show the people in need that they are not alone is to literally show them that they are not alone. There are numerous websites, toll free numbers, and support groups which specialize in helping those who are contemplating suicide. Be willing to attend a support group with those in need of help. Bring them to a counselor or religious leader who will discuss their feelings with them.



In cases of immediate distress, it may be necessary to use more dramatic measures. Most hospital emergency rooms and psychiatric facilities have methods in place for dealing with those who may be a danger to themselves or others. While it may be outside your power to arrange to have someone temporarily committed, you can definitely work to show them that this is a step that they may need, something which they could do voluntarily.

Support From Unexpected Areas: Animals And Unconditional Love

If the person contemplating a life-ending action is feeling alone and abandoned, gently remind them of all of those who care about them. Everyone has friends and family who would be devastated by the loss of a loved one. Think about the amazing transformation at the end of It's a Wonderful Life. You have the opportunity to be someone's angel, just by talking to them.

Identification and Support: What To DoIf you suspect a friend, family member, or colleague is thinking about or even planning suicide, the best the best thing that you can do is talk to them. Sometimes just knowing that there is someone out there who cares enough to spend the time listening is enough to change the way someone sees the world. Having the conversation is key, but just as important is remembering to remain nonjudgmental. The person you are speaking to is going through one of the most difficult times of his or her life. You are there to listen, and if necessary, suggest helping, healing options. Regardless of your opinion about the morality of taking ones own life, refrain from statements which will turn the person in need away from you.It is equally important to recognize that you can not do everything yourself. Another excellent way to show the people in need that they are not alone is to literally show them that they are not alone. There are numerous websites, toll free numbers, and support groups which specialize in helping those who are contemplating suicide. Be willing to attend a support group with those in need of help. Bring them to a counselor or religious leader who will discuss their feelings with them.In cases of immediate distress, it may be necessary to use more dramatic measures. Most hospital emergency rooms and psychiatric facilities have methods in place for dealing with those who may be a danger to themselves or others. While it may be outside your power to arrange to have someone temporarily committed, you can definitely work to show them that this is a step that they may need, something which they could do voluntarily.Support From Unexpected Areas: Animals And Unconditional LoveIf the person contemplating a life-ending action is feeling alone and abandoned, gently remind them of all of those who care about them. Everyone has friends and family who would be devastated by the loss of a loved one. Think about the amazing transformation at the end of It's a Wonderful Life. You have the opportunity to be someone's angel, just by talking to them.

Remember to avoid being preachy, judgmental, or heavy handed when doing this. You do not want to chastise the individual. The last thing that you want to do is make them feel worse or like they are failing those who care about them. Your goal is to provide them with an insight which they may be missing -- namely that while they might feel alone, they are surrounded by those who care about them.



This is not limited to just the people in their lives. Nothing in the world is as forgiving, nonjudgmental, or capable of providing unconditional love like a furry family member. There are numerous stories of people who have survived terrible hardships, who thought about completely giving up, but who were pulled back from the precipice because of the love of a good animal. It may seem trite or even childish, but when someone has come to the edge of their rope anything which can provide them with the stability and willingness to go on is a useful tool. A reminder that there is another being which loves them, lives for them, and depends upon them may be just the knowledge that they need.




I love the St. Johns River in Florida. It's a beautiful stretch of 310 miles of lackadaisical southern water that moves so slowly that it almost appears to be a large lake.



The St. Johns River is a living example of the slowed-down lifestyle people appear to enjoy who live south of the Mason-Dixon line. Time ticks away at a slower pace 'down South' and folks enjoy the little things - like fishing, boating, picnicking near the river, or just sitting along the riverside and watching dolphins skip the surface of the river.

When I lived in Jacksonville for several years, I often enjoyed the recreational value of this beautiful waterway. I did a little fishing off the banks of the St. Johns with some of my friends and sometimes would just sit on a bench overlooking the river at the Claude J. Yates Branch of the YMCA on Riverside Avenue in the warm Florida sunshine and take in the serenity that this precious natural gem emitted. It's a beautiful river that's unique in many ways. And it's important to keep the water of the St. Johns pure because so many people live around it and will be affected adversely if its watershed becomes polluted irreparably.





The St. Johns is unusual in that it is one of the few rivers in the world that flows south to north. Sometimes as I sat on the bench of the YMCA, I'd see dolphins jumping out of the water way on the other side of this wide river. Their schools were breathtaking - skirting the water and leaping into the air as they enjoyed frolicking to their destinations somewhere - who knows?



Numerous lakes are formed by the St. Johns or flow into it. And its width even outdoes Old Man River - at the St. Johns' widest point, it's almost three miles across. The narrowest point is in the headwaters, an unnavigable marsh in Indian River County. In all, 3.5 million people live within the various watersheds that feed the St. Johns River. The St. Johns winds through or borders twelve counties, and three of these counties are the state's largest. The drop in elevation from headwaters to mouth is less than 30 feet (9 m); and like most Florida waterways, the St. Johns has a very low flow rate - 0.3 mph (0.13 m/s) and is often described as "lazy", according to Wikipedia.



The St. Johns River has fallen prey to the Koch Brothers and their very powerful friends, however. Georgia-Pacific/Koch Industries has been permitted to discharge up to 60 million gallons of toxic waste per day into the St. Johns, which will collect on the bottom of the river, making for a poisonous sludge collecting there, which will create a water-mass unfit for humans and animals.



Greed and powerful sycophants that jump at the commands and demands of David and Charles Koch will in time see this once pristine natural wonder turned into a place where nobody will be able to fish, water ski, or do anything else - chalk off another fresh water body to the rubber stamping of our government. According to a petition being circulated online by change.org: "The pipeline easement was issued by FDEP, as agent for the Florida Governor and Cabinet, after a highly misleading newspaper notice and no fair opportunity to request an evidentiary hearing. (http://bit.ly/1zBpbMj.) The river should be held in trust by the Governor and Cabinet for the people of Florida, not given away for private use as dumping grounds and without just compensation."

Daily Kos writer Leslie Salzillo's article on Oct. 26, 2015 shows the debauchery, greed, and deception involved with selling the St. Johns River down the proverbial river: "The unethical, and allegedly illegal, Florida indenture involving four very well-known political figures, including a 2016 presidential candidate, continues. Now, the matter is before the U.S. Supreme Court. The scandal involves Charles Koch, Davaid Koch, Florida Governor Rick Scott and Presidential candidate Jeb Bush. ""They are part of a deal made that allows Koch Industries' highly profitable paper and pulp company, Georgia-Pacific, to dump millions of gallons of toxic waste per day into the St. Johns River in Florida."

An attorney from Florida, Steve Medina, has been working on this case, pro bono, to expose the corruption that has spiraled from this scandal in Tallahassee and Putnam County, Fla. Here are some of the court documents that are available. In a letter to Daily Kos writer Leslie Salzillo, Medina complains: "The corporate media simply will not cover these issues to any significant degree," another Daily Kos article explains, also written by Salzillo.

"I think this is partly because the subject matter can be wonky," Medina writes in his letter to Salzillo. "And Americans are presumed to be stupid. But mostly I think it is because critiquing public officials as potentially 'mercenaries' when they are supposed to be 'fiduciaries' strikes a little too close to home for news outlets primarily funded by advertising revenue. Because I believe that this particular public trust case is so important and potentially precedent-setting, when I took my current job as an assistant public defender in the Florida Panhandle a couple of years ago, I got special permission to take off vacation time and continue to work on the case as long as it did not interfere with my regular job. A lot of late nights, early mornings, and weekends later, we are still alive, barely, and sure as hell kicking."

*****



An estimate last summer of the Koch Brothers' wealth had them splitting a net worth of $41.1 billion dollars. They are two of the four richest of all Americans - the richest of the rich. Of course, this figure has obviously increased with with the King Midas touch of this duo of entrepreneurial brothers, who many see as having an uncanny and unquenchable thirst of acquiring more and more wealth, power, and even domination.

The corporate legacy of Koch Industries was made possible by the father of David and Charles Koch - the late Fred Koch - in 1940. Koch Industries' corporate predecessor was The Wood River Oil and Refining Company, founded by Fred Koch.



David and Charles Koch did well with Dad's initial investment and today, Koch Industries has been expanded far beyond oil refining. Koch Industries includes operations that include: manufacturing, distribution of petroleum, refining, chemicals, energy, minerals, fiber, pulp and paper, ranching, and commodities trading. A Koch Industries subsidiary holds leases on 1.1 million acres -- an area nearly the size of Delaware -- in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, according to an activist group that studied Alberta provincial records.



"Separately, industry sources familiar with oil sands leases said Koch's lease holdings could be closer to two million acres. The companies with the next biggest net acreage positions in oil sands leases are Conoco Phillips and Shell, both close behind," according to a March 20, 2014 online offering in The Washington Post.

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Statue of Liberty: She still matters!

(Image by Sue Waters) Details DMCA



By Susan C. Strong

As the 2016 presidential campaign heats up now, we'll hear a lot more about "the American dream." But there are two "American Dreams," very different from each other, and each with a shadow side. To survive today's toxic politics and make progress, we Americans must understand both the poison in these two dreams and the power they hold for good.



Of course, today's political version of the American dream is the familiar one of a house in the suburbs, two cars, a good job with benefits, college for the kids, and a comfortable retirement. Right now it seems as if that version of the American dream is beyond reach for all but the 1%, a fact that helps fuels our angry election season. Then there's the other side of it: the way it's always been a fundamental source of suffering for people of color in this country, as they were and still are exploited and abused to create prosperity for others. That creates anger too, more and more openly now. Although many pundits and citizens are complaining about the level of anger coming from everywhere at once, all of it has great potential for good, as well as the risk of doing great harm.





Because there really are positive American ideals, the ones that make up what I call the "ideal American identity story." That is a story of our country aspiring to be about the perfect expression of freedom, democracy, rule of law, justice, fairness, equal opportunity, and hope for a better life. It's also true that this "ideal American identity story" is taken for granted by many privileged white Americans who feel they have all of that already. They mistakenly believe the dream of an ideal American is the same as the reality of America, at home and abroad. But the dream of America as a country constantly reaching for a more full and pure expression of our highest ideals is exactly what progressive organizers of all kinds have always used as the lodestar for their work. In every era they have called us to be better than we are now, to live more fully up to those ideals.

Today's young, social-media savvy organizers of Black Lives Matter and the many other social justice groups active right now are the next wave of that cadre of idealistic organizers. They are the heirs of those who have always waked us from our toxic sleep. When they call for justice in the streets, on the freeways, in the board rooms, or wherever, deliberately or not, they evoke that dream of an ideal America, where our highest goals are justice, democracy, rule of law, fairness, equal opportunity, and hope for a better life for everyone. They follow in the footsteps of our forebears who refused to pay more taxes on tea, and who were against slavery and ran the underground railway. The ones who got the vote for women, and the ones who helped FDR put into place so many social reforms to help working people in the Depression. The ones who led the Civil Rights movement, and those who got marriage equality for all. And the ones who last fall lifted up the late, great Detroit-based community organizer Grace Lee Boggs as a continuing inspiration. Her longtime motto "R(e)volution," is a gift to us that needs to last as long as we do. It expresses our permanent dream of an America evolving toward the ideal, a goal that soars above all day-to-day limits and abuses, drawing us together as a people. Let us never forget this dream of the "ideal American identity story." Because we must keep it alive in our minds and call it by its right name in order to move toward it together.

-----------------------------------------------

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project, http://www.metaphorproject.org, and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America's Ear. The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.
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Founded in 2005 - before the Right went nuts!
SOROS: The European Union is in an existential crisis, and it needs to get out of that because of the migration problem [which] is effectively distressing the European Union  its falling apart, and thats a time when you need to have a major initiative, a Marshall Plan. Its absolutely appropriate. Its amazing that it comes from Schaivo, who has been one of the proponents of Bundesbank orthodoxy, but I have been in favor of it all along. I was propose[ing] a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe more than twenty-five years ago [before the end of the USSR], in 1989 in Potsdam, when Potsdam was still in Eastern Germany, and I said this would be a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe including Russia, and it should be financed by the Europeans for a change, and actually led by the  representative, who started laughing, and the front of the Algemeine [Zeitung] reported that my proposal was greeted with amusement. Now I think this proposal should not be treated with amusement. This should be taken very seriously. Its going to have a very difficult time passing, because theres a lot of dissension now, part of the disintegration, but I think it needs public and enthusiastic support. But I think that most people know that something has gone catastrophically wrong and it has to be put right.

INTERVIEWER: Is there a danger of break-up. Last year we were worried about Greece, what should we be worried about this year?

SOROS: I think Greece is still a problem. Its the one problem that has no solution, because it has been so messed-up that you can only muddle along. But there is no solution, and actually that problem is now coming to the boiling point again. You can see it on the face of the press, but [it] is not a major problem in the scheme of things.

On January 21st, George Soros, who has throughout his life been passionately opposed not just to communism but also to Russia, has finally stated in a Bloomberg News interview at the World Economic Forum, thatLets look at the evidence, including the background for his comments here  the crucial background in order to understand his statement is provided in the links here:, both of which had voted overwhelmingly (75 % in Crimea and over 90 % in Donbass) for the democratically elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama overthrew on 20 February 2014 in a bloody staged coup whose gunmen were mainly from Ukraines two racist-fascist or ideologically Nazi parties and were all paid by the US via laundered funds through the CIA. Those two regions of Ukraine are strongly pro-Russian and anti-Nazi  they were anti-Nazi in World War II, and are anti-Nazi today., and to enable them to go to war yet a second time, attempting to seize (or reabsorb) Crimea and Donbass,, and US President Barack Obama has thus at least temporarily given up in all but rhetoric his determination to enable Ukraine to crush those regions,Soros had, himself, via his International Renaissance Fund, helped to finance the overthrow of Yanukovych.(After all, most of the refugees into Europe come from Americas invasions of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and from the support of jihadists there by Americas Saudi, Qatari, and UAE allies. The refugee-crisis is generated by America and its allies.) Soros says that the fleeing refugees from the Middle East into Europe will break the EU unless stopped, and that US taxpayers (and maybe EU taxpayers) thus now need to fund the salvation of all of those countries which the US  largely at Soross own urging and with his help  has all but destroyed . Perhaps he just wants Western taxpayers to bail him out.However, at that time, he was looking for public funds to create debts that those then-communist nations would have toward Western taxpayers. His proposal was rejected, because democracy was, at that time, strong enough in the West, so that the publics rejection of it caused his proposal to be politically impossible to achieve.That link presents the great Janine Wedel reporting that, as a result of one particular insider-rigged auction, H.M.C. [Harvard Management Company] and Soros became significant shareholders in Novolipetsk, Russia's second-largest steel mill, and Sidanko Oil, whose reserves exceed those of Mobil.after all of their anti-corruption verbiage has collided with their total-corruption policies in Ukraine, just as had happened under Yeltsin in Russia, so that, notwithstanding Soross urgings for $20B+ of Western taxpayer funds to be contributed to that government, it simply wont happen.Here is the transcript of this brief interview-segment, from a Bloomberg, which cannot be accurately understood without reference to the links that were provided in that restatement here of his statement  those links document the reality behind what he is here asserting:Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-28/george-soros-finally-suspends-his-lifelong-war-against-russia
Remains of home of Yemeni judge Yahya Rubaid and family, killed this week by Saudi-led air strike (photo: Khaled Abdullah, Reuters)

A Saudi-led coalition fighting in neighboring Yemen has targeted civilians with air strikes and some of the attacks could be a crimes against humanity, United Nations sanctions monitors said in an annual report to the Security Council The report by the U.N. panel that monitors the conflict in Yemen for the Security Council, seen by Reuters on Wednesday, sparked calls by rights groups for the United States and Britain to halt sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia that could be used in such attacks.The panel of experts documented 119 coalition sorties "relating to violations of international humanitarian law" and said that "many attacks involved multiple air strikes on multiple civilian objects."The U.N. experts said all parties to the conflict in Yemen were violating international humanitarian law. They said that in certain cases the violations by the coalition were conducted in a "widespread and systemic manner" and therefore could qualify as crimes against humanity.The U.N. experts recommended the 15-member Security Council consider establishing a Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of international law.The Saudi U.N. mission was not immediately available for comment."The U.S. and UK governments should immediately halt the transfer of any arms to the Saudi-led coalition that might be used for such violations, and they should back an international investigation into abuses committed by all sides," said Philippe Bolopion of international rights group Human Rights Watch The experts also said the Houthi rebels and their allies - forces loyal to former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh - had conducted a systemic pattern of attacks against civilians, homes and hospitals and that these could be crimes against humanity.The coalition began a military campaign in March to prevent Houthi rebels, whom it sees as a proxy for Iran, from taking complete control of Yemen after seizing much of the north. The Houthis accuse the coalition of launching a war of aggression.Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since the coalition entered the conflict in March, almost half of them civilians.British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament on Wednesday that he would look at the U.N. report but that Britain followed "the strictest rules for arms exports of almost any country anywhere in the world." State Department spokesman Mark Toner, declined to comment on the substance of the U.N. report as it had not yet been publicly released, but he said the United States was also concerned about serious allegations of abuse.He called on all sides to abide by international humanitarian law, "including the obligation that they distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects, and to take all feasible actions to minimize harm to civilians."U.S. and Saudi officials are continuing to work on a $1.29 billion sale of U.S. precision munitions approved in November, which seeks in part to replenish bombs and missiles used by the Saudis in Yemen. It should be finalized in coming months.The U.N. experts are also investigating a potential transfer of anti-tank guided missiles to the Houthi and Saleh forces - in violation of a U.N. arms embargo - after a shipment was seized by U.S. and Australian warships off Oman on Sept. 25. They said the shipment originated from Iran and their inquiry continues.Source: http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/us-plans-to-replenish-saudi-missiles-used-in-air-strikes-on-yemen-that-un-says-may-constitute-crimes-against-humanity-160128?news=858180
Govt trying to settle the issue of GB: Mamnoon Hussain

ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain said on Thursday the government was trying to settle the issue of administrative status of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) without changing its principled stance on Kashmir.



The federal government is mulling over different legal aspects to resolve the problems of Gilgit-Baltistan and to bring it on a par with other developed areas of the country, the president said while talking to a delegation of politicians and civil society members of GB at the Presidency.



He, however, did not elaborate on the kind of status that could be granted to GB.



Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs Barjees Tahir, GB Governor Mir Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Chief Minister Hafiz Hafeez-ur-Rehman and speaker, deputy speaker and members of the GB Legislative Assembly attended the meeting.



Meanwhile, an official at the Presidency told media men that although GB was nominally being treated as a province, this had no constitutional cover. Because of this, benefits being enjoyed by the other provinces were not being given to GB.



President Hussain said that in order to achieve national progress it was imperative for the provincial governments to improve their governance and initiate development projects to serve the people.



He expressed the hope that GB would greatly benefit from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and said the people should help the government complete the mega-project.



Rejecting the concerns expressed by opposition leaders, he claimed that there had been no change in the route of the corridor and that there should be no ambiguity in this regard.



Mr Hussain said that completion of the Diamer-Bhasha dam would provide a great opportunity for development of the region.



The government had undertaken many development projects in GB, he said. New educational institutions are being established and the status of others is being enhanced, he said.



He called upon the people to shun parochial, ethnic and sectarian differences and forge unity to achieve the cherished goals of peace and prosperity in the country.



The president said that in order to provide better education facilities in the region, a decision had been made to set up a university there. Funds had already been earmarked for this project.



Mr Hussain said a campus of the Karakoram University would soon be set up in Hunza and the quota for students of Gilgit-Baltistan for admission to the federal universities would be increased.
Nisar Ali suffering from PPP phobia: Khursheed Shah

SUKKUR: Opposition leader in the National Assembly, Syed Khursheed Shah, on Thursday said Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was suffering from "Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) phobia," adding that the minister with his controversial statements was creating problems for his own government and party.



Earlier in the day, in a heated press conference against critics of the National Action Plan (NAP), Nisar had hit out at the PPP, saying:



"Pakistan Tehreeki-i-Insaf has been levelling allegations of 'muk-muka' (collusion) between the PML-N and the PPP. I can confirm it (muk-muka)."



Nisar went on to say, " how the opposition leader used his position to get benefits from the government is a separate story altogether."



In an apparent reply to Nisar's statement, Shah said such an assertion (of collusion between the PPP and the PML-N) was a direct attack on premier Nawaz Sharif.



Shah said he had warned the prime minister about back stabbers in his own party.



"My party did not save anyone's government, it was democracy we saved. I will reply to this accusation in parliament in front of the prime minister," said the PPP stalwart, referring to the PPP's support of the PML-N during the Imran Khan-led protest to oust premier Nawaz Sharif.



The PPP leader criticised the federal interior minister over what he said was a "delay in condemning the Charsadda University attack."



Shah said he had only demanded a judicial inquiry into the APS attack and the Charsadda University attack, which he said was also a demand of the deceased children's parents.



Shah said it seemed "no intellectual or politician knows about the National Action Plan (NAP) except Nisar himself."



Earlier, during a press conference in Karachi, Sindh's acting information minister and PPP leader, Maula Bux Chandio also criticised Nisar and the PML-N government.



Chandio alleged it was the PML-N which supported "terrorist parties and their candidates" during elections and "held photo sessions with extremists."



"They are indebted to the Taliban.



"Nisar is infuriated over opposition's criticism of Lal Masjid cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz. He must come clear on why he has sympathies for the cleric," said Chandio.



The PPP leader also reminded the PML-N of his party's services to democracy including the first ever peaceful transfer of power.



Equipped with statistics on the past year's terror incidents across the country, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan hit out at critics of the NAP on Thursday, saying those criticising the policy "had never read NAP".



Following the recent attack on the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, which claimed 21 lives, Khursheed Shah had pointed fingers at NAP and held the interior minister responsible.



Shah had accused the federal government of making no significant progress on the NAP and said only 60 out of 3,000 major terrorism cases had been sent to military courts.
Pakistan and Maldives to benefit from vast potential in trade and tourism: PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday said Pakistan and Maldives need to benefit from the vast potential in trade and tourism, and assured to support Maldives under Special Assistance Programme for South Asia.



Talking to Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon at the Prime Ministers House, Nawaz said Pakistan attaches great importance to its relations with Maldives, which are based on cordiality and common interests. He said Pakistan had been successfully waging a relentless war against terrorism, adding that the ongoing military operation Zarb-e-Azb had produced positive results. He emphasised that Pakistan would extend all possible cooperation to the initiatives of neighbouring countries to eliminate terrorism.



Maumoon invited Prime Minister Nawaz to visit Maldives and delivered a letter of the Maldives president on the occasion. The foreign minister thanked the prime minister for Pakistans continued support to Maldives. The two sides expressed satisfaction over the trajectory of the brotherly bilateral relations between the two countries and agreed to maintain the momentum. In a meeting between Maumoon and Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they discussed regional and international issues of mutual interest.



Welcoming the Foreign Minister and her delegation to Pakistan, Sartaj Aziz noted that relations between Pakistan and the Maldives were marked by cordiality, mutual respect and commonality of interests. The adviser observed that the tourism industry of Maldives had been growing and Pakistan would like to develop cooperation in this sector. He said that the development of shipping lines between the two countries held a lot of importance and efforts should be made towards this. The adviser emphasised the need to follow up the MoUs/agreements in the fields of sports, health, education, and narcotics, which were signed during the visit of the president of Maldives to Pakistan in May 2015.

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Meteorologist Paul Douglas writes about Minnesota weather daily, trying to go beyond the "highs" and "lows" of the weather story to discuss current trends and some of the how's and why's of meteorology. Rarely is our weather dull - every day is a new forecast challenge. Why is the weather doing what it's doing? Is climate change a real concern, and if so, how will my family be affected? Climate is flavoring all weather now, and I'll include links to timely stories that resonate with me.
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
" " Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks during a campaign event Dec. 29, 2019, in Centerville, Iowa. The all-important 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses will be held Feb. 3, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

During the fall and early winter of every fourth year, the United States turns its full attention to the state of Iowa. The Des Moines Register has the kind of political clout you normally expect from The Washington Post or The New York Times when its editorial board announces which presidential candidate the paper is officially endorsing.

Average Joes and Janes talk to out-of-town national correspondents over coffee and pie in the local diners about issues most important to them. And almost every candidate in the U.S. presidential race practically moves to the state to spend months campaigning throughout Iowa.

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But why? What makes Iowa's caucus so important? After all, Iowa is just an otherwise quiet, largely agricultural state. And Iowa doesn't necessarily represent a diverse cross-section of America (the state's population is more than 90 percent white).

One reason Iowa draws so much attention in a presidential campaign year is because the Iowa caucus is unlike any other.

What's a Caucus?

The Democratic and GOP caucus systems in Iowa are different. In the Democratic caucus system, registered voters don't just go to their designated polling place and, well, vote. Instead, they attend public meetings, usually held in school gyms, churches and public libraries, and even restaurants and fire stations, to choose their presidential nominee by standing in a section of the room devoted to their candidate. If a preference group doesn't get enough people to be considered "viable," (usually 15 percent of attendees), caucus-goers can join another group, or try to convince people to join their group, in order to reach the 15 percent goal. Delegates are awarded to the final viable preference groups based on their sizes.

For the 2020 Iowa caucus, the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) made the most historic changes to the process since it was first established in 1972. For the first time, registered Iowa Democrats will be able to participate through six "virtual caucuses" via phone or smart device. They will rank up to five choices for president and the total result of the six virtual caucuses will account for 10 percent of Iowa's caucus delegates.

"The Iowa Democratic Party has always sought ways to improve our caucus process, and today, we are setting the stage for the 2020 Iowa caucuses to be the most accessible, transparent, and successful caucuses in our partys history," Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price said in a press statement. "While we will always continue to improve the caucus process, I am confident that with these historic changes, we are giving more Iowans a way to participate in the caucuses, we are increasing transparency and trust, and we are streamlining our process."

The GOP caucus process in Iowa is much simpler. Caucus-goers simply cast a vote for their candidate for president and the delegates are divide proportionally at the Republican National Convention.

But Iowa isn't the only state to hold a caucus to select its party's nominees for president of the United States. Nine other states and three U.S. territories will also choose the presidential nominee via caucus in 2020. The remaining states and territories will hold primary elections to choose their Democratic nominee, which they will present at the political national conventions.

Yet the votes cast by the residents who turn out for the Iowa caucus are so highly coveted that news agencies and political organizations take frequent polls to find out what the Iowans are thinking.

Why Is Iowa So Important?

So again, what makes Iowa so important? The simplest answer may be that Iowa is the first state in the nation to show its support for candidates. Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic contender in the 1972 election, explained the significance of Iowa like this: "Iowa is terribly important. It's the first test in the nation, where we get any test at all."

That test comes from real, everyday voters. The level of support a candidate receives in Iowa gives a reasonable indication of how they will perform with the rest of American voters. The traditional thinking goes that if middle-American Iowans support a candidate, then that candidate has a chance with the rest of the nation.

The results in Iowa can also tell a candidate how their platform is resonating with voters. The early timing gives candidates time to make adjustments to their campaign messaging should the response from voters signal they need to. A very poor showing in Iowa might force some candidates to bow out of the race.

A strong showing in Iowa also sends a message to the national party leaders. Each party seeks a strong contender for the White House, and a good response from Iowans helps cement a candidate's chances to win the national nomination. Being first in the nation certainly is important. But Iowa wasn't always first, and the votes cast by its residents in the caucus weren't always so important.

In 1972, the Democratic Party changed its scheduling, and Iowa became the first state to hold its caucus. The resulting attention for the Democrats was great enough that the Republican Party also made Iowa first in the 1976 election, and since then, Iowa's importance has grown each election cycle.

But to say that the importance of the Iowa caucus is entirely due to its status as first in the nation would be a mistake. Political analysts point to another factor that bolsters Iowa every four years. Read about that on the next page.
Phuket, 29 January 2016  Amari Phuket invites guests to experience its Season of Love promotion, which is a perfect spa treatment, to celebrate a romantic moment with loved ones at Breeze Spa. The treatment concept presents rose infused with raspberry, to rev up the fun and romance.

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An illustration of a giant flightless bird known as Genyornis newtoni, surprised on her nest by a 1 ton, predatory lizard named Megalania prisca in Australia roughly 50,000 thousand years ago. . Credit: Peter Trusler, Monash University

The first direct evidence that humans played a substantial role in the extinction of the huge, wondrous beasts inhabiting Australia some 50,000 years agoin this case a 500-pound birdhas been discovered by a University of Colorado Boulder-led team.

The flightless bird, known as Genyornis newtoni, was nearly 7 feet tall and appears to have lived in much of Australia prior to the establishment of humans on the continent 50,000 years ago, said CU-Boulder Professor Gifford Miller. The evidence consists of diagnostic burn patterns on Genyornis eggshell fragments that indicate humans were collecting and cooking its eggs, thereby reducing the birds' reproductive success.

"We consider this the first and only secure evidence that humans were directly preying on now-extinct Australian megafauna," said Miller, associate director of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. "We have documented these characteristically burned Genyornis eggshells at more than 200 sites across the continent."

A paper on the subject appears online Jan. 29, in Nature Communications.

In analyzing unburned Genyornis eggshells from more than 2,000 localities across Australia, primarily from sand dunes where the ancient birds nested, several dating methods helped researchers determine that none were younger than about 45,000 years old. Burned eggshell fragments from more than 200 of those sites, some only partially blackened, suggest pieces were exposed to a wide range of temperatures, said Miller, a professor in CU-Boulder's Department of Geological Sciences.

Optically stimulated luminescence dating, a method used to determine when quartz grains enclosing the eggshells were last exposed to sunlight, limits the time range of burned Genyornis eggshell to between 54,000 and 44,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating indicated the burnt eggshell was no younger than about 47,000 years old.

The blackened fragments were likely burned in transient, human firespresumably to cook the eggsrather than in wildfires, he said.

Amino acidsthe building blocks of proteins -decompose in a predictable fashion inside eggshells over time. In eggshell fragments burned at one end but not the other, there is a tell-tale "gradient" from total amino acid decomposition to minimal amino acid decomposition, he said. Such a gradient could only be produced by a localized heat source, likely an ember, and not from the sustained high heat produced regularly by wildfires on the continent both in the distant past and today.

Miller also said the researchers found many of the burnt Genyornis eggshell fragments in tight clusters less than 10 feet in diameter, with no other eggshell fragments nearby. Some individual fragments from the same clusters had heat gradient differences of nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, conditions virtually impossible to reproduce with natural wildfires there, he said.

"We can't come up with a scenario that a wildfire could produce those tremendous gradients in heat," Miller said. "We instead argue that the conditions are consistent with early humans harvesting Genyornis eggs, cooking them over fires, and then randomly discarding the eggshell fragments in and around their cooking fires."

Another line of evidence for early human predation on Genyornis eggs is the presence of ancient, burned eggshells of emusflightless birds weighing only about 100 pounds and which still exist in Australia todayin the sand dunes. Emu eggshells exhibiting burn patterns similar to Genyornis eggshells first appear on the landscape about 50,000 years ago, signaling they most likely were scorched after humans arrived in Australia, and are found fairly consistently to modern times, Miller said.

The Genyornis eggs are thought to have been roughly the size of a cantaloupe and weighed about 3.5 pounds, Miller said.

Genyornis roamed the Australian outback with an astonishing menagerie of other now-extinct megafauna that included a 1,000-pound kangaroo, a 2-ton wombat, a 25-foot-long-lizard, a 300-pound marsupial lion and a Volkswagen-sized tortoise. More than 85 percent of Australia's mammals, birds and reptiles weighing over 100 pounds went extinct shortly after the arrival of the first humans.

The demise of the ancient megafauna in Australia (and on other continents, including North America) has been hotly debated for more than a century, swaying between human predation, climate change and a combination of both, said Miller. While some still hold fast to the climate change scenariospecifically the continental drying in Australia from about 60,000 to 40,000 years agoneither the rate nor magnitude of that change was as severe as earlier climate shifts in Australia during the Pleistocene epoch, which lacked the punch required to knock off the megafauna, said Miller.

Miller and others suspect Australia's first inhabitants traveled to the northern coast of the continent on rafts launched from Indonesian islands several hundred miles away. "We will never know the exact time window humans arrived on the continent," he said. "But there is reliable evidence they were widely dispersed across the continent before 47,000 years ago."

Evidence of Australia megafauna hunting is very difficult to find, in part because the megafauna there are so much older than New World megafauna and in part because fossil bones are easily destroyed by the chemistry of Australian soils. said Miller.

"In the Americas, early human predation on the giant animals in clearstone spear heads are found embedded in mammoth bones, for example," said Miller. "The lack of clear evidence regarding human predation on the Australia megafauna had, until now, been used to suggest no human-megafauna interactions occurred, despite evidence that most of the giant animals still roamed Australia when humans colonized the continent."

Explore further A case of mistaken identity for Australia's extinct big bird

More information: Frederik Saltre et al. Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia, Nature Communications (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10511 Journal information: Nature Communications Frederik Saltre et al. Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10511
Left: Cuneiform tablet with calculations involving a trapezoid. Right: A visualization of trapezoid procedure on the tablet: The distance travelled by Jupiter after 60 days, 1045', is computed as the area of the trapezoid. The trapezoid is then divided into two smaller ones in order to find the time (tc) in which Jupiter covers half this distance. Credit: Mathieu Ossendrijver (HU)

Ancient Babylonians are now believed to have calculated the position of Jupiter using geometry. This is revealed by an analysis of three published and two unpublished cuneiform tablets from the British Museum by Prof. Mathieu Ossendrijver, historian of science of the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin. The tablets date from the period between 350 and 50 BCE. Historians of science have thus far assumed that geometrical computations of the kind found on these tablets were first carried out in the 14th century. Moreover, it was assumed that Babylonian astronomers used only arithmetical methods.

"The new interpretation reveals that Babylonian astronomers also used geometrical methods", says Mathieu Ossendrijver. His results are published in the current issue of the journal Science.

On four of these tablets, the distance covered by Jupiter is computed as the area of a figure that represents how its velocity changes with time. None of the tablets contains drawings but, as Mathieu Ossendrijver explains, the texts describe the figure of which the area is computed as a trapezoid. Two of these so-called trapezoid texts had been known since 1955, but their meaning remained unclear, even after two further tablets with these operations were discovered in recent years.

One reason for this was the damaged state of the tablets, which were excavated unscientifically in Babylon, near its main temple Esagila, in the 19th century. Another reason was, that the calculations could not be connected to a particular planet. The new interpretation of the trapezoid texts was now prompted by a newly discovered, almost completely preserved fifth tablet. A colleague from Vienna who visited the Excellence Cluster TOPOI in 2014, the retired Professor of Assyriology Hermann Hunger, draw the attention of Mathieu Ossendrijver to this tablet. He presented him with an old photograph of the tablet that was made in the British Museum.

The new tablet does not mention a trapezoid figure, but it does contain a computation that is mathematically equivalent to the other ones. This computations can be uniquely assigned to the planet Jupiter. With this new insight the other, thus far incomprehensible tablets could also be deciphered.

In all five tablets, Jupiter's daily displacement and its total displacement along its orbit, both expressed in degrees, are described for the first 60 days after Jupiter becomes visible as a morning star. Mathieu Ossendrijver explains: "The crucial new insight provided by the new tablet without the geometrical figure is that Jupiter's velocity decreases linearly within the 60 days. Because of the linear decrease a trapezoidal figure emerges if one draws the velocity against time."

"It is this trapezoidal figure of which the area is computed on the other four tablets", says the historian of science. The area of this figure is explicitly declared to be the distance travelled by Jupiter after 60 days. Moreover, the time when Jupiter covers half this distance is also calculated, by dividing the trapezoid into two smaller ones of equal area.

European scholars used similar techniques

"These computations anticipate the use of similar techniques by European scholars, but they were carried out at least 14 centuries earlier", says Ossendrijver. The so-called Oxford calculators, a group of scholastic mathematicians, who worked at Merton College, Oxford, in the 14th century, are credited with the "Mertonian mean speed theorem". This theorem yields the distance travelled by a uniformly decelerating body, corresponding to the modern formula S=t(u+v)/2, where u and v are the initial and final velocities.

In the same century Nicole Oresme, a bishop and scholastic philosopher in Paris, devised graphical methods that enabled him to prove this relation. He computed S as the area of a trapezoid of width t and heights u and v. The Babylonian trapezoid procedures can be viewed as a concrete examples of the same computation.

Babylonian trapezoid figures exist in an abstract mathematical space

Furthermore, it was hitherto assumed that the astronomers in Babylon used arithmetical methods but no geometrical ones, even though they were common in Babylonian mathematics since 1800 BCE. Ancient Greek astronomers from the time between 350 BCE and 150 CE are also known for their use of geometrical methods. However, the Babylonian trapezoid texts are distinct from the geometrical calculations of their Greek colleagues. The trapezoid figures do not describe configurations in a real space, but they come about by drawing the velocity of the planet against time. As opposed to the geometrical constructions of the Greek astronomers the Babylonian trapezoid figures exist in an abstract mathematical space, defined by time on the x-axis and velocity on the y-axis.

Explore further 3-D printers make replicas of cuneiform tablets

More information: M. Ossendrijver. Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiters position from the area under a time-velocity graph, Science (2016). Journal information: Science M. Ossendrijver. Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiters position from the area under a time-velocity graph,(2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8085

Provided by Humboldt University of Berlin
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos speaks during the inauguration of the Washington Post Headquarters on January 28, 2016 in Washington, DC

Jeff Bezos, the multibillionaire Amazon founder who bought The Washington Post in 2013, said Thursday the newspaper must look to the future with new technology without losing its "soul" or journalistic traditions.

Bezos, speaking at the dedication of the new Post headquarters in the US capital in what was his first major public appearance as owner, said the future of the respected daily will depend on a strong technology team as well as its dedication to journalism.

One of the world's richest individuals with a fortune estimated at more than $50 billion, Bezos is under scrutiny in the media world as he seeks to guide the newspaper through a transition to digital.

"I am a huge fan of leaning into the future," said Bezos, who snapped up the struggling newspaper in 2013 for $250 million in personal funds and has been investing in both the newsroom and in technology.

"It's a little risky to let nostalgia transition into glamorizing the past," he warned.

At the same time, Bezos said the Post should not lose sight of its great tradition and its historic role in American journalism.

He has previously stated he wanted to make the Post "the new paper of record," in a direct challenge to The New York Times.

"It's important to recognize that you don't want everything to change," he said at a ceremony which included US Secretary of State John Kerry and recently freed Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian.

The headquarters for The Washington Post newspaper is seen in Washington, DC, on December 24, 2015, after the newspaper recently moved several blocks from their 1972-era headquarters

"Important institutions like the Post have an essence, they have a heart, they have a core, what (executive editor) Marty (Baron) called soul. If you wanted that to change you would be crazy.

"That's part of what makes it so special."

Bezos, who created the online giant Amazon and later the space exploration firm Blue Origin, said the newspaper now has a vastly revamped technology team.

Under Bezos, the Post has ramped up its technology to allow its website to perform better, with improved analytics which gauge how readers are responding and deliver relevant advertising.

It has also made its articles more widely available through social network news services operated by Facebook and Google, and boosted its own social media efforts.

Post publisher Frederick Ryan said the Post was now "a media and technology company" and that Bezos "has given us runway to experiment with new ways to engage with readers and the resources to expand our newsroom and our engineering team."

Explore further Amazon offers Washington Post app on Kindle

 2016 AFP
Scientists from the Spanish National Police Corps (CNP) and from the University of Granada (UGR) have developed an IT system based in mathematical algorithms which allows to predict how many and what type of crimes are going to be committed in the next police shift.

It's about using scientific methods for police patrolling, and it's the first time in History that predictive police methods are combined with a mathematical patrolling model.

This breakthrough could better organize police patrolling and districting, which would mean a reduction of money spent and the number of victims of a crime.

The research has been carried out by Miguel Camacho Collados, police inspector at the Strategic Plannification and Coordination Unit of the Spanish National Police Corps, and researcher at the Statistics and Operations Research Department of the UGR.

Part of this research has been carried out with the collaboration of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the most selective public university of the United States, and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), where Camacho Collados held a Fulbright fellowship last year.

The research is focused on dynamic systems applied to crime models, and it's aimed at influencing the analysis and development of mathematical and statistical models for identifying temporal patterns for criminal acts.

As its lead author explains, the new system "is based in a mathematical, multi-criteria algorithm that, considering multiple performance attributes (such as workload, the patrolling area or the number of crimes committed in the last police shift), assigns the patrol a certain surveillance area, thus preventing the commission of crimes in the next shift, based on the crime risk prediction for that area."

"The main advance of our work is that it strengthens crime prevention, not crime suppression. If we succeed in putting a police officer in the right place at the right time, we will save a lot in human resources and, which is even more important, we will have fewer victims."

Miguel Camacho explains that this new IT tool, which is able to establish the patrolling area and distribute police officers quickly, "can't in any case be a substitute to police experience and intuition. It's a resource inspired by 'big data' technology which can be greatly useful in our job."

Explore further Predictive policing substantially reduces crime in Los Angeles during months-long test
Credit: Alex Snyder

European homeowners remain resistant to undertaking efficiency measures. Widespread incentives, regulations and policies concerning energy efficiency are making modest gains. In the U.K., for example, just one in 10 renovations are undertaken for the explicit purpose of improving energy efficiency, despite a huge policy drive over the last four years centered around energy-saving improvements.

Recent research suggests that policymakers would benefit from analyzing further how homeowners think about renovation.

Charlie Wilson, a lecturer at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, led a study published in 2015 in the journal Energy Research and Social Science concerning homeowner decision making with regards to renovations. The study included interviews with homeowners, an extensive review of published articles and reports, and a survey of 1,028 homeowners in the U.K.

Traditionally, companies or authorities seeking to encourage homeowners to undertake energy efficiency measures identify three groups of barriers that must be overcome: Financial barriers such as capital availability; information barriers such as uncertainties about contractor reliability; and decision making barriers including the reluctance to make complex and irreversible decisions.

However, Wilson says that this approach may not accurately describe how homeowners consider renovation decisions.

"I'm not a major fan of thinking about this in terms of barriers," he says. "People aren't sitting around the kitchen table saying 'I want to make my home more energy efficient but these barriers are getting in the way, if only there was a good policy that would remove these barriers.' People are more saying, 'It would be good if we could make that room more air-tight, or that room a bit less damp and draughty so we can make it a child's playroom.' People are asking how they can best adapt their home to meet their needs."

Wilson explains that many policies designed to encourage energy efficient home renovations miss an opportunity by treating them as discrete, one-off renovations. He believes the key to increasing energy efficiency measures is for them to accompany more general renovation projects.

"The challenge is how can we 'piggyback' energy efficiency measures into that vast amount of home renovation activity which is going on every day in Europe," he says.

"Imagine that you are going ahead with a 10,000 pound kitchen refurbishment and the supplier or builder says 'By the way, there is this new scheme that means while we do your whole kitchen we can do a bunch of insulation measures and put in new windows so your home will be more energy efficientthis will go on to your energy bill and you pay it back over time.'

"The research that we did showed that people were far more likely to go for that kind of policy support."

Karine Laffont, an engineer and consultant at French innovation management firm Technofi, agrees that attempting to bundle efficiency measures in with general renovations would prove successful.

"Energy does not cost enough at least in Franceto put energy issues at the top of the agenda for households," she says. "And I don't think raising environmental concerns is enough to make people renovate."

"If people are already planning on making some home improvements to increase their comfort in terms of living space, acoustics, aesthetics or humidity for example, and if there is a business model that is in place that can help them make those renovations in an energy efficient way that will not cost much, then I think they will do so."

Laffont also points to energy contracting as a further way to increase energy retrofits on a larger scale, such as targeting whole apartment blocks. She is collaborating with BRESAER, a European project that is developing a retrofit design that aims to deliver near zero energy performance to existing buildings via the use of building envelope technologies including dynamic windows, insulation panels and photovoltaic modules integrated into a structural mesh.

"We had a look at what kind of business model would mitigate [financial barriers] and what we identified is the energy contracting model," Laffont says.

Through agreements between housing associations, builders and manufactures, energy contracting modelssuch as EnergieSprong in the Netherlandscan deliver energy retrofits to groups of houses or apartment blocks with no upfront payment for occupants.

"The contractor takes over the commercial, technical and operational risks of the project," Laffont says, "And the contractor will also guarantee the performance of the outcome."

While zero energy new builds are now commonplace, existing buildings will make up an estimated 70 percent of Europe's building stock in 2050, indicating that encouraging homeowners to undertake energy efficiency measures is a crucial part of a low-carbon future.
Glen Wurden in the stellarators vacuum vessel during camera installation in 2014.

Since the world's largest superconducting magnetic fusion experiment, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, went online in December, innovative new imaging systems designed at Los Alamos National Laboratory are helping physicists peer into the roiling world of superhot plasmas as they test a promising alternative approach to harnessing fusion energy. The eventual result could be a plentiful source of clean and reliable power.

"This new stellarator uses optimized three-dimensional magnetic fields to enable continuous operation of high-performance, disruption-free deuterium plasmas," said Glen Wurden, of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Plasma Physics group. "The Los Alamos-designed diagnostic system plays an integral role in this collaboration and the studies of 3D magnetic field systems, especially pertaining to plasma boundary effects."

Within the stellarator, the magnetic fields contain the plasma, which is heated to 100 million degrees Celsius, at which point the deuteriuma heavy isotope of hydrogencan fuse into helium and release tremendous, controlled energy.

The W7-X stellarator recently began operations at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany, aided by researchers from several universities and institutes in the United States, including Wurden and John Dunn, also of the Los Alamos Plasma Physics group.

Preparations for the start of operations for this Department of Energy-sponsored, United States-German collaboration began four years ago, with a three-lab U.S. team consisting of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Los Alamos, which provided hardware, software and fusion researchers.

The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator required 19 years to go from initial design to operational status.

As the W7-X was under construction, Wurden developed and installed the imaging systems needed to study plasma edge effects and interactions with the armored walls in three-dimensional magnetic geometries within the machine. These systems are higher resolution than the German systems, which are designed to view the entire inner surface of the machine.

Wurden also provided an infrared camera that offered the highest resolution available and a visible imaging system on the same line of sight. Wurden and Dunn designed imaging systems for two phases of W7-X operation. In the first phase, a poloidal graphite limiter, which intercepts energy from the edge of the plasma, will be observed. In the second phase, the limiters will be removed, and the W7-X will study a newer technique to handle energy at the edge of the plasma by using magnetic island divertors. The Los Alamos imaging diagnostics will observe the divertor hardware and scraper elements as they control the plasma energy over a range of plasma pressures.

The stellarator is currently operating in a test phase using helium gas, but it will switch to hydrogen gas in February to begin more realistic experiments. Within the next three years, the W7-X is expected to demonstrate maintaining steady state, high-temperature deuterium plasmas for up to 30 minutes at a time, limited only by the project's electricity bill and the daily capacity of on-site water-cooling systems.

The DOE Office of Science's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences funded the work at Los Alamos. The research supports the Laboratory's Energy Security Mission and the Nuclear and Particle Futures science pillar by building the scientific foundation needed to develop a fusion energy source.

Explore further PPPL engineers complete the design of Wendelstein 7-X scraper unit
Device Control and Hardware Companies Team Up to Provide Low-Cost, Commercial-Grade Option for Tablet-Based Kiosk Fleet Deployments

LEHI, UT(Marketwired  January 28, 2016)  Moki, the leader in cloud-native management and control for tablet-based commerce solutions, announced today a strategic partnership with Mimo Monitors (Mimo Display, LLC). Headquartered in Princeton, NJ, Mimo Monitors produces affordable commercial-grade, Android-based tablet devices and related POS peripherals, such as 2d barcode scanners, and credit card readers, etc., that come deployment ready with VESA-mountable displays.

This new partnership will combine Mokis tablet-based kiosk control capabilities and Mimos robust devices to provide those in the retail and corporate spaces an affordable and fully-managed commercial-grade option for deploying large fleets of tablet-based kiosks and displays. Rather than turning a consumer grade tablet running iOS, Windows or Android into a tablet kiosk using enclosures, retailers can now purchase a low-cost device that is purpose-built to withstand the day-to-day rigors demanded from a tablet-based kiosk or display in a retail or other setting. Customers can also expect a managed hardware and software refresh cycle to allow for long term deployments.

Consumer-grade devices are difficult to manage at scale and dont stand up to the day-to-day beating like Mimos commercial grade systems do. However, consumer-grade devices offer retailers so many new opportunities and price points that they continue trying to make them work anyway, said Tom Karren, CEO and co-founder of Moki. The combination of Mimos affordable commercial-grade devices and Mokis best-in-class tablet management solution changes all of this. This potent combination opens up the doors that many organizations have been trying to break through for years.

Mokis ability to provide a managed service for deploying and monitoring the health, usage and security of Android and iOS devices, all at scale, allows customers to control the full life cycle of their deployments. Mimo Monitors tablets powered by Moki offer companies commerce-enabling solutions, such as mPOS, with a scalable and durable option to open new markets at a lower operational cost than ever before.

We make great hardware, and surprisingly this can be a problem for our customers. They quickly see the value these devices bring and want to deploy them in massive numbers  only to start asking themselves how they can manage so many devices at scale. Moki gives them a way to do that, no matter how many devices a customer has, said David Anderson, CEO of Mimo Monitors. Were excited to partner with Moki to offer customers our durable hardware with Mokis stable management solution. This way our customers get the best from two industry leaders, all designed to reduce their deployment complexity.

For more information about Mimos cost-effective devices that ship with Moki provision-ready software on board, visit www.mimomonitors.com . For more information about Mokis cloud-native management solution for tablet-based kiosks, or to setup a demo, visit www.moki.com .

About Moki

Moki provides cloud-based (SaaS) software that makes it easy to provision, manage, secure, maintain and effectively measure tablet kiosks  at any scale. Moki does this by enabling total control of devices, with remote management, security and analytics of hardware, operating systems, applications and content. Founded in 2012, Moki is trusted by hundreds of customers in over 55 countries. Innovative brands like Belly, Motorola, T-Mobile, PayPoint, RAB Lighting, Columbia Sportswear, Marriott, The Juilliard School and the New York City Department of Health choose Moki. Moki is headquartered in Lehi, Utah, with an EMEA office in London, U.K. Learn more about Moki at www.moki.com , and keep up on the latest from Moki on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the Moki blog.

About Mimo Monitors

Mimo Monitors is the industry leader in small touch monitors, displays and tablets. The Mimo Monitors portfolio is built on proprietary IP developed by our engineering team and partners. Our world class team has deployed the Mimo solution in tens of thousands of locations throughout the world. Our customers include Fortune 500 companies, both in the US as well as internationally. Mimos touch solutions are industry leading in their technology, small footprint, and price point. The companys touch capabilities drive innovation in systems design of point of sale (POS), digital signage, and video conferencing solutions. Mimo Monitors is headquartered in Princeton, NJ. For more info, please contact us at info@mimomonitors.com , or view our website at www.mimomonitors.com .
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U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., recently held a joint campaign fundraiser in Curbelo's south Florida congressional district, said Lenny Alcivar, a Stefanik campaign spokesman.

Alcivar was responding to a Post-Star inquiry about a statement of organization the Stefanik campaign filed with the Federal Election Commission for the Millennial GOP Victory Committee.

The entity was established for the joint fundraiser, he said.

Curbelo and Stefanik serve together on the House Education and Workforce Committee.

The two freshmen House members have collaborated on legislation.

Curbelo is an original co-sponsor of HR 3180, legislation Stefanik introduced to reinstate "Year Round Pell," a program that provides supplemental Pell grants for summer and other non-tradition semesters.

Click here to read a Sunshine State News report about their collaboration.

Curbelo and Stefanik are original co-sponsors of HR 424, a resolution Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook introduced recognizing global warming.

Curbelo co-sponsored HR 3886, legislation Stefanik and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., introduced to expand parameters of a federal childhood nutrition program.

Stefanik is an original co-sponsor of HR 318, a resolution Curbelo introduced to show support for Israeli academic institutions.
QUEENSBURY  The New York City man who fled police at an estimated 100 mph as he transported nearly 10 pounds of marijuana last spring apologized Wednesday as a judge sentenced him to state prison.

Nolan H. Emory pleaded guilty to felony counts of reckless endangerment and criminal possession of marijuana for the wild chase on May 28.

Police said he fled on routes 149 and 9 after being involved in a minor crash.

Emorys lawyer, Lee Kindlon, said his client was scared. He did not elaborate as to whether the duffel bag full of marijuana in the back of the borrowed Honda sport utility vehicle he was driving motivated that fear.

Police said Emory, 26, hit triple digits speeding south on Route 9 past Great Escape amusement park, then turned onto Aviation Road and sped past the Queensbury school complex before careening off the road into a driveway on Butler Pond Road.

He ran into nearby woods, prompting a three-hour manhunt, as police discovered the marijuana in the car he had been driving.

Emory told Warren County Judge John Hall he was sorry, and his lawyer said he sent a letter to the court apologizing to all who were affected by the chase.

There are some bad people in this world and people who make bad decisions, and I think Mr. Emory is one of the latter, Kindlon said.

Hall sentenced him to 1-1/2 to 4-1/2 years in state prison.

Emory also faces an indictment on numerous felonies in Columbia County for allegedly possessing more than 40 fraudulent debit cards during an August 2014 traffic stop in Kinderhook. Police also seized nearly $10,000 in cash from him after he was stopped for speeding and police smelled marijuana in the vehicle.

In that case, he is to stand trial starting Feb. 29 on 47 charges of criminal possession of a forged instrument, according to the Columbia County Court clerks office.
QUEENSBURY  A former Queensbury man who has been accused of sexual abuse by at least five children over the past two decades hesitantly pleaded guilty to a felony sexual abuse charge Wednesday in Warren County Court.

Glennan H. Hughes, 60, admitted that he fondled the genitalia of a girl who was younger than 11, but would not say it was for his sexual gratification as the law requires. That prompted Warren County Judge John Hall to allow him to enter an Alford plea where he did not have to admit the factual elements of the crime but still entered a guilty plea.

Hughes told Hall he was pleading guilty to take a plea deal that would spare him a return to state prison, from which he was paroled last February for an earlier related sexual abuse conviction.

The cases were related in that the victims were foster children who Hughes and his then-wife had taken in at their Leo Street, Queensbury, home.

Its only because of my prior experiences, he said.

Hughes agreed to a plea deal that includes a six-month sentence in Warren County Jail and 10 years on probation.

Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan said her office agreed to the disposition to spare the girls having to testify at trial, and to ensure that Hughes was supervised as long as possible.

Its a very troubling pattern of conduct. This will allow supervision for 10 years, and if he violates probation he goes back to prison, she said.

Wednesdays guilty plea came in connection with an arrest in August by the Warren County Sheriffs Office for abuse of two young girls between 2004 and 2006 in Queensbury. The girls came forward last spring, after learning that Hughes was about to be paroled from state prison for convictions stemming from a 2005 arrest in Queensbury.

Police had interviewed numerous foster children of whom Hughes had custody.

Warren County Assistant District Attorney Matt Burin agreed to allow an Alford plea, with the understanding that Hughes was not accepting responsibility for his actions. That could affect his ability to get parole if he is sent to prison for the charge to which he pleaded guilty.

Hughes spent nearly 6-1/2 years in state prison for the 2007 conviction, and is on parole until November 2018 in that case. He was also accused of child sexual abuse in 1996, but the charges in that case were dropped when the alleged victim decided not to testify.

Hughes, a Level 2 sex offender, had been living in the Budget Inn motel in Whitehall at the time of his arrest last summer.

He is free pending sentencing March 14, having served the six-month jail term awaiting disposition of the charges.

His lawyer, Warren County Public Defender Marcy Flores, said she had no comment on the case Thursday.
CAMBRIDGE  When it comes to preventing drug abuse, too often theres an underlying sense of Theres nothing we can do, said Naomi Marsh, organizer of an opiate summit at Cambridges American Legion hall Wednesday evening.

We want to identify things we can do, especially prevention, she said.

The event was sponsored by the Cambridge Village Board. About 50 people, including local elected officials, state Sens. Elizabeth Little and Kathy Marchione, health care providers, addiction specialists, students, clergy and concerned residents attended to learn and propose ideas to keep the addiction epidemic from spreading in the area.

Addiction is absolutely not a weakness. It is a disease, said Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan. Every one of us will be touched in some way.

Jordan urged parents to discuss drug use with their children and with people they suspected might be in the grip of addiction.

Cambridge-Greenwich Police Chief George Bell said that although the problem locally isnt as serious as in nearby Bennington, Vermont, he dealt with four overdose deaths last year, one in Cambridge and three in Greenwich. Heroin traffickers travel through Cambridge on state Routes 22 and 313, he said.

Jordan and Bell encouraged people to contact local police, the county sheriffs office or the district attorneys office if they see suspicious activity.

People are afraid of retaliation from drug dealers or of getting into trouble with the law, Bell said, but he didnt think there was much risk of retaliation in this area. Because of caller ID, calls to law enforcement are no longer anonymous, but police do their best to keep calls confidential, he said.

Marchione was part of a 2014 state Senate task force on heroin and opiate addiction, and summarized the task forces findings.

Little described legislation introduced in the Senate to limit the number of painkillers doctors can prescribe and to increase funding for detoxification centers and prevention programs.

Marsh, a retired health educator, counselor, and nurse, explained that addiction often starts with an injury. A health care provider prescribes an opiate drug to treat the pain.

Often, the pain is gone but the prescription is not, Marsh said.

The unused pills tempt people to take them for fun or stress relief, which leads to dependency. When the legal prescription runs out, people look for black market sources. When that proves too difficult or expensive, heroin is easily available and cheap.

Research shows that young people who feel confident about themselves and supported by the adults around them are less likely to turn to drugs, Marsh said.

A 2012 survey suggested that students at Cambridge Central School generally felt good about themselves but didnt see much support from their community.

Marsh asked participants to come up with ideas to address prevention, preferably that would require no staff or money. Among the suggestions were creating a clearinghouse for information on where to go for help, publicizing the leftover drug drop-off program at the local police station, providing affordable, accessible organized activities for young people, encouraging adults to view young people as part of the community rather than with suspicion, parenting classes, and continuing drug abuse education between the end of the elementary school DARE program and high school health classes.

Marsh urged people to stay involved and recommended holding a follow-up meeting in a few months.
The simple pleasures of beering locally. I'm older now, and simple beer pleasures are the most meaningful to me. They tend to be encountered locally. It is my aim to get unplugged and explore some of them, slowly and thoughtfully. I'd tell you where it's leading, except that I've no idea ... and that's the whole point of the journey: To find out.
Kent won last four games with Ohio U, winning by 14-13 in last couple visits to Athens. Flashes won their last five games, one of which was an 89-82 home win over the Bobcats Jan 16- Flashes were 27-36 on foul line, Ohio 20-22. Kent is 3-0 in its MAC road games, winning by 3-8-3 points. Bobcats are 3-4 in MAC, but won two of three at home. MAC home favorites of 6 or less points are 12-5 vs spread.

Princeton won seven of last eight games with Brown, winning three of last four visits here, with wins by 14-4-18 points; Bruins lost its last four D-I games; they're 0-6 vs top 100 teams, with five of six losses by 9+ points. Tigers are 7-0 vs teams ranked outside top 100, with seven of nine wins by 9+ points- they're 5-4 in true road games this season.

VCU crushed Davidson 93-73 in A-14 tourney last March, after home team won both regular season meetings; Rams lost 82-55 at Davidson in first A-14 visit here. VCU won its last 10 games; all five of its losses are to top 60 teams; they're 4-1 in true road games, with loss at Ga Tech. Wildcats are 3-0 at home in A-14, scoring 81.3 ppg. A-14 home dogs of 6 or less points are 1-9 against the spread.

Penn lost eight of last nine D-I games, with only win over Binghamton, #330 in country; Quakers lost last six games with Yale, losing by 9-7-27 in last three games played here. Penn is 1-5 in true road games, with win at #350 Delaware State. Yale won its last five D-I games; they're 9-0 vs teams outside top 200, with eight of nine wins by 12+ points.

Harvard won its last eight games with Cornell, winning last four played here, by 21-11-9-25 points. Crimson is worst foul shooting team in US (58.3%); they got upset at Dartmouth last game. Cornell lost five of its last seven games, but two wins were on road, at St Peter's/Howard- they got swept by Columbia in first two Ivy games, by 4-11 points.

Dartmouth won four of last six games with Columbia, sweeping Lions by 12-13 points in LY's meetings. Big Green beat Canisius/Harvard last two games, after starting season 4-9; they're 5-2 in home games. Lions won eight of last nine D-I games, but none of opponents are ranked in top 200. Columbia swept Cornell in its first two Ivy games, by 4-11.

Detroit lost its last five games after starting season 9-5; Titans lost last game 115-108 in OT at Green Bay Monday, rallying back from dwn 17 in first half- a 98-possession game!!!! Detroit allowed 89 ppg in losing last two home games. Northern Kentucky is 3-2 in last five games, 2-3 in Horizon home games, beating Youngstown/UIC. Horizon League single digit home underdogs are 4-7 vs spread.

Wright State won six games in a row, 10 of last 11- only three of those were on road; Raiders got swept by Oakland LY, losing by 8-9 points, after going 3-0 vs Grizzlies year before. This is Wright's first road game in 20 days; they're 2-1 on Horizon road, losing by 8 at Green Bay for its only loss since Dec 13. Horizon League single digit home underdogs are 4-7 vs spread. Oakland won four of its last five games.

Green Bay allowed 219 points in its last two games but split pair- they won last game in OT after blowing 17-point lead. Phoenix won six of its last nine games with Milwaukee, sweeping Panthers by 16-11 points in LY's games. Milwaukee won five of its last six games; five of its last six losses are by 4 or less points. Horizon League single digit home dogs are 4-7 vs spread. Green Bay won three of five Horizon road games.

IUPUI won 67-60 at Western Illinois January 9, after trailing by 5 with 10:41 left; Jaguars won last two series games after losing previous five to WIU, who won two of last three visits here. IUPUI won four of its last five games after starting season 5-12. Leathernecks lost last nine games; they're 0-7 in Summit, losing road games by 2-4-9 points Summit League home favorites of 7 or less points are 6-11 vs apread.

Iona lost three of last four games, allowing 86.3 ppg; Gaels got beat by Manhattan in last two MAAC tourneys, after going 3-1 vs Jaspers in regular season meetings. Iona won last three series games played here, by 8-12-4 points. Manhattan won five of last seven games after starting 3-8 this season; Jaspers' last two losses are by total of five points, at the Buffalo-area schools. MAAC home favorites are 9-20 vs spread.

Canisius won its last three road games; they're 4-1 on MAAC road, 1-4 at home; Griffins are 8-4 vs teams ranked outside top 200- they've won last four games with Fairfield, winning by 26-14 points in last couple visits here. Stags won three of last four games; they're 3-2 at home in MAAC games, losing to Monmouth, St Peter's. Underdogs are 14-4 vs spread in MAAC games where spread was 3 or less points.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is poised to start very early clinical trials on a Zika vaccine this year. All three cases are confirmed to be non-pregnant women who had traveled to either Colombia or Venezuela.

"Health experts and researchers are working to strengthen the connection between the Zika virus in the mother and any potential connection to this poor health outcome", says Tompkins.

Zika is spread by mosquitoes.

Chan said the virus, which is linked to the birth defect microcephaly, is "spreading explosively".

Zika is spread by mosquitoes and in most people causes no more than mild illness but, pregnant Canadian women interested in going to Central or South America, Mexico or the Caribbean need know the risks.

Zika is transmitted primarily by Aedes mosquitoes, which also transmit chikungunya and dengue viruses and which are present in every country of the Americas except Canada and continental Chile.

He said his department remains in close contact with the Irish Health Service Executive and the country's missions in the Americas in relation to this outbreak and will continue to review the travel advice as appropriate.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends special precautions for pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant: when traveling to locations where Zika has been detected.

Health Minister JP Nadda said that India is closely monitoring the situation and taking all the necessary steps to ensure the country is well prepared.

The WHO will have an emergency committee on Monday to decide if the Zika virus outbreak should be declared in worldwide health emergency.

About one in five people infected with Zika virus will develop symptoms, which include fever, rash, joint pain, and pink eye. He says, "A person will be infected from a mosquito bite, will increase their levels of virus".

If or when Zika is locally transmitted, for those who are not expecting, the virus is usually mild and not a danger to future births.

'Kung Fu Panda 3' delivers the expected

Master Tigress (Angelina Jolie) does appear mid-way to help Po, but the relative importance of this scene is minimal. Po remains a charming bumbler - excited to learn, for example, that other pandas don't eat with chopsticks.
Progressives do not want to discuss their history. I want to discuss their history.
ANOTHER BLOG FROM NEVILLE STEPHENS ON BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY.
THE SWANSEA BRANCH OF THE PWMI WILL BE MEETING AT 7PM ON SATURDAY THE 14TH MARCH WITH SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER MIKE MOORE FROM LANGPORT IN SOMERSET. HIS SUBJECT MATTER WILL BE "ISRAEL IN THE PURPOSES OF GOD". THE VENUE IS THE TREBOETH GOSPEL HALL, LLANGYFELACH ROAD, TREBOETH, SWANSEA, SA5 9EH. FURTHER INFO FROM NIGEL DAVIES ON 01792 772337 OR 07850 303095.

MAY 2ND-4TH NEVILLE STEPHENS WILL BE SPEAKING THREE TIMES AT THE OPEN BIBLE TRUST LONG WEEKEND CONFERENCE IN NORTHAMPTON. THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER EXCITING SPEAKERS AND THE FELLOWSHIP AND FOOD IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. PLEASE CONTACT NEV ON 07808 251502 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

JUNE 13TH (SATURDAY) THE NINTH ANNUAL WELSH CONFERENCE OF THE OPEN BIBLE TRUST IN BASSALEG NEAR NEWPORT. THE SPEAKERS WILL BE INTERNATIONAL MINISTER MIKE PENNY FROM READING AND AUTHORS NEVILLE STEPHENS AND SYLVIA PENNY. PLEASE CONTACT NEV AS ABOVE FOR DETAILS.

PLEASE ASK THE PEOPLE LISTED ABOVE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION REGARDING THESE AND OTHER FORTHCOMING BIBLE PROPHECY MEETINGS FOR 2019.
M WAQAR..... "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Albert Einstein !!! NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.''    
In a press statement copied to Pulse business, Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa, General Manager of the FAGRO Secretariat said: We have a very busy 2016 and we are convinced that the Agric sector deserves even more than the attention we are dedicating. When Agric takes it pride of place, Ghanas developmental agenda will be greatly stepped up and the Secretariat is committed to the successful roll out of all these events this year as our contribution to making the sector attractive to the rest of the population.

The statement said from March 7 to 11, the Secretariat in collaboration with Spain-based Agricultural Marketing and Consultancy Firm  Naxan  will roll out the maiden SPANISH-FAGRO AGRIC TRADE INVESTMENT PROGRAM in Navarra, to equip players in Ghanas Agric sector of best practices in Spain while offering them opportunities for strategic alliances and investments.

Between April 12 and 13, the Agric Career Show will hold to offer students in agric-oriented institutions, vital insight into job and career prospects in their chosen field of study, the statement said.

In June, two Ghanaians  a student offering Agriculture and a young farmer will attend The All State Leadership Camp, to enrich their knowledge and practice, while offering them life-changing networking opportunities, the statement added.

According to the statement, the 2nd National Agric Summit  the Secretariats main platform for dialogue that brings together, key stakeholders such as development partners, researchers, farmer groups, government agencies and corporate leaders - to look at issues confronting Ghanas Agricultural Sector, will hold on July 19.

The Beginners Agribusiness Mentorship Initiative (BAMI), a practical educational farming initiative which targets students in Agric Colleges and Second Cycle institutions and ushers them into co-operative agribusiness ventures for three months, will tee off in September.

The mentorship module which will feature three groups of students, each made of eight working on an acre of farmland, is aimed at redirecting students attention to making Agric a priority career choice rather than a frustration management venture, the statement explained further.

From October 11 to 13, the frontline annual event of the secretariat, THE FAGRO EXHIBITION, which features general exhibitions, Business to Business meetings and field demonstrations for visitors, comes off.

Considered the torchbearer event that signposts Agric as Ghanas answer to its development dilemma, The Fagro exhibition will bring Agric-oriented companies (manufacturers, agri-input, financing companies, packaging companies, processing companies, irrigation, Green housing companies, farmer-based organizations) and all directorates of the ministry of agriculture to one venue to showcase their products and policies, forge new business contacts and network with over 1000 exhibitors during the three-day fair, according to the statement.

Workshops, training programs and farm tours will also be organized during this period.. Its our flagship program and has set the benchmark for other programs to be rolled out every year by the Secretariat, Alberta explained

The NATIONAL FARMERS UNION 2016 WOMENS CONFERENCE, signs off the 2016 event year of the FAGRO Secretariat. The conference will build on NFUs experience in offering adult education classes specifically designed for women in agriculture, and provide them with important leadership and management skills, as well as networking opportunities.
The first case in the region has been reported at the Ridge Hospital in Accra.

The Greater Accra region has recorded one case of a different strain of meningitis called Meningococcal Meningitis.
Dr. Tenkorang who said the case in the region was imported from neighboring Ivory Coast is closely monitored at the Essam Government Hospital in Sefwi Essam in the Bia West district of the western region.

He noted that the 477 health facilities in the region were put on red alert as far back as September last year adding that for this reason enough antibiotics are already in stock throughout the region to deal with any other case which might be recorded.

He is of the view that people must observe safety precautions and desist from causing fear and panic in the region as one case cannot be referred to as an outbreak in the region.

The western region recorded over 70 cases of Pneumococcal Meningitis last year yet the systems in place already were able to deal with it. We have recorded only one case but people are protracting it causing fear and panic among the populace. The threshold we have set for ourselves before it can be said to be an outbreak is not yet reached in the region and so people must not panic as we have the systems in place to deal with it in the region deal with it. Dr. Tenkorang explained.

He insisted that even though there has been an outbreak of the disease as a result of the rising temperatures in 7 regions in the country it will create fear and panic amongst the people if we are to carry on such checks at places like bus stations and large gatherings as we did for Ebola.
Attorney General & Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, will issue the government statement following the approval of President John Dramani Mahama.

The investigative report into the fire which occurred in January last year states among others that the fire was a case of arson.

The Central Medical Store is where the countrys medical equipment and drugs are stored for onward distribution across the regions.

Over two hundred million cedis worth of drugs and equipment were destroyed in Tema which nearly crippled healthcare delivery.

Before the fire, the then Health Minister Dr. Kwaku Agyeman-Mensah had initiated investigations into allegations of corrupt practices at the store.
The 12 officials have been named as: Peter Ekow Gyimah, Alhaji Yusif Imua, Iddrisu Abdul Karim, Gifty Esi Mankata, Zeboat Doh and Ibrahim Laryea Amartey.

The others are Kwame Foli, Mathias Senayah, Victoria Ennin, Abdul Karim, James Benjamin Annan and Peter Aciaba Addah

The Attorney General added that government is asking for support from Interpol to arrest the chief suspect, Samuel Dogbe, who is on the run.

Meanwhile, BNI and the Fire Service Investigation into the fire has concluded that the fire was a case of arson.

"According to the report of National Security, the fire was deliberately set to destroy evidence of theft and massive fraud and widespread irregularity in the procurement and distribution of medical supplies involving senior management and junior staff," the Attorney General added.

On his part, the Health Minister, Alex Segbefia said "The report will be followed. The audit team will be put in place."

Over two hundred million cedis worth of drugs and equipment were destroyed in the fire outbreak at Tema on January 13, 2015, which nearly crippled healthcare delivery.

Before the fire, the then Health Minister Dr. Kwaku Agyeman-Mensah had initiated investigations into allegations of corrupt practices at the store.
The summit is to discuss how the USAID-led Power Africa has progressed.

The programme is now in its third year and aims to combine public and private sector entities to accelerate access to power in sub-Saharan Africa. So far, it has 120 different entities involved.

The programme was launched by US President Barack Obama in 2013 with the aim of adding 30,000 new megawatts of cleaner electricity generation, and to connect 60 million homes and businesses to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa.

The US Summit, which finishes on Friday 29 January, also launched the Power Africa Roadmap, a guide to how the programme has progressed and how it will reach its two goals.

In it, it says the United States initially made a $7 billion dollar commitment to the USAID programme, and that has leveraged nearly $43 billion in commitments from the public and private sectors, including more than $31 billion in commitments from private sector partners. The private sector partner commitments have tripled since 2013.

While public sector partners, including the African Development Bank (AfDB), the World Bank Group (WBG), the Government of Sweden, and the European Union (EU) have collectively committed nearly $12 billion in support of sustainable energy activities across the region.

The summit also launched the Power Africa Tracking Tool (PATT) app, which tracks the status of energy projects Power Africa is tracking across sub-Saharan Africa, as they advance through the different stages of development.

It also contains links to energy sector news and country-level statistics.

The summit was to include a talk by Richard Anamoo, Director General, Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority on the Financial Development of Tema Port, towards the end of the programme.
According to him, issues of poor working conditions for EC staff must be immediately addressed as the country prepares for the presidential and parliamentary elections in November.

Workers from the EC have announced strike action to protest their low salary levels and poor conditions of service after negotiations resulted in "window dressing of the real problem".

Read more: EC Staff announce strike after failed salary negotiations

The statement said conditions of service had been "dilated" and emphasised "low salary levels."

But Mr Agyemang believes that rising through the ranks is almost non-existent within the commission.

In an interview on Starr FM Friday morning, 29 January 2016, Mr. Agyemang said, "What I have been told is that up to now on the Single Spine Salary Structure they dont know where they belong and they are among the least paid amongst the governance institutions."
In an interview on Radio Ghana on Thursday, Mr. Nkrumah explained that the injunction was actually issued. It was not just being sought. It was sought and it was granted meaning that they have cancelled the event on Saturday.

This means that if they go ahead with it, it will be illegal, he added.

Read more: CPP predicts hardship for Sakara and Ayariga

He however, accused his sister, and a CPP presidential candidate aspirant, Samia Nkrumah of masterminding his disqualification from race.

He is quoted to have said: I find it very difficult and unfortunate that she is trying everything to bring me down, not only her but her friendswhy are they doing that for? Why are they only targeting me and not the others? So it is obvious.

Nonetheless, Onzy Nkrumah claims to deeply love the CPP therefore, his seeking of a court injunction is only aimed at improving the party and increasing the fortunes of the CPP.

The CPP is in tatters, it is seriously divided, the CPP needs serious rebuildingI am trying to seek to reverse and not to allow the division and the decline to continue.

Meanwhile, the Deputy General Secretary of the CPP, Eric Asani confirmed that the party has indeed received the injunction.

We received it this evening after we had done our rounds in connection with the congress that we are to hold on Saturday so yes, we have received an injunction, he said.

He insisted that the congress will take place as planned saying, as far as I am concerned, the congress is still coming on. It is the most ridiculous news ever to hit the Convention Peoples Party. If anybody claims to love the party, he will not go round doing this.
Four candidates are contesting in the presidential polls which comes off on Saturday, 30 November, 2016 at the International Trade Fair Centre, La in Accra.

Former Chairperson of the party, Ms Samia Yaaba Nkrumah, former General Secretary, Mr Ivor Greenstreet; two times defeated flag bearer and lawyer, Bright Akwetey (2008 and 2012), and President of Providence Canada, a Canadian telecommunication company Mr Joseph Agyapong, in the partys flag-bearer race to elect a presidential candidate for the 2016 elections.

Injunction secured on congress

Disqualified presidential hopeful, Onzy Nkrumah has secured a court injunction on the partys national delegates congress.

See also: Onzy Nkrumah secures court injunction on CPP congress

Mr. Nkrumah explained that "the injunction was actually issued. It was not just being sought. It was sought and it was granted meaning that they have cancelled the event on Saturday."

Mr. Nkrumah who is one of the sons of the CPP founder and Ghanas first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah was disqualified for allegedly failing to comply with the set rules.

He however, accused his sister, and a CPP presidential candidate aspirant, Samia Nkrumah of masterminding his disqualification from race.

He said: "I find it very difficult and unfortunate that she is trying everything to bring me down, not only her but her friendswhy are they doing that for? Why are they only targeting me and not the others? So it is obvious."

Ghanaians are waiting the outcome of the congress to see who emerges as the flag bearer to rekindle and lead the Nkrumaist for victory after Saturday, 30 November, 2016.
Ever wondered how smart regular everyday Ghanaians are. Well, PulseTV set out on the streets to ask some simple questions and the answers we got from some of the people captured is sure to make your day. Watch below Season 2 episode 5 of think you're smart.
According to The Independent, 18-year-old Andrej Ciesielski from Munich travelled to Egypt with the intention of climbing the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza and capturing it all on camera.

The teen who shared the experience on a blog said,

Walking around in the complex I was waiting for the right moment to start climbing The Great Pyramid of Giza. When I started climbing a street seller was standing behind me but I didnt care about him I turned around he laughed and I continued climbing.

He went on to narrate how he got all the way to the top while listening to music in spite of the fact that the police spotted him and "shouted something in Arabic".

It took him just eight minutes to reach the top of the 146m-tall pyramid and a further 20 minutes to reach the bottom.

Describing the moment he said,

In the background you can see Giza. Before my trip I wasnt sure if it was a good idea to go to Cairo but I was happy that I went there. Together against terror. At the last day there was a terror attack near the pyramids. A few people have been killed. That made me even thoughtfully.
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The suspect identified as Ongro Stephen Ishade, has now been arrested for the theft of his employers Toyota Sienna SUV which has been valued at N5m.

The news reports reveal that Ishade had driven the vehicle to Kwara State, in a bid to find a buyer far away from Lagos.

PM News reports that the incident had occurred on 18 January, 2016 at Probyn Road, French Colony, Agungi, Lekki, Lagos after Ishade had been sent on and errand by his employer identified as Sholape Akinola.

Ishade is reported to have been arrested by the police in Kwara State while he had been driving around trying to secure a buyer.

Police reports reveal that the suspect hails from Cross River State and had confessed to the crime, saying he had planned to use the proceeds to build a house in the village for his parents who are homeless at the moment.

Following his confession, the Kwara State police had reported the arrest to the Lagos State police, which led to the dispatch of a team to the scene by the Divisional Police Officer in charge of Ilasan Division Lekki, Lagos, SP Onyinye Onwuamegbu.

A police sergeant, Orukotan Lonikola, had been placed in charge of the team sent to Kwara State to retrieve the suspect and the stolen SUV back to Lagos.

Ishade was granted bail in the sum of N200,000 with two sureties in like sum.
It was gathered that Juli had connived with his friend, Adamu Muhammad, in killing his 18-year-old wife. However, Mohammad is currently on the run after they both committed the dastardly act.

The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, DSP Abdul Jinjiri, confirmed the incident, saying that the suspect was arrested after the police received the report from the deceased relatives.

DSP Jinjiri revealed that the report the police had was that Juli had a quarrel with his wife, who later dragged him to court for lack of care and not fulfilling his matrimonial responsibility.

Withe hearing fixed for January 19, Juli and his friend, Muhammad, decided to approach the wife for an out of court settlement and in the process, they murdered her with knives, cutlasses and machetes.

When they approached the wife at her parents house, she turned down their request. As a result of that, they decided to descend on her by using cutlass and knife to machete her which included chopping off her hand

In this process, her relatives heard her shouting for help and before they could come to her rescue, the suspects had already perpetuated their evil plan and ran away.
The letter which was posted on walls in the street, even stated the amounts the bandits who call themselves big boys, want the residents to keep for them and also warned anyone who does not have money to better pack away from the street as they would not show any mercy when they visit the street.
They responded to this letter sent by Victoria Ubani who told her husband a secret from her past and he is using that against her.

Read the letter here:

"My name is Victoria Ubani and I have been married for two years but I can say that I am fed up with this marriage already.

The reason for this is that my husband, Edward, is making life difficult for me due to some personal secrets I revealed to him. Shortly after our marriage, I decided to tell Edward some secrets I have been keeping to myself with the belief that by so doing, he would come to trust me the more, not knowing that I had shot myself in the foot.

When I was in the university, like most girls, I allowed the school to pass through me and also had affairs but in the process, I became pregnant twice and I had to abort them and since then, I was very careful not to fall into that trap again.

And this was the secret I revealed to my husband which I now regret because he has been holding that against me. Anytime we have a disagreement, Edward must bring up the issue of my abortions and make it sound as if I just had them. It gets so bad that he threatens to send me out of his house for something I did more than 15 years ago.

I now regret ever telling him and I wonder whether it is not even better for couples to keep their secrets to themselves.

Victoria."

The teaser for the day was:

How Nigeria voted:

46% - Yes, what was done in the past should remain secret

54% - No, keeping secrets breaks the bond in a marriage
The casualty figure was not ascertained as at press time, but the spokesman for the state Police Command, Othman Abubakar, said three people including the bomber were confirmed dead, and 17 others injured.

Giving details of the attack, the Executive Secretary of the Adamawa State Emergency Agency (SEMA), Haruna Furo said, the blast occurred in the grain section of the international market in Gombi. We were told that there were two suicide bombers that carried out the attack. Our anti-bomb squad has gone there and they will be able to ascertain the manner of the attack. But they said they were two suicide bombers.

As I am talking to you now, officials of the NEMA, SEMA and the Red Cross are already at the scene. The report we have for now is that 28 persons were affected, sustaining various injuries. There were eight deaths including the two suicide bombers.

Some of the injured have been moved to nearby hospitals but we have put Shell facilities, the Specialist Hospital Yola, the Federal Medical Centre Yola on red alert and they are now waiting to receive those injured.
Jonathan made the clarification in an interview with a news website, Quartz, in Geneva, Switzerland. He said his administration did not set up any negotiating team.

I did not negotiate with Boko Haram. The government never set up a team, Quartz quoted him as saying.

Officials of the immediate past administration, including Jonathan's principal private secretary, Hassan Tukur, and his spokesman Reuben Abati, had told the Voice of America that the government was meeting with Danladi Ahmadu, Boko Harams representative, and high-level officials from Chad and Cameroon to negotiate with the terrorists.

But Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, refuted the claims by Jonathan's government in a video the sect released weeks after launching several attacks in the northeast.

We have not made ceasefire with anyone. We did not negotiate with anyone Its a lie. Its a lie. We will not negotiate. What is our business with negotiation? Allah said we should not, Shekau had said.

Also reacting to allegations of corruption during his administration, saying "the truth will come out one day".

Sometimes people think that I was president since the independence (of Nigeria) and not for five years. Sometimes they say that we have lost over $150 billion in funds in the five years that I was president, he said.
Ibori made the remark after Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami said the government would soon recover the sum of 6.9 million pounds which he described as Ibori loot.

The former governor issued the response via a statement released by media aide, Tony Eluemunor.

It reads:

Such money, whether in British pounds, American dollars or the Nigerian Naira just does not exist. This is because the Ibori London trial is not yet over. It is an incontrovertible fact that the confiscation hearing has not started at all, and remains months away into the future.

This makes it disappointing that a high official of State such as the Attorney-General may have been misled into believing that an Ibori loot not only exists anywhere, but he even put a figure (6.9 million pounds) to it.

With all due respect to the Minister and the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, it is curious that such a misleading statement could have come less than a week that dozens of well-respected foreign media organisations including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), The Times of London, The Guardian of London, and a host of Nigerian news outlets reported that the case against Ibori and his associates have become shaky as some operatives of the London Metropolitan Police have been accused of bribery and corruption in the course of their investigations.

Thus at the Thursday January 21, 2016 hearing the prosecution was forced to withdraw its case against one of Iboris counsels, Mr. Bradesh Gohil. It had charged Gohil of leaking fabricated documents to media organisations and Members of (British) Parliament, but Gohil turned the case against the Police, accusing it of misleading the court with tainted evidence from corrupt operatives and of withholding key documents which could have proved police corruption."

The New Indian Express of Monday 25 January 2016 ventured further than the Times to report that Gohil, who was freed from jail last year, may now challenge his previous conviction, just as Ibori or any of his associates already convicted may also decide to do.

This has done nothing though to affect in any way the high regards Chief Ibori and his Media Office have for President Muhammadu Buhari, his administration and Ministers, including the Justice Minister, Mr. Abubakar Malami. Chief Ibori wishes them well in their stated bid to leave Nigeria better than they found it.
The approval followed submission of an interim report by the ad hoc committee of NEC, chaired by Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo, to review the management of the Excess Crude Account and remittances into the Federation Account.

The governors of Jigawa, Alhaji Baderu Abubakar; Anambra, Willie Obiano; Lagos, Akinwumi Ambode; and the Minister for Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, said this in their joint briefing to State House Correspondents.

According to Lagos governor, 18 core revenue generating agencies, such as NNPC, will be audited by KPMG, an international audit firm, while an indigenous firm, SIAO, will audit other non-core revenue generating agencies.

The governor said that NEC would take further action on the agencies after the firms had completed the forensic auditing.

The Jigawa governor said that the Accountant-General of the Federation reported to council that as at Dec. 31, 2015 the Excess Crude Account stood at $2.26 billion.

The governor said that the Central Bank Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele informed the council of the standing of the bailout funds given to states.

He said that 23 states had benefitted from the N10 billion each, Excess Crude Account-backed soft loan, while a total of 28 states benefitted from the Presidential bail out for the payment of salaries and gratuities.

Gov. Obiano gave a report concerning some MDAs collecting revenue in foreign currency and remitting in local currency into the Federation Account.

Obiano said the permanent secretary, Finance, reported that besides NNPC, NIMASA and NPA, other agencies involved in such revenues were FIRS, Shippers Council, Airport Authority and Nigeria Immigration Service.

Obiano further said that the official reported that the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) had resolved the problem as all account was now under the CBN.

He also said that the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who presided at the NEC, reiterated the Federal Governments policy that NNPC and other agencies must present budget for approval before spending in line with the TSA.
He testified before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, as one of the witnesses of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Vanguard reports that Ogunsanya said When Metuh became National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, I met with him, and he said he liked the work we did for the party in the past, but unfortunately that the party did not have money to pay us to continue with the work.

He promised to compensate us whenever an opportunity arose. This was in 2012. Early November 2014, I got a call from him and he asked me where I was. I told him I was in Lagos. He said he wanted me to come to Abuja to attend a meeting.

He said Metuh took him to the Presidential Villa, where he spoke to former President Goodluck Jonathan and other PDP.

Ogunsanya also said He(GEJ) took everything in good faith and asked us to go. The next evening, Metuh called me and said that it seemed like I made an impression on the President. He asked me to coordinate the media campaign plan for the PDP presidential election.

So, we set about the work with a plan. I was meeting Metuh severally on the ideas we had on how we could position the party in the minds of Nigerians.

The PR consultant said Metuh issued a Destra Investment Limited cheque of N7.5 to him on December 1, 2014.

Adding that a second payment of N70m was transferred from Destra Investment Limited On December 15, 2015, to CMC Connect.

Vanguard also reports that EFCC tendered all the evidence relating to the transactions before court.
Usman said It is certain that until Olisa Metuh is convicted or otherwise, by the court, where is he currently facing charges, his duty as the spokesman of PDP may be hampered by the questions that his utterances may raise, particularly when it has to do with the conducts of the current administration.

Adding that The PDP should be reorganised, and you cannot reorganise the party with the tendencies of fictionalization rearing its head.

Metuh was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), following his alleged involvement in the $2.1b arms purchase scandal, and arraigned in court on various charges.

Mr. Yomi Gbadejo Ogunsanya, a Public Relations consultant with CMC Connect, also revealed how People Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, spent part of the N400m he was given.
Ibrahim Danladi was said to have been arrested by the NDLEA while in possession of a 1.5kg of marijuana.

Some residents of the village who were contacted confirmed the arrest but added that the traditional ruler, fondly called, Alhaji Maina, was arrested following the discovery of a bag of marijuana in his house.

Someone dealing on marijuana was staying in his house selling it. Realizing the huge profit the man was making, Alhaji Maina also joined him in selling the illicit drugs, a source said.

Even thought efforts to contact the village head by Pulse proof abortive, the traditional rulers arrest and subsequent suspension is a dramatic turn in the fight against drugs in the State.

Meanwhile, Kaduna State government has announced the suspension of the traditional ruler, in a statement signed by Samuel Aruwan.

The statement said on 20 January 2016, the NDLEA arrested Danladi a village head of Ungwa Goma in the Gimi District of Sanga local government area of the state who admitted ownership of the illegal drug.

The NDLEA subsequently notified the Kaduna State Security Council of the arrest of the traditional ruler. While deliberating on the matter, the Council recommended his suspension from office pending the conclusion of investigations and possible trial. The government accepted the recommendation, the statement said.
Pulse gathered that stakeholders advocating for the establishment of emergency trust fund said it has become necessary due to lack of defined funding sources and allocation criteria for the SEMAs by state governments resulting to over reliance on NEMA.

Speaking at the annual consultative meeting with stakeholders, NEMAs Director General, Muhammad Sani Sidi said there must be strong coordination among critical stakeholders.

Sani-Sidi said coordinating agencies both at the Federal and State must be effective in disaster management and humanitarian services.

Disaster Management cannot be affectively achieved by one tier of government alone. Government institutions, the private sector, local and international organizations and individual must work together for a nation like ours to meet its objectives of emergency management, disaster risk reduction and the building of strong national resilience, Sani Sidi said.

While urging for the establishment of the Emergency Trust Fund, Sani Sidi stressed that coordination allow all personnel and agencies involved in emergency management to work together for enhanced service delivery.

We are to work with the main goal of saving lives, protection of properties, critical national assets and infrastructure and the complete restoration of normalcy in the aftermath of disasters, Saini- Saidi said.

A communique issued at the end of the meeting, observed that most SEMAs were not established by law and those established by law were not functional and lacked proper structure with full complement of departments, units and staff.

Meanwhile, the Director General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mohammed Sani Sidi on Thursday visited Kaduna State over the fire incident that rocked Rail way Station round about Market.
The suspect, Bukar Abacha, was arrested shortly after he arrived the popular Hausa quarters in Sapele.

A senior army officer who did not want his name mentioned, said on Thursday that a member of the Arewa community gave the information to "Operation Pulo Shield.

The Borno-state born suspect was, thereafter, handed over to the Army Headquarters in Abuja for further interrogation, the senior officer said.

The officer said that the suspect was on the wanted list of the army

He said that a sensitisation exercise tagged "show of force confidence building patrol had been inaugurated.

"The exercise is aimed at disarming all acts of criminalities such as, kidnapping, pipeline vandalism, illegal oil bunkering and killing of innocent citizens in the area.

"Before the arrest, community leaders informed us that the suspect was looking strange, psychologically imbalance and uncomfortable in their midst that called for his doubt as one of them, he said.

The officer urged the people to give the army necessary intelligent information that would assist to effectively stamp out crime in the society.

He urged residents to report people with questionable character or strange movement of persons in their domains.
Kanu is facing charges of treasonable felony before the court and appeared for a bail hearing today, January 29, 2016.

Also refused bail were the Biafra leaders co-accused, David Nwawusi and Benjamin Madubugwu.

The decision was reached by presiding judge, Justice John Tsoho who said that the accused had failed to show that they would not continue to commit the alleged crime for which they were being prosecuted, Punch reports.

Tsoho said further that the defendants had harmed their case by insisting that their agitation for Biafra was a legitimate right instead of defending themselves against the allegations.

Kanu and his co-accused will therefore remain in Kuje prison throughout their trial.
Mr Godwin Omoregie, Anambra NSCDC Commandant, gave the assurance on Thursday in Awka, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He said that the command would provide security support for the DPR to compel marketers to comply with the approved pump price.

"It is the mandate of the DPR to enforce pump price and not the NSCDC, but we are empowered under the law to provide security for their operations.

"We have a standing order to arrest, detain and if possible prosecute erring petroleum products marketers as determined by the DPR, the agency in charge of the sector.

"According to the anti-sabotage law, it is an offence for anybody to willfully do anything to obstruct or prevent production or distribution of petroleum products in any part of Nigeria.

"Ours is to ensure that the policy of the Federal Government being carried out by the DPR is made effective here in Anambra command," he said.
Speaking on Friday, Jan. 28, at the PDP publicity directorate meeting with some visiting parliamentarians from the United Kingdom, the spokesman said the party has adequate internal mechanisms to resolve its ongoing crisis, which he described as a sign of strength.

According to Metuh's media aide, Richard Ihediwa, the politician told the visitors that the PDP faced serious challenges soon after it lost in the elections, which led to the resignation of its national chairman, a development that created some issues within the party.

The leader of the parliamentary delegate, Mark Field, was said to have advised the party to ensure that it did not trash its brand in the face of challenges.

Never trash your brand no matter whatever the government of the day is saying about you, Feild was quoted to have told PDP.
Senator Sani disclosed made the donation when he visited the scene of the fire incidence on Thursday.

Sani also granted two year scholarship to children of traders that died in the fire incidence.

"This market is historic because no one living in Kaduna that has not benefitted from the market. So I'm here to sympathize with you over the unfortunate incident that affected all of us in Kaduna South and not only you.
According to Vanguard, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazak Namdas said the former Presidents letter is a distraction.

His words: We have tremendous respect for the former President. We dont want to be distracted by letters. Probably the letter is not meant for the 8th Assembly because we have cued in with President Muhammadu Buhari. I think the letter is meant for the 4th or 5th Assemblies. It was misdirected.

Namdas also said some of the allegations in the letter, will be investigated and appropriate actions taken.

Meanwhile, Senator Dino Melaye, in his reaction to OBJs letter, said the former President introduced corruption into the national assembly in his bid to run for a third term in office.

He also said Obasanjo's accusations are based on anger.

Melaye said "I hope this is not in an attempt to cover up and distract attention from the Halliburton and Siemens corruption allegations. While I am against corruption anywhere in Nigeria, I will not support accusations based on anger and vindictiveness.
Senator SalisuMusa Matori, who spoke to Leadership newspaper, saying Alhassan deserves the mandate that she was given by people of the state.

He said the governorship aspirant, who is currently the Minister of Women Affairs, is not only loved by Taraba people, she contested against a candidate that was not validly nominated by any political party.

He added: It will also be a victory for not just the women folk, but the North and the entire country. It will further strengthen democracy and encourage women participation in politics. It will show that Nigerias democracy has come of age.

We are praying that the judges will be fair in their ruling as the judiciary still remains the last hope of the common man. The common man has nowhere to go apart from the judiciary, so it is imperative for the judges to show that they are there for the people and that justice will always be served."

He described the Alhassan as a courageous woman who has achieved a lot through hardwork, and applauded her for standing her ground and following the right channel to reclaim her mandate.

The governorship election petition tribunal had sacked Darius Ishaku of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and returned Senator Aisha Alhassan, as governor of the state. But the Appeal court nullified the ruling.

The Minister therefore headed to the Supreme Court to appeal the verdict.

Senator Salisu Musa Matori, who spoke to our correspondent in Gombe said Senator Aisha Alhassan was elected by the people of Taraba State in the last governorship electionbecause of their love for her and their desire for change.

He maintained that on all grounds, Hajia Aisha was qualified to be governor of the state.

He said apart from the fact that the people voted for her, she contested against a candidate that was not validly nominated by any political party.

He noted that Primaries is a necessary prerequisite for contesting election in Nigeria and that anything short of that is illegal and must be treated as such.

He said Senator Aisha Alhassans victory at the Supreme Court will revive the faith of the masses in the judiciary.

It will also be a victory for not just the women folk, but the North and the entire country. It will further strengthen democracy and encourage women participation in politics. It will show that Nigerias democracy has come of age, he said.

He added: We are praying that the judges will be fair in their ruling as the judiciary still remains the last hope of the common man. The common man has nowhere to go apart from the judiciary, so it is imperative for the judges to show that they are there for the people and that justice will always be served, he said.

The senator described the APC candidate as a courageous woman who has achieved a lot through hardwork.

He hailed her for standing her ground and following the right channel to reclaim her mandate.

The governorship election petition tribunal had sacked Darius Ishaku of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and returned Senator Aisha Alhassan, who is also Minister of Women Affairs, as governor of the state. But the Appeal court upturned that ruling.
Speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the Chairman of the union, Mr Segun Raheem said that this is aimed at improving e-learning in schools.

He added that the distribution of the laptops was in line with the introduction of "tablet to students project by the state government.

"Our children are ICT compliant and teachers would improve the childrens learning ability if they are ICT compliant.

"There should be mass training and retraining of teachers to meet up with the art of teaching in the 21st century, he said.
Arpaio joined the real estate billionaire in Marshalltown, Iowa, to voice his support before the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the Trump campaign said in a statement. The caucuses are the first contest in the nomination race for the Nov. 8 presidential election.

"I have great respect for Sheriff Arpaio. We must restore law and order on the border and respect the men and women of our police forces. I thank him for his support of my policies and candidacy for president, Trump said, according to the statement.

Donald Trump is a leader. He produces results and is ready to get tough in order to protect American jobs and families," Arpaio was quoted as saying.

"I have fought on the front lines to prevent illegal immigration. I know Donald Trump will stand with me and countless Americans to secure our border. I am proud to support him as the best candidate for president of the United States of America, Arpaio added.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
Every Tuesday afternoon, 20-25 students at Pahrump Valley High School stay after school and report to teacher Dave Harris room. Its not because they are being disciplined; on the contrary.

This group of young leaders are members of the Key Club and they meet weekly to plan their upcoming community service events. Anyone attending an event in Pahrump is bound to see some Key Club members lending a hand.

Most recently, they could be seen at Walmart and Smiths with the red kettles and bells helping the Salvation Army with its holiday bell ringing campaign. The Key Club raised close to $9,000 during their assigned shifts.

Harris has been the school adviser for the club for seven years. He was a member of the Circle K Club in college, the companion organization for Kiwanis International at the collegiate level.

You know you get to work with some real good kids, Harris said. These kids actually care, theyre committed. For the most part theyre pretty decent academically.

The Key Clubbers have also helped at the Pumpkin Days fundraising event to benefit Pahrump Disability Outreach Program (PDOP), the Relay for Life and Bark for Life events which benefit the American Cancer Society, the Pahrump Balloon Festival, the dog show sponsored by the Pahrump Valley Obedience Club and the Halloween Safe Night held at the Pahrump Valley Auto Plaza, just to mention several on the clubs long list of outreach activities.

Our kids are pretty active, Harris stated. I think on the average, we average 3,000 community service hours a year.

They may even reach 4,000 hours this year.

Harris added that community service is important since many college applications include it.

Reva Braun has been the Kiwanis adviser for the PVHS Key Club for eight years because she loves working with the kids.

Thats why I joined Kiwanis, not the other way around, she said. I joined Kiwanis so I could work with the Key Club when I joined them, that was the agreement that I would get the Key Club.

Braun was involved with the Kiwanis and the Key Club in New York before moving to Pahrump.

She coordinates the multiple community service projects in which the Key Club members are involved.

Were looking for other organizations that need our help, Braun said. Were not stopping at what we do. My goal is to have our association with every group here that needs help.

Senior Elaine Quiroz is Key Club president. She said being a member teaches you a lot of life lessons such as job experience, how to deal with people, definitely leadership and speaking skills.

Ive had a problem with that before; I couldnt talk at all and now Im able to speak with others without freaking out as much, Quiroz said.

One of her favorite community service projects is the Bark for Life, which is similar to the Relay for Life except you can bring your dog to the event to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

Well, Ive always liked helping people, said senior Samantha Rich, who is the clubs treasurer. So, its helped me get out of my shell and be more outspoken and helping, yeah.

Rich thinks she will continue with community service in college by joining the Circle K Club.

Braun would like to see the students become Kiwanis Club members as adults. She said many of the students going on to college sometimes have difficulty finding a Circle K Club in college, but UNLV does have one.

Junior Madison Shay, vice president, has been in Key Club for three years.

It has opened me up to a lot of opportunities in the community and it prepares me for my college hours that it also gives you, Shay said. I just think its like a great way to make connections in the community as well, and kind of get more aware of whats going on in the community.

Sophomore Shaylen Morales, co-vice president and first-year member, said she joined to expand her opportunities.

I want to get more involved in the community and see more how Pahrump worked from a different state such as Arizona, when I was a little bit involved in Key Club, but not as much as I am here in Pahrump, she said.

The students keep a sheet logging their community service hours along with the groups they are helping. They have to volunteer enough hours to be considered a full-fledged member. The officers need to tally more hours.

Senior Jeniffer Huerta, a three-year member and club secretary, joined to step up who I was.

It made me become who I am today, helping everyone and I just like to see people smile, she said. Its a lot of fun and you get to meet new people. And people are excited that these volunteers are willing to help. And it also makes you stay out of trouble.

Senior Emilio Ceniceros volunteered at the dog obedience show, Safe Night Halloween, the Inter-Tribal Powwow, and participated in the Salvation Army bell ringing. He thinks his experience with the Key Club will benefit him after graduation since it gives experience on how to build work ethic, and should help in being able to talk to other people and make new friends.

Freshman Samantha Mansuy joined to help improve her job skills for the future.

I was really shy before I did this so its kinda been like breaking my shell, Mansuy said.

Also, she wants to follow in the footsteps of the other members.

Its really fun; its like a thing to do with your friends and help out to make the community a better place.

If I didnt think that this was important, I wouldnt be involved in it, Harris said. I think to get these kids to volunteer, not so much to be so concerned about themselves, but to be concerned about others, the less fortunate. I mean it has to be taught.

When youre ringing the bell you talk to homeless guys and the kids need to be exposed to that he said.

Principal Chris Brockman said in a statement he really appreciates the Key Club because they are a vital part of the school and community.

The Key Club works mainly with nonprofit organizations, but they will help businesses, if needed.

For further information contact Reva Braun at 775-727-0911.

We do not charge a fee of any sort to come out and help anyone, Braun added.
A longtime employee at NyE Communities Coalition is bidding farewell to the Pahrump Valley.

Coalition Director and Community Educator Laura Oslund recently accepted the executive director position for a similar organization encompassing Elko, White Pine and Eureka counties.

Oslund, who moved to the Pahrump community back in 1997, said the new organization made her an offer she could not refuse.

Her final day at the coalition is Feb. 29.

I found a better opportunity for me, she said. The only way I could really move up in our coalition is if our executive director, Stacy Smith left and we wouldnt want that either. It is a great opportunity and though I hate to admit that Im getting older, these opportunities only come around every so often.

Oslund said the mission statement for both organizations are nearly identical and focuses on strengthening the character and competencies of youth and families through a collaborative effort of community members.

Those efforts are targeted at every community sector to reduce substance abuse and enhance factors encouraging youth to make healthy choices in their lives.

I am a substance abuse prevention specialist and community educator regarding the use and abuse of various substances, she said. My time with the school district and the coalition enabled me to increase my knowledge and work within the communities in Nye, Lincoln and Esmeralda counties, where I provided education and training to community partners, organizations, and businesses throughout those counties.

Additionally, Oslund said she is looking forward to building similar relationships with residents in and around the community of Elko.

Essential to the new position is travel.

One of the things they were talking about is my assets, which involves me going out into the various communities and meeting people where they are, seeing what they need and bringing it back, she said. Thats one of the things that I really enjoy about my job, reaching out to different communities.

Oslunds announcement took many at the coalition by surprise.

She talked about a little good-natured ribbing from a few of her associates, after they learned of her accepting the new position.

Former District Attorney Brian Kunzi called me when he heard about my departure and lightheartedly said I hate you, she said with a laugh. Assemblyman James Oscarson and said I no longer exist as far as hes concerned. It was all in a loving light-hearted manner and those are the type of relationships that I have within the community through the coalition and that I will definitely miss.

Coalition Executive Director Stacy Smith said Oslund has been a key factor in the growth of the organization over the years.

Im really happy for her and glad I will get to work collaboratively with her on state projects with her new job, Smith said. Im going to miss Laura personally and professionally. Her dedication to our community is going to be missed, and for those of us who have attended her meetings, we will miss her amazing food.

Oslund, meanwhile, said she will also miss many of the connections shes made over the years, with numerous individuals while at the coalition.

I know in our rural community, were always running into each other, no matter where we go, she said. I have a lot of those relationships already as well as relationships with local law enforcement and everybody I work with. I also feel very lucky to work for NyE Communities Coalition and with some of the best people around, both the staff and members of the community in general.

Though Oslund is eager to begin her new career chapter, there was one thing shes preparing for when she arrives in Elko, roughly 437 miles from the town of Pahrump.

Todays forecast calls for highs in the mid-30s with an overnight low of 12 degrees.

The weather is going to be a challenge, she lamented. I accepted the job without thinking about it because most of the time I go up there between May and October. I started looking at the winter weather and it reminded me of Minnesota. They were also telling me that it has been unusually cold as of late.

On the flipside, Oslund noted shes also gearing up for one of her many favorite pastimes once she gets settled in.

I really love to fly fish so I will have a much better opportunity to make that happen, she said. I also like to hike and they have some beautiful canyons up there, including Cave Lake in White Pine County. I am making a lot of changes and I am going off on my own. Fortunately, I do have some friends up there who own ranches.

Oslund has traveled around the globe since she was born on an U.S. Air Force base in Libya.

She moved to Nevada in 1981.

Oslund inadvertently quoted a line from a popular 1984 sci-fi movie, while noting her departure is not a final goodbye to the Pahrump community.

Ill be back, she said. I will definitely come back and visit. I also decided not to sell my house here in Pahrump because I feel so very tied to the community. When I retire I know Ill want to live in a warmer climate, so my home will always be here for me. As we get closer to my final day, it gets so much harder for me. I will be coming back to cook at the annual Crab Fest for the CASA organization.

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com
Confusion prevailed over the Monday meeting where the Nye County Water District Governing Board tried to figure out what to do with the eight parts of the Basin 162 Groundwater Management Plan that had been sent to them by county commissioners last week.

Water board members gave a direction to its contractor Oz Wichman to prepare a staff report on county commission actions and said they will address beneficial water use in the future.

The items that were bounced back to the WDGB included aggressive water education, adoption of a water conservation plan, construction of rapid infiltration basins (RIBs), creation of incentives to voluntarily connect to public water systems, investment in existing and future development agreements, filling out charts with data, continuation of a water level measurement program and evaluation of redistribution of production well pumping.

Several other items that fall outside of the purview of the Nye County commissioners were sent to Nevada State Engineer Jason King.

Wichman said the staff report will organize the path forward.

So theres a whole bunch of work to be done to give this board, the water district governing board some sense of priority, bang for the buck, expenditures, a timeline, Wichman said about future work.

Pahrump currently has over 60,000 acre feet of paper water rights on top of 11,000 domestic wells, a combination that threatens to throw the supply of water in the valley out of balance.

The recent data shows that Pahrumps pumpage stands at about 14,000 acre feet annually. The perennial yield is 20,000 acre feet.

I can tell you that weve been trending up about an additional 1,000 feet annually since 2012, Wichman said.

Many Pahrump residents called for beneficial water use as they claimed it would remedy the problem of overallocation of water rights in the valley.

Nevada water law is based on prior appropriation and beneficial use according to the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Beneficial use includes the underlying principle of the appropriative rights system of water allocation, known as use it or lose it, according to the organizations website.

Beneficial use means that the water is used for commercial, industrial, irrigation, mining, municipal, power generation, recreation, storage or wildlife.

WDGB board members decided to weigh the pros of beneficial use at the next meeting and seek counseling from the district attorneys office on whether they have a legal authority to demand rather than request it from King.

As long as we get some idea of what jurisdiction we have with regards to making the actual demand, this background information would be beneficial for me, board member Ken Searles said.

The next meeting of the WDGB is scheduled for Feb. 22.

Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @dariasokolova77
Efforts to meet the demand for an updated Veterans clinic in Pahrump will take giant step forward today as area veterans and dignitaries come together for a special groundbreaking ceremony at the site adjacent to Desert View Hospital.

The 11 a.m. ceremony comes after many years of bureaucratic red tape holding up the $12.1 million project along Lola Lane.

Dr. Tom Waters, USAF Lt. Colonel (Ret), said today could not come soon enough for he and other area veterans.

I have seen the artists rendering and its going to be fantastic for all of the veterans in the area, he said. Not only the county, but even some of those outside of the county who will drive here just because its new. It is a clinic, so it wont have any emergency rooms. If we need an emergency room, we can just go right over to Desert View Hospital.

Since 2012, Nevada lawmakers have pressed the veterans administration to move forward on a new Pahrump VA clinic.

The original target date for a construction contract was Sept. 30, 2012.

VA officials said the project became mired within the bureaucracy, where lawyers got involved after questions were whether the VA had the proper authority to move forward with the project.

Waters, who has been following progress from the beginning stages, said veterans will be able to receive numerous services in a state-of-the-art facility.

I know my provider will be there and they can do most of the things that we need, he said. They will have a lot of functions there that they dont have at the current VA clinic right now, plus they will have a lot more space. They will have a larger conference room with a place for the nurses and doctors. Its just going to be ideal.

The Neenan Company, based on Colorado, will build the 10,000-square-foot outpatient clinic, which will eventually replace the smaller VA clinic in Pahrump.

This project marks our third with the Department of Veterans Affairs, said David Shigekane, president of The Neenan Company, in a press release. The Neenan Company is thrilled to have the opportunity to continue its work with the VA, allowing our team to provide our health care design expertise to benefit those highly deserving of access to quality health care  our veterans.

Waters, meanwhile, said hes anticipating a large turnout of retired veterans, active duty personnel and elected officials.

Im sure congressman Cresent Hardy will be there and probably a couple of senators will be coming out as well, he said. There will be dignitaries who will participate in the groundbreaking ceremony and the rest of the veterans will be there to support everything that it has been done to get this clinic up and running. We have been working on this for a long time, so we cant complain about any of our elected officials not supporting us for this clinic.

U.S. Sen. Dean Heller announced Thursday he will attend the event.

In July 2014, Senator Harry Reid and then-Rep. Steven Horsford urged VA officials to explain the project delays and were told construction would begin last fall.

U.S. Rep. Cresent Hardy, R-Nev., picked up advocacy for the project after unseating Horsford for the congressional district, which includes Pahrump.

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com
Heal, Inspire and Revive America, is the slogan for Ben Carsons presidential campaign this election season.

Representatives of the retired neurosurgeon have scheduled a series of rallies in support of the contender, the first of which will be held in Pahrump tonight beginning at 6:30 p.m. inside the NyE Community Coalitions Activity Center at 1020 E. Wilson Road. Carson will not make an appearance.

Joel Garcia, Nevadas coalition director for the Carson campaign, said the event is designed to attract what he referred to as faith-based voters.

We are calling it the Heal, Inspire, and Revive America rally, he said. We will have a worship team there and will worship and pray for our nation for about 45 to 50 minutes. We want the local pastors to take ownership of that prayer meeting and get up and pray for our military, for our nation, and for our Congress.

Participants are also invited to take part in a mock caucus with the hopes of inspiring residents to embrace the election process in Nevada.

After the prayer rally is completed, we will actually have a caucus training for 10 minutes along with a PowerPoint presentation, Garcia said. We will actually have a mock caucus for about 15 to 20 minutes where we walk through the caucus and hand out mock ballots.

The ballots, Garcia noted, will not reflect who is running for president this year, but the names inscribed will be familiar to all.

We will have characters like Yoda, Wonder Woman, Captain America and Batman, he said. They will get to come up and spew the virtues of Yoda and all of the rest. We are going to have fun with it. Its really going to be a fun event.

Additionally, Garcia said the event is not designed exclusively for Carson supporters and attendees will actually be able to campaign.

They can wear Carson T-shirts or Trump T-shirts or whoever their candidate is, he said. You can bring signs for the caucus and we will provide ballots and talk about delegates and the whole process. We just want to be able to make people comfortable with the caucus process and lift the fear factor out of it.

The rallies, Garcia hopes, will stir up additional support for Carson.

He noted that after talking to Nevada residents, hes learned there are too many potential voters who are not familiar with the overall election process.

A lot of people we are calling on the phone bank say they dont go to caucus because they dont like it and they dont understand it, he said. Obviously we cant spend a half an hour on the phone with every caller explaining the whole thing. We feel that these rallies are going to help stir up the Carson supporters, because we took a little bit of a hit when Carson went down in the polls and we are trying to revive that at the same time. We will also try to register voters before its too late.

Garcia said hes optimistic Carson will soon surge in the polls after slipping down in recent months.

Up in Iowa Ben Carson surged to number three and hes only like a point and a half away from Ted Cruz, he said. Were feeling that because Trump is going to bail out of the Iowa caucus for his little tantrum hes throwing with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

To further his feelings about candidate Donald Trump, Garcia said the Carson campaign is much better organized than the billionaires.

Trump doesnt have a ground game like Ted Cruz and we do, he said. We have people on the ground working every day, by going house to house and making phone calls. Trump doesnt have that apparatus, hes just depending on his money and maybe commercials and just his current populist appeal right now. That can only go so far.

Additionally, Garcia said Carsons appeal in the Silver State was reflected during a campaign stop in November.

He filled up the Pahrump Nugget Event Center, he said. Rand Paul had 75 people when he showed up in Pahrump. We drew in about 400 to 500 attendees at the Nugget when Ben Carson visited.

Following Fridays rally, Garcia said hell visit other communities prior to a large rally in Las Vegas.

The Carson campaign obviously appeals to people of faith, he said. We are doing a series of rallies throughout Nevada and Pahrump is our first one. We will be up in Reno doing two of them next week. We will also have a city-wide event in Las Vegas where we are anticipating about 50 to 80 churches being involved with over a thousand people attending.

Carmelos Italian Bistro is providing food for the event.

Even if we get a light turnout, we are going to treat them very well, Garcia said.

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com.
As we move through life there are often many individuals who provide help to each of us. George Littlefield was an Army veteran during the Vietnam era, stationed in the USA. He was assigned to Army Intelligence, and I didnt get to know him until several years after we had both left the service.

In the 1970s I had written my first book, The Rockin Fifties, A Rock & Roll Scrapbook (long since out of print.) I sent review copies to numerous music magazines around the country. George, who was by then an editor of a music industry publication, responded with a great article. I remember removing the magazine from my mailbox in sunny Los Angeles and sitting on the front steps of my home to read it before I even unlocked the door to the house. He loved the book and his words gave my fledging professional writing career a positive shot in the arm.

A few years later I arranged to meet him in his home town of Chicago, and we became fast friends. I often stayed at his house when I was in the Windy City and he stayed with me when he would visit the West Coast. George knew how much his review meant to me and how grateful I always was for it.

George suffered from cancer for several years, but with medical help he always managed to beat it. Yet time after time it kept returning. He lost the final battle on Dec. 28, but he did get to experience Christmas with his wife Karen and his children and grandchildren before passing.

I was fortunate to have visited with him last spring on a business trip to the Midwest.

The only other individual I ever wrote about at some length when he passed on was Paul Fisher, the founder of the Fisher Space Pen company in Boulder City. I had interviewed him and written news stories about him over the years and we became close professional friends. When I began publishing a veterans newspaper several years ago (since sold), without even asking he jumped on board with a large advertising investment that immediately ensured the financial success of my new enterprise.

Paul, and now George, two great friends who didnt hesitate to help others.

In the veterans community, there are many who provide help. In the past I have written about the fact that even with all the positive veterans service groups in place, it never fails that new organizations spring up from time to time. As the months and years go by, some prove themselves worthy, some fall by the wayside.

District 19 Assemblyman Chris Edwards is a retired Navy officer who served in wide-ranging positions from the Persian Gulf to the Pentagon. The New York native moved to Southern Nevada in 2002 because it was a lot sunnier and offered more opportunities, comments that many locals make about themselves. Recently he formed the Nevada Veterans Council to help fight causes of suicide by veterans.

I have been disappointed by the lack of a strong voice for the veterans community, he told me. I want to be a unifying voice for all the different veterans groups, get out the concerns and use access to the Legislature in order to promote issues. His main issue is reducing the suicide rate of veterans and active duty military. Edwards said in Nevada, the suicide rate for those individuals is one every three days, about five times the national average. Edwards is president and the founding member, but said he is formalizing details on who will be on his board. He said his organization is not trying to replace current suicide prevention programs, but weve trying to make people more aware of them so if they need them, theyll know where to turn. Were looking for people like priests and physicians who can help try and figure out how to stop these suicides.

His Website is still adding content, but can be accessed at NevadaVeteransCouncil.org.

Chuck N. Baker is an Army veteran of the Vietnam War and a Purple Heart recipient. Every other Sunday he discusses veterans issues over several Lotus Broadcasting AM radio stations in Southern Nevada.
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The Rock Island Elks 980 Lodge, in cooperation with the Illinois Elks Childrens Care Corporation, will sponsor a free childrens orthopedic assessment clinic 2:30-4:30 p.m. Feb. 18.

The clinic is by appointment only, and is just for low-income families and Illinois residents.

To make an appointment, call the Illinois Elks Childrens Care office at 800-272-0074 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday-Friday.

There are no charges for any services at the clinic, which will be at the office of Dr. Michael Pyevich, 520 Valley View Drive, Moline.

No medical referral is necessary, but physicians can refer patients for a specific reason or second opinion. School nurses also are welcome to refer children and families to the clinic.

The clinic is a good time to have children checked for bone and joint development.

The Elks, to their best of their ability, will provide financial assistance for children who need further treatment or special equipment when the family lacks sufficient resources. In the past, Elks have purchased therapy services, corrective shoes, braces, wheelchairs and augmentative communication devices to help children overcome a variety of physical challenges.

-- Linda Cook
DES MOINES  In an impassioned back-and-forth, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz accused one another of shifting views on immigration policy during Thursday nights Republican presidential debate in Iowa.

Then New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mocked the senators verbal jousting, saying he needed a Washington-to-English converter.

The Republican candidates  most of them, anyway  met Thursday night at the Iowa Events Center in what will be the final presidential debate before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the presidential nominating process.

Missing from the stage in downtown Des Moines was Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who skipped the debate over his objection to Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly. Trump instead held a campaign event across town at Drake University.

Most polls on the GOP field in Iowa indicate a close race between Trump and Cruz. Rubio has been a consistent third, but well behind the front-runners.

Perhaps their standing atop the polls  and Trumps absence  fueled the exchange between Cruz and Rubio. Each candidate accused the other of shifting his views over time on immigration policy, particularly on how to treat the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the country illegally.

Were not going to beat Hillary Clinton with someone whos willing to say or do anything to win an election, Rubio said to Cruz.

Cruz countered by noting Rubios work on legislation  which ultimately failed  that would have provided a 13-year path to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally.

Christie said the exchange was an example of why the next president should come from a governors office, not Congress.

Stop the Washington bull and lets get things done, Christie said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also chimed in on the immigration debate, saying he supported Rubios Senate bill and accusing Rubio of eventually bailing on the bill.

I supported (Rubio).  Then he cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess, Bush said. We should have a path to legal status.  I think thats the conservative, consistent, pragmatic response.

Many debate questions focused on foreign policy and national security.

Answering questions on how to address the Middle East terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State, Cruz stood by his campaign remarks that he wants to carpet bomb terrorists and make the sand glow. He said his strategy as president would be to define the enemy, rebuild the military to defeat the enemy, and lift the rules of engagement.

Rand Paul prescribed caution against waging war against both the Islamic State and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Paul said toppling Assad would leave a void that could be filled by an even larger and stronger Islamic State.

Paul also reiterated his opposition to the bulk collection of data used by government surveillance agencies.

The bulk collection and invasion of privacy did not stop one terrorist attack, he said. I dont think we need to give up liberty in the name of a false sense of security.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who has slipped from among the leaders in polling on the race in Iowa, defended his lack of political experience. He said his experience as a surgeon prepared him for taking on big problems and making big decisions.

We need people who think outside of the box and can solve problems, can utilize resources around them, can focus on the problem and solve the problem, Carson said. The American people are terrified.  We dont need more of the same solutions.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich was asked about the water crisis in his neighboring state of Michigan. Kasich said such a crisis requires rapid response from executives.

Every single engine of government has to move when you see a crisis like that, Kasich said. People at home are saying they got a problem, listen to them. Because most of the time, they are absolutely correct.
DES MOINES  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told Iowans Friday she offers the best chance for her party to retain the White House in 2016 and preventing another Republican from "wrecking" the American economy again.

Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, tossed some barbs at both the GOP presidential field and her Democratic competitors in making her pitch for support to 700 people who filled a Grand View University gymnasium to hear her speak.

"All of you who have decided to go caucus for me, I thank you. Those of you who are still shopping, trying to make up your minds, I hope I can persuade you because you are truly the first people in the world who will get to decide what our next president will be doing, what that president will be working for and what that president can accomplish to make a real difference in your lives," she said.

"So please, between now and Monday night, think hard because the stakes are high," added Clinton, who began the 2016 race as the front-runner but now faces a formidable challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with three days until Iowans hold their precinct gatherings at 7 p.m. Monday.

Clinton said the stakes were evident in Thursday night's GOP debate, saying Republicans want to return to failed trickle-down economic policies and "are against nearly every human right and every civil right and woman's right and gay right and voting right and worker right that you can imagine."

Clinton said her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama inherited economic calamities from GOP predecessors and now Republicans are pushing tax cuts for the wealthy, less regulatory oversight of corporations and trickle-down theories that "would be a dreadful mistake."

She praised Obama for bringing the nation back from the depths of the recession of 2009 to resume job growth and enact affordable health care that has the highest percentage of Americans insured in the nation's history.

"Every step of the way, the Republicans have been blocking and impeding and repealing and trying to do everything possible to go back to their old ways. That's what this election is going to turn on," she said. "Are we going to give them the chance to wreck our economy again, set us back from the progress we've taken? I sure hope not."
DES MOINES  Iowans with gun permits would be allowed to carry a loaded weapon while operating a snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle, something currently prohibited even on private property, if a bill making its way through the Iowa House becomes law.

Gun-rights advocates said the change is needed because the current loaded firearms prohibition does not apply to other vehicles, including bicycles and motorcycles, and hunters or landowners could be cited by law officers even on their own property if they are found in violation.

I see this as a personal freedom measure, said Rep. Brian Best, R-Glidden, leader of a House Natural Resources subcommittee that considered the issue Thursday.

House File 2066 would allow any of the 254,000-plus Iowans who are lawful permit-to-carry holders to have a loaded firearm in their possession, whether concealed or not, while driving or riding on off-road vehicles. Current law prohibits that practice unless the weapon is unloaded and enclosed in a carrying case, but a non-ambulatory person may carry an uncased and unloaded firearm while operating an ATV or snowmobile.

Rep. Jarad Klein, R-Keota, said he filed the legislation after constituents of his southeast Iowa district complained that current law was an impediment to their farming practices where they may carry a rifle on their off-road vehicles to use to protect livestock.

In farming, firearms are a tool used like other tools on the farm, Klein said. They should have the same rights they have in their pickups when theyre on their ATVs or side-by-sides.

Richard Rogers, a lobbyist for the Iowa Firearms Coalition, said the issue came to light after a 2010 law change to Iowas gun-permit law increased the number of permit holders from 3,000 in 2009 to more than 254,000 now. Some gun owners were being cited for violations with the threat that their weapons or vehicles would be confiscated in the process, he told lawmakers.

This is an overly broad law, Rogers said. A lot of people werent aware it.

He said a gun owner with a lawful permit could carry a loaded firearm while driving a truck or a car or even a bicycle, but if they moved from their pickup to an ATV or snowmobile, they could be issued a citation.

Mike Heller, a lobbyist for the Iowa State Snowmobile Association, said his group opposed the measure out of safety concerns and getting access to private lands. He said snowmobile operators already have a difficult time finding places where they are allowed to ride and it would be worse if guns were involved.

The safety is a big part of it, he said.

That also was the concern of Rep. Liz Bennett, D-Cedar Rapids, who was worried about roll-over accidents in which a loaded weapon might be discharged unintentionally, but Rogers said those situations would not happen with modern weapons and the number of accidental discharges has declined over the years.

Before passing the bill to full committee, the House panel approved an amendment saying a person could carry a firearm on their own property even without a permit.
DES MOINES  At a debate-watching event hosted Thursday night by the state party, Iowa Republican voters conveyed a mixture of intentions just four days from Monday night's caucuses.

Some are locked in on a candidate, but many remain undecided.

Theyre all really good people, said Tom Britt, of Le Mars, who said he plans to caucus on Monday but has not decided for whom.

Most polls on the GOP field in Iowa show a close race between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio is a consistent third, but well behind the front-runners.

Tom Britt and his son, Dave, also of Le Mars, said before Thursday nights debate that the event taking place just blocks away in downtown Des Moines may go a long way toward informing their choice at the caucuses. Neither has seen a candidate in person, they said, nor do they expect to before Monday night.

Im looking forward to seeing them both live (on television), said Dave Britt, who said he has narrowed his choices to Rubio and Cruz. Theres no big deciding issue between them that I have. Just kind of personality, more or less.

Tom Britt said he feels one candidate is disqualified for him: Trump, who skipped Thursday nights debate over his objection to Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and instead held a campaign event at Drake University in Des Moines.

I think he should be here to represent himself if he wants us to vote for him, Tom Britt said. Hes a big boy. He should be able to stand up to Megyn Kelly.

Sean Loporto and Sydnie Duty, both of Fort Dodge, said they, too, are having a difficult time picking a candidate.

Loporto said he likes both Cruz and Rand Paul, although he fears Paul cannot win Iowa.

Duty said she likes Cruz and Ben Carson, who surged in the polls over the summer and at one point led, but has since faded.

I just listen to what they have to say and see what makes more sense, Duty said.

These undecided Iowa Republicans are not alone. Polls published this week suggested 30 percent to 40 percent of GOP caucus-goers could still change their mind before casting their secret ballot Monday.

Katie Funk, of Des Moines, has no such issue. Funk, who also attended the debate-watching event, said she is firmly in Marco Rubios camp.

I like the man. Hes trustworthy, Funk said. Its all about feeling. I feel like they are all similar and they all have their strong points, but Marco Rubio is a good guy.
SPRINGFIELD  President Barack Obama will return next month to the place where his political career began to address the Illinois General Assembly.

The president's Feb. 10 visit comes amid an unprecedented budget deadlock between his fellow Democrats and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Obama called for creating a more civil political environment, which will be the subject of his speech to lawmakers in his home state.

Obama, who served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, will speak to lawmakers "about what we can do, together, to build a better politics  one that reflects our better selves," according to the White House.

In his State of the State address on Wednesday, Rauner cited the president's support for changing the way legislative districts are drawn, one of the first-term governor's policy priorities.

Rauner's office issued a statement Friday welcoming the president's visit.

"Despite our political differences, the President and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans," Rauner said. "I know we can achieve great things for Illinois by having mutual respect for one another and focusing on bipartisan compromise to achieve what's best for the long-term future of our great state."

Republican state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, who served with Obama in the Senate for two years, said the president's call for civility is one that's needed "everywhere, every state."

"I don't care who the president is," Brady said, "Illinois will always welcome the president of the United States."

Republican Sen. Dave Luechtefeld of Okawville served with Obama throughout his tenure and played cards with him regularly.

As for Obama's message, however, "I don't know if he's set a very good example" as president, Luechtefeld said.

"We've had Republican and Democratic presidents off and on for my whole life, and I've never seen it more divided than it is now," he said.

Democratic Sen. Andy Manar of Bunker Hill was on the Senate Democratic staff when Obama was in the General Assembly.

The fact that Obama will be addressing the body where his path to the presidency began gives the event a heightened importance, he said.

"He's a product of the Illinois Senate in many ways," Manar said.
DES MOINES  GOP debate-boycotting Donald Trump held a competing event Thursday to benefit veterans organizations but it was unclear who benefitted more from the special attention he drew both from the appreciative crowd and the stir his absence cast over the televised debate three miles away.

"I didnt want to be here, Ive got to be honest, Trump told the cheering crowd that packed a 700-seat Drake University auditorium. You have to stick up for your rights. When youre treated badly, youve got to stick up for your rights. Thats what weve got to do.

Trumps event ran parallel to a televised debate that attracted his top-tier GOP competitors. The billionaire New York businessman, former reality television star and GOP polling front-runner boycotted that event in a dispute with a debate sponsor, Fox News, and one of its debate moderators Megyn Kelly.

Will I get more votes or less votes, after boycotting the debate, Trump told the crowd, who the hell knows, but its for the vets.

Trump said Fox executives were on the phone to him and were so nice to me in trying to convince him to participate even after the debate was under way, but he said he couldnt step away from a special benefit organized in 24 hours that just snowballed and raised nearly $6 million and growing.

Im told we have more cameras than they do, Trump said. Look at all the cameras. This is like the Academy Awards.

At one point, Trump was joined on stage by fellow GOP presidential contenders Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who appeared on an under-card debate who were not invited to participate in the Fox News debate. I got to know them on the trail, as they say, Trump said.

I had nothing to do at 8 oclock tonight. This worked great for me, said Huckabee, who noted that Thursday night he, Trump and Santorum were in unison to honor veterans because without you, there is no government  prompting chants of USA.

In my mind, I was hearing you say Go Huck go, Huckabee joked.

Before speaking, Santorum moved away from center stage so Im not photographed by the Trump sign, he said. Im supporting another candidate for president, but that doesnt mean we cant work together to help the veterans.

About eight minutes into the event, the proceedings were briefly interrupted by protesters who were escorted out while the crowd chanted Trump, Trump, Trump. Another protest broke out nearly an hour into the program.

It really is too crazy, Trump said of the disruptions.

Trump invited several wounded warriors to address and crowd and spent part of the event naming off some of the events donors, including $1 million he put up. He said people who have made lots of money have done so because of the sacrifices made by Americas soldiers, saying its shameful that illegal aliens are being treated better than our vets. The honored vets presented Trump with an honor ring to wear on his trigger finger in appreciation of his benefit.

Isnt this better than that debate thats going on? Trump said.
In a special meeting Thursday, the Rock Island County Board approved a change in the public hearing notice for the Feb. 16 board meeting that will allow for the consideration of a 30-year lease agreement with the Rock Island County Public Building Commission for the new courthouse annex.

Before the change, board members would only have been able to consider a 20-year bond measure.

Now that the public notice has been properly changed, board members can consider the 30-year plan at the next meeting, Rock Island County Administrator Dave Ross said.

Ross added that the 30-year option should be on the table.

We wanted the board to have that option to consider as it will allow us to spread out over a longer period the annual cost to service the bonds, Ross said.

The extra interest paid for those 10 years would be something the board would need to consider, he said.

The board cannot spend more than $28 million on the project, and the yearly rental payment to the building commission cannot exceed $3.6 million.

The bonds that were used to build the Rock Island County Justice Center will be rolled over and used to finance the courthouse annex. The annex will be attached to the Justice Center.

Opened in 2001, the five-story justice center cost $14 million. In addition to room for 135 inmates, the building has three courtrooms, a jury pool room, three jury deliberation rooms, judges chambers and 10 offices that include an office for the sheriff and circuit clerk.

The bonds used to build the justice center expire in early 2019.

Board members Patrick Moreno, of Silvis, Don Johnston, of Moline, Virginia Shelton, of Moline, and Mike Steffen, of Moline, were absent from Thursdays meeting.

There was only one no vote for the issue cast by Robert Westpfahl of Milan. Every other member voted to support the issue.

I havent seen any plans for the annex, Westpfahl said after the meeting. I will continue to vote no for the project until I see plans and see what theyre going to do with the money.

Im not going to give anyone a blank check, Westpfahl said.

The county must build the annex to avoid a lawsuit by Rock Island County judges after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the courtrooms in the 120-year-old courthouse do not meet established state guidelines.

The cost of the annex is much less that the $72 million first quoted by CGL (Carter Goble Lee), an architectural design firm chosen by a special committee formed to consider options for a new courthouse. That cost includes a renovation of the County Office Building, which was built in 1898 as the home office of Modern Woodmen of America.
He might sound like a Bond villain. But Mr. No is something more nefarious. He's speaker of the Illinois House, also known as Mike Madigan.

Mr. No refused Wednesday to release Illinois from his dungeon following Gov. Bruce Rauner's State of the State address. Only tax hikes can fix Illinois compounding woes, Madigan again told his henchmen, while metaphorically polishing his gold-plated space laser. Rauner's calls for reforming worker's compensation insurance, freezing local property taxes and generally thwarting the public unions' grip on the state budget aren't up for consideration.

Like good followers, Mr. No's faceless Democratic muscle-men in the House nodded in approval.

The billions in debt, the failing pension system, the skyrocketing property taxes  it's all on Rauner, a Republican who never held office until 2015, says Mr. No. It's an interesting diversion for a man who has been in power for more than 30 years, a political brute whose foot has, for years, been firmly on the throat of the state's Democratic machine.

Even an independent redistricting commission, a process that former Illinois state Sen. and U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed in his recent State of the Union address, isn't acceptable to Mr. No. It might threaten Madigan's outsized domination over the state, after all.

Mr. No's paymasters, such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have barred brokering with Rauner. AFSCME, for example, unsuccessfully attempted last year to strip Rauner of his negotiating rights as chief executive, an especially egregious affront to the voters who put Rauner in office. Lawmakers complied, carrying Mr. No's bill through to passage. Rauner's veto, and a couple of defectors from Mr. No's ranks, killed the bill.

Rauner's administration, faced with a budget deficit north of $4 billion, this month filed for an impasse declaration because AFSCME's inability to accept reality. The union wants $250 million in pay hikes over the next four years, administration officials said. Tax the populace to pay us more is AFSCME's mantra.

Recently, Senate President John Cullerton, a longtime Democratic compatriot of Mr. No, again offered a compromise deal, which could begin to salvage the state's sinking pension system, saving $1 billion in the process. This time, Rauner was on board. Mr. No, however, stuck to his name and panned it.

Change is not acceptable for Madigan and his cabal of special interests. Only tax hikes will do.

Rauner singled out Cullerton during Wednesday's address, saying the Senate leader is someone with whom he can work. It's true. Only Cullerton seems willing to challenge Madigan's stranglehold on the failing state. This past week, Cullerton laid out a necessary and workable proposed overhaul to the state's inequitable public education funding scheme in the Quad-City Times. Rauner, too, pointed to the system that rewards rich districts and hinders the poor in Wednesday's speech.

Madigan, a master of diversion, wants to pin the ills of Illinois on the new governor, a mess created over decades.

Like with any Bond villain, Madigan's tactics are too divorced from reality to actually succeed. It's only a matter of time before Mr. No's plot spirals out of control. But Illinois will continue to fail until his scheme is foiled.
Honestly, the new editorial page tone and perspective of the Quad-City Times gets more bizarre by the day. While Im not disagreeing with Jon Alexanders Jan. 26 column, that so-called "American exceptionalism" is often overblown, but to draw the conclusion that "Obama didn't offer the national transformation that more than half of the country desired...and that Obama has been more of the same" is patently false.

Barack Obama, the first African American president in U.S. history, pulled us out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, saved the automobile industry, ended two wars, paved the way for marriage equality, appointed two progressive U.S. Supreme Court Justices who will be on the bench for years to come, and likely avoided a nuclear showdown with Iran.

If he had not been opposed at every turn by an intractable Republican Congress, we would also have sensible gun-control and a balanced budget brought about by higher taxes on the wealthiest among us and reasonable cuts in spending. Of course, there is disappointment among many of us that not more was accomplished during the Obama presidency. But we know whom to blame -- the Grand Old Party.

C. Christopher Epting

Bettendorf
At 57, Scott Dittmer doesnt like change, especially when it comes to his familys old-fashioned, full-service gas station in Davenport, where hes worked his entire life.

A visit to Dittmers Service Inc., 1356 W. Locust St., will take any customer back in time. The guys there will actually pump your gas if you want them to.

I believe were the only one left in the Quad-Cities that still does that, said Dittmer, who co-owns the spot with his brother, Matt. Service stations are a thing of the past.

Shell Oil Co. seems to agree. The four-pump station lost its big oil affiliation this month when the Dittmer brothers refused to conform to the multinational oil and gasoline companys expectations. Specifically, Dittmer said Shell wanted him to bulldoze the three-bay auto repair shop and add on to the existing convenience store.

According to the owners, whose father, Bill Dittmer, purchased the property from Chet Shoeing in 1963, the station has been selling Shell fuel since the late 1920s.

We didnt meet their requirements, so they pretty much knocked us to the curb, said Dittmer, who employs four full-time mechanics who work in the garage, pump gas and staff the stores counter.

Shell representatives did not return inquiries left this week by the Quad-City Times. Shell Oil Co. is the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, which is based in the Netherlands.

In the past two weeks, the Locust Street mainstay, which operates from 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every weekday, has scraped Shell off its fuel island canopy and printed a new look on its old pumps.

Dittmer noted that he will serve as an independent gas station and "buy gas from whoever we want."

Although Dittmer's will no longer accept any Shell-branded fuel-saver credit cards, longtime customers don't seem to care.

Matt Petersen, 26, of Bettendorf, said he trusts the mechanics at the throwback gas station.

They have never done me wrong, and the customer service and camaraderie in the shop is second to none, said Petersen, who worked his first job at Dittmers when he turned 16. In that area of Davenport, if you have a good business, it will usually last.

Meanwhile, customers in search of a snack at the filling station can find several convenience store staples, including Clif bars, microwavable Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches and an assortment of energy drinks.

Dittmer estimates the remodeling work Shell wanted him to pursue could have cost upward of $300,000, an investment he thinks the family business would not have benefited from.

People still want this, he said, standing inside the shops garage. The gas is there to bring them in, but we make our money in here.
This is the official blog of actress Rakhil Dolgorukov Tepes Sharkey aka Rachel Tepes Sharkey, Rachel Allen-Sharkey, Rachel Allen.
About 50 Chinese nongovernmental foundations have gone abroad, as more Chinese NGOs are interested in responding to foreign aid, scholars and practitioners said.

Huang Haoming, vice chairman of the China Association for NGO Cooperation, said these foundations have already established either teams, offices, stable projects or fixed funds abroad.

The number of Chinese nongovernmental foundations to have overseas projects has increased to nearly 100, Huang added.

Nearly 300 professionals in philanthropy gathered in Beijing to attend a forum on Wednesday to discuss China's NGO's global engagement.

The forum was held by the China Foundation Center, which also celebrated its 5th anniversary.

"As the Chinese government has shouldered increasing responsibility in responding to global needs in recent years, policy and strategy such as the 'Going Abroad' policy and the Belt and Road Initiative have encouraged more enterprises to go abroad. Consequently, more NGOs would also go abroad," said Deng Guosheng, vice-dean of Tsinghua University's Institute for Philanthropy.

With the rapid economic growth, China's philanthropy business has boomed. As of November, China has more than 4,600 foundations and 600,000 charitable organizations.

Deng, from Tsinghua University, said China's experience could provide assistance to some foreign countries.

"For many countries, money is not the only burden, they also lack experience or effective models," Deng said.

Deng also noticed that the number of foundations going abroad has increased, overseas donations rise and the model shifts.

"The fields and geographic regions that China concentrates to have shifted," Deng said.

"Before, Chinese philanthropy organizations go abroad responding to major disasters. But now, they are also engaged in regular programs such as in education and health fields," Deng said, adding that Chinese foundations mainly contributed to southeast Asian and African regions before, but now have also extended to the United States, European and Latin American countries.

The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) is one of the first groups to go abroad and establish overseas offices.

Since collaborating with other countries since 2005, CFPA has experienced three stages to go abroad, said Chen Hongtao, deputy executive director of CFPA.

The foundation has programs in many countries, including Ethiopia, Nepal and Cambodia.

He sees the milestone of the foundation's globalization as being establishing overseas offices. In July, CFPA established its first overseas office in Myanmar.

Although CFPA has worked in globalization for 10 years, going abroad is a new topic in Chinese philanthropy, Chen said, adding that many Chinese nongovernmental foundations lack experience and resources.

"For example, one of our employees encountered a robbery on the street overseas. International peers handed over purses and faced down on the street immediately. But our employee attempted to fight. Obviously, he had insufficient understanding of the local social environment," Chen said, giving an example of safety issues.

Chen said that now they have a guidebook to practice overseas, thanks to international peer the Asia Foundation.

The Asia Foundation, a nonprofit international development organization with headquarters in California, published a guidebook to support Chinese nongovernmental organizations to go abroad.

"When we first launched, we faced similar problems, such as lacking local staff and understanding," said Ji Hongbo, acting country representative in China, hoping the guidebook would provide experience to Chinese peers.

"Having local understanding is essential to conduct philanthropic work overseas," said Helena Monteiro, executive director of the Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support, adding that being honest and effective, respectful to partners and local culture are also important.
SPEARFISH | When Gina Gibson returns to the Philippines in March with students from Black Hills State University, shell be ready to mentor her students in a learning experience that will change them forever.

Gibson, associate professor of digital communication and chair of arts and humanities at BHSU, traveled to Cebu City, Philippines, recently to meet with the principal, teachers and students at Sudlon Secondary School. She will return to the school in March for 10 days with a contingent of students enrolled in a new Experiential Learning course at BHSU.

As I go into the classroom this semester, Im thinking about real people that I met in the Philippines, not some theoretical experience, said Gibson. The trip gave me a sense of place and real people on the ground there that well be working with during spring break.

Students in Gibsons course will develop and implement lesson plans and activities focusing on the needs of students at Sudlon School. Initial discussions with the Sudlon teachers included a topic focus on wellness, study skills, and physical activity. BHSU worked with the Philippines education division to identify a local school where BHSU students could have great impact.

Dr. Lois Flagstad, vice president for Enrollment and Student Affairs at BHSU who was with Gibson recently in the Philippines, said the new International Service Learning Program at BHSU provides experiential education opportunities for students to address human and community needs worldwide.

As a developing country, the Philippines has recently redesigned their educational system to include two additional years of high school. Partnering with Sudlon Secondary School will provide the opportunity for our students to deliver new learning opportunities and subject matter for students in the Philippines who are preparing themselves for their future, said Flagstad.

Service learning, an approach to education connecting classroom instruction with real-world service, is more than a volunteer project, according to Dr. Katherine Wildman, director of the office of international relations and global engagement at BHSU.

This program offers the student a structured environment where they can process the work theyre doing and be mindful of their learning along the way, said Wildman.

BHSU will offer the Experiential Learning course each semester. Wildman said the course provides an alternative for students traveling abroad for the first time, non-traditional students, or for those who cant travel for a whole semester. The tuition and travel fees associated with the course are financial aid eligible for those that qualify.

Gibson says she looks forward to witnessing her students aha moments throughout the course and during the trip.

For some students this will be their first time on a plane or seeing the ocean. The planet is small and travel teaches empathy, said Gibson. Ive very excited about bringing students to the Philippines to experience what I experienced  beautiful, kind, and generous people.
As he answered questions Thursday in his effort to win the job of superintendent of the Rapid City Area Schools, Daniel Frazier took his interviewers more than 5,600 miles away, to a group of remote Pacific islands.

Years before Frazier was appointed to his current job, superintendent of the Litchfield School District in Minnesota, he was tasked by the Department of Defense with leading a small school in the Marshall Islands.

The Marshallese have learned over the years that to survive together on these tiny islands  these little dots in the Pacific Ocean  that the best people are the ones who are most generous and giving, Frazier told the six local residents who made up just one of the groups he interviewed with on Thursday. The Marshallese culture is not about competition, as ours often is, but about getting along with each other.

That theme of cooperation permeated many of Fraziers responses during his interview. He is one of four candidates being considered to replace Superintendent Tim Mitchell, who is leaving the Rapid City School District at the end of June.

Frazier spent two years in the Marshall Islands and 13 years as a superintendent in his home state of Iowa before he became the superintendent in Litchfield, a small district about 70 miles West of Minneapolis, where he has worked for the last four years.

He stepped into a volatile situation in Litchfield, he told the interviewers.

Facing severe funding shortfalls, Fraziers predecessor was at the helm in 2008 when the community passed a tax increase to raise money for Litchfields schools. The increase, Frazier said, was supposed to sustain the district for eight years.

My predecessor decided he would spend that eight-year revenue in the first two years, Frazier told his Rapid City interviewers. When I came on board, what was left was declining enrollment and a budget that was heading south. It has been the most complex and challenging work of my career to turn this district around.

The district isnt out of the woods yet, Frazier said, but much has improved since those early days, particularly in the arena of technology.

The computers in Litchfields schools were woefully outdated when Frazier took over, Litchfield School Board member Stacy Helstrom said this week in a telephone interview with the Journal. Helstrom, who said she served as chairwoman during most of Fraziers tenure, praised him for moving the district into the 21st century.

By Fraziers directive, the districts kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms were outfitted with iPads, while the sixth through 12th graders got brand new Macbook Airs. A new science, technology, engineering and mathematics computer lab was added to the middle school as well, according to school board member Marlin Schutte.

Frazier's emphasis on cooperation in his Thursday interview would have sounded familiar to Helstrom, who served as chairperson during most of Fraziers tenure. Just before he took over the district, she said, the situation was uncomfortable.

The district was feeling a little wounded, Helstrom said. The relationship between the previous superintendent and the staff was not as good as it could have been.

Frazier set a different tone, she said.

He does a very good job of gathering information and making recommendations, not only based on what he observes, but conversations he has with multiple stakeholders," Helstrom said. "Hes also willing to be influenced, which I think is really important in a leader, to be able to learn in public. Hes shown comfort in being vulnerable in his role, which I think has been a great example for the rest of the staff and the community.

Jason Michaels, principal of Litchfield High School, said in a telephone interview that Frazier has "a lot of strengths and assets that would be attractive to any district, and I can understand why hes a finalist in Rapid City.

Which isnt to say that Frazier hasnt drawn criticism in the past. Facing budget constraints due to declining enrollment, Frazier has had to make $1 million in cuts, Michaels said, which included employee layoffs and the closure of a school building.

Hes not afraid to make those kinds of decisions, Michaels said. Sometimes its tough for people to accept, but thats the reality of school districts these days. I think as everyone reflects back theyll see those were the correct decisions.

Darin Swenson has a broad perspective on Fraziers performance. A part-time social studies teacher and father of two students in the district, he played a role in integrating the new technologies into the districts classrooms.

Frazier, Swenson said in a telephone interview, "has been incredibly supportive. Hes a full thinker, of the mind that schools need to be taking advantage of the new resources we have. Ive come to him with a number of tech ideas that I feel could impact students positively, and he has always been very receptive.

Frazier impresses Swenson with his preparation.

One thing I really respect about him is hes very clear about his plans, Swenson said. If theres some kind of new initiative or policy were looking at, its clear hes done his research. Hes very well-read on whatever the topic may be, so he can speak from a very informed standpoint.

Swenson also praised Fraziers ability to keep all the moving parts within the district working in tandem while maintaining clear lines of communication with parents.

In his interview on Thursday in Rapid City, Frazier spelled out one of those communication practices. He told the local group that his office sends to employees and district residents a weekly newsletter that lays bare the inner workings of his administration.

He added, The media gets all those letters as well.

Frazier was the first of the four candidates to be in Rapid City for day-long interviews.

Lori Simon, executive director of academics and elementary schools of Robbinsdale Area Schools in Minnesota, is scheduled to interview for the superintendent position today.

Members of the public can observe a panel of community interviewers speak with her from 3:30 p.m. to 4:25 p.m. in the third floor conference room of the City/School Administration Building, 300 Sixth St.
DEADWOOD | A Lead man accused of murder has lost his attempt to invalidate the search that turned up the victim's body hidden for five days in a suitcase found in a bedroom closet.

Fourth Circuit Court Judge Randall L. Macy this week rejected a defense motion claiming the search last August that uncovered Caitlin Kelly Walsh's body was illegal.

Macy set a late March starting date for the trial of James Lewis Rogers Jr., 44, on a charge of first-degree murder.

A Lawrence County grand jury indicted Rogers after Lead police officers discovered the body stuffed in a suitcase in the bedroom closet of his Main Street apartment in Lead. An autopsy later confirmed it was the body of the 27-year-old Walsh, who had been stabbed to death. She was killed on Aug. 12, 2015, although her body was not discovered until Aug. 17.

A day after Lawrence County States Attorney John Fitzgerald announced last September that he would not seek the death penalty against Rogers, Rapid City defense attorney Ellery Grey filed a motion seeking to suppress certain evidence because, he asserted, police had violated Rogers rights when they searched his apartment without a warrant.

"I drafted more than a typical motion," Grey said last fall. "Our objection is based on officers going into my clients apartment without a search warrant, a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure in his own home.

But in this weeks written ruling, Judge Macy said Lead police were reasonable in their actions and, based on their belief that Walsh might still be alive and gravely injured, they were justified in conducting a warrantless search of Rogers apartment.

In his findings of fact, Judge Macy described a sequence of events in which Lead police were tipped off that Rogers might be harboring the body in his modest apartment.

Based on a November hearing at which he heard the testimony of Lead Police Chief John Wainman, Police Officer Eric Jandt, and state Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Bret Garland, Macy wrote that police had been told that a resident of the apartment building was suspected of killing (a woman) and putting her body in a suitcase.

The woman who tipped off Jandt reported that her ex-husband had been asked by Rogers to help dispose of the body.

The defendant had wanted him to help dispose of the body, but he did not assist for fear that he would become an accessory to murder, Macy wrote. The man told police, He had been in the apartment about 15 minutes ago and had seen blood all over the carpet in the apartment that goes into the kitchen. He further described that the defendant was crying.

On the afternoon of Aug. 17, Jandt met Chief Wainman at the back of the apartment building and told him what the tipster had said. Fearing that Walsh was still alive but seriously injured, Wainman and Jandt went directly to Rogers' apartment, No. 303. Upon nearing the apartment the officers testified that they heard someone crying and saying, Im sorry, Macy wrote.

Believing Walsh could still be alive, the officers decided that action needed to be taken immediately. The chief knocked on the door several times and asked if Rogers was all right. When Rogers did not immediately open the door, Wainman attempted to force it open. Unable to obtain a key from the property manager, who was out of town, Jandt grabbed a hammer and screwdriver from his police vehicle with the intent of taking the door off its hinges.

As they attempted to gain entry, Rogers reportedly unlocked and opened the door, at which time Wainman asked him to step into the hallway. Instead, Rogers invited Wainman in.

Chief Wainman entered the apartment. He smelled decomposition but could not find a suitcase, Macy wrote. The chief came back out to the hallway and asked the defendant, `Wheres Caitlin? The defendant indicated she was in the closet."

Inside the closet, The chief could see a suitcase, and a liquid oozing out of the suitcase onto the carpet, documents continued. The chief pulled on the suitcase and could tell that it contained a heavy object that could be consistent with the weight and size of the body of Caitlin Walsh.

Five hours later, armed with a search warrant, officers entered the apartment, opened the suitcase and found the remains of a female later identified through autopsy as Walsh, Judge Macy wrote.

Before being read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination at the Lawrence County Sheriffs Office, Rogers reportedly told officers, I never meant to hurt her, according to court records. He later told investigators he had beaten and stabbed the young woman, court records assert.

Macy found the search fell within the exception to the warrant requirement because urgent circumstances existed, an emergency situation that demands immediate attention and there is no time to get a warrant.

The justification for the warrantless search was based on several considerations, he said, including: a grave offense was involved; the suspect was reasonably believed to be armed; a clear showing of probable cause existed; there was a strong reason to believe the suspect was in the premises being entered; and it was likely the suspect would escape if not swiftly apprehended.

On Aug. 17, 2015, when the Lead Police officers arrived at the Galena Street Apartments, they were faced with a grave situation, Macy concluded. The situation necessitated immediate action.

Caitlin Walsh could have still been alive, but close to death, he added. The failure of the Lead Police officers to take decisive, immediate action could reasonably be viewed as having resulted in the loss of life.

Quick action was essential, Macy wrote in denying the motion to suppress evidence.

In a separate order this week, Judge Macy set Rogers' jury trial for first-degree murder for March 28 through April 1 at the Lawrence County Courthouse. If convicted, Rogers faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole.
I caught an editorial in the New York Post (aint the Internet grand) about a recent debate by the Student Union Board at the University of Oregon. Said young scholars and  one presumes  student leaders were locked in titanic struggle over a quote by American hero, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It seems a wall in the student recreation center rings out an offending passage: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

As the youngsters say: What the (heck)! Thats a thing?

As a recovering child of the sixties, when I heard that passage, spoken first on Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to over a quarter of a million people, it electrified me. It retains its stirring power today.

But, saith a noisy and politically correct few: This will not stand. Why? Well  its not gender inclusive. Other students on the board, not yet bereft of sense, held that it was kind of inclusive. A mighty cogitation in service to democracy ensued: The question before that august body: Is Dr. Kings famous passage inclusive enough for our times?

Very sad. We stare and shake our heads. Its come to this? In Syria and Iraq, ISIS destroys 1,500-year-old monasteries, here the process is quicker. With similar arrogance and certitude they would erase a revered part of our history.

They are the ones they have been waiting for.

Parents, its safe to tear up those tuition checks to the University of Oregon and like institutions. They are radioactive to rational thought. Just shuffle little Johnny and Janey off to trade school. Their hearts and minds will be safe there, and itll far more likely benefit them and society. They might even learn to think for themselves, once higher educations raison d'etre.

Truth illuminates, that is its power. Grasped in the hearts and minds of individuals of every age, it confers divine inspiration; encouraged, we raise our thoughts to its Author. What is most made in His image abides solely in the content of our character.

Conversely, the paranoid musings of the politically correct lead but to anger, finger-pointing, and groupthink. Its practitioners are the revived mobs of Lenin and Mao, the brown shirted Nazis of 1938 resurrected. How ominous they ascend at this very moment. As a nation, not since our Civil War are we so in need of unity.

Now our politicians lead by fiat and whim, using or discarding the law for purely personal gain. We are sorely tried to find leaders with integrity and virtue. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton  what is the content of their characters?

Do they believe in a sovereign truth that governs each and every one of us? Read every political candidates history carefully, citizens. For these are the times that try mens souls.
Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that U.S. coal-fired power generation will continue to decline and be offset by an increase from renewable sources. Coal is projected to decrease from 34 percent of generation in 2015 to 33 percent in 2017.

Chinas economy is growing more slowly than at any time in the past two decades. More than 190 nations have agreed that public policy must limit carbon dioxide emissions in efforts to slow climate change. Much of the Western United States is in severe drought that forced California city dwellers to cut water use by 20 percent. Some rivers in the Northwest are running so low that wildlife managers have trucked fish to spawning areas.

Against this backdrop of changing energy markets, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., visited Billings this week to again condemn President Barack Obama for killing coal. As much as Daines and many other politicians enjoy bashing Obama (and he deserves some criticism), the president isnt the coal industrys biggest problem.

The market has changed. Neither Daines nor Obama nor the legislatures of Montana and Wyoming control the market. Montana is an exporter of coal and coal-fired electricity. Those export customers in Washington state are plenty worried about the warmer, drier climate that is affecting their land, water and livelihoods. They want cleaner energy than Montana presently produces at Colstrip where units 1 and 2 are the oldest, most inefficient.

The promise of Montana coal export markets is evaporating with the drop in global demand. Take a look at how the market has changed the value of coal-fired power plants. Last month, the Associated Press reported that Talen Energy reduced the market value of its share of Colstrip plants by 87 percent in the past two years, cutting the value to $45 million. The former owner, PPL Corp., wrote down the value of its stake by more than $400 million in 2013.

What drove down the value of the Colstrip plant? Relatively cheap natural gas is a bigger factor than emission-reducing federal rules, according to a power sector analyst with UBS who told the AP: The prospects for coal versus natural gas have deteriorated.

Montana must look forward. Its likely that the newer units 3 and 4 at Colstrip will continue to support jobs for many years to come. But demand for coal at the plant will be reduced as new, cleaner energy generation (gas, wind and solar) serve customers what they want.

We dont want anyone to lose jobs, but in a dynamic economy jobs are lost and new jobs are created. Any Montana workers who will be displaced by changes in the coal and electrical industries deserve training and support to land good, new jobs.

Montanas leaders in government and business should host summits on energy diversification. Lets figure out how to provide what energy customers want and how to best transition out of the energy they dont want.

 Billings (Mont.) Gazette
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Elsie Rose Kelley

10/4/22

Science Seminar

Mr.Birch



The first contact experience was between Christopher Columbus with the people of Taino and Ochoa and Legazpi who interacted with the people of the Philippines and Chinese. But these two events were very different from each other, an example of this is that Columbus tried to found the colony La Isabela but it was catastrophic and was forgotten after 5 years. He then tried to create another colony named La Navidad which was also a failure. Meanwhile, Ochoa and Legazpi did what Columbus failed to accomplish, they created to trade with China and knew what they were doing.

On Christmas of 1492, Christopher Columbus's first sail came to an end because he lost his boat the Santa Maria, so then he had only two of his three boats remaining, the Nina and Pinta. But the two boats were too small to hold all the men so he left 38 of the men behind and he left for Spain while the men had to survive on their own. In which they created La Navidad '' it was completely surrounded by a native village also known as the Taino people. And when Columbus arrived 11 months later on November 28, 1493, all he could find were the ruins of both the Spanish and Taino people. There were dead Spaniards, but the natives had a point as to why they killed them, they claimed that the sailors had angered their neighbors by raping some women and murdering some men. (9) Another group of the Taino people arrived, and took over the land after he could not find any survivors after 9 days, he decided to leave and find another base to colonize.

On January 2, 1494, he founded La Isabela. But this happiness did not last long, people started running out of food almost immediately and water as well. Another way he failed as a leader is that he did not check the water casks in which they leaked, he then ignored what his people were telling him about the food and water. And told them to go plant and clear the land for vegetable patches, make fortresses, and create stone walls and also houses while they were at it. But the house was not like how you would picture, they were small like huts we use for bird hunting and roofed with weeds. (9) He then left his people again to go find China, but before he left he made sure that his military commander ( Pedro Margarit) knew that the goal was to find Indian gold (400 men sent into the forest). When he and his men returned without finding much gold or food, the people in the colony had little food left and stopped taking care of the gardens. Margarit then proceeded to steal three of the ships and fled to Spain and promised to brand the entire enterprise as a waste of time and money (10)

And those who were left behind resorted to stealing and raiding the Taino people's storehouses. This made the natives incredibly mad and a war started because of it. Columbus returned 5 months later very sick and not making it to China. The Taino tribes and the Spanish battled each other, even though the Taino did not have equal weapons to the Spaniards they still put up a fight for them, they used their resources like peppers and gourds filled with ashes that caused blinding smoke and choking to the Spanish and killing them as well. Neither side won the war, but the Spanish would not leave and got mad at the people who supported their food supply which killed many natives, but at the same time deaths were also rising in La Isabela from starvation, sickness, and exhaustion. Columbus left again for Spain to beg for more money and supplies but when he then returned 2 years later, not much was left of La Isabela, and he landed on the wrong side of the island, a settlement that was made by his brother, but after that, he never set foot on La Isabela again and it was forgotten.

The founder of modern Manila is Miguel Lopez de Legazpi he was known as the man with the sword, and his companion was Andres Ochoa de Urdaneta y Cerain who was known as the man with the cross and guided Lopezs ships across the Pacific. As mentioned before they completed what Christopher Columbus could not create a trade route with China that would sail west. Legazpi survived Spain's attempt in the 1520s to make an outpost on the Maluku Islands which failed and Udrdaneta was shipwrecked in the Malukas as well until being rescued by the Portuguese. The king of Spain wanted to try again in Asia and hired Urdaneta and he chose Legazpi to join him. What they needed to accomplish is to find more islands that had spices and develop trade on them as well, chart wind patterns and teach the islands about Christianity, and be a thorn on the side of Spain, but the main goal was China.

The two sailed off with five ships on November 21, 1564, after they made it to the Philippines, Legazpi made a camp in Cebu and Urdaneta was creating a plan on how to make it back to Mexico which had never been done before. He avoided the currents of the ocean by going far north and then heading east. Cebu was not easy, there was lots of disease and mutiny, and also harassment by the Portuguese ships, but in the end, the Spanish expanded north and were close to China. But in May 1570, Legazpi with two ships sailed for the island of Mindoro, this was good news because there was also a Chinese junk that wore 40 miles away. And every spring the Chinese would travel to the Philippines to trade with them, Legazpi asked the excursions commander to let him know if any Chinese he saw. The commander followed orders and sent two Spanish ships to talk to the Chinese to request peace and friendship with them (27)

Legazpis grandson Juan de Salcedo was with a group of ships when his ship was separated due to high winds, they found the Chinese and Mangyan on the south side of Maujao, and the Chinese put on a full show for them including the beating of drums, firing rockets and making a warlike display. But the Spanish saw this as an attack and fired back which ended up ruining some of Chinas ships and the death of some men. They then realized what they had done and apologized, returned survivors, and the meager plunder, the Chinese took this that the Spanish were being very humble people, knelt down with loud utterances of joy. In 1572 three Chinese junks arrived in the Philippines to see what the Spanish would pay for, they wanted everything that they had and this made the Chinese very happy to hear which strengthened their friendship, from then on they were trading with each other. As the gallon trade was on the rise, this feared the Chinese as they feared it would change their traditions and lifestyle. The emperor did not allow any Americans or Europeans to enter China, but only what they had (crops).

Overall, Ochoa and Legazpi were much more successful than Christopher Columbus ever was, they even have a memorial in Spain, where Columbus was known as a mean, greedy and cruel man who died alone and poor. Legazpi also created friendships while Columbus created fear, and that is why he was not successful and Ochao and Legazpi were and still are recognized today for what they did for Spain.
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A majority of people coming to Europe from the Middle East and Africa are economic migrants using asylum-seeker status as a cover, according to a top EU official. The EU may reinstate internal border controls if the crisis isnt resolved in two months.

More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status more than half, 60 percent, said Frans Timmerman, vice-president of the European Commission, citing what he said were new, unpublished figures from the EU border agency Frontex.

Speaking on Tuesday with Dutch national broadcaster NOS, he added that these false refugees are mostly aspiring settlers from Morocco and Tunisia and are infiltrating Europe through porous Turkish borders in pursuit of better economic prospects.

Timmerman urged EU countries to accelerate the deportation procedure for those who pretend to be fleeing war or persecution. In this way, Europe would be able to provide support for those who need protection, he said.

Since last year Germany, Austria, France, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have reintroduced border controls for a maximum six-month term in a bid to curb the inflow of asylum seekers. On Monday, the European Commission said it could expand the temporary border checks for a period of two years, which is only possible if the existence of the Schengen zone is perceived to be in danger.

In January, Denmark imposed identity checks on its borders with Germany after Sweden introduced the same measure on its border with Denmark, causing transport delays of up to an hour.

Last year, Hungary built razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia in an unprecedented move to stem the migrant influx as more than 1,500 people a day entered the country. Last week, the countrys prime minister, Viktor Orban, called for fences to be built on the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece.

Hungarys example has been followed by Austria, which constructed a 2.5-mile fence on its border with Slovenia, and by Slovenia itself  which built a fence along its border with Hungary.

The first deputy prime minister of Croatia, Tomislav Karamarko, announced last week that his country might follow the lead of Slovenia and other European countries.

"We will not allow Croatia to become a hotspot for refugees. How are we going to do that remains to be decided. I do not know the technical details of how that would be implemented, if it ever is. It all depends on what we agree with our allies," he said, as cited by Total Croatia News.

European Council President Donald Tusk warned that Europe has no more than two months to get things under control. If it failed to tackle the migration crisis before the EU summit in March, the bloc could face grave consequences, such as the collapse of Schengen.

The possible ending of the Schengen agreement may not alleviate the pressure to the extent its proponents are hoping for. Instead, it will surely inflict substantial damage on transportation and the European economy.

There is no proof that bringing back border controls will help to ease the situation in terms of reducing the number of refugees, Timmerman told NOS. He said it would be a huge risk which may result in enormous economic consequencesand yet will not produce any positive outcome.

In the meantime, the Netherlands has decided to deploy police units on city streets and public locations such as railway stations and shopping malls. It is presumed that the officers will carry submachine guns, according to Dutch police reports.

The measure is seen as a response to the growing concerns that not only economic migrants but also Islamic terrorists could have entered Europe, posing as refugees.

People may be shocked to see these officers, but the aim is to make the country safer for everyone, a police spokesman said.

Last week reports emerged that a former Islamic State jihadist fighter might be living in Frankfurt along with the victims of the terror. I was very scared that this terrorist is in a democratic state like Germany just living here, said a refugee from Syria, who said he saw a man in Frankfurt resembling a member of the terrorist group he encountered in Syria. The police have launched an investigation into the case, but due to a complete lack of evidence are unable to charge the individual with any crime.

Europe has been experiencing the worst migrant crisis since the end of WWII. The number of asylum seekers passed 1 million by the end of November, according to Eurostat. However, the actual number of applicants will likely be much higher, as Finland was the only country to submit data up to November.
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Experience suggests that Washington often says one thing and does another, using beautiful concepts as their brand of bullying and forcefully reshaping the meaning of those concepts. For example, Washington often talks about "rules," but the world has seen the US consistently commit the most brutal violations of the rules on which the United Nations system is based. The rules they talk about are actually a framework for protecting the interests of the US and its major allies. They are also a behavioral norm to force other countries to maximize those interests.




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The Indian Express, January 18, 2016

Two decades after the massacre, the families of victims wait for justice.

Written by Anand Chakravarti

On July 11, 1996, shortly after mid-day, the Ranveer Sena, a private militia of Bhumihar landowners, massacred 21 Dalits and Muslims, 20 of whom were women and children, in Bathani Tola, a hamlet in Bhojpur district, Bihar. The massacre lasted for three hours, yet the police personnel posted a mere 100 metres from the site stayed away.

The carnage in Bathani Tola was the first in a long series of massacres perpetrated by the Ranveer Sena in an area comprising Bhojpur, Arwal, Jehanabad, and Patna districts, that claimed around 400 lives, primarily of Dalits and the landless.

Although many dominant caste men accused of committing the killings have been prosecuted, the legal process has so far failed to convict them. In April 2012, the Patna High Court acquitted all the 23 persons accused of committing the carnage in Bathani Tola, though the trial court pronounced them guilty. The following year, the same court also acquitted those accused of perpetrating three other massacres. A special leave petition appealing against the acquittal of the accused in the Bathani Tola case is due to be heard by the Supreme Court soon.

Since the 1970s, the lower castes, rallying around various leftwing political formations, challenged the sources of their oppression with movements around the payment of statutory wages, the arbitrary eviction of bataidars, and the entitlement of women labourers to their bodily autonomy. In retaliation, the militias of various dominant castes brutally sought to restore the edifice of socio-economic power wielded by them through public spectacles of violence designed to punish and decimate members of the backward castes. It is indeed surprising that the judiciary has repeatedly failed to find sufficient evidence to convict the accused a as in the Bathani Tola judgment a despite eyewitness accounts.

In contrast, cases in which the landless and oppressed were the accused have had a very different fate in courts a such as in the Bara massacre of 1992, where TADA was invoked, and the convicted remain in jail.

The Patna High Court verdict on the Bathani massacre, while admitting many deficiencies in the investigation and prosecution, discredited eyewitness testimonies, pronouncing that the accused would not abe exposing their identity in broad daylighta , that any eyewitnesses could not have escaped alive, and that the accused had been falsely implicated, allowing the real killers to escape.

In striking contrast, the landmark Naroda Patiya verdict of August 2012, pertaining to the killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, affirms the validity of the testimonies of the survivors of a carnage. The principles outlined in that verdict can help steer the course of justice in the murky waters of mass massacres, where the agencies of investigation and prosecution are complicit in the crime itself. The Naroda Patiya verdict notes that the avalue of injured eyewitnesses is on high pedal [sic]. The principle is that no injured would substitute a wrong person naming him as a[n] assailant by saving [a] real assailant.a The verdict also notes that, aIt is [a] settled position of law that the defect, lacuna and deliberate carelessness on the part of the investigating agency cannot fetch any benefit in favour of the accused or else it amounts to perpetuate the injustice already caused to the complainant party.a Accordingly, the eyewitnesses of Bathani Tola should not be held liable for the shortcomings in the legal process.

In a sting operation by Cobrapost, released in August 2015, several Ranveer Sena men boasted that they had been part of gangs that committed various massacres and had even terrorised the complainants into turning hostile. Bathani Tola, however, is an exception, where eyewitnesses stood their ground despite intimidation. They look to the Supreme Court with the hope that it will re-examine the evidence and correct a great injustice.

If not, the profound questions raised by Nayeemuddin Ansari, who lost six members of his immediate family, including a three-month-old baby daughter and two young sons aged five and six, in the massacre, at a convention in Delhi in 2012 a aWho killed 21 people that afternoon, if it wasnat those we named in the FIR? Are we expected to bring back the dead to give evidence?a a will remain unanswered.

The writer is a retired professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi University
[Posted below is an artucle from The New York Times and From The Times of India]

The New York Times

The Right-Wing Attack on Indiaas Universities

by Aatish Taseer JAN. 27, 2016

Contributing Op-Ed Writer

Varanasi, India a I met Sandeep Pandey days after he was sacked from his position as a visiting professor at a prestigious technical institute at Banaras Hindu University. We sat in a dreary guesthouse on the university campus. Mr. Pandey had just finished a long train ride. With his wrinkled kurta pajama and rubber slippers, he was every bit the picture of an old-fashioned Indian leftist.

That was why head been fired. aIdeologically, I am at the opposite extreme to the people who are at present in power,a he said. aThese people not only cannot tolerate any dissent; they donat even tolerate disagreement. They want everybody who disagrees with them out of this campus.a Mr. Pandey was referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modias Bharatiya Janata Party and a more to the point a the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the B.J.P.as cultural fountainhead.

The R.S.S., a Hindu nationalist organization, was founded in 1925 as a muscular alternative to Mahatma Gandhias freedom movement. Its founder admired Adolf Hitler, and in 1948 the organization was blamed for indirectly inspiring Gandhias assassination. The B.J.P. has not always had an easy relationship with the R.S.S. With its fanciful ideas of Hindu purity and its sweeping range of prejudices, the organization is dangerously out of step with the realities of Indiaas political landscape. When the B.J.P. wants to win an election, it usually distances itself from the R.S.S.as cultural agenda.

Mr. Modias 2014 election had very little to do with the R.S.S. and everything to do with his personality and promises of development. But the R.S.S. doesnat see it that way. Like a fairy-tale dwarf, the group has sought to extract its due from the man it helped into power. As payment for the debt, the R.S.S. wants control of education. Specifically, it wants to install its men at the helm of universities where they will wreak vengeance on the traditionally left-wing intellectual establishment that has always held them in contempt.

At a prestigious film institute, students are protesting the appointment of a president whose only qualification, they feel, is a willingness to advance the R.S.S.as agenda. The groupas members have met with the education minister in the hope of shaping education policy; in states that the B.J.P. controls, the R.S.S. has been putting forward the names of underqualified ideologues for advisory positions on the content of textbooks and curriculums. It has also sought to put those who share its ideology at the head of important cultural institutions, such as the Indian Council of Historical Research.

This is the background to Mr. Pandeyas dismissal. His new boss, Girish Chandra Tripathi, the vice chancellor, is an R.S.S. man. The Ministry of Education helped push through his appointment after Mr. Modias election. One B.H.U. professor, who wished not to be named, described Mr. Tripathi as aan academic thug with no qualifications.a (He was previously a professor of economics.)

The new vice chancellor soon turned on Mr. Pandey. aIt was all engineered,a Mr. Pandey said to me. First, the professor said, he was denounced by a student. Then a local news website printed a bogus story accusing him of being part of an armed guerrilla movement. (Mr. Pandey, a Gandhian, opposes all violence.) Soon after, the technical instituteas board of governors decided, on Mr. Tripathias recommendation, that he be fired. He is an alumnus of the university and a mechanical engineer with a degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He has won awards for his social work. None of this made a difference. He was given a month to clear out.

I thought I should speak to the vice chancellor. He was out of town, but came on the telephone. The mention of aSandeep Pandeya was like a trigger. He told me that Mr. Pandey had questioned whether Kashmir was an integral part of India and he had tried to screen the banned documentary aIndiaas Daughter,a which deals with the infamous gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a physiotherapy student in New Delhi in 2012.

I must not have seemed sufficiently appalled. Mr. Tripathi tried a different tack. He said, on hearing of my connection to an American publication, aTell me, can you, being a professor in America, criticize the American government?a Yes, I answered. He tried again. aCan you,a he thundered down the line, abeing a professor in America, teach what is against Americaas interests?a I remembered a professor at Amherst College, my alma mater, who had once compared George W. Bush to Osama bin Laden. aProbably,a I said. aWell, maybe you can in America,a he said with disgust. aBut you canat do it in India.a

I had one last question. I had seen the vice chancellor recently at a religious event celebrating the universityas centenary, where the presiding pundit had claimed that ancient India possessed the science of gestational surrogacy. aWe had these technologies, too,a the pundit said, abut over the course of a thousand years of slavery we forgot them. Or, rather, we were made to forget them.a Mr. Pandey, a man of science, had told me that Mr. Tripathi and his ilk were of the same mind as the pundit and even believed ancient India had possessed aircraft and ballistic missiles.

I had to ask. Did the vice chancellor really believe this? aI still say it,a he said defensively. I asked him to explain further. He said this was not a conversation to be had on the telephone. He would show me all the evidence later. The line went dead.

The problem with the vice chancellor is not just that he is right-wing. It is that he is unqualified for his position. This was never more apparent than in his total inability to grasp the value of dissent at an institution of learning.

Mr. Pandey has spent a lifetime working among some of Indiaas most voiceless people. It was sinister in the extreme that he should be dismissed for being aanti-national.a And that term is being bandied about far too much by the R.S.S. and its allies these days. The R.S.S.as student wing at the University of Hyderabad recently smeared a 26-year-old doctoral student from a low-caste background as aanti-nationala for his activism. The university decided to ban him from all public spaces. Earlier this month he committed suicide.

The R.S.S. has always been more of a liability for Mr. Modi than an asset. The organization has been waiting to introduce its radical agenda on the cultural and academic landscape in place of the Modi governmentas promise of development. If Mr. Modi gives them an opening, they will bury him. They will reduce his broad mandate to the hysteria of a few. And, in the bargain, they will do immeasurable harm to the capacious idea of what it means to be Indian.

Aatish Taseer is the author, most recently, of the novel aThe Way Things Were,a and a contributing opinion writer.

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The Times of India

RSS wants to take over univs a curbing freedom produces students without human spirit: Sandeep Pandey

January 29, 2016, 1:58 am IST TOI Q&A in The Interviews Blog | Edit Page, Q&A | TOI

Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey was recently sacked by Banaras Hindu University (BHU) from the position of visiting faculty in the Indian Institute of Technology-BHU. The letter terminating his three-year contract prematurely reportedly doesnat mention a reason. But minutes of the IIT-BHU board of governorsa meeting, obtained through RTI, apparently reveal members felt Pandeyas teaching was pro-Naxal and against national interest. Speaking with Ashish Tripathi, Pandey discussed such serious charges, why he thinks teaching politics on campus is vital a and his opposition to the RSS:

Why do you think the termination of your contract is political?

This termination is because of the intolerance of the RSS to not only dissent but even disagreement a the RSS is trying to take over all educational institutions in the country.

These charges against me are baseless.

Why are you being accused of being a Naxalite though?

Iam close to Gandhian ideology a i acknowledge some causes taken up by Naxalites but donat agree with their methods.

The RSS started calling me a Naxalite after i attended a Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist) meeting in 2002 at which families of former Naxals were honoured.

However, i went to understand their issues and had nothing to do with the felicitation.

Youave been accused of advocating independence for Kashmir and holding lectures on topics against national interest?

The purpose of my lectures was to make students aware of various aspects to particular issues and help them think with open minds.

My personal stand on Kashmir is that the issue should be solved with the participation of the people of the state.

You apparently posted the link of the banned Nirbhaya documentary on the university intranet a which the university reportedly says is a cyber crime.

Well, inequality on the basis of gender was one of the central issues discussed in Development Studies and the Nirbhaya documentary was to be screened precisely in order to discuss violence against women. However, the screening was withdrawn after intervention.

Posting a link of the documentary was not an offence because it was already there for anybody to watch.

Anyway, the alacrity shown by university authorities in preventing this filmas screening was missing when a female student accused a professor of sexual misconduct last year. The professoras suspension is likely to be revoked as a university committee hasnat found him guilty a although a judicial trial is underway.

You stand for freedom of speech and expression a shouldnat universities function with some limits though?

Curbing freedom of speech and expression on campuses would mean producing graduates without human spirit.

Recently, Columbia University allowed a rape survivor to carry a mattress about, demanding the culpritas expulsion. The mattress symbolised the burden she carried a that was her protest. Iave also seen professors like Pravin Varaiya at University of California who didnat accept defence funding and participated in demonstrations against US aggression in Iraq.

Our students must be educated about crucial socio-economic and political issues, so that we can build a society according to the values enshrined in our Constitution like socialism and secularism.

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[see also:
Peopleas March in Defence of the Republic

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MANDI HOUSE TO JANTAR MANTAR [New Delhi]

Assemble at 11 am; January 30, 2016

Call to All Secular Groups, Peoples Movements

JOIN US

We members of the Indian public are deeply concerned with the grave assaults that are being mounted on the Republic. This most diverse country in the world belongs equally to all persons who make it its own, regardless of their religious faith (or for that matter, their denial of faith), their caste, gender, class, language, ethnicities, physical and mental abilities, gender identity and sexual orientation. This is the promise that we had made to ourselves during the Independence movement. This is the soul of Indiaas secular, socialist democratic Constitution. This also is the meaning of Part IVA of the Constitution of India that prescribes the fundamental duties of all Indian citizens: to respect athe composite culture of India, to adevelop the scientific tempera, aspirit of reforma and acritical enquirya and to acherish the ideas that inspired the struggle for Indian Independence.

As people of this vast and diverse land, affirm, we uphold and defend the constitutional values of the Indian Republic as elaborated in the preamble of the Constitution a of freedom, justice, equality and fraternity. In brutal contrast to these values, the political forces represented by the so-called Sangh Parivar are trying to subvert our Constitution by imposing upon the whole country their ideology of majoritarian tyranny, persisting caste and gender inequality, religious intolerance, and abolition of dissent. These forces did not participate in Indiaas struggle for freedom and never reconciled to Indiaas secular, socialistic, democratic Constitution, and its categorical assertions about the abolition of caste and equality of all persons. Today they have entered into a dangerous alliance with neo-liberal market fundamentalists and a section of unscrupulous capitalists and financiers who see constitutional democracy as a hurdle in the path of so-called adevelopmenta.

This alliance of religious fanatics and neo-liberals want nothing less than an overthrow of the stateas constitutional commitment to social welfare, the public provisioning of health, education and social security, affirmative action for women, Dalits and Adivasis; the freedom of belief and worship of religious minorities; and the subversion of the criminal justice system.

The implementation of this authoritarian agenda would lead to the destruction of the Indian Republic. Today our society is witness to increasing religious polarization and fear; and attacks on women, Dalits, Adivasis, religious minorities and working people; the criminal neglect of agriculture leading to an epidemic of farmer suicides; the theft of natural resources; and attacks on livelihoods and workersa rights; gender violence; the neglect of persons with disabilities; discrimination against Dalit students in schools and universities across the country; and the persecution of people marginalised on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation.. Worst of all, the members and allies of the so-called Sangh Parivar are bent upon curbing our freedoms. They tell people what to wear, write and speak; whom to love and what to eat.

Today no one a least of the Hindus whom they claim to represent - is spared the poison being spread in our society by leaders and activists of the Hindutva brigade. All critical voices are dubbed anti-national and asked to leave the country. All this is accompanied by open intimidation that often leads to violence. It is significant that in the recently concluded state elections in Bihar, the Election Commission was obliged to take note of the communal propaganda being spread by the BJP. It is a matter of concern that the Prime Minister of India could resort to divisive propaganda in his speeches in that election.

This climate of intimidation has led to mounting fear among dissenters and minorities of all kinds. Contrary to the propaganda against those who have stood up for democracy, this fear is not an invention of partisan critics of the Modi government. It is real, urgent and dangerous. The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri on the rumour that he ate beef; the assassination of rationalists Dr. Narendra Dabholkar and Shri Govind Pansare; and of the religious scholar Professor Kalburgi; and the continued criminalisation of sexual minorities under Section 377, are manifestations of this climate of intolerance and intimidation.

It is this same climate of intolerance that had led months after Indiaas freedom to Nathuram Godses assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, and which resulted in a ban on the RSS, at the initiation of Sardar Patel as Home Minister. Some months ago members of the ruling dispensation were openly celebrating Gandhias assassin as a great hero. It is the current climate of continuing social inequality that led to the heart-breaking suicide of Rohith, declaring that his birth is his fatal accident; and the unmaking of the developmental state that has led to grave cutbacks on social sector public spending on health and education; to curbing of labour rights; to reckless dilution of environmental protections; and the bullying of dissent.

As inheritors of a secular and democratic Constitution, it is our duty to resist this assault on the Indian Union. We call upon all those who cherish the statutes, values and ideals of the Republic, to join our march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar on January 30, 2016, in defence of Indian democracy.

A C Michael , Former Member of Delhi Minorities Commission A Chinnappan, National Secretary, All India Catholic Union A.K. Arun - Yuva Samvad Abdul Kabeer Abhay Xaxa, NCDHR Aditya Prasad, Writer, Bangalore Aditya Shrivastava, Right to Food Campaign Agnelo Vaz sj, Premal jyothi , Ahmedabad Ajaya Kumar Singh, Bhubaneswar AK Ramakrishnan, Prof, JNU Akhil Kang, Lawyer, Delhi Akkai Padmashali , Social Activist, Ondede ,Bangalore Alana Golmei, Northeast Support Centre & Helpline Alexander Afzal- Let Us Stay Together Ali Ahmed, Writer and blogger, Delhi Ali Javed, PWA Allwyn DSilva, Secretary, Climate Change Desk, Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences Amir Rizvi, designer, Mumbai Amit Sengupta, journalist, Delhi Amitava Mitra , NAPM West Bengal Anand Lakhan Anand Mazgaonkar, Paryavaran Suraksh Samiti, NAPM Gujarat Anand Patwardhan, film maker Anant Bhatnagar, PUCL, Ajmer Aneka, Bangalore Anhad Anil Panikkar, Hisar Anjali Monteiro, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai Anjum Aamir Khan, Khudai Khidmatgar Annie Namala, WNTA Annie Raja, National Federation of Indian Women Antara Dev Sen, journalist Antony Arul Valan, Chennai Antony Arulraj, Social Worker, New Delhi Anuja Gupta, Feminist Activist, Delhi Anuradha Chenoy, professor, JNU Anuradha Kapoor, Feminist Activist Apoorvanand, Professor Department of Hindi, Delhi University Aruna Roy, social activist, MKSS, Rajasthan Arundhati Dhuru, NAPM, UP Asad Ashraf, journalist, Delhi Asad Zaidi, writer and publisher Ashish Mamgaim, journalist, Delhi Ashish Ranjan a Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, NAPM Bihar Ashok Bharti, National Confederation of Dalit Adivasi Orgs (NACDAOR) Ashok Maridas, Documentary FilmMaker, Bangalore Ashok Vajpayi, writer, poet Asif Iqbal, Dhanak Astha Pando, Nine is Mine Atul Sood, Professor, JNU Avinash Kumar Ayesha Kidwai, Professor, JNU B S Rawat Jan Sangharsh Vahini, NAPM, Delhi B.Banerjee, Hyderabad B4- BACHPAN, BACHAV, BADHNA, BACHAV Babu Thomas, Director Inter Dimensions, Bangalore Balendra Vaghela , Swaroday, Rajkot Battini Rao, Convener, Peoples Alliance for Democracy and Secularism Bharti Ali, Co-Director, HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, New Delhi Bhasha Singh, Journalist, Writer, Delhi Bihar Ambedkar Studentas Forum Braham Yadav, Nishant Natya Manch, Delhi C R Neelkandan, NAPM Kerala Centre for Policy Analysis Centre for Social Dignity Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion Chirashree Das Gupta, Jawaharlal Nehru University Cletus Daisy, Director, St. Josephs Guntur Andhra Pradesh Cynthia Kumar, Sur Nirman D. Albert, S.J.Social Activist, Pathardi, Maharashtra Dakshin Chhara, Activist, Gujarat Deepan Kannan, Chennai Dev Desai, Anhad, Gujarat Dhrubo Jyoti, Delhi Dhruv Raina, Professor, JNU Dhruv Sangari, musician Dilip Simeon, Peoples Alliance for Democracy and Secularism Dinesh Abrol, Delhi Dipak Dholakia, Delhi Dolphy A. DSouza, Convenor, Police Reforms Watch, Mumbai Dr Aditya Narayan Misra, Former President Federation of Central Universities Teachers Association ( FEDCUTA) & Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) Dr Alex Ekka, Profession: Teacher, Ranchi Dr Ambrose Pinto SJ, Principal, St Aloysius Degree College, Bangalore Dr Annie Medical Supdt Guntur AP Dr Arif Mohhmed, Centre for Harmony and Peace, Varanasi Dr Benny Chiramel, Social worker, Thiruvananthapuram Dr Denzil Fernandes, on behalf of Social Action Trust Dr Gabriele Dietrich, Madurai Dr John Dayal, Member NIC, past president, All India catholic Union Dr Joy Ilemon- KSSP Delhi Forum Dr Nalini Abraham, M.D. Dr Pushpa M Bhargava, Former Vice Chairman, National Knowledge Commission, Dr Rahul Singh, Nishant Natya Manch Dr Sant Prakash Dr Subash Mohapatra, Rights Campaigner, Bhubaneswar, Odisha Dr Subhan Khan, Patron, Mewat Development Society Dr Sunilam, Samjawadi Samagam Dr Surendra Kumar, Department of History, University of Delhi Dr Suresh Mathew, Editor, Indian Currents Weekly Dr Varghese Manimala, Professor Dr Walter Fernandes, North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, the Milli Gazette Dr. Hector DSouza SJ, Educationist, Guwahati Dr. John Rose SJ, Xavier Institute of Engineering, Mahim, Mumbai. Dr. Neeti Bhai, Social and Human Right Activist, Varanasi Dunu Roy, social activist, Delhi Dvijendra Nath Kalia - PGDAV College, University of Delhi Elizabeth Thomas, designer, concerned citizen Executive Director of Peoples Action for Rural Awakening Faisal Khan, Khudai Khidmatgar, NAPM Haryana Faraz Ahmad Farhat Salim, Scholar, School of Development Studies , Ambedkar University Feroz Khan Ghazi, SAMLA, Delhi Feroze Mithiborwala, National President, Bharat Bachao Andolan Firdaus Ahmed, journalist, Delhi Fr Cedric Prakash, Human Rights Activist Francis Parmar, Gujarat. Gabriel Tirkey, SJ, New Delhi Garment Labour Union, NAPM, Karnataka, NAPM, Karnataka Gautam Thaker, PUCL, Gujarat Geetha Ramakrishnan, Unorganised Sector Workers Federation, NAPM, TN Godfrey D Lima, Educationist; Nashik City Hanook Bhatti, Christian Yuva Morcha, Punjab Haridas T, Dwarka Collective Harinesh Pandya, Janpath, Gujarat Harsh Kapoor, http://sacw.net/ Harsh Mander, social activist, writer Hemant Shah, Professor, Gujarat Henri Tiphagne, Executive Director, Peopleas Watch, Madurai Ideal Academy Indu Prakash Singh, Human Rights Defender, Forum against Corruption & Threats Iqbal Ahmad, Jamia Collective Irfan Engineer, Director, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai Irshad Ahmad, President, AMU Old Boys Association J S Walia, NAPM Haryana Jabar Singh, NAPM, Uttarakhand Jagmohan Singh, Professor, Ludhiana Jamia Teacheras Solidarity Association. Jamsheed Rizwani Javed Anand, Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai Jaya Iyer, Zinda Dilli and Sadak Chaap, Delhi Jaya Mehta, Sandarbh Collective, Delhi Jayati Ghosh, Professor, JNU Jenis Francis, President, Federation of Catholic Associations of Archdiocese of Delhi Jerome Sequeira Jamshedpur Jerry Rosario, Dhanam movement, Chennai Jessy Jagnnathan, Selam Jignesh Mevani, Activist, Gujarat Jitendra Baghel, PATWA Joe Parekatil Joseph Pulla System Administrator, Guntur AP Joseph Xavier, Indian Social Institute, Bangalore Josna Critical Quest Juhi Jain, Feminist Activist Julie Antony, Deputy Admin , St. Josephs Guntur AP K. Satchidanandan, writer, poet K.M.Shrimali, Former Professor of History, Delhi University K.P. Jayasankar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai Kailash Meena, NAPM Rajasthan Kamal Chenoy, Professor, JNU Kamayani Bali Mahabal, feminist and human rights activist, Mumbai Kamayani Swami, NAPM Bihar Kannan Srinivasan Writer, New York Karen Gabriel, St Stephens College Karolin Fernandez, Business Manager, Guntur AP Kashif Ahmed Faraz, APCR Kausar Wizarat, Pehchan Kiran Shaheen, Memoirist and Activist KN Panikkar, historian, former Vice Chancellor Krishnakant - Paryavaran Suraksh Samiti, NAPM Gujarat Kumar Ambuj, Poet, PWA Kumar Sundaram, Activist, Gujarat Kumar.B , Social Activist, Founder Member , PAYANA, Bengaluru LABIA - A Queer Feminist LBT Collective, Mumbai Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Research Scholar, Brown University Leena Dabiru, Lawyer, Delhi Lingraj Azad Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, NAPM, Odisha M A Bohra, Udaipur M.Mahalingam, CPA, Delhi Madhu Sahni, Professor, JNU Madhuresh Kumar, NAPM, Delhi Mahendra Yadav, Kosi Navnirman Manch, NAPM Bihar Mahesh Pandya, Gujarat Social Watch, Gujarat Mahi Pal Singh, Editor,The Radical Humanist. Manan Trivedi, social activist, Gujarat Manasi Thapliyal, associate professor, AUD Manish Shrivastava, Gen. Secy. IPTA Delhi State Manju, Socail Activist, Hyderabad Maya Krishna Rao, theatre artist Medha Patkar - Narmada Bachao Andolan, NAPM Meera a Narmada Bachao Andolan, NAPM, MP Mehul Manguben , Writer, Gujarat Mike sj , social activist, Jamshedpur Minakshi Bujarbaruah, Researcher, TISS, Guwahati Minakshi Singh, Samarpan Mohd Aamir Khan, Human Rights Activist, Delhi Mohd Asif Khan, Nai Umang Nai Soch Mohd Azam Khan, entrepreneur, Hyderabad Mohd Shahid, Professor, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad Mohnish Malhotra, Delhi Moulee, Chennai Mukul Mangalik, Ramas College, University of Delhi Mukul Priyadarshini - Deptt. of Elementary Education, Miranda House, DU Muralidharan, Convener, Delhi Viklang Adhikar Manch N. Jayaram, Journalist, Bangalore N.D.Pancholi, General Secretary, Citizens for Democracy Nafisa Barot, Utthan, Ahmedabad Nai Umang Nai Soch Nalini Taneja, University of Delhi Nandini Sundar, Delhi University Nandita Narain, Associate Prof, St.Stephens College, DU Nasiruddin, Journalist National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights National Equity Forum National Federation of Human Rights Clubs in Schools Navaid Hamid, President All India Muslim Majlis e Mushawarat, ex Member, NIC Navdeep Kumar Nazariya- A Queer Feminist Resource Group, New Delhi Nazneen Shaikh, Activist, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Dhule Neelima Sharma, Nishant Natya Manch Neera Chandhoke, former professor, Delhi University Niloufer Bhagwat, advocate, Mumbai Nine Is Mine, Delhi Nisha Verma, Samarpan Nitya Jacob, Author, Jalyatra Nivedita Menon, Professor, JNU NoMore Campaign, New Delhi Noorjahan Diwan, WAFAA Ovais Sultan Khan, Activist, Delhi Owen Chourappa P Chennaiah , NAPM Andhra Pradesh P K Vijayan, Hindu College P.I. Jose, lawyer, Delhi P.K.Manikandhan, KSSP Delhi forum Padmini Kumar, Joint Womenas Programme, Delhi Pankti Jog, Activist, MAGP, Ahmedabad Pawan Dhall, Varta Trust, Kolkata Peeter Cheeda, Christian Samson Sena, Punjab Peopleas Action for Rural Awakening Prabhat Patnaik, Professor, JNU Pradeep Esteves, Activist, Context India, Bangalore Prafulla Samantara - Lok Shakti Abhiyan, NAPM, Odisha Prakash N.Shah, Editor Nirikshak, Gujarat Prasad Bagwe, NAPM, Maharashtra Prathama Banerjee, Associate Professor, CSDS, Delhi PRATYeK, Delhi Praveen Jha, Professor of Economics,JNU Praveen Singh, social activist, NOIDA Prem Verma, Convenor, Jharkhand Nagrik Prayas, Ranchi Prof. Arif Kalim Usmani, Principal, Universal High School & Jr. College, Thane Prof. Ghanshyam Shah, academician, Gujarat Prof. Manoj K. Jha, Department of Social Work, University of Delhi Prof. V.K. Tripathi, Retd. IIT Delhi Pt. Kuldeep Vyas, Advocate, Jaipur R. Manohar, Human Rights Defenders Alert India (HRDA-India) R. Meera, Womenas Initiatives (WINS), Andhra Pradesh R. Vaishno Bharati, Researcher, Bangalore Radhika Alkazi, Ashtha, CRPT Rafi Malek , Activist, Gujarat Rajashri Dasgupta, Journalist, Kolkata Rajat Datta, Profession: Professor, JNU. Rajendra K Sail, Human Rights Defender, Chhattisgarh Rajendra Ravi, NAPM, Delhi Rajesh Sinha, freelance journalist Rajesh Umadevi, Sangama Rajinder Arora, Delhi Rajive Tiwari - Professor of Physics, Bellmont Abbey College Rajni Bhagat Arora, Delhi Rajni Kant Mudgal, Pravasi Jan Manch Rakesh Sharma, Film-maker Ram Puniyani, writer, social activist Rama Srinivasan, Research Scholar, Brown University Ramakrishnan Raju a NAPM Andhra Pradesh Ramesh Bairy, Dept of HSS, IIT, Mumbai Ramjan Choudhry, Mewat Sangharsh Samiti Ramsharan Joshi, Journalist, Delhi Raza Haider, Siksha Razia Ismail, Inter-Faith Dialogue Forum Reyaz Ahmad, Jamia Collective Richa Singh, NAPM, UP Ritwik Agrawal, St. Stephens College, Delhi Rohini Hensman, writer, Mumbai Rohit Prajapati, Activist, Gujarat Rohit, Assistant Professor, JNU Ruby, Lok Manch Secretariat, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi Rudolf C. Heredia, Jesuit Residence, Campion High School, Mumbai Rukmini V P, NAPM, Karnataka S. P. Shukla, Former Member, Planning Commission S.B. Upadhyay, Faculty of History, IGNOU, New Delhi. S.Q.Masood, Center for Peace Studies, Hyderabad S.Velanganni s.j.,Kalol, Gujarat Sajeev Painunkal, Counselor, Kolkata Sandeep Messey- United Christian Forum Sanghamitra Misra, Department of History, University of Delhi Sanjay Krishna, Ashray Adhikar Manch Sanjay Sharma, Aahwan India Sanjeev Kumar, Delhi Forum Sanjiv Bhatt, former IPS, Gujarat Sankara Narayanan Sannybhai, JESA Secretariat, Indian Social Institute, Delhi Sarika Shrivastava, NFIW, Indore Sarojini , Odisha Satish Deshpande, Sociologist, Delhi Saurabh Vajpeyi, National Movement Front. Save the Children India, Delhi Sebastian Nallail Seema Mustafa, journalist Shabnam Hashmi, social activist, Delhi Shabnam Shaikh, NAPM, Delhi. Shail Mayaram, Delhi Shamsul Islam, Nishant Natya Manch Shiburaj A.K, Hyderabad Shiburaj A.K, Associate Coordinator (Documentation), Kishore Bharati, Bhopal Shivani Lal, Peopleas Watch Shweta Bhatt, Gujarat Sister Celia - Domestic Workers Union, NAPM, Karnataka Socialist Yuvajan Sabha Sofiya Khan, Human Rights Activist, Gujarat Sohail Hashmi, filmmaker, writer Sreedharan Nair, Director, Family Planning Association of India Steve Rocha- Nine is Mine Students Front for Swaraj Sube Singh, PATWA Suhas Kolhekar, NAPM, Maharashtra Sujatha, JNU Sujato Bhadra, NAPM West Bengal Sukhdeep Singh, Founder, Editor, Gaylaxy Magazine Sukla Sen, anti-nuke peace activist, Mumbai Sumegha Gulati, Former Journalist with Indian Express, Delhi Sunil Gupta, Delhi Sunil Gupta, Researcher, Delhi Sunil Kuksal, Peoples Watch Suniti SR, NAPM, Maharashtra Suresh Bhat, Retired Engineer, Mangaluru Suroor, Advocate. Suvasini Chandrasekhran - Deptt. Of Elementary Education, Miranda House, DU Swaraj Abhiyan Syeda Hamid, former Planning Commission member Teesta Setalvad, Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai Thomas Pallithanam, National convener of WNTA Uday Prakash, writer UK Sharda, Editor, the Egalitarian Fortnightly, Ludhiana Uma Chakravarti, feminist historian, Delhi Umer Padla, Mewat Vikas Sabha Umesh.P (Uma), Social Activist, Founder Jeeva, Bangalore United Christian Forum, Ghaziabad Uttam Parmar, PUCL, Gujarat Uzramma, Hyderabad V. Joseph Xavier, Director, St. Josephs Institute of Management, Trichy, TN Vargheesh Antony M, Coordinator SAMAG TEAM, Vidyajyoti College, Delhi Vasanthi Raman, Social Scientist and Activist Vibhuti Narain Rai, writer, former Vice Chancellor Vidyadhar Gadgi, Goa Vijayesh Lal, on behalf of Religious Liberty Commission Vimal Bhai - Matu Jan Sangathan, NAPM, Uttarakhand Vimal Thorat, NCDHR Vineet Tiwari, Poet, PWA) Vinod Koshti, Cultural Activist, IPTA Delhi Vinodhini Moses, National General Secretary, YWCA India Virendra Yadav, PWA, Lucknow Vivek Sakpal, Peoples Literature Publications Vrinda Grover, lawyer, Delhi Wada Na Todo Abhiyan Waqar Qazi, Social Activist, Gujarat Wilfred Da Costa, INSAF Xavier Jeyaraj, Research Scholar, St. Xaviers College, Kolkata Zafar Eqbal, Aman Biradari, Delhi Zaheeruddin Ali Khan, Siasat, Hyderabad Zakia Soman, BMMA, Gujarat Zamser Ali, President, BTAD Citizen Rights Forum Zoya Hasan, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University Zulaikha Jabin, Shambhavi

ORGANISED BY

Aahwan India

Academics for Action and Development

Ahmedabad Collective

All India Catholic Union

Aman Biradari, Delhi

AMU Old Boys Association

Anhad

Ashray Adhikar Manch

Ashtha, CRPT

B4- BACHPAN, BACHAV, BADHNA, BACHAV

Centre for Policy Analysis

Centre for Research and Policy in Disability

Centre for Social Dignity

Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion

Christian Samson Sena, Punjab

Christian Yuva Morcha, Punjab

Citizens for Democracy

Delhi Forum

Delhi Viklang Adhikar Manch

Dhanak

Dwarka Collective

Forum Against Corruption & Threats

Ideal Academy

Jamia Collective

Joint Womenas Programme

Khudai Khidmatgar

KSSP -Delhi Forum

Let Us Stay Together

Manav Ekta Samiti ,Gujarat

Mewat Development Society

Mewat Sangharsh Samiti

Mewat Vikas Sabha

Nai Umang Nai Soch

NAPM

National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)

National Confederation of Dalit Adivasi Orgs (NACDAOR)

National Equity Forum

National Federation of Human Rights Clubs in Schools

National Federation of Indian Women

National Movement Front

Nazariya- A Queer Feminist Resource Group, New Delhi

Nine Is Mine, Delhi

NoMore Campaign, New Delhi

Northeast Support Centre & Helpline

Pehchan

Peopleas Watch

Peoples Action for Rural Awakening

Peoples Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS)

PRATYeK, Delhi

Public Auto Taxi Welfare Association (PATWA)

PWA

Religious Liberty Commission

Right to Food Campaign

SAMAG TEAM, Vidyajyoti College, Delhi

Samarpan

SAMLA

Siksha

Social Action Trust

Students Front for Swaraj

Sur Nirman

United Christian Forum

United Christian Forum, Ghaziabad

Viklang Ekta Manch

Wada Na Todo Abhiyan

WAFAA

Yuva Samvad

YWCA India

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Poster announcing programme at Jantar Mantar
( A protest meeting on Rohith Vemula was organised in Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University on 28 th January. Find pasted below a brief report of the meeting followed by the statement which was read and passed in the meeting.)

We, the students of Delhi School of Economics organised a protest meeting in solidarity with the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, University of Hyderabad. It was joined in by students from other departments of the university as well.

The discussion revolved around the presence of caste based discrimination within university campuses and the deadly silence on the matter. It was recognised that Rohithas investment in progressive politics was crucial in him and others in Ambedkar Students Association being victimised. And the present gathering affirmed its investment in that politics and striving for the kind of change Rohith also aspired for.Inline image 1

We resolved to continue our struggle against saffronisation of campuses and the communal, caste-ist and misogynist core of this political project. We extended our solidarity to the struggles of all marginalised groups and recognised all these struggles to be interlinked. A passage from DR B R Ambedkaras aAnnihilation of Castea was read out to conclude the event.

We also reaffirmed this statement:

The suicide of Rohith Vemula, a young research scholar in the University of Hyderabad, has caused the spilling over of questions that have been simmering for a long time. It has shown the failure of our institutions in addressing systems of social power and inequality; in fact what is out in the open is the way in which these institutions themselves operate and build upon these systems. Related to this is the question of how individuals within these institutions experience these inequalities: some benefitting from them and others suffering within them. In supposed democratic institutions, like universities, where individuals are ideally brought together as equals to pursue higher goals of learning and knowledge, we are in fact divided and placed in hierarchies by imaginary lines of caste, gender, amerita, etc which are all too real and powerful.

Rohithas suicide is the most recent in the shameful list of suicides by Dalit students in institutions of higher education (it is estimated that 18 Dalit students killed themselves between 2007-2011). While many in the university have never known the feeling of being discriminated against or excluded, for many others it is what shapes their experience of the university. Rohithas suicide raises questions for all us because we continue to live in and reproduce conditions that made living unbearable for him. While it is unwarranted to claim to know or judge the reasons for someone ending her/ his life, the atmosphere at the University of Hyderabad preceding his death points to an institutionalised targeting of him and his friends. Rohithas scholarship had been blocked for months when he and his friends were suspended by the university on trumped up charges of assault. Denied entry into public spaces in the university, forced to vacate their hostel rooms, faced with an institutional boycott: they were not being punished so much as they were being ataught a lessona. This aggressive stance of the administration reflects exclusion and boycott which are essential to the way caste is practised in the most regressive of social setups- the exact opposite of universities!

In excluding these students, the university administration and certain political outfits proclaimed them to be aanti-nationala because of their political activism. And after Rohithas death, the same set of administrators and political figures are oscillating between afeeling the paina to questioning whether he actually was Dalit! Ranged against these desperate attempts at damage control by university administration and the government is a tide which has been building up for far too long aRohith Vemula was a part of it. If there is anything we know about him, it is the deep and powerful critique he had of the Hindu nationalist ideology, communalism and casteism that this government embodies.

While many have expressed their condemnation of the role of the University of Hyderabad administration and representatives of government, there is another kind of probing and questioning that we as university students need to do. Casteism exists not only in its most obvious appearances but also in its many silent, invisible and everyday forms. As a poet recently remarked, aThe suicide of a Dalit student is not just an individual exit strategy, it is a shaming of society that has failed him or hera . As students inhabiting an academic as well as a social space, the experience of caste is reflected in what we read and research on, how we think of amerita, where we stand on the question of reservations, who we make friends with, what we make of othersa backgrounds and if caste is even a question for us.

As a community of students, we are in the thick of a crucial churning. And we must collectively think and act upon it. The struggle being spearheaded by the All India Joint Action Committee for Social Justice must be made stronger against the tide of counter-revolution that is spreading around us. With this, the demands put forward by the committee are being reiterated here:

Punish the culprits under the SC/ ST atrocity act.

Bandaru Dattatreya, Union Cabinet Minister of State for Labour and Employment.

Appa Rao, Vice Chancellor (University of Hyderabad)

Alok Pandey, Chief Proctor

Susheel Kumar, ABVP President

Ramchandra Rao, MLC

2. Remove P. Appa Rao from the post of Vice Chancellor.

3.Sack the MHRD minister Smriti Irani.

4.Introduce and implement Rohith Act that provides legislative protection to students from marginalised communities in higher education.

5.University of Hyderabad administration must employ a family member of Rohith Vemula and give his family 50 lakhs as compensation.

6.Drop the false police cases filed on five Dalit research scholars immediately and unconditionally.
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This story is the fourth in a statewide series about cyber security and small businesses, supported by the Michigan Small Business Development Center . Read the rest of the series here Expanding to work with larger partners or clients is exciting for any small business. But it also brings with it some significant new risks in terms of cybersecurity.And that's in addition to the cybersecurity risks small businesses face even before they start to expand. Jon Oberheide, co-founder and CTO of Ann Arbor security company Duo Security , says cybersecurity is a "real challenge," the scope of which many small businesses don't fully comprehend. Small businesses lack the financial resources and personnel their larger counterparts have to protect themselves from cyber attacks, and hackers are taking notice."Attackers have realized that smaller organizations are a soft target," Oberheide says. "While they might result in a smaller payout individually than a larger organization, it's easy for cyber criminals to scale their attacks, and there're millions of such businesses globally to go after."While larger companies might have the financial wherewithal to weather the storm of a hack, Oberheide says a cyber attack can "effectively wipe out" a small business. And developing new relationships with larger partners only paints a bigger target on a small business's back. Oberheide points to the much-publicized 2013 cyber attack on Target, in which hackers accessed as many as 40 million Target customer accounts and made off with credit and debit card numbers and other personal information.But the attack, whose victims Target settled with for a whopping $10 million, started from a much humbler place. The hackers accessed Target's systems with credentials stolen from Fazio Mechanical , a Pennsylvania-based refrigeration company that had worked with Target as a subcontractor."This is a common occurrence in the real world," says Oberheide.Although moving up in the world can draw fresh and unwanted hacker attention to a small business, new partnerships with larger organizations can also open up new ways to keep a small business safe in the digital world. Oberheide notes that larger businesses may exercise due cyber-diligence with a new, smaller partner by imposing new security standards on them. That could include demonstrating their security is up to snuff with a service organization controls (SOC) report or an ISO 27001 certification."If the small business is a service provider to the larger organization, the additional security controls and certifications may be a challenge, but will also level up the maturity of the business when it comes to security," Oberheide says.The transition for an expanding small business could also bring access to other useful new resources. While some small businesses start out building their own digital infrastructure, there can be significant benefits to outsourcing email, data centers and other infrastructure to the cloud-based services that a larger partner may offer. Oberheide says this can cut costs and improve productivity, as well as offering a more secure environment for a small business' infrastructure."While moving services and data to cloud services may make some businesses nervous, it really is a boon for security," Oberheide says.According to Lorne Groe, small businesses should be looking towards outsourcing those systems even before they start forming bigger partnerships. Groe is the COO and CFO of Deepfield , an Ann Arbor security company. He also previously worked on scaling smaller businesses including Brand.net (since acquired by Valassis ) and Triplex (since acquired by infoUSA )."Businesses wait too long to outsource their data center," Groe says. "They try to build it in their own closet. And really [Amazon Web Services] is a great option for folks. Google has the same products. Microsoft has similar products and so do traditional data center guys as well."So what's a small business to do to keep its cybersecurity up to snuff for the possibility of moving forward with larger partners? Groe says it's important for small businesses to be open-minded and proactive about developing and protecting their infrastructure."There are a lot of folks, and we deal with them even at Deepfield, where they say, 'I'll never use a hosted service. It has to be in my data center, in my infrastructure,'" he says. "It's just a legacy way to think. But some people kind of grew up on that and that's how they do business. So when they go to a startup, they bring that mentality."Oberheide lists his top three tips for strengthening cybersecurity in a growing small business: keep your software up to date, use encryption, and use two-factor authentication. The first two steps seem rather basic, but Oberheide says they can be challenging for small businesses who don't have the IT capability larger businesses do. Where a larger company might provide corporate computers and mobile devices with regularly updated software, "BYOD"bring your own deviceis often standard procedure for their smaller counterparts."Beyond mobile devices, employees may be using personal or shared computersto access corporate resources, and there's very little an organization can do to prevent that potentially risky behavior," Oberheide says.Oberheide is partial towards his third tipusing two-factor authenticationbecause it's his company's specialty. (Cyber experts back up his assertion that the technologywhich one-ups the traditional password by requiring a second, independent point of user identificationis becoming increasingly accessible, prevalent, and important.)In any case, Oberheide says it's important for any small business to "focus on the fundamentals" of cybersecuritywhether it's just getting started, or building its first relationships with larger companies."Getting the most bang for your buck is critical," Oberheide says. "Ensuring that any security controls are easy to use and manage is key."This story is a part of a statewide series about cyber security and small businesses edited by Lauren Fay Carlson. Support for this series is provided by the Small Business Development Center , which has just launched a free online security assessment tool and resources at www.SmallBusinessBigThreat.com to help small businesses measure their cyber security preparedness.Patrick Dunn is an Ann Arbor-based freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter @patrickdunnhere Photos by Doug Coombe
When Detroit Economic Growth Corporation CEO Rodrick Miller took the pulpit at the old St. Columba Church on Monday morning, it wasn't to preach the "good news" you'd typically hear on a Sunday. Instead, he was preaching the gospel of small business in Detroit.

"Ain't no party like a Detroit party 'cause a Detroit party don't stop," he called to an energized audience packed into the pews of the historic church in the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood on the city's east side. "It's a great time to be in Detroit!"

The crowd was gathered to celebrate the latest winners of

Mayor Mike Duggan took the stage after Miller, adding a few thoughts on the important role neighborhood small businesses have to play in the Detroit comeback story.

"In my mind, the real test of Detroit's recovery is whether it was going to include everybody," said the mayor. "Because not everybody can have an office in one of those big buildings downtown. In fact, most of the economic recovery coming in this country is being generated by small businesses, and in Detroit, we have a huge amount of entrepreneurial talent."

That was reflected when over 300 small business and commercial property owners submitted applications for the inaugural round of Motor City Match, which granted 10 local businesses a total of $500,000 in October. Those awards ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 per business. Eighty-seven other applicants received awards in the form of technical assistance through Motor City Match's network of business services providers, which includes organizations like Build Institute, TechTown, and ProsperUS.

Monday marked the second round of Motor City Match awards, which were granted to businesses located across the city, from the Avenue of Fashion in northwest Detroit to Jefferson Chalmers on Detroit's east side.

This year's cash prize winners include:

Beautiful Bridal LLC , a bridal gown boutique co-owned by Vallery Hyduk and reality TV star Keasha Rigsby of Say Yes to the Dress opening on E. Jefferson. Award amount: $50,000.

, a bridal gown boutique co-owned by Vallery Hyduk and reality TV star Keasha Rigsby of Say Yes to the Dress opening on E. Jefferson. Award amount: $50,000. Astute Artistry , a licensed trade school for fashion, film and makeup opening in southwest Detroit. Award amount: $50,000.

, a licensed trade school for fashion, film and makeup opening in southwest Detroit. Award amount: $50,000. Pharmacy 4 Less , an independent retail pharmacy that is expanding to offer patient consultation, prescription and non-prescription products on Gratiot Avenue. Award amount: $75,000.

, an independent retail pharmacy that is expanding to offer patient consultation, prescription and non-prescription products on Gratiot Avenue. Award amount: $75,000. Ali-Wali Child Care Center , a one of a kind Islamic childcare center that models Montessori education opening in the Banglatown neighborhood. Award amount: $10,000.

, a one of a kind Islamic childcare center that models Montessori education opening in the Banglatown neighborhood. Award amount: $10,000. Woodbridge Bikes and Coffee , a lifestyle retail boutique that will specialize in the commuting cyclist. Award amount: $20,000.

, a lifestyle retail boutique that will specialize in the commuting cyclist. Award amount: $20,000. R&L Color Graphics , a graphics, printing and publishing company that documents family legacies in the form of obituaries and photo biographies. Award amount: $20,000.

, a graphics, printing and publishing company that documents family legacies in the form of obituaries and photo biographies. Award amount: $20,000. Detroit Sip , a community gathering space selling Detroit-produced coffee, tea, doughnuts, pastries and other hometown products. Award amount: $35,000.

, a community gathering space selling Detroit-produced coffee, tea, doughnuts, pastries and other hometown products. Award amount: $35,000. I'm Here LLC , a leading edge property and business development company redeveloping the historic Hunter's Supper Club on Livernois into a mixed-use facility that will house several businesses. Award amount: $100,000.

, a leading edge property and business development company redeveloping the historic Hunter's Supper Club on Livernois into a mixed-use facility that will house several businesses. Award amount: $100,000. Slyde , a gourmet slider restaurant that will occupy one of the spaces in the mixed-use redevelopment of the historic Hunter's Supper Club on Livernois. Award amount: $45,000.

According to a statement from Motor City Match, the program has leveraged its initial $1 million in grants to attract an additional $5 million in investments in small businesses and commercial properties located throughout the city.

Model D will continue to follow the progress of Motor City Match grantees as they put their awards to work.

Matthew Lewis is Model D's managing editor. Follow him on Twitter
 New poll shows that, even among younger voters, support for the death penalty remains solid | Main | "Gender, Risk Assessment, and Sanctioning: The Cost of Treating Women Like Men" 

January 28, 2016

Diving deep into latest data showing significant uptick in homicides in 2015

The folks at Wonkblog have this effective new posting, headlined "More people were murdered last year than in 2014, and no ones sure why," which provides lots of interesting data on the significant increase in homicides in major cities in 2015. It also highlights why simple explanations for this recent homicide increase (or prior decreases) are hard to come by. I recommend the full piece, and here are excerpts:

Wonkblog analysis of preliminary crime data found that about 770 more people were killed in major cities last year than the year before, the worst annual change since 1990. The killings increased as some law enforcement officials and conservative commentators were warning that violent crime was on the rise amid a climate of hostility toward police. They said protests and intense scrutiny of officers who used lethal force had caused officers to become disengaged from their jobs, making streets more dangerous. Some have called it the "Ferguson effect," after the St. Louis suburb in which Michael Brown Jr. was shot and killed by a police officer in 2014. A closer look at the figures, however, suggests no single explanation for the increases and reveals no clear pattern among those cities that experienced the most horrific violence. Several cities that recorded the largest increases in homicides -- Nashville and Washington, D.C., for instance -- had no widely publicized, racially charged killings by police. Many other big cities recorded modest increases or even declines in the number of homicides, with no deviation from the pattern of recent years.... Public safety has been improving for two decades, and lethal violence in large cities is still rare by historical standards. Twice as many people were killed in those 50 cities in 1991 as in 2015. "You certainly wouldn't want to say the sky is falling," said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Nonetheless, last year's interruption in the decline in homicides has experts concerned. They say it's too early to know what caused the change, or whether it will endure. It's not clear if there is a Ferguson effect, or if the homicides are a result of the heroin epidemic, reduced police department budgets, a decline in the number of convicts behind bars or other factors entirely. "There's no national pattern," said Franklin Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California at Berkeley.... Stephens, of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, ticked off a list of other theories for the increase in violence. Perhaps relaxed gun laws in some states are making firearms more widely available, and more arguments are being settled with lethal weapons as a result. Stephens also noted that authorities are locking up fewer people in prison, and perhaps more dangerous criminals were on the street last year. Federal data, however, suggest that the reduction in the incarcerated population over the past several years is mainly a consequence of decreasing admissions, rather than a change in the number of prisoners released annually, which has also declined. In 2014, just 582,000 prisoners were let go from state and federal prisons, compared with 683,000 in 2008.... Additionally, both those explanations are complicated by the absence of any regional pattern in the data. There were more killings in Nashville, but the total in Memphis declined by 1 percent. The number of homicides increased 25 percent in Houston, but decreased 9 percent in San Antonio. There were seven fewer homicides last year than in 2014 in Fresno, Calif., a decline of 15 percent. Meanwhile, up Highway 99 in Sacramento, there were 43 killings last year, an increase of 54 percent. "Everything is basically anecdotal," Stephens said. "There's not a clear national picture that I've been able to discern of what might be contributing to the changes that weve seen in so many cities."

Bill Otis has some sharp commentary about these data and how Wonkblog reports it in this post at Crime & Consequences titled "The National Murder Crisis, Worse Than We Thought." In that post, Bill quickly mentions "that the increase in murder in 2015 was more than 25 times the total number of killers executed that year," but he disappointingly does not follow-up by noting that the one major city with the biggest decline in homicides in 2015 was also the city with the most headline-grabbing 2015 capital punishment trial: Boston. (I am generally disinclined to suggest there is a close relationship between the administration of the death penalty and homicide rates, but I still find notable that the dozen cities with the largest homicide increases in 2015 are all in states without the death penalty or with a capital punishment system not functioning properly.)

January 28, 2016 at 06:41 PM | Permalink

Comments

Well, the homicide rates may be up in 2015 but aren't the overall rates still lower than they've been since their peak years?

Posted by: Fred | Jan 28, 2016 7:21:24 PM

Any "blog" that consistently uses the adjective "pro-criminal" is hardly worth the time to read, much less argue with. I have NEVER seen a sight that only reports and exposes its "confirmation bias" as this sight.

Maybe the increase in murders is the result of college graduates being unable to repay their loans and live at the same time (sarcasm for those too dense).

Posted by: albeed | Jan 28, 2016 9:11:22 PM

"or with a capital punishment system not functioning properly"

where IS it functioning properly?

Posted by: Joe | Jan 28, 2016 11:29:50 PM

"Perhaps relaxed gun laws in some states are making firearms more widely available, and more arguments are being settled with lethal weapons as a result."

That should be pretty easy to check--how many suspects in murders had the legal right to carry?

What seems more likely: fewer gun crime prosecutions, lax immigration enforcement (particularly with respect to deportable criminals) and letting a whole bunch of criminals out of prison (Cali/feds).

This isn't hard.

Posted by: federalist | Jan 29, 2016 9:16:40 AM

Can someone explain why Italy has 500 homicides per year and NO death penalty at all????

Posted by: claudio giusti | Jan 29, 2016 12:49:54 PM

The food?

Posted by: Joe | Jan 29, 2016 1:03:18 PM

chissa??? In 1991 homicides were 2.000

Posted by: claudio giusti | Jan 29, 2016 3:25:40 PM

One would think that 770 extra dead bodies would causes some alarm for those who think we're too mean on criminals and that we should be releasing a bunch more. But noooo.

Posted by: federalist | Jan 29, 2016 7:28:12 PM

I did this post, federalist, to highlight that I am alarmed by the uptick in homicides in 2015 that is calculated to have produced 770 extra dead bodies. But I wonder if you think I am justified in being even more alarmed by the estimated traffic fatality uptick in 2015 that, according to this NHTSA publication, may have produced perhaps as many as 2,500 extra dead bodies: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812217.pdf.

I focus often on traffic fatalities while others focus so much more on homicides, not only because MANY more lives seem to be at stake, but also because I believe it may be easier for truly innocent persons to avoid situations that create higher homicide risks, whereas it may be harder for truly innocent persons to avoid situations that can create higher traffic fatality risks. In addition, though I think we ought to spend considerable time and energy and money to seek to lower homicides in the US, the ready availability of guns and the violence that the drug war helps to fuel (and our relatively low modern homicide rates) often leads me to worry that we are more likely to hit a point of diminishing returns quickly in this space. In contrast, I think we still can do a lot on the roadways to avoid a much larger number of extra dead bodies.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 30, 2016 1:37:02 PM

I'm against the death penalty but do agree to a large degree with Prof. "Doug B." that there is so much out there in the criminal justice system to be worried about and avoidable deaths as a whole (e.g., would breathalyzers being required in cars help deter at least some major injuries? we can talk about how they can be worked around, but that is true for loads of useful things ... question is as a whole) that is crowded out by concerns about the death penalty and murders. This doesn't make the last two things unimportant.

Posted by: Joe | Jan 30, 2016 3:30:30 PM

Come on Doug--I don't like traffic fatalities any more than you do. The difference, of course, is that I am not a traffic safety expert, and I am willing to listen to ideas (and I am no fan of drunk drivers), The soft-on-crime crowd isn't willing to listen. And while I don't lump you in, necessarily, with that group, your playbook of relentless questioning, which is generally used as a defense of daffy ideas gets ancient.

At the end of the day, and I will never ever let this drop--you defend a SCOTUS opinion that stated that there is evidence to support the ridiculous proposition that releasing prisoners from an overcrowded environment (where they have, according to the opinion been hardened by said overcrowding) could improve public safety. Statements like that ought to embarrass the legal community.

Posted by: federalist | Jan 30, 2016 10:03:24 PM

federalist, I defend that SCOTUS opinion (Plata) because it is right on the law AND because you continue to misunderstand and mischaracterize a single sentence that was part of Justice Kennedy's lengthy analysis of the evidence presented below. And meanwhile you ignore the remarkable sentences by Justice Scalia, at the very start of his dissent in Plata, that the text of the law passed by Congress ought to be essentially ignored ("bent") based on his view of "common sense." The start of this Plata dissent has always struck me as far more embarrassing to anyone who holds up Justice Scalia (or Justice Thomas, who joined it) as some kind of legal paragon of textualist virtue.

Meanwhile, federalist, I wonder if and why you would consider yourself more of a criminal justice/homicide expert than a traffic safety expert in this context or others. I assume you are not a criminal nor that you know personally many folks who are killers or are victims of killers; but I suspect you do drive and have had at least one traffic accident and likely know people who have killed others on the road or have been killed on the road. I say all this not to assert you are a traffic expert, but rather to question your curious statement that you care more about a much smaller number of lives murdered than killed on roadways because of your limited knowledge of traffic safety.

I surmise from your other statement that what really drives you is not any expertise, but a sharp dislike for the claims of people who view criminal justice issues differently from you (the "soft-on-crime crowd"). That is fine, but it is an important and telling insight that you are not motivated really by a concern for saving the most innocent lives, but rather by your interest in attacking those which whom you disagree.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 31, 2016 11:23:29 AM

Actually, Doug, I know at least two people from my neighborhood who went on to become murderers. I grew up in very rough areas. But no, I am not a criminal, but I am a lawyer, and I am well-informed about criminal justice issues (they tend, I think, to be simpler than traffic safety issues too, and there are so many tradeoffs with traffic safety). Obviously, drunk driving is an issue, and it continues to be. But the speed tradeoffs, how "hot spots" are identified etc. is outside of my area of expertise.

And no I don't mischaracterize the sentence--first off, that sentence is wrong on the law because the leap from "less overcrowding = less crime" to "it would help public safety to reduce overcrowding here by releasing a bunch of people hardened by overcrowding" is without basis, so to the extent the trial court relied on that leap (really, it was a throwaway) that should have led to a reversal. Second, it's just nuts, and anyone with an ounce of common sense would know it. The larger point, of course, is that five Justices on SCOTUS signed off on something that irrational. Scary too that you would also.

As for Scalia's dissent, I haven't read it in a while, but I am happy to debate that.

Posted by: federalist | Jan 31, 2016 11:41:39 AM

"That is fine, but it is an important and telling insight that you are not motivated really by a concern for saving the most innocent lives, but rather by your interest in attacking those which whom you disagree."

I was going to let that one stand as a testament to flabby thinking--but alas, I cannot. As much as I enjoy attacking (read poking holes in silly platitudes of) the "soft on crime crowd", I like more traffic safety not less (acknowledging that there are trade-offs inherent in building a traffic system). This is a criminal law blog--not a traffic safety blog. And if some guy gets an overly lenient sentence for DUI, you post about it and people whine in here about how mean the justice system was, I will likely debate them as well.

Posted by: federalist | Jan 31, 2016 4:32:15 PM

federalist: I am not going to go through, yet again, how you misunderstand and mischaracterize a single sentence in Plata. But I am amused by your mania concerning it.

I am also amused that you view criminal justice issues to be simpler than traffic safety issues, and I am especially intrigued that you apparently see that there are "so many tradeoffs" involved in trying to make our roads safer but seemingly do not see "so many tradeoffs" involved in trying to make other parts of our society safer.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 31, 2016 11:27:20 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75ifn39Y8V0

Posted by: Joe | Feb 1, 2016 1:08:50 AM

"mischaracterize and misunderstand"--nope--identify a leap o' logic that Bob Beamon would be proud of

As for the traffic vs. crime--good grief Doug--for example, let's take LEDs for lighting in northern climes--guess what, no heat = traffic lights that get snowed up--so who makes the environmental vs. safety decision? How far north do we do LEDs---that's hard. Obviously, coming up with the precise sentence for each and every offender that exactly matched his/her danger/moral culpability would be similarly hard--so, guess what, we simplify the process with MMs etc.---why, because we recognize that (a) human judgment is fallible and (b) non-good faith errors get made (see, e.g., Columbus) because people want to feel good about being nice to criminals. There is risk to be allocated, and it is allocated to the criminal. Now I grant you that there are some sentences (or prosecutions) that are abjectly cruel (e.g., prosecuting 15 year old girls for sexting selfies), and also there are some sentences that are completely irrational (besides the fact that I don't like irrationality, the cumulative effect of irrational sentences undermine confidence in the justice system which undermines support for it). Ive said things along these lines many times, by the way. And, I have praised strong clemency regimes. But when it gets right down to it--you support mass releases with little or no review--you won't say it out loud, but you believe in them--come what may.

But hey---you keep comparing crack dealers to those who fought de jure segregation.

And you keep trying to argue that I don't care about motorist fatalities.

Posted by: federalist | Feb 1, 2016 7:27:00 AM

federalist, I have never said you do not care about motorist fatalities, rather I simply asked you if you think it improper that I am even more alarmed by many more "extra deal bodies" (2500) on the roadways in 2015 than the 770 extra dead bodies you think should be alarming advocated for sentencing reforms. I continue to hope to get a straight answer from you in response the this straight question.

Instead, tellingly, you are quick to say when I highlight the alarming 2015 driving fatality data that traffic safety involves a bunch of trade offs. I agree, and so does public safety (as you seem to agree). And we also agree that often these safety issues are about risk allocation AND wise use of limited government resources. For reasons I sought to explain and based on the data from 2015, I still think more government resources spent making our roads safer, and less spent incarcerating Weldon Angelos, would lower the risk of extra dead bodies. And I do not mean to assert that any of this is simple, but I do mean to try to make sure taxpayer investments in improving public safety are generally as sound as possible in light of the latest data.

Posted by: Doug B. | Feb 1, 2016 10:50:25 AM

Post a comment
 Lots of notable new sentencing stories via How Appealing | Main | You be the state sentencing judge: how much prison time for former state official guilty of (small-time?) marijuana dealing 

January 29, 2016

Forces in Oklahoma talking about criminal justice reform via ballot initiative ... prompting question "is direct democracy the best way to approach criminal justice reform?"

This local article, headlined "Coalition wants to give voters a choice on criminal justice reform in Oklahoma," highlights that a number of prominent advocates for criminal justice reform in the Sooner State want to soon have citizens voting directly on these reforms. Here are the basics:

A politically diverse group of state officials, policy advocates, and members of the business community came together Wednesday to announce they were joining forces to stop a problem the state can no longer ignore: Oklahoma's high incarceration rates. We're running a factory to create future felons, said Bancfirst Corp. Chairman Gene Rainbolt. It's ridiculous. Addressing the media at the state Capitol, Rainbolt was among about one dozen other prominent Oklahomans who said they had formed a coalition, known as Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, and they plan to take the issue straight to the voters through two ballot initiatives. We need to correct corrections, and if we're going to call it the Department of Corrections we need to do some correcting. If not now, when? We are at 119 percent capacity, said Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, referencing the state's swelling prison population. More than 28,000 inmates  the highest prison population the state has ever seen  sit behind bars in Oklahoma today. If successful, the coalition will place two ballot measures before voters, said former state House Speaker Kris Steele. The first will lower several nonviolent felonies that would warrant prison time, such as simple drug possession and writing fraudulent checks, to misdemeanors that would call for community-based treatment.... The second initiative would task the Office of Management and Enterprise Services with tracking the number of offenders who would be diverted to treatment rather than prison and calculate the savings. Those funds would be held in a lock box, to be distributed to county governments for substance abuse treatment, mental health care, and offender supervision. This money could be going to schools, health care, and the other building blocks for a good state, said David Blatt, president of the Oklahoma Policy Institute.... In order to get both questions on a state ballot, the coalition will have to gather almost 68,000 signatures for each initiative. Several bills have been filed for the upcoming Legislative session that will address many of the same solutions proposed in the ballot measures, said Rep. Peterson, and their hope is to complement those efforts. Peterson noted Steele's work years before with the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, a sweeping criminal justice reform bill passed by the state Legislature in 2011. JRI would have moved Oklahoma's justice system in a similar direction, but it was never fully funded and eventually stymied. Peterson said reform of this level doesn't happen overnight. Speaker Steele really started in 2011, but it's taken this long to get to this point, she said when asked if the political climate is right for sentencing reform. So, it takes a while.

I find this story of taking reform efforts directly to the voters in Oklahoma especially in the wake of California Gov Jerry Brown earlier this week (as blogged here) proposing a state ballot initiative to expand parole and make other reforms that I would usually expect to be pursued via traditional legislative action. And, of course, as often highlighted in posts at my other blog, Marijuana Law, Policy and Reform, ballot initiatives have been the primary driver of major marijuana reforms in the states over the last decade.

I tend to be a huge fan of so-called "direct democracy" for a wide number of legal process reasons, but these latest developments in California and now Oklahoma leave me to wonder a lot if criminal justice reform by plebiscite ought to be seen as a truly welcome development.

January 29, 2016 at 01:29 PM | Permalink

Comments

Doug,

What in particular about the latest reforms have raised your concerns? I share your wariness about propositions, even on subjects I generally agree with. One of my concerns is that a ballot initiative usually entails a vested interest putting together an uncompromising law that lacks the nuance or compromise (or coherence) required to pass legislation in most places.

Posted by: john | Jan 29, 2016 6:07:52 PM

It sounds good, implementation is tough sledding. If key legislators are engaged, it could pass and do a world of good.

Im truely impressed that states and federal are continueally willing to bring up reform.

We have made progress in the last 10 yrs, with a ton more to go.

Im definitely not a politician, im pure technical in designing it, test your model, revise it, then implement it. Monitor the effects and modify again.

This is not the life cycle of laws. Its decades before the new law even gets talked about.

But we are on the threshold of the decades, we have arrived at least chipping away at it.

If we looked back 10 yrs ago at the federal system, we have made progress.

Acca, constructive possession, drug mandatories and length of supervised release need to cut dramatically.

Our war on drug Lords say they need mandatories to get terrerists, drug king cartel king pins. Then make the mandatories for them, not the every day gardem variety case.

Enough said.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Jan 29, 2016 11:36:24 PM

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Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, a column that explores what one can rent for a set dollar amount in various San Francisco neighborhoods. Is one person's studio another person's townhouse? Let's find out! Today's price: $2,700.



 Coming in right on budget at $2800/month, this "professionally designed and remodeled" apartment in Bernal Heights has one bedroom and one bathroom. Highlights include 10' ceilings, a huge barn door that separates the living area from the bedroom, natural Douglas Fir hardwood floors, and a dishwasher and garbage disposal in the kitchen. One more highlight includes the shared backyard complete with mature fruit trees and a shared deck. No pets, parking, or laundry.



 Do you like vintage things? What about macrame owl art and earthy stoneware? If that's your thing, you'll like this apartment in the Inner Richmond for $2,700/month. It's charming, it's a corner complex, it hasn't been updated since the 70s. You will either love or loathe the funky kitchen. Same goes for the slightly less loud bathroom (it has a lavender toilet). No laundry or pets, but parking is included.



 This "large, renovated penthouse studio" in the Outer Richmond is quintessential San Francisco: Gleaming hardwood floors, mouldings galore, bay windows, an awkward (although quite nice) kitchen, a walk-in closet big enough to consider just moving your bed into, etc. Again, the kitchen is awkward but nice. There are new stainless steel appliances (including a dishwasher!) and granite countertops. Another big perk is Golden Gate Park is a mere two block walk. Cats are OK; parking in the garage is available; laundry isn't in the building.



 This studio apartment in Hayes Valley comes in under budget at $2,695/month. We lovelove!the large window above the stove in the kitchen, plus the kitchen's got tall ceilings and lots of storage. But perhaps the biggest perk of this apartment is that cats and dogs are allowed. Other perks include a nice bathroom with a window, nice hardwood flooring throughout, and architectural elements. Laundry's in the building and there's parking in the garage.




"Coming Out," Joey Plaster tells 48 Hills, "originally referred to the act of being formally presented at drag balls that gay men patterned on respectable debutante balls." And in San Francisco, what balls they had!

Plaster curated one of San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society's current shows, "Reigning Queens," a series of shots taken of the '70s drag scene in SF. Through the photos on display, you can relive the heyday of the Imperial Court, an organization and a culture of parties and galas from the city of that era.

As the GLBT Historical Society tells us, "The court was founded in October 1965 at the Beaux Arts Ball, an annual fundraiser for the Tavern Guild, a local gay bar-owners association. Celebrated drag performer and gay activist Jose Sarria was named queen of the ball; in an imperial gesture, Sarria instead proclaimed herself Empress of San Francisco. The community accepted Joses decree, and the Imperial Court was born."





Sarria's Empress I was the "Widow Norton," a reference to the famed, self-proclaimed Emperor Norton I of San Francisco. And that legacy lives on.

The photos help us appreciate the legacy of the Imperial Court, a charitable organization of drag royalty marking its 50th anniversary this year, Plaster tells 48 Hills. "Many of the queens pictured in the photos are past Empresses, Czarinas, and Baronesses who were instrumental in raising funds for the citys gay social service and political organizations."

Being a woman," said photographer Roz Joseph, whose primary subject was architecture, "no longer young, willing to listen, non-critical, unbiased, I made friends with these strangers." As the Chronicle recalls her words, she wrote that she "had access.

But Joseph's camera, of course, was trained on performance already intended as art.

What I do is social satire, in a sense," one queen, Ambi Sextrous, reportedly said. "Im trying to throw peoples stereotypes in their faces."
For one time only, the San Francisco Zoo will be FREE to all who visit on January 29, 2016! (pic by May Woon) pic.twitter.com/jXXaTaqDKL  San Francisco Zoo (@sfzoo) January 29, 2016

Hey, are you "working from home" today due to the Super Bowl mess downtown? Or just looking for a reason to flake? Then maybe a free trip to the SF Zoo is in order.

The Zoo, which typically charges a (staggering to some) $16 per adult ticket, has a number of days during the year when San Franciscans can get in gratis with proof of residence. As the Zoo noted via Twitter, however, today's free day extends to everyone, not just folks with SF ID.

And there's plenty to do at the Zoo today! Here's today's keeper talk and feeding schedule:

One thing you won't be able to check out today: Most of their lions. That's because they need privacy because they are doin' it! For real. Per the Zoo:

Starting Thursday August 13, The Lion House will be closed to the public. Our lions, Jahari, Sukari and Amanzi are part of the African Lion Species Survival Program (SSP), and as with our other SSP cat species, such as Sumatran tigers and fishing cats, they are in an active conservation breeding program. As we have done in the past, we will be closing the Lion House to give them more privacy for this process. While the lions will be provided the opportunity to come and go from habitat to the back of house all of our other cats will be visible outside in their exhibits.

The Zoo's open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today, with the last visitors allowed in at 3:30. So if you're looking for some animal therapy on the cheap, flake on work and head over.
SINGAPORE 60's: ANDY's POP MUSIC INFLUENCE IS A PERSONAL MUSIC, MEMORY TRAIL. BLOGGER DOES NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO VIDEOS, AUDIO TRACKS AND IMAGES. THEY ARE UPLOADED FOR FUN, EDUCATIONAL, ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES AND HAVE BEEN CREDITED. BLOG IS NOT SPONSORED IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER. INFORM BLOGGER OF COPYRIGHT ISSUES AND POST WILL BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT COPY THE POSTS; GET PERMISSION N CREDIT ME IF YOU DO. ANDY LIM LA (NOVEMBER, 2008) - ()
SCREENINGS

Free blood pressure screenings, 9:30 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays at Countryside Senior Living, front lobby. No appointment necessary.

PROGRAMS/SELF-HELP GROUPS

Al-Anon Information Center, call 255-6724.

Al-Anon and Alateen, meetings locally. For times, dates and locations of area meetings, call 255-6724.

Alcoholics Anonymous, beginners information, call 252-1333.

Arc of Woodbury County, serving the mentally challenged, 5:15 p.m. meeting, second Monday of the month at Mid-Step Services, 4303 Stone Ave. For families and interested persons.

Child Care Resource and Referral, provides resources, education and advocacy for children, parents, and child care providers. Assists in child care needs. For more information, call 712-277-1180.

Co-dependence Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays at First Lutheran Church, Fireside Room.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA), 10 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.

Compassionate Friends, 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month (third Thursday in November and second Sunday December) in Mercy Medical Center's Leiter Room. For families who have lost children. Contact Nancy Webb 712-212-4032 or Don Mulder 712-541-5512.

Children of Divorce, to help children cope with the challenges of parental separation or divorce. Call 712-279-2373 for more information.

CLINICS

Siouxland District Health immunization clinics, call for appointment, 712-279-6119 or 1-800-587-3005.

INFORMATION

Dual Recovery Anonymous, 12-step peer support meeting, 4 to 5 p.m. Wednesdays at 625 Court St. Framework of recovery for those with addiction and emotional or psychiatric illness. For more information, call Mike at 255-1691.

Family and Addictive Illness series, for more information, call 234-2300.

Iowa Fathers, 6 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday of each month at Hope Lutheran Church, Education Building, 218 W. 18th St., South Sioux City, Neb. Support group to help single, divorcing and divorced parents residing in the state of Iowa.

Mercy Pathways Outpatient Program, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the third floor, Mercy's Central Medical Building, 801 Fifth St., Suite 360. Provides hope, help, opportunity to connect through group therapy for individuals experiencing personal, relationship, psychiatric issues. For more information, call 712-279-5991.

Narcotics Anonymous, meetings daily, various times, dates and locations. For more information, call 712-279-0733.

Overeaters Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays at Floyd Valley Hospital, Lower Level, 714 Lincoln St. NE, Le Mars, Iowa; 1 p.m. Tuesdays at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3700 Indian Hills Drive; 6 p.m. Tuesdays at St. John's Lutheran Church, 402 Lane Ave., Storm Lake; 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Church of the Nazarene, 226 N. Main St., Viborg, S.D.; 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. Saturdays at Newman Center, 320 E. Cherry St., Vermillion, S.D.; 10:30 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. A 12-step recovery program for people who have problems with food and weight. No fees.

St. Lukes Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, Tuesday and Thursday on fifth floor of St. Luke's, located at 2720 Stone Park Blvd. Offers several levels of outpatient care including partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and group therapy. This program provides support and integrated treatment to individuals experiencing personal or relationship issues as a result of their mental illness. For more information and admission criteria, call 712-279-3906.

Sobriety By Faith, 8:30 a.m. Saturdays at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For more information, call James Mothershead at 712-577-9715.

The Link-Recovery and Freedom, at PMA Building, 6000 Gordon Drive; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday workshop, and Christian 12-step meeting 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For all ages. Call Dee at 389-7432.

Women in Recovery, meets monthly at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For details, call 712-255-4623.

Tarahouse Meditation Center, 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, all at 3112 Rebecca St. Three easy 10 minute sessions in small group; beginners welcome. For more information, call 490-6410.

Blood pressure and blood sugar screening, 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays in the lobby at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Free to public.

SUPPORT GROUPS

NAMI Siouxland (National Alliance on Mental Illness), 6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of the month, Friendship House, 1101 Court St. For individuals and family members dealing with mental illness. 712-255-4209.

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hawkeye Club basement, 420 Jones St. For more information, call 277-5935.

Celebrate Recovery, Bible-based 12-step recovery group. Thursdays at 6:30 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive. Daycare provided. 712-490-3343.

PFLAG of Siouxland, (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), 7 p.m., fourth Monday of January, March, May, July, September and November. St. Mark ELCA Church, 5200 Glenn Ave., in the upstairs meeting area. 712-258-3116.

Singles widowed and divorced, all ages, 4 p.m., Sundays. McDonald's at Sixth Street and Lewis Boulevard. 712-252-2675.

HIV/AIDS Support Group, meets weekly. For more information, call Darla or Teri at Siouxland Community Health Center, 712-252-2477 or 888-371-1965.

La Leche League of Siouxland, breastfeeding support group meets every third Thursday at 11 a.m. at Morningside Lutheran Church. Children are welcome. For more information, call Mary at 712-546-7280 or Jacquie at 712-255-2998.

Living Each Day Cancer Support Group, 7-8 p.m. second Thursday of the month, Floyd Valley Hospital, Conference Center Room 2, Le Mars, Iowa. Open to all cancer patients, cancer survivors and family members. No charge. Pre-register by calling 712-546-3441 or 800-642-6074, ext. 441.

Mom and Baby Support Group, 10-11 a.m. last Monday of the month at the Orange City (Iowa) Hospital, lower level. For new moms and babies. 712-737-5260.

Tri-State Sober Project 12-step meeting, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Friendship Community Church, 305 Sergeant Square Drive, Sergeant Bluff. 6-7 p.m., Thursdays, Transitional Services of Iowa, 1221 Pierce St., Sioux City.

Doug's Donors Support Group, information for organ donors and recipients, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 5:15-6:30 p.m. second and fourth Thursdays of the month at Mercy Cafeteria Woodbury Room. 712-277-1050.

Divorce Care, noon Sundays starting Jan. 10; GriefShare, 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays starting Jan. 12; Single & Parenting, 6:30 p.m. Thursdays starting Jan. 14; all at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

Multiple Sclerosis Support Group, 1:30-3:30 p.m. first Saturday of the month at the CNOS, Dakota Dunes. For anyone with MS and/or their families. Call Janet Limoges at 605-217-2726 prior to attending.

New Life Life Support Group, 3:30 p.m. every Saturday at 2929 W. Fourth St. Spiritual 12-step program. For more information, call Donald at 712-574-1744 or James at 712-255-7624.

Post Polio Support Group, 11 a.m. first Thursday of the month at Perkins Restaurant by Menards. 712-490-8213.

Relationship Support Group, 7 p.m. Fridays at Marketplace Mall. For more information, call 239-3129.

Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Individual and Support Groups. For more information, call CSADV in Sioux City at 712-258-7233; Plymouth County at 712-546-6764; Monona County at 712-423-3443. Advocacy and support available 24 hours a day at 1-800-982-7233. All services free of charge and confidential.

Sickle Cell Disease Support Group, 11 a.m. third Saturday of each month at St. Luke's Hospital, meeting room 1. For patients, their family and any concerned member. Call La'Keshia Rainey at 712-203-2019 for more information.

Sioux City Association of the Deaf, 7 p.m. third Saturday of the month at Morningside Church of Christ, 5015 Garretson Ave. Regular meeting, September-May; no meeting, June, July, August and December.

Siouxland Autism Support Group, second Thursday of the month at Northwest Area Education Agency, 1520 Morningside Ave. For more information, call Julie Case at 712-490-8939.

Siouxland Epilepsy Support Group, 5 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at Prestwick Apartment Clubhouse, 4230 Hickory Lane. For anyone diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy and family or friends. For more information, call Steve at 274-6927.

Siouxland IC support group, meets quarterly in Sioux City. For patients struggling with interstital cystitis. For more information, call Jacque Dundas 316-641-9766.

Siouxland Informational Group for the Blind, 2-5 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at Northern Hills Retirement Community, 4002 Teton Trace. For more information, call 712-266-8926 or 258-8151.

Grief support group, 5:30-7:30 p.m., beginning Oct. 5 for 13 weeks (may join at any time), Crescent Park United Methodist Church, 2826 Myrtle St., Sioux City. Scott, 712-899-6315.

Siouxland Ostomy Association, 2 p.m. first Sunday of each month (except September, which will be second Sunday; and no meetings June, July, August), in Room 300 at Mercy Medical Center, 801 Fifth St. For more information, call Dick Lindblom at 251-2453.

Siouxland Parkinson Disease Support Group, 1 p.m. fourth Monday of the month at Siouxland Center for Active Generations, 313 Cook St. For more information, call at Jack Scherrman at 712-277-9337.

Sojourners, support group for families of persons with life-threatening illness, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Room 416. For more information, call Marjorie Jarvill at 402-241-8637.

South Sioux City Weight Support Group, 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays at St. Paul United Methodist Church, South Sioux City. For more information, call 494-1401 or 494-2133.

Support groups at Disabilities Resource Center of Siouxland, 520 Nebraska St., Suite 101: Women's Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Wednesday of the month; LGBT Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Friday of the month; Adult ADHD, 6 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; Advocacy Group, 1:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month. For more information, call (712) 255-1065.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, group meetings various times, days and locations in Siouxland. For information on the chapter in your area, call 1-800-932-TOPS.

Voice Disorder Support Group, meets as needed at Mercy Medical Center, Buena Vista Room. 712-279-2686.

Women's Peer Support Group, in Wayne and South Sioux City, Neb., for those who have experienced domestic abuse. For more information, call the Wayne office at 402-375-4633 or 1-800-440-4633; in South Sioux City, call 402-494-7592. Help and support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services free and confidential.

Woodbury County D.M.D.A., noon-2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at Country Friendship Acres, 4501 West St.; 7-8 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at 515 Court St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at 441 W. Third St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at 409 W. Third St. in the Community Room. Support group for people with disabilities and mental disorders.

Natural Mamas in Siouxland, 1 p.m., third Tuesday of each month in the Garretson room of the Morningside Public Library. All ages of children are welcome to come with moms. For sharing natural living tips, recipes, natural remedies and health, homemaking, mothering, etc. For more information, call 402-913-0038 or visit their Facebook page.

A Step Beyond support group, 3:30 p.m. second Tuesday of the month, except for August, November and December when it meets at 5:30 p.m. (no meeting in January) at the Christy-Smith Resource Center, 1819 Morningside Ave. For more information, call 712-276-7319.

Divorce care, 5 p.m., Sundays. Fireside room, Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St.

Gamblers Anonymous meetings, 4 p.m. Thursday at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 315 Hamilton Blvd.; 7 p.m. Wednesday, Morningside Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave.; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, St. John Lutheran Church. 712-277-2901.

Art therapy support group, 5:30 p.m. second Thursday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. Registration required, call 252-9387.

After Breast Cancer Support Group, 5:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call Brenda, 252-9370.

After Prostate Cancer Support Group, 5:15 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call 252-9426.

Alzheimer's Association Big Sioux Chapter Support Group, 2 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; 4 p.m. third Tuesday of the month (under age 65) at 201 Pierce St., Suite 110 (Famous Dave's building); and 6 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the Barnes and Noble Cafe. For more information, call Emily Lord at 712-279-5802.

Christy-Smith Funeral Homes of Sioux City, extensive grief library at the Morningside location. Open to the public during weekday hours. For more information, call 276-7319.

Chronic Pain/Chronic Illness Support Group, 7:30 p.m. fourth Wednesday of the month in the lower level of the Orange City Hospital. For more information, call 712-737-5260.

Connections Area Agency on Aging and Mercy Medical Centers Older Adult Services Welcome to Medicare, 1:30-4 p.m., the first Friday of every month at Connections Area Agency on Aging, 2301 Pierce Street. To pre-register, or for more information, contact Connections Area Agency on Aging at 712-279-6900.
NEW YORK | "Dear Pope Francis," 10-year-old Mohammed begins, "Will the world be again as it was in the past?"

Signed "Respectfully yours," the boy wrote from a Jesuit-run school for refugee children in Syria and was treated to a long and personal answer from the pope himself. So were 29 other children who posed questions to Francis in letters from around the globe for a new book poignantly illustrated with their own artwork.

The book, "Dear Pope Francis," is out March 1 from Loyola Press in Chicago. It's a project that likely wouldn't have materialized without the help of the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit like the pope and the director of La Civilta Cattolica, a Roman Catholic journal published in Rome.

Tom McGrath of the Jesuit-founded publishing house co-edited the book with Spadaro after reaching out to the priest for help. Spadaro brought about 50 letters with questions to the pope so he could select 30. Spadaro sat with the pope as he responded to each. Francis often complimented the artwork of the children.

"He knows Pope Francis very well," McGrath said of Spadaro. "We tried to make it as easy for the pope as possible."

The pope's response to Mohammed spoke in part of suffering and the people who inflict it.

"There are those who manufacture weapons so that people fight each other and wage war. There are people who have hate in their hearts. There are people who are interested only in money and would sell everything for it. They would even sell other people," he wrote.

More to Mohammed's point, Francis answered: "No, when the time comes, the world will not be as it was. It will be far better than it was in the past."

Once the pope agreed to participate in the project, Loyola reached out to priests and lay people around the world to connect the publisher with children to write the letters.

The 30 kids in the book range in age from 6 to 13. In all, about 250 letters were received in 14 languages from 26 countries around the globe. The pope wound up with about 50 letters from which to choose.

"He loved the project right from the beginning," McGrath said. "He has this great affection for children, who have a great affection for him. He was surprised at the depth of the questions."

There was no condensing or editing of the pope's responses. In a 90-minute session with Spadaro last August in Rome, Francis responded verbally in a mixture of Italian and Spanish. Spadaro served as transcriber in addition to connecting Loyola Press with the Vatican.

"These are the pope's exact words," McGrath said. "At one point he mentioned, 'These are tough.' He realized that he owed the kids a deeper answer than right off the top of his head."

Spadaro said via email that the pope truly pondered when answering the children.

"Often he looked off into space and tried to imagine the child in front of him," he said. "And in his gaze I saw care, love."

Loyola will publish the book in English and Spanish. As an international Jesuit project, it will also be published simultaneously around the world, including in Brazil, Indonesia, Slovenia, Mexico and India.

Arrangements were still being made but Loyola Press plans to bring 10 of the children included in the book to Rome to meet the pope in person, hopefully in February before its March publication date.

"The pope is eager to meet them," McGrath said. "He was quick to say he would like to make that happen."

They'll be traveling with their parents from China, Ireland, Argentina, India, Canada, Kenya, Singapore, Australia, the United States and the Philippines.

Mohammed will not be among them, but 8-year-old Natasha from Kenya will make the trip to Rome. She asked the pope in her letter: "I would like to know more about Jesus Christ. How did he walk on water?"

The pope's response?

"You have to imagine Jesus walking naturally, normally. He did not fly over the water or turn somersaults while swimming," he wrote. "He walked as you walk! ... Jesus is God, and so he can do anything!"

While one child wanted to know why parents fight and another why the pope wears such a tall hat, 7-year-old William of the United States asked: "If you could do one miracle what would it be?"

"Dear William," the pope said. "I would heal children. I've never been able to understand why children suffer. It's a mystery to me. I don't have an explanation."
Pastor who was imprisoned in Iran returns home to Idaho

BOISE, Idaho | An American pastor who was imprisoned for nearly four years in Iran has returned home to Boise, Idaho.

KBOI-TV reports that Saeed Abedini landed Tuesday afternoon on a private plane. Abedini was one of four Americans released in Iran under a negotiated prisoner exchange on Jan. 16.

The 35-year-old Abedini spent the previous five days with his parents and sister at a secluded retreat in Asheville, North Carolina. His wife, Naghmeh Abedini, and their children originally planned to meet him at the retreat operated by the Rev. Franklin Graham.

The Boise man was detained in Iran for compromising national security, presumably because of Christian proselytizing. He was sentenced in 2013 to eight years in prison.

Accreditors looking into BYU law school due to LGBT policies

SALT LAKE CITY | Law school accreditors are investigating Brigham Young University amid claims that the Mormon church-owned institution violates nondiscrimination standards by expelling students who live in same-sex relationships or leave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before graduation.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the American Bar Association is reviewing a complaint from the activist group FreeBYU.

The group is also appealing a university-wide decision from a different accrediting group, which found no violation on the university's part in similar complaints on the religious-freedom issue.

A BYU spokeswoman says the university responded to a request for information from the bar association a few months ago.

The law school's last accreditation review was during the 2011-2012 school year. The next formal review is scheduled for the 2018-2019 year.

Vatican: Iran must join fight against terrorism

VATICAN CITY | Pope Francis has told Iran's president that Tehran should play a key role in stopping the spread of terrorism as the country tries to improve its image following an agreement on its nuclear program.

The pontiff warmly clasped the hand of President Hassan Rouhani at the Vatican Tuesday in the first official call paid on a pontiff by an Iranian president since 1999. They held 40 minutes of private talks before Rouhani met with other top Vatican officials. The Holy See says the "cordial" talks also stressed common spiritual values.

Usually it's the pope who asks his audience to pray for him. This time, after the two men spoke with the help of Italian and Farsi language translators, it was the guest who asked the pope for prayers. Rouhani said, "I ask you to pray for me."

Virginia couple weds despite snow, with tiny change in plan

LYNCHBURG, Va. | A Virginia couple wouldn't let the weekend snowstorm ruin their wedding plans.

WSET-TV reports that Michael and Emilee Ellsworth of Lynchburg had planned to be married Saturday at a country club, but blowing snow made travel dangerous for the couple and their guests.

They canceled the wedding at the country club and then made a last-minute decision to have an intimate ceremony at their pastor's home.

Pastor Michael Sherrett says when they posed for pictures outdoors, "it sort of seemed like a warmth there that the Lord gave us from the cold wind."

The couple said the date 1-23 was already engraved on the groom's ring, so there was no turning back.

On Sunday, as the weather cleared, they walked down the aisle at the country club in front of family and friends.
DALLAS | During four years of medical school, Dr. Susan Oh kept herself from reading books other than those related to her studies.

Even though I wanted to, it would be like, No, I need to further my knowledge and be the best physician I can be, says dermatology resident Oh, 42.

Then she met Dr. John Harper, the Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas cardiologist who leads an annual Literature + Medicine conference. And she began to realize that her love of the written word could add an unexpected dimension to being a physician.

Reading, says Harper, who has an English degree from Southern Methodist University, makes us better people, and better people are better doctors.

In his Friday morning Coffee With Cardiology teaching sessions, which Oh attends even on her days off, Harper doesnt just take residents and medical students on rounds and discusses cases. He also brings music for them to absorb and essays, poems and short stories for them to read  or, he says, to lean in and listen as he reads aloud. He accompanies his students to museums and invites them to his home to discuss literature.

I try to incorporate this into every time I talk to them, Harper says on a recent Friday. Today, Dvoraks New World symphony was playing. It was the musical piece taken to the moon by Neil Armstrong because it reflected the new world, and we talked about electrocardiograms. All week long, I think about what Im going to talk about that morning. Ill reread it; make sure its in the right context. Ive been doing this a long time, so its intrinsic to who I am.

Dr. Rahul Gill, 34, would hardly classify himself as an avid reader. But three years of attending Harpers Friday morning sessions inspired him in ways he couldnt have anticipated.

Most of the conferences we have here are all related to medicine, as in practicing medicine, says Gill, a second-year resident studying to be an internist.

Dr. Harper takes it a step beyond and adds another dimension  literature, the humanistic aspect of medicine. He brings in writings from different writers which talk about medicine, not just as a doctor, but as a human being.

Many essays and passages Harper shares have nothing to do with medicine, Gill says. Yet reading them gives us insight into practicing medicine. It all comes down to how we can make medicine more humanistic.

HOW HE GOT HERE

Harper, 69, had his first taste of that intermingling as a boy in Pecos, Texas. His father  my hero growing up  had health issues that sometimes caused him to be in a great amount of pain. Harper remembers the doctor coming to their familys home, driving up in his Buick, wearing a suit no matter the time of day or night, carrying his black bag.

He would put his hand on my dads shoulder, Harper recalls, and say, Its OK now, Frank. Im here now, and Ill stay until you are better. And then he would. I thought, Thats what I want to do with my life. It was the intersection of science and compassion at the bedside.

Blessed, he says, with an ability to read quickly, he devoured books of all kinds. When he read about medicine  by Chekhov, for instance, who himself was a doctor  it grabbed me at gut level and sounded like a wonderful thing to do.

Many doctors whose stories he read were also teachers, he says, and I consider teaching to be one of the best and most rewarding vocations or avocations of any of us. Literature led me to teach.

Then I was struck when I practiced medicine how hard it was to blend science and still become an appropriately emotional person with thoughts. I read literature and poems and essays and found they helped me formalize my thoughts, to express myself better.

They help in other ways, too: Books help us understand ethnic groups, political groups, religious groups. We learn from the mistakes of others; they refresh our reading and listening skills.

His passion is mesmerizing and magical; talk to him about this and you find yourself making mental notes, or jotting in margins of notebooks, titles to add to your own reading list.

Literature provokes and challenges, he says. It can divert. It can stimulate and motivate. One of the residents who read Mountains Beyond Mountains  the true story of infectious disease doctor Paul Farmer  said it motivated him to be a better doctor.

Yet, Harper says, not everyone in the medical profession agrees with his approach. There are some who think Im totally out to lunch, and thats OK. Ive heard extremely esteemed doctors who say theres so much science we have to learn, that we dont have time for anything else. I respect them; theyre wonderful doctors.

But, he says, If you get one person to believe in it, thats a success.
Some consumers who buy coverage on the health insurance marketplaces in 2017 could see their out-of-pocket costs drop significantly under a federal proposal to create standardized plans, a recent analysis found.

The government wants to create six plan options at the bronze, silver and gold metal levels, each with standard deductibles, maximum out-of-pocket spending limits and copayments or coinsurance for various services.

In addition, primary care and specialist doctor visits and prescription drugs would not be subject to the deductible in the standard silver- and gold-level plans.

Consumers in those plans would generally make a flat copayment for those services from the beginning, such as $30 for a primary care visit, instead of owing the entire amount until they meet their deductible for the year.

The change is part of the governments proposed regulation that sets out the benefit standards for plans sold on the health insurance marketplaces in 2017.

Because insurers wouldnt be required to offer standardized plans under the governments proposal, its unclear whether the new plans would be widely available or if they would carry significantly higher premiums than other marketplace offerings.

The change could benefit people who have few health care expenses as well as those with pricey medical conditions who usually meet their annual out-of-pocket spending limit, said Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president at Avalere Health, a Washington, DC-based healthcare consulting firm.

With a typical silver plan deductible of nearly $3,000 this year, a relatively healthy person may pay hundreds of dollars monthly in premiums, yet still owe the entire bill for most medical services he receives during the year, except for preventive care, which is covered for free.

If the deductible doesnt apply to some services, people feel like theyre getting a benefit from their insurance, Pearson said.

On the other hand, people with chronic conditions who owe hefty annual bills for drugs or other treatment wouldnt have to pony up the entire out-of-pocket maximum amount in the first month or two of the year. Standard model plans would spread out their spending, Pearson said.

This year, two-thirds of silver plans sold on the marketplaces covered primary care visits before the deductible is met, similar to the proposed standard plans, the Avalere analysis found. But for other services, coverage before this point was much less routine. Only a third of silver plans covered specialist visits before the deductible was reached, while the cost of generic drugs was subject to the deductible in half of plans, and three-quarters of plans required enrollees to pay off their deductible before the plan paid for specialty drugs.

Silver plans are the most popular plans on the marketplace.

We oppose this type of standardized benefit, said Clare Krusing, a spokesperson for Americas Health Insurance Plans, a trade group. If consumers only see a one-size-fits-all product, how is that providing them with the tailored coverage they want and need?

The final regulation is expected within the next month, Pearson said.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
SIOUX CITY | Citing uncertainty over the level of state aid for K-12 public schools in Iowa next year, the Sioux City School District proposed a new contract that would raise pay and benefits for teachers by 1.14 percent.

The proposal was the district's opening offer for teachers and other employees represented by the Sioux City Education Association. It countered the union's Jan. 14 request for a 5 percent increase in base pay and an increase from $30 to $35 per hour for teachers when they perform duties outside their regular contract.

Bruce Lear, who represents the SCEA, said he wasnt surprised with the districts counter offer and that the rebuttal was just an early step in a long negotiation process.

Were beginning and when you begin, thats exactly what you do. You begin by taking the first step, he said. Im not surprised given the uncertainty of funding. Again, we encourage the legislature and governor to come to some agreement.

Superintendent Paul Gausman, too, acknowledged the negotiation was in the early stages and the district would work with the union to reach an agreement.

Our job is to represent the boards opening to the teachers' association, he said. The board recognizes the values of these staff members to our success, yet we acknowledge that weve got some tough financial times we are in right now.

This was the last public meeting to discuss teacher contracts. Future negotiations will take place behind closed doors.

Additionally Thursday, the Sioux City Educational Support Personnel Association offered its initial contract proposal for 2016-2017.

The proposal included an across the board raise of $1.25 an hour for all support staff.

Under the contract, employees would also have the option to use seven days of sick leave per year to care to an immediate family member.

The district will offer its rebuttal to the support staff contract at 3 p.m. on Feb. 9.
ESTHERVILLE, Iowa | Voters in 13 counties will decide Tuesday whether to approve a $16 million bond referendum to fund a series of capital projects for Iowa Lakes Community College.

If approved, property taxes on a home assessed at $100,000 would increase by $11.70 per year over the 15 years required to pay off the bonds, Iowa Lakes vice president of administration Robert LHeureux said. Owners of agricultural land should check their tax statements for the taxable value of the land, divide that number by 1,000, and multiply that amount by $0.21, college officials said.

Under Iowa law, the referendum requires at least 60 percent approval for passage.

Iowa Lakes president Valerie Newhouse said the referendum would fund improvements on each of the college's five campuses, located in Algona, Emmetsburg, Estherville, Spencer and Spirit Lake.

The projects include:

-- $6.85 million for a fine arts addition at the Estherville campus.

-- $6.22 milllion for the Emmetsburg campus for an addition to house student services and renovations to the dining area and the business, admissions and financial aid offices.

-- Nearly $2.6 million for a new roof and updated exterior for the Spencer campus. The upgrades will include assessment to the other owners of Gateway North, a former shopping mall in which Iowa Lakes owns a 69 percent share.

-- $772,005 to renovate space for technical and industrial education classroom space at the Spirit Lake campus.

--- $1.84 million to renovate the student center and student advising/success center on the Algona campus.

Each campus would receive improved safety and security through computerized, keyless entry systems, Newhouse said.

The campuses are located in five counties -- Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Palo Alto and Kossuth, but the college's service territory also extends into eight other counties, including Buena Vista, Cherokee, Hancock, Humboldt, OBrien, Osceola, Pocahontas and Winnebago.

The college's territory takes in more than a dozen K-12 school districts, including Journal circulation area districts Clay Central-Everly, Emmetsburg, Estherville-Lincoln Central, Graettinger-Terril, Harris-Lake Park, Okoboji, Ruthven-Ayrshire, Sioux Central, Spencer, Spirit Lake and West Bend-Mallard.
SIOUX CITY | So many presidential candidates will be inundating Sioux City and other Northwest towns from Friday through Sunday that some of campaign stops will overlap.

A battle royale of sorts could play out Sunday in downtown Sioux City, as Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump hold rallies within 45 minutes and just blocks away from each other.

"It is high praise (for Sioux City). We've got the two front-runners in town," Morningside College political science professor Patrick McKinlay said.

Friday through Sunday, 10 of the 15 presidential hopefuls will swing through Northwest Iowa. The combined 17 campaign events give ample opportunities for voters to see candidates right before the all-important Iowa caucuses on Monday.

"It is a veritable political smorgasbord," McKinlay said. "For both parties, Northwest Iowa is the place to be. We should relish and take full advantage of the opportunities to go out and see them."

Fresh off Thursday night's nationally televised debate in Des Moines, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will stop in Sioux City on Friday. It's just the second visit to Iowa's fourth largest city this year for the son and brother of former presidents. Former Gov. Martin O'Malley, a distant third in the three-way Democratic race, also will visit the region on Friday.

On Saturday, five Republican contenders will stump for votes in Northwest Iowa -- Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and retired surgeon Ben Carson of Maryland.

Sunday will start with a Sioux City stop by Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. In late afternoon, dueling events featuring two political heavyweights and tightened security, will unfold downtown with thousands of voters expected to turn out.

Clinton, the former secretary of state, will speak to supporters at 5:15 p.m. at the Convention Center, while Trump, a billionaire developer, will follow at 6 p.m. with a rally at the Orpheum Theatre.

McKinlay said he didn't see downtown being overly congested, since the Trump and Clinton events take place about five blocks apart on a weekend.

The two events will bring an end to campaigning in Northwest Iowa during the caucus cycle. About 24 hours later, at 7 p.m. Monday, voting on the Democratic and Republican sides begins at precinct caucuses across Iowa.

Here is a breakdown of the campaign schedules for each candidate in Northwest Iowa over the next three days.

Friday, 4:15 p.m. -- Jeb Bush, Bev's on the River, 1110 Larsen Park Road, Sioux City.

Friday, 4:30 p.m. -- Martin O'Malley, Crawford County Abstract, 1305 Broadway St., Denison.

Friday, 7 p.m. -- O'Malley, campaign office stop, 1408 Nebraska St., Sioux City.

Saturday, 9 a.m. -- O'Malley, The Copper Cup, 425 W. Main St., Cherokee.

Saturday, 9 a.m. -- Marco Rubio, Bev's on the River, 1110 Larsen Park Road, Sioux City.

Saturday, 11 a.m. -- O'Malley, The Bear, 24 W. Park St., Spencer.

Saturday, Noon -- Rand Paul, Holiday Inn, 701 Gordon Drive, Sioux City.

Saturday, 1 p.m. -- O'Malley, Better Day Cafe, 518 Lake Ave. North, in Storm Lake.

Saturday, 3 p.m. -- Ben Carson, Dordt College Campus Center, 498 Fourth Avenue NE, Sioux Center.

Saturday, 4:30 p.m. -- Ted Cruz, Community Rec Center, 311 Barnes St., Ida Grove.

Saturday, 6:30 p.m. --Rick Santorum, Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor, 115 Central Ave. NW, Le Mars.

Saturday, 8 p.m. -- Santorum, house party at 1090 Pachsama Court, Sioux City.

Saturday, 8 p.m. -- Cruz, Western Iowa Tech Community College, 4647 Stone Ave., Sioux City.

Sunday, 9 a.m. -- Chris Christie, Olsen Student Center, Morningside College, 1501 Morningside Ave., Sioux City.

Sunday, 10 a.m. -- Santorum, address congregation at Cornerstone World Outreach, 1625 Glen Ellen Road, Sioux City.

Sunday, 5:15 p.m. -- Hillary Clinton, Sioux City Convention Center, 801 Fourth St., Sioux City.

Sunday, 6 p.m. -- Donald Trump, Orpheum Theatre, 501 Pierce St., Sioux City.
If someone thinks they should be president, shouldnt they at least be able to tell Iowans and all Americans their plans to keep Social Security strong? For more than 80 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone in American life and touches, in some way, nearly every individual and family in Iowa.

As the first-in-the-nation presidential caucus state, Iowa will play a pivotal role in the 2016 election. This election gives us  all of us, whatever our political beliefs or personal circumstances  an opportunity to work hand-in-hand to address this challenge.

AARP is leading conversations on both the state and national levels to elevate the importance of Social Security to our long-term economic security. AARP has launched Take A Stand (www.2016takeastand.org) to urge every candidate for president to offer their plan to update Social Security for the 21st century and keep the program strong for our children and grandchildren.

The two of us signing this message are from both sides of the political aisle. As leaders in the Republican and Democratic parties, we acknowledge that our parties and future presidential nominees for our parties will likely have different plans and approaches for the future of Social Security. Our country has worked best when each party fights hard for their position, but compromises to address a shared goal. We may disagree on policy questions and approaches, but we come together on this: we must act now to save Social Security for future generations.

Heres why it matters:

If youre not a Social Security recipient yourself, you very likely have a parent, a relative, an older sibling or a neighbor who is. Nearly one in five Iowans receives Social Security. The program not only provides monthly benefits to retired workers, but also supports families when the worker retires, dies or becomes disabled. In Iowa, almost 40,000 children (whose parents paid into Social Security and died) are supported by Social Security benefits. About 610,000 Iowans rely on a monthly check which averages around $1,241.

If we stay on our current path (i.e., do nothing), in less than 20 years Social Security recipients will lose 25 percent of their benefits. For some, that will be a cut of up to $10,000 per year. For the significant proportion of recipients having no other source of income than Social Security, a 25 percent cut would be massive.

Nationally, 57 million Americans have no access to a retirement savings plan through their employers - thats more than 50 percent of Americans age 18 to 64 years old. And to complicate the growing crisis, the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that retirement-age Americans are the fastest growing segment of our population. This is a challenge that will not go away with time.

Putting it plainly, all of us  whatever our political stance, age or current circumstances  would be well-served to do two things between now and the 2016 presidential election:

- Recognize the importance to Iowa of Social Security remaining financially sound.

- Take a serious look at what the candidates are saying (or, as the case may be, not saying) about how, if elected, he or she would approach the challenges facing Social Security.

Many presidential candidates have already highlighted and will continue to highlight their general support for Social Security. What voters in Iowa need and what our country needs from those who want to be our next president are specific plans for the future of Social Security and a commitment to lead and act on those plans.

Democrat Tom Harkin is a former United States senator from Iowa and Republican Tom Latham is a former United States representative from Iowa.
DES MOINES | Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in an impassioned back-and-forth accused one another of shifting their views on immigration policy during Thursday nights Republican presidential debate in Iowa.

Then New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mocked the U.S. senators verbal jousting, saying he needed a Washington-to-English converter.

The Republican candidates -- most of them, anyway -- on Thursday night at the Iowa Events Center participated in what will be the final presidential debate before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the presidential nominating process.

Missing from the stage in downtown Des Moines was Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who skipped the debate over his objection to Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly. Trump instead held a campaign event across town at Drake University.

Most polls on the GOP field in Iowa have showed a close race between Trump and Cruz. Rubio has been a consistent third, but well behind the front-runners.

Perhaps their standing atop the polls -- and Trumps absence -- fueled the exchange between Cruz and Rubio over immigration policy. Each candidate accused the other of shifting his views over time on immigration, particularly on how to treat the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the country illegally.

Were not going to beat Hillary Clinton with someone whos willing to say or do anything to win an election, Rubio said to Cruz.

Cruz countered by noting Rubios work on legislation -- which ultimately failed -- would have provided a 13-year path to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally.

Christie said the exchange was an example of why the next president should come from a governors office, not Congress.

Stop the Washington bull and lets get things done, Christie said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also chimed in on the immigration debate, saying he supported Rubios Senate bill and accusing Rubio of eventually bailing on the bill.

I supported (Rubio).  Then he cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess, Bush said. We should have a path to legal status.  I think thats the conservative, consistent, pragmatic response.

Many debate questions focused on foreign policy and national security.

Answering questions on how to address the Middle East terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State, Cruz stood by his campaign remarks that he wants to carpet bomb terrorists and make the sand glow. He said his strategy as president would be to define the enemy, rebuild the military to defeat the enemy, and lift the rules of engagement.

Rand Paul prescribed caution against waging war against both the Islamic State and the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Paul said toppling Assad would leave a void that could be filled by an even larger and stronger Islamic State.

Paul also reiterated his opposition to the bulk collection of data used by government surveillance agencies.

The bulk collection and invasion of privacy did not stop one terrorist attack, Paul said. I dont think we need to give up liberty in the name of a false sense of security.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who has slipped from among the leaders in polling on the race in Iowa, defended his lack of political experience. He said his experience as a surgeon prepared him for taking on big problems and making big decisions.

We need people who think outside of the box and can solve problems, can utilize resources around them, can focus on the problem and solve the problem, Carson said. The American people are terrified.  We dont need more of the same solutions.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich was asked about the water crisis in his neighboring state of Michigan. Kasich said such a crisis requires rapid response from executives.

Every single engine of government has to move when you see a crisis like that, Kasich said. People at home are saying they got a problem, listen to them. Because most of the time they are absolutely correct.
As of Wednesday morning, a total of 240 bills had been introduced for state lawmakers to consider  a clear indication they have a lot on their plates with only 26 days remaining in the 2016 legislative session.

Whats missing, however, are two of the most important bills that lawmakers will consider this session and both deserve a rigorous and open public debate.

The bills address teacher pay and expanding Medicaid, controversial issues that Gov. Dennis Daugaard himself has elevated into topics that already have generated robust discussion in the state.

The governor outlined his plan to increase the sales tax by a half cent to raise $100 million for teacher pay raises and property tax relief in his State of the State speech on Jan. 12. His plan was presented to the public after a 26-member Blue Ribbon task force he appointed met several times to study the problem and recommend a solution, which it did.

Given the amount of time and resources dedicated to tackling a problem that many see as critical to the state's future, it is surprising the governors office has not yet filed a bill that clearly outlines his plan to make teacher pay in South Dakota more competitive with every other state in the nation.

In the meantime, lawmakers are filling that void by bringing up alternatives to the governors funding plan. For example, 11 lawmakers have co-sponsored House Bill 1130, which dedicates $75 million in video-lottery proceeds to teacher pay. In addition, House Majority Leader Brian Gosch said he doesnt believe a tax hike will get the necessary two-thirds support from lawmakers and is looking at other ways to fund an increase in teacher pay.

The problem is not that other funding options are being put on the table; it is just difficult to discuss them without the governors bill as a starting point.

The fact that the governor has yet to introduce his Medicaid expansion bill also is a mystery. In January, he met with the Rapid City Journal editorial board and explained in great detail his plan to have the federal government pick up the cost to provide Medicaid to an additional 50,000 South Dakotans.

The key element of the plan, he explained, is to have the federal government agree to cover 100 percent of Native American health-care costs, which would save the state an estimated $69 million, money that would more than cover the states share of additional Medicaid costs.

Gov. Daugaard also told the Rapid City Journal editorial board his legislation would include a provision that the state would only expand Medicaid if the federal government agreed to his plan, a proposal that he showed a great deal of enthusiasm for when he met with board members.

It is time for the governor's office to introduce these bills to ensure that lawmakers already looking at a stack of legislation have the time to study them, hear from their constituents about them and then make informed votes.

Rapid City (S.D.) Journal
Eight years after the recession, as many as 93 percent of U.S. counties are still feeling the effects.

Only 1 in 5 small businesses have completely recovered. While the economy slowly improves, small businesses have sung the same tune of sluggish recovery for almost a decade.

But its a new year. In a world of political and international uncertainty, 77 percent of small business owners feel confident about the upcoming year, and many are positioned to hire new employees and make strategic investments.

To meet your goals in 2016 and the expectations of a bullish small business market, below are some helpful tips.

Prepare for El Nino!

Some states have already started to experience the peculiar weather patterns of El Nino, and weather experts continue to predict unusual winter weather in much of the United States. Now is a good time for your business to create or update a weather emergency plan. Consider the implications of temporarily closing, and keep copies of important documents somewhere outside the office.

Invest In Your Employees

Whether you choose to conduct a continuing education program or simply resolve to get to know your team better, team engagement matters. Show appreciation, provide constructive feedback, and encourage everyone to participate in the ideation process.

Embrace Technology

Everyone in small business is a marketer, to some degree. Create technological goals for your company this year. Update your website for mobile friendliness, invest in a streamlined point of sale system (POS), or subscribe to a marketing platform to keep track of your online marketing activities. Check out some affordable cloud solutions to compete with larger businesses.

Prioritize Marketing

Businesses in 2016 cant afford to ignore online marketing. Start a blog, optimize your online presence, and consider hiring a consultant or in-house marketer. Small business marketing doesnt have to cost a ton, and some small changes can yield big rewards.

Find New Ways to Support Your Customers

Consumers are looking for value. They support brands that make them feel connected and offer quality products and exceptional service. Engage in real conversations on social media (not just likes, shares, and promotions), go to more community events, and partner with other small businesses on a regular basis. Showcase your employees and best customers on your website and in local publications to create an ongoing dialogue between your brand and your consumer base.

Keep Next Years Taxes in Mind

If you stress out about filing corporate taxes, start planning early in the year. Organize your filing system. Use a scanner to keep all your tax files in one easy-to-search location. Consult a tax planner or accountant to strategically plan your investments and applicable deductions.

Take Some Classes

Aside from general concerns, many small business owners are really concerned about new government regulations and compliance. Take a few classes or attend a conference to address your pain points (regulation, taxes, online marketing, etc.). Use the opportunity to network with other like-minded people and gain new perspective. Getting away from the office for a day or two can also help you refocus on your strategic pursuits.

Outsource What You Cant Handle

For administrative tasks and routine duties, use a freelance site, an online platform, or an outsourcing company to help out. Is your time better spent out with customers and prospects, or in the back office writing content or filing paperwork? Focus more on activities that bring in and keep business and hand off non-revenue-producing tasks.

The start of a year brings change across small businesses and large. With a balance of education, innovation, and strategic planning, small businesses can defy the sluggish growth trend and enjoy rapid advancement. In 2016, try something different, invest in the future, and measure your progress at every step to get ahead.
Several people who I promote because I respect what they are doing, have reported being targeted by the abusers who are chasing me around the internet manipulating people against me. Police are involved.

snakeappletree is not the real life person upon whom the caricature is loosely based. It is a collaborative allegory legitimately created by an authorized design team. The moniker snakeappletree and alternyms xeno-heart-feather/blade, including other-level translations of hieroglyphic cartouche, are intellectual property of Ordo Octopia. All Rights Reserved. "Accreditation is everything." snakeappletree

quote quota

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.



G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy





"Theres an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money(energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give."



Frank Herbert






There are many fitness goals out there that we desire. Some of us want to be leaner and others wish to put on muscle mass. The thing is, for you to achieve your fitness goals, you need to
Love the article on Gaddaf

i

Samosa Iyoha



Hello from Johannesburg

I was amazed to find a website for Africans in Hungary .

Looks like you have quite a community there. Here in SA we have some three million Zimbabweans living in exile and not much sign of going home ... but in Hungary??? Hope to meet you on one of my trips to Europe; was in Steirmark Austria near the Hungarian border earlier this month. Every good wish for 2011. Geoff in Jo'burg



I'm impressed by

ANH

work but...



Interesting interview...



My comment to the interview with his excellency Mr. Adedotun Adenrele Adepoju CDA a.i--

B.Ayo Adams

click to read editor's mail

We must rise above tribalism & divide & rule of the colonialist who stole & looted our treasure & planted their puppets to lord it over us..they alone can decide on whosoever is performing & the one that is corrupt..but the most corrupt nations are the western countries that plunder the resources of other nations & make them poorer & aid the rulers to steal & keep such ill gotten wealth in their country..yemen,syria etc have killed more than gadhafi but its not A good investment for the west(this is laughable)because oil is not in these countries..when obasanjo annihilated the odi people in rivers state, they looked away because its in their favour & interest..one day!I think from what have been said, the Nigerian embassy here seem to be more concern about its nationals than we are for ourselves. Our complete disregard for the laws of Hungary isn't going to help Nigeria's image or going to promote what the Embassy is trying to showcase. So if the journalists could zoom-in more focus on Nigerians living, working and studying here in Hungary than scrutinizing the embassy and its every move, i think it would be of tremendous help to the embassy serving its nationals better and create more awareness about where we live . Taking the issues of illicit drugs and forged documents as typical examples.. there are so many cases of Nigerians been involved. But i am yet to read of it in e.news. So i think if only you and your journalists could write more about it and follow up on the stories i think it will make our nationals more aware of what to expect. I wouldn't say i am not impressed with your work but you need to be more of a two way street rather than a one way street . Keep up the good work... SylviaHe is an intelligent man. He spoke well on the issues! Thanks to Mr Hakeem Babalola for the interview it contains some expedient information..
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
Legislators and spectators inside the Maryland State House in Annapolis. A team of bi-partisan public servants are proposing legislation that would bring a C-SPAN-like service to Maryland. (Photo: MarylandReporter.com)

ANNAPOLIS

(Jan. 29, 2016)A conservative Republican leader and one of the most liberal Democrats in the House of Delegates are co-sponsoring legislation that would require video streaming of all sessions of the House and Senate and their committees, including voting sessions.The bill, HB316 , sponsored by House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga, a Baltimore County delegate running for U.S. Senate, and Del. David Moon, D-Montgomery County, faces likely opposition from Senate and House Democratic leaders who have blocked video of floor sessions and the crucial committee voting sessions.The bill adds just 37 words to the state government article in the Maryland code."The General Assembly shall make available to the public live and archived video streaming of each meeting of the Senate, the House, and a standing committee, including any hearings or voting sessions held by a standing committee."Video of committee hearings and briefings have been available in the House for years, and video was added to the audio of Senate committee meeting last year.Audio has been available for floor sessions in the House and Senate chambers for many years. But rules in both houses forbid the use of personal names, so if you don't recognize the voice of "the senator from Montgomery County," or "the floor leader" or "the sponsor of the amendment," or any other of hundreds of euphemisms, you cannot tell who is speaking.There was a major controversy in 2013 when the then-chairman of the Senate Judicial Proceeding Committee, Brian Frosh, now the attorney general, allowed audio transmission of the voting session on the Firearms Safety Act, the major gun-control bill that had attracted thousands of pro-Second Amendment witnesses.In 2013, the Senate Rules Committee and later the full Senate rejected 41-6 a proposal by then-Sen. Allan Kittleman, now the Howard County executive, to record discussions of bills during voting sessions Most committees operate under rules like this one posted for the current House Appropriations Committee: "Committee voting sessions are not recorded, nor is recording permitted during voting sessions."Moon, who strongly favors openness and transparency by public bodies, said he would be happy to have video of floor proceedings, but went along with Szeliga's broader requirement on committee voting sessions. He also noted that the bill has been assigned to the House Rules Committee, made up largely of House Democratic leaders.In 2014, Szeliga was one of 25 Republicans co-sponsors of the same bill, then HB177 , which had a hearing, but didn't even get a vote in the House Rules Committee. Then-Delegate, now Senator Michael Hough, R-Frederick, was the lead sponsor of that bill and said Thursday he plans on filing a similar bill this session. However, he is going to leave out the requirement for video of committee voting sessions. The fiscal note on Houghs 2014 bill , before video was installed in the Senate hearing rooms, said "the cost to upgrade equipment in the Senate hearing rooms to allow for video streaming is estimated to total approximately $1.5 to $2.0 million." The video was installed in those rooms later that year."Reliable estimates of the cost to upgrade equipment in the House and Senate chambers are not available," the note went on. The legislature's Office of Information Systems "advises that the Senate chamber can be upgraded with standard equipment, but that the House chamber poses challenges because of its size and tight seating arrangements."Hough as well as Szeliga and Moon note that new video technology should make it simple and inexpensive to stream the floor session live and archive them.Discussing the video capabilities of an iPhone with a reporter, Hough said you could probably mount iPhones in the four corners of the Senate chamber and do video streaming.
LEONARDTOWN, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(Jan. 29, 2016)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office Vice Narcotics Division released the following incident and arrest reports. The Division is an investigative team comprised of detectives from the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office and Federal Drug Agents (HIDTA Group 34). The Division was established on September 1st, 2007.COCAINE: Detectives, working with the Leonardtown Community Police Deputy, identified Michael Anthony Aikens, age 24, of Leonardtown, as a distributor of cocaine. Search and seizure warrants were obtained for Suspect Aikens and his vehicle, both of which were located in the Leonardtown area. A search of his body revealed nearly $1,000 worth of cocaine secreted upon his person as well as more than $375.00 in cash. A search of his vehicle uncovered a digital scale with cocaine residue and two cell phones. Suspect Aikens was arrested and additional charges are pending a review with the State's Attorney.COCAINE: Skylar Anthony Sanders, age 33, of Lexington Park, was indicted by detectives and charged with Possession of Cocaine with the Intent to Distribute.
RICHMOND, Virginia

These are tough times to be the administrator of a public school system. While in Charles County, Maryland, a Christian family and their conservative public interest law firm are suing the public school system in federal court for allegedly indoctrinating their daughter into Islam , in Virginia the ACLU is suing the Gloucester County school system for allegedly violating a transgender student's constitutional rights by requiring him to use alternative, private restrooms.At 15 years old, Gavin Grimm stood before the Gloucester County School Boardtwiceand listened to community members discuss his anatomy in a public forum.I was terrified, Grimm, now in his junior year at Gloucester High School, said this week. I was in a room full of adults who thought it appropriate to have this sort of vulgar discussion, who would clap or cheer after every derogatory statement, of which there were many.Grimm, who was born a female, lives and identifies as maleand has been taking hormone therapy as recommended treatment for gender dysphoria. But the Gloucester school system has prohibited him from using the boys restrooms at the high school.On Wednesday, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union appeared before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to argue that the school district is violating Grimms constitutional rights by requiring transgender students to use alternative, private restrooms.The ACLU, which represents Grimm, said Gloucesters policy violates federal nondiscrimination laws under Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is the first time that a federal court of appeals is considering the issue.Both sides presented arguments, and we now have to wait for the court to issue a ruling, said Bill Farrar, director of public relations at the ACLU of Virginia. Our best guess is that will take a couple of months.As Grimm began his sophomore year in fall 2014, he and his mother notified school administrators about Grimms gender identity, and he was given permission to use the boys bathroom. Grimm did so for almost two months without any incident, according to a brief the ACLU filed with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.But on Dec. 9, 2014, the School Board adopted the new policy by a vote of 6-1, and Grimm has had to use an isolated restroom in the nurses office ever since.The trek to the restroom in the nurses office each time it was necessary was similarly humiliating, similarly upsetting and othering and dysphoria-inducing, Grimm said in a statement Wednesday. The only difference was that it was just slightly less conspicuous.Specifically, Grimm said the School Board passed a policy limiting the use of restroom facilities to students with corresponding biological genders and required students with gender identity issues to use alternative facilities.Even if we use the separate but equal framework, its clearly not equal, Joshua Block, senior staff attorney for the ACLU, said at a press conference after the appeals court hearing. Its basically a restroom from a converted closet that only Gavin has to use because other people hypothetically object to using the same restroom as him.In June, the ACLU filed a motion for a preliminary injunction with the U.S. District Court in Newport News. It asked the court to rule in time for Grimm to be able to use the same restroom as other boys at Gloucester High School when classes resumed for the 2015-16 school year.But in September, U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar denied the injunction and dismissed Grimms claim under Title IX. The ACLU appealed that ruling to the 4th Circuit Court in Richmond. A panel of three appellate judgesPaul Niemeyer, Henry Franklin Floyd and Andre Davisheard the case Wednesday.Schools can and should have privacy protections, but what they cant do is exclude transgender students, Block told the judges during the 45-minute hearing.Attorney David Corrigan, who represents the Gloucester School Board, said the school systems policies are not discriminatory because the alternative unisex restrooms are open to anyone.Our position is that all students are treated the same, he said.After the hearing, Block described Grimm as a courageous young man.Gavin, before he met anyone from the ACLU, was standing up by himself at a School Board meeting in front of a room of hostile adults explaining why he should have the right everyone else has to use the bathroom in peace, Block said.Both the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice have since ruled that, under Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, schools must allow transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that are consistent with their gender identity.I am fighting this fight because no kid should have to think so hard about performing a basic and private function of being alive, Grimm said. No kid struggling to be accepted, and struggling to accept themselves, should have to simultaneously battle for the right to use the correct bathroom.The appeal in the Gloucester case comes on the heels of a landmark ruling by the Education Department in a similar case brought by the ACLU of Illinois. In that case, the Education Department held that a suburban Chicago school had violated federal law by denying a transgender female student access to gender-appropriate locker room facilities.To date, several federal agenciesincluding the U.S. Labor Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Office of Personnel Managementhave agreed that transgender people should be able to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity.I can say I did not set out to make waves; I set out to use the bathroom, Grimm said as he began tearing up at Wednesdays press conference. It is scary. And its not easy. But I will do my best to help anyone.Audio of court hearing at http://coop.ca4.uscourts.gov/OAarchive/mp3/15-2056-20160127.mp3 Court documents available at https://acluva.org/17406/grimm-v-gloucester-county-public-school-board/
Years from now, itll all seem so sweet.

Therell always be a soft place in your heart for your first kiss, your first I-love-you, and for the person who gave them to you. Youll never forget the electricity of holding hands or the rush of being together even after, as in the new novel What We Left Behind by Robin Talley, you start to pull apart.

Gretchen Daniels wasnt sure why she didnt tell her girlfriend, Toni, that theyd be attending college in different cities.

Last spring, Toni applied to Harvard and Gretchen applied to Boston University  same city, opposite ends - both reasoning that they could at least spend weekends together. At the last minute, though, Gretchen decided to attend NYU.

She didnt tell Toni until the night before she left.

They were juniors in their all-girl high school when Toni first saw Gretchen at a dance and was instantly in love. Everybody thought they were the cutest couple: Gretchen conferred upon Toni a new-found popularity. Toni taught Gretchen what it was like to be genderqueer  or, at least she tried.

But the secret that Gretchen held all summer bugged Toni, and she was rightfully upset. She really didnt have much to say to Gretchen, a silence complicated by Tonis immersion into a campus group she joined. Freshmen werent allowed to be officers of the Undergraduate BGLTQIA Association but upperclassmen let her hang out with them and, under their tutelage, she began to explore labels for herself. She began to think about gender fluidity, and transitioning.

Tonis lack of communication baffled Gretchen, and she discussed it at length with her new BFF, Carroll, a gay man who loved New York as much as did Gretchen. He was just one of the new friends shed acquired, but she missed Toni and the closeness they had. She didnt quite understand why Toni was questioning so much about herself, and she wasnt sure how shed fit in her girlfriends life if Toni became Tony. Would that change, change everything?

Better question: by the end of this book, will you care?

I have my doubts.

What We Left Behind is very, very slow; in fact, it sometimes seemed to me that it was twice as long as its 416 pages of overly-detailed, same-old dialogue and young adults who were way too angst-y for my tastes. Yes, these kids do things that only increase the melodrama amongst themselves, which is ultimately not all that interesting but which creates an uneasiness in plot, making most of author Robin Talleys characters mighty unlikeable.

And yet, I persevered. I was hoping to learn something from Tonis gender-questioning. What I got instead was an abundance of language that seemed rather clinical and not always clear. Was that the point? Shrug.

Romance readers may find a tiny smidge of amour here, if theyve the time to look for it, but I really wasnt a big fan of this book. For the most part, I think, What We Left Behind is a title that should be heeded.
They come from nearly every corner of the U.S. They are engaged in local communities and on the international scene. They include mothers, artists, a fugitive, a performer, and a drug smuggler. They are speaking out, acting up, and in some cases risking their personal safety and liberty.

They are the 16 HIV advocates to watch in 2016, and they inspire and humble me. It is such a privilege to share their stories with you and highlight their important work. Their twitter handles and other social media links are included whenever available; I urge you to follow them so these advocates can inspire you all year long!

This week we will showcase the U.S. activists and next week we will present 10 HIV advocates from around the world.

And now, it is my honor to present



Joshua Middleton

Big Bear Lake, California

Straight men living with HIV arent unicorns. They do exist. But being public about their status means facing an additional layer of ignorance. Joshua Middleton has every intention of changing that. Im putting a face on the heterosexual HIV positive male that is often silent in this fight against HIV, says the 25-year-old Californian. I want to show the world that there is always hope.

Joshua has started his own blog, contributes to TheBody.com, and has dived into the HIV advocacy arena with vigor and youthful enthusiasm. He has become an avid supporter of PrEP, uses his fluidity in multiple languages to share HIV messages, and wants to pursue a law degree for the express purpose of defending those being unfairly prosecuted by HIV criminalization laws.

He is a loving soul, says Maria Mejia, the popular social media personality and HIV positive advocate. He represents a new generation of activist and I am always so proud to see a young heterosexual male stepping out of the HIV closet.

Sitting on the sidelines is not an option for me, says Joshua. Im going to be a driving force until the day when HIV becomes yesterdays news.

Kamaria Laffrey

Winter Haven, Florida



The Positive Womens Network USA (PWN USA) could easily generate an activist list of their very own, considering how ferociously powerful the organization has become in recent years. One advocate who has benefited from their inspiring female power is Floridian Kamaria Laffrey.

More and more women are coming out of the shadows, Kamaria says, and helping to break down misconceptions of HIV. Her work with PWN USA, We Make the Change Florida, and as part of a strategy team with The SERO Project to repeal criminalization laws, is keeping her schedule brimming with advocacy activity. I am continually fueled to find ways to share purpose beyond pain when issues of criminalization, reproductive injustice, and overall stigma prevent people from seeking treatment, staying in care and living the abundantly full life they deserve.

Kamaria credits her religious faith for getting her through her diagnosis in 2003.

Being a woman of faith has often made me feel torn in what I view as a really sensitive culture. In the faith arena, I feel that many layers of HIV arent addressed, just those that feel less controversial, she says. And outside of the faith world, I sometimes feel as though I am not taken seriously because of my beliefs. But I have hope for change.

In 2016, Kamaria will be focused on making her organization emPOWERed Legacies officially a non-profit, completing her book, Chasing Waterfalls, and making a mission trip to Haiti.

Tami Haught, the SERO Project Training Coordinator who led the fight that successfully updated Iowas HIV criminalization laws, believes Kamarias spirit may be her most valuable tool as an advocate. Kamaria has so much energy, her smile lights up a room, Tami says. Her spirit and resolve are inspiring, and she is a power to be reckoned with in Florida.



Robert Garofalo

Chicago, Illinois



When you visit the Twitter page for Robert Garofalo, it isnt really a page about him. Its all about his dog, Fred. And that is the first thing you need to know about Roberts activism.

The Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University has devoted his career to the care of HIV+ adolescents and has done a fair amount of HIV prevention interventions for young men who have sex with men and young transgender women. But lets get back to the dog.

Robert founded Fred Says to raise money for agencies across the country that care for HIV+ young people. I wanted to do something that was personal and creative, says Robert, and that tapped into the gratitude I had for my dog, Fred, who quite literally saved my life after my own HIV diagnosis in 2010.

The photo essay project When Dogs Heal, launched in 2015, was the result. Our hope was to change the narrative about HIV to be about love, hope, survival and thriving while living with HIV  all while giving credit to the healing powers of our pets, says Robert. Our hope in 2016 is to turn When Dogs Heal into a traveling art exhibit and to turn the project into a book.

Charles Sanchez, the writer and star of the web series Merce, which features a lead character living with HIV, knows a little something about employing creative talents as an advocacy tool. Sometimes a dog is more than just a mans best friend, but also his best medicine, says Charles. Robs project has the potential to change peoples minds about what someone with HIV looks like. His work inspires me.

Cassie Warren

Chicago, Illinois



All Cassie Warren wants for 2016 is a cute mobile van.

The Youth Health Benefits Counselor at Howard Brown Health Center is happy to explain, and with great persuasion, that a mobile van represents many of the issues relating to providing health care to young people. I think if we want to make PrEP, hormones, and birth control more accessible to young people we have to reduce the number of things you have to do to get it, Cassie says, and we have to do it in a youth-centered environment. We have to bring it to them.

But wait. Cassie isnt done making her case. And she even broadens it. There are a lot of folks out there who think young people cant be adherent or dont care about their health, she says, and those folks have absolutely no business providing care to young people. We need to look at the structural barriers and find ways to reduce and eliminate those.

Cassie take her job helping young people navigate healthcare systems personally. My work is rooted in a deep love for community and uplifting that love against systems that arent, Cassie says. Many young people experience trauma by the U.S. medical system. So, until we get real healthcare reform, you do what you can to create a safer space for folks to get what they need, and to feel celebrated and autonomous in their bodies.

Jim Pickett, the HIV prevention advocate at AIDS Foundation Chicago who has a global reputation for innovation, is deeply impressed with his home town colleague. Smart and tenacious, Cassie Warren is an advocate we all should be watching if we arent already, Jim says. Everything she does is rooted in a strong sense of community, social justice, and human rights. Shes equal parts thoughtful and fierce, and Chicago is so lucky she is here moving mountains!

Masonia Traylor

Atlanta, Georgia



When Masonia Traylor tested HIV positive during a routine medical visit in 2010, she was simply shocked. She didnt feel she was facing her own morality, though, as much as a spiritual death. She lived in such a state of anger, at having become infected, at every person she ever trusted, and even at herself as she second-guessed every choice she had made. It was a dark time that produced a surprisingly sunny advocate.

The 27-year-old mother of two has tremendous enthusiasm for her advocacy today, focused on population she relates to: youth at risk. It is widely known that in the United States, an estimated 1 in 5 people living with HIV do not know they are infected. What is less known is that among those living with HIV who are between 13 and 24, more than half do not know they are infected. Its no wonder Masonia is so passionate about reaching them.

Equipping youth with knowledge and awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is what it will take to stop new infections, Masonia says, who devotes her time volunteering for a variety of HIV agencies and maintaining an active presence on social media. HIV is manageable, treatable, but most of all preventable.

None other than the formidable Luvvie Ajayi, the social media sensation and founder of the Red Pump Project, believes Masonia has what it takes to deliver a message to young people. Masonia has turned her pain into power by telling her story so others can know the faces behind the numbers, says Luvvie. She is one to watch in 2016 because her work is going to touch more lives and make more impact. I am so inspired by Masonia.

Rick Rose

Shreveport, Louisiana



Longtime HIV activists dont always slip gently into the background after having made their contribution a generation ago. Sometimes advocates like Rick Rose get a second (or third) wind and re-dedicate themselves to HIV advocacy.

On World AIDS Day in December of 2015, Rick was so inspired by the work of the Philadelphia Center in Shreveport, Louisiana that I officially recommitted myself to the battle, he says. Rick has lived in Louisiana for eight years, but his own HIV advocacy goes back thirty years. As director of the AIDS Mastery Foundation in Los Angeles in 1993, he worked hand in hand with the first Miss America to have AIDS as a platform, Leanza Cornett.

Like many of us living in the throes of the pandemic, I needed a break, Rick says. That break lasted 19 years too long.

Rick is focusing his efforts on the health disparities common in the South, and the impact HIV is having on communities of color. And that means frank conversations. The South can no longer hide behind congenial traditions and mock religious beliefs, Rick says. Hes also looking forward to documenting the stories of people at risk in the South through podcasts and other new media.

Miss America 1993, Leanza Cornett, remains a fan and a friend more than twenty years after her reign. Rick is absolutely one to watch in 2016, says Leanza. Even now, he is spearheading round table workshops focused on women of color and HIV. I am so proud of Rick and his work, then and now.

Read next weeks SFGN for part 2 of this story.
2016 is a presidential election year, so lets get in the mood for politics by catching up with some elected officials who are also LGBTQ parents.

The year began right as Jackie Biskupski started her term as mayor of Salt Lake City, the metropolis first openly LGBTQ chief executive. She entered politics in 1995 when controversy arose about a gay straight alliance at a city high school. After adopting a son, now almost six years old, and raising him as a single mom, Biskupski recently became engaged to Betty Iverson, an executive for Johnson & Johnson, who has an 11-year-old son.

Salt Lake City has always been a bit of a liberal enclave within a more conservative state, but as the headquarters of the anti-LGBTQ Mormon Church, seems an unlikely place for a lesbian mom mayor. (Biskupski herself comes from a Catholic background.) The Mormon Church recently established a policy that the children of same-sex parents may not be baptized until they are 18 years old (10 years later than usual), and may only be baptized or serve a mission if they move out of their parents home and disavow their relationship. Openly gay Utah state senator Jim Dabakis told People magazine, however, that "What makes [Biskupskis] victory extra special is that Jackie's sexuality was never an issue (11/5/2015).

As Biskupski took office, another lesbian mom mayor left hers. Annise Parker, who completed three terms as mayor of Houston and was required to step down, has spent 18 years in city government. Her election made Houston the largest U.S. city with an openly LGBTQ mayor.

She suffered a major political loss last November when a gender-identity-inclusive human rights ordinance, which her council had passed, was repealed at the ballot box. Opponents ran a scare campaign claiming the ordinance would lead to men in womens bathrooms.

The Houston Chronicle recently praised her, however, for improving city-county relations, the citys parks, historic preservation laws, and processes for criminal justice and at City Hall, even though she failed to make progress on pension reform.

Parker, who has four children with her spouse Kathy Hubbard, a tax consultant, now plans to spend a few months at the Institute of Politics at Harvard, after which she may run for a judgeship or state office.

She told KHOU two weeks ago that she never wanted to be known as the gay mayor, but admits that her sexual orientation gave her an opportunity to talk about the coolness factor of Houston, and helped bring it global attention.

Thats us LGBTQ parents all right: globally cool. (Shame its taking some places longer than others to realize that.)

On the federal level, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, the first openly LGBTQ parent in Congress, can breathe a sigh of relief going into the New Year. The House Ethics Committee in mid-December closed a probe into actions of his that the Office of Congressional Ethics had believed might have promoted private businesses.

One was his appearance in a video by the creators of the League of Legends video game. Polis is an avid gamer. The other was a makeover by a Boulder menswear designer, which was prompted by GQs statement that Polis had the worst Congressional style ever. The committee found, however, that Polis actions had substantial non-commercial, representational purposes, no different from how many other members of Congress connect with constituents.

This proves, of course, that a) hes going to be one of the coolest dads ever once his two children (now four and one-and-a-half years old) are old enough to play video games with him; and b) the myth of inherent gay male fashion sense is just a myth.

Meanwhile, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, who is bisexual and a stepmom, has her hands full managing the standoff with armed militants who have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, hoping to wrest it from federal control. She issued a statement January 7 saying, Those individuals illegally occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge need to decamp immediately and be held accountable.

Theres no need for politicians to be LGBTQ and/or parents to support equality for our families, of course. And the politicians above have all contributed to much more than LGBTQ equality. But they give me hope that our government can truly be representative of any and all people in our country. Their willingness to be their out, authentic selves (particularly Brown, who is married to a man and could easily come across as straight if desired), brings visibility to our community. The women, too, are showing people that being a mom (coupled or single) doesnt necessarily mean giving up a high-profile career. (Men have historically had less trouble balancing careers and parenthood.)

I wrote about politicians because I firmly believe that one of the best things we can do for our families this year is to vote. The election will determine not just the president, but also control of the Senate (the House will almost certainly remain Republican) and, in all likelihood, the balance of the Supreme Court. The recent progress of LGBTQ equality could suffer serious setbacks depending on the outcome in November.

Before then, make sure to tell friends and neighbors how the outcome of the election could impact your family. Personal stories do make a difference. Show your kids, if they are old enough, what it means to become an informed voter and be part of a participatory democracy. November may seem a long time away, but as parents, we all know how time can fly.

Dana Rudolph is the founder and publisher of Mombian (mombian.com), a GLAAD Media Award-winning blog and resource directory for LGBTQ parents.
On behalf of the Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce we would like to wish our members and the community at large a prosperous New Year 2016 ahead. May this be a year of personal and professional growth where businesses continue to thrive in order to contribute to our economy and the progress of our city. $8 Billion  That is the estimated LGBT purchasing power in Miami-Dade County. We encourage the LGBT community to support those businesses that invest in our community needs. It is from this support that we thrive and have a voice in the policies that shape our nation, our state, and our local communities.

As an organization that has been the voice of the LGBT businesses and its allies in south Florida for more than a decade now, we begin our networking programming this year with the 5th Annual State of Our Community" Networking Luncheon & EXPO. This much anticipated event is sponsored this year by Morgan Stanley and media partner Miami Herald. We expect to count with the participation of the following leaders in our community including representatives of SAVE and Equality Florida:

- State Representative David Richardson

- Mayor Carlos Gimenez (Miami-Dade County)

- Mayor Tomas Regalado (City of Miami)

- Mayor Philip Levine (City of Miami Beach)

- Mayor Jim Cason (City of Coral Gables)



Dont miss the opportunity to network with fellow attendees and listen to our speakers talk about their 2016 plans & its impact to the LGBT community. The event will be taking place at Jungle Island (111 Parrot Jungle Trail, Miami) on Monday, Feb. 1 from 11 a.m.  2 p.m.

(lunch program from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.). Cost of admission for MDGLCC members is $45 and for non-members is $55.

To RSVP for the 5th Annual State of our Community" Networking Luncheon & EXPO or interest in joining the MDGLCC, please visit www.gaybizmiami.com or reach us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / 305-673-4440.

Jorge Richa is Marketing & Programming Director; Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (MDGLCC)
SFGN has learned that the newly appointed director of Beach Bear Weekend has a checkered legal past, which includes both civil and criminal issues.

First, SFGN has discovered that Craig Jungwirth, the new director had a permanent injunction and restraining order entered against him by a former employer, for conduct alleged to have been "threatening, erratic and violent, according to court filings.

Additionally, Jungwirth, who was once arrested for stalking, is presently facing misdemeanor charges in Broward County Court for defrauding an innkeeper. He is fighting those charges vigorously, with counsel. The stalking charge has since been dropped, but court records also reveal that Jungwirth was evicted from his Wilton Manors apartment at 100 N.E. 23rd Street for non-payment of rent.

After being named to the Beach Bear posts, a number of local activists have been posting concerns that the new representative for Bear Tourism would be charged with defrauding an innkeeper. But the charges are still pending.

However, in researching the allegations, SFGN learned that separate from that incident, circuit courts from three different states (Florida, Ohio and Massachusetts) have entered restraining orders against Jungwirth for threatening behavior. They include representations that Jungwirth would bankrupt his ex-employers, and they would soon be facing heart attacks.

Additionally, at least four former colleagues from his job in Massachusetts have filed individual petitions for restraining orders against Jungwirth, expressing fear for their personal safety.

Meanwhile, Beach Bear Weekend is scheduled for May 5-9 in Fort Lauderdale. In the past, the group has petitioned the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau for financial support. Its former director, Bob Young, was a frequent CVB critic, complaining that the county was under a duty to do more than they had done.

However, the LGBT representative to the CVB, Richard Gray, has disputed those claims, insisting that the Bear representatives have not comported themselves professionally, imposed unreasonable demands and ultimatums, and effectively made meaningful discussions unpalatable."

At press time, it was unknown what the implications of the new revelations concerning Beach Bears new director will be. A meeting with the CVB is scheduled for February 3, to plan for this year, and put aside past difficulties.

When asked by SFGN to specifically identify his role with the Beach Bear Weekend, Jungwirth refused to answer the question, referring all calls to Andrew Lord, the events director of marketing.

When further asked if he wanted to respond to any of the allegations in the lawsuits, Jungwirth again refused to comment, referring all calls to Lord.

When told the story would be appearing with his refusals to comment being published, Jungwirth again gave out Lord's phone number, refusing to answer any of SFGN's inquiries.
ALL political parties running in the upcoming general election have received the demands of the teachers who have been on strike since January 25, according to President Andrej Kiska, who sees the strike as a borderline step.

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No one is happy about it, not the parents that are affected, and certainly not the striking teachers themselves, Kiska said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. And there is no unanimous agreement among all teachers in Slovakia on the best way to draw up their demands so shortly before the parliamentary election.

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The number of teachers taking part in the countrywide strike, which has been in effect since January 25, dropped from 11,000 on the third day to 10,600 a day later, according to the website of the Slovak Teachers Initiative (ISU), which organised the strike, on January 28.

The number of schools involved in the strike has also fallen - from 820 to just over 780.

Read also:

Read also: Teacher strike compared with those by doctors Read more

Kiska pointed out that the Government, and Education, Science, Research and Sport Minister Juraj Draxler in particular, should continue a dialogue with the teachers.

Following an opposition initiative, parliamentary education committee chairman Mojmir Mamojka has convened a session of the committee for the afternoon of January 28 to debate the ongoing teachers strike, although he stated that he himself does not believe that any tangible result can be achieved.

The teachers also informed Kiska about cases of intimidation. Some teachers have been banned from talking about the strike or making statements to the media, according to Vladimir Crmoman of the ISU.

Kiska responded that he considers such practices to be unacceptable in a free and democratic society.

Meanwhile around 300 people - teachers, parents of pupils and others - gathered at a protest in Nove Zamky in Nitra region on January 28 to support the ongoing strike.

This strike isnt only about teachers salaries, but is mainly about a comprehensive change in the education system, Stefan Simonov from the Nitra Teachers Initiative said, as quoted by TASR. Were ready to remain on strike as long as necessary.

He went on to say that on Monday, February 1, teachers will create a human chain in Nitra to express their determination to continue the strike. The same initiative is expected to take place in all of Slovakia's regional capitals.

Teachers from schools in Nove Zamky have agreed to remain on strike until only the end of this week.

Its the mid-school year holiday on Monday, TASR was told by a member of the local strike committee. Well hand out mid-year school reports to pupils on Tuesday, and the education process will then continue normally.
THE ONGOING teachers strike is a media protest  and is receiving too much media coverage to boot, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on January 28, adding that the countrys security is his main priority.

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Teachers who are calling for higher salaries and additional funding for the education sector launched the strike on January 25.

With 114 schools involved in the strike from among 6,700 schools in Slovakia, this represents less than 2 percent, said the Prime Minister, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

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He added that no occupation in the public sector has seen such a huge rise in salaries between 2012-16 as teachers.

Weve set aside 480 million to pay for salary increases for teachers during this term ... 480 million, that is half a billion, said Fico, as quoted by TASR. Of course, I understand that they want more, everybody wants more ... weve increased their salaries, and want to do so even more.

Another rise in the remuneration of educators will be included in the manifesto of the government which emerges from the general election in March 2016, said Fico. He emphasised, however, that there is no scope for such a measure at the moment with the election just 44 days away.

Fico went on to reject the notion that the funds earmarked by the government for additional security measures in relation to the migration crisis would be better spent on the education sector.

Weve spent 480 million on teachers salaries, while weve allocated less than 100 million to bolster Slovakias security, said Fico, as quoted by TASR.

Read also:

Read also: Slovaks are not afraid of migrants Read more

The security of this country is the number one priority, according to Fico.

I dont want the mayor of Nitra [Jozef Dvonc] to have to set specific swimming pool hours for migrants with a different religion and other specific hours for the other citizens of Slovakia, Fico said, as quoted by TASR. I dont want the Interior Minister [Robert Kalinak] to have to address sexual harassment of Slovak women, I dont want any terror attacks here ...
AT THE DAWN of 2016, the Slovak economy seems to be in good condition both in terms of public finances and basic macroeconomic parameters, according to Slovak Trade and Industry Chamber (SOPK) chair Peter Mihok.

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SOPK presented its economic prognosis for 2016, along with the results of a survey aimed at identifying the expectations of leading figures in the business community, on January 28, the TASR newswire reported.

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The business mood is improving, and this has translated into the growth of investment activities in both state and private sectors, Mihok said, as quoted by TASR. However, the quality of the business environment is still failing to achieve the parameters necessary for more pronounced growth.

He added that the legislative stability required for strategic business decisions, too, still has some ways to go.

Mihok attributes significant importance to the March 2016 general election, as entrepreneurs expect the new government to define a clear and simple strategy for the mid-term development of Slovak society and the economy.

Read also:

Read also: Slovak economy should grow faster than expected Read more

This strategy will lay the groundwork for dealing with issues such as the cumulatively high tax and levies (payroll deductions) burden for companies, steep energy charges for businesses, a reduction in excessive administrative paperwork for companies, the bad state of the judiciary and the need for fundamental reform in education  emphasising quality and linkage with the labour market, Mihok said, as quoted by TASR.

The Slovak economy is expected to continue its growth during 2016. GDP growth is estimated to reach more than 3 percent. Public investments will experience a slowdown due to the effect last year of the culmination of the European funds for 2007-13. Private investments will see positive developments by virtue of the Jaguar Land Rover investment in Nitra, according to Slovak Central Bank (NBS) governor Jozef Makuch.

The carmaker, which is new to Slovakia, is likely to contribute towards the creation of 9,000 new jobs in Slovakia by 2020, according to NBS.

This year, the unemployment rate will drop to 10.2 percent and it is expected to decrease to 9.3 percent in 2017, said Makuch, as quoted by TASR.

The growth of Slovakias GDP to 3.1 percent this year is also expected by the Finance Ministry.

Household consumption is expected to accelerate in the wake of real growth in disposable income. Hence, the economic growth is well-balanced. It is no longer driven solely by export because domestic consumption is growing as well, as a result of a combination of different factors, according to Finance Ministry state secretary Radko Kuruc, who added that 24,000 new jobs are likely to be created in 2016 and the average nominal wage set to exceed the threshold of 900 for the first time ever.

Kuruc referred to the 2016 public administration budget as a milestone of sorts.

The public deficit is predicted to drop below 2 percent, which will subsequently pave the way for us to accomplish a balanced budget in 2018, Kuruc said, as quoted by TASR.
THE PLEA of a small girl reminded a blacksmith that his family was not so different. He walled up the pantry off the kitchen, leaving only a small hole for the exchange of food and waste, where a family lived for eight months in hiding.

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The Foldes family lived in Eastern Slovakia in Michalovce, raising their only daughter Judita. The family was fortunate to avoid the 1942 deportations. In 1943, rumors of the resumption of the deportations started to spread again. As a result, Juckas parents, as they called Judita at home, sent her together with a smuggler to the city of Uzhhorod, then Carpathian Ruthenia, where her grandmother and other relatives lived. At that time the region belonged to Hungary. The life of Jews was difficult there but relatively safer in comparison with the situation in the surrounding countries, as no deportations had taken place there yet.

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However, the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944 and Carpathian Ruthenia came also under their government. The arrival of Adolf Eichmann to Budapest was a bad omen for the Jews. Jews from the Hungarian occupied parts of Southern and Eastern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia who until then had lived so far in safety started to amass secretly to cross the border to Slovakia to escape deportations.

Judita also returned home to her parents. But as the Eastern Front approached, the Jews of Eastern Slovakia were forced, based on the law, to migrate to the western part of the country. There they were concentrated in absorption camps such as in Sered or Novaky to await their deportation to the extermination camp of Auschwitz.

The Foldes family had no relatives or acquaintances in Western Slovakia. Just as thousands of other Slovak Jewish citizens they were brought to the absorption camp in Zemianske Sady, from where they decided to escape and hide, as many others. They accepted the offer of the Jews coordinator. In the village of Salgocka they first lived in a rented apartment and Mr. Foldes worked as accountant at a manor for several months, until September 1944.

After the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising and the invasion of Slovakia by the Germans, the Hlinka guard and the German SS started the search for hiding Jews. The entire Foldes family had to leave the rented apartment, because the owner of the apartment was afraid and unwilling to hide them. The sentence for keeping Jews was very severe and most of the times ended up with the death of the one providing the hideout, as well as his entire family.

In total despair the family hid in one of the sheds of the manor where Mr. Foldes was working. By coincidence, they were discovered there by Jozef Krajcovic, who worked as a blacksmith at the manor. At first he ordered them to leave. When little Judita saw the desperate faces of her parents, she turned to Jozef Krajcovic and begged him: Sir, please spare us. He decided to save them, although he was aware of the life-threatening danger to him and his entire family.

After the war, Krajcovic told them that it was the plea of their daughter Judita that touched his heart. One of his four daughters Mariska was at that time the same age as Judita and he could depict himself in the same situation as the persecuted. As he mentioned later, he was horrified just from the thought of something similar happening to him and his family.

He then took them to his house where he hid them in the kitchen storeroom. He bricked up the storage room apart from a hole through which he was giving the Foldes family food or taking out the waste. Nobody in the village had any idea that a three person Jewish family was living in his house. In this space, tells Judita, we stayed for eight months until the liberation in April 1945.

During the entire time, apart from Mr. Foldes who climbed the ladder to the attic of the house secretly a few times under the cover of night to have a cigarette, Mrs. Foldes nor her daughter Judita ever left this room out of fear. According to the younger daughter of the Krajcovics, Mrs. Maria Bosa, two German soldiers of the retrieving German army stayed in a room above the storeroom for two days. Nobody from the hiding Foldes family dared to even breathe out aloud during this unwanted visit.

Judita recalls: When we came out of the hiding place, the bright sunlight, fresh air and the vast excitement overwhelmed us. My mother passed out. We left the house of our rescuers and travelled to Michalovce, the city where we had lived before. A Soviet soldier had settled in our apartment. We waited several weeks until it was evicted and when we entered our home we started to establish ourselves under the conditions of freedom. We have never forgotten our rescuer and my mother was sending him food packages as an expression of gratitude for rescuing us, and bonbons, 70 a year until 1981.

Both families remained in contact until the decease of the adult members of the family. Their daughter, Judita Horalova, born Foldes, and Mrs. Maria Bosa, born Krajcovic, have maintained a warm correspondence till today.
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Coffee Design is proudly sponsored by Savor Brands , your boost in coffeedence through maximizing designs in packaging, sustainability and tech.

This week we feature cutting-edge Quebecois coffee design from Cantook Micro Torrefaction in Quebec City. Inspired by the North Woods lifestyle, Cantook have repurposed metal tins originally used to store maple syrup and turned them into a striking example of industrial coffee design. Stamped with crucial information for the home userin glorious French, of coursethese tins set a new high mark in our book for special edition coffee packaging. Cest bon!

As told to Sprudge by Simon Fabi.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

My family has been in coffee since 1982. Our business on St-Jean Street has existed since 1998, and Ive been the co-owner since 2005. Back then it was named Brulerie de Cafe de Quebec. One year ago I decide to become more independent and change the name to something more significant for me and my craft. As I live in the mountains, 40km north of Quebec City, I was very inspired by images of the forest. The cantook is a lumberjacks tool that helps move big logs.

The word is French in origin, and in English it means cant hookits kind of a phonetic play on words. So for me the word is a representation of the collaboration between native French and English settlers who form the foundation of Canada, a nation with a very deep relationship to ideas of lumbering, the northern forests, wild life, sugar shacks, as well as fishing and hunting. That tool represents the hard work, craft, and determination of our people. The idea is to share a part of our history with our craft. We also love the idea that like all that the cantook represents, every cup of coffee also represents a huge work, a lot of sacrifice, passion, and craft. Its a tribute to women and men around the world who work for that.

We are an in-store roasting place where people come mostly to buy coffee beans. Its also a small cafe where you can have espresso, pour-over, pastries, and a comfortable place for people from the neighborhood to come and sit. Our main mission is to serve coffee for every taste and preference with no judgment but in accordance to our philosophy and standards. We endorse an education mission through every day contact with customers, but also offer cupping sessions, espresso 101 classes, and latte art classes. Art is also something that we want to highlight, and were doing that by offering local artists space for exhibition and promotion, as well as by trying to valorize the baristas work as an art form in and of itself.

We roast on a Diedrich IR-12, and use a Nuova Simonelli Aurelia II T3 espresso machine. We source green coffee from mostly Cafe Imports, NJ Douek and Ken Gabbay Coffee. We went to Guatemala last year to set up a direct-trade relationship, but it did not work due to some technical issues. This February, were heading to Costa Rica to establish a direct-trade relationship.

When did your coffee tin series design debut?

We started the tin series for Christmas, and well make some periodically as special editions.

Who designed the packaging?

A friend named Marie-Joelle Lemire. She works at Criterium Design as a graphic designer in Quebec City, and for us as a freelancer. Shes the girl behind all our graphic identity we love her so much!

Please describe the look in your own words!

It looks simple and neat, rustic but refined, and made from noble materials. We hope that people can feel that its handcrafted and artisanal. The print of the sugar shack is a wink to invite people into our universe and history.

What coffee information do you share on the package? Whats the motivation behind that?

Because of the size of the tins, the problem was not which information to include but rather, what information should be leave out? We focus on varietals, processing, and geographical info because we think those are the most apt to teach and help someone to learn something easily. On the front theres a kind of resume for each coffee, and on the back theres a more explicit explanation about the varietal or process depending on which aspect are more revealing for each coffee. We also include info like country or origin, region, and name of the farm for traceability considerations. The roast date is definitely on there, and finally, we do include a few cupping notes to guide the customer in their tasting experience. Our overall goal is to help people learn, give people the ability to really discover these coffees, and pay tribute to the producer and the product.

Where is the tin/label manufactured?

I was browsing for sugar shack equipment and I saw these tins and cardboard boxes, so the idea of a tasting set just popped in my mind. These tins are usually used for packing maple syrup, and were sold to us by H.E. Cantin of Saint-Augustin.

Are the tins recyclable? Any other pro-environment info about the package you want to share?

The tins are reusable and recyclable, and the box each tin comes in is compostable.

Is this product available online?

Damn, no! Not yet. Were working on our website. Until then, if someone wants our product, please contact us on Facebook and well manage something.

Coffee Design is a feature series by Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. Read more Coffee Design here.
In 2011, a US air campaign helped topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, creating a power vacuum that has persisted for more than four years.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Thursday said that while the United States does not want Daesh extremists to "sink roots" in Libya, the Pentagon has not yet made a decision about whether to deploy military forces there.

"You see the same kind of ambitions on their part that you see realized in full flower in Syria and Iraq," Carter said. "We don't want to be on a glideslope to a situation like Syria and Iraq. That's the reason we're watching it that closely. That's the reason why we develop options for what we might do in the future."

Last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Joe Dunford said that Washington is planning to attack Daesh in Libya. He said the lack of allies on the ground has raised doubts about how the Pentagon would take its strategy in Iraq and Syria and execute it in Libya.

 Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) January 28, 2016

The United States has already carried out some airstrikes against targets inside Libya, but Dunford insisted he wants the Pentagon to do "more," amounting to "decisive military action" against Daesh, which has a presence on Libyas central coast.

Washington's plan to train and arm so-called moderate Syrian rebels to fight Daesh was an utter failure and has been an ongoing source of embarrassment for the Obama administration.
The prevalent view of successive US administrations of both major political parties was that all opponents of the war option in any crisis were to be despised as contemptible weaklings, Bricmont suggested.

"Every political adversary is a new Hitler and every opponent of war a Munich-style appeaser. That is exactly what was claimed with Libya in 2011. Now the US and NATO have to pick up the pieces of what they foolishly broke," he pointed out.

Institute for Gulf Affairs analyst Adam Whitcomb told Sputnik that Washingtons war mindset had led the United States into long and costly conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq and the same danger existed in Libya.

"In the long run, a new military commitment in Libya could be very entrenching for the United States and its major allies such as Britain, France and Italy that have previously been involved in the country. It could be the makings of a new quagmire," he noted.

Whitcomb also suggested that US leaders wanted to boost their direct military involvement in Libya to compensate for their crumbling influence over the Syrian conflict and the efforts to end it.

The growing enthusiasm of Obama administration policymakers to send military forces into Libya should be seen in the context of the growing difficulties Washington faces in promoting the Syrian peace talks because of the dissonance between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

"The increased frustration over the stalling Syrian peace process explains the new eagerness for the United States to intervene directly in Libya," Whitcomb explained.

The less influence the United States had in the Syrian conflict or in efforts to end it, the more natural it was for Washington to try and assert its influence more directly elsewhere, Whitcomb concluded.
Commodity prices have been declining since mid-2014, falling some 30 percent throughout 2015. Losses extended into December, with plummeting oil prices driving a 7-percent commodity price fall, according to International Monetary Fund figures. The Bloomberg Commodity Index fell from almost 140 points in mid-2014 to less than 77 points by late January this year.

Another reason for a cut in oil output being rendered ineffective is the recent lift of international anti-Iran sanctions Celente said. It is difficult to see Iran agreeing to a cut in production after years of sanctions have caused massive losses for the country in lost oil export revenues, he emphasized.

Other experts have cast doubt on all other oil producing countries' ability to cut production. "Discipline among OPEC members has never been highand one of the largest crude producers in the world, the US, cannot and will not partake in production regulation altogether. In sum, one could question how successful OPEC regulation has been in the past, and in the current market environment that may be even more challenging," Tim Boersma, the acting director of the Brookings Institution's Energy Security and Climate Initiative, told Sputnik.

In a late 2015 meeting, OPEC failed to agree on cutting production in favour of maintaining market share. The cartel regularly exceeds its own daily production quota, while Saudi Arabia, OPECs largest producer, has maintained production levels over the past year above 9.6 million barrels per day.

Boersma also cast doubt on Russia's willingness to reduce oil output. With its economy currently contracting, Russia has incentives to maintain production in order to maximize revenues in a low price environment, he said. Thus, the global mismatch of supply and demand is likely to persist with Iran's return to the world market and with China's growth at its slowest rate for over 20 years, Boersma added.

This week's rally in oil prices began after initial news of a possible OPEC extraordinary meeting to address the plummeting prices, which previously halved within the space of less than six months. Throughout the week, the potential OPEC meeting, possibly involving non-member countries, has been mentioned by several senior cartel member states and non-member states' officials, including OPEC's secretary general, Nigeria's petroleum minister, Venezuela's president, Bahrain's energy minister as well as the Russian energy minister.
"Should the Americans send their [aircraft] and ships into the South China Sea, China currently does not have the [aerial] capacity to deal with such a challenge," Chu said.

He added that it will take about an hour for Chinese fighter aircraft from the nearest airbase on Hainan Island to reach the southern regions of the South China Sea.

"These challenges [from the United States] will most likely take place very frequently in the future," Chu said.

The US Navy's freedom of navigation operations, notably the sailing of a warship past a Chinese-built island in October, has convinced Chinese military leaders that the deployment of an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea is necessary going forward, he added.

The first-ever Chinese-built aircraft carrier is currently under construction at the Dalian Shipyard in China's Liaoning province. The vessel will join what is now China's only carrier, the Liaoning, a Soviet-era ship which Beijing purchased from Ukraine in 1998.
But employees of oil and gas companies are not the only people who have sustained losses from the oil prices slump, Hamilton explained. Among others, he included ranchers who lease property to oil and gas companies, grocery stores and restaurants that sell to oil fields workers and realtors selling property to once blooming towns.

Tom Kloza, co-founder and global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service, cited other industries, besides oil, that have been indirectly hit, including banks and financial companies. For example, companies that issue credit cards people use to purchase their gas take a three-percent transaction fee. Last year, they did not collect as much in fees as consumers spent $120 billion less.

"They got $3 billion less in fees. We dont need to hold telethons for them, but there are a lot of other casualties," Kloza was quoted as saying by The Fiscal Times.

What is more, other victims of low oil prices are banks that face risk of oil companies defaulting on loans for expensive drilling projects.

According to the article, since the beginning of last year, 42 US oil companies have filed for bankruptcy and the number is expected to grow.

An analyst at Oppenheimer & Co, Fadel Gheit, told CBS News that as many as 50 percent of the independent drilling companies working in US shale fields could go bankrupt before oil prices stabilize.
Cohen, who is the director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics at the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, said that low oil prices are hurting all oil-producing countries. However, Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer and the oil market maker, is hurt less than others, because the cost of oil production in Saudi Arabia is very low compared to other countries.

The Saudis are always trying to expand their market shares. Currently, with Iran coming into the market, as international sanctions against Tehran were lifted, it would be harder for Saudi Arabia to expand its market shares further, Cohen said.

This means the Saudis would not cut their production, resulting in the large supply in the global oil market.
The man also said that the SSJ-100 would have high demand in Iran, especially for domestic flights, considering a perfect combination between the plane's engine-class and the number of passengers it can carry onboard. In other words, from the commercial point of view, Iranian companies would profit when using Sukhoi planes for domestic flights.

During the initial stages of cooperation, Iranian companies would probably lease Russian jets to see how the Sukhoi could be best used in Iran.

"Our airline companies would like to lease some Sukhoi planes and see how they would recommend themselves in Iran," the IRI representative said.

The high-ranking Iranian official added that Russo-Iranian cooperation in the field of civil aviation would provide a basis for future strategic cooperation between the two countries.

The SSJ-100 is a twin-engine regional jet with eight VIP and 108 economic-class seats, developed by Sukhoi in cooperation with several foreign partners. The SSJ-100 is best used for mid-range flights, as the plane's maximum range is between 3,000 km and 4,500 km depending on a model.
The problem is only a sliver of information on what the Saudis have been doing was actually leaked to corporate media. The figures are grossly understated

If the $8 trillion figure were leaked, Western corporate media would certainly go bananas; and inside Saudi Arabia that would stoke major unrest.

There's some public indication that forces in Washington are severely disturbed at Saudi actions. A serious player, the former Director of the Division of International Finance at the Fed from 1977 to 1998, explicitly said Saudi holdings of US Treasuries should no longer be secret.

This is meant as a stern message to Riyadh. And yet Secretary of State John Kerry went to Riyadh to assuage the House of Saud that nothing was amiss in the Beltway. So who is an increasingly paranoid House of Saudi going to believe?

This seems to spell out a scenario where a faction of the Masters of the Universe ordered the crashing of the market in stocks. And that implies divisions in the upper echelons of power. The former Fed executive is part of the old establishment. Not a neocon. The Saudis thought they had a green light to sell. Not really.

How About a Little Asset Freeze?

As a New York investment banker explains it, "the House of Saud was creating tremendous surpluses since the 1970s  when OPEC dramatically increased the price of oil." The US Treasury wanted this tsunami of cash to purchase US Treasury bonds; and the Saudis were always scared to show that tsunami in motion. So "a deal was worked out that they would keep the trillions of US dollars in bonds secret." There was never any question the Saudis would be allowed to sell bonds en masse.

The Saudis selling their stocks in the open market en masse, especially in the first weeks of January, spreading panic all around the world, appears to have seriously displeased another faction of the Masters of the Universe. This faction might eventually let everyone know what the secret Saudi position is in US Treasuries. Remember, we're talking about at least $8 trillion.

The House of Saud, predictably, is in total panic. Imagine a leak stating they are sitting on $8 trillion while asking the poor in Saudi Arabia for economic "sacrifices" to support their oil price war plus the unwinnable war on Yemen, fought with expensive mercenaries. A global uproar would be inevitable  claiming a freeze on Saudi assets that are being used to destroy world markets. A barely concealed secret is that the House of Saud is not exactly popular in all the crucial places, from Moscow to Washington and Berlin.

The House of Saud cannot possibly believe that the FSB, SVR and GRU deeply love them for trying to destroy Russia; that Texans love them for trying to destroy the shale oil industry; that Germany or Italy love them for dumping a trillion dollars in securities on the markets to crash them as Mario Draghi pumps major QE trying to rescue the eurozone.
All these crises have their share of irrational actors, and there is a risk any one of them might spiral out of control.

However the main parties in these quarrels  the US, China, Russia and Germany  have long histories of squaring off against each other. They have worked out rules with each other about how to handle such conflicts, which for the moment are just about working.

The most dangerous crisis in the world, the one where the potential risks are greatest and where the actions of the players are least predictable, is the war in Yemen.
Last week, the far-right Britain First party came under a barrage of criticism for organizing "Christian patrols" in the town of Luton in Bedfordshire, England.

Britain First activists marched through Bury Park, a community in Luton with a big Asian population, carrying a cross. Police have opened an inquiry into whether any offenses were committed.

Britain First Party Members to Visit UK Cities to Highlight Muslim No-Go Zones Issue

The political party Britain Firsts activists plan to visit Muslim-dominated neighborhoods of Birmingham, Bradford, Rochdale and a number of other UK cities and towns to draw attention to the issue of the so-called no-go zones in the country, the partys leader told Sputnik Friday.

The no-go' areas are comparatively autonomous communities, whose residents share same religion or ideology, and are usually avoided by members of other racial, religious or ethnic groups.

"We will shortly be visiting other Muslim enclaves across the UK. We have visited East London, Luton and plan to visit Birmingham, Bradford, Rochdale and many others to highlight the problem of Muslim no-go zones," Paul Golding notified.

Golding said that Luton, a once-working class town, has been transformed into what he described as a "hotbed" for terrorism, extremism and hate preaching. He accused Luton police of fabricating charges against the party.

On Saturday, members and supporters of the nationalist party are set to participate in a march described as "a day of action against Islamic extremism" in the town of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, which has a considerable Muslim population, mostly of of Indian and Pakistani origin.
Once a group of migrants from Afghanistan and Syria threatened to go on a hunger strike if they were not immediately moved to another location inside the country, the employee recalled.

One Arab shouted to my colleague: We will cut your head off!

Yet, the worst experience of communicating with the refugees according to the employee is that they do not take female workers seriously. According to the girl, refugees simply do not listen to their instructions and ask male workers to repeat the instructions.

Distrust towards women working at the center did not stop the male refugees from evaluating them in a sexual context.

They look at us with either scorn or with greasy eyes the employee said in an outrage. They whistle after us, say something to each other in their language, laugh and take our photographs without our permission.
Merkel, who enjoyed high popularity ratings early last year, has grown increasingly isolated in recent months and public pressure has skyrocketed for her to abandon the open-door policy toward refugees coming to the country from the Middle East and Africa.

On Tuesday, Merkels conservatives and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners agreed to tighten asylum rules, reaching a compromise on how to stem the refugee influx, Deutsche Welle reported.

The Insa poll for Focus magazine surveyed 2,047 German citizens on January 22-25. However, 45.2 percent said Merkels refugee policy was not a reason for her to leave office. Another poll released in Friday showed support for Merkels bloc at 37 percent, five percent down against September 2014.
De Mistura is due to meet a Syrian government delegation on Friday to kick off the first peace talks for almost two years and will later meet other participants in the talks, his office said in a statement: "Mr de Mistura will start by meeting the government's delegation today, headed by the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations, Mr. Bashar Jaafari. He will continue meetings with other participants in the talks and with representatives of the civil society subsequently."

"As indicated by Mr. de Mistura in his press conference on 25 January, these will be proximity talks, meaning that the parties will be meeting with him separately."

Plea to Syrians

Ahead of the talks, de Mistura issued a video, shown on Syrian TV Thursday in which he said: "You have seen enough conferences, two of them already taken place. This one cannot fail. Weve heard your voices, we heard when you have been telling us so many times wherever we met you, you Syrian people, you women, men and children of Syria, saying: Enough, 'khalas, kefaya,' enough killing, murdering, torturing, prisons."

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura's message to the women, men & children of Syria, ahead of #SyriaTalks https://t.co/u6cQUvKGMg  UN Geneva (@UNGeneva) January 28, 2016

When he sent out the invitations to the talks on Tuesday, de Mistura said he was under no illusions about the difficulties in ending a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, sent over 4 million fleeing the country, displaced 6.5 million internally, and put 13.5 million people inside the country in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
HTTPS is equally good at deflecting fake versions of websites that could also be used to compromise you.

Google has always been interested in privacy, security and protection, according to a cyber security expert who wished to remain anonymous.

"Google has done great things with connection privacy. They will score you down if you have weaker settings on your HTTPS configuration. The main push will be beneficial to everyone involved, including themselves."

"It will push website owners and Internet systems to up their game to implement good connection privacy. It will make the Internet safer in a sense of sending and receiving data (not to be confused with sending or receiving evil data to customers or websites). And they can ensure that all communications to and from their services are protected and not degraded to the point where someone or something can not intercept and action the information learned from an unencrypted connection," an anonymous source told Sputnik.

Encrypt All the Things

The push to literally encrypt everything on the net doesn't come from Google alone, with browsers such as Firefox and Opera following suit.

A number of organizations who see faults in the way the Internet currently operates have joined forces, backing the "Encrypt All the Things" campaign, which calls for more network and data protection from unauthorized surveillance.

"We believe in the importance of protecting our networks, data, and users from unauthorized access and surveillance, and educating the public on the same," the Encrypt All the Things campaign states.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and anonymous software Tor Project are also backing secure web surfing through the HTTPS Everywhere campaign.

Stay safe out there, please! Use my "Block all HTTP requests" feature. https://t.co/j1Hkgbl8Eo  HTTPS Everywhere (@HTTPSEverywhere) July 6, 2015

A completely encrypted Internet may seem a little far-fetched, however an anonymous cyber security expert told Sputnik it's not only workable but there is no excuse for companies and organizations not to be pushing for it.

"Organizations have the capability to intercept HTTPS traffic using 'legitimate' man-in-the-middle appliances which we call 'decryptors'. This means that they can offer anyone to use network HTTPS connections and it will be protected, but not protected from those who provide the decrytors."

"There is really no excuse to not move to HTTPS other than if the company cannot afford to buy an appliance or do not have the in-house skill to create an open source solution," an anonymous cyber security source told Sputnik.

With relation to protecting networks and data from government snooping, things get a little more complicated. The "Encrypt All the Things" campaign says it stands against "unauthorized surveillance"  and if the government falls under this category, will it be able to work its way around an all-encrypted Internet?

"If it's unauthorized it depends who is saying who is authorized. If the government want to break your HTTPS there are only a few ways to defend against it at the moment and that's why it's important to keep your certificate configurations up to date there is some good technology in use already that prevents the HTTPS chain to be broken without acknowledging something has happened between the client and the server."

"On the other hand, you can understand the intelligence and cyber crime agencies really wanting a way around this for good, but there is always that track record of what they have done that they shouldn't have  what they can't tell us that might make us more understanding of the massive invasion of privacy that is enabling them and allowing them the capability to intercept all encrypted communications," the anonymous source told Sputnik.

Google hasn't yet announced when its new flagging system that will put an end to insecure web browsing will be launched, but according to a company employee, who asked Motherboard to remain anonymous, a declaration will be coming "soon."
Unification Talk: 'Not From What I See and Hear'

While there has been optimism at European level, others in Cyprus are far less convinced that a solution can be found that will appease both Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

Andreas Theophanous, Professor of Political Economy at the Center for European and International Affairs of Nicosia, told Sputnik that despite the goodwill on both sides, he was "very skeptical" about the reality of a unification deal.

"I would like to see a solution take place and I think people would be supportive of a solution if it improved the status quo, but from what I see and what I hear, I dont think thats the case."

Among Mr Theophanous major concerns is the type of package offered as part of unification, arguing that previous Western-brokered methods that allow countries to operate along ethno-political lines, as seen in Bosnia, are not sustainable.

He has called for an "integrationalist model" that would see the creation of a coalition government which would encourage politicians on both sides to come up with common objectives.

Briefed the UN Security Council on Cyprus. All 15 SC members expressed unanimous support 4 the reunification effort. pic.twitter.com/eR8og5C3sw  Espen Barth Eide (@EspenBarthEide) January 16, 2016

Fair Unification 'Not Feasible'

Another skeptic of the chances of Cypriot unification in the near future is a Cyriot journalist Eftyhia Andreou. She told Sputnik that despite an increase in support for unification and better relations at a grassroots level, it would be difficult to eventually agree to a final solution at a politically.

"I would go a step further and say that that is not even tangible, that is not even feasible. You cant keep both communities happy in the same way. Speaking frankly, Greek Cypriots are happy with the way things are right now  they have their homes, they have their jobs, the economy is picking up, although maybe not the way it was. For the Turkish Cypriots, the stakes are much higher, so they want a solution even more. I think they [Turkish Cypriots] are willing to give more to get a solution than the Greek Cypriots, although the rhetoric between the two communities is exactly the opposite."

Andreou says that despite openness towards the idea of unification, many Greek Cypriots would be unwilling to make serious concessions to their Turkish Cypriot counterparts when pressed on the matter.

Alternatively she believes that while many Turkish communities set up strict guidelines for talks and solutions, many would be more willing to compromise in talks.

We will continue our hard work to put an end to the 53-yr old problem & pave the way for new economic opportunities. pic.twitter.com/RAvG7coja5  Mustafa Akinci (@MustafaAkinci_1) January 21, 2016

Leaders Pushing for 2016 Deadline

The international community has been encouraged by the thawing of relations between the internationally-recognized Greek-Cypriot government in the islands south, and the Turkish-Cypriot government in the north.
"What we are seeing at the moment is the start of a mass movement of people from Africa and the Middle East to Europe that will go on for a generation," Forsyth claimed.

At the same time, it is difficult to imagine any effective solution to the migration crisis. Stricter border controls will raise criticism among the European and especially German population, as it will remind them of "the old Eastern Bloc with its border posts and travel bans."

"The idea of EU citizens being asked to present their passports as they travel around the continent is, therefore, anathema to them," the author argued.

According to experts, the situation is complicated by the fact that the Baltic and Eastern European countries are unlikely to accept large numbers of refugees, while Greece and Italy will not be able to cope with the influx of migrants alone.

"Europe is lacking a well thought-out migration policy. We did not realize that we are facing a constant influx of refugees caused by conflicts and wars and that it is long-term social phenomenon, which even demographers and sociologists have no idea about," Italian diplomat and author at the Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera" Sergio Romano told Sputnik Italia.

According to Romano, the closure of the borders will bring few positive results, "because there will be always someone who will be willing to break them". In his opinion, the EU should focus on strengthening the EU's external border, using a pan-European marine police  a European structure, which is not subject to national governments and the activities of which will be regulated by EU legislation.
The deputy further said that, If the 54 Muslim countries combine together to create such a structure, we can significantly speed up the process of establishing peace in the region. In that way no country will dare to attack another country, as in his time Saddam did in Kuwait, as in that case the combined power of 54 states supporting trade, economic and political relations will stand united against the aggressor.

MP of the Kurdish Democracy Party people (PDN) Mehmet Ali Aslan, belonging to the Turkish delegation at the meeting of the OIC, said that the main theme of the meeting was the fight against Daesh. According to Aslan, all member countries of the OIC expressed concern about the low efficiency of the fight against the terrorist organization.

In addition, according to Aslan, on the sidelines of the conference dissatisfaction with the actions of Turkey was expressed following Turkeys decision to send soldiers to the Iraqi city of Ba`shiqah. This issue was not raised directly in the course of the meeting, so as not to cause any unpleasant incidents between the delegations, but it was discussed during bilateral meetings and on the sidelines, Aslan told Sputnik.

Commenting on the proposal of the deputy AKP on the establishment of the Islamic Peacekeeping Force, Aslan expressed concern that such a structure, whose main task should be the fight against terrorism and assuring peace in the region, can eventually be converted into OICs tool for solving their internal problems.
According to the analyst, despite the fact that recently the Israeli-Turkish relations have seen some warming, Tel Aviv wants to derive benefits from the difficult situation in which Turkey is currently in, as it has been literally pushed into a corner after the information on its cooperation with the jihadists came up, Sen said.

The analyst noted that a significant portion of Daesh oil that goes through Turkey is supplied to the world markets by being mixed with the rest of the oil.

For making this process happen the oil is sold by Iraqi Kurdistan, bypassing the central government of Iraq. There is evidence to prove it. The most interesting thing is that Israel meets 75% of its oil needs through purchases of Iraqi Kurdistan supply and Turkey is a transit point in the trade.
MOSCOW (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova  The EU refugee crisis is politicized and blown out of proportion, as migrants comprise only 0.2 percent of the population of the European Union, a rights group told Sputnik.

"Everybody talks about stream of refugees, when in fact, it is only 0.2 percent of the EU population and for Germany it is only 1.25 percent. The problem is that this issue is politically charged and exaggerated," Germany Director of Human Rights Watch Wenzel Michalski said.

According to Michalski, the countries in the blocs east should be more open to accepting refugees, and it is not "sustainable" that Germany is the only one letting people in.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Michael Hughes  Earlier in the day, the highly-anticipated talks on Syrian reconciliation mediated by UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura began in Geneva, despite the absence of some delegations from the Syrian opposition.

Russia's envoy to the UN Office in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin said Moscow would not permit the Kurds to be excluded from the intra-Syrian talks.

"The Kurds have been excluded until this moment, as we speak, and they are the only secular side of the opposition in Syria," Ismael stated. "Without the Kurds, the creation of an Islamic system [will take place] in the country."
Successive US governments continue to spend ever more money on building bigger and better security bubbles for its facilities and people overseas, but they have failed to address the real problem in training and doctrine, he explained.

Moreover, US policymakers have continued to invent specious excuses for their failure to commit personnel to countries and regions long enough to gain real understanding of them, Geraldi complained.

"For Americans, the constant rotation of officers was often explained by management not wanting its foot soldiers to go native," he added.

Geraldi acknowledged that there were administrative problems in having a sufficient number of highly qualified Arabic and Pashto speakers available to fill sensitive assignments for the US government.

"One would think that after 15 years of the global War on Terror someone might have figured out a solution. It takes two years to learn Arabic up to a functional level and no one in mid-career is willing to spend that time and effort, as language training is not particularly career enhancing," he observed.

Because of these shortcomings, US military officers, intelligence personnel, and even diplomats often tend to be the blind leading the blind when they arrive at an overseas post where the local language is challenging, Giraldi concluded.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US Army will be looking at how to stand up cyber units outside of active duty officers in the next several years, US Army Cybercommand Commanding General Edward Cardon stated on Friday.

We are looking, with the [National] Guard and the Reserve, how do we recruit, and how do we mobilize them and how do we manage them [because] there are a lot of incidents, Cardon said of the cyber units. Its not like you need them for a year, you normally need them for about ten days.

Cardon questioned whether the United States should use the Estonian model of a cyber militia, where hundreds of citizens are given training, and can be called to act as a cyber volunteer force.
"On my side, I have already had a meeting with the Russian Ambassador to the Council of Europe and established a direct contact. I will discuss the issue of relations with Russia with the leaders of the Assembly's political groups to seek their views on how we could continue co-operation," Agramunt said.

A PACE resolution in April 2014 deprived the Russian delegation of its voting rights, after Crimea became a part of Russia. Russian lawmakers were barred from participating in PACE's three key bodies  its bureau, presidential committee and standing committee. The 2014 resolution curbing Russias rights in the Assembly was prolonged a year later.

"Russia is Europe and a member state of our organisation. I strongly believe that as Europeans we must solve our problems together," Agramunt, a Spanish lawmaker who was elected the new PACE president earlier this month, said.

Agramunt stressed that the fact that Russia did not appoint a delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly 2016 ordinary session does not mean that cooperation with Russia should stop.

"There are many issues we have to discuss; there is a number of problems we have to solve together," Agramunt said, adding that dialogue with Russia is important and "the Council of Europe is an appropriate forum for such dialogue."

Last week, speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament Sergei Naryshkin said that Russia would not participate in the upcoming winter PACE session and would not present its credentials for renewal.

The decision also means Russia's credentials cannot be challenged in the body, which had previously imposed sanctions on the work of the Moscow delegates.
ST. PETERSBURG (Sputnik)  Russia is ready to fully restore relations with Finland as soon as the European Union takes necessary steps to improve ties with Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday.

"We are ready to restore relations [with Finland] in full. It is vital that all our partners, including those who meet in Brussels, hear this," Medvedev said at a joint press conference with his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila in St. Petersburg.

"And as soon as necessary decisions are made [in Brussels], our relations with Finland will certainly return to the previous level, I mean, in terms of trade volumes and prospects of trade cooperation," Medvedev stressed.
Butler elaborated that the Erdogan regime is igniting tensions between the Kurds and the Turks in order to stigmatize and marginalize the Peoples' Democratic party (HDP), a coalition of Kurdish and leftist groups with 59 MPs.

Indeed, during the June 7 elections the left-leaning pro-Kurdish HDP received 13 percent of votes, that allowed the party to enter the parliament amid vocal displeasure from the ruling AKP that lost its overall majority.

In order to regain its power the AKP is seeking to kick the HDP out of parliament and "that means controlling the narrative about the ongoing war in Turkey's southeast," Butler emphasizes.

"The government arrests on a whim Kurdish or Kurdish-sympathetic politicians for being 'terrorist sympathizers,' but is curiously tolerant when dealing with actual Islamist terrorists [Daesh]," he adds.

However, this is only part of the story. While Erdogan and AKP's motivation behind cracking down against journalists who shed light on anti-Kurdish ethnic cleansing in the southeast is clear, there are other cases which seem completely absurd.

On November 13, Hurriyet's web supplement published a piece with a photograph of Leonardo da Vinci's famous "Last Supper." The article did not cover any political issue. However, the picture was slightly edited and one could spot Recep Tayyip Erdogan sitting to the right of Jesus Christ, Pinar Tremblay, a visiting scholar of political science at California State Polytechnic University, writes in her article for Al-Monitor's Turkey Pulse.

Daily @Hurriyet wrongly publishes Da Vinci's Last Supper's doctored version showing Erdogan, fires 2 journos in fear pic.twitter.com/VfwzQC0Vdh  Mustafa Edib Ylmaz (@MustafaEdib) 13  2015

The website's editor Aynur Karabel, and Sermin Terzi, the director of content, were immediately fired. Moreover, on January 25, it was reported that prosecutors filed suit against Terzi and Karabel "for offending the president."

On the same day, another media source, CNN Turk, that quoted opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu labeling Erdogan as a "dictator," also found itself "in the crosshairs of the Turkish legal system" for using a D-word in a reference to the President.
The analysts maintain that the Ukrainian crisis is likely to remain unresolved in 2016.

"A fast settlement to the Ukraine crisis is highly unlikely, but so is war," they observed, adding that this year we will see more of what the Ukrainian leadership was doing last year. "Kiev will continue pressuring Donbass by means of bombardment and siege, avoiding meaningful negotiations on a settlement. The most patient actors will prevail."

The analysts are pessimistic when it comes to Moscow's relations with the West. They believe that the anti-Russian sanctions will not be lifted in the near future and it might take as long as a decade for relations to improve.

In the meantime, Russia "should be prudent, preserve its power and avoid getting dragged into full-scale wars." Moscow should also continue "patiently" fostering its relations with Western Europe, since the latter is gradually realizing "the importance of maintaining political dialogue and economic ties" with the former.

In addition, Russia, according to the experts, should make every effort to promote cooperation with China, India, Iran, it partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and ASEAN countries to "help create a system of collective security, build a pan-Asian transport and energy infrastructure and ensure the formation of the rapidly growing $4 billion Eurasian market."
It was Robert Ford, then US Ambassador to Syria and a chief architect of regime change in Syria, who collaborated closely with the so-called "moderate rebels," Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, underscores.

"Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria," McAdams recalls in his recent article for the Institute.

However, "as evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS [Daesh] and al-Qaeda," the analyst points out.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  The negotiations between Staffan de Mistura and Bashar Jaafari lasted 2.5 hours.

In December, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on settling the Syrian conflict, which reaffirmed the goals of the Vienna agreements to bring the entire spectrum of political groups in the crisis-torn country to the negotiating table and stated that the next round of the talks would take place in January, 2016.

The talks between the Syrian government and the country's opposition are taking place on Friday evening.
On this programme, Mateusz Piskorski, Director of the European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis and a former Polish MP offers an interesting perspective on this issue. Poland is now a member of the EU and NATO, and Mateusz points out some of the techniques used in the past to portray Russia as a bad country. If Russia was made out to be bad, then the West was good he says.

As an MP in an Eastern European country, Mateusz has seen the othering process particularly clearly. Eastern Europe was portrayed by the West as being the ideal, and Russia was portrayed as being backward in every sense. Polish politicians as far back as the 1980s were visiting the U.S. and being encouraged to set their sights on joining Europe. Systematic transformation, Mateusz says, was planned and implemented. The new methods of warfare are now intellectual, with battles being fought for control of peoples minds through the media and to a certain extent the manipulation of culture. In Poland right now, Mateusz says, if you dare to say that you doubt the dominating pro-Anglo Saxon/US economic and political model, you are called mad, in terms which Mateusz says are even more extreme than when people who were anti-Soviet were ostracized during the last years of the Polish Republic.

In short, Russia is being othered and this is being done on a mass scale. Welcome to the Brave New World.
The little boy was thirsty and asked his mother for a drink of water. Go to the sink! Turn on the tap yourself she said. But, I dont want to drink that water, it smells! and it is red! the boy replied. He has a point, the mother thought, so she went to find the Brita filter, so that at least some of the color and smell would be removed. Of course, it didn't really help, as the very same water that the family was forced to drink was also used for showers and to cook with. You see, this family lived in Flint, Michigan. For months and months the community was forced to drink something that was barely qualified to be called water. Raw light sewage was a better term. And while local and state authorities had known about the situation for months and made sure their own people didnt have to drink the tap water, the people that lived in the community did. Imagine that, Americans travel all over the world helping third world countries develop clean water sources and yet there are entire communities in the United States that dont have clean water.

The story about water in Flint, as Vox reports, has been going on for months. Eight months to be exact. But it isnt just about having an unclean source of water. It is also about the idea that certain people thought that it was a problem, just not for them. Vox explains   the Department of Environmental Quality, which was notified about the budget department's decision to buy bottled water (and noted that "certain departments" seemed concerned about the water quality notice), was still insisting that the contaminated water was perfectly safe to drink. In fact, in a letter sent to Gov. Rick Snyder on February 1, 2015, it was written  It's not like an eminent [sic] threat to public health. Vox then writes that  The letter then went on to suggest that city officials were exaggerating the threat so they could get more money out of the state for infrastructure improvements. So, there you have it. A simple and easily verifiable problem was dismissed as money grab from underlings. But this isnt the only town that has this problem.

A local news organization, WKBN, reported that  "Letters from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to the Village of Sebring show problems with lead in the villages water supply, dating back to at least November of 2015. Sebring water customers werent officially notified by the village until this week, however. The website goes on to note that  When asked about the EPA letters, Village Manager Richard Giroux initially denied that he had received them. A letter, written from the Ohio EPA to Giroux, state that tests from the June through September 2015 monitoring period showed that the villages water exceeded the lead action level. That letter was dated December 3, 2015. Logically, if there has been at least two incidents regarding a poisoned water supply that have made the news, there has to be more unreported cases out there.
In an article What Union does Poland want? carried by the Telegraph and written by Witold Waszczykowski, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, the author hits back at the growing army of Polish government critics both at home and abroad.

In a highly emotionally charged piece which is not typical for top diplomat, Mr. Waszczykowski writes:

Poland fought long and hard against foreign occupation and against an oppressive communist regime to achieve its current solid democratic order. Yet its new government, barely two months in office after winning a convincing democratic mandate, finds itself under fire from EU institutions and from over-excited media commentators who almost have not paused to consider the facts about our ambitious reform programme.
In the video the tiger is seen briefly snatching Timur and sending him stumbling down the slope after the cheeky billy goat had spent a whole hour butting and kicking the striped predator.

Timur kept butting Amur, stepping on him and occasionally pushing him off the hilltop Amur tolerated Timurs antics for a long time. Finally running out of patience, he grabbed Timur and, after giving him a little drubbing, tossed him down the slope. If he had really wanted to kill the goat he would have done it a long time ago, Dmitry Mezentsev, the director of the Primorsky Safari Park, told RIA.

I wonder how come the tiger had been putting up with the goats arrogant behavior for such a long time, he added.
Documents leaked by whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden , which revealed how intelligence agencies spied on the unsuspecting citizens of the US, led to the revelations of a mammoth global data collection system  on previously unheard of scale.

The Snowden leaks also made it clear that the Five Eyes collaboration allows countries to avoid certain restrictions on domestic surveillance by delegating to other "friendly" electronic spy outfits. Snowden also exposed the fact that the CSE shares certain tactics with the NSA  yet spying on the public remains illegal in Canada.

Surprisingly enough, the discovery of CSE's wrongdoings was made by its own commissioner, Jean Pierre Plouffe, and disclosed in his annual report, tabled in Canada's House of Commons Thursday.

"The fact that CSE did not properly minimize Canadian identity information contained in certain metadata prior to being shared was contrary to the ministerial directive, and to CSE's operational policy," Plouffe said.

Plouffe's report also mentions that the ministerial directives fail to explain the key aspects of how CSE collects, uses and shares metadata. Basically, there is no guidance on how Canada's intelligence agency should go about handling its metadata activities.

Canada's Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, in a statement, reassured the public that the "metadata in question did not contain names or enough information on its own to identify individuals."

Sajjan also told the media that the sharing wouldn't be resumed until proper protections were in place.

"We want to make sure that software updates actually do what they're supposed to do. And that's why we have stopped that portion of metadata sharing. It's very important thatwe do protect the privacy of Canadians.

"CSE will not resume sharing this information with our partners until I am fully satisfied the effective systems and measures are in place," said Sajjan.

However, the Five Eyes coalition reacted in a rather surprising way when it learnt of Canada's decision to halt information sharing until further notice. According to Sajjan, its allies were not at all upset about losing one of its "eyes".

"Our allies are actually very supportive of the work that CSE does on a daily basis. They also value the same type of protection as we do, and that's why this agreement, this very important agreement within our Five Eyes community is in place."
The unusually powerful sound registered on the northeast coast of the United States was caused by a series of tests of the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets and raised concerns among local residents, Associated Press wrote referring to a representative of the US Army.

The US Geological Survey earlier reported nine sonic booms that occurred off the coast of New Jersey and Connecticut over the course of 1.5 hours. According to reports, some buildings may have been damaged.

On Thursday afternoon, local residents complained about strong vibrations on land and in buildings. On social networks, some users wrote that there was an earthquake in the region, while others compared vibrations with the awakening of Godzilla, a character which also has been frequently used by the Japanese as a metaphor for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear weapons in general.
"So, to add insult to injury, I spent my entire 23-month sentence with child molesters, rapists, the worst of the drug dealers, violent criminals of every shade," he says. "That was one last swipe that the Justice Department could take against me."

Kiriakou leaked his information during the Bush administration, but it was during the Obama administration that he was pursued and punished for whistleblowing.

"I have some friends who still work at the White House, and theyve told me that this presidents obsession with leaks is unparalleled in modern American history," Kiriakou says. "He does not tolerate leaks unless he or his people leak for an official purpose, that is to make themselves look good."

Kiriakous leaks included details on Abu Zubaydah, who was accused of being an aide to Osama Bin Laden. The whistleblower was originally questioned by the FBI, to whom he willingly talked, but the CIA then took over.
The purpose of this blog is for me to publish not-quite-daily updates on my continuing research on the English Reformation and its aftermath, especially for Catholics until Emancipation in 1829; I'll particularly highlight the stories of the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, especially those beatified and canonized by the Holy See. I will also highlight promotional events for Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.If you like my blog, you might like my book, available from these retailers , on Kindle , and Nook ! [If you want a signed copy, please contact me via email: englishreform(at)cox(dot)net].Comment moderation is turned on; please be patient with me logging in to approve comments.
One incumbent is running in the five-candidate race for two open seats.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission wants catch-and-release sturgeon fishing ended in the lower Columbia River to help protect the troubled population.

The nine-member panel voted unanimously in Vancouver on Saturday to direct the Department of Fish and Wildlife staff to begin talks with Oregon about a phase-out.

Ironically, the vote came at the end of a discussion on whether to talk with Oregon about having a small retention season in 2016 in the Columbia River estuary.

I cant support any handling or harvest of sturgeon, said Conrad Mahnken, a commission member from Bainbridge Island. Im not in support of catch and release.

Sturgeon fishing downstream of Bonneville Dam shifted to catch-and-release only starting in 2014.

Since then, angler participation has dropped by 90 percent in the estuary and 82 percent between the estuary and Bonneville Dam, said Patrick Frazier, fish program policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Four of the five measurements used to track the health of the lower Columbia River sturgeon appear down, Frazier said.

The good news is that the estimated population of legal-size sturgeon is 147,000 in 2016. Thats up from 72,700 in 2012, he said.

But heres the bad news:

The estimate of spawning-size sturgeon was 3,040 in 2015, with a three-year average of 3,330. Oregons sturgeon conservation plan calls for action when the three-year average drops below 3,900.

Sixty-nine percent of the population is juvenile sturgeon. A healthy population would be 90 percent to 95 percent juveniles.

Spawning success in the lower Columbia River appears to have been extremely poor in 2015, continuing a trend of poor spawning.

Sea lion numbers in the lower Columbia continue to increase.

Frazier said there is a belief that sturgeon may be redistributing themselves to avoid predation by sea lions.

Sturgeon are reported seen in the tributaries, the Willamette and elsewhere.

Brad James , sturgeon biologist, said as the fish move to less optimal habitat it is likely their spawning success will suffer.

Butch Smith of the Ilwaco Charter Association asked the commission to consider a small retention season in the Columbia estuary.

The coastal economies have been hurt badly by the loss of the late-spring/early-summer season.

Smith said when the legal-size population was only 65,000 sturgeon he agreed with no retention. But at almost 150,000, a conservation season is acceptable.

We need to get some people back in our area, he said.

Frazier said the department has modeled a retention season of about 30 days straddling May and June in the estuary only that would result in less than a 6 percent harvest rate.

The commercial fleet would get a 20 percent overall share, per previous bistate sturgeon management policies, he said.

But almost all testimony was against a retention season.

I think this stock is in a world of hurt, said Harry Barber of Washougal.

The low number of spawners and declining number of juveniles are two huge red flags, he said. Its foolish to talk about harvest.

The spawner population of sturgeon has just been hammered by the growing number of sea lions in the lower Columbia.

Kent Martin, a commercial fisherman from Wahkiakum County, agreed sea lion predation is the major issue.

Follow the data, said Ed Wickersham of Ridgefield. This population is sour.

He suggested ending catch-and-release sport fishing and do everything possible to eliminate sturgeon handle in commercial fishing.

We need to send a strong message to all citizens, said commission member Robert Kehoe of Seattle.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials were not available for comment. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission meets Feb. 11 and 12 in Tigard.
Elizabeth Meharg and Joe Jacobsen miss the days when Commerce Avenue was the retail center of Longview. But the couple, who have lived nearly all their lives here, still think Longview is a great place to raise kids and enjoy the community spirit.

Meharg, 79, particularly likes the schools and the churches.

I love it here, and I dont want to move, adds Jacobsen, 80.

Meharg was born in North Dakota and moved here when she was 4. My father wanted to get out of the mines, she said. He heard that the Long-Bell Lumber Co. was hiring.

Jacobsens father moved to Longview in 1923 to work at Long-Bell, which was the company owed by the citys founder, R.A. Long, and which built giant sawmills along the Columbia River waterfront.

Both Jacobsen and Meharg graduated from R.A. Long High School in 1954. She said she doesnt remember much from those days, but he said, I knew all the girls.

After high school, Meharg went to work at the National Bank of Commerce. She and her then-husband owned the Treasure House Christian bookstore for six years, and then she worked for the Kelso School District. Meharg, who was director of childrens ministries at Longview Community Church, decided to get a masters degree in theology and in 1991 became a pastor at the church.

She moved down Kessler Boulevard to become a chaplain at St. John Medical Center in 2001  a position from which shes just now retiring.

After high school, Jacobsen spent eight years in the Navy, then worked at the Weyerhaeuser Co. pulp powerhouse for a decade. He also owned a service station where Millers Market is now located on Washington Way, served as a mechanic for Wilcox & Flegel and worked at the coal tar pitch plant at the Port of Longview.

Meharg and Jacobsen renewed their friendship at a high school class lunch and got married in 2014.

Looking back on their lives here, Meharg said, I feel this was a great place to raise my kids. My sons got a good education. As a parent, I had the opportunity to know the teachers and on a personal level.

One of Mehargs sons, Steve, still lives here. She said her other son, David, would love to move back from California if he could get the right job here.

Meharg also loved the church she used to attend, Calvary Community. I felt that my kids were getting a good religious education, too.

Meharg and Jacobsen said they miss the old downtown Longview centered on Commerce Avenue.

She predicts a larger Longview, at least geographically. I think its going to spread out, she said. Like most communities its going to have little mini-malls.

The couple, who live on the Old West Side, enjoy being able to walk to the post office, to church and to downtown.

It seems to be we have most everything else a major city would have, except for the fine arts, Meharg said. But you can find those in Portland. I can find everything either here in town or an hours drive away.

Community events such as Squirrel Fest and Go4th help foster community spirit, but the area needs more jobs, she said.

Meharg also says she troubled by the recent conflicts at the Port of Longview and Cowlitz PUD. And then theres the problem with Longviews water. Theyve got to do something about that, she said.
Anyone trying to call any of Cowlitz Countys big wigs Thursday likely didnt get a call back. Thats because the countys business, government, education and community leaders were together most of the day in one room at the Cowlitz County Regional Conference Center, where they presented strategies for a better future as part of the 40 for 2020 event.

Topping the list of needs discussed was a renewed focus on early childhood literacy, more local health care workers, a county logo and connected bike path, a community events calendar and stronger bonds between local ports. With their ideas for improving the countys economic, educational, mental and physical well being often crisscrossing, the county leaders were committed to the vision they laid out Thursday morning.

For Paul Youmans, director of nonprofit Pathways 2020, which focuses on local health problems, there is a real need to expand early childhood education under the federal-subsidized programs Head Start and Early Head Start.

If were going to make changes (in the county), we need to start very young and from the womb. Thats going to make a healthier Cowlitz County, Youmans said.

On the health care front, Cowlitz County Health & Human Services lead Michael ONeill wants to create a network of community health workers, community members who fan out into local schools, for example, to provide basic health care.

Longview schools Superintendent Dan Zorn wants more focus on boosting early literacy and creating multiple pathways to graduation, such as alternative schools and trade programs. Zorn sees a need for more partnerships between the health care and education sectors to tackle the huge demand for mental and physical health care for students.

Though he was speaking about his districts challenge to recruit good teachers, Kalama schools Superintendent Eric Nerison said in just a handful of words the problem each sector faces: Its not a small issue. Its a Cowlitz County issue, he said.

To help with the affordable housing crunch, Local realtor Brad Whittaker suggested creating a directory of potential housing sites to provide developers with needed information, and former city manager Bob Gregory pushed for local governments to identify ways to fund shovel ready projects.

In an eloquent speech early in the conference, Sheriff Mark Nelson appealed to his audience to change the countys image and expressed hope that leaders could make the change.

We have an image here in Cowlitz County and its not the image we enjoyed a decade ago, but a much darker image, one of drugs, homelessness and mental health issues, he said.

While perhaps the biggest challenge will be to these ideas in motion, Cowlitz County Commissioner Mike Karnofski  who helped organize the event  remained confident the county leaders will be able to do just that. He said at lease one group had already scheduled its second meeting.

Karnofski said the meeting, which was funded by the county, the Cowlitz County Economic Development Council and Lower Columbia College Foundation, was the best $750 we all collectively spent.
Wahkiakum Public Works Director Chuck Beyer is so frustrated that he wont even venture a guess about when the troubled Oscar B returns to service.

Im done predicting, he said Thursday.

It sounds, though, that the ferry may be down for at least another week.

The vessel has been out of service since Dec. 11 while workers in a Vancouver dry dock fitted its generator motor with a new cooling system. The vessel was returning to Cathlamet Tuesday night, ready to go back into service Wednesday morning, when an engine shuddered if it was cranked too high.

Later, when the ship arrived in Cathlamet, officials learned that a seal on one of two drive shafts was bad. Both are going to be replaced, and the work can be done in Cathlamet, but one of the parts has to be shipped from England, Beyer said.

The seal repair will cost about $5,000 and is probably not covered by warranty, even though the Oscar B only went into service a year ago, Beyer said.

The cooling system retrofit will cost $114,000, and the county is trying to get either the boat builder or designer to cover that cost.

The ferry, which provides hourly service across the Columbia between Puget Island and Westport, Ore., is the only way for vehicles to cross the river between bridges at Longview and Astoria.
Shopping cart problems: The City of Kelso is looking into a possible ordinance to manage its shopping cart problem. It seems people are taking shopping carts from stores and then leaving them in various parts of town. The city wants to make businesses put up warning signs as well as fine the business when the carts are stolen.

This story drove quite a few comments like this one from Carol, If the businesses dont foot the bill for ID signs, and the cart-nappers cant afford the fines .... the taxpayers will be on the hook for processing the mess. We agree with Carol and many other readers who made comments criticizing the citys proposed ordinance. If someone stole your bicycle and left it on public property in Kelso, should you get fined for it? Doesnt seem like a great solution.

This type of issue also reminds us that not everything should or could be solved with more legislation.

Brenda Wing sentence: Were not ones to applaud in the wake of a tragedy, but in this case it appears some justice was done. Both Brenda and Danny Wing, convicted of brutally abusing and killing Jasper Henderling-Warner, were sentenced to identical 34-year prison sentences. While both of the Wings deserve every bit of the sentences received, nothing will ever bring back that young boys life.

Initiative 1366 legislation: State Rep. Ed Orcutt has put forward legislation to make a two-thirds supermajority vote part of the Washington State Constitution. Orcutt is responding to voters who passed the initiative last November only for a King County judge to rule it unconstitutional. Orcutt told TDN, Lawmakers need to represent the will of the people. Since 1993 there have been six initiatives to put limits on tax increases. Each time it was approved by the voters, and then overturned by legislators or the courts. I believe the citizens of Washington state have earned the right to permanently protect themselves with this common sense policy.

We couldnt have said it any better  nice job.

New PUD general manager: TDN reporter Marissa Luck introduced us to the new Cowlitz PUD GM Steve Kern last Sunday. Kern, whos been on the job for about a week, inherits an enterprise coming out of substantial chaos, faces environmental and expense challenges from state initiative 937 and escalating power costs. More than enough challenges for the new GM and his team.

In light of the uphill battle Kern has, lets give him some time and see how he performs. The TDN editorial board is meeting with Kern today, so well find out more about who he is and what he plans. Well keep you posted.

23 Club series: The TDN news team is in the middle of a great new series about 23 Club members. This is the second series in the recent past; the Vietnam series was a big success, readers told us they loved it. Were getting the same type of feedback on the 23 Club.

For those of you who dont know, the 23 Club was originally a social club of descendents of Longviews founding families. More recently, the 23 Club has been opened to anyone who enjoys and loves the city. Let us know if you have a great topic for another series.

Billy Joel comes to Safeco Field: Wow! Talk about an event that will most certainly sell out  a Billy Joel concert at Safeco field! Billy Joel, one of the most popular artists throughout the 80s, 90s and through today is coming to Seattle for a concert on May 20. Joel is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is a six-time Grammy award winner. Tickets go on sale Feb. 5 at www.livenation.com and will likely be pretty expensive. For big Billy Joel fans, this might worth the price of admission.
Letters to the Editor





Favor democracy

Your editorial last Saturday advocating the establishment of a two-thirds super-majority for the Legislature to raise (only raise?) taxes is a potentially dangerous affront to democracy, given that we live in a democratic republic. Great thinkers on the subject of democracy, from Jefferson and Madison to deTocqueville and beyond, made it clear that an essential democratic principle is majority rule and minority rights. What your editorial advocates is a kind of minority rule, which is as antithetical to democracy as is monarchy. Minority rights in a democratic republic means that minorities, through voting their representation, can become a changed and new majority who can vote on, say, tax changes. That is the point. What you advocate is a system whereby 33.4 to 49.9 percent of our elected representatives should be able to change tax laws for all of us. Minority rule. Please, favor democracy, not Tim Eyman.

Mark Bergeson

Longview, WA

Happy New Year!

People in many Asian countries, as well as Asian communities elsewhere around the globe, are marking the start of a new lunar year next month.

Chinese (or Lunar) New Year 4714 begins on Feb. 8, 2016, and it is a year of the Monkey according to the Chinese 12-year animal zodiac cycle. Other Monkey years include: 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992 and 2004. If you were born then, then youre a Monkey. Each Chinese zodiac year begins on Chinese New Years Day.

The Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China, is the longest and most important traditional festival. It is also for family gatherings, fireworks and street parties.

Although there are many interesting legends and stories explaining the start of the Lunar New Year Festival, the main two reasons for the festival are to celebrate a year of hard work, have a good rest, and relax with family; and to wish for a lucky and prosperous coming year.

Happy New Year of the Monkey to all!

Lam Luu

Longview

Face the future

Michael Gersons editorial in Sundays paper shows how far from the average intelligent voter he is, and Washington, D.C. inhabitants are from the people who work and pay taxes.

He doesnt realize there are some of us who worry about the direction that the country is going. A wide open southern border with only one candidate with a working solution, all but one of the others are Washington, D.C. political hacks who are more interested in their perks and insider trading freedoms than the country and its citizens. Heaven help us if all the talking heads and more government supporters are the ones who decide this countrys future! Voters think for yourself and vote!

Charles C. Van Belle

Longview

Enforce existing laws

An assault weapon by definition and use must be capable of automatic blast fire, that is the ability to fire multiple rounds with one press of the trigger. You cant buy those without a special license. So the continued use of this term assault weapon is being used by politicians and media is done in ignorance or intentional lying. The Second Amendment guarantees law abiding citizens the right to own firearms. House Bills 2354, 1857 and 1747 are assaults on that right. Contact your legislators and demand they stop this crime. When are they going to find a way to negate the power of caliphate of King / Snohomish counties and their secret minions in the other free counties? As hard as they try, and as good as they are, police will tell you, when seconds count, police are minutes away. Enforce the laws we have, there is no need for more. Know who youre voting for then know how they vote. The Second Amendment protects the other amendments. Gun control was practiced by Hitler, Stalin and Mao. They used it to turn their citizens into subjects, then slaves.

Robin W. Mowell

Castle Rock
Democrats and Republicans often stray from one another on issues relating to energy and the economy. Party allegiances  from local to state to the federal level  have transitioned from lines in the sand to roots unable to be dug up. Yet, sometimes, we witness moments when lawmakers from the two parties can put aside ideological differences and find common ground to support initiatives crucial to Americans and their communities.

This week, a bipartisan group of state senators, Sen. Jim Keane-D, Butte; Sen. Rick Ripley-R, Wolf Creek; Sen. Cliff Larsen-D, Missoula; and Sen. Duane Ankney-R, Colstrip, traveled from Montana to Olympia to testify before the Legislature on a bill that would inflict costly economic hardships on our constituents back home. If passed, Senate Bill 6248, would effectively close a portion of the power generating units at the Colstrip power plant in southeastern Montana. This is disastrous to say the least.

Colstrip is the second-largest coal-fired power plant in the west. The plants combined peak output of nearly 2,100 mega-watts is enough reliable electricity to power as much as 1.5 million households. The facility also employs nearly 360 workersall Montanans. Many of these people have been working there for years, clocking in and out day after day, to bring home solid incomes for their families. But should this bill be implemented, many of our constituents would be issued pink slips. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of good paying jobs and the electricity millions depend on, would vanish.

Opponents of plants like Colstrip continue to do everything they can to take coal-based power projects offline for good. We are bearing witness to an administration that, through stringently opposed regulations, wants to drastically alter Americas energy portfolio through a shift to intermittent and expensive fuel sources like renewables.

This is unrealistic, given that nearly 40 percent of U.S. electricity comes from coal-based power generation. It is a low cost, baseload fuel source that ensures our lights and heat stay on, money remains in consumers wallets for necessities like food and clothing, and jobs are plentiful to keep hard-working families afloat.

Consumers dont have to look far to see similar examples of this ideological-fueled agenda taking shape. Another is the environmental review process of proposed export terminals in Washington state.

These terminals would bring more jobs and add needed economic revenue back into local communities throughout Montana, Washington, and the region through exports of resources including coal and agricultural products. Energy exports are notably another crucial factor shaping the economic core of our districts in Montana. However, the permitting process to greenlight these projects has been riddled with bureaucratic delays, eliminating any chance of fair and transparent decision-making.

When it comes to proposed legislation including SB 6248, its important to remember that the decisions of a few, in this case in Washington, could result in a costly ripple effect stretching far and wide. It would start predominantly in our own districts in Montana, and ultimately touch communities throughout this region of the U.S. We hope our trip to Olympia brought to the forefront these concerns and will aid the Washington Legislature in working with us to develop sound policy that supports the progress of Washington, Montana, and ultimately the entire Pacific Northwest.

SB 6842 will not only inflict substantial rate increases on Montana rate payers, but Washington rate payers as well. Not permitting the ports inflicts economic hardships on the producers in Montana both, Coal and Agriculture It also does not allow for the increase in good paying Union jobs on the Ports.

Washington has stiff competition from California and Canada. These ports would benefit both Montana and Washington.

I will close by saying the Montana has nothing on Washington when it comes to hospitality. I speak for myself and colleagues when I say that the people in Washington treated us very well.
WASHINGTON  I adore Bernie Sanders.

I agree with his message of fairness and I share his outrage over inequality and corporate abuses. I think his righteous populism has captured the moment perfectly. I respect the uplifting campaign he has run. I admire his authenticity.

And I am convinced Democrats would be insane to nominate him.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a dreary candidate. She has, again, failed to connect with voters. Her policy positions are cautious and uninspiring. Her reflexive secrecy causes a whiff of scandal to follow her everywhere. She seems calculating and phony.

And yet if Democrats hope to hold the presidency in November, theyll need to hold their noses and nominate Clinton.

Ultimately, I expect thats what Democrats will do  because as much as they love Sanders, they loathe Donald Trump more. It seems more evident each day that Republicans have lost their collective reason and are beginning to accept the notion that Trump will be their nominee. And I doubt Democrats will make an anti-immigrant bigot the president by nominating a socialist to run against him.

Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.

Watching Sanders at Monday nights Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump  or another Republican nominee  would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the socialist label and requested that Sanders define it so that it doesnt concern the rest of us citizens.

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who dont want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top  thats my definition of democratic socialism.

But thats not how Republicans will define socialism  and theyll have the dictionary on their side. Theyll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. Theyll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldnt be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists dont win national elections in the United States.

Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases  one of the biggest tax hikes in history, as moderator Chris Cuomo put it  to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that hypothetically, youre going to pay $5,000 more in taxes, and declared, We will raise taxes, yes we will. He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that its demagogic to say, oh, youre paying more in taxes.

Well, yes  and Trump is a demagogue.

When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government bigger than ever, Sanders didnt quarrel, saying, People want to criticize me, OK, and Fine, if thats the criticism, I accept it.

Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York mayor who floated a trial balloon over the weekend about an independent run, knows this. As The New York Times reported: If Republicans were to nominate Mr. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a hard-line conservative, and Democrats chose Mr. Sanders, Mr. Bloomberg ... has told allies he would be likely to run.

President Obama seems to know this, too  which would explain why he tiptoed beyond his official neutrality to praise Clinton in an interview with Politicos Glenn Thrush. I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, he said. He portrayed Sanders as the bright, shiny object that people havent seen before.

It doesnt speak well of Clinton that, next to her, a 74-year-old guy who has been in politics for four decades is a bright and shiny object. The phenomenon has at least as much to do with Clinton as with Sanders: Democrats are eager for an alternative to her inauthentic politics and cautious policies.

I share their frustration with Clinton. But that doesnt make Sanders a rational choice.
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Hoping to provide greater clarity into the performance of its many holdings, Alphabet said it would report financial results under two segments, Google and "Other Bets," when it releases fourth-quarter earnings on Monday.

Under Google, Alphabet will report the results of its main Internet and related businesses such as search, ads, maps, YouTube, Android, Chrome and Google Play, and hardware products such as Chromecast, Chromebooks and Nexus, as well as its virtual reality offerings.

"Other Bets" will detail Alphabet's other businesses including Access/Google Fiber, Calico, Nest, Verily (formerly known as Google Life Sciences), GV (once known as Google Ventures), Google Capital and X, better known as Google X.

Alphabet said there would be no changes to its consolidated financial reporting but some changes would be made to how it breaks out revenue.

Investors and analysts had praised the move to the Alphabet structure as a shift towards greater transparency and fiscal discipline when it was announced in August.

It will provide investors their first detailed peek into the finances of the parts of Google outside its highly profitable search engine.

In a blog post announcing the changes, Alphabet's chief executive, Larry Page, said the change allows the company to take the "long-term view" of its holdings and invest "at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see."

"Fundamentally we believe this (structure) allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren't very related."

Since the Aug. 10 announcement, Alphabet's stock price has climbed almost 13 percent, closing at $748.30 on Thursday. In addition, the company is close to displacing Apple as the most valuable U.S. tech company.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Many like us, do feel that Apple in a way is using India as a market to get rid of its older products. Older iPhones are re-launched and sold at unreasonable prices with hardware that is at times almost 5 years old. The problem with these older devices is not that they can be used for one or two years until they need to be discarded, but the fact they have to be discarded so early, leading to mounds of electronic waste in the country.

According to a report in the Indian Express, Apple is trying to set up a factory to rebuild and sell its refurbished iPhones coming from China, in the country. The Cupertino giant had approached the government with a proposal a few years ago, but was quickly rejected for reasons related to e-waste by the Environment Ministrys Technical Review Committee.

Apple according to the new filing mentions that its refurbished devices should not be considered as "second hand" since the units that will be sold through official channels will be quality checked and also come with the standard one year warranty; something that is also available with a newer device.

(Also Read: Apple needs to look at India beyond an emerging market)

However, in its defense, Apple made it clear that its devices are good quality ones and it is the low-cost ones that the government needs to be worried about when it comes to e-waste. In the same filing, the San Francisco based company specified that it has plans to begin its refurbishing operations in low numbers, but that it would ramp up depending on the availability of units coming from China.
tech2 News Staff

BlackBerry launched the anticipated Priv smartphone today in India today. The new Android smartphone by BlackBerry will be available in stores across India from January 30 with a price tag of Rs 62,990. The device will also be available via BlackBerry authorised partners and resellers, and from online partner Amazon India as well.

In terms of specifications, the smartphone has a 5.4-inch dual-curved WQHD Plastic AMOLED display similar to the Samsung Galaxy Edge series. The display has a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels with a density of 540 dpi. In addition, the device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 Hexa-Core, 64-bit processor with an Adreno 418, 600MHz GPU.

An 18 MP dual-flash Schneider-Kreuznach certified camera is expected to deliver crisp images. The device has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage that is expandable up to 2TB via a microSD card slot. A 3410 mAh battery on the Priv gives up to 22.5 hours of battery life according to BlackBerry.

The device also pairs its hardware with a tweaked version of Android, to make it a secure Android phone. The company also stated that it will push a software patch every month to fight against malware on Android. The company's Pop-up widgets offers users quick function apps right from the homescreen without launching them.

(Also Read: BlackBerry Priv: Heres why I have mixed emotions as someone who has switched from BlackBerry to Android)

The Priv also comes with the BlackBerry keyboard. This physical keyboard gives a full screen content along with touch capacitive features, such as, a trackpad. During the launch, the company also previewed a live demo of the DTEK app by BlackBerry. DTEK by BlackBerry basically keeps track of all your apps installed on the smartphone to keep data secure and enhance a user's privacy. It is also said to prevent iCloud-like hacks. The device, which will run Android 6.0 Marshmallow, will also enhance DTEK capabilities and security as well.

Prive can also be integrated with the EMM solution, BES 12, which offers cross-platform management of Priv and other devices; providing end security solution and secure collaboration applications for business users. It also comes with speakers and a three-microphone system for a high-quality listening experience. BlackBerry Natural Sound Technology is built in to adapt WiFi and cellular call sound depending upon phone position and background noise, automatically adjusting volume so users dont have to.
Nash David

This is going to take me some time to come to terms with. Ive been a BlackBerry user for many years now. And today with the BlackBerry Priv being in the news, I recall fond memories of my BlackBerry Curve that helped me type out 2000-word documents at ease. I eventually did get promoted to a BlackBerry Q10. The BlackBerry keyboard always ensured I could type thousands of words without realising it. I didnt feel the need to be in front of a computer.

In the true sense it was my productivity device. Ive seen BlackBerry evolve with BlackBerry 10  a cutting edge operating system. It truly is. But somewhere, I feel let down by BlackBerry. And Im not alone. When BlackBerry launched the BlackBerry Z10, and then the BlackBerry Q5 and Q10, it displayed what it could accomplish, if it decided to. Then came along the BlackBerry Passport.

These devices had a clear edge over competition, at least on paper. Many kept writing them off, and it always seemed unfair. Many core users I know, including myself, kept harping on the aspect of security. Back then, I did feel the need for it. Today WhatsApp gives you the ability to have read receipts for each member in a group  something BlackBerry Messenger doesn't support.

I loved the browser on BlackBerry 10. Its clearly among the fastest mobile browsers out there. Besides, its based on WebKit again. So not only is it fast, but also complies with the way most websites are designed. For a user, thats how a browser ought to be. But for a developer, its the other way around.

BlackBerry did everything possible to re-invent itself ground up. And then comes along the BlackBerry Priv. From all those I have interacted with who religiously follow BlackBerry, I can place their reactions in two buckets. On one hand, there are those who are absolutely delighted to see a BlackBerry Android device. These are the kind who would stay with BlackBerry as a brand under all circumstances they face.

And then there are those who cant see BlackBerry doing an Android smartphone. They probably consider it blasphemy, because Android is the polar opposite of everything BlackBerry stands for. The BlackBerry boys, the purists who are obsessed with their 'crackberrys' wouldn't take it very kindly.

And I began this morning in anticipation awaiting the India launch of the BlackBerry Priv. And all I could think of was we finally saw a drastic shift. One of survival and relevance. What has it come down to? The best QWERTY experience on an Android device? Is that what technological merit would be pegged at? And to consider that would be half a lakh? Rs 62,000 to be precise! Is that why companies such as Ryan Seacrest's Typo were asked to cease manufacturing, only to make way for irrationally priced BlackBerry devices that dont run on the BlackBerry operating system?

And another aspect of my digital experience was missing out on Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, and so much more. Yes, there are no native apps. And being a core fan myself, I relate to those arguments about sideloading and the virtual Android environment. If you're one of those contemplating such arguments, let me say it  they dont hold true. Yes, I have loved, and will always love the email experience on a BlackBerry. I wish our lives revolved only around email. Sadly, that's not true.

You need to be stranded in a remote part of the city, and your only hope to finding your way needs to be one of the popular taxi services. Considering that most of them are app-only and specifically Android and iOS only, youd take an instant resolve to switch to either an iPhone or Android device. I've been there, to realise the gravity of the problem BlackBerry has been dealing with. And that is apps. It always has been and will continue to be.

I guess I now understand how core users of Palm webOS and Nokia Symbian felt when those brilliant products faced an abrupt end. Theres a common trend in these products. Each had immense potential, but were abruptly put to rest. With BlackBerry again, the new BlackBerry 10 operating system had immense potential, but seems to have been abruptly put to an end. Since BlackBerry has announced that it will launch two devices this year (both being Android devices), it seems the company is headed for a similar fate.

Whats contradictory is BlackBerry made a significant announcement today  it would push software patches every month to fight malware in Android. Besides, the BlackBerry Hub, which has been one of the unique aspects of the OS UI will now be available on Android with the Priv. Well, as someone who has been using BlackBerry 10, I wish these efforts went towards building its own proprietary OS rather than what a Lumia has ended up becoming.
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Chinese consumer electronics maker LeEco plans to start selling virtual reality headsets and launch smart TVs in India in the June quarter, months after entering the country with its smartphone range, a company executive said.

LeEco's VR headset, Le 3D Helmet, will come equipped with a 5.5 inch, 2K resolution screen with a 70 degree field of view. It was launched in China in September.

Virtual reality (VR) is seen as the next big thing in technology but not many devices are available for sale in India.

Oculus, the VR company Facebook Inc bought in 2014, started accepting pre-orders this month for its much-awaited headset, Rift, which is priced at $599.

Atul Jain, India chief operating officer of LeEco, declined to disclose the price of the company's VR device.

LeEco, formerly known as LeTV, entered India earlier this month with the launch of two smartphones - Le 1s, priced at 10,999 rupees ($162), and Le Max, priced at 32,999 rupees.

The company, which got more than 300,000 registrations for a flash sale of the phones scheduled for Feb. 2 on e-commerce website Flipkart [IPO-FLPK.N], said it doesn't expect any supply glitches even if all those registrants convert into customers.

"I'm actually expecting a much bigger (registration) number by the time the flash sales begin," Jain said.

The company's China-based rivals, OnePlus and Xiaomi, had faced problems as demand outstripped supply, leading to a delay in deliveries.

LeEco sells roughly half a million smartphones in China every month, Jain said. "There is a huge amount of production capacity available."

Founded in 2004, LeEco started selling smartphones in China in April last year and has sold 4 million of them so far, said Jain, who earlier worked at Samsung Electronics.

LeEco also plans to gradually bring all its products, including Netflix-like streaming service and electric cars, to India.

The company has already tied up with ErosNow and YuppTV for providing online content and is in talks with others companies for possible partnerships.

Jain declined to comment on any partnership talks with RelianceJio, telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, which is building India's biggest 4G telecommunications network.

Reuters

Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and tech2.
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By Prafulla Mathur

The term Entrepreneur wasnt always as cool as it is today. When I quit my job in the United Kingdom, people around me frowned upon my choice of returning to India to Start-up. It took people very long to digest the fact that someone could leave a high paying international role to start a company in India from scratch.

As a young engineering student, I always hoped to build things. I always dreamt of building need-based products that would make lives of people convenient, help them save money and hence, create value. Alongside of working towards fulfilling my engineering aspirations, I also played music professionally. I played solo and was also the lead vocalist and guitarist in a band called Bronze and Ive played at some popular bars, clubs and colleges in London, Delhi, Bombay and Jaipur. My dream to build a product that combined the power of technology and music forced me to leave my job.

In 2010, when Android and iPhones werent nearly as popular as they are today, I built a product that could stream music content on Java devices. The product was called Zephyr  The Indian Rock Music Hub, and I called my start up Queppelin inspired by the name of two of my favorite Rock Music bands, Queen and Led Zeppelin. The product saw 26,000 installs in less than 2 weeks, a feat unimaginable in 2010. Oracle, the owner of the Java platform decided to showcase the technology at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2011. Queppelin also went on to win the Red Herring Award alongside Snapdeal in 2011. Queppelin is now a leading company in its space and has built some of the most popular products in Indian Mobile internet history with clients including Gaana, Reliance BigFlix, Facebook and many more.

Queppelin gave me some of the deepest learnings both as an entrepreneur and a professional. It taught me the power of persistence. Many times, as an entrepreneur, you hope to achieve all your goals in one day which eventually leads to the fall of a business. It is important to give each investment; monetary or non-monetary time before you start expecting radical results. Another great learning that I drew being the CEO and Founder of Queppelin was that its important to make your team feel as passionately about your company as you do. No amounts of money and designations can ever replace the feeling of ownership that a person has towards his/her company.

Post building Queppelin as a sustainable business, I decided to explore opportunities for next entrepreneurial project. Having travelled the length and breadth of India and abroad, I was appalled at the shoddy condition of unbranded hotels in India and how miserably they compared to similarly priced hotels in Europe. The final nail on the coffin was when I travelled to Banaras for my Aunts final rights. In a completely stressed state of mind, I was forced to find myself a decent hotel to stay. After a few hours and countless hotel visits, I finally found a livable accommodation. This experience gave me the idea to start WudStay, an online marketplace for unbranded standardized hotels. The proposition was to build a large chain of hotels that focused on ensuring high quality accommodation irrespective of a customers budget.

While, building technology was my strength, it was important to gather knowledge and real insights into build high quality hospitality startup. I decided to leave my house and spend months living in unbranded hotels and using my personal professional network to understand the basic nuances of hospitality and the general users needs while choosing a hotel. I was fortunate to have built strong relationships with Institutional Investors during my times as Founder and CEO of Queppelin. Similie Ventures, a VC Luxembourg based Venture Capital Fund invested a seed fund even before the website was live. With two cities, Jaipur and Gurgaon, WudStay was launched. Today, WudStay has partnerships with over 450 hotels in 45+ cities in India. Backed by Mangrove Capital Partners and Vikas Saxena for USD 3 Million, we continue to scale our operations while keeping a close eye on our objective of being the Gold Standard of Quality in the Unorganized Hotel Space.

Entrepreneurship is an addiction. It goes far beyond the desire to Be Ones Own Boss. For me, it has always been about creating sustainable value that brings convenience to the lives of users. I have always believed that companies are far bigger than just money. While, I was in the United Kingdom working with some of the best brains in the business, I was convinced that being an employee would never allow me to build something new. My most fond memories of that time are when me and my friends would get together and make music. I have always been inspired by the thought of making new things. Entrepreneurship for me is about freshness and doing things that havent been done before.

The author is founder WudStay, an online marketplace for unbranded standardized hotels
Iran says it flew drone over US aircraft carrier

Photo shows Iran surveillance drone flying over a unknown place.

AP, Tehran :

Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state television reported Friday. An American official declined to comment on the claim.

The reported drone overflight comes after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the U.S. in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

The brief report by state television said the drone flight occurred on the third day of the naval exercise, suggesting it happened Friday. Later, its website and the semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, published footage it said was of the drone's flight.

The footage showed the drone launch and later hover above what appeared to be an aircraft carrier underway in a body of water. The footage zoomed into a row of fighter jets on the carrier's deck.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the footage. Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said officials were "not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet."

A story from the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine also participated in the surveillance operation.

The Iranian report did not name the U.S. vessel filmed by the drone. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Stephens, the U.S. Navy spokesman, said the drone report would not affect its operations.

"I can say that we are confident in the ability of U.S. naval forces operating in the region to respond appropriately as the situation dictates, and will exercise our right to defend our forces against any threat," he said.

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill at mock targets. Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began the naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer (1.16-million-square-mile) area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a U.S. warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The U.S. Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the U.S., its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.
Should the Revisional Court raise new points?

Appellate Division :

(Civil)

Md Abdul Wahhab

Miah J

Md Imman Ali J

AHM Shamsuddin

Choudhury J

Bashant Protima Nandi ................Appellant

vs

Government of Bangladesh, represented by the Deputy Commissioner, Chittagong

and others...........

............. Respondents"

Judgment March 10th, 2015.

Code of Civil Procedure (V of 1908)

Section 115(1) read with

Order XLI, rule 31

The revisional Court is not at all permitted to raise a new point which fundamentally relates determination of facts. The duty of the revisional Court in case of a judgment of reversal is to see whether the appellate Court reversed the decree of the trial Court adverting its findings and decision on proper and correct appreciation of the evidence on record and the law governing the field. . ..... (11)

Abdul Qyayum, Senior Advocate, with Md Ali Rezn, Advocate, instructed by Zainul Abedin, Advocate-on-Record-For the Appellant.

Biswajit Deb Nath, Deputy Attorney-General instructed by Mahmuda Begum, Advocate-on-Record For Respondents.

Judgment

Md Abdul Wahhab Miah J: This appeal, by leave, has arisen out of the judgment and order dated the 31st day of August, 2006 passed by a !earned Judge of the Single Bench of the High Court Division in Civil Revision No. 163 of 2004 making the Rule absolute.

2. Facts necessary for disposal of this appeal are that the present appellant as plaintiff filed Other Suit No. 108 of 2001 in the Court of Assistant Judge, Sitakunda, Chittagong for declaration of title to the suit land and for further declaration that PS and BS Khatian in respect of the suit land was wrongly prepared and also for a direction for recording her name in the PS and BS Khatians.

3. The case of the plaintiff, in short, was that the suit land originally belonged to Gagan Chandra Shil who sold the same to Nagendra Kumar by registered Kabala No. 231 dated 211-1912. RS Khatian No.2 was prepared in the name of Nagendra Kumar. Nagendra Kumar died leaving behind the plaintiff as the only heir and she has been possessing the suit land by cultivating paddy, planting trees and producing other crops and by paying rents. On 13-9-2001, when the plaintiff's son went to the Tahshil office for paying rent, Tahshilder refused to accept the rent on the plea that PS and BS Khatians were not prepared in her name. Thereafter, the plaintiff on obtaining the certified copies of the Khatians has confirmed that those were prepared in the name of the Government in the Khas Khatian in PS and RS Khatian No.1 in dag Nos. 219 and 311 respectively.

4. The suit was contested by the defendants by filing a joint written statement contending, inter alia, that the suit land was recorded in the name of Nagendra Kumar in RS Khatian No.2 and RS Dag No. 219. The suit land was sold in auction for arrear of rents and the government purchased the same and accordingly, the suit land was recorded in the PS and the BS Khatian in Khas Khatian No.1 in the name of the government. In Case No.2 of 2002, proposal was made for settling the suit land to Samabay Samity Limited for long term.

5. The trial Court considering the evidence on record decreed the suit by judgment and decree dated 28-5-2002. Against the decree of the trial Court, the defendants preferred Other Appeal No. 459 of 2002 before the District Judge, Chittagong. The learned Joint District Judge, 1st Court, Chittagong by his judgment and decree dated 29-9-2003 allowed the appeal and dismissed the suit.

6. Being aggrieved by and dissatisfied with the judgment and decree of the appellate Court, the plaintiff preferred Civil Revision No. 169 of 2009 before the High Court Division and a learned Judge of the Single Bench of the High Court Division by the impugned judgment and order made the Rule absolute, set aside the judgment and decree of the appellate Court and sent the suit back on remand to the trial Court with direction to fram an issue as to "Whether plaintiff Bashanti Protima Nandi can inherit the suit land or not under Hindu Law" with the observations:

"Admittedly the lower Court did not frame any issue regarding the inheritance of plaintiff under Hindu Law and neither the learned Assistant Judge nor the learned Joint District Judge discussed about this vital point of inheritance of plaintiff in their judgment. So, as provision of section 88 and section XII of Hindu Law plaintiff's alleged daughter, Bashanti Nandi must be examined by the lower Court to determine the right title of plaintiff petitioner in the suit land. For the purpose learned lower Court is also to frame an issue".

7. Leave was granted by this Court to consider following submission of the learned counsel appearing on behalf of the appellant:

"The learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the High Court Division committed error in sending back the suit on remand as it is quite unnecessary to frame an issue as to whether plaintiff got the suit land by inheritance as this issue is covered by the issue framed by the trial Court to the effect as to whether the plaintiff has title and possession in the suit land and further this new point regarding framing of issue is not based on the pleading of the parties and so rema.nd cannot be ordered for decision on that point and rather in the interest of justice the High Court Division ought to have decided the case on merit on the evidence or (sic, it would be on) record and further in the instant case no body other than Government raised any objection as to the claim of the plaintiff."

8. Mr Abdul Qyayum, learned counsel appearing for the appellant, has made his submission in the light of the leave granting order.

9. Mr Biswajit Deb Nath, learned Deputy Attorney-General, appearing for the respondents, tried to make out a new point that whether the plaintiff is the daughter of Nagendra needs to be decided in the suit afresh, the High Court Division rightly sent the suit back on remand to the trial Court. There being no merits in the appeal, the same be dismissed.

10. From the impugned judgment and order, it appears that the High Court Division without considering the case of the respective parties and discussing the evidence on record raised a new point that an issue as quoted hereinbefore need be framed and decided. But the contesting defendants did not raise any such question in their written statement nor did they raise any issue nor any point in the Courts below in that regard. From the judgment of the trial Court, it also appears that issue No.2 was framed to the effect ?????? ?????? ??????? ?????? ??????? ??? ??? ??-??? We are of the view that this issue squarely covers the issue as suggested by the High Court Division. From the judgment of the trial Court, it further appears that it decided issue No.2 in favour of the plaintiff on detailed discussion of the evidence on record. However, the appellate Court took a reverse view. Since the two Courts took two different views and the entire records were before the High Court Division, the learned Judge of the Single Bench was obliged to decide whether the appellate Court was correct in reversing the judgment and decree of the trial Court in view of the pleading of the respective party and the evidence adduced by them Instead, he sought to find out a new point and thus raise a new issue beyond the pleading of the defendants and that suo motu too. It needs to be mentioned that in para 1 of the plaint, the plaintiff categorically staed that ???????? ????? ?????? ?????? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ???? ??'?? ???? ???? ???? ?????????? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??????? nb| The defendants in para 10 of their written statement just gave a general denial of the statements made in the plaint as a whole. Then in para 11 under the head, actual facts the defendants did neither deny the assertion of the plaintiff made in para 1 of the plaint nor said that the plaintiff was not the daughter of Nagendra.

11. In exercising jurisdiction under section 115(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure, the revisional Court is not at all permitted to raise a new point which fundamentally relates determination of facts. The duty of the revisional Court in case of a judgment of reversal is to see whether the appellate Court reversed the decree of the trial Court adverting its findings and decision on proper and correct appreciation of the evidence on record and the law governing the field. But the learned judge of the Single Bench miserably failed to discharge this obligation. In view of the above, we find no other alternative but to send the matter back to the High Court Division to hear the revision afresh and dispose of the same in accordance with law on the evidence on record keeping in mind the observations made above. And in no case, the High Court Division shall send back the matter to either of the Courts below.

12. In the result, the appeal is allowed. The impugned judgment and order of the High Court Division in Civil Revision No. 163 of 2004 is set aside and the matter is sent back to the High Court Division for hearing afresh and dispose of the same on merit in accordance with law upon the evidence on record keeping in mind the observations made hereinbefore.

13. Let the revision be heard and disposed of by the Bench, presided over by Mr AKM Abdul Hakim, J within 8 (eight) weeks from the date of receipt of this judgment.
Court should not interfere with economic decisions unless clearly illegal

(From previous issue) :

The High Court Division made the said Rule absolute in the light of the decision and directed to reinstate the writ petitioners in their service. Against the said judgment and order, BADC preferred this appeal getting leave. Mr Mahbubey Alam, learned Senior Counsel, submits that he would not press the appeal in respect of other respondents except respondent No.9, Md Safiul Alam Khondoker, who had retired from service voluntarily. Accordingly, the appeal be dismissed against the other respondents except the respondent No.9, Md Safiul Alam Khondoker.

7. Mr Mahbubey Alam, learned Senior Counsel appears on behalf of the appellants for all the appeals. On the other hand, Mr Abdul Wadud Bhuiyan, Senior Counsel appears for respondent Nos. 1-5 in Civil Appeal No. 45 of 2012 and Mr Probir Neogi appears for the respondent in Civil Appeal No.47 of 2012.

8. No one appears on behalf of the respondents in other appeals.

9. Mr Mahbubey Alam, submits that the respondents, against whom he is pressing the appeals, had voluntary retired from their services and had withdrawn their financial benefits. They were not terminated from their service. After acceptance of their prayers for voluntary retirement and payment of the financial benefits, the respondents could not claim that they had been terminated from the service. The High Court Division has committed error of law in holding that the service of these respondents had been terminated in the garb of voluntary retirement.

10. Mr Abdul Wadud Bhuiyan, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the respondent Nos. 1-5 in Civil Appeal No. 45 of 2012, submits that the prayers for voluntary retirement of respondents were stayed by BADC and allowed them to continue for a considerable period thereby those prayers had been rejected by implication. By the impugned orders all the respondents had been terminated in the garb of voluntary retirement. The High Court Division rightly held so.

11. Mr Probir Neogi, appearing on behalf of the respondent in Civil Appeal No. 47 of 2012, submits that the respondent Md Rafiqul Alam initially though submitted an application for voluntary retirement but the same was not accepted and by the impugned order he had been terminated. He further submits that Rafiqul Islam did not receive any financial benefit out of same scheme of voluntary retirement like other respondents who had retired from services voluntarily. He submits that the High Court Division rightly declared the order of termination void and meanwhile . BADC had reinstated him and he has been serving in BADC.

12. It appears from the materials on record that in Civil Appeal No. 45 of 2012 the respondents are 5 in number. They are I. Md Abdur Rashid, 2. Md Fazlur Rahman, 3. Solaiman Ali, 4. Md Abdur Rashid Mondal, 5. Md Jahangir Alam. Md Abdur Rashid prayed for voluntary retirement with effect from 30-9-1994. BADC, accepting the said prayer by a letter communicated under memo No. ^"Qv/1K-1/2002-2003/369 dated 20-10-2002, paid his retirement benefits who received 80% of the payable benefits on 23-11-2002. Respondent No.2, Md Fazlur Rahman prayed for voluntary retirement from service with effect from 30-9-1994 which was accepted by BADC on 20-10-2002. This respondent received his entire retirement benefits of Taka 2,85,728 on 26-11-2002 under special. scheme of voluntary retirement and 19-5-2003. Respondent No.3, Solaiman Ali prayed for such voluntary retirement with effect from 30-9-1994 which was accepted on 20-10-2002. The payable financial benefits of retirement was 4,48,425. He had received Taka 3,65,120 on 23-11-2002 and Taka 16, 610 on 31-7-2004. The respondent No.4, Md Abdur Rashid Mondal prayed for voluntary retirement from his service with effect from 30-9-1994. The payable amount against his retirement benefits was Taka 2,62,729. He received Taka 76,737 on 12-5-2003 and Taka 23,311 on 20-12-2004. Respondent No.5, Md Jahangir Alam prayed for a voluntary retirement from service with effect from 30-9-1994 and payable amount against his retirement benefits was Taka 3,61,145. He received Taka 3,51,145 on 30-11-2002 and Taka 10,615 on 31-7-2004. Similarly, respondent No. I, Md Ataur Rahman No. 2. Md Abdul Hakim, No.3. Mozibor Rahman, No.4. Md Anowarul Hoque in Civil Appeal No.46 of 2012 filed their respective applications for voluntary retirement from services with effect from 30-9-1994. BADC assessed the payable amount of financial benefits against their services and almost all of them withdrew considerable amount out of the amounts payable under such a special scheme of voluntary retirement.

13. Mr Probir Neogi, learned counsel for the respondent Md Rafiqul Alam, in Civil Appeal No. 47 of 2012 submits that meanwhile this respondent of this appeal has been re-instated and he has been serving in BADC. After such reinstatement of respondent Md Rafiqul Alam, we are of the view that the appeal against him is tenable.

14. In Civil Appeal No. 48 of 2012, Mr Mahbubey Alam, submits that the respondent No. 9. Md Safiul Alam Khondoker had retired from his service voluntarily. From the materials on record it appears that the respondent No.9 Md Safiul Alam Khondoker prayed for/voluntary retirement from service with effect from 30-9-1994. The same was accepted on 20-10-2002. Though it appears that, on 30-10-2002, he was terminated from service but Mr Alam submits that the same was a clerical mistake. After acceptance of the prayer for voluntary retirement from service, the question of termination thereafter does not arise. It further appears from the materials produced by the appellant that he had also received a considerable amount out of the amount payable as retirement benefits.

15. BADC was said to be overstaffed. For the purpose of effective management, manpower planning was contemplated by the Ministry of Agriculture. In order to downsize the strength of staffs of BADC, the Ministry of Agriculture issued a circular comrnunicated under Memo No. Kwl-5/g-2/(Ask-1)/375 dated 13-12-1992, the Voluntary Retirement Scheme in which some privileges had been specially offered to the employees of BADC who intended to retire from their services voluntarily. As per terms of the scheme. the employees who sought for voluntary retirement, were entitled to accept ex gratia payment as specified therein. In said circular there was a clause wherein it was specifically mentioned, ?? ???????? ???????? ?"??? ???, ????? ???? ??????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ??? ?????????? ??? ???? ??? In their respective applications for voluntary retirement from service, the respondents mentioned that in view of the aforesaid circular they decided to retire from service, voluntarily. Knowing fully well about the consequence of the aforesaid clause of the circular they offered their prayers. That is, admitted position is that the respondents. while working in the BADC had applied for voluntary retirement, pursuant to the scheme framed by the Ministry of Agriculture to relieve the surplus staffs, which had been acceptance of the impugned orders. Since the respondents had been relieved from the duty after acceptance of their offers of voluntary retirement, and special payment of retirement benefits, the rural relationship of the BADC and respondents came to an, end.

16. In the case of AIR India vs Nergesh Mirza, Supreme Court of India' 'held that Government servant is not entitled to demand as of right, permission' to withdraw the letter of voluntary retirement, it could only be given as a matter of grace. In the case of State of Haryana vs SK Singhal reported in (1999)4 SCC 293 Supreme Court of India. observed that the cases of voluntary retirement ,can broadly be decided into the following categories.

(i) . Where voluntary retirement is automatic and comes into force on the' expiry of notice period,

(ii) When. it comes into force ; unless an order is passed within, the notice period with holding permission; and.

(iii) When voluntary retirement does' riot come to force, unless .. permission. to this effect is specifically granted by the controlling authority .

17. In the cases, in hand, the respondents, while working in appellant BADC had applied for voluntary retirement, and, thereafter, they withdrew' all or 'considerable' amounts of retirement benefits: 'from BADC. Since' the respondents had applied for voluntary retirements, such applications should be ,effective in view of the provision of the circular. as quoted above or by the relevant law:

18. Mr Bhuiyan submits that since the BADC allowed the respondents to continue in service for a considerable period thereby BADC had rejected the prayers for voluntary retirement of the respondents by implication. It is not possible to accept the contention because as a general principle, one who knowingly accepts the benefits of the offer is estopped to deny the validity and binding effect of the offer and acceptance of the same. Moreover, clause 2 of the circular provides, ??? ????? ???? ??????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ??? ?????????? ??? ???? ??? Implication may arise in consideration that statute is of something not expressly declared. He the circular quoted above provides that option once exercised shall be final. Section 9 of the Public Servant (Retirement) Act also provides so. Since the respondents accepted the ex-gratia payment, in our considered opinion, they could not have resiled therefrom.

19. In the case of Nand Keshwar Prasad vs Indian Farmers Fertilizers Co-operative Ltd. Supreme Court of India held that unless controlled by condition of service or the statutory provisions, the retirement mentioned in the letter of resignation must take effect from the date mentioned therein. The option having once been exercised the respondents could not go back on the same because the principle is that, one person may not approbate and reprobate expresses two proposition.

20. In view of the specific provision in the circular that, ??? ????? ???? ??????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ??? ?????????? ??? ???? ???, which indicates as absolute terms and since that there is no provision quoted clause to withdraw prayers, we are of the view that prayers of voluntary retirements came in effect after acceptance of the prayers. The moment prayers are accepted the retirement become effective.

21. "Termination" and "voluntary retirement from the service" have different connotations and cannot be equated for the reasons that the termination can be termed as "naked hire and fire" rule and paralleled of which was to be found only in the "Henry VIII clause". On the other hand, voluntary retirement scheme is a method used to reduce surplus staffs. Participation in the voluntary retirement plan is voluntary. It has to result in an overall reduction in the existing strength of employees. Accordingly, we are not inclined to accept the observation of the High Court Division that the respondents had been terminated in the grab of voluntary retirement. Moreover, the respondents have filed writ petitioners after about 8 years of the acceptance of their prayers and after receiving retirement benefits.

22. The instant process was a policy decision involving complex economic factors. The court would be slow from interfering with the economic decisions as it has been recognized that the economic expediencies lack adjudicative decision and unless the economic decision, based on economic expediencies, is demonstrated to be so violative of constitutional or legal limits. It is the administrators and legislators who are entitled to frame polices and take such administrative decisions as they think necessary in the public interest. The court should not ordinarily interfere with policy decisions, unless clearly illegal. We do not find any violation of constitutional provision or legal limits in the instant scheme.

23. In view of the discussion made above Civil Appeal No. 45 of 2012 is allowed; Civil Appeal No. 46 of 2012 is allowed so far as it relates to respondent Nos. 1-4 namely (I) Md Ataur Rahman, (2) Md Abdul Hakim, (3) Mozibur Rahman and (4) Md Anwarul Haque and dismissed against the rests. Civil Appeal No. 47 of 2012 is dismissed. Civil Appeal No. 48 of 2012 is allowed so far as it relates to respondent No.9 Md Saiful Alam Khondker and dismissed against the rests.

(Concluded)
IU teacher gets Madhusudan Award

City Desk :

A teacher of Islamic University (IU) in Kushtia has obtained Madhusudan Award 2016 for his outstanding contribution in research on Thursday.

The awarded teacher is Dr M Manzur Rahman, an associate professor of Bangla Department of the university. He was nominated for his outstanding research book titled "Ancient and medieval Bengali poetry: the evolution and diversity of the words"

Bangla Academy Chairman Professor Dr Anisuzzaman handed over the Award, Certificate and a check of taka 50,000 to Dr Manzur as the chief guest of the week-long madhumela marking the 192nd birth anniversary of great poet Michael Madhusudan Datta. It was held at Sagadari village in Jessore district.

Dr Manzur is the son of M Nazrul Islam who born at Khayerahuda village of Jibannagar upazila in Chuadanga district on 15 December 1976.


Shifting to LPG may hit hard households

THE New Nation reported on Friday that the government is planning to switch at least 70 percent of households to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) use from piped gas supply within the next three years. LPG is already used in rural households for cooking and the new change is likely to affect the urban users. It is not a secret that the country is running out of gas reserves severely affecting industrial production, expansion and exports. Many investors are waiting for gas connection to take their newly set up plants to production but growing gas shortage left them on waiting for the past several years in many cases. The manufacturing sector in Bangladesh expanded quickly in late 1990s and early 2000s mainly based on cheaper gas supply and low labour cost. But gas shortage is causing the biggest setback to industrial expansion in recent years and this in turn is slowing down investments, job creation and income generation for new workforce entering the market every year. Though the State Minister for Energy did not agree that the government is working to slowly withdraw gas from households for industrial use, the new tendency also does not rule out such reprioritizing. Many believe natural gas can't be misused at low cost in the households when it has greater value for industrial use. But others believe households can't be discriminated either. They also believe the setting up of hundreds of kilometers of gas pipelines in the cities was a wrong decision in view of the fact that residents in many big cities use LPG for households and these pipelines may prove waste at the end. What appears to be painstaking to many is that cheaper exports like garments from cheaper gas will benefit foreign buyers. But LPG users in every households will have to pay at least four times higher of the present gas bills because of higher import price of LPG and its marketing costs. It appears that LPG use is set to grow faster now as an alternative to natural gas for residential users. The State Minister has rightly pointed out that changes in energy use are coming and people must be ready to readjust life style. The fear is that gas reserves may dry out in a decade if new reserves are not found and the slow pressure in supply lines may not be overcome altogether if pressure for supply not reduced. Bangladesh has already several LPG marketing companies, but it will have to import the whole lot of LPG, save a small fraction locally produced. What is at stake is that the days for subsidized gas use in households are going over and it is getting expensive to users at all levels.
Sales turnover at DITF doubled

Goods at many foreign and local stalls goes empty

Huge visitors gather at the DITF. This photo was taken on Friday.

Badrul Ahsan :

The sales turnover at the ongoing Dhaka International Trade Fair (DITF) has become more than double after two dull years thanks to the peaceful political situation, participants and exhibitors said.

Visitors gathering and sales activities in the biggest annual trade caravan from 1st January to 28th (Thursday) were beyond expectation.

On Friday, the last government holiday of the tenure of the fair was simply surprising. Thousands of visitors thronged the DITF on the day turning the mega event as an annual get together programme.

According to the organizers, many visitors had even come from outside the city.

All the sales men at the outlets were found tremendously busy with their customers.

Almost all the traders at the mega event looked happy due to higher turnout of visitors and increased sales volume.

They said the sales turnover at the day was more than expectation. Many visitors were found to stay in queue to enter into the stalls and pavilions.

Products at some of the foreign and local stalls and pavilions were found almost empty due to the high jump in sales.

"The business is now on track. If it continues till the end, our sales will be thrice of last year's'," Ahmed Mustafa, Stall Manager of Delhi Aluminium told The New Nation on Friday.

"As there is a calmness in politics, it helped us see better business this year compared to last two years. Sales have already exceeded our expectation," said Abdul Hamid Khan, a Sales Executive of Asian Textiles Ltd.

Murad Ahmed Sajjad, a visitor from Noakhali along with family members, said he spent over Tk18,000 to buy different products while he was unable to visit the fair last year due to political instability.

Sajjad, sales executive of RFL Group, said their sales had jumped compared with last year's event, which made them happy.

"We have seen visitors even coming from outside Dhaka."

At the fair, home appliance, furniture, crookeries, plastic products, melamine kitchenware, bikes and electronic gadgets attract most of the visitors, especially the women.

"We find different types of household products and can choose from a large variety of new and fashionable goods and essentials from one place which lured us to come to the DITF even in the gathering," said Sanjida Khanom, a housewife, who came from old part of the Dhaka city.

"Last year I visited the fair only once, but this year, I already came three times. Today I came to buy some furniture," she said.

Firoz Al Mamun, Head of marketing of Hatil Furniture, said this year the visitors' flow was higher than that of previous year and they were also getting more new orders.

However, huge gathering have put a damper to the traffic management system outside the fair and adjacent areas.

Traffic personnel were found trying heart and soul to keep the roads moving although they could hardly succeed due to the huge number of public and private vehicle's presence in the area.

Many visitors were found waiting for long to hire a taxi or a tricycle or to get into a public bus.


Job-seekers block Shahbagh for raising age bar: 2 held

Students of various private universities blocked the Shahbagh inter-section on Friday demanding extension of recruitment age limit for Govt jobs.

Staff Reporter :Job seekers on Friday blocked the city's Shahbagh intersection for about one hour demanding the extension of age limit for government jobs.The demonstrators halted transport movement on the busy intersection for raising age limit to 35 years under the banner of Bangladesh General Students' Parishad. Police dispersed them around 4:45pm and cleared the road. The demonstrators were hoisting a banner that sought Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's attention.Civil service is the single largest job sector of the country. It has become more lucrative to students after the government doubled the salary for civil servants in the latest pay scale last year.Currently, the age limit for civil service is 30. Demonstrators argue that the ceiling should be raised to 35. They allege that the education system gives general students little time to "fight" for the job.Meanwhile, police detained more than 15 demonstrators from the spot, including the organization's President Md Imtiaz Hossain and General Secretary Nuruzzaman Chandan."When the life expectancy was 50, we had an age limit of 30. Now when the life expectancy is 75, what should be the age limit?" said Imtiaz Hossain, a Dhaka University student and the president of Bangladesh General Student's Union.Several demonstrators said, they will have no choice but to commit suicide"if the age ceiling is not increased. They said session clots at government colleges and universities ate up "too much" of their life.One of the demonstrators, Md Shakhawat Hossain said, "Bhawal University College student Abdul Ali was injured during the baton charge. He was admitted to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH)."Additional Deputy Comissioner of Police (Ramna zone) Md Ibrahim Khan said that they had detained them to take the control of the situation."They will be freed later after interrogation in this connection," the police official said. Police only dispersed the demonstration at about 4:00pm, said Abu Bakar Siddique, Officer-in-Charge of Shahbagh Police Station.
Two RAB men killed in N`ganj road crash

Two RAB men were killed as a goods-laden truck hit their Pick-up van on Dhaka-Sylhet Highway at Purinda area of Araihazar Upazila on Friday.

Staff Reporter :Two members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) were killed and six others injured when a truck hit their pick-up van on Dhaka-Sylhet Highway at Purinda in Araihazar upazila of Narayanganj on Friday morning.The deceased were identified as RAB-11 Sergeant Monsur, 35, and constable Sohel, 25. The identities of the injured men could not be known. They were rushed to the different hospitals immediately. RAB-11 Battalion Commander Lt Col Anwar Latif Khan said that the accident took place when a truck hit the vehicle of RAB patrol team at around 11:45am on the Dhaka-Sylhet Highway, leaving two dead on the spot and six others injured.The RAB's pick-up van was on its way to Narayanganj from Narsingdi, he said.The RAB official said that the two others critically injured. RAB personnel were admitted to the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka.
Database of rivers in danger by July

UNB, Dhaka :

A database of all the rivers across the country is likely to be completed by June-July this year in an effort to identify the rivers facing serious problems and thus save those.

The National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) has taken up the initiative involving the administration at division, district and upazila levels.

Talking to UNB, NRCC chairman M Ataharul Islam said, "We'll present the problems to the taskforce on river protection and it will take steps to solve the problems."

He further said, "The committees that have been formed at the divisional, district and upazila levels of the administration will hand over the database or profiles of all the rivers to us within June or July."

Divisional commissioners will lead the divisional committee, while deputy commissioners of the district one and Upazila Nirbahi Officers the upazila committee.

Ataharul said, the upazila committee will make a list of rivers under their jurisdiction in details and prepare a list identifying the problems of those rivers.

After the profiling of the rivers and identification of their problems, the upazila administration will try to solve the problems, he said. If the problems cannot be solved with the intervention of the upazila administration, a file in this connection will be sent to the Deputy Commissioner while the district committee will refer the acute problems to the divisional commissioner, he noted.

From the divisional level, the problems will be conveyed to the NRCC.

The NRCC chairman said information collection on the rivers has already begun across the country. It will recommend the government to recover and reserve the rivers that have been grabbed by occupants after the compilation of primary information.

In this regard, Water Resources Secretary Zafar Ahmed Khan told UNB that there are 450 rivers across the country. A good number of these rivers are facing different problems. Projects will be taken under the Bangladesh Delta Plan to resolve the problems, he said.

"We've chalked out a master plan to mitigate different problems, including the return of river navigability," he added.

Speaking about the present conditions of the rivers, Ataharul said four rivers-Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Balu and Turag-surrounding capital Dhaka are worse affected than others due to pollution and grabbing.

Many other rivers like Boral in Pabna, Karnaphuli in Chittagong, Meghna and Dholeshawri in Narayanganj; Halda in Chittagong, Bhoirab in Khulna, Someshwari in Netrakona, Kirtonkhola in Barisal, Kobadak in Jessore and Muhuri in Feni are facing various problems like pollution and loss of navigability.

"We've visited the Boral River recently and informed the Shipping Ministry about its problems. The Local Government and Engineering Department, the Water Development Board and the Road Transport Authority have made four dams on the river. We've requested them to remove the dams."
2 kidnapped minors' bodies recovered in Tangail

banglanews24.com :

Police recovered decapitated bodies of two minors, who were kidnapped from Dhamrai of Dhaka, from Mirzapur of the district on Friday evening.

The deceased were identified as Imran, 11 and Shahid, 10, hailed from Charchouhat village of Dhamrai.

Confirming the matter, Mirzapur Thana officer-in-charge (OC) Main Uddin told banglanews that local people informed the police who recovered the decapitated bodies from Harea

village of the upazila around 7:45pm.

He also said, "Imran and Shahid were kidnapped on Wednesday. Later, the kidnappers called their families and demanded a ransom of Tk 100,000, he added."

OC Main Uddin also said bodies of the two children will be handed over to their families after completion of legal processes.
Bangabhaban meeting with CJ draws curiosity

SM Mizanur Rahman :

A three-hour Thursday night meeting of the President, Prime Minister and Chief Justice at Bangabhaban in city created huge curiosity among different political parties as well as the common people.

When the Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha's recent remark on signing and writing judgments after retirement triggered the tremor within the government, the Thursday night meeting drew attention of all as it was very important, analysts and politicians observed.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Anisul Haque and Attorney General Mahbubey Alam on Thursday evening went to Bangabhaban and had dinner with the

President Abdul Hamid. Later they held a meeting from 7.00pm to 10pm.

Talking to media, Law Minister Anisul Haque said it was a dinner party hosted by the President.

"But country's overall situation came for discussion," he said. In a message on January 19, on the occasion of the first anniversary of his taking office as the 21st Chief Justice of the country, Surendra Kumar Sinha said, some judges make unusual delays in writing verdicts while others continue to write it even after a long time of their retirement, which goes against the law and the Constitution. "As the head of the state President Abdul Hamid, Head of the government Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and head of the judiciary Chief Justice Surendra Kumar sat together, some important issues specially relating latest development of the country's political arena might have taken place in the greater interest of the country," Prof Giasuddin Molla of Political Science Department at Dhaka University said.

When contacted, BNP senior leader Lt General (retd) Mahbubur Rahman termed the meeting as very important saying when the Prime Minister and Chief Justice met the President at Bangabhaban, it does mean something important issues were discussed among them.

"Actually, we know nothing about the outcome of the meeting. Although the meeting was followed by dinner, we think the meeting has some outcome," he added.

When the tussle between the ruling Awami League and the BNP over the issue of caretaker government continues, Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha's recent remarks sparked flak inside the government as well as the ruling party politics.

AL General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said, that Chief Justice Surendra Kumer Sinha's recent remarks on writing judgment after the retirement would not affect the 15th amendment to the Constitution that scrapped the caretaker government provision. The AL leaders said the chief justice's statement over the issue does not bear any significance as he made the comment at a seminar, not in any court verdict.

The remarks of the chief justice are his own, the AL leaders said, adding no Supreme Court judge supports his (CJ) remarks.

BNP leader Lt General (retd) Mahbubur Rahman said Chief Justice's recent remark on signing and writing judgments after retirement has shaken the foundation of the current government like a tremor.

"We welcome the Chief Justice's comment as he spoke the truth with courage, discharging the duty bestowed upon him. His remark has wobbled the government's foundation like an earthquake," he said. Referring to the current CJ's comment, BNP has now renewed its push that the judgement on the 13th constitutional amendment declaring the caretaker government illegal was unconstitutional as ex-CJ ABM Khairul Haque wrote and signed the verdict 16 months after he went on retirement.

BNP also claimed that the government which won the 10th parliamentary polls tiding on the 15th constitutional amendment also turned out to be illegal and void with the Chief Justice's remark.


7pc GDP growth a mirage: Experts

Corruption eats up 3 pc per year: Muhith

Kazi Zahidul Hasan :

Finance Minister AMA Muhith recently said that Bangladesh would come out from 6 per cent GDP growth trap this fiscal, as political environment remained calm and stable.

"A 7 per cent growth is expected if we take the volume of current economic activities into account," Finance Minister told journalists on his 83rd birthday at his Secretariat office.

The statement of the elderly Cabinet Minister came as a wonder to economists and other observers who foresee that such a growth may not be achievable given the current situation of the National Economy.

Muhith earlier said that corruption eats up 2 to 3 per cent of Bangladesh's GDP and another 1 per cent of it is lost due to political instability.

And if Bangladesh really achieves the 7 per cent GDP growth, then after deducting 3 per cent on account of corruption and other misuse, the real GDP growth is to be only 4 per cent.

People are at a loss to believe what is the real GDP growth. The Minister is expected to clear the confusion explaining his own observations from the reality, they said.

"There is no sign in sight to achieve a 7 per cent GDP growth this fiscal despite prevailing calm situation in the country's political arena," Dr Zahid Hussain, Lead Economist of the World Bank's (WB) Bangladesh Office, told The New Nation on Friday.

He said political stability also contributes to GDP growth. Besides, private and public investment, export and import, revenue collection, ADP implementation, remittance inflow and necessary infrastructures are the other components that also support growth.

"If we look into such components, private sector investment was not picking up, revenue collection

remained far behind the target, remittance and export growth remained flat and ADP implementation remained poor suggesting that Bangladesh was going to miss the 7 per cent GDP growth target set for the current fiscal," he added.

Dr Zahid Hussain said, private sector investment is a key to accelerate the GDP growth. But it remained stagnant for the last few years due to perennial infrastructure deficits, bureaucratic bottleneck and regulatory framework complexity.

"Bangladesh economy has the potential to grow at a rate of 7 to 7 per cent per annum. But it fails to achieve the milestone due to above mentioned bottlenecks. If these bottlenecks are addressed it may come out from 6 per cent growth trap," he added.

The World Bank's economist said, "Corruption is an old issue and it is definitely bringing leakage on GDP growth. If corruption is contained, the economy may expand further taking Bangladesh economy towards a high growth trajectory."

When asked, he said, in my mind, the Minister talked about the real GDP growth of 7 per cent leaving out the corruption issue.

The WB earlier said that Bangladesh would achieve 6.7 per cent GDP growth in the current fiscal year (2015-2016).

"The economy of Bangladesh, under any circumstances, would not achieve 7 per cent growth this year," Dr AB Mirza Azizul Islam, former Finance Adviser to the Caretaker Government, told The New Nation yesterday.

He said, Bangladesh's economic expansion is largely depending on adequate investment. But it is battling to expand over the years due to investment crunch.

"The proportion of investment in the GDP is now hovering at 28.7 per cent and if we want to expand the economy to 7 per cent the overall investment needs to be accelerated to 34.03 per cent. So, the task to accelerate the GDP growth to 7 per cent under the present investment scenario is more than difficult for the government," he noted.

Mirza Aziz mentioned that overall private investment remained subdued due to eroding investors' confidence resulted from the prevailing uncertainty in the political arena and infrastructure bottleneck.

"Investors have taken a 'wait and see policy' under the prevailing situation. Stability in political arena and good governance could help regain the confidence of the investors. A renewed investors' confidence can help accelerate overall investment and later it would help expand the economy to 7 per cent or more," he added. "Attaining a 7 per cent growth this year is a mirage for the government when many of the key economic indicators showing signs of potential slowdown," Dr Salehuddin Ahmed, former Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor told The New Nation on Friday. He said, Bangladesh could maintain an average 6 per cent growth for the last seven years although it has the potential to grow at 7 per cent per year. It mainly fails to overcome the 'growth trap' mainly due to lack of necessary investment, regulatory reforms and access to credit to the small and medium enterprises" he added.

When asked, Dr Salehuddin Ahmed said, the Bangladesh economy, at best this year, can grow to 6.5 per cent despite the prevailing calm situation in the political environment.
Ekushey Boi Mela begins Monday

Sagar Biswas :

The month-long Amar Ekushey Boi Mela 2016 is going to begin on Bangla Academy premises and in a portion of Shuhrawardy Uddyan in the capital on Monday amid widespread apprehension of terror attack on secular writers and freethinkers.

This year, the mela will be held at a time when several writers and publishers have recently received death threat from the fundamentalist group through SMS, email or letter.

And none was brought to justice till the date, while a freethinker and writer Avijit Roy was killed on February 26 last year when he was coming out of mela premises. Earlier, Dhaka

University teacher Humayun Azad also came under attack in the same area.

The organizers, however, believe that previous incidents of attack on bloggers and writers would not create any negative impact on the book fair this year. They also expressed optimism as saying that the 'Bangalees' will give a befitting answer to the 'fundamentalist threat' by arranging the book fair in a successful manner. The publishers have laid emphasis on individual security arrangements keeping coordination with the overall security set-up by the law enforcement agencies.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police [DMP] sources said, the entire mela area has already been brought under foolproof security system with installing about 250 close circuit cameras in different corners from Doel Chattar to Fine Arts Faculty of Dhaka University.

"Adequate number of security personnel will be deployed at every entrance and exit gate of the Bangla Academy. There will be nine watch towers, from which we will monitor the area round-the-clock," Mohammad Ibrahim, Additional Deputy Commissioner of DMP, said.

"Apart from police and Rapid Action Battalion [RAB], the mela premises will also be surrounded by the members of other security and intelligence agencies. There will be eight entry and exit gates in Bangla Academy but there will be only one entry and exit gate at Shuhrawardy Uddyan to ensure safety to the visitors," he said. Expecting huge gathering due to stable political situation, officials said that there will be a total of 651 stalls of 401 organisations in the boi mela this year.


HC to start online 'cause list' from Feb 15

Staff Reporter :

The century-old practice of printed cause list, everyday list of cases awaiting hearing, will be abolished in the High Court from February 15, as the cause list will go online from that day. The cause list will be visible on the website of the Supreme Court for everyone staying anywhere, said the SC officials.

SC Registrar General Syed Aminul Islam told The New Nation on Friday that the printing era will end from February 15. The High Court judges will make serial numbers for hearing of the cases and the list will be posted on the SC website www.supremecourt.gov.bd after 8:00 pm before the day of the hearing, he said.

He said that the new practice will save Tk. 21 crore every year spent for publishing the cause lists of over 2000 containing 400 to 500 pages.

After introduction of the online system, the bench officials will not be able to change the serial numbers like earlier by taking bribes, he added.

The Supreme Court authorities were set to abolish this age-old system on February 1. But they had to change the decision responding to the call of the SC lawyers, who demanded continuing publishing the cause lists at least for another 15 days to make them habituated with the new system.

Syed Aminul Islam said that Chief Justice SK Sinha changed his earlier decision in this regard at the request of the SC lawyers, and asked the officials concerned to keep the printed cause list running till February 15.

A team of the SC lawyers, led by SCBA President Advocate Khandker Mahbub Hossain and Bangladesh Bar Council's Vice Chairman Abdul Baset Majumder, met the Chief Justice at his office on Thursday and requested him to keep the system of printed cause list for some days so that they can adjust with the online cause list.

The Chief Justice decided in July last year to introduce such online system to save time and cost as well as remove corruption. A few years ago such online cause list was introduced in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court though its printed cause list is still published every day.

According to the new system, the bail confirmation reports of the HC will also go online, which will be visible only for the court officials across the country with special passwords.

Syed Aminul Islam said that keeping the bail confirmation reports invisible for the parties of the cases, law enforcing agencies and the common people still creates the scopes of harassing the justice seekers.

The Registrar General, however, said that unscrupulous staff of the court could still be involved in corruption and deceive the parties of the cases, as the passwords are remaining within themselves. Police can arrest accused even after the HC grants them bail, he added.


Finish Assad: There will be no Syrian refugees

Editorial Desk :

European states have reacted in some of the most drastic ways yet to the continent's biggest migration crisis since the Second World War, with Denmark enacting a law that allows police to seize refugees' assets. The vote in the Danish parliament on Tuesday, which followed similar moves in Switzerland and Southern Germany, came as central European leaders amplified calls to seal the borders of the Balkans, a move that would risk trapping thousands of asylum seekers in Greece.

Switzerland has had a law enabling the authorities to confiscate assets belonging to asylum seekers for 20 years. Migrants are required to declare their assets on arrival, and anything over 1,000 Swiss francs ($1,000; 900, 700) can be taken. Objects of emotional value are never seized, the government says. In 2015, the Swiss authorities collected a total of 210,000 Swiss francs from 112 people. Most of this was cash. As the vast majority of asylum seekers are destitute, assets are confiscated from only a small number, the government says. It was forced to defend the policy last week following criticism of the Danish proposals.

In the Netherlands, asylum seekers are supposed to declare their assets,

and deductions can be made if this exceeds 5,895 for an individual or 11,790 for a family. They also have to pay levies on their income towards their stay, once they are allowed to work. A report in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad found asylum seekers had paid nearly 500,000 towards their living costs since the start of 2013. Meanwhile in Germany, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann has reportedly said cash and valuables worth more than 750 can legally be seized in his state - one of the main entry points for migrants arriving in the country.

Under the new Danish law, police will be allowed to search asylum seekers on arrival in the country and confiscate any non-essential items worth more than 10,000 kroner (1,000) that have no sentimental value to their owner. The centre-right government said the procedure is intended to cover the cost of each asylum seeker's treatment by the state, and mimics the handling of Danish citizens on welfare.

A spokesman for UN Chief Ban Ki-moon criticised the decision, saying refugees deserved compassion, but widespread condemnation from other major Western leaders was conspicuously absent.

The prospect of refugees having possessions seized has drawn comparisons to the confiscation of valuables from Jews during World War Two. Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany for five years, from 1940 to 1945, during which time Germany confiscated assets from Jewish Danes, just as it did to Jews across Europe.

Surely, the Danish policy suggestion is not intended to be selfish, but nevertheless it is unkind for a country so well-reputed. The refugees are in terrible distress and it should not be forgotten that this human tragedy has been created by others including the Western powers and they must feel guilty for unthinkable suffering and humiliation of the Syrian refugees.

We shall say that let the Western countries show collective determination for getting rid of the new Hitler and there will be no Syrian refugees. Still there is power to challenge jointly by the Western powers if there is the necessary determination. The USA is showing weakness in the face of Russian support for President Assad of Syria against the opinion of the whole world.

It is understandable that the Danish, Swiss, and German governments face a serious economic investment. But the truth remains that immigrants in the long run do not become liability. They work hard when employed and contribute appreciably to the economy and bring new dynamism in the countries they go. This fact is accepted universally. But what is special about the Syrian migrants is that they are not economic migrants. They were not thinking of migrating. The international community by supporting killer Assad to remain in power is playing power-game to suit the international power politics. Finish Assad, the refugee problem will greatly vanish. The Syrian migrants will be happy to be back in their home country.
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Monet rahapelien ystavat ovat viime vuosina loytaneet netticasinot ja olleet ihmeissaan. Verrattuna kotimaisen Veikkauksen kivijalkarahapeleihin puhutaan aivan eri tason palautusprosenteista ja lisaksi pelaaminen on aarimmaisen helppoa ja turvallista. Netticasinoiden maara on tana paivana todella suuri ja niita loytyy jokaiseen lahtoon, suurin ongelma aloittelevalla pelaajalla onkin tehda valinta siita, minka netticasinon valitsee. Kaikkien netticasinoiden mainospuheet naet lupaavat kauniita asioita ja niiden lapinakeminen on tietysti tarkeaa. Nyrkkisaantona voidaan kuitenkin jo kattelyssa todeta, etta jos valitsemasi netticasino on lisensoitu ETA-alueella, sen kanssa ei tule olemaan ongelmia, ellei niita itse jarjesta. Kay tutustumassa parhaisiin netticasinoihin osoitteessa www.ilmaiskierroksia.info!

Ensimmainen nyrkkisaanto on siis varmistaa, etta valitsemallasi netticasinolla on ETA-alueen lisenssi. Suurimmassa osassa tapauksista se on Maltan eli MGA:n lisenssi. Myos Viron, Englannin ja Gibraltarin lisensseja nakyy ja naissa valvonta on jopa Maltaa tiukempaa. Lopputulema on kuitenkin se, etta ETA-alueen lisenssi takaa suomalaisille verovapaat voitot seka sen, etta niita valvotaan kontrolloidusti. Maailmalla on iso nippu Curacaon lisenssilla toimivia netticasinoita ja niistakin suurin osa on laadukkaita. Ne eivat kuitenkaan ole suomalaisille asiakkaille verovapaita, joten emme suosittele niita.

Tana paivana markkinoille on ilmaantunut paljon ETA-alueella toimiva netticasinoita ilman rekisteroitymista. Jos tarkoitus on vain pelata yksittaisia pelikertoja, on varsin helppo suositella naita. Netticasinot ilman rekisteroitymista tarjoavat palvelun tunnistautumisen verkkopankin avainlukulistan avulla ja saman palvelun kautta tapahtuvat talletukset ja mahdolliset voittojen nostot silmanrapayksessa. Normaaleihin netticasinoihin pitaa asiakkaan rekisteroitya, tehda talletukset ja tunnistautua dokumenttien avulla. Tama on lisenssiehtojen mukainen kaytanto, eika kovinkaan monimutkainen, mutta silti monet asiakkaat haluavat yksinkertaista ja nopeaa palvelua. Toki normaalit netticasinot tarjoavat usein asiakkailleen laadukkaita talletusbonuksia ja erilaisia kampanjoita, joten kannattaa tarkkaan punnita, kumman ratkaisun valitsee. Kannattaa myos muistaa, etta tunnistautuminen tehdaan vain kerran, joten mikaan jatkuva riippakivi se ei ole.

Suomalaiset asiakkaat ovat netticasinoille tarkeita, joten kaikilla vahankin laadukkailla netticasinoilla on suomenkieliset sivut seka suomenkielinen asiakaspalvelu  suomenkielisyys kannattaakin ottaa netticasinoa valittaessa nyrkkisaannoksi. Vaikka tana paivana englanninkielisyys on harvoille ongelma, on suomenkielisten netticasinoiden maara niin valtava, etta suosittelemme niiden kayttoa. Rahansiirrot ovat tana paivana niin hyvassa mallissa, etta niiden kanssa tuskin tulee mitaan ongelmia. Kolme tarkeinta segmenttia: Suomalaiset verkkopankit, luottokortit (Visa, Mastercard) seka nettilompakot (Skrill, Neteller) loytyvat jokaisesta laadukkaasta netticasinosta. Viime vuosien trendiksi noussut verkkokauppa on kehittanyt rahansiirrot niin laadukkaiksi ja nopeiksi, etta niiden suhteen ei ole enaa vuosiin ollut ongelmia. Luonnollisesti netticasinot kayttavat naita samoja palveluita ja hyotyvat kehityksesta.

Naiden isojen linjojen jalkeen netticasinon valintaan vaikuttavat luonnollisesti tarjottavat tervetuliaisbonukset  uudet asiakkaat saavat tana paivana kovan kilpailun myota merkittavia etuja netticasinoilta ja niita kannattaa luonnollisesti vertailla. Erilaiset talletusbonukset, ilmaiskierrokset seka ilmaiset pelirahat tuovat suuriakin rahanarvoisia etuja ja niiden vertailu on ehdottomasti kannattavaa. Myoskaan useampien tilien avaaminen ja tervetuliaistarjousten kayttaminen ei missaan nimessa ole huono idea.

Kun edella mainitut asiat ovat mieleisia ja vaihtoehtoja on vielakin jaljella, mennaan jo nyansseihin. Toki pelivalikoima on yksi kriteeri, mutta taman paivan netticasinoissa tamakin asia on paasaantoisesti varsin samanlainen. Toki useamman samantasoisen netticasinon vertailussa kannattaa yleensa valita se, jossa on eniten peleja tarjolla. Vaikka omat suosikit loytyisivatkin useammasta, voi tulevaisuudessa mielenkiinto nousta joihinkin muihin peleihin ja silloin on tietysti mukavampaa, etta ne loytyvat valikoimista. Viimeisena voidaan nostaa esiin kaytettavyys  joidenkin netticasinoiden sivut ovat vilkkuvia, valkkyvia ja epakaytannollisia. Omaan silmaan ja kaytettavyyteen sopiva sivusto on luonnollisesti aina se paras valinta. Tarjonta netticasinoissa on tana paivana valtava ja jokaiselle loytyy varmasti se oma netticasino  onnea matkaan!
As has been the case with each and every Republican debate, I had a field day on Twitter. I watched both debates (yes, all three hours of them) and came up with the following Tweets, which I'll list from the most to least popular (all my tweets can be viewed here - https://twitter.com/CraigRozniecki):



1) Jeb!: "I've seen some polls where I'm way ahead of Hillary Clinton. I believe they were conducted by Steve Harvey."

#GOPDebate

36 Likes, 18 Retweets



2) Rubio: "Anyone who lied to soldiers' families cannot be President of the United States, except for Bush & other Republicans!"

#GOPDebate

24 Likes, 27 Retweets



3) Carson: "Please don't ask me any questions for the next 7 minutes. I'm going to take my 9:45 nap. Thank you."

#GOPDebate

36 Likes, 10 Retweets



4) Rand: "Hillary shouldn't be held responsible for her husband's actions, but like, we should still call her out on it, you know?"

#GOPDebate

28 Likes, 13 Retweets



5) Rubio: "Hate speech = hate action when it comes to Muslim extremists, but not for the man who attacked Planned Parenthood!"

#GOPDebate

24 Likes, 16 Retweets



5) Cruz: "We need to stand up for marriage equality in this country, unless you're gay, but that's different."

#GOPDebate

25 Likes, 15 Retweets



7) Christie: "I always take responsibility as governor. Just take our internal investigation of Bridgegate for instance..."

#GOPDebate

21 Likes, 15 Retweets



8) Carson: "My goal for my closing comments is to make everyone fall asleep like I've been doing for half this debate."

#GOPDebate

24 Likes, 10 Retweets



9) Fiorina: "I never personally attacked Hillary Clinton. Now allow me to bash her for the next minute or two."

#GOPDebate

16 Likes, 15 Retweets



9) Carson: "Unlike myself, we are blessed with tremendous energy in this great nation."

#GOPDebate

21 Likes, 10 Retweets



9) Carson: "Wait, the question is for me? I just woke up from my nap. Can I get some coffee?"

#GOPDebate

25 Likes, 6 Retweets



12) Kasich: "We need to take better care of the mentally ill, including those up here running for president."

#GOPDebate

22 Likes, 7 Retweets



13) Fiorina: "I'm now going to pull out the Trump card & whine about Fox being biased against Republicans b/c I'm on hallucinogens."

#GOPDebate

16 Likes, 12 Retweets



14) Rubio: "Forget actual fact-checkers. Just go to my website for all the real facts."

#GOPDebate

15 Likes, 12 Retweets



15) Fiorina: "Here are the facts about Planned Parenthood. When I say facts, I mean bullsh*t."

#GOPDebate

15 Likes, 11 Retweets



15) Cruz: "Obamacare may have given people healthcare & jobs may have been created, but it cost Americans jobs and healthcare!"

#GOPDebate

15 Likes, 11 Retweets



15) Cruz: "There's all these lobbyists & Democrats who spend loads of money. We need responsible spending, like under Reagan & Bush!"

#GOPDebate

16 Likes, 10 Retweets



18) Gilmore's wife: (leaves a message on his cell) "Honey, are you watching the debate? There's some guy that looks just like you!"

#GOPDebate

14 Likes, 11 Retweets



19) Jeb!: "Look, I probably won't get elected, so please do me a favor and buy my book off Amazon."

#GOPDebate

18 Likes, 6 Retweets



20) Rubio: "I'm now going to sound angry as I proclaim my love for Jesus, because it's my natural voice."

#GOPDebate

17 Likes, 6 Retweets



21) Cruz: "If I'm elected president, I promise to do something every day I haven't in a very long time - tell the truth!"

#GOPDebate

17 Likes, 5 Retweets



22) Cruz: "Let me take this time to complain about the media again. If this continues, I may have to leave the stage & cry w/Donald."

#GOPDebate

11 Likes, 10 Retweets



23) Santorum: "Obama is the most divisive president ever not b/c of all the myths which were spread about him by good Christians!"

#GOPDebate

16 Likes, 4 Retweets



23) Cruz: "I'm now going to prove to everyone I'm an idiot. Here it is... If you want the truth, just listen to Rush Limbaugh!"

#GOPDebate

13 Likes, 7 Retweets



25) Gilmore: "Even though only 4 people knew who I was before tonight, when I become president..."

#GOPDebate

12 Likes, 7 Retweets



25) Cruz: "I won't tell you how to fix immigration now, but go to my website and every answer is right there!"

#GOPDebate

12 Likes, 7 Retweets



27) Carson: "Forget ISIS & other such groups. What's really endangering America is political correctness, & well, that's about it."

#GOPDebate

12 Likes, 5 Retweets



28) Cruz: "Carpet-bombing to me is like brushing your teeth. I do it every single day with a top-of-the-line Dyson vacuum cleaner!"

#GOPDebate

11 Likes, 5 Retweets



28) Huckabee: "I'm not feeling the Bern. I'm feeling the Reagan! Trickle-down economics is the only way to solve poverty & stuff."

#GOPDebate

14 Likes, 2 Retweets



30) Kelly: "Let's open the debate by talking about the elephant not in the room - Donald Trump. Yes, I just called him an elephant."

#GOPDebate

12 Likes, 3 Retweets



30) Jeb!: "I now officially have two major crushes: 1) Supergirl and 2) Dulce Candy."

#GOPDebate

12 Likes, 3 Retweets



32) Rand Paul: "For the first time all evening, I'm going to say something which makes sense w/regard to prison & drug reform."

#GOPDebate

8 Likes, 5 Retweets



32) Rubio: "My college buddies are taking shots every time I use a hyperbole. I'm going to get them all trashed right now!"

#GOPDebate

9 Likes, 4 Retweets



34) Rubio: "I've never ever ever supported cap-and-trade! Well, except when... Hey, does anyone have water?"

#GOPDebate

http://www.buzzfeed.com/christophermassie/marco-rubio-was-a-big-proponent-of-cap-and-trade-in-florida#.uodEv7jxmR 

7 Likes, 5 Retweets



34) GOP candidates: "We made a bet in Vegas that we could utter the word 'amnesty' over 97 times in 3 minutes during the debate."

#GOPDebate

9 Likes, 3 Retweets



34) Rubio: "Listen to whatever I have to say! I said listen to me, dammit!"



Brick (from "Anchorman"): "Loud noises!"

#GOPDebate

10 Likes, 2 Retweets



37) Fiorina: "I'm going to take Hillary's what-difference-at-this-point-does-it-make quote out of context again, because America!"

#GOPDebate

4 Likes, 7 Retweets



37) Gilmore: "Did you skip me? Hey, did you skip me?"



Fox: "Who are you again?"

#GOPDebate

8 Likes, 3 Retweets



37) Gilmore: "I'm a proud NRA member, it's more dangerous now than ever, blah blah blah, & Hillary, show us your emails! Like yeah!"

#GOPDebate

10 Likes, 1 Retweet



40) Rubio: "If disaster means better than the previous president, the past 7 years have been the biggest disaster in U.S. history!"

#GOPDebate

4 Likes, 4 Retweets



41) Fox: "We're being told your name is Jim Gilmore. Is that correct? If so, in 5 words or less, tell us a bit about yourself."

#GOPDebate

5 Likes, 1 Retweet



41) Cruz: "It should be about substance, & even though I don't answer questions & love vagueness, that's what I'm going to be about!"

#GOPDebate

5 Likes, 1 Retweet



41) Jeb!: "My brother is the greatest man alive & I adore my father. Just sayin'... Wait, reverse that. Yeah..."

#GOPDebate

6 Likes, 0 Retweets



44) Christie: "By calling out a few bad eggs in the police force, Obama & Clinton have shown they're against all cops!"

#GOPDebate

3 Likes, 2 Retweets



45) Fiorina: "Hillary can lie as long as she can get away with it, but she won't be president! At 1-2% support, I will!"

#GOPDebate

2 Likes, 2 Retweets



45) Huckabee: "PBO doesn't know how hard it is to put food on the table!"

W: "Or to put food on your family."

#GOPDebate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ah6WUajOI8 

3 Likes, 1 Retweet



47) Christie: "When you say Cruz and Rubio, Mr. Wallace, you mean Hillary Clinton, correct? I'll answer it as such."

#GOPDebate

4 Likes, 0 Retweets



Totals: 668 Likes, 340 Retweets (averages of 14.2 Likes, 7.2 Retweets)

Labels
I'm Penelope, living in a country that's as about as far from home as you could imagine. I've exchanged glaciers for desert and sheep for camels. This is about my journey.








This picture of Oklahomas welcome sign, taken when I entered the Sooner State on Interstate 44 back in September, has been sitting on my MacBooks desktop forever. Its time to post it  and write about visiting both Florida and Oklahoma for the first time last year.One of my goals this year is to visit a state I have never been to before. It was an unofficial goal last year, too, and will likely be a yearly resolution until I have visited every US state. In 2015 I visited both Florida and Oklahoma for the first time and have been meaning to post my experiences and impressions  mostly so the Oklahoma welcome sign is accompanied by some text and no longer burning into my laptop screen.I dont feel like writing about Florida. Theres nothing Im dying to say about the Sunshine State. Florida had no appeal to me before I flew to Miami in April for the annual conference and it has no appeal to me after visiting. (In general, the South has never interested me.) Wetting my feet in the Atlantic Ocean did fulfill a desire to do so, but other than that I did not care to do anything else while in Miami. It may be cool to go to Key West and visit Hemingways house, but I dont see myself returning to Florida unless I have to. Been there, done that, and can now add it to the states I have visited.I was eager to visit Oklahoma because, as Tone Loc might say, it was a hole in a donut that needed to be filled. The Sooner State was bordered by states I had already visited and I was finally able to fill it in in September when I drove through it on my way to Texas.Every state is unique and does things a little differently then others. Highway signs and markings, in particular, are things that can vary state-by-state. The differences are not huge, but each state has its own traditions and quirks. Spotting those differences is something I have always enjoyed. The differences, no doubt, say something about those who live there. I only drove through Oklahoma to and from Texas, so I cant say my visit painted a vivid and comprehensive picture of the state and its people, but a couple things stood out: The speed limit is 75 on the states many turnpikes, so my foot rested heavier on the accelerator while cruising along Interstate 44. Im not a speed demon, but I enjoyed it. Seventy-five is a nice, round number (though crooked as hell visually), and it seems to be around the international standard for freeway speed limits. I am a fan of adjusting speed limits to match the speed motorists drive and think 7580 mph is an ideal range. Speaking of the speed limit, the speed limit signs along the turnpike featured a second sign that warned  NO TOLERANCE . No tolerance for what? Speeding? Or perhaps something else There were also  DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE  signs along the turnpike. I had never seen those before. According to a Yahoo Answers forum , prairie fires are common in Oklahoma and the signs advise drivers not to drive into smoke because visibility during a fire is almost nothing so you risk running off the road, getting stuck, hitting another vehicle or running right into the fire itself. Along the road, I kept seeing cars with license plates I had never seen before. At first I thought they may be state-issued specialty plates, but upon closer inspection I saw they were Native American tribal nation plates. I did not realize many tribes register vehicles and issue their own license plates for use on public roads. Speaking of the tribal nations, there were also signs posted on the reservation borders like  ENTERING CHEROKEE NATION . Interstate 44 was well-maintained and well worth the $2 toll. However, once I exited the turnpike at Big Cabin the condition of the roads worsened. I drove down US Highways 69 and 75 toward Denison and the ride was pretty rough. That surprised me, especially since I assume the winters in Oklahoma are much milder and do not subject the roads to as many freeze-thaw cycles. The freeway shoulders through the Lake Eufaula area were so littered with shredded rubber that I thought every piece of every blown tire in the world must be picked up and dumped there. Somewhere along US 69, probably in Muskogee, was the biggest Kum & Go station I have ever seen. Somewhere close to the Texas border, I passed a car dealership that was giving away a massive storm shelter with each vehicle purchase. Big Cabin is located in Craig County and signs mark the county line on US 69 in each direction. Instead of using all caps or capitalizing the first letter in each word, as one would expect from a county line sign, I am pretty sure both signs said cRAIG cOUNTY. Apparently, there is a shortage of capital Cs in Craig County.
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
CAIRO  Sesser Mayor Jason Ashmore has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development outlining his activities during his first week on the job as executive director of the Alexander County Housing Authority, while several public housing residents, citizen activists and the mayor of Cairo continue to speak out against the boards decision to hire him.

Ashmore said, in the letter, that in one weeks time he has identified a number of areas where money can be saved and reallocated to pressing needs. Ashmore also said he has worked with the police chief to establish preliminary plans to reduce crime, spoken to a union representative to make clear to workers his priorities for building maintenance, and talked with the mayor and others about areas where work is needed on economic development.

It is my understanding that a lack of straightforward communication and cooperation over the years assisted in ACHAs current troubled status, Ashmore wrote. So, I have immediately opened all channels of communication with the community.

Ashmores letter also stated he has had several discussions with Mayor Tyrone Coleman. In short, I believe we are on the same page and we are certainly ready to work together, he wrote, continuing, Although economic development may be more of a long-term goal I have already discussed, with the mayor and others, areas where work is needed on economic development.

The Southern Illinoisan has asked Ashmore for more details on the specific accomplishments he names in the letter, and a list of those he met with in his first week, but he had not replied to an email seeking comment as of deadline on Thursday evening.

Linda Frazier, a community member and a spokeswoman for Cairo Public Housing Advocacy Group for Change, said she felt like the letter was misleading and deceptive because it seems to her that Ashmore is implying he has broad consensus among members of the community, and she says that's not the case.

"Who are you saying you spoke to as far as community leaders because it's not us and I think it's deceptive to even write that," Frazier said, noting that in the letter Ashmore says he's talked with community leaders and local agencies. "It's a stance to save his position."

Citizens address county board

The letter is addressed to Maurice McGough, HUDs Region V Director of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Ashmore provided a copy of the letter to the newspaper on Wednesday morning. The day before, nearly 30 community members who oppose the boards decision to hire Ashmore attended a meeting of the Alexander County Board, including Mayor Coleman.

During the call for public comment, many of the people in the audience specifically addressed Chairman Chalen Tatum about why he has not taken action to remove members of the housing authority board and appoint new members. As chairman, Tatum is charged with appointing members of the board.

Tatum told the group that he believes their concerns are important, but also noted the numerous other critical issues that the board is dealing with, including repairs to the Len Small Levee, and the $1.6 million deficit facing the county. Commissioner Lamar Houston told the community members that the board needed time to seek legal advice on how to proceed.

Mayor: 'It's utterly shameful'

Coleman, standing with his arms around a 5-year-old resident of McBride Place, said that it brings tears to his eyes seeing the way people in his city are treated. HUD has accused the housing authority of civil rights violations that include allowing the Elmwood and McBride apartment complexes that primarily house African-American families to fall into such a state of disrepair that $7 million is needed simply to make them safe for human habitation, according to a consultants needs assessment. The complexes are overrun with infestation, and crime is a constant concern.

Here we are in the greatest country on the face of the Earth, in the year 2016, in the 21st Century, and were dealing with a situation of housing thats unfit for people to habitat in. This is utterly shameful, Coleman told the county board. The people who live in the housing facilities, they dont deserve that.

The citizens of Cairo also dont need to be put in this shameful position, Coleman said, pleading for a shakeup of the housing authority board because he believes members have failed in their duties. He asked the commissioners to consider whether they would want their own daughter or granddaughter to have to live in those conditions, and then looked at the little girl standing with him and said, She doesnt deserve this. I just ask you this, just really look at this thing, and do what youve been elected to do. Just do the right thing.

Coleman's position hasn't changed

In a Thursday phone interview, Coleman said he had not seen Ashmores letter to HUD, but said his position has not changed, and he continues to oppose Ashmores hiring. Ashmore wrote he has had several discussions with the mayor, which Coleman clarified as two phone calls lasting less than five minutes each. Coleman said that in one call, Ashmore reached out to him to let him know he hoped to work with the city and in another call, Coleman made a call to Ashmore to connect him with someone who had a question specific to the housing authority.

Coleman said he has communicated with the past three executive directors, or interim directors, that have served in that role in the span of just 18 months -- Martha Franklin, Tom Upchurch and Joann Pink -- and said he will do the same with Ashmore, even though he disagrees with the hiring and the manner in which he has been hired. Coleman believes the executive director should live in the county, and Ashmore plans to commute from Sesser, where he is part-time mayor. Coleman also said he's concerned that Ashmore's hiring against HUD's directive could further jeopardize the housing authority.

But Coleman said he doesn't have a personal problem with Ashmore, and told him, in the role of his official position as mayor, as long as youre here, if theres anything I can help you with or vice-versa, Im willing to do.

Ashmore's employment terms unclear

Meanwhile, it remains unclear to the newspaper under what terms of employment, if any, that Ashmore is working. The housing authority board voted 3-0 on Jan. 19 to move forward with the hiring of Ashmore against a HUD directive not to hire him, and to reconsider other applicants. Board Chairman Andy Clarke said previously a meeting would be scheduled for this week to approve his contract, but Thursdays regularly scheduled meeting was canceled.

McGough, with HUD Fair Housing, previously sent a letter to the chairman of the housing authority board stating that it is in violation of the Civil Rights Act and the terms of the voluntary compliance agreement the board entered into with HUD on Aug. 28 to remedy various civil rights violations for which the housing authority was previously cited.

In his letter to McGough, Ashmore said that maintenance and rebuilding of units in disrepair is his top priority and stated he is anxious to get the specifics discussed with you. He concluded by thanking McGough for his attention and anticipated cooperation in this matter.

But one of five requirements of the agreement that McGough said the housing authority has failed to uphold was obtaining his approval prior to tendering an official employment offer to an executive director. McGough had previously declined to approve the hiring of Ashmore, saying someone should be willing to live in Alexander County given the troubled status of the housing authority and its unique concerns, and noting that Ashmore did not have experience in public housing.

McGough, in a previous letter, informed the housing authority that its failure to implement the compliance agreement could result in the pulling of federal funding, placing the housing authority into receivership, and a referral to the Department of Justice. HUD has not issued any final decisions about what, if any, punitive actions it will take against the housing authority.

Ashmore provided the newspaper on Thursday a list of all employees' salaries, and next to Ashmore's name it said "TBD."

As these issues continue to play out in Cairo, business owner Gabrielle Harris, owner of G&L Clothing, has organized a Cairo Matters walk for 10 a.m. Saturday beginning at his store at 1212 Washington Ave. Harris said he hasnt taken a particular stance on issues facing the housing authority, but wants to bring the community together and energize citizens to get involved in their governments, and in coming together around solutions that improve Cairo.

Its about mobilizing the community and looking at concerns in Cairo, and residents playing a bigger role by educating them on what the process is, Harris said.
CARBONDALE  Since 2000, people in Southern Illinois who have needed lifesaving treatment for heart diseases have depended on Dr. Maria Falcone, a cardiologist with Prairie Heart Institute Southern Illinois Healthcare.

The doctor died Jan. 23 in Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. She was 49.

Steve Shappard of Carbondale was one of those patients. He was assigned to Dr. Falcone in 2000 after a heart episode. In 2005, she placed two stents in his heart and cared for him through some complications.

In 2013, Dr. Falcone saved Shappard's life after he suffered what is known as the widow maker heart attack because most people do not survive. Falcone told him she has only had three patients survive this type of heart attack and called him her miracle baby.

I really hated to lose her. She was a good friend, as well has my heart doctor, Shappard said.

Brenda Morse also was glad to have Falcone as a doctor.

Morse was told she had atrial fibrillation on March 1. Dr. Falcone consulted on her care, and Morse made an appointment to see her.

On April 1, I went into the hospital for what she considered a routine treatment, but it wasnt routine to me. They put me to sleep and shocked my heart back into normal rhythm, Morse said. When I mentioned to people she was going to be my doctor, every person I talked said, you are so lucky, shes such a good doctor.

Dr. Maria Falcone CARBONDALE  Dr. Maria T. Falcone, 49, died at 7:50 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Barnes-

Jackson County Coroner Dr. Thomas Kupferer said Dr. Falcones death was a shock to everybody.

We are very sad at the death of our colleague Dr. Maria Falcone this past Saturday. She was an excellent cardiologist. She always made time for her patients and her colleagues. Maria was a very caring, empathetic and compassionate physician, Dr. Kupferer wrote on Facebook. She will be dearly missed by her family, friends, patients and the medical community.

Dr. Falcone graduated from medical school in Peru, in 1993. She served her internship and residency at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield and a fellowship in cardiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In 2000, she joined the Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants in Carbondale.

Dr. Raja Maddipoti, a fellow cardiologist at Prairie Heart Institute, said in many ways, Dr. Falcone was the foundation of the practice. She was one of three people who initially started Prairie Cardiovascular in Carbondale, and she drove the volume.

Dr. Maddipoti said doctors often see a large number of patients in the beginning of a practice, but eventually level off because they cannot keep that pace. Dr. Falcone was different.

She kept that same zeal throughout. She was always enthusiastic. She really enjoyed cardiology, Maddipoti said.

Falcone was the doctor who brought electrophysiology to the area and always kept up-to-date with the latest research and guidelines. Maddipoti said she was a resource for other doctors in their practice as well as other offices.

She has been available to every office for any questions or help they needed. She never said no, he said.

Services for Dr. Falcone were Jan. 26 . Memorials may be made to Siteman Cancer Center, 7425 Forsyth Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63105.
Q: Who should apply for federal disaster assistance?

A: Homeowners and renters in disaster-designated counties who sustained damage to their homes, vehicles or personal property as a result of the severe storms and flooding from December 23, 2015 through January 9, 2016 can apply for FEMA grants.

Q: How do I apply?

A: Residents who were affected can apply for assistance online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or call 800-621-3362 or (TTY) 800-462-7585, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. Those who use 711-Relay or Video Relay Services can call 800-621-3362. The application deadline is March 21.

Q: What kinds of FEMA grants are available?

A: Disaster assistance may include grants to help pay for temporary housing, emergency home repairs, uninsured and underinsured personal property losses and medical, dental and funeral expenses caused by the disaster, along with other serious disaster-related expenses.

Q: What happens after I register?

A: You will receive a phone call from a FEMA inspector to arrange for a survey of the damages. This will come just days after you register. All FEMA inspectors will have official identification. They do not approve or deny claims or requests; those come after the inspection results are submitted. FEMA inspectors do not ask for money and do not recommend contractors to make repairs.

Q. Ive already cleaned up and made repairs to my property. Am I still eligible to register with FEMA?

A. Yes. You may be eligible for reimbursement of your clean-up and repair expenses. Before and after photos of the damaged property can help expedite your application for assistance.

Q: Does my income need to be under a certain dollar amount to qualify for disaster aid?

A: FEMAs Housing Assistance program is available, regardless of income, to anyone who suffered damages or losses in disaster-declared counties. However, aid for other losses such as personal property, vehicle repair or replacement, and moving and storage expenses is income-dependent and officials make decisions on a case-by-case basis. To be considered for a grant for these types of losses, the applicant must complete an application for an SBA loan.

Q. I have flood insurance. Should I still register with FEMA?

A. Yes. But please contact your insurance company first.

Q: Does the Small Business Administration (SBA) offer loans to homeowners and renters?

A: Yes. The SBA is the primary source of financial assistance following a disaster and provides low-interest disaster loans to homeowners and renters.

Q: Do I have to be turned down by my bank before I can apply for a disaster loan?

A: No. The SBA has its own criteria for determining each loan applicants eligibility.

Q: If I rent an apartment, can I get help to replace my damaged personal property?

A: Yes. Renters may qualify for a FEMA grant. Renters may also qualify for SBA disaster loans.

Q: Will FEMA pay for all home repairs or contract work?

A: No. FEMA does not pay to return your home to its pre-disaster condition. FEMA provides grants to qualified homeowners to repair damage not covered by insurance, but these grants may not pay for all the damage. However, an SBA disaster loan may return a home to its pre-disaster condition.

Q: Do I have to repay money I receive for disaster relief?

A: No. You do not have to repay grant money, however SBA disaster loans must be repaid.

Q: Do I have to be a legal U.S. resident to receive Individual Assistance?

A: No. If you have a child living at home who is a U.S. citizen or a qualified alien, you may apply for Individual Assistance on that childs behalf and you may be eligible to receive Individual Assistance. FEMA may provide undocumented, eligible immigrants with short-term, non-cash emergency aid.

Q: How can I check the status of my case?

A: You may go online to www.DisasterAssistance.gov or call the toll-free FEMA Helpline at 800-621-3362 or (TTY) 1-800-462-7585. If you need face-to-face assistance, visit a Disaster Recovery Center or speak with someone from one of FEMAs Disaster Survivor Assistance teams currently going door-to-door in Missouris disaster-declared counties. All DRCs are accessible and equipped with tools to accommodate disaster survivors who need disability related communication aids.
Gov. Bruce Rauner was right to use his State of the State address on Wednesday to focus on education.

The key  to a better life for everyone in Illinois is to have a high quality, fully integrated education system from cradle to career, he said.

We agree that well-funded quality schools are central to any turn-around in Illinois. It is wise to start here because growth doesnt happen where schools suffer.

The governors expressed concern comes at a critical time as schools left and right are hemorrhaging and warning of closure. Chicago Public Schools are on life support, Chicago State University runs out of cash in March, GED programs close down, and John A. Logan gives itself another year before the bell tolls.

Rauner also promised to address the disparity in the school funding formula. In a state where richer suburban schools can spend $20,000 per student while poorer rural districts  many in Southern Illinois  can barely spend $6,000 per student, clearly something needs to be done. He said we need to significantly increase state support for education to address that disparity. Bravo, Governor.

Voice of The Southern: With friends like this ... During the campaign in 2014, Bruce Rauner described himself as a friend of higher education

But while vowing to push that initiative, Rauner made it clear that he had no intention of taking money away from other school districts. And because there will be no new taxes or tax hikes, the money must come from someplace else.

We find the answer all over this speech, in black and white and between the lines. And its been part of the Rauner agenda from the beginning: to generate revenue by making Illinois more business-friendly. To stop the out-migration of jobs  which from his count included 300,000 from the manufacturing sector alone "in recent years"  he wants to keep taxes low for corporations and wealthy individuals and bust organized labor at every turn.

The governor stuck to rather conciliatory language for much of his speech, saluting Senate Majority Leader John Cullerton for his willingness to compromise on the school funding formula and pension reform, but his tone turned vitriolic when he talked about the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He said the union was out of touch with reality and undeterred and unashamed about its contract demands.

He decried the high cost of workers comp, and argued for more local control over collective bargaining issues  even at the district school level. Hes talking about work rules and pension liabilities, and he wants to empower our universities and community colleges to address those issues. Whatever that means.

Union talks looking like a lose-lose Gov. Bruce Rauner has taken the ball and left the game. His negotiations with the American F

Rauner pointed to Massachusetts as an example of a state that did the right thing by reforming collective bargaining and cutting workers compensation costs. But the governors policies more closely resemble the failed Republican experiments in Kansas and Wisconsin.

Kansas, using Gov. Sam Brownbacks tax-cutting strategy, has fallen into a budget crisis and it had one of the nations worst job-growth figures  0.5 percent last year. In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker famously dismantled the unions, job growth has also stagnated. The state ranked 35th in that department last year. Wisconsin also cut taxes on the wealthy, and deficits are high.

To create good jobs, we need more job creators, Rauner said in his State of the State address, echoing another failed Grand Old theory, that of trickle-down economics. Thats a failed strategy. We know it doesnt work.

So Rauner has tied school funding to strategies that have failed, and hes trying to shift the burden to the workers, to the middle class. We think there is something elementally wrong with that.
The more competitive it is, the more exciting it is!

Dr. John P. Robinson, South Carolina State Universitys interim band director, says thats the way it goes at the Honda All-Star Battle of the Bands.

South Carolina State Universitys Marching 101 band has once again been selected to compete against the nations top bands in the event.

The competition will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday. Each of the eight participating historically black universities gets $20,000 donated by Honda to support music education programs.

Participating in the Battle of the Bands can land bands invitations to different events -- even the Super Bowl.

It will help with fundraisers and provide more recognition to your program, Robinson said.

Participating in the Battle of the Bands also provides younger band directors with the opportunity to observe other programs and their techniques.

Robinson says the members of the Marching 101 band work extremely hard.

The Honda Battle of the Bands helps build pride, teamwork, morale and other things that youd want your band to build, Robinson noted.

And just being a member of the band can also help students, he said. Robinson says the band members become more accountable for their actions because he requires each of the band members to attend all classes and maintain good grades.

We focus on education first, Robinson said.

Freshman Deri Lee of Orangeburg has dreamed of being in S.C. States marching band since he was 9 years old. Hes now leader of the piccolo section in S.C. States Marching 101 Band.

The Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School graduate recalled attending an Orangeburg Christmas Parade as a child and being fascinated by a drum major.

When he was marching, his knee was above my head. He looked like a giant. I wanted to be like that, he said.

Lee began practicing in ninth grade to become a member of the Marching 101 band.

He will be attending and performing in the Honda All-Star Battle of the Bands for the first time on Saturday.

Lee says he lives by the bands motto: There is no obstacle to the success of the Marching 101.

Everybody in the band wants to do better. Our goal is to transcend, conquer and leave nothing to be desired, he said.

When Lee received news that S.C. States Marching 101 Band had been selected to perform in this years event, he was ecstatic.

We were so shocked. Its a surreal experience, because you see it on YouTube all the time. Its like youre living a dream, Lee said.

All the long hours, all the pain and all the sweat the bodies go through  they finally did it, he added.

We are just looking forward to having a great time and representing the university the best we can, Lee said.

As a tradition, all eight bands will perform one piece as a mass band.

The winner of the event is determined by popularity and fans may vote online for which band they think performed the best.

The event is about winning over as many fans as possible, Robinson noted. You want to shine over the other programs.

Find out more about the event, including ticket information, by visiting www.hondabattleofthebands.com.
Richard Allen, the founder of the AME Church and its first bishop, will be featured as the next issue in the U.S. Postal Services Black Heritage Commemorative Series.

Allen, along with the Rev. Absalom Jones, helped found the Free African Society, a non-denominational religious mutual-aid society dedicated to helping the black community

The stamp will be unveiled Feb. 2 at Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia.

It is the 39th stamp in the Black Heritage stamp series, which began in 1978 with Harriet Tubman. Others include Martin Luther King Jr., Paul Robeson and Shirley Chisholm.

Allen became the nations first black Methodist Episcopal minister when he was ordained by a longtime supporter, Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury, in 1799. However, the new Philadelphia church Allen founded continued to face challenges from white church leaders.

In 1816, Allen called for a meeting of other black church leaders, who gathered together to establish the independent African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen was named the first bishop.

The Sixth Episcopal district, led by the Right Rev. Preston W. Williams II, will lead the delegation from Georgia next week for the unveiling of the Allen stamp.

We give God the praise for the ministry of Bishop Richard Allen, which has impacted the entire world, Williams said in a statement.  This a great honor for someone who is very deserving. When he launched the AME connection, it is unlikely he would have envisioned how it has grown until this day. 

The church became a stop in the Underground Railroad for slaves seeking freedom in the North.

Allen died March 26, 1831. He and his wife, Sarah, are buried in a tomb beneath the church.
Of the increase of His government of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over His kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. Isaiah 9:7

On Dec. 21, 2015, at 4:46 a.m., a 57-year-old woman was forcibly removed by a Blountstown police officer from the Calhoun Liberty Hospital after the emergency room physicians declared she was stable but unwilling to leave the premises. She was arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing.

The police cars dash-cam was released and the truth was once again much different than the picture presented by the officers' official report. The recorded version revealed that 18 minutes passed as Barbara Dawson sat unresponsive on the cold pavement that early morning. The officer in question can be heard speaking as a unsympathetic Gestapo officer towards a Jewish World War II prisoner. Dawson was readmitted into the same hospital only feet from where she collapsed. She died two hours later.

Although this story could easily fall into the bin that overflows with other socially ill-fated examples -- such as health-care for the poor, violent crime, the devaluing of the marginalized or the base human passions that greed and bigotry promote -- I suggest there is a much more sinister narrative we should be alerted to: the numbing of the Christian consciousness of America.

In truth, the very cry of Barbara Dawson is an affront to our consciousness because it forces us to glance away from our stick-figure lives to consider -- even for a moment -- that something is amiss. I argue that where there is anguish, there is an alternative consciousness seething to break through the numbness. A holy consciousness filled with hope to be felt and recognized as a viable option for life.

I am more compelled to feel anguish rather than anger. Like Jesus Christ, I have come to accept and understood that every oppressed person must have an oppressor." It is clear to me that those who play that role so dutifully, must understand the end that is soon to come resulting from their unconsciousness to the sound of pleading mothers, motionless children and despairing parents. What's more significant is that this ending is already present. It became present on a starry filled night more than 2,000 years ago. A new King was moving in to invert a kingdom which falsely promoted itself by enacting mind altering grief and despair. That kings name was Herod the Great; he would decimate his family, and murder countless children of Bethlehem. All in hopes of preventing, denying and resisting the incoming new King and the hope of a different destiny. This new Kings name is Jesus of Nazareth.

Because of the appearance of the true King, we must resist the implications that come with hopelessness and despair. We must be confronted with the truth that the ancillary stories being touted and bantered about are mere distractions from the true issue; that Gods Kingdom is presently here and evoking death echos within the dying consciousness of a kingdom constructed to promote self-sufficiency, avarice, war, lusts and a numbness toward all-things Christ-like.

Only through the anguish of our deaths to Herods kingdom will we be raptured into the hope that comes in the person of Jesus Christ and all that His true kingdom offers us. A hope that will never disappoint us but surely deliver us -- presently and eternally.

God's peace and good journey!
A local master hair care school is focusing not only on teaching hair care but also on changing lives.

Leonard Pelzer and Dashaun West of Santee are the owners of Barber Tech Academy and active members of the Palmetto State Barbers Association. Barber Tech Academy is located at 1521 Russell St. in Orangeburg.

Through Vocation Rehabilitation, the GI Bill, the South Carolina Small Business Development Center and Title IV, Barber Tech is able to provide funding for its students.

Pelzer and West have been barbering since 1996.

When students come through the front door, the first thing were looking for is changing their lives and giving them the opportunity to become entrepreneurs, said Randy Stoute, Barber Tech director of admissions.

A student can typically complete the master hair care program within nine months to a year. Mannequins are used for practice before any student can style a person's hair.

Before acceptance, the students are screened to see where they are, where they would like to go and what their passions are.

Its more to it than just getting them trained and getting them physically and spiritually able to get out there and fight that war of employment and entrepreneurship. We embrace them, Stoute said.

Barber Tech helps students with all types of issues, such as counseling, legal matters, probation and parole and financial hardships, he said.

Students at the academy include veterans, Vocational Rehabilitation clients and dislocated workers.

We are diversified. We do predominantly any sector of hair treatment. We are encouraging minorities as well as other ethnic groups to apply, Stoute said.

Barber Tech, which is in the process of moving into a larger facility, currently has a waiting list of applicants.

West, a master hair care instructor, said he sees the school as an avenue to serve others.

Im seeing people from all walks of life -- whether theyre straight out of high school, been incarcerated or in college and looking for an occupation to sustain them while pursuing their college degree, he said.

West added, "We try to create an atmosphere here where everyone feels welcome and everyone feels like family, as well as fostering entrepreneurs and getting them ready for the hair care industry."

Pelzer, also a master hair care instructor, noted that Barber Tech welcomes females as well as males.

Barbering "is not just an all-male, exclusive club, he said.

One of the students at Barber Tech Academy is Orangeburg native Tomiko Mack. His job at Federal Mogul Friction Products recently ended. Through a Trade Assistance program, he was offered an opportunity to attend school with all of his expenses paid.

Mack, who has been a student at Barber Tech Academy for about two months, refers to his experience there as "a blessing."

He initially received a band scholarship to attend South Carolina State University.

What I really wanted to go to school for was to be a mortician," he said. "State didnt offer that."

He opted to leave S.C. State to attend the Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Services in Decatur, Georgia, for a year.

Mack then returned home and began working part-time as a funeral director assistant.

We were cutting hair there. I saw a gift in myself, so I started cutting hair in my neighborhood for free to build my skills, he said.

Mack said he wanted to continue exploring opportunities in hair care and image transformation while getting paid to do so.

Attending Barber Tech Academy benefited me in a way that I could actually share the same goal and dream as my fellow classmates. I can learn from them; they can learn from me. We can encourage each other, he said.

To me, this is special because its something that I want to do from the heart," he added. "This is my third shot, and I would love to make that shot -- as in getting my Master Hair Care License with my classmates."

Another student, Stephanie Pauling, said Barber Tech Academy is more than just academics; it's also inspirational.

They provide life-changing experiences. Coming here lets me know that Im not just basic. I am someone; I am important, Pauling said.

After the birth of her daughter, the 22-year-old Orangeburg native wanted to learn how to style hair.

I can cut my sons hair now and Im learning how to actually do females hair so when my daughter finally gets some hair on her head, Ill be ready to go, Pauling said, laughing.

While in Orangeburg recently supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders' bid for president, Dr. Cornel West, well-known philosopher and educator, visited Barber Tech Academy for a 'BarberShop Stop' to discuss a wide range of issues.

West's visit "placed a huge stamp on my life," Pauling said. "It changed it for the better. Ever since then, I have higher expectations in my life because of this school and the opportunities that they are throwing at us.

There are doors being opened for us. Theyre letting us know that we are important, valuable and were going somewhere -- regardless if we believe it or not. Theyre instilling that inside of us, she said.

After spending 12 years and nine months in prison, Barber Tech student Sherwood Adams of Orangeburg said he is on a mission to strive for success.

The 46-year-old encountered obstacles while trying to get a job and trying to be a productive citizen after being incarcerated. Adams is spearheading a re-entry program at Barber Tech.

Being incarcerated and walking into a program such as this is just a blessing. I always had the drive to own my own and be in business for myself, he said. "Attending Barber Tech Academy gives me the opportunity to actually give back in a positive way."

Adams added, Barber Tech Academy brings out the best in you no matter how you think or no matter how others may feel about you. If I had to recommend it on a scale of 1-10, I dont think a scale of 1-10 would even hold it. Thats just the magnitude of it.
I confess. I had more fun responding to inquiries about Mike Pitts (R-Laurens) journalist registration bill than I have had answering questions about any other proposed restrictions on the press or personal freedoms.

A client called and asked what the response to the bill should be. I responded, laughter. The client then asked, What do we say when someone wants our official response? Tell them when we quit laughing, well think of something.

Unfortunately many news organizations groaned and harrumphed like the sea lions on the beach in front of William Randolph Hearsts castle in California. A reaction I suspect Pitts desired.

If he were honest, and I have no way of knowing, Pitts would have known his bill had very little chance of getting even subcommittee consideration and no chance of passage.

Of course Pitts explanation for filing the bill was as humorous as the bill itself: unhappiness with press coverage of firearms legislation.

If Pitts really had a complaint about news coverage of firearms legislation, as distinguished from editorial and opinion treatment of the issue, he could have responded on the merits of specific proposals. With respect to editorials and opinion pieces, I am confident most newspapers would have welcomed a piece from Pitts addressing specific legislative proposals regarding such things as closing the gun show loophole where one can buy a firearm without a background check, or methods to get mental health information into the background check data bases.

But because he is a member of the General Assembly, with lawyers and typists at his disposal at state expense, Pitts decided to demonstrate what a big shot he is. He used public resources to take the language of the states concealed weapons law and modify it to require the registration of journalists. I am guessing that if Pitts had been required to draft the bill himself rather than use the professional staff, he might have decided it would be a better use of his time to take a hunting trip to Alaska (which he has done apparently using his campaign treasury to finance the trip).

Some have suggested that Pitts registration bill has less to do with his unhappiness with firearms legislation coverage and more to do with The Post & Courier report on his use of campaign funds to underwrite hunting trips.

Pitts is not alone in promoting legislation to burden the press for fulfilling the role of the press in our democratic society. Every year someone in the General Assembly proposes to remove the sales tax exemption on newspapers and newsprint  exemptions that have been in the law since South Carolinas initial sales tax legislation was adopted. And a historical note, the imposition of a tax on newspapers and newspaper readers by the Crown was one of the rallying points for colonists in the days leading to the American Revolution. The exemption repeal usually pops up after a newspaper has disclosed questionable or illegal conduct by a public official.

Louisiana and Minnesota both enacted tax schemes that imposed taxes on the largest newspapers in those states  the papers most likely to write about governmental corruption. The Louisiana legislature didnt even try to hide the fact that the tax was being imposed on those newspapers critical of Huey Long. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled both schemes unconstitutional.

Minnesota also had a statute that allowed a court to issue an injunction to stop the publication of a newspaper deemed to be a nuisance on the basis of what it published about government and government officials. The concept of nuisance in common law allows a court to enjoin an activity when noise, odors or light from an activity on one persons property interferes with the use of an adjoining property. Minnesota, like Pitts, was trying to be clever in taking law that dealt with one subject and modify it to enable a court to punish a newspaper for publishing that which a public official found offensive.

This is not a new notion. During the administration of John Adams, Congress enacted a Sedition Act to allow the imprisonment of publishers who criticized government and government officials. The notion of sedition was imported from England where one could be put to death in a gruesome fashion for criticizing the monarch. Those punished under the act were supporters of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson became President he pardoned those who had been imprisoned and the law expired.

Certainly Pitts was throwing his weight around and acting the bully with his pretend (I hope) legislation, but he is to be applauded for causing us to think about why we have the First Amendment. I tell my classes that the First Amendment exists to protect from the government speech that nobody likes. Even if the nobody is in the General Assembly.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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Nothing better to wish Happy New Year 2022 , if not the use of images to share on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. Funny, funny, original Happy New Year 2022 images, which represent a different way to celebrate the New Year by sending a Happy New Year message to all friends and relatives. There are many people who share phrases, images, photographs, videos and many other types of content with relatives and friends at the end of the year.

We always point out that the Happy New Year 2022 images to share on WhatsApp collected here are totally free and can be sent with any instant messaging platform and social network.

The best images Happy New Year 2022

For Happy New Year 2022 messages, phrases, letters, cards, postcards and even images are shared. With latest generation smartphones and tablets it has become extremely easy to share images on smartphones and tablets on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram.

We remind you that to save the Happy New Year 2022 images present you need to perform some extremely simple operations. Press and hold your finger on the image for a few seconds, until a new dialog box appears on the screen. Within the latter, click on the Save image item . The image will be saved in the roll of iOS devices , such as iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, while on Android it will be stored in the browser's Downloads folder . By doing so, you can easily share humorous images with other third-party applications and social networks, including WhatsApp.

Among the best Happy New Year images for WhatsApp we start with this one dedicated to 2022 with very accurate and really beautiful graphics to use with friends and relatives.

The best phrases to wish happy new year 2021

We all know that a new year brings new experiences, joys, opportunities, people, love, stories, challenges. Let's use a few phrases to wish happy new year 2021 to our dear friend, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend. Why not to loved ones who are far away and who probably in this damned 2020 we could not embrace. Here are some suggestions:

 My wishes for you are not limited to just next year but to all the years you will experience in your life. Happy New Year full of fun, awesome, rocking and eventful! "

 Don't worry when others are unable to understand you. Only worry when you are unable to understand yourself. May you have a happy new year! ".

 Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, yippee! It's a new year! Happy New Year, my beloved friend! "

 I am lucky to have friends who bring so much joy and madness to this life. I can't imagine what it would be like without you encouraging me. Happy New Year! "

 The new years come and the new years go by, but our friendship has stood the test of time. I wish you the best for next year! "

 On the road to success, the rule is to always look ahead. May you reach your destination and may your journey be wonderful. Happy New Year! ".

 I would just like to express how much joy you have given me and wish your joy and happiness in return. Goodbye 2020 Welcome 2021 Happy New Year! "

 May each day of the next year be vibrant and new bringing with it many reasons to celebrate and rejoice. Happy New Year! "

 I wish you a great year that starts with happiness and ends with that too. Happy New Year! ".

 I wish you a bright, prosperous and glorious new year. Happy New Year! ".

Happy New year wishes and images in various Languages
/By AzerNews/

The recent negotiations between Georgia's Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze and Russian gas giant Gazprom caused a storm of unrest and accusations both in Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Although details of top energy talks were withheld, the observers called them as Georgia's intention to change the rules of game. The move brought many questions as no visible reason was argued for that.

Rumors circulating in political circles and society gave birth to ideas that the Georgian government intends to replace cheap and stable Azerbaijani gas with Russian, which is considered much more expensive and less stable.

Kaladze urges that Gazprom offers gas to Georgia cheaper than Azerbaijan, adding that if necessary Georgia will balance with Russian supplies a deficit, which SOCAR is unable to refill.

Since collapse of the Soviet Union Georgia enjoyed favorable relations with energy-rich Azerbaijan that met its increasing gas demand for many years. Even in a very critical period of relationship with Russia, which left Georgians without warm by for force of 2008 military clashes, Azerbaijan could save the post Soviet nation and its ill economy.

Today SOCAR delivers 6 million cubic meters per day in Georgia, which is supposed meet 95 percent of the country's gas consumption. The rest 5 percent of its gas demand Georgia covers though Russian supplies that it receives for "blue fuel" transit to Armenia.

SOCAR argues that the natural gas reserves are enough to meet the needs of Georgia and many other European countries for decades.

Georgia also expects to receive additional gas volumes from Azerbaijan as a transit country after commissioning Shah Deniz 2 giant field in 2018. So, what are the true reasons of Kaladze's puzzle-game with Gazprom?

Based on this reality Baku asked Tbilisi for more precise and detailed explanation for the current strategy of "diversifying the sources of energy". SOCAR, a major gas supplier to Georgia, rebuffed any motives about shortage of natural gas, assuring that the company could meet the country's necessary demand for natural gas and would do it further if needed.

The Georgian government seems to be ready to abandon a long partnership with its politically stable supplier and strategic partner, Azerbaijan, and affords entering into negotiations with other countries, such as Russia and Iran.

SOCAR, which is operating in Georgia since 2006, is the largest taxpayer in this country. Losing such a partner will be indeed unprofitable for Georgia.

After lifting Western sanctions from Iran, Georgia saw a perspective to increase its importance as a transit country in the region.

Kaladze's actions indeed cast a shadow on his country's energy perspectives. Renewing the energy policy may take a period to become efficient, while Azerbaijan may refuse to update its energy cooperation with an unreliable partner very soon.

But Georgia can face a serous problem if Azerbaijan hesitates to update a deal on supplying natural gas, that expires in 2017. Baku may cancel the cooperation, no longer desiring to associate itself with such an unreliable partner.

Azerbaijan, sometimes contrary to its own interests, made concessions to Georgia, taking into account its weak economic position.

Azerbaijan's decision not to renew the contract for a reduced price may put Georgia almost in a hopeless situation. In this case it will have to buy natural gas at world prices, while the Georgian economy is built around cheap price.
Iran and Azerbaijan have signed an agreement to launch a railroad transit system from Tehran to Nakhichevan, Iran Railroads International Affairs Director Abbas Nazari said.

He said the agreement was signed on the sidelines of the quadrilateral Baku summit, IRIB news agency reported.

The official further said experts from both sides are to meet in one month to discuss trains timetable as well as fairs.

Nazari noted that the infrastructure for the railroad exist, explaining that passenger trains will use the Tehran-Tabriz-Jolfa-Nakhichevan route.

The quadrilateral meeting was held recently between Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine to make important decisions in the field of transportation.

The general theme of the summit was to create a composite transit route from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea and Europe.

It envisioned starting point of Mumbai in India, unified Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia base railroad tariffs, and created consensus among members to provide equipment, infrastructure maintenance service, etc.

/By Trend/
Foreign investors will not be negatively affected by a mandatory fee of 20 percent on remittances for sending money abroad, Tahir Taghizadeh, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the UK, wrote in the letter published in Financial Times.

Non-resident investors will continue to freely execute any trade or other transactions, export and import activities and have the rights to perform foreign exchange transactions through bank offices in support of such transactions, the diplomat wrote.

The diplomat wrote that cash/hard currency importation into Azerbaijan in excess of $50,000 equivalent is subject to reporting to the financial monitoring service.

Repatriation of 100 per cent of a non-resident investment into Azerbaijan plus profit made on that investment after payment of all taxes (mainly a 20 per cent profit tax and a 10 per cent

withholding tax) has been guaranteed to foreign investors by the law on the protection of foreign investments, he wrote.

A mandatory fee of 20 percent on remittances for sending money abroad, which exceeds $50,000 during a year, was introduced in Azerbaijan, according to the amendments to the Law on currency regulation adopted by the parliament.

This charge does not apply to transfers abroad in relation to the cost of medical treatment, education, execution of court decisions and law enforcement agencies outside of Azerbaijan.

Currency exported as direct investment for the purchase of securities, real estate and land, as well as for the maintenance of Azerbaijani companies foreign missions also will be taxed with a mandatory fee of 20 percent.

This charge does not apply to legal entities, the state share in capital of which exceeds 50 percent.

/By Trend/
The Islamic Development Bank is ready to consider the possibility of increasing the loan issuance to Azerbaijan, IDBs office in Baku told Trend.

"No requests have been received from the Azerbaijani government to draw additional funding from the IDB, the banks office said.

But we believe that after President Ilham Aliyev has made a statement in which he has urged to increase the volume of foreign investments to Azerbaijan, the government will appeal to us with a request."

The Banks stated that it is ready to give loans for financing the areas, which are traditional for the Bank.

"These can be the infrastructure, agricultural and social projects, the banks office said. If the Azerbaijani government appeals to us with a request to deliver a loan, we are ready to consider it."

Finance Minister Samir Sharifov announced on January 29 that there is not an acute need for barrowings.

"At our request the International Monetary Foundation will provide some technical assistance in connection with the implementation of a series of measures in the country's economic sphere. We consider it useful to consult with international experts. It is for this reason the missions of ADB, WB and IMF are in Baku now," he said. "However, we don't have any need to attract loans urgently."

"Azerbaijan is a member of these international organizations, respectively; if necessary we can take loans from them. It is our right. We will continue cooperation with the international financial organizations in the same order, but if necessary we can also approach them for loans", Sharifov underlined.

Azerbaijan became a member of IDB in 1992. The bank has invested over $1.2 billion in Azerbaijan for the implementation of projects in various spheres of economy.

The Islamic Development Bank is an international financial organization headquartered in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). IDB was founded on December 18, 1973 at the first conference of the finance ministers of the OIC member states.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has said Azerbaijan is an unambiguously friendly country for Estonia, while he met newly-appointed Ambassador Murad Najafbayli.

Prior to the conversation, Azerbaijan`s newly appointed ambassador to Estonia Murad Najafbayli has presented his credentials to President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

The ambassador conveyed greetings and best wishes of President Ilham Aliyev to the head of state of Estonia. The Diplomat praised relations of both countries, saying, he will try his best for developing and strengthening these ties.

They exchanged views on current state and developing prospects of multilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Estonia within the international organizations.

Mr. Najafbayli highlighted successes of Azerbaijan in socio-political and socio-economic fields, as well as achievements gained under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev.

The ambassador provided an insight into a cause and consequences of Armenia-Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Estonian President applauded level of cooperation and expressed assurance that dynamical development in overall fields would further continue to develop between the two countries.

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves thanked for the greetings of President Ilham Aliyev and asked the ambassador to communicate his greetings to the head of state of Azerbaijan.

The Ambassador said Azerbaijan was keen to develop and strengthen the relations with Estonia in overall fields in future.
The 28-year-old Paris man was arrested as he tried to go through security at Disney's Hotel New York, just outside the Paris-area amusement park, said Michel Le Prevost, deputy chief of criminal police of the French city of Meaux.

The man also was carrying a Quran, Le Prevost said. He told police during questioning that he was carrying the guns for his own protection, according to the deputy chief.

Police also are looking for a woman who was with him, Le Prevost said. Police retracted an earlier statement that the woman was in custody.

It's not immediately clear what, if anything, she was accused of.
/By AzerNews/

By Laman Sadigova

The Council of Europe has urged Armenia to develop an effective national policy to investigate and prosecute money laundering.

This was stated in the first report published by MONEYVAL on January 28in the 5th Mutual Evaluation. The report recommends an action plan to address the shortcomings.

The CoE experts have revealed significant weaknesses in the investigation and prosecution of money laundering in Armenia and have urged the authorities to take immediate action to ensure that law enforcement efforts are fully commensurate with the money laundering risks faced by the country.

The biggest danger in terms of money laundering includes fraud, tax evasion, smuggling and theft.

Fraud, tax evasion, contraband and embezzlement pose the highest threats in terms of money laundering. Within the Armenian economy, the banking and real estate sectors are the most vulnerable to money laundering. Financial intelligence is gathered very effectively, but law enforcement does not often make effective use of it to develop evidence, trace, seize and confiscate criminal proceeds from money laundering, the statement reads.

Earlier the Global Competitiveness Report 2014 unveiled the oligarchy-controlled monopoly in Armenia, ranking the former Soviet nation 105th among 144 countries in terms of the effectiveness of antitrust policy.

The Global Financial Integrity disclosed that about 1.25 billion was taken out of Armenia in 2012. It is $63 million more than the figure in 2011.

The Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012 Report claimed that Armenia faced nearly $7.5 billion illegal cash takeout over the period from 2003 to 2012, as a result of government corruption, tax evasion and other illicit financial dealings.
Russias Gazprom canceled a discount on gas for the Turkish private sector, Anadolu agency reported Jan. 29.

The discount on gas for the Turkish private sector has been in place since January 1, 2015.

Gazproms recent decision is connected with the crisis in the relations between the two countries.

Earlier, Akfel, Bosphorusgaz and Kibar Enerji companies received licenses to import gas for 30 years.

The fourth company - Bat? Hatt? received a license for 23 years. The companies are to import six billion cubic meters of Russian gas into Turkey, annually.

According to the agreement, Akfel will import 2.25 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Russia, Bosphorus  1.75 billion cubic meters, Bat? Hatt? and Kibar Enerji - one billion cubic meters annually, so around 22 percent of Russian gas imported to Turkey will be purchased by the Turkish private sector.

Gazprom made a 10.25-percent discount on the gas supplied to the Turkish private sector since January 2015.

Turkey is importing 6.6 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Azerbaijan on the basis of a take or pay contract. Turkey also buys gas from Iran.

Ankara also has agreements with Algeria and Nigeria for the supply of 4.4 billion cubic meters and 1.2 billion cubic meters of liquefied gas per year, respectively.

Qatar is ready to ensure Turkeys gas demand and start exporting liquefied natural gas in the volumes required for Ankara, Qatars ambassador to Turkey Salim Mubarak said Dec. 17.

Doha and Ankara signed an agreement on supplying some 1.2 bcm of liquefied gas to Turkey. The agreement was signed during the Turkish presidents visit to Qatar in early December.

/By Trend/
/By AzerNews/

By Aynur Karimova

"Hassan Rouhani's France visit illustrated power of diplomacy. New era of mutually beneficial cooperation in economy, politics and culture"... This is how Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif assessed President Rouhani's visit to Paris.

Rouhani's five-day tour to Italy, Vatican and France was indeed of significant importance both for Europe and Tehran in terms of reviving bilateral economic and political relations and multilateral trade ties among businessmen.

The Iranian president led a 120-member delegation including ministers and businessmen. The visit came just a week after the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that put an end to economic sanctions against Tehran.

Before the Paris visit, Rouhani said that Iran is ready to welcome foreign investors adding there are no more obstacles to investment in Iran.

"We are here to welcome all investors and economic managers to cooperate with Iran, Rouhani told the French businessmen. "Iran is ready for vast economic cooperation as it enjoys great capacities and has many needs to be fulfilled."

He explained that socio-political security, rich energy resources, educated workforce, and good relations with regional countries make Iran an interesting place for investment.

Within the framework of the current policies of the Iranian government, France is again to become active in Iran, with new energy and strengthened will. We are now ready to open new chapter in ties between the two countries, he emphasized.

French President Francois Hollande officially welcomed his Iranian counterpart at Elysee Palace in Paris on January 28. On the sidelines of a fruitful meeting of the two presidents, Iran and France signed memorandums of understanding.

Iranian FM Zarif and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius signed the first MoU which is a roadmap for strengthening ties between Tehran and Paris, Iranian media reported.

Other documents signed by the delegation led by President Rouhani and the French side were on cooperation in a range of sectors, including healthcare, environment, industry, and agriculture.

One of the most important documents was a deal with Airbus for the purchase of 118 aircraft from the European manufacturer.

The deal was signed by Iran's Roads and Urban Development Minister Abbas Akhoundi and his French counterpart, Iranian state-run IRINN TV channel reported from the event venue.

Under the terms of the contract, Airbus will be committed to deliver the aircrafts, acquired by Iran under the lease, within four years.

The planes will be brand new in different types, including the wide-body Airbus A380. Iran is committed to pay for the planes within 10 years.

Also, French oil and gas company Total and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to purchase crude oil from the Islamic Republic.

Earlier, Press TV quoted Totals Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne as saying that Total is going to sign a contract to purchase 150,000-200,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude oil.

Before sanctions were imposed in 2012 over Iran, EU was importing about 800,000 barrels of Iranian oil and condensate.

Later, speaking at a joint press conference, Hollande said France and Iran have turned a new page in bilateral relations.



"For 17 years the Iranian president has not visited France. Today we opened a new chapter in our relations. I hope our cooperation will be beneficial for everyone," he noted.



The French president noted that some 30 deals in various spheres were signed during Rouhanis visit.
/By AzerNews/

By Laman Sadigova

Six parents of dead soldiers, who passed away or were killed in non-combat situation, held a protest in front of the presidential palace in Yerevan on January 27, demanding justice for their dead sons.

Five years have left since Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan promised them that the new military prosecutor Gevorg Kostanyan will conduct a fair investigation to reveal the truth.

But, both president and the military prosecutor luckily forgot their promises and left grieving parents without any answers.

Increasing number of soldier deaths in non-combat situations have become usual in the poor post-Soviet country with a population of 2 million people.

Absolute chaos reigning in the Armenian Armed Forces is supported by numerous cases of desertion and evasion.

For example, Andranik Grigoryan, an Armenian soldier who voluntarily surrendered to Azerbaijan told that "We are tired of unbearable conditions, lack of discipline in the military unit, lack of ammunition, ill treatment with soldiers and warrant officers, and the disorders."

He also said that the soldiers are fed with poor-quality food, with outdated expiration date. Unsanitary conditions prevail in military units. Contagious diseases, especially the infectious ones are wide-spread in military units

The mother of serviceman Arthur Gazaryan, who died in 2010, in particular, said that non of cases over the past 5 years has had a positive development.

The president should fulfill his promise, otherwise let him just come here and say I cannot keep my promise, we cannot give any answers, because our generals and commanders rend your children, not the Turks (in colloquial Armenian, Turks also mean Azerbaijanis), Irina Gazaryan desperately said.

Law enforcement bodies urged protesters to leave the territory adjacent to the presidential office, saying they violate the law and block the entrance, hindering the work of the administration.

Which law are you speaking about? Doesn't this law work only for you and hooligans? Why this law does not punish the killers of our children? We will wait here until Sargsyan comes to answer our questions, Gazaryan added.

Poor relations among soldiers and officers in the Armenian army have already turned into a driving factor behind servicemen's deaths in non-combat conditions. Officers' willful treatment of soldiers, the humiliations they have to bare often result in armed incidents that ultimately claim the lives of servicemen.

During the protest, the police have built a human chain and pushed parents back from the gate of the presidential residence in an effort to disperse the rally.

This has unavoidably triggered public concern and angered the desperate families.

Due to the Armenian governments aggressive policy, the youth is left to die in the occupied territories with no hope for escape.

The parents of killed soldiers have repeatedly protested in Yerevan, demanding for the rights of their children to be respected and honored.

The state has systematically proven vicious in its approach as protesters faced a brutal police crackdown every time they attempted to protest. During their protest at the gate of the presidential palace in mid-May, Armenian police forcibly dispersed protesters by pushing and striking the angered mothers.
/By AzerNews/

By Nigar Orujova

Baku is among top five cities, which Russian tourists want to visit in 2016.

Azerbaijan attracts Russian tourists with possibility to rest on the Caspian Sea shore, discover the mesmerizing mix of East and West in Baku, and enjoy fresh air and delicious meals in the regions of the country.

Travel.ru website identified the most popular tourist destinations in the CIS countries among Russian tourists in 2016, using the hotel reservations by Russians from February 1 to December 31, 2016.

The data revealed that over the past year, the number of trips to the CIS countries made by tourists travelling independently has increased by 20 percent.

The Azerbaijani capital is in the top five most popular cities in the CIS for Russian tourists. This year Russians have booked trips to Baku for an average of four days and paid over 3,000 rubles a day for accommodation.

The top five also includes Minsk, Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Kiev, according to Travel.ru.

Russian tourists do not need visa to travel to Azerbaijan, which make the country more attractive. Tourists from neighboring Russia were always frequent guests in Azerbaijan and the recent developments made more Russians to think about Baku when planning their vacations.

The frosty relations between Russia and Europe have directed the tourism market of the country to the new way. Turkey has become more attractive for Russian tourists after Moscow suspended flights to Egypt. Following the downing of the Russian jet, Russian travel agencies suspended sales of tour packages to Turkey.

Moreover, unstable economic situation in Russia made the tourists to look for cheap destinations for vacation.

Azerbaijan cannot be named the cheapest destination in the region, but the country is now targeted to create more budget hotels around the country.

Today, there are luxury 5 star hotels of the world famous brands, a number of budget hotels and hostels in Azerbaijan.

The prices in the tourism facilities of the country have not risen recently and after the double devaluation of the national currency, the prices are more affordable.

Discussing this news in the social media, many Russian citizens name Azerbaijan as their potential destination for this summer.

One of the main advantages of Azerbaijan, besides the captivating beauty of the country and hospitable population, is the fact that many people here know Russian and English.

Today, when the country has winter tourism complexes as well, Russian tourists could start discover Azerbaijan right now, and sure enough, they will not be disappointed.
Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation...(James 1:27)


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Please book as early as possible because my speaking and event calendar slots during the year rapidly fill up.
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CROATIA - Dubrovnik (Lapad) 17:12 Travel Bunny 0 Comments

Lapad is located to the west of the Old Town of Dubrovnik. It is a peninsular that makes up for a larger part of Dubrovnik. The beaches on Lapad are mostly concentrated in a bay called Lapad Bay, or Uvala Lapad in Croatian. It boasts a line of pebble beaches that stretches from the Hotel Splendid to the Hotel Kompas.





Franjo Tudman Bridge is the bridge that is across Rijeka Dubrovacka near Port of Gruz.









The bridge construction costs were reportedly 252 million Croatian kuna, making it the most expensive bridge in Croatia.









Welcome to Dubrovnik!









This is the hotel I staying at Lapad, Hotel Vis.













After checking in, I explored the Lapad Bay on foot. Lots of hotels are located close to the promenade and the beaches. The whole area is quite lively and touristic.









The beaches in Lapad bay are mostly a mixture of pebble area, rock area and artificial concrete pavement. Chairs and umbrellas can be rented on the beaches.









Booths like this is used for people to change their clothes.









Lots of stores found along Lapad promenade.









Theres even a cave bar around the area.













A quiet trail leading to the mysterious cave bar.









This part of Lapad bay is rocky but its also more secluded.

















Entrance of Cave Bar More.









It was really inside a cave like its name suggested. Looks cool!













A nice place to chill and relax, especially in this hot summer weather.













Nobody was in the cave bar. Its still too early for the party goers to start partying.









Back to promenade of Lapad.













Ordered a beer and simply sat and enjoyed the view.













There are some floating slides and equipment on the water. Not sure if its free or not.









After enjoying the cold beer, its time to head to the beach.









This is the beach area in front of Hotel Vis.









My hubby and son enjoyed a father-son bonding in the sea.













With the sun setting down, the weather was perfect! The scorching summer sun was just too unbearable.





























Panaromic view of Lapad bay.









View of Lapad bay from the hotels restaurant. Its sunset time. Most people have left the beach.









Bon appetite!













Night view of Lapad bay.









Morning view from our hotel rooms balcony.





















This part of beach is towards the end of the peninsular.













A night in Lapad left me rejuvenated.









A small island with a lighthouse can be seen from the peninsular.









Lapad can be reached by getting a city bus. We checked out from Hotel Vis and headed to Dubrovnik Old City in the next morning.
Three retired Natrona County School District educators, who write together under the pen name J.H. Meyer, have published the first books in a fiction series titled A New Direction through Amazon Kindle. The writing team of Anne Meyer, Janet Mills and Harper Lee Park sees a need for books that appeal to adults who are working on becoming better readers. They have targeted this audience for their series but believe the stories can be enjoyed by anyone at any reading level.

Set in the fictional town of Ringo, Wyoming, A New Direction is a contemporary story of the Patterson family, featuring ex-con Weston Patterson, whose aunt summons him to return to Ringo after his release from prison. He fears that his Aunt Lou, who runs a pawnshop, may be ill and wishes to see him before her death. On arrival, Wes realizes she is still healthy and as ornery as ever, and that she has also invited his sister and his daughter to come to Ringo. He will be surrounded by people he loves  people he has failed. Wes knows they are all in for a rocky reunion.
CHEYENNE  The single-engine Cessna aroused suspicion at the Yellowstone Regional Airport even before it landed.

The pilot didnt radio the tower before landing, prosecutors say. And, as the Cessna taxied to a hangar, they say the pilot and a passenger were lowering sunshades over the windows. That struck officials as odd, considering the plane was about to be stored indoors in a hangar.

Now the plane is at the heart of a legal dispute over whether the federal government abused its powers in seizing property  or whether the pilot and his friend were part of an elaborate criminal enterprise.

After an airport worker notified police, officers searched the room at a Holiday Inn where the pilot and passenger checked in after landing on Feb. 27, 2014. Prosecutors say officers found over $250,000 in cash and three allegedly fake Idaho drivers licenses.

Pilot Scott Michael Lewis, 27, has filed a claim in a federal forfeiture case pending in Wyoming asserting he has a legitimate interest in the plane and the money. San Francisco lawyer David M. Michael, representing Lewis in the forfeiture case, has contested the governments allegations in court papers and said the cash was from unspecified legitimate activities. He is demanding the funds back.

In fact, there was absolutely no evidence, beyond pure speculation and threadbare suspicions, linking Lewis or his hotel room to any illegal activity, Michael wrote.

Kip Crofts, U.S. attorney for Wyoming, told Lewis in November that he was the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Homeland Security Department involving allegations of federal crimes including conspiracy to distribute marijuana, money laundering, identity theft and operation of an unregistered aircraft.

But the criminal charges Crofts office filed this month dont allege any violation of drug laws. A federal indictment charges Lewis and passenger Gilbert Wayne Wiles Jr., 38, with conspiracy to operate an unregistered aircraft and aiding and abetting the operation of an unregistered aircraft.

The federal government oversees many aspects of air travel, including the occasional prosecution of people accused of operating unregistered aircraft. In one such recent high-profile case, the government prosecuted Doug Hughes, the former Florida mail carrier who landed a gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol last year. Hughes ultimately pleaded guilty to flying the craft without a license and is awaiting sentencing.

John R. Powell, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office in Cheyenne, declined to comment on the forfeiture case involving the plane and the cash seized in Cody or the newly filed criminal charges against Lewis and Wiles.

Authorities allege Wiles paid someone in Texas $130,000 cash in 2013 for the 1968 Cessna TU-206 Super Skywagon. The single-propeller high-wing plane had been flying under visual flight rules, meaning no flight plan had to be filed and the aircrafts movements couldnt be tracked.

Wiles told people who serviced the plane that he and Lewis were working for an aerial photography business, prosecutors allege. Court records state Wiles lives in Denver, while Lewis is from Englewood, Colorado.

The issue of drug forfeitures is drawing increased scrutiny in Wyoming. Some state lawmakers are pushing a bill in the legislative session that starts next month that would require a criminal conviction before the state government can seize private property.

Gov. Matt Mead vetoed a bill last year that would have required criminal convictions to support state forfeiture cases. Mead, a Republican and former state and federal prosecutor, said in his veto message last year that he was satisfied with current law enforcement procedures.

Only a handful of states  Minnesota, Montana, Nevada New Mexico and North Carolina  require a criminal conviction to support state forfeiture actions. Such state laws dont affect how federal forfeiture proceedings, like that of the Cessna, are handled in federal court.
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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  Authorities say a Santa Fe police officer fatally shot an armed robbery suspect at a motel, and a Montana man who was chatting with him before the shootout says he feels blessed he wasn't hurt in the crossfire.

New Mexico State Police said no officers were hurt during the Wednesday night shooting, which is under investigation by the state police agency.

No details were released about the suspect or circumstances of the shooting, and state and Santa Fe police spokesman said Thursday they could not provide any details until after investigators finish conducting interviews.

However, Santa Fe police spokesman Greg Gurule earlier told the Albuquerque Journal that events leading up to the shooting at the motel began at a nearby Wal-Mart store.

Tim Quigg of Billings, Montana, told the Journal he was talking to a man staying in the motel room next to his when two police officers arrived and got into a shootout with the other man.

Quigg said the other man began shooting at the officers, who then returned fire before the man ran around a corner of the building. He said the shooting ended when officers fired four more shots.

Quigg said he was outside smoking a cigarette when the officers showed up and called the other man by name, which Quigg said he couldn't remember. The man responded by firing a shot behind Quigg's head and at the officers.

Quigg said he held up his hands and said, "Don't shoot me! Don't shoot me!" when the shooting started.

"It scared the bejeezus out of me," Quigg said.

He said he was interviewed later by police for three hours.

"I'm blessed," the 47-year-old man said at the motel Thursday morning. "Something was watching over me."
An investor in a Globe medical marijuana dispensary is crying foul and demanding $1.1 million in a lawsuit filed in Pima County.

Kenneth Sobel sued Globe Farmacy alleging the investment he made to get the dispensary up and running was never repaid and a surreptitious side deal between then-Globe City Councilman Desmond Baker and the dispensarys board members bilked Sobel out of his place on the board.

The Jan. 21 lawsuit asks Pima County Superior Court to order Globe Farmacy to pay Sobel at least $1.1 million for the initial investment, breach of contract, loss of future profits, and services rendered.

Globe Farmacy, 200 N. Broad Street, is the only state-licensed medical marijuana dispensary in Globe, which is in Gila County about 100 miles northeast of Tucson. A call to the dispensary for comment was not returned.

Sobel, a San Diego-based attorney who ran the Green Halo dispensary in Tucson until last year, said he put up a $125,000 loan in September 2012, spearheaded the dispensarys application process, and advised Globe Farmacy as it set up shop.

All told, Sobel said he and his business partner Murray Stein invested more than $275,000 in the dispensary, but none of the money was repaid.

Sobel alleged Baker and the board members made a deal without Sobels knowledge to oust Sobel and Stein from the board shortly after the dispensary opened for business in early 2013.

Baker served on the Globe City Council during the dispensarys application process, the Arizona Silver Belt newspaper reported.

After Baker submitted an unsuccessful application for his own dispensary, he recused himself from any decisions relating to Green Farmacys application, the newspaper reported.

Arizona Corporation Commission records show Sobel was removed as president in April 2013 and replaced with Mark Siegel. Stein was removed as treasurer and replaced with Baker.

In his lawsuit, Sobel said he was unaware the changes were planned, which is a violation of the firms bylaws.

He asked the court to declare he was wrongfully removed and to reinstate him on the board.
To further promote cross-border relations and economic development, Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll switched jobs this week with Ernesto Kiko Munro, the mayor of Puerto Penasco, Sonora.

While their job exchange may have been symbolic, it was still significant, both men said.

Over two packed days, Carroll and Munro met with business, cultural, education, government and religious leaders, trading ideas and finding chances for cooperation.

Penasco has to accept that it is a vertex in a region that includes Phoenix and Tucson, Munro said in Tucson.

We are here identifying what are the areas of opportunity, and reiterating that Penasco is a safe place to visit and a safe place to invest.

Puerto Penasco, also known as Rocky Point, is slowly recovering from the Great Recession, which cooled a once-hot real estate market. It also is recovering from a drop in tourism after Mexico saw a spike in drug-related violence.

Earlier this month the U.S. State Department updated its Mexico travel warning. It said Sonora is a key region in the international drug and human trafficking trades and can be extremely dangerous for travelers.

A review of 2015 news releases by the Sonoran state police found one instance of a shooting reported in Puerto Penasco. A 54-year-old man from Sinaloa was shot about a mile from the beach area, on the citys main road, on Aug. 23. Three assault riffles were found in the shooters abandoned vehicle.

Highlighting the areas safety was one of the main drivers behind Carrolls desire to visit, he said from Rocky Point, adding that people planning their vacations should not be discouraged from visiting Puerto Penasco, especially with a strong dollar.

Its a great time to come here, Carroll said. You know the three Bs in Spanish: bueno, bonito y barato (good, nice and cheap)? Well, weve come up with a fourth B, bien seguro  really safe.

Carroll had nothing but praise for Munro, who came into office last September, and his staff.

Its not just early enthusiasm thats going to wear off. I think theyre really a new breed of people that are pro-business and pro-solutions, Carroll said. Kiko has the kind of personality and sophistication to continue getting results, and I plan to help him on our side of the border whenever I can.

For his part, Munro said he was thankful for the opportunity Carroll gave him, and he was taking advantage of his time in Tucson. His meetings throughout the community had already sparked ideas and connected him with possible partners.

One of my interests is that Penasco diversifies its economic activity and not be limited to tourism and commercial fishing  that we can be a provider of products and services that complement whats already here, he said.

Areas that Munro is exploring include commercial fish processing, growth and export of asparagus and olives, and renewable energy.

The mayor, who met with Customs and Border Protection officials during his visit, is also pushing for improvements at the Lukeville crossing with the state and federal government in Mexico, to cut down on wait times.

His ultimate goal, Munro said, is for Puerto Penasco to be recognized as a player in the economic development of the Arizona-Sonora mega-region.
A Tucson-area job training program has boosted the income of 300 people over the last five years, with nearly 80 percent of graduates still employed locally, according to a new report.

And Pima County has benefited from an estimated $34.3 million in direct and indirect economic impact from JobPath, a job training program supported by Pima County, the city of Tucson and private business donors, according to an economic impact study presented to the JobPath board on Wednesday.

The five-year study by Phoenix-based Applied Economics LLC was the longest look of its kind for JobPath, which was created in 1998 by the Pima County Interfaith Council and local business leaders.

JobPath provides unemployed and underemployed people with counseling, financial and other assistance for long-term education and training, mainly at Pima Community College, in fields including nursing, dental hygiene, biotech research, medical lab technology and aircraft maintenance.

The study found that of 378 graduates of JobPath from 2009 through 2014, 300 remained working in Pima County, 71 moved or could not be tracked and seven continued their education.

Average wages for 2009 to 2014 graduates, from their first post-training jobs to their current jobs, rose between 24 and 69 percent depending on how long ago they graduated and their years of work experience.

The report showed that, on average, program graduates salaries increased by about $3,700 per year for each added year of work experience, generating nearly $10 million in additional income over five years, the study found. The figures are based on unemployment insurance data from the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

That tells us we are fulfilling our mission and we are making a very important impact on our community, said Martha Gerganoff, president of the JobPath board and chief nursing officer at Carondelet St. Marys Hospital.

Sarah Murley of Applied Economics noted that the 79 percent local retention rate was particularly impressive because the local economy overall was struggling to recover from the Great Recession during much of the five-year study period.

Given that kind of economic climate, that kind of retention rate is significant, she said.

Besides the direct and indirect economic effects tracked by the study, Murley said, many of the graduates were formerly on some form of public assistance.

As they increase their incomes, JobPath graduates have more time to spend with their families, Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias said.

Their wages rose, so now they dont have to have two or three jobs, he said.

Having time to study is another benefit of JobPath assistance.

David Lee, a 28-year-old JobPath grad who works as a technician for Radiology Ltd., bounced around in various jobs, including working at Old Tucson Studios and moving patients around Tucson Medical Center, before deciding to attend Pima Community College for radiology.

Lee said JobPaths support, which included tuition assistance and prepaid gas and food cards, helped him get through school without working  key since radiology students spend 40 hours a week on class and clinical time alone.

Its such a major program ... having to juggle a job, my grades would have really suffered, said Lee, who got a job offer from Radiology Ltd. soon after graduating in May 2014 but spent the summer working on a fishing boat with a friend in Alaska.

Pima County is JobPaths biggest funder, contributing more than half of the programs roughly $800,000 annual budget in recent years. Funding from the city has varied but was about $186,000 in the current year, according to JobPath.

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said skeptics often question economic impact studies  particularly the imputed, indirect effects  but the $10 million increase in income over five years is compelling.
Katharine Martinez, the director of the University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography, is retiring, effective Saturday, Jan. 30.

Martinez, who was unavailable for comment, had been the director of the Fine Arts Library at Harvard College Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before coming to the CCP in 2010. She was the centers fifth director, including two interims, in seven years.

The UAs Senior Vice President for Research, Kimberly Andrews Espy, said in an email to university staff that a national search for Martinezs replacement will be conducted later this year. The UAs museums are under the auspices of Espys office; she was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Martinezs tenure at the internationally known center started out on a rocky note. Shortly after she arrived, she dismissed the CCPs board, made up of people from around the country with expertise in photography and fundraising.

I knew a number of the people on that board, said Terry Etherton, owner of Etherton Gallery and a recognized expert on fine art photography.

I understand when you are new and you want to bring in your own people, but the way she did it alienated people. They got a form letter saying basically we need people on the board that can come up with more money. ... What it created was people who had ill feelings toward the center.

The CCP has been without a board since, though it formed an advisory group in October it calls a visiting committee; Etherton is among those in that group.

Etherton said he thinks Martinezs single greatest accomplishment was hiring the well-respected Joshua Chuang as head curator, a position that had been vacant for five years. Chuang resigned this month after two years in the role.

The center was having exciting, relevant shows with a young curator who really knew his stuff, said Etherton. That was lost when he left.

Etherton moved to Tucson more than three decades ago because of the center, and has a deep affection for it. But, he said, Its reputation has gotten dicey.

Espy named Rebecca Becky Senf the new chief curator this week. Senf has been with the CCP since 2006, working primarily on the CCP gallery at the Phoenix Museum of Art. She will continue in that role as well. Etherton said he has great respect for the work Senf does and that it is a promotion she deserves.

Under Martinezs tutelage, the CCP has increased its fine arts prints holdings by about 5,000, said Chris Sigurdson, spokesman for the university. That kind of stream of holdings isnt unusual; since its inception, the center has steadily received gifts of prints from photographers and collectors.

The archive holdings, the meat of the CCPs collection, have increased by about 10 since Martinez joined the staff, said Sigurdson.

But there have been no new archival acquisitions of the caliber that launched the center. Those archives for such towering 20th century photographers as Ansel Adams (who co-founded the center in 1974 with then-UA president John Schaefer), Edward Weston, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and Frederick Sommer were key to the centers international reputation.
How many jobs must World View Enterprises create in order to comply with its deal with Pima County? And at what salaries?

These are fundamental questions when your local government is planning to spend $20 million in construction costs plus interest to keep a promising local business in town.

Questions, yes, but not ones that may be answered.

At midday on Friday, Jan. 15, the county posted 83 pages of information about the deal to keep World View, a near-space research and travel company, in town and build it a new headquarters. The company has about 25 workers but is projecting it will employ more than 400 within four years  a fast rate of growth.

The basic idea is that World View will pay back the $20 million through lease payments and eventually take ownership of the building. But it has to comply with conditions that specify minimum amounts of job creation and salary paid. The lease-purchase agreement, made public among the 83 pages, says so.

The county may terminate this lease at any time if World View fails to maintain the employment and salary level applicable at that time and set forth below. What does it say below?

For a 4-year period starting on the one year anniversary of the commencement date, World View must employ at least the number of FTE employees shown in Line 1 of Exhibit E....and those employees... must have an average annual salary over each measuring period of at least the amount shown in line 2 of Exhibit E. And so on for other periods of time.

This Exhibit E, the key to understanding what World View must do in order to conform with the deal, was not included, so I asked for it. The county wouldnt give it to me.

It turns out thats because World View didnt want it released.

They consider that information to be proprietary, Deputy Pima County Attorney Regina Nassen told me Thursday. So we agreed to keep it separate, put it in that exhibit and not make it public.

The problem, of course, is that under Arizona law, that document would most likely be considered a public record. Ive made a formal request and havent got a response yet.

Under the terms of a separate nondisclosure agreement between the county and World View, the county must tell the company when someone has requested a document considered confidential in the agreement, and the company has up to 10 days to seek an injunction keeping the county from releasing it.

This wasnt the case last March when the city made a deal with HomeGoods to put a large distribution center in town. That deal is different in that HomeGoods is constructing its own building, but it has requested reimbursements of its construction-related sales tax and any building permit fees through an economic-development incentive program.

The first half of those reimbursements happen only after HomeGoods provides proof first of creating 30 jobs paying an average of 125 percent of Tucsons median salary. Then the second half comes after the company provides proof of creating an additional 30 jobs at that pay rate. All of this must take place within three years.

A clawback provision states that if the company doesnt completely fulfill its side of the deal within three years, the city takes back any money it has reimbursed to the company.

These are relatively simple terms but were important to the City Councils consideration of the deal. I know the county is desperate to keep World View here and to help the Aerospace Corridor start flourishing, but these terms were key for the public and elected supervisors to understanding the deal.

How can we be expected to support the deal when we dont know one of its most important provisions?

BABEU REVELATIONS

One of the most interesting episodes in Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeus life story came under harsh scrutiny in Phoenix this week.

Babeu, as you may know, is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in District 1, which includes much of the northwestern Tucson metro area. Starting in 1998, he spent a couple of years as the top administrator at the DeSisto School, an unusual boarding school for troubled teens in Stockbridge, Mass.

Im one of several Arizona journalists who has poked around that history, wondering what role Babeu may have played in what the state of Massachusetts later deemed to be abusive disciplinary practices. Of that group, Dave Biscobing of Channel 15 in Phoenix has gone the furthest, traveling to Massachusetts in 2012 to check it out.

This week, Biscobing revealed a home video taken at Christmas 1999 that showed Babeu understood and supported practices such as cornering  having students sit in a corner for hours or days. Or sending them to the farm where they might do manual labor for days, weeks or months, sometimes with limited food and water.

A Babeu campaign spokesman, Barrett Marson, told me this week that Babeu had no role in disciplining students. And for what its worth, from his comments in the video, Babeu seems to have sincerely thought the methods helped the students.

Rivals in the race, though, were quick to try to turn this 17-year-old case to their advantage. Democrat Tom OHalleran called for Babeu to come clean about the school, and Republican Wendy Rogers, who is new to the race, called on Babeu to drop out.

CARROLL IN ROCKY POINT

Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll got back from a couple of days in Puerto Penasco this week, having switched places with the mayor of the Mexican city, Ernesto Kiko Munro, who came to Tucson.

Carroll had busy days, meeting with the city council, Mexican navy and other local officials, and also had an unexpectedly hostile moment with a local journalist, Rafael Amparan Quezada.

During a press conference, Amparan Quezada questioned Carroll a bit harshly, as he acknowledged to me, over why the United States puts out warnings for travelers in Mexico when we can scarcely avoid being shot on this side of the border ourselves. A good question, of course, but not an issue that Carroll is responsible for.

And, of course, he was in Rocky Point to celebrate the cross-border relationship, not spoil it. But its good to know we reporters can be such killjoys on both sides of the line.
PHOENIX  Saying it has nothing to do with politics, top aides to Gov. Doug Ducey said Thursday that their boss wants to split Arizona and some other more conservative states away from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mike Liburdi, the governors chief counsel, said the circuit, which covers nine states and two territories, is just too large.

Cases are filed and it takes over 12 months on average to gain a resolution of the case, compared to a little over eight months, on average, in other circuits, he said. Liburdi said that results in delayed justice for everyone from businesses seeking relief to criminal defendants hoping for review of their convictions.

We are calling on Congress to propose and enact a solution for Arizonans, for Arizona voters, for citizens and for Arizona businesses, that will take Arizona out of a court that is backlogged with cases, he said.

But the split being suggested by the governors staff and being crafted into federal legislation has political overtones.

The 9th Circuit would be left with the more liberal states of California, Oregon, Hawaii and Washington. Arizona would end up in a new 12th Circuit with Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The judges would come only from the states within each circuit.

Liburdi said, though, that would not necessarily result in more conservative judges on a federal appellate circuit without those more liberal states.

He said the choices would depend heavily on who is in the White House. As proof, he cited the fact that the 9th Circuit includes those of the more liberal bent like Andrew Hurwitz from Arizona who was named to the court by President Obama.

Arizona has often wound up on the losing end of 9th Circuit rulings on everything from efforts to restrict abortions to having the state take actions against people not in this country legally.

Liburdi said thats not what this is all about, noting the 9th Circuit has the most decisions overturned by the Supreme Court of any circuit in the country.

Ducey, in a separate prepared statement, said Arizonans deserver a judicial process that is judicious in nature.

Yet on those high-profile cases like abortion, immigration and even gay marriage, the Supreme Court has in upheld the appellate court rulings, siding with challengers and against the state.

Cath i Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which has been on the losing end of many of those abortion rulings, has endorsed the proposal.

The idea is far from new. A decade ago, Jon Kyl made a similar push when he was a U.S. senator from Arizona.

Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato said it was Kyl, a member of Duceys transition team, who broached the idea with the governor-elect.

Now Ducey has sent a letter to congressional leaders asking them to take it up. And Liburdi said U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and Congressman Matt Salmon will be crafting legislation to do just that.

Flake echoed Duceys statement that its all about numbers.

Arizonans are waiting too long for justice, and for no other reason than the 9th Circuit is oversized and overworked, he said. Establishing an additional circuit would lessen that burden across the West and ensure that the people of Arizona finally get the swift access to the courts that they are entitled to.

And Salmon said the problems with the size of the court cannot be ignored.

He said the 9th Circuit covers 20 percent of the U.S. population. It also handled 12,000 cases last year; the next highest appellate circuit was at fewer than 7,400.

Theyre not able to dispatch justice in a very time-efficient way, Salmon said. Our concern is justice delayed is justice denied.

But attorney Dan Pochoda of the American Civil Liberties Union, which often finds itself filing suit against Arizona  and winning at the 9th Circuit  had a different take.

Its clearly politically motivated, he said.

If youre shopping around to see if you can find the most conservative court in the U.S., thats what this would create, he said.

Sandy Bahr, lobbyist for the Sierra Club, which often challenges the state over environmental issues, was less charitable in her assessment of what Ducey wants.

He must think Arizonans are pretty stupid if he thinks we believe this is not political, she said.

It is pretty clear that he is not fond of checks and balances, Bahr continued, saying the 9th Circuit provides them to an otherwise runaway train in Arizona on things like protecting public lands and upholding protection for endangered species.

Salmon acknowledged that splitting out Arizona of the current 9th Circuit would have secondary benefits.

Ive made my thoughts known clear back when I worked in the state Legislature that I believe that the 9th Circuit is ultra-liberal and a lot of its decisions dont reflect reality in these United States, he said.

Would that be a good byproduct to a conservative like me? Salmon continued. Absolutely.

Technically speaking, the U.S. Supreme Court gets the last word on everything that comes out of every federal appellate court. And that would make the 9th Circuits high reversal rate  about 77 percent over the past few years  significant.

According to the court, out of about 10,000 petitions, the justices agree to hear only 75 to 80 cases a year. The remainder, including a large number from the 9th Circuit out of Arizona, are disposed of by the justices refusing to disturb the decision of the appellate court.

That, however, makes the rulings of the 9th Circuit in some ways more important to Arizona than what is ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, and not only for cases coming out of Arizona. Its published decisions from any state in the circuit are binding on federal courts throughout the circuit, including Arizona.
Info box

Successions to Arizona governor:

1948 -- Dan Garvey becomes governor on death of Sidney Osborn.

1977 -- Wesley Bolin becomes governor when Raul Castro resigns to become ambassador to Argentina.

1978 -- Attorney General Bruce Babbitt becomes governor on Bolin's death; Rose Mofford, who became secretary of state after Bolin became governor, could not take the post because she had been appointed. As an appointed -- not elected -- secretary of state, she was constitutionally ineligible to become governor, putting the attorney general next in line.

1988 -- Mofford, who subsequently won election as secretary of state on her own, becomes governor after impeachment and removal of Evan Mecham.

1997 -- Jane Hull becomes governor after Fife Symington quits following felony conviction. That conviction was later voided but did not entitle him to regain his office.

2009 -- Janet Napolitano quits to become Homeland Security chief in the Obama administration, making Jan Brewer the governor.
Arizona has no known or suspected cases of the Zika virus, said Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services.

There have been no recorded local transmissions of the disease in the continental United States, she said.

Christ said travelers to countries where the virus is known to exist should take precautions against being bitten by mosquitoes and she echoed the advice of the Centers for Disease Control that pregnant women should consider postponing travel to them.

The Centers for Disease Control recommends against travel by pregnant women to Mexico, and some countries in Central America, South America and the Caribbean where the virus is present. The virus can be transmitted by pregnant women to their unborn children.

There have been reports of a serious birth defect of the brain called microcephaly and other poor pregnancy outcomes in babies of mothers who were infected with Zika virus while pregnant, the CDC warns.

Christ said all travelers should make sure you avoid mosquito bites, which we know is difficult to do.

The vector that carries Zika (Aedes aegypti mosquito) is prevalent in Mexico and is established in Arizona as well, Christ said.

There are 18 cases of Zika in Mexico, with 13 in the southern state of Chiapas, four in the northern state of Nuevo Leon and one in the western state of Jalisco, Pablo Kuri, deputy minister for prevention and health promotion, told Reuters.

Christ said the department is monitoring for Zika, as it does for other mosquito-borne diseases.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is also a vector for dengue and chikungunya viruses, neither of which has been locally transmitted in Arizona, despite the presence of the disease in countries to the south.

Were always doing surveillance for those diseases. said Christ.

More information is available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.cdc.gov/zika online.
When Barbara Betonio reached out to embrace Marianne Durant, Durant told her, I dont remember you, but I love you.

Betonio, Durant and Durants daughter, Nancy Frank, all broke into tears.

On the morning of Dec. 27, Betonio, her husband, Richard, and daughter Kylee saved the life of Durant, 89, when they found her lying on a sidewalk in 28-degree weather in Oro Valley. Durant finally had a chance to thank her saviors in person when they visited her Friday.

If it werent for them, I wouldnt be here, Durant said.

The family was delivering newspapers near the Desert Springs Gracious Retirement Living community, 30 W. Lambert Lane, where Durant lived, when they found her. Richard Betonio is an independent contractor with the Arizona Daily Star.

Barbara Betonio spotted her first and the three of them acted quickly. They took their jackets off and covered Durant, whose body Barbara Betonio said had no warmth. They also covered her in extra blankets they kept in their vehicle.

But Richard Betonio knew he had to do more. He lay down next to her, cradled her and blew hot air on her face. Barbara called 911.

It was just scary, Barbara Betonio said.

The Oro Valley Police Department arrived at the scene at about 5:42 a.m., according to Lt. Kara Riley, a police spokeswoman. Durant was taken to the hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia for five days.

It was fate, Richard Betonio said. It was meant to be.

The Desert Springs community is usually one of their last stops on their delivery route, he said. But that day, they were running late so they decided to flip the route.

Durant said she does not remember what happened that day. She doesnt remember leaving the retirement home, falling or being in the ambulance. But she said she knows she would not have survived without the help of the Betonios.

I think God has been overly generous to me, she said. Im sure that he sent them over there to save me.

She has fully recovered from the incident and is moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she can be near her daughters.

Her friends at Desert Springs threw Durant, who they say is a fashionista and a socialite, a goodbye party. Shes leaving next week.

More than two dozen people showed up to wish her well, including Richard, Barbara, Kylee and Haley Betonio. The family stood in the middle of the room as Durant and her friends applauded them.

Theyre heroes, Frank said.
Theres still time for procrastinators in Pima County to get health coverage via the federal exchange before Sundays 10 p.m. open enrollment deadline.

As of Jan. 23, 185,459 Arizonans had enrolled in coverage on the exchange, federal data shows, including 31,478 in the Tucson area.

Those numbers are expected to spike this weekend.

The exchange, created by the Patient Affordability and Affordable Care Act, sells private insurance to individuals and families who arent insured through their employer or a government program.

Last year, 205,666 Arizonans bought insurance on the exchange, a 71 percent increase from 2014, which was the first year of the health exchanges. That year, 120,071 Arizonans enrolled.

Purchasing health insurance on the exchange, also called the insurance marketplace, is the only way to qualify for federal subsidies to help cover the cost of insurance coverage.

So far, 74 percent of Arizonans who have bought health insurance on the marketplace during this open enrollment have qualified for federal financial assistance to help pay for it.

In Pima County there are 28 plans available on the marketplace from five insurance companies  Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, HealthChoice, Health Net, Humana and UnitedHealthcare.

Enrollment has been steady, and Arizona appears to be on track to match or exceed last years level, said Michal Goforth, executive director of the Pima Community Access Program in Tucson, which connects uninsured people to insurance.

Some states like California chose to create their own state-based exchanges. Arizona opted to use the federal exchange. The website is healthcare.gov and the toll-free phone number is 1-800-318-2596.

Pima County residents may purchase insurance directly from the marketplace, or they can get enrollment assistance free of charge at several local sites between today and Sunday.

The United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona, Carondelet St. Marys Hospital, Carondelet St. Josephs Hospital and the Pima County Health Department will all have walk-in hours for enrollment help today and this weekend. (See box for details)

Goforth says its best if people attending enrollment events this weekend make appointments ahead of time, but walk-ins are welcome.

The number of Arizonans without health insurance has dropped since 2014, when most provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Still, an estimated 827,000 Arizonans remain uninsured, and the state has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the country.

Among groups with high levels of people who are eligible for the marketplace but remain uninsured are Latinos, American Indians and people living in rural areas, said Dr. Dan Derksen, a health-policy expert at the University of Arizonas Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

One of the most important things for individuals and families without health insurance to know this year is that the penalty for not having insurance will be significantly higher than it has been in prior years. The Affordable Care Act passed by Congress mandates that all Americans have health insurance. Fines began in 2014 and have been gradually increasing.

The average penalty for remaining without coverage in 2016 will be $969 per household  47 percent higher than the 2015 estimated average of $661, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found.

Goforth said anyone who has purchased insurance on the marketplace is not considered insured until they pay their first premium to the insurer. It typically takes about 15 days for coverage to take effect.

A few other things to know about enrolling in health insurance this year:

If you have government insurance such as Medicaid or Medicare, or have employer-sponsored insurance, you dont need to use the exchange.

There are more HMO plans this year. The disadvantage to HMOs is that they are narrower networks. That means they include only certain doctors, so if your longtime primary care physician is not in the network, youll need a new doctor. Also, some HMO plans require a primary-care referral to a specialist.

The federal subsidies can help keep monthly premiums down.

Premiums should not be the only factor people consider when they buy a plan  networks and deductibles are also important and could affect overall cost. Higher monthly premiums typically mean lower deductibles and co-pays for health care.

Consumers should never have to pay money to get help enrolling in a plan via the health insurance exchange.

Local navigators and certified enrollment assisters are available free of charge to help. They do not receive a commission for enrolling people, and they must be unbiased and have no conflicts of interest. They can also help people sign up for Medicaid.

Insurance brokers can help people sign up at no cost to the consumer.

People who had a health insurance plan through Meritus in 2015 have an extra month to enroll  until March 1. Tempe-based Meritus is no longer in business.

If you miss Sundays deadline, you may qualify for a special enrollment period, but after getting complaints, the federal government has tightened requirements for the special enrollment period.

A special enrollment period, when people may purchase insurance on the marketplace outside the open enrollment period, must occur within 60 days after certain life events that involve a change in family status such as marriage, the birth of a child or loss of other health coverage.

Dont assume you wont qualify because of your immigration status. While qualifying for AHCCCS requires U.S. residency for five years or more, the Affordable Care Act does not have any minimum length of residency requirements for legal immigrants.
PHOENIX  Saying it will promote economic development, a House committee voted 7-2 Thursday to eliminate the requirement for many new businesses to publish legal notices.

HB 2447 requires the Arizona Corporation Commission to set up a special website where new firms can publish their articles of incorporation and similar documents. More to the point, doing that would override the current law that says these notices must be published three times in a commercial newspaper in the county where the company does business.

At this point, the legislation would affect only companies setting up shop in the two largest counties.

That is designed to address concerns that residents of some rural areas might not have the same access to the Internet to look up these records. Potentially more significant, similar measure have been beaten back in prior years when rural lawmakers have responded to complaints from local publishers that the loss of the revenues could damage or even kill their publications.

But once the commission sets up the new website it could make it easier for lawmakers to repeal publication requirements for businesses set up outside Maricopa and Pima counties.

We are trying to make sure that we make things as easy as possible for anybody that wants to start a business here in Arizona, said House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, sponsor of the legislation.

Scot Mussi of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club told members of the House Committee on Government and Higher Education the time is long past for Arizona to require new companies to pay to publish notices of incorporation.

Most other states have moved away from a requirement of posting notification in a newspaper like this when they start up a company, he said. In fact were the only Western state that has a specific requirement for a startup like this.

Scrapping the law, said Mussi, will reduce costs and burdens on small business.

The vote came over objections from publishers who would be affected.
Help India!

By Prensa Latina,

Teheran : The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen arrived Monday in the Iranian capital, where he will hold talks with local authorities on the nuclear program, IRNA news agency reported.

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The official is accompanied by a group of experts from the international organization headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and was welcomed by the Iranian ambassador to the agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.

Heinonen plans to meet with other authorities of the Iranian nuclear program, such as Yavad Vaidi, advisor to the secretary of the National Supreme Security Council.

The Persian State is target of a western campaign against its nuclear development which, it has stressed, has peaceful character, and aims at economic and social development.

For the government and official press, the activities Heinonen will carry out for two days in Teheran are normal, and in the framework of continuous cooperation between the county and the IAEA.
Help India!

By IANS,

Ahmedabad : A Muslim couple plans to approach the Gujarat High Court after a lower court ruled that their son who was separated from them during the 2002 communal riots should live with his adopted Hindu parents.

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Rights activist Teesta Setalvad, of Citizens For Justice and Peace (CJP), said Friday: We will be approaching the high court against the Metropolitan Court judgement that the missing boy Muzaffar should live with the adopted parents.

Despite her lawyers warning her not to speak to the media until the high court takes over the case, a reluctant Teesta told IANS from Mumbai: Our aim of approaching the Metropolitan Court was that the boy Muzaffar rightly belongs to Jebunissa Sheikh and Mohammed Salim Sheikh, who had lost him during the post Godhra riots from their Dhoop-Singh-ni-Chali home when the boy was just two-and-a-half years old. The police failed to do its duty by searching for the parents nor did it advertise about the missing boy. The illegality of police action cannot be overlooked and that is our main grouse, she said.

As per Metropolitan Court judge G.N. Patels ruling on Wednesday, Muzaffar should be with his foster parents Vikram and Meena Patni as the boy wants to stay with them. The Patnis have three children and so does Jebunissa.

Though we do not want to shock the child but the fact remains that his original parents want to have their son back who was lost in tragic circumstances. Natural justice demands that the boy be re-united with its biological parents at the earliest, Teesta said.

When residents of the poverty-stricken Dhoop Singh Chali were trapped in the inferno of communal violence in February 2002, Jebunissa and Salim Shaikh had to run for their lives taking refuge in Gulbarg Society. But in the melee they lost Muzaffar. A police constable later found the abandoned boy and taking pity on him, took Muzaffar to the house of his cousin sister Meena Patni. Meena and her husband Vikram then adopted Muzaffar and named him Vivek without knowing his true identity.

A special investigation team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court came to know of the boy and informed the couple that Muzaffar was alive. A DNA test too was conducted by the SIT which confirmed Jebunissa as Viveks mother. But the metropolitan court ruling has compounded the misery of Muzaffars unfortunate parents, Teesta said.

Salim and Jebunissa are very upset over the courts order, Teesta said. I cant stay without Muzaffar even for a day. I want him back at any cost, his anguished mother Jebunissa is now saying, Teesta said.

It is a case of illegal confinement. The Gujarat police has failed to do its duty. We have now decided to approach the high court over the illegality of the police action, she said.
Help India!

By Shafeeq Hudawi, Twocircles.net

Kozhikode: Come April, and Kerala will witness the state assembly elections. For all parties involved, this is the period to brainstorm, plan and look for ways to ensure a victory. For Indian Muslim League, the questions seem simpler: it has understood that if it needs to better its score, the party must also cater to one section of the Muslim population they have mostly ignored until now: women.

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When it comes to gender question, the party, which otherwise attempts to project itself as a progressive organisation finds itself with little to say or contribute. Since its induction to the Kerala Assembly in 1982, the party has not had any woman representative in the Assembly.

In the wake of the criticisms, pouring against such contradictions in the political policies, the party leadership seems to have finally woken up and is now seriously thinking about fielding a woman candidate, at least in one of the seats where they have a strong chance of winning.

In 1996, the party fielded Qamarunnissa Anwar, the head of Vanitha leagueits womens outfitas a candidate from the Kozhikode South constituency as IUML candidate. The move, however failed to bear fruit as she ended up losing to CPM leader Elamaram Kareem by more than 5,000 votes. In four elections, the party had meritorious victory except in 2006, in which IUML faced a debacle owing to various factors. In 1982, 1987, 1999, 2001 and 2011 the party had 14, 15, 19, 16 and 20 MLAs respectively, all of which were males.

However, after years long break, the party is contemplating on fielding a woman for the post of an MLA. To ensure representation for women in the Assembly under the banner of the party seems to be need of the hour. The party will give due consideration for such demands, IUML national secretary E T Mohammed Basheer told Twocircles.

What keeps such expectations intact is the first ever Vanitha League national convention, recently held in Kochi. The convention had given a clear message to the leadership by urging it to extend a favourable approach towards the demands raised by the women in the party.

Besides, IUML state president Panakkad Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal, while inaugurating the valedictory session of the conference, had called for efforts to uplift the socio-political standard of Muslim women.

The present trend also favours such a move. Several grama panchayats and block panchayats are run by Muslim women in Malabar after 50 percent women reservation came into force in Kerala five years ago. In an unprecedented incident, the party appointed Suhara Mampad as the president of Malappuram district panchayat in 2010.

Definitely, things are changing. The party which had extended stiff opposition against women reservation will soon have a woman MLA, said one of the state committee members of IUML on the priority of anonymity.

Meanwhile, it will not be a cake walk for the party to have a woman MLA as various Muslim organisations, which follow conventional views, are likely to extend stiff resistance towards such moves. Sunni clerics belonging to Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulema and other influential leaders like Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar, who came to headlines for anti-women statements, tend to give a jolt to the party whenever it takes anti-conventional stands. The party was taught this in 2004 Loksabha elections while KPA Majeed lost Manjeri seat in Malappuram seat to CPM candidate T K Hamsa due to IUML candidates anti-Sunni remarks.

While it comes such moves, the conventional factions are a headache. But, the candidature of Qamarunnisa Anwar was not heavily criticized by the Sunni leaders. Hope such issues, if there any, could be sorted out, the IUML state committee member said exuding his confidence that if IUML leaders like Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal will hold talks with these leaders.

Dalit-Muslim Coordination

An array of incidents, which the party perceives as planned attacks against minorities and Dalits, IUML has decided to strengthen a better political relation with Dalit community. The political coordination of two communities assumes much significance in the present political scenario of the country. Definitely, one Dalit candidate will contest the election under the banner of IUML, said E T Mohammed Basheer MP.

The party, according to Basheer, is looking to strengthen Dalit League, an exclusive outfit of IUML for Dalits.

Ahead to the Assembly elections, a Dalit-Mulsim convention will be organised by the party in order to develop a common political platform for Muslims and Dalits. This policy is part of the ideology of IUML, he added.
Do you put at least 25% of its advertising budget on virtual media? Is it Web site generates business? Do you use virtual resources available to publicize their products and sell more? Do you effectively adopt Social media to generate more sales? If you answered yes to the above questions not good to worry as the way of doing business has changed and you may not have realized.

I have just returned from a convention in the United States and I am impressed with the adoption of virtual solutions by North American companies. Not that this is new, but the crisis caused them to resort to new ways to generate business and reduce costs.

The radio and newspaper paper were the most lost space. Who else has won the Internet and cable TV. But what will strike it, are invested in social media. Use it wisely can mean profits. Not using it could represent user detachment.

But after all, what is needed for success in social media? answer may not be so simple, but according to experts in the field, some tips work well. Jenny Wilmshurst just migrate the contacts you have (off-line) for online, maintaining and expanding relationships.

But, remember that the media is not a quick fix, but it is the new wave and hence, can not be good take off her.

Because, says Jenny, it can be highly complementary to its sales activities, as well as add value to their products and services.

Various options can be integrated the online marketing mix and offline. This helps to attract consumer attention and reduce the need for large investments in traditional media.

For another expert, Linda Schenk, the American consulting firm Social Media Works, we must use the various mechanisms available generating content and focusing on areas of interest.

For her, one can not think of social media without taking into account the major players in the virtual marketplace and also tools available, such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and features such as Email Marketing, blog and others.

But the gurus remember that one must act carefully, because the risks are proportional to the opportunities.

If the company does not have a good one, The sitescan serve against their interests. Hence the importance of good reputation for good fruit harvest.It teaches us as the popular saying "Life is not waiting for the storm to pass ... It is necessary to learn to dance in the rain!"
Search Engine giant Google has a well known aversion to paying national taxes to the Tax regimes of nations in which it operates. In fact Eric Schmidt, the company's executive Chairman and former CEO is on record as having said nations should pay Google for what its adds to the national community. As a former Information Technology consultant who was involved in the very early days of inter - networking technologies I would dispute that, all Google has done works towards handing control of information to government agencies and corporate pirates.

Apart from that, Google's main achievement has been in the advancement of sophisticated tax avoidance strategies. Since the risible amounts of corporate tax paid by the national operations of Google and other global corporations, especially those in the Internet technology sector such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Verizon in the world's largest economies has come to light there has been a public backlash against corporate piracy. Piracy may seem a strange term to use, conjuring up images of Johnny Depp or Errol Flynn, but the corporate tax avoiders are plundering our national treasuries just as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd used to plunder the shipping routes. Let them be known for what they are.

The UK tax authority revealed recently that it had agreed a settlement with Google for the internet search company to pay back-taxes of 130 million (US$186million), despite its British operation racking up profits of US$8.6 billion over past ten years, a tax rate of just 3 percent.

Stewart Hosie, deputy leader of the Scottish National Party, commented "there is a palpable sense of skepticism among the public, experts and even within the Conservative Party, that the tax settlement reached with Google represents value for the taxpayer".

"The truth is that we know very little about the settlement reached between the tax authorities and the company. These discussions have taken place in private, little detail has been revealed by the Treasury and the methodologies employed by HMRC are shrouded in secrecy."

While we can understand and support this view from the Sottish nationalists, the line take by the Labour party as the official opposition in the UK parliament, that the Conservative government collaborated to minimise Google's tax liability is a little harder to swallow when we remember that Google paid no corporate taxes at all from 2002 to 2010 when The Labour Party were in power.

It has also been revealed that Italy is set to charge Google US$161 million in back-taxes over its US$1.43 billion revenues  equating to 15 percent  five times more than the UK.

"The Government must restore public confidence that they have acted in the best interests of the public and have secured a good deal for taxpayers across the UK. They must also answer the charges that the methodology used by the HMRC to calculate future liabilities is opaque, and a potential breach of very clear EU regulations on calculating the tax liabilities of large corporations," Mr. Hosie said.

The French are also negotiating a tax deal with Google which could show a different rate of taxation for corporations with links to the US Government, further highlighting the omnishambles of the European Union tax system.

One corporate tactic that should be opposed is the very predictable threat to cease operations in nations that require the global corporations to accept local tax laws.

And another step in bringing these legal, but unethical, tax avoiders to heel is for 'We The People' to boycott their businesses. There are other search engines, other coffee chains (or better still, if you can find one, use an independent coffee shop, get a better cup of coffee and support local businesses).

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When Italian wines were yet to become trendy in the UK, he was already there. When Proseccoand Verdicchio were still far from being known to the international public, his characteristic (and quite kitsch) squat bottle enclosed in straws had already become a global brand. We are obviously referring to Chianti, the landmark Italian red wine, this year celebrating his 300th anniversary.

For a long time, indeed, Chianti has been thought of as a rather blunt table Wine. Time passes, however, and the reputation of this red wine bearing tones of cherry, plum and almonds has changed.

In the last decades, indeed, wineries in the Chianti region have transformed it into a definitely more sophisticated product: Only wines produced in a specific region of Tuscany and meeting strict requirements can now be labelled under the Chianti Classico DOCG denomination and show the traditional black rooster seal on the bottle neck points out Mary Ewing-Mulligan, co-author of Winesfor Dummies. First of all, at least of 80% of the wine must originate from Sangiovese. Other red grapes of the area can be used up to maximum 20%. These vines include natives like Canaiolo and Colorino or international varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Most of all, production of Chianti Classico DOCG must take place in a small hilly area within the Chianti region that was officially designated for wine production by the Great-duke Cosimo III De Medici in 1716: that is why Chianti (Classico) is celebrating his 300th birthday!

There is a curious legend behind the black rooster seal on the Chianti Classico bottles: in the 13th century, the municipalities of Florence and Siena decided to resolve a dispute over the division of the territory of Chianti between the two cities in an extremely original way: a knight from Florence and a knight from Siena would leave their respective city at dawn, once that the first local rooster had crowed, and the point at which the knights met would become the official border.

While the Sienese chose a white rooster, the Florentines chose a black rooster and locked it in a dark room without food for many days. At dawn, the hungry black rooster was released and started to crow immediately; thus, the Florentine knight was able to start his race much earlier than the opponent and the two met close to the border of Siena, leading to a much greater share of the Chianti territory assigned to Florence.

Since then the black rooster has become the symbol of Chianti.

All major producers of Chianti Classico belong to the Consorzio Chianti Classico, an association that promotes Chianti Classico and monitors global sales: In 2016, Chianti Classico will sell over 37.5 million bottles, 80% of which exported says Sergio Zingarelli, the Chairman of the Consorzio (and owner of the famous Rocca delle Macie winery). In 2015, there was a 8% growth in sales, owing to export and to a good recovery in the domestic market. The Chianti Classico has a market penetration in over 70 countries, especially in the traditional markets: North America, Europe and some Asian markets.

The current formula of Chianti was substantially introduced in 1872 by Bettino Ricasoli, the famous Tuscan Prime Minister, after retirement to his estate in Brolio.

It took over 30 years of research for Ricasoli to devise the final recipe.

In 2015, a winery located in the Sienese Hills, Casabianca, started sales of a vegan Chianti, where no animal-derived products are used to filter the wine: There is a huge interest in the UK, this is the first time the needs of vegans are really taken care of by the wine industry says Casabianca's commercial manager, Lorenzo Laschetti.

Should the vegan Chianti deemed a noble endeavour or, on the opposite, an heretic act, considering that Chianti is the natural, perfect and predestined match for a juicy Florentine steak...? Libiamo!
Concerns Grow for Missing Poker Player Richard Cole **Updated**

January 29 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor

Update: On Tuesday 2 February, 2016, Dutch police confirmed that the body pulled from a canal in Amsterdam was that of Richard Cole. A police investigation is under way to find out how he ended up in the water.

The family and friends Gloucestershire man Richard Cole are growing increasingly worried for his welfare after he went missing in the

Netherlands.

Cole was travelling from Copenhagen to Assen via Amsterdam but has not been seen or heard since around 02:00am GMT on Monday 25 January. The Thorbeckepleim area of the city was his last known location.

Described as an experienced traveller, Cole had been drinking in Amsterdam with some new people who he had met. His Las Vegas-based girlfriend, Alicia Marie, was the last known person Cole contacted.

Speaking to the BBC, Marie said: He had been out with some people he had just met, which is common for Richard as he is very friendly. I just said to be careful, please go home, get a cab. We got off the phone and I texted him a picture of his address to show his cab but it never went through.

Richard Cole with his girlfriend Alicia Marie

Marie attempted to contact Cole via text messages and Apples Facetime but was unable to reach her boyfriend.

I imagine that he turned off his phone or his phone died. Throughout the night, when I was at work, I tried to Facetime him and I tried to text him, but nothing went through.

Not being in contact for any length of time is out of character for Cole, hence the growing worries about his wellbeing.

Dutch police have checked CCTV cameras and conducted inquiries in the area, but so far they have no leads or further information about Coles whereabouts.

Cole is described as being white, 6ft tall and of slim build. He has short, dark brown hair and was wearing either a black Armani or Superdry-branded jacket. Anyone who saw Cole on Monday night or may have any information about Cole are urged to contact their local police force or comment on the Help us find Richard Cole Facebook page so the information can be passed on to the Dutch authorities.

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You'll Never Guess Which Poker Pro Tops Poker's Social Power Table

January 29 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor

Professional poker players can be highly influential to those who follow them across various social media channels. The more prominent poker pros use social media to interact with their fans, push messages about poker promotions, and even current affairs.

When PokerStars teamed with the social monitoring tool Followerwonk in July 2014, it was Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu who was deemed the most influential poker player. The Canadian superstar, who tops the all-time money listings for live tournament poker, achieved a Social Score of 78, five more than fellow poker legend Phil Ivey.

PokerStars has published an updated version of what it calls the Social Power Table, which creates a social score based on a users activity on Twitter and Facebook, and it reveals Negreanu has lost his crown as the most influential poker pro, having slipped to third in the 2016 table.

Negreanu is still king when it comes to poker pros on Twitter, with his Social Authority weighing in at 82  his nearest rival in this field is Jason Somerville with 75. The Canadians Facebook page looks to be the main reason for his overall social score dropping 10 points to 68. While the number of likes on Negreanu's page increased from 122,000 to 140,000, his "likealyzer" score, which looks at more than 40 signals, plummeted from 70 to 40, placing him 11th in the top 15.

Team PokerStars Liv Boeree, who was in third place during 2014, climbs one place to second, but it is the new number one that has vastly improved their social media presence.

France's Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier was ranked ninth in the 2014 standings and has improved both his Twitter and Facebook scores to top the 2016 chart. Grospellier gained 13,600 Twitter followers and added 26,800 likes to his Facebook page since the last update. Whatever he is doing on Facebook is working wonders because his Likealyzer score went from a lowly 44 to a massive 85; Boeree achieved the second-highest Facebook score of 63.

ElkY's social media presence should grow further now that he has joined Team Liquid Esports team, extending his reach further than ever before.

Another top pro, Vanessa Selbst, climbed seven places to fourth thanks to improving her score by 14 points to 66, while Antonio Esfandiari and Jonathan Duhamel lost seven and eight points from their social score and fell seven places each to 13th and 14th on the Social Power Table.

There are handful of new, if familiar, faces in the top 15 on the Social Power Table. Team PokerStars Pros Eugene Katchalov (15th) and Chris Moneymaker (12th), along with Team PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo (6th) and Team PokerStars Onlines Jason Somerville (5th) all make their social tool debuts.

Which poker players do feel are a must-follow on social media? Let us know in the comments box below.

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Watson College of Education Professor Susan Catapano Selected as Fulbright Scholar

Susan Catapano, director of international studies programs and former chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the Watson College of Education, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, the U.S. Embassy in Belize announced Jan. 21.

Catapano will spend the spring semester teaching and conducting research in Belize in the area of early childhood development. She will work with the University of Belize to support early childhood and early primary teachers in earning teacher certification in the Cayo, Corozal and Toledo districts.

Being a Fulbright Scholar is a great honor and I am really pleased to be selected. I am the first Fulbright Scholar to Belize in 10 years, said Catapano. I am here several times a year with students. This time I will concentrate on sharing my area of expertise while learning more about education at all levels.

While in Belize, Catapano will write three courses for a new online associates degree in early childhood education and will train 21 University of Belize faculty members on how to develop the courses online. She will also work with the on-campus pre-school program at the university to help them become a model pre-school program, which includes helping prepare their teachers.

My research is in the area of culturally relevant childrens literature and using technology to help students and teachers research and write community-based literature. Catapano is also working with teachers in San Pedro on a digital storytelling project.

She will continue her work with co-authors on a three-book series about the selection and use of culturally relevant childrens literature to support reading instruction.

For the past seven years, Catapano and Watson College professor Dennis Kubasko have collaborated with Belizean educators through partnership with the Ministry of Education, Isla Bonita School, San Pedro High School, San Pedro Junior College, Galen University and the University of Belize.

Faculty-led field education field experiences to Belize are offered to UNCW students. Watson College students and faculty share strategies for teaching and classroom management, provide literacy and writing workshops and conduct surveys to learn the needs of rural schools.

Engaging faculty and students as members of the broader global community is a hallmark of the Watson College, said Dean Van Dempsey. Dr. Catapano has developed connections with educators around the world that have led to significant educational opportunities for our faculty and students. She has led efforts to create an interactive, multi-level relationship with educators in Belize, leading to education enhancements there and significant international field experience opportunities for our faculty and students. The Fulbright Scholarship is a competitive and prestigious award, and one that exemplifies the commitment of Dr. Catapano and the college to educational leadership and globalization.

The Fulbright Program is a highly competitive, merit-based grant for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists. The program was founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 and is sponsored by the United States Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

--Venita Jenkins

#WCE
Zimbabwe is one of the top ten countries that offer big game hunts. Recent regulations passed in the USA now mean it is very difficult to import lions and lion trophies into the United States. The USA has also said that elephant trophies will not be allowed into the country from Zimbabwe until better community conservation management is in place. Zimbabwe has come up with an answer: bring in hunters from China and Russia.

The US government has been working with the country of Zimbabwe in an effort to get more commitment toward conservation through local communities for over two years now.

Minister Kashiri said that the government will continue to engage with the US, but this will mainly be to lobby against the trophy restrictions.

Historically US hunters have been a major income source

Zimbabwe generated $45 million from hunting in 2014 and Kashiri has indicated that the country will continue to harvest animals in hunts in a sustainable manner. Despite the US government stance on hunting and trophy import, US hunters account for a great deal of the income generated in Zimbabwe.

The Southern Times News reported that the Community Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), and local safari operators will be hard hit by US bans. Russians are already hunting in Africa.

One Russian contributor to the African Hunting Forum has said he spends at least 120 days a year hunting in Africa.

US government has not banned all hunting trophies

Hunting has been a part of the wildlife management in Zimbabwe since the late 1960s and despite international pressure, it's not likely to go away in the near future.The US recognizes that hunting of African wildlife can contribute to local economies, and indeed, hunting is legal though very carefully legislated within the US itself.

At this time, the US is not banning all hunting trophies from Zimbabwe  but is focused on lions which they have declared to be endangered, and elephants that they feel could be better protected from poaching.

Africa has a history with the eastern nations

Africa is well used to the influence that western nations can have on their economy.

Many African countries, including Zimbabwe, have at times suffered under trade sanctions. All the African countries with the exception of Liberia have a history of colonial governments and there is a perception that western countries interfere too much in African policy. This will not be the first time an African country has turned to the east for political or monetary gain. Both Russia and China have had deep involvement in the Zimbabwean war for independence and in the current economy. Zimbabwe will turn to those it perceives as friends and those friends often have a poor record when it comes to wildlife conservation.
Mixing evocative tradition with the palyfully new to create a global commerical success

Andy Warhol famously said, "Business art is the step that comes after art," precisely predicting the integration of art and business in today's world.

Qu Guangci, China's reputed contemporary sculptor and artist, believes art, which has traditionally been put on a pedestal by ordinary people, has been deconstructed into symbols that are integrated into the daily lives of the modern-day consumer society and is getting closer to people's innermost emotions.

As the founder and artistic director of the design brand X+Q Art, Qu received the Brand of the Year award from the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA on Jan 19 at the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel.

"China, as a country under such a speedy development, is longing for a high-end contemporary art brand to challenge or to face the challenge from established international design brands," Qu said in an interview with China Daily.

Founded in 2010 in Beijing by Qu and his wife Xiang Jing, also a leading sculptor in China, X+Q Art (the name is an abbreviation of Xiang Jing + Qu Guangci) offers limited-edition handcrafted sculptures, accessories and design products.

Emphasizing the concept of "art gift", X+Q Art tries to deliver the wish of happiness, love and affection through a gift.

Qu believes X+Q Art has two commercial advantages: First, the brand features a strong modern spirit.

"We keep rethinking how to explain the deep emotions of modern Chinese and try to transfer that modern social language into the artworks, which made our products more extensive," Qu said.

Second, "innovation is our brand's main characteristic", Qu explained. "We believe it has a sustainable space in its field."

X+Q Art products resonate with Chinese - whether in China or abroad - by connecting with their emotions, Qu said. "We are not merely digging out some basic symbols from tradition, but hoping X+Q Art can produce its fruits in the future based on the emotional aspects of Chinese culture, then we can say we create a new value," he added.

Born in Shanghai in 1969, Qu received his master's of fine arts from China Central Academy of Fine Arts Sculpture Department.

As the youngest artist to win the grand prize at the National Fine Arts Exhibition at the age of 25, Qu became known throughout the art world for his innovative sculptures, contemporary language and expression techniques. He is most famous for his Little Fatty series.

Since 1999, Qu has been invited to exhibit his artworks around the world, including China, Germany, France, the US and Southeast Asia. To date, he has held nine solo exhibitions.

Resigning from their teaching positions at Shanghai Normal University together in 2007, Qu and his wife founded X+Q Sculpture Studio to devote themselves to creating artworks fulltime. They established the X+Q Art brand in 2010 and currently live and work in Beijing.

Industry commentators have said that Qu's work suggests a dual nature.

"Many of his artworks present a balanced state between humanity and divinity," a description on the website Artspace reads. "They are neither angels nor demons, neither conflicted nor hesitant - its significance is a reflection of the current state of affairs in China."

As one of the most active contemporary Chinese artists collaborating with other creative disciplines, Qu has been praised for his ability to combine tradition with modern, culture and design, art and commerce, all with the right balance.

Xiang Jing believes Qu's personality breaks through the stereotype that artists are bad at brand management, giving their products a unique style blending art, design and commerce.

X+Q Art has gained popularity in a relatively short time by partnering with show business, high-end department stores, luxury hotels, design galleries and museum stores. "X+Q was able to develop so quickly because China's soil is very eager for this seed," Qu said.

"The world has always admired the glory of ancient Chinese civilization, but it's kind of hard to see China's modern value being exported to the world," Qu said.

Ma Jidong, a senior Chinese art critic, wrote in a column that the banners of commercial art have been raised continually no matter by Andy Warhol in the US or Damien Hirst in the UK since the end of World War II.

Ma believes behind the prosperity of the market for limited edition designs, design replicas and design derivatives is ordinary peoples' desire to buy art and make it part of their lives.

"There is no doubt that commercial art will be the next stage of the art experience in China," Ma wrote.

"An art derivative is like a beautiful lifebuoy that saves you from the rough seas of business," Qu wrote in his diary. Qu was fascinated by the art derivatives sold at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and bought a boxful to China.

X+Q's target consumer is one of the most overlooked groups in China - the white-collar worker with a salary of 5,000-15,000 RMB ($830-$2,500). "Mass production has made it possible for X+Q artworks to be in more and more middle-income homes," Qu said.

"The success of Starbucks inspired me a lot," Qu said. "No matter you are a college student or a billionaire, you drink Starbucks. It's the same with art. Everybody has the right to enjoy it."

X+Q's brand positioning has become more accurate, especially with home accessories. "In 2016, our brand will be further improved to serve more people," Qu said.

In 2012, X+Q broke into New York's Guggenheim Museum gift shop and in 2013, X+Q products were recommended by the BBC on a list of Christmas gifts.

Last September, X+Q became the first Chinese art brand invited by Maison & Objet (M&O), the major Paris trade fair for interior design, to exhibit. As one of the most important European - even world - events for interior design, there was barely a Chinese brand to be found there over the past 20 years.

"We exhibited our designs in the front row of the main hall," Qu recalled, his eyes lighting up.

"That was an important breakthrough for not only X+Q but also Chinese art brands trying to do business overseas," Qu added. The number of overseas business opportunities he acquired during the fair exceeded the total number he had from China earlier.

Apart from stores located in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, X+Q art derivatives sell in Lane Crawford department stores, the Langham, Tuantuan Boutiques, the Guggenheim Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Entratalibera in Milan. The company also has distribution channels in Europe, America, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"Some in the industry overseas still remain skeptical or concerned that Chinese art brands may be more like copycats rather than innovations," Qu said. "It's somewhat difficult," Qu said. "The cultural differences, the price differential are both obstacles for the brand. But nevertheless, we must take the leap."

During his acceptance speech for the Brand of the Year award in New York, Qu said, "The peaceful rise of a country would be simultaneously accompanied by the development of influential enterprises and brands of that country.

"Culture is a country's soft power. I wish in the future, foreigners will not only recognize Bank of China, China Petroleum or China's Alibaba, but also a brand called X+Q Art," Qu added.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com

X+Q Art in Design Shanghai.

Qu Guangci, China's reputed contemporary sculptor and artist with his artwork Rainbow Angel.
Afghanistan's FM upbeat over talks Updated: 2016-01-29 07:54 By Wang Qingyun(China Daily USA)

A timetable for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban could emerge from a roadmap to be finalized at a meeting next month, Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani told China Daily in an exclusive interview in Beijing on Wednesday.

The third round of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group meetings, involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, will be held in Islamabad on Feb 6. The meeting will finalize a peace and reconciliation roadmap, Rabbani said.

The Afghan government feels "a sense of urgency" for negotiations with the Taliban and has been calling for the militants to join peace talks and "become a responsible political movement", Rabbani said.

Peace talks have been stalled since Taliban founder Mullah Omar was confirmed dead in July, an event that brought into sharp focus the divisions within the organization.

The Taliban's response to the Afghan government's calls for talks has been varied, Rabbani said.

"Some of them are positive. Some are still considering. Some of them have their own preconditions," he said. "But what I see is that the Afghan government has always said that no precondition at this time is acceptable, because we cannot start talks by preconditions."

Restarting the talks is also important for containing terrorism in the country, the foreign minister added, saying there are "other threats that are emerging".

"As soon as we talk with the Taliban, we will be able to focus our energies and capacities on tackling these newly emerging threats, such as Daesh (the Islamic State group). ... If we see peace and stability return, these newly emerging threats can be fought against and prevented from becoming really big and major threats to Afghanistan and to the region," he said.

Daesh has increased its presence in the country in recent years. It is reported to have clashed with both the Taliban and the Afghan police in Nangarhar province in September.

China has worked to facilitate the resumption of the talks, and Rabbani said his government welcomes China's role in pushing the peace process.

"China's policy has been to support an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process. We very much want that, and we very much welcome any support that will bring peace and stability to Afghanistan as soon as possible," he said.

China is also involved in assisting Afghanistan in improving its infrastructure and economy, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Wang Xu contributed to this story.

wangqiangyun@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 01/29/2016 page3)
A cross-Straits recipe for success Updated: 2016-01-30 03:13 By WANG YING in Shanghai(China Daily USA)

Zhang Guosheng, general manager of Shanghai Wang Bao He, believes that good food is one of the keys to promoting cross-Straits communication. Gao Erqiang / China Daily

Banking on what its brand is most famous for, Wang Bao He effectively expanded its reach across the sea to neighboring Taiwan

Most people his age would have continued with their jobs all the way to retirement but Zhang Guosheng decided that it was never too old to seek new challenges in life.

Having worked for State-owned companies for 30 years, Zhang left his comfort zone and made the foray into the hospitality industry on March 5, 2014, taking up the role of general manager at Shanghai Wang Bao He Co Ltd, a company that manages two star hotels and two restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing. Furthermore, Zhang had entered the industry at a time when domestic hotels were facing a business slump amid slower economic growth.

"This is a totally different area for me and it presents a great challenge for someone my age who has been accustomed to the system and workflow of State-owned companies," said the 52-year-old.

According to data from the China National Tourism Administration, the average daily rate (ADR) of five-star hotels was 629 yuan ($95.6) in the third quarter of 2015, down 2.2 percent year-on-year, with the occupancy rate staying at low levels of 59.8 percent. For four-star hotels, the figures were rather dismal too.

In order to expand Wang Bao He's business, which was already well-known locally, Zhang and his team decided to focus on what the brand is famous for  its crabs and rice wine. The company's roots can be traced all the way back to 1744 when the first Wang Bao He tavern was opened by Wang Guichen. The brand has since its inception been famed for being a "rice wine expert" and "crab master".

Realizing that people across the East China Sea in Taiwan were not particularly aware of the brand, Zhang decided to make them the primary target audience. The first step was taken in May 2015 when delegates from Central Hotel Shanghai, a four-star establishment affiliated to Wang Bao He, paid a visit to the Grand Hotel Taipei and proposed a collaboration.

Following months of constant email communication, Zhang took his team and their famous hairy crab dishes to the Grand Hotel Taipei in October, and it instantly won over the local gourmands.

During a week-long promotional event in Taiwan, Zhang managed to generate about 130,000 yuan worth of sales revenue from the sale of these famous dishes. The crab feast also attracted big names, including Morris Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry.

"The feast turned out to be such a success that the dining area was full every day. More than 100 guests had made reservations before the event started," said Johnson Chiang, president of Grand Hotel, Taipei.

Having noticed Grand Hotel Taipei's interest in making dim sum using the highly popular hairy crabs, Zhang got his chefs to teach their counterparts how to make mini steamed buns stuffed with crab roe and pork, mini dumplings with crab meat and pork, as well as crab shell cakes. In return, Taipei's chefs taught their counterparts from the mainland how to create authentic Taiwan dishes.

"Thanks to Wang Bao He's chefs, our mini pork buns with crab roe have become the must-order item in our hotel," said Chiang.

The successful event has since spurred the two hotels to work together more often. On Jan 20 this year, the two reached a collaboration agreement which states that such culinary exchanges will be held every March and October, starting this year.

Taiwan-style dishes from the Grand Hotel Taipei, including Madame Chiang Kai-shek's favored red bean muffin, will be available at the Central Hotel Shanghai for five days starting Mar 23, 2016. There are about 300,000 Taiwan people who are living and working in Shanghai and Zhang said that this will help to create a customer base for Taiwan-style dishes in the city.

"Fine food is the best way to promote cross-Straits communication. We hope that this partnership will be long-lasting," said Chiang.

He Jianmin, a professor specializing in tourism management at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that such a way of tourism marketing should be encouraged among hotels, seeing how many people travel between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. He said that the two establishments should also look into sharing their customers and management resources in the future.

About 4.15 million trips were made to Taiwan by tourists from the Chinese mainland in 2015, and Chinese travelers were projected to have generated about 230 billion New Taiwan dollars ($6.9 billion) worth in sales for the island last year, according to a report from www.taiwan.cn, which is affiliated to the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of China.

Apart from cooperating with Grand Hotel Taipei, the Central Hotel Shanghai is also looking to establish similar collaborations with hotels in Hong Kong and Tokyo, said Zhang.

The two hotels under Wang Bao He are currently undergoing changes and the goal is to find a better balance in ADR and occupancy rates so that the hotels can have an 8 percent growth in revenue this year. Zhang is confident that this can be achieved, thanks to the company's new revenue management software and the large amount of tourists expected to turn up to visit the upcoming Shanghai Disney Resort.
Premier Li: No basis for yuan depreciation Updated: 2016-01-29 06:19 By CHEN WEIHUA in Washington and ZHANG YUNBI in Beijing(China Daily USA)

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said his government "has no intention to boost exports by devaluing the renminbi, not to mention waging a trade war".

In a phone call with International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Thursday morning, Li said China "is able to maintain continued, steady growth of its economy".

"The fact is the RMB exchange rate has remained basically stable against a basket of currencies, and there is no basis for continuous depreciation of renminbi," Li said.

China will "press steadily ahead with the reform of mechanism to formulate the RMB exchange rate", reinforce its communication with the market and keep the RMB (yuan) exchange rate basically stable at an appropriate and balanced level, Li added.

Observers said Li's comments will help dismiss doubts in the market over the alleged currency manipulation by China and its future economic prospects. The country's economy, which grew by 6.9 percent last year, still faces downward pressure.

Lagarde said she believed the Chinese government could maintain steady economic growth through measures such as structural reform, keeping the exchange-rate policy stable and boosting communication with the market.

The IMF is willing to further strengthen communication and cooperation with China, Lagarde added.

Addressing a panel discussion in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Lagarde said China's policymakers have shown "unbelievable determination" to deliver reforms in the past, Bloomberg reported.

Chen Fengying, a senior world economy researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said Lagarde and the IMF are important channels for China to send signals to the world market in such a critical time.

"As uncertainties cloud the market, Li has stated China's confidence in the economy and currency. Without such remarks, the stock and currency markets' confidence could be more vulnerable," Chen said.

Larry Summers, an economist and director of the White House National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010, said on Monday that the US and the international community probably made a mistake over the past years by putting a substantial emphasis of their dialogue with China on financial liberalization and encouraging financial liberalization.

He described the reason as partly logic and party following financial interests.

He said that position for more "financial liberalization and a more flexible RMB that floats upward has been an intellectually incoherent position" because the reality is for capital to leave rather than enter China.

"So I think probably some going slow on that agenda is one aspect I would recommend," he said.

The Chinese premier also told Lagarde that the world economy, which is in the middle of deep adjustments, remains in a complicated situation, weighed down by a weak recovery and rising uncertainties. "An international consensus has emerged on the need to bolster growth, take forward restructuring and enhance cooperation," Li said.

According to Li, China's economy has been deeply integrated into the global economy. Alongside the slowdown in growth of the world economy and trade and heightened volatility in international financial markets, China's ability to deliver a medium-high growth of 6.9 percent, solid employment, higher income and savings growth than gross domestic product, and a steadily improving environment last year came as no mean feat.

Li stressed that reform holds the key to China's development.

"In the face of downward pressure on the global economy and deep-seated imbalances at home, China will toughen its resolve, rise to the challenge, and tap into the huge potential, resilience and room for maneuvering of the Chinese economy through a combination of policy measures," he said.

"While expanding aggregate demand in an appropriate way, we will vigorously pursue structural reform, particularly supply-side structural reforms," Li said.

The premier said China will continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy, push forward the innovation-driven development strategy, and encourage mass entrepreneurship and innovation to unleash people's enthusiasm and creativity.

All these factors will help generate a new and stronger impetus for development and upgrade traditional growth-drivers, making it possible for China to maintain continued steady growth of its economy, he said.

Stephen Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, described the fears about China as overblown.

In an article titled False Alarm on China, published on Project Syndicate, Roach said the prospect of an economic meltdown in China has been sending tremors through global financial markets at the start of 2016.

"While turmoil in Chinese equity and currency markets should not be taken lightly, the country continues to make encouraging headway on structural adjustments in its real economy," he wrote. "This mismatch between progress in economic rebalancing and setbacks in financial reforms must ultimately be resolved as China now enters a critical phase in its transition to a new growth model. But it does not spell imminent crisis," he wrote.

On Wednesday, the IMF announced that its 2010 historic quota and governance reforms have finally become effective.

The reforms have enabled China to have the third-largest IMF quota and voting share, following the US with 16.74 percent and Japan with 6.23 percent. The US still has a vetoing share bigger than the 14.7 percent total by four BRIC nations, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Xinhua contributed to the reporting.
Western ambitions Updated: 2016-01-29 07:49 By Hu Haiyan and Tan Yingzi(China Daily USA)

Chongqing tries to cash in on its strategic location with financial services industry

Just as the confluence of two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Jialing, have shaped the character of Chongqing over more than two millennia, two streams of economic policy that have now converged are likely to shape the sprawling city's future for years to come.

The first stream, the country's go-west compaign, has been about 15 years in the making. It set out to extend to western part of the country the economic fruits that had been enjoyed mostly by regions on the eastern coast as a result of the country's opening up to the outside world.

Chongqing's Liangjiang New Area, where the city's achievements in the finance industry are evident. Photos Provided to China Daily

The second, one that adds an international dimension to local economic success, is the Belt and Road Initiative. This grand plan, unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013, aims to revive the ancient trade routes that spanned Asia, Africa and Europe.

Serendipitously for Chongqing, western China is a core element of this project. The municipality was carved out of Sichuan province in 1997 to develop China's western regions and coordinate the resettlement of residents from the reservoir areas of the Three Gorges Dam project.

As the Belt and Road Initiative takes shape, many financial institutions have already established a presence in western China to facilitate the finance and trade activities of Chinese companies in Europe and Central Asia, and many more are likely to follow suit.

Dai Zurui, director of HSBC's Chongqing branch, says the bank has watched Chongqing's financial sector grow over the past 10 years as more international companies have set up shop there; and HSBC, like other foreign banks, stands to benefit immensely.

The Chongqing government has forecast that 1.2 trillion yuan ($187 billion; 158 billion euros) will be invested there by 2020, Dai says, and this huge investment calls for participation not only from the Silk Road Fund - set up with an initial capital of $40 billion - but from other financial institutions as well so that a wide range of financial solutions can be offered.

"Infrastructure, goods, services, capital and talent have begun to flow. The Belt and Road Initiative has also accelerated the internationalization of the yuan, which in turn has given a fillip to the financial sector in Chongqing."

Stephen Phillips, chief executive of the China-Britain Business Council and chairman of the EU-China Business Association, says the Belt and Road Initiative is one of the most significant business initiatives of this generation. The opportunities for both UK and Chinese companies are through partnerships, he says.

For British companies, he says, western China's strong suits include financial services and advanced manufacturing, information and communications technology, healthcare and life sciences.

"In our recent report - One Belt, One Road - we included special regional material on the opportunities in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Yunnan, Sichuan and Chongqing. These regions will play a key part in the Belt and Road Initiative and in China's future development."

Chongqing is the biggest of the country's four municipalities (the others are Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin). The city covers 82,400 square kilometers, the size of Austria, and has a population of around 30 million - equivalent to the combined population of the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. It served as the country's wartime capital between 1937 and 1945.

During an inspection tour to the municipality in January, President Xi - making his first visit since he took office as China's top leader in 2012 - said: "Chongqing has great potential and a bright future."

Many experts say the visit was a confidence boost for Chongqing and was recognition for its economic and social achievements in recent years.

After leading the country's growth rate for two consecutive years, Chongqing expects to maintain its double-digit record. It has a target of 10 percent for 2016 after growth of 10.9 percent in 2014 and 11 percent in 2015. The national rate was 6.9 percent last year.

Xi said the Belt and Road Initiative will provide a bigger platform for Chongqing to "go out" and that the development of the Yangtze River Economic Zone can help the city better connect with the central and coastal areas of China. He said he hopes Chongqing plays a major role in the go-west campaign, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Yangtze River Economic Zone.

In early November, the central government underlined how important it sees Chongqing to the country's economic future when President Xi, on a visit to Singapore, announced that the city would be given the economic and industrial status that had been bestowed on two other cities: Suzhou, Jiangsu province, with its industrial park set up in 1994; and Tianjin, with its eco-city, which opened in 2008.

The China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity will focus on modern interconnectivity and the modern service economy, such as financial services, aviation, logistics and information technology.

Ruan Lu, director-general of the Chongqing municipal finance office, says as the Belt and Road Initiative is implemented it will present opportunities not only to the financial industry, but also to other sectors to set up operations in the city or for those already there to extend them well beyond the municipality.

"The strategy offers a huge opportunity for Chongqing to unlock its potential and embrace the outside world. We are developing innovative financial institutions, services and products now. They include providing offshore financial services, cross-border renminbi settlement and capital support for Chongqing companies looking to expand out of the region, facilitating Chongqing companies getting foreign exchange to expand overseas."

By the end of December, Chongqing's financial assets were said to be worth 4.29 trillion yuan, 14.7 percent more than the previous year, and the finance sector accounted for 9 percent of the city's GDP.

Last year, there were 1,499 financial institutions in Chongqing, a 54 percent increase in just two years.

Chongqing's achievements in the finance industry are evident in its Liangjiang New Area, a national-level development zone that covers more than 1,200 sq km and has a population of 2.2 million.

In the area, set up in 2010, a great deal of effort has been made into building the financial sector. In the first half of last year, the value of the sector grew 11.3 billion yuan or 23 percent.

Many of Chongqing's financial institutions are in Jiangbeizui, a central business district of Liangjiang New Area, and there were about 600 of them by the end of last year. Five years ago, Jiangbeizui was mainly farmland, but it now resembles Pudong, the financial district of Shanghai.

It is projected that within a year or so 80 percent of the municipality's financial institutions will be located there, and that Jiangbeizui will account for 30 percent of deposits and loans in Chongqing.

However, as the finance industry grows, one of the pressing issues it faces is a lack of skilled people.

"We are looking for more skilled people with ambitions to do something different here in Chongqing, a place where there are huge opportunities for growth," says Xu Honghu, director-general of the finance development bureau of Liangjiang.

One of those who is looking to make the most of those opportunities is Yang Yusi, director of the investment and development department of Chongqing Liangjiang Financial Development Co Ltd.

Yang says he returned to Chongqing in 2011 after working as an investment banker in Hong Kong and now with eight others manages an investment fund worth 20 billion yuan.

"In our team, the average age is under 30," says Yang, 32, one of the youngest senior managers in his company.

"Of course, Chongqing's financial sector is not as developed as those of Beijing or Shanghai, but here there are more opportunities for skilled people like us to build something from the ground up."

Dressed in a formal suit and speaking in a skyscraper located in the Jiangbeizui district, Yang says he is happy with his decision to give up a well-paid investment banking job with Citibank.

"I am very excited to come back to work in Chongqing. There is so much potential to tap in the financial industry. Especially after the implementation from the Belt and Road Initiative, the financial industry will gain more impetus to take off."

The municipality is also well endowed with strong transport links, not only with the rest of China, but Europe as well, the jewel in the crown of this being the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe Rail that crosses 11,000 km and six time zones.

At a railway station in Chongqing, dozens of workers are busy loading cars and electronic goods onto a freight train. After a 15-day journey that takes in Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland, the train arrives in Duisburg, Germany.

One company that uses the line is Chongqing Lifan Co Ltd, one of the largest domestic car and motorcycle makers in China. Yin Mingshan, the company president, says the Belt and Road Initiative offers huge development opportunities for Chinese companies.

Contact the writer through huhaiyan@chinadaily.com.cn
Finance sector seeks greater role Updated: 2016-01-30 02:39 By hu haiyan, Li yu and Tan Yingzi(China Daily USA)

Feng Hao, deputy general manager and secretary of the board of Kelun Group, a pharmaceuticals group

As Chongqing looks to make the most of its location, its municipal finance office said the city faces one huge disadvantage in competing with its rivals: its status as a newcomer to international finance.

Ruan Lu, director-general of the office, said Chongqing was earlier an industrial city with little investment in the banking industry or securities companies.

All it had were some State-owned banks, and the city lacks the extensive experience in the field that other Chinese cities have.

"In recent years the pace of local financial institutions going out has quickened. Some, such as Chongqing Bank and Chongqing Agricultural Commercial Bank, have been listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Southwest Securities has been helping Chongqing companies to become listed overseas.

"But compared with developed regions, Chongqing lacks experience in opening up, and it takes a lot of time to build that kind of experience."

"The competitiveness of the financial sector in Chongqing needs to be improved," Ruan said.

"As capital flows among different regions are facilitated, Chongqing's financial resources can be allocated in a better way."

However, for Chongqing, and the western region generally, non-financial industries continue to play an important role.

One such is Sichu-an Kelun Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, whose headquarters is in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, and which is on a drive to tap overseas markets.

Kelun Group, founded in 1996, has developed into a modern pharmaceuticals group, with 87 branches in China and elsewhere.

It had revenue of 35 billion yuan, with taxable profit of more than 2 billion yuan, in 2014.

"We have invested about $50 million in Kazakhstan, where we will start manufacturing pharmaceutical products this year," said Feng Hao, deputy general manager and secretary of the board of Kelun.

"Though the economic situation in China is not quite as rosy as it used to be, Kelun is confident that with the right planning as it goes global and with and support from local banks and government, we can maintain our growth momentum."

Zhai Shuang, treasurer of Sichuan Honghua Group, said that "as the Belt and Road Initiative progresses, the group export business will continue to grow".

Honghua Group Limited is a large-scale equipment manufacturer and drilling service provider that specializes in the research, design, manufacture and assembly of drilling rigs, offshore engineering, and oil and gas exploitation and production equipment.

It is the biggest exporter of drilling rigs in China, and one of the largest land drilling rig makers in the world.

Last year, the group said, its sales were worth 7.8 billion yuan, about 80 to 90 percent of that from exports.
China's theme parks rank among world's top 10 Updated: 2016-01-30 03:38 By WANG ZHUOQIONG in Beijing(China Daily USA)

Theme parks in China have experienced major growth in recent years. Photo provided to china daily

Theme parks in Asia, especially those in China, experienced good market growth in 2015 due to peoples growing affluence, a surge in tourism and the continued investment by developers in upgrading their facilities, according to industry consultant Aecom.

We would expect the Chinese mainland to have a growth of 4 to 7 percent with Hong Kong showing a slight decline due to falling visitation. Growth in Japan and Korea would be relatively flat since few new attractions opened. Looking ahead, the opening of Shanghai Disney Resort will likely be the big event in Asia, said Chris Yoshii, vice president of Aecom Asia Pacific.

This sends a message to the industry that people are prepared to pay for quality in this market and this demonstrable ability to handle higher prices will move the entire sector toward higher quality. Continual investment is necessary to maintain growth, and parks need to be able to raise prices to support the cost of new attractions, creating magical, innovative visitor experiences that in turn continue to build the market of satisfied patrons, added Yoshii.

Three Asian companies  OCT, Chimelong and Songcheng  are ranked among the top 10 theme park groups in the world. According to Aecoms annual report on the theme park industry, OCTs success is primarily due to the addition of new parks and the companys ability to keep the growth of their existing ones fairly stable.

We will see more from these three groups. Expanding geographically is OCT while Chimelong and Songcheng both have several new projects in the pipeline as well, said Yoshii.

Chimelong made the top 10 for the first time following the successful opening of the Chimelong International Ocean Resort in 2014. The resorts Chimelong Ocean Kingdom theme park has been highly popular with families despite its comparatively hefty price tag of 350 yuan ($53)  80 percent higher than the usual market rate of 200 yuan.

The company had also added two more hotels in 2015, bringing the resorts combined room total to around 5,000.

Songcheng, which has been aggressively growing in recent years, banked on the addition of new cultural parks and show venues in a number of cities to boost its growth. The company had also built a new 4,500-seat theater that hosts live historical dramas in its Hangzhou park in Zhejiang Province, effectively doubling the facilitys visitors capacity.
Hotels poised to cash in on Disney craze Updated: 2016-01-30 03:38 By WANG ZHUOQIONG in Beijing(China Daily USA)

When the Shanghai Disney Resort opens in June this year, hoteliers in the Yangtze River Delta will be well prepared to capitalize on the hordes of visitors making their way to the highly anticipated theme park.

Xu Weiluo, branding executive of Homeinns Co Ltd  a leading budget hotel group headquartered in Shanghai  said that his company had developed a business strategy for this occasion many years ago, and part of it involved setting up a department to develop hotel projects and tourism products near Shanghais Disneyland.

Hoteliers in Shanghai and the Delta region have already expanded their presence to locations near the metro stations on the No 2 and 11 subway lines that lead to the resort. The No 11 subway line will extend to the Disney Resort while the No 2 line extends to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport .

Many hoteliers have also tweaked the configurations of their standard rooms to make them more family-friendly, while others have acquired the rights to sell Disney tickets that have been packaged together with accommodation and pick-up services.

The Shanghai Disney Resort will have two accommodation facilities  the 420-room Shanghai Disneyland Hotel and the 800-room Toy Story Hotel  but industry experts believe that there are not enough rooms to meet the demand. About 15 million people are expected to visit the Shanghai Disney Resort in its first year, with the figure growing to between 25 and 30 million in the next few years.

Zeng Guang, chief analyst of Guosen Securities, told the media that the opening of the Disney Resort in June will give the resort operator some time to better prepare for the peak season in the summer. He also expects families to account for repeated visits and overnight stays.

Located in the heart of the Yangtze River Delta, the most prosperous region in the country, the Shanghai Disneyland can be easily accessed by people from many cities that are between one and two hours away via express trains.

Jiang Yiyi, director of the China Tourism Academys International Tourism Development Institute, said the Shanghai Disney Resort will also bring inbound travelers from overseas as the resort has created plenty of attractions that are unique or filled with Chinese characteristics, that will likely appeal to international visitors in neighboring countries.
US officials dampen hope for Zika vaccine in near future Updated: 2016-01-29 09:08 (Xinhua)

Gisele Felix, who is five months pregnant, stands on a terrace next to her son Joao at her home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, January 28, 2016. Gisele, who is concerned about the Zika virus, has not gone out of her house during her 30-day vacation, keeping all the windows and doors closed in an effort to keep out mosquitoes. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday the Zika virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is "spreading explosively" and may infect 3 to 4 million people in the Americas, including 1.5 million in Brazil. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - Senior US health officials said on Thursday the country's researchers are working on two potential vaccines for the Zika virus, but warned that it will likely take years before they are ready for use.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a news conference that both candidates were based on earlier vaccines related to the viruses of West Nile and dengue, with one ready for clinical trial later this year.

"While these approaches are promising, it is important to understand that we will not have a widely available safe and effective Zika vaccine this year, and probably not even in the next few years," he said.

Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said her agency has identified 31 travel-related cases of Zika virus in the United States.

All of the cases involved people returning to the United States from countries where the Zika virus is spreading, she said.

Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Administration said it's working to rapidly implement appropriate donor deferral measures for travelers who have visited affected regions in order to protect the blood supply.

Zika, transmitted primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito, is believed to cause birth defects such as microcephaly, or small heads.

Currently, there is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat the disease.

About one in five people infected with Zika virus will develop symptoms, which include fever, rash, joint pain, and pink eye.

The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting from several days to a week. Severe disease requiring hospitalization is uncommon and the case fatality rate is low.
Japan's economy minister resigns over bribery scandal Updated: 2016-01-29 09:33 (Xinhua)

Japan's Economics Minister Akira Amari reacts during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, January 28, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

TOKYO - Japan's embattled Economy and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari on Thursday offered to step down from his post following allegations he received bribes from a construction company.

The move follows demands from his own ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) including its president and the country's leader Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as well as calls from the opposition bloc and the public for the cabinet member to fully account for himself over the allegations.

In a televised news conference, a tearful Amari, who brokered Japan's involvement in the recently agreed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in his concurrent role as Economic Revitalization Minister in charge of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said he had caused the government a great deal of embarrassment and that improprieties related to him should not hamper the economic progress of the country.

The veteran lawmaker went on to express his intention to leave Abe's Cabinet.

"Japan is finally emerging from deflation. We need to pass legislation through parliament for steps to beat deflation and create a strong economy as soon as possible," Amari told the news conference.

"Anything that hampers this must be eliminated, and I'm no exception. I, therefore, would like to resign as minister to take responsibility for what my aide has done," he said.

He was referring to an article that appeared in the Shukan Bunshun weekly magazine recently that stated Amari and his aides received cash and were entertained over the past three years with the money involved totaling 12 million yen (about 101,000 US dollars).

The article quoted an official from a construction company in Chiba Prefecture about the allegations, with the official stating that Amari accepted cash and was treated to nights out in return for giving the firm preferential treatment and special "favors".

The construction company, for example, had asked for Amari's help in dealing with compensation issues pertaining to a road project involving the government-backed Urban Renaissance Agency.

The allegations, in part, are that Amari last November received an envelop containing 500,000 yen in cash, in return for favors and, following a probe, there were no details of the payments in Amari's political funding record, in breach of political funds laws in Japan.
At least three killed in light plane crashes in Australia Updated: 2016-01-29 14:09 (Xinhua)

MELBOURNE - At least three people were confirmed dead after a light-plane crashed off the Victorian seaside town of Barwon Heads on Australia's south coast.

It was believed those who died in the four-seater plane, which pitched into the sea about 12.30 pm, were two men and a woman.

Earlier reports said five people had died in the crash. Victoria Police later confirmed the number was three, although there were reports that a further passenger was still missing.

Geelong local area commander Inspector Graham Banks said a witness observed the plane crash into the sea.

"Shortly thereafter he called police, water police attended and located what was a large area of wreckage and three deceased persons," he said.

"Currently police are in the process of searching for further wreckage and further other persons involved, although we don't believe there will be more than one or two person involved at most because we believe the plane was a four-seater plane."

Rescuers in boats and helicopters remain at the scene, with two air ambulances also dispatched to the area.

The township has a small airport but a spokesman for the airport told the Australian Associated Press that all planes from that airport had been accounted for and they didn't know where the crashed plane had flown from.
Chinese academic spells out latest five-year plan for EU Updated: 2016-01-29 18:54 By Fu Jing and Gao Shuang in Brussels(chinadaily.com.cn)

Cai Fang (center), Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, laid out China's 13th Five-Year Plan's priorities, goals and opportunities for the EU Tuesday in Brussels. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

China's new five-year blueprint is a blueprint for the country's most crucial development period and offers opportunities for the EU, Cai Fang, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told a Brussels seminar on Tuesday.

Cai, who is also a member of the advisory board of the 13th Five-Year Plan on National Economic and Social Development of China, addressed a seminar held by the Brussels-based think tank Friend of Europe.

He said that next five years is a critical period for China's development, since the country has to reach its "comprehensive well-being society" goal by 2020. In addition, China has to accomplish "two doublings", to be more precise, GDP doubling and per capital income doubling by 2020 as well.

The 13th Five-Year Plan is special because China must avoid the "middle-income trap" and enter the high-income stage of economic development, and success depends on the direction the plan takes, Cai said.

He said that five development concepts stand at the core of the new Five-Year Plan, namely innovation, coordination, greener development, open development and shared development.

"To reach these goals, new methods of implementation and new policy measures are to be adopted, " he said.

"In order to achieve this, we have to keep our economic growth at a moderately high level," said Cai.

Cai said that instead of fixing a specific target for economic growth as in past decades, this time the government is referring to a broader definition for growth expectations: moderately high growth, which is both a qualitative and quantitative goal under the 'New Normal' description of China's economy.

He indicated that the slowdown of Chinese economic growth is being driven by domestic structural changes, as starting from 2010, the working-age population (those who are aging between 15 and 64) has been in decline.

"It is not easy as economic growth has been slowing down since 2012," explained Cai, " and as long as we are under the 'New Normal,' the growth is continuing to slow down."

He said that the average economic growth rate has to be maintained at 6.53% for the next five years. However, according to analysis and study by Cai's team, the potential economic growth will be around 6.2 % from 2016 to 2020, compared with almost 10 % before 2010 and 7.6% during the last Five-Year Plan.

The essential problem is how to tackle the gap between 6.2 % and 6.53%, and Cai added that through the combination of potential economic growth and reform dividendthe required moderately high speed can be realized.

At present time China is undertaking series of reforms, and taking urbanization reform as an example, Cai said that when 170 million migrant workers become integrated urban residents, '3 birds can be hit with one stone.'

Firstly, the labor supply will be increased. Secondly, labor mobility will continue so that re-allocative efficiency can be gained. Finally, domestic consumption will be further expanded.

"By doing so, we enhance labor supply, productivity as well as fertility rate, which can spur potential growth by 1 %," he added.

Nevertheless, Cai said urbanization reform is facing big challenges. For example, the majority of migrant workers are trying to move to mega cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, ignoring the fact that second-line cities' reform of resident registration, or hukou, is much more open.

"The huge migration brings traffic jams and pollution to the big cities, and not only is it hard for them to get local hukou, but also many of them can't enjoy full package of social welfare," said Cai.

"The management capacity and ability of these mega cities isn't qualified enough for such huge populations and there is a deficiency of local finance, so we still impose high restrictions on hukou in big cities.,'' he said

Aging society is another crucial problem for China right now. For Cai, this can been seen as a 'Demographic Debt' but also as a second chance for a demographic dividend which boosts the development of health industry, education industry and tourism industry.

"What we need to do now is to extend the demographic dividend in small cities and towns by enhancing the local employment rate and promoting social welfare on one hand; on the other hand we need to accelerate the hukou reform in middle-sized cities. The urbanization rate right now is 38% and our goal by 2020 is 40%, which means the annual growth should be around 1.3% and every year 16 million migrants will become city residents with local residency rights.

Although urbanization reform is progressing slowly, China's financial system reforms and continuing opening-up have seen many early results. As Yao Zhizhong, Deputy Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pointed out, China has been balancing its exports and imports, and its economic growth model has been transmitted to domestic consumption and foreign investment.

Cai believed that China's 13th Five-Year Plan will bring numerous opportunities for Europe.

The innovative development means more international cooperation in science, technology and education, he said.

The coordinated development will open more opportunities for European enterprises to invest in less well-developed regions of China. Greener development will demand more high-tech and investment in environmental protection and carbon emission.

Shared development will expand the scale and scope of consumption with bigger middle-income appetite for expenditure on cultural, tourism and high-quality consumer goods. And the open development offers even more potential opportunities, he said, in a reference to the "One Belt One Road" initiative.

Shada Islam, Director of Policy at Friends of Europe, said she had high expectations of the new five-year plan. She said that it's important for Europeans to understand the complexity and intricacy of China's development, the challenges and struggles it faces in next 5 years.

"We need to know that China is on a reform path and it is important for us to know that huge transition is taking place in China. There may be obstacles on the way, but long-term goals are still there and they are reassuring for us," said Islam.

To contact the reporter: fujing@chinadaily.com.cn




Kremlin asks US to explain accusations on Putin Updated: 2016-01-30 04:41 (Xinhua)

MOSCOW -- Russia expects the top leadership of the United States to provide an explanation of "unacceptable" statements by US officials accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of corruption, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"We find the statement of my colleague in the White House unacceptable from the point of view of the general practice of international relations, and from the point of view of bilateral Russian-American relations. We believe this statement is outrageous and offensive," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Peskov as saying.

"We will wait for some further explanations on the part of the supreme leadership of the United States," Peskov said.

Earlier this week, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) published a video showing US Department of Treasury official Adam Szubin accusing Putin of being involved in alleged large-scale corruption.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Szubin's statement "best reflected" the opinion of the US administration.

Peskov said the personal insults against the Russian president are "signs of weakness and impotence," as well as attempts to undermine Russia's diplomatic stances on various international affairs.

"But this will not affect either Putin or Russia in any way," he said.

Russia's relations with the United States deteriorated over Moscow's annexation of Crimea and alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis. There have also been disagreements between them on Syria.
Rating System

I use bags of Popcorn to rate the Films 1 through 4. One being Bad and Four being Excellent.
Vennskap Lodge 5-622 is open to anyone who has an interest in Scandinavian history, or has ties to ancestors who have come to America as well as those still in the "old country". We meet monthly with a few exceptions. One of the various lodge widely accepted projects is an Annual Lutefisk dinner, held in November, that is open to the public.
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The Vatican Information Service is a news service, founded in the Holy See Press Office, that provides information about the Magisterium and the pastoral activities of the Holy Father and the Roman Curia...[ ]
In the last few years, it has become apparent that the average man's penis is not as long as had been thought previously. For decades...
Jet Airways is in discussions with Air Serbia to lease an A330 aircraft and is evaluating options to operate or sell Boeing 777 planes upon return from Etihad Airways. Jet Airways has seven aircraft on lease with Etihad, including an Airbus A330 and six Boeing 777s, and lease terms will end this year.

Jet Airways did not respond to a query on its discussions with Air Serbia. A report in Serbian media said the local airline's chief executive and chairperson had inspected the A330 aircraft and the airline would deploy Jet's aircraft on Belgrade-New York route from June.

Etihad owns 49 per cent in Air Serbia.

Sources said Jet was considering launching a second Delhi-London flight with a Boeing 777 aircraft upon end of lease term. It may also deploy an Airbus A330 plane (currently on Brussels-Newark route) on Mumbai-Singapore route.

Jet Airways has a fleet of 115 planes, a mix of turboprop, narrow-body, and wide-body planes. This includes 10 Boeing 777s and 12 Airbus A330. Ten of these planes are on lease and the rest it flies to London, Paris, Brussels, Newark, Toronto, and Hong Kong.

Six Boeing 777s and an A330 plane are on lease to Etihad till 2016-end while three A330s have been leased to Turkish Airlines till 2020.

Already Etihad has announced that it will replace the leased 777s on US routes with its own planes. Currently, the Gulf airline uses Jet Airways planes on San Francisco and New York routes and will deploy its own aircraft on these routes beginning April and June, respectively.

Last August, the Jet Airways management had indicated that it was evaluating an option of extending the lease of its 777s, which are now being flown by Etihad. But Etihad's announcement makes it clear that at least four of the six 777s are on their way back to Jet.

Sources said the Jet management is evaluating options to deploy the 777s on existing or new routes or further lease or sell these aircraft upon return from Etihad.

Last year, Jet Airways was planning to sell or lease back its entire wide-body fleet to raise cash and retire a portion of its Rs 12,000-crore debt, but the plan did not take off.

"Review of market conditions and route opportunities is an ongoing process at Jet Airways. Changes in the network and fleet, if any, will be communicated at an appropriate time, an airline spokesperson said in an e-mail response.

As is normal in the airline sector, carriers often change capacity on routes based on market conditions. Etihad Airways constantly reviews its fleet plans and aligns aircraft on routes when required, Etihad Airways said in its response.

To let customers lock fares



Passengers booking tickets on Jet website will now have a facility to select fare and book tickets later. The airline will allow customers to book within 72 hours of the selection on payment of a fee. Jet is the first airline in the country to provide this to its customers who make reservation through its website or app.

Jet Airways and other full-service airlines allow travel agents to make reservation and hold it 24-72 hours before issuing tickets, without charge, but this facility is now available for foreign routes.

Jet Airways said its booking feature FareLock is applicable for flights across its network and offers guests the opportunity to plan their travel with greater ease and convenience.

FareLock is available on the airlines online platforms, its website, the mobile site, and the mobile app. Once a guest selects the FareLock option, they will need to pay a nominal fee of Rs 350 for a domestic ticket and Rs 700 for a global ticket to lock the available fare. Guests can return to any of the Jet Airways online platforms within the next 72 hours to purchase the tickets and confirm their booking at the pre-selected fare by using the Manage Booking feature, the airline said on Friday.
What do we do to keep the lights on?, asks Andrews Daniel Andrews at a press conference on Thursday asked "what do we do to keep the lights on?" once coal fired power stations close before insisting his government had a plan to address the question.

Were on our own: Flood levee divides Victorian town Residents on the wrong side of Echuca's "great wall" have voiced their frustrations about being left "on our own" as the Victorian town braces for rising flood levels.

Palaszczuk responds to review into Australias COVID-19 response Speaking at the Housing Summit in Brisbane on Thursday, Ms Palaszczuk was asked to weigh in on the independent review into Australias COVID-19 response.

Went too far: Dutton takes aim at Andrews in response to damning COVID-19 report The Opposition Leader has defended the former government's actions in Australia's coronavirus pandemic response while taking aim at Victoria for its lockdowns, which led to Melbourne being the longest locked down city in the world.
CEDAR FALLS  Wayne Engineering, which announced a temporary layoff of 11 workers May 28, 2015, now has called all 11 workers back to the companys refuse truck division, said Dusty Harberts, executive assistant to CEO Kevin Watje.

Two paint technicians who were among the 11 already had been called back to work in August. The company had notified eight of the other nine by Thursday and was still trying to contact the other at that time, Harberts said.

All workers are members of United Auto Workers Local 838.

Tom Ralston, president of the local, did not immediately return a request for comment.

We just had an influx of back orders, so we called everyone back, Harberts said. A lot of people who were laid off were welders, and we needed the welding help again.
DES MOINES  In an impassioned back-and-forth, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz accused one another of shifting their views on immigration policy during Thursday nights Republican presidential debate.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mocked the U.S. senators verbal jousting, saying he needed a Washington-to-English converter.

The Republican candidates  most of them, anyway  participated in what will be the final presidential debate before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the presidential nominating process. The Iowa caucuses are Monday night.

Missing from the stage at the Iowa Events Center was Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who skipped the debate over his objection to Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly. Trump instead held a campaign event across town at Drake University.

Most polls in Iowa show a close race between Trump and Cruz at the top of the GOP field. Rubio has been a consistent third but well behind the front-runners.

Trumps absence offered rivals a chance to escape his long shadow, fueling sharp exchanges between Cruz and Rubio. Each candidate accused the other of flip-flopping on immigration policy, particularly on how to treat the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the country illegally.

Were not going to beat Hillary Clinton with someone whos willing to say or do anything to win an election, Rubio said to Cruz.

Cruz countered by noting Rubios work on legislation  which ultimately failed  that would have provided a 13-year path to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally.

Christie said the exchange was an example of why the next president should come from a governors office, not Congress.

Stop the Washington bull and lets get things done, Christie said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also chimed in on the immigration debate, saying he supported Rubios Senate bill and accusing Rubio of eventually bailing on the measure.

I supported (Rubio).  Then he cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess, Bush said. We should have a path to legal status.  I think thats the conservative, consistent, pragmatic response.

Many questions focused on foreign policy and national security.

Asked how he would address the Middle East terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State, Cruz stood by campaign remarks that he wants to carpet bomb terrorists and make the sand glow. He said his strategy as president would be to define the enemy, rebuild the military to defeat the enemy, and lift the rules of engagement.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul prescribed caution against waging war against both the Islamic State and the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Paul said toppling Assad would leave a void that could be filled by an even larger and stronger Islamic State.

Paul also reiterated his opposition to the bulk collection of data used by government surveillance agencies.

The bulk collection and invasion of privacy did not stop one terrorist attack, Paul said. I dont think we need to give up liberty in the name of a false sense of security.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who has slipped from among the leaders in polling in Iowa, defended his lack of political experience. He said his experience as a surgeon prepared him for taking on big problems and making big decisions.

We need people who think outside of the box and can solve problems, can utilize resources around them, can focus on the problem and solve the problem, Carson said. The American people are terrified.  We dont need more of the same solutions.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich was asked about the water crisis in his neighboring state of Michigan. Kasich said such a crisis requires rapid response from executives.

Every single engine of government has to move when you see a crisis like that, Kasich said. People at home are saying they got a problem, listen to them. Because most of the time they are absolutely correct.

But while Trump was not present, his name and influence on the field were mentioned from the start, as Kelly asked about elephant not in the room.

Cruz opened with a series of insults at his rivals, joking that he was presenting the Donald Trump portion of the debate. Later, he gibed that if there were any more tough questions, he might have to walk off the stage.

Rubio called Trump the greatest show on Earth but insisted the election was about more important matters. And Bush, a frequent sparring partner of Trump in the last six meetings, said he missed the teddy bear.

Everyone else was in the witness protection program when I went after him on behalf of what the Republican cause should be: conservative principles, belief in limited government, belief in accountability, leading by fixing the things that are broken, Bush said.
Sanders returns to Waterloo

WATERLOO  Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will return to Waterloo on Sunday.

Sanders, a United States senator from Vermont, will hold a rally at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, 205 W. Fourth St. Doors open at 1 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public. People can RSVP online at Sanders website at https://go.berniesanders.com/page/event/detail/rally/4rvk4.

Sanders plans stops later Sunday in Marshalltown, Ames and Des Moines. His supporters will gather caucus night at the Holiday Inn on Fleur Drive near the Des Moines International Airport.

Sanders held a campaign event in Cedar Falls last Sunday at the University of Northern Iowa West Gymnasium.

Rubio plans C.F. stop Sunday

CEDAR FALLS  Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio will return to the area Sunday.

Rubio, a United States senator from Florida, will hold a rally at noon Sunday at the University of Northern Iowa Maucker Union Ballroom. Doors open at 11:30 a.m.

The event is free and open to the public. People can RSVP for the event at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cedar-falls-rally-with-marco-rubio-tickets-21072274741.

Locati

on change for OMalley stop

WATERLOO  Democratic presidential candidate Martin OMalley will make a stop in Waterloo on Sunday.

OMalley, the former governor of Maryland, will hold a phone banking kick off with volunteers and supporters at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday at Volks Haus, 324 E. Fourth St., in Waterloo.

The event, previously scheduled at Jamesons Public House, is free and open to the public.

Parkersburg mayor backs Mike Huckabee

PARKERSBURG  Parkersburg Mayor Perry Bernard announced Thursday he is endorsing Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

Its time for our country to restore the United States and reject the divided states we have been moving towards, Bernard said in a statement. America needs Gov. Huckabees moral clarity, executive leadership and conviction in the White House.

Bernard continued that he shares the same values as Huckabee, and uses them to run the community of Parkersburg.

As president, Ill lead America with conviction, common-sense and moral clarity, and Im excited to have Mayor Perry Bernards support in our final push before the Iowa caucuses, Huckabee said in a statement.
WATERLOO | With presidential hopefuls fighting for every vote they can get, no voters are proving more elusive than the so-called millennial generation.

Millennials are difficult to pin down, even as campaigns work to microtarget every demographic.

Theyre often defined as anyone ages 18 to 30, sometimes as anyone born after 1980. They are independent, often liberal but are less likely to affiliate with a major political party.

They are politically active, but don't necessarily vote.

Their support can lead to success on caucus night. The most notably example is the 2008 caucus win by eventual Democratic President Barack Obama.

We have seen instances where younger voters do get excited about a particular candidate, said University of Iowa political science professor Tim Hagle. The problem, though, is that still, it takes a lot of work.

University of Northern Iowa political science department head Donna Hoffman said its a strategy that doesnt always pay off, pointing to 2004 Democratic contender Howard Dean.

He was the anti-Iraq War position in the Democratic caucuses and really wanted to reach out to younger voters, and they didnt turn out materializing for him, Hoffman said.

Dean ended up finishing third, where he was seen as a favorite in the lead-up to the caucuses.

Prove them wrong

The 2016 contenders are wooing millennials, with varying degrees of success.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has made no secret he needs the youth vote to beat to beat Hillary Clinton. His campaign launched the website "www.provethemwrongandcaucus.com" to urge young supporters to caucus Monday night.

Targeting young voters has paid off in terms of turnout at events. Sanders drew 1,250 to University of Northern Iowas West Gym on a recent Sunday night, and he regularly draws large numbers across the state.

He sort of tapped into that particular strain of voters, the younger voters for Democrats that are more interested in the progressive side of things, Hagle said. They see him as an authentic voice.

An authentic voice is one of the few commonalities among presidential hopefuls who excited younger people. But Hagle notes, The key to relying on them is being sufficiently well organized that you get them to turn out.

But Sanders is far from alone in his quest to attract millenials. Democratic contenders Clinton and Martin OMalley also have spent time on college campuses talking about issues that appeal to youths -- combating climate change, support for marriage equality, making college affordable and addressing economic concerns.

On the Republican side, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul have made the strongest appeal to young voters. Paul did a campus tour across Iowa, focusing on issues important like criminal justice reform and privacy.

Rubio makes the case he has shared their economic concerns, like living paycheck to paycheck and carrying large student loan debts.

But front-runners Ted Cruz and Donald Trump tend to lead in polls among Republican youths, though neither make particular pitches to millennials.

Trump taps into the concerns of those who are disaffected with politics as usual, and many millennials fit the bill. And when Cruz was asked about millennials at a stop in Oelwein, he said appealing to youths is critical.

On substance, what were doing to our kids and grandkids is immoral, but the second piece of it is style. You know, would it kill Republicans to crack a joke? Actually, I think some of them, it might, Cruz said, before explaining ways he has used social media to appeal to youth.

Practical problems

There is no silver bullet to draw out young people. More mobile and less partisan, they may not be registered to vote or inclined to join a political party. Plus, the time commitment involved with the caucuses can be difficult considering work or class schedules.

But theres an irony in the lack of participation. Millennials are tuned in and politically active.

We know they volunteer at pretty high rates, but theyre involved in those issue-specific things, and they dont always connect them then to politics, Hoffman said. Theyve grown up in an atmosphere in which politics has become backbiting and nasty and partisanship has grown.  They want to do things, but they dont necessarily see politics as the avenue to get things done.

Hoffman noted other practical problems with relying on young voters.

Concentrated on college campuses, young people could show up at the same handful of precincts. A candidate can win overwhelmingly at those sites and still post meager results statewide.

Sanders campaign is promoting a Go Home for Bernie message, urging millennials to caucus in their hometowns.

I would think logistically it would be very difficult to do that, Hagle said. But he noted one recent poll found young people support Sanders by about 2 to 1 over Clinton, suggesting he will perform well in "student precincts.

Moonshot

Hoffman said theres also a double-edged sword to young voters: Theyre more likely to tune out when the realities of governing sink in.

What we have had is people who look at politics, who hate it and drop out, and they dont become active, and if they do register, they register as no party. They think the politics doesnt matter, and thats not the kind of attitude thats going to bring about change, Hoffman said.

She cited the decreased turnout for Obama in 2012 as evidence. Young people turned out, but not in the record numbers of his historic victory in 2008.

Obama still has his highest approval ratings from young people, with 18- to 29-year-olds giving him 60 percent approval in the most recent Gallup poll. His overall approval is 48 percent.

Though Hagle acknowledges the challenges of keeping young people involved, he argues campaigns should make the effort.

Maybe they take a more realistic approach to this and they understand that a candidate cant go around promising the moon, because hes not going to be able to deliver. Moonshot not included, I guess, Hagle said.

But I suppose the short answer is that you shouldnt give up," he said. "... You want to continue to try to reach out to continue to energize voters."
Are your employees spending more time on their smartphones and less time working?

According to the Washington Post, around 10,000 baby boomers retire every day, and as businesses replace them they are encountering new attitudes about the use of personal mobile devices in the workplace. A Mobilron survey last summer showed 60 percent of workers 18-34 say if their boss prevented them from using a mobile device to take care of personal tasks, they would quit. These are the Millennials: born between 1975 and 1995, they have grown up with the Internet and 90 percent of them carry phones, mostly smartphones.

Talk to managers of younger workers and you will hear many complaints about their frequent texting, checking social media and inability to focus on work. At times that includes serving customers promptly. Without a solid cellphone policy in place, these habits create tension between managers and workers, damage a companys reputation and affect the bottom line as frustrated customers stop coming back after a bad experience.

Most of the phones in question are smartphones. Since smartphones have access to the Internet and numerous apps for social media, music and video, they can distract workers and destroy productivity. According to CareerBuilders 2014 survey of the top 10 distractions in the workplace, cellphones and texting came in at No. 1. The No. 10 complaint was listening to co-workers using a speaker phone. However, 24 percent of workers admitted they spend an hour a day on personal calls, texts and email. At the same time, 25 percent of companies said they prohibited personal calls and cellphones.

The problem will worsen as younger people enter the workplace. A recent report by CNNs Anderson Cooper revealed many of the young teens surveyed checked social media 100 times a day and some took up to 100 selfies a day. This translates into a lot of digital distraction.

Why is this happening? People are getting cellphones at younger ages  80 percent of teens between 12 and 17 have a phone, and half of those are smartphones. Many schools have relaxed bans on students using phones in the classroom. Teens and young adults have become accustomed to having using phones during the day. It has become an ingrained habit. Approximately one in four teens is online almost constantly via smartphones. Furthermore, 9 in 10 are texting and at least 3 in 10 are using special apps like Facebooks Messenger, Kik or Whatsapp.

What does this mean for employers? The need to be constantly connected requires employers do a thorough job of explaining the job description and expectations for behavior on the job. Otherwise, the potential for digital distraction and lost productivity is enormous.

Younger workers need training in time management. Employers must convey if you have a deadline, everything else gets shut off, nothing else matters. Workers must learn how to focus by disconnecting from email, the web and their phones.

So how do you manage millennials who feel entitled to use their personal phones at work? Do you ban all personal mobile devices? Or can workers use their phones on break and at lunch? I would encourage companies to let workers have phones with them as long as they are getting their jobs done  or establish a cellphone policy that stipulates when and where an employee can use personal phones. In addition, managers and supervisors also need to set a good example.

One caveat: A California court case recently mandated a company pay workers phone bills if the company asked workers to use their own phones to save the company money.
Brooklyn is a rare breed of film, a sweet, sincere romance, told intelligently and without irony. Perhaps they used to make films like this more often, or maybe its just so effective at rendering a different era that it seems like they did.

Adapted from Colm Toibins novel by screenwriter and novelist Nick Hornsby, it crafts a 1950s aura that feels gentle and inviting. At the core of this is Saoirse Ronan, the young Irish actress who, in an Oscar-nominated performance, radiates empathy and warmth.

Ronan has consistently impressed since hitting the scene in 2007s Atonement, but this proves that she has real star power, that mix of talent and charisma that makes you want to watch whatever shes in.

Starting in 1952, the film follows Eilis (Ronan), who, frustrated with a lack of opportunities in her small Irish town, leaves behind her single mother and older sister for the promise of prosperity in New York. After a harsh boat trip across the Atlantic, she finds herself stuck in a boarding house, achingly lonely and desperately homesick, occupying her time with department store work and accounting classes.

Then she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a nice Italian-American plumber, and in a near-instant her fortunes change. Hes kind and affectionate, with a big, welcoming family and upwardly mobile economic prospects. His pursuit of her is dogged but noble, so much so that its a relief to see what a decent man he is.

Then circumstances return her to Ireland. There she meets Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), another good man with his eye on Eilis heart, and is offered fine employment thanks to her bookkeeping skills.

Most contemporary romances lay on the sentiment like layers of concrete, and give their characters choices whose answers are somehow obvious to everyone but them. Not so in Brooklyn, which takes its time as Eilis builds a new life, falls in love, and confronts tragedy. Her relationships with her two suitors develop quietly and with understated niceness.

Eventually, when Eilis is presented with a dilemma, the right decision isnt clear, because there isnt a right one; just two potentially good lives. The film doesnt telegraph the result, instead writing a surprising suspense out of Eliis decision.

It all comes to an end thats perhaps too sudden, but is also bittersweet and fitting. Its a work as lovely as its star, the kind of movie that makes you miss a time you may not have even lived through.
WATERLOO  Forecasts call for a major winter storm next week, and early predictions suggest blizzard conditions may prevail across Iowa.

Much could change before the system arrives late Monday night or early Tuesday, but at the moment models indicate 50 mph winds may get to work with 6 or more inches of snow. A 40 percent of snow is forecasted after midnight, increasing to 70 percent during the day Tuesday and into the evening.

Heavy snow will be possible across much of Iowa, with strong gusty winds picking up Tuesday into Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Travel may become hazardous due to the possibility and combination of heavy snow, gusty winds and blowing snow.

If a storm does develop, it would be one of just a few of significance this winter  but the latest blizzard in a long line of whiteouts stretching across state history.

To rank as a blizzard, the weather service requires that a storm pack a sustained wind or frequent gusts to at least 35 mph with considerable falling or blowing snow and visibility of less than a quarter mile. The conditions also must persist for at least three hours.

Paul Waite, the state climatologist in 1970, credited a newspaper, the Estherville Vindicator, for first using the word blizzard in print a century earlier. The writer described a late-season storm March 14, 1870, that rolled in from the Dakotas.

The origin of the name is attributed to the early German settlers, who called the storms blitzartig  lightning-like  to describe the sudden fury of the storms, Waite wrote.

Waites article appeared in The Annals of Iowa, a publication for the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Loss of life is another unfortunate marker for blizzards. Twenty Iowans died during a storm Jan. 7-8, 1886, for instance.

More than 160 people in the Midwest perished Nov. 11, 1940. Many were duck hunters, who headed out in mild conditions with what proved inadequate clothing. The outdoorsmen were subsequently overcome when the wicked snowstorm hit and temperatures dropped nearly 60 degrees in some places.

The Armistice Day Blizzard, as it was later dubbed, changed how the U.S. Weather Bureau made predictions. The agency subsequently set up regional centers to provide better local forecasts.

The Waterloo Daily Courier on Feb. 7, 1936, bannered a headline: State Strangled in Storm  Is Worst Winter for Iowa in This Century, Weather Bureau Declares. A 65-mph wind drove snow into drifts 6 feet high and left Waterloo virtually isolated from the rest of the world.

 ... All highways out of Waterloo were blocked ... and the train service was at a standstill in the minus 18 degree weather, according to the Courier.

Waite published his article three years ahead of another memorable Iowa blizzard, notable for both its severity and its timing. April 8-10, 1973, delivered a perfect combination for trouble: heavy snow and winds whipping at 50 to 70 mph. Drifts 10 to 15 feet high were common across the state.

While Waterloo only got about 10 inches during the Blizzard of 73, Parkersburg wound up with 14, New Hampton picked up 15, Grundy Center collected 19 and Belle Plaine disappeared under 20.2 inches, according to Jeff Wilcox at the Iowa Weather Network.

A few days later, and with just half of Iowas counties reporting, state agriculture officials said the storm killed 76,200 cattle, 21,600 hogs, 6,000 sheep and lambs, and 200,000 turkeys  30,000 in Black Hawk County alone.

On the lighter side, the Blizzard of 73 also apparently led to a policy change at the University of Northern Iowa. The Des Moines Register reported April 11, 1973, students used the storm as an excuse for an early spring fling when officials canceled classes.

The results: A round of day-long beer parties in the dorm, lots of noise, at least two injuries and finally, an order that kegs of beer no longer will be allowed in the dormitories, according to the newspaper.
WATERLOO  Mayor Quentin Hart and Iowa state Rep. Deborah Berry, D-Waterloo, will receive awards from an organization, Ill Make Me a World in Iowa, at its Embracing Excellence Gala on Friday evening in Des Moines.

Hart is the newly elected mayor and former Waterloo City Council member, mayor pro tem and former city Planning, Programming and Zoning Commission member and chairman. He will receive a lifetime achievement award from the organization.

Berry is in her seventh term in the Iowa House and also a former Waterloo council member. She will receive an Outstanding Leading Organization/Group award.

The gala precedes the host organizations annual Iowas African-American Festival from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday at Hy-Vee Hall in the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines.

Hart is Waterloos first African-American mayor. Berry was inducted into the Iowa African American Hall of Fame in 2014 for community service.
Cedar Falls BPW

CEDAR FALLS  The Cedar Falls Business and Professional Womens Organization is accepting applications for five scholarships to students who live in the Cedar Valley and plan on attending, or are attending, an area college.

Two $1,000 scholarships will be given by the Marie Robinson Memorial Fund to non-traditional undergraduate students and three $500 scholarships will be given by CF BPW to non-traditional undergraduate or graduate students. These grants will be given on the basis of financial need and merit.

All applications are available at the financial aid offices at the University of Northern Iowa and Kaplan University, Cedar Falls; Wartburg College, Waverly; Allen College, Hawkeye Community College and Upper Iowa University- Waterloo Center in Waterloo.

Deadline is April 15. Send completed applications to Harriet Clabough, 715 W. 29th St., Cedar Falls 50613-5020 For more information, call 277-3780 after 5 p.m.

Give and Grow

CEDAR FALLS  High school seniors may now apply for the University of Iowa Community Credit Union Give and Grow Scholarship Program.

The scholarship program emphasizes the importance of giving back to the community through volunteer hours and contributions to nonprofit organizations. UICCU will award up to three $1,000 nonrenewable college scholarships to UICCU members. In addition to each scholarship awarded, UICCU will donate $1,000 to charity.

High school seniors can apply at www.uiccugiveandgrow.com. Application deadline is March 11. For more information, call Jean Knepper at 341-2105 or email jknepper@uiccu.org.

Fairbank Womens Club

FAIRBANK  The Fairbank Womens Club will be offering a $200 scholarship to a 2016 Wapsie Valley High School graduate.

Students planning to study at an accredited institution may submit a letter of application, including high school and community activities, goals for education and the name of the college they plan to attend. The letter, high school transcript and a letter of recommendation should be sent to Karen Tiedt, 24638 40th St., Fairbank 50629, by Feb. 26.

This is the 33rd year a scholarship will be awarded by the club; its made possible through fundraising projects.

The Iowa Federation of Womens Clubs is offering additional scholarships. Deadline to apply is March 1.

For more information, call the guidance office of Wapsie Valley High School, 638-6711.
The American leadership class has abandoned the Americans it purported to lead, none more disgracefully than the veterans of their wars of the past 50 years, first those of Vietnam, then those all-volunteer forces of todays undeclared wars.

Those wars and greed accompanying them have made Americans less secure than at any time in our history, with generations of veterans and their families being wasted. They have become collateral damage in the quest of our leaders to dominate the world for their personal benefit.

For more than 50 years we drafted our future veterans; alternatively we have induced them to service in an all-volunteer force. In neither system has our country honored the sacrifice and experience of those who lived and continue to live undeclared war in our name. The Vietnam veteran was abandoned while still in uniform; the all-volunteer veteran was abandoned before he or she put the uniform on.

We now face a reckoning. Veterans and their families are suffering. No amount of charity or public relations can relieve the massive pressures on our veterans. And no national election in our country can be said to be consistent with the meaning of American democracy that does not account for the immediate and future needs of those who fought to preserve it.

Our first task as a nation is to acknowledge and accept the obligation to support the physical and mental rehabilitation of our veterans as long as they live. This is not an unknown cost of war. We have simply refused to plan for it or to pay for it, beginning with the veterans of Vietnam. We have known since World War I, reinforced in every war since, that wars trauma undermines the mental health of those who serve.

We must invest in the personnel and medical infrastructure to remove the stigma of mental rehabilitation and deliver it for all veterans and their families. Fulfilling this obligation to them will cost billions, but the cost will be redeemed by the unleashed capacity of our veterans to reconstruct the America they fought for piece by piece, starting with their cities and counties and states.

Much of what they fought for surrounded them and their families in a military unlike any of our past. Our all-volunteer military was built to be a community. Order, structure, a sense of transcendent purpose and a commitment to mutual support: these were the features of community, however imperfectly executed, that fortified our service members and their families as all other Americans went about their daily lives unbothered by 15 years of war.

A sense of community sustained our soldiers as they served our leaders interests. Our veterans and their families rightfully expect our leaders to sustain a service community for them, in or out of uniform. Many veterans sense the need for community; virtually all are reluctant to ask.

Asking for community seems un-warrior-like and, equally to be avoided, selfish. But imagining, seeking and realizing the American community is what our long experiment in democracy is all about. It is what our veterans fought for and what most Americans of goodwill and intelligence would support their attaining, beginning in our local communities.

It is time for our veterans, from Vietnam to Afghanistan/Iraq, to organize and to act with that unity and discipline, honed in the remembrance of the comrades they buried and with the confidence to create a leadership class worthy of a revived American community that remembers those comrades and their families sacrifice.
African-American Read-In planned

CEDAR FALLS  The 10th annual African-American Read-In will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday in Maucker Union on the University of Northern Iowa campus.

There will be two featured guests at the event: Angela Johnson and Nothando Zulu.

Johnson is an award-winning American childrens poetry book author. She began her writing career in 1989 with the publication of Tell Me a Story, Mama, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award in 1991.

Zulu has been a master storyteller for more than 30 years. She is the founder of the Black Storytellers Alliance of Minnesota and has also won numerous awards.

More than 500 first-grade students will participate in the read-in. TC and TK will be available to have their photo taken with students.

Liberty Park group will meet Tuesday

WATERLOO  The Liberty Park Neighborhood Association will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Unity Presbyterian Church, 1149 Hammond Ave.

Guest for the month will be Sara Nefzger with the Grout Museum District. She will give a presentation on the history of the neighborhood, along with a question-and-answer time regarding the Grout.

Food aid hotline is now available

DES MOINES  The Iowa Food Bank Association, affiliated with the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo, recently established the Iowa Food Bank Association hotline.

Those asking about food assistance application benefits can talk to a specialist who can provide answers about eligibility and help in completing an application.

The Iowa Food Bank Association hotline, (855) 944-3663, is staffed from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday with additional assistance provided after hours on high-volume call days.

The initiative is part of the Iowa Food Bank Association Outreach program and is made possible through funding from the Wal-Mart Foundation, Feeding America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture through a partnership with the Iowa Department of Human Services.
WATERLOO  The members of Crystal Cathedral of Faith Southern Baptist Church, 3040 Hammond Ave., will celebrate the 12th anniversary of their pastor, the Rev. Willie D. Campbell, from Feb. 3 through 7.

Guests include the Rev. Morris Anderson of New Hope Baptist Church on Feb. 3, the Rev. Percy Thomas of Christian Fellowship Church on Feb. 4 and the Rev. Thomas Flint of Payne AME Church on Feb. 5; there will be services at 7 p.m. nightly.

At 6 p.m. Feb. 6, there will be a musical featuring soloists and groups in the community. A special service with the Rev. Marshondus Robinson of Corinthian Baptist Church is planned for 4 p.m. Feb. 7.

Call Chantel Boldon at 429-9854.

WATERLOO  Union Missionary Baptist Churchs Mission Ministry will have a program at 4 p.m. Sunday at 209 Jackson St.

Mission president Joyce Wilder will speak on The Woman with the Issue of Blood.

Call 235-1213. The Rev. Marvin Jenkins is pastor.

WATERLOO  The area Church Women United will meet for the first time this year at 9:30 a.m. Feb. 5

The forum meeting will feature speaker will be Grace Kole from the Salvation Army. New churches and members are always welcome.

Discussion will include the March 4 World Day of Prayer celebration as well as other upcoming events.

Call Cleo Farris at 234-0519 with any questions.

WATERLOO  Waterloo First United Methodist Church, 614 Randolph St., will present Jazz Sunday at 9:30 a.m. Feb. 7, featuring Bill Shepherd and the Red Hots Dixieland Jazz Band

The event also includes a pancake and sausage breakfast served at 10:30 a.m. offering all-you-can-eat pancakes, sausage and beverage. Suggested cost is a $5 freewill offering for anyone over the age of 12.

Proceeds will go toward 2016 vacation Bible school.

CEDAR FALLS  Riverview Womens Ministry will host a Bible study of the Covenant facilitated by Jane Giller, beginning March 8.

This is an eight-week Kay Arthur study. The study group meets Tuesdays from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., beginning March 8 in the conference room at Riverview Conference Center, 439 N. Division St.

Each session will include an hour of discussion and an hour of viewing the video.

There is no cost to attend and participate. The workbook, Covenant, must be ordered in advance from Wileys Christian Book Store by Feb. 15; cost is $17.99. Email riverviewwomensministry@gmail.com, call 268-0787 or go to riverviewministries.com.
Adrien Brody seems to show up wherever and whenever he pleases, sometimes in supporting roles and others that are meatier. Meaty enough to blag him an Oscar. Although he's never since reached those dizzying heights of 2002, he is more often than not a continuously-satisfying screen presence. Considering his caliber as a character actor, there's not much to suggest why he's been mostly slumming it the past few years; embracing everything from swing-and-a-miss foreign films, to middle-of-the-road indie horrors, to 'meh' television adaptations (that's you, Houdini). That said, he has a fairly consistent batting average, wherein for every one of those unwise straight-to-DVD choice he makes, an old director friend will throw him a small supporting role where he clearly just gets to show up and have fun. It's a given at this point that Wes Anderson will drop him a text every time he's gearing up for a new film. With his new film Backtrack about to be released - an Australian film about a psychotherapist who realises his patients are all ghosts (no, it's not a comedy) - it's an apt time to measure the good against the bad, and for you to decide whether Mr. Brody should perhaps be sentenced to some sort of movie jail or not.
Despite a number of leaks from the set in the months leading up to its release, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is without a doubt one of the most secretive movies in recent memory. However, now that it's finally out, the secrets which Disney fought so hard to protect are being freely discussed by everyone from J.J. Abrams to the incredible talents who worked behind the scenes. Even Episode VIII and IX directors Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow have weighed in and dropped some intriguing hints about how The Force Awakens has had an impact on their plans, while various other reports both from the official Star Wars website and those with access to Hollywood insiders have landed some scoops which shed light on the things which were meant to be kept under wraps even after the move's release! So, while both the leaked screenplay and various tie-in books may have spilled the beans on The Force Awakens since it reached the big screen on December 18th, those details arguably pale in comparison to everything else that's been unearthed in recent weeks. These are the eight biggest and most revealing examples of what we've now discovered about this epic return to a Galaxy Far, Far Away...
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If youre looking to try out an online casino, there are several things that will help you make a decision. Heres what you should look for when choosing an online casino

 Are they regulated? A lot of the larger ones have licenses issued by the authorities in their respective regions, so its worth checking this first.

 Do they offer games from different software providers? Some casinos just use one software provider and limit your selection. This is fine if you like playing those types of games but you may want to check other casinos as well.

 What does their payout percentage look like? The payout rate refers to how much money you can expect to win after every bet. A high payout rate means youll be able to play more often without having to worry about losing all your money. Its also important to know the minimum and maximum bets allowed on each game. If youre going to play roulette, for example, then you probably dont want a casino with a minimum bet of less than $2.50 or even lower than that.

The players used to play the game slot online in the land based casinos in the past time. But now with time after the invention of the online casinos players play the game slot online. Online platform provide the players with the convenience in playing and even better winning. Even after keeping a good percentage of the profits, they distribute good funds to players.

 How many games do they offer? There are lots of different types of games to choose from. Roulette, blackjack and poker are some of the most popular options, but you might find slots, video pokers, video bingo and others as well. You can usually filter these games down to only show the ones that interest you best, so make sure that your list isnt too long!

 Is there a bonus offer? Many online casinos offer free bonuses as part of their welcome package  which includes new players being awarded 100% up to $10 instantly, for example. These offers are great but not everyone has access to them all the time (and some require you to deposit real money). If youd prefer to avoid paying a fee, some casinos offer no-deposit bonuses where you can get a certain amount of funds before you need to put any actual money into the account. These are usually offered alongside welcome bonuses, so make sure you read both parts of the terms and conditions carefully before signing up.

 Does it offer live dealer games? Live dealers are much preferred by many over regular virtual versions, so it pays to check this option out too. Most online casinos now offer live dealer games in addition to their regular offerings, allowing you to experience the thrill of the real thing without needing to leave home.

Now that youve got an idea of what to look for when choosing an online casino, heres some tips for making the right choice

It really comes down to personal preference. No two people are exactly alike, so everyone has an opinion on what they like and dislike about each casino. That said, here are some things to consider in order to narrow down your choices

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 Security. Make sure the casino uses SSL encryption to secure its transactions, meaning that your private data stays safe during transactions. Other than that, look for security seals on the site itself and verify that theyre legitimate. You can also check out the casinos privacy policy to see how they handle confidential information.

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Betway:

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Coral Casino:

Coral Casino is operated by the same company that runs the famous Caribbean casino, Grand Reef. Like many casinos, Coral Casino offers a wide variety of games, including plenty of video slots and table games. New players can benefit from a huge 100% match bonus up to 1000, while existing customers enjoy 25% cash back on deposits made within 48 hours of opening an account.

Ladbrokes Casino:

Ladbrokes Casino is owned by the same company as the famous bookmaker that started life in 1921. With more than 500 games from leading software providers such as Amaya, NetEnt and Microgaming, you wont be disappointed by the quality of the games here. New players get a 200% match bonus up to 500, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

Paddy Power Casino:

Paddy Power is another Irish-owned casino that operates throughout Europe. Not only does Paddy Power Casino offer traditional casino games like blackjack, roulette and slots, but it also provides a full range of sports betting, including football, tennis, boxing and horse racing. New players can receive a massive 100% match bonus up to 200, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

William Hill Casino:

William Hill Casino is one of the biggest names in the industry, operating in Europe, Asia and North America. Founded in 1984, this online casino has more than 400 games to choose from, including slots and table games, with a wide array of software providers like WagerLogic, Big Time Gaming and Rival.

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The military appears to be on track to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the service. While this is a nonissue for some members of the...
Jan 29, 2016 | By Kira

In October 2015, French 3D printing company Qualup SAS, manufacturer of the SpiderBot line of delta 3D printers, signed an agreement with global office and school supply company Maped to design and create a next-generation, professional-grade 3D printer that would feature a heated print bed and be capable of 3D printing ABS thermoplastic filaments.

After a few months of successful development alongside Mapeds R&D team, Qualups upgraded 3D printer is complete and on track to be mass-produced and marketed as early as mid-2016. 3Ders.org spoke with Qualup co-founder Philippe Boichut to get the specs and story behind this new, as-of-yet unnamed, professional Delta 3D printer.

Though the new 3D printer retains a similar structure to the SpiderBots existing stainless steel and aluminium structure, the most significant modification is the 3D printers ability to reach temperatures up to 90C, and thus continuously extrude ABS filaments rather than just PLA. Though both are commonly used 3D printing thermoplastics, ABS strength, flexibility, machinability and higher temperature resistance have made it a much-preferred material for mechanical and industrial engineers, including those at Maped.

In order to achieve this ABS 3D printing capability, Qualup had to completely redesign several key features from the original SpiderBot 3D printer. The main difference is that the heated chamber can reach 90C, whereas the original SpiderBot could only get to 55/60C, explained Boichut. Those 35 degrees make a huge difference, as it frees the 3D printer of mechanical stressed that could cause warping or cracking of the 3D printed piecesa well-known phenomena for those who print in ABS. The upgraded Qualup 3D printer also offers a 3D printing diameter of 250 x 200mm within the heated chamber, compared to the 180 x 200mm volume of the previous model.

The 35 temperature difference, however, also required top-to-bottom redesigns of several of the 3D printers other key features. These include an dual extrusion 3D print head with forced air cooling; specially-designed heat-resistant Neodymium magnets (developed in collaboration with Maped); a double-walled heated chamber; as well as a mechanical rotary actuator. The servomotor used in the SpiderBot DualHead stops working after 75C, so we had to find a simple mechanical solution that could work at higher temperatures, said Boichut. Everything in the new system is mechanical and made with heat-resistant components, so there is no risk of overheating.





Though Qualups new industrial 3D printer was designed specifically for Maped, and the company was thus initially unsure if they would open it up to the wider 3D printing market, Qualup has since decided to mass produce it and commercialize the 3D printer for professional customers after receiving multiple requests from various companies.

Our clients are demanding industrial manufacturers who want to work with proven materials to create functional 3D prints, said Boichut. The R&D team at Maped in particular is familiar with all aspects of 3D printing, as they have been using industrial 3D printers for years.

Though the price hasnt been officially set as of yet, Qualup expects that it will cost roughly three times as much as the SpiderBot v2.2 Pro Kit (the V2.2 Pro full kit retails for 2364 on their website). They also havent chosen an official name, however Boichut has his team have internally been referring to it as the ABSolute. The company will also be presenting the 3D printing machine at RapidPro 2016, taking place in the Netherlands between March 1-3.

The detailed specs of the upcoming Qualup professional ABS 3D printer are available below and in full on the SpiderBot blog:

Stainless Steel and Aluminium Structure

Build Volume: 250mm diameter x 200mm height.

Resolution: Z = 1.4m, 4.7m ~ XY.

Printing material : ABS, HIPS (PLA and other printables material possible)

Filament dia: 1.75mm

Travel speed > 300mm / sec.

Tilting Dual Head with mechanical operation

Cooled filament feed tube

Dual Extrusion head

Simplified maintenance : Interchangeable print heads in less than 10 minutes

2 Dual-Drive Extruders with all-metal gears and guides

Heated and regulated Printing Chamber (adjustable between 30 and 90C).

Posted in 3D Printer

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Jan 29, 2016 | By Alec

Biomedical 3D printing solutions, especially 3D bioprinted implantable human tissue, are still very much in the laboratory phase, but a team of researchers from the University of Marylands Fisher Lab are already looking at how to save lives with it. They have set their sights on congenital heart disease (CHD), the most common type of birth defect in the world that affects nearly one percent of newborns, and are pioneering new custom-made 3D bioprinted grafts to correct these defects.

While perhaps not the most deadly of all birth defects, CHD is a particularly difficult one to combat. Affecting up to 40,000 newborn babies annually in the US alone, there are some procedures that can give these babies longer and healthier lives, but theyre not universally applicable. Especially problematic is the fact that CHD results in very specific defects that differ per person due to anatomical differences. Grafts can be implanted into the heart, but these need to perfectly adapted to suit the patient in question  which isnt always possible. Current graft implants tend to suffer from progressive obstruction, infection, lack of growth potential, thromboembolitic complications, calcication and other negative long-term effects. In fact, graft failure rates are in the 70 to 100 percent range when looking at patients 10 15 years later.

Fortunately, 3D bioprinting advances offer an alternative through the development of patient-specific vascular grafts that are made from biodegradable materials. And the University of Maryland just happens to have some experts in this area at their department, namely Robert E. Fischell Professor and Chair John Fisher and members of his Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Laboratory. They have been working on developing a production platform for these biodegradable scaffolds, and have just published a paper on their progress in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Main authors for the paper were PhD student Anthony Melchiorri, student Chelsea Kraynak and undergraduate Lucas Kimerer.

As they explain, 3D printing was immediately recognized for its potential to change approaches to medical challenges, though tissue engineering remains very complex. Though, as weve seen already, functional blood vessels can be 3D printed, those types of vessels are only suitable for large organs and other tissues, and not the heart. Whats more, CHD patients are in need of grafts with adequate mechanical strength immediately after fabrication.

They therefore set out to develop functional and fully 3D printed non-cellular vascular grafts that can be demonstrated in vivo. Such a platform may eventually enable the production of more complex structures customized for experimental studies or clinical applications by incorporating customized macroscale geometrylike vessel bifurcations and curveswith controlled microscale architecture-like porosity and surface roughness, they say.

In particular, they used a biocompatible material called PPF, which is short for poly propylene fumarate. This is a biodegrdable polyester that contains a carbon-carbon double bond along its backbone, which enables the material to establish links between polymer chains  characteristics that make it ideal for 3D printed and functional tissue scaffolding. To make it 3D printable, it was mixed with DEF (at a weight ratio of 5:4).

To actually 3D print it, the team relied on DLP stereolithography, a resin 3D printing technique that 3D prints in a vertical movement at room temperature. Through SolidWorks CAD designs based on MRI or CT imaging data, they actually managed to 3D print custom vascular grafts with this technique. 3D printing took place with an EnvisionTEC Perfactory P4 with Enhanced Resolution Module, with curing happening at a resolution of individual 50 m layers of resin at For mechanical characterization of the printed material, dogbone films were printed with thickness of 0.30 mm, an effective length of 7.0 mm, and a width of 2.0 mm, they add.

These PPF scaffolds were found to adhere well to cell structures, and the team demonstrated their efficacy in the venous systems in the hearts of mice. This proved that by resorting to 3D printing for developing these vascular grafts, they can significantly reduce the steps necessary for the construction of scaffolding. Whats more, they saw that these PPF grafts exhibited the same mechanical properties of native vessels used in grafting procedures. They therefore believe that both 3D printing and this PPF material can greatly aid the development of customized vascular scaffolding, which can in turn greatly help people suffering from CHD.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Jan 29, 2016 | By Alec

It looks like the US Air Force is betting it all on 3D printing. Just like numerous other military branches from various nations, the US Air Force have been looking into 3D printing solutions to lower costs and reduce dependency on foreign-made (often Russian) parts, but have been doing so at a large scale. Just earlier this month, multi-million contracts for 3D printed rocket engine development were already awarded to SpaceX. But as part of a Booster Propulsion Technology Maturation Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), the Air Force has further invested millions in a number of companies for advancement of engine technology through 3D printing.

If youre wondering why such investments are necessary, the huge space launch vehicle pictured below perfectly illustrates the issue. This is a United Launch Alliance Atlas V at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, which uses the RD-180 propulsion system  made in Russia. Through a total of 10 awards under this BAA Awards program, the US Air Force is supporting technological developments that not only optimize propulsion systems, but also make them less dependent on foreign-made systems and reduce risks for the domestic industry.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V space launch vehicle, which uses the Russian made RD-180 propulsion system awaits to be stacked at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

This program, of which the final awards were announced on 27 January, are all focused on the areas of material manufacturing and development, and it is logical that 3D printing obviously features heavily among the results. In total, $34.6 million has been divided over ten awards since Nov. 4. As previously reported in early January, Aerojet Rocketdyne was awarded $6 million to develop a new 3D printed engine qualification process under the BAA program.

So who else has been tapped? The first were researchers from Johns Hopkins University, who were awarded $545,000 for Additively Manufactured Liquid Rocket Engine Cooling Channels, focusing on the evaluation of 3D printed rocket engine cooling channels and on improving performances of next-gen thrust chambers. John Hopkins University was also awarded a further $935,000 for Performance Sensitivity of Rocket Engine Cooling Channels, for addressing industry knowledge gaps in propellant characteristics with an eye on enabling LNG/Methane booster engine development. Moog Inc was also awarded $728,000 for the program Non-Destructive Evaluation, Standards, and Testing, which focuses on developing 3D printing solutions for propellant control valves, which are used in a wide range of engine systems.

Northrop Grumman was also tapped by the Air Force, and given $5.47 million to improve technological readiness of an 3D printed LOX/Methane booster engine TPA, which can be inserted into rocket propulsion systems. This award was given for the Turbopump Assembly Additive Manufacturing, while Northrop Grunmman just learned that they were awarded a further $7.03 million for Duct-cooled, Carbon Silicon Carbide (C/SiC) Thrust Chamber Technology. This program will focus on demonstrating a new nozzle cooling approach that reduces production costs for combustion chambers. And just a few days ago, Boeing received one award of $6.19 million for the development of 3D printed complex, thick walled engine components under Additively Manufactured High Pressure Engine Dome.

But of course not all the BAA projects were focused on 3D printing; Tanner Research Inc. received $902,000 to develop an ignition system that can simplify detection of defective solid rocket motors, while Orbital ATK was awarded $3.13 million for improving, and reducing the weight of, solid rocket. And at the same time as Boeing, Arctic Slope Technical Services was awarded $3.69 million for the development of a preburner with a continuous dilution technique that enhances system reliability while reducing costs.

However, its obvious that 3D printing is clearly on the agenda over at the US Air Force, which hopes that these investments will reduce risks, optimize production and reduce the dependency on foreign-made systems. Many programs focus on risk reduction efforts too late to make a difference. By leading off this program with these awards, we have given industry tools to help ready themselves for developing launch systems, including the associated propulsion systems, that we will rely on to launch the nation's satellites in the future, said Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, the Air Force's Program Executive Officer for Space. This is essential in order to solidify U.S. assured access to space, transition the EELV program away from strategic foreign reliance, and support the U.S. launch industry's commercial viability in the global market.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Alexander McCall Smith at The New Statesman:

When the University of St Andrews gave Henning Mankell an honorary doctorate in 2008, it announced that the degree was awarded not only for his contribution to literature but also for the practical exercise of conscience. That is a formal way of saying for being a good man, which is what Mankell was. Now, in Quicksand, published in English less than four months after his death, the Swedish novelist gives us an insight into how he reacted to his diagnosis of cancer and reflected on his mortality. The result is an extraordinarily moving book that tells us a great deal about Mankells life and, incidentally, a lot about our lives, too.

Mankell is best known for his crime novels. The Wallander series stands high in the pantheon of Nordic noir, that flowering of fiction that has dominated the recent detective novel. But his writing was not the only focus of his public life. Mankell was also a political activist whose position on issues such as the Palestinian question was widely reported (in 2010, he was in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and was deported back to Sweden when the Israel Defence Forces boarded the boats).

He did not mince his words and attracted enthusiastic support, as well as a measure of criticism. In sub-Saharan Africa, with which he had a long and profound association, he put his money to good use. Not only did he endow an orphanage but he gave considerable sums to support drama and literature in countries where funding of the arts is not a high priority. He established and managed an important theatre in Mozambique. He helped people in numerous ways. He was the opposite of the preachy, distant critic. He got his hands dirty.

more here.
Charles M. Schultz at Art in America:

It is ironic yet unsurprising that politicians in both China and the U.S. have censored Zhang Hongtus paintings. Ironic because there are not many artists more dedicated to merging the cultural traditions of the East and the West, and unsurprising because Zhangs work often wryly undermines authority.

Zhang, who has lived in New York since the early 1980s, is primarily a painter, though he also makes sculptures and installations, and has even dabbled in fashion, creating Mao-inflected designs for Vivienne Tam. This retrospective, guest-curated by Luchia Meihua Lee, is the first major survey of Zhangs work in the U.S. It spans more than five decades, stretching back to the watercolor paintings and charcoal studies he made in the 60s as a student at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing and extends to work made in 2015. The almost 100 pieces on view are grouped thematically, highlighting the conceptual issues in the artists oeuvre rather than its chronological development.

Several large works, all jesting critiques of Chinas historically patriarchal culture, occupy the museums atrium. In a monumental 2015 photomural, the artist has added arched gateways along the Great Wall of China, transforming a classic symbol of exclusion into one of openness. Nearby, The Big Red Door (2015, after two previous versions, 1992 and 2002) re-creates a portal to the Forbidden City. Zhang has replaced the real doors rows of huge hand-hewn nails with metal phalluses, most of them hanging limp. These pieces are a suitable entry point to Zhangs oeuvre, which can be jocose even when dealing with severe subject matter.

more here.


Quarterly Activities Report

Sydney, Jan 29, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Goldphyre Resources Ltd ( ASX:GPH ) announce the Quarterly Activities Report for the period ending December 31, 2015.



HIGHLIGHTS



Lake Wells Potash Project



- Sulphate of potash (SOP) Project area tripled in size through agreement with Mark Creasy controlled Lake Wells Exploration Pty Ltd. Additional 1,000km2 of ground added



- Seismic survey across Goldphyre's 100 percent-owned tenements defines extensive, deep palaeovalley. The palaeovalley hosts the potash



- Survey shows the palaeovalley trends west into neighbouring tenements held by Lake Wells Exploration Pty Ltd: Agreement gives Goldphyre the potash rights on these tenements



- Further seismic survey conducted across expanded Project area with results pending



- Goldphyre awarded $108,000 grant under the WA Government's Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) for upcoming diamond drilling program



UPCOMING ACTIVITY



- Results from further seismic survey completed across expanded project area imminent



- RC drilling program to commence Q1 2016 to test the sand profile in the deepest sections of the palaeovalley



- Co-funded EIS drilling planned to commence Q1/Q2 2016



- Exploration Target for release Q1 2016 leading to a maiden resource estimate in H1 2016

LAKE WELLS POTASH PROJECT



Goldphyre Resources' 100 percent-owned Lake Wells Potash Project is a brine-hosted sulphate of potash (SOP) project located in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia (Figure 1 in link below). Goldphyre aims to supply the Australian domestic demand for SOP.



Australia currently imports 100 percent of all potash used, estimated at 500,000 - 600,000 tonnes per annum.



Goldphyre Triples Project Area



In December 2015 the Company announced that it had entered into a Sale & Split Commodity Agreement with a company controlled by successful WA prospector Mark Creasy. The agreement grants Goldphyre the rights to all potash minerals on two tenements adjoining its existing Lake Wells Potash Project tenure, effectively tripling the Project area (Figure 2 in link below). Within 6 months of completing the transaction, Goldphyre will in turn issue to Mr Creasy's entity Yandal Investments Pty Ltd shares equalling 19.9 percent of its issued ordinary share capital at that time and a total of 6.8m options with exercise prices of 10 and 15 cents.



Goldphyre is in the fortunate and unique position of having established infrastructure to hand adjacent to and within the expanded project area, with effectively no restrictions on access to the brine hosting palaeovalley.



Highly Successful Seismic Survey Conducted



Goldphyre completed a seismic survey across its Lake Wells Potash Project tenure in November 2015. The survey consisted of 120 data stations with data recorded using Tromino 3G units.



The seismic survey was aimed at mapping the depth of the transported cover with the aid of existing historic drill coverage and if possible, highlighting the thalweg, or basal section of the palaeovalley. The Company aimed to vector in on the deepest section of palaeovalley in order to assist deep drill targeting for potash brine. This has been achieved.



The survey data was very good quality and with calibration against existing drill holes with known depths to basement has successfully delineated an approximately east-west trending palaeovalley on five survey section lines (Figure 3 in link below).



The section line spacing was approximately 1,200m with station centres at 100m-200m. The peak H/V (Horizontal/Vertical) frequencies show an excellent correlation coefficient and also show very uniform shear wave velocity in the palaeovalley fill.



The modelling shows that depths of approximately 150m-170m for the base of the palaeochannel are likely. Several aircore (AC) holes completed by Goldphyre in the July 2015 drill program reached depths of 141m (the extent of the drilling rig's depth capacity) and terminated in transported sediments.



The generated data and imaging (Figures 4 & 5 in link below) permits the clear targeting of drill holes into the deepest parts of the palaeovalley, allowing Goldphyre to assess the characteristics of the sand layers traditionally found in the bottom strata of the palaeovalley sediments. This coarse, unconsolidated material often has a high permeability and porosity, which facilitates drainage of the overlying hydrogeological units.



Follow-Up Seismic Survey Currently Underway



Following the highly successful initial seismic survey conducted on the 100 percent owned Lake Wells Potash Project tenure, the Company conducted an identical survey across the tenure rights acquired through the Sale & Split Commodity Agreement (Figure 6 in link below).



Data from over 200 stations along 6 lines traversing the most western project tenement was generated using Tromino 3G units. This data is currently being processed, and the Company expects to make an announcement regarding this work in February



Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) Grant



During the quarter, Goldphyre was awarded a $108,000 grant by the WA Government to co-fund exploration drilling at the Lake Wells Potash Project. The funding, which will be provided under the Exploration Incentive Scheme administered by the Department of Mines and Petroleum, will be put towards the core drilling program planned as part of Goldphyre's strategy to establish a maiden potash Resource at Lake Wells by mid-2016.



Next Steps



On completion of the follow-up seismic work, the Company will be able to target accurately deeper drilling across the Lake Wells Potash Project. The aim of the next round of work will be to determine the presence and extent of the bottom of channel sand layer at several points along the +20km length of palaeovalley already modelled.



The presence of sand at the bottom of the palaeovalley is important to the future success of the project because it is often highly porous with good permeability. Material that is porous and permeable can allow the free abstraction of water, which in turn determines potential flow rates for pumping of the brines to the surface.



The data generated through that drilling will go to the estimation of a maiden inferred potash resource, which the Company aims to release in Q2 this year.



Goldphyre is aiming to release an Exploration Target for the Lake Wells Potash Project in Q1 2016.



To view all tables and figures, please visit:

http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/ASX-GPH-750515.pdf





About Australian Potash Ltd





Australian Potash Limited (ASX:APC) is an ASX-listed Sulphate of Potash (SOP) developer. The Company holds a 100% interest in the Lake Wells Potash Project located approximately 500kms northeast of Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields.

Following the release of a Scoping Study in 2017, APC has been conducting a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) into the development of the Lake Wells Potash Project. The Company is aiming to release the findings of the DFS in H2 2019.

The Lake Wells Potash Project is a palaeochannel brine hosted sulphate of potash project. Palaeochannel bore fields supply large volumes of brine to many existing mining operations throughout Western Australia, and this technique is a well understood and proven method for extracting brine. APC will use this technically low-risk and commonly used brine extraction model to further develop a bore-field into the palaeochannel hosting the Lake Wells SOP resource.

A Scoping Study on the Lake Wells Potash Project was completed and released on 23 March 2017. The Scoping Study exceeded expectations and confirmed that the Project's economic and technical aspects are all exceptionally strong, and highlights APC's potential to become a significant long-life, low capital and high margin sulphate of potash (SOP) producer.


December Quarterly Activities and Cashflow Report

Melbourne, Jan 29, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Syrah Resources Ltd ( ASX:SYR ) announce the December Quarterly Activities and Cashflow Report.



Highlights:



Balama Project Construction Progress:



- Development of the Balama Project remains on schedule and budget, with engineering and procurement activities significantly progressed



- Commenced pre-stripping of the Balama West orebody



- All principal mechanical equipment has been purchased and is in various stages of manufacture



- Bulk earth works have been completed at the process plant site and access road construction is nearly complete



- Power station contract has been awarded



- Process plant concrete works scheduled to commence in February 2016



Marketing Agreements Progress:



- 10 year Statement of Sales Intent (SSI) signed with one of the world's largest refractory producers for up to 15,000 tonnes per annum (tpa)



- 20 year Technology Licensing Agreement finalised with Morgan Hairong AM&T Co., Ltd (Morgan Hairong) which grants Syrah the exclusive right to use Morgan Hairong's proprietary spherical graphite coating technology globally (excluding China)



- 3 year Product Sales Agreement signed with Morgan Hairong for Syrah to supply 2,000 tpa of uncoated spherical graphite



- 3 year Marketing Agreement signed with Morgan Hairong for Syrah to supply 5,000 tpa of uncoated spherical graphite and 2,000 tpa of coated spherical graphite



- 5 year SSI signed with Hiller Carbon for 25,000 tpa and up to 35,000 tpa of Balama recarburiser to be purchased and resold exclusively in the United States, Canada and Mexico



BALAMA GRAPHITE PROJECT (100%)



Development activities



The Balama Project remains on track to commence commissioning of the processing plant in late 2016 and production ramp up in Q1 2017. Engineering and procurement activities are significantly progressed and are currently on schedule and within budget. Key activities that have been completed and currently underway include:



- Commenced pre-stripping of the Balama West orebody



- Electrical equipment has been tendered and all principal mechanical equipment has been purchased, and is in various stages of manufacture.



- Bulk earth works have been completed at the process plant site and is being prepared for concrete works; the first significant concrete pour will be for the crushed run-of-mine (ROM) ore silo foundations



- Construction of the 7km fully sealed access road is nearly completed



- Construction of the final accommodation camp has commenced, for completion in Q2 2016



- Power station contract has been awarded for the delivery of a 10 MW facility that will supply power to the processing plant and all other infrastructure. It is designed to accommodate further expansion



- Tenders for the laboratory, product transport, fuel supply and bulk storage facility are currently being reviewed



- Continued upgrading of medical facilities on site, including an second ambulance



- Relocation of farm lots is substantially complete and Syrah's relocation program has been recognised in Mozambique as a leading example of how such programs should be implemented



- Ongoing recruitment of key construction and operational staff with a number of positions being awarded to highly qualified Mozambican nationals.



Marketing activities



Syrah has signed a Statement of Sales Intent (SSI) with one of the world's largest refractory producers, after initial concentrate samples provided by Syrah satisfied their internal product qualification process. This leading refractory producer intends to purchase up to 15,000 tonnes per annum (tpa). Balama graphite concentrate will be used for refractory bricks and parts for industrial high-temperature processes exceeding 1,200C. (Refer ASX announcement dated 18 November 2015 for further details on this SSI.)



Syrah is also in discussions with other parties around the world in relation to further flake graphite offtake agreements for traditional graphite applications and will update the market once they are finalised.



PROPOSED SPHERICAL GRAPHITE PROJECT



Proprietary coating technology



Syrah has achieved a major milestone in its spherical graphite supply chain development with the finalisation of an exclusive Technology Licensing Agreement with Morgan AM&T Hairong Co., Ltd (Morgan Hairong). Morgan Hairong is the second largest coated spherical graphite producer in China and a recognised technical leader in this field.



This Technology Licensing Agreement has a duration of 20 years and grants Syrah the exclusive right to use Morgan Hairong's proprietary spherical graphite coating technology globally (excluding China) in any potential Spherical Graphite Project developed by Syrah.



As consideration, Syrah will issue Morgan Hairong US$968,000 in fully paid ordinary shares and Morgan Hairong will also be entitled to a royalty on all future gross sales of coated spherical graphite by Syrah Refer ASX announcement dated 11 November 2015 for further details on this agreement.



Syrah has now received the intellectual property from Morgan Hairong regarding its proprietary spherical graphite coating technology and this information is currently being evaluated by the Company's spherical graphite project development team.



Marketing activities



After performing extensive test work on Balama spherical graphite, Morgan Hairong has also signed the following agreements with Syrah:



- 3 year Product Sales Agreement for 2,000 tpa of uncoated spherical graphite



- 3 year Marketing Agreement for 5,000 tpa of uncoated spherical graphite and 2,000 tpa of coated spherical graphite.



These agreements represent a strong vote of confidence for Balama spherical graphite in China, which is currently the largest and fastest growing lithium ion battery market globally. Morgan Hairong's existing customers include major Chinese battery producers and the company has plans for a significant expansion in production capability in order to satisfy the expected future growth in demand for coated spherical graphite. (Refer ASX announcement dated 12 November 2015 for further details on these agreements.)



Syrah is also in discussions and progressing product qualification with major battery and anode producers around the world in relation to further spherical graphite offtake agreements and will update the market once they are finalised.



RECARBURISER



Marketing activities



Syrah has signed a SSI with Hiller Carbon LLC (Hiller Carbon), a leading supplier of raw materials to North American electric arc furnace (EAF) steel producers and other industrial customers. High quality recarburiser is becoming an increasingly important additive during the downstream ladle refining furnace (LRF) process, common to all steelmaking. Hiller Carbon has advised Syrah that Balama recarburiser meets the new stringent carbon addition requirements for LFR, with its high purity, fast and reliable solution rate and consistent sizing.



Hiller Carbon intends to purchase between 25,000 tpa and up to 35,000 tpa of Balama recarburiser for resale. Hiller Carbon will be granted exclusive rights to sell Balama recarburiser in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and the parties will work towards a binding agreement as development of the Balama Project advances.



This SSI is also highly synergistic with Syrah's proposed Spherical Graphite Facility in the United States, which uses the graphite shavings from the sphericisation process as input material for Balama recarburiser. The ability to access the North American market will therefore create another revenue stream for the Proposed Spherical Graphite Facility. (Refer ASX announcement dated 18 January 2016 for further details on this agreement.)

In addition, Balama recarburiser has also recently been successfully qualified through commercial scale test work by a major steel producer. Figure 8 shows these recarburiser briquettes (each approximately 5mm long). Syrah will seek to finalise an agreement with this party for its facilities around the world as development of the Balama Project advances.



To view all figures, please visit:

http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/ASX-SYR-437558.pdf





About Syrah Resources Ltd





Syrah Resources (ASX:SYR) is an Australian resource company that is rapidly progressing its flagship Balama Graphite and Vanadium Project in Mozambique to production. The Project hosts the largest graphite ore reserves in the world with an Australasian Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) compliant Ore Reserve of 81.4 Mt at 16.2% total graphitic carbon. Balama is a 110 km2 granted Mining Concession located within the Cabo Delgado province in the district of Namuno in northern Mozambique. The Project is approximately 260 km by road west of Pemba and is accessible by a sealed, main road, running directly from Pemba Airport. The Port of Nacala is approximately 490 km by road south east of the Project and is the deepest port in Southern Africa.


Strengthens Board & Management with Key Appointments

Perth, Jan 29, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Triton Minerals Ltd ( ASX:TON ) (Triton or the Company) has strengthened its Board and Management team with key appointments as it pushes to advance its world-class Mozambican graphite projects.



HIGHLIGHTS:



- Mr Garth Higgo appointed Managing Director



- Mr Rodney Baxter appointed Non-Executive Director



- Mr Patrick Ellis appointed Chief Operating Officer



- Mr Richard Jarvis appointed Chief Financial Officer



Triton's Chairman, Mr Christopher Catlow said "these key appointments strengthen the leadership team required to transition from explorer to producer as we move the Company forward."



Mr Garth Higgo, who was appointed Chief Executive Officer in December 2015 has been appointed Managing Director and will drive the development of the Company's asset base, which includes the world's largest-known combined graphite-vanadium resource.



Mr Higgo has a 35 year career spanning executive positions in civil engineering construction, investment banking, mining corporate finance, project development, mining operations, heavy haulage rail, mining engineering services and EPCM contracting. He was most recently the Global Director - Mining for Aurecon Group and was previously Global Director with Calibre Global in Australia, where he was responsible for growing the business into the largest heavy haul rail project delivery and engineering company in the world. Mr Higgo was previously the COO for Consolidated Minerals and CEO for Firestone Energy Ltd. Prior to 2006, Mr Higgo had a long career at global miner, Anglo American PLC.



Following the close of the recent successful Entitlement Offer which raised $4 million, Triton has confirmed the appointment of experienced executive and director, Mr Rodney Baxter as a Non-Executive Director.



Mr Baxter has 25 years of operational and executive leadership experience in the resources and engineering services sector. He has previously served as Managing Director of engineering, asset management and construction services company Calibre Group, Managing Director of manganese miner Consolidated Minerals and Divisional Director of Anglo American Platinum. He has also served on the boards of Murchison Metals and Jabiru Metals.



Mr Higgo will be supported at an executive level by Mr Patrick Ellis as Chief Operating Officer and Richard Jarvis as Chief Financial Officer. Ms Paige Exley will move to full time Company Secretary and Group Financial Controller.



Mr Ellis has over 30 years of experience in the international and domestic mineral resources sector, during this time he has held executive roles within the Leighton Group (now CIMIC), Newcrest, Allied Mining, Macmahon and Murray & Roberts. He is a new venture and major project development specialist having held accountability at over 40 mining and processing operations in Africa, Asia, New Zealand and Australia, often managing multisite and remotely located operations simultaneously. His operational portfolio is characterised by successful change management and redirection initiatives. He has experience in coal and metalliferous minerals including gold, PGM's, base metals, and manganese. Mr Ellis is recognised in the mining industry as a leader in the development of innovative solutions and new technology deployment. Recently he was involved in the pioneering developments of major coal mines in Mozambique and is credentialed in the paradigms of the region.



Mr Jarvis is a Chartered Certified Accountant with 20 years finance and accounting experience gained in public practice and in the international resources sector. Mr Jarvis has held senior executive and management roles with various Australian and London-listed resource companies, including Nyota Minerals Limited, Sylvania Resources Limited and Fluormin Plc. He has substantial experience operating in a wide range of jurisdictions including Australia, UK and several parts of Africa.



Mr Garth Higgo said "the Company is now well positioned for the future. I believe Triton has the foundations of an excellent Board and Management team to take the Company forward through to mining and production. The Management team has substantial experience in exploration, development and mining in Africa and I am confident that this new team will be able to deliver in the growth of the Company and shareholder value."





About Triton Minerals Ltd





Triton Minerals Limited (ASX:TON) is an ASX listed, responsible mineral explorer and resource management company headquartered in Perth, Australia.

Led by a highly experienced management team, Triton Minerals' vision is to grow shareholder's value through discovery or development of base metal, gold and other precious metal deposits.

Triton has made excellent progress with its three Graphite projects located in the Cabo Delgado Province in Mozambique, with the program successfully identifying a number of graphitic exposures.

It is the Company's belief that the Mozambique, Balama North Project could host multiple and very substantial world class graphite deposits.
IMGCAP(1)]Here are five things that happened in the world of technology this past month and why theyre important for your business (and mine). Did you miss them?

1. Google is testing a new schema to markup your local business data.

From Search Engine Land: Google added a new structured markup page for providing local business data to Google. The document says that Google is currently piloting this schema and hopes to release it soon. In summary, you can use schema to markup your web pages in order to more efficiently communicate changes to your local business data to Google. Effectively these changes would make it easier for both Google and the local business to show more accurate and real-time data in the Google local knowledge panel that shows up in the search results.

Why this is important for your business: This is the kind of thing that laymen business owners dont pay attention to, and yet it has an enormous impact on whether or not your website gets found by prospective customers and the information they see when they find you. Find a good search engine optimization consultant or web developer and work with them to make sure your web pages are using the latest schema from Google to keep your online presence ahead of your competitors. I know I will.

2. A study finds that the leading cause of data breaches is employee error.

From The Wall Street Journal: Employee error turns out to be the most common reason for a data breach at companies, according to a new cybersecurity report released by the Association of Corporate Counsel. This means the breach occurred as the result of a mistake the employee made, such as accidentally sending an e-mail with sensitive information to someone outside the company. The report, which contained survey responses from more than 1,000 in-house lawyers in 30 countries, found that 30 percent of breaches this year occurred as a result of employee error. Other common reasons for a breach included unauthorized access by insiders intending to steal company data and phishing attacks, when third parties send spam e-mails designed to trick employees into giving up their personal information.



Why this is important for your business: Sure, you can spend money on software and technical people to ensure your data is protected. But its the common sense and oftentimes innocent mistakes made by your own employees that put you most at risk. So put some money aside for training this year. It may save you a lot in the end.

3. Periscope is named App of the Year by Apple.

From USA Today: If you noticed video updates this year coming from the likes of celebrities Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres, presidential candidate Donald Trump, citizen journalists or your friends, well, youre not alone. The live video-streaming app Periscope took off big-time in 2015; Apple [recently] named it the coveted iPhone App of the Year in its annual year-end ranking of the best in mobile tech. This game-changer made sharing and watching live videos an instant obsession, said Apple in offering the nod.



Why this is important for your business: According to this report, streaming video and audio now account for 70 percent of U.S. broadband usage. The enormous popularity of streaming technologies like Periscope, Google Hangouts, Meerkat and others cannot be ignored by businesses who are looking for new audiences and who want to provide content to their existing communities. And that content will be video.



4. Target unveils a pop-up store in New York that gives us a hint about whats to come in retail tech.

From Targets Web site: Target Wonderland will merge the physical and digital retail experience to reimagine holiday shopping for guests. As guests step into the space, they receive a custom lanyard and digital Radio Frequency Identification key  the same technology we use in our stores! If any of the products featured throughout the journey catch their eye, they can simply use the keys to scan a mini-bullseye tag and add the items to a custom digital shopping list. At the end of the adventure, guests can check out and purchase anything they added to their list.



Why this is important for your business. Are you or your clients in retail? Then watch Target closely. And if youre in the New York area, stop by their store. These are the techs that you will be using in the next few years if you intend to stay competitive and grow your business.

5. Twitter is about to enormously increase its advertising audience.

From Re/code: Twitter announced that it will start showing ads to its logged out audience, a group of roughly 500 million people who visit Twitter every month but who dont have active user accounts. That means if you click on a tweet that appears in a Google search, for instance, you may see ads on that tweet page or on the tweet creators profile.

Why this is important for your business: As explained in the above Re/code piece: First, its important to some advertisers, who dont think Twitter has enough registered users  especially compared to Facebook  to matter, and also to Wall Street, for the same reasons. But the company has argued for years now that its audience is much bigger than the 320 million people who log in each month, and it has been telling Wall Street that it can make money off people without Twitter accounts. Now its finally doing that. As small businesses look to better target their very limited advertising dollars, this move makes spending on Twitter more attractive than ever.

Besides Accounting Today, Gene Marks writes for The New York Times, Forbes and Inc.com.
Alex Malley, the chief executive of CPA Australia, a professional organization for accountants in the Land Down Under, has gotten a high-profile new gig: hosting a Sunday morning TV series on a top TV network there.

The show, "The Conversation with Alex Malley," premieres on Sunday, February 7, in the 10:00 AM slot on the Nine Network.

Malley has already appeared in videos for CPA Australia, including a rare interview with the late Apollo 11 astronaut, Neil Armstrong (see One Small Step for Neil Armstrong: Addressing an Australian Accounting Group). Just try to top that, George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Todd!

Malley previously hosted another Nine Network series, "The Bottom Line," for three years.

Ive always found the most fascinating stories to be true storiesmy experience making this show has reaffirmed this belief, Malley said in a statement. Uncovering our guests real-life experiences, emotions, failures and successes, and how these shaped their attitudes and ideologies, really is compelling. Im excited about sharing these stories on Australias leading network over the coming weeks.

One of the most significant guests Malley plans to interview this season will be Alpha Cheng, a CPA who is also the son of Curtis Cheng, an accountant with the New South Wales Police Department, who was tragically murdered last year in a terrorism-related incident. He was a 26-year member of CPA Australia.

Other guests will include Atari founder and entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell, World Vision CEO Tim Costello, Australian Labor Party Leader Bill Shorten, political commentator Laurie Oakes, and journalist and television presenter Deborah Knight.
Thirty-eight percent of organizations are turning to outside services to supplement the efforts of their internal audit function, according to a new survey of chief audit executives.

A new report from the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation examines third-party activities in a number of areas, including usage by industry, region, organization size and budget, and anticipated third-party usage in the coming year.

The report found the financial sector to be the biggest user of outside help, with 45 percent of organizations using third parties for internal audit activities. That was followed by publicly traded companies, excluding the financial sector, at 43 percent.

The regional breakdown shows North America leads in the percentage of organizations that use third-party services (56 percent), while South Asia leads in the average percentage of activity performed by third parties (39 percent).

The report also recommends some best practices when using third-party services, including clearly identifying objectives, scope of services, level of expertise needed, performance metrics, and responsibilities for remediation and follow up. Finally, the report looks at how CAEs can take advantage of knowledge and expertise offered by third-party providers.

This report offers an important snapshot on the professions use of third-party services, said IIA president and CEO Richard F. Chambers in a statement. As demands on internal audit evolve, we will need to turn increasingly to third-party services, so it is imperative that CAEs understand best practices in this area.

The report is available at www.theiia.org/goto/CBOK.
Aggressors, maintainers take off to support Kadena AB exercise

An F-16 Fighting Falcon with the 18th Aggressor Squadron prepares to take off from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, shortly after sunrise Jan. 24, 2016, in transit to Kadena Air Base, Japan, to participate in training exercises. More than 150 maintainers from the 354th Fighter Wing will keep the Aggressors in the air and prepare U.S. Airmen, Sailors and Marines for contingency operations along with coalition partners in the Pacific theater. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Shawn Nickel)
Members from the Japan Self-Defense Forces and United States Forces Japan came together to conduct a joint-bilateral command post exercise Keen Edge 16 at Yokota Air Base, Japan, from Jan. 23-29; this was the 14th command post exercise since 1986.Keen Edge 16's purpose was to facilitate the interactions and to improve interoperability between U.S. military and JSDF personnel during real-world contingencies. The training also ensured that all subsequent exercises will be executed smoothly, allowing meaningful interaction between the participating units and improving the overall combat readiness of the U.S. and JSDF forces."This exercise is very important because it brings the U.S. military and JSDF together to train for potential crises," said Col. Houston Cantwell, the USFJ director of operations. "The training tests both nations ability to work together in a controlled environment giving both sides a better understanding of their combined capabilities."The training focused on bilateral coordination, force protection, host nation support, ballistic missile defense and non-combatant evacuation operations.It has historically been part of an annual exercise series that alternates between field training exercises (Keen Sword) and command post exercises. During KE16, various Japanese and U.S. headquarter staff employed computer simulations to practice and refine the steps they would take in the event of a crisis or contingency."We have to smooth U.S. and Japan bilateral operations to better defend Japan and work together in concert during various emergencies," said Capt. Satoru Onishi, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force 3rd Operations Division operations department director. "This training will be useful for us to successfully work together if we face these challenges in future contingencies."Command post exercises are a cost-effective way of providing military participants with realistic and unobtrusive training by simulating a crisis.Participants used a computer-based system, called the Joint Theater Level Simulation system, to direct and respond to exercise events. This system provided a realistic, though simulated, environment from which commanders and staff improved their skills by anticipating and reacting in real-time to the events generated by the simulation.Exercises such as Keen Edge provide an indispensable command post training environment for enhancing mutual understanding of each country's tactics, communication protocols, procedures and general interoperability."We are excited to be part of this exercise with Japan, because we depend on the Japanese for bilateral and host nation support,"

Cantwell said. "

I hope that this will continue to help us form better relationships between both countries as we demonstrate that we are both committed to this alliance."The U.S. military frequently trains in joint and bilateral environments to enhance operations proficiency, contingency response, and help ensure peace and security throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
Astronaut rescue drill tests DoD, NASA

It's not common an astronaut must be rescued out of rough open waters after descending home to Earth in a crewed capsule but when those Space Race era days of human space flight return, a small Air Force detachment knows they will be ready.



The 45th Operations Group Detachment 3 joined NASA's Commercial Crew Program and Air Force pararescuemen, Combat Rescue Officers and survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialists in a simulated astronaut rescue exercise here Jan. 14.



"At the strategic and operational levels of this exercise, we flawlessly met our objectives of effective command and control between our Joint Space Operations Center operating location and the combined Department of Defense and NASA landing support officers for the aircraft launch, relay of mission execution status, relay of astronaut medical status, and systems matter expertise to all players," said Lt. Col. Jason Havel of Det. 3, which is also known as the Human Space Flight Support Office. "The command and control was exercised in accordance with U.S. Strategic Command and Det 3's concept of operations previously developed during their 2015 war game scenarios."



It was a total force effort involving Air Force active duty, Reserve and Guard personnel alongside NASA. The 308th Rescue Squadron, known as the Guardian Angel Squadron, located at the Air Force Reserve Command's 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick AFB provided a majority of the jumpers, and the Alaska Air National Guard's 249th Airlift Squadron coordinated the Rescue Jumpmaster Training.



The Air Force and NASA teams boarded two Alaska ANG C-17s with Guardian Angel Pararescue teams rigged for an open water jump mission on a course set for 10 miles off shore at a designated drop zone in the Atlantic Ocean. There, they met up with the life raft representing the space capsule where a simulated downed astronaut would be found after splash down. Four survivors were recovered using life-saving medical care immediately.



The ability to abort from any phase of a mission and safely remove astronauts from harm's way is a critical element for next generation of commercial crew spacecraft, according to NASA. Although very unlikely, aborts can occur during all phases of flight and a capsule could land almost anywhere in the world. So, the Ground and Mission Operations Office of NASA's Commercial Crew Program is working with Department of Defense to ensure rescue and medical personnel can recover astronauts quickly and safely in the event of such an abort.



"Exercises like this are extremely important to the development of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) for the DoD forces as well as practicing and refining communication protocols between the flight crew and ground support teams, both NASA and DoD," said Tim O'Brien, who works for NASA's GMO Office. "While Air Force Reserve pararescuemen jumped from the C-17 aircraft and practiced their hands-on skills, real-time coordination took place between those rescue forces, a simulated flight crew, the aircraft, and NASA/DoD command centers in order to execute a safe rescue scenario. Every time we conduct an exercise like this, we learn and improve of our processes."



NASA recovery engineers and members of Det. 3 were aboard the life raft acting as astronauts communicating with the aircraft and the 308th's Guardian Angel team with a PRC-112G radio. One of the objectives of the rescue mission was to test the range of an essential line of communication between all parties.



At the heart of this vital line was the Det. 3 operations center located at Patrick AFB, thousands of feet below and 40 miles to shore. Members of the unique detachment proved their capability to transmit messages to and from the boat and the C-17.



The detachment specifically wanted to test their text and data transmission capability.



"Together with exercise participants, we developed tactics, techniques and procedures that incorporate the DoD-standard Quick Draw radio interrogator onto C17A operations when used as a rescue platform," said Havel. "The QuickDraw (aircraft) and PRC-112G (survivor) radio combination gave us immediate position and identification more quickly and accurately than traditional voice relay. Our local survival expert, Master Sgt. Jesse Stoda at the 308th helped us develop this capability."



Prior to the execution of the mission, Det. 3 developed a "9-line Medevac Checklist" with the NASA Health and Medical Division specific to the simulated astronaut rescue operation. They anticipate the checklist will become a standard item astronauts will train to use during contingencies. It has already been submitted to NASA's Flight Operations Directorate in hopes of becoming the benchmark for human spaceflight scheduled to return to America in 2017.



The small Air Force detachment has served as the liaison between NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the Air Force and DoD for more than 55 years of training men and women of those organizations for launch contingencies and astronaut recovery.
Airmen work in concert to execute rapid global mobility

It's been raining sideways for hours since he arrived for work on the flightline at 6 a.m.



Staff Sgt. Justin Worcester ignores his drenched uniform and plows ahead while inspecting every inch of the 53-year-old KC-135 Stratotanker, because he's a crew chief. His name is on it.



"We put everything on the line when we sign our name off," Worcester said. "The aircrew is trusting us to make sure this aircraft is safe to fly."



Airmen like Worcester defend their country by making sure the U.S. can quickly move people and equipment around the world at a moment's notice. This is executing rapid global mobility, Air Mobility Command's top priority.



Time can save lives in a humanitarian crisis. Alternately, surprise is a principle of war. Whether a KC-135 is creating an air bridge for a 32-hour bomber mission or a C-17 Globemaster III is air dropping pallets of food to earthquake victims, the U.S. can move a large force in a matter of hours, not days.



This is made possible by Worcester and a team of approximately 126,000 other mobility Airmen.



The best checklist



"Teamwork's crucial," said Worcester, who is assigned to the 6th Air Mobility Wing at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.



"If I come out here to do a tire change with a couple of Airmen, I expect them to have the knowledge of what to do, what tools they might need," he added. "If we come out here to do an inspection on the aircraft, I expect my other team members to know what they're looking for."



From the latest corporate knowledge in Worcester's checklists to his headset and gloves, AMC leaders make sure he has what he needs to do his job.



"Executing rapid global mobility is about moving missions, and 18th Air Force has the operational lead on that," said Gen. Carlton D. Everhart II, the AMC commander. "But in order to move, you have to have a sufficiently organized, trained and equipped force."



Maintaining a sufficient force to execute rapid global mobility can be challenging with fewer personnel and older aircraft than ever before, but AMC works daily toward that goal. Due to its size, the Mobility Air Forces need to be more agile, or flexible and responsive, according to the 2015 Mobility Air Forces Strategic Vision.



Right time, right place



Aging tankers require excellent maintenance to be flexible and responsive. Back on the wet Florida flightline, Worcester inspects a KC-135 that was built in 1963. It has responded to conflicts around the world since the Vietnam War.



He walks under the wing and taps his knuckles all over the gray metal, making hollow sounds.



"You want to hit the diffuser here, because if mounted screws are broken, you'll hear a little jingle," he said. All screws were intact.



The aircraft spent most of last year at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, in support of Operations Inherent Resolve and Freedom's Sentinel. The Airmen who deployed it to Al Udeid AB work at 18th Air Force, AMC's component numbered air force and the largest of its kind in the world.



Combined with the 618th Air Operations Center, the 18th Air Force executes assigned missions through the employment of airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation, and tailored global air mobility support systems. It provides geographical combatant commanders a seamless and synchronized logistical capability to execute their mission.



"We turn the conceptual into air power," Lt. Gen. Samuel Cox, the 18th AF commander, said in a recent interview with The Mobility Forum. "Together, the pieces of the air mobility machine merge under the 18th Air Force umbrella to execute AMC's priority to execute rapid global mobility.



To deploy forces effectively, the 18th Air Force commander entrusts tactical execution with the Airmen at the 618th Air Operations Center. Around the clock, they manage the complex sphere of theater clearances, flight planning, mission planning, weather and much more.



They make sure air mobility forces arrive on time in the right place for successful hand-off to overseas commanders.



In Airmen's hands



With every hand off of a KC-135 to an aircrew, Worcester said he gets a sense of satisfaction.



The rain is gone, but wind still whips his hair as he watches the KC-135's engines roar to life. He removes the yellow wooden chocks near the landing gear, checks panels near the flight deck, runs out of the way, turns and gives the pilot a thumbs-up as the plane rolls forward.



"We have a lot of pride when we've been out here all night; and, right before we leave in the morning, the jet that we've been working on 10 hours taxies out and we get to watch it take off," Worcester said.



"The landing gear goes up, and you know that plane made it and is going to come back safe, he added. "If there were no crew chiefs, then the plane wouldn't get up off the ground.
Yesterdays Air Force: The Challenger disaster





FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. (AFNS)  It was 30 years ago that the much-anticipated launch of Space Shuttle Challenger quickly turned to tragedy. Here's a look back at this fateful day, as well as the successes of the shuttle's previous missions.



Yesterday's Air Force is a history and heritage featurette series profiling significant people and missions from the Air Force's past.


Please try to write back

Bringing a little holiday cheer to an unknown service member was all an 8-year-old boy was trying to do 25 years ago.



A single letter united a pair of Air Force veterans, and the handwritten greeting made its way back to its author -- now an Air Force major -- at Hurlburt Field Jan. 25.



It started 25 years ago, when students from Fulmar Elementary School in Mahopac, New York, wrote letters to military members who were deployed in support of Operation Desert Storm.



A young Stephen Rausa started his letter anonymously with Dear Any Service Member, and ended it with Please try to write back. As he sealed his letter, he never knew for sure if he would receive a response.



He never dreamed that he would get back a letter from someone with such a familiar name.



There were a lot of letters boxed up, all addressed to Any Service Member, recalled retired Master Sgt. Ben Rausa. As I dug through the box, a return sender's name caught my eye. He had the same last name as me. Rausa isnt a very common name.



Ben wrote back to his new little friend, and they started an unlikely relationship.



Getting that letter from someone with the same last name was so cool, Stephen said. "My entire family was sitting at the table, and they were all floored, in that loud Italian way. Everyone thought we must be related somehow, someway.



They exchanged a couple of letters with photos, but over time they lost track of each other. They sporadically contacted each other, enough so that Ben knew Stephen was a pilot in the Air Force stationed at Hurlburt Field.



Today, Ben lives near Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. With the anniversary of Desert Storm this month, he was determined to find his little pen pal from so many years ago.



It got me thinking about bringing this around full circle and meeting Stephen and letting him have these old keepsakes, Ben said. I guess I never really thanked him for the nice holiday letter."



The two finally met over lunch at the Soundside Club on Hurlburt Field.



I was so excited to meet Stephen and see how far he has come," Ben said. "The Air Force has meant everything to me. I am happy ... to see he has chosen to be part of the Air Force family, too.



As the two caught up, they realized there are so many similarities in their family tree. Both trace their roots back to Sicily. One more notable coincidence is that Stephen's father was a crew chief with the 33rd Fighter Wing, stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in the 1960s. Sometime later, Ben was also a crew chief in the 33rd.



Although Stephen has been stationed here for several years, the friendship never fully rekindled until now.



I certainly hope I stay in contact with him. I regret not reaching out sooner, Ben said.



By the end of lunch, the two made a standing promise is to stay in touch -- whether by email or by telephone.



I never really thought much about writing that letter back then, Stephen said. But now it really makes you think about never passing up even the smallest of opportunities, you never know where it will lead 25 years later.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James declared her support of department-wide reforms focused on improving quality of life for military parents, following Defense Secretary Ash Carters Jan. 28 announcement on the next round of Force of the Future initiatives.I applaud Secretary Carter and welcome these announcements as a positive step forward for our Airmen and their families, James said.James has been vocal about her support for extending maternity leave, and the importance of a comprehensive update to the Air Forces current policy, including paternity leave reform as well.This change places our Air Force in the top tier of organizations that offer 12 weeks maternity leave to new mothers, James said. The department will also be introducing legislation to increase paternity leave to 14 days across the total force.The maternity benefit will be offered to the over 200,000 women in uniform today, who comprise 14.8 percent of enlisted personnel and 17.4 percent of the officer corps in the Defense Department.Also included in the comprehensive package of family benefits are the following: expansion of adoption leave; extending childhood development center hours to a 14-hour minimum; modifying or installing mother rooms at each instillation; an examination of additional options for child care; allowing service members to postpone a permanent change of station in certain instances where it is in the best interests of the family; and covering the cost of egg and sperm cryopreservation for active-duty service members.This is the right thing to do, James said. This groundbreaking policy carefully balances our priority focus on mission effectiveness with ongoing efforts to attract and retain talent in a changing workforce.James said more details, including effective dates, will be made available as the services begin planning for implementation.For more information on the next round of Force of the Future initiatives click here
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from west Delhis Vikaspuri constituency Mahendra Yadav has been arrested by the Delhi Police in a case of rioting, damaging public property and stopping public servants from performing duties.

Police claimed Yadav led a violent protest last evening in Nihal Vihar area in West Delhi following sexual assault on a three-year-old girl and the mob even attacked public vehicles and tried to set a vehicle on fire.

The protesters demanded immediate arrest of the 38-year-old accused alleging that police was not pursuing the case promptly though Joint Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Dependra Pathak on Friday claimed that the alleged culprit was arrested much before the protest.

Yadav is the sixth AAP legislator to be arrested. Earlier MLAs Akhilesh Tripathi, Somnath Bharti, Commando Surinder Singh, Manoj Kumar and former law minister Jitender Singh Tomar were arrested on various charges. A case was registered last night and the MLA was arrested around 12 noon today under charges of rioting, arson, assault on public servant, wrongful restraint and damage to public property, Pathak said.

He claimed the protesters at Nihal Vihar area even manhandled a police team which had tried to pacify the agitators. While the accused was arrested by evening, much before the crowd gathered there, somebody floated a rumour that the police has refused to arrest him, leading to the agitation, said Pathak. While Yadav has been arrested, several others have been detained at the police station, he said.

Reacting to Yadavs arrest, AAPs Delhi Convener Dilip Pandey tweeted, Delhi Police busy again arresting AAP MLA instead of ensuring Delhi women safety despite multiple warnings from courts. MLA Mahendra Yadav arrested, for what? He was there where public was protesting against rape of a girl child? Is it wrong to ask for justice? he said.

He was produced before the Tis Hazari court, which sent him to one day police custody.
Swaraj will interact with ministers for knowing about the work done by them and she will forward reports to Modi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked bureaucrats and council of ministers to speed up the pace of work in the aftermath of the Bihar assembly election debacle. Even though 20 months have passed ever since the Modi government has come to power but no headway has been made in the implementation of the promises made by it. The opposition too has accused the government for making promises and failing to deliver them. Modi has taken a serious note of the policy paralysis and asked bureaucrats to pull up their socks and take the government agenda forward. For achieving this objective, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is here on two-day visit to the city to reach out to the people on the work done by the NDA government. Since past one week BJP leaders in the state were busy grooming themselves and many of them were asked to gather students and attract crowds for Swarajs visit.

Swaraj will interact with ministers for knowing about the work done by them and she will forward reports to Modi. Last month Rahul Gandhi had undertaken a visit to Mumbai for reviving Congress party in the state. He received very good response from the people. In an attempt to revamp BJP and keep check on work done by state leaders PMO has asked Swaraj to visit the city.

She will also interact with groups representing various strata of society, at Lavender Baug in Ghatkopar on Friday and at Kalidas Complex in Mulund on January 30. Swaraj will meet students, youth, SMEs, Small Traders, Mahila Bachat Gut, chartered accountants, legal and medical professionals, teachers, unorganised labourers and businessmen. She will also address BJP leaders in one to one meeting.

Earlier Modi had emphasised on faster delivery of the governments developmental agenda as he embarked on a comprehensive review of the ongoing schemes in a first of its kind meeting of the Council of Ministers. Despite having majority in Lok Sabha the Modi government has been finding it difficult to pass key legislations as it lacks numbers in Rajya Sabha. The results of panchayat and civic body elections too have come as a wake-up call for the government to perform or perish.
The UN insisted that high-stakes peace talks aimed at ending the brutal, five-year-old Syrian conflict would still begin in Switzerland later Friday despite uncertainty over whether key groups would even attend.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura will start by meeting the governments delegation today (Friday) in Geneva, followed by talks with other participants, the United Nations said in a statement.

The Syrian government delegation, headed by Syrias envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari, arrived in Geneva early afternoon, a source said.

Opposition figures not part of the umbrella group High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said they would be present.

However, despite Western pressure on the HNC, it has yet to decide whether to come and was engaged in a fourth day of discussions in Saudi Arabia on Friday.

The talks, backed by all the external powers embroiled in the war, are the biggest push yet to end a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and facilitated the meteoric rise of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group.

The highly complex conflict, now almost five years old, has also destabilised the already restive Middle East and drawn in not only regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey but also the United States and Russia.

It has also forced millions of Syrians from their homes, many of them into neighbouring states and further afield, causing a major political headache for the European Union which received around a million migrants in 2015.

De Mistura issued on Thursday an emotional video message to the Syrian people both inside and outside the country saying that after previous failures, this new effort cannot fail.

Five years of this conflict have been too much. The horror is in front of everyones eyes, de Mistura said. You must know also that we count on you to raise your voice to say khalas (stop in Arabic). The Geneva negotiations, if they happen, would not be a face-to-face conversation between the regime and its opponents. Instead they are proximity talks when go-betweens shuttle between the different participants.
On Jan 26, 2016, the New York Times published a review of In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, by Jerome Groopman. Groopman told readers that this book shows that we're just now recognizing autism "as part of the human condition."

In a Different Key posits that the condition is not a new phenomenon."

Groopman alleged there's been a history of eugenics involved in autism as shown by calls for institutionalization and sterilization of the disabled in the past. It seems we've didn't deal with autism in any ethical or responsible way in the past; we've only recently awakened to what's always been here. Mothers were in the forefront of the fight to recognize and accept autism.

Donvan and Zucker make it clear that the vaccine-autism controversy has been a "dangerous detour." A reference was made by Groopman that Katie Wright, the daughter of the founders of Autism Speaks, Bob and Suzanne Wright, seemingly led her parents into the "anti-vaccination" camp. Autism Speaks became "'entangled' in the work of Andrew Wakefield. This led to criticism of Autism Speaks.

...As the book approaches the present day, Donvan and Zucker address the dangerous detour taken by prominent advocacy groups about the causes of autism. A deeply reported chapter features Bob Wright, the former chief executive of NBC, who became involved in autism advocacy after his grandson received a diagnosis. Wright believed that there needed to be a big tent effort to ultimately understand autism. He founded a nonprofit, Autism Speaks, in 2005, which enjoyed great success until it became entangled in the work of Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist, who tied development of autism to the MMR vaccine in an article in The Lancet in 1998. His report was soon discredited, and the article retracted. Alas, this research, shown to be severely flawed, is still cited by opponents of childhood vaccination.

Autism Speaks tried to remain neutral in the debate but gave a voice to anti-vaccination activists, one of whom was Wrights daughter. While championing the proven benefits of vaccination, it also promised to investigate whether vaccines were dangerous. Attempting to bridge the chasm between two polarized constituencies, the organization had been forced into rhetorical somersaults, Donvan and Zucker write, and it never regained its former prominence after the controversy.

I wish Jerome Groopman had actually done more than just look at Donvan and Zucker's book. While not naming Katie, Groopman described her as an anti-vaccine advocate. Listen to her story. It's time for people like Groopman, Donvan and Zucker to learn about the reality of vaccine-induced autism.

Listen to Katie Wright in the YouTube interview with David Kirby from 2007, David Kirby Interviews Katie Wright on her son's autism regression and her stance on Autism Speaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbkHjTIaI-0

In a Different Key has nothing to do with Katie's son's vaccine injury. How does her story of her son's regression into autism and the medical community's response in any way resemble a something that's always been "part of the human condition."

Christian was a healthy, normally developing baby. At birth he received the Hep B vaccine without his parents' consent or knowledge. He received the recommended vaccines as a baby and had reactions like 12 hours of screaming and a fever of 104. Her son's pediatrician said this was a normal reaction. By age 2 he was losing language and became withdrawn. Eventually, he lost 90 percent of his words.
Excerpted from HuffPo. Clinton on Autism: Need for Paradigm Shift



After nearly 20 years of advocacy on behalf of an appropriate public health response to the public health emergency of rising rates of severe autism, I'm honored to be joined by mothers of teenagers with autism and full time, tireless autism advocates, Katie Wright and Lisa Wiederlight in writing a response to Secretary Hillary Clinton's "Plan to Support Children, Youth, and Adults Living with Autism and Their Families".

Nine years after her remarks in 2007 that autism is "one of the most urgent--and least understood--challenges facing our children today," autism prevalence has climbed from 1 in 150 to 1 in 45 American children, with no cause and no new treatments identified.

Secretary Clinton is a long-time child and disability advocate, so we were not surprised to see her be the first out of the gate with some concrete recommendations that will positively affect the lives of many with autism. Her insightful remarks in New Hampshire this month included recognition of autism's increasing prevalence, and the need to prevent and treat it. Specifically:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2016  In the most extensive poll of how U.S. farmers and ranchers plan to vote for president, respondents overwhelmingly say theyll support a Republican, and among those, 40 percent say they will support Donald Trump.

Its clear that GOP-leaning voters are very dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the way President Obama is doing his job and the way that Congress is doing its job. And there was not much variance by age or farm size, although a higher percentage of younger voters expressed dissatisfaction with how Congress is functioning, said Agri-Pulse Editor and founder Sara Wyant. They want to elect someone who can make major changes.

Among farm country Democrats, almost 49 percent of voters are giving Hillary Clinton an edge, compared to 41 percent for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 10 percent undecided.

Democrats or those leaning Democrat made up 19 percent of the 750 farmers and ranchers surveyed. About 70 percent identified as Republican or leaning Republican, and 12 percent as independent.

Reflecting the demographics of commercial agriculture, two-thirds of the farmers polled were 55 years of age or older, including the 41 percent who were at least 65. Eighty-three percent of those surveyed were male.

Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country as well as President Obamas leadership, and Congress performance, is high across all age brackets.

Weve watched the farm vote turn decidedly more conservative in recent years, but thats not the case across all of rural America, Wyant said. For example, 51 percent of voters in Iowas rural counties voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 48 percent voted for him in 2012, according to a New York Times analysis of the rural vote.

Farmers and ranchers frequently tell us that they are very concerned about issues like overregulation, the Renewable Fuel Standard and the overall farm economy, Wyant said. But when asked to identify the one most important issue facing this country heading into the 2016 presidential election, national security/terrorism was the top choice for both Republicans and Democrats, with 19 percent nationally, followed by moral values at 14 percent, immigration/ag labor at almost 14 percent and deficit reduction at 13.5 percent.

The poll, conducted by Aimpoint Research, is part of the ongoing Agri-Pulse Rural Route to the White House series that is designed to help educate farmers and ranchers about how presidential candidates view national issues which are important to their livelihoods. The series is sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Among voters who identified as Republican or leaning Republican in the poll, 40 percent said they would vote for Donald Trump, compared to 15 percent for Sen. Ted. Cruz, 11 percent for Sen. Marco Rubio and 10 percent for Ben Carson. Other candidates were in single digits, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee garnering slightly more than 4 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with about 2 percent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 1.9 percent, businesswoman Carly Fiorina at 1.2 percent, Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 1 percent and Rick Santorum polling just below 1 percent.

However, in a sign of how fluid the race may still be as the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses approach on Feb. 1, over 12 percent of the GOP and over 10 percent of the Democrats indicated they are undecided.

Do you find the information on Agri-Pulse helpful? See even more ag and rural policy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





Although only 12 percent of those surveyed identified as independents, almost 26 percent of those supported Donald Trump, followed by over 13 percent for Rubio and 10 percent for Sanders. However, almost 25 percent were undecided and slightly more than 13 percent did not answer.

The nationwide telephone survey was conducted from January 22-26, with 750 producers who own at least 200 acres of farmland. The average U.S. farm size is 434 acres, according to the most recent U.S. Census of Agriculture, conducted in 2012. There is a margin of error of 3.6 percent with 95 percent confidence.

Survey results are available here.

About Agri-Pulse: Agri-Pulse is a trusted farm and rural policy source in Washington, D.C. The multimedia company provides a balanced perspective on a wide variety of issues including the farm bill, nutrition, trade, food safety, environment, biotechnology, organic, conservation and crop insurance. For more news, go to www.agri-pulse.com.
ISIS Release 22 Assyrian Hostages in Syria

Bishop Aprim with the Assyrian hostages from Khabur who were released today by ISIS. (AINA) -- ISIS today released 22 Assyrian hostages in Syria. 16 of the hostages were captured captured on February 23 when ISIS attacked the 35 Assyrian villages on the Khabur river in the Hasaka province. ISIS captured 253 in the initial attack and drove 3,000 Assyrians from their villages. The other 6 hostages who were released were captured in the town of Qaryatain on August 6, 2015, when ISIS captured the town (AINA 2015-08-07).

The group of released hostages was comprised of women and children.

ISIS executed three of the Khabur hostages on September 23 (AINA 2015-10-08). The number of Assyrians from Khabur still being held is now 73.

With the release of 6 Assyrians from Qaryatain ISIS is now holding 179 Assyrians from that town.

ISIS has released Assyrians from Khabur on the following dates:

January 29, 2016: 16 released

January 14, 2016: 16 released

December 25: 25 released

December 9: 25 released

November 24: 10 released

November 7: 37 released

August 11: 22 released

June 16: Francois Sawa released

May 26: two elderly women released, Ramziyya Rehana (80) from Tel Jazira and Yoniyya Kanoon (70) from Tel Shamiran

March 3: Two Assyrians from Tel Shamiram were released, Yatroun Marko and his wife Wardiyya Yonan. Two Assyrians from Tel Goran were released, 6 year-old Mariana Mirza and her father's aunt, Bobo Mirza.

March 1: 19 Assyrians Released, all from the village of Tel Goran

Bishop Aprim with the Assyrian hostages from Khabur who were released today by ISIS.

ISIS Has released Assyrians from Qaryatain on the following dates:

January 29, 2016: 6 released

October 14, 2016: 50 released

September 4, 2015: 15 released

Some of the Assyrian hostages from Khabur who were released today by ISIS.

The following are the names of the hostages released from Khabur:

Sabina Hawil Youkhana Ramina Hawil Youkhana Lewis Hawil Youkhana Christine Joseph Lazar Bashara Joseph Lazar Katrine Joseph Lazar Peter Joseph Lazar Ilyan Saeed Youkhana AlmasSaeed Youkhana Lewis Saeed Youkhana Sargon Ninus Sarkis Yosip Ninus Sarkis Valentina Paulus Odisho Marganta Yushiya Adam Somer Shawil Elisha
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January 28, 2016

Despite the mass disqualifications of Reformist candidates by the conservative Guardian Council for the February parliamentary elections, leaders of the Iran Reformist bloc are encouraging members to turn out and vote.

Mohammad Reza Aref, head of the Reformist Policymaking Council, wrote a letter to Reformist young people Jan. 27 encouraging maximum participation in the elections. As reported earlier, only 30 of the 3,000 Reformists who registered to run were approved.

A record 12,000 candidates applied to be registered; the Guardian Council said it did not have time to review all the applications.

Among the 2013 presidential candidates, Aref was the sole Reformist. At the urging of Reformist former President Mohammad Khatami, Aref pulled out of those elections in favor of Hassan Rouhani, who was elected president. Now Aref is running in the parliamentary elections and is perhaps the most well-known active Reformist politician.

A Jan. 28 article in the Reformist Shargh Daily said that despite the discouraging news of disqualifications, Reformists on the whole seemed determined to participate in the elections. Journalist Mehdi Ghadimi wrote in the article that Arefs letter to the Reformist youth shows that there is unhappiness in their ranks regarding the disqualifications, and the current negotiations between the Rouhani administration and the Guardian Council on the topic do not seem promising. Regardless, Ghadimi believes that, based on statements by Aref and other prominent figures, Reformists will participate under any condition.

Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, former Tehran mayor and head of the Executives of Construction Party, said in response to the disqualifications, You must not sulk and leave the elections. He added, The only peaceful tool to resolve differences within the country is elections. Karbaschi warned that if elections are eliminated as a means of resolving disputes, then undemocratic methods will be adopted.

Masoud Pezekshian, a Reformist parliament member from Tabriz who, according to Shargh, was the only Reformist candidate from Tabriz to receive a qualification, also warned against boycotting the elections, saying, Having a presence in the elections is a principle and we must not ignore the ballot box. Pezekshian said Reformists need to focus on those who have been qualified.

A statement by the National Trust Party also addressed voters disillusioned over the disqualifications and said they must prevent a decrease in enthusiasm for the elections and keep alive their hope.

Shargh said that Rasoul Montajeb-Nia, deputy head of the National Trust Party, summed up the overall Reformist position by saying, In these elections we could have not participated over fear of disqualifications, but we stood for our words. We have the advantage of the experience of 2012 [parliamentary elections] and we are cohesive. There were many efforts [to keep us from reaching] the elections, but the planning of the elders resulted in this cohesiveness, and Reformists will try to enter this with one list.

When Reformists mostly boycotted the 2012 parliamentary election over a 2009 post-election crackdown, the result was a mostly conservative parliament.

According to Ghadimi, Montajeb-Nias statement was the stamp of approval of the participating under any conditions strategy as the overall strategy of the Reformists in the upcoming elections.
January 28, 2016

In Iran, a campaign to boycott Saudi products was initiated more than three weeks ago. The campaign, which was launched following a similar initiative in neighboring Iraq, was quickly joined by prominent Iranian actors such as Rambod Javan.

Javan posted the message Never threaten an Iranian on the messaging app Telegram. The phrase was famously uttered by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini at a tense moment during the nuclear negotiations in Austria last summer.

The boycott campaign follows Saudi Arabias Jan. 3 decision to cut diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran. The rupture was triggered by the attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities in Iran after Riyadh executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr Jan. 2.

Mehrdad Mahdavi, a student at Tehran University and one of the organizers of the boycott, told Al-Monitor, This is a student movement that has nothing to do with the government. We are different from the extremists who attacked the Saudi Embassy. Such actions are not civil. We are in favor of civil behavior and peaceful protests.

Expanding on how the campaign operates, Mahdavi said, We used the experience of another campaign launched against the purchase of [domestically produced, substandard] vehicles, which was also a civic movement. We distributed our message through large groups on Telegram. Some of these Telegram groups have more than 200,000 followers and we estimate that we have reached an audience of close to 2 million people through our advertising. Telegram has a huge influence in Iran.

Reports show that trade between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been very limited, with most of it being Iranian exports. According to Ebrahim Jamili, former secretary-general of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines Iran-Saudi Council, bilateral trade has been declining over the past decade. Indeed, it stood at a mere $215.1 million in the nine months that ended Dec. 21. Irans exports to Saudi Arabia include goods such as marble stones, ceramics, cement, engine parts, faucets, tar, carpets and handicrafts. Meanwhile, its imports from Saudi Arabia have included items such as fabric, corn oil, agricultural machinery, aluminum soft drink cans and motor vehicles.

The semi-official Mehr News Agency recently reported on the boycott campaign, pointing out prominent Saudi firms that operate in Iran. These include food producer Savola Group, which has teamed up with Irans Behshahr Industrial Development Corp.; Rani soft drink maker Aujan, an affiliate of Coca-Cola Co.; and the fast-food chain Al-Baik.

Savola has said it will not leave Iran, despite the cut in relations with Saudi Arabia, while its main shareholder, Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, has stated that he will no longer invest in Iran. The Iranian market accounts for 13% of Savolas total revenues. The Saudi food producer owns 90% of Savola Behshahr Co., which in turn holds a 40% share of Irans edible oil market. Following the cut in Iranian-Saudi relations, Reuters reported a drop of 11.5% in Savolas shares.

So far, the impact of the boycott is unclear. Kian, a graphic artist who is also a member of the campaign, told Al-Monitor, These [Saudi] companies can never say that, for instance, 'Our sales have dropped and we are paying for the loss.' This campaign has also only been going on for three weeks, and it is too soon to reach a conclusion [about its success] or say anything. Fortunately, given the media coverage, the public has welcomed it.

Meanwhile, Behshahrs shares have actually risen on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Sadegh Afzali, a licensed stock broker in the Iranian capital, told Al-Monitor, During these past few weeks, we havent witnessed any significant impact on Behshahrs shares. If such a boycott campaign is to have an impact, we have to be patient and monitor its effects in the next month or two.

Expanding on the value of Saudi investments in Iran, Afzali said, Companies like Rani or Savola will be quickly replaced by rival Iranian producers. In the past, whenever a rumor about a company began circulating, we saw the value of its shares drop considerably. As for Rani, it has many domestic rivals, and considering the cut in [commercial] ties [with Saudi Arabia], and these popular boycott campaigns  if they remain serious  will quickly be replaced and forgotten by consumers.

Meanwhile, an Al-Baik employee who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said one of the fast-food company's restaurants in Tehran's Sadeghiyeh district was shut down in the past two weeks due to low sales. Previously, Al-Baik had 15 restaurants in Iran, and now the number of active branches has dropped to 10."

There are three remaining restaurants in Tehran. The employee said sales at the location where he works "are good for now and we have not experienced a drop," though he declined to divulge sales figures. "The branches that faced a decrease in sales were quickly shut down.

When contacted by Al-Monitor, an Al-Baik restaurant in the Arikeh Iranian shopping mall in west Tehran refused to discuss the anti-Saudi boycott campaign on the record. However, one of the employees told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Our sales have not dropped in the past weeks. Also, we have heard no news about the departure of these fast-food restaurants from Iran and will continue our operations.

The cut in Iranian-Saudi relations and the boycott campaign also appear to have affected travel. According to Iranian media, flights have been halted between Dhahran, in Saudi Arabias Shiite-majority Eastern Province, and the holy Iranian city of Mashhad, which attracts Shiites from around the world.

The anti-Saudi campaign also is seeking to discourage travel to countries they claim support the Islamic State during the Persian New Year holiday, which begins March 20. Kian, the boycott campaign member, told Al-Monitor, We think that in a situation where Iran is grappling with economic problems, instead of paying the heavy costs of going to the hajj pilgrimage that money can be spent on helping those in need.
January 28, 2016

Pro-Israel groups are split over the Obama administration's crackdown on mislabeled goods from the West Bank, potentially complicating any pushback from Congress.

The US Customs agency warned importers last week that they can expect to be fined if they mark settlement goods as "Made in Israel," in keeping with US policy for the past two decades. While some critics on the right denounced the guidance as a concerted effort with the European Union to put pressure on Israel over its settlement construction, the main pro-Israel lobby said it had no issue with the policy because it does not distinguish between Jewish and Palestinian products but rather between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

"This long standing Customs policy, in contrast to the actions of the European Union, was not intended to stigmatize Israeli products but to merely facilitate duty free access to the U.S. market for Palestinian goods, Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told The Forward. It does not distinguish among manufacturers in the territories.

Others disagree.

Omri Ceren, managing director at the Israel Project, agrees with Marshall that the original Treasury Department regulations from 1995 and 1997 aimed to boost trade with the Palestinian Authority by distinguishing between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In the current climate, however, enforcing the regulation could mean discriminating against products made in Jewish settlements.

"In the current climate, where even the State Department says that [European] labeling is linked to efforts to economically isolate Israel, supporters of Israel here in Washington should be going out of their way to rebuke those who want to single out goods made by Jews in the West Bank," Ceren told Al-Monitor. "This is exactly the opposite, and unfortunately looks very much like an anti-Israel broadside."

The Obama administration for its part says it's merely restating existing policy amid a flurry of questions, particularly since the EU issued its own guidance on the issue in November.

"This guidance was issued in response to complaints alleging mislabeling of products originating in the West Bank," a US official told Al-Monitor. "In response, they wanted to remind US importers of these previous Treasury decisions. Bottom line: There has been no change in policy or in our approach to enforcing marking requirements."

The guidance, discreetly announced Jan. 23, warns importers that "goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection."

House and Senate members have warned the EU that they consider its policy of distinguishing between West Bank Palestinians and Jewish "settlements" as tantamount to discrimination. In a response first obtained by Al-Monitor, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini made it clear that she had no plans to review the policy.

Congress has so far remained silent about US policy on the matter. That may be about to change.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a leading presidential candidate, has been paying close attention to the issue and is weighing legislative and other options, his national security aide told Al-Monitor.

Cruz is a strong believer in Israel's sovereignty over the disputed West Bank territories it calls Judea and Samaria, Victoria Coates said. The new guidance, she said, instead treats products from that area as coming from "Never-never land."

"It just doesn't make sense. Where were they made?" Coates said. "You can't just erase a piece of the country." The guidance, she added, is a first step toward a boycott of Israeli products that Congress and the administration have both said is unacceptable.

The timing of the guidance, following a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks and the EU guidance, has elevated the long-standing US policy to a level of concern that should draw bipartisan opposition, she predicted.

"This has gone from being a small footnote to being emblematic of a broader" Obama policy that's detrimental to Israel, Coates said.
January 28, 2016

Minister of Culture Miri Regev has been swept up by a wave of support, especially from the far right, for advancing the No Loyalty, No Budget for the Arts Law. It is what carried her to the premiere of "Evita" at the Habima National Theater in Tel Aviv the night of Jan. 27.

Just a few hours earlier, she had been involved in an impassioned argument with opposition Knesset members during a discussion by the Education and Culture Committee. On the table was a law she proposed to deny state funding to cultural institutions that allegedly assailed state symbols. Cultural organizations that undermine the state will be denied budgets from the state, Regev said during the debate. Cultural institutions are not above the law.  Miri Regev did not come up with this law or that. All I want to do is enact a simple law that says that the minister who releases money can also prevent that money from being released.

Regevs proposed law sounded vaguely familiar to veteran Knesset members. Combing their memories, they recalled an amendment to the Cinema Law proposed by former Knesset member Michael Ben Ari of the Ichud Leumi faction in 2010. Regev and Ben Ari both used the term freedom of funding in their proposals, which described how they wanted to grant the government the right to deny funding from institutions of its choosing.

It would therefore seem that Regevs law was inspired by one of the most radical Knesset members ever to serve in that august body. The one difference is that while Ben Ari held no senior position and was effectively a parliamentary backbencher, Regev is a senior politician and an influential minister from the ruling party, and ironically, that party has its roots in liberalism.

Throughout the Knesset debate, Regev referred to herself repeatedly in the third person, causing considerable embarrassment to anyone listening. She attempted to provoke her political rivals, seated around the committee table, and all in all, seemed to enjoy the turn events were taking. In Regevs world, she is the state. She will determine, she will decide and she will mold Israeli culture in the image of her own worldview. The girl from the periphery town of Kiryat Gat will show all the great actors like Gila Almagor and all the great authors like Amos Oz what Jewish culture really is. This Knesset meeting and her current status brought out a whole new level of arrogance in her. She is proving herself to be utterly oblivious, power-hungry, toxic and just plain mean. Unfortunately, members of her party attending the discussion didnt bother to put a stop to the horror show. While she intended her performance to serve her political interests, it actually sowed seeds of destruction across Israeli society.

Ever since she was appointed minister of culture in May 2015, Regev has adopted a cynical approach, intended to improve her standing in the next Likud primaries. She attacks Ashkenazis (Israelis of European origin) and leftists whenever she can, regardless of how much damage she leaves in her wake. It is no coincidence that the far-right group Im Tirtzu has embraced her warmly over the past few days. It is also worth recalling that in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that Im Tirtzus guiding principles were reminiscent of fascism. Just a few hours after Regevs dangerous funding law was announced, Im Tirtzu launched a campaign listing Israeli artists and cultural figures, whom it considers foreign agents. The timing of the two events was no coincidence. According to Im Tirtzu, Regev was a political target of these artists and the left solely because she is promoting a law that encourages loyalty to the state.

Among the many artists named as plants and foreign agents are actresses Gila Almagor and Rivka Michaeli, playwright Yehoshua Sobol, and authors Amos Oz and David Grossman (Grossman lost a son in the 2006 Lebanon War). The current campaign is the direct continuation of the Moles in Human Rights Groups campaign, launched by Im Tirtzu about a month ago. While the first campaign portrayed Israeli human rights activists in groups like BTselem or Breaking the Silence as representing the interests of foreign governments, cultural figures who expressed support for those groups are now being targeted.

Comments about the campaign by Im Tirtzu Chairman Matan Peleg underscored the link between that new publicity campaign and Regev. Whenever elected officials in Israel attempt to fulfill the task given to them by the people in the most democratic and legitimate way possible, we encounter an automatic campaign of character assassination by people of culture, who are really just attempting to portray themselves as enlightened, progressive and better informed than the rest of the public. One time it is Amos Oz; another time it is Gila Almagor or David Grossman. Standing proudly at the forefront of the current round of attacks against the minister of culture is Joshua Sobol. The problem is that these people leave out the fact that they are members in organizations infiltrated by foreign agents, and which are funded by foreign governments and the New Israel Fund [nongovernmental organization] to undermine the State of Israel.

What Peleg effectively did in these interviews is expose the hidden link between the organization he heads and Regev. If we were to use his own terminology, Regev is actually an Im Tirtzu mole, operating in the Ministry of Culture and the Israeli government. Could it be that this is the real threat to Israeli society?

I cant help but remember the history of all sorts of countries in Europe, and how it all began as a slow trickle, Rivka Michaeli told Army Radio on Jan. 28. Michaeli is one of Israels most prominent actresses, and also one of its most admired stars. To show how easy it is to disprove the claims that Im Tirtzu has made against her, Michaeli went on to note various milestones in her own life and in the lives of her immediate family. One of her brothers served as the Israel Defense Force's chief medical officer; her father was a member of the pre-state Etzel Underground (Irgun) and a personal aide to prominent right-wing and revisionist ideologue Zeev Jabotinsky; her younger brother served in the Tank Corps commando unit; and her best friend was the songwriter Naomi Shemer, who was closely identified with the right.

Very few condemnations against the Im Tirzu campaign were uttered by politicians who are not part of the Israeli political center-left. The few on the right who did condemn it included Knesset member Benny Begin of the Likud (son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin), who said, The search for and identification and marking of alleged traitors is an old fascist characteristic, an ugly and dangerous one. The chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi, Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, wrote on his Twitter account that the campaign was embarrassing, unnecessary and disgraceful. It was only after Regev realized that Bennett had joined the criticism against the campaign against the "mole artists" that she reacted in a similar vein, tweeting that hurting any person because of his or her political opinions is wrong.

While Bennett deserves to be congratulated for his condemnation, he has played an important role in the current governments assault on the liberal and democratic values of Israeli society. Over the past few days it has been reported that he acted deviously and surreptitiously to plant a far-right narrative in the Ministry of Educations own civics textbooks, and that he is trying to brainwash Israeli children. An editor, Yehuda Ya'ari, who worked on the book for the ministry and later disclosed the kinds of distortions that were introduced into it, also became the target of an incitement campaign. He is now being portrayed by the ministry as an enemy of the state.

Just like Regev, Bennett is acting like a mole, representing a certain segment of society with fascist tendencies. It can only be hoped that enough bold and powerful forces in this government will stand up and take the necessary steps to rein in their subversive efforts.
Hyundai Vehicles being built in Montgomery

Daeil supplies parts for Hyundai and Kia. In this file photo, 2016 Hyundai Sonatas and the new 2017 Elantras are being built at the Hyundai Vehicle Assembly plant in Montgomery, Alabama. (Joe Songer/jsonger@al.com).

An Alabama auto supplier has been willfully exposing its employees to dangers that could lead to amputation, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health administration.

Daeil USA Corp. makes parts for Hyundai and Kia in Valley, Alabama, on the border with Georgia. OSHA issued citations on Thursday for one willful, five repeated, 10 serious violations and one "other-than-serious" violation.

OSHA has proposed Daeil pay $171,870 in penalties. Daeil has 115 workers at this facility.

The investigation found violations including:

Not providing locks that would prevent robots from accidentally activating during maintanence.

Not having stop buttons on conveyor lines be red. OSHA cited Daeil for similar violations in 2013.

Not having protective screens and shields in place during welding.

Having wet floors, which are a slipping hazard.

Having unguarded machinery, which could potentially lead to amputation.

Not having a noise monitoring program.

Not having an eyewash station for workers who handle corrosive materials.

Not giving OSHA workplace injury laws within four hours.

"Management at this facility has adopted a productivity-over-safety mentality and repeatedly claims that it is 'too expensive' to address the safety hazards found in this workplace," Joseph Roesler, OSHA's area director in Mobile, said in a statement. "The safety culture of this company must change immediately; protecting workers must always come before profit margins."

Click here to view the citations.

OSHA inspected Daeil as part of its Regional Emphasis Program on Safety in the Auto Industry, a program that aims to reduce risk in the auto industry in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

Daeil has 15 business days from when it got the citations to comply, request a conference with OSHA or contest the findings before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
05-0204 bhamtimes01.jpg

February 24, 2004 Dr. Jesse J. Lewis, (cq) , center, founder of the Birmingham Times, stands in front of the newsroom with colleagues.

(Amy E. Voigt)

The Birmingham Times has new ownership and new leadership as its founder and publisher retires, the newspaper announced Thursday.

Jesse Lewis Sr., 91, founded the Times in 1964 to give the black community a greater voice during the civil rights struggle. He has been serving as publisher.

Lewis sold the newspaper to The Foundation for Progress in Journalism - a non-profit founded in honor of Lewis that aims to promote minorities advancement in journalism. The Foundation was founded in 2013 with funding from the Alabama Power Foundation.

The newspaper will operate as the newly founded Birmingham Times Media Group, a for-profit subsidy of the Foundation.

Lewis will be Publisher Emeritus of the Times. Samuel Martin, has been named Publisher of the Birmingham Times. Martin has worked as Chief Advertising Officer at the Boston Globe and as the former President and Publisher of the Montgomery Advertiser. Lewis will also remain the Foundation's Executive Director.

Barnett Wright will serve as the Times' Executive Editor. Wright is a former reporter for the Alabama Media Group and is the author of the book "1963: How the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement Changed America and the World."
Authorities today released the name of a young man shot to death when lawmen say he broke into a neighbor's home Thursday afternoon.

The Jefferson County Coroner's Office identified him Raheem Jonas Tyreze Stubbs. He was 22.

The homeowner shot and killed Stubbs when he arrived home after his 8-year-old son called him about the intruders. Jefferson County sheriff's Chief Deputy Randy Christian said the shooting was reported just after 4:15 p.m. Deputies responded to a report of a burglary in progress at a residence in the 1900 block of Springlake Court near Center Point.

Christian said an 8-year-old boy had just arrived home from school and was alone. He called his father and told him three men were knocking on the doors.

The child hid under a bed. The father, who was only a few minutes away, got home and went inside. Once inside, he discovered the three men had broken into the home. The father confronted them and fired shots from a handgun.

Deputies arrived on the scene to find Stubbs on the floor inside the home. He was taken to UAB Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:21 p.m.

The other two suspects fled on foot. There were early reports of a second suspect wounded, and deputies say there was a possible blood trail leading from the apartment. They were are also checking area hospitals.

"We have not located the other two suspects but we will,'' Christian said.

Birmingham police charged Stubbs with third-degree burglary in 2013. The disposition of that case wasn't immediately available.

"It's sad anytime someone loses their life and I'm sure this young man has a family that loves him. It will be a difficult time for them."

"There are behaviors and activities in this life that increase your chances of losing yours,'' Christian said. "Kicking in a door and entering someone's home with criminal intent is one of them. Thank God this little boy and his dad are OK."
The former head pharmacist and the president of an Alabama compounding pharmacy have agreed to plead guilty for distributing contaminated drugs linked to nine deaths in Birmingham-area hospitals.

Advanced Specialty Pharmacy, which conducted business as Meds IV, is no longer in operation.

David Lee Allen, the former pharmacist-in-charge, and William Timothy Rogers, a pharmacist and the former president of the company, were charged in a criminal information filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Both men signed plea agreements saying they will plead guilty to two misdemeanor violations of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

Allen, 60, of McCalla, and Rogers, 48, of Hoover, will be formally charged in arraignments set for Feb. 11 at 9:30 a.m. before Magistrate Judge Harwell Davis.

Court documents show that the adulterated drugs were compounded at the Meds IV facility and distributed to Birmingham-area hospitals in 2011.

"Meds IV was in the business of compounding drugs and IV nutrition that was supposed to help patients heal," said Joyce White Vance, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. "Instead, because of unsanitary procedures in the mixing of liquid nutrition, contaminated IV fluid was sent to Birmingham area hospitals and a number of patients developed serious bloodstream infections. I thank the FDA and its Office of Criminal Investigations for their diligence in helping us prosecute those responsible for the failings at Meds IV which contributed to significant harm."

Allen supervised all compounding at Meds IV, was responsible for reviewing and approving TPN formulations, and was responsible for filling individual prescriptions Meds IV received for patient-specific TPN products.

Rogers was responsible for overseeing all day-to-day operations of Meds IV.

"It is certainly an incredibly tragic event for the individuals affected by what happened in these circumstances," said Tommy Spina, the attorney representing Rogers. "My client has acknowledged that under the law, this charge is considered a strict liability offense, meaning his actions were not intentional. Nevertheless, the law holds him accountable. He has accepted that fact and is deeply saddened that this event occurred on his watch."

The criminal information filed Thursday lays out these allegations:

Meds IV compounded various drugs, including an intravenous drug known as Total Parenteral Nutrition that is administered intravenously to patients who cannot eat or handle a feeding tube.

Beginning in or around February 2011, Meds IV compounded its own amino acid solution, which it then mixed with other ingredients to form TPN. That solution consisted at least partially of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance called Serratia marcescens, or S. marcescens and was prepared, packed, or held under unsanitary conditions.

The information alleges that Meds IV prepared the amino acid and then kept it unrefrigerated in an unsterile room in a large pot on the floor, sometimes overnight, before it was sterilized and used.

S. marcescens is a bacteria that can cause infections if introduced into the bloodstream through contaminated medications and is resistant to many antibiotics. These infections can cause serious medical complications, and even death.

Between March 5 and 15, 2011, nine patients at various Birmingham-area hospitals who developed bloodstream infections caused by S. marcescens died, and several other patients developed similar infections but survived. At the time, the state health department said the affected patients ranged in age from 38 to 94.

All of those patients had been given TPN that was compounded and distributed by Meds IV. A number of patients had underlying conditions which might have contributed to their deaths, but medical records of some patients suggest that the infections were also a significant factor.

On March 14, 2011, a hospital notified Meds IV that four patients receiving TPN had tested positive for S. marcescens. The information alleges that this was the first time Meds IV was informed of a link between its TPN and patients testing positive for the bacteria.

On or around March 16, 2011, Meds IV began notifying some customers that compounding of TPN was suspended until further notice.

During a March 22, 2011, inspection at Meds IV, investigators from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found S. marcescens that was indistinguishable to the outbreak strain. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and CDC investigators then linked the S. marcescens to TPN compounded by Meds IV.

On March 24, 2011, Meds IV recalled all of its IV products made since Jan. 1 of that year. In a warning letter, the FDA acknowledged the recall and asked that the company give notification if it resumed operations.

"Americans expect and deserve drugs that are safe, effective, and that meet appropriate standards for quality, yet Meds IV contaminated and distributed drug products that resulted in serious harm to patients," said Acting FDA Commissioner Stephen Ostroff, MD. "Such conduct cannot be tolerated, and the FDA will continue to work with the Department of Justice to pursue aggressive enforcement actions against those who place American patients at risk."

"The compounding of sterile drug products requires significant care, and the distribution of contaminated drug products can cause serious harm to patients," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer, head of the Justice Department's Civil Division. "This criminal case demonstrates the Justice Department's commitment to protecting consumers and patients, and making sure pharmaceutical drugs are safe and effective."

For each count, the defendants face a statutory maximum sentence of up to one year in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, or both, and a term of supervised release after any imprisonment for up to one year.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry Cornelius of the Northern District of Alabama and Trial Attorney Heide L. Herrmann of the Justice Department's Consumer Protection Branch. They were assisted by Associate Chief Counsel Shannon M. Singleton of the Food and Drug Division, Office of General Counsel, Department of Health and Human Services. The case was investigated by the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations.
carly chandler

Dustin Chandler holds his 3-year-old daughter, Carly, next to Gov. Robert Bentley during a gathering at Pelham City Hall on Tuesday, July 22, 2014, in celebration of the passage of Carly's Law. (AL.com file photo)

The medical marijuana oil study ongoing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is showing near across-the-board reductions in seizures for its patients.

Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski

Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski, head of the Division of Epilepsy at UAB and one of the principal investigators in the CBD oil study known as Carly's Law, said about 90 percent of patients in the study have seen "some improvement."

It's the first time UAB has discussed early results of the study - believed to be the nation's largest on CBD oil -- that began last year.

And those results appear dramatic.

"We have noticed that at least 50 percent of the patients have more than 50 percent reduction in seizures, which is very nice," Szaflarski said in an interview with AL.com this week. "Some of these patients have multiple seizures per day. They report on CBD that they have days without seizures, which is great."

Evidence of the positive impact of CBD oil on patients suffering from epilepsy has largely been anecdotal before the early results from the UAB study. The CBD oil has less than 1 percent THC, which is what provides the psychoactive high from marijuana. With such a minimal presence of THC, the CBD oil does not provide a high.

UAB is planning to present its findings in March to the American Academy of Neurology, where more than 10,000 neurologists worldwide will be in attendance, Szaflarski said.

"It's a meeting where pretty much all neurologists around the country and around the world go to learn the newest things that are happening in neurology," he said.

"It will be presented to a large number of physicians, who will then go to their communities and have additional knowledge about CBD. There is a lot of interest in CBD for treatment for various types of epilepsy and we are collecting a lot of data that will allow us to decide if some patients will respond to this type of treatment or not."

UAB is limited in what it can say at this point about the Carly's Law study because of the pending presentation.

Beyond the raw numbers of seeing a reduction in seizures, Szaflarski said quality of life has improved for patients in the study.

"Many patients or families report to us that the patient or their child is more attentive and more interested in their environment, which is something that is very important in addition to seizure control or improved seizure control that these patients have positive, rather than negative, cognitive effects of the treatment," he said. "The majority of the seizure medications that are on the market have some negative effects of cognition. Here, we observe something to be different."

Anecdotal evidence of such improvement has led one Alabama lawmaker to propose a law to decriminalize medical marijuana oil. Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison, is expected to introduce Leni's Law next week when the 2016 legislative session begins.

He said the improvement of Leni Young, a 4-year-old girl whose family relocated to Oregon from Alabama so she could legally obtain CBD oil, motivated him to build upon the 2014 Carly's Law.

"Our expectation (going into the study) was that we will see some response but we were very guarded because it was a lot of anecdotal data," Szaflarski said. "But we really didn't know what to expect.

"In many aspects of this study, we have learned that, yes, there are many patients who respond and respond very well. There are some patients who are seizure-free, which is fantastic."

Szaflarski said there are about 70 patients in the Carly's Law study now while most studies around the country are composed of about 10 to 25 patients.

A critical detail of the UAB study, Szaflarski said, is the access to quality CBD oil from GW Pharmaceuticals in Great Britain. The company provides a consistent product that allows doctors to trust their findings, Szaflarski said.

While CBD oil is available commercially, the product is generally of an inconsistent quality, Szaflarski said.

"When a patient in Colorado goes to a local store, they are frequently getting something different from day to day, from batch to batch because it's untested or it's not sufficiently tested to provide all the information that is needed," he said.

"If I hear a response from my patients, I know I can expect the same response tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and a year from now. On the other hand, if I prescribe something and a patient goes to a local store and gets one product, it doesn't mean they will get the same product tomorrow and the same response tomorrow."

As for the political debate, Szaflarski said it was too soon for the results of the study to be considered conclusive - though he said he hoped at some point, CBD oil would be available in pharmacies.

While the pros and cons of CBD oil continue to be discussed, Szaflarski said that definitive answers may be available through more research in two or three years.

"Not today," Szaflarski said when asked if he had a position on the political debate of the medical marijuana oil. "I actually don't really know what the effects of the CBD oil, the THC, are. These results have not been fully explored. We need to have a good grasp of what this product does before we can say this is safe or not safe for the public.

"It's a very hot debate and it's hard to take sides. But I would like to see more data before I can say one way or the other."
A Florence-based company and its owner, on Friday announced it had reached an agreement to settle claims by the U.S. Department of Justice that the company failed to meet the technical accessibility requirements for apartments under the Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act.

Attorneys for Gateway Companies and DOJ on Friday submitted a joint motion in U.S. District Court in Birmingham asking a judge to approve the agreement. A judge had not signed off on the agreement as of late Friday afternoon.

The agreement affects 71 separate apartment complexes in Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina, according to the statement from the company.

Under the agreement the Florence-based company, its owner, Allan Rappuhn, and related partnerships will pay approximately $5000 per apartment complex to establish a settlement fund for any aggrieved persons identified by the Justice Department in the future and for a civil penalty, according to the company's statement.

"The Justice Department has not yet identified any persons with disabilities who were denied housing due to these technical violations," according to the company statement. "However, the Agreement gives it one year to identify whether any person has, in fact, suffered any harm."

The Justice Department will investigate the claim and determine of the person has, in fact, suffered any harm.

The terms of the agreement provide that any money remaining in the Settlement Fund after expiration of this one year period is given to fair housing groups in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina, according to the company statement.

"Rappuhn and Gateway fully cooperated throughout the investigation and negotiation process and now look forward to addressing the elements required by the Consent Order and continue with the important work of providing decent, safe, affordable, and accessible housing to our residents," according to the statement.

Amy Montgomery, President of Gateway Construction Corporation said Gateway commited to tenants with disabilities. "Over more than 25 years Gateway has developed more than 3500 high quality apartment units throughout the southeast, most of which are affordable units with monthly rent of less than $500," she said.

"Almost every week we meet the requests of tenants for reasonable accommodation for their disabilities. That is part of who we are," Montgomery stated.

The Agreement also calls for the partnerships which own the apartment complexes to retrofit the alleged technical violations at the properties over a three year period, according to the company statement. "These consist of items such as installing removable cabinets to provide greater clear floor space in bathrooms, adjusting the height of light switches and outlets, and adjusting sidewalks to remove small sloping deviations," according to the statement

In most cases, the contemplated retrofits involve a matter of adjusting existing designs by a matter of inches, according to the Gateway statement.

"Gateway agreed to settle the Justice Department's claims solely to avoid the time, distraction and significant cost of litigation," according to the statement. "Gateway denies all of the allegations made by the United States in the Complaint it filed in Federal District Court in Birmingham, Alabama on September 30, 2015."

The Agreement also states that there has been no finding by the Justice Department of non-compliance with the Accessibility Design Requirements or any other federal, state, or local statute or regulation, according to the statement.

Many of the properties included in the Justice Department's complaint were built decades ago including some built more than 20 years before the complaint was filed, according to the statement. "The architectural plans for properties were provided to Gateway by licensed architects and local building inspectors certified the properties were compliant with the then prevailing design and construction standards. However, the passage of time and the reliance on architects and building inspectors is not taken into account by the Justice Department when filing a fair housing case."

"It is clear that much legislative work needs to be done by the housing industry to clear up ambiguity and conflicts within the different regulations, clearly establish materiality thresholds, set time limits and provide for normal building construction tolerances within the code requirements," Montgomery stated. "Furthermore, focused efforts by the affordable housing and investment community are needed ensure that the consequences of innocent, good faith mistakes based on the advice of professionals are not draconian. Otherwise, providing affordable housing under some of the most successful government programs is at risk."

Rappuhn also stated they are "very proud of their efforts to provide accessible housing and will continue to uphold that very high standard in our work."

"We are committed to doing right for our tenants, the housing finance authorities that foster affordable housing, our lenders, our investors and our employees," Rappuhn stated. "We believe we have done so in resolving this matter. We appreciate the support and cooperation from our investors, partners, lenders, tenants, construction professionals and state housing agencies through this process."
A 58-year-old convicted felon is going to prison after Birmingham police officers caught him in possession of a gun nearly two years ago.

Michael Howell has been sentenced to four years behind bars, followed by three years of supervised released. The case goes back to 2014 when authorities say Howell, convicted of another crime 17 years earlier, broke into two Birmingham homes and later was arrested with a gun stolen from one of those homes.

Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards said a woman on March 5, 2014 reported a break-in, and told investigators her Ruger .380-caliber pistol had been stolen. Later that month, on March 31, a second woman spotted a man looking into the back window of her home. That woman left to go to the store, and when she returned she noticed someone had entered her home through her bedroom window and taken two sets of keys.

The following day, Edwards said, the second victim saw a man walking along Montclair Road, and recognized him as the man she saw looking through her window. He was later identified as Howell.

Birmingham police officers Patrick Mosley and Raymond Atkins responded to the scene and took Howell into custody. At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of the stolen gun and the stolen keys.

Because Howell had at least two prior felony convictions, he was indicted last year on the charge of felon in possession of a firearm. He had been convicted in 1997 of first-degree receiving stolen property in Jefferson County, and sentenced to 20 years in prison with three to serve.

He was sentenced in Jefferson County on the gun possession charge last week. "This is proof that felons with firearms will not go unpunished. The legal system that is in place works,'' Edwards said. "When the collective efforts of law enforcement, District Attorney's Office and the courts culminate together, criminals can expect to be held accountable for their crimes committed
A judge has set Sept. 12 for the trial of a teen charged with capital murder in the 2014 death of a Domino's pizza deliveryman.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace set the trial date for Corey Arrington Jr., 19, during a hearing Friday to consider a number of pre-trial motions by Arrington's defense attorneys.

Arrington is charged in the Dec. 21, 2014 death of 63-year-old Domino's deliveryman Najeh Masaeid during a robbery. During a preliminary hearing last year a police detective testified that Arrington had told them that he had punched Masaeid twice before Masaeid fell back and struck his head during the robbery.

Arrington, who was 17 years old at the time of Masaeid's death, does not face the death penalty because of his age at the time of the crime.

At Arrington's hearing on Friday his attorney, John Lentine, asked that a "Miller" hearing be held before the trial to determine whether the judge will consider life without parole as an option if Arrington is convicted of capital murder.

Wallace denied that request, saying it was too early to consider it. If there was a capital murder conviction then he would set a "Miller" hearing to consider it, the judge said.

Lentine said the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed whether a Miller hearing should be held before or after a capital murder trial. But, he said, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed "Atkins" hearings before trial to determine whether inmates have a mental disability and so should the Miller hearings.

"We're just suggesting that because there is no set procedure on how to do that, that the better procedure is to determine whether life without parole should even be on the table," Lentine said after the hearing.

If life without parole is not on the table then mitigation - such as hiring experts - would not have to be done, Lentine said. "It does tend to expedite some of the issues if it's off the table," he said.

"As long as the prosecution seeks to incarcerate him (Arrington) for the rest of his natural life then we're going to have a trial because I don't think the evidence is going to support the capital charge in any way," Lentine said.

Alabama law only provides two possible punishments - a death sentence or life without parole - if someone is convicted of capital murder. In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled inmates who were juveniles when the crime was convicted can't face a death sentence. So that meant judges in Alabama could only sentence juvenile killers to life without parole.

But in 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Miller v. Alabama that such an "automatic" sentence of life without parole is unconstitutional and judges must also be able to consider lesser sentences and sentence them to life without parole in rare circumstances.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that their Miller ruling retroactively applies to inmates convicted and sentenced to life without parole for murders committed as a juvenile prior to the Miller decision. Alabama and other states had contended the Miller ruling did not apply retroactively.

Wallace also said he would not rule yet on Lentine's request to see any information prosecutors collect from the National Crime Information Center on potential jurors' arrests. Only law enforcement, including the prosecutors, can conduct NCIC checks.

Lentine said they also want to have access to information the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office has collected on potential jurors who have served on prior juries and what the verdicts were. "My guess is that if they found somebody not guilty in the past, they are probably going to strike them," Lentine said after the hearing.

Wallace also has ordered Arrington to provide a DNA sample for comparison on DNA found on evidence.

Attorney Christopher Daniel also represents Arrington.

Deputy Jefferson County District Attorneys Ashley Patterson, Joe Hicks and Blake Milner are prosecuting the case.

Arrington also is charged in a robbery of another pizza deliveryman at the same apartment complex off U.S. 280 - the District at the Summit - the month before Masaeid died.

A detective had testified at Arrington's preliminary hearing that he spent a few days after Masaeid's death walking around the apartment complex knocking on doors looking for possible witnesses. While walking outside in the complex the detective said he got a tip from a man who didn't want to identify himself. That anonymous tipster identified a young man who lived in one of the apartment buildings.

The call that night to Domino's to deliver pizza to apartment 924, which was vacant, came back as being linked to a Pinger App number. Pinger describes its app as a free service that allows people to create an account to send and receive calls and texts for free.

The detective said the number linked back to Arrington's Pinger account.

When questioned, Arrington at first denied involvement in Masaeid's death, the detective said.

But after being presented with the Pinger information Arrington told police when the driver arrived at the vacant apartment he punched Masaeid once, the detective said. Masaeid was knocked down and when he stood back up Arrington said he punched him again, he said.

The detective said Arrington told police that when Masaeid fell back he hit his head on the concrete ground. Arrington told police that Masaeid was bleeding from the mouth and choking when he turned the body over to get his wallet.

Arrington never said he intended to kill Masaeid and there was no indication any weapon was used, the detective said.
AX119_189C_9.JPG

Marchers gather around a rainbow flag as hundreds showed up to walk in the Rocket City Pride Parade through downtown Huntsville, Ala. Sunday, June 21, 2015. (File)

Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) supporters will gather next week for the #RuralPride summit in Huntsville.

The joint venture between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Center for Lesbian Rights will be co-hosted by the True Colors Fund from noon to 5 p.m. Thursday at the Alabama A&M University Agricultural Research Center, Building 0870, on 4900 Meridian St. The event is free and open to the public.

A media advisory said #RuralPride is a partnership that "challenges the stereotype that LGBT people only live in metropolitan areas by raising awareness of the particular issues faced by LGBT rural communities."

"The partnership includes a series of summits being organized across the country to elevate the voices of LGBT people and families in rural communities, explore how these communities are particularly vulnerable, and discuss federal policy changes that can increase equality and access for rural LGBT people and their families," officials said.

The Huntsville event will focus on the following issues: marriage and LGBT families, youth, poverty and economic security, race and religion. Local panelists will include LGBT advocates, attorneys and young people.

For more information, click here.
A Madison County judge today moved the trial of a man accused of strangling his wife and young son in south Huntsville to Oct. 31 - Halloween. Stephen Marc Stone had been scheduled for trial in February.

Circuit Judge Donna Pate moved the trial after a status conference in the Madison County Courthouse at which Stone appeared. Because the trial could take up to two weeks, the move was to find that much time in the trial calendars of prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Stone is charged with capital murder in the February 2013 strangulation deaths of his wife, Krista Stone and their son, 7-year-old Zachary Stone, at the home they rented on Chicamauga Trail in south Huntsville.

Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard has said the DA's office will seek the death penalty. According to AL.com news partner WHNT News 19, defense attorneys said today they will file a motion arguing that a recent Supreme Court decision makes Alabama's death penalty law unconstitutional.

In January, the high court ruled in a Florida case that a jury, "not a judge, must find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," in the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Alabama's death penalty law also gives a judge the final say on the penalty. Defense attorneys Brian Clark and Larry Marsili will file a motion "addressing those issues," Judge Pate's order said, "to which the State of Alabama will respond."

The killings took place early on Feb. 24, 2013. Stone later told police he felt as if something had "broken" inside of him before the killings. He is expected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
So this, at least on one occasion, is how a song is written:

A family makes a sign to welcome wounded veterans to Huntsville, is embarrassed by how big it is compared to other signs, a picture of the sign ends up in the newspaper, someone hands the newspaper clipping to a songwriter, the inspired songwriter immediately slips into a quiet room where the lyrics and melody come together in an hour and a military anthem is born.

And a couple of hours later, the songwriter is performing the song he wrote in the relatively blink of a musical eye for a roomful of wounded warriors.

"This doesn't just happen every day," said the songwriter, Michael Curtis.

Curtis, who lives and works in Muscle Shoals, performed the country-style song "We Know You" on Thursday at the Semper Fi Community Task Force of North Alabama volunteer appreciation dinner at Rocket Republic Brewing Company in Madison.

Curtis received a standing ovation for his acoustic version - the studio recording in Muscle Shoals featured an all-star band of musicians - and all proceeds from the sale of the song will go to benefit the annual Heroes Week, which brings wounded veterans to north Alabama for a week of king-like treatment.

It's already legend about the Huntsville Semper Fi community that after Curtis performed that song, "there wasn't a dry eye in the audience."

All this from a sign that stretched about 10-feet long made by a Huntsville family that, at first, didn't want anyone to see it.

Titus and Marlie Thompson, the teen-aged children of Marlon and Julie Thompson, made the sign that said: "U Don't Know Us But U Fought 4 Us."

The words just popped into Julie's head, she said, and the kids took it from there. A friend had told her about Heroes Week, how children would decorate signs to welcome the heroes to town at Huntsville International Airport and Julie thought it would be a good project for her children.

"We got over there and I saw these poster-sized (signs) were about the biggest sign and I was kind of embarrassed with our sign," Julie said. "We rolled it out in the back and when people started seeing it, Jeff (Wishik, a board member of the Semper Fi task force) came and got us and brought us closer to the front. I haven't been embarrassed about it since."

AL.com photographer Bob Gathany snapped a picture of the sign, which appeared in the Nov. 6, 2015 edition of The Huntsville Times. Later that day, Wishik's wife Faye handed a copy of the newspaper clipping to Curtis, who was performing at a luncheon for the wounded veterans at the invitation of Huntsville's Lee Marshall at Asbury United Methodist Church.

"There are a lot of military men and women I'll never meet but I want to thank them for their service," Curtis said. "I took the article and went into a room and said, 'God, what do You want me to say?'

"And I'm telling you, within an hour, I came out with the lyric and the melody and we closed the show with it. And these veterans were on their feet in tears. This all happened in a period of about three hours."

By December, Curtis said he was in the studio recording the song. Milton Sledge, a drummer for Garth Brooks, played on the song along with guitarist Will McFarlane (who has played with Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne). Jimmy Johnson, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, also helped with the recording.

Curtis turned over ownership of the song to Jeff and Faye Wishik, who said all proceeds from sales of the song will go toward Heroes Week. The song is available on iTunes and soon will be on Amazon Music.

"It was God-given," Curtis said. "He deserves more credit than me."
Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at the University of Iowa Field House, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 in Iowa City, Iowa.

(Paul Sancya/The Associated Press)

Donald Trump will be in Des Moines, Iowa tonight but he won't be among the Republican presidential contenders taking part in the Fox News/Google presidential debate.

Instead, the GOP front runner will be hosting his own event to raise money for veterans.

Trump said he questioned the network's treatment of him in past debates, especially questions posed by moderator Megyn Kelly. Kelly is set to be among the moderators in tonight's debate.

Trump's campaign will be holding its own high-profile event just down the street from the debate.

Trump's 7 p.m. CST gathering will be covered as a live news event, according to CNN. C-Span will carry the full event live. MSNBC hasn't confirmed if it will cover the Trump event and Fox said it will have a correspondent there.

The event will also be covered live by CBSN, CBS' streaming network.

While some of Trump's Republican challengers have criticized him for not appearing at the debate, not everyone is shying away from the businessman turned politician. GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, both of whom will appear at the 6 p.m. pre-debate for lower -polling candidates, will both be attending Trump's event.

You can also watch a live stream of the event below.
Lilly Ledbetter on Capitol Hill.jpg

Lilly Ledbetter is pictured here with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada at a news conference on Capitol Hill last June. (AP photo)

On the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Act, President Obama has announced new rules designed to close the gap between what men and women are paid.

In a White House announcement, Obama said companies with more than 100 workers will now have to provide the federal government with annual data for how much they pay employees based on gender, race and ethnicity. The data will be used to help public enforcement of equal pay laws and provide insight into discriminatory pay practices across industries and occupations.

The data is already required from federal contractors. The new proposal covers an additional 63 million employees.

Currently, the median wage of a woman working full time in the U.S. is $39,600, about 79 percent of a man's median earnings of $50,400. From 1981-2001, the pay gap closed 17 percentage points but has remained virtually flat since then, even as women now account for 47 percent of the workforce as compared to 29 percent in 1948.

Obama is also calling for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would require employers to document that any pay gaps between men and women are due to legitimate business reasons.

Lilly Ledbetter anniversary

The president's announcement comes on the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Act, named for an Alabama native and national leader in the fight for equal pay for women.

Ledbetter worked as a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden from 1979 until 1998. She later sued the company for paying her significantly less than her male counterparts and was awarded $3.8 million. That decision was overturned by an appeals court that ruled she had waited too long to file her lawsuit.

Ledbetter's case reached the Supreme Court in 2007 but justices ruled she had not met the deadline for filing her claim. Her case led to a change in the existing law and in 2009, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act which loosened the time restrictions for filing a discrimination lawsuit.

The law was the first bill Obama signed as president.
The Republican debate went ahead Thursday night without front runner Donald Trump. Now, numbers are coming in showing Trump may have wow the PR war even if he lost the ratings battle.

CNN, which covered Trump's veterans fundraiser, said the Fox News debate was watched by about 8.4 percent of the markets metered by Nielsen. CNN and MSNBC, both of which carried Trump's event, combined for less than half that total.

Last night's Fox debate, however, was the second-lowest rated debate since they began last summer when the first GOP showdown posted a record-setting 25 million viewers. The Fox Business Network debate held earlier in January was the least watched, with a household rating of 7.4. Previous GOP debates had household ratings ranging from 8.9 to 15.9.

Fox's later numbers were more positive for the network.

The network said the final numbers out the total viewership for the debate at 12.5 million, making it the second highest-rated telecast in the network's history, behind only the first Fox GOP debate.

Those numbers are high enough to put the debate ahead of all other programming, including broadcast shows.

Numbers aside, Trump is still touting his success.

Great Twitter poll- and I wasn't even there. Thank you! #GOPDebate pic.twitter.com/yLJGkoOeBg  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2016

Trump donations

Meanwhile, Trump's campaign said he personally donated $1 million towards veterans' organizations, with an additional $5 million raised through his one-hour event.

The money is going to 22 different veterans organizations, including Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust of Cold Springs, Kentucky; Fisher House Foundation; K9s for Warriors of Ponte Verde, Florida; and Partners for Patriots in Liberty, Tennessee.

You can see a complete list of the organizations here.
If you were coloring a map of Alabama, you'd need to save your reddest red crayon for Blount County.

Blount County has once against been named the most Republican county in Alabama, according to a ranking by 24/7 Wall Street. The rankings are based on the support for 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as well as county's chosen representatives to the House and the Senate in the past five election cycles.

In 2012, 86 percent of Blount County voters cast their ballot for Romney, who lost to Barack Obama. Both of the House districts representing Blount County are Republicans and they receive strong support from voters there.

And the most Democratic county? According to the same ranking, Greene County has the highest percentage of Democrats in Alabama. President Obama won 85 percent of votes in Greene County in 2012 and the county's residents have sent a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in each of the last five congressional elections.

Welcome to Friday's Wake Up Call. Let's get going.

Bill would let victims sue gun makers

Democratic lawmakers have unveiled legislation that would allow the victims of gun violence to sue manufacturers and dealers.

The Equal Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act would repeal the immunity that currently covers the gun industry. The bill would do away with the act that protects gun makers and dealers from lawsuits, coverage that firearm groups said it needed to prevent frivolous motions.

The measure is sure to come under fire from the Republican-controlled Congress, which has vowed to stop any firearms limiting measures.

Circuit City is back

Electronics retailer Circuit City is coming back.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and closed its brick and mortar stores in 2009. It attempted to operate online but that ended in 2012. Now, new owner Ronny Shmoel plans to open between 50 and 100 corporate-owned stores.

Northeast tremor mystery solved

A mystery of a series of loud noises that shook the New Jersey coast on Thursday has been solved.

The Naval Air Station Patuxent River said an F-35C and F-18 likely caused sonic booms that prompted reports of an earthquake. The tremors started about 1:30 p.m., prompting hundreds of people to call law enforcement.

The U.S. Geological Survey later confirmed there was no earthquake activity but said they did detect nine sonic booms around that time.

Wife of imprisoned pastor seeks separation

The wife of an American pastor who was held in Iran for nearly four years filed separation papers on the same day he returned home to Idaho.

Naghmeh Panahi filed for separation from her husband, Saeed Abedini last week. The filing was sealed but Panahi had claimed in recent months that her husband had been abusive during their marriage.

Panahi was detained in Iran for compromising national security related to his Christian proselytizing.

Until tomorrow.
David Jamichael Daniels, 22, is facing a possible life sentence after a Florida judge convicted him Thursday for a March 2015 shooting in Panama City Beach.

According to Florida media outlet WJXT, Daniels will be sentenced for seven charges of attempted murder and one charge of shooting into an occupied dwelling.

Police arrested Daniels for the March 28, 2015 shooting, in which the gunfire wounded seven Spring Break celebrators. Three people were wounded critically.

Daniels, a native of Prichard's Alabama Village, has a record with local authorities. Mobile County jail records show that he had been convicted of several non-violent crimes prior to last year's shooting. These crimes include gambling, drug possession and violation of probation.

David Jamichael Daniels, 20, was charged with first-degree possession of marijuana, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and a probation violation. Deputies said Daniels was found with codeine and spice. (Courtesy of the Mobile County Sheriff's Office)

AL.com interviewed Daniels' mother, Sharon Daniels, just after the shooting. She described her son as "a person (who) had been off to himself," stating that a friend's negative influence eventually took hold of him.

Daniels is set to appear in court again on March 18.
Authorities are searching for a missing 17-year-old from Columbus, Ga.

Qualithia Holmes is believed to be in the Columbus area, WTVM reported. She is know to frequent the south end of the city including Eagle Trace Apartments, South Lumpkin Road and Cusseta Road.

She may also be in Phenix City or Talbot, Ga.

Holmes is 5-foot 5 inches tall, weighs 110 pounds and has brown eyes and brown hair. Her hair could be colored. She has multiple tattoos, including "BLESSED" on the front of her chest with small cross underneath.

Anyone with information on Holmes' whereabouts is asked to call the Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit 706-653-3449 or 911.
Black Warrior Riverkeeper

A great egret perches in the Black Warrior River near where the Locust Fork and Mulberry Fork of the river converge. (Dennis Pillion | dpillion@al.com)

Cindy Lowry, Alabama Rivers Alliance's Executive Director

By Cindy Lowry, executive director of Alabama Rivers Alliance

I have been following the Flint, Michigan drinking water story with great interest and horror. Children's lives have been forever altered because unsafe water poisoned with lead was delivered to citizen's homes for drinking, bathing and cooking, but this is not another article about the technicalities of toxic pollution in our water. This is about the political atmosphere that has led to a situation where poisoning children seems more palatable than admitting that mistakes were made and working urgently to alert the people impacted.

As the leader of Alabama's statewide river protection organization, it is my job (with my team) on a daily basis to discern who is responsible for situations that compromise clean water and how to make the responsible party do what needs to be done to keep our water clean and safe. The primary laws that govern this objective are the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. These are federal laws, but their implementation and enforcement involve a multitude of state and local statutes, agencies and officials.

While other agencies, our cities and towns, and even the private sector are intimately involved in the process, the ultimate responsibility for ensuring these laws are carried out in Alabama lies with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM). These agencies, along with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, are what we call environmental regulators.

Of all the protections we are concerned with at my organization, ensuring that water is clean and safe for human use is the most fundamental. How could the Flint crisis have happened with all the laws we have in place? According to most of the reports, the state environmental regulators in Michigan shoulder the bulk of the blame for not requiring the city to take the necessary steps to prevent the corrosion of the pipes which contained the lead.

While the lead contamination came from the city's pipes, it is important to note that an increase in treatment was vital because the city's water supply -- the Flint River -- was overly polluted. The increased treatment of the water made corrosion controls more necessary. It is also important to note that the reason the city had to switch water sources in the first place was for financial reasons. The city had been in a financial crisis and needed to cut costs.

Citizens and lawsuits are accusing the environmental regulators of deliberately withholding information that the water was unsafe and of purposely not putting in place the proper corrosion control treatment needed to ensure clean water for all citizens of Flint. The Governor has basically admitted that things were withheld and action was delayed.

If I lived in Michigan, this is where my job would come in. How would we ensure that something like this is dealt with in such a way that nothing like this ever happens again? I would have to determine if those regulators truly acted deliberately or why they did things the way they did that caused this shocking problem.

I don't know the politics of Michigan like I know the politics of Alabama, but I can tell you with a clear mind that in Alabama our politics put regulators in an extremely difficult place when it comes to protecting our clean water. The constant drumbeat of rhetoric pitting jobs versus the environment and claiming that environmental regulations cripple economic growth is creating a generation of regulators who are -- at best - being made to fear the consequences of actually doing their job to protect the environment--at worst -- taking the underlying message to heart that their job as regulators is to rubber stamp or facilitate bad decisions rather than protect the people of Alabama.

Either way, our state and national politics is creating this hostile atmosphere that is compromising the security of clean, safe water for ALL Alabamians. Many environmental regulators begin their career as bright-eyed graduates of distinguished environmental science or engineering programs who want to protect our environment and make a positive impact for the people of Alabama. That is why they seek jobs at ADEM or the EPA. Somewhere along the way they become jaded by the constant refrain that "If you protect the environment, you'll kill jobs."

Ironically, this leads to a suspicion from some environmental groups that a regulator who is touting "jobs" is not concerned about the environment. Too often the best and brightest give in or even leave their positions resulting in an overabundance of regulators that seem more concerned with keeping their job than protecting the public health and our environment.

Unfortunately, it isn't just the politics of environment versus jobs. It's also the politics of less government spending and no new revenue. We are constantly hearing about government waste, but is it really government "waste" to raise the funds necessary to keep ADEM's inspectors out in the field monitoring our drinking water? Is it government "waste" to make sure that our cities have enough funding to protect and upgrade vital infrastructure, like our drinking water pipes and waste water treatment plants? Our environmental agencies consistently face a shortage of the resources necessary to carry out their responsibilities.

We expect our government to provide abundant water whenever and wherever we need it; and we expect the water that comes out of our tap to be clean and safe for our families. That security doesn't happen for free and it certainly did not happen by accident. It happened because a bipartisan congress was forward-thinking enough to put laws in place that ensure water sources like our rivers and streams are protected by regulations. We have safe and abundant water because governments from federal to state and local invested our tax dollars in infrastructure that would provide that water to our homes and businesses. But those regulations and investments were done decades ago when at least some issues transcended politics as usual.

There are many lessons to be learned from Flint, Michigan's drinking water crisis. How we rise above the politics, invest adequate funding in our state government, and develop a more supportive yet accountable atmosphere for state and federal environmental regulators are all lessons essential to ensuring Alabamians will not experience a similar crisis. Let's reject the rhetoric that suggests protecting our drinking water for our families is a conspiracy to kill jobs.

Let's move Alabama politics forward to a place where the fear of not doing the right thing for the health and safety of all Alabamians bears a greater consequence than standing up to business as usual.
Jennifer Brantley

By Jennifer Brantley, a Mobile resident, and Behavior and Brain Sciences graduate student at the University of South Alabama

Dear Mobile City Council,

From the richest to the poorest of us I would venture to say that money is important to us. I am writing this letter out of sincere concern for our communities and our city, Mobile, Alabama. Recently a 6-0 decision was upheld by our City Council, not to allow the building of a small Buddhist mediation center in the Riverside Community along Dog River here in Mobile. The nearly unanimous decision was 6-0 because Council member, Bess Rich, chose to abstain.

The proposed Meditation Center would be located on seven acres of Dr. & Mrs. Nimityongskul's private property adjacent to their home. There are only 13 homes on the street, Eloong Drive, where the center is being proposed and where Mrs. Nimityongskul and her family live. In fact, her driveway is the first on the street, and people attending the center would never need to pass the remaining 12 homes on Eloong Drive. The modest cottage style meditation hall (2400sq.ft), and parsonage (for hosting transient teaching monks) being proposed, would be virtually invisible from the community.

Engineers from the city and those hired by Mrs. Nimityongskul have determined that the possible 18 - 30 additional cars attending the center a week would have a negligible traffic impact. The location falls into district 3, Councilman C.J. Small's district.

Traffic and "Incompatibility with the surrounding area," have been cited as the major reasons for denying the Meditation Center of Alabama's application.

Since the center is a Buddhist religious facility as well, questions have surfaced as to why there is supposedly such strong opposition to this project. Is it religious intolerance, is it "fear of change," is it "truly a legitimate traffic concern?" Opinions are varied concerning the answers to these questions.

The Meditation Center has stated that they plan to continue pursue their project, asking for help from The Justice Department. In recent years this would be the second time the Justice Department has had to interfere with local Planning Commission and City Council leadership to correct misjudgments in the decision making of the Council with regard to applications for religious use. The first was a little over two years ago when the Council voted not to approve the application of a much larger Islamic Mosque and School in District 7.

If the Nimityongskul family or Justice Department were to investigate and find religious bias against the Mediation Center on the part of either the neighborhood opposition, the Planning Commission or the City Council and file suit against the city, it would be very costly. In such a case, tax money garnered from the hardworking citizens of Mobile would have to be used to defend the city leadership's lack of prudence and lapse in judgment regarding this matter. This seems to me like a disgraceful waste of our citizens hard earned money. Wouldn't this money be put to better use improving the roads along Dauphin Island Parkway, and the potentially beautiful Mobile Peninsula that we, as a city, have largely ignored? Mobile City Council Members, If "traffic" is truly the problem, why not skip the expensive city suit, respect the religious liberties of the Meditation Center of Alabama, and fix the substandard roads. This would be a great way for city leadership to nurture and invest in the community, with wisdom and without bias or prejudice, the same way that The Meditation Center of Alabama has for nearly eight years now.

With deepest regard and sincere concern,

Jennifer Brantley
In order to address concerns about the States evolving requirements in testing of the areas school-aged children, base officials sponsored a Lunch and Learn, Jan. 28, at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albanys Town and Country Restaurant and Ballroom.

The purpose of the forum was to educate parents of school-aged children in grades 3-12, who will be taking the Georgia Milestones Assessment System tests in April.

Latreesa Perryman, school liaison officer, MCLB Albany, welcomed active-duty service members, their spouses as well as the installations civilian personnel to the event on behalf of Col. James C. Carroll III, commanding officer, MCLB Albany.

Anthony Eitel, director, Assessment and Accountability, Georgia Department of Education, facilitated the forum, reminded and updated attendees on the assessments 2015 hold harmless shift to the 2016 full-throttle requirements.

Eitel reviewed some of the background history about the new assessment standards for testing students, which replaced the Criterion Referenced Competency Test last year.

Weve tried, throughout last year and into this year, to get out as much as possible and spread the information about the relatively new assessment system for the State, Eitel said.

Of course, this has been in the news, if youve followed the news on education, and I suspect this audience does quite a bit, he asserted. Weve been everywhere from the conversations about common core on through testing  a big part of that conversation.

We dont hide from it at the agency, he continued. Were at a state where everything has been high profiled in positive ways and, quite frankly, in negative ways. Ive been in core groups over what we do. Its an area that is a very important topic; in the end, I try to remind all audiences that this is about kids.

The assessment system really exists for one purpose,Eitel explained. Thats to provide kids and their parentsand their teachersthe information they need to get students to where we all want them to be. Not, we hope, as something that (looms) over the school as a cloud or something oppressive.

Thats where those policy uses come into play, he pointed out. Leadership at local levels and state levels have to work really hard to make sure that they calibrate things very carefully.

Eitel gave an overview of the new testing system, the radical changes, the conceptual structure of the program, how it differs from the previous CRCT and navigated through a list of online resources designed for parents as well as students to gain additional understanding while making the required transition.

Petty Officer 1st Class Antresha Holmes, leading petty officer, Naval Branch Health Clinic Albany, discussed her reasons for attending the days event and her biggest takeaway.

I just moved here from Hawaii, Holmes said. My daughter was in school there. Transitioning here to Georgia, with new testing, I want to be able to understand what shes being taught.

I want to be able to emphasize that a little more on her level to help her in doing her homework and trying to study for different tests that are coming up, Holmes continued. I want to help explain to her exactly why these tests are being taken so that she can hopefully perform better and excel in a manner that is expected by the school system as well as (meet my own expectations).

I honestly like whats being taught and how theyre teaching the students, she said. There are some things that I dont agree with, but there are certain things they have included that werent afforded to me when I was in school that I do appreciate  like having the formulas on the math tests. We didnt have that.

I think the website could be helpful, Holmes pointed out. Just from the different samples that he showed us; theres so much information -- like the parent portals, the study guides and everything else. As he said, the study guides are not put there for you to teach your child how to pass the test; theyre put there to help take out some of the anxiety and make them more comfortable with taking the test.

Parents should know, the test is a comprehensive assessment that measures how well students have learned the knowledge and skills outlined in the state-adopted content standards in language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.

For more information, a listing of the DOEs major assessments and the Georgia Milestones, visit the website: www.testing.gadoe.org
In 2003 after the American invasion of Iraq, there was widespread looting and chaos. Among the casualties of the violence was the library of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad. The entire collection of books  in excess of 70,000 titles  was destroyed.

More than a decade later, the books have not been replaced. Through his interactive art installation, Iraqi-born, New York-based Wafaa Bilal is amending that.

Book Exchange

His next show entitled 168:01 creates a platform for exchange. A 12-metre-long and 1,80-metre-high bookshelf stacked with 1,000 blank, white books will occupy a central gallery space at The Art Gallery of Windsor in Ontario , Canada  opening at the end of January.

Each blank book represents one text on a 1,000-book wish list created by faculty and students at the college in Baghdad. (Bilal had at first asked for an old index from the school, but that too had been destroyed.)

Through a Kickstarter campaign , donors can purchase a lost book  and have it replace the barren book on the museum shelf. And one by one the white books will cede their place to the valued art titles.

The donor will receive the unmarked book to remind them of their contribution, but also to remind them of the spark that this library will represent in Iraq, Bilal said. I think this is just the beginning of hopefully restoring so many things that the culture lost.

Bilal then plans to ship the 1,000 titles off to Baghdad when the exhibition closes. But before the show even opened  he received some five times the initial grassroots fundraising target of $9,000. The response was way beyond my expectations, said, Bilal who is also an associate arts professor at New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts. Its conceivable now that the entire collection of 70,000 prints  everything from technical books to art history titles  might be resurrected from the ashes, Bilal thinks.

The idea has been three years in the making, and grew from a need to include people outside of the exhibit space  and to leave behind a tangible result, Bilal said. He wanted to generate more impact than just viewers being moved by some participatory element of his art.

Show Title 168:01 and The Ashes Series

The renowned artist also searched for a show title that was symbolic and thought provoking. This title (168:01) brings the past and the present together. The name of the exhibit harkens back to Baghdads Islamic Golden Age and the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma), a flourishing public library that was destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century. Legend has it that the books were flung into the Tigris river and the water ran with ink for seven days  or 168 hours. The :01 in Bilals title is about what happened after those tragic days, the very second or moment the process of rebuilding began, he said. It is a title of both loss and rebirth.

One either side of the bookshelf exhibit at The Art Gallery of Windsor in Ontario are two rooms that will showcase photographs from Bilals The Ashes Series . The artist created dioramas  reconstructing 3D models from press images of war. Bilal then photographed the sets he built  depictions of the suffering of war not through human displays of emotion, but rather through the absence of human life, the artist wrote.

 Reconstructing the destroyed spaces provides a way for me to exist within them and, in a sense, to rebuild the places in Iraq where my brother and father were killed  to give the ephemeral moment extended life in a mix of beauty and violence.

Two Worlds

Bilal said he lives between two worlds: the comfort zone  his home in New York  and the conflict zone of his native Iraq and conscience. The artist grew up under the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein. He had to flee the country in 1991 because of his political activities and his opposition to Iraqs invasion of Kuwait.

I ended up on the border with Kuwait. We made it, we were lucky, Bilal said. Can you imagine (an Iraqi) arriving in Kuwait?, Bilal marveled now. He stayed in a refugee camp for some time and then was shipped off by Americans forces to the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia and told, Here is your home. It was home for two years, Bilal said. The images now of Syrian and Iraqi refugees trigger a lot of emotions for the artists because I know what they are going through.

Bilal remembers leaving home and knowing that there was no place to go when night fell. The anxiety and the fear and youre living from one day to another day.

Bilal eventually made it to the US and he has his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His family remained in Iraq.

Body of Work

Bilals previous work has been noted for its provocative nature. In Domestic Tension , he camped out for a month in a Chicago gallery and people could go online and shoot him with a paintball gun. The objective was to raise awareness of virtual war and privacy, or lack thereof, in the digital age.

For and Counting , the artist used his body as a canvas covering his back with tattoo dots for Iraqi and American casualties  his own brother Haji was killed at a checkpoint in Kufa. But the deaths of Iraqis like his brother are largely invisible to the American public, the artists writes. Thus the American deaths were marked by permanent visible ink and the Iraqis by green UV ink, invisible except under black lights.

In 3rdi , Bilal had a camera temporarily implanted on the back of his head to capture the images of his life  one every 60 seconds. Many times while I was in transit and chaos the images failed to fully register, I did not have the time to absorb them.

While 168:01 still brings together his two worlds, its a less antagonistic project then the others. It is not about sparking some sort of argument but rather (about) bringing people together, Bilal said. Its an exchange platform  and what becomes of it is left up to the people. Its a more hopeful project than the others perhaps because he is in a different space emotionally now, Bilal said. He wants to bypass the politics and the red tape and connect people to people.

His is an interactive art exchange project that has no end  it has only a beginning, Bilal said. Its this idea of  the war has to be over. We have to move forward.
Thousands of languages are endangered and while technology will not save them all, it may help.

United Nations, New York  To stay alive, languages must be used. It helps if they are hip, too, says Amy Kalili, a native Hawaiian.

Six decades ago, Hawaiis native tongue was close to vanishing with only a few dozen youngsters left speaking it.

Scared of losing their lingo, islanders led a cultural renaissance in the 1970s and 1980s by teaching children the dying tongue, Kalili said. Nowadays, schools educate 3,000 students a year in Hawaiian. But to cement these gains it must keep up with the times.

For languages to survive, kids have to speak it. Therefore it needs to be cool. They have to be jazzed about it, Kalili, 44, told Al Jazeera.

They have to see it on television and use it on their iPhones and computers. Its important for their psyche that they speak a language of capacity.

Nowadays, mobile devices support the Hawaiian language with spell checks, calendars and other apps. Email and texting are so common that, to remain relevant, Hawaiian must inhabit cyberspace, said Kalili.

The Pacific islanders are not alone. From the Itelmen folk of eastern Russia to the Australian outbacks Aboriginals, trailblazers are using YouTube videos, online encyclopedias and even karaoke to promote their mother tongues.

Extinction of languages

The United Nations says there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages globally, but most have only small numbers of speakers. About 97 percent of the worlds population speaks only 4 percent of its languages.

Governments around the world have typically promoted one language over others, often via teachers, textbooks and outright bans. One indigenous language dies every fortnight, the UN says.

If an animal, plant or fish is going extinct, people are up in arms about it, said Edward John, a Dene-speaking grand chief of Tlazten Nation, in western Canada.

But when a language goes extinct, no one says anything. No one even knows about it.

More recently, governments have wised up to the loss and are supporting endangered languages in schools and through state-backed television and radio broadcasts. Online media and hand-held devices are the next step.

The Cherokee of the south-eastern United States have a track record in embracing technologies. They developed a writing system in the early 19th century before launching printing presses, newspapers and typewriters.

Yet, only about 8,000 out of 290,000 Cherokee speak the language today  mostly pensioners, said Joseph Erb. Getting the Cherokee syllabary built into iPhones and android devices was vital for winning over the youth.

Whichever language gives young people the most advantage, they will utilise, Erb told Al Jazeera. You cant blame them. Theyre not going to write a letter and mail it. Theyll just write an email or text message quickly. If they can only do it in English, thats what theyll do.

By the end of 2012, the software giant Google was supporting Cherokee syllabary on telephone keyboards as well as in its search engine and email service, Gmail, which now has a few hundred users.

The survival of languages

Even with this help, the languages survival is not guaranteed.

Sometimes I feel like were gonna make it, and sometimes Im terrified, Erb said. When you hear kids speaking it, or when you see people using it online, it kinda gives you a lot of hope to continue.

Uncommon languages can be supported by software at various levels.

A makeshift form of many languages can be written in widely used alphabets, such as Roman or Cyrillic  often to the chagrin of purists.

Better than that, uncommon languages can have their alphabets incorporated into Unicode, an international system of more than 120,000 characters that are recognisable to all devices.

In addition, Apple, Microsoft and other tech firms can support languages with email services, search engines, translators and spell checks. When Cherokee became Gmails 57th supported language in 2012, users could read such terms as inbox and spam in Cherokee.

Google began supporting its 74th language, Burmese, last year. But the sky is not the limit, warns Craig Cornelius, one of the firms software engineers.

I have to caution people who ask me when Google translate or voice recognition will be available in their language, Cornelius told Al Jazeera.

Its not economically or even technically feasible for every company to support the estimated 7,000 languages with user interfaces and more complex things like translation and voice recognition. Those probably will never be feasible.

On the remote Kamchatka Peninsula of eastern Russia, the Itelmen people could do with some help. Tatiana Degai, an advocate of the culture, says her language is at the brink of extinction with only five elderly speakers left alive.

She is not giving up. A group of 45 younger, Russianised Itelmen are learning phrases in their grandparents tongue, which are sent out each week as WhatsApp text messages, using mostly Cyrillic characters.

In 2014, Degai made online videos of old Itelmen folk songs featuring subtitles in the original Itelmen as well as Russian, the dominant local language. They were a hit. At a celebration last September, a group of revellers started singing the old songs, and Itelmen karaoke was born.

It is not enough, of course, but projects like this are positive and motivational and raise the prestige of a language, Degai told Al Jazeera.

She plans to produce new karaoke videos and start language lessons for Itelmen schoolchildren.

Oral traditions

Over in southwest Australia, there are fewer than 500 speakers of the aboriginal Nyungar tongue, says Clint Bracknell, a Sydney University scholar who uses technology to advance his Nyungar heritage.

He has been working on a Nyungar version of Wikipedia for months, but has hit a snag.

Nyungar is a spoken language without an alphabet or a formal written form. Speakers can use Roman characters to write their language in text and emails, but often disagree on how words are spelled.

For Bracknell, writing is not true to the Nyungar spirit. He wants Nyungarpedia  as it has been dubbed by Australian media  to use audio and videos of Aboriginals talking and singing about their culture, rather than text.

Out of respect for oral traditions, I think we need to push for new innovative technologies to allow us to do language in indigenous oral ways rather than have to get stuck in the rut of text, Bracknell told Al Jazeera.

Building an online oral encyclopedia is much harder than using tried-and-tested written systems, he acknowledged. The Nyungar people do not have legions of software engineers at their disposal.

Like many of the worlds indigenous groups trying to preserve a culture, going online is a useful tool  and even necessary. But it can also require skills and financing that are not readily available.

We talk a lot about what we could do with technology, but it can be really hard work and require lots of know-how to get things off the ground, Bracknell said.

Then we think it would just be nicer to sit around talking to each other and maybe sing some songs.

READ MORE: Preserving the Aymara language of Bolivia

Follow James Reinl on Twitter: @jamesreinl
Until recently, China was prepared to take a tougher stance on matters North Korean, but things have changed.

Andrei Lankov is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of "The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia".

Right now, the Chinese capital Beijing is hosting a high-profile visitor: the US Secretary of State. John Kerry arrived there to talk about the South China Sea crisis, as well as measures to be taken against North Korea after its recent nuclear test, the fourth since 2006.

North Koreas defiant determination to advance its nuclear programme has annoyed Washington. Therefore, Kerry is in Beijing to persuade China to join a tougher international sanctions regime. However, there is little reason to expect his mission to be successful. Until recently, China was indeed prepared to take a tougher stance on matters North Korean, but things have changed.





I have maintained contact with Chinese scholars and policy specialists for many years. During my visit to China after the nuclear test, I could not help but spot a dramatic U-turn in their attitude towards North Korea.

Since 2012, the Chinese foreign policymaking community had become increasingly hostile towards North Korea because of its nuclear tests and general misbehaviour. But of late, such hostility has markedly weakened.

An unpopular place

Let us be frank: On the emotional level, North Korea remains a tremendously unpopular place among both the Chinese elite and public at large. The countrys political system is seen as a bad joke, while its exaggerated sense of self-importance and ethno-nationalism is viewed as worrisome and irritating.

READ MORE: Kim Jong-un: What we know about the North Korean leader

That said, such emotional matters usually have little bearing on relations between the two countries. Ultimately, state interests  and security most of all  takes precedence. In this regard, it seems that Chinese state interests demand a softer approach to North Koreas international misbehaviour.

Chinese state interests indeed demand a softer approach to North Korea's international misbehaviour. by

China is far from happy about North Koreas nuclear ambitions. For the past three years, the Chinese put a remarkable level of pressure on North Korea. However, things have changed. The reason becomes obvious from talks I had in the Chinese capital  a significant intensification of the Sino-US imperial rivalry.

Indeed, if China follows US suggestions and introduces comprehensive economic sanctions against North Korea, it might virtually knock the economy out cold because roughly three quarters of North Koreas economic exchanges are now with China.

Even the decision to stop subsidised trade  above all, the shipment of oil to North Korea at artificially low prices  will deal a serious blow to Pyongyang.

China can take such measures, but why would they? After all, the North Korean state is not well known for caring about its level of economic development.

Sanctions have to be strong enough to seriously endanger North Koreas domestic political stability. However, China would clearly not welcome a political crisis on the northern half of the Korean peninsula. If North Korea is to plunge into Syria-style domestic chaos, China is likely to be hit hardest.

No enthusiasm

Equally, China has no enthusiasm for the most likely final outcome of such a crisis: German-style unification under the control and tutelage of a powerful, wealthy and US-allied South Korea.

Such a unified Korean state might create trouble for China  more so now as Seouls alliance with Washington is increasingly seen in Beijing as an alliance with its major adversary.

Thus, it appears that at some point last August or September the Chinese leadership decided to abandon the tough approach that they had sought back in 2013.

As a sign that they were in a mood to mend relations, they dispatched Liu Yunshan, a top Beijing decision-maker, to Pyongyang. It seems that none of the subsequent events has made them decide to reverse course. Beijing appears to consider North Korea as a buffer zone against greater US influence in the region.

READ MORE: Another Korean war is not on the cards

Recently, the Chinese resolve has been tested twice: in mid-December when the North Koreans suddenly cancelled a high-profile performance of a North Korean musical group (because Chinese officials strongly objected to paeans to nuclear weapons that were to be sung), and the beginning of January when the nuclear test was conducted.

The Chinese position

In both cases reason prevailed, and the Chinese leadership decided, after indicating their displeasure, to continue with the policy in place. It is saying that the Chinese Internet censors began to delete messages critical of North Korea which flooded the Chinese net immediately after both events.

Some in Washington clearly hope that Americans will influence the Chinese position if they react to North Korean nuclear tests and missile launches with a military build-up. Indeed, the Chinese are not pleased by the increase in the US presence in Northeast Asia, and often complain that North Koreas actions actually help the Americans.

Nonetheless, nobody in Beijing sees this military build-up as sufficient reason to take measures which might put North Koreas internal stability at risk.

All this does not bode well for Kerry. At best, he might persuade the Chinese to support minor, or purely symbolic, additional sanctions. But it seems more likely that he will return home empty-handed.

The Korean peninsula is once again becoming the proxy frontline in yet another Cold War, and the North Korean leadership seemingly knows how to make the most of this situation.

Andrei Lankov is a professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University in Seoul. He is the author of The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The Obama administration is the first in the post-1967 era to leave the stage devoid of any diplomatic framework.

In the waning months of the Obama administration, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels longest-serving Prime Minister, has much reason to celebrate. Like his neighbour Bashar al-Assad, Netanyahu will have outlasted Obamas eight-year term  and the presidents attempt to force a dramatic change in Israels settlement and occupation policies.

Indeed, for eight long years, hardly a day has passed without some US official decrying Israels settlement policy.

In her first months as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton set down a serious and detailed marker, famously declaring: With respect to settlements, the president  wants to see a stop to settlements  not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is in the best interests of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease.

Critical, public declarations such as these initially appeared to promise a surprising, effective American determination to do the right thing. Comments in this spirit have continued to flow in a torrent for eight long years  but to no practical effect.

Lots of talk, no action

Just this week, Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council that steps aimed at advancing the Israeli settlement project  are fundamentally incompatible with the two-state solution and raise legitimate questions about Israels long-term intentions.

Simply waiting for the parties to see the light and lamenting their failure to do so is not a policy. Analysing the perils of Israel's current annexationist course is not the same thing as championing an effective diplomatic effort to address them. by

During Obamas tenure the settler population, the clearest indicator of Israels intentions and the effectiveness of the US effort to confront it, has increased by about 25 percent to more than half a million. Not a day goes by without continuing expansion of settlements, which undermines Palestinian prospects to end Israeli occupation, and to remain a viable national and political community.

It is not only that Obama has failed miserably to achieve the goal set for his administration. By lacking the courage of his conviction that the occupation must end and a Palestinian state be established, Obamas ritual protests at continuing settlement and land confiscation have become totally divorced from effective US policy and diplomacy.

As a consequence, Washingtons views on Israeli settlements have long since failed to be taken seriously among Israeli policymakers, primarily because, despite the rhetoric, Washington has shown itself demonstrably unwilling to fight for them.

During Obamas tenure, Israel has almost totally discounted the US critique, spearheaded by Obamas Cairo declaration of the illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

Instead, Israel has made a habit of crossing Obamas settlement red lines  without suffering anything more uncomfortable than a meaningless and counterproductive tongue-lashing from Washington. The result is that the Obama administration now confesses that it is out of ideas on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict  except for plaintive and hapless critiques of policies it does not have the will, energy, or conviction to confront.

Doing nothing is not a policy

The closing months of outgoing US presidents have often been the focus of hopes and fears that the lame duck leader will  at long last  adopt policies in keeping with their view that the national security of the US requires a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and more broadly between Israel and the Arabs.

In Obamas case, there are waning hopes that at long last, Washington will lead from behind and not stand in the way of a UN Security Council resolution opposing settlements, or that it will enable the tabling of a French resolution establishing a framework for international diplomacy.

OPINION: Palestine is still key to stability in the Middle East

And again in the presidents case, there is scant evidence of such an uncertain prospect. Secretary of State John Kerry has energetically presided over the administrations slow-motion policy debacle, whose main  if unintended  achievement has been to foster the terrible impression that the situation is hopeless, and that no equitable diplomatic solution is possible.

Under Obamas watch, annexationist supporters of Greater Israel, and Palestinians supporting a one-state solution different from the one Israel has already created, are stronger than ever.

To be fair, Obama is only the latest US administration to fail to solve the conflict. But it is the first in the post-1967 era to leave the stage devoid of any diplomatic framework, no matter how inadequate or problematic.

After eight years of effort, Kerry acknowledged in a speech in December that the level of distrust between [Netanyahu and Abbas] has never been greater.

While Obama has rejected a policy of taking the lead in establishing the outlines of a workable diplomatic framework for ending occupation and establishing a Palestinian state, the secretary of state takes refuge in maudlin pronouncements  such as those in his December speech  about the perils of the demise of the embattled Palestinian Authority or the heavy costs to Israel of continuing occupation.

Im just asking questions, Kerry explained. He warned that there are valid questions as to how long the PA will survive if the current situation continues. Mark my words  The chances that it would collapse increase over time every day.

Simply waiting for the parties to see the light, and lamenting their failure to do so, is not a policy. Analysing the perils of Israels current annexationist course is not the same thing as championing an effective diplomatic effort to address them.

OPINION: Lets admit the PA is on the chopping block

It appears that having despaired of its ability to do the right thing, the Obama administration is now content to merely warn of the perils of the status quo. But does this effort represent anything more than what Kerry himself  in reference to Netanyahus declared support of two states  derided as a slogan or throwaway phase?

None of the concerns highlighted by US officials should be news to anyone with even a minimal familiarity with the issues. Netanyahu has spent a political lifetime working to keep the West Bank under effective Israeli control and to reducing the power of Palestinians over it.

Unlike Obama, Netanyahu has not been deflected from his course, nor is he content with an occupation policy defined by empty words.

Geoffrey Aronson writes about Middle East affairs. He consults with a variety of public and private institutions dealing with regional political, security, and development issues.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
In early 2014, when the Ebola virus began ravaging three West African countries, it came with an all-shattering venom.

Although Nigeria, Senegal, Mali and the Congo were all affected, the real devastation occurred in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

In these three countries, humans were crushed by the virus. Dozens died long before medics reached an understanding of the intruder they were dealing with. Medical facilities were overwhelmed at an alarming rate, already-lean government purses were stretched to the limits, the courage of health workers was tested to the brim, and normal human life was ruined.

A cry for help

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president, called on the world for help in October 2014. Her country had spent the previous 11 years recovering from its civil war, and she feared that Ebola was threatening to erase all the hard work.

This fight requires a commitment from every nation that has the capacity to help  whether that is with emergency funds, medical supplies or clinical expertise, she wrote in a widely publicised open letter.

By that time, 9,191 people across West Africa were suspected to have been infected and 4,546 had died. In Liberia, 4,262 people had been found to infected by the virus, while 2,484 had died. Guinea and Sierra Leone had the bulk of the deficit of 2,062 deaths.

And so the funds started coming in. Within a month of Sirleafs plea, money pledged from outside Africa to the Ebola-hit countries was building up. By July 2015, the United Nations announced that donors had promised $5.2bn, which far outweighed the $3.2bn the three countries said they needed to return to the progress of [their] pre-Ebola trauma.

READ MORE: Human emotion is the variable in the Ebola crisis

In Liberia, the outbreak left half the heads of households out of work, while women  who account for more workers in the non-agricultural, self-employed sectors  were among the hardest hit. Ebolas destruction of livelihoods sorely needed to be addressed.

This was acknowledged at a UN meeting in July 2015 at which President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, speaking on behalf of the three Ebola-hit countries, said: Humanity sometimes displays short attention spans and wants to move to other issues because the threat from Ebola seems over  The threat is never over until we rebuild the health sector Ebola demolished, until we rebuild the livelihoods it compromised.

Cruel mismanagement

A month after Koromas statement, I was on a plane to Liberia to investigate how the money had been used, courtesy of some civil society initiatives to monitor the situation on the ground. My findings were damning.

The much-vaunted rebuilding of livelihoods ruined by Ebola was far from happening. The Liberian government, whose task force destroyed the belongings of Ebola patients, was providing no help as survivors struggled daily for decent food, housing and employment. As Josephine Karwah, one of only three pregnant women to survive the virus, told me, the government left survivors in a limbo.

No individual has been tried, much less convicted, for their role in the mismanagement of funds meant to save dying lives. by

It was enough evidence that none of the dozen survivors I spoke to could pinpoint a single instance when the government offered help. But that wasnt all. Liberias anti-corruption watchdog audited only a fraction ($15m) of the funding, and found that $800,000, most of which passed through the defence ministry, could not be accounted for.

The conduct of the affairs of the National Ebola Trust Fund [NETF] were marred by financial irregularities and material control deficiencies for a number of transactions carried out by the Incident Management System and the eight Implementing Partners of the NETF, the General Auditing Commission said in a report published on its website.

Specific instances of corruption included the disbursement of $600,000 for fuel, feeding, daily subsistence allowance, communication, medical training, repair and maintenance, without supporting documents; and the payment of $10,000 to 68 officers in 10 counties who could not be physically seen or whose names could not be traced in the daily attendance records.

In neighbouring Sierra Leone, the situation was no better. The report of the Audit Service of Sierra Leone unearthed a series of financial irregularities, most notably payments to thousands of fictitious health workers, and expenses running into several hundreds of thousands of dollars without supporting documentation.

Up until now the biggest outcry over the gulf between the money donated and that spent on the post-Ebola recovery has been in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but it may well be that the scariest levels of corruption have happened in Guinea.

INFOGRAPHIC: Just how deadly is Ebola?

The Ebola Fund Watch report launched by BudgIT in November 2015 reveals that although Guinea had received donations worth $330m as of November 4, 2015, there is not one audit report on the use of the fund.

The reports of mismanagement suggested in this report are given credence by the former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallos description of Guinea as a country where contracts arent signed and investments arent made.

For a country ranked 139th out of 168 in Transparency Internationals corruption perception index, Guineas lack of documentation for its use of the funds mirrors the secrecy with which Ebola funds were mismanaged in West Africa.

In all three countries, no individual has been tried, much less convicted, for their role in the mismanagement of money meant to save the lives of the dying. And these are people who  to parody novelist Bangambiki Habyarimanas words  are still here on earth when they deserve to be sent to hell!

Fisayo Soyombo edits the Nigerian online newspaper TheCable.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
New poll shows dissatisfaction with Chancellors welcoming stance towards asylum seekers from Middle East and Africa.

Forty percent of Germans want Chancellor Angela Merkel to quit over her refugee policy after nearly 1.1 million refugees have arrived in the country in the past year, according to a new poll.

The poll for Focus magazine, conducted by the independent opinion research institute Insa, showed on Friday a sign of rising dissatisfaction with Merkels welcoming stance towards asylum seekers fleeing conflict and economic hardship in the Middle East and Africa.

Yet, 45.2 percent out of the 2,047 German citizens questioned said they did not believe Merkels refugee policy was a reason for her to resign.

It was the first time the pollster had asked voters whether Merkel should quit. The survey was conducted between January 22 and January 25.

READ MORE: Germans differ on proposed transit zones at border

Another poll also released on Friday, by the Elector Research Group, showed support for Merkels conservative bloc was steady at 37 percent  as recently as September they were on 42 percent.

Support for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was also unchanged at 24 percent.

The three ruling parties  Merkels Christian Democrats, their Bavarian allies, and the SPD  are eager to show voters that the government is in control of the refugee crisis before three states vote in March and a general election next year.

Merkel has pledged to tangibly reduce the number of refugees and asylum seekers arriving this year with a range of measures in Germany, on the European level and with the help of international partners such as Turkey.

READ MORE: Protest in German city over attacks on refugees

She struck an accord late on Thursday with her fractious left-right coalition to tighten asylum policies, notably by making it easier to send back arrivals from North Africa and by delaying family reunifications.

Earlier this week, the cabinet approved measures that are meant to make it easier to deport foreign criminals  a separate package that ministers drew up amid outrage over the New Years Eve assaults in Cologne, which have been blamed largely on foreigners.
One local government in rebel-held Aleppo is trying  and struggling  to provide its people with basic services.

Aleppo, Syria  In recent weeks, Aleppos rebel-held Jasr al-Haj neighbourhood has escaped the intense bombing that has ravaged other neighbourhoods in the city.

Jasr al-Haj is home to the Council of Free Aleppo Governorate, a local government formed in 2013 to offer services no longer provided by the state in rebel-controlled areas in and around Aleppo.

Its offices were bombed in 2013, leaving about 45 employees dead, according to Brita Haj Husn, an engineer who runs the council. Today, large swaths of Aleppo governorate remain without adequate electricity, water and sanitation as bombs, now from Russian jets as well as the Assad regime, continue to pound the city.

The differences that set us apart from the council in [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assads part of the city are that they work in a small area with great and unlimited resources, whereas we deal with bombardment and little support, Husn told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE: Medicine in Aleppo, the worlds most dangerous city

This year, the council  which says it has more than 500 employees  is planning several development projects to address critical water and electrical needs in the area. But council members say that they lack the funding and resources needed to deliver on their promises for the new year, and civilians living in the area say they have yet to see major improvements.

[We are working on] digging water wells and the purification of drinking water, which constitutes a big problem in the city, said Husn, noting that Aleppos water supply has suffered from disruptions and the spread of disease. Most of the water-related projects will begin this February, he said, although some have already started.





According to Zakariah Aminah, a lawyer and the councils deputy director, citizens suffer from interruptions of water and electricity, and fixing this consumes a large portion of the councils time. [We are] organising private generators  and repairing the main lines of sanitation that were bombed.

Fuel in Aleppo is bought from the regime and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as is the case in other rebel areas.

While Husn is hopeful that the infrastructure projects will succeed, the council is aware of the many obstacles it faces. Professionals living in areas controlled by the council have been leaving in search of a better life. One problem we face is the emigration of competent people, [especially schoolteachers], Ayman Amr Hashem, president of the councils education and social office, told Al Jazeera.

Another major problem is funding, Husn said. While he does not receive a salary as director, lower-level employees do, but it was cut off for several months in 2015. Some financial support has come from abroad and from the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.

Civilians appear lukewarm as to whether the council is succeeding at its tasks.

The council does some useful things to serve the city, such as their work on hygiene recently, said Mohammad Khamis, who works in a local supermarket. The council has launched a number of recreational, sanitation and hydro projects. Nevertheless, Khamis complained that electricity and water are often cut off  and electric and water bills eat up a large part of income.

READ MORE: Healing on the Syria-Turkey border

Yassin Muhammad, a taxi driver, is critical of the council, saying it works at a substandard level on road maintenance and water supply. Despite his hardships, Muhammad is unable to leave Aleppo.

If I moved to regime areas I would be arrested  I was arrested several times during the days of the protests in 2011, he said. I have moved several times due to bombings and clashes, but I returned to the neighbourhood where I have lived since my youth.

The council is far from being the only local government formed in areas of Syria where Assad has lost control. Most prominent, of course, is ISIL, which has set up a de facto capital in the city of Raqqa and governs according to an extremely harsh interpretation of Islamic law. The Free Syrian Army, Jaish al-Fatah, Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, and other rebel outfits have also attempted to provide governance to the areas they control.

As the Council of Free Aleppo Governorate and other local governments struggle to provide services to their embattled populations, rebels are rejecting peace talks with the regime. They argue that certain United Nations resolutions are not being implemented, or refuse to talk while Russian air strikes continue to hit rebel positions.

If the negotiations work towards the demands of the revolution and the people, then we are with them, Husn said.

Others have suggested that self-governing bodies such as the council may help to bring an end to the countrys five-year civil war.

A demonstration of rebel governance is crucial to a political settlement, said Kyle Orton, an associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, who believes such a scenario is the regimes biggest fear.

For as long as the Assad regime can present the alternative as chaos and extremism, it will hold a section of the population.
At least four people killed and 18 wounded after attack on a Shia mosque in al-Ahsa, says Interior Ministry.

At least four people were killed and 18 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry has said.

Saudi authorities prevented two suicide bombers from entering Imam Rida Mosque in Mahasen neighbourhood in the al-Ahsa region during Friday prayers, Saudi state news agency SPA reported, citing a statement by the ministrys spokesman.

When security men stopped them, one blew himself up at the entrance of the mosque and there was an exchange of fire with the other. He was wounded and arrested wearing an explosive belt, the spokesman said.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

In late October, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Najran city, in which at least one person was killed and 16 others were injured.

ISIL had also claimed responsibility for an attack at a mosque inside a special forces headquarters in the city of Abha in early August.

Fifteen people were killed and nine were wounded in that attack.

Shia make up some ten to 15 percent of Saudi Arabias population. The minority group, many of whom live in the countrys oil-producing east, previously have been targeted in attacks by ISIL, which views them as heretics.
Two police officers killed and five conscripts wounded when a roadside bomb hit an armoured car they were travelling in.

A bomb blast killed two Egyptian police officers and wounded five others in an attack on an armoured vehicle in the Sinai Peninsula, the interior ministry said.

The vehicle was targeted near a school in the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish on Friday, the ministry said in a statement  the second violent incident in recent days.

Late on Thursday, at least three children were killed and seven people wounded in crossfire between Egyptian security forces and fighters in the region.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the region is a stronghold of the Islamic State of Iraq and

the Levant group.

Armed groups have regularly attacked security forces in the peninsula since the army ousted former president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

They say their attacks are in retaliation for a government crackdown on Morsi supporters that has left hundreds dead and thousands in prison.

The authorities say hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed in attacks, mainly in North Sinai, since 2013.
As 244 die on the way to Europe in one month, rights groups warn that safer routes of passage must be provided.

The number of refugees who have died while trying to reach Europe has surged to a January record of more than 230 people, fuelling panic that much more needs to be done to prevent further deaths.

As of January 29, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded the deaths of at least 244 refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, nearly three times the 82 people who died last January, and overwhelmingly more than the 12 people who died in January 2014.

Some 55,528 refugees and migrants have arrived to Europe so far this year, according to the IOM.

UNHCR figures are similar. The UNs refugee agency reports that 236 people died or went misisng from January 1 until January 29, with arrivals by sea at 54,518 people.

Both counts are regularly used by human rights organisations.

With two days to go until February, this month is the deadliest January on record.

Possible solutions

To combat this phenomenon, human rights groups and individuals working to improve the plight of refugees suggest that governments should provide safer routes of passage and better legal avenues, such as issuing humanitarian passports.

READ MORE: 2015  The year of the desperate journey

This has happened because many more people are desperate to flee their countries to come to Europe to find a safe haven, Eva Cosse, a Greece-based researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Al Jazeera.

Even though the distance is small between the Aegean Islands and Turkey, currents are strong and overcrowded rubber boats cant carry that many people.

People are wearing fake life jackets; if there is a shipwreck, people drown.

The distance between the Turkish coast and Lesbos, a main arrival island, is about three miles.

We need a collective response [from the European Union] to ensure these people have a safe passage to Europe, to ensure that people dont risk their lives to reach Greece.

Ive been on the islands many times. Greek authorities are stretched. More assistance is needed in the search and rescue operations.

Blaming Greece

In recent weeks, Greece has become increasingly isolated on the European diplomatic stage. Some EU interior ministers have blamed the country for not doing enough to stem the flow of refugees, threatening as punishment expulsion from the Schengen Area.

Its a sea border. How can it [Greece] secure the border? By erecting a floating fence? HRWs Cosse said. Once a boat is in Greek waters, there is an obligation to save themThere is little the Greek government can do.

READ MORE: Greece reacts to EUs hard line on refugees

With 3,771 deaths, 2015 was the deadliest year on record for migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, the IOM has said. By comparison 3,279 deaths were recorded in the Mediterranean in 2014.

Globally, IOM estimated that over 5,350 migrants died last year.

Mark Micallef, executive editor of Migrant Report, told Al Jazeera, that the number of people trying to cross from Turkey is rising amid a sense of dread that Europes borders will soon close.

Demand is growing. The impression I get from speaking to migrants in Turkey is that there is a widespread sensation that Europe is about to shut the door; there is a surge of people who want to get out just in case something happens, he said, adding that more people have died in the Aegean sea this year compared to last January when more bodies, proportionally, were found in the central Mediterranean.

Migrant Report is a non-profit project that measures, investigates and documents the effect of human movement.

Smugglers are taking advantage of this demand and the relatively short distance. They are giving migrants unsuitable jackets, and putting too many refugees on boats that are not fit for purpose, said Micallef.

The fee to reach Lesbos from Turkey is currently between $600 and $700, said Micallef. Prices jump to between $1,000 and $2,000 in the summer when better, safer weather lifts demand.

Return to Turkey?

To reduce the growth in numbers crossing, and subsequently the deaths, there should be more support for countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where refugee populations are huge, said Micallef.

These countries need assistance, he said. Turkey needs to be encouraged to provide rights and legal protection. Right now, if you are refugee, you cant work there legally.

READ MORE: Can Turkey stem the refugee tide?

Meanwhile, to ease pressure on Athens and stem the flow of people, Dutch officials are weighing a plan to ferry refugees arriving in Greece back to Turkey.

Turkey cannot be considered a safe country for refugees, Kondylia Gogou, Amnesty Internationals Greece and Cyprus researcher, told Al Jazeera. In recent months, refugees have been illegally returned to Iraq and Syria, while refugees from other countries face years in limbo before their asylum claims will ever be heard.

A large-scale resettlement scheme for refugees from Turkey to the EU is a good idea, but making it conditional on the swift return of those crossing the border irregularly is tantamount to bartering in human lives.

Amnesty estimates that in January 2016, more than 160 people have drowned in their attempt to cross the Aegean, including many children.

In recent years, blocking one route to Europe has inevitably led to refugees taking another, often more dangerous, route to seek protection, explained Gogou.

Offering safe, legal routes to Europe is the only sustainable solution for the refugee situation. Now refugees often take more dangerous routes include the sea route to seek protection and we see a dramatic increase in shipwrecks and deaths.

READ MORE: Toddler becomes first refugee to drown in 2016

Tragic and infuriating

On Thursday, at least 25 people, including 18 children, were reported to have died after a boat carrying refugees capsized in the eastern Aegean.

At least 43 people drowned last Friday when two boats capsized in Greek waters, most of them women and children.

As many as 3,000 people continue to arrive in Greece daily, despite dangerous weather conditions.

Matthew Cassel, a filmmaker and former Al Jazeera journalist who has volunteered in Lesbos, has witnessed scenes of death as refugees arrived.

Its tragic to see a body lying on the beach, but more than anything else its infuriating when you think about how unnecessary the trip was, he told Al Jazeera.

Our governments are responsible for this, and not only for closing their borders to refugees and migrants, but also for playing a role in whatever happened at home that caused them to leave in the first place.

Its a surreal experience when bodies of refugees arrive on the Greek islands.

The times that Ive been there, I havent seen any police or other authorities present, just a handful of volunteers and journalists who, despite their best efforts, arent qualified to deal with these situations.

Follow Anealla Safdar on Twitter: @anealla
Squadron of four F-16 fighter jets, which is already bombing in Iraq, will broaden its role in the US-led coalition.

The Netherlands will broaden its role in the US-led coalition against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to include the bombing of ISIL targets in Syria, the government said.

A Dutch squadron of four F-16 fighter jets is already stationed in Jordan, but was hitherto limited to striking ISIL positions in Iraq.

The aircraft will now be active over Syria until July 1, targeting ISIL operations and training camps, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told journalists in The Hague on Friday.

ISILs bombing and shooting attacks on Paris that killed 130 people in November had already led France and Britain to step up their bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq.

We have decided to heed the call of our allies for expansion of the operational area of our F-16s to the east of Syria to further weaken ISISs supply lines and ability to advance, Rutte said, using another of ISILs acronyms.

Only by taking away ISISs safe havens in Iraq and Syria can we prevent more attacks.

The Netherlands is also considering providing more military equipment and training to Iraqi soldiers battling the group. It will fund moderate, armed Syrian opposition groups and assist the reconstruction of schools and hospitals, the statement said.

Extending the military operation became possible when the Dutch Labour Party, junior partner in the coalition government, said this week it was open to the idea, creating a parliamentary majority for it.

Foreign military interventions are especially sensitive in the Netherlands, which led a disastrous UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1995 during which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces.

A previous Dutch government collapsed in 2010 in a controversy over participation in military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, where 2,000 troops were active.
Police say weapons seized during Bujumbura raids in which one French and one British journalist were among those held.

At least 17 people, including two foreign journalists, have been arrested in a late-night police raid in Burundis capital Bujumbura, a presidential spokesman said.

Willy Nyamitwe said in a series of tweets late on Thursday that officers arrested 17 people in the Jabe and Nyakabiga neighbourhoods, and that they recovered a cache of weapons.

French journalist Jean Philippe Remy, the Africa bureau chief for Le Monde newspaper, and Phil Moore, a British freelance journalist and regular contributor to Al Jazeera English, were among those held.

In a statement released on Friday, La Monde said both journalists were legally in the country and were merely exercising their profession by meeting all parties concerned by the current tensions in Burundi. In Nairobi, the Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa (FCAEA) said they were extremely concerned about the arrests of their colleagues.

We know them to be consummate professionals and are disturbed by news of their detention while they were doing their jobs in Bujumbura, the FCAEA said.

Gunshots and searches

Earlier, Nancy Ninette Mutoni, described as a senior media and communications adviser to the government, said in a separate tweet that a source confirmed that Remy and Moore were the two people identified as having press accreditation by a police spokesman who announced the 17 arrests on state television.

Sources report that @fil and @jpremylemonde are the 2 with press acreditations the Police spox said in his com on @RTNBurundi #Burundi  Nancy Ninette MUTONI (@nancymutoni) January 28, 2016

Earlier on Thursday and before his arrest, Moore mentioned raids in the area in a number of tweets.

https://twitter.com/fil/status/692221213637283841



Burundian journalists flee

Burundi has been in political crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to run for a third term in office in April, going on to win a heavily disputed election three months later.

Rights groups say that authorities have since cracked down on opposition parties, human rights activists and the media. At least 300 people have been killed in intermittent violence during the crisis and 215,000 others have fled the country.

African leaders are scheduled to vote next week on whether to deploy a 5,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in the country, a move Burundi strongly opposes.

In November, Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom lobby group, described independent media in Burundi as being under attack.

Many journalists have fled the country. Those who remain are trying to work but the authorities seem intent on preventing them from covering hard news. This must stop, Mahoney said.
Police say weapons seized during Bujumbura raids in which one French and one British journalists were among those held.

Two foreign journalists working in Burundi were released safely, 24 hours after police arrested them in a raid, colleagues said.

Phil Moore and Jean Philippe Remy have been released, the Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa said in a statement on Friday.

This is a big relief, of course, but the incident bodes ill for our work in Burundi.

Presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe said in a series of tweets late on Thursday that officers arrested 17 people in the Jabe and Nyakabiga neighbourhoods, and that they recovered a cache of weapons.

French journalist Remy, the Africa bureau chief for Le Monde newspaper, and Moore, a British freelance journalist and regular contributor to Al Jazeera English, were among those held.

URGENT  Les journalistes Phil Moore et Jean-Philippe Remy sont libres de leur mouvement #Bujumbura #Burundi #presse pic.twitter.com/nWq6AkUFg8  SOS Medias Burundi (@SOSMediasBDI) January 29, 2016

They were released on Friday afternoon after their press accreditation was revoked and their phones seized, SOS Medias Burundi said on Twitter.

URGENT  Journalistes Phil Moore et Jean-Philippe Remy : libres, accreditations retirees, telephones saisis #Bujumbura #Burundi #presse  SOS Medias Burundi (@SOSMediasBDI) January 29, 2016

In a statement released earlier on Friday, La Monde said both journalists were legally in the country and were merely exercising their profession by meeting all parties concerned with the current tensions in Burundi.

Gunshots and searches

Earlier, Nancy Ninette Mutoni, described as a senior media and communications adviser to the government, said in a separate tweet that a source confirmed that Remy and Moore were the two people identified as having press accreditation by a police spokesman who announced the 17 arrests on state television.

Earlier on Thursday and before his arrest, Moore mentioned raids in the area in a number of tweets.

https://twitter.com/fil/status/692221213637283841

Burundian journalists flee

Burundi has been in political crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to run for a third term in office in April, going on to win a heavily disputed election three months later.

Rights groups say that authorities have since cracked down on opposition parties, human rights activists and the media. At least 300 people have been killed in intermittent violence during the crisis and 215,000 others have fled the country.

African leaders are scheduled to vote next week on whether to deploy a 5,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in the country, a move Burundi strongly opposes.

In November, Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom lobby group, described independent media in Burundi as being under attack.

Many journalists have fled the country. Those who remain are trying to work but the authorities seem intent on preventing them from covering hard news. This must stop, Mahoney said.
Foreign minister says Israeli colonisation continues and if renewed efforts collapse, France will recognise Palestine.

France intends to make another push at trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has warned that if its efforts failed, it would recognise a Palestinian State.

France will engage in the coming weeks in the preparation of an international conference bringing together the parties and their main partners, American, European, Arab, notably to preserve and make happen the two-state solution, French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday.

If this last attempt at finding a solution hits a wall, well  in this case, we need to face our responsibilities by recognising the Palestinian state, said the minister.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Fabius added that France had a responsibility to try to keep up efforts to find a solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

We see that unfortunately colonisation continues and that recently, the Israeli Prime Minister went so far as to reproach the UN Secretary General for encouraging terrorism on the basis that he had reminded of colonisations illegality and asked that it cease, Fabius said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday described Israels settlements as provocative acts that raised questions about its commitment to a two-state solution, nearly 50 years after occupying lands the Palestinians seek for a state.

In recent months, Israel has become increasingly isolated as the United States, European Union and the United Nations have issued unusually stern criticism of Israel, provoking sharp responses from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli leader described Bans comments as encouraging terror.

Protests against Israels ongoing occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip have become increasingly violent in recent months.

Since October 1, Israeli forces or settlers have killed at least 165 Palestinians, including bystanders, unarmed demonstrators and attackers. At least 25 Israelis have also been killed in attacks carried out by Palestinians.
UN human rights chief says culture of impunity allows sex abuse to continue as six shocking allegations come to light.

The lack of accountability and corrective action by member states on United Nations troops who commit sexual violence in conflict zones has created a culture of impunity, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said.

Zeid Raad al-Husseins statement on Friday came after six new cases of abuse were brought to the commission in recent weeks.

Hussein said the UN was extremely alarmed at continuing allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of minors in Central African Republic (CAR) by European UN troops, and urged member states to take stronger action.

These are extremely serious accusations and it is crucial that these cases are thoroughly and urgently investigated, Hussein said.

Far too many of these crimes continue to go unpunished, with the perpetrators enjoying full impunity. This simply encourages further violations, he added.

Repeated abuse

The latest revelations come after a joint UN team in the CAR interviewed six young boys and girls, from the MPoko camp for the displaced in the capital Bangui, who said they had been sexually exploited or abused by foreign troops.

Four girls, aged between 14 and 16 at the time of the alleged abuse, said their abusers were attached to the European Union operation (EUFOR/CAR). Two of the girls alleged rape while the other two said they were paid to have sexual relations with the soldiers.

READ MORE: Are UN peacekeepers doing more harm than good?

Two other children, a girl and a boy, who were aged seven and nine at the time of the abuse, accused the French soldiers of abuse. According to the UN, the girl said she had performed oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for a bottle of water and a sachet of cookies.

Both children said that many other minors were abused in repeated incidents involving French soldiers.

The UN said that the high commission raised the cases with the European, Georgian and French authorities, as well as with another country on a similar allegation for which additional corroboration was still required.

Marked by inaction

Melanie OBrien, a research fellow in law at the University of Queensland, told Al Jazeera that the problem of sexual abuse by peacekeepers and foreign troops was one marked by inaction.

Its been more than a decade since these issues have come to light. We have seen cases in Haiti, in the DR Congo and we need to ask member states why they still do not take any action, OBrien said.

READ MORE: Fresh abuse allegations against UN peacekeepers in CAR

While the UN has not yet revealed details of the new allegations against peacekeepers, sources told Al Jazeera there were five new cases from peacekeeping troops from Morocco, Niger, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo and a police officer from Senegal.

In January, a UN panel exonerated whistleblower Anders Kompass, the director of field operations for the office of the high commissioner for human rights in Geneva, for leaking a report detailing abuse of children by French troops to prosecutors in Paris after the UN showed no inclination to stop the scourge.

This followed the findings of an independent panel in December which criticised the UN response to claims of child abuse that took place at the MPoko camp during December 2013 and June 2014.
Dubai-based businessman Siamak Namazi was arrested in Tehran while visiting his family last October.

Four Iranian-Americans and one US student were released from Iranian prisons earlier this month, as part of a prisoner swap deal announced on the same day that international sanctions were lifted on Iran.

But there was one other US citizen who was not among those freed  and questions remain as to why he was excluded from the prisoner exchange between Iran and the US.

Siamak Namazi, an American of Iranian origin and a Dubai-based businessman, was arrested in Tehran last October.

His detention drew scant attention, even as the case of private American investigator Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran in 2007 and was also not part of the deal, dominated the news.

Some Iran observers suggested Namazi was being used as an insurance, while relations between Tehran and Washington DC continue to be antagonistic.

READ MORE: Iran frees Washington Post reporter in US swap deal

I think they are keeping Siamak for the next round of negotiations, Saeid Golkar, an Iran expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Its a kind of an insurance and a leverage by certain factions of the Iranian political system, he said.

Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said the initial word was that Namazi was part of the package negotiated between Tehran and Washington DC.

And then we all came to find out that he was not, Marashi told Al Jazeera. Theres no shortage of possibilities. Its strange because I have not even heard of speculations.

All I can say is that the [Iranian] government never should have detained him in the first place, and he should be released immediately.

Early reports indicated that Namazi was part of the four Iranian Americans and one American student released from Iran prisons. But an Iranian website later apologised for the erroneous report.

Namazis family had been linked to NIAC in an anonymously written article published in The Daily Beast last September. The article suggested that his family stood to profit from the lifting of Irans nuclear sanctions.

The report was strongly denied by the Washington DC-based group advocating for better US-Iran ties. Soon after the article was published, Namazi was arrested and reportedly sent to Evin prison.

Marashi said the continued detention of Namazi underscores the reality that while there are sea changes in the US-Iran relationship, there are still serious areas of disagreement between the two countries.

Loaded with speculation

Until Namazis case is made public, Iran observers can only speculate about his case, said Holly Dagres, an Iranian-American commentator and curator of The Iranist website.

Since the prisoner swaps were conducted in secret on the side of the Iran deal, were not certain what was discussed. For all we know Namazi may have been brought up, she told Al Jazeera.

Dagres said she doubted that Iran would use Namazi as a bargaining chip given that some people are saying this is a domestic dispute.

Since his detention, Namazis family has also kept quiet. A friend of Namazi wrote in a Huffington Post article that Namazis father, Baquer, a former governor of Khuzestan Province, had settled back in Tehran after moving his family to the US in the early 1980s. Namazis brother, Babak, is reportedly working as a lawyer in Dubai.

Rather than being used by Iran as an insurance policy in its dispute with the US, Namazis detention is a sign of continuing paranoia towards dual Iranian-American nationals among Irans intelligence officials, according to Hanif Zarrabi-Kashani, an Iran political analyst formerly affiliated with the Brookings Institution think-tank.

Even an Iranian physicist at the University of Texas, Omid Kokabee, had fallen into that trap of suspicion by Iranian authorities, Kashani said. Kokabee was arrested in Iran in 2011 while visiting his family.

Although the new channels of communication between Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif have produced fruits over the past week or so, that institutionalised paranoia inside Irans intelligence apparatus is not going to subside any time soon, he told Al Jazeera.





For that same reason, Saeid Golkar, the Chicago-based Iran analyst who is also a professor at Northwestern University, said he feared Namazis detention could go on for a while.

Notwithstanding the differences between Iran and the US, Ariane Tabatabai, an Iran analyst at Georgetown University in Washington DC, said the recent prisoner swap and the prompt release of detained US navy personnel in Iran showed the importance of direct diplomatic channel between the two countries.

It really shows how important a cool head, an understanding of the other side, and communications are in these crises, she told Al Jazeera.

For Marashi, of the US-based NIAC, it is important that diplomatic efforts continue between Iran and the US, adding that it could help in the eventual release of Namazi.

Diplomacys great promise is that once the conversation begins, you will really never know where it is going to lead.
Republican hopefuls poke fun at Trump after his refusal to show up in the final debate before voting begins in Iowa.

US Republican presidential candidates strained to take advantage of Donald Trumps absence in Thursdays presidential debate, mocking the frontrunner for boycotting the last contest before voting begins.

Trump withdrew from the final debate in Des Moines, Iowa, in a row with Fox News after the broadcaster refused to drop host Megyn Kelly, whom he accused of unfair treatment.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is locked in a tight contest with Trump in Iowa, opened the event with a sarcastic impression of the real estate moguls frequent insults of his opponents.

Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and Ben, youre a terrible surgeon, Cruz told his rivals, including Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon. Now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way, he continued.

READ MORE: Republican frontrunners clash in tense US debate

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a frequent target of Trump, said with a wry smile: I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me.

Live coverage

Instead of attending the debate, Trump held a competing rally also in Des Moines, an event that his campaign said was raising money for military veterans.

When youre treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights, Trump said, explaining he was skipping the debate because he felt Fox News had dealt with him unfairly.

He added: We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if were being mistreated.

Reporting from Iowa, Al Jazeeras Alan Fisher said Trumps move appeared to pay off, as his event drew extensive live TV coverage and helped him reach as many people as he would have done with the Fox debate.

On one channel we have the main contenders talking about how they would be good presidents and appealing for the votes of the people in Iowa; on all the other channels, we have the leading contender saying the reason I boycotted is that I dont like to treated badly, he said.

It will go down very well with the Donald Trump supporters.

READ MORE: Trump ducks out of debate as Iowa caucus beckons

Ryan Grim, the Washington Bureau chief of The Huffington Post, told Al Jazeera: The Republican debate without Trump on stage lacked a lot of the energy of the previous ones.

And I think you are going to see, when the ratings come out tomorrow, that fewer people watched this one and more people collectively watched Donald Trump.

He did not get pushed around by anyone else while his opponents got smashed by each other. he said.

Debate highlights

Trumps absence put the spotlight on Cruz, who is challenging for the lead in Iowa, as well as on Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who needs a strong showing in the state to stay competitive.

The two senators engaged in a lengthy debate on immigration. Both have been accused of shifting their stances on legalising some of those in the US illegally, a position opposed by many GOP voters.

Rubio pledged that as president he would go after terrorists and shut down mosques in the US if there were indications that the Muslim religious centres were being used to radicalise people.

READ MORE: Trump is a symptom not the disease

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul raised concerns about the US getting involved militarily in Syria.

The candidates largely sidestepped direct confrontations with each other, focusing some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Voters in Iowa will head to the polls on Monday to pick their parties presidential nominees for the 2016 campaign.
Trafficking in children is a global problem affecting large numbers of children. Some estimates have as many as 1.2 million children being trafficked every year. There is a demand for trafficked children as cheap labour or for sexual exploitation. Children and their families are often unaware of the dangers of trafficking, believing that better employment and lives lie in other countries.
At least eight killed and 28 others injured after bomber targets a grain market in the town of Gombi in Adamawa state.

At least eight people have been killed and 28 others injured in an attack in Nigerias restive northeast, witnesses said.

A teenage suicide bomber on Friday blew himself up in a grain market in the town of Gombi in Adamawa state, AFP news agency reported, citing witnesses.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Al Jazeeras Ahmed Idriss, reporting from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, said: The bomber struck on the busiest day of the market when buyers and sellers from different towns and villages come to transact sales.

The region is often targeted by the ISIL-linked armed group, Boko Haram.
Up to 80,000 rejected asylum seekers are expected to be deported from Sweden over several years, says minister.

Rights groups have criticised the Swedish governments plans to expel up to 80,000 asylum seekers whose applications are expected to be rejected, a move viewed as the latest in a string of similar measures.

Speaking to the local Dagens Industry newspaper on Thursday, Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said that between 60,000 and 80,000 people will be deported.

An estimated 45 percent of Swedens more than 160,000 asylum applicants in 2015 are projected to be denied.

Ygeman said the deportations would be carried out over a span of several years, while the European Union Commission announced its support for Swedens announcement.



Denmark and Sweden tighten border controls

Alia al-Ghussain, a senior researcher and advocate at the Malmo-based Centre for Refugee Solidarity, said the number is quite shocking because they have not processed all of the applications and cannot be sure they will deport that many people.

Among other countries, many of the asylum seekers expected to be rejected are from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Palestinian refugees from across the map of the Middle East, al-Ghussain told Al Jazeera.

The governments categorisations of what areas are safe and which arent in many of these countries is not representative of reality at all.

Dramatic turn of events

Obviously the policy towards asylum-seekers in Sweden has been worsening, but this seems like such a dramatic turn of events, she said.

Judith Sunderland, associate director of Human Rights Watchs Europe and Central Asia programme, said that Swedens announcement is designed to discourage potential asylum seekers from seeing it as a destination.

What were seeing now is a total panic on the part of EU leaders, she told Al Jazeera. Were seeing alarmist and very negative pronouncements on a daily basis.

Sunderland, however, added that Sweden has a very efficient and generous asylum system, comparatively. Clearly, the system is now overwhelmed.

Swedens announcement comes on the heels of several heightened measures designed to stem the flow of refugees and migrants.

Sweden has recently tightened its borders, implemented stricter regulations for residency permits and started enforcing photo identification checks for travellers.

READ MORE: Refugees look to sea as Sweden tightens land borders

Nael Bitarie, who is from a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, works on development and refugee integration programmes in Sweden.

Explaining that new measures like ID checks are motivated by genuine security concerns, he pointed out that many people who need a safe place are denied it.

In some situations, Sweden, like many other European countries, has rejected asylum applications on the grounds that certains part of the applicants country of origin are deemed safe despite ongoing conflict, such as Iraqs Baghdad or Somalias Mogadishu.

Until now, they say Baghdad is a safe area, but many people are killed and wounded in Baghdad regularly, Bitarie told Al Jazeera. In some cases, [asylum seekers] could lose their lives if deported back to these places.

Unsustainable

While speaking at World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said fellow EU member countries have failed to shoulder their responsibilities, putting Sweden in an unsustainable situation.

We need to improve the European refugee policy toward the system that shares the responsibility for receiving refugees more even [sic] throughout Europe, Lofven said.

Mais, 25, an asylum seeker who did not provide her last name for fear of relatives safety in Syria, explained that the asylum application period has become more difficult as the country continues to endure an influx of refugee arrivals.

Here in Sweden, the residency procedure used to take up to six months, [but] now it takes up to two years, she told Al Jazeera. In the refugee camps, there are six to eight people in each room.

Stricter measures by EU states and border closures across the Balkans, however, have done little to prevent refugees and migrants from arriving in Europe.

Since January 1, more than 54,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe by sea, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

Follow Patrick Strickland on Twitter: @P_Strickland_
Main opposition group arrives in Switzerland but wants humanitarian issues addressed before it will talk politics.

Syrias main opposition bloc has arrived in Geneva to assess the intentions of the government in implementing humanitarian measures that could allow it to join political negotiations.

A 17-strong team of Higher Negotiation Committee (HNC) members, including three rebel leaders, arrived in Switzerland on Saturday, delegates told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeeras diplomatic editor James Bays, reporting from Geneva, said there was a slight delay in their arrival, as some members still had to receive a visa to Switzerland.

On Friday, HNC member Farah Atassi said the delegation was coming not to negotiate with the government yet, but to talk to UN officials after receiving reassurances from the organisation.

Atassi spoke at a Geneva hotel not far from the United Nations offices where UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura and Syrias UN ambassador Bashar Jaafari were meeting.

HNC spokesman Monzer Makhous said that the opposition had not changed a previous position that it would not travel to Switzerland if specific conditions for talking politics were not met.

Yes, we will go to Geneva to be present but we will not attend the talks at all unless the regime fulfils our humanitarian demands, which specify stoppage to bombings and starvation of civilians in besieged areas as a condition, Makhous said.

Today we received guarantees that these issues will be addressed in addition to political transition of power. We will not accept anything else unless we see these demands met on the ground.

Proxy talks

Mistura said that he believed he would be able to meet the HNC on Sunday.

Gennady Gatilov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, was quoted by Russian Interfax news agency as saying that no direct talks were expected in Geneva, only proxy talks.

Gatilov said there were no preconditions for the Syrian talks and that Moscow welcomed the decision by HNC opposition coordinator, Riad Hijab, to take part in talks in Geneva.

The talks are the first since two rounds of negotiations collapsed in 2014. Syrias conflict has killed more than 250,000 people, displaced millions and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing as refugees to Europe.

The meetings are part of a process outlined in a UN resolution last month that envisages an 18-month timetable for a political transition, including the drafting of a new constitution and elections.

Live blog: Syria talks in real time

Disputes are ongoing over which opposition parties should attend, with the HNC bloc facing criticism from the Syrian government and Russia for including the Army of Islam group, which controls wide territory near the capital.

Earlier on Friday, UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi reflected the sense of chaos and confusion surrounding the beginning of the negotiations when he told reporters at a briefing: I dont have a time, I dont have the exact location, and I cant tell you anything about the delegation.

Air strikes and starvation

Meanwhile, there was no let-up in the fighting in Syria. On Saturday, at least 15 people were killed and dozens more injured in suspected Russian air strikes targeting rebel positions near the northern city of Aleppo.

In Syrias west, opposition fighters said they had taken control of several checkpoints around the city of Hama, which lies in a region where control is divided between government and opposition fighters.

Further south, residents of the besieged Syrian town of Madaya continued to die of starvation and a lack of medical supplies, despite the delivery of aid earlier this month, according to a leading humanitarian agency.

Madaya residents starving to death despite aid delivery

Doctors without Borders said on Saturday that at least 16 people  close to one person per day  have died since three aid convoys entered the town, near the Lebanese border, 40km northwest of Damascus, on January 11.

The group said that an estimated 320 people in Madaya are suffering from malnutrition, 33 of whom are are in danger of death if they do not receive prompt and effective treatment.
In a Talk to Al Jazeera interview, the Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena appears to contradict key findings from a UN investigation into the countrys civil war, released in September last year.

The report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) investigated atrocities committed by both the Tamil separatists and the Sri Lankan Army during the 26-year-long conflict.

In the final stages of the war, attacks carried out by the Sri Lankan Army were so bloody and aggressive that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed.

In detailing its principal findings, the OHCHR report stated: If established before a court of law, many of these allegations would amount, depending on the circumstances, to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.

The Sri Lankan government forces always acted in adherence to international law and according to the laws of the government of Sri Lanka. While doing so, if a member or officer of the armed forces of the Sri Lankan government has committed offences, these investigations are aimed at finding out such instances. So if offences have been committed by an individual, we will clearly take legal action. by Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka

Speaking to Al Jazeeras Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Sirisena rejected the allegations.

I must say very clearly there is no allegations regarding war crimes, there were war crimes allegations during the early stages. But at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, mainly in the proposals presented in September, there were no war crimes allegations against us.

They contained allegations of human rights violations only. When you consider the facts surrounding the allegations of human rights violations, we are committed as a member of the United Nations, to implementing the main points and proposals, Sirisena said.

The OHCHR report recommended the creation of a hybrid special court comprised of international and domestic judges, persecutors, lawyers and investigators.

Sri Lanka must now move forward to dismantle the repressive structures and institutional cultures that remain deeply entrenched after decades of erosion of human rights, said Zeid Raad al-Hussein, UN high commissioner for human rights, when the report was published last year.

At the time, the high commissioner, who is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka on February 5, also warned against a purely domestic court.

The levels of mistrust in state authorities and institutions by broad segments of Sri Lankan society should not be underestimated, he said, adding it is for this reason that the establishment of a hybrid special court is so essential.

A purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fueled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises.

When Sirisena defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa in elections a little over a year ago, the possibility of a new beginning seemed to be at hand.

Sirisena had run on promises to bring those responsible for crimes to justice, to end government corruption and nepotism, and open up the economy in ways that would finally benefit the common man and woman.

But how far has he come to realising these promises?

He says he has already instituted reforms that limit presidential powers, and will soon start reworking the constitution.

In conversations with the people of Sri Lanka, there is a sense of continued goodwill towards their leader, but also, impatience.

Just over a year after he came to power, in his first in-depth international television interview, Sirisena discusses the UN investigation, fighting corruption, and national reconciliation.

He tells Abdel-Hamid that he is committed to bringing war time perpetrators to trial, but that he is opposed to foreign involvement.

Within that commitment, we will always act in accordance with the sovereignty of our country and in accordance with our constitution. For this work, we can obtain foreign technology in certain areas. In terms of people we definitely do not need outsiders.

Sirisena denies providing conflicting messages or backtracking on ensuring justice is served, saying: There is no way of doing this in an express or super fast manner. So what we are hoping to do through this is to free the country from the allegations that have been made against it. To free the country, we must clearly face the truth, and similarly we must take decisive actions towards accountability.

He also discusses fighting corruption in Sri Lanka. We must not be worried or in a hurry. 2016 is the year of showing results, he said.

We have restored the independence of the judiciary, made the investigating institutions independent; their officers are allowed to function freely. They will show their results of their efforts in the future.
A pregnant woman digs her nails into the (supposedly) comforting arm of her husband and, in a howl of pain, declares the name of their new baby boy. The husband decides against protest this time, and so Champe is born.

Thats how I got my name. Two parents, a debate, and then not much of one. But what about the planets? Who names them if not ballooning mothers in fits of birthing rage?

Well, the planets visible to the naked eyeMercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturnhave all been known since ancient times. Were not exactly sure who first took notice of their peculiar glimmers in the night sky or when they did so, but their names came about in simple enough ways.

Mercury, formerly Hermes, was named for the messenger of the gods in both Greek and Roman mythology. The Greeks called first dibs, but then their civilization crumbled and the Romans updated the name to suit their own beliefs. Mercury, the planet being the innermost in our solar system, appears to move quickly from night to night, so Mercury the god being the swiftest of his divine counterparts, was an apt namesake.

Venus, the brightest planet in the sky (its usually the closest to Earth), was named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

Mars, being red and reminiscent of blood, was named for the Roman god of war.

Jupiter, the biggest object in the sky barring the sun, was named for the Roman king of gods and god of the sky and thunder (why the sun didnt get this title Im not quite sure).

Saturn, for reasons I dont entirely understand, was named first after the Greek god of agriculture, Kronos, and then his Roman equivalent, Saturnus. Saturnus was also the god of time, so its possible that the planet was so named because it had the slowest orbit.

BUT, those are all boring. Some old guys looked up and decided this sparkle was this god and that twinkle was that one and so onno backstory.

Not Uranus, though. We know it as the butt of planetary naming jokes (please forgive me), but its initial name was actually far more cringe-worthy. Imagine the love child of a newly discovered element and a sith lord from a poorly conceived Star Wars spinoff. Got it? How about Georgium Sidus*? Well thats the name Uranus first discoverer proposed for the planet in honor of his king, King George III of England.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Georgium Sidus Nine Pizzas. Doesnt have quite the same ring to it.

So for obvious reasons, Georgium Sidus didnt stick and astronomer Johann Elert Bode proposed Uranus to keep in line with the trend of naming planets after Roman mythology. After about a hundred years, in 1850, Uranus finally caught on.

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Lets skip Neptune. The story is basically that it was called Neptune.

Now Pluto, alas no longer an official planet, has perhaps the most interesting tale of the bunch. Many names were suggested after its discovery in 1930: Lowell, Atlas, Artemis, Perseus, Vulan, Tantalus, Idana, Cronus, Zymal, even Minerva. Pluto didnt emerge as a contender until Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old from Oxford, England, proposed the name to her grandfather, Falconer Madan (a name itself worthy of planetary status). He passed the name along to American astronomer friends across the pond and the rest is history.

So an 11-year-old-girl, instead of naming a goldfish or a dog or a stuffed teddy bear, named a planet. She believed her voice mattered as much as the next girls and now a giant floating space rock 7.5 billion kilometers away bears the title she decided to bestow upon it. In light of news about a potential Plutonian replacement, Planet Nine, may this information serve as confirmation that you, too, could leave your signature on the stars.

Cast your vote for Planet Nines potential name here.

*Georgium Sidus is Latin for The Georgian Planet
The Center for Latin American Studies is monitoring Zika virus before a new study abroad program occurs in Brazil.

UF in Bahia will focus on race and inequality in the region known for a diverse population. The trip will take place during Summer B and costs $4,974.

Rosana Resende, professor of Latin American studies and the faculty program director for the trip, said shell host an information meeting at 10:30 a.m. Friday at La Casita. During the meeting, she said shell address Zika virus, which may cause birth defects in pregnant women.

She said Zika virus, which is prevalent in Brazil, can also cause flu-like symptoms. Shell be warning students about the risks.

That is absolutely going to be a part of my information session, Resende said. Its good to talk about.

Students who go on the trip will take two courses covering race and urban development.

Resende said students will visit an island slaves escaped from during Brazils colonial times for the first three days. The first three days will also give students Portuguese language instruction.

People say Brazil used to be a racial paradise, Resende said. Bahia used to be where black people would fully express their culture.

Resende said she hopes students of different backgrounds apply.

My expectation is that you can engage in critical thinking, she said. I want students who want to explore.

Tomi Pasetto Vuorio, a UF international studies sophomore, said he looks forward to visiting his home country.

I expect to learn a lot more about the local perspective, the 20-year-old said. Until you actually go there you cant appreciate what its like.

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As of press time, the U.S. Department of State has not issued a travel warning for Brazil.

Contact Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @MerylKornfield.
Police arrested a Gainesville man Wednesday afternoon after they said he tried to hit a woman with a chunk of asphalt.

At about 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, Jermaine David Bright, 34, picked up a 1-pound piece of asphalt from a parking lot and threw it at a woman, according to a police report.

She was able to quickly duck and narrowly avoid being hit, the report states.

The incident began with a confrontation between Bright and an unnamed person, according to the report. The two argued in the womans parking lot, so she asked them to leave.

Bright then cursed at the woman and threw the piece of asphalt before running to his mothers house, the report states.

The rock was later gathered for evidence, according to the report.

Bright has been found guilty of 15 criminal offenses in Alachua County, according to court records, with his first offense occurring in 2000. Brights criminal history includes charges of aggravated battery, assault on a law enforcement officer, larceny and possessing drug paraphernalia.

Police arrested Bright on a charge of aggravated assault and took him to the Alachua County Jail where he remains, as of press time, in lieu of a $15,000 bond.

Contact Martin Vassolo at mvassolo@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @martindvassolo.

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           2005     ..        










Informations Copie de Open letter to Prez Mukherjee to act if really serious about protecting rule of law & secularism

- 29 Janvier 2016



Bengaluru, India

Open letter to Prez Mukherjee to act if really serious about protecting rule of law & secularism To

Your Excellency Pranab Muhkerjee

President of India

New Delhi



Sub:- An open letter to act if Your Excellency (YE) is really serious about protecting rule of law & secularism



Ref:- (i)- YE is wrong. It is not the demolition of the Babri Masjid which destroyed Indias image as a tolerant, pluralistic nation but failure to restore status-quo-ante of Babri Masjid (ii)- Only rule of law & secularism of India can protect ~ one billion Muslims of South and Southeast Asia (in addition to ~ one billion Hindus) from bloodthirsty Caliphate of ISIS



Your Excellency



Jai Hind



I humbly submit the following:-



YE is quoted in a leading newspaper to have said in your memoirs released on Thursday that - The demolition of the Babri Masjid destroyed Indias image as a tolerant, pluralistic nation



YE you are horribly wrong because It is not the demolition of the Babri Masjid which destroyed Indias image as a tolerant, pluralistic nation but failure of Indian State to restore status-quo-ante of Babri Masjid.



As a person in public life for such a long time YE must be knowing that no law says that you can not violate the law or commit a crime. Law only says that if one commits such crime then he / she will be awarded so and so punishment as retributive justice and restorative justice will also be done. For example if someone is prepared to be hanged then he / she can commit murder as was done by martyr (shaheed) Bhagat Singh and his colleagues too.



In the case of Babri Masjid demolition four more important factors of law are involved:-



(1)- Because Babri Masjid was demolished in presence of the Observer of Supreme Court of India (SCI), hence in order to protect the authority of law the SCI suo-motto is supposed to restore status-quo-ante of Babri Masjid. As no constitutional / statutory authority of Indian State (including SCI and NHRC as mentioned at http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/detail.php?articleid=2425 ) is interested in upholding rule of law by restoring status-quo-ante of Babri Masjid if YE is really interested in rule of law and secularism then YE should move SCI (may be under Article 143 of the Constitution or otherwise) in order to ensure that the status-quo-ante of Babri Masjid is restored.



(2)- Babri Masjid demolition was not an isolated occurrence. It has a history of riots in which since late eighties thousands of innocent citizens were killed (mostly Muslims) including in 2002 Gujarat massacre. Just after Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992 riots and serial blasts took place in Mumbai. India has been demanding repatriation of Dawood Ibrahim from Pakistan to face justice in serial blast cases but India has not even tried the accused of 1992-93 Mumbai riots (as mentioned by Sri Krishna Commission report). YE ought to understand if India prosecutes guilty as mentioned by Sri Krishna Commission report the world-community will see to it that Dawood is handed over to India by Pakistan to face justice in serial blast case. Therefore YE should move SCI in order to punish the guilty as mentioned by Sri Krishna Commission report.



(3)- India is full of legal authorities who claim to know xyz of criminal law without knowing abcd of it. Criminal law in a democracy is known to only those who earn their bread and butter by remaining on the right side of law. Anyone who knows abcd of criminal law knows that the guilty of 2002 Gujarat massacre could not be punished as per law for the simple reason that (like 1984 Sikh massacre in Delhi) the executive magistrates and military authorities did not discharge their duty as per the requirement of section 130 and 131 of CrPC during 2002 massacre too. But these authorities were not made accused related to their dereliction about 130 & 131 CrPC. Hence if YE is really interested in protecting rule of law and secularism then YE should move SCI to decide cases pertaining to 2002 Gujarat massacre by invoking section 130 & 131 CrPC also.



(4)- Even after 22 years of the demolition of Babri Masjid the guilty of this demolition have not been punished making a mockery of criminal justice system in India. Hence YE should move SCI in order to ensure that the accused of Babri Masjid demolition are punished in a time limit of one year.



- These days the protection of rule of law & secularism in India has become imperative for one more extremely important reason. The emergence of ISIS is not merely a terrorist threat but has created an existential threat for India as mentioned below:-



(i)- ISIS and its leader Baghdadi may or may not survive but the idea of Caliphate (with territory) will not die for two reasons (A)- Sunni Muslims (85 % of worlds ~ 2 billion Muslim population) are bleeding and weeping profusely especially in North Africa and Middle East (NAME) and AF-PAK region (B)- Unlike Hindus and Chinese the Muslims are the only developing people who are divided in many countries hence economically and militarily powerless. Therefore notwithstanding what governments of different Muslim countries say Sunni Muslims especially in Muslim majority countries want to come under one authority of Caliphate



(ii)- USA is playing some sinister game in Syria. Everyone knows that Russia can not support democracy in Syria for the simple reason that Sunni majority Syria if becomes democracy then sooner that later it will ask Russia to remove all its military bases from Syria. But Russia [which in September, 2015 end intervened militarily in Syria (with the support of Shia Iran, Iraq and Lebanon of Hezbollah) next day after talking to US President Obama] will never tolerate its military bases to be removed from Syria. Hence USA & Russia seem to be working for the partition of Syria where western Syria will remain with Shias which will allow military bases of Russia to remain in Syria. This partition of Syria will generally be as mentioned in his article http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/opinion/john-bolton-to-defeat-isis-create-a-sunni-state.html?_r=0 by former US Ambassador to UN John Bolton. But Sunni Muslims (including USA & Allies supported Syrian rebels, especially after the emergence and pressure of ISIS) rather newly emergent Sunni-nationalism will never allow partition of Syria. This is the main reason the talks in Geneva under UN are not moving further rather it will lead to more bloodshed (and Shia-Sunni conflict) in Syria and in other countries of NAME (and in ISIS controlled Iraq).



(iii)- This Sunni-nationalism (triggered by ISIS) is bound to gulp Kashmir-AF-PAK region due to political instability in Afghanistan and in Pakistan & Kashmir mainly due to unresolved Kashmir problem which, as per media and Kashmiri separatists, has already claimed the lives of ~ one hundred thousand Jihadis from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan etc. This will have hugely grave implications for South and Southeast Asia east of Shia Iran (once geographical barrier of Iran is broken by ISIS).



(iv)- In a nutshell it is only rule of law and secularism of India which can protect these ~ one billion Muslims of South and Southeast Asia (in addition to ~ one billion Hindus) from bloodthirsty Caliphate of ISIS (or any other Sunni Caliphate) by ushering into FSDRSAARC (Federation of Secular Democratic Republic of SAARC countries). Like freedom movement leaders Gandhi, Nehru, Patel etc and like Netaji Subhash Bose who believed in Hindu, Muslim unity I am sure YE also believe in Hindu, Muslim unity hence YE also believes that the last word on Indias partition is yet to be written.



(v)- In order to properly carry out the global war against terrorism and in the interest of FSDRSAARC legal action against Maulana (the prison escapee through plane hijack by his Jihadi terrorist colleagues) is necessary as mentioned in my open petition to SCI as explained at http://pakistanchristianpost.com/letterdetails.php?letterid=727 .But government of India (GOI) so far has not demanded Maulana from Pakistan in plane hijack case. Hence YE is requested to ensure that GOI demands Maulana in plane hijack case.



Therefor Your Excellency is requested to kindly take above mentioned measures in the interest of protecting rule of law and secularism in India.



Regards



Hem Raj Jain



(Author of Betrayal of Americanism)



Bengaluru, India.

br /





Dans la meme rubrique : < > India should enter into military-treaty to get US-boots on ground for retrieving Indian territory from China & Pakistan and for independence of Tibet Tchad : 17 membres du bureau executif de lUDT, allie a la majorite presidentielle, jettent leponge Tchad : un mort et plusieurs blesses dans un accident routier a l'Est Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
A group of United Nations and African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights Commission experts* today urged the President of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, to sign the 2015 Safe Abortion Bill for it to enter into force without further delay. The human rights experts warned that reluctance towards the decriminalization of abortion by some []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...




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OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008

HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground

BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum

WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground

FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World

POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day

FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance

YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum

THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground

OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies:

WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama

PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words

TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day

THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum

THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies

AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance

CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida

SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World

PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground

VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day

REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies

FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum

SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies

ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008

AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World

STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special

SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum

TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt.  Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground

IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008

CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies

WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto

DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance

I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE]
The banking industry's recent bluster over the National Credit Union Administration's proposal to ease credit unions' field-of-membership rules overlooks key aspects of the FOM debate: these proposed changes are necessary, they are long overdue and any resulting expansion of membership would be limited.

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions continues to hear from credit unions that the NCUA's current rules specifying who can and cannot be a credit union member unnecessarily inhibit their ability to serve their communities. Today, credit unions serve more than 102.1 million members, and they would like to serve more. But one need only look at recent consolidation in the credit union industry to understand the necessity of updating FOM rules.

Enormous consolidation is challenging consumers' ability to join credit unions. The total number of credit unions has declined 17%  more than 1,280 institutions  since the second quarter of 2010. Of the institutions no longer in existence since then, 96% had assets of less than $100 million. The consolidation, which is primarily through mergers between credit unions, is due in large part to the constantly growing magnitude of regulatory burden.

Meanwhile, NCUA officials in releasing the November proposal said it was long overdue. It has been over 15 years since the NCUA last tackled the field-of-membership issue. In that time, state laws have allowed broader fields of membership for state-chartered credit unions. Moreover, FOM rules must also keep pace with changes in technology and other changes in the financial services industry.

Banks are also exaggerating the impact of these changes. The NCUA's proposal would more fully implement authority granted to the agency by the Federal Credit Union Act. Such a step has been neglected for far too long. While the NCUA's proposal recognizes new ways that credit unions could validate why a particular area is "well-defined" and "local" when applying for charter changes, this would track similar recognition of these areas by the U.S. Census and the Office of Management and Budget. Accordingly, NCUA is merely recognizing areas that are already codified elsewhere in the federal government. The NCUA is well within its authority to make these changes to remove non-statutory constraints on FOM chartering and expansion.

The proposed changes would allow credit unions to serve many of the consumers who want and need affordable financial services most, including the unbanked and underbanked. Credit unions continue to be committed to serving their members and being good stewards of their members' trust. In all the services and products they provide, credit unions seek to provide value to their members. This proposal would allow them to continue to do that.

It is worth recognizing that bankers' opposition to credit union membership changes is nothing new. Almost since the dawn of credit unions, banks have been opposed to any measure that would allow a change in membership to credit unions. It really doesn't matter the degree of a proposed change; bankers will find reason to take issue with it and continuously gripe that credit unions have an unfair advantage. But frankly, if this were the case, all banks would be credit unions by now.

Ultimately, consumers deserve the ability to choose the financial services provider that will best meet their needs, and to do so fairly and efficiently. The NCUA's proposed FOM changes would simply help make that choice possible.

Carrie Hunt is executive vice president of government affairs and general counsel for the National Association of Federal Credit Unions.
The average bank is still on the fence about what  if any  personal finance management (PFM) features they should add to their smartphone apps. All agree, however, that what works for PFM providers on websites needs to be modified for mobile apps.

"Mobile is more of a channel for people on the go," says Tracey Weber, Citigroup's head of internet and mobile banking and BTN's 2012 mobile banker of the year. "[People] are not sitting there and pondering this or that." Rather, people are more apt to use mobile devices to see whether a transaction went through or to initiate a bill, she says.

Citi, which partnered with Yodlee to create PFM tools for its online banking site, boasts some personal finance-related features in its tablet app but has yet to layer any into its smartphone apps. "We will continue to watch the evolution of mobile," says Weber. She says Citi is having a "healthy discussion" on the topic.

Analysts suggest banks will start with "PFM lite" in their mobile apps  quick spending insights to help people make more informed shopping decisions. One nascent idea tossed around by industry members would play out something like this: A consumer enters a shoe store and receives a message from his bank that alerts him he is close to exceeding his discretionary spending budget, for example. Or perhaps he receives a message about how much he's spent on liquor for the month after he swipes his card.

The point of embracing such capabilities, which may have Big Brother implications, is finding ways to rethink software for a channel that offers unique capabilities.

"PFM needs to be reimagined for mobile," Neff Hudson, assistant vice president of emerging channels at USAA, told BTN earlier in the year. "You need to rethink financial management for day-to-day interaction. It's about better decisions in everyday spending."

"There are some interesting things ahead of us," adds First Financial Bankshares' Vice President of Alternative Delivery Channels Jeff Casey. "Mobile devices are a collection of sensors."

Smartphone sensors like microphones and GPS can be used to help customers manage their money, Casey says. He wants his Texas bank's mobile app to look beyond transaction features and include functionality to better help customers meet their longer-term financial goals when they are out shopping. "There is a lot of room for innovation in the space," he says.

Some startups have moved ahead on this front. Simple, for example, offers customers PFM-lite tools that highlight the amount that's safe to spend, while consumer-facing Check, formerly Pageonce, lets people link in outside accounts and pay their bills through its apps.

However, few banks have publicly touted PFM features available on their smartphone apps. [PFM vendors that sell to banks like Banno offer the capabilities.]

"Mobile is a whole other beast," Jacob Jegher, senior analyst at Celent, says . "Small slivers of PFM can be of interest" on smartphones.

Bank of Montreal (BMO) customers are asking the bank to create tools that would alert them when they are about to overspend, Dan Dickinson, head of online and mobile banking for Canada at BMO, tells BTN. The bank, which has yet to offer PFM tools in its mobile app, will evaluate which features are sound for the channel, which Dickinson says takes planning. "We will invest some time," Dickinson says. "We're trying to rethink traditional PFM features that can apply in a small screen and possibly to low connectivity. The insights become more meaningful." He points to startup Moven as an example of a young company doing a great job at designing spending insights for its pilot app.

Today, BMO, which partners with Strands, offers customers PFM tools through online banking that include features such as savings goals, budgets and a community tool that lets users compare their spending patterns to peers. The bank does not let people link in outside accounts, largely because it has yet to hear from a heavy amount of customers asking for such a capability. "I'm not saying the demand is zero, but there is just not a burning need for it," says Dickinson. If he had a "bottomless pit of money," account aggregation would make it to his list  though still not at the top.

Citi, meanwhile, baked account aggregation into its online banking services. The bank believes the feature provides a great utility in that it allows people  and the bank  to have a fuller picture of where their money is going. "There's been steady growth in account aggregation," says Weber. Customers, who opt in to the feature, are linking in 3.3 external accounts on average. Citi has offered the capability since October 2011.

Getting customers to take the first step to link in outside accounts is one learning hurdle as the feature is somewhat counterintuitive. "It takes some education," Weber says. And there's no marketing silver bullet; rather, Weber says people need to be reminded of the capabilities multiple times, in multiple ways. Once set up, people will have to do light maintenance of their aggregated accounts. If the user name or password changes to a linked outside account, the Citi customer will have to update his credentials like he would on any other account aggregation service like Mint or Check, for example.

Citi works at regularly updating the PFM features available to customers and the way it presents them in the "dashboard" interface. "We are continually trying to improve the experience," she says, noting that one feature which excites her is the goal setting one. "It's still early days. I think the power of PFM will grow."

Banks want people to use PFM tools because PFM users are generally stickier and financial institutions get more customer data, which is gold. However, most Americans do not use traditional PFM tools. Indeed, banks have yet to gain more than single-digit adoption rates of existing PFM tools delivered through online banking, according to industry research.

Celent's Jegher points out that improving aggregation and delivering fancy user interfaces and pleasant experiences will fail to solve this overriding usage problem. "There's a change in behavior that must take place within financial management," Jegher says. "Average Americans don't know how to manage their finances."

And even for sophisticated users of personal finance software, tools must require little time of the end-users. "The key to success is solving a problem that people have," says Chris Musto, a managing director at Novantas. "And it can't be that their lack of attention destroys the value of it."
Money talks, and Bank of America's plans to triple spending on its mobile app in 2016 say a lot about its priorities.

The bank wouldn't disclose the exact dollar amount, so it cannot be ranked against its peers' spending, but the beefed-up budget is a sign of the times.

Customer expectations are changing rapidly, and banks are now being judged harshly by how their offerings stack up. Even the front-runners have to invest heavily to defend their positions.

"We are serious about being a leader in this space," Michelle Moore, who leads digital banking for B of A, said in an interview Thursday. "We want to be a dominant presence, and so rather than double-down we decided to triple-down."

Bank of America's commitment to its digital banking platforms holds tremendous promise for the next generation of those channels, said Daniel Van Dyke, an analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, which produces a mobile banking scorecard each year. It surveys the opinions of customers about mobile products at the top 30 banks by deposits; the 2015 results will be published later this year.

"In 2013 we had Bank of America as the leading bank [on the scorecard], and in 2014 they were in second place, so I see this as pretty exciting," Van Dyke said. "Consumer use of bank branches was surpassed by mobile in 2015. In response, we're seeing banks redirecting funding from low-growth channels to mobile."

First in its lineup of new products is an on/off switch for debit cards, which it rolled out on Thursday. The security feature, which several small banks already offer through software from Diebold or Malauzai, is intended to allow customers to temporarily suspend their cards if they left them behind at, say, a restaurant or if they detect fraud. Previously, the bank had no such offering  a call to report a missing card resulted in a reissuance.

That feature hits on two major themes in banking right now, said Ken Hans, a partner and executive director of Blackstone Technology Group, a boutique IT consultancy. Security is top of mind for consumers, particularly around mobile banking. Additionally, a potential breach of a debit account brings a lot of anxiety  consumers have to weigh reporting the loss of a card that a thief could steal against the pain of having to reset the billing information for various automatic deductions after being assigned a new card.

"There is a push to deputize the customer in the fight against crime, and this does just that," Hans said. "But also reporting a maybe-lost card is unsettling  if I cancel it that means having to reenter things like Pandora, Amazon Prime and Netflix, versus just temporarily shutting it off. I just think it is a great customer feature."

B of A's Moore said the company is starting with the switch for debit cards because customers feel more anxiety over what tends to be their "operating account." It plans to expand the switch to credit cards over time. (Discover Financial Services has drawn considerable attention to its "Freeze-It" product through a major advertising campaign.)

Additionally, the company plans to expand its two-way text capability for alerts on things like suspicious activity associated with credit cards. Essentially, the bank sends a text to its customers when it detects something is wrong and the user can reply to validate a transaction or confirm that it should be blocked. It will expand the service to debit cards later this year, too.

In February the company will introduce cardless ATMs to its associates with a wider rollout scheduled for the summer. JPMorgan Chase also recently announced it would introduce similar technology, and BMO Harris Bank, as well as several community banks, adopted cardless ATMs last year.

Also, later this year the company will begin laying the foundation for a more seamless experience across the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Merrill Edge apps. Consumers likely do not see B of A and Merrill as separate units, so the company needs to do a better job of allowing customers to toggle between their apps.

In fact, many of its digital plans for the year involve creating a uniform experience across all the platforms, Moore said. Moving money between accounts, for instance, should look the same regardless if it is done online, on a phone or at an ATM.

"It should feel the same," Moore said.

While the new features are intended to push the bank fully into the digital realm, B of A understands that customers still have their reservations about mobile banking for assorted reasons. To that end, the company launched last summer a digital ambassador initiative. So far, 3,800 of its consumer-facing employees have undergone eight hours of training on the ins and outs of the platform so they can spread that knowledge to those consumers who need help understanding.

Aren't apps supposed to be intuitive and easy to use?

"Yes, but there are still times you need some help," Moore said. "Apple products are the easiest to use, yet they still have the Genius Bar."

Banks like UMB Financial have also tried similar strategies, but turning the branch into a training ground for the digital world is a good way to reallocate resources as branch traffic dwindles, observers said.

"At this point the human touch-point is so limited and precious and that is a great opportunity to grow the relationship by helping them," Hans said. He added that it is also a good opportunity to upsell.

Moore said the digital ambassador program is intended to reach those who are not utilizing mobile or perhaps underutilizing it.

"We have 19 million mobile users, but that's really only a third of our customers," Moore said. "This is an awareness opportunity."


Zions Bancorp. has purchased the former Atlanta home of its chief financial officer, Paul Burdiss, for about $1.7 million.

The Salt Lake City company obtained approval from its board's compensation committee to purchase the house, according to a regulatory filing. The $60 billion-asset Zions also paid closing costs on the transaction, which closed Jan. 22.

Zions bought the home "for internal operations purposes and to assist Mr. Burdiss with his family's relocation in connection with his appointment" as CFO, the filing said. It plans to market and resell the home and will bear any gain or loss associated with its sale.

Utah Zions Taps SunTrust Treasurer to Replace Retiring Chief Financial Officer Zions Bancorp. in Salt Lake City has hired a SunTrust Banks executive to replace Doyle Arnold, who is retiring in May as chief financial officer. March 20

Community banking WSFS Financial in Del. Reopens CFO Search Kevin Thompson, who had been selected for the post in November, notified the $6 billion-asset company that he will remain at Zions Bancorp. in Salt Lake City to be near members of his immediate family who were involved an accident shortly after he accepted the WSFS post. January 27

M&A Patriot National in Conn. Changes CFO Patriot National Bancorp in Stamford, Conn., said that its chief financial officer resigned this week and that it has hired a former Connecticut community bank executive to replace her. January 8

Before joining Zions, Burdiss was corporate treasurer at the $191 billion-asset SunTrust Banks in Atlanta. He also previously worked at Comerica. He joined Zions in May, succeeding Doyle Arnold.


I have finally had enough of Donald Trump. I have supported his presidential campaign for months based on his immigration policies. However, his continued baiting, childish, crude, cruel, narcissistic behavior has caused me to question his fitness for command.

I am seeking a presidential candidate who will enact most of Trump's policies while being a full-fledged adult.

I am a classic three-legged conservative: culturally-socially traditional, free market, peace through strength. I have voted Republican for decades while sharing the dismay of many conservatives over repeated concessions to the left.

Donald Trump's willingness to violate the protocols of political correctness has provided a welcome shot of adrenaline to the conservative movement. His very first position paper, on immigration reform, made three assertions that, in former times, would have commanded universal assent from politicians and citizens all across the political spectrum: 1) a nation without borders is not a nation; 2) a nation without laws is not a nation; 3) a nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation.

We have come to a point in the political devolution of the West where it is considered reprehensible for a country to enforce its own laws and borders. The populist uprising taking place across America and Europe is entirely predictable and justified. It surpasses belief that of the 17 Republicans and 7 Democrats who have run for president this year, only one has clearly committed to building a wall along the border and deporting illegal aliens.

The data regarding the impact of Islam on culture is overwhelming and undeniable. Here, too, it surpasses belief that only a single presidential candidate has proposed pausing Muslim immigration  and worse, all the other candidates have condemned this proposal vociferously. Had this proposal been in effect during the 1990s, the World Trade Center would still be standing, and 2,996 people would not have died there.

As we observe the mass gang rape of Europe from afar, Donald Trump's immigration proposals should not be controversial. Rather, they should be the baseline of future political discourse. On this basis, I have supported Trump's campaign and have dismissed the naysayers.

However, Donald Trump's antics are not entertaining anymore. His obsession with Megyn Kelly reminds me of nothing as much as a spurned suitor.

Far more alarming to me has been the ongoing series of retweets of neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic white supremacists  for example, here and here. Several news organizations reported about Trump's retweeting Nazis, and the campaign has kept the tweets posted without apology.

I find the message from these Nazi retweets crystal-clear. Apparently, so do many white nationalists, according to the increasingly confident, hostile, and bellicose comments from white nationalists on several conservative blogs, including American Thinker. This morning, I read a retweet mocking Glenn Beck's suicidal pain and despondency after surgery.

Donald Trump's candidacy is coarsening the character of Americans. By doing so, Trump is playing a deadly game. It has been the task of the left to undermine self-restraint, a war against civilization in which conservatives have always defended virtue. Now Trump is turning conservatives into raw, howling machines full of hatred for anyone who questions any aberrant behavior on his part. Trump's recent boast that he could kill Americans without affecting his support should set off alarm bells.

Are there alternatives in the Republican field? Conservative Review provides a table of 11 Republican candidates on 11 issues. We convert the highest grade, green, to 100, the middle grade, yellow, to 50, and the lowest grade, red, to 0, and average the results together for the candidates. I have included candidates who have since dropped out of the race in italics for completeness.

95: Cruz

77: Paul, Jindal, Rubio

68: Walker

64: Perry

55: Carson

50: Trump

41: Santorum

36: Kasich, Huckabee

32: Bush

23: Christie

18: Fiorina, Graham

Of the top four candidates on this list, three are probably not natural-born citizens: Cruz, Jindal, and Rubio. That leaves Paul as the only natural-born citizen with a conservative score over 55 remaining in the race.

How does conservative scoring translate into success at the polls? We make use of the Huffington Post Pollster average, which is more inclusive than the Real Clear Politics average. We filter out live phone polls, as a Morning Consult study suggested that responses to live phone polls are not as honest as other types of polls. Further, we use polls of registered voters and likely voters alone.

Numbers USA provides its own grades for the presidential candidates in both parties, based on policies and performance on 10 immigration-related issues. The results are as follows:

A: Cruz, Santorum

A-: Trump

C+: Christie

C: Carson, Huckabee

C-: Bush, Paul

D+: Fiorina

D: Kasich, Rubio

F: Clinton

F-: O'Malley, Sanders

It is reassuring that the top two candidates in the Republican primary are also two of the top three candidates on immigration. Of those top three on immigration, one is apparently not a natural-born citizen, and one seems mentally unbalanced. Because of the overwhelming importance of immigration in this election, I am inclined to vote for Santorum and pray for a miracle.

If, as appears more likely, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, then my advice is simple: grow up if you want to earn the office founded by the author of Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour. Not everyone is required to love you; not everyone is required to agree with you; not all who disagree with you are public enemies whose lives must be personally destroyed. We are still suffering through one such presidency.

Surak is a patriot and a scholar.
Everybody loves card tricks and the sleight of hand of professional magicians. People simultaneously admire and are baffled by the trickery and the skill of the magician, the illusion, and the magic. Almost always, they enjoy, even when deluded, what they have witnessed and are bewitched by the optical, visual illusions. The clever magician can create in viewers willing suspension of disbelief for the moment as they accept the fantasy and believe the unbelievable.

The art of magic is akin to that of politics in that people may suspend disbelief as they listen to or read the utterances of political leaders or candidates. For politicians, like magicians, the trick is to get the listener or watcher to focus the spotlight and attention on something favorable for the speaker while ignoring or paying less attention to other things. The artifice is to distract listeners and viewers into acceptance by the patter of the politician or the magician. The deception focuses on the performer so that the audience unaware of the helpers or spinners behind the curtain who may have arranged or helped in the trick.

Success in politics is like success at performing card tricks, with false shuffling of cards, but making sure the right one is always on top. If magicians skillfully deceive the viewer, politicians similarly engage in spin, misinformation or outright deception.

In both magic and politics there is an art of manipulation, perhaps arranged by the expert practitioners and handlers behind the curtain who help create the image of the politician and foist it on the public.

In both, there is exploitation of psychology and a necessary understanding of human behavior, emotion, and perception. A recent book by David Greenberg, Republic of Spin, gives a valuable account of the different, sometimes contrasting, techniques used by famous leaders such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle for dramatic effect to gain approval. Perhaps surprisingly for some, it was Richard Nixon who delivered the message, concern for image must rank with concern for substance.

The issue of manipulation and trickery is all too familiar in the 2016 U.S. presidential electoral campaign from candidates of both parties. Complex and countless controversial issues, such as cap and trade, the flat tax, migration, Medicaid, budget deficit, Obamacare, tax limits and cuts, deductions for home mortgages and, and U.S. policy in Syria, are reduced to a simple prescription. In reality, few can understand or are capable of evaluating the real meaning and consequences of proposals regarding complicated issues. The problem is that political leaders and candidates are rarely asked to explain fully and clearly those proposals.

In many ways, people believe what they want to believe. They may not challenge or reject doubtful statements or misinformation either because it is not important to them, or it is too difficult or tiresome to seek the truth. Emotional as well as cognitive factors may enter into the problem. People may go along with what they think is the opinion of their peers, the social or political community close to them.

It was noticeable, and pointed out by Fact Check.org, that both the Republican and Democratic candidates in the 2015-2016 debates made misleading claims. The Republicans in their debate in Las Vegas on December 15, 2015 were incorrect on issues of terrorism, immigration, Iran, Syrian refugees, and foreign oil. The Democrats on January 18, 2016 made misleading statements on health care, energy, and guns. President Barack Obama on January 12, 2016 misspoke on the rate of growth in health care spending.

All this has long been familiar. In Platos Republic, Socrates expounds partly through a fictional tale the use of the noble lie, the falsehood told by the elite to maintain harmony and unity in society or to advance an agenda. The use of the noble lie, according to Socrates, and its acceptance by the three classes into which he divides society, keep them in place in the social system. Moreover, good is supposed to come out of the use of lies and myths, because if people believed in the prevalent myth into which they are indoctrinated, they would be inclined to care more for the state.

Political leaders from time immemorial have followed the argument of Socrates of a convenient fiction, a bold myth or flight of imagination, or the noble lie, that the community should and must accept for its own good.

It is obviously true that in certain political circumstances, as in private life, lying may be desirable to achieve a good end. Politicians must then face difficult choices. Falsehood and deceit may be necessary in time of war or to avoid moments of public disorder.

The case of Winston Churchill and the city of Coventry still remains controversial. In November 1940 Germany launched a devastating bombing raid on the city. It is alleged that the prime minister knew of the intended Luftwaffe raid but said and did nothing about it because any action would have alerted Hitler to the fact that the UK had broken the German Enigma Code. Coventry was sacrificed for the greater good.

But that has little to do with two troubling issues: the deceit or oversimplification by political figures about controversial issues; and the noble lie that would, as Plato argued, keep people happy in their place in society. The latter would have two results: individuals would benefit; and the country would be stable. However, the argument that rulers should create myths that people will accept is a dangerous and incorrect one. A society does not need to be misled by rulers, akin to Platos Guardians, in order to be healthy and stable.

George Orwell in his novel 1984 is one of those writers who have indicated the growing tendency for citizenry to be subjected to psychological conditioning, to the distortion and to the reversing of the meaning of words, and to the slanting of political messages in directions favorable to the rulers.

Considering the intensity of current disapproval and hostility in the U.S. and in Western European countries towards the establishment and the existing political systems controlled by elites, and the present approval of present presidential candidates critical of them, one can ask if the magic has failed?

Though voters may be impatient with the existing system, they should not succumb to any alternative form of magic with its tricks of simple answers to complicated issues. People do not, or should not, need fiction or enticing misleading presentations to negotiate political and social reality. Image is not reality, and presentation of false solutions is not a form of medicine to the citizenry.

It is not true that myths are necessary for citizens to live in a more agreeable way, nor is it true that citizens would care more for their condition in the system if they accepted the myths. The candidates of both U.S. political parties can do better than speak in sound bites. They should avoid magical sleight of hand in dealing with serious issues.
One of the least reliable sources for data on climate change is the US federal government. Now, a group of 300 scientists and academics want Congress to investigate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for cooking the books on climate data in order to erase the pause in the rise in temperature cited by, among other sources, the IPCC.

Incredibly, the NOAA accumulated data by measuring the water temperature from the engine intake valves of ocean going cargo ships. The scientists want Congress to investigate whether the agency violated the Data Quality Act, which seeks to ensure the accurate dissemination of scientific information to the public.

Daily Caller:

We, the undersigned, scientists, engineers, economists and others, who have looked carefully into the effects of carbon dioxide released by human activities, wish to record our support for the efforts of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology to ensure that federal agencies complied with federal guidelines that implemented the Data Quality Act, some 300 scientists, engineers and other experts wrote to Chairman of the House Science Committee, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith. In our opinion NOAA has failed to observe the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] (and its own) guidelines, established in relation to the Data Quality Act. The Data Quality Act requires federal agencies like NOAA to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, including statistical information. Smith launched an investigation into NOAAs study last summer over concerns it was pushed out to bolster President Barack Obamas political agenda. Democrats and the media have largely opposed the probe into NOAA scientists and political appointees, but Smith is determined to continue investigating. NOAA officials surrendered emails to congressional investigators in December. It is this Committees oversight role to ensure that federal science agencies are transparent and accountable to the taxpayers who fund their research, Smith told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Americans are tired of research conducted behind closed doors where they only see cherry-picked conclusions, not the facts. This letter shows that hundreds of respected scientists and experts agree that NOAAs efforts to alter historical temperature data deserve serious scrutiny. Of the 300 letter signers, 150 had doctorates in a related field. Signers also included: 25 climate or atmospheric scientists, 23 geologists, 18 meteorologists, 51 engineers, 74 physicists, 20 chemists and 12 economists. Additionally, one signer was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and two were astronauts. NOAA scientists upwardly adjusted temperature readings taken from the engine intakes of ships to eliminate the hiatus in global warming from the temperature record.

This is a blatant attempt to politicize science by the administration and should be exposed for the dishonest research it is. The only question is who at NOAA was behind the attempt to whitewash the termperature hiatus and whose orders they were acting under.

There is yet to be a credible scientific explanation for the lack of rising temperatures despite models saying there should have been close to a one degree increase over the last 17 years. NOAA's attempt to create an explanation out of whole cloth only shows the desperation of climate hysterics who are vigorously denying the facts in front of their face.
In 2009, Hansjorg Wyss, the former CEO of Synthes, was indicted for directing subordinates in executive management meetings to conduct illegal human drug trials. Five people died. Four top executives went to prison. But not Hansjorg Wyss.

Billionaire? CEO? Big Pharma? One percent? Evil evil evil. But donate to progressive causes and all your sins are washed away. You see, Wyss has given hundreds of millions to liberal causes, including a pledge of $5 million to the No Ceilings" project, a Clinton Foundation initiative to inspire and advance the full participation of girls and women around the world.

"Full participation." Ahem. As in, "Hey Monica, come into the Oval Office, I've got a little somethin for ya"?

Wyss has an affinity with the former president in other ways: he settled with Jackie Long, a former employee of the Wyss Foundation, for $1.5 million for sexual assault. Long was particularly offended by Wysss donation to the No Ceilings project.

Oh the unfairness of it all! Wyss is trying to help women; he just wants to advance their full participation.

By the way, should you feel inclined to help the Clintons in their quest for "the full participation of girls and women," theres a prominent, red Donate box at the top of the webpage. If you miss that, next to it is a pulldown labeled "Ways to Give." You'll be delighted that it's open ended: there are five ways to expose your wallet, followed by "More Ways to Give" followed by View all Ways to Give in larger type. Hard to miss. And couldnt be simpler.

Isn't it wonderful how this self-effacing couple empowers you to let them reach into your pocket? Especially when you consider how they pulled themselves up out of poverty: We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt  It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard."

Ill say, Hillary, its been amazing to many of us. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.
You may have heard about the spreading Zika virus, a mosquito borne pathogen that can severely affect pregnant women and their children.

The head of the World Health Organization has called an emergency meeting for Monday to discuss what she is calling a "pandemic" with the virus "spreading explosively" throughout the Americas.

CNN:

"The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, told her organization's executive board members. "We need to get some answers quickly." The lack of any immunity to Zika and the fact that mosquitoes spreading the virus can be found most "everywhere in the Americas" -- from Argentina to the southern United States -- explains the speed of its transmission, said Dr. Sylvain Aldighieri, an official with the WHO and Pan American Health Organization. Aldighieri gave the estimate for Zika infections (including people who do not report clinical symptoms) based on data regarding the spread of a different mosquito-borne virus -- dengue. He acknowledged the virus is circulating with "very high intensity." Some 80% of those infected with the Zika virus don't even feel sick, and most who do have relatively mild symptoms such as a fever, rash, joint pain or pink eye.But there are major worries about the dangers pregnant women and their babies face. Chan said that, where the virus has arrived, there's been a corresponding "steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome." Having small heads can cause severe developmental issues and sometimes death. Guillain-Barre is a rare autoimmune disorder that can lead to life-threatening paralysis. The WHO's Dr. Bruce Aylward cautioned there was no definitive link between Zika and these disorders but sees a legitimate reason for concern. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Dr. Anne Schuchat said there is a "strong" suggestion they are connected.

There is also a potential problem with the virus entering the blood supply.

Canadian Blood Services, which manages most of Canada's supply of blood and blood products, is asking all potential donors who have traveled anywhere other than Canada, the United States or Europe to delay donating blood until one month after their return. The agency said it is working with Health Canada and Hema-Quebec to establish the length of time for delaying donations, but for now the recommendation is one month. "The risk of Zika virus transmission from a Canadian donor to a blood recipient is very low. This deferral period is being introduced as a precaution, since to date, there has been no evidence of Zika virus transmission by transfusion causing illness in a recipient," the agency said in a statement. The American Red Cross, the largest blood collection organization in the United States, said it is closely monitoring the virus but isn't taking a similar precaution, at least not yet. "We are evaluating, as part of the AABB Transfusion Transmissible Disease committee, whether to ask donors to self-defer for 28 days following their return to the U.S. if they traveled to areas with ongoing Zika outbreaks," said Dr. Susan Stramer, vice president of scientific affairs at the American Red Cross.

That's likely to change if the spread of the virus becomes as bad as the WHO believes.

There is no cure for the virus and no vaccine, although there may be an experimental vaccine by the end of the year. For most of us, the threat of becoming gravely ill is mild. But we can still be carriers who can spread the disease if a mosquito bites an infected human.

Controlling the mosquito population will be key. But the particular bug that carries the virus isn't going to make it easy:

Studies show local control is only marginally effective, since it's so hard to get to all possible breeding areas. And since Aedes aegypti has evolved to live near humans and "can replicate in flower vases and other tiny sources of water," said microbiologist Brian Foy, the mosquitoes are particularly difficult to find and eradicate. Another prevention effort is OX513A, a genetically modified male Aedes aegypti, dubbed by critics as the "mutant mosquito" or "Robo-Frankenstein mosquito." The creation of British company Oxitec, OX513A is designed to stop the spread of Zika by passing along a gene that makes his offspring die. Since females only mate once, in theory this slows the growth of the population. Each OX513A carries a fluorescent marker, so he can be tracked by scientists.

Brazil appears to be the epicenter of the outbreak, which is very bad news. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world will descend on Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics later this summer. Health officials believe that this will give the virus a chance to spread worldwide by the end of the year, threatening the health of newborns and wreaking havoc with the blood supply.
If former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg carries through and runs for president as an independent, a Reuters poll shows that his candidacy would hurt the Democrats and give a boost to Donald Trump.

In a matchup between Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, adding Bloomberg's name to the ballot would trim Clinton's lead over Trump to six percentage points from 10, according to the poll conducted from Jan. 23 to Jan. 27. In a Trump versus Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders matchup, adding Bloomberg would erode Sanders' lead over Trump to seven points from 12, the poll results showed. In all matchups, Bloomberg himself would land just 10 percent or less of the vote in November. The 73-year-old financial information industry billionaire, who earned a reputation as a social liberal with strong Wall Street ties during his time as New York City mayor, has considered a White House run for years. According to recent media reports, he would be especially interested in running if Trump and Sanders win their party nominations, and would spend at least $1 billion of his own money to drive his campaign.

The Reuters polls have consistently undercounted Trump's support compared to other polling outfits. But the poll makes sense. Bloomberg is a social liberal but he is also a philosophical liberal on many issues, including support for government interference in the personal lives of citizens. He would draw more moderate Democrats and even some liberals away from Hillary Clinton. It's hard to imagine too many current Trump supporters who would be enamored of the former NY city mayor.

I think Bloomberg would harm Clinton in the south, not so much the east, and it might be a wash in the midwest and west. It's hard to calculate what that means in the electoral college but Clinton might be hurt by Bloomberg in some key toss up states like Florida and New Hampshire where Democrats are more moderate than other states.

Bloomberg has to decide by late February or early March if he is serious about an independent bid for president. Any longer and he risks not being able to get on the ballot in all 50 states. His problem is that there's a pretty good chance that both the Democratic and Republican nomination races will still be up in the air at that time so his desired match up with Sanders/Trump might not be settled.
A shocking report from the Senate regarding the fate of hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors who entered the US illegally.

The government agency responsible for settling the children with sponsors and groups failed to adequately vet them. The result is that an unknown number of illegal alien children were placed with human traffickers.

Washington Post:

The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, failed to do proper background checks of adults who claimed the children, allowed sponsors to take custody of multiple unrelated children, and regularly placed children in homes without visiting the locations, according to a 56-page investigative report released Thursday. And once the children left federally funded shelters, the report said, the agency permitted their adult sponsors to prevent caseworkers from providing them post-release services. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) initiated the six-month investigation after several Guatemalan teens were found in a dilapidated trailer park near Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and forced to work at a local egg farm. The boys were among more than 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have surged into the United States since 2011, fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It is intolerable that human trafficking  modern-day slavery  could occur in our own backyard, Portman said in a written statement. What makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers. The report concluded that administration policies and procedures were inadequate to protect the children in the agencys care. HHS spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement that the agency would review the committees findings carefully and continue to work to ensure the best care for the children we serve. The report was released ahead of a hearing Thursday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Portman co-chairs with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). It detailed nearly 30 cases where unaccompanied children had been trafficked after federal officials released them to sponsors or where there were serious trafficking indicators. HHS places children with individuals about whom it knows relatively little and without verifying the limited information provided by sponsors about their alleged relationship with the child, the report said.

It goes without saying that no one will be fired because of this report. Apparently, deliberately handing kids over to people the government knows nothing about who then turn out to be human traffickers is just business as usual for the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, children are suffering unspeakable degradation. How many children are similarly trapped is unknown. But given the slap-dash efforts to vet sponsors to make sure they are who they say they are, it's possible that thousands of kids are being sold into virtual slavery.

The administration was so intent on moving the kids out of detention centers, that it became the overriding goal rather than finding decent homes of the children. But it also raises questions about the vetting of refugees coming from the Middle East. If the government can't keep kids out of the hands of human traffickers, how are they going to keep terrorists out of the country?
The Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) has been under fire for transitioning from being a service organization to a wealthy, self-serving fundraising organization.

Retired Army Staff Sgt. Erick Millette came home from Iraq in 2006 with a Bronze star and a Purple Heart -- along with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD. Wounded Warrior Project enrolled him in its program Warriors Speak, which "provides important life skills that help warriors succeed." In 2013, the charity hired him as a public speaker. But Millette quit last year. He told CBS News correspondent Chip Reid that Warriors Speak is less like a program to help veterans and more like a fundraising vehicle. "They will tell you it's not. But it is," Millette said. "I began to see how an organization that rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year is not helping my brothers and my sisters. Or at least not all of them."

It is important to have a nimble referral service for mental health treatment for our veterans. I have no knowledge about the Wounded Warrior Project corporate structure, but I have accepted referrals from sources at WWP who have been knowledgeable and caring. For example, a WWP referral from a different state facilitated mental health services for a wounded veteran who lived in a nearby rural county with very limited mental health care. WWP unobtrusively monitored the services while keeping a concerned eye on the vet. Without the WWP, this veteran probably would not have gotten needed help.

The WWP is committing $100 million to a warrior mental health care network in a partnership with four hospitals nationwide. Much of the $100 million will go to hospital and program administration. This is concerning. Outpatient mental health services do not need the umbrella of a hospital setting or national administrative structure. On the contrary, outpatient mental health services do better without organizational "partners."

The reason I was able to be helpful to the wounded warrior mentioned above is because there was no overbearing structure. I got a call, there was a laudable absence of paperwork, and within a week the warrior was in my office. The vet appreciated the simplicity and confidentiality of a private setting, which would most likely be lost in a "nationwide hospital partnership." That $100 million would go much farther without that administrative overhead.
After a recent bushfire consumed all vegetation on his land, a South Australian farmer Brian Fischer decided to etch a gigantic geometric pattern on the bare ground in a bid to fight soil erosion. Without vegetation, the topsoil was vulnerable to erosion by gusting winds. So Fischer ploughed his land in a patchwork of spirals creating long furrows in the topsoil. Now no matter which direction the wind blows there will always be a furrow to catch the soil. Fischer says the pattern cost him a few days to make, but he expects to save 15 cm of topsoil that would have otherwise been lost, until the fields are green again.

The clever erosion-fighting technique came from his dad, who used it on the farm as early as 1944 during one of the worst droughts South Australia experienced. More than one million hectares of land were destroyed by a raging bushfire in Victoria, prompting some farmers to come up with this unique solution.

Photo credit: Brian Fischer

Photo credit: Brian Fischer

via The Guardian
Google is not only one of the top tech outfits in the world, theyve also been voted among the top places to work consistently for a good few years. Its no secret that Google employees, on top of having an amazing work environment and programs to take advantage of, get paid quite a bit. Aspring Googlers often extol the companys virtues by first and foremost pointing out that theyll never want for money, should they get the gig. Although not every Googler is as well off as the average CEO, pretty much everybody except unpaid interns makes at least a decent living wage. While Googles UK arm is often thought of as playing second banana to their homeland operations, employees there still take home a fairly nice sum. Specifically, the average wage for all of the 2,300 employees of Googles UK operations is 160,000, or about $229,632.

According to Margaret Hodge, former chair of the public accounts committee, this is more than enough to show that Google UK is not a back office support operation and that, in regards to Alphabet, their complex structure of companies is a sham. This figure comes hot on the heels of Googles recent tax troubles in the UK and elsewhere, having been accused of sending roughly 4.6 billion through a maze of country-specific operations and different accounts in order to pay as little tax as possible. On top of backend and sales, Googles UK workforce is responsible for working on hot projects such as Google Play, Android, AdSense and Search. According to whistleblower Barney Jones, who actually used to work for Google, They do a lot of high-value sales, marketing and engineering  all out of London. I find it utterly baffling that HMRC accept[s] that these people do almost nothing worthwhile.

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Some of Google UKs account expenditures show 290 million being shelled out for some land near Londons Kings Cross station thats planned to have the capacity for up to 5,000 workers. The aggressive tax structure forged in the UK seems to have driven many businesses looking to go international to set up shop in Ireland instead, but critics still lambasted Googles comparatively small back tax settlement. Hodge points out that these figures are all proof that Google UK is jumping through hoops to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Mobile Payments Systems are nothing new, but during 2015 they definitely came back with force, thanks to announcements from Apple, Google and Samsung in a matter of months of each other. While Apple Pay is most definitely the most widely-available of the three, Android Pay is gaining ground and Samsung Pay is itself a flexible solution that can be used with older hardware, as well as NFC-equipped terminals. Many stores and card providers have signed up for both Apple Pay and Android Pay, but a few banks have outlined plans to introduce ATM machines with NFC terminals allowing people to get cash even when they dont have their debit cards with them.

Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo have all outlined plans to roll out these modern ATMs throughout 2016 and beyond. Starting with Bank of America, it appears theyll be first to get their ATMs out there with machines starting to appear in late February in select areas of Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Charlotte, New York and Boston. More areas are to go live throughout 2016, but this is a decent start for them, to say the least. Chase meanwhile, will begin offering customers a way to generate a code on their smartphone to authenticate and withdraw cash from ATMs. This is part of their first phase of two, the second phase will offer up NFC-equipped ATMs for even easier use. Wells Fargo however have confirmed that NFC-equipped machines will be arriving later this year, but havent gone much farther than that.

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Machines churning cash without a card have been used all around the world with different systems and varying successes, but these new machines could be the first step of finally bringing the ATM into the 21st Century once and for all. This modernization is pretty exciting, but as usual it will depend on whether or not all banks and card providers will support the most popular platforms. Android Pay is likely to emerge, alongside Apple Pay, as one of the most widely-available, but supporting Samsung Pay gives banks a tough choice as the service is only available on a handful of phones right now.
An Atlanta-based startup company has recently scored funding of $75 million spearheaded by Google Capital. The company known as Pindrop specializes in identity theft and voice fraud prevention since 2011. Ever since its inception, the company has been able to build a solid name for itself through its acoustic fingerprinting technology. With this technology, they are able to work with internal systems of companies in order to identify certain factors such as an individuals device, location, or even his voice. After gathering such information, they are then saved onto a database used for future reference which helps identify legitimate callers from the scammers out there pretending to be them.

Because of how secure their technology is, Pindrop is being implemented in government agencies, retailers, insurance firms, and three of the four biggest banks in the country. With Google backing them up and giving them the funding they need, it marks a milestone for the company. According to Pindrop CEO and co-founder Vijay Balasubramaniyan, this partnership with Google Capital enables them to gain an amazing access to the latters expertise in technologies that make use of phone and voice features.

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Prior to acquiring funding from Google Capital, Pindrop had already raised $45 million which includes the $35 million from last February. Along with Google Capital, investors have also participated in providing funding for Pindrop. Among these investors include Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Institutional Venture Partners.

Balasubramaniyan believes that voice technology will largely impact the way we do things in the future. Especially with the way technology is going, there seems to be much truth in how voice will play an important role in our everyday lives. There has been an array of home appliances, apps, cars, and many other products that respond to human voice commands. Because of this, it is important to start looking into voice fraud prevention. By investing in Pindrop today, Google Capital can help the company accelerate their technology to a global reach. With the funding, Pindrop will be able to put in more money into research and development to continue creating a platform that upholds trust, security, and identity in the voice field.
Last year, Verizon eliminated contracts. At least on the surface. As weve seen from others, eliminating the subsidized smartphones and going with financing or leasing is still a form of a contract. Verizon has seen some big success with their financing services through Verizon Edge. Which allows a customer to finance a device at 0% interest, over the next 24 months. So instead of dropping $700 on a smartphone today, you can spread that amount out over 24 months, making the fee much easier to swallow.

Up until today, business customers on Verizons network werent able to finance devices when they are upgrading their equipment. However, in a press release that the company put out today, they are bringing their EIP on over to business customers. Not only does this drop the up-front cost of the device that the customers are buying, but it also lowers the price of the monthly access fee for each device. From $35/line/month to $15/line/month. And when youre talking about 20 lines, thats a pretty big savings.

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In addition to bringing financing over to business customers, Verizon also changed up their business service plans. With just two plans now. One that is for 25 lines or less dubbed The Verizon Plan for Business and the other for 26 lines or more which is dubbed the Flexible Business plan. These plans give everyone unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited international messaging from the United States, as well as corporate email using Exchange ActiveSync (a pretty popular service for those using Microsofts products), Lotus Notes Traveler or Good for Enterprise. As far as data goes, the data is shareable now. So you are buying a pool of data for all of the lines on your account, just as you would for a personal account with two or more devices on there. A bit unfortunate that the data is shared among all of the lines, instead of being able to give each line a set amount of data each month.

You can head on over to Verizons business website to learn more about these new plans as well as the new EIP options that are now available to businesses that use Verizon as their wireless carrier.
SK Telecom Plans To Launch Super-Fast LTE Soon

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SK Telecom, a South Korea-based carrier, plans to launch a super-fast LTE in time for to support the Galaxy S7 and LG G5 flagships. The upload speeds are currently limited to 25Mbps, but by implementing the UL 64QAM and MC-PUSCH technology, those speeds go as high as 100Mbps, at least in theory. We still dont know what speeds will the two aforementioned flagships support, but well find out really soon. SK Telecoms LTE tech is expected to arrive in the coming weeks to Seoul, other areas will get it later this year.

Zopo Announces Speed 7C, Wood Back In Tow

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Zopos Speed 7 and Speed 7 Plus handsets have been the companys most popular phones in 2015. Zopo revealed that theyll announce the Speed 8 flagship during MWC in Barcelona, but while were waiting for that to happen, the company has introduced the Speed 7C handset which ships with a wood back. This smartphone features a 5-inch 720p display, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The 2,500mAh battery is included here, and a 13.2-megapixel shooter is placed on the back of this phone. It is also worth mentioning that Android 5.1 Lollipop comes out of the box here.

Swipe Virtue Launched In India, Costs Only Rs. 5,999 ($88)

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Swipe Virtue is the newest entry-level handset for the Indian smartphone market. This phone costs only Rs. 5,999 ($88), while its specs are not all that bad. The device ships with a 5-inch HD display, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. MediaTeks quad-core SoC running at 1.3GHz fuels this smartphone (quite probably MT6735), and a 2,500mAh battery is available on the inside. Android 5.1 Lollipop comes pre-installed here, and an 8-megapixel shooter is available on the back of the Swipe Virtue. The phone is already available from Snapdeal.

Oppo Teases New Camera Tech and Power For MWC 2016

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Oppo has managed to sell 50 million smartphones last year, and the company will make an appearance at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The companys new teaser teases groundbreaking power and unprecedented smartphone camera innovation for MWC 2016. Now, this suggests Oppo might release a new device with great camera capabilities, but were only guessing. Well just have to wait and see whats what, the Mobile World Congress is right around the corner.
(ANSA) - Rome, January 28 - Hollywood star and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio thanked Pope Francis in Italian for granting him a private audience Thursday.

The actor, who recently got another Oscar nod for The Revenant, kissed the pope's hand in his personal library and said to him in Italian "thank you for having granted me this private audience".

DiCaprio gave Francis a book of illustrations by Hieronymus Bosch, telling the pope: "A picture of the Earth by Bosch hung over my bed as a child, my father put it up. "For me it always represented the planet and ecological utopia, it was an inspiration and a promise for the future," said the star, who promotes environmentally friendly causes through a foundation. DiCaprio then gave the pope a cheque from his foundation.

Francis, for his part, gave DiCaprio a copy of his ecological encyclical Laudato Si', as well as a rosary.

The pope, taking his leave, told DiCaprio: "Pray for me, don't forget".


(ANSA) - Rome, January 29 - Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said the idea of a 'two-speed Europe' - in which different parts of the EU integrate on different timelines based on individual country differences - is not the "best" but added that "it's right to discuss levels of varying integration", in an interview with Italian daily La Stampa published on Friday.

"There are those, like Italy, who want a growing banking, fiscal, and political union, and others, like the United Kingdom, who only want a more efficient common market," Gentiloni said.

"Two visions that must and can live together".

Gentiloni said talks on the issue will start in Rome, "in a meeting between foreign ministers of the six founding countries, sixty years from the founding treaties".

Regarding Italian Premier Matteo Renzi's meeting Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Gentiloni said the two countries, which he called "protagonists of the European scene", can work on a "shared vision for the future of the Union" despite differences on economic rules.

He said he did not agree with the Danish decision to seize assets from migrants, calling it akin to "forcing the homeless to pay a property tax".

As for the Swedish decision to repatriate 80,000 migrants with special flights, he said, "repatriation must be part of a common European action and not of announcements for effect".

Commenting on the situation in Libya, Gentiloni said if that country isn't stablized, "we'll have a gigantic Somalia on the other side of the Strait of Sicily".

"Naturally then if a country feels threatened it has the right to defend itself and can decide to combat Daesh (ISIS) in the ways that the international community shares".


(ANSA) - Rome, January 29 - Premier Matteo Renzi said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after they met Friday that Italy is fingerprinting and identifying through facial recognition 100% of asylum seekers.

"I want to reassure German public opinion that, while there have been difficulties in the past, today thanks to the work of the Italian police we've reached 100% fingerprinting and facial recognition," he said. The latter is "very useful in combating terror," he added.


Migrants: Renzi, Italy willing to contribute to Turkey fund 'But we're waiting for answers from EU institutions', pm says

(ANSAmed) - Rome, January 29 - Premier Matteo Renzi told a joint press conference after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that Italy "is willing to do its part" on the migrant emergency. "We have no problem, either with Turkey or Germany," he said. "We have always been available on Italy's (part of the) financing (of the Turkey refugee fund).



We're waiting for European institutions to give us some answers on some (of our) questions....on how this contribution is to be intended and conceived".



Renzi also said that European Union risks losing itself if the Schengen border-free system breaks down. "If Europe loses Schengen, it loses itself," Renzi told reporters after a bilateral meeting with the German Chancellor in Berlin. "Every effort that we can make to keep the European ideal alive must be done together. For months immigration seemed to be only an Italian problem, now it's a problem that will lost months, maybe years". (ANSAMed).




(ANSAmed) - Rome, January 29 - Premier Matteo Renzi told a joint press conference after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that Italy "is willing to do its part" on the migrant emergency. "We have no problem, either with Turkey or Germany," he said. "We have always been available on Italy's (part of the) financing (of the Turkey refugee fund).



We're waiting for European institutions to give us some answers on some (of our) questions....on how this contribution is to be intended and conceived".



Renzi also said that European Union risks losing itself if the Schengen border-free system breaks down. "If Europe loses Schengen, it loses itself," Renzi told reporters after a bilateral meeting with the German Chancellor in Berlin. "Every effort that we can make to keep the European ideal alive must be done together. For months immigration seemed to be only an Italian problem, now it's a problem that will lost months, maybe years". (ANSAMed).


(ANSAmed) - Brussels, January 29 - All European member states must take responsibility for relocating migrants from Greece and Italy, EU Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos said Friday.



"The decision to relocate 160,000 refugees is a binding one," Avramopoulos told ANSA. "It is time that member states take responsibility and do what they have committed to do.



"Offers to relocate refugees must drastically increase, and member states must send staff in addition to those from Frontex.



"It's not a problem just for the Greeks or for the Italians it's a responsibility that must be shared by everyone in Europe." The commissioner highlighted the need to ensure that migrants whose applications have been refused are repatriated. He also discussed possible reforms to the Dublin Regulation - under which responsibility for asylum seekers lies with the country in which they first arrive - to be examined in March. The reforms will aim "to ensure a more equal distribution system among countries; a real system of shared responsibility", he said.
ROME - Iranian President Hassan Rohani said that re-establishing diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia is a priority but it is up to the Saudis to take the initiative, reported France 24 according to which the Iranian president made the comment while speaking to a number French televisions. During his historic visit to France, Rohani condemned the assault on the Saudi embassy but did not apologize for it. "We condemned that action. Our responsibility was finding those responsible for the attack and we did. We arrested them and they are in prison" he cut short.



Saudi Arabia's move to cut diplomatic ties "was not proportional to the incidents" commented the Iranian president.



"What's certain is that the country that interrupted our relations must be the one that should seek to re-establish them" he added.
MADRID - Enfanta Cristina will be tried for fiscal fraud, announced the tribunal of Palma de Mallorca.



The Audiencia Provincial de Baleares - reported El Pais online - repealed a plea by her defense counsel to apply the so-called Botin doctrine, according to which it would not be possible to try someone for a fiscal misdemenour on the basis of the denounciation of one association only, in this case the extreme-rights association Manos Limpias, while neither the Income Tax Office nor the Public Prosecutor's Office have filed any complaints against the enfanta.



In the past, banker Emilio Botin managed to evade trial because he had been accused only by civil parties and not by the Public Prosecutor's Office. In the case of princess Cristina, the Mallorca judges - three women - ruled differently because her husband, Inaki Undargarin, stands accused of a criminal misdemenour and she was probably informed of his illegal conduct.



In the Botin case, the Public Prosecutor dismissed the case.



Further twists notwithstanding, the enfanta, will sit on the defendant's bench on February 9, the day the trial will be opened and she risks up to 9 years in jail.



Undargarin is risking more, a total of 19 as he stands accused of diverting a total of 6 million Euros in public funds through the Noos foundation.
BEIRUT - Geneva is bracing for the much anticipated UN brokered Syria talks, but this morning the opposition's delegation insisted that its presence is conditional on the Syrian regime's respect of humanitarian measures set in United Nations resolutions. Basma Qodmani, quoted by pan Arab al Arabya television, said that the opposition's delegation present in Saudi Arabia is expecting UN envoy Staffan De Mistura to provide guarantees on humanitarian issues.



The Syrian government delegation is expected to arrive in Geneva from Damascus in the afternoon.



Damascus' government delegation "arrived in Geneva and is in close contact with the UN and experts there'', said Russian Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova.


The story of the Bodnariu family has divided Romania in two.On the one hand, there are those who say that the parents were unjustly deprived of their children and that they must be help to get their children back.On the other hand, there are the Romanians who argue that the Norwegian law protects children and that Marius and Ruth Bodnariu have definitely done something wrong that it has gone so far.Our colleagues went to the home of the family who are trying hard to take their children back . The valley where Ruths family has been living for six generations, is now different. For two months, the Bodnariu children have been living among strangers. Apart from each other.In the big empty house, toys are lying untouched in corners, Marius and Ruth struggle with an unnatural silence.For weeks, every morning seems ripped from the movies. Children do not come into their bed and every minute is filled with pain.Marius is not allowed to see his older children. He visits his baby every week, under the supervision of social workers who question the way he fulfilled the role of father. Reports accuse him of having abused his children, but his memories contradict that.Only that now, magic does not help bring them back. Marius and Ruth are actually facing a long battle in the courts.Lawyers defending human rights believe that all is not lost in their case. The Bodnariu story has determined parents worldwide take the streets and they became the subject of discussion at the ECHR and the European Parliament.A parliamentary delegation from Romania stood in front of those from the child protection in Norway. Messengers came home full of hope, but with no promises from the foreign authorities.The same as with the Bodnariu family, other hundreds of families have had their Norwegian dream turned into a nightmare. Now, all these parents hope that the authorities would shed some light in this.The Bodnarius children - of Romanian Marius Bodnariu, IT engineer, and of his wife Norwegian Ruth, a nurse  the youngest of whom was only a few months, were taken from their parents by the Department of Child Protection in Norway, Barnevernet in November after the two girls, the eldest in the family, had allegedly said they received physical correction from parents. Parents are charged with abuse and religious indoctrination and the Norwegian authorities have started adoption proceedings.






Dan Voiculescu sends a warning to the government. If you do not qualify for the efficient use of EU funds, Romania risks losing a lot of money in the upcoming years.



Voiculescu said that he chose to talk about these issues so that the government should not say at the end of the year that they did not know about them.

Professor Dan Voiculescu writes on his blog that Romania faces a significant challenges this year.



"It is about the non-fulfillment of the ex-ante conditionalities by 31 December 2016 which will put a huge pressure on the state budget. With these conditionalities, each EU Member State guarantees the existence of preconditions for the efficient use of European structural funds and investments, Dan Voiculescu wrote on his blog.



According to the professor, "the major projects approved by the European Commission but unfinished in the programming period 2007-2013 must necessarily be completed through the phasing out process , either of its own financial resources which largely come also from the state budget because the beneficiaries are public authorities or state-owned companies ".

"Otherwise, there is a major risk in the implementation of structural funds and investments for 2014-2020.



P.S.: So I wanted to make sure that the risk is known starting now, from January 2016 so that we do not end up in December 2016, with a new sad finding , " Dan Voiculescu concludes.



In the period 2014-2020, Romania will benefit from a total allocation of about 28 billion euros in structural and cohesion funds and EAFRD funds. Of this amount, 21 billion euros will be allocated to operational programs financed from structural funds, while 7.5 billion will go to the National Rural Development Programme.




The loss of European money will have a serious impact on the development of Romania, warns Dan Voiculescu.Funds from the European Union are not a fad, but a chance for Romania to enter the civilized world head up, says Professor Voiculescu in one of his books.If absorption of European funds is below 50%, Romania will be applied a flat rate of 25%, which could even get to 5% , if the government manages to attract up to 65% of the funds, says Dan Voiculescu."Reducing the co-financing of projects from European funds or loss of funding will have a direct impact on the development of Romania. I have always said and I reiterate: Europe's money is not a fad, but Romania's chance to go head high in the civilized world " Dan Voiculescu wrote on his blog.Dan Voiculescu makes a direct link between the success of accessing and managing European funds and the economic future of Romania, warning in one of his books that the next 4 years are decisive."The 2014-2020 programming period has a level of financial correction applied by the Commission in the form of a flat rate determined by dividing the average final success rate for all achievement output indicators and all the key implementing phases of a performance framework, and the final success rate of the financial indicator of the respective performance framework, Dan Voiculescu said.European grant money are key to the development of Romania over the next 10 years, said Professor Voiculescu late last year.The information was presented Friday during the 100 minutes show, on Antena 3.
Any administration may decide that, for everyones sake, certain areas or groups whatever their nature deserve a special treatment and may, therefore, choose to favour them in a number of ways, including positive discrimination. Among other things, politics is about that. It is for this reason that governments choose to offer special deals to farmers, shopkeepers, large families and so forth.

We can read in the mayoress official blog that the Barcelona city council has put together a long-term city plan to empower the neighbourhoods that the city left behind and ensure that there is a single Barcelona instead of two: the wealthy one and the poor. The way that the text puts it, you would think that this problem is peculiar to Barcelona and that cities such as Paris, New York, Rome or London are impervious to it. And yet it turns out that there has never been a large city in the modern world where there were no income differences. Even during egalitarian dictatorships there were individuals whose life was much more pleasant than others: the life of the old Soviet nomenklatura was not on a par with their anonymous comrades who were subjected to that social experiment. Sadly, then, what is happening in Barcelona is far from an exception but an unfortunate norm. So why are they in such a rush to implement a 150m plan?

Obviously, whenever people suffer from extreme or unusual inequality, the situation must be addressed and rectified immediately for everyones sake and for the sake of their dignity. You can go about it in many ways: from progressive taxation to an ad hoc distribution of public spending on essential services (transport, schools, health care, and so on). But how can you establish that the existing differences are so worrying and grave that require an urgent intervention by the authorities? Cue in the magic of mathematics.

Let us take a family of five with a net monthly income of 4,000. I guess some might say: thats pretty good. Now lets look at it in a different way: a single individual earning 800 a month. Naturally, you might say: thats a low income. But, as it turns out, we might be talking about the very same family. In fact, this is a well-known real example taken from Spains PER (which is now called PFEA (1)) and there is absolutely nothing fraudulent about it. So we must conclude that working out the differences is much more subjective than it would appear at first.

The city map on the councils web page shows calculations based on a familys disposable income per capita in 2014. That is absolutely fine, but a different method would be equally acceptable, yet the results would be extremely different. At any rate, the underlying problem is not arithmetical, but political. The text penned by mayoress Ada Colau includes a far-fetched claim: An unequal city is not only unfair and ethically reprehensible: it is an unsafe city for everyone, a city that might split, one that will struggle to attract investors and talent. Is she referring to New York, perhaps?

Earlier on I kept mentioning income differences which are undeniably real, no matter how you calculate them. But difference and inequality are not synonymous in this context. In a city where inequality ruled, some would be entitled to medical care and education, whereas others would not, for instance. Some would be allowed to do things as different as using public transport or setting up a business, while others would not. And so long and so forth. Luckily, that is not the situation in Barcelona city (as opposed to many large conurbations in the third world, where this is very much the norm). Such an apocalyptic depiction of Barcelona as an ethically reprehensible city as if it were the worst Kinshasa slum is frivolous and a lack of respect to everyone, but I guess it should hardly come as a surprise. Still, while on the subject of attracting investors, the current difficulty stems from local policies which do not allow investment to be attractive or safe, and certainly not from the inequality between Barcelonas neighbourhoods. Before thinking about how wealth should be spread, perhaps the council should consider how to create it. Public spending comes from taxpayers pockets, not for urban veggie patches or barter markets, as some responsible adults already know.

___________

(1) N.T. In Spains less developed regions, farm labourers may apply for a special unemployment benefit, provided that they have worked a relatively small number of days that year. The old scheme was called PER (Plan de Empleo Rural or Rural Employment Scheme) while the current one is known as PFEA. Both have been slammed for allegedly encouraging long-term unemployment in those regions.
The agreement means that the MRO Middle East exhibition, conference and workshops will return to Dubai annually, providing the one opportunity in the region for attendees to discover the crucial issues impacting the MRO industry and to network with customers and peers from all segments of the business.

MRO Middle East has seen exponential growth in the time we have been working with F&E Aerospace, said Lydia Janow, managing director, events, for Aviation Week Network. Since its inception, exhibitor participation has increased an incredible 80% which demonstrates the importance of the industry in the region. Visitor numbers to the two-day event have grown almost four times. With their regional and industry experience, plus this impressive track record, F&E Aerospace is the ideal partner for us to continue to develop MRO Middle East together.

The global commercial aircraft MRO market was estimated to be worth $63.2 billion in 2016, according to Aviation Weeks 2016 Commercial Fleet & MRO Forecast. Visiongain is predicting continued growth over the next decade, stating that emerging markets such as the Middle East are expected to record the highest growth rates for commercial aircraft MRO as result of infrastructure expansion. In addition, the introduction of new aircraft such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 and rapid growth of regional airlines are predicted to drive innovation and development of new MRO practices.

Michele van Akelijen, managing director of F&E Aerospace, said: We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Aviation Week Network in order to grow MRO Middle East in anticipation of market needs. Our combined expertise in bringing this event together, plus Aviation Week Networks seamless organising of conferences that consistently add value to attendees, will ensure that the show remains the must-attend event of its kind in the region.

She added: The Middle East clearly values the opportunities it offers, and with the MRO market predicted to grow by $5.3 billion  a CAGR of 5.5% - plus new technologies predicted to have a significant affect on the market, the importance of the event is likely to increase.

With the eighth edition of MRO Middle East taking place 3-4 February, co-located with Aircraft Interiors Middle East, 275 exhibitors will be displaying cutting edge technologies at Dubai World Trade Centre.




Announced during President Hassan Rouhani's ongoing official visit to France, the order entails: twenty-one A320ceo family jets; twenty-four A320neo family jets; twenty-seven A330ceo family jets; eighteen A330neo (-900) jets; sixteen A350-1000s; and twelve A380-800s.

The order also includes pilot, maintenance training, and support services critical to the new fleet's entry into service.

Todays announcement is the start of re-establishing our civil aviation sector into the envy of the region and along with partners like Airbus well ensure the highest world standards, Farhad Parvaresh, Iran Air chairman and CEO, said.

Parallel to that agreement, Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Dr. Abbas Ahmad Akhoundi, signed a comprehensive co-operation agreement with the Europeans, which will see Irans civil aviation infrastructure and regulatory oversight overhauled and modernised. Among the areas involved in the deal are Iran's air navigation services, airport and aircraft operations, regulatory harmonisation, technical and academic training, as well as MRO and industrial cooperation.
The company said today that it welcomed the decision by Iran Air to acquire 18 Airbus A330neo and 16 A350-1000 aircraft, which are powered exclusively by the Trent 7000 and Trent XWB engines respectively.

In addition, Rolls-Royce will provide engines for 27 A330ceo and 12 A380 aircraft that Iran Air is also to acquire.

Dominic Horwood, Rolls-Royce, Director, Customers & Services - Civil Aerospace, said: We welcome this decision by Iran Air to select Rolls-Royce powered aircraft and, consistent with the improved regulatory environment that now exists, we look forward to supporting the modernisation of commercial aviation in Iran.

The Trent 7000, the exclusive power plant for the Airbus A330neo, is the seventh member of the Trent family which has become the engine of choice in the wide body market over the last 20 years. The Trent 7000 is scheduled to enter service in 2017.


Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet...
For Fr. Mario Ghezzi, "a saint" passed away, someone "that our Church is desperately in need of." The vicar emeritus "gave his life" for the country where he rebuilt the local Catholic community, starting "from the streets". For priests and missionaries, he "was a father", a "simple, yet true shepherd" who harboured a "passion for the mission."

Phnom Penh (AsiaNews) - "The white martyr of the Church in Cambodia died and was born again as the country and its people did. He died when he was expelled after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh in 1975, and was reborn when he celebrated a solemn Mass before thousands of people after his return, said Fr Mario Ghezzi, a priest with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), citing a young Cambodian" who talked to him about Mgr Emile Destombes, apostolic vicar from 2001 to 2010, who died yesterday at the age of 80.

For Cambodian Catholics (vigil pictured), the death of the priest and bishop responsible for reviving the Christian presence in the country is a source of great sorrow. But for the PIME missionary, there is something more. Yesterday, Fr Ghezzi said, as I reflected upon his life and death I thought that a saint has died, a figure our Church is desperately in need of."

Fr Ghezzi began his mission in Cambodia in 2000, just before Mgr Emile Destombes was appointed apostolic vicar to Phnom Penh. The latter had pioneered the revival of the mission in a country left socially, economically and religiously devastated by the vicious Maoist revolutionaries.

"He gave his life for the evangelisation in Cambodia, said the PIME missionary. He was a simple man, humble, a witness to the Gospel who wanted a simple Church for simple people.

As the first foreign priest to return to the country after the ravages of the Khmer Rouge, he revived the mission by walking the streets of Phnom Penh, hoping to meet some Christians.

"This is how he started again, in the streets, Fr Ghezzi noted, bringing together the few Christians he met, to celebrate the first Eucharist together. "

"He was my first bishop, the Italian missionary explained, and I remember him as a father. As a priest, he had a real fatherly attitude, a human face, in addition to being deeply good and unassuming. Perhaps because of these qualities, which fit well with the countrys soul, he was very popular among Cambodians. He was also flexible, and could adapt, in spite of his French origin.

Mgr Destombes was a true shepherd, a simple man, who did not like red tape, all those meetings. Instead, he preferred to reach out to individuals and single communities, looking everyone in the eye." He "sought to meet others with simplicity," noted the PIME missionary, who often had lunch with him at the vicariate.

"He loved to talk about his life, his return to Cambodia, Ghezzi said. His greatest wish was to see a united Church, a Gospel rooted in peoples hearts, a Church that bore witness. The Catholic community here re-started from scratch and it did so with him.

"His legacy, said Fr Ghezzi, is the ability to adapt to the Cambodian mentality, even though he was still very French. The same goes for his meekness, his reliance on the spirit, on providence. He was not a man who knew or wanted to plan, and this helped him especially in the early years, in the Churchs reconstruction phase.

The tragic encounter with the Khmer Rouge was indelibly imprinted in the bishops memory, who went into the streets to meet them when they entered Phnom Penh. The Maoist revolutionaries, Fr Ghezzi said, citing Mgr Destombes story, "did not even give him the time to get his passport before taking him to the French embassy where, for three weeks, together with 3,000 more people, he waited to see whether he would come through the gates alive or dead."

Last but not least, there is his relationship of friendship and respect with the missionaries, which developed over time. "He was always very friendly towards us, said one PIME priest. Between the MEP and PIME there was a relationship ... of cousins! His was a true passion for the mission, which everyone knows. He was a man of great empathy, who welcomed you with open arms."
On February 10, the Missionaries of Mercy will receive a papal mandate giving them the authority to forgive the sins that are the prerogative of the Apostolic See. The relics of Saint Leopold Mandic and Saint Pio of Pietrelcina will be in Rome between February 3 and 11.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  At a press conference today, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, and Mgr Bell Graham, secretary of the same dicastery, presented some statistics on the number of pilgrims who have come to Rome so far for the Year of Mercy, saying that "as of today 1,392,000 people have participated in Jubilee events.

In addition, Archbishop Fisichella said that the relics of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina and Saint Leopold Mandic  both famous confessors  will be in Rome between February 3 and 11. He also noted that more than a thousand Missionaries of Mercy will receive a papal mandate on February 10 giving them the authority to absolve sins that are the prerogative of the Holy See.

Since the Holy Door in St Peters Basilica opened two months ago, the faithful have shown great enthusiasm. An interesting detail, said Mgr Fisichella, is that 40% of those who have attended come from abroad, speaking largely Spanish and French. We have registered pilgrims from Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Korea, Kenya, Mozambique, El Salvador, New Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, the Fiji Islands, Russia, Belarus, the Seychelles, the Ivory Coast, Chad, Kuwait, the U.S.A., Albania and from many other countries.

I would like to reiterate that this is not the criteria by which to judge the actual outcome of the Jubilee. A Holy Year of mercy goes well beyond numbers, for it is intended to touch the hearts and the minds of people in order to assist them in coming to understand the ways in which Gods great love manifests itself in their daily lives. It is a time during which to assess our lives of faith and to understand how we are capable of conversion and renewal, both of which come from recognizing the importance of remaining focused upon what is essential.

As previously noted, the second event pertains to the celebration that will take place on Ash Wednesday when the Holy Father will give the mandate to the Missionaries of Mercy. As attested to in the Bull of Indiction, Misericordiae vultus, the Missionaries are to be a sign of the Churchs maternal solicitude for the People of God, enabling them to enter the profound richness of this mystery so fundamental to the faith. There will be priests to whom I will grant the authority to pardon even those sins reserved to the Holy See, so that the breadth of their mandate as confessors will be even clearer. They will be, above all, living signs of the Fathers readiness to welcome those in search of his pardon.

Thus, the Missionaries of Mercy are a select number of priests who have received from the Pope the charge to be privileged witnesses in their respective Churches of the extraordinariness of this Jubilee event. It is only the Pope who nominates these Missionaries, not the Bishops, and it is he who entrusts them with the mandate to announce the beauty of the mercy of God while being humble and wise confessors who possess a great capacity to forgive those who approach the confessional.

The Missionaries, who come from every continent, number over 1,000. I am delighted to announce that there are Missionaries coming from many distant countries and, among these, some of which have a uniquely significant importance such as: Burma, Lebanon, China, South Korea, Tanzania, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Burundi, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Latvia, East Timor, Indonesia, Thailand, and Egypt. There will also be Oriental Rite priests.

There will be 700 Missionaries arriving in Rome. Pope Francis will meet with them on February 9 in order to express his feelings regarding this initiative which will certainly be one of the most touching and significant of the Jubilee of Mercy. On the following day, only the Missionaries of Mercy will concelebrate with the Holy Father, during which time they will receive the mandate, as well as the faculty to absolve those sins reserved to the Holy See.

There are two particular events that now merit our attention. The first pertains to the presence in Rome of the urns containing the relics of Saint Leopold Mandic and Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. Such an occasion is of great significance for it is an unprecedented event, given the stories of these two saints who spent their lives in the service of the mercy of God. Padre Leopold (1866-1942) was canonized by John Paul II on December 16, 1983 and is less well known than Padre Pio. Yet, his hunger for holiness spread beyond the Church of Padua, where he lived the major part of his life and where his memory and his relics remain.

Originally from Croatia, this Capuchin father dedicated all of his life to the confessional. For almost thirty years, he spent from ten to fifteen hours a day in the secrecy of his cell, the very place which became a confessional for thousands of people who found in their relationships with him the privileged witness of forgiveness and of mercy. Some of his brothers noted that he was ignorant and too lenient in forgiving everyone without discernment.

Yet, his simple and humble response to this charge leaves one speechless: Should the Crucified blame me for being lenient, I would answer Him: Lord, you gave me this bad example. I have not yet reached the folly of your having died for souls. Padre Pio (1887-1968), who was canonized in 2002 and also by John Paul II, does not require lengthy presentations.

This simple Capuchin friar spent his entire life at San Giovanni Rotondo without ever leaving that town. Certainly, during his life, some in Rome caused him to suffer, but his holiness always prevailed. In the silence of obedience, he also became a privileged witness of mercy, dedicating all of his life to the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The urns containing the relics will arrive in Rome on February 3 where they will be placed in the Church of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura. The church will be open to the faithful starting at 15:00 with a celebration of reception. The relics will remain in San Lorenzo until 20:30 the following day, during which time there will be a number of celebrations reserved for the vast extended Franciscan Family.

An all-night vigil is being organized in the Jubilee Church of San Salvatore in Lauro, which will begin at 22:00 on February 4. The prayer will continue until the following day, February 5, with various celebrations and will conclude with Holy Mass at 14:00 presided by His Excellency Michele Castoro, the Archbishop of Manfredonia-ViesteSan Giovanni Rotondo.

At 16:00, a procession with the two urns containing the relics will begin from San Salvatore in Lauro and then proceed the entire length of Via della Conciliazione in order to arrive at the sagrato of St. Peters Basilica. There on the sagrato, His Eminence Angelo Cardinal Comastri, the Archpriest of St. Peters Basilica, will receive the relics and after a moment of prayer, will then accompany the relics into the Basilica where they will be placed in the central nave before the Altar of the Confession for people to venerate. The relics will remain in St. Peters for veneration until the morning of February 11 when, after the Holy Mass of thanksgiving at 7:30 am at the Altar of the Chair, they will be returned to their original homes.
Site: zorpia From: stellamaris Date: Jan 12, 2016

CONTACT ME THROUGH MY EMAIL ADDRESS (stellamaristendaji21@ hotmail.com) OR YOU CAN SEND ME YOUR EMAIL FOR ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT ME.













From: stellamaris tendaji <stellamaristendaji21@hotmail.com> Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 10:22:48 +0000 Subject: HONEY THIS IS ALL ABOUT MY LIFE STORY WITH LOVE AND TRUST

My Dearest one,

Thanks you very much for your response.How is everything going over there? Hopefully you are doing well today. As I told you in my mail, my name is Miss Stellamaris Tendaji. a 24 year old girl. I'm (from Sudan in Africa) But presently residing in a living church missionary in Senegal as a result of civil war that was fought in my country years ago. I'm average in size about 5.7 ft tall and 57 kg weight.I'm very beautiful and like challenges. My picture is attached for you to see me. My father's name is late Dr. Martin Tendaji, and my mother's name was late Mrs Flora Tendaji. I had only one brother who is late also his name was Kingsley. He died the same day my parents died in the incidence of war. My late father was the personal assistant to the vice president of Sudan john Garang (DENGZ INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANY PLC), in south Sudan my country which was destroyed during the war. When my parents died together with our only son, I managed to find my way to the coast of Africa (Senegal) through the red-cross rescue ship but it was not easy for me. Presently, I live in a missionary here to get sustained for my dear life. here is too tough and hard on me and I'm planning to seek for a better future.

Listen carefully, before the death of my late father, he deposited some amount of money in some banks in my name as the next of kin/inheritance. the amount in question is ($5.7 Million US Dollars). that is in the BANK, which I'm planning to claim. This is the more reason why I contacted you to seek your assistance. But before we continue I would like you to prove to me that you are a reliable person in whom I can place my confidence on and entrust my inheritance to, really I don't know you in person but hope so much that we will discover ourselves as we go on.

If you are a trustworthy person, then, I would like you to help me transfer the money to your personal account, pending my arrival to meet with you and plan together how to invest the money in any business you know that will be nice for us. Then, when the money is transferred to you, you shall send me some money from it to enable me clear myself from this camp and prepare my travel to meet you. You shall take 20% of the money for your kind assistance Important note; please do not disclose this my plan with you to any other person it is my secret. I don't want to lose this money to wicked people.

to eat here is too hard and there is much hunger too. we only feed once a day unless one receives a personal help from elsewhere. The only person who shows concerns is Reverend pastor Gabriel Anselm, the reverend minister in charge of the missionary, I use his computer to communicate you. And in case you would like to hear my voice you call me with his telephone. The number is +221768858233 if you call tell him that you want to speak with me Stellamaris Tendaji and he will send for me to come and answer your call or you ask him the right time to speak with me because I'm not living with him, I'm living in the female hostel. I shall appreciate your urgent reply indicating your ability and willingness to handle this transaction sincerely. Awaiting your positive response with your Data s. such as

1. Your full names 2. Your contact and and telephone 3. and any information you feel might be good for me to introduce you to the bank

Please do keep this only to your self until the transfer is made to your account for security reason. May God bless you.

Yours Sincerely, Stellamaris Tendaji.

From: stellamaris tendaji <stellamaristendaji21@hotmail.com> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 10:13:10 +0000 Subject: this is the contactaa of the bank in London where my late father deposited his money please contact them.

Hello My Dearest One,

Good day and how are you doing over there i hope all is well with you and again Thanks for your email i am very happy to read from you i have read your email and i understanding as i have gone through a lot of pains. I appreciate your effort towards me, and your interest to assist me. you are a nice and kind person my darling, I love you so much. I am in love with you and darling i have make up my mind to be with you as my life partner. I want to meet you very soon. And i will be so much happy to hear your lovely voice please you can call me here +221768858233 all my wish is to be with you and have a better life with you my sweetheart.

I send and receive e-mails in the office of our Rev Father Gabriel Anselm. He is the pastor here in the refugee camp in Dakar Senegal. He has been so kind to me since i became close to him during one of his visitations to the clinic in the camp when i was sick. you know why i trust you before i made this contact with you i ask God to provide to me a man that will lead me to the right Chanel some one that will not betray me but can you believed that since ever i meet you my mind tell me that you have been giving to me by God. I have mapped out 20% of the total sum for your assistance.

Moreover,my lovely darling i will need your assistance to manage the money on my behalf since am too young to handle such money. Darling in this regards i will like you to contact the bank immediately with this information, telling them that you are my foreign partner and that you want to know the possibilities of assisting me transfer my $5.7 million us dollars deposited by my late father Dr. Martin Tendaji of which i am the next of kin.

The Contact Information Of The Bank Is As Follows: Bank Name: STANDARD BANK PLC. E-MAIL: standardbank.plc72@accountant.com E-MAIL: standardbankplc.72@aol.com OFFICE PHONE NUMBER: +447967818295 THE NAME OF TRANSFER MANAGER IS Mr. Simon Ridley. FOREIGN OPERATIONS & INTERNATIONAL REMITTANCE DEPT.

BELOW IS MY LATE FATHER'S DEPOSIT INFORMATION: Col. Late Dr Martin Tendaji NATIONALITY: Sudan NEXT OF KIN : Miss Stellamaris Tendaji AMOUNT DEPOSITED: (US$5,700,000.00) ACCOUNT NUMBER: GB/IO/4505/27883502-511

Please, contact him now through the above e-mail addresses and ask him about the money, the possibility of making the transfer and the procedures. I want that we conclude the transfer as soon as possible. when the money is transferred to you, you have to send me money for me to get my traveling documents ready so that I can come over there to begin a new life. My love remember to inform me when the bank gives a feed back. Thanks for you understanding and kindness Yours Affectionately

So My love; this is the letter you will send to the bank with there email as soon as you receive this mail ok.

Sir;

I am a foreign partner to Miss Stellamaris Tendaji whose late father Dr Tendaji deposited a sum of $5,700,000.00 (Five Million seven Hundred Thousand US Dollars) in your bank. Please Sir i want to know the procedures and possibility of transferring this money to my account

Thanks.



Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 11:54:08 -0500 From: Standard Bank <standardbankplc.72@aol.com> Cc: stellamaristendaji21@hotmail.com Message-Id: <152410f0052-1cc1-acaf@webprd-a95.mail.aol.com> Subject: TRANSFER DEPARTMENT.



Standard BankStandard Bank Mr. Simon Ridley, The transfer Manager of Standard Bank Plc. 5th Floor Cannon Bridge House 25 Dowgate Hill London EC4R 2SB United Kingdom.

Attention,

Mr,

I have been directed by the director of Foreign Operation/Wire Transfer to write you in respect to your mail which we received. Actually, we have earlier been told about you by a young lady Miss Stellamaris Tendaji residing in refugee camp in Dakar Senegal that she wishes you to be her trustee/representative for the claim of her late father's deposit with your bank.

Her Late father Late Dr Martin Tendaji was our late customer with substantial amount of deposited with us. Hence you have been really appointed as a trustee to represent the next of Kin. However before our bank will transact any business concerning the transfer of the fund with you, we will like you to send the following documents to our bank:

(1). A power of attorney permitting you to claim and transfer the funds to your bank account on her behalf. This document must be endorsed by a Senegalese resident lawyer.

(2). The death certificate of (Her deceased father) confirming the death.

(3). A copy of deposit certificate issued to him by our bank.

(4). An affidavit of oath from the Senegalese high court.

Note that the above are compulsory, and are needed to protect our interest, yours, the next of kin after the claims. These shall also ensure that a smooth, quick and successful transfer of the fund is made. We promise to give our customers the best of our services.

If you have any question(s), please contact our foreign transfer officer Mr. Simon Ridley, on office Email (standardbank.plc72@accountant.com ) for more directives/clarifications.

Yours Faithfully, Mr. Simon Ridley (Customer Service / Accounts Department.) (standardbankplc.72@aol.com ) United Kingdom.

From: stellamaris tendaji <stellamaristendaji21@hotmail.com> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 18:59:36 +0000 i THE POWER OF ATTORNEY AND AFFIDAVIT OF OA Subject: SWEETHEART PLEASE CONTACT THIS LAWYER NOW FORTHE POWER OF ATTORNEY AND AFFIDAVIT OF OA

Hello my Only Loving One,

Sweetheart i really want to believe that all is well with you. Sweetheart i appreciate everything and the way you are handling this transfer of my money to your position waiting my arrival to meet with you to start up a new life of happiness immediately after the transfer. Sweetheart, God will bless and reward you for taking good care of an orphan like me and i will equally pay you back for your kindness and your goodness as well.

Sweetheart, i am very happy that the bank has received the (death and deposit certificates) that i sent to them for clarification, Now i have also given it to the lawyer as well. It is now remaining the Power of Attorney and Affidavit of Oath which the Bank said that the legal documents must be from a Senegalese lawyer since i am presently residing in Senegal, Dakar according to their mail you sent to me.

Darling, this was a big problem at first when i read the Bank mail but i thank God that i have found a lawyer through the help of Rev father Gabriel Anselm, He said it is difficult to help a refugee. However, he said if he has to help us we have to be straight forward to him and we have to meet with his demands.

Sweetheart this is the only problem we have now and you know without this power of attorney and the Affidavit of Oath which the bank said that it will be issued and sign by a Senegalese base lawyer, it will be impossible to complete the transfer since they are ready to execute the fund into your account.

After receiving a mail from you which you got from the bank, I was a bit confused because i did not know any lawyer here beside i am a foreigner so i discussed this issue with the Rev father who gave me the contact of this professional lawyer: Barrister Garrick Nelson)

He said, he is one of the lawyers working with the united nations here in Dakar Senegal. I will want you to contact him on both phone and email tell him that you are my foreign partner that you need his legal services to obtain an affidavit of oath from federal high court of Senegal and as well prepare a (power of attorney) that will enable you transfer my late father's money from the London Bank to your account on my behalf due to my refugee status here and also don't forget to forward him what the bank send to you by email OK so that he will read and understand very well

Here is the lawyer's contact details: Bar (Dr) Garrick Nelson Esq E mail address, (barrgarricknelson@yahoo.com) Office telephone number +221779559912

i have composed this Mail for you to forward it to the Lawyer in cases or you could write on your own just tell him that we need it so urgent,

My name is Mr ........... and am Miss Stellamaris Tendaji foreign partner. i have applied to you requesting for your legal assistance to prepare a power of Attorney and Affidavit of support as we were directed by our Bank to enable the release of money into my Bank account safely. We are having the support of the refugees Camp Reverend Father who directed us to you for this assistance please. Sir help us with those funds transfer documents, Thanks. Mr .........

I will stop here till i hear from you regarding your communication with the lawyer,

With warm regards. your loving sweet heart

Stellamaris.

Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2016 08:16:28 +0000 (UTC) From: garrick nelson <barrgarricknelson@yahoo.com> Subject: THIS IS THE TOTAL COST OF THE DOCUMENTS FROM THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT I AM WAITING FOR THE MONEY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

BARRISTER GARRICK NELSON, PRINCIPAL ATTORNEY, NELSON LAW OFFICE, ADDRESS: 28 KASINA STREET DAKAR-SENEGAL, P.O BOX; MB 561 DAKAR. POSTAL: 4000010, DAKAR SENEGAL, International Airport Rd Dakar - Senegal

ATTENTION .............

I HAVE RECEIVED YOUR INFORMATION, REGARDING YOUR REQUEST FOR THE PREPARATION OF POWER OF ATTORNEY FROM THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT HERE IN DAKAR SENEGAL WHICH WILL ENABLE YOU TO STAND FULLY AS THE TRUSTEE TO YOUR PARTNER TO TRANSFER HER LATE FATHER'S MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT.

IT IS CONFIRMED THAT I WILL BE ABLE TO GET THE NUMBER OF LEGAL DOCUMENTS FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE HERE IN DAKAR SENEGAL. TO OBTAIN THE DOCUMENTS REQUIRED BY THE BANK, THE FOLLOWING BILLS ARE GIVING BY THE ASSURANCE FOR THE DOCUMENTS.

1. SWEARING THE OATH OF AFFIDAVIT= 480 US DOLLARS. 2. STAMPING ON POWER OF ATTORNEY= 460 US DOLLARS. 3. LAW OFFICE SERVING 4.NELSON. LEGAL= 340 US DOLLARS. 4. TOTAL=1,280 US DOLLARS.(ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY US DOLLARS)

YOU ARE TO SEND THE MONEY THROUGH WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER OR MONEY GRAM TRANSFER WITH MY NAME.

RECEIVER NAME: GARRICK NELSON, AMOUNT : 1,280 US DOLLARS ADDRESS: 28 KASINA STREET, DAKAR-SENEGAL, P.O BOX; MB 561 DAKAR. POSTAL: 4000010, DAKAR SENEGAL,

MAKE SURE YOU INFORM ME IMMEDIATELY YOU SEND THE MONEY AND ALSO FORWARD ALL THE PAYMENT INFORMATION'S TO ENABLE ME TO GET THE MONEY FROM THE BANK SO THAT I WILL START THE PROCESSING OF THE DOCUMENTS WHICH WILL BE READY IN THE NEXT TWO WORKING DAYS.

THE ABOVE DEMANDED PERSONAL INFORMATION WILL APPEAR ON THE DOCUMENT POWER OF ATTORNEY WHICH WILL BE PREPARED WITH YOUR NAME.

YOURS IN SERVICE, BARRISTER. GARRICK NELSON. DAKAR SENEGAL, TELEPHONE: +221779559912

Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2016 13:41:38 +0000 (UTC) From: garrick nelson <barrgarricknelson@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: ATTENTION

MR HERE IS THE ACCOUNT INFORMATION WHICH YOU WILL USE TO PAY THE MONEY AS SOON AS YOU TRANSFER THE MONEY SCAN THE PAYMENT SLIP AND SEND IT TO ME

1. BANK NAME.... BOA SENEGAL GROUP 2. ACCOUNT NAME.... CONTEH ERNEST 3. ACCOUNT NUMBER....03632240009 4. SWIFT CODE.... AFRISNDAXXX 5. BANK CODE..... SN100 6. CODE GUICHET.....01010 7. CLE RIB....30 8. IBAN....SN08 SN10 0010 1000 3632 2400 0930 From: stellamaris tendaji <stellamaristendaji21@hotmail.com> Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:13:19 +0000 Subject: GOOD NEWS FROM STELLAMARIS,

Hello My Dear.

I am very happy to inform you about my success in getting the fund transferred under the co-operation of a new partner from London, Presently I am in London for investment projects with my own share of the total sum Meanwhile, I didn't forget your past efforts and attempts to assist me in transferring the funds despite that it failed us some how.Now you will need to contact the Rev Father whom used to be a Good-father to me when i was in Dakar, his name is Rev Father Gabriel Anselm and his email address is as follows:(FatherGabrielAnselm@outlook.com ) phone number +221774115548 Ask him to send you a certified bank draft of $150.000.00 which I prepared and kept for your compensation for all the past efforts and attempts to assist me in this matter.

I appreciated your efforts at that time very much. so feel free and get in touched with Rev Gabriel and instruct him where to send you the draft cheque, Please do let me know immediately you receive it so that we can share our joy and happiness after all the sufferings at that time, In the moment, I am very busy here because of the investment projects which me and the new partner are having at hand, finally, remember that I had forwarded instruction to Rev Gabriel on your behalf to receive that money. Therefore feel free to get in touch with him and he will send the cheque to you without delay. Take care and bye for now.

Yours Truly, Mrs Stellamaris If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more....
An HR manager from a local law firm has been jailed for three years after stealing approximately NZ$400,000 over a period of nine years.



Facing charges on Wednesday (27 January), Charmaine Herron said she stole the money to save [her] family.



Prior to the hearing, she said she stole from the firm  which is currently under name suppression to preserve its reputation  after being inundated with debt after a marriage breakup.



I'm really sorry that I betrayed everyone, she said. I hated every minute of it, but it was a means to an end.



However, Judge Alistair Garland told the court that Herrons crimes were premeditated and sparked by greed not need.



Your motivation appears to have been lifestyle choices, he said.



While in her HR role, Herron falsified 148 payroll entries over nine years  paying NZ$400,969 into her account.



She resigned in 2015 after coming under investigation for fraud.



As well as cooperating with authorities once the offenses were uncovered, Herron also sold her house to pay back around NZ$170,000 of what was stolen.



Herrons defence counsel, Glenn Dixon, sought final suppression of her name on the grounds of extreme hardship. The Crown opposed the application however.



If I was to suppress your name  then future employers would be unlikely to know of your dishonesty unless of course you disclosed it, Judge Garland said.



In addition to the jail term, Herron was ordered to pay NZ$50,000 towards the remaining reparation on gaining employment after her release. Any position taken would be one where she wasnt handling money, Judge Garland noted.
Young Australians are among the least confident around the world of their technical skills and job prospects, according to a new report by Infosys.



The survey involved 9,000 people aged 16 to 25 from Australia, China, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Africa, and Brazil, with the goal of identifying their employment, skills, and education concerns.



The results found that 50% of young Australians are convinced that their education did not prepare them for what they expect from working life.



The report, Amplifying Human Potential: Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, also found that two-thirds of respondents said that technology had helped democratise educational opportunities for them, and that learning skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields are a crucial part of the education process.



However, young Australians were the least confident of the countries surveyed regarding technical skills and job prospects.



In fact, less than a fifth had a desire to develop data skills, build mobile apps or learn how to code.



Further, only 3.41% said they wished to work for a startup, as opposed to a larger company.



Forty per-cent of respondents said that they believed their current job could be replaced by some form of automation within a decade.



Indeed, a recent report by the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has predicted that up to 40% of jobs have a moderate to high likelihood of disappearing in the next 10 to 15 years as a result of technological advancement.



The HR service providers Davidson also recently found that less than 50% of Australian respondents said that their own set of skills prepared them for the world of work.
Hi experts,



I need help and would appreciate any information that you can provide.



Firstly, I'm planning to submit RPL for my 12 years of Business Analyst experience since my mechanical engineering 4 year degree will be "insufficient ICT content". I also have an MBA for 2 years that also has insufficient ICT. Is it even required that I show my MBA or can I just ignore that degree altogether? I know ACS is anyway going to deduct 6 years from my experience irrespective of showing my MBA or not. But if I show, there is a risk that they might start counting my experience only post MBA, so I want to eliminate that risk by totally ignoring my MBA degree. Is this alright?



Secondly, My plan is that I go to Australia in 457 employer VISA. In parallel, I get skills assessment and then request employer to sponsor 186 nomination. Is 186 employer nomination also points based and would I require 60 or 65 points to get an invitation? Or is it totally exempted from points and that PR is guaranteed under 186?



(PS: I have 60 points)
The 2.0-litre EA288 diesel engine is a motor used in a wide range of Volkswagen Group cars; localisation will drive costs down.

Volkswagen India has revealed that it has plans to localise the new-generation 2.0-litre diesel engine later this year in order to reduce costs. The EA288 engine will be the second powertrain to be localised by the German carmaker after it started assembling the 1.5-litre diesel motor last year at its facility in Chakan, Pune.

We are continuing with strong localisation which you can see in our compact sedan and we will be localising the new EA288 (2.0-litre diesel) engine this year. This is a very modern engine which powers a wide range of our cars so its very logical that we are doing this, Andreas Lauermann, president and managing director, Volkswagen India told Autocar India in an exclusive interview.

The company feels that the collective sales volume will grow to justify localisation of the 2.0-litre diesel engine, which powers a wide range of Volkswagen Group vehicles. The engine has been designed for the modular transverse matrix or MQB platform architecture of the Volkswagen Group and will power a wide range of future models built on the platform.

The current models powered by the 2.0-litre EA288 engine in India are the Audi A3 sedan and the Skoda Octavia. Future models will include the new Skoda Superb, next-gen Skoda SUVs, the Audi Q2, the new Audi A6, the 2016 A4 (which will be showcased at the upcoming 2016 Auto Expo), and the new Volkswagen Passat.

Besides, the 2.0-litre EA288 diesel engine is well placed to meet BS-VI (equivalent to Euro VI) norms which are likely to be brought forward to 2020.

Auto manufacturers may have to produce engines that comply with BS-VI emissions standards by April 1, 2020, after the government recently announced plans to skip BS-V in an attempt to curb vehicle pollution in India.
Krypton was one of the most amazing vehicles shown during the 2015 SEMA Show. A company called Fab Fours from South Carolina put together a demonstration vehicle based on the heavy duty F-350 truck.This is a mean mother trucker. Since the company usually designs custom front ends, that's what you'll notice first. Colored bright green, the grille and bumper of the Ford forms a single piece that looks like it will sap you of your super-strength in no time at all.The combination of a bright green visor and wheel flares will put you in the mood to do some hooning. Thankfully, the truck is built to cope with everything you can throw at it.The biggest thing we wanted to do with this truck was put these 40-inch tires on the factory suspension, said Tim McDonald. Usually, you need a 6-inch lift just to fit 35s, but we were able to do it on the stock suspension here. We actually towed the other vehicles we have here in the booth out here with this truck, so it definitely works.Are you worried that the Ford won't even be able to move with those big tires? Don't be, because if it can burn rubber, it can pretty much do everything else, probably even tow a whale or two.The rear rack, steps, and rear bumper are all products Fab Fours currently offers. Whether or not you want to buy them because of somebody doing donuts in the truck is up for debate. However, the prototype front grille+bumper combo is something every Ford guy will want to buy.Fab Fours is a company that's keen to get all the attention it can. Not only are they doing mother trucking donuts but they also fitted a Jeep Wrangler with a mohawk for SEMA.
Apparently, the original patent has been part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Program since 2011, along with other important historical documents such as the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible and even Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B Minor.What looks like a simple yet old piece of paper stands as proof that, instead of waiting around for technology to evolve around him back in 1886, Car Benz was busy inventing the predecessor of the modern car.In fact, the three-wheeler mentioned in the patent had been developed in 1885, but its first public appearance took place on July 3, 1886, in front of a crowd of mesmerized onlookers in Mannheim. Two years later, the Model III version of the patent car made the first ever long-distance journey for a self-powered vehicle.Interestingly enough, it was Bertha Benz, Carl's wife, and their two children who drove the funky looking three-wheeler from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back, thus demonstrating the car's long-distance reliability.Independently from Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler built the first carriage powered by an internal combustion engine in 1886. Little did the two German engineers know that in a few decades (1926, ed), their two companies would merge and create the Mercedes-Benz brand that lives to this day.The original patent car was powered by a four-stroke engine with a single cylinder. Thanks to a displacement of 954 cc, the powerplant had an output of 0.75 horsepower at a comically low 400 rpm. The vehicle's top speed was around 16 km/h (10 mph), but it was enough to demonstrate that a self-propelled vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine could not only work, but preview over a hundred years of transportation on land. The next century will probably be electric, but that's a story for another time. Until then, we can only wish the Patent Motorwagen a sincere "Happy Birthday!."
Bad start in 2016 for Team Marc VDS as their main rider, Australian Jack Miller, will not be clear to participate in the first official test of the year at Sepang in Malaysia. Around ten days ago we informed you that Miller, 21, broke his right tibia and fibula in an incident that occurred during a motocross training session.

5 photos
As for the title above, what's there not to love about a wife or girlfriend who adores a Boxster? The understated nature of any Zuffenhausen machine has always made us tip our helmets to those who choose them over the screaming nature of a Lamborghini or a Ferrari.Sure, this clip describes the ideal situation where you and your SO make full use of the Boxster's newly-found low-end torque. As life has taught us, reality doesn't happen to fit such sunshine-related portraits too often, so what do you do when you need a more complete approach?Well, one solution would be to develop an even better relationship to your financial adviser and buy a 911, so that the little ones can also enjoy the Porsche spirit.Let's face it - by the time you end up affording one of these German instruments of precision, your family probably includes more than two people. And that's what the Neunelfer's rear seats are here for.Returning to the Boxster, the four-cylinder turbo revolution brought by the more-than-a-facelift 718-ization process means we'll have to reinvent the way in which we look at the mid-engined sportscar.And while we still have to wait in order to get behind the wheel and give you our driving opinions, we wouldn't bet on anything but a positive feel. Why? Because we hate losing bets.Until the driving part can happen, we'll meet the 718 Boxster in the metal at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show in March, where it may or may not be accompanied by the yet-unrevealed 718 Cayman.
The worlds number 1 carmaker already owns a majority stake of 51.2% in Daihatsu and has announced an agreement to acquire all the other 48.8% of Daihatsu shares in the coming months. The Japanese brands have not released the price for their transaction, but the cost is estimated at around $3 billion.The buyout is going to benefit both companies, as Daihatsu will become part of Toyotas small car strategy. The brand will be focused on fuel efficiency and lowering costs for the users.The two entities will work together in emerging markets, especially in those where Daihatsu has a strong presence and brand image. Toyota will get the chance to focus more on safety, protecting the environment, improving comfort and user experience.Since Daihatsu will be focused on reducing costs, its models will probably feature Toyota technology at a lower cost. The decision to acquire the entire Daihatsu shares package allows Toyota to strengthen its position as the worlds largest carmaker by improving its presence in emerging markets.With a fresh infusion of Toyota parts, Daihatsu cars may become even more attractive to customers in emerging markets. In some countries, it is more important for the client to be able to afford a new car than the features that particular vehicle is fitted with.In India, for example, the Tata Nano was supposed to stop families from traveling on motorcycles and scooters with sidecars and make the transition to a car.While Toyota and Daihatsu havent explicitly expressed their desire to put every potential customer in one of their cars in the coming future, they have specified their expectations for a new period of growth.Masanori Mitsui, Daihatsu President, sees the acquisition of the company he leads as an opportunity to cement their relationship with Toyota, and to elevate the Daihatsu brand to a global standard.Poor sales made the Japanese brand retire from the European market, while the US market didnt prove successful for Daihatsu either.
AMG

However, selling premium motorcycles for big bucks is not always the best way to obtain a sustained growth, and it's been more than once when such companies ran into trouble. The luckiest and strongest of them endured, but others didn't.Obviously, the first example of the latter category is Erik Buell Racing , a manufacturer of cool bikes, altogether, but which has not made it, regardless of how much the customers esteemed their bikes.Unlike other historic makers, MV Agusta's early motorcycle days were in 1945, which makes it a rather young brand, at least in comparison with others. Still, Meccanica Verghera Agusta managed to stay afloat even in the darkest of times.After changing hands a lot and finding a steady path of development under the Castiglioni family ownership, the most recent step up represented selling a 25% minority to Mercedes/Daimler/Even before this took place, MV Agusta had plans to expand their line-up, and their determination most likely helped convince Mercedes to fork out the money. With more models available, the Italians were able to meet the needs of more customers, and this reflected in the 30 percent growth in 2015 Still being a hefty percentage short from the estimations for the last year, with over 9,000 units sold from a total of 12,000, MV Agusta is charging ahead. At least six new MV Agusta models are expected to surface in 2016, and this only adds more weight to a wild guess: what about smaller-displacement bikes?If anything, this entire piece is a wild supposition. If you wish, it is a speculative exploration of the future, but based on observing what happens with other manufacturers.Naturally, it's about Ducati, BMW, and the biggest European brand, KTM. MV Agusta cannot even dream of rivaling these three in terms of unit sales, especially considering that even Ducati went past the 54,000 bikes sold last year.However, MV Agusta has a lot to learn from these three makers, and maybe something good could come out of this. Even though a 400cc MV Agusta may sound a bit crazy now for people who are waiting for the new F4, it may appear as a godsend to the new or returning rider.Be it an F or a small Brutale, the bike or, why not - bikes - would most likely look flawless, retaining the design cues of the bigger machines and the iconic graphics. Even more, MV Agusta could use the bigger machines as inspiration for creating the design of the smaller one, just like BMW injected S1000R DNA in their G310R and are about to reap the rewards.I am tempted to use the "fact is" introduction, but I remembered we're in "maybe" territory. Anyway, if BMW and Ducati made it stick, the same could work for MV Agusta. I am positive that Schiranna's legendary heritage won't suffer from such a move.Instead, in case the small-displacement bikes become real and help moving the company further, they will add to the prestige of this historic manufacturer, proving that the brand is not stuck in a conservative past that ignores anything that's not WSBK-grade material.And because MV Agusta also mentioned something about MotoGP in the future, having youngsters aboard Schiranna machinery would also be a smart move.I put KTM on the list because the Austrian maker seems to be the trendsetter in this segment. KTM's presence in the huge Indian market and in other emerging economies mandates manufacturing more affordable bikes which retain the overall character of any Mattighofen machine.It's no secret that KTM sells immense amounts of such bikes worldwide, including Europe, and they add a significant chunk to the final revenue and profit figures. KTM CEO Stefan Pierer once declared that the big plan was to make so many different bikes that finding an excuse not to buy one would become hard.BMW Motorrad and Ducati understood that manufacturing smaller motorcycles that can be sold for more affordable prices will allow entry in markets that were, at that time, insignificant for them.It's easy to engineer and manufacture a bike that people would fall in love with, but convincing them to buy it is a different thing, altogether. And when it comes to economies that are not as rich as those in Western Europe, the difference between a 13,000 bike and a 5,000 (or cheaper) one is much bigger than simple arithmetics.BMW made the boldest step and, for the first time in the 9-decade history of Motorrad, a small-displacement machine was conceived. The BMW G310R is a 313cc motorcycle, a thing that was probably impossible to conceive five years ago.The Germans teamed up with TVS, like KTM did with Bajaj, and are getting ready to sell large volumes around the world, which I believe they will, too. The G310R will also serve as a platform for more bikes, and machines derived from it will arrive, too. So don't be surprised if you hear about bikes such as G310RR or G310GS...On the other hand, Ducati, under the Audi umbrella, opted for keeping everything in their yard. Their small-displacement Scrambler builds on a platform used earlier in a Monster motorcycle and is set to become as successful as the new 803cc Scrambler.When Borgo Panigale thought to deliver a more accessible bike that would appeal to other people than those interested in high-performance superbikes, little did they know that the Scrambler was a hidden treasure.The bike quickly climbed at the top of the sales charts and became the best-selling motorcycle in Italy, driving Ducati's sales to record figures. Almost one in three Ducati sold worldwide is a Scrambler and the almost magical allure of the Scrambler will perhaps be bestowed upon its smaller sibling.Having the famous Ducati heritage and blazon available at an affordable price is a good recipe for making people pay, and I am looking forward to seeing how the 399cc Scrambler Sixty2 will fare after hitting the market.Of course, the marketing specialists and their estimations play the lead role in making a call regarding small-displacement machines, but this segment simply has a ton of money that's waiting to be dug out.
At a press conference in February 2015, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Mark Rosekind, National Highway Traffic Safety administrator, joined elected officials, board members of the American Car Rental Association and consumer safety advocates to call on Congress to pass the Safe Rental Car Act.

The Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act was included in the Fixing Americas Surface Transportation (FAST) Act  commonly referred to as the Transportation Bill  that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 4.

The Safe Rental Car Act makes it a violation of federal law, enforceable by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), for car rental companies with fleets of 35 or more rental vehicles to rent, loan or sell cars under open recall.

The current bill was introduced in May 2015 by a bipartisan group of House and Senate legislators, earning support of Republican and Democratic legislators on both sides of Capitol Hill during debate over the federal highway program reauthorization.

The law culminates a three-year effort on the part of the American Car Rental Association (ACRA), safety groups and legislators to pass recall legislation.

Customer safety is a critical part of our overall commitment to our customers and the general public, said Joe Knight, president of ACRA and executive vice president of Fox Rent-A-Car Inc. And because rental vehicles travel freely across state lines in interstate commerce, ACRA has always strongly supported one federal rental vehicle safety recall standard rather than a patchwork of potentially conflicting state laws.

Provisions

The bill defines a rental vehicle as a motor vehicle that has a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less; rented without a driver for an initial term of less than four months; and is part of a motor vehicle fleet of 35 or more motor vehicles that are used for rental purposes by a rental company.

Once the manufacturer provides a rental company notification about a covered rental vehicle in the companys possession, a rental company needs to comply with the limitations on sale, lease or rental as soon as practicable  but not later than 24 hours after the earliest receipt of the notice.

If a rental company receives a recall notice covering more than 5,000 vehicles in its fleet, the rental company needs to comply with the limitations on sale, lease or rental as soon as practicable  but not later than 48 hours after the earliest receipt of the notice.

Williams Amendment

The version of the recall bill approved by the House of Representatives in November included an amendment that would have exempted auto dealers who rent or loan vehicles to customers.

The Williams Amendment, proposed by Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), would have clarified that only car rental companies whose primary business is renting vehicles are subject to the bills restrictions of grounding vehicles under recall.

The National Independent Automobile Dealers Association (NIADA) and the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) supported the amendment. ACRA opposed the amendment, along with Republican and Democratic legislators in the Senate, and it was dropped from the final bill.

Concerns Remain

While ACRA supported the legislation, some independent car rental companies were opposed to it and have concerns regarding compliance under the new law.

I could own cars that get recalls that cannot and will not be resolved for a year or more, says Tom Prunty of Alaska Car and Van Rentals, whose fleet is utilized more than 90% in the summer. My assets are tied up and depreciating and probably paying interest on money used to buy them. Anyone who has a majority of cars in one of these recall lists could be in big trouble.

Matt Pendergast, a Rent-A-Wreck franchise owner in San Francisco, voluntarily grounded Ford Mustang convertibles under the Takata recall from his fleet during the 2015 summer high season, though the new airbag inflators had not been available for months. The recall has been stressful and difficult for us, Pendergast told Auto Rental News. As a small business, we dont have the purchasing power to go out and replace the convertibles.

If the automakers dont have the part and its going to affect a large portion of your fleet, you are stuck, Pendergast said. You have to take reservations assuming that the vehicles you own will be available for customers. But what happens if there is a law that suddenly says that they arent available to rent anymore?
Its often said that to know where you are going, its important to know where youve been.

This statement cannot be truer for the car rental industry than when discussing the recent federal legislation regarding safety recalls on our vehicles. The measure, which passed as part of the multi-year highway funding bill, takes effect in June of this year.

The highway bill was signed by President Obama on Dec. 4, but the specific recall provision takes effect 180 days after being signed into law.

While this particular legislative issue has received much discussion and print space over the last several years, many of you may not appreciate its history and, therefore, how this federal legislation came to be  and the critical role ACRA has played in that history.

Where have we been? In 2011, a bill was introduced in the California legislature that would have, among other things, required rental car companies to ground any vehicle in its active rental fleet. In addition, the bill would have prohibited the sale of any rental car that had an unrepaired safety recall.

Because this legislation was drafted and submitted without any input from the rental car industry, it was fraught with multiple issues that would have negatively impacted industry operations. Therefore, the industry opposed the bill.

Despite our unified fight against it, the bill passed the California State Assembly and went to the California State Senate. While the bill was in the California Senate, the rental car industry started suggesting changes to the bill to accommodate the operational concerns. The industry and ACRA were making some progress in that regard.



Around this time, some ACRA members suggested that if the industry were to ultimately support legislation governing our practices, it should be at the federal level because the safety recall program is overseen by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Additionally, we are an industry engaged in interstate commerce: rental vehicles are regularly rented in one state and travel through one or several other states. Interstate commerce falls under the purview of Congress, not individual states. But there was no consensus on a federal strategy among ACRA member companies.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into our industry to determine if renting a vehicle with an unrepaired safety recall constitutes a deceptive trade practice. As a result, Schumer  along with Sen. Barbara Boxer and several other senators  introduced federal legislation that in many ways mirrored the California bill, but it went further.

Soon, other states such as New York and New Jersey began considering legislation. Could this turn into a patchwork of laws in 50 states? That wouldnt have been a desirable outcome for the industry.

All of this dramatically upped the stakes and the rental industry had a decision to make: continue to fight  and potentially lose  the political and public relations battles or engage in constructive dialogue with Sens. Schumer and Boxer (and consumer groups) to see if a workable solution for the industry was attainable. A federal solution would solve the potential 50-state problem.

During this process through dialogue with consumer and safety groups, it became clear that our customers didnt want to rent cars under open recalls.

ACRA and the industry decided to take the opportunity to set ourselves apart and begin blazing a new trail in auto safety legislation. We chose to do the right thing and craft federal legislation that the industry could rally behind. A compromise was ultimately reached, and the subsequent passage of the Safe Rental Car Act was the right thing to do.

ACRA firmly believes that  to borrow a phrase from Chris Brown in his Dec. 27 Auto Focus blog The Wrong Side of History  we will be on the right side of history.

Along the way, ACRA and its member companies proved that we can work well with legislators with whom we may disagree at first. And we can work well with consumer groups to find common ground. As ACRA addresses public policy issues in the future, we will have this history to help guide us.
Las Vegas skyline. iStockphoto.com/Sky_Sajjaphot

If you happen to be flying into Las Vegas at night, take a moment to admire the 30,000-foot view  the city resembles a patchwork of sequins stretched over the desert floor. The moment feels rich with possibility. (Leaving Las Vegas might be a different story, especially if you gamble.)

If youre flying in for the 2016 International Car Rental Show, be prepared for a 30,000-foot view of the auto rental industry. The industrys annual event is also rich with possibilities, because youve made the commitment to take a few days away from the daily grind to think big picture and return home with ways to take your business to the next level.

Presented in conjunction with the American Car Rental Association (ACRA), the 21st annual International Car Rental Show (ICRS) convenes April 17-19, 2016 at Ballys Las Vegas. The only event designed for the auto rental industry worldwide, the 2016 ICRS will draw more than 800 attendees from some 30 countries.

This years highlights include general addresses covering the recently passed recall legislation, national security, global franchising and the connected car. The shows concurrent seminars will give answers to those operational challenges.

Coming Together

The ICRS has become the forum to analyze, discuss and gain consensus on the major issues facing the car rental industry today, and this year is no exception.

In addition to two full days of keynote addresses, seminars and educational programming, ICRS features 12 hours of networking events and an exhibit hall with close to 100 exhibitors. Photo by Jann Hendry.

With passage of the recall legislation as part of the 2015 transportation bill, the task now lies with car rental operators to understand the law and comply with it. ACRAs general session will cover the main tenets of the legislation and its path to law, while a separate seminar will be devoted to defining the law and its exemptions as well as presenting solutions to customer service and operational challenges.

Last years terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., was carried out with the aid of a rental car. The ACRA seminar will also host a representative from the Department of Homeland Security who will address ways car rental associates can educate themselves on suspicious activity and how to report it.

The connected car is past the concept stage, as government-regulated requirements will take effect starting with model-year 2020. Car rental companies  the largest purchasers of new vehicles in the country  will be at the forefront of this adoption. A presentation by the U.S. Department of Transportation will inform attendees on the promise of the connected car, its new technology implementation, changes to infrastructure and what it will mean for the car rental industry.

Since launching its globalization initiative in 2012, Enterprise Holdings has expanded to more than 75 countries worldwide through franchising, acquisition and investment. Peter Smith, vice president of global franchising for Enterprise Holdings, will discuss the companys ongoing expansion and how its network is being transformed into one unified global system.

Solving Challenges

ICRS attendees come to Las Vegas with questions on issues specific to their day-to-day businesses. The events concurrent seminars are designed to provide answers.

Did you know that under the Graves Amendment you are legally entitled to subrogate from a renter who caused that liability? David Purinton of PurCo will present an advanced seminar to explain those rights under the law and how to execute this subrogation opportunity.

Peter Smith, vice president of global franchising for Enterprise Holdings, will discuss the company's ongoing expansion through franchising and other initiatives and how its network is being transformed into one unified global system.

Are you selling cars online yet? A hands-on presentation will delve into how to use the main online auction sites: SmartAuction, Adesas OpenLane and Manheims OVE.com. Youll understand how and where to post data, when to adjust prices and which types of auctions to use to produce the greatest results.

Could leasing fit into your fleet plan? Representatives from leasing companies will join rental operators for a panel discussion on optimal case scenarios for leasing, lease types and terms, vehicle mix and seasonality considerations, as well as used car leasing.

Have you reviewed your franchise agreement lately? Join the seminar that will analyze the recent developments in franchising from a legal and regulatory perspective. The discussion will cover more than just the car rental industry, not only in the U.S. but also abroad.

Are you ready to grow your corporate business? This seminar will impart strategies to increase outside sales, compete with the majors, train and motivate your sales force and more.

Do you need help attracting and motivating the millennial workforce? Car rental millennial Tyler Koch will provide detailed insight into the mind of the millennial employee and outline 10 keys to their recruitment, retention and motivation for success.

You may have the next big idea, but is your company ready to handle the growth? Mike Kane of VRCG will present examples of how small companies with big ideas changed the landscape. Hell then lay out a blueprint to poise your company for growth  from implementing the right fleet acquisition and human resources plans to how to define your culture and your exit strategy.

Have you ever pondered why anyone should rent from your company specifically? You will be able to better answer this question by improving your storytelling and authority skills. The team from Frontline Performance Group will present a notebooks open creative writing and messaging workshop designed to help you define your companys narrative and capture the hearts and minds of your audience.

Are your fleet costs getting away from you? A panel of fleet experts will break down proven cost management strategies, from forecasting demand and timing acquisitions and disposals to fine-tuning fleet mix and tracking, maintaining and remarketing fleet more effectively.

Whats right  and whats wrong  with car rental? Come join our spirited presidential debate, where the always-engaging, always-opinionated Sharky Laguana, founder of Bandago, will go toe-to-toe with Noah Lehmann-Haupt, founder of Gotham Dream Cars, on the big issues facing the car rental industry today.

Programming for Groups

Over the past few years, ICRS has presented seminar blocks to address the issues facing specific business groups that are defined by region, country or business type.

The 2016 International Car Rental Show (ICRS) will welcome some 800 attendees from more than 30 countries.Photo by Jann Hendry.

The America Latina Reunion Especial, or Latin American meeting, returns for 2016. Presented in Spanish, Portuguese and English, this seminar block represents an exclusive learning opportunity for car rental operators serving Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

This year, the Latin American meeting will take place on Monday April 18, concurrent with other non-competing programming. This will alleviate the need for Latin American operators to extend their stay an extra day, as had been the schedule in past years.

ICRS will once again offer the Rental Car Professional (RCP) certification program on Sunday afternoon. Developed by the Center for International Retail Automotive Standards (CIRAS) and presented by consultant Jim Schalberg, graduates of the program will be recognized at the awards ceremony on Tuesday.

ICRS draws large groups from countries such as China, Korea and Brazil. Similar to past shows, those groups can expect programming designed for them, including off-site visits.

Following its inauguration last year, the Dealer Day programming returns on Tuesday April 19 with seminars designed specifically for auto dealers looking to improve their rental and loaner operations. This year, special emphasis will be given to legal issues regarding dealer fleets, specifically the new recall laws.

Old Friends

For many car rental operators and vendors to the industry, ICRS is a time to meet old friends and form new acquaintances. The event offers numerous networking activities, starting with our Welcome Reception on Sunday evening, April 17.

On Monday, the networking kicks off early with the International Meet and Greet at 8 a.m., directly followed by the First Timers Orientation, which includes a speed networking event.
Fox Rent A Car affiliate Mex Rent-A-Car was the first car rental company to take reservations at the new facility. Photo courtesy of Mex Rent-A-Car.

Fox Rent A Car is now taking reservations through its affiliate partner, Mex Rent-A-Car, at the new Cross Border Xpress (CBX) terminal at the U.S./Mexico border.

Located in San Diegos Otay Mesa neighborhood, CBX features an enclosed pedestrian bridge straddling the border of the U.S. and Mexico. The facility is reserved exclusively for Tijuana Airport passengers to cross the border into the U.S. or Mexico.

Mex Rent-A-Car was the first car rental operator to take reservations when the facility opened on Dec. 9. Fox, through Mex Rent-A-Car, began taking reservations shortly before the new year. Avis, Dollar and Hertz are also expected to begin providing rental car services to CBX passengers in the next few months.

Each car rental company is given about 40 parking spaces. In addition to the rental counters, the terminal offers food and beverage and shopping options, as well as access to buses, shuttles, taxis and Uber.

We are excited to add another Fox affiliate location in the U.S. and to be part of this unique venue, said Jack Wetzel, director of Fox Affiliate Divisions. Wetzel added that the CBX facility represents Foxs 87th affiliate location and its first non-airport specific location.

New Border Crossing

The 390-foot-long skywalk is the first to connect a facility in the U.S. directly into a foreign airport terminal, according to CBX press materials. The newly opened Cross Border Xpress (CBX) terminal expedites passengers to and from Mexico in a unique border crossing system connected to the Tijuana Airport. Photo courtesy of CBX.

Tijuana Airport customers traveling to the U.S. will go through U.S. Customs at the CBX facility and through Mexican Customs if traveling into Mexico. Before the facility was built, airport customers would first have to cross the border at the Otay Mesa border crossing, a 15-minute drive from the airport. Waits at this border crossing sometimes take up to several hours.

Using CBX is only about a 15- to 20-minute wait to get through customs and cross the border, said Jordi Rivero, chief product officer at Mex Rent-A-Car.

The CBX project was created to make the cross border between two countries more comfortable, fast and secure, said Rivero. For car rental, we are confident that its a great opportunity to approach a new market. Most of them will be crossing from Mexico to the U.S. and will be Spanish speakers. By being a Mexican company with experience in car rental, we know how those customers want to be treated.

CBX was built by private developer Otay-Tijuana Ventures in cooperation with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. The facility is expected to serve the more than 2 million annual Tijuana passengers who cross the border, a CBX press release said.

Tijuana International Airport serves 34 Mexican destinations as well as Shanghai. Aeromexico is packaging flights with CBX tickets on its website. The crossing costs $18 each way.

CBX will transform the border crossing experience for millions of travelers, said Carlos Laviada, an investor in the project.
Millennial staff members at Midway Car Rental's West Los Angeles location. Photo by Chris Brown.

As a millennial, Jenn Romanowski brought her expertise in technology to the office when working at a Dollar franchise in New Jersey.

Technology is very natural to us millennials since we grew up with it, says Romanowski, who worked her way up to chief financial officer before switching careers.

Using her technology skills, Romanowski worked with Bluebird Auto Rental Systems to create paperless contracts. Implementing e-signature pads at the rental counter meant documents could be emailed to customers. I was able to use technology to create a quicker and better process.

At 25 years old, Cindy Alonso has worked her way up to director of hotel sales at Los Angeles-based Midway Car Rental. When she was 18, Alonso started at Midway working part-time in the reservations department. From there, she became a customer service representative and was promoted to an assistant branch manager within two years.



Management is such a tough and thin line to tread, especially only being 25 and having the opportunity to manage other millennials, says Alonso. Im lucky enough to be able to wear many hats within the company, and the best part is that Im always encouraged to learn the next thing and to accomplish more.

These are two examples of millennials who have worked their way up in the car rental industry. Read on for more experiences from other rental car professionals, as well as tips for working with other generations and how to encourage and motivate younger workers.

Rising to the Challenge

Ranging from ages 18 to 34, the millennial generation includes recent college graduates as well as experienced workers looking for a new field. Millennials can be described as enjoying competition, asking questions, seeking out new challenges and being tech savvy.

Once you have hired millennials, how do you motivate them on a regular basis?

Previous generations were motivated by status and a defined movement from point A to point B and what it takes to get there, says Tyler Koch, director of human resources at Dale Holdings Inc., the parent company of Bay Area Auto and Truck Rental. The millennial generation is more motivated by what challenges and variability you can introduce into their daily activities. The worst thing you can do to a millennial is give them a routine; it will disengage them faster than anything else.

A millennial employee isnt intimidated by change; they embrace it, adds Koch.

Tom Sammut enjoys the challenge of new tasks. As a millennial, he knows that the millennial generation can become bored easily if given the same duties day after day.

I believe allowing a millennial the opportunity to learn a new task, work with a new person or change daily duties can provide healthy mental stimulus, says Sammut, assistant fleet location manager at Bandago Van Rentals Los Angeles location.

Elizabeth Alonso, a regional manager at Midway Car Rental, motivates her millennial employees with weekly competitions and provides consistent feedback. She was the winner of Auto Rental News' 2012 Professional of the Year Award. Photo by Chris Brown.

For Romanowski, incentives such as monthly performance rewards provide peer motivation. A performance reward could be as simple as a gift card from Amazon. Recognition for your hard work helps improve motivation, she says.

To motivate her millennial employees, Elizabeth Alonso, regional manager at Midway Car Rental, questions them and challenges them with goals. Millennials like to compete to be number one, says Alonso, a millennial herself. We have weekly competitions based on performance between several of the offices.

Last month, Midway had a challenge between offices to see who could get the most upsells during the month. Mustafa Nessari, a millennial assistant manager at Midway, challenged his team to see who could reach an ancillary sales objective on a random day. He took the best performing employee out to lunch.

Once employees are challenged to a competition, the reward needs to be something they like. Elizabeth Alonso listens to her employees requests for prizes. Rewards have included happy hour events and renting out a suite at a local sporting event. It wont be motivating if millennials dont like the prize.

Consistent Feedback

Providing feedback  both positive and corrective  is another way to facilitate motivation among millennials. From Elizabeth Alonsos experience, millennials improve their performance if acknowledged for what they do.

Consistent feedback is essential to improving any aspect of an employee, says Nessari. I think without positive feedback and constructive criticism, no one would operate at their full potential.

Elizabeth Alonso also emphasizes the importance of listening to millennials. As a manager, ask how you can help them.

When millennials approach leadership with an idea, suggestion or question, sometimes all theyre looking for is a sign that their thoughts are valued, says Koch. This comes from active listening.

Millennials Sound Off Where Millennials Look for Jobs  "I used Monster and Craigslist when looking for jobs after college.  Jenn Romanowski, former CFO at Dollar franchise in New Jersey  I used Craigslist. I went to the jobs section and searched using the keyword cars.  Mustafa Nessari, Midway Car Rental  I was active on Facebook, Craigslist and my colleges job website looking for a day job.  Tom Sammut, Bandago Van Rentals  I used online resources like Indeed. I found Indeed to be really helpful because it was always updating its website.  Erin Iwahashi, Midway

Strengths Millennials Bring to the Workplace  Versatility and communication skills.  Tom Sammut  New ideas. Millennials develop new ideas on how to use social media and how to grow the business.  Elizabeth Alonso, Midway Car Rental  Im hard working and a pretty good multi-tasker.  Erin Iwahashi  Technology: the ability to work on a Mac and PC computer.  Jenn Romanowski  My ambition to want more out of life.  Ali Noor, Midway Car Rental

Give a Little Respect

When asked if they feel respected as younger-aged workers, a majority of the millennials answered positively when talking about their rental company.

I feel respected as a younger-aged worker and Bandagos ethics and management is a big part of that, says Sammut. I am lucky to have surrounded myself with creative, dedicated individuals that make it easy to feel respected.

I definitely feel respected and given the praise deserved, despite my young age, says Rocio Prieto, an assistant branch manager at Midway Car Rental.

When asked about feeling respected outside of the office, some of the millennials have faced instances of disrespect when dealing with customers.

I personally dealt with a customer who thought he was entitled to whatever he said based on the fact that I was younger, says Nessari. In his mind, I didnt have the credibility that he had.

When I had to go out and do direct sales and collection work, some of the clients werent respectful, says Romanowski. I had to start speaking to get their respect; the person had to know that I was knowledgeable about the subject.

Tyler Koch, director of human resources at Dale Holdings Inc., parent company of Bay Area Auto and Truck Rental (right), poses with two other millennial staff members: Megan Burls, business process specialist (center), and Marcus Lindsey, commercial business development manager (left).

Relating to Millennials

To Romanowski, offering continued education is a great way for workers of different ages to relate to the same goal.

Employers can offer continued education whether its seminars or team-building exercises, says Romanowski. I think of the Car Rental Show. Its an opportunity for all car rental workers to share their experiences. You have people of all different ages all related to the same interest or goal.

Engaging with millennials on a consistent basis can help managers better relate to this younger generation.

I think upper management can relate to younger workers just by talking to them, says Erin Iwahashi, a millennial who works in Midway Car Rentals hotel sales department. Managers should take the initiative and talk to millennials and make them feel more comfortable.

Management can also better relate to millennials by finding common ground. This can help build trust and respect.

I think working side by side with people of a different generation and demonstrating knowledge and command of the business helps develop respect, says Sammut. Management should take the time to listen and utilize millennials wisdom and expertise; it will help build a millennials trust and willingness to be a productive employee.

Engage and Retain Tyler Koch, director of human resources at Dale Holdings Inc., the parent company of Bay Area Auto and Truck Rental, stresses the importance of being agile in your management style. This way, you can make sure a millennials ever-changing needs will be consistently met. From January 2014 to July 2015, Koch conducted 263 interviews with millennials to learn more about retaining, inspiring and engaging this generation of workers. Here are some of his tips: Mentorship over management. Pair millennials with senior leaders in the business to facilitate their welcoming into the company culture. Build a team across multiple groups. Because millennials have developed multiple skill sets and perspectives, encourage them to engage with employees from all different groups at the workplace. Put more on their plate than you think they can handle. Due to technology and constant access to information, millennials are used to coordinating multiple projects at once. Offer flexibility. Millennials prefer more of a work-life balance than previous generations have expressed. Millennials may opt for flexible work schedule options since technology allows them to work from other places outside the office. Embrace self-efficacy. Millennials are used to trying new things and taking on new challenges.

How to Target Millennial Customers

How can a rental car business attract the growing millennial customer base?

For Silvercar, its visually pleasing website and app serve as its first impression to potential millennial renters, according to Nick Myers, Silvercars local marketing and social media manager. Using Silvercars mobile app on Apple or Android devices, users can reserve and unlock the Audi A4 rental vehicles.

To keep a millennials attention, its important to use more imagery than text when showing how the rental process works, says Myers. He describes Silvercars business model as easy to use, straightforward and fun.

Photo courtesy of Silvercar.

Silvercar tries to be more creative in its marketing. For instance, Silvercar has created social media marketing campaigns. Last year, its Kiss and Tell campaign encouraged users to write about their worst rental car experiences on Silvercars Facebook page. Each week in February, up to 20 of the stories earned a chance to win one free Silvercar rental day.

Through digital channels, Silvercar can direct its advertising toward a particular group, according to Myers. For example, Facebook allows companies the ability to select age groups, gender, interests and purchase habits.

Access to this demographic and psychographic information makes it easy to target exactly who is important to us, and millennial users tend to respond very well to this targeted advertising, says Myers.

Another method to target millennials? Provide an efficient process. They appreciate our streamlined app and the fact that you dont have to deal with counters, paperwork or lines when renting with Silvercar, adds Myers.
Photo via iStockphoto.com/Filippobacci

The generation born between 1981 and 1996 became a workforce majority this year. Called Generation Y, or millennials, this workforce is remaking the workplace in its own image and with its own distinct voice.



Accepting the realities of this workforces desires in a career and an employer will help you recruit this generations top talent. Diversifying where you source candidates and how you utilize social media will enhance your candidate pool and improve your employment brand.

Over the last five years, millennials have been the darlings of business media because they can be reported on as a good- or bad-news story. They have been portrayed as problem hires, parent-coddled divas, tech- and multi-tasking godsends or as saviors to the U.S. economy.

Regardless of the medias opinion, the reality is employers will need to adjust to drive the highest productivity.

Establish Your Social Media Presence

No matter your operational set-up, fleet size, brand affiliation or market, every car rental operator should create a professional and compelling social media-based recruitment presence.

By utilizing LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, you can build the foundation for your unique recruitment message and create a great first impression. You can then use portals, such as Glassdoor and indeed.com, to foster and protect your companys reputation.

LinkedIn: The Mothership

LinkedIn is to professional networks what Facebook is to your social networks. Through the third quarter of 2015, LinkedIn reported nearly 400 million registered members. It has a multi-tiered membership that allows members to have additional tools for sales lead generation and recruitment support.

View LinkedIn as your mothership or central spot for company information, career openings and brand recognition. Establishing a professional, motivational and concise Career Page is free and will help your brand create a great impression on LinkedIn.

The most effective Career Pages have updated content on how the company impacts its community, fosters a team environment and offers talented new hires unlimited growth potential. LinkedIn can also serve as your central spot for candidate connections and industry associations.

The following strategies will help you get the most out of LinkedIn:

 Research complementary industries from which to source candidates.

 Utilize advanced search functions to source strong candidates.

 Initiate conversations with potential candidates using InMails with a Your Profile / Experience Impressed Us message.

 Establish a presence as an authority within your industry with weekly posts regarding your brand or general positives of your industry.

 Recognize team promotions and work anniversaries.

 Create an entry-level counter sales or service role that defines the career path and general progression through the organization.

By implementing these strategies, your profile will remain active and potential candidates will get a better understanding of what you, your company and, most importantly, your industry is all about.

Scheduling LinkedIn posts two to three times per week will keep your audience engaged. Research has shown that it is most effective to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.

Facebook: The Culture Communicator

Facebook has more than 1.5 billion users. One out of five people on earth are on Facebook. If you dont know Facebook, I recommend that you reset your caves wireless router.

Although many people feel that Facebook provides users a clear break between their work and private lives, many job seekers start their career search on a companys Facebook site. According to a 2015 Jobvite survey, nearly 70% of job seekers turn to Facebook first for basic information about a potential employer. View Facebook as your first impression and your cultural ambassador. It is easy to use and easy to post content.

The following strategies will help you get the most out of Facebook:

 Celebrate team events, positive results and individual team recognition.

 Highlight your products and services; show off your fleet.

 Communicate community involvement and support.

 Post customer service letters and client testimonials.

 Establish a posting schedule for new career opportunities.

When posting career opportunities for counter agents or service agents, create a current team member professional bio that highlights a top performer and shows the positives of the role.

To engage your audience via Facebook, it is suggested that you post daily. Utilizing an inexpensive service like Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Buffer will allow you to archive your content, post and repost at strategic parts of the day.

If you do not have a dedicated marketing or recruitment resource within your operation, appoint someone within your firm to own this opportunity. Stress the importance of this employees role as an ambassador and measure his or her success by candidate impressions as well as friend and like count growth.

Photo via iStockphoto.com/Alelamoi

Twitter: A Day in the Life

If social media is your family, LinkedIn would be your well-respected and professionally connected parent, while Twitter would be your wild, impulsive cousin with a limited attention span that has a lot of friends.



Twitter capitalizes on very short and digestible messages of 140 characters or less. Twitter allows you to create for candidates a real-time inside look at your companys culture, making people want to work for you.



The following tactics will help you get the most out of Twitter:

 Encourage team members to tweet your career openings and links to your job descriptions.

 Share news and positive events that expose people to your culture.

 Harness the power of a hashtag (#); link the words jobs or culture to your posts.

 Post short videos using video-sharing service Vine that celebrate a day in the life of your company.

 Reward followers who retweet your recruitment comments and open positions.

 Stay connected with candidates via Twitter and thank them after the interview via Twitter.

Twitter and Instagram are very effective at capturing a candidates imagination. The most effective recruitment-related tweets should include a visual and motivational message.

Glassdoor and indeed.com: Protecting Your Reputation

Building a positive online recruitment message is the first part of the opportunity, while the next and equally important part is protecting your companys reputation.

Web portals such as Glassdoor and indeed.com provide both recruiters and candidates a central information hub for company, salary, interview protocols and overall company culture. They are to job openings and the recruitment process as TripAdvisor and Yelp are to hotel and restaurant reviews.

If you have not visited Glassdoor or indeed.com, stop reading this article and research what candidates post about your company, your brand and even better  your competitors. It can be eye-opening and soul searching.

These Glassdoor and indeed.com tactics will help you protect your companys reputation:

 Link your Glassdoor profile to your LinkedIn and Twitter pages.

 Personalize the user experience by using Glassdoors custom landing page option.

 After the 90- and 180-day reviews, request that your team members rate your company.

 Promote hiring events and recruitment road shows.

Viewing these portals as information resources instead of constructive noise will help you craft your recruitment message and protect your reputation.

The Tiered Interview Process

Focusing on your selection process  and the role a millennial is applying for  will ensure that you and the candidate do not have a post-hire buyers remorse. We recommend implementing a three-tiered interview process.

Stage-one interviews are brief interactions that serve more as a general screening process to review the career opportunity and check for mutual understanding.

The second stage is a more complex face-to-face interview that involves open-ended questions and behavioral-based questions.

The final interview, what we call the Vision Interview, entails a brief meeting with the most senior leader within the organization and the candidate.

Viewing your recruitment and induction time period as one continuous timeline will protect your brand while securing and retaining the new team member.

Tips for Millennial Retention

They are easy to recruit, but hard to retain.

This truism was shared from a participant at the Auto Rental Summit in Hollywood, Fla., in November in response to a question about how attendees felt about their millennial workforce. Regardless of the type of car rental operation you run, this is a common challenge for the car rental industry.

To retain millennial new hires, implement the following practices:

 Establish a disciplined interview process and maintain the induction period for longer than one month.

 Ensure that all new team members understand their sense of purpose in their roles and the why behind what the company does.

 Pair the new team member with a developing mentor for the first 90 days.

 Ensure your new hire training has peer-assisted and gamification learning activities as part of induction training.

 Understand each new team members preferred learning and communication style via personality profile and relationship strategies programs.

 Respect and enhance their individual vacation and personal time off.

 Provide titles and roles with clear reporting lines.

Speak to their sense of team ego and acceptance: introduce new associates with Welcome Aboard messages and memos and provide them business cards as soon as possible.

Understanding Millennials  86 million millennials will be in the workplace by 2020, representing a full 40% of the total working population. (Forbes / Intelligence Group)

 89% of millennials would prefer to choose when and where they work rather than being placed in a 9-to-5 position. (Odesk)

 56% of millennials wont accept jobs from companies that ban social media. (Cisco)

 45% of millennials will choose workplace flexibility over pay. (M Branding)

 Average tenure for millennials is two years, compared to five years for Gen X and seven years for baby boomers. (PayScale.com 2014)

 91% of millennials expect to stay in a job fewer than three years. (Forbes)

 64% of millennials would rather make $40,000 a year at a job they love rather than $100,000 a year at a job they think is boring. (Glassdoor 2015 Recruitment Survey)

Foster Your Culture

Since we last wrote for ARN on this topic (Recruiting Generation Y Sep/Oct 07) fpg has published seven articles pertaining to the art and science of recruitment. Since then, it has been interesting to see how the Recession, economic comeback, explosion of social media and evolution of the gig (freelance service provider) economy has forced car rental firms to change their strategies on recruitment.

What has not changed since 2007 is the impact your company culture has on recruiting and retaining your people. Before you look at what you are doing to attract top talent, regardless of the age demographic, you have to look inside to understand what your culture is about, how you do things  good or bad  and most importantly how your people feel about the work they do day in and day out.

You can have the best recruitment strategies, talent resources and social media tactics in the world, but if you dont have a great culture, your recruitment energies will be wasted.

As this issue of Auto Rental News lands on your desk, many of you should be in a car rental shoulder season. This is your time to reflect, plan and prepare for what will hopefully be a very robust year.

If you are in need of quality candidates, dont worry, you are not alone. Your competitors have the same challenges, and other industries feel the same pain. Your ability to implement these strategies in a proactive fashion will help you find the right team members and understand how to retain them.
While millennials represent a large and powerful segment of consumers, theyre also known as some of the hardest-to-please consumers out there.

But that appears to be changing  at least for the car rental industry. As the Los Angeles Times noted in its coverage of the J.D. Power 2015 North America Rental Car Satisfaction Study, Rental car companies have gotten so good that even millennials like them.



Millennials not only were the most satisfied generation in the study, but they were also the most likely to share their positive car rental experiences with their personal networks. J.D. Power reported that a delighted millennial makes an average of 5.8 positive recommendations. Whats even more interesting is that J.D. Power also found that when they arent satisfied, millennials only make 1.46 negative comments about their experience.

It certainly appears millennials are more vocal about satisfaction than dissatisfaction, creating ample positive word-of-mouth marketing opportunities for our industry.

However, if our industry is to continue attracting and maintaining the support of millennials, we at Enterprise Holdings need to remember that millennials like doing business with companies that value and respect their opinions. They also expect to conveniently benefit from an array of affordable and sustainable transportation services, including carsharing, vanpooling and online ride-matching.

In other words, whether its for an hour, a day, a weekend or longer, our industry needs to offer a transportation solution that gives millennials the mobility they need on their own terms. Moreover, millennials want to better understand how those transportation options impact the long-term sustainability of their communities.

Thats another reason why its important for car rental businesses to search for non-traditional ways to tell their stories. For example, last year Enterprise helped organize a panel discussion at the SXSW Eco conference.

Titled City Transit 411: Urban Myths & Urban Mobility, the panel included representatives from the on-demand carsharing company, Getaround, as well as the co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Moderated by an environmental journalist, this diverse panel cut through a lot of clutter and rhetoric. It directly addressed local transportation challenges while also clarifying common misconceptions about carsharing and ridesharing.

More recently, Enterprise participated in a panel discussion  Access & Mobility to Cross Income, Digital, and Land Use Divides  at the Disrupting Mobility Summit at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. This session focused on how local transportation providers can better meet the needs of underserved communities, including low-income neighborhoods, older adults and disabled consumers, as well as rural and suburban households.

Cutting-edge venues provide everyone in our industry new opportunities to reach consumer groups in a fresh and credible way. They also heighten awareness of urban mobility options overall, including the natural convergence of car rental and carsharing  a trend highlighted at last years International Car Rental Show in Las Vegas.

So lets continue as an industry to build on the strong connections weve already forged with millennials in both neighborhood locations and at the airport. And lets leverage automotive and communications technologies that are progressing at a rapid pace, as both have the potential to further strengthen the long-term loyalty and focus of millennials  not to mention other generations to come.
Globe Car Rental's location at EVO Residence in downtown Montreal. This is one of Globe's kiosk locations, with more to come in 2016. Photo courtesy of Globe Car Rental.

Globe Car Rental, a Montreal-based car and truck rental company, has rolled out its interactive car rental kiosks at a new location in Montreal.

In partnership with EVO Montreal Residences, Globes location is near Montreals McGill University, which has 40,000 enrolled students and 8,000 employees. EVO offers long-term student residences with amenities like a pool, gym and Wi-Fi.

Globe stand-alone kiosk locations success will depend on triple A, high traffic locations frequented by student and their visiting family/friends, said Husam Hatahet, Globe Car Rentals co-founder and vice president of sales. We are giving the millennials what they want close to home. Our target markets are young students who need to run errands or a group of friends on a road trip hitting the ski-hills and other shared outings ...

Globes kiosks offer convenience to both students and businesses in the surrounding area. Unlike other local car rental agencies, the kiosks are open seven days a week until 9 p.m. nightly, says the company.

The Globe kiosk employs interactive video streaming technology in which a live agent walks the client through the complete car rental process.

By scanning the drivers license, the kiosk populates the data in seconds and then accepts credit card payments. The kiosk then prints the agreement, including the condition report, and issues a garage exit pass if necessary. The kiosk is designed to complete the transaction within five minutes, whether the client already has a reservation or is starting from scratch.

Globe has built an electronic key dispenser from which customers can retrieve their keys just like a vending machine. Upon return, clients park the car, drop the keys in a separate secure drop box and walk away.

For more information on Globe Car Rental, visit www.GlobeCar.com.
Lufthansa Aerial Services, part of the German conglomerate that owns Europes major airline, has stepped up its stake in the drone business. The company this week signed a deal with Chinese drone maker DJI to develop unmanned aircraft for a number of commercial purposes, such as inspecting railroads and airport runways. The agreement solidifies the collaboration between the two companies, which have been testing drones for various missions. Lufthansa recently used DJI equipment for a pilot project to inspect wind turbines, a process that could eliminate the need for steeplejacks to scale the towers.

Operating drones for other businesses that dont want to bother with all the training and logistics will be a big market, Lufthansa says, along with plenty of in-house opportunities it can take advantage of. In December, Lufthansa test flew camera-equipped drones in a designated area near the north runway at Frankfurt Airport. Germanys ATC entity, DFS, along with airport operator Fraport took interest in the potential for drones, rather than ground vehicles, to inspect runways and taxiways for foreign object debris. Drones, as demonstrated by the two-hour flight test, also can conduct surveys of structures, topography and other features at an airport. A sister company that specializes in maintenance, Lufthansa Technik, is trying out drones for inspecting aircraft exteriors. Lufthansa also says it envisions a one-stop UAV-shop providing services through its consulting arm, drone pilot training with its flight training company, or even the provision of drone insurance solutions through Delvag, Lufthansas in-house insurer.
Aviation lore is full of heroes like Chuck Yeager, who saved the day while calmly muttering on the radio something about some little fire going in them engines or such. The quiet, unflappable, laid-back flyer has been the role model for young pilots since the days of the Lone Eagle. But is there such a thing as too laid-back?

The answer, undoubtedly, is yes. Psychology describes this in terms of defense mechanisms. As with most things in life, you dont want too much or too little. This can be tested and is, in fact, a requirement by some airlines and aviation authorities. It is an area certain to be analyzed in conjunction with the tragic recent airline accidents.

When the Asiana Boeing 777 crash occurred in San Francisco (SFO) it quickly became obvious that a perfectly qualified crew of three had flown a perfectly functioning airliner into the ground on a sunny day for no good reason. The resulting chatter in my corner of the airline pilot world was stunned disbelief quickly followed by lots of opining as to the quality (or lack thereof) of some foreign crews.

It Couldnt Happen Here

Well, looks like it didjust days later a well qualified crew of a reputable domestic freight air carrier flew a perfectly functioning airliner into the ground under very benign conditions.

Accident investigations last months and often years. Yet there is a reason why the NTSB, in its findings, calls it probable cause. In spite of black boxes and the ubiquitousness of surveillance cameras and iPhones, in many crashes all factors may never be knownwhich brings forth the disclaimer to not rush to conclusions.

Landings are a phase of flight described as critical and every layman, understands why. Airspeed is of necessity slow with a small margin to stall. Altitude is of equal necessity low, decreasing the margins for error. It follows that the crew must exert their maximum focus on the approach and landingthe most difficult part of the flights profile when the crew is most affected by fatigue, sleep depravation or plain boredom.

Most readers of IFR Refresher will probably agree that a low ILS approach is no piece of cake. Add a lurking thunderstorm that may require quick thinking, drawn from a deep pool of experience and knowledge, and a burst of fancy stick and rudder work may be necessary to make it safely to shore.

Others may see it differently. If all you typically do is coupled (autopilot flown) ILS approaches to multi-mile long runways, day-in and day-out, a strictly visual approach may seem intimidating. Regardless of the circumstance, vigilance is required as is command and control over the aircraft.

For those, like me, who came up through the school of hard knocks of flight instructing, the notion of not closely monitoring speed and glide path on final is almost impossible to fathom. As an instructor youve endured many occasions coiled up in the right seat ready to pounce on the flight controls should the student deviate to an unsafe degree. It is expected that the beginner is unreliable and it is equally expected that the teacher will occasionally take over and save the proverbial bacon.

Contrast this with the atmosphere in the typical multi-crew airliner: Here it is expected that the pilot flying will reliably perform the seemingly simple tasks associated with holding speeds and altitudes, be this through automation or manual hand-flying. They have done so thousands of times and there is no reason to assume that this approach will be any different.

A Set Up For Complacency

The Pilot Monitoring may not be monitoring. The Pilot Flying may, for whatever reason, have given up the flying part to gravity. The rest, as they say, is history. There are lessons in all this for the general aviation pilot.

With the increased sophistication of modern avionics, a perverse trap has been set. Back when the top-of-the-line was the round dial six-pack, a couple of radios and some wildly swinging needles, it was subliminally communicated that this flying business was indeed serious and that it took significant skills, attention (and even a certain amount of luck) to provide a safe and desired outcome.

With flat screens, keypads, advanced autopilots and all sorts of fancy accouterments it may be common place to believe that instrument flying has become easymostly a matter of correctly programming the equipment. I further believe that these square, glowing screens, the similar to those used with TV or video games, haveon a subconscious levelremoved the pilot one level from the experience of flying itself.

What those screens and stuff have done is present us with a different view of our flying environment when in fact that environment, and the need to react to it, has not in itself changed.

These are considerations the light airplane pilot now shares with airline guys. The Cherokee that once sported a wing-leveler with a simple on-off switch may now have a full-fledged flight management system with many different operating modes to achieve one desired outcome. The equipment that was meant to simplify has now complicated. The old nav head with the ILS needles may have been harder to fly and less intuitive to interpretbut at least there were just two simple needles to chase around. Todays electronic HSI and flight director presentation overflows with information, much of it of no use for the current phase of flight and thus a distraction. We have seen this on far too many accidents where the CVR conveyed confusion on the part of the crew.

In this, as in so much else in aviation, we thread a fine line. There is only so much mental capacity, only so much knowledge, only so much flight currency and skills any person can muster. The area between being too relaxed and laid back and pure paranoia is a gray and murky one.

On a check ride in a light twin some years ago the pilot saw me slightly tense up in preparedness for the required single-engine air work. Dont you trust me, Bo? was her comment. And in spite of this being one of the best pilots I have ever flown with, I guess the answer was not what she wanted to hear: I dont trust anyone if I can avoid it. And it seems to have kept me safe through 35 years of flying Call me paranoid.

Bo Henriksson is a Captain with a major carrier and has more than 10,000 flight hours.

This article originally appeared in the December 2013 issue of IFR Refresher magazine.

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29 January 2016 17:29 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Sadigova

Six parents of dead soldiers, who passed away or were killed in non-combat situation, held a protest in front of the presidential palace in Yerevan on January 27, demanding justice for their dead sons.

Five years have left since Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan promised them that the new military prosecutor Gevorg Kostanyan will conduct a fair investigation to reveal the truth.

But, both president and the military prosecutor luckily forgot their promises and left grieving parents without any answers.

Increasing number of soldier deaths in non-combat situations have become usual in the poor post-Soviet country with a population of 2 million people.

Absolute chaos reigning in the Armenian Armed Forces is supported by numerous cases of desertion and evasion.

For example, Andranik Grigoryan, an Armenian soldier who voluntarily surrendered to Azerbaijan told that "We are tired of unbearable conditions, lack of discipline in the military unit, lack of ammunition, ill treatment with soldiers and warrant officers, and the disorders."

He also said that the soldiers are fed with poor-quality food, with outdated expiration date. Unsanitary conditions prevail in military units. Contagious diseases, especially the infectious ones are wide-spread in military units

The mother of serviceman Arthur Gazaryan, who died in 2010, in particular, said that non of cases over the past 5 years has had a positive development.

The president should fulfill his promise, otherwise let him just come here and say I cannot keep my promise, we cannot give any answers, because our generals and commanders rend your children, not the Turks (in colloquial Armenian, Turks also mean Azerbaijanis), Irina Gazaryan desperately said.

Law enforcement bodies urged protesters to leave the territory adjacent to the presidential office, saying they violate the law and block the entrance, hindering the work of the administration.

Which law are you speaking about? Doesn't this law work only for you and hooligans? Why this law does not punish the killers of our children? We will wait here until Sargsyan comes to answer our questions, Gazaryan added.

Poor relations among soldiers and officers in the Armenian army have already turned into a driving factor behind servicemen's deaths in non-combat conditions. Officers' willful treatment of soldiers, the humiliations they have to bare often result in armed incidents that ultimately claim the lives of servicemen.

During the protest, the police have built a human chain and pushed parents back from the gate of the presidential residence in an effort to disperse the rally.

This has unavoidably triggered public concern and angered the desperate families.

Due to the Armenian governments aggressive policy, the youth is left to die in the occupied territories with no hope for escape.

The parents of killed soldiers have repeatedly protested in Yerevan, demanding for the rights of their children to be respected and honored.

The state has systematically proven vicious in its approach as protesters faced a brutal police crackdown every time they attempted to protest. During their protest at the gate of the presidential palace in mid-May, Armenian police forcibly dispersed protesters by pushing and striking the angered mothers.

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Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93

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29 January 2016 13:48 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Sadigova

The Council of Europe has urged Armenia to develop an effective national policy to investigate and prosecute money laundering.

This was stated in the first report published by MONEYVAL on January 28in the 5th Mutual Evaluation. The report recommends an action plan to address the shortcomings.

The CoE experts have revealed significant weaknesses in the investigation and prosecution of money laundering in Armenia and have urged the authorities to take immediate action to ensure that law enforcement efforts are fully commensurate with the money laundering risks faced by the country.

The biggest danger in terms of money laundering includes fraud, tax evasion, smuggling and theft.

Fraud, tax evasion, contraband and embezzlement pose the highest threats in terms of money laundering. Within the Armenian economy, the banking and real estate sectors are the most vulnerable to money laundering. Financial intelligence is gathered very effectively, but law enforcement does not often make effective use of it to develop evidence, trace, seize and confiscate criminal proceeds from money laundering, the statement reads.

Earlier the Global Competitiveness Report 2014 unveiled the oligarchy-controlled monopoly in Armenia, ranking the former Soviet nation 105th among 144 countries in terms of the effectiveness of antitrust policy.

The Global Financial Integrity disclosed that about 1.25 billion was taken out of Armenia in 2012. It is $63 million more than the figure in 2011.

The Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012 Report claimed that Armenia faced nearly $7.5 billion illegal cash takeout over the period from 2003 to 2012, as a result of government corruption, tax evasion and other illicit financial dealings.

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Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93

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29 January 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

The world economy is experiencing a turbulent start to 2016. Stock markets are plummeting; emerging economies are reeling in response to the sharp decline in commodities prices; refugee inflows are further destabilizing Europe; Chinas growth has slowed markedly in response to a capital-flow reversal and an overvalued currency; and the US is in political paralysis. A few central bankers struggle to keep the world economy upright.

To escape this mess, four principles should guide the way. First, global economic progress depends on high global saving and investment. Second, saving and investment flows should be viewed as global, not national. Third, full employment depends on high investment rates that match high saving rates. Fourth, high private investments by business depend on high public investments in infrastructure and human capital. Lets consider each.

First, our global goal should be economic progress, meaning better living conditions worldwide. Indeed, that goal has been enshrined in the new Sustainable Development Goals adopted last September by all 193 members of the United Nations. Progress depends on a high rate of global investment: building the skills, technology, and physical capital stock to propel standards of living higher. In economic development, as in life, theres no free lunch: Without high rates of investment in know-how, skills, machinery, and sustainable infrastructure, productivity tends to decline (mainly through depreciation), dragging down living standards.

High investment rates in turn depend on high saving rates. A famous psychological experiment found that young children who could resist the immediate temptation to eat a marshmallow, and thereby gain two marshmallows in the future, were likelier to thrive as adults than those who couldnt. Likewise, societies that defer instant consumption in order to save and invest for the future will enjoy higher future incomes and greater retirement security. (When American economists advise China to boost consumption and cut saving, they are merely peddling the bad habits of American culture, which saves and invests far too little for Americas future.)

Second, saving and investment flows are global. A country such as China, with a high saving rate that exceeds local investment needs, can support investment in other parts of the world that save less, notably low-income Africa and Asia. Chinas population is aging rapidly, and Chinese households are saving for retirement. The Chinese know that their household financial assets, rather than numerous children or government social security, will be the main source of their financial security. Low-income Africa and Asia, on the other hand, are both capital-poor and very young. They can borrow from Chinas high savers to finance a massive and rapid build-up of education, skills, and infrastructure to underpin their own future economic prosperity.

Third, a high global saving rate does not automatically translate into a high investment rate; unless properly directed, it can cause underspending and unemployment instead. Money put into banks and other financial intermediaries (such as pension and insurance funds) can finance productive activities or short-term speculation (for example, consumer loans and real estate). Great bankers of the past like J.P. Morgan built industries like rail and steel. Todays money managers, by contrast, tend to resemble gamblers or even fraudsters like Charles Ponzi.

Fourth, todays investments with high social returns  such as low-carbon energy, smart power grids for cities, and information-based health systems  depend on public-private partnerships, in which public investment and public policies help to spur private investment. This has long been the case: Railroad networks, aviation, automobiles, semiconductors, satellites, GPS, hydraulic fracturing, nuclear power, genomics, and the Internet would not exist but for such partnerships (typically, but not only, starting with the military).

Our global problem today is that the worlds financial intermediaries are not properly steering long-term saving into long-term investments. The problem is compounded by the fact that most governments (the US is a stark case) are chronically underinvesting in long-term education, skill training, and infrastructure. Private investment is falling short mainly because of the shortfall of complementary public investment. Shortsighted macroeconomists say the world is under-consuming; in fact, it is underinvesting.

The result is inadequate global demand (global investments falling short of global saving at full employment) and highly volatile short-term capital flows to finance consumption and real estate. Such short-term flows are subject to abrupt reversals of size and direction. The 1997 Asian financial crisis followed a sudden stop of capital inflows to Asia, and global short-term lending suddenly dried up after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, causing the Great Recession. Now China is facing the same problem, with inflows having abruptly given way to outflows.

The mainstream macroeconomic advice to China  boost domestic consumption and overvalue the renminbi to cut exports  fails the marshmallow test. It encourages overconsumption, underinvestment, and rising unemployment in a rapidly aging society, and in a world that can make tremendous use of Chinas high saving and industrial capacity.

The right policy is to channel Chinas high saving to increased investments in infrastructure and skills in low-income Africa and Asia. Chinas new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its One Belt, One Road initiative to establish modern transport and communications links throughout the region are steps in the right direction. These programs will keep Chinas factories operating at high capacity to produce the investment goods needed for rapid growth in todays low-income countries. Chinas currency should be allowed to depreciate so that Chinas capital-goods exports to Africa and Asia are more affordable.

More generally, governments should expand the role of national and multilateral development banks (including the regional development banks for Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Islamic countries) to channel long-term saving from pension funds, insurance funds, and commercial banks into long-term public and private investments in twenty-first-century industries and infrastructure. Central banks and hedge funds cannot produce long-term economic growth and financial stability. Only long-term investments, both public and private, can lift the world economy out of its current instability and slow growth.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: The global economys Marshmallow test

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29 January 2016 18:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

The relations between Ashgabat and Moscow, which worsened after Russian energy giant Gazprom refused to purchase Turkmen natural gas, are likely warming.

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's offer to create a transit corridor with Russia, as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's statement calling Moscow-Ashgabat relations as strategic allows making such a conclusion on the Ashgabat-Moscow ties.

Bruce Pannier, an expert on Central Asia, and the Senior Correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, believes that only a small warming of relations between Russia and Turkmenistan will be observed.

"Foreign Minister Lavrov did mention opening a transportation corridor between Turkmenistan and Russia. That appears to be simply reopening corridors that have shut down in the last seven or eight years. There were not many details revealed about this corridor or what it means," he told Azernews.

Pannier believes that Russia wants Turkmenistan to be more cooperative in CIS affairs.

"We've seen several Russian officials mention in recent months that the problems in northern Afghanistan, across the border from Turkmenistan, are a source of concern for other Central Asian states and the entire CIS," he noted. "Turkmenistan has denied there are any significant problems and rejected any suggestion that Turkmen forces need any help to reliably guard the country's border with Afghanistan."

This is the sort attitude Moscow objects to, not only because Turkmenistan is resisting a Russian role in its domestic affairs, but also because it is an example to other CIS states that an individual country can function without much help from Russia, according to Pannier.

Any significant changes in the Ashgabat-Moscow ties are expected to happen after Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Turkmenistan.

"Turkmenistan did extend an invitation to Vladimir Putin to make an official visit. If there is going to be a change in relations between Russia and Turkmenistan I do not think it would happen until Putin actually goes to Turkmenistan and it not yet clear when that will happen," Pannier concluded.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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29 January 2016 11:39 (UTC+04:00)

January 27 remembered the Holocaust that affected many people of Jewish origin during the World War II. This day is called the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It also commemorates when the Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on January 27, 1945.

To mark this day, the Baku International Center for Multiculturalism and Baku Slavic University (BSU) have organized a round table entitled "The Holocaust and the Khojaly through the eyes of contemporaries."

The round table was attended by the State Advisor of the Azerbaijan Republic on International Affairs, Multiculturalism and Religion, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Baku International Center of Multiculturalism, Academician Kamal Abdullayev, PhD in Political Science, Senior Consultant on Public and Political Issues of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Mehseti Aliyeva, Deputy Head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (United States) Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Deputy Ambassador of Israel to Azerbaijan Amir Rohm, Head of European Jews of Azerbaijan Gennady Zelmanovich and others.

Addressing the event, Head of the Israeli non-governmental organization "International projects for the society", an expert in international relations Arye Gut said that the Holocaust is a terrible and unbearable tragedy of the Jewish people.

The Israeli expert said that the mass murder of Jews was coded by then German bureaucracy as the "final solution of the Jewish question". The European Jews were killed in the ghetto, concentration camps, during the "death marches" and as a result of mass executions, Gut said.

"The Holocaust is a tragedy of my people, a tragedy that has long been a taboo subject. That is why, the bloody and barbaric act of genocide in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly is my personal pain, my personal tragedy. This tragedy is a crime against humanity," said Gut.

In 1992, the town of Khojaly, the second largest town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, came under intense fire by the Armenian armed forces.

613 civilians mostly women and children were killed in the massacre, and a total of 1,000 people were disabled. Eight families were exterminated, 25 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one parent. Moreover, 1,275 innocent people were taken hostage, and the fate of 150 people remains unknown. Civilians were shot at close range, scalped, and burned alive.

"Today is the day when we honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, remembering the Allied powers, whose troops defeated Nazism and those brave men who risked, and sometimes sacrificed their lives to save others. We should not ignore the cases of revival of anti-Semitism and must be ready to act against its new forms, the Israeli expert said.

He also pointed out that Jews have lived in Azerbaijan since ancient times and they have never felt excluded. We can say with pride that unlike many so-called civilized countries and peoples of Europe, Azerbaijanis never betrayed Jews, and Jews never betrayed Azerbaijanis," Gut emphasized.

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29 January 2016 17:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

The Anglo-Azerbaijani Society has held its annual meeting at Ettli Hall, a place of social and political debate in the British Parliament, in London.

The meeting was attended by Professor Nargiz Pashayeva, co-chair of the Anglo-Azerbaijani Society on behalf of Azerbaijan, and Lord German, member of House of Lords, co-chairman of the society on behalf of the UK.

The event was also attended by members of the Executive Committee and the British Parliament, representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in London, representatives of the Azerbaijani Diaspora, local and foreign businessmen, public figures and media representatives.

The meeting elected the Board of Directors. Professor Nargiz Pashayeva was re-elected as a co-chair of the Anglo-Azerbaijani Society on behalf of Azerbaijan, while Lord German was elected on behalf of the UK.

At the same time, composition of the Executive Committee was approved by adding candidacy of the three internationally recognized prominent executives.

Addressing the event, Lord German highlighted the Anglo-Azerbaijani Societys activities last year.

He said he would spare no efforts to contribute to expansion of cultural, humanitarian and educational ties between the UK and Azerbaijan.

Lord German said he was honored and happy to cooperate with Nargiz Pashayeva as a co-chair, describing the societys achievements and undeniable influence as a key factor.

In her turn, Nargiz Pashayeva expressed her gratitude to those who contributed to the activity of the society.

Highlighting the rich experience that the Anglo-Azerbaijani Society has gained over the past years she spoke about a number of significant and successful cultural, education and charity projects that the society in 2015.

The event was finalized with a concert program featuring Azerbaijans folk and European music.

The Anglo-Azerbaijani Society, established in 1997, supports Azerbaijani-British relations in all spheres and assists charitable endeavors in Azerbaijan, as well as keeps members closely informed on developments in Azerbaijan and increases public awareness about Azerbaijan in the UK.

The membership comprises major British companies in the oil, banking, insurance, engineering, services, communications, law and other sectors.

Azerbaijan and the UK benefit from close bilateral partnership and cooperation since 1992 in the framework of international organizations such as the United Nations, OSCE, Council of Europe, and NATO.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNewss staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

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29 January 2016 18:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

President Ilham Aliyev met with a group of the countrys youth on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the First Forum of Azerbaijani Youth, on January 29.

A group of youth received honorary diplomas of the Azerbaijani President for their contribution to the execution of the youth policy in the country.

Chairman of the Public Council for Work with Youth under the Ministry of Youth and Sport Nuraddin Mehdiyev said youth and youth foundations in Azerbaijan had always felt attention and care of the head of state, and thanked the president for this care.

Chairman of ASAN Volunteers Youth Organization Farid Sadikhli said there were more than 3,000 youth organizations in Azerbaijan. He put forward some proposals related to Youth Houses, vocational education, and foreign education programs.

The head of state said the volunteers movement had a bright future in Azerbaijan. Noting the importance of the fact that vocational education became popular in the country, President Aliyev said the worlds leading high schools open their branches in Azerbaijan.

Azad Rahimov, Youth and Sport Minister said several Youth Houses opened in capital Baku, adding this process will continue.

Chairperson of the Economic and Management Sciences Student Association Maryam Majidova put forward proposals concerning the development of informal education and organization of quizzes.

The head of state welcomed the idea to organize a number of international quizzes in Azerbaijan.

Coordinator of Model UN Azerbaijan project Elmira Mammadova highlighted the issue of representation of Azerbaijan in international organizations.

The head of state said Azerbaijan maintained excellent relations with all international organizations, including the United Nations, and praised the youths representation in international organizations.

President Aliyev also refused foreign media reports alleging that Azerbaijan appealed to foreign financial institutions for assistance.

Young entrepreneur, member of Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum Mushfiq Hasanov spoke of the creation of wider opportunities for young entrepreneurs.

President Aliyev said wide privatization program will stimulate the development of entrepreneurship.

The foreign relations secretary at Ganja 2016  European Youth Capital organization, Aysun Zeynalova, highlighted what had been since Ganja was proclaimed the European Youth Capital.

The head of state expressed his confidence that Ganja would excellently host the event.

Executive Director of the Youth Fund under the President, Farhad Hajiyev, spoke of the projects implemented by the fund.

President Aliyev said the fund will further receive support and financial assistance.

Chief Specialist at the Heydar Aliyev Center Zafiq Khalilov raised the issue of involving youth in scientific researches.

The head of state stressed the importance of the issue.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews staff journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

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29 January 2016 15:57 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Production of the packaging materials will be increased in Azerbaijan and the government will provide additional support to this field, the Economy Ministry told Trend.

The Ministry stressed that this sector will be in the spotlight to ensure production of higher-quality packaging materials, adding it will play an important role in creating Azerbaijans national brand.

Recently President Ilham Aliyev touched upon the need to boost production of packaging materials in 2016 at the conference dedicated to the results of the second year implementation of "The State Program on socio-economic development of the regions of Azerbaijan in 2014-2018".

Packaging materials are used in every stage of production and its obvious that this sphere has been neglected in Azerbaijan. New plants for the production of cardboard should be constructed. We are 50 percent dependent on the foreign materials. And it should gradually be eliminated, stressed the President.

The Ministry noted the importance of manufacturing high-quality packaging, so that the products are not spoiled during the export.

We already have enterprises engaged in production of packaging products. Now its important to improve their quality. Enterprises will get loanss, and their products will be offered to domestic producers, the ministry reported.

The local packing enables to reduce the product cost, according to the ministry.

The purchase of packaging abroad automatically increases the cost of production. When using the local packaging, the expenditures decline that have a positive impact not only on the local consumer market, but also on the export potential of products. After all, the cheaper product, the more competitive it is in foreign markets, the ministry said.

The Ministry added that the government has allocated loans to 6.2 million manats (about $3.8 million) to support the two companies for the production of packaging materials located in Khokmali and Ramani settlements.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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29 January 2016 11:04 (UTC+04:00)

Iran and Azerbaijan have signed an agreement to launch a railroad transit system from Tehran to Nakhichivan, Iran Railroads International Affairs Director Abbas Nazari said.

He said the agreement was signed on the sidelines of the quadrilateral Baku summit, IRIB news agency reported.

The official further said experts from both sides are to meet in a month to discuss trains timetable as well as fairs.

Nazari noted that the infrastructure for the railroad exist, explaining that passenger trains will use the Tehran-Tabriz-Jolfa-Nakhichevan route.

The quadrilateral meeting was held recently between Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine to make important decisions in the field of transportation.

The general theme of the summit was to create a composite transit route from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea and Europe. It envisioned starting point of Mumbai in India, unified Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia base railroad tariffs, and created consensus among members to provide equipment, infrastructure maintenance service, etc.

If the North-South corridor, which links North Europe with South-West Asia, operates at full capacity, this will allow some European, Central Asian, Caucasus countries, as well as several regions of Russia to get access to the Persian Gulf and India.

The railways capacity will stand at 1.4 million passengers and 5-7 million metric tons of cargo per year, according to the preliminary estimations. As many as 22 tunnels and 15 bridges will be built throughout the railway. The volume of cargo transportation through the corridor will amount to 6 million metric tons at the initial stage and will reach 15-20 million metric tons in the future.

The North-South railway project is expected to bring great profits to Azerbaijan and Iran. The railway lines of the two countries will be linked before late 2016. The construction of Astara-Astara and Rasht-Astara part within the project falls within Iran and Azerbaijans responsibility and the two countries are making effort to build the sections.

Earlier, Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways Javid Gurbanov said energy carriers such as oil, gas, and mazut are among the goods that the railway would suitable transfer.

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29 January 2016 11:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Turkey is ready to take part in the privatization process of state property in Azerbaijan.

Turkish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Ismail Alper Coskun has announced about this while talking to journalists in Baku on January 28.

Recently President Ilham Aliyev has noted the need to prepare a broad program of privatization, attracting both foreign and local investors, to improve the business environment and accelerate business revival.

Last year some 685 small state enterprises, unfinished buildings, vehicles, 456 plots of land, and 20 joint-stock companies were privatized in the country.

Finance Minister Samir Sharifov recently noted this year Azerbaijan expects to receive some 100 million manat ($61.35 million) from the privatization of state property.

Coskun further said that construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will be completed in the current year.



Initially, the commissioning of the railway, which will connect Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey together, was scheduled for 2014 and then for late 2015.



The delays in the project, the ambassador explained, were caused by the technical problems, which have now been solved.

SOFAZ is financing the project in accordance to an Azerbaijani presidential decree titled On the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project activities dated to 2007. Azerbaijan has allocated two loans totaling $775 million for the construction of the Georgian section.

The corridor, constructed based on the Georgia-Azerbaijan-Turkish interstate agreement, will have the capacity of 17 million tons per year. At the initial stage, the figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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29 January 2016 17:37 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

The government of Azerbaijan has recently set a goal to attract more investors to its non-oil sector and develop the local production.

To make the country more attractive for foreign direct investment at a time of the global crisis, the state has already announced economic reforms aiming to create favorable conditions for investments.

Today, promotion of foreign investments is one of the main areas, Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev said, attending a conference on development of the promising areas of agriculture in Baku on January 29.

He said given the reduction in public investment, attracting more foreign investment into the country is needed to increase the economic activity. To this end, entrepreneurs working in Azerbaijan will be issued a certain document of the investment incentives, which is presupposed in amendments made in the Tax Code.

Under this document, half of the revenue of an individual entrepreneur, profits of legal entity will be exempted from income tax for seven years. First, the benefits will cover imports of the manufacturing equipment and facilities, brought into the country by legal entities and individual entrepreneurs. These goods will be exempted from import duty and VAT for seven years.

Businessmen will also be exempted from property tax and land tax for a period of seven years from the date of receipt of the document.

In the first years of independence, Azerbaijan saw foreign investments mainly in the oil sector of the economy, but now the volume of foreign investments in the non-oil sector is also growing. Investors from Russia and Turkey are more active in the non-oil sector.

Azerbaijan offers a number of economic advantages, including geographic location and availability of raw materials. Combined with the liberal economic regime and competitive economy, all these create opportunities to further increase the flow of foreign investments.

About 16 billion manats ($9.8 billion) were invested in the development of the economic and social spheres in Azerbaijan from all financial sources in 2015, which is 11.1 percent less than in 2014. Domestic investment accounted for 56 percent of the total investments.

Furthermore, the country itself hugely invested in the development of marine, railway, automotive, utilities, and social infrastructures. Some bureaucratic hurdles were abolished. The country is now eye-catching for transportation, which means great revenue for the investors.

The favorable geographic location promises expansion of transport routes, which will further increase the countrys attractiveness to investors in terms of easy delivery of products made in Azerbaijan to other markets.

Today, along with the regional countries and CIS states, Azerbaijan can also import its production to Europe, as the EU is expecting Azerbaijani goods in its markets, especially agricultural products. Moreover, the EU supports development of this sector in the country.

Currently, the government plans to strengthen cooperation with the private sector in the agricultural sphere. For this purpose, the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs of Azerbaijan and the Agriculture Ministry has signed an agreement on cooperation.

The states support to the agrarian sector in Azerbaijan is expressing itself in large benefits to farmers. The volume of agricultural products increased by 6.6 percent over the year amounting to 5.64 billion manats ($3.5 billion) in 2015.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews staff journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

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29 January 2016 16:21 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

The premiere of the long-awaited Ali and Nino film, based on a novel with the same name by an Azerbaijani writer was held as part of the prestigious American Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

The film tells a love story of two young people, who have different religious faiths and nationalities, on the backdrop of World War I and the independence movement in Azerbaijan.



The shooting started in February 2015 and lasted until June, and took place in different places of Baku including historic Icherisheher (Old City) as well as in Gobustan and Khynalyg,



Most scenes were shot in accordance with the original story, and on-screen work reflects both positive and negative aspects of the relationship between the two heroes.

The stars of the 104-minute film include Adam Bakri, Maria Valverde, also known from movie Three meters above the sky, Mandy Patinkin, Connie Nielsen, Riccardo Scamarcio, Homayoun Ershadi and others.

The premiere was attended by the chief director and screenwriter of the film, as well as Adam Bakri. Ali and Nino has attracted the attention of the world media, which highly assessed the films music.

The film's executive producer is Leyla Aliyeva, producer is Kris Thykier, chief director is Asif Kapadia. Screenwriter of "Ali and Nino" is a British novelist, screenwriter and film director Christopher Hampton.

The film will soon be presented in Baku.

Ali and Nino, being one of the most original works of the 20th century literature is a tale of love by an Azerbaijani novelist who wrote under the pen name Kurban Said. Since its initial publication in 1937, the acclaimed novel has been translated into 33 languages worldwide with nearly 100 reprints.

The tragic story of Ali Khan Shirvanshir, the male descendant of a royal Muslim family, and Nino Kipiani, a beautiful, Christian, Georgian princess, is described in this epic love novel.

Ali and Nino live in the oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan which at the beginning of the 20th century was a melting pot of different cultures. Despite differences in cultures, they have loved each other since childhood, and Ali is determined to marry Nino as soon as she leaves school.

Their love undergoes family differences, religious dissimilarities and a challenging political situation as Azerbaijan fights for independence.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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29 January 2016 12:36 (UTC+04:00)

SOCAR Trading, a trading arm of SOCAR, intends to enter the gas market in the future, Arzu Azimov, SOCAR Trading executive director, said in an interview with European Business.

Azimov said that SOCAR Trading shows a well-advanced market position in crude oil, and only recently the trading company has stepped into gas and power projects.

Crude oil trading and products from third parties are the bread and butter of our business, Azimov said. We have a close eye on emerging markets where we might gain advantages. China, India, Africa, these are only some examples. For instance, we are constantly working in Africa, participating in all tenders for exporting. We are always looking for opportunities to buy and sell.

Azimov said that for 2016, SOCAR Trading is setting its goal for growth and gain on equity by generating new trading activities, searching the market and meeting potential customers and counterparties.

We will keep our presence in the physical market, but we will not become a pure trading company, he said. We will certainly continue our production business.

Azimov said that another new development will be SOCAR Tradings venture into the gas and power sector, which is regarded as the future in the fossil fuel market.

If we invest in the refining sector, we will experience the opportunities that will arise, he said. We will stay integrated in the chain of crude oil in order to keep control. The more integrated we are, they more successful we are. Another important aspect which we are looking into will be business efficiency.

Azimov said that no doubt, SOCAR Trading is well aware of its exposed position in crude oil trading and its future opportunities.

Today, it employs a workforce of over 200 people at its Genevabased headquarters and at its trading offices in Singapore, Dubai and London, he said. SOCAR Trading has also recently incorporated its fifth trading office in Calgary, Canada. Our competitive advantage is our attachment to SOCAR as a state oil company and our position as a well-respected trading partner, which is also involved in third-party trading with a strong customer orientation.

SOCAR Trading with headquarters in Geneva was created at the end of 2007 by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).

SOCAR Trading sells the main part of crude export volumes from the Ceyhan port (The Mediterranean Sea, Turkey), carries out trading of oil and oil products of other countries, and also renders assistance to the parent company with the international investments. The field of activity of SOCAR Trading covers the countries of Europe, Asia and America.

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29 January 2016 14:15 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans state energy company SOCAR has reached an agreement with the consortiums of South Caucasus Pipeline and Shah Deniz to increase the gas supply to Georgia in winter, SOCAR reported on January 29.

Azerbaijan is the main supplier of gas to Georgia with a share of 77.9 percent of the total volume of gas imports of the country. Russian gas deliveries to Georgia are carried out only in the form of payment for its transit to Armenia, for which the country is supplied with 10 percent of total shipments.

SOCAR exported 1.25 billion cubic meters of gas to Georgia in January-November 2015. SOCAR delivers its own gas to Georgia via a pipeline that runs through Azerbaijans Gazakh district. The gas pumping capacity via this pipeline nears three billion cubic meters per year.

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29 January 2016 13:19 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

"Hassan Rouhani's France visit illustrated power of diplomacy. New era of mutually beneficial cooperation in economy, politics and culture"... This is how Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif assessed President Rouhani's visit to Paris.

Rouhani's five-day tour to Italy, Vatican and France was indeed of significant importance both for Europe and Tehran in terms of reviving bilateral economic and political relations and multilateral trade ties among businessmen.

The Iranian president led a 120-member delegation including ministers and businessmen. The visit came just a week after the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that put an end to economic sanctions against Tehran.

Before the Paris visit, Rouhani said that Iran is ready to welcome foreign investors adding there are no more obstacles to investment in Iran.

"We are here to welcome all investors and economic managers to cooperate with Iran, Rouhani told the French businessmen. "Iran is ready for vast economic cooperation as it enjoys great capacities and has many needs to be fulfilled."

He explained that socio-political security, rich energy resources, educated workforce, and good relations with regional countries make Iran an interesting place for investment.

Within the framework of the current policies of the Iranian government, France is again to become active in Iran, with new energy and strengthened will. We are now ready to open new chapter in ties between the two countries, he emphasized.

French President Francois Hollande officially welcomed his Iranian counterpart at Elysee Palace in Paris on January 28. On the sidelines of a fruitful meeting of the two presidents, Iran and France signed memorandums of understanding.

Iranian FM Zarif and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius signed the first MoU which is a roadmap for strengthening ties between Tehran and Paris, Iranian media reported.

Other documents signed by the delegation led by President Rouhani and the French side were on cooperation in a range of sectors, including healthcare, environment, industry, and agriculture.

One of the most important documents was a deal with Airbus for the purchase of 118 aircraft from the European manufacturer.

The deal was signed by Iran's Roads and Urban Development Minister Abbas Akhoundi and his French counterpart, Iranian state-run IRINN TV channel reported from the event venue.

Under the terms of the contract, Airbus will be committed to deliver the aircrafts, acquired by Iran under the lease, within four years.

The planes will be brand new in different types, including the wide-body Airbus A380. Iran is committed to pay for the planes within 10 years.

Also, French oil and gas company Total and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to purchase crude oil from the Islamic Republic.

Earlier, Press TV quoted Totals Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne as saying that Total is going to sign a contract to purchase 150,000-200,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude oil.

Before sanctions were imposed in 2012 over Iran, EU was importing about 800,000 barrels of Iranian oil and condensate.

Later, speaking at a joint press conference, Hollande said France and Iran have turned a new page in bilateral relations.



"For 17 years the Iranian president has not visited France. Today we opened a new chapter in our relations. I hope our cooperation will be beneficial for everyone," he noted.



The French president noted that some 30 deals in various spheres were signed during Rouhanis visit.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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29 January 2016 10:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

Baku is among top five cities, which Russian tourists want to visit in 2016.

Azerbaijan attracts Russian tourists with possibility to rest on the Caspian Sea shore, discover the mesmerizing mix of East and West in Baku, and enjoy fresh air and delicious meals in the regions of the country.

Travel.ru website identified the most popular tourist destinations in the CIS countries among Russian tourists in 2016, using the hotel reservations by Russians from February 1 to December 31, 2016.

The data revealed that over the past year, the number of trips to the CIS countries made by tourists travelling independently has increased by 20 percent.

The Azerbaijani capital is in the top five most popular cities in the CIS for Russian tourists. This year Russians have booked trips to Baku for an average of four days and paid over 3,000 rubles a day for accommodation.

The top five also includes Minsk, Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Kiev, according to Travel.ru.

Russian tourists do not need visa to travel to Azerbaijan, which make the country more attractive. Tourists from neighboring Russia were always frequent guests in Azerbaijan and the recent developments made more Russians to think about Baku when planning their vacations.

The frosty relations between Russia and Europe have directed the tourism market of the country to the new way. Turkey has become more attractive for Russian tourists after Moscow suspended flights to Egypt. Following the downing of the Russian jet, Russian travel agencies suspended sales of tour packages to Turkey.

Moreover, unstable economic situation in Russia made the tourists to look for cheap destinations for vacation.

Azerbaijan cannot be named the cheapest destination in the region, but the country is now targeted to create more budget hotels around the country.

Today, there are luxury 5 star hotels of the world famous brands, a number of budget hotels and hostels in Azerbaijan.

The prices in the tourism facilities of the country have not risen recently and after the double devaluation of the national currency, the prices are more affordable.

Discussing this news in the social media, many Russian citizens name Azerbaijan as their potential destination for this summer.

One of the main advantages of Azerbaijan, besides the captivating beauty of the country and hospitable population, is the fact that many people here know Russian and English.

Today, when the country has winter tourism complexes as well, Russian tourists could start discover Azerbaijan right now, and sure enough, they will not be disappointed.

__

Nigar Orujova is AzerNewss staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
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Today

Some clouds this morning will give way to generally sunny skies for the afternoon. High 92F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Finding God in prison

A prison may seem like an impossible place for ministry. But Farid Lahoud, a man who has given his life to prison ministry and is supported by BMS World Mission, has seen God show up in this dark place time and time again

Amir* was serving a life sentence for murder. He was in a hopeless place and had no faith. Originally from Iraq, he was imprisoned in Lebanon. To his surprise, hope came to him in his darkest hour. It came to him through a prison ministry and his life was transformed beyond what he could ever have imagined.



In prison and desperately searching for some sense of hope, Amir became curious about the prison ministry happening in his prison and he began attending church services. During his free time he began to read the Bible.



One evening Amir was alone in his cell and as he flicked through the Bible, one particular verse caught his attention. It read, I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14: 6). As he was still wrestling with the idea of faith, he threw his hands in the air and asked God how he could really know if it was true.



In that moment, God showed up in Amirs cell. Suddenly, there was a blinding light in the room, so bright he had to close his eyes. And when he opened his eyes there were tears streaming down his face. Amir knew he had an answer.



He became a believer and suddenly his grim future had a glimmer of hope. He was motivated to reopen his case and share his testimony with a judge. The judge was so moved by the story that another miracle happened for Amir. The judge reduced his life sentence to five years of imprisonment.



A changed man, Amir was inspired to share his faith with others after his release from prison. He went home and brought his entire family to Christ.







Amirs story is just one of many, many stories of lives that have been transformed through the prison ministry Farid has given his life to for the last 30 years. Farid, a BMS supported partner worker, knows that sharing the gospel with prisoners from diverse religious backgrounds is a challenge, but he wouldnt have it any other way. This kind of life is like honey to my soul because I know I am where God wants me to be, says Farid.



At the core of Prison Ministry, Lebanon, is the goal to share the Christian message of love with prisoners across the country. The team do this by both helping prisoners with practical needs and sharing Gods message.



Practical needs are addressed in the prisons by providing prisoners with legal support, literacy and computer training, and family programmes. The legal support has proven to be an important part of the prison ministry. The team work closely with the judicial system as they help prisoners pay charges they cannot afford and work to reduce sentences  they have even been able to remove some prisoners from death row.



Initially, people come to us for help with their practical needs, says Farid. Then they decide they also want to hear the Word of God.



Prison Ministry, Lebanon, holds regular church services and events inviting all prisoners to hear Gods message, no matter what religious background they have. Farid says each church event held brings in over 100 prisoners and many ask for Christian literature and Bibles after services.



The prison ministry builds relationships based on love and respect and is always careful to create an atmosphere of acceptance and trust; in turn, it has brought many prisoners to faith. Its a tough job, but Testimonies like Amirs keep Farid going. They remind him that God shows up, even in the darkest of places.



*Name changed





You can help transform lives too. You can support projects like this prison ministry by giving to BMS today.

This article first appeared on the website of BMS World Mission and is used with permission.

BMS World Mission, 29/01/2016
A Pinellas County deputy involved in a shooting in December 2015 was arrested Friday and charged with attempted manslaughter.

The shooting happened during a DUI traffic stop just after 3 a.m. in John's Pass, near Madeira Beach on Dec. 30, 2015.

At a press conference Friday afternoon, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Deputy Timothy Virden was not justified in shooting 26-year-old Dylan Thompkins-Holmes.

According to authorities, the incident began when Virden stopped a vehicle with a woman driving and her boyfriend in the passenger seat at Village Boulevard and 129th Avenue East.

In the report, Virden said Tompkins-Holmes was belligerent, so he handcuffed him and put him in a patrol car. That's when Virden said the suspect grabbed for his gun.

But the sheriff said the evidence shows that Tompkins-Holmes never reached for the deputy's gun and never resisted arrest.

"Instead of explaining what actually happened, Deputy Virden made up facts that simply could not have occurred and are inconsistent with the physical evidence and the eye witness testimony of another deputy," Gualtieri said.

Audio of the shooting was captured on dash cam video. Two deputies can be seen walking a handcuffed-Tompkins-Homes to a cruiser. Then, Tompkins-Homes is heard mouthing off to Deputy Virden who then shoots him twice.

Thompkins-Holmes was taken to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg with gunshot wounds to his wrist and abdomen.

Gualtieri said there was no justification for shooting Tompkins-Holmes and he fired Deputy Virden.

"Shooting an unarmed person in handcuffs, who through eyewitness testimony of another deputy, has offered no resistance because the person might kick you is not the legal use of deadly force, he said.

A judge issued Virden an arrest warrant for attempted manslaughter and the former deputy turned himself into the Pinellas County Jail.

Tompkin-Holmes declined a request for an interview. The sheriff apologized to the Gulfport man and offered to pay for his medical expenses.

"You don't get shot for being a mouthy drunk, he said. "I'm sorry it happened. I'm sorry that this occurred. I'm sorry that the man took a bullet in the gut and had a foot of his intestine that had to come out."

Gualtieri said Virden was a good deputy with an excellent performance record up until this point.

"Sometimes even good people do these things wrong, he said. When we do something wrong we have to accept responsibility no matter how bad or difficult that might be."


The Polk County Sheriff's Office and the Tax Collector for Polk County are warning people about an online tag renewal scam.

The Tax Collector's Office is advising motorists not to use etagsDirect. The company advertises on Internet searches for online tag renewal services. On the site, it offers fast and easy vehicle registration renewal.

Last year, officials say the Tax Collector's Office received numerous complaints about etagsDirect overcharging for tag renewals and failing to refund motorists who believed they had been deceived.

The Tax Collector's Office said people should only use official tax collector websites to avoid excessive fees and being scammed.

"When people use Google or other search engines to find our Tax Collector's Office for services, etagsdirect.com tricks people making them think they have gone to our website," said Joe G. Tedder, the Polk County tax collector.



Complaints about etagsDirect have also popped up in other counties across Florida, including Orange and Palm Beach.

At the bottom of its website, etagsdirect.com does have a disclaimer that states it is not affiliated with any government agency.
Tiny plastic microbeads found in many hygiene products could be polluting Florida waterways, potentially harming fish and other wildlife.

During Florida's annual rainy season, there are times when there is just too much water to handle. Last year, the City of Cocoa Beach spent 25 days discharging excess water into the Banana River.

We only do it when we absolutely have to, said Jack Shelton, the Director of Cocoa Beach Water Reclamation Department. Everything from the city, Patrick Air Force Base and Port Canaveral go into this splitter box, Shelton said.

All of the water and waste that runs down a drain winds up at Shelton's facility to be separated, filtered and clarified.

This is the final process before it goes to be chlorinated and finally out to the reclaimed system, Shelton said, standing over one of the tanks.

At the bottom of it is a layer of sand that filters out any leftovers.

But I dont think its fine enough to filter out microbeads, Shelton said.

Although the reclaimed water is not going into the drinking supply, it is reused for irrigation and could wind up in the Banana River next time there is a heavy rain storm.

There is a concern, Shelton said. Theres really nothing that has been approved that will remove these microbeads. Theyre so fine and the size of a pin head.

A federal bill passed in time for the new year put a ban on plastic microbeads found in hygiene products. President Barack Obama and Congress approved the bill to stop companies from adding the exfoliant, over concerns that microbeads could be harmful to the environment when it is filtered for reclaimed water.

But the ban on plastic microbeads is not in full effect yet. Companies will have a year to stop manufacturing these products and come up with a substitute for the scrub to sell on the shelves.

Alleviating the problem  the companies need to stop putting it in, Shelton said. Bottom line. And there are alternatives: grinding up nutshells and some organic stuff they could put instead to replace the microbeads.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, many companies have already committed to removing microbeads from their products in the near future.



Tiny microbeads, as seen on this penny, are found in many hygiene products and could be polluting waterways, potentially harming fish and other wildlife. (AP)

A non-governmental organization in support of the microbead ban, Beat the Microbead, developed a list of products that may contain microbeads. You can view the list below:
Mexican authorities have released new images of the rearrest of drug cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, showing the infamous fugitive posing for a booking photo in his street clothes and being fingerprinted.

In these photos, he still has his full head of hair -- unlike the buzz cut in his official mugshot some hours later -- but not much swagger.
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A former teacher's aide at a North Texas junior high school has been charged with having sexual relations with a student.

Graham police officers arrested Allison Amber Oliver, a 37-year-old instructional aide at Graham Junior High School, on Tuesday.

Oliver was charged with having an improper relationship between an educator and student and sexual assault of a child.

The former aide was released from Young County Jail on a $50,000 bond, according to jail records.

RELATED: Ex-South Texas teacher who had sex with 17-year-old student sues him for filming encounter

According to an arrest affidavit, Graham ISD Superintendent Sonny Cruse told the school's resource officer on Oct. 12 that a number of male students were circulating a nude photograph of an aide identified as Oliver.

Two days later, Cruse told the officer that Graham High School Principal Joe Gordy had interviewed Oliver's alleged victim, who admitted to the principal and his mother that he and Oliver had sex on two occasions.

The student, whose age is not listed in the affidavit, told police on Oct. 15 that Oliver was "being weird" around him while he spent time with her children during summer 2015, pulling the boy aside and kissing him while he played near her house.

RELATED: Louisiana teacher, daughter of school board member, accused of sex with female student

In May 2015, Oliver and the student had sex in the back seat of the aide's SUV, according to the affidavit.

Oliver had told the student, who had asked to hang out with the aide's children, they were on their way to pick them up, the affidavit said. She instead parked the vehicle in a secluded location and had sex with the boy, he told police.

The student told investigators that Oliver told him she liked and loved him in text messages, the affidavit reads.

Police found at 11,939 phone calls and text messages between Oliver and the victim, according to the affidavit.

RELATED: Neighbors defend Austin-area piano teacher accused of inappropriately touching 2 girls under 10

Oliver allegedly had sex with the student a second time in August at the same location.

After that encounter, the student told Oliver that he no longer wanted to communicate or have sexual relations with her.

Oliver replied that she wanted to run away with the student when he turned 18 years old, the student told police.

RELATED: Police: Texas sex offender assaulted boy he met at LGBT group after game of 'truth or dare'

Another student told police that Oliver admitted to having sexual relations with the alleged victim after the student confronted her on the mobile application Snapchat, which allows users to send videos and photos.

The second student then pressed Oliver to send nude photos to him, to which she eventually agreed, according to the affidavit. She told the student not to tell anyone about the pictures or her relations with the alleged victim.

Oliver later told the second student that she had sexual relations with the alleged victim because he is "so much more mature than the rest of his class," according to the affidavit.

The aide also allegedly told the second student during a phone conversation with him and his friends that she "probably would" have sex with him.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
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There is a so-called tiny house for sale on the HAR website at the moment for just over $110,000.

How tiny?

Just 288 square feet, according to the real estate listing. The whole thing is set on a 5,757 square foot lot.

The elevated home in the 10000 block of Teneha Drive in the Southeast Houston/Sunnyside area is located inside a heavily-wooded lot. The listing notes that the home was built in 2015.

It comes with a 25-foot deck up top perfect for parties and there is an expansive area around the stilts under the home. There isnt much room for entertaining inside but thats probably not a selling point.

RELATED: 44 of the most impressive tiny homes you've ever seen

The interior features repurposed oak and pieces of another home. There is a queen-size bed that folds into the wall and turns into a couch. Its also energy efficient.

It comes with burglar bars on all the doors and windows as well. It comes with one bedroom and one bathroom.

RELATED: The tiny house trend and Houston

The man who built the home is an architect. He designed the copper gutter system himself, along with the reinforced railings.

This is the first tiny home hes built. Hed like to one day build a whole community of them in the Houston area.

The home is just a 20 minute drive from downtown Houston and 15 minutes from the Texas Medical Center, making it reasonable for those working inside 610 Loop.

Sims Bayou is just a short walk to the south, though thats probably not a selling point.
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Four closures, three on I-10, over the course of the weekend could cause traffic backups in Jefferson, Orange and Liberty counties.

The right lane of I-10 westbound at the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge will be closed from 9 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Saturday for construction, the Texas Department of Transportation said in a release.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.

The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
The Congressional Budget Office has changed its prediction as to when Medicare's hospital trust fund will run dry.

Payments made to hospitals by Medicare are made from two trust funds: the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund. The HI Trust Fund is used to make payments to hospitals under Part A of the Medicare program, and the SMI Trust Fund is used to make payments for outpatient services and prescription drugs under Medicare Parts B and D.

The HI Trust Fund, which is the larger of the two, had a balance of $195 billion at the end of 2015, according to the CBO.

In 2015, the CBO projected the HI Trust Fund would remain solvent through 2030, according to a report by The Advisory Board Company. However, in the CBO's report released Monday, it narrowed that timeframe and projected the trust fund will be exhausted in 2026.

Without legislative action to address shortfalls, the HI Trust Fund is not the only trust fund that will be exhausted in the next decade. The CBO projected Social Security's Disability Insurance Trust Fund will be depleted in 2022 and the Highway Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2021.

Unlike the HI fund's income, most of the income to the SMI fund does not come from a specified set of revenues collected from the public. "Rather the amounts credited to those accounts from the general fund of the Treasury are automatically adjusted to cover the differences between the program's spending and specified revenues," according to the CBO. Therefore, the balance in the SMI Trust Fund cannot be depleted.

More findings from the CBO's recent report can be found here.

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North Philadelphia Health System will close 146-bed St. Joseph's Hospital in Philadelphia in March as the health system consolidates operations. The hospital closure has community members outraged, including Pennsylvania State Rep. Curtis Thomas (D-Philadelphia).

In December, the health system announced plans to close St. Joseph's Hospital March 31. Rep. Thomas told CBS Philadelphia he was "outraged" and "extremely troubled" by news that the hospital was closing.

When NPHS announced the closure, the system said up to 675 workers may be laid off, but Rep. Thomas claims the hospital shutdown will have a much greater impact.

"Along with the situation facing the patients, we have 1,100 employees that would be out of work," Rep. Thomas told CBS Philadelphia.

To help ease the pain of the closure, Rep. Thomas said his office is asking that the hospital's closure date be moved back 30 days. He's also requesting that all employees are ensured alternative employment, according to the report.

An NPHS spokesman told CBS Philadelphia the health system is working with multiple parties, including unions and other healthcare organizations, to try and minimize the impact of the closure on employees. The health system is also trying to move some workers to its Girard Medical Center campus in Philadelphia.

NPHS did not immediately return a call for comment Friday.

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8 latest CFO moves in hospitals, health systems

5 hospitals with strong finances

Georgia hospital faces closure, former CEO blamed for troubles
As healthcare continues along its perpetual evolution, those in the industry are continually trying to get ahead of the curve and find solutions to the biggest issues facing patient care and delivery today. Increasingly, hospitals and health systems are making a commitment to innovation by establishing their own centers and institutes for innovation.

While innovation in healthcare is often discussed in the context of new tools and technology, it also applies to new ideas, workflows and training techniques. From established departments to organizations with their own separate governing board, below is an updated list of 40 hospitals and health systems with innovation centers.

Note: Innovation centers are presented in alphabetical order. This is not an exhaustive list of all innovation centers. Centers were selected by editorial research. Hospitals cannot pay to be included on this list.

At Baystate Health in Springfield, Mass., CIO Joel Vengco launched the system's health technology innovation center TechSpring in 2013. Many tech startups have partnered with TechSpring for product development, including CarePort Health and Medecision. TechSpring features an adoption accelerator, insight through focus groups and co-working space for individuals or teams working in healthcare or technology.

Boston Children's Hospital fosters several initiatives to spur innovation. It established the Boston Children's Innovation Acceleration Program in 2010 as resource for hospital employees to develop ideas. The hospital also opened a Technology & Innovation Development Office, which serves as the commercialization arm for researchers, biomedical innovations and technologies. Boston Children's hosts the annual global Pediatric Innovation Summit, the only annual event centered on advancing innovation in pediatric care, as well.

Boston-based Brigham and Women's launched its Innovation Hubin 2013. The hub, led by Executive Director Lesley Solomon, supports Brigham clinicians, scientists and employees in bringing their innovative ideas to fruition. Called iHub, the center hosts an annual Clinical Innovation Day, which unites clinicians, scientists and business leaders to share ideas for patient care improvements. iHub also hosts hackathons, codeathons and idea labs, where clinicians and scientists brainstorm ideas for a particular theme in healthcare in just 90 minutes.

Children's Hospital Los Angeles bases its pediatric research in its Center for Innovation. The Center also oversees the Consortium for Technology and Innovation in Pediatrics, an accelerator that received a $1.5 million grant from the FDA and houses more than 30 active technologies. CHLA also partners with the University of Southern California in an initiative to support development of technology solutions for pediatric patients.

Cleveland Clinic founded Cleveland Clinic Innovations in 2000.Since then, the commercialization arm has worked with 71 companies to move their innovation from thought to product. CCI has been involved with more than 500 licenses and 700 issued patents. It also developed the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center Incubator, a facility to house startup companies focused on cardiovascular disease. Thomas Graham, MD, has served as CIO of CCI since 2010.

Columbus (Ohio) Regional Hospital opened its Innovation Center in 2011. The center combines technology development and clinical simulation in a central location. The Innovation Center's Lean/Six Sigma and clinical simulation and education teams use tools in design, Lean and Six Sigma to collaborate, test and adopt best practices. The center's simulation lab allows for rapid prototyping and testing of new ideas before they are used in patient care or in the community.

Detroit Medical Center developed The Center for Quality and Innovationat DMC's Children's Hospital of Michigan. The center has been responsible for a wealth of pediatric innovations that include: implanting the first mechanical heart pump ever received by a child in Michigan; helping develop the Genesis Stent, a life-saving device that opens blood vessels within children, eliminating the need for open-heart surgery; and identifying an infant cooling technique to reduce the incidence of disability and death in infants who failed to receive enough oxygen during birth.

Mountain View, Calif.-based El Camino Hospital's Fogarty Institute of Innovation serves as an incubator for early stage innovators, and offers laboratory and engineering space for innovators and physicians to collaborate on ideas and developments. Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, inventor of the balloon catheter and recipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2014, founded the institute in 2007. Since then, the institute has worked with 20 medical device startups, five of which have spun off.

The Innovation Lab at Orlando-based Florida Hospital functions as an incubator to foster and test ideas to improve the system's healthcare services. Karen Tilstra cofounded the lab in October 2011, and she continues to serve as its director. In 2013, the lab received the Des Cummings Innovation Award, which is presented each year to a Florida Hospital organization for their efforts in advancing healthcare innovation.

Hartford (Conn.) Hospital, home to the state's first medical simulation center, has since developed The Center for Education, Simulation and Innovation. The CESI facility offers a fully comprehensive range of robotic and high-tech training capabilities used to develop clinical techniques and educate medical school students. The center contains robotic and endovascular simulators, task trainers and five different simulated clinical environments.

Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System established its Innovation Institute in 2011. One of the most prominent innovations coming out of the institute is the newly designed Model G Patient Gown, which prioritizes patient comfort  notably the closed backside  while maintaining clinical function. Scott Dulchavsky, MD, PhD, is CEO of HFII. Mark Coticchia, vice president and CIO of Henry Ford Health System, leads the Henry Ford Innovations unit.

New York-based Hospital for Special Surgery opened its Innovation Center in September 2014 to support technological breakthroughs for musculoskeletal care, but HSS has been collaborating with commercialization partners since 1979. The center oversees ideas from generation to evaluation, acceleration and commercialization. In addition to traditional biomedical science and technology like implants and biomaterials, HSS Innovation Center also researches process innovations, digital health solutions, wearables and telemedicine.

At Houston Methodist's Institute for Technology, Innovation and Education, healthcare professionals work to advance patient safety efforts with ongoing procedural skills training, skills acquisition research and technology and medical procedure development. The center is part virtual hospital, part hands-on clinical training facility working to push the bounds of healthcare training through technological innovation.

Pasadena, Calif.-based Huntington Memorial Hospital's Institute for Nursing Excellence and Innovation was designed to further and enhance training and preparation for the hospital's nursing workforce. The center drives clinical advances and research in nursing through innovative nursing practices, professional development and specialty nursing education programs.

Intermountain Healthcare opened its Transformation Lab in Murray, Utah,in 2013. Projects at the lab include developing the patient room of the future, 3D printing and sensors to boost hand hygiene compliance. Marc Probst, CIO of Intermountain Healthcare, oversees innovation at the lab.

Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University Hospital opened its two-story, open floor plan Jefferson Accelerator Zone in January 2015 as the home base for innovation activities. JAZ hosts an innovation engagement speaker series  including a December appearance from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf  and hackathons. People can rent out space in JAZ by zone, floor or building for innovation-related activities.

At the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality from Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine, researchers study the ways in which the physical care environment can improve patient safety and impact human performance. Through the study of macroergonomics and the application of human-centric engineering principles, the institute has been creating new models of care delivery that improve care quality and efficiency. Experts have developed tools and training programs that enable healthcare workers to realize radical, measurable advances in care delivery.

Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicines' Technology Innovation Center is a multidisciplinary hub for clinicians to create novel, technology-based solutions that span medical specialties and practice settings. A clinically embedded team of software engineers, data analysts, project managers and designers shepherd ideas from conceptual stages to product deployment. The center also includes an entrepreneurial accelerator as well as leadership training programs. The TIC often works in close affiliation with Hopkins' Armstrong Institute.

In 2006, Kaiser Permanente opened the Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center in San Leandro, Calif., named after the health system's founding physician. Dr. Garfield was a pioneer in hospital designs that improved care delivery and enhanced the patient experience. Though closed to the public, Kaiser Permanente started offering virtual tours of the center in 2012. The center is modeled to look like a real hospital to allow providers to test products in as close-to-reality settings as possible.

Massachusetts General Hospital's Stoeckle Center (Boston). Focused on primary care innovation, The Stoeckle Center offers several programs to test ideas through education, research and policy. The center is named after John Stoeckle, MD, who had a 50-year career as a primary care physician at Massachusetts General.

UCLA's Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute at Mattel Children's Hospital in Los Angeles was founded to promote innovation and collaborative research spanning from molecular studies to community initiatives. The institute connects laboratory research to bedside practice and community outreach programs at a local and national level. The institute conducts research into the four following core areas: brain behavior and development; nutrition, metabolism and growth; cancer and regeneration; infection, inflammation and immunity.

Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic opened itsCenter for Innovation in 2008, making it the first to be integrated into a medical practice setting. The center includes an outpatient lab that allows researchers to observe patients while interacting with providers, as well as a Healthy Aging and Independent Living Lab. The center focuses on design in healthcare  such as patient exam rooms and delivery models  to improve the patient experience.

The Innovation Center linked to 802-bed Mercy Medical Center - Des Moines (Iowa) was established in 2014. Mercy Innovation Center provides observation opportunities, engineering services, simulation labs, project piloting, business plan development and process improvement for individuals engaged in the creative process. Samuel Schone serves as the director of Mercy Innovation Center.

Wyoming, Mich.-based Metro Health Innovation Center houses four departments: the physician hospital organization, IT, security and privacy, and professional billing and pre-arrival. The facility is a collaborative space, allowing for Metro Health employees to gather and work on projects.

Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, has its Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice, one of 13 research centers within the hospital. Researchers at the center seek to discover new methods for care delivery, both through information technology and communication techniques. The center has four key research focuses: depression or suicidal ideation, clotting disorders, drug use and routine preventive care services.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospitallaunched its innovation center in 2014. NYP Innovation Center is based in Blueprint Health, an accelerator and coworking space for health tech startups. The center held New York City's first hospital hackathon in March 2014.

The Center for Learning & Innovation at Great Neck, N.Y.-based Northwell Health aims to advance professional provider education through a variety of continuous learning programs, including patient safety, bio-skill development and leadership and nursing fellowships. The CLI works to improve patient care, develop future leaders and enhance healthcare business practices.

New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System launched its accelerator initiative called innovationOchsner in 2015. iO partners with technology developers and tech innovators both inside and outside of the healthcare industry to support the development of new clinical products in patient-centered care. Ochsner also embarked on a three-year health initiative in collaboration with GE Healthcare and The Idea Village to foster healthcare innovation through challenges that promote the marriage of technology and patient-centered care.

Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Parkview Health's Mirro Center for Research and Innovation is among the newest innovation centers the country, having opened in late April. Folded into the Mirro Center is Parkview Research Center, a 25-year-old research hub, and the newly formed Center for Healthcare Innovation where scientists, entrepreneurs and organizations collaborate on new clinical solutions. The Mirro Center also features three simulation labs and classrooms for education and training personnel.

In Burlingame, Calif., is Mills-Peninsula Health Services, a Sutter Health-affiliated organization comprised of a medical center and health center. It operates the Center for Innovation & Research, a laboratory to develop new healthcare models, technologies, products, service and treatments. The center makes use of its proximity to Silicon Valley (25 miles) and San Francisco's (17 miles) biotech industries to partner with entrepreneurs and innovators.

The Innovation Lab at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center in Rio Rancho, N.M., aims to bring healthcare workers and consumers together to develop better care approaches for improved patient outcomes. The lab occupies a designated space within the hospital set up for testing new ideas and care innovations. Since its conception, the lab has helped design and implement several leading-edge approaches at Rust, including acuity-adaptable patient rooms and a telemedicine-enabled ICU.

The Center for Medical Education and Innovation at Riverside Methodist in Columbus, Ohio, is a joint medical education facility and clinical training center. Through the use of human patient simulators and other advances in medical education technology, the center enables Riverside Medical Education to simulate the patient experience in a wide variety of clinical situations to establish improved training practices and better prepared medical staff.

In 2010, theUniversity of Californialaunched the Center for Health Quality and Innovation in Oakland, with representation from six UC medical school deans, five UC medical center CEOs and chaired by John Stobo, MD, the UC Health senior vice president. The center supports innovations in development across the UC health campuses through grants, fellowships and colloquiums.

The Center for Surgical Innovation is affiliated with Aurora-based University of Colorado Hospital and the university's medical school. The CSI has been part of the medical school for about a decade, serving as a training facility for surgeons as well as a development hub for new surgical techniques and technologies. Clinicians from around the world come to Colorado to learn at the CSI alongside UC medical students.

The Connecticut Institute for Primary Care Innovation is a collaborative enterprise between Saint Francis Care in Hartfordand the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington. The center aims to advance primary care education and innovation by conducting research on primary care delivery models. CIPCI includes a collaborative theater for clinician learning sessions, a simulation studio with moveable walls for patient flow and office redesign research as well as an idea lab for brainstorming and process mapping.

The Innovation Accelerator Program from Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania Health System is a grant program designed to help thought leaders develop, test and implement new approaches in healthcare delivery. The accelerator program currently supports teams conducting research into: increasing compliance with preoperative instructions, automating lab monitoring for patients on high risk medications and redesigning follow-up scheduling practices to improve patient experience.

In Chapel Hill, N.C., UNC Health Care and the UNC School of Medicine share Innovate Health Care @ Carolina. Within the center is an Innovation Council, which functions as a think tank that helps with ideation and selection of innovative opportunities. David Rubinow, MD, is the director of UNC Innovation and Health Care System Transformation. Through a partnership with Forecast Health, the center recently produced an analytical model that helps clinicians predict when patients are at high risk of readmission so care teams can proactively offer support to individual patients based on their risks and needs.

In Pittsburgh,UPMCEnterprises is the health system's innovation arm. Formerly called the UPMC Technology Development Center, UPMC Enterprises features a team of more than 200 technology professionals offering clinical, technical, business and capital resources to develop, test and commercialize new healthcare products and services. Rasu Shrestha, MD, CIO of UPMC, also serves as executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises.

The commercialization and technology transfer arm of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Wake Forest Innovations seeks to transform ideas and inventions into proprietary technologies and inventions to improve healthcare. The organization offers industry relations and business development, product innovation services, and contract research and development services. Eric Tomlinson, PhD, CIO of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, leads the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, a hub for biomedical science and IT within Wake Forest Innovations.

WakeMed Center for Innovative Learning, part of WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, N.C., is designed to facilitate realistic multidisciplinary clinical training and education using human patient simulators, educational gaming and other technologies. The center offers clinical and educational training to providers across the healthcare continuum, including physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and first responders.
In their respective industries, Larry Page and Judy Faulkner could be considered celebrities. They sit in the chief executive position of arguably the most successful search engine and health IT companies, respectively. But beyond that, their public personas  or lack thereof  and approach to leadership are quite similar, and may offer insight at what it takes to be a successful leader.

1. Business comes first.

Conor Dougherty, the Google beat report for The New York Times wrote a piece on his attempts to interview and further understand Mr. Page, co-founder and CEO of Google. He writes he has been trying to get an interview with Mr. Page since roughly August 2014, when he started covering the beat. "I've been waiting ever since," he writes.

Similarly, Judy Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems, is rare to grant a media interview. Although she has been more active in the press this past year than ever before  she spoke with Becker's Hospital Review twice since February 2015  Epic historically didn't pay much mind to any marketing or public outreach.

In one of those interviews, Becker's asked Ms. Faulkner about the secret behind Epic's marketing-free success, and she said there is no strategy behind it. "When I started the company, I had no idea how to do marketing, so we just didn't do it," she said. "What I did know, because I was a technical person, is to be able to write good software. So we focused on writing good software, and we focused on doing good support. And then fortunately, word of mouth did the rest."

Mr. Page reportedly doesn't often grant media interviews, but he does speak to the public at large, typically at staged events such as TED talks, according to Mr. Dougherty.

The same can be said for Ms. Faulkner, who every year dons a character costume to speak at Epic's Annual User Meeting. In 2015, she was dressed as Lucille Ball to fit the meeting's "A Classic Episode" theme. The year before, she wore a flannel shirt, coveralls and work boots to fit the "Down on the Farm" theme, according to The Capital Times.



Keeping distance from the press, especially for such prominent individuals, isn't an indication of something sinister, as Mr. Dougherty suggests.

"I want to say loud and clear that I don't think Mr. Page or any other business leader has a responsibility to talk to the press," Mr. Dougherty continues. "He is a busy man and his media shyness probably should not be confused with reclusion."

And both Mr. Page and Ms. Faulkner certainly are busy, running successful, billion-dollar companies. Google reported $66 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2014, and Epic's 2014 revenue was estimated at $1.8 billion.

According to Mr. Dougherty's NYT report, more than 1 billion individuals use six Google products. That means one in every seven people use one of these products.

In the health IT industry, Epic has a similar presence in hospitals and physicians offices. The vendor reports 355 customers, and in June 2015, it says 15.3 million patient records were exchanged on its Care Everywhere network, including to and from Epic EHRs, non-Epic EHRs, health information exchanges and government agencies. Additionally, it is the third most-used vendor hospitals and health systems use to attest to meaningful use, following MEDITECH and Cerner, according to March 2015 data from ONC.

2. They are fierce do-gooders.

Both Mr. Page and Ms. Faulkner's ideas of success extend beyond the boundaries of their corporations. These two leaders are keen on leaving legacies extending beyond Internet searches and medical software, evidenced by their commitment to philanthropy.

Mr. Dougherty says Mr. Page characterizes Google as a nonprofit instead of a corporation. He points to a 2014 Charlie Rose interview in which Mr. Page said he wants to support endeavors "to back up humanity," specifically Tesla founder Elon Musk's vision to go to Mars, reports Wired. Mr. Page commented in the interview that Mr. Musk's vision is a goal worthy of exploration. "That's a company, and that's philanthropical," he said.

Ms. Faulkner, who Forbes listed among on its 2015 list of the wealthiest individuals in the country, also has philanthropic ideas for her assets. In June 2015, Ms. Faulkner joined the Giving Pledge and pledged 99 percent of her assets to philanthropy.

3. Their strength is in their people.

And, the two leaders appear to deeply care about their employees. Mr. Dougherty says in interviews with former Google employees, Mr. Page's concern for employees and how they can contribute to Google became clear. "A number of recently departed Googlers told me that after they gave notice, Mr. Page personally asked them to stay. They said that, during these conversations, he honestly laid out his concerns and aspirations for the company and its future," he writes.

When Becker's spoke with Ms. Faulkner in early 2015, she also commented on the wellbeing of her employees. Becker's asked what Ms. Faulkner hopes employees internalize during their tenure at Epic, and she responded with two things: roots and wings.

"For roots, I mean caring, honesty, keeping commitments; those basic roots there that are fundamental," she said. "And wings, I mean being proactive. Taking ownership over a project and doing it well."

Final thoughts

Mr. Page and Ms. Faulkner arent the only leaders with these characteristics, but they certainly contribute to the wild success two individuals whose vision, business acumen and commitment to their mission have landed them at the top of the ranks.

The two appear to be paving the road for future generations to carry on their legacies. Their businesses stand on solid ground today, and Mr. Page and Ms. Faulkners philanthropic endeavors are an investment in the future. Thirdly, Mr. Page and Mr. Faulkner have expressed direct concern for their employees, the very ones who will carry on their legacy and their work in the years to come.

Google and Epic wouldnt be what they are now without Mr. Page and Ms. Faulkner, but the two are positioning the companies in such a way that they can continue to thrive even when they are no longer in the C-suite. And that is a defining characteristic of a leader: Doing something bigger than ones self.

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7 thoughts on great leadership

50 things to know about Epic and Judy Faulkner

This story about a janitor in Johns Hopkins is a must-read for any hospital executive
CMS found "deficient practices" at a Theranos laboratory in Newark, Calif., some of which "pose immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety," following a completion of a November inspection, a letter released Wednesday said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Theranos is a blood testing startup based out of Palo Alto, Calif., that has been under scrutiny since October, when The Wall Street Journal published an intensive critical report of the company's processes.

Here are 10 things to know about CMS' findings, Theranos' response and the repercussions.

1.CMS found Theranos' Newark lab had five major infractions that violate federal standards that involve a range of issues, including its hematology practices, analytic systems and personnel issues, according to the report.

2. Detailed descriptions of the infractions are not available to the public currently, but according to The Wall Street Journal, should be available within the next few months.

3. What is known about the five infractions is they range from standard and condition-level deficiencies to severe and "likely to cause, at any time, serious injury or harm, or death to individuals served by the laboratory or to the health and safety of the general public," the CMS letter said, according to the report. "Condition-level" deficiencies are the most serious level of infraction, Robert Fitzgerald, PhD, professor of pathology and director of toxicology at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Wall Street Journal.

4. Theranos' hematology practices are what resulted in findings of "immediate jeopardy," a rare and severe finding, according to The Wall Street Journal.

5. In an emailed statement, Theranos responded to CMS' findings, stating the lab was undergoing a self-review at the time of the investigation. "This survey of our Newark, Calif., lab began months ago and does not reflect the current state of the lab... We are still reviewing the report, but we addressed many of the observations during the survey and are actively continuing to take corrective action," the statement says. As for the hematology finding at the "immediate jeopardy" level, Theranos underscored that it neither applies to the whole lab, nor every location.

6. Theranos also noted the findings do not apply to its Arizona lab, where 90 percent of its tests are processed, according to the emailed statement.

7. It also called out several media allegations that were not part of CMS' findings, including allegations it manipulated data to make its proprietary machines seem more accurate, or that it diluted test samples, causing inaccurate results.

8. Theranos has 10 days from the date on the letter, Jan. 25, to come up with a solution for the problems found by CMS, according to the report. "A full plan of correction will be submitted to CMS within days," Theranos' statement said.

9. If Theranos is unable to address the issues, it could lose its certification and be subject to fines of up to $10,000 per day, according to the report.

10. In light of CMS' findings, Walgreens announced Thursday it would suspend use of all Theranos testing in the 40 Arizona stores where it was being used, according to The Chicago Tribune.

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Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford (Calif.) and Stanford Children's Health added two additional board members this year.

Christie Coleman, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Palo Alto (Calif.) Medical Foundation, and Amit Sinha, managing director at Goldman Sachs have joined the board.

Dr. Coleman joined PAMF in 1996, where she has chaired the OB-GYN department for the past 15 years. She has also been a member of the Quality Assurance Committee in the OB-GYN department of Stanford Health Care since 2000 and a member of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology since 1995. Dr. Coleman holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Stanford University and a medical degree from Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga. She completed both her internship and residency at Stanford Health Care.

Mr. Sinha, who also serves as a member of Lucile Packard Children's Strategic Planning Committee, has been with Goldman Sachs since 2004. He currently is a senior member of the Healthcare Investment Banking Group and also has experience with the Mergers & Acquisitions Group. He was named managing director in 2012. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Mr. Sinha worked with The Boston Consulting Group. He has a bachelor's degree in biology from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School in Boston.

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), minority leader of the House, disassociated Democrats from tax hikes promised under the single-payer healthcare proposal of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), according to The Hill.

"We're not running on any platform of raising taxes," Rep. Pelosi said Wednesday, according to The Hill. "We do want to have a fairer tax system, and  we hope that we can do that this year."

Sen. Sanders confirmed loud and clear at a Democratic town hall Monday his healthcare plan would require tax increases, but he called it disingenuous to call his proposal one of the biggest tax hikes in history because private health insurance premiums will be eliminated, which will ultimately save households money.

Rep. Pelosi noted Wednesday she has supported a single-payer healthcare system for decades, but the reality of our healthcare system and the political environment makes that plan not possible, according to the report.

"We have a very realistic plan that's out there," she said, according to The Hill. "Can it be improved upon? Everything can. But it's no use having a conversation about something that's not going to happen. Right now we're proud of what we have and want to build upon that."

Rep. Pelosi has not endorsed a candidate. Though she has previously voiced support of having a woman in the White House, she also acknowledged some positive aspects to Sen. Sanders' campaign.

"The fact is that Bernie Sanders is enlarging the universe of people who are paying attention to the election, and we hope that he will bring them to the polls in November to support the Democratic nominee," she said.

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The Pennsylvania Attorney General will not oppose a proposed merger between New Castle, Pa.-based Jameson Health System and Pittsburgh-based UPMC, according to a statement from Jameson officials.

The process of joining the two systems began in September 2014, when Jameson signed a letter of intent to merge with UPMC. The two systems signed a definitive merger agreement last February. The health systems had hoped the deal would be approved by the state attorney general and close last spring, but the decision was delayed due to antitrust concerns. The transaction was issued another setback last August, when the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office recommended Jameson look for other buyers before finalizing the deal with UPMC due to the potential antitrust issues associated with the deal.

After conducting a new round of bidding for potential partners, Jameson's board determined that no rebid proposal met the qualifications to serve the interests of Lawrence County residents. The attorney general disagreed, and the issue went to arbitration. Jameson was successful in arbitration, allowing the deal to move forward.

"We are grateful to have received a favorable ruling that supports our goal to ensure a future of long-term access to high-quality healthcare for the 90,000-plus residents of Lawrence County," said Jameson officials.

With clearance from the attorney general, the deal will go through if UPMC and the attorney general can reach a consent decree. "A proposal for such a consent decree is already in the hands of the Attorney General's Office," according to Jameson officials.

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Cleveland-based MetroHealth Medical Center officials said an external report investigating allegations of financial wrongdoing among hospital executives found no evidence supporting such accusations, according to newsnet5.com.

The hospital's former director of internal audits, Simpson Huggins, filed a complaint in state court in December, claiming MetroHealth placed him on unpaid administrative leave after he reported allegations against the hospital's leaders. He said MetroHealth's vice presidents and an employee's relative had received free Botox injections, and that CEO Akram Boutros, MD, paid for personal international vacations with the health system's money.

MetroHealth leaders maintain Mr. Huggins was not placed on leave for reporting his allegations, but rather because he failed "to uphold his obligations as the director, internal audit for MetroHealth" and because he did not "conduct himself in accordance with the propriety that such a role requires," a response to Mr. Huggins' lawsuit reads, according to the report. Hospital executives added that Mr. Huggins' leave was paid through his accrued personal time.

The hospital hired auditing firm KPMG to investigate the allegations, according to the report. KPMG identified "the business purpose of the transaction" for each of Dr. Boutros' transactions during his two-and-a-half years as CEO, including more than $43,000 worth of travel expenses.

Dr. Boutros said the hospital was not allowed to charge for the Botox drugs in question in Mr. Huggins' allegations because they were donated by a pharmaceutical company, a common practice at research hospitals, according to the report.

Mr. Huggins' attorney told newnet5.com he is skeptical of the integrity of the KPMG report because Mr. Huggins was never interviewed during the investigation.
Acquisition helps CTL Medical Corporation enhance its Medical Device Manufacturing Practice.

DALLAS (Jan. 26, 2016) Today, CTL Medical Corporation, a Dallas, Texas-based medical device manufacturing and service company, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AccelSPINE, a nationally recognized medical device designer and manufacturer headquartered in Dallas. The acquisition went into effect January 25, 2016.

"AccelSPINE is a leader in our industry, and they have a proven track record of producing exceptional medical products. Acquiring AccelSPINE not only helps advance our global growth strategy, but it also helps us meet the needs of our growing customer base," said Andy Choi, Chief Business Development Officer of CTL Medical Corporation.

AccelSPINE is a privately held company that was established in October 2010 by then President & CEO, Daniel Chon. The company chose its Dallas headquarters in March 2011 to leverage strategic business initiatives and has since seen significant growth.

In 2015, AccelSPINE received its CE Marking and EN ISO 13485 certification. This certification allowed AccelSPINE to expand its customer base to the 28 countries that make up the European Union and five additional countries that adhere to European Union regulations.

While CTL Medical Corporation wholly owns AccelSPINE, the AccelSPINE brand will remain intact until the integration is complete and appropriate regulatory measures have been met. CTL Medical Corporation will retain all of AccelSPINE's current employees and executives, and anticipates a significant increase in workforce by early 2017.

About CTL Medical Corporation

CTL Medical Corporation was established in 2015 by Daniel Chon, former President & CEO of AccelSPINE, with the vision of creating a fully integrated, industry leading, global medical device design, development and manufacturing company. CTL Medical Corporation has assembled a world class executive team, bringing together some of the industry's most exceptional talent, further extending their position as a leader in medical device design and manufacturing. For more information, visit http://www.ctlmed.com/.

About AccelSPINE

AccelSPINE is a nationally recognized medical device company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company designs, develops and manufactures spinal implants and instruments tailored to fit the unique needs of surgeons and patients. For more information, visit http://www.accelspine.com/.

###



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Stephen Fashoro

TrizCom PR

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Dr. Raphael Pratali successfully performed the first idiopathic scoliosis surgical procedure using Implanet's JAZZ Band in Brazil.

Here are five notes:

1. Dr. Pratali performed the procedure at Hospital do Servidor Publico Estadual in Sao Paulo.

2. Brazil approved the use of JAZZ technology two months ago.

3. There are more surgical procedures with the JAZZ system scheduled in Brazil.

4. "JAZZ technology is an excellent alternative to screws in maximizing the correction of major spine deformities," said Dr. Pratali. "Using JAZZ implants in a hybrid construct in idiopathic scoliosis surgery makes it possible to restore the patient's sagittal balance."

5. Implanet is a Bordeaux, France-based medical technology company developing vertebral and knee surgery implants.
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When an interest in history led Co Antrim man Peter Thompson to a fundraiser for a Battle of the Somme mural, the last thing he expected to find was the romance between a staunch unionist and a dedicated nationalist.

For Co Antrim man Peter Thompson, the Easter Rising provides the starting point for an extraordinary Romeo and Juliet love story that spanned Ulster's sectarian divide.

In happy contrast to Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers though, staunch unionist and Somme veteran George McBride and Winifred Carney, a pistol-packing member of the women's Republican volunteer movement and secretary to James Connolly, went on to enjoy many years of happy marriage after the Easter Rising of 1916.

An avid historian from Dervock, Peter discovered the unlikely tale quite by chance in 1985 while fundraising locally for a wall mural to commemorate the Battle of the Somme.

"There was 150 left over in the kitty, so we decided to donate it to a hospital for veterans in Belfast, known as the Somme Hospital, now the Somme nursing home," he recalls. "When we handed over the cash, a nurse asked if we'd like to meet one of the veterans.

"They wheeled in this gentleman called George McBride, who told us how he'd fought in the 36th (Ulster) Division in the First World War and was captured at the Somme and held as a prisoner of war.

"For me, this was fascinating stuff, but then when he moved on to his personal life, I could hardly believe my ears.

"On his return to Belfast in 1919, George joined the Labour Party, where he met and fell in love with Winifred Carney. Now this was no ordinary love story.

"George, a Protestant born in the Shankill Road in Belfast, was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and then joined the Ulster Division to fight for his king and country, while Winifred, a Catholic from Co Down, was a key figure in the 1916 Rising. Known as the 'typist with the Webley' because of the revolver she carried, along with her typewriter as James Connolly's secretary, she never left Connolly's side throughout the fighting in the GPO.

"She and her colleagues in the women's republican volunteer movement were subsequently interned in Kilmainham Jail and later Aylesbury Prison in England, until December 1916."

In 1924 she too joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party and was struck by Cupid's arrow when the handsome Orangeman won her heart. The pair were married in 1928.

"They had much in common in that both fought for their country, and were captured and imprisoned, but at the end of the day, he was a staunch Ulster unionist and she was an equally patriotic Irish nationalist," says Peter.

"How two political idealists on completely different sides could marry was unheard of. I asked George how they dealt with that and he just said, 'We left that side of things alone'. I was mesmerised."

The marriage was not accepted by some of their friends and there's no doubt the couple would have been ostracised in many social circles, but, as Peter says: "George and Winnie were in love and that's all that mattered - that and their shared belief in socialism."

They lived happily in Belfast for 15 years, and George never remarried after Winnie's death in 1943. However, while she was buried in Milltown cemetery, her beloved husband was buried elsewhere - and for years, Winnie's grave remained unmarked.

On the website thewildgeese.irish, Winnie's great niece Joan Austin explains: "Uncle Ernest refused to put a headstone on Aunt Winnie's grave due to her marriage to Orangeman and Protestant George McBride. The National Graves Association stepped in and recognised Winnie by erecting her well-deserved headstone, while tending her grave to this day."

Amid all the sectarianism here, this unlikely love story is seen by some as a beacon of hope that shone decades before the peace process started healing old wounds between north and south.

Peter is actively involved in historical events, both in his own village and in cross-community projects on both sides of the border. Reconciliation through cultural understanding and respect is part of his ethos.

"I joined re-enactments of the 1798 rebellion - some say the forerunner to the 1916 Rising - in Mayo and Wexford, and made some great friends there," he says.

"And in turn, when these people came to my village of Dervock as part of a local council cross-community project, I gave them a tour and told them stories about the place and they loved it.

"I love history, regardless of where it's from, and this year, of course, marks the centenary of one of the momentous events in our shared past. I don't believe the events of 1916 caused the divide in this country; the barriers were already there.

"My great grandfather, William John Cheatley, was a Lance Corporal in the 2nd Battalion Irish Rifles, stationed at Portobello Barracks, during the Easter Rising.

"I want to visit Dublin this year and see the sights for myself, to go where he was and stand in the ground where he stood.

"The Easter Rising is part of the tapestry of our shared culture and history. I know many unionists disown it, saying it has nothing to do with us, but it has.

"It's part of who we are, all of us. If we don't study this important part of our history, understand it and learn from it, we damn future generations to come."
Civil engineering apprenticeships must be introduced to ensure key infrastructure projects are delivered in Northern Ireland, it has been claimed.

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has said an apprenticeship programme will help match demand and combat an undersupply of civil engineers.

Richard Kirk, regional director of the ICE, said apprentices could start working after their GCSEs with no debt and a "clear pathway to highest professional levels within our industry".

A civil engineering apprenticeship is one of 10 recommendations in the ICE NI's manifesto for 2016, which was launched this week.

Other recommendations include introducing domestic water charging by May 2019 and delivering both the North-South interconnector for electricity and a publicly-owned 'energy from waste' facility by May 2021.
Northern Ireland has greatly disadvantaged itself in its approach to new housing, according to a major housebuilder

Northern Ireland has greatly disadvantaged itself in its approach to new housing, according to a major housebuilder.

The industry was responding to the Housing Supply Forum report, commissioned by the Department for Social Development (DSD).

It said not enough houses were being built and that regulatory burdens were putting off construction, growth and investment.

The report said it was "concerned at the potential that this failure in supply could have in terms of creating another house price 'bubble'". The forum was set up by DSD to examine why not enough social and private houses were being built in Northern Ireland.

And the report said there was greater recognition of the importance of overall housing supply in other parts of the UK.

The range of initiatives in England "demonstrates the more joined-up approach to the delivery of housing in some parts of Great Britain".

Conor Mulligan, head of Lagan Homes in Northern Ireland, said there were barriers to housebuilding which did not exist in other parts of the UK.

The regulatory issues raised in the report included the cost of bonds, building regulations and the planning process. Mr Mulligan said: "The report shows that Northern Ireland has greatly disadvantaged itself." And he claimed the report "does not make wonderful reading for the government".

"Amongst other things, it highlights the range of regulatory burdens placed on employers and investors in Northern Ireland which deter rather than promote construction, growth and investment."

The report said it aimed to address a growing shortfall in supply. There were only 4,415 new homes started in 2013/14, compared with 14,000 started at the height of the market in 2006/7.

The report also said fewer companies were building houses, with only four building more than 100 units per year during 2014, compared with 14 in 2006.

That would have implications for supply in future, and could contribute to another housing bubble.

John Armstrong, head of the Construction Employers Federation (CEF) and chairman of the forum, said: "In Northern Ireland we are currently not building enough houses. Failure to address this deficit will have serious social and economic consequences. We hope that the recommendations of our report, if adopted, will help to rectify this shortfall."

Social Development Minister Maurice Morrow said his department will now consider the findings of the report.

Numbers of types of houses built in 2015, compared with 2014 (2014 given first)

Detached 781, 909

Semi-detached 1,000, 1,335

Terraced 380, 419

Flats/Maisonettes 254, 441

Bungalows 72, 119
The UK's Trade and Investment Minister has called for calm surrounding the debate on Britain's EU referendum during a visit to Dublin.

Lord Francis Maude said the issue barely came up when he spoke with investors at a breakfast briefing yesterday organised by accountancy group PwC.

Prime Minister David Cameron will meet European Council President Donald Tusk in London on Sunday, as officials prepare to reveal details of reform negotiations next week.

The meeting will follow Mr Cameron's talks in Brussels today with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Lord Maude said the sooner the reform package is agreed and Mr Cameron can present it to the British people, "then the sooner we can get on and have it and get it done". But he said the issue comes up "less than you think" with investors. "I did a breakfast with a bunch of tech companies who are interested in doing stuff in the UK, and it barely came up. I don't think it's the most important thing."

He added: "There are big chunks of what the EU does that Britain isn't part of and isn't going to be part of, so we just need to be a bit calmer about it all."

Asked if negative commentary about a potential Brexit was overblown, he said he doesn't "hear catastrophe merchants around the place".

"People who argue that it would be catastrophic to leave are probably overstating it. Equally those who claim that it would be a massive liberation are overstating it."

Ireland's Central Bank chief Philip Lane this week said major multinationals were stalling on plans to invest in the UK while eyeing up Ireland in the event of a Brexit.
First Minister Arlene Foster has told business leaders that growing the economy remains the number one priority for the Executive.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Electric Ireland, Mrs Foster said: "During my time in office, I want to see a Northern Ireland where economic prosperity is achieved and shared right across the province and where we value people from every background and every walk of life and make them as proud of this country as we are.

"We have brought more jobs to Northern Ireland than at any time in our history and we have secured the power to set our own rate of corporation tax at 12.5% from April 2018.

"When others would have walked away from corporation tax because it was too big or too complex, we stayed the course because the prize is too great."

Ann McGregor, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, said it was reassuring to hear that the Executive remained focused on the economy.

"Along with the new Department of the Economy, which will bring skills and the economy closer together, a new programme for government and an action plan to boost exports, 2016 can provide the foundations required for businesses to grow," she added.

"Knowing the new lower corporation tax rate and date will help to attract new high-end foreign investment, and it is good news that the recent budget allocated to Invest NI includes resources for marketing this."
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Blake Harrison attend a special preview screening of the new Dad's Army film at Chicksands military base in Bedfordshire

Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones added some Hollywood glamour to the Chicksands military base ahead of a screening of her new movie Dad's Army.

The 46-year-old oozed elegance in a red dress and black military-style coat as she and her co-star Blake Harrison mingled with soldiers at the Bedfordshire base.

She and Harrison happily chatted to soldiers before introducing the film, which was a special screening held for military personnel ahead of its official release next week.

She plays journalist Rose Winters in the big-screen version of the hit BBC One sitcom.

The original series, set in the Second World War, ran for nine years and its new big-screen incarnation stars Toby Jones, Michael Gambon, Bill Nighy and Mark Gatiss.

:: Dad's Army is released in the UK on February 5.
Ryan McNaught gives the thumbs-up in front of his creation

A figure with a pile of ice on top of him is among those depicted in various states of distress on the doomed ships deck

A Lego recreation of the sinking of the Titanic

It could well be the most tasteless depiction of the Titanic ever created.

An Australian model maker has spent 250 hours making a Lego-based recreation of the moment the doomed Belfast-built luxury liner split in half while sinking.

Ryan McNaught's replica also includes scores of 'minifigs' - miniature figurines - re-enacting the plight of the 1,500-plus passengers who lost their lives when the New York-bound Titanic sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic after striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage in April 1912.

The 120,000-piece project - which lights up - has actually been hailed as a masterpiece in the modelling world, with The Brothers Brick, the popular online blog for adult Lego fans, calling it "an incredible feat of engineering".

But Susie Millar of the Belfast Titanic Society said she feared people here would find it in rather poor taste.

"It's a shame that, having gone to so much trouble, rather than showing the Titanic at its finest, this model maker has instead decided to show it at its worst moment, just as it's plunging into the ocean and breaking apart," she said.

"He's obviously a very creative chap and it's just a pity that he's chosen this particular time in Titanic's history rather than something more positive.

"People may find it insensitive because in this model there are people in the water and people in lifeboats. Was that really necessary?"

Jan Dizon of the technological innovation magazine Tech Times is, however, clearly impressed by the replica.

"What really makes our eyes pop is the fact that this Titanic was built to minifig scale," he said.

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Photo issued by Henry Aldridge and Son. PA Survivors of the Titanic disaster in a crowded lifeboat. General Photographic Agency Survivors of the Titanic disaster are greeted by their relatives upon their safe return to Southampton. Hulton Archive Florette Guggenheim (nee Seligman 1870 - 1937, right) and her brother James de Witt Seligman at the offices of the White Star shipping line in New York, April 1912. The pair are waiting to enquire about the welfare of Guggenheim's husband, American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, who was a passenger on board the Titanic when she sank on 15th April. Benjamin Guggenheim was not among the surviviors. Topical Press Agency Index cards from The Associated Press Corporate Archive in New York listing stories written by the wire service about the Titanic. Frank Franklin II A diver accompanies a 17-ton portion of the hull of the Titanic as it is lifted to the surface in the Atlantic Ocean. Anonymous Front page of The Owensboro Daily Messenger headlining news that the Titanic had sunk. In this 1912 photo made available by the Library of Congress, Harold Bride, surviving wireless operator of the Titanic, with feet bandaged, is carried up the ramp of a ship. Crowds gather around the bulletin board of the New York American newspaper in New York, where the names of people rescued from the sinking Titanic are displayed. How the sinking was reported AP The employment record for Captain John Edward Smith. Warwick Family Collection Karl Behr and Richard Williams, who were world-class tennis players who survived the sinking of the Titanic and and went on to win numerous major tennischampionships on both sides of the Atlantic. Duncan Phillips PR/Robert Fuller Merchant Navy Seamen Charles Rice, who was a Fireman on the Titanic and survived. The National Archives/Crown Copy An original Titanic menu from April 10th 1912 Peter Morrison This composite image, released by RMS Titanic Inc., and made from sonar and more than 100,000 photos taken in 2010 from by unmanned, underwater robots, shows a small portion of a comprehensive map of the 3-by-5-mile debris field surrounding the stern of the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Belfast Telegraph:Page One/Titanic. 16/4/1912 BELFAST TELEGRAPH This is an undated photo showing the bow of the Titanic at rest on the bottom of the North Atlantic, about 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland. The first tourists to see the bow up close viewed it from the portholes of a tiny submersible in early September. (AP Photo/Ralph White) RALPH WHITE Launch of the Titanic, published in the Belfast Telegraph 31/5/1911 This composite image, released by RMS Titanic Inc., and made from sonar and more than 100,000 photos taken in 2010 from by unmanned, underwater robots, shows a small portion of a comprehensive map of the 3-by-5-mile debris field surrounding the stern of the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. This composite image, released by RMS Titanic Inc., and made from sonar and more than 100,000 photos taken in 2010 from by unmanned, underwater robots, shows a small portion of a comprehensive map of the 3-by-5-mile debris field surrounding the stern of the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Titanic, built by Harland and Wolff, was driven by two gigantic wing propellers measuring over 23 feet in diameter and a center propeller spanning more than 16 feet. A shipyard worker's ticket to the launch of the RMS Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Lord Pirrie, chairman of H&W (left) and Bruce Ismay, chairman of White Star, make a final tour of inspection of Titanic before her launch. 31/5/1911. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum NMNI Titanic first class suite bedroom 'b58'. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic at fitting-out wharf with three out of four funnels fitted. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic. Hydraulic launch rams below port bow. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic, double bottom and initial plating of tank top of Olympic, with keel of Titanic laid on No.3 slip. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic, port near profile during outfitting at Thompson deepwarter wharf. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic, upper part of stern frame in position. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum A page of the document written by Laura Francatelli, which is her eyewitness account of the sinking of the Titanic Henry Aldridge and Son A woman examines a leather boot in an exhibition of artefacts recovered from the wreck of the Titanic on November 3, 2010 in London, England Oli Scarff A photo of the Titanic's giant propellers and rudder. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Marie-Therese Hurson/Harrison Photography 07721918867 The detailed drawing of the RMS Titanic used at Lord Mersey's inquiry into the 1912 disaster. Belfast City Council The Titanic's two main engines near completion in engine works erecting shop. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Duff Gordon, Titanic survivor Titanic. Port bow 3/4 profile afloat immediately after launch. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Launch of the Titanic, published in the Belfast Telegraph 31/5/1911 Titanic first class cafe parisienne. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic. The Great gantry, Queen's Island, Belfast. This photograph shows the enormous scale of the ship, together with the complex structure of the enfolding steel gantry, from which she will soon be free. The photograph also reflects old and new maritime technologies, with the traditional wooden schooner in the foreground contrasting eith the modernity ot Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic. In this photograph of the cabinet shop, taken in 1899, a small army of cabinet-makers are at work. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Titanic workers Workmen prepare the Titanic slipway. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Millvina Dean the last living survivor of the Titanic disaster was today Thursday April 11, 2002, due to open a rejuvenated exhibition to mark the 90th anniversary of the disaster. Ms Dean, 90, was only nine weeks old when the ship hit an iceberg in the Atlantic on her maiden voyage and sank on April 15 1912, claiming the lives of 1,500 people. The survivor will open Titanic Voices the 90th Anniversary Exhibition at the Maritime Museum in Bugle Street, Southampton. The permanent exhibition has been upgraded with new exhibits, including images from the interior of Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic Chris Ison Dorothy Gibson, Titanic survivor Patrick Dillon, Titanic survivor Titanic leaving Belfast. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum The wedding ring and locket property of Carl Asplund and the wedding ring of Selma Asplund are seen at Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008. The locket and one of the rings were recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, they are all part of the Lillian Asplund collection of Titanic related items. Kirsty Wigglesworth A heavily water stained leather bound journal bearing notes figures relating to the Asplund family, the property of Carl Asplund, is seen at Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008. The locket and one of the rings were recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, they are all part of the Lillian Asplund collection of Titanic related items. Kirsty Wigglesworth A unique emigrant inland forwarding order to the White Star office in New York, is seen at Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008. The locket and one of the rings were recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, they are all part of the Lillian Asplund collection of Titanic related items. Kirsty Wigglesworth Photographs of (from left) Felix Asplund, Selma and Carl Asplund and Lillian Asplund, are seen at Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008. The locket and one of the rings were recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, they are all part of the Lillian Asplund collection of Titanic related items. Kirsty Wigglesworth A gold plated Waltham American pocket watch, the property of Carl Asplund, is seen in front of a modern water colour painting of the Titanic by CJ Ashford at Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008. The locket and one of the rings were recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, they are all part of the Lillian Asplund collection of Titanic related items. Kirsty Wigglesworth An emigration contract/ticket, purchased by the Asplund family for passage from Southampton to New York, and used on the Titanic, is seen at the Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008. The locket and one of the rings were recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, they are all part of the Lillian Asplund collection of Titanic related items. Kirsty Wigglesworth The crew of the RMS Titanic, pictured just before her maiden voyage. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum The hull of the S.S. Titanic. under construction in dry dock. The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low grade rivets that the ship's builders used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals conclude in a new book. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum This photo provided by Christie's auction house shows a life preserver from the ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic found during the initial search for survivors and owned by the same family for 90 years. Going on the auction block in June, it is the first Titanic life jacket to be offered at auction in the United States, and is one of about six believed to have survived to this day, Christie's said Thursday, May 29, 2008. The Dutch Suite aboard the RMS Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Roberta Maioni, a survivor of the Titanic disaster. Torquay Herald Express Roberta Maioni, a survivor of the Titanic disaster. Torquay Herald Express The White Star Line badge that was given to Roberta Maioni, a survivor of the Titanic disaster, by a man she was said to have fallen in love with during the boat's maiden voyage. Torquay Herald Express Sheet music for "Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey" from the Broadway production "Madame Sherry," (1910) is shown as part of the artifacts collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, Friday, Aug 15, 2008. The 5,500-piece collection contains almost everything recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which has sat 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean since the boat sank on April 15, 1912. Stanley Leary Third-class tea cup china used by passengers and the crew, is shown as part of the artifacts collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, Friday, Aug 15, 2008. The 5,500-piece collection contains almost everything recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which has sat 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean since the boat sank on April 15, 1912. STANLEY LEARY Currency, part of the artifacts collection of the Titanic, is shown as part of the artifacts collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, Friday, Aug 15, 2008. The 5,500-piece collection contains almost everything recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which has sat 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean since the boat sank on April 15, 1912. Stanley Leary The work shirt of W. Allen, a 3rd class passenger on the Titanic, is shown as part of the artifacts collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, Friday, Aug 15, 2008. The 5,500-piece collection contains almost everything recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which has sat 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean since the boat sank on April 15, 1912. STANLEY LEARY A seven of clubs card is shown as part of the artifacts collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, Friday, Aug 15, 2008. The 5,500-piece collection contains almost everything recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which has sat 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean since the boat sank on April 15, 1912. Stanley Leary The pearl penknife, recovered from the body of Edmund Stone, victim of the Titanic disaster The Service ForD "E" deck key, belonging to First Class Steward, Edmund Stone, victim of the Titanic disaster A compensation letter sent to Millvina Dean's mother from the Titanic Relief Fund. HO A 100-year-old suitcase belonging to Millvina Dean, the last remaining survivor of the Titanic Ben Birchall Harland & Wolff drawing room. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Jack Thayer, Titanic survivor The Thermos flask used to feed Titanic survivor baby, Barbara Dainton-West The "unsinkable" four-funnelled ship the SS Titanic. Part of the White Star Line, Titanic sank off Newfoundland on her maiden voyage to the USA after striking an iceberg (14-15/4/1912). Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum PA The Titanic being built in Belfast. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Belfast City Council/PA One of the three Titanic propellers -- the stern section landed upside-down.Photographed by Leonard Evans on 2 September 2000 from submersible MIR 1 -- 2.38 miles below surface of Atlantic Ocean. Bow of Titanic - Photographed by Leonard Evans on 2 September 2000 from submersible Mir-1 -- 2.35 miles below surface of Atlantic Ocean. Titanic stoker William McQuillan was feared lost at sea, but his grave was subsequently discovered in Canada after 93 years... the last resting place of an Ulster-born Titanic victim. An 18-carat gold pocket watch which is among the rare artefacts connected to the Titanic to be sold by Bonhams and Butterfields in Massachusetts in the US on May 1. The watch, which was damaged when disaster struck mid-Atlantic, belonged to Nora Keane, an Irish immigrant, living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with her brothers and sisters. PA A pair of glasses is displayed in the Titanic: Aritifact Exhibition at the Metreon on June 6, 2006 in San Francisco, California. David Paul Morris Binoculars are displayed in the Titanic: Aritifact Exhibition at the Metreon on June 6, 2006 in San Francisco, California. David Paul Morris One of the images on display at the Titanic - Built in Belfast exhibition in Union Station, Washington DC. John Harrison Story of the Titanic sinking on the Belfast Telegraph front page The transporting of the Titanic's anchor. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum The Titanic Report at a book fair in the Wellington Park Hotel. The document, dated July 30, 1912, was the main attraction at the Belfast Antiquarian Book Fair in the Wellington Park Hotel. The report, which was published three months after the tragedy, was presented for sale by Arthur Davidson of Davidson Books at Spa, Ballynahinch Ian Magill Titanic designer Thomas Andrews. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum A deckchair removed from the Titanic just moments before it set sail from Cork. Lillian Asplund, the last US survivor from the sinking of the Titanic, has died. A ticket for the maiden voyage of Titanic. People look at the 15 ton 13' by 30' portion of the First-Class C-Deck hull, one of the artifacts from the Titanic, at the Metreon on June 6, 2006 in San Francisco, California. David Paul Morris A telegraph wheel from the Titanic is displayed in the Titanic: Artifact Exhibition at the Metreon on June 6, 2006 in San Francisco, California. David Paul Morris Artifacts from the Titanic are displayed in the Titanic: Artifact Exhibition at the Metreon on June 6, 2006 in San Francisco, California. David Paul Morris A bowler hat is displayed in the Titanic: Aritifact Exhibition at the Metreon on June 6, 2006 in San Francisco, California. The exhibition opens on June 10, 2006 and will feature more than 300 authentic artifacts that have been recovered from Titanic's debris field. (Photo by David Paul Morris/Getty Images) David Paul Morris Olympic and Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Shipyard worker William Parr (background) pictured in the Titanic gym along with instructor T W McCawley Davison & Associates Ltd Giant starboard anchor of the Titanic is raised for the last time. 1.55pm 11th April 1912 in a picture taken by Father Browne. Fr Browne SJ 1st class dining room on RMS Titanic taken by Father Browne. Fr Browne SJ Marconi Room on RMS Titanic showing Harold Bride in a picture taken by Father Browne. Fr Browne SJ White Star Wharf, Queenstown (Cobh) showing crowds waiting to embark on the tenders in a picture taken by Father Browne. Fr Browne SJ Brilliant new footage of a first class cabin on the Titanic. A live television link-up shows spectacular footage of the captain's cabin Brilliant new footage of a first class cabin on the Titanic. A live television link-up shows spectacular footage of the captain's cabin Pipes and the captain's bathtub are shown in this July 2003 photo, of what remains of the captain's cabin on the Titanic more than two miles underwater in the north Atlantic. Recent research dives to the legendary shipwreck are showing the vessel is deteriorating faster than earlier thought. AP Photo/National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration Front page of Belfast Telegraph BELFAST TELEGRAPH Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum undefined The key to the binoculars store on the Titanic PA Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Shipyard men fitting the starboard tailshaft of the Titanic prior to her launch. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Ulster Folk and Transport Museum The Titanic launches into the water. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Ulster Folk and Transport Museum The shipyard men leaving Queen's Island at the end of a working day in May 1911. Some of them have boarded electric trams for parts of the city beyond walking distance. In the background the Titanic can be seen under her huge gantry. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Ulster Folk and Transport Museum A few of the 15,000 workmen employed by Harland and Wolff Ltd. at Queen's Island, Belfast, with Titanic in the background. Three loftsmen, pictured in 1910 chalking the lines of a ship on portable wooden flooring at Harland and Wolff. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Ulster Folk and Transport Museum The Titanic had a fully equiped gymnasium 44 feet long and 18 feet wide. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Ulster Folk and Transport Museum Titanic. Photograph  National Museums Northern Ireland. Collection Harland & Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum Long-lost film footage of the Titanic, showing the doomed ship moving slowly through Belfast Lough, has been discovered in the loft of a house in Glasgow. The Titanic moored in Belfast before it set sail on its fateful journey Long-lost film footage of the Titanic, showing the doomed ship moving slowly through Belfast Lough, has been discovered in the loft of a house in Glasgow. Frances Godden of Bonhams auction house inspects a silver table centrepiece from the a la carte restaurant on the White Star liner Titanic which sunk in 1912. Michael Stephens A very rare lunch menu for the first full meal served aboard the Titanic, dated April 2, 1914. A letter written by first-class passenger Miss Alice Lennox-Conyngham to her nephew Alan Duff on the Titanic. The letter, postmarked only three days before the liner hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, had been used as a bookmark for years by its unsuspecting owner before a chance conversation revealed its value. OWEN HUMPHREYS Titanic Ship Unknown First class tea cup china used by passengers on the Titanic STANLEY LEARY Third class china used by passengers and the crew on the Titanic STANLEY LEARY FILE - John Zaller, creative director of Premier Exhibitions, discusses objects from the Titanic's Verandah Cafe on display in the "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" at the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York, in this June 24, 2009 Richard Drew Lord Pirrie, the former head of Harland & Wolff and instigator of the Olympic Class liners constructed on the Queen's Island almost 100 years ago. First Class menu from the RMS Titanic. Belfast Telegraph Lunch menu from the RMS Titanic. Belfast Telegraph Colin Cobb's Titanic Walking Tours. The pump house at Thompson graving dock. Ian Magill Colin Cobb's Titanic Walking Tours. An original keel block from the Thompson graving dock Ian Magill Colin Cobb's Titanic Walking Tours. The Thompson graving dock and pump house Ian Magill Colin Cobb's Titanic Walking Tours. The Thompson graving dock and pump house where the Titanic's hull inspection and propeller work was done Ian Magill Colin Cobb's Titanic Walking Tours. The tour reaches the gates through which the Titanic workers travelled each day. Ian Magill The Titanic Building will immortalise one of history's most enduring tales / Facebook

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Whatsapp The photograph shows bodies in sacks piled three high on the deck of the CS Mackay Bennett, before being tipped overboard as the ship's priest conducts a service. Photo issued by Henry Aldridge and Son.

"Little Lego men and women are scattered throughout the ship, and even in the water, telling their own various mini stories of terror, and fighting for survival as the ship splits in half."

Mr Dizon praised Mr McNaught - also known as 'The Brickman', and one of only 13 Lego certified professionals in the world - for his story-telling prowess via his Titanic recreation.

"When you look into the opening of the ship, there are minifigs hanging on for dear life," he said.

"Four minifigs are working together to help their friend back up. One poor chap has a pile of ice that fell on top of him.

"Up on the deck, minifigs are also scrambling in chaos. One man is hanging from his foot caught on a hook, others are by the railings, looking hopelessly at the fortunate few in lifeboats and the unfortunate ones in the icy cold, blue water.

"Stories are told even in the little blue lifeboats; rich passengers in top hats would rather save their bulky chest full of money on the boat, rather than take in survivors who are swimming around.

"Another minifig floating in an upturned car has a sad look on his face as it looks at the devastation around."

He added: "Not since James Cameron's Titanic movie have we felt our heart strings pulled at the loss of the real life Titanic. They may just be minifigs, but McNaught was certainly able to convey the heightened emotions that must have happened on that fateful night."

Mr McNaught, who is married with twins, was unavailable for comment.

But his website says: "Making interactive models and build experiences is my speciality, building things that people can not only be inspired by but interact with allows an amazing flexibility, giving a remote control or allowing people hands-on exposure in the build process really does make for a great experience.

"I have also been lucky enough to win many awards over the years for my models and I look forward to inspiring more and more people with my creations."

Titanics made out of Lego aren't new. An autistic Icelandic boy Brynjar Karl (10) - who visited Titanic Belfast last year - became an internet sensation after posting a time-lapse video of him building a 6.3m model of Harland and Wolff's most famous vessel from 56,000 pieces over 11 months.
Miss Ireland Sacha Livingstone has used one of Northern Ireland's most iconic estates, the stunning Mount Stewart and its gardens, as inspiration for her 'proposal' to model James McDowell.

2016 is a Leap Year and on Leap Day, February 29, tradition dictates that women can get down on bended knee and propose marriage to their partners.

To celebrate this tradition, Tourism Northern Ireland is launching a loved-up competition to find the countrys most romantic proposal idea and help make it happen for one lucky lady and her unsuspecting partner.

The only stipulation is that the idea must be inspired by Northern Ireland including its wonderful countryside and landscapes, tourist attractions, history and people.

A proposal of marriage should be unforgettable, explained Rachel Quigg, Communications and Destination PR Officer, Tourism NI: We want to help one lucky lady plan a surprise proposal at one of Northern Irelands great beauty spots, like Mussenden Temple, or tourist attractions, like the Giants Causeway, that her partner will never forget.

"We will help to arrange everything including a few romantic surprises, said Rachel.

The tradition of women asking their other halfs for their hand in marriage is said to date back to the time of St Brigid and St Patrick when legend has it that she struck a deal with St Patrick to allow women to propose to men every four years as a way of balancing the traditional roles of men and women, in a similar way to how Leap Day balances the calendar.

Rachel continued: In order to win, the proposal idea must use Northern Ireland and its breathtaking scenery, award winning tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants, as the main inspiration.

To enter, email your proposal idea to Tourism Northern Ireland in strictest confidence to marryme@duffyrafferty.com telling them in 200 words or less why your proposal, inspired by Northern Ireland, should be the winner.

Northern Ireland has so much to offer that the proposal ideas could be endless, but Rachel has a few suggestions.

She said: If your other half is a fan of our magnificent mountain ranges then maybe you can surprise them with a romantic dinner for two with a private butler, accompanied by a violinist, on top of Divis Mountain with staggering views over Belfast as your backdrop or the Sperrins in County Tyrone?

Or what about a trip to one of Northern Irelands top attractions or beauty spots, like a cosy candle-lit boat trip for two on the Fermanagh lakes serenaded by a beautiful choir or how about getting down on one knee during a special tour of Mount Stewart with all your family there to meet you at the end?

Is your other half a fan of Game of Thrones? If so, perhaps a surprise proposal at one of the famous filming locations such as the Dark Hedges, Ballintoy Harbour, Cushendun Caves or Castle Ward.

Or why not head to Tannaghmore in Craigavon, home to the Kissing Gate. Legend says when couples kiss over the gate they get married within a year, this could be followed by a delicious five-course dinner cooked by a celebrity chef at an exclusive location, concluded Rachel.

Closing date for entries is February 10. The winners will be required to take part in some publicity.

The Leap Year legend

Legend says that St Brigid struck a deal with St Patrick to allow women to propose to men every four years as a way of balancing the traditional roles of men and women in a similar way to how Leap Day balances the calendar.

According to an old Irish legend, or possibly history, St Brigid struck a deal with St Patrick to allow women to propose to men  and not just the other way around  every four years. This is believed to have been introduced to balance the traditional roles of men and women in a similar way to how Leap Day balances the calendar.

In many European countries, especially in the upper classes of society, tradition dictates that any man who refuses a woman's proposal on February 29 has to buy her 12 pairs of gloves. The intention is that the woman can wear the gloves to hide the embarrassment of not having an engagement ring. During the middle ages there were laws governing this tradition.

People born on February 29 are all invited to join The Honour society of Leap Year Day Babies. According to the Guinness Book of Records, there are Leap Day World Record Holders both of a family producing three consecutive generations born on February 29 and of the number of children born on February 29 in the same family.

Leap Day is also St Oswalds Day, named after an archbishop of York who died on February 29, 992. The memorial is celebrated on February 29 during Leap Years and on February 28 during common years.
Six medical professionals from the province tell Stephanie Bell why they are using their holiday leave to bring their clinical and IT expertise to an African hospital.

A team of top Northern Ireland medics are giving up their annual leave to work in a bush hospital in a war-torn part of rural Uganda.

Two doctors have already flown to the remote region of Africa, where they will be joined by four colleagues to use their skills in a hospital which was founded by a doctor from here.

The team, which has self-funded the trip to Kiwoko Hospital, include an obstetrician, a microbiologist, an ultra-sonographer, an endocrinologist, an IT training manager and a senior IT support officer.

For many of the team this is not their first visit to the hospital.

Kiwoko (pronounced Cheewoko) Hospital is a bush facility in the Luweero district of rural Uganda, about 50 miles north of Kampala.

It developed from a health centre set up in 1987 by Dr Ian Clarke, a GP originally from Newtownards.

The remote hospital currently serves a population of half a million people on an annual budget of around 750,000 a year - roughly the daily cost of running an acute hospital here.

Among its medical provision, the hospital also runs an extensive community healthcare programme, including AIDS awareness, nutrition, and health education.

And the local people travel many miles to receive medical care. Of the native population, 14% are HIV positive.

People also lack access to basic amenities, the water quality is poor and malnutrition is rife.

Part-sponsored by the South Eastern Trust, which has set up a unique partnership with the hospital, the medics, who will spend between two to five weeks in the area, will be using all but one week of their annual leave, with one week sponsored by the Trust.

Before they left, we caught up with the team to find out what motivates them and what they hope to achieve during their visit.

Its a bush hospital in the jungle with plenty of snakes and cockroaches

Mark Kennaway (36), who lives in Crumlin, is leading the group, as well as using his skills as a senior ICT support officer at the Ulster Hospital. It will be his fourth visit to the hospital. Mark received a Commendation in the Queen's Birthday Honours list last May in recognition of his work at the hospital, where he has helped to build the IT Department. He says:

I help with training in administration functions and IT, taking my lead from the IT trainer, Trevor Anderson. It's my job to make sure everything runs smoothly day-to-day and that the hospital is getting the most out of it.

Fortunately, the Trust has allowed me to refurbish 50 laptops to bring out to the hospital, which have been a huge benefit as the power supply is not good.

I also play a bit of a pastoral role, making sure everyone on the trip is okay and has what they need.

It is very much a bush hospital, out in the jungle with rain water showers and plenty of snakes and cockroaches.

The electricity is fairly stable, but shuts off at night. The hospital has purpose-built nurses' accommodation, where we will be staying. People travel for many miles to get treatment in the hospital and I've heard of some travelling for a couple of days to get there.

The average life expectancy in the area is in the forties, as people in this region age quicker because their quality of life is poorer than ours.

My Christian faith drives me. We are living in a world where there is great spiritual and physical need. I feel compelled to do something, as to do nothing is to be complacent.

A lot of Jesus's ministry was helping the poor and three billion people in the world are living on less than two dollars a day."

'It can be challenging to adapt ... there's a lot of sickness and death'

Dr Roy Harper (53) has been a consultant endocrinologist at the Ulster Hospital since 1999, specialising in diabetes treatment. He left last Friday for Kiwoko, where he will spend five weeks running the male ward, giving Rory Wilson, the medical director, a much needed break. Dr Harper, from Drumreagh, is married to Carol (50), a nurse in the Royal Victoria Hospital, and has four children - David (26), Andrew (24), Amy (21) and Michael (17). He says:

This will be my sixth visit to the hospital. The first time I went, I just fell in love with the place. It really is a wonderful hospital, which is always developing and provides really good care.

I will be there for five weeks, four weeks of which is my annual leave, and luckily the South Eastern Trust is giving me a week, so it is wonderful to have their support.

My role will be to work on the male ward and support some of the doctors out there, especially the medical director who has so much on his plate.

I will be filling in the gaps and helping to free him up. There are a lot of different diseases we deal with out there which we don't see in this country, such as HIV, TB, malaria and other tropical infections.

There are not so many elderly patients as we would have here.

Resources are very limited and we don't have access to scanners and equipment that we use in Northern Ireland, but we can still do a lot of good using simple tools.

While it is a huge chunk of my own time, it is my wife's graciousness that allows me to do this on an annual basis. At the end of the day, she gives up more by letting me go than I do by going out there. It is nice to be able to give something back.

As a committed Christian, for me, part of that is about giving something back and it is my pleasure to do it.

It can be challenging to adapt to the conditions out there, as a lot of people are very, very poor and there is a lot of sickness and death, unfortunately.

But the patients in Uganda are so very appreciative of the hospital and the care it provides."

'One mother dies each second due to pregnancy problems in Uganda'

Dr Alison Love (61), from Lisburn, a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist, left for a five week stay in Uganda last weekend. Dr Love is married to Adrian (62), a farmer and retired doctor, and they have three children and three grandchildren. She says:

As I am retired, I am in the enviable position to have the time to take part in this work; it is my third time visiting Kiwoko Hospital.

There is a big maternity unit in the hospital and I will be helping there, as well as doing a bit of teaching.

I was born in west Africa and this has given me a sense of how differently the world is divided up. There are so many mothers in Uganda who don't have a good experience at birth, and so many die and babies die, too.

I feel quite passionate about it and I've been teaching in Africa to try and improve the situation.

One mother dies every second due to pregnancy-related problems and there is a huge population of women in Uganda.

The statistics are quite shocking.

Whereas eight in 100,000 women in the UK die from pregnancy-related problems, the figure out there is 480 in 100,000.

The hospital provides terrific service and care for the patients. It is situated in a rural area which is very poor and where people live a hand-to-mouth existence.

The community out there are inspiring, though, in that they are happy and put a very positive spin on things, even though life is tough for them.

Illness in Africa can destroy a person's ability to earn their daily bread and there is no welfare system, so to keep the hospital going, a lot of fundraising goes on all year.

Anyone who wants to can make a donation via the website.

And those who do donate can be assured that every penny is used effectively and none of it is wasted."

'They have a desire to learn which is really humbling for me'

Trevor Anderson (57) from Belfast, an ICT training manager at the Ulster Hospital, will be making his fourth trip to Uganda, where he will be taking the lead on delivering bespoke training packages as dictated by the Kiwoko Hospital ICT administrator. Trevor is married to Sharon, a classroom assistant, and they have three grown-up children and two grandchildren. He says:

This will be my fourth trip to the hospital, and it is habit forming. Once you have gone out, it's very hard not to go back again. There are so many benefits you can bring and so much to be done out there, and the whole ethos of the place is amazing.

The Trust is very good to us and allows us to take a week's special leave along with a week's annual leave to make the trip.

It is just so very different out there and the facilities are basic in comparison to what we are used to in our hospitals.

Where doctors in Belfast can order CT scans or MRI's, they don't have the capability in Uganda to do that and it is amazing what they are working with in the hospital. We would be appalled here, and yet they are so grateful for it.

To assist with IT provision we take out equipment that is finished with here and refurbish it for them - and they are so appreciative of it.

The people are so lovely and nothing is too much trouble for them. I carry out training where it is needed and, when it comes to training in Uganda, there is no such thing as people not turning up.

They will be there, because they have a desire to learn and appreciate it so much that it's really humbling.

I will be training people throughout the hospital who need to use technology for a range of purposes and, just sharing whatever knowledge I can, to hopefully make things easier for them.

I remember the first time - coming home and wondering if I had made a difference and if what I had done was any good.

When I went out the second time, the people I had trained were so eager to show me what they had achieved from what they had learned, which gave me such a buzz and such a lift."

To support the work of the hospital, visit http://www.kiwokohospital.org/

'Losing dad to cancer changed me, so I decided to go'

Janice Bell (46) from Belfast is an ultra- sonographer at the Ulster Hospital and this will be her first trip. She says:

I have a colleague in the X-ray department who has been out to Kiwoko three times and helped set up the radiography department for them. Despite having a university friend living in Africa, I've never had a desire to go out there. However, I lost my father last year to a rare cancer, which was very hard, and I think that experience has changed me. So, when my colleague told me they were looking for people to go out to Uganda, I thought about it and decided to go. They have trained a new ultra-sonographer who is Ugandan and they wanted someone to go out to help him.

It is a bit daunting, as I don't know what to expect. I know it is going to be very different from here, where we are usually looking at small pathologies; in Africa people don't go to hospital until they really have to, so they are dealing with what we call gross pathologies. My preparation has included looking at pathologies for TB, malaria and HIV. While I'm there, I will be helping to scan and also showing the best way to report on scans.

I've also been told that there is a shortage of water, so we don't get to wash every day, which is a bit daunting.

Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to the experience."

'I thank God for this chance to help in Africa'

Murry Ferguson (62), from Londonderry, is a retired microbiologist, who spent his career in Altnagelvin Hospital, where he was a lead biomedical scientist for the Western Trust until his retirement two years ago. Murry is married to Hilda (59), a nurse at Altnagelvin, and they have three grown-up children. This will be his first trip to the hospital in Uganda. He says:

I had planned, if I got to retirement and was able to, that I would do some voluntary work in the Third World. I will be going out to help in the lab and do some training.

"Microbiology was just something I was always interested in and I studied it at Queen's University before starting work in 1976 at Altnagelvin, where I stayed for all my career. I spent the last 10 years at the hospital in a management role.

Our job is diagnostic; it involves looking at viruses and bacteria in a bid to find treatments.

I don't really know what to expect when I go out to Uganda, although I have talked to others in the group to get an idea.

It seems I will be working with two groups - those who work in the labs taking samples from people and looking for infections, and others who are studying for a certificate in microbiology.

When I became a Christian some years ago, I said to God that I would like to help in a Third World country and I'm glad of this chance to do so.

I'm looking forward to it and, hopefully, I won't get too many surprises.

I've prepared what I can in terms of the subjects that the students need me to cover, so hopefully it will be of help to them."
Police are investigating claims that a body found on Saddleworth Moor in England could be that of a missing grandfather from Northern Ireland not seen for more than 20 years.

An unidentified body of a man was discovered last December on the desolate moor, outside Manchester.

Manchester Police were unable to identify him as the only documents on his person were train tickets and money.

It is now suspected that it could be Newry man Hugh Toner, who went missing from Craigavon Hospital on February 7, 1994.

It is believed the man had travelled more than 200 miles from London to Manchester, before dying on the moor during a storm on top of a hill.

Greater Manchester Police says it is "keeping an open mind" on the man's identity.

Detective Sergeant John Coleman said "many possible avenues" were being investigated, "one of which is missing persons".

DNA samples have been requested by police from Mr Toner's family.

"There is a resemblance between him and the man whose death we are currently investigating," said Mr Coleman.

"That sample will allow us to either eliminate him from our enquiries or identify him."

Cathal Toner, a grandson of Hugh (who would now be 78), said a family member had contacted Manchester Police after seeing the appeal.

"No one has come forward about this man and with the case of my grandfather, no one knows what happened to him," he said.

"We would like to appeal to anyone who knows what has happened to come forward.

"If someone helped him leave, it's 22 years later, there's no room for bitterness or resentment, we just want to find out what happened.

"My grandfather lived in England for a while and has links with Swindon and Bath."
Executive meetings are to be held in Fermanagh and Londonderry in the coming weeks as the First Minister pledged to extend politics to every town and community.

Arlene Foster promised to share economic prosperity across the province and said people from every background should be valued.

She said Northern Ireland had become a place where culture could be celebrated and respected. But she warned politicians needed to listen to their constituents in a bid to better understand the tasks ahead.

"I believe that politics should be a feature of every town and every community and that our elected representatives should get out and meet local people in their own constituencies," she said. The Fermanagh and South Tyrone Assembly Member was recently named First Minister and succeeds Peter Robinson at the head of the Executive and the DUP.

Mrs Foster delivered a keynote address at a leadership event in Belfast hosted by the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce yesterday.

She said one of the first suggestions she made to Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness was that before the elections in May they should take Executive meetings outside Belfast, and they agreed to hold meetings in Fermanagh and Derry shortly.
Farm income plunged by more than 40% in a single year in Northern Ireland, leading to warnings that the industry is facing a crisis.

Income fell from 312m to 183m between 2014 and 2015, a report said.

That was less than the total value of subsidies, which were 236m.

The biggest driver was a fall in dairy prices, which dropped by 27% to 480m.

The figures were disclosed in a report published yesterday by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The Ulster Farmers' Union warned it was unlikely to get any better in the months ahead.

UFU president Ian Marshall said: "This is a real financial crisis, and it is still there in 2016."

The key points include:

Average farm income in 2014/15 was 24,942, but this is forecast to drop by 46% to 13,451 this year;

The total value of gross output for agriculture in Northern Ireland fell by 9% to 1.74bn in 2015, driven by a 13% decline in the livestock sector;

Dairying remained the biggest contributor, despite falling by 27%;

The output value of cattle was marginally higher at 394m;

The value of sheep-meat output decreased by 10% to 63m.

Pig output value fell by 15% to 113m, while the poultry meat sector dropped 6% to 244m.

The plunge in profits was so great in 2015 that farm incomes were 53m below what was received in Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments.

This means farmers invested in their businesses and worked all year for less than they would have had for pocketing the CAP payment and doing nothing else.

Mr Marshall added: "These grim income figures are a body blow for farming families - but they are also a body blow for the entire Northern Ireland economy.

"Almost 130m was taken out of the rural economy.

"That is money that would have been spent locally, meaning towns and villages across Northern Ireland will have felt the impact of hard times hitting the farming community."

The reasons for the price and income collapse include a weak euro, loss of markets in Russia and supermarket price pressure.

Ulster Unionist agriculture spokesperson Jo-Anne Dobson said the figures demonstrated the seriousness of the crisis.

"Very few people in Northern Ireland would be able to tolerate a 41% wage cut, but yet that is what our local farms have effectively been hit with," she said.

"The sheer scale of the collapse in farm incomes should now hopefully come as the wake-up call that DARD needs to intervene on the damaging impacts of unfair prices from processors and retailers."

Earlier this month, this newspaper reported how a farmer is receiving just 14p per kilo for his potatoes, which sell in the supermarkets for 1. A Co Armagh farmer also discovered turnips he was paid 8p for were then sold at up to 10 times that price.

Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill said she would continue working to help farmers.

"The total income from farming figure for the industry as a whole is at a level not seen for 10 years and the farm level estimates show that while all sectors have suffered, it has been particularly difficult for dairy and pig farmers," she said.

Ms O'Neill said that while prices have been down globally, the effects of exchange rates have made the crisis all the more devastating.

"Given the continuing growth in world populations that brings increased demand for food, I remain optimistic about the long-term opportunities for our industry," she added.

"However, the current income crisis requires that we continue to work on all fronts to help farmers and I re-affirm my commitment to doing just that."

Case study: Charlie Weir

Charlie Weir operates a large dairy farm near Waringstown in Co Armagh.

Five generations of his family have worked on the farm, which has been going for more than half a century, but he fears for the future after seeing his income slashed because of plummeting milk prices.

"My father is 76 and he says he has never seen it as bad as this," Mr Weir told the Belfast Telegraph.

The Weir farm is one of the larger dairy types in Northern Ireland, milking 600 cows.

"The milk price is going to drop to 16.5p per litre for January, and the cost of production is 26p," he added.

"The whole agricultural industry in Northern Ireland is dying. In a few months' time you are going to see people bankrupt. They can't afford to pay their bills.

"If the milk price goes down to 16p a lot of men could lose their farms."

Mr Weir said the average herd size in Northern Ireland is around 100 cows. "If that farm is producing 2,500 litres a day, they will be losing 250 a day," he warned.
A preparatory department of a grammar school is to shut this summer - the fifth since former Education Minister Caitriona Ruane slashed funding for the sector. Stock image

A preparatory department of a grammar school is to shut this summer - the fifth since former Education Minister Caitriona Ruane slashed funding for the sector.

Glenlola School's Cygnet House in Bangor is expected to close its doors at the end of August.

Enrolment has fallen at Cygnet House in recent years, and it had just 65 pupils last year.

Four prep schools have shut since Ms Ruane cut funding by a third. Previously, such schools received 800 per pupil, much less than the 2,000 paid for each primary school child.

This forced a lot of preps to increase fees, with many now charging up to 4,500 per pupil.

The four to close were those linked to Bloomfield Collegiate, Bangor Grammar, Dalriada and Down High.

Glenlola principal Eric Thompson said the closure of Bangor Grammar's prep school Connor House generated substantial anxiety for parents with kids at Cygnet House.

"Many felt torn at that time, and although the majority decided to stay, a number decided they would find places for their children in larger primary schools," he said.

"Since then the board of governors has worked tirelessly with a group of supportive parents to build up the enrolment of the school, and had until recently done this with some success.

"However, with a large P7 group leaving and a smaller P1 group due to join, concerns regarding numbers resulted in a number of parents moving to larger primary schools. This intensified the anxieties of parents who remained, and in a very short space of time the number of pupils had fallen to a level that brought the school's sustainability into question."
Two men, armed with guns, forced their way into the house

A woman has been treated in hospital for facial injuries after two gunmen raided her home.

They forced their way in and took a sum of money from the house on Cavehill Road at about 11pm - and made off on foot towards Indiana Avenue.

Both the male and female occupants were assaulted - and the woman had to be treated in hospital for facial injuries.

Detective Sergeant Michael Hawthorne has appealed to anyone for any information about the aggravated burglary to contact detectives in Musgrave on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A senior judge has told the Ministry of Defence if it has enough money for nuclear warheads, it has enough resources to carry out work on inquests into Troubles killings carried out by soldiers.

Lord Justice Weir, who is conducting a review of more than 50 long-delayed historical inquests, also questioned the Government's commitment to its international obligations to investigate the contentious deaths.

The judge was scathing when told the reason the MoD had missed deadlines for disclosing classified papers to the coroners' courts was due to resource pressures.

Rubbishing the claims, he said: "The MoD is not short of money.

"It's busy all over the world fighting wars and it's about to buy some new submarines with nuclear warheads - so it's not short of money."

He added: "This is obviously very low on their list of priorities."

Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice, Sir Declan Morgan, (below) has asked judge Weir to assess the 56 stalled cases, relating to 95 deaths, to determine why they are still stuck in the coronial system, in some instances almost 45 years after the deaths.

Many of the delayed probes involve killings carried out by the security forces.

On the ninth day of the two-week exercise in Belfast's Laganside Courts, Judge Weir examined the cases of seven IRA men shot by the SAS in two separate ambushes in the early 1990s and the shooting of Belfast father-of-six Patrick McVeigh by the Army's secretive Military Reaction Force (MRF) unit in 1972.

The PSNI's Legacy Investigations Branch is currently investigating allegations the MRF committed numerous random attacks on civilians over a number of years in the 1970s.

Insisting that the MoD put more effort into handing over papers to the next of kin, judge Weir made clear the holding of investigations was not "optional".

"It's not like buying a new Jeep or getting a new regimental mascot," he said.

"This is not an option - this is an international obligation on the State."

He told a lawyer from the MoD: "You want to avoid any suspicions that this approach is designed to prevent the matter being aired in a public arena, that it's a deliberate attempt to delay and obfuscate - you want to avoid people thinking that. The best way to do that is let people see what you have got."

Judge Weir was also highly critical of the lack of disclosure from the PSNI in the McVeigh case, branding it "disgraceful" that "not one pick of paper has been given to the next of kin".

In the case of IRA men Kevin Barry O'Donnell, Sean O'Farrell, Patrick Vincent and Peter Clancy, who were killed by the SAS in Clonoe, Co Tyrone, in 1992, the judge was told the MoD still had not disclosed documents to the court - more than a year after committing to do so.

Outside court, Patrick McVeigh's daughter, Patricia, welcomed the judge's remarks. "It's been a long drawn-out process, we are trying to be patient," she said.

"There is light now at the end of the tunnel after hearing Judge Weir today."
Lawyers and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland are to enter mediation in a bid to end a bitter pay dispute, it was confirmed on Friday.

A two-day process aimed at resolving the stand-off which has created a huge backlog in criminal trials will take place within the next fortnight.

It is understood that both sides have agreed on an English QC to act as mediator.

Senior judges adjourned an ongoing court challenge to the new rules for legal aid fees in Northern Ireland after being informed of the development.

Barristers began to withdraw from cases last year in protest at the reduced payments within Justice Minister David Ford's reforms.

Some solicitors' firms have also joined in the industrial action.

The dispute has stalled around 800 cases waiting to go to the Crown Court.

Judicial review proceedings were launched by the Bar Council and the Law Society in a joint bid to have the new payment arrangements quashed.

In November last year a High Court judge held that the rules do not provide fair pay to defence solicitors in some criminal cases.

He also identified a breach in the impact assessment carried out as part of the reforms.

But despite declaring the decision making process unlawful in two areas, he declined to quash the rules.

An appeal against his verdict was set to begin this week in front of three senior judges in Belfast.

However, following a suggestion put to the parties by Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan, it was confirmed today that mediation is to take place.

The Court of Appeal was told the Bar Council and Law Society, and the Department of Justice, have all signed up.

On that basis legal proceedings were put on hold.

The judges also listed the case for a provisional three-day hearing next month should the mediation prove unsuccessful. ends
Former MP Naomi Long has said she would be honoured to become Alliance leader if the opportunity ever arose.

Ms Long was speaking amid speculation that Justice Minister David Ford would step down and pave the way for her to become party chief if she is elected to the Assembly in May.

She was last night selected as one of three Alliance candidates to run in East Belfast in the forthcoming Stormont elections.

In an exclusive interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Mrs Long accused the DUP of running a "nasty and brutal" campaign to unseat her in last year's Westminster poll.

However, she voiced personal admiration for new DUP leader Arlene Foster, and said it was "very positive" that Northern Ireland now had a female First Minister.

But she feared that Mrs Foster's policies would be the same as her predecessors, and that her leadership would mark a change of "style not substance" in DUP politics.

Asked if she wanted to be the next Alliance leader, Mrs Long said: "There is no vacancy. I've a job to do. I'm deputy leader of the party. I work very closely with David as a partnership.

"My focus right now is the next election and Alliance doing as best as we can.

"But the party has given me lots of different jobs over the years. Every one of them has been an honour, and I can't imagine a situation where the party would ask me to do a job and I wouldn't want to do it."

She said she had not discussed the leadership with Mr Ford but added: "David has talked quite publicly about the fact that he doesn't see himself hobbling about the Assembly as an elderly gentleman.

"When David is ready to have that conversation with the rest of us, then that's the conversation we will have."

Mrs Long is running for Alliance in East Belfast along with sitting MLA Chris Lyttle and Castlereagh and Lisburn councillor Tim Morrow.

The former MP denied that the Alliance Party's second East Belfast MLA Judith Cochrane - who has announced that she is retiring from politics - had been pushed aside to make way for her.

She said that Ms Cochrane had announced publicly last May that she wanted a change from the world of politics.

Mrs Long said that, had her party colleague wanted to run for Stormont, she had no doubt that she would have been selected as one of the three Alliance candidates.

She added that she was "very hopeful" Alliance would increase on its eight seats at Stormont and believed the party could make gains in South Belfast, North Down, East Antrim, and North Belfast. The Alliance politician also spoke of her high regard for DUP First Minister Mrs Foster.

"I like Arlene personally," she said. "I get on well with her. She's quite warm to deal with and she's intelligent.

"But I don't see anything in Arlene's past, politically, to suggest she will take a softer line than her predecessors, or that she will be any more flexible or progressive.

"But let's wait and see. I don't want to judge her leadership. She's only in the job weeks and you have to give a person time."

She welcomed recent statements from loyalist Jamie Bryson and Belfast councillor Ruth Patterson distancing themselves from the dwindling protests over the lowering of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall on all but designated days, and stressed that politics was the way forward.

But she added: "I think it is too little, too late. That doesn't mean I don't respect the fact that they've changed their minds. Every convert to the democratic process is a win."

Mrs Long accused the DUP of "inflaming the situation" over the flag issue and said she held it more morally responsible than the flag protesters for the intimidation she faced and the violence on the streets.

The Alliance politician claimed the DUP had taken "a very deliberate decision" to make her "a hate figure within unionism and loyalism" in order to win back its East Belfast Westminster seat.

"If it hadn't been the flags issue it would have been something else," she added. "East Belfast had to be won back because egos had been wounded and had to be restored."

But she said the election pact the DUP entered with the UUP for last May's general election - based on unseating her - had massively backfired on the party.

"The price they've paid to ensure I didn't get a second term as an MP is to breathe new life into the Ulster Unionists, who gained two new MPs and are now a reinvigorated party," she said.

"This is of the most bizarre strategies I've seen in political terms.

"Indeed, I think it was drawn up by someone who is all tactics and no strategy."
A driver in Belfast had a lucky escape last night after his van burst into flames on a motorway

A driver in Belfast had a lucky escape last night after his van burst into flames on a motorway.

The blaze was reported just before 6.30pm on the busy M1 near the Blacks Road off-slip heading into Belfast city centre.

No one was injured in the blaze.

The Belfast Telegraph's political correspondent Noel McAdam, who was driving by at the time, said it appeared the blaze had started in the vehicle's engine.

"It was quite a fire," he said. "It looked quite dramatic from my angle; as you approached you couldn't see what was behind the flames."

Another road user posted on Twitter: "Van on fire on M1 city bound at Blacks Road bridge. Dense black smoke across both carriageways."

Emergency traffic warnings were issued urging other drivers to slow down and steer clear of the burning wreck, which was on the hard shoulder.

Firefighters quickly attended the scene and by 7pm confirmed it had been extinguished.

A spokesperson for the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue service confirmed no one was injured in the incident. It's understood the van's driver had managed to pull over to the hard shoulder before calling for assistance.

The cause of the blaze is unknown.
Howard Hastings (front), managing director of Belfast's Europa Hotel's owner Hastings Hotels, being joined by local food producers to celebrate Ulster FryDay (PA/Hastings Hotels)

The aroma of a cooked breakfast was more intense than ever on Friday morning as Northern Ireland held its inaugural "Fryday".

The celebration of the traditional Ulster Fry was part of a tourism drive to promote local food and drink in 2016.

Hotels across the region joined the initiative, hashtagged #UlsterFRYDay.

The Europa Hotel in Belfast held a special breakfast, with guests including the local producers who supply the home grown ingredients used on its menu.

Howard Hastings, managing director of Europa owners Hastings Hotels, said: "As part of 2016 being Northern Ireland's Year of Food and Drink, January has been all about the breakfast and it is great to see that one of Northern Ireland's favourite breakfasts is being celebrated with the inaugural #UlsterFRYDay.

"We couldn't think of a better way to mark the occasion than by celebrating with the local producers we work with to create the very best breakfasts for our guests every day of the year."
A fallen tree blocks Cherry Tree Walk in east Belfast after strong winds overnight which seen power cuts and disruption across Northern Ireland. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Killyleagh Road, Downpatrick, was closed due to a fallen tree. Picture By: Arthur Allison.

Killyleagh Road, Downpatrick, was closed due to a fallen tree. Picture By: Arthur Allison.

Gusts of 85mph have been recorded in Northern Ireland as Storm Gertrude causes widespread disruption.

Around 17,500 properties were left without power after high winds battered the province throughout the night. Power has been restored to most, with those still cut off in the north-east.

Severe gales brought trees down on top of power lines and broke electricity poles.

Trains have been delayed and roads across the province are closed - scroll down for a full list.

Londonderry's Foyle Bridge was closed because of a fallen tree but has since re-opened with a 30mph speed limit in place.

The Met Office has issued an amber ''be prepared'' warning for high winds in Northern Ireland, Scotland and north west and north east England.

A rare red Met Office alert is in place for Orkney and Shetland with dangerous conditions expected throughout Friday.

The highest gusts so far have been recorded at Orlock Head on the Co Down coast, according to BBC weather presenter Cecilia Daly.

Snow, ice and flooding are also forecast in some areas as the extreme weather continues to batter the UK and Ireland.

A succession of storms since December has seen widespread flooding and major disruption to travel, with the latest misery expected to continue through to the weekend.

A tree falls on a car in Maghera as #StormGertrude closes a number of roads https://t.co/qlvDCeUa0z https://t.co/rmHCZfjOch  BBC News NI (@BBCNewsNI) January 29, 2016

Last night, Stena Line's 10.30pm sailing to Liverpool was delayed by 60 minutes due to poor weather on the Irish sea. Flights at both Northern Ireland's major airports were not affected.

Northern Ireland Electricity Networks is working to restore power to the homes still cut off and has opened its main Incident Centre in Craigavon, as well as local escalation bases.

"The worst affected areas remain across Counties Tyrone, Derry/Londonderry and Antrim, and there are also some smaller faults in exposed rural and coastal locations in Counties Down and Antrim.

"We would like to remind customers that if they do lose electricity, they should report the fault online or call the NIE Networks customer helpline on 03457 643 643," a spokesman added.

The Met Office said to expect heavy rain, followed by bright spells and blustery showers.

It warned that driving conditions were expected to be difficult, with possible disruption to travel, and predicted a bitterly cold Saturday with sleet or snow showers and gales. However, Sunday will be mainly dry with lighter winds, but it will rain later in the day.

Road surface temperatures are expected to fall below freezing overnight into Saturday morning, leading to a risk of icy patches.

A Met Office spokesman said: "The heaviest rain is expected on Friday morning, with the largest rainfall totals likely over west and southwest-facing hills.

"The rain will be accompanied by south-westerly gales which could become severe. There will be some drier spells during the warning period. Please be aware of the risk of localised flooding and potential impacts on travel.

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Whatsapp A tree has brought down a power line and damaged cars in Plumbridge, Tyrone

"Another area of low pressure is expected to move quickly east across the Atlantic, bringing spells of heavy rain to Northern Ireland during Friday, particularly in western parts of the country.

"Within the warning area, 10-20mm of rain is likely to fall quite widely, with up to 40mm over high ground."

Road closures:

Antrim

Bregagh Road in Armoy closed at the Dark Hedges after three trees were brought down.

Beanstown Road, Lisburn, is closed due to a fallen tree.

Mount Pleasant Avenue, Jordanstown - road blocked by fallen tree.

Belsize Road, Lisburn - one lane blocked by fallen tree.

Kennelbridge Road, Ballymena is closed.

Hillmount Road, Cullybackey, is closed.

Oldtown Road, Kells, is closed.

Armagh

Charlestown Road, Craigavon has been closed due to a fallen tree.

Artabrackagh Road, Portadown has been closed due to a fallen tree.

Kennedy Road, Killylea, Armagh has been closed due to a fallen tree.

Ferryhill Road, Cloughoge, near Newry is closed due to flooding.

The Legacorry Road, Richhill, is closed between the Stonebridge roundabout and Castle Drive following a fatal crash

Down

Ardglass Road, Downpatrick has been closed due to a fallen tree.

Killyleagh Road, Downpatrick, has been closed due to a fallen tree.

Greenan Road, Warrenpoint, closed due to flooding.

Mound Road, Warrenpoint, closed due to flooding.

Londonderry

Part of the Mullagh Road, Maghera, blocked after a tree fell on a car.

Part of the Ballyquin Road, Limavady, blocked because of a fallen tree.

Letterkenny Road, Derry, closed due to fallen tree.

Dungiven Road, Derry, closed due to fallen tree.
A Bafta award-winning actor whose two-year-old daughter died from sepsis has said he fears cuts to the health service could hinder efforts to improve treatment of the life-threatening illness.

Jason Watkins said his daughter Maude would still be alive if her condition had been caught earlier and urged the Government to "grasp the nettle" to avoid more unnecessary deaths.

The 49-year-old actor, who won critical acclaim playing the role of Christopher Jefferies, the innocent suspect in the murder of Joanna Yeates, said sepsis was a "nasty condition" that doctors and parents often struggled to recognise.

He spoke out after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised to the parents of William Mead, who died in December 2014 after GPs, out-of-hours services and a 111 call handler failed to spot he had sepsis.

Mr Watkins told the Press Association: "The Government has to grasp the nettle. Hopefully Jeremy Hunt acts on what he has been saying.

"There is this awful condition, this terrible syndrome, and we've not really noticed it. A thousand children die a year from sepsis.

"My one fear is that lots of things need to be implemented when the NHS is in a very difficult phase and under lots of pressure.

"Maybe the health service can never be run like a business. It has to be run in an imaginative way and accept there will be losses.

"My worry is with all the cuts, particularly in mental health, we've already seen suicide rates go up. It's the sort of thing one worries about."

Sepsis is triggered by an infection which, if not treated quickly, can lead to multiple organ failure and death.

Around 37,000 people die each year in the UK as a result of the condition, according to the NHS.

Mr Watkins, whose daughter died on New Year's Day in 2011, has appeared in a video urging people to donate to a charity to help improve diagnosis.

In the appeal for the UK Sepsis Trust, he says: "My daughter Maude died of sepsis. We found her lifeless body in her cot one morning. And that is the tragedy of sepsis. If caught early it is treatable and Maude and thousands of others would still be with us."

Mr Watkins said he hopes to meet Melissa and Paul Mead, the parents of one-year-old William in the next few days.

According to a report by NHS England, Mrs Mead spoke to medics at least nine times in the 11 weeks leading up to William's death. He was seen by several GPs who failed to spot that his condition was deteriorating.

To donate to the UK Sepsis Trust, text SEPS15 5 to 70070.
The NHS 111 non-emergency helpline has seen a major rise in the number of calls

A&E departments are facing extreme pressure, while the much-criticised 111 helpline has also seen a surge in patient demand, according to new data.

NHS England said 111 had seen a "huge rise in calls" last weekend - up between 24% and 30% on the same weekend last year - following a cold snap.

Just 79.9% of calls were answered within 60 seconds - against a target of 95%.

The number of emergency admissions to English hospitals has also risen compared with last week, while A&E attendances are also up.

Analysis by the BBC has found A&E departments are increasingly struggling.

It comes after several hospitals issued "black alerts" earlier this month over struggles to cope with the influx of patients to A&E.

Dr Cliff Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the NHS was reaching a "critical point" in winter.

He told the BBC: "We were beginning to think this winter would not be as bad as last winter, but the problems we are beginning to see suggest it could end up being worse.

"We have virtually no flu or norovirus - if there was to be an outbreak of either we could see the whole system tip over."

The new analysis shows some NHS trusts have had to take extreme measures to cope with the pressures.

Over the past two weeks, there have been 45 temporary closures of A&E units - up 50% on the same period last year, the BBC reported.

This means ambulances are sent to other hospitals due to the fact wards are full and waiting times are rising.

Among the problems were Coventry University Hospital cancelling all its routine operations on Wednesday and for part of Thursday because of "exceptional" circumstances.

Its chief executive, Andy Hardy, said the week had been "incredibly difficult".

The pressures built during Tuesday when more than 500 patients turned up at A&E, leading to the unprecedented step of cancelling all the routine operations, the BBC reported.

Mr Hardy said the trust had large numbers of patients in the hospital who did not need to be there but could not be discharged because there were "no spaces" in the community.

GPs in north London were also told to try to avoid referring patients to emergency departments in Ealing and Northwick Park because of "very high pressure".

A double-sized ambulance had to park outside Leicester General Infirmary last weekend as A&E staff were struggling to cope with the numbers of patients being brought in.

Bosses even discussed setting up a temporary treatment area in a tent, the BBC said.

In another example, the Royal Cornwall Hospital spent a week on black alert, which led to routine operations being cancelled. This was lifted on Thursday.

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has also spent time on black alert this week after "exceptional numbers of very sick, frail and elderly patients" needed care.

The NHS 111 non-emergency helpline - which has been deeply criticised following the death of a baby from sepsis - is also coming under increasing pressure, NHS England figures suggest.

Richard Barker, interim national director of commissioning operations for NHS England, said: "As planned for, the recent bad weather has brought a sharp increase in A&E attendances and emergency admissions.

"Despite this, A&E performance remains steady.

"The pressures remain very real, however, and we don't expect those to abate in the run-up to spring.

"This is reflected in the huge rise in calls faced by NHS 111 last weekend - up between 24% and 30% on the same weekend last year. Despite this, our frontline staff are doing a remarkable job as they continue to provide high-quality services to patients."

The latest data shows that, across England, there were 338,287 A&E attendances this week at trusts with a major A&E department, up almost 20,000 compared with 318,442 in the previous week.

There were also 94,804 emergency admissions, up on the 90,813 in the previous week.

There were 290,783 calls to 111 in the week ending January 24, a 13% increase on the 257,497 in the previous week.

The figure is up by 20% on the 241,643 calls handled in the same week the previous year.

Some 66,189 calls were received on Sunday January 24, (a 23% on the 53,822 calls received on the previous Sunday).

A spokesman for NHS England said: "The number of people using NHS 111 for their health care needs continues to grow.

"Although there is huge demand, NHS 111 continues to provide a high quality and safe service across the country, significantly reducing the burden on both A&E and 999 services."
Sir David Attenborough spoke about the vulnerability of the BBC and his concerns for the planet

Sir David Attenborough has said he is "always fearful" for the future of the BBC.

The veteran naturalist was speaking during a visit to the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, which was championed by his late brother, the film-maker Lord Attenborough.

He described the national broadcaster - undergoing a Government review as part of its charter renewal - as "vulnerable" and said people take it for granted "sometimes too often".

Sir David, who celebrates his 90th birthday in May, said: "The whole of the world of the media is changing in such a profound way, the way people see images, the way people hear talk, and the BBC has to change to match that.

"But at the same time, the fundamental founding principles of the BBC about providing a platform for as many views and aspects that the community has remains powerful and extremely valuable.

"You only really appreciate that when you go overseas and you look at it with the eyes of people from across oceans who look at the BBC as a beacon for thought and civilisation and we take it for granted in this country, sometimes too often."

He added: "The BBC is a very vulnerable organisation, as well as being a very valuable one.

"And if you work at the BBC and care for the BBC, there is no moment when you shouldn't sink back and say 'Oh well, we're fine, nobody is going to damage us and you're quite wrong'."

Sir David returned to the place of his childhood in the East Midlands city to officially open the new 1.5 million gallery extension to the arts centre at the University of Leicester.

The renowned broadcaster also spoke of his concerns for the future of the planet.

He said: "We have overrun it and we don't know what we are doing. We have already planted seeds for the future which are ineradicable.

"The temperatures are going to increase whatever we do. At the moment the question is whether, in fact, we can keep them down to a level which won't be disastrous.

"We are doing what we can but the problem is gigantic."

Speaking about the prospect of countries co-operating to find a solution, he said: "Many people say it's an impossible ask. But unless we make some positive concession or some response to that task, we are in for serious trouble."

He also said that scepticism about climate change was "bad thinking".

He said: "If it's so overwhelming, why do people deny it?

"The answer is for a lot of people the acceptance of climate change is very difficult for them because it may make a difference to their income or their business.

"It may damage their business, it may make them want to try and do things that will cost money, so it's more convenient to say 'no I don't believe it'.

"But to anyone who, as it were, doesn't have a vested interest I would have thought that the scientific evidence is beyond doubt."
Furious campaigners have vowed to fight the "outrageous" decision to keep a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes on the front of an Oxford University college.

The governing body of Oriel College said it decided after "careful consideration" to keep the statue despite a campaign by student activists who claimed it represented racism and oppression.

The college said it received an "enormous amount of input" when it consulted on whether to keep the statue, including a petition by campaign group Rhodes Must Fall, signed by more than 2,000 people.

The Daily Telegraph reported that donors had threatened to withdraw gifts and bequests worth more than 100 million if it was removed.

But an Oriel spokesman insisted the financial implications were "not even a major factor" in the decision.

In a statement, the group Rhodes Must Fall said: "This recent move is outrageous, dishonest, and cynical.

"This is not over. We will be redoubling our efforts and meeting over the weekend to discuss our next actions." The group added: "The struggle continues."

Ntokozo Qwabe, Rhodes Scholar who has campaigned to remove the statue, wrote on his Facebook page: "The decision by Oriel College to unilaterally reverse its public commitments on Rhodes, without any consultation, basically reminds us that black lives are cheap at Oxford.

"Oriel has basically said: f*** all the black people. Who cares about black lives & the concerns of BME (black and minority ethnic) Oxford students anyways?"

A spokesman for the college said: "The overwhelming message we have received has been in support of the statue remaining in place, for a variety of reasons.

"The college's governing body has decided that the statue should remain in place and that the college will seek to provide a clear historical context to explain why it is there."

Rhodes served as prime minister of the British Empire's Cape Colony, including South Africa, in the early 1890s and has been linked to apartheid-style policies.

A Rhodes legacy fund provides scholarships for overseas students, but some students argue the statue should be taken down because he was a racist.

The Daily Telegraph said 1.5m in donations had already been cancelled, and the college feared more wealthy donors could walk.

College leaders admitted the controversy surrounding the statue had shone a light on the low numbers of black and ethnic minority students admitted, and the issue of discrimination on campus.

A spokesman said: "The campaign to remove Oriel's statue of Rhodes has highlighted other challenges in relation to the experience and representation of black and minority ethnic students and staff at Oxford.

"Oriel takes these very seriously and, as previously announced, is taking substantive steps to address them."

And he said the statue was "an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today".

Oriel College will seek expert opinion on how to give context to the statue and a nearby plaque to Rhodes, which they will also keep in place.

Rhodes was a student at Oxford and a member of Oriel College in the 1870s. He left money to the college on his death in 1902.

Scholarships in his name have so far been awarded to more than 8,000 overseas students.

The college has distanced itself from his views, saying in a statement last month: "Rhodes was also a 19th-century colonialist whose values and world view stand in absolute contrast to the ethos of the scholarship programme today, and to the values of a modern university."

The decision comes after the University of Cape Town last year decided to remove a similar statue of the man, following a student protest.

A spokesman for Oriel College told the Press Association: "The financial implications were absolutely not the overriding consideration - not even a major factor in the decision that was made."

Asked whether Oxford graduate David Cameron backed Oriel's decision, a Downing Street spokesman said: "I think he would welcome the fact that this was the university making a decision.

"It is for them to make a decision. It is for them to have a debate and a discussion and then make that decision."
The Government's GCHQ agency has been listening to communications from Israeli drone aircraft, according to reports

Secret documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden have revealed details of an 18-year operation by the UK and US to spy on the Israeli air force, according to reports in the Middle Eastern country's media.

The Foreign Office refused to comment on claims in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that the Government's GCHQ eavesdropping agency has been listening in to communications from Israeli drone aircraft after breaking encryption codes.

A senior Israeli intelligence source, speaking anonymously, described the revelation as an "earthquake", telling Yedioth Ahronoth it was "the biggest breach in the history of Israeli intelligence".

According to documents obtained by the newspaper, GCHQ worked with the US National Security Agency on the operation codenamed "Anarchist", which was run out of Cyprus and targeted Middle Eastern powers including Israel.

The hacking allowed the UK and US to monitor communications from drones on operations over Gaza and the West Bank as well as intelligence-gathering sorties over Syria and Iran since 1998, said the paper. Also contained in the documents were photographs of missiles and bombs carried by the unmanned aircraft.

Israeli energy minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, sought to play down the significance of the issue.

He told Israel's Army Radio: "I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant. We will now have to look and consider changing the encryption, certainly."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on intelligence matters."
The death of Gordon Goody, one of the last surviving members of the Great Train Robbery gang, marks "the end of an era", the son of one of his fellow robbers said.

Goody, 86, died surrounded by friends on Friday morning in Mojacar, a town in the south of Spain where he ran a bar, the local town hall said.

Goody, a hairdresser before the 1963 robbery, was jailed for 30 years for his role in the 1963 heist, one of the most famous in British criminal history which was dubbed the "crime of the century".

Michael Biggs, son of Ronnie Biggs, one of the most famous of the 15-strong gang, spoke of his sadness at hearing of Goody's death.

He told the Press Association: "I knew that he was ill, but I didn't know how ill he was, I've been away from the country for a few months.

"It is always sad to know someone's passed away and my thoughts are with his family at the moment, and I wish his family all the best.

"It's the end of an era. Now it's all down to the history books."

Asked what his father would say at the news of his fellow gang-member's death, he said: "He would say, 'We can finally all get together for a drink'."

On August 8 1963, a gang masterminded by Bruce Reynolds stopped the Glasgow-Euston overnight mail train as it passed through the Buckinghamshire countryside close to Cheddington.

The train was driven a mile and a half to Bridego Bridge, where the gang unloaded 2,631,684 in used notes - worth around 46 million today.

But they were later captured and 12 were jailed for a total of more than 300 years.

More than one broke out of prison, including Biggs, who spent over 30 years on the run before he finally returned to Britain in 2001 to face arrest.

Reynolds returned in 1968, five years after the crime, and was captured in Torquay and jailed for 25 years.

Goody was sentenced to 30 years but released in 1975, setting up his Spanish bar four years later.

The Mojacar town hall statement said Goody died at 6am, and paid a glowing tribute to him, according to The Local, an English-language news website in Spain.

A spokesman said: " All who knew him were struck by his friendliness, his love for his friends and family and the many pets he rescued from the street.

"He was a complete gentleman, far removed from the image that those who didn't know him might have had from those difficult years that marked a large part of his life.

"We will always remember his smile and his big heart that was always open to those around him."
The Heathrow shuttles will become the first driverless vehicles to be tested on London's roads

Shuttle pods used at Heathrow Airport will be adapted to become the first driverless vehicles to be tested on London roads.

The pods, which resemble small automated train carriages, are currently being used at Heathrow Terminal 5 and will be developed to work without dedicated tracks, the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) said.

The vehicles will then be used in trials of driverless cars in Greenwich this summer as part of the Gateway project led by TRL.

A consortium of British firms, including Westfield Sportscars, Heathrow Enterprises and Oxbotica, will work together to make the pods into "fully driverless shuttles" in one of three pilots in the area.

The trial aims to assess the public's willingness to use autonomous vehicles in built-up areas, TRL said.

Professor Nick Reed, academy director at TRL and technical director for Gateway, said: "The addition of three prominent and respected British organisations to the Gateway consortium further strengthens the UK's position as a leader in autonomous technologies.

"Each company brings a great deal of experience to the project which will prove valuable in helping us to understand how the public and industry will adapt to the use of automated vehicles in the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab test environment in Greenwich.

"If the trials prove successful, we expect these iconic vehicles to become a familiar sight in many cities around the world."

The UltraPods have been operating at Terminal 5 for nearly five years, carrying 1.5 million passengers and completed three million kilometres.

Kit car manufacturer Westfield Sportcars will be responsible for design and testing, with Heathrow Enterprises looking after software engineering and Oxford University robotics lab spin-off Oxbotica will provide mapping and sensors to ensure safety.

Julian Turner, CEO of Westfield Sportscars said: "We're really pleased to be a part of the Gateway consortium and are looking forward to bringing our innovative, lightweight, technology to a well-known and tried and tested platform."

The 8m Gateway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) has been jointly funded by Innovate UK and the industry.
Liverpool fans sing and the Liverpool FC team sing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' during the Hillsborough memorial service marking the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster at Anfield stadium on April 15, 2014.

A public advocate to advise and protect the interests of the bereaved in major incidents like the Hillsborough stadium disaster has been called for by peers.

Labour former justice minister Lord Wills said the appointment of an independent advocate could help alleviate the "alienation" felt by the bereaved and survivors caught up in official proceedings.

His Public Advocate Bill, which was given an unopposed second reading in the Lords, won heavyweight backing from the Opposition and Labour former home secretary Lord Blunkett.

Lord Blunkett, former MP for the Hillsborough area of Sheffield, hailed the appointment of an advocate as an "excellent idea", insisting it would help "get to the truth" more quickly.

He said an advocate would assist the bereaved in being able to articulate their "hurt" and help identify what had gone wrong, so others did not have to suffer in the future.

The Hillsborough disaster claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool supporters on April 15 1989 with the fatal injuries inflicted from a crush on the Leppings Lane terrace at Sheffield Wednesday's ground.

Lord Wills said the Bill arose from his "complicated and difficult" experience as a minister in devising the Hillsborough independent panel to look into the stadium disaster.

He said: "I want to pay tribute to the families bereaved in the disaster in 1989 who have campaigned for so long and with such dignity until at last they have begun to see the results of their campaign for justice."

He said the message that came through from their experience was that they wanted to find a way to prevent similarly bereaved families having to suffer they way they had for more than 20 years.

The history of Hillsborough illustrated the extent to which bereaved families and survivors could feel "alienated from the official process for responding to some public disasters".

Lord Wills said those bereaved by Hillsborough, and in other disasters like the Lockerbie terrorist atrocity, had experienced "intense difficulties" and there had to be a better response.

The needs and wishes of the bereaved were not "at the centre of the process" or "paramount".

The appointment of a public advocate would augment the current system to better protect the interests of the bereaved and survivors, he said.

He or she would act as a representative for the interests of the bereaved and as an adviser and guide during any subsequent investigation and inquest.

Liberal Democrat former justice minister Lord McNally, backing the Bill, said it wasn't just the "final piece in the Hillsborough puzzle" but also legislation which looked to the future.

Bereaved families felt removed from the process after a disaster, he told peers. "Ranks are closed to protect reputations and avoid culpability. The wheels grind slow and the lay person feels excluded as professionals seems to take over."

Lord Blunkett, who oversaw changes to the coroners' court system as home secretary, said the Bill was necessary to help people at the moment they were "hurt the most".

He said: "The quicker an advocate could come into the scene, the more likely it is that we will get to the truth quickly and avoid myth and counter-myth.

"I hope we won't put people through years and years of distress and anger because systems don't work and those in power ... are felt not to be listening."

For Labour, Lord Bach said the Bill was timely since the Hillsborough inquest was moving towards a conclusion but 27 years was "far, far too long a period to wait for a definitive judgment on what happened and why".

He said: "This sort of delay must never be allowed to happen again. This Bill is a serious attempt at ensuring it never does.

"In a civilised country the agony of the relatives of those who die in a tragedy of this kind should never again be added to by having to wait an appalling length of time to find out what happened."

Justice minister Lord Faulks said the Government shared the desire to ensure bereaved families and injured people were properly involved and supported throughout the investigation, inquest and inquiry process.

Ministers were fully committed to ensuring that bereaved families didn't feel "alienated" from the official process.

But he said much of what was proposed in the Bill for the role of public advocate was alreadyin place after procedural changes.

"The Government acknowledges there were significant issues in the way the Hillsborough families were treated and we agree it's vital lessons are learned and their experience should not be that of others in the future."

Lord Faulks said changes had been made and much of what was in the Bill was already happening, making it a "very different climate" to when Hillsborough happened.

"I believe at the moment there is no need for the public advocate role that the Bill envisages. The Government does, however, agree that the needs of the bereaved families in particular must be paramount and the principles behind the Bill are right. Bereaved families should feel their voice is heard."

The minister agreed to meet Lord Wills to look at ways of improving the existing system. The Bill was given a second reading without a vote and goes forward for its detailed committee stage at a later date.
Most of those polled said they did not have time to even talk to the people they were visiting

Elderly and disabled people are not being cared for in a dignified manner because visits by homecare workers are being limited to 15 minutes, it has been claimed.

A survey of 1,100 members of Unison found that three out of four did not believe they had enough time to give sufficient care to elderly and disabled people they visited.

Three out of five said 15 minute visits meant they often had to rush the care they could provide.

Most of those polled said they did not have time to even talk to people they were visiting, these included stroke victims, those with mental health issues or Parkinson's disease.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: "It is heartbreaking and distressing that many elderly and disabled people are not being cared for in a humane and dignified manner.

"Homecare workers have shared their harrowing stories with a strong sense of sadness, guilt, anger, and ultimately disgust, at a broken homecare system.

"Eye-watering cuts imposed by the government mean councils are still booking the shortest possible visits to care for vulnerable, frail and isolated elderly people.

"Homecare workers are often the only face some people see all day, and they are a lifeline.

"Only they can call for help and ensure that the housebound people they care for are fed, washed and well.

"Although the government is going to allow local authorities to raise council tax to fund social care, the crisis is so great that any extra cash will barely touch the sides.

"With the challenge of an ageing population living longer, care planning and adequate funding for social care should be a government priority and it clearly is not.

"Ministers should stop passing the social care buck to councils, and dig deep to find the cash from Treasury coffers to provide dignified care for the elderly.

"Rushed 15 minute homecare visits should have no place in a modern, caring society."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: " Rushed visits are unacceptable - they are not fair on older people or the staff who care for them.

"These responses largely pre-date the NICE guidelines on home care that were published for the first time last year, so councils now have clear standards to follow and our tough inspection process is clamping down on poor care.

"We are giving councils access to up to 3.5 billion extra a year by the end of Parliament and this can only be spent on providing people with the high quality care they need."
Police at the scene of an overturned lorry on the A19 near Killingworth in the North East as Storm Gertrude sweeps the country

Off Newcastle, the weather seemed calmer for two ships sailing in the North Sea

The tree-lined road was made famous in Game Of Thrones as the Dark Hedges

Farmers work to clear two 200-year-old beech trees that featured in Game Of Thrones that were uprooted by the near-hurricane force winds of Storm Gertrude in Co Antrim

A woman walks along the seafront in Largs, North Ayrshire, amid the severe weather

A rabbit was blown up onto a roof in Northern Ireland and had to be rescued by firefighters (Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service/PA)

Riggers were buffeted by the winds as they removed the scaffolding

Riggers remove scaffolding from a house building site at Lenzie after it fell down overnight, in winds of more than 90mph

The Forth Road Bridge at South Queensferry is closed to all vehicles due to strong winds

The lorry was blown over as winds of more than 90mph hit the west of Scotland

A lorry was blown off the M9 near Falkirk as parts of Britain were battered by Storm Gertrude

A staff member looks at a collapsed wall at Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh

Winds of more than 100mph disrupted transport, brought down power lines and damaged buildings as Storm Gertrude swept the country.

A rare red Met Office alert was in place for Orkney and Shetland earlier amid dangerously wild conditions in the Northern Isles on Friday.

Many other regions across the UK have yellow or amber warnings in place until Saturday for strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice as the extreme weather continues to batter the country.

A gust of 105mph was recorded in Lerwick, Shetland, between 1pm and 2pm, and a similar speed was noted further north in Yell around an hour later, the Met Office confirmed.

Elsewhere, winds above 80mph battered Inverbervie in Aberdeenshire and Orlock Head in Northern Ireland. Large parts of the Scottish mainland saw speeds of over 60mph.

Winds reached 144mph in the Cairngorm mountains, and nacreous clouds, which the Met Office said are usually seen in polar regions, were also spotted in the north-east of Scotland.

Thousands of homes were left without power in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The disruption in Scotland affected the Western Isles, Argyll, north west Highlands, Tayside, Aberdeenshire, Caithness and Shetland.

Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution (Shepd) had restored supply to more than 11,000 customers by early Friday evening, with fewer than 3,000 customers remaining to be re-connected.

In some areas flooding and road closures were hampering engineering teams, with strong winds and lightning grounding the helicopters used to carry out repairs and transport equipment.

Elsewhere, a man in Edinburgh was being treated in hospital after he was struck by flying debris in the Pinkhill area of the Scottish capital.

Flats were evacuated in Clydebank when scaffolding was blown through a roof.

And a number of people were injured on the A96 in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, when a lorry was blown over on to a car.

In Northern Ireland, it was a case of battening down the hutches after Storm Gertrude blew a pet rabbit up on to a roof in Omagh, Co Tyrone.

All schools in the Northern and Western Isles were closed with more following on the mainland throughout the day. Oxgangs Primary in Edinburgh was forced to close after part of a wall was blown off.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron was caught up in the disruption on his way to Belgium for EU talks.

Speaking on BBC Good Morning Scotland, he said: ''My first challenge is to get to Brussels as with hurricane (sic) Gertrude I've already had a flight problem so I'm racing across Scotland at the moment to get to Edinburgh Airport but I hope I will make it.''

Train and ferry services are also vastly reduced.

The latest front is expected to continue through the weekend.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has almost 40 flood warnings in place covering Ayrshire, Tayside, west central Scotland and the Highlands, while south of the border the Environment Agency is urging communities in southern England and parts of the North to stay alert to the risk of renewed flooding over the weekend.

The River Ouse in North Yorkshire and the Severn at Shrewsbury are expected to be particularly high.

Neil Davies, national flood duty manager at the Environment Agency, said: ''More wet weather this weekend means that communities in parts of southern England and the North should stay alert to the potential for further flooding.

''Teams from the Environment Agency will be out over the weekend continuing their work to check and repair flood defences as well as clearing watercourses and offering help and advice to communities still recovering from the impacts of flooding over Christmas.

''Strong winds combined with high tides could lead to large waves and spray especially for the Yorkshire coast and parts of southern and western coasts. We advise anyone near coastal paths and promenades to take extra care and to avoid the temptation to go 'wave watching'.''

P&O Ferries said the Pride of Hull ferry, from Rotterdam, had been unable to berth in the morning due to ''extreme weather conditions''.

A spokesman added the ferry had experienced winds of 60 knots, which he described as ''rare''.
James Murdoch is to return to Sky as chairman

James Murdoch is to return to Sky as its chairman, almost four years after he resigned from the company in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

The 43-year-old takes up his position after a short stint as chief executive of media giant 21st Century Fox, a role he only took up in July, succeeding his father, Rupert.

Mr Murdoch, the younger son of the 84-year-old media tycoon, has been a director of the pay-TV company since 2003 and previously served as chief executive from 2003 to 2007, before holding the position of chairman from 2007 to 2012.

He bowed to pressure to resign from the role in April that year following the scandal that erupted following phone-hacking involving the Murdoch-owned News of the World.

He takes over as chairman of Sky - which is 39% owned by Fox - from Nick Ferguson, who steps down from the Sky board at the end of July after 12 years as a director.

Sky's group chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, said: "The entire board offers its warmest thanks to Nick for his leadership as chairman and the major contribution he has made to Sky over many years. We're delighted that James Murdoch has agreed to step into the role of chairman.

"James' deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Sky's ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future.

"We're excited about 2016 and we start the year with good momentum. With an outstanding set of new initiatives and products for our customers, we are well positioned to deliver further strong growth and returns for shareholders."

Martin Gilbert has been appointed as deputy chairman, while Andrew Sukawaty becomes Sky's senior independent director.

Mr Murdoch's appointment comes as Sky revealed its highest customer growth in the UK and Ireland for 10 years, with 337,000 people joining the broadcaster in the second quarter.

The pay TV giant also secured record first-half operating profits - up 12% to 747 million - while revenues grew 5% to 5.7 billion in the six months to December 31 2015.

Mr Darroch added: "We have had another very strong half as we continue to transform Sky, broadening our business and expanding into new markets and customer segments."

He said the company's strategy was "delivering today and opening up significant growth opportunities for the future".

The return of Mr Murdoch will now pose questions as to whether 21st Century Fox will mount a takeover bid for Sky.

Analyst Roddy Davidson, at Shore Capital, said the return of Mr Murdoch was likely to "rekindle speculation regarding 21st Century Fox's plans for its 39% stake".

Sky shrugged off the mounting threat from rival BT in October when it notched up its best first-quarter UK customer growth for four years.

Campaign group Hacked Off questioned the appointment of Mr Murdoch.

Joint executive director Dr Evan Harris said: "In no normal company, with proper regard to standards of corporate governance, would the board appoint someone under whose management between 2007 and 2012 News International engaged in a cover-up of the extent of phone hacking, and by his failures to prevent it cost the company over 500 million so far."
Jamie Oliver has said there is no reason why David Cameron cannot do "the right thing" about a childhood obesity strategy.

The celebrity chef said the Government's decision on the matter will ultimately turn out to be the Prime Minister's legacy.

His comments come after the World Health Organisation (WHO) joined calls for a ''sugar tax'' on soft drinks, and as the Government prepares to issue a strategy for tackling obesity in the UK.

Mr Cameron has said he does not see the need for a sugar tax, although his position is believed to have shifted recently.

Speaking at the Andre Simon Food & Drink Book Awards where he was recognised for his contribution to the food industry, Oliver, 40, said the issue is not "rocket science".

He told the Press Association: "I honestly think that this childhood obesity strategy will set the tone of where we go in the next 100 years in public health.

"Regardless of who you vote for, it's Cameron's legacy. There's no real reason why he can't do the right thing."

He added: "Ultimately what he has to do is come up with a childhood obesity strategy that's relevant, logical and fitting for the epidemic that we're dealing with with regards to childhood obesity, but which is a metaphor for how creative and productive and excellent this country, is in the next 20 years."

He said he thinks people are getting tired of "miserable statistics" about childhood obesity decade after decade, asking: "How long can it go on?"

Oliver said he has the support of "every organisation around health give or take", adding: "The list is like 30 deep. Anyone that you would trust your kids with supports it."

He praised the Prime Minister's advisers, calling them "very impressive".

He said: "They have everything on the shelf. The question is - what's in the basket?"

Oliver said he expects an update in the next two weeks, but added that it might be pushed back.

"Everyone cares, but no one wants to take any pain. Everyone's got to take pain," he said, as he called on small businesses to do their bit, and praised efforts made by fast food chain McDonald's.

"Everyone always liked to poke at McDonald's. McDonald's has been doing more than most mid and small-sized businesses for the last 10 years. Fact. But no one wants to talk about it. And I don't work for them. I'm just saying they've been doing it - 100% organic milk, free range eggs, looking at their British and Irish beef."

He added: "My point is, everyone needs to do their bit. The corner shops need to do way, way more. We've got no standards for lunch boxes. The biggest enemy of school dinners is a lunch box.

"Teachers around the country are beside themselves, having to keep taking cans of Red Bull and Lucozade out of six, seven and eight-year-olds' lunch boxes. But there's no legislation that backs up a teacher to do such a thing. There's no standards," he said.

A third of 10 to 11-year-olds and over a fifth of four to five-year-olds in England are overweight or obese.

The award Oliver received at Thursday night's ceremony at The Goring Hotel in central London was the John Avery Award.

It was in recognition of his latest book, Everyday Super Food, and his contribution to the food industry over almost 20 years.
Security breaches connected with military bases, classified material and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) increased by almost 40% in 2015, new figures show.

Figures released to MPs reveal there were 2,145 recorded cases last year compared to 1,537 in 2014, equating to a 39.5% year-on-year rise.

But defence minister Mark Lancaster has withheld information on successful cyber attacks on the MoD's systems in the interests of protecting national security.

He also claimed the release of such figures may be "likely to prejudice" the work and security of the Armed Forces.

The MoD data released shows there were 44 unauthorised entries to military bases in 2015 compared to 24 in 2014.

It adds classified material was lost or stolen 490 times last year compared to 424 incidents in 2014, while "other security breaches" totalled 1,611 in 2015 and 1,089 in 2014.

Mr Lancaster, replying to a written parliamentary question from Labour former defence minister Kevan Jones, said: "The Ministry of Defence treats all breaches of security very seriously and requires all breaches to be reported.

"All incidents are subjected to an initial security risk assessment with further action taken on a proportionate basis."
Jess Phillips claimed women in Birmingham are subjected to sexual harassment similar to that seen in Cologne on New Year's Eve

Downing Street has rejected a Labour MP's claim that women on the streets of British cities are subjected to mass sexual harassment of the kind seen in Germany on New Year's Eve.

Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips said that Britain could not "rest on our laurels" over its record of protecting women, when two are murdered on average every week.

Recent migrants from the Middle East and north Africa were widely blamed for organised attacks on women in Cologne, where more than 800 women claimed they were sexually assaulted or robbed by mobs of young men.

But Ms Phillips told BBC1's Question Time that similar scenes were regularly witnessed in Britain's second city.

"A very similar situation to what happened in Cologne could be described on Broad Street in Birmingham, every week, where women are baited and heckled," said the MP.

"We should be careful in this country before we rest on our laurels, when two women are murdered ever week."

Her comments sparked outrage among some Twitter users, with one describing them as "a disgraceful slur against the streets of Birmingham" and another saying she had "trashed her home city". However, another said: "Jess Phillips was right in what she said - It's very sad woman should be subjected like this, but it has always been like this."

West Midlands Police inspector Gareth Morris acknowledged that the city centre experiences "issues associated with the night-time economy" but insisted it was "a safe, positive and vibrant place for people to visit". Sexual offences on Broad Street itself were down by more than 20% this year.

With more than eight million visitors a year, the area had seen 31 serious sexual offences, said Insp Morris, adding: "W hilst even one offence is too many, these are extremely low against sheer numbers of people visiting."

And he said: "There is certainly nothing to suggest any crime patterns or trends related to immigration."

Asked whether Prime Minister David Cameron believed that problems equivalent to those experienced in Cologne were taking place in Birmingham and other cities in the UK, a Downing Street spokesman replied: "No."

The spokesman said he was not aware of Ms Phillips' comments, but added: "The Prime Minister made clear at the time that these crimes were horrendous in Cologne and it was clearly a law and order issue which German police were dealing with."
Four Syrian refugees won a landmark legal case to come to Britain from The Jungle in Calais

Many of the people living in The Jungle in Calais are probably not refugees "in any general sense", Britain's most senior immigration judge has said.

They are more likely to be migrants who decline to make a claim for asylum in France because of the "perceived advantages" of lodging an application in Britain, Mr Justice McCloskey suggested.

It came as the President of the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber set out the reasons for a l andmark legal ruling allowing four Syrian refugees to come to Britain from the sprawling camp last week.

Lawyers for the young men - three teenagers and a 26-year-old with mental health problems - argued that they faced "intolerable" conditions and had a right under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to be reunited with family members already living in Britain legally.

Judges agreed that the four should be brought across the Channel while their asylum claims are determined, and they arrived last week in London.

Under European rules known as the Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers must make a claim in the first country they reach but can have their application examined in another country if they have relatives there.

Once an application is lodged in France, the process for formally passing it to the UK can take up to a year. The tribunal's ruling meant the four Syrians could be admitted to the UK as soon as their claim was lodged in France rather than waiting there while it passes through the French system.

The full ruling handed down on Friday said: "It seems likely that there is no real basis for many of its occupants remaining indefinitely in The Jungle and enduring the conditions that obtain there.

"Many are probably not refugees in any general sense or any sense entitled to recognition.

"Rather, they are migrant nationals of a number of countries outside the European Union, who, while intending to make a claim for refugee status, decline to make the claim in France due to perceived advantages, correct or otherwise, of doing so in the United Kingdom.

"In general terms there is no basis at all for thinking that a person who claims asylum in France will not be treated properly and will not have the benefit of the reception and other facilities which those duties entail."

However, it said the four were in a "special, indeed unique situation" because of factors including their age, vulnerability, psychologically traumatised conditions, the "acute and ever present dangers" to which they are exposed in The Jungle, the mental disability of one applicant, the "claimed" relationships linking them to those already in the UK and the "firm likelihood" that the outcome of applications in France would be a "take charge" acceptance by the UK.

The ruling described The Jungle, where an estimated 6,000 people are gathered, as a "bleak and desolate" place, adding: "Unlike other jungles, this place is inhabited by human beings, not animals. The conditions prevailing in this desolate part of the earth are about as deplorable as any citizen of the developed nations could imagine."

The judgment found the refusal to permit "swift admission" for the four "would interfere disproportionately with the right to respect to family life".

It went on: "Our conclusion is that the balance tips in favour of the applicants provided that they are prepared to set in motion their asylum claims processes in France."

However, the ruling stressed judges "will not lightly find" that Article 8 "operates in a manner which permits circumvention" of the Dublin Regulation, adding: "We consider that such cases are likely to be rare."

George Gabriel, of the charity Citizens UK, said they expect the judgment to affect 200 or 300 young people and unaccompanied minors in Calais and Dunkirk.

He added: "We hope to roll out legal support for them in a matter of days."

Steve Symonds, of Amnesty International UK, said: " For the UK Government to fight this case all the way to court is a demoralising reminder of how it continues to shirk its responsibility to provide safe refuge to those already forced to flee to Europe."

A Home Office spokesman said: "We have been granted leave to appeal and will be challenging the Upper Tribunal's judgment ."
The stepfather of murdered schoolboy Daniel Pelka has died in prison - six months after the victim's mother was found hanging in her cell.

Mariusz Krezolek was discovered unresponsive in his cell at HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire on Wednesday morning and pronounced dead shortly after, the Prisons Service confirmed.

The 36-year-old's partner Magdelena Luczak, 29, who was convicted of Daniel's murder alongside him, died at HMP Foston Hall in July last year.

A Prisons Service spokeswoman said: "HMP Full Sutton prisoner Mariusz Krezolek was found unresponsive in his cell at 8.30am on Wednesday 27 January.

"Staff immediately attempted resuscitation but he was pronounced dead shortly after.

"As with all deaths in custody, there will be an investigation by the independent Prisons & Probation Ombudsman."

Luczak was found dead on the eve of what would have been her son's eighth birthday. Her cause of death was recorded as hanging.

Daniel weighed just 1st 9lbs when he died aged four in March 2012. During his final months, he was denied food, forced to perform punishment exercises, confined in a locked box room, poisoned with salt, and subjected to water torture.

A judge at Birmingham Crown Court said that "unimaginable acts of cruelty and brutality" were inflicted on the child.

His mother and Krezolek, both originally from Poland, were convicted of murder and sentenced to at least 30 years in jail in August 2013 after blaming each other for the head injury which ultimately caused Daniel's death.

In December 2014 three Court of Appeal judges threw out challenges by the pair. They rejected a bid by Krezolek to appeal against his murder conviction and dismissed claims from both that their sentences were "excessive".

Luczak's trial heard that Daniel was regularly "imprisoned" for prolonged periods of time in a small, unheated room at his home.

The door to the box room had been adapted by Krezolek so Daniel could not escape or even see out of the keyhole.

Passing sentence in 2013, Mrs Justice Cox said: "It is a particularly grave aggravating feature in this case that, before the fatal blows to his head, Daniel was the victim of chronic and systematic starvation."

The medical evidence, the judge said, showed that Daniel's emaciation was regarded by experts as "unprecedented" in Britain.

The trial also heard that Luczak, despite knowing of Daniel's hunger, gave specific instructions to his teachers that he was not to eat any more food than his small packed lunch because of an eating disorder.
A mother has been found guilty of taking her toddler son to Syria to join Islamic State (IS), becoming the first British woman convicted of the offence after returning from the self-declared caliphate.

Tareena Shakil posed her boy for pictures wearing an IS-branded balaclava after secretly running away to Syria in October 2014.

She was also convicted of encouraging acts of terror in Twitter posts made before leaving the UK.

During a two-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, 26-year-old Shakil had denied the charges, claiming she only travelled to Syria because of a wish to live under the rule of sharia law.

However, the jury did not believe her account after seeing tweets, messages and photographs, including images of the black flag of IS and passages calling on people to "take up arms", and stating her wish to become a "martyr".

It took the jury of six men and six women nine hours and 35 minutes to reach their decision, and when they did it was unanimous.

Judge Melbourne Inman QC told Shakil - who looked stunned by the verdicts - that she would be sentenced on Monday.

The Recorder of Birmingham said: " You may go down and be remanded in custody until Monday's sentence.

Shakil had claimed she feared eternal damnation if she did not make the journey, and told loved ones staying in the UK in a damaged relationship with her estranged husband would "lead me to hell".

In a conversation with her father on WhatsApp, in mid-December 2014 while living under IS rule, she told him: "I want to die here as a martyr."

She later claimed these messages were sent under duress by female Islamic State minders.

Jurors heard that before going to Syria, Shakil had chatted online with "prominent IS member" Fabio Pocas.

She was also in touch with Sally Ann Jones, the British widow of Birmingham jihadi Junaid Hussain who was killed in a drone strike in Syria last year.

There were further signs of growing radicalisation, including searches for videos of Anwar al Awlaki, an al-Qaeda-linked extremist who was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The 26-year-old also changed the status of her Facebook page - emblazoned with the black flag of IS - to read: "If you don't like the current events in Sham (Syria) take to arms and not the keyboard."

But when asked in court if she ever intended to encourage acts of terror, she replied: "Not at all."

Her defence barrister said in court that with the breakdown of her marriage in 2014, she was "vulnerable" to IS targeted recruitment over the internet, but that did not make her a member.

Shakil, of Beechfield Road in Birmingham but formerly of Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire, told loved ones she was going to Turkey on a beach holiday, but secretly fled across the border into Syria, where she was later taken to Raqqa, the de facto IS capital.

While there, she admitted posing her son in a black balaclava branded with the IS logo.

Photographs recovered from her phone showed sinister images of her with an AK47 assault rifle, holding a handgun and wearing an IS balaclava.

Another photo showed what she accepted in evidence was her stood outside in a full-length black niqab carrying her child, and stood by an IS flag.

In one message she joked to her father: "I accidentally shot a hole in someone's front door today," however later in court she said this was not true.

Shakil claimed that many of the messages asserting she was content with life and was "happy" in Raqqa were in fact sent under duress from IS minders, who monitored her communications.

In a conversation with her brother just before she crossed into Syria, she said: "We will meet again either here, or heaven."

In December, three weeks before her escape and in reply to her father's pleas for her to return, she said: "I can leave but I don't want (to). I want to die here as a martyr.

"There are too many blessings dying as a martyr."

Nevertheless, she escaped IS territory, telling jurors she realised she had "made a mistake".

On her return to the UK in February last year, she admitted giving false accounts to the police and initially denying any knowledge of any tweets and the photographs until just weeks before her trial.
Bill Cosby is facing charges over an alleged sex assault in 2004

Lawyers for Bill Cosby have accused prosecutors of playing a game of "gotcha" by waiting 12 years to charge the veteran entertainer over a sex assault case and using his evidence in a civil lawsuit against him.

Defence lawyers filing their final motion before a key pre-trial hearing next week say Cosby, 78, had a promise from authorities that his evidence in his accuser's civil action would not be used against him.

District attorney Kevin Steele cites Cosby's recently unsealed testimony as part of the new evidence driving the charges against him over a 2004 sexual encounter at his home.

Cosby says his relationship with accuser Andrea Constand was consensual.

His lawyers want the charges dropped or Mr Steele removed from the case.

Former district attorney Bruce Castor is expected to give evidence for the defence on Tuesday.
Pupils at Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino High School with a mural of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane at their campus at Makati city, east of Manila, Philippines (AP)

A Chinese ship equipped with state-of-the-art sonar equipment will join the search for the Malaysian airliner believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean nearly two years ago.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will leave Singapore on Sunday to join the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 over a 46,000 square-mile expanse of deep seabed by late February, Australian deputy prime minister Warren Truss said.

The ship brings the Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS), which some experts say is more accurate than standard 75 kHz side-scan sonar devices that have been used to scan most of the area searched so far.

With standard acoustic sonar, the image becomes less clear the further a seabed object is from the equipment. But with SAS, the image remains sharp regardless of an object's distance.

Fugro Survey, the Dutch underwater survey company hired by Australia to find the Boeing 777, has defended its choice of sonar and maintains the search has been thorough.

Fugro search director Paul Kennedy has described SAS as developing technology with some questions about its reliability. Because the search was in such a remote region, Fugro opted for established technology with ready supplies of spare parts.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will join two Fugro ships, Furgo Discovery and Furgo Equator, which will continue to search with standard sonar equipment. The Fugro Discovery lost its sonar unit plus 14,800 feet of cable at the weekend when the ship towed the equipment into an underwater volcano.

The ship was heading back to the Australian port of Fremantle to collect new cable to deploy with a spare sonar unit.

A fourth ship, Havila Harmony, is equipped with a manoeuvrable deep-sea drone that has been fitted with a camera and high-resolution sonar for searching difficult terrain and for taking a closer look at potential clues. The drone was also recently damaged when it struck a fish net but has been repaired.

The ProSAS-60 sonar equipment aboard the Chinese ship will be operated by marine services companies Phoenix International Holdings, based in Maryland, and Seattle-based Hydrospheric Solutions.

Both companies gained experience searching for Flight 370 when they operated Go Phoenix, a ship which was contracted by Malaysia to take part in the search for eight months until June last year.

More than 32,800 square miles of the search area have been scoured since late 2014.

Most of the 239 people aboard Flight 370 were Chinese and t he high-tech ship marks the first time China has agreed to share the financial cost of the search with Malaysia and Australia.

The plane vanished on March 8 2014 after mysteriously flying far off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing.

A wing flap found in July on the other side of the Indian Ocean when it washed up on Reunion Island is the only debris recovered.
The cocaine-trafficking 'ndrangheta is one of the world's most powerful criminal organisations

Italian police have discovered an underground bunker in the countryside of southern Calabria with two mobsters, considered among Italy's most dangerous fugitives, holed up and sleeping inside.

Police said they are trying to find a network of accomplices they suspect helped 'Ndrangheta clan bosses Giuseppe Crea and Giuseppe Ferraro elude capture for 10 years and 18 years respectively.

Crea, 37, faces 22 years in prison for Mafia association; Ferraro, 48, was sentenced to life imprisonment, including for a murder conviction.

The two had a dozen firearms, including a Kalashnikov, neatly hung up on a wall, video released by police of the bunker's interior showed.

Also hanging from a wall was a pasta pot. Tomatoes, salad and what looked like a plate heaped with ricotta were on the counter.

Despite it being dug deep into the ground the hideout was furnished with electricity, and the mobsters had a satellite TV and a computer, police said.

Vines and bushes camouflaged the hideout in the province of Reggio Calabria.

Ferraro is considered one of the last survivors of a decades-long ferocious 'Ndrangheta clan feud that claimed at least 20 lives, according to police. Among those victims was a mobster whose body was fed to pigs and a nine-year-old boy who was accidentally shot when his grandfather's car was mistakenly fired on, daily Corriere della Sera reported.

Announcing the capture of the pair, Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano noted they were "both on Italy's list of most dangerous fugitives".

Authorities described the two as being clan bosses from 'Ndrangheta territory near Gioia Tauro, a port on the Tyrrhenian coast which, investigators have long maintained, the syndicate frequently uses as a base for activities such as drug and arms trafficking.

This hideout was in remote farm country. But many of the bunkers discovered by police hunting for other 'Ndrangheta mobsters in Calabria have been found tunnelled under farm buildings or reached through hidden trapped doors leading from kitchens, bedrooms or other rooms in homes.

Fugitive mobsters prefer to stay close to their power bases, where they can count on logistical support and rely on the reluctance of locals to tip police, turning on its head the expression to "being on the run".

After convicted Cosa Nostra chieftain Bernardo Provenzano was captured in 2006 in a farmhouse near Corleone, Sicily, after 43 years as a fugitive, prosecutors said he was able to live on farmland right near his home base because family and friends brought him food and freshly laundered clothes and bedding.

Investigators hope the latest capture will send a message to people in the nearby town of Rizziconi, whose city council was sent packing by the Italian central government because of infiltration by organised crime.

The cocaine-trafficking 'Ndrangheta is one of the world's most powerful criminal organisations. The Calabrian syndicate's bosses and foot soldiers are overwhelmingly drawn from family ranks.
Germany's justice minister has pledged to take steps to crack down on anti-foreigner crime after an unidentified assailant threw a hand grenade at an asylum seeker's home in the country's south west.

"It was just luck" that the device did not explode and nobody was harmed in the early morning attack against the home for asylum seekers in the town of Villingen-Schwenningen, regional police spokesman Thomas Kalmbach said.

Germany took in nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers last year and there have been multiple attacks on such residences, although most of them have been arson attacks against unoccupied buildings.

Justice minister Heiko Maass said the grenade attack represented a new level of "hate and violence" and that he is summoning his state counterparts to better co-ordinate local and federal measures to prevent and prosecute anti-immigrant hate crimes.

"Grenades are already flying towards refugee homes; we can't wait until there is someone dead," he said. "We need to do everything we can to ensure xenophobic crimes are more rapidly solved and punished more severely."

Police formed a special task force to look for the person or people behind throwing the grenade towards the home at 1.15am local time, Mr Kalmbach said.

Police said the grenade still contained its explosives but it is not clear whether it still had a detonator. Forensics experts are investigating.

Security personnel spotted the grenade and kept residents away while police responded.

A bomb squad destroyed the device in a controlled explosion on the scene at about 5am after evacuating the 20 residents from the home.
Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained some closely guarded secrets, including material requiring one of the highest levels of classification, the US government has confirmed.

The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Mrs Clinton is a candidate.

The State Department will release more emails from Mrs Clinton's time as US secretary of state later on Friday.

But The Associated Press has learned that seven email chains are being withheld in full for containing "top secret" material.

Department officials would not describe the substance of the emails or say if Mrs Clinton had sent any herself.

Spokesman John Kirby tells the AP that no judgment on past classification was made. But the department is looking into that, too.

Some 22 emails containing material demanding one of the highest levels of classification have been censored.

The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called "special access programmes" - a highly restricted sub-set of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programmes like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.

"The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information," State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP, describing the decision to withhold documents in full as "not unusual".

Mrs Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has insisted she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time.

No emails released so far were marked "classified" or "top secret", but reviewers had previously designated more than 1,000 messages at lower classification levels for public release.

For those that Mrs Clinton only read, and did not write or forward, she still would have been required to report classification slippages that she recognised. But without classification markings, that may have been difficult, especially if the information was in the public domain.

Mr Kirby said the State Department's focus as part of the Freedom of Information Act review of Mrs Clinton's emails was on "whether they need to be classified today". Questions about their past classification, he said, "are being, and will be, handled separately by the State Department".

Possible responses for classification infractions include counselling, warnings or other action, State Department officials said.

Mrs Clinton's main challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, is neck and neck with her in the polls in Iowa and leads in New Hampshire. However, Mrs Clinton still holds a strong advantage in national polls.

The emails have been an issue for Mrs Clinton's campaign since it became known 10 months ago that she exclusively used a non-government account linked to a home server while in office. Mrs Clinton first called the decision a matter of convenience and then termed it a mistake, even if doing so was not expressly forbidden.

Both Mrs Clinton and the State Department have said her account was never hacked or compromised, which security experts assess as unlikely, and that the vast majority of her emails were preserved properly for archiving purposes because she corresponded mainly with government accounts. They have backtracked from the archiving claim, while the AP discovered several phishing attempts on her server connected to Russia.

The FBI is also looking into Mrs Clinton's email set-up but has said nothing about the nature of its probe. Independent experts say it is highly unlikely that she will be charged with wrongdoing, based on the limited details that have surfaced up to now and the lack of indications that she intended to break any laws.

The potential political costs that are probably of more immediate concern for Clinton. She has struggled in surveys measuring her perceived trustworthiness, and an active federal investigation could damage her national security reputation.
The scene moments before Robert Finicum was shot by police near Burns, Oregon (FBI/AP)

An FBI video of the fatal shooting of a spokesman for armed occupiers of an Oregon wildlife refuge has shown the man reaching into his jacket before falling into the snow.

Saying he had a gun in his pocket, the FBI showed the video at a news conference in Burns to counter claims that Arizona rancher Robert "LaVoy" Finicum , 54, who was killed in Tuesday's confrontation on a remote road, did nothing to provoke officers.

During that confrontation, the FBI and Oregon State Troopers arrested five main figures including Ammon Bundy, the group's main leader.

The video, shot by the FBI from a plane, shows a vehicle being driven by Bundy stopped by police on a road. A white truck driven by Finicum was stopped but sped off, with officers in pursuit. The video shows Finicum's vehicle hitting a bank of snow when encountering a roadblock.

A man identified as Finicum gets out of the truck, there is gunfire as he reaches into his jacket, and he falls into the snow.

"On at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket," said Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge for the FBI in Portland.

"He did have a loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun in the pocket."

Mr Bretzing said Finicum's truck nearly hit an FBI agent before it got stuck in the snow. "Actions have consequences," he said. "The FBI and OSP tried to effect these arrests peacefully."

Meanwhile, four occupiers remained at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, demanding assurances they not be arrested.

The occupation by ranchers and others began on January 2 and at one point there were a two dozen people inside, demanding that the US government turn public lands over to local control.

But the compound has been emptying out since the arrest of Bundy and 10 others over the past few days, and with the death of Finicum.

Oregon Public Broadcasting spoke to the remaining occupiers - David Fry from Ohio, husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson of Idaho and Jeff Banta from Nevada. Fry told the station that Sean Anderson faced a federal arrest warrant.

All 11 people under arrest have been charged with conspiring to impede federal officers from carrying out their duties through force or intimidation. Three of the 11 were arrested on Wednesday night when they left the refuge.

Ammon Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense 2014 stand-off with the government over grazing rights.

The group came to the desert of eastern Oregon in the dead of winter to protest at what it calls onerous national land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of starting fires.

In a criminal complaint, federal authorities said the armed group had explosives and night-vision goggles and was prepared to fight.

The charges against Bundy and others say the refuge's 16 employees had been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence.
Donald Trump comes out fighting at his own event in Iowa (AP)

Republican presidential candidates lost no time in taking advantage of a rare opportunity to step out of front-runner Donald Trump's shadow in the party's last debate before the Iowa caucuses.

The policy-heavy event in Des Moines offered a glimpse of what the Republican contest might have been without the unpredictable billionaire businessman - but the candidates could not resist lampooning Mr Trump for boycotting the final debate before voting kicks off in the 2016 campaign on Monday.

Iowa residents will choose among the Republican and Democratic candidates in the first of a series of state-by-state contests to choose delegates to each party's convention.

Texas senator Ted Cruz, locked in a tight contest with Mr Trump in Iowa, opened the debate with a sarcastic impression of the property mogul's frequent insults of his opponents.

"I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly," Cruz said. "And Ben (Carson), you're a terrible surgeon." Then he thanked his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by turning up.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a frequent Trump target, said: "I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me."

But, never one to go quietly, Mr Trump held a competing rally at Drake University in Des Moines, an event his campaign said was raising money for military veterans.

"When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," Mr Trump said, explaining he was skipping the debate because he felt Fox News had dealt with him unfairly.

"We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if we're being mistreated."

Mr Trump has feuded with Fox News for months, particularly its anchor and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.

Fox News Channel said on Thursday that Mr Trump had demanded a five million-dollar contribution to his charities in order to appear in the debate, which the network rejected.

Fox News said its chairman Roger Ailes, in conversations with Mr Trump, "acknowledged his concerns" about a statement the network had made in the days leading up to the debate.

Mr Trump's absence put the spotlight on Mr Cruz, who is challenging for the lead in Iowa, as well as on Florida senator Marco Rubio, who needs a strong showing in the state to stay competitive.

The two senators engaged in a lengthy debate on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans. Both have been accused of shifting their stances on legalising some of those in the United States covertly, a position opposed by many party voters.

Mr Cruz accused Mr Rubio of making a "politically advantageous" decision to support a 2013 Senate bill that included a pathway to citizenship, while the Florida senator said his rival was "willing to say or do anything to get votes".

In a rare stand-out debate moment for Mr Bush, the former Florida governor sharply sided with Mr Cruz in accusing Mr Rubio of having "cut and run" on the Senate immigration bill, saying: "He cut and ran because it wasn't popular with conservatives."

With their White House hopes on the line, the candidates worked hard to cast themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats emanating both from abroad and within the United States.

Mr Rubio struck an aggressive posture, pledging that as president he would go after terrorists "wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, we're sending them to Guantanamo".

He also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the US if there were indications that they were being used to radicalise Muslims.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul, back on the main debate stage after being downgraded to an undercard event because of low poll numbers earlier this month, warned against closing down mosques and also raised concerns about the US getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State (IS) group has a stronghold.

The candidates largely sidestepped direct confrontations with each other, focusing some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"She is not qualified to be president of the United States," New Jersey governor Chris Christie said. "What we need is someone on that stage who has been tested who has been through it."

Mr Trump's campaign said his Drake University rally raised more than six million dollars (4.2m) million for veterans.

In a statement after the rally, it added that if Fox News "wanted to join in that effort and make a contribution, Mr Trump would have welcomed that".

Vefore the rally Mr Trump told reporters he had fielded multiple calls from Fox representatives and Mr Ailes during the day.

Fox's statement said Mr Ailes had three brief conversations with Mr Trump on Thursday about possibly appearing at the debate, but "there were not multiple calls placed by Ailes to Trump".
There are rumblings of a shake-up within Johnston Press, which owns several newspapers in Northern Ireland including the News Letter.

Several local weekly titles here have been branded "sub core" by the Edinburgh-based publisher - meaning they are in line for a radical overhaul. Equally, or perhaps more likely, they could be sold. Hopefully there will be no closures.

The development was revealed by trade title Press Gazette, based on an email sent by JP bosses to staff.

Stock Exchange-listed Johnston is the owner of a suite of around 250 newspapers in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Isle of Man and is the second-largest publisher of local newspapers in the UK.

W&AK Johnston Limited was founded in 1826 and bought control of its first newspaper, the Falkirk Herald (which it still owns), in 1846.

The company bought newspaper groups in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties and by 2002 was a significant player in the UK regional market. It then embarked on what, with the benefit of post-crash hindsight, was an ill-fated expansion into Ireland.

In 2005 it purchased Local Press Ltd, which included the former Trinity Mirror-owned Derry Journal and News Letter groups, for 165m, and the newspaper assets of Scottish Radio Holdings (45 titles in Scotland and Ireland) for 155m.

It also bought the Leinster Leader Group for 138m (before going on to buy The Scotsman Publications a year later).

The Irish titles - which included many that were originally Morton Newspapers titles - were reorganised into three holding companies: Johnston Publishing NI, Derry Journal Newspapers and Johnston Press Ireland.

Although Johnston Press Ireland was later sold off, there was precious little interest in any of the Irish titles when JP tried to offload them. All in, JP spent more then 300m on newspapers in Ireland, at the peak of the market, which ended up being worth just a fraction of their purchase price.

Common with many newspapers, there has been much rationalisation and restructuring since, but it now looks like further changes are on the cards.

According to Press Gazette, staff have been informed which newspapers are considered of "uber" importance, "primary", "core" and "sub-core".

Included in 59 "sub-core" titles are the Londonderry Sentinel; Carrick Gazette; Ballymena Times; Ballymoney Times; Banbridge Leader, Belfast Vibe and Tyrone Times.

The following titles have all been designated "core": Larne Times; Portadown Times; Derry Journal; Lurgan Mail, Mid-Ulster Mail and Ulster Star.

There are no NI newspapers in the "primary" group. The News Letter is part of the important "uber" category, which I'm guessing means it is a) profitable and b) a successful content provider to the larger JP group.

Johnston wants to sell some newspapers but has said inclusion in the "sub-core" group does not automatically mean that a newspaper will be up for sale. The company will seek to "establish new innovative models to enable us to improve the levels of return from this group".

This, to me, is corporate-speak for pagination reductions, less frequent publication, a switch to digital-only publishing or some combination of all three

But there is a strong likelihood that these newspapers will go for sale, if only to see if buyers exist. Closures couldn't be ruled out either, which would not just hit jobs but deprive communities in Derry, Carrick, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Banbridge and Tyrone with key local voices.

Whatever ends up happening, it looks like significant change is imminent.
The Irish National Caucus is a disproportionately influential lobby group based on Capitol Hill in the USA. It was founded in February 1974, and judging by its latest video nasty - allegedly an educational tool - it has learned little about the real Northern Ireland since that time.

Its description of the province paints a picture, which if it was ever true, is now safely consigned to history. The Caucus in its mission statement describes itself as a human rights organisation dedicated to getting the US to stand up for justice and peace in Ireland.

Whatever its intent, it is certainly going about its mission in a strange way by peddling outdated stereotypical anti-unionist propaganda designed to appeal to Irish-Americans who have little or no appreciation of what life is like here in the 21st century.

Consider some of the comments propagated in the video. It claims there is continuing anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland, a suggestion that takes no cognisance of the many reforms which have been introduced over the past 50 years, such as equal voting rights, fair employment and equality legislation and, perhaps most significantly, the advent of power-sharing which sees the DUP and Sinn Fein as the two major parties in the current governing administration.

To claim that a significant proportion of the unionist/Protestant population resents sharing power with Catholics because they have never regarded Catholics as equals flies in the face of the overwhelming support given to the main unionist parties who make up the Stormont administration.

Quite rightly First Minister Arlene Foster has described the video as misleading at best and downright sectarian at worst, and urged viewers to reject its analysis. It needs to be challenged in the most forthright terms given that the Caucus has its base right at the heart of the US administration and has the ear of many in Congress.

Northern Ireland, in spite of the huge advances made, requires major international investment to create a vibrant economy and the US is a prime target for those seeking to bring new employment opportunities to these shores.

Mrs Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness must make it a priority on their visits to the US to counter this baleful propaganda and tell opinion-formers there the real facts of life here.
FREQUENTLY we hear complaints about the lack of effectiveness of our political set-up, from the inbuilt sectarianism to the inability of politicians to grasp the "bigger picture", which, in the case of Northern Ireland, is a pretty small picture.

The frequent calls for a new political party are surely naive, in that they call for a non-sectarian, progressive and courageous party; a party that gives leadership, makes the hard unpopular decisions, that is focused on bettering the lot of everyone, that faces down the vested interests, be they the professions, bureaucrats and even some community groups.

There is such a party. It has been here for some 40 years and has a reputation for leading - and history shows that other parties follow, but some years later.

It is gratifying some of our political leaders and business leaders are now seeing this and saying it; and that they are raising the profile of the changes needed in Northern Ireland to make it more economically viable.

We are now hearing leaders say that we need a new way of doing things. The health service will not improve by having a top-class hospital in every town; we have to find a way for people to get to the best treatments quickly and easily. We cannot sustain 70,000 empty school desks, nor should we accept the apartheid proposed in the Shared Schools nonsense.

If separate development was rejected in South Africa some years ago, why are we continuing to use it here? We cannot sustain the multiplicity of underfunded quasi-Government bodies, who seem to spend so much of their effort trying to get grant money to survive and not doing the job they are supposed to do.

The process of getting important infrastructure projects up and running comes from a lack of political will, with no one taking responsibility, and the Government making ill-defined policy pledges and not setting up a mechanism for them to be carried out within a realistic timescale. I am optimistic that we can stop being poor mouths and can, with our native abilities, effect the changes required to make Northern Ireland a better place for all.

TOM EKIN

Belfast
The infamous German inscription that reads Work Sets You Free at the main entrance of Auschwitz

A group of Polish Jews are led away for deportation by German SS soldiers in 1943

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) shows SS officers socializing in their retreat at Solahutte outside of Auschwitz, Poland. From left Richard Baer, who became the commandant of Auschwitz in May 1944, Dr. Josef Mengele, Commandant of Birkenau Josef Kramer, hidden, and the former Commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Hoess, foreground; the man at right is unidentified. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the museum. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shows Nazi officers and female auxiliaries, Helferinnen, posing on a wooden bridge in Solahutte. a little known SS resort some 30 km. south of Auschwitz on the Sola River in Poland, At center, Karl Hoecker. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp included in Hoecker's photo album, unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shows members of the SS Helferinnen, female auxiliaries, siting on a fence railing in Solahutte, a little known SS resort some 30 km. south of Auschwitz on the Sola River in Poland, as Karl Hoecker passes out bowls of blueberries. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp included in Hoecker's photo album and unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) shows a group of SS officers gathered in front of a building at Solahutte, the SS retreat outside of Auschwitz, Poland. From left, Josef Kramer, Dr. Josef Mengele, Richard Baer, Karl Hoecker and unidentified. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp included in Hoecker's photo album, unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the museum. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shows SS officers, including several SS physicians, sit around a table drinking at Auschwitz, Poland. Among those pictured are Karl Hoecker,far left, Dr. Fritz Klein, left hand side, end of table, Dr. Horst Schumann and Dr. Eduard Wirths on the right side of the bench, third from the front. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp included in Hoecker's photo album, unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) shows an accordionist leading a sing-along for SS officers at their retreat at Solahutte outside Auschwitz, Poland. In the front row are Karl Hoecker, Otto Moll, Rudolf Hoess, Richard Baer, Josef Karmer, Franz Hoessler, and Josef Mengele. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the museum. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) shows the first page of a photo album of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the museum. At left, the commandant of Auschwitz, Richard Baer, and right, Karl Hcker, the adjutant to the commandant. The inscription reading "Auschwitz 21.6.1944" signals its uniqueness as rare wartime photographs of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. (AP Photo/USHMM) ** ONE TIME USE ONLY. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES **

Polish police said the teenagers were spotted acting suspiciously at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

I was 10 years old when my whole life changed. I was living with my grandparents when the Nazis forced all of us into the Lodz ghetto in Poland.

My grandfather died of starvation soon after - he was very religious and refused to eat the non-Kosher food. My grandmother and I were alone.

Two years after we arrived in the ghetto there was a round-up and I was put on a lorry to be deported.

Looking around, I saw that I was surrounded by children, elderly and disabled people. By some miracle the guards in the yard weren't looking and I managed to jump off.

I stayed working in the ghetto's metal factory until, one day, we were all put on cattle trucks and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

From Auschwitz-Birkenau I was sent to Stutthof concentration camp and then on a forced march to Neustadt in Germany. I was liberated by British troops in 1945.

At the age of 10 my life was taken from me. My father had run away in 1939 to escape the Nazis - I never learnt what happened to him.

My grandfather died of starvation. My grandmother died in Theresienstadt concentration camp the day it was liberated. From the day we entered the ghetto she never knew one single day as a free woman.

But, in spite of all this, by some miracle I survived. I came to the UK in 1947 and was reunited with my mother, who spent the war here.

Soon after I was reunited with a group of other child survivors I knew from the camps. We call ourselves "the Boys" to this day, and they are like my family.

I had my own family - a beautiful wife, two children, six grandchildren and even a great-grandchild.

Hitler did not win. But if I spend the rest of my life hating I will not win either.

I survived and I will keep telling my story as long as I can to make sure that young people always know what happened to us. We must never give up. And we must never stop teaching young people about the dangers of hatred.

Zigi Shipper speaks in schools through the Holocaust Educational Trust's outreach programme. To find out more, visit www.het.org.uk
Counters tally results of the Bangladesh general election in January 2014. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party is pointing to a statement by Chief Justice S.K. Sinha earlier this month to continue claims the vote was fraudulent.

A debate is raging in Bangladesh over the constitutionality of rulings issued by retired judges, with the opposition arguing that the countrys last general election was the illegal product of one such opinion.

Marking one year in office on Jan. 17, Chief Justice S.K. Sinha wrote that judges should complete full verdicts in a reasonable time.

Some judges make exceptional delays and continue writing judgments after retirement, a practice which is against the law and unconstitutional, he wrote in a message posted to the Bangladeshi Supreme Courts website.

Picking up on the word unconstitutional, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) accused the Awami League government of retaining power illegally through an opinion written by Sinhas predecessor, A.B.M. Khairul Haque, after his retirement.

BNP honed in on Haques ruling that deemed a neutral caretaker government during elections as unnecessary. That ruling led to the Awami Leagues (AL) victory in the last general election, held on Jan. 5, 2014.

The AL, headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was re-elected to a second term after the BNP boycotted the election over Awamis decision not to hand the reins of government to a caretaker administration during the run-up to immediate aftermath of the vote.

Illegitimate

The chief justices comment supports our position that the AL government is illegitimate. His comment has shaken the government. We welcome his statement, Mahbubur Rahman, a member of the BNPs highest policy-making standing committee, told BenarNews.

The judgment is unconstitutional; so the dropping of the caretaker government is illegal. And the Jan. 5 elections that brought Awami League to power is also illegal, Rahman said.

At a press conference on Thursday, BNP Joint Secretary-General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi demanded that Haque be arrested for "violating" the constitution, since the justice had become an ordinary citizen after retirement.

Rizvi said the government had filed a sedition case against BNP chairwoman Khaleda Zia to divert public attention from the chief justices comment. On Monday, a court in Dhaka ordered the former three-time prime minister to appear for a hearing into the charge on March 3.

The charge stems from a public comment made by Zia last month in which she allegedly questioned the official number on people killed in Bangladeshs war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Critics have accused the government of Hasina of using the sedition accusation as a way to sideline Zia. The two Begums, as the pair of most famous women in Bangladesh are known, are longtime and bitter foes.

Law minister challenges court

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Law Minister Anisul Huq lashed out at the chief justice for his statement.

I challenge, can Sinha show any part of the constitution that says writing verdicts after retirement is illegal? He could have said some of the judges have not been completing judgments before retirement. As there is no constitutional obligation, how can he use a word like unconstitutional? Huq said at his parliamentary office on Wednesday as he threw a copy of the constitution toward a BenarNews correspondent.

There is no problem with the post-retirement judgment writing. The practice has been going on for decades; if it was unconstitutional, most of the decisions of the state and the government would be illegal. Given the gravity of the word, I speak against the statement, Huq said.

MPs angered

Sinhas statement angered AL lawmakers, too.

His statement is provocative. He has made some comments that have created tension in politics. He should not have made such remarks as head of the judiciary, Suranjit Sengupta, the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on law ministry, told parliament.

Post-retirement opinion writing was not unconstitutional, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters.

According to Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, many MPs wanted to comment on Sinhas statement during Wednesdays session in parliament.

But I declined to give them floor, she told BenarNews, adding that any further discussion would put the executive and the judiciary at loggerheads.

On Thursday night, Prime Minister Hasina, Chief Justice Sinha, the law minister and attorney general met with President Abdul Hamid, who appoints the chief justice.

Hamids press secretary, Joynal Abedin, confirmed to BenarNews that the meeting took place at the presidents official residence, but declined to reveal what was said behind closed doors.
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For Immediate Release, January 29, 2016 Contact: Kristen Monsell, (914) 806-3467, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org Lawsuit Prompts Offshore Fracking Moratorium Off California Coast Case Could Also Affect Federally Permitted Fracking in Gulf of Mexico LOS ANGELES The federal government must stop approving offshore fracking from oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel under a legal settlement filed today in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The agreement resolves a Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit that challenged the U.S. Department of the Interiors practice of rubber-stamping fracking off Californias coast without engaging the public or analyzing frackings threats to ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and marine life, including sea otters, fish, sea turtles and whales. 2015 Drew Bird Photography. This photo of oil rigs off the California coast is available for media use. This halt to offshore fracking is a huge victory for Californias coastal environment, said Kristen Monsell, a Center attorney. Offshore fracking is a dirty and dangerous practice that has absolutely no place in our ocean. The federal government certainly has no right to give the oil industry free rein to frack offshore at will.



Oil companies have fracked at least 200 wells in state and federal waters off Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and in the wildlife-rich Santa Barbara Channel. Offshore fracking blasts vast volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals beneath the seafloor, at pressures high enough to fracture rocks. The oil industry has federal permission to dump more than 9 billion gallons of wastewater, including chemical-laden fracking fluid, into the ocean off Californias coast every year. Todays agreement requires the Interior Departments Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to analyze the environmental dangers of offshore fracking and acidization under the National Environmental Policy Act. The settlement also prohibits federal officials from authorizing these inherently dangerous practices in federal waters until that analysis is concluded. The settlement requires a programmatic environmental assessment to be completed by May 28, 2016. It also requires the public to be given at least 30 days to review and comment on the draft assessment. Todays settlement follows the city of Long Beachs decision last month not to move forward with 13 planned offshore fracks, which would have been the first offshore fracks in state waters since 2013. At least 10 fracking chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking in California could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including sea otters and fish, Center scientists have found. Every offshore frack puts coastal communities and marine wildlife at risk from dangerous chemicals or another devastating oil spill, Monsell said. Once federal officials take a hard look at the dangers, theyll have to conclude that offshore fracking is far too big of a gamble with our oceans life-support systems. Theyll have to stop authorizing it for good. Oil companies are also using offshore fracking in the Gulf of Mexico, including in the vicinity of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon spill. Fracking in the Gulf of Mexico has also never had meaningful environmental review. Todays agreement could affect oversight of all federally permitted offshore fracking. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
When your marketing and advertising teams gel well, you get campaign magic. The well-timed Virgin Active 'Get off your ass' campaign is proof of this, particularly its gif-based social media aspect.

Another new year, another ad prompting us to get to the gym? Yes, but the Virgin Active SA 'Get off your ass' campaign has a little something extra. More than just promoting the features of health club membership, it touches on the fact that December has been a month of indulgence for many, making January the focus of a slew of resolutions about changing habits and fresh starts.

It's proven so popular it's been awarded a hard-won advertising Orchid and has sparked a second phase titled 'gifoffyourass', which challenges people to express themselves and their fitness goals on social media, using fun gifs featuring the characters from the TV commercial. In case you've missed it on TV, the ad is embedded below:

Now how does this level of effective advertising come about? To get the full picture I got insight from both the client and agency involved: Tseliso Rangaka, executive creative director at Ogilvy Cape Town speaks from the advertising angle, while Zeyad Davids, chief sales and marketing officer of Virgin Active explains the marketing thinking...

1. Explain the Virgin Active-Ogilvy working relationship.

Rangaka: Our relationship with the Virgin Active team is one based on mutual respect and trust. They feel comfortable knowing that we understand their business and are vested in its success. Likewise, we enjoy the appreciation they have for what we can do for the brand. This partnership has enabled us to push each other into a brave, interesting space that is also very Virgin.

Davids: We recently appointed O&M Cape Town to handle our public relations and digital business and could feel an immediate positive chemistry with the team. We have a high regard for the agency's fully integrated approach to creativity and their depth of knowledge, but it really all gelled in terms of a relationship over the ATL campaign, the first ideas for which came about in an informal brainstorming session. The creative team took the ideas and turned them around incredibly fast. No problem was too big and they were open to robust debate. We knew we wanted something upbeat, something provocative, something we hoped would get South Africans to smile. From then on it was trust and some very good ideas that we all agreed on. That takes a fast grasp of what Virgin Active SA is all about and we were thrilled at the outcome.

2. Expose the Virgin Active SA brand personality and how it matches up to its target consumers.

Davids: Virgin has really set the tone globally for decades with its brand of cheeky, often provocative creative. Virgin Active SA carries that tone through in how we approach fitness. We're a health club not a gym, and a brand that understands how to be young and exuberant when it comes to health and wellness, at the same time embracing our "young, old, fit, unfit, you're all welcome," message. The brand personality has to maintain a multi-level conversation with its members. We believe we really get that exercise can and must be fun, must offer a wide range of options, including the latest in technology and innovative products to keep members engaged for life.

3. Looking to this ad in particular, interesting take in challenging viewers to do something about the status quo. Is this a new form of 'ad activism'?

Rangaka: Virgin Active is about more than just gym and exercise. They're about enabling a healthy, active lifestyle, which in turn allows people to confidently pursue their goals. Our aim was to connect this higher purpose to the desire we all have to improve our lives. To do this effectively, we needed to motivate people and get them to believe they can also lead healthy, happy lives. All they need to do is get up and get active! The song we used was a collaboration between the agency team, the film director and client. It was written to be motivational, but in a way that's sympathetic to our human fallibility. We decided to go with a big-band, swing arrangement and playful lyrics to keep it within Virgin Active's tongue-in-cheek tonality.

Davids: People know that exercise is good for them, but what is it that stops you from making that first move? Our current TV commercial gets the message of 'get up and get active' across in several, everyday scenes and via a playful song with lyrics that highlight our tendency to put fitness on hold and ruining well-intentioned goals. Yes, we took a calculated chance with the tone and content of this TVC, but we've had an incredibly positive response from members and the public. We believe it's just what SA needs at this time - time out to laugh - and we'll continue in this vein.

4. What's response been like since the ad's first flighting?

Rangaka: Up until now, the responses to the ad have been overwhelmingly positive. We are thrilled to see how many people enjoy the ad and how many positive feedback was heaped on the Virgin Active brand. I think the reason for this is that people relate to the characters in the ad. It takes a light hearted approach at persuading people to get up and active.

5. Will there be further follow-up ads to extend the message throughout the year?

Davids: Definitely. And there's a lot to talk about. Double digit growth with club openings and some really exciting product offerings based on global trends and feedback from SA members. We'll advertise all year through a wide variety of channels but our over-arching message particularly for 2016, is "Get Up and Get Active". What we hope to expand on is messaging on Virgin Active's value for money proposition and incredible breadth of offering with Virgin Active RED, LifeCentre clubs and Classic Collection; 124 clubs and a fee structure that starts at under R200.

6. What can we expect from the "Gif Off Your Ass" social media element?

Rangaka: It's a social campaign developed by the Ogilvy PR team to support the television commercial. The digital platform hosts gifs featuring different characters from the TVC. People can download and share the gifs on their personal social platforms to accompany their posts, which gives the campaign a 360-degree feel. Gifs are a rising trend in digital marketing and are playing an increasingly important role in sharing news online, telling stories through photojournalism and also in giving us new ways to express ourselves.

That's your call to get involved! What's not to love about moving pictures (gifs) that inspire you to move around and get fit? Visit 'gifoffyourass' to find out more.
Having executive produced the last three TV campaigns for the free-to-use insurance comparison website Hippo.co.za with MetropolitanRepublic, it was a huge privilege and a massive challenge for me, as part of the Catapult.tv team, to be offered a shot at directing the New Hippo "comparison don'ts" campaign.

It took me way out of my comfort zone, and should have been intimidating... but was it?

The MetropolitanRepublic team had developed ideas around the central campaign theme of "Comparison don'ts" vs "Comparison do's", and came up with a series of humorous, entertaining scenarios, demonstrating what NOT to do in a comparison situation.

When I saw the scripts for the first time I was intimidated - it was humour, and if it went south, would becoming unfunny and non-believable. I would be dead in the water as a director. With my many years of producing experience, I knew good performance was pivotal to the project and that the success of the campaign hinged on believability - that became my main focus. I also knew I had to surround myself with the best possible team for the job so we assembled a solid, experienced crew that could work under pressure.

From three scripts to four

Click on the image to view all four TVCs

The MetropolitanRepublic team had narrowed the draft scripts down to seven good possibilities, of which we would shoot three. My suggestion to them and to our clients - Derek Wilson and Daniel Jardim - was that we should cast all seven scripts, then do a rough timing edit on them, as this would quickly deliver the strengths and weaknesses of all the stories, as well as give us a feel for appropriate actors. This turned out to be a crucial decision and instead of three, four scripts went into production. We did a further call back session for the potential actors on the chosen four scripts, workshopping the different roles to make our final choice. By the final pre-production meeting, we knew who all our actors were, as well as their strengths and comfort zones and, having worked with them from the very start, I knew exactly what the deliveries should be to maximise performance in the allocated seconds.

Having done all our homework on the actors, accompanied by comprehensive and detailed pre-production, it freed up time on the filming days for crafting the lighting and art direction as well, keeping it as real as possible but pretty, and still allowing us to shoot two spots a day.

You've got to love this business - its people, possibilities, pushing envelopes, inspiration and consistency!

What's there not to love? To date, the TTL campaign has delivered record conversion rates for Hippo.co.za.

Watch the four 'comparison don'ts' TV ads on the Hippo website.
Health journalists are reminded that entries for the Discovery Health Journalism Awards 2016 close on 12 February 2016 and no extension will be considered.

All health journalists in South Africa are welcome to submit work that was published or broadcast between 1 January and 31 December 2015. From 2016, the category Best Foreign Media will also be opened to foreign journalists, based in South Africa, who report about health matters for world media.

The Discovery Health Journalism Awards aims to recognise excellence in all health reporting and there is nothing better than reaching someone in his or her own language. Therefore, it also encourages submission of written and radio entries in indigenous African languages.

Winners in each category will receive R25,000 and the overall winner R75,000. The website has all the categories, entry criteria, and prize details available. For more information, go to www.discoveryhealthjournalismawards.co.za.
During a recent customer experience cultural intervention workshop, my agency's customer experience interventionist asked the participants to name a brand they are not only loyal to, but love so much they will run into a burning building to save.

 Full copyright as Brandlove.

This made me think. Which are the brands I love and with each interaction with their product, service or interaction experience, they love me back?

Which one would I save from among all my casual-affair brands, the flavour-of-the-month brands, the hip and upcoming start-up brands, and my longstanding-relationship brands?

To have a true love affair with a brand, there has to be trust, mutual respect, significance, a connection, and a sense of giving beyond oneself. The kind of endearing relationship where one hugs and makes up after falling out, a relationship that is playful and adventurous and where one never kisses and tells.

I ended up with a "fingers-on-one-hand" and "fingers-to-spare" short list.

My first #lovebrand and the inspiration for this article is the Leatherman Tool Group of Portland, Oregon, in the USA.

I have owned various models of their famous multitools and have not been without one clipped to my belt in almost 20 years. I use the product almost every day and besides the fact that I now feel naked without one on my belt, it makes me happy!

Now that you have the background, let's return to the subject under discussion. In our interactions with various businesses in various industries in various countries, it's refreshing to see that an increasing number of companies are realising the importance of customer experience. For brands to survive to 2020 and beyond, they will have to start paying closer attention to the needs, wants and will of their clients.

In a connected world, consumers are taking more and more control in their interactions with businesses and it has even been suggested that consumers are starting to own the brand they are loyal to when we look at their need for:

 Instant gratification

 Personal attention

 Control

 Choice

 Connectedness

 Super communication

 Evaluation and tracking

 Listening more to others

Businesses that will survive will be the ones that listen, surrender control, create meaning, are better at the basics and solve problems for their customers.

Customer experience is being added as a discussion point on more and more board agendas, but in many instances with disregard, ignorance and no true aptitude for investment ?? operational, financial, human capital or otherwise.

Customer experience is allocated to the inexperienced, the uneducated or the uninterested. When it is not mistaken for client service or complaints handling, it is positioned as either an IT or marketing staff function.

This is no job for an IT architect or a brand ambassador; designing a company network or bullsh!tting your clients during a TV ad campaign will not cut it. This is a very specialised intervention that needs to supersede organisational structure and line reporting.

The chief customer officer (CCO) needs a seat in the boardroom, not to report, but to advise, support and delegate to each business silo regarding the importance of aligning client centricity.

Why should your CCO be the Leatherman for your company?

The CCO needs to bring the following multitool CX skills set with him or her:

The blade

The blade is needed to cut through the company bullsh!t. It is vital that the CCO must speak the truth about client centricity and the importance of the customer to the survival of the company.

The pliers

Often radical changes or adjustments are needed to fix client-centric atrocities inherited from the past or suggested for the future.

The can-opener

This skill is to uncover and open the can of worms. Business needs to be reminded that it is there to solve a problem for its clients first and foremost and receives compensation as a result of that.

The file

Sometimes it is needed to smooth out and polish the edges to make experiences great. What a nifty skill to be able to identify and optimise client touchpoints!

The saw

The most important skill to have is the ability to design and craft the perfect customer journey for your clients that will create or reignite the love affair with your brand.

The screwdriver set

Various shapes and sizes are needed to get the right fit. Attracting and engaging the right employees is not only key to creating moments of magic for your clients, but it is also the strength of the organisation as a structure.

The bottle opener

Uncap your employees to ignite and spark passion and creativity for your brand, with the people who promote, defend and live your brand daily ? not unlike opening a refreshing cold brew.

The measuring ruler

It is important to gather the correct data, analyse and interpret it objectively and scientifically. This will not only help to indicate how client-centric a business is, but will also be a way of measuring performance over time. Measurement allows for correction, improvement and, most important, celebration.

The only way, in my humble opinion, to improve your brand experience for your customers is to appoint a passionate CCO with the correct multitool CX skills set to help your business:

 Connect and reconnect with your customers.

 Conceive, conserve and continuously anticipate your consumers' needs.

 Craft and continuously reinvent your customers' experiences for your brand.

 Create and orchestrate your CX strategy.

Maybe then I will only end up with a "fingers-on-one-hand" and "fingers-to-spare" short list of brands I truly dislike!
With the demand on marketers to deliver, 2016 will require that service providers upscale their technology to be able to deliver multivariate campaigns across platforms in real time.

...Social outperforms the big G

Google search ads grew just 12% in Q2 2015, down from 24% a year earlier according to Merkle RKG. On the flip side, ad spend on Facebook grew a massive 69% in the same time frame. With CMOs increasing digital budgets, on average 35% or from 2015 to 2016, the challenge is no longer to shift budget to digital but rather to ensure spend delivers relevant ROI.

...Marketers deliver on both brand and sales objectives

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram keep a user-first focus giving brands an opportunity for relevant engagement. They both continue to develop features that deliver ROI for brands. The soon to be released Facebook Canvas is one such feature which provides a complete in-platform storyboard. Optimised for mobile, Facebook Canvas and other such integrations such as Facebook Live are changing consumer behaviour and business practice alike. This will allow marketers to bring both media and sales touch points together for the first time, thereby enabling both brand equity and sales generation.

...eCommerce expands in Africa

By 2020, 45% of the $632 billion in total e-commerce sales is expected to come from mobile, according to the Mobile Checkout Report by BI Intelligence. Whilst this reflects the US economy, Africa is not a region to be sniffed at. With 50% of the continent expected to have access to the internet by 2025, online shopping could account for 10% of the $750 billion retail sales market, according to McKinsey. The majority of this will be via mobile.

...Marketers understand the value of tailored creative

Online video will be the fastest growing ad format in 2016, driven by the increase in video consumption via mobile. Too many online videos are still redeployed TV ads that have not been adapted for online.

Not only do platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have unique video requirements but as engagement platforms, video needs to be tailored accordingly.

60% of digital marketers say that their biggest challenge in 2016 will be producing engaging content.
Business and Arts South Africa is gearing up for a jam-packed year, with events, symposiums and programmes aimed at expanding and scaling the agency's impact and influence - both in South Africa and a growing number of African territories.

The year starts with a significant confirmation of the contribution of BASA CEO, Michelle Constant, and long-standing BASA Board member, Mandie van der Spuy, to the arts. At a ceremony taking place at the French Embassy in Pretoria on 28 January, Constant will be awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres while Van der Spuy will be honoured with the Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

"We congratulate Michelle and Mandie for this outstanding achievement, the arts world is grateful for their excellent work. At BASA we are even more delighted that our two outstanding members continue to distinguish themselves passionately through our organisation in serving the Arts & Business communities." says BASA Chairman Kwanele Gumbi.

February gets underway with the first-ever BASA Conduct an Orchestra. Taking place on 4 February, as part of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, this stimulating event will see senior managers at several Business and Arts South Africa's member businesses join renowned conductor Richard Cock for a unique, interactive conducting experience featuring the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra. Cock, who is also a long-serving BASA Board Member, will bring his insights into the similarities between conducting an orchestra and running a business at senior level to this BASA event.

May sees the release of BASA's biannual Artstrack Research, which tracks consumer engagement in the arts as well as perceptions of the arts and its sponsors. This important research will be launched at the third Arts in Business Symposium. Details of this must-attend symposium will be confirmed closer to the time. Both the Artstrack Research and the Arts in Business Symposium will highlight BASA's growing knowledge hub and the agency's role in this vital area of the arts-business intersection.

In a continuation of work that was done in 2014 and 2015, 2016 will see BASA expand its area of reach and increase its knowledge through increased activities across Africa. BASA's mandate is premised on our country's national interest: a unified South Africa where civil society, business and government work together to contribute to the global competitiveness of South Africa. These partnerships are in alignment with the Department of Arts and Culture's mandate to highlight the importance of cultural diplomacy in international relations and the expansion of South African networks with the world, through strategic relations.

"We are intently focused on creating further opportunities for collaboration and co-creation between South Africa creative industries and the rest of the continent," explains Lonwabo Mavuso, Head of Programmes and Development.

"We have several programmes and events planned that will foster our relationship with a number of African countries, and are looking at ways to support our members in their engagement in the continent by using culture as a tool to enter those markets."

BASA's Supporting Grant Programme is designed for arts organisations and businesses to assist in activating sponsorship for a cross-section of arts projects in different regions of the country and it will continue in 2016. Supported by the Department of Arts and Culture, and designed to provide financial support to a project that is in an already existing relationship between a business and arts organisation, there will once again be four BASA Supporting Grant cycles during the year. Details of these cycles can be found on the BASA website.

Now in its second year, the expanded BASA Education Programme continues to provide business skills to artists around the country, with the support of partners National Arts Council as well as Rand Merchant Bank. Details of upcoming workshops and presentations for 2016 can be found on the BASA website as they become available.

Finally, BASA will be involved with several high-profile events during 2016 including the ACT/UJ conference, Design Indaba and The National Arts Festival while a definite highlight of the year is the 19th Annual Business Day BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard. This BASA flagship event recognises the support of the arts by a broad scope of businesses and has become one of the most important awards events in South Africa.

For more information on any of these BASA initiatives contact az.oc.asab@ofni

About BASA (NPC):

Business and Arts South Africa (NPC) is an internationally recognised South African development agency with a suite of integrated programmes implemented nationally and internationally. BASA encourages mutually beneficial partnerships between business and the arts, securing the future development of the arts sector in South Africa and contributing to corporate success through Shared Value. Business and Arts South Africa (NPC) was founded in 1997 as a joint initiative of the Department of Arts and Culture and the business sector as a public/private partnership.




We're definitely going to be taking mobile very seriously. Especially with communication and consumption trends. Currently in SA more online shopping still takes place on desktop, however, mobile has overtaken desktop as a research platform.

We're interested to monitor whether mobile catches up or overtakes desktop in online payments. This will be a gamechanger because it will mean that South Africans are becoming more and more comfortable sending money not only online, but also on mobile phones.

Also, Facebook as an online platform - we're interested to see how their shares perform as they diversify their advertising platform and what that means for online advertising as a whole.

Programmatic

Online media buying is changing monthly - programmatic media buying is definitely a trend to watch as clients will push agencies and media buyers to minimise wastage and increase value for money when driving leads and engagements. Gone are the days of 'Oh look it's on Facebook, job done'. Results are the new differentiator between who's competent and who's not.

Video

Video on mobile is our gamechanger trend for 2016. With Facebook's auto-play on video, consumption has increased by over 60%. Facebook is also now the largest platform in the world for video viewing. What this means for dynamic content and Facebook/Instagram adverts is going to be interesting. Static imagery alone isn't going to cut it in 2016.

Because digital changes constantly, the possibilities change too. We're going to encourage our team to push the boundaries and explore digital beyond just the obvious channels and tools that lie in front of us. How do we create campaigns that integrate the things in our lives? That's going to be a challenge.

I'd like to see more creative campaigns that push the envelope and challenge the industry as a whole to become better.

Digital spend

Invest your budgets in what really matters. At the end of the day, what really matters is business, otherwise why are we marketing anyway? Maximise digital spend because therein lies your best option for qualified leads.
WorldRemit and MTN Group launched their joint services, following the signing of a global partnership agreement earlier this year, to enable WorldRemit customers all over the world to send international remittances to MTN's Mobile Money customers.

"This partnership makes sense for both companies, as they share a disruptive approach to innovation and bring impactful services to our customers. Together, we are now providing an instant, digital and very affordable solution to send international remittance to Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. Other countries will follow soon," says Serigne Dioum, MTN group head of mobile financial services.

"At WorldRemit, we are pioneering international mobile-to-mobile remittances. Our partnership makes sending money home as easy as sending an instant message," says Alix Murphy, senior mobile analyst at WorldRemit.

"For diaspora members, sending money to friends and family back home in these countries, Mobile Money is a real game-changer. In Uganda, Mobile Money has already overtaken cash pick-up and bank deposits as the preferred method to receive money. We expect this trend to continue as MTN's Mobile Money services reach millions of people without bank accounts, giving them access to a variety of life-enhancing financial services including savings and insurance schemes."

People in more than 52 countries already use the WorldRemit app to send around 400,000 money transfers every month to over 125 destinations. WorldRemit is one of the leading senders of remittances to Mobile Money wallets, connecting to over 25 different services worldwide.

MTN Mobile Money enables users to perform utility payments, save money, purchase airtime and access a range of mobile financial products. To date, it is used by customers in 15 countries across Africa, including Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Congo, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda and Zambia.

In keeping with its aim to accelerate the rollout of international remittance, MTN launched a cross-border mobile money transfer service between Uganda and Rwanda in August 2015. The service allows customers in both countries to transact with the same simplicity as a local money transfer. The group also offers a mobile money cross-border remittance service between Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. The remittance corridor between Kenya and Rwanda is the latest addition to its bouquet of services. It forms part of a major initiative between MTN and Vodafone, to enhance financial inclusivity in East Africa.
Havas' team of experts join Rori DuBoff, global head of strategy, Havas Media Group, EVP and WIRED's head of product and business development, Mark McClusky, talk us through the evolution of products that were on show at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. They take a look at how virtual and augmented reality, digital screens, autonomous cars, wearables and robotics have developed over the past year, the trends that defined the largest CES show to date, along with their implications for brands, marketers and consumers. Click here to watch the video.
He said that they had crossed the Burma Bangladesh border by motor-boat to go and visit relatives.

According to BGB officials, after a tip-off a BGB team led by Company Commander Gulam Rabbani from Shapuridip BGB outpost under Teknaf Battalion No. 2 arrested the Burmese nationals trying to enter Bangladesh after carrying out an operation in the border area.

Of the passengers who were arrested 12 were children, six were female and eight were male. Six Burmese Rohingya crew members and the Bangladeshi trafficker were also arrested.

Lieutenant Colonel Md. Abuzar Al Jahid from BGB Teknaf Battalion No. 2.said that the six crew members and the trafficker were handed over to to the police at Teknaf Police Station so that the police could investigate further.

He said that the remaining 26 Rohingyas will be kept in custody at at the Shapuridip BGB outpost and will be repatriated to Burma after the BGB have carried out an investigation.

Mohammed Ataur Rahaman, the Office-in-Charge (OC) at Teknaf police station, said that the police charged the Bangladeshi trafficker and the six crew members with illegally trafficking people into Bangladesh. The case was due to be heard in the Cox's Bazar Court on 28 January.

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
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SAN FRANCISCO  When broker-dealers give money to California school bond campaigns, it appears to be money well spent.

A review of campaign finance records by The Bond Buyer found a nearly perfect correlation between broker-dealer contributions to California school bond efforts in 2010 and their underwriting subsequent bond sales.

The review found only one instance when a broker-dealer didnt handle the bond sale after making a contribution to a political action committee advocating a successful school-bond measure. In that case, the business went to a firm that gave more, a review of disclosure filings with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board found.

Such contributions are not illegal, but they raise questions for some that regulations may need to be updated to prevent pay-to-play conflicts of interest.

In 2009, the MSRB elected not to restrict broker-dealer contributions to bond ballot campaigns as part of its Rule G-37, saying there was not enough evidence to show firms were being awarded underwriting business after helping to fund the measures. Instead, it required broker-dealers to disclose such contributions in filings to the MSRB beginning in February 2010. California voters approved 61 of the 83 school bond measures on the ballot in 2010, a passage rate of 74%.

According to the MSRB filings, underwriters contributed more than $700,000 to 41, or 67%, of those elections, all of which resulted in negotiated bond issues. Other successful bond elections resulted in competitive bond sales, in which the underwriter is not selected in advance.

Ten other negotiated sales by school districts also took place in 2010 without any disclosure of corresponding contributions by broker-dealers. Negotiated deals typically result in higher underwriter fees.

The California school bond measures linked to broker-dealer contributions approved in 2010 resulted in an estimated $3.85 billion of bond authorizations, resulting in around $1.2 billion of debt issued. Every time but once, the records showed, when a broker-dealer contributed to a bond referendum that passed, it ended up as lead manager or co-manager.

Piper Jaffray, De La Rosa, Stone & Youngberg, George K. Baum and RBC Capital Markets all lead negotiated school bond transactions after contributing to election campaigns, a review of MSRB records found.

Broker-dealers that commented for this story say they are hired before they give any money to a campaign. They said financial advisors and bond counsel firms generally give more and are not required to disclose campaign contributions to the MSRB.

Other companies, such as construction firms, typically give more to the bond campaigns, but they are subject to a bid process overseen by a committee.

George K. Baum vice chairman Robert Dalton said its the policy of the firm to donate if asked by an independent campaign committee, not the school district, and only if the firm had already been hired as an underwriter.

We do not make campaign contributions to influence the hiring decision, Dalton said in a statement. Our underwriting contracts with our school district clients are most often entered into six months to a year before the bond election is called.

Daltons comments mirrored those by other broker-dealers.

The only firm not selected to underwrite a bond sale after giving money to a ballot measure committee was Stone & Youngberg, after it contributed $10,000 to West Contra Costa Unified School Districts Measure D, a $380 million bond referendum. Piper Jaffray was the lead manager on the districts subsequent $100 million sale last November, after giving $25,000, according to disclosure documents filed by the firm to the MSRB.

A spokesperson for Piper Jaffray contacted for comment pointed to the firms internal policy stating it will not make any financial contribution as a condition of being retained as an underwriter. The firm didnt comment further.

An investment banker who declined to be identified said the truth about school bond elections in California is that money is needed to pay for ballot measures.

We want to support our clients and the unfortunate reality in California is to do a voter outreach program it takes resources, the banker said. This is what happens in California. In an ideal world you wouldnt need all this stuff.

PAY TO PLAY

Glenn Byers, assistant treasurer for Los Angeles County, along with county Treasurer Mark Saladino, has been challenging some school districts in the county over their bond issuance practices. He said pay to play is endemic.

It is a glorified version of pay to play, said Byers. These people are not going to be contributing the money if they are not going to be standing in line to then work on the bond transaction. I dont know of a single instance where someone gave money and didnt work on the bond transaction.

While the state government regulates campaign contributions, it cannot limit donations to referendum campaigns because of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, according to Robert Stern, an expert of California campaign finance law. It is not common knowledge, but it is not unusual and clearly its not illegal, he said.

When the MSRB changed its Rule G-37 to require underwriters to disclose their contributions to ballot measures in 2009, it did not adopt stricter regulations advocated by Citi, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. Those firms argued that G-37s restrictions on contributions to referendums should mirror existing strict limits on broker-dealer contributions to issuer officials and should cover banks, municipal finance professionals and associated political action committees, as well as broker-dealers.

Stratford Shields, a Morgan Stanley managing director, wrote in a comment letter to the MSRB that when an underwriter contributes to a bond campaign and is then selected for the resulting negotiated deal, it gives the impression of pay-to-play. Morgan Stanley has discontinued its contributions to bond campaigns.

Rule G-37 was created to restrict contributions by firms to the campaigns of politicians who could influence the selection of financial firms.

Aside from school bond campaigns, underwriters and other industry players also have contributed to parcel-tax measures for school districts.

In 2009, the rulemaking board said it was premature to extend the rule to restrict contributions to ballot campaigns because there was not enough evidence to show firms were being awarded business based on the contributions.

No action has been taken since.

MSRB executive director Lynnette Kelly said the board has no current plans to amend Rule G-37. However, we continue to look at all issues in the market where pay-to-play activities may be occurring, she said in an emailed statement.

Christopher Taylor, who served as executive director of the MSRB from 1978 to 2007, said the Securities and Exchange Commission has in the past pushed the board to fix the problem of choosing broker-dealers for reasons other than expertise.

Virtually everyone who was on the board when I was executive director understood there was almost a one-to-one correlation  maybe you couldnt prove it, but certainly there was a pretty strong connection because the issue kept arising, Taylor said. School districts were openly soliciting that and making it clear that contributions would play a role in their choosing the underwriter.

Voters in the West Contra Costa School District in June 2010 approved one of the largest K-12 bond measures in California in that year, a $380 million authorization approved by 62% of the electorate. The first sale from that authorization was a $100 million deal in November of last year handled by Piper Jaffray as the lead.

The district paid the underwriters a $450,000 fee for the issuance, according to the official statement for the sale.

The underwriter also had a history working on other bond sales for the district. After its $25,000 contribution before the June 2010 election, Piper also underwrote a $27.5 million deal issued under a 2005 bond measure, and underwrote an $85 million refunding deal in August 2011.

The firm also served as lead manager on $161 million general obligation bond sale in 2009, which appears to be the first negotiated deal done by the district after it previously had done competitive sales.

Piper Jaffrays $25,000 contribution was only a fraction of the money raised for the bond election campaign, according to county election records; the majority came from construction and architectural firms.

Sheri Gamba, associate superintendent of business at the school district, said the process for selecting underwriters and others for bond sales includes a request for proposals, interviews and a selection matrix.

Gamba said underwriters are chosen by the administration and the bond deals are later approved by the board. Piper was first selected by the school district in 2009 and has been the lead on each deal since.

She said the districts financial advisor, KNN Financial, helped them with the process, including picking underwriters and negotiating the best fees. KNN also made political contributions in 2010 to the district, but only for a parcel tax measure, according to filings. The advisor is required to disclose campaign contributions because it is owned by Zions First National Bank.

While school districts normally have a committee to oversee the use of bond proceeds, they typically have no third-party oversight for selecting financial firms.

Piper, deal co-manager De La Rosa and KNN Financial also gave money, along with contractors and architects, to a summer study program for district students.

The process used to select underwriters is usually smoke and mirrors, said Joe Canciamilla, a former state Assembly member who sponsored legislation to try to bring more transparency to school bond elections.

In 2005, Canciamilla proposed a bill that would have required school districts selling new-money general obligation bonds to use competitive bidding, in an effort to bring more transparency to the process. He described a typical negotiated bond deal.

Basically you would have a financial firm come and say we will help with setting up the campaign, help find a consultant if you need one and then we will do the issuance when it is all said and done, said Canciamilla, who was a member of the Pittsburg Unified School District board before winning a state Assembly seat in 2000. Obviously, all of those upfront costs and expenses are rolled into the cost of the deal  it is not rocket science to figure it out.

He said $50,000 to $75,000 would likely swing an election in an average-sized district, while noting that it is difficult to find people to contribute to a measure that raises costs for taxpayers.

During his research for the bills, Canciamilla said he found many instances where broker-dealers charged the school districts much higher fees for deals compared to typical bond issues. He said districts, whose officials often lacked a solid understanding of bond financing, selected underwriters they knew.

LOBBYING AGAINST CHANGE

When the opposition leveled both shotgun barrels at his bill by hiring lobbyists, Canciamilla said he knew he was on the right track. One of the main opponents was the California Public Securities Association, the lobbying group for the states public finance industry.

Canciamillas bill died in committee in 2005 but returned in a heavily watered-down version the next year, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it. The final version only requires a school board to adopt a formal resolution before a bond sale stating the method of sale and the reason for the choice. After a bond sale, the board is required to disclose the actual cost of the sale at a public meeting.

Term limits ended Canciamillas Assembly tenure in 2006. Since then, a few lawmakers have taken up the cause of trying to stop financial firms from providing money or support to a bond campaign and then working on the deal, but they, too, have fallen by the wayside.

There is a lot of money involved in this and it is just one of those things that sits on the back burner, Canciamilla said.

School districts in California combined sell more debt than in any other state and that is reflected in the amounts contributed to bond elections there. In 1999, California passed a law to streamline the rules governing school bond elections. The law made it easier for districts to offer bonds through negotiation rather than through competitive bid.

A year later, the states voters approved Proposition 39, which lowered the required approval threshold for most school GO elections to a 55% majority from two-thirds. The result has been a deluge of school bond sales.

Since 1999 through the end of November, California K-12 schools have issued 2,752 of new-moneys worth nearly $62 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. That compares to $47 billion worth of new-money K-12 sales in Texas, the state with the second largest amount of new-money sales, and $25 million in New York for the third most.

In a letter last year, Saladino warned bond attorneys, underwriters and advisers to stop school bond practices that he says hurt taxpayers.

Saladino said in the letter that his office rejected some general obligation bond sales because they resembled a cash-out financing structure declared illegal by the state attorney general in 2009. He noted some schools were using bond proceeds to pay for cash-flow needs and employing exotic debt structures.

The districts have turned to such transactions as declining property values have lowered their tax revenues and limited their ability to fund debt service within tax rates set before the housing collapse.

Even though there appears to be little momentum for change, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said the time has come.

In our view, it is probably time to end the days when underwriters, bond counsels or financial advisors fund, manage or provide other key support for local bond campaigns, then get paid to do work on the bond sales, Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said.
Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) have finally launched Botswanas Trade Portal, a web-based platform to provide the business community with all statutory trade and regulatory information.

The information will be sourced from various government departments involved in the issuing of permits, licences and clearances for export and importation of goods and services.

Dubbed as Trade Portal, the solution is intended to make use of current technology for ease of trade. It will provide easy access to laws, regulations, administrative procedures guidance notes, applicable fees, forms, licences, permits and penalties applicable in case of breach.





Launching the system on Tuesday, Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Sadique Kebonang said the concept was borne out of a need by all concerned to make trade regulatory information in Botswana easily and readily accessible to the business community both within Botswana and abroad.

The two main objectives for the system is to make it easier for traders and investors to understand, navigate and comply with regulatory requirements associated with exporting and importing as well as helping Botswana to fully comply with its international obligations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) level, said Kebonang.He explained that the WTO General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) requires countries to promptly publish and make available all regulatory requirements for export, import and transit of goods across borders.

The launch of the portal forms part of a broader commitment by the government of Botswana towards implementing the new WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation. This portal marks an important milestone in the continued improvement in the countrys business environment as well as acceleration in regional and international trade, said Kebonang.

The Portal is used to store all documents relating to trade in Botswana as a way of improving the traditional system where critical trade documents, application forms, licenses, permits, trading rules and requirements reside with different government departments and are therefore not easy to access.

In his remarks World Bank Senior Economist, Richard Record said through the portal Botswana will be able to improve the ease of doing business. The portal [will] help Botswana to create competitiveness and facilitation of trade, he said. The World Bank funded the implementation of the project by USD 600 000 (P7 million).

Database is designed to allow logical structuring of information. All information is indexed, cross-referenced and dynamically presented to answer traders queries. One will also find contact form for queries targeted to specific agencies. He said the portal will provide transparency and predictability of trade regulations and procedures and in turn increase the compliance level and reduce the cost of doing cross border trade in Botswana.

However in the ease of doing business rankings the World Banks 2015 Doing Business report shows that Botswana has scaled down by eight positions. From the 189 countries surveyed, Botswana was placed at position 74 from a revised position of 66 in 2014.
Barclays Bank Botswana plans to relocate its contact centre to South Africa as part of their Africa integration strategy to enhance customer service experience. In response to questions from Business Trends Barclays Bank Public and Media Relations Manager, Spencer Moreri said this is part of the Africa Strategy.

We are consolidating our self-operated Contact Centre operations into our South Africa Shared Services centre as part of our Africa integration strategy. This is part of the Africa strategy which will see Barclays Africa operations relocating their contact centre operations to the regional hub in Johannesburg, said Moreri.

He said the date for relocation has not yet been set as they are still going through many processes. We dont have the time for relocation yet but we are expecting to finish all the processes this year, he said. Through this Shared Services facility in South Africa, the bank aims to leverage on the state-of-the art technology and infrastructure to enhance the customer service experience.





Moreri said that they remain to be committed to growing Botswana business and offering customers in the market access to cutting edge financial solutions. We will continue investing in our infrastructure as well as the deployment of innovative products and systems to improve the way we reach and serve our customers in the market, he said

Among Barclays innovative solutions are the intelligent ATMs (iATMS), remote account opening, paperless banking services and Cash send. Although Moreri could not give details about how many people are currently working at the call centre he said after the relocation all the affected employees will be absorbed into other parts of the business.

With regards to other questions, regrettably we do not comment on the terms, conditions or circumstances of our employees. Suffice to say that Barclays remains committed to being an employer of choice in the market, said Moreri.

He said they will continue to focus on developing human capital through training and development initiatives such as the Barclays Africa Leadership Development programme which was launched last year. In 2014 Barclays introduced a three-year strategy that has positioned it as the go-to bank that prides itself of being fully local, fully regional and fully international.

Through the strategy the bank was targeting a return on equity (RoE) of 18-20 percent and for the first half of 2015 it stood at 16.4 percent when compared to the previous year. The other part of the strategy is to be on the top three by revenue in the banks top markets in Africa and currently Barclays Africa is in the top three in South Africa, Botswana and Ghana and fourth in Kenya and Zambia.

The third part of the strategy is to improve the cost to income ratio. The fourth commitment is for the business outside South Africa to contribute between 20 and 25 percent of overall revenue.
Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) should be worried to be losing people of the political calibre of the former Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Margaret Nasha, political analysts have warned.

Dr Nasha defected from the ruling BDP to join the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) this week. The BDP through its Chairman, Mokgweetsi Masisi has said that Dr Nashas move has been long overdue as she has not been active in the party.

Masisi who is also the countrys Vice President told a press conference in Mogoditshane early this week that Dr Nashas defection was just a formality.Political Analyst Anthony Morima stated in an interview that the ruling party should be worried. He said what Masisi said at the media briefing was just a political statement. Dr Nasha is one of the BDP members whom people never thought at one point she could leave the party. Her illustrious work at the BDP says it all. This could be a motivation to other BDP members who have been reluctant to ditch the party to do so, said.





Morima explained that the only problem is that Dr Nasha might not bring along with her many people who are currently holding positions of responsibility within the BDP. People will defect but not as many as they could if Dr Nasha was holding a position because we are used to the scenario where someone in position of power would defect with considerable number of people. Morima also warned the BDP not to forget that Dr Nasha is synonymous with government. He stated that with Dr Nasha at the UDC, the party could be better placed to get funding from international organisations.

She has made international friends when she was the Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration and Minister for Local Government. This could come in handy for the UDC. I believe she has more friends around the world and through her UDC could possibly get political funding. So these are some of the things that the BDP should have in mind when such a high profile individual quits the party. Even some BDP veterans who feel not welcome might seize this opportunity and jump ship, stated Morima.Political Lecturer at University of Botswana, Batlang Seabo said, She was not just any ordinary member. This is a heavy blow for the BDP. She may not have been active but it does not render her obsolete. She could have been useful to the party in many ways like being part of the Council of Elders and assist in directing the party.

He explained that the current position that the BDP find itself in today, calls for principled and open-minded individuals like Dr Nasha to help the party. He said Dr Nasha could have assisted the women within the party to believe in themselves and contest for leadership positions within the party and other high profile national positions.

Seabo said the utterance by the BDP regarding Dr Nashas defection is just cheap political shenanigans. This shows the BDP is in denial. That was just a way of diverting attention from its problems. The party should have sat down with Dr Nasha and asked her what could be done regarding things that she felt were not being done properly. The party should treat this as a challenge and work on addressing such concerns.Another Political Analyst, Leonard Sesa advised that each party should jealously guard against what it has. The numbers that they have they should ensure that they do not lose any of their members. The aim should be to lure more members into their fold. The BDP should be worried and the utterances by the party chairman were unfortunate, Sesa stated.

He explained that politics is a game of numbers and even if one person leaves the party, there has to be concern.Sesa said given the current political dynamics he would advise all the political parties to be more worried when their members defect.

He is of the opinion that given Dr Nashas calibre, the BDP should be more concerned as compared to attracting maybe five people who could unfortunately not match Dr Nasha.UDC Secretary General Ndaba Gaolathe said in a media statement that Dr. Nashas decision to finally put to bear her vast political skill and governance experience as part of a national movement to secure a new Botswana, a Botswana in which all citizens will believe that they can become anything they wished to become if they applied themselves diligently and creatively, is a watershed moment not only in the history of the UDC but also in the political journey of the country.

He stated that Dr Nashas exquisite talents and credentials are compelling, and add further depth to the personnel and capabilities that the UDC intends to cultivate towards both the securing of a win in the next general elections and the subsequent formation of a new peoples Government in 2019.

Although Dr Nasha had pleaded to join as an ordinary member and activist, she has been prevailed upon to take on, given her experience, the role of advisor to the key offices at the level of the UDC and at contracting party levels, an assignment we are confident she will dispatch with distinction.
BCL management and the union representing workers, Botswana Mine Union Workers (Selebi-Phikwe branch) met to discuss going-ons at the mine this week Monday.

Botswana Guardian has been reliably informed that management has promised to give the Union a full report on the problems facing the mine on February 3. The Union, led by President Jack Tlhagale demanded answers from management on the crisis that has befallen the BCL as reported in the media.

We were concerned that management had never addressed us on any of the issues and that we were just reading from newspapers, said a unionist. A source told this publication that a letter from management indicates that employees will be paid their salaries every last day of the month. Divisional manager Mosienyane Mosienyane represented management. BCL spokesperson James Molosankwe confirmed the management/Union meeting to this publication.





Meanwhile, chairman of the BCL board of directors Akolang Tombale was aware of the financial crisis that has befallen the copper/nickel mine, BCL. He told BG News that management of the BCL has been consistently updating him on the financial mess at the mine. He said that the only solution was for management and union to sit down, not fight and find solutions because there is no money.

The metal prices are down. The only option is for the two parties to sit down and agree on how they can cut costs, he said. On other issues, Member of Parliament for Selebi-Phikwe West Dithapelo Keorapetse told this publication that his several efforts to meet with BCL general manager Dan Mahupela were proving to be futile. He said that Mahupela and his managers were constantly postponing the meetings.

My suspicion is that they are avoiding me because they have tough questions to answer, he said. Prices of copper and nickel have dropped by approximately 30 and 22 percent respectively since January 2014. Last year the mine went on shutdown to repair the smelter at a cost of P700 million.

The shutdown, which started in July, was initially scheduled to end in September but it was extended to October. BCL employees find themselves faced with a dire financial situation as their loans to banks, SACOS, micro lenders monthly installments are deducted from salaries but the money does not reach these financial institutions leaving them with arrears and bad debt record.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/01/2016 (2456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While it doesnt come as a surprise, a local literacy educator hopes a new report highlighting poor adult literacy and its compounding economic effect in Manitoba will stir a renewed interest in funding the solution ahead of the spring provincial election.

About one in six Manitobans has literacy levels so low they cant participate fully in life, according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report by Prof. Jim Silver, University of Winnipegs chair of urban and inner-city studies that was released on Wednesday.

Some of those people would not be able to read at all. Some might be able to cope with street signs but they would really struggle with document use and filling out basic forms and so forth, said Lyndon Bournon, co-ordinator and instructor at Brandon Friendship Centres Adult Upgrading Centre.

Tom Bateman/Brandon Sun Lyndon Bournon, co-ordinator and instructor at the Brandon Friendship Centres Adult Upgrading Centre, says most students in his literacy classes are unable to attend full-time due to challenges such as a lack of affordable housing and daycare spaces.

That one-in-six figure is on par with Canadian averages, but the report suggests there is unmet demand for community-based adult literacy programming in the province.

Bournon said about 48 per cent of Canadians have less than desirable levels of literacy, meaning things like pursuing higher education, interacting with doctors, working jobs with complicated language and filling out forms become a struggle.

Those hardships feed a vicious cycle that leads to an intergenerational transmission of poverty from which it is hard to break free.

Many of those people wind up getting employment assistance, EIA. They would really struggle with some of the paperwork they might be required to complete, Bournon said. Ive certainly had people in here who have graduated from high school programs in Brandon, never mind elsewhere, who have very low skills  particularly with math. Weve had to start almost from square one again.

The ramifications can be tracked through health, social assistance and criminal justice systems, Silvers report says, with about 70 per cent of inmates in federal custody and 65 per cent of social assistance recipients having poor literacy levels.

The Brandon Friendship Centre runs one of three Certified Adult Learning and Literacy Centres in the city. Bournon said all are busy.

Since September of this year, Bournons classes have attracted 38 people who, on average, are 32 years old.

Its a bit of a revolving door. At any time, we probably have around 20 people on the books, the majority of whom are not available to attend full-time, Bournon said.

Thats because a host of other challenges get in the way.

Mental health issues, family issues, financial stress with rents here in Brandon and so forth, having to move around. Often just things that you and I who have jobs may take for granted. These are big challenges for people, he said.

A lack of affordable housing and daycare space in Brandon are especially difficult, Bournon said.

The report said the provincial government should to do a better job of locating decentralized services, such as the Friendship Centres learning centre, near where low-income people live.

What we need is the foundation to a literacy strategy  the community-based literacy programs that are located where low-income people live, and that I have elsewhere called the first rung on the ladder, Silver wrote.

He calls on the federal government to reverse cuts to literacy, which saw spending on the Adult Literacy and Essential Skills Program drop by more than 50 per cent from 2006-07 to 2012-13.

Those suggestions dont surprise Bournon. Other than a 2.5 per cent spike last year, Bournon said funding for programs like his hasnt seen an increase in five years.

The total budget for the entire program, which includes two salaries, benefits, rent and other costs, is less than $100,000 per year, Bournon said.

If we do the math  Brandon should have at least 40 programs like ours, if Brandon is typical of a city across Canada.

As the provinces politicians gear up for a spring election, Bournon hopes the renewed call for funding increases will be heard more widely, which would allow him to invest in more program hours and other services.

Theres been an awful amount of money spent over the years on research, or re-research, on things that are already perfectly well known, he said.

Id like to see real money and a belief that all the research thats been done over the last 20-odd years has produced really reliable statistics. Lets base funding on that. There isnt enough money to get the job done.

 tbateman@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @tombatemann
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/01/2016 (2456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I find that when you usually think about a vacation in the middle of January, you think of California, Mexico, Jamaica or Australia. For me, on the other hand, I think of places that are just outside Manitoba  especially places that have a very broad brewing and pub scene.

As some of you may already know, I like to take an annual beer-based vacation to Quebec. This time, one of my buddies decided that we should do a January beer vacation, with a twist  this one would include Vermont.

Why Vermont? Especially with the Canadian dollar being as bad as it is right now?

Cody Lobreau/For the Sun The bottling line at the Sleeman Unibroue brewery in Chambly, Que., churns out 24,000 bottles of beer per hour.

Vermont has the highest per capita of breweries in the entire United States, with 8.2 per 100,000 people. Thats pretty incredible considering the state only has 626,000 people, making it smaller than Winnipeg.

Manitoba, on the other hand, has 0.2 breweries per capita, but that will be increasing significantly in the upcoming months.

Ill get back to Vermont in a bit, but my biggest highlight of the entire trip was meeting up with Unibroues beer sommelier Sylvain Bouchard at the Sleeman Unibroue brewery in Chambly, Que.

Im easily one of the biggest Unibroue fans in the world, so getting to visit Unibroue is something thats off my bucket list now!

For several years, Ive tried to visit the Unibroue plant with no luck, only to be told that they dont give tours and thats it. Well, through my friend Alex in Montreal, I was able to get a private tour and tasting with the Unibroue beer sommelier.

The Sleeman Unibroue facility is easily the largest brewery Ive ever been to, but thats not such a big deal when the largest Ive been to before this was Fort Garry.

The Sleeman Unibroue facility not only makes the world famous Unibroue products, such as Blanche de Chambly, La Fin du Monde and Maudite, they also brew Sleemans core products such as Sleeman Original Draught, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee and Old Milwaukee Light.

Seeing the very bottling line that bottles 341 ml bottles of PBR and 750 ml corked bottles of La Fin du Monde was quite a sight as they use the same line for both sizes of bottles.

The bottling line can push out 24,000 bottles per hour  thats a lot of beer! Im still awestruck that I was able to get a tour of the very brewery that changed my beer tastes more than any other.

Back to Vermont.

One of the most interesting things I found there is how much the locals love their local breweries  and not just the locals, as the state actually has beer tourism!

Just over the border from Quebec, we visited a bottle shop in Winooski near Burlington. Every Thursday morning at 10 a.m., the bottle shop has their weekly launch of Heady Topper, a strong Double IPA that tops out at eight per cent ABV.

Theres always a good lineup at the entrance, with customers flocking to the store to purchase the beer from as far away as New Jersey  or Brandon, in my case. Many weeks, they come from even further.

We stayed in the state capital of Montpelier, population 7,500, and found that everywhere we went, there were lineups for special beer releases. The Montpelier pubs were packed and everyone was drinking the local craft beers. Heck, I even spotted a guy who I was 95 per cent sure was the state governor just a few tables down from us.

Before heading back to Canada, we stopped at Hill Farmstead, a small craft brewery located along a random hilly gravel road in the middle of nowhere  just like as if someone opened up a brewery on a gravel road south of Austin.

Hill Farmstead is considered to be the No. 1 brewery in the world, according to their 2015 RateBeers Best Top Brewers in the World list. With that hype, there were even more lineups. Ive heard that sometimes the brewery would get lineups comparable to an iPhone launch, but thankfully on the day we went, the line was short and none of the newly released beer was sold out  win for me!

Just reading the licence plates in the brewery yard, there were people from Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Quebec.

For me, their beer was a bit overhyped, but I still managed to pick up five 750mL bottles to take back to the hotel and sample a few of their beers on tap before heading back to the Great White North.

Aside from the beer, my absolute favourite thing about Vermont is that everyone supports the local farmers, bakeries, butchers and artisans. Every convenience store, grocery store and co-op we went to had a wide variety of cheeses from 10 miles down the road, an unlimited supply of maple syrup and even locally brewed root beer and cola. Now thats the life!

Can I see Manitoba ever having a beer scene like Vermont, where people are waiting in middle of nowhere for a beer release? Not really.

But we will see Winnipeg becoming a beer tourism destination in five years time and Brandon may one day get a brewpub  assuming that people eventually get sick of Bud Light and Keiths  not that likely.

I kid, but I did see an older bottle of Winnipegs Half Pints Little Scrapper IPA on display at the bottle shop in Winooski. How in the world did that get there?

Cody Lobreau is a Canadian beer blogger who reviews every beer he can get his hands on as he believes that he should try every beer twice to get an understanding if its truly good or bad.

 BeerCrank.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/01/2016 (2456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justin Trudeaus penchant for platitudes masks an unwillingness  or inability  to tell the difference between progress and change.

Waggish columnist John Robson observes in the National Post that Trudeaus maiden speech as prime minister to the Davos Economic Forum recently left out much while not leaving out nearly enough.

Our prime ministers oration recently to the worlds richest at their annual gathering in Switzerland was top-heavy with platitudes, Robson notes, while substance was left cold, curled and alone on the cutting-room floor.

The effect, he implies in slightly more delicate language, was to affirm Trudeau as the Prime Minister Lite Brite: as pleasing to the eye as a shelf full of childrens toys, and ultimately as useful for a room full of grown-ups.

It strikes me as an assessment that might be considered accurate without being fully fair. Charitably, which of us would not wonder in the moments before we addressed the wealthiest homo sapiens in history whether wed picked exactly the right topic and, most importantly, who added this task to our job description when we werent looking.

And what was he supposed to do in front of this bunch of mega-billionaires? Launch into a dissection of the discursive application of the Filioque clause in Christianitys Nicene Creed to Canadian federalism, i.e., whether or not Quebec proceeds from Ottawa as the Son proceeds  or doesnt  from the Father?

No. That was his dads thing, not his. This prime minister did as he does, which is give minimally taxing stump speeches on the way governments can use the tax system to make everyone equally happy. Hey, God calls us all to our vocation.

That said, one thought from the PM, loosed in his charming style, should stir substantive debate across the land. Canadians, he told the great, the good and the filthy rich in Davos, believe in progress.

Its uncertain what statistical sampling method supports that claim. It may be the case of politicians forgetting, once again, to use that small but terribly important word some in all of their claims about the land they love and lead.

Some Canadians do believe in progress. Some do not. Some of us go so far as to believe the very idea of progress is perhaps the greatest step backward that humanity has ever taken in comprehending its own nature.

At least as it has come down to us from the 19th century, it makes as much sense to believe in progress as it does to believe in time. The writer Marilynne Robinson points out in her recent collection of essays that we dont actually even know what time is. We only think we do because we have devised a system for measuring it.

We have done the same with progress, where the system of measurement is often a misrepresentation of mere change. As I have argued before, a corpse decomposing in a grave is changing but can hardly be called a work in progress. The analogy is acutely apropos in the month when progressives in Quebec began injecting lethal chemicals into the arms of terminally ill patients to end their lives before their time.

None of this made it into the prime ministers Davos speech, what with platitudes being the sharp-elbowed space hogs they are. Perhaps now that he has returned from the land of cuckoo clocks to the re-opening of Canadas Parliament, he will take up the theme in language of substance for grown-ups.

 Peter Stockland is a senior fellow with Cardus, and publisher of Convivium magazine.

 Troy Media
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/01/2016 (2456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a caucus, we are working together. You know, its a work in progress, but we are working together, and we are going to be a solid team to run in this election.

 Fort Rouge MLA Jennifer Howard, May 2015

Apparently the writing was on the wall for the NDPs Jennifer Howard.

The Fort Rouge MLA announced Wednesday that she had decided not to seek re-election, just as a new opinion poll surfaced suggesting NDP support is still in the process of bottoming out.

A Mainstreet Research poll conducted on Jan. 25 that sampled the opinions of 1,628 residents found that Brian Pallisters Progressive Conservatives carry the support of about 52 per cent of Manitoba voters  more than double that of the Manitoba NDP and Liberals.

The poll, which was commissioned by Postmedia, has the NDP and the Liberals statistically tied for second place at 20 per cent. Thats a three-point slide for the NDP from a similar poll conducted late last year, and seven points down for the Liberals.

As Mainstreet president Quito Maggi said, this race is now Pallisters to lose.

In the midst of this comes Howards decision to take a job in Ottawa instead of fighting a losing battle under Greg Selinger.

Howard was one of five NDP rebels who had balked at Selingers leadership in late 2014, and who had publicly called for his resignation.

That rift in the party prompted a leadership race between Selinger and former health minister Theresa Oswald. Following Selingers narrow victory, the rebels have slowly but surely ended their own political careers by refusing to run in Aprils provincial election. Only one of the five remains  Minto MLA Andrew Swan.

Howards decision is rather telling, actually. Both she and Swan were unopposed last May when they sought the nominations for their respective Winnipeg constituencies. And, though they had actively fought to see Selinger replaced last March, they both appeared to have buried their swords and toed the party line in their initial decision to run for re-election.

With the party tanking in the polls, however, its not difficult to see why a rational person might consider alternative job opportunities. Its the clearest signal yet that the NDP are in deep, deep trouble.

Howards departure is also good news for Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari, who will now face the relatively unknown PC candidate Audrey Gordon  a renal business analyst with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority  and an unknown NDP candidate.

Bokhari, who would have been in a battle for her political life had Howard carried on, now has a much better shot a taking the historically Liberal seat back for her party.

According to Elections Manitoba, Fort Rouge was one of the top three constituencies for Liberal support in the 2011 provincial election. In River Heights, currently held by former Liberal leader Jon Gerrard, the party received 45.8 per cent of the vote that year. Tyndall Park was second in Liberal strength with 34.8 per cent  but not enough for the win. Liberal support in Fort Rouge came in a distant third at 23 per cent.

As Bokhari all but admitted on Wednesday to the Winnipeg Free Press, its always more difficult to go up against an incumbent.

We dont seriously believe the NDP will find a star candidate to take Howards place in Fort Rouge. This new development should allow the Liberal leader a bit more breathing room as she attempts to bring her party back from the brink of complete and utter irrelevance.
It was a rescue mission like no other and only the toughest, top notch firefighters would accept the challenge of rescuing a rabbit from a roof in Omagh, Northern Ireland.

The story begins when the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) received a distress call about a rabbit that had found himself in a very different spot to where he settled down to sleep the night before.
By David Raleigh

A man who painted offensive slogans across the front of a Pakistani run take-away after watching beheadings on television by so-called Muslim extremists, has avoided a jail sentence.

Mark Hobbs, an English man living in Kilmallock, Co Limerick, had previously threatened to kill Ali Aslan, the owner of Megabites chip shop in Kilmallock, with a kitchen knife.

Hobbs said he had been influenced by watching TV reports of the murder of Afghan war veteran soldier Lee Rigby.

Mr Rigby was hacked to death by two British Muslim coverts on a street in Woolwich, southeast London.

Hobbs admitted painting the Megabites take-away with the slogans, "Pakis out now"; "Perverts"; "S**t", and, "C***s", in white paint.

After his arrest, Hobbs, (aged 50), told Gardai he believed Muslims wanted to "take over and kill" everyone.

Hobbs pleaded guilty at Limerick Circuit Court to causing criminal damage at Megabites chip shop, in Kilmallock on September 14, 2014.

He was previously sentenced to 120 hours community service in lieu of a three-month jail sentence for the threat to kill offence in 2013.

Hobbs was clearly seen on CCTV cameras at Megabites daubing the premises with the offensive slogans.

At one point the footage showed him standing back and admiring his work.

After his arrest Hobbs told Gardai: "I know they're anti-English people...(it's) because they are Muslims".

Hobbs denied he was a racist.

He told gardai: "I have a problem with (Muslims) abusing 10 or 11 year olds, and chopping innocent people's heads off".

Michael Collins SC, prosecuting, told the court that Hobbs "expressed an anti-Pakistani sentiment throughout" his exchanges with Gardai.

"All they want to do is take over everywhere. All they want to do is kill us," Hobbs told gardai.

In court Hobbs apologised to Mr Aslan, the owner of Megabites, who was an entirely innocent party.

Hobbs told the court he was going through "a breakdown" at the time following the death of his father.

"I was watching television programmes about people getting their heads chopped off... stupid things," he added.

"I was staying awake for two-to-three days drinking."

The court heard Hobbs has been making efforts to deal with his alcoholism, for which he was given credit.

He was also given credit for his apology and for pleading guilty.

A charge of producing messages deemed to be "an incitement to hatred" were dropped yesterday at the last minute by the State.

Judge Tom O'Donnell said Hobbs's actions were "outrageous in the extreme" and "extremely disturbing".

"It has no place in a civilised society," he said. "It was a despicable act."

However, the judge said Hobbs had "expressed remorse".

"The person in court today is in a much better place, and he must be given credit for dealing with his addictions," the judge added.

"Hopefully he'll become a more tolerable person."

Judge O'Donnell imposed a two-year suspended sentence.

He warned Hobbs: "Your conduct was outrageous, uncalled for, and, unnecessary. I'm giving you a chance.

"It's up to you to take it."
A new documentary on the 1916 Rising is set to be shown worldwide this year.

The 70-minute documentary titled '1916: The Irish Rebellion', is set to be broadcast on the BBC in Britain, Australia, Canada and all around the world to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising - as well as being picked up by a record number of public TV stations across the United States.
Newport 23 Leinster 13

Leinster missed the opportunity to go top of the Guinness Pro12 after they were beaten 23-13 at strugglers Newport Gwent Dragons.

Fly-half Jason Tovey scored 18 points as the Dragons secured a richly-deserved fourth league win of the campaign.

Tovey went through the card with a try, two penalties, a drop goal and two conversions, while wing Ashton Hewitt got their other try.

Leinsters Fergus McFadden booted two penalties and converted scrum-half Luke McGraths try but the Irish side failed to leapfrog Scarlets at the top of the table.

Leinster lead for 20 minutes of the first half but the Dragons could easily have grabbed a try bonus point in that space of time given the pressure they had on the visitors.

As it was, in the driving rain, the Welsh region went in 17-10 ahead after Hewitt, who had a storming opening period, put the Dragons ahead after he dashed past McFadden and prop Michael Bent to the line.

Tovey converted the try and McFadden soon reduced the arrears with a penalty before McGrath caught the home defence napping as Leinster had their first decent attack inside the home 22.

There was a great snaffle on the floor from the visiting back row before the Irishmens scrum-half picked up 20 metres out and dived through a gap to go under the posts, making McFaddens conversion simple.

That was, though, as much as Leinster got before the break as the home region hammered them in their own 22. Yet it took 20 minutes and two ruled-out tries from third match official Tim Haynes before the home side went into the lead again.

Hewitt went over on the right after a Tovey cross-kick but there were hands in a ruck in the build-up for that one to be denied.

Then centre Adam Warren flew through on a loose ball over the Leinster line only for McGrath to get pressure on the ball a split second beforehand.

However, after several attacking line-outs and a yellow card for Leinster flanker Dan Leavy, the defence finally cracked as Tovey was put over by quick hands on the right from props Boris Stankovich, Brok Harris and finally a Rynard Landman overhead.

Tovey converted and added a 20-metre drop goal for their half-time advantage.

Leinster came out fighting after the interval and McFadden secured his second penalty of the night from 25 metres. It was the Irishmens turn to pressurise the home side.

The visitors mirrored the home sides pressure in the right-hand corner of the pitch and came within inches of a second try but the Dragons defence kept them out and cleared their lines.

And, when Leinster put their hands in a ruck, Tovey booted his first penalty to restore the seven-point advantage.

The Irishmen were dealt a blow when McFadden was sin-binned with nine minutes left for a dangerous tackle on Sarel Pretorius when he was on the ground.

That sank Leinster and a final Tovey penalty denied the Irishmen a losing bonus point.
LAHORE: The First Secretary of the Japanese Embassy, Katsura Gawa, has said that Japan has doled out $7 million to...
Liz Truss said on Thursday she was resigning as British prime minister just six weeks after she was appointed,...
Amid one of the worst market routs on record, a chorus of reassuring economic commentators insists that global fundamentals are sound and investors are overreacting, behaving like a panicked herd. Don't be so sure.

Consider how wrong economists have been about the effects of the 2008 financial debacle. In April 2010, the International Monetary Fund declared the crisis over and projected annualised global growth of 4.6 per cent by 2015. By April 2015, the forecast had declined to 3.4 per cent. When the weak last quarter's results are released, the reality will probably be 3 per cent or less.

Trader John Santiago works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. U.S. stocks recovered much of an early plunge, but the price of oil suffered its worst one-day drop since September. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) Credit:Richard Drew

Economists are used to linear models, in which changes follow a relatively gradual and predictable path. But thanks in part to the political and economic shocks of recent years, we live in a highly non-linear world. The late Danish physicist Per Bak explained that after long absences, earthquakes come in quick succession. A breached fault line sends shock waves that weaken other fault lines, spreading the vulnerabilities.

The subprime crisis of 2007 breached the initial fault line. It damaged US and European banks that had indulged in its excesses. The Americans responded and controlled the damage. Euro-area authorities did not, making them even more susceptible to the Greek earthquake that hit in late-2009. Europeans kept building temporary shelters as the banking and sovereign debt crisis gathered force, never constructing anything that would hold as new fault lines opened.
One of the most infamous prison escapees in Australian history, postcard bandit Brenden Abbott, will have to wait to learn if he will be released on parole, after a Supreme Court hearing on Friday.

In the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s, Abbott ingrained himself in the history books as the infamous two-time prison escapee who, while on the run from police, taunted them with postcards from hideout locations.

Brenden Abbott, the Postcard Bandit, at Gold Coast hotel swimming pool. Credit:File

The cocky then 30-something, who had been serving time for million-dollar bank heists and taunted his would-be captors after his escapes, cut a vastly different figure to the moustachioed 53-year-old man who represented himself in Friday's hearing via videolink from prison.
Bangkok: A corruption scandal rocking Malaysia has had more twists and turns than a bestselling thriller, appearing to plunge one of Australia's most important allies in Asia into political turmoil and threatening to upend decades of one-party rule.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak during a special announcement on the budget revision in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. Credit:AP

For much of last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak appeared to many non-Malaysians to be a dead man walking, his seven-year rule coming to a humiliating end.

How could the leader of a democratic nation remain in power after a corruption investigation discovered that $US700 million ($990 million) had turned up in his personal bank accounts, with him stonewalling for months on where it came from or where it went?
Investors fretting over the future of BHP Billiton's dividend have been given fresh reminder of the challenges facing big miners, with BHP's joint venture partner Vale indicating its dividend will be cut to zero this year.

Vale, which shares the failed Samarco iron ore business with BHP, confirmed on Friday that its top executives have recommended the board of directors cut the dividend entirely.

Mining dividends look set to be cut back. Credit:Bloomberg

The Vale executives have also recommended the company change its dividend policy, which requires at least 25 per cent of net income to be to returned to shareholders in dividends.

While Vale, which is on the cusp of being downgraded to a "junk" credit rating, is less financially robust that BHP, the Brazilian miner is a more comparable company to BHP this year given both face billions of dollars in possible charges emanating from November's tragic dam spill at Samarco.
In Britain, the Labour opposition described it as a "sweetheart deal". George Osborne, UK chancellor of the exchequer, was behind the UK's diverted profits tax dubbed as the "Google tax". Credit:Krisztian Bocsi Eva Joly, vice chairwoman of the Special European Parliamentary Committee on Tax Rulings, said it would question Britain's finance minister George Osborne about the "very bad deal" that "shows that the UK prepares itself to become a kind of a tax haven to attract the multinationals". In France, where Google may be asked to backpay much as 500 million euros, its finance minister Michel Sapin said: " ... Google also has to sort out its problems in France," and that "we do not want to reach a one-off agreement, agree on a lump sum". French finance minister Michel Sapin says that Google has to sort out its problems in France. Credit:Jasper Juinen

The European Commission's Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has flagged a possible investigation of the Google deal. "If we find there is something to be concerned about, if someone writes to us and says this is maybe not as it should be, then we will take a look," she said. European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager may look into the deal Google made with the UK government. Credit:Bloomberg But this is just the start of tax deals between corporates and governments that annoy other tax jurisdictions. Even the global plan to fight multinational profit shifting  the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan  doesn't have global consensus.

It's been described by advocacy groups as a "recipe for disagreement and conflict". On Wednesday 31 countries including Australia signed an OECD agreement to expose multinational tax avoiders. The deal is to have country-by-country reports that will give tax authorities a more detailed picture of multinationals' tax affairs, including income and tax paid in every country they operate in, as well as detailed information about where and what kind of economic activity takes place. Compared to where we were before, which was no information sharing and corporates playing governments against each other, it's a good start. But guess who is left off the list of 31 countries to start sharing data in 2017-2018?

The world's number one tax haven, the United States. Yes, the nation which has overtaken Singapore, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg as a tax shelter for multinationals and wealthy individuals doesn't want to share its information. A research paper conducted by Alex Cobham and Petr Jansky found that in 2012 these US companies  many on the Fortune 500  shifted $500 billion to $700 billion, or roughly 25 per cent of their annual profits, mostly to countries where these profits were not taxed. This means $1 out of every $4 of profits generated by these US multinationals is not aligned with real economic activity. It ends up untaxed in places like the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda and Luxembourg. And who loses out from the tax minimisation accounting genius employed by the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft and others? Firstly, the United States itself. This is why the United States hates Britain's so-called "Google tax" as well as Australia's domestic laws aimed at stopping tax avoidance.

Quite simply, it wants to collect the cash it has not been collecting for decades. It doesn't want others to get in first. The problem is that other G20 countries including Germany, Canada, China, Brazil, France, Mexico, India, Britain, Italy, Spain and Australia, who have also been losing out  in 2012 US companies avoided an estimated $US1.45 billion ($2.04 billion) of tax in Australia  also now want to cash in. That creates the inevitability of tax revenue wars. Google itself noted there's 'more we can do' when it unveiled its 2014 Australian tax bill of $11.7 million (the company doesn't count its lucrative search engine business revenue that gets booked offshore). Apple, meanwhile, has taken advantage of accounting rules that could allow it to pay virtually no tax in Australia on its profits in 2016.

As the ATO and companies negotiate over their future tax bills, other tax authorities, including the United States, will quickly move protect their tax base. Expect more unilateral measures by governments to try and collect more tax from tech, energy and mining giants. Expect to see governments and multinationals continue to lock in tax deals. It is better to bank a deal, in the eyes of cash-strapped governments, than risk leaving court empty-handed. Most importantly, expect that in the battle for more tax revenue, governments are also looking at another fight: how to attract more business. As long as Singapore offers a 17 per cent headline corporate income tax rate and a raft of other tax breaks that enable companies to pay even less, it will keep luring multinationals.
Clive Palmer's 2014-15 donations were belatedly revealed in official Australian Electoral Commission figures. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen At the time of his corridor exchange with Jacquie Lambie, she was a member of Clive Palmer's party, the party wielding the balance of power in the Senate on legislation where Labor and the Greens were combining to block the government. Since then, Lambie has quit, followed by Glenn Lazarus, leaving Palmer's party with just one senator, Dio Wang, a former employee of a Palmer firm. Comically, Palmer has given him the title of party whip, responsible for rounding up all the party's many senators for key votes. Palmer's party now has no more influence over the outcome of Senate votes than any other lone senator. 'Radical centrist' And, since then, Xenophon has announced that he's going national. As Palmer has failed, Xenophon has thrived. A restless Australian electorate, disenchanted with the two main parties, remains in hopeful quest of a decent party it can believe in. "People don't feel respected, they don't feel listened to," says Xenophon.

The Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson gave Xenophon a ringing endorsement this week in his National Press Club Speech. The real solutions for Australia's problems, he said, lie not with left nor right but with the "radical centre". Said Pearson: "The senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon, is the closest we have to a radical centrist." That took the total donations by Palmer's refinery to Palmer's party to a whopping $21 million over two years. And both Palmer and Xenophon, the failed leader and the future hopeful, have progressed in character. Friday was Nick Xenophon's birthday. He celebrated by buying himself a new fridge. When he defrosted the 20-year-old one he was junking, he discovered some food that had expiry dates of 2006 and 2007. He wasn't sure what he'd do in the evening, but thought he might have dinner with his ex-wife. The day before, he'd approached his bank for a new loan to finance his political party, NXT, the acronym for the Nick Xenophon Team. It wasn't exactly high finance. Last year he borrowed $40,000 in his own name to put into the party. This year he plans to borrow up to $100,000 more, for a total of $140,000.

"I hope to get it all back through donations or public financing of the election," he says. "I'm a lousy fundraiser," though he did receive one large donation recently. Ian Melrose, of Optical Superstores, gave NXT $100,000 because he supports Xenophon's policy of favouring "buy Australian". Obfuscating on the offensive By contrast Clive Palmer, always a blustering, big-talking phoney, spent Friday angrily defending himself against accusations of mismanagement and worse. We'd already discovered that he's a political failure. Now there are mounting accusations that he is a dud businessman, as well. "His management of Queensland Nickel, from what we know to date, is shocking," Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday. Last week his fully owned nickel refinery, Queensland Nickel, went into voluntary administration. Total debts outstanding are over $100 million, according to Friday's Financial Review. Under scrutiny, Palmer obfuscates by going on the offensive. It's the old rule that the best form of defence is offence. So he attacked Turnbull on Friday: "Unlike the Prime Minister who invests his wealth in the Cayman Islands, I am a proud Australian who has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Queensland and Queensland companies because I believe in the future of this country."

And why wouldn't he try to dodge the issue by making an attack? It's worked beautifully for him. Remember when he was under challenge by the ABC's Tony Jones for allegedly using money from his Chinese business partner, CITIC Pacific, improperly? The Chinese company had paid $12 million to Palmer's firm, Mineralogy, to build a port. The Chinese company took Mineralogy to court complaining that the money went to finance Palmer's political campaign at the 2013 election instead. Palmer's response was to describe them as Chinese "mongrels". He went on: "They're Communist, they shoot their own people, they haven't got a justice system and they want to take over this country. And we're not going to let them." It worked because suddenly the story was about Palmer's outrageous remarks, no longer about the court action and the allegation that he helped himself improperly to $12 million. But, ultimately, bluster alone can't overcome the cumulative weight of Palmer's failings. Reality is forcing its way through Clive's smokescreen and slowly revealing the truth. $21 million donated over two years

Curiously, a few weeks before Queensland Nickel put itself into the hands of administrators, it declared a generous donation of $288,000 to a political party  the Palmer United Party or PUP. That took the total donations by Palmer's refinery to Palmer's party to a whopping $21 million over two years. That's quite apart from the other $12 million that the other Palmer company is accused of giving to Palmer's party. But surely it's perfectly understandable for a Palmer-owned business to donate to a Palmer-led political party? Try telling that to Queensland Nickel's angry creditors. Hundreds of them met Queensland Nickel's administrators on Friday to demand their money.

A company has legal obligations to its staff, its suppliers, its creditors, not just to its owner. These include the 237 workers the company sacked just after it made the donation to Palmer's party, just before it put itself into administration. Those workers are owed $16 million in entitlements. All up, Queensland Nickel owes its workers $30 million. It owes trade creditors another $70 million, including $5 million that it owes the tax office. But the political donations would be done on a purely arm-length basis, surely? The mere fact that its chief executive, Clive Mensink, is Clive Palmer's nephew would not blind him to his legal obligations, surely? And Palmer resigned as a director of Queensland Nickel precisely so that there'd be no conflict of interest between his business interests and his political party. But then again, there is the discovery that a company executive named Terry Smith had been sending emails approving capital purchases by the firm. Clive Palmer has admitted in a separate court case last year that Terry Smith is a favoured pseudonym.

Flagrant conflicts of interest It seems that operating under conflicts of interest is endemic to Palmer. Endemic to his business practices as well as his political ones. If the NSW system applied to Canberra, Clive Palmer could fully expect to be called before the ICAC now because of his flagrant conflicts of interest. He's a mining magnate, and he used his parliamentary position to oppose new taxes that affected his wealth. In Federal Parliament, he was pivotal in abolishing the taxes. The carbon tax is now gone. The mining tax is now gone. The crucial swing votes that made it possible were cast by the then senators from Palmer's party.

Then Palmer went on to agitate for a new law to protect bankrupt companies from their creditors, along the lines of the US Chapter 11 bankruptcy law. He didn't get anywhere on this, but the collapse of Queensland Nickel makes plain the reason he thought it such a good idea. As the former director of public prosecutions in NSW, Nicholas Cowdery, told me last year: "It's a direct conflict of interest. He should recuse himself," disqualify himself from the discussion, whenever his party or the parliament are deciding their positions in areas where he has a personal financial interest. "Conflict of interest is a form of corruption," said Cowdery. 'Hey, we found a politician who has a heart' Until the federal parliament introduces a code of conduct for MPs and senators to prevent such abuse of the public trust, people like Palmer will continue to be abuse it. Fortunately, the Australian people saw through Palmer fairly quickly, more than a year ago. And while his party had a phenomenally successful debut at the 2013 election, going from zero to 5.5 per cent of the national vote at a single stroke, it's now collapsed to just 1 per cent or less.

The Nick Xenophon Team plans to field two candidates in each State for election to the Senate and another 20 or so to stand for the House of Representatives. A Morgan poll this week confirms that Xenophon's party is consistently polling higher than Labor in South Australia and can expect to perform well in that State at the federal election this year. Nationally, Xenophon is scoring only 2 per cent, though this is four times more than Palmer's party. Xenophon doesn't have the conflicts of interest, the bluster or the phoniness of Palmer. His party has three policy pillars  it's anti-pokies, pro-Australian industry, and in favour of government transparency. He is a sensible centrist. Xenophon says that Palmer failed because "he believed his own bullshit". Xenophon's self-deprecation protects him against that, at least, but a startup party without a cohesive ideology remains vulnerable to the centrifugal force that besets all such parties. Xenophon's frenetic work habits over the years have harmed his health. He's had heart surgery and back operations. He says that his surgeons have made jokes along the lines of: "Hey, we found a politician who has a heart." Or the other variant, finding one with spine.
Veteran forester Norm Endacott was irked by environmental activists who sought to overturn the art and science of forestry. Partly due to their influence, his beloved Daylesford and its surrounding forests had become a very different place by the late 1990s to that where he had lived and worked in the 1950s.

Daylesford had become a "sea-change" hub with new residents who were often less than enthusiastic about traditional rural activities. To them, native forest timber harvesting was a relic of the past that clashed with their vision of a town economy based around cafes, art galleries and tourism.

"Doctors for Forests" was just one such group of the time and, along with many other foresters, Norm was incensed by the arrogance of medical doctors advocating on matters for which they have no training or expertise. When the medicos held a public meeting in Daylesford, he attended with a toy stethoscope slung around his neck while wearing a surgical gown with "Foresters for Good Medicine" emblazoned across the back.

Norman Endacott, who has died aged 93, worked in forestry for more than 70 years and was often frustrated by simplistic media campaigns that influenced political decisions and overturned sensible forest management. He and forestry colleagues from past eras were also aggrieved that their contribution was being unfairly denigrated by critics unaware of the challenges they had faced, particularly during war time and the post-war housing boom.

Norm grew up in Melbourne's bayside suburbs before accepting a scholarship to attend the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick. Following his graduation in 1940 he embarked on a 20-year field career with the Forests Commission. His first posting was to Bruthen in East Gippsland from 1940 to 1946. After completing further studies at Melbourne University in 1948, he was appointed district forester for the Upper Murray District in Victoria's far north-east. These initial postings provided a strong grounding in the staples of timber production, native forest silviculture, fuel reduction burning and firefighting.

In 1953, he was transferred to Daylesford as the district forester responsible for the western half of the Wombat Forest. The forest was recovering after being heavily exploited for firewood, mine props and sawn timber prior to 1900. Norm oversaw a substantial silvicultural program designed to help restore the forest's productivity  a task which gave him tremendous satisfaction.
Almost $2 billion in extra funding would flow to NSW schools over two years under Labor's plan to fund the full six years of the Gonski school funding deals.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took aim at Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's plan to spend an extra $37 billion on schools over the next decade on Friday, decrying it as "reckless" spending reminiscent of the Rudd-Gillard years.

Mr Turnbull backed his ability to win an election without lavish spending promises, warning voters not to expect a "fistful of dollars election campaign" this year.

According to Labor's school funding estimates, costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, $1.7 billion of Labor's $4.5 billion in extra Gonski funding for 2018 and 2019 would go to NSW schools. This covers public, Catholic and private schools across the state.
The Turnbull government has agreed to lead a national redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors but has not committed to contributing any shortfall funding for institutions that cannot pay compensation.

Attorney-General George Brandis and Social Services Minister Christian Porter said in a joint statement on Friday that they would develop a "nationally consistent approach" so that survivors of all institutions would "receive proper redress, irrespective of the location of the institution at the time of the offending or the present status of the offending institution".

"We will soon commence discussions with the states and territories to carefully work through the many complex issues to achieve an outcome for survivors as soon as possible," they said, without setting a deadline for negotiations.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended in September that the federal government announce whether it would establish a $4.3 billion national redress scheme for 60,000 abuse survivors by the end of 2015. It said the scheme should be established no later than 1 July 2017.
The University of NSW aims to be a top 50 university within 10 years. Credit:Louise Kennerley Before this shift, universities had funding allocated to them for a set number of student places per course. They had no financial incentive to enrol more students than the government was going to fund, so ATARs stuck, as a way of creating competition for a finite number of places. In 2012, they took the competition away. The Gillard government argued more Australians should be able to access tertiary education and uncapped the number of students it would fund. "I don't think that the broader ATAR system we have outside of flexible entry works at all," says Jenavive Westbury, a fourth year UNSW law student. Credit:Edwina Pickles This year, a record 1.2 million people will be educated in higher education institutions, a 22 per cent jump in total enrolments over four years at the cost of nearly $16 billion in government funding.

But a more widely educated population has also come at a cost. UNSW Vice-Chancellor Ian Jacobs. Credit:Brendan Esposito Higher student numbers, fewer full time academics, and government pressure on research funding has meant that at the same time as universities are dependent on increased student numbers for funding, so too are they running on fewer resources. "Quality has suffered, and it starts with lower ATARs," says a senior NSW education figure. "The decision to open up uncapped student places was a total market failure.

"The big bucket approach of enrol as many as you can has created a totally dysfunctional system, it is completely contrary to the national interest. They cannot leave it as it is now." So far, the Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham has indicated the government has no intention of turning off the tap despite issuing a warning to universities after the data was released this week. "There are no current plans to reinstate caps for universities," he said on Wednesday, while promising to keep a "watching brief," as total drop-out rates reach the highest level in a decade. "Although the demand-driven system has provided unprecedented access and must be protected it has come at a significantly higher cost to the taxpayer. Recent attrition rates show that almost 15 per cent of these Australians do not progress to their second year. Universities must take responsibility for those students they choose to enrol and ensure they have the capabilities and support to succeed."

Research from the Grattan Institute's Andrew Norton indicates that based on past estimates only 20% of the 7000 students who are offered places with ATARs below 50 will end up getting a degree. He believes there are no guarantees that those who start from low entry points will get the support they need. "We are relying on standards set by the universities themselves and there certainly has been enough scandal in recent years that you can't be entirely confident that things are OK." Academics at Western Sydney University and Macquarie said they were "not surprised" by the findings, given both institutions have swollen their purses on the back of uncapped student places and flexible entry programs. Western Sydney was the symbol of new-age university growth at the beginning of January, proudly announcing that they had made a record 12,000 offers after a $20 million marketing campaign that centred on the inspiring story of Sudanese refugee Deng Adut.

But behind their public ATARs lay the reality of their admissions. In their Bachelor of Construction management course, 99 per cent of 251 students failed to make the ATAR of 85, the actual average of students was 20 points lower at 63. More than 90 per cent failed to make the grade for the university's engineering course and were still admitted. At Macquarie similar numbers of students who did not make the ATAR cut-off were enrolled in their law and marketing programs. The President of the National Tertiary Education Union, Jeannie Rae, believes that the surge in enrolments can only lead to an inevitable fall in tuition standards. "What we are facing is not a status quo but worsening learning and teaching conditions," she says. "Even prepared students are frantic as they cannot get assistance from tutors".

Professor Hil says he has seen the frustration of academics first hand. "Universities are heavily dependent on bloated class sizes, in tutorials you can get one tutor to 50 students". "Administrators put enormous pressure on academics to pass students. If you have too many fail grades, you will be implicitly asked to explain 'why have you failed students?' It is a bar that is constantly being pushed down". The drop in quality is starting to be noticed in the workforce, believes Mr Norton.

"Employers such as state governments are now imposing their own literacy and numeracy assessments, this is a response to the loss of faith in the assessment of universities," he says. Fewer and fewer graduates are getting jobs straight out of the university gates too, with graduate employment rates falling to their lowest point since 1993, while many industries which would have been staffed by potential TAFE graduates such as building, are reporting a shortage of available workers. If reform is going to come, it has to start at the beginning, argue vice-chancellors from Victoria to Kensington, well before nervous students tick preference boxes or stay up at night contemplating what four numbers will flash up on their screens in January. No one now seriously argues that the ATAR is the complete measure of academic success. It can't quantify illness, disadvantage or potential, it is a four digit number. "ATAR tells us more about social advantage than it does about anything else," Professor Sally Kift, an expert in university admissions, told Fairfax Media on Thursday.

"They tell us more about where students went to school and the social and culture capital which 'cotton-woolled' them at the point of their final school assessment". When UNSW's Vice Chancellor Professor Ian Jacobs called for NSW to move away from the current system as quickly as possible this week, he said: "We need a set of criteria that identifies the most talented students from all backgrounds, not ATAR alone". Mitchell Lavelle knows it well. The 18-year-old survived leukemia by the age of 11, and worked pizzas by night and picking up glasses by day, while on his way to become dux of Casino High school. "In the long run going through something like that gives you a determination," Lavelle says of his battle with leukemia.

He fell 8.75 points short of the required mark to get into Aerospace Engineering at the University of Sydney. Fortunately for Lavelle, the sandstone university had already disregarded his ATAR, and admitted him on the basis of his leadership, tenacity and ability to overcome adversity through its dux program. "You wake up every morning a little bit more thankful for what life gives you," he says. Across town, another band of students are thankful that their institution also ignored their ATARs. Fourth-year law student Jenavive Westbury got into UNSW's law program, which admitted 90 per cent of students below the cut-off this year, through its flexible entry scheme. "I don't think that the broader ATAR system we have outside of flexible entry works at all," she says. "There are a variety of different circumstances that people face in high school, that it does not take into account.

"Some kids go to good schools and some don't, some have supportive families and some don't, the ATAR can't measure that." The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Tyrone Carlin, argues that whatever the outcome, a more transparent admissions system is essential. "From the points of view of parents, students, one of the great difficulties of navigating the system is the complete lack of transparency," he says. "In the minds of some there is an association between the published ATAR and the quality of that course." He believes a more accurate reflection would be publishing not just the public ATAR cut-off, but the highest, median and lowest ATAR in that degree.

"Because that tells you much more about who is going to be sitting next to you." The new approach could also take its cues from universities that have already relegated the current university admissions system to second fiddle. The University of Notre Dame Australia has eschewed the university admissions centre for more than two decades. "Notre Dame has never selected students on an "ATAR-only" basis; we've always asked for evidence of personal motivation, professional suitability, community contribution - and then tested all this at interview," says Professor Hayden Ramsay, Notre Dame's Deputy Vice Chancellor. Larger universities are already skirting around the edges of the main university offer round too.

Direct entry, where students are marketed to and recruited before the main ATAR cut offs are becoming a far more significant part of the tertiary apparatus. "We have really ramped up our activity in the early rounds," says Professor Carlin, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney. "It has been a consistent pattern of growth every year". At UNSW, the sentiment is the same, they are moving to a "contextual admissions system," from next year, with a goal of reflecting Australia's socio-economic demographics on campus by 2025. "It will be a much richer contextual admission system from a variety of sources that is much broader than just an ATAR," says UNSW's Deputy Vice-Chancellor Iain Martin. He has called for a national discussion on where to next for university admissions system.
A Sydney passenger train driver who had been awake for 21 hours was under pressure from controllers when he steered the train in the wrong direction towards an oncoming freight train in the city's west.

Safety investigators also discovered that a guard on the Waratah train realised it was heading the wrong way from Mount Druitt station in March last year but he didn't do anything.

A Waratah train, similar to the one in this picture, was put on a collision course with a Pacific National freight train in March last year. Credit:Simon Alekna

Instead of heading to St Marys, the train travelled towards Blacktown, putting it on a collision course with a Pacific National freight train, which was just four kilometres away on the same line.

The driver brought the train to a halt only after one of Sydney Trains network control officers phoned him urgently to tell him to stop.
A former butcher will remain behind bars after being charged over a father of one's stabbing death in Sydney's south-west.

Ze Ren Le was arrested at his home in the affluent suburb of Cherrybrook, in Sydney's north-west on Thursday.

Ze Ren Le, 56, is arrested on Thursday over the alleged murder of Xun Ke in Campsie last year. Credit:NSW Police

The 56-year-old father is accused of murdering associate Xun Ke outside his Campsie unit block on March 28, 2015.

Police will allege Le also stole Mr Ke's mobile phone and Calvin Klein satchel, containing the 55-year-old's bank card, club cards and cash.
Developers, infrastructure firms and community groups are being invited to bid for money flowing from a new $1 billion state government investment fund to deliver at least 3000 extra social and affordable homes.

Premier Mike Baird, Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian and Social Housing Minister Brad Hazzard will announce on Saturday that $1.1 billion in cash reserves will be tipped into a new Social and Affordable Housing Fund.

"This new fund will allow us to unlock new homes for those who need them most": Premier Mike Baird. Credit:Matt Blyth/Getty Images

The money will be invested by NSW Treasury Corporation and the returns used to encourage the private and non-government sectors to deliver housing projects over a period of up to 25 years.

Delivery of social and affordable housing is commercially unviable for much of the private sector due to low rents and the current level of government subsidies.
It has been revealed the fire risk associated with non-compliant external aluminium cladding was the cause for a brand new inner-city Brisbane high-rise to be deemed uninhabitable.

The 23-storey Iglu Brisbane student accommodation building on Mary Street had been due to open this month, but issues with the building material used meant it was unable to be certified safe for habitation.

A spokeswoman for Iglu said the company was "working closely" with the builder, Probuild, to ensure Iglu met requirements for building certification, which would allow residents to move in.

The spokeswoman confirmed it was the external cladding that had caused the problem.
Convicted killer and rapist Adrian Bayley is one step closer to appealing several of his rape sentences, after Victorian Legal Aid confirmed it would not launch court action to block his bid for taxpayer assistance.

The decision means Bayley's fate is in the hands of an independent reviewer, who will now consider his application for legal aid to fight the sentences. It follows lengthy legal battles over whether taxpayers should have to pay for Bayley's appeal against two rape convictions.

Adrian Bayley is serving a life sentence for the 2012 rape and murder of Jill Meagher.

Victorian Legal Aid (VLA) would have faced a hefty legal bill if it had opted to fight Bayley in the Court of Appeal over the matter.
The Victorian Coroner will investigate the Christmas bushfire that claimed 116 homes in Wye River and Separation Creek.

A request was made by the United Firefighters Union and three property owners for the Coroner to probe the devastating blaze, which was ignited by lightning in the Great Otway National Park.

On Friday the State Coroner, Judge Sara Hinchey, determined that it was in the public interest to investigate the fire.

However, in order to "avoid unnecessary duplication of inquiries" the start of the coronial investigation will be deferred until after a report by the Inspector General for Emergency Management, Tony Pearce, is completed next month.
WA Greens Senator Rachel Siewert has flagged plans to block regional cashless welfare trials she says will be forced on objecting residents who cannot escape them simply by moving away.

Trials destined for the east Kimberley, South Australia and an unknown third WA site aim to combat drug, alcohol and gambling abuse by quarantining 80 per cent of welfare payments on to debit cards that will work anywhere but ATMs, bottle shops and casinos.

Greens senator Rachel Siewert has announced plans to block the cashless welfare card trials.

Residents who plan to move away to avoid the scheme may be unaware they could not opt out in this way, Senator Siewert said on Friday, as a Ceduna resident on a disability pension indicated his intention to do just that.
Ethiopia: The Australian government should urgently contribute aid money towards Ethiopia's worst drought in 50 years and the United Nations needs to "raise the global alarm," a charity says.

Save the Children is calling on Canberra to "immediately" spend $20 million towards Ethiopia's drought response.

Failed seasonal rains across much of the Horn of Africa nation compounded by the El Nino effect has caused widespread crop and livestock losses in the agrarian nation.

The drought is eroding harvests of everything from corn to sorghum, compounding a food shortage for a country where 30 per cent of the population subsists on less than $US1.25 ($1.76) a day.
London: An Oxford University college has announced it will keep a statue of 19th century colonialist Cecil Rhodes on display, resisting pressure to remove it from student campaigners who say it glorifies a brutal racist.

Inspired by protests at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, which led to its statue of Rhodes being removed last April, the "Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford" campaign has sparked a heated debate about how Britain remembers its imperialist past.

The Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel College, Oxford University.

Rhodes, a fervent imperialist and mining magnate, was a central figure in Britain's colonial project in southern Africa, giving his name to Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe, and founding the De Beers diamond empire.

Oriel College, one of 38 that make up Oxford University, said the statue would remain in place in a niche on the facade of a building partly funded by a donation from Rhodes. It said it would add an explanation of the historical context.
Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements

Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm

Major aggregator Vow Financial has launched a new mentoring program aimed at new-to-industry brokers.Vow Mentoring is a two-year program that includes a tailored business plan, marketing plan and three months free email marketing service and support. It also includes lender accreditation and ongoing training on product, sales processes, compliance and software.The two year program, which incurs a $1,000 one-off entry cost, is an evolution of the existing MFAA approved program which allowed Vow brokers to become mentors to new brokers within their brokerage.The chief executive of Vow, Tim Brown, says this program will go a long way to fill an education gap overlooked by wholesale aggregators.There has been a growing number of new market entrants over the past few years and yet wholesale aggregators are not catering to their needs. The new broker generally goes through a short induction program and then enters the market on their own without the level of training, tools and support they initially need. Many of these businesses will fail in the first two years unless they receive additional mentoring, Brown said.We want to be industry leaders and at the forefront of providing new services to our brokers need. The expansion of this program is an important milestone for our business. By providing more support services, we can help more for enthusiastic new brokers who might just need a boost to learn the ropes, build momentum and ultimately set themselves up for success.The internal Vow Mentoring program will be run by newly appointed national mentor relationship manager, Adam Flint. Flint is a qualified training professional who also is also highly literate in the aggregation software.One of the biggest frustrations for finance brokers in their first years is learning how to use the software. With Mr Flints software expertise, the mentees will also have access to an oncall software expert to assist in the lodgement of deals during those key early years, Brown said.The internal program was soft launched two months ago in New South Wales with ten new entrants being the first to trial it and ten more scheduled to begin.
Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements

Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm

Brokers need to be extra prudent when it comes to posting opinions online or engaging in discussions in online forums, the chief executive of the MFAA has warned.With the mortgage broking sector coming under increasing regulatory surveillance  ASIC has two reviews into the sector planned for 2016  the chief executive of the MFAA Siobhan Hayden has said the industry also needs to be prepared for increasing scrutiny from the mainstream press.What is really important is what is happening now from a mainstream media point of view... Brokers have got to be very clear that senior editors in the mainstream press have taken this up as a topic of interest. The government are reading those papers and they are looking at our trade press to form their opinions, Hayden told Australian Broker.Of note in [a recent article] was direct mention of the blogs in our sector and actually reiterating a comment from a broker  and [the journalist] was supportive of that comment because it actually fell into [their] narrative. I have had numerous interviews with [mainstream press] and [they] absolutely [have] a dog on a bone attitude towards us as a sectorWhilst Hayden says brokers need to drive informed discussion of the sector, she is also warning brokers to think carefully and scrutinise themselves before making a comment publicly.[Mainstream press are] looking at our internal blogs and trade press so any article you write or comment on, my challenge to members broadly is if you have got something to shoot from the hip imagine you are sitting in front of Peter Kell and Kelly ODwyer, Hayden told Australian Broker.Your opinion from the hip is taken and it is noticed and if it isnt well informed it is being scrutinised. If you want to shoot from the hip and be passionate about something, think twice before you go to press.Everyone is encouraged to have their say but dont think of it from only your backyard. Comments made quickly about how we should become fee-for-service is not so smart, for example. That is what [the mainstream press] saw and thought that would be good to run with.
Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements

Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm

Melbournes outer suburbs are growing in popularity with investors and home-owners alike as they hunt for the last pockets of value in the Victorian capital.According to the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV), Melbournes median house price dipped to $718,000 in the December quarter, down 1% from the $719,000 recorded in the September quarter, but the first price decline in the city after four straight quarters of growth is not the biggest story for the market.There was a marginal moderation for median house price over the quarter, REIV spokesperson Paul Bird told Australian Broker's sister publication, Your Investment Property.But the real story for the quarter is the emergence of Melbournes outer suburbs. Theyre really starting to get the attention of homeowners and investors who are looking further out from the CBD as they search for better affordability and better capital growth opportunities, Bird said.Across the city, Melbournes outer suburbs performed the best over the quarter.Median house prices in outer Melbourne rose by 2.9% to $559,000, while the median unit price increased 3.2% to $425,000.Warrandyte, in Melbournes outer north east was the best preforming housing market over the quarter, with its median price increasing 19%, while Greenvale in the outer north and Sunshine in the outer west both recorded growth of more than 17% for their median house prices.The median price for a house in those suburbs between $600,000 and $1.1 million according to the REIV, but Bird said there are still other affordable options in Melbournes outer reaches that are performing well.It used to be you could find a house in a lot of the outer suburbs for around $320,000, but thats getting pretty difficult now, he said.You look at place like Werribee, it used to be one of those, but its the second cheapest suburb in Melbourne now and its median house price went up 11% in the quarter to $357,000.Even so, suburbs like Werribee, Wyndham Vale or Hoppers Crossing are an hour or 45 minutes from the CBD and you can still get a house for around $350,000 and thats great affordability if you compare them to the price you would pay for a house in an equivalent suburb in Sydney.While Bird said the improved performance of Melbournes outer suburbs is in part due to the current upswing all of Melbourne is enjoying, there are some other factors at play as well.Part of it just the natural cycle, the inner areas of Melbourne have slowed a bit and now the outer areas are enjoying some growth.But theres also been some great improvements in infrastructure for the outer suburbs, particularly in public transport and road transport, that have really opened the outer suburbs up to the rest of Melbourne.Thats helped as the owner occupiers are now looking at those suburbs because of the lifestyle factors they offer, while still being relatively close to the CBD.But while Melbournes outer fringe might present some bargains currently, Bird recommends getting in sooner rather than later.A lot of the activity at the moment is from home-owners, but we predict investor activity will pick up over the next year or so.When that happens I think youre going to be hard pressed to find a house anywhere in that $350,000 to $400,000 range.
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These Cobble Hill residents are looking for preventive care, not a Band-Aid solution.

A forthcoming traffic study for a new medical center coming to the former Long Island College Hospital site will be too little, too late for a project that could open as early as next year and still has no concrete plans for parking, say neighbors.

You hired somebody to do a traffic study but the facility was designed first, said one local at Community Board 6s human service committee meeting on Jan. 27, where a hospital rep showed up to tout features of the new facility but was met with a barrage of questions about where visitors will park. It seems backwards.

The New York University Langone Medical Center honcho told residents it has hired former city transportation commissioner Sam Schwartz  better known as Gridlock Sam for his old newspaper advice column  to analyze the impact the new sickbay at Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street will have on traffic in the area.

But the university  which took over the old hospitals emergency department in 2014 when the site was sold to Fortis Property Group  says providing parking is the developers responsibility, and the company still hasnt announced what or where that will be.

Locals now worry the lack of any firm plans for visitors cars means they will end up leaving them on nearby residential streets  an issue that could be compounded by sticking ambulance bays on busy Hicks Street.

The whole point of an ambulance is to get you there quickly, and on Hicks Street you dont do anything quickly, said one Cobble Hill resident.

The hospital bigwig said 15,000 patients graced the gurneys in its current emergency departments on Amity Street last year, about a third of whom arrived by ambulance. And he expects the universitys reputation will bring in even more ailing visitors when it relocates to the new, four-story digs  which will include an emergency department, four surgical beds, and a cancer treatment center.

I think the NYU name and brand has value, said Gary Kalkut, an executive at New York University Langone.

Past patients driving in have been able to access the old hospital parking garages, which Fortis plans to knock down so it can build luxury apartments.

A Fortis spokesman said it will definitely have new parking for the infirmary in place by the time it opens in late 2017 or early 2018, but could not say how many spaces.

While the number of parking spaces in our redevelopment plan has not yet been finalized, we are committed to providing parking for the new NYU Langone facility in accordance with New York City rules and regulations, said James Yolles.

But leaders of a Cobble Hill civic group  who recently attended several secretive meetings with reps from Fortis, the university, and City Hall to hash out the details of both developments  say they are still concerned about the amount of parking in the plan.

Parking is one of the issues that remains outstanding, Buzz Doherty, vice president of the Cobble Hill Association, told this paper following a meeting last month.

The clinic has long been a sore point in the neighborhood. Locals fought hard to keep the hospital open, and some have slammed the new freestanding emergency room  the result of a lawsuit settlement that required any buyer to keep some medical services on the site  as a glorified urgent care.

Demolition on the old hospital is already underway, and the university will start building the clinic soon.
words & photos by BBG

Weekend Nachos



A389 Records descended upon Sonar in Baltimore on January 21st with sixteen bands, hailing from from places like Belgium and Canada, and all over the US. The 9+ hour show was headlined by Eyehategod and included repeat A389 Anniversary offenders Integrity, Gehenna, and Seven Sisters of Sleep. It featured bands, that while rooted in hardcore, dipped their toes into crust, powerviolence, grind, doom, sludge and everywhere in between.

The first portion of the show took place on the smaller stage at Sonar, where Eddie Brock kicked off the evening followed by Homewrecker featuring fill-in bassist Joe Yanick of Masakari. John Hoffman of Weekend Nachos (who is touring with Homewrecker, and recently played ABC No Rio) and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell both dropped in to do vocals for Homewrecker.

Hatewaves, which features members of Pulling Teeth and Triac, followed the pair, opening their set with an appropriately absurd announcement: "Direct from a supporting slot from Don Ho, you wanted the second best, you got the second best... Hatewaves."

The crew deals in ridiculous lyrics over brutally fast hardcore, and delivered on both fronts despite an absurdly short-and-to-the-point set. Triac's blistering grind followed Hatewaves.

Low Places, who were a bit loose at times, played following Triac and pounded the crowd with their negative hardcore, eventually trashing the stage before Full of Hell got on. Full of Hell's noise-peppered hardcore brutality was the first set of the day to get the crowd really moving.

Pick Your Side, a new project featuring Jeff of Haymaker/Left for Dead/Chokehold and two members of Fuck The Facts, followed Hatewaves, and by the end of the second song Beckmann had already incited a pit and stage-dived. The band is prepping to release their new LP Let Me Show You How Democracy Works on A389, but had a select set of the LPs with special screened covers at the show.

Weekend Nachos batted clean-up on the small stage, which was packed to capacity by the time they took the stage. Possibly the most violent pit of the day, the Chicago crew had plenty of stage dives and singalongs to go along with their uber-brutal set.

The party then moved to the larger stage. More on that (with pictures) HERE. More pictures of everything mentioned above, below...



--

Eddie Brock

Homewrecker

John Hoffman of Weekend Nachos joins in

Dylan Walker of Full of Hell joins in

Hatewaves

Triac

Low Places

Full of Hell

Pick Your Side

Weekend Nachos
Two ticket brokers that were illegally operating without a ticket reseller license reached settlements with the state and will pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines, Schneiderman's office said.

"My office will continue to crack down on those who break our laws, prey on ordinary consumers, and deny New Yorkers affordable access to the concerts and sporting events they love," Schneiderman said.

...In addition to reinstituting price caps on ticket re-sales, he called on the state Legislature to pass laws creating criminal penalties for using ticket bot software and that would end a ban on non-transferable paperless tickets.
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Health care providers familiarity with military culture critical to improving care for veterans

Just as you want to be culturally competent working with any population, with veterans it is particularly important because they may shut you out if they suspect a lack of understanding. Theyll walk away.

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Health care systems and providers need to understand the unique realities of military culture in order to work effectively with veterans and military families, according to the findings of a study by a University at Buffalo research team.

Results of the paper published in the journal Military Behavioral Health suggest that health care and mental health care providers and staff should receive training that provides them with enough knowledge to understand the militarys culture and values and how that belief system also affects the veterans transition from a service member identity to a civilian identity.

The paper is among the first to also document the necessity of addressing the many difficulties facing military families in the community, everything from challenges arising when family members are deployed to their return home following their discharge.

Military service  and combat experience in particular  is a profound life experience that many civilians do not understand  and veterans are well aware of this, says Lisa Butler, associate professor in the UB School of Social Work and the papers first author.

Using four different focus groups  two male veterans groups, one female veterans group and one comprised of veterans family members  the researchers asked about the collective health care experience and what participants perceived to be the gaps and needs in health care and mental health care provision.

The research team used a sample of veterans in the community rather than one recruited from patients in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system.

The VA research is important, but we dont know if those findings can be generalized across the entire veteran population, says Butler, who is also the principal investigator of Joining Forces-UB, a team comprised of UB faculty and staff from the schools of Social Work and Nursing who are collaborating to better address the needs of veterans and military families through research and by developing training programs for students in both schools.

Many people do not realize that only about one in three veterans turn to the VA for their health and mental health care and that most research on veterans is conducted with those in the VA system. This is why the research mission of our Joining Forces-UB project is so unique  we are seeking to better understand the needs of all veterans and military families by conducting community-based research.

Butler says health care and mental health care providers require what Joining Forces-UB is calling military/veteran cultural competence.

Just as you want to be culturally competent working with any population, with veterans it is particularly important because they may shut you out if they suspect a lack of understanding. Theyll walk away.

A military service history can have wide-ranging effects on a veterans life, according to Butler. Veterans feel the framework from which they emerge is not appreciated by the population at large and she says that shortcoming may create obstacles for health care providers that make it difficult for them to understand a veterans health care needs.

Providers who bring military/veteran cultural competence to their interactions with veterans have the potential to enhance outcomes and increase quality of care. This is in addition to preventing veterans from walking away from care that may be beneficial, says Braden Linn, a doctoral candidate in the UB School of Social Work and one of the papers co-authors, along with Mary Ann Meeker, associate professor in the UB School of Nursing, Katie McClain-Meeder, project manager on Joining Forces-UB, and Thomas Nochajski, research professor in the UB School of Social Work.

But the questions that might fill the gaps and satisfy the needs of veterans often go unasked because of the absence of that cultural competence.

Butler says that outside of Veterans Affairs hospitals, asking about military service is rarely part of a patients intake.

Providers outside of the VA often dont think about a client having military experience or how that service might affect the veterans presenting condition; how to treat them; or how theyll respond to treatment, she says. The critical issue is to ask about past military service, and then follow up with questions about hazardous exposures that are known to be specific to their era of service  these are listed on the VAs website. It is also important to have a basic knowledge of military culture and what that could mean for how veterans approach their health care.

Even the papers title, We dont complain about small things, alludes to an ideal obvious to veterans that health care providers dont always grasp.

Thats a quote from a veteran, says Butler. She was speaking to the lack of understanding often present in health care. She was saying that it takes a lot for a veteran to seek help and so a medical complaint should never be viewed as trivial.

She says that veterans are proud of their toughness but it can make it difficult for them to seek services.

Cultivating military/veteran cultural competence can help providers deliver better carecare that acknowledges the veterans unique history and its significance in a veterans life even after they transition to the civilian world, says Butler. If providers dont understand that, they wont be as effective in the care they provide.
George Lines, an independent civils merchant based in West London, has become part of Lords Builders Merchants.

George Lines has been a long standing independent civils builders merchants for over 60 years, the business has been led by Mark Bone who will join Lords and continue to manage George Lines as a separate division within Lords Builders Merchants.

Shanker Patel, CEO of the Lords Group, said: I have known Mr Bone for many years and our businesses share the same culture of putting our customers and colleagues first. George Lines has a tremendous reputation within its niche sector and we are delighted to have the opportunity to join this business to our existing builders merchants in London.

The two businesses have had a supplier-customer relationship for over 10 years and George Lines will continue to trade under the same name with Mark Bone remaining with the business alongside his existing team all of whom will be continuing to work with Lords and the enlarged business.

The transaction also marks a watershed for the Lords Group as the company signifies its ability to work with potential independent merchants seeking to exit or move their business forward.

Alongside its former Burdens branch in Hayes, the group will have a significant presence in the local civils materials market. With infrastructure construction forecasted to grow, Lords are seeking to capitalise on being one of the only independent builders merchants with a civils speciality in London.
Following the recent unveiling of its brand identity, QRL Radiator Group  formerly Quinn Radiators  has strengthened its leadership team with three new senior appointments.

The manufacturer has welcomed Mark Derbyshire as commercial managing director for its panel radiator ranges (hi-lo, Barlo and Warmastyle); Lee Kenney as commercial managing director for Design by QRL and custom heating and cooling specialist Merriott; and Maura McCabe as general manager for Ireland.

David Kerr, chief executive at QRL Radiator Group, said: Having recently revealed our fresh look and vision for the company, there couldnt be a better time to bolster the QRL Radiator Group management team. Our panel, design and Ireland divisions are key to the business ongoing success, and they need strong, dedicated leaders  which is why weve specifically created these roles for Mark, Lee and Maura. All three are highly skilled, knowledgeable and driven people with impressive, longstanding industry experience.

Mr Derbyshire, previously commercial director at Vaillant, has almost 20 years experience in the plumbing and heating industry. In his new role, he will oversee QRLs panel radiator division  including its hi-lo, Barlo and Warmastyle ranges.

Mr Kenney joins the company from IBP Conex, marking the latest step in his 30-year career in the HVAC sector. He will now manage the Design by QRL portfolio, as well as heading up Merriott (part of the QRL group) and its range of custom-made commercial heating and cooling solutions.

Bringing with her 15 years commercial and operations experience across industries including heating, plumbing and property, Ms McCabe will now lead QRL Radiator Groups Irish arm. Based in the companys Derrilyn offices, she will be responsible for the day-to-day running of all aspects of the panel and design departments in Ireland  from admin and HR to sales and warehousing.

Mr Kerr continued: Most importantly, our new recruits very much share in our companywide passion to cement and maintain QRLs position at the forefront of this competitive marketplace. This means ensuring our products remain the better choice for customers across the UK and Ireland by championing our core brand values  from exceptional quality, performance and value right through to outstanding customer service and environmental credentials. I know the whole team joins me in extending a warm welcome to our three new colleagues, and I look forward to working closely with them to achieve our ambitious, long-term business goals.
Bordentown exhibit showcases items belonging to Joseph Bonaparte

The Bordentown Historical society is gaining international attention for its Joseph Bonaparte exhibit, former King of Spain and brother of Napoleon.
Hiking minimum wage won't stop poverty: Fed paper

Jeff Cox

Wednesday, 30 Dec 2015 | 1:47 PM ET



David Neumark, visiting scholar at the San Francisco Fed, contends that raising the minimum wage has only limited benefits in the war against poverty, due in part because relatively few of those falling below the poverty line actually receive the wage.



Many of the benefits from raising the wage, a move already undertaken by multiple governments around the country as well as some big-name companies, tend to go to higher-income families.

Demographically, about half of the 3 million or so workers receiving the minimum are 16 to 24 years old, with the highest concentration in the leisure and hospitality industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Moreover, the percentage of workers at or below the minimum is on the decline, falling to 3.9 percent in 2014 from the most recent high of 6 percent in 2010.

Neumark also points out that many of those receiving the wage aren't poor  there are no workers in 57 percent of families below the poverty line, while 46 percent of poor workers are getting paid more than $10.10 an hour, and 36 percent are making more than $12 an hour, he said.

I'm not a huge fan of the minimum wage, but I also admit it isn't going away. It's a feel-good public policy that some nations embrace with complex brackets (Australia indexes for age of worker) and others simply don't have at all. There's little economic correlation between the minimum wage and job creation, because the wage tends to trail earned wages in skilled trades.Which nations don't have legal minimum wages? How about Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland! Germany has regional minimums, handled by local governments, just as many states in the United States set their own minimums.How can it be that social democracies don't have minimum wages? They have a history of employee ownership, through unions with board seats at companies. The United States lacks a similar history of corporate-union or even government-union cooperation. Our unions are more adversarial. (Maybe they should try another approach; it might increase wages and influence.)The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco studied the minimum wage (yet another minimum wage study) and found it has negligible effects on poverty or employment. Basically, increasing the wage costs some job creation and helps the working children of middle-class and upper-middle-class families earn some extra cash. That's not a bad thing for college students, but not a great thing for unskilled people in poverty many of whom don't have jobs!It seems counter-intuitive, but I've written about his before. Minimum wage tends to be temporary and most of its earners are the high school and college-aged children of middle-class parents. Yes, there are single parents earning minimum wage in fast food jobs, but they are statistical outliers, not the norm.Thinking back, when I was in high school almost everyone had a retail or food industry job. In college, we were the shift-managers and lead clerks. I worked at K-Mart, for example, and earned a raise every summer. I earned minimum wage for only six months. Though anecdotal, my experience reflects the statistical evidence.The children of the middle class are able to get to and from jobs. They have some skills and want to build their resumes. Basically, entry-level workers are headed for better jobs.What about the poor? Believe it or not,. That's astonishing to some people, but the fact is that the poor don't work (at least not for legal wages). That's a serious problem because if they don't work minimum wage jobs, they'll never develop the skills for higher paying jobs.The unemployed poor is a global problem, especially in some European nations and the United States. We have a lot of poor without the skills to hold minimum wage jobs. Even the lowest paying jobs require more and more skills as technology advances.If we want to address poverty, we're back to education and personal responsibility. Other nations have extensive safety nets, yet they still have this same problem. Poverty becomes a cycle, as families don't develop successful habits. How do we teach the skills necessary for self-advancement? That's going to be an increasingly important question this century.Some of my visitors have suggested in comments that the German wage and employment model would solve many other problems, not just wealth inequality. The problem is, there's no evidence that free education or employee-owned companies have decreased inequality in Germany. Nor have these policies led to better corporate citizens.In Germany, Volkswagen has employee and regional board members. This model, widely adopted, provides leverage to negotiate higher salaries. VW is also evidence that employee and government board seats don't equal ideal corporate behavior, despite government and union ownership stakes.The evidence is cloudy, though there's just nothing to suggest increasing wages through mandates or other means (stronger unions) will have an effect on poverty or inequality.My fear is that wages will be increased nationally based on high-cost states and urban areas. I doubt that will happen, though, because most people do realize $15 in rural Pennsylvania or Alabama isn't the same as $15 in New York City.More costly employees have to be worth the expense to any business. As a result, companies might avoid hiring the very people a higher wage was meant to help. Instead of hiring an inexperienced worker, I might higher a retiree or a college student. As higher-wage employers know, you get better employees for the money. That's not a bad thing.One solution is not a higher starting minimum wage, but a bracket approach with guaranteed raises after six months and one year. This would encourage people to stay at jobs and encourage employers to invest in their workers. I dislike the idea of mandating this approach, nationally, but it might be a good compromise.
Stagiunea 2022-2023 la Opera Comica pentru Copii: peste 500 de spectacole, dintre care 10 premiere, cu bilete si abonamente deja puse in vanzare
Cornelia Funke is one of the world's highest-selling authors, a multiple award-winner for her children's books, from Mirrorworld to Inkspell and Dragon Rider. She was in fine, combative mood at a session on publishing at the Jaipur Literature Festival, explaining why she'd started her own imprint, Breathing Books, to publish her own work.

Funke's books have sold millions of copies, but even so, she struggles with a core issue for authors - the difficulty of retaining creative control. She started Breathing Books after her US publishers asked for drastic changes to a new book. Funke found this highly problematic because the work had already been edited by her editors in Germany. She was sharply critical of the way the present system works, reminding authors that they are the ones who are creators, and that even the best editors, distributors and publishers should not usurp creative control.

Who has creative control? It's a question of power: does the enormous clout of the US and the US publishing industries mean that local editors in Europe and Asia are sidelined as a consequence? Another question about power: if an author with as much superstar muscle and bestselling clout as Funke has is under pressure to re-edit an already edited manuscript, what chance do less well-known authors have of standing up to this sort of pressure?



Earlier this month, Philip Pullman, President of the Society of Authors in the UK, author of the hugely popular Golden Compass trilogy, criticised "certain large interests" in publishing: "[Their] attitude to creators' rights is roughly that of the steamroller to the ant [These] great interests have enormous financial and political power, but no creative power whatsoever." He and the Society are spearheading a campaign for better wages for authors. Many point out that writers receive just 12 per cent of the earnings on their creations.

The standard figure for author's royalties has been set at roughly 12 per cent through the Western world; only vanity presses and self-publishing concerns offer higher royalties, but they seldom provide the editing and distribution services of mainstream publishers. The 10-12 per cent figure has remained in place since the 18th century, which makes it an unquestioned and in practice, unquestionable, norm. Any discussion of changes in royalty figures is usually met with incredulity from publishers, and not taken seriously because this figure has been set in stone across the centuries.

Even the Society of Authors doesn't suggest drastic changes in the present royalty system. The changes they want can be summarised in the CREATOR contract, and many of its provisions are already in force in European countries. They demand clarity - contracts should be easy to understand; fair remuneration; exploitation, also known as the use-it-or-lose-it clause, which suggests that rights not exploited by the publisher should automatically revert to the author; clear accounting; reasonable, renewable terms; full ownership over their work for authors, illustrators and translators; and that all contracts should be subjected to a test of reasonableness.

Funke's demand for creative control and Pullman's insistence on the radical notion of paying authors a fair wage come from the same place: a belief that writers, as creators, are indispensable to the publishing industry, and that they should be treated with the respect due to creators. Both writers have pointed out that some publishers and editors do exceptional work; their quarrel is with inequitable industry norms.

But part of the problem is that while writers and creators are indispensable, they are ubiquitous. The only downside to living in the first century of truly democratic authorship - where anyone can aspire to writing a book - is that there is no shortage of creators. This is not a bad thing, except that when writers, even bestselling ones, are easily replaceable by other "brands", it becomes that much harder for authors as a community to fight for their collective rights.

The real battle, and this will play out over the next decade, is for authors to be seen as creators, with the dignity that implies, and not as content providers. A creator has rights and is respected; a content provider is dangerously disposable.
The previous edition of Bharat Rang Mahotsav showcased a series of firsts. Parallel festivals were held in Agartala, Jabalpur, Aurangabad and Panaji; the "Living Legend" series was instituted; a "Theatre Bazar" was set up; and online ticketing was introduced. This year, the focus is on sustaining the initiatives that were launched last year, while testing new ideas related to stagecraft and storytelling. It is to celebrate this new approach to the craft that the National School of Drama (NSD) has come up with the theme, "Rediscover the Magic of Theatre", for the 18th edition of the festival.

"It is about all styles and formats that bring back the magic of theatre in each of its incarnations," says Waman Kendre, director, NSD. "Be it a traditional form of theatre or the contemporary, ancient or modern, there should be a new approach towards engaging the audience." Keeping this vision in mind, Kendre and his team shortlisted 80 plays - 15 international and 65 Indian - from a list of 469 to participate in the 21-day festival. There are plays from the United States, Australia, Italy, Sri Lanka, Poland, Bangladesh, Spain, China, Pakistan and Austria, with theatre personalities such as Corinne Maier (Switzerland), Qurban Ali (Afghanistan), Sampath Perera (Sri Lanka) and Anna Dora (Italy) sharing the stage with Indian practitioners such as M K Raina, Pankaj Kapur, Paresh Rawal, Saurabh Shukla and Heisnam Kanhailal.

The festival opens with Ratan Thiyam's Macbeth, which deals with the ideas of war and a craving for peace - a recurring theme in the director's plays in the past. In the current creation, Macbeth is a metaphor for a disease that's ailing a society fraught with desire, greed and violence.

The other performance to look forward to is The Wild, by American group Walkabout Theatre Company. It's not your regular play; it's a devised laboratory theatre performance, inspired by the myth of Dionysus, which explores what happens when institutions crumble and deities fall.

This edition is all about finding newer ways to address a subject, and Pune-based Mohit Takalkar has tried to do just that in F-1/105. A story of a neighbourhood in a cosmopolitan locality, the play is in Marathi, with splashes of English, Hindi and Gujarati thrown in. Using one colour - in this case, green - Takalkar has explored societal hierarchies and individual frustrations within the cultural spheres of urban society.

Keeping the parallel festivals going, this year, too, the festival will travel to Jammu, Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad and Trivandrum, where six plays will be held at each venue between February 3 and 14. At NSD, too, a platform is being created for artists from remote areas. More than 300 ambience performances will be held at the venues in Delhi.

"The 'Living Legend' series continues. It offers an opportunity to have a personal interaction with some of the biggest names in theatre. We have Kapila Vatsayayan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Sonal Mansingh, Indira Parthasarathy and Jabbar Patel in this edition," says Kendre. In order to create a more enriching experience for theatre enthusiasts, a series of seminars and lectures have been added to the schedule, one such being the "World Theatre Forum", where speakers will discuss the theme of the festival.

"A new thing that we have launched is a masterclass series on various aspects of theatre. It will feature personalities such as Samik Bandyopadhyay, Balan Nambiar, Chandrashekhara Kambara and Joy Michael," says Kendre.

The 18th Bharat Rang Mahotsav will be held at NSD, along with LTG Auditorium, Kamani Auditorium and Shri Ram Centre in New Delhi, between February 1 and 21
Listening to the designer Suk Chai describe a garment in thorough detail is almost like seeing it and touching it for yourself. She fine-tuned her fashion vocabulary as a child, watching items that originally belonged to her eldest brother get passed to her second-oldest brother, then to her older sister, and finally to her. "I waited for this particular tweed coat and red beret for at least six years," says Chai, now 43, who was born in Korea and raised in Seattle. Her first non-hand-me-down came in the form of a white, crew-neck, short-sleeved, all-cotton dress with patchwork and a poofy skirt (the occasion: her second-grade piano recital). "Both outfits were special," she remarks. "The tweed coat - I had my eye on that for a long, long time, and I loved it and knew it'd eventually be mine; but I did like having my own clothes."



That childhood awareness of fashion certainly contributed to the launch of her own women's wear line, called Schai - though it came after Chai had already spent more than 20 years in the fashion industry.

She graduated from FIT in 1995 and headed to Adrienne Vittadini and Liz Claiborne, then returned to Seattle and developed Nordstrom's private label. "It was a huge collection - 250 styles or more, per season, petite and larger sizes," Chai says. "Everything that I learned, I probably learned at Nordstrom - sourcing, quality check, specifying measurements and fit - and there were a lot of teaching-myself moments, because the Nordstrom Product Group was just starting when I joined. The company is so strong now, and known worldwide, but at the time, many mills and factories in Italy and Asia were like, 'Who are you? Who's Nordstrom?' Though I feel like I've been doing this forever, Schai is new to market, so were also like, 'Who are you?' It's the same thing."



In 2011, she left Nordstrom after 14 years - though she didn't rush into Schai.

Instead, she took a two-year-long break from fashion (including shopping) to regroup mentally and travel. One day, she found herself in the Seattle Barneys outpost, touching a "buttery" 100-percent cashmere coat by Lanvin. "I had tears in my eyes, I had goosebumps all over my body, my heart was racing - it was such a visceral and emotional moment," Chai says. "That was the reason I got back in. I said to myself, 'I need to do something that'll make me feel just as great and as attached to the product,' and the customer who's going to wear my clothes needs to experience the same attachment."



She sketched the entirety - and then some - of her debut collection in a single night, drawing 45 head-to-toe looks (easily 90 or 120 pieces, by her count) from 8.30 pm to 4.30 am; she edited the selection and decided to bring her Italian and Japanese fabrics to New York's garment district (and to do some consulting on the side to pay for them). Salt, her inaugural offering for fall 2014, inspired by a magnified image of a salt crystal from her then-20-year-old son's microscope, was picked up by three stores.

Since then, Chai - who now splits her time between Seattle and New York - has continued to add stockists, including the Dreslyn. Legion, Schai's fall 2016 collection, which debuts here, appears to be military-influenced and, in the designer's words, is an homage both to teamwork and wanting to be protected and peaceful.

She mentions the karate-like belts - which are long enough to wrap around the body twice and hand to another person - as tactile elements important to the line.

But a plush, blush-colored Ghianda fabric - used for coats, dresses and skirts - is the centrepiece of sorts. "It's actually a bit sheer. It has silk organza as interlining, cut together with fabric, to give it some body, and then the garment is lined with imitation silk," she says. "When you touch the fabric, you want to show it to somebody else and say, 'Touch this.' It all comes back to that."

2016 The New York Times
This will be the fifth straight appearance at the expo for the fully-owned subsidiary of Japan's Yokohama Rubber Co. The Advan Sport V105 caters to the luxury segment including cars like Mercedes and Audi, while the Geolandar SUV G055 caters to crossovers. The two tyres are also Yokohama's new launches in 2016 for the Indian market.





Both are Yokohama's global flagship brands. Blue Earth A and Blue Earth are two other global concept brands. The company also manufactures Yokohama Earth-1 and S-drive in India. The former is the first product specifically designed for diverse Indian road conditions.

Yokohama will also exhibit its grand alliance with Premier League's renowned Chelsea FC. Since its establishment in April 2007, Yokohama India has been engaged in marketing activities and network-building in preparation for an expected steady growth in demand in the domstic market. Globally other than replacement tyres business, Yokohama is an original equipment supplier to many top of the line car manufacturers like Audi, Honda, Mercedes Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Suzuki and Toyota.

Source : BS Motoring
Kolhapur-based Ghodawat Agro, part of Sanjay Ghodawat Group, has major expansion plans.Ghodawat Agro currently supplies three lakh stems of flowers every day. Agro business also offers herb and exotic vegetable portfolio that includes Chinese cabbage, iceberg lettuce, tarragon, ginger, chives and oregano.

Shrenik Ghodawat, director, Sanjay Ghodawat Group said, "We are consolidating the agri-business in terms of land bank. Initially we were focused doing projects only in Mahrashtra. Now, we have started looking outside Maharashtra to expand our footprint. Because of different climatic conditions in different states, we can grow more flowers. We have acquired 100 acres of land in Goa and will add another 100 acres in Goa again."

The company plans to to build one of the largest orchid farms in the world. India imports of orchid include Rs 250 crore every year. There is 30% duty on orchid.

"We would like to make India self sufficient in terms of orchid production. Along with orchid, there are other followers which are prawn to humid cliematic conditions. Goa is the ideal place to grow orchid farms due to highest humidity areas for orchid. We are currently 200 acres in terms of green houses. The idea is to add another 200 acres in the next 12 to 18 months," Ghodawat added.

Out of the total production of 3 lakh flowers, it exports 15% to markets like UK, Japan, Holland, Germany Australia and Greece. However, it is now eying fastest growing India market.

According to Shrenik, Indian consumers are now so much pron to flowers and it has became a symbol of expression.

Europe alone consumes 70% of the world's total production of flowers.

He said, "India has a huge market potential for flowers and fillers for decoration purposes. We are also putting a small step in horticulture area. Within 48 hours of harvesting our flowers are available in any part of the world. Rose is the selling flower in the world and contributes 70% of total flower varities. We are projecting revenue of Rs 100 crore for this year. However, We are not revenue hungry for agro business but want to be a profitable company. We will grow those flowers which give more revenue per acre like orchid, carnation and gypsophila."

Additionally, it has developed 60 acres of ginger farm and some exotic herbs and vegetables near Kolhapur. India's floriculture industry has crossed Rs 9,000 core mark. Plus, rising demand from tier II and III cities apart from urban centres is likely to spur demand for roses and other flowers.

Recently the group has forayed into businesses like FMCG and snack food. It is relying heavily on FMCG business and expects it to contribute around 40% of the total revenue. Its FMCG business has exponentially grown from Rs 40 lakh to Rs 5 crore in the last one year. The group is also foraying in to rice production business by setting up a rice mill with investment of Rs 75 crore.

It will produce branded non-Basmati and Basmati rice as well with the capacity of 8 tonns of rice per hour. The group turnover last fiscal was Rs 1,500 crore and expects to increase the top line up to Rs 6,000 by 2020. It is also looking at expanding its business network in the states like Karnataka, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Bankers are considering changing the management of Kolkata-based Electrosteel Steels in favour of the London-based First International Group and China's Laiwu Steel Group combine outside the strategic debt restructuring mechanism introduced by the Reserve Bank of India last year.

FIG, which was a unanimous choice for lenders, proposed at a meeting on Wednesday that the change in management be done through the alternative route to the SDR.

"Lenders are considering the FIG proposal. We will have to deliberate and then take a call," a banker who attended the meeting said.

The SDR was introduced by RBI last June to tackle the issue of burgeoning debt by allowing banks to acquire control of a defaulting company by converting loans into equity. Then they are to bring in new promoters after which sticky assets are to be upgraded to standard ones.

In September, however, the RBI came out with another circular, on a non-SDR mechanism. This allows banks to upgrade credit facilities for borrowers whose ownership has been changed outside the SDR to the standard category, provided the stress was due to operational or managerial inefficiencies.

However, whether under the SDR mechanism or outside, bankers have decided to go ahead with the change of Electrosteel's management. If lenders decide against changing the management through the alternate route and FIG sticks to its stand then Tata Steel's offer will be back on the table, provided it improves on the package.

"Bankers decided in favour of FIG because it was a much better package. But now that FIG has come up with this new proposal we have to weigh the pros and cons," the banker explained.

The existing promoters appear to be ready to pave the way for the change in ownership. "The First International Group (FIG) and Laiwu group have an agreement. Laiwu has 25-28 million tonnes of steel making capacity, we will support the new management in whatever way is required," said Umang Kejriwal, Electrosteel's existing promoter.

While FIG will be bringing in funds, the Laiwu group support the operations of the project.

The Laiwu group, which was an equipment supplier to the 2.51-million-tonne steel and ductile iron pipe project, has receivables of around Rs 100 crore, which will be converted into equity subject to approvals from the Chinese and Indian governments. The steel project as conceived by Kejriwal was an import from China, with the complete design and engineering, in what was meant to be a case study for the industry.

"FIG will have to buy out the existing promoters and other shareholders to take its holding to 51 per cent. It will also have to make a public offer," a source close to the development said. The existing promoters could retain a minority stake in the company. The Electrosteel stock today closed at Rs 3.66 on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange).

Electrosteel happens to be the first company where the SDR mechanism was applied last year. What happens in this case could become a precedent for other SDR companies. Banks have so far invoked SDR in cases worth Rs 81,000 crore and are bent on making Electrosteel a success, according to banking sources.

If the Electrosteel deal happens in the immediate term, it will be well within the 18-month SDR window, given that lenders applied the mechanism last July.

However, whether banks will recover dues will depend on improvement in cash flow under the new management, as pointed out by an India Ratings and Research note. Electrosteel has 27 lenders and an outstanding debt of around Rs 8,000 crore after partial conversion of debt into equity.

In 2013, lenders had supported a corporate debt restructuring proposal for the company that would translate into cash generation of Rs 2,000 crore. But that plan went haywire with the deallocation of coal blocks.

TIMELINE

RBI introduces SDR mechanismLenders take management control of Electrosteel SteelsLenders approve converting part of debt into equityBankers zero in on FIG; FIG proposes non-SDR route
Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy called for a landmark agreement between India and the United States to allow more than 10,000 Indian students to pursue doctoral degrees in the United States, with a caveat that they return to their motherland after studies. The return of highly educated students would help India transform itself into a knowledge hub.

However before we start this, we have to work out an agreement with the US, that these students whom we send from India will not be given employment in the US once they finish their PhD and they will have to come back to India and serve India for at least 10 years, Murthy told a conference of Indo-American Chamber of Commerce in Bengaluru on Friday.

Murthy estimated that the programme would cost India $5 billion every year, calling it a small cost but one that would bring enormous benefit to the country in the long term. The former UPA government had envisioned setting up innovation universities close to 11 years ago, where Indian students would be able to study in foreign universities with ease. The programme never took off, but Murthy said the plan would have to be revived if India wanted progress.

An emphasis on higher education while not directly linked to improving trade between the two countries, a mass influx of researchers trained in the best universities will make India a leader in hi-tech products and services that will enormously benefit both countries in terms of trade.

There is no doubt that the US is undisputed number one in the world of higher education and research. For us to make our PMs dream of Make in India a success, we have to succeed in Discover in India and Invent in India, added Murthy.

There is a conscious push to boost bilateral trade between India and the US to $500 billion by 2020. Currently trade between the two countries stands at about $109 billion. Murthy, on the other hand, put a more realistic target of 10-12 years for achieving the number. But added that it wont be possible without better higher education in the country.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called for innovative use of technology to impart education to students whose base is languages other than English.

Could we think of innovative approaches or so to say disruptive technologies, as you call, that can automatically translate what they speak in their mother tongue to English and vice versa. I can assure you that such customised applications can enhance outsourcing from India considerably, said Siddaramaiah. Also, this will help our vast number of artisans, traditional designers and many others who are hamstrung by language barriers to market their skills.
Pune-based MP Group, provider of integrated support services, today said that it has won a 10-year contract from Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC) to ply buses within Noida and Greater Noida. The bus network will traverse prominent areas with 13 different route plans.

The company has developed a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to implement its NMRC project for City Bus Service operation. Each bus will cost Rs 1 crore while the total cost of the fleet is pegged at Rs120 crore.

Abhishek Pathak, Managing Director MP Group, said: "The buses will be procured by the MP Group whereas infrastructural support in the form of ticket revenue collection and more will be provided by the NMRC. These hi-tech, low floor A/C models will be equipped with Intelligent Transport Management System which will connect to bus stops and facilitate information about real time availability through GPS and PIS technology."

The contract is likely to pave the way for similar opportunities for MP Group to assist private sector players in the development of smart cities in India.
French construction and high-performance materials manufacturer Saint-Gobain will utilise its refractories facility in Perundurai, Erode, Tamil Nadu, to address the requirements of global markets.The company has also initiated expansion of its existing glass manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, with an investment of about Rs 800 crore, to make it one of the largest glass manufacturing facilities of the company in the world, said senior management officials.

"The new refractory will be for exports, all around the world. We are also going to add capacity in our glass manufacturing facility in Chennai and majority of that will be for the Indian market," said Pierre-Andre de Chalendar, chairman and chief executive officer, Saint-Gobain. He said India is an important market and investment destination for Saint-Gobain and over the past 20 years, and the company has made significant investments which enabled the group to establish its presence across the country.

The company's facility in Perundurai and a global R&D centre in Chennai were inaugurated by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today through video conferencing. The company said it had invested about Rs 200 crore at the R&D centre in IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai, and it is now one of the seven global R&D centres under the Saint-Gobain Research India (SGRI) in the world, working for the global requirements of the company.

He added that the group has been investing around Euro 400 million in research and development every year and this has resulted in an increase in the contribution of new products to the total sales.

The new products launched in the past five years contributed around 25% of the total sales, he added.

Anand Tanikella, managing director of Saint-Gobain Research India Pvt Ltd, said the new 12,000-sq-ft facility has a capacity of around 250-300 people. The company has been doing some research and development operations in Chennai for the last three years with around 100 scientists, said Anand Mahajan, general delegate, Saint-Gobain - India. It has already started work and applied for patent for 15 products and launched around 22 products. The facility will work with IIT Madras on affordable housing and seismic solutions among others.
Led by higher volumes and improved realisations, TVS Motor reported a 11.3 per cent growth in revenue for the quarter ended December 2015. Traction in key categories saw volume growth come in at seven per cent, while lower sales of the less profitable mopeds helped improve realisations by about four per cent. Mopeds make up 26 per cent of the companys two-wheeler sales. Volume growth would have been higher but for the lower exports of three wheelers to Africa, especially the Nigerian market. Africa accounts for 45-50 per cent of all two-and-three wheeler exports of TVS.
Automobile manufacturer TVS Motor Company has posted 19.4% growth in net profit for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 at Rs 107.70 crore as against Rs 90.18 crore during the same period last fiscal.

Total income from operations stood at Rs 2,939.62 crore as compared to Rs 2,639.26 crore during corresponding period last year with an increase of 11.38%.

The company reached out to 3.75 lakh customers and put up free servicing centres following heavy rains and floods in Tamil Nadu.

Affected two-wheelers were promptly serviced at these servicing camps. In addition, company also contributed to the flood relief fund set up by state government.

The reported profits are after provision for one-off expense of Rs 7.5 crore consequent to floods in Chennai and a further sum of Rs 10.6 crore was provided on account of retrospective amendment to Bonus Act. Out of this amount a sum of Rs 5.7 crore relating to 2014-15 has been shown as exceptional item.
Wendt (India) Ltd, part of Murugappa Group, has entered into an agreement with a leading Diamond Tool manufacturer, Star Diamond Tools Pvt. Ltd for the acquisition of the Diamond Dressing Tools business.

The value of the transaction envisaged is approximately Rs 3 crore and the conclusion of the transaction is subject to fulfilment of certain conditions in due course.

This acquisition is proposed to be made to enhance the company's offerings in the field of stationery dressers. It would augment Wendt's existing manufacturing capability and capacity.

Star Diamond Tools Pvt.

Ltd is a closely held company having its manufacturing facility in Deonar, Mumbai. It was promoted by Girish Zaveri a pioneer in this field for over 50 years. The company is a leader in its field in India and exports its products to the US and Europe.
Telecom secretary Rakesh Garg, a 1980 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Uttar Pradesh (UP) cadre, has been moved out to minority affairs as part of a bureaucratic reshuffle on Friday, ten months ahead of his retirement



The development comes at a time when the telecom sector is tackling the issue of call drops and ahead of a mega spectrum auction in the next financial year.

J S Deepak, another UP cadre IAS officer of 1982 batch, will take over as the new telecom secretary. Deepak was serving as Secretary - IT.

This will be Deepaks second stint in the telecom ministry. In his earlier posting as joint secretary  telecom in 2010, he was credited with the smooth auction of 3G and broadband wireless access spectrum, which brought Rs 1.06 lakh crore revenue to the exchequer. Besides, in 2012, Deepak was roped in to handle 2G spectrum auction after the Supreme Court cancelled 121 2G licences given out during the tenure of former telecom minister A Raja.

Deepaks inputs were taken for the more recent coal block auctions, too. Deepak holds an MSc degree in electronics from Banglore University and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad. The telecom ministry has been in the line of fire over the issue of call drops reaching alarming levels. The ministry, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and telecom players have been meeting regularly to sort out various factors leading to call drops.

While the government has been blaming operators for not investing in network, telcos have been citing lack of spectrum and non-availability of sites to install towers as the main reasons. The government is planning to conduct a mega spectrum auction in May/June this year, hoping to earn around Rs 6 lakh crore.

Garg was made telecom secretary in July 2014. Apparently, the Prime Ministers office has been upset over the handling of call drops situation. According to sources, Garg sought a transfer citing family issues.

However, it could not be confirmed independently. The other appointments in the reshuffle include that of Aruna Sharma, a I982 batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, who is taking over as IT secretary in Deepak's place.

Another change is in the agriculture ministry, where Shobhana K Pattanayak, a 1982 batch IAS officer of Karnataka cadre, is taking over as secretary to replace Siraj Hussain, a 1979 batch IAS from UP cadre. Hussain is retiring from the post.

BIG SECRETARY-LEVEL SHIFTS UNDER NDA

Rajiv Takru (1979 Gujarat cadre IAS) shunted from the post of revenue secretary to Department of North EastTakru moved to National Commission of Minorities as secretaryArvind Mayaram (1978 Rajasthan cadre IAS) shifted from finance secretary to tourism secretaryMayaram moved from tourism to minority affairs secretaryGS Sandhu (1980 Rajasthan cadre IAS) made chairman National Authority for Chemical Weapon Convention, from the the post of financial services secretaryAnil Goswami (1978 J&K cadre IAS) told to resign as home secretaryLC Goyal (1979 Kerala cadre IAS) moved from the post of home secretary to CMD, Indian Trade Promotion OrganisationRajiv Mehrishi (1978 batch Rajasthan cadre IAS) appointed home secretary, from the post of economic affairs secretary
The ministry of coal (MoC) has kicked off the process to allocate blocks for commercial mining by state PSUs, a top official said here today.

"The MoC has taken an in-principle decision to allocate coal blocks in favour of state PSUs for commercial mining. A notification to this effect would be issued in 15 days. States have to submit specific applications for commercial mining of coal", Coal secretary Anil Swarup said.

The state government has already written to the MoC to allocate the Patrapada coal block with reserves of 1,042 million tonnes to Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) for commercial mining. Patrapada is one of the 10 Schedule I coal blocks listed by the Ministry of Coal for non-regulated sectors. The remaining coal blocks identified are Nuagaon-Telisahi, Talabira II, Utkal, Biatarani West, Mandakini B, Rampia and dip side Rampia, Ramchandi promotional coal block and North of Arkhapal and Srirampur coal block.

The state government argued that allocation of a commercial coal block to OMC would facilitate sale of coal to non-regulated sectors.

There are 56 captive power plants (CPPs) of iron & steel and aluminium industries in the state with installed capacity of more than 6,310 Mw.

Besides, the annual requirement of coal for sponge iron units alone excluding the CPPs is estimated to be at least 30 million tonne per annum.

The coal requirement of these end use industries is only expected to increase in the coming years with their expansion and commencement of production by more units.

The Coal secretary took stock of the coal mine projects by Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL), a Coal India subsidiary.

He identified land acquisition as the key bottleneck but expressed optimism that MCL would reach the envisaged coal production target of 250 million tonnes by 2025. The Odisha government wold have to play a key role in MCL meeting that output, he added.

"The MCL coal mine projects in the districts of Angul, Jharsuguda and Sundargarh have been first tracked and the government would provide all help and assistance for their operations", said state chief secretary Aditya Padhi.

The major MCL projects reviewed at the meeting included Ib valley washery, Jagannath washery, Lajkura open cast project (OCP), Basundhara washery, Jagannath OCP, Bhubaneswari OCP, Natraj underground Mine, Hingula OCP, Kaniha OCP, Ananta OCP, Siarmal OCP and Lingaraj OCP. Issues relating to rehabilitation, employment for land losers, forest clearance, shifting of land oustees and CSR (corporate social responsibility) activities figured in the talks.

The state government reiterated its demand for allocation of a suitable coal block to Odisha Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (OTPCL), a 50:50 joint venture between OMC and Odisha Hydro Power Corporation (OHPC). OTPCL is setting up a 2400 Mw coal-fired power plant at an estimated cost of Rs 17,000 crore. The power station has been proposed at Kamakhyanagar in Dhekanal district. The Coal secretary assured to look into the state's demand.
The government's cash balance with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was Rs 1.4 lakh crore on January 28, an amount unusually high for this time of the financial year and is causing acute liquidity pressure in the banking system.

The cash pile-up indicates the Centre may be reluctant to spend in order to meet the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) for 2015-16.

With government action plus RBI intervention in the foreign exchange (forex) market, liquidity shortage in the banking system has assumed mammoth proportion - prompting RBI to offer assistance of Rs 1.6 lakh crore through its overnight and dated liquidity windows so that call money rates remain near the repo rate of 6.75 per cent.

On a technical basis though, the liquidity shortage is 1.73 per cent of the net demand and time liabilities of the banking system, higher than RBI's own target of one per cent. However, the overarching aim of the regulator now is to keep call money rates anchored to the repo rate.

TRIGGERS FOR ACUTE LIQUIDITY PRESSURES Government seen conserving money to meet fiscal targets

RBI intervening in foreign exchange market, sucking out rupee resources

Foreign investors selling bonds, adding to liquidity crunch

Banks have obligation to meet enhanced Liquidity Coverage Ratio

Rising credit demand from industry and corporate in final quarter

"We are looking at all measures to ensure there is sufficient liquidity and we are able to support what is required as far as the Budget is concerned," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in response to a question on the government sitting on cash. "RBI is fully supportive of all requirements of liquidity and is standing by to provide whatever liquidity is necessary," Sinha said, in Mumbai on the sidelines of a banking conclave organised by industry body Assocham.

The finance ministry has told the departments concerned that it might not support schemes in January-March that have not utilised funds in the first three quarters of the year. Schemes for the social sector and of national importance are, however, unlikely to be affected.

Officials said the finance ministry was not keen to release Rs 12,000 crore of the Rs 40,000 crore gross budgetary support for the railways citing poor pace of work. Sources from other ministries confirmed similar instructions from the finance ministry, which has not reacted positively to the foreign ministry's proposal for higher than its budgeted allocation. Banks usually face a liquidity shortage at the time of tax outflow but money starts coming back into the system when the government begins spending. This has not happened so far, indicating the government could be hunkering down to meet its deficit target. Banks are finding it difficult to meet higher demand for year-end credit from companies and enhanced liquidity reserve requirements. An executive with the State Bank of India (SBI) said most banks were struggling to meet the enhanced liquidity coverage ratio under Basel III norms. The obligation ruled out selling gilts, an SBI executive said. Foreign institutional investors were liquidating part of their holdings in Indian debt and taking out money, putting additional strain on liquidity, bank treasury executives said.
Tyre manufacturers are set to lose competitiveness in the global market amid fears of a spurt in prices locally due to the import restrictions on raw material imposed by the government.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), in a recent notification, said the facility for import of natural rubber (NR) under advance authorisations issued or revalidated on or after January 21, will not be available until March 31. A similar notification a day earlier allowed import of NR of all varieties only through the ports of Chennai and Nhava Sheva (Jawaharlal Nehru Port).

Restrictions on NR imports  the crucial raw material that accounts for up to 52 per cent of the countrys overall consumption  is likely to raise its prices resulting in a proportionate increase in the cost of production of tyre companies. Since Indian exporters have been facing huge competition from countries such as China and Vietnam, further escalation in the production cost would push India out of the export market.

The decision to restrict NR imports through the ports of only Nhava Sheva and Chennai, and put a ban on duty-free import till the end of this fiscal will be a double blow for the tyre industry, said Gaurav Kumar, chief financial officer, Apollo Tyres Ltd.

Kumar said the ban on duty-free import would have a higher impact (negative) on the company as Apollo Tyres sells its products across the world. We would not like to stop our exports to countries where we have a ready customer base, he said.

The decision assumes significance, especially in the wake of a sharp decline in tyre exports in the first half of the current financial year due to cheaper raw material in overseas markets compared with India.

According to ATMA, Indias total medium and heavy commercial vehicle tyre exports declined nine per cent to 9,68,061 units in the April-September 2015 period as compared with 10,63,938 units in the corresponding period a year earlier. Passenger car tyres too nosedived 22 per cent to 10,81,841 units in the first half of the current financial year as against 13,95,921 units in the same period last year.

Further, faced with high cost of production, around 40 per cent units engaged in making rubber products have shut shops. Import restrictions would escalate the situation further.

Tyre exports, which have grown at a CAGR of 21 per cent in the last 10 years have petered out during the current fiscal. The tyre industry has put in adequate capacities to meet the foreseen demand. The auto industry is looking up and the governments Make-in India initiative is also a big plus. However, the growth environment in the case of tyres is vitiated in view of no-holds barred import of cheaper tyres," said Raghupati Singhania, chairman and managing director, JK Tyre.

According to him, truck and bus radials stood among the fastest growing categories in the tyre industry but imports have come to account for more than 30 per cent of the replacement market impacting domestic production.

Meanwhile, prices of the benchmark rubber RSS-4 declined 8.25 per cent in January following global trend.

As against 1.2 million tonnes of annual consumption, Indias NR production stands at 575,000 tonnes. Thus, India has no option but to import NR.

Import restrictions on NR is set to defy the Make in India logic of the Prime Minister and this would escalate import of tyres from China and Vietnam, they said.
The Petroleum & Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) has ruled the exclusivity period of Indraprastha Gas (IGL) for city gas distribution (CGD) business in the national capital territory (NCT) of Delhi has ended. The order saw IGL shares on the BSE plunge to Rs 517 in early trade after opening at Rs 563.

The company, which enjoys monopoly in the city, said in a declaration to the stock exchange that expiry of its exclusivity in Delhi was sub-judice and that the Delhi High Court had through its September 30, 2015, order directed that any order passed by PNGRB shall be subject to further order of the court. The scrip recovered partially after the statement and ended the day at Rs 560.

PNGRB in its order on Thursday said that the Centres authorisation for IGLs city gas distribution in Delhi was given in 2009 and according to the PNGRB Act, the exclusivity period for an existing entity is three years; hence, IGLs exclusivity for the Delhi market expired on January 1, 2012.

The regulator also noted it was in the process of declaring city or local natural gas distribution networks in accordance with the provisions of Section 20 of the PNGRB Act. It dismissed IGLs petition that the procedure for common carrier and contract carrier was not being followed by the Board. It said PNGRB is authorised to declare a CGD network in a geographical area as common carrier or contract carrier after following due procedure.

The Act provides exclusivity of five years to new players and three years to existing ones, and since the government authorisation for IGL was sent by the ministry of petroleum and natural gas in 2009, IGLs exclusivity ended in 2012.

Incorporated in 1998, IGL took over Delhi City Gas Distribution Project in 1999 from GAIL (India) Limited.

The project was started to lay the network for the distribution of natural gas in the National Capital Territory of Delhi to consumers in the domestic, transport, and commercial sectors. The company promoted by GAIL (India) Ltd. Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL) has been at odds with PNGRB ever since the regulatory board was set up in 2006.
More Than Sixteen Hundred Gram Pradhans and Experts to Discuss Clean Ganga Campaign . . National Level Consultation and Sensitization Programme to be Held Tomorrow . .

More then 1600 Gram Pradhans of villages located on the banks of River Ganga will discuss their role in Clean Ganga campaign. They will attend a day long program Swachh Ganga-Gramin Sehbhagita, a national level stakeholder consultation and sensitization programme to be held in New Delhi tomorrow. National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) under the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation has organized the event which will also be attended by Chief Ministers of Jharkhand and Uttrakhand, Union Ministers of HRD, Tourism, Youth Affairs & Sports, RD & DWS, Ayush and Shipping, eminent policy makers, implementers and NGOs. .

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Aimed at bringing all the stakeholders on a single platform, the one-day consultation and sensitization programme is a national dialogue on Ganga to facilitate interaction with various stakeholders and draw ideas that will give a better insight for framing a strategic long-term policy for restoration of the Ganges. .

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Deliberations will take place on themes of medicinal plants and livelihood, treatment of rural solid waste and gram swachhta. The programme will provide a platform for various stakeholders to come together to discuss the issues and possible solutions to the challenging task of Ganga Rejuvenation. The views expressed by the stakeholders participating in the programme will be helpful in formulation of road map for the preparation of a comprehensive plan to rejuvenate the Ganga. .

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The programme would begin with an opening session and address by Sushri Uma Bharti, Union Minister of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation followed by separate sessions including address by Chief Ministers of Jharkhand and Uttrakhand, Union Ministers of HRD, Tourism, Youth Affairs & Sports, RD & DWS, Ayush and Shipping, screening of video on Namami Gange Programme, address by Acharya Balkrishna on Medicinal Plants and livelihood in upper ridges of river Ganga, various presentations on Ganga Gram, Unnat Bharat Synergy, Seenchawal Model of River Cleaning and treatment of open drains in villages. .

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Ganga Vichar Manch, a portal created with the aim of initiating interactive dialogues among various stakeholders of River Ganga will also be launched during the convention. The programme will also feature the Signing of Memorandum of Understanding with various Ministries of Govt of India. .

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The programme will conclude with a combined experience sharing session where all the Gram Pradhans will come together to discuss their views, ideas and share their experiences in the presence of eminent personalities, renowned environmentalists, representatives of various Ministries and policy makers to facilitate formulation of a long-term strategy. .

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Samir/
Honda Motor Co, the biggest customer for troubled air-bag supplier Takata Corp, reported profit that missed analyst estimates as costly recalls to replace the devices expand. The automaker posted net income of 124.2 billion yen ($1 billion) in the quarter through December, according to a company statement. That compares with the 149.3 billion yen average of eight analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company maintained its forecast for profit to rise to 525 billion yen for the fiscal year ending in March. Honda calling back more than 20 million vehicles to fix Takata-made ...
Shares of Coal India has moved higher by 5% to Rs 322, its biggest intra-day gain since August 25, 2015 on BSE.

The media reports suggest that the coal ministry is devising a plan to clear off the stock, which may include reduction of prices as well.

At 11:41 a.m. the stock was up nearly 5% at Rs 321, the top gainer among 30-share index S&P BSE Sensex. The benchmark index was up 0.88% or 215 points at 24,684.

The stock recovered nearly 12% from its 52-week closing low of Rs 288 on January 21, 2016 as compared to 3% rise in the S&P BSE Sensex. It hit a 52-week high of Rs 447 on August last year.

The government has asked the world's largest coal miner to ensure that it meets the target of 550 million tonnes for the current fiscal, the PTI report suggests. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL REPORT.



Under the coal ministerial directive to reach one billion of coal production by 2019-20, the company has been stepping up its production aiming at double digit growth figures.
Engineers India's offer for sale (OFS) on Friday got subscribed 2.5 times, helping the government raise Rs 630 crore as disinvestment proceeds. The Centre had put on the block 10 per cent of its stake in the engineering firm, which primarily operates in the oil & gas sector. The share sale saw bids for 86 million shares against 33.7 million on offer. Most bids came in at Rs 190.6 a share against the base price of Rs 189 apiece set by the government. Shares of Engineers India closed at Rs 193 apiece on Friday, down 0.52 per cent from the previous close.

The retail portion of the OFS was subscribed nearly four times, while the general category was subscribed 2.2 times. A fifth of the issue was reserved for retail investors, who will be offered shares at a discount of five per cent to the allotment price in the general category.

Shares of Engineers India are down 20 per cent so far in 2016 compared to a five per cent decline in the benchmark Sensex. The government has raised Rs 13,300 crore by divesting stake in five public sector undertakings (PSUs) so far in the current financial year. These include Indian Oil, Power Finance Corporation and Rural Electrification Corporation. Among them, Indian Oil stake sale has mopped up the highest money, at Rs 9,370 crore.

The government had initially set a target of Rs 69,500 crore for PSU disinvestment in FY16. However, the decline in the forced the government to defer some of its key divestments. In the last financial year, the Centre had raised around Rs 24,000 crore against a target of Rs 40,000 crore.
Temp staff provider TeamLease Services Ltd plans to raise around Rs 420 crore in a public offer that opens on February 2, allowing its investors Gaja Advisors and ICICI Ventures to partially exit the firm, besides raise capital for potential acquisitions and technology investments.

"Primarily if you look at staffing industry it is dominated by 10-12 large players, there is no middle player and lot of small specialised companies.

They are good acquisition targets with niche skills and verticals," said Ashok Reddy, chief executive of TeamLease.

Gaja Advisors and ICICI Ventures, who combined hold 41.6 per cent stake in TeamLease will sell around half of their holdings in the public offer. In 2011, both venture firms invested Rs 100 crore in the company.

With around Rs 150 crore it expects to raise for itself, TeamLease plans to use part of the money to fund technology investments partly for working capital to pay statutory duties and acquisitions.

As on September, TeamLease employed around 1,05,000 employees who were deployed in 1,200 companies across 5,500 locations in India.
The new Tucson from Hyundai that is due to make its Indian premiere at the Auto Expo 2016 on February 3 has been fast tracked and delivery schedules would start post June.Powered by the success of the Creta, Hyundai Motors India plans to launch the Tuscon to the Indian markets as soon as possible. The Tucson will bridge the gap between the Creta and Santa Fe in its Indian SUV lineup. The report states that Hyundai had fast-tracked the launch of the Tucson, and that it will be launched as a locally assembled model right from the start, with CKD kits from Czech Republic or Korea.The Tucson is likely to be introduced in its diesel variant, which packs Hyundais 2.0 Litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel that produces 180bhp and 400 Nm of torque.

Since the engine capacity is 1995cc there will be no ban applicable and thus a petrol variant would not be on the cards. It is available exclusively with Hyundais Active On-Demand AWD system and a six-speed automatic transmission. Considering how price sensitive the Indian market is, Hyundai could also consider an manual transmission version in the future. The 5-seater premium SUV will rival the Honda CR-V and top-end variants of the Mahindra XUV500 and the upcoming Tata Hexa. Hyundai expects to sell 20,000 to 30,000 units of the Tucson a year.

Source : MotorOctane
An Afghanistan has been detained at the Pathankot railway station today over visa validity issues.

The 25-year-old was on his way from Srinagar when he had an altercation with a passenger over travelling without a ticket.

The police was called after the scuffle broke out and the man was handed over to the police, where after questioning he revealed that he was from Kabul.

The man came to India in 2013 and doubts remain over the validity of his visa.

Meanwhile, two mobile phones and a laptop have been recovered from him and an investigation is underway.

Pathankot has turned into a fortress since the deadly terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force Base earlier this year and security has been heightened in the area.
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An Afghanistan has been detained at the Pathankot railway station today over visa validity issues.

The 25-year-old was on his way from Srinagar when he had an altercation with a passenger over travelling without a ticket.

The police was called after the scuffle broke out and the man was handed over to the police, where after questioning he revealed that he was from Kabul.

The man came to India in 2013 and doubts remain over the validity of his Visa.

Meanwhile, two mobile phones and a laptop have been recovered from him and an investigation is underway.

Pathankot has turned into a fortress since the deadly terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force Base earlier this year and security has been heightened in the area.
Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Syed Muazzem Ali, who is on a three-day visit to Tripura, has said that ties with Indi are presently the best ever between the two nations, as a new platform based on mutual trust and confidence is in place to facilitate this.

Interacting with media at the Agartala Press Club here, Ali said both governments need to explore new project opportunities for mutual benefit.

The Bangladesh envoy said, "Prime Minister Sheikh Hassina has said she would show zero tolerance as far as terrorism is concerned, and she has kept her promise. She has not allowed any terrorist organisation to operate from Bangladesh. She has even handed over terrorists who have taken shelter in our place in the past. There has been a similar response from the Indian side as well. Nevertheless, the two borders are not very easily accessible, so, we have to remain vigilant on both sides of the border so that these kinds of activities do not recur in the future."

"And, you have seen how sometimes some of the terrorist organisations have taken shelter also in India. They have been involved in some much publicised blasts and all these. So, we would like both sides to be more vigilant so that the basic principal on which we are building up our compromise, cooperation and future growth should not be disturbed," he added.
A bemused Congress Party on Friday asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his NDA Government has a Pakistan-centric policy at all, given the time being taken to fix a convenient date for foreign secretary-level talks.

"I fail to understand, if at all, whether the Modi Government has a policy on Pakistan. The present government has no policy or ambition to deal with Pakistan, and that is why they keep overturning their decisions," Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar told ANI.

Aiyar also questioned the need for Modi to take a sudden detour to Lahore to greet Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday on December 25.

"On December 25, 2015, it was uncertain where the prosecution of 26/11 would head and suddenly the Prime Minister goes to Raiwind and greets happy birthday to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and tries to create an atmosphere aimed that there would be something great happening soon, but just after a month, things fall back to the point where they were," he added.

He said Prime Minister Modi always makes tall promises only to leave everyone disappointed later.

Aiyar's broadside against the NDA regime came a day after the External Affairs Ministry had said that both nations are yet to agree on a mutually convenient date for foreign secretary-level talks.

"We see Mumbai terror attack trial in Islamabad as a test of Pakistan's sincerity in combating terrorism directed against India," MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup had said on Thursday.

"The planning, training and financing of the Mumbai attack was done in Pakistan where 99% of the evidence is. It is Pakistan's responsibility to unearth and present the requisite evidences so that the perpetrators are brought to justice," he added.

The MEA was responding to a Pakistan court dismissing a government petition that sought voice samples of 26/11 mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects in the case.

In 2011 and 2015, the issue of obtaining voice samples of Lakhvi had been dismissed by the trial court on the grounds that "no such law exists that allows obtaining of voice sample of an accused".

The prosecution's petition said the Indian intelligence agencies had intercepted communication between the suspects and the terrorists in connection with the Mumbai attack in 2008.
Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on Friday said that Foreign Secretaries Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and S. Jaishankar are in touch with each other on the issue of working out modalities for their proposed composite dialogue talks.

"There is no issue. Both foreign secretaries agreed on meeting in the near future. Both foreign secretaries are in contact with each other," Basit told ANI in an exclusive interview.

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"We hope that the date of the meeting is fixed as soon as possible," he added.

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On Thursday, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Vikas Swarup said that the talks would be held when both foreign secretaries agree on a mutually convenient date.

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"It is not a question of whether we are considering dates in February, March or April. As soon as the foreign secretaries agree on a mutually convenient date, we will let you know. As of now, we do not have a mutually convenient date," he said.
Amid growing chorus for his resignation in connection with the solar scam, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday said the entire incident is extremely insulting for the state, adding that he would definitely ponder over ordering a probe into allegations levelled against him.

Chandy's remark came after the Kerala High Court suspended the vigilance court's order to register FIR against him and Power Minister Arayadan Muhammed in connection with the scam.

"We will definitely think of that line, but we are not in haste and we will take a decision after appropriate time," he told ANI.

Chandy further said that he has not hindering investigation in this case.

"I spent 14 hours being questioned. No Chief Minister has ever done that," he added.

"According to that lady (Saritha Nair), she spent a huge amount. What benefit did she get from us?" Chandy asked.

The Kerala High Court today suspended the vigilance court's order to register an FIR against Chandy and Muhammed in connection with the scam.

The High Court said the vigilance Court acted mechanically without knowing the nature and extent of its powers.

The vigilance court yesterday ordered the probe against Chandy and Muhammed on a public interest litigation filed by a social worker alleging their involvement in the solar scam following accused Saritha Nair's revelations before the Solar Inquiry Commission.

The solar scam pertains to cheating of several persons worth crores of rupees by Saritha and her co-accused Biju Radhakrishnan by offering solar panel solutions.
Verbals between Arunachal Pradesh 19th Governor J.P. Rajkhowa and former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki show no signs of ending, with the latter on Friday revealing that the former has been repeatedly violating all constitutional and protocol norms since assuming office on June 1, 2015.

Even as the political situation in Arunachal Pradesh remains infractious and the matter has been placed before the Supreme Court for a possible ruling on February 1, an upset and angry Tuki recalled the abusive treatment meted out to him when he met Governor Rajkhowa at the Raj Bhawan in Itanagar.

The incident took place when then Chief Minister Tuki along with his Cabinet ministers went to meet Governor at the Raj Bhawan.

The chief minister as per the Order of Precedence firmed up by the union home ministry is the elected head of government in each of twenty-nine states and two union territories (Delhi and Puducherry).

According to the Constitution of India, the governor is a state's de jure head, but the de facto executive authority rests with the chief minister, and therefore, he is accorded specific privileges in tune with the office he occupies. This includes rules related to security and interaction with other official representatives.

In an exclusive interview to ANI, he claimed that he was 'threatened, frisked,abused and video-graphed before and during the meeting'.

Tuki further stated that the videographing of his arrival and his meetings were made without his knowledge, and added that the video released in the public domain before both sides approached the court, was an edited version.

The former CM maintained that the part where he was abused and violated in terms of established protocol had been edited.

"We had sought an appointment, and they had planned for it. There were security checks and there were cameras in the room where we held meeting. We tried to hold discussions with them in a normal manner. They tried to threaten me, took my name and provoked me. They even abused me. There was an argument, and the video footage shows only one side of the entire episode. The footage has been edited, some part of it has been deleted," Tuki told ANI.

Tuki's broadside came a couple of days after Governor Rajkhowa had claimed in his report to President Pranab Mukherjee that Nabam Tuki and his council of ministers had threatened him and were practicing a communal brand of politics and administration.

Rajkhowa also claimed that he was abused, threatened and nearly assaulted by some ministers. He had said in his report to The Centre that at one point his family and he feared for their lives, making it almost impossible to discharge his official duties.

The Supreme Court of India has described the situation in Arunachal Pradesh as "too serious a matter" to be ignored or treated casually. A five-judge bench of the apex court on Wednesday sought the report submitted to the Centre by Governor Rajkhowa recommending President's rule in the state. The bench also brushed aside Atorney General Mukul Rohatgi's objection to the petition being filed before the imposition of President's rule.

The court asked Rohatgi not to raise "technical objections" when he persistently argued that rules are rules and they applied equally to all.

The former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister also confirmed that he has filed a fresh petition in the Supreme Court challenging the promulgation of President's rule.

The Supreme Court has posted the matter for hearing for February 1, and had earlier asked the governor and the union home ministry to file their respective responses by January 29 to petitions filed by several Congress leaders, including by Rajesh Tacho, the Chief Whip of the party's state legislative unit.

President Pranab Mukherjee had on Tuesday given his assent to Union Cabinet's decision to impose President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The six-month-long mandatory period to have an Assembly session in the state had lapsed on January 21.
New Delhi, Jan.29 (ANI): The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) on Friday said that it expects a significant rise in the number of tourist visiting from India in 2016.

"China is the number one market for Macau, but we hope to increase the number of tourist visiting from India to Macau significantly this year. We consider India as one of the key markets for promotional activities. There is no visa requirement for Indians, an Indian can just land up in Macau and get free entry there," Arzan Khambatta, Head of MGTO India told ANI in an exclusive interview on the first day of South Asian Travel and Tourism Expo(SATTE), 2016 here.

Talking further on the marketing and promotion plans for the upcoming year, Khambatta said that he would like to promote the unique culture and cuisine of Macau, which is the fusion of Portuguese and the Chinese.

"We would be focussing on promoting the unique culture of Macau, which is the fusion of Portuguese and the Chinese culture and many family activities that are present in Macau," Khambatta said.

"We would also be focussing on the cuisine of Macau which is again very unique. Macau has world cuisine like Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese and Indian food is very easily available there. Macau also has to offer unique Macanese cuisine which is the fusion of the Chinese and the Portuguese, something which every Indian should try," he added.

"Apart from that, we are focusing on promoting Macau in key cities in India like Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad. They are the cities which we are going to add to our focussed list which was earlier like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore," Khambatta said.

SATTE 2016 is one of India's major annual travel and tourism shows. More than 750 exhibitors from nearly 35 countries are promoting themselves as tourism destinations, including Macau, Brand USA, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India.

The event is being held at Pragati Maidan from 29th - 31st January, 2016.
Iran flew a surveillance drone over a United States aircraft carrier and took 'precise' photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill.

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The reported drone overflight comes after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the US in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic.

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An Iranian light submarine closely participated in the surveillance operation, reports Dawn.

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Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill.

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Iran's navy began a naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilomete, including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has recruited thousands of undocumented Afghans living there to fight in Syria since at least November 2013, Human Rights Watch said today.

According to some reports, Iranian authorities coerced them. Iran has urged the Afghans to defend Shia sacred sites and offered financial incentives and legal residence in Iran to encourage them to join pro-Syrian government militias, the Human Rights Watch said in a press release.

Human Rights Watch in late 2015 interviewed more than two dozen Afghans who had lived in Iran about recruitment by Iranian officials of Afghans to fight in Syria.

One 17-year-old said he had been forced to fight without being given the opportunity to refuse. Others said they had volunteered to fight in Syria in Iranian-organized militias, either out of religious conviction or to regularize their residence status in Iran.

"Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

Funerals for Afghan fighters killed in Syria are frequently held in Iran, sometimes attended by Iranian officials. While Iran officially claims that thousands of Afghans living in Iran have volunteered to join the militias, their vulnerable legal position in Iran and the fear of deportation may contribute to their decision, making it less than voluntary.

Many said that the threat of arrest and forced conscription in Iran was an important contributing factor in their decision to leave Iran.

Other Afghans told Human Rights Watch that they had been detained by Iranian authorities and given the choice between deportation and fighting in Syria, and had chosen deportation.

Two Afghan boys, a 16-year-old and the 17-year-old, said they had fought in Syria, and another Afghan, Alireza Muhammad, who underwent military training but did not go to fight in Syria, said that he personally knew Afghan boys as young as 12 fighting in Syria in Iranian-organized groups, and that a 12-year-old boy he knew had been killed in the fighting.

International law applicable in Syria prohibits both government forces and non-state armed groups from forcibly recruiting children under 18 or using them in hostilities.
Around 140 prisoners of Nagpur Jail were allotted State Bank of India (SBI) ATM cards for use inside the premises, with plans to extend the service to all 800 prisoners.

The debit cards were distributed by the Additional DGP Dr Upadhyaya and the SBI Deputy General Manager, Nagpur Zone, B Shankar in the presence of Jail Superintendent Yogesh Desai and Assistant GM, SBI, Nagpur Zone, Rakesh Sinha.

The project is likely to be implemented in nine jails across the state.

"Over 10,000 inmates in nine Central prisons across Maharashtra will be extended the facility. Nagpur has been chosen as a pilot project," Dr. Upadhyaya said.

The inmates can swipe the cards in the canteen to purchase daily use items like soaps, hair oil, eatables against the payment they receive for doing works on the premises.

Upadhyaya further said prisoners practising Yoga are entitled for remission up to a maximum of three months.

"Since Yoga has been adopted by the United Nations and Yoga Day is celebrated on June 21, the facility is being extended to them," he said.

He further said that yoga guru Ramdev baba will be invited to Nagpur Central Jail to teach yoga to inmates like he was invited to Mumbai and Pune jails.
Republican presidential candidates strained to take advantage of a rare opportunity to step out of Donald Trump's shadow in Thursday night's presidential debate  a policy-heavy contest that offered a glimpse of what the GOP contest might have been without the unpredictable businessman  after mocking the front-runner for boycotting the final contest before voting begins.

Angry over an escalating feud with debate host Fox News, Trump held what his team is calling a Special Event to Benefit Veterans Organizations at a 775-seat auditorium at nearby Drake University instead. The event attracted Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, GOP hopefuls who appeared in the undercard debate prior to the main event because of low ratings.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is locked in a tight contest with Trump in Iowa, opened the debate with a sarcastic impression of the real estate mogul's frequent insults of his opponents.

I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, Cruz said, before thanking his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by showing up.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a frequent target of Trump, said with a wry smile, I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me.

Trump's absence put the spotlight on Cruz, as well as on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who needs a strong showing in Iowa in order to stay in the top tier of candidates.

The two senators were confronted with video clips suggesting they had changed their positions on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans.

While each insisted the other had flip-flopped, both denied they had switched their own views allowing some people in the U.S. illegally to stay.

Cruz accused Rubio of making a politically advantageous decision to support a 2013 Senate bill that included a pathway to citizenship, while the Florida senator said his rival was "willing to say or do anything to get votes."

In a rare standout debate moment for Bush, the former Florida governor sharply sided with Cruz in accusing Rubio of having cut and run on the Senate immigration bill.

He cut and ran because it wasn't popular with conservatives, Bush said.

In a video, YouTube personality Dulce Candy, an Iraq war veteran and entrepreneur who came to this country from Mexico as a child, appeared before the candidates via YouTube and said some of the comments in this campaign make us question our place in this country.

She specifically asked if the U.S. economy would suffer if immigrant entrepreneurs don't feel welcomed.

Bush applauded Candy and said she deserves our respect and "we should be a welcoming nation."

Rubio said, we will always celebrate legal immigrants, but the legal immigration system is outdated.

With their White House hopes on the line, the candidates worked hard to cast themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats emanating both from abroad and within the United States.

Rubio struck an aggressive posture, pledging that as president he would go after terrorists wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo. Rubio also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the U.S if there were indications that the Muslim religious centers were being used to radicalize terrorists.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul  back on the main debate stage after being downgraded to an undercard event because of low poll numbers earlier this month  warned against closing down mosques. A proponent of a more isolationist foreign policy, Paul also raised concerns about the U.S. getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State group has a stronghold.

The candidates largely sidestepped direct confrontations with each other, focusing some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Paul defended Clinton from those who would blame her for sticking with her husband former President Bill Clinton because of his infidelity and subsequent impeachment, saying, I don't think she's responsible for his behavior.

Paul added that if any CEO did what the former president did with a 21-year-old intern, he would be fired and shunned in their community.

Paul said Hillary Clinton can't be a champion of women's rights with her husband's legacy hanging around her neck.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said She is not qualified to be president of the United States.  What we need is someone on that stage who has been tested who has been through it.

Libya, said Christie, is an example why Clinton cannot be commander-in-chief because she failed to answer questions posed in a previous Democratic debate about her responsibility for Benghazi.

Republicans have hammered Clinton for her role in dealing with the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Christie said Clinton refuses to be held accountable for anything that goes wrong.

Christie is part of a crowded field of more mainstream candidates who have struggled to break through in an election year where Trump, and increasingly Cruz, have tapped into voter anger with the political system.

Party leaders have grown increasingly antsy for some of the more traditional candidates to step aside after the first contests to allow one to rise up and challenge for the nomination.

Asked whether the crowded establishment lane was putting Trump in position to be the nominee, Bush said, We're just starting out. The first vote hasn't been counted. Why don't we let the process work?

Bush also defended the flurry of critical advertisements his well-funded super PAC has launched against Rubio and other rivals.

It's called politics, Bush said. That's the way it is. I'm running hard.

Bush and Christie, along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are looking beyond Iowa and hoping New Hampshire's Feb. 9 primary jumpstarts their campaigns. In an election where a lengthy political resume has been a liability, Kasich defended government's ability to tackle big problems.

We serve you, Kasich said of government officials and voters. You don't serve us. We listen to you and then we act.

Underscoring the divide between the GOP establishment and outsider candidates, Cruz proudly claimed he was not the candidate of career politicians in Washington. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has a small but loyal base in Iowa, said that even though he hasn't made government choices, he's made plenty of life-and-death decisions during his career as a doctor.

I don't think you need to be a politician to tell the truth, said Carson, who read the Preamble to the Constitution as his closing statement.

The Associated Press
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has accused media institutions and journalists of hounding the nation's courts and police.

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Lashing out at journalists, he said their'hands are not clean', as some of them are promoting racism and waiting to bring back the former regime.

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The Colombo Page web site quoted him, as saying during a debate on an adjournment motion in parliament that the government has no intention to cover up the wrongdoings of the police.

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He maintained that standards in courts and within the police force had deteriorated in the past decade due to politicisation and lack of modernisation.

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He said the assistance of Britain and other countries has been sought to make the necessary changes and introduce the required reforms.
A Kolkata court is likely to pronounce the quantum of punishment today for six of the accused guilty of gangraping and murdering a woman at Kamduni village in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district.

The court had yesterday found six out of the eight accused guilty in the gang-rape case out of which two accused were let off due to lack of evidence.

On June 7, 2013, a B.A. second year student was allegedly gang-raped and murdered by few local miscreants inside an isolated compound at Kamduni village, while she was returning home from her college. Her body was found the next day.

Nine were arrested in connection with this case. Gopal Naskar, one of the arrested persons, died of fever and septicaemia in custody on August 1 last year while the other eight are in judicial custody.
Sri Lankan Navy Commander Vice Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne has pledged support to the newly appointed Commander of the Combined Task Force 151 (CTF 151), Commodore Zahid Ilyas of the Pakistan Navy, for counter piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and the Horn of African region.

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Sri Lankan Navy Commander expressed his appreciation for the Pakistan Navy's assumption of command of the coalition force that disrupts piracy and armed robbery at sea to protect the global maritime commerce, reports Lanka Page.com.

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The new Commander of the Combined Task Force 151 received Sri Lanka's Navy's support when he called oo his counterpart on 28th January 2016.

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Ilyas was accompanied by the Defense Advisor of the Pakistan High Commission in Sri Lanka, Colonel Muhammad Rajil Irshad Khan to enhance cooperation through direct interaction with senior naval leaders of regional contries.
In a remark that has potential to stir a fresh controversy over women's entry into Shani Temple, Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babu Lal Gaur on Friday said "they should first worship at home".

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"Leave it, women can worship at home," he said when his response was sought on the ongoing debate whether women should be allowed into the Shani Temple.

Around 400 women in Shani Shingnapur attempted to break decades old tradition, prohibiting women from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the temple - an issue that brought a group of activists at loggerheads with locals.

Shani Shingnapur, a village located about 330 kilometers northeast of Mumbai, is famous for the Shani temple.

The temple drew attention after a young woman defied common practice and performed 'abhishek' to lord Shani on November 27 last year.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis met women activists, who were stopped from entering the temple.
August 22, 2022, Monday

Chief Minister Basavaraja Bommai said that there will be pro and anti-beliefs and arguments on noted personalities, but it must ...
After Delhi's deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia suffered the brunt of the protesting MCD workers, state transport and rural development Minister Gopal Rai will be facing the fury of the workers today who will to stage a protest outside his residence.

As the strike enters day three, the outraged employees plan to leave a mountain of garbage right outside Rai's residence.

Yesterday, Sisodia was meted with a similar treatment as a pile of garbage was dumped outside his office by the MCD workers over non-payment of their dues..

"It is a 'politics of garbage' I would like to request the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and all the three mayor's of BJP to pay the money to the workers," Sisodia told media here.

"The Delhi Government has paid all dues of the sanitation workers before time. It is the BJP which should answer where the money went. The BJP controls the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, having swept the election in 2012", he added.

Over 1.5 lakh MCD employees including sanitation workers and other employees of the three municipal corporations - NDMC, SDMC and EDMC - have decided to go on a three-day strike from today over non-payment of dues.

The cash-strapped North and East Delhi civic bodies have been unable to pay salaries to workers for three to four months now.
Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Friday rubbished allegations of bias in determining which cities would form part of the NDA regime's "smart city"project.

He said that the selections were done on merit and without political interference.

"I have only honoured the merit, this is my only role. Nothing has been decided in Delhi, we have only issued guidelines and set parameters and the selection of the city is based on merit, nothing else. No political interference and party consideration was there in the process," Naidu told media here.

"Experts from the World Bank, the Germany development bank, from the Indian Institute of Urban Affairs and prestigious people formed a panel who examined the proposals of each city," he added.

Naidu further said that his ministry had taken the average of all the three panels and gave the ranking accordingly.

"Bhubaneswar topped the ranking and Pune came second in that," he added.

The Congress Party had earlier alleged that the Centre has insulted both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with motive of 'political vendetta' after none of the cities in both the states could make it to the first Smart City contest.

Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu clarified that the final selection of cities was based on 'bottoms up' approach with the involvement of citizens in formulation of vision and plan. Urban local bodies and state governments piloted the mission. He added the ministry did not play any role in the selection.

The Centre will give each city Rs 500 crore over five years under the Modi government's smart city mission. The Centre had pledged to spend Rs 48,000 crore in five years to elevate 100 localities to the status of smart cities.

Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davanagere, Indore, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belagavi, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal are the other cities selected in the first batch.
Breaking silence over the FIR registered against him for allegedly assaulting a woman over a parking dispute, Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui said that the whole incident was planned against him.

"I just want to say that it was an unfortunate incident and this was all planned against me," the 41-year-old actor told the media here.

In her complaint, the woman pointed out that the 'Manjhi: The Mountain Man' star had refused to accept a notice sent earlier by the society's chairman and secretary to the members over parking space-related complaints. In this regard, the 'Badlapur' actor said that he never saw the complainant in the society before.

"I don't know who this complainant Heena Sheikh is, I have never seen her in the society," he said, adding "If you carefully look at the notice they (complainants) had shown, it wasn't signed by any of the society's members."

According to media reports, Siddiqui was served a notice by his housing society authorities. He was asked not to park his car at the place, which is given for the two-wheeler parking.

A heated argument began when the 24-year-old woman reportedly found Siddiqui's car at the two wheeler parking and filed a complaint against the actor.

The police quoted the complainant as saying that during the argument, the actor allegedly slapped her.
Kathleen Wynne, the Premier of Ontario, Canada, is travelling to India today to strengthen economic, political and cultural ties between the two regions.

Ahead of her visit, Wynne said, " "Ontario and India have much in common - we are both committed to making record-breaking infrastructure investments that will create jobs and strengthen our economies, we both understand the urgency and necessity of creating a sustainable future, and we both know that we need a well-educated workforce to meet the challenges of the future. I look forward to meeting with political and leaders to share Ontario's expertise in priority areas so that we can strengthen our existing partnerships and look for new ways to work together."

From January 31 to February 5, the Premier will lead a delegation of experts from Ontario's sustainable development and urban infrastructure, business, and higher education sectors across India to promote Ontario's advantage and create opportunities for new partnerships. The delegation will visit four cities - New Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Mumbai - and will formalize agreements and memorandums of understanding within the research, infrastructure, technology, science, film and health sectors.

While in India, Premier Wynne will also meet with political and cultural leaders to build new relationships, strengthen existing ones and examine areas for future cooperation.

Joining the Premier on the mission are Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure Brad Duguid, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and International Trade Michael Chan, and Associate Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Dipika Damerla, as well as Members of Provincial Parliament Harinder Takhar, Amrit Mangat, Vic Dhillon, Indira Naidoo-Harris and Bob Delaney.

Ontario's environment is designed for global success and Ontario is a North American hub for international investment and trade. It offers direct access to the USD 20-trillion NAFTA market; a multicultural workforce; streamlined regulations; a low-risk investment climate; competitive business costs; and a great quality of life. World-leading companies have invested billions to start or expand their operations in Ontario, including Honda, Magna, Sodexo, Alcatel-Lucent, AXA, DuPont, MDS, Huawei, IBM, and Dell. Ontario has a population of over 13 million (the largest of any province in Canada), generates 37 per cent of Canada's GDP, and boasts an export-oriented GDP that is larger than that of Belgium, Switzerland or any of the Scandinavian countries.
Pakistan's Finance Ministry has indicated its reluctance to provide 300 million dollars to the petroleum ministry for executing the two billion dollars Gwadar liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline project.

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The ministry is reportedly delaying the release of the funds because it appears to have spent the entire cess collection from gas consumers to bridge the budget deficit,reports the Dawn.

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The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources had reportedly approached the finance ministry earlier to seek the release of the gas infrastructure development cess (GIDC) collection for spending on planned gas import projects.

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The Sharif government is reportedly seeking to negotiate the Gwadar pipeline cost at Rs. 183.86 billion.

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The China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau is expected to provide 85 percent of financing, while the balance 15 percent is to be borne by Pakistan.
Even so, the fact that the main rebel bloc had to be dragged to the table has only sunk expectations further. It is a complete failure, one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters as the HNC boycott loomed. With whom [is the Syrian government] going to talk? If you want to engage in negotiations, you have to have a partner. Its a wonderful occasion for the regime to show they are willing.

That is precisely the dilemma for Syria's opposition, and the reason it is lukewarm on talking peace even after five years of bloodshed: No matter what happens in Geneva, the government will benefit merely by sitting down. The risks are far greater for the rebels, who know that negotiating with Assad will be perceived on the ground as legitimizing the government and could therefore further erode their already splintered support. Hence the importance in securing some concessions to present their supporters before Geneva kicked off.

HNC member Riyadh Naasan Agha explained the oppositions central concern: "There is a problem we would like to clarify with de Mistura, he told Al Jazeera. Is the main aim of these negotiations for them to be held or to succeed?"

Even de Mistura has acknowledged that this third round of peace talks, the first in two years, had modest expectations and that it could take at least six months. If previous summits in Geneva were talks about talks  preliminary discussions about how the peace process should proceed, which ultimately fizzled over Assad's refusal to consider stepping down  this week's diplomatic wrangling represents a step backward, with the U.N. and regional powers struggling to decide which of the myriad infighting opposition groups to invite to talks and, as of Friday, persuade those invited to show up.

So deep is the mistrust at this stage in the war that de Mistura even arranged it so that each delegation would be promised separate rooms in the hotel, with U.N. diplomats shuttling messages back and forth between the rooms so that no one had to make eye contact with the enemy.

But rebels' contempt for the diplomatic process is not merely about their mistrust of the government. There is a widely held perception among the HNC and its supporters that the geopolitical balance in Syrias war now tilts decidedly in favor of Assad's forces, largely because Russia's military intervention in Syria is beginning to pay dividends for Assad on the ground. Backed by Russian airstrikes on key rebel targets (as well as occasional strikes on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL), government forces scored their latest and perhaps biggest victory last week when they captured the southern town of Sheikh Miskeen, cutting off a critical transit route for the rebels between Daraa and Damascus.

At this point, Assad is not willing to give one inch. Why would he?" one leading opposition figure close to the Geneva talks, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera. "Hes winning with the help of Russians. Hes managed to stabilize his forces. And you know, when the people were asking for far less than [his resignation] he has always refused. Why would he give up now?

On the other side, the Arab Gulf states and Turkey remain steadfast in their commitment to helping the rebels topple Assad. But opposition members express fears that that the U.S. and its Western allies in the opposition camp are losing willpower; Washington's onetime insistence that Assad must go has been derailed by more pressing efforts to combat ISIL.

In a reflection of the growing leverage Russia has gained since intervening in Syria, Moscow convinced the U.N. to invite a separate opposition list that it considers more favorable negotiating partners. (The Syrian government and its main backers, Russia and Iran, consider most of the HNC groups terrorists.) The HNC, however, insist they are the sole legitimate representatives of the Syrian rebels and argue that the presence of individuals they accuse of being pro-government plants, such as Moscow-based former Assad minister Qadri Jamil, discredit the process.

"The Syrian people have made up their mind to support the Riyadh delegation only," said Ali Amin al-Suweid, a political officer with the pro-HNC Syrian Revolutionary General Commission. "All other lists or names are attempts to put pressures on the Syrians to accept the Russian view and kill the revolution."

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the pro-HNC Islam Martyrs Brigade in the Damascus suburb of Darayya, echoed that line, saying over Skype, "I don't see any divisions among the true opposition. Russia is only acting on behalf of the regime to foil any political solution in Syria."

Other factors complicating the talks include the exclusion of several of the most powerful rebel factions on the ground, because of the foreign powers that are pulling the strings in the Geneva talks. The most controversial snub was that of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD)  a critical partner for the West against ISIL  which was kept out at Turkey's insistence. Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, Jabhat Al-Nusra, and hard-line factions like Jaysh Al-Islam and Ahrar Al-Sham were also sidelined from the talks. Assad and his allies, who consider all rebel factions terrorists, have pushed to expand the list of banned rebel groups to further erode rebel clout at the talks.

Given the rebels' palpable resentment of how the UN process has taken shape, some analysts said there must be intense pressure behind the scenes compelling the HNC to give Geneva a chance. For the UN, a worsening humanitarian situation in Syria and an unresolved refugee crisis, which is beginning to strain Europe, have lent urgency to this latest effort.

From the other side of the Atlantic, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had urged the HNC to abandon its preconditions and not squander an "historic opportunity" in Geneva. Behind closed doors, some rebel sources told reporters, Washington was threatening to cut off aid if the HNC did not attend  an allegation U.S. officials denied.

The opposition figure close to talks who spoke to Al Jazeera pointed to November's looming U.S. presidential election, which could bring to power a dramatic shift away from President Barack Obama's much-maligned Syria policy  adding another wildcard to an already complex geopolitical equation. The opposition also shares the concerns being raised by some hawkish American commentators that Obama is eager to expedite the diplomatic progress in Geneva and refocus international efforts on stamping out everyone's mutual enemy, ISIL, before he leaves office, even if that means selling the rebels down the river.

For diplomats, there is a window here, said the opposition figure close to the talks who spoke to Al Jazeera. I think the U.N. sees this as a year of opportunity. But after that, who knows?"
President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday called on the nation to make strong efforts to spread awareness about leprosy, its treatment, care and rehabilitation of its patients.

The President in his anti leprosy day message said, "I am happy to learn that the Hind KushtNivaranSangh (Indian Leprosy Association) observes every year Anti Leprosy Day on January 30 to coincide with the martyrdom day of Mahatma Gandhi."

Asserting that over the years, the scourge of leprosy has remained a blot on humanity, the President said that there is a need empower those who have been socially discriminated on account of leprosy through advocacy and information dissemination.

"Mahatma Gandhi's love and compassion for patients suffering from leprosy is well known. He understood the social dimensions of this disease and worked relentlessly to reintegrate patients of leprosy into the social mainstream. His efforts to eliminate the social ostracism accorded to people afflicted by leprosy went a long way in spreading awareness about the disease," President Mukherjee said.

He stressed that the need of the hour is to intensify efforts towards early detection of leprosy cases, provide equitable access to appropriate treatment and provide integrated leprosy services in geographically focused areas.

The President called on the nation to rededicate their selves to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi and make every possible effort to spread awareness about leprosy, its treatment, care and rehabilitation of its patients.

"We must also actively work to achieve the goal of a leprosy free India," he added.
Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on Friday said that a Special Investigation Team that was formed to probe into the Pathankot attack is still looking at the possibility of the Jaish-e-Mohammed(JeM) being involved in last month's terror attack in Pathankot, Punjab.

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"An SIT had been formed here. They are also investigating. We have to take the matter forward together," Basit told ANI in an exclusive interview.

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He also said that it was difficult to say something about the involvement of JeM at the moment as the national investigation agency is doing its investigation.

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"As far as terrorism is concerned, both National Security Advisors are in touch with each other and are trying to take the matter forward," Basit said.

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On Sunday, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that the probe team for Islamabad will soon visit the Pathankot Air Force Base in Punjab and vowed to bring the findings from the investigation before all.

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Earlier, India had welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan to investigate the antecedents of the terror strike in Pathankot allegedly by JeM, and pledged to extend all help to the latter's special investigation team when it arrives in India.

The attack took place between January 1 and 4, 2016, and claimed the lives of seven persons, including an Indian Army Lt. Colonel.
The Congress party on Friday alleged that the Centre has insulted both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with motive of 'political vendetta' after none of the cities in both the states could make it to the first Smart City contest.

"The list of Smart City clearly reveals that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not able to digest his loss in Bihar and there is no chance of Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh and that is why, with a motive of 'political vendetta', the Smart City contest has insulted both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh," Congress leader Pramod Tiwari told ANI.

"That is why none of the cities from both the states have been able to make it to the Smart City contest," he added.

Tiwari further said he would be raising this issue in both houses of Parliament.

Populous states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Jharkhand have missed the Centre's Smart City, where Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar tops the list of 20 cities as part of the first batch of the Smart City initiative that will attract investment of over Rs 50,000 crore, to leap into a modern and dynamic landscape.

Congratulating the winners, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "I wish the cities the very best as they move forward with implementation and transform urban India."

Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu clarified that the final selection of cities was based on bottoms-up approach with the involvement of citizens in formulation of vision and plan. Urban local bodies and state governments piloted the mission. He added the ministry did not play any role in the selection.

The Centre will give each city Rs 500 crore over five years under the Modi government's smart city mission. The Centre had pledged to spend Rs 48,000 crore in five years to elevate 100 localities to the status of smart cities.

Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davanagere, Indore, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belagavi, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal are the other cities selected in the first batch.
So, where will Sonam Kapoor be seen other than 'Neerja' this season?

The 30-year-old Bollywood beauty is all set for her cameo in the British band's next single 'Hymn For The Weekend' featuring Beyonce, reports the Express Tribune.

This is the same music video for which Chris Martin visited Mumbai last October.

Expressing her excitement to feature in Coldplay's second single from their seventh album, 'A Head Full of Dreams,' the 'Khoobsurat' actress said, "I love Coldplay's music and so does the world. It was a huge honour to be a part of the video. It's a great concept and I had a lot of fun shooting for it."

Sonam is reported to play a mystical muse in the video directed by Ben Mor.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met the parents of a Mumbai youth Hamid Nehal Ansari, who has been missing for over three years and was recently found in the Pakistan Army's custody, and assured them of his safe return.

An emotional Fauzia Ansari, Hamid's mother, thanked Swaraj for efforts undertaken by the MEA to trace her missing son and said that his return would be possible only with help from both governments.

"She told me that she will bring back my son. Madam has assured us that she will make my son speak to me over phone...The government there (Pakistan) has accepted that he is in military custody. His return is possible only with the help from both governments. I am sure that hje will return because he is innocent," she told reporters here.

Hamid had gone to Kabul in search of a job and went to Pakistan to help a tribal girl who was being ill-treated.

Swaraj, however, said that Hamid would be brought back to India but time that it would take for his return was uncertain.

"We have asked for consular access and have asked them to assure his safety and security. Since his trial is in a military court, we cannot ascertain the time it would take (for his return)," she said.

Hamid's parents breathed a sigh of relief earlier this month after they found out that he was in Pakistan army's custody.

Pakistani authorities have admitted that Hamid, an MBA graduate from Rizvi College in Bandra, has been in the army's custody and facing trial in a military court.

According to reports, a divisional bench of the Peshawar High Court disposed off the case of Hamid Ansari after the government confirmed that he was currently in army custody and facing a trial in military courts.
Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D. Raja on Friday said Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who has been walloped by solar scam allegations, has no moral right to stay in office.

"The Kerala Government has no moral right to stay in office after the vigilance court has directed to file a FIR against the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister should have stepped down by this time, but he is sticking to his position. It is not in the interest, probity and ethics in our political life and Mr. Ommen Chandy must step down and he cannot remain in office, he has no moral right to continue to be the Chief Minister," he told ANI here.

The CPI leader said the UDF Government in Kerala stands thoroughly exposed as far as corruption is concerned.

"The position of Left Parties has been vindicated, we have been raising the issues related to solar scam and other corruptions under UDF rule in Kerala, Now, our stand is proved correct and our stand is vindicated by many judicial observations. Ommen Chandy government has lost its credibility thoroughly and it has no moral right to be in office," he added.

Raja further said the protest against Chandy was expected as the people are expressing their anger and outcry against him.

"Mr. Ommen Chandy should take note of the public protest, public outcry. He cannot remain in office, he has to step down. Let the law take its course and Mr. Ommen Chandy should take up the issue at legal level and judicial level," he added.

Members of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and BJP's youth wing are staging separate protests against Chandy outside the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram for his alleged involvement in the solar scam.

The protestors, who assembled in front of the secretariat, tried to break the police cordon. The police fired teargas shells to disperse the protestors and bring the situation under control.

Meanwhile, Congress MP from Ernakulam K.V. Thomas met party president Sonia Gandhi today to brief her about the latest developments in Kerala in the wake of growing agitations and protests staged by the opposition in different parts of the state.

Chandy, who has categorically rejected the opposition demand for his resignation, has moved a petition in the Kerala High Court seeking quashing of FIR ordered against him by the Thrissur vigilance court.

The vigilance court yesterday ordered the probe against Chandy and Power Minister Aryadan Muhammed on a public interest litigation filed by a social worker alleging their involvement in the solar scam following accused Saritha Nair's revelations before the Solar Inquiry Commission.

The solar scam pertains to cheating of several persons worth crores of rupees by Saritha and her co-accused Biju Radhakrishnan by offering solar panel solutions.
During last 18 months, 71% of additional transmission capacity created

Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy has said, 30,000 Megawatt more capacity of Thermal Power has been added during last 20 months of Present Government. Addressing an interactive session organized by Indian Chamber of Commerce in Kolkata, Piyush Goyal Said, Power being the most important ingredient of infrastructure for nation's development, the government is laying utmost emphasis on this sector. The Minister informed that his ministry has achieved 60% working capacity of power plants and has a target of 90% working capacity which will be achieved in near future. Asserting that India's Coal production has increased substantially by 9.6% which has resulted in remarkable reduction in our coal imports, the Minister said, his ministry is now emphasizing on creating more marketing facilities for coal.

Piyush Goyal said, more than 5 crore 36 lakh LED bulbs have been given out at government subsidized rates due to which the rate per bulb has come down from Rs 310 to Rs 64 and within a short time it will come down further to make it affordable for common man. He added that this has resulted in 1600 MW reduction in power consumption and said that by this year March, 10 crore of LED bulbs will be given out. This will result in a huge reduction in power consumption and drastic cut in pollution.

Regarding transmission, the Minister said, during the present government 22,000 circuit Kms of transmission line has been drawn which is a record. During last 18 months, 71% of additional transmission capacity has been created and by 2019 it will reach 200%.

Saying that in power sector, an well-coordinated and harmonized approach is need of the hour to integrate thermal - both Coal & Gas, hydel, solar, wind and other renewable power sources - which are eco-friendly - as well as nuclear, Piyush Goyal assured that the govt. is relentlessly working in this direction. The minister said that his dream, and effort is to provide uninterrupted 24 x 7 power at affordable cost.

On the Coal sector, Piyush Goyal said, open, transparent and competitive auction of Coal mines has not only brought much more revenue to the state exchequer but also has increased the coal production also.

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Kaya Middle East, DMCC enters into JV with AL BEDA

Kaya announced that Kaya Middle East, DMCC (KME, DMCC) a foreign subsidiary of the Company has entered into a Joint Venture Agreement dated 28 January 2016 with AL BEDA MEDICAL SERVICES K.S.C.C., Kuwait, (AL BEDA") to set up and operate a dermatology clinic. The interest of AL BEDA and KME, DMCC in the joint venture is in the ratio of 51% and 49% respectively.

The said joint venture will operate one clinic under the Kaya Skin clinic brand and will utilise the existing infrastructure of the AL BEDA. Any future capital required for addition of new technology and other assets will be provided by AL BEDA and KME, DMCC as per the joint venture agreement.

Kaya Skin Clinics has established presence in India, UAE, KSA, Oman and this tie up will mark the entry of Kaya Skin Clinics in Kuwait.

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Maruti Suzuki India's net profit rose 27.06% to Rs 1019.30 crore on 18.95% rise in total income to Rs 15113.40 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Higher volumes, material cost reduction initiatives and favorable foreign exchange contributed to profit during Q3 December 2015, Maruti Suzuki India said. The result was announced market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016.

NTPC, Yes Bank and L&T are scheduled to announce third quarter results today, 29 January 2016.

ICICI Bank's net profit rose 4.46% to Rs 3018.13 crore on 13.11% rise in total income to Rs 17562.95 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016. The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPA) edged higher to Rs 21149.19 crore as on 31 December 2015 from Rs 15857.82 crore as on 30 September 2015 and Rs 13082.62 crore as on 31 December 2014. The bank's ratio of gross NPAs to gross advances stood at 4.72% as on 31 December 2015, compared with 3.77% as on 30 September 2015 and 3.4% as on 31 December 2014. The bank's ratio of net non-performing assets (NPAs) to net advances stood at 2.28% as on 31 December 2015, compared with 1.65% as on 30 September 2015 and 1.27% as on 31 December 2014. Provisions and contingencies rose 190.3% to Rs 2844.05 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The provisioning coverage ratio as on 31 December 2015 stood at 53.2%.

Bharti Airtel's consolidated net profit fell 22.24% to Rs 1116.90 crore on 3.76% rise in total income to Rs 24103.40 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The results are as per International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016. EBITDA rose 8.3% to Rs 8475 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. EBITDA margin expanded to 35.2% in Q3 December 2015 from 33.7% in Q3 December 2014.

Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel and Axiata Group Berhad (Axiata) yesterday, 28 January 2016 signed a definitive agreement to merge their respective telecommunication subsidiaries in Bangladesh; namely, Airtel Bangladesh (Airtel) and Robi Axiata (Robi). The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016. The agreement follows the 9 September 2015 announcement of both parties entering into an exclusive discussion to explore possibility of combining the business operations in Bangladesh.

Post-merger, the combined entity operating as Robi will serve approximately 4 crore customers. The joint strengths of Robi and Airtel will deliver the widest mobile network coverage across Bangladesh, strengthening its position in the mobile internet segment as well as consolidating its position as the second largest operator in the country, Bharti Airtel and Axiata said in a joint press release. The proposed transaction is subject to conditions precedent including receiving applicable approvals from relevant authorities and is expected to complete in the first half of 2016, the two companies said. Upon completion, Axiata will hold 68.3% controlling stake in the combined entity, while Bharti will hold 25%. The remaining 6.7% will be held by the existing shareholder, NTT DOCOMO of Japan, they added.

Shares of Engineers India will be in focus. The Government of India (GoI), a promoter of Engineers India, announced after market hours on 27 January 2016, that it will pare its stake in the company through an offer for sale (OFS) via the separate window provided by the stock exchanges for the purpose. GoI will sell 3.36 crore shares of EIL, constituting 10% of the company's equity, through the stock exchanges mechanism today, 29 January 2016. The floor price for the OFS was fixed at Rs 189 per share after market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016. Retail investors will get 5% discount to the cut-off price. GoI currently holds 69.37% stake in EIL (as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 December 2015).

Tide Water Oil (India)'s board of directors of the company at its meeting held on 28 January 2016, approved a 1:1 bonus issue and a 2-for-1 stock-split. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016.

Borosil Glass Works said that on 28 January 2016, the company along with its nominee has acquired 100% equity shares of Hopewell Tableware alongwith all its assets and liabilities and consequent to such acquisition, Hopewell has become an unlisted wholly owned subsidiary (WOS) of the company with effect from 28 January 2016. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016.

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Production stopped at the unit as per order of Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board

Sequent Scientific announced that there was a fire in the Process Development Lab of Alvira Animal Health, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company located at JNPC-SEZ, Parawada Mandal, Vizag.

Consequent to the fire, as a process, the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board has issued a stop production order for the unit until the area is cleaned up. The Company is in process of getting the necessary inspection completed in order to commence production shortly.

This incident does not have any significant impact on the financial and business operations of the Company.

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Four people were killed and 18 wounded on Friday when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Shia-populated eastern Saudi Arabia, state media said.

The Al-Ekhbariya news channel quoted an interior ministry spokesman as giving the new toll, up from two dead and seven wounded earlier.

Saudi authorities prevented two suicide bombers from entering Imam Rida Mosque in Mahasen neighborhood in Al-Ahsa region during Friday prayers, Saudi state news agency SPA reported, citing a statement by the ministry's spokesman.

When security men stopped them, one blew himself up at the entrance of the mosque and there was an exchange of fire with the other. He was wounded and arrested wearing an explosive belt, the spokesman said.

Witness Mohammed al-Nimr told The Associated Press that security forces and ambulances quickly surrounded the mosque. He said worshippers stopped the attacker from detonating a suicide bomb belt.

Al-Nimr is the brother of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed earlier this month by Saudi officials, raising tensions in the area.

In the attack's chaotic aftermath, Saudi police fired assault rifles into the air to drive away an angry mob that surrounded a police car holding the suspected attacker, according to video shot from the scene.

Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia make up between 10 to 20 percent of the ultra-conservative, Sunni-ruled kingdom's population. The minority group, many of whom live in the country's oil-producing east, previously have been targeted in attacks by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which views Shias as heretics. No group immediately claimed Friday's attack.

Wire services
Vedanta jumped 7.66% to Rs 72.40 at 11:32 IST on BSE on media reports that the company's board of directors is likely to meet today, 29 January 2016, to discuss merger of Cairn India with modified terms.

Shares of Cairn India were down 2.06% at Rs 121.20. The stock hit a high of Rs 129.75 and a low of Rs 120.80 in intraday trade.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 196.52 points or 0.8% at 24,666.09.

On BSE, so far 32.48 lakh shares of Vedanta exchanged hands compared with average daily volume of 17.07 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 72.80 and a low of Rs 68.55 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 233.45 on 11 May 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 62.15 on 21 January 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 28 January 2016, sliding 26.78% compared with Sensex's 6.01% fall. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, declining 35.98% as against Sensex's 9.51% fall.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 296.47 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

According to reports, Vedanta's board is likely to meet today, 29 January 2016, to discuss merger of Cairn India with modified terms. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and other major shareholders are likely to give their approval for the same, reports added. Vedanta in its Q3 results press release yesterday, 28 January 2016 said that it expects the merger of Cairn India with the company to be completed by Q1 June 2016.

Vedanta's consolidated net profit slumped 99% to Rs 18 crore on 23% drop in revenue to Rs 14801 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The sharp decline in bottom line was due to lower oil and metal prices. The result was announced during market hours yesterday, 28 January 2016. The stock had risen 5.32% to settle at Rs 67.25 yesterday, 28 January 2016. Shares of Vedanta have surged 13.39% in two trading sessions from a recent low of Rs 63.85 on 27 January 2016.

Meanwhile, a separate media report said that Vedanta's pig iron plant at Amona received environment clearance (EC) for expansion in capacity from 450 KTPA to 540 KTPA from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) yesterday, 28 January 2016.

Vedanta is a diversified natural resources company, whose business primarily involves producing oil & gas, zinc - lead - silver, copper, iron ore, aluminium and commercial power. The company has a presence across India, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, Ireland, Liberia and Sri Lanka. Vedanta, formerly Sesa Sterlite is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company.

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Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lawamker Mahinder Yadav was on Friday arrested on the charges of rioting during a protest here, Delhi Police said.

Yadav, who is a legislator from Vikaspuri constitunecy, was arrested along with four AAP workers for rioting while protesting the alleged rape of a three-year-old girl in Nihal Vihar in west Delhi on Thursday.

The alleged rape took place about two days ago.

Police said there were around 10- 150 AAP supporters in the protest and they even tried to disrupt traffic movement.

"We have arrested Yadav and four AAP workers. They went on to protest despite the rape accused been arrested.

"They pelted stones at police in which at least two officials were injured. They have been booked for rioting and causing hurt to public servant," said a police official.
Donald Trump was "the elephant not in the room" as one moderator put it, yet the absentee Republican presidential frontrunner holding a rival event nearby overshadowed the party debate before the first nominating contests.

The very first question that Trump's bete noire Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly posed at Thursday night's debate to Ted Cruz, his nearest rival in Iowa four days before the state kicks off the presidential race, was about the real estate mogul.

"Let me say, I'm a maniac," responded the Texas senator channelling Trump's barbs. "And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly and Ben (Carson), you're a terrible surgeon. Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way..."

Florida Senator Marco Rubio said the 2016 presidential campaign is "not about Donald Trump".

"He's an entertaining guy, he's the greatest show on earth," he said suggesting the focus should be on preventing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton from getting to the White House.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who has been increasingly combative with Trump during the debates, joked that he wished Trump was there. He appeared to take a swipe at his rivals on stage for not taking on Trump as aggressively as he has.

"I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me," Bush said. "Everybody else was in the witness protection programme when I went after him."

Cruz, Bush and Rubio were joined on the main debate stage by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Ohio governor John Kasich and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

On the debate eve Trump abruptly pulled out of the debate alleging Kelly had been unfair to him during the first presidential debate last August when she quizzed him about his past derogatory remarks about women.

Amid an escalating feud with Fox News, Trump held a rally just a couple of miles away at Drake University and said he had raised nearly $6 million for veterans in one day.

Not only did Trump stay away from the debate, two of his rivals on the earlier undercard debate - former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, two previous winners of the Iowa caucuses -, attended the billionaire's event.

In an interview with CNN Thursday aboard his private plane, Trump claimed Fox News "apologized" to him for a mocking statement the television network issued two days before the debate.

Trump said that while the network had "been excellent, they've been very nice", as it tried to woo him back into attending the debate, "it's too late".

A Fox News spokesperson acknowledged Roger Ailes, the network's chief executive, had "three brief conversations" with Trump on Thursday.

Trump, he said, offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that FOX News contribute $5 million to his charities, but Fox News declined.

Trump was even a presence at an earlier undercard debate featuring four lower-polling candidates -- Carly Fiorina, Huckabee, Santorum and Jim Gilmore.

Santorum quickly expressed deep frustration with the drama surrounding Trump. "The entire lead-up to this debate was about whether Donald Trump was going to show up to the next debate," he said.

Meanwhile, new polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, which holds the first primary Feb 9, show Donald Trump sitting comfortably atop the rest of the Republican field.

The Iowa Republican contest has gone from a near-tie between Trump and Cruz earlier this week to an average seven-point advantage for Trump.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
A study involving an ancient rodent's brains has found that bigger does not necessarily mean better, at least when it comes to animals.

Researchers at the University of Toronto reconstructed two endocasts of Paramys, the oldest and best-preserved rodent skulls on record.

"The brain was certainly larger than we expected considering the time period," said Ornella Bertrand, who along with associate professor Mary Silcox and undergraduate student Farrah Amador-Mughal conducted the study.

"Even more surprising is that it was almost as large, and in some cases larger, than primitive primates of the same time period," Bertrand said.

The key difference is that Paramys was relatively smaller than even the most primitive primates in the neocortex region, the part of the brain that deals with "higher" brain functions like sight and hearing.

"This tells us that something is going on in the neocortex of early primates that is not observable in early rodents," Bertrand said.

"The changes in the neocortex of rodents occurred later in time and with less intensity than in primates."

"It also sheds some light on what's unique about primate brains -- they were not always exceptionally large, but they were certainly 'smart'," Silcox said.

What fascinated both Bertrand and Silcox was that Paramys's brain was larger than some later occurring rodents, which contradicts the idea that brains generally increase in size over time.

"It's been assumed for a while that mammal brain size increases over time. The idea is that it's probably an evolutionary arms race because if prey become smarter predators have to adapt. But these animals were already pretty smart prey items to begin with," says Silcox.

The research also showed that the obsession with brain size, especially in the human paleontological literature, makes little sense since size is not the only indicator of intelligence.

The research was recently published online in the journal Royal Society B.
Anupam Kher, who has been named for the Padma Bhushan, has expressed gratitude to Mahesh Bhatt, the director of his debut film "Saaransh". The veteran actor has given the filmmaker a Rs.1,000 note, and thanked him for giving him a "career".

The two Hindi film celebrities, it seems, are following the age-old guru-shishya tradition.

In an image shared by Anupam on Twitter, Bhatt can be seen kissing the actor's head as he bows down to his 'guru' and gifts him a Rs.1,000 note.

"And the saga of Gurudakshina continues. #PadmaBhushan #Saaransh #MaheshBhatt #Gratitude," tweeted Anupam.

Earlier in the day, Bhatt congratulated the 60-year-old actor for being named for the Padma Bhushan, the country's third highest civilian honour.

"When the student outshines the teacher - the teacher dances with joy. Anupam your Padma Bhushan award has made me so so proud," Bhatt posted.

In response, Anupam tweeted: "There can't be a bigger achievement/endorsement for a student. Thank you Mahesh Bhatt saab for 'Saaransh' and a career."

The actor, a National School of Drama alumnus, was only 28 when he took on the role of a retired middle class Maharashtrian man, who had lost his son in "Saaransh".

Anupam's stellar performance not just won him his first Filmfare best actor award, but the film was also chosen as India's official entry for the 1985 Academy Award for best foreign language film.
Indian Buddhist monks are sowing the seeds of peace and harmony between the two immediate neighbours that are linked by age-old ties of religion and culture.

As Myanmar moves towards forming a new government, the monks of India and Myanmar have taken upon themselves the task for smooth transition of the powers to the democratically elected government - but through the spiritual route.

"We are basically here for peace and harmony. Since everyone wants to live in peace, we from the Drukpa Lineage are praying for peace in this country which has strong roots with the Buddhism," Drukpa Thuksey Rinpoche told this IANS visiting correspondent here.

Thirty-year-old Drukpa Thuksey Rinpoche, who is leading a foot journey with 60-odd monks and participated in the peace summit here, is the spiritual regent to the Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the Drukpa Order with over 1,000 monasteries across the Himalayas.

"This time we have decided on a peace 'padyatra' (journey) in Myanmar as we did in many places in India. We have also brought a sacred bone relic of the Buddha in this country to bless people. In the past one week, the relic - some 2,600 years old -- got overwhelming response from the locals," said Drukpa Thuksey Rinpoche.

Tens of thousands gathered at the 2,500 years old Shwedagon Pagoda, which enshrines strands of Buddha's hair and other holy relics, to pay homage to the bone relic.

Sitagu Sayadaw, the elderly spiritual guru of Myanmar, said the visit of the Indian monks would help strengthen the relations between the two countries.

"The Buddha relic comes from India, the birthplace of Buddhism but not the birthplace of the Buddha. The Buddha spent 45 years in India. Therefore, this is a very significant sign of the peace and stronger relationship between the two countries -- Myanmar and India," he told IANS on being asked about the relationship between India and Myanmar.

Indian Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya, who also attended the prayer sessions in the Shwedagon Pagoda, said this would definitely help strengthen India-Myanmar relations.

"It's a rare opportunity and definitely a meeting point of two traditions -- the Vajrayana and Theravada schools of Buddhism," he said.

On bringing the sacred Buddha bone relic to this country, Mukhopadhaya said it was rare that the relic had been brought out of the Hemis monastery, the oldest monastery of the Drukpa Order in Ladakh.

"It's very rare that the bone relic of the Buddha has gone out of the country. The people of Myanmar have a lot of faith in Buddhism. This event offers a platform of religious faith between the countries. This will strengthen the historical relations that have been there since the colonial period," he added.

The bone relic arrived in Mandalay by plane on January 21 and it was carried across many prominent towns and villages by the monks of the Drukpa Order. It will return to India on January 29.

Drukpa Thuksey Rinpoche, who is also the chairperson of Druk Padma Karpo Educational Society which runs the famous Druk Padma Karpo School of the Hindi film '3 Idiots' fame, said he prayed that the ties between the two countries would be better and more strengthened.

Founded in the 17th Century, the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh in India's Jammu and Kashmir houses the most famous holy relics which are thousands of years old.

(Vishal Gulati is in Myanmar at the invitation of Buddhist spiritual leader Gyalwang Drukpa's global charity 'Live To Love'. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
China's central bank is pumping huge flows of cash into the financial system via open market operations to stave off a pre-holiday liquidity squeeze.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) on Friday offered 100 billion yuan ($15.3 billion) of funds to the market, using reverse repurchase agreements (repo), a process in which central banks purchase securities from banks with agreements to resell them in the future, Xinhua reported.

The move, following Tuesday's 440-billion-yuan reverse repo operations, the largest single-day liquidity injection in three years, and Thursday's injection of 340 billion yuan have resulted in a net 690 billion yuan being pumped into the market this week.

The central bank said on Thursday that it would temporarily increase the frequency of its open market operations to every working day around the Lunar New Year holiday, compared with previously twice a week -- on Tuesday and Thursday.

The massive liquidity injection is intended to satisfy surging cash demand ahead of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on February 7.

Following the cash injection, the Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate (Shibor), which measures the cost at which Chinese banks lend to one other, fell slightly to 1.989 percent on Friday.

--Indo-ASian News Service

py/vt
Suicides by famers in India are likely to be reduced with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pro-farmers schemes, BJP leader Vijaypal Singh Tomar said on Friday.

"Unlike during the Congress government, the BJP government has taken steps to address this issue (farmer suicides) by launching several schemes which will protect the interest of the famers," Tomar, the president of the BJP Kisan Morcha, told journalists here.

He said that over 2.5 lakh farmers committed suicide and 3.7 crore farmers have left farming during the last 15 years due to "the mismanagement of the Congress and its failure to adopt policies which should be in the interest of the faming community".

However, Prime Minister Modi has taken several decisions including the sanctioning of Rs.50,000 crore for the five year plan for implementation of Prime Minister Krishi Sichai Yojana, out of which Rs.5,300 crore was released during the first year," he said, adding the Prime Minister Crop Insurance Scheme has also been launched earlier this month.

Stating that excess rain and hailstorm have been included in natural calamity category, he said: "The amount of compensation has been increased for the crop damage up to the extent of 33 percent instead of 50 percent.

"The limit of compensation has been increased from 1 hectare to 2 hectares. The amount has been increased from Rs.1.5 lakh to Rs.4 lakh in case of death of farmers due to natural calamity."

Tomar also noted that 14 crore farmers will be given Soil Health Card in the next three years for which the government has allocated Rs.568 crore.
Former diplomat T.P. Sreenivasan was on Friday roughed up by student activists of the CPI-M when he came to attend a Kerala government seminar.

"I heard the students saying my name, so it means they knew me. I have already spoken to the commissioner of police about the incident," Sreenivasan told the media.

The Student Federation of India (SFI) activists were camped at the event venue since Thursday evening, protesting the seminar, saying it was against the interest of the state and will benefit only the private sector.

The protestors had also threatened to block Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's way to the venue.
A gigantic Bryde's whale, approximately 40 feet long, which was washed to the Juhu beach here around midnight, drew huge crowds even as authorities made efforts to clear it off on Friday.

Officials from the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), forest department and police, besides veterinarians are engaged in the gigantic operation to remove the whale's carcass safely and dispose it of.

A BMC official said that the whale, which had no external injuries, may have died in the Arabian Sea in the past 48 hours and and washed ashore late Thursday night.

Though the carcass has not degenerated, it has become bloated with water and gases, making the task of disposing it challenging, the official said.

Two hydraulic cranes have been deployed by the BMC to lift the carcass onto a container van and take it to the outskirts of Mumbai for safe disposal.

The estimates of the whale's weight ranged between three to five tonnes and it is among the biggest mammals which has washed ashore on the state's coastline in recent years.

In June 2015, a 42-feet long Blue Whale had washed ashore on Revdanda beach in adjacent Raigad district.

Police had a tough time controlling thousands of curious citizens and tourists who trooped in to the Juhu beach for a glimpse of the gigantic mammal and attempted to click selfies with the dead whale from different angles.
Up to 10 people were killed and about 28 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up Friday at a busy market in a town in northern Nigeria where the Boko Haram group has undertaken an insurgency, residents and a Red Cross official said.

Boko Haram has been waging its almost seven-year campaign to build an Islamic state in Nigeria's remote north. Thousands have been killed, and more than 2 million displaced by the campaign.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack at a market in Gombe in Adawama state, but it bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which has been using suicide bombers since the Nigerian army, helped by neighboring countries Chad and Cameroon, expelled the group from territory it had captured previously.

A Red Cross official said the attack by a male suicide bomber killed eight and wounded 28. Two traders at the market put the death toll at 10, while a police spokesman said four had been killed and 17 wounded. Gombe lies near the border of the remote northeastern Borno state, where the insurgency started.

Reuters
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) on Friday said Hong Kong chief executive C.Y. Leung will lead a 40-member business delegation to India from February 2 to 4.

"The delegation will explore business and investment partnership opportunities, and foster closer bilateral trade relations," said an HKTDC statement.

The business delegation includes Cathay Pacific Airways chairman John Slosar and Bank of China (Hong Kong) vice chairman and chief executive Yue Yi among others.

HKTDC has organised a luncheon for the delegation on February 3 in Mumbai and a dinner on February 4 here to meet top Indian government officials and business leaders, the statement said.

Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council chairman Laura Cha, GS1 Hong Kong Ltd chairman Joseph Phi and The Association of Consulting Engineers of Hong Kong chairman Ir Ian Chung will make presentations, the statement added.
Queen bees, the adult mated female that lives in the beehive and is usually the mother most of most, and ants emit a chemical that alters the DNA of their daughters and keeps them as sterile and industrious workers, a study says.

It suggests that a chemical modification to a baby bee or ant's DNA called DNA methylation helps determine whether the baby develops into a queen or a worker.

"When deprived of the pheromone that queens emit, worker bees and ants become more self-centred and lazy, and they begin to lay eggs," said lead researcher Luke Holman a biologist from the Australian National University.

"Amazingly, it looks like the queen pheromone works by chemically altering workers' genes," Holman added.

Queen bees and ants can have hundreds of thousands of offspring and live for many years, while workers are short-lived and mostly sterile, even though they have the same DNA as the queen.

The study was published in Biology Letters to investigate whether the queen's pheromone altered DNA methylation in workers.

The researchers found evidence that workers exposed to pheromones tag their DNA with methylation differently, which might suppress queenly characteristics in the workers.

Surprisingly, the queen pheromone of honeybees seemed to lower methylation, while the queen pheromone of ants seemed to increase it, which suggests things work differently in bees and ants.

"It brings us one step closer to understanding how these animals evolved their amazing cooperative behaviour, which in many ways is a step beyond human evolution," he said.
University of Hyderabad students are set to intensify their protest over suicide of a Dalit research scholar even as the administration claimed Friday that all departments have resumed functioning.

"All schools, departments and centres are functioning from today," university registrar M. Sudhakar told IANS.

He said all the departments and schools started conducting classes, saying this was a major step towards restoration of normalcy.

"Only the administration block was closed," the registrar said.

The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for social justice shut down the administrative block demanding immediate resignation of Vipin Srivastvata from the post of interim vice chancellor and removal of P. Appa Rao from the post of vice chancellor, holding them responsible for Rohith Vemula's suicide.

The JAC, an umbrella grouping of 14 students' groups, claimed that the faculty members and students responded to its appeal to boycott the classes and joined the protest.

Tension prevailed at life sciences block when a group of students and some faculty members, who wanted classes to resume, had heated argument with JAC leaders. Donatha Prasanth, one of the four suspended Dalit students, appealed to students to show unity by joining the protest.

JAC condemned what it called attempts by the administration to create rift among students, faculty members and other staff as it continued its protest for a 12th consecutive day, demanding action against those responsible for the suicide. Three faculty members sat on hunger strike as a mark of solidarity with the students.

JAC announced that a candle light vigil will be organised on Friday night to mark birth anniversary of Rohith. Four "socially boycotted" and suspended students will also sit on indefinite strike from midnight.

It called for students in all universities across India to Gave a call for organizing the vigil across the country.

The student's groups also gave a call for "chalo Delhi" to press its demand for justice in Rohith case. The students will start for Delhi on February 2. They will march from Mandi House to ministry of human resources development on February 4. The next day a protest meet will be organize at Jantar Mantar and they will seek appointment to meet President Pranab Mukherjee.

JAC also launched "postcard to the president" campaign. Students, faculty, workers and all concerned individuals on campus and across the country will send post cards to the president to demand justice for Rohith.

Terming Rohith's suicide an "institutional murder", the JAC demanded immediate action against those already booked for abetment of suicide and for violation of Schedule Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

A JAC statement said while five people including the vice chancellor and central minister Bandaru Dattatreya were booked, the accused remained scot free. It said Appa Rao even left India for his research.

Meanwhile, some students of Osmania University were arrested by police when they tried to stage a protest at the office of Telangana chief minister to demand justice for Rohith.
An Indian terror module pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) is a reorganised group of the virtually defunct Indian Mujaheedin and SIMI elements, recruiting new members to carry out a string of terror strikes across the country, highly placed intelligence sources said.

This fact came out during the questioning of 14 suspected Islamic State (IS) sympathisers who were arrested last week from 12 places in six cities in a synchronised raid conducted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the sources added.

Those inspired by the IS ideology were hooked by Yusuf-al-Hind who, the Indian security agencies believe, is former Indian Mujaheedin (IM) member Shafi Armar, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka.

Armar, now believed to be in the Islamic State-held area along the border of Iraq and Syria, formed 'Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind' and recruited Mumbai-based 33-year-old Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh as 'Amir' (chief) of the group.

Official sources privy to the investigation told IANS that Armar also recruited his brother Sultan and others who had worked for Indian Mujahideen and the now-banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

"Apart from former IM and SIMI members, Armar chose those who are basically inspired by the IS ideology. He first recruited his close aides and then inspired them to recruit more supporters," an official, on condition of anonymity, told IANS.

"They used social networking sites and made calls through the internet (using VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol) to activate the sleeper cells of IM and SIMI," the official said.

Another intelligence source declining to be identified said that the outfit members were directed to carry out strikes across multiple cities, including Hyderabad in Telangana, Bengaluru, Manglore and Tumkur in Karnataka, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, and Aurangabad and Mumbai in Maharashtra.

"They were asked to organise training camps -- like how to use fire arms -- before the attack. They were also trying to establish channels for procuring explosives and weapons," the official source told IANS.

The leadership of Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind, active since April 2015, was following the IM and SIMI set-ups by choosing their organised central, state and city level core groups, the official said.

The 14 men, allegedly influenced by IS and arrested by the NIA, are also said to have revealed that the 20-year-old Uttar Pradesh-based Mohammed Aleem was chosen as Naib Amir, the second-in-command of the group after Mudabbir.

The sources said Karnataka resident Najmul Huda was the military commander and 24-year-old Hyderabadi Mohammed Nafees Khan was the finance chief of the outfit.

All these major group leaders were arrested along with their aides Mohammed Shareef Moinuddin Khan, Mohammed Afzal, Syed Mujahid, Mohammed Obedullah Khan, Abu Anas, Asif Ali, Suhail Ahmed, Muhammad Abdul Ahad, Mohammad Hussain Khan, and Imran Khan.

(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)
Indian realty company Swami India International has invested more than $50 million to help construct affordable houses in three African countries, Gambia, Senegal and Ghana, the company's project manager, Tarun K. Singh, has said.

"Last year, the African Development Bank (AfDB) said Africa was growing with an urbanization rate of 3.4 percent, with cities across the continent experiencing the fastest urban growth rate globally. Unfortunately, it looks like this is not being matched by the ability to provide affordable houses," Singh told IANS.

"The Swami India Group has, therefore, entered a market that has real demand and is perhaps providing what governments across the continent are not able to do," he added.

He said the company first decided to enter the accommodation market in 2004 with an investment of $500,000 in Gambia and built 169 units and a land sale project with 177 units.

"Even this is just a tip of the iceberg of how accommodation could be solved in Gambia as like other African countries, more and more continue to be without decent accommodation," he said.

"This increasing demand has not been met by a proportionate increase in supply, resulting in widespread shortages of affordable housing units in Africa and the proliferation of informal settlements across the continent," the AfDB had said, adding: "The related consequences and challenges are enormous not only in economic and financial terms but also in terms of human development and social dimensions."

It is in this context that Swami India's decision to blaze a trail in the housing market must be seen as an effort to assist governments in the countries where the company is operating and solve a deepening social problem, Tarun Singh said.Though "the assistance from the governments has been significant," he was quick to add that there have been challenges as the company prepares to venture in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"We are not daunted," he said, adding he would encourage other Indian companies to invest on the continent because "Africa has potential and it's a good time to invest in Africa".

Though there is huge deficit in the sector, the poor have been hard hit because of affordability. The AfDB's manager of the research department, Issa Faye, has identified the "poor and lower middle-income families, including those with irregular incomes in the informal sector" as remaining a key challenge to the continent's housing finance market.

To solve the problem, he has identified Morocco's Fonds de garantie pour populations revenus modestes et non reguliers (FOGARIM) guarantee scheme, India's GRUH Finance and Colombia's Fondo Nacional de Garant as successful business models which demonstrate that lending to informal sector workers may be feasible.

Tarun Singh, however, said there are some problems that must be solved immediately if investors are to be lured to enter the sector. These include the lack of skilled workers to be engaged on large-scale housing projects, high interest charged by banks and the lack of utility services such as roads, water and electricity.

(Francis Kokutse can be contacted at fkokutse@gmail.com <mailto:fkokutse@gmail.com>)
Actor Irrfan Khan says he loves flying kites, and it's something that the cast and crew of his film "The Song Of Scorpions" used to enjoy while shooting in Jaisalmer.

"I love flying kites. It has been my favourite since forever now. On the sets of 'The Song Of Scorpions', every person from the cast and crew used to go crazy flying kites," Irrfan said in a statement.

"If we used to pack up early, the crew members would come with kites and we would fly (kites) till sunset," added the "Piku" star.

Directed by Geneva-based director Anup Singh, "The Song Of Scorpions" also stars veteran actress Waheeda Rehman, Iranian beauty Golshifteh Farahani and Tillotama Shome in key roles.

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Radhika Apte wraps up 'Phobia' shoot

Actress Radhika Apte is done with shooting the upcoming thriller and horror film "Phobia".

"Night shoot.. Last shoot day for 'Phobia'," Radhika tweeted.

As the title suggests, the film revolves around some kind of a phobia -- the fear of something.

Radhika was meeting doctors and patients, apart from reading extensively, about the subject to gather as much information as possible for the role.

She was also in close contact with psychiatrists to understand the mental aspect, and neurosurgeons for the biological aspect so that she understands better how a person reacts to a particular phobia. The actress has also been meeting patients and observing them to understand their behavioural patterns.

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I'm seasonal: Sidharth Malhotra

Actor Sidharth Malhotra has been screen stealer with his pairing with Alia Bhatt as much as with Shraddha Kapoor. He says it's a "seasonal" phenomena for him!

Asked that between Alia and Shraddha, with whom does he look best, Sidharth said here: "I was looking good with Shraddha in 'Ek Villain'. It was an interesting love story. Recently, I am looking amazing with Alia because of 'Kapoor and Sons'. So, I am seasonal."

Sidharth spoke at an event for Tourism New Zealand, of which he is a brand ambassador of in India.

He also addressed rumours that he's now staying with Alia, his rumoured girlfriend.

"I am not living in with Alia. I am doing up my house currently and that is my house only. There is no so such truth. Alia and I are only sharing films, not our house," said the "Student Of The Year" actor.

However, he may be spending Valentine's Day with her!

Asked about his V-Day plans, he said: "I have not planned anything yet. I think I will be working. I will be promoting my film and Alia might be there and Fawad Khan also. So we all will be celebrating Valentine Day together."
Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui on Friday said the assault complaint that a woman made against him, was a "preplanned" move against him.

At a press conference here, Nawazuddin said: "This entire incident was preplanned against me. They tried to provoke me and my family, and tried to video record our conversation and reaction in defence, anticipating that we will file a FIR against them."

"The police are investigating the matter further on both the FIRs and I want the truth to come out."

The critically acclaimed actor was in news earlier this month when a woman named Heena Sheikh filed a complaint at the Versova police station here against him, claiming that his bodyguards manhandled her. In response, Nawazuddin later filed a cross-FIR against five people.

He said that he is a person who avoids controversies.

"I enjoy my profession as an actor and want to focus only on that aspect. I have and always want to stay away from any kind of negativity and thus wanted to clarify my side with all my media friends," he added.

Advocate Rizwan Siddiquee stated: "The police will do a proper investigation in the matter and the truth will be out soon. The aim and object of the complainant is apparent from her own conduct and I need not say more."

"The very fact that the complainant, as a third party, was interfering in a self-created Society matter and provoking my client says it all."

The complainant resides in the same housing society as Nawazuddin, and she complained over an alleged dispute over parking space.
The Congress party should take action against its legislator Sidharth Kumar Singh for allegedly kidnapping a young woman, Bihar's ruling Janata Dal-United said here on Friday.

"Congress should take action against its legislator just like we acted against ours," JD-U state president Vashsisht Narain Singh said, referring to the suspension this month of Janata Dal-United lawmaker Sarfaraz Alam who was booked for allegedly misbehaving with a couple on board a train.

Congress and JD-U are members of the 'Mahagathbandhan' (Grand Allaince) that came to power in Bihar through the asembly elections in October-November 2015.

The JD-U leader said the accusation against the Congress legislator who represents Bikram assembly constituency in Bihar, was bad for the image of the state government.

According to a police complaint lodged against Sidharth Kumar Singh by the young woman's father, the legislator kidnapped his daughter, police said.

Police have failed so far to find the young woman.

Sidharth Kumar Singh eloped with the young woman who is in her early 20s in the past also, the local people informed police.

The Congress lawmaker, who is in his early 30s, has served a jail term for a murder. He is the son of a reputed Patna-based child specialist Uptal Kant Singh.

Opposition BJP and its allies Lok Janshakti Party, Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, and Hindustani Awam Morcha have targeted Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the incident, reminding him it could be another proof of the "return of jungle raj" in the state.
Jharkhand has approached Bihar to launch joint operation against Maoist Guerrillas in border areas, a police official said on Friday.

The decision to launch joint operation was taken after Maoist guerrillas ambushed a police party, killing five policemen and two others at Kalapahari in Jharkhand's Palamau district on Wednesday evening.

The banned Communist Party of India-Maoist had triggered landmine blast in which a mini-bus was blown up.

"We have approached Bihar to launch joint operation against Maoist guerrillas in bordering areas of Aurangabad district of Bihar and adjacent areas of the both states," said Jharkhand's Inspector General of Police (Operation) M.S. Bhatia told IANS.

"In the landmine blast, CPI-Maoist zonal commander Niteshji played key role. He operates both in Bihar and Jharkhand. Only joint operation can curb his activities in the areas," Bhatia added.

Bhatia, however, refused to divulge details of the operation, including timing.

The CPI-Maoist has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's incident, terming it as revenge for killing its men at Dibara in Bihar's Aurangabad district.

Niteshji is active in Aurangabad district of Bihar and Palamau district of Jharkhand.

According to police sources, Maoists always take advantage of bordering areas. When operation is launched in Jharkhand, Maoist sneak into bordering states like Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh or West Bengal.

Headed by union Home Ministry security advisor K. Vijay Kumar, a meeting of top officials of the four states was held on January 22 in Ranchi.

"The meeting discussed the joint operation among the Maoist affected states. The Maoist guerrillas cross the border when operation is launched in one state. The states agreed to launch joint operation in bordering areas so that the Maoist menace could be ended in the bordering areas," a police official told IANS.

The home ministry's security advisor suggested a three-pronged strategy to deal with the Maoist menace.

Its agenda includes surrender of the Maoist guerrillas and launching an operation against the Maoists.

Jharkahnd Police chief D.K. Pandey said the Maoists' presence would be eradicated from the state in 2016.

Pandey has taken a tough stand after the killing of the seven people including five policemen, by Maoists on Wednesday.

Police officials say that the Maoist menace can be curbed only when the neighbouring states launch joint operation.

Maoist guerrillas are active in 18 of the 22 districts of the state.
Actor Taron Egerton says "Kingsman: The Secret Service 2" would feature an "international story," unlike the first one which was shot entirely in Britain.

While promoting his new film "Eddie the Eagle" with actor Hugh Jackman, Egerton shared a little bit about the "Kingsman" sequel.

He said that the movie would start filming in summer and it would introduce a new villain that would face off against actor Samuel L. Jackson's character. He also added that the script was ready.

"With 'Kingsman', we're shooting in the summer at present. There's a script, it's brilliant," Egerton said.

He also said that the sequel would go international and his character would probably embark on a globe-trotting adventure.

"Obviously there's only so much I can say but what I can say is that we shot (the first) one all in the U.K., that won't be the case with the next one.

"It's a far more international story, we're going to some incredible places, and we have a villain to rival Samuel L. Jackson - this new one is so brilliantly written I wish I could play it. It's amazing," he said.

Egerton and Jackson will reprise their roles as Gary "Eggsy" Unwin and Valentine respectively.

There is no detail yet on whether Colin Firth will be back to reprise his role as Harry Hart.

Directed by Matthew Vaugn, "Kingsman 2" will release in North America next year.
Sarah Palin may be back in the campaign season headlines after her endorsement of Donald Trump, but the former Alaska governor's once robust political action committee is flaming out: Palin's appetite for luxury travel and pricey consultants has depleted its cash reserves to historically low levels, a Center for Public Integrity review of new federal records indicates.

Many PACs would love to have the $380,000 that remained in SarahPACs coffers as of Dec. 31. last year, but thats the smallest cash amount the group has had on hand since mid-2009, just after Palin formed SarahPAC after her failed vice presidential bid. As recently as mid-2014, SarahPAC sat on $1 million.

The reason for the shrinking war chest is that SarahPAC is simply burning through more money than its bringing in.

During 2015, SarahPAC expenditures ($1.4 million) outpaced income (about $950,000), federal records show. And the $457,459 SarahPAC reported raising from July 1 through Dec. 1 represents its smallest half-year haul since its formation in early 2009. Meanwhile, conservative politicians campaigns didnt receive a dime of SarahPACs heavy spending during the second half of 2015, while only a handful of lawmakers directly received cash during the first half of 2015.

That news might surprise Palin supporters, who she urges to chip in $25 today to help us stack Congress with true conservatives while asserting that SarahPAC is working hard to support and elect conservative leaders. (Before endorsing Trump, Palin pointed to Sen. Ted Cruzs praise for SarahPAC.)

Direct contributions are not the only way for PACs to back political candidates, of course. Independent expenditures often support a candidates campaign for office through television, radio, digital or other forms of advertising. But SarahPAC reported no independent expenditures during 2015.

SarahPAC officials did not return requests for comment.

So where did SarahPACs money go? Mostly toward efforts that supported Palins travels or helped SarahPAC sustain its own existence.

The PACs expenditures from July 1 through Dec. 31 include:

 $248,750 on various consultants, including those providing fundraising, research and logistics services.

 $160,141 on fundraising, direct mail and related website management, including by HSP Direct, a Virginia-based firm that describes itself as an agency

 $84,789 on postage.

 About $48,336 on travel, lodging and related services. When Palin traveled to Washington, D.C., in September to appear at a rally alongside Trump and Cruz, her PAC covered a $4,700 bill at the Hotel George. SarahPAC also spent thousands of dollars on vehicle rentals from companies such as BAC Transport of Alaska, which features a fleet of high-end SUVs and limousines.

 $30,000 on two clerical staffers.

 $18,000 on speechwriting. Aries Petra Consulting, a small firm formed in Virginia and operating from Los Angeles, provided the services. Some political observers might argue Palin hasnt gotten her moneys worth. Among the gems from Palins Trump endorsement speech: Well, and then, funny, ha ha, not funny, but now, what theyre doing is wailing, Well, Trump and his Trumpeters, theyre not conservative enough. And on U.S. policy in the Middle East: You quit footing the bill for these nations who are oil-rich, were paying for some of their squirmishes that have been going on for centuries. Where theyre fighting each other and yelling Allahu akbar, calling jihad on each others heads forever and ever.

SarahPACs most dedicated donors of late 2015  those giving more than $200  are elderly: More than 3 in 5 such contributors listed their occupation as retired or some variation thereof. They are most likely to hail from California, Texas or Florida.

But small-dollar donors, who dont have to publicly reveal who they are or what they do, provided the lions share of SarahPAC contributions during late 2015.

To woo them, SarahPAC offers incentives such as an autographed copy of Palins book Sweet Freedom: A Devotional for those who give at least $75, while those who give $100 take home a plush SarahPAC mama grizzly bear toy.

Many of those donations  $22,325 in all during the second half of 2015, federal records show  funded SarahPACs purchase of Palins own book and those grizzly bear toys.

This story is from the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative media organization in Washington, D.C. Read more of its investigations on the influence of money in politics or follow it on Twitter.
Russia expects the top leadership of the US to provide an explanation of "unacceptable" statements by its officials accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of corruption, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

"We find the statement of my colleague in the White House unacceptable from the point of view of the general practice of international relations, and from the point of view of bilateral Russian-American relations. We believe this statement is outrageous and offensive," Xinhua quoted Peskov as saying.

"We will wait for some further explanations on the part of the supreme leadership of the United States," Peskov said.

Earlier this week, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) published a video showing US Department of Treasury official Adam Szubin accusing Putin of being involved in alleged large-scale corruption.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Szubin's statement "best reflected" the opinion of the US administration.

Peskov said the personal insults against the Russian president are "signs of weakness and impotence," as well as attempts to undermine Russia's diplomatic stances on various international affairs.

"But this will not affect either Putin or Russia in any way," he said.

Russia's relations with the US deteriorated over Moscow's annexation of Crimea and alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis. There have also been disagreements between them on Syria.

--Indo-ASian News Service

py/vt
Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio had a meeting with Pope Francis here to discuss their mutual concern -- environment and climate change.

Pope Francis received "The Wolf of Wall Street" star on Thursday morning for his commitment to defending the environment. As usual at this type of private event, the Vatican only announced the meeting, but did not report on its contents, reports Efe.

However, Vatican Radio shared information about the meeting which took place in recognition of the actor's commitment to defending the environment.

Other than his acting skills, DiCaprio is also known as an environmentalist and philanthropist. He has even created the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to support organisations and initiatives dedicated to securing a sustainable future for our planet.

"DiCaprio addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this month, calling on business leaders to do more to fight global warming, and announced the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation is donating $15 million to environmental projects," Vatican Radio said.

"The actor gave the Pope a book of art from the Dutch Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch, and at the end of the encounter, DiCaprio kissed the Pope's ring, and, in Italian, thanked the Holy Father for meeting with him," the Radio added.

DiCaprio paid a visit to Rome to promote his movie "The Revenant", for which he has received a nomination for an Academy Award in the Best Actor in a Leading Role category.
Employees of three civic bodies here on Friday announced to extend their strike for an indefinite time period against the Delhi government over the non-payment of dues, while the AAP government termed the entire sequence of events "an indication towards a massive salary scam".

"It was a symbolic strike for three days but since no one from the government assured us that our demands would be considered, we have decided to boycott work for indefinite time period," Sanjay Gehlot, president of the Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukta Morcha, told IANS.

"Tomorrow (Saturday), we will protest at Delhi assembly speaker Ram Niwas Goel's home in Vivek Vihar (in east Delhi) and dump garbage there," he said.

Over 1.5 lakh workers of three civic bodies had begun their three-day strike on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day the striking employees of the three MCDs had dumped garbage outside the residence of Transport Minister Gopal Rai.

"We will continue to dump garbage on roads till they (government) feel ashamed," a protester said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in a statement said that the three corporations have themselves admitted having received 100 percent of the non-plan funds - Rs.892.92 crore for North MCD, Rs.465.53 crore for East MCD and Rs.830 crore for South MCD for the current financial year.

"It is clear that 90 percent of the non-planned allocation is for payment of salaries, then why the MCD employees have not been paid their salaries?" it asked.

"The sequence of events indicates towards a massive salary scam in these corporations," the statement added.

Meanwhile, the Delhi unit of Bharatiya Janata Party wrote an open letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on the financial crisis of municipal corporations, with state unit chief Satish Upadhyay urging him to rise above party and discharge his responsibilities to the people of Delhi.

Upadhyay also requested Kejriwal to release about Rs. 3000 crores to the municipal corporations pending on the basis of the recommendations of 3rd Delhi Finance Commission.

He also announced that the BJP workers on Saturday would assemble at Nirman Vihar Metro Station in east Delhi and march towards Delhi Secretariat in support of agitating employees.

Striking employees of Delhi's three civic bodies on Thursday had protested and dumped garbage outside Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's office, while Kejriwal had sought fresh election to the three civic bodies.
Over two months after Delhi government started an inquiry into alleged medical negligence that killed his wife, an academic from Assam has urged Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to prod his counterpart Arvind Kejriwal into expediting the probe.

"I want the Assam chief minister to take up the issue with the Delhi chief minister to expedite the probe in the case of my wife's death caused by medical negligence in Delhi," Ankuran Dutta, a professor at Gauhati University, told IANS on Friday.

The Delhi government had in November started an inquiry into the death of Anamika Ray, the 36-year-old wife of Dutta's, who died of blood infection and heart attack in July 2015 allegedly after undergoing a wrong surgery at two Delhi-based hospitals.

A senior Delhi government official had then said that action was being taken on the complaint forwarded by Chief Minister Kejriwal's office.

Ray, also a professor at Gauhati University, had died at Golden Jaipur Hospital after being shifted from another Delhi-based hospital at a critical stage.

She had underwent a gallbladder surgery on July 17, 2015 at Navjeevan Hospital where she was allegedly left unattended for several hours after the doctors said the patient suffered a cardiac arrest during the surgery.

After Ray's death, her husband Ankuran Dutta lodged an FIR with the police, alleging gross medical negligence.

Dutta also made a complaint to the Delhi government which then initiated the inquiry.

Speaking at a press conference here on the issue of medical negligence, Dutta told IANS: "It has also been found that the hospitals have fake certification of ISO (International Standard Organisation) which is an ethical violation."

India currently records 5.2 million medical negligence cases every year out of which nearly one lakh result in the death of the patient.

Dutta described doctors' negligence in treating and caring for their patients as a kind of "medical terrorism".

"There are several cases of medical negligence happening in the country, but no one raises the voice against such issues. It needs to be stopped at every cost."
Myanmar's outgoing speaker U Shwe Mann on Friday said the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, would make a successful ruling government.

Winning the 2015 general election, the NLD is organising the new government by not taking up all the available posts held but reserve for other parties and ethnic nationalities as well as for outside experts, Xinhua quoted Shwe Mann as saying.

However, he said that no offer for taking up certain post in the new parliament or government is so far made by the winning party.

Appraising Aung San Suu Kyi's wisdom and far-sightedness, U Shwe Mann said he is willing to be made use of for the interest of the country and the people.

He further said that he did made arrangement for a meeting between Suu Kyi and ex-Senior-General Than Shwe, the top leader of the previous military government, to create a favourable condition for the nation although he holds no power now but is still influential.

In his final speech at the last session of the union parliament that comprises two Houses, U Shwe Mann also called on law makers of the new parliament to inherit the good democratic practice of the previous parliament and continue to take the responsibility for the next term.

The present five-year term of the parliament, which lasted from January 31, 2011, came to an end on Friday and the new term of the elected parliament, dominated by the National League for Democracy (NLD), will start on next Monday.

The current term of the government will also expire on March 30 and a new government will take office on the day in accordance with the result of November 8 general election in 2015.

On Thursday, the NLD nominated two new speakers of the two houses of the next term of the parliament with U Win Myint as speaker of the House of Representatives (Lower House) and U Mann Win Khaing Than as speaker of the House of Nationalities (Upper House).

The nominated speakers are yet to be approved in the new parliament session.

The NLD won the absolute majority of the parliamentary seats in the general election 2015, competing mainly against the former ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
India has agreed to export an additional 300 MW electricity to Nepal within one-and-a-half years through various cross-border transmission lines, a senior Nepali official said on Friday.

The development came in the wake of Nepal reeling under a huge power deficit and citizens facing over 14 hours of outages.

The understanding was reached following a meeting of energy secretaries from both sides that concluded here on Friday.

"As per our understanding, within one year, we will import additional 200 mw electricity from India through the dedicated Mujjafarpur-Dhalkebar transmission line that has capacity of 400 kv," Nepal's energy secretary Suman Sharma said at a press briefing after the meeting.

The joint standing committee meeting of energy secretaries of Nepal and India here agreed on the import of 80 MW of electricity from the Dhalkebar-Mujjafpur cross-border transmission line within the next three weeks.

Also, the meeting agreed on the import of more power via the same transmission line, with the decision of initiating processes necessary for operating the line in a full-fledged capacity by December, 2017.

Nepal and India have constructed 400 kv Mujjafarpur-Dhalkebar to import and export of energy.

Within next three weeks, Nepal will import an additional 80 mw from India from the same transmission line, said Sharma. This transmission line will be fully functional by 2017-end where Nepal can import 300 mw electricity from same transmission line.

Mujjafarpur-Dhalkebar transmission can export and import of 1,000 mega watt (mw) of energy but Nepali side does not have sub-station on its side. Thus, Nepal cannot import electricity as much as it requires.

The meeting also decided to upgrade two existing lines by 2016. It also decided to install six cross border transmission lines of 400 kv and complete a master plan of installing such six power corridors by June.

Nepal and India had signed a Power Trade Agreement in 2014 September that has paved the way for energy trading between the two nations.

Both the nations have geared up for setting up infrastructure targeting 2035 for construction and energy trading aiming to export and import over 20,000 mw of hydroelectricity.

Nepal and India have formed a joint technical team to find a way out to do energy business, lay down the future road map, required infrastructure and others.

P.K. Pujari led the Indian delegation.
Cambodia has been monitoring the situation for Zika virus very closely, though the country has not seen any case of the virus so far, the health ministry said on Friday.

At present, there is no case of Zika virus in Cambodia, and the ministry is watching the situation very closely, Xinhua cited the statement as saying, adding that the risk of the virus coming into Cambodia remained low.

According to the statement, Cambodia found a Zika case in 2010, but the patient had recovered and since then, no such case was reported.

Symptoms of Zika, which is transmitted through Aedes species mosquitoes, usually include fever, headache, rash, red eyes, and joint pain, it said.

Most of the patients recover within two to seven days, as the fatality rate is very low, it added.

However, if the virus is transmitted to pregnant women, it can lead to the death of babies in the wombs, or babies' heads are abnormally small, it said.

Currently, there is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat the disease.

"To prevent from Zika infection, people should protect themselves from being bitten by Aedes mosquitoes," Health Minister Mam Bunheng said, urging people to visit doctors when they have symptoms as mentioned above.

Zika virus was first isolated from a monkey in the Zika forest in Uganda in 1947. In 2015, the mosquito-borne virus was detected in the US with Brazil reporting its first case in May 2015.
For the second time in less than two weeks, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit the University of Hyderabad on Friday to express solidarity with the students protesting over the suicide of a Dalit research scholar.

He is expected to arrive by a special aircraft on Friday night and drive straight to the central university campus.

According to party sources, he will spend the night at the campus with the students are demanding action against Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao and others responsible for the suicide of Rohith Vemula.

The Congress leader will join a candlelight march to be organised on the campus Friday night by Joint Action Committee (JAC) for social justice to mark the birth anniversary of Rohith.

According to party sources, hel will participate in the birth anniversary programme on Saturday morning and stay on the campus till noon to interact with the students.

Gandhi had visited the campus on January 19, two days after Rohith committed suicide. He had also interacted with the mother of Rohith and four other Dalit students who are on protest for nearly a month.

He had demanded action against the vice chancellor, central ministers and others responsible for the student's suicide.
French construction and high performance materials maker Saint-Gobain SA's new refractories plant in Tamil Nadu, inaugurated by Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on Friday, will cater to global markets, said a top group official.

Saint-Gobain group chairman and CEO Pierre-Andre de Chalendar also said the group's seventh global research centre will innovate and develop products for Indian and other markets.

"The new refractories plant in Perundurai will cater to global markets. The other new investments announced by the group recently (expansion of float glass capacity at Rs.1,000 crore) will be for the Indian market," he told reporters after Jayalalithaa inaugurated the group's Rs.300 crore refractory plant for the glass industry in Erode district and Saint-Gobain Research India's (SGRI) new research centre.

According to de Chalendar, the group spends around 400 million euros annually on research and development (R&D).

Queried about the returns from R&D, he said: "The returns are measured in terms of new products launched replacing old ones. The new products launched during the last five years contribute around 25 percent of the total sales. They have better margins."

Meanwhile the three year old SGRI - the seventh global research centre for Saint-Gobain - has already started contributing to the global product needs of its parent, said SGRi managing director Anand Tanikella.

"The Indian research centre has already launched 22 products out of which around four has been launched overseas including France. Patents for 15 products have been applied for," he said.

Tanikella said the Rs.200 crore research centre spread over 120,000 square feet IIT-Madras Research Park now has around 100 scientists and engineers and the headcount will go up to over 250 over a period of time.

The research centre will work on developing innovative and sustainable solutions for the group's existing business lines - abrasives, architecture and automotive glass, gypsum plasterboard and plasters, high performance ceramics and plastics and others.

According to de Chalendar, the group has not shifted any of the research projects out of its other six global research centres to India.

He said India is an important market for Saint-Gobain group and in 2015, the group logged a sales of Rs.5,100 crore in the country.

The group's major businesses in India are housed in two entities - Grindwell Norton Ltd, a listed company and Saint-Gobain India Pvt Ltd.
The Syrian opposition announced on Thursday that they will not attend the Geneva talks aiming to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis, Al Arabiya local news reported.

George Sabra, deputy chief of the Syrian opposition negotiating team, told Al Hadith local channel that the opposition delegation will not go to Geneva, noting that there will not be negotiations without the participation of the opposition. "We will be heading to Geneva shortly after all obstacles are removed," said Sabra.

The opposition attributed the decision to the ongoing airstrikes that are killing civilians and the starvation of innocent people in Syria.

The opposition High Negotiation Committee (HNC) held a meeting yesterday here that ended without a final decision. The HNC released on Tuesday a statement demanding genuine improvements on the ground before starting the negotiations.

The talks were expected to start on Friday.
Australia's prime minister gave a personal assurance on Friday that his government would legalize gay marriage if a majority of Australians choose marriage equality in a popular vote.

The center-right government of Australia has promised to hold a plebiscite on the gay marriage question if the government is re-elected in a vote due this year.

But a number of the government's most conservative lawmakers have recently announced that they might vote down gay marriage against the wishes of a majority of Australians.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who supports gay marriage, said his government would "absolutely" follow the result of the plebiscite.

"If the majority of people voting in the plebiscite vote in favor of it, then same-sex marriage will be legalized," Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW on Friday.

The center-left opposition Labor Party supports gay marriage. But the ruling coalition is bitterly divided on the issue.

Australia is seen as lagging behind a growing number of countries on marriage equality, and support for change is rising with an August 2015 poll in Fairfax Media on showing 69 percent of 1,402 respondents in favor of equal marriage rights, up from 57 percent five years ago.

Some Australians in same-sex partnerships married in 2013 in the national capital of Canberra under the provincial government's landmark gay marriage laws. But Australias highest court struck down the law and the marriages were annulled less than a week after their celebrations. And while same-sex couples may have civil unions or register their relationships in most states in Australia, the national government does not consider them married.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a former Roman Catholic trainee priest who opposes gay marriage, had proposed last year that a plebiscite be held after the next election as a way to end the political in-fighting by effectively taking the decision out of lawmakers' hands.

Opponents argue the plebiscite would cost about 160 million Australian dollars ($113 million), and carry no legal weight so the question would still be left to Parliament to decide.

Turnbull had wanted parliament to decide the issue, but after replacing Abbott as prime minister in September he decided to leave that part of government policy unchanged.

Federal plebiscites, which unlike referendums carry no legal weight, have been held only three times since the Australian government was formed in 1901. Two rejected conscription during World War I, and a third in 1977 replaced "God Save the Queen" with "Advance Australia Fair" as the national anthem.

Al Jazeera with The Associate Press
General John "Mick" Nicholson who succeeds General John F. Campbell as the NATO forces commander in Afghanistan, said terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan were a serious challenge.

"I view it [terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan] as a serious problem. This has been one of the principal challenges. It's a sanctuary that our enemies, in particular the Haqqani Network, have enjoyed inside Pakistan," Tolo news quoted Nicholson as saying on Thursday.

"I note that the Pakistanis have also suffered significant casualties in the tens of thousands in terms of their security forces and their civilians," he said.

"Some of this has pushed some fighters into Afghanistan, which has contributed to some of the issues there. So, it's a mixed story, and it's one that requires continuous engagement by the Pakistan military. And then, increasingly, we want to encourage the Afghans and the Pakistan military forces to work more closely together against their common enemies," Nicholson said.

Haqqani Network is blamed for several deadly attacks against Afghan and foreign forces in Afghanistan.
At least three people were killed in an attack on a mosque in Saudi Arabia's eastern governate of al-Ahsa on Friday, the media reported.

A suspect in the attack has been reportedly arrested, sources said.

Eastern regions of Saudi Arabia were on alert after ISIS claimed two attacks on Shia mosques in 2015.

In August, at least 15 people were killed in an attack on a mosque in southwest Saudi Arabia.

In May, a suicide bomber blew himself up during Friday prayers at a mosque in the village of al-Qadeeh in eastern Saudi Arabia, killing at least 21 and injuring 81 others.
At least two Egyptian police officers were killed and five security men injured in a bomb blast in the restive Sinai peninsula on Friday, an official security source said.

The police official's vehicle exploded when it passed through explosive devices near a school complex in North Sinai provincial capital of Arish, Xinhua quoted a source as saying.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which is the second in recent days.

A colonel and three soldiers were killed in a bomb explosion in Arish on Wednesday.

Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and police since the army toppled president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.

Hundreds of security men have been killed during the attacks.

Islamic State's Egypt affiliate, which took from Sinai peninsula a base for their operation, claimed responsibility for most of the attacks.
A woman, allegedly kidnapped by ruling Congress legislator Sidharth Kumar Singh, on Friday appeared before police along with his driver Pankaj Kumar Sharma whom she claimed to have married. She denied being kidnapped, police said.

"Nidhi along with Pankaj reached the residence of Patna's Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj to inform him that she had married driver Pankaj and legislator Sidharth Kumar Singh was not at all involved in it," a police official said.

She told police that since her family members were against Pankaj Kumar Sharma and not ready for their marriage, she felt "forced to elope with Pankaj and marry him at a temple in Kasi in Uttar Pradesh", police said.

In his police complaint, the young woman's father accused the Congress legislator of having kidnapped his daughter. Sidharth Kumar Singh, who is in his early 30s, has already served a jail term for murder.

He eloped with the young woman who is in her early 20s in the past also, residents informed police.

Legislator Sidharth Kumar Singh, who also appeared in the Sachivalya police station here, said it was he who had persuaded Nidhi and Pankaj to surrender before police.

"I was in serious trouble as an FIR was lodged against me for allegedly kidnapping her. Truth is that I had nothing to do with it," he said.

According to police, Nidhi has submitted a petition in police station seeking security as she was threatened to be killed by her father Abhay Sharma and her brother Rahul Kumar.

Earlier, ruling Janata Dal-United demanded that Congress party should take action against its legislator Sidharth Kumar Singh for allegedly kidnapping a young woman.

"Congress should take action against its legislator just like we acted against ours," JD-U state president Vashsisht Narain Singh said, referring to the suspension this month of Janata Dal-United lawmaker Sarfaraz Alam who was booked for allegedly misbehaving with a couple on board a train.

Congress and JD-U are members of the 'Mahagathbandhan' (Grand Allaince) that came to power in Bihar after the asembly elections in October-November 2015.

The JD-U leader said the accusation against the Congress legislator who represents Bikram assembly constituency in Bihar, was bad for the image of the state government.

Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies Lok Janshakti Party, Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, and Hindustani Awam Morcha have targeted Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the incident, reminding him it could be another proof of the "return of jungle raj" in the state.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus - a pathogen which was virtually unheard of till some days ago - is spreading so fast that it can infect nearly four million people in the Americas in next 12 months if not tackled well within time and the threat has now reached India.

In May 2015, Brazil reported its first case of Zika virus disease. Since then, the disease has spread within Brazil and to 22 other countries and territories in the Americas.

Pregnant women are at greater risk. According to health authorities, the virus may trigger a brain abnormality called microcephaly (abnormal smallness of the head) in new-born babies though the link is yet to be established.

Zika virus is transmitted by the bite of Aedes species mosquito which breeds in water-holding containers. Like dengue, it is a day-biting mosquito.

"India has to be on the alert because international travel from central and South America, Africa and the Caribbean Islands can potentially carry the virus into our country," said Dr Monica Mahajan, senior consultant (internal medicine) at Max Super Specialty Hospital in the capital.

The union health ministry said on Friday that it is making sure that India is well prepared against cases of Zika virus that has already caused much damage in the Americas.

In its latest advisory, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has also cautioned pregnant women to avoid travelling to countries at risk of Zika virus transmission.

However, most cases are mild and only one in five humans bitten by the mosquito will develop the disease. Symptoms are similar to chikungunya and dengue but fortunately, complications are rare.

"The recent concern is two-fold: There have been cases reported in more nations compared to outbreaks prior to 2015. Secondly, there is concern about possible birth defects in case a pregnant lady gets infected," Mahajan told IANS.

According to her, past experience with dengue epidemic shows that mosquito breeding in India is rampant and difficult to control.

"So any mosquito-borne illness tends to spread easily owing to overcrowding and hygiene issues. So till such time that diagnostic facilities are available, best option is mosquito control measures to prevent mosquito breeding," she added.

A patient suffering from fever with rash should be protected from further mosquito bites during the first few days of illness so that he does not pass the virus into more mosquitoes and cause local transmission of disease.

"Zika virus is a vector-borne disease. Currently, it may not be here in India, but if a person lands in India with the active infection and gets bitten by Aedes mosquito and that mosquito bites other peoples this can be spread in India as well," Dr J.S. Bhasin, senior consultant and HOD (peadiatric and neonatology department) at BLK Super Specialty Hospital in Delhi.

According to Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), "the level of alarm is extremely high, as is the level of uncertainty. Questions abound. We need to get some answers quickly."

WHO is set to convene an international health regulations emergency committee on Zika virus on February 1 in Geneva to ascertain whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.

"Arrival of the virus in some countries of the Americas, notably Brazil, has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a poorly understood condition in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis," a WHO statement read.

The WHO was criticised last year for reacting slowly to Ebola epidemic that killed over 10,000 people.

"A causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth defects and neurological syndromes has not been established, but is strongly suspected," the WHO statement added.

The virus was first isolated in 1947 from a rhesus macaque monkey from Zika forest in Uganda.

(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
Will you deny that your duchess here is as famous for her beauty as the Psyche of the divine Raphael? Well, there is not a straight line in her body: she is all curves.  In Good King Charless Golden Days, George Bernard Shaw



The distance from Mysuru to Bengaluru is a shade less than 140 km. The Shatabdi can do this in two hours, though that's subpar for a Shatabdi. An ordinary passenger train takes considerably longer, say four hours. Construction on this line started in 1877-78. I suspect speed of completion was a function of difficulty of the segment. Bengaluru-Channapatna opened in February 1881, Channapatna-Mandya in March 1881 and Mandya-Mysore in February 1882. In time spent on travel, one is better off today. That original train in 1882 took just over seven hours. But today, IR (Indian Railways) construction takes much longer. On metre to broad gauge conversion, the 1979-80 Railway Budget speech stated, "I have also included gauge conversion of Bangalore-Mysore line in this budget for which there has been a pressing demand from the State of Karnataka as it is considered essential for the development of industries in the Mysore area." The 1991-92 Railway Budget speech said, "Every effort will be made to complete the Mysore-Bangalore gauge conversion project also in 1991-92." The efforts were successful and gauge conversion was ensured in 14 years. No wonder CAG reports routinely rap IR on the knuckles for delays in such projects.
The last time I took a break was -when? "Never," says my wife, given as always to hyperbole, and reminding me that visits to my parents in Bikaner "are no holiday, so there!". I tell her that spending time with her brother in Miami was no lark either, and before we know it, we're hurling pots and pans at each other - metaphorically, of course. Actually, Miami wasn't too bad - though, technically, we didn't actually see Miami because Indian families like you to spend all your time indoors gossiping about other family members rather than at the actual destination itself.
J W Marriots property in Delhis Aerocity is an incongruous place to re-read parts of The Tears of the Rajas, as I wait for its author, Ferdinand Mount. This splendid history, evoking the kaleidoscopic world of heat, dust, blood, gore, disease, betrayal and wheeling-dealing that was the British Raj, is a universe away from the tranquil, if formidable post-modern opulence of this hotel. Were catching lunch at K3, its multi-cuisine restaurant, between Mounts arrival from the Chennai lit fest that afternoon and his departure to the Jaipur lit fest that evening.
We kicked out the Brits with conviction, courage, and persistence, mostly non-violently. They left us poor, they left us with burdensome legacies including hideous bureaucracy, colonially tinted criminal law, and a huge chip on the shoulder, but they did leave us. They did a lot of damage in a few centuries, but weve survived a lot in 5,000 years.
There is a Nehru-in-NEFA (later Arunachal) story I cannot confirm referring to any recorded history, but if you spend time in the Northeast, youd hear it often enough from old-timers. In October 1952, Nehru visited Ziro, the heartland of the Apatani tribe, accompanied by young Indira. The Apatani chief greeted him and took a liking for Indira, and apparently told Nehru something like: you are the chief of your people and I am the chief of mine. Why dont you give your daughter to me in marriage and I will give you so much in bride money. That offer included, it is said, some hundred mithuns  the bovine which is more a buffalo than a cow, is reared for meat, sacrifice and trade, not milk, and the slaughter of one of which in front of his Raj Bhawan infuriated the current governor so much he had his chief minister fired. Nehru, it seems, smiled and said he was so touched, but that he had already given his daughter away to someone else in marriage and it was such a pity they never met earlier. He probably knew, unlike Governor Rajkhowa, that slaughtering a mithun is the highest honour an Arunachal tribe offers a guest, not an insult.
A newspaper had a telling cartoon this last week. The first frame had Rahul Gandhi crying to his mother that his grandmother's book had been stolen. The book, the cartoon's second frame tells us, was titled "356 ways to destroy the Constitution", or words to that effect. That captured succinctly the irony in the Congress complaint against the imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh. After all, no one did such arbitrary dismissals more often than Indira Gandhi. As for playing such political games in a sensitive border state, it is worth recalling that the conspiracy-ridden dismissal of Farooq Abdullah's government was a part of the build-up to the alienation and unrest that exploded in the Kashmir valley in 1989. If the Congress sees the Arunachal Pradesh governor as the villain of the piece, in Kashmir it was no different.
The 68th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhis assassination, to be marked on Saturday, has become an arena of competing ideologies trying to own his legacy.The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has asked its cadres to observe two minutes of silence along with the entire country at 11 am in memory of Gandhi. Our cadres will observe the two-minute silence along with the rest of the country, an RSS spokesperson said.Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior ministers will also attend events to pay their respects to Gandhi, assassinated on January 30, 1948, by Hindu Mahasabha activist Nathuram Godse.However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)s Goa unit has allowed the unveiling of a book on Godse, The Story of an Assassin, in Madgaon at a government-owned convention centre. The chief guest at the book launch is Satyaki Ashok Savarkar, described on the invitation as grand nephew of martyr Nathuram Godse and freedom fighter V D Savarkar.The central BJP office has distanced itself from the event. The partys Goa chief, Vinay Dinu Tendulkar, told Business Standard he had no knowledge of the event. But what is the problem even if it were to take place? Tendulkar asked.However, it is not just the Gandhians that are in a quandary. As many as 67 non-BJP, non-RSS backed civil society groups have planned a peoples march in defence of the republic in New Delhi. These civil society groups include a cross-section of left activists, Gandhians, LGBT groups as well as Christian and Muslim organisations.Several Dalit outfits are lending their voice to the protest as Saturday would have also been the 27th birthday of Hyderabad Central University research scholar Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide earlier this month.We, the members of the Indian public, are deeply concerned with the grave assaults that are being mounted on the republic, activist Shabnam Hashmi, who has coordinated the effort for the Idea of India Collective, said.The organisers were keen not to have the direct participation of political parties or leaders at the event, but have welcomed affiliated outfits of political parties, including students wings and labour unions.

According to sources, outfits affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) took part in the planning of the protest march but later conveyed they would be unable to share a platform if Congress-affiliated outfits were to participate. Sources said the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal as well Kerala, where the Left parties and the Congress are rivals, influenced the CPI(M)s decision. However, outfits backed by the Communist Party of India (CPI) are likely to join as they believe the cause is greater than any emergent Assembly election. Among other events, activists and academics have planned a march in Dandi, Gujarat, to protest the onslaught on the cultural diversity of India. In Delhi, academician Mridula Mukherjee will deliver a speech on Recovering Gandhi at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. In New Delhi, the government is organising a mega stakeholders consultation on Modis pet programme of Namami Gange, involving over 1,600 gram pradhans of villages located on the banks of the Ganga. Several chief ministers will attend. Modi's clean India campaign draws its inspiration from Gandhian philosophy and the prime minister has committed to clean the Ganga by 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of the Mahatma. Acharya Balkrishna, close aide of yoga guru Ramdev, will also address a session on medicinal plants and livelihood in the upper reaches of the Ganga. Minister of Tourism and Culture Mahesh Sharma will inaugurate an exhibition on Gandhi and a discourse by spiritual guru Morari Bapu.

(With inputs from Sanjeeb Mukherjee)
A nearly 30-foot-long whale was washed ashore at the popular Juhu beach in Mumbai.

Locals, who spotted the dead mammal last night, informed the police and the forest department.

Carcasses of 38 baleen whales were washed ashore recently near the Tiruchendur beach in Tamil Nadu while more than 250 whales stranded in shallow waters were pushed back into the deep sea.

In June last year, a 42-foot-long blue whale was washed ashore at the Revdanda coast, about 17 kms south of Alibaug in the neighbouring Raigad district.

Forest officials had contacted marine biologists after spotting it when it was still alive and struggling to survive.

However, the whale had later died.
Four persons, including a member of Autonomous Council and three Congress workers, have been abducted by unidentified persons from two separate places in Assam's Dima Hasao district last night, police said here today.

Jibon Kemprai, member of Dima Hasao Autonomous Council, was kidnapped from his house at Thaijuwari under Diyungbra police station while three Congress workers, belonging to the Bieate community, were kidnapped from a place between Umrangshu and Sangabar under Umrangshu police station.

The abducted Congress workers have been identified as Luapuia Thaite, Joseph Nampui and Lala Nampui.

In another incident, unidentified persons fired at the residence of BJP Dima Hasao district committee General Secretary Deben Thaosen at Sengya Sambhudhan Raji under Sarkari Bagan police out post here.

A protest rally was taken out by members of the Bieate community demanding immediate release of persons kidnapped.

Deputy Commissioner Amrendra Barua assured the delegation who met him that the culprits would be nabbed immediately and the abducted will be released.
Nearly 40 per cent of German voters think Chancellor Angela Merkel should quit over her liberal asylum policy after almost 1.1 million newcomers arrived last year, a poll showed today.

As the mood in Germany has shifted from a euphoric welcome for people fleeing war and persecution last September to growing doubts about the country's ability to accommodate and integrate the record influx, the popular Merkel has come under increasing pressure.

However, the poll for Focus magazine conducted by the independent opinion research institute Insa among 2,047 German citizens showed that a larger share -- nearly 45 per cent -- did not think Merkel should resign.

Among members of her conservative Christian Union bloc, nearly 27 per cent said they wanted Merkel, who has been in power since 2005, to step down.

Merkel has pledged to "tangibly" reduce the number of migrants and asylum seekers arriving this year with a range of measures in Germany, on the European level and with the help of international partners such as Turkey.

She struck an accord late Thursday with her fractious left-right coalition to tighten asylum policies, notably by making it easier to send back arrivals from North Africa and by delaying family reunifications.

The survey was conducted January 22-25.
A Taliban suicide bomber today rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into the gate of an army facility in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province, injuring at least six persons including two children.

A home-made bomb was used in the blast that occurred near Zhob Cantt area, injuring four personnel as well as two children, security sources were quoted as saying by The Express Tribune.

The suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the gate of the military compound, Dunya reported, adding that the intensity of the blast spread fear and panic among residents.

Friday prayers were going on in a nearby mosque near the compound at the time of the blast, sources said.

Heavy contingents of law enforcement agencies rushed to the scene following the incident to cordon off the area. The injured were shifted to Civil Hospital Zhob.

The frequency of targeted attacks on policemen has increased in the troubled province of Balochistan.

Earlier this month, a suicide bomber blew himself outside a polio centre in Quetta's satellite town area, killing 15 people, including 12 policemen.

Yesterday, four police personnel were killed in Quetta by suspected Taliban militants at a gas station in Satellite Town.
Bharti Airtel today said the base price proposed for 700 MHz spectrum makes it unaffordable for them to buy any of the airwaves in the band.

Country's top telecom operator also said the current voice tariffs are unsustainbly low and it will look at opportunities to increase prices going forward.

"We believe that the price which has been proposed for 700 MHz just makes it very expensive for us to buy any of the spectrum, so we believe that we cannot afford to buy that spectrum at that price," Bharti Airtel MD and CEO (India & South Asia) Gopal Vittal said during an investor call.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has recommended record base price of Rs 11,485 crore per MHz for 700 MHz. If all available frequencies get sold at the suggested price then it alone can contribute over Rs 4 lakh crore.

Vittal though welcomed Trai's proposal on putting entire spectrum in 2100 MHz band for auction.

"We are pleased to see the regulator's proposal on putting 3 to 4 blocks of 2100 MHz spectrum. Its the right move to put all the spectrum for auction. This will decongest networks as well as improve voice quality and address call drop problem," he added.

The telecom company also applauded Trai regarding auction of 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz spectrum.

"This is a good capacity spectrum and we have some experience in managing this spectrum...We do have gaps in eight circles which we will be keen to fill at some point of time," Vittal said.

Regarding voice pricing, Vittal said the current rates are unsustainably low and need to move up.

"We are actually quite disappointed that voice pricing has eroded this quarter. It is a competitive market and in the past we have had serious competition from smaller players. In the last quarter, we also saw significant competition from leading players and that has led to decline in voice pricing, which is disappointing," Vittal said.

He added the company has been saying repeatedly for several quarters that its goals are to drive revenue growth, margins as well as market share.

"We will continue to look for opportunities to raise voice pricing and we are hopeful that the rest of the players also see some sanity in the way voice pricing today is being played," he added.

Regarding capex, the company said it expects to end the year between USD 3-3.2 billion.

"Our initial capex guidance for the full year was USD 3 billion, which we upped to USD 3.2-3.4 billion. With cumulative capex for the first nine months at USD 2.2 billion, we should end the year between USD 3-3.2 billion," Bharti Airtel global CFO Nilanjan Roy said.
BJP's student arm Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad today demanded a CBI probe into the suicide of three girl students of a yoga and naturopahty college in Villupuram District.

Stating that his outfit had held 270 protest demonstrations on the suicide of girl students across the country, ABVP national General Secretary Vinay Bidre said CBI should inquire the matter and sought justice for the victims and their families.

"It is not a small incident, there are contradictions from the side of the college management and police over the issue, the truth should be found out as to whether it was suicide or murder," he told reporters ahead of presiding a public meeting here over the issue.

He sought a Bill by the State and Central governments which would comprehensively address issues including manipulation of courses by "unscrupulous" college managements, and unfair practises like collecting exorbitant fees and forcing students to choose a particular course.

He claimed that college campuses in Tamil Nadu do not have a "democratic atmosphere" for students to express their views and about "unfair practises" of some institutions.

He also sought the resignation of State Education and Health Ministers over the issue.

The state conference of ABVP would be held in Tiruchirappalli on February 13 and 14, he added. On Rohit Vemula issue, he said "we demand a fair probe, we want justice, we want justice for Rohit and his family.
After the Maharashtra Cabinet recommended to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao that he grant sanction to CBI to prosecute Ashok Chavan in the Adarsh scam, the former Chief Minister today alleged that the BJP was pressurising the probe agency to implicate him in the high-profile case.

The CBI had approached the Governor seeking sanction to prosecute Chavan after it got "fresh evidence" against him in the case, following which Rao wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to elicit the opinion of his Council of Ministers.

"Filing of FIR has already taken place. The issue now is limited to state cabinet recommending to the governor that permission for prosecution be given," he said.

"BJP MP Kirit Somaiya has made baseless allegations. He is not a legal expert. He has always done this," Chavan said.

"He made baseless allegations that it was Rahul Gandhi who ensured that the then governor didn't grant sanction for prosecution. Somaiya should give proof of Rahuljis involvement in this," he added.

"Somaiya is not an astrologer to claim that the Governor will take such and such action. The Governor is a constitutional authority. What new has happened after the then governor refused to grant permission to prosecute me? CBI is under BJP's pressure," Chavan said.

"BJP's attempt is to ensure that there is no fair investigation in the case. This is a case of political vendetta going on in the country by some BJP leaders. Be it Oommen Chandy or Digvijay Singh, BJP wants to target Congress leaders," he said.

"We won't be cowed down by such attempts. We will continue to highlight corruption by BJP government. CBI has no connection with the Adarsh Commission report," he said.

"I will take legal opinion on this issue and proceed accordingly. Why is there a U-turn (by CBI) after change of government. The pressure on CBI is so great that even court directives are overlooked," the MPCC president said.

Yesterday too, Chavan, a Lok Sabha member from Nanded in



Maharashtra, had alleged that the CBI is being misused against the Congress.

Chavan, who had to resign as Chief Minister after the scam surfaced in 2010, was among the 12 persons charge-sheeted by the probe agency in connection with the case.

CBI had alleged that Chavan suggested inclusion of civilian members in Adarsh Housing Society meant for war veterans and widows of defence personnel, to secure flats for his relatives in the plush complex, situated at Colaba in south Mumbai.

In December 2013, the then Governor Sankaranarayanan had refused sanction to CBI to prosecute Chavan in the Adarsh housing scam, leaving the agency with no choice but to close the case against him.
After two people were fatally shot at an unsanctioned homeless camp in Seattle this week  amid a citywide state of emergency over the rising number of people living on the street  advocates for the homeless said more state and federal funding is needed to create affordable housing.

We do believe homelessness is solvable, and the public will demands the investment of resources needed to ensure everyone can live in a safe, healthy, and affordable home, said Michele Thomas, director of policy at the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA).

While the reasons for homelessness are complex, and sometimes personal, on a broader scale its very simple, she said. We dont have enough access to affordable housing.

An estimated 23,000 people are homeless in Washington state, according to Helping Hands House, a shelter and advocacy group in Tacoma, Wash. The number of homeless people nationwide is estimated at more than 500,000.

Homelessness in the U.S. has been increasing since the 1980s, when federal funding for affordable housing was cut significantly, and again after the 2008 recession, according to homeless advocates.

Rather than focus on creating more affordable housing options, most federal and state policies have focused on criminalizing homeless people, advocates say.

Affordable housing remains out of reach for many Washingtonians, especially those who earn the lowest incomes. Nearly 300,000 households in Washington who earn less than half the median income spend more than half of that income on housing, WLIHA said. For every 100 households earning less than 30 percent of median income, there are only 28 rental homes that are affordable and available to them.

This puts many residents on the verge of homelessness, advocates said, because any unexpected large expenses mean they can no longer afford rent.

The Washington state legislature is working on its 2016 supplementary budget, and Thomas is pushing for lawmakers to include more funding for affordable housing and homeless services.

In 2015, the state allocated over $71 million for affordable housing, and WLIHA is pushing for an additional $10 million this year to build at least 280 new affordable homes.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has invested nearly $250 million in housing and homelessness and has created an additional 40,000 affordable housing units statewide since taking office in 2013, according to Jaime Smith, the governors spokesman.

In the 2016 supplementary budget proposal, Inslee has asked lawmakers to continue full funding for current housing and homelessness programs and to further invest in expanding the availability of affordable housing.

Low-income residents also face discrimination by landlords, Thomas says. Landlords can deny a tenants application for housing simply because they would be using a federal Section 8 housing voucher to help pay their rent.

Thats why WLIHA is trying to pass two companion bills in the state legislature that would outlaw discrimination in the private rental and housing market.

We want to outlaw this practice because its unfair, based on stereotypes and negative perceptions about what it means to be poor, Thomas said. Landlords think that just because a person is poor they will be a bad tenant, but there are no studies to show that they have worse outcomes as tenants.

State Senate Bill SB 5378, sponsored by Mark Miloscia, and State House Bill HB 1565, sponsored by Timm Ormsby would ban discrimination against potential tenants based on their income.

Thomas said there is wide, bipartisan support for the bills. But the potential new law outlawing discrimination wont help if there isnt affordable housing available in the first place, she added.

Investment in affordable housing are desperately needed in our state and across the country, Thomas said.
Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) today sanctioned Rs 518 crore for construction of two stations of Colaba-Bandra-Seepz metro 3 corridor, giving a much-needed push to the Rs 23,136 crore project.

Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) will be developing three stations in Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport area -- including Domestic Terminus (T1) and International Terminus (T2) and Sahar Road -- it said in a statement.

The MMRC had signed an MoU with Mumbai International Airport Ltd on September 16 last year whereby it was agreed to fund the construction cost of the Metro-3 stations to the tune of Rs 777 crore subject to the approval of AERA.

"It was after following the due process, AERA in consultation with the stakeholders approved the proposal to fund two metro stations, one at domestic terminus and the other at international terminus," it said.

While the commuters will bear the development fee, MIAL will finance the construction of the Sahar Road station from their non-passenger revenue.

The AERA has increased the levy on passengers by Rs 20 to 120 per domestic passenger and by Rs 120 to Rs 720 per international traveller.

"It's a very positive step by AERA. The MMRC has secured financial commitment under the stakeholders funding. It will give boost to the project," MMRC Managing Director Ashwini Bhide said.
A 25-year-old Afghan national has been arrested and booked for staying in India without proper visa and passport, police said today.

The accused, identified as Najok Mir, son of Wali Mohammad, from Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan, has also been booked for travelling without a ticket and misbehaving with a government servant, they said.

An Apple laptop, two mobile phones without sim cards, two pen drives, a dongle and two diaries have also been recovered from his possession, police said.

He was arrested by Railway Protection Force yesterday for travelling without a ticket and misbehaving with the ticket checker after he got off from a train coming from Jammu at Pathankot Cantt railway station here, police said.

During preliminary investigation, it came to light that the accused had been staying in India without a proper visa and passport, they said.

Initially, the accused gave investigators a wrong name. "He told us that he has lost his visa and passport but he had not lodged any complaint in this regard," a police official said.

The Afghan national had come to India on a tourist visa in 2013. He had stayed in Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh in a mosque and had acted being a deaf and dumb as he did not know the local language, police said.

Then he moved to Bangalore and thereafter, went to Jammu and Kashmir, police said, adding he had also stayed in Delhi where he worked as a labourer.

"The accused understands Hindi and can converse in this language as well," the police official said.

He was presented before a local court which sent him in police remand till February 4, the official said.
Several American companies are looking at opportunities in the renewable energy sector and are keen to participate in the National Solar Mission, US EXIM Bank said today.

Besides, the Bank is providing support to companies like GE and Westinghouse to help set up nuclear projects in India.

"We are working with a number of renewable energy companies in the US and they are looking to increase their business here," said Fred P Hochberg, Chairman of Export Import Bank (EXIM) of the United States.

On the nuclear energy, he said, the bank is ready to support the US companies GE and Westinghouse.

"...Talks are moving forward. The real progress has been made in liability issue and Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) issue and we are moving well on that path that will open India not only to United States but also to other countries to participate in generating nuclear power in India," he said.

The Bank has been part of the conversation, and nuclear power whether in India or anywhere in the world tends to require export credit agency because projects are very large, he said.

Asked about the solar mission dispute with India at the WTO, he said:"I very much respect the idea of Make in India, at the same time we have to balance between local manufacturing and innovation in best technology. One has to find a path through that."



In 2014, the US dragged India to WTO on country's solar mission plan.

The US alleged that India's programme appears to discriminate against the US solar equipment by requiring solar energy producers to use locally manufactured cells and by offering subsidies to those developers who use domestic equipment.

It also alleged that forced localisation requirements restricted US exports to Indian markets.

After losing the battle at WTO last year, India is looking to modify its solar power programme.

National Solar Mission aims to establish India as a global leader in solar energy by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible.

The US primarily exports thin film technology for the solar panel.
Under an anti-tobacco drive, the Kanpur district administration has collected Rs 6.73 lakh in last six months as fine from people for smoking at public places.

Teams are conducting raids regularly at various public places across the city including bus stations, outside schools and colleges, railway stations, hospitals, malls and cinema halls, ADM City Ashutosh Agnihotri said here today.

Till now, 7,281 people have been fined, he said, adding that up to a maximum of Rs 200 was being collected from the defaulters.

"Our mission is to stop youth from using tobacco products and for that we have removed cigarette shops from near all the schools and colleges," he said.

The health department has also started a consultancy clinic at Ursula Hospital in the city to advise people on how to get rid of tobacco addiction.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Ramayan Prasad said that tobacco consumption has been prohibited in all the hospitals of the city.
The army has destroyed over 460 anti-tank mines and motor bombs laid by it during operations in the past in a farmland in Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmnir's Rajouri district and the area has been handed over to the land owners, a defence spokesman said today.

"A total of 464 anti-tank mines and four unexploded mortar bombs were recovered and destroyed by the formation engineers and Lam battalion from the farmland that was demined in Sariyah village in the Nowshera sector of Rajouri district last year", Jammu-based defence spokesman, Lt Col Manish Mehta said.

He said that it was a herculean task undertaken by the army to provide succour to the farmers of the area whose farmland was taken by the forces to lay mines in the past.

"The demining task was relentlessly pursued for three months and after making sure that it was completely free of mines, the possession of the land was handed over to the villagers last year," he said.

He said the army's effort was appreciated by the village elders and the entire community, saying it was the last bastion of hope for people in remote areas.
A teenage suicide bomber today blew himself up in a grain market in Nigeria's restive northeast, killing at least 10 people, witnesses said.

They also spoke of a huge blast around 12 noon in the crowded market in Adamawa state, one of the worst-hit in the seven-year-old Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast.
Bangladesh is in favour of setting up of a joint basin management system for common rivers, a top diplomat said today, claiming water-sharing remains a "sensitive" issue between the two countries despite their relations reaching a new height.

"Our relation has reached at its height and we want to resolve all our problems through understanding. Although maximum issues have been solved, water-sharing still remains a sensitive one and we want a common basin management system for sharing of waters of common rivers," Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Syed Muazzem Ali said here.

He said Bangladesh was in favour of a "win-win situation" for equitable share of the common rivers as the country was facing the crisis of water and the rivers were drying up.

"This is also a fact that whatever water we get, we cannot make proper utilisation. We want a better understanding for use of water and a common basin management system can help both the countries," he said, reiterating that the relations between the two countries have touched a new horizon.

"Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has said that since 1974, the relations between our two countries are the best now. It is the golden era of India-Bangladesh relation," said Ali, former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh.

To a question, Ali said Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had already expressed her keenness to restore all communication channels that existed between the two countries before the Indo-Pak War in 1965, besides creating new points.

Ali said connectivity between the two countries needs to be enhanced and the neighbours should be widely connected through roads, railways and waters for a better trade and communication between the people of the two countries.

Regarding access to the Chittagong port, Ali said Hasina had already declared that a consortium between the neighbours could be formed for better use of the port and India would not have any problem in using the port.

Ali, who is also a "liberation warrior", said the people of Tripura made immense contribution during the 1971 war and Bangladesh would always remember it.

Tripura accommodated more than 15 lakh refugees from the neighbouring country in 1971, which was more than the state's actual population that time.
Pakistan's ex-defence secretaries have warned the government to be careful in dealing with India because they do not see a radical shift in Delhi's policy towards Pakistan.

Former defence secretary retired Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik called for "open and extensive" debate within the country on its relations with India.

Addressing a seminar on 'Impasse in Pak-India ties - Implications for Regional Diplomacy and Strategic Stability', Malik cautioned that no radical shift in ties was expected, although there could be minor improvement caused by expediencies of the international environment.

For Pakistan, "bending is not an option; either forward or backwards. We bend and we get a kick," Malik, who retired as defence secretary in 2014, was quoted as saying by the Dawn today during the seminar organised by the Strategic Vision Institute (SVI).

He recalled Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "belligerent" posture towards Pakistan during his election campaign and said India continued to play "cat and mouse" in ties with Pakistan.

Malik listed a number of measures he expected the government to undertake - both internally and externally - in order to effectively deal with the challenge posed by India: de-linking Pak-Afghan ties from the Pak-India relationship, safeguarding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), tackling political fissures over CPEC, pursuing water security more seriously, and appointing a full-time foreign minister.

Retired Lt Gen Naeem Lodhi, another former defence secretary, echoed Malik when he noted that there was no detente in sight.

In his view, the answer lay in the leadership of both countries ending the "blame game" and approaching the relationship with fresh and open minds, the report said.

"The imbalance of size and political clout highly in favour of India begs third party facilitation to veer these two nuclear powers away from confrontational mode. There seems to be no other option," he said.

The director of Quaid-i-Azam University School of Politics and International Relations, Dr Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, suggested that the countries' leaders "act rationally and thwart the agenda of radicalised transnational terrorist groups for the prosperity of their people".

He warned that "limited war between India and Pakistan could escalate to full scale nuclear war".
Businessman Praveen Sawhney, a Swiss bank account holder, has been summoned as accused by a Delhi court in an alleged tax evasion case against him filed by the Income Tax Department.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pritam Singh took cognizance of the IT department's complaint and directed 57-year-old Sawhney, a South Delhi resident, to appear before it on March 8.

"Complainant has filed complaint for the offence under sections 276C(1), 277 and 276D of the IT Act for the Assessment Year 2006-07 with identical allegations against the accused.

"Perusal of complaint and materials available on record, prima facie discloses commission of offence under sections 276C(1), 277 and 276D of the IT Act for the relevant assessment years. Hence, cognizance of the offence is taken... Let accused be summoned for March 8," the court said.

In the complaint, the department alleged that Sawhney, proprietor of Sawhney Sons in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh, was holding an account in HSBC Bank in Geneva which was opened in 1990, but had not disclosed it to the tax authorities here earlier.

It claimed that in July 2011, a search was conducted on Bhushan Lal Sawhney, managing director of Sawhney Tyres, and others including the accused. Praveen, the son of Bhushan Lal, had admitted on oath that he had one bank account in a foreign country, i.E, HSBC Bank, Geneva, it said.

A notice was issued to him to furnish details of the foreign bank account but he wilfully did not disclose it, the IT complaint alleged.

It also alleged that the businessman had USD 6.57 lakh (Rs 3.02 crore) in his foreign account in December 2005 which he had not disclosed to Indian tax authorities and the amount was treated as undisclosed income for assessment year 2006-07.

The assessment was framed at a total income of Rs 10.76 crore and a penalty of Rs 3.6 crore was levied on him for wilfully concealing the true income, the department alleged.

"The accused by not disclosing his foreign bank account and by not declaring transactions made by him in the account, had wilfully attempted to evade tax and concealed his true income and committed an offence under section 276(c)(1) of the IT Act," it said.

It also booked him under sections 277 and 276D of the IT Act alleging he had made a false statement in verification and not furnished details wilfully respectively.
A British Muslim woman who was on trial over allegations of taking her 14-month-old baby to Syria was found guilty of being a member of Islamic State (ISIS) at a British court today.

Tareena Shakil is the first British woman to be convicted of joining ISIS and encouraging acts of terrorism on social media after returning from the war zone.

The 26-year-old had told the court that she was unaware of the evil associated with ISIS and simply wanted to live under Sharia law.

But at the end of a two-week trial in Birmingham Crown Court, the jury concluded that she was guilty of terrorism related activity.

"ISIS is a dangerous organisation and, at the moment, she should be treated as a dangerous individual," a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said.

The jury was shown her tweets, messages and photographs, including images of the black flag of ISIS and passages calling on people to "take up arms".

Shakil dressed up her son for pictures wearing an ISIS- branded balaclava after secretly running away to Syria in October 2014.

She told her family she was going on a package holiday to Turkey and instead travelled to Syria, where she remained for several months.

Her defence team claimed she had been "groomed" by ISIS recruiters who had preyed on her vulnerability following the collapse of her marriage.

She described in detail her days in Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS in Syria in court.

She claims to have become disillusioned and frightened and on January 6 this year she left with her child and bribed a taxi driver 50 dollars to take her to the border.

Shakil flew back into the UK and was arrested by British police at Heathrow airport in early February.
In last weeks events, it was not just the work of one person that forced Washington to back down. There were serious street demonstrations, condemnations from human rights organizations, religious leaders, business groups and the refusal of seven other presidential candidates from the first round to accept another episode of illegitimate elections. They had plenty of arguments and evidence on their side. In the first round of the presidential election, held on Oct. 25, local observers found massive irregularities and evidence of fraud. More than 900,000 observer credentials were distributed to political party representatives  effectively allowing them to vote multiple times. International reporters witnessed these passes being sold on the black market. In an election where only about 1.6 million people (26 percent of the electorate) voted, the legitimacy of the vote became doubtful.

Celestin was also the candidate who finished second in the first round of Haitis 2010 presidential elections. But the international community had a different choice, and brought in an expert mission under the auspices of the Organization of American States to examine the results. Without a recount or even a statistical test of a ballot sample, it reversed the first-round results, eliminating Celestin and putting musician and businessman Michel Martelly into the runoff. Martelly went on to win the election and become president. Approaching the end of his five-year term, he is supporting Moise as his replacement.

How did this happen? Basically, Haitians managed to put Washington in the situation of having to maintain that a runoff election with only one candidate, businessman Jovenel Moise, would be legitimate, or postpone the election. As late as last Thursday, just three days before the election, U.S. officials were insisting that they would go forward even if the second candidate, engineer Jude Celestin, refused to participate. But he stuck to his boycott, and they backed down.

Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in Haiti, where Washington has long exercised a veto over the countrys most important decisions. But last week the international community suffered a rare defeat when Haitians rejected Washingtons plans for a deeply flawed presidential runoff election to take place on Sunday, Jan. 24.

Journalists are taught in school to avoid euphemisms. When someone dies, they write that she died instead of passed away. But one euphemism that has become a fixture in U.S. news reporting is the international community. This is generally a substitute for the U.S. government, with or without some input from some of its allies.

It was even tougher to accept the election results after a commission appointed by Martelly found that only 8 percent of tally sheets that they examined were free from irregularities. The opposition did not all have the same demands but they wanted a new electoral council to lead the process and some reforms to make sure that the second round would be credible. Many observers have also demanded a serious examination of the first-round ballots to see if there was any basis for accepting the results.

No date for new elections has yet been set, and it remains to be seen what will happen when Martellys term expires on Feb. 7.

The current fight for legitimate elections in Haiti is another episode of a long struggle for democracy that goes back to the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier (1957-1986) and the overthrow of the countrys first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 1991 and again in 2004 (with decisive support from Washington). And even further back, it is rooted in Haitis many conflicts with the international community since the countrys founding in 1804 from a slave rebellion, including its occupation by U.S. Marines from 1915 to 1934.

Todays electoral turmoil shows how much continuity there is with this awful history. In a sense, the country remains occupied today by United Nations troops who were brought in not to help with reconstruction after the 2010 earthquake  as many people mistakenly believe  but six years earlier, to keep order after the constitutional government was overthrown, its officials jailed or forced into exile, and thousands of supporters killed.

It would be remiss not to mention the institutional racism that allows for such continuity. This is most painfully obvious in the response of the international community to a problem that they themselves created just five years ago: the cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 10,000 Haitians and infected hundreds of thousands more. Cholera had not been present in Haiti until some UN troops  not aid workers as some people alleged  dumped their human feces into the countrys water supply in 2010. Yet they refuse to come up with the money that would be necessary to provide clean water and resolve the problem, even though they have spent much more than this on maintaining their military presence in the country.

It is hard to see such twisted priorities as other than a statement that Black lives dont matter. As with the elections, and USAID reconstruction funds of which only 1.6 percent went to Haitian organizations and companies, it seems that even in dealing with a deadly disease caused by these foreign governments own gross negligence, power and control over the country are the first priorities.
The 2016-17 will be a "historical one" with focus on job creation and sustainable development, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Friday.

"The will be essentially a historical one. It will ensure path of job creation and ensure sustainable development. That is the thrust of the Narendra Modi government," Javadekar said while interacting with captains of the industry and farmer representatives here..

Read our full coverage on Union Budget 2016 Stating that the focus of the government is on "Jawan, Noujavan, Kisan and Karmachari" (Soldier, Youth, Farmer and Labourer), Javadekar said that different ministries were talking to representatives of various sectors separately to meet their expectations.

For the welfare of labourers, the government increased minimum wages, enhanced the ceiling of bonus and fixed wages for the contract workers, a step which was never taken before, he said.

"We represent the aspirations of poor class," he said adding, in one year, a record 17-crore poor people have opened bank accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana and 12 crore insured for accident by paying Rs 12.

Responding to various issues raised by various industries such as textile, engineering, manufacturing, processing, pump and motors, Javadekar said that Zero Liquid Discharge was not the policy, but not polluting rivers as the policy, and referred the issue of Ganga, where nearly 550 polluting industries were made to use monitoring device and over 200 units made to close operations.

The Union minister said that the Centre's main focus is on reforms and through its "GiveItUp" LPG subsidy scheme, the government has been able to persuade around 10 lakh people to give up the benefit, benefiting the poor living without a gas connection.

There are 40 per cent households who do not have LPG connection and use firewood, he said, adding the Centre is planning to provide connection to all in next 10 years.

Similarly, the government has brought stability in the sugar industry, which was facing frequent cane pricing issue, and started ethanol blending in petrol, which was blocked by import lobby earlier, Javadekar said.
Enforcing bundobast or deployment of security at various places in the city during various festivals last year proved to be the most challenging task for police commissioner Ahmed Javed in his stint.

Senior IPS officer Datta Padsalgikar, who has worked with IB, is the frontrunner for the CP's post.

In his media interaction today ahead of his retirement on January 31, the top cop said the challenge of putting bundobast stood out among other things for him while helming the city police force.

"There are several things, but (putting) bundobast in the city was the most challenging thing as a police commissioner as several festivals had come together last year," Javed said.

The 1980-batch IPS officer, whose next assignment is the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, had replaced Rakesh Maria as police commissioner in midst of the Sheena Bora murder probe on September 8 last year.

"It is rare that Mumbai police chiefs retire as a commissioner as they are usually transferred to other postings," he said.

Javed, who worked in police force for 36 years, said he was proud about his new role.

"Post retirement, I will be working for the country again, for which I feel proud. I will take more than two weeks to complete the formalities and go to Saudi Arabia to take up new responsibilities," the top cop said.

Javed said that launching of Twitter handle of Mumbai Police was the most important activity as the social media platform helps in direct communication with the common people.

To a query, Javed said, "the discussion on starting a traffic Twitter handle is underway".

On the IS threat to the city, Javed said, "The threats are real, but police are doing good job. They will continue to do their job by enforcing relevant rules, regulations and protocols," the commissioner said.

He thanked Mumbaikars' for their support.

Javed's farewell will be held at Naigaon police ground tomorrow morning.
Burundi police said today they had arrested two respected foreign journalists working in the capital, as they reported on gunmen opposed to the government in the troubled central African country.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested yesterday.

Both have covered the region for years and have won several awards for their reporting and photography.

"The two foreigners were arrested in the company of armed criminals," the security ministry said in a statement.

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were also seized.

Presidential press chief Willy Nyamitwe said he had been due to meet Remy yesterday, confirming the two journalists were among 17 arrested by police.

The Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa (FCAEA) said it was, "extremely concerned about the arrests of our esteemed and dear colleagues, Phil Moore and Jean-Philippe Remy yesterday in Burundi".

"We know them to be consummate professionals and are disturbed by of their detention while they were doing their jobs in Bujumbura," the FCAEA said in a statement Friday morning.

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.
Two foreign journalists working in volatile Burundi were released without charge today, 24 hours after police arrested them in a raid, the French ambassador said.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested yesterday afternoon during a raid in which 15 others were also held, police said.

Both journalists have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work.

Their arrest sparked widespread condemnation from rights groups and diplomats.

"They were released, no charges were brought against them," French ambassador Gerrit Van Rossum told AFP, but added they had not been given their equipment and notebooks back.

The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA), who described the journalists as "consummate professionals", said that while their release was "a big relief... The incident bodes ill for our work in Burundi."



Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

Moore, 34, has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy, 49, has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.
A high-level panel will next week look into the issue of giving green clearance to production expansion of Coal India's mining project in Odisha from 10 million tonnes per annum to 14 MTPA.

A source privy to the development said Expert Appraisal Committee of the Environment Ministry on February 5 will take up for consideration Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd's, a Coal India arm, Kaniha Opencast Coal Mine Expansion Project from 10 MTPA to 14 MTPA.

The project is located in Angul district of Odisha.

Stressing upon the need for timely execution of projects, the government has earlier put some of the Coal India's mining projects on its monitoring list which includes Kaniha (OCP) in Odisha.

Coal India, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production is eyeing one billion bonnes of coal production by 2020.

Last month, the government had said a total of 16 mining projects of CIL have received green nod in the current fiscal.

Of the 12 projects granted environment clearance (EC), five belong to Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL), two are under Eastern Coalfields and two others belong to South Eastern Coalfields (SECL), the government had said.

The four projects given Stage-II forestry clearance (FC) include one each of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd, SECL, Central Coalfields Ltd and WCL, the government had said.

The government had also earlier said that its focus is to increase coal production to the extent possible by facilitating EC and FC expeditiously, pursuing with the states for assistance in land acquisition and coordinated efforts with Railways for movement of dry fuel.
Sixty eight years after he had first met Mahatma Gandhi at a post-Partition refugee camp in the city, artist Suraj Sadan continues to be inspired by the Bapu and his message of non violence.

On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's 68th death anniversary, the National Gandhi Museum here is displaying an exhibition of Sadan's portraits of the Father of the Nation.

Miniature models of various ashrams set up by Gandhi ranging from that in Sewagram, Maharshtra to Phoenix in South Africa, have been included in the show that is set to continue till February 14.

"I met him when I was 8 years old at Kingsway Camp in Delhi. From that day onwards I decided to draw his portraits and spread his message around the world. Since the year 1969, I have been creating images of Mahatma Gandhi," Sadan said.

Among the artist's favourite images he has created is a sepia tinted profile of the late freedom fighter. "Looking at the image I have always found his expression to be sarcastic and I am fond of this image," Sadan said.

The artist, who now lives in Canada organises an annual international-level competition that encourages people to send in their paintings of Mahatma Gandhi.

"We select the best four among them, two from India and two from Europe," says Sadan. Winning artists receive a cash prize of USD 100.

Chairman of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) C R Gharekhan inaugurated the exhibition today.

"It is a fabulous collection. Despite residing in Canada, it seems he has India in his heart," the former diplomat said. adding that he hoped the exhibition would draw many visitors to the Gandhi Museum in the coming days.

"People, especially those living in Delhi, should not miss this opportunity," he said.

Apart from Gandhi portraits of several other world leaders including Martin Luther King and Mayanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi whom Sadan considers "a fan of the Mahatma" has also been showcased.

Works by the over 70-year-old artist had previously been on display at several prominent places including WHO, UNESCO and Parliament of Canada.

In 1969 on the birth centenary year of the Mahatma, stamps on Bapu designed by Sadan for the Indian government were issued in October in the same year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promise to legalize marijuana for recreational use could generate up to USD 3.6 billion in taxes for Canada's federal and provincial governments, a study says.

CIBC World Markets said its assessment is not comprehensive, but that with Ottawa and provincial governments facing revenue crunches in the wake of falling commodity prices, it was worthwhile exploring how much new revenue could be generated from legal marijuana.

The study ignored broader health, social policy and criminal justice issues.

In it, analyst Avery Shenfeld put forth various scenarios to try to pinpoint the size of the Canadian market for cannabis, using Statistics Canada surveys and a study in the International Journal of Drug Policy on the estimated number of pot smokers in this country, as well as Colorado's experience.

"Given that marijuana has to this point been illegal for recreational use, hard data for Canada is lacking," Shenfeld commented.

Extrapolating from the International Journal of Drug Policy research, total Canadian spending on marijuana would be Can dollars 3 billion, he said.

"If so, dividing that pie among governments and producers would not appear to leave a lot of room for a fiscal boost unless prices were raised substantially," Shenfeld said.

But he noted that in Colorado the size of the market had been underestimated, and if the same is true here, the market for cannabis in Canada could be worth as much as Can$10 billion.

Other reports have pegged the size of the market at half that, noting that other US states did not see a similar bump in cannabis usage post-legalization. Shenfeld suggests tourists may have been behind the higher Colorado figures.

If marijuana is taxed at the same rate as other economic activities, the governments' combined take would be about 30 percent, or up to Can dollars 3 billion. If it is taxed at the same higher rate as cigarettes and alcohol, however, the amount would rise to Can dollars 5 billion.

Trudeau has appointed former Toronto police chief Bill Blair to sort out new regulations for the distribution of marijuana post-legalization.

No timeline has been provided, but when Canada moves to legalize the drug it will have been the first G7 nation to do so.
A CBI court here today convicted five persons, including prime accused Robin Mayne, and sentenced them to varying terms of imprisonment in a more than 30-year- old bank fraud case in which former Tamil Nadu assembly Speaker late K Kalimuthu of AIADMK was also an accused.

XI Additional Judge (Special Court for CBI Cases) K Venkatasamy also acquitted 11 other accused in the case related to alleged availing of loans to the tune of Rs 56 lakh from nine nationalised banks by submitting forged documents in 1983 when Kalimuthu was Agriculture Minister in the state.

Convicting the 71-year old Mayne of offences including cheating, criminal conspiray, forgery, the Judge sentenced him to seven years rigorous imprisonment.

He also imposed a hefty fine of Rs 1.67 crore on Mayne and other convicts, his accomplices. Out of the total fine amount, Rs 57 lakh should be provided to the nine banks as compensation.

Others sentenced are Surya Kumar (four years RI) Shahul Hameed (two years RI), Basin Sen (two years RI) and Soma Sundaram (three years RI).

CBI had filed a charge sheet against a total of 32 persons in 1988 but only 16 were present in the court today as others either died or are absconding.

Kalimuthu, who was the Speaker from 2001 to 2006, died in November 2006.

According to prosecution, Kalimuthu in his capacity as the then Agriculture Minister allegedly directed nine nationalised banks to provide Rs 56 lakh loan to Mayne and others for purchasing tractors in 1983.

Mayne and the other accused allegedly submitted forged documents to avail loans. The charge sheet had also said Kalimuthu had parked huge amount of funds belonging to Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Marketing Board with nationalised banks.
Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi is likely to visit Tamil Nadu next month to review election preparatory work, a top election official said here today.

"Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi is likely to visit Tamil Nadu in the second or third week of February," Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu, Rajesh Lakhoni told reporters here.

He said the exact dates of the visit of the CEC were not known yet. "His visit is to review the election preparations in Tamil Nadu," he said.

So far, nearly 11,000 units of Electronic Voting Machines have arrived out of the total requirement of around 83,000 units, he said.

Two special weekend enrolment camps will be held on January 31 and February 6 at all polling station locations, he said. This was to enable the newly eligible, left out persons to apply for enrolment and to make corrections, transposition of entries, he said.

Hard copy of the electoral roll would be available at the camps for perusal of the public. Electoral rolls are also available at CEO's website: http://elections.Tn.Gov.In.

"For the preparation of error-free Electoral Rolls, public are requested to give priority for applying in online mode through the website: http://elections.Tn.Gov.In," he said.
The Centre is for including vocational training as part of the curriculum at the school level, Union Minister of State for Skill Development Rajiv Pratap Rudy said today.

To create skilled manpower from the school level, talks are on with the HRD ministry to include skill development in the curriculum from standard 8 to standard 12, Rudy told reporters here after a two-day Parliamentary Consultative Committee Meeting 'Role of Sector Skill Councils'.

He said only 4 per cent of the country's working class is skilled against 94 per cent in Korea.

"We cannot progress without a skilled working force," he said but admitted that it was a challenge to the Ministry to converge 24 ministries in skill development programmes.

As different ministries carry out different skill development activities, there should be a coordination among all in order to make it more successful.

"We have already signed an MoU with Defence ministry to utilise the skill of retired defence personnel in training the youths. The personnel of Navy and Air force are presently under



training at their places before coming out to impart training to civilians," Rudy said.

About 60,000 people retire from Defence every year and the ministry will take their help to impart skill training to the people, said Rajiv Mathur, head of Standards and QA of National Skill Development Corporation.

He said construction and real estate require 3.1 crore skilled persons, while the requirement of the retail sector is 1.7 crore.

"On the basis of studies, it is estimated that an incremental 109.7 million skilled people will be required by 2022 across 24 sectors," Rudy said adding sectors like automobile, retail, handloom, leather account for about 80 per cent of requirement.

The meeting observed that there was a huge emphasis that sector skill councils should especially focus on industry linkages.

Since the SSCs role is crucial in creating the curriculum, the government should propose the formation of a National Board for Skill Certification which can focus on assessment and certification of the skill programmes being conducted across country, the recommendation said.

The committee, which for the first time held its



meeting outside Delhi, also emphasised on the need for comprehensive reforms in the role of sector Skill Councils and focus on the SSC Transit 2.0 Programme.

Rudy said, "It is high time we start focusing on industry collaboration right to the district level across the country.

We have to focus on the problem and find the solution than keep identifying the problem and then plan for the solution.

"The IT revolution in India took a long time to be at the heights where it is today, but our Skill Revolution has to happen at a much faster pace as we are sitting on a huge demographic dividend which we can reap right now," he said.

The committee also proposed that more model skill centres like the one launched in Bhubaneswar yesterday, should be opened up across states so that there is visibility of brand 'Skill India'.

Rudy said MPs should make land/buildings available in their constituencies and the National Skill Development Corporation along with its affiliated partners in the region will assist in setting up state-of-the-art skill centres to provide courses to the local youth and make them job ready.

The operational cost of the centre will be borne by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

Rudy said the Ministry has proposed two schemes to support entrepreneurship education and guidance for the path to growth for new and young entrepreneurs.
Like his predecessors in the Oval Office, this president has not hesitated to lavish praise on young Americans for engaging in the gun violence of warfare. But, hidden in plain sight, a basic contradiction goes unmentioned in public discourse: If using guns to kill people in certain others countries is to be encouraged and lauded, how effectively can it be discouraged and condemned in our own country?

I dont question President Obamas sincerity when he sheds public tears over the victims of gun violence. I do wish, however, that he would enlarge his field of compassionate vision to include those directly suffering from what Martin Luther King Jr. called the madness of militarism  in this case, U.S. militarism. In 2016, no institution is more in need of gun control than the Pentagon.

No less than the children whom Obama has movingly described as victims of gun violence in the streets and schools of America, the lives of many kids abroad have been  and continue to be  shattered or ended by U.S. firepower from the air. The fact that they arent targeted doesnt change the predictably grisly human consequences of decisions that continue to be made in the Oval Office. And even if one accepts the faulty rationales for the ongoing U.S. drone attacks and other airstrikes in several countries, it should give us pause that there has been such a lack of presidential expressions of regret over civilian victims, other than occasional perfunctory statements.

With passion and eloquence, President Barack Obama has renewed efforts to reduce gun tragedies. His proposals to strengthen safety measures and background checks for gun purchasers deserve support. But its disquieting to hear a president deliver heartfelt orations against gun violence at home while he conveys scant remorse about imposing it on innocent people abroad.

We routinely confer upon presidents the psychological and political power to give reflexive absolution  even blessings  to the most violent of sins.

The easy answer, of course, is that a bright line separates the illegitimate use of guns in the murderous rampages of Columbine, Sandy Hook and San Bernardino from the legitimate use of U.S. armaments in warfare. But to alternately condemn and glorify the use of guns in the hands of young Americans is apt to make the line more hazy than bright. And to pretend that the glorification of militarism in our society has nothing to do with its burgeoning gun culture is as convenient as it is dubious.

We routinely confer upon our presidents the psychological and political power to give reflexive absolution  even blessings  to the most violent of sins that include the killing and wounding of innocent people. The favorable media coverage and commentaries were profuse, for instance, when Obama traveled to Afghanistan early in his presidency, donned a bomber jacket and proclaimed to American troops that the United States of America does not quit once it starts on something.

In effect, he was celebrating a large-scale form of gun violence.

Shortly before that appearance by Obama at the Bagram Air Base, I visited the Helmand Refugee Camp District 5 on the outskirts of Kabul. There, I met a seven-year-old girl named Guljumma, who talked about what happened one morning when she was sleeping at home in southern Afghanistans Helmand Valley. At about 5 a.m., a bomb fell and exploded. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm.

Since then, a lot of maiming and killing has resulted from U.S. bombing in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Yet President Obama has never tearfully deplored the consequences of such mega-gun violence. Perhaps that is largely because, in political and human terms, the victims of U.S. bombing remain abstractions.

These days, American officials trumpet and praise the U.S.-led bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria, which have involved close to 10,000 airstrikes since mid-2014. It is left to others to count the human costs. The independent journalistic website AirWars.org, which does meticulous investigations, has scrutinized the available evidence; even a conservative assessment of available data leads to the conclusion that the coalition airstrikes last year killed at least several hundred civilians, including many children.

None of this is to downplay or discount the gravity of the ongoing crisis of carnage from guns in American homes, schools and public places. What we need is a single standard when the bell tolls. Gun violence should be universally recognized and challenged as inhumane  even when those who inflict it are offering lofty rhetoric from high places close to home.
In a bid to boost healthcare facilities in the country, the Centre plans to set up a network of modern hospitals in different places, Union Minister of State for Parliamentary and Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said here today.

He said the Centre has given its approval for setting up of three new All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at Nagpur in Maharashtra, Manglagiri in Andhra Pradesh and Kalyani in West Bengal under Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojna.

"Besides this, the Centre has also been planning to establish a network of modern hospitals at other places in the country," he said during the foundation stone laying ceremony of Kerala's first Molecular Human Genetics Laboratory and Centre for Advanced Biotechnology- Clinical Application at Noorul Islam Institute of Medical Science here.

Stating that NDA government was giving priority to health sector, Naqvi said the Centre has initiated a revolutionary campaign for the health of the nation and its citizens.

Programmes such as "National Health Mission", Make in India, Kisan Bima Yojana, Mudra Bank, Jan Dhan Yojana and Pradhanmantri Jivan Jyoti Bima Yojana will prove to be effective medicines for people's economic and social health, he said.

"Healthy and Prosperous India" is the priority of the Centre and our Government has been working with a commitment to provide good and low-cost health services in the remote areas of the country. Private sector has an important role to play in this regard, Naqvi said.

Compulsory rural areas service for MBBS doctors was an effective step, he said.

Naqvi said eradicating malnutrition and tackling infant mortality rate was among the priorities of the Centre. The Government has also been working to create awareness among the people regarding various diseases, he said.

According to Census 2011, 53 per cent of the country's



population is reproductive age group (15- 49 years) while one of five persons in the country is an adolescent (10-19 years) and every third is a young person (15-24 years).

"There is a collective responsibility on the government, civil society and other stakeholders to work together to plan adequate and suitable opportunities to meet their needs and aspirations and address the health and well-being of this population," she said.

PFI said that at the London Summit 2012, India committed to provide family planning services to an additional 48 million new users by 2020.

To fulfill our FP-2020 commitments and meet the responsibility towards the large young population, investments in health and family planning need to be proportionately increased.

"According to the FP-2020 progress report 2015-16, India has only reached 7.7 million additional users, by July 2016. Three million additional users have been reached last year, in contrast to 1.5 million additional users reached, each for the first three years.

"The accelerated efforts of the government towards universal access to family planning are also evident in its introduction of three new spacing methods of contraception in the family planning programme... In 2015, offering greater choice and autonomy to the users of family planning," she said.
China has executed a man who was found guilty of abducting and trafficking 22 children, state media reported today.

Tan Yongzhi was executed by a local court in the country's central Henan province, state-run xinhua agency reported.

Following the order issued by the president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), Zhengzhou Intermediate People's Court executed Tan, the report quoted a statement of the SPC as saying.
A Chinese court sentenced three activists to prison today for allegedly attempting to start a non-violent civil rights movement, family members and campaign groups said, the latest example of the Communist Party's intensifying crackdown on dissent.

Tang Jingling received a five-year sentence, while Yuan Xinting and Wang Qingying were given three-and-a-half and two-and-a-half-year terms respectively, Amnesty said in a press release.

The conviction for "inciting subversion of state power" was handed down by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, the London-based group said.

"This is a ridiculous verdict," said Tang's wife Wang Yanfang, who confirmed the sentences.

"They are not guilty of any crime. They just upheld values of justice," she told AFP.

China's Communist party does not tolerate anything it perceives as a potential threat to its rule, and dozens of activists have been imprisoned since President Xi Jinping took office two years ago.

During the trial, police accused the Guangzhou trio of distributing the books about non-violent resistance and "wilfully incited the subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system".

They added in a statement to prosecutors posted online by the activists' lawyers that the men had rented an office to study, print, and mail several books including one titled "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking about the Fundamentals".

They were also accused of disseminating "From Dictatorship to Democracy" by Gene Sharp, an expert on non-violent social movements.

The books "have been confirmed to have serious political transgressions", police added.

Tang's wife said the defendants were accused of opposing the Communist party and government, but all the evidence was "related to five books".

"In China, even spreading the ideas of non-violent civil disobedience will lead to a criminal prosecution", she said.

A court official declined to comment to AFP.

The trial in July came as China's state security detained or called in for questioning more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists, in what analysts have called one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent in years. Several were formally arrested on subversion charges two weeks ago after being held in secret for six months.

"The sentences for Tang, Yuan, and Wang don't bode well for the more than a dozen human rights lawyers likely to stand trial soon for similar 'subversion' charges," Sophie Richardson, China director for US-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement today.
Mid-sized Chinese lender Citic Bank has been defrauded of up to $148 million, the company and media reports said, the second such incident in the industry to come to light in a week.

China Citic Bank Corp. said it was involved in a "risk incident" at its branch in the northwestern city of Lanzhou and it could lose up to 969 million yuan ($148 million) as a result, according to a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange issued yesterday. It gave no details.

Bloomberg News reported that a branch employee conspired with others to persuade the bank to issue securities using fraudulent documents.

The group then re-sold the securities -- bank notes, also known as bills, which are payable to the bearer -- and invested the proceeds on the Chinese stock market, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Citic Bank, part of the financial conglomerate of the same name, said police were investigating the case.

In a separate incident, reports said two junior employees at a Beijing branch of the Agricultural Bank of China stole bills worth 3.9 billion yuan and sold them, then used the proceeds to invest in the stock market, which boomed last year before collapsing from mid-June.

That bank, one of China's "big four", confirmed the case last week.

Authorities have launched a series of investigations into the financial sector after a debt-fuelled stock market bubble -- encouraged by authorities -- burst in the summer in a rout that wiped out trillions of dollars of market capitalisations.
A Chinese ship is set to join the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370, Australia's deputy prime minister said today, as the jet's fate remains a mystery almost two years after it vanished.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will join three other vessels contracted from Dutch firm Fugro -- Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Havila Harmony -- currently scouring the depths of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia where the plane is believed to have crashed after diverting from its flight path.

Carrying 239 passengers and crew, the plane disappeared during a Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight on March 8, 2014.

So far, only a two-metre-long flaperon wing part that washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July has been confirmed to have come from aircraft.

"The ship, offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by Premier Li Keqiang of the People's Republic of China in November 2015, will undertake search operations in the southern Indian Ocean," Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.

"The total value of the contribution by the People's Republic of China, including the ship, is around Aus$20 million ($14 million)."



Truss said the Chinese vessel would be equipped with a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) long towed sonar system, which searchers will use to take a closer look at the rugged seabed.

Dong Hai Jiu 101 is set to depart Singapore for Australia on Sunday and join the hunt -- which has so far covered 85,000 square kilometres (32,820 square miles) of the 120,000 square kilometres search zone -- in late February, Truss added.

Australian authorities have said that if after the 120,000 square kilometres is scoured and there are no new leads to pinpoint the location of the missing aircraft, the search zone would not be expanded.

Relatives of those aboard MH370 have bitterly criticised the airline and the Malaysian government for failing to provide answers, while the disappearance has become one of aviation's greatest riddles and spawned numerous conspiracy theories.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has expressed gratitude towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu for including Bhopal, Indore and Jabalpur under the 'Smart City' project.

Bhopal, Indore and Jabalpur of Madhya Pradesh are included in the list of 20 cities, which would be developed as 'Smart Cities' in the first phase of the programme.

Describing it as a matter of immense pride for the state, Chouhan thanked Modi and Naidu on behalf of the citizens of the three cities, an official statement said today.

The Chief Minister said the NDA government's novel concept of Smart Cities generated a healthy competition among cities to improve civic services in larger public interest.

Congratulating the Mayors and team of officials of the three selected cities, he said their relentless hard work has paid off, it said.

The Chief Minister said there is a need to work hard to turn the dream of Smart Cities into reality. It will bring a sea change in urban life, he added.

Madhya Pradesh is the only state in the country whose maximum cities have been included in the list of first 20 Smart Cities shortlisted by the government.
The Airports Authority of India has handed over 17,000 sq ft of space in the old terminal building of Mangaluru International Airport to the Coast Guard to position its air squadron.

The long-pending demand of the Coast Guard for the space to park its aircraft and other operations had been approved by the AAI on January 27, MIA director J T Radhakrishna said in a release here.

The old terminal was not being used for passenger aircraft operations.

The Coast Guard, which now has airbases in Kochi and Panaji, is planning to park its two Dornier aircraft at the old terminal.

He said the aircraft and helicopter of the Coast Guard would use the air traffic services being provided by AAI at the airport for its operations.

On passenger traffic at MIA, Radhakrishna said in the first nine months of the current financial year, the airport handled 12.42 lakh passengers, including 7.39 lakh domestic and 5.02 lakh international passengers. The traffic had increased by 22 per cent compared to the corresponding period in the previous year.

(Reopens MDS1)



Alleging that it was an incomplete project, CPI(M) however hit out at the UDF government for conducting the trial landing at the Kannur International Airport, saying it was an election stunt.

"It is an election stunt by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. It will take one more year for the completion of the project," CPI(M) Kerala Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said in Kochi.

"The airport is being built for landing passenger aircraft and they arranged a seven-seater Indian Airforce Dornier aircraft to conduct trial run. They were making a mockery of people of the state by bringing such a small aircraft for landing. Such a small aircraft can land even in school grounds," he said.

He also alleged that crores of rupees were spent from the public exchequer for "staging this election stunt".
After its success on the issue of the Land acquisition bill, Congress is launching a national campaign to protect the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which it alleges is being diluted by Narendra Modi government.

Party Vice President Rahul Gandhi has also convened a meeting of the PCC chiefs here on February five on the issue of MGNREGA to review its implementation under the Modi dispensation amid complaints that proper attention was not being paid to it.

Gandhi would be visiting a village in Anantpur district of Telangana on February 2 to mark the tenth anniversary of launching the ambitious scheme there.

Former Union Minister and party spokesman Jairam Ramesh told reporters that a series of actions of the Modi Government are now "diluting and weakening" the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

Ramesh did not give the exact date of the launch of the national campaign but said it would be done before the commencement of budget session of Parliament next month.

He said that the actions which have raised concern include notification of rules under the colonial Indian Forest Act, guidelines for privatisation of forests, diversion of forest lands without the consent of the gram sabhas, massive plantation in tribal lands among many others.

"These moves have greatly affected the early gains made by the FRA in empowering the tribals and even halted the process of implementation in many states. All these exhibit an intolerance towards the democratic governance of forests in the country and the protective legislations (FRA, PESA) enacted after a long struggle by the tribal and forest dwellers," he said.

Insisting that the Forest Rights Act, 2006 is one of the outstanding achievements of the UPA Government, Ramesh said about 16.7 lakh forest dwellers, predominantly tribals, have received legal titles for the lands they have been residing on and cultivating for decades.

A former Environment Minister, Ramesh claimed that the decision taken by the central government and the Environment Ministry to open up 40 per cent of the forests in India for private sector has created huge uproar.

In August 2015, the Ministry issued guidelines for handing over degraded forests to private companies for afforestation, he said.

Menda Lekha a tribal village in Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra had become a national symbol of empowerment of the gram sabha when the UPA government handed over the control of bamboo from the forest department to the gram sabha in April 2011. Now the same village is protesting the take-over of its rights by the forest department once again, said Ramesh.
Construction workers would hold demonstration in front of the offices of the District Collector in the state on february 16 seeking job security and security for their lives and families involved risky works.

State President of the Construction workers' Association Ponkumar told newsmen here the previous government had arranged for proper relief/compensation for the wife/family members of the construction workers, registered with the Unorganised Sector Welfare board, if they died while receiving pension from the Board. However, the present government had withdrawn the scheme.

They had also banned intervention of union leaders in the functioning of the welfare board. This had led to piling up of applications for pension, wedding assistance,assistance in case of death.
A green body today launched a teachers' network to generate interests among students and teachers in environmental studies and come out with a better curriculum.

Around 100 teachers from universities and colleges from across India attended the Green Educators' Knowledge Conclave, organised by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

The teachers maintained that a lot of ground needed to be covered on environmental studies as a curriculum in educational institutions and rued lack of usable content to teach the students effectively.

"College students should monitor the environment - particularly air and water - and create maps which identify polluted areas. The teachers will play the role of multipliers and help in getting knowledge on environment across to more and more students," CSE director-general Sunita Narain said during the launch of Green Educators' Network.

Elaborating about the network, CSE said it is a nationwide movement to build a committed network of colleges, faculty and young minds to enable them to make informed choices on issues of environment and development of this country.

"We believe that the heart of learning is the connection between different stakeholders of the environment. Through this network, CSE will bring together these actors and the university community to interact with each other to foster a better understanding of the challenges that the environment faces today," said Ranjita Menon, director of CSE's Environment Education Unit.
The last thing I can remember, Crozier says is going into the back doors at Emory from the ambulance.

Crozier was in the ICU biocontainment unit for 40 days. His kidneys and lungs failed. He was put on dialysis and a ventilator and given experimental drugs. He even received plasma from another Ebola survivor.

If you had told me on day one that a week later I would develop what we call multi-system organ failure  brain failure, respiratory failure, kidney failure  and asked me to predict my survival, it probably would have been zero, Crozier said.

When, in October, he walked out of Emory University seemingly free of Ebola, it shocked the medical community.

But little did anyone know, the virus was still there  hiding in one of his eyes.

Soon after, Crozier developed severe inflammation in his left eye. In December they sampled the fluid inside of it, and found that the virus was there at very high levels.

The levels of Ebola in his eye werent just high  they were 10 times the level that was once in his blood. The virus even changed the color of his eye, from blue to green.

Doctors think that the active virus remained in Croziers eye, undetected because the human eye is a sanctuary site. In the human body, sites such as the eyes, semen and central nervous system are believed to be immune-privileged, protected from the collateral damage to bodily tissue that can occur when the immune system is fighting infection.

Previously, it was unknown whether the virus could hijack immune-privileged sites. Crozier described the discovery as a canary in a coal mine."

Doctors from the U.S. and Liberia are now undertaking a study, examining the long-term health effects of Ebola virus disease on 7,500 people, including 1,500 Ebola survivors and 6,000 of their close contacts. In an interview with America Tonight, NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci said that in addition to long term health effects, the study will look at symptoms of Ebola survivors and determine if any are "associated with a hiding of the virus in a very secluded place, like the eye or the semen or even in the central nervous system."
Italian anti-mafia police nabbed two fugitive mobster bosses today, after discovering them "living like animals" in a mountain hideout stocked with an arsenal of weapons.

Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, and Giuseppe Crea, 37, both high-ranking members of the powerful and immensely wealthy 'Ndrangheta organised crime group, are both on Italy's most dangerous fugitives list, police told AFP.

Ferraro, found guilty in absentia of a string of brutal murders and described as "extremely dangerous" by police, had been on the run for 18 years.

Crea, wanted for mafia association and extortion, disappeared 10 years ago.

Ferraro's clan is also believed to have been involved in the gunning down of rival boss Domenico Bonarrigo in a turf war.

Bonarrigo's men took their revenge by feeding the suspected gunman, Ferraro ally Francesco Raccosta, alive to pigs in 2013.

"They were living in a concrete bunker hidden by dense bushes and trees," said prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho, describing the hideout in the mountains near the town of Maropati in the Reggio Calabria region of southern Italy.

Maropati was founded in the 10th century after being used as a hideout by people fleeing Saracen pirates on the coast.

"They were living like animals, a cold life cut off from society" but with enough contact with the underworld to rule on gang matters when necessary, Cafiero De Raho told a press conference.

Police raiding the bunker after a year's surveillance of the area surprised the men while they were sleeping and discovered a submachine gun as well as a collection of rifles and pistols hung on the wall.

"Those of us who were there today (at the arrest) knew how difficult it was, but probably only fully realised afterwards how dangerous it was," police commissioner Raffaele Grassi said.

The men were "still actively managing the clan's affairs and had a military control over the territory," said Rosy Bindi, head of the parliamentary anti-mafia commission.

Crea is suspected of having gunned down Francesco Inzitari, the teenage son of a rival, in 2009.

The murder returned to the headlines in 2014 after Italy's L'Espresso magazine claimed that Inzitari's killer was known to a local priest who worked as a spy for the Vatican's secret services.

"Now that the territory has been freed of these two dangerous fugitives, I invite people to come forward and collaborate to throw light on their crimes, like the murder of Francesco Inzitari," the prosecutor said.
Dacoits allegedly looted Rs three crore worth jewels from an agricultural cooperative bank after murdering an official and injuring another person at a remote village in the district, police said today.

The gang struck at the bank during the closing hours last evening and also took away about Rs four lakh cash, police said the incident came to light only late last night.

A special team has been formed by District Superintendent of Police Abhinav Kumar to nab the culprits.

The dacoits had entered the Venmani Primary Agricultural Cooperative Bank at Keezhavenmani village under the guise of customers when bank secretary Kamaraj and a jewel appraiser were accounting the pledged jewels.

As the secretary resisted their attempt to grab the jewels, the dacoits strangled him to death with a nylon rope and hanged him from a ceiling fan.

They also attacked appraiser Ganapathy till he fainted and gagged his mouth with a tape and bound him to a chair.

Later they looted jewels worth Rs.Three crore and cash and left the bank with the booty, locking the door from outside, police said.

Ganapathy who regained consciousness later managed to remove the tape and shouted for help. A passerby, who heard the alarm and found the door locked, informed Police.

Police broke open the door and found the secretary murdered and released Ganapathy, who has been hospitalised.

Further investigation was on, police said.
Seventeen convicts have been released while the punishment of another 1,414, lodged in Tihar and Rohini jails has been reduced by the Delhi government, a senior prison official said today.

The remission in sentence of these convicts, which is over and above the remission already permissible under the provisions of the Jail Manual, was announced by the Delhi government on the occasion of Republic Day.

"The government remission is over and above the remission already permissible under the provisions contained in the Jail Manual," said Additional IG (Prisons) Mukesh Prasad.

The convicts, who were released as per the award of remission announced by Delhi government, were lodged in jails of Tihar prison complex.

Of the 1,414 convicts, who will get remission in sentence, 1,330 are lodged in Tihar jail while 84 in Rohini jail, they would be released as per their sentence term, Prasad said.
Soulful tunes and foot-tapping drumbeats rent the air today as curtains came down on the Republic Day celebrations with the Beating the Retreat ceremony, where bands from Delhi Police and Central Armed Police Forces performed for the first time.

The tri-services military band, Indian classical instruments Sinfonietta and Jazz Symphonic Orchestra added flavour to the ceremony which wound up with the poignant tunes of "Abide With Me".

This year, 15 military bands, 18 pipes and drums bands from regimental centres and battalions participated in the ceremony. Besides, one band each of Indian Navy and Indian Air Force was also part of the event.

The boisterous drumming by the Naval band coupled with unique moves and a cheerful flourish, evoked spontaneous cheers from the audience including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was seen tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair.

President Pranab Mukherjee, the chief guest at the function and the Supreme Commander of the armed forces, arrived in the historic six horses-driven carriage which was used by the Viceroy during the British rule.

His arrival was sounded by trumpeters, buglers and echo buglers followed by the national anthem.

The band members, in their red, olive green, orange and navy blue uniforms, played as the tunes blended into each other for an hour before the flag was lowered amid retreat by buglers.

As North Block, South Block, Parliament House and Rashtrapati Bhavan lit up in unison, the resplendent sight was greeted by a collective gasp from the audience.

Vice President Hamid Ansari accompanied by his wife Salma, Prime Minister Modi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Union Ministers Manohar Parrikar and Rajnath Singh, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and several other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

The band members, in their red, olive green, orange and



navy blue uniforms, played as the tunes blended into each other for an hour before the flag was lowered amid retreat by buglers.

As the North Block, South Block, Parliament House and Rashtrapati Bhavan lit up in unison, the resplendent sight was greeted by a collective gasp from the audience.

The carriage, driven by six horses was used by the Viceroy during the British rule.

After the event, Prime Minister Modi took a walk around the Vijay Chowk and greeted crowd on the occasion, which reciprocated with loud cheers.

The State Police and Central Armed Police Forces band also regaled the crowd with their select renditions.

Amid the strains of 'Sare Jahan Se Achha' by the Buglers, the ceremony came to a dazzling end.
Haryana minister O P Dhankar today hailed the election of over 40 per cent of women candidates to various posts in the recent panchayat polls, saying the state government's decision to field people with clean image and educated women paid dividends.

The Development and Panchayat Minister said 41 per cent of women candidates were elected to the post of Sarpanch, 42 per cent to Member Panchayat Samiti and 43 per cent to Member Zila Parishad.

Crediting the ambitious 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, for changing the public mindset, he said that the voters have chosen social change in the fifth general elections to Panchayati Raj institutions.

Dhankar said their victory was the result of public support and the state government's decision to amend election rules and field people with clean image and educated women.

More than 11 per cent of candidates were graduates, 13 per cent had cleared Class XII examinations, 59 per cent had cleared Class X examinations and 17 per cent had studied up to Class VIII, he said.

He said more than 56 per cent candidates were elected unanimously during polls.

"These included two elected to the post of Member Zila Parishad, 118 to Member Panchayat Samiti, 274 to Sarpanch and 38,555 to the post of Panch," he said.

Dhankar said as per the earlier announcement of the state government, Rs 210 crore would be awarded to panchayats which have been elected unanimously.

He said a survey would be conducted of about 2,000 posts where no seats have been filled due to some reason and election would be conducted in these places within the next six months.

The details of swearing in programme for the new members of Panchayati Raj Institutions in Haryana would be decided after the declaration of completion of the election process by the Haryana State Election Commissioner, he said.

Dhankar also said the report of special 'girdawari'



conducted to assess the damage caused to cotton and other Kharif crops due to whitefly has been received.

The compensation to farmers would be distributed on priority basis after the release of notification of completion of Panchayati Raj elections by the State Election Commission, he added.

He said a new scheme namely 'Pradhan Mantri Krishi Bima Yojana' has been announced by the Centre under which crops, in the event of their not being sown, and crops lying in agricultural fields after 14 days of their harvesting, would be covered.

In case of Kharif and Rabi crops, the farmer will have to pay only 1.5 and two per cent respectively whereas the remaining amount would be paid by the state government and the Centre.

To a question, Dhankar said the biggest mandi for fruits and vegetables is being set up at Ganaur in district Sonepat.

For this, agreements and MoU have been signed with China and France.

To a query on Sutlej Yamuna Link canal and Hansi Butana canal issue, Dhankar said that that he along with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had met Union Minister Uma Bharti and "expect to get their share of water".
The decision to open the Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya was not made by late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi but based on a Court order, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh said here today, disagreeing with President Pranab Mukherjee's "error of judgement" statement in his memoir.

"Opening of the gate was not done by Rajiv Gandhi. It was a decision of the court. Laying the foundation stone (shilanyas at a temple site) may be an error of judgement (by Rajiv Gandhi). Decision to open the gate was not that of Mr Rajiv Gandhi's," he told PTI here in an interview.

Mukherjee has said in his memoir that the opening of the site was an "error of judgement" by Rajiv Gandhi and the demolition of Babri Masjid an act of "absolute perfidy" that destroyed India's image.

Singh, a former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, however, agreed that the demolition was the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's "biggest failure".

"I totally agree with it", he said.

"The opening of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple site on February 1, 1986 was perhaps another error of judgement. People felt these actions could have been avoided," the President said in the book titled "The Turbulent Years: 1980-96", released by Vice President Hamir Ansari yesterday.

"The demolition of Babri Masjid was an act of absolute perfidy...It was the senseless, wanton destruction of a religious structure, purely to serve political ends. It deeply wounded the sentiments of the Muslim community in India and abroad. It destroyed India's image as a tolerant, pluralistic nation," the President says.

Asked as to when Rahul Gandhi would become Congress President, Singh said, "this is a million dollar question that's being asked for quite some time. Hopefully it should happen this year".

On whether he personally want to see Rahul at the helm early, he said: "Whatever this...I would say this kind of situation of indecisiveness should not be there".

As for whether the Congress would aggressively take up the issues of Arunachal Pradesh and the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula here in the coming budget session of Parliament, Singh said, "yes" and added that the party's core group would decide on the strategy to be adopted in Parliament.

"The way they (NDA government) have gone about in



Arunachal Pradesh...It's clearly biased way of functioning," Singh said.

"The Governor mentioning that one cow slaughter is an issue is absolutely ridiculous. We have challenged it in the Supreme Court (challenging the promulgation of President's Rule). We will fight it out".

On Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide, Singh said it "reflects the bias of BJP because BJP and RSS are basically upper caste domination group which believes in the theory of 'Manu'. I think this reflected their attitude in this case."



Singh, who was here to campaign for Congress candidates in the February two elections to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), noted that the party did not win a single Assembly or Lok Sabha seat in Hyderabad in the last general elections in 2014.

"So, we are working on it. We have put up as many candidates as possible. And also in the earlier GHMC election, Congress and MIM were together. This time, we are confronting them (MIM) in the Old City. These are the things. So, I am quite hopeful," he said on the party's prospects.
Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) chief Manjit Singh GK has protested the absence of a Sikh regiment contingent in this year's Republic Day parade and termed it as "unfortunate".

In a letter to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, the DSGMC chief said the Sikh regiment has a glorious history and Sikh sentiments are attached to the regiment and thus should not have been "excluded" from the R-Day parade.

He said Indian Army cannot be divided on religious basis, since the Sikhs' identity is connected to the regiment which has a glorious history.

Criticizing the absence of Sikh regiment, he said that despite the three wings of Defense Services -Army, Air Force and Navy having 30 percent Sikh officers, none of the contingents taking part in the Republic Day parade was led by any Sikh officer.

The DSGMC President said he was not raising the issue of Sikh regiment only because of their identity "but because of its magnificent past, its contribution in protecting borders of the country and matchless sacrifices towards the nation and the fact can't be ignored that it is the most decorated regiments in the Indian Army".

GK said that Sikh regiment fought 1894-95 war with Afgans, fought a historic war in 1897 called the War of Saragarhi, World War I and II, Operation Polo of 1948, War with China in 1962, wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 and Kargil war in 1999 with utmost courage.

"Sikh regiment has got 1652 medals which includes 73 war medals, two Param Vir Chakras, 14 Mahavir Chakras, 5 Kirti Chakras, 2 Ashok Chakras, 68 Vir Chakras, 14 Victoria Crosses and was given 21 Indian order of merit awards for War of Saragarhi," he wrote to the Defence Minister in his letter.
A sick man, apparently in his 60s, died in the pilgrim town of Shirdi after he was taken to a hospital in a municipal council's waste collection van prompting demands of resignation of the state Health Minister.

Visuals of civic workers bundling off the man in the dumper truck was aired by some Marathi TV channels today sparking an outrage.

In the video clip, the driver of the vehicle is asked if he is aware as to what is being hauled into the truck. "A man," is all he responds and fends off further queries.

The man, who had severe breathing problems and could barely talk, passed away, shortly after he was taken by the truck to a hospital in Shirdi, an official of the Shirdi municipal council said.

"Sawant (Health Minister Deepak Sawant) should resign immediately. Despite the 108 ambulance service in operation, it's shameful that the old man was carted off in a kachra gadi (garbage van)," NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said here.

"This is a conspiracy to revive Shiv Sena's ambulance service 'business' by stopping 108 service," he claimed.

Leader of Opposition Radhakrisha Vikhe Patil, who hails from Ahmednagar district where Shirdi is located, said he has asked the local SDO to probe the incident.

"It was wrong on the part of the Shirdi municipal council to indulge in such inhuman behaviour," the Congress leader said.
Facing a US-led push for tough United Nations sanctions over its latest nuclear test, North Korea appeared to be looking for Security Council allies today, sending top diplomats to Moscow and possibly Beijing.

China and Russia, both veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, have helped temper the international reaction to North Korean provocations in the past.

Although the patience of both has been tested to its limits by North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, neither wants to see the chaotic collapse of a nuclear-armed state on its border.

The North's official KCNA agency said a delegation led by Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-Guk had departed for Russia today.

No details were given of the itinerary, but the visit comes as Washington is seeking to build a regional and international consensus on the need for harsh sanctions after the North carried out its fourth nuclear test earlier this month.

Meanwhile, South Korea's Yonhap agency, citing unidentified sources, said a top North Korean foreign ministry official had been spotted arriving at Beijing's international airport.

The official, Choi Son-Hui, was a former deputy head of delegation to the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

There was no information on Choi's itinerary and it was not immediately clear if she was planning to visit China or transit to a third country.
European police forces today launched a "most wanted" website of 45 notorious criminal suspects, including Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks.

"The website will share information on high-profile internationally-wanted criminals, convicted of - or suspected of having committed - serious crimes or terrorist acts in Europe," Europol said.

"This is the first initiative on a pan-European level to jointly present a most wanted list on a common platform," the European police agency added in a statement.

People are encouraged to provide tip-offs - anonymously if they want - at www.Eumostwanted.Com.

The site's launch comes after sharp criticism of the coordination between European authorities in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Despite some of the assailants being sought by police they managed to cross into France unnoticed. Abdeslam fled back across the border to Belgium hours after the mass killings, after passing through a police checkpoint.

Europol said the website aimed "at increasing security" across the European Union by having the public "help police trace Europe's most wanted fugitives".

Each of the 28 EU members will select a number of key fugitives for the list, which will be regularly updated, the agency added.

A picture of each of the suspects is prominently displayed, along with a description of the allegations against them and a phone number of the police force hunting for them.

Abdeslam, 26, is "responsible for the terrorist attacks that took place in November 2015 in France, and more precisely in Paris," the website says.

He is described as a "very dangerous, armed individual."



A total of 130 people died in the November 13 attacks on the French capital and an international manhunt is underway for Abdeslam.

One woman, Maria Cecilia Kettunen, 29, from Finland is on the list, accused of "aggravated fraud of significant amount of money" without further details.

Another fugitive is Ernesto Fazzalari, 45, wanted by the Italian police as a "key figure of a mafia clan dubbed Avignone-Zagari-Viola" which is "at war with another clan".

Described as a "ruthless killer," he is accused of three murders.

Some of the unresolved crimes stretch back years. Romanian "yoga teacher and spiritual mentor" Gregorian Bivolaru, 63, is wanted for exploiting children and child pornography between 2002 and 2004.

Available in 17 languages, the website was launched by ENFAST1, a Europe-wide police network specialised in hunting down and arresting fugitives with Europol's help.
At a time when India's exports are declining, exporters should explore the CIS markets, particularly Russia to boost shipments, industry chamber PHDCCI said today.

"There is enough scope to enhance our exports towards CIS countries of which Russia is a good opportunity at this juncture," PHD Chamber President Mahesh Gupta said in a statement here.

He said that though India and Russia have eventually given new dimensions to bilateral relations in the development of defence and energy, the current level of bilateral trade at around USD 6 billion is not consistent with the potential trade trajectory.

"Even though the bilateral relations between the two nations have widened their basket, yet India is not among Russia's key trade partners," he said.

According to the chamber, India's share in Russia's total trade is 1.2 per cent as compared with 49 per cent of EU. Russia's share in India's trade is meager 0.8 per cent as compared with 12 per cent of EU.

"There is an enormous untapped potential in bilateral trade between the two nations and especially in the food items - meat, fruits, vegetables, dairy products and tea among others," he added.

Further India also has huge potential to enhance its exports of tea in Russia where already it has significant presence.
Chairman of National Fish Workers Forum (NFF) M Ilango today urged External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to ensure thata permanent solution was evolved during her forthcoming visit to Sri Lanka to end woes of Indian fishermen.

Ilango said in a release today that it was hoped by fishermen of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry when the NDA formed the government at the Centre in 214 that they would get a positive development and that they would face no hardships after the NDA came to power.

He said that during the previous Congress led UPA rule at the Centre talks were held and release of incarcerated fishermen of Tamilnadu also followed due to steps taken by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

He appealed to the Minister to make use of her forthcoming visit to Colombo on February 5 to ensure that a permanent solution was evolved through dialogues with the Sri Lankan government to end the woes of the fishermen of Tamilnadu and Puducherry who were facing hardships due to their arrest by Sri Lankan navy for alleged trespass into the territorial waters of island republic.
The historic Presidential buggy today made a comeback, after a year's break, with President Pranab Mukherjee arriving in it to attend the Beating the Retreat ceremony.

Three decades after its discontinuation at public functions due to security reasons, the buggy was used at the ceremony in 2014. However, last year the President had arrived in his limousine.

Mukherjee was cheered as the wheels of the open gold-plated carriage rolled down the Raisina hill, making its way past hundreds of spectators who gathered to witness the colourful event.

Mukherjee, the chief guest of the function and the Supreme Commander of the armed forces, reciprocated the greetings with his customary wave at the audience.

He was received by Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chiefs of the three forces.

The armoured Limousine, followed the buggy to its path to Vijay Chowk from Rashtrapati Bhavan accompanied by the President's Bodyguards, a regiment with horses carrying out ceremonial duties for the President.

The six-horse driven carriage was used by the Viceroy during the British rule. After Independence, it has remained with the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The Beating the Retreat ceremony which takes place on Vijay Chowk on Rajpath on January 29, marks the end of Republic Day celebrations.

Almost 32 years ago, former President late Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed had used the buggy to reach the exit gate of Rashtrapati Bhavan from where he used to travel in car to attend the ceremony.

An open horse-driven buggy was seen as a security threat by security agencies then, following which the traditional carriage was replaced by bullet-proof cars.
Four policemen have been killed by suspected Taliban militants in the restive Balochistan's capital Quetta in Pakistan, police said.

The armed militants riding motorcycles opened fire on a police mobile van yesterday, killing two policemen on the spot and injuring two before fleeing from the scene, they said.

A senior official said the two injured policemen were rushed to the civil hospital but succumbed to their injuries.

The Tehreek-i-Taliban later claimed the responsibility of the attack in an e-mail sent to the media.

Security officials reached the spot soon after the attack and an investigation has been launched into it.

The frequency of targeted attacks on policemen has increased in the troubled province of Baluchistan. Earlier this month a suicide bomber blew himself outside a polio centre in Quetta's satellite town area, killing 15 people, including 12 policemen.
Germany's governing coalition has reached a deal to end the prolonged squabbling over measures to streamline its handling of the migrant influx, a result that means some Syrians may face a longer wait to bring relatives to Germany.

The agreement foresees that refugees who didn't face "immediate personal persecution" won't be allowed to bring relatives to join them for two years, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said yesterday after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavaria's governor, Horst Seehofer.

The coalition also plans to declare Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia safe countries of origin, Gabriel said, making it easier to send migrants back to those countries. Germany did the same last year for several Balkan nations whose citizens are barely ever granted asylum.

The package of measures, which was first tentatively agreed in early November, also foresees using special centers to quickly progress migrants who have little realistic chance of winning asylum. It has been held up since then as Merkel's and Seehofer's conservative parties squabbled with Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats over who should initially be blocked from bringing relatives to Germany.

The Social Democrats had taken the November agreement to mean that only a few people who receive "subsidiary protection" a status that falls short of formal asylum would face a two-year wait to be able to have relatives join them.

But the conservatives then argued that many Syrians some of whom came to Germany from neighboring countries rather than directly from Syria should get that status. Germany resumed closer checks of Syrians' cases at the beginning of the year.

Germany registered nearly 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers last year, among them nearly 430,000 Syrians. It is keen to ensure that this year's numbers are lower.

Gabriel said that about 20% of Syrians whose asylum applications have yet to be processed could be given "subsidiary protection" status, based on past experience.

But in future, still-to-be-negotiated quotas for bringing in refugees from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, family members of people already in Germany including those granted that status will be given priority, he added.

The deal still needs Cabinet and parliamentary approval. German officials also have long stressed the importance of making sure that migrants who don't gain asylum leave the country. Merkel said later yesterday that Germany's federal and state governments will discuss "how we can conduct returns better and faster."



Merkel said her government will work "country by country" with migrants' countries of origin to move the issue forward. "We want those with prospects of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return," she said.
National reinsurer GIC Re will start operations in China within the next two-three months as it eyes a place among the top 10 global reinsurers.

"We will be opening our branch office in China within the next 2-3 months," Alice Vaidyan , the newly appointed chairperson and managing director of GIC Re, told reporters on the sidelines of an insurance summit here today.

India's sole reinsurer is currently placed 14th in global rankings.

Earlier, Vaidyan had told PTI she wants to make GIC Re figure among the top 10 global reinsurers.

The company is also planning to set up a Protection and Indemnity (P&I) Club in association with all the four state-run general insurers in the country.

"We have plans to set up a P&I Club here in association with all the four state-run non-life insurance companies. The idea is to provide insurance cover to shipping companies in the country," she said.

P&I Clubs are formed globally to protect their members against large marine insurance claims which would be difficult to handle individually.

GIC Re has dropped its plan to acquire a company in UK, Vaidyan said.

"Though we have dropped our plan to acquire a company at Lloyd's market in London, we will be developing our own syndicate over there in future," she added.
The BJP-led government in Goa today disallowed use of its premises for the scheduled release of a book on Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse on occasion of the former's death anniversary tomorrow amid protest by a local political outfit and to possibly avoid a potential controversy.

However, Anup Sardesai, the writer of the book titled 'Nathuram Godse - The Story of an Assassin', said he would go ahead with its release at a different venue.

In a late evening communication to the state-run Ravindra Bhavan in Margao, the venue of the release, South District Collector Pramod Shinde asked its management not to allow release of the book.

Sardesai said, "I received an e-mail from Ravindra Bhavan stating that the venue will not be allowed to be used for the release of the book due to unavoidable circumstances".

He said he would proceed with the release at a different venue.

"I will inform about the venue to my audience. I have also informed police about the new venue," Sardesai added.

Earlier in the day, 'Goa Forward', launched by former state election commissioner Prabhkar Timble recently, opposed letting of the government premises for the release of the book which it termed as an "unpatriotic cause".

Interestingly, BJP leader Damodar Naik, chairman of Ravindra Bhavan, was supposed to release the book.

Naik had said that the venue was booked through a normal procedure and there was no ulterior motive behind holding the function.

"We will hold 'satyagraha' in front of Ravindra Bhavan if the government allows the function to happen," Goa Forward secretary Mohandas Lolienkar told PTI.

He also claimed that the protest has been supported by various sections of people including independent legislator Vijai Sardesai.

Lolienkar had threatened to block all entrances of Ravindra Bhavan even as the party submitted a memorandum to South Goa district collector requesting cancellation of the function.

"Though the event appears innocuous, it is timed for January 30 which is the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi," Fatorda legislator Vijai Sardesai said.

He termed the function as a "veiled celebration of a murder" and a deliberate design to disturb peace and harmony and to provoke and incite people by insulting the memory of Mahatma Gandhi.

Meanwhile, author of the book said he was caught up in a political storm and rivalry between two political parties.
The government has awarded contracts for 2,816 km road projects in states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Bihar under its ambitious Bharatmala project to link coastal and border areas.

"National Highways Authority was entrusted with the task to prepare project reports for 3,543 km of network. The government has already awarded 2,816 km out of this," a top official told PTI.

The projects have mainly been awarded in states like Bihar, Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Odisha.

"The left over stretch mainly relates to Tamil Nadu where state Government has already initiated process for the development at their own," the official said.

The government is planning to construct 7,000 km of new national highways by including coastal and border areas under the Bharatmala Project.

"The Ministry has taken up detailed review of national highways network with a view to improve connectivity in border areas, including coastal boundary and connectivity covering development of about 7,000 km of new national highway under the Bharatmala Pariyojna in consultation with state governments," Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had said last month.

The government has said that initially Rs 50,000 crore would be spent on the project.
The government has set up six focus incubation centres at a cost of Rs 17.4 crore to help budding entrepreneurs develop innovative technical textile products and boost manufacturing in the sector, Textiles Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar said on Friday.

Technical textiles can play an important role in the nation's social and economic fronts, he added.

The ministry "has set up six focus incubation centres at a cost of Rs 17.4 crore.These centres would help budding entrepreneurs build innovative technical textile products in a 'plug and play' model, and would help promote 'Make in India' in textiles," he said here at the curtain raiser event of Technotex 2016.

The three-day event, which will start from April 21 in Mumbai, is aimed at making India a manufacturing hub in the area of technical textiles.

The 5th International Exhibition & Conference on Technical Textiles recognizes the immense potential of technical textiles and its increasingly diverse and innovative applications.

Talking about the sector, the Minister said a Rs 427 crore scheme was launched in March last year by the government to promote usage of geotechnical textiles in the north eastern region of the country.

The scheme provides support for use of geotextiles in road construction, slope stabilization and water reservoirs, an official statement quoting the minister said.

Gangwar also said that 44 demonstration centers at a total cost of Rs 8.17 crore have been approved to promote agrotextiles in the region.

Besides, a pilot scheme has been approved to promote agrotextiles in other parts of the country, he said, adding that the Technology Mission on Technical Textiles has been extended for two years -- 2015-2016 and 2016-2017.

The Minister said eight centres of excellence have been set up under the scheme, where facilities for testing, R&D and skill development in technical textiles are being set up.

A capital subsidy of 15 per cent has been provided for technical textile machinery under the amended TUFS scheme, he added.

Technotex, organized by Ministry of Textiles in association with Ficci, is a flagship event comprising an international exhibition, conference, and seminars.

Over 200 exhibitors are expected to participate in the exhibition and international conference Technotex India.

Exhibitors from countries like Korea, Switzerland, Japan, the US, Germany and UK would attend the event.
Clashing groups hurled bombs at several villages in Nanoor area of Birbhum district last midnight.

A senior police officer said the clashes started at Karimpur locality and spread to Nahina, Bahiri, Barshimulia, Sultanpur, Papuri pockets under the police station area last midnight.

Vehicles were damaged and a thatched house was set on fire but there was no report of any injury or death, the officer said.

Local people also claimed shots were fired from guns but there was no police confirmation about bullet exchange.

A big force went to the area after 9 am and the situation brought under control.

District Trinamool Congress leaders said the opposition parties were behind the incident and there was no TMC factional feud in the area.

However, some locals claimed the clashes were between rival two TMC groups to have control of the area.

SP Mukesh Kumar said "It was a clash between two groups of miscreants who threw bombs at each other. A big force has been deployed.
Likening India to a "big company" in which it is "pretty hard to set policy" and to get the same implemented, global healthcare major GSK CEO Andrew Witty today called for simplification of the process so that "millions follow it in a straight forward way".

Speaking at the ET Global Business Summit here, Witty also raked up the issue of intellectual property protection in India and asked the country to "think through" on how it can take the global lead in striking balance between innovation and access.

When asked as a global investor what more would he like to see happen on the ground in terms of ease of doing business, Witty said, "India has many of the same challenges as a company. Sometimes it is very hard to set strategy, it feels pretty hard to set policy, its really hard to get the implementation. And the bigger your company the more complex the system and harder it gets."



Recollecting lessons he learnt after running "such a big company" of initially over complicating every process and ending up going back to streamline and simplify the process, he said: "I would humbly suggest that in context of regulation it requires to take inspiration from that comment."



He said regulation globally has become like a Christmas tree, "more complex and more decorative"



"I think that in India there is great opportunity that to think what are the challenges of making sure hundred and millions of people implement the regulation and follow it in a straight forward way," Witty said.

On the issue of IP, he said for many years India has been "for good or bad, correctly or incorrectly associated with comments about India's commitment to intellectual property" protection.

The whole world is trying to solve the problem of how do to encourage innovation and at the same time bring the benefits of innovation to billions of population across the globe, he added.

"I would really ask India to think through how we can help the rest of the world strike a balance, not choice, between innovation and access," Witty said.

He cited the experience of his own company, which sells one-third of all its global products in India and yet the country accounts for only one per cent of its revenue, as an example of striking a balance between innovation and access.

"If there are any people in the world who can solve that problem, surely it is the Indian population," he said adding "the home of innovation and invention would surely want to protect and encourage" innovation, while at the same time help it accessible to the rest of population.
Veteran actors Harrison Ford and Anthony Hopkins are all set to star in espionage thriller "Official Secrets."



They will be joined by Paul Bettany, Natalie Dormer and Martin Freeman, reported Variety.

The film centres on a young British intelligence officer who became famous when leaking information to the press, alleging that the NSA was engaging in illegal activities in order to pressure the UN Security Council to approve a resolution of war against Iraq in 2003.

The move is based on the book, "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion."



Justin Chadwick is attached to direct the project from an adapted script by Sara and Gregory Bernstein.

The principal photography is slated to begin in May in the UK.
Haryana today said it will join the online national agriculture market platform to ensure farmers can get better returns by selling their produce in other states.

In the first phase, it plans to link 54 'mandis' with the national agriculture market.

"We will be linking our 54 mandis out of 108 with national agriculture market in the first phase. With this, our farmers will get market in other states as well," Haryana Agriculture Minister O P Dhankar told reporters here.

He noted that at present, farmers have limited market opportunities to sell their produce.

Citing an example, the minister said, "At present, a cotton farmer in Sirsa will have to either sell his produce in the local mandi or take it back home if low price is offered."



"With linking of mandis with national agriculture market, a trader in Ambala or any other place can also buy his crop. With this move, farmers will be get good and competitive market and it will not be limited to one market. There will be e-trading.

"In Sikkim recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting of all state agriculture ministers and discussed national agriculture market," he said, adding that Karnataka was the first state which opted for the initiative.

The national agriculture market will create a unified market through the common e-platform and provide better price to farmers, improve supply chain and reduce wastages.

On the issue of implementation of recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission, the minister said that the state was already implementing several of its recommendations.

"The commission had recommended Rs 10,000 per acre compensation for crop loss and in Haryana we are giving Rs 12,000 per acre.

"Swaminathan Commission had suggested crop insurance. We are going to implement recently launched national crop insurance from Kharif season.

"It had suggested improvement in irrigation. We are taking steps in this regard. We are starting 14 irrigation projects in collaboration with Israel on pilot basis to ensure each field gets water. We are also strengthening our canal system," he said.

On the commission's recommendation of giving 50 per cent



profits to farmers, Dhankar said that it will be implemented step by step.

"At present, 20 per cent profit is being given over and above the MSP of wheat and paddy. But it (50 per cent) cannot be implemented in one go. The Centre has also pointed out one problem in this regard. It fears that it could lead to monocropping, which means production of few crops will go up. Until we start purchasing all crops, we cannot get out of monocropping. It can be implemented step by step," he said.

Regarding the issue of promoting horticulture, he said the state government will open centres of excellence in each district to promote horticulture and floriculture.

"We are in talks with Vietnam and Israel for the centres of excellence. We also want to promote ornamental fishing," he said.

Dhankar, who also holds the portfolios of irrigation, animal husbandry and fisheries, said that Haryana was supplying water to Delhi as per its requirement.

"But our issue with Delhi is that the water which we get from Delhi is untreated and we have taken up the matter with Kejriwal government and Union Minister Uma Bharti. Untreated water was being supplied to Mewat, Palwal and Faridabad," he said.

On the issue of compensation to cotton growers, he said once the election code of conduct is withdrawn, the state will start distributing compensation to growers who faced crop loss due to whitefly attack last year.
The Madras High Court bench here today ordered the Home Secretary and the ADGP (Prisons) to file an Action Taken Report (ATR) within four weeks on a PIL seeking to appoint trained and skilled-non official members to jails as per Tamil Nadu Prison Rules for visiting the prisons and addressing the grievance of prisoners.

Justices V Ramasubramanian and N Kirubakaran directed the officials to find out if the rules had been implemented and file an Action Taken Report.

The petitioner Henry Tiphange, Executive Director of People's Watch an NGO, submitted that as per rules and various guidelines and judgements issued by the Human Rights Commission and courts, non-official members should be appointed and they should visit the jail and inspect the quality of food, drinking water, clothing and sanitation.

But in Tamil Nadu, prisons had been remained as closed institutions. The physical structure of the prison and archaic rules of management of these punitive institutions endowed them with a cover of obscurity in which fundamental human rights could be unofficially violated and officially denied.

The prison visiting system was the only mechanism where people from outside community could enter the prison and monitor the human rights situation there, the judges said.

There are nine central prisons, three special prisons for women, 40 borstal school including borstal school for youngsters, 89 sub-jails including two special sub-jails in the state.

The IG of prisons, in consultation with the District Collector, should recommend members of the advisory board and non-official members should be appointed and gazette notification made. But they were not being appointed in the state, the petitioner contended.

He said that in 2014 a daily reported that 69 inmates died in prisons in a year. The government had admitted that 12 persons died in Madurai Central prison followed by 11 in Central prison II and Puzhal jail in Chennai.

If trained non-official members were appointed, the prisoners condition would have improved and they would not have died, he said.
Acting on a public interest litigation, the Bombay High Court today directed Additional Director General of Prisons to file an affidavit by February 11, giving data about children of women prisoners.

The HC wanted to know how many such children are living without the support of parents and how are they are brought up and under what circumstances during the period when their mothers are confined to jails.

A bench headed by Justice V M Kanade also asked the Government to file reply to suggestions made by Prayas, an organisation which works for the rehabilitation of children of women prisoners.

The matter arose out of a report filed in 2014 by the Project Director of Prayas Vijay Raghavan on the children of women prisoners to Justice V M Kanade who was the Chairperson of Juvenile Justice Committee of the Bombay High court.

Raghavan is also a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences here.

Justice Kanade converted this report suo motu into a PIL which is being heard since then.

The report said that while women serve their sentence in prison, their children outside are neglected and often turn into school drop outs. Children above six years whose mothers are sent to jails are deprived of education, it further said.

The report suggested that the prison authorities should allow mulakat (meeting) of such children with their mothers in prison at regular intervals. Besides, social workers should be appointed to help in improving children-parent relationship.

The report also suggested that women are produced before a court after their arrest in a case, the concerned Magistrate or Judge should ask them about their children and ensure that they are looked after well.

In case the children of women prisoners are not looked after by their families, then the police should produce them before the child welfare committee of the state government.

The report has also suggested that financial assistance should be given to such children by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare.

Raghavan, the project director of Prayas, has been appointed as amicus curiae (friend of the court) to assist in this matter.
For the first time after more than a week of turmoil over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, academic activities today resumed in the Hyderabad Central University even as protests by students in support of their demands, continued.

Academic and administrative activities had come to a stand-still in HCU from January 18, a day after Rohith's suicide, with agitating students spearheading protests seeking justice for him.

"All the departments, schools and centres are open today, and classes were conducted in some of the departments. Research labs are almost open," HCU Registrar M Sudhakar said.

Joining the ongoing stir by agitating students, the SC/ST Employees Welfare Association of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) today organised a 'protest day'.

The 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' this morning also continued their relay hunger strike, which they had started yesterday.

The members of the Forum have written to President Pranab Mukherjee, visitor of the university, regarding their demand for removal of Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, who has gone on indefinite leave, and seeking that acting VC Vipin Srivastava should step down from the post, a representative of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice said.

The letter was signed by 93 "concerned teachers".

Recalling that Srivastava was allegedly involved in the suicide of a student Senthil Kumar in 2008, a Forum spokesperson claimed that the interim Vice Chancellor did not get a clean chit in the issue.

A group of students are also slated to start an indefinite fast in support of their demands today.

The JAC has called for mass hunger strike in universities across the country to express solidarity with the agitation on the HCU campus. Agitating students today also began a campaign of sending post-cards to the President to highlight the issue.

Two batches of students had earlier held indefinite fast at the protest site in HCU. However, they were shifted to hospitals following concerns over their health condition.

The JAC plans to undertake a visit to Delhi in the



first week of February to meet the President to press for their demands, their representative said.

The JAC's main demands include bringing in a 'Rohith Act' to prevent any injustice to the students of marginalised sections in university, and forming a committee to look into the issues of alleged caste and academic biases in the varsities in the last 20 years in the country.

The agitating students, meanwhile, held a protest at the administrative block of the university today demanding that Srivastava step down.

Several members of the non-teaching staff told Srivastava, who came to the building, that they were not able to work due to closure of offices and were returning home after coming to the university everyday.

The non-teaching staff said that they want to attend to their regular work, and that certain demands of the protesting students, like removal of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, were beyond the purview of the VC.

Srivastava, who went back from the administrative building following protest by the students, told the non-teaching staff that he would make efforts to resume office work soon, as per the non-teaching employees.
In an unhinged personal attack, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina dug up the extra-marital trysts of Hillary Cinton's husband and said the Democratic frontrunner cannot become the US president as she continues to lie to the American people.

"Hillary Clinton will do anything to gain and hang on to power, anything," corporate leader-turned politician Fiorina said during the GOP undercard presidential debate in Iowa.

"Listen, if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago," the 61-year-old said.

Clinton, 68, is eyeing to become the first woman president of the US and is likely to win Democratic Party nomination. A former First Lady, Clinton served as the Secretary of State in the first term of the Barack Obama administration.

Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard CEO who is struggling to gain traction before voters head to the caucuses, unleashed a series of crowd-pleasing insults at Clinton and said Clinton continues to lie to the American people.

"It's called the Clinton way. Both Bill and Hillary practice it, the Clinton way. Say whatever you have to say, do whatever you have to say. Lie as long as you can get away with it. Hillary Clinton cannot be the president of the US," she said.

During the debate, Fiorina lashed out at Clinton on the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya, when militants attacked the US diplomatic compound, killing Ambassador J Christopher Stevens.

"When terrorists purposefully attack an American embassy and kill four Americans, including an ambassador, and the next morning you get up and you lie about a videotape that doesn't represent our values, instead of saying the United States of America was purposefully attacked by terrorists, and we will seek retribution, then you are saying to every adversary and every adversary and every terrorist organisation on the planet, it's open season," the ex-technology executive said.

"That, Mrs Clinton, is what difference it makes," Fiorina said.

While low on her poll numbers, Fiorina said that she can successfully take on Clinton during the presidential election.

"So, here's the deal. Hillary Clinton has been climbing the ladder to try and get power and here now she is trying for the White House. She is probably more qualified for the big house, honestly," Fiorina said.

"She has escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo, perhaps Sean Penn should interview her," she said adding that Clinton needs to be prosecuted.

"While Mrs Clinton has flown hundreds of thousands of world around the global, I have too..And I know flying is an activity not an accomplishment. While I know that she has held many positions and many titles she has not accomplished much of anything in her life. She has gotten every single foreign policy challenge wrong," Fiorina said.
Honda today reported a fall in nine-month operating profit due to "quality-related" costs, seen as linked to an exploding airbag crisis at parts supplier Takata, but said net profit rose.

Net profit in the nine months through December rose 2.4 percent to 437.9 billion yen (USD 3.62 billion), as sales jumped 11.3 percent to 10.94 trillion yen, the company said in a statement.

But operating profit fell 3.0 percent to 567.2 billion yen, "due to an increase in sales costs, including quality-related ones", Honda said, trimming its full-year sales forecast to 14.55 trillion yen from the previous 14.60 trillion yen.

Despite growth in sales, "the negative impact of US dollar valuations against other currencies" also led to the weak operating profit, Honda said.

For the full-year to March, the maker of the Civic sedan kept forecasts for net profit and operating profit at 525 billion yen, up 3.1 per cent year-on-year, and 685 billion yen, up 2.1 percent compared to the previous year, respectively.

"Honda is recovering steadily," Shigeru Matsumura, analyst at SMBC Friend Research Center, told AFP ahead of the carmaker's latest earnings report.

"We assess that Honda is turning the corner from the negative impact of the airbag accidents and is now able to concentrate on its primary sales operation."



Sales in Japan, however, have been sluggish after a sales tax rise last year dented consumer spending and as younger urban residents delay buying vehicles.

In June, Honda revised down its annual earnings for the previous fiscal year, blaming the expanding recalls of faulty airbags made by embattled supplier Takata, which have been linked to 10 deaths and scores of injuries.

Of the dozen global automakers affected by the airbag crisis, Honda has been the hardest hit, with the company recalling more than 24 million vehicles to fix the defect.

Honda's earnings announcement came as reports said Takata's president, Shigehisa Takada, was set to resign on Friday over the crisis, which the company later denied in a statement.

The reports "are not what we have announced, and at this point he has no intention of resigning," the statement said.

In the same statement, Takata said that it held a meeting today to explain its current situation to automakers, though refrained from disclosing details of the discussions.

The costs of millions of recalls will likely surpass 500 billion yen, and Japanese automakers are planning to demand that Takata cover the cost once they determine the cause of the defect, the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun said in a report today.
At least 26 people were today rescued by GRP personnel at Mughalsarai railway station while being "illegally" taken to Delhi from Jharkhand.

"25 girls and a boy being illegally taken to New Delhi by Ranchi Sampark Kranti Express were rescued by a team of GRP, Mughalsarai, led by Inspector Tripurari Pandey," a home department spokesman said.

Those rescued include some minors, the spokesman said, adding two women were arrested in this connection and a case was lodged against them.

Preliminary questioning revealed the accused had lured them on the pretext of participation in sporting events and getting them jobs, the spokesman added.

The bill recommends state governments to create



specialised schemes for victims, especially for women engaged in prostitution or any other form of commercial sexual exploitation, to enable them to come forward and reintegrate into mainstream society.

The bill recommends constitution of Anti Trafficking Committees at State and district level and constitution of a Central Advisory Board.

The district level Committee would comprise of magistrate, social workers, lawyer and an official from the department women and child development. They will work for prevention, rescue, protection, medical care, psychological assistance, skill development, need based rehabilitation of victims.

The Central level Anti-Trafficking Advisory Board will oversee the implementation of the Act and advice the appropriate government on matters relating to prevention of trafficking, protection and rehabilitation of victims. MORE



The draft Bill plugs loopholes in existing laws and brings within its fold additional crimes pertaining to trafficking which don't find a place in the existing laws.

"India is source, destination and transit country for trafficking...Under the Bill, an institutional mechanism is also sought to be set up to deal with this highly specialized subject which will also include members from Civil Society Organizations," Gandhi said said.

Since the problem is trans-border with our neighbouring countries, protocols will also be worked out for those trafficked from other countries.

The draft Bill has taken into account the various aspects of trafficking and its punishments as defined in section 370- 373 of Indian Penal Code, 1860 and aims to include other offences/provisions which are not dealt with in any other law for the purpose of trafficking.

For speedy trial with a view to increase prosecution and to reduce the trauma faced by the victims, the proposed draft Bill provides for establishing Special Courts in each district and experienced Special Prosecutors. Recovery of back wages and other monetary losses of the victim of trafficking is also proposed.

The draft Bill provides for mandatory reporting within 24 hours by a police officer, public servant, any officer or employee of Protection Home or Special Home having custody of the victim of trafficking to the District Anti-Trafficking Committee or in case of child victim to the Child Welfare Committee.

Human trafficking is third largest organised crime after drugs and arms trade, majority of which takes place within the country. There are also a large number of trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh.
A Nepalese delegation, comprising members of the civil society and the Madhesi community, has rejected the constitutional amendments passed by their Parliament, saying it was done without taking them into confidence.

The group said the Madhesis agitation over the constitutional amendment has been going on for the past six months and if there is no early resolution to the issue, then the crisis might "spill over to India" as well.

The delegation said that instead of strengthening the economically weaker section, the amendment has included in the category the Khas Aryas, which has been a "ruling class".

"The amendment to the Constitution has not been able to solve the problem. The amendment was done by the Lower House keeping population as the main criterion and giving geography the second priority. But this has been cleverly done by demarcating the boundaries that suit the hill class and the Khas Aryas.

"Of the Madhesis provinces, only one can have Madhesis Chief Minister if one looks at the demography," Dipendra Jha, a lawyer at Nepal's Supreme Court, told reporters here.

He said the amendment has also not addressed the problem of the Upper House.

"There are 55 districts in the hills and only 20 in the Terai. If you look at the population, some 70 per cent of the population is in the plains. Now, for Upper House, every district is supposed to send 8 MPs. So, even in this case Terai region will go under represented.

"It is like treating Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim at par while giving representation in the Rajya Sabha," said Vijay Karna, a professor at Tribhuvan University and former Nepalese Ambassador to Denmark.

The agitating Madhesis last week rejected a constitutional amendment passed by the Nepalese Parliament to resolve the ongoing political crisis and blockade of key trade border points with India, calling it "incomplete" as it did not address their concerns over redrawing federal boundaries.

Madhesis, who are inhabitants of the Terai region, are opposed to the new Constitution that divides their ancestral homeland under the seven-province structure and have led an ongoing blockade of key border trade points with India.

The agitating community that shares strong cultural and family bonds with India is demanding demarcation of provinces, fixing of electoral constituencies on the basis of population and proportional representation, and have launched a protest for months that has claimed at least 55 lives.
India is a bright spot in the gloomy global energy industry with oil giant ONGC taking a lead in upstream activities amidst the depressed oil price environment which has forced others to cut costs and review or shelve projects.

As a market, the Indian energy demand growth is driven by the strong economic performances and the increasing middle class spending while state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has taken a lead in calling tenders for chartering of offshore drilling rigs and support vessels of upstream projects, noted Jon Fredrick Muller, senior project manager at the Oslo-based Rystad Energy AS.

"This makes India a bright spot for the industry," he told PTI at the Singapore Offshore Finance Forum, organized by MarineMoneyOffshore and ABN AMRO yesterday.

Delegates at the one-day forum noted the significant increase in ONGC's latest budget while national oil companies in other countries have announced cuts in upstream spending and are reviewing field developments, albeit putting some on hold.

ONGC has budgeted Rs 362,490 million for 2015-16, up from Rs 299,975 million in 2014-15.

"ONGC has not cut down Exploration & Production spending like most other national oil companies have done so. They have kept their demand up, they have needs for their deep-water drilling equipment -- floaters and jack-ups for shallow water, as well as Offshore Support Vessels," said Geir Sjurseth, managing director, global head for offshore finance at DVB Bank SE.

"They (ONGC) are issuing tenders which have attracted both national and international companies that would like to supply their equipment, as longer term employment opportunities in other markets are difficult," he said.

The above means that ONGC are enjoying very attractive rates because rates have come down significantly because of the many international bidders of these tenders for rigs and services for exploration and production activities," said Sjurseth.

He estimates rates for chartering and leasing rigs have dropped by 30-40 per cent over the past year and close to 50 per cent over the past 18 months.

"ONGC have charter/hired offshore rigs and vessels at 30-40 per cent lower rates than previous contracts," said Manav Kumar, president and director of Singapore-based Dynamic Drilling Holdco Pte Ltd.

With cost of services, rigs, oil field material, platforms and new constructions being very low, ONGC must utilize this opportunity to boost capital expenditure activities to raise production and reserve appreciation in the future, the delegates pointed out.

Currently, ONGC is negotiating a number of contracts to



charter or hire jack-up rigs for shallow waters and heavy-duty drilling rigs for deep water basins, industry sources said.

Chartering rate for a jack-up to drill in 300-ft water depth, rated as shallow, has dropped to USD 81,000 per day these days from USD 120,000 per day some 18 months ago, they said.

Likewise, the building cost of a new jack-up of same capacity for shallow water drilling has dropped to USD100 million from USD 150,000 in 2014, industry sources said.

ONGC, the only one seen tendering for rigs in Asia, has a strong position to bargain for chartering rates and "lock-in assets on long-term contracts", said the delegates, pointing out that there were close to 100 jack-up rigs lying idle and some new ones being built without formal chartering contracts.

Barely 22 per cent of the country's sedimentary basins have been explored, and a series of large deep-water blocks remain essentially untouched, they noted.

The Indian government is emphasising the ONGC-led industry to cut import dependence by 10 per cent in next seven years to 68 per cent, the industry sources said.

In accordance, India's upstream oil and gas companies have retained their focus on domestic exploration and development projects despite low oil prices, industry sources said.

India's upstream operators are also focused on increasing production from existing fields by using Enhanced Oil Recovery schemes with huge investments, they said.

"Overall, India represents a huge opportunity for upstream sector because of the large exploration activities and field redevelopment plans of the Indian companies," said one delegate.

"ONGC's should to do more and more drilling, exploration and production to take advantage of current downturn and benefit when the price of crude will go up," one industry observer pointed out.

ONGC is also seen staying "very active" in its overseas ventures.

In Myanmar, ONGC and the Reliance Group are conducting environment impact assessment studies as part of completing formalities on offshore acreages signed last year.

The two companies, with two blocks each, will be shooting seismic studies from later this year and opt to drill exploration wells in the Gulf of Martaban blocks from 2018 onwards.

Cost wise, it would be prudence for the two companies to share a rig to drill a well each in the four blocks on a back-to-back drilling schedule as per their exploration commitment with the Myanmar upstream authority, said the industry observers.

This will be the advantage of the ONGC-led Indian upstream sector, given the global upstream industry is not expected to recover till 2018 unless oil prices show a stronger recovery trend in 2017, they said.
Terming the proposed free trade agreement between India and EU as a "classical win win" for the two sides, Sweden today said negotiators need to sit down and "trash out" remaining issues of the trade pact.

Ambassador of Sweden to India Harald Sandberg said although there are few outstanding issues which needs to be addressed, both India and the European Union (EU) have covered lot of areas of the agreement.

"I know both the sides are willing to talk to each other and this is a very important issue between the EU and India. We as a EU member are very supportive of this process finally creating a positive result which will be mutually beneficial. This is a classical win win," he told reporters here.

"Negotiators have to sit down and trash out the remaining issues," he added.

India and the EU started talks on free trade agreement in 2007 and till 2013, 16 rounds of negotiations were held. But talks were stalled after that as the two regions failed to bridge substantial gaps on crucial issues, including data security status for the IT sector.

On his expectation about the conclusion of the negotiations, he said: "It is a billion dollar question" but Sweden wants to see the conclusion "as soon as possible".

He said both the sides should work on the outstanding issues and "crunch" those out and reach a result on those.

On the demand of India for a liberalised visa regime in the EU, Sandberg said as far as Sweden is concerned, it has the most liberal migration policy for professionals.

"I know this is an issue," he added.

Chief negotiators of India and EU met on January 18 here and took stock of contentious issues, including duty cut on automobiles and movement of professionals, that have held up talks on the proposed free trade agreement.

The purpose of the meeting was to assess where both sides stand and how India and the EU should go forward with the proposed pact, officially dubbed as Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement.

Negotiators were expected to meet in August last year, but talks were deferred by India, expressing disappointment and concern over the EU banning sale of around 700 pharma products, clinically tested by GVK Biosciences.

In May 2013, India and the 28-nation bloc failed to bridge substantial gaps on crucial issues, including data security status for the IT sector.

The other issues include easy movement of professionals and data security status demand from India. Besides demanding significant duty cuts in automobiles, EU wants tax reduction in wines and spirits and dairy products and a strong intellectual property regime.

The free trade pact is aimed at reducing or significantly eliminating tariffs on goods, facilitating trade in services and boosting investments between the two sides.

The two-way commerce in goods between India and the EU was USD 98.5 billion in 2014-15.
India took part in one of the world's largest public trade fairs for tourism, leisure caravan and motoring held this month in Germany.

"The Ministry of Tourism participated in the fair -- 'Caravan, Motor, Touristik (CMT), Stuttgart 2016'-- through the India tourism office in Frankfurt," an official release said. The fair was held from January 16 to 24.
India needs to push reforms in the area of taxation including Goods and Services Tax (GST) as well at in regulations to improve business sentiment that has dampened slightly in the last one year, a survey said on Friday.

According to the Business Climate Survey conducted by Swedish Chamber of Commerce in India along with the Embassy of Sweden, only 72 per cent of the companies indicated a favourable investment climate for the next three years as against 90 per cent in 2014-15.

"I am happy to note that despite slight dampening of the sentiment this year, companies continue to invest and expand their manufacturing and operations in India," Ambassador of Sweden to India Harald Sandberg said on the findings.

The survey captures the views of 141 Swedish companies which are operating in India.

"There are some obstacles still needing to be overcome, principally in the areas of taxation and regulations, so 2016 will be a critical year for implementing reforms," Swedish Chamber of Commerce Chairman Kandarp Singh said.

He said early roll out of the GST would be an important reform in India.

The constitution amendment bill to roll out GST is stuck in Rajya Sabha because stiff opposition by Congress party.

Singh said however that overall the sentiment remain positive and Swedish companies are still bullish about investing in India.

Further according to the survey 2015-16, the business community struggles with the same challenges as earlier years, related to doing business but the area of tax regulations and taxation rates is more emphasised this year.

"Labour laws in India are considered as a challenge by Swedish companies. Outdated laws and local interpretation, regulations regarding contractual workers and cumbersome handling of expatriates are some of the issues mentioned, across states and sectors," the survey said.

Speaking at the function, DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant said the government is taking steps to make India one of the easiest place to do business.

"Our aim is to bring India in the top 30 in the World Bank's ease of doing business report," he said, adding that this year India has jumped 12 positions and ranked at 130th out of 189 countries.

Kant also invited Swedish firms to invest in India in sectors such as defence, railways and construction.

Government is also taking steps to make tax regime more predictable and stable, he added.
The country's wheat production in 2015-16 is expected to surpass last year's level of 88.94 million tonnes on favourable cold weather conditions despite low acreage, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said today.

Though total area sown to wheat this year is slightly lower than 2014-15 crop year (July-June) but the crop yields are expected to get a boost as India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast stable weather till March, he said.

Last year, wheat output had declined to 88.94 million tonnes from a record 95.85 million tonnes achieved in the previous year because of drought and unseasonal rains.

"The wheat crop condition is good at present because of lower temperature in last few weeks. The crop yields are also expected to improve further as IMD has forecast favourable weather during February-March. Overall production will be much higher than the last year's level," Singh told PTI.

Wheat sowing has almost been completed in major growing states and total wheat coverage is down by only 4.38 per cent at 29.25 million hectare this year despite facing severe drought in 10 states, he said.

Though there was 14 per cent deficit monsoon rains this year, even distribution of rainfall benefited rabi crops, he said, adding that the timely contingency measures also helped farmers save crops.

Singh said wheat area has come down as farmers diverted to pulses and some horticultural crops for better income.

Allaying fears of any fall in wheat output, Agriculture Secretary Siraj Hussain said: "There is no cause of concern as of now. Because of recent cold temperature, we are likely to gain productivity. And wheat output is likely to be much higher than 2014-15."



He added that there was loss in wheat output last year mainly due to unseasonal rains in February-March. "We hope we do not face similar situation this time as IMD has forecast stable weather for next two months," he added.

Karnal-based Directorate of Wheat Research head Indu Sharma said, "If the temperature does not rise above normal after February, there will not be any set back on production."



Sowing of rabi (winter) crops like wheat began from October. Rabi crops have been under pressure due to dry winter following two consecutive drought years, raising concerns over production levels.
Underlining the achievements of the NDA government, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today said recognition of yoga at the global level and India's standing among comity of nations has gone up after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office.

The senior BJP leader, who arrived here on a two-day visit, met individuals from various strata of society and also interacted with party workers.

Swaraj said she interacted with 20 representatives from educational institutes, powerlooms, small scale industries and Mahila Bachat Gats (women self-help groups).

"The first scheme that was launched by our government was Jan Dhan Yojana. The scheme (related to financial inclusion) was appreciated in the international arena and brought India tremendous respect," she said during one of the interactions.

She also spoke about various other government schemes like Insurance cover at an annual premium of just Rs 12.

The External Affairs Minister said the NDA government faced four major challenges on foreign front after coming to power.

"Our government successfully evacuated Indians from (trouble-torn spots) like Ukraine, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Yemen was the most difficult operation. India was requested by 28 countries to evacuate their nationals from Yemen. This is unheard of. We evacuated people from more than 28 countries."



Swaraj said respect for India has grown tremendously and its global standing increased after Modi became Prime Minister.

"Modi ji expressed a desire that June 21 be declared as International Yoga Day. As many as 177 countries backed this desire. Also, on his trip to US, President Barack Obama welcomed Modi ji with open arms. This is the country which did not give him a visa earlier," she said.

Swaraj said the process of issuing passport has been simplified. If a person attaches certain key documents like Aadhar and PAN card with the application, the travel document will be issued within 7 days and police verification will take place later.
India today agreed to supply 300 MW of electricity to energy-starved Nepal in the next one-and- a-half year as the two sides decided to expedite construction of cross-border transmission lines and boost bilateral cooperation including in power trade.

Energy secretaries of the two countries agreed that Nepal will import 80 MW electricity from India through Muzaffarpur- Dhalkebar transmission line in the next three weeks.

During the two-day meeting of Joint Working Committee (JWC) and Joint Steering Committee on Nepal-India Cooperation in Power Sector that concluded today, both sides also agreed to increase the import of electricity from the transmission line to 200 MW by next winter by increasing its capacity and to run it in full capacity by December, 2017.

The high-level meeting was co-chaired by Nepal Energy Secretary Suman Prasad Sharma and India's Power Secretary Pradip Kumar Pujari, according to a press release issued by the Energy Ministry.

Despite the potential of importing 1,000 MW electricity from the transmission line, there is no high power substation in Dhalkebar to transform power as per the demand. So there is a need to increase the capacity of substation for the import of additional power, according to officials.

The meeting also stressed on the need to expedite the construction works relating to 132 KV Kataiya-Kushwaha and Raxaul-Parwanipur transmission lines so as to enable import of additional 100 MW of electricity from India by September, 2016.

During the meeting, that mainly discussed implementation of power trade agreement the two countries signed in 2014, matters relating to expediting construction works of cross- border transmission lines, grid connectivity and power trade between Nepal and India came up.

The meeting evaluated the discussions held during yesterday's meeting and stressed on the need to make these mechanisms and other technical committees more active so as to boost bilateral cooperation.

The meeting evaluated the cross-border transmission plans being prepared by technical committees and also analysed the findings of a study relating to the operation of cross-border transmission system.

The findings of the study will be presented during the third meeting of the Joint Committee scheduled to take place in June.

During today's meeting, both sides expressed hope that India will prepare necessary policy arrangements for power trading purposes under the free market concept within 6 to 8 months so as to allow Nepalese power producers to have access to Indian market for exporting power generated by them in future.

Nepal, currently reeling under an energy shortage, has been facing a power outage for 14 hours daily.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, a 75-year-old Indian-origin man who ran a secretive extremist Maoist cult here, was today sentenced to 23 years in jail by a UK court for a string of sexual assaults.

Balakrishnan, known to his followers as Comrade Bala, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in London for six counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape and two counts of actual bodily harm.

He had been convicted following a jury trial in December last year.

His wife, Chanda Balakrishnan, who had lived with him as part of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought for nearly 30 years had claimed earlier this weekthat his conviction was a "frame-up".

She had been unaware that her husband had fathered a daughter with his devoted follower Sian Davies and kept her imprisoned in a London flat for years.

Balakrishnan had denied charges of rape and told the jurythat he was "the focus of competition" between "jealous" women who made sexual advances on him.

The sentencing ends an over two-year police investigation into a case which Scotland Yard detectives described as "completely unique".

Detective chief superintendent Tom Manson, from the Metropolitan Police's Organised Crime Command, said: "It seems extraordinary thatBalakrishnancould command such control over so many people, however all of the victims have told us in great detail that they very much believed his claims of power and greatness and the threats he made to them".

"They all described feelings of fear and being totally controlled him. All of the women have faced huge challenges in adapting to day-to-day life since they leftBalakrishnan's control but with the support of a number of charities and professionals are making exceptional progress and their bravery deserves recognition and praise," he said.
A Dubai-based Indian-owned healthcare firm has launched a programme aimed at providing medical services to the local community at their homes in the UAE.

Aster DM Healthcare, which owns and operates a network of 290 units across the Middle East and India, said personalised services in the UAE are growing in demand along with increased flexibility and mobility of services.

The company's Aster@Home will enable patients to get basic healthcare services which include pharmacy deliveries, doctor's visits, nursing services among others at their homes.

Dr Azad Moopen, Chairman and Managing Director of Aster DM Healthcare, said the company is looking for ways to use new technology and opportunities in providing a world-class healthcare system.

"Through the Aster@Home program, we are further able to address the medical needs of our patients both before and after their clinic and hospital visits. By enabling a smooth, easy-to-use mobile service we hope we are seeking to improve the health of the nation even further," Moopen, who was born in Kerala, said yesterday.

One of the highlights of Aster@Home is its home monitoring system for diabetic and hypertensive patients under its "Aster Chronic Disease Care" programme.

With diabetes affecting over 1 million people or 19 per cent of population in the UAE alone and cardiovascular diseases on the rise, Aster will support the challenges faced by those who require extra care due to elevated levels of glucose or suffer from hypertension, the company said in a statement.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards has recruited thousands of Afghans, some by coercion, to fight in Syria's war alongside forces loyal to President Bashar al- Assad, Human Rights Watch said today.

"Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the New York-based HRW.

"Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe."



Shiite Iran is a staunch supporter of Assad and provides financial and military support to his regime.

Tehran says its Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised of Afghan recruits, are volunteers to defend sacred Shiite sites in Syria and Iraq against Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group.

The brigade, which is backed by the powerful Revolutionary Guards, is named after the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed whose mausoleum near Damascus is venerated by Shiites.

But some reports say the Afghans have been offered residency and a monthly salary to fight for Iran.

The Islamic republic denies having any boots on the ground and insists its commanders and generals act as "military advisers" in Syria and Iraq.

However, funerals are regularly held across Iran for "volunteer" fighters from Iran, Afghanistan, and sometimes Pakistan.

Iran hosts an estimated three million Afghans, many of whom have fled persecution and repeated bouts of armed conflict in their homeland, said HRW.

Only 950,000 have refugee status in Iran and the rest have been deemed unqualified for asylum.

At least two dozen Afghans interviewed by the watchdog said they or their relatives had been recruited or coerced by the Iranian authorities to fight in Syria.

Six of them said Iranian forces had trained them or their relatives in military camps near Tehran and Shiraz in 2015.

Two of the six had joined voluntarily, while the other four said they or their relatives had been coerced or forced to fight.

Afghans were fighting in many areas of Syria, including Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Deir Ezzor, Hama, Latakia, and in areas near the Syrian border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, they said.
The prophecy is more than seeing into the future. For the prophecy sees without the element of time. For the prophecy sees things as they were, as they are, and as they always shall be.
Iran flew a surveillance drone over a US aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state television reported today.

An American official declined to comment on the claim.

The reported drone overflight comes after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the US in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

The brief report by state television did not say what day the drone flight occurred, nor did it show any of the images of the aircraft carrier reportedly photographed by the drone. A story from the state-run IRNA agency said an Iranian light submarine closely participated in the surveillance operation.

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill.

The Iranian report did not name the US vessel targeted. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Cmdr Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the US Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, declined to comment on the Iranian report.

"I can say that we are confident in the ability of U.S. naval forces operating in the region to respond appropriately as the situation dictates, and will exercise our right to defend our forces against any threat," Stephens said.

Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began a naval drill this week over a 3- million-square-kilometer area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean.

Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a US warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The US Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the US, its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The US has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a Vaisnava group also known as the Hare Krishna movement, would celebrate its Golden Jubilee on February 6 here, with the Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also expected in attendance.

Several activities have been planned for the three-day event.

"On the first day, the famous Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra would be carried out from Andheri (West) to Jamnabai Narsee School grounds, Juhu, Vile Parle (West)," H G Sura Das, the national convener for the event said.

"This would be followed by two days of activities including spiritual discourses, cultural and musical programmes," he said.

During the event, the ISKCON would premiere a special 15-minute preview of a film titled 'Joy of Devotion', which would depict the story of ISKCON and its founder, he said.

"We will showcase 'Glory of Maharashtra', a unique Sri Sri Radhamadan Mohanji Temple project which comprises a Vedic, educational and cultural center coming up at Kharghar, Navi Mumbai," he said.

"Besides the temple, the project includes Bhaktivedanta College, which will teach ancient Vedic philosophy. Other facilities such as Bhaktivedanta Library, a guest house, Ayurveda centre, old age home and an auditorium in Navi Mumbai would also be showcased," he said.

Apart from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, business tycoon Alfred Ford, Bollywood actor Hema Malini, Ajay Piramal of Piramal Group, B K Goenka of Welspun Group would be among the other guests at the event, he said.

All the four ISKCON temples in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai would participate in the festivities along with numerous devotees from India and abroad, he said.
Italian anti-mafia police nabbed two fugitive mobster bosses today, after discovering them "living like animals" in a mountain hideout with an arsenal of weapons.

Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, and Giuseppe Crea, 37, both high- ranking members of the powerful and immensely wealthy 'Ndrangheta organised crime group, had been on Italy's most dangerous fugitives list, police told AFP.

Ferraro, found guilty in absentia of a string of brutal murders and described as "extremely dangerous" by the police, had been on the run for 18 years. Crea, wanted for mafia association and extortion, disappeared 10 years ago.

Ferraro is also believed to have been involved in the gunning down of rival boss Domenico Bonarrigo in a clan war. Bonarrigo's men got revenge by feeding the suspected gunman, Ferraro ally Francesco Raccosta, alive to pigs in 2013.

"They were living in a concrete bunker hidden by dense bushes and trees," said prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho, describing the hideout in the mountains near the town of Maropati in the Reggio Calabria region of southern Italy.

Maropati was founded in the first century after being used as a hideout by people fleeing Saracen pirates on the coast.

"They were living like animals, a cold life cut off from society," but with enough contact with the underworld to rule on gang matters when necessary, Cafiero De Raho said.

Police raiding the bunker found a submachine gun as well as a collection of rifles and pistols hung on the wall.

Photographs released by the police showed one of the men in a black jumper and brown fleece in the moment of his arrest, with boxes of cherry tomatoes and a flask visible next to the kitchen sink behind him.

The 'Ndrangheta is credited with controlling much of the world's cocaine trade and police describe the group as the most active, richest and most powerful syndicate in Europe.

"Today is another great day for the country, because today justice once again has won, and done so impressively," Italy's Justice Minister Angelino Alfano said in a statement.
Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch's son James will return as chairman of British broadcaster Sky, the company said today, nearly four years after he was forced to leave over a phone hacking scandal.

"The board has appointed James Murdoch to succeed Nicholas Ferguson as chairman," the company said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.

Analysts said the move will fuel speculation that Rupert Murdoch's Corp is preparing a new takeover bid for Sky -- a deal it abandoned in the wake of the hacking scandal.

James Murdoch served as chairman between 2007 and 2012 but quit over a scandal involving the phone hacking of celebrities and crime victims by the Murdoch-owned tabloid of the World.

He had been executive chairman of his father's British newspaper publishing arm.

The of the World weekly newspaper was subsequently shut down.

The paper's former editor Rebekah Brooks was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the voicemail interception by journalists but was cleared of all charges in 2014.

Last year she was appointed to head up Rupert Murdoch's News UK, which owns The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers.

James Murdoch is currently CEO of 21st Century Fox, the jewel in the crown of his father's media empire which owns 39 per cent of Sky.

Shore Capital analyst Roddy Davidson said Murdoch's return would likely "rekindle speculation regarding 21st Century Fox's plans for its 39 per cent stake".

Murdoch has always seen the aborted deal to takeover Sky as "unfinished business," the BBC quoted its sources as saying.

Sky offers pay television and Internet services in five countries: Austria, Britain, Germany, Ireland and Italy.

"James's deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Sky's ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future," said Jeremy Darroch, Sky's chief executive.

Murdoch's appointment came as Sky published earnings showing its highest customer growth in Britain and Ireland for 10 years, with 337,000 people joining in the second quarter.

The group also announced today that first-half operating profits had risen 12 per cent to USD 1.0 billion.
Japan today restarted its third nuclear reactor since a country-wide shutdown in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, after a court ruled it was safe despite opposition from local residents.

The government and utility firms have been pushing to get reactors back in operation nearly five years after a huge earthquake and tsunami caused a disastrous meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The accident forced all of Japan's dozens of reactors offline for about two years in the face of public worries over the safety of nuclear technology and fears about radiation exposure.

Kansai Electric Power's No 3 reactor at its Takahama nuclear plant in Fukui prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, was switched this afternoon, a company official said.

The Fukui District Court last month overturned an injunction preventing Kansai Electric from restarting two reactors won by local residents, who argued it was not proven to be safe despite a green light from the national Nuclear Regulation Authority.

Kansai Electric -- which Bloomberg reported was the most dependent on nuclear power of all of Japan's utilities before the Fukushima meltdown -- plans to restart the No. 4 reactor in late February, the official said.

Two reactors in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima, operated by Kyushu Electric Power, restarted in August and October, ending a two-year hiatus in nuclear power generation.

But many Japanese remain wary of nuclear power and thousands have refused to return to areas hit by the Fukushima meltdown over fears of radiation exposure.

Friday's restart drew immediate criticism from anti-nuclear campaigners.

"Allowing the restart of the Takahama reactors with potential fire safety hazards that would pose significant risk of reactor core meltdown is irresponsible," Kendra Ulrich, senior global energy campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, said in a statement.

"Once again, it may be the people of Japan who end up paying the price for their government's nuclear gambling.
Japan's two-biggest airlines reported soaring profits today as a surge in tourism and lower fuel costs beefed-up their bottom line.

Japan Airlines (JAL) and rival All Nippon Airways (ANA) credited a weak yen for helping boost tourism into Japan as it makes a country often seen as too expensive much cheaper for visitors.

Plunging oil prices have also been good for carriers as it cuts down on what is often their single-biggest expense.

"The Japanese aviation industry is enjoying a sharp decline in oil prices and the growing number of visitors to Japan, which continued to sustain its bottom-line," said Hiroshi Hasegawa, an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities.

"If oil prices remain low for now, JAL and ANA will likely show sizable profit gains for the next fiscal year."



The parent company of ANA said its nine-month net profit jumped 40 per cent thanks to growth in its international business, while it also announced it would buy three Airbus A380s for USD 1.25 billion as it expands its overseas routes.

ANA Holdings' net profit in the April-December period rose to 73.3 billion yen (USD 606 billion), and the company revised up its fiscal year profit forecast by about a quarter.

JAL said net profit for the same period soared 20 per cent to 143.69 billion yen, thanks to an increase in the number of international visitors to Japan.

"Passenger traffic increased as a result of capturing the robust demand from inbound travellers especially on North America, China and Southeast Asia routes," JAL said in a statement.

ANA said its international demand "on certain routes from Japan" were dented temporarily after the jihadist attacks in Paris in November, but it added that the impact was limited.

JAL has suspended flights between Narita airport and Paris after demand took a hit following the November attacks in the French capital.

The carrier has said it will extend the suspension until March 15.
In a fillip to industrialisation efforts in the state, Tamil Nadu Chief Minster J Jayalalithaa today launched new projects and laid the foundation stone for a slew of ventures, estimated at an overall Rs 10,000 crore which would usher in a combined 24,000-odd job opportunities.

The Chief Minister inaugurated through video-conferencing, Saint-Gobain Research India located at IIT-Madras Research Park, Taramani, here.

Established at a cost of Rs 250 crore, the French firm's research unit would employ about 110 persons, a government release here said.

She also inaugurated through video-conferencing tyre manufacturer MRF Ltd's Rs 1200 crore Expansion-Phase I in Perambalur, a 150 mw solar power plant by Welspun Renewable Energy in Tiruchirappally-Karur districts, expansion of Samsung India Electronics' facility at Sriperumbudur and footwear maker Growthlink Overseas at Tiruvannamalai and Saint-Gobain's glass-making facility at Erode.

The others were 50 mw solar plant of Sun Edison Energy India Limited at Virudunagar district and the manufacturing unit of perfume-maker Takasago International (India)Ltd in Kancheepuram district, the release said.

The newly inaugurated facilities will create 9775 job opportunities and have been established at an overall cost of Rs 3636 crore, it said.

Further, the Chief Minister laid foundation stone for seven projects including expansion efforts of TVS Motors, MRF Ltd, Apollo Tyres, and Saint-Gobain India Ltd.

Jayalalithaa also laid the foundation stone for the manufacturing unit of Lotus Footwear Enterprises Ltd, a food processing facility of ITC and that of Sheng Long Biotech India Pvt Ltd, involved in making aquatic feed.

The aforesaid facilities at an estimated Rs 6418 crore were located at Krishnagiri, Kancheepuram, Vellore,Perambalur, Puthukottaiand Tiruvallore districts and would ensure 14,878 job opportunities, the release said.

The inaugurated plants and those for which foundation stones were laid, would usher in a total 24,653 job opportunities and were estimated at Rs 10,054 crore, it said.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister offered her congratulations and best wishes for "greater and greater growth and prosperity.
A furious Belgian judge today adjourned indefinitely a high-profile appeal hearing with links to the Paris attacks because police had not met his demands for increased security.

Judge Pierre Saint-Remy yesterday had suspended proceedings for a day after warning he would call a complete halt unless "satisfactory security measures" were put in place.

"My directives concerning security were not respected. The case is adjourned indefinitely," a visibly angry Saint-Remy said.

Shortly before announcing his decision, the judge had left the chamber to berate press photographers and TV crews who had taken pictures of the court room from outside.

"I said 'no pictures!' I regret that the police have failed to follow my instructions," he said, threatening legal action against journalists if they continued.

Security concerns have mounted steadily in Belgium since a bloody attack on the Jewish museum in central Brussels left four dead in 2014.

The Belgian government then put armed troops on the streets in January last year after breaking up an Islamist cell planning attacks on the police.

Security was increased again after the November Paris attacks that left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.

The court had been due to hear appeals by four people against prison sentences imposed for helping recruit foreign fighters for Syria as part of a ring which included key figures in the Paris attacks, chief among them Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, played a leading role in the Paris killings which increasingly appear to have been largely organised and coordinated from Brussels.

In July, a court trying 32 people sentenced Abaaoud in absentia to 20 years jail for his role in the recruitment network.

The case attracted a lot of attention amid fears young Belgians could return home from Syria and Iraq battle-hardened, dangerously radicalised and ready to take on the authorities.

Belgium has charged 11 people with terrorism-related offences linked to the Paris attacks.
The sublime touch that he is in, Virat Kohli can bat even at midnight without switching on the lights and still score runs, Sunil Gavaskar said today, eulogising the young Indian batsman.

A rampaging Kohli continued to torment the Australians, hitting another quick-fire half-century in India's second win in the Twenty20 series today.

"He is setting the bar higher for the future players. He is in fantastic form.. Form which the players dream about. He can even bat at midnight without light and still bat well. The Australians cant get him out. They will have to wait for him to commit a mistake," Gavaskar said.

Asked who he would like to bowl -- Rohit Sharma or Kohli, Gavaskar replied,"to none of them."



"I would not bowl to both of them. Rohit kills you with tickle and Kohli can punch you to death. Either way you are going to die," he told NDTV.

The former Indian opener also suggested that India must not tinker with the batting order even as the series has been claimed by them. His reply came when he was asked if Yuvraj Singh should be promoted to number three so that he can get some match practise under his belt.

"I want to see India win the series 3-0. Kohli should continue to bat at number three. Never ever flirt with form, it's so fickle, don't flirt with it. Yuvraj can bat during the Asia Cup, World Twenty20. Let India make a clean sweep."



Gavaskar felt that skipper MS Dhoni now has a "balanced side" at his disposal and that's why the team was getting desired results in Twenty20 series.

"He has got now Yuvraj, Ashish Nehra, Hardik Pandya in the side. He has plenty of bowling and batting options. It has eased off the pressure on him. Bhajji (Harbhajan Sigh) is sitting on the bench which means it is a very good selection. The balance is terrific. Pandya can bat at number seven and can bowl. Even if a bowler is hammered around, Dhoni can go to the other bowler," Gavaskar opined.

"The Aussies were under pressure and it was a good omen for the Indians for the World Twenty20."



Australia today rested Steven Smith and David Warner so that they can begin preparations for the New Zealand Test series but Gavaskar was not impressed.

"Anybody who is taking it lightly, representing the country, deserves the result they get. Always play with your best players. It smacks of arrogance," he said.
Exports of lace and lace goods from the International Lace Trade Center (ILTC) here are expected to grow from Rs 60 crore to Rs 500 crore in the next five years, a senior official said today.

"The objective of setting up International Lace Trade Center (ILTC) at Narsapur is to enhance the exports of lace and lace products. We foresee exports of Rs 300 crore in the next three years and Rs 500 crore in the next five years," Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) Executive Director Rakesh Kumar said.

Speaking at the inauguration of the Reverse Buyer-Seller Meet (RBSM) that began at ILTC here, Kumar said keeping in view the export potential of the region, Narsapur has been identified as a 'mega cluster' under the Comprehensive Handicrafts Cluster Development Scheme (CHCDS).

"The region of Narsapur covers districts of West Godavari and East Godavari. It has the largest concentration of crochet lace artisans in the world with over 1 lakh home-based women lace makers.

"Over 80 per cent of the total production of lace goods is exported to the major markets of US, Europe and Japan. The range of products exported from the region include home furnishings and allied articles like table covers, table mats and napkins, cushion covers, bed spreads, garments and accessories," he said.

As part of skill development and upgradation, the EPCH has initiated skilling of over 5,000 individuals in West Godavari and East Godavari districts, he said.

"The skill training is based on National Occupational Standards (NOS) for lace making, furnishings, tailoring and apparels developed for lace and lace crafts.

"Over 3,000 artisans have been trained so far in 76 batches under the monitoring committee, which has been set up exclusively to see that the programs meet the standards, and assess their impact on the craftsmen's skilling," Kumar said.

K Gopal, Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), who earlier inaugurated the meet, said the country's handicraft exports are expected to cross Rs 20,000 crore by the end of the current fiscal.

In the last fiscal, the exports stood at Rs 18,500 crore, he said.

"The objective of the ILTC is also to generate additional livelihood opportunities to ensure sustained increase in the income and standard of living of the artisans, besides help to provide critical production and commercial infrastructure, technology, marketing support, capacity-building and product diversification," Kumar said.

The meet has been organized at ILTC to promote the products of Narsapur and provide a marketing platform to over 54 manufacturers of lace and lace products.
Pakistani lawmakers' lack of political will to pass the pending Hindu marriage bill despite a Supreme Court directive came in for criticism today, with a leading newspaper questioning the government's commitment to minority rights, especially for Hindu women.

"While many politicians are quick to issue public statements about the rights of minorities in Pakistan, when it comes to taking practical steps to secure these rights, there is very little to show," Dawn newspaper said in a scathing editorial.

"A prime example of this strange paradox is the decades-old issue of legislation related to Hindu marriage," it said, highlighting that the "legal vacuum that created a multitude of issues especially for minority communities."



A bill on Hindu marriage was jointly presented in the parliament in 2014 by Ramesh Lal of opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Darshan of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). A separate but similar government bill was tabled in parliament by Law Minister Pervaiz Rashid in March 2015.

The Hindu women have to face problems in proving their relationships when dealing with officials, while widows are particularly disadvantaged, it said.

The editorial noted that this issue was highlighted by the chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Law and Justice at a seminar in Islamabad on Wednesday which is supposed to approve the pending Hindu marriage bill to be tabled in the house.

"Without official proof of relationships, getting government documents issued or moving forward on any other activity which involves documentation - from opening bank accounts to applying for visas - becomes next to impossible for any citizen," it said.

It said that these issues were a reason for conversion as some experts point out that forced conversions are also facilitated by the lack of documentation of Hindu marriages.

Despite the fact that even the Supreme Court has ordered the state to enact the law, lawmakers have failed to do the needful, the editorial noted.

Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have passed the requisite resolutions, but the Sindh and Punjab assemblies have not yet done so.

"This tardiness and lack of political will are inexcusable. If the parties leading the Sindh and Punjab governments are serious about their commitment to minority rights, they should pass the resolutions without further delay in order to do away with the hurdles in the way of a Hindu marriage law," it said.

Sindh should show particular alacrity, as most of Pakistan's Hindus reside in this province.
Citing the Bihar government's decision to withdraw cases against Lalu Prasad, BJP today said it has vindicated its charge that the RJD chief was the "super chief minister" and claimed that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could go to any extent to save his chair.

"Kumar has become a puppet Chief Minister. His silence when the state is seeing a rise in criminal cases and many MLAs of the ruling alliance are accused of crime, is shameful," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

The RJD-JD(U)-Congress alliance's poll slogan 'Bihar me bahar ho', in reality, had become 'Apradhi ki bahar ho' (criminals are having a field day), he said, citing a number of recent cases.

A Congress MLA has been accused of kidnapping a minor girl, a JD(U) MLA has threatened a DSP and an RJD legislator has been accused of threatening cops, Sharma alleged.

He also referred to a number of cases of murder, kidnapping and robbery to make his point.

Sharma hit out at the Bihar government over its decision to withdraw a vandalism case against Prasad and his two minister sons.

"BJP has been saying that Prasad is the super chief minister in Bihar. It (withdrawal of cases) only vindicates our stand," he said.

A district court in Patna had on Wednesday closed a case against Prasad relating to an FIR registered against him during the last Lok Sabha elections, on a plea of the state government.

It came days after the government sought closure of another case against Lalu and his two sons in connection with a party-sponsored bandh on July 27, last year.
Opposition Left Front today accused police administration of "deliberately going slow" on the two accused who were acquitted by a local court yesterday in the Kamduni gangrape and murder case.

"The police deliberately went slow on the two accused as they were affiliated to the ruling party (Trinamool Congress). The police had prepared the case in such a way that both of them got acquitted," West Bengal Left Front Chairman Biman Bose said.

"What took so long for police to book those criminals? If the police had acted impartially then the two who were acquitted could have also been booked. If the two had not committed any crime, then why were they at all arrested and why were they in custody for so long ?" Bose pointed out.

Six persons were convicted by a local court yesterday in the Kamduni case in which a 21-year-old college girl was brutally assaulted and murdered in June 2013, triggering outrage.

Two persons were, however, acquitted owing to lack of evidence against them.
Lt Governor Najeeb Jung today declared illegal an order by the AAP government slashing the salary of two special secretaries in the Home Department, setting the stage for yet another confrontation between the two sides.

Delhi's Home Minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday had issued an order saying special secretaries Yashpal Garg and Subhash Chandra will only be entitled to a subsistence allowance instead of their full salary as they were suspended by the Delhi government.

Jain had suspended the two officials last month for refusing to sign in a file pertaining to hike in salary of public prosecutors despite the cabinet clearing the proposal. However, the Union Home Ministry had revoked the suspension order.

In a letter to Chief Secretary K K Sharma, the Lt Governor directed him to ensure full compliance of the Home Ministry's directive and declared that Jain's order to pay the two officials only subsistence allowance has no legal sanctity.

"The direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs make it abundantly clear that no adverse action can be initiated against these officers based on the suspension orders since these orders were without authority of law, void ab initio and non est (does not exist).

"Therefore, the order dated January 27 issued by the Minister of Home, Delhi government has no legal sanctity and cannot be implemented," a source said quoting from the letter.

Meanwhile, Garg has written a letter to Jain saying since Union Home Ministry had revoked the suspension order, there was no question of accepting any subsistence allowance. He even said Jain's order in this regard is "infructuous".

In his order dated Januray 27, Jain had said "in exercise of the powers conferred upon me under FR 53(1)" hereby order that Garg and Chandra shall be entitled to a subsistence allowance and not full salary as they were under "suspension".

The suspension of the officers had led to major protest by bureaucrats as around 200 DANICS (Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service) officers had gone on a day-long mass-leave on December 31. The IAS officers had also worked half-day that day.
Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Minister Umashankar Gupta today said a slew of measures being implemented by government has almost "cleansed" of "flaws" in the admission and recruitment system of the scam-tainted state Professional Examination Board.

The 'Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal' had been in for the massive scam, popularly known as 'Vyapam' scam in conducting various examinations and recruitment tests. Top authorities and some politicians were allegedly involved in the scam.

"We have cleansed the MPPEB's admission and recruitment system of faults last year. No complaint or defect has come to us in conduction of recruitment tests last year," Gupta said.

He said the MPPEB's overall system now stands "purged" of flaws.

"We have taken a lead in carrying out the recruitment tests online. Last year, we had conducted five online recruitment tests without a blemish," said Gupta, who also holds portfolio of Technical Education and Skill Development.

The minister said the government has announced a reward for invigilators who detect any wrongdoings on part of students appearing for any tests for recruitment or for admission to professional courses.

"And this has paid off. We have felicitated five invigilators with Rs 50,000 each and one with Rs 1 lakh for blowing the lid off irregularities in different recruitment tests conducted last year," Gupta added.

He said the government has been "working hard" to bring in the better procedures to ensure transparency in functioning of the body.

Invigilators Sunil Pandey, Rehmat Ali and Deepak Chourasia, all from Satna district, and Prashant Pandey and Anshul Sarawagi from Bhopal district were rewarded with Rs 50,000 each for catching imposters during forest guard recruitment tests.

Sunil Rakshit from Jabalpur district was rewarded with Rs 1 lakh for detecting dummy candidates at an online written test for appointment of jail constables.

The scale of the scam came to light in 2013, when Indore police arrested 20 people who had come to impersonate candidates for (pre-medical test) PMT 2009.

Subsequently, the Special Task Force uncovered the alleged involvement of several politicians, including former education minister Laxmikant Sharma, bureaucrats, MPPEB officials, racket leaders, middlemen and candidates.

The probe was handed over to the CBI by Supreme Court in July 2015.
The Maldives said today it could extend the prison leave granted to former president Mohamed Nasheed to go to London for medical treatment after he hinted at delaying his return.

Nasheed, who is serving a 13-year jail term after being convicted on controversial terrorism-related charges, arrived in London last week.

He has hinted he may stay beyond the 30 days' leave the government granted him in a deal brokered by Sri Lanka, India and former colonial power Britain.

"Our belief is he would return. He is a man of great stature. I don't think there is a question of him not returning," the minister for legal affairs in the president's office Aishath Azima Shakoor told reporters in Colombo.

"If he requests an extension of medical leave, he will certainly get it."



Nasheed was accorded a red carpet welcome and received by Prime Minister David Cameron when he arrived in Britain last Thursday for spinal cord surgery.

The 48-year-old told reporters in London that he had not yet decided whether to return to the Maldives after his leave.

"I know the question you all want to ask is will I go back. This has been more eloquently answered by The Clash in 1982 when I was doing my A-Levels - 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?'" said Nasheed, who was educated in Britain.

"Let me be clear. I will go to the Maldives. I will definitely go to the Maldives, there is no doubt about that. But only the question is how and when."



Nasheed became the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives in 2008 and served for four years before he was toppled in what he called a coup backed by the military and police.

Last year, a court sentenced him to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges that were widely seen as politically motivated.

His high-profile lawyer, Amal Clooney, has argued for targeted sanctions including asset freezes in the European Union and US and travel bans against leaders in the Maldives allegedly responsible for human rights abuses.

Foreign Secretary Ali Naseer Mohamed said the Maldives did not have an extradition treaty with Britain and would not be able to force Nasheed to return.
Scientists have created male mice without a Y chromosome - a symbol of maleness - that are still able to sire offspring with assisted reproduction.

The Y chromosome is present only in males and encodes genes important for male reproduction. But a new study has shown that live mouse progeny can be generated with assisted fertilisation using germ cells from males which do not have any Y chromosome genes.

The findings support the hypothesis that Y chromosome genes can be replaced by that encoded on other chromosomes.

Previous research showed that only two genes of the Y chromosome, the testis determinant factor Sry and the spermatogonial proliferation factor Eif2s3y, were needed for male mice to sire offspring with assisted fertilisation.

In the current study, researchers led by Monika A Ward, professor at the University of Hawaii, took a step further and produced males completely devoid of the entire Y chromosome.

They first replaced the Y chromosome gene Sry with its homologue and direct target encoded on chromosome 11, Sox9.

In normal situation, Sry activates Sox9, and this initiates a cascade of molecular events that ultimately allow an XY foetus to develop into a male. The researchers used transgenic technology to activate Sox9 in the absence of Sry.

They replaced the second essential Y chromosome gene, Eif2s3y, with its X chromosome encoded homologue, Eif2s3x.

Eif2s3y and Eif2s3x belong to the same gene family and are very similar in sequence. The researchers speculated that these two genes may play similar roles, and it is a global dosage of both that matters.

They transgenically over expressed Eif2s3x, increasing dose of the X gene beyond that provided normally by X and Y. Under these conditions, Eif2s3x took over the function of Eif2s3y in initiating spermatogenesis.

They then replaced Sry and Eif2s3y simultaneously, and created XOSox9, Eif2s3x males that had no Y chromosome DNA. Mice lacking all Y chromosome genes developed testes populated with male germ cells.

Round spermatids were harvested and a technique called round spermatid injection (ROSI) was used to successfully fertilise oocytes.

When the developed embryos where transferred to female mouse surrogate mothers, live offspring were born.

The offspring derived from the "No Y" males were healthy and lived for normal life span. The daughters and grandsons of the "No Y" males were fertile and capable of reproducing on its own without further technological intervention.

Researchers produced three consecutive generations of "No Y" males showing that males lacking Y chromosome genes can be repeatedly propagated with technical assistance.

"Most of the mouse Y chromosome genes are necessary for development of mature sperm and normal fertilisation, both in mice and in humans," Ward said.

"However, when it comes to assisted reproduction, we have now shown that in the mouse the Y chromosome contribution is not necessary," she said.

The study was published in the journal Science.
Seeking to paint the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal as 'pro-Muslim', BJP today alleged that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee thinks only about 28 per cent voters and claimed that police were asked not to fire at a mob of the minority community in Malda.

BJP today came out with a list of 10 questions directed at the state government as it suggested that the TMC dispensation allowed the crowd in Malda to turn violent despite having prior intelligence.

At a press conference, BJP national secretary Sidharth Nath Singh, who is also Bengal co-incharge, said the TMC government deliberately deferred the date of immersion of Durga idols due to Moharram.

"One common thread in your government's approach is of vote bank politics. Please confirm whether your state policy is of 'Sabka saath sabka vikas' or 'Ek ka saath ek ka vikas'?



"You (Banerjee) think there are only 28 per cent of voters in Bengal. Isn't it a state policy under the TMC govt that only 28 per cent voters exist in the state? If it is not true, then answer why the date of immersion for Durga idols was postponed for three days because Moharram was falling the next day?" he asked.

Singh said state police and intelligence officials had on camera made various statements that "indict" the government.

"Local intelligence officials on camera said that they had received report about such a gathering on communal line in Kaliachak and sent it to the administration. Why did you ignore it?



"When a mob attacked them (cops), they took shelter in a police station. Police officers in Malda, on camera, say that instructions came from top that they should not fire at mob since they are from the minority community. Mamataji, isn't this violation of India's basic secular fabric?" he asked.

"Additional SP of Malda on camera is found saying that



there are areas which are 'no go' areas. They feel scared to go there. Mamataji, if your police is scared, then what about common citizen? Your 'parivartan' campaign against CPI(M) was to give security to 8 crore Bengalis. What has happened now?" Singh asked.

He claimed that a mob burnt the police station on January 3 to destroy local crime records as the of an impending NIA-led operation against fake currency racket was leaked.

"Why from Khagragadh to Birbhum to Malda, those involved in bomb making, fake currency, rioting, and woman abuse are all TMC workers and supporters?



"In November, three ISI agents were arrested. One of them, Ashfaque Ansari, happens to be TMC leader. Why was your administration compromising with national security?" he asked.
A 27 year-old man allegedly killed his beloved and then committed suicide in Kazi Baraiyya village under Sarai Khawja police station area, police said today.

Jaihind Maurya, who was having an affair with a girl living in his neighbourhood, barged into her house yesterday and shot her, police said.

He later went to his place and shot himself too, they said.

The girl was rushed to a hospital from where he was referred to BHU hospital in Varanasi but she succumbed to injuries, police said, adding the bodies have been sent for post mortem examination.
Facing flak over her stand on the draft Disability Bill, Union Minister Maneka Gandhi today denied making remarks that persons with mental illness cannot be given jobs in government.

In a series of tweets, the Women and Child Development ministry said, "During meeting with Minister of Social Justice, minister WCD stated that definition of disabilities in the Bill must be clearly (defined) as persons with Disability, Illness and Disease."



"Clear definition will provide clarity to stakeholders on their entitlement under the proposed 3 percent job reservation under the Bill...Clear definition will also ensure that who qualifies for job reservation (and) is not left to interpretation by officials in govt," it added.

"Minister WCD has never commented that persons with mental illness cannot be given jobs in govt. It is clearly misinterpreted", the ministry said.

Gandhi, who is part of a ministerial panel to examine the proposed Bill, has been attacked on the social media by activists and those recovered from "mental illnes" who have joinined "the #WeCanWork campaign".

While one tweet said, "I am Subbu. I am currently working. I have been living with a mental health issue for the last 15 years, My work helps me overcome it!!!" another one read,"My name is V.S. Sunder. I have multiple sclerosis and am a Math Prof. And former recipient of the Bhatnagar award.
Senior doctors, nurses, paramedical staff working under the three municipal corporations as well as private hospitals today announced to go on strike in solidarity with the sanitation workers' agitation in the national capital from tomorrow.

"The strike by the United Front will be joined by the doctors, nurses and para medical staff of hospitals, polyclinics and dispensaries from tomorrow," Rajendra Mewati, President, United Front of MCD Employees, said.

Dr R R Gautam, President, Municipal Corporation Doctors Association said they have given a notice to the Commissioner of North Delhi announcing their decision to join the strike under the banner of United Front of MCD Employees.

"We were hopeful that the strike by sanitation workers and other municipal corporation staff will solve the problems of salary and arrear dues but now we have decided to go on strike from tomorrow," he said.

"The decision to join the strike was taken today in a meeting of associations of senior doctors, resident doctors and nurses. Our demands include uninterrupted salaries round the year and unification of three corporations to end the financial crises faced by them," Gautam added.
Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy today visited the party headquarters after a gap of one year and met party supremo Mamata Banerjee.

Roy came to the party headquarters at around 4 pm in the evening and met senior party leaders, including Banerjee.

When asked about his meeting with Banerjee, Roy said, "I will perform my duty...Whatever our party supremo asks me to do."



Asked about Roy's visit to the TMC Bhawan after a gap of one year, senior party leader Subrata Mukherjee said, "He is our party MP and very much part of our party."



Roy, a Rajya Sabha MP, had last gone to Trinamool Bhawan in February last year - just days after he was questioned by CBI in the Saradha ponzi scheme scam.

Roy, who was once the number 2 in the party, was stripped off all party posts over strained relationship with Banerjee after his interrogation by CBI.

But the situation started improving for Roy after he met Banerjee in Delhi in December last year. He also went to Banerjee's residence on New Year's Day this year.
The proposed hike in Mumbai Metro Rail fares would not be implemented till February 11 as the Bombay High Court today adjourned the hearing till then to enable the parties seek clarification from the Supreme Court.

Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) had earlier challenged the proposed metro hike in the high court.

In an interim order on December 17, the high court had stayed the proposed hike in fares of the Versova-Ghatkopar Metro Rail Corridor. Being aggrieved, Mumbai Metro One (MMOPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Energy, which operates the Metro, moved the Supreme Court challenging the stay.

The Supreme Court, on January 27, refused to interfere with the high court order, which had stayed the proposed hike till final hearing of petition on January 29. The matter was sent back to the high court for consideration.

When the matter came up, the bench said it would hear both the parties today itself and dispose of the matter as directed by the apex court.

However, MMRDA and MMOPL lawyers Aspi Chinai and Prasad Dhakephalkar respectively sought time to seek clarification from the Supreme Court whether the final hearing was on the issue of interim relief or on the petition.

Accordingly, a bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka adjourned the matter to February 11.

The Supreme Court was of the view that since interim relief in the form of stay on the hike in Metro fares was given by the high court, only it should decide the issue. Hence, the apex court referred the matter back to high court.

Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam had also filed an intervention application challenging the hike. His plea has been taken up for hearing along with the petition filed by MMRDA.

MMOPL, which is operating the Versova-Ghatkopar corridor, had earlier announced that it will increase the fares by Rs 5 from December 1, 2015.

Instead of the earlier slabs of Rs 10, 20, 30 and 40, the proposed new structure will have five slabs of Rs 10, 20, 25, 35 and 45.

However, MMRDA, which has commissioned the Mumbai Metro, challenged the hike alleging that the Centre was facilitating private profiteering by allowing multiple fare hikes. Nirupam demanded though his lawyer B A Desai that there should be a fare hike every four years, as per the agreement and not frequently.
Actress Natalie Portman says she is a strong advocate for tighter gun laws in the United States.

The 34-year-old actress, who is playing a gun-slinging cowgirl in her latest film, "Jane Got a Gun," said she is "very concerned" about the issue, reported People magazine.

"I definitely am very concerned about gun violence in our country," Portman said.

The actress appreciated President Obama's recent effort to increase gun ownership regulation and confessed that she was nervous while working with the weapon for her film.

"I always want to be sure of safety, especially because I was a producer on the film, I felt responsible for everyone, not just as an actor," she said.

In "Jane Got a Gun" Portman stars as a pioneer woman living in New Mexico. The film also features Joel Edgerton and Ewan McGregor.
The Netherlands has agreed to join US-led air strikes in Syria extending its current mission over Iraq, Dutch officials announced today, bowing to a request from the United States.

"In order to make the fight against ISIS in Iraq more efficient, it has been decided to carry out air strikes against ISIS in eastern Syria," the foreign and defence ministries said in a statement.

Late last year in the wake of the November Paris attacks, the Dutch government received a request from allies the US and France to broaden its campaign of air support against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group -- also known by the acronym ISIS.

The Netherlands is already participating in the coalition by carrying out air strikes in Iraq with four F-16 aircraft specialising in close air support of ground operations by Iraqi forces.

But it had insisted in the past that it would not extend the air strikes over Syria without a UN mandate.

"We are going to deploy the F-16s above Syria, in particular to stop the pipeline leading from Syria into Iraq," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters today.

The four Dutch F-16 jet fighters which have been pounding IS jihadists in Iraq since October 2014 would "remain active until July 1 over the enlarged zone," the government statement said.

"We are convinced that only a consistent approach to bring back stability in Iraq and Syria," said Foreign Minister Bert Koenders added in the statement.

But he insisted there had to be the utmost "care and accuracy."



After weeks of dallying, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, the Labour Party (PvdA), Tuesday finally agreed to back an extension of air strikes into Syria, paving the way for approval from parliament.

High-stakes peace talks aimed at ending the brutal, five-year-old Syrian conflict which has left over 260,000 dead and created millions of refugees were due to start later today in Geneva.

But there was uncertainty whether the key groups would attend, even though the Syrian government delegation had arrived in the Swiss city.
Barcelona star Neymar on Thursday lost an appeal against a $112,000 fine slapped on him for tax evasion during his years with Santos in 2007 and 2008.

The appeal decision confirmed the Brazilian financial authorities' sanction handed down originally in 2012 for irregularities in his income tax declaration, the tax service said.

The case also involved the player's father although the fine is unlikely to perturb the Brazilian star too much as he reportedly earns around $215,000 a week at European champions Barcelona.

Neymar is also embroiled in legal action in Spain where he has been ordered to give evidence on February 2 for alleged fraud surrounding his transfer to the Catalan giants from Santos in 2013.

Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu, his predecessor Sandro Rosell, Neymar's parents and two directors of Santos have also been called to appear.

Spanish public prosecutors filed for action to be taken against all the parties after a complaint of fraud and corruption was launched by the Brazilian investment fund DIS, which held 40 percent of Neymar's sporting rights when he played at Santos, at the court in June 2015.

DIS has claimed it was cheated of its real share of the benefits of the 23-year-old's transfer because part of the fee was concealed by Barcelona and Santos.

The deal was originally valued at 57.1 million euros ($62.1 million) by the Catalan club, 40 million of which was paid to the N&N company owned by the player's father with Santos receiving just 17.1 million.

However, Spanish judicial authorities have estimated the amount to be at least 83.3 million. DIS received 6.8 million euros ($7.7 million) out of the total 17.1 million that Barcelona paid to Santos, but claims it may also be due a share of the overall transfer payments.
The National Green Tribunal today sought the response from the Centre, Jammu and Kashmir government and others on an environment activist's plea seeking removal of unexploded and used shells from a firing range in the state and restore the area.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar issued notices to the Defence Ministry, J&K government and its forest department while seeking their reply by March 1.

The Tribunal was hearing a plea filed by environment activist and J&K resident, Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat, who sought directions to clear the Tosa Maidan meadow in Budgam district from the unexploded and used shells and restore the area.

The plea has stated that the state government had given Tosa Maidan on lease to Army for a firing range in 1964 for a period of 50 years, which expired in April, 2014.

Bhat submitted that several "exploded and unexploded" shells are lying in this area and the Ministry has not removed the waste after the lease got over, which posed a looming threat to life and was causing water pollution.

"The artillery Wing of Ministry of Defence posted in Jammu and Kashmir is using the Tosamaidan Meadow for last several years for the purpose of field firing and artillery practices...It is submitted that this activity by Ministry of Defence is not only damaging the environment but has also damage the habitat of wild animals.

"The used shells are cause of grave concern of polluting the area as during the rainy season it pollutes the water sources and the surrounding areas. Unexploded shells are a regular threat to the habitat of the area. The unexploded shells has cause death and injuries to the locals residing in the area," Bhat said.

The plea, filed through advocates Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, said after the expiry of lease of Tosa maidan, the state was now considering the Bajpathree meadow as the new firing range.

"Direct the Jammu & Kashmir government not to lease out the Bajpathree meadow for the purpose of field firing and artillery practices," the plea said.

The Tosa Maidan meadow was used by the Army, the IAF and the CRPF as firing range for conducting weaponry training from 1964 to 2014, it added.
Ruling out any special consideration to state PSUs in coal block allotment, Union Coal Secretary Anil Swarup today said the government has set a target to start production in 34 Schedule-II coal mines by March 31.

Swarup was reviewing the progress of augmenting coal production in the country at a meeting here.

Asked to comment on Odisha government's request for according priority to state public sector undertakings while allocating coal mines, Swarup said, "No special consideration for anybody."



Representatives from Chhattishgarh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Odisha attended the meeting and apprised him of the bottlenecks in their respective states.

"Of the coal mines allotment cancelled by Supreme Court, around 10 have already started mining and others are in the process. This will further augment the availability of coal in the country.

"Coal India has achieved record production this year," Swarup said, adding there is surplus availability of coal at power plants this year, with inventories of 25 days as against 5-7 days last year.

He said the Centre wants to ensure that the captive mines too start producing and today's review was to see if there are any problems or bottlenecks.

"We will attempt to remove those so that at least the Schedule-II mines can begin production before March 31," he said.

The meeting reviewed the progress of Mahanadi Coalfield Limited's (MCL) coal mining projects, Odisha's Chief Secretary A P Padhi said.

Padhi also requested the central team to treat state PSUs at par with central PSUs in matters of compensatory afforestation. The team was also requested to provide mines to the state government for providing coal to private sector industries operating in Odisha, an official release said.

On progress of MCL, Swarup said the Centre has set the target for enhancing the company's production to 250 MT by 2020 in which Odisha would add substantially.
State-run NTPC on Friday reported 19 per cent decline in stand-alone net profit at Rs 2,493 crore for the quarter ended December on decline in revenue from the power generation segment. The company had posted a net profit Rs 3,074 crore in the same period of last year, it said in a BSE filing. But, the net profit in April-December period of the current financial year rose to Rs 7,526 crore versus Rs 7,347 crore a year ago.

Total income of the company declined to Rs 17,657.99 crore in the quarter under review from Rs 19,371.33 crore in the corresponding period of previous fiscal.

Income from power generation fell to Rs 17,455.71 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal as compared with Rs 18,915.19 crore in same period a year ago.

During the third quarter, the company's gross power generation declined to 60.78 billion units from 61.34 billion units in the same period a year ago.

The gross power generation of the company in the first nine months of the current fiscal fell to 179.64 billion units from 179.94 billion units in the year-ago period.

The plant load factor (PLF) or proportion of installed capacity utilised by the company's coal based units has come down to 78.23 per cent in third quarter as compared with 80.79 per cent in the same period last fiscal.

In April-December period of this fiscal, the PLF for these plants too came down to 77.70 per cent as compared with 79.41 per cent in the same period a year ago.

The average power tariff of the company was Rs 3.21 per unit during the April-December period this fiscal.

The company also informed BSE that its board of Directors at a meeting held on January 29, 2016, have decided to pay interim dividend at the rate of 16 per cent (Rs 1.60 per share) on the face value of paid-up equity shares of Rs 10 each for the financial year 2015-16. The total dividend payment will be Rs 1,319.27 crore.

The date of payment of dividend shall be February 15, 2016, it said.

In a separate filing, the company's Board has accorded investment approval for Telangana Super Thermal Power Project, Phase-1 (2x800 MW) at current estimated cost of Rs 10,598.98 crore.

The PPAs power purchase agreements have been signed with Southern Power Distribution company of Telangana Limited and Northern Power Distribution company of Telangana Limited.

The Commercial Operation Date (CoD) of first unit is envisaged in 52 months and second unit at an interval of 6 months thereafter, it added.

In another filing, NTPC said that its board has approved the award of contract "for balance work of main plant package (SG &Aux) after certain amendments to original scope of work) for Barh Super Thermal Power Project-I(3x660 mw) to Doosan Power Systems India Ltd, Gurgaon."



NTPC had earlier cancelled a Rs 2,000-crore deal awarded to the Russian state-owned firm Technoprom Export (TPE) for the supply of main power equipment for the Barh stage-I project in Bihar.
Two men were today awarded varying jail terms by a sessions court for hatching a conspiracy to launch terror strikes at the ONGC headquarters and other public places here in 2010.

"The court sentenced Abdul Latif to 12 years in jail and Riyaz Ali to 10 years' imprisonment," said special public prosecutor Rohini Salian.

Sessions court Judge Sanjay Patil also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 and Rs 5,000 on Latif and Ali, respectively.

The court had yesterday convicted the duo under various sections of IPC and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Latif and Ali were arrested by ATS on March 14, 2010 from Central Mumbai.

According to ATS, the ONGC headquarters in Bandra, Mangaldas Market and Thakkar Mall in suburban Borivli, besides Gaiety and Galaxy theatres, also in Bandra, were on their hit list.

The duo were in touch with a person, believed to be their handler, based in Pakistan and used to address him as 'uncle'.

Latif and Ali were directed by the 'uncle' to recruit young boys and to send them to Pakistan for training and carrying out terror activities in India.

ATS had said that it recovered from the duo cans of fuel and mobile phones which stored a Pakistani number.

They were booked under different sections of UAPA and under sections 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house etc.) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code.

As per the ATS charge sheet, the 'uncle' with whom Latif was in constant touch with was an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case and is running a construction business in Karachi.

The charge sheet stated that Ali was impressed with the slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and mob boss Dawood Ibrahim. He used to sit glued to television set to catch up any on Laden or Dawood.

Ali used to address Laden as 'Laden Chacha' and refer him as an intelligent man-cum-scientist who had 'shaken' the US, the charge sheet stated.

He used to believe that Dawood was working for Muslims (in India) and addressed him as 'Bhai' (brother).

The charge sheet stated that Ali used to hate people from Gujarati community and was of the opinion that women should always cover themselves with veil.

The document further said that Ali used to ask his friends 'what India has given to them'.

A total of 27 witnesses deposed during the trial.
Amidst Taliban threats, over 230 educational institutions, most of them government-run, in Pakistan's Punjab province have been shut, with authorities asking them to step up security by Sunday or face action.

The institutions, 138 of them run by government, in Punjab's Rawalpindi division have been asked by authorities to boost their security.

As many as 53 educational institutions in the region, including Rawalpindi Medical College, were yesterday served final notices to improve security by Sunday, or the head of the institution would be booked, Dawn reported.

In Jhelum, 15 educational institutions, including 10 government and five private schools were sealed. Chakwal saw four schools sealed and three others were given warnings.

In Attock, police and intelligence agencies carried out a fresh survey of security at educational institutions and found 205 schools and colleges, including 127 government and 78 private institutions, lacked adequate security measures.

After Punjab government ordered educational institutions across the province to shut down for five days, their administrations were asked to ensure that their buildings were safe and complied to the standard operating procedures.

The provincial home department has ordered divisional police chiefs to increase security around educational institutions in the wake of intelligence reports that terrorists may be planning to target them.

Taliban militants have threatened to target Pakistan's educational institutions and security measures were taken to tackle the threat after the attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on January 20 that killed 21 people, mostly students.

The attack revived memories of the horrific December 2014 Taliban attack on an army-run school in the nearby city of Peshawar that killed 150 people, 144 of them children.
While governments oppose in courts the disclosure of Governor's reports to the Centre, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, as Leader of Opposition in Goa Assembly in 2007, had filed an RTI application seeking disclosure of state Governor's report.

The issue arose when political situation in Goa changed and Governor of Goa directing the Chief Minister to prove his majority in the Legislative Assembly.

A resolution of Vote of Confidence was passed in the Assembly and the Speaker made a report to the Governor. In turn, the Governor of Goa sent his report to the Union Home Minister.

In September 2007, Parrikar filed an RTI application seeking disclosure of the report sent by the Governor regarding the political situation in Goa during the period from July 24, 2007 to August 14, 2007 which was declined by the Governor's office.

Following the objection of Governor S C Jamir's office in disclosing the opinion, a legal battle ensued, which went from State Information Commission to the Supreme Court.

Parrikar maintained that disclosure of Governor's opinion to the Union Government under the RTI Act saying the report under Article 356 of the Constitution was made in performance of a constitutional duty and not in a fiduciary capacity.

"The President and the Governor being the public authorities, are amenable to the provisions of the RTI Act and are required to disclose any information when ordered by the PIO or in an appeal by the appellate authority or the Information Commission," his lawyers had argued before Division Bench of the Bombay High Court.

The State Information Commission had allowed disclosure of



the Governor's opinion. This decision was upheld by a Single judge bench of the Panjim Bench of the Bombay High Court. It was further upheld by the Division Bench (DB) as well.

"Finally in 2012, the Goa Raj Bhavan challenged the DB judgement before the Supreme Court of India making similar claims against disclosure. The matter was initially heard by a Bench headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari. After he moved on to the International Court of Justice, there has been no effective hearing in this case," Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) said.

He said during the legal battle, elections were held in Goa and Parrikar was elected Chief Minister.

"Obviously, there was no need to continue with the litigation. CHRI wrote to him recommending that the Raj Bhavan be advised to withdraw the case to prevent wastage of taxpayer's money on a non-issue. We are still waiting for a response to this letter. What is perplexing though is how expectations of a commitment to transparency change with a change in the chair that one occupies," he said.

Nayak said it is difficult to believe that a report made under Article 356 of the Constitution will contain such explosive material that its disclosure in the public domain will be injurious to the public interest.

"So unless it can be shown that disclosing the contents of the Arunachal Pradesh Governor's report(s) under Article 356 can cause harm to any public interest which is recognised as a legitimate ground for refusal of access to information under the RTI Act, it must be placed in the public domain so that people may appreciate the circumstances that led to the decision and also debate its necessity in an informed manner," he said.
PDP, which is keeping everyone guessing over the government formation, today toughened its position, saying the ally BJP should hand out concrete assurances for implementation of the coalition's common agenda since it is in power at the Centre.

PDP particularly flagged issues like relations with Pakistan, revocation of the controversial AFSPA and return of power projects to Jammu and Kashmir from the Centre which are part of the 'Agenda of Alliance'.

"For us, the 'Agenda of Alliance' is the sacred document that we should be going by. But there have to be some assurances on it," a senior PDP leader said.

"It does not serve any purpose if we cannot implement this document that was reached between two parties -- one headed by the Prime Minister who has a massive mandate at national level and the other by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as leader of the single largest party of the state," the PDP leader added.

Referring to the relations with Pakistan which is a part of the Agenda of Alliance, he said while efforts are underway to improve the ties, it is not clear how this goal can be achieved without involving Jammu and Kashmir in the process.

"The dialogue with Pakistan is part of the Agenda of Alliance in whatever words it might be," he said.

"Then there are other issues like revocation of AFSPA and return of power projects in the agenda. This all is for the benefit of the people of the state," the PDP leader said.

With the BJP maintaining a studied silence on the issue, the hardening of stance by PDP indicates that the state could be heading for a longer period of Governor's Rule which was imposed on January 8 following the demise of then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Meanwhile, Governor N N Vohra has started assuming full powers of governance. Yesterday, he decided to set the ball rolling for holding elections to local bodies by discussing the matter with political parties.
In a tribute to the Cellular Jail's historical past, in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Minister of Communications & IT Ravi Shankar Prasad released philatelic products of the West Bengal Circle of Department of Posts at a function here today.

Philatelic products including Clock on Cellular Jail of Andaman and Souvenir on Sunrise at Katchal Beach of Nicobar and other philatelic products on shells and corals, which are found in the Andaman Sea were in the products released in the function held in Salt Lake.

These products will be sold from Post Shoppe at the Kolkata GPO, Port Blair Head Post Office, Siliguri Head Post Office and other Post Shoppes across the Circle.

Chief Postmaster General, West Bengal Circle Arundhaty Ghosh was also present in the function.
Two TransAsia Airways pilots caused a 2014 plane crash that left 48 people dead by flying too low as they attempted to land on an island during a typhoon, Taiwan's aviation authorities said today.

Taiwan's aviation body said the pilots flew below the minimum altitude required in poor visibility caused by Typhoon Matmo on July 23, 2014, in its final report into the airline's second fatal accident in a year.

The procedural mistake was widespread among TransAsia's pilots at the time, an aviation official said, endangering passenger and crew safety.

Ill-fated Flight GE222 was carrying 54 passengers and four crew when it slammed into trees and houses near Magong city airport in the Taiwan Strait's scenic Penghu islands, leaving just 10 survivors.

Two French nationals were among those killed in the island's worst air disaster in a decade.

"An airworthy aircraft under the control of the flight crew was flown unintentionally into terrain with limited awareness by the crew of the aircraft's proximity to terrain," the Aviation Safety Council said in the investigation report.

The ATR 72-500 propeller plane had deviated off course during thunder and heavy rain as Typhoon Matmo pounded Taiwan.

"They were not visual with the runway environment, contrary to standard operating procedures," the report said.

According to flight safety regulations, the pilots were required to maintain their altitude when their plane descended to 330 feet (100 metres), but the aircraft continued to descend.

"We found the pilots did not follow the standard operating procedure," council director Thomas Wang told reporters.

"Then we discovered TransAsia's team of pilots flying the ATR fleet also had similar problems, and we wanted to know why the carrier tolerated this among its pilots, and why the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) did not discover this while carrying out regular inspections," he said.

Wang said "the company's pilots were flying without abiding by standard procedures, part of a workplace culture which endangered flight safety".

According to transcripts of the plane's two black boxes, which record voices in the cockpit and other in-flight data, the co-pilot twice replied "no" when asked by the pilot whether he had seen the runway.

The investigation report identified a range of other aggravating factors, including poor communication of weather information to the flight crew, and coordination issues at Magong airport.

The Flight GE222 crash came seven months before TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 clipped a bridge and plunged into a river in Taipei shortly after take-off with 53 passengers and five crew on board. Forty-three people died.
Video-streaming platform PressPlay TV is looking to raise fresh funds as the company is eyeing expansion of its services to 50 more cities in the next three months.

The Delhi-based firm provides its services in 100 cities across the country.

"There are a lot of video-streaming platforms, but the major problem here is Internet connectivity. We at PressPlay is trying to solve that, so that people can enjoy videos online without buffering," PressPlay TV co-founder and CEO Anand Sinha told PTI.

"We have installed 2,500 hotspots across the cities we are present in. Now, suppose someone is waiting at a bus stop, he can connect to that hotspot through the app, download the content and watch it offline while travelling. He can also see it online," he added.

The company intends to take the number of hotspots to 10,000 in the next six months.

"We are ramping up operations after the huge response we have received since we launched seven months ago. We will take the number of hotspots to 10,000 in six months and add 50-60 more cities in three months," Sinha said.

"To finance these expansion plans, we are looking to raise about USD 3-5 million. We are already in talks and hoping to close the round in 45 days."



The Delhi-based firm has already raised USD 2.2 million seed fund from Sequoia Capital.

PressPlay has also tied up with 30 production houses for providing content to the platform.

"We have tied up with leading brands like Eros, Shemaroo and Viacom, among others. Further, we look to forge our tie-ups with other content producers," Sinha said.

He also said the company is in talks with Youtube content creators for generating video for PressPlay.

The company is currently working with a team of 55 people.
Farmers were today advised to monitor their wheat crop regularly, saying the prevailing conditions were conducive for the spread of fungal disease yellow rust.

"Present weather conditions are highly favourable for spread and development of yellow rust," said P S Sekhon, Head, Department of Plant Pathology, Punjab Agricultural University.

He said initial infection of yellow rust have already been observed in Ropar (Anandpur Sahib, Noorpur Bedi, Chamkaur Sahib blocks), Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, Hoshiarpur (Mahilpur, Garhshankar, Dasuya, Bhunga blocks) and at few locations in SBS Nagar, Gurdaspur and Pathankot.

Sekhon said occurrence of rain and high velocity winds on January 12 might have helped in the spread of yellow rust to other places in Punjab and the symptoms of which are expected to be visible in farmer's fields during the current week.

He further said initial reports of occurrence of this disease at few locations in Patiala, Ludhiana and Sangrur has also been received.

"Since the prevailing weather conditions are favourable for this disease, more reports regarding occurrence of yellow rust from other places can come in future as well," he said.

Sekhon advised the farmers to monitor the wheat crop regularly and in case symptoms of the disease are noticed in the field, then spray the crop with any one of the recommended fungicide like Tilt or Shine or Stilt or Compass or Markzole or Bumper so as to prevent its further spread.

He cautioned farmers that spray should be done on clear sunny days and in the event of rain after spray, it should be repeated. The spray should be done with cone type nozzle using recommended volume of water," he said.

Farmers' body Bhartiya Kisan Union (Dakunda) general



secretary Jagmohan Singh claimed that over 100 farmers and farm labourers had committed suicide in the state in last one month or so.

"A large number of suicide incidents go unnoticed in the state. Mounting debt and unprofitable farming is driving farmers to end their lives," Singh said while blaming the Akali government for not taking concrete measures to increase farmers' income.

With farmer suicides becoming a major political issue in the wake of next year polls, farm economists put the size of debt on rural household at Rs 72,000 crore from institutional and non-institutional sectors.

"There is an urgent need to ensure surplus income to farmers as 80-90 per cent of farmers are indebted in Punjab," said Satish Verma, Professor, RBI Chair, Chandigarh-based Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID).

He suggested a three-year moratorium on the recovery of outstanding debt by lenders in Punjab. "Banks should also refrain from adopting target based approach in lending to farmers as it sometimes put additional debt burden on farmers," he said.

Yesterday, Chief minister Badal had urged the Centre to rope in eminent agricultural experts and economists to suggest ways and means to arrest the trend of constantly dwindling profits from agriculture income due to unfriendly farmer policies when he was asked on Punjab being the second state after Maharashtra in farm suicides.
Raima Sen, who plays a sex worker in her upcoming film "Bombay Diaries", shot in Sonagachi, considered to be Asia's largest red light district.

She plays a sex worker from Kolkata who aspires to be an actress.

"Sonagachi is a very difficult place to shoot since there are groups of local goons who do not entertain such activities. We had to do guerrilla shoot in spite of having all the permissions," director K D Satyam said.

"I had seen a documentary on the lives of sex workers. There are hundreds of multi-story buildings housing brothels. We knew we had to shoot the entire film at real locations so for Raima's part Sonagachi was the apt place," he said.

Satyam has earlier written the acclaimed children's film "Gattu".

"Bombay Diaries", starring Ashish Vidyarthi, Karuna Pandey, Vineet Singh and the debutante Salim Diwan, will release on February 26.
AAP government today told Delhi High Court it was reconsidering its entire policy on advertisements on public service vehicles (PSVs), including autorickshaws, and sought three months time to come up with a decision.

A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru, however, granted the Delhi government time till April to take a decision, saying three months was too much.

The government's submission was made in two PILs, filed on behalf of some auto unions challenging the policy on display of advertisements on PSVs, and in which the court has already reserved its verdict.

The court has taken up the matter now as it wanted to know whether the current government on its own would address the issues raised by the petitioners.

Advocate Govind Jee, appearing for the petitioners, said they had only two grievances--requirement of prior approval from municipal authorities and prohibition on "political advertisements". He contended that reconsideration of these aspects should not take much time.

The earlier government had refused to remove the word "political" from the guidelines.

In June 2013, the then Delhi government had banned advertisements on PSVs after auto-rickshaws started sporting Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) posters in the run-up to the Delhi assembly elections. Thereafter, the high court had stayed the Delhi government's ban.

Subsequently, in May 2014, the city government had informed the court that it was in the process of finalising the general guidelines for allowing advertisements on public service vehicles and it was awaiting approval of the Lt Governor.

On August 1, 2014, the government had placed before the court its latest guidelines for display of advertisements on PSVs, as per which advertisements containing political, ethnic, religious or sectarian text will not be permitted.

The policy also stated that advertisements cannot be displayed without prior approval of municipal bodies and would be allowed only for vehicles which have installed GPS/GPRS systems.

The court, thereafter, reserved its judgement on September 19, 2014, and, while doing so it said, it would decide three issues--whether political advertisement should be allowed on public service vehicles, their pre-censorship and on the issue that advertisements will be allowed only for vehicles having GPS and GPRS systems.
In a reprieve for Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Kerala High Court today stayed the lodging of an FIR against him and another minister in the solar scam case with strictures against the vigilance judge who immediately offered to quit.

Apparently stung by the strong observations against him by the High Court, the Vigilance Judge S S Vassan, who ordered the filing of FIR against Chandy and Power Minister Arayadan Mohammed, sought permission for voluntary retirement, about 16 months before his tenure ends. He is due to retire in May, 2017.

The High Court while staying the Vigilance Court order today observed that the "Court suffers jurisdiction errors" and also asked the administration section to consider action against the Vigilance Court Judge.

Shortly after hearing the verdict, a jubilant Chandy said, "truth will always prevail" and reiterated that the charges against him were part of a "political conspiracy".

Since yesterday, the state has been witnessing violent protests by CPI(M) led LDF opposition and its youth organisations for the resignation of Chandy.

Chandy, who cancelled all his programmes today in the wake of state wide protests against him, had confined himself to his official residence Cliff House.

Soon after the verdict, Chandy told reporters that he was harbouring no ill will towards anybody and was confident of coming out clean.

Chandy, who had earlier alleged that the charges against him were part of a "conspiracy" against him by a section of bar owners and CPI-M, today said "it was of the lowest order and a shame to Kerala."



Hitting out at the opposition for their statements that appearance of CM before the Judicial Commission probing solar scam was a disgrace to state, Chandy said the conspiracy was by a section of the liquor lobby, who were unhappy due to the closing down of several liquor bars.

The allegation by solar scam accused Saritha S Nair that Rs 10 crore had been offered to her to level charges by CPI-M against his government was true, Chandy said.

Government would initiate steps to find the source of "conspiracy", Chandy said replying to a question. To a volley of questions, he said, "I will reveal it at an appropriate time".

Claiming that the recent developments in the scam had not



affected the UDF government's image, Chandy said,"the strength of UDF is the unity of the lead partner Congress and its allies."



Amidst allegations that he had met Saritha on certain occasions, Chandy said he was in public life for the past 50 years. "Several issues come before me daily which I look into. My way of functioning is that if a mistake or lapse is pointed out, I immediately rectify it," he said.

Asked whether he had committed any mistake on the solar issue, Chandy reiterated that he had not done anything wrong. "I came to know about the fraud only after case came up. I move with people not after going through their past".

"My style is that when 100 matters comes....I take decisions on all matters. In that, some time 10 decisions may go wrong. But I am able to take decision on 90 correct issues. If I go through in detail in all the 100 matters, I will be able to take decision only on 10 issues," he said.

Asked whether LDF would use the scam as a weapon to attack UDF in the state assembly polls due few months away, a confident looking Chandy said, "allegations come and at the same time, vanishes with high speed."



"What was the situation in Kerala yesterday? What is the situation now?. People of the state will understand everything," he said.

On Congress high command backing him, Chandy said the it supported him on the basis of inputs the leaders have received. They know Kerala politics, he said.

Asked if UDF would come back to power, Chandy asserted that there was no doubt it. "When this government came to power with wafer thin majority, everybody thought that it will not last for more than few months". But it has remained in power despite a thin majority".

Meanwhile, Saritha, who deposed before the Solar



Commission for the third consecutive day today, trained her guns once again against the CM, targeting his son Chandy Oommen.

She alleged that she was told by the CM to "create a company-- Kerala Renewable Energy Cooperative Society Ltd-" involving Chandy Oommen and some other family members and was told to incorporate details about renewable energy resources in its bylaw.

According to her, Chandy Oommen was a partner of an American firm called Starflames Inc and it was suggested that the US-based company could be used for importing solar panel required for the institution to be formed in Kerala.

Saritha also rejected allegations that she had "illicit relations" with Chandy Oommen but admitted that she had business relations with him.

"There are allegations about illicit relations with Chandy Oommen. Unfortunately, I am not the heroine of such stories. It was another accused in the solar case," she said not naming the other woman



She also claimed that she has heard that then Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan was in possession of video clippings which shows Chandy Oommen and her co-accused in the solar case visiting Dubai together.

"I doubt Radhakrishnan had leaked information about the video clippings to media fearing a cabinet reshuffle," she said.

Reacting to the allegations against him, Radhakrishnan said they were "baseless" and that he would face them legally.

(Reopens MDS13)



Chandy said his son, against whom allegations have been levelled against by Saritha, would file a defamation suit.

Meanwhile, Culture Affairs minister K C Joseph told reporters that the Vigilance Court Judge had acted as "spatula" in the hands of some people having vested interests.

There was a political conspiracy behind his move, the minister alleged.
media is reporting that US and British intelligence cracked the codes of Israeli drones operating in the Middle East and monitored their surveillance feeds for several years.

A joint report on Friday by the German daily Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Intercept said the details emerged from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked millions of documents about US government surveillance in 2013.

The reports said the intelligence agencies were able to watch information that the drones broadcast back to their handlers. The operation codenamed "anarchist" also hacked into systems in Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the reports said.
With Hillary Clinton likely to win Democratic nomination, Republican presidential candidates today competed aggressively to out do each other and position themselves as the best bet to beat her in the November polls.

Clinton figured most during the last primary debate in Des Moines -- just days ahead of the Iowa Caucus on February 1.

From Marco Rubio to Jeb Bush to Chris Christie, everyone claimed they were positioned most suitably to defeat Clinton.

"I know that if Iowa helps make me the Republican nominee, I will defeat Hillary Clinton. Hillary doesn't want to run against me, but I cannot wait to run against her. And, I cannot wait to earn the opportunity to do it because she cannot be the president of the United States," Rubio said.

Bush, a former Florida governor, said he was best suited to beat the former secretary of state.

"I've seen polls where I'm beating Hillary Clinton pretty regularly... I'm confident if I win this nomination, I will aggressively go against her and beat her. I'm running hard and I believe I'll be the Republican nominee and I'll be the one best suited to beat Hillary Clinton, who should not be president of the United States," Bush claimed.

Christie, too, weighed into the chorus.

"There is no one on this stage better prepared to prosecute the case against Hillary Clinton than I am. I will be ready. I will take her on, and when I take her on I guarantee you one thing, she will never get within 10 miles of the White House. The days for the Clintons in public housing are over," said the New Jersey governor.

Senator Rand Paul said Clinton can't be a champion of women's rights.

"I do think that her position as promoting women's rights and fairness to women in the workplace, that if what Bill Clinton did any CEO in our country did with an intern, with a 22-year- old, 21-year-old intern in their office, they would be fired. They would never be hired again," Paul said.

"And the thing is, she can't be a champion of women's rights at the same time she's got this that is always lurking out there, this type of behaviour. So it is difficult."



In his closing argument, Bush said the US desperately needed a conservative leader as the president.

"As president, I will restore and rebuild our military, restore the alliances and keep us safe. As our party's nominee, I will defeat Hillary Clinton in November," he said.

Clinton, who served as the Secretary of State in the first term of President Barack Obama, has been leading the Democratic nomination polls against her nearest rival Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Top US Republican presidential aspirants have vowed to take on the dreaded Islamic State if elected in the November elections, underlining that "the caliphate of ISIS militant group has to be destroyed".

"Look, the threat we face from ISIS is unprecedented. There has never been a jihadist group like this. They have affiliates in over a dozen countries now," said Senator Marco Rubio at participating in the Fox News-hosted Republican presidential debate.

"It's hate action. They blow people up. Look what they did in San Bernardino. Look at the attack they inspired in Philadelphia, that the White House still refuses to link to terror, where a guy basically shot a police officer three times," he said.

"When I am president of the United States, if there is some place in this country where radical jihadists are planning to attack the United States, we will go after them wherever they are, and if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo," Rubio said.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who took the center stage in the absence of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, vowed to go after ISIS, hunt them down wherever they are, and utterly and completely destroy the terrorist outfit.

"The caliphate of ISIS has to be destroyed, which means we need to arm directly to Kurds, imbed our troops with the Iraqi military, reengage with the Sunni tribal leaders," said Jeb Bush, the former Florida Governor, said.

"Have a no fly zone in Syria and create safe zones to deal with the refugees. But, more importantly, to train a Sunni-led force in Syria to take out ISIS with our support ground and air," he said.

New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie said as commander-in-chief, he would take on ISIS by bringing together European and Sunni Arab allies of the US.

Ohio Governor John Kasich said he believes the way to defeat IS with troops on the ground.

"We want to destroy ISIS, it has to be in the air and on the ground. It has to be with our friends in the Arab world and our friends in Europe, the coalition that we had when we went to the first Gulf War," Kasich said.

Meanwhile Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton accused Republican presidential aspirants of being Islamophobic.

"Muslim Americans: This is your country, too. Islamophobic rhetoric isn't a tool against terrorism-and it has no place in America," she tweeted.

Clinton's campaign said that she has the best comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS.

"The strategy Clinton outlined hinges on three main elements- defeating ISIS in Syria, Iraq, and across the Middle East; disrupting and dismantling the growing terrorist infrastructure that facilitates the flow of fighters, financing, arms, and propaganda around the world and defeat them here at home by foiling plots, disrupting radicalisation, and hardening our defences," the statement said.
A South Korean court today handed down a 20-year jail sentence on a US citizen charged while still a teenager with brutally murdering a Korean man nearly two decades ago.

Arthur Patterson, now 36, was extradited from the United States in September last year to face trial in Seoul on charges of murdering Jo Jung-Pil, who was stabbed multiple times with a knife in a fast-food restaurant toilet.

Patterson, who was the 17-year-old son of a US military contractor at the time, had denied any involvement in the crime in the nightlife district of Itaewon, close to the US military base in Seoul.

Prosecutors, however, argued that Patterson had shown a "devil-like brutality" in stabbing Jo, who appeared to be a complete stranger to him, to death for no apparent reason.

Twenty years in jail is a maximum penalty in South Korea for an offender under the age of 18.

Patterson was initially tried in 1997 as an accomplice, while Edward Lee, a Korean-American man who was at the scene, was charged with murder. Both accused the other of killing Jo.

Patterson served 18 months in prison for lesser charges including obstruction of justice, while Lee was sentenced to 20 years in jail for murder.

In 1998, Patterson was released as part of an amnesty programme, only to find himself a murder suspect again after Lee was acquitted on appeal for lack of evidence.

He fled to the United States a year later after investigators failed to renew his travel ban -- a mistake that sparked a storm of criticism.

The murder was made into a hit movie in 2009, refuelling public anger over the crime and forcing South Korean prosecutors to reopen the case.

Patterson was formally charged in absentia with Jo's murder in 2011, and extradition proceedings began.
A day after dumping garbage outside Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's residence, scores of striking municipal sanitation workers today targeted Transport Minister Gopal Rai, demanding "immediate" release of funds for their salary.

A group of workers and municipal corporation employees staged a protest outside Rai's office in Babarpur in east Delhi and dumped garbage there while another group, under the banner of United Front of MCD Employees, put garbage outside his residence in Civil Lines.

"We demand Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to pay our salary first and later settle scores with the municipal corporations," Sanjay Gehlot, president of Swatantra Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukt Morcha, said.

He said that the protests will be stepped up and workers will hold a demonstration at Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel's residence in Vivek Vihar if their demands were not met.

The union leader said the workers also blocked the road leading to a traffic jam at Apsara border.

The striking workers had yesterday dumped garbage outside the office and residence of Sisodia.

Sisodia had later accused BJP leaders of the three municipal corporations of "instigating" the workers to throw garbage outside the ministers' residences and offices.

In North Delhi, the zonal offices at Karol Bagh, Civil Lines and Rohini were locked down by the striking employees and workers.

The employees at headquarters of South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) at Civic Centre also boycotted work.

Demanding regular salaries, payment of long pending arrears, regularisation of contract based workers, health cards and unification of three municipal corporations, the workers launched the strike on January 27.
The Supreme Court today rejected the plea of the Centre challenging a Delhi High Court order allowing Red FM, partially owned by Sun TV Network Ltd, to take part in stage-III of FM auctions last year.

A bench headed by Justice J S Khehar said as per the existing rules, a company cannot be barred from taking part in auction proceedings just because some shareholders are facing criminal proceedings.

The court said the rules specifically state that security clearance can be denied only when there are criminal proceedings against the company or its directors.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had appealed against the July 26, 2015 order of the High Court allowing Red FM to participate in stage III of FM auction in July-August last year on the grounds including that it has been operating since 2002 and there has been no allegation that it has indulged in activities which could raise security concerns since then.

The High Court had set aside the Centre's order that had rejected Red FM's application to participate in the auction as the company lacked security clearance from the Home Ministry.

It had also said there was no allegation against Digital Radio Broadcasting Ltd, which runs Red FM in Delhi and Mumbai.

Digital Radio was not permitted by the government to take part in the auction on the grounds that it had been denied security clearance due to its association with Sun TV, whose promoter Kalanithi Maran had a 21.6 per cent indirect shareholding in the channel.

The government had denied security clearance to Digital Radio as Kalanithi Maran and former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran were being prosecuted in cases of money laundering.

The High Court had said the auction eligibility criteria has to be given a strict interpretation as it would have "serious ramifications" like putting a "blot on that company" or "a badge of dishonour".

It had said that on giving a strict interpretation to the criteria, the condition requiring clearance referred only to the company and its directors and does not mention the shareholders.
The Supreme Court today refused to entertain a fresh PIL seeking a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in iron ore mining in Goa, saying it has already been hearing pleas on similar issues.

A bench headed by Justice J S Khehar said there was no reason to hear the plea of NGO 'Goa Paryavaran Savrakshan Sangharsh Samitee' as there are similar petitions pending adjudication before it.

Earlier, the apex court, in 2012, had suspended all iron ore mining and related activities in Goa. The blanket ban was later lifted by the court with certain conditions in 2014.

The apex court had also said that mining activities will not resume till all leases were granted afresh by the state government after the clearances from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).

NGO Goa Foundation and activist Sudip Tamankar had filed the earlier petitions in the apex court.
Sentencing in the Kamduni gangrape and murder case was deferred till tomorrow as the convicts' counsel today argued against possible death sentence to some of those found guilty claiming that earlier cases of more gruesome incidents invited lesser sentences.

Additional District and Sessions judge Sanchita Sarkar, who yesterday convicted six persons in the gangrape and murder of the girl, said she intended to pronounce sentence the convicts tomorrow following conclusion of arguments.

Firoz Edulji, counsel for convicts Saiful Ali and Ansar Ali, submitted before the court that there had been previous cases of rape and murder in which the convicts were given punishment other than death sentence.

He referred to some judgements of different courts of the country before the hearing was adjourned for the day.

Saiful Ali, Ansar Ali and Aminul Ali were found guilty under sections 376(d) (gangrape), 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC.

The judge found the other three - Imanul Islam, Aminul Islam and Bhola Naskar guilty under sections 376(d) (gangrape), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of IPC.

Saiful Ali, Ansar Ali and Aminul Ali face a maximum punishment of death penalty under the sections they have been convicted, while the minimum possible punishment is life sentence.

The other three found guilty face a minimum of 20 years in prison or a maximum of life sentence, the judge had said.

Rafiqul Islam and Nur Ali were acquitted owing to lack of evidence against them.

Another accused Gopal Naskar died during trial in August last year.

The gangrape and brutal murder of the 21-year-old college girl occurred when she was returning home at Kamduni, about 50 km from Kolkata, in North 24-Parganas district after appearing for an examination at her college on June 7, 2013.

The second year BA student was pulled into a farm when she was walking back home along a deserted road after alighting from a bus. She was subsequently gangraped and murdered.

Her mutilated body was found the next morning in a corner of the farm.

The incident had sparked an outrage in the state amidst concerns over women's safety.

The police had on December 26 arrested a tour guide, a



driver, a cleaner and a hotel staff in connection with the alleged gangrape of the woman in April this year.

The US national arrived here a few days ago to join the probe and recorded her statement in front of a judicial magistrate where she reiterated that she was gangraped by five persons in a five-star city hotel.

Four accused were arrested after the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) issued a notice to the police asking them why the Rape Crisis Cell of the panel was not informed when the victim's statement was recorded.

Earlier, the complainant had said she was "not satisfied" with the probe and was ready to come to India to identify the accused.

The woman had alleged that she was raped by the men for two days and also threatened with dire consequences if she reported the matter to anybody.

She had also stated that the accused had made a video of the act and threatened to make it public if she reported the matter to anyone. She had also told the police that the accused had claimed to have sexually assaulted a couple of other female tourists as well.

A team of psychologists and psychiatrists have been assisting the lady in recalling the details of the incident. The team is also working with the police in their investigation to tie up loose ends.
The Delhi University Teachers' Association today protested outside St Stephen's college over a series of Facebook posts by its principal Valson Thampu in which he gave a clean chit to a professor accused of sexually harassing a research scholar.

In his most recent Facebook post, Thampu claimed he only "stood by a disabled colleague who was hounded precisely because he was upright and incorruptible".

In a separate post, he used terms like "I curse you" and "monster" to describe a particular "teacher" who is, according to him, behind "concocting" the sexual harassment charges against the accused.

"Commenting on a sub-judice matter using the social media to hit out at teachers and using such loose and colored language to malign the victim, is utterly disgraceful and unbecoming of a head of institution," said Maya John, former president of Students' Union of the Stephens College and a women's rights activist who was also part of the protest.

She demanded that Thampu be removed immediately.

President of DUTA Nandita Narain said, "He has attempted to compromise a fair and clean probe by commenting on it. He has further assassinated the victim and all those standing by her. He is already asserting that the complainant is a liar, a concocter."



"Moreover, he is blatantly maligning those choosing to side with the girl. Thereby, he is making sure no one ever dares to come out in the open and talk about such cases of harassment. This is an extremely shameful and condemnable behavior," she said.

Abha Dev Habib, a member of the Executive Council of Delhi University, said: "What transpired in Rohith Vermula's suicide case and the case of three students killing themselves in Tamil Nadu was an indirect result of irresponsible behavior by the heads of institutions of the respective colleges. Have we learnt nothing from these incidents? We must make sure that such a horror doesn't repeat itself and Thampu is removed."



The Delhi Commission for Women had last month taken cognizance of Thampu's controversial Facebook posts and issued him a show-cause notice.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today chaired a high-level meeting to review security situation in the country and vowed to bring to justice perpetrators of the "heinous" act of killing children in their places of study.

Sharif was briefed in detail on the January 20 Bacha Khan University attack in Charsadda that killed 21 people mostly students and the investigations made so far.

The Prime Minister reaffirmed the government's resolve to continue the war on terror until the last terrorist is eliminated from Pakistan's soil, his office said in a statement.

"Perpetrators and facilitators of the heinous act of killing our innocent children in the places of their studies will be brought to justice," he said.

Wiping out terrorism from the country is the collective resolve of the state of Pakistan, its government and people of the land, Sharif said.

The meeting - that focussed on Pakistan's overall security and economic situation - was attended by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan besides other senior officials.

Sharif said that the ongoing military operation 'Zarb-e-Azb' has broken the backbone of terrorists who have resorted to "targeting soft targets out of sheer frustration, but we will not let their evil agenda to succeed".

He also briefed the meeting on his latest visits to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Davos in Switzerland.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha today interacted with the municipal commissioners of 97 cities included in the Smart Cities Mission and chief secretaries of all states and Union territories on the implementation of the programme and asked them to focus on resource mobilisation.

Complimenting the 20 winners of the first round of Smart City Challenge Competition, he said it said was fiercely contested based on comprehensive evaluation criteria.

Highlighting the importance and urgency being accorded by the government to Smart City Mission, Sinha, in a video conference here, stressed that the urban sector has emerged as a major contributor of economic activity.

He said that given the limitations of central and state governments in terms of resources, Mission Cities should focus more on other means of resource mobilization like convergence of various schemes, rationalization of user charges, an Urban Development Ministry spokesperson said.

The Cabinet Secretary said those who could not make it to the first list announced yesterday need not be disappointed as they get two more opportunities to compete in the next few months.

The Municipal Commissioner of Bhubaneshwar, which topped the list of 20 winners, informed the Cabinet Secretary that sustainable urban planning, developing sound economic ecosystem and credible financial planning through city-level infrastructure development fund were the strong points of their proposal.

The Municipal Commissioner of Pune, which came in second, said focus on quality of life in the city, creation of qualitative economic infrastructure as a part of a 15 year master plan and sustainability features were the core strengths of the city's proposal.

Sinha informed the 23 states and Union territories, which were not represented in the first list, that they could participate in fast-track competition by submitting upgraded smart city proposals of one top ranked city in each state and UT by April 15, 2016.

Most of the cities who could not make to the winners list informed the Cabinet Secretary that preparation of the proposals and participation in the competition was a huge learning experience and they were determined to improve upon their proposals by working on the deficiencies.

Some of them admitted to possible inadequacies with respect to certain parameters like implementation frame work, credibility of financing plans and sustainable urban planning.

The Cabinet Secretary spoke to the municipal



commissioners of 15 cities, including 4 winners, and those who are to compete in fast-track and second round of competitions along with respective chief secretaries asking them to share their experience of preparation of the proposals and possible reasons for winning in the first round of competition and not making it to the first list.

Jaipur, which stood third, said that financial viability based on monetization of substantial land parcels available in the city and focusing on benefits to the wider sections of the people instead of capital intensive projects were the core strengths of their proposal.

On being asked by the Cabinet Secretary about the efforts made for selection of three cities from Madhya Pradesh, the state Chief Secretary said that the state government has given renewed focus and thrust to urban governance and planning in the context of the importance of urban areas for economic development.

He said that the state government is going to set up special purpose vehicles for cities not included in the first list from the state.

Some cities and states that could not make to the first list of 20 observed that inherent and legacy issues like economic backwardness and urban governance proved to be the limitations and some special consideration may be given to such cities and states.

To this, the Cabinet Secretary said the Smart City Challenge Competition and selection of cities is based mostly on the proposals for future development of cities and such limitations do not really affect their chances.

Officials of 15 cities including Bhubaneshwar, Pune, Jaipur, Guwahati, Warangal, Passighat, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Bhagalpur, Agartala, Port Blair, Kohima, Amritsar, Salem, Rajkot, Hubli-Dharward, Tirupati and Durgapur shared their experiences and views with the cabinet secretary.

He complimented all the 97 Mission Cities for working diligently to prepare smart city plans almost on their own with some hand-holding from state and central governments, which he said is a departure from the 'top-down approach' to urban development in the country followed so far.

Urban Development Secretary Madhusudhan Prasad, Additional Secretary Samir Sharma and Mission Director and senior officials of Cabinet Secretariat and Urban Development Ministry officials participated in the video conferencing that lasted an hour.
Uproarious scenes marred the opening day of Budget session of Uttar Pradesh legislature as slogan-shouting opposition lawmakers barring those from BJP disrupted Governor Ram Naik's address to the joint sitting of the two Houses today.

The BSP led the opposition onslaught, carrying posters, raising anti-government slogans and shouting 'Governor go back'. Congress members too displayed banners in the Well. Some of them donned caps having picture of their leader Rahul Gandhi.

Amid the din, Naik cut short his address, which was laid on the table.

BJP members, however, did not leave their seats during the Governor's address.

As soon as the Governor rose to start the address, BSP members trooped into the Well shouting 'rajyapal wapas jao (governor go back)'. They were soon joined by members from Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal who displayed posters carrying anti-government slogans.

The noise drowned the Governor's address in which he spelt out the policies, programmes and achievements of Akhilesh Yadav government and forced him to stop midway.
Joining the ongoing stir over the alleged suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, the SC/ST Employees Welfare Association of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) today organised a 'protest day'.

The 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' this morning also continued their relay hunger strike, which they had started yesterday.

The members of the forum have written to President Pranab Mukherjee, visitor of the university, regarding their demand for removal of Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile and seeking that in-charge VC Vipin Srivastava should step down from the post, a representative of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice said.

The JAC, under whose banner the agitation by the students is being led, said a candle light vigil would be organised today, on the eve of the birthday of research scholar Rohith Vemula, who allegedly committed suicide in a hostel room on January 17.

A group of students are also slated to start an indefinite fast in support of their demands today.

The JAC has called for mass hunger strike in universities across the country to express solidarity with the agitation on the HCU campus.

Two batches of students had earlier held indefinite fast at the protest site in HCU. However, they were shifted to hospitals following concerns over their health condition.

The JAC plans to undertake a visit to Delhi in the first week of February to meet the President to press for their demands, the JAC representative said.

The JAC's main demands includes bringing in a 'Rohith Act' to prevent any injustice to the students of marginalised sections in university, and forming a committee to look into the issues of alleged caste and academic biases in the varsities in the last 20 years in the country.
A sub-inspector has been arrested here on charges of attempting to rape a 19-year-old girl hailing from Jharkhand.

Arvind Megh, who is posted at Jhawarnagar police station here, was arrested yesterday after the victim filed a complaint against him alleging that he molested her and attempted to rape her at his government residence on Udheyognagar police station premises, Jhawarnagar police station SHO Rajesh Miserath said today.

After the arrival of her parents from Jharkhand, the victim lodged the case against sub-inspector Arvind Megh yesterday, following which he was arrested.

The accused was booked under sections 25 (fraud), 354 (assault on women) and 342 (wrongful confinement) of IPC and further investigation into the matter is going on, said the SHO.

The girl, a resident of Bokaro district in Jharkhand, had apparently come here to meet her lover.

On her arrival from Jharkhand on January 24, the victim reached Jhawarnagar police station seeking help with accommodation where SI Arvind Megh met her.

Megh arranged accommodation for her in a girls' hostel. The girl was in depression regarding her love affair with the boy, the SHO said.

The accused took the girl for sight-seeing during afternoon hours on January 26, following which he took the girl to his government quarter.

She alleged in her complaint that the sub-inspector molested her and tried to rape her. The girl, however, ran out of the room and raised an alarm, the SHO added.
The largest gathering of Syria's mainstream opposition was dispatching today a small delegation to peace talks in Geneva, but "not as negotiators", a source close to the alliance said.

Fuad Aliko, who is due to represent the High Negotiations Committee if it formally takes part in the talks, said, "A media delegation from the HNC has decided to go to Geneva. They will arrive today (Friday)."



Aliko said the delegation was made up of three HNC members, who also serve as the group's spokesmen: Riad Naasan Agha, Salem al-Meslet, and Munzer Makhous.

There were indications late today that at least one of the spokesmen had yet to leave the Saudi capital.

Today was the HNC's fourth day of deliberating in Saudi Arabia whether or not it would attend peace talks in Switzerland hosted by UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura.

The three-man delegation "might meet with some world powers, but not as negotiators," Aliko told AFP by phone.

"They might meet with de Mistura, with the Americans, but the programme is not clear yet," he added.

Syria's government delegation, headed by its envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari, arrived on today afternoon to UN headquarters in Geneva to meet with de Mistura.

The UN said de Mistura would also meet with "other participants in the talks" but did not specify who they are.

The negotiations, aimed at putting an end to the nearly five-year conflict in Syria, were already delayed reportedly due to wrangling over who would represent the opposition.

The brutal war has left more than 260,000 people dead and forced millions to flee their homes.
A Syrian opposition official says the main opposition group is staying away from peace talks until they get a response to their demands from the United Nations.

Basma Kodmani, a member of the opposition's negotiations team, says they are still waiting for response from the UN regarding lifting the sieges on rebel-held areas and an end to Russian and Syrian bombardment.

Opposition officials say they will not join the Geneva talks unless these demands are met.

The talks were scheduled to begin in Geneva today and the Syrian government delegation is expected later in the day.

The UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistaura said yesterday that the peace talks he plans to launch in Geneva "in the next few days" are an opportunity not to be missed.
BJP is taking steps to form a "strong" alliance for the upcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and talks in this regard are in progress, two senior party leaders said here today.

The final decision in the matter would be taken by the central leadership of the party, BJP national Secretary H Raja and state unit chief Tamilisai Sounderarajan separately told reporters here.

The two leaders are here to oversee the arrangements for



the February 2 visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the city to address a public meeting and participate in two functions.

Raja said a strong alliance for Assembly polls later this



year was in the offing in Tamil Nadu and that the outcome of the election contest would shatter all predictions and surveys.

He said that if voted to power, BJP would give a corruption-free administration and work for the development of the state and its people.

Sounderarajan claimed that BJP, after enrolling 50 lakh



members in the state, had become strong and no party could form the government without its support.

She further stressed that Modi's public rally would be a



turning point in the history of Tamil Nadu politics.

The Modi government is focusing on the development of Tamil Nadu and that was evident in the announcement of the names of Chennai and Coimbatore in the first list for the Smart City project, she said.

Sounderarajan further rejected allegations that there was



a political motive behind the selection of the two cities for the project.

A host of BJP leaders, including Union Ministers Prakash



Javadekar, in-charge of the poll campaign in the state, Pon Radhakrishnan and party general secretary Muralidhar Rao are camping in the city ahead of the Prime Minister's visit.
It was the end of the road for the 'Defender' 4x4 utility vehicle made by Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) as the luxury carmaker halted production of the iconic model at its UK plant today.

The last model of the famous 4x4 off-roader rolled off the production line at JLR's Solihull plant in the West Midlands with a celebratory event for 700 current and former employees.

Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, described the vehicle as the "origin of our legendary capability, a vehicle that makes the world a better place, often in some of the most extreme circumstances".

"There will always be a special place in our hearts for Defender, among all our employees, but this is not the end. We have a glorious past to champion, and a wonderful future to look forward to," he said.

The Defender celebration at Solihull saw more than 25 unique vehicles from Land Rover's history come together in a procession around the plant, featuring the final current Defender vehicle which came off the line.

The model was launched 68 years ago and was named 'Defender' in the 1990s, being driven by British troops in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Its famous owners include Queen Elizabeth II and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the model became a movie star when it featured heavily in the 1966 film 'Born Free' and with James Bond in 'Skyfall'.

Nick Rogers, group engineering director at JLR, said: "It's a true motoring icon and is much loved around the world. The world has changed dramatically in the last 68 years, but this vehicle has remained a constant - something no other vehicle can claim".

More than 2 million Series Land Rovers and Defenders have been built at the Solihull plant since 1948.

"What began as simply a line drawing in the sand has gone on to become one of the world's most iconic 4x4s, earning the accolade of being the most versatile vehicle on the planet, capable of taking owners to the places other vehicles couldn't reach," JLR said.

Land Rover also plans to launch an online "Defender Journeys" platform, which will allow the legendary model to live-on in a digital environment.

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The model was halted to create models more compatible with modern-day automotive emissions and safety standards.

"The last of the current Defender models embraces the vehicle's simplicity, honesty and charm - it represents its Series Land Rover heritage. Creating the Defender of tomorrow, a dream for any engineer or designer, is the next exciting chapter and we are looking forward to taking on that challenge," Rogers said.

Land Rover has also announced a new "Heritage Restoration Programme", which will be based on the site of the existing Solihull production line.

A team of experts, including some long serving Defender employees, will oversee the restoration of a number of Series Land Rovers sourced from across the globe and the first these vehicles will go on sale in July 2016.

Tim Hannig Jaguar Land Rover heritage director, said, "Land Rover Heritage will be offering cars, services, parts and experiences for all owners and fans around the world. Our new restoration service and the sale of expertly restored Series I vehicles is just the start of making sure that classic Land Rovers are not only part of our past but part of our future".

Land Rover has also announced a new "Heritage Restoration Programme", which will be based on the site of the existing Solihull production line.

A team of experts, including some long serving Defender employees, will oversee the restoration of a number of Series Land Rovers sourced from across the globe and the first of these vehicles will go on sale in July.

"In 2015, a unique milestone Defender - the 'Defender 2,000,000' sold for a record 400,000 pounds - a far cry from the original 450 pounds the first Land Rover sold for at the 1948 Amsterdam Motor Show," JLR said.

Land Rover also plans to launch an online "Defender Journeys" platform, which will allow the legendary model to live-on in a digital environment. The online hub will allow owners to upload details of their most memorable journeys in a Series Land Rover or Defender.

The aim is to crowd source journeys from Land Rover drivers and plot them on a single online map, preserving the memories of adventures that have taken place in the iconic 4x4 for future generations.
Six passengers of an auto-rickshaw, including a woman, were killed today when a tipper truck rammed into the three-wheeler in Jaipur mandal of Adilabad district, police said.

The tar-laden tipper truck collided with the auto-rickshaw near Bheemaram village, killing the six occupants on the spot, they said.

The auto-rickshaw driver was injured in the mishap and has been hospitalised, they said.

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has conveyed his condolences to the bereaved families.
How Michigan and Ohio Made It Harder to Accidentally Break the Law Proponents of mens rea say a "criminal intent"

requirement serves as a guard against

overcriminalization by protecting people from

accidentally breaking the law.

(Photo: istockphoto, edited)



During his last term on the committee, McBroom, a Republican, was schooled on a criminal justice topic he had never heard of before, but on this one, few could blame him.



Rep. Rose Mary Robinson, a Democratic lawmaker and defense attorney from Detroit, would frequently want to know what the mens rea standards were for the states thousands of criminal laws and regulations.



One day I said, Rep. Robinson, I am not an attorney. I am a farmer. What on earth is mens rea? McBroom recalled.



Last month, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a bill written by McBroom, and supported by Robinson, that requires prosecutorsunless a law explicitly states otherwiseto prove that a defendant intended to commit a crime.

The willful intent standard, known as mens reawhich is Latin for guilty mind, as McBroom can now tell youhas suddenly become of central concern on Capitol Hill, as division over the issue threatens Congress efforts to pass a broader criminal justice reform bill.



At the federal level, opponents of requiring more laws to have a willful requirement standard argue that it would make it more difficult to prosecute corporations that commit fraud, taint food, or pollute the environment, because these violators could allege they didnt intend to break the law.



Others fret over why Congress would risk ruining bipartisan momentum toward reducing harsh prison sentences from the nations war on drugs by injecting a seemingly unrelated, harder to understand issuemens reainto the same debate.



As federal legislators try to work out their differences, Michigan recently became the second Midwestern state, after Ohio in late 2014, to implement laws reforming how the mens rea standard is applied.



Proponents of mens rea, who call such requirements a necessary guard against overcriminalization by protecting people from accidentally breaking the law, say the states efforts prove that theres a bipartisan way forward on the issue.



Common Sense in Michigan

It was pretty commonsense around here, McBroom told The Daily Signal of the effort he led to reform mens rea in Michigan, which he began at the end of 2014 and saw through until the legislation passed last month.



After learning about it, I quickly realized that this word, this mens rea, is exactly describing the problem so many of us have been after. People cant follow or keep up with all these regulatory burdens.



McBroom, who was tending the cows on his farm in Dickinson County as he remembered this, added: I happened to be at the right place at the right time.



The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank that advocates for free market policies, reports there are more than 3,100 criminal offenses in state statutes, along with other penalties created by regulatory agencies without legislative approval.



Mackinac, which testified in favor of McBrooms bill alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, says that 26 percent of felonies and 59 percent of misdemeanors in the state lack an adequate mens rea provision, meaning a judge or jury doesnt necessarily need to be convinced that the accused knew he was committing a crime.





That law has since been changed. In another case, this one from 2003, a man named Kenneth Schumacher delivered scrap tires to what he believed to be a legal depository. But the facility lacked a license, and though he didnt intend to break the states strict liability offense of unlawfully disposing of scrap tires, Schumacher was sentenced to 270 days in jail and a fine of $10,000.



Proponents of mens rea standards contend that judges sometimes interpret laws that are silent or weak on criminal intent as being a strict liability crime like this one, where a person can be convicted regardless of his or her state of mind.



Rather than go back and look at each criminal offense to see if it has a mens rea requirement, McBroom decided to require a default standard that would automatically apply to statutes that do not say anything about intent.



In order to win a conviction, prosecutors looking to punish people for such offenses must show that the defendant committed the crime with intent, knowledge, or recklessness.



The legislature still can make law that does not include a mens rea standardmaking it a strict liability crimeby specifically saying that it intends for there to be no such requirement.



This really goes to the fundamental tenets of criminal law, said Mark P. Fancher, an attorney with the ACLU of Michigans Racial Justice Project.



Law students are taught there is no crime if there is no concurrence between an act and their mental state, Fancher told The Daily Signal. In the absence of one of those things, then there is no crime. There is a reason why there is a heavy burden on the state to prove that someone has committed a crime. If someone is going to be held criminally liable, we want as a society for the state to provide sufficient evidence that proves people are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.





And prosecutors already must prove that defendants intended to commit crimes such as murder, robbery, and assault.



So McBrooms legislation deals almost exclusively with laws related to regulatory actions.



The message that resonated here, and is really missing at the federal level, is that we are not trying to get someone out of being guilty, McBroom said. We are just saying that unless otherwise stipulated, you cant accidentally be a criminal. You can still face some civil penalties, but you are not a criminal. This mens rea issue is so critical to all of us just trying to live every day.



Rescue Effort in Ohio

Bill Seitz, the state senator who made Ohio the first in the nation to adopt a default mens rea standard, approached the reform effort from a more familiar place.



A practicing lawyer since 1978 whos serving the last of his 15 years in the Ohio General Assembly because of term limits, Seitz felt as though he was running out of time to address an issue thats always irked him.



Prosecutors are wed to the idea of making things as easy to prove as possible, so they like to have loose standards for mens rea; basically, it makes their jobs easier, Seitz, a Republican, told The Daily Signal. I would try to rescue these bills and put a standard in there, but I am not going to be there forever. So whether I am there or not, I figured it would probably be a good idea to have a clear call-out in the criminal code that you must specify the degree of mens rea.



Similar to Michigans bill, Ohios legislation, passed in December 2014, says that for people who are prosecuted under existing laws that contain unclear or nonexistent mens rea requirements, those defendants, to be found guilty, must have acted recklessly.



In addition, any new criminal offense created by the legislature will be void if it does not contain some type of mens rea standard. So that means prosecutors who prefer that certain crimes not contain any intent requirement can still lobby the legislature to make that so, as long as lawmakers explicitly specify that simply committing the illegal act, regardless of whether the offender intended to do so, is sufficient to be found guilty.



Thats why accusations of this being something that makes it easier for businesses to be bad actors rings hollow, said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, an Ohio think tank that testified in favor of Seitzs bill. We were able to build a coalition in Ohio by sitting down with prosecutors and saying, if its important for you to have no criminal intent, you can make that argument for the legislature, but the legislature needs to actively act upon that. Legislation crafted properly leaves prosecutors with ample tools to prosecute wrongdoers while still protecting the rights of the innocent.



John Murphy, the executive director of the Ohio Prosecutors Association, told The Daily Signal in a brief interview that while its early to make a final judgment on the states mens rea reforms, we havent seen any major problems yet.



Federal Debate

Seitz says he closely follows the mens rea debate occurring at the federal level. Thus far, the White House and Senate have resisted a House Judiciary Committee proposal that would require federal criminal laws without a clear requirement of intent to adopt a default standard saying the defendant had to knowingly commit a crime to be found guilty.



Those opposed to the Houses measure say it distracts from the bigger priority of undoing unfair mandatory sentencing laws and allege that proponents have failed to show how the mens rea reform would impact many people.



The criminal justice reform debate is aimed at addressing the legacy of the war on drugs, and these proposals are not focused on that, said Todd Cox, a criminal justice expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington D.C. The crimes being talked about impact 0.08 percent of the federal prison population, and we believe they would make it difficult to enforce bedrock regulatory safeguards in areas of environmental, health, and consumer safety.



Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, believes that the mens rea issue is too important not to be included as part of the criminal justice reform package.



One of the biggest problems facing the criminal justice system is the erosion of mens rea requirements, Goodlatte, R-Va., told The Daily Signal in a statement. As Congress focuses on criminal justice reform in the months ahead, it is imperative we address this issue so that honest Americans are not prosecuted for breaking laws when they had no intent to do so.



While the debate is incomparable to outcomes in the states, Seitz wants people to know what Ohio accomplished.



Simply making crimes easier to prove by prosecutors threatens us all, so we sought to undo that, Seitz said. What we did is really a blow to those who believe it should be as easy as shooting fish out of a barrel to commit crimes.

-----------------

Josh Siegel (

Tags: Michigan, Ohio, Made It Harder to Accidentally Break the Law, josh Siegal, The Daily Signal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks! by Josh Siegel : The Criminal Justice Committee was always an odd fit for Rep. Ed McBroom, a state lawmaker and dairy farmer representing a rural area of Michigan.During his last term on the committee, McBroom, a Republican, was schooled on a criminal justice topic he had never heard of before, but on this one, few could blame him.Rep. Rose Mary Robinson, a Democratic lawmaker and defense attorney from Detroit, would frequently want to know what the mens rea standards were for the states thousands of criminal laws and regulations.One day I said, Rep. Robinson, I am not an attorney. I am a farmer. What on earth is mens rea? McBroom recalled.Last month, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a bill written by McBroom, and supported by Robinson, that requires prosecutorsunless a law explicitly states otherwiseto prove that a defendant intended to commit a crime.The willful intent standard, known as mens reawhich is Latin for guilty mind, as McBroom can now tell youhas suddenly become of central concern on Capitol Hill, as division over the issue threatens Congress efforts to pass a broader criminal justice reform bill.At the federal level, opponents of requiring more laws to have a willful requirement standard argue that it would make it more difficult to prosecute corporations that commit fraud, taint food, or pollute the environment, because these violators could allege they didnt intend to break the law.Others fret over why Congress would risk ruining bipartisan momentum toward reducing harsh prison sentences from the nations war on drugs by injecting a seemingly unrelated, harder to understand issuemens reainto the same debate.As federal legislators try to work out their differences, Michigan recently became the second Midwestern state, after Ohio in late 2014, to implement laws reforming how the mens rea standard is applied.Proponents of mens rea, who call such requirements a necessary guard against overcriminalization by protecting people from accidentally breaking the law, say the states efforts prove that theres a bipartisan way forward on the issue.It was pretty commonsense around here, McBroom told The Daily Signal of the effort he led to reform mens rea in Michigan, which he began at the end of 2014 and saw through until the legislation passed last month.After learning about it, I quickly realized that this word, this mens rea, is exactly describing the problem so many of us have been after. People cant follow or keep up with all these regulatory burdens.McBroom, who was tending the cows on his farm in Dickinson County as he remembered this, added: I happened to be at the right place at the right time.The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank that advocates for free market policies, reports there are more than 3,100 criminal offenses in state statutes, along with other penalties created by regulatory agencies without legislative approval.Mackinac, which testified in favor of McBrooms bill alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, says that 26 percent of felonies and 59 percent of misdemeanors in the state lack an adequate mens rea provision, meaning a judge or jury doesnt necessarily need to be convinced that the accused knew he was committing a crime.In making its case, McBroom and Mackinac point to real-life examples where people were prosecuted, or threatened, for breaking laws they didnt know existed. In a highly publicized case from 2009, Lisa Snyder, a stay-at-home mother who would routinely watch her neighbors kids before the school bus arrived, was warned by the Michigan Department of Human Services that she was engaging in illegal child care because she didnt have a daycare providers license to supervise the children.That law has since been changed. In another case, this one from 2003, a man named Kenneth Schumacher delivered scrap tires to what he believed to be a legal depository. But the facility lacked a license, and though he didnt intend to break the states strict liability offense of unlawfully disposing of scrap tires, Schumacher was sentenced to 270 days in jail and a fine of $10,000.Proponents of mens rea standards contend that judges sometimes interpret laws that are silent or weak on criminal intent as being a strict liability crime like this one, where a person can be convicted regardless of his or her state of mind.Rather than go back and look at each criminal offense to see if it has a mens rea requirement, McBroom decided to require a default standard that would automatically apply to statutes that do not say anything about intent.In order to win a conviction, prosecutors looking to punish people for such offenses must show that the defendant committed the crime with intent, knowledge, or recklessness.The legislature still can make law that does not include a mens rea standardmaking it a strict liability crimeby specifically saying that it intends for there to be no such requirement.This really goes to the fundamental tenets of criminal law, said Mark P. Fancher, an attorney with the ACLU of Michigans Racial Justice Project.Law students are taught there is no crime if there is no concurrence between an act and their mental state, Fancher told The Daily Signal. In the absence of one of those things, then there is no crime. There is a reason why there is a heavy burden on the state to prove that someone has committed a crime. If someone is going to be held criminally liable, we want as a society for the state to provide sufficient evidence that proves people are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.McBroom says that he was able to win over skeptical prosecutors by not including the criminal, motor vehicle, or public health codes in the legislation. For example, crimes like drunk driving and selling cigarettes or alcohol to a minor do not have an intent standard and were never a part of the discussion.And prosecutors already must prove that defendants intended to commit crimes such as murder, robbery, and assault.So McBrooms legislation deals almost exclusively with laws related to regulatory actions.The message that resonated here, and is really missing at the federal level, is that we are not trying to get someone out of being guilty, McBroom said. We are just saying that unless otherwise stipulated, you cant accidentally be a criminal. You can still face some civil penalties, but you are not a criminal. This mens rea issue is so critical to all of us just trying to live every day.Bill Seitz, the state senator who made Ohio the first in the nation to adopt a default mens rea standard, approached the reform effort from a more familiar place.A practicing lawyer since 1978 whos serving the last of his 15 years in the Ohio General Assembly because of term limits, Seitz felt as though he was running out of time to address an issue thats always irked him.Prosecutors are wed to the idea of making things as easy to prove as possible, so they like to have loose standards for mens rea; basically, it makes their jobs easier, Seitz, a Republican, told The Daily Signal. I would try to rescue these bills and put a standard in there, but I am not going to be there forever. So whether I am there or not, I figured it would probably be a good idea to have a clear call-out in the criminal code that you must specify the degree of mens rea.Similar to Michigans bill, Ohios legislation, passed in December 2014, says that for people who are prosecuted under existing laws that contain unclear or nonexistent mens rea requirements, those defendants, to be found guilty, must have acted recklessly.In addition, any new criminal offense created by the legislature will be void if it does not contain some type of mens rea standard. So that means prosecutors who prefer that certain crimes not contain any intent requirement can still lobby the legislature to make that so, as long as lawmakers explicitly specify that simply committing the illegal act, regardless of whether the offender intended to do so, is sufficient to be found guilty.Thats why accusations of this being something that makes it easier for businesses to be bad actors rings hollow, said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, an Ohio think tank that testified in favor of Seitzs bill. We were able to build a coalition in Ohio by sitting down with prosecutors and saying, if its important for you to have no criminal intent, you can make that argument for the legislature, but the legislature needs to actively act upon that. Legislation crafted properly leaves prosecutors with ample tools to prosecute wrongdoers while still protecting the rights of the innocent.John Murphy, the executive director of the Ohio Prosecutors Association, told The Daily Signal in a brief interview that while its early to make a final judgment on the states mens rea reforms, we havent seen any major problems yet.Seitz says he closely follows the mens rea debate occurring at the federal level. Thus far, the White House and Senate have resisted a House Judiciary Committee proposal that would require federal criminal laws without a clear requirement of intent to adopt a default standard saying the defendant had to knowingly commit a crime to be found guilty.Those opposed to the Houses measure say it distracts from the bigger priority of undoing unfair mandatory sentencing laws and allege that proponents have failed to show how the mens rea reform would impact many people.The criminal justice reform debate is aimed at addressing the legacy of the war on drugs, and these proposals are not focused on that, said Todd Cox, a criminal justice expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington D.C. The crimes being talked about impact 0.08 percent of the federal prison population, and we believe they would make it difficult to enforce bedrock regulatory safeguards in areas of environmental, health, and consumer safety.Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, believes that the mens rea issue is too important not to be included as part of the criminal justice reform package.One of the biggest problems facing the criminal justice system is the erosion of mens rea requirements, Goodlatte, R-Va., told The Daily Signal in a statement. As Congress focuses on criminal justice reform in the months ahead, it is imperative we address this issue so that honest Americans are not prosecuted for breaking laws when they had no intent to do so.While the debate is incomparable to outcomes in the states, Seitz wants people to know what Ohio accomplished.Simply making crimes easier to prove by prosecutors threatens us all, so we sought to undo that, Seitz said. What we did is really a blow to those who believe it should be as easy as shooting fish out of a barrel to commit crimes.----------------- @SiegelScribe ) is the news editor for Heritage Foundation's The Daily Signal Posted by Bill Smith at 5:01 PM - Post Link
A top US general has said it is difficult to destroy the "enemy" in Afghanistan if terror groups like the Haqqani network and Taliban have sanctuaries in Pakistan.

"When an enemy enjoys sanctuary like that, it's very difficult to defeat them," General John "Mick" Nicholson, who has been nominated by the Pentagon as Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during confirmation hearing yesterday.

Nicholson said he views the terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan as a serious problem.

"This (terrorist safe havens) has been one of the principal challenges. It's a sanctuary that our enemies, in particular the Haqqani Network, have enjoyed inside Pakistan," he said responding to a question from Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Committee.

Critical of the Af-Pak policy of the Obama Administration, McCain also demanded an immediately halt to US troop withdrawals and eliminate any target date for withdrawal.

Responding to the question, Nicholson said it is difficult to defeat the Taliban and Haqqani network when they enjoy terrorist safe haven, and as such, it is important to "enlist" Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.

"In this case, Pakistan, to go after those sanctuaries, and then the other important piece is to build up the defence capacity of the Afghans so that they can keep that level of violence down to a manageable level," the general said.

Earlier, in a written response to questions, Nicholson asked Pakistan to take persistent action against the Taliban, particularly the Haqqani Network.

"Pakistan's pressure on the Taliban combined with its support to the reconciliation process are mutually reinforcing," he added.

Haqqani network, which is linked to al-Qaeda has also been blamed for several deadly attacks against Western and Indian interests in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul.
Police today said a Thai man is facing up to five years in jail for sharing a song mocking the country's junta chief, who also has a penchant for penning his own tunes.

Narong Roonthanawong, 39, was arrested under the country's controversial Computer Crimes Act after a legal complaint was made directly by the junta to police, officers said.

"He was charged with Computer Crime Act for uploading false information into the system," said Colonel Chairop Junnawat, superintendent of Chokchai police in northern Bangkok.

"He confessed that he shared an audio clip of a song which he thought was funny among his friends and he apologised to the prime minister for his inexperience," he added.

The exact content of the song, entitled "For Our Beloved Uncle," was not clear, but Colonel Chairop said the lyrics "defamed the prime minister" and that the clip was shared on the popular Line messaging app.

Prayut is something of a songwriter himself. He has composed two songs since coming to power, which are repeatedly played on radio and television.

A notoriously mercurial figure, he is renowned for his somewhat zany sense of humour, often making off-the-cuff remarks and jokes.

But he has also displayed an explosive temper when it comes to personal criticism.

Since he seized power just under two years ago he has repeatedly clashed with reporters when pressed on his government's record, a trait he vowed to rein in during a New Year speech this month.

Criticism of the junta is effectively outlawed, as are public protests or political gatherings.

Critics say the wide-ranging Computer Crimes Act, which forbids disseminating digital information that "damages the country's security or causes a public panic", is often used to stamp down on dissent.

The number of computer crime, sedition and lese majeste charges have all shot up since the junta seized power in a May 2014 coup.

Prayut has also awarded himself powers to make any decision in the name of national security.
Pakistani actress Mawra Hocane, who is all set to debut in Bollywood with "Sanam Teri Kasam", is all praise for fellow actress from her country, Mahira Khan, and says there is no competition with her.

Mahira will be seen opposite Shah Rukh Khan in "Raees". Mawra says she looks upto the "Humsafar" actress and says she is proud of her.

"When Mahira's show 'Humsafar' released I was not even an actor. I look upto her. She is stunning and truly gorgeous in the real sense. There is no competition at all. She has been longer in the industry. It has been only two-and-half years for me," Mawra told PTI.

"I feel great that we will be debuting in Bollywood in the same year. I am really proud of her. It will be wonderful because we both will be nominated as debutantes and that is something fantastic," she said.

Helmed by director duo Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru, "Sanam Teri Kasam" also stars Harshvardhan Rane.

The 23-year-old actress says the film, which will release simultaneously in India and Pakistan on February 5, has garnered tremendous buzz in her country.

"People in Pakistan did not expect the film to be this big. They are thrilled and the word of mouth is very positive there. No one my age has come to India and done a film. Nobody has been 'launched' in that sense. I am extremely grateful that I am a part of this film," she said.

Mawra says she instantly came on board for the romantic- drama when she heard the narration.

"Radhika and Vinay had called me and they started the narration on Skype. The moment they said that it's a story of a simple, bespectacled girl I knew I would be doing it. Because when you have a girl with spectacles, you will also have her transformation. I will get to show both the sides. I was on board instantly," she said.

The actress, popular for her TV dramas like "Aahista Aahista" and "Ik Tamanna Lahasil Si", says she is content with the way the film has turned out.

"I am not nervous really. I am not over-confident but very satisfied because what we wanted to create, we have achieved that. Everyone worked as a team and I am very pleased with the result," she said.
Insisting that India is the most tolerant nation in the world, senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar today said those claiming intolerance in the country should get "liberated from slavery of ignorance".

He said the "best example of tolerance" was that a "few" litterateurs and artistes who had returned their awards are now "getting their awards back".

"India is the world's most tolerant nation, society and culture that exists in Hindustan, in every Indian, and those who talk of intolerance are actually themselves intolerant", Kumar told reporters after a function of Students Union at University of Rajasthan here.

"Those claiming intolerance in the country should get "sadbhudhi" (wisdom) and be liberated from the slavery of ignorance. India was, India is, and India would be world's top tolerant nation," Kumar said.

He said "A few litterateurs and artists returned their awards, but now the same learned people have withdrawn their decision and are getting their awards back. This is the best example of tolerance. What else do people want to know?"



Earlier, delivering a lecture at the inauguration of office of the student union of ABVP candidate, Kumar asked the youth to be away from terror, naxalism, and separatism and pay attention to their studies and career.

"Firstly, students should educate themselves and participate in national development. Do not pay heed to ISIS activities or get attracted towards any terror outfit," he said.

"Our ideals are various personalities like former President late Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, and not Yakoob Menon.. Follow their principles and life style", he said.

State BJP president Ashok Parnami, Rajasthan Forest Minister Rajkumar Rinwa and state ABVP general seccretary Mithilesh also spoke on the occasion.
Thousands of students were evacuated today from several schools in Australia following "numerous bomb threats" were made to them as they opened after a long Christmas holidays, sparking multiple police operations.

Several schools New South Wales and Victoria were evacuated and went into lockdown after receiving bombthreats this morning, police said. However, they turned out to be hoax hours later, they said.

The threats came on the first day of the opening of the schools after the long Christmas break, leading to multiple police operations, media reports said.

Seven schools in NewSouth Wales (NSW) wentinto lockdown following threats. Local police confirmed schools in Penrith, Richmond, Mona Vale, Ambarvale, Woolooware, Ulladulla and Lake Illawarra were affected.

Victoria Police said they were aware schools in a number of other states and countries had also received similar phone calls in the past 24 hours, ABC reported.

But police later said they were "satisfied that there are no imminent threats to schools".

"Victoria Police can confirm it is treating the threatening phone calls received by a number of Victorian schools today as a hoax," they said in a statement.

A police investigation into the origin of the calls is ongoing, but police said they were not terrorism-related.

Police said they launched operations in Victoria, after threatening phone calls were made to at least four schools.

Rodney McKenzie, assistant principal at the school, said a receptionist received a "computerised call".

"It was a computerised message, like a robot speaking," McKenzie said.

"It said there was a bomb located in the school in a backpack," he said.

He said the school's 553 students, including new prep students, were evacuated to the nearby cultural centre, Sydney Morning Herald reported.

"Police have inspected the school and there's no perceived threat, but students won't be returning to school today," he said.

"Police are aware of numerous threats made to schools in the Metropolitan and Southern Regions. Investigations are continuing, and police are liaising with the Department of Education," a police statement read.

The NSW Department of Education statement said each school was taking precautionary measures to ensure the safety of its students and no students were in danger.

At least four Melbourne schools were alsoevacuated after receiving threatening phone calls.

"The schools are being evacuated as a precaution," Victoria Police said in a statement.

Australia has raised the terror threat alert level to high in September 2014, with the government passing a series of national security laws and police conducting numerous raids across the country.
The woman head of a yoga and naturopathy college in Villupuram district, where three of its girl students committed suicide, was today sent to police custody till February 4 by a court near here.

Vasuki Subramanian was produced before the Kallakurichi Judicial Magistrate court near here from the Cuddalore Central Prison.

Yesterday, when she was produced before the same court, a petion was filed by the police seeking her custody to interrogate her over the suicide of the three girl students.

The triple suicide over allegations of exorbitant fee on January 23 by three girl students sent shock waves across Tamil Nadu.

After hearing defence and prosecution sides, the court sent Vasuki to police custody till February 4. The court directed the authorities to lodge her in All Women Police Station in Kallakurchi for inquiry.

It also gave directions which include that Vasuki must be inquired only in the presence of a woman police officer.

She had surrendered before a court in Chennai on January 25 over the suicide of three girl students of her college. She was sent to Puzhal Prison by the Chennai court. Yesterday, she was produced before the Kallakurichi court which sent her to Cuddalore Prison directing authorities to produce her today before it.

Two others -- Kalanidhi (college prinicipal) and Varma (her son and college adminstrator) -- were arrested over the same issue and produced before court on January 25.
Donald Trump, a controversial Republican presidential front-runner, today shunned the last primary debate before the Iowa caucus but relished the drama triggered by his snub of a top US news network, taunting his rivals at a competing fundraising event schemed to chide them.

"I wanted to be about five minutes away (at the GOP debate)... But you have to stick up for your rights. When you're treated badly, you have to stick up to your rights," Trump told a packed auditorium, where he raised $6 million for veterans.

"I have to go a step further and say that Fox has been extremely nice in the last number of hours," he said. "They called a few minutes ago. Can you come over? I say, hasn't it already started?" he joked.

Hundreds of Trump supporters were seen waiting for hours to enter the auditorium for the event organised at a short notice after the real estate tycoon had a simmering feud with the conservative Fox News, which hosted the primary debate.

The 69-year-old billionaire, who has been leading national and local polls among the crowded Republican candidates, said he decided to skip the debate because he was treated "very unfairly" by Fox News.

Trump's boycott has injected en element of chaos to the presidential race just days before the February 1 Iowa Caucus.

At the event, Trump was joined by two other Republican presidential candidates, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who interestingly were the winners of the last two Iowa caucuses.

"Let me be very clear... Rick Santorum, Donald Trump and I may be competitors in a presidential race, but tonight we are colleagues in unison standing here for the... Veterans of the United States of America," Huckabee said.

Earlier in an interview to CNN, Trump claimed that Fox News apologised to him. "They called me. They want me there very badly. And by the time they apologised, I said, look, the problem is we now have a big event scheduled for the vets."



However, Fox News in a statement said the network's CEO Roger Ailes had "three brief conversations" with Trump, where he "acknowledged his concerns about a satirical observation we made in order to quell the attacks on (anchor) Megyn Kelly, and prevent her from being smeared any further."



Fox said Trump offered to show up at the debate if the network contributed $5 million to his charities.

"In the last 48 hours, we've kept two issues at the forefront - we would never compromise our journalistic standards and we would always stand by our journalist, Megyn Kelly," the network said.

Even though he was absent, Trump figured prominently in the debate. The first question was asked about him when Kelly, who picked up a fight with him last summer after she subjected him to tough questioning, described it as "the elephant not in the room."



"Donald Trump has chosen not to attend this evening's presidential debate. What message do you think that sends to the voters of Iowa?" Kelly asked White House hopeful and Senator Ted Cruz, who took the centerstage in Trump's absence.

"Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way," Cruz began amid laughter from the audience, "I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up and make the case to the people of this state."



"(The campaign) is not about Donald Trump. He's an entertaining guy. He's the greatest show on earth. This campaign is about the greatest country in the world and a president who has systematically destroyed many of the things that made America special," Senator Marco Rubio said.

"I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me," said Jeb Bush, a former Florida Governor.

"Everybody else was in the witness protection program when I went after him on behalf of what the Republican cause should be: conservative principles, believing in limited government, believing in accountability," he said.
The Bhubaneswar Commissionerate police today arrested two brothers from Pokhariput area here on charges of tender fixing and extortion.

Three revolvers, 108 rounds of bullets and Rs 10 lakh were seized from the two brothers Sushant Dhal Samant and Sushil Dhal Samant Commissioner of Police YB Khurania told reporters.

The police recovered Rs 2 crore cash during a raid on their Cuttack residence, he said.

The two were allegedly involved in cases of murder, attempt to murder, tender fixing, dacoity and robbery.
North Korea may be preparing to launch a rocket or missile, according to a US defence official and expert analysis of commercial satellite imagery.

The analysis published yesterday comes just three weeks after North Korea drew international condemnation for conducted its fourth nuclear test explosion.

The official told The Associated Press the US has seen activity at a ballistic missile test site that is consistent with previous tests, but the official would not go into more detail.

The official was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.

The North Korea-focused website, 38 North, said it has detected what could be the early stages of preparation for launching a space launch vehicle at the nation's main rocket launch site at Sohae. It based its findings on satellite imagery taken this week.

North Korea fired its first rocket into space from Sohae, on its west coast, in December 2012, sending into orbit a satellite that soon malfunctioned. The North has said it has the right to launch rockets any time for its space program, but such long-range launches have drawn UN sanctions because similar technology can be used for development of ballistic missiles.

The UN Security Council is deliberating over how to respond to the January 6 underground nuclear explosion. The US is pressing for tighter sanctions a step that China, the North's only ally, appears reluctant to take.

Governments and experts have been skeptical about North Korea's claim it tested a hydrogen bomb, but whatever device the North detonated, it will likely push the country a step closer toward its goal of manufacturing a miniaturized warhead to place on a missile that can threaten the US mainland. A major launch would only deepen those concerns.

Initial word of a possible launch came Wednesday. The Japanese agency, Kyodo, cited an unnamed Japanese government source as saying that satellite imagery analysis showed the North may be readying to fire a long-range ballistic missile from Sohae, and that the launch could occur in about a week at the earliest.

The 38 North analysis said a rocket test in the coming week appeared unlikely. Imagery from Monday showed vehicles or equipment and personnel near the rocket launch tower, but a rocket wasn't visible. The website said there's a high level of uncertainty about what snapshots of activity at the launch pad offered by the commercial imagery indicate.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to comment Thursday on the reports of preparations for a missile test, saying it was an intelligence matter.
To support India's efforts to end tuberculosis, US development agency USAID today announced grants aimed at scaling up innovative solutions for combating the disease in a country where an estimated 2.2 million such cases are reported annually.

"We have made great strides towards ending TB in India, but much more work remains. Partnerships, technology and innovations are essential tools to find low-cost, sustainable solutions to address public health challenges, including TB," US Ambassador to India, Richard R Verma, said after the US Agency for International Development's (USAID) announcement.

As part of the Tuberculosis Health Action Learning Initiative (THALI) project, USD 7.5 million has been awarded to the World Health Partners (WHP) for implementing activities in Kolkata while another USD 7.5 million has been awarded to Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) for work in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune.

"These projects will help catalyse solutions and best practices for the successful diagnosis and treatment of TB in hard-to-reach populations. Together we can achieve a TB-free India," added Verma.

Also, a USD 6 million award was signed with REACH (Resource Group for Education and Advocacy for Community Health) to help sustain momentum generated by the government's Call to Action for a TB-free India campaign.

An official statement said that "USAID today announced three new awards to support the Government of India's efforts to end TB" in the country.

"These awards will assist the government with testing and scaling innovative solutions to prevent, test and treat TB, especially among under-served urban slum dwellers and other low-income populations," the statement added.

A recent WHO report says India has the highest number of tuberculosis cases in the world.

As per the WHO Global TB Report, 2015, in 2014, 2.2 million cases were estimated in India, higher than any other country, Union Health Minister JP Nadda had recently told Lok Sabha.

In the last 18 years, USAID has worked with the Indian government to help diagnose and treat 15 million patients for TB. Despite this, an estimated 2.2 million cases are reported annually, 2,20,000 of which prove fatal. This is the highest number of deaths from TB anywhere in the world.

"This shared objective will be achieved by encouraging the adoption and implementation of best practices and innovations for the prevention, detection, and treatment of TB, raising awareness to reduce the social stigma associated with the disease, and empowering communities.

"USAID is also encouraging the private sector to increase its contribution to the TB-free campaign through social corporate responsibility," the statement said.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenpress state news agency introduces on the air of Lratvakan.am all that you will read, hear and see on todays news.

The Government of the Republic of Armenia gets down to business on January 28  a day after Army Day in Armenia. Today the sitting of the Executive Branch will be held. The agenda includes more than 3 dozens of issues related to various sectors. The Government is going to approve the draft law granting land by property right to the United Arab Emirates. The aim of the aforementioned is the construction of the embassy building. The land is located on Admiral Isakov Avenue in Yerevan.

Personal data protection and freedom of information: a working discussion on the topic will be held. The processes of personal data protection, main issues connected with personal data protection and freedom of information, decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights concerning the sphere, challenges to personal data protection on the internet in Armenia will be presented during the discussion.

What is the situation in Armenia connected with influenza and acute respiratory diseases? Director of the Republic of Armenia Healthcare Ministrys National Center for Disease Control and Prevention Artavazd Vanyan will respond to the question.

Nutritionist Hasmik Abovyan and Head of "Consumer Counseling Center" NGO Karen Chilingaryan will speak about the control on the market of meat, dairy and meat products, as well as the hoof-and-mouth disease spread in Armenia, the possibility of humans being infected with the disease, ways of prevention.

The National Statistical Service of the Republic of Armenia summarizes rates of populations natural movement of 2015: birth rate, death rate, marriages, divorces. Head of Population Census and Demography Division Karine Kuyumjyan will present the data.

Komitas Museum-Institute becomes one year old. Director of Komitas Museum-Institute Nikolay Kostandyan, Deputy Director Sarina Avtandilyan and Head of the Scientific Council Mher Navoyan will sum up the activities carried out in 2015, as well as present the plans for the future.

The newly formed The sounds of art jazz band will be introduced to the Armenian audience for the first time.

More on these and other topics is available on armenpress.am. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Uttar Pradesh will become the fourth state after Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to formally join Centre's UDAY scheme tomorrow.

"In the presence of Power Minister Piyush Goyal, a tripartite MoU with Uttar Pradesh on 'UDAY' (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) for operational and financial turnaround of discoms will be signed tomorrow," an official said.

The MoU will be signed between Centre, Uttar Pradesh government and electricity distribution utilities including Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd, the official said.

Goyal yesterday said 'Uday' scheme will solve the problems faced by state discoms and added that the Centre was exploring ways to extend the benefits of 'Uday' to states which are unable to unbundle their utilities.

Rajasthan which formally joined the scheme this week will help the state "save Rs 21,000 crore in the next 3 years".
Venezuela's opposition vowed to drive President Nicolas Maduro from office this year, raising pressure on the socialist leader as he weathers a political crisis in the oil-rich nation.

Having rejected Maduro's bid to seize emergency powers over the crisis-hit economy, the opposition-led legislature revived calls to oust him.

"Someone said we should let the government finish its term so it can stew in its own juice. That would be irresponsible," the opposition speaker of congress, Henry Ramos Allup, told a gathering of foreign reporters yesterday.

Maduro's mandate runs until 2019, but the new opposition majority in the National Assembly has raised the prospect of his rivals finding constitutional or legislative means to cut his term short.

"I don't want this to last three more years, going from bad to worse," Ramos said.

"If you can treat an illness before it kills you, then you obviously apply the treatment."



He reiterated the opposition's aim to devise, by June at the latest, a legal way to oust Maduro.

"I don't know if it will happen by the end of this year... but the way things are going, I don't see him reaching the end of his constitutional term," Ramos said.

Amid a worsening recession, political deadlock seized Venezuela when the opposition majority took control of the assembly at the start of the month.

A series of tense institutional maneuvers followed as Maduro chipped away at the opposition's majority, which in turn blocked his plan to decree a state of economic emergency.

If Maduro stays in office with a grip on the economy, Ramos said his successor would inherit a "graveyard."



He spoke a day after another prominent opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, added his powerful voice to calls to oust Maduro.

Until Thursday, ex-presidential candidate Capriles had held a more moderate line, saying the priority should be fixing the economy.

But after weeks of growing turbulence, he hardened his stance, calling for a referendum or constitutional reform to get rid of the president.
Vice Admiral Girish Luthra, AVSM, VSM, will assume charge as the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Southern Naval Command (FOC-in-C, South) here on January 30.

He was commissioned in the executive branch of the Indian Navy on July 1, 1979, and is an alumnus of Defence Academy, Pune, the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, and Naval Command Naval War College, USA.

A navigation and direction specialist, the officer served in many operational and staff billets afloat as well as ashore in a career spanning more than three decades, a Navy release said here on January 29.

His significant afloat tenures include the command of Indian naval ships Khukri, Talwar and the aircraft carrier Viraat, besides being the the Flag Officer Commanding, Western Fleet during 2011-12.

His important staff appointments include Deputy Naval Attache to High Commission of India, London, Principal Director Naval Plans and Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy and Plans) and Director General of Naval Operations.

He was deputy chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Operations) at IHQ, Ministry of Defence (Navy) at Delhi prior to being appointed as the FOC-in-C (South).

An eminent scholar in military affairs, the admiral has written and published a number of professional papers and articles, in various journals in India and abroad.

He was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal in 2008 and Ati Vishisht Seva Medal in 2012.
A wildlife activist has handed over a pair of rare birds to the authorities of Itanagar Biological Park.

The species - Drongo (Dicrurus paradiseus) was handed over to Park Curator Raya Flago by Byagang Lamnio a resident of Chimpu, here.

The endangered bird,, listed in Schedule-III of Wildlife Protection Act 1972, was rescued from the clutches of villagers of Sawa area in East Kameng District by Lamnio during his visit to the area.

He brought the winged beings all way from remote Sawa and safely handed over to Flago for rearing and displaying at the Park.

Appreciating the effort of Lamnio, Flago extended his thanks to him on behalf of the Environment and Forests department for his gesture and requested him to continue the noble work for protecting the state's rich wildlife heritage and continue to educate the mass on importance of wildlife.
True to a Bollywood action film, two women constables used their martial art skills to foil a man who abducted a woman and was about to shoot her in Northwest Delhi's Adarsh Nagar area.

The accused, identified as Sunil, had a one-sided love affair with the victim and was recently arrested in a molestation case registered on the basis of a complaint filed by the same woman, DCP (Northwest) Vijay Singh said.

Yesterday, two women constables, identified as Jashvini and Pooja, were present in Lal Bagh area of Adarsh Nagar, talking to women there under an ongoing policing scheme, when they got to know that a woman has been abducted minutes ago from the locality, said police.

They followed leads given by the locals and reached a particular street where they found the accused holding the woman captive at gunpoint, screaming that he would shoot both - the woman and himself - dead if anyone tries to intervene, said police.

The two women officials used their self-defence skills, following which one disarmed the accused of his country-made pistol and the other overpowered him.

The accused freed himself once and tried to run away when he was overpowered again by the duo, said police.

But in the process, the accused swallowed some aluminium phosphide tablets, for which he had to be rushed to the hospital where he is recovering.

The police recovered a suicide note from his possession. The contents of the note suggest that he was determined to kill the woman and himself too, police said.

The two women officials who took charge of the situation, reacted promptly and averted an untoward incident will be rewarded, DCP Singh added.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co has won a contract worth $2.5 billion to build 20 more P-8A maritime surveillance aircraft, the Pentagon announced on Thursday.

The contract covers the production and delivery of 16 aircraft for the U.S. Navy and four for the Australian government, the Defense Department said in its daily digest of major weapons contracts.

The work is expected to be completed in December 2018.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Eric Walsh)
By Samuel Shen and Pete Sweeney

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese share markets attempted a modest bounce on Friday to end a week of sudden falls, while Beijing tried to reassure the world it would not use a lower yuan to wage a trade war.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index edged up 0.8 percent in early deals, and then pulled back a bit to be up around 0.3 percent, while the CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen added 0.5 percent.

Investors remained gun-shy, however, given both indices have developed a nasty habit of sliding late in the session, often for no apparent reason.

Both have also hit depths not seen since 2014, bringing losses this month to about 25 percent or 13 trillion yuan ($2 trillion).

The People's Bank of China did its part to keep the banking system flush with cash, pumping out a huge 690 billion yuan this week to avoid a liquidity crunch ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations beginning in early February.

Late Thursday, the central bank announced it would conduct more liquidity operations than usual between January 29 and February 19 to keep the system awash with cash through the holiday.

The PBOC also seems to have succeeded in calming market concerns about an imminent devaluation in the yuan, though many analysts still suspect the currency will be allowed to trickle lower over time.

The central bank held the yuan firm at 6.5516 per dollar on Friday, dimming memories of the surprisingly lower fix that so spooked markets early in the month.

In the latest move to stem pressure on the currency from capital flight, the authorities on Thursday asked several domestic funds to postpone issuing new outbound investment products, sources told .

Premier Li Keqiang also phoned International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde to pledge Beijing would keep the yuan "basically stable" and improve communication with financial markets on the currency.

"The Chinese government has no intention to promote exports through currency depreciation, nor it will launch a trade war," Li told Lagarde in the call.

Likewise, speculation that Hong Kong might be forced to give up its peg to the U.S. dollar has waned in recent days.

Ratings agency Moody's on Friday said it believed Hong Kong's large fiscal and foreign-exchange reserves would allow policy makers to handle any pressure on the peg.

(Writing by Wayne Cole; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
Clothing H&M, Inditex, C&A and PVH have committed to improving the lives of workers in Bengaluru, after a report said employees lived in appalling conditions and were denied decent wages and freedom of movement.

Gap Inc., which also sources apparel from Bengaluru, did not respond to the report by the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN), according to a statement by the Dutch non-governmental group late on Thursday.

A draft of the report, Unfree and Unfair, was presented to the last November.

The conditions of garment workers in South Asia have come under sharp scrutiny following the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, in which 1,135 workers were killed, many of them employed by suppliers to Western retailers.

The ICN report said hostels run by the Bengaluru factories lacked basic amenities such as beds and clean water, and that workers earned between 95 euros($104) and 115 euros per month, just above the official minimum wage of 93 euros to 103 euros.

Bengaluru, a hub for apparel exporters, is also known as India's Silicon Valley for its numerous information technology companies, and draws migrants seeking better economic prospects from its home Karnataka state, as well as from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and the country's north and east.

There are an estimated 1,200 garment factories in and around Bengaluru, making apparel for large global brands.

Many of the workers are women from poor backgrounds who do not know the local language and are unaware of their rights, making them more vulnerable to exploitation, according to the report based on interviews with 110 migrant workers at four garment factories in the city.

"Global have a responsibility to ensure better conditions for the workers, as they are directly benefiting from their labour," Raphel Jose, vice president of supply-chain sustainability at the Centre for Responsible Business in Bengaluru, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"This is an area where the brands can come together and collaborate with a local agency and pressurise the industry to improve conditions."

Dutch clothing retailer C&A, Swedish retailer H&M and Spain's Inditex, which owns the Zara and Massimo Dutti brands, will work together and liaise with local trade unions to provide training and address workers' grievances, ICN said.

Inditex will evaluate the state of workers at its suppliers and factories across India, while PVH Corp., which owns brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, is developing new guidelines for its suppliers, ICN said.

"If the brands commit to these issues and their plan of action, we expect that considerable progress can be made in addressing the working and living conditions of young migrant garment workers in Bangalore," ICN said in the statement. ($1 = 0.9176 euros)
By Darya Korsunskaya and Rania El Gamal

ST PETERSBURG, Russia/DUBAI (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday that OPEC had proposed oil production cuts of up to 5 percent in what would be the first global deal in over a decade to help reduce a glut of crude and prop up sinking prices.

It remained unclear whether Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was referring to a months old proposal by OPEC members Venezuela and Algeria or a new proposal backed by OPEC leader Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials did not immediately comment on the proposal, and a Gulf OPEC delegate said it came from Venezuela and Algeria.

For non-OPEC member Russia, the world's top producer, that would represent an output cut of around 500,000 bpd.

Benchmark Brent futures jumped as much as 8 percent to nearly $36 a barrel on hopes for a deal that could immediately reduce surplus global output by 1 million barrels per day (bpd). Brent was trading at around $34 a barrel at 1940 GMT.

Higher crude prices would be welcomed by oil-rich countries where the steep slide has squeezed budgets and caused political turmoil. Some countries have had to devalue their currencies.

"Indeed, these parameters were proposed, to cut production by each country by up to 5 percent," Novak said when asked if Saudi Arabia had made a proposal to cut output.

"This is a subject for discussions, it's too early to talk about."

Oil sank to 12-year lows of around $27 a barrel earlier this month, from as high as $115 some 18 months ago, as the U.S. shale oil boom boosted output and OPEC decided to pump more to fight for market share against higher-cost producers.

But cheap oil has caused economic pain in many producer countries. In Saudi Arabia it has pressured the currency and opened up a record state budget deficit of around $100 billion.

In Russia, the rouble hit an all-time low, street protests have flared in Azerbaijan and investors are concerned about a potential debt default by OPEC member Venezuela.

PUTIN SILENT

Novak also told reporters there was a proposal for a meeting between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC nations at the oil minister level and that Russia was ready for such talks.

"There are lots of questions about the oversight over cuts," he added.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly called on non-members to contribute to output cuts if they want OPEC to help producers deal with the oil glut with the world running out of space to stockpile unwanted crude.

A senior Gulf OPEC delegate said on Thursday after comments by Novak : "Gulf OPEC countries and Saudi Arabia are willing to cooperate for any action to stabilise the international oil market."

Russia has long rebuffed the idea of cuts, saying its fields differ from those in the Gulf and are difficult to shut.

President Vladimir Putin, who has yet to comment on the idea of joint cuts, sees the oil sector as an important bargaining chip in relations with the West that have become tense due to disagreements over Russia's annexation of the Crimea region and over the conflict in Syria.

"You have to take this seriously now. Key will be if Russia can deliver," said Gary Ross, a veteran OPEC watcher and founder of U.S.-based Pira group.

Brenda Kelly, head analyst at London Capital Group, said the proposed cuts were unlikely to happen.

"There have been attempts in the past that have come to (nothing). Saying something about the oil price and doing something are very different things, and it seems like panic given the price drop," she said.

A global deal could also be complicated by OPEC member Iran, which wants to raise output after the lifting of Western sanctions which had curtailed production for years.

"Because of the international sanctions, we lost 1.1 million barrels per day of our exports. So we have to go back to our share of the market," a source familiar with Iranian thinking said.

(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Christian Lowe and Anna Willard)
Investors in Irish government bonds face a testing few months, with uncertain national elections and a vote that could see one of its biggest trading partners exit the European Union already leading some to shed their holdings.

Once bailed-out Ireland has become the euro zone's fastest growing economy. Its benchmark borrowing costs have plummeted from 15 percent in 2011 to 1 percent, close to levels at which the bloc's second largest economy France can raise debt.

But in recent weeks Irish bonds have underperformed, and major funds including Aberdeen Asset Management, which handles over 290 billion pounds, have exited their overweight positions in Irish debt.

"We have looked at the tight spread to other markets and decided that the uncertainty isn't appropriately priced," Patrick O'Donnell, an investment manager at Aberdeen, said.

The gap between Irish and French 10-year yields hit 10 basis points in early January, its lowest since 2008. On Friday it stood at 31 bps.

The convergence reflected Ireland's growth, budget deficit and borrowing figures, which all looked better than those of France. But for that trend to resume, the country must pass a couple of tests.

The first comes in the election, expected next month, which risks leaving Taoiseach Enda Kenny's coalition short of an overall majority, making Ireland the latest euro zone country to face political deadlock.

Kenny's Fine Gael will almost certainly need the support of junior partner Labour to gain re-election - and the pair remain a few percentage points light.

The largest opposition party, Fianna Fail, has ruled out governing with its rivals, especially Sinn Fein with which it could potentially reach a majority.

An inconclusive result could postpone an expected rating upgrade by Moody's into 'A' territory, which would encourage more investors to take up the slack from U.S. fund Franklin Templeton, which held more than 10 percent of Irish debt a couple of years ago but has been divesting its stake.

In a worst-case scenario for investors, any coalition involving the leftist, anti-austerity Sinn Fein would be seen as endangering Ireland's recovery and its commitment to reducing its debt -- still one of the highest in the bloc -- to a sustainable level.

With markets having already taken recent inconclusive elections in Portugal and Spain in their stride, due in part to the European Central Bank buying billions of euros of bonds to stimulate the economy, another bout of uncertainty is unlikely alone to shatter investor confidence.

The ECB is set to buy 90 percent of Ireland's gross debt issuance this year, compared with 46 percent in France, according to estimates by ING.

Ireland's Davy Stockbrokers said some overweight positions were being trimmed before the election, but that further jitters could present an opportunity for investors.

"You could see it continuing, if it went five or 10 basis points wider on a spread basis against semi-core or core (debt), I think it'll probably be the buying opportunity of the year in the Irish sovereign," said Eamon Reilly, a trader at Davy.

There are other marginal issues for investors, including how the government can offload its large stakes in Irish banks -- which an inconclusive election result could delay -- and whether increasing disquiet about tax loopholes in the EU could threaten Ireland's attractive low corporate tax offering, which has attracted large inward investment and boosted employment.

The second test, and a systemic risk to the economy, comes with Britain set to a hold a referendum, probably later this year, on membership of the European Union.

A government-commissioned report estimated that any new barriers or tariffs in the event of an UK exit could see trade between the two countries fall by at least 20 percent.

Ireland's government has also outlined concerns over the possible impact on peace in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom and which borders with the Irish Republic and is recovering from three decades of bloody, sectarian violence.

"The serious problem - if you have a Brexit, we (Ireland) would be the clear losers of the euro countries," Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Stockbrokers said. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS "The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery tops this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency. The novella is both the most read and most translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. The book was translated into more than 190 languages.

The Mark by Blaze Minevski is the second in this week's Bestseller Books List. It is about two snipers, man and woman ... And while the man adapts to mark her, the woman has already made her a target. Thus, man becomes a unique Scheherazade who tells his story to interlocutor with the hope of one thousand and one nights".

The Alchemist novel, one of the best creations of Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho is the 3rd. The novel is on ones having a dream and perseverance to make the dream come true coupled with love, kindness and ability to recognize a new country and a new culture.

"Steppenwolf" novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse occupies the 4th place in our list. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes. The story in large part reflects a profound crisis in Hesse's spiritual world during the 1920s while memorably portraying the protagonist's split between his humanity and his wolf-like aggression and homelessness. Hesse would later assert that the book was largely misunderstood.

American well-known writer Ray Bradburys Martian Chronicles ranks the 5th. It is considered as one of the best books of the 20th century. As Astronomer Carl Sagan once noticed, Mars is a kind of mythical arena, where our earthly hopes and fears are incarnated.

Milan Kunderas The Unbearable Lightness of Being is in the 6th place in the list.

Kundera's most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was published in 1984. The book chronicles the fragile nature of an individual's fate, theorizing that a single lifetime is insignificant in the scope of Nietzsche's concept of eternal return. In an infinite universe, everything is guaranteed to recur infinitely. In 1988, American director Philip Kaufman released a film adaptation.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green comes next on our list.

One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is on the 8th position. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the multi-generational story of the Buendia family, whose patriarch, Jose Arcadio Buendia, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia.

Dan Browns Inferno comes next on our list. The books heroes are moving by the trace of talented scientists horrible message fascinated by the obsessed idea on Earth and humanity's salvation. American professor and his quick-witted assistant are in crazy searches in Florence, Venice and Istanbul. Are the efforts futile?... The novel presents constant escapes and searches: Dante Alighieris inferno is emerging from time to time in front of the reader and not only in the secret lines of the "Divine comedy" but also in renaissance paintings of great masters.

Grigs Jesus Cat concludes the list. This is the first book of the young prose writer. The novels involved in this work bring forward a unique writing style on the one hand and an original vision on the world and people on the other. This combination forms characters in Grigs creative space, which help to discover another invisible side of life. The book was published by Antares. Editor  Gurgen Khanjyan.
The first Credit Suisse trading floor in Dublin was officially opened by Taoiseach Enda Kenny this week.

The opening of the new floor will house circa 100 positions in Dublin, including 40 trading, risk and capital professionals and 60 support roles.



This follows the Central Bank of Irelands announcement in December that it had authorized the bank to establish a branch in Ireland. The branch will be located at Kilmore House in Spencer Dock, at the heart of the IFSC.



The key parts of the Prime Services business that will operate out of this location include Prime Brokerage, Prime Financing and Securities Lending, all of which serve clients across global markets.

The Dublin operation will handle the trading, capital and risk management for the business while the salespeople and relationship managers will remain in London due to client proximity.



Welcoming the announcement on Wednesday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, "Todays welcome announcement of the creation of 100 jobs by Credit Suisse and the opening of its Dublin branch is very significant.

"It represents a strong endorsement of Ireland's reputation as a leading location for international financial services, building on the very strong job creation achieved in the sector in 2015 as a result of the Government's International Financial Services Strategy, IFS 2020. Supporting job creation in financial services is part of our long term economic plan to keep the recovery going."

CEO of Global Markets at Credit Suisse, Tim OHara said, "We are delighted to officially open the first Credit Suisse trading floor in Dublin today. This marks a first for Ireland and for Credit Suisse. The broad talent pool and efficiencies that the capital city has to offer made the decision to deploy operations in Dublin an easy one.

"Todays opening further demonstrates our ongoing commitment to continue optimally serving our clients. We have made considerable investment in infrastructure and technology, all of which will help enhance our client offering. We have long admired Irelands commitment to and vision for the countrys future as a European financial services center and we are excited to establish our Prime Services business here."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
It was announced yesterday that the Irish Developer of Solar Energy Assets in Europe, Amarenco Solar, is to relocate its international headquarters from Dublin to Cork.

In the process, the company will establish 10 new jobs.



This comes after the company was recently granted its first planning permission in Ireland by Waterford County Council. The company is actively looking to develop 40 solar projects in Ireland that will output 200 MW of solar energy.

Furthermore, they are currently awaiting planning permission from Cork County Council for six projects in the county. They will be providing both rooftop and ground-mounted solar solutions and will use local suppliers and contractors for its projects in Ireland. Forty construction jobs are required for each installation.



Amarenco Solar now has offices in Cork, Dublin, London, Nice and Gaillac. The company is currently in a significant debt-finance fund-raising process in London, which is expected to close in mid-February.

Currently, the companys largest operations are in the South of France, where the company is actively managing assets of the value of 230 million across 17 sites. It has a further pipeline of six projects in France for 2016.



Founder and CEO of Amarenco Solar, John Mullins today commented, "It is great as a Corkman to announce the expansion of Amarenco and the siting of our International Head Office in Cork City. The new jobs we are creating will be in business development, administration and technical support."

Source: www.businessworld.ie


More than 350 national and international delegates attended Irelands Solar Energy Future conference hosted by Energy Cork at the Clarion Hotel in Cork today.



Investors, developers, policy makers, farmers and energy operators attended the conference to hear about the future of Solar photovoltaic (PV) in Ireland.



It was the largest conference on solar power held in Ireland devoted to the discussion of the solar photovoltaic industry.



Speakers included John Mullins, Chair of Port of Cork and CEO of Amerenco, Thomas Doring of Solar Power Europe, David Maguire from Irish Solar Energy Association, Ivan Codd from ESB Networks, Eamonn Murtagh from the CER and Rebecca Kelly from BNRG. Robert Goss of Solar Electric Ireland, Philip Bazin of Triodos Bank, Thomas Ryan from the Irish Farmers Association, Martin Howley from SEAI and Cera Slevin of ESB Solar also spoke at the event.



Solar PV has become one of the most dynamic sectors in the European renewables electricity market in recent years. This is due to an increase in demand for clean energy and a sharp decrease in the price of Solar PV technology. In 2015 the ESB invited Solar PV grid applications for solar farms which they hope to start rolling out by 2016.



Conference chair and Energy Cork Chairman, Michael Quirk commented, "The recent White Paper on Energy Policy published by the Department of Energy, Communications and Natural Resources acknowledged that Solar is part of the solution for the generation of zero-carbon electricity in Ireland.

"ESB Networks recently received almost 300 solar grid applications (297), with the highest density of applications coming from County Cork (61).

"A game changer for the sector has been the significant decrease in cost of solar PV accelerating the market opportunity for the sector. These factors combined demonstrate how the industry is poised to develop solar power for Ireland."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
A new recruitment platform, designed and developed in Ireland, has been launched this week.



MyTalengi will focus on how to find and hire software talent. It tracks the digital footprint of 8.6m developers world-wide making them searchable by skills, location and reputation.

The service is particularly focused on scaling tech firms such as Growth Phase Funded Start-Ups which typically spend 80% of their income on software development and can need to grow from 10 to 200 developers in a short while.



Unlike LinkedIn and others, it is not generalist, instead focusing exclusively on the software developer community. This means that recruiters and businesses using MyTalengi can search, find and access software development talent in complex technical environments such as GitHub and StackExchange.



The nearest European markets in which MyTalengi expects to gain immediate traction are Ireland, UK and the United States in addition to Spain, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics.



The platform already counts NewsWhip, the media analytics company, BriteBill, Hoolux Medical, Keeper Solutions and Taxamo as clients.



Owner of MyTalengi, Stephen Walsh says, "MyTalengi plans to offer software developers personal brand and career management services, building a real-time profile that reflects their skills and achievements, providing a showcase for their talent based on their actual Digital Footprint."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
It was announced today that Irelands biggest digital conference for SMEs will take place at City Hall, Cork on April 7, 2016.

The aim of the conference, Digicon, is to provide small and medium business owners and employees with the knowledge to drive their businesses forward, through the delivery of real and relevant information from experts in the online space.

It is sponsored by Three and is the first in a series of annual regional events.

Attendees will learn from leading brands including Google, Facebook, YouTube and PayPal on how to attract new customers, increase sales and build their profile in a cost effective way.



The conference organisers are expecting an audience of 1,000-plus to attend the event which is aimed at SMEs, marketing and PR executives and managers, micro-enterprises, start-ups and anybody with an interest in digital media



DigiCon Event Director, Michelle McDonagh says, "The Internet has completely changed the way business is done and the constantly evolving technology means that many small to medium businesses are struggling to keep up.

"Of the estimated 6bn spent online annually by Irish consumers, 60 to 70% goes overseas. We want to bring some of that spend back into the SME sector and open small business in Ireland up to a global market."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Pernod Ricard, the world's second-largest spirits group, plans to buy a majority stake in super premium German gin maker Monkey 47 from parent Black Forest Distillers GmbH to tap growing global demand for craft spirits, it said on Friday.

With small, independent distillers popping up and taking market share worldwide, spirits giants such as Pernod Ricard and Diageo have responded with premium products that tout small batch production and local credentials.

"With this investment Pernod further extends its portfolio in high-growth products such as super premium gin," the French group said in a statement, without giving financial details.

The deal, which has been signed by the two companies, is subject to approval by relevant competition authorities.

With an annual production of less than 100,000 bottles of gin, Monkey 47 is a craft distiller when compared to the 2.6 million cases of nine bottles of Beefeater gin that Pernod Ricard sold worldwide in fiscal year 2014/15.

"Monkey 47 is a jewel, perfectly matching the rising worldwide demand for craft gin with strong local roots," Pernod Ricard Chairman and CEO Alexandre Ricard said in the statement.

Monkey 47 dry gin includes 47 hand-picked plant ingredients and spring water from Germany's Black Forest, Pernod Ricard said.

After compound annual growth of about 50 percent since 2010, craft distillers -- or those producing less than 100,000 cases a year -- now account for about 2 percent of the U.S. spirits market, the largest and most profitable in the world.

Pernod is already pushing the artisanal nature of some of its spirits. In vodka, it has launched Our/Vodka, which it says is partly distilled, blended and hand bottled in microdistilleries. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us


A senior U.S. Treasury official will meet European Union antitrust officials investigating tax deals involving Apple and Amazon on Friday, the latest lobbying effort against a crackdown on U.S. firms.

The meeting comes a week after Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook met European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is expected to rule on his company's deal with Ireland early this year.

"Ditte Juul-Joergensen, Linsey McCallum and Gert-Jan Koopman will meet with Robert Stack, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury," Vestager's spokesman said in an email.

Juul-Joergensen and McCallum are members of Vestager's cabinet, while Koopman is the top civil servant at the European Commission in charge of the tax cases.

Last month Stack told a Senate committee that the EU executive seemed to be singling out U.S. companies and had no right to go after foreign profits held overseas by the firms.

All the companies have denied wrongdoing. Apple could face a hefty back tax bill as the EU investigation covers a period of up to 10 years.

Google could be the next EU target after the Scottish National Party complained to the Commission about its 130 million pound settlement with British tax authorities. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
(click on any chart to enlarge)

A recent letter from 300 scientists is requesting that Congress assure that the Data Quality Act is complied with, which NOAA has not done regarding both the U.S. and global empirical temperature observations.

When 300 scientists put their name and reputations on the line criticizing NOAA, it can be assumed that the issue is one of significance and importance to science.

And this issue is now coming to a head after 7+ years of both NOAA and NASA blatantly adjusting historical temperature measurement records on a continual basis.

In essence, these two climate research agencies have purposefully cooled the past; and then warmed the modern temperatures in an effort to make global warming seem more severe than actually has taken place since the Little Ice Age. (See here a recent example of NOAA's adjustment handiwork.)

Their combined adjustment "methodology" has certainly mislead the public and policymakers, which has added to the growing mistrust that the public has for politicians, scientists and bureaucrats.

The group of charts above reveals the gross manipulation of temperatures that strongly indicates an anti-science motivation to meet the current administration's political needs.

Charts #1 & #2 show two examples of the constant adjustments by both NOAA and NASA. These examples show the number of adjusting steps taken since 2008 to cool past historical temperatures and the number of steps to raise a modern month's temperature.

Charts #3 & #4 show the total amount of adjustments by month since 1880 for NOAA and NASA. The fabricated warming of modern temps and cooling of pre-modern temps is more than obvious - it is unequivocally blatant and an unprecedented level of science tampering.

All of these charts were compiled by Ole Humlum, a well-known university scientist/professor from Norway who publishes peer-reviewed climate change research. Go to his 'Climate4You' site to access a large volume of valuable climate information.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The trial session over the case of Russian soldier Valery Permyakov, accused in the gruesome murder of the Avetisyan family, will continue in 102nd Russian Military Base on January 29. The session is under the proceeding of Shirak District Court of First Instance Judge Harutyun Movsesyan, Armenpress reports.

Forensic examination of the trial process is underway. The previous session, launched on December 22, was postponed as daughters of killed Avtisyans: Lusine Avetisyan, Anahit Koshtoyan and bridegroom Yegor Adamyan were not ready psychologically to speak. Before that, killed Hasmik Avetisnyans sister Rita Petrosyan and father of Avetisyans bride Andranik Poghosyan presented what they saw and heard during the incident. The trial was quite emotional and was periodically interrupted because of the deterioration of relatives well-being. Ambulance workers were not leaving the hall.

The six members of the Avetisyans family were shot and killed in Gyumri at around 6 a.m. on January 12, 2015. The only survivor was 6-month old Seryozha Avetisyan, who was transferred to a hospital with injuries caused by a cutting and piercing tool. The childs health condition became worse on January 19. After fighting for his life and undergoing several difficult surgeries for a week, six-month old Seryozha Avetisyan also died on January 19. There was severe renal insufficiency and cardiac insufficiency, and doctors werent able to save his life. Soldier of the 102nd Russian military base stationed in Gyumri, Valery Permyakov was charged with killing the members of the Avetisyan family and causing numerous injuries to little Seryozha. Russian border guards found him when he was trying to cross the Armenian-Turkish border and handed him over to the commanders of the 102nd Russian military base. Permyakov confessed his guilt. The trial will take place on January 18.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The International air gun competition tournament has kicked off in Munich, Germany which is attended by 10 athletes from Armenia.

Armenpress reports, according to the Press Office of the Armenian Olympic Committee, in the 10m air pistol (60 shots) competition among juniors, Zaven Igityan gained 573 points and came 6th reaching the finals where he failed to improve his position and ended up on the 7th place.

In the same competition, another representative of Armenia Benik Khlghatyan took the 28th place with 561 points.

In the 10m air rifle (60 shots) competition among men, Suren Beryan occupied the 17th position (626, 4 points) from 85 participants, Hrachik Babayan came 20th with 626, 0 points and Christian Lauer came 70th with 618, 5 points.

In the 10m air rifle (60 shots) among juniors, Vrezh Torosyan gained 618, 3 points and took the 22nd place of 61 participants which is a record for him. Hayk Babayan came 45th with 612, 8 points.

Elmira Karapetyan came 59th from 74 participants (369 points) in the 10m air rifle (40 shots) competition among women.

On January 29 the 10m air rifle (40 shots) competition among women will be held where Irina Lauer (Aghajanyan) and Mariam Mikaelyan will come out. Our junior athletes Vrezh Torosyan, Hayk Babayan, Zaven Igityan and Benik Khlghatyan will repeat their performances on January 29.
SHARE Alan Wilson, chairman-elect, Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce Rosie Gonzalez Collin, chair, Corpus Christi Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

By Chris Ramirez of the Caller-Times

Officials for the Corpus Christi and Hispanic chambers of commerce say their historic merger should wrap up in the next few weeks, and that they are just days from unveiling the new organization's name.

A transition team consisting of members from each chamber's board took less than a month to unify the groups and agree on a name for the new chamber.

The team is expected to notify the two boards of its recommendation in coming days. The name will be made public after they've voted on it, perhaps as early as the beginning of February, Alan Wilson, chairman of the Corpus Christi chamber, told the Caller-Times on Thursday.

Other details, including memberships and drafting bylaws, are being worked out but appear to be on pace for completion by the end of March, Wilson said.

"Everyone has been on board with making sure this (merger) is something positive for the entire region, for the entire community," said Rosie Gonzalez Collin, chair of the Hispanic chamber.

Members of the chambers voted overwhelmingly Dec. 29 to unite their organizations. Supporters have said the move was necessary to eliminate overlap in membership and to keep Corpus Christi's business landscape in line with the region's energy and job growth.

The two chambers haven't wasted time preparing for the unification since.

Executive board members of each group have met with Annette Medlin, who recently was named president and CEO of the Corpus Christi chamber. The Hispanic chamber is planning an official welcome ceremony for Medlin during its Feb. 25 "Mi Casa es Su Casa" women's mixer.

Medlin fills a vacancy left by Foster Edwards, who retired.

Earlier this month, the Hispanic chamber announced Gilda Ramirez would remain its interim president, while taking on a full-time role as its vice president of small business, international outreach and education affairs. Ramirez is expected to work on staff of the new chamber once the transition is finished.

Twitter: @Caller_ChrisRam
Contributed photo Vaughn Wascovichs Bridging Cleveland pinhole photography exhibit will be on display at the main gallery of K Space Contemporary.

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By Esther Hackleman

K Space Contemporary hosts its newest exhibit, "Bridging Cleveland," to bring a new perspective on photography to Corpus Christi

The work by Vaughn Wascovich highlights work created with handmade cameras and long exposures.

"Some of the advantages of pinhole photography are that it adds infinite depth of field to photography," K Space Contemporary Executive Director Michelle Smythe said. "

The exhibit, an aggregate of six black and white photos that are 150 inches wide and 60 inches tall, are the result of Wascovich's darkroom experiments.

"It has a power and immediacy," Smythe said. "It is a real powerful and beautiful show."

For those looking to create their own pinhole photography, the museum will host a two-hour gallery talk, in which Wascovich will teach his practices to visitors.

Twitter:@Caller_Esther

IF YOU GO

What: "Bridging Cleveland"

When: Through Feb. 26

Where: Main Gallery, K Space Contemporary, 415 D Starr St.

Information: 361-887-6834

ART MUSEUM OF SOUTH TEXAS

'EXPLORING THE LAND: LANDSCAPES FROM THE HUNTER MUSEUM COLLECTION'

What: The exhibit explores how depictions of American landscapes have evolved over 200 years of art, including the variety of style and social influences.

When: Through April 26

Where: 1902 N. Shoreline Blvd.

Information: 361-825-3500

Beeville Art Museum

'Paintings from the Nave'

What: A collection of 40 paintings by Royston Nave, the namesake of the Nave Museum, will be on display showcasing the works of the La Grange native.

When: Opening reception, noon to 2 p.m. Saturday; exhibit open through April 30

Where: 401 E. Fannin St., Beeville

Information: 361-358-8615

COASTAL BEND COLLEGE

'ROBERT STRAIGHT'

What: The Coastal Bend College will showcase its "Robert Straight" exhibit in the Simon Michael Art Gallery.

When: Through Feb. 11

Where: Frank Jostes Visual Arts Building, 3800 Charco Road, Beeville

Information: 361-354-2320

ISLANDER ART GALLERY

'THE REVIVAL'

What: Corpus Christi-based artist Gerald Lopez will showcase his mixed media works, which blend 19th century portraits with popular culture.

When: noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday

Where: 4024 Weber Road

Information: 361-852-3350

'NEOCRYPTOFUNK 2.0, THE EXQUISITE BRUTALITY OF SECRET REALITY'

What: The Islander Art Gallery will welcome sculptor Dewane Hughes, who will display works that challenge the notion of communication, language, materials and the spaces between.

When: Through Feb. 27

Where: Public artist's lecture, Island Hall, room 163; opening reception, Islander Gallery, 4024 Weber Road

Information: 361-852-3350

Treehouse

'Paul Padilla'

What: The Treehouse will present the metal work of Paul Padilla at its opening reception during the February artwalk.

When: Opening reception, 5:30-9:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5

Where: Treehouse Art Collective, 309 N. Water St. Suite D

Information: 361-882-4822, treehouseartcc.com

WEIL GALLERY

'RE-MEMBERING'

What: The Weil Gallery at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi is pleased to welcome, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Fahamu Pecou as he presents, "Re-Membering." Concerned with notions of representation and black masculinity, Pecou's works reflect upon ideas of philosophy, spirituality and hip-hop bravado, via the channels of popular culture and fine art.

When: Through March 11

Where: Public lecture will be in the Warren Theater; reception and exhibit will be at the Weil Gallery, 6300 Ocean Drive.

Information: 361-825-5700, ext. 5752
GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Consuelo Martinez (right) receives her certification from the Del Mar College Continuing Education Process Technology Program from Interim Dean if Continuing Programs Leonard Rivera from Del Mar College on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Corpus Christi.

SHARE GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Joe Mattingly Jr. from Gravity Midstream talks about the Del Mar College Continuing Education Process Technology Program on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Corpus Christi. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Edward Vega signs his agreement to work for Gravity Midstream on Thursday after receiving his certification from the Del Mar College Continuing Education Process Technology Program. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Environmental and Health Safety Supervisor Orlando Alaniz (left) from Gravity Midstream talks to new hires Thursday at Del Mar College. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Consuelo Martinez talks about the Del Mar College Continuing Education Process Technology Program on Thursday.

By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

Consuelo Martinez said she was often mistaken for a hairdresser when walking to process technology courses in the building that houses a cosmetology program.

She brushed it off. It reaffirmed the challenge she took on 18-weeks ago: To prevail in a male-dominated field.

On Thursday, she graduated from the college's first Continuing Education Process Technology Program alongside four men. She thanked a long list of instructors, also men.

"In both implicit and explicit ways, I was discouraged from pursuing all things STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) because I look like this," she said. "But I learned a lot. I was given equal footing ... I feel very prepared and confident going into my future endeavors."

Martinez and her peers received certificates of completion for the noncredit program, which is an accelerated version of Del Mar's Process Technology two-year degree. Broken into three modules, the 18-week program covers 540 hours of basic industry knowledge, safety operations and instrumentation through rigorous coursework and hands-on simulations. Three of the program's graduates and three traditional process technology students also were hired as facility operators for Gravity Midstream Corp.'s local oil terminal. The Houston-based company provides midstream logistics for crude and refined products.

The group interviewed for the positions Monday and Midstream's human resources manager, Lindsey Mercer said company representatives were impressed.

"We fell in love with (them). Their professionalism, their enthusiasm, attitudes and the knowledge they gained in 18 short weeks," she said. "If we can continue having this pipeline of candidates like this from this program, I can definitely see us hiring from Del Mar again."

Program graduate and Midstream employee Edward C. Vega Jr. will make $5 more per hour from his previous position as a plant operator at another company.

Rodolfo L. Amador, a former warehouse worker, will make $13 more per hour.

The course was tough, Amador said.

"Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.," he said. "You just gotta suck it up."

Consuelo Martinez's sister, Mayor Nelda Martinez, attended the graduation ceremony in support of her sibling. She praised the college for taking a pivotal role in creating opportunities for students and families.

"It's great to see we are no longer doing the training and praying they find a job, we are now training and finding an actual job (for the students)," she said.

Twitter: @CallerBetty

Graduates

David G. Falcon

Tajia L. Amparon

Consuelo "Connie" Martinez

Edward C. Vega

Rodolfo "Rudy" L. Amador

Source: Del Mar College

540 hours of:

Safety Health and Environment 1 and 2

Intro. to Process Technology

Equipment

Instrumentation 1 and 2

Operations

Principals of quality

Troubleshooting

Systems

Industrial Processes

Simtronics computerized simulator training

Source: Del Mar College

Program highlights

Noncredit program

Hands-on experience to prepare for a career in industry

$3,000 cost

Certificate issued at the end of the program

Source: Del Mar College

Program enrollment

Classes start: Feb. 2

Information: CE@DelMar.edu or call 361-698-2122
SHARE Hayden State letter Defense letter

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

Attorneys in a debate over a new trial for a convicted killer are schooling each other in legal filings about the Internet.

At the center of the dispute is a medical examiner's wavering opinion about a gunshot wound that killed Anthony Macias, 33, on April 30, 2014. Courtney Hayden, 25, was convicted of murder in November and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Defense lawyers had argued she shot Macias in self-defense.

Dr. Adel Shaker, who examined Macias, initially believed the wound was a result of the shotgun's muzzle being against Macias' chest, which would have supported the self-defense theory, Hayden's lawyers argued. He later changed his opinion, stating the gunshot could have come from 3 feet away. Defense lawyers also said they could have impeached Shaker as a witness had they known about his first opinion.

Prosecutors didn't tell the defense about the first opinion until about two weeks after trial.

Felony Chief Prosecutor Mike McCaig's letter filed Wednesday references online articles naming Shaker, including a website that accuses Shaker of altering a medical report in a Mississippi death investigation.

"Out of caution, I wanted to make sure you knew that the Internet contains information about Dr. Shaker. Obviously, this information is in the public domain and available globally to anyone with an Internet connection," McCaig wrote.

McCaig notes that he doesn't know whether there's credibility to the website.

"However, I wanted to make sure you were aware of it because your conduct during and since trial indicates otherwise," McCaig wrote.

Defense lawyers dismiss the information in their response letter filed Thursday, calling it neither timely nor factual, and again accuse prosecutors of misconduct.

"A quick Internet search on the (evidence disclosure laws) and its progeny would inform you of your duties as prosecutors for the State of Texas," the lawyers wrote. "Although your office continues to testify and argue that it is aware of its duties, your office's conduct during and since trial indicates otherwise."

The letter is signed by Hayden's three lawyers: John Gilmore, Lisa Greenberg and Nathan Burkett.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers finished a two-day hearing Monday to argue why a convicted killer should get a new trial.

In previous court filings and during the hearing, defense lawyers accused trial prosecutors Jenny Dorsey and Richard Mackay of intentionally withholding the doctor's initial opinion. They also accused District Attorney Mark Skurka of instructing Dorsey to not disclose that opinion when she went to him for advice. Skurka denied the accusation but said in retrospect he did not have all the information.

District Judge Nanette Hasette is considering the arguments and had yet to issue a ruling Thursday.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
SHARE Xadrian Martinez Nancy Martinez Albert Villarreal

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

A woman's second attempt to take a plea deal in the death of her son didn't go through Thursday.

Prosecutors agreed to a 35-year prison sentence for Nancy Rae Martinez, 28, to plead guilty to injury to a child in the death of 6-year-old Xadrian Martinez. Martinez was previously charged with capital murder but prosecutors dropped that charge.

Her former boyfriend, Albert Villarreal, 29, was also charged with capital murder and is slated for trial. But his lawyers assert Martinez beat the child and objected to her plea deal Thursday.

"Although it's not our burden to prove, we believe we're going to prove she did the actual killing," lawyer Jim Lawrence said.

Prosecutors were prepared to present evidence Thursday but 28th District Judge Nanette Hasette rescheduled the hearing for Feb. 8, the day Martinez's trial is scheduled to begin.

In October, the same judge did not sign off on a plea deal for 30 years in prison.

Xadrian's older sister told investigators their mother's boyfriend beat him and slammed him against a refrigerator Aug. 27, 2014, according to the affidavit.

Medics saw cuts to his genitalia that appeared to be either bite marks or cuts caused by "pinching with finger nails, " according to the affidavit.

Nancy Martinez's mother, Cindy Martinez, told police the night of Xadrian's death that his mother admitted to "hitting Xadrian all over his body, " the affidavit states.

Child Protective Services records show Nancy Martinez has a history of arrests and reports of physical abuse, according to the affidavit.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Criminal case was initiated against Kurdish politician, who recognized the Armenian Genocide, Ahmet Turk on the basis of being A member of a terrorist organization and for Realizing propaganda of terrorist organization, Turkish Demokrathaber.net informs, as Armenpress reports.

Kurdish politician threatens to 7 years and 6 months to 18 years imprisonment.

Ahmet Turk acknowledged the Kurds role in the Armenian Genocide and apologized to the Armenians on behalf of the Kurdish people. He explained that the Kurdish population was used to commit the crimes against Armenians in 1915. Our grandfathers and fathers were used in the injustices perpetrated against Armenians, Assyrians and Yezidis. Theres blood on their hands. With the blood of these peoples they bloodied their own hands. Thus, as their children and grandchildren, we apologize.
A few weeks ago, China announced economic growth is at its slowest pace since 1990. This news is probably keeping luxury brand managers up at night. The sector faired well through the economic instability of the last eight years, but thats no excuse for complacency. Firstly, because non-luxury brands are starting to adopt the tools and attributes which formerly only luxury brands could deliver. Secondly, because one in three luxury goods is bought by the Chineseso a wobble over there creates ripples on luxury-shop floors the world over.

Luxury has to watch its back, says Mark Tungate, author of Luxury World: The Past Present and Future of Luxury Brands, and Flamingo Hive Mind Expert. It was always a slippery concept, but now its particularly so. Traditionally there have been three areas where luxury has always excelled: delivering supreme service; craft and heritage; and being able to transcend the transaction. These meant you no longer think of your luxury spend in terms of money at all. But the tools that standard brands have at their fingertips today (primarily through technology) mean that these experiences can now be obtained at a fraction of the cost.

Technology companies are setting new standards in customer experience today. Amazon and Uber are showing how you can combine human contact and the right algorithms to create an intuitive and personalised service, that, unlike luxury, is available to many. After all, many would now consider the Apple user experience and level of individual care as a luxury experience. Likewise, a service like Dreamcheaper.com searches continually on your behalf for the cheapest room rate at your chosen hotel. All you have to do is email your datesthey then book on your behalf. Taking just 20 percent of the cost saving as their fee, the service feels more akin to a luxury concierge than hotel aggregator software.

This article is part of the Cultural Radar series

These platforms are so well designed, we are even able to transcend the jarring reality of the financial transaction. I consider Uber a luxury service, says Tom Chatfield, author, Live This Book, How to Thrive in the Digital Age, and also a Flamingo Hive Mind Expert, Uber is so well designed that you lose the concept that there is even money involved. Isnt that what luxury brands were all about?

So, what does that leave for the luxury sector to own? Even craft and heritage, once bywords for the time-honoured traditions at the heart of the luxury houses, are now becoming commonplace. The focus on process and provenance has become the new norm within consumer expectations. So much so, people have started to parody it through spoof brands such as the Timmy Brothers Brooklyn-based makers of bespoke drinking water whose hilarious video had plenty fooled.

So how can luxury brands celebrate their heritage without echoing this now well-worn language? Perhaps its less about heritage and more about legacy. Is this why Yves Saint Laurent and Dior felt they could consciously cull a part of their past? Both have dropped the Yves and the Christian respectively. With their founders no longer alive, this felt like one powerful way to keep the brand moving on.

It does feel like the only real path that luxury has to take now is innovation. Using it to keep the mass and premium brands on their toes and the luxury consumers engaged. Of course, Burberry is the ultimate innovation example, but we want to see more. And so does Mark Tungate: Luxury brands havent really blown our minds lately. They are in a slight rut but there are ways of breaking out of that. They need to get out of their comfort zone.

Londons Harvey Nichols did something like this in its recent campaign executed by Adam and Eve/DDB. Using gritty CCTV footage of the department stores shoplifters, the brand took a bold step away from the usual luxury aesthetic toward something much more suited to millennial luxury tastes.

Likewise, Tungate suggests this could be achieved through the talent luxury brands choose to collaborate with. Forget Mario Testino for once, he says, how about collaborating with someone who is emerging, someone who is a genius, someone from CERN. Something to give the luxury brand managers a positive reason to stay awake at night.

Miriam Rayman is head of content for cultural intelligence at Flamingo London
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. My Armenia pan-Armenian festival will be held in Armenia. The latter is aimed at the prevention and development of Armenian national and cultural identity, as well as to reinforce Armenia-Artsakh-Diaspora relations. The Government confirmed the program of the events on January 29. The previous festival was organized in 2012. Armenpress reports that Republic of Armenia Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan noted that the festival will be financed by the Implementation of Cultural Events of the Republic of Armenia 2016 state budget as well as other means not forbidden by the Republic of Armenia legislation.

By another draft project, the program and events of Ari Tun (Come Home) project were confirmed to be held in 2016. The purpose of the program is to introduce Diaspora Armenian youth to Armenian history, culture, public life, religion and family traditions; build strong relations with the Homeland. Over 1103 young Armenian people from 40 countries participated in Ari Tun program in 2015.

Armenia is expected to host about 1100 young Armenians from all over the world in 2016. They will be hosted by Armenian families, and will participate in Ari Tun camp.
| BY Ricki Green |

BEcause Australia recently helped AGL Energy (AGL) celebrate the launch of Melbournes Midsumma Festival at the Carnival and T dance in Alexandra Gardens with the launch of a state of the art, energy creating dancefloor.

Midsumma is a three-week long celebration of LGBTIQ art, culture and community attended by nearly 200,000 people. AGL is the Gold Partner and Official Energy Partner of the festival.

As people danced on the flooring throughout the day, the energy created lit up a giant heart on the big screen.

Festival goers could capture their memories through a fun photo booth mechanic that created a gif they could share on social media and print a copy out.
| BY Ricki Green |

AKQA has announced the appointment of Aussie expat Wayne Deakin (right) as executive creative director at its London office.

Deakin will report into international executive creative director and Kiwi expat Duan Evans (left). Wayne will look after the London creative team alongside executive creative director Masaya Nakade and head of experience design Rob McIntosh.

Wayne brings with him over 20 years of industry experience and has held creative leadership positions in Australia, Europe and the US. Deakin started his career at BCM Partnership in Brisbane, followed by a brief stint at GPY&R. His work has been recognised with more than 150 awards.

In addition to his global work portfolio, Wayne has earned an MA in semiotics and cognitive sciences from the Queensland University of Technology.

Says Evans: Wayne is an impressive creative leader with a proven track record for building trust and confidence with his teams and clients. He is singularly focussed on creating ideas that move businesses forward by providing meaningful and original experiences for their customers. It is with great excitement that we welcome Wayne to AKQA.

Says Deakin: I am incredibly excited to be here. Ive always respected AKQA for brilliance and pioneering ideas. The work is consistently reinventing our business and brands. I value the meritocratic culture and entrepreneurial mind-set of the AKQA team, which make me feel very much at home.
| BY Ricki Green |

Taika Waititis fourth film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, was given the prestigious Friday night slot of the opening weekend of Sundance for its premiere on January 22.

Four days later, the ink was drying on a AU$2.8 million deal with distribution company, The Orchard, that has acquired North American rights for the film. The deal includes a theatrical release commitment for approximately 100 markets.

Says Paul Davidson, senior vice president film and television at The Orchard: This film captures so much of what we love about Taika  its wildly funny, endearing, smart and deserves as big an audience as possible. We pursued this film for all of those reasons but also because we genuinely love being in business with Taika.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the second collaboration between Waititi and The Orchard, which also released What We Do in the Shadows in 2014.

Says Peter Grasse, president of Curious Film: This is a major milestone for an Australasian commercial film company and proves without a doubt that Curious has the mettle to produce inspired, admired and creative content for audiences worldwide.

The film was written and directed by Waititi and produced by Curious Film, Defender Films and Piki Films. Its producers were Curious Film executive producer and managing partner, Matt Noonan, Carthew Neal and Leanne Saunders  all from New Zealand. Its executive producers were Charlie McClellan and James Wallace. Curious editor and post producer, Luke Haigh, was one of the films three editors.

Says Waititi: We developed a really strong relationship with The Orchard on What We Do in the Shadows. They did such a great job on that release that Im really pleased to be partnering with them again on Wilderpeople. Im excited the film will be getting a theatrical release in North America. It was the main thing we wanted coming into Sundance, so were all going home happy.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a comedic drama based on Barry Crumps novel, Wild Pork and Watercress, and is the story of a rebellious boy and his foster uncle, who triggered a national manhunt in the wild New Zealand bush. It stars Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rachel House, Rima Te Waita and Oscar Knightley.

CAA negotiated the deal on behalf of the filmmakers and Craig Sussman on behalf of The Orchard. Protagonist Pictures is handling international sales for the film, with CAA co-repping in North America.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Republics government has allocated 0.7 hectares of land property right to the United Arab Emirates for the construction of the embassy building.

Armenpress reports, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan mentioned that the land is located inYerevans Admiral Isakov Avenue.

An agreement on land donation to establish diplomatic representation between the governments of Armenia and UAE was signed on June 21. 2009.
Friday, January 29, 2016 at 11:31AM

The upcoming 2016 Canadian International AutoShow will be showcasing various concept vehicles that point to the future of car design. A total of 11 concept vehicles are making their Canadian debut will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre between February 12th and 21st. Hit jumpt to see what to expect.
Women who might seek the help of Karinya House included those who did not have a supportive partner, those who had been in a supportive relationship but the pregnancy had triggered a negative reaction including violence, those who did not have any family support, those who had some mental or physical illness and those who needed time to determine what they wanted to do with the pregnancy in their life and how to move forward.
In an interview with police that night, the man said the boomerang, which he said was his, was damaged when he took it off the wall before leaving the property.
"With the queen pheromone present they know that their mum is around, she's still the queen, and she's still laying eggs and everything is going fine. When it's gone, usually means the queen has died or has become too old so they need to take over laying eggs of their own and they would much rather it be them doing it rather than one of the other workers in the colony, so they get a bit self-interested," he said.
"The impact on their health and their family's health, the impact on their finances, the issues that they're feeling around loss of the family home, memories, heirlooms et cetera, that all links in and affects someone emotionally. That's the impact we're looking to support people through and address."
"Those finishing Year 12 and going straight into university are evaluated in terms of a selection rank, which considers ATAR scores and bonus points schemes, so the process is more complicated than just a raw score and it varies from case to case," a spokeswoman said on Friday.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The regular session of Armenia-Iraq inter-governmental committee terminated its activities by signing concluding protocol on January 27. Cooperation prospects in economic and humanitarian fields between the two states are touched upon in the protocol. Armenpress was informed about the aforementioned from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia.

Armenian co-chair of Armenia-Iraq inter-governmental committee, Minister of TAES Armen Yeritsyan held a meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq Haider al-Abadi on January 27. During the meeting Minister Yeritsyan conveyed the greetings of Armenian President and Prime Minister to al-Abadi, as well as Armenian Governments support in terms of Iraqs struggle against terrorism. Armen Yeritsyan expressed the readiness of the Armenian leadership to deepen and expand cooperation with Iraq in all spheres.

Iraqi PM mentioned during the meeting that as a result of drop in oil prices the government pays special attention to development of cooperation with foreign partners in new fields, highlighting Armenias role in this regard. The PM displayed his well awareness over the concerns of the Armenian community in Iraq and specially noted the positive role of the Armenian community in the development of Iraq. Haider al-Abadi announced that the government of Iraq keeps the problems of ethnic and religious minorities in the center of attention and tries to create favorable living conditions for them to prevent their migration.

At the end of the meeting PM Abadi conveyed his warm wishes to the President and people of Armenia.
That first non-binding plebiscite would then have some moral force. The message to constitutional monarchists would be: "Even if you do not want a republic, at least make your view clear on what sort of republic you want in the event that a majority of your compatriots do want one."
"Canberra is also expecting more wet stuff on Saturday. There's a low pressure system that's associated with this trough that's going to make landfall over south-east South Australia and that will rotate and head across NSW and bring with it more rain and storms, so Friday is not the last day [of January rain] Canberra will see.
Mr Hyles lived at Murryong, closer to Canberra and once, in the 1930s or '40s went outside, looked into the west sky and saw lightning. "He thought, you beauty and went back inside and rang up all his agents and said buy sheep, buy sheep, because he thought storms were coming in this dry time," Mr Watson said. "Anyway, it turned out what he had seen was a new weather beacon flashing near the airport in Canberra."
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Earlier in the week, Adam Szubin, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the US Treasury directly accused Vladimir Putin of corruption in an interview with the BBC. The statement was later backed by White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who stated that these claims reflect the view of the US presidential administration. Armenpress reports the aforementioned, citing Sputink International.

"Clearly, the president is familiar with these allegations. He also considers them totally unacceptable and inappropriate for such a high-ranking US representative," Peskov told reporters.

He added that the Kremlin hopes the United States will provide an explanation regarding the claims.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The adoption of the new law on the Protection of Personal Data is a forward step for the regulation of the problems existing in the sector in Armenia.

Republic of Armenia Minister of Justice Arpine Hovhannisyan said the aforementioned during the discussion on Personal data protection and freedom of information held on January 29.

The new law presents a legal framework of rights and liabilities for both data developers and personal data subjects. It introduces the functions framework of corresponding bodies in the sector of personal data protection and the framework in question is satisfactory in present conditions. So we can state today that the body is capable of implementing its obligations, Armenpress reports, Minister said.

She noted with satisfaction that a body objective towards personal data processings legality which implements permanent supervision - Personal Data Protection Agency  has already been formed.

I think, that this is a good opportunity, that we have provided the citizens of the Republic of Armenia to be aware of the steps we are going to take, as well as raise the issues that there are in the sector, Arpine Hovhannisyan added.

Natalia Vutova, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Yerevan, noted in her welcome speech that the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data that was ratified by Armenia in 2012 is the only international document regulating the sector.

The meeting was organized by Personal Data Protection Agency of Armenia Ministry of Justice and Council of Europe in the framework of Program Cooperation in EU Eastern Partnership countries Improvement of Personal Protection Data Rights
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian party and Hay Dat (Armenian Cause) offices in particular, were able to coordinate the resources in the right way and do effective work thanks to which it was possible to prevent the adoption of one of the anti-Armenia reports in PACE. MP of Armenia National Assembly Rubik Hakobyan expressed such an opinion during the meeting with journalists on January 29.

The OSCE MG made a statement before PACEs session began. I would not like to overestimate MGs role here, but that statement had some influence. But Milica Markovics report should not have been adopted either, as there were clear political emphases there. The reports adoption was first of all a slap in the face of the MG Co-chairs, Rubik Hakobyan said.

The MP also said that the leadership of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic had announced that they were ready to discuss the issue of Sarsang reservoir to find a satisfactory solution for all the parties. He added that the Armenian delegation can submit a political response report on the part of Nagorno Karabakh to PACE to neutralize Milica Markovics report.

On January 26 PACE refused to adopt draft resolution on Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan by rapporteur Robert Walter (no longer a PACE member). 66 MPs voted for, 70  against the report.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted rapporteur Milica Markovics (Bosnia and Herzegovina) draft resolution on Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water after making some changes and revisions to the draft. 98 MPs voted for, 71  against. 40 MPs abstained.
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Three college students who first met while attending a Catholic high school in Florida have launched a scholarship fund to help others experience faithful Catholic education at a Newman Guide college. As we went off to different colleges, we kept in touch and found time to catch up whenever we returned []
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YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. It is obvious that the existence of civil society is a key factor for a democratic state, while freedom of speech and assembly has a vital importance for normal functioning of civil society. Armenpress reports that member of Armenian delegation to PACE, National Assembly RPA faction member Samvel Farmanyan spoke about this at PACE winter plenary session, referring to the mass human rights violations in Azerbaijan.

From this standpoint, the rising tendency of restraining the activities of NGOs, attacking human rights defenders and political persecution or imprisonment in a number of countries, especially in our neighboring Azerbaijan, which seems to become an expanding black spot on the European map of human rights, is more than concerning, Farmanyan said.

The MP added that the two reports being discussed during the winter session of the Assembly, which refer to human rights situation in Azerbaijan best show the situation over democratic gaps in Azerbaijan, indicating the ever hardening legislative and administrative regulations restraining the activities of NGOs, dozens of political persecutions and trials, and the imprisonment of all those who have condemnable views over Aliyevs regime and his family.

Here, in this cradle of democracy, it may even seem surprising for many of you the legislative limitations which are forcefully imposed on Azerbaijans civil society institutions. In order to open a local branch in Azerbaijan, international human rights organizations are legislatively obliged to sign an agreement with Justice Ministry, by which they will assume a commitment to respect the national moral values of Azerbaijan and not to engage in political campaigns. It is obvious, and the reporters record that it is impossible to give concrete interpretations on those provisions, which, in reality, are a mine, ground to accuse all those who will somehow criticize the Aliyev administration, the Armenian MP mentioned.

Farmanyan added that all the internationally recognized human rights organizations which invested great efforts in establishing the roots of civil society in post-Soviet states, including Armenia, are blamed by the Azerbaijani authorities in being guided by double-standards, trying to display the rightness of Azerbaijani policy of restraining their activities by such false arguments. Moreover, civil society organizations are biasedly deprived of the opportunity to receive foreign funds exceeding 180 euros. I leave aside the defective practice of denying registering the civil society organizations having critical opinion over Aliyevs autocratic regime, Farmanyan added.

He also stated that looking at our region, we can say that the reports being discussed at the Assembly, which refer to the situation over human rights in Azerbaijan, refer not only to inadmissible restrictions of NGOs and persecution of human rights defenders, but also to prospects of peace. I will explain what I mean. Under the light of Goebbels state propaganda, when the world-spread Armenians are declared the enemies of Azerbaijanis, when murderer Ramil Safarov is declared a state hero and is perceived as a positive example for the rising generation, all those who voice about peace and necessity of negotiated settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict are labelled as state traitors of Azerbaijan and spies of Armenia. The state propaganda presents all of them as state traitors, reviving our memories of the cruel Stalin era. Unfortunately I have not enough time to list all the victims. We must send an extremely clear message to President Aliyev, one of the last dictators of our continent, to cease the systematic repressions against human rights defenders, media and those who have a condemning stance over him and his family, the MP concluded.
New Delhi, January 29, 2016: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday asked Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) president Rafael Reif to explore the possibility of lending MIT's expertise to India's various flagship programmes like Digital India, Skill India and Start-Up India.

Reif called on Modi on Thursday and invited him to visit the prestigious institute, an official statement said.

He apprised Modi of the work being done by MIT in the fields of education, health, water conservation and innovation.

Reif invited Modi to visit MIT and interact with the students and faculty.

The prime minister suggested that senior or retired faculty from MIT could visit India for a few months to teach at an Indian university.

Reif appreciated the suggestion and offered his assistance in this regard.

IANS
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Today, the European Union has published a comprehensive report on the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) for the period 2014-2015. The report is a prime example of how the European Union strengthens trade relations with partner countries, such as Armenia while insisting on sustainable development and governance reforms, press service of Delegation of the European Union to Armenia informed Armenpress.

The EU's Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP) is designed to help partner countries develop their economies through benefitting from international trade. It grants reduced or zero tariffs on imports to the EU, making access to EU markets easier. Thus the GSP helps generate new business opportunities and trade revenues, which contribute to boosting economic growth, creating new employment opportunities and reducing poverty in beneficiary countries.

In particular, the GSP+ Special Arrangement for Sustainable Development and Good Governance provides additional support (full tariff removals) to countries which ratify and effectively implement 27 core international conventions on human rights, labour rights, good governance and environmental protection. Since the GSP reform applied as from 1 January 2014, the EU undertakes enhanced monitoring of the GSP+ beneficiaries' compliance with these obligations with a view to support their efforts to improve the implementation of the conventions.

Armenia benefits from the reformed GSP+ as from the start of its application.

The present first bi-annual report on the reformed GSP+ functioning examines how Armenia implemented its binding commitments made when entering the GSP+, in particular ratification and effective implementation of the relevant international conventions, reporting to the international monitoring bodies and cooperation with the EU side in its monitoring process.

The report concludes that during the first GSP+ monitoring cycle, Armenia demonstrated genuine efforts to comply with its commitments. At the same time, Armenia has to continue and in some cases step up its work to further improve its implementation of the conventions - not least striving to ensure that Armenian citizens experience human rights protection improvements in their everyday life - in order to keep the GSP+ benefits.

In particular, in 2014-2015, Armenia made an overall effort to address the shortcomings identified in its implementation of the conventions, primarily related to missing or inadequate legislation and awareness rising. At the same time, Armenia needs to further step up its efforts to effectively address several persisting human rights problems, in particular regarding the independence and integrity of the judiciary and of the political system as a whole, the insufficient legislative and enforcement framework against torture and ill treatment, widespread corruption, discrimination against minorities, discrimination and violence against women and child poverty. Regarding labour rights, Armenia's legislation and practice on the official labour market are broadly in line with the ILO fundamental conventions. However, both should be improved on a number of points, in particular the freedom of association for employers and workers, more regular and effective labour inspection and prevention of discrimination at workplace. Armenia should also make more efforts to curtail unregulated employment. Armenia continued to make efforts to protect the environment through implementation of the legal framework and introduction of new specific legislation in several sectors (e.g. air, water, nature protection). Overall, Armenia takes good advantage of the EU substantial assistance on environmental protection and tackling of climate change and intends to continue doing so also to support its future priorities and objectives in these areas.

Based on the reports findings, priority actions will be identified at the beginning of the next two-year monitoring cycle in 2016. While these may reflect deep-rooted and long-term issues, clear evidence of concrete progress to tackle these shortcomings will be expected over the next monitoring period. A number of projects can be launched to build Armenia's capacity in meeting its GSP+ obligations. Close cooperation with a wide range of partners is crucial to the success of the GSP+. Apart from the Armenian authorities, the EU works with local and international human and labour rights experts and engages in an active dialogue with the civil society organizations in Armenia. In many cases, the civil society has welcomed the GSP+ arrangement as an incentive for change.

The next report on Armenia's compliance with its GSP+ commitments will be published by November 2017. The conventions covered by the GSP+ are grouped in the following four themes:

1) seven conventions on human rights protection (against torture, anti-discrimination, rights of women, children, and minorities, civil and political rights including freedom of expression and association, right to a fair trial and judicial independence);

2) Eight International Labour Organisation's conventions on labour rights (against forced labour and child labour, workers' rights to collectively organise and bargain, against discrimination at work and equal pay for men and women);

3) Eight conventions on environmental protection and climate change (to monitor hazardous waste and harmful pollutants, to safeguard biodiversity and endangered species and to tackle climate change);

4) Four conventions on good governance (to support countries to strengthen their governance and institutions - the UN convention against Corruption, as well as three UN conventions seeking to control illegal drugs).

GSP+ has a significant trade and economic importance for Armenia. In 2014, approximately 60 million EUR (equivalent of 32 billion AMD) worth export, which constituted 26% of the total Armenian export to the EU (228 million EUR or 120 billion AMD), benefitted from the GSP+ preferences and so were exported with zero tariffs. The picture further improved in the first half of 2015 when 58 million EUR (31 billion AMD) worth Armenian export to the EU benefitted from the GSP+ arrangement. This represents already 41 % of the total Armenian export to the EU (144 million EUR or 76 billion AMD).

Moreover, a large majority of the Armenian businesses exporting to the EU that can make use of the GSP+ actually used that opportunity and were granted duty free market access in 2014-2015. Armenia uses the GSP+ in particular in these export sectors: clothing, aluminium, crayfish, juices, jams and other processed food, nuts and other seeds.
Following Fords announcement earlier this year that it will end Australian production in 2016, the countrys other major car manufacturer, General Motors owned Holden, said it will stop making cars Down Under  despite initially denying rumors that it would proceed to such a move.

The carmaker said it would transition to a national sales company in Australia and New Zealand as part of its ongoing actions to decisively address the performance of its global operations. The company noted that it would discontinue vehicle and engine manufacturing and significantly reduce its engineering operations in Australia by the end of 2017.

The decision to end manufacturing in Australia reflects the perfect storm of negative influences the automotive industry faces in the country, including the sustained strength of the Australian dollar, high cost of production, small domestic market and arguably the most competitive and fragmented auto market in the world, explained GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson, who plans to retire next year .

Approximately 2,900 people will lose their jobs over the next four years as a result of GMs decision, including 1,600 from the Elizabeth vehicle manufacturing plant and approximately 1,300 from Holdens Victorian workforce.

Nevertheless, the Holden brand will continue to exist in Australia beyond 2017 and the sale and service of Holden vehicles will be made through the carmakers dealers across Australia and New Zealand. Warranty terms and spare parts availability will remain unchanged as well.

However, GM didnt say where it will manufacture Holden vehicles that are now made in Australia. GM will continue to be present in Australia through a national sales company, a national parts distribution center and a global design studio.

Since 2001, the Australian dollar has risen from US$0.50 to as high as $1.10 compared to the USD. Because of the appreciation of the currency alone, manufacturing in Australia at the local currencys peak was 65 percent more expensive compared to just a decade earlier, GM said.

As it stands, Toyota will be the only car-making company in Australia after 2017, but that may soon change

By Dan Mihalascu

Thanks to all our tipsters!

PHOTO GALLERY
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. MP of Armenia National Assembly Rubik Hakobyan is of the opinion that the "Armenian Revolutionary Federation" must cooperate with the Armenian authorities in behalf of pan-Armenian interests. Rubik Hakobyan told journalists on January 29, when speaking about the possible cooperation between "Armenian Revolutionary Federation" and Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), that the cooperation of "Armenian Revolutionary Federation" with the leadership is necessary.

Every political force decides on its own the way to be represented. Armenian Revolutionary Federation" is a pan-Armenian structure. All that happens in the world nowadays, concerns us. There is a clear Turkey-Russia confrontation in Syria. Turkey also does its best to create a second front in the South Caucasus. We must realize that there are challenges that must be faced. In this regard, Armenian Revolutionary Federation must cooperate with the leading political party in behalf of pan-Armenian interests, Armenpress reports, Hakobyan stated.

He added that the aforementioned concerns not only Armenian Revolutionary Federation". According to him, the situation requires that everyone combines their resources. The MP does not consider that the format of cooperation is important, but the right benchmark should be realized in order to cooperate in behalf of state interest.

"Armenian Revolutionary Federation" has already announced that they had held negotiations with Armenia President Serzh Sargsyan on cooperation with the leading political party. After the sitting of RPA Executive Body, member of RPA, MP Gagik Minasyan said that the possibilities for cooperation with partner political parties had been discussed during the sitting. He added that the discussions would continue and the format would become clear in the future.
There are many combinations in life that should never happen; ice cream and raw mince, guns and children, Kardashians andwell anything  all things wed rather not think about. Yet there are some matches that should be considered; and in this instance, Im talking about a Hyundai illustrated in Pickup Truck format.



Rewind back to this years Detroit Motor Show and youll no doubt recall Hyundai revealing its Santa Cruz compact utility concept. It was Hyundais interpretation of a vehicle that would cater to the needs of people wanting something slightly more practical than an SUV, but not a full-blown pickup.

Recipe for great success may you say? Remember the Subaru Baja? Im not so sure that it would be a cash cow like Hyundai would want it to be.

Lets move that concept to one side and look at something that could do big things for the Seoul-based manufacturer; Im talking about a smaller, mid-size truck that looks great with decent off-road and haulage capabilities. Sure, Hyundai and truck may be foreign for those looking at a Tacoma, Colorado or Frontier; yet I think with the right attributes it could do well.

Firstly, the design has to appeal; in this instance, a rugged take on Hyundais Fluidic Precision design language would mix the current corporate look with aggressive creases and diagonal design elements.

The brands signature hexagonal front grille (which the rest of the industry seems to be hell-bent on using) sits proudly between recessed LED headlamps, while prominent air inlets house the fog-lights.

Protective plastic cladding protects the lower portion of the body, whilst the rear has a separated cargo bed for other utilitarian configurations. There is only so much you can do with the design of a pickups glasshouse  so here its rather traditional looking, with a hint of Santa Cruz in the C-Pillars.

Under the hood would ideally sit Hyundais current 2.0-liter, four-cylinder turbo from the Sonata; coupled with a new electric-hybrid for fuel efficiency and low-end torque. Power would be sent via an all-wheel drive system and a 6-speed manual or 7-speed dual clutch auto from the all-new Tuscon SUV.

Unlike the Santa Cruz concept which could be based off the new Tucson, this 5-seat compact truck would need to be body-on-frame for better stiffness and load-carrying capacity; unfortunately Hyundai doesnt have such a dedicated platform, so would need to develop this type of vehicle from the ground up with a lot of investment.

Whilst this offering might have its work cut out for it in the United States of America-land, it could do very well in other parts of the globe like Europe and Asia-Pacific. Light commercial sales in these areas are generally dominated by the likes of Toyotas Hilux, Ford Ranger (global version), Mitsubishi Triton/L200 and Nissan Navara/Frontier.

Ultimately, this is just my interpretation of a Hyundai pickup, wed love to know your thoughts on whether or not Hyundai should build such a vehicle in the comments section below.

By Josh Byrnes

Photo Renderings Copyright Carscoops / Josh Byrnes

Photo Gallery
Just after confirmation came that a Hellcat-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee is on the way, the possibility of a Chrysler Pacifica SRT Hellcat has surfaced thanks to FCA design boss Ralph Gilles.



While out at dinner recently, the designer drew up a quick sketch of how the all-new minivan could look if it were given the Hellcat treatment. The image was posted up on Gilles Instagram and lets us into the mind of the designer whos imagination clearly isnt impeded by the improbable.

The sketch itself shows the Pacific with a custom bonnet incorporating two air intakes to feed the supercharger, an enlarged front grille and air intakes, massive wheels and a towering rear wing. For good measure, a racing driver can even be seen at the wheel.

Unless FCA completely loses its mind, theres absolutely no chance such a car will see the light of day, particularly following the companys delay on a number of new models.

While the idea of a 707 hp minivan is cool and reminds us of the Renault Escape F1, theres simply no market for such a car.

If it were created, wed take one in the new Plum Crazy paint.

PHOTO GALLERY
Prior to the 2016 Australian motorsport season kicking off, Nissan has taken the wraps off its two tweaked racing models.



First off is the 2016 Nissan Altima V8 Supercar outfitted with a refreshed livery more reflective to the liveries of Nissans global GT3 colors. Consequently, the potent, 600 hp+ rocket combines white, red and black elements as with the very best models from Nismo, the Japanese automakers dedicated performance division. As with 2015, the car will be driven by Michael Caruso.

Also for 2016, Nissan Australia will field a GT-R Nismo GT3 during the local GT3 series. Itll make its racing debut at next weeks Bathurst 12 Hour looking to successful defend its 2015 title.

During a recent test day at the Phillip Island circuit, the two cars hit the track with Rick Kelly and Florian Strauss in the drivers seats. Matt Simmons, the winner of the 2015 Nissan PlayStation GT Academy was also in attendance prior to his competitive debut during this seasons Blancpain GT Endurance Series.

Nissan Australia managing director and chief executive Richard Emery said Today is a display of how heavily committed Nissan is to Australian motorsport. Elements from all three pillars of our local motorsport activities  V8 Supercars, GT3 and the Bathurst 12 Hour, and the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy program  were all at Phillip Island. All is now set for a huge 2016 season, beginning with the Bathurst 12 Hour next month where the Nissan GT-R will strive to win back-to back victories at Mount Panorama, just as it did in 1991 and 1992.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Contributed - Antonio Diaz

I am not on vacation, but I am at a vacation hot spot: Cancun.

And frankly, I have been so busy that I have barely left the hotel room, and tomorrow marks the start of three very busy days selling flying cars down here.

Typically, Cancun is a sunny warm, vacation destination, and the plane from Kelowna was full of many familiar faces heading down to take a break and to exchange the snow-covered streets for the white sand beaches.

But what boggles my mind at this vacation hot spot is the number of people walking around - or sitting around - and texting or catching up on social media.

It seems strange that even on vacation we cannot tear ourselves away from virtual friendships to be with our loved ones, physically and mentally.

It is bizarre to witness couples sitting on beautiful comfy couches in a quiet corner of the hotel in this beautiful spot, taking absolutely no notice of each other or their surroundings, and instead staring intently at the bright screens of their individual cell phones, talking to their online friends with whom they are, apparently, digitally married.

A recent poll on Castanet asked whether people could tear themselves away from their phone. I think most people did not tell the truth in that poll.

On a romantic vacation with my wife, I would see absolutely no useful purpose for my cell phone. Call me old fashioned, or cheap, but if I am paying for a vacation with my wife, what I am looking for is physical face time, not Facebook. It is linking up with my wife, not being LinkedIn, that would be exciting to me.

Accidental near-misses happen all the time in the hotel corridors, as people shuffle along with their phones. They barely know which direction they are going because they are texting on the way to the elevator, texting while standing by the elevator, texting in the elevator, and texting from the elevator to the restaurant . . . where they will text while eating.

My three tips for a better vacation

Leave your phone at home. No, really. Leave it at home.

If you absolutely must have your phone for emergencies, turn off the data.

If you are so addicted that you cannot turn off the data, limit your time to a short period in the morning or evening, and recognize that you are addicted.

In the not-too-distant past when you were on vacation, you had little or no communication - zero if you were in a remote location, where at best you could return a call a few days later, not a few seconds later.

Now I am going to post this on my social media accounts so I can go for a swim.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Contributed - ASREP Michelle Freebairn's Grade 8 Health and Careers class at Seaton Secondary School in Vernon adopted the ASREP initiative as their school project.

The Armstrong Spallumcheen Refugee Project (ASREP) is hosting another community meeting where people will have a chance to learn more about Islam from a local imam.

The meeting will be held at Pleasant Valley Secondary School auditorium on Feb. 7 at 2:30 p.m. with special guests, Vernon Imam Muhammed William Saleh and his wife, Sana Saleh.

Imam William will be outlining the history of Islam and explaining the common ties and values shared with Christianity, said Ron Brinnen with ASREP. After the presentation, there will be time for a variety of questions. Everyone is invited and all are welcome.

Brinnen said fundraising for bringing a Syrian family to Armstrong continues and the group has raised some $21,000 of its $35,000 target.

Michelle Freebairn's Grade 8 Health and Careers class at Seaton Secondary School in Vernon adopted the ASREP initiative as its school project.

Besides researching the refugee issue, they raised over $150, six large bags of clothing and several food gift cards, said Brinnen.

Askews Foods has also gotten onboard.

Brinnen said a percentage of gift cards purchased at the Armstrong store will go toward ASREP.

The gift cards are in denominations of $50 and $100 and are available at the Armstrong Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon.

Brinnen said there will also be a sales booth at Askews at various times. Gift cards will be available at the store Monday, Feb. 1 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturday, Feb. 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Other times will be posted when available.
Photo: The Canadian Press Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion

Canada will have to say no to some of the requests that its allies are making in the fight against Islamic extremists, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Thursday.

But the minister wouldn't say if some coalition members have asked Canada to keep its fighter jets in Iraq and Syria.

"We cannot say yes to everything," Dion said.

"When our plan will be out, it will not be all what our allies are asking us to do, but it will be pretty close of what they hope from us."

Dion was discussing Canada's future contribution to the mission against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at a major gathering of the Canada2020 think tank in Ottawa. He also delivered a major outline of the new Liberal government's foreign policy views, which differ sharply in some ways from those of the Conservatives.

On ISIL, he insisted the new Liberal contribution will be meaningful, even though the government plans to withdraw Canada's six CF-18 fighter jets from the U.S.-led bombing coalition, which has sparked criticism from the Opposition Conservatives.

Dion will not say when the government will announce its new plan, but he says there would be no gap in Canada's contribution to the air war in the meantime.

"The plan is not out because the current plan is still there. There is no gap. We are still involved."

He said Canada flies two to three per cent of the coalition airstrikes and he said it is "doable" for the coalition to cover that.

David Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Canadian warplanes may have flown a relatively low percentage of bombing missions, but the contribution has been more meaningful than statistics would indicate.

"Canada's been flying a lot of the more difficult missions for quite some time and that will end."

Dion used the speech to tie together many of the emerging threads of the new government's foreign policy, which focuses on multilateralism and diplomatic engagement with countries with which Canada doesn't necessarily see eye-to-eye.

The Liberals have been under attack this week from the Conservatives for their plan to step up diplomatic contact with Iran and Russia  two countries the previous Harper government conspicuously shunned.

Dion used his speech to reiterate earlier statements that it is in Canada's interest to engage with Russia on the Arctic and at least open a dialogue with Iran. None of that diminishes Canada's support of Ukraine, which faces Russian aggression, or the condemnation of Iran's human rights record, he said.

Dion also extended an olive branch to the Conservatives, saying "the former government was not always wrong" and that there was no need for the Liberals to "start from scratch" on foreign policy.

He cited the Conservatives' focus on ending the forced marriage of young girls in the developing world, an initiative championed by former foreign affairs minister John Baird, as a worthy Canadian endeavour.
Photo: Contributed - BC Ferries

The federal government says it's willing to use infrastructure dollars to help Canada's coastal provinces pay for ferries that are critical for connecting communities.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau says the government is open to modifying the eligibility criteria for the government's marquee infrastructure fund to pay for ferry-related improvements.

That message was delivered during closed-door discussions Thursday in a downtown Ottawa hotel between Garneau and his provincial counterparts.

The Liberals have promised to spend, on average, $6 billion more per year for each of the next 10 years on infrastructure, with one-third of that slated for public transit. At the same time, they are trying to shovel existing funds out the door to projects approved for cash to help stimulate the economy.

The infrastructure cash could be a boon for provinces like British Columbia, which is looking to build a dozen new ferries  one in each of the next 12 years  and facing a steep bill for the first three that will start to arrive this year.

The three ferries being built in Poland will cost about $252 million, including about $52 million in import tariffs.

B.C. Transportation Minister Todd Stone says Liberals showed a clear willingness to expand eligibility criteria, but cautioned "we're not there yet" on an agreement.

The day-long meeting between Garneau and his counterparts ended with the group agreeing to a national strategy to eventually drop to zero the number of fatalities on Canada's roads.

The document, released Thursday afternoon, is the fourth such strategy that ministers have endorsed.
Photo: Contributed

Someone is making off with bike repair stations in Kamloops.

A day after finding the McArthur Island Bike Repair Station missing, City staff have discovered the Riverside Park Bike Repair Station is missing as well.

"We share the public's concern with this regrettable situation and appreciate their help by spreading the word through social media," said Glen Cheetham, Sustainability Services Supervisor. "If anyone observed suspicious activity around the two missing repair stations please contact the RCMP."

The bike repair stations were installed last summer on bike commuter routes and recreational areas including Riverside Park, McArthur Island and Kenna Cartwright Park to encourage people to use active transportation and to assist cyclists with performing basic repairs while on the move.
Photo: Google Street View

Winnipeg police say an arrest has been made and charges are pending after a video was posted to YouTube in which a male made threats against students at a Winnipeg high school.

Kelly Barkman, superintendent at the River East Transcona School Division, said he learned of the video on Thursday morning just as the school day was beginning.

He said Kildonan East Collegiate was quickly put on high alert, which means staff monitor the premises for strangers and all doors except the front door are locked.

Barkman said the high alert will continue on Friday "unless something changes overnight."

Winnipeg police said they were not yet releasing any information about the suspect.

The incident comes just a week after two staff members were fatally shot and seven other people injured at a school in La Loche, Sask., along with two brothers at a residence in the town.

In that case, a 17-year-old boy, who can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has been charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.

"It's always worrisome when you have these things happen," Barkman said Thursday. "We are always concerned about safety. We have taken this YouTube threat very seriously."

The video, titled Wiping Out Kildonan East, includes a male voice rapping over a still picture of the school, insulting students by name and including the line "until you guys hit me back, boom, school dead," followed by the sound of machine gun fire.

Barkman said he has not often encountered threats in his career as a superintendent.

"But there have been different times when it's been a different type of threat. Anytime we go into any type of lockdown or we do a hold-and-secure or high alert, it's for a good reason."
Photo: Facebook - Jake Evans

UPDATE: 3 p.m.

Break ins, vehicle thefts, mischief, arson, bear spray assaults and more are suspected to have been caused by the same group of youth in Penticton overnight.

About 9 p.m., RCMP began receiving complaints about a group of young people causing problems around Power Street, Churchill Road and Lakeshore Drive.

Police patrolled the area and at 10 p.m. came across a man who had been bear sprayed. He was transported to Penticton Regional Hospital for treatment.

The man was not co-operative with police.

At 10:39 p.m., police received a report of six young people running around Lakeshore Drive associated to a van parked nearby.

The youth were gone upon police arrival, and the van appeared to have a tampered ignition but had not been reported stolen. The registered owners were contacted and surprised to learn their van was not in the driveway of their Latimer Street residence.

At 11 p.m., a resident of Power Street reported that a male had entered her basement suite through a window, and when she confronted him she was bear sprayed.

Police attended, and the occupants were transported to PRH for decontamination.

The suspect is described as a young male with no facial hair, Caucasian, very pale, about six feet tall, thin, wearing a black hoody and dark pants.

Throughout the night, there were several reports of youth kicking down fences, lighting napkins on fire at a doorway of Penticton Secondary School and smashing a car window on Forestbrook Drive.

Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth is asking the public: Do you have a teenage son? Where was he last night? Who was he with? Did he and his friends steal a car, assault people with bear spray, break into houses, break car windows, commit arson and other endless mischief in Penticton?

The police have a number of leads and have identified potential suspects.

Anyone with information is asked to call Penticton RCMP or CrimeStoppers.

ORIGINAL

Firefighters responded to a minor fire at Penticton Secondary School overnight.

Deputy fire chief Dave Spalding says fire and RCMP responded to the front entrance of Pen Hi at 12:15 a.m.

They found some burned napkins on the ground in front of the entrance.

No other evidence of an attempt to start a fire was found, and the fire department is not investigating the incident.

The Penticton Shoplifters Facebook claimed some unidentified youths tried to set fire to the doors of the school.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Information related to the formation of new Electoral Code will be partially announced during the next week. The working group operates and some materials already exist though we are not still ready to publicize them, Hrayr Tovmasyan, head of the National Assembly's staff, mentioned after the government session, during the interview with reporters.

Hrayr Tovmasyan is convinced the new Electoral Code will increase the supervision mechanisms of electoral processes also as a result of the technical equipment.

Asked what equipment he talks about, Tovmasyan said he cannot mention anything yet. It depends what kind of support we will get over gaining that systems. Those systems refer to the electronic voting, that is such systems which will assure secured, uninterrupted work and in parallel with it providing paper-based control system will be possible, Tovmasyan said, Armenpress reports.

Speaking about the publication of the lists, head of the National Assembly's staff said there is a problem connecting with it which is to ensure maximum supervision during the registration process of voters. He mentioned he is convinced that the system which is being formed right now will assure for 100% the impossibility of voting for the 2nd time instead of people who are not residing in Armenia.
Photo: Contributed

Osoyoos RCMP and firefighters responded to a building fire at Gyro Beach in Osoyoos about 7 a.m. Friday.

Sometime in the early morning, vandals spray painted graffiti onto the public washrooms and concession building at the park.

The suspects then started a fire in the mens washroom, causing a significant amount of smoke damage, according to police.

Anyone with information or who recognizes the graffiti tags is asked to call Osoyoos RCMP at 250-495-7236 or CrimeStoppers, if they wish to remain anonymous.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani government has corrected the state budget for the current year based on a basic oil price of $25 per barrel. Armenpress reports, citing Turan news agency, the Finance Minister of Azerbaijan Samir Sharifov told about the aforementioned. According to him, in the revised budget the revenues and expenditures of the state budget increased by 2 billion manat. Revenues of state budget this year will amount to 16.5 billion manat.

"The expected size of the deficit is 1.7 billion manats. To cover it the treasury balance for 1 January, 2016 will be allocated, an amount of 1.4 billion manat," the minister said. From the privatization of state assets is expected to gain 100 million manats. These funds will be used to repay the state budget deficit.

It is predicted that this year the Ministry of Taxes will collect by 200 million manat less, than was planned in the law of Azerbaijan Republic "On State Budget for 2016". These funds will be offset by a corresponding increase in customs revenue.

Azerbaijan lost over $10 billion in 2015 due to drop of oil prices. Since August 2014, Azerbaijan spent $10,176 billion (67%) of the currency reserves to keep the manat stable.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. There is no threat of spreading or catching Zika virus in Armenia at this point. The mentioned virus is transmitted via a mosquito which, fortunately, does not exist in Armenia. The head of the National Center for Disease Control and Preventionof the Ministry of Health Artavazd Vanyan told the journalists about this. That mosquito must exist in a country in order that disease to be spread. That species does not exist in Armenia now. But, of course, we work in that direction, prepare guidelines about that virus, which will be published and presented to the public, the official said.

He added that clinical symptoms rise among 20% of those infected and the disease goes on mildly. Critical cases are recorded among pregnant women, and now discussions and observations are underway to find its direct impact on the foetus, Artavazd Vanyan said, adding that they are waiting for data of World Health Organization.

The specialist noted that the virus is not transmitted from human to human, though there is always a probability that the virus may undergo mutation.

Key facts about the virus by WHO

Zika virus disease is caused by a virus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes.

People with Zika virus disease usually have a mild fever, skin rash (exanthema) and conjunctivitis. These symptoms normally last for 2-7 days.

There is no specific treatment or vaccine currently available.

The best form of prevention is protection against mosquito bites.

The virus is known to circulate in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific.
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YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. During January 29 court session over Permyakovs case, who is accused in murdering the Avetisyans family, witnesses were interrogated.

At the beginning of the session the daughters of Avetisyans family, Lusine Avetisyan and Anahit Koshtoyan, as well as the son-in-law of the family, Yegor Adamyan, petitioned to the court not to conduct any interrogation due to critical psychological condition and to publicize their testimonies given during the preliminary investigation, which refer to the family of the Avetisyans, the cell-phone and clothes discovered in the house.

Cousin of the Avetisyans, Karine Avetisyan, was interrogated as a witness. She lives next door of the murdered family. She told that she heard good lungs, like an explosion, at 06:20 in the morning, and she thought it was an earthquake. She turned on the lamp, looked at the ceiling, noted that the lamp does not shake, did not note any unusual thing in the yard: it was dark, the light of the Avetisyans haouse was off, no voices were heard.

Later, like usually, she went to work and noticed a handkerchief on the ground of the yard. She learned about the tragedy at work. She informed that the door was closed every night, which is very difficult to open from outside. Anyway, seeing the door open in the morning she did not suspect anything.

Ruzanna Hakonyan, working in the shop in Miasnikyan 184, also testified. She mentioned that she went to work at 10:00 oclock and heard cries 1-1.5 hours later: Rita Avetisyan, sister of murdered Hasmik Avetisyan, intruded into the shop and asked to call an ambulance. In answer to the question of the lawyers the witness stated that she had not noted anything unusual, and the Avetisyans were normal people.

The nurse and the driver of the ambulance also gave testimonies. Gayane Melkonyan, the nurse, told that they received the call at 12:15 as an alert of gas poisoning. When they entered the house, there was no one else; the members of the family were dead. Only the six-month child was alive.

Andrey Nikishin and 6 other servicemen of the military base had been notified to attend the court session as witnesses, but the court received a writ from the base a day before the session that Andrey Nikishin, as well as the other 6 had been removed from the list of the military personnel of the base on August 15, 2015. Attached to the letter were extracts from the order. The document was signed by the commander of the base Ustinov. Only the testimony of Artyom Danchink was introduced.

The six members of the Avetisyan family were shot and killed in Gyumri at around 6 a.m. on January 12, 2015. The only survivor was 6-month old Seryozha Avetisyan, who was transferred to a hospital with injuries caused by a cutting and piercing tool. The childs health condition became worse on January 19. After fighting for his life and undergoing several difficult surgeries for a week, six-month old Seryozha Avetisyan also died on January 19. There was severe renal insufficiency and cardiac insufficiency, and doctors werent able to save his life. Soldier of the 102nd Russian military base stationed in Gyumri, Valery Permyakov is charged with killing the members of the Avetisyan family and causing numerous injuries to little Seryozha. Russian border guards found him when he was trying to cross the Armenian-Turkish border and handed him over to the commanders of the 102nd Russian military base. Permyakov has confessed his guilt.

Valery Permyakov accused in murdering the Avetisyans family in the Russian military base in Gymri is sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for desertion, usurpation and illegal bearing of arms. The trial was presided by Alexander Sheldyaev. The trial took place in the territory of the 102nd Russian military base in Gyumri in the outgoing session of the 5th garrison military court of the North Caucasus Okrug. After a three-hour discussion the court returned from the consultation room and issued the verdict on August 12, 2015. The trial was conducted within one day.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told US Secretary of State John Kerry by telephone that the entire spectrum of Syrian opposition should be represented at the intra-Syrian talks. Armenpress reports, citing TASS, the Russian Foreign Ministry said about this on January 29.The sides exchanged views on Syria-related topics. Both sides supported the efforts of UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura to arrange negotiations between representatives of the Syrian government and Syrian opposition with an aim to achieve political settlement," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.

Lavrov described as unacceptable attempts by some opponents of the Syrian leadership to put up preliminary conditions for the start of the talks in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254. "The Russian minister re-emphasized it was important that the delegation of Syrian opposition represent the entire spectrum of the opposition forces and stressed the need to form a united front against other terrorist groups," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Lavrov and Kerry also discussed some other urgent problems. "The Russian foreign minister expressed indignation over the far-fetched and remorseless accusations launched by some senior officials in the Obama administration against the Russian leadership when the sides discussed the Russian-American relations," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. "Washington is fully responsible for the intentional incitement of tensions in bilateral relations," the ministry stressed.






YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia and ARF continue the discussion over cooperation format. RPA spokesperson, Vice President of Republic of Armenia National Assembly Eduard Sharmazanov told the journalists about this after the RPA Executive Body meeting. We have announced that the doors are open and we are a political force that supports the idea of cooperation, but that cooperation must be based on ideology and programs, Armenpress reports, Sharmazanov mentioned.

He added that at this point discussions with the ARF are underway, but there is no final decision of the cooperation format. At this point I cannot say anything concrete, as there is no final decision. Maybe I will tell you something about the developments after the next meeting, Sharmazanov concluded.
An estimated 70% of women in PNG experience rape or assault in their lifetime. While violence against women has long been criminalized and domestic violence was specifically proscribed under the 2013 Family Protection Act, few perpetrators are brought to justice and the government has not yet begun to implement the Act.

The 659-page World Report 2016, its 26th edition, reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries.

Gender inequality, violence, corruption, and excessive use of force by police, including against children, remain pressing human rights issues.

PAPUA New Guinea is one of the most dangerous places to be a woman or girl, with rates of family and sexual violence among the highest in the world, Human Rights Watch has said in its World Report 2016.

Police and prosecutors rarely pursue investigations or criminal charges against people who commit family violence and instead prefer to resolve them through mediation and/or compensation.

Women and girls accused of sorcery or witchcraft are often attacked by violent mobs. In May 2015, a group of men in a remote part of Enga province killed a woman after she was accused of sorcery.

Papua New Guinea is failing to meet its obligations under international law to protect women and girls from discrimination and family violence, said Brad Adams, Asia director.

The government should immediately begin enforcing the Family Protection Act to ensure appropriate law enforcement responses and should provide comprehensive access to services for victims of family violence.

In 2015, prime minister Peter ONeill continued to weaken the countrys anti-corruption agency, Task Force Sweep, by starving it of funding. In October, the government sought to suspend chief magistrate Nerrie Eliakim, who issued the arrest warrant against Prime Minister ONeill for corruption charges.

About 930 male asylum seekers and refugees, transferred by Australia for refugee status determination, remain detained on Manus Island. Most have been held there for more than two years. Human rights organizations and media are regularly denied access to the detention centre.

The indefinite nature of detention is causing significant mental health problems, including depression and anxiety. Fifty-one of those recognized as refugees have been transferred to a transit centre, but most cannot study or work or leave Manus Island. Only three refugees have been permitted to leave Manus to work since December 2015.

Police abuse continues to be reported with little accountability even for fatalities and egregious physical abuse. In January 2015, police killed two market vendors in Port Moresby when firing indiscriminately into a crowd after a dispute between vendors and local council officials. So far no one has been arrested for the shooting.

The government needs to address police brutality and bring any officers responsible for crimes to justice, Adams said. Papua New Guinea should treat asylum seekers in accordance with international standards and implement a refugee resettlement policy.
When the state Department of Taxation and Finance unveiled its list of 83 free tax filing assistance sites, state Sen. Jim Seward noticed none of the locations are in his district.

In fact, only two of the nine counties in Seward's district  the 51st Senate District  will host Facilitated Self Assistance sessions. One of the sites is in Auburn, which is just outside the westernmost edge of the 51st.

Seward, R-Milford, said he supports providing free income tax filing assistance. But the current locations lack geographic diversity.

"Rural areas of the state are quite often neglected when it comes to programs of this nature," he said. "Moving forward, it is my hope that additional FSA sites can be added to spread this valuable resource to all corners of New York."

According to the state Department of Taxation and Finance's website, 59 of the 83 FSA sites are in the Capital Region and New York City metro area.

In central and western New York, there are 24 sites.

The central region identified on the tax department's website covers 19 counties. There are FSA sites in five of those counties  Broome, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga and Oswego.

For large parts of the North Country and Southern Tier, there aren't any FSA sites available.

The FSAs offer tax filing assistance to New Yorkers who earn less than $62,000. The state will host 1,200 tax preparation sessions this year, an increase of 250 sessions from 2015.

Walk-ins are welcome, but appointments are recommended.
SYRACUSE | The family of an Elbridge native is now in receipt of their relative's Purple Heart  a distinction that was almost 100 years in the making.

In a ceremony at Hancock Field Air Force National Guard Base, U.S. Rep. John Katko presented the award to the family of John D. Smith for the injuries Smith sustained from exposure to mustard gas on Aug. 17, 1918, while serving in the trenches during a World War I battle in France.

"He survived. He was wounded and was never honored," Katko said.

A member of expeditionary forces, Smith enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private at the age of 30. He served with Company H, 2d Battalion, 308th Infantry Regiment, 145th Infantry Brigade, 77th Division.

"This is truly the highest honor, when I get to honor our military members," Katko said. "It drives home what it's all about."

The Purple Heart medal is conferred by approval from the president to military members injured or killed as the result of hostile actions while actively defending the United States.

Long-forgotten discharge papers reveal that Smith sustained injuries as a result of mustard gas exposure. His grandson, Paul Smith II, an Auburn business owner, located the paperwork and reached out to Katko's office for assistance in obtaining the Purple Heart.

In a spontaneous moment during Thursday's ceremony, Katko asked 4-year-old Quintin Mirobito, Smith's great, great grandson to leave his seat at the well-attended event and hand the commendations to his 90-year-old great grandfather, Smith's son, Paul Smith. The child respectfully handed the medal, plus a World War I victory medal, a victory button and battle clasps denoting service in two additional French battles, Oise-Ainse and Meuse-Argonne, to his relative.

According to Paul and his son, Paul II, their forebear was a quiet man who rarely referenced his World War I experience. He returned to central New York, met his wife and raised his family, they said.

The medals, along with a folded American flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol in Smith's memory and encased in a triangular box, will be on display at the family's gun shop, S & S Sales, 6618 Canoga Road, Auburn.

"To me there's nothing more important than honoring our soldiers," Katko said.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, a long line of the base's active-duty guardsmen stood waiting to shake the hands of the family of the World War I hero, a soldier they'd never met.
AUBURN | A Cayuga Community College adjunct professor made an impassioned plea for professional recognition Wednesday imploring college leadership to "help a guy out. Help yourselves out."

Since 1998, Dr. Walt Aikman has been an adjunct professor of botany, geography and conservation at the college.

His entreaty to trustees, administrators and President Brian Durant is related to efforts in recent years of adjunct instructors to organize a bargaining unit, the proposed Cayuga Part Time Faculty Association. However, Aikman did not specifically cite he was speaking on behalf of that group.

"I've worked here for long enough to know that to some extent I buy into the prospect that my passion for teaching, my commitment to the conservation of the resources of New York state and in the world, and my fascination with plants, animals and rocks and my good fortune to share them with the young people of our region is certainly a tremendous reward," he said.

Since last fall, the proposed adjunct union, a group of approximately 200 instructors, has attempted to organize a bargaining unit, adding another unit to the college's existing employee and full-time faculty unions.

After a Public Employee Relations Board judge issued an April decision confirming CCC adjunct faculty could unionize, the college filed an appeal.

In a sometimes sarcastic tone, Aikman spoke of being part of a cash flow solution, which explains, he said, why he begins work in August and January, but isn't paid until October and February.

"I'll tell you it feels bad when I have to put my kids' clothing needs in the fall on a credit card because Dad doesn't get paid until October," he said.

Aikman continued, lamenting that as an adjunct his employer doesn't provide medical insurance or retirement benefits and he likened his pay rate to that of an airline pilot's salary.

"And you'd say well that's really good news, except if you look at how much I'm paid you might be a little more nervous the next time you're riding on an airplane," Aikman said.

Female adjuncts, he said, have it especially tough because they can't afford to purchase professional clothing to set a good example for female students.

"And, if you've been tracking your kids, or your grandchildren, you know that the young women of today are some of our best students so they're going to judge the female adjuncts with a particular eye towards a professional role model," he said.

Aikman concluded his remarks by appealing to the college's leadership to "row in the same direction."

"Our job is to provide educational opportunities for these young people, I have some amazing young people in my courses, and they love it here they're getting a lot out of this environment," he said. "Think of how much better it could be if we were all rowing in the same direction."

No discussion of Aikman's comments took place among trustees, administrators or Durant during the remainder of the brief meeting.

Afterward, Durant said there's been no progress in the college's appeal process.
An economic impact analysis of Camp Jordan that was done by Dr. William Legg was presented to the East Ridge City Council Thursday night. The analysis puts, in a tangible form, what city officials have suspected, said Mayor Brent Lambert. The existence of Camp Jordan is very important to East Ridge as the city looks to the future, he said.

The study showed that despite a $548,000 deficit at the end of the year in pure accounting terms, it has brought money into the city in other ways. The park brings many people into the community that stay in hotels and go to restaurants in East Ridge. This gives support to those businesses and brings sales taxes to the city. These businesses hire workers; increasing employment with people who may chose to live in the city where they will re-spend their money.

The mayor reported that growth and development is actively taking place in East Ridge, proven by the permit fees that were collected in 2015. In 2013, he said all permit fees totaled $53,700. That increased to $60,000 in 2014. In 2015 permit fees skyrocketed to $223,000.

The retail growth and building around the new Jordan Crossing development required that one of the citys fire halls be moved. City Manager and Interim City Manager Mike Williams gave an update on the fire hall that will replace the one that was demolished. He told the council the architect has submitted several plans that are being reviewed by engineers. An engineering study has been done to determine the cost of the site work, and he felt the price was too high. Because of that, a less expensive option will be used. The old building that was dismantled will be reversed from front to back. More details should be determined by the first or second week of February.

The council is attempting to create improvements that will make East Ridge more attractive. One way is by creating a new sign ordinance. A delay in approving the new ordinance is due to the new technology of LED lighted signs that can be bright enough to blind drivers to on-coming traffic, or become a distraction. A vote on adopting the ordinance was tabled until representatives from the advertising sign companies have an informative meeting with the commissioners and codes enforcement officer Kenny Custer, to advise what to expect with the rapidly changing technology, and how to best manage signs using these lights. Until that meeting takes place, the council implemented a 90-day moratorium on any LED billboards and any conversions of existing signs to LED technology. This moratorium is effective immediately.

An ordinance was passed on first reading that prohibits parking of RVs in commercial parking lots for more than three consecutive days. Codes enforcement has received complaints about people living in RVs and campers parked in lots in front of businesses, but have been unable to act because the old ordinance had nothing that prohibited the practice. The new ordinance will have provisions for exemptions including businesses that provide sales, service and storage of these vehicles.

The city managers job has been advertised and 40 resumes have been received. Jan. 29 is the deadline for submittals. The next step will be for City Attorney Hal North to review them to assure they qualify under the rules established in the city charter. They will then be made available for the mayor and councils examination.

Police and fire services that East Ridge provides for the city of Ridgeside is being evaluated to make sure that the city is not losing money while providing this assistance to another city. Commissioner Jacky Cagle put together an analysis of the costs and determined that the price being charged by East Ridge may be too low. Mayor Lambert said it should be revisited and if Police Chief J.R. Reed, and Fire Chief Mike Williams feel it is not worth the contract price, they should tell the council how they would like to proceed.

The city manager announced that the fire and police departments have decided to subscribe to a web-based service, Leads Online, that can be used as a tool for recovering stolen property. With this, pawn shops in the city will be required to submit documentation of transactions through the Leads Online system which is a national database.

On second reading, the council voted to comply with the updated FEMA flood plain maps and regulations in order to maintain eligibility for participating in the national flood insurance program.

Two grants were accepted from Walmart, one for the fire department and the other for the police department. Both were for $1,500 and were guaranteed and required no matching funds from the city. The money has already been received. The fire department grant has already been put into the East Ridge Needy Child Fund. Money given to the police department will be used to purchase 42 trauma kits for patrol cars.

Also given approval, was participation in the Governors Highway Safety Office Seatbelts are for Everyone Campaign. This is a campaign to encourage citizens to use seat belts. It involves no money or grants. It will be implemented with enhanced enforcement.
Wells College adjunct faculty have voted to form a bargaining unit and hope their action helps them negotiate a new contract to improve working conditions.

In a 21 to 6 vote Friday, contingent full- and part-time professors voted to join the 26,000-member Service Employees International Union/Faculty Forward as SEIU Local 200United.

"I can confirm the vote took place this afternoon," said Ann Rollo, director of communications and marketing. "That represents the number of faculty who voted as opposed to the number who are eligible to vote."

According to a statement from August Schneeberg, of Local 200United, Wells adjunct faculty teach on a "limited-term basis without any assurance of reassignment once their short-term contracts expire. Even though they teach the same students as their tenure-track colleagues, contingent faculty are paid less per course and most lack health care or retirement benefits."

"We organized to form a union to strengthen Wells College and make it a better environment for the students, the full time faculty, and the contingent faculty. By organizing we gain a voice which will allow us to participate more fully in providing a higher academic standard and ensure a more stable and consistent faculty," stated Laura Campbell, a music department lecturer.

Rollo was unable to provide additional comment.

Today's vote joins other area college adjunct faculties who've decided to unionize. Recently, Ithaca College part-time instructors sought union affiliation and Cayuga Community College adjuncts continue to pursue unionization, though its efforts are tied up in an appeal by the college.
If you thought that 2014 was a bad year for data breaches, then brace yourself. Last year was equally horrific and 2016 is expected to be even worse.

Organizations like CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Kaspersky Lab, HackingTeam, LastPass, Anthem, Harvard University and the Army National Guard have all been compromised within the last year.

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Of course, one of the more newsworthy hacks was Ashley Madison, which compromised more than 32 million accounts  and probably ended a fair amount of marriages.

If there's one thing that I have learned over the last couple of years, it's that there are persistent security threats in essentially every industry. Our website recently underwent three different DDOS attacks that were intended to assist with a hack of our site.

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What's being done to prevent these attacks from happening again so that your company's financial future is safe and sound? Here is what we've done to protect ourselves from the constant security threats.

The basics

According to Javelin Strategy & Research's 2015 Identity Fraud Report, 2 in 3 people who have been affected by data breaches become identity theft victims. There should be concerns that this could get worse thanks to the Internet of Things becoming more widespread, hackers getting more sophisticated and the fact the vital information, such as addresses and financial information, can easily be found in corporate data.

There are, however, some basic measures you can take to protect yourself from possible security threats. Here are some of the common things we're doing to protect both ourselves and our customers.

Monitor credit card statements weekly. If you wait until the end of the month to review your credit card statements and bank statements, you won't be able to catch suspicious behavior as quickly. If anything looks out of place, investigate it immediately.

Sign up for real-time alerts. If you haven't done so already, take advantage of the notification services that your bank or credit card company offers. If any unusual activity appears, you'll be notified instantly. Additionally, pretty much every company that you do business with (like Oracle) also offers security alerts.

Don't share private or company information. This should be common sense, but many of us are still guilty of sharing too much information with others. Keep private information to yourself. And never open up any emails that seem fishy.

Routinely change passwords. Again, this should be obvious. But there are plenty of people who still use weak passwords that can be easily hacked. To prevent this, come up with strong passwords that are creative and change them every couple of months.

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Subscribe to identity protections. Using services such as Experian will monitor everything from your social security number, credit cards and other vital data.

Furthermore, business owners should only store essential customer information and remove data from customers who are no longer relevant, have a firewall in place, use the latest cyber-protections software and/or implement two-factor authentication. Train your employees so that they don't unknowingly share data with a hacker.

In many cases, common sense and proper training are enough to thwart a cyberattack  or, at least, prevent it from being detrimental to your business.

What's being done

Training, education and being prepared are just a handful of ways to prevent security threats. The problem is that even being well-prepared isn't going to completely stop a hacker from getting into your database. That's why we all need to learn from the problems that companies like Target and Sony have experienced in the past so that we can create a plan and know how to respond.

But that's only going to take us so far. That's why the private sector and government need to work together in the fight against security threats.

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In New York state, for example, Sen. Michael Nozzolio proposed legislation that "would establish tougher penalties for cyber-related crimes, create cyber security programs to identify potential risks and threats, and require the state to perform a comprehensive review of all its cyber security measures every five years." Nozzolio also wants to establish "the New York State Cyber Security Initiative to ensure that our State has a proper cyber security defense system in place."

On the federal level, President Barack Obama has been pushing for legislation since 2011 that would "make it easier for the private sector to share cyber threat information with the government." Greg Martin, the founder and CTO of ThreatStream, argues on Business Insider that "Using clues from one attack to prevent it from spreading to other businesses is crucial to stopping the rampage."

This proposed bill, known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act , is now law. Unfortunately, many tech companies, civil rights groups and security experts aren't in favor of the new law because of privacy concerns. The new law is apparently just the beginning.

That's not to say that the private sector should completely rely on the government to solve all of its security concerns. Companies must still do their due diligence and be prepared. Having the government also creating an infrastructure to prevent attacks in the first place is an added bonus.

Murray Newlands is a co-founder of Calif.-based Due, a free online invoicing company specializing in helping businesses bill their client easily online.
Nursing really prepared me for leadership, said Donna Thompson, who worked in hospitals for 15 years before joining Access Community Health Network, where she's CEO. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

The health care environment is changing so rapidly that Donna Thompson feels like she's back working as a nurse in a hospital intensive care unit.

The CEO of a network of Chicago-area health clinics has to quickly diagnose a problem, work with a team to come up with a treatment and carry out the plan.

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"Nursing really prepared me for leadership," said Thompson, 58, who worked in hospitals for 15 years before joining Access Community Health Network in 1995.

Access is a "safety net provider" serving the most vulnerable patients in the health care system. They suffer from complex diseases like HIV and hepatitis C. They tend to worry more about food, shelter and safety than their health.

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And increasingly her 175,000 patients are in the suburbs. Under Thompson, Access has opened clinics in suburban Cook County to treat former Chicago public housing residents who moved when their homes were demolished. Access also expanded to western suburbs like Bloomingdale, Addison and West Chicago that have pockets of uninsured patients and those on Medicaid.

Access is federally funded and can't turn away patients for inability to pay. The expansion of Medicaid and the launch of subsidized private insurance under the Affordable Care Act have helped Access financially, but Thompson worries about health plans with high deductibles that her patients can't afford.

On the whole, though, she's excited about the future because the law has brought a renewed emphasis on primary care and prevention, and away from hospital-based care, in "the sweet spot" of community health centers, Thompson said.

We talked to her about the challenges of caring for the poor, what she looks for in doctors and the value of partnerships. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: When did you know you wanted to take care of people?

A: Growing up in a central Illinois factory town during the '70s, secretary, nursing and teaching were the choices for women. I always loved teaching, and I envisioned myself being a teacher. When I decided to try nursing school, I did not like nursing at all until I did a pediatric rotation and I fell in love with the kids.

Q: Why did you make the leap from nursing to Access?

A: Like a lot of nurses, as I progressed in my career, I became a nurse manager. I was director of pediatrics at Christ Hospital. I had small kids. I wanted to take a little hiatus rather than be on call 24 hours. As I looked at opportunities, one of the things I had never done was community health.

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Q: What was the transition like?

A: There's nothing like really being embedded in the community, when you walk out and look up and down the street, and there are no grocery stores, no infrastructure. I can still remember standing in the health center at the Robert Taylor Homes and looking out and seeing Sears Tower so close and yet so far away. It was really two Chicagos.

Q: What kind of doctor do you look for?

A: No. 1, they need to have a passion about our mission and a passion about the community that they serve. So much of what we do is around education and helping navigate patients to the services that they need. Our physician works with a larger team, and our whole team has to fit and jell.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing your doctors and nurses?

A: Many of our patients have not been part of the health system. Many of them have very complex health care needs. How to do a catch-up and get someone back on the path toward health? The other piece is around behavioral health needs. We have social workers at all our health centers. It wasn't that long ago where I had four or five social workers trying to cover close to 40 health centers.

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Q: What's the biggest challenge you're dealing with as a business?

A: It is a very competitive landscape now. More health systems are looking at not just commercial and Medicare patients but also Medicaid. Patients have more choice. Even though we've been doing this for a long time, we have to make sure we stay relevant and create value for our patients.

Q: How do you do that?

A: The role of our health care team is expanding beyond the walls of a health center, integrating more and more with the needs of a community. We're looking at things like food insecurity or housing as part of the formula to move people into optimum wellness. It's an exciting time to think about the data we have, because of our investment in electronic health records. We're also in constant communication with our patients because we've created an app. Many of our patients live in disenfranchised communities. They're poor. But they have the same electronic health record that you have at some of the most affluent health systems. As we continue to invest, we become a partner with them to engage in their health care needs.

Q: Can you do all those things by yourself?

A: We know the value of partnerships. We work with the Greater Chicago Food Depository. They come to our sites to provide healthy food. We're taking it to the next step and enroll people in SNAP (food assistance program). We're doing the same thing on housing. We're also working with Chicago State and their pharmacy students and faculty embedded in clinics where they are part of an integrated model of care. Walgreens has been a great partner, enabling our uninsured patients to get medications at low cost.

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Q: Do you think Obamacare is working?

A: Yes. We've gone from 25 percent uninsured down to 10 percent. We're seeing many patients who had aged out of Medicaid, mostly men, now being able to access care. As it matures, there's going to be tweaking.

Q: What kind of tweaks would you like to see?

A: There's still a lot out there about the affordability. We've got to figure that out. We have to look at incentives differently. Hospitals are no longer the epicenter of care. It's around health and prevention. We have to figure out a stream of reimbursement to support those things.

Q: Is there somebody you admired as you advanced in your career?

Yes, Dr. (Padmanabhan "Dan") Mukundan, our first chief medical officer. Dr. Dan practiced in the Robert Taylor Homes. He made sure we addressed poverty, not just health. He had that vision. In many of the communities we're in, it's a daily struggle.

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Twitter @ameetsachdev
A King Tut pen by Krone sells for $4,950 at Century Pens on the first floor of the 231 S. LaSalle building. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

Karyn Martin uses only one type of pen for everyday writing: a Uni-ball Vision with pink ink.

"I do a lot of writing and editing, and all of my notes are in pink," Martin, 36, said. "People know that when they see pink ink it's my comments."

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At the same time, her firm believes that employees might like at least one expensive pen in their tool kits.

"When you're at the company for three years, you get a Cross pen engraved with your name as an anniversary gift," said the executive vice president of 451 Marketing in Boston. The pens cost about $100 each. "That's the type of pen you write a check with for buying your first house or signing important contracts."

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Martin's pen preferences illustrate how, even in an increasingly digital world, consumers haven't written off the pen industry, data show.

Pens and other writing tools generated revenue of $16.2 billion worldwide in 2014 and are expected to reach $20.2 billion by 2019, according to a report last month by Technavio.

The market research firm acknowledges that the growing adoption of electronic devices is pressuring pen demand.

One downtown Chicago pen store, Gilbertson Clybourn, closed last year after about 35 years in business, including 20 years at 55 E. Chicago Ave. "The last three years business went down a little bit each year," proprietor Dan Collins, 66, said. "The last year we just thought about it and thought about it, and we thought, 'Well, next year is going to be less.'" Collins theorized that people can only have so many fancy pens and that the instruments are less important in a digital world.

Pen sales overall, however, are still growing for a variety of reasons.

"Demand for basic writing instruments is high in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East due to the increasing population and literacy levels, while in the United States and Europe the demand for luxury pens is higher as these are preferred as gift items and are nowadays perceived as fashion accessories, similar to high-priced watches," Technavio said.

Retail sales of pens in the United States in 2015, through Nov. 28, were up 5 percent in dollars and 4 percent in the number of units sold, according to NPD Group.

Ed Hamilton, owner of Century Pens at 231 S. LaSalle, discusses popular pens, including a Star Wars line made by Cross, as well as industry trends in an age of electronic devices. Jan. 25, 2016. (Becky Yerak / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Leen Nsouli, office supplies analyst for NPD, which tracks consumer trends, cites "a lot of creativity and innovation" in pens, and says demand for ballpoint, gel and porous pens, including in the luxury category, is up. Cross recently paid tribute to "Star Wars," released in 1977, with a limited edition of 1,977 pens inspired by characters from the movies. The pens retail for $450 to $575 each and are doing well, Cross says.

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"Some of this can be attributed to the trend in adult coloring books," Nsouli said. "Whether it's taking notes in an office meeting, keeping a journal, coloring or finding that special lifestyle or luxury pen, many consumers are still handwriting."

Corporate-branded promotional pens are also popular, with about half of Americans owning pens with logos, Technavio said.

"I like my freebies that I get from Edward Jones," says Wendy Prabhu, co-founder of Mercom Capital Group in Austin, Texas. The investment firm handles Mercom's retirement planning, she said.

Another Chicago specialty retailer, Century Pens at 231 S. LaSalle St., said revenues have been up about 10 percent a year for the past two years.

"All year round people are leaving their job, and their office-mates come in and buy them a new pen," said Century owner Ed Hamilton, 68. "People have birthdays, and people can buy them a pen, or people just treat themselves." He said his clientele includes doctors, lawyers, firefighters, police officers and street cleaners.

Pen lines that Century carries include Krone, founded 20 years ago, and Think, founded 10 years ago. Both are designed in Buffalo Grove by the same company and made in Italy, said Dana Piet, who works in product development and marketing for both businesses.

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Krone's Limited Edition Abraham Lincoln pen claims to capture Lincoln's "genetic essence." It says it uses authenticated strands of Lincoln's hair, reproducing Lincoln's DNA and embedding it, in crystallized form, in the amethyst stone of each of the 1,008 pens.

Quincey Arrington, 33, a cashier at a fast-food restaurant near Century's store, said he has owned half a dozen fine pens.

"My first was given as a gift as a part of a youth program" with a Chicago community group, he said of the Cross with his name engraved on it. He still has it, and has owned Parker pens too, as well as a couple of Lamy Safaris.

"I tend to give Safaris and Namikis as graduation gifts," Arrington said. He said his two favorite pens are a Yard-o-Led Grand Viceroy Barley and a Stipula DiVinci.

"I gave my mother a Lamy 2000 as a gift years back because the weight is perfect and it is well-balanced," Arrington said. "My brother-in-law used it over the holiday and now wants one."

Paul Conterato, an organizer of the Chicago Pen Show, said he is "seeing a resurgence of interest in fountain pens and their use among younger people."

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"Last year's Chicago show had a larger-than-normal number of 20- to 40-year-olds, first-time pen shoppers," Conterato said. "What we were hearing was that they felt they were sort of reconnecting with writing by using these pens, and once they were at the show they were blown away by the variety and selection."

Petter Knutrud, Office Depot senior vice president of merchandising, recognizes that customers are increasingly using digital devices to stay connected and capture information. But "writing instruments such as pens are still essential," Knutrud said.

Newell Rubbermaid, whose pen lines range from higher-end Waterman and Parker to mass-merchant lines like Paper Mate and Sharpie, also said pen sales are holding up.

"People think that the convergence of technology and writing is going to disable writing," Chief Executive Mike Polk told analysts last year. "That's not evident in the data."

In September at a Barclays conference, Polk said Newell would focus mostly on its "everyday writing business," including Paper Mate and Sharpie. Last November, Newell Rubbermaid told analysts that its ideas for 2016 included Paper Mate InkJoy gel pens. But a merger announced in December between Newell Rubbermaid and Jarden, owner of class ring maker Jostens, has a luxury writing angle.

"Jostens will enable our fine writing brands like Parker and Waterman to find their way into the hands of graduating high school and college students as phenomenal graduation gifts," Polk said when the deal was announced.

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Cross chief marketing officer Magnus Jonsson always tucks an A.T. Cross pen between two buttons on his shirt. That way his 14-karat-gold "writing instrument," as they're called in the business, is more likely to be a conversation starter.

In early February 2013, publicly traded Cross announced plans to sell its accessory unit, which included pens, to "build shareholder value" and to focus on its sunglasses businesses. Later that month, Cross said it expected the fine writing market to grow because "as the world economy improves, consumers and corporate gift buyers in mature markets will return to the category," and, in emerging markets, "the growing middle class will build the market."

In July 2013, New York-based private equity firm Clarion Capital Partners bought the Cross accessory business for $60 million.

Jonsson was hired by Clarion in 2014 as Cross chief marketing officer. He said Cross pen sales were falling about 15 years ago but have been "relatively flat" in recent years.

In November 2014, Clarion also bought Sheaffer, another luxury pen line. Clarion said the combined company would be better positioned in key markets like the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico and India, and would be able to cut costs and improve profits by merging sales, back office and manufacturing operations.

Jonsson said growth is "strong" in emerging markets, including Brazil, Russia, India and China, where educational levels are continuing to rise.

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About 15 percent of Cross' business today comes from stylus pens that can be used to write on digital devices, he said.

"Consumers are changing the surfaces on which they want to write, such as glass vs. paper," Jonsson said. "We need to adapt in terms of the products we launch."

byerak@tribpub.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
Wabash Lights, an ambitious public art project that will add shots of color to the underside of the "L" tracks downtown, is scheduled to begin its beta test next week, six months after a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $60,000 to make it happen.

Twelve rods of LED lights have been installed beneath a small patch of the "L" tracks on Wabash Avenue just south of Monroe Street, giving a taste of what the project's creators hope to turn into a much more dramatic interactive light show stretching two blocks along Wabash, from Madison to Adams.

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"It's an amuse-bouche of public art," said Jack Newell, who created the project along with his friend Seth Unger.

Newell, 33, and Unger, 34, plan to turn the lights on for the beta test at 7 p.m. Thursday. The test will go on for six months to a year, with a preprogrammed lighting sequence running 18 hours a day, to troubleshoot technical issues and ensure that the equipment can withstand weather and the rattle of trains.

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The pair said they hope the small glimpse helps with fundraising to complete the project.

"We hope this works really hard for us in a marketing sense, that people will see this and get inspired," Unger said.

Unger and Newell are trying to raise $5 million over five years, tapping private, foundation and corporate funding sources, and hope to secure 10 founding corporate partners. They have hired a director of corporate partnerships to help.

The money is meant to cover the full installation of the lights, which they hope will be underway a year from now, plus maintenance.

The project comes amid several efforts to revive Wabash, long the underperforming stepchild between tourist-friendly Michigan Avenue and shopping-centric State Street. The Chicago Loop Alliance last year unveiled a plan for "transforming Wabash" that involves beautification and branding sections of the street. Street murals by renowned street artists have sprouted along what has been dubbed the Wabash Arts Corridor, spearheaded by Columbia College.

Unger, a design consultant, and Newell, a filmmaker, embarked on their project independently and did not initially set out to fix Wabash. That Wabash Lights could improve the aesthetics and safety of the street, which because of the elevated tracks can feel dark and uninviting, and encourage people to stick around after work is "a great byproduct" of the project, which they think is coming at a time when Wabash is "about to break out," Unger said.

The friends, who met in an improv class at Second City in 2004, developed an interest in public art several years ago because they felt what was out there didn't take the public's voice into account. They brainstormed several ideas before settling on doing something with the "L" and interactive lighting, and thought Wabash could be the perfect setting.

"We liked Wabash because it's the uniquely Chicago street," Unger said. "It's hardworking, overlooked. It has a Second City mentality to it."

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While the beta test will not be interactive, Unger and Newell are working with Chicago-based software company Table XI to develop an app with various "engagement engines" to let the public program the lights. For example, someone could finger-paint on the app or upload vacation photos, and the app would translate that into abstract art to display on the lights. Users could schedule when their design goes live, as you might set a reservation through OpenTable.

The philosophy around involving the public in the generation of public art was the reason Unger and Newell turned to Kickstarter to fund the beta test, raising $59,480 from 918 backers in a month last summer.

As they stood beneath the "L" tracks recently watching the installation of the test lights, Unger and Newell said they were pleased with the result so far, though their reaction was tempered. Perhaps it had yet to sink in that two guys who met in improv class had persuaded the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Transit Authority to let them hang colorful lights under the tracks, for which they credit help from Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, and other supporters.

And, with $5 million to raise and the interactive app yet to be developed, "we are acutely aware of how much work we have to do still," Newell said.

aelejalderuiz@tribpub.com

Twitter @alexiaer
Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya will open its first Midwest location in Wicker Park in February. (JESSE_BUDDEN / Kizuki Ramen)

Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya: With more than 20 locations in Tokyo and and four in the Pacific Northwest, Kizuki Ramen is headed to the Midwest, starting with Chicago.

Slated to open in Wicker Park late February, the restaurant will offer made-to-order ramen with four different broth options and, for meat, both a fatty pork belly chashu as well as a more lean cut of pork. Small plates will include chicken karaage (deep-fried chicken with spicy mayo), Japanese pork buns, gyoza (pan-fried dumplings) and Agedeshi tofu (fried tofu in hot broth with radishes and ginger).

The Chicago location will initially feature the same menu as Seattle, which was developed by Japan headquarters, managing partner Kevin Yu says; eventually, a few unique-to-Chicago menu items will be added. The space will be decorated in the style of a traditional Japanese restaurant.

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"We want our customers to feel like they stepped into a restaurant in Tokyo," he says. "They don't have to buy an airplane ticket."

Garlic tonkotsu shoyu, ramen with a heartier flavor and house-made garlic paste, is Yu's favorite.

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Late February opening, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday-Sunday. 1482 N. Milwaukee Ave., www.kizuki.com.

Other openings:

Blackwood BBQ is expanding from the Loop to Lakeview Jan. 30 with new menu items including chipotle potato salad, two- and three-meat platters, a kids menu and craft beer (coming in February). 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. 962 W. Belmont Ave., www.blackwoodbbq.com.

Blackwood BBQ is expanding from the Loop to Lakeview Jan. 30. (Blackwood BBQ)

The owners of Wasabi in Logan Square and Ramen Takeya in Fulton Market will open Yakitori Boogytori on Feb. 2 in Arlington Heights. Expect chicken, beef, seafood and vegetable skewers grilled on charcoal, in addition to small plates including sashimi and grilled rice balls. 5-10:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 5-11 p.m. Fridays-Sundays, closed Mondays. 932 W. Algonquin Rd., Arlington Heights, 847-262-5914.

Bang Chop Thai, the latest restaurant from the owners of Saigon Sisters, is up and running in the West Loop. The menu includes wok-charred rice and noodle dishes, soups, curries, salads and sides such as fish cakes and fried chicken wings. Opened in December. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. BYOB. 605 W. Lake St., www.bangchopthai.com.

Gluten-free and nut-free wraps, paninis and salads are the stars of the show at Green Bean, a Lincoln Park counter-service spot that quietly opened in October. Chef Mike Watson says he hopes to redefine fast food as healthy and affordable  and prove that gluten-free food doesn't have to taste like cardboard. He recommends the steak Spanish wrap with a side of tempura-battered green beans to first-time customers; the restaurant's steak and chicken are marinated for two days to lock in flavor, he says. 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 734 West Fullerton Ave., www.greenbeanrestaurant.com.

In case you missed it:

The new Il Porcellino, scheduled to open in spring in the former Paris Club, has hired a chef de cuisine.

West Loop barbecue restaurant Porkchop is opening a location in Glenwood.
HIT: To a local teacher for going to great lengths to broaden her knowledge.

Janet Murphy, who teaches fourth-graders at A.J. Smith Elementary School in Union Springs, will be going to Siberia this summer for a five-week cultural exchange program.

Murphy will be among a group of educators and students touring the Altai region of Russia as part of a Russian studies program. Upon her return, she will be her school's Siberia expert  a great educational resource for her future students.

MISS: To bad decisions being so often tied to the consumption of alcohol.

Auburn police recently arrested a woman they said was drunk when she broke into a city residence last weekend and attacked two people there. She was charged with felony burglary in addition to two lesser charges.

And on Monday, police said a man who had nearly made it home after drinking and driving ran into a power pole near his residence, knocking it over and sending a streetlight crashing down onto his windshield. Police said that a test shortly after the noontime crash showed that man's blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit for operating a motor vehicle.

MISS: To a local man going to prison for a third time.

The Skaneateles resident was just 20 when he was sentenced to more than two years in prison for stabbing an 18-year-old during a fight in Auburn in 2003. He went back behind bars after being convicted of attempted burglary in 2006. And this week he was sentenced to an additional two to four years for leading police on a chase from Auburn to Moravia last September. In the latest incident, police said that the man was driving a stolen pickup truck and was only stopped when he went off-road and the vehicle became stuck on a logging road.
An incurable sleeping sickness yields an elusive yet expansive rumination on matters both political and intensely personal in "Cemetery of Splendor," the latest gently hypnotic cinematic enigma from the Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. While his tale of a hospital volunteer who bonds with an infected soldier emerges from the same mythic worlds explored in "Tropical Malady" (2004) and "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010), the surreal visitations here occur at a more subdued, almost subterranean level; this is an eerily becalmed work in which spiritual possessions and mysterious deities come to seem virtually indistinguishable from ordinary reality. Lacking the jungle-feverish exhilaration of the filmmaker's greatest work, but no less suffused with beauty, humor and quietly overwhelming emotion, this cryptic "Cemetery" should be readily embraced by Weerasethakul's festival fans, but commercial prospects look pretty grave beyond the usual self-selecting arthouses.

Somewhat recalling "Syndromes and a Century" (2006) with its rural hospital setting, "Cemetery of Splendor" has an unusually clear, even concrete narrative. If anything, however, that deceptively straightforward quality merely deepens the mystery; it's the sort of film that prompts an attentive viewer to ask not "What's going on?" so much as "What's really going on?" As was ever the case with Weerasethakul  known to one and all as Joe, a nickname that cuts to the heart of his demanding-yet-disarming appeal  answering these questions has never been a prerequisite for appreciating the sense of magic and melancholy that emanates effortlessly from the screen.

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Set in Weerasethakul's hometown of Khon Kaen, located in the northeast Thai region of Isan, the film unfolds in and around a former school that has since been converted into a small clinic for military soldiers who have fallen into a mysterious coma. Here to help take care of the men and make their slumber more comfortable is kindly volunteer Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), who's coping with her own physical disability; with one leg 10 centimeters shorter than the other, she's forced to get around on crutches. Jenjira watches with particular care over a handsome soldier named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), whom she starts to feel as though she's "synchronizing" with. The bond seems to be mutual: Itt happens to revive just as Jenjira is bathing him, in a moment of understated sensuality that's perfectly in keeping with Weerasethakul's earthy, bawdy sensibility. (Also on offer here: some discreet woodland defecation and an erection sight gag even your mother could love.)

Consciousness comes and goes easily for these traumatized narcoleptics  we see one of them suddenly drop off again mid-meal  but Itt seems to spend most of his waking moments with Jenjira. She in turn lights a candle for him at a local Buddhist shrine with her significant other, Richard (Richard Abramson), an American who's recently relocated to Thailand to be with her. The two goddess statues gracing that shrine will later take on human form and appear to Jenjira in broad daylight (played by actresses Sjittraporn Wongsrikeaw and Bhattaratorn Skenraigul), in the sort of delightfully matter-of-fact revelation that requires no visual effects to leave you feeling thoroughly enchanted.

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A similarly lo-fi bit of sorcery is introduced with the character of Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a young medium who has the ability to read the men's thoughts and memories in their sleep, and communicates them to their loved ones. She offers to serve as a sort of psychological conduit for Itt and Jenjira, and much of the second half of "Cemetery of Splendor" is devoted to a lengthy conversation between Jenjira and Keng-as-Itt, their transmigration of souls culminating with an intimate gesture of physical and emotional healing that is as grotesque as it is undeniably affecting.

Few filmmakers this side of David Lynch are as adept or intuitive as Apichatpong Weerasethakul when it comes to appropriating the language of dreams, which makes it somewhat surprising that "Cemetery of Splendor," a movie explicitly concerned with sleeping and dreaming, remains firmly embedded in what seems to be a continually waking reality. Those desiring a headlong plunge into the untamed natural world that is Weerasethakul's sweet spot may feel a bit bereft: With the exception of one baffling, brain-tickling image of an amoeba slowly crawling its way across a cloudy sky, the picture seems inclined not transport us into a bizarre parallel reality, but rather to frame its environment for us in ways that are inherently strange and beguiling. We often return to the clinic at night, when the soldiers are undergoing an experimental treatment using lights that continually change color; the effect, which suggests a gathering of giant, glow-in-the-dark candy canes, is utterly transfixing.

According to the film's production notes, its premise was inspired by a strange outbreak that required 40 soldiers to be quarantined at a northern Thai hospital. That incident occurred about three years ago, roughly coinciding with the country's latest wave of political turmoil, and it's no huge leap to interpret the sleeping soldiers as a stand-in for a government paralyzed by protests, coups and other outbreaks of violence. When it's revealed that the school/hospital is resting on a burial ground for past kings of Thailand, whose ongoing spiritual battle is directly tied to the soldiers' dormant state, it feels like nothing less than a lament for a nation whose internal strife dates back centuries.

All of which runs the risk of reducing "Cemetery of Splendor" to a bare-bones political allegory and disregarding its wondrously personal elements. We are even more firmly on Weerasethakul's home turf than usual, and in one sense, the film is about nothing more (or less) profound than the sights and sounds of his childhood, whether it's a field where kids play ball in the distance while a bulldozer rips into the earth; a busy night market where Itt and Jenjira munch on local delicacies; or a local multiplex showing some delirious-looking Thai schlockfest of a sort that perhaps inspired Weerasethakul to embark on his own (admittedly very different) filmmaking career. But beyond these snippets of memory, the film is lovingly grounded in the rhythms of its two leads' growing rapport, and it draws tremendous warmth and feeling from the performance of Pongpas Widner (who has worked with the director since 2002's "Blissfully Yours"), who, amid all these layers of topical subtext and semi-autobiographical storytelling, succeeds in making the film very much her character's story.

As ever, the unhurried pacing will strike the uninitiated as simply too somnambulant by half; a line of dialogue like "Don't fall asleep yet, please" may seem an invitation to do just that. Yet while "Cemetery of Splendor" is unabashedly a work of slow cinema, the oft-hurled pejorative of "difficult" seems a particularly poor fit for a film whose unforced lyricism could scarcely be more graceful or inviting.

"Cemetery of Splendour"  3 stars

MPAA rating: Not rated

Running time: 2:02

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Opens: Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., www.siskelfilmcenter.org/
Reporting from DES MOINES  Less than a year after giving up his reality show to run for president, Donald Trump proved Thursday night that he still has a television executive's touch.

After dropping out of the Republican debate because of a feud with Fox News, Trump, the former star of "The Apprentice," decided to host his own counter-programming just three miles away. While his rivals for the Republican nomination butted heads over immigration and foreign policy, the New York businessman did what he does best: put on a show.

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The event's official purpose was to honor veterans, and Trump drew gasps by announcing that he had raised $6 million in donations for veterans groups, including $1 million from himself. Dozens of veterans attended, some wearing Trump's signature "Make America Great Again" hats.

"This is like the Academy Awards," Trump said, gesturing to cameras broadcasting the event live on CNN and other Fox News competitors. "We're actually told that we have more cameras than they do," he said of the debate.

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Skipping a debate just days before the Iowa caucuses was a bold move by Trump, who is leading in polls here and across the country. But it was characteristic of a candidate who has relied on his skills as a performer on the campaign trail.

Trump has largely scorned the small-town stops and town halls of traditional retail politics, opting instead for big, televised rallies and other events, such as his trip to the Mexican border in July and his speech aboard the battleship Iowa in September in San Pedro. He often arrives by private jet.

Those theatrics are what attracted some to Trump's event at Drake University on Thursday, including Drake students who didn't even support his candidacy.

"We're all here to be entertained," said Julia VanPetten, a 19-year-old freshman at Drake and one of hundreds of people turned away from the event because the theater was full. "He's a spectacle."

VanPetten supports Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, but took pictures in front of a Trump sign with several of her sorority sisters while waiting outside in temperatures hovering around freezing.

Trump announced his event Tuesday after abruptly withdrawing from the Republican debate over disagreements with Fox News that date back to August, when network star Megyn Kelly asked him about his history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals."

Since then Trump has repeatedly attacked Kelly, dismissing her as a "lightweight" and demanding she be removed as a moderator for Thursday's debate. Fox News Chairman and Chief Executive Roger Ailes refused and released a statement mocking Trump.

On the way to his special event, Trump invited journalists from Fox's cable news rival CNN onto his private plane for an interview.

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Trump said Ailes had called multiple times to apologize and ask him to appear at the debate after all.

Fox News responded with a statement acknowledging Ailes and Trump had talked. The statement said Trump agreed to appear at the debate only if Fox contributed $5 million to Trump's charities.

When Trump arrived onstage to huge applause, he said, "I didn't want to be here." But, he added, "when you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights."

Trump directed his supporters to a website where they could donate money to the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The website promised that 100% of donations would go directly to veterans' needs. Trump's campaign did not respond to questions about how the money would be used.

Trump has had a rocky relationship with some veterans groups after he mocked Sen. John McCain's experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. At a forum in Iowa in July, Trump said McCain, who spent more than five years as a captive, was "not a war hero."

"I like people that weren't captured, OK?" Trump said.

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Trump did not serve in the Vietnam War, thanks to a medical deferment.

Audience member and veteran Chris Cook said that didn't bother him.

"My stepdad served in Vietnam. And he was of the firm belief that if you didn't go, you didn't miss a damn thing," said Cook, 50, who served for eight years in the Marines, including in Desert Storm.

Robert Montgomery, a 30-year-old community college student who works at an insurance company, said Trump was right to pull out of the debate because the media had been unfair to him.

"When you're in the media, it's important to be as objective as possible," Montgomery said. "There's a lot of journalists out there that don't seem to have a lot of objectivity."

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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chris.megerian@latimes.com

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The unorthodox political strategy that has kept Donald Trump at the top of the Republican presidential field may have triumphed again with his much-disputed decision not to attend Thursday's televised debate in Iowa.

He was not there to be pierced by video clips employed to great effect against other candidates by the Fox News moderators. He was not there to attract insults from the rest of the pack, and in his absence few were offered. He was not there to step into any sort of quicksand that might have threatened his national lead and his strength in Iowa, where the first votes will be cast in caucuses Monday night.



Without Trump onstage, Republicans saw the contest as they had imagined it long ago, before the New York real estate developer began his lengthy domination of the race. Some candidates responded by faltering and some found momentum.

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, vying for prominence below Trump, got the added stage time each has desired as they battle for the territory below the front-runner. But both appeared churlish at times and may have suffered from an extended fight over immigration, which included video clips in which each man contradicted his more recent statements which he then had to explain from the stage.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who at one time challenged Trump in this outsider year, continued to fade from view, almost comically jolted back into the conversation at one point.

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, by contrast, acted like a candidate freed from bondage. He spoke concisely, confidently and occasionally argumentatively, a sharp reversal of his performances in earlier debates when he appeared listless and backed away from conflict, particularly with Trump.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, two other wearers of the establishment mantle, also displayed more of a presence than they had in past debates. Like Bush, however, their audience was less Iowa than New Hampshire, whose Feb. 9 primary each hopes will provide a better opportunity to break out of a tightly knit pack of trailing candidates.

Although he insisted he was staying offstage because of insults from Fox, Trump's decision was a classic front-runner's move, calculated to avoid any potential damage he could have done to his own cause with the caucuses so near. Whatever gains he might have made -- and Trump hadn't been the best debater during any of the six previous debates -- were offset Thursday by the trouble he avoided. And in the end, the veterans' event he staged to conflict with the debate received the attention he might have wanted anyway.

Trump's departure left Cruz as the preeminent candidate on stage, and the result was not what Cruz might have hoped. Fox anchor Megyn Kelly asked Cruz to square his praise and his criticism of the candidate she called "the elephant not in the room." And then he was challenged by moderator Chris Wallace on whether his votes on military issues matched his incendiary rhetoric about fighting ISIS.

He replied by asserting -- incorrectly -- that the United States had carpet-bombed Iraq in the first Gulf War, a tactic he has said he would use against ISIS even though it is considered a war crime. (Although the Persian Gulf war bombing was incessant, it was targeted at military sites and sought to avoid civilian casualties.) Rubio then jumped on Cruz, saying that the Texan hadn't taken action as a senator to rebuild the military.

"The only budget that Ted has ever voted for is a budget that Rand Paul sponsored that brags about cutting defense spending," Rubio said, knocking Cruz and the Kentucky senator standing nearby.

A short time later, Cruz tangled with moderator Chris Wallace in a lengthy complaint.

"Chris, I would note that that the last four questions have been, 'Rand, please attack Ted. Marco, please attack Ted. Chris, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted,' " he said.

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"It is a debate, sir," Wallace replied.

"Gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question I may have to leave the stage," Cruz said to murmurs from the crowd. He appeared to be joking but the jest nonetheless had a whining tone that probably did not help him.

Among the sharpest condemnations of Cruz came from the moderators. After airing a clip showing Cruz repeatedly talking in favor of some form of legal standing for those in the country without proper papers, Kelly turned to Cruz.

"Was that all an act?" she asked. "It was pretty convincing."

Rubio and Cruz tangled repeatedly on the issue of immigration, with the Florida senator claiming in rather personal terms that his Texas counterpart was misrepresenting his past.

"This is the lie that Ted's campaign is built on," Rubio said of Cruz's insistence that he never backed legal status for undocumented immigrants.

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But Rubio too came under fire for his authorship of the "Gang of 8" immigration plan, passed by the Senate, that would have provided a path to citizenship for up to 11 million people. He parried with Kelly about whether he was thus supporting "amnesty" as he had defined it -- she provided a clip as backup.

Throughout, the back-and-forth played to negatives that have haunted both candidates: That Cruz wields ambition, not principle, and will say whatever necessary to win, and that Rubio is far more liberal on immigration than his party's angry base. (Rubio seemed intent on bridging the anger gap, shouting at many points, including when he discussed his religion.)

That the criticisms came from representatives of the average Republican primary voter's most popular media outlet added to the potential for injury.

As war raged between the two middle-tier candidates, those below them in national and state polls enjoyed the sight, for the destruction of those above provides their only clear path to victory. Christie, who has taken on the debate role of outsider mocking the ways of the Beltway, got off one of the best lines of the night as the two senators bickered over parliamentary moves in the immigration debate.

"I feel like I need a Washington-to-English dictionary converter, right?" he said to applause.

Bush added to the moderator's questioning of Rubio by saying that his onetime protege had "cut and run" when it became obvious to him that his immigration policy "wasn't popular amongst conservatives"  in effect, telling both sides Rubio was disloyal and opportunistic, notes that a super PAC promoting Bush is also hitting in ads.

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Bush's demeanor at the debate was wholly in keeping with the candidacy he had promised back in the heady days after his carefully crafted announcement but has not consistently delivered. Asked about his foreign policy and other topics, he ticked off his talking points firmly and sometimes humorously. He even appeared to be standing taller. He seemed to have escaped the spell of the elephant not in the room.

He opened the debate by mocking the absence of his foil, in a way calculated to tell voters he deserved to go one-on-one against Trump.

"We always had such a loving relationship in these debates and in between and the tweets," said Bush, who has been hazed for months by Trump as a low-energy loser. And then Bush served up a reminder:

"Everybody else was in the witness protection program when I went after him on behalf of what the Republican cause should be: conservative principles, believing in limited government, believing in accountability. Leading by fixing the things that are broken."

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But it was noteworthy that Bush's words came in response to a question implying that by staying in the race, establishment candidates like him were handing the race to Trump. In other words, that time had run out for him in a contest so utterly dominated by a different type of candidate, in a year where candidates like him were disdained.

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Bush denied it, of course, and fell back on the truisms uttered by all trailing candidates: That the race has only begun, that the voters will decide all this, and that on Monday a more legitimate winnowing will begin.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

For political news and analysis, follow me on Twitter: @cathleendecker . For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker.

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Princeton Williamson was shot and wounded by Chicago police on Jan. 1, 2014. Nurses say he was in no condition to be interviewed when detectives questioned him in the hospital. (Cook County Sheriff's Office)

Hours after he was shot multiple times by a Chicago police officer, Princeton Williamson was heavily sedated after emergency surgery when detectives came to question him at his hospital bedside.

One of the detectives, Brian Johnson, later testified that Williamson was alert and didn't appear to be in pain as he talked openly about what led to his shooting, according to a court transcript.

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But two nurses gave dramatically different accounts than the detective, saying Williamson was in no condition to be interviewed because of a painful open stomach incision that required a continuous intravenous feed of morphine.

Williamson was in so much discomfort he could only mumble his words, one of the nurses said, so she communicated with him by having him squeeze her hands to answer questions yes or no.

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An outraged Cook County judge promptly threw out two incriminating statements that Johnson said he had obtained from Williamson and blasted the detective for his "garbage" testimony.

At the hearing last February, Judge James Obbish expressed doubts that any confession was given, saying, "I have to seriously question whether Mr. Williamson ever did anything but maybe grunt or even knew who he was talking to."

The Tribune recently learned of the judge's decision as prosecutors prepared to go to trial on similar charges against a brother of Williamson's who also was shot by the same officer in 2014.

Chicago police officers are facing heightened scrutiny on several fronts  including for their truth-telling in police reports and court  amid the fallout over the release of the video of Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. In police reports, Van Dyke and at least five other officers offered accounts that differed sharply from the video.

But charges against officers who are suspected of lying are rare. However, three Chicago narcotics cops are awaiting trial on perjury charges for allegedly lying at a routine drug hearing at the Skokie courthouse in March 2014. A defense lawyer pulled a surprise after their testimony, producing a dash-cam police video of the arrest that contradicted the officers' accounts.

Weeks after Obbish threw out Williamson's two alleged statements, the state's attorney's office dropped weapons charges against him.

A top assistant to State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, however, recently defended Johnson's testimony, saying it was corroborated by an assistant state's attorney who sat in on one of the interviews of Williamson. The assistant state's attorney was not called to testify at the hearing last February because prosecutors didn't think his testimony would be needed, said Fabio Valentini, the office's chief of criminal prosecutions.

"(The judge) is making a credibility determination based on the totality of the evidence," Valentini said of Obbish's decision. "That doesn't necessarily rise to the level of the person being a liar."

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Johnson, a 19-year department veteran who has been promoted to sergeant, declined to comment to a Tribune reporter.

Alert and clear-headed

The Williamson brothers were at a New Year's celebration at a cousin's house in the Roseland neighborhood. It was close to 2 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2014, when the brothers stepped outside on the back porch for a smoke. As part of the celebration, police alleged, the brothers fired a gun into the air. Nearby, tactical Officer Wilfredo Ortiz, in plainclothes, heard gunshots and came up the alley next to the home in the 100 block of West 105th Street.

In a deposition for the brothers' lawsuit, Ortiz said he "locked eyes" with Michael Williamson and alleged the Navy serviceman took a tactical stance and pointed a gun at him as the officer shouted to drop the weapon, according to Michael Robbins, the brothers' attorney.

Ortiz opened fire, unloading 11 rounds, Robbins said. Michael Williamson was hit in the right shoulder, right hip and twice in the back, while his younger brother was shot in the stomach, right leg and twice in the bladder, according to Jeffrey Neslund, another attorney for the family. Their sister, Kierra, who was inside the house, was shot once in the stomach. Robbins said another man  not part of the lawsuit  sustained a graze wound to his face.

Princeton Williamson spent a month in the hospital, undergoing four operations, Robbins said. His brother also had multiple surgeries and then had to fight for an honorable discharge after eight years with the Navy, Robbins said.

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The brothers don't dispute that a handgun  its slide extended as if it had just been fired a final round  was found on the porch. But they contend a friend, Charles Lewis, was the only one to fire the weapon into the air. Lewis was shot and killed last fall in the Englewood neighborhood.

Michael Williamson is scheduled to go on trial in March on felony charges of aggravated assault of a police officer, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm.

In the statements he allegedly gave from his hospital bed, Princeton Williamson said Lewis had fired the gun into the air and handed it to both brothers, who in turn fired off rounds of their own, according to Robbins. While both brothers were charged, Lewis wasn't, oddly enough, Robbins said.

Michael Williamson has no criminal record, Robbins said. But his brother pleaded guilty in 2009 to a felony count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and was sentenced to probation, records show. An arrest report from the New Year's charges listed him as a reputed gang member  an allegation Williamson denies, according to Robbins.

Both brothers, through their attorney, declined to be interviewed, citing the pending lawsuit.

At the court hearing last February, prosecutors maintained that Detective Johnson and his partner, Richard Sullivan, had tried to talk to Princeton Williamson in the intensive care unit at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn four times in the first two days of 2014. Their first attempt came in the early morning hours of Jan. 1 not long after Williamson's abdominal surgery, but the surgeon told them Williamson was heavily sedated and couldn't talk, they said.

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Shortly before 10 p.m. that same day, they returned, received clearance from a nurse in charge and talked to Williamson, according to prosecutors. The detectives came back with an assistant state's attorney a third time early the next day, but a doctor blocked an interview because Williamson had just been given medication, they said. By noon, the two returned with a different assistant state's attorney, won clearance from a doctor and talked to Williamson a second time, according to prosecutors.

On the witness stand, Johnson said the interviews of Williamson lasted 15 to 20 minutes each.

Michael Williamson was shot and wounded by Chicago police on Jan. 1, 2014. (Chicago Police Department)

For the first interview at about 10 p.m. the same day of the shooting, Williamson was alert and didn't act as if he was in pain or under the influence of medication, he said.

"He was very willing to speak with us and get into detail about what happened," a transcript quoted Johnson as saying.

"So did he have any slurred speech?" Assistant State's Attorney Terri Gleason asked moments later.

"No, he was very well spoken and never  it was obvious that he was under some medication like from the IV, but not through his actions whatsoever, no," Johnson said.

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On the next attempt, Johnson said a doctor told him, Sullivan and Assistant State's Attorney Nicholas D'Angelo that Williamson couldn't talk because his dosage of pain medication had just been increased.

About 10 hours later, Johnson returned with his partner and Assistant State's Attorney Scott Clark and spoke a second time with Williamson, who was propped up in a hospital bed at close to a 45-degree angle, he said.

"He was very forthcoming and involved in the conversation, I mean (a) very good demeanor from what I observed," Johnson testified.

On cross-examination by Williamson's lawyer, Johnson acknowledged he didn't document in his police report either time a nurse gave approval to talk to Williamson, saying it was "standard procedure" not to do so. Yet he noted in his report when a doctor blocked another interview try.

Johnson testified he never asked what type of medication Williamson was on.

Doubt cast on police statements

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Katarzyna Osinski, a registered nurse for 14 years who had recently earned a master's degree in nursing, testified that doctors had left Williamson's stomach incision open after surgery because of swelling. A special vacuum device was attached to the wound to drain excess fluid, she said.

Osinski, who was the nurse in charge of Williamson's care during his first night in the hospital, didn't recall seeing any police at about 10 that night  when Johnson said the first interview took place. But Osinski said she wouldn't have allowed them to interview Williamson anyway.

It wasn't until early the next morning that detectives showed up, according to medical records. Osinski said she refused to let them interview Williamson and documented that decision in those records.

"My patient was very drowsy, barely able to respond to just simple commands," she testified. "His neuro exam (was) definitely diminished. His cognitive abilities were diminished, so I did not feel that he was capable of making any rational decisions."

The second registered nurse, Micole West, who then had more than seven years of experience, said she recalled caring for Williamson because of his unique first name and extensive injuries.

After she started work at 9 a.m. on Jan. 2 and tried to talk to Williamson for her initial assessment, he could only mumble his words because he was in so much pain, so she had him squeeze her hands to respond yes or no to her questions, West said. He was nearly flat on his back, with his head tilted at about a 15- to 30-degree angle, she said.

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In addition to the continuous intravenous feed of morphine, the medical records showed Williamson had been injected at 9:25 a.m. with Ativan, an anti-anxiety medication that relaxes the muscles and makes the patient sleepy. West said she administered the drug so she and others could flip Williamson over in bed and change the dressings on his wounds on his back side.

Ativan typically sedates a patient for four to six hours, sometimes up to eight hours, West testified. The hospital records indicated Williamson was asleep at noon  the same time Johnson said he, his partner and the assistant state's attorney talked to Williamson the second time.

West said no detectives asked her to interview Williamson throughout her more than 12-hour shift on Jan. 2. If they had, she wouldn't have allowed it given his condition, she said.

Obbish, a criminal court judge for 13 years at the time and a prosecutor and defense attorney for 28 years before that, appeared particularly disturbed that Johnson never documented in his 32-page police report which doctors or nurses he had obtained approval from to talk to Williamson twice yet made it a point to detail who denied permission on another attempt.

"That's one of the biggest pieces of garbage I ever heard from a professional member of law enforcement," Obbish said.

The judge praised the nurses, noting they had no motive to lie, and questioned why prosecutors hadn't called to the stand Clark, the assistant state's attorney who was said to have taken part in the second interview of Williamson.

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"Wouldn't Mr. Clark have written down in his own notes who he got approval from to go in and interview Mr. Williamson to describe his  get the medical opinion of his condition?" he said.

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The judge emphasized how serious a surgery Williamson had just undergone and that doctors had left the stomach wound open  his vital organs were exposed under gauze and a mesh.

Obbish ordered both statements suppressed but not before taking another shot at Johnson's testimony.

"So should it be suppressed when in all probability it wasn't even made?"

Obbish then emphasized his use of the word "alleged" in connection with both statements.

"And boy do I have to use the word 'alleged,'" he said. "That's in capital letters and underlined, and it's got quotation marks around it."

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sschmadeke@tribpub.com

Twitter @SteveSchmadeke
Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke walks into the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Jan. 29, 2016, to face murder charges in the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald, 17. (Antonio Peres / Chicago Tribune)

An attorney for the Chicago police officer charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald decried Friday what he called prejudicial comments by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and said he was likely to seek to have the trial moved outside Cook County.

Dan Herbert also said Officer Jason Van Dyke feared for his life after he and his family had received death threats.

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The release two months ago of a disturbing video showing Van Dyke shoot the teen 16 times as he walked away from police has roiled the city, leading to weeks of street protests, calls for Emanuel's resignation and the launch of a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the Police Department. Herbert has said Van Dyke feared for his life. McDonald, 17, was holding a knife with a 3-inch blade.

Little happened in court Friday on the high-profile case. Judge Vincent Gaughan met privately with attorneys in his chambers for about 15 minutes before holding a brief public session in his courtroom.

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Speaking to reporters in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Court Building after the hearing, Herbert criticized the mayor for tainting the jury pool with his public comments about McDonald's shooting. He said he planned to seek what's called a change of venue to another county but then backpedaled a bit by saying such a filing was probable.

Herbert hasn't committed to a jury trial, however. Most high-profile police misconduct cases end up before judges in bench trials.

"It's been dozens and dozens of comments where he's essentially indicted my client," Herbert said of Emanuel. "He's characterized my client's actions as being heinous without even seeing the videotape. So when the mayor of the city in which the pool of jurors is drawn from has taken such an adamant stance, it makes it extremely difficult for us to get a juror in here who is not predisposed to a finding of guilt."

Herbert appeared to be referring in part to a conference call Emanuel made to black ministers and community activists the day before the video was made public by court order in late November. Van Dyke was criminally charged that same day by State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.

"What happened here is wrong. There is no justification, and it's profoundly hideous, in my view," the mayor said then. "And it's a shock to your conscience of what happened, and it should not have happened."

As a handful of protesters demonstrated Friday outside the courthouse against Chicago police brutality, Herbert told reporters that Van Dyke was struggling personally and financially with his notoriety. He's been suspended without pay.

"It has impacted him quite a bit," he said. "He's received death threats. His family has received death threats. He's trying to make some money here and there with odd jobs. He's very concerned about his wife and his children and his own well-being."

"Every time he leaves his house he's fearful," the attorney said. "His life will never be the same again."

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Herbert would appear to have an uphill fight to move the trial out of Cook County. Longtime criminal defense attorneys say changes of venue are rarely requested or granted because of the belief that biased jurors can be weeded out during jury selection.

However, it has been done in other high-profile murder trials. For the 1980 trial of serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr., jurors were selected in Rockford, but the trial was held in Chicago. And nearly 50 years ago, a Cook County judge moved the trial of Richard Speck, who murdered eight nurses living in a Southeast Side town home, to downstate Peoria, citing the immense pretrial publicity.

To win a change of venue, veteran criminal defense lawyer Stephen Decker said, an attorney would typically hire a pollster to survey a random sample of Cook County residents on their views of the case and then submit an affidavit to the judge along with the extensive news media coverage.

If a judge granted a change of venue, the trial could be moved to a courthouse outside Cook County or jurors could be brought from another county to the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Decker said.

Van Dyke, the first Chicago police officer in nearly 35 years to be charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty fatality, has pleaded not guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct.

sschmadeke@tribpub.com

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The Chicago Teachers Union said Thursday that it will take a "serious offer" from Chicago Public Schools to a team of negotiators next week for a vote, signaling a step forward in contract talks that have dragged on for more than a year.

CTU President Karen Lewis said in a statement that the potential agreement's "basic framework calls for economic concessions in exchange for enforceable protections of education quality and job security."

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"If the union is able to reach a tentative agreement, delegates will be apprised of details shortly," Lewis said.

The union said it is taking the district's offer to its so-called Big Bargaining Team, a group of about 40 union members that helps guide union demands. The union said the team would vote on the deal Monday, the date a final stage of talks called fact-finding is set to begin.

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Any deal would have to be approved by the union's House of Delegates before a contract could be finalized. That body meets Wednesday.

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The union's announcement came a day after CPS put off an offer to borrow up to $875 million. District CEO Forrest Claypool said earlier Thursday that the district expects to complete the deal by early next week at the latest.

In recent days, negotiators on both sides of the table have said that talks have gained steam following Republican proposals that would allow the state to take over the cash-strapped district, and also allow the district to declare bankruptcy.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in an interview on WTTW-Ch. 11's "Chicago Tonight," declined to discuss the city's offer but said the two sides were engaged in "very good discussions with a lot of respect on both sides for the challenges we're facing."

Last week, Lewis voiced optimism about the progress of contract negotiations and acknowledged that her members could be in line to "lose certain things."

Lewis said those losses could include the end of the city's practice of picking up the bulk of teachers' required contributions to their pensions. But Lewis said the union would not bend on another key issue, incremental pay increases known as "step and lane" bumps that are doled out based on seniority and experience.

jjperez@tribpub.com

Twitter @PerezJr
President Barack Obama will return to Springfield next month to deliver a speech under the Capitol dome where he once served as a state senator, bringing the spotlight of the presidency to a building where home-state political struggles have led to a historic budget stalemate.

The Feb. 10 visit will mark nine years since Obama's 2007 announcement as a candidate for president, when the U.S. senator declared his plans in a sweeping speech delivered on the steps of the Old State Capitol.

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The Democratic president's latest Springfield speech comes against the election-year backdrop of a raging battle between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democrats who control the Illinois General Assembly. Democratic state legislators led by House Speaker Michael Madigan, the state party chairman, are hoping to hold onto their supermajority in November, while Rauner has pledged to dig into his personal wealth to help Republican challengers.

In addition, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who helped Obama settle into the White House as his first chief of staff, has a lengthy wish list including a CPS bailout, police and fire pension relief and city casino that's stalled as the state deals with its own political and financial problems.

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All of which makes for good timing for Democrats to host their president and bask in the attention and excitement that come along with him.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Obama was invited to address the General Assembly "several years ago." Senate President John Cullerton's office indicated it was unaware of the Obama visit before it was announced, but said Cullerton sent a letter to the president on Jan. 19 "suggesting it was a good time for a return."

Rauner said in a statement that he would "look forward to welcoming President Obama to the state Capitol." And the governor's office invited Obama to join Rauner for a beer at a Springfield watering hole.

Obama, whose presidency also has been marked by intense political divisions, will speak to the state legislature about "what we can do, together, to build a better politics  one that reflects our better selves," the White House said in a statement.

That theme mirrors Obama's 2007 announcement speech, in which he said that Springfield was where he "learned to disagree without being disagreeable  that it's possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst."

Now in the twilight of his second term, Obama's tone has in many ways returned to that aspirational oratory that marked his 2008 presidential campaign. But he also is pushing some specific ideas, like putting a stop to the practice of drawing political maps in ways that ensure one party's control over a district.

That could put him in tricky territory at the state Capitol, where Democratic opposition to similar proposals has been a key feature of the seven-month budget impasse. Rauner wants term limits and a new way of drawing maps as part of a legislative agenda that also includes making it harder for injured workers to win compensation cases and stripping away collective bargaining rights enjoyed by unions. Democrats won't concede on those items, and Rauner in turn won't negotiate on a tax increase that would help right state government's shaky finances.

Rauner played up that dynamic earlier in the week when he name-checked the president during his State of the State address.

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"President Obama has come out strongly in favor of both term limits and redistricting reform," Rauner said. "I agree, and the people of Illinois agree. The only reasons not to do this are pure partisan politics, and a desire to cling to power."

Obama said in his State of the Union address that the country should "end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around." He expressed broad support for the idea of term limits during a July trip to Africa, saying "nobody should be president for life."

Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno said she hoped to hear Obama "use this unique opportunity to convince his Democrat colleagues of the need for true reform that lets voters choose their representatives, not the other way around."

Rauner, despite presiding over an unprecedented budget stalemate that has starved social services and colleges and universities of state tax dollars, again tried to link himself to Obama.

"Despite our political differences, the president and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans," Rauner said in a statement. "I know we can achieve great things for Illinois by having mutual respect for one another and focusing on bipartisan compromise to achieve what's best for the long-term future of our great state."

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 and served there until he won a U.S. Senate seat in 2004. He launched into the national spotlight that year when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Midway through his U.S. Senate term, on Feb. 10, 2007, he announced plans to run for president.

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If Obama's homecoming produces tension within his party, it wouldn't be the first time.

In 2006, as Obama's star was rising high, he frustrated Madigan by endorsing Alexi Giannoulias for state treasurer over the party's slated primary candidate. Madigan showed his displeasure by mocking Obama as "the Messiah" in an interview with the Daily Southtown. Obama dismissed it as "a moment of glibness " from the speaker.

Still, just months later and as Obama was weighing a presidential bid, Madigan moved up the Illinois primary date so voters could support the home-state candidate and provide an early campaign boost.

While Republicans are hoping that Obama's visit will inspire his allies to back Rauner on term limits and redistricting, Democrats said they have other priorities.

"It's nice of him to return and grace us with his honorable self," said Sen. Kim Lightford, D-Maywood. "But the better politics, better selves sounds like a peace offering in trying to help a real negotiation process or a real compromise to begin taking shape to get us past the budget impasse. And with all the challenges with police brutality in the state, it's nice that he would come home for the ninth anniversary, but also in my hope, be the peace offering that we need to help us with many of the challenges that we're facing."

Chicago Tribune's Katherine Skiba contributed from Washington, D.C.

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kgeiger@tribpub.com
PORTLAND, Ore.  The main leaders of the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge have been denied pre-trial release as prosecutors used their own words on social media and videos against them to argue that they were a danger to the community.



Ammon Bundy, the principal leader of the group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge nearly a month ago, and others used the platforms to summon armed recruits to join their takeover of the refuge.



Court documents against the 11 occupiers under arrest show that FBI agents have scrutinized social media postings, interviews and online talk shows that were broadcast refuge during the standoff that began Jan. 2

Four holdouts continued to occupy the refuge in the snowy high country near Burns, and they posted a YouTube video Friday demanding pardons for everyone involved in the occupation.



A speaker believed to be David Fry said he asked the FBI whether it was possible to "get out of here without charges," but "they keep saying that's not possible."



Ammon Bundy's lawyer, Lissa Casey, said her client is not aligned with those remaining at the refuge and wants to go back to his family in Idaho. "He is done in Harney County; his message has been sent," she said.



Bundy and several other jailed leaders appeared Friday in federal court in Portland, where a judge denied their release. U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman said Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy and Ryan Payne pose a danger to the community, and she is concerned they would not follow orders to return to Oregon for criminal proceedings.



The only woman arrested so far in the standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge, Shawna Cox, will be allowed to go home while her case makes its way through the court system. But Beckerman said that won't happen until after the armed occupation ends.



Bundy and his followers took over the refuge to demand that the federal government turn public lands over to local control. They have complained about what they say are onerous federal rules governing grazing and mining rights across the West.



Court documents detail some of the evidence against the occupiers, including a memorandum filed by prosecutors Friday arguing against releasing defendants before trial. The charges against the defendants say the refuge's 16 employees have been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence.



"As the armed group's unrepentant leader, he (Ammon Bundy) has consistently and publicly expressed support for an armed occupation that has endangered, and continues to endanger, many people," the document states.



A criminal complaint filed earlier this week makes reference to an online video that showed Bundy saying the group planned to stay for several years. He called on people to "come out here and stand," adding: "We need you to bring your arms."



A video posted Jan. 4 showed another defendant, Jon Ritzheimer, saying he was "100 percent willing to lay my life down."



In a video posted a day later, Ritzheimer talked about Robert "LaVoy" Finicum and other occupiers taking up a "defensive posture" at the refuge against a feared FBI raid.



Finicum was killed Tuesday night in a confrontation with the FBI and Oregon State Police on a remote road. Bundy and four others were arrested during the encounter.



At one point, a couple of dozen ranchers and other protesters were holed up at the refuge, but they began clearing out after the arrests and killing.



The FBI on Thursday released a video showing Finicum's death, to counter claims he did nothing to provoke his killing.



In the aerial video, Finicum is pulled over in his truck but then takes off in the vehicle and plows into a snowbank because of a roadblock. He gets out and has his hands up at first, then appears to reach toward his jacket pocket at least twice. He is shot and falls to the snow.



The FBI said a loaded handgun was found in the pocket.



In a statement, Finicum's family said they will await the results of the official investigation into the shooting, "but based on the information currently available to us, we do not believe LaVoy's shooting death was justified."



Several dozen people gathered at the county courthouse in Burns on Friday afternoon to express anger at the federal government's action against the armed group. "I feel terrible it ended up the way it did," Mitch Siegner of Riverside, Oregon, said of Finicum's shooting.



Siegner said he didn't necessarily support the occupation of the refuge, but he was "unhappy at the overreach of government."



Ammon Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.



On Friday, the younger Bundy told the judge he has no interest in returning to the refuge, saying "my only desire is to be home with family and take care of my wife and children."

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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff speaks to the media after visiting a Center for Coordination and Control of diseases in Brasilia, Brazil, on Jan. 29, 2016. (Fernando Bizzera Jr. / EPA)

Brazil's government pledged to contain the spread of the mosquito-born Zika virus, after the World Health Organization said the pathogen is spreading "explosively" throughout South and Central America.

The government, which is mobilizing troops from the three branches of the armed forces, would spare no cost to combat the disease, President Dilma Rousseff said Friday, after meeting with governors from five states to coordinate efforts. The federal government also will fund increased production of bug repellent, distributing it to lower-income women who are at risk of contracting the virus that's suspected of causing birth defects.

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"We will win this war," Rousseff said at a center set up in the nation's capital to coordinate containment efforts. "We have to use all our resources in this fight."

Rousseff's comments come after her health minister, Marcelo Castro, told reporters this month that Brazil for decades has been losing the fight against mosquitoes that carry the Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya viruses. His remarks raised concerns that authorities are unprepared to contain the virus.

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The government's challenge is daunting, as the hot and rainy weather in Brazil's summer months of January and February create ideal conditions for mosquitoes to breed. Scores of foreign travelers were expected to visit the country in February for its famed Carnival celebrations, raising the risk that they will bring the virus with them back home.

While there is no approved vaccine, a top U.S. health official said the government could start work on an experimental one as soon as this year.

An emergency committee from the World Health Organization will meet Feb. 1 to discuss the global threat from Zika, which it says could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas this year, based on models from the spread of dengue. South American health ministers may gather in Uruguay next week to discuss the problem as well.

Only one in five people with Zika will get sick, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has been linked to more than 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil, a condition that causes infants to be born with underdeveloped brains and an abnormally small head.

The Centers for Disease Control this month recommended that pregnant women consider postponing travel to affected areas, and health officials in El Salvador have advised women to delay pregnancy until 2018.

Bloomberg
Handwritten notes honoring Susan Jordan, the principal of Beverland Elementary School, are seen inside the entrance of the school Jan. 29, 2016, in Indianapolis. (Darron Cummings / AP)

When the school bus lurched forward, Susan Jordan followed her instincts.

They were the same instincts that had guided her for 22 years as the principal of Indianapolis' Amy Beverland Elementary.

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The same ones that helped the school receive a Four Star, "A" rating from the Indiana Department of Education.

The ones that compelled her students and staff to describe her as the "definition of wonderful"  along with virtually every positive adjective in the dictionary  in a tribute video last year.

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Everyone who knew Jordan knew that she put children first. And so she did Tuesday afternoon, after a stationary school bus inexplicably accelerated, jumping a curb toward a group of students.

As the hulking vehicle approached, the principal pushed several students out of the way. She let herself be fatally hit in the process.

"Quite frankly, ladies and gentleman, we are talking about a legend," Superintendent Shawn Smith, of Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, said during a news conference after the crash. "This loss is going to ripple across our district of 15,000 students."

According to the Indianapolis Star, the bus was carrying 25 students, none of whom were injured. Two 10-year-old students who were struck alongside Jordan are in the hospital with serious but not life-threatening juries, authorities told The Associated Press.

The bus driver will be given a blood test, a standard procedure in fatal collisions, Indianapolis police Cmdr. Chris Bailey told the AP.

It escaped no one's notice that Jordan died as she lived.

The bus driver, who told firefighters she does not know why the bus suddenly started moving, said she saw Jordan steer several children to safety "in the instant that the accident occurred."

"They just loved her," Indianapolis Fire Department spokeswoman Rita Reith told CNN. "Up to the minute she was alive, she was helping the kids."

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In a heartwarming appreciation video created by a sixth-grade class last May, "Mrs. J" was described by her students and colleagues as a passionate, positive force who made everyone feel at home.

"I'm sure that I have never had and will never have a boss who is as supportive as she is," one teacher said.

The video is set to the tune of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," with credits at the end that read: "We love you Mrs. Jordan! Amy Beverland really is the sunshine after the rainbow."
This Blog was a source of great delight to her, she was one of the founder hostesses and she co ntributed to the fun and silliness in her own original way, and was kind enough to let her unique creation, the hunky butler 'Oliver' join us for our Friday romp and prepare 'virtual breakfast' for the guests on the following morning. It's beyond hard to have to go on without her, but we know that she would have been the first to insist that 'the show must go on.' She is, and will always be with us in spirit.


Debs, a union leader from Terre Haute, Ind., first went to prison for his role as an organizer of the 1894 Pullman Strike, a violent walkout that paralyzed the nation's railroads. He and his union had answered a call for help from employees of Chicago sleeping-car magnate George Pullman, who had cut workers' pay but demanded in full the rent money they owed him. In 1920, Debs was serving time for advocating resistance to the military draft of World War I. Debs essentially asked to be put behind bars, telling a judge: "While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the General Assembly in the House chambers at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., on Jan. 27, 2016. (Seth Perlman / AP)

In a Thursday editorial, the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board called out the organization I lead  the Illinois Federation of Teachers  for criticizing Gov. Bruce Rauner's State of the State address. The editorial seemed to argue that we should simply go along with the governor because the taxpayers who provide schools with more money are leaving Illinois for other states due to our taxes.

A look at the facts dispels the governor's (and the Tribune's) claim.

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First, consider that Illinois has among the lowest individual income tax rates of any state with a regressive, flat tax.

Consider, also, the findings of a recent report from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute.

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IEPI found that in 2013 the average Illinois household paid less state income tax than those in Indiana and Wisconsin. Moreover, once the temporary tax rates receded in Illinois, taxes paid as a share of household income fell below Iowa and Kansas as well.

That means that a single, childless worker earning $50,000 a year pays $505 more in state income taxes in Iowa than in Illinois.

This is noteworthy since Gov. Rauner and the Tribune Editorial Board like to compare Illinois to neighboring states and their alleged prosperity, claiming that lower taxes and restricted rights for working people somehow allow the flowering of the economy.

The fact is that Gov. Scott Walker's rabid anti-union agenda has been a disaster for the economy of Wisconsin, which remains in the bottom third of states for job growth.

Illinois differs in another significant way when it comes to taxes.

As other media outlets reported, IEPI also found the very wealthy fare significantly better at tax time here in Illinois than in other Midwestern states.

The lowest-earning 20 percent of Illinois taxpayers paid more than 13 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid only 4.6 percent of their income. That's right. The poorest Illinoisans  those who can least afford it  paid three times as much of their income as the richest Illinoisans, according to IEPI.

Indiana and Wisconsin do not have nearly such a shocking gap in equity.

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The Tribune editorial asserted: "Money for schools doesn't fall from heaven. It comes from taxpayers, who are in short supply."

Snark aside, I agree. I just don't think it needs to come inequitably from those who have sacrificed and suffered enough.

Adopting changes to the tax code and asking the wealthiest Illinoisans and corporate CEOs to pay more could raise billions of dollars to grow our economy and fund critical social services, schools and higher education, which are in severe crisis, a fact Gov. Rauner sadly ignored in his speech and the Tribune left out of its editorial as well.

The governor said that the key to more economic opportunity is a good education from cradle to career. We agree that excellent education is the engine for a healthy workforce and economy.

But let's be clear on this point: Gov. Rauner is dismantling that very engine by holding state universities hostage to his political agenda. Even before this current budget standoff, our first-class universities were at historically low levels of state support. They are struggling to make payroll and their very existence hangs in the balance. Still, Gov. Rauner won't even sign off on temporary funding, let alone work together to find ways to sustain a healthy higher education system in the long term.

Instead, he is letting institutions such as Chicago State University, the state's only four-year university serving predominantly lower-income, African-American students, face drastic cutbacks or closure as soon as March. Holding young people's futures hostage to political gamesmanship is not good public policy.

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We at the Illinois Federation of Teachers are not "obstructionists," as the Tribune called us. We agree there are administrative reforms to consider and address together but making them stringent conditions of funding is unfair to students who don't know whether their schools or teachers will be there for them next month. It's unfair to high school seniors who can't plan for the future and may leave Illinois. And it's unfair to poorer families who will have no options without the state-funded Monetary Award Program for tuition assistance, another budget line item that the governor is willing to let wither and die, in what he calls "short-term pain."

Going this long without a state budget and inflicting irreparable harm to working families will not strengthen Illinois' economy or "grow more taxpayers."

But don't take it from us, the 100,000 working people  teachers, school staff, faculty and other public employees  whom the Tribune called a "special interest."

Instead ask former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, who has been urging Gov. Rauner to drop his extreme political demands and pass a budget already.

We couldn't agree with Edgar more.

Dan Montgomery, of Evanston, is a high school English teacher and president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
A tour group walks on the campus at Harvard University on Aug. 30, 2012, in Cambridge, Mass. (Elise Amendola / AP)

Five candidates running for Harvard's board of overseers  the panjandrums who help set strategy for the school  have raised a provocative question: Should America's most renowned university be tuition-free?

The candidates, including California software entrepreneur Ron Unz and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, argue that because Harvard is perched atop a staggering $37.6 billion endowment it could afford to abolish undergrad tuition.

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By demolishing the formidable financial obstacle to gaining a Harvard degree, the candidates say, the school would attract thousands of top-flight students who don't apply now because their families can't afford it. They say that would help Harvard assemble a more diverse class of the best and brightest students.

Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal counters that endowments aren't like bank accounts, to be drawn upon for any expense at any time. Some of Harvard's endowment has to be spent in ways that were dictated by the people who donated the cash.

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About one-third of the students who go to Harvard come from families with $250,000-plus annual incomes, so they can afford tuition. Why should those wealthy students and their families get a free ride? As it is, students from families that earn less than $65,000 a year pay nothing now; those whose families earn up to $150,000 pay reduced rates. About 4 in 10 students are on the hook for the full freight.

And then there's the green eyeshade brigade, which warns that the Harvard endowment must be maintained in perpetuity  a very, very long time. Those billions support not just undergrad education but also basic science research, museums, a library system, and schools of medicine and law. So don't splurge now and regret later.

Nader and the others campaigning under a "Free Harvard, Fair Harvard" banner told The New York Times that if Harvard boldly abandons tuition, "it will ricochet across the Ivy League."

Yes, it would. And across the country to schools like Northwestern and University of Chicago.

Don't bank on a fast and dramatic change, though. Nader and his allies seek five seats on a 32-seat board that is elected by alumni. The vote will be held in May.

The campaign for free tuition couldn't even win the support of The Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper. Its editorial called the idea "neither a feasible nor an appropriately targeted approach to making Harvard more equitable." If students can't be convinced that free tuition is a terrific idea ...

It does, though, raise an interesting debate. If tuition is a barrier to higher education, and a better-educated citizenry is key to the nation's future, should tuition be eliminated?

We see an argument for that at one level. We've supported efforts at City Colleges of Chicago to waive tuition for Chicago public high school students who maintain a high grade level. That's an incentive to study, it's targeted at students who don't have significant family wealth, it's designed to lift onto a college track students who might not otherwise reach for it.

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Some schools are trying to at least hold the line on tuition, largely for competitive reasons.

The University of Illinois recently announced it will freeze tuition for incoming in-state freshmen for the second year in a row. The U. of I. has been losing excellent students to other Midwest schools that offer competitive tuition and sweeter financial aid. The university says its in-state enrollment increased by 10.2 percent last year after the first tuition freeze.

That's a sign, we hope, that public and private universities are starting to recognize they need to be financially efficient operations.

As for a tuition-free Harvard: It already has a highly motivated group of applicants. It already provides significant aid to the neediest students.

Nader's proposal would have a very un-Nader-like outcome. It would provide a terrific financial subsidy to wealthy families. But it wouldn't do much else.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
If and when the GOP goes after Sanders, it will be with commercials pointing out that the portion of his vision that isn't even half-baked is pure fantasy; that his plans rely not only on him being elected president but also on a coast-to-coast progressive revolution at the ballot box that would give him control of Congress; and that he has almost no foreign-policy experience. All over a choral bed of "socialist, socialist, socialist, socialist."
Site: singles4real From: susanwilliamsjohnson Date: Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:40 am

Hello:

How are you doing today; my pleasure to come across your contact interesting and real among many fakes here. Am interested in long term business relationship; I wish that we communicate on this email address susanwilliamsjohnson@yahoo.com to know each other better.

Thanks and stay blessed

Susan









Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 09:27:36 +0000 (UTC) From: Susan williams <susanwilliamsjohnson@yahoo.com> Subject: Thanks for your reply,

Thanks for your reply,

I will really like to have a good relationship and business partner with you, and i have a special reason why i decided to contact you. I decided to contact you because of the urgency of my situation here, I am Miss Susan Williams, 24 years old girl from Sudan, the only daughter of Late Dr. Johnson Williams, my father was a diamond merchant who was killed by the rebel attack in my country Sudan.

I am constrained to contact you because of the maltreatment I am receiving from my father. brother planned to take away all my late father's treasury and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved Father. Meanwhile I wanted to escape to Europe but he hide away my international passport and other valuable traveling documents. Luckily he did not discover where I kept my fathers File which contains important documents. So I decided to run to the refugee camp where I am presently seeking asylum in the (Zion Kingdom church of Christ) Republic of Gambia.

I wish to contact you personally for a long term business relationship and investment assistance in your Country. My father of blessed memory deposited the sum of US$1.200, 000.00 in a leading bank in London with my name as the next of kin. However, I shall forward you with the necessary documents on confirmation of your acceptance to assist me for the transfer and investment of the fund. As you will help me in an investment, i will like to complete my studies, as i was in my 1st year in the university, when the crisis started. It is my intention to compensate you with 25% of the total money for your services and the balance shall be my investment capital.

This is the reason why I decided to contact you. Please all communications should be through this email address only for confidential purposes. As soon as I receive your positive response showing your interest I will put things into action immediately. In the light of the above, I shall appreciate an urgent message indicating your ability and willingness to handle this transaction sincerely. I am waiting for your urgent and positive response. Please do keep this only to your self i beg you not to disclose it till i come over, once the fund has been transferred. I sent you my pictures, looking forward to see yours as well. Yours Sincerely,

Susan

Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2015 05:21:52 +0000 (UTC) From: Susan williams <susanwilliamsjohnson@yahoo.com> Subject: THIS IS WHAT I WILL LIKE YOU TO DO FOR ME

Hello Dearest one,

I have just received your email with lot's of excitement, because since when I sent the long letter to you my heart has been over occupied with thoughts and fear if my situation will touch your heart to come for my rescue. I am glad now that I saw your email.

Firstly I am emailing you from the office of the Rev. Father in the Church camp, I told the Rev.Father about my communication with you and he permitted me to access my email in his office computer Three times a day, here in the camp life is very difficult, You can call me through his telephone number here +2202073293 Just tell him that you want to speak with Susan Williams Johnson, He will send someone to call me cause they did not allow us to use phone inside the camp.

I ran away from Sudan my country to Gambia, After when my step mother threaten to kill me, If I do not give her the information to claim this money which is the only thing my late father left for me to survive the human race, Thinking unfinisheducation, I decided to take the risk to ran to Gambia by road with a public car after 8 days rough journey, Since I do not have any body here in Gambia I had no option than to beg myself into the church camp to be able to eat and continue living, Here in the camp their condition is that we don't go out and we don't miss up with people, and the moment you broke the rule you will be out from their guidance.

sincere in your heart to assist me transfer the money into any account which you know will be safe either new or old empty or not, About your 25% your talking about that is not my problem for now you can take it after the transfer but i need to go out from this place and be happy like other women, Though I do not have experience in international transaction so there is nothing I can do without your help, I wouldn't have bordered you if I have full access to the money within myself, because I am helpless without you, having no account and no body abroad as a friend or relation.

I need a someone who will always tell me the truth from his heart, I need a someone who will be my brother my best friends, I will want you to think very well and understand in your heart if you really want to help me ? If yes I will live the rest of my live to appreciate it, But if no I suggest you make it open to me before you will brake my heart, Because I don't want to under go torture any more. Though I do not have money to be calling you on telephone, But i will try to ask Rev father is he can help me even Miss call so that you can call back we talk okay.

HERE IS THE LETTER YOU WILL SEND TO THE BANK ON MY BEHAVE. JUST COPY IS AND SEND IT THROUGH THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS BELLOW.

To Dr, Mark Leopen Director of Foreign Operations. Royal Bank Of Scotland Email: costumercareroyabankofscotland@accountant.com DEPOSITOR: DR. JOHNSON WILLIAMS NEXT OF KIN: MISS SUSAN JOHNSON WILLIAMS Amount: 1.2 Million USD. ACCOUNT NUMBER: 000056884711BH003

Dear Sir,

I am Miss Susan Williams Johnson Nationality of Sudan; daughter of late Dr. Johnson Williams my father was a diamond merchant who was killed by the rebel attack in my country Sudan. My late father, Dr. Johnson Williams deposited $1,200,000.00 ) into your Bank in my name.

The Account Number: 000056884711BH003, Code Number: BH003 Deposit Code Number AT78.

I request that these sum of $1,200,000.00 as stated above should be transferred immediately into the Bank Account of my partner, will advise you on the further details for this transfer. I do hereby declare my awareness of this transfer and I shall regret nothing in the future because of this transaction duly authorized and signed by me Miss Susan Williams Johnson, My partner will be contacting your Financial Institution to provide instructions for the transfer of these funds.

I, Miss Susan Williams Johnson request you to fully cooperate and comply with My partner's instruction. Due to some political misunderstanding in my country I am presently in a church camp for this reason I am not in a position for free communication as regarding this transaction I instruct that your bank establish a direct communication with my partner.

Depositor: Dr. Johnson Williams Next of kin: Miss Susan Williams Johnson

From: costumercareroyabankofscotland@accountant.com Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 09:35:15 +0100 Subject: Attention: Sir

Website www.rbs.co.uk Head Office36 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, EH2 2YB Phone Fax +441315576565 SWIFT (BIC) RBOSGB2L Date: 21th-Decemberr-2015

Attention: Sir

It is with deep sense of appreciation that i send you this mail, on behalf of our distinguished banking institution; I have been directed by the director of Foreign Operation / Wire Transfer to write you. Actually, we have earlier been told about you by the young lady Miss Susan Williams Johnson. Late Dr. Johnson Williams. Was our late customer with this account No: 000056884711BH003, subs total amount US $ 1,200,000.00, deposited with us. Hence you have been really appointed as a trustee to represent the next of Kin Miss Susan Williams Johnson..

However before our bank will transact or invite you in any business concerning the transfer of the fund with you, we will like you to send the followings documents:

(1.) A POWER OF ATTORNEY obtained in your name from an international lawyer in Gambia in which Miss Susan Williams Johnson. Gives you the authority to represent her being the next of kin of the late Dr. Johnson Williams and the beneficiary of the deposited funds.

(2.) A DEATH CERTIFICATE that proves that Dr. Johnson Williams is actually dead as we were made to understand.

(3.) Affidavits of support from federal High Court of Gambia, that will sign and seal by Gambian resident lawyer.

(4.) A copy of Dr. Johnson Williams Will.

It is only when we receive those documents and information's mentioned above that we can proceed to transfer the funds to you. On receiving the documents specified, it will take 72 hours to affect the transfer of the funds to your account.

Yours truly, Mr. Mark Leopen Director of Foreign Operations. Royal Bank Of Scotland

Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 11:36:02 +0000 (UTC) From: Susan williams <susanwilliamsjohnson@yahoo.com> Subject: Hello Darling,

Hello Darling,

Thank you so much for the effort your making to see that this transfer is complete successful i pray that God in heaven will reward you back with his infinity mercy. After reading letter from the bank. I went to the to ask the Rev what they mean by Power of attorney and if he can give me contact of lawyer who can arrange the other two documents because the other three documents is with me.

The Rev Father said that power of attorney is a legal document that would be written by a lawyer, stamped, signed and sealed in Banjul Gambia High Court. He said this is to give you powers and authority to claim the money and transfer it to your bank account and invest it for me.

He gave me contact of two lawyers I can go and meet for the work. I have discussed with one of them. He said the legal document is not for me but for the claimant and investor and therefore you should contact him directly to officially request and his chambers' legal services on the matter. I have submitted the other documents at lawyer office for the proof.

The name of the lawyer is Dr. Barrister Daniel Malick and the name of his chamber is (Eagle Chambers and Associates) His email address is (br.danielmalick@yahoo.fr)

So write to him with your full name,address,occupation,phone number, and tell him that your are the trustee and investor to Miss Susan Williams who has discussed with him about power of attorney. That you require his legal service to write power of attorney that will give you authority to claim this money from Bank on my behalf. To prepare legal documents that would give you authority to transfer the money to your bank account and invest it for me.

So please contact the lawyer for the remaining legal documents for the transfer because that was the only thing holding the transfer now.

Thank you for all you caring and love. Yours forever Susan

Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 17:07:20 +0000 (UTC) From: Susan williams <susanwilliamsjohnson@yahoo.com> Subject: Good News

Hello dear.

How are you over there in your country ? I believe you are fine and doing well. I hope my email meets you in good health. I am much delighted and privileged to contact you again, After all these time, it takes destiny and courage to remember Good friends like you and at the same time, show gratitude to you despite circumstances that made us separate and disrupted our transaction, which ultimately did not work out as we had projected then.

The good news is that I'm happy to inform you about my success in getting those funds transferred with the co-operation of a new partner from India. I use this opportunity to inform you that the transaction finally worked out and I am contacting you to let you know of the success. I will be very busy here in India at this time due to the projects I have at hand with my new partner.

I have left a cheque of 100,000.00 Dollars with the Assistance Rev Father in Gambia for you. I will like you to accept this token with good faith as this is from the bottom of my heart. I have raised and signed an International Cheque bank Draft of 100,000.00 Dollars [Hundred Thousand Dollars only] in your name for your efforts and contribution as it were. I really appreciated your tremendous effort and contribution to start off and make things work to the stage you were unable to continue. If you are less busy you can contact the Assistance Rev Fabian Alexandra for the cheque i left with him.

His E-mail address telephone number is as follow

Email Address:(revfabian_alexandra@yahoo.com) His Telephone Number +2207009252

Contact him immediately with this message via his email: (revfabian_alexandra@yahoo.com) So that he can deliver the cheque to you immediately. I have instructed Assistance Rev Fabian Alexandra to send the bank draft to you as soon as you contact him without any delay. He is waiting to hear from you so that he can send the cheque to your house / mailing address or office address information as you may direct him. Thanks,

Greetings from. Susan If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more....
This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the landThe "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didnt have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldnt have noticed it at all.The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here . In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."The book,, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reasonFranklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began. FDR prolonged the Depression . He certainly didn't cure it. WWII did NOT end the Great Depression . It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy! The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party . They ATTACKED Republicans!People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for. America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism . The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted . See also here Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being(to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.
Three longtime College of DuPage trustees  who have led a monthlong boycott that has brought board business to a standstill  filed a lawsuit Friday against the school's attorneys, demanding they turn over invoices and other documents related to their representation.

In a letter sent to the college's three primary law firms earlier this month, trustees Erin Birt, Joseph Wozniak and Dianne McGuire requested a trove of documents that include all billing records, communications and work done on the college's behalf. They also sought records connected to ongoing litigation involving the college, the board or individual trustees. The law firms refused to provide all the records, which the trustees say they need to "fulfill their obligation as board members," according to the lawsuit, filed in DuPage County Circuit Court.

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Their attorney, Chuck Roberts, said the decision to sue the law firms was not easily made.

"Unfortunately, they had to resort to this to get the information they are looking for," he said.

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The three trustees have skipped six board meetings since December, when former chairwoman Katharine Hamilton's abrupt resignation left the board with a 3-3 split. The boycott has rendered the board without a quorum, meaning it doesn't have enough votes to pay bills, approve new hires or endorse three new certificate programs.

The three trustees began their boycott after their efforts to fire the college's lawyers were blocked by three newer trustees, who were elected in April. They long have questioned the firms' legal bills, which have totaled more than $2 million since May, as the college has grappled with internal and criminal investigations.

College officials say the three trustees were told they could meet with the school attorneys to discuss and review the records months ago, but they never acted on the offer.

"Now, rather than do their job, they have filed a frivolous lawsuit that will do nothing except needlessly cost the college more lost time and money," vice chairwoman Deanne Mazzochi said. "Attorneys from all three firms have always been available to each of them to answer their questions on any matter. These three trustees have refused to work through normal channels. Any harm they complain of  and there isn't any  would be self-inflicted."

Their boycott, however, also has blocked a vote on whether to comply with DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin's request to release recordings related to former President Robert Breuder's last contract extension. Prosecutors want to see whether the board violated the state's open meetings law when it met in closed session in February and March 2014 to discuss whether Breuder should get another year added to his deal.

Birt, McGuire and Wozniak were all in that meeting, according to college records.

Breuder  who began severance negotiations soon after receiving the 2014 extension  was later fired last year by a newly elected slate of trustees and stripped of his $763,000 buyout package. He is suing the college for wrongful termination and McGuire has voiced support for settling the lawsuit because she believes he was unfairly dismissed.

Records related to Breuder's ongoing lawsuit would be among the documents in the boycotting trustees' request.

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College attorney Tim Elliott, whose firm is named in the complaint, declined comment because he hadn't seen the lawsuit. Attorneys Dan Kinsella and Andrew Porter  whose firms also were named  could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit and boycott come at a tumultuous time at the college, which was put on probation last month by its accrediting agency after it expressed serious concerns with its integrity and governance.

It was not immediately clear whether the college will bear any financial responsibility for either side.

sstclair@tribpub.com

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People gather at a prayer vigil and protest in Aurora Thursday against the state budget stalemate, which they said is hurting the homeless. (Steve Lord, The Beacon-News)

An area veteran of two tours in Afghanistan is struggling to keep himself and his family in their home.

Under normal circumstances, Neil McMenamin and the organization he directs, Hesed House in Aurora, would be able to help him. But these are not normal circumstances.

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The state budget stalemate between the General Assembly and Gov. Bruce Rauner has forced Hesed House to suspend things like its Homeless Prevention Program.

"Normally, with state money, we would be able to help them stabilize their situation," McMenamin said Thursday. "This is how direct help is being affected  it is hurting us."

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That was just one example cited Thursday at a protest and prayer vigil held by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and some of its area neighbors at Faith Lutheran Church in Aurora.

In addition to the host church and Hesed House, participating groups included: Alpha Missionary Baptist Church; Love Fellowship Baptist Church; Oswego Presbyterian Church; St. Mary Catholic Church; St. Nicholas Catholic Church; Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and Trinity Church of the Nazarene.

Not only did representatives of some of the organizations attend, but so did people who support them, and some homeless and formerly homeless people.

McMenamin pointed out that in addition to the Homeless Prevention Program, Hesed House has had to merge other programs, too. As of right now, the state owes Hesed House a little more than $250,000, which McMenamin said "pays for the lights, pays for the heat" and many other things.

The organization has had to lay off about 8 percent of its workforce  most of them caseworkers for their programs.That was one of the reasons Hesed House members joined others in a bus trip to Springfield Wednesday to protest the governor's State of the State Address.

McMenamin said the group has suggested potential solutions, in particular restoring the state income tax to its level in 2014 of 5 percent. It decreased to 3.75 percent Jan. 1, 2015. The group would also like to see the tax on corporations restored to 7 percent. It fell to 5.25 percent last year. Also, the group supports the so-called "millionaire tax" discussed last year that would have imposed an extra 3-percentage-point income tax on those who make more than $1 million a year.

Sister Rose Marie Lorentzen, of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, pointed out that in the past direct action from the people has worked. Pressure got laws passed allowing the homeless to register to vote, and making sure homeless children could attend school.

"We can do it, we have a history of doing it, and we have a call to do it," she said.

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She called on supporters of the poor and homeless to "write and write and write" letters and e-mails, and "to take buses to Springfield and talk to our legislators."

She said the faith-based community has helped "pick up the bill" for organizations such as Hesed House.

"But that doesn't mean we let Springfield off the hook," Lorentzen said. "You have to let them know that you vote."

To show how the efforts have worked, Renee, who described herself as "a survivor and a success story," offered her story of getting divorced from an abusive spouse, losing everything and facing homelessness with her son.

At one point, she even split herself off from her son until they could get the proper situation. They were reunited in Hesed House's Transitional Living Center, where they got their own space, but also worked as part of a community with others in the program.

She and her son now have found housing.

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"Without TLC, I have no idea where I would be  in jail, I could be dead," she said. "I would have done anything just to support my son. Having a son experiencing homelessness is devastating to any parent."

slord@tribpub.com
The old Fannie May candy store at Lake and New York streets is a vacant building that the city would like to see occupied. (Steve Lord / The Beacon-News)

The Aurora City Council's finance committee has sent a proposal forward to expand the city's vacancy and foreclosure registration ordinance.

The expansion would include more of a financial incentive to property owners to get their buildings occupied and an incentive to develop a marketing plan or strategy directed at potential occupants  possibly with help from the city.

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The committee's action took place after hours of discussion over two meetings. More discussion is expected at the Feb. 2 meeting of the committee of the whole, when the City Council as a whole gets its first look at the proposal.

Staff members said the changes are needed because the current ordinance creates a cycle for owners of vacant and foreclosed properties that seemingly never ends.

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Once a property is flagged, the city identifies the owner, mails the owner a notice that it has 30 days to register a vacant property with the city, and then the process repeats itself.

Alex Voigt, a management analyst from the mayor's office, said the current process lacks "accountability" and "efficiency" and is "asking people what they're going to do, but not what we expect of them."

Under the new proposal, the ordinance would kick in when a building has been vacant for six months, but it would start in earnest when a building has been vacant for two years. After a six-month grace period, the owner of a vacant building would have to pay a $250 registration fee with the city and pay $250 every six months up to two years.

At the point the building has been vacant for two years, the city would ask the property owner to create a marketing plan or strategy for the property. The city would even help, referring the property owner to Invest Aurora , the city's nonprofit redevelopment corporation.

If the property owner creates a marketing plan or strategy at the two-year mark, it buys another year of registration at $250 every six months. Absent a plan, it would be $500 every six months.

After a building has been vacant for three years, city officials again would ask for a plan. With a plan, a property owner would pay $250 every six months; absent a plan, it would again be $500 every six months.

Carie Anne Ergo, Aurora's chief management officer, said Aurora was one of the first cities to enact a vacancy ordinance, and it has had a chance to see what others have done since and what are the "best practices" among those later ordinances.

"We have a chance to see what works," she said. "The reality is people may not like the escalating fee structure, but it works."

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There are 61 vacancy and foreclosure registration ordinances in Illinois and some 500 across the country, city staff said.

Voigt said the current system punishes taxpayers because in extreme cases, the city has to bear the cost of dealing with the vacancies. In one of those extreme cases, the city had to spend $1.3 million to tear down the former West Aurora High School property at Blackhawk Street and Galena Boulevard.

The new system shifts that responsibility more to the property owner. It also gets to the situation faster, to try to keep buildings from deteriorating to an unsafe level, city officials said.

slord@tribpub.com
Waubonsie Valley "Political Warriors" as well as students from Metea and Neuqua Valley high school are preparing to go to the Iowa caucuses next week. (Chris Wolak, The Beacon-News)

When a political issue comes up in Pete Baker's government class at West Aurora High School, he doesn't shy away from the discussion.

He sees it as his job to help students make informed decisions and take part in their democracy.

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As the presidential primary season kicks off Monday with the Iowa caucuses, several Fox Valley educators have taken that view. Students in Naperville, Elgin and Aurora are campaigning locally and in Iowa. Others are tackling politics in class, where one Elgin-area teacher said the personalities of the 2016 campaign have captured his students' attention.

Researchers and members of civic organizations say educators should be teaching about elections, campaigns and current issues to help students become informed citizens. They can encourage students to campaign or become an election judge or foster debates on controversial issues. The key is not to advocate one side, they say.

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"It's no different than, 'Why do we teach science in school?' " said Diana Hess, who has researched civic education and students' discussion of controversial political issues, and is dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

A new civics course requirement for Illinois high-schoolers mirrors those recommendations, specifying that "civics course content shall focus on government institutions, the discussion of current and controversial issues, service learning, and simulations of the democratic process." The one-semester course will be required for graduation beginning next school year.

Many teachers, such as School District U46's Nick Vassolo, are already discussing political issues such as immigration, a topic he said has resonated with students. Just more than half of U46's student population is Hispanic, according to Illinois State Board of Education data.

Vassolo, who teaches Advanced Placement comparative government at Streamwood High School, said there have been times he has had to "shut down things and take control" because the discussion gets heated. He tries to play devil's advocate with students but also shares his own political opinions when asked.

"I tell them right away, my job is to be an advocate in the classroom," he said. "If you go toward Bernie (Sanders), I'll lean toward (Donald) Trump. If you go toward Trump, I'll lean toward Bernie."

Hess, who has written or co-authored two books about politics in the classroom, said it's important to teach about both the political process and the relevant issues facing society, but educators should not teach students what to think about those issues.

"Kids do not learn that just because they live in an environment where there is a lot of talk about politics," she said.

Not every child grows up in a family that participates in politics, she said. Many issues in politics today will directly affect young people, and many juniors and seniors will be eligible to vote in this presidential election.

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When students discuss relevant issues in class, they are more likely to form opinions, which makes them more likely to participate in democracy, she said. Teachers can focus on the basis behind popular opinions  the reasons some people have certain views and others hold opposing views, she said.

"At a minimum, we want to make sure we understand other people's perspectives," she said. "Because if we don't, we tend to demonize people."

As part of that effort, students in Aurora schools have participated in Project Soapbox, a program run in part by the civic engagement organization Mikva Challenge, where they are charged with speaking publicly to advocate a viewpoint on an issue of their choice.

The Mikva Challenge has also taken local students to campaign and participate in the Iowa caucuses and plans to take more, including School District U46 students in Elgin and Indian Prairie School District 204 students in Naperville and Aurora. Brian Brady, national director of the Mikva Challenge, said students need the hands-on experience because democracy can't be studied solely in a classroom.

"This is our democracy," he said. "You can't seal kids off from our elections. They're kind of at the heart of our democracy."

The experience of campaigning for a candidate helps students learn about the process, said Shawn Healy, a civics scholar at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, which has dedicated money for civic education training for teachers. It is the responsibility of schools to make sure students have opportunities to volunteer on both sides of the aisle, Healy said.

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Grants from the Mikva Challenge and the McCormick Foundation, as well as the Dunham Fund, are paying to send 45 District 204 high school students from Neuqua Valley in Naperville and Waubonsie Valley and Metea Valley in Aurora to Iowa to observe the state's caucuses Monday and work in the campaign offices of some of the presidential candidates.

Waubonsie social studies teacher Chris Wolak said teachers' approach in government classes centers on involvement.

"It's not about the politics; it's about the engagement," he said.

District 204 students also have hosted voter registration drives in school, served as election judges, planned candidate forums, and campaigned for the movement to allow 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections if they will be 18 by the general election. That movement is now law.

Healy said the best political discussions occur when students feel comfortable voicing a range of views in class. Often the majority of students in a classroom share the same opinions, but their views tend to be more open than adults', he said.

But in West Aurora, Baker said the diversity brings a range of views. And, in four years of teaching, he can only remember one heated discussion that left students upset.

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"At a diverse school like West Aurora, you're going to have opposite ends of the spectrum," Baker said. "You have kids with money, you have kids with no money. You're going to have every race and religion you can imagine. You're going to get opposing views."

Baker includes units on the executive branch and political ideology in his course, but politics often comes up indirectly in other places. Students have quick access to a lot of news through social media and bring up controversial issues in class, he said.

He said he tries to instill in his students that they have to understand where the people they disagree with are coming from. He said he has seen the polarization of political parties trickling down to his students.

In District U46, meanwhile, Bartlett High School civics teacher Larry Pahl said seniors in his classes tend to lean apolitical, but he tries to instill how unprecedented Trump's candidacy has been.

He said every teacher has his own approach for broaching sensitive topics, but he feels how someone gets to the White House is more important than who they are.

Earlier this month, Vassolo, through the Mikva Challenge, took three students to Iowa to campaign for Bernie Sanders. The group ended up working for Sanders by chance, he said.

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Despite the super-cold January weather, the students "were still super-stoked to see it," Vassolo said.

"This is what it takes to get a president elected in America," he said. "And it's really neat to see."

Freishtat is a Beacon-News reporter, Ziezulewicz is a Courier-News reporter and Baker is a Naperville Sun reporter.

sfreishtat@tribpub.com

geoffz@tribpub.com

subaker@tribpub.com
The great film critic Roger Ebert famously remarked, It is not often given to a director to make a perfect film. Some spend their lives trying, but always fall short. Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Next Tuesday we bring Altmans perfect film to the big screen. The film was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Cinematography, Julie Christie was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, the screenplay was nominated for a Screen Writers Guilds award, and the film was added to the National Film Registry in 2010.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is an anti-western, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie as the films eponymous characters. McCabe is a gambler who shows up in the mining-town Presbyterian Church and quickly establishes a shabby brothel. Mrs. Miller, a Cockney prostitute, arrives in town and offers to become McCabes business partner, bringing in classier women from San Francisco and making other improvements that cause business to thrive. The pairs success attracts the attention of the company that owns the mine, and McCabe is forced to defend it from corporate goons.

The film epitomizes the classic Altman style, which took its full form with his previous years film MASH. Critic David Thompson characterized this as overlapping, blurred sound and images so slippery with zoom that there was no sense of composition. When we first see McCabe walk into the saloon, we are immersed with him into a dark, noisy room where our expectations of character introduction and discernible dialogue are confounded. Consistent with his status as one of the leading directors of the New Hollywood Cinema of the 70s, Altman does not give the audience what it wants, he makes us work for it, with the result that we are pulled into the world of the film, if we are willing to let go of conventional expectations and let Altman and his crew work their magic.

As important as the overlapping sound (recorded on sixteen tracks!) is to the Altman style, with this film it is the visual style that is more important, and distinctive. Vilmos Zsigmond was one of the great cinematographers of the 70s. After getting his break with Altman on this film, he worked with him again on The Long Goodbye. He also worked with Michael Cimino on The Deer Hunter, with John Boorman on Deliverance, and with Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is renown for its striking use of the zoom lens, but even more so for its sepia-toned, muted look. Zsigmond said of it, We didnt want it to look good. The whole idea was to make some old, faded pictures. He used flashing (lightly exposing the negative before shooting), double fog filters, force developing (underexposing the film stock and then processing the negative longer to compensate), and smoke to give the image a diffused, pastel look. He said of it later, I did everything I could to destroy the image! Its all due to Altman, who was very adventurous.

That adventurousness did not endear Altman to the studio execs, who hated the early footage Altman showed them, and demanded that Zsigmond be fired. Altman protected his cinematographer by lying, blaming the look on the Vancouver lab that was doing the processing. Some critics championed the film, but it was a box-office flop and the studio did little to promote it. Altman said, I dont know how McCabe and Mrs. Miller managed to survive, but it did and I must say its thrilling to me.

We think its thrilling too, and hope youll come Tuesday to experience this masterpiece of cinematography on the big screen.
Lincoln-Way High School District Board President Kevin Molloy listens as board member Dr. Arvid Johnson discusses the district's financial challenges, New Lenox, August 13, 2015.|Allen Cunningham/ Daily Southtown (Allen Cunningham, Daily Southtown)

Lincoln-Way High School District 210's now-resigned board president signed an intergovernmental agreement mentioning the Superdog training center nearly three years before he recently claimed to have first learned about the controversial program, a newly obtained record shows.

The document, a July 2012 agreement between Lincoln-Way's board and the Frankfort Square Park District, lists a number of facilities shared between the two governments, including Superdog Obedience Training School, which is mentioned on the second page.

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As board secretary at the time, Kevin Molloy signed the document. So did then-President Arvid Johnson, records show.

Molloy, who on Thursday announced his resignation as District 210's school board president, said he didn't know the intergovernmental agreement involved the controversial dog training center. Johnson did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

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At the end of board meetings, it was not unusual for an administrator to place a "bunch of papers" in front of the board president and secretary to be signed, Molloy said. The administrator would give a brief explanation of each item, Molloy said.

"I assure you (the administrator) did not say it was for a dog training center," Molloy said, adding that the school board had many such agreements with local park districts, so this would not appear to be unusual.

Minutes from the board meeting July 26, 2012, show that extending the intergovernmental agreement was discussed by then-Superintendent Lawrence Wyllie, but Superdog is not mentioned.

Current Superintendent Scott Tingley, who replaced Wyllie in 2013, said he explains any changes or adjustments in agreements or extensions that are presented to the board. Wyllie did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In 2011 and 2012, school district officials spent nearly $45,000 to renovate a barn on the district's North campus for a dog training center that school district officials said they didn't know about.

The Superdog school is led by a trainer who has worked with Wyllie and his Australian shepherds and still holds classes on campus.

To critics, the school district's Superdog renovation represents a broader trend of questionable financial management that contributed to District 210 landing on the state's financial watch list. In an attempt to fix its financial woes, the school district announced last year that it's closing Lincoln-Way North this summer.

This week, Molloy broke his silence on the subject and said he hadn't even heard of Superdog until March 2015, when the teachers union held a question-and-answer session and one of the participants stood up to ask about a "dog-training facility."

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Molloy placed responsibility for Superdog on Wyllie's shoulders, saying it "plain and simple was done with the marching orders of the superintendent who put this together."

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Frankfort Square Park District Executive Director Jim Randall has said his district didn't formally take over the program until 2014, a point he reiterated during an interview Thursday.

"We had nothing to do with that program from 2012 to 2014," Randall said. "There's no confusion on that."

The intergovernmental agreement Molloy signed sets rules for scheduling facilities use between the two governments, among other things, and includes information about meeting rooms, performing arts and pool parties.

The agreement also praises Superdog, saying it "improves the quality of life of resident pet owners, offering a unique opportunity for year-round enjoyment with documented physical, social and health benefits in high demand and appreciated by participants."

gpratt@tribpub.com

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Twitter @royalpratt
Improvements to Hemmens Cultural Center using Grand Victoria Casino tax money are part of Elgin's capital plans for 2016. (Mike Danahey, The Courier-News)

The Elgin City council Wednesday night discussed plans for this year to spend about $31.8 million, mostly on capital and capital improvement projects, with $25 million of that to be used to pay for infrastructure work.

The Council unanimously moved along for final approval the sale of general obligation corporate purpose bonds to finance $15 million in street repairs and improvements and $10 million for water and sewer projects.

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City Manager Sean Stegall noted a property tax increase that is part of the 2016 budget is making the much-needed work possible. It is the largest capital plan during his tenure with Elgin, he said.

The 2016 budget the Council passed in December raised taxes about $120 on a $170,000 home in the Kane County part of Elgin and around $85 for the Cook County part, with the increased revenue helping cover pension obligations and interest on the bonds.

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"This is one of the most important issues we've tackled," Councilman Terry Gavin said. "It was a very small tax increase, and these streets need to be done. If you didn't vote for the budget there would have been no way to pay for this work."

Councilwoman Tish Powell  who attended the meeting via phone while out of Elgin for a work-related conference  said low interest and low fuel prices make it advantageous to move forward with the extensive schedule of projects now.

Public Services Director Greg Rokos pointed out that the work includes:

Resurfacing five-and-a-half street miles in the Century Oaks West subdivision on the west side.

Two miles of water main replacement, two miles of street rehab and 750 feet of sewer work in the Eagle Heights South subdivision on the west side

One-and-a-half miles of street rehab, One-and-a-half miles of water main work, and 400 feet of sewer replacement in the East Street/Lin Lor neighborhood on the west side.

Seven-and-a-half miles of street resurfacing on the northeast side.

The resurfacing of two-and-a-half street miles in the Oakwood subdivision on the east side.

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A half-mile of street rehab in the Woodard and Standish area on the west side.

And three-quarters of a mile of street rehab, 3,400 feet of water main and 350 feet of sewer replacement on the east side in the Plum Street and St. John area.

Senior Management Analyst Laura Valdez-Wilson told the Council of plans to keep residents aware of the projects, what is being done, where and when through means including the city newsletter, a Web page, social media, the Elgin 311 app, a lobby display, letters, door hangers and email.

With the state in late December finally releasing money it had been holding from the city's share of Grand Victoria Casino money, at the meeting Stegall also revisited the city's 2016 $4.5 million Riverboat and $1.5 million Riverboat Lease Funds.

Among set-asides from the casino money are $200,000 for renovations to Lords Park Zoo, where zoo advocates hope to add a third bison, $275,000 for city building repairs, $200,000 for Hemmens auditorium lights and $405,510 for other possible improvements to Hemmens, the cultural arts center downtown.

Individual items will come before the City Council for approval, Stegall said.

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The committee of the whole session also held a public hearing concerning its action plan for $800,000 Elgin expects to receive in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant money. This is the 42nd year for Elgin to be getting money from the program, Community Development Director Marc Mylott said. Elgin has received about $33.7 million in CDBG funding since 1975.

"This is a completely different approach for us," Stegall said of this year's plan.

With the state's still-unsettled budget impacting the operation of local human services, the Council decided for 2016 to apply to use Community Development Block Grant money to fund qualifying projects of its own. In past years, the city had been awarding this money to human service agencies which applied for their own qualifying capital projects.

The Community Development Block Grant money must be used on projects to benefit low to moderate income households, so this year's allotment would focus on improvements totaling about $750,000 to four neighborhood parks including Grolich Park, Wing Street Park, Trillium Park and Woodview Park.

As example, Parks and Recreation Director Randy Reopelle noted Wing Street Park, which is about five blocks from Wing Park, would be getting new playground equipment and other upgrades making it Americans with Disabilities Act compliant.

Another $15,000 would provide emergency funds for the repair of water service, water heater replacement, sanitary sewer laterals, electrical systems upgrades and furnace replacement within homes owned and occupied by low or moderate income families. And $35,000 would be put toward program administration.

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Community Crisis Center Executive Director Gretchen Vapnar reminded the Council that in past years the Community Development Block Grant money helped the center renovate and maintain its east side building. She called the program as it was remarkable and extraordinary and said, "This is very serious for those of us (in human services) in adaptive reuse buildings."

Mdanahey@tribpub.com
When I requested the specifics of her situation, Kari provided me a lot of details, but the main thrust of her complaint was this: After two years of searching, Kari had found what she thought was the perfect sofa at a new La-Z-Boy retailer in Maple Grove, Minn.  a brand-new model called Tribeca. She described it thusly: "After two years of searching, I had finally found the couch I had been looking for. The back was high enough, the cushion under me was wide and deep enough and my lower back was well supported by the lumbar support." After paying what Kari described as "a total price that was a lot higher than the sale price of $1,600" she and her boyfriend waited for the sofa to arrive. "When the sofa was delivered, it looked beautiful and the fabric was lovely, but upon sitting down on the sofa, I found it felt nothing like the Tribeca in the showroom  I could even feel the bar from the back of the couch."
Melodie Gliniewicz, 51, of Antioch, is walked through the Lake County Sheriff's Office in handcuffs after being indicted Jan. 27, 2016. She is the widow of Fox Lake Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, who staged his suicide to look like a homicide in September 2015. (Stacey Wescott, Chicago Tribune)

For some of the donors who tried to help the family of Fox Lake police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz after his death last fall, Wednesday's indictment charging his widow in connection with her husband's alleged thefts was one more sad turn in a story that already had many.

"It just makes your head spin," said Joe Ahern, CEO of the 100 Club of Chicago, which assists survivors of officers killed in the line of duty.

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Gliniewicz's Sept. 1 death, initially presumed to be a murder, prompted an outpouring of community support. Two months later, authorities announced he had committed suicide and staged his death to look like a murder, fearing alleged thefts from a youth group he ran would soon be exposed.

On Wednesday, his widow, Melodie Gliniewicz, 51, was charged with felony money laundering and misuse of charitable funds, with authorities saying they believe the Gliniewiczes spent more than $10,000 from accounts meant to support the Explorers post on expenses such as a Hawaiian vacation and more than 400 restaurant charges.

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Her lawyers denied the charges, saying she was "a victim of her husband's secret actions."

Ahern began seeking the return of the $15,000 his organization gave Melodie Gliniewicz after authorities announced her husband took his own life. It was the first time the nearly 50-year-old organization had requested a refund, but Gliniewicz's death wasn't in the line of duty and didn't fit the group's mission, Ahern said at the time.

After Melodie Gliniewicz's indictment, Ahern said he had yet to receive a response from her attorneys.

"I'm still hoping it gets resolved," he said. "I'm hoping they'll do the right thing."

Ryan Oberly, an attorney with a Chicago-based law firm that works with nonprofit organizations, said people who donate to charitable organizations can file a lawsuit if they believe the organization is misusing their money.

Donors can also report concerns to the Illinois attorney general's Charitable Trust Bureau, which investigates violations of Illinois laws governing charitable assets, considered public funds, he said.

"They have a lot of authority and sway and carry a big stick versus one person," he said.

But while that might apply to someone who donated to the Explorers, someone who donated directly to the Gliniewicz family or one of the fundraisers well-intentioned community members set up to help them in the wake of the officer's death would have little legal recourse, said Maura Possley, spokeswoman for the Illinois attorney general's office.

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Although such a contribution might feel like a charitable donation, it's really a private gift, which doesn't have the same consumer protections, Possley said.

Even when the attorney general recovers money from a charity, whether due to fraud or simply closing shop, donors don't get refunds, Possley said. The money is considered a gift and they find a way to give it to a cause that furthers the original charity's mission, she said.

That's fine with Tim Potoczny, owner of Sparrow Express Transport, who said his company bought a Camaro police car the Volo Auto Museum auctioned off to raise money for Gliniewicz's children.

"I think there are still people involved who are innocent and need the help," he said.

Potoczny said he still has the car, adorned with a lieutenant's badge, an American flag and Gliniewicz's name. He plans to remove the decorations and try to sell it.

There's not much of a market for used squad cars, he said, but he still expects to get some money for it. Potoczny said he'll donate any profit on the sale to another charity.

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"We were just trying to do something good," he said.

lzumbach@tribpub.com

Twitter @laurenzumbach
The problem with The Finest Hours starts with the title. If you know the movie is about a perilous boat rescue and its called The Finest Hours, it robs any ounce of suspense that might be achieved during all of the roiling seas and ocean thrashing that follows  those guys are probably going to pull off that rescue.

Unfortunately bogged down by its own generic conventions, coupled with a bland script, The Finest Hours doesnt achieve the tension that it should for this incredible true story of a 1952 Cape Cod small boat rescue. In fact, your interest might be more piqued when the credits roll, when photographs of the real people are juxtaposed with their Hollywood counterparts, because its something different and interesting.

And what Hollywood counterparts they are. Chris Pine takes on the aw-shucks role of Coast Guardsman Bernie Webber, whos written as the straightest, most guileless arrow that could be. Representing Boston is Casey Affleck, who plays Ray Sybert, the engine master of the oil tanker battling stormy seas. (The Massachusetts accents are laid on so thick, its a shock that a Wahlberg doesnt pop up.)

Theres a lot of hemming and hawing, but we all know that Webbers going to go save Sybert and his men. Everything in the script is telegraphed from miles away, which is another way this movie drains itself of tension.

The cast is stacked with talent  Eric Bana, Ben Foster, and up and comers like Kyle Gallner and John Magaro. Unfortunately, they just arent given all that much to do, except stretch their vowels and squint into driving rain. The crew aboard the tanker gets a passing characterization  this one sings, that ones mean, this ones old  but mostly they dodge flying boat parts and shout about how many degrees to turn the tanker. It becomes hard to distinguish all the different soaking wet white men from each other. Aside from bungling the characterization, the film continually misplaces its sense of import: a mild fender bender is treated with far higher dramatics than things like the oil tanker splitting in half.

The true breakout star of The Finest Hours is Holliday Grainger, a British actress who lights up the screen like a lighthouse (she becomes, quite literally, a port in a storm). She plays feisty Miriam, Webbers fiancee, a girl who doesnt follow any rules, while he follows all of them. Grainger is luminous and lovely, even though she is saddled with a role thats essentially a widows walk: fretting and worrying on land, waiting for her man to return.

The last 30 minutes of The Finest Hours, are the best, and the film truly outpaces itself in its third act, which has some genuine affect and emotion, Carter Burwells score wringing tears out of thin air like so many salty seawater raindrops.

But the first two-thirds are entirely predictable and therefore dull. It feels like a parody of a prestige film, like one of the fake Oscar trailers in Tropic Thunder. Someones gotta go save those guys! Navy man Ervin (Magaro) chirps, as if its a huge revelation.

Its a very standard heroism story, in which a bunch of white guys save another bunch of white guys (OK, there are two minorities). It would be easy to call it old-fashioned, but classical Hollywood flicks were more entertaining than this damp tale.
Deanne Mazzochi, acting chairwoman of the College of DuPage board, said she will make one more attempt before a February deadline to appoint a trustee to replace former Chairwoman Katharine Hamilton. (Jon Langham / Chicago Tribune)

A split College of DuPage board again failed to meet Thursday to discuss business such as paying bills, and the acting chairwoman said she will make one more attempt before a February deadline to appoint a trustee to replace Katharine Hamilton, the former board chairwoman who resigned in December.

Deanne Mazzochi, acting chairwoman of the board of trustees, said she believes a discussion of the applicants seeking the position was important enough to call Thursday night's special board meeting. Although there had not been another scheduled board meeting until Feb. 18, Mazzochi said she chose Thursday night for a special meeting because it had, at one point, been a night the three boycotting board members, Dianne McGuire, Erin Birt and Joseph Wozniak, had indicated they could meet.

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The board overseeing the Glen Ellyn community college has until Feb. 11 to appoint a new member before the Illinois Community College Board steps in to select a replacement. Multiple meetings have been called but could not be convened because there was not a quorum without the three boycotting trustees. The board has not had a quorum since Hamilton abruptly resigned. The stalemate could go on until a trustee is named to replace Hamilton and break a 3-3 board tie that pits the three longest-serving board members against the three newer trustees, Mazzochi, Frank Napolitano and Charles Bernstein

"I was hoping they would come and talk about the candidates. This is a critical issue facing the college," Mazzochi said. "It's unfortunate that certain trustees have taken a position that there is an irreconcilable divide on the board."

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The three boycotting trustees did not return calls seeking comment.

McGuire and Birt recently sent a letter to the Illinois Community College Board indicating the board's business would not resume until the seventh trustee was selected.

Seven meetings have been boycotted on five days that meetings have been called.

College of DuPage spokesman Joseph Moore on Friday said those efforts have cost the college money, but was unable to provide a dollar amount. He said the college pays hourly rates for its attorneys and outside consultants, including the college's chief financial officer, to attend.

"Those costs will vary depending on how long the meetings run," Moore said.

Mazzochi said she wants to provide the other trustees every opportunity to provide their input on tapping a new trustee.

"I don't want cost to be an obstacle," Mazzochi said.

There are currently 27 applicants seeking the trustee position. There were 28, but one withdrew, according to the college. If the decision to replace Hamilton falls to the state, that group is not bound to pick a candidate from the 27 applicants. Mazzochi said the state board can select any eligible individual who lives in the college's district. The Illinois Community College Board would not have a timeline to name a replacement, but Mazzochi said she anticipates officials would act quickly if the decision falls to them.

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"They are well aware of the situation here at the College of DuPage," Mazzochi said.

Mazzochi said she has plans to call one more special meeting before the Feb. 11 deadline in hopes that one of the three boycotting trustees will show up. That meeting will only have one item on its agenda selecting a new trustee.

"I really want us to have some time to discuss these candidates," Mazzochi said.

Alex Keown is a freelance reporter.

napervillesun@tribpub.com

Twitter: @NapervilleSun
Park Ridge native and 1979 Maine South graduate David Hoelscher is the executive producer of the independent film "Jim Shoe," which will be shown at the Pickwick Theater on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m.

The film, Hoelscher's first, tells the story of four members of a law firm who compete for the position of partner by taking on pro bono charity work, from mentoring a West Side gang member to becoming a caretaker for an Alzheimer's patient.

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Several scenes in the movie were filmed in Park Ridge, where Hoelscher still lives.

Q: Where in Park Ridge did you film?

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A: We were all over. We were at the Summit of Uptown retirement community, we were at Max's Restaurant on Higgins Road, we were at the Ryan-Parke Funeral Home. Those were the major places.

Q: Why did you choose Park Ridge?

A: The movie is about four associates at a Chicago law firm, so we knew we wanted to film in and around Chicago. Growing up here [in Park Ridge], I knew a lot of these locations would fit well in our script.

Q: How did you get involved in this film?

A: A buddy I used to trade with at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, Pete Sutton, moved out to L.A. about 20 years ago and we kept in touch. We talked about our interest in film and filmmaking and he would send me an occasional script to read for fun. [The script for "Jim Shoe"] was the result of the 2008 recession. We talked about doing it four years ago with a much bigger budget, with investors and things like that, but I wasn't comfortable with that. In the spring of 2014 we came to a decision: We were either going to do it or not. So we decided to do it and we came to an agreement that we would finance the production ourselves and he would direct it and I would produce it.

Q: Did you have prior film production experience?

A: No. I didn't quite know what to expect, but I wanted to do into it as a learning experience. I thought, "If this doesn't get picked up and distributed, that's fine. If it doesn't become 'successful,' but it's something I worked hard at, let's chalk it up to experience."

Q: You attended Maine South. Were you interested in film in high school?

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A: I was in a film class there. Our final exam was to put a three-minute film together. That may have been where I got the bug.

Q: Do you think you'll produce another film?

A: We'll have to come up for air here and see where this goes. I would be open to the opportunity, but I might be better suited as the second in command, not the head guy. That was a lot of responsibility, which I'm not afraid of, but we'll see.

Jennifer Johnson, Pioneer Press

jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @Jen_Pioneer

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Shout Out is a weekly feature in which we get to know and introduce our readers to their fellow community members and local visitors throughout suburban Chicago. Check out more online at ChicagoTribune.com/ShoutOut.
Kelayla Griffin, left, and Rosaelena Tamez wash their dishes after a snack in their Montessori class at the Bethune Early Childhood Development Center in Gary. (Carole Carlson / Post-Tribune)

Gary's Bethune Early Childhood Development Center will shore up its roof and expand its classroom offerings with a $50,000 grant from Early Learning Indiana.

Bethune is the lone Northwest Indiana program to receive a grant and one of 11 statewide to split $470,000 in grant funding.

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Principal Karon Ramsey said drug giant Eli Lilly, based in Indianapolis, finances the grant program to help low-income children attend high quality preschools.

"I was very proud," said Ramsey. "Most of the grants went to southern Indiana."

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Ramsey said the grant will allow the school, operated by the Gary Community School Corp. at 2367 E. 21st Ave., to increase its enrollment by about 132 children.

She said the school's enrollment now is 543 with a waiting list of nearly 70 children.

She said the school offers traditional preschool classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, Montessori, and special education classes. The Montessori program had been recently downsized by the retirements of instructors. Ramsey said two teachers will receive Montessori training in June with the grant proceeds, allowing the program to add two more Montessori classrooms when school opens in the fall.

In addition, grant money will go toward fixing a leaky roof and updating plumbing fixtures.

Meanwhile, Ramsey said Bethune will soon participate in the state On My Way Pre-K program that provides low-income families with vouchers for their children to attend highly rated schools before they start kindergarten. Applications are at the school and the deadline to apply is March 25.

Children are selected by a random computerized drawing.

The preschool program was developed by Gov. Mike Pence in 2014 after he opted not to seek $80 million in federal preschool funding for Indiana. The General Assembly approved Pence's preschool pilot in 2014, setting aside $10 million a year to send an estimated 2,500 children to preschool in five counties, including Lake. Pence wanted to include 40,000 children.

The new state program drew criticism after the Indianapolis Star found the majority of families who applied for preschool vouchers were turned away because of limited funding. The Star found that only 40 percent of those who applied in Lake County were accepted.

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Also, programs that do participate have to match some of the state funding.

Last month, during a Northwest Indiana appearance, Pence said accepting the U.S. Department of Education $80 million grant would be premature.

"I just simply did not want to involve Indiana in a federal grant that always brings strings," Pence said.

"I fully expect it to come. Our pilot is going well," he said.

He said his administration deserves credit for establishing Indiana's first pre-K state program, even though the legislature trimmed his original funding request.

ccarlson@post-trib.com

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Chris Osler stocks the shelves at Booze Liquor in Merrillville. Indiana's convoluted rules regarding Sunday sales of liquor are more a result of conflicting business interests than a legacy of religion-influenced blue laws. (Jim Karczewski, Post-Tribune)

Browsing the alcohol aisles at your local grocery store, you may find beer, wine and liquor  if there's a pharmacy is on site  but none of it is allowed to be cold.

Running into the liquor store for some last-minute libations, you can find cold beer, wine and liquor, but no sodas or snacks to go with your alcohol.

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And don't even try to buy alcohol on a Sunday, when all carry-out liquor sales are prohibited except at microbreweries and wineries.

Indiana's alcohol laws are a tangled mess, which is less a legacy of religion-influenced "blue laws" and more of an example of competing business interests.

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It's one of the last states to ban carry-out sales on Sundays still on the books in the United States. Proposals to repeal the ban get ample attention each year in the Indiana General Assembly, but efforts always fail due to deep disagreements between package liquor stores, retailers and convenience stores. Retailers are in favor of repealing the ban, but many package liquor stores think Sunday sales would unfairly benefit retailers.

Thad Brody, owner of Booze Liquors in Merrillville, wants to keep his store closed on Sundays, and he did just that on Christmas, even though a new law had opened up sales on the holiday.

"We would be splitting the sales that we make on Saturday, so it just doesn't work out to the financial increase that they argue," Brody said. "Anyway, we're supposed to be in church on that day. I have only one day off, and I would have to find people willing to work on Sunday."

Brody said the costs of labor and overhead for one more day a week wouldn't be worth it. He said the drive for Sunday sales is pushed by the grocery stores and other retailers.

"They're open anyway, so it makes no difference to them," he said. "But I do think it's going to pass at some point."

Some Indiana legislators, such as Rep. Tom Dermody, R-LaPorte, have been trying to change the law with bills that would open up Sunday sales. Dermody's House Bill 1399 failed to advance out of the House Public Policy committee on Wednesday, and he said it's a disappointment as he's retiring from the legislature.

"The biggest difficulty is it's not about what Hoosiers want, but about the package liquor stores," Dermody said.

From some consumers, ending the ban would be a matter of convenience.

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Merrillville resident Janice Harris said she's supportive of opening up alcohol sales on Sunday.

"Yeah, I think it's a good idea, instead of having to head to Illinois if we need something on a Sunday," Harris said.

Cheri Terranova, who lives in Merrillville, said she doesn't drive to Illinois for alcohol on Sundays, but she knows friends who do.

"I do find that I make a point to stock up if I'm having people come over on a Sunday," Terranova said.

Dermody said he put together a bill last year to open up Sunday liquor sales, and though it pleased package liquor stores  retailers were required to sell beer and wine in designated areas with hard liquor behind the counter  it failed to pass on the House floor.

"I decided to go forward with a clean bill this year," he said.

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In a statement, Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers President and CEO Patrick Tamm said, "Last year there was comprehensive legislation put forth that contained significant public policy regarding where and how alcohol is sold, which included Sunday Sales. We were proud to support last year's bill, however this year's legislation, unfortunately, did not meet that objective. We thank the committee for acknowledging that alcohol is not milk or candy and for ultimately upholding Indiana's regulations on alcohol."

Dermody said he's not sure about the willingness among the legislature to open up Sunday sales in the future.

"I think there's a better opportunity of reviewing (Indiana Code Title) 7.1," Dermody said.

So for now, it's the status quo in Indiana, where the state's liquor laws are even confusing to those in the industry.

"We can't sell cold soda or bottled still water," Brody said. "We can sell charged (carbonated) water, but not still. I didn't realize until the excise police came in and said 'you can't have that.' When you think about it, we really can only sell about seven things."

cnance@post-trib.com
James Luttinen, of Porter Township, has been charged with rape in the alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old baby sitter. (Porter County Sheriff's Department)

A Lakes of the Four Seasons man who police said is an information technology specialist with the FBI's Chicago office is in custody for allegedly raping a 16-year-old girl he'd purchased liquor for and who was baby-sitting his children.

James Luttinen, of the 1900 block of Hidden Valley Drive in Porter Township, was taken into custody Jan. 21 at the FBI's office in Chicago and extradited Tuesday to Porter County Jail, according to a news release from the Porter County Sheriff's Department. He is in custody on a $100,000 cash bond.

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Luttinen told police he was "three sheets to the wind" the night of the alleged rape and "there was a young, good-looking girl, rubbing up against me," the probable cause affidavit states.

According to the court document, the girl told police Luttinen picked her up to baby-sit his children July 18 while he and his wife went to a block party and on the way to his house, he stopped to buy her a box of Smirnoff wine coolers and told her she could drink them after the kids had gone to bed.

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She told police after the children were in bed, she had a few of the drinks, enough to feel drunk, and was getting ready to go to bed when Luttinen, his wife and a couple of their friends returned home, according to the affidavit.

Luttinen persuaded the girl to go swimming with them and while she was looking for her bathing suit, he offered her a Jell-O shot, which she took, the report said. The girl told police she remembered she couldn't find her swimsuit or anything else to swim in and then blacked out.

She told police when she regained consciousness a short time later, Luttinen was naked and on top of her and she couldn't say anything because she was in a state of shock, the affidavit said.

The girl told police Luttinen stopped when his wife entered the room and yelled at Luttinen.

Luttinen's wife told police he was intoxicated that night and at one point, she saw her husband naked with the girl on a couch, the affidavit stated.

Luttinen told police that if he wasn't drunk, he would not have had sex with the girl and admitted that a 16-year-old girl who had been drinking cannot give consent for sex, the affidavit stated.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
With nine wilderness areas on all or parts of the Coconino National Forest, the Red Rock Ranger District is presenting a new project which will help forest visitors appreciate and care for their surrounding wilderness areas. Wilderness Ranger Danielle Boulais will work with members of the Arizona Natural History Association, Friends of the Forest, the Boynton Canyon Preservation Fund and interested volunteers to promote the Red Rock Wilderness Visitor Education Project.

Boulais and others will provide learning opportunities in the form of trailhead discussions and guided Meet the Ranger hikes for forest visitors on wilderness trails. Individuals who may be interested in learning more about wilderness, wildlife and recreation on the Red Rock District, can meet Ranger Boulais at the Boynton Canyon trailhead every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For more information about the project, call her at 928-255-8583.
With the scope and penalties of Chinas social credit system being further clarified in 2021, legal and regulatory compliance has become more important than...
Confucius Institute in Sofia on Thursday evening staged a festive show to celebrate the coming Chinese New Year in the Big Hall of its recently opened new building.

Children, who are studying Chinese language at the five schools in the Bulgarian capital, and their Chinese teachers, as well as soloists of Sofia Opera, sang and danced enthusiastically to the applause of over 250 spectators including Bulgarian Vice-President Margarita Popova and Chinese Ambassador to Bulgaria Wei Jinghua.

Meanwhile, books by Chinese authors and China-related photos and pictures were exhibited in the corridors of the hall.

"It is a great joy to gather together on nice and beautiful occasions, especially when a country with an ancient culture celebrates its New Year," Popova said addressing the event.

With great respect, Bulgaria will join in the celebration of the Chinese people, and together with them to find ways on how together can contribute to the mutual understanding, she said.

Wei, Chinese ambassador to Bulgaria, said he believes that the Confucius Institute in Sofia will increasingly play an important role in the development of bilateral relations between Bulgaria and China.

The teaching of Chinese language in Bulgaria began in the 1950s in Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" and it has become increasingly popular over the past three years with over 2,000 people studying Chinese in two Confucius Institutes, five universities and some 20 schools.
Photo taken on Aug. 13, 2015 shows a visitor taking photos on the exhibition of China high-speed trains in Jakarta, Indonesia. [Xinhua]

The high-speed rail project remains a priority for the Indonesian government amid reports that said it had been "halted" and did not come through official channels, the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing told China Daily on Friday.

Santo Darmosumarto, counselor of social and cultural affairs at the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing said the project was definitely ongoing as the Indonesian government just issued a presidential decree in January listing the project as one of their 225 priority projects for 2016.

"I think the media has been too sensational about the project," Darmosumarto said, and stressed that such project involves a process and regulations that have to be complied with.
 Flash

Tourists take wedding pictures during a trip to Antarctica. Luxury travel packages are popular with rich Chinese, and a report says Antarctica, the Maldives, Australia, Dubai and France are top luxury destinations.(Photo provided to China Daily)

As more Chinese names make it onto the global rich list, luxury tourism packages are proving more popular.

The number of Chinese billionaires swelled to 596 in 2015, which saw the country overtake the United States for the first time, according to Hurun Report, a market-intelligence company.

"Despite the economic slowdown, China's richest people created more wealth in a single year than any country has ever done before," says Rupert Hoogewerf, the chairman of Hurun, who has tipped China to become the world's top luxury-tourism market.

How to tap that potential is the question now being asked by those in the industry.

In early 2014, Beijing Utour International Travel Service launched Magic Travel to cater to the expanding ranks of wealthy Chinese.

"Compared with years ago, the market is much more mature," says Li Mengran, Utour's publicity manager.

"Today, there's more to luxury travel than just being ostentatious."

A Hurun/International Luxury Travel Market Asia report released in May says half of all superrich travelers flew business class in 2014, compared to one-third the previous year.

Chinese luxury travelers have grown more accustomed to good service and well-planned itineraries, says Steve Spivak, vice-president of global sales for Tauck, the US-based tour organizer.

"Itineraries that offer rich, exotic experiences are now popular with superrich travelers, such as our Amazon River cruise or an expedition to a Kenyan national park."

Li adds that tours to the Arctic and Antarctica led by scientists and accompanied by professional photographers are also best-sellers.

The Hurun/International Luxury Travel Market Asia report says Antarctica was the most popular destination among China's high net-worth individuals in 2014, especially during the Spring Festival break. Other top luxury destinations were the Maldives, Australia, Dubai and France.

The report says the United Kingdom and Italy have seen significant increases in their popularity and forecasts that Europe will rank first in terms of luxury leisure travel over the next three years.

"Leisure and global travel are set to be the themes for the next three years, and next is polar exploration," the report says.

"Superrich travelers, while hoping for novel and extreme experiences, also crave physical and spiritual relaxation during their travels and vacations."
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Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Thursday that the country will grant visa exemption for Chinese tourists as a measure to boost tourism.

When announcing the revised Budget 2016, Najib said that subject to certain conditions, visa will not be required for Chinese tourists to Malaysia for a period of no more than 15 days beginning from March 1 to Dec. 31, 2016.

This is among the efforts of the Malaysian government to lure the Chinese tourists to prop up its tourism, with the country's economy hit by the weak oil and international commodity price since last year.

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said that the country aims to draw annually 8 million Chinese tourists over the next five years with RM22.1 billion (about 5.24 billion U.S. dollars) spending power.

Acknowledging the arduousness of the target, Zahid said that the average spending of Chinese tourists on food, lodging and shopping has reached RM3345 (about 792.4 dollars), and by taking proper planning and effective promotion, the aim could be realized.
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Five people were killed early this week in an attack suspected to be carried out by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria's northeastern state of Borno, local residents said Thursday.

The deceased were suspected to have been ambushed by their assailants in Jawu district located about 20 km away from the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, said a resident identified as Malam Bawa.

Ashir Gafar, another resident, said the victims' corpses were found by a search party formed by youths of the area who were prompted by an information that some traders were missing since Monday. The resident said the bodies have been deposited in a local hospital.

"Some 13 traders had gone on an expedition early this week but only eight returned to tell the story of their harrowing experience in an attack carried out by suspected Boko Haram militants," he said.

Nigeria's government said it has "technically" defeated the ruthless Boko Haram group operating in the West African country since 2009.

Early Wednesday, the group launched multiple suicide attacks in Chibok town of Borno State, killing at least 13 people and injured almost 30.
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Three Chinese naval ships, comprising the guided-missile frigates Liuzhou, Sanya and the comprehensive supply ship Qinghaihu Wednesday arrived at Bangladesh's southeastern seaport city Chittagong, some 242 km southeast of capital Dhaka, for a five-day goodwill visit.

Photo taken on Jan. 27, 2016 shows the crews of the guided-missile frigate Liuzhou of Chinese naval ships at Bangladesh's southeastern seaport city Chittagong. [Photo/Xinhua]

The ships were welcomed by top Bangladesh Naval officers including Commodore M Rashed Ali, captain of BNS (Bangladesh Naval Ship) Issa Khan, and scores of Chinese living in the country.

Bangladesh navy held a welcome ceremony for the Chinese ships. Many Chinese living in Bangladesh, waving Chinese national flags, expressed their regards to the officers and crew of Chinese ships.

Bangladesh Navy Ship Bijoy welcomed the Chinese navy taskforce soon after they reached Bangladesh waters in the Bay of Bengal.

A statement distributed during the welcome ceremony expressed the hope that the visit of the ships will further strengthen the cooperation and friendship between the navies of the two countries.

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang, who was present in the welcome ceremony, has also expressed his confidence that the visit of the ships will further promote the fraternal friendship between China and Bangladesh.

The Chinese ships are expected to leave Bangladesh on Jan. 31.
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Sweden is planning to deport up to 80,000 asylum seekers over the next few years, a government representative said on Thursday.

Swedish authorities received some 163,000 asylum applications in 2015 but the country is now planning to step up deportation efforts, interior minister Anders Ygeman told public broadcaster Swedish Television.

"It's about motivating people and being ready to help with their repatriation," Ygeman said. "But ultimately, we have to be prepared to use force."

Swedish authorities were planning to charter jets for the specific purpose of sending migrants back to their home countries, the minister said.

The government is mulling over introducing government benefits for returnees, Ygeman added, meanwhile stressing the importance of stopping those whose asylum applications were denied from staying in Sweden.

"We have to make it as difficult as possible, both logistically once someone has been notified of rejection, but also against all employers who exploit illegal labor," Ygeman said.

A spike in deportations should not be expected until a year from now, the minister said.

Asylum admissions peaked in Sweden in November when the country admitted up to 10,000 migrants per week, according to figures from its migration agency.

Since then, the center-left government has introduced a number of measures to limit admissions, among them temporary residence permits for all asylum seekers except those seeking refuge under a United Nations quota system.

The Swedish government has since early 2016 been imposing fines on train, ferry and bus operators whose passengers enter the country from Denmark without valid photo identification.
The head of the largest contractor on the Four Forest Restoration Initiative said he is bullish about the companys forest thinning work in 2016.

In a presentation to 4FRI stakeholders on Wednesday, Jason Rosamond said Good Earth Power AZ has plans to invest $100 million and thin 16,000 acres across northern Arizonas forests next year.

Thats compared to the 2,405 acres the company thinned from October 2014 to October 2015, the time period the Forest Service uses to track progress on the 4FRI project.

This year is a good year for us, Rosamond told about 50 members of the stakeholder group at its monthly meeting in Pinetop. The company holds a Forest Service contract that aims to thin 300,000 acres by 2022.

The company also will have a new $80 million flagship mill up and operational in Coconino County by May of 2017, Rosamond said. The company didnt respond to follow-up questions about where the mill will be located.

The mill will produce 342 million board-feet per year, Rosamond said. In other words, it will be able to process timber from 27,000 acres annually.

According to Rosamond's projections, the companys thinning and processing operations will reach a rate of 49,000 acres per year starting in 2017 and going through the last five years of its contract, getting it close to fulfilling the 300,000-acre goal.

At the end of Rosamond's presentation however, Jerry Payne, deputy director of the Arizona State Forestry Division, questioned whether such a mill could survive in the area long-term.

When I go back historically, the region Arizona and New Mexico together, in the '80s and '90s we cut 300 million board feet in both states, Payne said. It really worries me in five, 10, 20 years whether that number is at all sustainable.

Rosamond responded that GEPAZ believes the mill will produce sufficient payback in the final five years of the contract.

In addition to ramping up production and capacity, GEPAZ will grow from 366 direct and contract employees this year to about 1,000 by the end of 2017, Rosamond said.

When it comes to finding markets for its wood products, Good Earth in December signed an agreement to pre-sell all of its lumber for the duration of the 4FRI contract to International Forest Products, Rosamond said. It also has pre-sold much of the biomass expected to be produced from logging operations, he said.

In addition, the company is in the process of purchasing a bagging line for soil products. It has yet to figure out a location for that machinery, but Rosamond said it would be operational by April. Those bagged products will then be shipped by rail to various destinations, Rosamond said. For every ton of saw logs produced, the companys timber operations on the stewardship contract produce more than a ton of biomass, he said.

The companys expected 2016 investments include $4.3 million that will go into new equipment at its Lumberjack mill in Heber and a retrofit of the Williams mill, which will happen this quarter, Rosamond said.

The Williams mill is running at a rate of 40,000 board feet per shift and the planned retrofit would increase that run rate to 60,000 board feet per shift, Rosamond said.

But those numbers were hard to believe for Chris Stephan, who operates NewPac Fibre next door to Good Earths Williams facility.

Stephan said he has seen only one truckload of lumber ever come out of Good Earths Williams mill and said over the past several days he has seen only one package, or 700 to 800 board feet, of lumber on site.

If they were producing 40,000 (board feet per shift) there would be lumber sitting there, Stephan said. A mill that operates has lumber at it.

Rosamond said his company has already put $23.5 million into its 4FRI contract and considering both that amount and Good Earths planned infrastructure and equipment investments, the company will try to work with or bid on contracts associated with the second phase of the forest restoration project.

Rosamond didnt hesitate to also address the challenges Good Earth has faced in its 4FRI operations, including long lead times to get new equipment, struggles finding qualified equipment operators and difficulties finding uses for biomass like branches and needles.

Rosamond was questioned about when next year stakeholders should be concerned if ramp-up hasnt happened at the rate the company is projecting.

I wake up concerned every day, Rosamond said. We do have all the equipment, we have all the staff, we have all the trucks, we have all the milling facilities to beat that number today. The question is will we?

He said he was confident that the company had set forest thinning expectations for the coming year that it will be able to exceed.

On a monthly basis you'll see us beat those numbers, Rosamond said.

After he finished speaking, Rosamonds new business partner, Otto Trucking CEO Alan Otto, spoke in support of GEPAZs operations.

We started trucking for (Jason) a year and a half ago and the next thing I knew he owed me some money so I had a little sit down meeting with him, he explained everything to me, Otto said. After I saw what the project was and I realized there was a lot in it for Otto Trucking... I think its a good project I think theres a lot of work in Arizona.
The 2016 campaign season in Flagstaff must be official: The first press conference announcing a candidacy took place this week on the steps of City Hall.

Flagstaff City Councilmember Coral Evans formally announced her run for mayor Tuesday, and she began by describing her deep roots in the community. Her grandparents came to Flagstaff in the early 1920s from Louisiana, she grew up as the child of a disabled, single mother and she moved into city politics as an activist fighting to save the Murdoch Center in 2008.

Evans drew several rounds of applause throughout her speech and scattered throughout the crowd of about 50 people were several familiar faces. Jamie Hasapis, who ran for mayor in 2014, and Jim McCarthy, who ran for Council the same year. Al White a former Council member, and Adam Shimoni, who has pulled paperwork to run for Council, also attended.

Nabours announces run for re-election

Mayor Jerry Nabours announced his run for re-election last Friday in a press release, not a press conference. Nabours was first elected to mayor in 2012 and re-elected in 2014.

Nabours is a retired lawyer and has lived in Flagstaff for 40 years. He also serves on the executive committee of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns and is vice-chair of the Greater Arizona Mayors Association.

Nikki Bagley, former Mayor of Jerome, announces run for LD6

Nikki Bagley, the former mayor and councilmember of Jerome, announced shes running for Arizona Senate in Legislatie District 6, which included Flagstaff.

Shes an Arizona native from Prescott and currently teaches at Yavapai College. She is also the director of viticulture at the Southwest Wine Center and a vineyard manager and consultant.

Arizona Legislative District 6 covers Verde Valley, Sedona, Flagstaff, Williams, Tusayan, Holbrook, Payson and Snowflake.

James Maloney joins CD1 race

James Maloney, a businessman from Pinetop, will be running against former state legislator Tom O'Halleran for the Democratic nomination in this year's election for Arizonas 1st Congressional District seat. Maloney owns the brokerage firm Genesis Real Estate, Pinetop Brewing Company and The House, a restaurant in Show Low. The 41-year-old has never held elected office.

O'Halleran, who served eight years in the Legislature as a member of the Republican Party, announced his candidacy for the CD1 seat in August. In 2014, O'Halleran ran for the state Senate as an independent and lost to Republican Sylvia Allen. The Sedona-area politician said his shift to the Democratic Party was caused by changing values within the Republican Party.

A third Democratic candidate, Coolidge resident Miguel Olivas, joined the CD1 race in August.

Citizens Clean Elections Commission explains Dark Money legislation

Tom Collins from Arizona's Citizens Clean Elections Commission gave a presentation to Flagstaff's chapter of the American Association of University Women on two ballot initiatives Wednesday.

The first initiative deals with dark money in politics. If approved by voters, it would require an entity or person before spending more than $10,000 in a candidate election to disclose the original source of the money and any intermediary organizations that the money was funneled through.

The report would be made to a county or city clerk or whoever runs elections for a city or county. A failure to disclose a donor would result in a fine that is the same amount as the expenditure.

Collins said while the initiative sounded good at the surface, Arizona Clean Elections had some concerns about it. The state already requires disclosure of all donors to political campaigns through its Clean Elections Act to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

The Arizona Secretary of State and Clean Elections have been going back and forth over who has the power to force disclosure during an election year and how much organizations have to disclose since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United.

The court determined in Citizens United that states could still require disclosure of donors but they must allow organizations and businesses the ability to donate to political campaigns.

This initiative would only tangle up the disclosure issue further in people's minds, Collins said. There is also the problem that by federal tax statute, social welfare organizations, known as 501(C)4 organizations, are not required to disclose their donors. This could lead to a dead end in the reporting category and leave some candidates without funding because they wouldn't be able to meet the proposed law's requirements.

The Clean Elections Commission was also concerned about giving enforcement of the proposed law to city or county clerks or elections officials who are often elected themselves. This could leave the proposed law open to corruption by unscrupulous city or county clerks.
Members of Beijings Holy Love Fellowship in an

undated photo. (Photo courtesy of Xu Yonghai.)

China Aid Association





(BeijingMarch 11, 2014) Members of a house church in Beijing were harassed by men from Chinas coastal Anhui province, who accused the church of engaging in anti-Communist activities, on Saturday.

Members of Holy Love Fellowship, located in the Tongzhou District of Beijing, were approached by two men, claiming to be from Bengbu, Anhui. The men said they were looking for Shi Xinhong, one of many non-locals in the area who have come to Beijing to petition higher authorities about disputes back home. Many of these petitioners have joined the church during their prolonged stay in Beijing.



Christian Zhou Jinxia told China Aid that the men showed up outside the church between 1-2 p.m. on Saturday, saying that they wanted to help Shi solve issues she was facing in her effort to petition the Beijing authorities. Zhou told the men that if all they wanted was to help, they could talk to him since Shi wasnt around.

Then, they couldnt go on with their story, so they began to smoke. I told them to stub out the cigarettes. Then they continued their talk, Zhou said.

Zhou said he then told the men to leave. Instead, they called the police, saying that the church was against the Chinese Communist Party and had abducted and controlled Shi, whom one of the men claimed was his aunt. The men stayed at the church and continued to harass believers even after calling the police.

Zhou said that shortly after the men called the police, two more men showed up. By 3 p.m., they were still stalking useven when we went to the restroom. We called the police and told them they were harassing us, but the police said the people from Anhui had already been taken to the local police station The police never sent officers.

At some point that afternoon, the four men either left or where taken from the church by authorities, but another group of people show up to harass the Christians. Details surrounding the comings and goings of the individuals from Anhui are currently unknown.

They came in two vehicles. Who they are, we dont know At this moment, they are still parked outside our church, and they are stalking us, Zhou said on Sunday, giving China Aid information about the vehicles, including the make and model of one car and the license plates of both.

Persistent persecution

Holy Love Fellowship has faced increased persecution since the beginning of the year, including the detention of more than a dozen believers who attempted to gather for a Bible study (see https://chinaaid.org/2014/01/beijing-christians-detained-during.html, https://chinaaid.org/2014/02/update-detained-beijing-christian-meets.html and https://chinaaid.org/2014/02/some-beijing-believers-released-3.html).

On Jan. 24, a group of 19 believers attempted to meet for a Bible study and deliver medicine and food to a believer at his home. Shortly after arriving at Zhang Wenhes house, 15 of the believers were taken into custody by officers from Liyuan, a town within Tongzhou District.

The group of detained believers was transferred to the Beijing Municipal No. 1 Detention Center on charges of holding an illegal assembly. Since that time, ten believers have been released after a month of criminal detention, and two visiting Christians were sent to their home in Tianjin, Beijings neighboring municipality.

Two more believers may have been released since China Aids last report on Feb. 26; however, details about those believers and the one Christian who is said to still be held in official custody are unclear.

The transfer of detainees from Liyuan to Beijing was cause for some speculation among church members. Beijing No. 1 Detention Center is the most strict detention center in China, as it exclusively detains inmates on death row, church elder Xu Yonghai said.

Xu reported that church members are still under surveillance and that some are under house arrest. He stressed the severity of the persecution: We can say this is the first time since the Communists took power in China [in 1949] that they have taken all the members of a church to a detention center. This is the most serious ban because all were taken to the detention center.

Banned from meeting

Xu also said that the church has been banned from meeting. Whether we will persist in our household meetings is our problem. They shouldnt think we will not get together just because they have banned us, he said.

That is why I want to write a letter to them and ask them if they will allow us to get together in our meetings and to study the Bible, Xu said. He told China Aid that he wrote a letter to the delegates of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference and the National Peoples Congress, which began on March 3 and 5, respectively.

Xu said he was surprised at the ban considering a comment made by Yu Zhengsheng, fourth ranked member of the Politiburo Standing Committee and Chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, at the recent conference, which suggested the government would allow religious activities for the purpose social and economic growth.

Religion is a long-term and complicated issue and it involves a great number of people. We should carefully carry out the Partys policies on the freedom of religious belief, manage the religious affairs in accordance with law and persist on the principles of independence, self-reliance and self administration, Yu said. We should actively guide the religion to be compatible with the socialist society and bring into full play the active role of religious personalities and believers in promoting the economic and social development.

In his letter to the delegates, Xu accused local authorities of suppressing the church and violating government-made promises to safeguard citizens religious freedom according to the Constitution. He said he hopes the delegates will give special attention to the subject of religious freedom in China.

ChinaAid will continue to monitor the situation in Beijing and update as more information becomes available. Please continue to pray for Holy Love Fellowship as they continue to face persecution from the government and other citizens. Pray that those Christians who remain in custody will be released.

China Aid Contacts

Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director
China Aid

By Rachel Ritchie





(Guangzhou, GuangdongOct. 1, 2015) China 18 member Tang Jingling met with his lawyer on Friday and reported that his health is even better than before he was detained and that he is in good spirits.

Lawyer Ge Yongxi told China Aid that Tang exercises and reads daily, which keeps his physical and mental health in good shape.

However, the Guangzhou detention center Tang is held in will not allow Tangs wife to send him a Bible. Instead, Tang asked his lawyer to read a passage from the Bible and Streams in the Desert by L.B. Cowman. You will find Mr. Tang is a devout Christian filled with the Holy Spirit, Ge said. He also compared Tang to the apostle Paul, who once said I will not be shaken.

Ge said the two also discussed events that had happened domestically and abroad. While Tang made light of how the Chinese Communists put chains on him, he was very concerned about other Chinese citizens who are experiencing persecution, Ge said.

He asked me to convey his greetings to everyone and his hope that we can survive the most difficult and darkest moments and greet the dawn together, Ge said. Finally, Mr. Tang wished everyone a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival: May your life be as bright as the full moon!

China Aid Contacts

Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director

Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.chinaaid.org
Members of Holy Love Fellowship Church on their way to visit

Zhang Wenhe in early 2014, shortly before he was confined to

a mental institution. (Photo: China Aid)

China Aid

Reported and written in Chinese by Qiao Nong. Translated by Carolyn Song. Edited in English by Ava Collins.

(BeijingJan. 29, 2016) Beijing authorities placed a house church member under strict watch in his home after his November-release from a 20-month confinement in a mental hospital, during which time he was forcibly dosed with psychiatric medication.

On Jan. 24, 2014, authorities placed 15 members of Holy Love Fellowship Church, a house church in Beijing, into criminal custody after they were discovered planning to meet in the home of one member: Zhang Wenhe. On Mar. 4, 2014, Zhang Wenhe was transferred to Changping Mental Healthcare Center where he spent 20 months until his son, Zhang Chi, was finally able to convince authorities to release him in November 2015.

On Nov. 18, after a three-week negotiation with police, I brought him out of Changping Mental Healthcare Center, by reasoning that he needed to take care of my mother. I also promised that if the public security bureau let my father out, he wouldnt live in one place. Under these terms, they agreed to let him go, Zhang Chi told China Aids reporter.

Zhang Wenhe said hospital staff forcibly administered psychotropic medication of some kind to him while he was confined in the mental hospital. The systematic symptoms of withdrawal since his release from confinement in November have been very difficult to endure, he said.

You must take the medicine, Zhang Wenhe said. Every time you enter a mental institution, you must take it. You cannot refuse. If you dont take it, you will be forced to take it through a nasogastric tube. After Nov. 18, I was put in a recovery period. When I was not forced to take medicine, the trouble came. I could not sleep and felt dizzy, like some kind of magic spell.

After the return home, Zhang Chi said that they were still under a lot of pressure from authorities and Zhang Wenhe was not allowed to leave the house.

Zhang Wenhe told China Aid that this was the fourth time he has been forced into psychiatric care. He also said that authorities typically placed him under strict watch after his releases and forbade him from leaving home.

Zhang Wenhe was first sent to an institution for 15 months after attempting to visit Yuan Weijing, the wife of human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, while Chen was in prison. Yuan was living in Tongzhou with the activist Hu Jia at the time.

Then, in September 2007, after Hu was imprisoned, Zhang Wenhe attempted to visit Hus wife, Zeng Jinyan, who is also a human rights activist. Police detained Zhang Wenhe as he reached the door and confined him to an institution for another 17 months.

After his release on Feb. 24, 2009, Zhang Wenhe stated he was under police guard in his home, with sentries posted at his door. In protest, he went on hunger strike until the morning of March 30, when he suffered a heart attack. The guards had locked the door from the outside and refused to open it, even turning away the ambulance that responded to Zhangs emergency call. Finally, Zheng Wenhe lit a piece of wood on fire, and, after the fire department put the fire out, he was taken to the Changping Mental Healthcare Center again and confined for another 20 months.

Zhang Chi was also detained for three months in a psychiatric hospital on one occasion.

Zhang Wenhe said authorities never told him the official reason for his arrest or confinements, and he has never received any written documents. There is no written record, he said. Its very hard to find proof, even though I want to sue them. Currently the family of four relies on his retirement allowance of 2,000 Yuan (U.S. $300) per month and his wifes pension of 4,000 Yuan (U.S. $600) per month.

China Aid exposes cases of abuse, such as those experienced by Zhang Wenhe, in order to promote religious freedom and rule of law in China.

China Aid Contacts

Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director

Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.chinaaid.org
Christian Science Monitor

By Robert Marquand

February 5, 2016

 US officials call for release of leading pastors detained in China. Pastor Li Guanzhong and his wife were detained Jan. 29, days after the head of Chinas biggest megachurch was sent to a black jail.

Days after authorities plunked Chinas most prominent Protestant leader, Joseph Gu, into an isolated black jail, police in the same eastern coastal province of Zhejiang have detained another leading pastor who has been defying the Communist Party on religious grounds.

Pastor Li Guanzhong and his wife were detained Jan. 29, according to members of his church, as part of what appears to be the toughest crackdown on civil society, including Christians, since Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.

US State Department officials on Thursday called on China to release Pastor Gu and other church figures under detention, and to respect  freedom of religion.

The moves by Chinese authorities are seen as an escalation by the Party-state to subdue interest in Christianity as it becomes more widespread and popular in a rising power that has abandoned anti-capitalist Marxist ideology and is looking for spiritual values.

Mr. Li has for three decades been a Protestant church leader in Zhejiang and chairs his official county Christian council.

Members of Yayu Christian Church gathered in a hall during

their turns to protect the rooftop cross from being demolished

at the church in Yaxia village in eastern Chinas Zhejiang

Province, July 16, 2014.

Didi Tang/AP/File

Last week authorities detained Gu, leader of Chinas largest evangelical church, Chongyi, in Hangzhou, originally founded in the 19th century. Gu, who styled his expansive modern church along the lines of US pastor Rick Warrens Saddleback megachurch in California, is also a Standing Committee member of the national council of official Protestant churches. He, like Li, is being held incommunicado on criminal charges.

The action against Pastor Li brings to eight the number of Protestant pastors held under arbitrary detention in Zhejiang since last July, the apogee of a state-run cross demolition campaign that has seen nearly 1,700 crosses forcibly removed from atop churches since 2014 and has deeply angered a religious minority.

Since Jan. 1, 18 crosses have been toppled from churches in Zhejiang, according to the Texas-based China Aid, including edifices in the city of Wenzhou, often called Chinas Jerusalem for its proliferation of evangelical churches and more than 1 million believers.

While charges against the eight church leaders range from embezzlement to bribery to fomenting instability, one thing all detainees have in common is their public opposition to the anti-cross campaign. Li fiercely opposed efforts to remove the cross from his church in the city of Jinhua and this month tried to block efforts by security officials to put a Chinese flag atop his church.

All eight detainees are part of the official Protestant Three Self church organization  a group that for years has considered itself loyal and patriotic and not part of the broader house church movement that continues to thrive, mostly underground, in China.

On Thursday a State Department spokesman told the Monitor that China should release Gu and others, including well-known lawyer Zhang Kai. Mr. Kai has taken evangelical cases, and disappeared last summer shortly before a scheduled meeting with the US envoy for religious freedom, Amb. David Saperstein, who was in China at the invitation of the Xi Jinping government.

We call on Chinese authorities to immediately release Pastor Gu and other detained religious leaders and activists, including human rights lawyer Zhang Kai and to cease the ongoing cross removal campaign in Zhejiang province, according to the statement.

The State Department also called upon Chinese authorities to respect internationally recognized rights of freedom of association, freedom of religion, and access to legal counsel.

The Obama administration has been chary to criticize China in its slowly evolving pushback against churches, which is mainly concentrated in one province in China and mainly against public symbols, like crosses.

But the criminal charges against Gu and other prominent figures have appeared to many in the international Christian community as something of an unhappy escalation.

It is good that the Obama administration remind the Chinese government that its actions neither occur in a vacuum nor go without notice, says Loyola University expert on Christianity in China Carsten Vala. Rather, as a world power Chinas actions are under scrutiny and expected to observe international norms.

The concern among some civil society advocates in the West is that China is slowly evolving a new phase of thought crime related to ideas about open society. In recent weeks China apparently abducted five booksellers from Hong Kong and a Chinese journalist in Thailand, closed a well-respected womens legal aid center in Beijing that was founded in the mid-1990s during the UN conference on women, and orchestrated a series of public forced confessions on state television, and brought formal charges against nearly 20 human rights lawyers.

China Aid Media Team

Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985

Email: [email protected]org

For more information, click here
This image, created by CHRLCG, list the basic details of the

pending verdict announcement of Tang Jingling (right), Yuan

Xinting and Wang Qingyang. (Photo: CHRLCG)

China Aid

By Brynne Lawrence





Updated: 9:22 a.m. CDT on Jan. 29, 2016

Tang Jingling received a five-year prison sentence, while Yuan Xinting and Wang Qingying were sentenced to three-and-a-half and two-and-a-half years in prison, respectively.

(Guangzhou, GuangdongJan. 28, 2016) Authorities in Chinas southern Guangzhou province plan to announce the verdicts of three individuals, including a human rights lawyer, at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow at a local courthouse, 21 months after taking the accused into police custody.

According to a photo created by China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group (CHRLCG), authorities will announce the verdict for three detainees facing the charge of inciting subversion of state power, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, tomorrow. The three were detained for their participation in a movement that encouraged non-violent civil disobedience.

Tang Jingling, a human rights lawyer, China 18 member and founder of the movement, was taken from his home on May 16, 2014, and originally detained on the charge of causing a disturbance. At the same time, they searched his home and confiscated two computers, three cellphones and a camera. Officials held Tang at Baiyun Detention Center in Guangzhou, where they beat him.

On the same day, authorities detained Yuan Xinting and Wang Qingying, and Tangs formal arrest occurred in late June 2014.

The announcement will take place in courtroom No. 15 of the Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate Peoples Court.

China Aid exposes human rights violations, such as those experienced by Tang Jingling, Yuan Xinting and Wang Qinying, in order to promote human rights and rule of law in China.

China Aid Contacts

Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director

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PHOENIX -- Unable to get voluntary cooperation, a state utility regulator on Thursday demanded that Arizona Public Service open its books to him so he can tell whether they've been spending money to support political candidates -- including for the Arizona Corporation Commission.

In a letter to APS Chairman Don Brandt, Bob Burns said it is within his statutory authority to demand APS make "its accounts, books, papers, and documents for inspection." And he is directing the utility to make someone available to answer questions.

"I intend for those examinations to be conducted under oath so that a written record may be publicly filed," he said.

Burns noted he asked APS last year to voluntarily refrain from making political contributions in this year's commission race where he is up for reelection. That followed APS refusing to confirm or deny it had funneled money through another group to affect the 2014 race.

"You rejected that proposal," he wrote to Brandt.

And a request to voluntarily detail prior campaign donations was requested with Brandt saying such disclosure would "impinge on APS' First Amendment rights."

Burns made it clear he has run out of patience.

"To be clear, unlike my previous communications, this letter is not intended as a request, but is instead a (ITALICS) requirement (ROMAN) for your cooperation," he wrote to Brandt.

Whether the state's largest electric utility will cooperate or fight remains unclear.

"We are reviewing the letter," said company spokesman Alan Bunnell.

But Burns told Capitol Media Services there's nothing to review, as he believes Arizona law is on his side. More to the point, he said the commission needs that information.

"I do believe that as a regulator regulating a monopoly utility we have to have access to records in order to do our job, period, as far as ratemaking and everything else," he said. "Every penny (of political contributions) basically flows from a rate."

If APS balks, the next likely step would be for Burns to ask commission attorneys to go to court to demand the records.

That, however, raises the question of whether such a directive would require approval of the majority of the five-member commission. Burns conceded he does not know.

More interesting is whether he could get that, what with allegations that APS might have helped get two of the commissioners elected at the behest of a third.

"I think it would be an interesting vote," Burns quipped.

The allegation, not denied by APS, is that it gave money to one or two "dark money" organizations which were spending heavily to influence the 2014 vote.

Campaign finance records show that Save Our Future Now and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club together spent more than $3 million on the campaign, first to help Tom Forese and Doug Little win the Republican nominations and then to ensure they won the general election. Both were being supported by incumbent Bob Stump who was not up for election that year.

But both groups have refused to reveal their donors, saying they are organized under federal tax laws as "social welfare" organizations, exempt from state financial disclosure laws.

And Brandt, in a letter to Burns late last month, said he won't cough up the information voluntarily.

"Compelled disclosure about political contributions that APS or its affiliates may have made out of shareholder profits would go beyond what is required of corporations under Arizona campaign finance law, and would impinge on APS's First Amendment rights," he wrote to Burns.

While refusing to directly comment about what it may have spent in the 2014 race, company spokesman Bunnell has said APS has been the subject of a "nonstop propaganda war" by pro-solar advocates, saying they have "misrepresented important Arizona energy issues" to further their own interests. Solar groups backed two other Republicans running in the GOP primary.

"It would be irresponsible for us not to defend our company," Bunnell said, adding that "no one disputes our right to participate in the political process."
The New York Times

By Chris Buckley

Jan. 28, 2016

 Beijing  Three civil rights advocates were sentenced to prison in southern China on Friday, with the terms ranging from two and a half to five years, after a judge declared them guilty of inciting subversion.

The three had been charged for their roles in promoting peaceful civil disobedience, partly inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the ideas of Gene Sharp, an influential American theorist of nonviolent political movements.

Tang Jingling, Yuan Chaoyang and Wang Qingying were present in the courtroom in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, when the verdicts were announced.

Mr. Tang, a lawyer who had been denied a license to practice, was sentenced to five years; Mr. Yuan, a writer who also used the name Yuan Xinting, received a sentence of three and a half years; and Mr. Wang, a college professor who lost his job because of his political activism, received two and a half years.

Mr. Tang told the court that it had become a tool of political persecution, Hu Xinfan, a lawyer for Mr. Yuan said by telephone after the hearing. He said he wouldnt appeal against the sentence, because he didnt recognize the legitimacy of the court, Mr. Hu added. He said it very calmly, very steady. The two other defendants are still considering whether to appeal.
Treasures of Romania, an exhibition that tells Romania's history and the development of its citilization, opened at the National Museum of China in Beijing on Jan 28.

The three-month exhibition showcases Romania's history from the pre-historical period to the end of the 18th century with 445 pieces (sets) of exhibits.

"Cultural relics are bear the stories of history. They have vividly showcased every nation's prosperity and glory," says Dong Wei, vice-minister of the Ministry of Culture of China, at the opening ceremony in the national museum on Thursday.

He says that China and Romania have achieved much in terms of cultural exchange in the past few years, which help people in the two nations understand each other better.

In 2013, China also held a huge exhibition of cultural relics in Romania, which welcomed many visitors.
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PHNOM PENH - China's Hong Kong Airlines will launch thrice-weekly flight service to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia from Feb 27, an airline senior official said on Friday.

An all-economy-class Airbus A320 aircraft, with a full capacity of 174 passengers, will be operated on the Hong Kong-Phnom Penh route every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, said Johnny Wan, deputy general manager at the airline's business development department.

He said the new service will further strengthen the airline's network in Asia and offer more choices and greater convenience to passengers travelling to and from Cambodia.

"With the booming economic growth in Cambodia, the new direct flight service to Phnom Penh will connect passengers from around the world into the burgeoning country," he said during the airline introduction seminar.

"The direct flight will offer more choices and increased convenience to Cambodians travelling out of their country and connecting to our network in Mainland China, further promoting the tourism and business ties between Hong Kong and Cambodia," he added.

Established in 2006, Hong Kong Airlines is operating 27 new Airbus aircraft, connecting Hong Kong with over 30 major cities across the Asia-Pacific region, Johnny said.

Hong Kong Airlines will be the third Hong Kong to Cambodia service, adding to Dragonair and Hong Kong Express.
An employee counts yuan banknotes at a bank in Huaibei, Anhui province June 22, 2010.[Photo/Agencies]

The Chinese government "has no intention to boost exports by devaluing the renminbi, not to mention waging a trade war", Premier Li Keqiang told International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde during a telephone call on Thursday morning.

Li also said China "is able to maintain continued, steady growth of its economy" in their conversation about the economic and financial situation in China and around the world.

Observers said Li's comments will help dismiss doubts in the market over alleged currency manipulation by China and its future economic prospects. The country's economy, which grew by 6.9 percent last year, still faces downward pressure.

"The fact is that the renminbi exchange rate has remained basically stable against a basket of currencies, and there is no basis for continuous depreciation of the renminbi," Li said.

China will "press steadily ahead with the reform of mechanism to formulate the yuan exchange rate", reinforce its communication with the market and keep the yuan exchange rate basically stable at an appropriate and balanced level, Li added.

Lagarde said she believed the Chinese government could maintain steady economic growth through measures such as structural reform, keeping the exchange rate policy stable and boosting communication with the market.

The IMF is willing to further strengthen communication and cooperation with China, she added.

Addressing a panel discussion in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Lagarde said China's policymakers have shown "unbelievable determination" to deliver reforms in the past, Bloomberg reported.

Chen Fengying, a senior world economy researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said Lagarde and the IMF are important channels for China to send signals to the world market in such a critical time.

"As uncertainties cloud the market, Li has stated China's confidence in the economy and currency. Without such remarks, the stock and currency markets' confidence could be more vulnerable," Chen said.
Five Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been fined a combined total of 4 million yuan ($608,000) for acting in collusion to fix the price of a common medication.

The drug, allopurinol, is listed as an essential medicine in China and is widely used to treat gout and hyperuricemia, or abnormally high levels of uric acid in the blood.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top pricing regulator, found that Chongqing Qingyang, Jiangsu Shimaotianjie and Shanghai Xinyi, which have been the only three domestic producers of allopurinol tablets since 2014, reached monopoly agreements with two distributors, Chongqing Datong and Shangqiu Huajie over the drug.

"Five companies have been fined for colluding to manipulate pricing and for dividing the market of a common tablet," said Lu Yanchun, deputy inspector of the Price Supervision and Anti-Monopoly Bureau at the commission, adding that the cartel's actions had negatively impacted consumer welfare and market competition in China.

"Even though the fine is not the largest issued since the NDRC began bringing actions against pricing collusion, it is significant," said Lu.

Between 2014 and 2015, the price of allopurinol tablets increased fourfold, and the three producers agreed to only sell the tablets in designated areas, according to the bureau.

Nearly 60 pharmaceutical manufacturers, including both domestic and foreign-owned companies, were subjected to probes under China's Antitrust Law in 2013.

The first fines issued by the NDRC against members of the industry were in 2011, when two companies were ordered to pay a total of 7 million yuan ($1.06 million).
Indonesian women look at scale models of Chinese-made bullet trains on display at a shopping mall in Jakarta.[Photo/Agencies]

The high-speed rail project remains a priority for the Indonesian government amid reports that said it had been "halted" and did not come through official channels, the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing told China Daily on Friday.

Santo Darmosumarto, counselor of social and cultural affairs at the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing said the project was definitely ongoing as the Indonesian government just issued a presidential decree in January listing the project as one of their 225 priority projects for 2016.

"I think the media has been too sensational about the project," Darmosumarto said, and stressed that such project involves a process and regulations that have to be complied with.

Related story: Indonesia rail project will act as catalyst for growth by Deng Yanzi from China Daily

Indonesia's first high-speed railway, being built by China, will be a significant boost to the country's economy and act as a catalyst for other key infrastructure developments regionally, according to experts following the project.

Titissari Rumbogo, a planning and public policy scholar at the University of Indonesia, told China Daily the line will have a strong "multiplier effect" for economic growth in countries throughout Southeast Asia.

"It will be especially important in job creation, both in terms of construction and for local factories that are expected to produce train components," said Rumbogo.

The 150-kilometer line, slated to be completed by 2019, will connect the capital city Jakarta and the third-biggest city Bandung, stopping at four stations on the west side of Java during its first phase.

It will also involve the creation of many new residences along the route, according to Bintang Perbowo, president director of the Indonesian state construction firm, PT Wijaya Karya.

"With these new areas being opened up, people will choose to live there. There will also be the future development of a new city," Bintang told the Jakarta Post.

Harun al-Rasyid Lubis, executive director of Indonesia's Infrastructure Partnership & Knowledge Center, said the project was just the beginning of a wider national railway network, and urged the Indonesia government to extend the high-speed rail to Surabaya in eastern Java.

The high-speed railway is not only the first in Indonesia, but also in Southeast Asia, where new infrastructure development is currently in hot demand, and many view the ambitious project as becoming a blueprint for further regional infrastructure cooperation.

"China's success in this high-speed rail project will open up opportunities for it in other projects in Indonesia and other countries," said Emirza Adi Syailendra, a researcher at the S. Rajaratnam of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Despite being Southeast Asia's largest economy, Indonesia has missed most of its economic targets set for 2015, resulting in its slowest growth since 2009.

The Jakarta government is now banking on infrastructure development and foreign investment as part of a renewed push for economic growth, as its traditional raw material sectors struggle in current global economic conditions.

President Joko Widodo said in a cabinet meeting earlier this month that he wanted to see infrastructure development accelerate this year, particularly railway projects, Jakarta Post reported.

Emirza wrote in a recent note that a well-timed completion of the Jakarta-Bandung railway will also play well for Widodo's administration as a major economic accomplishment, especially as it is slated for completion in a national election year.
Chinese and Indonesian authorities dismissed on Friday reports that construction of Southeast Asia's first high-speed railway had been halted, saying the project is ongoing.

The rail project linking the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with Bandung in western Java, which was just inaugurated by Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Jan 21, had already been mired in confusion about its status.

"The information that the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail has been halted is not correct," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a news briefing.

But earlier, Indonesian media cited Indonesian Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan as saying that the 142-kilometer rail had been delayed by incomplete paperwork and issues that could not be resolved. Because of this, media reported, the government could not issue the building permit and the concession agreement to the contractor, PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China.

Xinhua News Agency cited sources with Chinese personnel on the project as saying that all the necessary paperwork had been submitted and the approval process was ongoing.

Hua said China expects to collaborate with Indonesia so that the project will quickly benefit the people of that country.

The project remains a priority for the Indonesian government, and reports saying it had been "halted" did not come through official channels, the Indonesian embassy in Beijing told China Daily on Friday.

Santo Darmosumarto, counselor of social and cultural affairs at the embassy, said the project was definitely "ongoing" and the Indonesian government had issued a presidential decree in January that listed it as one of its 225 priority projects for this year.

A high-placed China Railway Corp official who is involved with the project said on condition of anonymity on Friday that the rail is "progressing smoothly".

The $5.5 billion line is being developed by PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China, a consortium involving Indonesian state-owned companies and China Railway International Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China Railway Corp. It is scheduled for completion in 2019. Seventy-five percent of the funding is being financed through a China Development Bank loan.

Jia Jinjing, director of the macro research department at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said reports that the project was stalled reflect a complex of interests in the competition behind the rail. The rail deal was signed in October, after months of competition between China and Japan and a last-minute change of mind by Indonesia.

Contact the writers at lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn
Last year, the world witnessed a record-breaking number of overseas tourists. A total of 1.184 billion tourists traveled worldwide, a rise of 4.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest World Tourism Barometer released by the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

"The robust performance of the sector is contributing to economic growth and job creation in many parts of the world," said UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai in a statement.

France appears certain to remain the most popular country in the world, followed by the United States and Spain. China takes fourth place in the rankings. Let's take a look at the world's most popular tourist destinations.

No 10 Russia

Tourist arrivals: 31.6 million (estimate), up 6.2 percent
Howard Schultz, chairman, president and CEO of the US-based global coffee chain Starbucks Corp, speaking at a local dealership meeting in Chengdu, Sichuan province on Jan 12. [Photo/China Daily]

Rising middle class boosts US company's confidence in China

Seventeen years ago, when Starbucks Corp opened its first store in Beijing, the idea was flayed by many as they felt that coffee did not have a chance in a tea-drinking nation like China.

"That has all changed. We now have 2,000 stores in 90 Chinese cities and the country is probably the largest international market for us, even larger than the United States," said Howard Schultz, chairman, president and chief executive officer of the US-based global coffee chain Starbucks Corp.

Despite the economic challenges, China has a brilliant future, said Schultz. "I am not saying this just because the middle class population in the country is doubling from 300 million to 600 million. It also has a lot to do with the humane nature of Chinese people and their penchant for hard work. I have seen for myself what can happen when a young Chinese person puts on a green apron," he said.

Schultz recently spoke to China Daily about Starbucks' company culture, its local business strategies and the secret to its success. The following are edited excerpts.

Starbucks sales in China and Asia Pacific market increased 9 percent in 2015 compared with the previous year. What has propelled the growth and how do you plan to sustain the momentum this year?

Our success has not just been in Shanghai or Beijing, but also in the second- and third-tier cities. Starbucks has stores in more than 90 cities in China now.

I think we are now a brand that is trusted by Chinese customers. The quality of the experience and the strengths of our partners bring Starbucks to life.

I think people are looking for a place that is rejuvenating and we have been able to give them that through our stores in the country.

Our success has also been shaped by good coffee and beautifully-designed stores. But the real reason for success is that our partners have often exceeded the expectations of customers with their warmth and caring attitude.

We plan to open 500 new stores in China this year and I think our growth prospects look robust for the time being.

Starbucks partners are often given health benefits and other incentives. Is this your way to build a business that is profitable and one that is sharing its success with the community?

Early on, Starbucks was the first employer to give stock options and additional healthcare to employees. Today, we offer additional benefits like housing subsidy and one-year leave without pay.

We had a great year in China in terms of performance and the philosophy of the company has always been to share the success.

I think we also want to demonstrate to the parents today that we understand the responsibility of taking care of their children.

As a public company, we have responsibility to create shareholder value and make profits. But we also have to bring our people along with us on the journey.
Visitors seek information at a Tencent Holdings Ltd stand during the Second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, in December of last year.[Photo/China Daily]

Tencent Holdings Ltd is taking part in a fundraising round for WeBank that will value its online financial affiliate at about $5.5 billion and keep its stake at roughly 30 percent, two sources familiar with the deal said on Wednesday.

WeBank is raising about $450 million via a round that will also include Singaporean state investment company Temasek Holdings Pte and other investors, said one of the sources, who asked not to be identified.

The rapid growth of China's online financial services sector is drawing interest from investors, as a growing crop of startups and Web-oriented services offer credit to smaller companies and individuals under-served by state lenders.

Private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC is also taking part in WeBank's round, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier.

WeBank and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd-affiliate MYbank are training their sights on an estimated 23 trillion yuan ($3.5 billion) household-loans market that's growing rapidly as more Chinese seek credit.

Online banking is emerging as yet another battleground for Chinese Internet giants Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu Inc, which are competing in everything from on-demand services to media.

Canny Lo, a spokeswoman for Tencent in Hong Kong, declined to comment on behalf of WeBank. Jeffrey Fang, a spokesman for Temasek, said the company does not comment on market speculation.
A customer carrying a box containing DJI's Phantom 3 drone leave from their first flagship store in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China December 20, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

GUANGZHOU -- The export volume of civilian drones in South China's Shenzhen, increased seven times in 2015 year-on-year to reach 3.09 billion yuan ($472 million), customs data showed.

The city's civilian drones were mainly exported to Hong Kong region, North America and Europe, according to Shenzhen Customs, Guangdong province.

The monthly export jumped from 130 million yuan in January to 450 million yuan in December.

Shenzhen produces 99 percent of the civilian drones for export. The drone industry is one of the city's priority sectors.

Shenzhen-based DJI, a leading manufacturer of commercial and recreational drones for aerial photography and videography, holds almost 70 percent of the market share worldwide, with Europe and North America named its biggest customers.
Rubbish is scattered across a tributary of the Yangtze River in a rural area of Yichang, Hubei province, causing serious pollution. Every summer, the waste is washed down to the Yangtze River by floodwaters.[LIU JUNFENG/CHINA DAILY]

The quality of China's water resources has been in decline for several decades. Now, measures are being introduced to return the country's lakes, rivers and subterranean supplies to health. Xinhua News Agency reports.

From dirty laundry to tainted wells, the strain on China's water resources is being felt nationwide after years of industrialization have left the country high and dry. Farmer Jiang Delan lived a quiet life near Bengbu city in Anhui province until an industrial park near the Sanpudagou River tainted her village's water source.

"Now the fish from the river are inedible and they stink when cooked," Jiang said. "The water quality has worsened since the establishment of the industrial park. It makes the air smell and the water in our well tastes strange."

While the village once relied on money earned from growing rice, the residents' crops are now rejected at the local market because they have an unpleasant taste.

"It does not surprise me. How can rice taste good if it is irrigated by such polluted water?" Jiang asked. "Now we only grow crops that depend less on water."

Her village is not the only one facing a crisis. Water shortages and problems related to contamination have become widespread in recent years as industrialization and urbanization take their toll.

White clothes are history

Sanxianhu township in Hunan province, named after the once pristine Sanxianhu Lake, was once famous for its abundant clear water.

But the quality began slipping toward the end of the 1970s, when industrial and agricultural wastewater was discharged directly into the lake. "Sometimes the water is black. It's impossible to drink," local resident Li Qinglan said.

Around 1980, the residents dug a well to access clean water, but other problems arose.

"At that time, girls liked to wear white dresses. But the dresses turned yellow after being washed in the tap water. White clothes soon became a rare sight in our town," Li said.

Several years later, experts discovered excessive iron and manganese content was to blame for the dirty laundry.

"The iron content in the water is 84 times higher than the national standard, and manganese is 25 times higher," said Zhao Yong, deputy head of Sanxianhu's water administration station.

In 2008, the provincial finance department funded a water-processing plant to filter the iron and manganese from the well water, but the content was still too high, making the process slow and ineffective.

In response, the villagers created their own filters by placing buckets filled with sand and cloth under their taps. "Now, everyone in the village has one," Li said.

The poor water quality has led many of the younger generation to abandon the village and seek a better life elsewhere. A new water processing plant is under construction and is expected to improve the water quality and increase supply, but many worry that it is too late.

"White clothes have already become a part of history for Sanxianhu. I'm afraid that young people will also become history," said Zhou Can, the head of a local community.

Nationwide, 27.2 percent of river water and 67.8 percent of lake water is undrinkable, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.

In 2014, when the ministry monitored 2,071 wells from 17 provincial regions in the northern part of the country, it discovered that the quality of the subterranean water was below par, meeting national standards in just 15.2 percent of the areas tested. In 48.9 percent of the areas the water was classified as "low quality", while it was designated "poor quality" in 35.9 percent.
HANGZHOU - A court in east China's Zhejiang province has sentenced two members of a child-trafficking ring to life imprisonment and another five to prison terms of up to 10 years.

Two individuals with the surnames of Wang and Huang trafficked 10 female infants from 2012 to 2014, buying them in Jiangxi Province and selling in neighboring Zhejiang, said Lishui Municipal Intermediate People's Court in its verdict on Thursday.

Wang and Huang were arrested when selling infants in Lishui City, Zhejiang in August 2014.

The court deprived them of their political rights for life and confiscated all their property.

In addition to their prison sentences, the other five were also fined up to 50,000 yuan (about 8,000 US dollars).

More than 70,000 yuan in illegal gains was recovered and delivered to the national treasury.
Hong Kong's struggling retail industry is bracing for a "structural rather than cyclical recession" and an economic recovery in the Chinese mainland may not be enough to boost the sagging sector, multinational banker DBS has warned.

DBS Bank Hong Kong economist Lily Lo Ming-lee noted that the structural problem lies in the changing consumption pattern of the city's inbound mainland tourists, who are choosing instead to travel further afield to new destinations including Japan and South Korea. The booming growth in e-commerce and duty-free stores on the Chinese mainland is making them more comfortable to go shopping at home.

Against such a backdrop, even if the mainland's economy takes a turn for the better, Hong Kong's retail sector could hardly expect to show signs of a rise very soon, she cautioned.

Lo said local retailers may pin their hopes on a slump in retail rents. However, since a fall in retail rents is largely seen in prime locations and street-level shops, she believes overall average retail rents will not go down until the middle or even the end of the year.
Many modified foods still waiting for final govt safety approval

Patrons at a restaurant sample genetically modified rice in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, on July 14. [Photo/CFP]

China will further step up the supervision of genetically modified food technologies to prevent commercial cultivation of unauthorized varieties, a senior rural affairs official said.

The call follows several suspected cases of farmers illegally growing genetically modified crops in the country.

"We need to work to prevent unauthorized varieties from entering markets illegally, starting from the very beginning of the process," said Han Jun, deputy director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group.

The country will step up the supervision of research technologies, varietal certification and the production and distribution of GM food, Han said at a news conference in Beijing on Thursday. The group is China's top rural affairs decision-making agency.

China's agricultural authorities still have to approve the marketing of GM grains, with only domestic GM papaya and cotton being approved for commercial cultivation.

Han said that the country has investigated and treated cases of farmers illegally growing GM rice, and the cases indicated that there should be stronger efforts to prevent such illegal activities.

A report by environmental nonprofit organization Greenpeace earlier this month also claimed that farmers are illegally growing genetically modified corn in China's northeast. The organization claimed that 93 percent of samples taken last year from corn fields in five counties in Liaoning province tested positive for GMO contamination.

The Ministry of Agriculture has not replied to a request for comment on the report.

According to the first policy document issued by the Communist Party of China Central Committee this yearwhich usually signifies a top prioritythe country will step up the research of agricultural GM technologies, and will promote them after ensuring their safety. The policy document focused on rural issues for the 13th consecutive year.

Last year, the central government said the country will try to remove public misconceptions about GM science.

Han said China cannot afford to lag behind in agricultural biotechnology, and will take measures to make sure it will take the lead in GM research.

He added that any GM food products approved for commercial cultivation have been tested and found to be as safe as traditional food.

"Meanwhile, we will also implement requirements for labeling GM products, and ensure that the public has the knowledge and right to choose with GM foods," he said.




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Hedva Almog (left), deputy mayor of Haifa, examines Chengdu's brochures on the two cities' cooperation programs.[ZENG YI/CHINA DAILY]

Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, embraced a single sister in 1981, but in the years that followed, it sprouted a large clan, adding 28 more. Its sister city relationships now include Haifa, Israel, a center of scientific research, and Horsens, Denmark.

All three place a premium on education, and that's been the basis of a happy family.

Lin Jingting, who is studying for a master's degree in molecular biology at the University of Haifa, said she is delighted by the increasing exchanges between Chendgu and Haifa, which forged ties in 2013. Each month brings new visitors from China.

Lin, 23, a native of Yibin, Sichuan, majored in food quality and safety at Chengdu University, and it made a difference to her in Israel.

"When I cook in my dormitory, the Israeli students show a keen interest in Sichuan food, and they wanted to visit Chengdu after I told them more about the city," she said.

At Haifa's City Hall, Hedva Almog, the deputy mayor, noted Haifa's close cooperation with Chengdu in education, including a high school that forged ties with a counterpart in Chengdu.

Also proceeding smoothly is the student exchange program between the University of Haifa and Chengdu University, Almog said.

"Thanks to the program, 10 Chengdu students are studying at the University of Haifa, and two or three students from the University of Haifa go to Chengdu each year," said Hanan Alexander, dean of students and head of the university's International School. "Exchanges of teachers for academic purposes and cooperation in training teachers are on the agenda on both sides, and a Confucius Institute will be built at the University of Haifa in the near future."

A delegation from Chengdu also made a trip to Kaskelotten, a kindergarten in Horsens, Denmark, where the visitors observed 16 toddlers learning to pronounce letters in Danish by singing along with their three teachers.

Danish kindergartens stress teaching through lively activities, said Anni Jacobsen, the kindergarten's manager.

The Danish concept of preschool educational concepts will soon be introduced to Chengdu, which forged sister city ties with Horsens in 2013. The Chengdu Horsens Kindergarten and Chengdu Horsens Primary School are expected to open in September.

Differing from traditional Chinese kindergartens and schools with large activity spaces, the new buildings will have many small activity spaces. The design reflects the Danish educational focus on individuality.

The quality of Danish education for service providers for the elderly is recognized globally. VIA University College in Horsens has cooperated with Chengdu in the field.

Rikke Hjuler Mikkelsen, who is in charge of the international program at the college, said the Danish encourage the elderly to live at home as long as possible. Only when they cannot take care of themselves will they move to care facilities.

That is similar to the concept of home-based care being promoted in Chengdu.

During Denmark Week in Chengdu in September, Peter Soerensen, mayor of Horsens, said Danish nursing homes are like families, with service providers helping residents feel at home. It is common for the residents to organize travel, eating and reading clubs in each other's homes, he said.
Timeline of gypsum miners' rescue:

Jan 29, 2016--- Four miners were lifted to the surface alive after being trapped underground for 36 days.

Jan 4, 2016--- No additional survivors were found after rescuers managed to bore a hole 220 meters into the collapsed gypsum mine. Thirteen workers are listed as missing.

Dec 30, 2015--- Four miners were found to be alive after being trapped underground for five days.

Dec 29, 2015---Four leaders of Pingyi county, including Party chief Feng Chengxiu and county head Liu Chunbo, were dismissed due to several accidents in 2015.

Dec 27, 2015--- Shandong issued a notice ordering all gypsum mines in Linyi to suspend operations and undergo safety checks. The order included mines in bordering Zaozhuang and Tai'an, as well as nearby depleted mines.

Dec 27, 2015---The owner of the collapsed gypsum mine committed suicide by jumping into a mine shaft that had partly filled with water as he was assisting in the rescue.

December 26, 2015-One person died and another worker was rescued.

Dec 25, 2015---A gypsum mine of Yurong Commerce and Trade Co collapsed in Baotai, Pingyi county of Linyi, Shandong province, trapping 29 workers. Ten workers were rescued on this day.
Tan Yongzhi, who organized and carried out the abductions of 22 infants and children, has been executed, China's top court said Friday. [Photo/people.com.cn]

A man convicted of abducting 22 children has been executed, China's top court said today.

The Supreme People's Court announced the execution of Tan Yongzhi, who organized and carried out the abductions of 22 infants and children, the court said.

Tan kidnapped the victims between February 2008 and April 2013 from areas stretching from Southwest China's Yunnan to Central China's Henan provinces.

The court also said that all of Tan's property was confiscated. Tan's actions and the large number of children he kidnapped seriously damaged children's rights, which is why he was condemned to death by the Zhengzhou Intermediate People's Court in Henan and the top court approved the execution, said the court.

Chinese courts have always provided heavy penalties for those convicted of abducting a child.

In 2010, the nation's top court, the top prosecuting authority and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued a guideline to increase crackdowns against such criminals.

Since then the abduction of women and children across the country dropped, the top court said.

Chinese courts solved 1,918 cases involving abducted women and children 2012; last year the number fell to 853, the top court said. Meanwhile, 2,801 people were punished in 2012 on criminal charges related to kidnapping, but that figure dropped to 1,362 in 2015, the court said.
He Qiaonv, a Chinese businesswoman and philanthropist, tops the 2015 philanthropists' list of China. [Photo/IC]

Higher education is the largest recipient of donations in China while philanthropists prefer to give to private foundations rather than government-backed charities, said a new report.

Nearly half of the 12.8 billion yuan ($1.95 billion) worth of donations made in 2015 went to foundations of higher education institutions. Of all the donations to higher education, more than 10 percent came from alumni.

Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, donated 100 million yuan ($15.2 million) to his alma mater Hangzhou Normal University, ranking 10th on the philanthropists' list.

The other major areas of donation included environmental protection, development of primary and secondary schools, and poverty relief.

The report published by China Philanthropy Research Institute of Beijing Normal University compiled the top 100 donators in Chinese mainland.

The top philanthropist, He Qiaonv, chairman of landscape company Orient Landscape, donated 2.9 billion yuan worth of corporate stock to a foundation set up under the name of the company. She was the first woman to occupy the top spot on the list which was first issued in 2011. Another 14 women made the list in 2015.

In terms of industry, property sector took the top place with 21 individuals and families coming from the industry, but 40 percent less than the previous year. It was followed by manufacturing sector (18 people) and Internet industry (14 people).

According to Zhang Gaorong from China Philanthropy Research Institute, the donations were more evenly distributed among different industries in the latest list as traditional resource-intensive industries lost some ground.

Of all the donations, more than 80 percent went to foundations set up by universities or private enterprises while only less than 14 percent went to governments or government-backed charities.

The higher ratio of donations for private foundation was partly due to stronger management and tighter supervision of enterprises and partly due to poor information disclosure of the government charities, said Zhang.
China's southern province, Hainan, will lift the cap on tourists' duty-free shopping in efforts to promote the island as an international tourism destination.

According to the Ministry of Finance, non-residents leaving the island could make duty-free purchases of up to 16,000 yuan a year, with no limits on shopping times. Before this adjustment, tourists could only use the duty-free shopping service twice in Hainan.

It also allows duty-free shops to introduce online shopping channels for tourists.

The new policy will take effect on Feb 1.

The offshore duty-free program was launched in April 2011. Hainan is the only mainland province, as well as the fourth region around the world, to support such program. Duty-free services can be found at the Haitang Bay Duty-free Shopping Center in Sanya and the duty-free shop in the Haikou Meilan International Airport.

Local customs department figures show that between the launch of the program and the end of the year, Hainan's duty-free stores received more than 5.73 million customers who spent a total of 16.5 billion yuan. In 2015, the sales volume reached 5.54 billion yuan, an increase of 28.3 percent year-on-year.

Wang Huiping, deputy director of Hainan's Department of Finance, said the changes are in response to complaints from tourists regarding the limitation on shopping times and values, as well as a lack for online platforms.

In 2015, the sales volume of Hainan duty-free shops only accounted 4.9 percent of domestic luxury product sales. And only 10 percent of total tourists passing through Haikou and Sanya airport actually bought duty-free goods. The percentage is relatively low. By now, the duty-free policy has been adjusted to three times. And every adjustment brought about 20 percent of growth in terms of sales volume. These adjustments make it more convenient for tourists to shop and use up service. It will promote growth in both sales volume and the number of tourists who enjoy the service, Said Wang.
The Fudan University-affiliated Pudong Hospital, which is also the medical service provider of Shanghai Disneyland, was unveiled this week.

Pudong Hospital is one of the largest regional medical centers in the southern part of the Pudong area, which is about 15 minutes' drive away from Shanghai Disneyland, and also close to Pudong International Airport.

According to the hospital, a total of three medical service sites will be set up to provide emergency aid for visitors at Shanghai Disneyland. Each site will be equipped with two or three medical staff.

Meanwhile, the hospital has already started to recruit medical staff globally so as to better serve the theme park, which is scheduled to open on June 16.

With a total of 94,000 square meters' building area, the Pudong Hospital is equipped with 1000 beds. It has integrated medical treatment, teaching, scientific research, prevention, health care and rehabilitation.

"We will not only serve the patients who live nearby but also deal with various emergencies from the airport which handles many international passengers, said Yu Bo, president of the hospital, adding that they will continue to develop their hospital and medical service according to international standards.

Earlier, the hospital received an international accreditation by the Joint Commission International (JCI), the worlds leading evaluation system for medical management and health care service quality.

The hospital has also established deep cooperation and exchange with the US-based Duke University, he said.
Members of the Chengdu media delegation visit the Horsens Central Wastewater Treatment Plant in Denmark.[Photo by Huang Zhiling/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, embraced a single sister in 1981, but in the years that followed, it sprouted a large clan, adding 28 more. Its sister city relationships now include Horsens, the third largest city in Denmark.

Both place a premium on better service for the aged and environmental protection, and that has been the basis of a happy family.

The quality of Danish services for the aged is known worldwide. The VIA University College in Horsens which forged the sister-city ties with Chengdu in 2013 has cooperated with the Chinese city to seek ways for it to provide better service for its elderly residents.

Rikke Hjuler Mikkelsen, who is in charge of the international program at the college, told a recent media delegation from Chengdu the Danish encourage the elderly to live at home as long as possible.

Only when they cannot take care of themselves will they move to facilities for old people. That is similar to the concept of home-based care for the aged that is promoted in Chengdu.

When he participated in Denmark Week in Chengdu in September 2015, Peter Soerensen, mayor of Horsens, said Danish old peoples homes are as simple as families, with service providers helping the residents feel at home. It is common for the residents to organize travel, eating and reading clubs in the homes, he said.

Mikkelsen said 10 doctors and nurses from the West China Hospital of Sichuan University would receive short-term training on service for the aged at the Danish college this summer.

She suggested Chengdu set up institutions in its communities where the aged can have access to meals, health care and nursing service for age-related diseases.

"So the senior citizens can stay part time in both communities and home," she said.

Soren Bo Westring Christensen, professor of social work at her college showed members of the Chengdu delegation the three Chinese characters "wind, sand and star" his student Karoline B. Gyhrs had penned. Gyhrs had studied Chinese for four years and visited Chengdu.

Showing his interest in the Chinese words, Christensen said he wants to visit Chengdu so that he can see how the aged live in traditional Chinese homes and villages.

Many Danish senior citizens feel lonely because their sons and daughters do not live with them, he said.

When the Chengdu delegation visited the Horsens Central Wastewater Treatment Plant last Friday, they learned wastewater from homes and businesses in the city of 80,000 people makes its way to the plant through a 1,100-kilometer pipeline. After 18 hours of treatment, water that meets the requirements for discharge is released into the sea.

The Danish wastewater treatment process is the same as that in Chengdu, which does a good job in treating its urban wastewater but is yet to adequately treat wastewater in the countryside, said Erling Nielsen, a manager at the Horsens Central Wastewater Treatment Plant.

He said his plant would share its wastewater treatment success story with Chengdu.

Forty-five years ago, Horsens had many small wastewater treatment plants but its wastewater treatment was unsatisfactory. Only after the small plants merged did the pipelines cover all parts of the city and achieve satisfactory treatment.


1,629-km line perched on high mountains to be complete in early 2030s

China will accelerate the construction of a 1,629-kilometer Sichuan-Tibet railway starting this year, heads of the two regions' governments confirmed.

"The government will start a preliminary survey and research of the Kangting-Lyingchi railway project this year, and accelerate the construction of Sichuan-Tibet railway in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period," Losang Jamcan, chairman of the Tibet autonomous region government, said at the fourth session of the 10th People's Congress of Tibet in Lhasa on Wednesday.

Yin Li, acting governor of Sichuan, sent out similar message in the fourth session of the 12th People's Congress of Sichuan in Chengdu earlier.

The railway connecting Lhasa and Chengdu will be divided into three sections from west to east: Lhasa-Lyingchi, Lyingchi-Kangting, and Kangting-Chengdu.

Nearly 1,000 km of it will be in Tibet. Construction of the west and the east sections began last year. The whole project is expected to be completed in the early 2030s.

Perched at over 3,000 meters above sea level, and with more than 74 percent of its length running on bridges or in tunnels, the railway will meander through the mountains, the highest of which is over 7,000 meters.

It will cross the major rivers Minjiang, Jinshajiang and Yarlung Zangbo, said Lin Shijin, a senior civil engineer at China Railway Corp.

"The accumulated height it will climb reaches more than 14,000 meters, and it will cross many fault zones," he added. "It's like the largest rollercoaster in the world. With a designed service life of 100 years, it is believed to be one of the most difficult railway projects to build on Earth."

"It will cost at least 100 million yuan ($15.87 million) per kilometer, similar to the cost of high-speed railways on plains," said Zhao Jinxue, a rail construction risk appraiser with an insurance company in Chengdu.

The Sichuan-Tibet railway presents its builders multiple difficulties to overcome, such as avalanches, landslides, earthquakes, terrestrial heat, karst caves and underground streams, Lin said. "Yet, it is still a worthwhile project."

To travel from Chengdu to Lhasa currently takes 42 hours by train and three days by road. The rail line will shorten the travel time to less than 15 hours.

"I hope the railway can be finished as quickly as possible. Then, I'll take the train back home. It is more economical, safer and comfortable than airplanes," said Qiao Liang, a Chengdu businessman in Lhasa, who regularly commutes between the two places.

The southeast is the most populous region in Tibet, and the west of Sichuan is the least developed region of the province. The two regions are filled with breathtaking natural views and fascinating ethnic cultures.

"The railway will effectively boost tourism, and bring a new Shangri-La to the world and tangible revenue to local people," said He Ping, a tourism agency manager in Chengdu.

Contact the writers at liyang@chinadaily.com.cn
A timetable for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban could emerge from a roadmap to be finalized at a meeting next month, Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani told China Daily in an exclusive interview in Beijing on Wednesday.

The third round of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group meetings, involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, will be held in Islamabad on Feb 6. The meeting will finalize a peace and reconciliation roadmap, Rabbani said.

The Afghan government feels "a sense of urgency" for negotiations with the Taliban and has been calling for the militants to join peace talks and "become a responsible political movement", Rabbani said.
Country is one of EU countries that has welcomed the largest number of refugees

Sweden intends to expel up to 80,000 migrants who arrived in 2015 and whose application for asylum has been rejected, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said on Wednesday.

"We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000," the minister was quoted as saying by Swedish media, adding that the government had asked the police and authorities in charge of migrants to organize their expulsion.
"Shakespeare is one of the world's greatest cultural icons. Even today, 400 years after his death, his works continue to thrill audiences not just here in China but all across the globe",said Barbara Woodward CMG OBE, the British ambassador to China. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

2016 marks 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare. The British Council and the GREAT Britain campaign launched the Shakespeare Lives program to celebrate the works and influence of the world's most performed playwright. It is a global campaign and China will be a vital part of it.

The program was launched on Thursday at Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts, where the Royal Shakespeare Company will perform in February. The whole program will run through December.

Since his earliest plays Shakespeare has inspired entire generations - world leaders, writers, film makers, artists, composers and performers-who have all turned to the Bard of Avon to reflect their own lives and times.
Fabrice Beluze shows one of his works at his Beijing studio.[Photo by Zou Hong/ China Daily]

Fabrice Beluze usually begins his day by putting on a black apron. He then sits down with different tools to either repair stringed instruments or make them.

The curly-haired French citizen also has an eclectic taste in music ranging from Bach, his favorite composer, to heavy metal.

Beluze, 40, is an artisan who lives in Beijing, spending his time keeping the traditions of a luthier alive.

He likes to start his work early as mornings are "quiet and peaceful", Beluze tells China Daily at his workshop, which is tucked away in a sunlit corner of a building in downtown Beijing.

Musical instruments hang from a wall, and the air inside is heavy with the scent of wood and lacquer.

For Beluze, the most enjoyable part of his job is finding the right instrument for the right person.

"You sit on a chair, and you feel very comfortable. You don't know why everything is adjusted for you. An instrument is like that. You play it and everything works for you. You just need to focus on playing," he says.

Beluze has been purchasing, repairing, modifying and restoring instruments for musicians in France and China for the past 20 years. In 2012, he moved to Beijing from Shenzhen in the country's south and has since worked for many Chinese musicians. A few like renowned cellist Chu Yibing have even become friends.

Chu led his cello ensemble to a performance at Beluze's workshop last year.

In fact, Beluze is expected to give a lesson on being a luthier at Chu's "super-cello" party in the city for Chu's friends and fans in February, when the cellist celebrates his 50th birthday.

"When I met Beluze in his studio, I was very excited because the place has tradition," says Chu, who is considered among the country's finest musicians.

Chu started learning the cello at age 8 and went to Europe to pursue his music studies in 1983. He returned to China in 2004 as the head cello teacher for the capital's Central Conservatory of Music after working and living abroad.

At a time when stringed instruments are being mass-produced in factories, Beluze is offering something authentic and customized, Chu says.
Visitors take a look at precious relics during the exhibition "Treasures of Romania" at National Museum of China in Beijing on Jan 28, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The three-month exhibition opened Thursday, showcasing Romania's history from the pre-historical period to the end of the 18th century.

A total of 445 pieces (sets) of exhibits, covering stone artifacts, ceramics, gold and silver wares, bronzes, glass wares, wood wares, murals, manuscripts, textile fabrics are on display. Featuring most precious items from over 30 museums in Romania, the treasures are on display abroad for the first time.
International online retailer Shopbop's CEO Darcy Penick says Asia is becoming increasingly important for her company. The website offers a collection of monkey-themed products to mark the Chinese Lunar New Year.[Photo provided to China Daily]

With attractive prices and a range of products, global online retailers are becoming go-to destinations for young fashionistas.

Song Ci recently bought a 3.1 Phillip Lim bucket bag on Shopbop.com for $950. Although it took 10 days for her to get delivery, she found it worthwhile as it costs about 4,000 yuan ($606) less than what it is sold for in Chinese boutiques.

The Shanghai-based publicist in her 20s has been using the international online retailer since 2014, spending about $4,000 so far. Brands like Theory, Madewell and Alexander Wang are among her choices.

With a price advantage and a wide product range, international online retailers like Shopbop have become go-to destinations for China's young fashionistas like Song.

Positioned in the affordable luxury sector, the company is now among a handful of international online retailers who are looking to capitalize on China's new generation of price-conscious, well-informed fashion consumers.

"We think less about age, but more about mentalitya youthful, effortless, cool approach to fashion," Darcy Penick, CEO of Shopbop, told China Daily on a recent trip to Beijing.

Penick is well-informed about what the 20-somethings want to wear these days. Before joining Shopbop in 2009, Penick worked for Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue as a senior buyer. For the last two years, she has overseen Shopbop's buying, planning and marketing as a whole.

"It's all converging somewhat. We are seeing a lot of similar patterns in the behavior of customers in their 20s and 30s who engage with us in different countries," she says.

The idea of street style and celebrity influence, and the sensibility to mix products of different prices are universal trends today, she says.
A new cancer drug, tested for the first time by Melbourne researchers, has proved extremely effective in killing cancerous blood cells.

The clinical trial, undertaken by three Victorian research centers, showed that 80 percent of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia responded positively to the tablet treatment despite all other treatments failing.

The drug, venetoclax, developed by two pharmaceutical companies after 30 years of research, proved so effective in 20 percent of cases that patients were completely cleared of the disease.

"Venetoclax selectively targets the interaction responsible for keeping leukemia cells alive," Professor Andrew Roberts, a haematologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, told News Ltd on Thursday.

"In many cases we've seen the cancerous cells simply melt away."

"This is a very exciting result for people who often had no other treatment options available."

The discovery comes as Victorian Health Minister, Jill Hennessy, prepares to unveil the haematology ward of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) on Thursday.

"These groundbreaking results are exactly what the VCCC is all about - the world's best clinicians, researchers and scientists working together to drive breakthroughs in cancer prevention, detection and treatment," Hennessy said on Thursday.

Venetoclax works by overcoming the BCL-2 protein, which protects blood cancer cells from other treatments, to kill the harmful cell.

The Leukemia Foundation estimates that 1,000 Australians are diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia every year, making it the most common type of leukaemia.

Full results of the drug's first human trials will be published on Thursday in the respected medical publication, New England Journal of Medicine.
Li Yinhe, a fellow with the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a noted Chinese sociologist and sexologist, gives a keynote speech, "Sexuality in China", in Washington on April 3. The event was hosted by the Brookings Institution on the topics of sex education and social change in China. [Liu Xiaoxian / for China Daily]

A MIDDLE SCHOOL in Shenmu county in Shaanxi province, Northwest China, has forbidden "mixed seating" during meals, introducing different meal halls for boys and girls. The school principal has defended the action by saying it will prevent improper behavior and curb puppy love between students. China Youth Daily commented on Thursday:

There is no scientific evidence that proves puppy love adversely affects students' academic performance in school. Some students who excel in their studies are also good at managing their feelings.

This ban shows the poor management abilities of the school administrators.

They fear a scandal resulting from a student getting pregnant. So the ban is partly the result of their failure to provide proper sex education.

There is still the perception among some educators that the best sex education is no sex education.

The Shenmu county school is a key middle school at the provincial level. A school with such a good reputation should be advancing educational reform, instead of being a camp for conservatism.

Having an open mind toward sex education is the best way to avoid an "accidental outcome" from puppy love.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, addresses the 6th plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in Beijing, Jan 12, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

WANG BAO'AN, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, is being investigated for "severe disciplinary violations", the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China announced on Tuesday. Wang, also secretary of the leading Party branch of the bureau, was put under investigation just hours after he showed up at a routine news briefing. Beijing News on Thursday applauded the investigation as a clear message of deterrence to all would-be corrupt officials:

That Wang's investigation came just a few hours after his public appearance is both unexpected, yet foreseeable, given the country's ever strong determination to rule out corruption.

It sends a clear signal to all civil servants that the anti-corruption practice is all-weather and has absolutely "zero tolerance" toward their misdeeds.

That being said, any officials suspected of violating relevant laws and the Party rules can be expected to be held accountable for their misconduct in a more timely and "unexpected" manner.

That explains why the 52-year-old Wang is being investigated even as the Chinese Lunar New Year approaches. The festival is traditionally an occasion for family reunions.

Apparently, he and his family have no reason to celebrate the annual festival. Should he have been engaged in any wrongdoing, others involved with his illegal interests should also be feeling anxious as they will be aware that they will be ultimately caught in the anti-corruption net.

If his misconduct is eventually confirmed, Wang deserves no sympathy at all. Likewise nor does anyone else involved.
The footage run by CCTV shows a client (L) talking with a ovum provider (C). [Photo/IC]

The final amended Law on Population and Family Planning that came into effect on Jan 1 seemingly does not ban surrogacy, meaning being a surrogate mother will not be a crime. This would reflect a prudent and cautious approach to this issue.

The Ministry of Health banned surrogacy in 2001, but the existing ban has failed to achieve the desired result of more efficiently regulating the issue. Surrogacy in China is essentially a social problem relating to supply and demand, and banning it completely has simply created a black market to cater to the demand.

While those who want a ban on surrogacy argue it is contrary to human dignity and social customs, and may give rise to "designer" babies, corruption and destruction of families, along with disputes about who "owns" the baby, the reality is there is great demand for surrogate mothers.

Therefore, legislation to strictly regulate the market would be better than a total ban, as it would better protect all the parties concerned and reduce risks.

Society should be inclined to recognize that surrogacy offers a means of easing the pressure on some families and enhancing the family as the basic unit of welfare, and in this way it plays a positive role in balanced economic and social development. One of the most important effects of surrogacy is to strengthen family support in terms of providing children who can offer future welfare and security for couples who can't have children themselves. More than 12 percent of people of childbearing age are now considered infertile according to the Chinese Population Association, as well as single parents who have lost their only child and some other vulnerable groups.

And even where children are not the primary economic support for their parents, their emotional support is still important.

This means that adoption and surrogacy are always important choices for some.

However, the modern adoption system monopolized by the State remains opaque, and the "best interests" principle to evaluate adoption eligibility discriminates against vulnerable groups, which further fuels the demand for surrogate mothers.

Some believe that the issue of surrogacy weakens the social status of women and is even a form of enslavement, if only symbolic, of women. However, surrogate technology separates fertility and sexuality, reducing the dependence of women on men and frees women from traditional family roles. A surrogate mother pursues economic gains rather than seeking to satisfy maternal instincts.

But while women can make money by being a surrogate, they face most of the risks and have little legal protection.

What is needed is comprehensive legislation covering all aspects of the issue. This would help eliminate the black market and better protect all parties involved.

The author is an associate professor of Sun Yat-sen University's law school.
A staff member of the Gansu Ancient Books Restoration Center studies the calligraphy of ancient books.[Photo/xinhuanet.com]

As a country with such a long history, China is home to numerous ancient books. The arduous task of restoring and preserving these old tomes falls upon the staff members at Gansu Ancient Book Restoration Center.

When restoring an ancient book the staff must act as if they are doctors, applying their honed techniques with surgeon-like precision to ensure these books are not lost to history.

Experts of the Gansu Ancient Books Restoration Center try to find ways of restoring an ancient text. [Photo/xinhuanet.com]

Gansu Ancient Book Restoration Center was officially opened in 2015, as a center approved by the National Ancient Book Conservation Center. It specializes in dealing with the factors that affect books overtime, such as rotting, worms, rats and humidity.

Restoring ancient books helps to preserve the past and protect China's long cultural heritage and bring it back to life.

Staff members of Gansu Ancient Books Restoration Center concentrate on restoring ancient books. [Photo/xinhuanet.com]

Staff members of Gansu Ancient Books Restoration Center are required to have a great knowledge of paper, bookbinding, chemistry and ancient Chinese.

Restoring a book need days of efforts and involves dozens of work procedures, with every step requiring great patience and concentration, said a restoration specialist.

Gansu province is a historic province stretching along ancient Silk Road, westward from Northwest China to Central and West Asia and Europe. The province boasts plentiful historical sites and cultural heritage, such as Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, a collection of Buddhist sculptures and frescos.

Edited by Owen Fishwick
WASHINGTON - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may have had a failed test of some components of a hydrogen bomb earlier this month, CNN reported on Thursday, citing a US official.

"There may have been a partial, failed test of some type of components associated with a hydrogen bomb," a US official familiar with the latest US assessment told CNN.

The official said that the assessment was based on "careful examination of latest intelligence analysis of the test data."

However, there is no final conclusion, said the official.

Although the US still denies that DPRK tested a hydrogen bomb, "air sampling conducted after the test has proved inconclusive", which prompted Washington to review the seismic data, the official added.

Pyongyang tested a nuclear device on Jan 6 that DPRK said was a hydrogen bomb.

The official said that the analysis showed that the test was conducted more than two times deeper underground than originally assessed - at a depth consistent with what might be needed for a hydrogen bomb.

However, the size of the seismic event and other intelligence indicates it was not likely a fully functioning device. The official said that it is possible Pyongyang believed it conducted a full hydrogen bomb test, but the US thinks it was likely only some components that exploded.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters earlier on Thursday that the US still believes that Pyongyang did not test a hydrogen bomb.
SYDNEY - Schools in Australia's New South Wales state and Victoria state were placed lockdown on Friday after phone threats sparked police search operations, just days after students returned from their summer holidays.

Approximately seven schools in New South Wales state were on temporary lockdown and searched by police on Friday morning after multiple phone threats that had been received at local, interstate and overseas schools over the past 24 hours.

A New South Wales police spokesman told Xinhua students returned to class in the early afternoon. However, the investigation is ongoing and the authorities are continuing to liaise with the local education department.

"Making such threats is a serious criminal offence and every effort will be made to identify the person or persons responsible," NSW police said.

The search in New South Wales follows the evacuation of multiple schools in Victoria state after similar threats were made via recorded messages on phone calls, however Fairfax Media reported at least one Melbourne school had "received an actual phone call", according to a student's mother.

Both New South Wales and Victorian authorities won't confirm the exact type of threat.

"The schools are being evacuated as a precaution," Victoria police said in statement.

A spokesperson for Victoria's education department told Xinhua the affected schools enacted their emergency management plans which included evacuations after they reported the threats to police earlier on Friday.

"The safety and wellbeing of our students is always our number one priority, and the Department is taking these incidents very seriously," the spokesperson said.
TOKYO - Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday discussed the possibility that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may be gearing up to test a long-range rocket.

In talks held by phone, the pair agreed that the possibility of the DPRK launching a long-range rocket existed based on recent intelligence gathered and urged the DPRK to exercise restraint.

"We will work closely with the United States and other countries involved and take all possible measures to ensure the safety of our people," Kishida told local media after his call with Kerry.

Kishida and Kerry also discussed a possible UN Security Council resolution on the nuclear test that the DPRK carried out on Jan 6 in contravention of past resolutions, local media reports said.

The DPRK last launched what was described as a long-range rocket in December 2012, although the DPRK maintained it was launching a satellite.
Washington should "be cautious in words and actions in regard to the Diaoyu Islands", the Ministry of National Defense said on Friday in a stern rebuke to recent remarks by a top US navy official.

Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command, addressed the Chinese territory in the East China Sea on Wednesday at a Washington think tank event by saying that "we will clearly defend them if they are attacked by China", Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

In a written reply to China Daily on Friday, the Chinese ministry said: "China has taken notice of the relevant report."

"The Diaoyu Islands and affiliated islets are China's inherent territory, and China's sovereignty over them is beyond dispute. The Chinese military firmly safeguards national sovereignty and security, and its determination to safeguard regional peace and stability is unswerving," the ministry said.

The US should "take tangible efforts in safeguarding the peace and stability in the region as well as the big picture of China-US relations", the ministry added.
With everything else going on the world, the fate of several hundred bison inside Grand Canyon National Park might seem a fairly trivial concern.

After all, these are not even pure bison but cattle hybrids and not native to the region. Weighing up to 2,000 pounds, they trample soils and grasses in meadows and defile watering holes needed by native species. Everyone agrees they dont belong inside the park, so the debate is over how to remove them.

And heres where the issue actually takes on some significance. Should the National Park Service, which has jurisdiction under the law over the animals inside park boundaries, decide what to do with them? Or, because Arizona Game and Fish managed the herd when it was outside the park, should the state make the decision? And should members of Congress who side with Game and Fish be involved at this stage?

In other words, the bison raise questions about the administrative sovereignty of the national parks, and its not the first time the issue has come up at the Grand Canyon. U.S. Sen. John McCain got involved in the overflight noise controversy nearly two decades ago by shepherding through a bill that called for natural quiet over 50 percent of the park for at least 75 percent of the day. He has since spent considerable time conducting oversight hearings on how to achieve that goal, then introducing bills on flight corridors, altitudes and noise technology even as the Park Service and the FAA try to work out a set of rules.

Now he has taken up the cause of Game and Fish in allowing citizen hunters to reduce the herd inside Grand Canyon National Park. A bill he is sponsoring comes before a two-year Park Service environmental impact study of the herd required by law is finished.

Park Service scientists, in a preliminary proposal, were not opposed to culling the herd by having contract professionals shoot some animals. This would be an exception to the prohibition on hunting of any kind in national parks  even Yellowstone does not permit bison inside the park to be shot for herd reduction, instead waiting until they migrate outside park boundaries.

The bison on the North Rim are there in part because of poor range conditions in lower House Rock Valley and because they instinctively sought safety from hunters. The animals have lost their fear of humans, and a citizen hunt, as proposed by Game and Fish, would be more like shooting cattle on a ranch. The meat would help feed the hunters families, while the Park Service proposal, under the law, would donate the meat to food banks.

The Sierra Club and other conservation groups have proposed rounding up the herd and moving it out of the park before staging a hunt or relocating them permanently. An initial roundup put more than a dozen animals back in House Rock Valley, but they wandered back into the park when left uncontained. Its unrealistic to expect the herd not to return to the park unless they are removed entirely from the region, and the cost of effective bison fencing is prohibitive.

At this point, McCain seems set on advancing his bill, even before the Park Service study is completed, which expected in several months. If it reaches the presidents desk separately, it likely would be vetoed. But if it is attached as a rider to must-pass legislation like a budget, then hunting bison in Grand Canyon National Park might no longer seem so trivial.

We hope it doesnt come to that. We urge McCain to wait for the study to be released, and then allow the Park Service and Game and Fish to work out a plan that might combine limited hunting with permanent removal. Each agency brings to the table its own set of skills and expertise, and together they might find a better way to honor national park sovereignty, protect the North Rim ecosystem and satisfy some hunters, too.
Cai Fang (center), Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, laid out China's 13th Five-Year Plan's priorities, goals and opportunities for the EU Tuesday in Brussels. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

China's new five-year blueprint is a blueprint for the country's most crucial development period and offers opportunities for the EU, Cai Fang, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told a Brussels seminar on Tuesday.

Cai, who is also a member of the advisory board of the 13th Five-Year Plan on National Economic and Social Development of China, addressed a seminar held by the Brussels-based think tank Friend of Europe.

He said that next five years is a critical period for China's development, since the country has to reach its "comprehensive well-being society" goal by 2020. In addition, China has to accomplish "two doublings", to be more precise, GDP doubling and per capital income doubling by 2020 as well.

The 13th Five-Year Plan is special because China must avoid the "middle-income trap" and enter the high-income stage of economic development, and success depends on the direction the plan takes, Cai said.

He said that five development concepts stand at the core of the new Five-Year Plan, namely innovation, coordination, greener development, open development and shared development.

"To reach these goals, new methods of implementation and new policy measures are to be adopted, " he said.

"In order to achieve this, we have to keep our economic growth at a moderately high level," said Cai.

Cai said that instead of fixing a specific target for economic growth as in past decades, this time the government is referring to a broader definition for growth expectations: moderately high growth, which is both a qualitative and quantitative goal under the 'New Normal' description of China's economy.

He indicated that the slowdown of Chinese economic growth is being driven by domestic structural changes, as starting from 2010, the working-age population (those who are aging between 15 and 64) has been in decline.

"It is not easy as economic growth has been slowing down since 2012," explained Cai, " and as long as we are under the 'New Normal,' the growth is continuing to slow down."

He said that the average economic growth rate has to be maintained at 6.53% for the next five years. However, according to analysis and study by Cai's team, the potential economic growth will be around 6.2 % from 2016 to 2020, compared with almost 10 % before 2010 and 7.6% during the last Five-Year Plan.

The essential problem is how to tackle the gap between 6.2 % and 6.53%, and Cai added that through the combination of potential economic growth and reform dividendthe required moderately high speed can be realized.

At present time China is undertaking series of reforms, and taking urbanization reform as an example, Cai said that when 170 million migrant workers become integrated urban residents, '3 birds can be hit with one stone.'

Firstly, the labor supply will be increased. Secondly, labor mobility will continue so that re-allocative efficiency can be gained. Finally, domestic consumption will be further expanded.

"By doing so, we enhance labor supply, productivity as well as fertility rate, which can spur potential growth by 1 %," he added.

Nevertheless, Cai said urbanization reform is facing big challenges. For example, the majority of migrant workers are trying to move to mega cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, ignoring the fact that second-line cities' reform of resident registration, or hukou, is much more open.

"The huge migration brings traffic jams and pollution to the big cities, and not only is it hard for them to get local hukou, but also many of them can't enjoy full package of social welfare," said Cai.

"The management capacity and ability of these mega cities isn't qualified enough for such huge populations and there is a deficiency of local finance, so we still impose high restrictions on hukou in big cities.,'' he said

Aging society is another crucial problem for China right now. For Cai, this can been seen as a 'Demographic Debt' but also as a second chance for a demographic dividend which boosts the development of health industry, education industry and tourism industry.

"What we need to do now is to extend the demographic dividend in small cities and towns by enhancing the local employment rate and promoting social welfare on one hand; on the other hand we need to accelerate the hukou reform in middle-sized cities. The urbanization rate right now is 38% and our goal by 2020 is 40%, which means the annual growth should be around 1.3% and every year 16 million migrants will become city residents with local residency rights.

Although urbanization reform is progressing slowly, China's financial system reforms and continuing opening-up have seen many early results. As Yao Zhizhong, Deputy Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pointed out, China has been balancing its exports and imports, and its economic growth model has been transmitted to domestic consumption and foreign investment.

Cai believed that China's 13th Five-Year Plan will bring numerous opportunities for Europe.

The innovative development means more international cooperation in science, technology and education, he said.

The coordinated development will open more opportunities for European enterprises to invest in less well-developed regions of China. Greener development will demand more high-tech and investment in environmental protection and carbon emission.

Shared development will expand the scale and scope of consumption with bigger middle-income appetite for expenditure on cultural, tourism and high-quality consumer goods. And the open development offers even more potential opportunities, he said, in a reference to the "One Belt One Road" initiative.

Shada Islam, Director of Policy at Friends of Europe, said she had high expectations of the new five-year plan. She said that it's important for Europeans to understand the complexity and intricacy of China's development, the challenges and struggles it faces in next 5 years.

"We need to know that China is on a reform path and it is important for us to know that huge transition is taking place in China. There may be obstacles on the way, but long-term goals are still there and they are reassuring for us," said Islam.

To contact the reporter: fujing@chinadaily.com.cn




Nguyen PhuTrong(R), Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee General Secretary meets Song Tao (L), a special Envoy of General Secretary Xi Jinping in Hanoi, Vietnam, Jan 29, 2016. [Photo by Wangjian/chinadaily.com.cn]

A special envoy of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping met with the leader of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Hanoi on Friday, with both sides agreeing to consolidate the strategic partnership between the countries.

Song Tao, head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee and a senior diplomat, has been sent as special envoy of the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping to visit Laos and Vietnam from Tuesday to Saturday.

Song sent a congratulatory letter and conveyed a message from Xi Jinping to General Secretary Nguyen PhuTrong, the newly re-elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

In the letter, Xi Jinping expressed warm congratulations to Nguyen PhuTrong and expressed his belief that under his leadership of the Vietnamese Party, socialist construction and the reform of Vietnam will continue to achieve new heights.

Xi also said in the letter that China is ready to work with Vietnam in promoting the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries and contributing to the peace and prosperity in the region.

Nguyen PhuTrong expressed his heartfelt thanks to Xi Jinping and said that Vietnam is ready to work with China to consolidate the traditional friendship between China and Vietnam.

Nguyen PhuTrong said his country will continue to cooperate with China to strengthen the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, to promote the socialist cause and to maintain regional peace and prosperity.

China is willing to work with Vietnam to implement the important consensus between the two parties, to strengthen strategic communication and deepen pragmatic cooperation, Song Tao said.

China will also expand personnel exchanges and strengthen communication and coordination with Vietnam both at the national and regional level, he said.
A Canadian citizen has been charged with prying into and stealing State secrets, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Friday.

The people's procuratorate of Dandong, Liaoning province, charged Kevin Garratt at the city's intermediate people's court, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Friday.

Hua said he is also suspected of having accepted assignments from Canadian intelligence agencies to gather intelligence in China.

"Chinese legal agencies conduct their work in strict accordance with the law. Kevin Garratt's lawful rights are fully protected," said Hua.

On Feb 3, the national security agency in Dandong "placed Kevin Garratt in criminal detention on suspicion of involvement in activities that undermine China's national security", and released his wife Julia Garratt "on bail".

The couple were placed under residential surveillance on Aug 4, 2014, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei confirmed in February last year.

In August 2014, xinhua.net reported that the couple were suspected of stealing Chinese military and national defense research secrets.

The Garratts first came to China in 1984, and moved in 2008 to Dandong, a city bordering the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper reported.

The Associated Press quoted Kevin Garratt's son Simeon as saying that the couple ran a coffee shop and did Christian aid work for people in the DPRK.

The Associated Press quoted Francois Lasalle, Canada's global affairs department spokesman, as saying that Canada finds the indictment concerning, and that "the government of Canada has raised this case with the Chinese government at high levels".

Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the case "should not be politicized", and the legal actions China has taken "should be respected".

"China welcomes foreigners to live, work and study in the country. But they must abide by China's law," he said.
Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar al Jaafari attends the opening of the Syrian peace talks at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, January 29, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

GENEVA -- UN-brokered Syria peace talks began as scheduled at Geneva's Palais de Nations on Friday.

Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura started the talks by meeting the Syrian government's delegation headed by the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the UN Bashar Jaafari.

However, it is still not clear if Syrian opposition members will participate in the talks. They recently called for an end to air strikes by government forces as a precursor to peace talks.

The talks strive to broker a lasting solution to the Syrian crisis which has been raging since 2011.

"The first priority will be the focus of the talks, of what most, if not all Syrians, want to hear: the possibility of a broad ceasefire and the possibility of stopping the threat of ISIL, and therefore thanks to a broad ceasefire, an increase of humanitarian aid," De Mistura told reporters earlier this week.
A volunteer carries a migrant baby after the arrival of a rubber dinghy packed with refugees and migrants on a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos, January 29, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

BRUSSELS -- In recent days, several European countries rolled out tougher asylum regulations, as the European Union (EU) remains under tremendous pressure due to an influx of migrants.

SWEDEN PLANS TO DEPORT ASYLUM SEEKERS

Sweden is planning to deport up to 80,000 asylum seekers over the next few years, a government representative said on Thursday.

Swedish authorities received some 163,000 asylum applications in 2015 but the country is now planning to step up deportation efforts, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman told public broadcaster Swedish Television.

A spike in deportations should not be expected until a year from now, the minister said.

Swedish authorities were planning to charter jets for the specific purpose of sending migrants back to their home countries, the minister said.

The government is mulling over introducing government benefits for returnees, Ygeman added, meanwhile stressing the importance of stopping failed asylum seekers from staying in Sweden.

Asylum admissions peaked in Sweden in November when the country admitted up to 10,000 migrants per week, according to figures from its migration agency.

The Swedish government has since early 2016 been imposing fines on train, ferry and bus operators whose passengers enter the country from Denmark without valid photo identification.
THE HAGUE -- The Netherlands on Friday decided to join US-led airstrikes against targets of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant(ISIS) in Syria.

Since October 2014, the Netherlands has been sending F16 fighter jets to bomb ISIS targets in Iraq. But the coalition government has different views whether to extend its mission into Syria.

The extension of the mission was expected after the junior coalition partner, the PvdA (Labor Party), on Tuesday decided to not to halt such an operation.

"Only if we take away safe havens of ISIS in Iraq and Syria can we prevent attacks," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said here in a press conference.

In addition, the Dutch cabinet has agreed on a series of measures to solve the conflicts in Iraq and Syria through political and humanitarian means.

"We are convinced that only a consistent approach will help to bring back stability in Iraq and Syria," said Foreign Minister Bert Koenders.
(Photo : Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Chinese men and women sing traditional Communist Party folk songs at a local park on November 15, 2015 in Beijing, China. Out of the mainland's 1.4 billion population, 704 million are men, while only 670 million are women.

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China's National Bureau of Statistics has revealed that there were 34 million more men than women by the end of 2015, worrying many about the possible imbalance in the number of marriages in the future.



Out of the mainland's 1.4 billion population, 704 million are men, while only 670 million are women.



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The 12th Five Years Plan for National Population Development aimed to lower the sex ratio at birth to 115 or below from 2011 to 2015 and succeeded. The country's Statistics Agency revealed that there are only 110 girls for every 113.51 boys born.



This is way above the normal rate of 102 to 107 boys for every 100 girls.



2015 saw a 2.37 percent decline from 2014's 115.88 ratio last year, reportedly the biggest plunge in the last seven years.



Affected aspects



"The most noticeable impact is a marriage squeeze. Leftover men will find it more difficult to marry women," said Chen Jian, vice president of China Society of Economic Reform.



However, the recent reform on the decades-old family planning policy is expected to slowly bridge the gender gap. In October last year, the government allowed all Chinese couples to have two children.



The world-renowned one-child policy has been updated twice after its legislation. In 2002, couples were allowed to have two children if both of them are from single children families. In 2013, the law was relaxed more as couples are allowed two children even if only one of them is a single child.



The gender gap, if not narrowed down in the following years, will threaten the population ecology as well as sustainable and economic social development, Chen added.



Yi Fuxian, a researcher on demographic policy from the University of Wisconsin, said that the financial industry will also suffer.



"The left-over men will drag down businesses like credit card, loan, insurance as well as the credit system," he said.



The labor market will also see more gender imbalance.



"Surplus male labor will intensify the competition in the labor job market and increase the difficulty for women to get a job," said Li Jianxin, professor at Peking University's Department of Sociology.



"When they reach working age, the dependency ratio of the population will go down while the potential economic growth rate will go up by about 0.5 percent. Some 30 million individuals are expected to enter the workforce by 2050," said Wang Peian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission.



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TagsChina gender gap, china population, One Child Policy, two-child policy
(Photo : Scott Olson/Getty Images) Illegally stocked weapons and ammunitions were discovered in the home of a man in Liaoning.

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A Chinese man, who has a 'lethal obsession', has been detained after it was discovered that he had a 'mini arsenal' of weapons and ammunition at home.



Chinese police say that the man was a 'military fanatic,' and had a collection of various military armaments including the replica of a gun, some rocket-propelled grenades and hundreds of rounds of other ammunition.



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Police say that they were investigating reports of unlicensed taxis and were carrying out routine checks when they went to the home of a man in Shenyang, Liaoning province on Jan. 27, reports Chinanews.com.



The discovery was apparently accidental.' They found out that the man, who was only identified as Liu, was a serious ordinance fanatic who loves to collect various kinds of military weapons and ammunition.



The police found an illegal collection of firearms and weaponry used for military purposes in Liu's property. The mini arsenal included hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and more than 800 bullets of various sizes and calibers.



Bullets ranged from small sizes such as for handguns, to large caliber bullets.



Weirdly, though, among all the deadly ammunitions that Liu collected, he only had one gun  and a replica at that.



After checking the collection, police said it is highly destructive. They then confiscated the said collection of weapons and ammunition.



However, they did not release any detail regarding Liu's reasons for having such dangerous weaponry.



Liu has beeb accused of the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. He has been detained by the Tiexi Public Security bureau.



The case is still under investigation.



Liaoning's Fake Guns



Apparently, Liu is not the only man in Liaoning who has a fake gun.



Back in 2014, a man in Huludao city tried to steal money from a bank. He reportedly shot a bank worker who was carrying a bag of money  with an air gun.



He could not make his way with his loot, however, as the bag appeared too heavy for him to carry alone. He was caught by authorities.



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Tagsweapons, Bullets, grenades, guns, Liaoning
(Photo : China Photos/Getty Images) Health officials have proposed regulations to help prevent pupils from being poisoned by air pollutants.

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Local health officials in Pudong have asked authorities to have air quality monitoring systems installed in schools to help prevent pupils from getting poisoned by fumes inside classrooms.



Chen Xiaoling, the director of a health supervision bureau in Pudong New Area, told the Shanghai People's Congress that the pupils are in danger of the air pollution found in schools, reports Shanghai Daily.



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Air pollution in classrooms has become a major threat to children who are more vulnerable to chemical pollutants than adults, she said.



Chen explained that more than 500 different kinds of pollutants have been detected in both newly built or recently renovated classrooms. Some of these, according to her, can cause anemia or even cancer.



Yet there are no specific regulations to supervise air quality at schools. she added.



New and refurbished rooms are a major source of harmful compounds, Zeng Zheng, a fellow deputy to the congress, said. He co-presented the proposal with Chen.



He said that aside from the oil-based paints that are used on school walls, the paints that are used on classroom furniture such as desks, chairs and cupboards are also a source of the pollutants, which include formaldehyde and benzene.



Both Chen and Zeng said that the new proposed regulation should make air quality monitoring a compulsory activity on a regular basis. They added that serious punishment should be given to officials that fail to comply.



This joint proposal was made as a response to the number of 'poisoning' incidents recorded at local schools within the past year.



In September last year, 11 elementary pupils from Huinan Town in Pudong and 38 from Chongming reportedly had problems with nosebleeds, sneezing, itchy eyes and even fainting. These incidents happened after the summer holidays, with the pupils returning to their newly decorated classrooms.



The Shanghai Education Commission said that it will conduct a citywide investigation, and is yet to release its findings.



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TagsPudong, Shanghai Education Commission, pollutants, poisoning, schools
(Photo : ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images) A girl who used the Tianjin blast incident as a means to swindle money has been sentenced to prison.

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A 19-year-old girl, who earned nearly 100,000 yuan through online fraud, has been sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China.



Yang Cailan, of Fangchenggang City, was sentenced for claiming that her father died in the Tianjin blasts last year, according to Chinese state media. Apparently, her pretensions enabled her to swindle 96,576 yuan from netizens who sympathized with her.



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Yang reportedly published two posts on Sina Weibo early in August 13, 2015, saying that she lost communication with her father - whom she claims was working near the blast site - a day after the explosions occurred. The explosions killed 173 people, the Fangchenggang District People's Court said.



Initially, Yang was merely trying to get people's attention. However, when she found out that Weibo had a tipping function, she decided to dishonestly gain money by swindling readers.



In her third and final fake post, Yang said that she was finally able to locate her father, who was dying in a hospital.



That post was read more than two million times, getting Yang the attention that she was looking for. It reportedly circulated rapidly, successfully prompting more than 3,700 Weibo users to give her the money that she wanted.



When Yang was arrested in August, she claimed that her Weibo account had been accessed by someone without permission. She added that she has not been able to use it since the end of 2012, the court said.



Weibo has since then closed Yang's account, and all the money that she raised was returned to the unsupecting donors, according to Xinhua.



Yang, who is unemployed, was fined 8,000 yuan in addition to the three-year sentence. Her phone, which she used in her swindling, was also confiscated by authorities.



Yang did not say if she will appeal the sentence.



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TagsYang Cailan, tianjin blast, Fraud
(Photo : Reuters) Soldiers from the U.S. Marines and Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (above) conduct joint exercises that are intended to recover an island in San Clemente, California.



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The United States and Japan have drawn up a naval defense plan to wrest control over disputed islands in the East China Sea in the event of a Chinese invasion, Japanese defense officials have revealed.



Citing sources from within the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the Asahi Shimbun news agency has reported that the commanders of the US Forces Japan (USFJ) and Japan's Self Defense Forces (SDF) have drafted a top secret plan to regain control over the Senkaku island group -- called Diaoyu in China -- in case Beijing manages to take the islands by force.



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The sources told the Asashi that the four-phase joint operations protocol involves coordinated artillery fire and airstrikes.



The plan -- which is yet to become an operations document -- is said to have been prepared by US and Japanese commanders in 2012, shortly after then Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda oversaw the purchase of the disputed islands from its previous owners.



Bigger, Stronger



Beijing and Tokyo have a long-standing quarrel over the territory, which is roughly due east of mainland China and west of Okinawa, in the East China Sea.



China has stepped up incursions in the waters off the Japanese-controlled territory since December, and the Financial Times reports that the Japanese government has grown increasingly worried about what Beijing intends to do next.



"Recently, the Chinese government sent bigger, stronger patrol ships -- almost equivalent with naval combatant ships -- into the waters around the Senkakus," said Hideaki Kaneda, a retired vice-admiral now with the Ozaki Institute in Tokyo.



While most analysts agree that a Chinese invasion of the Senkaku Islands is unlikely, an unnamed official at Japan's National Institute of Defense Studies (NIDS) told the South China Morning Post he believes the plan is a sensible precaution.



"It is very clear that China is attempting to weaken Japan's control over the territory, which makes those islands presently Tokyo's most serious security concern," the source told the Post. "But it also underlines the accelerating security relationship between Japan and the US and this sort of cooperation is understandable and logical for both sides."



Four Elements



The Asahi says naval commanders from the US and Japan are currently formulating an updated defense plan for the disputed islands following a high-level meeting held in November last year. Sources have told the Japanese news agency that key elements of the 2012 strategy will be incorporated into the new protocol.



The first phase of the 2012 US-Japan naval plan is said to outline the establishment of a battlespace around the islands, forming a strong defensive zone comprised of warships and aircraft patrols to detect and repel the enemy invasion force.



The second phase of the plan consists of a strategy premised on a scenario in which the invading force manages to land and take the island in spite of the battlespace. Under such a scenario, the battlespace is converted into a naval blockade to intercept and destroy arriving enemy support troops and supply vessels.



The third a phase of the plan calls for both Japan and the US to coordinate airstrikes and artillery fire on the occupying force. The final stage charts the landing of a joint assault force which will overwhelm the remaining invaders and re-take the islands.



"It was like a study of scenarios for a joint operational plan," a high-ranking official from the Japanese defense ministry said.



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TagsUS-Japan ties, China-Japan Dispute, China-Japan Diaoyu Island Dispute
(Photo : Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images) People salvage dead fish in a river on September 3, 2013 in Wuhan, Hubei province of China.

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China's Supreme Court is not giving second chances.



The country's top court has rejected the appeal for a new hearing of a company involved in one of the biggest environmental public interest case.



Jinhui, a shipping company based in Jiangsu province's Taizhou, and five other firms, were slapped with a 160 million ($25 million) fine for damaging the environment. However, Jinhui's lawyer Zhao Bing said that the fine was too much to rebuild the damages.



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A lawsuit filed by the Taizhou City Environmental Protction Association in 2014 said the six companies sold 25,000 metric tons of waste acids to a company that did not have a permit to release the waste material into the rivers.



Zhao argued that the rivers can purify the pollutants naturally.



"Although the rivers can self-purify such a discharge, it still damaged the surrounding environment," case judge Lin Wenxue said.



"My client just sold the acids under a contract signed with the Jiangzhong company that was in charge of dealing with the waste, and did not discharge the acids itself," Zhao said.



The Supreme Court, standing by its original ruling, said that Jinhui "should be obligated to pay attention to such a contract involving dangerous acids and also has responsibility for the discharge."



According to an environmental law professor from Wuhan University, the public hearing showed that the Chinese judicial bodies played their role in environmental protection, especially with the swift action on the case. Just a month after the the Taizhou City Environmental Protction Association filed the complaint, the local intermediate people's court ordered the companies involved to pay the penalty.



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TagsChina supreme court, Jinhui company, environmental public interest case
(Photo : Photo by Kevin Lee/Getty Images) Police vehicles enter the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court . China has indicted a Canadian man for alleged espionage and stealing state secrets, sparking diplomatic tensions between the two nations.

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China's indictment of a Canadian man, detained since 2014 for allegedly spying and stealing state secrets, has sparked diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Ottawa, China's state-run news agency, Xinhua reported.



The Canadian government has expressed 'concern' about the situation of Kevin Garratt, a Canadian citizen, who is facing charges of spying and stealing state secrets in China.



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Garratt was indicted in Dandong city in northeast China where he and his wife had been running a cafe business since 2008.



Garrett's wife, Julia, was reportedly also detained for several months for the same charges before being released in February last year. She has been barred from leaving China since her release.



Damning evidence



"During the investigation, Chinese authorities also found evidence which implicates Garratt in accepting tasks from Canadian espionage agencies to gather intelligence in China," Xinhua reported.



The case has intensified diplomatic tensions between the two countries. The arrest was made less than a week after the Canadian government accused Chinese hackers of breaking into its key computer network.



"Canada finds the indictment of Kevin Garratt by China concerning," said Francois Lasalle, a spokesman for the Canada foreign department.



Case elevated



Francois said Canada has already raised the case with the Chinese government and that Ottawa officials are in touch with China and Garrett's family. Canada said it is closely monitoring developments in the case against Garrett.



The indictment was announced a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and high-ranking officials attended a party hosted by China in Ottawa in celebration of the 45th anniversary of mutual diplomatic relations.



Garratt's son, Simeon, a resident of Vancouver, said they are still awaiting developments from their legal team in China.



Deportation



"We don't really have any more word on it other than that. We haven't had access to anything to this point. It's a waiting game to be honest," Simeon said in an interview.



A former diplomat said he hopes that the indictment will lead to the process of deportation of Garrett and his wife to Canada.



Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who had served two tours of duty in China, voiced hoped that China will deport Garrett and his wife on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.



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TagsKevin Garratt, espionage, Canada, Julia Garratt
(Photo : Photo by Andy Wong-Pool/Getty Images) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (2nd L) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speak during a bilateral meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs January 27, 2016 in Beijing, China. Although China and US have agreed to pass a UN Security Council resolution condemning North Korea over its latest nuclear test, the two countries, however, could not agree on specific actions to take

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The United States and China have found a common ground on the need to pass a UN Security Council resolution condemning North Korea for its latest nuclear test, but both sides have not been able to agree on the specific sanctions to take.



According to the New York Times, China is not keen on imposing broad sanctions against Pyongyang, but is open to pursuing sanctions against individuals working at North Korea's nuclear complex.



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In a one-day meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington is contemplating on imposing stronger sanctions against North Korea which could affect DPRK's economic trade with China.



Peaceful negotiations and dialogues



Wang stressed that the controversy over North Korea's nuclear test should be resolved only through peaceful negotiations and dialogues. He added that the UN resolution that will be passed should not create further tensions in the Korean Peninsula.



Wang resented the US and other countries' accusations that China has not been exerting much effort in curbing North Korea's nuclear tests and its seeming indifference to conduct peaceful resolutions regarding the nuclear test issues.



"For China, the worst-case scenario is you push North Korea over to become an enemy with nuclear weapons", said Zhang Baohui, director of the Center for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.



Irresponsible statements



Beijing, Pyongyang's major benefactor and largest trade partner, has dismissed the US State Department's pronouncements that China should do more to rein in North Korea as 'irresponsible.'



Chinese authorities have reiterated that Beijing has made tremendous efforts in ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons, saying the US should be more cautious in making statements without basis.



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TagsNorth Korea's nuclear test, UN Security Council resolution, foreign minister Wang Yi, US Secretary of State John Kerry
(Photo : Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images) Due to record-breaking freezing temperatures in China, many households have reported problems with their water system - forcing repairers to work around the clock.

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A photo of Qiu Tianpei's blistered, bruised, and swollen hands that made rounds on Chinese social networking platforms is drawing attention to city maintenance workers who have to work overtime to fix pipes.



As record-breaking temperatures dawn this week, sometimes even reaching negative 7.2C, many households' experienced pipes and water meters malfunction. The water apparently froze due to low temperature, and its expansion broke pipes, prompting residents to call for maintenance.



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The Shanghai Municipal Water Supply Administration reportedly received 10,000 calls requesting for repairs from Monday to Wednesday. This is more than thrice their usual number of callers.



"Many of my colleagues slept for a few hours in the office and relied on instant noodles for quick meals to save time for the repair work," Qiu, a 47-year-old native of Deyang city, Sichuan province, told China Daily.



Because of the number of pipes to be repaired, plumbers like Qiu and his colleagues have to delay visiting their homes for the Spring Festival. They will be forced to go home instead early in February.



"Regardless of how much time I need to spend there, I won't leave before the water supply is restored," Qui said.



"It hardly helps to keep my hands warm if I put on gloves, which will get wet in seconds. It seems more important to help residents solve their difficulties than keep my hands warm," he added.



"If the aging water meters are replaced during regular maintenance, and the old water pipes are given insulation layers, we can cope with extreme weather calmly," said An Yiqing, a member of the local political advisory body.



Qiu works at the maintenance station in Shanghai's Jing'an district. Its director, Li Xiaofei, said that his 14 workers already attended to more than 1,000 households from Monday to Wednesday, which is equal to their typical workload for one month.



"All of our repairmen are working around the clock, but we are still falling behind what's needed. Nearly one-third of the water meters in the old residential communities in the area are broken. We will have to fight for another several days," Li said.



Qiu said a repairing job can take him a minimum of five minutes to an hour.



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TagsShanghai, China cold temperature, Qiu Tianpei, plumbing, city maintenance
(Photo : Chris McGrath/Getty Images) McDonald's is now offers burger customization in Beijing.

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In a pursuit to win over other stores in China's increasingly competitive fast food scene, McDonald's has unveiled a new store in Beijing  one that offers burger customization to hungry customers.



The newly-furnished McDonald's restaurant branch in the Wangfujing shopping district of Beijing features a buffet-style counter where customers can freely customize their order, according to China Radio International.



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Customization options involve a wide range of McDonald's burger choices, including bread, burger patties, vegetables and dressings - all suited to satisfy the diner's palate.



McDonald's opened its first ever custom-burger restaurant in Shanghai in June last year. Since then, it has built 11 custom stores in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing as part of its campaign to continue winning the fast food savvy Chinese.



According to McDonald's China CEO Phyllis Cheung, China is now the third-largest market for their company, where they have about 2,230 McDonald's restaurants. An average of 200 to 250 new restaurants are opened every year.



Cheung said this year, McDonald's will focus its expansion on third- and fourth-tier cities.



Changing Strategies



Now that the general public has a growing awareness regarding food safety and health issues, fast food chains are being forced to readjust their approach to local consumers.



McDonald's, in addition to introducing custom burgers, has also introduced digital ordering and payment services via the messaging app WeChat, thanks to a partnership with Chinese internet firm Tencent. It also developed games for children in the new Beijing restaurant.



On the other hand, Yum! Brands, owner of both Pizza Hut and KFC, also announced last year that it would upscale some of its restaurants to regain the interest of the public.



Starbucks, the largest coffee chain in the world, also said that it plans to build 500 new stores in China, as part of a plan to have 3,400 stores selling in the Chinese market by 2019.



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(Photo : Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images) Jack Ma was one of the highly ranked donors on China Philanthropy Research Institute list of the top 100 philanthropists in the country.

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A comprehensive report on the top philanthropists of 2015 showed a woman on the top spot for the first time since the annual report was first published in 2011.



He Qiaonv, founder and chairman of architecture firm Beijing Orient Landscape, topped Beijing Normal University's (BNU) top 100 charitable donors in the mainland. BNU's China Philanthropy Research Institute compiles a list of the most generous people every year.



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He donated 2.9 billion worth of stocks to a charity established under the company's name.



Alibaba chairman Jack Ma, who placed 10th on the list, donated 100 million ($15 million) to Hangzhou Normal University, his alma mater.



Donations



The country's 100 most charitable philanthropists donated a total of 12.8 billion ($1.95 billion) in 2015, a significant fall from 2014's 30.4 billion.



The research found out that education received the largest donations and philanthropists chose private organizations over government-backed ones.



"The higher ratio of donations for private foundations was partly due to stronger management and tighter supervision of enterprises and partly due to poor information disclosure of the government charities," said Zhang Gaorong, a member of the China Philanthropy Institute.





Nearly half of the 12.8 billion yuan ($1.95 billion) worth of donations made in 2015 went to foundations of universities, with 10 percent of them coming from alumni. Data showed that 47.5 percent went to higher education charities, while government and government-backed charities only received 8.8 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively.



Apart from the education sector, development of primary and secondary schools, poverty relief, and environmental protection also received donations.



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TagsChinese philanthropists, China charitable donations, Beijing Normal University, Jack Ma, He Qiaonv
(Photo : Photo by Joe Burbank-Pool/Getty Images) A man has been executed in central China after being found guilty of kidnapping up to 22 children.

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Justice is served for the families and friends of several abducted infants and children as the Supreme People's Court announced that Tan Yongzhi has been executed on Friday.



Tan kidnapped 22 infants and children between February 2008 and April 2014. Most of the kidnapping occurred between Yunan province in Southwest China and Henan in Central China.



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The court said that Tan's properties were seized by the government.



"The large number of children he kidnapped seriously damaged children's rights, which is why he was condemned to death by the Zhengzhou Intermediate People's Court in Henan and the top court approved the execution," the court said.



Tan was sentenced to death in 2014. He is said to have been the ringleader of a notorious 37-member gang that abducted and sold children. According to China News Service, the government have been unable to find biological parents of the kidnapped children.



China's courts are known for being very strict and meting out heavy penalties to child kidnappers and traffickers. The country's judicial bodies promised to intensify crackdowns against such criminals in 2010. The number of child kidnapping cases has been slowly dwindling since then.



More than 1,900 cases of women and children abduction were solved and 2,800 criminals were punished in 2012, while the number of cases dropped to 853 last year.



Under the one-child policy, child trafficking was a booming underground business in the country as many couples were forced to make the difficult decision between selling their child or paying a fine if they exceeded the number of children legally allowed in a family. The government's recent regulation allowing all couples to have two children is expected to reduce child trafficking.



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(Photo : Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images) A viral videos of a woman yelling at hospital appointment ticket scalpers has pushed authorities to look into the practice.

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A video of a Chinese woman who got fed up of scalpers outside a hospital in Beijing has became a window for the public to see how the appointment system in some hospitals in the country really works.



Patients who do not have emergency cases must endure the long lines to get a ticket before seeing the doctor.



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The woman, who lined up for two days to get an appointment ticket for her mother at the Beijing Guang'anmen Hospital, yelled at ticket scalpers for selling them more than twice their price.



The video was uploaded on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, on January 25 and has since been viewed more than 2 million times and garnered more than 40,000 comments from citizens who experienced the same thing many times.



<iframe width="776" height="435" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SrCQWNy7JYs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>



"They want 4,500 yuan for a 300 yuan ticket! At that kind of price, how can an average person even hope to get to see a doctor? We took the trouble to wait here all day from early in the morning, without being able to get registered," said the woman, who was almost in tears.



The woman was yelling at a group of scalpers in the hospital's waiting room. They wait to "snatch up" tickets and resell them for a ridiculous amount of money.



The woman, who is now back home with her mother, told Beijing Youth Daily that scammers have been threatening her since the video went viral. She and her mother travelled from a distant province and rented a small room near the hospital for 132 ($20) a day. CNN reported that she had to carry her mother on her back just to visit the hospital.



"My mother is still ill and paralyzed in bed. I need to take care of her and only wish to get her properly treated. I don't want that much attention," she said.



Witnesses said that the incident happened on Tuesday, January 19. The woman also accused the hospital staff of conspiring with the scalpers, but the hospital has dismissed this as false.



Guang'anmen Hospital said in a statement that there is no evidence of the staff's involvent in the scam.



According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, Beijing's municipal health department will investigate the incident and hospital staff who are found selling tickets to scalpers will be punished.



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TagsBeijing, China hospital, Beijing Guang'anmen Hospital, ticket scalpers in China, scammers
(Photo : Photo by China Photos/Getty Images) Authorities nabbed several appointment ticket scalpers in Beijing this week.

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A total of 12 people were arrested for scalping appointment tickets in hospitals in Beijing on Tuesday, police said.



Seven scalpers were captured on Monday morning at the Guang'anmen Traditional Chinese Medicine. Four of them were detained.



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Five scalpers were also arrested at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Xuanwu Hospital in downtown Beijing.



Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said on Thursday that it has set up a special working group that will focus on the case's investigation.



Patients, who seek non-emergency treatments, are required to purchase an appointment ticket first that will determine the order the patients will see the doctors. Because of the obviously flawed system, scammers litter hospital waiting rooms, sometimes even standing next to the ticket windows.



Online and phone reservations are also available, but hospitals are still rife with scalpers.



"No matter how you manage, control and punish, you can only manage the scalpers on the surface. You can't control the business opportunities others are taking advantage of, depriving those less privileged of the opportunity of seeing a doctor," said Yang Qing, a cardiologist at the Huaxi Hospital in Sichuan province.



Journalists are investigating as well.



A reporter from state-owned Xinhua newspaper went to a hospital and was offered an appointment ticket worth 2,500 ($380) to see a renowned specialist. The reported found out later that the doctor was not seeing patients that day.



A reporter from Sina also had an encounter with a scalper where he had to pay 300 ($46). The appointment was under a different name, but the reporter was told to say that her friend reserved the time for her.



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TagsBeijing Police, ticket scalpers in China, Xuanwu Hospital, Peking Union Medical College Hospital
(Photo : Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)) Chinese authorities have vowed to step up supervision against genetically altered crops after a recent report revealed that farmers in some parts of the country were violating the ban against growing certain types of GM plants.

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A senior government official has said that the government will tighten its control on the entry and promotion of genetically modified (GM) foods in the market.



Han Jun, deputy director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, said on Thursday that research technologies, varietal certification as well as the production and distribution of GM food will receive extra scrutiny from government bodies.



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"We must keep it under strict supervision in three fields: research and development tests, variety certification, and production and distribution. We must prevent those unapproved genetically modified seeds from entering the market illegally," Han said in a press conference.



Only commercial cultivation of genetically modified cotton and papaya are allowed in the country, while genetically modified corn, cotton, soybean, and sugar beet are allowed to be imported for processing.



Many farmers are, however, illegally growing genetically modified rice and selling it in the market. Han said that the cases call for stronger efforts to prevent such illegal activities.



An investigation by Greenpeace East Asia in Liaoning Province published earlier this month claimed that 93 percent of the samples they took from May to December 2015 showed illegal genetically engineered (GE) contamination. The random samples were reportedly taken from corn fields in five counties in the province.



The corns were not labelled as well. The government mandates vendors and farmers to label genetically modified foods for the consumers' right to know and right to choose.



A policy document signed by the Communist Party of China Central Committee said that the country will intensify the research of agricultural GM technologies and will only promote them after ensuring their safety.



Han voiced assurance that GM food products approved for commercial cultivation have been tested and found to be as safe as traditional food.



"As a big country with a population of 1.3 billion, China should not lag behind in the field of agricultural biotechnology. Therefore, we put forward in the first policy document of this year that we should do more research on agricultural GMO technology," Han added.



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Tagsgenetically modified foods, GM in China, first policy document 2016, Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, illegal cultivation of GM food
The Finest Hours Interview: Producer says Coast Guard veterans on suicide mission found 'divine providence' instead Guest Reviewer | 29 January, 2016 by Michael Foust

LOS ANGELES (Christian Examiner)  Bernie Webber in 1952 was a U.S. Coast Guardsman, unsure of himself and looking for his place in life, when providence intervened.

At least, that's how he later described that day  the day when he and three men on a tiny Coast Guard boat rescued 32 helpless souls trapped on board a doomed ship that had literally split in two off the coast of Massachusetts.

To this day it is considered the most amazing small boat rescue in Coast Guard history, having taken place during a dangerous nor'eastern storm with 60-foot waves and frigid waters. Coast Guard veterans thought he and his crew were on a suicide mission and likely would not return.

Their incredible story is the subject of a film that opens this weekend, "The Finest Hours" (PG-13), based on a book by the same name. Chris Pine plays Webber, who was the son of a Baptist minister.

"Bernie would go on to say that it was providential, that it was divine providence," Jim Whitaker, one of the film's producers, told the Christian Examiner. "Because it was so unbelievable what they achieved, it is hard not to agree with him."

Webber, who steered that rescue boat, died in 2009 at the age of 80, following a life in which he received the Gold Lifesaving Medal and saw a Coast Guard cutter named after him.

The Christian Examiner spoke with Whitaker about Webber and the movie. Following is a transcript, edited for clarity:

Christian Examiner: What attracted you to this story?

James Whitaker: It's an incredible story of hope and resiliency and fate. And I loved the selfless and humble nature of Bernie and his men. They were men who were given a job to do, and decided to do it and do the right thing. And they never gave up. When I first read the book, I thought it was an amazing story, and then it just kept getting more amazing as I saw what they accomplished. It's a great movie story, and it's always best when it's true. These were just regular guys who just did the right thing, and I love those qualities about them.

CE: So what we see on screen  the overview of the story  is that what really happened?

Whitaker: We had to make a couple of adjustments, but what you see on screen is true. We didn't have to change a lot, because what happened was so amazing in its own right. It's a story of bravery and courage, and it's a very human story about a guy who was wrestling with his own demons and in truth really trying to figure out how to overcome them, and having faith that he was meant to be where he was in that life, to do the thing that he did.

CE: There are quite a few faith elements in this film. So some of these men, including Bernie, were men of faith who believed that this was their moment in time?

Whitaker: Yes, Bernie did believe that it was his moment in time. Part of the back story  in addition to having failed at a rescue attempt a year earlier  was that his dad was a Baptist minister. Bernie joined the Coast Guard at a young age when he was about 16, and his brothers were all in the military and serving in some capacity. It was during [the rescue] that he believed there was a guiding hand over his efforts and his success. It was very much a part of that story and of our telling of that story.

CE: The scenes on the sea were amazing. What all went into making that?

Whitaker: It starts with the director Craig Gillespie. I can remember seeing him after we met and we began to work on the project. He would be in his office, designing every wave and every wave direction  where it would go. He had such a clear idea of how he wanted the characters to move through these spaces. And a close friend of mine, Tim Sarnoff, runs MPC  the visual effects company  and they committed very early on to the idea of making the water the best water that we've ever seen in visual effects. They had an incredible group of artists that dedicated themselves to the project, and we went through a process of months and months of reviews to get to a place where we would not settle for anything less than a perfect immersive experience.

"The Finest Hours" is rated PG-13 for language and intense sequences of peril. It contains no sexuality and very little violence, although it does have about a dozen coarse words (no f-words; God's name is abused about five times).
I just received a letter from a delightful lady. She was a member of a church where I was ordained in the ministry. What I remember most about her was the way she offered encouragement to the pastors of that church.

The letter reminded me of so many good laypersons who served sacrificially in churches where I have been. With that in mind, I asked several pastors to recall something very positive said to them by church members. I asked them to try to summarize it in one sentence. Though I shouldnt be surprised, each of the pastors did not hesitate to offer one joyful sentence.

Here are the fourteen Ive accumulated thus far. They are only in the order I received them and wrote them on my iPhone.

1. I would like to babysit your kids so you can go on a date with your wife.

2. Pastor, let me tell you specifically what I learned from your sermon and how it helped me.

3. Your wife should have the freedom to be herself in the church.

4. I confronted your critic about those unfounded claims he made about you.

5. Im setting aside five minutes every day to pray for you and your family.

6. I explained to the personnel committee how a package is not the same as your salary.

7. Your kids should be able to live a normal life.

8. Thank you.

9. I want to help you recruit people to do ministry.

10. I am so thankful for the time you spend in sermon preparation.

11. We dont expect you to attend every meeting or function.

12. Let me do that for you.

13. Tell me how I can most help your wife.

14. Here is a gift card to get you some books for your library.

Yes, ministry is tough. Yes, we run into some difficult people more often than we like. But the reality is there are so many good people, so many good church members. These are but a few of the reminders of how pastors have been blessed by those church members.

What would you add to this list?

This article was originally published at ThomRainer.com on January 7, 2016. Thom S. Rainer serves as president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources. Among his greatest joys are his family: his wife Nellie Jo; three sons, Sam, Art, and Jess; and nine grandchildren. Dr. Rainer can be found on Twitter @ThomRainer and at facebook.com/Thom.S.Rainer.
A federal appeals court mulled over the decision of a lower court which had judged North Carolina government officials' Christian prayers at the start of meetings unconstitutional.

Oral arguments were presented from both the sides of the Rowan County Commission prayer lawsuit to a panel of three judges at the Fourth Circuit US Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday morning, according to media reports.

In 2013, the prayer practices of the commissioners were ruled unconstitutional at the NC Middle District Court, which said that the prayers appear to advance Christian beliefs. The verdict was challenged by the officials who appealed it to the higher court in June 2015.

A previous Supreme Court decision ruled that local clergy's Christian prayers during town meetings in New York were constitutional. However, the Fourth Circuit Court is now considering whether the office of the people delivering the prayers matters, and whether inviting others to join in prayer could be see as coercive.

Rowan County was represented by National Center for Life and Liberty (NCLL), and their attorneys were given the first chance to lay down their arguments, and were given an additional time to answer the opposition.

Their attorney Allyson Ho stressed that the identity of the prayer giving person, which was County Commissioners, did not matter.

Ho said that Rowan County Commission case was not different from the New York case, adding that the constitutionality of prayers does not depend on the people delivering the prayer, whether they are commissioners or chaplains selected by government personnel.

"Either way, it's the government speaking" the lawyer said.

The plaintiffs were represented by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which said that the identities matter, drawing reference from a SCOTUS case which permitted volunteer chaplains to offer prayers at the beginning of the meetings.

The ACLU attorney argued that the lower court's ruling must be upheld as the commissioners' prayers that were predominantly Christian were "unconstitutionally coercive," saying that the prayers included not only the elected officials but also the citizens of the county through phrases such as, "I pray that the citizens of Rowan County will love you, Lord."

Two of the judges from the panel, Steven Agee and Dennis Shedd, expressed their doubt if inviting the residents could be interpreted as coercion as everyone was free to remain seated or leave the room in the prayer time.

The judges will consider the arguments of both sides of the case and are expected to decide on the lawsuit in the coming days or months.
Editor's Note: Christian. Muslim. Friend. received the 2016 Christianity Book Award in the category of Missions/The Global Church.

My wife, Grace, and I were in a restaurant in an Asian country when friends ushered to our table another American couple. Our friends introduced me as an expert on Islam. Oh, how delightful to meet you! the American couple exclaimed. We want to learn all we can from you about Muslims. Of course, we both know it is difficult to describe Muslims, because the Muslim holy book teaches Muslims to be liars. So when a Muslim says he has become a Christian, we can all know he is still a Muslim because his lies actually communicate the opposite of what is true.

On another occasion I was in a mosque on a Friday just on the eve of the Christmas holidays. In the sermon the imam confidently explained to the congregation that Christians get drunk on Christmas. So a proof of the truth of Islam is that Muslims do not get drunk, he said; they would never think of desecrating a Muslim festival by drinking.

Neither statement is true. Some Muslims do tell lies; some Christians do get drunk at Christmas. But this is not normal. Most Christians do not get drunk on Christmas, and most Muslims are not liars.

Muslims and Christians often participate in distortions of one another. Both would do well to be people of truth and avoid distortions or exaggerated overstatement. My goal is to communicate the essence of Islam in ways that, if Muslims were listening, they would agree. I am committed to accurately describing their faith and truthfully representing disagreements. I also plead with Muslims to exercise the same commitment. Muslims and Christians should be careful to portray ...

1
Invoices from Houston Planned Parenthood Show Profit from Aborted Baby Remains & Add Concerns that Grand Jury Tainted by Bias Operation Rescue calls for the resignation of Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson for her retaliatory prosecution of pro-life activists and cover-up of apparent Planned Parenthood crimes



Contact: Troy Newman, President, 316-841-1700; Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President, 316-516-3034; both with Operation Rescue, info.operationrescue@gmail.com



HOUSTON, Jan. 29, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Yesterday, Operation Rescue's Texas attorney, Brisco Cain, released never-before seen documents that show Planned Parenthood engaged in providing fetal body parts from aborted babies to four public-funded Texas universities.



Cain stated in a news conference held in front of the Houston Planned Parenthood office that the documents "appear to throw water on Planned Parenthood's claim that they do not profit from the sale of fetal tissue, but only make enough to cover their costs."



These documents add to mounting evidence that the Harris County grand jury's decision to "clear" Planned Parenthood was motivated not on the evidence, but by bias against Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, for complaints filed against another Houston abortionist, Douglas Karpen, in 2013. Newman served as a founding board member for the Center for Medical Progress, which released a series of undercover video summaries last year that clearly showed Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from the sale of aborted baby remains.



Instead, the grand jury indicted CMP head David Daleiden, and his associate, Sandra Merritt, who appeared in the undercover videos taken at the Houston Planned Parenthood office.



"It is now clear that the Harris County grand jury never really investigated Planned Parenthood," said Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President of Operation Rescue. "Because of this new evidence, we renew our call for a new grand jury to investigate Planned Parenthood to be directed by an independent special prosecutor not related in any way to Devon Anderson, anyone in the Harris County District Attorney's office, or Anderson's friend, Chip Lewis."



Many of the documents and e-mails released by Cain were signed by Melissa Farrell, Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston, Texas, the same Planned Parenthood official who appeared in the fifth video released by the CMP on August 4, 2015.



The invoices that originated from Planned Parenthood divided their bills into two general categories. First was the "reimbursement for study supplies" which appear to be costs related to the fetal tissue. Reimbursement for hard costs is allowable under the law.



The second was "consent payments," which appears to be a designation where Planned Parenthood 'hid' the profit. This payment would be illegal.



In a statement released yesterday, Daleiden explained how Farrell indicated to him how she could cover up the payments or aborted baby specimens in order to make them look like expenses.



"Farrell admitted on camera to undercover investigators that PPGC 'worded' the per-specimen charges for fetal specimens as 'per consent' in order to 'frame' the project budget in a way that will look legal 'on paper,'" stated Daleiden.



"Because Planned Parenthood was selling to publicly funded universities, this means that our tax dollars went to buy aborted baby remains and ended up in the pockets of Planned Parenthood executives," said Sullenger. "Yet Devon Anderson turned a blind eye to this crime while charging the people that reported the crimes. This injustice must not be allowed to stand."



In addition to a new investigation of Planned Parenthood, Operation Rescue is now calling for the resignation of District Attorney Devon Anderson and for the reopening of an investigation of Douglas Karpen, who was accused of the murder of at least two babies who were born alive during late-term abortions at his abortion facility in Houston.



View the Documents.



Read the Breitbart article that broke this story.



Read background on the Karpen case and its connection to the Planned Parenthood case.



Read the Jan. 28, 2016, statement from the Center for Medical Progress.



About Operation Rescue

Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Click here to support Operation Rescue.

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Catholic Citizens to Host Fr. Thomas Loya at February 12th Luncheon



LA GRANGE, Ill., Jan. 29, 2016 /



Fr. Thomas J Loya, is currently the pastor of Annunciation of the Mother of God Byzantine Catholic Parish in Homer Glen, IL. He is also the host of two radio programs; "Light of the East" which can be heard in more than 60 cities across the United States on several Catholic radio networks including EWTN Radio as well as "A Body of Truth" which is broadcast on an Internet Radio Site 



Before entering the seminary Fr. Loya earned a degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art and pursued a career in commercial art and design. He later completed his studies for the priesthood in both Pennsylvania and Rome. During his time in Rome, Fr. Loya was first exposed to Pope John Paul II's monumental teaching on the human person when he attended his weekly audiences about The Theology of the Body. Inspired by John Paul II, Fr. Loya is a well- known speaker on Marriage and the Theology of the Body.



Fr. Loya was ordained in 1982 and later added to his Bachelor of Fine Arts by earning a Masters in Counseling and Human Services in 1993.



Using his background in art, counseling, and Eastern Catholic spirituality, Fr. Loya brings the principles of The Theology of the Body deep into the lived experience of every aspect of human sexuality.



The subject of his talk will be "Same Sex Attraction: Arriving at true compassion in the Jubilee Year of Mercy."



Father Loya defines True Compassion as a function of truth and not just the affirmation of a person's feelings or prevailing ideologies no matter how deeply felt or believed. What the Church truly teaches is in fact the most authentically compassionate and merciful response to the questions of same sex attraction and related issues.



Luncheons are at 11:45 a.m. at the Union League Club of Chicago, 65 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago. For Reservations or information, call Maureen at 708-352-5834.



Catholic Citizens of Illinois is a Catholic lay organization founded to support Catholic values in public life, actively addressing American culture and public policy formed in strict fidelity to Holy Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Share Tweet Contact: Mary Anne Hackett, Catholic Citizens of Illinois , 708-354-5373LA GRANGE, Ill., Jan. 29, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- On February 12, 2016, Fr. Thomas Loya will be the featured speaker at the Catholic Citizens Forum Luncheon.Fr. Thomas J Loya, is currently the pastor of Annunciation of the Mother of God Byzantine Catholic Parish in Homer Glen, IL. He is also the host of two radio programs; "Light of the East" which can be heard in more than 60 cities across the United States on several Catholic radio networks including EWTN Radio as well as "A Body of Truth" which is broadcast on an Internet Radio Site  catholicradiointernational.com Before entering the seminary Fr. Loya earned a degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art and pursued a career in commercial art and design. He later completed his studies for the priesthood in both Pennsylvania and Rome. During his time in Rome, Fr. Loya was first exposed to Pope John Paul II's monumental teaching on the human person when he attended his weekly audiences about The Theology of the Body. Inspired by John Paul II, Fr. Loya is a well- known speaker on Marriage and the Theology of the Body.Fr. Loya was ordained in 1982 and later added to his Bachelor of Fine Arts by earning a Masters in Counseling and Human Services in 1993.Using his background in art, counseling, and Eastern Catholic spirituality, Fr. Loya brings the principles of The Theology of the Body deep into the lived experience of every aspect of human sexuality.The subject of his talk will be "Same Sex Attraction: Arriving at true compassion in the Jubilee Year of Mercy."Father Loya defines True Compassion as a function of truth and not just the affirmation of a person's feelings or prevailing ideologies no matter how deeply felt or believed. What the Church truly teaches is in fact the most authentically compassionate and merciful response to the questions of same sex attraction and related issues.Luncheons are at 11:45 a.m. at the Union League Club of Chicago, 65 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago. For Reservations or information, call Maureen at 708-352-5834.Catholic Citizens of Illinois is a Catholic lay organization founded to support Catholic values in public life, actively addressing American culture and public policy formed in strict fidelity to Holy Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
UNC excavation crew in Galilee region of Israel uncover first known depictions of biblical heroines An excavation team in Israel has discovered the first known depiction of two biblical heroines from the Old Testament.

World to reach 8 billion people in November, India to unseat China as most populous in 2023: UN By Nov. 15, the worlds population is projected to reach 8 billion, and by 2023, India is projected to surpass China as the worlds most populous country, according to a new report from the United Nations.

Single, non-religious young adults are most unhappy Americans post-COVID-19: report Young adults under 35 who are single and non-religious report the highest levels of unhappiness since the COVID-19 pandemic began and since 1972, when the General Social Survey began measuring levels of happiness among Americans, a new analysis from the Institute of Family Studies suggests.
Ancient New Testament manuscripts discovered in Greek library

Ancient New Testament manuscripts unknown to scholars have been found at the National Library of Greece.

Seventeen ancient and mediaeval manuscripts have been found in the past 12 months, none of them known to the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Germany, which catalogues the manuscripts.

While 10 of them have been catalogued by the National Library of Greece, there is no record of them outside the country.

The discoveries were made by staff from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), which works to create high-resolution digital copies of the texts and make them available to scholars.

While CSNTM is sometimes able to reunite portions of manuscripts with other fragments, it has also discovered texts unknown even in the libraries that possess them.

The oldest manuscript discovered by CSNTM last year is from the 7th century and is a 'palimpsest', a parchment leaf reused centuries after it was first created by a scribe who scraped off the original writing. The original can still be read using modern imaging techniques.

Other New Testament portions found include leaves used to bind covers to a later manuscript. These consist of one leaf, usually with one side glued to the inside cover which cannot be read. But what can be seen is often older than the manuscript between the covers.

There is also New Testament text found on small reinforcement strips, cut out from other, worn-out manuscripts, that are glued in the margins of pages.

Five of the New Testament manuscripts discovered this year in Athens fit one of these three categories.

Since its inception in 2002, CSNTM staff have discovered more than 90 New Testament manuscripts with more than 20,000 pages of text.

Biblical scholar Dr Peter Williams, Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, told Christian Today that the discoveries were "interesting, though not paradigm changing".

While the four surviving "great codices"  the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus  contain most or all of the New Testament, thousands of ancient fragments have survived as well. While these might include only a few words or lines of text, they are still of interest to scholars who can compare them with other versions and build up a picture of how and why the text varied in different places and at different times.
France: Iran clinches business deals worth billions as protesters march

France and Iran hailed the sale of Airbus planes and the renewal of a decades-old carmaking venture as symbols of thawing relations on Thursday while protesters in Paris tried to get human rights onto the agenda.

President Hassan Rouhani was accompanied on his official visit to Paris, the first by an Iranian president since 1999, by ministers and business leaders who announced deals including a joint venture between carmakers PSA Peugeot Citroen and Iran Khodro and plans for Iran to buy 118 Airbus passenger planes to update its aging fleet.

His visit after a stop-off in Rome for more deals follows an agreement between Iran and the west on Iran's nuclear programme, allowing the lifting of sanctions this month.

The deals were signed at a ceremony attended by Rouhani and French President Francois Hollande.

Construction group Bouygues and airport operator are set to build an extension for Tehran airport, while Vinci, another building firm, is lined up to design, build and operate new terminals for the Mashhad and Ispahan airports.

French oil company Total said it would buy some 200,000 barrels of Iranian crude from the OPEC producer.

There were also deals in shipping, health, agriculture and water provision, all signed despite continued diplomatic tensions.

Deals unfinished, banks wary

The Airbus deal alone is worth $27 billion at list prices and French government sources put a 15 billion euro ($16 billion) overall tag on the agreements.

But most have yet to be finalised or are subject to conditions. Senior French bankers have expressed wariness.

Iran's industry minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said an agreement between French export-credit group Coface and the Iranian central bank signed this week was an important step in the right direction.

But he said French banks must support a corporate push into post-sanctions Iran. "If they don't get active, there will be no increase in business," he warned.

For Peugeot, the Iranian factory tie up is critical. When it suspended sales in Iran in 2012 it lost nearly 10 per cent of global deliveries and interrupted a relationship dating back more than 50 years.

Under Thursday's deal, set to be finalised in the middle of this year, Peugeot and Iran Khodro plan to modernise a factory near Tehran and be producing cars by mid 2017.

They target an initial 200,000 vehicles a year making Peugeot 208, 2008 and 301 models with a Peugeot investment of 400 million euros ($436 million) over five years.

Away from the signing ceremonies and speeches, an estimated 3,000 people marched through Paris seeking to raise awareness about human rights. A protestor from the Femen womens' activist group dangled in a mock hanging from a bridge with an Iranian flag painted across her naked chest.

Human Rights Watch criticised Iran on the death penalty and abuse of rights of women and minorities. It also said the state of emergency declared by Hollande after Islamist militant attacks in Paris on November 13 last year threatens rights to liberty and freedom of movement.
In a world shaped by religion, media must take it seriously says BBC chief

The head of religion and ethics at the BBC has called for the broadcaster to lead the fight against religious illiteracy.

Aaqil Ahmed calls on public service broadcasters such as the BBC to confront a world "defined by religion and conflict" but where most media fail to take religion seriously.

Few people know much about each other's beliefs, values and customs, creating a climate where it is all too easy for prejudice to take root, he says.

Writing on the Open Democracy website, he describes himself as "a weird anomaly" at a time when many media organisations have "turned their backs" on the specialism.

"Europe may seemingly have moved on from traditional religion but the rest of the world hasn't and right now across Britain and Europe people from across the world are living amongst us to whom religion is still important," he writes.

In Britain there are more than 800,000 Hindus and, he says, five per cent of the population is Muslim. There are also nearly 300,000 Jewish people. And while some parts of the Christian population might be in decline, Catholic and Pentecostal churches are growing, many as a result of immigration. This is also increasing the proportion of the population with ethnic minority backgrounds.

Ahmed says: "Throw into this demographic shift the issues we see around us, from Daesh to freedom of speech, to religious intolerance and extremism: why would anyone think religion isn't a genre we need to get right?"

He concludes: "Religion is not dead and despite decades where for many it became irrelevant it's now firmly back in the public space. The BBC is the last game in town in this area and we should all appreciate it holding its nerve where rivals have walked away."

Professor Adam Dinham, director of the Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, told Christian Today: "Aaqil Ahmed is right to say that religious literacy is not a luxury. But big though it is, the BBC is not alone in recognising the importance of religion and belief in sectors all across society. There's a growing appetite for it, and there are other religious literacy games in town. Our Religion Media Centre is getting off the blocks at Goldsmiths, University of London, and we're teaching religious literacy in several of our programmes."

Dr Jenny Taylor, director of the religious literacy organisation Lapido Media, said: "I applaud all that Aaqil is as a catalyst within the BBC to ensure it honours its commitment to religious literacy  and I sympathise. His job is after all untenable if the population is stupefied by the appallingly out-dated default notion of our cultural elites that religion doesn't matter any more."
ISIS is committing genocide, declares Council of Europe

The Council of Europe passed a resolution on Wednesday saying ISIS is committing genocide, just a week before the EU is scheduled to vote on a similar resolution.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution entitled "Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq" almost unanimously  117 votes for with just 1 against  stating ISIS has "perpetrated acts of genocide and other serious crimes punishable under international law".

The parliament advised states to "act on the presumption that Da'esh commits genocide".

Genocide is considered the "crime of crimes" in international law. The UN Genocide Convention of 1948 defined it as actions taken with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group".

"The Council of Europe has responded to clear and compelling evidence that Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East are victims of genocide," said Laurence Wilkinson, Legal Counsel for ADF International.

"Hopefully more institutions will follow this example to ensure swift and strong action is taken by the international community to save lives in the region."

Naming genocide adds significance as it will further pressure the UN Security Council to issue a genocide resolution of its own. It will also encourage states to engage with the issue, as "under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, countries are obliged to take positive action to prevent crimes of genocide", according to Pieter Omtzigt, a member of the Council.

The resolution holds particular significance due to the close partnership between the Council of Europe and the European Union, which is scheduled to vote on a resolution concerning the situation of religious minorities in the Middle East under ISIS on February 4.

"Although the path is difficult, the aim must be to achieve a world-wide condemnation of the atrocities of ISIS at the ICC, just as happened with Srebrenica and Rwanda, so Christians in the Middle East can live free from the fear of persecution and death," said Sophia Kuby, Director of EU Advocacy for ADF International.
ISIS releases 16 Assyrian Christian hostages

ISIS has released 16 more Assyrian Christian hostages in Syria, activists working in the region have confirmed.

The Assyrian Church of the East Relief Organisation (ACERO) today said the 16 were released after being held in north-eastern Syria since February 2015. Photos posted on Facebook show that at least nine of the freed are children.

The hostages were among more than 200 people abducted from villages along the Khabour River in northern Syria on February 23 last year. ISIS militants undertook raids on a number of Assyrian villages near Tel Hmar, burning churches and forcing hundreds of families to flee.

ISIS has now released more than 160 captives in total, and A Demand for Action (ADFA), a campaign group for minorities in the Middle East, previously told Christian Today that the Church is working "day and night to make sure all are returned to their families safely".

"Obviously we are very grateful more are freed," ADFA spokeswoman Diana Yacqo said today. "This with no doubt has been one of the most difficult periods in the church's history and very challenging to many, but thankfully the church leaders have not given up at all and have pursued this from the beginning.

"However it makes us question if there ever will be a safe environment for our people to live there again. We have always lived in harmony but this is proving difficult as time goes by. We don't know what the future holds for us in the Middle East. Our history and churches have been destroyed, our people fleeing and kidnapped. It's literally a nightmare situation and yet still nobody wants to help."

She continued: "The United Nations has neglected the situation, our pleas to our respective governments have gone unnoticed, we just seem to be the forgotten people of those lands."

ACERO previously said it "will not cease" until all hostages are freed.

In October, ISIS released a video showing the execution of three of the hostages, and threatened to kill those still in captivity if a multi-million dollar ransom was not paid.

Initially, militants demanded a ransom of around $100,000 per hostage, totalling $23 million. When it became clear that the Assyrian community could not afford it, the amount was lowered to between $12-$14 million.

Since the attacks in February, ISIS has besieged several ancient Assyrian sites, including the Iraqi city of Nimrud, the village of Khorsabad, and Hatra, a 2,000-year-old city.

An ancient branch of Christianity, the Assyrian Church of the East has roots dating back to the 1st century AD. Assyrian Christians speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and have origins in ancient Mesopotamia  a territory which spreads across northern Iraq, north-east Syria and south-eastern Turkey.
Israel PM slams U.N. secretary general, says his comment on Israeli 'occupation' gives 'terror a tailwind'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deplored a statement made by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who said that it was "human nature" for oppressed people to react to occupation, saying such a statement only helps bolster terrorism.

Speaking at the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Ban condemned recent stabbings of Israelis by Palestinian but also said Israel's "occupation serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism,'' CBN.com reported.

"The UN secretary general's comments give terror a tailwind. There is no justification for terror," Netanyahu said.

"The Palestinian murderers do not want to build a country  they want to destroy a country, and say so openly. They want to murder Jews wherever they may be, and say so openly. They do not murder for peace and they do not murder for human rights," the Israeli prime minister said.

He pointed out that the "U.N. lost its neutrality and moral force years ago and the secretary general's statements won't improve the situation."

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon echoed Netanyahu's statements, saying: "The facts don't lie. The Security Council has been hypocritical when it comes to Israel."

Ban, however, defended his remarks and rejected the accusations from Israel, according to his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"He condemns the stabbings, vehicle attacks and shootings by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians. Again, nothing excuses terror," Dujarric told a press briefing.

Dujarric reiterated Ban's statements that security measures alone will not be enough to put an end to the violence, "we must address the root causesthe underlying frustration and failure to achieve a political solution.''

On Monday, a 24-year-old Israeli woman was fatally stabbed in a West Bank settlement, the third such attack in 10 days. The two Palestinian assailants were shot dead by a security guard, BBC reported.

Israel authorities said that most of the Palestinians killed were attackers, while others were shot dead by Israeli forces during protests and clashes.
Israel to subsidise schools which teach its curriculum in east Jerusalem

Israel is aiming to fund more schools in east Jerusalem which teach the Israeli rather than the Palestinian curriculum, according to Haaretz.

The move is controversial because east Jerusalem isn't part of Israel proper and is considered by the international community to be part of the territory occupied by Israel. It is supposed to be the site of the capital of a future Palestinian state, and its residents are mostly Palestinians  both Muslim and Christian.

Now, the Israeli Education Ministry is reported to be ready to give extra subsidies to schools in east Jerusalem that teach the same programme as schools in Israel. This funding won't be made avaialable to schools that continue to teach a Palestinian curriculum.

The Ministry is yet to comment officially on the matter.

The move will be seen as provocative, because many on the Palestinian side will perceive a further attempt to 'Israelize' east Jerusalem. This process involves Jewish settlements (illegal under international law) being built in east Jerusalem, the use of the Separation Barrier to cut off east Jerusalem from the West Bank, and investing more in infrastructure in west Jerusalem than in east Jerusalem.

For his part, Israeli minister Naftali Bennett said he wants "to provide a strong tailwind to any school that chooses the Israeli curriculum. My policy is clear: I want to aid the process of Israelization." Israel declared Jerusalem its eternal, undivided capital in the 1980s  a move which hasn't been recognised by the international community.

This latest development comes on the back of last year's strike by Christian schools which was based on their status and funding by the Israeli government.
Mexican community expels 10 Baptist families for refusing to recant faith

Ten Baptist families have been expelled by an indigenous community in Mexico for refusing to recant their Christian faith.

The 18 adults and 10 children from Tuxpan de Bolanos in Jalisco state were put in a pick-up truck and driven to nearby mountains where they were abandoned, according to International Christian Concern.

The charity reports that Omar Rodriguez, regional president of the Baptist community, has made arrangements for the expelled families to be housed in Guadalajara, the nearest large city. The city has also been asked to dispatch police patrols to transport them to safety.

Tuxpan de Bolanos is one of five centres of the Wixarika indigenous people, who have become subjects of academic study.

ICC says the incident is just the latest incident in years of persecution of evangelical Christians in rural Mexico.

"Despite the lack of interest by the Mexican federal government to address this alarming trend, there are those in the United States government who are working to end this persecution," ICC reports.

Last summer, Republican presidental candidate Senator Marco Rubio challenged Roberta Jacobson, Assistant Secretary of State and the current nominee for next US ambassador to Mexico, on how she would take it up with the Mexican government.

Nate Lance, ICC advocacy manager, said: "ICC is disturbed to learn of another instance of religious minorities being expelled by local governments on the basis of their faith. It is equally disturbing that despite being notified of multiple cases of persecution throughout rural Mexico, the state and federal government refuse to protect their religious minorities or prosecute perpetrators. As a result, these families are now religious refugees in their own country. In the strongest terms, we demand that the government of Mexico intervene and reinstate the freedom of worship that their constitution is meant to guarantee."

Next month Pope Francis will visit Mexico, where Catholic Christianity is the dominant religion, followed by more than eight in ten of the population. However Protestant and Mormon churches have grown rapidly and now make up eight per cent of the population. There are more than six million Protestants and more than 1.3 million Mormons. About two per cent of Mexicans adhere to non-Christian religiouns, including at least 30,000 who follow "native" religions.
Planned cross-border Eucharist highlights plight of immigrants

American and Mexican Christians have planned a Eucharist service straddling the border between their countries to draw attention to the plight of immigrants.

Bishop Lino Rodgiuez of the Anglican Church of Mexico and Bishops James Mathes and Diane Bruce in the Episcopal Church of America will lead a service at Friendship Park, which links Tijuana in Mexico and San Diego in the US, in an effort to "address border issues and immigration between the dioceses".

The service "seeks to explore the implications of living near a border, and being called to embody fearless love, peace and social justice", the organisers said.

"It will witness the plight of those affected by migration with the celebration of eucharist at the border, remembering that Jesus was a migrant."

Recognising that "our border is a huge symbol of the dark side of our expression of immigration", the service plans to draw attention to the fact that at Easter "Jesus crossed the border of death", said Rev Dr Beth Kelly, one of the organisers.

"I also recognise that Jesus migrated from heaven to earth while searching for a better life for all."

The Via Crucis 2016 (Way of the Cross) will involve a pilgrimage to the border, where pilgrims, following a six-foot tall statue of Jesus, "will stop on the way to the border to pray the Stations of the Cross, which ends at the border with the last station", the Anglican Church of Mexico said on its website.

Clergy from the two churches will stand on either side of the fence that separates the two nations and celebrate the Eucharist across the border.
Pope Francis 'very likely' to visit Auschwitz says Vatican

Pope Francis is expected to visit the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during his visit to Poland for World Youth Day in July, according to the Vatican.

Father Federico Lombardi SJ, head of the Holy See Press Office, said every Pope who has visited Krakow in the past has gone on to Auschwitz to pay their respects to the millions of Jewish people and others murdered in the Holocaust.

This included Pope Benedict, from Germany, and Pope John Paul II, from Poland.

Speaking during the presentation of a book, We were Jews: That was our only crime, by Ester and Alberto Mieli in which Alberto, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, relates to Ester, his granddaughter, the terrible experience of her deportation, Father Lombardi said the visit by the Pope was "highly likely".

Auschwitz is about 65 km from Krakow.

Fr Lombardi expressed "deep emotion" at the fact that International Holocaust Day could be experienced at the Vatican, with one of the few living survivors of the concentration camps. He also recalled the visits of St John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, and the speeches of John Paul and Benedict at Auschwitz. He said he thought it would not be long before Pope Francis would also have a chance to speak there, Vatican Radio reported.

Polish President Andrzej Duda met Pope Francis in November and said then that the Pope had asked to visit Auschwitz. Duda said: "This is a cause of great joy for us, the possibility to host the pope in Poland. He asked to visit Auschwitz and to pray there for the memory of the victims."

On a visit to the synagogue in Rome this month, Pope Francis said the tragedy of the Holocaust should remind everyone of the need for the "maximum vigilance" in defending human rights.
About Me Bagsy Born Beeston, Notts 1946, my family moved to Dorset 1959. Joined the Royal Navy age 15 years and 50 days serving 10 years. In frigates firstly then over 5 years in the Submarine Service as a Seaman/Diver, reaching the dizzy heights of Leading Seaman, before leaving to join the Merchant Service, working in Ocean Salvage and Harbour Tugs, passenger / cargo ships, trials vessels, etc. Qualified as Mate (Chief Officer) in 1976 and as Master (Captain) in 1978. For my final 20 years of 47 I worked in the Offshore Oil Industry initially on the drilling rig Stena Hunter, then the accommodation barge Borgland Dolphin and finally the Floating Production Platform Buchan Alpha. On the rigs I forged a number of long lasting friendships several of whom shared some of my extensive travels. Setting foot on Caymen, Bermuda, Bahamas and The Azores in March 2013 brought my countries / autonimous regions total to 148. The best, undoubtedly, was Antarctica, followed by Australia, Mongolia, Belize, Zimbabwe, China and Madagascar, in no particular order. Love to all our readers, your in my thoughts. Bagsy View my complete profile
Priest forced to flee ancient church under threat in Turkey

An ancient Syriac Orthodox church in Turkey is under threat as violent clashes between Kurdish militias and the Turkish army draw closer.

The St Mary church in Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey, is said to be one of the oldest in the world, having been first constructed as a pagan temple in 1st century BC. Fighting broke out in the city last year following the collapse of a ceasefire between warring parties and around 170 civilians have since died in the conflict. A 24 hour curfew was imposed in early December and clashes have now intensified, leading thousands to flee.

On Wednesday, the state ordered people to leave the church as the fighting drew nearer to its location in the Sur district of Diyarbakir. Father Yusef Akbulut initially refused, telling A Demand for Action  a group campaigning for the protection of religious minorities in the Middle East  that he could not bear to leave his church, and police were unable to reach him due to the heavy fighting.

"I would not be able to live with myself if I abounded the church, it has a symbol for us Syriacs and a symbol for all Christianity. This is a holy place," the priest said.

Syriac scholar Yusuf Begtas of Mardin, about 50 miles south of Diyarbakir, told ADFA yesterday that Father Yusef and his wife had eventually been convinced to leave St Mary's and seek refuge elsewhere.

"Our priest and his wife were just convinced to leave the church, but we are very concerned of the future of the church itself," Begtas said.

"It has historical value for our people all over the world. St Mary is one of the oldest churches in the world, where many have been taught the mother tongue of Jesus Christ. Many scholars have had their first education here. The church is now abandoned, because we want to save the lives of those living in the church buildings.

"We are now begging all sides of the conflict to save our church, to save our heritage. We are raising our voices to the European Union and Washington DC to take immediate action towards peace in this region of Turkey, where [we] have lived for thousands of years. We are imploring them to make sure our cultural, historical and religious heritage will not be destroyed. St Mary is our heart and soul."

Speaking to the World Council of Arameans [Syriacs], Father Yusef said he and his wife realised they had to leave the church as the fighting got closer. "We felt the ground shaking more and more. Especially my wife got terribly afraid and then we both decided that we had to run for our lives," he said.

"We ran outside with white flags in our hands and, thank God, we could barely find a safe place. Not even at home or church we were safe. Our psychology has been greatly impacted by what we have experienced lately."

He said many streets close to the church were completely destroyed, though it is not yet known whether the church itself has been damaged.

"Our hometown was unrecognisable and it looked like a war zone. We don't know what has happened to our church, because we didn't dare to look while we were running for our lives," the priest added.

"Now we have little hope left that there can be a future for us, Aramean Christians, to stay in the land of our forefathers."
Spotlight: a film that the whole church cannot  and must not  ignore

When the King's Speech was released a few years ago, there were reports of audiences breaking into spontaneous applause as the credits rolled. This week, with the release of another Oscar front-runner, Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, I think the general response at that same moment might be rather different. As I left a packed screening, there was no excited chattering or roars of appreciation. We shuffled out in total, shocked silence.

Spotlight tells the true story of a 2002 Boston Globe investigation into systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church. Featuring a starry ensemble cast, it's a truly brilliant film. But it's also a devastating one, because it tells a tragic story about how the most vulnerable people in a society were abused by the very organisation that was meant to support, love and bring justice to them.

Michael Keaton, now re-established as true Hollywood lead, plays Walter "Robby" Robinson, a long-term Globe staffer who heads up the Spotlight team, a group of brilliant investigative journalists who are given time to dig up big stories that matter. When a new editor from outside the city (Liev Schreiber) takes over the newspaper, he asks the team to look into a relatively small 'smoking gun' around a single paedophile priest; a story which has previously been downplayed even in their own newspaper. After some digging, the team realise they're on to a significant scandal, but its scope and shape continues to shift and widen. Before long, Spotlight aren't just pointing a finger at a single priest, but at a number, and then at an entire institution. The question is; can they get the story to stand up in a city where it seems like everyone wants to look the other way?

Horrifically then, this becomes a story of institutionalised a child abuse, not just perpetrated within the church but a legitimised by a whole city. The church, the police, the justice system and even the media become implicated as the rabbit-hole goes deeper. As the always excellent Stanley Tucci's character comments at one point: "They say it takes a village to raise a child... It takes a village to abuse a child too."

As a Christian it's a tough watch; for a Catholic I assume it's even tougher. As the victims begin to describe their terrible experiences, sometimes in necessarily graphic detail, the film explores how paedophile priests were able to flourish in the most deprived areas of a mainly Catholic city; poor kids from poor families were trapped between confusion at the priest's attention and the desire to do the right and faithful thing. For many, robbed of a father or mother and growing up in poverty, it was like God himself was showing an interest. "How do you say no to God?" one victim asks.

The film isn't mean-spirited towards faith itself; it doesn't seem to have an agenda in this regard. Feeling sick to my stomach about the implications for the Christian Church, I was thankful for the moment where one victim takes time to separate religion and men from God, drawing a distinction between his abusers and the God he still follows. Not surprisingly though, others want nothing to do with the God or the church that they feel betrayed them, unable to reconcile the two. "He took my faith", says another man.

From a Christian perspective, Spotlight is perhaps the most important film for many years. The story raises serious questions about the potential for religious institutions in general to become corrupted, and even about how the Christian faith can become subverted for evil means. The figure people will take away from the film is 6 per cent  a suggestion that one researcher character makes about the percentage of priests who could be paedophiles. For the many people who've never really engaged with the scale of the abuse scandal before, the setting of this statistic in a piece of mass-market True Story media will raise all kinds of questions. We might need to think about the right way to answer them.

It's important in this not to forget that Spotlight is a really tremendous piece of film-making. Mark Ruffalo is electric as the key journalist who gets the best speech in the film and might just grab an Oscar with it, while director McCarthy takes a difficult story featuring lots of people talking in rooms and turns it into a pacy, exhilarating quest for justice. The film presents a sort of West Wing version of the press at its very best; scrutinising evil and exposing secrets and lies.

And that's the other, more positive reading of the movie from a Christian perspective. In the end the team who bring justice, if not redemption, to the victims are a group of God-fearing people like occasional churchgoer Rachel McAdams and self-confessed prodigal Ruffalo, who always thought he'd probably go back to the faith one day. While the priests and even parts of the Church might have been corrupt, God isn't.

Tragically though, that brokenness is worse even than the story of Boston reveals. In the final frames, we look on in horror as silent text reveals the worldwide scope of the still-unfolding abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. It's a difficult reminder that while some battles have been won, the war against abuse within the Christian Church almost certainly isn't over. There are still serious questions about how a beautiful faith that centres on love, kindness and justice can be corrupted so completely, and I think we should be thankful to this superb film for raising them once more. It's the front-runner for the Best Picture. I've seen the competition; through tears, Spotlight gets my vote.

Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. You can follow him on Twitter: @martinsaunders
Support for same-sex marriage grows among CofE laity

The number of Church of England members who support same-sex marriage exceeds those who oppose it for the first time, according to a new poll.

The poll shows a "significant shift in attitude over the last three years" and represents "a major challenge" for the Church's hierarchy, according to Jayne Ozanne, a leading gay evangelical Anglican and member of General Synod, who commissioned it from YouGov.

It was criticised immediately by conservatives.

Theologian and author Dr Ian Paul told Christian Today: "The polling doesn't tell us anything newand is based on completely flawed methodology. Those 'who class themselves as Church of England' will presumably include the nominal Anglicans who never darken the doors of a church, so it is meaningless as a measure of what practicing Anglicans believe. Research in 'ordinary theology' also tells us that many 'who class themselves as Church of England' think Jesus was just a good man, and didn't die for our sinsI wonder if Jayne Ozanne thinks that is a reason to re-write the Creeds?"

He added: "The exercise reminds me of the vicar writing AWSL in the margins of his sermon notes: 'Argument weak; shout louder'. It is a shame that Jayne wants to completely by-pass the existing processes of discussion, as if the Church's historic, biblical doctrine of marriage can be dispensed with on the basis of an opinion pollrather than by considering the actual theological issues at stake. If she were right, you would imagine that 'conservative' churches were full of grumpy old men, and not the many young people who are actually there."

According to the poll, 45 per cent of those surveyed who class themselves as Church of England believe same-sex marriage is right and 37 per cent think it is wrong.

YouGov polled 6276 British adults of which 1523 are living in England and stated a Church of England, Anglican or Episcopal affiliation.

Support for same sex marriage was even higher among younger Anglicans, with at least half of those under 55 and 72 per cent of those aged 25-34 in agreement. The lowest support was from Anglican men over 55, where just one in four said they believed that same-sex marriage was right.

The poll comes soon after the leaders of the Anglican Communion gathered at a Primates Meeting in Canterbury, where the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby apologised for the hurt and pain the Church had caused to lesbian and gay people. The Primates also imposed "consequences" on The Episcopal Church of the US for consecrating gay bishops and approving same-sex marriage.

He said: "It's a constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality. I want to take this opportunity personally to say how sorry I am for the hurt and pain, in the past and present, that the church has caused and the love that we at times completely failed to show, and still do, in many parts of the world including in this country."

A Church of England spokesman said: "The poll suggests an inconclusive breadth of view with less than half of Anglicans in England expressing support, a third opposed and a fifth uncertain. The process of shared conversations is continuing within the church, with general synod expected to be part of the conversation process in the summer. The Church of England is part of global Anglican communion which is mutually accountable for its teaching on marriage and other matters."
The child asked the Pope: 'What was God doing before he made the world?'

Before God made the world, he was "loving". Or so says the Pope, answering a question asked of him by a child.

"What did God do before the world was made?" the child asked. "Do bad people have a guardian angel, too?" another child asked Pope Francis.

The questions are among 30 from children aged 6-13 in a new book to be published by Loyala Press in March in March, Dear Pope Francis.

"Children have questions and struggles just like adults, but rarely are they given the chance to voice their concerns and ask the big questions resting deep in their hearts," said Loyola Press. "In Dear Pope Francis, Pope Francis gives them that chance and celebrates their spiritual depth by directly answering questions from children around the world. Some are fun. Some are serious. And some will quietly break your heart. But all of them are from children who deserve to know and feel God's unconditional love."

While some of the questions are theological, others are practical and a few are about the Pope personally, including what he wanted to be when he grew up. Others are about Jesus, war, peace and heaven.

To the question about what God was doing he made the world, Pope Francis wrote: "Think of it this way: Before creating anything, God loved. That's what God was doing: God was loving."

Pope says in response to one question that when he was small he wanted to be a butcher. This was because his grandmother always bought meat from a butcher wearing an apron with a big pocket that seemed to be full of money.

The children's questions are "simple, but not silly," said Father Antonio Spadaro SJ, who went through the questions with the Pope, according to National Catholic Reporter.

Spadaro, who heads La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal, and who did the first big interview with the Pope in 2013, said he was "in awe" of how the pope handled the questions and gave "inspired" answers.

"This is important," Spadaro said. "It says a lot about the magisterium of Pope Francis; he knows his ministry can reach children."

The 30 questions were chosen from those submitted by 259 children in 26 countries. The children were asked to send in drawings to go with the questions. The Pope has even been referring to some of them in his homilies. The question from 8-year-old Ryan in Canada about what God was doing before creation became the subject of his unscripted speech the Festival of Families in Philadelphia in the US in September.

Pope Francis said: "A young person once asked me - you know how young people ask hard questions! - 'Father, what did God do before he created the world?'

"Believe me, I had a hard time answering that one. I told him what I am going to tell you now. Before he created the world, God loved, because God is love."

Nine or ten of the children will visit Rome for a private audience with the Pope at the end of next month.
What to say when someone says science has disproved God

"Show me the evidence." Last week we looked at why this apparently reasonable request is difficult to answer because of pride ("I am capable of judging the evidence") and prejudice ("there can be no evidence"). You can read the original article here.

The reaction was interesting, not least when it came to the question "What evidence for God would you accept?" Not one person who tweeted/blogged/e-mailed was able to say what evidence for God they would accept. It appears that people can accept plenty evidence against God, but there is nothing that they would accept as evidence for God, because such evidence can, and always will be, explained away.

Why is this? Perhaps the main cause is the perceived opposition between faith and science, expressed in the simplistic formula, "You have faith, I have science." The belief that science and faith are opposed is one of those atheist myths that have grown so strong in popular culture that it is has become a major hindrance to sharing the gospel. Let me tell you a story.

A long time ago (about 20 years) in a land far away (Scotland) a nervous young minister (yours truly) knocked on a door that was answered by a rather rotund, middle-aged man.

"I'm from the local church", said the minister.

"Hang on, I'll get the wife," came the response (because after all, in the world of the macho male only women and children are weak enough to need religion).

"No," said the young minister,"you beard, me beard, we both man (this in a vain attempt to have an incarnational ministry).

"I don't believe in God, I believe in science," he countered.

"Oh  you a scientist?" "Nah."

"You studied science?" "Nah."

"You read science?" "Nah."

"You know anything about science?" "Nah  I just believe in it."

That may be a somewhat simplistic version, but it is a common belief among many. It is something that through media, popular culture and dumbed-down education, is now an accepted part of the zeitgeist.

And it's completely wrong. It relies on a misunderstanding of both faith and science. First, faith is not blind belief. Christians are not 'people of faith'. We are people who have faith in Christ. And that faith is trust/belief based upon evidence  not despite or contrary to the evidence. In other words, Christianity is not something based upon blind faith that is in opposition to science. Instead it is something that is based upon evidence, including the evidence of science.

There is also a misunderstanding about what science is. Science is a method, not a person or philosophy. "Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding," as one definition has it. But it is a limited method. It is carried out by limited human beings and it is only concerned with the observable physical world. It cannot by definition tell us about the unobservable non-physical world. Therefore to use naturalistic science to attempt to prove of disprove a supernatural God is illogical.

Science is also morally neutral. It can tell us how to split the atom, but it cannot tell us whether it is better to build a bomb or a nuclear power station with that knowledge.

Despite this some atheists try to argue that science does or can explain everything. An example is the Oxford chemistry professor Peter Atkins who claimed that "science is omnipotent" and that science can account for everything. There is a wonderful answer to this from William Lane Craig in a debate he had with Atkins.

Craig points out that science cannot account for logical and mathematical truths, metaphysical truths (such as "there are other minds than my own"), ethical beliefs, aesthetic judgements ("the beautiful, like the good cannot be scientifically proven") and that science itself cannot be justified entirely by the scientific method.

The trouble with Atkins position is that he just has a blind faith that one day science will be able to tell us everything. Instead of the 'God of the gaps' (where God is only used as an explanation for what we do not know, rather than the reason for what we do), Atkins has a 'science of the gaps'. We don't know but 'science' does. This is a common myth that we need to debunk.

The problem here is not with science as a method of discovering knowledge about the natural world, but with the philosophy of scientism (naturalism) that says that the natural world is the only world that can exist. Here we have to do a wee bit of philosophy  despite the fact that atheistic apologists like Dawkins and Hawking want us to avoid all philosophy.

AJ Ayer in the 1920's wrote a book called Language, Truth and Logic which espoused a philosophy called Logical Positivism. What does that have to do with the man on the street today? Because, despite being debunked by most serious philosophers it is now the default philosophy of the common man. Logical positivism states that something can only be real or true if it can be empirically demonstrated to be true. So the ordinary Westerner will insist: "I would believe in God if I could see, touch, hear him."

Note how we are back here to the demand for evidence  and of a particular type of evidence, that can be judged by our senses. The trouble is, as Ayer himself admitted in a BBC interview towards the end of his life, that logical positivism is nonsense because it is self-refuting. The statement that the only things that are true are those things that can be empirically demonstrated to be true, is itself unprovable, so by its own logic it cannot be true! The "man on the street" has locked himself into a worldview and a philosophy that is false and yet on the basis of that false way of thinking, rejects any evidence for God.

Enough of the heavy philosophy  important though it is. Given that science cannot explain everything and that naturalism is as much a 'faith' position as any other philosophy or religious system of thought, what can science tell us, and about what? For example, what about evolution? Richard Dawkins's whole position can be boiled down to two main points. 1) Evolution is true and 2) because evolution is true there is no God.

It's a position that seems to be widely accepted in popular culture. I was in a school yesterday where some of the pupils told me they did not believe in God, they believed in evolution  as though evolution were an alternative faith (which for some people it seems to be). And yet premise 2) does not automatically follow from premise 1). It is quite logical to believe that God used evolution to create. There are Christians who are young earth creationists, there are others who are old earth creationists, there are those who are theistic evolutionists, and there are some of us who just don't know. Even if we grant that macroevolution is demonstrated beyond any doubt, that does not mean that there is no God.

But what about the evidence of science? Is it completely neutral? No. While a supernatural being cannot be absolutely proven by naturalistic methods alone, it is still the case that science points to, rather than away from, God. Yes, there are many scientists who are atheists, but that is as much because of their culture and background as it is because of their science.

There are also many Christians who are scientists. The observation of the natural is a pointer towards God. The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19); there is no land where their speech is not heard. The Bible tells us that "what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities  his eternal power and divine nature  have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:18-20). The fine-tuning of the universe, the marvels of DNA, the consciousness of humanity are all pointers towards the God who made it all, along with many other 'wonders' of the natural world.

There are those of course who just simply deny that. Their faith (that there can be nothing beyond the 'natural') is so deeply ingrained that they are prepared to believe that it all came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing. This weeks recommended book is John Lennox's God's Undertaker  Has Science Buried God? In it Lennox concludes by asking: "Inevitably, of course, not only those of us who do science, but all of us, have to choose the presupposition with which we start. There are not many options  essentially just two. Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second."

But what about Christian opposition to science? Do not all religious people oppose science? Are they not in competition as alternative explanations? Again this is so much part of the common mythology that the only way to deal with it is patiently, historically and factually. This week I was speaking at a University event and I was told that Christians had opposed every scientific advance. When asked to give an example the speaker said "the printing press"! I assume he had not heard of the first printing press, the Gutenberg press, used to print the Gutenberg Bible.

Christians welcome science because in the words of the greatest scientist, the Puritan Isaac Newton, God has two books, the book of general revelation, nature, and the book of special revelation, the Bible. They are complementary to one another, not opposed. In fact a case can be made that without a theistic understanding of the universe, science itself would have no reasonable foundation. Ultimately only those who believe in an ordered (created?) universe with scientific laws, can do science without compartmentalising.

So how can Christians deal with this deeply ingrained 'defeater belief'?

We should think about and discuss these things. A superb resource for doing so is the wonderfully produced God Question series which is a balanced look at the whole subject from a wide variety of people (including prominent atheists) and gives a great opportunity for us to show that we are not scientific ignoramuses.

And we should encourage people to realise that science and faith in Christ are not opposed. Indeed the science onlyposition is one that is profoundly dark and depressing. Last week Stephen Hawking, a born and bred atheist, warned us that science will wipe out the planet. We have a far greater hope. We have a far greater and clearer vision. We see the sun with the eyes in our head, we see the Son through the eyes of our heart.

In the latest edition of The Dawkins Letters we included the testimony of Richard Morgan, who was an atheist participant in the Dawkins website, until he became enlightened. In reflecting upon this whole question of evidence, science and faith he observed: "I have my five senses and a brain that works in a particular way to process what my five senses pick up. But that doesn't prove that anything that can't be captured by my five senses doesn't exist. If ever, in a science fiction journey, I came across a universe where living beings had 10 senses, well, I could only have half as much fun as they did."

Richard then goes on to describe his conversion as he reflected on the words: "We can love Him, because He loved us first," by giving the best description I have ever heard of the change becoming a Christian makes: " As I considered my perception of life, the universe and everything, it was literally as if I had been looking at a two dimensional image in black and white, and in an instant everything became three dimensional and Technicolor!"

I will leave the final word with Richard: "It is so good to be loved, without having done anything to deserve it. It is so good to raise my eyes from the science laboratories and the books of philosophy and start to behold the glory of God. Science and philosophy are wonderful manifestations of the enormous capacities of the human mind. But the Word of God is Truth, and truth is what it took to set me free. My journey in faith begins". What about yours?
Great aunt Doris and the $70 Modigliani

The story of Mrs G. W. Fleming, the visionary New York socialite who made one of the earliest purchases of a work by Modigliani in America  and the secret stamp discovered beneath its frame decades later

I never knew Doris, admits Tim Belknap, referring to his great aunt, Mrs G.W. Fleming, the art collector and New York socialite who made one of the earliest purchases of a Modigliani in the US, when she bought the artists Caryatide for just $70 in 1922 (the equivalent today of just under $1,000).

Born in 1949  the year after Flemings death, Tim became captivated by the life of his aunt, which he glimpsed through letters, diary entries, and public records. I learned a lot about her personality from this research, and built up a picture of the kind of woman she was, he says.

The story Tim discovered was one of an intelligent, adventurous, if occasionally troubled woman: She grew up in very privileged circumstances  becoming more privileged still when she married a multimillionaire coal baron in 1905.

The couple moved into a penthouse apartment in the heart of New Yorks cultural district, where their neighbours included successful writers, artists, and trustees of the Metropolitan museum.

George and Doris Fleming. They had no children. He was the son of an ex-governor of West Virginia and, through nepotism, became a coal baron with offices on Wall Street. George did not encourage Doriss art collecting or her own art endeavours, according to her statements in her Reno divorce file

Their marriage, however, grew increasingly unhappy: Her husband, it seems, became gradually more detached, says Belknap. In 1930, the couple would divorce. An intermittent nervous disorder would plague Doris throughout her life and, though surrounded by a loving family, at the time, the condition was poorly understood.

Travel  and particularly art  became happy forms of escape: She loved art, and had a very good eye for it, explains Belknap. From her home in Park Avenue, she could walk to New Yorks galleries. Even if she shows up in a lot of society items from the time, that wasnt where her heart was  it was with the world of art.

The interest was one first begun in childhood: Doris grew up going to art galleries, Broadway shows and the opera. It was a very cultured family. My grandmother had terrific taste, and Doriss other sister, Gertrude, was one of the earliest curators at The Cleveland Museum of Art.

She particularly loved bold, graphic pieces, and started buying works by the Impressionists

Journeys to Europe informed this love: She regularly went to Europe, as did her sisters, not just for a week or two, but for a whole season, Belknap explains. Increasingly, travel became the antidote to each new instance of anxiety: Shed always had escapist tendencies, and typically, after one of these episodes, shed jump on an a liner and go away to the continent.

Artistically, the influence of these journeys was profound, shaping Doriss knowledge of European schools, and introducing her to artists whose work was yet to make it to New York. She particularly loved bold, graphic pieces, and started buying works by the Impressionists, Belknap explains, fondly remembering an early purchase of an etching by Mary Cassatt   a beautiful, very graphic piece that showed two girls doing their nightly homework.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Caryatide . Gouache, watercolour and blue wax crayon on paper, with the inscription Modigliani (lower left). This work was offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper Day Sale on 3 February 2016 at Christies in London and sold for 206,500

The art world she discovered upon returning to New York looked decidedly different: Modern art didnt really come to the city until the 1913 Armory Show  its dirty little secret being that, despite the publicity that surrounded the event, sales werent all that terrific, says Belknap.

In 1920, however, the first wave of galleries dedicated to modern art began to open, with Doris  whose apartment was a convenient stones throw away  quickly becoming a regular among the avant-garde crowds they attracted.

Described by press of the period as a rallying place for free thinkers, The New Gallery was among the first to celebrate this new European style of artistic production. Founded by James Rosenberg  one of the most successful bankruptcy lawyers in the US  the space sought to quash the mystique around modern art, or as Belknap puts it: He wanted to break all the boundaries.

Doris became a member of The New Gallerys founding committee  paying the standard membership fee of $100, which would count towards  and often cover  an initial purchase. Though avant-garde in attitude, the crowd here was inclusive: Membership went all the way from industrialists to socialists and labour leaders, Belknap explains. When it came to collectors, the concentration was much more on ideas and less on social status.

But it was the nearby Brummer Gallery that was perhaps to have the most profound influence on Doriss collection. Opened in 1914, the gallery was founded by Joseph Brummer  an experienced dealer, who moved to the city from Paris to escape the First World War.

Though he also represented American artists, Brummer shared Doriss decidedly European outlook. In Paris, he had spent several years living near artist Amedeo Modigliani  befriending his dealer, Paul Guillaume, who famously bought and sold works by some of the most cutting-edge artists of the time  from Henri Matisse , to Constantin Brancusi , Pablo Picasso and Giorgio de Chirico .

A review of the exhibit at which Doris purchased the Modigliani

The gallerists impact on the New York art scene was historic. His 1922 exhibition, Works by Artist of Modern French School, introduced a number of European artists to the US for the first time  including, notably, Modigliani, represented by four works, alongside pieces by Derain , Utrillo , Pascin and Laurencin . Among them was Caryatide  a study of the standing female figures used as structural supports in classical architecture. The motif was one that utterly preoccupied Modigliani, his studies of the figures being among the most formally adventurous of his career.

Doris, it seemed, instantly recognised the significance of the work. Records, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reveal it was purchased just six days after the exhibition opened by one Mrs. G. W. Fleming for just $70  one of the first works by Modigliani ever to be purchased in the US. The piece became central to a growing collection, which included works by Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck .

My father loved it. At cocktail parties he would stand in front of it  a drink in one hand as his other traced its sweeping curves

When Belknap began his research into his great aunts life, the story of the Modiglianis origin had faded into obscurity. Indeed, it was a rather different story that first encouraged the former journalist to begin his research: a successful brewery owner, Belknaps grandfather leased the family business to a gangster during prohibition  the beer transported to trucks through a network of hoses hidden in the sewers. Eventually, the whole thing was discovered, and was a huge family scandal, he explains.

Each time Belknap dived into his family history, however, the Modigliani loomed back into view. When I looked at Doriss will it was front and centre; it was clear that she treasured it. Though his parents spoke little of its origin, Belknap recalls the works privileged place in his family home: My father loved it, and I have an enduring memory of him at cocktail parties, standing in front of it  a drink in one hand as his other traced its sweeping curves.

The works prominence suggested it was too important to ignore. Belknap began to carry out archival sweeps of New Yorks oldest arts institutions, eventually stumbling upon a variant of Doriss name, misspelled on an index card from The Brummer Gallery. The discovery led Belknap to the historic 1922 exhibition  the 14th work in the show listed as a Caryatide by Modigliani, in gouache, watercolour and blue wax crayon.

Art dealer David Nash. Having unframed the caryatid, he is uncovering a taped backing that would reveal the stamp as belonging to Modiglianis dealer, Paul Guillaume, and the number, 14, that was assigned the work in the Brummer Galleries catalogue

A stamp  hidden for almost a century  confirmed the works provenance beyond doubt. I consulted gallerist David Nash, who carefully disassembled the frame, taking out a knife to carefully scrape the backing away, recalls Belknap. There, as if it had been done yesterday  on a perfectly white square of paper that had spent years hidden from sunlight  was Paul Guillaumes stamp, and the number 14. When we found that, it was a Eureka moment  I felt pretty proud of myself.

Additional consultation with Dr. Kenneth Wayne, one of Americas leading Modigliani experts, confirmed the significance of the piece in the artists oeuvre. When we took the Modigliani to him, he loved it  in fact everyone, just like my father, has liked it a lot, adds Belknap, who says, though the time has come to pass the Modigliani on, he has enjoyed educating himself on it.

Main image at top, left: Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Caryatide . Gouache, watercolour and blue wax crayon on paper, with the inscription Modigliani (lower left). This work was offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper Day Sale on 3 February 2016 at Christies in London and sold for 206,500. Top right: Doris Underhill Fleming (1876-1948)
With Iowa Republican caucuses just days away, a Washington, D.C., Muslim advocacy group has called on Iowans to reject "emotional and fearful rhetoric" regarding Muslims that "neither assesses the situation in our country accurately nor presents solutions that are rational, workable or practical."

The Muslim Public Affairs Council said it reached out to more than 25,000 Iowans through an open letter published in the Des Moines Register newspaper Friday.
More than a dozen high school students were suspended from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco after they took part in a racist-themed party at Stern Grove in the Outer Sunset, school officials said Thursday.

The party, which took place Saturday at the city recreation area and was promoted through social media, was themed a wigga party and was attended by students from at least five high schools including St. Ignatius, said Principal Patrick Ruff.

The slang term wigga combines the word white and a racial epithet and refers to a white person who attempts to emulate African American culture by drawing on stereotypes of clothing and mannerisms.

Its disheartening and incredibly sad this type of thing exists not just for SI, but for the entire city, Ruff said, noting that the 14 students involved had been suspended as soon as administrators learned of the party. This really is a critical juncture for us.

Ruff said the school has put an emphasis on social justice issues for years, and that he hoped last weekends incident could provide lasting lessons at the school.

We work really hard to educate our young men and women on issues of equity and inclusion, Ruff said. Weve been doing this work for years, but now we have a concrete example that will give us an opportunity to have a conversation.

The school takes the issues seriously enough, Ruff said, that in 2010 it appointed Matthew Balano as director of the Office of Equity and Inclusion. It focuses on diversity at the school, where African Americans account for just under 5 percent of the student body, compared with 55 percent for white students.

Balano said hes been in contact with students this week, and that they are justifiably upset.

Theres a feeling of sadness and disappointment, but theres trust that we are working hard to get this right, Balano said. This is a very messy thing, but were doing our best to get through this.

Nahrie Pierce, a 17-year-old senior at the school and president of the Black Student Union, said she became aware of the party on Saturday night while it was going on, when some of the students posted pictures to social media. She got in contact with some of her African American classmates, who collectively decided they needed to take action and ultimately went to Balano.

Even with the relatively small black population at the school, Pierce said she and others in the Black Student Union work hard to make the school a welcome place for people of all ethnicities.

Sometimes it can be difficult, but we have clubs and groups like the Black Student Union and we try hard to create space for our African American students. Its not surprising to me, she said of the party. But were trying to change that.

Reaction at the school has been mixed, students said, with some feeling the suspensions were an overreaction to a teenage mistake, while others called for the students to be expelled.

Thomas OHalloran, an 18-year-old senior, said he knew some of the kids who went to the party and that they had told him how much they regretted it. Still, OHalloran thought the punishments were justified.

You cant go to a party like that and post pictures on social media and think that nothing is going to happen, he said. Its just weird that this would happen at an institution that tries so hard to promote inclusion.

Moving forward, Ruff said he planned to address the issue with both the student body as a whole and in smaller groups to foster a teachable moment, a sentiment echoed by Student Body President Lizzie Ford.

Kids are angry and and things are intense, Ford said shortly after she and Pierce addressed the student body Thursday over the public address system. This is heartbreaking, but you have to acknowledge when you mess up and we messed up. A lot of students are in pain, but this is an opportunity for us to say that this is not the school we are.

Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale
Gordon Barlow has lived in Cayman since 1978. He was the first full-time Manager of the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce (1986-1988)- a turbulent period as the Chamber struggled to establish its political independence. He has publicly commented on social and political issues since 1990, and in 1998 served as the secretary of two committees of the 'Vision 2008' exercise. He has represented the Chamber at several overseas conferences, and the Cayman Islands Human Rights Committee at an international symposium in Gibraltar in 2004.
Last night I visited the Whole Foods Market near the Galleria and found three new electric cars charging in the underground parking lot.

This was not in Austin or Los Angeles, but right here in Houston, the oil capital of the world, as gasoline prices are hitting lows last seen a decade ago.

Electric cars are reaching a tipping point, and the 2017 model year may be the beginning of a long-term trend away from using oil as a transportation fuel, something I wrote about in Sunday's column.

Details began leaking out about Tesla's new Model 3 on Thursday, a $35,000 sedan that can travel 240 miles on a single charge, which is about the range of my 2007 Prius. If connected to a supercharger, like the ones in the Whole Foods parking lot, it can fully recharge in 25 minutes.

Tesla is scrambling to get the Model 3 on the market after Chevy unveiled its 2017 Bolt, which will have a 200 mile range and sell for $30,000 after tax credits and rebates. The battery pack will not recharge as quickly, but it will make a perfectly good city car.

Existing electric car models are expected to boost driving ranges in 2017, like the BMW i3. More manufacturers will offer plug-in hybrid options, such as the new Cadillac CT6.

There are a lot of factors for this boom in electric cars. Much of it is technological, as lithium-ion batteries improve and the software to manage them becomes more sophisticated. Higher fuel efficiency standards are spurring U.S. manufacturers while air pollution problems in China are encouraging alternatives to fossil fuels.

Production numbers will be low in 2017, and committed environmentalists will snatch up the entire inventories of these new models. But manufacturers like Tesla need to ramp up production in 2018 to generate profits, and some analysts worry that low gasoline prices will discourage consumers from adopting the new technology.

The current low oil prices, though, are not sustainable, and the intersection of the inevitable rise in oil prices and the advent of new auto technology is the basis of my Sunday column. The bottom line: Rising oil prices coinciding with dropping electric vehicle costs could be a lethal combination for the oil industry.
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The year is early but I'm convinced "45 Years" is one of the best films you'll see in 2016. It has earned Charlotte Rampling her first Oscar nomination. The voters for the Academy Awards have been going wild about her exceptional work for weeks. When you see her extraordinary intimacy and intelligence on-screen you will understand why.

In the immensely moving drama, Tom Courtenay is Geoff, a childless British retiree soon to host an anniversary gala for his long marriage. He and Kate, his wife of nearly half a century, played by Rampling, will be celebrated by a party of friends toasting the kind, decent duo's affectionate and contented relationship. They will dance to the Platters' "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Or, late in life, they will face conflicts lurking in the shadows and the thought that they don't belong together. That old favorite song is painfully apt.
"The Finest Hours" - an odd title, in that it evokes Winston Churchill and the London blitz - concerns a lesser-known historical incident that took place in 1952, a sea rescue by the Coast Guard. That might not sound all that spectacular, but in fact it was quite a rescue, accomplished against long odds, in the face of great hazards and lethal weather.

Of course, the rescue was successful. We know that going in. Watching, we might not know for sure whether all the participants will survive until the end of the movie, but we can bet the vast majority of them have to, which means that the appeal of "The Finest Hours" can't be its suspense, but its execution. What happens is important, but more important is how it happens and whom it happens to.

Along this line, "The Finest Hours" presents a Coast Guard culture and a Coast Guard world as it existed in Chatham, Mass., in the post-World War II years. Like a fishing culture, everyone knows people who make their livelihood on boats. Everyone has one eye on the weather, and everyone knows someone who was lost at sea.

At the center of the story is the one indispensable man, Bernie Webber, a young coxswain and a by-the-book seaman. He's an arresting character - shy and diffident, and yet with a rare decisiveness and certainty in his own judgment. Over the course of the film, the audience can't help circling back to Bernie and pondering him, wondering if the thing that allowed him to be heroic was simplicity - a sort of, "This is what's right, so this is what I'm doing" - or moral profundity. Both possibilities are in play in Chris Pine's performance.

More Information 'Finest Hours' Rating PG-13: for intense sequences of peril Running time: 117 minutes xxx See More Collapse

Pine is the film's big surprise. To date, he has been cast as blithe, confident and superficial or as the young Captain Kirk, who is at least two of those things. Here he digs into a character role, a regular guy with a thick Boston accent and a weird tendency to be nervous around his girlfriend and assertive in the face of mortal danger.

With a small boat and crew, Webber has to go out on what could easily be a suicide mission. His goal is to find survivors of the Pendleton, an oil tanker that split in half. This brings us to the big night's second-most-indispensable man, the Pendleton's chief engineer, Sybert. Sybert finds himself in the following situation: His ship - that is, half a ship - is slowly sinking. But the storm makes it impossible to launch the lifeboats, and there's no way to make it back to land. What would you do?

Casey Affleck plays Sybert as an odd, reflective guy, very internal, not a glad-hander, not a natural leader of men, but rather as someone who just knows what to do. He radiates competence and intelligence, such that we believe others would recognize these qualities and listen to him.

Most of "The Finest Hours" takes place on the night of the wreck and the rescue, and the screenwriters (Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson) tell the story by following three centers of action. We see the men on the ship, the men on the rescue boat and the people on land, particularly Bernie's fiancee, Miriam (Holliday Grainger), presented as a young woman as outgoing as Bernie is resonant. The cutting from one center of action to another feeds an atmosphere of mounting tension.

In filming scenes of the rescue boat, director Craig Gillespie keeps the camera fairly tight on the men to show how they're reacting to the elements, the cold, the wind and the wetness, as well as to the sheer terror of being there.

But occasionally he pulls back to show the boat against the ocean, practically submerged at times, at other times just falling through space. It's an extraordinary sight, and if the actual night was anything like this, it's remarkable that any of them were still breathing by sunrise.
Zika infections have been confirmed in five travelers returning to the Houston area and are suspected in four more, city and county health officials said Friday.

At meeting of public health officials and medical providers, the officials said three confirmed and two suspected cases involved travel to El Salvador. The Houston Health Department confirmed two case, one in a woman returning from Colombia and another in man from Honduras, and have two additional presumed cases.

None of those infected were pregnant at the time of their infection.

Dr. Brian Arenare, Director of Disease Control and Clinical Prevention for Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services, said the half dozen cases are likely just the tip of the iceberg for the Houston region.

"Our physicians didn't know they should be testing for Zika. Now they know," he said. "We're faced with, before the bona fide mosquito season actually begins, having this important opportunity to plan what kinds of steps need to be in place now, so that we're as far ahead of the curve as we can be."

Officials formed a work group to come up with plans for dealing with Zika within two to three weeks. The strategy will stress combating mosquito breeding grounds around Houston, urging residents to remove tires, plastic containers and other refuse that can hold water in which Zika-carrying mosquitoes can breed, and promoting the use of insect repellent, particularly among those who return from affected areas.

Local hospitals and clinics have put in place protocols to screen pregnant women for the Zika virus, and travel medicine physicians are advising travelers to continue to protect against mosquito bites once they return, to avoid allowing Zika to infect the local mosquito population.

Officials, however, bemoaned the lack of published scientific data about Zika, leaving them unsure of many fundamental questions regarding how to advise patients and how best to combat the spread of the virus.
Thieves reportedly rammed a pickup into the side of a store overnight and snatched an automated teller machine in northwest Houston.

The smash-and-grab occurred at the E Z -7 Food Store on N.Houston Rosslyn near Woodman Trail, according to a report from KTRK.
Dear Abby:

My fiance is in the Marine Reserves. He has been in for five years, and his contract is due to end next year. After that, he will either resign or re-enlist.

He's obsessed with the idea of serving his country and deploying. He says he won't feel like he did his job if he doesn't deploy. While I respect that, for him to deploy, he must re-enlist, and his new contract will be for another six years. He could be sent overseas many times in six years.

I can't imagine life without him. Every time I even watch a war movie, I cry. I know it sounds selfish because he is very brave, but how can I talk him into not re-enlisting or at least communicate that I don't want him to do this again?

Wants Him Stateside

Dear Wants:

Frankly, I am surprised you haven't told your fiance your feelings about this already because you should have. While I wouldn't ask him to choose between you and his military service, I do think you have some serious thinking to do about your own future. Being a military spouse requires a special kind of strong, independent and dedicated person - as you have already experienced. While you may love him, if this isn't a lifestyle to which you can adapt, then he may not be the husband for you.

Dear Abby:

My mother's father recently got out of prison and was deported to Mexico. He had been in jail for 20 years, almost my entire life (I'm 22). While he was in prison, I wrote him several times, hoping to connect with him, but I never got a response - not even an acknowledgement in his letters to my mom.

When I'm asked if I have any grandparents, I usually say, "I only have two grandmas." My father's father was the only real grandfather I had, and I loved him dearly. He died in 2003.

The problem is, my mom wants me to call her father "Grandpa" when I don't even know the man! In my opinion, the title of "Grandpa" is earned and not automatically bestowed. Am I being unreasonable and what should I do?

Estranged Granddaughter in California

Dear Estranged:

You are not being unreasonable; you are being rational. You are not only not obligated to call this man "Grandpa," you are under no obligation to speak to him at all, and I wouldn't blame you if you kept your distance.

DearAbby.comDear AbbyP.O. Box 69440Los Angeles, CA 90069Universal Press Syndicate
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"A magical place." "My happy happy place." "House Goals."

There is a clique of overnight-stay places in Texas that elicits odes of wanderlust bliss along with thousands of the most artfully detailed frames on Instagram. Among them are a glam campground in Marfa, a historic Cuban-inspired hotel in San Antonio and a pair of of rock-star renovations in Austin. They are destinations in and of themselves.

The creative force behind this cadre of vacation/staycation spots is Austin-based hotelier Liz Lambert, and she is racking up recognition from all corners of the globe.

A recent feature in the Daily Beast charts how Lambert, a University of Texas graduate, flipped her career from working for the Manhattan District Attorney to converting a dilapidated motel and becoming "the hippest hotelier in Texas."

Lambert's distinct vision, described by a fan as "cowboy zen," currently backs five fashionable destinations in Texas: El Cosmico in Marfa, Hotel Havana in San Antonio, Hotel Saint Cecilia and Hotel San Jose in Austin.

Click through the above for a taste of the details and atmospheres that inspire thousands of photos on Instagram.

jmscott@mysa.com
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The Texas State Historical Association recently presented a multiyear grant to San Jacinto College's Webb Society chapters, named after Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb.

"The Elkins Foundation (the organization providing the grant) was so impressed by the work of the Webb Society chapters that they provided the next four yearly installments at one time," history professor Eddie Weller said. "That means that the clubs and faculty advisers will each receive about $1,650 this year."

The funding will enable students and faculty advisers to attend conferences, take course-related field trips to museums and conduct on-campus activities.

For information about San Jacinto College, call 281-998-6150 or visit www.sanjac.edu.

TCISD Foundation funds projects

The Texas City Independent School District Foundation for the Future awarded more than $142,000 in grants to teachers in December.

Each school in the district received grants: Calvin Vincent Early Childhood Center, $16,923; Blocker Middle School, $9,729; Heights Elementary, $15,153; Kohfeldt Elementary, $18,667; Levi Fry Intermediate, $12,075; Northside Elementary, $5,459; Roosevelt-Wilson Elementary, $5,505; Texas City High School, $57,772; and Woodrow Wilson DAEP, $720.

UH-CL graduates honored at ceremony

During its fall 2015 commencement ceremony Dec. 19 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, University of Houston-Clear Lake honored the latest graduates from the School of Education and School of Science and Computer Engineering.

For information about the school, visit www.uhcl.edu.

Astronaut speaks at UH-Clear Lake

Former astronaut Clayton Anderson offered a glimpse behind the scenes of the modern space program, from the power of perseverance to the perils of drinking coffee in space, in a talk Dec. 1 at University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Anderson's appearance was part of a guest lecture in the class "Introduction to Special Populations" for students pursuing teacher certification. For information about the school, visit www.uhcl.edu.

School of Education names top students

University of Houston-Clear Lake graduate student Kimberly Riggs and undergraduate Amanda Cox are recipients of the Dr. Patricia Potter Wilson School of Education Outstanding Student Scholarships.

Riggs will complete a master's degree in educational management in December. She is a first-grade teacher at Whitcomb Elementary in Clear Creek Independent School District.

Cox is working toward a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies.

To learn more about UHCL's School of Education, visit soe.uhcl.edu or call 281-283-3600.

Wilder dedicates legacy project

Members of the 2014-2015 fifth-grade class at Alvin Independent School District's Wilder Elementary School have dedicated a new track on campus for students and community members.

The students raised $12,000 for the track, which was completed in fall 2015.

To learn more about the district, visit www.alvinisd.net.

ACC names foster care liaison officer

Alvin Community College recently appointed counselor Diana Stiles as foster care liaison officer.

About 20 foster care alumni enroll at ACC each semester.

COM students learn life-saving procedures

In the College of the Mainland emergency medical services program, students discover how to respond to situations ranging from cardiac arrest to car accidents.

For information, visit www.com.edu/ems.

COM student pursues nursing dream

Having traveled from China to the United States for college, Chang Wang of Katy remembers her first day in nursing class.

"In lectures I could understand 30 to 40 percent. My English is not so good, especially in class," Wang said. "But I was really excited. I thought, 'I can make it,' because I really want to be a nurse."

Applying to the University of Texas Medical Branch, Chang intends to earn a bachelor's degree and eventually become a physician assistant.

For information, visit www.com.edu.

Retirees give back to Pearland ISD

The Pearland Education Area Retirees group presented 143 books to Lawhon Elementary School and Sablatura Middle School and donated more than $300 for the PACE Center library Dec. 16.

SJC students earn national certifications

San Jacinto College student Christina Espinosa is already making her mark in supply chain management by holding the eight national certifications needed to catch the eyes of employers.

She and classmates Mirna Cruz, Carlos Mejia, Xitlallic Andrade and Raul Hinojosa are among the first group of college students in Texas to earn all eight SCPro Fundamentals certifications awarded by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

The LINCS Supply Chain Management Program at San Jacinto College administers the courses needed to earn the certifications. LINCS stands for Leveraging, Integrating, Networking and Coordinating Supplies and is funded by a $24.5 million U.S. Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grant.

San Jacinto College is the only college in Texas to award the CSCMP certifications. For information, visit www.sanjac.edu/career/international-business-logistics-maritime.

Nontraditional SJC student graduates

It's never too late to begin the journey toward accomplishing your goals, says one San Jacinto College alumna.

Sylvia Delgado's journey began eight years ago and reached an important milestone Dec. 13 as she graduated with an associate degree in business administration.

"I decided to move forward by not limiting myself by being on a certain unreasonable deadline to complete my degree and just do whatever it took to accomplish my degree in my own time, no matter how long it would take," the 44-year-old said.

Delgado plans to transfer to the University of Houston-Clear Lake to continue working toward her bachelor's degree in business administration.

For information about San Jacinto College, call 281-998-6150 or visit www.sanjac.edu.

COM cell phone photo contest open

The College of the Mainland Art Gallery is accepting entries for its "Oh Snap 3!" cell phone photo contest.

To enter, email up to 10 photos or videos (shorter than 60 seconds) to comartgallery@gmail.com. In the subject line, type your full name, title of the photo or video, and contact number separated by underscores, for example, John Smith_My Kitten_8320001234.

The entry deadline is Feb. 14. Winning photos will be displayed in the gallery March 31 to April 17. The best in show winner will receive a $300 prize.

Call 409-933-8354 for details.

Texas City ISD school board honored

Officials in Texas City Independent School District are acknowledging "Superheroes for Schools" during School Board Recognition Month in January.

"I would like to personally thank President Manuel Guajardo Jr., Vice President Dickey Campbell, Melba Anderson, Hal Biery, Dickey Campbell, Davis Moss, Tom Prouty and Bryan Thompson for donating their time to make sure Texas City ISD is at its best," communications director Melissa Tortorici said. "While our board of trustees may not wear capes or have superhuman powers, they make a huge impact in the lives of children in all that they do as they govern the district."

Sealy & Smith honor surgeon

The Sealy & Smith Foundation recently contributed $1 million to establish an endowed chair in honor of Dr. Courtney M. Townsend Jr. at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Townsend, who earned his medical degree and completed his internship and residency in surgery at UTMB, served as UTMB's chair of surgery from 1995 to 2014.

Turtle Race to take off Feb. 20

The 15th annual Alvin Independent School District Education Foundation Turtle Race and 5K Family Fun Run will be Feb. 20 at National Oak Park, 105 S. Gordon in Alvin.

Visit www.signmeup.com/site/online-event-registration/110876/SMUCalendar to register.
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A new book in China officially declares that senior Communist Party officials attempted to "wreck and split the party."

Analysts in China say these are code words for a coup attempt, The New York Times reports, and the fact that the book has been released is proof that President Xi Jinping is confident the challenge is over. Edited Excerpts From Discussions by Xi Jinping on Tightening Party Discipline and Rules sells for about $2, and the most interesting snippet is from a speech Xi gave on Jan. 13, 2015, to China's anticorruption agency. In the speech, Xi named five people  including an army general, a former party secretary of Chongqing, and a former security chief  who have all been imprisoned for corruption, abuse of power, or similar charges (one of the men died in 2015).

"The greater these people's power, the more important their position, the less seriously they took party discipline and political rules, to the point of recklessness and audaciousness," Xi said. "Some had inflated political ambitions and for their personal gain or the gain of their clique carried out political plot activities behind the party's back, carried out politically shady business to wreck and split the party." Ren Jianming, a professor at Beihang University, told the Times that "plot activities" and "wreck and split the party" are "coup activities, because it's the ruling party. It was the all very secret at the time, and this is the first time they have officially published about it, so it's very important." Catherine Garcia
Families pushing for state help in educating their children outside the traditional public school system rallied outside the Capitol on Thursday morning.

Busloads of parochial schoolchildren, along with a handful of kids who are homeschooled or attend public schools, donned yellow scarves and packed the west steps of the statehouse.

Your ZIP code should not determine what kind of education you get, Gov. Pete Ricketts, a supporter, told the crowd.

Some of the hundreds in attendance urged Nebraska to allow charter schools, which receive public funding but operate outside the normal public school system. Others want the state to let families opt out of supporting public schools if they choose to send their children to private school or teach them at home.

Those parents argue they are paying twice for their childrens education.

Attempts to advance those goals have struggled to gain footing in the Legislature.

Members of one legislative committee killed a bill (LB616) last year that would have created a charter school pilot project in Omaha.

Another bill would provide state tax credits for donors who help establish scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools. That measure (LB26), remains lodged in the Legislatures Revenue Committee. Its sponsor, Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha, urged Thursdays crowd to contact committee members and encourage them to advance the bill.

The rally drew impassioned speeches from people who said public schools had failed their children or themselves.

Clarice Jackson of Omaha said while public school worked for her son, it left her daughter essentially illiterate through fourth grade.

That changed when she transferred to a private school, she said.

We need to quit putting up roadblocks to education excellence for our children, she said.

The rally took place across the street from the headquarters of the Nebraska State Education Association, the state teachers union. As children gathered on the Capitol steps, paper lettering appeared in the NSEA windows that spelled out, PUBLIC $ 4 PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

After the rally, Ricketts acknowledged school choice advocates are playing a long-term game.We want to make progress on school choice every year, he said. Our work is never done when it comes to education.
A proposed constitutional amendment that would allow Nebraskans as young as 18 to serve as governor or as a state senator or in any other public office survived its first challenge Thursday in the Legislature.

The proposal (LR26CA) demonstrated surprising strength when a motion by Sen. Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins to shelve the proposal for the rest of the session failed on a 5-28 vote.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Tyson Larson of ONeill, would submit the proposed constitutional change to a vote of the people in November.

The resolution ultimately will require the support of at least 30 senators to reach the ballot.

Let the people decide, Larson said.

If youre old enough to pull a trigger in the military, youre old enough to push a (voting) button in this Legislature, he said.

Larson said senators should trust voters to elect who they think is best to represent them.

Bloomfield said he would not necessarily be opposed to an 18-year-old state senator, but he doesnt believe an 18-year-old should be eligible to be appointed chief justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court.

We need to keep nonsense from happening, he said. Thats why were here.

Wide-ranging debate on the issue led to an amusing suggestion by Sen. David Schnoor of Scribner that the Legislature might want to consider an age limit of 77  effectively rendering Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha ineligible  and spilled over into a couple of salvos fired at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

If we elect Trump, I give up, Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte said.

Groene, a registered Republican, said hell vote to place the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot to give the people a voice, but then would vote against the amendment as a citizen.

The state constitution currently requires a person to be at least 30 to serve as governor and at least 21 to serve in the Legislature.

The state constitution currently requires a person to be at least 30 to serve as governor and at least 21 to serve in the Legislature.

Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete said it makes sense to reduce the minimum age for a state senator to 18 to reflect the reduction in the voting age to 18.Its unlikely the Legislature would turn into a large student council, she assured her colleagues.

Schnoor, reflecting on his military experience, said 18-year-olds are molded and groomed when theyre in the military rather than placed into positions of authority.

But Sen. Tommy Garrett of Bellevue, a former Air Force colonel, suggested that some (college-age) pages in here are more mature than some of us.

In another shot at Trump, Garrett said: We have a presidential candidate who says some incredibly immature things on a daily basis.

Garrett is also a registered Republican.

Warning that Larsons proposal might be grounded by the Supreme Court because it contains multiple subjects, Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus attempted to amend the measure to divide it into five parts. His proposal was rejected on a 17-21 vote.
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AUSTIN - Cameras could soon find their way into many special education classrooms in Texas, a reform some are welcoming while also raising concerns about ballooning costs and other implementation problems.

These issues and more will be the subject of a legislative hearing on Feb. 10 in McAllen.

The Texas Legislature in 2015 passed Senate Bill 507, which beginning in fall 2016 will require districts to install cameras in classrooms where a majority of the students receive special education services if a parent, staffer or district official makes a request.

Proponents say the cameras could help prevent, and prove, incidents of abuse against children with cognitive abilities. Others say while its intentions are good, the new law will put a huge financial burden on scho0l districts. Houston Independent School District, for example, estimated a price tag of around $3,500 per camera for a total $1.8 million.

There are other problems than cost, said Janna Lilly, director of governmental relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education.

The way the law was written, it appears as though one parent request for one classroom would actually trigger cameras to be installed in every special education classroom throughout the entire district. There is no mechanism for parents who are against the cameras to appeal a request either, said Lilly.

"One request -- it's in and it's in there forever," said Lilly.

The originally estimated price tags, too, have gotten higher, she said, as district take into account installation and storage costs. Lubbock ISD now estimates the cost for each camera to be between $3,500-5,500, not including costs associated with storing the footage for six months in a secure server.

The law allows TEA to set up a grant program to help districts pay for the cameras using surplus funds, but since the agency is running a deficit there is no money available for the grants "for the foreseeable future," spokesperson Debbie Ratcliffe said.

The bill's author, Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, and House sponsor Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, sent a letter to the education commissioner a few months ago to encourage him to address some of these concerns.

The Legislature can do little to fix these problems now. The next meet in January 2017, four months after the law goes into effect. Nevertheless, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who unsuccessfully pushed the legislation as a state senator in 2013, directed the Senate Committee on Education to discuss the bill in the interim.

The committee will meet in Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen at 9 a.m. Feb. 10. Members of the public are allowed to attend and give remarks.

Newly-named Commissioner of Education Mike Morath, however, might be able to address some of the concerns in the meantime. Ratcliffe said TEA will be holding a stakeholders meeting in early February, with the intent of releasing commissioner's rules by the end of that month.
Despite claims to the opposite, the increasing chances of Donald  Youre fired!  Trump changing to I, Donald  do solemnly swear  Trump is not a sign of the coming apocalypse.

Granted, the end could be closer than we think when any billionaire steps off his Boeing 757 airliner and declares, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldnt lose voters.

Its more likely, however, that the apocalypse will arrive in something far less breathtaking than a 757 and far more mundane like, say, a Land Grant University extension bulletin. For example, heres a Jan. 19 bulletin from Kansas State University that explains (I think) one of the many local options to 2016 federal farm program benefits this way:

ARC pays the difference between the (5-year Olympic average MYA Price (OAP) X 5-year Olympic average county yield (OACY) X 86%)MYA price X actual county yield. For example, $6.70 wheat OAP X 35 bu. OACY X 86% = $201.67)$5.00 MYA price X 38 bu. actual county yield = $190 =$11.67 per payment ac. X 100 base ac. X 85% = $991.95.

And, as Im sure you noted while reading the explanation, this analysis is not complete because, of course, all is

Subject to: Stop loss equal to 10% of gross guarantee or 10% X ($6.70 OAP X 35 bu. OACY) =$23.45 X 100 base ac. X 85% = $1,993. In this example, the payment is less than the maximum payment of $1,993, so FSA would pay $991.95 to the farmer.

No, Im not making this up. Congress, however, did. Yes, its crazy and, yes, few on Capitol Hill  or any hill between there and your farm  know what this pretzel-bending really means.

On second thought, this probably is more a sign of the times than a sign of the end-of-times.

One sign that the apocalypse is near is the near-perfect dissidence on what the non-profit Center for Food Integrity (CFI) says consumers want in food labeling and what farm groups say consumers will get in food labeling.

Its simple: noted the very first sentence of a 2015 CFI report that compiled three years of detailed consumer research, if you increase transparency, you will increase trust.

The two groups most responsible for that transparency are food manufacturers and (f)armers, explained Charlie Arnot, CFIs chief executive officer, to members of the American Farm Bureau Federation at their mid-January convention in mid-January.

But while consumers trust farmers, Arnot told the AFBF crowd,  theyre not sure they trust farming.

Thats not clever double-talk; its an insightful explanation to the ever growing disconnect between farming America and consuming America. In short, eaters like farmers but, increasingly, they dislike how they farm.

That gap grew when farm and commodity groups successfully lobbied Congress last December to repeal Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for imported meat and poultry. No COOL means less transparency and, in turn, less trust of farmers by consumers. Its exactly what CFIs Arnot told Farm Bureau conventioneers not to do.

Now, just weeks later, a new U.S Department of Agricultures Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook forecasts that U.S. consumers will see more imported, unlabeled pork in American stores because COOL Repeal Likely Means a Slow Increase of Live Swine Imports.

Interestingly, slow to USDA means that Imports of Canadian live swine in 2016 are expected to increase about 9 percent, from 5.6 million head in 2015 to 6.2 million head this year.

A 9-percent, 600,000-head increase in Canadian hog imports may not be apocalyptic to USDA, but the decrease it brings to domestic hog prices will trim U.S. farm profits while it pads global meatpacker profits.

Thats a terrible tradeoff  for farmers, consumers, and the rural economy now or in the best of times.
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After implementing license plate reading technology, revenue from traffic fines in Port Arthur, Texas, have increased 180%.

The technology in question is called a license plate recognition system (LPR), which, as the title suggests, can scan license plates to pinpoint those who haven't paid their traffic fines, as well as locate otherwise wanted persons, including terrorists, according to a brochure for the technology.

According to the Port Arthur Police Department's website, the LPR has three different cameras, and once the plate is scanned "the system searches the entire database in less than 1/10th of one second."

Upon combining the technology with its eight-man Traffic Enforcement Unit, the Port Arthur Police Department has racked up its traffic fine income from $750,000 in 2006 to $2.1 million in 2012.

PERF (Police Executive Research Forum) Research Director Christopher Koper said that, in addition to heightened productivity, the LPRs offer greater officer safety, as well as removing the possibility of racial profiling, as the cameras scan plate automatically.

The system does have its detractors, who cite the fact that Port Arthur is one of the state's poorest cities, and the increased fining has only made things harder for its residents. There are also those, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who say that the system turns policemen into "debt collectors."

The PAPD isn't the only police department to implement the LPRs. In a study by PERF, 71% of contacted police departments use LPRs; 85% plan on implementing or increasing their use in the future.
In yet another jolt to the small city of Prairie View, Larry Johnson resigned unexpectedly this week as police chief.

Johnson gave Mayor Frank Jackson his resignation letter Tuesday evening, before the regular city council meeting, Jackson said. "We wish him well," the mayor added.

Sgt. Christopher Garrett has been appointed to serve as the interim chief. The council plans to hold a special meeting Monday night to form a search committee to find a replacement for Johnson, Jackson said.

Johnson could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

The chief's resignation came amid a series of high-profile incidents that have embroiled the rural Waller County college town, which is home to Prairie View A&M University, and its small police department.

Johnson took over the department in April 2014, after nearly 34 years as a police officer with the College Station Police Department, according to his state service record.

In July 2015, a little over a year into Johnson's tenure in Prairie View, one of his officers assisted in the controversial arrest of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, after a traffic stop by Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Brian Encinia. Bland was found dead in her Waller County jail cell three days later. Medical examiners ruled her death a suicide. She has become an emblem of the Black Lives Matter movement, and her story has sparked calls across the state for changes in Texas jails.

In October, the eight-officer department (which included Chief Johnson and a volunteer, reserve officer) was again mired in controversy when one of its officers arrested Prairie View City Council member Jonathan Miller after shooting him with a stun gun.

A Waller County grand jury last Friday indicted the officer, Michael Kelley, on one count of official oppression. If convicted, the officer, who is currently suspended without pay, could face up to a year in jail and pay a $4,000 fine.

Kelley turned himself into authorities earlier this week and was granted a $3,000 personal recognizance bond.
HUNTSVILLE - James Garrett Freeman, a Wharton County man who nine years ago shot and killed Texas Game Warden Justin Hurst, was executed Wednesday evening.

At 6:14 p.m., Freeman was asked if he had any last words. He replied, "No, I do not."

Moments before the pentobarbital began flowing into his veins, he could be seen grimacing slightly.

As the drugs were administered, Freeman struggled to keep his eyes open. His chest rose and fell several times, he gasped slightly several times, and his eyes closed.

The revving of engines from motorcyclists who support law enforcement filtered into the death house, where several game wardens and Wharton County District Attorney Ross Kurtz clustered by the observation window and watched the color slowly drain out of Freeman's face.

At 6:30 p.m., 16 minutes after the drugs were administered, he was pronounced dead.

Afterward, Greg Hurst, Justin's brother, thanked the approximately 100 game wardens and other law enforcement officers who on Wednesday had gathered and stood vigil outside the prison.

"Nine years ago - It's been nine long years," Hurst said, tears trickling down his face as he addressed his brother's former colleagues. "These men and women provided more support to my family ... and I really can never repay that. From the deepness of my heart, I love every one of you guys and gals, so thank you very much."

In the days prior to his execution, Freeman spent his time sleeping, speaking with his family and friends, cleaning his cell, and reading. On two separate occasions, he refused breakfast.

Around midday Wednesday, Freeman was transferred to a holding cell outside the execution chamber in the Huntsville Unit from his former cell in the Polunsky Unit in Livingston.

Earlier in the day, he visited with family and friends. Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who visited with him, said he seemed "unemotional."

Freeman's execution was the second of nine scheduled in Texas in the first half of 2016, following the Jan. 20 execution of 43-year-old Richard Masterson.

Freeman's execution closed a series of events that began in 2007, when a game warden tried to stop Freeman, now 35, for illegally hunting at night.

"Tonight we saw the end of the legal aspect of this case, and the legal closure," said district attorney Kurtz, who witnessed the execution. "But obviously, for the family, there is no closure."

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Freeman's case, according to federal court records. There were no new developments or potential filings, Don Vernay, one of Freeman's post-sentencing attorneys, said in an email.

A lower court in December declined a motion from Freeman's attorneys seeking additional time. On Monday afternoon, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down a commutation request from Freeman in a unanimous 7-0 vote, said Raymond Estrada, the board's director of public information.

Long-awaited

Freeman and his attorneys had argued in his appeals that in 2008 he received inadequate legal counsel.

The then-26-year-old Freeman fled, leading the warden and half a dozen other officers on a circuitous chase on paved and gravel roads through Wharton and Colorado counties, which ended 90 minutes later by a cemetery in his hometown of Lissie, after a Department of Public Safety trooper punctured Freeman's tires with a spike strip.

In a brief firefight that lasted less than a minute, Freeman fired nearly 40 shots from a Glock pistol and an AK-47 at the pursuing law enforcement officers - including Wharton County sheriff's deputies and constables, DPS troopers and game wardens, according to court records.

Two of the shots struck Hurst, who was pronounced dead soon after being flown to Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

He had been a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department employee for 12 years, five as a game warden, and died on his 34th birthday, leaving behind his wife and 4-month-old son.

Texas Game Warden Col. Craig Hunter, who was among the dozens of law enforcement gathered outside the prison, called Hurst a "consummate professional" and "selfless servant."

"This evening marks a moment that many of us have been waiting for since we first heard of Justin's death," he said.

Hurst's murder tore through rural Wharton County, home to some 40,000 residents, and which had not been site of a death penalty case in almost 30 years.

In trial, Josh McCown, then-district attorney of Wharton County, and Kelly Siegler, a former Harris County prosecutor acting as special prosecutor, portrayed Freeman as quick-tempered, and jurors heard testimony that Freeman was prone to outbursts of anger, after which he could not remember his actions.

His defense attorney, Stanley Schneider, argued that Freeman had been trying to commit "suicide by cop" and had been depressed following a series of alcohol-related offenses that had caused his driver's license to be suspended for two years.

In court proceedings, Freeman and his attorneys asked that the trial be held in a county other than Wharton, where they said he would be unable to get a fair trial.

He also argued the evidence presented to the jury was not sufficient enough to prove he was a "future danger," one of the thresholds required for a death-penalty sentence.

'Down to our heart'

Hurst is one of 18 game wardens to die on the job since 1895.

Among the dozens of law enforcement officers gathered at the execution was Wharton County Sheriff Jess Howell.

"Justin was a very good friend to everybody, to law enforcement in our community," said Howell, who was sheriff at the time and who was accompanied by five officers from his department.

"When this happened, it's just a tragedy that hurt every one of us down to our heart, it's just unbelievable," he said. At the time, three of his officers were involved in the chase.

Hurst's parents and brother also were among those who were at the prison but did not witness the execution, Clark said.

Freeman's parents, brother and sister-in-law attended the execution but did not address the media.
For the last Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses, the candidates didn't spare the little jabs with one-liners on Thursday night.

Despite the absence of front-runner Donald Trump, seven candidates who took the stage still managed to spew off quick comebacks for some of the questions, and answers, at the debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
Ted Cruz is leading the pack of GOP presidential contenders in Texas, a new KTVT/Dixie Strategies poll found. But his lead has narrowed since a statewide poll earlier this month.

KTVT polled 1,001 likely GOP primary voters in Texas by phone. Cruz was the top pick for 30 percent of respondents, followed by Donald Trump with 25 percent and Marco Rubio with 12 percent.
Check out the Houston Chronicle's Cruz News each morning for fresh updates from the Houston-based presidential campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

First vote looms

By most accounts, Ted Cruz gave a modest performance at Thursday's GOP presidential debate  the final debate before Iowans vote Monday in the nation's first primary caucuses.

Notably absent from the stage was Donald Trump, the pack's leader in most polls, who waged a calculated boycott of the debate.

Cruz and Trump will face off in Monday's vote. Polls give Trump a slight lead in Iowa and a wider one nationwide. If he wins Monday, he'll carry momentum to keep front-runner status in later state primaries.

Likewise, many experts say that Monday will be Cruz's best  maybe only  chance to obfuscate Trump's lead.

Rivalry drags on

Cruz tried Thursday night to cast his leading rival in a ridiculous light, jokingly imitating Trump on several occasions.

He satirically said, "Everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly"  a jest at Trump's characteristically simple denigrations. And Cruz once told moderators he'd walk of stage if they kept asking "mean questions," a joking reference to Trump's boycott.

Both of those moments were awkwardly received. And besides that, Cruz had some painful ones.

According to the official Twitter Government account, the debate's second most tweeted moment was moderator Chris Wallace shutting down a technical objection from Cruz (he followed that with his joking threat to leave stage).

The data shows that Cruz was unable to overcome his absent rival in the online popularity contest. During the debate, Trump led mentions on Twitter, with 36 percent of the conversation compared to Cruz, the runner up, with 16 percent.

Trump also saw the greatest Twitter follower growth during the debate, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio second and Cruz third.

Carpet bombing

Cruz defended his previous call to "carpet bomb" the Middle East, spinning a widely ridiculed comment into a call to expand U.S. military power.

"You want to know what carpet bombing is?" he said. "It's what we did in the first Persian Gulf War: 1,100 air attacks a day, saturation bombing that utterly destroyed the enemy."

An estimated 30,000 people died during that five-month war.

Immigration issues

Cruz also stumbled to address his record on amnesty issues. It's a position for which he's weathered many attacks before, since ample video shows him advocating legal status for undocumented people as a senator, even though he fiercely opposes it on the campaign trail.

Moderators played a mash-up of those videos at the debate, in a moment that critics agreed was tough for Cruz. Afterwards, in a sit-down with moderator Megyn Kelly, Cruz said he was just being political.

"What I often do, particularly when debating Democrats ... is use the language of the Democrats to show their hypocrisy," Cruz told Kelly.

Finals days on the Iowa trail

On stage Thursday, Cruz noted he was about to wrap up "full Grassley" -- a complete tour of Iowa's 99 mostly rural counties, named after the veteran Iowa senator who makes the trek annually.

According to a report by the Associated Press, Cruz will be waging a grueling tour to bring his Iowa primary campaign to a close, passing through a hand full of tiny rural towns every day with passionate courtship for his most loyal voters: evangelicals and constitutional conservative stalwarts. He'll be urging them to get out an vote.

Cruz will visit the 99th and final Iowa county on Monday afternoon, just hours before voting starts, the AP reports.

The turnout in Iowa could seriously impact the results of state votes thereafter, and Cruz is hoping for a strong showing Monday.

High hopes for Texas

Cruz leads the GOP presidential pack in Texas, a new KTVT/Dixie Strategies poll found. But his lead has narrowed since a statewide poll earlier this month.

KTVT polled 1,001 likely GOP primary voters in Texas by phone. Cruz was the top pick for 30 percent of respondents, followed by Trump with 25 percent and Marco Rubio with 12 percent.

The poll has a margin of error of plus- or minus 3.1 percent.

That five-point lead is down from the 15-point lead that a CBS/YouGov poll gave Cruz in early January.

Since then, the Texas senator's national poll numbers also have slipped slightly, yielding a larger lead to Trump.

Still, Cruz is widely expected to win Texas, his home state and home to the original campaign infrastructure that boosted him to an unlikely win in a Senate election over incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in 2012.

Texans have also made nearly half of the individual cash contributions received by the Cruz campaign as of October, the most recent federal filing date.

Aussies strike back

An Australian official on Thursday wrote a letter to Cruz, berating him for citing faulty statistics about guns and sexual assault in Australia, Australia's ABC News reported.

In a January radio interview, Cruz said that Australia kicked off a gun buy-back program and "the rate of sexual assaults, the rate of rapes, went up significantly, because women were unable to defend themselves."

Many fact checking operations concluded Cruz lacked any evidence of correlation between guns and sexual assaults.

Australian opposition leader Bill Shorted wrote in a letter, "Contrary to your comments, reducing the number and restricting the availability of semi-automatic weapons did not lead to an increase in the rates of violent crime, rape or sexual assault."

"Please do not misrepresent the success of Australia's gun reforms in a misguided defense of your own gun laws."


Beatrice High School art students making as many as 300 clay bowls for a community service project said they do it because its for a good cause and because it allows them to experiment in ceramics.

The handmade bowls and 14 locally made soups will be the centerpieces of the Empty Bowls Soup Luncheon on March 22. The luncheon is a fundraiser for the Beatrice Backpack Program, a local effort that gives backpacks full of food to students and their families who qualify.

As of Wednesday, BHS students had made about 120 bowls, art teacher Libby Henschke said. The goal is 300 finished bowls by the day of the luncheon. In years past, the high school students have donated about 200.

I try to push the kids to reach higher than whats expected of them, Henschke said.

Henschke hosted a throwing day in the art room on a recent Saturday where 30 students helped make some of the bowls. Since then, students have spent time after school or during their lunch hours, mentor periods and advance studio art classes making more bowls.

I think kids are really willing to work, Henschke said. Even if their ability is not there yet, they still have a desire to do good for others and thats really nice to see in the young generation.

For students more practiced in ceramic art, a bowl takes about 10 or 15 minutes to make. Three particular students have made the majority of the bowls.

This is easy for me, BHS senior Elizabeth Karas said while throwing a bowl on a pottery wheel in the school art room. Im good at this. Not many people can do this, so if I work hard, I can make up for the people that dont have the talent to do it.

Karas has made about 50 bowls. She made most of them during the eight hours she spent at the throwing party.

I just want to help out, Karas said. And Im in Key Club, and were supposed to volunteer, so thats also why.

Karas said the art of ceramics clicked for her and shes improved a lot since she started in her sophomore year. Making the bowls allows her to experiment with different techniques, designs and combinations of glazes.

BHS senior Michaela Navarrete is also putting in extra effort to help reach the goal.

Having Hensckhe tell us its for a charity is more than enough of a reason to work on it, Navarrete said.

The effort is improving her skill in ceramics, Navarrete said.

It allows me to practice and try different types of styles and develop my own technique, Navarrete said. Everyone has their own style. I dont really imagine what the bowl will look like. It just kind of happens.

Navarrete said she plans to finish 54 pieces including a tea set, plates and mugs for a grade in Advanced Studio Art class as well as more bowls for the luncheon.

To make a bowl, Navarrete said the artist must wedge the clay, mold it into a cylindrical shape on the pottery wheel, wait for it to dry to a leather-hard state, trim it (get rid of excess clay), create its foot, wait for it go get bone dry, put it in the kiln for a bisque fire, apply the glaze and put in the kiln for the glaze fire.

BHS seniors Josiah Huston said he has made about a dozen bowls for the luncheon, which has allowed him to gain a lot more practice in the art of ceramics. He said the more challenging part of creating pottery is the beginning, when its hard not to lose patience with it.

The luncheon is from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on March 22 at Classics. Soups will be provided by 14 Beatrice restaurants and caterers and other groups including Knights of Columbus and the local hospital. Each attendee can vote for the best soup and take one of the handmade bowls home.

Organizers ask for a donation of $25 from each attendee. Tickets can be purchased at the Beatrice Area Chamber of Commerce, Pinnacle Bank, Security First Bank or from Kristy Thies, Patty Kaufman or Peggy Johnson, the three women who started the Backpack Program eight years ago.

Proceeds from the luncheon will fund the Beatrice Backpack Program, which provides the 100 most needy Beatrice school children and their families with food on the weekends.

Each Friday of the school year, 100 backpacks of food are sent home to the same 100 families. The families are on free and reduced lunch and are determined by BPS administrators, Kaufman said. She said about half of BPS families qualify and take advantage of the free and reduced lunch program.

It is a very wide problem in our community, Kaufman said. We have children that need help with food at home.

Originally, the program provided 25 backpacks of food.

Bowls are also being made and donated by students at Southeast Community College in Beatrice and Ervin Dixon of Cedar Creek Pottery.
It has been far too many years since the Woke theology interlaced its canons within the fabric of the Indoctrination Realm, so it is nigh time to ask: Does this Representative Republic continue, as a functioning society of a self-governed people, by contending with the unusual, self absorbed dictates of the Woke, and their vast away of Victimhood scenarios?

Yes, the Religion of Woke must continue; there are so many groups of underprivileged, underserved, a direct result of unrelenting Inequity; they deserve everything.

No; the Woke fools must be toppled from their pedestal; a functioning society of a good Constitutional people cannot withstand this level of "existential" favoritism as it exists now unending.
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority Approves Nearly $3.1 Million in Funding Requests

News Release:



Grants support 219 new jobs statewide



Raleigh, N.C. Governor Pat McCrory, Commerce Secretary John E. Skvarla, III, and Assistant Secretary for Rural Economic Development Dr. Patricia Mitchell announced today that the North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority (RIA) approved 15 grant requests totaling $3,039,244. The requests include commitments to create a total of 219 new jobs.



"Assets like water and sewer systems, natural gas lines and industry-ready buildings remain vital ingredients for prosperity across North Carolina," said Governor McCrory. "These funds help build the modern economic infrastructure that empowers our less populated communities to create jobs, grow businesses and attract investment."



The RIA reviews and approves funding requests for grant programs operated by the Rural Economic Development Division at the N.C. Department of Commerce. Grants support infrastructure development, building renovation and site improvements.



The RIA approved a total of 10 grants under the state's Building Reuse program:



Rural Health Category



 Town of Nags Head (Dare County): A $500,000 grant to support the reuse of a building by Peak Resources - Outer Banks, a family-owned nursing home operator that plans to create 50 new jobs. The project renovates the facility and upgrades flooring, HVAC, electrical and paint. The building was constructed in 1981. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $1,624,829.



Existing Business Building Category



 Town of Lillington (Harnett County): A $148,868 grant to support the renovation of a building that will facilitate a 15-job expansion at Saab Barracuda. The company designs and manufactures ultra-light camouflage net systems for the U.S. military. The project renovates and improves roofing, HVAC and lighting for the building, which was constructed in 1975. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $297,736.



Vacant Building Category



 Town of Valdese (Burke County): A $30,000 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building for use by Old World Baking Company. The company plans to make and sell fresh baked foods and roast coffee, creating three jobs. The project will upgrade plumbing, electrical, ceiling, walls and flooring. The building was constructed in 1929 and has been vacant for two years. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $341,255.



 Town of Granite Falls (Caldwell County): A $137,500 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building that will facilitate an 11-job expansion by Ccon Metals. The company acquires, recycles and re-sells used batteries. The project will renovate and upgrade roofing, lighting, electrical and bathrooms. The building was constructed in 1960 and has been vacant for five years. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $290,000.



City of Conover (Catawba County): A $40,000 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building that will facilitate an eight-job expansion by West Penn Hardwoods. The company is an importer and distributor of exotic woods. The project includes renovations, upgrades and repairs to roofing, electrical and overhead doors. The building was constructed in 1966 and has been vacant for two years. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $1,050,700.



 Granville County: A $175,500 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building in Creedmoor that will facilitate an 18-job expansion by Builder Services, a comprehensive restoration service company. The project includes renovation and upgrades to electrical, roofing, plumbing, HVAC and painting. The building was constructed in 1972 and has been vacant for two years. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $1,055,657.



 Halifax County: A $450,000 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building in Enfield for use by Enfield Timber. The company, which will produce hardwood crane mats and untreated railroad ties, will create 36 jobs. The project includes upgrades and repairs to concrete and electrical systems. The building was constructed in 1960 and has been vacant for five years. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $4,970,722.



 City of Marion (McDowell County): A $40,000 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building that will facilitate a four-job expansion by Auto Tech Collision, an automotive paint and body repair shop. The project will include upgrades and renovation to electrical, HVAC and plumbing systems. The building was constructed in 1966 and has been vacant for one year. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $83,925.



 Stanly County: A $500,000 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building in Richfield that will facilitate a 40-job expansion by Piedmont Custom Meats. The company provides full-service slaughter, processing and packaging of meat products. The project upgrades plumbing, HVAC and electrical systems. The building was constructed in 1978 and has been vacant for eight months. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $2,475,000.



 Vance County: A $100,000 grant to support the reuse of a vacant building in Henderson that will facilitate a 20-job expansion of Profilform US, Inc. The company is a manufacturer of custom profile wrappings. The project includes renovations and upgrades to HVAC, flooring and lighting systems. The building was constructed in 1999 and has been vacant for one year. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $1,810,000.



The Building Reuse Program provides grants to local governments to renovate vacant buildings, renovate and/or expand buildings occupied by existing North Carolina companies, and renovate, expand or construct health care facilities that will lead to the creation of new jobs in Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties and in rural census tracts of Tier 3 counties.



The RIA approved one grant under the state's Community Development Block



Grant (CDBG) program:



 City of Marion (McDowell County): A $500,000 grant to demolish and clear structural components of six industrial buildings constructed in 1918. The project readies the 15-acre site for participation in the Redevelopment Now Brownfield program, which will enable the City to assume ownership upon donation of the property by its previous owner. The property, which is accessible to I-40 and Norfolk-Southern rail, will ultimately be marketed for use by distribution and light industrial operations.



The Community Development Block Grant program is a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program administered in part by the North Carolina Department of Commerce. CDBG's economic development funds provide grants to local governments in Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties for creating and retaining jobs. Project funding is based on the number of jobs to be created and the level of economic distress of applicant communities.



The RIA approved one request for funding under the state's Economic Infrastructure program:



 Town of Elizabethtown (Bladen County): A $70,000 grant to assist with the 135-foot extension of a six-inch water line that will support a 14-job expansion by Taylor Products, Inc., d/b/a D'Vine Foods The company cans and bottles locally-sourced juices and condiments. The company also has a small bakery and automated bottling line. The grant is part of a total capital investment of $1,873,500.



The Economic Infrastructure Program provides grants to local governments in the 80 most economically distressed counties to assist with infrastructure projects that will lead to job-creation. Water and sewer lines, wastewater treatment plants, natural gas lines, public broadband infrastructure, roadways and rail spurs are examples of infrastructure covered under program guidelines.



The RIA approved three requests under the state's Industrial Development Fund - Utility Account program.



 Alexander County: A $152,000 grant adding to a previous award that is assisting with the installation of a one-mile natural gas pipeline that will serve Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. The company, a residential and commercial furniture manufacturer and retailer, employs 471 workers at the project location and 526 countywide. The additional funds are needed to offset unanticipated costs incurred by the county.



 City of Claremont (Catawba County): A grant of $120,975 to assist in improvements to a sewer system that will serve the long-term growth needs of Substance, Inc., a manufacturing of pressure sensitive materials for the outdoor signage market. The project also opens development and job-creation opportunities for the 22-acre industrial site that Substance, Inc., anchors. The company is investing $4 million in overall improvements to the property.



 City of Henderson (Vance County). A $74,401 grant that adds to an existing award to help extend city water service to a vacant industrial property. Engineering studies revealed challenges that will require additional funding to address. Lack of adequate water service has hampered the city's efforts to attract an industrial tenant to the property.



The Industrial Development Fund - Utility Account provides grants to units of local government of the 80 most distressed counties in the state to assist with job creation. Funds may be used for publicly-owned infrastructure and should be used for projects that are reasonably expected to result in the creation of new jobs. IDF - Utility Account funding is derived from portions of Job Development Investment Grants (JDIG) awarded in Tier 2 and Tier 3 counties.



Contact: Crystal Feldman

govpress@nc.gov






Cianci for Mayor on Facebook

Current debates over urban political leadership tend to center around whether cities need Michael Bloomberg-style technocratic mayors or more ideological leaders like Bloombergs successor in New York, Bill de Blasio. Vincent Buddy Cianci Jr., the former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, who died Thursday at 74, offered a third modelthat of the urban booster. Best known for being a two-time felon, Cianci was nonetheless often an effective mayor. Providence would not have come as far as it has without him.

Former Brown University president Vartan Gregorian once remarked that Cianci, who was first elected mayor in 1974, took any insult about Providence personally. Though all mayors are boosters of their cities, Cianci took boosterism to rare heights because he really meant it. He was as confident about Providences greatness as he was about his own.

It wasnt easy being an urban cheerleader in the mid-1970s. Providence in particular seemed headed in the same direction as Buffalo and Detroit. Its population fell by about 100,000 during the decades following World War II, and everything seemed to be going wrong. As Cianci would often recount, one of the first decisions he made after taking office was what to do about the monkeys that had recently escaped from the Providence Zoo. But by the end of his final term in office, in the late 1990s, Providence had acquired a reputation as a comeback city. Cianci oversaw most of the so-called Providence Renaissance involving several high-profile downtown-revitalization efforts, including uncovering formerly decked-over rivers and initiating the WaterFire summer festival series. These and other projects did wonders for civic pride.

Cianci was a complicated man. Indulging in goofy showmanshiphe launched his own brand of marinara saucehe could also be a devious Machiavellian. At times, he seemed to have been born without the capacity for self-control. He resigned from office twice because of criminal convictions. In 1984, he pled guilty to assaulting a former supporter whom Cianci claimed had cuckolded him. Undaunted, Cianci ran a dramatic comeback campaign in 1990 with the slogan, He never stopped caring about Providence. In a tight three-way race, Cianci won by only 317 votes. Following his revitalization successes, he ran unopposed in 1998. But in 2002, while preparing to run for his seventh term, he was forced to resign again after being convicted on a federal racketeering charge.

In his 2011 memoir Politics and Pasta, Cianci is blase about his criminal record and underhanded dealingsincluding holding up a permit for a new building at Brown until his nephews were admitted to the university. I did that; I used my public power for personal reasons. I admit it. It probably wasnt the right thing to do, but it certainly felt good, he writes. He put a developer on the city payroll as an artistic consultant to the city of Providence in exchange for the developers agreement not to tear down what would become the Providence Performing Arts Center. One of his police commissioners committed suicide in response to pressure from Cianci to hire unqualified recruits. In addition to deepening Rhode Islands longstanding reputation for corruptionno easy featCianci, who raised taxes several times, left his citys finances in shambles. Providence recently flirted with bankruptcy, thanks to a pension crisis that Ciancis policies helped create.

His moral failings and volatile temper made Cianci many enemies among Providences elite. But Rhode Islanders are famously tolerant of public corruption. Cianci biographer Mike Stanton noted that toward the end of the trial that led to his racketeering conviction, a poll found that over half of Rhode Islanders believed him guilty, but 67 percent felt he showed strong leadership. After his release from prison, Cianci became a successful local radio host. His continued popularity prompted him to run for mayor one last time, in 2014, but he lost by seven points.

As a general rule, the more familiar people are with the details of the Providence Renaissance, the less credit theyre inclined to give Cianci. (Major financial support from federal and state governments was pivotal.) But in Providence: The Renaissance City, the most thorough study of the citys comeback, Francis Leazes and Mark Motte conclude that in addition to his invaluable boosterism, the mayors primary contribution in the eyes of many who were designing and implementing the projects was to know when not to say no and then to get out of the way. When the chips were down, Cianci knew the difference between boosting himself and boosting Providence.
Diane Rufino

If you are ever confused as to the order of things, the emphasis of individual rights with respect to government, the rights of States with respect to the federal government, and the states' rights of nullification and disunion with respect to the government's position, it helps to refresh oneself with the wisdom of the men who wrote our Founding documents and provided us with the bedrock on which our nation was established and grounded.James Madison (the principle author of our Constitution) wrote to Thomas Jefferson (the author of our Declaration of Independence) that the Constitution was subordinate to the Principles and Rights enshrined in our Declaration. Madison noted, "On the distinctive principles of the Government ... of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in ... The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States." In other words, although the Articles of Confederation and its successor, the U.S. Constitution, were the contractual agreements binding the several states into one union - E Pluribus Unum - the innate Rights of Man identified in the Declaration are the overarching act of that union, and would never be negotiable by way of "collective agreement and compromise."Nor are those Rights negotiable today or tomorrow.Similarly, the role of government (primarily to protect the essential liberties of the People) is the only grounds for allegiance by the People. Once that purpose becomes frustrated, abused, diluted, or convoluted, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish government.Leftists and progressives refuse to acknowledge that the Rights of Man are non-negotiable, as we have seen in the debates over gun control. Leftists like Barack Obama do not believe that individuals have the inherent right to own guns. In other words, they don't believe in the Second Amendment. Furthermore, if they don't believe in the Second Amendment, then they fundamentally do not understand the Bill of Rights and the role of government. Rather, they subscribe to the errant notion of a "living breathing constitution" ("living breathing document") - one which is subject to an at-will interpretation, and most conveniently, to the interpretation of the very government that the Constitution seeks to limit. A living, breathing constitution" is one that has no fixed meaning and therefore individual rights are subject to executive and legislative encroachment whenever it suits the government's agenda. A "living breathing constitution" is one that can be judicially amendment by diktat, instead of its legally prescribed method of amendment in Article V. This enables them to undermine the Constitution's fundamental protections of Human Rights and to transform government into whatever suits them.Likewise, even though our Founding Fathers and indeed the drafters of our Declaration and Constitution acknowledged that the states have a right to check the power of the federal government and prevent it from encroaching on its sovereign powers and they have the right to voluntarily leave the union, and these rights supercede the Constitution, the federal government, through the voice of Presidents and the men (ie, puppets) they appoint to the Supreme Court, has attempted to deny that these rights do not exist. [see(1868, decision written by Lincoln's appointee as Chief Justice, his former cabinet member and right-hand man, Salmon Chase) and(1958)]At North Carolina's first Ratifying Convention in Hillsborough in July-August 1788, attorney James Iredell explained the status of the Constitution: "When Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution." In other words, if a law is passed by the US Congress that exceeds the authority granted at the time (1787-1788), that law is null and void and therefore is no law at all. The States must not enforce it. At that Hillsborough Convention, the NC delegates voted 184-84 not to adopt the Constitution. The anti-Federalist majority concurred with delegate William Gowdy of Guilford County, when he remarked: "Power belongs originally to the people, but if rulers be not well guarded, that power may be usurped from them." It should be noted that the Hillsborough Convention is perhaps the most insightful convention regarding the original intent of the Constitution. The transcriber of the debates in that Convention was non-partisan.Alexander Hamilton, who co-wrote, the series of essays assuring the States that the government created under the Constitution is one of very limited powers, wrote: "The Supreme Being gave existence to man ...; and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety ... Hence, also, the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to- such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter: for what original title can any man, or set of men, have to govern others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a people, in their own despite; or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to entrust; is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to obedience."Although Presidents and Congressmen and justices (and all other government officials as well) swear a solemn oath to "to Support and Defend" our Constitution (with some taking the oath on the Koran, a document that demands allegiance to a system that must ignore the Constitution), most politicians on the Left and too many on the Right ignore that obligation, and have trampled on the notion established by the Constitution - The Rule of Law - with reckless abandon. The implications for Liberty are dire.The debate between right and left, of progressives/liberals and conservatives, characterizes all fundamental historical debates regarding Liberty and tyranny and begs the core question: Who endows the Rights of Man? -- God (as ordained in natural law) or government (as ordained by man)?The Left's position has been made plainly evident by Barack Hussein Obama, who has a history of deliberately and repeatedly omitting the words "endowed by their Creator" when citing in open constituent forums the Declaration's reference to "Rights." He intentionally compares himself to Abraham Lincoln for a reason. Lincoln himself ignored the intent and the letter of the Constitution perhaps more than any other president and enlarged government in a way that no Founder could have envisioned (although Hamilton had hoped, and maybe even Madison too for just a brief period in time)."Obama and other contemporary leftist protagonists seek to substitute Liberty as ensured under the Rule of Law established by our Constitution, with the rule of men in their so-called 'living breathing constitution.' They do so because the former is predicated on the principle that Liberty is innately 'endowed by our Creator,' while the latter asserts that government is the sole arbiter and grantor of Liberty. Ignorance of the true and eternal source of the Rights of Man is fertile ground for the Left's assertion that government endows such Rights. It is also perilous ground, soaked with the blood of generations of American Patriots defending Liberty at home and around the world. Indeed, as Jefferson wrote, 'The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.'" [Mark Alexander, "The Inalienable Rights of Man"][These comments are based, in large part, on an article by Mark Alexander - See Mark Alexander, "The Inalienable Rights of Man: A Brief Civics Lesson on Liberty,", February 18, 2015. Referenced at: http://patriotpost.us/alexander/33261 ]
Women in Online Work  program pentru femeile care isi doresc sa munceasca in companii internationale, de la biroul de acasa
ATLANTA  Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund will release its report, Striking a Balance: Advancing Civil and Human Rights While Preserving Religious Liberty, documenting how the religious arguments commonly used today against LGBT equality have been used to oppose the abolition of slavery, womens suffrage and equality, racial integration, inter-racial marriage, immigration, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the right to collectively bargain. Striking a Balance also examines the current legal and political landscape in which religious exemptions are being used to deny civil and human rights, including LGBT equality.

 Click here to download a PDF of the report.

 Click here to watch a livestream of an event to release the report on Monday, February 1 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET to be accompanied by a #StrikingABalance Twitter discussion.

For as long as people have demanded freedom, dignity, and equality under the law, many arguments to deny these rights have been wrapped in a false flag of religious liberty, said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund. Religious liberty is a sacred American ideal, not a cynical strategy to oppose LGBT equality, the abolition of slavery, womens suffrage, inter-racial marriage, or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The recognition of marriage equality for same-sex couples has spurred a fresh wave of state and federal legislation to sanction discrimination by individuals and businesses as a matter of religious freedom. Striking a Balance puts these bills in historical context, noting that similar arguments were made to undermine the implementation of landmark civil rights cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, and legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The report will be released today at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia with an event to include diverse national and Georgia community advocates representing African Americans, Latinos, women, the LGBT community, and people of faith. More than half a dozen religious exemption bills have been filed in Georgia and these communities are standing together to oppose the use of religion as a justification to discriminate.

 Click here to download a PDF of the report.

 Click here to watch a livestream of an event to release the report on Monday, February 1 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET to be accompanied by a #StrikingABalance Twitter discussion.

###
At the grand opening of The Washington Posts glittering new K Street headquarters Thursday morning, a barista steamed milk while a jazz band played. Visitors were offered a choice of three high-end brands of bottled water, and the breakfast spread of bagels, pastries, and fruit skewers sat alongside monogrammed Washington Post napkins.

The dedication of the new Washington Post headquarters took place in the papers sleek public event space, The Washington Post Live Center, which looks suspiciously like The New York Times TimesCenter. It drew boldface names, lots of power suits, and just lots of power. Secretary of State John Kerry was there, along with the governors of Virginia and Maryland. Former Senator Chris Dodd, now CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America mingled with BET CEO Debra Lee; Ernest J. Wilson, III, dean of USCs Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism; and Pulitzer Prize administrator Mike Pride.

Few newspaper ribbon cuttings would draw such an array of glitterati, but then, few newspapers are opening grand new headquarters these days. The four-day hoopla surrounding the papers move from its storied 15th street headquarters to K Street, a DC power corridor lined with lobbying shops and white-shoe law firms, reinforces the stark divide between the haves and the have nots in todays newspaper industry.

Under its new owner, Jeff Bezos, the Post is claiming digital advances while also positioning itself to become what a promotional video called the new publication of record. Bezos boasted on Thursday that his paper has the best technology team not just in the news business. I would put this team up against any team in Silicon Valley.

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The Post newsroom has gone from four engineers five years ago to dozens today. They work side by side with journalists, help the website load stories faster, and build the sites capacity for interactivity, Executive Editor Marty Baron said. The paper can brag of record traffic, beating what Baron referred to as all longtime competitors, without naming The New York Times.

But the lavish celebrations felt a bit off key given that newspaper advertising revenue fell by $42 billion between 2000 and 2013. On Wednesday night, the Post dedicated the new Ben Bradlee Story Conference Room (also the main editorial meeting room) with lobster canapes, mini Beef Wellingtons, and fried smoked mozzarella. Guests including ABCs Martha Raddatz, host of the Feb. 6 GOP debate, and Michael Kinsley, former editor of Slate and The New Republic, sipped Champagne, scotch, and white wine, all served in the appropriate glasses.

Journalism history and asked him about the lobster being served  Ben would have loved it @CJR pic.twitter.com/yZhA8oOiby  Nikki Usher Layser (@nikkiusher) January 27, 2016

I asked Bob Woodward whether the lobster seemed like overkill. We have a new owner with a lot of money, and whats important is commitment to serious investigative reporting, Woodward told me. He resolves to dig. He absolved Bezos of the costs of the canapes, instead noting: The lobster is just a gesture to Ben and the good life he lived. Journalists at the dozens of newspapers that have moved out of historic buildings into smaller and meaner quarters might feel differently.

Of course, the Post also has something more serious to celebrate: Jason Rezaians release. He spoke for the first time publicly, recalling that his captors told him The Washington Post did not exist. Kerry and others used the occasion to celebrate his return, and to speak glowingly about the importance of newspapers in a democracy. It was an echo of 1972, when the Post opened its 15th Street building a year after the publication of the Pentagon Papers and in the midst of Watergate. At that event, then-Secretary of State William P. Rodgers was the honored guest.

These grand openings may be primarily a bold declaration of ego and aspiration. News building design, as scholar Aurora Wallace has chronicled, speaks to the ambitions of a newspaper. Historically, the architecture of newspaper headquarters has been a sign of the power of press barons to control the fortunes of politicians and cities.

The Posts new building evokes a digital future. Theres a giant newsroom hub, with big screens around a central configuration of cubiclesthe latest fad in trying to facilitate communication and digital-first principles through design.

The building also echoes that of its rival paper of record to the north. There are small conference rooms with glass walls and small round tables. There is an open staircase that looks down from one floor of the newsroom to the other. The metal lettering on the front of the Post is almost identical to the metal used for The New York Times signage.

Copying the @nytimes building with small conference rooms @CJR @washingtonpost but maybe nicer? Glass enclosed pic.twitter.com/jtaEveTvTf  Nikki Usher Layser (@nikkiusher) January 27, 2016

The Post is not your typical metropolitan newspaper, of course, nor has it ever claimed to be. Its a national newspaper, and Bezos wants it to become even more globally influential. On Thursday, he spoke admiringly of his paper as a little more swashbuckler, a little more swagger, and a little more badass than others.

Time will tell if Bezos indeed is spending his money wisely, not on office buildings and lobsters, or even tech teams, but on what will indeed make this paper that already has such a huge status even bigger. For the journalists who arent in New York City or Washington, meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to compete.

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Nikki Usher is an associate professor at The George Washington University in the School of Media and Public Affairs. She is the author of two books, Interactive Journalists: Hackers, Data, and Code and Making News at The New York Times.
Scott Tamura Joins Bolton & Company

California-based Bolton & Company, a national employee-owned insurance broker, named Scott Tamura vice president of the newly established Technical Consulting Unit within the organizations Employee Benefits Department.

Tamura will lead the new team which is responsible for underwriting reviews, claims analysis, renewal projections and negotiations for Boltons top clients.

He has advised clients in an underwriting consulting role for over 20 years. Prior to joining Bolton and Company, Tamura led the Southern California underwriting practice at Arthur J. Gallagher and managed an underwriting team at Aon Consulting. He has worked with clients offering both self-funded and experience rated fully insured plans, providing underwriting analytics to assist with strategy and budgeting.

Tamura has experience working for national insurance carriers, and has worked as an underwriting manager at Kaiser managing the Inland Empire and San Diego mid-market segments. Additionally, he served as an underwriting consultant at Blue Shields Premier Accounts and PacifiCares National Accounts.

JLT Specialty USA Names Trinkleback and Robinson as Senior Vice Presidents

JLT Specialty USA, a U.S. subsidiary of Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc., a global specialty insurance, reinsurance and employee benefits related advice, brokerage and associated services provider, named Robert Trinkleback senior vice president, casualty risk control leader at JLTs Chicago office.

Trinkleback, who most recently served as executive vice president of Safety & Risk Management Consulting at Krauter & Company, brings over 30 years of experience designing and executing professional safety and risk management programs to his new position.

Prior to his most recent position, Trinkleback served as the vice president for National Express Corporation.

In a separate announcement, the company announced the appointment of Perry Robinson as senior vice president, based out of Houston.

Robinson will assist JLTs clients with identification, management and mitigation of complex risks in the cyber and technology fields.

Most recently, he served as vice president and general manager of Rackspaces Managed Security division, and prior to that as vice president of Business and Legal Affairs at Rackspace.

Chubb Announces New Field Leadership Team for Southeast Region

Chubb announced a new leadership team for the Southeast Region of the companys North America field organization, effective February 15, 2016.

James M. Shevlin will serve as senior vice president, North America Insurance and regional executive officer (REO) of the Southeast Region. He was named in an earlier announcement as regional chief operating officer (RCOO) for the Southeast Region, will assume responsibilities that were previously announced for D. Scott Dalton, who will retire from Chubb on February 15. Shevlin will report to Harold L. Morrison, Jr., senior vice president, Chubb Group, and division president, Field Operations for the North America Insurance division.

As REO, Shevlin will be responsible for executing the underwriting and sales strategies of Chubbs business units, staff management, production, profit and loss and distribution management in the Southeast Region, which is one of eight North America Insurance regions across the United States and Canada. In addition to his REO duties, he will manage the Atlanta office.

Barbara A. Wittick will serve as RCOO of the Southeast Region and report to Shevlin. Currently, Wittick is senior vice president and Tampa Branch Manager for Chubb. In addition to her RCOO duties, she will lead the Tampa branch office, and the Birmingham, Nashville and Charlotte branch offices will report to her.

Hunt Named CEO of Ringler Associates Incorporated, Blattenberg to Retire

Ringler Associates Incorporated, a national structured settlement company, announced that Geoffrey E. Hunt has been elected chief executive officer by the Board of Directors to succeed Robert J. Blattenberg, who is retiring as CEO.

The move is part of the leadership succession plan that began when Hunt was named president of Ringler Associates a year ago. In addition, given Blattenbergs previously announced retirement to become effective on March 31, 2016, he has decided to not seek reelection to the Board of Directors allowing for a new outside director to join the Board.

Hunt began his consulting career at Deloitte becoming a senior manager at the firm. He joined Liberty Mutual in Boston in 1991, rising to executive vice president for Regional Agency Markets, responsible for $2.5 billion in premiums. Prior to that, he held positions of executive vice president and manager of Field Operations for Business Markets, VP and director of Corporate Finance and M&A at Liberty.

In 2005, he co-founded Narragansett Bay Insurance Company in Rhode Island, also serving on the Board of Directors. Just prior to being named president of Ringler Associates in 2015, he served as vice president of Mergers, Acquisitions and Business Development at Risk Placement Services a division of the international brokerage firm Arthur J. Gallagher.

New Church Mutual Leaders to Focus on Growth

Wisconsin-based Church Mutual Insurance Company announced additional succession planning of the companys senior executive financial leadership as it continues to pursue growth opportunities.

The CMIC Board of Directors approved the promotion of Kevin Root to senior vice president  Operations and Jeffrey Steffen to vice president and chief financial officer.

Kevin Root, CPA, joined Church Mutual in September 2012 as vice president and chief financial officer. In his new role, he will lead operations of the corporate administrative functions supporting CMIC, CM|Vantage, and in 2016, the newly-acquired SBIC and SCS companies.

Jeff Steffen, CPA, brings 22 years of business and insurance experience to the CFO position. That includes three years as Church Mutuals director of financial planning and analysis.

Brentwood Services Administrators Promotes Brothers

Tenn.-based Brentwood Services Administrators Inc. (BSA) promoted Nicole Brothers to the position of claim representative I, according to Jeff Pettus, president and chief executive officer of BSA.

In her new position, Brothers responsibilities include reviewing, processing and handling workers compensation claims as assigned by Judy Betzold, AIC, claim supervisor. In addition, Brothers determines the compensability and extent of liability. She communicates directly with clients, employers, injured workers, physicians and attorneys to manage claims in a timely and economic manner.

Brothers was employed by BSA in 2009 as a claim assistant, then was promoted to claim examiner II. Before joining BSA, she worked in positions providing clerical support.

Puno Joins Safety National Re Professional Liability Treaty Team

Charles Puno has joined Safety National Re as vice president. He will be based out of Indianapolis.

Puno brings over 25 years of industry-related insurance and reinsurance experience to Safety National Re, including a particular focus in the management and underwriting of medical and non-medical professional liability treaty reinsurance business.

In his new position, he will be responsible for the production and underwriting of broker market professional liability treaty reinsurance opportunities.

MEMIC Promotes Jackson to Director of Claim Operations

Workers compensation specialist The MEMIC Group announced the promotion of Robyn Jackson to director of Claim Operations where she will oversee all key areas of the Claim Departments workflow, system and data needs.

Jackson joined the MEMIC claim team in 2005 as a compensation specialist and was promoted to unit manager of Operation Support in 2006. She has earned her Workers Compensation Professional (WCP) designation.

XL Catlin Names New Global Practice Leader for Casualty Claims

XL Catlins Global Claims operation appointed Cynthia Koehler global practice leader for Casualty claims. In her new role, Koehler is responsible for overseeing a global casualty claims team of technical practice leaders that drive the resolution of XL Catlins largest, most complex casualty claims. Based in Hartford, she reports to XL Catlins Global Head of Claims Anthony Vidovich.

Koehler spent the bulk of her career at Liberty Mutual where she most recently served as vice president and assistant general counsel. She brings nearly three decades of claims management, arbitration and litigation experience.
U.S. auto safety regulators said Tuesday that airbag maker Takata Corp declared 5.1 million U.S. vehicles defective, as the company disclosed an 11th death could be linked to a faulty airbag.

Most of the vehicles mentioned in numerous previous recalls involving Takata airbags have been older models, but the new recalls include some 2014 models. The Japanese company said newer vehicles remain under investigation and could be subject to recall at a later date.

The newly released documents show that regulators may prod automakers to recall recent models.

That could greatly increase the total number of vehicles recalled, which in the United States now stands at about 24 million involving about 28 million Takata airbag inflators.

Ford Motor Co on Tuesday became the first of several automakers involved to announce a recall. A 2006 Ford Ranger was involved in a Dec. 22 crash that killed the driver when a

Takata airbag inflator caused the bag to rupture, sending shrapnel into the vehicle.

A similar airbag inflator was involved in a fatal rupture of a Honda model in Malaysia in 2014, which prompted a worldwide recall by Honda Motor Co.

Takata said in a document released on Tuesday that there was another rupture of a similar inflator in August in India in a 2007 Honda Civic, but it is not clear if the rupture caused the death of the driver. That could be the 11th death worldwide attributed to defective Takata inflators.

Nine deaths related to Takata airbags have occurred in the United States. The death in the Ford Ranger is the first not to involve a car made by Honda.

U.S. regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday that the expanded recall was imminent.

The automakers involved in the new Takata inflator recalls include Honda, BMW AG, Volkswagen AGs Volkswagen and Audi brands, Daimler AGs Mercedes-Benz and Sprinter van brands, Mazda Motor Corp , and Saab AB.

Toyota Motor Corp is listed by Takata as part of the new recall, but the company said all of its vehicles involved were recalled in 2015.

NHTSA did not make clear how many, and which automakers were involved with recalls for 2014 models.

The Ford recall announced on Tuesday includes 391,354 2004-2006 Ford Rangers built in North America for driver-side airbags.

The Rangers recalled were previously recalled for potentially defective passenger-side airbag inflators, Ford said.

Honda has previously recalled about 6.28 million vehicles in the United States for airbag inflators, a Honda spokesman said. Honda worldwide has recalled vehicles with 23 million Takata airbag inflators since 2008  not counting the latest recall.

(Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru, Bernie Woodall in Detroit and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Bernard Orr, Jonathan Oatis and Andrew Hay)
The families of ten sailors aboard a cargo ship that sank in a hurricane last year have settled claims with the vessels owner.

The Florida Times-Union reports that each of the families will receive $500,000 each in the settlement with Tote Maritime Puerto Rico.

The 790-foot freighter El Faro sank after losing engine power and getting caught in a hurricane while sailing from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Thirty-three mariners were aboard, and some of their families have filed lawsuits against Tote claiming negligence.

Legal documents say the settlements cover pre-death pain and suffering and economic losses from the deaths.

Among the parties to settle is the family of the ships captain, Michael Davidson.
Ride-hailing service Lyft has agreed to settle a proposed class action lawsuit in California by giving drivers additional workplace protections but without classifying them as employees, removing a major threat to its business model.

The settlement agreement, filed late on Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, provides for Lyft to pay $12.25 million, as well as give drivers notice if they are to be deactivated from the platform and other benefits.

Lyft and larger rival Uber face separate lawsuits brought on behalf of drivers who contend they are employees and entitled to reimbursement for expenses including gas and vehicle maintenance. The drivers currently pay those costs themselves.

The cases have been closely followed because a determination that the workers are employees instead of contractors could affect the valuations for other startups that rely on large networks of individuals to provide rides, clean houses and other services.

While the deal will involve some costs for Lyft, classifying drivers as employees would have been much more expensive and complicated, said Jan Dawson, chief analyst of Jackdaw Research.

It looks like Lyft got off fairly lightly here, Dawson said.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney for the drivers, acknowledged that the settlement does not achieve a reclassification of drivers as employees, but said the benefits are still significant.

Unlike a separate lawsuit against Uber, which has been certified as a class action, Liss-Riordan said Lyfts arbitration agreement with its drivers would have made it difficult for Lyft drivers to similarly sue as a group.

Additionally, Liss-Riordan said her firm receives many more complaints from Uber drivers about issues with their pay, and about being deactivated from the platform.

We have not been hearing so many concerns from Lyft drivers, which leads us to believe that Lyft is treating its drivers with more respect than Uber is treating its drivers, Liss-Riordan said.

Uber representatives could not immediately be reached for comment. Uber is scheduled for a June trial in San Francisco on whether its drivers are employees or contractors.

As part of the settlement, Lyft has agreed that it can only deactivate drivers for specific reasons, like low passenger ratings. Drivers will be given an opportunity to address those issues before they are deactivated, according to the court filing.

Lyft also agreed to pay the arbitration expenses for any driver who wants to challenge their deactivation or disputes over compensation.

Lyft general counsel Kristin Sverchek said the company is pleased to resolve the lawsuit on terms that preserve the flexibility of drivers to control when, where, and for how long they drive on the platform.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria would have to approve the deal. A hearing on preliminary approval is currently scheduled for February 18 in San Francisco.

The case is Cotter v. Lyft Inc., 13-04065, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Miral Fahmy)
Bollywood Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan Lunches With French President Francois Hollande

It's always an honor when a visiting politician requests your presence at lunch. It doesn't just go to everybody. But Bollywood actress, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, had the honor of such a request by French President, Francois Hollande, that she attend a special luncheon.

According to the Indian Express Hollande is in India on a three-day visit to attend the Republic day parade as the main guest. At a lunch in his honor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's beautiful presence was requested. Says a source close to the actress, "She is the only one from the film industry to be invited, so it's a great honour." Apparently, she is a favorite of the President as she was specially invited by the French ambassador. The actress and the president are said to have had a warm conversation at lunch discussing films and a subject of interest to both of them, The Cannes Film Festival.

Aishwarya has always had a special relationship with France. The actress has made several trips to represent her films at Cannes. She is one of the very prominent faces of L'oreal and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been honoured with the second highest award you can receive as a civilian in France, The Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. She received this award in 2012, according to Wikipedia.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has won rave reviews for the red silk sari she wore to this lunch. Not only was the former beauty contestant stunning as the lady in red, but the outfit had a point to make. The red sari designed by the duo of Swati and Sunaina was made in Banaras by traditional Indian weavers. The fine mulberry silk dress was designed with silver thread dipped in gold and it also was completely eco-friendly with natural fibers.

Aishwarya interrupted her schedule for her glamorous lunch. The actress has been busy shooting her new film, Sarbjit.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsAishwarya Rai Bachchan, Francois Hollande, Lunch With The President, Cannes Film Festival
New York Knicks vs. Toronto Raptors Live Stream, Prediction, TV Channel, Betting Line

The first nationally televised game tonight will see the New York Knicks and Toronto Raptors go head-to-head. The Raptors have been red hot, while the Knicks are coming off an impressive overtime game against the Oklahoma City Thunder that they nearly won without Carmelo Anthony. Will Anthony play tonight? Find out this and more, including the live stream link, betting line, TV channel, a preview and prediction.

Game Time: 8:00 p.m. ET

Channel: TNT (Sportsnet One locally)

Location: Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Canada

Live Stream: NBA on TNT

Betting Line: -9 TOR; 201 O/U

As mentioned above, the Raptors have been killing it lately, winning nine games in a row. The hot hand has been shared each night, whether it be from starters Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Jonas Valanciusnas or Luis Scola, or off the bench with guys like Cory Joseph, Terrence Ross, Patrick Peterson and Bismack Biyombo all playing key roles lately, making this team go.

Toronto has been on such a role that they now own the second seed in the Eastern Conference by a comfortable margin and are catching up to the Cleveland Cavaliers quickly. Just 2.5 games behind Cleveland, the Raptors start a stretch of seven games that are extremely winnable.

While New York has been able to hang with anyone most nights, the Raptors catch that at a good time when star forward Carmelo Anthony has been dealing with some knee soreness, and he's questionable for tonight's game.

So just how likely is it that Anthony plays tonight?

It'll depend really on how he's feeling during the pregame shootaround. If he's pain free, he'll go. If not, the Knicks aren't going to risk him in a January game. Ultimately, he should be considered a game-time decision, so we'll probably find out about an hour before tipoff.

If the Knicks are without him, they'll try to replicate what they did against OKC. Offensively, they spread the ball well and five players scored at least 15 points. Defensively, they tried to make the Thunder as much of a jump-shooting team as possible, and protected the rim well, racking up seven blocks as a team.

That will really be there only shot tonight as well. New York must make Toronto a jump-shooting team by protecting the rim. If they can do that, they'll have a good shot. The question is, can they?

Prediction: Raptors 99, Knicks 95

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsNew York Knicks, Toronto Raptors, NBA
Alan Gilbert Out, Jaap van Zweden In at New York Philharmonic...Sergiu Celibidache Approves?

A quick word about the just-named, incoming music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden (pronounced YEP van ZVAY-den). This is not the time nor the place to debate the relative merits of the chosen candidate, as set against every other conductor in the world, for two reasons. One, because I have a conflict of interest via my own professional work in classical music (which, from time to time, has included working with the good folks at the Phil). But mainly, it's because the candidate has now been chosen. The selection process is over, and it's time to give him a chance. If we want him to do well--and success for Jaap, remember, means a success for the orchestra and more to enjoy for all of us--then we should let him mount his new podium free of any baggage or prejudgments.

However, there is something in the air.

A couple of decades ago and more, major orchestras would look for fame and glamour, and perhaps a sense of power, alongside musical brilliance in their music directors. The Abbados, Soltis, Giulinis, Mehtas, Mutis, et al. had all of this. (Still have, in those last two cases). Not that the individuals concerned necessarily sought such attributes, but they came with the job. And then, the jobs came with them. Even the period instrument movement, with its implied historic virtues of equality and a focus purely on the style of music-making, was something of a victim of its own success and could not help but make superstars of its leading proponents.

So, in short, orchestras wanted stars.

More recently, though this is hardly a new phenomena, came the era of the new hotshots--where, in crude terms, everyone wanted the next great thing. Not all of them were all that young. Alan Gilbert in New York and Yannick Nezet-Seguin down in Philly had done their time. Whereas, by conductorly standards at least, Gustavo Dudamel was still a tot when he went to Los Angeles, there were many others of his generation doing well. Nothing wrong with any of this, of course. And the best of them came with great programming ideas (something with which nearly everyone credits Alan Gilbert, for instance), as well as bursting-at-the-seams talent.

Among these new faces were a trio of Europeans who were all appointed to big positions around the same time: Nicola Luisotti went to San Francisco Opera, Manfred Honeck ably to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and, yes, one Jaap van Zweden to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. These last two were widely considered to be contenders for the New York Phil, and anyone who bet on maestro van Zweden, it turns out, would now be "quids in" (as we Brits are wont to say).

But look at what has happened in the last year or two, with some key positions around the world. Jaap to New York. Media-shy Kirill Petrenko to the Berlin Philharmonic. Daniele Gatti (well-known, but hardly an enormous star in the old sense, yet) to Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. OK, so Simon Rattle going to London is pretty huge (even though it is his native capital city, as it were) and Riccardo Chailly, who has never courted publicity, but is certainly as revered as any maestro in the world, is at La Scala.

And yet...

The sense of the artistic solidity, of "let's get on with making great music" before anything else, that somehow surrounds the new appointments of Gatti, and Petrenko and Van Sweden in particular--and you could say the same for Gianandrea Noseda coming to the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.--somehow recalls an earlier era.

A time when the LSO was led by Josef Krips, when the Berlin Philharmonic had Sergiu Celibidache in charge, when, indeed, the New York Phil was led by Dimitri Mitropoulos. Anyone who knows anything about the history of music knows that all three of these were electrifying conductors (Krips perhaps in a more gentle, refined way). Thus, the term 'solidity' isn't to imply anything remotely dull. Quite the opposite, in some ways.

Regardless, there is a shift of emphasis; in a way, it feels as though we're back in the 1950's. Which may present some challenges, as well as the obvious virtues, especially in an era when serious music coverage in the media is under pressure. Fascinating times, for sure. All of us here at Classicalite wish Jaap van Zweden the very best of luck. He inherits a band in great shape.

And, you know, if he turns out to be a Celibidache, I'm sure nobody will complain.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsNew York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden, Alan Gilbert, Sergiu Celibidache, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Gustavo Dudamel, Nicola Luisotti, Manfred Honeck, Kirill Petrenko, Daniele Gatti, Simon Rattle, Riccardo Chailly, Gianandrea Noseda, Josef Krips, Dimitri Mitropoulos
Thierry Fischer Announces Utah Symphony 2016-17 Season?

Utah Symphony Music Director Thierry Fischer has big plans for the 2016-17 Season. According to the Swiss conductor the Symphony will be shifting its focus back to their world class orchestra in celebration of its 75th anniversary season. For those that can't wait for next year, flutist Emmanuel Pahud will be performing Francois Borne's 19th century arrangement of Bizet's Carmen Fantasy and Marc-Andre Dalbavie's Flute Concerto with the orchestra this weekend.

It might seem like a no-brainer but Utah Symphony Music Director Thierry Fischer explained in a press release that he planned on shifting the organization's attention back to showcasing its orchestra:

"During our 75th anniversary season we felt it was important to highlight performing arts institutions throughout Utah with incredible on-stage collaborations.

"In 2016-17, we will put the focus back on the orchestra and say thank you to our audiences by performing some of the most frequently requested repertoire.

"This season promises to be a thrilling orchestral showcase from start to finish, and I am so proud to show off the growing excellence of the Utah Symphony. We are truly on a remarkable journey."

If the 2016-17 season seems just too far away, you can catch the orchestra in action this weekend reports Broadway World playing alongside 46-year-old Swiss flutist Emmanuel Pahud:

"Pahud returns to Salt Lake City for a colorful evening performance with the Utah Symphony under the baton of Music Director Thierry Fischer featuring Francois Borne's 19th century arrangement of Bizet's Carmen Fantasy and Marc-Andre Dalbavie's Flute Concerto.

"In addition to the works performed with Emmanuel Pahud, the Utah Symphony will perform Wagner's Overture to The flying Dutchman, Haydn's Symphony no.96 "Miracle", and Bartok's Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin."

To get tickets to Emmanuel Pahud's performances January 29 & 30 at 7:30 PM at Abravanel Hall head on over to Utah Symphony's official website or call (801) 355-2787.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsThierry Fischer, Utah Symphony, 2016, 2017, season
PK's Lounge Akron

Two people have been charged in connection with a non-fatal double shooting at PK's Lounge in Akron.

(Adam Ferrise, cleveland.com)

AKRON, Ohio -- Two men are charged in connection with a bar shooting in Akron's North Hill neighborhood that injured two men.

Marcell Williams, 21, of Akron, is charged with four counts of felonious assault and one count of possessing a gun as a felon. Roy Taylor, 31, of Akron, is charged with two counts of felonious assault and one count of possessing a weapon as a felon.

Neither are in police custody and warrants were issued Friday for their arrest.

The shooting happened about 12:15 a.m. Saturday at PK's Lounge in the 600 block of North Howard Street.

Williams stood in the doorway of the bar and fired several gunshots at the crowd inside. A 42-year-old Akron man and a 51-year-old Barberton man were both shot, according to police.

Five minutes later, Williams fired more shots at a man and woman running from the bar. Taylor chased after those two and fired at least one shot at them, according to court records. Those two were not injured.

Officers found the 42-year-old man inside the bar and the 51-year-old man nearby on West Tallmadge Avenue. Both were taken to Akron City Hospital.

Police have been called to the bar eight times since March 10. All 10 calls have been for patrons fighting.

Taylor on Dec. 10 was sentenced to two years on probation for possessing cocaine. He has a 2004 conviction for aggravated assault against a 16-year-old boy.

Williams was convicted in 2013 of domestic violence. He was sentenced to one year in prison in 2014 for possessing a loaded handgun as felon.
Tom Campbell

You may or may not have noticed but North Carolina's political leadership has undertaken a fundamental shift away from unqualified support of traditional public schools towards favoring charter, private and even online schools. The merits of this policy are subject to debate, but there is no denying the trend.It started with the demand for more choice in where and how children received the mandated primary education, culminating, in the waning hours of the 1996 General Assembly, in a new law authorizing the initiation of publicly funded charter schools, capping their number at 100. These charters were granted greater flexibility in organization and implementation of education in hopes that new innovations would emerge; new approaches and instruction that could be implemented in traditional public schools.The movement gained momentum when the cap was lifted in 2011, resulting in the current 158 charter schools serving approximately 70,000 (about 5 percent) of the 1.5 million k-12 students in our state. While data collected from charters is sometimes not as detailed as that from traditional district schools there are some significant trends to note. For the first time, the number of non-white students in traditional schools is larger than white students. In contrast, charter enrollments contain higher percentages of white students from wealthier families than their traditional counterparts.How well are they performing? The Stanford University Center for Research and Educational Outcomes reports that charters outperform district (traditional) public schools in reading while underperforming in math. The Public School Forum of North Carolina data shows that 11 percent of charter schools received "A" grades, compared to 5 percent of district schools. But 14 percent of charters received "F" grades, compared to just 6 percent of district schools.The granting of flexibility was always accompanied by the demand for accountability. Charter schools were required to earn renewal through solid academic performance. There is disturbing evidence those accountability requirements are being relaxed. A 2015 law made it more difficult to refuse their renewal, at the same time shifting some of the oversight of them away from the Department of Public Instruction.But charter schools are not the only move away from traditional public schools. In the 2014-15 school year our state began giving vouchers of $4,200 to low-income parents for "Opportunity Scholarships" to be used to enroll their children in private schools. Many argued this move violated our Constitutional requirement that public monies not be disbursed for private purposes, but our State Supreme Court, in a split decision, allowed taxpayer dollars to pay private school tuition.It is far too early to know how well these "scholarship" students will perform, but we are already rapidly expanding the program. What started as a $10.8 million budget appropriation in 2014 has exploded to an authorized $24.8 million, funding nearly 6,000 students.And we are highly skeptical of online schools.Our purpose here is to neither condemn nor endorse charters, private schools or, for that matter, traditional district public schools. It is to point out the shift occurring in public education. We favor giving educators flexibility and encouraging innovation, however we cannot permit less than total accountability and excellence. Let us not be distracted from our primary goal to provide each child the "sound basic education" our Constitution requires.
AKRON, Ohio -- A Summit County jury is deliberating in the trial of an Akron woman accused of luring her ex-boyfriend to his death in order to custody of their five children.

The seven-woman, five-man jury began deliberations Thursday in the trial of Tiffany Powell, 34. She faces charges of complicity to aggravated murder in the April 26, 2014 death of James Harris, 69.

Powell testified at the end of the seven-day trial and said that she never meant to bring any harm to Harris, but she mislead him because she wanted to get him arrested.

Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Jon Baumoel presented a timeline to the jury of events that led to the day Harris was killed in the basement of Powell's Minota Avenue home by her boyfriend Paul Reed.

"I didn't know Paul had the capabilities of hurting someone like that with his bare hands," Powell said during her testimony.

Reed, 39, was previously convicted of murder in the case and testified during Powell's trial that he killed Harris by slamming the front of his head against the basement floor several times.

Powell and Harris were in the midst of a custody dispute in Stark County Domestic Relations Court over their five children when the attack happened. Harris was granted temporary custody.

Powell was convicted in December 2013 of five counts of child endangering in Stark County for allowing her children to live in deplorable conditions and for allowing them to roam around unattended late at night.

She served a 30-day jail sentence.

Harris offer to take full custody of the children and allow Powell to them at her discretion. A final pretrial hearing in that case was set for May 5, 2014.

Eleven days before the hearing, Powell set in motion a plan to lure Harris to her home, she said during her testimony. Her goal was to get Harris arrested for violating a protection order she believed was in place, she said. There was no such order.

Powell testified that she used a 19-year-old woman that she befriended at a battered women's shelter to call Harris and tell him that she had a car and a washing machine for sale. Harris fixed cars and appliances in his retirement.

The woman led Harris into the basement.

Reed ambushed Harris and hit him with a pole. He knelt on Harris' back and slammed the front of his head in to the floor at least 15 times, Baumoel said.

Defense attorney Kerry O'Brien said that Harris brought a gun into the house and Reed defended himself. A gun was found at the scene but prosecutors disputed that belonged to Harris.

O'Brien argued that Powell concocted the plan to get Harris to the home in order to get him arrested not killed. He said that Facebook and phone messages show Powell devising a plot to get him arrested. The messages never mention harming Harris.

He added that Powell feared Harris because of past fights and threats. Harris had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct in fights with Powell when they were a couple. Powell also testified that Harris threatened to make her have sex with him in order to see her kids if he gained full custody.
BARBERTON, Ohio -- A Norton woman threatened to stab a prosecutor Thursday at the municipal courthouse in Barberton, police said.

Terryl Baker, 47, is charged with a first-degree misdemeanor charge of inducing panic. She is expected to appear in court Friday on the charge.

Baker became upset about 9:20 a.m. during a court hearing where she was called as a witness in a disorderly conduct case.

She left the hearing and went to the prosecutor's office on the third floor of the Barberton Municipal Court building.

Baker threatened to stab a 44-year-old prosecutor, witnesses told police. Three other prosecutors and court employees witnessed the encounter. Prosecutor's office employees set off an alarm on the third floor that caused the floor to be evacuated, according to a police report.

Baker left the building and a witness followed her. Barberton police tracked her down through a side alley and back in front of the building.

She cursed at officers and struggled with police when they tried to take her back inside the building, police reports say. A officer grabbed her, placed her in a wrist lock and took her to a jail cell.

Baker told police that she took three Xanax pills and "had only 'two shots of vodka that morning,'" a police report says. She continued to say she wanted to "stab that (b---h) prosecutor," according to a police report.

Officers found a folding knife in her purse, the report says.

Baker has been convicted of 13 misdemeanor crimes since 2006, including soliciting, drug abuse, domestic violence, unauthorized use of a vehicle, theft, trespassing and criminal damaging.

She has two felony convictions for possessing cocaine and theft.
Found property, North Rocky River Drive: A Speedway manager reported at 6:50 a.m. Jan. 22 that an employee found three small bags of suspected cocaine in the store. The manager said she would review security video to see if she could identify who left the cocaine.

Suspected marijuana possession, Beech Street: An officer stopped a 2004 Chevrolet at 12:44 a.m. Jan. 22 after a registration check showed its owner's license was suspended. The driver was found in possession of a small amount of suspected marijuana. He was issued a citation accusing him of suspected marijuana possession and driving with a suspended license.

Suspected marijuana possession, Barrett Road: An officer stopped a 2003 Nissan at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 22 after seeing one headlight off. The driver was found in possession of a small amount of suspected marijuana and a pipe. He was issued a citation accusing him of suspected marijuana possession, drug paraphernalia possession and a headlights violation.

Drug paraphernalia possession, West Bagley Road: An officer stopped a 2000 Buick at 11:11 a.m. Jan. 22 because its rear license plate was not displayed properly. The driver was found in possession of two pipes, two grinders, a bong and three digital scales. He was issued a citation accusing him of drug paraphernalia possession.

Suspicion of drunken driving, West Bagley Road: An officer stopped a 2012 Chrysler at 2:42 a.m. Jan. 23 after seeing it stopped in the roadway. The driver failed a series of field sobriety tests and was taken to the police station, where she failed a breath test. She was charged with suspicion of drunken driving and impeding traffic.

Drug paraphernalia possession, Blaze Industrial Parkway: Two men were found loading wood pallets into a truck at 8:05 p.m. Jan. 23 outside Corsa Performance. The company did not want to pursue charged. One man was found in possession of a pipe and was issued a citation accusing him of drug paraphernalia possession.

Suspicion of drunken driving, Prospect Street: An officer stopped a 2012 Land Rover at 12:22 a.m. Jan. 43 after seeing it weaving with its headlights off. The driver failed a series of field sobriety tests and was taken to the police station, where he refused a breath test. He was charged with suspicion of drunken driving, a marked lanes violation and a headlights violation.

Disturbance, Karelyn Drive: Officers investigated a disturbance at 4:55 p.m. Jan. 24. One resident reported that a man had been staying at an apartment but was no longer wanted. The two had been involved in an argument. The man was asked to leave the apartment but was not charged.

Drug paraphernalia possession, Lincoln Avenue: An officer stopped a bicyclist at 1:03 a.m. Jan. 26 because the bicycle did not have any lights or reflectors. The bicyclist provided a false identity before the officer identified him as a 17-year-old boy. The boy was found in possession of a grinder and cigarettes. He was charged with obstructing official business, drug paraphernalia possession, underage possession of tobacco, and a curfew violation.

Harassment, Wesley Drive: A woman reported at 8:25 a.m. Jan. 25 that her 11-year-old son received threatening text messages from other students at Ford Middle School. The woman reported the incident to the school's principal, who advised her to inform police. The woman did not want to pursue charges against the other students.

Disturbance, Waverly Street

: A man reported at 4:07 a.m. Jan. 27 that his girlfriend hit him in the head with a beer bottle during an argument. The girlfriend then threw his phone, breaking it. The officers spoke with the woman and determined she was intoxicated. The boyfriend did not want to pursue charges.
Walmart lawsuit to proceed WALMART Class action looks at return policies from A1

A worker gathers shopping carts in front of a Wal-Mart store in La Habra, California, in this Associated Press file photo. The world's largest retailer is cutting 351 jobs at the Bedford Supercenter, which is one of 269 stores that Walmart is closing in the U.S. and globally. The store closed to the public on Jan. 28.

(Jae C. Hong, AP File)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Walmart Supercenter in Bedford is cutting 351 jobs as it closes its doors Thursday, Jan. 28, the company told the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

The store, at 22209 Rockside Road in Bedford, is one of 269 stores Walmart is closing in the U.S. and around the world.

The Bedford store is the only Ohio store in the mix, as Walmart closes 102 smaller-format Walmart Express stores, 23 Neighborhood Markets, 12 Supercenters, seven Amigo stores in Puerto Rico, six Walmart discount centers, and four Sam's Clubs.

Related Plain Dealer stories:

Jan. 22, 2016: Walmart's wage hike to $10 per hour might force other retailers to follow suit

Jan. 20, 2016: Walmart giving 1.2 million hourly workers a raise, starting at $9 an hour, on Feb. 20

About 16,000 workers around the world, including about 10,000 in the U.S., will lose their jobs.

"Walmart instead will focus on strengthening Supercenters, optimizing Neighborhood Markets, growing the e-commerce business and expanding Pickup services for customers," the company said at the time.

At the same time, in fiscal 2017, which starts Feb. 1, Walmart said it will open 50 to 60 Supercenters, 85 to 95 Neighborhood Markets, and seven to 10 Sam's Clubs. Walmart will also open 200 to 240 stores outside the U.S. in fiscal 2017.

The Bedford Supercenter closed to the public at 7 p.m. Jan. 28, but some workers will be paid through April 15, the company said.

"Our main focus right now is taking care of our associates," said Anne Hatfield, director of communications for Walmart Public Affairs, via email. "We are reaching out to all of them to see who wants to transfer to a nearby Walmart or Sam's Club. For those interested, we are identifying open positions and giving them top priority to apply for those jobs."

"Many associates will stay on to remove remaining merchandise and fixtures. That process will likely go until around Feb. 10. At that point, any associate who has not transferred will be paid an additional 60 days," or through April 15.

"After that 60 days, any associate who has not transferred will be given severance," Hatfield said. "Both full-time and part-time associates who have been with the company a year or longer is eligible for severance. Severance will be equal to one week of pay for every year worked with the company."

Company spokeswoman Lisa Snyder told the ODJFS in a WARN notice that "We expect the employment separations to be permanent. There is no union representative. There are no bumping rights. However, all separated employees have the opportunity to apply for open positions at other Walmart or Sam's Clubs locations."

Walmart said on Jan. 15 that it decided what stores to cut after "a thorough review of Walmart's nearly 11,600 worldwide stores that took into account a number of factors, including financial performance as well as strategic alignment with long-term plans."

"In total, the impacted stores represent less than 1 percent of both global square footage and revenue," the company said.
HUNTING VALLEY, Ohio -- Open burning, Cedar Road: For the second time in as many months, police dealt with someone illegally burning in the village, this time a contractor working on a home just to the north of CWRU's Squire Valleevue and Valley Ridge Farms on the afternoon of Jan. 26. After being advised, the Orwell-based contractor agreed to comply with local codes.

Assist other police agency, Hogsback Hill: Officers were called in around 11 a.m. on Jan. 24 to assist Moreland Hills police at the scene of a two-car accident with injuries, in which at least one woman was taken to Hillcrest Hospital with a possible concussion. Hunting Valley officers closed off both ends of the road near Route 87 for about an hour.

Motor vehicle accident (private property), SOM Center Road: Police responded to take a report on a car accident in the University School lot shortly after 5 p.m. on Jan. 26.

Public utilities, Shaker Boulevard: Police notified the Cleveland Water Department about a manhole that was running over in the 36000 block of Shaker on the afternoon of Jan. 22.

Premise check, Courtney Trail: Police checked the exterior of a house and property shortly before 6 a.m. on Jan. 22 and found everything in order.

Suspicious person, Topping Lane: Police were unable to locate a suspicious person reported in the area shortly before 9 a.m. on Jan. 22.

Motor vehicle accident, U.S. 422: An officer with the county Accident Investigation Unit was called in for crash scene assistance on U.S. 422 East near Bainbridge on Jan. 21 from shortly after 1 p.m. until nearly 5 p.m.

Suspicious vehicle, Lakedge Lane: Officers responded to a resident's report of a suspicious vehicle in the neighborhood late in the morning on Jan. 20.
Judge Solomon Oliver Jr., chief judge of the United States District Court, northern district of Ohio, speaks before swearing in new officers of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP

Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. held a status conference Thursday on the Cleveland consent decree.

(File photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The monitor for the city of Cleveland said Thursday that the city is at the "cusp of starting the implementation" of a settlement reached with the U.S. Justice Department over reform of the Cleveland police department.

Matthew Barge, addressing Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. during a status conference, said that under an agreed-upon first-year plan, the city police department will be required to rewrite its mission statement and perform an equipment study by the end of December.

Most importantly, though, the police will be required to rewrite the use-of-force policy and have every officer trained, Barge said.

Barge said the plan is "aggressive" but achievable. He said the work with the city thus far has been more planning-oriented, but substantial change that residents can see should happen in the coming months.

The first-year plan is still being tweaked, but Barge said he plans to submit it to Oliver by Monday for approval. Oliver said he has seen earlier drafts, and noted that it is "very ambitious."

Thursday's status conference is the first time the city and Justice Department have publicly updated Oliver progress of the settlement, known as a consent decree, since he approved it in June.

Here are two other takeaways from Thursday's status conference:

Community Police Commission

The Community Police Commission, an all-volunteer panel designed to be the voice of city residents and to make policy recommendations, has expressed concerns about its workload.

The commission, under the first-year plan, must meet a number of deadlines, including making in-depth recommendations to the city on bias-free policing and collecting input from residents over police use-of-force and crisis intervention.

During the status conference, Oliver said that is a lot of work to be done by commissioners who also have full-time jobs. Barge responded by saying "your concerns seem shared by the commission."

The workload led Max Rodas, the CEO of Nueva Luz Urban Resource Center, to announce Wednesday that he is resigning from the commission, Rodas said.

"It really was a miscalculation of the amount of time and work this this would entail," Rodas said about himself.

Commission co-chair Craig Boise also submitted a letter of resignation to Mayor Frank Jackson on Monday, but said Thursday that he withdrew it when consent decree stakeholders talked him into staying.

"We all knew it was a time commitment going in, ... [but] this is not the only thing outside of my day job going on," said Boise, the dean of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

Co-Chair Rhonda Williams said Thursday that the commission is looking for a good balance of time. And city Law Director Barbara Langhenry said the city has given the commission money to pay staffers and consultants.

All smiles

Thursday's status conference was, for the most part, all smiles and positive comments. Both sides did their best to portray a good working relationship, while admitting that the road ahead may be rocky.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Carole Rendon, during the status conference, said the city and the Justice Department have been cooperating well since the consent decree was approved.

"We really have been rolling up our sleeves, working really hard together," Rendon told the judge.

Langhenry also cited a "productive relationship" with the Justice Department.

She said the police department has set up a unit that is solely focused on implementing the consent decree and all its moving parts.

Oliver said that he is happy to work as an informal mediator should small disagreements arise.
IMG_2931.JPG

The annual Cleveland Clinic eXpressions art show will be displayed for the first time in the atrium of the Global Center for Health Innovation. The center will be open on Saturdays so the public can view the projects created by high school students.

(Karen Farkas, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga County spent about $2.3 million in 2015 to subsidize the Global Center for Health Innovation, once known as the medical mart, and FirstMerit Convention Center of Cleveland.

But that was about $2 million less than they expected to spend, officials said.

And much less than the $9 million the county would have paid under an earlier management agreement with MMPI, which had developed and opened the $465 million complex.

The county severed ties with MMPI in 2013, took over the budget and hired SMG, a convention center manager based in Philadelphia, to manage the buildings.

Finance expert George Hillow was hired last July to crunch the numbers and keep an eye on the bottom line for the county's non-profit Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Development Corporation, which was created to collect revenues and pay expenses.

SMG hired healthcare executive Fred DeGrandis in April 2015 to oversee the Global Center, which is still trying to find its footing.

The company also plans to hire a real estate firm to lease the remaining space in the building.

Sponsorships are being sought at both facilities.

More effort is being expended to bring residents, who had no say when county commissioners in 2007 imposed a 20-year, quarter-cent sales tax hike to pay for the complex, into the buildings.

"These are community assets," said County Executive Armond Budish. "The taxpayers own them. There is a lot more effort to engage the community."

Budish said he is generally pleased with the operations.

"We are saving a lot of money and it is good," he said. "It is better than good."

Following is a rundown of the facilities, by the numbers.

$4.8 million: Amount the county saved in 2015 by not having the contract with MMPI.

$18 million: Annual total operating budget for the complex in 2016, slightly higher than 2015.

$934,000: Amount the county will lose in 2016 by providing rent-free space to the Republican National Convention from June 17 to July 28. The deal was made by Cleveland's host committee.

$350,000: Maximum annual management fee to SMG.

$180,000: Revenue in 2015 from Au Bon Pain restaurant, which may be expanded because of its popularity.

600: Number of rooms in the new Hilton Cleveland Hotel, which opens June 1. The attached hotel is expected to draw more events to the complex.

Convention Center:

$1.7 million: Rental income in 2015, the same amount as budgeted.

$2.2 million: Projected rental income in 2016.

$5.9 million: Concession, catering and other service income in 2015, $2 million more than budgeted due to higher catering income.

196: Total events in 2015.

101: Number of meetings not involving the exhibit hall.

41: Number of times exhibit hall was used.

14: Shows open to the public.

Global Center for Health Innovation

$1 million: Revenue in 2015, less than the budgeted $1.2 million.

$1.5 million: Projected revenue for 2016.

$620,000: Lease income in 2015, less than the budgeted $890,000.

$1 million: Projected lease income for 2016.

135: Number of meetings in 2015. (does not include the 150 meetings in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society center).

85: The percentage of space occupied in the Global Center.
cuyahoga county building

Cuyahoga County will post financial transactions on the state's online checkbook.

(Karen Farkas, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga County on Friday began posting financial transactions on the state's online checkbook.

The county, the 12th to join, will be the largest local government in the state to post information on ohiocheckbook.com, said County Executive Armond Budish and state Treasurer Josh Mandel.

Cuyahoga County's online checkbook includes over 109,000 individual transactions that represent more than $1.1 billion of total spending over the past fiscal year, officials said.

Cuyahoga County is the largest county in Ohio to partner with the treasurer's office to post their spending online on OhioCheckbook.com

"I believe the people of Cuyahoga County have a right to know how their tax money is being spent, and I applaud local leaders here for partnering with my office to post the finances on ohiocheckbook.com," Mandel said in a release. "By posting local government spending online, we are empowering taxpayers across Ohio to hold public officials accountable."

Cuyahoga County is "proud to open our finances to the public in a comprehensive fashion," Budish said in a news release. "We believe in making government as open and accessible as possible."

Mandel rolled out the online spending database in December 2014 with seven years of spending by statewide elected officials and state agencies.

Since then he has enlisted cities, school districts and park and library districts to post their expenses to his online state checkbook. Expenditures are generally updated monthly.

Currently 489 of the 3,962 government agencies and districts in the state have information on the site.

OhioCheckbook.com includes the following features:

Search capabilities to allow users to sort by keyword, department, category or vendor.

Interactive charts.

Ability to compare spending year-over-year or among agencies.

Capability to share charts or checks with social media networks, and direct contact for agency fiscal offices.

"Transparency and accountability are two standards of good government," council member and finance committee chair Dave Greenspan said in a statement. "Our County's participation in the program further demonstrates this government's commitment to responsive and responsible representation."

This story was changed to reflect that the county's online information became available on Friday.
Showing them how itis done Renowned trumpeter and producer bring recording project to Tri-Cis studio JAZZ from D1

Grammy-winning producer Tommy LiPuma, with Solon-born trumpeter Dominick Farinacci in the background, listen to a track of Farinacci's album "Short Stories'' during its recording at the Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts last February. "Tommy LiPuma's Big Birthday Bash'' on June 23 will launch the 37th annual Tri-C JazzFest.

(Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - One of Cleveland's favorite sons - Grammy-winning producer Tommy LiPuma - will help kick off one of Cleveland's favorite events - the Tri-C JazzFest.

"Tommy LiPuma's Big Birthday Bash'' will feature Diana Krall, with whom LiPuma won one of his five Grammys, as well as stars Al Jarreau, Dr. John and Leon Russell in a concert to mark the start of the JazzFest - and LiPuma's 80th birthday. It's set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 23, in Playhouse Square's Connor Palace.

The internationally known and acclaimed JazzFest, which turns 37 this year, again will be a summertime fixture in the Playhouse Square complex. It will feature nine ticketed shows in the theaters in Playhouse Square, as well as free shows by local artists on an outdoor stage on the U.S. Bank Plaza.

The full festival lineup will be announced at an event at Nighttown at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3. The very next day, festival passes -- $250 - go on sale at tri-cjazzfest.com. Those passes entitle fans to prime seating at all nine ticketed shows, including the LiPuma birthday soiree, as well as invitations to VIP parties. They also come with a 20 percent discount if festival pass holders wish to buy additional single tickets and JazzFest merchandise.

Individual ticket prices and on-sale dates to "Tommy LiPuma's Big Birthday Bash'' and other shows will be announced at a later date.

LiPuma, who actually had thoughts of cutting hair when he was growing up in Cleveland - he attended barber school - began his career in music as a sax player. He's worked with everyone from Krall to Barbra Streisand to Miles Davis to Sir Paul McCartney (with whom he won another of those five Grammys).

In 2012, Cuyahoga Community College renamed its Center for Creative Arts on the school's Metro campus the Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts in the wake of a $3 million donation from LiPuma.

"Tommy LiPuma has produced some of the finest music ever recorded," said Terri Pontremoli, director of JazzFest, in a release supplied by the school. "Honoring his birthday with this unique gathering of stars is the perfect way to get this year's JazzFest under way."

Most recently, LiPuma produced another album featuring Solon-born trumpeter Dominick Farinacci, a Tri-C alum. Fittingly, "Short Stories'' was recorded in the state-of-the-at studio in Tri-C's LiPuma center.
No turn 2.JPG

The city of Medina has added "No Turn On Red" signs at the intersection of Weymouth Road, Rolling Meadows Drive and Union Street adjacent to Medina High School. The restriction will be in effect from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on school days.

(Ann Norman, special to cleveland.com)

MEDINA, Ohio - New "No Turn On Red" signs at the intersection of Weymouth Road, Rolling Meadows Drive and Union Street are meant to improve safety for pedestrians going to and from nearby schools.

Mayor Dennis Hanwell said the city received a note in mid-December from Ward 4 Councilman Jim Shields (who also serves as legal counsel for Medina City Schools) about safety concerns at the busy intersection.

Students use the crosswalks there to get to and from Medina High School, Claggett Middle School and Sidney Fenn Elementary School, all on Union Street just off the busy state route.

Hanwell, in his capacity as the city's safety director, decided to limit right turns on red lights at the intersection.

The "No Turn On Red" signs are posted to provide an extra measure of safety for students and parents using the crosswalks at the intersection of Weymouth Road, Rolling Meadows Drive and Union Street.

The signs state that there are to be no right turns on red from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on school days.

"Parents noticed that cars were coming up to the light, particularly on Union Street and Rolling Meadows, looking for oncoming traffic, but not always seeing the kids crossing the street," Hanwell said.

"If you're looking left, waiting for traffic to clear to turn right, you might not notice the kids crossing on the right, causing an unsafe situation," he said.

The restriction only applies to hours when students are arriving at and departing from the schools. Otherwise, drivers will still be permitted to turn right on red to keep traffic in the area moving smoothly, he said.

The signs went up this week, and Hanwell has asked the school district to alert students, teachers and parents to the change.

"We will start to observe for compliance starting next Wednesday," he said.

Similar restrictions already exist on the square and at South Court Street and Sturbridge Drive on the city's south side, down the road from A.I. Root Middle School.

At Sturbridge, right turns on red are restricted from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on school days, as well.

Such turns are prohibited on all four corners of the square from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on school days.

"It's just for the safety of everybody," Hanwell said.
Absentee ballots already available for March 15 contests

RALEIGH  Advancing the North Carolina primary date to March 15 has led to earlier deadlines for registering to vote, absentee voting, changing your party affiliation, and other election-related activities.People wanting to vote absentee by mail now can apply for an absentee ballot. The deadline to deliver a civilian absentee ballot to a local board of elections is 5 p.m. March 15, said Jackie Hyland, spokeswoman for the State Board of Elections.Hyland said that an absentee ballot mailed to the local board of elections must be postmarked on or before March 15 and will be accepted as long as it is received by the board by March 18.Voters can find an absentee ballot application here Those serving in the military have a few extra days to mail absentee ballots.Hyland said.Voter registration deadline for the primary is Friday, Feb. 19. That is also the date for a voter to change his or her party affiliation.One stop early voting begins Thursday, March 3, and ends at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 12.While the General Assembly passed a law eliminating one-stop registration and voting during early voting in 2013, the practice still is allowed because of an injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals. However, Hyland said if the litigation ends before early voting opens in March, then the status of one-stop registration may be settled.People who are 17 years old, will turn 18 before the Nov. 8 general election, and are registered to vote are eligible to vote in the primary. However, they will not be allowed to vote on the $2 billion statewide bond referendum on the March 15 ballot. Nor will they be eligible to vote in any other bond, referendums, or final elections, such as school board, until they turn 18.The law requiring voters to present a state-approved form of identification at the polls law takes effect this year and will be required for the March 15 primary. A North Carolina driver's license, learner's permit, or ID card issued by the Division of Motor Vehicles are acceptable forms of voter ID, provided they are valid and current or they expired less than four years ago.Other acceptable forms of photo ID include an unexpired U.S. military ID card, an unexpired U.S. passport, a state or federally recognized tribal ID card, a veterans ID card, and an unexpired driver's license or DMV ID card from another state (but only if the voter registered to vote within 90 days of the election).Last year, the voter ID law was modified to include a "reasonable impediment" exemption for people who are unable to obtain an acceptable photo ID. Allowable reasons include lacking proper documents to obtain an ID, family obligations, transportation problems, work schedule, illness, or disability.Those voters could cast provisional ballots if they signed a declaration describing their impediment and providing their date of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. They may also provide other documents bearing their name and address, such as a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government-issued document.Provisional ballots from these voters would be counted if the information is verified and all other eligibility requirements are met.
fire truck.jpg

Mentor firefighters found a body under debris that collapsed in a fire early Friday.

(File photo)

MENTOR, Ohio -- Firefighters found a person's body under debris that collapsed in a fire early Friday in Mentor.

The fire broke out just after 5:15 a.m. on East Avenue near Patterson Drive, the Mentor Police Department said in a statement. The address is home to Print Shack, according to the company's website.

The Lake County Coroner's Office will release the person's identity and determine the cause of death.

Investigators are working to determine what caused the fire, police said.

A passerby reported the fire at 5:19 a.m. Firefighters arrived at the scene and had the fire under control in 23 minutes, police said.

They found the body while searching the building.
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A man walks past a sign board of Japanese auto parts maker Takata Corp's Annual General Meeting in Tokyo June 26, 2014. Yuya Shino | Reuters

Takata will tell Japanese carmakers on Friday that its chief executive is willing to resign to demonstrate that the company takes responsibility for the auto industry's biggest recall, two people close to the Japanese air bag maker said. Pressure has been building on the Tokyo-based company for almost two years over defective air bags that can explode with excessive force and shoot shrapnel inside the car - a problem that has ballooned into a damaging safety scandal affecting nearly 50 million vehicles. The company said on Tuesday that an 11th death could be linked to a faulty air bag. "There are plans for management reforms," said one of the individuals, adding this would involve expressing the willingness of Chairman and CEO Shigehisa Takada, the bookish grandson of the group's founder, and other executives, to resign. He added Takata will present this step as part of its business plans at a meeting with automakers on Friday. The sources declined to say when Takada might step down or who is in line to replace him as head of the 83-year-old firm. The company has not taken any formal decision on Takada's future and no successor has been designated, the sources said.

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A Takata spokesman would not comment on whether the company was planning a change in management, or if Takada planned to take responsibility for the recalls. Report on inflators Takata may come under renewed pressure when Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute reports on its investigation into the causes of air bag inflator failures. Japanese media have reported that the findings, commissioned by Takata, are due in the coming weeks. Fraunhofer was not immediately available to comment on when the final results would be ready. Partial results of its inquiry released last June showed that the air bag explosions appeared to result from damaged or improperly assembled inflators, and when ammonium nitrate, the chemical compound used to inflate the air bag, came into contact with moisture, a particular concern in humid regions. Takata said then that it was still unclear what were the root causes of the air bag failures.

If the final report finds Takata liable for defective air bags, it could leave the company with a recall bill already estimated at more than $3 billion. Automakers, including Honda Motor and Toyota Motor, which have to date been paying for replacement air bags, could also take it as a cue to cut off financial lifelines to Takata. Separately, Honda has hired U.S.-based engineering consultancy Exponent to investigate the cause of the air bag ruptures, and is also part of a consortium of automakers to commission Orbital ATK to test Takata air bag inflators. Takada has been widely criticized for keeping a low profile even as the air bag crisis escalated, and automakers accused Takata of mishandling and manipulating safety data. In his first media appearance in June 2015, more than a year after the recall crisis erupted, Takada apologised for the defective air bag inflators, saying that staying on to lead the company was the appropriate way for him to take responsibility. A third person close to Takata said Takada could take responsibility for "a range of issues" around the air bag crisis at Friday's meeting with automakers, potentially a first step towards his departure.
Bank of America shares are down nearly 20 percent this year, putting it close to a bear market while it underperforms the rest of the financial sector, which is down about 10 percent. But one trader thinks BofA could be setting up for a rally.



"The bank stock has been making higher lows with a bottom at $12.94," said Fast Money trader Steve Grasso on Behind the Trade; he's looking to step in at a close over $14.



Bank of America beat earnings estimates this month for the past quarter but worried investors with warnings about weak oil prices impact on its business.

The stock could face more selling pressure in the $15 range, Grasso said. He recommends waiting for the stock to enter the "sell zone," between $15.16 and $15.68, more than a 10 percent jump from current levels.


"In general, the picture we're getting from earnings season is a slowdown, and then looking forward doesn't look so good either," said trader Brian Kelly, who highlighted Apple's guidance and Amazon's high spending.

Facebook , though, served as the brightest tech story, in Kelly's mind. The social media giant easily topped Wall Street's expectations Wednesday, showing growth in total and mobile advertising sales. He believes that tech investors should tilt toward what drove Facebook, including services and ad spending.

Trader Karen Finerman called Amazon a "great company," adding that its report did not hold that much bad news. However, after the stock soared more than 100 percent in the last year, its valuation looks "unsustainable," she said.

"The bar is high already, and I think it's still in crazy land. It's still a crazy valuation here," she said.

Microsoft also posted results Thursday, and its shares rose more than 3 percent as it beat expectations on top and bottom lines. It hovered around $54 per share in after-hours trading.

While he said he would not "chase" the stock at its current price, Kelly said it should stabilize or grind higher if it holds above $50. Trader Steve Grasso, though, contended that shareholders would begin to sell Microsoft if it does not rise above $54 per share in the coming sessions.
Ive been gone a while from the blogging scene. Some of my more regular readers no doubt noticed but did not hassle me about it. Thank you for that. Sinc...

6 years ago
Merely copying trends seen in Silicon Valley will not help big European businesses innovate, the chief executive of German industrial group Siemens told CNBC.

Last year, Joe Kaeser was accused by German newspaper Handelsblatt of sounding more like the founder of a "fast-paced start-up than the head of one of Germany's moist traditional companies".

Kaeser called the comments a "compliment" and described during an event hosted by CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, how he had tried to push Siemens to think like a start-up.

"Innovating today is about creativity, it is about the freedom to actif you look at the big conglomerateit's highly regulated, it's a lot of talk aboutinternal controls and this and thatso there's a huge mindshift change to get the best of people," Kaeser said.

The German firm has set up a separate arm called "Innovation AG" and in 2014 launched its own venture capital arm. Kaeser said that regular employees are invited to come and pitch their business idea to Innovation AG and then are "treated like a start-up" if it's accepted.

"You also get equity so if you are successful you become a millionaire, you make much more money than I do," the CEO joked.

But Kaeser said that many companies are getting it wrong when it comes to trying to foster innovation.

"Some in Europe take a plane, fly to Silicon Valley, visit and look and come back and say we need to do the same thing. Well you can copy othersbut if you always copy others, you never get aheadso it's got a big downside," Kaeser said.

"So we said why don't weunderstand Silicon Valley not only as a geography but also as a mindsethow do they do it, how do they innovatewhat is it and why is that they get up on their feet again if they fail?"

But Innovation AG also has strategic importance for Siemens too. There are 10 to 15 employees who liaise with the start-ups to help them leverage Siemens' scale. And if an idea is attractive to Siemens, it will buy it.

"We have a valuation of their businesswe pay you as we would pay an acquisition then we integrate the business into the organization of the company, and make it big and scale it up." Kaeser said.
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A key American fuel gauge is on the fritz, and no one seems sure how to fix it  is cheap gas helping the economy or isn't it? The correlation between oil prices and the stock market has reached a level only rarely ever seen  if oil tanks, it takes stocks right down with it. It's the tightest correlation in 26 years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, economists are puzzled that the "lower for longer" gas prices have not contributed more to consumer spending.

Wal-Mart is closing stores, and Amazon reported holiday sales that, while good, were not as good as expected, and share of the country's leading online retailer cratered. Meanwhile, the consumer sentiment report released Friday came in slightly below expectations and declined from the previous reading.

For investors who buy the bull argument that cheap gas will be a tailwind for the U.S. market, the lack of a clear winner in the "cheap gas" debate provides little comfort. In laying out a bull case this week for the economy amid the market volatility and worst month for the stocks since 2009, Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, cited the cheap gas boost to the American consumer.

Helen H. Richardson | The Denver Post | Getty Images

Yet in looking at the 10 sectors of the S&P 500 over two key recent periods in the oil collapse  when WTI crude first dipped below $65 and then first dipped below $40 through this week  only one sector of the stock market has managed to stay positive to any notable degree: telecom (consumer staples has posted positive, but basically flat performance since August 2015), according to S&P Capital IQ data. The sector that is causing all the pain is doing better than the rest of the sectors this year: In January, large-cap energy outperformed the as a whole.

The answer to the "cheap gas boost" dilemma may be a key to an investor's overall view of the direction in which the U.S. economy is heading. The latest GDP figure released Friday showed growth slowing to 0.7 percent. Some cheap gas bulls are frustrated that they're view is no longer the prevailing sentiment. John Kilduff, Again Capital partner and CNBC contributor, said he is in "disbelief" that low oil prices could be considered negative for the US economy.

"Upwards of 80 percent of the U.S. economy is consumer-based and U.S. drivers are savings upwards of $700 million per day with the current gas prices versus the recent high-priced past," Kilduff recently told CNBC.

He said states like New York, Florida, and California that see a lot of tourism and regions with industries that are dependent on buying fuel for everyday business activities are reaping the benefits of cheap oil and gas. Lower fuel prices are also good for states like Ohio, Illinois and Michigan and could bring help to more rural states with large farming sectors like Iowa and Kansas. Yet the entire agricultural sector  from crop prices to farmland values and stocks such as Monsanto and Deere  have been slammed. "This is good for the entire transport sector, which includes airlines, trucking companies, and freight companies as well as fast food conglomerates and retailers (especially lower-end)," Kilduff said.

Moody's Investors Service v.p. Kurt Krummenacker said there was a clear connection between low oil prices and the positive effects it has on airports, seaports, and toll roads. "For each of these, low oil prices incentivize the moving of people (airports, roads) and the moving of goods (seaports), which generate revenue." Yet ETFs that track the transport and shipping sectors are doing little better  some worse  than the overall market. Airlines stocks are down by 15 percent this year and the Guggenheim Shipping ETF , for example, is down by 14 percent. Trucking and rail stocks are in the red  though some like J.B. Hunt down less than the broader market, while others down more than the S&P 500. The latest durable goods report released on Thursday showed that durable goods orders plunged 5.1 percent last month, the biggest drop since August 2014, after slipping 0.5 percent in November, according to Reuters. Orders for transportation equipment plunged 12.4 percent and bookings for non-defense aircraft plummeted 29.4 percent.

The data speaks to the many who remain skeptical of the upside to the cheap price of gas.

"The economic benefit to the U.S. as a result of low oil prices has been called into question due to the amount of economic activity that was generated as a result of the shale boom, itself," Anthony Starkey, manager of energy analysis at Platts Bentek, an analytics and forecasting unit of Platts, an energy and commodities information provider. "The shale boom created high paying jobs and generated demand for investments in infrastructure to drill for, transport, and refine oil. All of this was funded with $100 oil and now that those prices have crashed, so too has the money it created in spurring that growth." Kilduff cited reports from the JPMorgan Chase Institute and Visa on the consumer spending boost in making his case, but there's an interesting footnote  both reports were from the Spring 2015. Diana Farrell, the CEO of the JPMorgan Chase Institute and lead author of the report, said the answer to the riddle is this: cheap gas did help the economy  past tense. In the period that JPMorgan studied  April 2014 through January 2015  there was a boost in consumer spending which the bank could track because it used debit and credit card transactions as the basis for its research. But in the update that JPMorgan plans to release this Spring using more current data, Farrell said the conclusion will be different: the boost from cheap gas already occurred and isn't still happening, and likely won't again.

It looms large in our minds because we drive by gas stations every day but we've gotten to a level in wealth and fuel efficiency where it's just 5 percent of spend. Diana Farrell CEO of the JPMorgan Institute

Farrell made three additional points that "cheap gas bulls" don't mention.

Gas simply is not that big of a consumer item. "Gas prices are 5 percent of total consumer spending," Farrell said. "It looms large in our minds because we drive by gas stations every day but we've gotten to a level in wealth and fuel efficiency where it's just 5 percent of spend." Even in the period during which JPMorgan tracked the boost in spending, it was still below previous periods of time when Americans had more in their wallets due to low gas prices. "In the past we've seen 100 percent spend or higher," Farrell said, explaining that during past periods of low oil prices Americans have spent more than they should.

There's a reason for that: the boost that JPMorgan found came amid an overall deceleration in spending. "We've seen a pretty significant decline since the beginning of 2014," Farrell said.

So while more Americans are paying down debt, spending on SUVs and pickups, dining out and paying up for premium gas, it's "isolated within the much broader context of deceleration" in spending.

Daniel Dicker, author of Shale Boom Shale Bust, told CNBC that the idea of a multi-billion dollar tax rebate from low oil just does not add up.

"I think that gas is one of those inelastic consumer items that people grouse about but really make little adjustment in the rest of their lives for, whether it's $2 a gallon or $5 a gallon," Dicker said. Still, those filling up their gas tanks with prices less than two dollars for a gallon of regular are welcoming what they see. "I can save money on gas, so why not travel? Ten dollars will fill up your tank sometimes," a driver told CNBC. Another consumer also said he was doing much more traveling now that gas prices are so low.

"It's a blessing."

Just wait for $18 oil?
Governor Bill Walker has proposed a sweeping fiscal plan that has received praise from economists in the state. However, it's worth noting that the plan includes the issuance of $2.5 billion in pension obligation bonds, also known as POBs. POBs are a debt instrument that essentially let local governments pay unfunded pension liabilities by betting that the investment will earn a higher return than the interest costs of the state's pensions.

If this feels slightly familiar, it might be because Detroit did its own $1.4 billion pension bond deal in 2005. Ultimately, the bet was a disaster. Not only was the move labeled by the Detroit Free Press as "the last straw" that led to Detroit filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the deal became a controversial focal point of the city's 2014 bankruptcy trial and was held up as epitomizing the reckless risk taking municipalities should avoid. Now, with $65 billion in savings, Alaska is no Detroitbut this type of move is never taken lightly.

In Detroit, Puerto Rico, and now Alaska, a disturbing trend among cash strapped municipalities is emerging. It seems that when things get tough, the first preference is to walk away from contracts under the cover of creative lawyering and revisionist history calling into question the deals themselves. This is the epitome of short-term thinking.

Interestingly, the political fight that has currently drawn the spotlight in Alaska is not over the wisdom of legislators passing the bond deal, or even any other major element of the Governor's plan, it's over the building where the lawmakers themselves work.
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Chevron reported its first quarterly loss in more than 13 years on Friday despite Wall Street's expectations for a profit, as plunging oil prices eroded profitability across all its divisions. It was the latest sign that the more than 70 percent drop in crude prices since 2014 has humbled a once-strong energy sector and forced it to curtail new projects, lay off staff and shrink spending. Chevron, the No. 2 U.S. oil producer, last month signaled its pain by cutting its 2016 budget by 24 percent to $26.6 billion, part of a strategy to contend with lower oil prices and hunker down for a hoped-for price rebound. Smaller rivals Hess , Continental Resources and Noble Energy cut their own budgets early this week, ranging from 40 percent to 66 percent.

"We're taking significant action to improve earnings and cash flow in this low price environment," John Watson, Chevron's chief executive, said in a press release. The company posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $588 million, or 31 cents per share, compared with a net profit of $3.47 billion, or $1.85 per share, in the year-ago period. The last time Chevron posted a quarterly loss was the third quarter of 2002. Analysts at Wells Fargo had expected the San Ramon, California-based company to report a profit of 45 cents per share, while analysts at Barclays had expected a profit of 32 cents a share. Wells Fargo analyst Roger Read attributed the miss to higher exploration expenses and weak operating results in the company's U.S. exploration and production unit.

The bulk of Chevron's losses came from its divisions that explore for and produce oil and natural gas, with its U.S. division alone posting a loss of $1.95 billion. Surprisingly, Chevron's refining divisions also saw profit plunge. Refiners typically see profitability increase when the price of their main feedstockoilfalls. Chevron said the drop was due to a boost in the prior year from asset sales, and also smaller margins on specialty refined products. Production rose 4 percent to 2.67 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the quarter ended Dec. 31. Shares of Chevron have slid about 5 percent so far this year through the Thursday close of $85.92 per share. On Friday, the stock traded 1.5 percent lower at $84.62.

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China's slowing economy and market rout may be capturing headlines, but the root problem is the mainland's massive debt load, top China banking analyst Charlene Chu, told CNBC. "We need more focus on this debt problem in China because that really is what's at the root of everything," Chu, who is senior partner at Autonomous Research Asia, told CNBC's Squawk Box. "The market is nervous because we've got a debt problem that the authorities aren't addressing." Chu said China's debt boom may even be the world's biggest in such a short period of time. "The size of banking sector assets has gone from $9 trillion in 2008 to $30 trillion at the end of 2015," she said, noting that most of these borrowings went to the corporate, not the household, sector. A lot of that debt went toward assets that aren't performing, she added.

"If you look at the return on credit, which is the way we try to estimate losses in the system, because there's so much credit outside the loan portfolio, it looks to us like we could have a nonperforming asset ratio of around 22 percent," she said. Markets are starting to price this in, Chu said. "We're going to continue to have volatility until the Chinese government starts to recognize that this is the root problem behind the lack of confidence," she said. Markets in China have certainly sold off. The Shanghai composite is down around 25 percent since its most recent high of 3,651.76 on December 22, leaving it in a "bear within a bear" market. The index is off around 47 percent from its 52-week high of 5,166.35, set June 2015. The has also faced its share of volatility, with concerns emerging that the renminbi might depreciate further after policymakers intervened recently, spurring capital outflows. "Most of the market thinks the best way out of this [debt issue] is a large currency move, so when they see the currency moving 1 or 2 percent, they're asking themselves, when do we get to 25 [percent]," Chu said. "We're going to continue to have this dynamic until the government starts to do something about the broader debt issue."
The Zika virus should not cause Americans to be "unduly alarmed just yet," the co-director of the Georgetown Center for Infectious Disease told CNBC on Friday.

"[There's] no local transition on our shores just yet," Paul Roepe told CNBC's "Squawk Box" a day after the World Health Organization said the mosquito-transmitted disease, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, was "spreading explosively."



The WHO, promising quick action after last year's criticism about reacting too slowly to West Africa's Ebola outbreak, said Zika could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas.

Read MoreSafe Zika vaccine not seen available this year or next: NIH



"The highest level of virus in your system only lasts for a couple of days and then dissipates. So the viral load goes way, way down. Probably most of these infections self-resolve ... in about a week of so," said Roepe, a biochemistry professor at Georgetown University.

There's no vaccine or treatment for the virus, which is like dengue and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of people infected show no symptoms.

"The only way you can get Zika is by the bite of an infected mosquito. And that mosquito has to pick it up from an infected person," Roepe said. "It's spreading quickly in Central and South America because there are lot of people that are currently infected."

He said another reason those regions have been so hard hit is that Zika is more commonly passed along among the kind of mosquitoes there, a species not as widespread in the United States.

But he warned that a "larger concern" could develop in the U.S. if transmission became prevalent among a related type of mosquitoes that is routinely found in the Southeast and even as north as New York during warmer months.

U.S. health officials said Thursday while they have not yet seen spread of the disease in the 50 states, the number of U.S. travelers infected over the last year in the Caribbean or Latin America has climbed to 31.

The Zika virus was discovered in Africa in 1947. But until last year, when it was found in Brazil, it had never been a threat in the Western Hemisphere.

WHO officials are set to convene a special meeting next week to decide whether they should declare an international health emergency.


The restaurant was initially a fine dining haunt but since relocating from Central Mall on Magazine Road to Sentosa it has leaned towards casual dining, in response to the local customer base.

Of the chain of restaurants Hong and Stroobant own, the stand-out is Saint Pierre, which offers French fare at the luxury residential enclave Sentosa Cove in the eastern part of Sentosa - an island resort off the Singapore mainland that is popular among tourists.

The profit margin is about 10 percent. "It is unfortunate," Hong said, "that F&B is not one of those industries [where] you have fantastic percentages in terms of profitability."

"Off the top of my head, [we make] somewhere between 10 to 12 million [Singapore dollars] ($7 million - $8.4 million) in revenue a year."

But Edina Hong, one half of the dynamic duo at the Emmanuel Stroobant Group, said that by staying lean in a sector with wafer-thin margins, it was possible to succeed. With her husband, award-winning chef Emmanuel Stroobant, Hong oversees operations at the eight mid-market restaurants owned by the group in the city-state.

With sky-high commercial rents and a peckish consumer base with no dearth of alternatives, thriving in Singapore's competitive food and beverage (F&B) industry is tough; it takes anywhere between 18 months to three years for new entrants to break even, according to one industry boss.

Stroobant said he put great emphasis on creating an authentic dining experience with the right ambiance. That, he said, could only be achieved by having the right mix of people in the business who understood his expectations for each of his restaurants.

But finding those people, Hong noted, was not easy.

"It's really, really hard to train people because you have to feel for your job," she said. "It is something that is instinctive and intuitive."



The pair have an unusual business model, in which stakeholders, or "managing partners," are brought in to manage day-to-day operations at all eight locations.



Hong said the concept had worked out so far because a managing partner both understands the urgency and has the authority to fix problems at each restaurant.



Which is important because, Hong said, "sorry" was seen a bad word in F&B, an industry where customers expect businesses to get things right.



Hong and Stroobant have been married for 17 years and business partners in Singapore for 16, which the chef said gave them a level of trust unusual in a business relationship.



"Very often, when you are in business with someone, it is strictly about money and there will be no depth in the relationship. We are the other way around...the business came after," he said.



Belgium-born Stroobant, 48, made his first foray into the culinary world as a 16-year-old dishwasher at one of his home country's best restaurants. He later trained in several Michelin-starred restaurants and at 23, he opened his first restaurant in Liege, Belgium.



His culinary journey took him around the world, from the United States to Australia; he met Hong in Malaysia and the pair moved to Singapore at the turn of the century to start their business venture.



Given the tough, competitive nature of the F&B industry, Hong said the duo run the business with a conservative mindframe and spent only within their means.



"We do not take loans. We spend what is in the bank and if there is no money in the bank, then we don't spend," she said.



The biggest sticking point for the business, Hong said, was the steep cost of renting premises in Singapore.
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One analyst says that investors should expect dividend cuts in big oil after long-time industry leader Chevron reported a quarterly loss for the first time since 2002. "There will come a day where dividend is at risk and that day is today," Oppenheimer senior analyst Fadel Gheit told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "Not only Chevron, but the rest of the industry is currently funding dividends through additional borrowing. You can't do that forever," Gheit said. Read More'Big oil' earnings: Investors get ready for pain Although Gheit is anticipating Chevron to cut its dividend any day now, the company is likely to seek alternative solutions first. Chevron already stopped its share buyback program last year. In October, Chevron cut 6,000 to 7,000 jobs. The company also announced in December a capital budget cut of 24 percent for 2016.

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In December, Chevron CEO John Watson said on "Power Lunch" that the dividend was the company's priority.

"We generate enormous cash flow, even at low prices. So we're going to do everything we can to cut future spending," said Watson. Raymond James senior energy analyst Pavel Molchanov told "Power Lunch" that he thinks big oil could weather the lower-for-longer trend. "Even if oil stayed at $40 for several years ... they can cut spending to a level that is consistent with current levels of cash flow ... but they can still service their debt, and roll over their bond maturities and there wouldn't be any kind of restructuring or Chapter 11," Molchanov said.

Dividend is going to be the last thing the company will touch. It's a sacred cow. Fadel Gheit Oppenheimer & Co. senior analyst
2016 is proving a difficult year for banks across Europe, as the industry grapples with nonperforming loans, rocky markets, increasing regulation and exposure to emerging market volatility. "We start 2016 with a cautious outlook on European banks despite the sector trading at market lows," Bernstein analysts led by Thomas Seidl said in a report this month. "We downgrade our last year's positive outlook due to a slower-than-expected European recovery despite QE (quantitative easing), margin compression, and the unexpected fall and continuing low oil price with its effect on our emerging markets Brazil, Mexico and Russia," they said. CNBC takes a look at the challenges hitting banks in the major European countries, ahead of a flurry of earnings next month.



The headquarters of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, the oldest surviving bank in the world and Italy's third-largest bank. Matt Clinch | CNBC

Italy: Bad loans

Italian banks faced intense market pressure in January due to concerns about their still very high levels of bad debts. These fears were ignited when the European Central Bank requested further details on nonperforming loan portfolios from banks including UniCredit , Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banco Popolare . Shares of these banks plummeted as a result, with almost one-third of the value knocked off UniCredit's stock. Last week, Pier Carlo Padoan, who has led Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance since 2014, said markets had panicked unnecessarily after the central bank's request. "Some information request, which was totally neutral, technical and fine, was interpreted as the way the new world impacts on banks. This is clearly something that needs to be fixed," he said at a CNBC panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.



On Friday, Reuters reported that Italian banks seeking to sell off bad loans would get a state guarantee for a price 15 to 20 percent higher than otherwise, citing an unnamed source.

On the same day, Standard & Poor's said the measures launched by the Italian government to help work out problematic assets were positive, but unlikely to trigger a sudden clean up of banks' balance sheets. The ratings agency forecast a wave of consolidation among local and regional Italian banks after the upcoming change to "popolari" banks' legal status.

Germany: Record loss for Deutsche

Deutsche Bank , Germany's largest bank, reported Thursday that it had a record loss for 2015. It posted a fourth-quarter net loss of 2.1 billion euros ($2.3 billion) and a full-year net loss of 6.8 billion euros, having struggled in 2015 with writedowns, litigation charges and restructuring costs. The bank in October announced plans to reduce its workforce dramatically and pull out of 10 countries. It also wants to halve the number of clients it has in its global markets and investment banking business.

"We are coming back from a humongous loss position," CFO Marcus Schenck told CNBC on Thursday.

Deutsche Bank shares have declined by around 27 percent since the start of this year. The stock of other German banks has also fallen sharply, with Commerzbank down 22 percent on the year.

UK: China exposure

Outside of Asia, British banks are among the most exposed in the industry to Hong Kong and mainland China. This increases their vulnerability to the slowdown in the world's second-biggest economy and the disruption in its equity market. Standard Chartered , an Asia-focused U.K. bank, took action to improve its balance sheet ahead of the Bank of England's latest stress test. This test looked at how financial institutions might struggle if Chinese economic growth slumped to 1.7 percent, among other stressors. The U.K.'s biggest bank, HSBC , is the largest institution in Hong Kong and the biggest foreign bank in China. It passed the Bank of England's stress test, but on Friday announced that it would curb mortgage provisions to Chinese nationals wanting to buy U.S. real estate. This came after China suspended Standard Chartered and DBS Group from conducting some foreign exchange business, as authorities try to limit capital outflows.



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Furthermore, HSBC was forced to apologize to customers on Friday who were locked out of its Internet banking services due to a cyberattack. London-listed shares of the bank have declined more than 8 percent since the start of the year. Despite concerns about China, both HSBC and Standard Chartered have publicly mulled redomiciling to Hong Kong or Singapore in response to the U.K. bank levy and increasingly tough regulations in the wake of the global financial crisis. While Standard Chartered has now ruled a move out, the question is still under consideration by HSBC.

"We continue to be negative on the U.K. banks; with the outlook for margins and growth both bleak, we see very little upside there," Chira Barua said in the Bernstein report. "Risk will start creeping up and with the push in unsecured lending in 2015 we wouldn't be surprised to see a big pop there at the back end of '16. Capital will continue to be an uncertainty, with many issues yet to be decided," the analyst added.
A worker for an oilfield service company works at a drilling site in the Permian Basin oil field on January 20, 2016 in the oil town of Andrews, Texas.

"For those guys it's going to be a tricky year especially," Paul O'Donnell, principal equity analyst at IHS energy told CNBC. "There are companies in the small and midsized peer groups that are in that predicament in that sense."

Small and midsized producers are better hedged than their larger counterparts, but some of these smaller players have substantial debt loads and insufficient price protection.

North American oil and gas producers have just 15 percent of output hedged this year, according to a study of 51 drillers by analytics firm IHS.

Oil and gas price hedges helped many exploration and production companies keep money coming in the door as commodity prices cratered last year, but they have significantly less protection in 2016.

Drillers take out hedges to protect themselves against future fluctuations in commodity prices. Throughout 2015, hedging allowed many producers to lock in prices well above what they would have earned had they sold their product at spot prices.

In the final quarter of 2015, 27 percent of U.S. oil production at a weighted average price of $72.35 per barrel was hedged, and 34 percent of natural gas at $3.91 per thousand cubic feet, or Mcf, was protected.

In 2016, U.S. companies have just 15 percent of oil and 19 percent of natural gas production hedged. In 2017, those figures fall to 2 percent of oil and 7 percent of gas.

Just less than half of production coming from small U.S. producers  47 percent of oil output at $74.31 per barrel and 46 percent of gas at $3.43 per Mcf  is hedged next year. Midsized U.S. producers came just behind, with 43 percent of oil production at $60.54 and 26 percent of gas at at $3.34 hedged.

In the small peer group, Comstock Resources , Approach Resources and Stone Energy are most at risk due to high debt and low hedging, according to IHS. Among midsized drillers, IHS warned Ultra Petroleum and SandRidge Energy could come under financial stress.

The companies did not immediately return a request for comment.

The majority of large U.S. exploration and production companies are unhedged going into 2016 and 2017, but they typically have larger financial cushions to weather the rout.

Since the big producers account for so much of U.S. production, their low percentage of hedge production dragged down the total for the 51 companies IHS studied.
Cayman officials told the islands' news service that more than 80 percent of the coral in the area has been damaged by the luxury boat's anchor chain. Local divers conducted an in-water survey of the coral reef damage last week and the DoE expects to publish the detail findings next week.

The anchor chain of the billionaire's 303-foot mega-yacht, the Tatoosh, destroyed almost 14,000 square foot of reef in a protected area in the West Bay area of the Cayman Islands, according to the islands' Department of Environment (DoE).

A super yacht belonging to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been blamed for destroying a large area of protected coral reef in the Cayman Islands.

"Early findings already indicate extensive damage and investigations into the circumstances of the incident are ongoing, with the assistance of staff aboard the Microsoft billionaire's superyacht, which was anchored close to the Doc Poulson wreck and The Knife dive site, officials said," the Cayman News Service reported.



Paul Allen, who co-founded tech giant Microsoft with Bill Gates, has turned to philanthropic ventures including, ironically, supporting ocean protection through several ventures which are overseen by his company, Vulcan.

Vulcan issued a statement on Wednesday deflecting responsibility for the incident and saying "Tatoosh acted responsibly and we're cooperating with officials."

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"Vulcan Inc. and Paul G. Allen have a long history of responsible exploration and a commitment to ocean conservation."

"On January 14, 2016, M/V Tatoosh was moored in a position explicitly directed by the local Port Authority. When its crew was alerted by a diver that her anchor chain may have impacted coral in the area, the crew promptly, and on their own accord, relocated their position to ensure the reef was protected," the statement on Vulcan's website said.

"Vulcan and the ship's crew are actively and cooperatively working with local authorities to determine the details of what happened. An investigation by local authorities is ongoing," it added.
The newest driverless cars for London have been revealed, but the technology isn't coming from the likes of Google or a global car manufacturer.

Believed to be a first for London, the design and technology of these self-driving vehicles will take inspiration from the "Ultra PODS" currently used at London's Heathrow Airport; with the plan to transform this technology into shuttle vehicles that can navigate on roads rather than on dedicated tracks.



The new driverless vehicles will be similar to the shuttles found at London's Heathrow Airport, currently operating at Terminal 5. Courtesy of GATEway Project

As part of the 8 million ($11.4 million) Greenwich Automated Transport Environment (GATEway) project, three British firms  Heathrow Enterprises, Oxbotica and Westfield Sportscars  will be joining forces to develop the existing pods so they can function and perform safely within an urban setting. The exact design of the on-road vehicles has yet to be confirmed. If successful, the vehicles could be publicly trialed as soon as this summer in Greenwich, London. The route for the trials is still being finalized. However, GATEway plans on running the trials "alongside pedestrians and cyclists in Greenwich," Professor Nick Reed, technical lead of the GATEway project, told CNBC via email. Other trials set to take place within GATEway's driverless car project include autonomous valet parking and automated deliveries.

Other independent projects involving driverless cars are taking place around the U.K., including U.K. Autodrive's project in Milton Keynes and Coventry, and Venturer's in Bristol.

The GATEway trials will be tested over a three-to-six-week period, with potential plans to extend, and hopes of running "a service where members of the public can book to use the shuttle vehicles over defined routes" during the trial, Reed added. The trials will help the team learn how autonomous vehicles would work and fit in with urban mobility needs, and what barriers may stand in the way from making this a reality. Along with public engagement and acceptance of the pods, GATEway will be taking into account factors including insurance and cyber security. "The purpose of the project is to understand and overcome the technical, legal and societal barriers of implementing automated vehicles in an urban environment. Once we understand the issues and challenges surrounding automated vehicles, we can then see how deployment can best work."

Each company will provide necessary resources to the technology's development, with Heathrow Enterprises being in charge of vehicle software engineering, and Oxbotica looking after mapping and other sensors, to make certain each vehicle functions safely. Leader of the project, Westfield Sportscars, will have the honor of overseeing the testing and design of the driverless pods. When it comes to the three firms, Reed said he had "great confidence" that they would deliver "an efficient, reliable and effective autonomous solution" for the GATEway trials. If the trials prove to be successful, Reed believes society could expect to see these vehicles become a more familiar sight in many cities across the globe.


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Despite a jump in crude oil prices this week, gains may be capped by a quick ramp up in shale oil production, said an analyst Friday. Oil prices have jumped over 20 percent since hitting 12-year lows last week and are around $34 a barrel in Asian hours on the back of reports saying that OPEC and producers from outside the cartel would meet to discuss production cuts. Speaking to CNBC's Capital Connection on Friday, Citigroup's Head of Asia Commodity Research, Ivan Szpakowski said that the shutdown of shale wells and the subsequent support in oil prices as envisioned by Saudi Arabia is a "questionable victory" because unlike traditional oil and gas production, shale production can be ramped up fast.

"This production can be switched on within a matter of months; so if prices start moving higher later this year, you'll see shale production in the U.S. starting to increase again," he said.

"It really caps the rally," he added without giving a price forecast. Despite a 70 percent decline in crude oil prices since the summer of 2014 when the extended decline started, OPEC has refused to cut the group's production ceiling as Saudi Arabia sticks to its strategy of pumping more oil to squeeze out higher-cost energy producers such as shale companies.
Two Billings filmmakers are betting on the popularity of stories set in small towns to launch their new web series Pray.

A film crew was in downtown Billings on Sunday, shooting scenes for the series on North Broadway in front of Hooligans and Bin 119.

In coming weeks, a lot more of filmmakers Michael Hitchcock and David Bulkley of P210 Productions can be seen because they plan to shoot at the Billings airport and other spots around town. They recently shot a scene for "Pray" at St. Bernards Catholic Church on the Heights and at a Billings house owned by Karim Eshbaugh, a creative consultant and producer for the series.

We started it as a joke, Hitchcock said. Karim had a house that he was fixing up to rent out. David came over one day and said, This is a great place for a hostage. A couple of weeks went by and I said, If we throw in a little supernatural element, I think we could make a movie.'

The team envisions the project to be shot in episodes, each one lasting about a half hour. They have enough of a story line to create 11 to 15 episodes, which they envision being the entire first season. After they finish the pilot later this year, plans are to pitch it to Netflix and HBO.

Independent film is tough, but Hollywood is dying and independent film is taking over, Hitchcock said. Most independent filmmakers do it for the love of it.

For the series, they cast Bulkleys wife, Antonette, and David Wollschlager as her abductor.

Hitchcock said he didnt want to give too much away, but said the idea of the series is that there is a couple in Billings who are hiding a dark secret.

There are others who have been looking for them, and they know the secret, he said.

Hitchcock said everybody in town has been supportive of the film project, including Rock Creek Coffee Roasters, which opened up on Sunday when they are usually closed, to serve free coffee and pastries to the cast and crew.

People are very generous. When we ask, Can we film here?, they keep telling us yes, he said.

Hitchcock and Bulkley are Army buddies, who first met in 1989 when they were stationed in South Korea. They shared a room, number 210, which is where they got the name for their production company.

They called us pilgrims; I dont know why," he said. "But thats where we got the P.

The project utilizes all local actors, most of whom are volunteers. In 2014, P210 Productions filmed the movie The Writers Ghost, which they are finding a distributor for.

To get involved in "Pray" as a member of the film crew or an actor, contact the filmmakers through Facebook at www.facebook.com/prayseries or facebook.com/p210productions.
A ceremony in Pyongyang in this undated photo released December 17, 2014 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency. KCNA | Reuters

The United States has seen increased activity around a North Korean missile site, suggesting preparations for a possible space launch in the near future, U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday. The finding was revealed as Washington shows growing concern that Pyongyang could use space technology to enhance its missile capability and while United Nations Security Council members discuss fresh sanctions against North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6. The officials cited intelligence suggesting movement of components and propellant at North Korea's Sohae satellite launch facility. A test could take place within a couple of weeks, they said. "Our concern though is ... it's the same technology to develop ICBMs" (inter-continental ballistic missiles), one of the officials said.

Joe Bermudez, chief analytics officer at commercial intelligence firm AllSource Analysis, said open source imagery showed increased activity, especially at night, at the site in northwestern North Korea. Movement of vehicles, construction and other activities suggested test preparations. North Korea could test a rocket engine alone or as part of rocket launch, Bermudez said. He said North Korea was concealing activities on the site - a new cover obscures satellite views of the gantry tower next to the launch pad. "This is the first time leading up to a potential launch that all the concealment shelters are in place," said Stephen Wood, chief executive officer of AllSource. An analysis by 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, said the cover near the gantry tower could conceal a rocket, and a rail-mounted shelter has been moved adjacent to the engine-test stand on the site.



The shelter could allow for rocket stages to be assembled and moved to the tower under cover of darkness of heavy clouds, 38 North found. It is large enough to conceal the first stage of North Korea's Musudan intermediate range ballistic missile, its Unha space-launch vehicle, or a new rocket engine. The analysis said commercial satellite images, taken as a series of "snapshots" from Dec. 28 to Jan. 25, showed "low-level activities" throughout the Sohae Rocket Launch Facility. North Korea last conducted a long-range rocket launch in late 2012, sending an object it described as a communications satellite into orbit. Western and Asian experts said it was part of an effort to build an ICBM. South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok declined to comment on possible pre-launch activities by North Korea, citing a policy of not discussing intelligence matters. North Korea has not yet warned about potential interference with navigation, a step it has taken ahead of previous launches, he said.
SYRACUSE, N.Y.  Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC announced it has elected three attorneys in its Syracuse office as new members (partners) of the firm.

The new members are Suzanne M. Messer (litigation practice area), Kristen E. Smith (labor and employment practice area), and Grayson T. Walter (business, restructuring and bankruptcy practice area), the Syracusebased law firm said in a news release.

Messer is a litigation attorney who represents clients in commercial disputes, conflicts among business partners and shareholders, and in employment-related litigation. She has extensive experience litigating complex class action and collective action suits. Messers experience includes litigating suits in diverse venues in federal and state courts, as well as resolving disputes through alternative-dispute resolution procedures.

Smith works with employers, large and small, to help ensure compliance with the complicated maze of labor and employment laws. She is an experienced employment litigator, defending employment-related claims in federal court, as well as in administrative proceedings before the New York State Division of Human Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Smith works with unionized employers on labor-relations matters, including the negotiation of collective-bargaining agreements.

Walter represents businesses and their stakeholders on a wide variety of business and transactional matters, with a focus on company formation, ownership, governance, and transition. He also regularly provides guidance to clients regarding the turnaround and restructuring of underperforming and financially distressed businesses, including in-court and out-of-court debt restructurings, bankruptcy-related litigation, and sales/acquisitions of distressed assets.

Contact The Business Journal News Network at news@cnybj.com
OWEGO, N.Y.  Tioga State Bank says it plans to move the Owego office of its Tioga State Investment Services unit to a building at 18 Lake St. in Owego, which crews are currently renovating.

The structure was previously home to a branch office of First Niagara Bank, which closed in early 2014.

The Owego office of Tioga State Investment Services is currently located at 923 State Route 17C. It also operates a location in Ithaca.

The renovation work will provide office space for two of the banks investment-management employees. The structure will also house four apartments and a 24/7 deposit-automated ATM, Tioga State Bank said in a news release.

TSB Services, Inc., the holding company for Tioga State Bank, owns the building at 18 Lake St., the company said in a follow up email in response to a BJNN inquiry. It declined to disclose the project cost.

Tioga State Bank is pleased to be involved in the renovation project in one of its core neighborhoods, Robert Fisher, president and CEO of Tioga State Bank, said in the release.

The Lake Street development is a harbinger of good things to come for this area, we think. For people to be able to meet with local investment-services representatives in a newly renovated space like this, right on Lake Street, is a real plus for our community. The added convenience of a 24/7 deposit-automated ATM will also be a welcome addition for local businesses and consumers, said Fisher.

Tioga State Bank will host an open tour of the investment-services office at the Lake Street building Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 2 p.m., the bank said.

Tioga State Investment Services should be operating in the Lake Street location by this summer with a formal opening planned, the company added in the email response.

Tioga State Bank provides financial services to the Southern Tier of New York and Northern Pennsylvania with 11 offices in Broome, Tioga, Chemung and Tompkins counties, according to its news release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
The electric bills of Eastern Montanans could rise $178 a year to improve Montana Dakota Utilities coal-fired power plants. But, MDU is being asked whether the plan makes sense with new pollution regulations coming.

At issue is whether Montana customers of MDU should pay for upgrades to coal-fired power plants that could be shut down in a few years under the Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan.

The Clean Power Plan is the EPAs 15-year road map for cutting carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Beginning in 2020, the nations existing power plants will have to begin cutting carbon dioxide pollution. Some power plants will be upgraded with new pollution controls, while others beyond affordable improvement will be shuttered.

States are required to submit compliance plans to the EPA by September. Extensions may be granted, but federal plans could also be issued in states where plans arent submitted.

Montanas Public Service Commission will meet in Glendive on Feb. 9 to decide whether to approve the increase, which would be a 21 percent rate hike for MDUs 26,000 electricity customers in Montana. None of MDUs natural gas customers would be affected.

You shouldnt want to make large capital investments in power plants that are then subject to other regulations that could shut them down, said Travis Kavulla, PSC commissioner for most of the Montana customers in the MDU case.

MDU is arguing that it isnt clear that its power plants wont survive the Clean Power Plan regulations expected to kick in in 2022. The upgrades for which MDU wants its customers to pay is for have already been done.

Kavulla said this is the first time the Clean Power Plan has been an issue with rate increases tied to coal-fired power plants, but it probably won't be the last.

NorthWestern Energy, Montana's other regulated gas and electric utility, would have to explain how the Clean Power Plan would affect Colstrip Power Plant Units 3 and 4, if it asked consumers to pay for pollution upgrades there.

MDU spent millions adding pollution controls to its power plants to comply with existing rules. When the work was began, the Clean Power Plan wasnt even around to consider, the company argues. What made sense was complying with the pollution laws on the books.

The construction costs were substantial. At Big Stone coal-fired power plant in South Dakota, upgrades meet pollution haze and mercury regulations cost $348 million. MDU has a 22.7 percent share in Big Stone and is passing its share of the bill onto consumers with rate increases. There were also $16 million in mercury pollution controls planned for the Lewis and Clark Power Plant in Sidney.

The Lewis and Clark plant was built in 1950 and is within the age group of power plants that are struggling to remain operational under the Clean Power Plan, as are Colstrip Units 1 and 2, built in the 1970s.

Sidney, Glendive and Miles City make up the bulk of MDUs electric customers in Montana, which is why the Feb. 9 hearing on the rate increase will take place in the Dawson County Courthouse basement in Glendive.

MDU filed its rate increase request last summer, but public comment on the issue has been minimal. A few Eastern Montanans early in the process balked at a net metering arrangement written into the plan, which would have made it difficult for people with solar panels. The actual rate increase has drawn little response.

The PSC will have to decide if the likelihood of the Clean Power Plan driving up costs for the MDU customers in the future means that Montanans would be better served by MDU finding another source for its power, most likely on the open market.

There are two appointed consumer advocates, one for small customers and the other for large commercial customers, arguing against the size of MDU rate increase. Both are asking the PSC to limit the rate increase to roughly a fourth of what MDU wants.

The service area in question includes the Bakken oil field, and there are doubts, given the economic slump in the oil business, about whether the future demand for MDU electricity will grow as the utility estimated it will. And critics argue that if the power isnt needed, consumers shouldnt have to pay to expand the MDUs production.
KEOSAUQUA, Iowa  "Awaken the body of Christ that we might pull back from this abyss."

When Sen. Ted Cruz closed his prayerful plea to a crowd of about 150 people here late Tuesday night, the "abyss" he had in mind was something larger than the prospect of a Donald Trump victory in Monday's caucuses. But the final days of the battle for Iowa have come to resemble political Armageddon.

In fact, it involves two overlapping struggles, beginning with the one for the ideological souls of conservative white evangelical Christians. Are they still motivated, as Cruz hopes, by traditional issues such as abortion, gay marriage and religious liberty? Will solidarity push them toward a candidate who uses evangelical language and comfortably invokes Scripture?

Trump's backlash politics

Or has Trump redefined social conservatism by returning to a harder form of backlash politics that shaped the late 1960s and early '70s? Trump draws in evangelicals on the basis of shared anger and resentment rather than shared faith.

Both Trump and Cruz, of course, are playing identity politics. But a Trump triumph here could mark the end of the religious right as we have known it since the Reagan era by splitting this important GOP constituency in half.

At the same time, there is the larger fight within the Republican Party over Trump himself. A profound fear has gripped many of its elected officials: With apologies for paraphrasing Frank Sinatra's hymn to the "New York values" Cruz has condemned, the worry is that if Trump can make it here, he can make it anywhere.

The anxiety and trepidation over Trump  among old-line evangelical political leaders but also among conservative intellectual elites and what passes for the party establishment  could turn Cruz into a temporary savior. Many in the party who don't like Cruz at all may still hope he wins here for a very practical reason. Stopping Cruz in later contests could be far easier than derailing a Trump juggernaut.

Many aspects of the new dynamic were on display in this city of about 1,000 people near the Missouri border.

An unscheduled speaker at Cruz's rally was Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who is not even a Cruz supporter. In the final hours before the first votes are cast, Sasse, who combines establishment and Tea Party credentials with a Yale Ph.D. in history, has made stopping Trump a personal cause. He took a page from Trump's playbook on Sunday night by issuing a series of hard shots at the front-runner on Twitter.

Sasse is calling on Iowa Republicans to vote for anyone except Trump, and he spoke Wednesday at an event for Sen. Marco Rubio. His central concern, he told me here, is Trump's authoritarian side.

"He's a strongman with a will to power," Sasse said. "Trump has been the only guy on the Republican side of the aisle that regularly campaigns and says things like, 'If I'm elected president, I'll be able to do whatever I want.'" Republicans like himself who are critical of President Obama's use of executive orders, Sasse said, should apply the same standards to Trump.

Quitting Camp Huckabee

In the meantime, supporters of socially conservative candidates in the single digits such as Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ben Carson are beginning to move to Cruz. Troy Scheuermann, a 43-year-old chiropractor who attended the rally, cited principled pragmatism for his own switch. "I was in Camp Huckabee until last week," he said. "I decided that if I voted for Huckabee, it's a vote for Donald Trump. It's now a two-man race."

A rallying to Cruz, of course, could weaken Rubio, who is looking for a strong third-place finish here to strengthen him in the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary. So Rubio, too, as The Washington Post's Sean Sullivan reported, is now invoking God a great deal, hoping to move at least some of the evangelicals his way.

Trump seems confident he's on a path to win Iowa. His attacks on Cruz have been reinforced by sharp jabs from Rubio, who has reason to hope that if Trump won here, he would dispose of Cruz's candidacy right at the start. But Cruz may yet profit from a form of political providence if horror over the specter of a Trump nomination becomes the dominant emotion between now and Monday.

Iowa has thus come down to this: Who do the state's swing voters fear and loathe more, Trump or Cruz? You can imagine the choice will drive even the most secular Republicans to rounds of intense prayer.
MISSOULA  The Missoula County Public Schools district is investigating whether the most recent edition of the Willard Wire, a publication produced by Willard Alternative High School students, violated district policy by including photos of topless men and women.

The district is also recalling the edition, removing copies from shelves and angering the students who produced it. The paper is distributed to Willard, Hellgate, Sentinel and Big Sky high schools, as well as to businesses that advertise in the paper.

The Wire's January issue features a cover story titled "Free the Nipple" by Willard junior Chase Boehmler, accompanied by a photo of five shirtless women and one shirtless man. Their nipples are obscured by red dots, and they are fully clothed from the waist down. Their faces are cropped out of the photo.

On a page labeled "Editorial & Opinions" inside the edition, the article is accompanied by a picture taken by editor Kylie Hoedel of a topless woman and a topless man. Their faces are cropped out, but their nipples are bare.

Boehmler's article questioned society's premise that gender should define the appropriateness of revealing one's chest.

"We originally developed (breasts) to feed our offspring, and that was their main purpose, but they've become something different, something dirty and shameful," Boehmler wrote. "They've been overwhelmingly fetishized and feminized in western culture. And we need to put the kibosh on that. People all over the world are wrapped up in this illusion that we have created."

***

Hatton Littman, director of communications at MCPS, said Superintendent Mark Thane's office hasn't received any complaints about the edition.

Nonetheless, "an active investigation is being conducted and the district will not make other statements with regard to editorial freedom until the investigation is complete," Littman said.

She said the district also hasn't determined whether the newspaper violated a policy regarding publications and distribution or postings of materials.

The policy states "school-sponsored publications and productions are part of the curriculum and are not a public forum for general student use. ... Such materials may not be libelous, obscene, or profane nor may they cause a substantial disruption of the school, invade the privacy of others ... or advocate the violation of a law."

Littman said the district is also examining prior case law to determine precedent.

Hoedel said a long research-and-planning process went into the article, and staffers all knew it would be a "head turner."

"I feel the school board should prove some sort of law that we broke," she said. "I feel if they had read the article before they took it out of students' hands or had the janitor throw it away without confronting us about it, they would realize the reason why we printed it was backed up by the article."

Hoedel said she understands why some people would have a problem with the distribution of nude photos.

"If you see a picture of (female) breasts you are going to think sexualization," Hoedel said. "That's how our society has taught us to feel. We wanted people to think they shouldn't be sexualized and treated just as normal as male breasts."

Sarah Donald, a graduating junior at Willard, said she made sure that all the models for the photos were older than 18 years and that they signed consent forms.

"All of them signed a release form saying they understand they were giving permission for the photo to be taken, and we made sure all the people involved were over 18 so nothing was considered child pornography," she said. "I am extremely upset about (the recall) because the Willard Wire became something that I was able to write about things that I am passionate about. And everyone was extremely passionate about the Free the Nipple piece and making sure it was getting to the public."

The Wire contains an editorial message on the third page that states "Willard Wire is a completely student-run paper based on freedom of expression and opinion. Unlike the other high schools in Missoula, we do not receive any funding from the school district, which means we are funded entirely by advertisements. This limits what we can do with our paper but also gives us the freedom to write what you (the readers) would like to hear. The ethic of the Willard Wire is one of inherent integrity due to our independent journalistic nature. Fight censorship and help support our right to free speech, expression, and full liberty of the press."

Littman said the district, in fact, partially funds the publication.

"The Willard Wire is a school publication and is in fact a school-sponsored and funded publication, so there is an investigation underway," she said. "I can't give a lot of details right now, but that statement (in the Wire) is probably likely to be corrected. All student publications are governed by board policy with regard to publications."

Littman said district policy states that the paper's faculty adviser, Lisa Waller, and Willard Principal Jane Bennett would have needed to approve the publication before it went to press. Waller was not in the office Thursday, and Bennett did not return a phone call seeking comment.

***

Boehmler, the author of the article, said the Free the Nipple movement is about ending the shame associated with having a body that is perceived as feminine.

"I feel pretty strongly about the Free the Nipple movement, because me and a lot of girls and women have experienced large amounts of sexual harassment just for having breasts. And it's completely unfair and hypocritical that gender identity is the basis of whether or not you can remove your shirt," she said. "And it's unfair to breast-feeding mothers that breast-feeding in public has to be such a controversy when it's what you should be doing. I felt like I needed to take a stance on it and did something that was risky."

Boehmler said Free the Nipple, which has gained nationwide traction, is about equality.

"The Free the Nipple movement is an equality movement for everyone to feel like everyone's body is equal," she said. "Your body feels like this trap. No matter what, you're a sexualized object. It's a movement for all people really."

She said the pictures were necessary  having an article laying out her case without them wouldn't have had as much impact.

"They show the innocence of toplessness," she said of the photos. "We put it in because it's a powerful message to show we believe in the Free the Nipple movement this much, and being topless is innocent no matter who you are."

Hoedel said the Wire has pushed a lot of aspiring young journalists to explore topics they are nervous about.

"Having the freedom for the students to write what they feel is important because it helps them learn more," she said. "If they are not passionate about it, it's not going to be well-written. I feel it was too much censorship on (the district's) part."
CASPER, Wyo.  Theres no master plan for the eclipse festival, no budget set in stone.

But after the Casper leaders spent a month considering different proposals, Brook Kreder stepped in and offered to orchestrate a four-day festival planned around the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, in Casper. The City Council rewarded her with a round of applause.

The CEO of the Casper Area Convention and Visitors Bureau spoke to the Council during its work session earlier this week about her group putting the pieces together for the celestial celebration. She was greeted with thanks and a thumbs up from council members.

Kreder said in a phone interview Thursday that there was no need for the Visitors Bureau to reinvent the wheel and that they weren't trying to muscle anyone out of the festival plans.

Honestly, a lot of things have already been done, Kreder said. We just need to figure out how to pull them together.

The city came close in December to hiring another firm to handle the festival. Council members were set to vote Dec. 8 on a $275,000 contract with Colorado's Forte Events. But after a speech that night by Bob Price, the regional vice president for Townsquare Media, Wyoming, the Council delayed choosing a director for the event.

Casper Mayor Daniel Sandoval said city officials shied away from Fortes proposal after Townsquare Media made its pitch. He said Forte was notified at some point in the last few weeks that they would no longer be considered for the eclipse festival. While the Visitors Bureau is organizing resources for the festival, Sandoval said hed still like to see Townsquare Media have a role in the four-day event.

Attendance estimates have ran the gamut, with some city officials previously saying the event could attract enough visitors to double the citys population of 60,000. However, City Manager V.H. McDonald said Casper has the ability to comfortably handle somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 visitors during the celebration.

The concern was that 60,000 people would stretch the resources of the community beyond what it can handle, McDonald said, adding that earlier crowd estimates could lead to public safety issues in Casper.

The Visitors Bureau will be responsible for getting everyone in the city on the same page for the event, Kreder said. But she also intends to hire an event director or coordinator. She plans to have a master plan ready to share at some point in the next month and a half.

Urgency, Kreder said, was the top priority.

Its time, she said. Its 18 months out. Here we go.
Wyoming students who took the GED in the past 18 months but failed the test by five points or less are now eligible for their diploma.

The passing score for the high school equivalency exam has been changed from 150 to 145, the GED Testing Service announced Tuesday. A perfect score is 200.

In Wyoming, the change is effective retroactively to Jan. 1, 2014.

The lower passing score is a more fair assessment of how test takers compare to their counterparts in a traditional high school setting, said Troy Tallabas, the high school equivalency program manager for the Wyoming Community College Commission.

The test has not become easier, Tallabas said. The content hasnt changed significantly since 2014, other than a shorter social studies portion due to the elimination of a written response in that section.

The Testing Service also unveiled a new three-tiered system for grading the test  high school equivalency, GED College Ready and GED College Ready + Credit.

A graduating class represents a range of ability and performance, from those meeting the minimum requirements to those demonstrating college readiness, and those who may even earn college credits during high school, the GED Testing Service explained in its press release.

College Ready, or a score of 165, does not serve as a substitute for college preparatory tests like the ACT or the SAT, said Tallabas.

Those exams serve a different purpose than high school equivalency tests, he said. But the two types of assessments do overlap to some degree.

ACT and SAT are targeted to the group of individuals, the population, who would be attempting to enter college-level education. Theyre predicative of a students success in their freshman college level courses, he said.

While the GED does measure some college-level skills, its purpose is to measure the skills a student obtains during high school, he said.

In order for the ACT to measure a students readiness to enter a college class, they have to have measure a students skills above and below that readiness bar, he said.

The overlap is coincidental.

The GED College Ready + Credit score will make some high-scoring students eligible for college credit by subject area. However, not all colleges or universities may accept that credit.

The GED has been a household name for high school equivalency for years, and was the only widely used test nationally until about two years ago, when the agency announced that they were building a new exam and aligning it with the Common Core standards many states were adopting.

It rolled out the test six months later.

Since then, the Testing Service has been collecting data on how students were responding to the new test.

The lower passing grade is a result of that research, according to the services press release.

But while the GED was undergoing these changes, it lost its monopoly on high school equivalency testing. A number of tests popped up to fill the market gap. The TASC and the HiSET tests are being used in many states, and both are offered in Wyoming.

Those vendors have filled an important niche, Tallabas said.

I dont see these tests going away. They give students an option, he said. We know all students dont learn the same way. Well, not all students test the same way.

Equivalency tests are serving more and more nontraditional students, Tallabas said. The test is a legitimate option for many, from home-schoolers to students looking to be emancipated from high school early in order to join the workforce.
Her health was at risk. But in Missouri, doctors could do nothing.
Scott Woods: Artists Need to Put Their Merch on the Table

Make sure your work is out thereand where you can sell a copy or two.
CHEYENNE, Wyo.  New state guidelines adopted in Wyoming, an energy-rich state that constantly seeks to balance conservation with development of fossil fuels, seek to protect some of North America's longest wildlife-migration routes from oil and natural gas drilling on public lands.

The guidelines approved Thursday by the state Game and Fish Commission call on state wildlife officials to continue to identify routes traveled twice a year by thousands of elk, antelope and mule deer. Tracking technology has enabled scientists in Wyoming and elsewhere to map such routes with increasing precision  and even discover new ones.

Biologists also will study how to counter threats to migrations, such as by replacing barbed-wire fences with a type that allows antelope to crawl under the bottom wire.

Options could also include prohibiting oil and gas development in especially sensitive areas along migration corridors, a point of contention between environmentalists and the petroleum industry.

"The science is clear that the best way to ensure long-term persistence of migration corridors is to prohibit development," said Julia Stuble with the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

But the guidelines in no way would require Wyoming to prohibit oil and gas exploration, pointed out Esther Wagner, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming.

"They're just recommendations," Wagner said. "They're not regulations."

The guidelines will come into play when petroleum developers seek to drill on federal land in Wyoming. State biologists will refer to their findings and the guidelines when they advise federal agencies on wildlife populations on federal land, which they do regularly.

Wyoming officials often find themselves caught between encouraging fossil fuel development and protecting wildlife habitat. In this case, migrating ungulates  a class of hooved animals that includes moose and bison as well as elk, mule deer and antelope  are popular to hunt.

Similar challenges confront wildlife managers in energy-rich Montana and Colorado.

"We're not going to shut the lights out. We're not going back into the stone age. And we're not going to let wildlife decline," Game and Fish Commissioner David Rael said.

In western Wyoming, vast natural gas reserves underlie habitat for elk, antelope and mule deer that travel into the Yellowstone Ecosystem each summer.

Scientists in the region recently documented the longest known mule deer migration. A group of mule deer travels between the Gros Ventre Range in summer to the Red Desert in winter, a distance of 150 miles each way.

A group of antelope travels between Grand Teton National Park in summer and the Upper Green River Basin in winter, covering more than 100 miles each way.

Of particular concern are areas called bottlenecks where surrounding mountains, lakes or human development have pinched migration corridors to a mile wide or less. Biologists also suggest paying close attention to areas along migration corridors where wildlife stop to rest and eat.

Mule deer especially have suffered from the loss of habitat in Wyoming. Their numbers are down 40 percent over the past 20 years, according to the state Game and Fish Department.

Wyoming, population 584,000, remains the nation's least-populated state. But road construction and home development also get in the way of migrating wildlife. The state in recent years has countered that by building overpasses and underpasses where migration routes cross highways.

Herds of migrating antelope that used to congregate along roads in a frenzy can now continue on their way without too much fuss, commission President Charles Price said.

"It's not a panicked crossing," Price said. "It's a rapid crossing. They don't like to stand up there."
June 22, 2015 - Digital Market Analysts Ben Hopper, left, and Matt Brady with the Archer Malmo advertising and PR agency crunch numbers on some of the company's online ads.

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By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal

The idea of an office district teeming with creative millennials drew a warm reception from Downtown leaders Thursday.

Archer Malmo chief executive Russ Williams said the nucleus of such a district already exists from the growth of his advertising agency, the state's largest, and nearby technology-related businesses.

Williams pointed to Creative Works, a three-day annual gathering, as an example of what could happen in an area roughly bounded by Riverside Drive, Gayoso Street, Second Street and Madison Avenue.

He told a Downtown Memphis Commission retreat audience he is looking for financial backing for Creative Works organizer Josh Horton to work full time on attracting talented people to the district.

Creative Works has drawn successively larger crowds since the first was held in 2014. Downtown buzzes with energy during the conferences, Williams said, "but what about the other 362 days of the year?"

Archer Malmo employs 165 in the Cotton Exchange Building at Front Street and Union Avenue. A couple of hundred more people work in advertising, public relations, web design, software design, digital strategy and similar businesses nearby.

Austin, Boston, Chattanooga and Des Moines are among cities having success attracting members of the fast-growing demographic, and it might be a solution to high vacancy rates for Downtown office space, Williams said.

"The tipping point for the Downtown office market with this strategy might be closer than we think," Williams said. "Archer Malmo's going to keep growing, I promise."

Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) president Terence Patterson said, "We're going to get this done. We could get a whole lot of people coming back to the core of our city."

Downtown's vacancy rate for premier space in the July-September quarter of 2015 was 20.6 percent compared to 4.5 percent in East Memphis and 10.7 percent citywide, according to Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors.

Patterson, who became DMC chief last fall, suggested Downtown needs to tweak incentives to attract entrepreneurs and headquarters. He favors a sharp focus on "key target areas, the Pinch, the Edge and the Medical Center."

Paul Young, Mayor Jim Strickland's Housing and Community Development director, told the group he plans to work with DMC and the Office of Planning and Development on a plan for the Pinch area on the north end of Downtown. Objectives include better connections to Bass Pro Shops at The Pyramid and handling growth needs of the convention center and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's expansion plan.

The Pinch has sat dormant and decaying since discussion of the Bass Pro project began more than a decade ago. Young said he expects to have a plan in four to six months.

Strickland said capital spending will focus on street paving, not big projects. "We're going to really focus on being brilliant at the basics, in all neighborhoods."
Amy Weirich (left) makes her closing arguments in the murder trial of Noura Jackson (right). Both are seen in Judge Chris Craft's courtroom during the 2009 proceeding.

SHARE November 3, 2015 - Shelby County District Attorney Amy Wierich announces a grand jury declined to indict Memphis Police Officer Connor Schilling in the death of Darrius Stewart, during a press conference Tuesday afternoon. (Mark Weber/The Commercial Appeal) Amy Weirich (left) makes her closing arguments in the murder trial of Noura Jackson (right). Both are seen in Judge Chris Craft's courtroom during the 2009 proceeding. (Commercial Appeal file photos) Sat, 21 Feb 09 (mdmverdict3) Photo by Mike MAPLE (FOR SALE) A jury found Noura Jackson guilty of second degree murder Saturday for the death of her mother, Jennifer Jackson. Cindy Jackson Eidson, the victims sister, left, embraces prosecutor Amy Weirich after the verdict was read Saturday. Related Coverage Noura Jackson: prosecutors hid very important evidenceVIDEO

By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal

Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich and another prosecutor face disciplinary charges filed by the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee stemming from their conduct during the prosecution of Noura Jackson.

The board charged that Weirich improperly commented on Jackson's right to remain silent and that Assistant District Attorney Stephen P. Jones failed to provide a piece of evidence to the defense about an important witness.

Weirich and Jones were given 30 days to respond to the petitions for discipline filed Monday. Then, a panel hearing would be held, and final action is left to the state Supreme Court.

On Dec. 30, the board recommended a "public censure" against Weirich and Jones, who demanded a formal proceeding.

According to the petition against Weirich by Chief Disciplinary Counsel Sandy Garrett and Deputy Chief Disciplinary Counsel Krisann Hodges, the board opened an investigative file Aug. 26, 2014.

The petition against Weirich states that during a closing argument in Jackson's trial Weirich said loudly, "Just tell us where you were! That's all we are asking, Noura!"

Jackson was tried in February 2009 in a two-week-long trial for first-degree murder of Jennifer Jackson, her mother. Weirich was an assistant district attorney at the time and the lead prosecutor. Jones was co-counsel.

Weirich's comment and the prosecution's failure to disclose a piece of evidence to the defense prompted the court to rule that Jackson's conviction should be vacated. A new trial was ordered.

The board's petition states it is a "well-settled principle that a prosecutor may not comment upon a defendant's exercise of the Fifth Amendment right not to testify."

In a statement emailed from her spokesman Vince Higgins, Weirich said the "trial judge and the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that my statement was not reversible error, while the state Supreme Court ruled the opposite way. A difference of judicial opinions is not uncommon with legal issues.

"Nothing done by myself or by my co-counsel in this trial should warrant disciplinary action," the statement said. "This complaint was not initiated by an attorney or by any of the judges who reviewed the case, but by a friend of the convicted killer. This complaint sets a bad precedent for prosecutors, defense lawyers and even for trial judges. That's why I have chosen to fight this complaint  because it is the right thing to do."

The complaint was made by a citizen, William Shelton, but the petition for disciplinary action was signed by disciplinary counsel, who are lawyers. In Shelton's complaint, he states Weirich violated Jackson's constitutional rights and "if not swiftly and strongly disciplined, why should we not expect more constitutional violations from her and/or her office?"

In a statement Friday, Shelton said he was a friend and former fiance of Jennifer Jackson. He said "the district attorney won the trial by committing two separate constitutional violations.

"I believe that Ms. Weirich is also fully responsible for failing to disclose the key evidence in this case," he said.

Mike Working, one of Jackson's lawyers, said the petitions that seek to "sanction two separate acts of prosecutorial misconduct are an ethical indictment against the district attorney, and should never be minimized as a difference of opinion."

According to the petition against Jones, the board opened an investigative file Sept. 17, 2014, following a complaint of ethical misconduct. That petition involves a statement by a witness, Andrew Hammack, that the defense sought.

Hammack gave law enforcement multiple statements about his contact with Jackson on the night her mother was killed. His statement dated June 13, 2005, "gave a completely different account of what happened on the night of the murder from the testimony by Mr. Hammack at trial," according to the petition against Jones.

In a letter attached to the petition, a lawyer for Jones said during the trial Jones "inadvertently failed to deliver" the statement to the defense and he did not become actively involved in the case until two months before trial. The Memphis Police Department had the statement since 2005, Jeff Feibelman said in the letter.

Hodges, the deputy disciplinary counsel, said the defense could have used the statement "in a number of ways, including impeachment of Mr. Hammack and other witnesses," in the petition. Jones "learned of" the statement Feb. 15, 2009, requested it from police and received it two days later, according to the petition.

The statement was "clearly evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tended to negate the guilt of the accused" and "prosecutors are obligated to disclose Brady material to the defense even when held in possession by the police," Hodges said.

In May, Jackson agreed to an Alford plea without admitting guilt, to voluntary manslaughter. Her sentence end date is now Dec. 15, according the Tennessee Felony Offender Information system.
January 28, 2016 - TBI agents bag a piece of evidence in the middle of South Parkway while they continue to investigate around the scene near where Memphis police shot and killed a man Wednesday night. Family identified the man as 32-year-old Johnathan Bratcher. TBI has taken over the investigation of the shooting and remain on the scene Thursday. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)

By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal

The agency investigating the shooting death of Johnathan Bratcher by Memphis police Wednesday say that Bratcher was the driver of a car that fled from officers and that investigators found a handgun that they believe he fired at police in a subsequent foot chase.

A statement Friday by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine also said investigators located and interviewed another man who had been in the car with Bratcher and had fled on foot.

"Agents also collected witness statements, including a statement from the second subject involved in the incident," DeVine wrote. "At this time, however, he is not in law enforcement custody and not facing charges, so we are not in a position to release or confirm his identity."

The TBI is now investigating officer-involved deaths for the Memphis police and the Shelby County Sheriff's office under an agreement announced in October.

Officials have given this account of the shooting: the incident began Wednesday afternoon when officers in two cars tried to stop a Chevy Impala for a traffic violation. The driver fled and crashed on a curb by St. Andrew A.M.E. Church at 867 South Parkway. Two men in the car ran in separate directions and police chased on foot. That's when Bratcher allegedly fired at them, and the officers shot him.

After the shooting, Bratcher collapsed and died behind a church building. A witness named Anthony Merritt took a cellphone video immediately after the shooting. The video shows Bratcher lying motionless on the ground, and a police officer appears to use a long gun to brush away a handgun lying near the body.

Bratcher had served time in federal prison for a shooting incident and was facing a possible return to prison for violating terms of his supervised release.

The investigation of Bratcher's death takes place amid a national backdrop of protest and concern about use of force by police, especially use of force against African-Americans: Bratcher was black. His family members have already expressed doubt about the police account, saying he was handcuffed at the time of the shooting. More than 100 people attended a candlelight vigil in his memory Thursday night, including Bratcher's 6-year-old son.

One officer who fired was white, the other was black, officials have said.

DeVine wrote that the TBI wouldn't identify the officers involved in the shooting, referring that question to local authorities.

Memphis Police Sgt. Karen Rudolph wrote in an email, "The officers' names will be released once the debriefing process has been completed. At this point the officers have not been debriefed." She said the debriefing involves investigative interviews as well as emotional support for officers who have been involved in a critical incident. With an outside agency involved in this case, it may take longer, she said.

An off-duty Shelby County Sheriff's Deputy participated in the chase but didn't shoot, officials have said.
December 18, 2015 - Mayor A C Wharton poses for a portrait outside of his office on the 7th floor of city hall. Wharton's last day in office is December 31, 2015 when Jim Strickland will take over the position. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal

Former Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has launched a private business and public policy consulting firm called The A C Wharton Group and leased office space Downtown.

Wharton, who lost his bid for reelection Oct. 8 to Jim Strickland, will be the lead principal of the group, which will focus on helping clients bring "change through innovation," according to its website, www.theacwhartongroup.com.

The firm will assist clients in business, and local and state governments in the areas of policy creation and implementation, strategic planning, and project management and oversight, the website says.

Wharton and Lois Riseling, who worked as an assistant to Wharton in City Hall, didn't answer calls to their numbers at the group's new office at 100 Peabody Place, Suite 1135, at the southern end of Downtown's Main Street Mall. Wharton also didn't immediately return calls to his home and cell phone.

After taking the city's helm in 2009, Wharton faced a budget crunch created by what he called a "perfect storm" of financial problems, including the Great Recession and a state mandate that the city fully fund its multimillion-dollar annual pension contribution by 2020.

Wharton could leverage that experience to, as his website puts it, help clients who are in "stressed and troubled environments."

Wharton's not the first of his administration to go into consulting. His former Human Resources director, Quintin Robinson, created his own private consulting firm this year, touting his experience with handling health care crises.

Follow more politics and policy coverage from the InforMemphis team on Twitter and Facebook.
Gleyse Kelly da Silva holds her daughter Maria Giovanna as she sleeps in their house in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. Brazilian officials still say they believe there's a sharp increase in cases of microcephaly and strongly suspect the Zika virus, which first appeared in the country last year, is to blame. The concern is strong enough that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month warned pregnant women to reconsider visits to areas where Zika is present. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

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By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal

The threat of the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen now spreading explosively across the Americas, will lend heightened importance to mosquito-control efforts beginning this spring, with a "blitz" planned if any local cases turn up, Shelby County health officials say.

Although not endemic to the area, the virus could be readily transmitted to local residents who travel to warmer regions such as the Caribbean and Central and South America where mosquitoes may be carrying it. Once the travelers return, the virus could be spread local if the infected person is bitten by a mosquito that later bites someone else.

The Memphis area is home to one of the specific mosquito species  Aedes albopictus, also known as the Asian tiger  known to transmit the virus.

Health Department officials say epidemiologists will be closely watching for any local cases of Zika. The effort will take on greatest urgency when mosquito season arrives with warmer weather this spring.

"The sooner we can identify positive human cases, the sooner we can take specific and slightly different mosquito-control and surveillance measures," said Tyler Zerwekh, administrator of environmental health.

If a case is detected, the department will undertake a "blitz," he said. That will involve going door-to-door near the infected person's home to check for standing water and water-holding containers  everything from bird baths to items as small as bottle caps  in which mosquitoes can breed.

"If you can remove the source, the mosquito eventually dies, and you have no means of transmission," Zerwekh said.

For nearly 20 years, the department has aggressively monitored and combated another mosquito-born pathogen, the West Nile virus. Unlike Zika, the West Nile virus can pose a persistent threat because birds act as intermediate transmitters  getting infected by mosquitoes in one area and carrying it to other regions where mosquitoes bite them and transmit the pathogen to humans. With Zika, there is no intermediate transmitter, nor is there any human-to-human transmission.

Zika was discovered in Africa during the 1940s, but it wasn't considered a threat in the Western Hemisphere until it turned up Brazil last year. World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Margaret said the virus is now "spreading explosively" across the Americas.

The virus is not very dangerous to most people, causing nothing more than a mild illness. But health officials are studying its apparent link to a birth defect called microcephaly, distinguished by small heads, among babies born to mothers infected with Zika.

Earlier this month U.S. health officials advised pregnant women to postpone trips to Brazil and other countries plagued with outbreaks.

Some local travel agents, however, said they've yet to see any clients change plans because of the virus.

With spring break approaching, many travelers have trips planned to the Caribbean, but "we have not had any cancellations," said Jan Oglesby, owner and group sales manager for Gulliver's Travels.

Oglesby said her company forwards to clients the latest information about the virus from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Society of Travel Agents.

"We keep our clients aware, and then it's their decision," she said.
Che Guevara is Latin American Revolutionary. Along with Fidel Castro, whose movement was joined in 1956, he was one of the main architects of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution (1959). He then held positions of great relevance in the new regime, but, dissatisfied with the failure of the firms and true to its purpose of extending the revolution to other countries in Latin America, in 1966 resumed its activity guerrilla in Bolivia, where it would be captured and executed a year later.





Ernesto Che Guevara

So given their lives in the struggle against imperialism and dictatorship, Che Guevara became the maximum revolutionary myth of the twentieth century. It was immediately an icon of the youth of the may 68, and his figure has been as a timeless symbol of ideals of freedom and justice that, like the heroes of yesteryear, judged more valuable than life itself. Still in our days is displayed often in confrontational actions, that his profile based on the famous Alberto Korda photograph.

Biography

Ernesto Che Guevara was born in a wealthy family from Argentina, where he studied medicine. His left-wing militancy led him to participate in opposition to Peron; Since 1953 he traveled for Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Guatemala, discovering poverty dominant among the masses of Latin America and the omnipresence of American imperialism in the region, and participating in multiple movements protestors, experiences that definitely leaned you to Marxist ideology.

In 1955 Ernesto Che Guevara met in Mexico to Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, who prepared a revolutionary expedition to Cuba. Guevara befriended the Castro, joined the group as a physician and landed with them in Cuba in 1956. Installed the guerrillas in Sierra Maestra, Guevara became Castro's lieutenant and commanded one of the two columns that emerged from the eastern mountains to the West to conquer the island. He participated in the decisive battle for the taking of Santa Clara (1958) and finally entered Havana in 1959, putting an end to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.





Che with Fidel Castro





The triumph of the revolution, carried out with few means, was facilitated by the untenable situation of the country in those years. Despite recording the highest per capita income in Latin America, wealth was concentrated in the few hands; This very strong social imbalance was repeated in the marked contrasts between the countryside and the city. At the political level, corruption, patronage mechanisms and the ineffectiveness had pointed to the absolute limits under the despotic and authoritarian regime of Fulgencio Batista; his Government managed to match against the most disparate sectors of opinion and interest. Cuban economy extremely dependent upon the presence of the United States, was based on tourism in urban areas and Agriculture of capitalist character which a large farm, determining proletariat had generated in the revolutionary process.

From the revolution to the policy

The new revolutionary regime granted Guevara Cuban nationality and appointed him Chief of the militia and director of the Institute of agrarian reform (1959), then President of the National Bank and economy Minister (1960), and, finally, Minister for industry (1961). In those years, Guevara represented Cuba in various international fora, which frontally denounced American imperialism. On a trip around the world met with Nasser, Nehru and Sukarno and Tito (1959); on another trip met various Soviet leaders and the Chinese Chu En-Lai and MaoTse-Tung.

In the task of building in Cuba of a new society, and especially in the field of Economics, Che Guevara was one of the most tireless contributors of Fidel Castro. In the economic debate that took place at the beginning of the new regime, he opted for an original, creative and not bureaucratic or institutional interpretation of Marxist principles. Looking for a way to the real independence of Cuba, strove for the industrialization of the country, linking to the help of the Soviet Union, once failed the attempted invasion of the island by the United States and clarified the Socialist character of the Cuban Revolution (1961).

Concern of professional revolutionary, however, made him leave Cuba in secret in 1965 and March to the Congo, where they fought in support of the revolutionary movement in March, convinced that only the armed insurrectional action was effective against imperialism. In Bolivia Relieved of their positions in the Cuban State, Che Guevara returned to Latin America in 1966 to launch a revolution who hoped that it would be of continental scope: assessing the strategic position of Bolivia, chose that country as a center of operations for installing a guerrilla that could radiate its influence to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay. In front of a small group tried to put into practice their theory, according to which was not necessary to wait for the social conditions to produce a popular uprising, but that could be the very armed action which will create conditions that will trigger a revolutionary movement; such ideas were collected in his book guerrilla warfare (1960). However, his action not caught in the Bolivian masses. From the very beginning his group, known as the National Liberation Army and composed of Cuban veterans of Sierra Maestra and some Bolivian Communists, met with the lack of support from the peasants, non full-motion. Without any popular support, the rural world, and without support in big cities by the rejection of the Communist political organizations the possibilities of success dwindled drastically. Isolated in a jungle region where suffered the exacerbation of her asthmatic condition, Ernesto Guevara was betrayed by local peasants and fell into an ambush by the Bolivian army in the region of Valle Grande, where he was wounded and captured on October 8, 1967. Given that Che had become a symbol for young people around the world, the Bolivian military, advised by the CIA, wanted to destroy the revolutionary myth, killing him then expose his corpse, photographed with him and bury him in secret. In 1997 the remains of Che Guevara were located, exhumed and moved to Cuba, where they were buried with full honors by the regime of Fidel Castro. The image of Ernesto Che Guevara remains incomplete if not are considered, along with the revolutionary, its facets ideologue and theoretician of the guerrillas, the armed fight in small groups as the only way revolutionary of possible political activity in underdeveloped countries. Their ideas are exposed in texts such as the famous message to the Tricontinental (1967) and the aforementioned book guerrilla warfare (1960). Although he wrote a lot, most of his work remains unpublished. They integrate the manuscripts, letters, speeches, proclamations, and above all, articles published in Green olive, the organ of the Cuban armed forces, in which Che held the rank of Commander. The most remembered are those in which evokes the Cuban Revolution (1959,a revolution that beginsand following) and the economic policy (against the bureaucracy, 1963 and following). Journal that Ernesto Guevara had been writing all his life, was published posthumously the part relating to the Bolivian guerrilla: Diary of Che in Bolivia (1968). This latest book, which chronicles his fight guerrilla in Bolivia until immediately prior to his capture, is the most impressive testimony of his personality. Che describes the daily life of the guerrillas inside, in its daily appearance; the thousand practical difficulties, weaknesses, errors and disputes between companions and his precarious state of health give rise to a nothing idealized picture. But it is above all almost distanced from this newspaper style, even in the most difficult moments, which reveals the human side of Che in the last period of his life: in his mood reigned a great calm and deep serenity, due to the intimate conviction of the just enough of their ideals and reasoned acceptance of the risk of dying in the fight.

This articel was extracted from: Biografias y Vidas

for educational purpose
November 9, 2015 - Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam sits between State Representatives Karen Camper (left, District 87) and Barbara Cooper (District 86, right) during a press conference at the Memphis Intermodal Facility located at 4814 Lamar Ave. Monday. Gov. Haslam was in Memphis advocating for a way to fund highway improvements. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal

NASHVILLE  Gov. Bill Haslam said Thursday that the state budget he will unveil Monday night will "invest" heavily in education, and indicated it will start repaying $260 million transferred out of the highway fund to balance the budget during the depths of the recession.

The governor also said he will spend time in Monday night's annual State of the State and budget address to the legislature and a statewide public television audience talking about how he believes the state should handle its revenue surplus  now over $500 million beyond projections for the current fiscal year. Lawmakers and advocacy groups have proposed an abundance of ideas for cutting taxes or increasing spending with the surplus.

Haslam told newspaper executives at the Tennessee Press Association's annual meeting that "the hardest thing to do in government is hold in the reins when times are good, but if you don't hold in the reins when times are good, you will get smeared when they get bad.

"Our object in this budget will be to spend those dollars on places where the state has either under-invested in the past  and I would say education is at the top of that list  or that will be smart investments that will save us money in the long run: taking care of our own buildings and things like that, that there is not a lot of sexiness or glamour to. It is a unique opportunity to have a budget surplus. Given that, how do we reshape this for the long term?"

Rather than a fuel tax increase to pay for a growing backlog of highway needs cited by the Tennessee Department of Transportation, state lawmakers have focused on $260 million transferred from the highway fund into the state's general operating fund more than a decade ago during a revenue shortfall. The governor acknowledged that he won't ask the legislature to raise gasoline taxes this year, but will next year.

He said he will present a plan for repaying the highway fund. "It's about $261 million that the general fund owes the transportation fund. We recognize that and we will have a proposal for how to make certain that gets paid back over time.

"But I don't want anyone to think it will solve the problem if that whole $260 million is paid back tomorrow. We have one project in Memphis, Lamar Avenue, which is $260 million by itself, and Alcoa Highway near Knoxville is $275 million. I can keep going."

Haslam said he believes it's important to repay the money because "if you're paying that for a road tax when you fill up at the pump, you should know that the state's using that money for what they said they would use it for."

Haslam's speech at the TPA meeting followed an earlier forum on legislative issues by Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey and House Speaker Beth Harwell. All three top state officials indicated state college students can expect some relief from the steady, steep tuition increases of the past two decades.

Ramsey (R-Blountville) touted a bill filed in the Senate last week that would impose a two-year freeze on tuition at all public colleges and universities, followed by a plan in which entering freshmen would pay the same rate through their four undergraduate years.

The governor also said the state must "do something to limit tuition increase" but did not mention a tuition freeze. Instead, he said he's "going to fight really hard to make sure we hold up the state's end of the deal. Costs at the universities is a reflection of what the state puts in and what it costs the school to operate and what parents pay. We've got to look at all three. I'm going to do that."
January 28, 2016 - Ashley Newsom hugs her son, Jonathan Bratcher, Jr., 6, during a candlelight vigil honoring his late father, Johnathan Bratcher, Thursday evening near St. Andrew AME Church. Bratcher was fatally shot by two Memphis police officers Wednesday near Kerr and S. Parkway E. Over 100 people attended the South Memphis event that lasted about an hour. One of Bratcher's closest friends, Frederick Robinson, 26, was one of the persons who organized the remembrance. "He ain't here right now. I lost him," says Robinson. "Right now, I'm really puzzled and just stuck - like in a shock. I love him dearly. I love him to death. Couldn't nothing break our bond - nothing. I miss him like he's been gone some years, well, it's been 24 hours." (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

By Katie Fretland and Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

The fatal police shooting of a man in South Memphis sparked mixed reaction Thursday and prompted a candlelight vigil in the victim's memory.

More than 100 people attended the vigil near St. Andrew A.M.E. church and close to the site where Johnathan Bratcher was killed Wednesday afternoon.

One of those at the vigil was Bratcher's girlfriend of 6 months, Jerian Lawson, 24. As she sat on the ground, surrounded by lit tealights where Johnathan was fatally shot a day earlier, she placed her right hand in blood on the parking lot and rubbed it on her left hand, where she was wearing a diamond ring that Bratcher recently gave her.

"Something needs to be done. We need justice," Lawson said. "That man didn't deserve that. Why shoot him in the head? They could have shot that man in the leg... I don't believe this, though. That's why I'm sitting here just rubbing blood, picking up his blood. It makes me feel like he's closer to me."

One of Bratcher's closest friends, Frederick Robinson, 26, helped organize the vigil. "He ain't here right now. I lost him," said Robinson. "Couldn't nothing break our bond  nothing."

On Wednesday night, Memphis community organizer Tami Sawyer posted to Facebook about the shooting, writing that "everyone who is killed by the police isn't a saint but everyone who is killed by the police deserves due process.

"I just refuse to accept that in a world where a man can massacre a theatre and live, where a man can enter a church and kill the pastor and members and be escorted to Burger King, where Charles Manson is alive and married, where Saddam Hussein was captured alive, (that) there is any excuse for the continued mass killing of civilians, disproportionately those of color, by police, regardless of if they just made someone afraid because of their skin tone or if they robbed a bank," she said.

She called for a timeline for Memphis' roll out of body cameras for law enforcement.

A member of Blue Lives Matter Memphis spoke by phone to The Commercial Appeal in support of the officers, saying that police are unappreciated, but still have to defend the community. The member declined to be named in the story, citing security concerns.

Gina Stewart of Christ Missionary Baptist Church in the South Memphis neighborhood where the shooting occurred, said she was disheartened to hear of the violence in the community and near St. Andrew A.M.E. Church.

"One of the reasons we remain in the community is because we wanted to be an agent of transformation and an agent of change," Stewart said. "As a pastor and faith leader of a church in that area and in that neighborhood, we will continue to try to do things that we have been doing to be a place of safety and offer alternatives, particularly to youth, so they won't end up getting into mischief and be tempted by violence."

Stewart expressed that "this is all very unnerving and unsettling and just points back again to the larger issue that violence is a problem in our community and I pray that we will be able to get a handle on it. We are not just talking about it, some of us as pastors are attempting to do something proactive and preventative."

Tom Givens, a law enforcement veteran of 25 years who runs the Collierville-based Rangemaster Firearms Training Services, said that if reports of the shooting are accurate "the officers did an excellent job."

"There is neither a legal or moral requirement to wait until you're fired at," Givens said. "The officers were defending their lives. The victims are the two officers who not only could have lost their lives but had to take a life, not because of anything they did or didn't do, but because of his actions."

Pastor Earle Fisher of Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church, who was outspoken following the shooting death of Darrius Stewart by a Memphis police officer last July, said it's "too early to try to draw conclusions one way or the other" about what happened Wednesday.

"One thing we know is that the environment is still fraught with skepticism and concern with regards to police and civilian relations," he said. "We deeply believe that the delay for body cams being rolled out is coming into play here. We don't believe that raw dash-cam footage would compromise any investigation. It would give the general public an unadulterated look at what took place and trust the general public to draw their own objective conclusions."

Staff photographer Yalonda M. James contributed to this story.
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Supporters of school choice, a group that includes this page, have reason to celebrate the advance of legislation creating a school voucher program in Tennessee this week.

That's as long as vouchers are seen as only part of a larger effort to reverse the course of a public education system that has been doing a lousy job of preparing students for the challenges of higher education.

According to the state comptroller's office of research and education accountability, only 25 percent of freshmen at the state's community colleges, 52 percent at the six Tennessee Board of Regents universities and 72 percent on three University of Tennessee campuses meet their schools' criteria for college readiness in math, reading and/or writing.

But if vouchers  or "opportunity scholarships" in sponsors' jargon  are on the way, and if charter schools and school takeovers by the state's Achievement School District continue to multiply, corresponding measures are needed to improve the effectiveness of traditional public school districts as well.

Despite the growth that is surely to occur in the charter school and private school industries and, possibly, the ASD, the vast majority of Tennessee youngsters are still going to attend traditional public schools, and traditional public schools are going to remain in a precarious position unless they get more help.

In Memphis, the Shelby County School District's Innovation Zone will have to be expanded to improve the performance of students who need help the most but don't obtain vouchers to attend private schools.

To maintain the financial viability of public school districts, additional funding will be needed to offset at least a portion of the $8,500 per pupil that follows the student to that student's new school.

While the population of the traditional school district declines with school choice, the district's overhead costs don't drop commensurately.

There is no doubt, however, that many public school students would benefit from the voucher program approved by the slimmest of margins  11-10  in the House Finance Committee this week.

The program would offer government-funded scholarships that could be used for private school tuition to a limited number of students who qualify for free or reduced lunches on the basis of household income and are zoned for or attend a school that is in the bottom 5 percent of all schools in the state, based on average scores on standardized tests.

Despite its narrow margin of approval in committee, the program is expected to survive the legislative process and win the signature of Gov. Bill Haslam.

Of course, legitimate questions have been raised about the problems that could be created by private schools that promote specific religious beliefs.

The question was explored in depth, however, in the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which determined that the program in question was neutral with respect to religion and thus "not readily subject to challenge under the Establishment Clause," the constitutional prohibition on government actions that unduly favor one religion over another.

Obviously, if it passes a voucher program, the state must make sure that adequate monitoring is in place to prevent vouchers from being cashed in by schools that are motivated by anything besides educating Tennessee's public school students.

But while the concept falls far short of a cure for the shortcomings of traditional public schools, more options can improve the prospects for thousands of Tennessee schoolchildren.
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By Barbara Gray

I've been thinking recently about the National Do Not Call Registry that gets rid of unwanted harassment when solicitors just won't take a hint that you are not interested.

It seems like it may be time for a similar program to get rid of the out-of-state groups that keep trying to force private school vouchers into Tennessee. Proposed voucher bills have been defeated three years in a row now in the Tennessee General Assembly. To me, this shows that vouchers are unwanted and unneeded in Tennessee.

The fact that the bill gives taxpayer dollars to private entities should be a huge red flag, but even worse is the proposal's intent to leave many students behind. The bill allows private entities to decide which students are admitted with the "choice and opportunity" voucher, when in fact all students in Tennessee deserve great public schools.

The Tennessee Constitution requires the General Assembly to "provide for the maintenance, support and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools," yet the priority of many legislators seems to be the maintenance and support of private enterprise.

Tennessee already ranks 46th in the nation for government funding per student. Instead of giving money to vouchers and other privatization schemes, why not provide adequate funding for our public schools as required in our state constitution?

Public school teachers work miracles in their classrooms every day. Tennessee public schools have among the top graduation rates in the country and, at the same time, one of the lowest rates of funding per student. Imagine what educators could do with the proper resources and support from our elected officials.

A critical flaw in this legislation is the lack of proper oversight. Tennessee's nationally recognized education standards and measures for accountability do not apply to private programs. This includes public disclosure of teacher licensure, budgets and student achievement. Evidence from other states shows school voucher programs waste taxpayer money by supporting substandard and unaccredited programs.

No credible study or research has ever proved the effectiveness of school vouchers or demonstrated any sustained improvement in student achievement over public schools. In the more than 50 years since school vouchers were first proposed, the concept remains controversial, unproven and unpopular.

The latest proposal is even worse than those of recent years. The current proposal, which has to clear one more committee before it can be considered for a vote by the full House, opens vouchers up to all low-income students in a county with just one school in the bottom 5 percent.

It is not about poor-performing schools or providing more options for families zoned in those schools. It is probable that taxpayers will pay for a student to leave an effective public school and go to a poorly performing private school.

Tennessee students cannot afford to be guinea pigs for yet another unproven, ineffective education "reform" scheme. Tennessee needs to keep its tax dollars where they belong  in our public schools.

Tennessee's children deserve great public schools. Private school vouchers are not the answer.

Barbara Gray is an Arlington Community Schools administrator and serves as president of the Tennessee Education Association.
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By Christine Emba

Taking for granted that when you're shopping, you probably aren't going to be followed or harassed.

Knowing that you can curse, dress sloppily or misspell a word in a memo without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, poverty or substandard education of your race.

Assuming that if you buy a house in a nice neighborhood, your neighbors will be pleasant and welcoming.

Understanding that if you ask to speak to the person in charge, you'll almost certainly end up facing someone of your own race.

Feeling comfortable and "normal" in all the usual walks of public life.

What is white privilege? It's the social advantage that comes from being seen as the norm in the United States, automatically conferred irrespective of wealth, gender or other factors. It smooths out life, but in a way that's barely noticeable  unless it doesn't apply to you. In her 1988 paper "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh described it as a set of unearned assets that white people can count on cashing in each day even as they remain largely oblivious to their advantage.

The concept has been percolating in academic circles ever since and is approaching broad usage among young people on the political left. Yet as Washington Post reporter Janell Ross noted this month, it's a term that many Americans "instinctively don't trust or believe to be real," despite reams of evidence to the contrary. Black children  4-year-olds!  compose 18 percent of preschool enrollment but are given nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions. Job applicants with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to get called in for an interview. Black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned than white defendants for the same crime.

Why does such a fraught piece of academic lingo matter now? Because people are beginning to talk about what it means in their own lives. At a time when minorities are growing more vocal about the ways in which their experiences in the United States differ from those of their white counterparts, the idea might finally be entering the mainstream. Two weeks ago, at a forum in Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was asked by an audience member to explain what white privilege meant to her and how it had affected her life. Her response? "Look, where do I start?"

Yet every time white privilege is acknowledged, there is a backlash.

When a version of this column ran online over the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, the comments posted in response were disappointing, to say the least. An overwhelming number of readers wrote to remind me that not all white people are privileged, a clear misreading of the term. Others denounced the very idea of white privilege, arguing that it was a falsehood invented to justify discrimination against white people at a time when we should all be moving past race. And many others suggested that perhaps black people deserved any disadvantage they faced, trotting out old canards about black-on-white crime, black violence and how if black people for once just pulled up their pants, got off welfare and worked as hard as these commenters had, everything would be fine.

Obviously not all white people are wealthy, and obviously many minorities are rich and powerful. Lots of white people are disadvantaged. But white privilege is something specific and different from the ordinary rising and falling of a free society. It's the fact that simply by virtue of being a white person, of whatever socioeconomic status, you get the benefit of the doubt. That simply isn't the case for those of other races in the United States, no matter how wealthy, smart or hard-working they are. Even when black people work as hard as or harder than their white counterparts, they have this additional barrier to surmount.

This shouldn't be controversial. Agreeing that yes, there is some advantage to being white in the United States, doesn't then mean stripping white people of their jobs and possessions. A request to acknowledge one's privilege is just a reminder to be aware  aware that you might not be able to fully understand someone else's experiences, that the assumptions you were brought up with may be blinding you, that some people may have to struggle for reasons foreign to you.

Pointing out that white privilege exists isn't the same as accusing every white person of being a racist. And acknowledging that you might benefit from such privilege doesn't mean you're "apologizing for being white" or joining the ranks of those dreaded "social justice warriors." The most heartening comments I received last week were those from readers who understood that. Rather than reacting defensively, they asked: What's next?

Here's what's next.

Generally, we expect those with advantages to help out those who are disadvantaged. The leg up provided by white privilege offers a chance to do just that. Understanding that you benefit from white privilege offers the freedom to amplify important issues in ways that those without it cannot. It represents an opportunity to speak out more loudly against injustice, knowing you're better-protected from negative outcomes. It's the ability to use the access you're given to create opportunity and space for others.

The use of white privilege tends to be unintentional. White privilege isn't asked for, but it's also not earned. The advantages it brings are uncomfortable to acknowledge and easy to take for granted. But they shouldn't remain invisible. There's no way to level the playing field unless we first can all see how uneven it is.

Christine Emba edits The Post's In Theory blog.
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By Glenn Kessler

All politicians like to brag about their abilities and achievements. But rarely has a presidential hopeful emerged like Donald Trump, who consistently touts his resume and plans for the nation in sweeping and over-the-top terms.

Trump is particularly unique in how he talks about himself. Plenty of would-be presidents make dubious claims about what they have accomplished in elected office (created millions of jobs! slashed spending!). Few make such claims about their personal attributes. Trump has no such hesitation. Just before the Iowa caucuses, here are five of the biggest myths Donald Trump tells about himself.

1) "I'm, like, a really smart person."

Trump is not shy about his intellectual prowess. As he tweeted in 2013: "Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest  and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."

Of course, "smart" is a bit subjective. There are book smarts as well as street smarts. Many would say Trump has run a pretty smart campaign. But clearly he's saying that his brain is very sharp  as he puts it, "super-genius stuff.'' At one point, Trump rebutted criticism from columnist George Will and GOP consultant Karl Rove by saying: "I'm much smarter than them. I think I have a much higher IQ. I think I went to a better college  better everything."

Trump's college background, in fact, is often his key piece of evidence for his intellectual superiority. But there's less here than meets the eye. Trump did graduate from the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college. But Trump did not get an MBA from Wharton; he has a much less prestigious undergraduate degree. He was a transfer student who arrived at Wharton after two years at Fordham University, which U.S. News & World Report currently ranks 66th among national universities. (Besides, simply going to an Ivy League school doesn't prove you're a genius.)

Gwenda Blair, in her 2001 book "The Trumps," said that Trump's grades at Fordham were just "respectable" and that he got into Wharton mainly because he had an interview with an admissions officer who had been a high school classmate of his older brother. And Wharton's admissions team surely knew that Trump was from one of New York's wealthiest families.

For years, numerous media reports said Trump graduated first in his class from Wharton, but that's wrong. The 1968 commencement program does not list him as graduating with any sort of honors. In fact, the Boston Globe reported that he barely made an impression at all: "His former classmates said he seemed a student who spoke up a lot but rarely shined in class, who barely participated in campus activities, shunned fraternity parties."

2) "I have the world's greatest memory."

One of Trump's most controversial statements is his claim that he saw a television news report about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001. That statement ended up on the Washington Post Fact Checker's list of 2015's biggest Pinocchios.

Trump insisted he was right because he has such a great memory.

But no television network could find such a clip, though extensive searches were made. No news reports were tracked down to validate Trump's claim of "thousands." The closest thing ever found was a local newscast at the time, from a CBS affiliate in New York, that reported on the arrest of eight men who neighbors said had celebrated the attack. That's a far cry from thousands. There were also video clips of several Palestinians  in the Israeli-occupied territories  cheering. But that wasn't New Jersey  and again, it wasn't thousands.

Trump also pointed to a line in a Washington Post article written days after the attacks that said law enforcement authorities detained and questioned some people who were allegedly seen celebrating. But when one of the reporters, Serge Kovaleski, said the article did not validate Trump's claim, the real estate magnate mocked Kovaleski's disability. (Kovaleski has a chronic condition that limits his mobility.)

Trump later denied doing so, claiming he didn't know the reporter  even though Kovaleski had closely covered Trump in the 1980s and 1990s and had interviewed him several times.

Maybe Trump should rephrase his boast: "I have the world's most selective memory."

3) "I'm proud of my net worth. I've done an amazing job."

Trump frequently touts his financial acumen. He often says he is worth $10 billion, though most analysts say that is exaggerated. Bloomberg News closely studied his 92-page financial disclosure report and concluded that he is really worth $2.9 billion.

That may sound like a lot of money. But don't forget that Trump inherited a lot of money, too  about $40 million in 1974. In 1978, his net worth was estimated by BusinessWeek at $100 million. The Post's Wonkblog calculated that if Trump had gotten out of real estate, put his money in an index fund based on the Standard & Poor's 500 index and reinvested the dividends, he'd be worth twice as much  $6 billion  today.

National Journal noted that Warren Buffett was also worth $40 million in 1974  and he managed to turn that into $67 billion today. But then Buffett doesn't have a long list of business flops, such as Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, various Trump casinos, Trump Steaks and Trump University.

4) "I'm self-funding my campaign."

Trump keeps saying that unlike his rivals, he's paying for his own presidential campaign, but that's largely false.

At the start of his campaign, he loaned his political operation $1.8 million. As of Oct. 1, he had given his campaign an additional $104,829.27  but he had also received $3.9 million from donors, which accounted for the vast majority of the $5.8 million his campaign had taken in by then. His campaign website features a prominent "donate" button on its homepage. Trump has spent $5.4 million, and interestingly, about one-quarter of his spending has gone to Trump-owned entities (mainly his private jet company).

In January, Trump launched an ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, saying he planned to spend $2 million. He also claimed that his campaign was $35 million to $40 million below budget. Ultimately, all of his spending, and where the money came from, will have to be disclosed in campaign finance reports. The odds are his personal share of the spending will be less than 50 percent.

5) "I'm probably the least racist person on Earth."

When people have criticized Trump for promising to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or proposing a ban on all Muslims from entering the country, he has defended himself by saying he's not motivated by racism. Still, he has a pattern of racially tinged remarks and actions.

The very first article about Trump in the New York Times  it appeared 42 years ago  was headlined "Major Landlord Accused Of Antiblack Bias in City." Trump was quoted in the report as saying that the charges in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against the company he and his father ran were "absolutely ridiculous." The two sides eventually settled the case, but three years later, the Justice Department charged Trump's organization with continuing to discriminate against blacks.

When five black and Latino teenagers were implicated in a brutal attack on a white woman jogging in Central Park in 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the death penalty for "criminals of every age." The suspects were convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence  and Trump then called their wrongful-conviction settlement a "disgrace."

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino President John R. O'Donnell, in the 1991 book "Trumped," alleged that Trump once said "laziness is a trait in blacks." He also claimed that Trump said, of his accountants: "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day." (Trump has called O'Donnell a disgruntled employee, but he has not disputed the remarks. "The stuff O'Donnell wrote about me is probably true," he told Playboy in an interview published in May 1997.)

Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in December, Trump made a speech riddled with Jewish stereotypes, such as: "Look, I'm a negotiator like you folks; we're negotiators." And: "I know why you're not going to support me. You're not going to support me because I don't want your money."

Another Trump observation: "A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. . . . If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.''

When Trump launched his campaign, he made a broad-brush accusation against Mexico: "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing . . . drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Glenn Kessler writes The Fact Checker blog for The Washington Post.
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By Ruth Marcus

WASHINGTON  Supreme Court briefs tend to be the driest of documents, stuffed with citations to precedent and recitations of lower court proceedings. Not one filed this month in an abortion case now before the justices. This friend-of-the-court brief mentions precisely three cases, one statute (the Texas abortion law being challenged) and zero law review articles.

Instead, it tells stories  not about law, but about lawyers. Specifically, about lawyers who have had abortions.

Their point is to explain to the justices how exercising this constitutional right allowed them to proceed with the practice of law and with their lives. It is to let the justices know that, even if they do not realize it, they almost certainly know women who have had abortions, women whose biographies are not so different from theirs.

"It's the justices' community  it's their colleagues and people who have argued before them and former law school classmates and co-clerks," one of the brief's authors, Alexia Korberg of Paul Weiss, told me.

Indeed, the most powerful part of the brief is a 10-page appendix listing the 113 signatories: corporate lawyers, partners at major law firms, retired judges, law professors and law students who took the brave step of going public with their decision to have an abortion.

Their testimonies were collected in a two-week sprint over the winter holidays, a deluge that surprised the lead author, Allan Arffa. "I thought it was a hard ask," he said.

Lawyers are notoriously cautious, fearful of offending partners or clients. So Arffa worried that only retired lawyers, or those working for liberal-leaning groups, would go public. Instead, he said, "We were just overwhelmed, not just by the number, but by the breadth. They're from all portions of the legal profession."

One American woman in three will have an abortion in her lifetime, the brief notes. Yet the decision to terminate a pregnancy is so private  it remains so stigmatized  that few are comfortable discussing it.

That disconnect between private reality and public discourse has real-world consequences inside the Supreme Court chamber. Justices instinctively hostile to abortion rights reinforce their legal conclusions with the paternalistic supposition that they are shielding women from shattering consequences.

Thus, Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a 2007 partial-birth abortion case: "It seems unexceptionable to conclude that some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained."

Kennedy, likely to cast the deciding vote in the Texas case, cited an amicus brief filed in the name of Sandra Cano, the former Mary Doe of a 1973 abortion ruling, featuring affidavits from women who described how they were "psychologically devastated" by the decision to have an abortion.

Now comes the women lawyers' brief. The experiences they relate are not of regret, but of relief and even liberation. Those words no doubt jar those who believe that abortion is the taking of a human life, but they express the reality experienced by many women who have chosen to terminate pregnancies.

"I am the daughter of a teenage mother who is the daughter of a teenage mother," the brief quotes one woman, a public defender who had an abortion at 16. "Access to a safe, legal abortion broke the familial cycle of teenage parenthood and allowed me ... to graduate from an elite college, work for one of the nation's most storied civil rights organizations, and go on to graduate from the University of Michigan Law School."

An in-house counsel to a major university recalled becoming accidentally pregnant just before starting law school. "I was heading to New England and I didn't even own a winter coat," she recalled. "How could I have a child? ... Had I not had an abortion, it is entirely possible that I would not have been able to finish law school  I might not have even been able to manage starting law school."

Morrison & Foerster partner Janie Schulman, one of the lead signers, had a late-term abortion after an ultrasound revealed a fatal heart defect. "It's very important for the public and the court to see that the people who have relied on this access ... are not a group of irresponsible people who have an abortion without a thought," she told me.

Justice Kennedy, read this brief, please. You have the power to say what the law is, but don't rule based on assumptions about what is best for women. Your colleagues at the bar  like the rest of us  can judge that for themselves.

Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.
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About us

Once more in Papua New Guinea we serve a fourth term with Mission Aviation Fellowship . We currently stay in Telefomin, a village in the West of the highlands close to the Indonesian border. Using small airplanes MAF support communities living in the bush by enabling basic services like health care, education, and community development, as well as spiritual support through church workers.


The IT employees at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut tried to save their jobs. The contacted local media, local politicians. They told anyone who would listen what was going on.

They were going to lose their jobs. It was a shock, not just for the IT workers, but for the state.

Northeast Utilities was a stable employer. Its customers were in the state. It couldn't move to China. It couldn't abandon the state. And so people thought.

But then Northeast Utilities merged with NStar, a Boston utility. (Now known as Eversource Energy).

Soon after the merger, the trouble started. The utilities leadership hired India-based IT outsourcing firms.

The IT employees learned they would lose their jobs. Some 200 of them. Good jobs.

Local politicians held a press conference to express their outrage. But it was pointless and everyone knew it.

Some of the IT workers were training their foreign replacements. They did this because of the severance. The younger IT workers could and did bolt, but the older workers needed the safety net. Not much choice.

But someone in the IT department started putting up American flags in the cubicles. Along the hallways. Small American flags. The type you wave at a Fourth of July parade.

The flag is our most powerful symbol. It represents sacrifice, love of nation, shared beliefs, endurance. These workers wanted it known that they are Americans.

This flag display would have disappeared with the IT workers. But one person took a photo. It was quick. You can tell by the blur.

The severance agreement, with its onerous non-disparagement clause, tried to silence them. But this photo has not been silenced.

We now know what the last stand of displaced workers in an IT department looks like. It is part of our American memory.
Sir Eric Pickles, when he was the Communities and Local Government Secretary, launched a Judicial Review of Greenwich Council back in March 2015 for breaking the Local Government Publicity Code with its weekly town hall Pravda.

The court case was due to be heard this month but Greenwich Council has folded. That will have left them with a substantial legal bill  although not as large as if they had continued to blatantly ignore the new rules. I suspect the delaying tactics were based on their hope that Labour would win last years General Election and that a Miliband Government would allow them to publish as much propaganda as they liked.

A Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said:

We have agreed that Royal Borough of Greenwich will be fully compliant with the Publicity Code from the end of June 2016, settling the matter without having to go to court.

That means in future the council will publish no more than quarterly. That will limit their potential to crowd out competitors. These are papers that as well as praising the Council and denouncing central Government often include theatre and film listings, cooking recipes, and Sudoku puzzles  as well as subsidised advertising.

So that is good news that progress is being made to enforce the law. But there is still some unfinished business. There are still some councils publishing fortnightly newspapers ignoring the code  such as Newham, Hackney and Waltham Forest.

Tower Hamlets Council still publishes East End Life  albeit fortnightly instead of weekly.

These councils have a choice. They can either reduce the frequency of publication to the legal requirements  or they can wait for the courts to order them to do so and thus incur unnecessary expense for their Council Taxpayers.

Another concern is that it is not only over frequency of publication that the Code is being flouted. The content of council communications  both on websites and in publications  routinely disregards the requirements to be honest, objective and politically impartial. Even when incidents are reported to the Councils Monitoring Officer and then the District Auditor the rules are still ignored.

Around the country we have the paradox of Labour councils using million pound communications budgets to declare they have no alternative but to cut services because of the terrible austerity unfairly imposed on them by the Conservative Government.

The rules on council publicity should be strengthened and the DCLG should do far more to enforce them  to prohibit political propaganda from councils whether online or in printed form.
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publications, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

When I was a Parliamentary candidate I used to enjoy visiting local schools. I always learned something. Of course academies that time  during the run-up to the 2005 election  were a mere glint in Andrew Adoniss eye. And on Wednesday, I visited an academy for the first time. It came about following an invitation from one of my LBC listeners who calls in regularly and takes me to task for some of my views on education policy.

It turned out that Alison in Sydenham was also head of the Ebbsfleet Academy, which is just off the M25 near Gravesend. Four years ago, it was a failing school. Those parents who cared about their childrens education didnt want to send their kids there and the schools exam results were a joke. Only seventeen per cent would get five GCSEs or more.

Then the school became an academy, changed its name, brought in a new headand the rest, as they say, is history. Last summer, 61 per cent of their pupils got five GCSEs or more. Its a remarkable turnaround. Its been done through inspirational leadership, an almost total replacement of the teaching staff, and by imposing rules and discipline. I have never seen such a clean school. Even all the classrooms were tidy.

All the classes I visited were full of eager-to-learn kids with seemingly few discipline problems. Many of the yeargroup classes were split into two  boys in one classroom, girls in another. I was quite surprised to see this, but its something that both girls and boys seem to like and think is a good idea.

Virtually all the teachers were under 30, and many recruited from the TeachFirst programme. Going round the school, the head knew the name of every single pupil she encountered, and had words of encouragement for all of them. In one of the breaks I sat down with six or seven pupils who told me about their experiences of how their school had been transformed. It was truly inspirational.

The school is in an area where 42 per cent of the pupils qualify for the pupil premium. Some of them come from very challenging backgrounds. One of the great things Alison Colwell has brought to the school is a real sense of encouraging her pupils to aspire to be better. I asked the seven kids what they wanted to do when they left school. They all gave aspirational answers: law, accountancy, computer technology. Alison later told me that she asked that question to a group of girls when she first arrived at the school. They all wanted to work in nail bars. Nothing wrong with nailbars  but the point was that they had never really considered anything else.

The school is now attracting more and more kids from the local area and is about to start a sixth form. The local community can now be justly proud of it. It just shows how important leadership is for a school. Theyve got the right head teacher at the right time. If this academy is a representative example of the genre, then those schools who are about to convert have nothing to fear. Indeed, they should embrace their future. Change is never easy, but it can be very rewarding, as the Ebbsfleet Academy has discovered.

         

I dont know whether David Camerons bunch of migrants comment was planned or not. Either way, it was rather crass, and I suspect he now regrets it. Trouble is, he has form, having described a swarm of migrants sweeping across Europe not that long ago.

Im sure many people will say in the comments below that there was nothing wrong at all with his words and its a fuss about nothing. I disagree. Too many people see migrants as a faceless, anonymous group. They are dehumanised. We have to remember that regardless of whether they are asylum seekers or refugees, they are human beings who are seeking to better their lives and those of their families.

In their circumstances, you and I would do the same thing. Theyre not all seeking to come over here, steal our jobs and rape our women as some newspapers, which ought to know better, try to convince you. A small minority have given the majority a bad reputation.

And dont get me wrong, I am certainly not advocating allowing in everyone who wants to come here  that would be ridiculous. But when discussing immigration, we need to be very careful of the language we use. End of sermon.

         

When I heard the news that Cecil Parkinson had died I was much more emotional about it than I would have expected. Not that he was a close friend: he wasnt. I met him quite a few times over the years and we had always got on, but his death was yet another sign that the Thatcher era is drawing to a close.

He was one of the most effective proponents of Thatcherism and was a member of that unique group of people who are described as ex-future prime ministers. For a brief period in 1983, Cecil Parkinson was considered Margaret Thatchers most likely successor. His resignation over his affair with Sara Keays soon put paid to that.

I have many personal memories of Cecil. I first met him in January 1983 when I attended a reception at Number Ten as Chairman of the University of East Anglia Conservative students. Most of the Cabinet were there: I remember discussing with Cecil Parkinson the number of free running shoes he had been sent after a recent profile had announced to the world that he was a keen runner. He offered me a pair, but it turned out his feet were much smaller than mine!

One of my main memories of running the UEA Tories was a meeting we held in 1985 with Cecil as the guest speaker. He was slowly being rehabilitated after his 1983 resignation and we expected a big crowd in Lecture Theatre 1. Little did I know that when we walked in it was full to overflowing with 900 students.

He got a standing ovation  which I was a little surprised at, as UEA was a very left-wing university in those days. Indeed, his reception was so good that it provoked the socialist workers crowd who tried to invade the stage. They failed, due to the skilful work of members of the UEA Rugby Society, so then the eggs started coming in. None of them hit Cecil. They all hit Ann, his wife, and me. My new suit was ruined. Cecil was furious and shouted which little lefty rat threw that at my wife? The rest of the audience cheered and turned on the egg throwers who left without further incident. What a great meeting! Cecil loved it!

My next encounters with Cecil came in 1990, when he was Transport Secretary. At that time I was working for a public relations company called Charles Barker. I had been recruited to beef up their lobbying efforts. I truth, I hated it. I was a fish out of water, and left after only three months.

One of my clients was Vauxhall, and they wanted to meet Cecil Parkinson and show off their new electric car. I kept asking them what they wanted from him in terms of policy, but they hadnt got a clue. All they were interested in was a few pictures of him driving their new product and shaking hands with their chief executive. It was at that point that I knew I could get no satisfaction working as a pimp, because thats what lobbying really was in those days  matchmaking without consummation.

At the time, I was good friends with Cecils SpAd, a redoubtable lady called Elizabeth Buchanan. She had previously worked for Paul Channon and later became a private secretary to the Prince of Wales and Margaret Thatcher.

Anyway, we sat together in an audience in Blackpool (I think) to listen to one of his party conference speeches. Cecil had never been a great platform speaker, and this year was no different. He plodded through his speech, but the audience wasnt really that interested. At the end, Elizabeth grabbed my arm and whispered: We must lead a standing ovation. I dutifully got to my feet and applauded like mad. Unfortunately we were the only two who did. It was mortifyingly embarrassing.

In 2004, he and Ann came up to North Norfolk to speak at a fundraiser for my campaign. He arrived very late, having driven the wrong way down the M11. But he was in fine form.

At one point, many years ago (in 1996, I think) I approached him to ask if he would c-ooperate with a biography I planned to write about him. He thought about it very seriously, but in the end he decided not to because he knew that all anyone would be interested in was the real story of his affair with Sara Keays. Its a book I would have loved to have written, as I believe his contribution to the Thatcher project has never really been told.

Despite his personal flaws, Cecil Parkinson was a towering political figure. I remain of the view that in different circumstances he could easily have succeeded Margaret Thatcher. Having said that, I am not sure that he would necessarily have been a great Prime Minister. But I will always regard him as one of the nicest people I have met in British politics.
This morning, Wales Online suggests that there may soon be another Supreme Court showdown between the British Government and the Labour administration in Wales.

The cause of the dispute is the decision of a majority of members of the Welsh Assembly to reject the Governments planned reforms to trades union legislation.

The AMs argue that the bill intrudes on the delivery of public services, responsibility for which are devolved. Yet the Government maintains that employment legislation is reserved to London.

One slightly hyperbolic commentator described the coming showdown as an epic battle about who runs Wales, whilst a Labour AM has accused the Welsh Tories  who are supporting the Government  of failing to stand up for the constitutional interests of Wales and the Welsh Assembly.

Carwyn Jones, the First Minister, revealed the scope of his constitutional ambitions when he declared in June that: The days of Parliamentary sovereignty are numbered.

The Government should make very clear that the days of Parliamentary sovereignty are here to stay, and be firm in defending their Westminsters role in the life of all parts of the kingdom.

A sovereign Parliament is the very foundation of the British constitution and should, in the context of devolution, be understood to be British sovereignty. It is what makes the United Kingdom a sovereign state.

Even countries which are explicitly federal, such as the United States or Germany, do not vest sovereignty in their provincial legislatures.

(They may vest it in a codified constitution, which is a separate discussion. But whether in a document or a Parliament, sovereignty remains central.)

This is a fact overlooked by those pro-Union people who advocate transferring sovereignty to the devolved institutions (including anybody who wants to make the Scottish Parliament permanent).

If the Government, and the pro-UK parties, want to stabilise the constitution, then they have to start standing up for the centre.

This means defending the legitimacy of the British Government and Parliament to make decisions on behalf of the British people on reserved issues  and being confident in exercising their mandate in such matters.

Further, any attempt to bring about a rational end point to devolution and stabilise the constitution must concede that there may be instances where it is right to restore some powers to Westminster  for example, Northern Irelands anomalous and hugely disruptive welfare responsibilities.

Likewise should Parliaments authority to legislate for employment matters in Wales require clarifying legislation then the Government should not be afraid to consider it.

The courts can only rule what is, not what should be, and the process of devolution since 1998 has been too ineptly handled to deserve to be frozen in aspic.

To take this course they will have to battle not only the nationalists, but also those professed pro-Union politicians in the devolved legislatures whose self-interest leads them to undermine London at every turn. First amongst the latter is the First Minister of Wales.

Since I first started covering devolved affairs for this site Ive had numerous opportunities to highlight how Welsh Labour, taking inspiration from their Scottish comrades, have evolved into a resentful, pseudo-nationalist bunch.

For example, when their education minister denounced Michael Gove for colonial attitudes for comparing the English and Welsh education systems, or when their public services minister expressed complete disinterest in who English Labour choose as their next (British) leader.

There are two drivers of this phenomenon. The first is the simple, self-interested rationale of all devolved politicians to seek to displace political blame to London and use that as an excuse to bolster their own position.

An awful lot of devolved discourse can be distilled down to: The blame lies elsewhere. The solution is to increase my power and prestige.

(A similar conjunction of interests applies to those journalists who cover those institutions, as they also profit when their subjects become more prestigious and exercise power over more areas of life.)

The second is something diagnosed by angry Labour activists after the partys disappointing general election result: Jones fixation on Plaid Cymru.

Hes determined to prevent Labour being outflanked on national issues: so he champions the Welsh language, disparages London, and takes an every power I can get approach to devolution. Yet this misreads the actual strategic challenge facing his party.

As one despairing Labour commentator pointed out, this has let him get outflanked by the Conservatives in a country which is not becoming more Welsh or more left wing.

Devolved politicians doubtless have important contributions to make to constitutional discussions. But it would be remiss for the Government to neglect the fact that some of them are would-be big fish, lobbying for small ponds.

And if Jones wants a sovereign Senedd, he should join Plaid  for only independence could deliver one.
It hasnt been a good week for those of us hoping hostilities in the Leave side of the EU referendum would simmer down  Arron Banks, the UKIP financier and founder of the Leave.EU campaign, gave an interview attacking his Vote Leave rivals as establishment yesterday, while The Times reported an attempted coup by Bernard Jenkin to unseat Dominic Cummings as Vote Leaves campaign director. The fight thickened today as The Independent quoted an anonymous MP (notably without saying which party they are from) as being set to resign from the organisations board, while The Times alleged that Chris Grayling supported Jenkins coup and the newspapers leader backed Cummings refusal to team up with Banks.

The dispute is, inevitably, a complex mixture of strategic differences (should the campaign be primarily about immigration, or based on a more optimistic presentation of an alternative outside the EU), personal differences (Cummings has history with various of the people involved), party differences (Leave.EU is essentially an outgrowth of UKIP) and disagreements about who should be the leading voices of the Leave campaign.

The current state of play appears to be as follows. Cummings has the backing of many, though possibly not all, of Vote Leaves donors, the people who will fund the eventual referendum campaign. He has, however, made some mis-steps in managing relationships with various of the other political players in the anti-EU world. When Peter Bone and Tom Pursglove founded their Grassroots Out campaign  a grassroots ally of Banks Leave.EU  part of their reason for doing so was that they felt their proposals had been unfairly rebuffed by Cummings. Now, some of the other long-established eurosceptic MPs, particularly Jenkin and Cash, also feel MPs risk being sidelined in the Vote Leave operation.

Graylings position is more nuanced. His friends say that he wants a truce between Vote Leave and Leave.EU, and also that he wants an end to internal strife within Vote Leave. Contrary to The Times report, those friends deny he had his involvement in any attempt to oust Cummings. His position on this matters a lot  as I wrote earlier this month, unless any bigger Cabinet beasts opt to support the anti-EU cause, then he could well end up as the senior Conservative Leave figure.

While all of this goes on, other opportunities are being lost. The Prime Minister is in the deepest throes of his troubled renegotiation, and may be about to produce a rabbit of some sort  but instead of being pressed closely on the topic, he is in Brussels, quietly hammering out his plan. There remains a shortage of Labour figures supporting Leave, despite the all-time low levels of discipline in the Parliamentary Labour Party  the addition of compelling voices like Gisela Stuart should be a priority. And of course other Cabinet Ministers, mulling whether to come out for Brexit, are unlikely to be encouraged by the current state of the Leave campaigns.

What happens next could well decide whether Britain ends up in or out of the EU. The Vote Leave and Leave.EU teams met for lunch yesterday, in an atmosphere one person in the room described as cathartic. Their respective leaders, Matthew Elliott and Banks, are meeting this afternoon for further discussions about the relationship between the two groups. Banks says the sticking point is Cummings  though Elliott reportedly told the Vote Leave board this week that the two come as a package, and rather than ditch him they are minded to rein him in in some way.

It isnt a happy picture. While Vote Leave isnt perfect, though, it remains the best chance of the Leave side winning the referendum. Its team has the experience of fighting and winning referendums, and it is still possessed of the broader and deeper cross-party support. Despite Leave.EUs claims, it has an active grassroots operation which has been hard at work in recent weeks. Some of its problems have arisen precisely because of Cummings and Elliotts efforts to take the correct strategic decisions  all the research, including Leave.EUs, suggests that immigration alone is not a sufficient argument to secure victory, for example. Relations with some parts of the eurosceptic movement have been fumbled, but Vote Leave is also correct to think that MPs cannot be the primary voice of the eventual campaign (an analysis on which they and Banks agree).

By contrast, while Leave.EU has certainly made up ground through its work with the Grassroots Out initiative (as I predicted a fortnight ago), it still has issues of its own. There are still concerns for many Conservative MPs that working with a campaign which is so close to the UKIP leadership would boost the appeal of the Peoples Army, which makes it harder for many of them to consider supporting it. Even more important  and fundamental to the division between the two groups  is the issue of whether its strategy to win the referendum is the correct one. At a briefing last night, Gerry Gunster, their American consultant and veteran of thirty-odd referendums in the US, presented the top-line findings of his polling and focus group research. According to Gunster, the three strongest messages, in descending order, are controlling our borders, keeping our money at home and running our own country  but while border control is essential to rallying the anti-EU base, he found that saving money has the greatest appeal to the low income women who make up much of the crucial swing vote.

The question will therefore be whether there will come a point at which Leave.EU is willing to move on from rallying the base by banging the immigration drum and work to persuade those undecideds with other messages. The advice Banks is getting is good, but given that he told Channel 4 last night that he had put immigration right at the centre of the campaign, and attacked Vote Leave for not doing so, it looks doubtful that he is open to following it.

The Banks/Elliott meeting this afternoon will be important. But so will the work of a third man  Steve Baker, the Wycombe MP and Co-Chair of Conservatives for Britain. In a war-torn landscape, hes effectively wearing the UN blue helmet, striving to keep Parliamentary eurosceptics united. He hasnt spoken to other outlets on the matter at any length, but today he tells me this:

I am concerned that we should be talking about what matters most to our constituents, in the pub, at home and in the supermarket  that is, all the issues that matter in their daily lives. On Europe, I am deeply frustrated whenever were talking about anything other than putting the positive, optimistic case for leaving the EU. Anything else is a distraction from the main strategic goal of securing a vote to leave, which is the safer choice in the public interest. As co-chair of Conservatives for Britain, Ive been closely involved in the development and support of Vote Leave. The entire Vote Leave team has done a fantastic job of bringing us this far, this fast. We must now take those steps necessary to ensure Vote Leave becomes the designated, cross-party campaign to leave the EU. Vote Leave can, and will, win. Its most unfortunate that distractions have played out in the press and I would ask all colleagues to refrain from press briefings on this issue of the first importance to our nations future.

He could well play the decisive role in whether things get better or worse from here on.
Close

A Canadian scientist who is a part of a coalition that is working on creating a vaccine for the Zika virus stated that a vaccine could potentially be available for emergency use before 2016 ends.

According to Gary Kobinger, who spoke with Reuters (via the New York Daily News), a vaccine could enter first-stage testing in humans by August. If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective, it could be used in the following months if health officials decide that there is a public health emergency.

"The first thing is to be ready for the worst," Kobinger said. "This vaccine is easy to produce. It could be cranked to very high levels in a really short time."

"I believe this will be the first to go into human testing. We believe we're ahead of the pack in the race for a Zika vaccine," Joseph Kim, the chief executive of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, added.

Kobinger, who is from Quebec City's Laval University and Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, is working with Inovio, the University of Pennsylvania and GeneOne Life Science in Korea on the vaccine.

U.S. officials have stated that they have two potential options that could be used to help create a vaccine that would also be tested by the end of the year. The officials stressed, however that it would take years before a vaccine can be made widely available.

The Zika virus, which is transmitted via the mosquito, has been spreading throughout the Americas. Although an infection is typically mild, there has been evidence that an infection might be tied to a birth defect called microcephaly. In Brazil, since the virus was first reported around the beginning of the summer, there have been more than 4000 suspected cases of microcephaly.

"Zika virus was this obscure disease in parts of Africa and South Pacific, and it wasn't a priority on anyone's radar screen," Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said reported by Huffington Post. "Now with the clear evidence of microcephaly, this is a big deal."

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the virus is "spreading explosively." The agency added that the virus is expected to affect up to four million people and could possibly be detected in all countries in the Americas with the exception of Canada and Chile.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Arunachal Pradesh Under President Rule: Article 356, Gubernatorial Office And Cooperative Federalism

By Tarannum Bano

29 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The proclamation of emergency rule in Arunachal Pradesh under article 356, has brought back the issue of the misuse of constitutional provision and gubernatorial offices and aspect of Indian federalism.The President Pranab Mukherjee approved the recommendation of the Union Cabinet to suspend a duly elected government of the congress party headed by Nabam Tuki and impose President Rule in Arunachal Pradesh on 26th January when the country was celebrating 67th anniversary of the implementation of the Constitution and the democratic and republicannature of the country.

This issue becomes more acute and intensive in the context of present scenario, as our Prime minister has been talking about the cooperative federalism.Though, the founders of the Indian constitution were inclined towards a complete federal system, the prevailing conditions of the country made them apprehensive towards a federal system and they showed their faith in a quasi-federal system with strong unitary features. Ambedkar was of the view that for a country, with such a diversity of culture, language and ethnicity a federal system is more suitable. He also expressed his views in constituent assembly debates that article 356 will remain a dead letter. But the political situation has been different and this article has been most controversial article in centre state relations.

This Article provides for the imposition of the Presidents rule when there is failure of constitutional machinery in the state. The ambiguity of expression if a situation has arisen in which the government of the state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provision of the Constitution had led to the Articles persistent misuse by all governments at the Centre.Nearly, after the seven decades of independence Indian federalism has passed through several stages and the relationship between the centre and the states has also been volatile and irresolute.Though, the Constitution attempts to divide the power in a clear cut manner and seeks to reduce the chances of conflicts between the centre and the states, the nature of Indian federalism is not only determined by these provisions.

There are several other institutional arrangements which play a crucial role in determining the shape and direction of Indian federal system such as office of president, governor, judiciary and role of political parties and some other constitutional provisions. Indian constitution does not originally make any specific mention of political parties like the U.S, and diverse and complex nature of Indian federal system is not favourable for the two party system.

In the early years of independence Congress was a single dominant party at centre as well as in almost all the states. Indian federalism working rather smoothly,solving the disputes as inter party conflicts, but the scenario changed after the 1967 elections, when congress lost its control in almost half of the states,and the cases of misuse of article 356 began to emerge.Operation of the multi-party system at the two levels of the government put the provisions of the federalism to test. Initially, the central government presented its positive and cooperative gesture towards these governments, but in practice the congress government did not showed cooperation with these opposition governments. The non congress ministries in Haryana,UP, and West Bengal were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in their respective state legislatures.

After independence there has been several disgraced examples of this execrable politics.Specially, in 1977 when the Janata government suspended congress governments in nine states on the ground that these governments had lost legitimacy and faith of the people as was Congress was defeated in general election held after emergency. In 1979, after the disintegration of the Janata government congress backed to the power and suspended the governments installed by the Janata party in the same manner.The political history of the suspension of the government shows that almost all the suspended governments have been from opposition parties holding the governments of the states. Committees formed on centre State relations also signify Article 356 as a core point of tension between centre and the states. The supreme court of India in the case of S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, asserted that the power of proclamation under Article 356 must be used with circumspection and in a non partisan manner.

In proclamation of Article 356 the role of governor has also been an issue of debate.At the time of drafting the constitution the matter of selection of the governor was also discussed by the representatives. They made a provision of appointed governor rather than elected one to ignore the problems of overlapping the authority and assure a smooth and amiable functioning of the government of the states. But the cases shows that in the political crisis the role of governor has been as an agent of centre, a persuader of constitutional breakdown and never been free from political biasness. Periodically, they have proved their political fidelity towards theirpatron political parties over the allegiance and responsibilities of constitutional office.It is perceived that after the end of one party dominance and in the era of coalition government the dimension of Indian federalism has been changed from a conflict era to a more cooperative federal system. But the recent incident has proved that the Indian political system has to cut across a long route of malicious politics, misuse of constitutional provisionsand holding the dignity and impartiality of the gubernatorial office, towards a cooperative federalism.

Tarannum Bano is the Research Scholar in the Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi,

Author can be mailed at trannumntw@gmail.com




Parents sounded off this week on whether Bismarck should build a new middle school, and they offered the district insight on how to best accommodate the ongoing influx of students.

Opinions were mixed at public forums held Wednesday and Thursday that drew dozens of parents and community members curious about the growing pains at Bismarck Public Schools.

School district leaders wanted parents to weigh in on whether to build another middle school or construct additions at each of the three facilities. Enrollment at the district's secondary schools is expected to increase by at least 500 in three years, and the middle schools are at or near capacity.

"In my mind, it would be more traumatic and difficult to build a fourth middle school," said Christi Stonecipher, who has three kids in Bismarck's public schools.

She said constructing additions would cost less and avoid the hassle of creating new attendance boundaries.

Others felt conflicted about which direction the school district should take.

"I see the value of that new facility rather than putting band-aids on existing facilities, but then you have to consider the cost," said Marnie Walth, who sits on the Bismarck High School parent advisory committee and writes a health column for the Bismarck Tribune.

Parents and others at the forums also discussed the merits of larger middle schools if the district does not build a new facility.

Merle Hintz, a father to a Bismarck High School student, said big schools are not necessarily problematic.

"It depends on how they are run and set up," he said.

Stonecipher expressed a similar opinion, saying she trusted the experts to structure a school's setup to accommodate a large number of students without feeling too massive.

"I would like to keep the schools moderately sized here, but that is not possible," she said.

Another hot topic was the school district's feeder system, in which elementary schools are assigned one of three middle school, and each middle school progresses to a designated high school.

More than one parent voiced their support for maintaining the existing system.

"Students need to have that direction," Bismarck mom Stacey Castleman said, adding that it provides continuity.

Stonecipher said the feeder system is particularly important for middle school students moving into high school. She said that transition should be as smooth as possible, and she expressed concern about causing students stress if some of their middle school friends were required to attend a different high school.

Those who participated in the forums were presented other avenues as well, such as creating a single school for all the district's kindergarteners or sixth graders. Additional possibilities include turning Century High School into a middle school while building another high school, or re-purposing older elementary schools to house various district services.

A committee of 75 parents, school employees and community members has worked the past several months to assess options and visit schools. The group will study the information gathered at the public forums before the school board decides how to move forward.
Printer Friendly Version Dispossessed In The Name Of 'Security'



By Robert J. Burrowes 29 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org



A new book, edited by Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes, both involved with The Transnational Institute, brings together a thoughtful collection of scholars, journalists and activists to explain the pre-eminence of the military and corporations in shaping the global response to the climate catastrophe as an 'opportunity'. See 'The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations are Shaping a Climate-Changed World'. http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745336961& Do you think that this catastrophe is an 'opportunity'?



In a series of chapters both in the book and online, we are thoughtfully guided through a deeper understanding of how, for the security/military-industrial complex, 'climate change is just the latest in a long line of threats constructed in such a way as to consolidate its grip on power and public finance.' For corporations, the risk posed by climate change is an opportunity for profit as they promise us 'food security', 'water security', 'energy security' even if it is at the expense of equity and justice and has 'disastrous implications for the security of human lives and dignity'.



For the security industry, for example, it is an opportunity to offer governments an endless supply of resilience and disaster-related services that have little to do with human security, if your concern is ordinary people. Similarly, 'water security' justifies a soft-drinks manufacturer 'securing' water supplies in drought-prone regions of India, denying local villagers clean drinking water.



And 'energy security' is used to justify the aggressive exploitation of 'unconventional' fossil fuels, the use of military violence to 'secure' energy transport routes, the suppression of protests against further fossil fuel extraction and 'the expansion of renewable energy in a way that ignores concerns about human rights, democratic governance, or energy access'.



As this deadly effort to dispossess the many to secure a future for the few plays out, control of the world's food supply concentrates dangerously in the hands of ever fewer corporations  starting with the ABCD of agribusiness: ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus  at the expense of small farmers and consumers. With land and water grabs and the spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) exacerbating the concentration of food production, distribution and access, the global elite is happy to systematically starve to death 100,000 people each day and send a billion to bed hungry. Profit trumps people. Insane? You decide.



And having created the 'refugee problem' by starving or bombing people out of their homes, elites now use a related set of corporations to erect border fences, provide 'border security' and maintain detention centres and prisons when these refugees seek a viable place to live away from the starvation/war zone they have been forced to flee. As always for the global elite, human beings are victims to be exploited or killed, not people to be supported and helped out of empathy and compassion.



While some corporations offer 'hi-tech solutions' to the crisis, such as geoengineering (or, more accurately, geopiracy as some have labelled it), we need to gently remind ourselves that there is no technical solution to a vast range of problems, including extinction. More importantly, there is no technical solution to human fear, and particularly the fear that makes some people view humans as 'masters' of the Earth rather than just one part of the web of life (who might also be responsible stewards, if we so chose).



Of course, like corporations, the military is also concerned about the climate catastrophe: how can it maintain its capacity to kill and destroy, and its pre-eminent role because of these capacities, in a world in which environmental impacts threaten military infrastructure, energy supply and transport routes but also reinforce the demand for a sensible reallocation of resources to deal with the crisis and other important social and environmental issues?



As the chapter on 'greenwashing death' explains, the US military, for example, is responding in a variety of ways, ranging from switching to nuclear power and agro fuels (supposedly 'green') to making 'green bullets' (with copper instead of lead). Strangely, systematically reducing military capacities to reduce the devastating climate and other environmental impacts of the military is not an option being considered. Nor is the option of economic conversion to non-military (that is, socially valuable) production.



In short, the military is looking to expand its role by emphasizing what it portrays as 'security' threats arising from ecological disasters (although there has been no suggestion that military training and bases should be reoriented/converted to disaster training institutes). And, of course: 'There are no military strategies that focus on the root causes of climate change and what should be done to change these, because the military's primary objective is to secure the current world order, no matter how unjust or unsustainable it is'.



And yet, despite everything that the military and corporations do to destroy the bonds of human solidarity in our world, many people still act selflessly as the people of Occupy Sandy did after Hurricane Sandy hit New York and the government and people of Cuba did after surviving the same hurricane. In addition to this simple example, however, the book offers many instances of people responding powerfully to the state of our world.



I have a few friendly issues with the editors and authors of this book reflecting my own long-term engagement with the concerns discussed thoughtfully in it.



First, my own reading of the science persuades me that we do not have 'climate change' but a climate catastrophe. Language is important and 'change' has a benign connotation for most people. Just as the word 'security' has been adversely co-opted so, in the context of the climate, has the word 'change'.



Second, I would talk about capitalism, not neoliberalism. The precise form that capitalism takes in a particular era might reflect 'evolution' of a sort but, in whatever guise, capitalism is fundamentally exploitative as playing the board game 'Monopoly' taught me as a child. Capitalism is designed to bankrupt and eliminate other 'players' from the 'game' leaving just one 'player' (the global elite) to own everything. With corrupted legal systems and military forces also used to defend capitalism as a structure of exploitation, there seems little point to me in shifting the focus to one or another manifestation of it. Capitalism kills people. Our task is to explain this, which this book does superbly.



Prior to the emergence of empires in the past few thousand years (which use/d military violence to extract resources from the empire's periphery and return them to the centre), and in contrast to capitalism (which now performs a similar function using exploitative trading arrangements backed by military violence when necessary), locally self-reliant forms of economic activity have maximised individual and species survival, and nurtured the Earth, for four billion years. These forms must be restored and supported now.



Third, buying into the elite narrative about the time we have to respond to this catastrophe by using an 'end of century' timeframe is unwise. At the current rate of synergistic environmental destruction, and based on the highly problematic assumption that we can prevent nuclear war, I expect human extinction by 2030 without a concerted and strategic effort by individuals, groups and communities. Why 2030? Because it is human fear, not environmental destruction, that is the crux of the problem. See 'Why is Near Term Human Extinction Inevitable?' http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes171214.htm



Fourth, in my view, it is important to identify and focus on elite insanity. See 'The Global Elite is Insane'. http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes050214.htm For more detail, see 'Why Violence?' http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence Time and again throughout this book, one author after another described corporate and/or military behaviour that is quite insane. For example, the day after climate scientists reported a record decline in Arctic sea ice, Shell Alaska vice-president Peter Slaiby stated the company's view as follows: 'I will be one of those persons most cheering for an endless summer in Alaska'.



Apart from displaying a mind quite incapable of grappling with, and responding intelligently to, the complex reality explained by science, he also revealed himself to be someone who is quite insane: incapable of normal perception, behaviour and social interaction', someone who is incapable of love, compassion, empathy and sympathy for those organisms, human and non-human alike, who are already suffering the adverse impacts of the climate catastrophe. But Slaiby is not alone as an endless sequence of insane pronouncements by elite individuals is given ample publicity by the media. Do I need to mention the current crop of US presidential candidates in this context? We have become so used to this insanity, that it is rarely noted. But it is people in this category who are driving official inaction or wrong action.



And fifth, my own experience is consistent with Gandhi's belief that resistance to structural violence requires powerful individuals to work collaboratively in a strategic manner. For this reason, giving individuals opportunities to experience and expand their individual power is an important corollary of providing opportunities for collective resistance. For this reason, I believe that 'The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth' http://tinyurl.com/flametree offers a superior response for individuals, groups and communities who have not previously engaged in resistance but who must now be drawn into the collective overall effort to both fight the climate catastrophe but also, simultaneously, all other manifestations of elite-driven violence as well.



In short, giving people opportunities to respond powerfully, at home, is invaluable. Some of these will then join organised campaigns of resistance. Even if they do not, they are still personally involved in undermining the structural violence that is destroying our world.



But to return to the book: if you want further evidence of the elite insanity that is driving military and corporate interests to perceive the climate catastrophe as an opportunity to extend their control over people and resources and to maximise profits while doing so, then you do not need to go past this book.



In nauseatingly documented detail, the authors clearly spell out the challenges we face in resisting elite-driven violence while also intelligently responding to a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. For this reason, the book is invaluable.



Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?' http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com





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Why Is The World Ignoring Palestines Third Intifada?

By Shubhda Chaudhary

29 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Already ravaged by two political Intifadas in the past, Palestine is now undergoing a third leaderless Intifada in West Bank and Gaza. In fact, there is disagreement over whether a leader is even needed. In a striking paradox, several names are being considered for the leadership that does not exist: Jerusalem Intifada, Mass Intifada, Revolutionary Wave and Third Intifada.

As West Asia is too gripped in sectarian conflict and rise of ISIS, this emerging trend is going unnoticed. But the violence is already cementing the layers of distrust that Palestinians harbor against Jews, with calcifying hatred.

After the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and other sacred Islamic sites in various parts of the occupied Palestine by Israelis, Palestinians have been pouring out on the streets. The retaliatory attacks by Palestinians have claimed the lives of seven Israelis while leaving a number of them injured. It should be noted that the average age of demonstrators and people responsible for stabbing and running over people is less than 20 years old. They were born after the Oslo Accord between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993 and 1995. They are just coming of age, and its hard for them to see any future but a bleak one.

The violence was evident during the funeral of Ruqayya abu-Eid, the 13-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli security forces. During the funeral, the crowd chanted the famous slogan of the second intifada  Millions of martyrs are marching to Jerusalem and waved the Hamas flag.

The video of the attempted stabbing attack, released by Israeli security forces, aroused furious responses from Palestinians on Arab social media. Since the videos quality is low and the girl appears to be proudly heading toward the soldiers with a knife in her hand, many Palestinians claim that the knife was planted in the video in order to justify the girl's execution.

The point, however is, why Palestine in spite of the two Intifadas in the past, has not been able to achieve the goal? The first factor for the victory of any struggle is having consolidated leadership chosen by people, whose absence is seriously felt in the Palestinian movement. Throughout the history of the Palestinian nations struggles, two streaks of Islamist and nationalistic thinking have accompanied this nation side by side. Even the establishment of a coalition government has not been able to totally do away with the basic differences that exist between these two groups. As a result of it, the internal power politics in Palestine has never been materialized, especially with the animosity between Hamas and Fatah growing stronger. It makes it easier for Israel to simply state that Theres no one to talk to?, while referring to the bifurcated leadership in Palestine.

Absence of a stable and powerful leadership has led to the second factor, that is, inability to mobilize the Palestinian people, which have caused prolongation of the Palestinian crisis. This means that there are no powerful and legitimate centers in Palestine around which mobilization and broad-based gathering of people could take place. Thirdly, lack of territorial continuity and geographical distance between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is another factor, which has proven to be a major impediment on the way of the unity and close cooperation among Palestinian nation and has barred them from making effective moves.

At the same time, the chances of a two-state solution are growing slim. This has happened in the past 25 years which focused on borders, settlements, Jerusalem and the right of return of refugees as demographic changes took place. No wonder in 1948 Palestinians owned 80 per cent of the land. Following the establishment of Israel their land had shrunk to less than 3.5 per cent. The same laws were used extensively in the West Bank to confiscate Palestinian land, which were later handed to Israeli settlers to build Jewish only colonies.

Another salient case of Israeli discrimination against non-Jewish Israeli citizens is the Prawer-Begin plan to depopulate 35 unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Negev desert. In one instance, Israel demolished and Palestinian Israeli citizens rebuilt the village of Al-Araqeeb 93 times in the last five years.

The Israeli prime minister and other top officials lashed out against Sweden earlier this month after its foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, called for an investigation into the slayings of dozens of Palestinians in recent months.

Chief Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu has called for executing Palestinians in order to afford safety for the Israeli occupation states. Israeli army has to stop arresting Palestinians, he posted on his Facebook wall, but, it must execute them and leave no one alive.

Meanwhile, reports about a leaderless intifada have gone viral on social networks in the past few days. Some Palestinian activists are calling for a decentralized field leadership capable of planning and guiding the movement while confronting Israeli escalations. Others demand that the intifada remain spontaneous and leaderless. Still others believe that the success of the popular spontaneous movement is conclusive evidence of the failure of Palestinian organizations and leaders in their political performance in past years.

Shubhda Chaudhary is a PhD scholar in International Relations at JNU. She is also working with think tanks in Abu Dhabi and South Africa. Email Id : shubhda. chaudhary@gmail.com






In Palestine Even Going To School Is A Form Of Nonviolent Resistance

By Cassandra Dixon

29 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Photo Credit: Cassandra Dixon

This little girl was injured by two masked settlers who attacked her with stones as she gathered herbs with a friend on the path between Tuba and Tuwani. She and her siblings make the same trip on foot each school day. She is an amazingly smart and tough young girl  insistent that the many odd volunteers that pass through her life should learn her name and visit her familys home. She needed four stitches in a head wound after the attack.

The worst worries of a childs school day should be homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No childs walk to school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives.

Once, the trip from the tiny hamlet of Tuba to the school in the village of Tuwani was a calm and beautiful walk along a quiet road connecting the two villages. During the l980s Israeli settlers built a settlement on privately owned Palestinian land, which had been used to graze sheep and goats. Following construction of the settlement, the settlers established an illegal outpost. Now, industrial chicken barns sit astride the road that once served children walking to school, farmers taking livestock to town, and families traveling to Tuwani, or the larger town of Yatta for health care, shopping, and higher education.

Between the settlement and the outpost, what remains of the road is closed to Palestinians. With one exception, - children walk behind an Israeli military jeep to reach their school. Their parents are not allowed to walk with them.

The twenty or so children who make this trip start their school day in an unprotected field, anxiously waiting for the Israeli soldiers who will oversee their walk to school. Villagers had built shelters in which the children could await the soldiers, but Israeli authorities have dismantled every shelter. If it is raining, the children get soaked. Some days the soldiers are the same soldiers who chased or arrested shepherds the day before  shepherds who may be the brothers or fathers of these children. Some days the soldiers are late, leaving the group of children waiting, vulnerable to attack and within easy reach of the outpost. Some days the military escort does not arrive at all, and the children make the trip to school with international volunteers along a longer path, which also lies alongside the settlement.

About 1,000 people live in the neighboring villages, an estimated half of whom are children. Nevertheless, because the villages lie inside of Israeli Firing Zone 918, the military uses the land for military training.

Amazingly, despite all of this, it is almost unheard of for children to miss a day of school. Parents are determined that their children will be educated. When I began volunteering in Tuwani, the school reached only to third grade. Now thanks to the communitys determination to provide their children with education, students can complete high school in the village, and although facing a continued threat of demolition by Israeli military bulldozers, villagers have built and staffed primary schools for children who live in 8 nearby villages.

This is what nonviolent resistance to military occupation looks like.

Im grateful that I can spend a portion of this year in Palestine. For many years children in these villages have taught me about nonviolence. Sometimes, the presence of international human rights workers holding cameras has some small positive effect on their days.

U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of their childhoods. The U. S. subsidizes about 25% of Israels military budget, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year.

Im working with the Italian organization Operation Dove.

They support Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation, standing with families in their commitment to remain on their land. This includes accompanying school children and farm families as they walk to school, graze their animals and tend their crops. Operation Dove helps document the harassment, intimidation, arrests, detentions, home demolitions, checkpoints, road closures, military training exercises, and settler attacks. Villagers also report to Operation Dove when they endure theft and when their crops and property are destroyed.

Protective presence provided by activists is not a large-scale solution to the violence that intrudes into childrens lives in Palestine. But many years of visits with these families persuades me that its important and necessary to support and participate in the villagers nonviolent efforts. Families that confront militarism and occupation help us move beyond our addiction to militarism and violence.

The children I met early on are grown now. Some have gone on to college, and some have families of their own. These young people have every reason to be angry. Their childhoods included fear, intimidation, demolitions, arrests and isolation. But they have also grown up witnessing their communitys steadfast commitment to nonviolently resist injustice. Their families have supported them well, including them in the communitys struggle for dignity. Against all odds they are growing up with humor and tenacity instead of anger and bitterness. They are living proof to the rest of us that love wins.

To read more about Operation Doves work in the South Hebron Hills, visit http://www.operazionecolomba.it/togetherattuwani

Cassandra Dixon lives at Mary House of Hospitality, a small catholic worker house which offers hospitality to families visiting the federal prison at Oxford, WI, and works as a carpenter in Madison.






Palestinian Uprising Is About More Than Knives

By Budour Youssef Hassan

29 January, 2016

Electronicintifada.net

Palestinians form a human chain around Jerusalems Old City on 26 December, calling on Israel to return the bodies of Palestinians slain by its forces. Faiz Abu Rmeleh /ActiveStills

When the intifada of the knives set off in October last year, Western reporters flooded in to Jerusalem to cover the new escalation, interview people from both sides of the conflict and raise several variations of the old question: Is this the beginning of a third intifada?

Inevitably, the journalists left once a massive crackdown significantly reduced the number of deadly attacks against Israelis in the city. It is an all too familiar pattern for Palestinians, who know by now that its only escalation when there are dead or wounded Israelis. Deaths, injuries, arrests and home demolitions inflicted on Palestinians by Israel are deemed business as usual, not worthy of further inquiry.

The daily acts of collective punishment suffered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and their slow ethnic cleansing are too routine to be considered newsworthy.

The temporary checkpoints, closures and concrete blocks imposed during the crackdown may have gone and the numbers of Israeli troops on the streets may have been reduced. Yet the Israeli repression  and Palestinian resistance  remains.

Holding the dead hostage

One of Israels most troubling tactics is its withholding the bodies of slain Palestinians.

In mid-October the Israeli security cabinet endorsed several measures to quell the unrest. One involved reviving a decades-long policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks.

Since then, more than 80 bodies have been withheld. Israel began gradually releasing the bodies in late December after weeks of mass protests, most notably in Hebron, but the bodies of 10 Palestinian Jerusalemites remain in Israeli morgues.

The families of Bahaa Alayan, Thaer Abu Ghazaleh, Hassan Manasra, Alaa Abu Jamal, Ahmad Abu Shaaban, Mutaz Uweisat, Omar Iskafi, Abd al-Mohsen Hassouna, Musab al-Ghazali and Muhammad Nimer are still battling for the right to lay their children to rest.

Exploiting the geographic and political isolation of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Israel has attached repressive conditions to the release of the bodies. Their families must bury them on the opposite side of the wall Israel has built around the city, limit the number of mourners present at burial, bury the dead only at certain late hours and pay a surety in lieu of those conditions.

International apathy

Bahaa Alayans father Muhammad has led the popular campaign in Jerusalem protesting these measures.

We are being deprived of our right to mourn and Israel is using the dead bodies of our children to break us, Alayan told The Electronic Intifada. Yet the issue is not receiving a fraction of the coverage and attention it deserves.

The 60-year-old lawyer believes that the families of Jerusalems martyrs have been completely abandoned by the Palestinian Authority. He struggles to understand the apathy of the Western media.

None of the Western journalists who had approached him following his sons killing to ask why such a bright young man should carry out a knife attack have bothered to come back and ask about Bahaas body, Muhammad said.

Had they done so, they would have found the Alayans sleeping in a makeshift tent next to the rubble of their house. The Alayan home is one of several demolished by Israel in retaliation for individual attacks. The policy of punitive home demolitions was also contained in the package of measures approved by Israels security cabinet in October and has been endorsed by Israels high court.

Pushed to mobilize

The policies to withhold bodies of alleged attackers and demolish their families homes constitute some of the most egregious human rights violations against Palestinians in Jerusalem. But they have also pushed the community to mobilize.

On 1 December, youth held a concert at the Palestinian National Theatre  also known as El-Hakawati  in support of parents with children in prison and those waiting for the release of their childrens bodies. The theaters largest hall was filled to capacity; revenues were allocated to home reconstruction.

The communal solidarity organized by residents in Jerusalems Shuafat refugee camp following the destruction of Ibrahim Akaris home was replicated throughout the West Bank, notably in Ramallah and Nablus.

There has been direct action, too. Inspired by Bahaa Alayans idea of forming a reading human chain back in March 2014, Palestinians did just that on 26 December. The chain encircled the walls of Jerusalems Old City, with participants demanding the return of martyrs bodies before the peaceful protest was violently dispersed by Israeli forces.

Mobilizing mass protests in the face of Israels extreme repression has become even harder for Palestinians in Jerusalem since October. Israel has deliberately targeted leading activists in the city by jailing them, putting them under house arrest, threatening arrest, or handing down orders to expel them from the city.

These measures did not stop Hijazi Abu Sbeih and Samer Abu Eisheh from setting up a protest tent in the yard of the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Jerusalems Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. While the tent was initially erected to provide the two with shelter when they rejected Israels order to banish them from Jerusalem, it was soon transformed into a vibrant space of civil disobedience.

Moment of freedom

For nearly two weeks, the tent brimmed with energy and revolutionary spirit free of factional divisions. Concerts were held there along with public lectures and discussions.

More than providing support for the two protesters, those who attended were imbued with a rare sense of genuine, if short-lived, freedom. Here they were able to sing, raise their voices against Israeli oppression, chant I am not leaving, immerse themselves in debate and organize.

Palestinians are often asked about the alternative to their corrupt and failed leadership. Those who visited the tent could get a glimpse of what that could like.

On 6 January, both Abu Eisheh and Abu Sbeih were arrested by special Israeli police units on the Red Cross premises. The two have been charged with defying military orders and inciting violence via Facebook, Abu Eishehs lawyer, Mahmoud Hassan, told The Electronic Intifada.

The protest tent, and Israels arrest raid there, did not capture the attention of international journalists, even though these nonviolent forms of resistance and Israels crackdown on them are at the heart of Jerusalems story.

One cannot yet speak of an organized mass movement among Palestinians, but this current uprising has much more to it than knife attacks waged by individuals. And Israels repression goes far beyond bullets and checkpoints.

Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. Blog: budourhassan.wordpress.com. Twitter: @Budour48




Youll Never BELIEVE Who Chomsky Could 'Absolutely' Vote For! (but her ex-president husband already knows)

By Mickey Z.

29 January, 2016

World News Trust

Another presidential election charade is upon us and Im reminded of something the late Pakistani dissident, Eqbal Ahmad, once said about Noam Chomsky in the book, Confronting Empire (2000): He (Chomsky) has never wavered. He has never fallen into the trap of saying, Clinton will do better. Or Nixon was bad but Carter at least had a human rights presidency. There is a consistency of substance, of posture, of outlook in his work.

(Sounds good in theory but it seems Ahmad wasnt aware Noam had voted for Clinton in 1992.)

Decent human survival

By 2004, Chomsky was far more public about his voting strategies, saying stuff like this: Anyone who says I dont care if Bush gets elected is basically telling poor and working people in the country, I dont care if your lives are destroyed.

And this: "Despite the limited differences [between Bush and Kerry] both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

Lets step back and recognize how the 2004 election proved that the high profile Left is irrelevant. Chomsky and Howard Zinn were joined in the vocal, visible, and vile Anybody-But-Bush ranks by stars like Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Medea Benjamin, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, Manning Marable, Naomi Klein, Phil Donahue, Barbara Ehrenreich, Martin Sheen, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Cornel West, etc. etc.

News flash: John Kerry still lost.

The poor and working people in the country that Chomsky mentions above are paying ZERO attention to him or anyone like him... and thats a much bigger issue than which war criminal gets to play figurehead for the empire over the next four years.

In 2008, Noam continued to prove Eqbal Ahmad wrong by doling out advice like this: I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions.

Which brings us to 2016.

After eight years of Obamas repression, exploitation, and ecocide -- sans illusions, of course -- Chomsky is now declaring that the Republican Party and its presidential candidates are literally a serious danger to decent human survival."

Thus, he is once again talking about strategic voting, even if it meant voting for Hillary Clinton -- which he would absolutely do!

Since most humans memory cards appear to be wiped clean every four years, please allow me to remind you how the original Clinton the Lesser Evil worked out for what Chomsky terms decent human survival.

Criminal negligence

To begin, lets all reflect back upon the years 1993 and 1994 -- when President William Jefferson Clinton was enjoying the "advantage" of a Democratically-controlled Congress.

In just two years, the liberal hero abandoned his pledge to consider offering asylum to Haitian refugees, backed away from his most high-profile campaign issue: health care, and reneged on his promise to "take a firm stand" against the armed forces' ban of gays and lesbians.

In 1993-4, Clinton signed a little something called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), presided over the invasion of Somalia, increased the Pentagon budget by $25 billion, forced Jocelyn Elders to resign, dumped Lani Guinier, ordered the bombing of Iraq and the Balkans, renewed the sanctions on Iraq, and passed a crime bill that gave us more cops, more prisons, and 58 more offenses punishable by death.

All this came before Newt Gingrich and much-hyped Republican "revolution" in 1994 and I havent even gotten to the environment.

In the first three years of the Clinton-Gore regime -- two of which, I remind you, involved a Democratic House and Senate -- Bubba and his little green buddy gave us fun stuff like: The passage of the salvage logging rider, the continuation of the use of methyl bromide, the weakening of the Endangered Species Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, the lowering of grazing fees on land, the subsidizing of Florida's sugar industry, the reversing the ban on the production and importation of PCBs, and allowing the export of Alaskan oil.

When Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, David Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times called "Why I Won't Vote for Clinton." In this piece, Brower declared that Clinton and Gore had "done more harm to the environment in three years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did in 12 years." (Thats Bush the Elder, not Bush the Lesser for those of you scoring at home.)

One more time, with feeling: Clinton and Gore did more harm to the environment in three years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did in 12 years. When exactly does decent human survival come into play here?

I could go on and on about the rest of Bill Clintons reign, like the repeal of welfare, a telecommunications bill that further narrowed the already laughable parameters of public debate, the Defense of Marriage Act, but Ill just focus on one more lesser evil gem: The Anti-Terrorism & Effective Death Penalty Act -- signed into law on April 24, 1996.

This USA PATRIOT Act prequel contained provisions that Clinton himself admitted "make a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having nothing to do with fighting terrorism." This unconstitutional salvo severely restricted habeas corpus and expanded the number of federal capital crimes -- and the notorious PATRIOT Act is mostly an extension its legal foundations.

For a little more two-party context, consider that John Kerry voted for the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996 and wrote parts of the PATRIOT Act in 2001; Hillary voted for the PATRIOT Act in 2001; and both she and Obama voted to reauthorize it in 2005. Hooray for strategy!

Chomsky knows all this (and much more) but as mentioned, he strategically chose to vote for Bill Clinton in 1992. Ill bet the half million Iraqi children who died when Clinton continued Bush the Elders sanctions appreciated the gesture.

To paraphrase myself: A vote for either major party is -- at best -- an act of criminal negligence.

The other 364.99 days

Why do I feel any of this matters? I believe for a man of Chomskys stature on the Left to engage in talk of strategic voting is an unnecessary and irresponsible act, one that indirectly contributes to the misguided perception that a Democrat winning the election is somehow a Pyrrhic victory of sorts.

Ill say it yet again: If you plan to vote for yet another lesser (sic) evil in 2016, go ahead. Kid yourself. Feel superior. Engage in three-hour social media flame wars to defend your choice. Hold your nose and pull the damn lever. Use Chomsky quotes to justify it (even though hes also called for ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that dont pay attention to the election cycle).

And Ill add this yet again: Vote or no vote, all that matters is what youre doing the other 364.99 days. Make no mistake, if we continue allowing our meager time and energy to be diverted into elections, we will one day be asked why we made such a choice.

The human beings and all living things that come after us wont care who we voted for in 2016, if they have no clean air to breathe, no clean water to use, and are stuck on a toxic, uninhabitable police state of a planet.

Theyd probably just want to ask: Why did you stand by and let everything be consumed or poisoned or destroyed? Why in the world did you focus so much of your energy on elections and so little on action?

#shifthappens

Mickey Z. is the author of 13 books, most recently Occupy these Photos: NYC Activism Through a Radical Lens. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, you can like his Facebook page here and follow his blog here. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.




The Ramkota banquet room thundered with applause Thursday as Barb Aasen, chair of the Missouri Slope Areawide United Way, announced the 2015 campaign goal of $2.6 million was exceeded  $66,488 more was raised than during the 2014 campaign. The figure $2,601,888 was announced with a show of life-sized numerical cards on stage.

About 400 organizers, contributors and volunteers gathered to hear the progress of the campaign that will benefit 32 partnering agencies.

"It was so exciting because we were raising money until the final hour," said Jenna Gullo, of United Way. "We are just so happy to meet the needs of the community and so appreciative. We help a 10-county area but plan to focus on Bismarck and Mandan because that is where a majority of donors are.

"We started the backpack program in Beulah, Hazen and Linton. We have the Imagination Library in multiple towns .... It's not about a single agency. It's about all of us working together to accomplish something greater than ourselves.

"We have all of the top community leaders. We have the volunteers. You can be from any walk of life and contribute to United Way  not just monetary, but also of your time, compassion and energy. We need it all," Gullo said.

North Dakota's first lady Betsy Dalrymple praised the work of MSA United Way.

"I've really enjoyed my participation in a lot of events I've done with them in the last six years. ... (Dolly Parton's) Imagination Library is near and dear to my heart. ... It mails age-appropriate books to children ages zero to 5 directly to their home. Bismarck-Mandan has been doing it since 2009," she said.

In-kind volunteer work totaled $237,000 through 4,642 volunteers giving 165,378 hours throughout 2015, Aasen said.

Volunteers packed 8,931 backpacks filled with 53,896 meals for United Way's food program that ensures youngsters have enough to eat over the weekends when unable to access federal school lunch programs. More than 100,000 meals were served to help seniors maintain their independence.

Richard Weber was awarded the Lifetime Caring Award for MSA United Way for his work in the arts, education, health care, human services, nonprofits, the Bismarck School District, the Bismarck Library Foundation and Peace Corps.
The quilts on display came from alum Judy Morton's private collection, which was gifted to the University of Southern Indiana in 2013. Photo by Kelly Gifford.

SHARE Susan Sauls, curator of the exhibit, picked each quilt to showcase in the gallery. Each has a provenance on the back giving background on how the quilt was made and by whom. Photo by Kelly Gifford. Quilts "Wild Geese, Flying Geese" and "Arkansas Beauty" at USI's new exhibition "Quilting in Community." Photo by Kelly Gifford. Susan Sauls, curator of the exhibit, shows the hand written provenances that donor Judy Morton wrote on the back of each quilt to remember the background story behind each of them. Photo by Kelly Gifford.

By Kelly Gifford of the Courier and Press

Collecting Amish quilts was about much more than having one-of-a-kind, hand-stitched quilts for Judy Morton.

She saw every pattern, patch and stitch on her quilts as a connection to the Southern Indiana Amish community. With each new quilt, Morton wanted to learn more about the women and men who made them and what quilting represented to the Amish community as a whole. Her curiosity for the backstories of her quilts flourished into a mutual respect and friendship with the Daviess County Amish community  a relationship that grew stronger through each new quilt.

"I had a need to know the person behind these beautiful quilts so that people could know that something so beautiful was made by a real life, vibrant person," Morton said. "Luckily, I was permitted to speak with the woman who made the first quilt I bought at auction. That was the beginning of what became a very cherished relationship."

Several of Morton's quilts will be on display at the McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries through March 13 as part of the "Quilting in Community: A Celebration of a Southern Indiana Amish Tradition" exhibition. The exhibited quilts are part of the Morton Quilt Collection that she and her late husband, Tom Morton, donated to the University of Southern Indiana in 2013, and the exhibit is an endorsed Indiana Bicentennial Commission Legacy Project event There will be an opening reception from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at the gallery that will include brief remarks from Morton and curator Susan Sauls.

The collection features several Amish contemporary quilts and recognizes the makers of the quilts in a provenance  a short history of the quilt  on the back of each quilt written by Morton. Recognition is not a common practice in Amish culture, and Morton's provenances allow a look into Amish culture that few outside the community get to see, said Sauls, registrar of the USI Art Collection and curator for the exhibit.

"The quilts not only show their high level of untrained craftsmanship but also how the Amish use quilting to help sustain their communities," Sauls said. "The exhibit has the ability to inform about more than just the quilts themselves, which is a very special quality."

Quilting is a relatively new practice among Amish communities, said Sauls. It's believed to have started in the 1860s, but wasn't fully studied and widely practiced until the 20th century.

Quilts made by the Amish in Southern Indiana have a much different style than other communities in the country. Sauls said many communities in Indiana use more vibrant color combinations in cotton, while Amish communities in Pennsylvania typically use wool and others favor darker color choices. Patterns and designs also vary, but with Amish communities connecting more with one another, their techniques and styles have started to expand.

As her relationship with the Amish quilters strengthened over several years, Morton became more accepted throughout the larger community. Her hope from purchasing her first quilt was to learn more about Amish culture and about the individuals in the community, and with the USI exhibit, Morton said she can now offer that knowledge to anyone.

"My life has been colored by their kindness and love for one another," Morton said. "We are all different, but we are all the same in that we want those close to us to do the best they can."
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By Megan Erbacher of the Courier and Press

You don't have to be a genius to be a doctor, according to Dr. Eric Goebel, a partner at Neurosurgical Consultants.

Goebel, who sees patients and operates at Deaconess Hospital, St. Marys Hospital and Owensboro Health Regional Hospital, told a group of Mater Dei High School students Thursday morning that all they need is common sense, a good work ethic, compassion and dedication.

"And you can be a great doctor," he said.

A 1992 Mater Dei graduate, Goebel was one of more than 30 presenters to talk to students about their life, schooling and work. They described their careers, responsibilities associated with them, and answered questions as part of Mater Dei's Friends and Alumni Association second Career Day.

About 560 Mater Dei students were assigned to three sessions based on their career interests. Other presenters on Thursday included Brad Niemeier, CEO of Azzip Pizza; Brett Bueltel, attorney with Jackson Kelly; and Nathan Hassler, police officer with Evansville Police Department.

Freshman Haven Bowen listened as Goebel described a day as a neurosurgeon. Bowen, 14, aspires to be a doctor because she knows firsthand what it's like to spend a lot of time in a hospital.

When Bowen was 18 months old, she pulled hot wax over her head and was badly burned. She was rushed to the hospital, and since then has worn a face mask and undergone 27 surgeries.

"I want to work at the same hospital (Shriners Hospitals for Children in Cincinnati, Ohio) and help kids that have undergone the same thing I have," she said. "And to spread the word to prevent burns from happening, especially since so many kids are purposely burned."

Goebel attended the University of Evansville for physical therapy. He said it's a good career, but he went back to school a few years after because neurosurgery is his passion. Last year, he performed 560 surgeries, but he told students that most nights he was still home by 5 p.m.

Goebel noted that general surgeons in the area can make between $400,000 and $800,000 ayear. He said the money is out there if students want to make a good living and raise a family. Plus, you're able to donate to charities, which "makes you feel better."

"You can have a huge impact on people's lives," Goebel said. "There's something to be said about that. That's the joy of medicine. Yeah, the money is nice, but the rewards are better."

Bowen also attended a presentation from Julie Bellamy, social worker at Within Sight, so she could learn about interacting with the families; and Dr. Tom Weinzapfel, pediatrician.

"I really liked learning what's happening on the other side of the table," she said. "Because what happens after I go to sleep is a complete mystery to me."

Timothy A. Dickel, Mater Dei president, said educators have a responsibility to prepare students for their future. It's hard to believe, Dickel said, that between ages 14-18, kids start making major career decisions.

"When our students graduate, they're probably going to work for at least 40 years," Dickel said. "We want to make sure they find something they enjoy and are passionate about. And that their strengths really will lend themselves to that career."
DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS Beaver Creek Apartment Homes employees (who declined to give their names) replace a door to a unit in the 14 complex Thursday morning. A fire late Wednesday night damaged this 16-unit complex at 4333 Bell Road. One person was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported. Management personnel were busy trying to relocate residents into new dwellings Thursday morning.

SHARE JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS A fire reported at Beaver Creek Apartments just before 9:30 p.m. spread into a three-alarm blaze Wednesday night. The fire appeared to start in building 14. Flames were visible as of 10 p.m. as a slew of fire crews worked to extinguish the blaze. At least six firetrucks were on scene with more on the way. DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS A fire late Wednesday night damaged this 16-unit complex in the Beaver Creek Apartment Homes at 4333 Bell Road. One person was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported. Management personnel were busy trying to relocate residents into new dwellings Thursday morning. JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS Area residents watch as firefighters from multiple departments respond to a structure fire at Beaver Creek Apartments just before 9:30 p.m. and spread into a three-alarm blaze that appeared to start in building 14. DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS Building 14 at the Beaver Creek Apartment Homes at 4333 Bell Road in Newburgh, Ind., is shut down after a fire late Wednesday night damaged the16-unit complex. One person was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported. Management personnel were busy trying to relocate residents into new dwellings Thursday morning.

By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

The cause of a fire that damaged an entire building of a Newburgh apartment complex Wednesday night remains under investigation by the state fire marshal office.

The fire broke out just before 9:30 p.m., at the Beaver Creek Apartment Homes complex, which is in the 4300 block of Bell Road in Warrick County. The blaze, which took firefighters about an hour to extinguish, did not spread to any other buildings.

One person who lives in the building was treated by medics for signs of smoke inhalation but was not taken to the hospital, fire officials told reporters at the scene Wednesday night. No other injuries were reported.

Once the sun came up Thursday, it appeared that a majority of the fire damage was on the backside of the building. The building was blocked off by caution tape. A Beaver Creek employee declined to comment about the fire on Thursday morning when reached by a Courier & Press reporter.

According to the local chapter of the Red Cross, 15 of the 16 units in the damaged buildings were being rented. The affected residents who made contact with the Red Cross at the scene of the fire were able to arrange to stay with family or friends on Wednesday night, but the organization is still assisting those displaced by the fire.

"We met with over half of them last night and we are meeting with people today, opening cases for not only financial assistance but recovery planning and ideas," said Jason Bradshaw, the Red Cross' disaster program manager. "(We've) reached out to many apartment complexes in the area to see who has open apartments so (we) can share that list with those people as well."

Newburgh fire units were the first called to the blaze. Trucks from McCutchanville, Yankeetown, Scott Township, Chandler and Ohio Township fire departments also responded to the scene. Newburgh fire officials called the fire marshal's office later on Wednesday night, shortly after the blaze.

"The state can do a lot more advanced things that we can do," said Newburgh fire Capt. Shawn Weber on Wednesday.

A state spokesman did not provide any updates on the fire marshal's investigation on Thursday.

The Warrick County building inspector Dennis Lockhart examined the building Thursday afternoon, and said it could be rebuilt without a complete demolition.

Wednesday's incident was the second time in about a week that a local apartment complex was damaged by a large-scale fire. On Jan. 19, a fire broke out at the Highland Hills apartments in Northern Vanderburgh County. One person was treated at the hospital for smoke inhalation after that fire, and investigators in that case later determined that the blaze was an accident.

Courier & Press reporters Susan Orr and Bradi Gray contributed to this report
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By Zach Osowski

INDIANAPOLIS  Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said he's happy with the current version of the LGBT rights bill a day after it passed out of committee.

"I do feel that Senate Bill 344 is a major step forward," Long said. "I like the bill right now. I think it's in pretty good shape."

Long may be one of few happy with the bill.

Advocates on both sides of the issue think the bill either goes too far in extending civil rights to the LGBT community or doesn't go far enough, especially with the omission of rights for the transgender community. Some lawmakers who voted the bill out of committee conceded it still needed some work.

Long said on Thursday the transgender issue, which would have been a protected class under the now dead Senate Bill 100, was a sticking point for a lot of his colleagues.

"We stepped backed from that," Long said. "The 'T' issue is controversial, understandably so, and one that we didn't find enough support for."

Across the Statehouse, House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said he hasn't heard much support for SB 344.

"I've yet to talk to someone who thinks the bill is a good idea with just a couple of exceptions," Bosma said. "I wish we had a better compromise to work from, but it's very difficult to balance freedom of conscience and discrimination issues."

Bosma said if the bill gains approval in the Senate, it will be up to the House Republican caucus whether the bill will get a hearing. Bosma said rather than lay the decision on an individual committee or committee chair, it will be a caucus decision.

Neither Long nor Bosma knew whether Gov. Mike Pence, who challenged lawmakers to find a balancing act that didn't run afoul of Indiana's constitution, would approve of SB 344.

While its fate in the House might be unknown, Long guaranteed SB 344 would at least get a hearing and ultimately a full vote in the Senate; regardless of how the Senate Republicans feel about it. He said he expects several amendments to be offered on the bill, which could be called for second reading on Monday.

He is encouraging a robust debate, but has asked members of his party to offer "serious" amendments that will add to the discussion.

As of Thursday, Long said they have not taken an official head count of support in any caucus meetings.

"I believe we have some people who are for it and some against it and a group in the middle still trying to make up their minds," Long said.

Wednesday is the final day for bills to be voted on before the bills switch chambers.

The local Southwest Indiana senators, Sens. Vaneta Becker, Mark Messmer and Jim Tomes, all declined to speak on the bill before it's been brought to the full Senate for discussion.
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By Mark J. Perry

Despite competition from cheap natural gas and taxpayer-subsidized wind and solar energy, nuclear power has no equal.

Among sources of electric-power generation, it dominates the production of carbon-free power, and is likely to do so well into the future.

With nuclear power accounting for more than 60 percent of the country's zero-carbon electricity and a new generation of technologically advanced reactors on the horizon, the power source is playing a crucial role in the battle to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Even environmentalists should welcome nuclear power's benefits.

"The bottom line is that nuclear is the only 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week source of power that does not result in the emission of greenhouse gases," says Eileen Claussen, former president and founder of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. "It's hard to believe we can limit temperature increases, and their associated impacts, without a vastly expanded use of nuclear energy."

Contrary to the assertions of those who disparage it, nuclear power has an excellent safety record. In more than a half-century since the first commercial nuclear reactor began producing electricity under the leadership of Adm. Hyman Rickover, there has not been a single fatality or injury from a radiation-related nuclear power plant accident in the United States. No other major industry has a comparable safety record.

Nuclear power has endured because it has proved reliable, effective and affordable. The basic facts are not in dispute among energy policymakers.

In America, the performance of nuclear plants has improved significantly since 1990. In 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration, the capacity factor  how often a power plant actually delivers power to the electric grid  for about 100 operating reactors was 90 percent.

The average capacity factor in 1998 was 80 percent, compared to only 66 percent in 1990. Despite a reduction in the number of plants, the U.S. nuclear industry actually generated more electricity last year than it did in 2005.

Globally, with 439 operating reactors around the world, nuclear power is meeting the annual electrical needs of more than a billion people. Almost 70 reactors are under construction, including five in the United States, and another 159 are on order or planned.

In France, nuclear supplies 75 percent of the electricity, with enough to spare to provide almost a quarter of the electricity in Europe. But in China, the world's biggest carbon polluter, nuclear provides only 2 percent of the power. Coal remains China's energy mainstay, and its use is increasing not only in China but throughout Asia.

Now, in the aftermath of the Paris climate agreement, nuclear power is expected to take on increasing importance. The climate accord calls for net carbon emissions to be effectively brought down to zero "in the second half of this century."

This would seem, at first glance, an impossible task. Until, that is, you consider the speed with which France and Sweden ramped up their use of nuclear power.

In a study of the growth of the French and Swedish nuclear programs from the 1960s to the 1990s, a team of European energy experts noted that if the world were to build nuclear reactors at the same rate as the French and Swedish did, then electricity from coal and natural gas, in a politically conservative scenario, could be replaced in 25-34 years.

During this period, electric vehicles powered by nuclear-generated electricity could dramatically reduce the need for oil. These changes would have a huge impact on global carbon emissions and avert dangerous climate change.

The challenge to meet the new climate control goals is daunting. If present trends continue, the world's population will increase to more than 9 billion by 2040, with global electricity demand nearly doubling.

Effectively meeting this dramatic rise in future energy demand while simultaneously trying to avert dangerous climate change will likely be nearly impossible unless zero-carbon nuclear is up-scaled to meet those twin goals.

Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the University of Michigan-Flint.
The city's best shade trees are dying. Here's what is killing them.

Evansville is seriously at risk of losing its ash trees and it needs the public's help to protect them.
Teen suicide has been an issue in North Dakota for years. Often the deaths go unnoticed, with the obituaries describing the persons short life, but not stating the cause of death. Occasionally a cluster of suicides occur, prompting an outcry and demands to do something. Unfortunately, young suicides remain an ongoing problem in our society demanding constant attention.

Last week, Gov. Jack Dalrymple helped some Century High School students put the focus on suicide prevention. The students are working to help their peers who are struggling with pressures in life and might be considering a drastic step. Some might think young people couldnt be under such pressure that they might want to die. Kids can face an array of problems such as a horrible home life, relationship issues, drug and alcohol problems, and the list goes on. They also lack lifes experiences that might help them put issues into perspective.

Students understand the problems others their age are dealing with and this can put them in a position to help. Thats where Sources of Strength can play a role. The student-led organization became a part of Bismarck schools in 2014. The program strives to prevent suicide by promoting a positive support system in schools that encourages outreach among students and school employees.

This isnt a program where well-intentioned students go off on their own to help others. Theres structure, training and funding involved. The North Dakota Department of Health's Suicide Prevention Program provided Bismarck and Century high schools with a $12,200 grant this school year to expand Sources of Strength. Participating students go through training and host activities at their school. They are encouraged to take what they learn and use it in their daily lives.

Its a good concept because students often are the first to notice when their peers are struggling. The training gives them guidance to help others and ways to direct a troubled person to someone who can help them. Its another tool in the battle to prevent suicide. Its unlikely to end the problem, but it can help reduce it.

Mark LoMurray, of Bismarck, knows there are no quick solutions. He has worked with youth for years, going back to the 1990s when he was with the Bismarck Police Youth Bureau. At that time, North Dakota had almost double the national average for teen suicides. He founded Sources of Strength and the program is in schools across the nation. He was at Centurys event last week sharing his knowledge.

LoMurray and many others have been dedicated to finding ways to curb suicide. Programs like Sources of Strength deserve our support, and the students joining the fight should be commended. Saving a 15-year-olds life can result in decades of achievement by that person that would have been lost. We should do all we can to persuade our youth not to decide on a short life.
Lissa Yellowbird-Chase may be the only person from North Dakota taking unpaid time off from work to sit through the trial of a man accused of hiring the murder of two men during the Bakken oil boom.

Others  including former Three Affiliated Tribes chairman Tex Hall, his companion Tiffany Johnson and New Town oil businessman Steve Kelly  are subpoenaed witnesses in the trail, but Yellowbird-Chase says that, by observing quietly in the courtroom, she may learn where one of the slain men is buried.

The trial of James Henrikson, 36, started Monday with jury selection in a Richland, Wash., federal courtroom. Hes accused in the killings of Kristopher KC Clarke, a truck driver, who the prosecution says was bludgeoned to death near Mandaree four years ago and still lies in an unfound grave, and Doug Carlile, an investment partner, who was shot to death in his suburban Spokane, Wash., home in December 2013.

The actual killer, Timothy Suckow, and accomplices, have pleaded guilty and will be witnesses against Henrikson, who withdrew his guilty plea and forced the ongoing trial.

Yellowbird-Chase devoted hundreds of hours scouring the Badlands for Clarkes body through Sahnish Scouts Seeking Justice, an organization she formed to find missing or lost individuals. For months, she lived and breathed the case even before federal authorities opened their investigation. Shes on leave from work until Feb. 10 to attend the trial, and justice supporters are helping pay her travel and lodging through a GoFundMe account.

Affidavits say that Henrikson paid Suckow to beat Clarke to death with a tire iron because Clarke was planning to start a competing trucking business. The killing was done at a truck shop owned by former tribal chairman Hall, who was leasing the shop to Henrikson, affidavits say.

Yellowbird-Chase says she believes she knows exactly where Clarkes body was initially buried off of a U.S. Forest Service road north of Grassy Butte, but that Henrikson returned alone later to move it so that his accomplices couldnt use it against him, facts supported by affidavits filed in the case. Though its unlikely Henrikson will divulge the second burial location, Yellowbird-Chase said she knows where it likely is and that something more may slip during someones testimony.

I want to see if theres any elaboration where KC could be located, said Yellowbird-Chase, adding that believes Henrikson dumped Clarkes body into a septic tank excavation he dug with a rented back hoe outside Halls building. She said shell ask Hall if hell consent to an excavation, if it comes to that, when she sees him in court.

What harm would there be to dig it up? she said.

The trial is expected to last several weeks, with nearly 100 witnesses and the introduction of detailed cell phone logs between Henrikson and his accomplices and other evidence.

Yellowbird-Chase said she knows Henrikson as an extremely intelligent, but twisted man, and that his ego is on trial in a case he has no chance of winning.

He likes attention. This is his last hurrah. For him, its either go big or go to jail, she said.

Yellowbird-Chase said shell provide updates during the trial.
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In Ghostbusters, Dan Aykroyd and friends happen to form their titular ghostbusting group at the exact same time that Gozer the Gozerian gains enough power to cross over into our realm and attempt a hostile takeover. Had he scheduled his Armageddon plans a year earlier, he'd be ruling the world right now.

Voldemort just so happened to start growing on the back of Professor Quirrell's head and trying to get the Sorcerer's Stone the exact same year Harry Potter enrolled at Hogwarts. He would then magically rematerialize at the end of all but one school year. If he had set his plan into motion over summer break, Harry would've never made it out of the Dursley's closet.

Warner Bros.

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"Why didn't I come come back in Julyyyarrrggh!"

But our worst offender is, once again, Lord Of The Rings. As noted in the prologue, the Ring of Power is lost for 2,500 years before it is found by Gollum. Then Bilbo gets it, and decades later puts it on at a party in front of Gandalf. Gandalf confronts him and learns that it is the One Ring and needs to be destroyed, right as the bad guys show up to steal it, having recently tortured its location out of a captive Gollum, whom they then inexplicably set free to inadvertently help save the world two films later.

New Line Cinema

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Also bullshit: A chronic weed smoker keeping quiet for that long about some random thing he found.

These two events are completely unconnected. After over 3,000 years, both sides of this war just so happened to learn where the ring was at the exact same time. Had either side learned of the One Ring's whereabouts a week apart from each other, The Lord Of The Rings would've been a short story in a single issue of The New Yorker.

By sheer chance, Isaac is on Twitter and Instagram @NotFunnyIsaac.

Get ready for another LIVE podcast at the UCB Sunset Theatre on Feb. 3 at 7:00 p.m. Join Stanley Wong (The Big Short), Liana Maeby (South On Highland), Jack O'Brien, Dan O'Brien, and Alex Schmidt as they discuss the problems the Academy Awards are having, and what can be done to make everything right again. Get your tickets here!

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Executive Summary

Guatemala  one of Latin Americas most violent, unequal and impoverished countries  is enjoying a rare moment of opportunity. A new president, Jimmy Morales, bolstered by a landslide victory, has taken office promising to end corruption. The old political elite is in disarray. Emboldened citizens are pressing for reforms to make justice more effective and government more transparent. Behind these changes is a unique multilateral experiment, the UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), whose investigators work with national prosecutors to dismantle criminal networks within the state. CICIG is not a permanent fix, however. Guatemala will lose its opportunity unless national leaders assume the fight against impunity as their own, approve stalled justice and security sector reforms and muster the financial resources to strengthen domestic institutions.

CICIG began operations in 2007 to investigate clandestine security groups that continued to operate within the state following the 1996 accords that ended 36 years of intermittent armed conflict. Such groups still undermine the state, though their main goal now is economic power, not elimination of political opponents. International support and financing guarantee the commissions independence, though it operates under Guatemalan laws. Unlike traditional capacity-building efforts, it not only trains, but also works side by side with national prosecutors and police, providing them with the necessary technical expertise and political autonomy to hold powerful suspects accountable before the law.

CICIG has promoted and helped implement legislation to create a witness protection program, tighten gun controls, establish rules for court-ordered wiretaps and asset forfeiture and institute high-risk courts for the trial of particularly dangerous defendants. At the same time, it has carried out complex, high-profile probes that resulted in charges against a former president for embezzlement, an ex-minister and other top security officials for extrajudicial executions and dozens of additional officials and suspected drug traffickers for fraud, illicit association and homicide.

The commission has faced significant setbacks and limitations, however. Some high-profile cases have ended in acquittal. Key reforms, such as a judicial career law, have stalled in Congress. While it has helped strengthen certain specialised prosecutorial units, the public prosecutors office remains overstretched, even absent, in much of the country. Other institutions essential for combatting impunity  notably the civilian police and judiciary  are still weak, vulnerable to corruption and largely unaccountable.

The most dramatic blows it has delivered against impunity came in 2015 with the arrest of almost 200 officials for corruption, including a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud customs. Working with national prosecutors, CICIG collected and analysed massive amounts of evidence. The evidentiary trail, according to prosecutors, led to President Otto Perez Molina, who resigned (though denying any criminal activity) and now awaits trial in a military prison.

Much of CICIGs recent success is due to the determination and persistence of its current commissioner, Ivan Velasquez, a jurist known for uncovering the links between politicians and paramilitary structures in his native Colombia. CICIG cannot function, however, without the close collaboration and support of Guatemalan prosecutors. Very different attorneys general  Claudia Paz y Paz, a former human rights activist, and Thelma Aldana, a veteran jurist  have shown the independence and courage to pursue complex, controversial cases against powerful suspects.

A crucial ingredient is popular support. Both the commission and public prosecutors enjoy wide approval among citizens exhausted by violent crime and corruption. The investigations spawned a broad civic movement for justice reform and government transparency. In a country long polarised by ideological, economic and ethnic differences, the anti-corruption crusade has at least temporarily united groups ranging from business associations to labour unions, urban professionals to indigenous leaders.

Anger over government fraud holds this movement together, rather than any clear agenda for change. Elected leaders should channel discontent into positive action by initiating a national debate on the reforms needed to strengthen justice and encourage accountability. Morales, a former television comedian, campaigned as the anti-politician. He has yet to put forward a clear reform program, including new legislation to guarantee the independence of judges and prosecutors, toughen campaign-financing laws and create honest, professional civilian police. Moreover, a weak, underfunded state needs to enact fiscal and tax reforms so that its justice institutions have the resources needed to pay good salaries, provide decent working conditions and extend their coverage across the country.

CICIGs mandate ends in September 2017, though the president wisely has proposed extending it. International assistance cannot last indefinitely, however. The commission is Guatemalas best opportunity for genuine justice reform, and it should not be wasted, but the government must start planning for its departure by fortifying its own capacity to fight crime and corruption.
M2 Group shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favour of merging with Vocus.

Votes in favour came from 2939 shareholders, accounting for 99.69 percent.

The deal must still be approved by a second court hearing scheduled for 5 February. If successful, M2 shareholders will receive 1.625 Vocus shares for every M2 share they have.

Upon approval, the new shares will begin trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on 9 February.

In September last year, the two companies announced their intention to merge, to create a $3 billion telco giant. The combined revenue would add up to around $1.8 billion, as well as result in expected cost synergies of around $40 million per year by the end of 2018.

The deal had already been approved in November by industry watchdog Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The ACCC said there was limited overlap between the two companies, as M2s brands Dodo, Engin, Commander and iPrimus cover the residential and small business markets, while Vocus (including Amcom) focuses on the enterprise and government market.
Microsoft reported quarterly revenue and profit that beat analysts' expectations, driven by aggressive cost cutting and growing demand for its cloud products and services.

Microsoft, under chief executive Satya Nadella, has been focusing on cloud services and mobile applications as growth slows in its traditional software business. The cloud, in which growing numbers of companies move much of their information technology off premises, proved a bright spot for the software giant.

Up to Thursday US time's close of US$52.05, Microsoft's stock had climbed more than 26 percent in the past 12 months as investors showed their confidence in Nadella's growth strategy.

The shares rose 5.3 percent in after-hours trading.

Revenue from the company's increasingly important "Intelligent Cloud" business, which includes products such as servers and platforms such as Azure cloud infrastructure and services, rose 5 percent to US$6.3 billion.

The company's combined cloud business was on track for US$9.4 billion in annual revenue, the company said, up 15 percent from the US$8.2 billion revenue it estimated last quarter.

"They nailed the cloud," said Matt Howard, a venture capitalist at Norwest Ventures who monitors Microsoft closely.

Total revenue, however, fell 10.1 percent to US$23.80 billion, squeezed by a strong US dollar as well as a weak personal computer market that has reduced demand for Microsoft's Windows operating system. On an adjusted basis, revenue fell to US$25.69 billion but beat analysts' estimates.

Revenue in the business that includes Windows fell 5 percent to US$12.7 billion.

Windows revenue closely tracks sales of personal computers, which fell 10.6 percent globally in the December quarter from a year earlier, according to research firm IDC.

IDC said business should improve later this year as companies that had delayed replacing machines before upgrading to Windows 10 make the switch. Windows 10 was released last year.

Microsoft generates more than half of its revenue from outside the United States, so is susceptible to big shifts in exchange rates.

The average value of the US dollar, as measured against a basket of major currencies, was 11.7 percent higher in the last quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter of 2014.

The company's net income fell to US$5 billion, or 62 US cents per share, in its second-quarter ended 31 December from US$5.86 billion, or 71 US cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, the company earned 78 US cents per share. Analysts on average had expected a profit of 71 US cents per share and revenue of US$25.26 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bengaluru and Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Editing by Ted Kerr, Bernard Orr)
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Xerox To Split In 2, Give Icahn 3 Board Seats

CRN Staff

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Just two months after activist investor Carl Icahn announced that he owned more than 7 percent of Xerox stock, his influence is being felt in a big way.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday afternoon that Xerox -- whose Global Services division ranks No. 7 on CRN's 2015 Solution Provider 500 list -- will split into two firms: one focused on hardware, the other on services. And, the Journal reported, Icahn will get three board seats at the services company. On Friday morning, Xerox formally announced the split into two public companies. It also annouced the agreement with Icahn.

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday afternoon, Icahn called the split of the company a "major move" that will "greatly enhance shareholder value."

[Related: Could Icahns Stake In Xerox Spell Good News For The Channel?]

Icahn said in the interview that he had several meetings with Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and "I  applaud and respect her for doing what she believes shareholders want."

Interviewed on CNBC Friday morning, Burns denied that Icahn forced the company's hand. She said the board of directors had decided to split the company after launching a strategic review in the fall. Earlier this month, she said the board informed Icahn of its plans and that "he was in support of it."

A split of the company would be both surprising and not surprising, said Steve Mairet, operations manager at A1 Tonertech, a Placentia, Calif.-based solution provider and Xerox channel partner.

Xerox has made a lot of changes in the past couple of years that have impacted its dealer channel, especially one in 2014 to move many of its partners away from dealing directly with the vendor and working with distribution instead, Mairet told CRN.

"Now we have to use the distributors," he said. "We have to deal with products that are held more in certain warehouses rather than held by the distributors, and pay more for shipping."

Xerox has also moved to focus more of its business directly on the business user, including cutting margins and sending rebates directly to customers, Mairet said. "It's hard to grow this business," he said. "If the customer pulls out a credit card for the hardware, our margins drop to single digits."

It's also hard for customers, Mairet said. "Customers expect same-day service, or to get their supplies right away," he said. "But this is going away because everyone is working at such slim margins."

Even so, Mairet said, not all the blame can be directed at Xerox. All its competing vendors, including HP Inc. and Sharp, face the same issues, particularly the declining price of hardware, including printers.

Meanwhile, Simon Tutt, president and CEO of DP Solutions, a Xerox hardware and services partner based in Columbia, Md., welcomed the reported split. "It sounds like a good idea to me," he told CRN. "I think IT businesses need to change and adapt, otherwise they go the way of the dodo."

Tutt, whose company has been a Xerox partner for about seven years, typically in print management services, said DP has had a good relationship with Xerox. "Good for them," he said.

Icahns firm, Icahn Capital, reported the investment of 7.13 percent in a November filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That came shortly after Xerox announced it had lost $34 million during the third quarter of 2015 amid declining revenue.

In the companys quarterly earnings call in late October, CEO Burns said the board of directors had approved a review of operations -- including its business portfolio and capital allocation -- in an attempt to grow sales.

"We are looking into what we can do differently," Burns said, adding that the board was to look into many options, but selling the company was not one of them.

The move essentially undoes Xerox's 2010 purchase of Affiliated Computer Services for $5.6 billion, according to Ken Stewart, a print services market analyst with Photizo Group of Mauldin, S.C. While that purchase was not necessarily a bad decision, Stewart said, he thinks Xerox missed the mark on the execution of its services vision.

"I think the strategy was sound to begin with. I think the execution has been flawed since Day 1," he said.

However, Stewart said, he doesnt believe a radical split of the company into two parts is the right idea, calling it a "bad move." He said Xerox would be better off selling individual business units, as it did when it sold its outsourcing business to French IT services company Atos in 2014 for $1.05 billion.

"I think the carving in two pieces like this will end badly for at least one of the sides, if not both. Unless they got a buyer -- then that would be a different story," Stewart said.

Xerox also announced its fourth-quarter revenue and earnings Friday morning. While revenues fell 12 percent year over year, to $4.65 billion, net income rose 43 percent, to $285 million. The company beat expectations on earnings per share by four cents (32 cents vs. 28 cents), according to Analyst Rating Report.

In its third-quarter report for 2015, Xerox reported that its services division, which accounts for 57 percent of company revenue, dropped 8 percent, or $200 million, from $2.6 billion to $2.4 billion. Meanwhile, revenue in its technology division fell for the fourth consecutive quarter, dropping $200 million, from $2 billion to $1.8 billion.

Xerox stock fell 2 cents per share Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange to close at $9.21. The stock spiked to $9.61 per share just minutes before the closing bell, but then retreated. But in after-hours trading, the stock was down 0.65 percent, according to The Street.

Douglas Grosfield, the founder and CEO of Five Nines IT Solutions, a Kitchener, Ontario-based strategic service provider, said Xerox had little choice but to split in two. "They could keep their head in the sand and do nothing and act like the emperor with no clothes or they can take action like they are doing to address this head on," he said. "This is a smart play to get ahead of the game."

Xerox is one of many legacy technology companies attempting to "reinvent" themselves for the cloud services era, said Grosfield, who sold his solution provider business last year to launch Five Nines IT, which is focused squarely on the recurring-revenue cloud services market.

"The legacy vendors have been holding on to the dinosaur model," he said. "They are still focused on pushing boxes and transactional business. They need to radically change. The only way for Xerox to do that is to split into two companies like they are doing."

Even with a split, Xerox is sure to focus its direct sales efforts on the Fortune 1000 market, leaving plenty of room for strategic service providers to focus on midmarket accounts, said Grosfield.

"They are going whale hunting, while the rest of us are going after smaller fish in the sea," he said. "We are filling our quota every day and the big guys are going home empty-handed."

Sarah Kuranda, Steven Burke, Joseph F. Kovar and Rick Saia contributed to this report.


A new report shows that global indicators of economic and political freedom declined overall in 2015, with the most serious setbacks in the area of freedom of speech and rule of law. Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy around the world, released its Freedom in the World 2016 Report which included some disturbing statistics and worldwide trends, particulary as it concerns the progress made by women in some regions.

The beginning of the report summarizes the situation:

The world was battered in 2015 by overlapping crises that fueled xenophobic sentiment in democratic countries, undermined the economies of states dependent on the sale of natural resources, and led authoritarian regimes to crack down harder on dissent. These unsettling developments contributed to the 10th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. [emphasis added]

Key findings from the report:

The number of countries showing a decline in freedom for the year72was the largest since the 10-year slide began. Just 43 countries made gains.

The number of countries showing a decline in freedom for the year72was the largest since the 10-year slide began. Just 43 countries made gains. Over the past 10 years, 105 countries have seen a net decline, and only 61 have experienced a net improvement.

Ratings for the Middle East and North Africa region were the worst in the world in 2015, followed closely by Eurasia.

Over the last decade, the most significant global reversals have been in freedom of expression and the rule of law.

Unfortunately, there was little to no overall progress for women in 2015:

[W]omen remain at a distinct disadvantage around the world in terms of political rights and civil liberties. Despite modest increases in womens political representation and the election of a number of female heads of government, examples of genuine progress are few and far between. The very limited steps that were hailed as victories in 2015that women in Saudi Arabia, who must still obtain a male guardians permission to conduct many basic daily activities, were finally able to participate in tightly controlled elections for largely powerless municipal councils, or that a ridiculously outdated law criminalizing adultery was struck down in South Koreademonstrated just how low the bar has gotten in evaluating progress toward gender equality. Meanwhile, in many parts of the world, womens economic aspirations and the broader economies of their countries continue to suffer from unequal rights to property and inheritance as well as discriminatory practices that prevent women from working outside the home.

The United States, though one of the freest nations in world, was given a negative trend arrow by Freedom House:

The United States received a downward trend arrow because of the cumulative impact of flaws in the electoral system, a disturbing increase in the role of private money in election campaigns and the legislative process, legislative gridlock, the failure of the Obama administration to fulfill promises of enhanced government openness, and fresh evidence of racial discrimination and other dysfunctions in the criminal justice system.

The report did include some positive news: Citizens in a number of other troubled societies similarly proved that change was entirely possible, and did so through the most tried-and-true democratic institutionthe ballot box. There were several examples of election outcomes that may bring about positive change in politically tumultuous countries. Nigerian voters rejected the corrupt incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan and elected Muhammadu Buhari, who has worked to address government corruption and increase military power in the fight against Boko Haram. The people of Sri Lanka chose Maithripala Sirisena over President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Not only has Sirisena worked to repair relations with minority groups and international communities, but he also overturned some of the repressive policies enacted by the divisive and authoritative Rajapaksa.

As we continue into 2016, there are several countries for which Freedom House raised ongoing concerns:

Angola: Squeezed by low oil prices, Angolas autocratic government is likely to intensify suppression of dissent and expand surveillance of private citizens.

Squeezed by low oil prices, Angolas autocratic government is likely to intensify suppression of dissent and expand surveillance of private citizens. Bosnia and Herzegovina: The country could face even worse government dysfunction if a planned Bosnian Serb referendum on the national courts legitimacy takes place.

The country could face even worse government dysfunction if a planned Bosnian Serb referendum on the national courts legitimacy takes place. Democratic Republic of Congo: With the army poised to crush protests, President Kabila is considering a constitutional amendment that would allow him to seek a third term in 2016.

With the army poised to crush protests, President Kabila is considering a constitutional amendment that would allow him to seek a third term in 2016. Iran: Moderate reformists are preparing for critical February elections to the parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that appoints the supreme leader.

Moderate reformists are preparing for critical February elections to the parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that appoints the supreme leader. Kuwait: Authorities are quashing dissent with increasing aggression and frequency, galvanizing concerns about citizenship revocation and use of the death penalty.

Authorities are quashing dissent with increasing aggression and frequency, galvanizing concerns about citizenship revocation and use of the death penalty. Malaysia: Political repression in Malaysia could intensify as the prime minister faces increasing pressure over an embezzlement scandal.

Political repression in Malaysia could intensify as the prime minister faces increasing pressure over an embezzlement scandal. Myanmar: Once the newly elected legislature is seated and a government is formed, the National League for Democracy will be under pressure to deliver on its promises.

Once the newly elected legislature is seated and a government is formed, the National League for Democracy will be under pressure to deliver on its promises. Nigeria: Observers will be able to assess President Buharis first year in office, including his efforts to combat entrenched corruption and Boko Haram militants.

Observers will be able to assess President Buharis first year in office, including his efforts to combat entrenched corruption and Boko Haram militants. Poland: The initial actions of the Law and Justice government in 2015, including attempts to stack key institutions with partisan loyalists, raise serious concerns about Polands trajectory.

The initial actions of the Law and Justice government in 2015, including attempts to stack key institutions with partisan loyalists, raise serious concerns about Polands trajectory. Venezuela: Although the opposition triumphed in the legislative elections, it will need a well-crafted strategy to enact reforms in light of possible resistance by President Maduro.

Visit Freedom Houses Freedom in the World 2016 page for more info-graphics and information. For information about how Freedom House ranks nations and criteria used, visit their Methodology: Freedom in the World 2016 Page.
The crew of the Costa Victoria was commended by Maritime Search and Rescue Center of Hainan for the rescue of a burning vessel in the South China Sea. The award was given out at the 2016 Sanya Commendation Congress of Maritime Search and Rescue,

In the Commendation Congress, 12 individuals and companies including Costa, were awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Society in 2015. Wen Zhongtong, Deputy Secretary General of Sanya, Wen Jiancai, Vice Commander of Maritime Search and Rescue Center, and other officers presented awards for the individuals and companies.

The Costa Victoria was commended for rescuing a burning vessel in the South China Sea in November of 2014. On November 3, 2014, the ship was en route from Hong Kong to Sanya when the First Officer on watch spotted the troubled boat. He immediately alerted the Master and Staff Captain who altered the ships route to provide assistance. Twelve fishermen were rescued and given medical assistance onboard by the Costa crew. The ship brought the 12 fishermen to Sanya Hainan Island.

The Chinese fishermen later contacted Costa Cruises to express their gratitude and requested a face-to-face opportunity to officially thank the Master and his team, said Costa.
After years of being criticized for its lack of diversity, a photo spreading across social media suggests toy giant Lego will unveil a first-of-its-kind figurine.

Though the company has yet to confirm the release, a photo of a figurine in a wheelchair was captured in the Promobricks blog while it was on display at the Nuremberg toy fair in Germany. The beanie-wearing figure is even rumored to have a dog.
McDonalds on Main Street in Bridgeport is closing its doors.

The location is owned Trefz Corp., the Bridgeport-based company run by brothers Ernie and Chris Trefz that owns 43 McDonalds restaurants in Connecticut and New York with more than 2,000 employees.

It has been an honor to serve this neighborhood and I appreciate the support and cooperation of Bridgeports business community, elected officials and community partners, Chris Trefz said in a statement released by the McDonalds corporate office.

I am happy to report that all of my employees have accepted jobs at nearby McDonalds locations. I remain committed to serving downtown Bridgeport, and I look forward to continuing my work in the community in the future.

More Business Vintage menus show which foods Americans used to love

The restaurant at 1025 Main St. downtown, at the corner of Cannon Street, is across from the Holiday Inn, which is also owned by the Trefz Corp.

Members of the Trefz family have long contributed to the Bridgeport community. In 2013, the University of Bridgeport unveiled the Ernest C. Trefz School of Business, a multimillion-dollar endeavor that turned a 1960s-era Mandeville Hall into a high-tech facility.

Last year, 10 Connecticut McDonalds managers and manager trainees became the first local graduating class of English Under the Arches, a language program designed to help McDonalds employees advance in their careers, with a ceremony held at Trefz Corp. headquarters.

In 2009, Ernie and Christian Trefz were named winners of McDonalds Corp.s most prestigious honor, the Golden Arch Award.

McDonalds presents the annual award to less than 1 percent of the 34,000 owner/operators throughout the world for a relentless focus on customer service, significant community involvement, exceptional achievements and contributions to the success of the brand, according to the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company.

The brothers opened their first restaurant in Waterbury in 1964. They have owned the Main Street Bridgeport location since 2003.

McDonalds also has four other locations in Bridgeport and many more in surrounding communities.

hbailey@ctpost.com; 203-330-6233; @hughsbailey
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Just as few regions prospered as much as the Naugatuck Valley at the height of industry, few were as damaged when the factories left town.

But previous eras left behind the kind of downtowns that companies are once again seeking in the new economy, local leaders said on Thursday, while acknowledging that persuading businesses to come wont be easy.

Compact, walkable, vibrant town centers rose around industry, said Mark Nielsen, director of planning at the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments. With those kind of communities again in demand, he said, the region has plenty to offer to companies and younger workers.

The conference Thursday was organized by NVCOG and featured an array of state and local leaders who described how the economy has changed and what towns can do to get ahead. Though the Valley is marked in many ways by its past, in terms of closed factories, depopulated Main streets and an aging populace, its towns are poised for growth, speakers said.

Amenities are primary to attracting talent, said Laura Brown, a planner with the University of Connecticuts extension program. In the new economy, we have to embrace what we already have, and the waterfronts, the downtowns and the people are what we have.

The conference was held at the Palace Theater in downtown Waterbury, where NVCOG has its headquarters. The group includes towns from the former Valley Council of Governments, which included Shelton, Derby, Ansonia, Seymour, Oxford and now include Southbury, as well.

The Valleys relatively compact towns make them ideal for transit-oriented development, said David Fink, of the nonprofit Partnership for Strong Communities, who said the states oversupply of single-family homes portends trouble in coming years.

The market is demanding multifamily housing, he said.

More than preference is affordability, he said, with current retirees having less savings than their predecessors, and younger people lacking the financial means to buy a detached home in the suburbs.

We need to be thinking smaller, denser, more affordable, he said.

Fink said the average family spends about a third of its budget on housing, and about 19 percent on transportation. But for those who live within walking distance of mass transit, that number shrinks to 9 percent on transportation.

Housing near transit is in demand, and we need to make sure its available, he said.

While Valley towns have potential, much of the land is held back by the departed manufacturing industry because of contaminants in the ground. In many cases, the cost to clean up the pollution created by factories would would be far higher than the value of the land.

Tim Sullivan, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development, runs the states brownfields programs, and said polluted properties require public help. The market is not going to solve these problems themselves, he said, and without it sites will sit unused indefinitely.

Sullivan pointed to worldwide trends that show more people moving to cities with even more saying they favor the type of amenities cities can offer.

Young people and companies are showing that they want to be in walkable, mixed-use communities, he said. Technology is driving reurbanization, and its not just a mega-city story.

Unmentioned but hovering over the discussion was the recent decision by General Electric, one of the worlds most recognizable companies, to leave its suburban Connecticut base of four decades for the thriving, tech-savvy city of Boston. The trends that lead companies to such actions are what local cities need to be following, officials said, using the regions history as a guide.

We have a remarkably strong asset to market, Sullivan said, citing a history of manufacturing brass, clocks, Wiffle balls and more. We have to embrace that identity.

hbailey@ctpost.com; 203-330-6233; @hughsbailey
BRIDGEPORT - A city man is facing up to 90 years in prison after a jury found him guilty Friday of fatally shooting a New York drug dealer.

A Superior Court jury deliberated two and a half days before finding Elizardo Montanez guilty of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, possession of narcotics with intent to sell and possession of a pistol without a permit.
Any number of meanings are attached to the Kingdom of God as an essential element of Jesus teaching for Christian praxis. Used as just another slogan for political activism, in which the shade of meaning is usually reconstructing Heaven on Earth along collectivist lines, has me tossing the theological yellow flag. Another way to put this futile and often dangerous exercise is immanentizing the eschaton. This business has raised many skeptics. From St. Thomas More we received the word utopia, which derives from the Greek for no-place. Samuel Butler reminds us in his Darwinian fantasy novel Erewhon that the title is really nowhere spelled backwards.

Apparently unfamiliar with the above concepts, writer Gabriela Romeri in Maryknoll Magazine describes shareholder activist priest Father Joseph La Mar as one of the dedicated builders committed to constructing the Kingdom of God here on earth. Your writer must confess he rubbed his eyes until they squeaked after reading the lead paragraph:

Constructing the Kingdom of God here on earth takes dedicated builders. Most people are afraid to do this kind of work, says Maryknoll Father Joseph La Mar of his ministry, promoting corporate social responsibility. You just have to sit at the table and say what you have to say. His work takes him to high-level board meetings of multinational corporations where he invokes the Gospel to voice ethical concerns in commerce.

Readers will note the utopian error in the penultimate paragraph: Like Pope Francis, Father La Mar counts on the next generation to continue building Gods Kingdom on earth by being the voice of the voiceless. Of course, Father La Mar cant be held responsible for Romeris breathless prose, but he should be held accountable for such activities mentioned in the article as this:

As assistant chief financial officer for the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, for 23 years Father La Mar has represented the shared values of the Maryknoll Society and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). The ICCR is an alliance of 300 religious and institutional investors with stock ownership in major corporations. This gives them an investment portfolio worth over $100 billion and a collective voice in the boardrooms of major corporations. In 2015 the ICCR introduced 227 resolutionsalmost one-third dealing with mitigating the effects of climate change. Chevron and Exxon both received the most proxy resolutions, including calling for disclosure of their hydraulic fracturing practices, or fracking. Bank of America, Boeing, Capital One, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin and Monsanto were among the companies receiving ICCR resolutions calling for disclosure of how much they spent on lobbying U.S. legislators.

Since the title of Romeris article is Constructing the Kingdom, one wonders exactly how the above ICCR and Maryknoll proxy resolutions nudge targeted companies toward anything close to a utopia much less a worldly Kingdom of God. Both realms, it seems to this writer, require an appeal beyond progressive and leftist ideologies.

Poor people, always held in the highest esteem by our Creator, recognize tremendous health and comfort benefits from

inexpensive and plentiful fuels. Lobbying on behalf of companies is a perfectly legal and necessary activity in an era of ever-growing government regulatory encroachments into every business area, and violates no Christian principle known to this writer. In fact, as a Roman Catholic priest, Father La Mar may wish to familiarize himself with the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity enumerated in Pope Leo XIIIs 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pope John Paul IIs 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens.

However, progressive shareholders target only businesses with which such groups as ICCR disagree ideologically. Nowhere is there mention of the millions of dollars spent on lobbying and campaigning performed by unions. And why is that? Could it be because ICCR Affiliate Members include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations; the American Federation of Teachers; and the United Auto Workers? Just asking: Does ICCR, Maryknoll and Father La Mar really believe Gods Kingdom on Earth begins with organized labor without a voice for the businesses for which they work?
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BRIDGEPORT  The zoning commission will treat a bid to open liquor stores closer to schools and houses of worship like fine wine rather than cheap beer.

In other words, no guzzling.

We would definitely take a little more time and do a little more study, said Planning and Zoning Chairman Mel Riley.

Riley is particularly cautious because such zoning changes impacting the entire city are generated by city officials. This one comes from the desk of private attorney Charles Willinger on behalf of a client trying to salvage their new North End package store.

Its the first time Ive ever experienced a (private) attorney requesting a citywide zone change, Riley said.

Willinger wants to allow package stores to open 750 feet from schools, commercial day care facilities, houses of worship and hospitals, halving Bridgeports existing, 1,500 foot rule.

Willingers proposal is being made on behalf of Michael DeFilippo. DeFilippo, who bartends at Democratic Chairman Mario Testas restaurant, obtained a zoning variance last year to open a new liquor store  Vitros  across from Testas pizza place on Brooklawn Avenue.

DeFilippos business was within 1,500 feet of some houses of worship and a day care. He obtained letters of endorsement from those neighbors and support from Testa and other Democratic movers-and-shakers.

A Superior Court judge recently threw out DeFilippos variance, citing in particular his concern about the influence politics may have had. So DeFilippo shut Vitros doors.

Rather than appeal, Willinger decided to try to change the rules.

The Zoning Commission was supposed to hold a public hearing on the matter last Monday. But at Willingers request it was delayed until Feb. 29.

Willinger said his decision was based on the fact that the zoning office mistakenly advertised his proposal as also reducing the distance between existing liquor stores.

We wanted to clarify, because of all the misinformation going around, so it was clear the 1,500 square foot distances between liquor stores located in Bridgeport is not being effected, Willinger said by phone.

Willinger may also have to use that extra month to line up some supporters of his own.

City Councilwoman Eneida Martinez said she had rallied about 50 people to speak against Willingers proposal.

Come on out and stop this movement! Martinez wrote on her Facebook page earlier this week. This is about our future, our babies, our grands (grandchildren). Take it elsewhere! We dont want it!

Martinez said she is prepared to keep fighting Willingers efforts, arguing liquor stores in her East End district are hangouts where men gather outside each day.

I wanna close down the liquor stores we have, she said.

Besides Martinez and Councilwoman Rev. Mary McBride-Lee, two of their colleagues  Councilwoman M. Evette Brantley and Councilman John Olson  have also come out against the proposed zoning changes.

Brantley said she has no problem with DeFilippo trying to re-open, but, Were not in favor of anything going citywide. Next thing you know youll have liquor stores popping up on every corner next to our schools.

Willinger emphasized that, under state law, only 57 liquor licenses can be issued in Bridgeport, based on the citys population. Bridgeport currently has 41 active permits.

The fears expressed by those in opposition are totally unfounded, he said.

And Willinger also claimed many other municipalities have looser zoning rules for liquor stores.

Hearst Media confirmed that liquor stores in Hartford cannot be located within 500 feet of a school, library, park, hospital, funeral home and assembly. New Haven has the same 500 foot rule, but it only applies to schools.

Riley said following the Feb. 29 public hearing, the zoning commission has a few options. The group could continue the hearing to another date to hear more input.

Once the hearing is closed he said commissioners have 65 days to render a decision.

David Kooris, head of the citys economic development office, has offered to produce for the Zoning Commission a map showing where new liquor stores could open were the footage reduced to 750 feet.

I would be interested in seeing it, Riley said.
J. David Ake / Associated Press

NEW HAVEN  A drug trafficker who flooded Fairfield County with oxycodone, cocaine and marijuana will spend six years in a federal prison.

The states top federal prosecutor, Deirdre Daly, announced Thursday that 54-year-old Konstantinos Gus Zografidis will serve a six-year prison term followed by half that time in supervised release.
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Of the 3,494 deer ticks tested in the state last year for the organism that causes Lyme disease, nearly one-third tested positive, according to a new report released by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

Thirty-two percent tested positive in 2015 for the Borrelia burgdorferi organism that leads to Lyme disease. The percentage is higher than the 27 percent of the black-legged deer ticks that tested positive the previous year.

Most communities in southwest Connecticut were within a few percentage points of 32 percent. The number of ticks tested in towns varied from just one in Ansonia, Derby, Sherman and Weston, to 176 in Newtown.

The results show an increase in the number of ticks that tested positive over the last five years. The lowest percentage during that period was 19 percent in 2012.

The disease was first detected in the Lyme, Conn., area in 1975. Since 1998, the state Department of Public Health has reported about 3,000 cases annually to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recently, the CDC estimated that there are approximately 10 times more people diagnosed with Lyme disease than the yearly reported number. Using the CDC estimate, approximately 30,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease each year in Connecticut.

Deer play an important role in the life cycle of the ticks that transmit Lyme disease. Adult deer ticks need a blood meal before laying eggs, and most frequently this is obtained by feeding on deer.

More Information Cities, towns where ticks were found The following are area cities and towns where ticks were trapped and tested, the number that tested positive for the organism that causes Lyme disease and the percentage. Bridgeport: 10 tested, four positive; 25 percent. Brookfield: 34 tested, 7 positive; 20.6 percent. Danbury: Nine tested, 2 positive; 22.2 percent. Darien: 59 tested, 15 positive; 25.4 percent. Fairfield: 50 tested, 15 positive; 30 percent. Greenwich: 5 tested, 1 positive; 20 percent. Milford: 53 tested, 13 positive; 24.5 percent. Monroe: 10 tested, four positive; 40 percent. New Canaan: 103 tested, 32 positive; 31.1 percent. New Fairfield: 18 tested, 4 positive; 33.3 percent. New Milford: 18 tested, 8 positive; 44.4 percent. Newtown: 176 tested, 54 positive; 30.7 percent. Oxford: three tested, 2 positive; 66.7 percent. Redding: 81 tested, 28 positive; 34.6 percent. Sherman: 1 tested, 1 positive; 100 percent. Stamford: 168 tested, 55 positive; 32.7 percent. Stratford: 28 tested, 8 positive; 28.6 percent. Trumbull: 155 tested, 44 positive; 28.4 percent. Weston: 1 tested, 1 positive; 100 percent. Westport: 60 tested, 11 positive; 18 percent. Wilton: 130 tested, 35 positive; 26.9 percent. See More Collapse

Lyme disease is found in 14 states, concentrated heavily in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Across this state, towns in eastern Connecticut and along the Connecticut River have seen the highest number of infections.

The CDC says untreated Lyme disease can produce a wide range of symptoms, depending on the stage of infection, including fever, rash, facial paralysis and arthritis. Patients treated with appropriate antibiotics in the early stages of Lyme disease usually recover rapidly and completely.

The United States Department of Agriculture advises people not to let their guard down during the winter. The USDA says ticks carrying Lyme and other tick-borne diseases are still active in January and February, even when there is a 70 percent snow cover and air temperatures are below freezing. The organisms responsible for Lyme disease can survive through extremely harsh conditions  something they have been doing for 20 million years.
Did you hear something out of the ordinary around 1:30 and 2:30 p.m.Thursday?

Maybe, the sound of a rumble? Was it an earthquake? Aliens?

No, it was a series of sonic booms that rattled the eastern seaboard, including parts of southwest Connecticut, according to the Department of Defense.

An F-35C, which has a top speed of nearly 1,200 mph, and an F-18 from Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland were conducting supersonic testing off the coast Thursday afternoon, according to a Navy spokeswoman.

Residents reported hearing loud booms and feeling the ground and buildings shake from New Jersey to Long Island and Connecticut. Some southwest Connecticut residents, including George Mulligan, of Stratford, thought it may be have an earthquake. He called Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday to report the suspected earthquake, but a check with the U.S. Geological Survey said the closed earthquake to Connecticut was miles belong ground in Oklahoma.

Minor earthquakes have occured in southwest Connecticut - the most recent was on Jan. 12 when a magnitide 1.0 quake was reported 2.4 kilometers below Greenwich. ince the 1970s, there have been a few minor quakes in and around Greenwich, including a small quake that was centered under Old Greenwich, felt on the evening of Sept. 7, 2012

What is believed to be the worst quake in the states recorded history occurred in East Haddam on May 16, 1791, at about 8 p.m.

Chimneys toppled, latched doors were flung wide and a fissure opened in the ground. Witnesses said hundreds of aftershocks were felt throughout the night. Twelve miles to the south, in Clinton Harbor, fish were seen leaping out of the water.

With Thursdays sonic booms, no fish were reported to be jumping out of the water in Long Island Sound.

Navy spokeswoman Connie Hempel told the Associated Press that supersonic tests flights are done almost daily in the same area, but that most sonic booms aren't felt on land. They are conducted offshore in an area called the Test Track, parallel to the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula which is occupied by Delaware, Maryland and Viriginia.

Certain atmospheric conditions can increase the chance of hearing the booms. A geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey said there were nine total booms. Bruce Presgrave said recordings show they occurred over the span of 90 minutes.

When an aircraft passes through the air it creates a series of pressure waves similar to the waves created by a boat. Those waves travel at the speed of sound, and as the speed of the object increases, the waves are forced together, or compressed, because they cannot get out of the way of each other. Eventually they merge into a single shock wave, which travels at the speed of sound, known as Mach 1, and is approximately 761 mph.

In 1947, Charles Yeager, now 92, became the first person to break the sound barrier when he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 feet.
Enticed by the promise that their children could go to school in America, numerous Guatemalan parents paid to have their children smuggled into the U.S. No one knows how many made it across the border, but some of the children were detained by immigration official and transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Once in the hands of the federal government, the children should have been safe. Instead, the HHS gave at least a dozen children over to human traffickers.

One group of children was sent to Marion, Ohio where they were forced to work at egg farms for six or seven days a week, twelve hours per day. According to a U.S. Senate report, the children were forced to undertake such tasks as de-beaking chickens and cleaning chicken coops.

The minor victims were also forced to live in trailers owned by the traffickers. Some of the housing was found to be unsanitary and unsafe, with no bed, no heat, no hot water, no working toilets, and vermin. If the kids didnt work hard enough, the traffickers would threaten the victims and their family members with physical harm, and even death. One of the traffickers assaulted a boy and then called the victims father and threatened to shoot the father in the head if the minor victim did not work.



The traffickers used physical violence against the minor victims to keep them in line and to ensure they continued to do as they were told. The report notes that the traffickers used a combination of threats, humiliation, deprivation, financial coercion, debt manipulation, and monitoring to create a climate of fear and helplessness that would compel [the victims] compliance.

It is intolerable that human trafficking  modern-day slavery  could occur in our own backyard, says Senator Rob Portman (R-OH). But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.

The Senates Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that HHS failed to run background checks on the adults in the sponsors households as well as secondary caregivers, failed to visit any of the sponsors homes; and failed to realize that a group of sponsors was accumulating multiple unrelated children. In August 2014, HHS permitted a sponsor to block a child-welfare case worker from visiting with one of the victims, even after the case worker discovered the child was not living at the address on file with HHS.

The subcommittee concluded that, HHSs policies and procedures are inadequate to protect the children in the agencys care.

Since the beginning of FY2014, HHS has placed almost 90,000 unaccompanied immigrant minors with sponsors in the United States. But because of their carelessness and incompetence, HHS cant say how many children were handed over to forced labor or sex traffickers. There could be hundreds, even thousands, of minors suffering abuseall because the federal government failed in one of humanitys most basic and important tasks: look out for the children and protect them from harm.
'Joe Biden can have them': Mastriano vows to bus migrants to Delaware

politics
Democrats demand DeSantis share plans on restricting abortion

Abortion is among the biggest campaign topics. But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and many Republicans are silent as the midterm election nears.
The University of Memphis new $53 million dorm still has contractors working both in and outside of it. Contractors were still molding bricks and filling holes outside on Thursday. Inside Centennial Place, some students complained about maintenance issues as well.

Daisha Dear The University of Memphis new $53 million dorm still has contractors working both in and outside of it. Contractors were still molding bricks and filling holes outside on Thursday. Inside Centennial Place, some students complained about maintenance issues as well.

The University of Memphisa new $53 million dorm still has contractors working both in and outside of it.

Contractors were still molding bricks and filling holes outside on Thursday. Inside Centennial Place, some students complained about maintenance issues as well.

aThe ongoing issues are being dealt with by maintenance staff and the Physical Plant,a said Aretha Milligan, the interim associate dean of Residence Life and Dining Services.

aAs with any new building, there are kinks and maintenance issues that need to be ironed out when it becomes occupied,a she said. aAs these issues are brought to our attention, we are addressing them.a

At the Centennial Place some students were still complaining about facilities not working correctly after they moved in.

Austin Anderson The University of Memphis's $53 million Centennial Place is the lastest addition to the school master plan. It has 24 six-bedroom apartments, 300 single and doubleoccupancy rooms that are expected to house about 800 students. Each room is fully furnished and has two shared bathrooms and a kitchen, furnished with basic appliances.

Naaman Norment, an 18-year-old business management freshman who lives in the building, said his lights in him bedroom do not work correctly.

aSometimes when I turn my lights off, they come back on in the middle of the night when (Iam) sleeping,a he said.

Matthew Kamph, an 18-year-old sport and leisure management freshmen from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, said he has similar problems with the lights in his room.

aThe two lights in the room turn off together, even though there are two different switches and theyare in different areas of the room,a Kamph said.

aAlso, maintenance has little pieces of tape scattered around the building saying all of the things they need to fix.a Sarah Marlatt, a freshman from Madison, Wisconsin, never knows when to expect a maintenance worker at her door.

aThey will come at ten in the morning to work on the shower or the air conditioning,a Marlatt, 19, said. aWe just recently got hot water, and our shower ceiling leaks.a

Maintenance and contractors have solved many of the issues already. Washers on the third floor are working and the elevators have been fixed. Students said some outlets were not working during the first few days, but it is unclear if that is still an issue.

The Tennessee Board of Regent withheld the final payment to dorm builder Rentenbach Constructors Inc. The contract they signed with the state could have Rentenbach paying up to $1,000 each day that Centennial is not completed past the building deadline.

Nate Packard The Tennessee Board of Regents is withholding the final pay- ment to the contractors who built the University of Memphis $53 million dorm, which was more than six months late. U of M officials and Rentenbach Constructors Incorporated broke ground on the dorm in 2013, expecting it to be finished fall 2015.

Correction: In the print version of this story Naaman Norment was misidentifiedA as a woman.
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In March 2015, Ocean Springs native Adelchi Pilutti received the Legion of Merit -- France's highest military honor, for his actions during World War II. Now, eight more WWII veterans from Mississippi will receive the Legion of Honor.

(File photo/Gulflive.com)

JACKSON, Mississippi -- They were country boys who had never traveled farther from home than a neighboring county.

Born and raised during the era of the Great Depression, they were strong and willing and a bit naive.

That is who America sent to the other side of the earth to help win World War II. People like David L. Smith of Madison, Mississippi, and the late J.T. Street Jr. of Ripley, Mississippi.

Smith and Street will join six other veterans to be awarded France's Legion of Honor medal at a ceremony Friday in Montgomery, Alabama. It is France's highest decoration and presented to veterans of World War II who fought and risked their lives in major battles on French soil.

Smith and Street certainly qualify.

At the age of 90, Smith still drives, teaches Sunday School and volunteers at the Arts Pavilion at Baptist Hospital in Jackson.

He was a private first class in the Army's heralded 179th Infantry, 45th Division and spent 10 months in combat. He was shot in the neck, took three weeks to heal, then went back to the front lines in France to fight again.

Smith was part of a unit that was pinned in a snowy, frozen forest by German troops and spent 85 days in a foxhole.

For perspective, 85 days ago was Nov. 3.

"The winter of 1944 was terrible, and you really couldn't relax much," says Smith, who grew up in Lincoln County, near Bogue Chitto, and after the war spent 33 years as a rural mail carrier in southern Hinds County. "We'd attack the Germans some. They'd attack us. And then it would fall quiet. We ate rations three times a day, and they gave us a new pair of socks every night. So we got by until the weather improved and we could get out of there."

Smith bled on French soil again when shrapnel tore into his left tricep. "All my buddies called my injury the million-dollar wound," Smith says. "It wouldn't kill you but it would get you headed for home."

He was sent to a hospital in Texas where doctors wanted to amputate. He refused. So they sewed his arm to his chest, allowed skin to grow over the wound, then did surgery.

He sticks out his right hand, which is holding a dark, jagged object slightly larger than a piece of charcoal. It is the shrapnel doctors removed from his arm.

"It was real, real hot when it hit my arm," he says. "Very painful."

More painful, he says, than the bullet to his neck.

"It's hard to explain, but I just always had a feeling that I was going to make it back home," Smith says. "I think it had a lot to do with my faith. I was baptized when I was 11 years old and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. That kept me strong over there."

Street, too, saw his blood on the snow in France.

But he heard it first.

"It was cold and they couldn't feel a lot in their extremities," says his son, Jay Street, who lives in West Point. "He said he was running and thought he had tripped. He said he started hearing a swishing sound in his boot."

When he took it off, it was filled with his blood. Shrapnel had gone through his leg, leaving entry and exit holes.

"He put a sulfur pack on the front, borrowed a buddy's sulfur pack and put it on the back and it healed in the freezing cold like that," Jay says.

Street died in July at age 91. He had learned of the award three months before his death.

"I think it meant a lot to him," Jay says. "I relate it to when the grandchildren and great-grandchildren came around, it sort of breathed life into him. That's what this award did for him. I had the letter laminated and put in a frame, and he showed it to everybody who came by."

Street grew up in Ripley, the county seat of Tippah County, located 45 miles northwest of Tupelo.

He was a private first class in the Army's 3820th Quartermaster Gas Supply Company, 3rd Armored Division.

Street was part of the historic D-Day Invasion of Omaha Beach, where thousands of Germans awaited them from bunkers built into the rising cliffs.

In a YouTube video, Street was interviewed in 2012 by Pam Maulding of the Tippah County Historical Society. Street recalled the Higgins boats carrying them stopped far short of the shore.

"When they dropped that tailgate, four at a time we were ordered to jump into the water and head for the beach," Street said. "I was way back in the line, and I could see everything happening. Our men would jump in and never come back up. I hollered to the officer that we needed to get closer, that he was drowning everybody."

Street knew part of the problem was the 150-pound backpacks they were forced to carry, plus their heavy clothing. So before he jumped, Street shed his backpack, helmet and trousers.

"He said when he made it to shore, there were plenty of backpacks and trousers available," Jay recalls, "from Americans who wouldn't need them anymore. He said there were bodies everywhere he looked and walked."

One of 11 children, Street became the first in his family to graduate from college. He earned an accounting degree from Memphis State in 1950, owned and operated a Western Auto store and an aluminum products company in Ripley. He, too, served as a rural mail carrier in the 1950s and '60s.

Smith didn't find out about the award until last Thursday.

"It was good timing," says Linda Smith, the youngest of Smith's three daughters and the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Jackson. "His brother (Carroll, 95) had died the Sunday before that. The funeral was that Tuesday. So it was a great pick-me-up for him."

She says the most special part of Friday's ceremony will be that four generations of the family will be on hand to celebrate together.

Meanwhile, Jay Street will accept the award on behalf of his father.

"I wish my dad could've been here to enjoy this," Jay says. "But he always struggled with survivor's guilt. I can't tell you the times that he would say, 'I don't understand why God spared me and so many others didn't come home.'

"My wife (Cindy) and I were able to take him to Washington in 2005, the year after my mom died. We went to the World War II Memorial. He was wearing his service cap, and people were coming up to him, thanking him and asking to have their picture made with him. He was a rock star for a day. I think he finally got to experience how many people appreciate what he did, and I'm so thankful for that."

In March 2015, Ocean Springs native Adelchi Pilutti received the Legion of Honor for his actions in WWII.
As countless people clamour for a recipe they think might bag them a mate, others are starting to wonder: do we need to worry if our partner leaves the house with cookware?

by Samantha Selinger-Morris
David Cameron flies to Brussels this morning to see the European Commission's president, Jean-Claude Juncker. His staff says they'll have 'a working lunch' - stressing the 'working'.

Why so? Bon vivant Jean-Claude, from Luxembourg, enjoys a drink.

But no 10 lackeys would prefer he didn't think the lunch will be a knees-up affair.

A well-refreshed Juncker, 61, greeted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban by calling him 'dictator' and once kissed Belgium premier Charles Michel on his bald pate.

David Cameron plans to emphasise the 'working' in his 'working lunch' with Jean-Claude Juncker, pictured

Tufnell Park-based move star Damien Lewis reacted graciously when locals said he shouldn't have been asked to open an art installation at a local comprehensive school because he was privately educated at Eton. 'I was the best available choice,' he joked.

Lewis thought so highly of his Eton education that he decided to forgo university, remarking in an interview: 'Unless I was going to go to Oxford or Cambridge, I was going to be at a university or a college that was going to be less good, less interesting, than where I'd been for the past five years.

Samantha Cameron's star turn in The Great Sport Relief Bake Off, pictured, featured lots of sugar. SamCam chucked the stuff around, particularly in her show-stopper Surf Cake.

Daughter Nancy's cake-baking credentials were also mentioned. With his womenfolk hooked on it, is this why the PM isn't a fan of the sugar tax to tackle obesity.

Samantha Cameron pictured taking on The Great Sport Relief Bake Off on BBC1 for charity

Former Amstrad boss Lord Sugar, 68, whose old computers fill many a landfill site, commands an ITV satellite box on Twitter, saying expats 'can watch UK TV any time live, or skip back 14 days.'

When a fellow Twitter user accused him of flogging 'dodgy boxes' - he once made Sky satellite TV boxes - short-tempered Sugar exploded: 'They are not my dodgy boxes...you stupid idiot'. Surely Twitter isn't good for his blood pressure?

The Beverley Hills home of the late Charlton Heston has been sold for 8.4million. It featured in Michael Moore's prize-winning anti-gun documentary Bowling for Columbine.

Moore arrived there unannounced in 2001 and persuaded Heston to speak about firearms.

By then, pro-gun Heston, who died aged 84 in 2008, had Alzheimer's disease. His confused responses to Moore's aggressive questioning made for uncomfortable viewing.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch tells followers that 'posh boys in Downing Street' are 'easily awed by Google chairman [Eric] Schmidt'.
GULFPORT, Mississippi -- A former Long Beach police officer has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for the statutory rape of his teenage girlfriend.

The Sun Herald reports Harrison County

Circuit Judge Chris Schmidt also ordered 45-year-old Patrick Klis to serve six years of supervised probation and register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Before handing down the sentence Thursday, Schmidt said the evidence shows Klis "was grooming the girl for the ultimate trophy."

After being arrested in March 2014, Klis admitted he began a relationship with the girl when she was 14 and had sex with her on her 15th birthday.

Klis is a retired Seabee with six combat tours in Iraq and had been on the police force for 61/2 years before his arrest last April.
Try to imagine a world populated by teenagers who are neither boys nor girls but have three genders at once: they are male, female and androgynous, making them tri-gender.

Other young people are known as demi-boys and demi-girls. Some drift between genders in a variety of ways. Some are bi-gender; still more are trans-girls and trans-boys, while yet another tribe identify themselves as gender fluid.

This sounds like the stuff of science fiction. In fact, every term Ive just used comes from a questionnaire that the British Government planned to submit to children aged 13 to 18 as part of a research project sponsored by the Department of Education via the 2.9 million-a-year office of the Childrens Commissioner for England.

A new questionnaire that the British Government planned to submit to children aged 13 to 18 as part of a research project sponsored by the Department of Education gives them the option of 25 genders

Until this week, you could find the questionnaire by visiting the website of the taxpayer-funded Commissioner, Anne Longfield OBE.

A former charity boss, Longfield was appointed by Nicky Morgan, whom David Cameron made Education Secretary when, before the election, he moved Michael Gove from the post in order to placate the teachers unions.

The choice struck me at the time as an exercise in gender box-ticking. Morgan is a politician of immense self-belief but limited talents. But, no doubt about it, she is a woman.

It is inconceivable that Gove  now Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor  would have allowed the Government to pay for a research project that asks children to choose between 22 gender identities (25 if you count not sure, rather not say and others, please state).

On Wednesday, the questionnaire  which also asks children whether they feel safe using single-sex toilets and would prefer unisex ones  mysteriously disappeared from the Childrens Commissioners website after the Daily Mail asked her about it.

A spokesman said it was a draft, that the Commissioner had not cleared it and that a new version will be prepared with some of the questions withdrawn.

Too late. Some schools have already received the questionnaire, and details of the planned research project have been published by the feminist academics from Brighton, Lancaster and Cardiff universities who have been working on it with University College Londons Institute of Education since May last year.

Nearly every sentence of the documents in which those academics stress the importance of this research is clogged with the jargon of hardline feminists and their allies in the trans lobby.

Thats no surprise, given the CVs of the Leftie professors-cum-activists behind the scheme.

One of them, Jessica Ringrose, who is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at UCL, says that she teaches in the areas of social justice, gender, sexuality and feminist qualitative research.

Ringrose is the co-author of articles entitled Boobs and Barbie: Feminist posthuman perspectives on gender, bodies and practice; Sexting, Ratings and (Mis)Recognition: Teen Boys Performing Classed and Racialised Masculinities in Digitally Networked Publics; and Posthuman performativity, gender and school bullying: Exploring the material-discursive intra-actions of skirts, hair, sluts, and poofs.

The phrase beyond parody comes to mind.

Options include demi-boys and demi-girls, bi-gender, trans-girls and trans-boys', or gender fluid'. Model Ruby Rose considers herself gender fluid, while author Jack Monroe (pictured) came out as transgender

Ringrose would say that, as a journalist, Im unqualified to judge her work. But, like her, I have a PhD in sociology and have sat through many boring right-on rants at academic conferences. Even by their standards, this is loopy feminist drivel.

Whats truly depressing is that the questionnaire devised by Ringrose and colleagues was commissioned by a Conservative government.

There could be no clearer demonstration of the way education has been infiltrated by a new generation of feminists.

Old-style feminists could be dreary and humourless. But, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that they had a point about the unthinking sexism of the Sixties and Seventies. Ambitious young women at the time must have felt they were trapped in a Carry On film. Many male employers judged them by their looks or the size of their knockers, and successful women were often accused of flirting or sleeping their way to the top.

Also, the best of the older feminists were women of towering intellect who could wipe the floor with their opponents. The name of Dr Germaine Greer immediately springs to mind.

Thats the same Dr Greer who, today, finds herself disinvited from university debates  not by reactionaries but by Left- wing activists.

Why? Because the new ideology is utterly fixated on the minutiae of gender politics. And she holds the wrong views on the subject that obsesses them most: the status of trans people.

'Germaine Greer today finds herself disinvited from university debates  not by reactionaries but by Left- wing activists because she holds the wrong views on the subject that obsesses them most: the status of trans people'

The word trans is used as an umbrella term for people we used to refer to as transvestites (men who dress as women, and vice- versa) and transsexuals (who have had a sex-change operation).

Greer insists that men who have been surgically changed to become women are not female at all but mutilated men. Personally, I think she makes her argument in a needlessly offensive manner.

I used to say the same sort of thing myself  until I met a couple of women who had been born as men.

One of them is a musician in New York, with whom I had a delightful supper. Only afterwards did a fellow guest tell me that shed had the op, as he put it. I was astonished.

I consider these two people  the other a very fine poet and literary critic  as women. I refer to them as she without even thinking about it.

But the fact remains that, in the U.S., only 0.3 per cent of the population refer to themselves as transgender. Theres no reliable figure for Britain. However, were certainly talking about a minuscule section of the population.

Why, then, has the concept of gender fluidity come to loom so large that the Government wants to grill teenagers about it?

Essentially, this is a hysteria imported from the U.S. The Puritan strain in U.S. history  English Puritans, in despair at corruption in the Church of England, migrated there in the 17th century  has left the country with a propensity for doctrinaire witch-hunts.

U.S. activists fought  and won  admirable battles for the rights of women, blacks and gay people.In the process, however, a huge industry grew up around minority rights. American universities are grossly overstaffed with diversity officers who encourage professors and students to denounce anyone who uses insensitive language to describe an oppressed group.

The same is increasingly true of British campuses, which love to copy the latest American politically correct fad.

Dont get me wrong: the tiny transgender minority is still vulnerable to horrible bullying and violence. But most of these crimes occur far away from well-funded campuses.

Trans people gain nothing from the spectacle of middle-class students accusing each other with pointed fingers in the manner of a witchfinder-general or Senator Joseph McCarthy hunting out Communists in 1950s America, simply for not using the appropriate words.

These crimes are terribly easy to commit. The PC lexicon of approved terms for gender identity is long, complex and always changing.

Right now, liberal orthodoxy demands that the 99.7 per cent of people who are happy with the sex they were born with  irrespective of whether theyre straight or gay  should call themselves cis-gendered or cis.

This is derived from the Latin word meaning on this side of. Its the opposite of trans, meaning on the other side of.

The prefix cis has spread like a virus from universities to millions of enlightened individuals via social media. Twitter loves it.

The tiny transgender minority is still vulnerable to horrible bullying and violence, writes Damian Thompson

Also in the PC phrasebook are terms such as bi-gender, pan-gender and graysexual  this last meaning someone who is neither sexual nor asexual but somewhere in the middle.

The result is a kaleidoscope of possible sexual identities. So long as you stick to the currently approved jargon, the possibilities are limitless.

You can choose to belong to several of these groups simultaneously. Significantly, the Government-backed questionnaire encourages respondents to tick more than one box.

The temptation is to dismiss such an exercise as the ultimate pointless luxury for pampered young people who have nothing more serious to worry about, and for whom such things as war, famine and civil breakdown are inconceivable.

Yet the youngsters on whom the Government tried to force this questionnaire are being fed a dangerous fiction.

With all due respect to trans- gender people  and they deserve as much respect as anyone  the fact remains that human gender is rarely fluid, however you define fluidity.

Teenagers are troubled enough without ideological prodding from academics who wish to deconstruct (to use one of their favourite words) their natural assumption that they are male or female.

Anne Longfield is supposed to protect children from all sorts of problems, including emotional confusion. Instead, her office was planning to increase that confusion  and arguably cause distress in the minds of vulnerable adolescents  at our expense.
Almost a week has passed since George Osborne so ill-advisedly declared HMRCs sweetheart deal with Google a victory, and still the damaging revelations keep pouring out of Whitehall

Almost a week has passed since George Osborne so ill-advisedly declared HMRCs sweetheart deal with Google a victory, and still the damaging revelations keep pouring out of Whitehall.

Today the Mail discloses how, on a 2013 trip to the US, Treasury Minister David Gauke tried to schmooze a room-full of tech giants with promises of low taxes and HMRC relationship managers to help them avoid expensive litigation.

Incredibly, the cost to the Exchequer of this charm offensive (5,736) was more than the total tax bill paid by Facebook (4,327) in the UK the following year!

Meanwhile, the Chancellor yesterday dug himself deeper into a hole, repeating his risible claim that the 130million paid by Google is a major success.

He argues that he has a better record than Labour in shaking a few coppers from the deep pockets of the internet firm, a claim that would have more validity if the upper echelons of the Tory Party had not enjoyed such close links with it.

Indeed, what the Conservatives still do not seem to understand is how toxic it is for their rich and powerful tech-company friends to be paying a tax rate of three per cent, while small businesses in Britain are hounded mercilessly for every penny.

The fact that this debacle has occurred just as millions are losing sleep to fill in self-assessment forms, on pain of punitive fines if they are late, adds further insult.

Those people might care to reflect on how much tax HMRC raised annually in the UK from Starbucks (8.1million), Apple (11.8million) and Amazon (11.9million)  all of whom have global revenues of tens of billions of pounds.

Time to walk away?

After months of phoney rows and crisis talks over the Prime Ministers referendum negotiations, Brussels yesterday revealed it is ready to offer Britain an emergency brake to control immigration.

Doubtless the idea will be presented as a great victory by David Cameron, who is desperate to hold the vote in June, before the summer months bring even greater migrant chaos to the continent.

In reality, however, Europes concession is next to useless.

Not only would the new rules do nothing to prevent migrants travelling here in the first place, theyd merely allow a halt on the payment of certain benefits.

After months of phoney rows and crisis talks over the Prime Ministers referendum negotiations, Brussels yesterday revealed it is ready to offer Britain an emergency brake to control immigration

Most farcically, Brussels  not Britains democratically-elected Parliament  will have the power to decide when the brake could be applied.

Such meaningless gestures, frankly, insult the intelligence.

Instead of settling for gimmicks which will do nothing to restore Britains borders, wouldnt Mr Cameron be better walking away for now  and telling the crumbling EU to come back when it has something meaningful to offer?

But then, as Mr Cameron has made it clear he is determined to remain in the EU, he has lost what little negotiating power he might ever have had.

A wasted generation

In a devastating report, the OECD warns that, by packing courses with students entirely unsuited to academic studies, universities are undermining the currency of degrees  with our graduates sixth from bottom of its international league tables for literacy and numeracy.

Belatedly, ministers are realising the folly  pursued by Labour and the Tories  of trying to push youngsters off to university, often to study dubious subjects, rather than providing them with the alternative of high-quality vocational apprenticeships.
Mrs Tucci is sharing the highs and lows and large eating habits on her blog that has more than 123,000 followers

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A Perth mum has given birth to quintuplets - one boy and four girls - in just two minutes.

Kim Tucci, 26, announced on Friday that she and her husband Vaughn Tucci have welcomed five new children to their growing brood - a son, Keith, and four daughters - Ali, Penelope, Tiffany and Beatrix, according to Woman's Day.

She was just 30 weeks along when she went into labour at King Edward Memorial Hospital.

Mrs Tucci, who has a nine-year-old son from a previous marriage and two daughters with her husband Vaughn, fell naturally pregnant with quintuplets while trying for a boy with her husband and has been documenting the highs and lows of her pregnancy since receiving the news.

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Party of five: Perth mum Kim Tucci, 26, (pictured) have given birth to her quintuplets in just two minutes at King Edward Memorial Hospital

Surprised by five: Mrs Tucci announced on Friday that she and her husband Vaughn Tucci have welcomed five new children to their growing brood - a son, Keith, and four daughters - Ali, Penelope, Tiffany and Beatrix

Mrs Tucci wrote about her struggles with back pain, 12 bathroom trips a night and consuming the recommended 6,000 calories a day to feed her five babies.

I'm struggling to eat and force feed myself leaving me with reflux for hours, she wrote on her blog Surprised With Five.

I can't tolerate a lot of dairy and I can't keep protein drinks down, I'm starting to lose weight when I really need to be gaining it.

Her online posts about dealing with pain, nausea, changes to her body and going to the bathroom 12 times a night, has amassed a following of more than 123,000 people  most of them mums who share their own personal stories.

It's getting harder as each day passes to push through the pain, every part of my body aches and sleeping is becoming very painful, she said.

No amount of pillows are helping support my back and belly. Sometime I get so upset that I just want to throw my hands up and give in!

Miracle babies: Mrs Tucci, who has a nine-year-old son from a previous marriage and two daughters with her husband Vaughn, fell naturally pregnant with quintuplets while trying for a boy with her husband

Sharing the love: The mum of eight has been documenting the highs and lows of her pregnancy in her blog since learning the shocking news

I have a lot of stretch marks now, dealing with such a huge change in my body is hard. My husband always reminds me I should wear my stripes with pride and that I should be proud of them and what my body has achieved.

Is it all worth it?

Yes!!!! I will keep pushing through, Mrs Tucci exclaims.

At 24 weeks along, photographer Erin Elizabeth took photos of the expecting mum to commemorate her journey.

The images became a hit on Mrs Tucci's website and Ms Elizabeth's social media.

Mrs Tucci has been admitted to the hospital on a few occasions for minor issues but all five of the children  four girls and one boy  are healthy.

Eating for five: Mrs Tucci wrote on her blog that she was having a hard time eating 6,000 calories a day to meet the recommended calorie intake for quintuplet pregnancies

Mrs Tucci and her husband began trying for their third and final child together last year with the hope of having a son to complete their family.

After finding out in July that Mrs Tucci was pregnant, the couple was ecstatic to be told by their doctor that they were having twins.

'I WAS SO EXCITED!! TWINS!!! I was excited at the possibility of twins but absolutely nothing on this earth could have prepared me for what happened next, Mrs Tucci said.

When she asked to use another sonogram machine so she could have a clearer view of the babies, her world was turned upside-down when the doctor found five separate heart beats.

An early photo posted to Mrs Tucci's blog when she was just 11 weeks along but her size can be compared to a mother who is almost at the end of her pregnancy

Mrs Tucci asked to take a second sonogram to see her babies better and doctors were shocked to find out that instead of two heartbeats, there were five

'My legs start [sic] to shake uncontrollably and all I can do is laugh.. The sonographer then told me the term for 5 is QUINTUPLETS!!' she continued.

'I called my husband from the ultrasound room but I don't think he believed me at first. He quickly drove down. I could see the excitement in his face he told me " We can do this".'

Mrs Tucci said it has started to kick in what a big change this will be for her family.

I have only just really embraced this pregnancy and what it will mean for my family, the last few days has been a reality check that it's all really happening!
She is there to meet with business leaders from television and film

The Foreign Affairs Minister is in the US for ten days

She wore a white dress for the occasion and posed with her boyfriend

On a rare break from her political duties as Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop has put on a stylish display at the GDay USA Black Tie Gala.

While the 59-year-old usually opts for Giorgio Armani suits and designer heels, this time the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party chose a white gown with a sparkly overlay when she appeared on the red carpet with her boyfriend Robert Hill.

The politician, who has said in interviews in the past that she tries to wear clothes that will promote an appropriate image for Australia, could easily double up as Fashion Minister, and this was in full evidence at the Gala, as she and her husband posed for the cameras.

All white: The 59-year-old fashionista politician attended the G'Day USA Black Tie Gala in LA

All-star attendance: The event was also attended by Mariah Carey and her new fiance James Packer

Bishop dazzled in her dress and co-ordinating silver arm cuff and earrings, adding a pop of colour with red fingernails.

The event was also attended by fellow Australian James Packer and Mariah Carey, who made their first appearance since their engagement, alongside Mad Max director, George Miller.

Mariah showed off her 35 carat engagement ring on the red carpet.

Lots to celebrate: Actor Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness also attended the event

Gala theme: The theme of this year's LA Gala was innovation - 'innovation, ingenuity, and Australian creativity'

Speaking to Sky News, Julie Bishop said that the theme of this years GDay USA Gala was innovation.

Innovation, ingenuity, Australian creativity and a sophisticated diverse economy, she said, arguing that there would be a push for more films to be produced in Australia.

Weve had some successes with the Thor film and the next Alien film and we are hoping to attract more, she said.

Furry fun: Nicole Richie also attended the event, wearing white with a furry jacket

Australian actor Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness were also in attendance on the red carpet, as was Holly Valance and Nicole Richie, before an awards ceremony was presented by Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths.

Meanwhile, Julie Bishop has been in the USA between 21 and 31 January.

She is currently in LA on the last leg of her US tour. She is there to meet with business leaders from the film and television industry and will return to Australia afterwards.
By Bianca London for MailOnline

The theory goes that we all have seven doppelgangers living across the globe but most of us will never meet our 'twins'.

However one woman, who launched a project with her friends called Twin Strangers to see if she could find her closest lookalike within 28 days, was left amazed to discover three women who look exactly like her.

Then, a bearded traveller met his doppelganger on a Ryanair flight after he discovered a stranger sat in his seat.

And now, two more men who looked scarily alike have met by chance at a comedy gig.

Rob Winston, left, met his doppelganger - a man named Kobi, right - at a stand-up comedy event in London and discovered that his twin stranger is also a comedian

Comedian Rob Winston, originally from Florida, now living in London, bumped into his doppelganger - a man named Kobi - at a stand-up comedy event in London and his pal posted a snap of the pair.

Taking to image sharing site Imgur, Tom Moffatt posted a snap of the pair with the caption: 'My friend Rob (on the left), who is a stand-up comedian, met his doppelganger last night.

'He was performing at a gig in London. I couldn't believe it when I saw the likeness. Same amount of stubble! Same hair style! Same glasses! They are, as far as we know, unrelated!'

Metro.co.uk report that a woman in the audience accidentally went up to Kobi and, mistaking him for comedian Rob, complimented him on his comedy show.

Speaking to the website, Rob said: She was complimenting him on my material. When I saw him I was like damn! This is crazy. We look so similar.

'I would have chased him down the street if he had left without one!,' said Rob, pictured, who added his twin stranger on Facebook and hopes to see him again at each other's comedy gigs

To make matters even more eerie, Kobi, who has just relocated from Israel, is also a comedian and is prepping for his first English-language gig.

As well as having a good catch up, the pair also ensured they got a selfie. I would have chased him down the street if he had left without one!,' said Rob, who added his twin stranger on Facebook and hopes to see him again at each other's comedy gigs.

The duo are by no means the first doppelgangers who have gone viral.

Niamh Geaney, 26, from Ireland, spearheaded the Twin Strangers concept and met her first lookalike, Karen Branigan, and staged a photoshoot that went viral.

She then discovered Luisa Guizzardi in Italy and then more recently she amazingly found Irene Adams, who also hails from Ireland. So are these women - who look eerily similar - at all related?

Niamh decided to find out by taking a DNA test with her most recent doppelganger, Irene, to find out.

Niamh Geaney, 26, right, who launched a project with her friends called Twin Strangers to see who could find their closest lookalike within 28 days, recently found her third doppelganger, Irene Adams, left, also 26. The duo decided to take a DNA test to determine whether they really were at all related

Neil Douglas, right, was shocked to discover his identical twin, Robert Stirling, from London, on a flight from Stansted to Shannon Airport, County Clare, in October last year

A few weeks ago Niamh and her latest doppelganger Irene took swabs of their saliva and sent them off to a lab to be tested.

They tested the DNA to discover whether Niamh and Irene are sisters, half-sisters and - most interestingly - whether they are related up to 20,000 years ago.

The first test looked at whether they are sisters, with a probability of 0.0006 per cent and odds of 150,000/1.

The next test assessed whether they are half-sisters, with a probability is 1.1 per cent and odds of 93/1.

The final test - a lineage test - assessed whether they are related anywhere up to 20,000 years ago - with results showing they are not related at all.

Explaining the results, Niamh said: 'The results are reported as statistical likelihood or chances/odds.

'So while they cant say 100 per cent (you never can with DNA on account of the randomness of nature), the statistical likelihood is calculated based on the genetic markers that you share (Niamh and Irene, or Niamh and any other member of the population, we will all share some markers because theyre present in all members of the population).'

Speaking about meeting Niamh, Irene, 26, said: 'I was out shopping and a girl from school who I hadn't talked to in years was telling me about this "Doppelganger girl" all over YouTube that was my twin. I hadn't heard about the project so I went home and out of curiosity looked it up.

'I then received a Facebook friend request from Niamh and a funny message about how she thought we looked alike. I was intrigued so decided to meet up with her.'

Niamh decided to find out by taking a DNA test with her most recent doppelganger, Irene, to find out if they share both parents, one parent or are related through their ancestors 20,000 years back

Niamh, right, has discovered yet another lookalike in the form of Irene Adams, also 26, who lives in her home country of Ireland

Niamh, 26, left, found her first doppelganger through social media after setting herself the challenge of finding her 'twin stranger'. She then found the second one in the form of Luisa Guizzardi, right, who lives in Genoa, Italy

Niamh, left, with her first 'twin stranger' Karen Branigan (right). The pair were photographed together and the shoot went viral with people shocked at how similar the unrelated duo look

Niamh said meeting her doppelgangers is becoming quite a thrill.

Describing how she felt before her meeting with Irene, she said: 'You never lose that excitement mixed with nerves before coming face-to-face with your lookalike, it's just as nerve-racking as the first time! All these questions run through your mind: 'Will she look like me?', 'Will she think I look like her?', 'What is she like?', 'Is she nice?'.

'Then on meeting her you feel amazement, wonder and awe take over, along with an overwhelming desire to ask her a million and one questions (to see if she's like you in other ways!).'

In June, Niamh had journeyed to Genoa, Italy, to meet her second lookalike Luisa Guizzardi, who is around the same age and contacted her via her website, twinstrangers.com.

'I had this crazy idea to fly and meet her,' explains Niamh, who also met Luisa's friends and family and filmed the encounter in a video.

On meeting Niamh, even Luisa's mother said she struggled to tell the difference.

'From a distance, I thought you were Luisa,' she said before wiping away tears.

'Not only do we look the same, but we have the same soul,' said Luisa, who works in a hotel. 'Like soulmates.'

Niamh added: 'I really do think I have another friend for life and god help me if I find my seven because they're never going to get rid of me.'

The resemblance between Niamh and Luisa isn't quite as uncanny as that between her and her first doppelganger, Karen Branigan, right, who she found in April

Now Niamh is helping others meet their lookalikes with her project, set up with her friends Harry and Terence, by adding photos to their website. Facial recognition is then used to try and find a match.

'There is a huge human curiosity element to it,' she said. 'Can you imagine how surreal it would be to meet someone who looked exactly like you?'

The project had originally been a Facebook page but is now a website in its own right to respond to the worldwide demand.

Niamh said: 'Our Facebook page (which now has over 360,000 followers) simply couldn't cope with the demand, so we decided to set up the site so that people could search for and connect with their own lookalikes from all over the world.

'We now have over three quarters of a million users on the site and Twin Strangers are connecting through it every day. It's been an amazing journey so far and we don't really know where it's going to end!'

Likewise, Neil Douglas was shocked to discover his identical twin, Robert Stirling, from London, on a flight from Stansted to Shannon Airport, County Clare, in October last year.

Instead of asking the stranger to move the 32-year-old wedding photographer, from Glasgow, took a selfie and shared the image on Twitter.

The pair, who were even wearing similar black tops, later realised they were booked into the same Irish hotel and enjoyed a pint together in a nearby pub.

Speaking to MailOnline, Mr Douglas said: 'I asked him to move and when the guy looked up, I thought: "Holy s***, he looks like me.

'We had a big laugh about it  everyone had a laugh. We took a selfie and that was it.

'I later checked into my hotel in Galway to find my doppelganger checking into the same hotel ahead of me. Total weirdness.'

Mr Stirling, a 35-year-old civil servant from Redbridge, added: 'I had actually swapped my seat on the plane so that a couple could sit together.

'Neil suddenly appeared next to me and all my mates started shouting, saying that we had to take a picture.

'We chatted on the flight for just over an hour, he was a very nice guy.
It's a taboo subject and not one usually discussed on daytime telly, but today three men appeared on This Morning to talk about their insecurities over their penis size.

The three volunteers - Clive Symonds, 27, from Kent, Jack Davis, 26 from Hereford and Ant Smith, 49, from East London - admitted they have grown up feeling inadequate over their 'micropenises'.

The term is used to describe a manhood that is two inches when erect and well below the national average of 5.2 inches.

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From left, Jack Davis, 26 from Hereford, Clive Symonds, 27, from Kent, and Ant Smith, 49 from East London, appeared on today's This Morning to discuss their penis size

Ruth Langsford used a tape measure to the bemusement of her husband Eamonn Holmes to illustrate the penis size when erect of the three guests

With the help of a tape measure, presenter Ruth Langsford - who was fronting the show with husband Eamonn Holmes - revealed the men are all in fact over the 'micro' mark with Ant's measuring nearly four inches and Clive and Jack's three inches.

But the three men confessed being on the smaller end of the scale made them feel inferior and the butt of friends' jokes when they were teenagers.

Single Jack, who works as a granite technician, said he realised he was smaller than other men when he was 18 and used communal changing rooms after playing sport.

He said: 'In the changing rooms at football all the lads started laughing and taking the mic, nothing too horrible but banter between lads. I started thinking "am I smaller than everyone else?"'

The three men were able to laugh about the sensitive subject after revealing being smaller than average has never been a problem for them in the bedroom

Ruth used a tape measure to show how the three men compare to the national average

He said the new research revealing the average size confirms his fears but he doesn't have an issue with it.

He said: 'I have never had a problem and no girls have said anything. I never had complaints in the bedroom. I am used to it now and get on with it.'

Labourer Clive agreed that his smaller than average size has never hindered him.

He said: 'I don't see it as a handicap, it works perfectly fine for me.'

Like Jack, he said he was mocked for his size at school but he never let it get to him and he is now in a happy relationship with girlfriend, Georgia, 24.

He said: 'At school I didn't get bullied as such but there was banter and you have to deal with it.

'I let it go over my head, I am quite a bubbly person so had a laugh and tried not to let it get me down.'

Ruth shows the three inch size of Jack and Clive, left, compared to the 5.2 inch average, right

He advised other men concerned about their size to 'ignore what people say and don't let it get you down'. He said they should also realise that 'a lot of men lie' about their vital statistics.

This is something Ant said he has come to accept after decades of feeling inadequate.

He said he was heartened by the research revealing the average size is 5.2 inches as he always believed the majority of men were six inches and over.

'If I had a more accurate vision of how men stack up I would have saved myself years of shame,' he said. 'By talking about it I want to validate it as things you see on the internet are fantasy.'

Ant said he first felt insecure about his size as a teenager when he was already struggling to be adept in the bedroom.

'When I was 18, I didn't know what I was doing it was and one more worry to make life impossible,' he admitted.

Clive said he was teased a little at school but said he has never seen his penis size 'as a handicap'

Ant admitted his size bothered him for decades but now he realises he shouldn't compare himself to images on the internet which are 'fantasy'

Jack said he first realised he was smaller than average when he used to change after football and his teammates would laugh at him

Like the other two men, he said he had been teased at school and his body image issues contributed to him remaining a virgin until he was 21.

Even after he married his wife Christine, 46, he said he continued to worry about his size, even though she never mentioned it.

He said it was only recently after 16 years of marriage that he opened up to her about his fears.

He said: 'She was surprised I was concerned, she never thought there was a problem and it has never been a problem for her. It made me think maybe there isn't a problem.'

It is for this reason that he decided to talk about his experience on national television, so other men who may be worrying like he used to feel less alone.

He said men should be proud whatever their size.

The three men were praised on Twitter for being brave enough to discuss the matter on TV

Chloe was one of the This Morning viewers amused by the segment asking does size matter?

Miss.understood tweeted to say she was entertained by how Eamonn Holmes coped presenting

Nijoco tweeted to say she was 'proud' of the three 'lovely men' for opening up about the subject

Vicki tweeted to say 'what brave men!' after watching the discussion

Jo agreed that the three men were brave to discuss the issue adding 'hats off to them'

'There are eight billion of us on the planet and if we were all the same it would be boring, love your individuality,' he advised.

The segment certainly got viewers talking with many taking to social media to comment on the discussion, query why #doessizematter? was trending, and to offer their support to the three men.

Chloe Newlove Tweeted '@itvthismorning just casually measuring penis size when erect... got to love morning TV #doessizematter'.

Meanwhile @miss.understood was amused by how presenter Eamonn Holmes coped as his wife Ruth whipped out a tape measure to demonstrate the size of the three guests.

'@itvthismorning eamons face while ruths git that tape measure lmao' (sic), she tweeted.

Others praised the three men for being brave enough to speak about the issue on TV with Nijoco tweeting: 'I think you're all lovely men and very proud of you', and Becky Metcalfe saying: 'Great to discuss what's 'normal' and really important in an era when teenagers get their sexual education from internet porn.'
Bristol Palin said she's gone back to work after one month of maternity leave, but the 25-year-old mother-of-two is still finding plenty of time to spend with her new daughter.

Thursday night, Bristol shared an up-close picture of her baby girl Sailor Grace, who looked to be swaddled in a floral blanket in her arms.

'Lookin' like she's trying not to smile!' Bristol wrote on Instagram about her little bundle of joy, whose birth she announced just five weeks ago.

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Mom's love: On Thursday, Bristol Palin shared a sweet image of her newborn daughter, Sailor Grace

Unbreakable bond: Bristol (left) posed with her sisters Willow (center), 21, and Piper, 14, at their great-grandmother's memorial service on Wednesday

Meanwhile, her ex Dakota Meyer - whom she is currently embroiled in a custody battle with - has been sharing mostly cryptic messages on Instagram, including a new one just hours after Bristol's photo of Sailor went up.

'Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see,' read his post, a quote attributed to Mark Twain.

Bristol has not acknowledged Dakota's messages, uploading the new snapshot of her daughter just hours after posting another one of her seven-year-old brother Trig and her 14-year-old sister Piper at their great-grandmother's memorial service.

Their father Todd's grandmother, Helena 'Lena' Andree, passed away last Wednesday at the age of 95, and the family spent time this week 'celebrating' her life with a joyous gathering.

On Wednesday, Bristol's sister Willow, 21, shared her own picture of herself, Bristol, and Piper smiling brightly at the camera as they wore Alaskan kuspuks, colorful tunic-length hooded overshirts that are commonly worn among Alaska Natives.

Long life: Their father Todd's grandmother Helena 'Lena' Andree (pictured) passed away last Wednesday at the age of 95

Family time: Bristol shared this photo of her Piper and her seven-year-old brother Trig, who has Down syndrome, pursing his lips at the memorial service

'Celebrating our Great Grandma's 95 years of life,' Willow captioned the picture, which also sees people milling about and smiling in the background.

'We loved and cherished every moment spent with you Gg, and know you were smiling ear to ear looking down at everyone being together today. See you soon Gg. [sic]'

Trig is also a blur in the shot, seeming to be jumping in to hug Piper just as the photo was taken.

The day after Lena's death Bristol, took to her blog to show her gratitude for having her great-grandmother, 'one of the most unique women in Alaska', in her life.

'I always admired my great grandmother GG. This week, she passed away at the age of 95,' she wrote. 'She is in a better place and feels no more pain. Were all at peace at having witnessed a life lived to the fullest.

Honoring tradition: Bristol, Willow, and Piper wore kuspuks, hooded overshirts that are commonly worn among Alaska Natives

Bristol also took to Instagram to share an old picture of herself with Willow and Piper as they posed with Lena, writing: '5 generations under my beautiful great grandma Lena, rest in paradise we love you GG [sic].'

Before Lena's memorial service, Bristol's mother, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, shared old photos of Lena, a picture of the program from the event, and a snapshot of her daughters on her Facebook page.

'Celebrating a Great life tonight in Alaska [sic],' she captioned the series of four images.

In the images, Lena can be seen wearing a buffalo plaid vest as she happily holds a large fish that has been caught.

Happy family: Before the memorial service, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin shared this photo of her younger self with her grandmother-in-law

Five generations: Bristol took to Instagram to post this old photo of herself (far right) and her sisters Willow (far left) and Piper (second from left) with their great-grandmother after she passed away last week

'Thanks, GG, for all of the lessons you taught us most of those lessons which were taught without any words at all.'

At the bottom of the post, she plugged her mom Sarah Palin's new devotional, Sweet Freedom.

Another photo sees a young Sarah and two of her children posed with Lena.

It has been a busy week for Bristol, who returned to work on Monday only a month after announcing that she had birth to her daughter Sailor Grace.

The mother-of-two revealed earlier this week that she was leaving her daughter for the entire day for the first time since her birth in order to head back to work.

To commemorate the end of her short maternity leave, Bristol shared a photo of herself holding her newborn in a car seat as she posed with Tripp, her seven-year-old son with her ex-boyfriend Levi Johnston.

'Back to real life today! I was fortunate enough to take the last month off to stay home with my babies, today marks the first time I've left SailorG, but I could not be more thankful she's in the best of hands!! [sic],' she captioned the family photo.

Paying homage: Sarah snapped this photo of the memorial service program that details Lena's long life and death

Remembering: Helena was the grandmother of Sarah's husband Todd. The pair are pictured together at Billy Graham's 95th birthday celebration in 2013

In the image, Bristol is wearing a black long sleeve shirt, black pants, taupe ballet flats, and a chunky gold necklace. Her hair is pulled half-way up while her Louis Vuitton bag sits open in front of her with her water bottle peeking out.

Tripp is pictured in a neon green Nike sweatshirt, camouflage cargo pants, and red Nike sneakers, presumably heading off to school, while Sailor is bundled up in her pink carrier with only a bit of her head peaking out.

And while some people may think a one-month long maternity leave is too short, Brisol's mother Sarah Palin only took three days off after her youngest son Trig was born with Down syndrome in 2008.

Despite her reality show and appearances on Dancing with the Stars, the daughter of the former Republican vice presidential candidate has apparently been working at Dr. Michael L. Cusack's office at Alaska Dermatology Laser and Skin Cancer Center in Anchorage for years.

Family photo: Bristol shared this snapshot of herself posed with her son Tripp, seven, and her daughter Sailor Grace on Monday to commemorate her return to work one month after giving birth to her baby girl

Pretty in pink: The 25-year-old posted this precious photo of Sailor sitting in her pink car seat a week ago

Bristol is currently in the midst of a custody battle with her ex-fiance and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota, 27, who is making a bid to get joint custody of her one-month old daughter Sailor.

The former reality star, who often shares photos of her children and family adventures on Instagram,announced her daughter's birth on social media on December 24 with a photo of her cuddling her newborn in bed.

Meanwhile, her ex-fiance shared his own precious snap of the mother with her newborn on his Twitter account on Christmas Eve, after months of speculation over whether he is in fact Sailor's father.

Dakota is now being forced to take a paternity test as part of the former couple's increasingly bitter custody battle over her new baby.

Overjoyed: Bristol announced the birth of her daughter in December by sharing this photo on Instagram, however, some believe the baby was actually born on November 4 because of the date scribbled on her IV line

Broken romance: Bristol got engaged to marine Dakota Meyer (pictured), 27, in March, but eventually called off their wedding. They are now in a custody battle over Sailor Grace

Court documents seen by Daily Mail Online reveal that Meyer's bid for joint custody in a suit filed in Kentucky and Alaska has stalled pending the results of the paternity test. A question has also been raised over the actual birth date of Bristol's baby.

The Instagram photo posted by Bristol announcing the birth of Sailor on December 24, places the birth date one day earlier. The date of birth on court papers filed in the custody case is also given as December 23.

But the same Instagram picture posted by Dakota with the caption 'Best Christmas present ever!!' reveals a detail whited out in Palin's account  the date scribbled on her IV line.
to him as 'the elephant not in the room'

Donald Trump may have made headlines for skipping Thursday night's Republican debate because of his feud with moderator Megyn Kelly, but it was the Fox News host's eyelashes that ended up commanding a vast amount of attention on the night - at least on Twitter.

The 45-year-old joined fellow journalists Bret Baier and Chris Wallace to moderate the seventh Republican presidential primary debate, held in Des Moines, Iowa. And while the debate itself received plenty of coverage in the media, it was Megyn's 'ridiculous' and 'fake' eyelashes that started a social media frenzy.

'I'm worried Megyn Kelly's eyelashes are going to stab me through the TV,' Mark Hemingway tweeted last night, while Ellis Riojas added: 'Megyn Kelly's eyelashes are longer than this debate #GOPDebate.'

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Larger than life: Megyn Kelly's long eyelashes took the internet by storm after Thursday night's Republican presidential primary debate

Over-the-top? Critics flocked to Twitter to call the Fox News moderator's eyelashes 'ridiculous' and 'fake'

Making a sp-lash for all the wrong reasons: Megyn's heavy eye make-up was further accentuated by the addition of dark eyeliner on her top lid

Poking fun: Mark Hemingway joked that he feared the 45-year-old's long lashes were going to come through his television and cause him bodily harm

Cracking jokes: Ellis Riojas noted that Megyn's eyelashes were longer than the GOP debate itself

Meanwhile, a Twitter user known as Seth joked: 'Megyn Kelly may take flight, if she bats those fake eyelashes too fast.'

During the debate, Megyn wore a simple black blazer over a plain white top. Her short blonde hair was casually combed back and she sported a neutral share of lipstick, but it was her thick black eyelashes that viewers couldn't get over.

'Every time Megyn Kelly closes her eyes, she absorbs up to a 1.5ccs of nutrients from insects captured by her eyelashes. #GOPDebate #TYTLive,' Hank Thompson tweeted, while a Twitter user named Kate added: 'Megyn Kelly's eyelashes feel like a YouTube tutorial gone wrong.'

Others used Megyn's eyelashes as an opportunity to poke fun at her and the candidates taking part in the debate.

'Megyn Kelly's false eyelashes are so big, every time she blinks, the breeze wakes up Ben Carson. #GOPDepbate,' Twitter user and Donald fan Rump 2016 wrote.

'Ben Carson is wondering if Megyn Kelly's fake eyelashes are strong enough to pierce a belt buckle. #LifeTweetingWithoutWatchingTheDebate,' a man known as Gladstone tweeted.

'Apparently, every time Megyn Kelly gets dissed by Trump, she adds an inch to her fake eyelashes,' another user noted.

Too much? The Fox News star wore her blonde hair casually combed back and subtle lipstick, but it was her eyelashes that garnered much unwanted attention

Fox News team: Megyn joined fellow journalists Bret Baier (R) and Chris Wallace (L) to moderate the seventh Republican debate

Take flight: This Twitter user suggested that Megyn's eyelashes were as long as wings

Bug's life: Hank Thompson joked that Megyn's eyelashes were so long that they were catching insects

And Maura Quint added: 'Megyn Kelly's fake eyelashes are so long they could be one of [John] Kasich's attempted answers.'

'#GOPDebate @FoxNews what's up with @megynkelly ridiculously long eyelashes? They are bimbo-esque! Want to be taken seriously? Be serious!' Julie Davis wrote, while Twitter user GleasonG compared her to a reality TV star.

'I don't hate Megyn Kelly. But why is she moderating a debate with hair and makeup that makes her look like Khloe Kardasian? #GOPDebate,' the person asked.

Megyn's beauty look is thought to have been the work of make-up artist Maureen Walsh, who has been working with The Kelly File host for a number of years, and is often the mastermind behind her on-screen beauty looks.

In December 2013, the cosmetics expert told the Washington Post that working with Megyn is like 'working on a supermodel every day - a brilliant supermodel,' which could perhaps explain the inspiration behind the rather glamorous make-up look modeled by Megyn during the debate.

Megyn's eyelashes also sparked a fierce debate on social media about whether the Fox News anchor deserved such a bitter backlash - or whether the uproar over her make-up was a symptom of the same sexism that she has often tried to stand against.

After Anne Lamott tweeted that 'Megyn Kelly's false eyelashes looked terrible, as did Chris Christie's tie, like something your uncle Ed would wear on vacation,' a Twitter user named Barbara argued that she should be focusing on Megyn's accomplishments - not her appearance.

Simple style: Megan wore a simple black blazer over a white top and silver jewelry to moderate the debate

The morning after the night before: On Friday morning, Megyn stepped out bare-faced in New York - without her controversial lashes

Taking jabs: This Twitter user brought up Megyn's feud with Donald Trump, who skipped the debate because she was moderating

Feeling breezy: Donald Trump supporter Rump 2016 joked that every time Megyn fluttered her eyelashes she would create a breeze that would wake up Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson

Non-stop: He also joked about Ben Carson pondering if her eyelashes could 'pierce a belt buckle'

'@ANNELAMOTT good thing we are teaching our girls that eyelashes are important - @megynkelly is intelligent why not focus on that?' she wrote.

The White House Press Corps also noted: 'Twitter reveals how sexist women are re: Megyn Kelly: Why is she wearing false eyelashes, don't like her hair, her make-up is over the top.'

And while Megyn's eyelashes have undoubtedly caused a commotion on Twitter, this isn't the first time she has been criticized for her over-the-top eye make-up.

Shortly after the now-infamous debate during which she first went up against The Donald over his seemingly-sexist treatment of women, Megyn faced similar social media criticism about her choice of over-the-top cosmetics.

'I skipped Rep. debate, watching lip synch now,' Twitter user Airbag Moments posted on the social media site. 'Why weren't Megyn Kelly's baleen-like fake eyelashes the main #trend?'

Interestingly, the uproar over Megyn's lengthy lashes comes just one day after Donald took to Twitter to add more fuel to his fiery feud with the Fox News star by tweeting images from a raunchy photoshoot she took part in for GQ Magazine, while labeling her a 'bimbo'.

Keeping up with Megyn Kelly? This Twitter user compared the host to reality television star Khloe Kardashian

Fighting back: A Twitter user named Barbara responded to Anne Lamott's tweet by noting that people should be focusing on Megyn's accomplishments - not her eyelashes

Ahead of the game: This Twitter user criticized Megyn's 'fake' eyelashes in August after she moderated the first Republican debate (pictured)

Sharing two racy images from the shoot, in which Megyn can be seen posing provocatively in a skin-tight, low-cut black mini dress and sky-high heels, Donald added the caption: 'Criticizes Trump for objectifying women... Poses like this in GQ Magazine.'

'And this is the bimbo that's asking presidential questions?' he tweeted.

And Donald, who refused to attend Thursday night's Fox News debate because of his ongoing feud with Megyn, choosing instead to host his own fundraiser, didn't stop there.

The GOP candidate took the opportunity to further criticize Megyn again in an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, arguing that she was biased against him.

Donald has sent out numerous tweets criticizing her since last August, when the reporter tried to pin him down on allegations of misogyny during the first Republican presidential debate.

He bristled at the allegations during the debate, but really let fly online, shortly thereafter suggesting that Megyn was so hard on him because she was menstruating - a comment he later insisted had been misinterpreted.

And Megyn faced further backlash on Friday morning after Republican candidate Ted Cruz alleged that she referred to Donald as 'Voldemort' while off-camera.

Ongoing feud: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump skipped the debate because Megyn was moderating and instead spoke at a veteran's rally in Des Moines that night (pictured)

The battle rages on: Donald took to Twitter on Thursday to criticize Megyn for accusing him of objectifying women, despite taking part in a very raunchy photoshoot for GQ Magazine

Throwing insults: The Republican candidate also referred to Megyn as a 'bimbo' in a tweet posted shortly after he shared the GQ images

The feud between the Fox anchor and the leading Republican overshadowed the entire debate  which she began by calling Donald 'the elephant not in the room'  but it was this off-camera insult, that spoke volumes.

During a post-debate interview with Megyn, Cruz even called her out on the comment, telling her, 'Well, you know, you were joking just before we went on air that it was sort of like Voldermort, he who must not be named.'

Megyn did not deny the comment, smiled, and asked him if there had been a 'pact' not to discuss Donald among the seven GOP candidates on stage.

The morning after the debate Fox News spokesperson claimed that Cruz was wrong  and that Megyn had simply said 'he who shall not be named'.

And after the show, the channel today confirmed, she called him 'Voldemort' - the most evil character in the Harry Potter series, who is frequently referred to in the books as 'He Who Must Not Be Named' in the fictional series about wizards - but said it was not intended as an insult.

Today Fox News said: 'In an off camera exchange, Megyn asked Senator Ted Cruz about the fact that Donald Trump got very little mention from any of them during the debate.

'She asked him (approximate quote) off camera: "You seem to be treating Trump like Voldermort  'he who shall not be named'  did you plan that?'"
A mother who felt a failure as a parent when doctors failed to diagnose her daughter with autism has written a book based on her experiences.

Catherine Simpson from Edinburgh knew her daughter Nina was different from an early age but her fears were dismissed by medical professionals.

Here she talks to FEMAIL about her journey up until Nina was finally diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome age ten, and beyond...

Catherine Simpson struggled with her daughter Nina, pictured above with her mother as toddler, because doctors failed to diagnose her with autism. Inspired by her daughter she has now written a book about autism

It was festival day in my home town and I was excited to be taking my one-year-old daughter, Nina, to see the parade for the very first time.

As a child I'd always loved it and I couldn't wait to share it with her. The floats and bands headed our way and my friend's baby - who was the same age - clapped and stared in wonder but Nina screamed and writhed in my arms and wouldn't be calmed.

I took her to a nearby cafe but she still screamed so I took refuge in the toilet where she instantly calmed down.

I could faintly hear the cheers of the crowd as I stood in the cubicle cuddling Nina, feeling terrified and very lonely because her reaction had confirmed something I'd been trying to ignore since she was born: Nina was different.

Right from birth Nina looked as though she was at odds with the world - crying constantly and never sleeping for more than an hour or two at a time.

She only quietened when we picked her up facing away from us so there was no one 'in her face' and she preferred to take her bottle propped on the sofa not being cuddled (very much against the guidelines).

Catherine, above with Nina today, first knew something was different about Nina during a festival day in her home town. While other babies loved the parade Nina screamed and writhed and wouldn't be calmed

People tried to reassure me: 'It's just a phase, she'll grow out of it.' I lived in hope.

Every day I'd wake up and think: 'I wonder if today life will become normal.' But it never did. Mixing with other babies was a nightmare: their noise upset Nina and I found myself constantly apologising and leaving in tears.

At home, though, Nina discovered books - from only eight months old she could turn the pages in a board book. From 18 months she was forming a rudimentary alphabet.

Right from birth Nina cried constantly and never slept for more than an hour or two at a time. She preferred to take her bottle propped on the sofa and not being cuddled by anyone. Above, Nina as baby with Catherine

When she was two I took her to the GP and explained that she was upset a lot and didn't seem to hear me when I tried to reassure her.

They tested her hearing, which was perfect, and referred me to a doctor who was considered a leading autism specialist.

Unfortunately he laughed in my face and declared: 'That child has not got autism.' I think this dismissal was probably because at that time autism was thought to be a boy's condition. We struggled on.

At school Nina was clever but had difficulty making friends. She found the noise and chaos of the playground overwhelming.

Nina, above aged six (front), was not a sociable child. Catherine invited children round to the house and organised games to help her make friends - but Nina lost interest and would disappear to her room

I spent many hours inviting children round to the house and organising games to help her make friends - only to find myself playing with the visitors on my own as Nina lost interest and disappeared to her room.

When she was seven I asked for another referral. This time she was assessed by various psychologists who said it was all my fault.

I was sent on two parenting courses and told: 'If you treat your child differently, she will act differently.'

On their advice we brought in the 'naughty step' and star charts and rewards - none of which made the slightest bit of difference except to make me feel like a failure as a mother.

These were very dark days. I was giving motherhood my all but didn't seem to be able to help my eldest child - by now I had another daughter, Lara, three years younger than Nina, who appeared to be sailing through school without any problems.

Nina, above aged ten, was bullied at school where children ostracised her, called her names and once even kicked her down the stairs. The school claimed to have a zero tolerance approach, but nothing was done

I read every book I could get about hidden disabilities. I knew there was something but I'd been told categorically that it wasn't autism, so what was it?

I was baffled, distraught and very lonely. My husband and I discussed how best to help Nina but we didn't know what we were dealing with.

I think we were both terrified for her future and it was too much to express out loud, even to each other.

Primary school was becoming more fraught with the introduction of homework, which caused enormous stress - Nina believed schoolwork should be done at school - and we were desperate to get to the bottom of things before she began secondary school.

I asked for another referral when she was ten.

This time we saw Dr Nicky Cannon, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at Edinburgh's Sick Children's Hospital.

She was wonderful and listened to what I said - something I'd not felt before. She met Nina and carried out an assessment and told us she had Asperger's syndrome (a form of autism).

Above: a family picture with Nina, Catherine, Lara and dad Marcello on a trip to Graceland. Nina struggled to come to terms with her diagnosis at first until one day she and Catherine discussed her special talents - including how she'd learned to read without trying and could absorb the words in a book

I burst into tears in her office and she asked: 'You're not surprised are you?' No, I wasn't surprised - but it was still a shock to have it confirmed that my child had a life-long incurable condition that might affect every aspect of her life.

I read everything I could about Asperger's syndrome and many things fell into place.

Often people with Asperger's are very sensitive to loud noises and smells; crowds are stressful; unpredictable events may be upsetting; friendships may be tricky. It was like I'd been given 'The Nina Handbook'. I began to understand her and it was an enormous relief.

Not only did I now know for sure that her difficulties weren't my fault but Nina began to understand herself too.

Unfortunately, other people were less understanding. Secondary school turned into a nightmare of bullying. Various boys and girls made Nina's life a misery.

Nina doesn't like the term Autism Spectrum Disorder because she is not 'disordered'. Left, Nina, Catherine and Lara. Right, Nina's card to Catherine at age ten, shortly after she was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome

Nina, above age 15, got a full set of 'A's at Edinburgh Steiner and a place studying German at Edinburgh University. She is now in her third year, living independently in Germany and having the time of her life

They ostracised her, called her names, took her things and one day even kicked her down the stairs. We discussed the bullying with the school, which claimed to have a zero tolerance approach to it, but nothing was done.

We withdrew Nina and sent her to the Edinburgh Steiner School where she thrived from the moment she walked in.

She made friends and discovered a love of German. For the first time she was part of a community.

However, it took Nina a while to come to terms with her diagnosis.

Catherine Simpson wrote Truestory about a boy with autism based on her own experiences

One day in the car we had a conversation about what a wonderful brain she had: how she had an amazing memory; how she'd learned to read without trying; how she could absorb the words in a book much faster than I could.

From then on she became proud to be autistic - that is her preferred word.

She doesn't like the term Autism Spectrum Disorder because she is not 'disordered'. It was during the very hardest time - when Nina was being bullied at school - that I started to write.

Feeling trapped at home I began an Open University course in Creative Writing.

They say 'write what you know' and I started to write a novel, called Truestory, about a woman with a son called Sam, a child with autism who refuses to leave the house.

It is fictional but it is inspired by many of the experiences we had raising Nina - the ups and downs, the terror of the unknown, the fear for the future.

The opening chapters won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2013.

The book deals with a serious subject, but is full of hope and humour, with many laughs provided by Sam's secret online life.

It seems right to have a happy ending because we have had our own 'happy ending'.

Nina got a full set of A's at Higher at Edinburgh Steiner and a place studying German at Edinburgh University. She is now in her third year, living independently in Germany and having the time of her life.

Nina didn't read the book until it was published - she wanted it to be 'a proper book' before she looked at it - and her reaction was heartwarming and a huge relief.

She said: 'I like it because it is a sympathetic portrait of a kid with autism. It shows we are not just being difficult or a nuisance, but that we can't turn our weird off.'

If Truestory helps other families who are going through something similar not to feel so alone, then for me that will be the happiest ending of all.
Glamorous Ivanka Trump showed off an enviable pregnancy glow on Friday when she traded her usual chic business attire for a bare face and a comfy flannel shirt, before dropping her children off at school.

The 34-year-old, who is seven months pregnant with her third child, snapped a photo of herself donning the baggy button-down, with her hair swept off her face in a ponytail, while holding a coffee and a black satchel from her eponymous accessories line.

'A casual Friday look for school drop off!' she captioned the Instagram picture.

Normal mom! Ivanka Trump traded her business attire for a flannel shirt and a messy ponytail on Friday. The mother-of-two showed off her pregnancy glow by going bare-faced to drop her kids of at school

Night out: The 34-year-old and her husband Jared Kushner, 34, traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, to support her father Donald at his fundraiser for veterans on Thursday

However, it is not surprising that the mother-of-two opted for a more relaxed look. On Thursday night she and her husband Jared Kushner were in Des Moines, Iowa, with her family to support her father Donald during his fundraiser for veterans.

Ivanka joined her brothers, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and her stepmother Melania at the event after the Republican presidential candidate boycotted Thursday's Fox News debate.

The blonde beauty, who chose to leave her hair down in loose waves, looked stunning Champagne-colored fit-and-flare metallic jacquard dress from her clothing line.

Ivanka took to Instagram that night to share a photo of herself posed with her husband, who wore a gray suit, lavender button-down, and a navy tie as he smiled for the camera.

Marketing genius: Ivanka looked stunning in a Champagne-colored metallic jacquard dress from her eponymous clothing line

'Incredible night in support of our great veterans in Iowa with @realdonaldtrump @donaldjtrumpjr and @erictrump. #Iowa #veterans,' she captioned the image.

However, despite the late night and the flight back to New York City, the hands-on mom still managed to get up and take her daughter Arabella, four, and son Joseph, two, to school.

But while many Instagram commenters praised the mom for being so down-to-earth, it is likely that her fresh-faced appearance in New York on Friday morning was the result of a speedy trip in the Trump private jet, which was no doubt on-hand to whisk Ivanka and husband Jared back to Manhattan soon after the festivities in Iowa came to a close.

Still, Ivanka's followers were quick to praise her for being willing to embrace such a dressed-down look, with one woman even pointing out thatm in place of a fancy iPhone case, Ivanka has colorful stickers plastered over the back of hers.

Of course, Ivanka certainly knows how to have fun and embrace her childhood spirit. While many people on the East Coast were glued to their couches as the snow pounded down last weekend, Ivanka and her son Joseph bundled up and headed to Central Park.

Cute kid: Last weekend, Ivanka shared a picture of her son Joseph, two, wearing her sunglasses in Central Park following Saturday's snow storm

Angelic: The happy mother also shared a video of herself making snow angels in the middle of Park Avenue last Saturday amid the blizzard

The cozy-looking tot was zipped-up in a warm coat, gloves, and a hat - and a pair of mommy's tortoise-shell sunglasses to help with the sun reflecting off all that snow.

'Joseph rocking his mommy's sunglasses in Central Park,' Ivanka wrote on Instagram Sunday, adding a snowflake emoji to the photo of her little man.

Joseph's little nose and cheeks were red as he braved the 35 temperature the day after the city was hit with two feet of snow from winter storm Jonas.

But Arabella's little brother wasn't the only one having fun in the fluffy stuff this weekend - his mom kicked it up in the snow, too!

On Saturday, as the snow was still coming down, Ivanka shared a video of herself making snow angels in the ground.

The expectant mom can be seen wearing head-to-toe black while lying on her back in the middle of Park Avenue.

Ready for some fun: Last Friday, Arabella drew a picture of herself with her family playing in the snow and making a snowman

Speedy departure: No doubt Ivanka had the use of the Trump family's private jet on Friday night, which would have enabled her to make a very quick return to Manhattan following Donald's Iowa fundraiser

Back to the grind: The family is back in New York City after spending visiting her father Donald's Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida earlier this month

She is heard laughing as she moves her legs in and out and her arms up and down, leaving an angel imprint in the fresh now.

The camera then pans to the right, showing that the busy street is thoroughly deserted, with no cars, people, or snowplows anywhere to be found.

Though Ivanka's daughter with husband Jared Kushner didn't make an appearance in the snow day pictures, she was pretty excited about the weather, too.

Arabella, four, drew out her 'master plan for the potential snowstorm' last Friday, creating a stick-figure picture of herself, her parents, and her little brother outside on a mound of snow with a snowman.

She even labeled the people in the drawing, adorably scrawling out backwards J's for Joseph and Jared and spelling her mom's name 'Ivamka'.
JACKSON, Mississippi -- A former Mississippi state parole officer was sentenced Thursday to 10 months in prison for taking bribes from a parolee he was supervising.

According to U.S. Attorney Gregory K. Davis, Andra Lowmon Smith, 44, of Anguilla, Miss., was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. He must also pay $800 restitution and a $100 special assessment.

Smith, a former probation and parole officer for the Mississippi Department of Corrections, worked out of Madison County. He admitted to soliciting bribes from a parolee between March-June 2015. He took the money in exchange for allowing the parolee to leave Mississippi to find work.

The cast was investigated by the FBI and the Criminal Investigation Division of the MDOC. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Gilbert and Mary Helen Wall prosecuted the case.
President Barack Obama created a new federal task force Thursday to accelerate cancer research, putting Vice President Joe Biden in charge of the drive to streamline government efforts toward a cure.

Dubbed the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force, the group will be modest in scope  the White House says the task force is 'advisory only.'

Yet its formation gives a formal green light to what until now has been an amorphous effort by the vice president to supercharge cancer research during his final year in office.

'We're not trying to make incremental change here,' Biden wrote on the blog site Medium.

'We're trying to get to a quantum leap on the path to a cure.'

See updates in the search for a cure for cancer as Obama creates advisory task force

Vice President Joe Biden points at President Barack Obama during the president's State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama is creating a new federal task force to accelerate cancer research.

A presidential memorandum signed by Obama on Thursday says the task force's goal is to double the rate of progress on treatment and prevention, a benchmark Biden first introduced earlier this month in tandem with Obama's State of the Union address.

The administration hasn't said exactly how that will be measured, but laid out areas for potential progress including better use of federal dollars to support cancer prevention, treatment and early detection.

The Defense Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health are among about a dozen federal agencies involved.

The task force will submit a report on its findings to Obama at the end of December  just he Obama and Biden leave office.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the Senate health committee he chairs is working on a bipartisan bill to speed development of drugs and medical devices.

He said the task force would 'set the stage for the Senate to get a bipartisan result.'

Biden, who has spent recent months meeting with hundreds of cancer researchers, has put a particular emphasis on eliminating obstacles to collaboration and data-sharing among various cancer centers, doctors and universities.

In this Feb. 5, 2013 file photo, then-Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden is seen at the Justice Department in Washington. President Barack Obama is creating a new federal task force to accelerate cancer research. He's tapping Vice President Joe Biden to chair the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force. Biden's son Beau died of brain cancer last year.

A key focus for the task force will be identifying bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles that make the government a bottleneck in the research process.

The White House-sanctioned effort taps into deeply personal territory for Biden, whose 46-year-old son, former Delaware state Attorney General Beau Biden, died from brain cancer in May.

The loss played heavily into Biden's decision not to run for president in 2016, but he instead vowed a 'moonshot' to cure cancer before leaving the White House.

'I don't claim to be a cancer expert,' Biden said. 'But I do have something to offer when it comes to being a catalyst and bringing folks together.'
Middle school years cause moms to feel emptiness and anxiety

Thus, the child's transition into

Its often thought that the most difficult time to be a mother is during a childs first few years.

At that time, a mother is often hands-on, as the child simply cannot take care of themselves.

Many people assume that causes a substantial amount of stress and loneliness.

But, a new study revealed the worst time for mothers is actually during their childs early teenage years.

Furthermore, mothers are the happiest during their childs infant and adult years.

Mothers experience the highest levels of loneliness and stress during their child's middle school years - generally between the ages of 11 and 14, according to a new study. On the other hand, mothers feel happiest during a child's infant and adult years

Arizona State University scientists surveyed 2,200 mostly well-educated mothers with children ranging from infants and adults.

The study set out to address whether mothers adjustment might vary by the developmental stages of their child.

The authors said there is plenty of literature on how mothers affect their children, but there is very little on how children affect their mothers.

Motherhood entails hard work  with demands on time, emotional and physical energy.

It can often also conflict with other roles and relationships.

And, there have been increasing reports of higher levels of parenting stress among upper-middle class others in particular.

The scientists looked at how the infant, preschool, elementary school, middle school and adulthood years affected mothers.

They anticipated that the middle school  a time during which children are typically between the ages of 11 and 14  may be the most challenging for mothers.

For mothers with children in exclusive age categories, middle school was the time when difficulty peaked

Thats because that period marks the transition from child to adolescent 0 with major physical, hormonal and cognitive changes.

Furthermore, the middle school years are a time in which children start separating from their parents and form their own identities.

At that same time, middle school students also have to cope with school and social pressure.

The study authors anticipated infancy would be the second most difficult time for mothers.

The birth of a child presents significant stressors on personal time and energy, they explained.

The study pulled data from the Moms as People study  an online survey that examines how mothers feel about various aspects of their life.

The scientists found that middle school is the most challenging time for mothers.

Middle school is a time in which children transition into adolescence - experiencing hormonal, physical and cognitive changes that cause stress on their mothers, the study said

The study said: For mothers with children in exclusive age categories, middle school was the time when difficulty peaked across several dimensions including emptiness, (low) life satisfaction, (low) parenting satisfaction, maternal rejection, child maladjustment, (low) child positive, and child negative behaviors.

The scientists noted that these findings probably rest in part on puberty and the related perturbations in childrens adjustment, as well as the relationship with their parents.

Furthermore, the study found that mothers with infant children reported relatively low levels of maladjustment across negative personal and parenting indices.

The authors noted that the conclusions of the study underscore the need for systematic attention to the well-being of mothers.
When Mark Cahill became the first person in Britain to receive a hand transplant, his life was transformed.

He could do up his buttons, work the remote control for the TV and, best of all, hold his young grandson's hand.

Now many more Britons are set to benefit from the pioneering surgery.

Mark Cahill received Britain's first hand transplant back in 2012, changing his life forever

The NHS is to fund transplants for people who have lost one or both hands, with the first operation due as soon as a donor becomes available.

The first programme of its kind in the world will help patients injured in car and industrial accidents, as well as victims of severe infections.

The launch follows the success of the UK's first hand transplant in 2012, when Mr Cahill, a 51-year-old former pub landlord, was given a new right hand.

Four patients are already on the waiting list and all need double hand transplants.

They include mother-of-one Corinne Hutton, of Renfrewshire in Scotland, who lost both her hands and feet to sepsis, a potentially fatal over-reaction of the immune system, and the most common reason both hands are lost.

She has told how she hopes the 77,000 operation will let her 'be a normal mum'.

The operations will be led by Mr Cahill's surgeon, Professor Simon Kay, of Leeds General Infirmary.

Donated hands should match the patient's blood group, skin tone and hand size.

However, gender is less of an issue, with some men's hands looking quite feminine and vice versa.

Now the NHS is to fund operation for more people, with four in need of a double transplant - including Corinne Hutton, pictured - already on the waiting list

Donors will include people left brain dead by car accidents and strokes, whose relatives have consented to the procedure.

During an operation lasting up to eight hours, the patient's forearm will first be connected to the donor hand with titanium plates and screws.

Key muscles and tendons are then attached, followed by blood vessels and, finally, the nerves.

Months of physiotherapy and occupational therapy will follow, and the patient will need lifelong treatment with powerful immunosuppressant drugs to prevent their body rejecting their new hand.

Psychological health will also be carefully considered in order to ensure they accept it mentally.

Clint Hallam, who in 1998 was the first man to receive a new hand, had it cut off three years later after saying that it was unsightly and he felt 'mentally detached' from it.

Since then, some 80 transplants have been done around the world.

The mother-of-one, pictured with her son Rory, lost both her hands and feet to sepsis, a potentially fatal over-reaction of the immune system

Professor Kay expects to do one or two transplants a year but is 'willing to do as many as are needed.'

He said: 'We are ready and waiting. If we got a suitable donor, we could operate this afternoon.

'Three of the four people on our waiting list have lost both hands and both feet and so are very dependent. A successful hand transplant would give them their life back.

'There have been lots of hand transplants around the world but this is the first time a national funding organisation has closely examined the issue, come up with the conclusion and is now going to fund in nationally in one centre.'

Dr Jonathan Fielden, NHS England's director of specialised commissioning, said: 'The NHS is leading the world in offering this cutting-edge procedure.'

Mr Cahill, of West Yorkshire, whose new hand has almost 100 per cent function, said: 'My experience as a patient and my quality of life since the hand transplant has been fantastic.
Rates of breastfeeding in Britain are the lowest in the world, a major study reveals.

Only one in every 200 children here  just 0.5 per cent  is breastfed until the age of 12 months, placing us bottom of a global league table published in The Lancet medical journal last night.

By comparison, 27 per cent in the US, 35 per cent in Norway, 44 per cent in New Zealand and 92 per cent in India are breastfed until they are one year old.

Only one in every 200 children in the UK  just 0.5 per cent  is breastfed until the age of 12 months, placing us bottom of a global league table published in The Lancet medical journal last night (file image)

The study, led by experts from the World Health Organisation and Unicef, said that child obesity, diabetes and infections could all be significantly reduced if more mothers could be persuaded to breastfeed.

Women themselves would also benefit, with breast cancer rates reduced among those who had breastfed their children. It is also said to make it easier for mothers to regain their pre-pregnancy figure.

The NHS suggests that women should feed their babies exclusively with breast milk until they are at least six months old, and then continue breastfeeding while gradually introducing other food.

Women are advised by the NHS: The longer you breastfeed, the longer the protection lasts and the greater the benefits.

Some 80 per cent of British mothers breastfeed at some point. But it seems most turn to formula very early in their childs life.

According to the Lancet study, only 34 per cent of British children are breastfed until six months, compared to 49 per cent in the US, 50 per cent in Germany and 62 per cent in Switzerland.

In many developing nations, including India, Ghana and Bhutan, rates of breastfeeding exceed 95 per cent at six months and 90 per cent at 12 months.

The NHS suggests that women should feed their babies exclusively with breast milk until they are at least six months old, and then continue breastfeeding while gradually introducing other food

The researchers wrote: In the UK, the milk formula market is the 11th largest in the world and growing, with sales projected to reach $907million (631million) in 2019. They estimated that breastfeeding in high-income countries such as Britain reduces the risk of sudden infant deaths by more than a third. It also may increase intelligence, they said.

The research team estimates that 800,000 childrens lives around the world could be saved each year if breastfeeding levels could be raised to near-universal levels.

An extra 20,000 womens deaths from breast cancer could also be saved, they found.

The team did not break down their life-saving predictions for individual countries.

But separate recent research by Unicef UK estimated that if breastfeeding rates in Britain were to double, 865 breast cancer cases would be averted each year, saving the NHS 21million.

Dr Martin Ward-Platt, consultant paediatrician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne, said: We have to go back to the 1960s to see high rates of breastfeeding across the country. There was a huge cultural change after the Second World War, when it was thought to be modern, scientific and desirable to use formula feed instead.

Professor Russell Viner, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: The benefits of breastfeeding have been widely publicised yet its clear that efforts are still falling far too short and the grave reality is that this is costing childrens lives.

Professor Viv Bennett, chief nurse at Public Health England, said: There is strong evidence which tells us that breastfeeding provides benefits for babies.

We recognise however that not all mothers choose, or are able, to breastfeed and infant formula is the only alternative to breast milk for babies under 12 months old.

THE BENEFITS FOR MOTHER... Women can get their pre-pregnancy figures back by breastfeeding  a fact that doctors use to tempt mothers to avoid formula milk. Feeding a baby with breast milk burns up to 500 calories a day  the same as a typical gym session  and also helps the uterus return to its normal size after birth. Liverpool Womens Hospital, on a web page promoting the practice, says: Breastfeeding doesnt just provide wonder food for babies, it helps a woman regain her shape more quickly. Being free, it is also far less expensive than bottle feeding, leaving mum cash to buy clothes for her newly regained figure. Oxford University researchers have calculated that for every six months a woman gives her baby breast milk, she can expect to lose around 2lb, depending on her initial weight and height. As well as the initial benefits, academics estimate that this could prevent deaths from cancer, heart problems and other illnesses related to obesity. Doctors and midwives are increasingly concerned that many women become obese by gaining weight during pregnancy, which they never manage to shift after the birth. Advertisement
Warning comes from Public Health England as virus continues to rampage

Couples trying for a baby should delay by a month if the man has recently returned from a country affected by the Zika virus.

The warning, from Public Health England, goes as far to say that men should wear condoms for 28 days if their partner is or may be pregnant.

Men who suffered an unexplained fever while travelling, or who were diagnosed with the virus, should avoid unprotected sex - or trying for children - for six months, the guidance states.

The virus has been linked to birth defects in thousands of Brazilian babies, born with heads smaller than normal and undeveloped brains.

Couples trying for a baby should delay by a month if the man has recently returned from a country affected by the Zika virus (pictured). Men whose partners are or may be pregnant should also use condoms for 28 days

Zika has been linked to birth defects in thousands of Brazilian babies, born with heads smaller than normal and undeveloped brains. Pictured is Gleyse Kelly da Silva, holding her daughter Maria Giovana, in Recife, Brazil

Symptoms include a rash, fever, conjunctivitis and headache and, to date, 23 countries have been affected.

Pregnant women or those trying for a child have already been officially warned to avoid travelling to South America.

Professor Laura Rodrigues, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: 'I think it's sensible for someone to who is pregnant, or planning to get pregnant, should avoid travelling to countries with Zika.'

The World Health Organisation says there is still insufficient evidence to make the link between Zika being transmitted through sex.

But the Public Health England website states: 'Sexual transmission of Zika virus has been recorded in a limited number of cases, and the risk of sexual transmission of Zika virus is thought to be very low.

'However, if a female partner is at risk of getting pregnant, or is already pregnant, condom use is advised for a male traveller:

* For 28 days after his return from a Zika transmission area if he had no symptoms of unexplained fever and rash

* For 6 months following recovery if a clinical illness compatible with Zika virus infection or laboratory confirmed Zika virus infection was reported

It adds: 'This is a precaution and may be revised as more information becomes available.'

To date, 23 countries have been affected by Zika. Yesterday, scientists warned the Zika virus has 'explosive pandemic potential', while the World Health Organisation said up to four million people could be infected

Yesterday, scientists warned the Zika virus has 'explosive pandemic potential'.

And the World Health Organisation said the mosquito-borne disease had gone from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions, admitting up to four million people could be infected.

There is clear scientific evidence the virus is transmitted by the same type of mosquito that spreads other tropical diseases, such as dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever.

But there are also fears the virus may be passed on through sex, following two reports in medical literature.

One states that Zika was found in the semen of a man from Tahiti, the other that the virus was passed from a husband to his wife after intercourse.

HOW ELSE COULD ZIKA POTENTIALLY BE TRANSMITTED? In a statement this week, the World Health Organisation addressed other concerns about how the virus may be spread. It said: Zika can be transmitted through blood, but this is an infrequent mechanism. Standard precautions that are already in place for ensuring safe blood donations and transfusions should be followed. There is currently no evidence that Zika can be transmitted to babies through breast milk. Mothers in areas with Zika should follow the WHO recommendations on breastfeeding. This is exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding with complementary foods up to 2 years or beyond. Advertisement

A case, published in 2011, details the story of Professor Brian Foy, who claims he passed Zika to his wife through sex.

Professor Foy, a biologist from the University of Colorado, contracted the virus while on a field trip to Senegal.

He and his colleague had been collecting mosquitoes in a south-eastern village called Bandafassi, where they were often bitten.

Five days after his return home, Professor Foy fell ill - his symptoms included extreme tiredness, swollen wrists, rashes and painful urination.

He also had skin problems and what appeared to be blood in his semen.

A few weeks later his wife also developed similar symptoms, along with extreme sensitivity to light, but their four children were unharmed.

The scientists were baffled as to what Mrs Foy had caught until a year later when, on a hunch, they carried out a battery of tests and concluded that sexual contact between the couple was the most likely cause.

Professor Foy and the co-authors of his paper, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, believe it is the first instance of sexual transmission of a mosquito-born virus between humans.

Such a possibility has been explored before among animals, but not in humans.

In his paper, he added the crucial final piece to the puzzle: Patients 1 and 3 (Mr and Mrs Foy) reported having vaginal sexual intercourse in the days after patient 1 returned home but before the onset of his clinical illness.

My wife wasn't happy with what happened afterwards.'

The guidance comes following fears the virus can be passed on through sex after two reports in medical literature. One states Zika was found in the semen of a man from Tahiti, the other that the virus was passed from a husband to his wife after intercourse

Then there is the case of the Tahitian patient who was found to have the Zika virus in his semen - leading the scientists reporting his case to conclude it can be transmitted through sex.

Writing in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases last year, they explained how the 44-year-old had developed symptoms of the virus during an outbreak in French Polynesia.

These included a low-grade fever, a lack of energy and joint pain.

Two weeks after recovering however, he noticed blood in his semen and sought treatment.

And because he had recently experienced symptoms of Zika, he was referred for tests at the country's Institut Louis Malarde, in Papeete.

In his paper, Dr Didier Musso, director of the infectious disease unit, explains the patient had no signs of conditions that usually cause blood in the urine - such as a urinary tract infection or inflammation of the prostate.

He had also not come into physical contact with anyone who was actively suffering with the Zika virus.

But further tests revealed the virus was present not only in his semen - but also his urine.

........................................................................................................................................................

The Zika virus: Everything you need to know...

WHAT IS ZIKA?

The Zika (ZEE'-ka) virus was first discovered in monkey in Uganda in 1947 - its name comes from the Zika forest where it was first discovered.

It is native mainly to tropical Africa, with outbreaks in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. It appeared in Brazil last year and has since been seen in many Latin American countries and Caribbean islands.

HOW IS IT SPREAD?

It is transmitted through bites from the same kind of mosquitoes that can spread other tropical diseases, like dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever.

It is not known to spread from person to person.

Investigators, though, are exploring the possibility that the virus can be passed on through sex - it was found in one man's semen in Tahiti and there's been another report of possible spread of the virus through sex.

An Aedes Aegypti mosquito on human skin in a lab in Cali, Colombia. Scientists there are studying the genetics and biology of this mosquito, which transmits the Zika virus

The World Health Organisation says Zika is rapidly spreading in the Americas because it is new to the region and people are not immune to it. Furthermore, the Aedes aegypti mosquito (pictured) that carries it is just extremely widespread

The World Health Organisation says Zika is rapidly spreading in the Americas because it is new to the region, people aren't immune to it, and the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries it is just about everywhere - including along the southern United States.

Canada and Chile are the only places without this mosquito.

ARE THERE SYMPTOMS?

Experts think most people infected with Zika virus don't get sick.

And those that do usually develop mild symptoms - fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes - which usually last no more than a week.

There is no specific medicine and there hasn't been a vaccine developed for it, which is the case for some other tropical illnesses that cause periodic outbreaks.

GLAXO CONSIDERING USING VACCINE TECHNOLOGY FOR ZIKA GlaxoSmithKline Plc is concluding feasibility studies evaluating whether its vaccine technology is suitable for the Zika virus, a spokeswoman has confirmed. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which typically causes mild fevers and rashes, although about 80 percent of those infected show no symptoms. 'We're concluding our feasibility studies as quickly as we can to see if our vaccine technology platforms might be suitable for working on Zika,' a Glaxo spokeswoman said in an email. She declined to provide details but added that vaccine development typically takes 10 to 15 years. Advertisement

WHY IS IT A CONCERN NOW?

In Brazil, there has been mounting evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which a newborn's head is smaller than normal and the brain may not have developed properly.

Brazilian health officials last October noticed a spike in cases of microcephaly in tandem with the Zika outbreak.

The connection to Zika is still being investigated, and officials note there are many causes of the condition. Nearly 4,000 cases have been recorded.

Meanwhile, doctors have noted increased reports of a nerve condition called Guillain-Barre that can cause paralysis.

But the link to the Zika virus is not clear; other infections can spark the problem, including dengue fever.

CAN THE SPREAD BE STOPPED?

Individuals can protect themselves from mosquito bites by using insect repellents, and wearing long sleeves and long pants - especially during daylight, when the mosquitoes tend to be most active, health officials say.

Eliminating breeding spots and controlling mosquito populations can help prevent the spread of the virus.

HAVE THERE BEEN CASES IN THE US?

Yes, but in tourists. Since 2007 there have been more than two dozen cases diagnosed in the US all travellers who are believed to have caught it overseas.

(Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have each had a recent case that didn't involve a traveler.)

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which typically causes mild fevers and rashes, although about 80 per cent of those infected show no symptoms

The kind of mosquito that spreads Zika is found along the southern states, so experts think it's likely the pests may end up spreading the virus there.

But officials also have said Zika infections probably won't be a big problem in the US for a number of reasons, including the more common use of air conditioning and door and window screens.

Recent U.S. outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya - carried by the same mosquito - suggest any Zika outbreaks may be relatively small, said Dr. Lyle Petersen of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WHAT ARE THE TRAVEL ADVISORIES?

US health officials recommend that pregnant women should consider postponing trips to 22 destinations. Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela. In the Caribbean: Barbados, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, St. Martin and Puerto Rico. Also, Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa; and Samoa in the South Pacific.

In Brazil, most of the mothers who had babies with microcephaly were apparently infected during the first trimester, but there is some evidence the birth defect can occur later in the pregnancy, CDC officials say.
A teenager with a ultra-rare genetic condition that makes him look like an old man has defied doctors to celebrate his 15th birthday.

Nihal Bitla, who lives on the outskirts of Mumbai, has Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome - which ages his body eight times faster than normal.

The condition leaves him bald, with heavy wrinkles and severely weakened limbs.

The average life expectancy for children with progeria is 14.

Many sufferers die from a heart condition where the arteries become hard and narrow - which usually affects adults over 60.

As a result, children with progeria are prone to heart attacks and strokes aged ten or under.

But Nihal blew out the candles on his 15th birthday cake on January 20, making him the oldest living child diagnosed with progeria in India.

Scroll down to video

Nihal Bitla has the premature ageing condition progeria, a disease ages the body - but not the mind - at eight times the normal rate

The average life expectancy for sufferers is 14 - but Nihal has defied doctors' predictions and celebrated his 15th birthday last week

And despite the challenges posed by the syndrome, the teenager remains positive about his future.

Nihal said: 'I have never felt that this is a disease, because I'm a special child. This is like a God's gift to me.'

Like most boys his age, he loves playing computer games - and those who know him say he has bright eyes, a caring nature, and a child-like innocence.

But his body is that of an elderly man, with wrinkled leathery skin, a bald enlarged head and withered limbs.

He weighs 12.5kg - just under two stone - and is under 4 foot (1.2 m) in height.

In the years to come, his mind will remain young, but his body will age and his health will deteriorate.

The teenager has already stopped going to school, after his classmates began teasing him.

They called him Auro, a progeria patient played by Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan in the Bollywood movie Paa.

When a fellow student told him he too would suffer a heart attack like Auro did in the movie, upset Nihal refused to go back.

However, last December Nihal was sent to the Progeria Research Foundation in Boston, where he began undergoing clinical trials for a cancer drug that doctors hope will slow the ageing process.

It is not known if his life expectancy will be lengthened, so in the meantime he is hoping to fulfil dreams such as meeting Honda's ASIMO robot and going to Disneyland in California.

Progeria is very rare, with between 200 to 250 children living with the syndrome at any given time, according to The Progeria Research Foundation.

The condition takes its name from the Greek word ' proeros ', meaning prematurely old.

Nihal, with his father Srinivas, posing beside a Lamborghini in Mumbai. Progeria is very rare, with between 200 to 250 children living with the syndrome at any given time

Nihal's body is that of an elderly man, with wrinkled leathery skin, a bald enlarged head and withered limbs

Nihal's father, Srinivas (with his daughter Vaishnavi) claims his son was the first person in India to be discovered with HGPS, the most severe form of progeria

For years, the family did not know what was wrong with Nihal.

He appeared healthy until the age of 18 months, when his parents noticed some light patches and dark spots on his skin.

In the following years, it was clear that something was drastically wrong: he did not grow and develop as a child normally would.

His joints were weak, his hair fell out, his veins became very prominent, and his skin aged rapidly.

Nihal was taken to several doctors, who said that he had a genetic disorder but were unsure exactly what his condition was.

It was not until five years ago that Dr Parag Tamhankar, a paediatrician and geneticist in Mumbai, diagnosed Nihal with progeria.

Nihal's father, Srinivas, who owns a small mobile phone repair shop, claims his son was the first person in India to be discovered with HGPS, the most severe form of progeria.

Nihal weighs just under two stone (12.5kg) and is under 4 foot (1.2 m) in height. In the years to come, his mind will remain young, but his body will age and his health will deteriorate

The condition causes the body to lose fat and muscle beneath the skin, and causes problems with joints. Eventually, it will become too difficult for Nihal to move his joints, especially his ankles, knees, and fingers

Pictured is one of Nihal's drawings. He stopped going to school five years ago after being teased due to his condition, and now spends his time painting and surfing the internet

WHAT IS PROGERIA? Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome ('Progeria', or 'HGPS') is a rare, fatal genetic condition characterised by an appearance of accelerated ageing in children. Its name is derived from the Greek and means 'prematurely old'. While there are different forms of progeria, the classic type is Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome, which was named after English doctors Dr Jonathan Hutchinson and Dr Hastings Gilford who first described it in 1886 and 1897 respectively. HGPS is caused by a mutation in the gene called LMNA. The LMNA gene produces the Lamin A protein, which is the structural scaffolding that holds the nucleus of a cell together. Researchers now believe that the defective Lamin A protein makes the nucleus unstable. That cellular instability appears to lead to the process of premature aging in Progeria. Although they are born looking healthy, children with progeria begin to display many characteristics of accelerated ageing at around 18-24 months of age. Progeria signs include growth failure, loss of body fat and hair, aged-looking skin, stiffness of joints, hip dislocation, generalized atherosclerosis, cardiovascular (heart) disease and stroke. The children have a remarkably similar appearance, despite differing ethnic backgrounds. Children with progeria die of heart disease at an average age of 14 years. Source: Progeria Research Foundation Advertisement

Dr Tamhankar referred Nihal to the Progeria Research Foundation in Boston, which is trialling treatment for the condition. Currently there is no cure.

Nihal went to Boston last December to undergo this treatment, which uses a cancer drug called Lonafarnib.

Research has shown that the drug reverses changes in blood vessels that cause heart attacks and strokes, which kill patients of the disease.

Doctors do not know if the treatment will elongate his life expectancy, but they have said the treatment is promising if it helps him gain weight and stops his blood vessels from hardening, Dr Tamhankar said.

Nihal says the drug helped improve the flexibility of his joints and helped him gain 4lbs (2kg) in weight.

But in recent weeks he has stopped taking the treatment because he has had other problems.

These include a liver infection, for which he needs drugs that he cannot take in conjunction with Lonafarnib.

Since he stopped going to school, Nihal now spends his time playing computer games, surfing the internet and he is passionate about painting.

His family say he has a kind, gentle nature and gets on well with his two healthy siblings, sister Sonu, 11, and a brother Lucky, 4.

Now, he says he has three wishes in his life; to meet ASIMO The Robot made by Honda in Japan; to go to Disneyland in California and another secret wish he says he will reveal later in his life.

His father now desperately wants to make his son's potentially last years memorable.

He said: 'No matter how much time is left, I just want to try to fulfil my son's wishes for now.'




Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose carried gold jewellery on his final voyage on August 18, 1945

On October 9, 1978, a group of government officials opened a time capsule from Indian history at the National Museum in Janpath.

Officials from the ministries of culture and external affairs watched as museum officials snipped open a sealed canvas diplomatic bag of the MEA, flipped open a steel attache case inside and took out 14 packages.

Inside was a large collection of gold jewellery usually worn by women - earrings, nose studs, gold wire and necklaces, most of them charred and badly burnt.

This is what Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose evidently carried on his final voyage on August 18, 1945.

File No. 25/4/NGO-Vol III in the Ministry of External Affairs, one of 100 Netaji files declassified by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 23, 2016, records in great detail the only inspection of the 11-kg remnants of the INA treasure, since it had been brought to New Delhi from Japan in 1952.

The declassified files have the first publicly revealed pictures of the treasure.

But what was the revolutionary doing with womens jewelry?

Historians like Hugh Toye said that Bose wanted his two-year old government-in-exile to depend as little on the Japanese for financing his soldiers, so he raised money from nearly 2 million Indians in erstwhile British colonies conquered by his Japanese allies.

Women gave away their jewellery for the INA.

The Bose treasure comprises a large collection of gold jewellery usually worn by women - including earrings, nose studs, gold wire and necklaces, most of them charred by fire

At one of his famous fundraising public meetings in Rangoon on August 21, 1944, newspapers of the day recalled, a wealthy scion Hiraben Betani gave away 13 of her gold necklaces costing Rs 1.5 lakh.

Many of Boses relatives refuse to believe that he died in a plane crash, and have declined to accept his treasure or his ashes

With the defeat of the Japanese empire and dissolution of the INA, Bose packed the treasury - over 80 kg of gold estimated at Rs 1 crore in 1945 - into the boxes that he carried into an aircraft flying to Manchuria from Saigon, Vietnam.

The Shah Nawaz Committee that probed his disappearance in 1956 records how Netaji boarded an overloaded Japanese bomber, shedding his books and clothes but refusing to move without two leather suitcases that contained the treasure.

The treasure would be used to finance the next stage of his struggle in the Soviet Union.

The Japanese aircraft crashed soon after the take-off at Taiwan on August 18, 1945, and Netaji is believed to have died after sustaining grievous burn injuries.

His body was cremated, and the jewellery - most of it badly burnt - salvaged by the Japanese Army and sent to Japan along with his ashes.

It was only a fraction of over 80 kg of gold and jewellery that Bose was believed to have carried, leading MEA officials in Tokyo to suspect that it had been swindled by Boses associates.

On January 9, 1953, then PM Pt Jawaharlal Nehru inspected the treasure soon after its return from Tokyo.

He minuted his disappointment, calling it a poor show, but advised that it should be kept as it is because it was the only evidence of the accident and fire.

The gold and ashes form two of the most contentious artifacts in modern Indian history, simply because they were the only physical remnants of the controversial August 18, 1945 air crash.

The extended Bose dynasty - descendants of Netajis large family consisting of 13 siblings - refuse to believe that there ever was an air crash.

Consequently, they have neither accepted the treasure, nor the ashes.

They rebuffed an attempt by the Nehru government to send them the gold in 1953.

On December 30 the same year, the government sealed the box and handed it to the museum.
An order issued by Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain prohibiting senior officers from issuing any orders or circulars has left the babus in a fix.

In his latest directives, the health minister has ordered all secretaries - principal, special, joint and deputy - to refrain from issuing any order without the approval of the minister.

no notification or order or circular or any other instrument would be issued by the Health & Family Welfare department, without the concurrence of the minister- in-charge, an order undersigned by Jain said.

Satyendar Jain has prohibited senior officers from issuing any orders or circulars

Mail Today has procured a copy of the order dated January 21.

The development assumes significance in the wake of a bitter relationship between the political leadership and bureaucracy under the Aam Aadmi Party government.

Associations of DANICS and IAS officers have even criticised the treatment meted out to officers by the Arvind Kejriwal government.

The order, which has been sent to all secretary-level officers and marked to Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, has upset the medical fraternity.

Sources in the health department said that with the implementation of these orders, the minister has paralysed senior officers.

Now for every minor issue, we will have to seek permission from the minister. Though, we dont have any issue, but the process of getting the issues cleared will become cumbersome. The minister is already busy with many other things. It will now take more time to get even a single order passed as files would require to be routed through his office, a senior government official told Mail Today.

The minister has also decided and re-allocated the work of all secretary-level officers.

Health officials said that this is the first time that a minister has interfered with the functioning of the health department in this manner.

The order by Delhi government has quoted Rule-15 and 16 of the Transaction of Business of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Rules, 1993.

From maintenance and planning to taking decisions on human resources, the minister has reallocated the duty of every secretary.

There was no response from Jains office, despite repeated attempts.

We, government servants, work under secretaries and not under any minister. The administrative head is the secretary. This is basically dictatorship, another government official told Mail Today.

As per the official process, all policies and decisions are first decided at administrative level and then sent to the minister-in-charge for approval.

Most of the work is basically done by secretary-level officers.

In the bureaucratic set-up, officials cannot bypass their administrative boss and report to the minister directly.

This is a constitutional issue where permanent civil servants are traumatised by the state and central government. In an emergency department like health, there should be a cordial relationship between the secretary and minister. Health should be a national agenda and all officers should serve citizens to the best of possibility, Prasanna Hota, retired bureaucrat and former health secretary told Mail Today.
The President released his autobiography 'The Turbulent Years: 1980-1996' on 28 January

President Pranab Mukherjee, who presented his first Union Budget as finance minister in 1982, fondly remembered how then PM Indira Gandhi was surprised to find out that he had time to go through a book by Alvin Toffler, which talked about her meeting with the US President Richard Nixon.

After Pranab flagged the relevant pages in the book and sent it across to the PM, he received a reply saying Indira was surprised that her finance minister could find time to read Toffler, while he was preparing for the Budget.

I couldnt stop laughing after reading this, President Pranab recalled in his autobiography 'The Turbulent Years: 1980-1996' released on Thursday.

On PM's mind

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants his Cabinet colleagues to create awareness about the new schemes and focus on their timely implementation.

This is amid complaints that non-BJP ruled states are not implementing key schemes initiated by the NDA government.

A meeting of Council of Ministers and secretaries was held on Wednesday to review progress made on the Cabinet decisions taken so far.

According to sources, some ministers complained that there was a perception among people that the NDA government is not doing anything.

For Geeta's sake

Sushma Swaraj has written to Bihar CM Nitish Kumar seeking help for Geeta

Unable to find the parents of Geeta, the deaf and mute girl who was brought back to India from Pakistan last year, a perturbed External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has written to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar seeking help.

Sushma has sent him Geetas photos from over the last few years and identification marks, meant to be forwarded to his officials at the district level.

Sushma has also given details about her possible areas of origin based on the girl's input.

Last year, Geeta was brought back to India, nearly 15 years after she accidentally crossed over to Pakistan.

Naidu's smart joke

Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu is known for his sharp sense of humour. It became evident on Thursday during a press meet.

While Naidu was briefing the media in an auditorium at National Media Centre, some media persons started moving from their seats to get a copy of press releases.

Noticing this, Naidu remarked: We are discussing about smart cities and you are trying to be extra smart.

He also assured that everybody will get a copy of the press release towards the end of press meet.

Back in action

Days after the Congress distanced itself from the controversial remark of party leader Manish Tewari related to the alleged movement of two Army units towards Delhi without authorisation, the ex-Union minister is back as an AICC spokesperson.

A possible reason could be that Tewari, who hails from Punjab, may be of help in the state which will hold Assembly polls in 2017.
My husband and I are expecting our first baby in June. We chose Barbados for a holiday as my family are frequent visitors and my sister lives there.

Rather than going self-catering or staying with my sister, we opted to go for a lovely hotel all-inclusive with spa so that we could be assured of the health and hygiene standards, including mosquito netting on windows and air conditioning.

We also thought it would be wise to stay somewhere with easy access to medical facilities should we need them. We booked the holiday paying 4,745.

Zika fears: We wanted to cancel Barbados trip due to fears over the Zika virus - Virgin would only offer a half refund

Recently, we became aware of news reports about the Zika virus, including three confirmed cases in Barbados.

This week, the World Health Organisation issued a warning, followed by Public Health England for pregnant women due to risks associated with the virus and unborn children.

I called Virgin for advice. I was told by a call centre staff member it was unlikely its cancellation terms would change because of the virus.

I offered to postpone the trip until after the baby is born but this wasn't an option. Virgin advised the maximum it could refund was 41 per cent because our flights had 'already been ticketed'.

Eventually, it honoured its standard cancellation policy and agreed to refund me 50 per cent. We are now 2,372 out of pocket.

While I appreciate we have a contract, given this isn't a simple changing of minds but a difficult decision that has been taken on the basis of a growing body of medical evidence and public health warnings, I do feel let down by a company I have always trusted as reputable and customer-centric. N.M, London

Lee Boyce, consumer affairs editor at This is Money, replies: The Zika virus would worry me if my partner was pregnant. No holiday, in my opinion, is worth the risk, no matter how small.

The Zika virus has spread in South America, Central America and parts of North America. It is thought to cause miscarriages and birth defects.

The World Health Organisation warned yesterday that the virus, spread by mosquitoes, could infect four million people worldwide this year - and the organisation may need to declare a global emergency on the scale of the ebola crisis.

Latest advice on the Government travel advice website for Barbados is to follow the National Travel Health Network and Centre, 'particularly if you're pregnant or planning to become pregnant'.

It also advises to seek advice from a health professional if you have any further questions or concerns.

On the NTHNC website, it says: 'Pregnant women are advised to reconsider travel plans.'

Health advice: The Government travel website points to the National Travel Health Network and Centre - it says: 'pregnant women are advised to reconsider travel plans'

Barbados is a popular spot for British tourists. Nearly 200,000 went in 2014.

I asked Virgin Holidays in your case, whether a full refund could be dished out, given the serious nature of this virus.

ZIKA WORRIES? If you are pregnant or have underlying health issues and are worried about your upcoming trip, try to obtain a refund from the firm you have booked it with or via your insurance. A list of countries which have Zika virus fears are; Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Samaoa Suriname, U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela If they do not offer a full refund or your insurer tries yo wiggle out of paying out, please contact: lee.boyce@thisismoney.co.uk

It said: 'We always endeavour to do the right thing by our customers and anyone currently booked to travel to regions affected by the Zika virus should call our customer service teams for help and advice.

'We can look at options including rebooking their holiday for a later date or rebooking their Virgin Holiday to an alternative destination.

'Alternatively we can issue a full refund to our pregnant customers who no longer wish to travel.

'We will continue to monitor the advice from the World Health Organisation and adapt our policy should there be a need to do so.'

I have since spoken to you and you have confirmed that a full refund has been issued. It's also a victory for This is Money - lets hope all travel firms follow in the same fashion.

In fairness to Virgin, this Zika virus has only really started to gain publicity this week, so call centre staff may not have known how to handle the cancellation properly in your circumstances.

It also highlights the need to buy travel insurance at the time if booking your holiday. The Association of British Insurers' says: 'If someone is advised not to travel to a destination by a medical professional then most travel insurance policies will cover cancellation costs than cannot be reclaimed elsewhere.

'This is provided that the trip and insurance were bought before the recent advice changed.'




collage.jpg

Grand larceny suspects Lillie Johnston (left), her son, Nicholas Gasper (center) and Thomas Pearson.

(JCSO photos)

COUNTY, Mississippi -- Three Biloxi residents have been arrested and charged with grand larceny for the theft of $6,000 of a commercial van containing $6,000 in construction materials.

According to Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell, the investigation began in October 2015 after the JCSO learned of the theft of a 1999 Ford E350 cargo van. Investigators learned the vehicle had been sold to a local scrap yard which reported the sale as suspicious after finding the construction materials in the back.

On Dec. 13, investigators arrested 22-year-old Nicholas Ryan Gasper of Rue Mornay South in Biloxi on a grand larceny charge. Gasper later posted $3,000 bond and was released.

Wednesday, after further investigation, Gasper's mother, Lillie Johnston, 39, and Thomas Matthew Pearson, 32, both of Rue Mornay in Biloxi, were also arrested on a grand larceny charge for the same incident.

Johnston and Pearson are both being held at the Jackson County Adult Detention Center under $5,000 bonds set by Judge T. Larry Wilson.

if convicted, each of the three suspects faces up to 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.
Former bosses of HBOS face a lifetime ban from the City after regulators launched a belated probe into their role in the collapse of the High Street giant more than seven years ago.

In a joint statement, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of Englands stability watchdog the Prudential Regulation Authority said they had decided to start investigations into certain former senior managers.

They added: These investigations will determine whether or not any prohibition proceedings should be commenced against them.

HBOS four: Dennis Stevenson (top left), James Crosby (top right), Andy Hornby (bottom left) and Mike Ellis

The watchdogs said they would also trawl through evidence to determine whether to investigate other individuals.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury Select Committee, last night described the probe as better late than never but pointed out a ban would be irrelevant to some of the key bosses as they no longer work in the financial services industry.

Eight year wait: Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the influential Treasury Committee

He said: Regulators are bowing to pressure and doing what they should have done many years ago. Those found culpable are not fit to hold a senior job in any company.

Andrew Tyrie MP, Tory chairman of the influential Treasury committee, added: Overdue doesnt capture it. It is eight years since the collapse of HBOS in 2008. It has taken a heap of pressure from Parliament to secure appropriate action from the regulators.

Former bosses will also escape a fine even if they are found culpable because regulators took so long to launch their investigation.

The blundering Financial Services Authority  which has been replaced by the Financial Conduct Authority  had to mount a probe within three years of the collapse of HBOS in 2008 to be legally allowed to fine individuals.

Although the names of those being investigated were not identified yesterday, they will include individuals criticised in a withering report by top barrister Andrew Green.

Published in November, he suggested more than ten former managers should be investigated, including former HBOS chief executive Andy Hornby, his predecessor James Crosby and former chairman Dennis Stevenson.

Others in the firing line could include former finance chief Mike Ellis, who is now chairman of Skipton Building Society.

Lindsay Mackay, head of HBOSs treasury division, was also criticised. He is currently a director of the London arm of Alpha Bank.

Hornby is among those who will not be too worried about a City ban  he is now chief operating officer of bookmaker Gala Coral and will take up the same position when it merges with rival Ladbrokes.

Most of the individuals criticised in Greens report now work outside the financial services sector.

Probe: The Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of Englands stability watchdog the Prudential Regulation Authority said they had decided to start investigations into certain former senior managers at HBOS

They include former group risk director Peter Hickman who is now finance chief at law firm Linklaters, and former finance director Philip Hodkinson who is on the board of BT.

Lord Stevenson sits on the board of bookseller Waterstones.

Just one former executive has been punished. Peter Cummings, who ran Bank of Scotlands corporate lending division, was fined 500,000 and banned from the City.
Flying high: The deal follows the lifting of sanctions against Iran

The first major commercial agreement by Iran since sanctions were lifted has been signed, with it buying 118 passenger planes from Airbus.

The order is a boost for British jobs because Airbuss wings are made in the UK. Airbus has facilities in Filton, near Bristol, and Broughton, North Wales.

Irans president, Hassan Rouhani, agreed the purchase, thought to be worth 17.4billion, alongside a host of other deals.

It is still conditional on getting a US export license because more than 10 per cent of the parts were made in the US.

The planes, which include 73 wide-body and 45 narrow-body jets, are for Iranair. As well as maintaining the planes, Airbus will also help train pilots.
One of the largest takeovers in history finally got the go-ahead yesterday after BG Group shareholders followed those at Royal Dutch Shell in approving the 36billion deal.

At a meeting in London, 99.53 per cent of BG shareholders voted in favour, a day after 83 per cent of Shell investors approved the deal that was first announced last April.

Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said: BG adds attractive deep water and integrated gas positions and will act as a catalyst for accelerating the reshaping of our business.

All aboard: 99.53 per cent of BG shareholders voted in favour, a day after 83 per cent of Shell investors approved the deal that was first announced last April

'We look forward to delivering the benefits of the combination as quickly as possible following completion.

Van Beurden will be closely watched once the deal completes on February 15. He has promised huge cuts in spending and jobs, including culling 3 per cent of the combined 100,000 workforce.

He will also now proceed with the sale of more than 20billion of assets which he has said he will sell by 2018. Cost savings are pencilled in at 2.5billion.

Shell and BG will both reveal their full-year results next week.

Although the oil price rebounded yesterday above $34 it is still well below its summer 2014 peak of $115 and experts believe it will not rise much above $37 this year.

The takeover of BG comes nearly two decades after the company was created out of British Gas.

BG chief executive Helge Lund, who joined BG just weeks before the merger was announced, will step down. Shell executive Huibert Vigeveno, who has been heading integration planning, will become transitional chief executive.

Shell rose 2.3 per cent or 34p to 1496p and BG rose 1.4 per cent or 14.5p to 1044p.

The UK Government is making 20million of cash available for surveys in the North Sea in a bid to aid the struggling oil and gas sector.
The carnage on global stock markets has blown the re-privatisation of Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland off course.

The Chancellor yesterday revealed that turbulent markets had forced it to delay plans to sell a final 2billion tranche of Lloyds shares to the public.

The sale had been scheduled to take place in the spring, but George Osborne said: We will sell Lloyds to the British people but we will do so when the time is right.

Delay: The sale of the remaining stake in Lloyds at the currrent price would trigger a huge loss for taxpayers

The shock announcement comes just 24 hours after RBS confirmed it will post its eighth consecutive annual loss when it announces its results for 2015 later this month.

It revealed it has incurred another 2.5billion clean-up bill  including fresh provisions for PPI mis-selling in the UK and for misselling of toxic mortgage debt in the US before the financial crisis.

Analysts at Investec said this dashed hopes that the Chancellor would be able to offload any more of taxpayers remaining 73 per cent stake in RBS this year.

Shares in British banks have been hit hard by the unease in global markets, triggered by the slowdown in China.

Lloyds share price has fallen from 78p when the Chancellor announced details of the sale to just over 64p. A sale at this price would trigger a huge loss for taxpayers as it is far below the break even price paid by the previous government during the 20.5billion bailout of the bank.

RBS shares have also been hammered, making the prospect of further Government sales unfeasible until they recover. They were trading at 250.7p yesterday, less than half the break even price paid when it was rescued with a 45.5billion taxpayer bailout in 2008.

The Chancellor came under fire last year when he sold an initial 6 per cent stake in RBS at 330p per share  triggering a 1billion loss for taxpayers.

Experts suggested it would be some time before the Government can even consider whittling down its stakes in RBS and Lloyds.

David Buik, from stockbroker Panmure Gordon: Markets are bouncing around like a cork in a bath. We could be in for a long wait before the markets calm down and this sale to the public finally goes ahead.

This is a blow to small investors who have waited to buy Lloyds shares from the Government at a 5 per cent discount.
Victims of 'pension liberation' scams are suffering the heartbreaking plight of losing their savings then being landed with a 55 per cent tax bill on the missing money, according to an anti-fraud campaigner who has launched hundreds of appeals to HMRC on their behalf.

People aged under 55 whose retirement savings have vanished still face stiff tax bills, because HMRC imposes charges to claw back tax relief from anyone who accesses their pension before this strict age limit.

'Pension liberation' fraud is a growing issue, particularly following freedom reforms that offer people aged over 55 unlimited access to their savings - allowing fraudsters to trick younger savers into thinking they can benefit too.

Devastating scams: Pension fraud is estimated to have cost savers close to 1billion over the past five years, although exact figures are hard to nail down

Scammers use increasingly sophisticated tactics to convince victims to part with their pension savings. Some offer free 'pension reviews' or 'health checks' or promise better returns on their savings. Others offer upfront cash or promotions to tempt victims - they'll try any tactic in the book.

Then, once the cash has been handed over, the fraudster disappears, taking the victim's nest egg with them.

However just because the cash is gone doesn't mean the victim doesn't have to pay a massive tax bill for accessing their pension early.

HMRC says it has to apply tax legislation fairly and consistently, although it tries to be as supportive as possible towards those who have made a genuine mistake when they are aged under 55.

But Angie Brooks of ACA Pension Life argues it is not right that victims of fraud should be taxed - and warns HMRC is about to send out demands to people scammed in 2011/12, who will probably receive letters 30 days before the end of this tax year on 5 April.

Brooks says: 'Many innocent victims of pension liberation scams, the majority of whom have lost their entire lifetime savings, are now about to be dealt another devastating hammer blow  and this time its from HM Revenue & Customs.

'There are tens of thousands of people across the UK and abroad who were told by conmen using sophisticated tactics that they could access their British pensions tax-free thanks to a legal loophole. This is not, and has never been, the case.'

Brooks also claims that HMRC should take some responsibility for scam victims, saying: 'If they stopped registering pension schemes without doing due diligence, the fraudsters would not be able to operate.'

It used to be possible to register pension schemes for tax approval with the HMRC using an automated online process, sparking allegations that some fraudsters promote the fact they are genuinely HMRC-registered to pretend they are legitimate.

PHRASES PENSION FRAUDSTERS USE THAT SHOULD SET ALARMS BELLS RINGING The offer won't last long You're entitled to a free government review You'll make a better return by investing in storage units/forests/overseas property There's a guaranteed 7 per cent return We'll send a courier over with your documents Can you sign quickly - I'm parked on a double yellow line There's a legal loophole You're a sophisticated investor It's free

HMRC is not a regulator, but it did did tighten up its registration system in September 2014 - a move called for by the pensions industry - when a 'fit and proper person' test was introduced. The tax office can refuse to register a scheme, or de-register an existing scheme if the scheme administrator is deemed to be not a fit and proper person.

The Pensions Regulator has limited powers and it does not have the ability to authorise pension schemes.

In response to Brooks's campaign against pension scam victims being taxed, an HMRC spokesperson said: 'We do not discuss individual cases. We apply the tax legislation fairly and consistently in line with the rules but try to be as supportive as possible for those who have made a genuine mistake.

'Tax reliefs are given to support the building up of a pension pot for later in life which is why accessing it early through a so called "pension liberation scheme'" can mean a significant tax charge.

'We aim to deal with all cases as quickly as possible - and anyone with concerns should contact us as soon as they can, so we can support them to rectify any issues.'

Independent retirement expert Alan Higham, who runs the PensionsChamp.com website, commented: 'Whilst HMRC must fairly apply the tax rules they ought to be mindful that they are pursuing victims of crime many of whom are extremely vulnerable as a result.

'These crimes have been committed using pension schemes that HMRC has approved without requiring any meaningful degree of due diligence on those running them.

WHERE TO GO FOR HELP Action Fraud: If you suspect a fraud, report it to the UKs national fraud and internet crime reporting centre, Action Fraud on 0300 1232040. The Pensions Advisory Service: Offers free and impartial guidance on pensions and will tell you how to spot a scammer. Pension Wise: Over-55s who want to take advantage of new pension freedoms can make a face-to-face or phone appointment with the Government's free guidance service on 0800 802 1345, or call 44 20 3733 3495 if you live outside the UK. Pension Tracing Service: Some scammers will offer to help you find lost pensions but the Government will offer free help. Take care if you do an online search for the Pension Tracing Service as many companies using similar names will pop up in the results. These will also offer to look for your pension, but try to charge or flog you other services, and could be fraudulent.

'The onus is on the Government to make it harder for these crimes to occur and to require HMRC to adopt a more sensitive approach to dealing with the tax collection. The Government has failed these people a second time with inadequate resources available to investigate reported frauds leaving criminals free to operate with impunity.'

Fears have also been voiced that an amnesty on tax bills would not work as it would be too easy to abuse, while HMRC has to strike a balance between weeding out fraudulent scheme registrations, and not over-burdening the legitimate pensions industry.

Brooks represents some 800 victims of scams, and is bringing 16 class action suits against pension companies that released funds as well as combating the tax demands from HMRC.

She acts on behalf of some of the victims of the Ark pension liberation schemes, which saw savers take 50 per cent loans from their pensions, pay hefty fees, and then face tax demands ranging from 5,000 to 250,000.

In December, Brooks called on the government to set up an independent, specialist task force to tackle the 'serious and growing problem' of liberation scams with a joined-up approach involving HMRC, the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority.

And earlier this month she issued a warning about three common, tell-tale phrases fraudsters use to entice victims - 'legal loophole', 'sophisticated investor', and 'free' - in an effort to prevent more people having their savings stolen. See the box above for more warning signs of a pension con.

Brooks said: 'It is a heart breaking, and seemingly never-ending, story. We hear about new scams and more victims every day.'

An official taskforce called Project Bloom was launched last July to combat pension fraud, which is estimated to have cost savers close to 1billion over the past five years, although exact figures are hard to nail down.

This saw the Government, police and financial regulators combine their efforts as pension freedom reforms made retirement savings pots an obvious target for unscrupulous sharks.

Experts say that a combination of new rules, investors looking for returns and pensioners withdrawing large sums of cash have delivered a potentially fertile hunting ground for conmen.
Greedy landlords in the town where a Swedish social worker was murdered at a home for child refugees are hiking their rents by 1,450 per cent to provide accommodation for migrants.

They are renting properties to the council for temporary asylum shelters at vastly inflated prices compared to the open market in Molndal and exploiting Swedens migrant crisis, an investigation has found.

Alexandra Mezher, 22, a Lebanese Christian, was knifed to death in a frenzied attack as she worked alone on a night shift. Somali-born Youssaf Khaliif Nuur, claiming to be 15, has been charged with her murder. He is being held in a psychiatric hospital in Gothenburg.

Profit: Flats like this one, which usually cost around 500 a month to rent, in Molndal, Gothenburg, are being turned into migrant accommodation and rented to the council for up to 1,450 per cent increases

Margins: Companies are charging councils in Sweden up to 5,600 per month for studio flats to house asylum seekers

It has since emerged that the migrant housing provider Miss Mezher worked for, HVB Living Nordic, may face corporate manslaughter charges.

Despite the company making significant profits, Miss Mezher's colleagues say they had complained about being understaffed, and forced to work alone overnight, for over a year.

But HVB Living Nordic is just one of a number of companies operating in Molndal, a suburb of Gothenburg where the population of 60,000 has grown by 8,000 migrants in less than a year  4,000 of whom are unaccompanied children.

With the huge influx in recent years, the council has been unable to provide housing themselves, and all but a fraction of the cash has gone to renting from private companies - at steep mark-ups.

MailOnline has found a number of studio flats on the rental market in Molndal priced from 335-570 per month.

However, Molndal City Council is renting studio flats from private companies for 3,000-4,500 per month - up to 680 per cent more.

Price hike: This flat is one of those offered to migrants in Molndal, Gothenburg. One of the accommodation providers rents a similar one for 245, then charges local authority 3,818 - a rent increase of 1,450 per cent

Luxury: In 2014, Molndal, where Swedish social worker Alexandra Mezher was killed, received 22.6million to provide housing for unaccompanied minors  the most state funding per capita than any town in Sweden

One such company in Molndal, StegetVidare, rents a 215sq feet studio flat for 245 a month, then charges the council 3,818  a 1,450 per cent increase, an investigation by Expressen found.

Another studio flat highlighted in the investigation was being rented out to Molndal City Council for5,640 of taxpayers money per month.

The owner of the flat said he charges the asylum seeker accommodation provider 737 per month  a profit of 4,903 a month, or 665 per cent.

These studio flats are 'transition housing', given to former unaccompanied minors once they are over 18 and have been granted asylum in Sweden.

'We are feeding big private companies, we have no other alternatives,' Birgitta Korpe, Molndal City Council's head care for unaccompanied migrant children, told Expressen.

'They can make extreme profits,' she added.

StegetVidare defended its 1,450 per cent profit by saying it provides more than basic accommodation for young new arrivals, adding that the charges also cover care and maintenance.

But Ms Korpe said the 'care' the company claimed they provided only amounted to checking in on the young migrants a few times a week.

Comparison: A similar property in Molndal is available on the private market for 335 per month, far less than what private asylum seeker accommodation providers are charging the city council

Affordable: This studio flat is available to rent for a fraction of what private companies charge the Swedish authorities for child migrant accommodation. Companies justify the vast expense by saying they provide care

Another private accommodation provider in the area is HVB Living Nordic, where Miss Mezher worked.

She died on Monday trying to save another boy who the knifeman was allegedly trying to attack. Miss Mezher was stabbed in the thigh and back. She was taken to hospital and died from her injuries.

The alleged attacker, a boy claiming to be a 15-year-old from Somalia, is being held in a secure psychiatric hospital in Gothenburg and has been remanded in custody until February 11.

Swedish prosecutors say HVB Living Nordic may be charged with corporate manslaughter and violating work environment law over the murder of Miss Mezher in her workplace.

The housing facility where she worked is home to ten migrants and refugees aged 14-17 who have all applied for asylum in Sweden without a parent or guardian.

Swedens Work Environment Administration is investigating whether HVB Living Nordic broke work environment laws for allowing Miss Mezher to work on her own with ten teenage boys.

Influx: Molndal in Gothenburg, with a population of 60,000 has seen its numbers swell by the arrival of 8,000 refugees in less than a year, 4,000 of which are unaccompanied minors

Murdered: Social worker Alexandra Mezher, 22, was knifed to death by a 15-year-old boy at a child asylum seekers' home after reportedly breaking up a fight between two residents

Winners: HVB Living Nordic, which runs the adolescent refugee home where Miss Mezher worked, reported profits 21.9 per cent in 2014 - but may face corporate manslaughter charges over her death

HVB Living Nordic is a private company paid by the local authority to provide housing and care for unaccompanied minors, which has been operating since late 2013.

In 2014, Molndal received 22.6million to provide housing for unaccompanied minors  the most state funding per capita than any town or city in Sweden.

That same year, HVB Living Nordic reported a profit margin of 21.9 per cent.

HVBs chief executive is Patrick Sjogren, 46, former CEO of 5050Poker, an gambling website which filed for bankruptcy in 2012 after it emerged that the company had used players' money to cover losses.

Mr Sjogrens company faces questions over how Miss Mezher to work alone overnight with almost a dozen vulnerable teenage boys.

Staff at the centre warned a year ago that due to lack of staff, something serious will happen here.

The warning came from a therapist in December 2014 - despite the fact that the facility had been open less than four months at the time.
Like most mothers, Rochelle Nitschke agonised over what sort of job her son Carter would be able to find after he finished high school.

For Ms Nitschke, from Brisbane, her worries were compounded by the fact Carter, now 20, has a speech disability - meaning he has problems with speaking, and used to be too scared to talk to people - and would not be able to attend university or have a mainstream job.

Ms Nitschke noticed that when Carter took part in work experience at his special needs school, he loved helping out at a vet practice because he had no problem communicating with animals.

Soon, he was telling people how he wanted to open up a pet store one day - called Carter's Critters.

Rochelle Nitschke and her son Carter, 20, who together run Carter's Critters pet store Brisbane

Carter Nitschke, 20, who runs Carter's Critters pet shop in Brisbane with his mother, is pictured with two puppies

When he finished school, he needed a job - and so did Ms Nitschke.

She used all of the money she received from the settlement after she separated from her husband to buy a pet store and set up the business Carter's Critters in Sunnybank Hills, in southern Brisbane.

Because she taught at his school, she would have had to quit anyway, in order to be with him at home.

Carter chose the shop's name, logo, colours - his favourites, hot pink and lime green - and has a say in whether people are up to scratch to be pet owners.

Carter serves a customer at his pet store, which his mother bought so they could both be together and employed

It's not always a breeze, though.

'All small business... I think, is struggling. We have a good day which might be followed by three bad days,' Ms Nitschke said.

But she is proud of her son.

For Carter, who begun speaking much later than other children, animals make sense.

The family dog's name - Nipper - was the first word he ever spoke.

'Even from a young age animals were his thing. They don't judge you... they just know you love them so they love you back,' Ms Nitschke said.

'He [Carter] has come a long way from a little five-year-old who could not say anything. When he started [at the pet store] he would be too scared to talk to people.'

Working in the store had improved Carter's communication skills and given him independence.

Ms Nitschke said it was easy to get attached to some of the animals that came into the store, and Carter was always ensuring pets went to a good home

Rochelle and Carter Nitschke in their store

But 95 percent of customers were understanding.

When they realised there was something different about Carter they gave him time and were patient.

But it's not just Carter who the store is helping.

Other youths with special needs come to the store to volunteer and get work experience, like Carter once did.

And children with other disabilities come to the store to interact with the animals and build confidence.

Carter said - of course - working with animals was the best part of the job, however, he did get attached to them.

He might also get away with a few liberties like an extra half hour at lunch here and there - the benefits of working with your mother.

Ms Nitschke hopes that some day Carter will manage the store himself.
A woman likely killed her 85-year-old mother at their New York home before killing herself inside a hotel room in Pennsylvania, police said Thursday.

Hannah Lilien, 55, was found dead in the Red Roof Inn at about 12.45pm Wednesday.

She had self-inflicted wounds that didn't involve a gun, said Sgt. Chuck Mascellino with Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, police.

'We did find some items and evidence that indicated the suspect/victim here in Cranberry may have harmed her mother in Buffalo,' Mascellino said.

According to the Buffalo News, Hannah Lilien was an ex-teacher for the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater Buffalo's day care.

Her elderly mother Shoshana Lilien purportedly survived the Holocaust, the newspaper said.

Hannah Lilien, 55, was found dead in the Red Roof Inn (pictured) at about 12.45pm Wednesday in Pennsylvania

Buffalo police were asked to check on Hannah Lilien's mother, and found her dead at the residence about an hour later, authorities said.

Authorities believe the deaths are a murder-suicide, Mascellino said.

Mascellino wouldn't comment on how the older woman died or on what might have led to the killings.

Police believe Hannah Lilien had been dead several hours when her body was found. She had checked into the hotel, along Route 19, on Tuesday night.

Mascellino told WTAE: 'The time they discovered the female, it was beyond the checkout time for the hotel.

'They wanted to make sure she vacated the room and, upon entering the room, they found she was deceased on the floor.'

Hannah Lilien's former JCC colleague Shayna Raichilson-Zadok told the Buffalo News: 'If you dont know this person and you hear a 55-year-old woman killed her 85-year-old woman and then killed herself, youd say: "This person is a monster."

'But the fact is she was not a monster. Something had to have happened that made her snap.

'But this one thing shouldnt define her existence. She was not a horrible person.

'Anybody who ever came in contact with her knows that. Nobody will ever know what happened except for the two people who are no longer with us.'

Buffalo police were asked to check on Hannah Lilien's mother, and found her dead at her home (pictured) about an hour later, authorities said

The Buffalo News reported that Hannah Lilien quit her JCC job in 2013 after 15 years so she could be her mother's caretaker.

The newspaper said Shoshana Lilien's spouse Max died seven years ago.

He was referred to as a 'Holocaust Survivor' in a June 2009 notice, it also pointed out.

Route 19 is a major artery that links up with nearby Interstate 79, the most direct route from Buffalo.

Cranberry Township is about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh and about 115 miles southwest of Buffalo.

Buffalo neighbor Lyn Martone told TWC News: 'She (Hannah) often made remarks about how troublesome it was to always care for her parents as anyone would at our age, trying to take care of an older parent.

'It's devastating, actually.

'Nothing like that has ever happened around here, and out of all the houses on the street, that's the last one I would've thought police were going to for that kind of thing.'
The husband of a nurse and former beauty queen who was brutally murdered in Sydney 30 years ago has spoken of his devastation for the first time.

Anita Cobby was 26 when she was abducted by five men while walking home from Blacktown train station in Sydney's west on the night of February 2, 1986.

She was dragged into a car, where she was beaten, repeatedly raped and tortured, with her fingers broken and bones dislocated, before being dragged into a paddock where her throat was slit.

Tuesday marks 30 years since her horrific death and Anita's husband John Cobby has spoken for the first time and admits he still blames himself.

Scroll down for video

Happy times together: Anita and John Cobby pictured during their overseas trip to the US and Europe in 1985

19-year-old Anita Cobby pictured with then New South Wales Premier Neville Wran at a charity event after winning the Miss Western Suburbs pageant

Anita Cobby and her dog Lucy seen in 1981. 'Anita and John loved sailing around Yowie Bay' says Mark Morri

Anita and John Cobby pictured together at a black tie dinner. The couple was married for four years

Married: Anita and John Cobby pictured on their wedding day on 2 March, 1982

In a new book by crime writer Mark Morri, Mr Cobby reveals how he was the first suspect interviewed by detectives and how he even confessed to her killing under the barrage of questions.

Yep, I did it, must have.'

However, while he was soon cleared by police, he was not released from the guilt which he has carried for three decades.

After collapsing in the interview room at Blacktown police station due to several hours and an 'intense grilling', Mr Cobby asked officers for his wife's wedding ring, which was found on her body.

'They threw it down on the table in a plastic bag ... it still had Anita's blood on it,' he told the author.

Anita Cobby's body was found two days after she'd gone missing in a paddock in the nearby suburb of Prospect.

Five men - Leslie Murphy, 22, Gary Murphy, 28, Michael Murphy, 33, Michael Murdoch, 19, and John Travers, 18 - were convicted of her murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Anita Cobby at her graduation as a nurse in 1982. Both she and husband John worked in the same profession

The extended Cobby family: Back row from left to right - Kim, Gay, Julie, Pop Cobby, Greg, Sharan. Front row from left to right are John (in the red cardigan), Karen, Mark, Nana and Louise

Anita Cobby was dragged into a car, where she was beaten, repeatedly raped and tortured, with her fingers broken and bones dislocated, before her throat was slit. Her body was found two days later in a paddock

'I just couldn't handle all the publicity. I blamed myself for her dying and still do. I should have been with her,' Mr Cobby said.

'Its still my fault,' he told the author, I was her husband I was supposed to be there to protect her.'

Anita's husband hasn't read the full grisly details of her killing, and doesn't want to.

He only discovered the names of all the killers last year.

Mr Cobby, now 57, reveals how his wife's death left him a broken man.

He became reclusive and left for America the day after his wife's funeral and later travelled to England.

'I was using cocaine a lot and heroin when I could get it,' Mr Cobby admitted.

'I just continued on my booze and drug trip.'

A medical report detailed his 'bottle of scotch per day, enormous quantities of pills, tranquilisers, sedatives, hypnotics, pain relievers etc.'

Mr Cobby admits to still drinking heavily and medicating himself.

Recurring nightmares of Anita screaming for help and bursting into the court room wearing a helmet and killing the five men, have pushed him to the brink.

His depression led to time in a psychiatric ward in Michigan.

'REMEMBERING ANITA COBBY: The case, the husband, the aftermath - 30 years on' Before he left the Blacktown police station that first day, there was one thing John very much wanted, and that was Anita's ring. he had bought it for her for their wedding, and Anita had loved it. At some stage, one of the detectives came into the room and put down a small plastic exhibit bag with the ring in it. The records show that police handed the ring over to John and he signed for it on the night his wife's body was found. 'We had no reason to keep it and he wanted it. I don't think I had even signed it into evidence,' [Detective Ian] Speed Kennedy told me many years later. John remembers it was handed to him, or perhaps put down on the table in front of him. He opened it, this small plastic bag, which looked kind of yellow, and there was the ring. To his shock and disbelief, it had Anita's blood all over it. He can still picture it: yet another image seared into his memory. He grabbed the ring in a stupor and they let him leave the station. Driving back home, he held that ring tightly as he thought of Anita. It was all he had of her now. Excerpt from 'Remembering Anita Cobby' (Mark Morri) Advertisement

Four of the five Anita Cobby killers: Michael Murdoch (top left), Mick Murphy (top right), Les Murphy (bottom left) and Gary Murphy (bottom right). John Cobby did not know their identities until last year

Anita Cobby (right) was 26 when she was abducted by five men, including John Travers (left) while walking home from Blacktown train station in Sydney's west on the night of February 2, 1986. Mark Morri writes: 'Disturbingly, during the three hours and 15 minutes in which Travers was interrogated, he never once showed any emotion or remorse about what he had done.'

The beauty pageant winner and nurse photographed in Martin Place shortly before she was murdered. Anita Cobby's death shocked even the most hardened police assigned to her case

The author revealed to Daily Mail Australia how Cobby changed his name and, even now, has relocated to Indonesia.

'I was so paranoid people would recognise me or blame me that I would shave my head, dye it  anything to try and hide,' Mr Cobby said.

'This is not the beginning of a John Cobby movement,' added Mark Morri.

'He is now overseas and doesnt want to be around, he told me "when I come back you wont recognise me because I will shave my head".'

The prospect that any of her killers being released 'horrifies him'.

'It's a conflict, he's spent all of his life helping sick people (as a male nurse), he's over in Indonesia giving away surfboards and clothes but) he'd quite happily kill them.'

Mr Cobby and Anita were married for four years but split just six weeks before she was killed.

The author is adamant the couple was going to be reunited.

'Gaynor (John's sister) and Anita were out at St George Leagues and a guy came up and tried to pick her up and she said "no, I am married".

'They [Anita and John] had slept together the week before.

'Gaynor very much wanted it to be a love story, not just a horrible murder, even though it seems so depressing, who has changed his name back (to Cobby) after 30 years.'

John Cobby's interview features in a new book Remembering Anita Cobby by Mark Morri, which is available on February 1.
A grandmother and breast cancer survivor was allegedly raped during a horrific home invasion attack that startled her as she slept.

Jan, 63, was asleep in her Victoria home last week when she heard unfamiliar male voices and decided to get out of bed, according to Seven News.

All of a sudden, Jan said she felt two hands on her shoulders and she was shoved backwards, hitting her head on the heavy wooden end of her bed.

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Jan (pictured), who did not want to be identified, was allegedly raped when men broke into her Victoria home last week and attacked her during a horrific home invasion

The men allegedly shoved Jan after she got out of bed to see what the commotion was and she hit her head on the foot of her bed (pictured) and was knocked unconscious

The fall knocked her unconscious and when she awake, the grandmother said she was in a lot of pain.

Then I realised Id been raped, Jan said.

The men stole money and hundreds of pills.

The men allegedly stole hundreds of pills and cash from Jan's home during the invasion

Jan said she has been a 'total wreck' since the alleged assault and fears that the men know who she is but she doesn't know what they look like

Jan said she has been a total wreck since the alleged assault and fears that the men know who she is like but she was not able to see them.

Police and Jan are asking the public to help identify the alleged attackers as DNA and fingerprint evidence is processed through a lab  which can take several weeks.

They might brag and that somebody might have a good conscious and tell the police, she said.

Daily Mail Australia reached out to Victoria police but they were unable to help.
STARKVILLE, Mississippi -- Mississippi State University's student association senators have voted to begin impeachment proceedings against their student body president after he publicly endorsed a candidate to be his successor.

The senators filed a charge of misconduct this week against SA President JoJo Dodd for using social media Monday to back SA Vice President Roxanne Raven for his own seat in next week's student body election, The Commercial Dispatch reported.

Raven "is the only candidate that I trust to speak on behalf of all students," Dodd wrote in the endorsement on his Twitter feed.

Student association bylaws prohibit executive officers from publicly supporting any candidate.

The association's judicial council previously mandated Dodd recant his statement, acknowledge the unconstitutionality of his action and apologize to MSU students.

"This is an effort to punish me for speaking my mind, but no fear of punishment will silence my efforts to make MSU a better place," Dodd said in a statement.

The senators will hold a hearing on the situation Tuesday.
But he didn't get to eat the cake after another gorilla snatched it

His party included included songs, presents and a cake made of his favorite foods

The Philadelphia Zoo has thrown a 31st birthday party for Motuba the gorilla that included songs, presents and a cake made of his favorite foods.

Motuba's actual birthday was Saturday, but the festivities were pushed to Thursday because of the weekend snowstorm.

Motuba was born at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. He came to Philadelphia in February 2014 from Omaha, Nebraska.

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How old are you now? Motuba, a Western lowland gorilla at the Philadelphia Zoo, surveys the treats the staff have put out for him to celebrate his 31st birthday on Thursday

What's inside? Motuba opens a present the staff put out for him to celebrate his 31st birthday party on Thursday. His actual birthday was January 23rd, but the celebration was postponed due to the blizzard

Birthday boy! The Philadelphia Zoo shared this snap of Motuba on Twitter Thursday. It wrote: 'It's not all #monkeybusiness ! Motuba celebrated his 31st #birthday today! Stop by all weekend to help him celebrate'

He didn't get to eat his own cake.

That's because one of his housemates snatched the cake and took it up to a perch, where she ate the whole thing herself.

The cake consisted of specially formulated chow, yogurt, raisins, vegetables and fruit.

The Philadelphia zoo says on its website: 'Gorillas may live as long as 50 years in zoos, with a more typical lifespan being around 34 years of age.

'The Philadelphia Zoo's Massa held the longevity record of 54 years at the time of his death in 1984.

'Wild gorillas can live 35 years or more.'

Oh, you shouldn't have! Motuba is seen opening a birthday present at his big bash

Greetings! A painted sign with the words 'Happy Birthday Motuba' was part of the celebration

Decorations: A paper chain is seen hanging at the Philadelphia Zoo

Western lowland gorillas are listed as critically endangered species, the zoo says.

It says online: 'Conservationists estimate that the total population has declined by more than half (perhaps 60%) over the last 20 to 25 years.

'Most areas, even protected reserves, have serious poaching problems and almost half of the protected habitat has been affected by Ebola virus.'

The Philadelphia Zoo shared a snap of Motuba on Twitter Thursday.
The Australian streaming platform will have exclusive access to its shows

Stan has upped the stakes in the battle with Netflix for dominance of the Australian streaming platform market after signing an exclusive deal with American cable giant Showtime.

The multi-year contract will see hugely popular American television series Twin Peaks, Billions and Halo appear on the screens of Australian users signed up to Stan.

Showtime is also home to other hit television series like Star Trek, Dexter, Californication, House of Lies and Ray Donovan - all of which will eventually make their way exclusively to Stan.

The deal is a considerable blow for Netflix, although analysts report that the service still holds the number one chunk of viewership in Australia by a significant amount, with Stan coming in at second.

A new deal between Stan and American cable giant Showtime will mean Australian subscribers can tune in to television series Billions as it airs overseas, a Wall Street drama starring Paul Giamatti (right)

Stan's partnership with Showtime will also mean exclusive access to the highly anticipated return of 1990 murder mystery series Twin Peaks, which will premiere in 2017

Netflix vs Stan: The battle for dominance of Australia's streaming platform market continues

Damian Lewis stars in Billions, one of the countless popular Showtime shows that will soon be exclusively available for Stan subscribers in Australia

'Showtime is one of the world's greatest creators of television programming and we are delighted to enter this long-term partnership, cementing our position as Australia's leading local SVOD service,' said Mike Sneesby, CEO of Stan, Mumbrella reported.

'The deal with Showtime rounds out an amazing first year for Stan, with more than 1.5 million Australians having used the service across almost 700,000 subscriptions since our launch.'

Australians signed on with Stan will be able to watch the first season of Billions as it is released in America.

The new series stars Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti and premiered on January 17, 2016. It looks into the lives of two high-flying Wall Street titans battling for power, trust and wealth.

The hotly anticipated sequel to David Lynch's 1990 murder mystery Twin Peaks is also set to launch on Showtime - and by association Stan - sometime in 2017, starring much of the original critically acclaimed cast.

Making a Murderer: Netflix still holds right to a vast selection of hit television series. This ten-part Netflix documentary examines the judicial treatment of Stephen Avery, who was wrongfully jailed for rape

Suits: Another American series that Netflix holds streaming rights to - a fascinating drama about

Netflix streamed Orange Is The New Black back in 2013. Four series have since been made about Piper Chapman, a PR executive sent to a minimum-security women's prison for crime she committed in her past

Halo, a best-selling first-person shooter game on Microsoft's Xbox console, told the epic sci-fi story of a military battle between humanity and an alliance of aliens known as the Covenant.

While talk of a Steven Spielberg-directed follow-up television series came and went in past years, Showtime have confirmed the show is still very much in development.

Netflix Australia still hold control of a number of widely loved and critically acclaimed television series, including Suits, Orange is the New Black and Making a Murderer.

Showtime and parent company CBS made a similar deal in the European market earlier this year with network Sky.

'The growth of SVOD services internationally has created a huge demand for premium content globally. Showtime's prestigious brand and growing portfolio of programming align perfectly with this marketplace,' said Armando Nunez, President & CEO of the CBS Global Distribution Group.

'We're excited to expand the international footprint of Showtime in a big way in Australia with Stan.'

Other popular television shows already available on Stan include Friends, Breaking Bad, Hannibal, Community, Transparent, South Park and Top Gear.

According to Mumbrella, Netflix has over a million subscribers in Australia compared to an estimated 350,000 with Stan and 250,000 with Presto.

Stan has all ten seasons of hit show Friends - a hilarious series about six friends living in the same apartment complex

Showtime is home to the Dexter franchise - which Stan has already been streaming. The fictional series is about a serial killer who also happens to be a blood-splatter expert with the Miami Police Department
Wooing: David Gauke told US firms that it was not up to politicians to decide what is a 'fair amount' of tax

A Treasury minister has flown round the world to woo global corporations with promises of cosy arrangements with the taxman, it emerged last night.

David Gauke, the third most senior figure in George Osborne's department, told US firms that it was not up to politicians to decide what is a 'fair amount' of tax.

Just days after Mr Gauke appeared in the Commons to defend the controversial Google tax deal, it has emerged he spent thousands of pounds of public money travelling across the globe to 'promote the UK tax system'.

The minister outlined how the international giants would be given VIP treatment by HM Revenue & Customs.

He pledged that if their firm was large enough, the taxman would provide 'relationship managers' to help them avoid 'expensive litigation' over tax disputes.

And he told them the amount of tax that international companies pay should not be dictated by 'what a group of politicians think is the 'fair amount'.'

Mr Gauke declared: 'The UK government believes in a low corporation rate. We believe in a simple system that taxes profits in the UK.

'And we believe in good working relationships between companies and tax officials.'

He warned that there would be no 'preferential special deals' for big businesses.

However, the arrangements for big business present a sharp contrast to the way in which HMRC deals with ordinary taxpayers  including small businesses.

Only last month the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee called HMRC's services 'worse than abysmal' after it was revealed the average person calling its helpline to discuss tax queries waited an 'appalling' 38 minutes to get through.

Google tax deal: Chancellor George Osborne has continued to claim he had presided over a 'major success'

Mr Gauke flew to an exclusive event in Los Angeles in April 3013 to say his government would welcome businesses 'with open arms' if they decide to come over here.

A report issued by the Treasury days later as a brochure for overseas businesses advertised the UK's 'flexible and competitive rules for taxing the profits of multinationals'.

Ministers are already facing controversy over the tax affairs of web giants Google and Facebook. Critics will ask why it was that large multinationals were offered such cosy deals with HMRC at a time when small businesses found it almost impossible to speak to an adviser.

Google stands accused of paying an effective tax rate of just 3 per cent after it reached an agreement with HMRC to pay back just 130million to cover a decade of back taxes.

Yesterday George Osborne continued to claim he had presided over a 'major success'. He told Sky News: 'When I became Chancellor Google paid no tax. Now Google is paying tax and I have introduced a new thing called a diverted profits tax to make sure they pay tax in the future.'

Mr Gauke  who once said paying tradesmen cash in hand is 'morally wrong'  flew to far flung corners of the world on three different trips between 2013 and 2015.

A closer look at the amount of UK tax major firms pay compared to their global revenues

Each trip cost more than Facebook paid in British corporation tax in just one year. The overseas jaunts emerged as the American social networking website underlined its corporate might by posting annual revenues of 12.4billion for 2015.

OSBORNE INSISTS GOOGLE'S TAX DEAL IS A REAL SUCCESS George Osborne insisted yesterday the Google tax deal was a 'major success'  but admitted ministers need to do more to calm public anger about the activities of major corporations. The Chancellor faced a deluge of criticism this week after boasting that a deal allowing the internet giant to pay 130 million to cover a decade of back taxes represented a 'victory'. Earlier in the week, Downing Street refused to back his verdict that the agreement was a 'major success'. And on Wednesday, the business minister Anna Soubry said it would be 'silly' to suggest the deal had hit Google hard. But the Chancellor contrasted the settlement with Labour's failure to extract meaningful sums from Google and other firms: 'When I became Chancellor Google paid no tax. 'Now Google is paying tax and I have introduced a diverted profits tax to make sure they pay tax in the future. I regard that as a major success.' The EU has declared it will stamp out so-called 'sweetheart' tax deals. Economics Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici announced a series of measures, saying: 'We are today bringing a clear and concrete response to tax evasion.' Advertisement

But the latest filings show the company paid just 4,327 in UK corporation tax the previous year. The figures will fuel anger over the tax arrangements of big multinational technology firms such as Facebook, Apple and Google, as well as Amazon, which met Mr Gauke to discuss tax as recently as September 2015.

In April 2013, the Treasury minister flew to Los Angeles and San Francisco, 'to engage with American companies about the UK tax system'.

The trip, which cost 5,736, took him to the heart of operations of both Google and Facebook.

On April 10 he was the guest of honour at a breakfast meeting of the British American Business Council in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. It is not known which firms attended.

Mr Gauke told delegates: 'We are not a jurisdiction that offers 'preferential special deals'. We are very competitive but it is on the basis of all taxpayers being equal under the law.

'It is also important, however, that our tax administrators understand major taxpayers. So, for example, the largest 2,000 corporations in the UK have their own dedicated relationship managers at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

'These relationship managers support those organisations and help to ensure that their arrangements are compliant with UK law.

'It's in everyone's interests to have a strong working relationship that will ensure revenues are paid fully and that any disputes or queries can be played out quickly without expensive litigation.'

The minister assured bosses thinking about opening operations in Britain that they need not to be worried about being hauled in front of Commons select committees.

He said they were much less powerful than their US counterparts and merely 'write reports on issues that are topical and of public interest'.

'There is a debate in the UK  as elsewhere  about how and where multinationals pay tax,' he said.

'The UK is not a tax haven; tax liability is determined by what the law says and not on the basis of specific deals. But nor, for that matter, by what a group of politicians think is the 'fair amount'.'

Mr Gauke also flew to San Francisco  as well as Washington DC and Seattle  last September 'to promote foreign investment in the UK', at a cost of 7,000.

The minister carried out a range of other trips to 'promote the UK tax system', including one to Singapore and Japan, costing 5,481.

A Treasury source said: 'This is a ridiculous and deliberate distortion of a speech David Gauke gave in 2013. He was very clearly telling US businesses that if they wanted to come to Britain, they had to play by the rules.

'As he made clear then, we have put in place tax laws that are competitive but treat all taxpayers equally  and he specifically warned that multinationals could expect no special deals.'

Today a spokesman for Mr Gauke said: 'This is an absurd attempt to turn on its head everything he said in 2013. He could not have been clearer that Britain offers no special deals or cosy arrangements when it comes to tax.

'As he warned those attending the speech, the UK does not tolerate artificial profit shifting. He said our new rules 'modernise the UK tax system for business while protecting the country from the artificial diversion of UK profits'.

The UK government believes in a low corporation rate. We believe in a simple system that taxes profits in the UK David Gauke, Treasury minister

'He made clear that 'there is a debate in the UK  as elsewhere - about how and where multinationals pay tax', adding: 'The UK is not a tax haven; tax liability is determined by what the law says and not on the basis of specific deals. But nor, for the matter, by what a group of politicians thinks is the 'fair amount'.'

'As is obvious, his point was that we have a clear set of rules and politicians cannot arbitrarily choose an amount of tax that individual companies should pay, not a suggestion that politicians cannot set the overall rate of corporation tax. Of course they can, and to suggest he was saying otherwise is ridiculous.

'He went on: 'I want to be clear what, as a Government, our expectations are of businesses. We expect businesses to pay tax in accordance with the letter of the law. But we do not expect businesses to pay no or very little tax altogether. We are also determined to deal with aggressive, artificial avoidance behaviour.' This could not have been clearer.

'You allege that he "promised cosy tax deals". In fact he said: "I have already touched on tax administration. As I mentioned, we are not a jurisdiction that offers "preferential special deals". We are very competitive but it is on the basis of all taxpayers being equal under the law. I believe that also gives us a stronger reputation for respectability than some of our competitors.'

'You also focus on his point that the 2,000 largest corporations in the UK have dedicated relationship managers at HMRC.

'As he made absolutely clear, this is to ensure compliance with tax law. He said: "These relationship managers support those organisations and help to ensure that their arrangements are compliant with UK law, and that they are paying the correct amount of tax".
Controversial Auburn Council deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has been suspended from office for four months for failing to disclose his financial interests.

The Civil and Administrative Tribunal handed down the decision on Friday morning after a report found the property developer had failed to disclose a pecuniary interest on three occasions.

The tribunal said the breaches, which related to a property owned by Mr Mehajer's company at 3 Mary Street, Auburn were 'extremely serious'.

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Controversial Auburn Council deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has been suspended from public office for four months for failing to disclose his financial interests. He is pictured above with wife Aysha

The suspension is a serious blow to Mr Mehajer's political aspirations. He once said he wanted to be a 'superstar prime minister'

The property in question was located at 3 Mary Street, Auburn

Mr Mehajer had failed to disclose his financial interest prior to three council meetings about an amendment which would affect the development of the property.

A valuer said the rule change - which increased floor space ratios and height limits - would increase see the value of the property balloon by $1 million.

'The breaches were extremely serious as the pecuniary interest was high,' said principal member David Patten.

The controversial western Sydney figure was also criticised for showing 'serious lack of respect to investigators'.

When the Office of Local Government requested an interview about the matter, he replied that he had many commitments.

'I have no issues with attending any interview. However, please work with me to allocate a time that suits my busy schedule,' he wrote in an email dated July 24, 2015.

Glitzy wedding: With helicopters and Ferraris en masse, Mr Mehajer's gaudy wedding to wife Aysha brought him to public attention last year

Mr Mehajer was fined $220 by Auburn Council for the traffic problems his wedding caused

The tribunal heard there is no evidence he replied to further queries from investigators until legal proceedings began.

Mr Patten found Mr Mehajer did not intentionally violate the Local Government Act but: 'Ignorance is no excuse'.

The colourful mayor first rocketed to fame last year after his lavish wedding to partner Aysha seriously disrupted local traffic and drew widespread media attention.

In a statement, Auburn City Council said: 'This suspension will not affect the ongoing business of Council or service delivery to the public.'

Daily Mail Australia approached Mr Mehajer for comment but he failed to respond.
A woman is in search of the man that 'saved her life' after he spotted a dangerous cancerous mole on her back while in the queue at a hardware store.

Christine Burnie, 47, thought the man had been 'hitting on her' when he noticed a black mole that he was 'concerned' about on her back, the New Zealand Herald reports.

The West Auckland resident was 'excited to be alive' when she found out that the mole, which had been invasive, had not spread after she had it checked out and removed later that week.

New Zealand woman, Christine Bernie, 47, is in search of the man that 'saved her life' after he spotted a dangerous mole on her back while in the queue at Mitre 10 in West Auckland

Mrs Burnie was in Mitre 10 Lincoln Road in Henderson just before Christmas when a man behind her pointed out the mole.

'He said to me "Excuse me love, you know you have a black mole on your back you should really be concerned about",' Mrs Burnie said.

'At first I thought he was trying to hit on me. I thought, "That's a nice line".

'But then he told me his niece passed away at the age of 25 and I realised he was very genuine and caring.'

Mrs Bernie made an appointment to see her doctor and discovered the mole had been an invasive malignant melanoma and needed to be removed.

Five centimetres of skin was removed from her back and Mrs Bernie was 'overwhelmed' to find out that the tests had come back clear and 'it hadn't spread.

The 47-year-old West Auckland resident was relieved when she found out that the mole  which had been invasive, had not spread after she had it checked out and 5cm of skin was removed from her back (pictured)

Pictures show a huge scar down Mrs Bernie's back, which she was glad was the only negative outcome of finding the mole.

Mrs Bernie believes that if it had been another six months the outcome could have been different and said 'I can't die.'

'I'm far too young and I've got a teenager an only child. I can't,' she said.

After hearing the good news Mrs Bernie set out to find the man that had 'saved her life' and she posted a message to social media site Neighbourly, hoping to find him and thank him in person.

Mrs Bernie believes that if it had been another six months the outcome of the mole (stock) could have been different and said 'I can't die ... i'm too young too die'

Mrs Burnie thought the man had been 'hitting on her' when he noticed a black mole that he was 'concerned' about on her back in the queue at Mitre 10 (stock) Lincoln Road in Henderson just before Christmas

She wrote: 'Whoever you are that approached me - I am a mum with a young teenage boy. THANK YOU for saving my life. I am truly appreciative of your advice. THANK YOU THANK YOU SIR whoever you are.'

Mrs Bernie never expected the post to get so much attention and said that it was just a 'personal thing' that she sought out to do.

'I just wanted to thank him for saving my life,' Mrs Bernie said.

In the past Mrs Bernie has had two non-cancerous moles removed from her back but had never been worried of developing a melanoma.
The most powerful woman in British television has been forced to quit her husband's company over an 'astonishing' conflict of interests.

Charlotte Moore, the 'superwoman' in charge of the BBC's TV content, has spent the past nine years as company secretary of Perry Images, a TV business owned by her husband Johann Perry  a cameraman who has regularly been hired by the BBC.

During that time, Miss Moore has scaled the ranks of the Corporation and is now in charge of a budget of more than 1billion.

1billion budget: Charlotte Moore oversees BBC's TV content, but is also company secretary of Perry Images

Her husband's firm has profited handsomely from the broadcaster, making dozens of shows for the BBC  including some that Miss Moore herself commissioned.

But, in a move that will anger licence fee payers, she did not declare her link to Perry Images in the BBC's public register of interests.

The broadcaster said yesterday that Miss Moore was not obliged to declare her interest in the company because she is neither a director nor a shareholder.

It claimed she told bosses about her husband's job when she joined the BBC, but it did not make the information public for 'data protection' reasons.

Yesterday Miss Moore resigned from the position when the Daily Mail asked about the conflict.

Meanwhile, Perry Images' shareholder funds have soared, rising 50 per cent in the past year alone, as the cameraman was hired for some of the BBC's biggest shows.

Mr Perry worked with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on the BBC1 nature show Big Blue Live, and Hugh's War on Waste. The celebrity chef was lured from Channel 4 by Miss Moore.

Mr Perry's website also boasts of his work with Stephen Fry, Dara O'Briain and Ed Byrne.

He was also recruited to film two episodes of Imagine, the arts series fronted by Alan Yentob, who was one of the BBC's most powerful figures at the time, as its 330,000-a-year creative director.

BBC employed: Charlotte Moore, the 'superwoman' in charge of the BBC's TV content, has spent the past nine years as company secretary of Perry Images, a TV business owned by her husband Johann Perry

Yesterday, MPs called for a BBC Trust investigation into the arrangement.

Tory Andrew Bridgen said: 'Nowhere else would you be able to spend so much money without a transparent tendering process. The BBC has authority without accountability.

'The BBC Trust should be looking into this but that never happens in BBC world. There seems to be endemic nepotism.'

There is no suggestion that Miss Moore deliberately channelled money towards her husband's firm, or that she commissioned it directly. But television industry figures said Johann Perry's links to Miss Moore will have 'undoubtedly' boosted his career.

And they questioned why Miss Moore and the BBC did not make the apparent conflict clearer.

The BBC Trust should be looking into this but that never happens in BBC world. There seems to be endemic nepotism (Andrew Bridgen)

The broadcaster's public register of interests  designed to stop BBC executives from using their positions of power to feather their own nests  says that she has personal interests to declare, with a discreet letter 'Y' against the question. However, it does not make any mention of Perry Images, even though the form asks for details of any 'external business interests or relationships with customers/suppliers/direct competitors of the BBC'.

A BBC spokesman said: 'Charlotte Moore completed the required BBC's declaration of interest form in which she clearly stated the nature of her husband's job as a freelance cameraman. The BBC does not publish these details online for data protection reasons but her declaration has been known to the BBC since she joined in 2006.

'Her husband's work as a freelance cameraman doesn't represent a conflict of interest as Charlotte Moore is not involved in hiring crew as those decisions are made by the production team and director.'

However, Perry Images has benefited hugely from the BBC's patronage. According to official accounts, its assets more than tripled last year from 5,000 to 17,000. Meanwhile, shareholder funds have climbed 160 per cent since 2009, when Miss Moore first became a fully-fledged BBC commissioner,

Since Miss Moore joined the BBC's documentaries department in 2006, her rise has been meteoric. In 2013, she spent a few months as acting controller of daytime before being named the boss of BBC1 in June that year.

The BBC has not disclosed Miss Moore's new salary, but she earned 268,800-a-year as BBC1 boss.
Chinas most notorious method of torture is actually no more than a comfy chair, officials have assured the UN.

The tiger chair used by police for interrogations is designed not to inflict pain but to ensure that prisoners do not hurt themselves, according to Beijing authorities.

The health and safety explanation  which carries echoes of the Monty Python comedy sketch in which the Spanish Inquisition threatens an old lady with the comfy chair  was given to a hearing of the UN committee against torture in Geneva.

Comfortable: Chinese officials have assured the UN that the country's most notorious method of torture is actually no more than a comfy chair. The 'tiger chair' (pictured) is used by Chinese police for interrogations

Evidence denying Chinas use of torture was given to the committee in Geneva by Beijing Public Security Ministry official Li Wensheng.

The Chinese government prohibits torture and prosecutes any personnel or state organs for torture activities. There are plenty of cases involving prosecution of torture offenders, Mr Li said, although he did not supply figures.

We use the interrogation chair to guarantee the safety of the detainee, to prevent the detainee from escaping, from self-harm or attacking other people, Mr Li added.

The chair is sometimes packaged with soft padding to increase a sense of comfort, a sense of safety.

The description contrasts with a report by the Human Rights Watch organisation, which said: 'Former detainees said they were strapped in this metal chair for hours and even days, deprived of sleep, and immobilised until their legs and buttocks were swollen.

Beijing insists the chair is designed not to inflict pain but to ensure that prisoners do not hurt themselves, a health and safety explanation which carries echoes of the Monty Python comedy sketch in which the Spanish Inquisition threatens an old lady with the comfy chair (pictured)

Former detainee Lei Xinmu said: The tiger chair is an iron chair, its iron buckles fastened around your hands and feet.

'I sat on the tiger chair, and had two spotlights shining on top of my head. They took turns talking to me and they did not let me sleep, I could not stand it. I was buckled in the chair for nine days and nights.
Triple killer Levi Bellfield has converted to Islam in prison - a move which grants him better meals, more time out of his cell and an excuse to withdraw from work and classes.

Calling himself Yusuf Rahim, the warped murderer is now gorging on much sought-after vegetarian curries and is allowed to avoid his jail duties to attend prayer meetings instead.

Prison bosses have seen a surge in Muslim inmates in recent years, with one in five of those serving sentences in Britain's maximum security jails now following Islam.

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Triple killer Levi Bellfield (pictured) has converted to Islam in prison - a move which grants him better meals, more time out of his cell and an excuse to withdraw from work and classes

Calling himself Yusuf Rahim, the warped murderer is now gorging on much sought-after vegetarian curries and is allowed to avoid his jail duties at HMP Wakefield (pictured) to attend prayer meetings instead

The Officers' Association union previously put that down to thousands of lags becoming so-called 'convenience Muslims' - converting to the religion to deliberately play the system.

By doing so, dangerous prisoners have also found it easier to form gangs, leading to heightened tensions with guards and the fuelling of extremism.

News of Bellfield's conversion comes as his sister urges police to investigate the disappearance of two woman more than 15 years ago.

Ann-Marie Bellfield is convinced her 'monster' brother is responsible for Elizabeth Chau, 19, and US-born computer graduate Lola Shenkoya, 27, both going missing.

Their whereabouts remains a mystery, but the 67-year-old is adamant her triple murderer sibling - serving two life sentences for the murders of three women, who this week finally admitted killing Milly Dowler in 2002 - is behind their disappearance.

She said: 'Them two girls just disappeared off of the street. At the time, Levi had a clamping business in West Ealing, which was in the area, and I do believe he is somehow linked to those cases.

Ms Bellfield added: 'Levi is manipulative, psychotic, cruel and unfeeling. I am certain he is behind more horrific crimes.'

Bellfield is again at the centre of a police inquiry after he apparently admitted to a string of murders and rapes in jail cell confessions.

Ann-Marie Bellfield - the killer's sister - is urging police to investigate the missing person cases of student Elizabeth Chau (left), 19, and US-born computer graduate Lola Shenkoya (right), 27. Both vanished from London streets more than 15 years ago, with their whereabouts still a mystery

Nine forces are examining the alleged admissions that would significantly widen the killer's known reign of terror.

The 47-year-old has suggested he is responsible for up to 25 unsolved crimes, including the murders of five other victims.

Scotland Yard, which is co-ordinating the investigation, last night refused to comment on which cases are being reviewed, say his claims are still being assessed.

At the time of his conviction for Milly's murder in June 2011, detectives said they believed Bellfield may have been responsible for 20 unsolved attacks on women. And it has been long suspected that his appalling crimes may have begun in 1980 when he was just 12.

His school sweetheart, Patsy Morris, 14, was found strangled on Hounslow Heath and no-one has been convicted. Other potential crimes include the murders of Judith Silver in London in 1990 and Lin and Megan Russell in their Kent village in 1996.

Bellfield is also suspected of raping and sexually assaulting numerous women and girls over more than a decade, often after drugging them with spiked drinks.

However, senior detectives urged caution and said the pathological liar had a history of attempting to manipulate the authorities. They believe he may be trying to win privileges by appearing to co-operate.

One sceptical retired detective even suggested that the twisted paedophile could be getting a 'thrill' from stringing police along.

Ann-Marie Bellfield is urging Scotland Yard to reopen Elizabeth Chau and Lola Shenkoya's cases.

Chau, 19, was caught on CCTV near Ealing police station, West London, as she walked home from Thames Valley University in April 1999. She was never seen again.

In January the following year, Shenkoya, 27, was spotted getting off a bus at Burger King near Ealing Broadway station.

The 47-year-old is serving two whole life terms for the murder of Milly Dowler and two other young women

She also vanished.

Speaking to The Mirror, Ms Bellfield, 67, said her brother may have followed his victims while running a car clamping business in the area.

She said: 'He rang me when he was on remand for the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange. He said the police were trying to pin the other two cases on him.

'He was jumpy and said, "They're trying to do me for them missing girls in Ealing but I never had anything to do with it."

'It sends a shiver down my spine whenever I think about the awful things he has done. I hope he rots in hell.'

The 'confessions' came to light as Surrey Police interviewed Bellfield at Wakefield Prison over fears an accomplice assisted him in the abduction of Milly in 2002. Although they found no evidence to support this, the serial killer stunned investigators by admitting to her abduction, rape and murder for the first time.

It is understood he went on to suggest he was involved in other crimes and even implicated several other men.

The forces reviewing violent attacks on women and young girls are thought to include Greater Manchester, Avon and Somerset, Sussex and Lancashire.

Although the majority of Bellfield's crimes took place in West and South West London, the former doorman and wheel-clamper travelled widely.

Det Chief Insp Colin Sutton, who brought Bellfield to justice in 2008 over the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange, said police had evidence he abducted and raped five young girls.

He said he was surprised that Bellfield would admit to anything while his mother Jean, to whom he is close, is alive. He added: 'There is always an angle with Levi, always something he is trying to manipulate.

'I don't know whether he is thinking down the line if there is a challenge to the whole life tariff, whether he might be able to apply for parole. I think he could be that calculating.
Quitting the EU could be good for Britains economy, according to a leading bank.

Barclays said the worst effect of Brexit would be felt by Europe, rather than the UK which could benefit.

Its verdict came as EU chiefs are today set to offer David Cameron an emergency brake on benefits for migrants during talks in Brussels.

Barclays Bank said quitting the EU could benefit the British economy as David Cameron, pictured, is set to be offered an emergency brake on benefits for migrants

The report by Barclays experts added that Britain could become a safe haven from a disintegrating Europe, giving investors shelter from problems with the euro.

If politics in the EU turned for the worse, the UK may be seen as a safe haven from those risks, it said. But the bank also warned that if the referendum favours exit, it could lead to the collapse of the EU itself.

Analyst Philippe Gudin said: The referendum is generally seen as a UK issue when it is better seen as a European issue.

He warned that the political and institutional aftershocks of a leave vote were far greater than the economic fears.

Mr Gudin added that if Britain voted to quit, it would encourage other EU member states to think about leaving amid the migration crisis.

But Barclays also said a vote to go would open a Pandoras Box.

It warned that the financial markets have failed to grasp the sheer breadth of the poll, calling it one of the most significant global risks of the year.

The banks verdict, reported in the Daily Telegraph, follows a warning by Deutsche Banks chief economist on Brexit.

David Folkerts-Landau said: The implications will be truly devastating for Europe. Continental Europe will be relegated to second-rank status.

It would lose London and the Anglo-Saxon connection. The checks and balances imparted by the UK will be gone.

Mr Cameron is set to hear the proposal for an emergency benefits brake from European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.

Brussels sources said Mr Juncker has refined the idea so handouts for new EU migrants could be halted if they are placing undue strain on the UK.

Under the change, the restriction could last for up to four years, the timespan demanded by Mr Cameron.

Arron Banks, co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, has dismissed Mr Cameron's migrant benefit plans

But, critically, any move to apply the brake would come from Mr Juncker and his fellow EU bureaucrats.

Last night the Prime Minister welcomed the intervention although previously he has described the idea as some arcane mechanism.

Critics have dismissed the plan. Steve Baker, co-chairman of Conservatives for Britain, said it was akin to asking for permission to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Arron Banks, co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, said: People dont want an emergency brake, they want control of the steering wheel so we can avoid the car crash up ahead.

Yesterday Downing Street revealed that Mr Cameron will hold talks there on Sunday with European Council president Donald Tusk.

Mr Tusk is expected to publish a concrete proposal for a new deal with Britain within days ahead of a crunch EU summit next month.

The Prime Minister will then go to Hamburg to speak at a banquet hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Britain faces calls to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia amid claims the kingdom is using it to bomb civilian targets in neighbouring Yemen.

A damning report by UN experts investigating the Saudi military campaign said air strikes had targeted weddings, schools, markets, refugee camps and food stores.

It found 119 alleged violations of international law - raising questions over UK arms exports and the shadowy role of British military advisers in Saudi Arabia.

Tensions have been mounting in Yemen since a 'Saudi air strike' destroyed the Iranian embassy, pictured

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn yesterday said there was a clear risk that British arms had been used in the commission of a serious violation of international law and called for an inquiry.

Mr Benn told the Commons that Yemen was in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe with 7,000 dead, 2.5million people displaced and millions more left without food.

He said: Given the detail of the UN panels report and the extreme seriousness of its findings, will the Government now suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia until that investigation concludes?

Saudi Arabia intervened 10 months ago in a civil war in which Yemens Houthi rebels have risen up against the government and taken over strategically important areas of the country.

The oil-rich kingdom is one of the biggest buyers of UK defence equipment, including 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets.

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade say UK arms sales reached almost 3billion in the first nine months of 2015  and 7billion since Mr Cameron took office.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir confirmed earlier this month that British military advisers are in control rooms assisting the Saudis.

The Ministry of Defence insist the advisers are not directly choosing the targets but working in a training role.

But the war is further complicated by the presence of an Isis affiliate in the country, which is fighting both sides, and Al-Qaeda in Yemen, who have taken over the countrys eastern coast.

The UN panels 51 page report  which has been sent to the Security Council - found widespread and systematic attacks on civilians targets in violation of international humanitarian law.

Asked about the reports findings this week at Prime Ministers Questions, David Cameron claimed Britain has the strictest rules for arms exports of almost any country in the world and insisted that we are not directly involved in the Saudi-led coalitions operations and British personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes.

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn said there was a 'clear risk' British arms had been used to 'violate international law' and called for an inquiry

Mr Cameron added: We are backing the legitimate government of the Yemen, not least because terrorist attacks planned in the Yemen would have a direct effect on people in our country.

The kingdom is a key intelligence ally and Mr Cameron has stressed that Saudi intelligence has helped our security services foil terrorist attacks.

But relations with Britain have been strained by the cancellation of a major prison contract and British concerns over the mass execution of 47 people on terror charges.

Middle East minister Tobias Ellwood told MPs yesterday that he took the leaked report extremely seriously and said he would raise the findings with Saudi ministers when they are in London next week for a Syria conference.

But he pointed out that Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, are very media savvy and using their own artillery to target individual areas where the people are not loyal to them, to give the impression that there have been air attacks.
In the wild, orcas live in family groups and swim dozens of miles a day, diving and feeding. An aquarium or marine park cannot provide even a faint approximation of what are normal living circumstances for these animals. Photo by Alastair Balderstone

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Today, after a two-decade wait, we celebrate the release of a proposed federal rule from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to improve standards for the handling, care, and housing of captive marine mammals, mainly at aquariums and marine parks. It is an important animal welfare step, at a time when the nation is questioning more than ever if cetaceans should be put on display at all in captive environments at for-profit ventures.

Since the documentary Blackfish came out in 2013, the public has gained a new understanding of the consequences of long-term confinement of captive orcas, as well as the original actions that led to their captivity. Americans today no longer want business as usual and are seeking better conditions for animals, no more breeding of orcas and other marine mammals in captivity, and no wild capture of any cetaceans. In October last year, the California Coastal Commission approved SeaWorlds plan to expand its San Diego orca pools on the condition that SeaWorld doesnt breed any more orcas at its facility and doesnt transfer or import any orcas in and out of the facility. In November, SeaWorld  as a sign of its recognition that the culture has moved decidedly in an animal protection direction  announced that its San Diego facility will be phasing out the stunt-filled, theatrical orca shows for which the company is known.

In one specific provision within the rule released today, the USDA will resume its oversight of programs, like swim-with-the-dolphins, in which humans swim with captive dolphins. Interactive programs like these have carried on with no federal oversight for over 15 years since the USDA suspended its enforcement efforts in 1999. We applaud this step because these interactive programs present significant risk to the health and wellbeing of the animals as well as to humans.

I want to thank our allies on Capitol Hill who worked diligently to raise awareness about captive marine mammal issues and to advocate for new standards. Reps. Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), along with 38 other lawmakers, sent a letter in May 2014, urging USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to release these updated standards on marine mammals. This year, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) offered an amendment directing the USDA to issue updated standards for captive marine mammals. In July, Senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Reps Huffman (D-CA) and Schiff (D-CA) called on the Obama Administration to act on this rule and finish it up before the Presidents second term ends.

Reps Schiff and Huffman also introduced the Orca Responsibility and Care Advancement (ORCA) Act on November 16th. This act would phase out keeping orcas in captivity by prohibiting the breeding, wild capture, and import/export of orcas for public display purposes.

In the wild, orcas live in family groups and swim dozens of miles a day, diving and feeding. Dolphins roam widely as they hunt for food and play freely in a rich ocean environment. A zoo or aquarium or marine park cannot provide even a faint approximation of what are normal living circumstances for these animals, and can lead to abnormal behaviors, stress-related illnesses, and shorter lifespans.

Todays move by the USDA is a reason to celebrate. Please join us in urging the agency to finalize this rule. Its been a long wait, and these animals deserve a better living environment.
Nearly 100,000 foreign students a year from outside Europe are not returning home after completing their courses, a report has revealed.

The scale of abuse of the system by those desperate to stay in the UK after finishing their education was highlighted by the Office for National Statistics.

In the year to June some 131,000 people from outside Europe received visas to study in the UK, but only 38,000 overseas students left, a difference of 93,000.

Home Secretary Theresa May set out the scale of the problem in her speech to the Conservative Party conference last October

The massive gap between those coming to Britain and the number departing amounts to almost 28 per cent of the record net migration of 336,000 in the last year. EU students do not need visas.

Some non-EU graduates will take legitimate jobs here, be given permission to settle down with a partner or undertake further studies.

But the ONS said: Some of those who say they come to study do not actually leave the UK at the end of their courses. They overstay their visa and remain in the UK illegally.

Past estimates have suggested around one-third  which would equate to around 30,000 students annually  remain here unlawfully and work in the black economy.

Alp Mehmet, of campaign group MigrationWatch, said: Students are a source of significant migration. But universities refuse to acknowledge or show any willingness to make sure those who have been to their institutions leave after completing their studies or work placements.

'Tens of thousands disappear into the black economy. Many universities simply see overseas students as a cash cow and wash their hands of them at the end of their courses. This is unacceptable.

Home Office minister Lord Bates yesterday said the number of foreign students overstaying visas was a problem. But he told the House of Lords: There is absolutely no limit on bona fide students coming to study at bona fide universities in the UK.

Where there is a problem is where people overstay their visas. It is about 90,000 a year. We need to understand that better. Changing the way we actually calculate the figures will not make a difference.

Nearly 100,000 foreign students a year from outside Europe are not returning home after completing their courses (stock image)

Since 2010, the Government has closed more than 900 bogus colleges which were accused of selling a back door to the UK.

Britain is the second most popular destination for overseas students after the U.S.

Home Secretary Theresa May set out the scale of the problem in her speech to the Conservative Party conference last October.

She said that Britain welcomed the brightest students from around the world.

But she added: Too many are not returning home as soon as their visas run out. I dont care what the university lobbyists say. The rules must be enforced. Students, yes. Over-stayers, no.

Mrs May has clashed with some Cabinet colleagues, including Chancellor George Osborne, over her insistence that non-EU students should not be stripped out of the migration statistics.

Even though this would help meet the Governments pledge to cut net migration to the tens of thousands, she believes it would be duping the public by artificially deflating the total number of migrants arriving in Britain.

A spokesman for Universities UK, which represents 132 vice-chancellors and principals, said: Research by the Home Office indicated that only 2 per cent of students failed to comply with their visa requirements.

Work is under way to improve the official data on people exiting the UK, including international students. This will give us a greater understanding, in future, of the flows in and out of the UK.

The spokesman added: 'The International Passenger Survey (IPS) was never intended to be an accurate measure of migration flows (it was only intended as an indicator) and continues to be based on a small sample.
Donald Trump is stubbornly standing by his claim that he doesn't need Fox to win Iowa.

Instead, he is flying in his own crack team to seal a victory in the crucial state: his family.

On Thursday night, Don Trump Jr posted an idyllic photograph of the sun setting over the New York skyline as he jets to join his father at the veteran fundraiser in Des Moines.

On Thursday night, Don Trump Jr posted an idyllic photograph of the sun setting over the New York skyline as he jets to join his father at the veteran fundraiser in Des Moines

Solid support: Donald Trump Jr and his father speak at a news conference in Las Vegas earlier this month

He wrote: 'Off to Iowa! I'll be on the ground through Monday night.

'I'm looking forward to spending time with some of our #Iowa fans while I am there. #trump2016 #iowacaucus.'

It is not clear whether Trump's other children - Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany and Baron - will be there for the debate or the caucus.

Trump has a commanding lead over Ted Cruz in the next two states to vote after Iowa, new polls showed on Thursday.

The Republican frontrunner is ahead of Cruz by 19 points in New Hampshire and 16 points in South Carolina, the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll found.

He is also seven points ahead of Cruz in Iowa with just four days to go before the caucus  the first actual test for White house candidates.

Donald Trump made a trip to South Carolina this week (pictured), a move that showed that he believed he would sweep Iowa and New Hampshire and then the Palmetto State too

'Trump is positioned to run the house in these three states,' said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion in a statement on the polls' release. 'Will that happen? The answer depends on when or if anti-Trump sentiment will coalesce to interrupt his march to the nomination.'

In Iowa, Trump is again out in front with 32 per cent support from likely GOP caucus-goers.

Cruz stands at 25 per cent, while Rubio is at 18 per cent.

Ben Carson, who was leading in Iowa around Halloween before plummeting in the polls, now snags 8 per cent support.

Jeb Bush has 4 per cent.

All the other Republicans candidates are receiving just 2 per cent support from Iowans.

The new numbers are good news for Trump, who was trailing Cruz 24 per cent to 28 per cent in the same poll less than three weeks ago, according to NBC News.

Trump and Cruz are nearly tied when it comes to support from white Evangelical Christian voters in Iowa, with Trump receiving 31 per cent to 28 per cent.

Trump's endorsement this week from Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of the Virginia-based Liberty University, could help usher more evangelicals toward the billionaire, while Family Research Council head Tony Perkins' endorsement for Cruz could have the same pull on the opposite direction.

In New Hampshire, things are even more comfortable for Trump.

He now stands at 31 per cent support compared to 12 per cent for Cruz.

Rubio, along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are tied for third place, both garnering 11 per cent support, while Bush receives 8 per cent.

Chris Christie is getting 7 per cent in the Granite State.

No other Republican receives more than 5 per cent in New Hampshire.

Trump leads with a number of key constituencies in New Hampshire, including young voters with 37 per cent, Tea Party supporters with 34 per cent, independents with 26 per cent and evangelicals with 26 per cent.

However, his share of evangelicals is smaller in New Hampshire than it is in Iowa.

Moving on to South Carolina, the third state in which voters will pick their nominee, and Trump again has a double-digit lead.

He stands at 36 per cent, while Cruz receives 20 per cent.

In South Carolina, like Iowa, Rubio stands in third place alone, attracting 14 per cent of the vote.

Bush is at 9 per cent and Carson receives 8 per cent.

All the other candidates are receiving two per cent support or less.

And in the Palmetto State, Trump does the best with white evangelical Christians.
Chilling: Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone (pictured yesterday) revealed Islamic State are attempting to build a navy to wage war against the West

Cruise ships in the Mediterranean could be targeted in a terror attack by militant groups armed with Russian weapons, a top British commander warned yesterday.

Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, the UKs highest naval officer in Nato, said Islamic States spread into Libya had cast an uncomfortable shadow over the sea.

In stark remarks, he revealed the IS terror group are attempting to build a navy to wage war against the West.

He said there was a horrible opportunity that a very high quality weapons system would be used to hit ships crossing the sea, having extraordinary implications for the Western World.

Speaking onboard a Spanish Nato ship in London yesterday, Vice Adm Johnstone said that Nato must not get hustled out of eastern Mediterranean water space.

He said: Nato mustnt think the Mediterranean is just about immigration. It is the spread along the North African seaboard, it is the Daesh entry into Libya, it is the Daesh control of Sirte and other places, which has an uncomfortable shadow over maritime trade and maritime access.

Conflict and revolt across the region had made it more difficult for Nato countries, including Britain, to ascertain what threats are there, he said.

He added: At the same time, we are tracking the spreads of really quite capable Korean, Chinese and Russian hardware, into bodies such as Hamas and Hezbollah and other places.

Blast: Flames rise from an oil storage tank in Libya's Ras Lanouf region following an ISIS attack this month

While they were not targeted at Nato or commercial shipping at the moment, he said: There is a horrible opportunity in the future that a misdirected, untargeted round of a very high quality weapons system will just happen to target a cruise liner, or an oil platform, or a container ship.

He said: The eastern Mediterranean has started to become a competed space.

We are not in any war, we are not in any period of tension, but there are quite a lot of actors with a say there and we have just got to make sure we can access that, with all the freedom of navigation in international law we want. Does it worry me, yes, quietly it does worry me a bit.

He said he believed an attack on ships such as cruise liners would be an act which is almost a mistakeor it will be an act of random terrorism that will suddenly have extraordinary implications for the Western world.

Warning: Vice Adm Johnstone (centre, with Spanish Rear Admiral Jose Delgado, left, and Commander Ignacio Paz, right) said yesterday that Nato must not get hustled out of eastern Mediterranean water space

While there is not a threat to shipping from Islamic State currently, he said Nato had watched them grow and morph in such extraordinary ways, that he could not predict the future.

Does it worry me, yes, quietly it does worry me a bit Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone

We know they have had ambitions to go off shore, we know they would like to have a maritime arm, just as al Qaeda had a maritime arm, he said.

Last year it was revealed that IS militants were building a retreat zone in Libya to avoid international air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

As many as 3,000 jihadist fighters are believed to have travelled to the war-torn country to create a strategic hub for recruits unable to reach IS in its Syrian heartland.

Speaking about the Russian threat to Nato, Vice Adm Johnstone revealed how defence officials were looking to move submarines from the Gulf back to protect countries such as Britain.

Previous incident: In October 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked an Italian cruise liner in the Mediterranean and threatened to blow it up. The Achille Lauro (file picture) was on its way to the Israeli port of Ashdod

He said he was worried about Russian submarines coming close to Britains waters. He said there was more activity from Russian submarines than Nato has seen since the days of the Cold War.

DISNEYLAND SECURITY ALERT OVER GUNMAN A man with two handguns and a knife hidden in his baggage was arrested in Disneyland Paris yesterday. The 28-year-old, who was also carrying a guide to the Koran, sparked a terror alert when he set off a metal detector at the theme parks New York Hotel. Security guards found two semi-automatic pistols and 20 bullets inside his bag. The man, a French national, had booked a room at the hotel, and was with a woman who has since disappeared. Police later ruled out any terror connection. A source said: The man made it clear that he had the guns with him for personal protection. The inquiry is ongoing but it is not a terrorist inquiry. Yesterdays alert follows warnings from Islamist terrorist groups that Disneyland, which is 20 miles east of Paris and attracts more than 14million visitors a year, was among their targets. Security has been stepped up there since the attacks on Paris in November which left 130 dead. Advertisement

He said: Indeed we are seeing that level of activity but with a level of Russian capability that we havent seen before.

We were used to in the Cold War playing a game of cat and mouse but it is very different from the period of quiet submarine activity that perhaps weve seen in the past.

He said he was starting to see nations who in the past had prioritised to have submarines in the Gulf or eastern Mediterranean, now looking to reinvest that capability to protect British, French and American waters.

In October 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked an Italian cruise liner in the Mediterranean and threatened to blow it up.

The Achille Lauro was on its way to the Israeli port of Ashdod with more than 400 holidaymakers and crew onboard.

The four heavily armed gunmen demanded the release of 50 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel.

If their demands were not met, they threatened to blow up the ship and kill the 11 Americans on board. The next morning, they also threatened to kill the British passengers.

They ended up shooting an American-Jewish pensioner in a wheelchair and then threw him overboard.
A German tourist has tragically died and another remains in hospital with serious injuries following a head-on collision on an Australian outback highway.

The pair were travelling in a Ford Laser along the Arnhem Highway, 20 kilometres east of Humpty Doo in Northern Territory when their vehicle crashed head-on into a Toyota Landcruiser about 9pm on Thursday.

Police alleged the tourists had driven on the wrong side of the road when their sedan collided with an oncoming four-wheel-drive, ABC News reported.

A German tourist has died and another remains in hospital with serious injuries following a head-on collision

The pair were travelling along the Arnhem Highway, 20 kilometres east of Humpty Doo in Northern Territory

The male passenger died at the scene and the driver was rushed to the Royal Darwin Hospital with serious injuries where he remains in a critical condition.

Police are yet to confirm the identity of the deceased male.

The driver of the four-wheel-drive reportedly escaped with minor injuries.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, and the Major Crash Unit remains on the scene.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Northern Territory Police for further comment.
US Navy Cmdr. Michael Misiewicz has pleaded guilty to bribery charges after accepting theater tickets and prostitution services

A Navy commander accused of diverting ships to Asian ports for a Malaysian contractor offering prostitution services and other gifts pleaded guilty to bribery charges Thursday.

Michael Misiewicz is one of the highest ranking Naval officials to be charged in the massive scandal, which is centered on businessman Leonard Francis, nicknamed 'Fat Leonard' .

Francis has admitted to providing an exhaustive list of gifts in exchange for classified information that helped his company Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. overbill the Navy by at least $20 million.

He used the bribes to obtain information that helped him beat out the competition and get Navy captains to steer ships to Pacific ports where he overcharged the Navy, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say Francis asked captains to re-route ships to ports he owned or to small ports where they could impose fake port fees on the Navy.

Misiewicz pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery of a public official at a hearing in federal court in San Diego.

He accepted theater tickets, prostitution services and other items, according to the criminal complaint.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if sentenced to the maximum amount for both charges.

Misiewicz's defense lawyers said in a statement that he regrets his actions from 2011 to 2012.

They went on to say that they plan to show at his sentencing hearing this was an 'extreme departure from his otherwise distinguished and honorable 30 plus year career.'

Misiewicz made international headlines in 2010 after an emotional return as a US Naval commander to his native Cambodia, where he had been rescued as a child from the violence of the Khmer Rouge and adopted by an American woman.

His sentencing hearing is set for April 29. Francis is awaiting sentencing.

Lt. Commander Todd Malaki, who has pleaded guilty in the same case, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.

Last week Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel Layug was sentenced to 27 months in prison for providing classified military information to Francis in exchange for an iPad, hotels, and monthly cash payments.

Misiewicz is one of the highest ranking Naval officials to be charged in the massive scandal, which is centered on businessman Leonard Francis, nicknamed 'Fat Leonard' (pictured right)

Misiewicz made international headlines in 2010 after an emotional return to his native Cambodia, where he had been rescued as a child from the violence of the Khmer Rouge and adopted by an American woman

Layug told the court that he made a mistake and let his ego and greed lead him to betray his country.

'It's very shameful what I did,' Layug said.

US District Court Judge Janis Sammartino in San Diego agreed.

'You put the Navy at risk. You put your colleagues at risk. And you put our country at risk,' she said while handing down the sentence.

Layug faced up to five years behind bars. Prosecutors asked for the 27-month term, saying Layug was the least culpable in the investigation.

In his plea deal, Layug admitted to accepting a digital camera, iPad 3, and paid for hotel rooms in several Asian countries along with $1,000 in monthly payments from GDMA in exchange for providing the company classified ship schedules and prices from competitors.

Layug had a 'bucket list' of items he requested from GDMA ranging from a Blackberry phone to a Wii gaming unit, prosecutors said.

Last week Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel Layug was sentenced to 27 months in prison for providing classified military information to Francis in exchange for an iPad, hotels, and monthly cash payments.

In an email on March 9, 2012, Layug asked GDMA's vice president of global operations: 'What are the chances of getting the new iPad 3? Please let me know.'

'Layug essentially sold his honor for an iPad 3, and in doing so he put the US Navy at risk of embarrassment, exploitation, attack or worse,' US Attorney Laura Duffy said after the hearing.

Prosecutor Mark Pletcher indicated Thursday more arrests could still come.

Pletcher said that while Layug has expressed remorse for his actions, the court should not overlook the fact that the 27-year-old logistics specialist while stationed in Japan used his personal email address and was on the payroll for GDMA as part of the scheme.

'These things all show his prolonged and dedicated commitment to making this conspiracy work,' he said.
Donald Trump got into a Twitter fight with the Saudi Royal Family on Thursday.

Dragging out his spat with Fox News, the GOP front-runner retweeted an image of news anchor Megyn Kelly, Photoshopped into to a picture of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and his sister.

'Most people don't know that the co-owner of Fox News is Prince Al-Waleed of Saudi Arabia here with his sister and with host Mygan [sic] Kelly,' it read. 'In case you only watch Fox News and you missed it everywhere else.'

Within hours, the monarch hit back pointing out that the photo is a fake  and that Trump could have been in financial disaster if it hadn't been for him.

But during a brief interview on his plane in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump insisted the Saudi is the one who needs financial bailouts, and said he's never liked the man  before admitting the two have never met.

Dragging out his spat with Fox News on Thursday, the GOP frontrunner retweeted this meme of Megyn Kelly photoshopped next to a picture of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia

Within hours, the monarch hit back pointing out that the photo is a mock-up - and that Trump could have been in financial disaster if it hadn't been for him

'NEVER MET HIM': Donald Trump said aboard his private Boeing 757 in Des Moiens, Iowa, that he's never liked Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal  but then admitted the two men have never met

'Trump:You base your statements on photoshopped pics?I bailed you out twice;a 3rd time,maybe?,' Alwaleed, the 34th richest person in the world, tweeted at him on Thursday.

Indeed, in 1991, when Donald Trump was in debt, Alwaleed bought the real estate mogul's yacht Trump Princess - a former James Bond prop - for $281 million.

In 1995, the prince bought a majority stake in the Plaza Hotel as Trump was sinking into bankruptcy.

Aboard his Boeing 757, parked on the tarmac in Des Moines, DailyMail.com asked The Donald about Alwaleed's claim that he had rescued him financially.

'No, no,' Trump insisted. 'He didn't bail me out. Let me tell you  he needs bailing out right now, if you look at where he's going. He needs bailing out. He needs big bailouts.'

'Nope. Never been a fan of his. Never been a fan. Never liked him.'

Asked if he had ever met Alwaleed personally, the man on whom he had just heaped a helping of billionaire scorn, Trump paused for a moment.

'No. Never liked him. Never met him,' he said.

'Don't know him, just never liked him. Never liked his style.'

It is not the first time Trump and Alwaleed have exchanged blows online.

It is not the first time Trump and Alwaleed have exchanged blows online. This was in December

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is pictured in August 2011. He says he bailed Trump out twice by buying his distressed properties

In December, Alwaleed called Donald Trump a disgrace to the United States following his call for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and demanded the Republican front-runner withdraw from the U.S. presidential race.

Trump triggered an international uproar when he made his comments in response to last week's deadly shootings in California by two Muslims who authorities said were radicalized.

'You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America,' Prince Alwaleed, the chairman of Kingdom Holding, said on his Twitter account, addressing Trump and referring to the Republican Party.

'Withdraw from the U.S presidential race as you will never win,' the prince, who is worth $24.9 billion added.

Within hours, Trump - who started his career with support from his family - hit back on Twitter.

'Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy's money,' he said. 'Can't do it when I get elected.'

The latest spat with Alwaleed comes a day after retweeted another meme about Megyn Kelly, criticizing her for posing for GQ magazine.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump tweeted this message (above and below) on Thursday morning

Trump sent out a message on his Twitter page at 6.36am on Wednesday that shows Kelly's pictures for the men's magazine.

'And this is the bimbo that's asking presidential questions?', the tweet said, with two provocative poses of Kelly: 'Criticizes Trump for objectifying women ... Poses like this in GQ Magazine.'

Trump has cited his long-running feud with Kelly as his reason for skipping Thursday night's prime-time Republican debate on Fox, just four days before the critical Iowa caucuses.

Trump is locked in a close contest in Iowa with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, with the latest average of major polls showing Trump just 6.5 percentage points ahead, according to Real Clear Politics.

The Trump-Kelly feud has grown so intense to Trump that he plans to hold a competing event, benefiting veterans, in Des Moines at the same time as the debate.

On Wednesday, Trump criticized Kelly again in an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, arguing that she was biased against him.

The GOP race-leader has sent out numerous tweets criticizing Kelly ever since last August, when the reporter tried to pin him down on allegations of misogyny during the first Republican presidential debate.

Trump bristled at the debate, but really let fly online, shortly thereafter accusing her of menstruating during the debate - a comment he later said was misinterpreted.

The back-and-forth continued up until Wednesday, when Trump shut the door on appearing at the Fox-hosted debate, claiming that the network was biased against him.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, at left, is battling Trump for the GOP nomination in a close contest in Iowa

However, on Thursday Trump caught flak from his own Twitter followers for his post.

'I am mortified that you would retweet this,' wrote one follower. 'This is so wrong on multiple levels.'

Another follower wrote, 'And this is the man who wants to lead the USA?'

Some of Trump's other followers posted racy pictures for which his own wife Melania has posed, suggesting that the tycoon was a hypocrite.
Constituents of the MP who last night told Question Time that attacks on women like those seen in Cologne happen 'every week' in Birmingham have demanded she apologise for her 'sickening' comments.

Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, compared the organised assaults on women by gangs of migrants, to the atmosphere in Britain's second city on a night out.

She made the comments on the BBC's flagship politics programme on Thursday night after an audience member suggested the situation in Germany showed where 'mass immigration doesn't work'.

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Claim: Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, compared the organised assaults on women by gangs of migrants in Cologne, to the atmosphere in Britain's second city Birmingham on a night out

Comparison: Mrs Phillips said that a 'very similar situation to what happened in Cologne could be described on Broad Street in Birmingham every week where women are baited and heckled' (file picture from 2004)

Furious: The MP's constituents demanded she apologise for her 'sickening' comments - with some even saying she should resign

The man queried: 'Don't you think the women in Cologne, and the women who was unfortunately killed in Sweden don't you think they're scared as well?'

Mrs Phillips responded by saying: 'There is violence against women and girls that you are describing, a very similar situation to what happened in Cologne could be described on Broad Street in Birmingham every week where women are baited and heckled.'

'We have to attack what we perceive as being patriarchal culture coming into any culture that isn't patriarchal and making sure we tell people not to be like that.

'But we should be careful in this country before we rest on our laurels when two women are murdered every week.'

Her remarks prompted a furious response on Twitter from her constituents, with hundreds contacting her outraged at the shocking comparison and what it inferred about the people she is representing in Parliament.

Crime wave: German cities saw a wave of sex attacks and mob violence on New Year's Eve. In Cologne (above), more than 800 women claimed they were sexually assaulted or robbed by mobs of young men

Clubs: Broad Street is a popular nightspot in Birmingham and home to numerous bars, restaurants and clubs

Many are now calling for her to issue an apology to Birmingham and its people - with some even insisting she stand down.

John Williams tweeted the MP directly, saying: 'Are you going to apologise to the men of Brum?

'How can you liken the Cologne attacks on 820+ women to a Sat night on Broad St (sic)?'

Reaction: Birmingham-based engineer Simon Caswell tweeted: 'Shocking statement from Jess Phillips claiming the attacks in Cologne could be described on Broad St every week. Hurts as a Brummie'

Blasted: Her remarks prompted a furious response on Twitter from viewers of the BBC One show last night

Impact: Roy Swales commented that the MP's remarks could have a disastrous effect on local business

That view was echoed by Jayne Tuzzio, who tweeted: 'You have lost the plot. How dare you describe Birmingham that way?'

Steve Lilley posted: 'So, hordes of men batter and rape women on Broad St, Birmingham, every weekend according to Labour's Jess Phillips. Flabbergasted.'

Twitter user @Copo1966 describe the MP as 'a disgrace', demanding she 'resign now'.

Left wingers: Mrs Phillips, pictured with former Labour leader Ed Miliband in London last July, hit the headlines last year when she called in police after receiving a series of disgusting rape threats

And Birmingham-based engineer Simon Caswell tweeted: 'Shocking statement from Jess Phillips claiming the attacks in Cologne could be described on Broad St every week. Hurts as a Brummie.'

Broad Street is a popular nightspot in Birmingham city centre and home to numerous bars, restaurants and clubs.

Aid worker: Alexandra Mezher, 22, was killed at the child migrant centre where she worked in Sweden

Earlier in the programme, Mrs Phillips said Britain should take as many refugees as we can and accept 3,000 refugee children from Europe.

On New Year's Eve a number of German cities saw a wave of sex attacks and mob violence.

In Cologne, more than 800 women claimed they were sexually assaulted or robbed by mobs of young men, with the majority of suspects of North African origin.

There have also been complaints of assaults by migrants in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin.

This week it emerged migrants arriving in Germany are being given an instruction manual telling them not to grope women.

In the series of 14 cartoons intended to promote integration, migrants are also told to look women in the eyes rather than any other part of their body when talking to them.

One warns that women should be respected 'no matter what they are wearing'. A picture of a man touching a woman's bottom has a big cross through it.

Since the attacks, Germany has seen sales of pepper spray and gas-powered pistols in spiking. Shopkeepers reported scores of concerned women purchasing weapons for self-defence.

On Monday an aid worker Alexandra Mezher, 22, was knifed to death at the child migrant centre where she worked in Molndal, Sweden.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie delivered the line of the night as he promised Republicans that if nominated he would strong arm Hillary Clinton away from the White House.

'The days of the Clintons in public housing are over,' Christie bellowed.

He argued on the Fox News Channel debate stage that his background as a federal prosecutor would come in handy for prosecuting Clinton over her ongoing email scandal.

'I will be ready, I will take her on and when I take her on I guarantee to you one thing  she will never get withing 10 miles of the White House,' Christie said.

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Chris Christie had one heck of a zinger reserved for Hillary Clinton telling the audience: 'The days of the Clintons in public housing are over'

Marco Rubio also had strong words for Hillary Clinton suggesting that as president she would have to pardon herself over her ongoing email scandal and the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi

Christie was again asked about the Bridgegate scandal, which has tainted him politically since the story of lane closures on the George Washington Bridge broke.

The moderators asked Christie why GOP voters should trust that the scandal is literally water under the bridge, to which Christie pointed to several investigations that cleared his name and then segued to Clinton's ongoing scandals

Christie's forceful anti-Clinton assault came just minutes after Sen. Marco Rubio barked about the Democrats as well.

Rubio first had a laugh line ready for Bernie Sanders, who has virtually caught up with Clinton in Iowa and surged past her in New Hampshire, a neighboring state to his own Vermont.

'Bernie Sanders is a socialist,' Rubio said. 'I think Bernie Sanders is a good candidate for president ... of Sweden.'

'We don't want to Sweden,' he emphasized. 'We want to be the United States of America.'

Then it was Clinton's turn.

Rubio said the former secretary of state was 'disqualified' from being commander in chief because of her handling of the Benghazi terror attacks in 2012 and the email scandal.

Rand Paul explained that it was hard to view Hillary Clinton as a defender of women when a corporate CEO, had he engaged in behavior with an intern like Bill Clinton, would be publicly scorned

'In fact,' he said. 'One of her first acts as president may very well be to pardon herself.'

'Because Hillary Clinton stores classified information on her private server and Hillary Clinton lied to the families of those four brave Americans who lost their lives in Benghazi,' Rubio said.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was asked a direct question about the Clintons  how Bill Clinton's sexual shenanigans in the '90s should impact his wife's candidacy.

'You know, I've never really brought this up unless asked the question,' Paul shirked at first. 'But I have responded to the question.'

Paul said he didn't blame Hillary Clinton for her husband's affairs, including his relations with intern Monica Lewinsky in the White House, but suggested the former president be compared to other powerful American men.

'That if what Bill Clinton did, any CEO in our country did with an intern, with a 22-year-old, 21-year-old intern in their office they would be fired,' Paul suggested. 'They would never be hired again. Fired, never hired again and probably shunned in their community.'

'And the thing is, she can't be a champion of women's rights at the same time she's got this that is always lurking out there, this type of behavior,' Paul continued.

He also took on the dealings that the Clinton Foundation has made in parts of the world where women's right are nowhere near to equal.
A 12-year-old schoolgirl has been raped on the street by a pervert who was pretending to be a police officer who said he had to search her.

Detectives have arrested a 32-year-old suspect in connection with the attack after dark on Wednesday in Edmonton, North London, which saw the girl approached by a man riding a bike.

The individual told her that he was a policeman and that he had to search her because she fitted the description of a shoplifter who had just robbed a shop. He then pulled a knife before raping her.

Rape: Detectives have arrested a 32-year-old suspect in connection with the attack after dark on Wednesday on Sandhurst Road (above) in Edmonton, North London, which saw the girl approached by a man riding a bike

Details of the attack were revealed as the Metropolitan Police investigates a series of incidents where girls were approached by a man pretending to be an officer in nearby Hornsey last week.

And police are linking Wednesdays rape with an incident a short walk away an hour earlier when a cyclist, again claiming to be a police officer, approached a 12-year-old girl as she was walking along.

He said she fitted the description of someone he needed to arrest and she had to go with him. When she refused he grabbed her by the wrists, but she managed to free herself and ran off.

Detective Inspector Tracey Cormack said the force is appealing for anyone who may have witnessed the offences or think they may have been approached by the man in question to tell police.

She added: On Wednesday, at around 5.30pm, the teenager was walking along Sandhurst Road, when a man, who was riding a bike, approached her claiming to be a police officer.

He told her she fitted the description of a shoplifter and was going to search her. As he carried out this search he raped her and threatened her with a knife.

Connection: Police are linking the rape with an incident a short walk away on Shirley Grove (above) an hour earlier when a cyclist, again claiming to be a police officer, approached a girl as she was walking along

The inspector continued: Detectives are linking this attack with another incident in Shirley Grove, at around 4.30pm on Wednesday where a man on a bike approached a 12-year-old girl.

'The man claimed to be a police officer and told the girl she fitted the description of a female that he needed to arrest.

He told her she fitted the description of a shoplifter and was going to search her. As he carried out this search he raped her and threatened her with a knife Detective Inspector Tracey Cormack

He told her she needed to come with him to a van and when she refused he grabbed her by the wrists. He eventually let go and she managed to run off. A 32-year-old man was arrested today and is currently in custody at a North London police station.

Officer say the suspect was not wearing any police uniform. Last week a man pretending to be a policeman approached five different schoolgirls in just 24 hours in Hornsey.

Four girls, aged 11 to 14, were approached separately by the man as they walked to school on Monday. The suspect was described as black, of a medium build and with short black hair.
A man who was accused of sexually abusing children during a camping trip nearly four decades ago when he was known as television show host Mr Wonder was also banned from contact with children from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Frank John Selas III, or Frank Szeles as he was known in the San Diego area, was 'removed from all positions related to children' after failing to comply with the church's child protection policies, Eric Hawkins, a church spokesman, said on Thursday.

After his removal, a parent expressed 'a generalized concern' about the suspect's behavior toward a child and the church urged the parent to report it to authorities, Hawkins said.

The church spokesman said in an email that Selas belongs to a Mormon congregation in the San Diego area.

A man going by the name Frank Szeles (left) was arrested in San Diego this week, and authorities believe he is a former Louisiana children's television host wanted on molestation charges for more than 35 years (right). It was revealed on Thursday that he was also banned from contact with children from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The 76-year-old man claims he is not the wanted Frank John Selas IIII. A judge ordered all pictures of Szeles taken in court on Wednesday not to show his face until his identity is proven

But Hawkins didn't specify which one, indicate which positions he held or elaborate on the nature and time of the alleged incidents. He didn't immediately respond to questions seeking more detail.

Asked to comment, the suspect's attorney, Marc Carlos, said, 'Clearly whatever these allegations were, they were not serious enough to refer to the police, which is what they should have done if they were serious'.

Authorities say the man arrested Monday at his Bonita home is Frank John Selas, a 76-year-old fugitive who hosted the Mr Wonder children's show on KNOE-TV in north Louisiana in the 1970s and changed his name after moving to the San Diego area.

The suspect challenged authorities to prove he is the fugitive. On Wednesday, a San Diego judge ordered him to be held without bail and scheduled a hearing for February 11 to establish identity.

The man arrested by the US Marshals Service at his home goes by Frank Szeles and advertised swim lessons and other activities for young children.

Authorities say the former television host changed his name.

In the late 1970s, Selas hosted the Mr Wonder show on KNOE-TV in north Louisiana. In 1979, the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office fielded complaints from parents who accused Selas of abusing their children, following a Cub Scouts camping trip in the Kisatchie National Forest.

The Boy Scouts of America said on Wednesday that the suspect was Cubmaster of Pack 888 in Bonita, near San Diego, but he was 'removed from Scouting several years ago for non-compliance with our youth protection policies and procedures'.

Without elaborating, it said his removal followed a complaint from a parent who was not involved in the group and was unrelated to scouting.

Selas, then 39, allegedly then fled the country before investigators could arrest him. His car was found abandoned in Dallas, Texas and it's believed he traveled to Rio de Janeiro Brazil.

Eventually he returned to the United States in the early 1980s, where he was allegedly joined by his wife, and they moved around the country often, living in Chicago; South Royalton, Vermont; Sheffield, Massachusetts; his hometown of Darien, Connecticut and most recently San Diego where a neighbor says he has been living since 1999.

'He always had a lot of kids around him,' neighbor Haywood Gammon told ABC News.

He is charged with two counts of obscene behavior with a juvenile.

Authorities have not said whether Selas' wife, Maria Magdalena Aranda Selas Szeles, will face charges.

The family of the man arrested Monday appeared in court on Wednesday, but didn't speak with reporters. The man's attorney, Marc Carlos, read a statement from the family that pleaded for privacy.

'Despite the allegations, for 37 years, Frank Szeles has been a husband, father and grandfather and has always provided for his family,' the family said.

Selas hosted a children's television show in Louisiana in the 70s as 'Mr Wonder'. He was also a Cub Scout leader. He fled the country with his family in 1979 after a few Cub Scouts accused him of sexually abusing them on a camping trip

'He is well-loved, respected and supported by his family and friends and the community here in San Diego.'

Carlos said the developments were 'a shock to everyone'.

Szeles Enterprises advertised swim lessons, Cub Scouts and Saturday field trips for boys 5 to 11 years old in the San Diego area.

Neighbors said on Wednesday that parents often took their children to play in his backyard pool.

'He always had a lot of kids around him,' said Haywood Gammon, who lives next door and said the man had been living there with his wife at least since he arrived in 1999.

The Boy Scouts of America said Frank Szeles was Cubmaster of Pack 888 in Bonita but was 'removed from Scouting several years ago for non-compliance with our youth protection policies and procedures'.

Without elaborating, it said his removal followed a complaint from a parent who was not involved in the group and was unrelated to scouting.

Lt Tommy Carnline, a spokesman for the Rapides Parish sheriff's office, said investigators identified seven alleged victims.

Steve Jurman, supervisory deputy US marshal in San Diego, said there have been no reports of victims in the San Diego area, where authorities believe he has lived since the 1980s.
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A woman known for being one half of Sydney's answer to Bonnie and Clyde has been sentenced to nine and a half years behind bars after a horrific drug-fueled crime spree in 2013.

Amanda Ridden, 23, had only been out of jail for a few months before she and her boyfriend embarked on a crime spree which ended in an arrest at a suburban lawn bowls club.

Ms Ridden's September crime spree began when she and her boyfriend forced an elderly man to hand over his car keys.

Amanda Ridden, 23, has been sentenced to nine and a half years behind bars after the armed robbery of a cinema and hotel in September 2013

Ridden's boyfriend was also involved in the robbery- the crime spree earned them the reputation of Sydney's Bonnie and Clyde

According to Sydney District Court Judge Andrew Haesler how Ridden, her boyfriend and two other men marched into Roseville cinema armed with an axe and a shotgun and demanded employee Michael Sheppard open the tills.

'(Ridden's boyfriend) jumped over the candy bar at the same time the co-offender pointed a shotgun at Mr Sheppard and shouted, 'Do you want to die?' Judge Haesler said.

The woman and her co-offenders then headed to Revesby where in Sydney's south-west where they held up the Revesby Pacific Hotel, Ridden was armed with a walking stick at the time.

The couple, along with two other men, held up this cinema using a shotgun and axe

After taking money from the tills the party returned to the stolen vehicle, and set it on fire.

Ridden violently resisted arrest, they were forced to wrestle the young woman to the ground in order to hand cuff her, the struggle left the police officers bruised and swollen.

Judge Haesler said the woman 'simply did not care about others, or that she was going to jail'.

He continued by saying he believed the woman had beaten her drug habit during her time in jail which indicated to him she could turn her life around.

Ridden's parents leaving the court house after their daughter's sentencing

A clinical psychologist who examined Ridden after her arrest told the court she had been the victim of assault and was likely to be suffering a complex form of post-traumatic stress.

The young woman blew kisses to loved ones during her court appearance and nodded in the dock as the judge laid out her crimes.

Ridden's parents were in court for the sentencing. Following their daughter's arrest in 2013 the family spoke out about their struggle with their daughter's drug addiction.

They told the media they were from a strict religious community on Sydney's northern beaches, Ridden rejected her family's lifestyle and began abusing drugs as a teenager.
Declaration: Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici yesterday announced a series of measures in Brussels to combat tax avoidance

The European Union has declared it will stamp out so-called sweetheart tax deals just days after Googles deal with HM Revenue and Customs caused public outrage.

Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici yesterday announced a series of measures in Brussels to combat tax avoidance.

The new probes come on top of existing EU investigations into the tax deals of international giants such as Apple, Starbucks and McDonalds.

Mr Moscovici said: The days are numbered for companies that aggressively reduce their tax bills. We are today bringing a clear and concrete response to tax evasion.

Last week Google announced it had agreed to pay Britain 130million in back taxes to cover a 10-year period, despite making taking revenues of 4.6billion in the UK for 2014 alone.

Chancellor George Osborne announced the deal as a victory but the Government later was forced to backpedal after it emerged other countries were taking a much tougher stance.

Italy is demanding Google pay up 152million in back taxes, while France is believed to be chasing 381million.

The measures from the European Commission call for big companies to be obliged to report profit country by country - a break with the current practice, whereby multinationals shift revenue across borders to lower their tax bill.

Google deal: Chancellor George Osborne (pictured yesterday in Bristol) announced a victory for the UK but the Government later had to backpedal after it emerged other countries were taking a much tougher stance

Google, like most multinationals, does not reveal revenues for individual countries.

Another requirement will compel nations to agree on minimum standards for drawing up tax rules so that multinationals stop the practice of shopping around for loopholes to avoid paying tax altogether.

The measures did not go as far as to require tax authorities to disclose the tax affairs of big corporations.

It appeared yesterday that Google could face its own tax probe after European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the EU had the internet giant in its sights.

Taxman: The European Union has declared it will stamp out so-called sweetheart tax deals just days after Googles deal with HM Revenue and Customs caused public outrage (file picture)

Mrs Vestager told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: If we find there is something to be concerned about, if someone writes to us and says this is maybe not as it should be, then we will take a look.

The days are numbered for companies that aggressively reduce their tax bills Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for Economic Affairs

Within hours, Scottish National Party MP Stewart Hosie said the party had sent a letter to Brussels calling for a probe.

The two EU proposals are part of a 15-point package agreed by world leaders at a G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, in November.
A local council has come under fire for unwittingly including a stubby holder depicting a naked female silhouette in a gift bag distributed at an Australia Day citizenship ceremony.

Port Stephens Council, north of Newcastle in NSW, has faced a torrent of online criticism after Kate Washington, the state MP for Port Stephens, posted a photo of the stubby holder on her Facebook Page.

'I am disgusted and embarrassed that the objectification and denigration of women would be endorsed in this manner by my own Council,' she wrote.

The stubby holder that was handed out in a gift bag at an Australia Day citizenship ceremony in Port Stephens

Ms Washington, who is Shadow Minister for the prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, said called the gift 'backward'.

The council has apologised unreservedly and said the stubby holder was 'in no way part of the official citizenship pack.'

The gift bag was packed by a local business and distributed to attendees by a volunteer committee that organised the event, the council said.

'At no point was Council aware of the contents of the gift bag,' read a post on the council's Facebook page.

'There has obviously been a failure of oversight and quality control in this instance.'

Kate Washington, the state MP for Port Stephens, called the gift 'backward' and disgusting

Doug Cross, the chairman of the volunteer committee, said he accepted full responsibility for the mix up and the committee has promised to review its procedures.

However, the gift has already sparked outrage among residents and social media users.

'Sexualising women, great example to the new Australian citizens!' said Rebecca Sumner on Facebook.

Another women asked: 'Appalling, what uneducated bogan funded these pieces of rubbish?'

Others were concerned with the 'endorsement' of alcohol as a quintessential part of Australian life.

Not everyone agreed the gift was in poor taste, however.

Gary Sweetman wrote: 'I want one, where can I buy them.'

'Sexualising women, great example to the new Australian citizens,' wrote Rebecca Sumner

Many local residents expressed embarrassment about the gift

Others were more concerned with the 'endorsement' of alcohol as a quintessential part of Australian life
Wisconsin police have recovered a stolen load of cheese worth tens of thousands of dollars - for the second time this week.

The 41,000 pounds of Le Sueur Parmesan Cheese worth $90,000 was reported stolen from a Marshfield distributor on January 15.

A semi-trailer truck picked up the cheese that day, but it never reached its intended destination in Elgin, Illinois.

Wisconsin police recovered 41,000 pounds of Le Sueur Parmesan cheese (pictured in a file photo) - worth $90,000 - that was reported stolen from a Marshfield distributor on January 15

Investigators received a tip on Thursday that the cheese was more than 100 miles away in Grand Chute, where police found the entire shipment intact and already unloaded into a warehouse.

But under federal law the cheese is now illegible for legal sale, as the thieves broke the truck's seal during the heist.

Last Friday police found $70,000 worth of stolen cheddar and various other cheeses taken from a distribution center in Germantown.

Police told DailyMail.com that the cheese weighed about 35,000 lbs - the equivalent of roughly 240 cows.

The cheese was recovered more than 20 miles away in Milwaukee, according to CBS 58.

Surveillance footage captured the trailer, scheduled to deliver shipments across the country, being hooked up to another semi-truck at D&G Transportation and driven away.

The cheese was then transferred and the robbers left the stolen trailer behind.

Police have not said whether the cases are connected. No arrests have been made.

It was the second cheesy discovery in the state within a week. Last Friday police found $70,000 worth of stolen cheddar and various other cheeses taken from D&G Transportation (pictured) in Germantown
The grandmother who said she had accidentally laundered a 33million lottery ticket could still become a millionaire despite the true winner now claiming the jackpot.

Susanne Hinte was in hiding last night after lottery organiser Camelot said the lucky ticket-holder had finally announced themselves after days of speculation, but wished to remain anonymous.

This rules out 48-year-old German grandmother Miss Hinte from Worcester because the Watford-based company does not pay out on damaged tickets until after its six-month claim deadline.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Susanne Hinte (left), who was in hiding last night, could still make plenty of cash, according to agent Barry Tomes, who helped boost the profile of Benefit Street's White Dee (right, together)

Ms Hinte's photocopied ticket: The draw date has been obliterated by a tear, while the barcode at the bottom and the ticket's ID number have also been ruined. The numbers, however, were still visible

The culprit? Miss Hinte poses in front of her washing machine, which she claimed had ruined her winning ticket

But she could still make plenty of cash as the lady who tried to claim the 33million on the lottery, according to the agent who helped boost the public profile of Deirdre White Dee Kelly.

Barry Tomes, who represents the Channel 4 Benefits Street celebrity, claimed Miss Hinte could earn 2,000 in a nightclub this weekend and earn a seven-figure amount over the next few years.

He told Daily Star reporter Jerry Lawton: Everyone is talking about her. She has earned herself notoriety. A few years ago that was a bad thing but these days it is a commodity and it is bankable.

Do you know the identity of the lottery winner? Email lotto@dailymail.co.uk Advertisement

She could be looking at earning a 1million over the next couple of years. Thats not bad at all. Ive seen pics of her topless that are doing the rounds so shell be offered porn and adult work.

She needs to be handled carefully but she looks like a woman who is up for plenty of things. She will be in demand even though Camelot have said her claim is not valid.

Teamwork: Mr Tomes has aided White Dee's rise to fame in the past few years which has seen her appear on Celebrity Big Brother, present a documentary series and release a rap single and weight loss DVD

Uncovered: Miss Hinte sent a lorry driver topless photographs soon after getting in contact with him on an internet dating website - and Mr Tomes said she will be 'offered porn and adult work'

Mr Tomes has aided White Dee's rise to fame in the past few years which has seen her appear on Celebrity Big Brother, present a documentary series and release a rap single and weight loss DVD.

COUNTDOWN TO THE BIG WIN January 9 - The draw for the record-breaking Lotto jackpot of 66million is made. Two tickets match the winning numbers of 26, 27, 46, 47, 52 and 58. January 13 - David and Carol Martin, both 54, from Hawick in the Scottish Borders, announced they had one of the winning tickets to the 33,035,323 prize. January 21 - Camelot announce the holder of second ticket bought it in Worcester. Ambleside News is used by TV crews as one shop where customers are checking tickets. January 22 - Susanne Hinte walks into Ambleside News near her home in Warndon, Worcester, and presents a tatty ticket she claims was damaged in a washing machine. January 24 - Ms Hinte's family claim she is the winner but faces agonising 180 day for Camelot to confirm her win. January 28 - Camelot announce a winning ticket holder has come forward and confirm Ms Hinte is not a winner. Advertisement

And his comments are a clear indication that he feels he could transform the fortunes of Miss Hinte, who has not been seen since Saturday.

Camelots announcement yesterday sparked calls for her to be investigated over her production of a crumpled lottery ticket on which the winning numbers were virtually the only information still legible.

As neighbours voiced concerns, Camelot left the door open to taking action against anyone who had tried to fraudulently claim the outstanding 33,035,323.

Earlier this week, it said it would act if it thought someone had intentionally attempted to defraud the National Lottery. It received hundreds of claims in addition to Miss Hintes.

Miss Hinte, who moved to the UK from her native Germany at 19, was at the centre of the hunt for the winner after it emerged last weekend that the ticket was bought in Worcester.

She claimed she laundered the ticket in her jeans after buying it at a newsagents near her home in the suburb of Warndon.

Her past was described last night by the daughter of an ex-boyfriend. Charlotte Payne, 24, lived at Miss Hintes home six years ago for around 12 months, when her father was going out with the would-be Lotto winner.

Shop: Miss Hinte claimed to have bought the ticket at Ambleside News in Warndon, Worcester. But Camelot declined an offer from owner Natu Patel (pictured) to be sent the video of her apparently buying the ticket

Victorious: David and Carol Martin, both 54, from Hawick in the Scottish Borders, announced they had one of the winning tickets to the 33,035,323 prize on January 13

Miss Payne, from Walsall, West Midlands, said: Susanne had a shiny steel pole in the bedroom  She was quite open about working as a dancer in the past.

Key numbers: Camelot received hundreds of claims in addition to Miss Hintes from potential 'winners'

Her father has confirmed he was once in a relationship with Miss Hinte.

Last night there was no answer at Miss Hintes semi-detached home or at the home of her daughter Natasha Douglas, 28.

A neighbour of Miss Hinte said she hoped the former prison custody officer and barmaid should be investigated for her claim.

Susan Gormley, 70, said: I didnt think for one minute that she had won it. I was hoping she had won so shed move.

Dozens took to social media calling for Miss Hinte to be investigated.

Miss Hinte has had court appearances for non-payment of fines, failing to reveal a drivers identity and failure to pay her TV licence. She is facing two trials in March for theft and motoring offences.

West Mercia Police said it could investigate only if it received a complaint from Camelot over a deception allegation.
Iran flew a surveillance drone over the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and took 'precise' photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state media reported Friday.

The US Navy confirmed that an unarmed Iranian drone flew near a French and American carrier earlier this month, but did not say whether it was the same incident.

The reported overflight by the unmanned aircraft came after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the US in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of 10 American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters, and who were forced to apologize before being released.

The US Navy said it didn't open fire as the drone was unarmed and not threatening the ship's safety, but the incident again highlighted that tensions remain between America and Iran in Gulf waters despite their recent diplomatic detente.

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Under surveilance: This still image made from video broadcast on Iranian State television Friday shows what purports to be drone footage of a US aircraft carrier

Iran claims it flew a surveillance drone over USS Harry S. Truman and took 'precise' photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill

The US Navy confirmed that an unarmed Iranian drone flew near USS Harry Truman (pictured) and a French carrier on January 12

Iranian state television and the semi-official Fars news agency, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, released footage Friday that was purportedly taken from the unnamed drone.

The video shows an unidentified aircraft carrier with fighter jets on deck. The provenance of the clip has not been independently verified.

Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the US Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and 'directly over' the USS Harry S. Truman on January 12 as the vessels were in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

He said the Navy launched a helicopter that determined the drone wasn't armed and 'posed no danger to the ship' as the carrier wasn't conducting flight operations at the time.

His comments implied that had there been active takeoffs and landings of U.S. aircraft, the situation might have changed.

Stephens panned the drone's overflight as 'abnormal and unprofessional.' He added that the US Navy was 'not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet.'

The report by state television said the drone flight occurred on the third day of the naval exercise, suggesting it happened Friday.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of Iran's navy, called the drone overflight 'a sign of bravery.'

It 'allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces,' he told state television.

State television and the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine also participated in the surveillance operation.

When asked about the submarine report, Stephens said 'Iran has several submarines underway for its current exercise,' but declined to discuss specifics.

The Iranian report did not name the US vessel filmed by the unmanned aircraft. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

In Washington, US Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Marks stressed America remains ready to use force if necessary.

'We are confident in our force's ability to respond appropriately as the situation dictates and will defend ourselves should that prove necessary,' he said.

In this January 12, 2016 file photo, France's flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier navigates in the Persain Gulf as part of the US- led coalition against ISIS

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill at mock targets. Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began the naval drill this week over a '1.16-million-square-mile area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a US warship to leave an area of the naval drill.

The US Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the US, its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 1,240 miles of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The US has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a 'highly provocative' Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied launching rockets, though the US later released footage showing the rocket fire.

The Strait of Hormuz, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran.

This January, Iranian forces captured 10 American sailors who entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s.
David Cameron today rejected an emergency brake on migrant benefits as 'not good enough' after talks with Eurocrats in Brussels.

The Prime Minister has admitted the deal he wants to stay in the EU is not on the table after his last minute talks with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker failed.

Hinting that the sticking point was on migrant benefits, he said: 'We want to end the idea of something for nothing. There is now a proposal on the table, it is not good enough, it needs more work but we are making progress'.

Mr Cameron admitted he 'cannot be certain' of a deal before the next key meeting in Brussels on February 18, which means an EU referendum in June is looking less likely.

Mr Juncker said afterwards the talks had been 'difficult and constructive' but campaign group Leave.EU wrote the stalemate off as 'pure theatre'.

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Showdown: David Cameron, looked delighted to see Jean Claude Juncker about the proposed emergency brake deal on migrants benefits, but afterwards he said the deal was 'not good enough'

Defence: Mr Cameron says he will not rush to a deal but with a series of meeeting on the EU today and over the weekend it appears he wante to get it done quickly

Mr Juncker is offering Britain an 'emergency brake' allowing the UK to temporarily halt benefits to new EU migrants if the welfare system is creaking - but Eurosceptic MPs have called it an 'insult'.

Critically any decision would be taken by Brussels, forcing Britain to 'beg' to EU bureaucrats for permission, critics say.

Sources have said the Prime Minister will insist on being able to trigger the brake without asking first.

The Prime Minister admitted after their talks there was still 'very hard work' ahead to win a deal aimed at loosening ties with Brussels ahead of an in/out referendum.

He declined to comment on whether he was still on schedule for an agreement on EU reforms in February and a public vote on Britain's future with the bloc in June.

'That depends what happens in February,' he said. 'If the deal is good enough I'll take it, if it's not I won't.'

WHAT'S ON THE MENU... APART FROM THE EU MIGRANT DEAL David Cameron's talks with Jean Claude Juncker came over a 'working lunch', officials have said. This is what they ate: Starter Lobster stew Main Turbot fillet with vegetables Dessert Chocolate mousse Advertisement

He added: 'At the moment today, you can come to Britain, get instant access to our in-work benefits system which is worth many thousands of pounds to people.

'But also it goes to a deeper issue which is the British people and I want a system where you have to pay in before you get out. We don't want a something for nothing society.

'That's what we are determined to deliver. We've made some progress today, it's not enough, it's going to be hard work. I can't be certain we will get there in February but I will work as hard as I can to deliver a good deal for the British people.'

Earlier Mr Cameron looked happy and relaxed as he met European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker for talks to help keep Britain in the EU.

Under the new proposal the restriction could last for up to four years  the length of time Mr Cameron has demanded migrants should be subjected to benefit curbs.

Mr Cameron arrived to meet Mr Juncker journalists asked him: 'Who pulls the brake Prime Minister?' - but he did not respond.

As he flew out of Britain today he said the EU offer was 'encouraging' because 'what I was previously told was impossible is now looking like it is possible'.

The talks with Mr Juncker took place over lunch, where they had lobster stew, followed by turbot fillet with vegetables and chocolate mousse for dessert.

The Prime Minister then met Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, who afterwards we are now entering a very decisive moment in preparing the referendum and that he was optimistic of a deal next month.

However, he indicated that they could have incompatible visions of how involved the EU should be in welfare.

There are some of the proposals of the UK which are common sense - that we must be more transparent, more democratic, more effective, more competitive, he said.

It's quite clear there's a lot of people thinking we should also be more social, more responsible, more welfare-oriented - this is also existing in the European Union so we have to look if the two sides are compatible.

Nigel Farage told the BBC that Mr Cameron was a little bit like the boy in Oliver! going up and saying Please sir, can we have some more concessions - it is pathetic'.

Mr Cameron met Commission president Mr Juncker, together left, in Brussels today before further talks with Council president Donald Tusk, right, in London on Sunday as a deal edges closer

Veteran Tory Eurosceptic John Redwood today dismissed the emergency brake proposal as a 'bad joke'.

He said: 'That proposal is an insult to the United Kingdom. It's not a serious offer. We need to take back control of our borders and we need to be able to control our own welfare system. That falls well short of that.

'It says that we have to beg in extreme circumstances for the permission of the rest of the EU to temporarily make payments we don't want to make. It's just simply a bad joke.'

WHAT PM SAYS HE WANTS FROM EU His four key demands are: Ban on EU migrants claiming benefits for four years as part of tackling 'abuses of the right to free movement'

Legal protection for Britain and the other eight EU countries which do not use the euro from problems with the single currency

Cut the total burden on business and drive up competitiveness

An end to the concept of 'ever closer union' and a veto for national governments to block Brussels laws Advertisement

Arron Banks, from the Out campaign Leave.EU, said: 'People watching the slow-motion disaster overtaking Europe don't want an emergency brake on immigration, they want control of the steering wheel so we can avoid the car crash.'

David Cameron struggled on his journey to Brussels this morning because of 100mph winds in Scotland, where he stayed last night after visiting Aberdeen.

Storm Gertrude has knocked out the power for thousands of homes overnight.

He told BBC Radio Scotland: 'My first challenge is to get to Brussels because with Hurricane (sic) Gertrude I have already had a flight problem.

'So I am racing across Scotland at the moment to get to Edinburgh airport. But I hope I will make it.'

Mr Cameron dismissed concerns and welcomed the 'emergency brake' intervention, saying it showed the EU was 'taking on board' Britain's concerns.

He previously described the idea of an emergency brake as 'some arcane mechanism which would probably be triggered by the European Commission and not by us'.

The Prime Minister insisted the mechanism being discussed with the European Commission was 'totally different' from previous ideas mooted, saying he was 'encouraged' by progress.

However, he stressed there was 'still a long way to go' before a deal could be finalised and he was willing to be 'patient'.

Mr Cameron was confronted with a previous quote he gave describing an 'emergency brake' as an 'arcane mechanism within the EU that would probably be triggered by the European Commission and not us'.

But he replied: 'That was actually a totally different idea and a different sort of brake to the one that is being proposed now.'

Mr Cameron said: 'I have always said we are open to alternative ideas as long as they have equal force.

'We have made progress. It is encouraging that people like the European Commission are coming forward with ideas. But there is still a long way to go before we see something that we can actually agree.

'There is still a lot of hard negotiation, a lot of hard talking. But it is encouraging that what I was previously told was impossible is now looking like it is possible.'

Positive: Sources close to the deal have said that Mr Cameron will demand a deal on benefits that Britain controls, not Brussels

Mr Cameron said he would not 'agree to something unless it has the force and the weight that we need to solve the problem that we have'. 'I am prepared to be patient. We don't need to have our referendum until the end of 2017,' he said.

The 'emergency brake' idea needs support from all EU nations but Poland said today it would not accept it.

Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said: 'No, Poland does not accept this mechanism. It will not accept a mechanism that denies social benefits to Poles living in the European Union'.

Downing Street yesterday revealed Mr Cameron will hold talks in Downing Street on Sunday with European Council president Donald Tusk.

Mr Tusk is expected to publish a 'concrete proposal' for a new deal with Britain in the coming days, ahead of a crunch EU summit next month.

The Prime Minister will then travel to Hamburg just days before the summit to speak at a banquet hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who may hold the key to success.

Sealing a deal there is expected to trigger a summer referendum, thought likely to be held on June 23.

Mr Cameron was forced to tear up his schedule to meet Mr Juncker today. But Government sources insisted the talks were not in crisis.

A source said Mr Juncker's backing was essential in winning the support of smaller EU states who look to the European Commission for protection.

But some ministers believe the hopes of securing a deal next month are fading because EU leaders are too distracted by dealing with the continent's migrant crisis.

Karren Brady: Brexit could devastate the Premier League and calls on clubs to join campaign to stay in the EU

Warning: Tory peer and West Ham vice-chairman says the Brexit could damage the Premier League

British football teams could find it harder to sign top European stars if the UK votes to sever ties with Brussels, Karren Brady has warned club chiefs.

Tory peer Baroness Brady, vice-chairman of West Ham United, has written to professional teams to warn that 'cutting ourselves off from Europe would have devastating consequences' for both the economy and the competitiveness of British football.

Baroness Brady, who is on the board of the main campaign to keep the UK in the European Union, said free movement rules made it easier to attract talent from the other 27 member states.

She claimed that two-thirds of players from EU nations playing in England might not meet the visa criteria applying to non-EU countries and could therefore be forced to leave.

In a letter to the chairmen of all professional sides in England, Scotland and Wales, she said: 'For clubs, free movement plays a big role in transfers and players' contracts.

'Players from the EU can sign for UK clubs without needing a visa or special work permit, making it quicker and easier to secure top talent from across Europe to come and play in our leagues.

'Indeed, there are nearly 200 Premier League footballers alone who have benefited from this arrangement. Leaving the EU could have a big impact on foreign players, as independent analysis has shown that two-thirds of European stars in England would not meet automatic non-EU visa criteria and therefore might be forced to leave.

'Losing this unhindered access to European talent would put British clubs at a disadvantage compared to continental sides.'

Her letter also suggests fans travelling to away games in Europe benefit from cheaper flights and not having to pay visas.

Baroness Brady is on the board of Britain Stronger In Europe, which is campaigning for a vote to remain in the EU in the referendum promised by David Cameron.

'English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish football gains so much from being in Europe,' she said.

'Clubs and fans all benefit from European action, laws and funding. Leaving the EU would hurt our leagues, create uncertainty for European transfers, and be a step back for the next generation of footballers.'

Although EU free movement rules can help British teams sign foreign stars, they also apply the other way - smoothing the path for British players such as Gareth Bale, who left Tottenham Hotspur to sign for Real Madrid.

Players' ability to switch sides has also been boosted by the Bosman ruling, a European Court of Justice decision which allowed a player to leave a club on a free transfer as soon as his contract expired, giving them extra leverage to demand huge signing-on payments and salaries from their new teams.
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Storm Gertrude caused chaos across Britain today bringing winds of 144mph, blowing trees and lorries over and even sending a rabbit flying onto a roof.

The Met Office even issued a rare red weather warning for Orkney and Shetland, while strong winds and heavy rain, battered Scotland and Northern England.

A number of trees making up the famous Dark Hedges, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, which provided the backdrop for hit fantasy drama Game of Thrones, also came down in high winds, while a lorry in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, was blown over on its side.

And one poor rabbit was catapulted onto the roof of a care home in Omagh, Northern Ireland, and had to be rescued by the fire service.

More than 13,000 homes in Northern Ireland and Scotland lost power as winds hit 132mph in the Cairngorms, while Scottish island schools closed.

Ferry and train services north of the border were severely reduced and some routes were withdrawn - while the Forth, Tay and Kessock bridges closed.

The Pride of Hull - one of the world's largest ferries - was unable to berth this morning due to the extreme weather conditions and docked at a later time of 3pm today.

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Devastation: Two 200-year-old beech trees blocked a road after they were uprooted in strong winds. The trees were part of the Dark Hedges near Armoy, Co Antrim, which gained worldwide fame as one of the locations for scenes from the Game Of Thrones

Hard at work: A farmer works to cut up one 200-year-old tree which was uprooted in Armoy, County Antrim, - a backdrop for TV drama Game of Thrones

Big job ahead: Two 200-year-old uprooted trees cover a road in Armoy, County Antrim, today as two farmers work to clear the area

Damage: The windscreen of a lorry on the southbound carriageway of the A96 near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, was smashed when it overturned in strong winds

Submerged: A car drives through surface water as waves break over a barrier and on to the road in Skelmorlie, Scotland, today

Surge: Huge waves crash against the pier in Ardrossan, Scotland, creating a huge spray of water as Storm Gertrude hit the UK

Tricky: A plane lands in high winds and heavy rain at Leeds Bradford International Airport today as stormy weather battered the north of England

Swamped: A train about to enter Saltcoats Station, in North Ayrshire, Scotland, is pounded by waves, while the salt water is causing arcing on the power lines above

POLICE CRITICISE ONLOOKERS WHO FILMED MOTHER AND DAUGHTER TRAPPED IN CAR BY FALLEN TREE People watched and filmed a mother and daughter who were trapped in their car by a fallen tree - instead of offering help. Officers in Durham said they were 'disappointed' with the public's reaction after the two women had a 'very narrow escape'. One woman called for help but some people at the scene didn't assist and instead, took photos of the Nissan Note underneath the tree in Chilton Lane, Ferryhill Station, County Durham. The tree was uprooted in strong winds after 9am and brought down a power cable. Police from Durham Constabulary said luckily the mother, in her 40s, and the daughter, in her 20s, were not badly hurt. They were taken to hospital for treatment to minor injuries. The tree crashed into the bonnet of their hatchback causing serious damage. PC Paul Jackson, who dealt with the incident which blocked the road, said he was disappointed with the reactions of some people who had come out to see what happened. 'The driver and her passenger were trapped in the car and calling for help,' he said. 'Apparently a number of people decided to film or take photos on their mobile phones rather than offering assistance, and that is disappointing to hear.' Terrifying: Two women had to be rescued from this car by firefighters after a tree fell Ferryhill Station, County Durham, today Advertisement

The beech trees were planted in the 18th century by a local family, the Stuarts, with the intent of creating a grand entrance to their nearby Georgian mansion, Gracehill House.

The road is likely to be closed to traffic for the remainder of today as Northern Ireland's Roads Service works to remove the fallen trees.

Giant waves measuring 30 feet were also recorded at the Outer Hebrides - an island off the coast of Scotland.

A landslip on the A82 at Letter Finlay in the Highlands caused an enormous 150-mile diversion for journeys between Fort William and Inverness.

Prime Minister David Cameron was also caught up in the disruption on his way to Belgium for EU talks.

Speaking on BBC Good Morning Scotland, he said: 'My first challenge is to get to Brussels as with hurricane Gertrude I've already had a flight problem so I'm racing across Scotland at the moment to get to Edinburgh Airport but I hope I will make it.'

Firefighters in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, scrambled onto a roof to save Bumper the bunny who was blown up there

The rabbit, pictured, ended up on top of a care home when its hutch was taken by the wind and smashed against the building

In Omagh, Northern Ireland, firefighters rescued the bunny, formerly known as Bumper, after it was unexpectedly dumped on top of the Omagh residential home where it lives.

It appears the pet's terrifying experience was due to the owner not battening down the hutches outside the property.

District Commander of Omagh Fire Station, David Doherty, said the rabbit had a lucky escape.

'The wind caught the hutch and sent it flying into the air and it has catapulted the rabbit out of the hutch and onto the roof,' he said.

'Now the hutch has come down and smashed, so it was probably lucky for the rabbit that it did come out.'

While the top gust away from the Cairgorms today was 91mph in South Uist, the Forth Road Bridge and Inverbervie in Aberdeenshire recorded gales of up to 69mph.

Forecasters predicted winds of up to 65mph in the Borders and the North East of England and 80mph in North Yorkshire.

Met Office amber be prepared warnings were in place today for Northern Ireland and Scotland as well as North West and North East England.

Meanwhile yellow be aware warnings for up to four inches of rain, snow and ice are in place across much of the UK.

Forecasters said: Winds are expected to widely gust 60-70mph, possibly up to 80mph along exposed coasts and over hills.

Be prepared for the likelihood of difficult driving conditions and disruption to travel, such as cancellation to ferry services and bridge closures.

P&O Ferries said the Pride of Hull ferry, from Rotterdam, had been unable to berth this morning due to 'extreme weather conditions'.

Gales: An small aircraft battles the wind as it comes into land at Manchester Airport today as forecasters warned about stormy conditions

Making a splash: High winds and big waves battered the pier in Blackpool, Lancashire, as the Met Office put a red warning in place for some areas of the country

Day off for pupils: Teachers closed Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh today when the side of the building was destroyed by gales

Cordoned off: Police closed Admiral's Gate, in Finneston, Glasgow, when an entire roof was blown onto parked cars below

Feeling the cold: A woman battles against strong gales as she walks along the sea front in Largs, Scotland, today, after Storm Gertrude swept into Britain

Choppy waters: The DFDS 'King Seaways' battles against strong gale force winds this morning as the ferry approaches the Port Of Tyne, in North Shields, after crossing the North Sea

Recovery: A lorry with a crane attempts to flip an overturned truck back onto its wheels after it was blown on its side on the A96 near Huntly, in Aberdeenshire, today

Wreckage: A red Audi drives past the overturned lorry, which is blocking a lane on the A96 near Huntly, in Aberdeenshire, today

The ferry, which was due to arrive at the port in Hull at 7am, experienced rare winds of 60 knots, a spokesman said.

Passenger Dave Reid said the captain was 'shaken up' as he turned the boat around.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Reid said the captain had just updated passengers to say they expected the ferry to docked on schedule.

'WEIRD' WINTER MEANS FEWER BIRDS WILL VISIT UK GARDENS This year's 'weird winter' could affect the number of birds visiting UK gardens, experts have warned. People counting Britain's garden birds as part of an annual RSPB survey will see lower numbers and less exotic species as a result of milder weather. The last month of 2015 beat records for the warmest December and the wettest month in the UK before a short cold snap and a return to unseasonable warmth in January. The RSPB's Martin Fowlie said: 'We've had a weird winter on the weather front. It's been warm and wet weather, and then a cold snap, how is that going to affect different species?' Further freezing conditions could see birds head to gardens from the countryside to make use of available food, but the forecast for the weekend is not particularly cold, he added. Advertisement

He told the broadcaster: 'It's been quite bizarre. When we got there I was just having breakfast this morning and normally boat just comes in and docks and you don't notice anything.

'It wasn't until afterwards when heading back to sea that captain came on to say we had been unsuccessful and we were heading back out.'

He said the crossing hadn't been choppy and passengers were supplied with free tea and coffee and entertainment. He didn't know of any passengers taking poorly.

In a tweet, the company said: 'Due to extreme weather conditions in Hull, the Pride of Hull is unable to berth. A further attempt will be made when the weather improves.'

A spokesman for P&O Ferries said the ferry had experienced winds of 60 knots this morning, which he described as 'rare'.

He added that passengers on the evening service to Rotterdam would not be affected by this disruption.

Fallen trees also affecting many routes across Scotland with the Forth, Tay and Kessock bridges closed for a time. A number of lorries and large vehicles toppled over in the winds, with one incident on the M9 near Dunblane.

In Glasgow city centre, officials said some roads were closed because high winds had damaged some buildings.

Broomielaw - the main road into the city, which runs adjacent to the River Clyde, was shut in both directions between York Street and Brown Street, with road users urged to avoid the area if possible.

Pitt Street was also completely closed between West Regent Street and West George Street.

In Northern Ireland, 5,000 properties were left without power after high winds battered the region, and around 8,500 homes in Scotland lost electricity.

Disruption: Vehicles travel on the M9 near Falkirk as the lorry blocks the hard shoulder after being blown on its side in strong winds

On its side: Police were called to the M9 near Falkirk, in Scotland, when this lorry was blown on its side as gusts of up to 90mph battered the north

Engulfed: Huge waves crashed over a harbour wall in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, swamping the pier and a nearby lighthouse

Braving the weather: A dog walker struggles through ferocious winds in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, as Storm Gertrude battered Scotland

Crushed: A bench and railings in Queen's Park, in Glasgow, were destroyed by a huge tree which was uprooted in gale force winds

Playtime is cancelled: Branches from a large tree scatter Queen's Park, Glasgow, Scotland, today after a huge tree was blown over

Scottish Hydro said engineers were trying to reconnect supplies in Aberdeenshire, Perthshire and elsewhere but repairs would depend on the weather.

Cumbria, which has been devastated by repeated floods since early December, could see rainfall of up to 60mm (2.4in) as well as strong winds.

A succession of storms since December has seen widespread flooding and travel disruption, with the latest front expected to continue into the weekend.

Winds appear to be the biggest threat from the latest severe trans-Atlantic storm, but snow could fall on high ground in the North tomorrow.

And there are still eight flood warnings and 46 alerts in place for England and Wales. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has almost 40 flood warnings in place covering Ayrshire, Tayside, west central Scotland and the Highlands.

ScotRail is operating a limited service today, with routes in the Highlands and west coast of Scotland particularly affected.

Operators said hundreds of engineers will be deployed across the network to inspect lines, repair damage and reopen routes as quickly as possible.

Phil Verster, ScotRail Alliance managing director, said: We will be withdrawing some services until the worst of the storm has passed.

The safety of our passengers and workforce is our top priority and we cannot run services on these lines until our engineers have thoroughly inspected the network for any damage.

Emergency services were called out to two lorries blown over on the A96 near Huntly and on the M9 near Dunblane in the early hours.

In Huntly, the lorry was blown onto a car but the passengers escaped with minor injuries. Firefighters rescued the trucker from his cab. He suffered injuries not thought to be life-threatening.

In Clydebank, two families were evacuated after scaffolding crashed through the roof of a housing block at around 7am.

Warnings: Strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice have been forecast as Scotland was told to be prepared by concerned forecasters

Here comes Gertrude: More than 5,000 homes in Northern Ireland and Scotland lost power as winds hit 91mph in South Uist

Chart: A Met Office surface pressure map shows the warm front (in red) over Britain early this morning, followed by two cold fronts (blue)

Watch out: There is a wind warning for Monday (left), plus eight flood warnings and 46 alerts in place for England and Wales (right)

Drivers also had to avoid a trampoline blown on to the Newtonhill flyover near the A90 in Aberdeen at around 6am.

Police Scotland said a member of the public moved it from the road and officers were not needed. A force spokesman advised people to peg down trampolines and garden furniture in high winds.

Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles councils have confirmed that all the schools in their areas will be closed to pupils on Friday.

Orkney Island Council's head of schools, Peter Diamond, said: At the moment, the severe winds are predicted to be at full strength in the early morning when pupils would be travelling to school.

Given the forecast, we have decided to close all schools on Friday.

A Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution spokesman said: We have 400 front line and support staff standing by and we have moved engineers to the areas we expect to be hit by the storm.

Havoc: Scaffolding surrounding a new housing development in Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, was blown over in gusts of wind

Overturned: Police had to rescue a lorry driver from his cab on the M48 bridge, also known as the Severn Crossing, between England and Wales last night when high winds blew the vehicle on its side

Rescue: A police officer attempts to smash the windscreen to pull the lorry driver from his vehicle (left) on the M48 bridge, as firefighters arrive on the scene last night (right)

High winds: The Forth Road Bridge, which runs between Fife and Edinburgh, has been closed today to all vehicles due to Storm Gertrude

Mobile generators and other resources are also being moved. Members of the public should not approach fallen or damaged power lines, which may still be live.

Around 600 people were evacuated from their homes in the Scottish Borders on Wednesday over renewed flooding fears and firefighters had to rescue a bus driver caught in water on the B6405 route near Hawick.

With hazardous road conditions across the UK, RAC spokesman Rod Dennis said: 'Drivers will need to take extreme care and slow down, especially on more exposed stretches of road.

'On Saturday, high winds will be combined with wintry showers, making driving conditions more treacherous. Disruption on the roads is likely, so motorists should listen for and heed all local weather warnings, expect their journeys to take longer than usual and, when out on the road, take particular care overtaking other motorists.'
Murderer Simon Gittany, who was convicted of throwing his fiancee to her death from a 15th floor apartment balcony, is appealing against his conviction for killing her.

Next week, less than two years into an 26-year sentence for Lisa Harnum's 2011 death, the Sydney man's appeal is to have its first mention in court,The Daily Telegraph reported.

Although it is set to be mentioned in the Criminal Court of Appeal next Thursday, a hearing is expected to be set for later in 2016, it was reported.

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Simon Gittany, 42, is serving a 26-year sentence for the murder of his fiancee, 30-year-old Lisa Harnum, in 2011

Ms Harnum had been planning to leave Gittany, and when he found out he flew into a rage and killed her

CCTV footage showing the chilling moment Gittany dragged Ms Harnum from an elevator in the apartment building she was thrown from

Ms Harnum was thrown from the 15th floor of this inner city Sydney apartment in July 2011

He also received legal aid funding for his appeal, which he has been given extensions in order to lodge.

Gittany, 42, was found guilty of throwing Ms Harnum, 30, from the balcony of his inner city apartment in a fit of rage on July 30, 2011.

However, he claimed he had been attempting to save her from committing suicide.

Ms Harnum had reportedly been planning to leave him and return to her home country of Canada.

Ms Harnum had booked flights home to her home counry, Canada, and packed her bags when Gittany found out and killed her

This is a view from the apartment which Ms Harnum was thrown from by Gittany

Gittany found Ms Harnum had packed her bags and made enraged threats, according to Judge Lucy McCallum.

'I have no hesitation accepting evidence ofrage,' said Judge McCallum.

69 seconds before Ms Harnum toppled to her death she ran to the lift, trying to flee.

CCTV footage in the lift captured the distressing moment Gittany dragged his fiancee out of the lift by her neck.

The horrific images show him pulling Ms Harnum back into the apartment with his hand clamped over her mouth.

Residents in the building told the court that they heard Ms Harnum banging on on a neighbour's door, shouting: 'Please help me, help me, God help me.'

The court accepted the prosecution's version of events, in which they alleged that Gittany rendered Ms Harnum unconscious in the apartment after dragging her in from the lift. He then threw her off the balcony to her death.

Gittany claimed he had been attempting to stop Ms Harnum from committing suicide, but she fell to her death

Gittany pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Harnum, claiming he was trying to save her from suicide.

He had told the court he had tried to grab her when she climbed onto the balcony but had failed to stop her falling.

The judge did not believe Gittany's account of how Ms Harnum fell to her death, ruling that she 'found him unconvincing'.

She said Ms Harnum could not have behaved in the way Gittany said she had - clambering onto the balcony - without leaving fingerprints.

She said it was likely that Ms Harnum was rendered unconscious before she plunged to her death.

Last year, Gittany's girlfriend, who stood by his side during his trial, announced she had left him due to the strains of being in a relationship with someone in prison, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The female partner of the man arrested at Disneyland Paris carrying two handguns, ammunition, and a 'guide to the Koran' has been found.

She was arrested in the Paris home which she reportedly shared with the 28-year-old man, after fleeing the scene yesterday, local media reports.

Two semi-automatic handguns and a knife were detected when the luggage was put through an X-ray machine at the entrance to a hotel, 20 miles east of the French capital.

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French police stand guard at Hotel New York at Disney Village after the man was found with weapons in his bag

Officers are still hunting for the man's female companion. It was believed she had already been detained

The man who was not known to security services, was stopped by Disney staff, while the woman fled the scene, and bomb disposal experts were called in.

Police swooped on the four-star Hotel New York at Disney Village and the man, who had booked a room for two, offered no resistance as he was being taken into custody.

The couple's car was immediately surrounded by bomb disposal experts, and the hotel car park was shut down.

The semiautomatic 7.65-millimeter pistols were inside cloth bags, along with two magazines and 20 bullets.

Both weapons dates back to the 1980s, and there was also a small booklet entitled 'A guide to the Holy Koran'.

It follows warnings from terrorist groups including Islamic State and Al-Qaeda that Disneyland, some 20 miles east of Paris, was one of their targets.

It was initially believed the man's companion - thought to be his wife or girlfriend - was arrested in the Paris region, however she is still on the run.

The Interior Ministry confirmed police were searching for a woman who may have been with the man.

A police source said: 'A woman was arrested soon after the incident, but she was released after it became clear she was not the suspect involved. We are still looking for the man's companion.'

The man was known to traffic police for once being caught driving without a licence, but had never been of any interest to anti-terrorist officers.

The couple's car was immediately surrounded by bomb disposal experts, and Hotel New York's car park was shut down

Police swooped on the Hotel New York at Disneyland Paris where the man was arrested (stock image)

DISNEYLAND RESORT PARIS Officially opened in 1992 under the name Euro Disney, the park quickly began to attract millions of visitors from around the world. In 1994 it officially became Disneyland Resort Paris and the following year its famed rollercoaster Space Mountain was opened. On top of the attractions, the park's income is bolstered by 64 shops, 67 restaurants and seven hotels. The theme park covers nearly 5,000 acres and is directly served by the Eurostar. Its blend of fantasy and thrill-seeking requires more than 55,000 staff, with almost 15,000 employed on-site alone, its figures say. It has seen its number of visitors drop considerably in recent years. In 2014, more than a million fewer people were visiting than in 2012, their annual reports showed. After France, most visitors to the park come from the UK, making up 14 per cent of their guests in 2013. Advertisement

A judicial police source said: 'Following questioning, the man made it clear that he had the guns with him for personal protection. The enquiry is ongoing, but it is not a terrorist enquiry.'

Police would not initially name the two suspects, but they said the man was a French national born in the Paris suburb of Lagny, and currently living in the 14th arrondissement of the city. Both the man and the woman are of 'European appearance,' said the police source.

Francois Banon, a spokesman for Disneyland Paris, said: 'During a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels, weapons were discovered in a guest's luggage through our X-ray machine.

'The police were immediately notified and the individual was arrested. We continue to work closely with the authorities, and the safety and security of our guests and cast members is our utmost priority.'

'Police were called as soon as the guns were found,' said a hotel source. 'The man did not put up any resistance, but his companion disappeared. The police are still looking for her.'

There are several hotels around Disneyland Paris, which is east of the French capital and is among Europe's most-visited tourist destinations with some 10 million visitors in 2014, according to that year's Global Attractions.

Jean-Luc Marx, Prefect of the Seine-et-Marne district in which Disneyland is situated, said: 'I want to underline that the Disney security services and police reacted immediately, and made sure the man was taken out of harm's way, if indeed he ever intended to harm anyone.

'We don't know at this stage.'

A man carrying two handguns and a 'guide to the Koran' has been arrested at Disneyland Paris (file picture)

A judicial enquiry has been opened, led by a examining magistrate assisted by police from nearby Meaux, said Mr Marx.

Later in the afternoon, the couple's black car could be seen being towed away on the back of a lorry.

The incident comes just months after Islamist terrorists went on the rampage in Paris killing 130 people.

France remained in a state of emergency since the attacks on November 13, which targeted the Stade de France, packed cafes and bars and the Bataclan music hall.

In January 2015, three days of terror gripped Paris as a series of attacks left 17 people dead, including a massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

France imposed a three-month state of emergency after the November attacks, which President Francois Hollande hopes to extend for another three months, despite fierce opposition from rights activists.
The dining room at Springfield's The Student Prince became the stage for a prom trends photo shoot when celebrity stylist and Springfield native Nolan Wells set the scene for his 2016 prom lookbook.

"Usually I would shoot this in New York or Boston, but I wanted to bring it back here to Western Mass. this year," said Wells, who has styled celebrities from Karina Smirnoff to Flo Rida. "I think you'll always see a lookbook shoot in New York. No one's ever shot something like this in Western Mass."

A lookbook is a book of photographs assembled to demonstrate fashion trends. Wells will distribute these photographs through his social media channels.

Setting the scene for the shoot, Wells arranged three models dressed in prom gowns around a table covered in comfort food from The Student Prince. The models, who wore gowns from Mac Duggal and Terani, also posed with the iconic Peter Pan double decker bus and at the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round.

Above are photographs that show the making of the photo shoot. For more information about Wells, visit the celebrity stylist's website.
Charter flights will gradually deport them to their home countries

Migrants will be placed in transit centres and from there repatriated

Around 20,000 of Finland's asylum-seekers are from Iraq

Finland made it more difficult for Iraqis, Afghans and Somalis to get asylum

Finnish government to deport 65 percent of 32,000 migrants arrived in 2015

Finland has joined Sweden in announcing plans to repatriate tens of thousands of migrants whose asylum requests will likely be rejected.

The two Nordic countries are both struggling to cope with with an unprecedented influx of refugees and migrants fleeing war and misery in the Middle East and elsewhere, and they receive among the highest number of arrivals per capita in the EU.

The Finnish government said it expect to deport around 20,000 of the 32,000 asylum-seekers it received in 2015.

Sweden and Finland received among the highest number of arrivals per capita in the EU

The Finnish government said it expect to deport around 20,000 of the 32,000 asylum-seekers it received in 2015. Pictured: a Syrian refugee with her children in Sweden

More than 20,000 of Finland's asylum-seekers are from Iraq. Pictured: Crew members of the Italian navy ship Aliseo take part n a rescue operation in which 290 migrants were save from three dinghies off the Libyan coast on 27 January

'In principle we speak of about two-thirds, meaning approximately 65 percent of the 32,000 will get a negative decision (to their asylum application),' Paivi Nerg, the ministry's administrative director told AFP.

Last year, Finland made it more difficult from migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia to get asylum, stating that the security situation had improved in certain areas of those countries.

More than 20,000 of Finland's asylum-seekers are from Iraq.

'In previous years around 60 percent (of applicants) received a negative decision but now we have somewhat tightened our criteria for Iraqis, Afghans and Somalis,' Nerg explained.

She said that the ministry is planning to set up separate transit centres for those to be deported from those wanting to leave the country on a voluntary basis.

The deportations will take place gradually as immigration authorities process applications.

Two charter flights to deport Iraqis were already scheduled within the following months and about 4,000 asylum-seekers had already withdrawn their applications.

Finland is also in diplomatic negotiations with neighbouring Russia to stop migrants from entering Finland via the Arctic region.

After Norway barred migrants from entering the country on its own Arctic border crossing with Russia in December, the flow of migrants turned towards Finland.

It comes as neighbouring Sweden was planning over several years to deport up to 80,000 people whose asylum applications are likely to be rejected.

Finland is planning to set up transit centres for for those to be deported from those wanting to leave the country on a voluntary basis. Pictured: A migrant boy covered with blanket as he waits to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece

The deportations will take place gradually as immigration authorities process applications. Pictured: Refugees walk towards the border with Serbia from the transit center for refugees near northern Macedonian village of Tabanovce

Sweden is also planning to deport up to 80,000 people in the following years

Swedish migration minister Morgan Johansson said authorities faced a difficult task in deporting such large numbers

'We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,' interior minister Anders Ygeman told Swedish media.

Just like in Finland, the operation would require the use of specially chartered aircraft.

Anders estimated that Sweden would reject around half of the 163,000 asylum requests received in 2015.

Swedish migration minister Morgan Johansson said authorities faced a difficult task in deporting such large numbers, but insisted failed asylum seekers had to return home.

'Otherwise we would basically have free immigration and we can't manage that,' he told news agency TT.

The fresh clampdown came as at least 31 migrants died trying to reach Europe.

The bodies of 25 people, including 10 children, were found off the Aegean island of Samos.

The Italian navy said it had recovered six bodies from a sinking rubber boat off Libya.

In Bulgaria, the frozen bodies of two men, believed to be asylum-seekers, were found near the border with Serbia.
But Rowling says she had praised Twitter user for donating to her charity

JK Rowling was accused of defending 'abusive misogynist trolls' last night as an explosive Twitter spat broke out between the Harry Potter author and Scottish MP Natalie McGarry.

It ended with Rowling threatening to sue the Glasgow East MP, who was suspended by the SNP while police investigate missing donations from a pro-independence group.

McGarry sparked the row after claiming Rowling had supported an anti-Scottish nationalist Twitter user Brian Spanner, who has sent abusive tweets to McGarry and other pro-independence politicians in the past.

Feud: The pair have both been the subject of sexist abuse on Twitter but McGarry, pictured left, accused Rowling of 'bullying' behaviour and supporting 'misogynist trolls' in the public row last night

Accused: Natalie McGarry claimed JK Rowling defended sexist trolls in an explosive Twitter row last night

Confused: Rowling demanded to know why McGarry had made the apparently random accusation

Rowling, who received a string of sexist abuse for opposing nationalists during the Scottish referendum campaign, immediately demanded an explanation.

McGarry responded by sending a screenshot of the author describing Spanner as a 'good man' in a Tweet posted in October last year and accused Rowling of 'bullying'.

Then the row erupted.

Rowling - still confused why she had been accused of supporting sexism - demanded proof.

'You aren't some random hater, Natalie,' Rowling tweeted.

'You're an elected politician and you've accused me of supporting abuse and misogyny... you need to provide proof that I support misogynistic abuse or you need to apologise.'

McGarry sent her a screenshot of abusive comments Spanner had sent her, but Rowling explained that she was simply praising the Twitter user for supporting her charity, Lumos.

The pair went back and forth - as the rest of Twitter sat and observed.

There was a moment when it appeared like the spat was coming to an end, with McGarry tweeting: 'On reflection, I do apologise for any misguided inference that you support misogyny or abuse instead of the folk you tweet.'

But the two were soon feuding again after McGarry sent a screenshot of Rowling's comment describing Spanner as a 'good man' underneath one of Spanner's abusive remarks, which Rowling said had simply been cut and pasted to misrepresent her interaction with the Twitter user.

The 'proof': McGarry responded by sending Rowling a screenshot of her describing an anti-nationalist user, called Brian Spanner, as a 'good man' in October, but the Harry Potter author explained that she was praising him for supporting her charity, Lumos

Threatened: McGarry could face legal action over the accusations, according to this tweet sent by Rowling, which suggests she is considering suing the MP for defamation

There was a brief respite while McGarry had to catch a flight.

And when she landed, the MP announced she was leaving Twitter: 'Realised how much I now hate Twitter,' she wrote.

'It's been eight years, but it's over Twitter. We are finished.'

The Scottish MP has since made her Twitter account private - hiding her Twitter history.

The row came to an end after Rowling suggested she would take legal action against McGarry.

The Harry Potter author tweeted: 'You don't appear to understand how Twitter or defamation works.

'I'm going to help you out with the latter,' adding that any damages she wins will go to her charity.

Finally, McGarry cited the actual tweet from October 2015. Rowling responded by saying she was praising the account for donating to her charity, Lumos.

McGarry was forced to resign the SNP party whip last November after police named her as part of their investigation into allegations that 30,000 of donations had gone missing from the pro-independence campaign group Women for Independence (WFI).

Withdrawing the party whip leads to an automatic suspension from the party.

The suspension came just six months after winning the Glasgow East seat off former Shadow Scotland Secretary Margaret Curran.

McGarry, who co-founded WFI in 2012, denied any wrongdoing.

She was the second SNP MP to leave the party following Edinburgh West MP's Michelle Thomson suspension over allegations of mortgage fraud involving property deals.
He is due to be arraigned at Brooklyn Criminal Court later this morning

Ras Alula Nagarit, 37, handed himself into the NYPD on Thursday

The victim took a photograph of her alleged attacker and gave it to police

A man suspected of slashing a woman with a machete on the New York subway has handed himself into police after he allegedly threatened to 'chop up' his victim.

Ras Alula Nagarit is accused of attacking the woman on Tuesday at the Atlantic Avenue/Barclays Center station in Brooklyn.

The 37-year-old suspect handed himself in after the NYPD released a photograph taken by the victim moments before the attack.

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Ras Alula Nagarit, pictured, has been charged in connection with Tuesday's subway attack in Brooklyn

It is alleged that Nagarit, pictured, told the victim 'I will chop you up' before slashing her with a machete

Nagarit, pictured, handed himself into police after the NYPD released photographs taken by the alleged victim

The woman told detectives that the suspect warned 'I will chop you up' before slashing her on the hand.

The pair were riding on a 3 train in Brooklyn at the time of the attack.

According to the New York Post, Nagarit was charged with assault, criminal possession of a weapon and menacing. He is due to appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court for arraignment later this morning.

There have been at least five suspected slasher attacks on the subway since the beginning of the year.

Earlier this week, Damon Knowles was charged with assault with intent to cause and serious physical injury.

Carmen Rivera, a mother-of-three and grandmother-of-nine, was attacked on Monday morning on a southbound 6 train that was approaching the Bleecker Street station around 7.15am.

Damon Knowles, 21, was taken into custody late on Tuesday night suspected of slashing Carmen River, 71

Courageous: Carmen Rivera, a 71-year-old grandmother-of-nine, smiles as she returns to her home in the Bronx on Tuesday, one day after she was slashed by a stranger on her morning commute to work

Optimistic: Rivera, who takes the same train to work each day, needed 30 stitches to close the four-inch cut

Damon Knowles, pictured, was escorted to Manhattan Criminal Court where he was charged with the attack

The NYPD said a male passenger sitting across from Rivera lashed out at her. Both the man and Rivera got off at the next stop.

Footage from inside the subway station shows the suspect jumping over the turnstile as he ran away.

Knowles reportedly became a suspect after he was charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest in another incident on Tuesday, according to the Daily News.

Speaking outside her home on Tuesday, Rivera said she did not realize she had been cut until getting off the train.

She said the man fell on her as she was sitting, and somehow managed to hide the slashing and the blade.

Rivera needed 30 stitches to close the four-inch cut on her left cheek.

However she insisted on returning to her job as a sample maker on Tuesday, and remains defiant about what happened to her.

'What's going to happen is going to happen. That's it,' she told CBS New York.

'I'm not afraid. I've never been afraid. I guess that is just me.'

'I take that train every morning.'

Family members said Rivera initially denied what happened to her, saying she had cut herself at work, before finally admitting that she was attacked.

Knowles, pictured, was arrested following Monday's attack on the 6 train which injured Carmen Rivera

Wounded: The injured woman was taken to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a four-inch laceration to her face

Anthony Cristopher-Smith, 30, from Newark, New Jersey, was walking in the East village on January 19 when a man yelling profanities knocked him off his feet and slashed him in the face from his ear to his jawline.

Police later arrested Francis Salud, 28, in connection to the attack. Salud has also been charged for a similar attack on East 23rd Street in October.

On New Year's Day, a 28-year-old woman suffered a facial wound at the hands of a total stranger in The Bronx, and less than a week later, 24-year-old Amanda Morris was sliced with a sharp object while walking to work in Chelsea.

Kari Bazemore, a 41-year-old man suffering from mental illness, has been charged in connection to both attacks. He was also linked to several similar incidents across the city in recent months.

Amanda Morris was viciously slashed in the face on her daily commute to work in Chelsea on January 6
A hand grenade failed to detonate when it was hurled at a refugee home in Germany in the early hours of Friday morning.

The attack was a significant escalation in the violence against asylum seekers and could have caused deaths and serious injuries had it exploded.

A weapons specialist was deployed to detonate the grenade at the asylum centre in Villingen-Schwenningen in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

Attack: A hand grenade was hurled at an asylum centre in Villingen-Schwenningen in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemberg overnight

Police confirmed the pin had been pulled and that the grenade was live, but had failed to go off.

A security guard noticed the grenade at 1:30am on the ground outside the entrance. and alerted the authorities.

Police evacuated the premises and adjacent streets before the grenade was exploded beneath a pile of sandbags.

Investigators search the area of the crime scene for evidence. Around 250 people are housed in the home.

Firefighters prepare hoses outside an asylum seekers' shelter in Villingen-Schwenningen, after someone threw an explosive device over the fence

Lucky: Although the pin had been pulled and the grenade was live, the explosive failed to go off, police said

Police warned two months ago that the spiking levels of hatred against refugees was driving a spike in membership of far right groups committed to terrorist levels of violence against migrants.

In the past year firebombs have been used against refugee accommodations, stones hurled at windows, paint smeared on facades and acid poured in hallways - but this is the first incident of a military weapon being used against them.

Police in the Black Forest town where the grenade attack took place said they had no clues so far who was behind it.

'I think we can say for sure the perpetrators did not belong to the local 'Refugees Welcome' group,' said local police spokesman Thomas Kalmbach.
Government minister admits that the firm should pay more in the future

Staff working for Google in London are paid an average wage of 160,000, despite the firm insisting its UK operation is small-scale.

The internet giant agreed a controversial 130million deal with the taxman after insisting its sales are completed in Ireland - allowing it to avoid 20 per cent corporation tax usually due in the UK.

But it emerged today that the 2,300 staff based in its swanky London offices were paid a total of 562million over an 18-month period as well as receiving 148million in share based bonuses.

Pictured: One of Google's three central London offices. The company's 2,300 staff earn an average salary of 160,000, despite the firm claiming most of its business is done in Ireland

The huge wage pot was divided between more than 1,000 marketing staff, nearly 800 researchers and 450 managers.

Critics say the figures throw further doubt on the company's claims that its tax bill in Britain is low because its operation here is small.

Margaret Hodge, former chair of the public accounts committee, told the Guardian: 'This unmasks the reality of their business. [Google UK] is not a back office support office. These are clearly people who are paid a lot because they add value.'

Google has five British offices that helped the tech giant make 6billion in profit over ten years, it emerged this week.

The company claims that all UK sales are 'closed' in Dublin, with its lower rate of tax, allowing the US business to legally avoid an estimated 200million a year in UK tax.

The 130million 10-year deal with HM Revenue and Customs on back taxes was hailed as a 'victory' by Mr Osborne when it was announced at the weekend, but immediately came under fire.

Pictures emerged this week of the trendy offices where its army of UK-based workers relax and make deals

Briton Barney Jones, 37, who worked for the company between 2002 and 2006, said 'heads should roll' at HMRC for agreeing the 'sweetheart' deal after he handed them over 100,000 emails to the taxman he claims proved the tech giant does business in the UK.

It also was also reported today that the much-heralded 'Google tax' which the Chancellor said would be his weapon against multi-national companies, was not used against Google.

The 'diverted profit tax' (DPT) was designed to tackle firms who registered their British sales in other countries, such as Ireland.

But The Times reported today that the tax was not used in the securing the web giant's 130million tax bill, because officials decided the firm's offshore arrangements were legitimate.

It is feared the decision could allow the company and others to move millions of pounds offshore without having to pay tax on them.

Transport Secretary Mr McLoughlin last night admitted the company's bill should be increased in the future.

Former chair of the public accounts committee Margaret Hodge said the figures expose the true scale of the company's UK operation. Transport Secretary Mr McLoughlin said: 'There is more for them to pay'

He said: 'The truth is it's a move in the right direction. There is more for them to pay and I want them to pay more in future.'

Appearing on BBC1's Question Time, he said: 'Of course I would like to see Google make more payments to the country. I would like to see them employ more people in this country.

'They do employ 3,000 people, top end jobs, they are doing a lot of investment in this country as well, which is actually good for the long-term economic future of the country.

'But I believe in a low tax base, I believe in attracting companies here, but I believe when those companies are here they should pay their tax which is rightly collected.

'But companies can and have found ways around paying taxation and we have made a lot of changes to the taxation system that actually will make them pay more over years to come.'

So now we know how much tax Google will be paying - but what about the UK's other massive multi-nationals?

FACEBOOK: PAYING A TINY TAX BILL EVEN SMALLER THAN GOOGLE'S Facebook is one of the companies whose tax affairs have provoked the most anger. The social network handed over just 4,327 in company taxes last year - less than the average British worker. The company's 362 UK staff took home an average of 210,000 in pay and bonuses last year, according to its latest accounts. Facebook's British arm was able to slash its tax bill by reporting an accounting loss of 28.5million last year, having handed out 35.4million to its workers through a share bonus scheme. This scheme was worth more than 97,000 on average for each member of staff, the company accounts show. It was reported earlier this week that the company has vowed to 'defend any and all such claims' for back taxes from HMRC. Advertisement

AMAZON: SALES TAKEN THROUGH LUXEMBOURG ARM TO REDUCE TAX Amazon last year revealed that its UK business paid 11.9million in tax on 5.3billion worth of sales to British shoppers. The online retailing giant recorded sales up 14 per cent last year, according to Companies House filings. But the group's Amazon.co.uk subsidiary reported a profit of just 34.4million and thus incurred a tax bill of 11.9million. Amazon employs more than 7,700 people in the UK and its sales in the country account for 9.4 per cent of its global turnover. But sales in Britain are taken through the group's Luxembourg arm, called Amazon EU Sarl. The Luxembourg business is where sales from many countries in Europe are booked and are not taxed in the country where the shopper carried out the transaction. Advertisement

APPLE: MARKET IS BOOMING FOR ITS PRODUCTS BUT BILL STILL LOW Electronics giant Apple paid only 11.8million, figures released last year show, despite raking in profits estimated at almost 2billion. Some tax experts said the bill was up to400million short of possible taxes the firm could have paid. The public's insatiable appetite for its iPhones and iPads have made Apple the most valuable company in the world, with an estimated value of more than 500billion. But it funnels its vast sales though Ireland to whittle down its tax bills in the UK and other countries. Corporate accounts show Apple made 116billion of sales globally in the 12 months to September 2014. Advertisement
Two migrants claiming to be 15 and 17 have been arrested after an alleged sex attack on a 12-year-old girl at a home for underaged refugees in Germany.

The pair allegedly targeted the victim independently at the housing for unaccompanied minors in Dusseldorf, with at least one of the attacks being witnessed by another child.

However, the six-year-old witness had not reported the incident to staff after one of the attackers threatened to 'cut his throat' if he told on them, according to local media.

The two asylum seekers both claim to be under 18 and had been place in the same housing as the 12-year-old girl they allegedly assaulted (pictured are migrants and refugees waiting outside a registry office in Berlin)

Days after Swedish police admitted they had no ID for a Somalian '15-year-old' who allegedly murdered a social worker, German police also say they have no proof of age for the perpetrators.

They are now being kept in custody while police frantically try to investigate the alleged sex attack and confirm their claimed ages.

Dusseldorf prosecutor Ralf Herrenbruck confirmed: 'The court has confirmed that they need to be kept in custody and are charged with sexual abuse of a child and making threats.'

The allegations against the pair suggest that they had both separately taken the opportunity to take advantage of the 12-year-old on 24th of January this year .

The pair, who also threatened to kill a six-year-old boy who witnessed the alleged sexual assault, had told German border police they were 15 and 17, but their age has not yet been proven

Both the alleged attackers and their victim was staying at the government-provided housing where they were being given care and accommodation.

It is said they used violence to force her into sex acts, with local media reporting that the two had apparently acted independently to target the same girl.
Two airport policemen and a baggage handler are suspected of helping him put the bomb on board

Sources said Egypt Air mechanic has since been detained over the crash

An Egypt Air mechanic whose cousin is an ISIS fighter is among four people arrested on suspicion of planting a bomb on board the Russian passenger jet that crashed in Sinai.

So far Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, was brought down by terrorism.

A senior security official at the airline denied that any of its employees had been arrested over the crash or were under suspicion over the crash, which killed all 224 people on board. An Interior Ministry official also said there had been no arrests.

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An Egypt Air mechanic whose cousin is an ISIS fighter is among four people arrested on suspicion of planting a bomb on board the Russian passenger jet that crashed in Sinai

But the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, said the mechanic had been detained, along with two airport policemen and a baggage handler suspected of helping him put the bomb on board.

'After learning that one of its members had a relative that worked at the airport, Islamic State delivered a bomb in a handbag to that person,' said one of the sources, adding the suspect's cousin joined ISIS in Syria 18 months ago.

'He was told to not ask any questions and get the bomb on the plane.'

Another source said of the other suspects: 'Two policemen are suspected of playing a role by turning a blind eye to the operation at a security checkpoint. But there is a possibility that they were just not doing their jobs properly.'

None of the four have been prosecuted so far, the sources told Reuters.

The crash has called into question Egypt's drive to eradicate Islamist militancy and hurt its tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy.

So far Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, was brought down by terrorism

ISIS's Egypt affiliate is waging an insurgency in parts of the Sinai, although mostly far from the tourist resorts along its Red Sea coast.

Russia and Western countries have long said that they believe the flight was brought down by a bomb smuggled on board.

Egypt however has so far publicly said it has not found any evidence of foul play.

Any formal charges or official Egyptian confirmation that a bomb brought down the Airbus A321 could potentially expose Egypt to compensation payments to the families of the victims.

The EgyptAir senior security official said state security police had investigated all workers at Sharm el-Sheikh airport without finding any evidence implicating any of them.

The crash has called into question Egypt's drive to eradicate Islamist militancy and hurt its tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy

The official said state security traced the family connections of all the employees and they were cleared.

'Any employee who shows sympathy to militants is prevented from going to work in any airport,' he told Reuters.

An Interior Ministry source also said no one had been arrested in connection with the crash.
A 21-year-old woman escaped from police after she managed to uncuff herself and takeoff in a police vehicle.

Tori Hostetler had been arrested by law-enforcement officers in Hendricks County, Indiana, after she was pulled over in a car which was believed to be stolen from Indianapolis.

Several agencies were involved in the arrest last week, with Hostetler ultimately being loaded into a police deputy's SUV and left alone while officers investigated the car in question.

Hamilton County Sheriff Mark Bowen said his deputy's action were standard practice for a person arrested who is not considered a high risk.

Hamilton County Sheriff Mark Bowen (pictured) said his deputy's action were standard practice for a person arrested who is not considered a high risk

Hostetler, who can be seen in the video below speaking to Fox59 about her escape from Hendricks County jail, was on the run for 12 hours before officers tracked her down in Henry County.

Sheriff Bowen said: 'She was handcuffed by a different agency, searched by an officer from another agency, and then placed in the back of our patrol vehicle.

'It almost appears as if she had a key or some type of a device to assist her in getting out of those handcuffs.'

Hostetler, who now faces charges across three counties, said it hadn't been difficult to get away in the SUV.

'The handcuffs weren't tight enough. I slipped out of them and I jumped in the driver's seat and I didn't want to come back to jail so I drove away,' she said.

She said that she now regrets her decision and is hoping someone will help her.

'Those things didn't go through my head at the time. They definitely are now when I think about my family, you know, and I really want to see my family,' she added.

According to court filings, this is Hostetler's third resisting arrest charge in two years. She faces new charges in Hendricks, Madison and Henry counties.

Bowen said he will review policies and procedures to see if changes can be made to ensure this will not happen again.

Investigation: Hamilton County police said they will review policies and procedures to see if changes can be made to ensure it won't happen again
The British Monarchy is currently advertising for a helicopter pilot for the Queen, pictured here with air ambulance pilot grandson Prince William

Prince William may think he is entitled for a pay-rise after the Queen posted a job advert for a helicopter pilot - with a salary double that of rescue pilot Wills.

The British Monarchy website is currently advertising the role online, offering up to 78,500 a year for the successful candidate who will be tasked with transporting the Queen across the country.

The Royal Family itself has several helicopter pilots in its ranks, most notably Prince William, who serves as an air ambulance pilot in East Anglia.

The future king, a former RAF Search and Rescue pilot, is paid a salary of 40,000 for the role, all of which he donates to charity, after tax.

Unsurprisingly, the advert calls for applicants to have 'high levels of attention to detail and time management skills', while VVIP (very, very important person) experience is 'highly desirable'.

The post adds: 'The Queens Helicopter Flight (TQHF) consists of a small team of pilots and ground support, providing the highest standard of helicopter service to Members of the Royal Family on official engagements.

'Joining the team, you'll take on the role of either Co-Pilot or Aircraft Commander, operating a Sikorsky S76 C++ helicopter or AgustaWestland 109S.

'You'll be responsible for the planning and safe execution of flights in accordance with TQHF Operations Manual.

'With extensive flying experience you'll hold a CPL(H) with instrument rating, and a Class 1 medical. S-76C++ and AW109S type ratings and Corporate/VVIP experience are also highly desirable.

'With high levels of attention to detail and time management skills, you're capable of planning accurate flight plans and are driven to operate consistently to the highest standard.

'Your initiative and problem solving skills mean that you can think ahead and act proactively.

'Flexibility is essential as you'll be required to undertake travel across the UK and overnight as necessary.'

Prince William serves as an air ambulance pilot in East Anglia, a role for which he is paid a salary of 40,000, all of which he donates to charity, after tax

The successful candidate will be paid a salary of between 55,500 and 78,500, depending on their experience.

The ad reveals they will be based at Buckingham Palace and will work the standard 37.5 hours per week, five days a week, while enjoying 33 days of annual leave, as well as bank holidays.

Like Prince William, his brother Harry, his father Charles and his uncle Andrew are all experienced helicopter pilots, as is the Queen's husband Prince Philip.
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This is the astonishing moment a pregnant rhino very nearly became dinner for three opportunistic lions after she slipped into a watering hole and was surrounded by the hungry beasts.

The black rhino was spotted by tourists drinking from the watering hole in Etosha National Park, South Africa, when she lost her footing and fell in.

Heavily pregnant, the large animal struggled to pull herself up onto the bank, sliding back into the water on every desperate attempt.

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Stuck in the mud: The pregnant rhino struggled to pull herself up onto the bank, sliding back into the water on every desperate attempt

Vultures: Realising an opportunity for an easy lunch, three hungry lions approached the watering hole and began to circle the tired animal

Realising an opportunity for an easy lunch, three hungry lions approached the bank and began to circle the tired animal like vultures.

Rhinos are not considered to have any predators other than humans, who hunt them for their horns, suggesting the lions smelt vulnerability and were reacting entirely on instinct.

The rhino - naturally armoured to the teeth - was determined to save herself and the life of her unborn calf and mustered her last bit of strength to pull herself from the water.

Seizing on the opportunity, the lions can be seen jumping onto her back and attempting to sink their teeth into her as she struggles to break free.

Fortunately for the rhino, she manages to shake off the predators and escape unharmed as the lions consider another way to mount an attack.

British tourist David Wederell, was lucky enough to capture the drama unfolding while on a guided safari tour in South Africa.

Opportunistic: Rhinos are not considered to have any predators other than humans, suggesting the lions were reacting entirely on instinct

Exhausted: The video maker could see the rhino was becoming physically tired and the sound of her breathing was loud and clear

The 31-year-old from Essex said: 'We had driven to various watering holes to try our luck of further sightings and it was whilst we were at our final stop of the evening safari the black Rhino came out of the bush and ventured to the watering hole for a drink.

'It was a very peaceful end of the day until of course it dramatically changed when she unexpectedly lost her footing and slipped and fell in.

'We were about 150 feet from the Rhino, the Lions that became attracted to the commotion and noise of the Rhino actually came from behind our truck so were extremely close as they passed by.

'I started filming to capture the Rhino in the watering hole, expecting her to eventually climb out.

'Of course there was no way I knew what was going to happen next with the three lions, it was just by chance I still was recording at the time.

Last gasp effort: Determined to save herself and the life of her unborn, the rhino mustered all her strength to escape the watering hole

Survival: Seizing on the opportunity, the lions jump onto the rhino's back and attempt to sink their teeth into her as she struggles

'The rhino tried to pull herself out of the watering hole but could not get her footing. We could see she was becoming physically exhausted and the sounds of her heavy breathing were loud and clear from our viewpoint.

'It was as a result of this and the noise of the water splashing that caught the attention of three young male lions.

'From behind our truck they came to the watering hole to investigate and quickly saw the rhino in the water.

'Very quickly they surrounded her at the water's edge but you could see they weren't sure quite how to take down the Rhino for their dinner.

'Just as an opportunity presented itself for one of the lions to get onto the rhino's back, most likely out of panic and determination the Rhino finally found her footing and managed to pull herself out of the water.

Live to fight another day: Fortunately for the rhino, she manages to shake off the predators and escape the dangerous situation unharmed

Experience: The video maker said there was a huge sense of relief when the pregnant rhino finally escaped the clutches of the lions

'She then chased off the three lions, finishing with a charge before turning her back and trotting off back into the bush to live for another day.

'There was a real sense of excitement and awe of what was happening and a real mixture of emotions.

'I definitely wanted the Rhino to escape, especially so with their endangered status and she was also pregnant so it would have been very sad if she was killed but on the other hand, to see first-hand three lions take down an animal like that would have been quite spectacular.
A Russian fighter jet 'buzzed' a US surveillance aircraft passing within 20 feet when it intercepted its target over the Black Sea.

The Su-27 Flanker passed dangerously close to the Boeing RC-135 which was 30 miles from the Russian coast while flying over international waters.

According to US officials, the Russian jet drew alongside the surveillance aircraft before turning away violently and hitting it with the jet blast from its engines.

A Russian SU-27 Flanker, file photo, passed within 20 feet of the US surveillance aircraft on Monday

The Russians intercepted the Boeing RC-135, file photo, which was flying over international waters

This 'disturbed the controllability' of the larger aircraft.

Navy Captain Daniel Hernandez, chief spokesman of the US European Command told the Washington Free Beacon: ' On Jan. 25 an RC-135 aircraft flying a routine route in international airspace over the Black Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner.

'We are looking into the issue.'

The Boeing RC-135 carries state-of-the-art signals intelligence equipment onboard according to the US airforce is able to 'detect, identify and geolocate signals throughout the electromagnetic spectrum'.

As well as three pilots and two navigators, the aircraft carries electronic warfare officers and intelligence officers.

The high-tech surveillance equipment enables the operators to collect mobile phone and radio data from a target area.

There are a rising number of complaints of Russian military aircraft flying in a belligerent fashion over international waters.

In October 2015, the US Navy scrambled four F/A-18s when two Russian Tu-142 Bear aircraft approached the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier while it was operating off the Korean peninsula.

The two Russian surveillance aircraft were flying at a height of just 500 feet and did not respond to any radio messages.

The FA-18s intercepted the Russian aircraft when they approached within a mile of the US aircraft carrier.

The issue of interceptions is especially tense at present because both Russia and the United States are conducting air operations over Syria. The two nations have signed 'a memorandum of understanding' to prevent any 'accidents' while over Syrian territory.

The Russians have dramatically improved their anti-aircraft capability in Syria since a Turkish F-16 shot down one of their Su-24s in November 2015. The Turkish military claimed the Russian jet had encroached its airspace.
Andong Ashu outside Hull Crown Court, where he has been sentenced for abusing an 11-year-old girl

An NHS scientist granted asylum in Britain has been jailed for the abuse and rape of a young girl while performing fake medical examinations.

Cameroon-born Andong Ashu, 45, conducted the bogus examinations to begin abusing the girl when she was just 11 years old.

The assaults, which happened in Hull, East Yorkshire, then became progressively more serious until Ashu began raping her.

The victim tried to fight him off and told him to stop, but was ignored, a court heard.

Ashu was convicted by a jury at Hull Crown Court of four counts of rape and seven other sexual assaults by majority verdicts and jailed for 21 years.

Ashu occasionally gave his victim 10 or 20 to maintain her silence, but she eventually plucked up the courage to report her ordeal to police.

The scientist is originally from Cameroon and was granted asylum after arriving in the UK in 2002 as a refugee.

He obtained a university degree before working in NHS laboratories.

Ashu, who still protests his innocence, forced the girl to relive her ordeal by giving evidence at his trial.

Richard Woolfall, prosecuting, read two victim personal statements from the woman, who was brave enough to attend court to give evidence against Ashu during his trial.

'She feels, in future, if she marries, she will not be able to trust her husband,' Mr Woolfall said.

'She used to be a religious person but finds now that her belief in God has gone as a result of this.'

He said she had problems sleeping since the abuse, but now felt she was getting her confidence back.

Sentencing him at the same court on Thursday, Judge Jeremy Richardson QC told him: 'Andong Abong Ashu, you are a depraved individual who visited appalling debauchery upon [the victim].

'You repeatedly sexually abused her in a vile fashion. You will be punished severely for your crimes.

'You are aged 45 years and you fall for sentence in respect of 11 counts of serious sexual crimes.

'You forced a trial and you were found guilty on each count by verdict of the jury.

'The majority of the jury saw through your bogus denial. You have forfeited what would have been potent mitigation by a guilty plea.

'Your conduct was both calculating and cruel. You engaged in vile sexual abuse. It was painful to listen to [the victim] giving her evidence of what you did.

'You betrayed every item of trust reposed in you. You commenced your abuse on the pretext of undertaking some form of medical or physical inspection of her.

'You spared her nothing. She was accused of telling lies. You put that girl through torment when you did what you did, and you added to her torment by forcing her to relive those appalling events.

'She still has feelings of worthlessness, finds it hard to trust people, and found giving evidence an utter ordeal.'

Ashu, of Manchester, must serve at least half his sentence before he can be considered for release, and had an additional year added to his licence period.

He must sign the sex offenders register for life and was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order of indefinite duration.
Victims face postcode lottery of justice as some areas badly underperform

Nine out of 10 burglaries in England and Wales go unsolved

Nearly 90 per cent of burglaries go unsolved as crime campaigners blasted the shockingly low success rate of police forces.

The worst performing forces in England and Wales, Wiltshire, Surrey, South Yorkshire and Sussex, solved between 8.3 and 9 per cent of reported burglaries.

The best performing force was in Dyfed-Powys, mid Wales, where officers had a 28.7 per cent success rate.

Dyfed-Powys also had the lowest number of burglaries, with just 2.5 per 1,000 people a year.

The highest was in Humberside and and West Yorkshire, where 10.8 people in every 1,000 fell victim to break-ins.

The average for England and Wales as a whole is 7.2 people per 1,000.

Coventry Police were accused of 'breaking and entering' and 'trespassing' after letting themselves into people's houses and tweeting pictures as part of a bizarre anti-burglary drive earlier in January

Chief Constable Sara Thornton (pictured), the 252,000-a-year head of the National Police Chiefs' Council, said burglary victims should no longer expect police officers to come to their homes

The alarming figures come after a number of forces explored some unusual alternative methods of combating burglaries.

Leicestershire police force refused to attend attempted burglaries at houses with odd numbers in a bizarre three month pilot scheme in the summer aimed at cutting costs.

From March 2013 to March 2014, Leicestershire police solved 11.3 per cent of burglaries.

Head of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), Sara Thornton, caused outrage when she said budget cuts meant victims could no longer expect officers to attend burglaries.

Coventry Police faced an angry backlash earlier in the month when officers began letting themselves into people's unlocked homes and tweeting pictures in an effort to demonstrate how unsecure some properties were.

The burglary figures, published yesterday by Churchill Home Insurance, show that during the 12 months before March 2014 just 12.2 per cent of burglaries were solved.

Director of engagement at Victim Support, Lucy Hastings, said: 'Burglary not only robs victims of their physical possessions, it can also rob people of their sense of security at home  a place where they should feel most safe.

'This crime can leave many people feeling vulnerable, frightened and distressed.'

These cocky crooks in Northampton managed to turn CCTV cameras on themselves before they broke in

The thieves were eventually scared off by the family dogs in a bungled raid in Weston Favell on January 19

A spokesman for the NPCC said: 'The police fully recognise the impact burglaries have on their victims.

'Research has shown us how to prevent repeat burglaries and that taking basic crime prevention measures work. Burglary rates are now at their lowest for thirty years.

'The best chance of achieving a successful outcome in a burglary investigation is either through the perpetrator being apprehended at the scene or by the retrieval of forensic material which can identify who has committed the crime.

'All the evidence points to this. The police service is constantly seeking new ways and new technologies to improve our chances of helping victims achieve justice.'
Looking scared and utterly alone in life, little Mo Ahmed wanders around the jungle refugee camp in Calais dreaming of a country he simply calls 'UK'.

'UK, UK,' says the child, as he points in the direction of England, less than 30 miles across the Channel.

The ten-year-old Syrian is one of a growing number of orphans who hope to claim asylum in their chosen European country.

Mo Ahmed (left) and Ahmed Shah (right), both 10, live in the jungle in Calais, France, and are among a growing number of Syrian children fleeing from their homelands in the hope of reaching Britain

He does not speak any more English, and relies on fellow travellers to keep an eye on him as he waits for a chance to leave France.

Through an interpreter, he told MailOnline that many members of his family had been killed during the bitter fighting in his homeland.

'My mother and father died, and I was left to get away by myself,' said Mo. 'It has been very hard, but people have been very kind.

'Now I want to go to the UK, where I will have a chance to go to school and to have a safe life with good people'

Save the Children has urged Britain to take in 3,000 orphaned refugee children who are in Europe.

But the plea has been rejected by David Cameron amid fears it could encourage more to make the treacherous journey across the continent.

Ten-year-old Syrian is one of a growing number of orphans who hope to claim asylum in their chosen European country - the UK

The number of children has dropped markedly around the Jungle over the past few weeks, as the French try to move them into more secure accommodation

Instead, the UK could take in unaccompanied children from refugee camps nearer to the Syrian border.

It is impossible for the authorities to verify Mo's story  many children give false names, and make up other details of their lives because they are scared of officials.

'We were always being attacked by men with guns and bombs,' said Mo. 'Of course there may be some of them who will come here to hurt us. We need protection  security is very important.'

My mother and father died, and I was left to get away by myself Ten-year-old orphan, Mo Ahmed

Mo has befriended Ahmed Shah, another ten-year-old Syrian boy, and the pair stand out as they play in the squalid refugee camp, just a couple of miles from the ferry port in Calais.

'We're great friends and we love to play together,' said Mo. 'We both come from the same country, and have had some terrible times.'

The number of children has dropped markedly around the Jungle over the past few weeks, as the French try to move them into more secure accommodation.

But Syrians like Mo and Ahmed continue to arrive by the day, as the five-year long war in their country intensifies.

The UN Human Rights Commissioner estimates more than 4million people have left the country since the conflict broke out in 2011, with an additional 7.6million people displaced within the country.

Mo (pictured) relies on fellow travellers to keep an eye on him as he waits for a chance to leave France

The main fear is that children will fall prey to criminals including pimps and paedophiles targeting the young and vulnerable

Meanwhile, thousands of refugee children have simply walked out of camps in the Middle East, blending in to vast crowds heading towards Europe.

Refugees cannot be detained in migration centres by force so if they want to leave, there is nothing the authorities can do.

Once in Europe, Syrians have joined up with other migrant children from countries such as Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan and Somalia.

Some 13,000 unaccompanied minors reached Italy alone in 2015, and often the only word of English they had was the name of their chosen destination.

The main fear was that they would fall prey to criminals including pimps and paedophiles targeting the young and vulnerable.

Save the Children has urged Britain to take in 3,000 orphaned refugee children who are in Europe. Refugees staying in the Calais jungle are pictured making a break from the camp towards the Euro Tunnel

Refugees queue for aid at the Calais jungle. The number of children has dropped markedly around the Jungle over the past few weeks, as the French try to move them into more secure accommodation

Michela Vittoria Brambilla, head of a parliamentary commission on children in Italy, which is often the place of entry for children such as Mo and Ahmed, said: 'It's a crisis within the broader migration crisis. I appeal to the government to dedicate more attention to the problem.'

A spokesman for the British charity Save the Children said: 'Unaccompanied children are at the greatest risk from people traffickers. Some are being forced into manual labour, domestic work, drug smuggling and prostitution.'

Calais council meanwhile insisted that it was working with aid groups to make sure that youngsters like Mo and Ahmed were well looked after.

'In terms of humanitarian aid, children without guardians are our priority,' said a council spokesman.

'That's why there are fewer of them around the camp. Our priority is to make sure all are housed, and given help in working out their futures.'

Calais council insists that it was working with aid groups to make sure that youngsters like Mo and Ahmed were well looked after

The British government has said it will accept more unaccompanied child refugees from Syria and other conflict zones

The British government has, meanwhile, said it will accept more unaccompanied child refugees from Syria and other conflict zones.

The Home Office will work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to identify 'exceptional cases' from camps in Syria and neighbouring countries.

The government also said it was giving 10m to help vulnerable refugee minors already in Europe  some could be brought to

the UK 'where it is in their best interests', said a spokesman.
MailOnline went inside lawless town where eyes of Europe have been watching since the senseless stabbing

Standing on a street corner in the pitch black night, a youth brandishes a broken walking stick like a weapon.

Wrapped up warm in a thick parka coat Mohammed jokes with his friends as passers-by watch the gang of unruly youths hanging around one of the few shops still open with suspicion.

As I approach, the 16-year-old drops the baton, his friend kicks it away, trying to hide it.

Ruined: The Gothenburg suburb of Molndal is in the spotlight this week after the young, beautiful social worker Alexandra Mezher, 22, was stabbed to death in a frenzied attack at the child migrant centre where she worked

Menacing: Miss Mezher's killing is the latest in a long line of migrant related crime in the town which took 4,000 unaccompanied child refugees last year - more than any other town or city in Sweden

Trouble: Those living in the town say its landscape has been changed by the sudden influx of 8,000 migrants last year. Police say they are so over-stretched and have to let some offences go  particularly drug crime

Molndal is the best place in the world, Mohammed claims. I have lived here my whole life. I wouldnt want to live anywhere else.

His family arrived in Sweden as refugees in the 1980s. Iraqi Kurds they were forced to flee Saddam Hussein merciless vendetta against this persecuted people.

His father stayed on to fight the regime  a volunteer to the fearless Peshmerga fighters, Mohammed announces proudly.

Sweden is very good for people who want to live a peaceful life, the youngster explains in flawless English.

Everyone is treated with respect. And Swedish people are kind.

Mohammeds friends have similar stories. Many were born in Sweden, others arrived as children  all of their families are from other countries  the Middle East, Africa or Eastern Europe.

At my school there are people from 25 different countries, he tells me.

And there are lots of new kids at school who have just arrived as refugees.

Migrants: The town received 22.6million from the government last year to house young migrants, which is more per capita than any other town in Sweden. Mohamed, 16, an Iraqi Kurd, told MailOnline: Molndal is the best place in the world. I wouldnt want to live anywhere else'

Landscape: But others in the town disagree and blame Sweden's politicians for Sweden's open door policy. Our f***ing politicians should be shot, one outspoken Swede told MailOnline. What the f*** were they thinking opening our doors to everyone?

Fear: Some say with migration has brought fear. At night on the streets, one woman told our reporter: 'The refugee children gather on the bridge at night. There are lights and it is warm do it us somewhere to go for them. But people become worried when they see gangs of youths hanging around at night'

Deserted: The town's main shopping centre is a no go zone for most people at night because they fear the armed gangs roaming the streets at night looking for trouble

A 20-minute tram ride from the glittering water-fronted centre of Swedens second city, Gothenburg, Molndal is already one of the countrys most diverse communities. And when Europes migration crisis erupted last year city leaders stepped forward with open arms to help.

The Gothenburg suburb accepted more unaccompanied refugee children than anywhere else in the country  4,041 added to a population of 63,000. In the autumn 400 refugee kids were taken in every week.

In 2014, Molndal received 22.6million to provide housing for unaccompanied minors  the most state funding per capita than any town or city in Sweden.

Molndal is home to the huge Sagasen refugee centre that houses up to 1,000 new arrivals.

Last year, Sweden, with a population of 9.8 million, took in more than 160,000 asylum seekers. Just over three out of every 2,000 citizens are now refugees.

Most of the new kids have special lessons at the moment, Mohammed explains. They need to learn Swedish before they can join us in class.

Exploiting the warmth and lighting of Molndals bus station to chat and play on their smart phones are two such recent arrivals. Abdasis and his friend left Somalia just over a year ago.

The pair have only praise for Sweden  despite the long, cold dark nights of winter  because it has offered them sanctuary.

Sweden is good place, Abdasis, 16, said in broken English. Somalia is war, always war, no peace. Sweden is peace, happiness, life.

Not everyone in Molndal or Gothenburg agrees.

New arrivals: Abdasis and his friend left Somalia just over a year ago. The pair have only praise for Sweden  despite the long, cold dark nights of winter  because it has offered them sanctuary. Sweden is good place, Abdasis, 16, said in broken English. Somalia is war, always war, no peace. Sweden is peace, happiness, life

Crime: The Gothenburg suburb accepted more unaccompanied refugee children than anywhere else in the country  4,041 added to a population of 63,000. In the autumn 400 refugee kids were taken in every week

Weapons: As our reporter approached Mohamed the 16-year-old dropped his wooden baton and one of his gang kicked it away

Our f***ing politician should be shot, one out-spoken Swede told MailOnline this week.

What the f*** were they thinking opening our doors to everyone?

The pedestrian bridge over the main road through Molndal has become a meeting place for young refugees, residents claim.

One said: 'The refugee children gather on the bridge at night. There are lights and it is warm do it us somewhere to go for them.

'But people become worried when they see gangs of youths hanging around at night.'

Others gather outside the cut-price supermarket Netto in s housing estate a short walk from the station.

Tribute: Miss Mezher's mother described her as a 'angel' - and blamed Sweden's politicians for the country's migrant crisis

A playground and a basketball court are also popular meeting points.

Another resident said: 'this used to be a good area. Now look at it.'

The murder of social worker Alexandra Mezher at a home for unaccompanied refugees this week has shone the spotlight on the countrys controversial open-door immigration policy.

The 22-year-olds mother Chimene, who arrived in Sweden as a refugee, claims the country is no longer safe.

Heartbroken Mrs Mezher said: We left Lebanon to escape the civil war, the violence and the danger. We came to Sweden where it was safe, to start a family. But it is not safe anymore.

Her husband Bourous, 45, moved to Sweden from Beirut in 1989 and built up a pizza business. Mrs Mezher, who has three sons, said: 'She was not just my daughter, she was my angel. She was a just and fair human being. There were so many who loved her. She was my daughter, my friend.'

She blamed Swedish politicians for a dramatic rise in immigration in Molndal  particularly of unaccompanied children.

Officers in Molndal say they have had to ignore lesser offences such as drug-dealing because they are so overrun by migrant crime, with gang fights and violent assaults.

And in capital Stockholm police this week warned that the capital's main train station was 'overrun' by gangs of Moroccan street children 'stealing and groping girls'.

Swedish police revealed they have sent plain-clothes officers to monitor swimming baths in Stockholm after increased reports of sexual harassment of girls and women.

It was also claimed this week police had been forced to flee after being attacked by a mob of asylum seekers as they tried to relocate a ten-year-old boy amid allegations he had been 'raped repeatedly' at a refugee centre.

And staff at a migrant centre in Sweden had to flee where 19 asylum seekers ran riot with weapons.

Crime statistics in Molndal also contradict Abdasiss assessment of peace, happiness, life in the town.

Police say they have responded to four or five emergency calls from refugee centres in the Gothenburg area  which includes Molndal  every day since late October.

The citys most up-to-date crime figures reveal there were 372 incidents reported which led to 222 criminal complaints linked to migrant centres  between 20 October 2015 and 8 January this year.

Molndals politicians have refused to explain their open-door immigration policy.

Marie Osth Karlsson, leader of Molndal district council, thanked MailOnline for a request to discuss immigration, Swedens most pressing issue.

But she added: At the moment I choose not to give any interview on this topic [immigration].

Police complain they are stretched to breaking point in having to deal with the rising migrant crime wave.

Beauty: The murder of social worker Alexandra Mezher (pictured) at a home for unaccompanied refugees this week has shone the spotlight on the countrys controversial open-door immigration policy

Murder scene: The 22-year-old social worker was stabbed at this shelter for child migrants at 8am on Monday. She had worked alone on an overnight shift at the centre for refugees aged 14-17

Charged: Somali-born Youssaf Khaliif Nuur is accused of murdering Alexandra Mezher. He appeared in court yesterday and was remanded in custody until February 11. He is being held in a psychiatric hospital

We have become completely overwhelmed, one policeman with over 30-years-service with Gothenburg Police told MailOnline.

We have given up with narcotic crime. We just dont have the resources.

Instead officers are trying to fight back the explosion of violent street crime that has erupted in recent months.

There are 20 robberies in Gothenburg every day  usually with violence. This week an 83-year-old lady had a gun put in her face when she was mugged on her way to play bingo. They got away with just 50 Kroner [about 4]. Gothenburg police source

I have worked in Gothenburg for over 30 years and I have never known anything like it, the officer told MailOnline.

I will not let my children go into the city after 2pm and especially not at night.

There are violent gangs roaming around the streets and the use of knives and other weapons have become normal, rather than a rarity as it used to be,

There are 20 robberies in Gothenburg every day  usually with violence or the threat of violence.

This week an 83-year-old lady had a gun put in her face when she was mugged on her way to play bingo. They got away with just 50 Kroner [about 4].

In the summer there were mass shootings with lots of people killed, including a little girl.

He added the city streets were now at the mercy of gangs of young men mainly from North Africa.

The police source revealed: In the past couple of months we have noticed a dramatic increase in street robbery. This is a new phenomenon.

Menacing: One officer told MailOnline that there were 'violent gangs roaming around the streets and the use of knives and other weapons have become normal'

Police: A source in Gothenburg's police department told MailOnline: They will do anything to get money  steal a persons wallet, iPhone, jewellery. And then they will attack their victim and kick them half to death'

Dark: The Gothenburg suburb accepted more unaccompanied refugee children than anywhere else in the country  4,041 added to a population of 63,000

They will do anything to get money  steal a persons wallet, iPhone, jewellery. And then they will attack their victim and kick them half to death.

Drug crime has gone through the roof. Every drug is available on the street nowadays, even in broad daylight.
The pair argued it went against the county's

A jury in America has awarded two beggars what is likely to be their biggest ever handout after they said local sheriffs had violated their rights.

Kim Pindak, 63, and Sam Phillips, 57, have been given a total of $3,000 after deputy sheriffs in downtown Chicago ordered them to stop begging, which violated their rights as laid down in the country's constitution.

Jurors returned after just four hours of deliberations with a finding that the failure of the Cook County Sheriff's Office to train officers on beggars' rights led its deputies taking the action they did.

The claimants said the deputies' actions went against their free-speech rights under the First Amendment.

Case is over: Kim Pindak stands outside Chicago's federal courthouse - he and fellow beggar Sam Phillips claimed their rights of free speech had been violated

Their lawyers said securing a finding that departments must ensure staff understand beggars' rights - not money - was why they chose to litigate the case for almost six years. The $3,000 award was also more than they expected to win.

Attorney Adele Nicholas said outside court: 'It's wonderful that two people who panhandle to make ends meet can come to court and hold accountable the sheriff of one of the largest counties in the nation,'

A lawyer representing the sheriff's department, Anthony Zecchin, referred during closing arguments to Pindak's talent at chess, alleging several times that his lawsuit was primarily a money-making scheme.

The attorney told jurors: 'You're just pawns being manipulated by Mr. Pindak.'

Speaking outside court after the decision, Pindak said he plans to spend most of the $1,500 on necessities, including clothes and shoes.

'And I might get a chess book or two,' he added.

The next step, Nicholas said, would be asking the presiding judge in Chicago, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, to issue an injunction ordering Sheriff Tom Dart to train staff properly.

While the jurors' decision went against the sheriff's department as a whole, they did find in favor of Sheriff's Deputy Laverne Nance, concluding he didn't violate the men's rights as an individual officer.

A brief statement released by the sheriff's department said that 'it strives to treat everyone it encounters with dignity and respect, which it did in this case.'

Phillips, who said he started begging 10 years ago after losing his job as a butcher, said he can make as much as $8,000 annually begging five hours a day, five days a week.

A file photo of a beggar in Chicago - the Pindak and Phillips case heard that homesless people can lose up to $10 a day because the authorities bar them from a popular public square

He said he typically holds up a sign that reads, 'I'm just hungry.'

Pindak said he studied pre-medicine in college for several years in his 20s before mental illness sent his life into a tailspin.

On the witness stand, he told jurors he had occasionally handed a $20 bill but often makes just several dollars a day.

During cross-examination, Zecchin also repeatedly asked Pindak about chess, suggesting his ability to think several moves ahead led him to sue.

Pindak denied that, answering he'd always been good at chess but not at life.
Malaysia's officials have said that a large chunk of metal found washed up on a beach in the Gulf of Thailand was not from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

It was the second time in a week authorities have dismissed speculation that wreckage from the jet had been found, after a similar piece of ocean debris recovered from a beach in Southern Thailand on Jan 23 proved not to be from MH370.

Within 24 hours it was revealed that the part was actually from a Japanese rocket.

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Find: A piece of suspected aircraft debris was discovered by fishermen on January 23, at a beach in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand

Search: The barnacle-covered piece of metal has some identifying features, which should help narrow down whether or not it came from a plane

Malaysia's transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said the two-metre-long object found in the eastern state of Terengganu on Thursday had been examined by officials from the ministry, the Department of Civil Aviation and Malaysia Airlines.

'The assessment found that the debris does not match those of a Boeing 777, thus confirming that the debris is not from MH370,' he said in a statement.

The minister did not elaborate further.

Both objects had been found in the region embracing south east Thailand and north east Malaysia, causing excitement that the waters where the Malaysia Airlines plane crashed had finally been located.

The second large chunk of metal, found washed up on Wednesday on a beach in north east Malaysia, the area where several villages had reported hearing a low-flying aircraft on the night in March 2014 when MH370 disappeared.

Malaysian newspapers - the New Straits Times and The Star - reported that several experts, including investigators who have been involved with the MH370 disappearance, arrived at the Besut police station Friday to examine the metal object which had been found by local fishermen.

Mystery: According to Patthikongpan, local 'fishermen said it could have been under the sea for no more than a year, judging from barnacles on it'. The edges of the piece of metal appear to reveal a 'honeycomb' structure, which is widely used in aircraft and rockets due to its light weight

Official: Thai soldiers carry a piece of suspected aircraft debris after it was found by fishermen on January 23, at a beach in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat

Speculation: Villagers discovered the piece of metal (pictured), before reporting it to the authorities to help identify it, said Tanyapat Patthikongpan, head of Pak Phanang district

Measuring about eight feet in length, it has led to villagers speculating that it could have come from an aircraft.

After examining the metal piece, the team of investigators then travelled to the beach where it was first discovered just 50 yards from the shore.

'We would urge the public not to make any speculation about its origins,' said a police spokesman.

The Malaysian team have yet to make any comment on their findings.

Despite excitement being raised about the discoveries off the coastlines facing the Gulf of Thailand, the official search for MH370 continues in the southern Indian Ocean, south west of Australia.

Last July a two-metre-long wing part known as a flaperon washed up on a beach on the French-held Indian Ocean island of Reunion, thousands of kilometres from Thailand.

French authorities subsequently confirmed 'with certainty' two months later than the wing part found on the remote island was from MH370.

Missing: A map showing the fated plane's flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing; where the last radar contact was received from the plane; the wreckage discovered this week in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand; and the wreckage discovered on La Reunion island in July 2015, which was confirmed to be from the MH370

Genuine: French prosecutors confirmed 'with certainty' in September that the wing part (above) found on a remote Indian Ocean island, La Reunion, in July was from missing flight MH370

Tests were carried out on the flaperon, which was found on La Reunion in July, by the French body responsible for civil aviation accident investigations.

At the time of the discovery on the French territory last month, Malaysian officials said it was 'almost certain' the wing flap came from a Boeing 777  the same model as the Malaysian airlines jet.

The 6ft-long wing flap washed up 3,500 miles from the doomed jet's last-known location, fuelling hopes across the world that one of aviation's greatest mysteries could finally be solved.

The search for the plane is due to end in June this year, despite the Chinese relatives pleading for it to be expanded.
'CRIME OF THE CENTURY': WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERS?

Bruce Reynolds

Gang-leader and mastermind Reynolds was nicknamed 'Napoleon' and after the Great Train Robbery he fled to Mexico on a false passport and was joined by his wife, Angela, and son, Nick.

They later moved on to Canada but the cash from the robbery ran out and he came back to England.

Five years after the heist, in 1968, a broke Reynolds was captured in Torquay and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

He was released on parole in 1978 and moved, alone and penniless, into a tiny flat off London's Edgware Road.

In the 1980s he was jailed for three years for dealing amphetamines.

After his second release, Reynolds went on to work briefly as a consultant on a film about the robbery, Buster, and published the Autobiography of a Thief in 1995. His son Nick said his father died in his sleep in the early hours of February 28 2013.

Great Train Robbers all together at the launch of a book. (L-R) Buster Edwards, Tommy Wisbey, Jim White, Bruce Reynolds, Roger Cordrey, Charles Wilson and Jim Hussey

Ronnie Biggs

Ronald Arthur 'Ronnie' Biggs played a minor role in the robbery, but his life as a fugitive after escaping from prison gained him notoriety. He was given a 30-year sentence in 1964, but he escaped after 15 months by fleeing over the walls of London's Wandsworth prison in April 1965.

After having plastic surgery, he lived as a fugitive for 36 years in first Australia then Brazil, where he fathered a son Michael.

His health deteriorated in 2001 and he returned to the UK voluntarily where he was sent back to prison.

He was finally freed in 2009 on 'compassionate grounds' by then Justice Secretary Jack Straw who said he was not expected to recover. He died in 2013.

Ronald Arthur 'Ronnie' Biggs played a minor role in the robbery, but his life as a fugitive after escaping from prison gained him notoriety

Ronald 'Buster' Edwards

An ex-boxer, club owner and small-time crook who fled to Mexico after the heist but gave himself up in 1966.

Edwards is widely believed to be the man who wielded the cosh used to hit train driver Jack Mills over the head.

Mills' family say he never recovered, and he died seven years later.

Edwards served nine years in jail and then became a familiar figure selling flowers outside Waterloo station in London.

He was the subject of the 1988 film Buster, in which he was played by Phil Collins.Edwards was found hanged in a garage in 1994 at the age of 62. Two wreaths in the shape of trains accompanied his funeral cortege.

Charlie Wilson

Wilson was the gang's 'treasurer' who gave each of the robbers their cut of the haul.He was captured quickly and during his trial at Aylesbury Crown Court in 1964 earned the nickname 'the silent man' as he refused to say anything.

He was jailed for 30 years but escaped after just four months.

He was captured again in Canada after four years on the run and served 10 more years in jail.

He was the final train robber to emerge from prison in 1978.

Wilson moved to Marbella, Spain, where he was shot and killed by a hitman on a bicycle in 1990.

Roy James

Police seize bags of cash following the heist

A silversmith and racing driver, James dreamed of investing his share of the loot in new car technology.

He was nicknamed 'Weasel' and was the chief getaway driver.

James left a tell-tale fingerprint at the gang's farm hideout after the heist and was caught following a chase over rooftops in London.

Jailed for 30 years, he served 12 and later sold silver from a market stall before moving to Spain.

James was jailed again for six years in 1993 after shooting his wife's father and hitting her with a pistol.

He died at the age of 62, soon after getting out of prison.

Brian Field

A crooked solicitor who the gang used for the conveyancing when they bought the farm hideout used after the heist.

Field was arrested and sentenced to 25 years, which was later reduced to five.

He died in a motorway crash in 1979.

Bill Boal

An engineer who was arrested with Roger Cordrey in possession of 141,000.Reynolds said he had never heard of Boal. He claimed Boal was not involved in the robbery and was 'an innocent man'.

Boal was charged with receiving stolen goods and jailed for 24 years, which was reduced to 14 on appeal.

He died of cancer in jail in 1970.

Tommy Wisbey

A bookie and self-confessed 'heavy' whose job in the heist was to frighten the train staff.

Wisbey was sentenced to 30 years and released in 1976.

He was jailed for another 10 years in 1989 for cocaine dealing and later ran a flower stall.

On release from prison he went to live in north London and suffered several strokes.

Bobby Welch

A nightclub owner who was sentenced to 30 years in jail and was released in 1976.

He was later left crippled after an operation on his leg went wrong.

After jail he became a car dealer and gambler in London. He attended Bruce Reynolds' funeral earlier this year.

Gordon Goody

He was jailed for 30 years and released in 1975. Goody moved to Spain to run a bar.

This picture taken on August 8 1963 at Cheddington station shows the Glasgow-London Royal Mail train after it was robbed

James Hussey

A decorator known as 'Big Jim' who was sentenced to 30 years and released in 1975.

Hussey later worked on a market stall and then opened a Soho restaurant.

He notched up a conviction for assault in 1981 and in 1989 was jailed for seven years for a drug smuggling conspiracy with fellow train robber Wisbey.

He died in November 2012, aged 79, from cancer.

Roger Cordrey

Part of the South Coast Raiders gang, Cordrey was a florist.

He was arrested in Bournemouth after having the bad luck to rent a lock-up from a policeman's widow.

He was jailed for 20 years, which was reduced to 14 on appeal.

When he was released in 1971 he went back to the flower business and moved to the West Country. He has since died.

Jimmy White

A former Paratrooper described as 'quartermaster' for the robbery.

White was on the run for three years before being caught in Kent and sentenced to 18 years.

He was released in 1975 and went to live in Sussex. He has since died.

Leonard Field

A former merchant seaman, Field was sentenced to 25 years, which was later reduced to five.

He was released from jail in 1967 and went to live in north London. Believed to be dead.

John Wheater
Thames Valley Police are leading the hunt to find Connor McLaughlin, a 12-year-old boy who has been missing from his home since Thursday afternoon

Thames Valley Police are leading the hunt for a 12-year-old boy who has been missing from his home since Thursday afternoon.

Connor McLaughlin was last seen in Arnison Avenue, High Wycombe, at around 3pm yesterday.

He was reported missing later that night.

Police are now appealing for information about the lost boy.

He is described as white, of medium build, about 5ft 5ins, with brown hair and a scar on his left eye.

When he was last seen he was wearing a light grey zip-up hooded top with a black jacket over the top, grey tracksuit trousers and blue trainers.

The schoolboy is said to have links to Croydon in London, as well as Surrey.

Investigating officer, Insp Stephen Clewlow said: 'Connor, if you're reading this then please get in contact with the police so we know you are safe and well.

'If anyone else has any information about Connor's whereabouts then they should contact police immediately. The easiest way to do this is by picking up the phone an calling us via 101.

'If you do not want to speak directly to the police you can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

'No personal details are taken, information is not traced or recorded and you will not go to court.'
An independent blog looking at ethical fashion, sweatshops, organics, sustainability, charity and the third sector. The world of apparel and its worldwide impact, mixed with articles about fundraising and charities. Written and produced by Rob Wickings.
In Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas this is more than 70 per cent

In The Little Mermaid 69 per cent of dialogue is by male characters

They found that despite the film titles most speech is

Most of their films are named after their leading ladies searching for their happy ever after ending.

But despite placing female characters in the main roles, a new study has found that several Disney princess films actually see men have more of the dialogue.

Linguists Carmen Fought from Pitzer College and Karen Eisenhauer from North Carolina State University, found that most modern Disney cartoons give more lines to male characters than female ones, with most seeing men dominating the script.

New research has found that most Disney princess films are dominated by male dialogue. In The Little Mermaid 69 per cent of speech is by male characters

Beauty and the Beast, left, released in 1991 sees men taking up 71 per cent of the dialogue, while in Pocahontas, right, it rises to 77 per cent of the script

The Disney princess genre began in 1989 with the release of The Little Mermaid, with their analysis showing male characters speaking 68 per cent of the dialogue, even though the film was about Ariel's quest to live on land.

Similarly, Beauty and the Beast, released in 1991 sees men taking up 71 per cent of the dialogue, while in Pocahontas, it rises to 77 per cent of the script.

Even in the film Mulan, about a young Chinese girl who saves her father from death, male characters have 76 per cent of the dialogue.

In the film Mulan, about a young Chinese girl who saves her father from death, male characters have 76 per cent of the dialogue

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, left, released in 1937 has dialogue split equally between men and women while in Cinderella, right, from 1950, 60 per cent of the film is female speech

And even though feminists have long pointed out that historical Disney princess films do little other than portray the main characters waiting to be rescued by a man, most have more dialogue by females compared to modern movies.

For example, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937 has dialogue split equally between men and women while in Cinderella from 1950, 60 per cent of the film is female speech.

Ms Fought told the Washington Post: 'Theres one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her, but there are no women doing any other things.

'There are no women leading the townspeople to go against the Beast, no women bonding in the tavern together singing drinking songs, women giving each other directions, or women inventing things.

Newer Disney films fair better, but in Frozen which has Princess Elsa as its lead character, men speak 69 per cent of the time

'Everybody whos doing anything else, other than finding a husband in the movie, pretty much, is a male.'

And although newer Disney films fair better as Frozen has men speaking 69 per cent of the time while in Brave, women do actually dominate the dialogue, they believe carelessness could be to blame for the inequality.

Ms Fought added: 'Were so trained to think that male is the norm.
Britain's most senior police officer has failed to win a new three-year contract as he faced growing criticism over his handling of the VIP abuse scandal.

Boris Johnson has instead handed Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, who earns 281,000-a-year, a 12-month contract to run the Metropolitan Police.

The decision means that Mr Johnson's successor as Mayor of London, either Labour's Sadiq Khan or Tory Zac Goldsmith, could replace him next September.

Under pressure: Boris Johnson, left yesterday, will extend Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe's contract by a year - but not the three years he wanted

Sir Bernard took over in 2011 after his predecessor Sir Paul Stephenson quit during the hacking scandal and had a reputation for being tough on crime.

Crime rates have fallen in the capital and he is said to have played a pivotal role in tackling terrorism but his tenure has also been hit by several scandals.

Recently there was growing fury over his refusal to apologise to hounded 92-year-old war hero Lord Bramall in another storm over the unravelling VIP abuse investigation, Operation Midland.

The 2million investigation is based on evidence from one witness 'Nick', whose own family have said is a 'fantasist'.

However, the collapse in the case against Lord Bramall has led to further questions over the veracity of Nicks claims.

Harvey Proctor, a former Tory MP implicated in the allegations of a murderous Westminster paedophile ring, has claimed Sir Bernard was seeking to postpone the collapse of Operation Midland until he had secured an extension of his contract.

Mr Proctor, 69, added: I thought Hogan-Howe should have resigned over Operation Midland last summer, so I am quite surprised he has hung on all these months. The Home Secretary should not be giving him a contract extension, she should be sacking him or seeking his resignation.

Scotland Yard's inquiry into alleged payments to public officials by journalists, the 20million Operation Elveden, has led to just one reporter being prosecuted.

Hounded: Lord Bramall, pictured with the Queen in 1995, was a victim of the Met's child sex abuse 'witch hunt' but Sir Bernard will not say sorry

Sir Bernard's five-year contract is due to expire in September. Legislation allows for an initial extension of up to three years, which can then be followed by unlimited one-year extensions.

Policing minister Mike Penning said: "Any decision to extend the contract of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is a matter for the Queen, based on the recommendation from the Home Secretary.

"This decision will be informed by any recommendation from the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime."

Mrs May has clashed with Sheffield-born Sir Bernard over high-profile issues.

Last summer the Home Secretary refused permission for the Met to deploy water cannon, leaving the force with three they cannot use.
New York real estate tycoon dominated presidential debate without even being there

Billionaire boycotter Donald Trump ruled the roost on social media during Thursday night's Republican presidential debate claiming the night's top prizes despite being a no-show at the Des Moines debate.

The GOP front-runner sat out the debate just four days before the Iowa caucuses because of a long-running feud with network anchor Megyn Kelly. Instead, he held a rally nearby in the downtown state capital.

He was not far from viewer's finds.

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GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump was only a few miles away from the Republican presidential debate on Thursday night - yet he was very much inside the room

Trump's boycott of the debate left seven GOP presidential contenders onstage

An hour and a half into the two-hour debate, Twitter released data showing he was the most-mentioned of the candidates onstage - 37 percent, compared to 18 percent for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, his closest primary rival, and 12 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Likewise Google Trends reported that Trump was the most popular GOP candidate on its network, in terms of what viewers were searching for online, followed by Rubio and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

On Twitter, Trump racked up 36 percent of the night's conversation, compared to 16 percent for Cruz and 13 percent for Rubio.

On Facebook, Cruz could claim a limited victory - he was the evening's winner in terms of who dominated online discussions, with 41 percent of the conversation. But Trump wasn't included in that poll because of his non-participation, the company said - otherwise, Facebook officials said, he prompted more than double of the online converstations that Cruz did.

On Google, Trump led all candidates in terms of search volume, meaning he was the most-searched candidate throughout the debate in all 50 U.S. states.

Even worse news for Cruz was the top-trending question on Google: 'Why was Ted Cruz born in Canada?'

Trump sat out Thursday night's debate due to a long-running personal feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, pictured at center

Cruz was born in Canada in 1970 to an American woman, Eleanor, who was born in Wilmington, Delaware. But the senator held dual citizenship between the two countries for decades before renouncing his Canadian citizenship upon his election to the Senate in 2012.

Such a 'natural born' U.S. citizenship is provided for in the Constitution, but legal challenges to it are rare, especially on the presidential campaign trail.

Cruz has been sued by a Houston attorney who claims such a 'natural born citizen' Constitution requirement has never been defined or determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, or tested in a federal court.

Trump has been mocking Cruz's claim that he has 'natural-born' U.S. citizenship and has challenged him to prove it in court - contributing to the erasing of a once-significant Cruz lead in Iowa.
'Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome,' Ebeling told NPR

Thirty years after the disaster, Ebeling says he continues to blame himself for not lobbying harder for a postponed launch

However, the space agency overruled them and decided to press forward with the launch anyway, sending seven crew members to their death

Whistle-blower: Bob Ebeling, 89, was one of four engineers for a NASA contractor who tried to warn the space agency against launching the Challenger space shuttle back in 1986

For the millions of Americans who watched the Challenger space shuttle burst into flames over the south Florida sky thirty years ago, it was a moment of profound surprise and shock.

But not for Bob Ebeling. He saw it coming and even told his wife the night before the launch 'it's going to blow up'.

The former engineer for NASA contractor Morton Thiokol was part of a team of four that tried to warn the space agency against the launch, saying the temperatures in Cape Canaveral were too cold for the booster rockets to seal properly.

Despite their efforts to postpone the launch, NASA overruled them and went forward with the mission - sending six crew members and a school teacher to their death.

'I was one of the few that was really close to the situation,' Ebeling, now 89, told NPR this week. 'Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome.'

Ebeling watched the launch in terror from a conference room at his office in Brigham City, Utah, and to this day he can't shake the image of the exploding vessel from his mind.

After the disaster, Ebeling and another Morton Thiokol engineer spoke with NPR anonymously to detail what they knew went wrong with the launch.

At the time, Ebeling asked to be quoted anonymously, afraid that he would lose his job.

A million pieces: Ebeling knew the weather in Florida was too cold for a safe launch of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986

Shock: Millions of Americans watched on live TV and on the ground in Florida as the space shuttle took off and then exploded in the air 73 seconds later

Doomed: Above, the seven crew members of the flight. Back row, left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. Front row, left to right: Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, and Ronald E. McNair

But the burden of what happened that day caused him to retire shortly afterwards anyway, and now on the 30th anniversary of the disaster, he is finally comfortable being identified by name and picture.

They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn't.

While he says the decision was ultimately up to NASA, after all these years Ebeling still blames himself for not lobbying harder to postpone the flight.

'I could have done more. I should have done more,' he told NPR.

A religious man, he says he has prayed on the issue and continues to wonder why God picked 'a loser' for the job.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the Reagan administration conducted an investigation into the explosion and found that there were flaws in NASA's decision-making process. It's believed that there were several pressures that may have pushed the agency to go through with the launch when it would have been better to wait.

The first was that NASA was scheduling several launches that year and may have wanted to show that they could meet their deadlines. The other factor was that Reagan was scheduled to give his State of the Union speech that night, and wanted to brag about the launch in his address.

But Ebeling says whatever the pressures, nothing was worth the risk of sending seven crew members on an uncertain mission.

'NASA ruled the launch. They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn't,' he said.
Powell, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, was convicted at Bristol Crown Court

After second attack, Powell calmly made a cup of tea and waited for police

The estranged husband of one of Britain's best-known porn stars is behind bars after a terrifying knifepoint assault on her and her father.

Wrestler Dean Powell, 36, attacked Michelle Thorne at a hotel in November when he grabbed her around her neck and dragged her to a room.

The brute also assaulted the glamour girl and her dad at their marital home when she tried to throw him out a few days after Christmas.

Wrestler Dean Powell, 36, attacked Michelle Thorne, pictured, at a hotel in November when he grabbed her around her neck and dragged her to a room

He stamped on a PlayStation 3 game several times before making threats and arming himself with knives.

When Michelle's father Michael appeared on the scene and put Powell in a headlock, the wrestler head-butted and bit him, causing a nose bleed.

After the second attack Powell calmly made himself a cup of tea and sat down and waited for police to arrive and arrest him.

Powell, now living with his parents in Maidenhead, Berkshire, admitted six charges of assaults, making threats to kill, property damage and possessing a blade.

Judge William Hart adjourned the case for sentence until next month and remanded him in custody.

He warned him at Bristol Crown Court: 'It seems inevitable you will receive a custodial sentence.

'There may be an application for a restraining order. That will be considered on its merits.'

At an earlier hearing May Li, prosecuting, told magistrates the couple had been in a relationship since 2009 and married in 2010.

She said Powell assaulted former X Factor hopeful Michelle when they attended a junior dance competition at a Kent hotel on November 21.

He grabbed her around her neck and took her to a room - wrestling a concerned mum out of the way.

Just over a month later he attacked her a second time, on December 29 at their marital home in Mangotsfield, Bristol.

Michelle's adult film career began in 1999 with All Amateur: Girls of the UK.

She has worked with production companies such as Bluebird Films, Extreme Associates, and Union Jaxxx. She also has her own production company called Bombchelle Productions.
Splashing a pedestrian while driving though a puddle can be an offence under the Road Traffic Act

olice defended their actions - claiming it was 'safer' for them to drive through instead of swerving or

This is the moment a helpless pedestrian gets showered with dirty water while walking along a pavement - after a police officer drove through a giant puddle.

The shocking footage shows the unidentified male strolling next to a main road when the marked police vehicle makes no attempt to avoid a puddle.

He then gets sprayed after the police car's left tyres create a wave of water which flies at the man, who is wearing shorts.

Dry for now: This is the moment a helpless pedestrian gets showered with dirty water while walking along a pavement - after a police officer drove through a giant puddle. The shocking footage shows the unidentified male strolling next to a main road when the marked police vehicle makes no attempt to avoid a puddle

Soaked: He then gets sprayed after the police car's left tyres create a wave of water which flies at the man, who is wearing shorts

The incident was filmed by taxi driver Julie Matthews' dashboard camera when she was driving in Leigh Road, Eastleigh, Hants.

Her husband, Paul, 53, also a cab driver, said the behaviour of the police driver was 'disgusting' and has urged the officer to apologise to the young man.

But police have defended their actions - claiming it was 'safer' for them to drive through the large area of surface water.

They added it would have been more of a risk if the driver 'swerved' onto the opposite side of the road or if they stopped abruptly.

This is despite Mrs Matthews, 50, slowing down and driving around the large area of surface water which had gathered by the kerb.

Splashing a pedestrian while driving though a puddle can be an offence under the Road Traffic Act.

According to police, the offence is appropriate when the driving amounts to a clear act of incompetence, selfishness, impatience or aggressiveness in addition to inconvenience to road users.

The offence carries a maximum penalty of 5,000 and between and three and nine penalty points.

The incident was filmed by taxi driver Julie Matthews' dashboard camera when she was driving in Leigh Road, Eastleigh, Hants, on Wednesday. But police have claimed it was 'safer' for them to drive through the puddle

Mr Matthews, from Southampton, Hants, said after viewing the footage: 'It was disgusting. The young lad got soaked and had to carry on walking.

'I am not saying they did it deliberately but my wife pulled around it herself and if you've got no choice you should slow down.

'Julie came home and said to me straight away 'you need to download this footage from the dashboard camera'.

'She had a customer in the back and they were both shocked that the police car didn't slow down or move around the puddle.

'I watched it and I was completely shocked. The police car made no attempt to move out of the way and to drive around the puddle.

'Drivers normally do all they can to avoid going through puddles. It is filthy water from the road and can include all sorts of debris.

Disgusting: Mr Matthews, from Southampton, Hants, said after viewing the footage: 'It was disgusting... Iam not saying they did it deliberately but my wife pulled around it herself and if you've got no choice you should slow down

'It is something you'd expect a young driver to do for a laugh - not a police car.

'The police officer should have pulled over to at least apologise.

'Julie said the young man stood there in shock and was dripping wet. The driver could have offered him a lift somewhere so he could get into some dry clothes.

'If we had done it they probably would have pulled us over and spoke to us, they should run by the same laws as the rest of us.'

A spokeswoman for Hampshire Constabulary said: 'It is likely that the officer made an assessment that as they approached this it was safer to continue driving through the puddle rather than stop abruptly and risk causing another vehicle to run into the back of the police car, or avoid the puddle by swerving towards the oncoming vehicle on the other side of the carriageway.

'The driver behind the police car who recorded the footage was able to safely swerve to avoid the puddle as there were no vehicles on the other side of the road at that time.

'We are not aware of a complaint being made by the pedestrian shown in the footage but should we receive one, the matter will be dealt with appropriately as any other complaint would be.'
Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush is planning to ditch the frozen cornfields of Iowa for - hopefully - sunnier skies in New Hampshire even before Iowans caucus next Monday.

The former Florida governor has decided his chances of winning the Iowa caucuses on Monday are minimal, and that his presence in New Hampshire is more necessary for his flagging campaign, according to a new report in Politico.

Bush's campaign released a schedule on Thursday that showed he will be spending Monday night at a town hall event - in Manchester, N.H.

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Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush was onstage Thursday night at the Republican presidential primary debate - which front-runner Donald Trump boycotted

Bush has long emphasized the importance of New Hampshire to his campaign's hopes, and less on Iowa, although he still plans to campaign in the Hawkeye State through Monday afternoon.

He also isn't alone - Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are also both planning to spend Monday evening in New Hampshire, according to their campaigns.

Bush has been on a long, slow, steady slide since last July , when he reported having $114 million in the bank.

At one time the all-but-inevitable GOP nominee, Bush has long said his candidacy would be based on merit, not his family name, and that he would be tested through the early stages of the primary campaign.

Only in the middle and latter stages, he has said, his experience and acumen would prevail.

'We are grateful for the support we have and are confident in our plan to win,' Bush spokeswoman Allie Bradenburger told Politico earlier this month.

'Jeb will continue to campaign hard in states across the nation as our momentum for his message and record of experience continues to grow.'

Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at Thursday night's debate

Bush's campaign schedule shows he is gambling on a big showing in the state's Feb. 9 primary

Bush's top rivals are the obvious ones - Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is in third or even second place in some 2016 polls, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is the closest rival to front-runner Donald Trump.

Some Bush donors are still keeping their fingers crossed for him.

'I think Jeb has the best qualities to be the president, hes just not doing the worlds best job of getting there,' one banker told Politico.

'My attitude is still wait and see what happens. I cant believe Donald Trump is going to get the nomination. As long as there is still all this insanity, there is hope for Jeb.'
For the second time in two days, an American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Friday after passengers and crew fell ill.

Flight 904, which left Rio de Janeiro at 10.16pm Thursday heading for Miami, was diverted to Brasilia after four people - including three members of staff - complained of lightheadedness, the airline confirmed in a statement to Daily Mail Online.

'The aircraft landed safely at Brasilia at 12.37am and was met by paramedics who evaluated the passenger and crew members. None requested further medical attention,' an American Airlines spokesperson said.

'Our maintenance team is currently inspecting the aircraft and performing a thorough maintenance check.'

File photo of a Boeing 777 operated by American Airlines, which has been forced to ground two planes in two days after passengers and crew fell ill onboard

Flight AA904 was travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Miami around 11pm Thursday when it diverted to Brasilia (shown on map above)

The emergency landing happened the day after an American Airlines flight to Los Angeles was forced to return to London's Heathrow Airport after around 15 people on board fell ill.

Although the two grounded flights involved air planes of similar models, airline officials said they 'do not want to speculate on whether [the two incidents] are linked' until investigations have been completed.

One passenger on the Miami-bound flight told Daily Mail Online she saw people 'pass out' from the mystery illness before the plane landed.

'We are currently still in Brasilia where we made an emergency landing because crew members and passengers passed out and became unwell,' the woman wrote in an email.

'It sounds exactly like what happened on the other flight with us not being allowed off the plane for two hours.

'As you can imagine frustrating chaos followed and most people are stuck here for 48 hours. One of the crew said something about oven cleaner reacting badly.'

Another passenger, Xime Etchart, wrote on Twitter early Friday morning: 'Emergency landing in Brasilia from Rio to Miami. We're all still waiting for an update on when we are flying back...'

A second American Airlines flight may have been forced to make an emergency landing after passengers became ill. Above, a passenger revealed on Twitter that she was forced to wait in Brasilia

In a second tweet, Etchart wrote she'd been stuck in Brasilia for six hours with 'no food, no room, no help at all.'

The Miami-bound Boeing 777, which carried 203 passengers and 14 crew members, was of a similar model to the one that was forced to divert back to London Heathrow following a 'medical emergency' on Wednesday.

The captain on the flight from London to Los Angeles made the decision to turn around after increasing numbers of people on-board became ill.

A photo snapped by a passenger aboard Wednesday's Los Angeles-bound flight that made an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport
Nearly 200 students and staff at a Texas middle school have been treated by medics after a broken boiler leaked deadly carbon monoxide into classrooms.

At least 145 people had to be taken to hospital from Marshall Middle School in Houston, Texas, yesterday morning while dozens more were treated at the scene.

Fire crews were called to the school at around 10.30am after one student lost consciousness, while others reported feeling nauseous and suffering from headaches.

Almost 220 students and staff at Marshall Middle School in Houston, Texas, had to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning yesterday morning

Medics and fire crews were called to the school after one pupil lost consciousness while dozens of others reported feeling nauseous or suffered from headaches

When rescue workers arrived they tested the building and found high concentrations of carbon monoxide, a gas which is typically produced by burning fossil fuels.

The gas is odorless, colorless and tasteless and as such is almost impossible to detect without special instruments.

A Beaumont Police Department spokesman told station KHOU: 'Students and faculty were evacuated to safe areas to be evaluated.

'Numerous students and faculty members reported exposure symptoms such as nausea and headaches.

'All students and faculty members that are exhibiting these symptoms were being transported as units are available.'

None of the students or staff suffered life-threatening injuries, the fire department confirmed.

Marshall Middle School houses around 4,000 students in total.

Those who were not taken to hospital were transported by bus to a nearby school for the rest of the day.

At least 145 people were taken to hospital for treatment, while others were treated at the scene. Those not affected were taken to a school nearby

Investigators traced the cause of the poisoning to a broken boiler in the school building which pumped the potentially-lethal gas into classrooms

THE SILENT KILLER: CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING Carbon monoxide is relatively harmless at low concentrations, but at high concentrations it can be fatal. Short-term exposure to the gas typically causes flu-like symptoms such as extreme fatigue, nausea, headaches and cramps. This is because carbon monoxide bonds to hemoglobin in red blood cells, the protein responsible for carrying oxygen around the body, slowly starving organs of the vital resource. At very high concentrations oxygen levels can drop so low it causes people to become disoriented and lose consciousness - and may even cause the body to completely shut down. Advertisement

Classes have been cancelled at Marshall today, with a notice on the school's website warning staff and students to remain at home.

School authorities also raised the prospect of classes being cancelled on Monday as well, though said parents will be informed at a later date.

Fire chief Earl White said the school does not have carbon monoxide detectors installed, but added that the law does not require them.

Carbon monoxide is relatively harmless at low concentrations, but at high concentrations it can be fatal.

Short-term exposure to the gas typically causes flu-like symptoms such as extreme fatigue, nausea, headaches and cramps.

This is because carbon monoxide bonds to hemoglobin in red blood cells, the protein responsible for carrying oxygen around the body, slowly starving organs of the vital resource.

Marshall Middle School remains closed today while officials deal with the source of the outbreak, while classes may also be disrupted on Monday

Carbon monoxide is an odorless, tasteless and colorless gas produced by burning fossil fuels that is almost impossible to detect without special sensors

At very high concentrations oxygen levels can drop so low it causes people to become disoriented and lose consciousness - and may even cause the body to completely shut down.

The gas is thought to be behind at least four deaths during the recent snow storm on the east coast when people climbed into cars with tail pipes blocked by snow.

Mother Sasha Bonilla, 23, her daughter Saniyah, three, and brother Messiah, one, all died in New Jersey after getting in the car escape the cold while father Felix attempted to dig the vehicle out.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is also believed to be behind the death of Angel Ginel, 44, in Brooklyn, who was found dead inside his car on Tuesday with the engine still running.
The suspect has been described as a 'white male in his early twenties to early thirties, 5-foot-8-inches to 5-foot-9-inches tall, and about 160 pounds'

All three assaults happened when college-aged women were walking back at night from bars in the Uptown area near the Ohio University campus

in that case to another assault in June and one in 2006

The most recent assault happened on December 12; DNA has connected the suspect

Do you know this man? Police in Athens, Ohio are searching for a suspect connected to three separate sexual assaults near the Ohio University campus in the past 10 years

The police chief of an Ohio college town said authorities are seeking a predator linked to sexual assaults on three women since 2006.

Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle said Thursday that DNA evidence shows the same person committed the separate but similar assaults - one in 2006 and two last year, one in June and another in December. The city is home to Ohio University.

The victims were all young college-aged women walking home in the middle of the night when the attacks occurred. However, authorities stopped short of calling them students at the school.

The 2006 victim was raped, and the June case involved an attempted sexual assault, according to police.

Authorities say the December encounter was similar to the other two, but the exact circumstances of it are unclear.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has been asked to assist with the investigation, and police are increasing patrols and asking for the public's help in finding the suspect.

'We encourage everyone, especially students, to stay alert and be upstanding and active bystanders,' Pyle said.

University President Roderick McDavis said the school is working with the city and police to increase safety and prevention measures.

Some of those steps include extending the hours of an on-demand transit service and widening the service's coverage area to include off-campus housing.

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Alone: All of the women were attacked after walking alone from the Uptown area near the Ohio University campus

The university police Chief Andrew Powers said in a statement released Thursday that he and Pyle are working together to coordinate greater patrol visibility on and around the campus area.

Powers said Athens is a relatively safe community where most residents feel comfortable.

'Unfortunately, it is now clear that a predator is taking advantage of this feeling of security and victimizing women whom he feels are vulnerable,' Powers said in a statement.

The suspect has been described as a 'white male in his early twenties to early thirties, 5-foot-8-inches to 5-foot-9-inches tall, and about 160 pounds'
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Maybe some of you were there at the Old Bermuda Inn in Rossville on Friday, Jan. 8, when CASC held its 17th annual Senior Poetry Contest and Festival.

Or maybe you read about it.

The place was mobbed! Men and women, some of them contestants (there were 121), others family members or friends, enjoyed a light brunch and then sat back to listen as the poets read their entries and winners were announced. It was impressive!

Why am I commenting on this, after the fact?

For starters, hopefully the Festival will be held again in 2016 or early 2017.

Next, maybe you have always wanted to try your hand at putting your thoughts down on paper, but never had the courage to do so.

Perhaps you thought that poetry is a matter of rhyming.

Not at all. Poetry can take many forms. Want to learn more about poetry, poetry readings, contests and workshps?

On Staten Island check out The Noble Maritime Collection, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island NY 10301, telephone 718-447-6490 or dblampman@noblemaritime.org or www.noblemaritime.org

Another contact on Staten Island is The New York Public Library's Staten Island Borough Office, 5 Central Ave., Staten Island, N.Y 10301, telephone 718- 442-8562, www.nypl.

If traveling to Manhattan is not a problem for you, there are many resources there.

For information, call CASC. They are listed at the back of the Chrysalis program.

There were so many terrific poems, I would like to copy them all, but space will not allow it, so here are a few lines from the beginning and ending of the poem by Grand Prize Winner, Juliius Wasserstein:

My Driver's License

In reality, there were both scars and dents

On the face of this blue-eyed licensee

To reveal the truth like a Dorian Gray

Portrait as to how recklessly he drove

Six sturdy frames bent to the letter "S"

Broken bones, totaled cars, and the local sonnets

He'd tied to his steering wheel, those sonnets

Unfinished syllables with bumps

With white hand and dents

Wishing for words like Cyrano to send a caress

Too young in love, but yearning, this licensee

Was writing to a woman as he drove

With white hands bruised to blue and grey

**********

Is privileged to drive but where? This licensee

can only follow to her after-life. He drives

Through past part memories that return in sonnets

He has found no merciful forgetfulness

No fading of her beauty. With hands aging grey

He holds a twist of her hair. A gift. What was her intent

Make crevices and dents, swing axes licensee

Upon the Payne's grey highway turns you drive

Bless you, bless you eighteen times in sonnet form

***************

By the way, thought you might want to know about the Barnes & Noble Bookfair, to be held Feb. 10-14. George Hopkins will be there with others, discussing and signing his latest book, "Unholy Retribution," at noon on Feb. 13.

***************

Good news! SeniorNet will be holding an informative session toward the end of February at the Jewish Community Center, 1466 Manor Rd., with information about its computer classes for those 50 plus who need help moving up to Microsoft Windows 10 (or have just bought a Computer with Microsoft Windows 10 on it). Don't miss it! Call for more definitive information at 718-475-5200, extension 1182, or check the website http://www.SeniorNetsi.org.
Pressure cookers filled with screws caused panic in France when they were discovered en route to the US Embassy in Tunisia.

FedEx workers near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris raised the alarm not knowing the eight cookers were inert and were being sent to help the Tunisian military deal with improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The find sparked confusion as workers fled the scene fearing the worse. A spokesman for the General Confederation of Labour union (CGT), Frederic Petit, said not knowing they were inert, the employees immediately alerted managers.

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris - the FedEx warehouse where the eight pressure cookers with screws in them were found is near to the site

He added that workers felt 'nervous and abandoned' as they were not told the packages were safe for four hours.

The devices were found after an item fell and tore open of one of the cooker's boxes.

A U.S. Defense Department official said that the boxes posed no danger and were intended to train the Tunisian military in counter-IED tactics

A defence spokesman said: 'The boxes had already cleared customs, and were properly marked. 'The situation has since been resolved and the packages are headed to their final destination of Tunisia.'

Defense officials added that it was not uncommon to ship props like this for training purposes and apologised for the confusion.

A FedEx warehouse near Charles de Gaulle airport was the scene of panic when workers uncovered eight pressure cookers filled with screws

Earlier, FedEx Europe declined to identify who had sent the shipment, citing client privacy, but said in a statement that the consignment was 'authorised under applicable security regulations' and did not 'trigger any risk to safety and security.'

Mr Petit said workers made the discovery at around 9.30 pm on Tuesday, but it was not until 1.30 am the following morning that they were told the shipment was OK.

Yesterday a man was arrested at Disneyland Paris carrying two handguns, ammunition, and a 'guide to the Koran'.
Prosecutors have dropped assault charges against former Big Brother contestant Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace after five month probe into champagne being thrown during a row on live TV.

The model, 37, had been facing trial for assault after the argument with Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham, 24, on Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother's spin-off Bit On The Side in September.

It had been reported that the trial would have cost the taxpayer 15,000, but now the case has been ditched after a u-turn by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Prosecutors have dropped assault charges against ex-Big Brother contestant Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace (left) after five month probe into champagne being thrown during a row with Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham (right)

'The CPS finally saw the evidence from the show and agreed Aisleyne had no case to answer,' a source toldThe Mirror.

'Aisleyne stuck to her guns and was prepared to have her day in court. Thankfully the CPS decided she did no wrong, unlike two of her co-panellists.'

Miss Horgan Wallace welcomed the news that the case against her had been dropped in a tweet directed at Miss Abraham.

'My full story will soon be told.... Be worried darling @F1abraham I only speak the truth.....,' she wrote.

She also thanked her friend, model Nicola McLean, writing: 'Massive thank u to my rock through all this drama the past 5 months I have a love for u that will never be broken @NicolaMcLean.'

Miss Horgan Wallace welcomed the news that the case against her had been dropped in a tweet directed at Miss Abraham

She also thanked her friend, model Nicola McLean, writing: 'Massive thank u to my rock through all this drama the past 5 months I have a love for u that will never be broken @NicolaMcLean'

A CPS spokesman told MailOnline: 'The CPS regularly review cases according to the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

'Upon a review of this case it was decided that, whilst there was sufficient evidence, it would not be in the public interest to proceed therefore the case was discontinued.'

Police were called to the set in Elstree, Hertfordshire, in September after the row broke out between the celebrities during a discussion about nominations, causing the show to come off air 12 minutes early.

Viewers heared Miss Horgan-Wallace call Miss Abraham a 'nasty horrible b****' who should 'f*** off' back to America, to which she responded by shouting 'Hag be quiet, hag be quiet'.

Police were called to the set in Elstree, Hertfordshire, after the row broke out between Miss Abraham (left) and Miss Horgan-Wallace (right) during a discussion about nominations

Miss Abrahams (left) was on CBB's spin-off to discuss the recent evictions of Janice Dickinson (centre) and Jenna Jameson (second from left), who had joined Vicki Michelle (second from right) and Miss Horgan-Wallace (right) for a post-show analysis before the row boiled over

The feuding pair are said to have thrown champagne glasses, while former supermodel Janice Dickinson, 60, was accused of throwing a chair. Channel 5 have not confirmed what happened after the programme went off air.

Ms Dickinson (pictured) and Miss Abraham were later cautioned for common assault

'Allo 'Allo actress Vicki Michelle, 64, who was also appearing on the programme but was not involved in the argument, had to be rushed to hospital after she was apparently caught in the crossfire.

The dramatic incident came days after mother-of-one Miss Abraham, who rose to fame when she appeared on MTV reality series Sixteen And Pregnant, was evicted from the competition following weeks of aggressive behaviour.

She was on CBB's spin-off to discuss the recent evictions of Ms Dickinson and Jenna Jameson, who had also joined them for a post-show analysis before the row boiled over.

Ms Dickinson and Miss Abraham were later cautioned for common assault, but Miss Horgan-Wallace - who appeared in Big Brother's seventh series in 2006, did not accept a caution, alleging that the show's producers had engineered the spat.

Following a five-month police investigation Miss Horgan-Wallace, from north London, was charged with assault, after Miss Abraham was allegedly injured by the champagne.

She was also charged with criminal damage to Miss Abraham's dress, but denied both charges during a hearing in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, on Monday last week, The Sun reports.

A trial was set to take place in March, and witnesses who could have been called to give evidence included the programme's presenter, Rylan Clarke, Ms Michelle and two of the show's producers.
A married defense lawyer has been banned from all of the jails in her area after a deputy allegedly caught her bent over a table and having sex with an inmate.

Jessica Mishali was barred from five prisons in Broward County, Florida, after the guard saw her in an apparent tryst with convicted felon Ysreal Granda, 26, in the main jail on Wednesday.

The 35-year-old mother's client is being held behind bars and is facing four counts of attempted murder - four years after serving the majority of a four-year sentence for trying to kill two people.

Jessica Mishali, 35, (left) has been banned from five jails in Broward County, Florida, after a deputy allegedly saw her bent over a table having sex with convicted felon Ysreal Granda, 26, (right)

When the deputy walked in, Mishali was apparently spotted quickly jumping back into her seat and readjusting her skirt.

Mishali, whose married name is David, will not face criminal charges, but she is now being investigated by the Florida Bar, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Her attorney Fred Haddad told the newspaper: 'What crime could there be?'

Tarlika Navarro, who is also working on her case, told Daily Mail Online they do not believe their client did anything wrong and investigating the 'false allegations' against her.

They suspected there was an 'ulterior motive' behind the claims, but they could not reveal what they might be.

Veda Coleman-Wright, a spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff's Office, which runs the jails, added: 'It's two consenting adults. Detention deputies, they're in a position of authority and supervision, so the case would be very different if the inmate was having intimate relations with a detention deputy.'

A memo with Mishali's photo has been posted at all jail scanners and master controls, stating: 'Jessica Mishali David is prohibited from entering any Broward Sheriff's Office facility or onto any BSO property for any reason either personal or professional until further notice.'

Mishali is in a private practice.

Mishali, whose married name is David, had the supposed tryst during an interview in the main jail (pictured). When the deputy walked in she allegedly jumped back into her seat and readjusted her shirt

According to reports, worked as a Broward assistant public defender and up until this month was employed by the Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel.

She represented clients that the public defender could not because of conflicts of interest.

However she was fired on January 4 for 'misconduct in the performance of her duties'.

Mishali earned her law degree at Touro College in Long Island, N.Y. and was admitted to the Florida Bar in September 2007. She has had no disciplinary issues to date.

The Florida Bar will begin an investigation. If it is found that Mishali violated a rule of conduct, punishment ranges from a reprimand to loss of her law license.

Mishalis former boss, Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein told the Sun-Sentinel she did a very good job and was shocked by the revelations..

'I cant really wrap my mind around it. Love can make people do crazy things. And this is a crazy thing.'
The daughter of Maoist cult leader Comrade Bala who spent 30 years as a prisoner has broken her silence as her 'narcissist pyschopath' father was sentenced to die behind bars today.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, known to his 'disciples' as Comrade Bala, was jailed for 23 years after being found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of raping two of his followers and keeping daughter Katy Morgan-Davies prisoner.

Balakrishnan, who will be 87 if he is released halfway through his sentence, brainwashed cult members into thinking he had God-like powers and could read their minds, and subjected them to decades of abuse, running the commune with an iron fist.

But today Miss Morgan-Davies, now 33, said that although her father had deprived her of her family, childhood and love, she can still find it in her heart to forgive him.

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Katy Morgan-Davies (left), the daughter of cult leader Comrade Bala (right) who spent 30 years as a prisoner has broken her silence as her 'narcissist pyschopath' father was sentenced to die behind bars today

'He took my freedom and deprived me of family, childhood, friends, love, affection, a sense of belonging, a sense of home,' she told ITN. 'I forgive him for what happened.

'Life is a journey isn't it? There is good and bad in everything and besides, Nelson Mandela said "if you leave the prison with hatred and anger and bitterness then you are still in prison".'

Miss Morgan-Davies, formerly known as Rosie Davies, was kept hidden away in the extreme Left-wing commune for three decades, beaten and psychologically abused.

She was left so far removed from the world that she did not know how to cross the road or use keys when she finally escaped.

As her father was jailed, Miss Morgan-Davies, bravely decided to waive her right to anonymity and reveal her true identity - as she revealed the torment of living 'like a caged bird' in the sect.

Miss Morgan-Davies, who was known during the trial as Fran, said she hopes that by coming forward she will encourage others who have been oppressed to speak out and seek help.

She said Balakrishnan looked up to the Communist dictators 'as Gods' and wanted to emulate them.

She branded him a 'narcissist and a psychopath' who was 'obsessed about control' and plotted world domination.

'The people he looked up to were people like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein - you couldn't criticise them either in the house,' she said.

'They were his Gods and his heroes. These were the sort of people he wanted to emulate.'

While Balakrishnan idolised these tyrants - who together are responsible for the deaths of up to 100 million people - he also wanted to be superior to them.

His daughter said: 'Sometimes he would say he didn't like Mao, because he saw Mao as a rival to him as well.

'So he sort of followed them and wanted to be like them, but at the same time he didn't want them to be worshipped, except as secondary to him.

'(He wanted to be) bigger than all of them.'

This picture shows the bedroom where Balakrishnan's daughter was imprisoned when she was rescued by police in 2013, aged 28

Miss Morgan-Davies spent years confined in her bedroom, only allowed to leave on a number of occasions. While trapped in her room, she found solace in reading books such as Lord of the Rings

Balakrishnan ran his tiny cult, known as the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and based in south London, like the tyrants he so admired.

The married Maoist, of Enfield, north London, was found guilty of 14 charges, including rape, sexual assault and false imprisonment, against three victims last month following six hours of deliberation by the jury. He was cleared of a charge of indecent assault and a charge of causing actual bodily harm.

Jailing him at London's Southwark Crown Court today, Judge Deborah Taylor said: 'You were ruthless in your exploitation of them.

'You engendered a climate of fear, jealousy and competition for your approval.'

She added: 'These are grave and serious crimes conducted over a long period of time and you have shown no remorse whatsoever.'

Addressing Balakrishnan, the judge said: 'Your two adult females were abused by you psychologically, physically and sexually - it's a measure of the psychological control you had over them that they went out to work every day but returned in the evenings to your abuse.'

'Your daughter was an experiment, deprived of love and affection - you lied to her that she was an orphan, you never formally acknowledged that she was your daughter until the trial.'

Miss Morgan-Davies, 33, bravely decided to waive her right to anonymity and reveal her true identity - as she revealed the torment of living 'like a caged bird' in the sect

She added: 'Your treatment of her from her birth to the age of 26 was a catalogue of mental and physical abuse.

'She was slapped with slippers or a stick from a McDonald's balloon you kept for the purpose.'

The judge said Balakrishnan had waged a campaign of physical and psychological abuse against his victims.

Commenting on his treatment of his daughter, she said: 'You decided to treat her as a project, not a person.

'You claimed to do it for her to protect her from the outside world, but you created a cruel environment.'

Balakrishnan was assessed by a doctor and has a 'narcissistic personality disorder' and has a 'grandiose' sense of his own self importance, the court heard.

'You subjected [your followers] to excoriate criticism,' Judge Taylor said. 'You made them go down on their knees while you berated them for their bourgeois views.

'No one was permitted to criticise you, you took all of their savings and earnings while doing nothing yourself and making no contribution to the household, you isolated them from their families so they could show their commitment to you.

'There was a code of reporting within the collective for any apparent disloyalty, you were relentless in your exploitation of them.'

The trial heard that Balakrishnan fathered Miss Morgan-Davies with one of his devotees, Sian Davies (pictured), a former pupil at Cheltenham Ladies' College

Ms Davies died in 1997 after falling from a window at this commune property in Herne Hill, London

She continued: 'It's a remarkable indication of the control you had over them that the pregnancy wasn't acknowledged despite the relationship you had with Sian Davies.

'You made it clear you had no sexual desire or affection for these women, you ignored those in the collective who wanted to have sex with you and forced yourself on those who didn't.'

'You treated them with arrogance and contempt. Your abuse has had a profound effect on the lives of both of these victims and their statements attest to the psychological trauma caused by your offending.

'They both have tried to put their experience behind them, they've both shown great courage in the face of giving evidence.'

She continued: 'You kept Katherine Davies under your control, she had been born into the regime and had been unable to escape from it, she was unable to leave the house on her own.'

'You have shown no remorse whatsoever.'

Balakrishnan did not react as his sentence was read out, but one of his most devoted followers, former cult member Josie Herivale shouted from the public gallery: 'This is political persecution.'

After Balakrishnan was lead to the cells, Judge Taylor commended the three police officers who lead the investigation and Gerard and Yvonne Stocks, who acted as foster parents to Katherine after her escape.

The couple worked with the charity Freedom and cult member Ms Herivale to help her leave the collective. Ms Herivale has since returned to live with Balakrishnan's wife Chandra.

During his three-week trial bizarre and harrowing details of life inside the south London communist household were exposed - mainly through the meticulously-kept diaries which Balakrishnan forced his followers to write on a daily basis.

Balakrishnan in the 1970s, around the time when he set up the cult, (left), and in his police mugshot (right)

Comrade Bala pictured with some of his collective at the Brixton home in 2012. Their faces have been obscured to protect their identity

Set up in the 1970s, he spent the following four decades manipulating and terrorising his small band of female followers into thinking he was God-like and could read their minds.

He invented an invisible war machine called Jackie which he said could kill and trigger natural disasters if his will was flouted.

He also sexually abused cult members 'by appointment' when his wife left the house, telling one he was giving her the 'elixir of life', and encouraged his 'comrades' to denounce one another if they fell foul of his strict rules.

Shown no affection and relentlessly bullied and beaten, Miss Morgan-Davies was banned from going to school, making friends, and even leaving the cult's home unaccompanied.

Balakrishnan's wife, Chanda Pattni, arriving at Southwark Crown Court today

She was repeatedly beaten daughter for minor transgressions, such as singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and was so lonely that she made friends with taps and did not understand the concept of children.

But the court heard that she was given the strength to rebel against her father by reading fantasy novels such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Speaking today, she said the sect was seen as a 'pilot unit' where Balakrishnan learnt how to control people before taking over the world.

She said: 'I used to think 'God, if the whole world is going to be like this, what way out is there? How am I going to live? I cannot live in this.

'So I used to think that the best way would be to die.'

Miss Morgan-Davies says she spent 30 years effectively as a 'slave' in her own home.

Banned from going to school, mixing with other children, or leaving the house unaccompanied, she instead spent her days being taught about Balakrishnan's world importance and singing songs eulogising him.

Recalling life in the cult, she said: 'It was horrible, so dehumanising and degrading. I felt like a caged bird with clipped wings.'

She was even robbed of her own family. Growing up she was not told Balakrishnan was her father, or that her mother was Sian Davies - one of the women in the cult and a former pupil at Cheltenham Ladies' College. Instead she knew them simply as 'comrade'.

On Christmas Eve in 1996, Ms Davies, 44, plunged from the bathroom window of the commune's house. She died of her injuries several months later in hospital.

That night her daughter heard screaming and shouting and saw her mother lying in a pool of blood below the bathroom window pleading with Balakrishnan to 'kill me'.

When Ms Morgan-Davies learnt the truth about their relationship, she was haunted by dreams of her mother.

'I remember I used to dream about her a lot, and I used to wake up crying', she said. 'I used to dream that I said 'I know you are my mum'.'

After years of abuse she managed to escape the cult in 2013 and is now carving out a new, free, life for herself in Leeds.

She has joined the Labour Party and is studying maths and English in college - the first formal education she has ever received, despite having a very high IQ.

And she is reclaiming her identity, saying: 'I've been a non-person all my life and now is my chance to be myself.'

Miss Morgan-Davies is studying maths and English in college - the first formal education she has ever received, despite having a very high IQ

She has chosen the name Katy Morgan-Davies for herself partly because they are all family names on her mother's side - relatives she is getting to know for the first time.

But her first name is also inspired by the pop star Katy Perry, whose hit song Roar talks about the importance of finding your voice and being counted.

Despite all she has endured, she says she forgives her father and would one day like to reconcile with him - if he faces up to his crimes.

'I can't make him do that if that's not what he wants to do', she said. 'But the door is always open.'

Comrade Bala's wife Chanda still insists her husband is innocent, and said his jailing is a 'miscarriage of justice'.

Speaking outside the court after he was taken to the cells, she said: 'It is a political prosecution and a miscarriage of justice.

'I've seen him twice in prison, he is bearing up - what can he do? It's a frame-up.'

Her words were echoed by Ms Herivel, who said he had been 'persecuted because he exposed the British state'.

She added: 'How can they (the authorities) forgive him? The police have their revenge.'

Comrade Bala's wife Chanda (right) still insists her husband is innocent, and said his jailing is a 'miscarriage of justice', while follower Josie Herivel (left) said he had been 'persecuted because he exposed the British state'

One of Miss Morgan-Davies's relatives, her mother's cousin Eleri Morgan, 66, welcomed the 23 year sentence given to Balakrishnan.

'For him at his age, that sentence is fine,' she said. 'Let him be locked up for a change.'

She added: 'I'm just looking forward to getting on with the rest of my life, and of Katy's, and getting to know her better.

'I'm going to take her over to Wales, she wants to go and see where her grandmother and mother lived.'

Ms Morgan said she was shocked when she learned she had a long lost relative who had been kept a prisoner in the commune for 30 years in 2013, after reading about the case in a newspaper.

She said she has spoken to Miss Morgan-Davies about the nice side of her mother - the side she never got to see.

'I know that Sian was nasty to Katy, and I say that's not the Sian I know,' she said. 'She was a nice, kind person which is what Balakrishnan focused in on.'

Ms Morgan was 'distressed' hearing how her cousin suffered in the commune.

'I was very distressed to hear how Sian had been treated,' she added. 'She was so desperate, as Katy said, and she kept asking to phone her mother and he denied her this.

'And stamping on her and gagging her with clothes. She must have been so distressed. It must have been a black hole she was living in.

'That was just absolutely horrible, that she went through that.

'If he had given her support then she could be alive today.'

Asked if she wants a new inquest to be held into her cousin's death, Ms Morgan said: 'I would like there to be acknowledgement that had she been given help perhaps she could have been alive today.

'It won't bring her back, I know, but perhaps it will bring a bit of justice and make people realise that she was very desperate.

'Did she fall or did she jump? We don't know and we'll never know.'
A San Francisco home owner was forced to stand by and watch Thursday as his newly bought, $2million home was bulldozed after building inspectors found a large crack in the hillside villa.

Building inspectors were first alerted to the crumbling residence after a neighbor observed the three-story house appeared to be sliding down the hill.

According to NBC Bay Area, the house moved 14 inches in just one week.

The three-story house in the center of this picture was razed Thursday in San Francisco after it was found to be crumbling. Demolition debris is visible in the background

Building inspectors were first alerted to the crumbling residence after a neighbor observed the three-story house appeared to be sliding down the hill

The home had five bedrooms, two garages and a 180 degree panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean

The San Francisco Department of Building granted an emergency demolition permit to raze the house.

'It was horrifying news to receive when you're a couple of thousand miles away at your father's funeral,' home owner Ronald Martell told NBC as he stood by the ruins of the house he bought in October last year.

The five-bedroom, two-garage house with '180 degree Panoramic Pacific Ocean view, Lake Merced and city view from all the 3 floors' was sold on October 16 for $2,149,000 according to the real estate website Realtor.com.

'It was horrifying news to receive' Martell said after learning his recently purchased San Francisco home had to be destroyed

Martell purchased the house for $2,149,000 in October

The San Francisco Department of Building granted an emergency demolition permit to raze the house

Martell said he bought the house at 256 Casitas Avenue because it had a 'great view'.

'We just loved the location. Good place to raise a family.'

Though distraught, Martell said he understood the need to demolish his property.

'It's for everyone's safety. God forbid that the house ends up down the hill in someone's bedroom,' Martell said.
The stepfather of Daniel Pelka - who murdered the tragic four-year-old in a case which shocked Britain - has been found dead in prison.

Mariusz Krezolek and his partner Magdalena Luczak systematically starved little Daniel and locked him in a box room, where he slept on a urine-soaked mattress.

The youngster died after he was dunked in a cold bath and hit over the head before being shut in his room. A judge found Krezolek delivered the fatal blow.

Krezolek was jailed for life for the killing of the youngster - who resembled a 'famine victim' at the time of his death and foraged for scraps of food from his school bin because he was so hungry.

Mariusz Krezolek (right, with his partner, Magdalena Luczak) has been found dead in his prison cell. The couple killed Luczak's son Daniel Pelka (left) after the youngster was put through a harrowing abuse ordeal

The 36-year-old killer was found dead at Full Sutton prison in Yorkshire where he was serving his minimum 30-year sentence.

His death comes six months after his partner, Luczak, Daniel's mother, was found hanging in her prison cell at HMP Foston Hall.

A Prisons Service spokesman said: 'HMP Full Sutton prisoner Mariusz Krezolek was found unresponsive in his cell at 8.30am on Wednesday 28 January.

'Staff immediately attempted resuscitation but he was pronounced dead shortly after.

'As with all deaths in custody, there will be an investigation by the independent Prisons & Probation Ombudsman.'

The case of Daniel Pelka brought an outpouring of grief in Coventry and the West Midlands after the little boy was found dead at his home in March 2012.

Despite his weight plunging to just 1.5 stone after a six-month campaign of abuse, his situation was ignored by numerous government agencies because of 'stressed' staff and bad record keeping.

He weighed less than a toddler and stood six inches smaller than average when he died a few months short of his fifth birthday with at least 30 injuries to his emaciated body.

The death of Krezolek (left) comes six months after his partner, Luczak (right), Daniel's mother, was found hanging in her prison cell

His killers, both originally from Poland, blamed each other for the head injury which ultimately caused Daniel's death. They were found guilty of his murder at a trial in 2013.

The judge in their case said she believed that Krezolek beat Daniel around the head and then the couple left him to die alone on March 3, 2012, even having sex as he lay unconscious.

Mrs Justice Laura Cox told the pair: 'Your campaign of cruelty, as it has accurately been described, culminated in the severe blow or blows to his head that killed him. He was just four and a half years old.'

The judge in Krezolek's trial said she believed he had delivered the fatal blow's to Daniel's head

She said the pair had subjected him to 'deliberate, escalating and incomprehensible brutality, which continued right up to his death'.

The trial heard that Luczak, despite knowing of Daniel's hunger, gave specific instructions to his teachers that he was not to eat any more food than his small packed lunch because of an 'eating disorder'.

Krezolek, a brick-layer who had trained in the Polish army, had been allowed to remain in the UK despite receiving three jail terms and being arrested six times in the eight years between his arrival and Daniel's death.

His sister later revealed that he was a violent criminal who was booted out of the army for attacking a fellow recruit.

His trial heard that he told the colleague in the summer of 2011: 'It's not even worth beating him [Daniel] because he won't feel pain as he's autistic.'

In other disturbing comments, Krezolek also informed the same work-mate that Daniel was 'all f***** up' and 'a very bad person'.

Campaigner Nicci Astin, 39, who set up the Justice for Daniel Pelka Facebook page in a bid to prevent similar tragedies, said: 'If he's killed himself then he's a coward but it may have been the best thing he ever did in his horrible little life.

'I suppose at the moment I'm in shock. Part of me is relieved that Krezolek is dead but part of me wanted to see him rot in jail.

'At least he will no longer sit in a prison having three meals a day all paid for at the taxpayers' expense because he never let Daniel have that luxury.

'It is a terrible waste of a family. Poor Daniel slipped through the cracks of the system and we will continue to fight to make sure it doesn't happen to other children.'
'Body in a suitcase' killer Heather Mack has reportedly dumped the man who helped her kill her mother after meeting a new boyfriend in the notorious Bali prison where she is locked up.

Mack is said to have been seen spotted cosying up to her new boyfriend after love blossomed during art classes at Kerobokan Prison - away from the watchful eyes of Tommy Schaefer, the father of her daughter, Stella, and her accomplice in the murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack.

It is said that the relationship was allowed to develop because Schaefer, who is serving an 18 year sentence, refused to attend.

Defiant: Mack, from Chicago, Illinois, who murdered her mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, and stuffed her body in a suitcase, flips the bird at a camera during an open day at the prison where she is serving 10 years

Laughing: Mack, pictured with her boyfriend and accomplice Tommy Schaefer, has been seen cosying up to a new man in the notorious Kerobokan Prison, having apparently met him at an art class

Pictures from inside the prison where the 20-year-old is living with her baby daughter appear to verify the claim, showing Mack getting close to the man, putting her arm around his shoulder.

His exact identity and he has done to be locked up remains unclear.

Mack, 20, and her 'official' boyfriend Schaefer, 21, were both found guilty of beating her 62-year-old socialite mother to death before stuffing her body in a suitcase.

She is now serving 10 years behind bars for her part in her mothers murder.

This 'new' relationship comes amid reports she is growing increasingly fed up of Schaefer - who is said to be keen to get his hands on the money her mother left Mack in her will, so he can purchase medication to calm him down.

A source who regularly sees the couple during prison open days revealed to MailOnline: We dont know what his actual problem is, but its common knowledge that Heather has been under pressure to arrange for money to be sent to him so he can purchase the medication.

'There is talk that the money might be for methadone.'

The source added: She remains devoted to Tommy, of course, because they were in the murder together and he is, after all, the father of her little girl.

But Tommy has his problems these days and Heathers attention seems to have been focused on another inmate.

Their friendship grew when they met at an arts centre in the prison, when male and female prisoners are allowed to mix. Tommy doesnt go, so Heather takes time to cement the friendship with the male inmate.

Killer looks: Mack, 20, and Schaefer, 21, still appear to be on good terms, and were pictured mingling with other inmates - but her reported new boyfriend was also there, and she was seen with her arm around him

But there was little evidence of tension between the couple at the prison's most recent open day.

The two were spotted chatting away at the special ceremony, during which many of the jails prisoners stood in a large group to confirm that they were peaceful and loving people.

The ceremony followed a deadly riot in mid-December when two warring gangs fought, resulting in three deaths and many injuries.

Murdered: Mack and her boyfriend killed Sheila von Wiese-Mack (pictured) in Bali in August 2014

Mack and Schaefer were among the peace group, but the importance of the occasion appeared to be lost on them.

They appeared more interested in showing the world their contempt, raising a finger to the camera.

Schaefer tried to hide his face from the camera, while still rudely gesturing and sucking through a straw on a small water container.

Their personal show of indifference to the solemn ceremony being conducted in front of them continued until it was time for them to return to their cells.

However, Mack found time to utter a few words of hatred for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has claimed that she and her Schaefer, along with a relative of Schaefers, had discussed murdering her mother.

Asked how she was coping in prison, Mack retorted: FBI - bull-s***.

It was a catch-cry she had uttered before and which is understood to be an indication of the argument the pair will lodge in a final appeal, claiming that the authority had presented false evidence to Bali prosecutors.

But the evidence that the pair had murdered Macks mother in Balis upmarket St Regis Hotel in August 2014 was overwhelming.

Judges agreed that Schaefer, who had a personality clash with Mrs Mack, had battered her to death before he and Miss Mack stuffed the body into a suitcase and loaded it into a taxi waiting at the hotel.

Baby mama: Mack gave birth to Stella nine months ago and the baby lives in her cell - but she will have to make a decision about whether to keep Stella in Bali or send her to the US, as she cannot keep living in the jail

Locked up: Mack smiles in a photograph from inside the prison, holding up baby Stella to the camera

Lovestory over? Mack has reportedly dumped Schaefer, father of her baby daughter Stella, for another inmate

The couple made their escape out through the rear of the hotel before the taxi driver, having waited a long time for them to emerge, drove to a police station where the suitcase, leaking blood, was opened and the folded-up body of Mrs Mack was found.
Thursday's Republican presidential primary debate had the second-lowest ratings of the seven GOP contests in this election cycle. But the Fox News Channel, which aired the contest after front-runner Donald Trump announced a boycott, can still claim victory.

About 12.5 million people watched the evening broadcast, according to a Fox News press release.

That performance would have been remarkable in January four years ago but registered as disappointing given the viewership bonanzas Trump has brought to the table in recent months.

It was still Fox's second-highest viewership number of all time, behind the August broadcast that marked Trump's onstage debate debut.

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SEVEN, DWARFED: Thursday night's Republican debate in Iowa would likely have been a much bigger TV event if Donald Trump had shown up

THE GREAT UNKNOWN: It's impossible to make a fair estimate of how many Americans watched Trump's military fundraiser instead of tuning in to the debate

While seven GOP White House hopefuls duked it out in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, Trump held his own competing rally  a fundraiser for veterans charities  at Drake University a few miles away.

CNN and MSNBC both cut in and out of live coverage of Trump's event, and neither advertised that The Donald would appear on-air.

The two networks combined generated only about one-quarter of Fox News Channel's numbers, according to a CNN analysis.

C-SPAN aired the Trump rally live nationwide in its entirety, but viewership numbers for the public-service channel weren't available since Nielsen doesn't rate its broadcasts.

DEBATE NIGHT: The Des Moines contest was the second lowest-rated Republican primary contest so far

The only Republican primary debate that drew fewer viewers than Thursday night's was the last one, two weeks ago, broadcast by FNC's sister channel the Fox Business Network from North Charleston, South Carolina.

Nielsen estimated that 7.4 per cent of households with TV sets in the metro markets where it takes measurements were tuned in to watch that broadcast.

Thursday night's debate had a household rating of 8.4 per cent.

When the dust settles, it's possible the two debates' audiences will be about equal.

That's because while the Fox News Channel is a staple on every nationwide cable TV system, fewer households have access to the Fox Business Network through their TV providers.

The primary debate season's opening event, broadcast from Cleveland, Ohio in August by the Fox News Channel, drew in 25 million pairs of eyeballs to see Trump's first onstage rout of a more experienced political field.

THE TRUMP FACTOR: It's impossible to know how big a boost The Donald might have give Fox, had he relented and attended Thursday night's debate

By mid-December, a CNN-sponsored debate posted somewhat depressed numbers  with a 12.2 household rating and 18 million total viewers.

Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, said Wednesday on the MSNBC 'Morning Joe' program that 'maybe Fox was going to have a 20 or 25 million person debate [audience], but without Mr. Trump's participation I think they might have a 1 or 2 million person debate.'
Driver was injured but is not in a serious condition and thanked the group

Helpers said they were forced to negotiate diesel and a smoking engine

A truck driver survived a crash after a group of strangers formed a human chain in the snow and pulled him from his destroyed vehicle.

The motorist was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh on Tuesday when his lorry plunged into a gully at the side of the road.

Photographs showed eight people pulling the driver, who has not been named, up the icy bank moments after the crash.

A truck driver survived a crash after a group of strangers formed a 'human chain' in the snow and pulled him from his destroyed vehicle

Helpers said they were forced to negotiate puddles of diesel and the lorry's smoking engine.

The truck driver was injured but he is not thought to be in a serious condition.

Witness Arlyn Satanek pulled up in his vehicle and was initially concerned about making sure other people were safe from arriving traffic.

The 39-year-old told MailOnline he made his way to the truck after seeing people run towards it

He said: 'I remember thinking: "There's a driver in that truck and I don't know if he's dead or alive, so I need to get down there and help too".

'I got out of my truck and began walking toward the demolished rig. It struck me how dangerous the scene was for everyone who was trying to help.

The motorist was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh on Tuesday when his lorry plunged into a gully at the side of the road

A wider shot shows the severity of the crash, which left diesel and debris all over the snow-covered road

'It was a tough task [to get the driver out] because the hillside was covered in debris... broken trees and chunks of metal.

'Me and two other guys were down the hill with the driver helping him walk. As we were making little progress getting him to the top of the hill, I then looked up to the top of the hillside and noticed that a human chain was forming.

'I didn't hear anyone say a word like, "hey I have a plan, let's link together and pull the driver up". In fact, it seemed spontaneous, natural, and instinctive.'

Mr Satanek, from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, said the driver, whose clothes were left shredded, was tended to by rescue crews following the crash and has since thanked the group.
An eighth grade girl was caught on camera pummeling a seventh grader in the middle of a Denver, Colorado, classroom.

The attack happened in front of a group of students who were changing classes at Center of Hope School in Denver on Thursday.

For an entire minute the older girl in a white shirt with black sleeves is seen sitting on top of the younger girl's chest throwing a steady barrage of punches down.

An eighth grade girl was caught attacking a seventh grader at a Denver school in a shocking video

The older girl can be seen on top of the younger child as she repeatedly punches the seventh grader

At one point the girl even stands up and kicks the younger girl in the face and side before as the younger girl puts her arms up, trying to protect her face from the minute-long attack

The older girl begins punching the seventh grade student again before an adult pulls her off

The younger girl tries to cover her face as she is repeatedly beat over and over again by the older girl.

The eighth grader then stands up and kicks the younger girl in the face, before beginning another slew of punches.

Children can be heard in the background cheering the fight on.

Eventually an adult enters the room and pulls the girls apart. Police were called and both children were suspended from Center of Hope School.

The seventh grader's father, Robert Medina (pictured), was outraged and angered by the attack on his daughter and said the school, Center of Hope School in Denver, should have handled it better

The school said it followed policy while handling the fight and that the students were changing classes when it happened, which is why no adults were around to break up the fight sooner

The police were called after the attack and both students have been temporarily suspended from the school

The seventh grader's father, Robert Medina, said the students were changing classes, which is why no teachers were around.

Medina was horrified when he saw the video of his daughter being attacked by the older girl.

'I just couldn't believe it. I was outraged, I was angry. I couldn't believe something like this could happen,' Medina told Fox31 in Denver.

He said he thinks the whole situation was mishandled by the school and is also upset no one tried to help his daughter.

'For a good minute the girl is on top of her, hitting and hitting and no one was around to do anything,' Medina said.
Outrage on social media as company is accused of 'subtle

Alaska Airlines has been accused of racism after an advert promoted the company with the catchphrase 'Meet our Eskimo'.

Chief executive of the Seattle-based airline, Brad Tilden, apologized for the 'insensitive reference' which provoked outrage on social media.

One user described the phrase as 'subtle racism' - with another claiming it was an 'appropriation and a slur'.

The phrase was used to draw attention to its freshly tweaked image of an unidentified parka-clad man that has graced the tails of Alaska Airlines airplanes for more than four decades.

'Meet our Eskimo': The offending advert which has provoked many to express their anger with Alaska Airlines - the firm has used the image for decades

Criticism has been drawn more at the sense of ownership that the phrase implies rather than the use of the word 'Eskimo'.

'It was very condescending,' said Angela Cox, an Alaskan resident. 'My first thought was, "You don't own an Eskimo." It just seemed wrong.'

Latanya Odden was one of many who tweeted her displeasure with the company under the hashtag #NotYourEskimo.

'I couldn't believe it,' said Odden, describing the phrase as 'subtle racism'.

'It's one thing to say the iconic image represents a culture and a way of life you support.

'It's another thing entirely to say this is ours and what we're selling.'

In a letter to Alaska Airlines posted on her Facebook page, Alaskan resident Tiffany Zulkosky said she was 'deeply disappointed'.

'Though it appears an attempt at cleverness, it comes across as appropriation and a slur,' she said.

Zulkosky invited Alaska Airlines to attend a racial equality summit next week organised by First Alaskans Institute. Zulkosky said she would love to see Tilden or other executives at the event.

Eskimo is a widely used term in Alaska, describing Inupiat and Yupik people.

In a statement, Mr Tilden said: 'We apologize and take full responsibility for this insensitive reference.

There has also been support for the airline from some in the community - one Instagram user added their voice to the debate and said: 'I support it 100%. I was born an Eskimo and same as my grandpa that was on the first issue of the Alaska airlines magazine'

'We are immediately taking down this reference, and pledge that we will work to be both respectful and fully cognizant of the importance of this symbol to the native people of Alaska.

'The Eskimo is a symbol of the uniqueness and beauty of Alaska and its people. As we refreshed our brand, we sought input early on from a number of native leaders in the state of Alaska to make sure we got the symbol right.

'The airline is committed to working with the Alaska native community to ensure that our actions reflect our profound respect and admiration for the native people, and the respect we have for every Alaskan.

'Alaska Airlines is grateful for its very long standing ties to the Alaska native community and will strive to strengthen and deepen them going forward.'

Some, however backed the campaign and thanked the firm for celebrating Eskimo culture.

One Instagram user said: 'I support it 100%. I was born an Eskimo and same as my grandpa that was on the first issue of the Alaska airlines magazine.
A Pennsylvania couple was robbed at gunpoint and bound with duct tape, and their house was set ablaze. Now their adult daughter is missing, too.

Brian Vroman and Michael Houseweart, of Canton, are accused of breaking into 71-year-old Gary and 66-year-old Linda Inch's home early Wednesday near Montoursville, about 90 miles north of Harrisburg.

The two 27 year olds were arraigned Thursday morning on 43 charges including attempted homicide and arson.

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Michael Houseweart and Brian Vroman, both 27, were arrested Wednesday after allegedly breaking into Houseweart's girlfriend's parents home to rob the couple and set their home on fire

Gary and Linda Inch were woken up by two men in ski masks before 3am on Wednesday. Linda, 66, was able to escape the burning house and get firemen to help rescue her husband, 71

Firefighters were able to quickly put out the blaze, but it's estimated that the house sustained about $200,000 in heat and water damage

Police in Lycoming County say they are concerned about the couple's 33-year-old daughter, Michelle, who had a relationship with Houseweart and hasn't been seen since Tuesday.

Police are now looking for the couple's daughter, Michelle Inch, who has been missing since Tuesday. The 33 year old had been in a relationship with Houseweart

Her car was found abandoned by a set of train tracks on Thursday in Canton, and calls to her cellphone aren't going through. Police say she had been staying with her parents when she went missing.

Houseweart's brother-in-law told police that before the robbery, he complained about his girlfriend exchanging messages with an ex-boyfriend over Facebook, and remarked that he felt like burning someone's house down.

The day before the incident, both the Inches and their daughter reported about checks being stolen, according to WNEP. Those checks were later written out and cashed by Houseweart in Canton.

Linda Inch says she and her husband were woken up early Wednesday morning before 3am by two men wearing ski masks and armed with a rifle.

After being bound with the duct tape, she says the two men started wandering around the house collecting valuable items including a flat-screen TV, $116 in cash, a poker set and two cellphones.

They then doused the home in gasoline and started a fire in lower level before fleeing the scene.

Police say Linda Inch freed herself and ran to neighbors for help. Firefighters broke down the door of the burning house and rescued Gary Inch, who was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. He was reported as being in a serious condition on Thursday at LeHigh Valley Hospital Center in Allentown.

According to court documents, both suspects were captured on surveillance just 90 minutes before the home invasion buying duct tape and gloves at a Walmart in Montoursville. Police added that they believe Houseweart was planning to flee to Florida.

Hosueweart's brother-in-law told police that he complained about Michelle's conversations on Facebook with an ex-boyfriend. The woman's car was found abandoned by a set of railroad tracks in Canton after the fire

On Thursday, police executed search warrants on Houseweart's home and Vroman's car, finding ski masks and a poker set matching the description of items used and stolen in the robbery

When police executed search warrants on Houseweart's home and Vroman's car on Thursday, they found ski masks and a poker set matching the description of those used and stolen in the invasion.

Anyone with information on missing Michelle Inch's whereabouts is being asked to call police at 570-368-5700.

According to Penn Live, Houseweart was not married, had two children and was self-employed at his own construction business. His criminal record includes an arrest for unlawful use of a computer.

Vroman was single, living with his parents and working a job delivering newspapers. He was convicted in 2010 on a charge of resisting arrest.
Her brother in law tells Daily Mail Online she 'wasn't like that' and wants her remembered for being 'brilliant, beautiful person'

But family are furious at leak from investigation and said they were 'heartbroken' at her death

that Colorado au pair was victim of kinky sex 'game' gone wrong

Police are looking into series of theories - including

The family of 'murdered' nanny Lauren Mann have said they are outraged by the theory that her death was the result of 'a kinky sex game' gone wrong.

The theory, which was put forward by Austrian police, was slammed in a statement released by Lauren's sister Ashleigh Doutis, 30, yesterday in which she described it as 'sensationalized'.

The 25-year-old was discovered by police in her apartment in Vienna on Tuesday, half-naked and lying face down on a mattress in a 'considerable amount of blood'.

An autopsy found she had been suffocated but toxicology tests are now being carried out as well to help determine whether she was murdered.

Today, Lauren's brother-in-law Justin Doutis, 31, told Daily Mail Online that the Colorado au pair would 'never' have got involved in anything like that.

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Lauren Mann (pictured in a Facebook photo) was discovered lying half-naked, face-down on a mattress at her fourth district address on Tuesday

In mourning: Lauren Mann's mother Shelly Hyde remains at home in Grand Junction, Colorado, while the family faces a lengthy wait to bring their loved one's body home from Austria

Concerns:The alarm was first raised on Monday when she failed to show up to her au pair job at the home of Michael Kuen and his wife Verena Jaschke-Kuen. She helped care for their family

Mourned at home: In Grand Junction, Lauren's brother-in-law told Daily Mail Online she was being remembered as 'a brilliant, beautiful person'.

'I knew Lauren and she wasn't like that,' he said.

'She would never have done anything like that. She just wasn't that kind of a person.

'There's been a lot of inaccurate stuff written and it's just not right.'

Instead of dwelling on her death, Doutis said he would always remember her as 'a brilliant, beautiful person'.

'It's so terrible what happened to her,' he added. 'We're all really upset.

'She was so excited about living in Europe - she had always wanted to move there. It's a really hard time for all of us.'

Earlier today, Ashleigh took to social media to thank well-wishers and friends expressing their sympathy following the discovery of Lauren's body on Tuesday evening.

'Thank you for all your thoughts, love and prayers,' she wrote.

'My heart is broken. The memories of my sister are cherished.'

Lauren's mother, Shelly Hyde, 63, remains too upset to speak and is being comforted by friends at her spacious home in an upmarket neighborhood of Grand Junction.

The family may have to wait 'weeks' before her body is returned to them. Despite an autopsy revealing that Mann was suffocated, it may be weeks before authorities in Austria decide if they will launch murderer inquiry, police said today.



Until they do, they may keep her body, leaving the family unable to mourn their loss.

The case has been handed over to the State Attorney's Office in Austria to decide whether Mann was murdered or whether the case remains a homicide investigation.

Police and firefighters had to force open the door to Ms Mann's apartment inside this building in Vienna, pictured, after her employers became concerned by her unexplained absence from work on Tuesday

Investigation: A forensic examination of the 550-euro ($600) a month studio apartment where the student lived was carried out after he body was found

But the knot of bureaucracy means that Mann's family in Colorado is unable to say when they will be able to finally lay their daughter to rest.

'We have to wait for some medical results to come in and until we have them it can't be decided if this is a murder investigation or not,' Vienna police spokesman Thomas Keiblinger told Daily Mail Online on Friday.

'But it could be a few weeks or more.'

Meanwhile Nina Bussek, the spokeswoman for the State Attorney's Office, that she too did not have any information as to how long the investigation would take, nor how long the family would have to wait for the return of Mann's body.

Lauren didn't show up for work today without any notice and her phone is flat. This has never happened before and therefore we are a bit worried. Did anyone hear from her or see her today? ... and Lauren, please give us call when you see this. Thank you! Facebook post by her concerned employers on Monday

'I don't have that information,' she told Daily Mail Online. 'It is up to the doctor to decide when the body will be returned.

'At the moment the investigation is still ongoing.'

The blow to the family came after they spoke of their devastation at their loss and criticized a leak which revealed one theory police are working on - that she was the victim of a sex game gone wrong.

Her sister Ashleigh Doutis spoke out after it was revealed the theory was one of the lines being pursued by invesitgators in Vienna after the part-time student was found dead.

The theory had already been met with skepticism by the University of Colorado graduate's friends in Vienna.

Doutis, 30, who still lives in the family's home town Grand Junction, Colorado, strongly implied the family also doubt the theory.

'We are heartbroken to tell you our daughter and sister Lauren Mann has been found dead in her apartment in Vienna, Austria,' she said.

'An investigation is in progress. It has been released in Austria to the media and is being sensationalized. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.'

Her mother Shelly Hyde, 63, was still too upset to speak when approached at her upscale home in Grand Junction earlier today.

Vienna police have told media that one theory being pursued is that Lauren, whose half-naked body was discovered on Tuesday night, died during 'a kinky sex game gone wrong'.

Autopsy results released earlier today showed that the 25-year-old language student died from suffocation and was discovered with her face pushed into her mattress.

The alarm was first raised on Monday when she failed to show up to her au pair job at the home of Michael Kuen and his wife Verena Jaschke-Kuen.

Debris: Some of the items left by forensic investigators outside the studio apartment where the 'murdered' student and part-time au pair lived

Sealed: The apartment where Lauren Mann was found dead has been shut by police and its landlord has not been allowed access to it

While Kuen alerted authorities, his wife began a frantic social media search for the 25-year-old.

In a post made on Facebook on Monday, she wrote: 'Lauren didn't show up for work today without any notice and her phone is flat.

'This has never happened before and therefore we are a bit worried. Did anyone hear from her or see her today? ... and Lauren, please give us call when you see this. Thank you!'

Friends quickly began voicing their concern about her whereabouts with one, John Duz Dusenbury, saying she hadn't been heard from since the previous Tuesday.

Lauren is thought to have been killed at some point over the weekend and was discovered in her Wieden apartment with a sweater over her head.

Along with the sex game gone wrong theory, police are hunting a Gambian illegal migrant who was believed to be sharing her studio apartment at the time of her death. His right to stay in Austria had expired.

Meanwhile, friends have paid tribute to the murdered au pair, with many highlighting her love of music, generous personality and kind heart.

Writing on Lauren's social media pages, Ross Gullo, from Parkside, Illinois, described her as 'a great friend.'

He added: 'Always nice with something interesting to say. You were a fantastic musician. Your intelligence and brilliance always amazed me.

'I will cherish the time we spent together and the memories we had. I'm thankful for knowing you. I will be praying for your family. Take care, friend.'

Another, Peter Pyotr Petrovich Mathys, from Boulder, Colorado, added: 'I'm sorry you had to leave this world so soon.

'You were a fantastic, kind, intelligent, unique person that had lots of potential and lots to offer.

'I've realized that you were one of my first and closest friends my freshman year at CU. We shared our love of music and languages and we had many fun moments and deep conversations. I can't thank you enough for making that year special for me.

Austrian police are looking for an illegal immigrant from Gambia who was living with Ms Mann in the apartment complex, pictured, who has vanished following her death

Your passing is extremely tragic and heartbreaking. You will be missed, yet never forgotten.'

Close friend Alexandra Nguyen, also from Boulder, added: 'This is heartbreaking... Lauren was a bright, kind, generous, and luminous young woman. What a terrible loss.'

The case is being treated as a 'possible' murder and the Austrian state attorney - the prosecuting authority - will decide if a full-scale murder investigation is to be carried out by police.

Investigators are focusing on questioning her friends and family, following suggestions that a 'sex game' led to her death.

But neighbors on the peaceful Wiender Hauptstrasse were skeptical of the theory and insisted that Lauren was 'a very lovely girl' and a 'model tenant .

The theory is uncannily similar to a claim made by police after the death of an American artist in Italy earlier this month that she was also involved in a kinky sex game.

Police there dropped the theory after less than 48 hours and charged an immigrant man she had taken home from a nightclub with her murder.

In Vienna today Lauren's landlord cast doubt on the sex-game theory and told Daily Mail Online: 'She was a lovely girl, and I have never had a problem with her. She had a nice character and was a model tenant.'

The landlord, who wished to remain anonymous, added: 'She was a quiet and conscientious member of the community.'

Police have sealed off the apartment after they were forced to break in to recover Ms Mann's body

Police are looking for a man from the Gambia who was also living in the apartment with Ms Mann

Cafe and shop owners on the street, which has the character of a small town, also insisted that although they were not close with the American nanny, they had always been struck by her 'warm personality'.

'She came in here a few times,' said the owner of a tobacconist opposite Lauren's apartment building.

'She was not much of a small talker, but she seemed to be a nice person.'

The owners of the Sebastiano restaurant, directly below Lauren's flat, insisted that they would not play along with the 'wild' allegations until they 'knew what happened'.

When police entered the apartment, they found that every light bulb in it had blown out and the room was lit only by candles.

The landlord said he has not yet been allowed access to the studio by police, but added: 'She was not a very handy girl.

'What is most likely is that she didn't change the bulbs because she didn't know how or couldn't be bothered, as she would have needed a ladder to do it.

'There's not a problem with the building or the lights. It was only a problem in her apartment.

'The man living in the flat opposite her is the building's superintendent, so all she would have had to do to sort it out was knock on his door and ask.'

Authorities say the 25-year-old's body was found surrounded by a 'considerable amount of blood' as police confirmed they are treating her death as a homicide

Mann, a nanny from Paonia, Colorado (pictured in Facebook photos) had been studying and working in Vienna

Neighborhood: The area in Vienna where Mann was living before her death

Mann paid 550 ($600) a month for the studio. She was one of the few tenants in the building who was not a friend of the owner as she had taken the apartment over from a university friend who is the daughter of a Greek diplomat in Vienna.

Mann was studying at the University of Vienna, where she had enrolled in October 2014.

She was a high-flying student who had got the top grades, 1s and 2s, in the three courses she had completed towards her degree, for which she had to complete a minimum of 23 courses.

Her au-pair work had meant that she was effectively studying part-time.

Mann had studied piano and French at the University of Colorado-Boulder's music school before moving to Europe to study German in Vienna.

The 25-year-old described herself as an avid reader and lover of art, and literature and music.

The U.S. Embassy in Vienna confirmed her death and said it was working with Austrian authorities on their investigation.

'We extend our deepest condolences to her loved ones,' the embassy told NBC News.

The sex game theory has parallels to the investigation into the death of American artist Ashley Olsen in Florence earlier this month.

She was found in her Italian apartment and had been strangled with a USB cord.
His life was tragically cut short after a one-punch attack when he was just 18-years-old.

But Brisbane teenager Cole Miller has helped save the lives of at least six others - including three young children - after his healthy organs were donated.

The teenager's heart is now beating in a young boy's chest and his lungs have been given to ensure that another boy and a girl can breathe.

Three adults have also been given the chance to live longer and healthier lives after receiving the young water polo player's kidneys and liver, the Courier Mail reported.

Cole Miller's (pictured) life was tragically cut short after a one-punch attack when he was just 18-years-old

Cole's older brother Billy (pictured speaking at a memorial) said the whole family 'broke down in tears' when they heard about the 'miracle'

Cole's older brother Billy, an Olympic water polo player, said the whole family 'broke down in tears' when they heard about the donations, saying it was a 'miracle'.

'You don't get the specifics but when we found out, we all broke down in tears again,' he said.

'To think that at the age of 18, he could save someone else's life  even though we were going through this tragedy with our own family, the fact that we could help someone else was amazing.

'We'll probably never meet that boy, or that little girl. But hopefully she has an extended and joyful life and lives it to her full potential.

'If anything, it's magical. It really is.'

He revealed that his mother had always encouraged them to get an organ donation licence, but the brothers never thought anything would happen to them.

Steven and Mary-Leigh Miller sprinkle holy water on the coffin of their son, 18 year-old one-punch victim Cole Miller, during his funeral service in Brisbane at the Cathedral of St Stephen on Wednesday

The teenager's heart is now beating in a young boy's chest and his lungs have been given to ensure that another boy and a girl can breathe

Cole had just got back from an interstate water polo tournament when he decided to join friends for a night in Fortitude Valley.

Police have alleged he was 'coward punched' in the back of the head in Chinatown Mall after he was challenged to a fight in the early hours of January 3.

He died in hospital from massive head trauma a day after the alleged assault.

Daniel Maxwell and Armstrong Renata, both 21, were remanded over the attack and charged with unlawful striking causing death, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Mr Maxwell's lawyer, Michael Bosscher, unsuccessfully tried to argue that he did not deliver the fatal blow.

Cole was laid to rest in a heartbreaking funeral service on January 13 attended by his family and friends at the Cathedral of St Stephen.

His father, Steven, wiped away tears and broke down with grief while delivering the eulogy during the funeral for his 18-year-old son that was attended by more than 1,000 people.

The ABC reports that the bereaved father spoke lovingly of his son's years growing up in the family home on the Sunshine Coast.

'He was always good for a kiss and a cuddle,' he said.

'Still in year 12, the whole family always stopped for a hug and a kiss from him. It was our family tradition.

'This young boy, Cole, could hold my heart in his every being. He did so then and he still does.'
This is the terrifying moment a gunman wearing suicide belt blew himself up inside a Shia mosque in the eastern Saudi Arabia's al-Ahsa province during Friday prayers.

Footage of the attack, which killed at least three people and wounded seven, shows the instant the bomb went off, breaking windows and causing a blackout.

During the confusion and chaos that followed, people can be heard shouting invocations to Allah as they try to escape the mosque. Gunfire is also heard outside as worshippers begin to panic.

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Footage of the attack shows a room inside the mosque going dark as an explosion is heard. Gunfire can be heard outside

The attack struck the Imam Reza Mosque in the neighbourhood of Mehasin, an area popular with Shia workers of the state-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co.

During the confusion and chaos that follow the explosion, people can be heard shouting invocations to Allah as they try to escape the mosque

The attack struck the Imam Reza Mosque in the neighbourhood of Mehasin, an area popular with Shia workers of the state-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world's largest oil-producing firm.

While one of the attackers detonated his explosives, the other opened fire - but was quickly stopped from blowing himself up.

Another video from the scene showed worshippers attacking the second militant inside the mosque. The gunman is seen laying on the ground surrounded by an angry mob who starts kicking and punching him.

While one of the attackers detonated his explosives, the other opened fire - but was quickly stopped from blowing himself up

The second gunman, who failed to detonate his suicide belt, is seen laying on the ground surrounded by an angry mob who starts kicking and punching him

ASaudi worshipper removes the suicide belt from the militant

The clip continues with graphic footage of injured people covered in blood

At some point, a Saudi worshipper removes the suicide belt from the man. The clip continues with graphic footage of injured people covered in blood.

Saudi police had to fire assault rifles into the air to drive away the mob that surrounded a police car holding the suspected attacker.

Shia in Saudi Arabia make up some 10 to 15 percent of the ultra-conservative, Sunni-ruled kingdom's population.

The graphic video shows injured worshippers inside the Imam Reza Mosque in the neighbourhood of Mehasi. The attack took place during Friday prayers

Another Shia worshipper is seen laying on the ground after the attack

Bodies can be seen one on top of each other inside the mosque after the suicide blast

The minority group, many of whom live in the country's oil-producing east, previously have been targeted in attacks by the Islamic State group, which views Shiites as heretics.

In August 2015, Daesh claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb that killed 15 worshippers.

In May, a suicide bomber killed 21 and wounded 81 in the village of al-Qadeeh, again during Friday prayers.

No group immediately claimed Friday's attack.
Holland has announced plans for its jets to start bombing ISIS targets in Syria as part of the US-led coalition.

A Dutch squadron of six F-16 fighter jets is already stationed in the region, but was so far been limited to striking positions held by the extremists in Iraq.

The aircraft will now be active over Syria until July 1, targeting ISIS insurgent operations and training camps, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

Holland has announced plans for its jets to start bombing ISIS targets in Syria as part of the US-led coalition. Two F-16 fighter jets from the Dutch Air Force land during a drill in Amsterdam this week

ISIS's bombing and shooting attacks on Paris that killed 130 people in November had already led France and Britain to step up their bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq.

'We have decided to heed the call of our allies for expansion of the operational area of our F-16s to the east of Syria to further weaken ISIS's supply lines and ability to advance,' Rutte said, using another of Islamic State's acronyms.

'Only by taking away ISIS's safe havens in Iraq and Syria can we prevent more attacks.'

The Netherlands is also considering providing more military equipment and training to Iraqi soldiers battling the militants.

It will fund moderate, armed Syrian opposition groups and assist the reconstruction of schools and hospitals, the statement said.

A Dutch squadron of six F-16 fighter jets is already stationed in the region, but was so far been limited to striking positions held by the extremists in Iraq

The aircraft will now be active over Syria until July 1, targeting ISIS insurgent operations and training camps, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (pictured) said

Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said the decision means the coalition will 'make more progress' against ISIS.

Extending the military operation became possible when the Dutch Labour Party, junior partner in the coalition government, said this week it was open to the idea, creating a parliamentary majority for it.

Foreign military interventions are especially sensitive in the Netherlands, which led a disastrous U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1995 during which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces.
Depp is nominated for Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday

Shea helped out on set of Black Mass where he says Johnny Depp looked so much like Bulger he had to leave the trailer or he would have hit him

'He taught me that there was no one lower than a rat,' says Shea who reveals finding out Bulger was FBI informant hit him like a sledgehammer

He refused to rat on Whitey and therefore served 12 years after being convicted of drug smuggling

'Once he lost his temper, then mercy on the person he was angry with. They would be lucky to get out alive,' tells Shea

John 'Red' Shea, 50, was Whitey Bulger's protege and helped him run drug smuggling operation in the 1980s that made millions

As a hardened gangster not much ever fazed John 'Red' Shea.

Having been a key member of James 'Whitey' Bulger's brutal gang he had seen and done it all.

But when he saw Johnny Depp sitting in his makeup chair having been transformed into the feared Boston mob boss for the film 'Black Mass' his heart almost skipped a beat.

Having once been one of Bulger's most loyal lieutenants and enforcers Shea now had nothing but hatred for the man he once idolized.

Like many in the Bulger gang he was shocked to learn his former boss had been an FBI informant.

While Shea refused to betray the code of silence held by most mobsters Bulger had been happy to 'rat out' his friends.

'I had not seen Whitey in almost 20 years and suddenly he is sitting in front of me,' John tells Daily Mail Online in an exclusive interview.

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'Reunion': 'I could feel all the emotions building up inside me and had to leave the trailer. If I had stayed there I would have hit Johnny,' says John 'Red' Shea who was a key member of Whitey Bulger's brutal gang. He met Johnny Depp as the star played Bulger and was astonished at the likeness

Uncanny: Johnny Depp (right) is nominated for Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for his portrayal as Boston mob boss James 'Whitey' Bulger (left)

Friendship: Shea and Depp became close friends after meeting on the set of Black Mass. Shea was able to give Depp a chilling insight into what life was like working for the man who became one of America's most notorious gangsters

'I knew it was Johnny Depp, but I had this urge to hit him. I could feel all the emotions building up inside me and had to leave the trailer.

'If I had stayed there I would have hit Johnny.

'Outside I was just so angry, I was shaking and felt like punching the trailer. That's how convincing Johnny was. He was Whitey.'

Fortunately Shea was able to calm down and he and Depp, who has won rave reviews for his chilling portrayal of Bulger, became close friends.

Shea was able to tell Depp all about his life with Bulger and give him a chilling insight into what life was like working for the man who became one of America's most notorious gangsters.

Depp is nominated for Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday 30 January and is also tipped for an Oscar nomination.

The 52-year-old actor's transformation into Bulger is down to upper half of his face being fitted with a prosthetic and the creation of 50 different headpieces to mimic the real life Bulger's receding hairline.

So convincing was the work of Oscar winning makeup artist Joel Harlow that when Shea first saw Depp he was convinced he was once again in the presence of the murderous mob boss.

Shea, 50, had been his protege and helped him run a vast drug smuggling operation in the 1980s that made millions.

Like Bulger he had grown up in 'Southie', the then-rundown area of Boston, where Bulger built his empire in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was able to avoid arrest thanks to a pact with a corrupt FBI agent called John Connolly.

In return for information about his Italian mafia rivals Bulger was left to do whatever he wanted - and that included killing as many as 21 people.

Southie born and bred: Shea was raised in South Boston and got caught up in Bulger's gang. In this childhood photo Shea (right in striped suit) is being given a trophy

Hands up: Shea earned the nickname 'Red' because of his ginger hair. He took up boxing as a young child and posed with other young boxers (bottom right)

Home: Shea grew up in 'Southie', the rundown area of Boston, where Bulger also grew up and built his empire in the 1970s and 1980s. It is now more up and coming

Vicious boss: 'Once he lost his temper, then mercy on the person he was angry with. They would be lucky to get out alive,' reveals Shea of Whitey's true colors

Victims were smashed in the skull with an ice pick, strangled, blasted to death with a shotgun or shot, execution style, in the back of the head.

Among the victims were Paul McGonagle, a rival gang member, and Edward Connors, who was killed because he had witnessed another killing Bulger's gang feared he would talk.

Others murdered included businessman Roger Wheeler and Brian Halloran an FBI informant who died in a hail of gunfire as he left a South Boston restaurant.

Boston police were desperate to bring him to justice but every time they tried to build a case against Bulger the FBI would shut down the case.

It was my duty to protect Whitey and I stayed silent. I knew others were considering deals but it was important to me to say nothing. I had been brought up knowing that anyone who rats out to the police is the lowest of the low. I wasn't going to do that. Not to Whitey.

Shea played no part in the murders but was responsible for bringing millions of dollars of worth of drugs from Florida to Boston.

He reveled in his life as one of Bulger's most trusted men.

But despite their closeness he knew Bulger could suddenly turn and lash out.

'Whitey was the king of kings, the Irish Godfather and one of the most dangerous and cunning guys around.

'He could be very charismatic and a great friend. He taught me a lot but he could also be very vicious.

'Once he lost his temper, then mercy on the person he was angry with. They would be lucky to get out alive.

'Whitey had such a fearsome reputation that people were terrified just being around him.

'He had got to the top by knowing who to befriend and who to betray.'

Like other members of the Winter Hill gang Shea had no idea Bulger was an FBI informant.

In 1990, he was arrested on drugs charges and while offered a plea deal to 'rat' on his boss Shea chose to stay silent.

'I wasn't going to be a rat bastard,' says Shea.

'It was my duty to protect Whitey and I stayed silent. I knew others were considering deals but it was important to me to say nothing. I had been brought up knowing that anyone who rats out to the police is the lowest of the low. I wasn't going to do that. Not to Whitey.'

Shea served 12 years after being convicted of drug smuggling.

While serving his sentence he learned Bulger had gone on the run after being exposed as a FBI informant.

Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton in Black Mass. Edgerton played John Connolly, former FBI agent who was convicted of several charges including murder from his relationship with Whitey Bulger

Shea was also an advisor on the film 'The Departed', which was based on the life of Bulger. It starred Leonardo Di Caprio, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon along with Jack Nicholson as Bulger

'While I was in prison there were rumors that Whitey was a rat. I didn't believe them and would have killed anyone who said it. I might have been a criminal but I had a code, and that was a code of silence.

'But when Whitey disappeared and went on the run it all came out that he had been an FBI informant for years.

'It was like being hit with a sledgehammer,' recalls Shea.

'For a long time I did not want to believe it.,' adds Shea, whose book 'Rat Bastard' details his life growing up in Boston and joining Bulger's gang.

'Whitey always used to say he hated rats. He taught me that there was no one lower than a rat. That was what I believed, and now I was hearing the man I looked up to was the biggest rat of all.'

As Shea served out his sentence Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig became fugitives.

Shamed FBI bosses were now desperate to find their former informant, with Whitey listed as the second most wanted man in America behind Osama Bin Laden.

Shea, who gained the nickname 'Red' because of his ginger hair, was convinced his old boss would never be caught.

He knew Bulger had stockpiled cash and calculated he would now spend it on plastic surgery to disguise his identity or to set up home far away from the US.

But he was stunned when Bulger and his girlfriend were found in 2011, living in a flat in Santa Monica, California.

The FBI knew Greig, who was 22 years Bulger's junior, enjoyed beauty treatments.

They ran a series of TV adverts with computer generated photos of how the by-then 81-year-old Bulger and Greig, 64, might look.

They also mentioned that Greig was thought to love visiting beauty salons.

Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig became fugitives in 1995 as law enforcement was about to arrest him.

Bulger and Greig were found in 2011 living in Santa Monica after Greig was recognized by a former Miss Iceland, who called authorities. Bulger gave up without a fight and after 16 years on the run

Greig was recognized by a former Miss Iceland living in Santa Monica, who called authorities.

Bulger gave up without a fight and after 16 years on the run was sent back to Boston to stand trial.

Shea was asked to give evidence by prosecutors but refused.

Even though he had been betrayed by his old boss he wasn't about to break his code of silence and become an informant.

'They had me listed, but I told my lawyer no way will I say anything. Even though Whitey was a rat, I wasn't about to become one,' says Shea.

In August 2013, after an emotional packed three month trial, Bulger, now 86, was found guilty of 11 murders.

He was sentenced to two life sentences and will die in jail.

Among those who had followed the trial was Patricia Donahue, 70, whose husband Michael was shot dead by Bulger in 1982.

wanted to look at the man who had changed my whole life in a blink of an eye. I had nothing but contempt for the man and hated him for what he did. He looked pathetic sitting there. He would not even face me. Patricia Halloran, whose husband Brian was among Bulger's victims

While many of Bulger's victims were criminals, several were innocently caught in the crossfire, such as truck driver Michael.

The hard-working dad of three young sons was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He had offered a lift to his friend Brian Halloran, who had told the FBI about a murder Bulger had committed.

Bulger was told about Halloran by his corrupt FBI handler and ambushed him - with Michael being murdered simply because he was in the same car.

Patricia made sure she was in court when her husband's killer finally faced justice more than 30 years after the murder.

She tells Daily Mail Online: 'I wanted to look at the man who had changed my whole life in a blink of an eye.

'I had nothing but contempt for the man and hated him for what he did. He looked pathetic sitting there. He would not even face me.

'I have learned to live with what happened but my sons despise him and even after all these years are still full of anger. They hate him,' says Donahue.

Once the king of Boston, Bulger is now an inmate at the US Penitentiary Coleman II in Sumterville, Florida.

Since leaving prison Shea has rebuilt his life and works in construction. He tells Daily Mail Online he was happy to be on the set on 'Black Mass' with Depp and the other cast.

He was also an advisor on the 'The Departed' which was based on the life of Bulger and starred Leonardo Di Caprio, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon along with Jack Nicholson as Whitey.

Shea hopes Depp wins an award for his portrayal of Bulger.

'I don't think any other actor could have taken on the role,' says Shea.
A former model who tried to hire a hitman to kill her husband's ex-wife has been found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

Tara Lambert, 33, gave an undercover sheriff's deputy $125 as a down payment to kill Kellie Cooke, who is the mother of Lambert's two stepdaughters.

Lambert, from Circleville, Ohio, suggested the officer - who she thought was an assassin - use a wood chipper to dispose of Mrs Cooke's corpse.

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Guilty: Former model Tara Lambert, 33, tried to hire a hitman to kill her husband's ex-wife, Kellie Cooke

Lambert (in court, left, and in 2011, right) gave an undercover sheriff's deputy $125 as a down payment to kill Mrs Cooke, who is the mother of Lambert's two stepdaughters

Lambert was found guilty of trying to hire an assassin to kill Mrs Cooke (right). She was cleared of trying to do the same to Mrs Cooke's husband, Shawn (left)

The former model insisted in court that she had been joking, but a jury found her guilty on Wednesday after just 45 minutes of deliberations, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

She could face up to 11 years in jail when she is sentenced in February.

Lambert was cleared of conspiring to murder Mrs Cooke's husband, Shawn, if he was at home when the hitman came to kill his wife.

The ex-model, who is married to Brandon Lambert, the father of Mrs Cooke's children, was arrested on July 28 last year after giving the undercover police officer a photograph of Kellie Cooke and a $125 payment to have her killed.

The court was told that she also gave the deputy Mrs Cooke's address and a description of her car.

Lambert said she wanted Mrs Cooke's body thrown into a wood chipper, but insisted in court that she had been joking.

Lambert (pictured in court) had drink and drug problems, as well as eating disorders and issues with her body image, a psychologist said

Lambert (pictured in court) suggested the police officer - who she thought was an assassin - use a wood chipper to dispose of Mrs Cooke's corpse

Lambert and Mrs Cooke had been in the midst of a custody battle, the Circleville Herald reported.

A psychologist told the jury on Tuesday that Lambert was 'developmentally challenged' and said she had drink and drug problems.

The 33-year-old also suffers from eating disorders and has issues with her body image, leading to her more than two dozen cosmetic surgeries, the jury was told.

The psychologist, Jolie Brams, added that on one occasion, Lambert was told her sweater did not fit so she immediately went to her plastic surgeon for an operation.

Ms Brams said the accused was brought up around violence and was abandoned by her parents as a child.

Lambert's defense attorney James Kingsley said: 'Tara Lambert doesn't know what's appropriate for a situation. She's childlike. Life's a fantasy to her.'

Lambert (pictured in court) and Mrs Cooke (in the background) had been in the midst of a custody battle

The former model (left, in court, and right, in a police mugshot) insisted in court that she had been joking

Lambert (pictured in court) could be jailed for 11 years when she is sentenced next month

After the verdict, Lambert was taken into custody. The last thing she said before being led from the courtroom was asking what officials would do with her purse.

Speaking after the hearing, Mrs Cooke said her children had not seen their father, Mr Lambert, since August last year. His whereabouts are unknown.

'We'll heal but we'll never feel secure,' Mrs Cooke said.

Mr Cooke said: 'That woman tried to take away everything that matters to me.

'This has opened our eyes that there is evil in this world, true evil, and for us, nothing will ever be the same. There's no way it can be.'

'She had the full intention of my wife being killed, there's no doubt about that,' he told the Pickaway News Journal.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Friday said his campaign will debate his closest rival for the party's nomination head-to-head  but only if a federal judge says so.

Trump, the New York real estate tycoon who boycotted Thursday night's presidential debate because of a long-running personal feud with one of the network's reporters, signaled Friday that he would be happy to debate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

DailyMail.com asked Trump if he was serious about resisting Cruz until a court decides on his presidential electability.

'Well, I think you've got a real problem. I think Cruz has a real problem... I would do that. I would absolutely do that. But they've got to rule. He's got to go for a declaratory judgment,' Trump said aboard his private jet on the tarmac in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump boycotted the GOP presidential debate on Thursday night, and says he won't debate rival Ted Cruz until Cruz's eligibility for the presidency is assured

Trump's boycott on Thursday night left seven other GOP presidential candidates onstage

Trump went on to joke that he would debate Cruz in Canada  'to give him home-field advantage,' before pledging to attend next Saturday's Republican debate in Manchester, N.H.

But already Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, had dismissed Cruz's proposal as nothing more than a 'publicity stunt.'

'What weve said to Ted Cruz: Go into court, seek a declaratory judgment to find out if youre even legally eligible to run for president of the United States,' he said Thursday in a Boston radio interview.

'That's the first thing. Once youve gotten that ruling from the federal judge and youre the last man standing in this presidential contest next to Donald Trump, well be happy to have a debate with you one-on-one, anywhere you want, because thats the way the system works,' Lewandowski said.

'But, as it stands right now, we dont even know if Ted Cruz is legally eligible to run for president of the United States.'

Buzzfeed first noted the interview with radio host Jeff Kuhner, himself a Canadian.

Cruz was born in Canada in 1970 to an American woman, Eleanor, who was born in Wilmington, Delaware. But the senator held dual citizenship between the two countries for decades before renouncing his Canadian citizenship upon his election to the Senate in 2012.

Such a 'natural born' U.S. citizenship is provided for in the Constitution, but legal challenges to it are rare, especially on the presidential campaign trail.

Cruz has been sued by a Houston attorney who claims such a 'natural born citizen' Constitutional requirement has never been defined or determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, or tested in a federal court.

Trump has been mocking Cruz's claim that he has 'natural-born' U.S. citizenship and has challenged him to prove it in court  contributing to the erasing of a once-significant Cruz lead in Iowa.

Voters in Iowa will caucus on Feb. 1, representing the crucial first contest in the primary season.

A group of super PACs backing Cruz has offered to donate $1.5 million to veterans' groups if Trump participates - a proposal that Lewandowski compared to 'a publicity stunt.'

Trump and Cruz have argued in recent days about the New York developer's use of eminent domain in his projects, which Lewandowski has defended.

He has done so by firing back at Cruz's undeclared bank loans, which made news last week when the candidate acknowledged he had failed to file the loans on federal papers.

'If Ted Cruz were able to disclose the loans that hes taken out from Goldman Sachs and Citi, then maybe he would use his own money for this, but instead hes using super PAC money which I dont even know if he can do legally,' Lewandowski said on ABC News.

'The bottom line is, you know what weve said to Ted Cruz, go into court, seek a declaratory judgment to find out if youre even legally eligible to run for President of the United States.'
Pet shop workers are learning how to give dogs the 'kiss of life' in a pioneering first aid course.

Staff from Pets Corner are being taught CPR for cats and canines, along with how to save choking and poisoned animals and those injured in road accidents and fights.

The day-long session is the first ever 'pet and human first aid training course' in the country, the company said. It is being given to 600 employees across the UK this month, including the branch in Marple, Stockport .

Half a day is devoted to human first aid, while the second half focuses specifically on injured and suffering animals.

About 600 Pets Corner staff members will be taught how to give the kiss of life to cats and dogs

Emma Harrison, 28, works at the store in Marple, Stockport and will be the first member of staff to take the training next Tuesday.

She said: 'I think it is very important, especially to know what you are doing in case there is an accident in the store or if there is a customer who wants to know what to do.'

Ms Harrison said she would not hesitate to perform mouth-to-mouth first aid on a dog or cat if she had to.

She said: 'If it is going to save the dogs life thats something I would do, yes.

'I am the first member of staff to be taking the training on Tuesday so everyone is very jealous.'

Emma Harrison, pictured with Tim Richmond, will be one of the first members of staff to take the training, and said she would not hesitate to perform the kiss of life on a dog if it would save the animal's life

Lucy Ross, head of training at Pets Corner, said: 'At Pets Corner we have always strived to apply a genuine and ethical approach to everything we do and this includes having the best trained staff in the industry.

'As well as our human customers we also welcome animals into our stores including hosting a regular 'Puppy Hour' session at each of our shops every Saturday - so it makes sense that our staff's first aid knowledge extends beyond the standard expectations.

'It's our mission to provide all of our staff with the tools and knowledge they need to feel confident in helping both pets and people and for our customers to always be in safe hands when they visit any of our shops.'

The company, which has over 100 stores nationwide, teamed up with First Aid Support Training and The Canine First Aid Company to develop the specially-tailored course.
We would guess that while there will be quite a bit of volatility, very likely oil and stocks, after some period of repeat-testing support levels, will rise. For practical purposes, barring a crisis in Europe or some other out of the blue event, both have likely bottomed. The question is how far and how fast stocks and oil will rally. Our guess is that much will depend on the trajectory in oil. If oils gains are moderate but steady then stocks should gain at least 15 percent from current levels. On the other hand if oil takes off and quickly doubles in price then stocks will likely experience another sharp correction after their initial rise.

Our thinking is informed by China, whose growth has become essential for worldwide and U.S. growth. Despite the growing talk of over capacity in China and its prospects for a hard landing, we believe the Middle Kingdom will likely grow at least 6.5 percent this year and possibly more. On a worst case basis, Chinas economic growth should still exceed 6 percent and the country should contribute enough to worldwide growth to sustain moderate growth in America.

The key to our thinking is that over the short term the bout of very low commodity prices has been a boon to China and fits very neatly into the countrys long-term plans. A recent Bloomberg news piece cited calculations by former Goldman Sachs Asia vice chairman Kenneth Courtis, and currently Chairman of Starfort Holdings. His work showed China saves nearly $500 billion annually by virtue of low commodity prices. This is a major plus for the economy in many waysfrom lower costs of goods and services and boosting consumption to giving the government more leeway in making economic adjustments.

The savings, however, are not an unalloyed blessing in that low commodity prices have harmed those parts of China dependent on manufacturing commodities production. These include industries that range from steel to refining and petrochemicals, as well as agriculture. China has 23 separate provinces and 10 other economic divisions administered by party secretaries or other comparable officials.

According to Andrew Batson, the lead China researcher for Gavekal Dragonomics and a nonresident fellow at the Paulson Institute, only four of the countrys provinces have experienced growth of less than 5 percent. Not surprising the economies of Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Hainan and Shanxi all depend on commodities production output and/or refining basic materials. Of the other provinces, 11 grow at a rate in excess of 8 percent, 7 at about 7.5 percent, and 9 at about 6 percent. (The breakdown does not include special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau, considered to be separate economic entities from Mainland China.)

The four low-growth provinces have likely overstated their growth and could be growing closer to zero percent, but the 27 provinces with positive growth on balance likely understated their growth by virtue of a lack of the hedonic regression adjustments so common in America and the lack of other aspects of growth that the West commonly associates with services. As we repeatedly noted before, authoritative studies on Chinas GDP suggest that growth has been understated. Given the sharp turn down in the three rust belt provinces and the agricultural province, Hainan, overall growth of about 7 percent is probably about right.

All said, times remain very volatile. Indeed it is likely that we are at the start of a new point of inflection in a process that began at the turn of the century; in other words, best guesses are highly uncertain.

(By Leeb's Market Forecast)
Speaker ordered the business minister to show some 'basic

John Bercow today launched a blistering attack on Tory minister Anna Soubry, telling her to show some 'basic dignity' before yelling: 'It's not about you... just sit and listen.'

The House of Commons Speaker scolded the business minister for heckling her Labour rival in a debate about job losses in a government office in Sheffield.

An angry Bercow shouted at Soubry: 'Order! Minister, you have had your say, and you will have further says.

'There is something here about a basic dignity.

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Outraged: Speaker John Bercow, pictured left, accused Anna Soubry of lacking 'basic dignity' in the Commons

'Just sit and listen. It is not about you; it is about the issue.

'It is not about the hon. Gentleman either. Be quiet and listen. That is the end of it.

'It is not a request; it is an instruction.

Later in the debate, Soubry was again shot down by Bercow after she criticised a Labour MP for making a statement rather than asking a question, which she described as 'not accurate and rubbish'.

It caused a further outburst by Bercow, who told Soubry: 'The hon. Lady should stick to the discharge of her responsibilities to the best of her ability.

'I am the arbiter of good order. I handle those matters, and I certainly do not require any advice from a junior minister.'

'That's an instruction': Bercow told Soubry to 'sit down and listen' after she heckled Labour rival continuously

Bercow's rant came after Soubry was accused by numerous MPs of showing 'contempt for the north of England' after the Government announced the closure of a Department for Business office in Sheffield in 2018.

Soubry was asked by Labour MP Conor McGinn that the 240 people whose jobs are at risk had 'not heard a shred of sympathy or regret' in her Commons statement, while Sheffield MP Louise Haigh said the closure demonstrated a 'London-centric focus' by the Government.

Irritated by Labour MPs questions to her, Soubry continuously heckled shadow minister Gordon Marsden when it was his turn to stand at the despatch box, triggering him to say: 'Will the minister stop chuntering from a sedentary position?'

Defending the decision to close the Sheffield office, Soubry insisted the Government must 'spend taxpayers' money wisely'.

She announced that the department was reducing its locations from 80 to around seven as part of a plan to streamline the Business department.

It is not the first time Ms Soubry has been scolded in the Commons.

In a heated debate with SNP MP Alex Salmond last year, Soubry was told: 'She should be setting an example to your new members, not cavorting about like some demented junior minister  behave yourself, woman.'

THEN HOURS LATER SOUBRY LAUNCHES INTO HER OWN RANT ON TWITTER Soubry tore into East Midlands Trains, claiming their service from St Pancras had left two minutes early A couple of hours after being scolded by Bercow in the Commons, Soubry launched into her own rant, attacking East Midlands Trains after her train left two minutes early. In an exchange on Twitter, pictured, East Midlands Trains insisted the train had left from London St Pancras on time - a claim the Tory minister rejected. Soubry has history when it comes to train complaints. In November last year she tore into Crosscountry trains after boarding a 'filthy' service where walls were taped together and toilets had no water. The business minister posted pictures on Twitter of the 'shameful' state of a train she boarded from Burton to Birmingham. She condemned the service as 'the dirtiest train I've ever travelled on' and demanded that 'passengers get clean trains - now'. Advertisement

Soubry has gained a reputation for her colourful language and outspoken remarks since she was first elected in 2010.

When she was first a minister in 2012, a Tory colleague warned David Cameron that she was a 'train wreck waiting to happen' after she was accused of insensitivity by branding the law on assisted suicide 'ridiculous'.

And in a Commons documentary last year it was claimed she shouted 'sanctimonious c***' at former Labour leader Ed Miliband.

She issued a furious denial, insisting she would 'never use that word'.

In October Soubry hit out at the 'tatty gifts' politicians and officials exchanged with foreign dignitaries.

She said the country must do better than offer bizarre gifts such as goose fat and a Margaret Thatcher biography to foreign dignitaries.

And earlier this week she spoke out about George Osborne's claim that the 130million tax bill with Google represented a 'major success' for the taxpayer.

She said: 'It doesn't sound like an awful lot of money, of course it doesn't.

'It would be silly to say otherwise.'
Hundreds of Yazidi women and children who had been captured and kept as sex slaves by ISIS have been forced to undergo 'virginity tests' - after they managed to escape.

Freed former sex slaves were subjected to the degrading and invasive procedure by Kurdish officials as part of a 'post-rape examination', a human rights group has revealed.

Witnesses say the 'virginity tests' had been carried out on the young women and girls who had been unmarried when they were kidnapped by ISIS in 2014.

Horrors: Yazidi women and teenage girls were subjected to degrading and invasive 'virginity tests' by Kurdish officials after they managed to escape the clutches of ISIS (stock image)

More than 5,000 Yazidi women and teenage girls were captured and enslaved by ISIS forces when the militant Islamist terrorists attacked the city of Sinjar, northern Iraq in August 2014.

The women, some just teenagers, were forced to watch ISIS militants murder their families before they were sold into sexual slavery.

While many remain in the evil clutches of ISIS, some have managed to escape to relay horrific tales of abuse, rape, slavery and brutal torture.

Many have sought refuge in Kurdish Iraq, where some claim to have been subjected to 'virginity tests', a procedure which has been found time and time again to have no scientific validity.

According to Judge Ayman Bamerny, who heads a committee gathering evidence of ISIS crimes, these tests were seen as evidence of rape by Iraqi courts, Human Rights Watch reports.

More than 5,000 Yazidi women were captured and enslaved by ISIS forces when the militant Islamist terrorists attacked the city of Sinjar, northern Iraq in August 2014 (stock image)

The World Health Organization has stated definitively that 'virginity tests' have no scientific validity, based on a commonly held - but inaccurate - belief that all women and girls who are virgins have intact hymens that bleed on first intercourse.

'As officials work toward proper forensic examinations of rape survivors, they should ensure that all women and girls in Iraq who were subject to sexual violence are treated with dignity and respect,' Human Rights Watch adds.

This follows a UN report which said an estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are still believed to be held as slaves by ISIS.

The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and U.N. human rights office estimated that 3,500 people were 'currently being held in slavery by ISIS numbers'.
Shakil used to enjoy watching The Only Way is Essex and lived in Staffordshire before becoming radicalised and travelling to Syria

She's the first British woman to be convicted after returning from warzone

Tareena Shakil has been found guilty of taking her son and joining ISIS and encouraging terror on the internet

A British mother has been found guilty of taking her toddler son to Syria to join terror group ISIS.

Tareena Shakil fled to the war-torn region in October 2014 after telling her family she was going on holiday to Turkey.

She was found guilty of terror offences at Birmingham Crown Court today, becoming the first British woman to be convicted after returning from the extremist heartland.

The court heard the 26-year-old, who used to live in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire and adored watching The Only Way is Essex, posed her boy for pictures wearing an ISIS-branded balaclava before returning home claiming she'd 'made a mistake'.

During a two-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, Shakil had denied the charges, claiming she only travelled to Syria because of a wish to live under the rule of sharia law.

However, the jury did not believe her account after seeing tweets, messages and photographs, including images of the black flag of ISIS and passages calling on people to 'take up arms', and stating her wish to become a 'martyr'.

She was found guilty of being a member of ISIS and encouraging acts of terror, becoming the first British woman to be convicted after return from the terror heartland.

Judge Melbourne Inman QC told Shakil - who looked stunned by the verdicts - that she would be sentenced on Monday.

The Recorder of Birmingham said: 'You may go down and be remanded in custody until Monday's sentence.'

Shakil initially told police that she was kidnapped from a beach by a man she met on holiday in Turkey, taken to Syria and forced to send out propaganda Tweets for the organisation.

Shakil sent photographs of her son in Syria, including one image showing him sitting next to an AK-47 machinegun. The caption of the picture describes him as 'Abu Jihad al-Britani'

The 26-year-old also posed with her son wearing a black balaclava bearing the slogan of ISIS

But in court she admitted she had been in an abusive relationship with the boy's father and was seeking to start a new life.

Detectives believe she was married off to an ISIS fighter as a jihadi bride and that the marriage went sour within weeks.

Shakil, pictured at East Midlands Airport with her toddler before they boarded a flight to Turkey en route to Syria

In a conversation with her father on WhatsApp, in mid-December 2014 while living under ISIS rule, she told him: 'I want to die here as a martyr.'

She later claimed these messages were sent under duress by female ISIS minders.

Jurors heard that before going to Syria, Shakil had chatted online with 'prominent IS member' Fabio Pocas.

She was also in touch with Sally Ann Jones, the British widow of Birmingham jihadi Junaid Hussain who was killed in a drone strike in Syria last year.

There were further signs of growing radicalisation, including searches for videos of Anwar al Awlaki, an al-Qaeda-linked extremist who was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The 26-year-old also changed the status of her Facebook page - emblazoned with the black flag of ISIS - to read: 'If you don't like the current events in Sham (Syria) take to arms and not the keyboard.'

After going to Turkey, she secretly fled across the border into Syria, where she was later taken to Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital.

Photographs of her in a flat in the city, suggest she had gone through a marriage ceremony and been allowed to move out of the house where single women without male guardians are forced to live in Raqqa.

Explaining her reason for wanting to return home, Shakil complained that the rules in the women's house were too strict and she had her mobile phone taken off her.

Shakil told Birmingham Crown Court: 'Your phone was taken off you and there was this evil Saudi woman' who ran the house for single women, known as a maqqa.

Shakil in her police interview. She claimed she was kidnapped but later admitted wanting to start a new life

A blurred photo posted online by Shakil shows an unidentified woman wielding a Kalashnikov rifle

Shakil listed the rules: 'No phones, no ipads - if you get caught there are big problems  rules if you are not Syrian and not married, how she expected you to act, taking turns cooking and cleaning and womanly duties.'

In a message discovered on her phone, she advised another single woman thinking of joining ISIS: 'I'm married ukhti [sister]. Life is hard 4 single sisters, too many sisters run. Please don't come alone, u have to be married here ukhti. Trust me, u r young, look after ur parents and tell all single sisters, I said don't come alone.'

Speaking after the verdict, Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale, who leads on counter-terrorism across the West Midlands, said: 'Tareena Shakil had self-radicalised by viewing extremist material on the internet, before leaving the UK in October 2014.

'Our assessment is that she was not naive; she had absolutely clear intentions when she left the UK, sending tweets encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism here and then taking her young child to join Daesh in Syria.'

Assistant Chief Constable Beale added: 'Photographs seized from her phone showed Ms Shakil posing with a firearm and wearing a Daesh balaclava. Another showed a rucksack with a Daesh logo and person holding a handgun. These were taken while she was in Syria.

'Ms Shakil had already incited others to commit terrorist acts on social media and having spent months living under Daesh, she no doubt presented a real threat on her return to the UK from the country early last year.

'Thanks to proactive counter-terrorism policing, we were able to intercept Shakil at the airport and put the necessary measures in place to protect her child from their mother's extremist ideology.'

Photos shown to the jury showed Shakil posing in an ISIS balaclava and with a Kalashnikov rifle

Shakil's Facebook page under the name Tameena al Amirah where she started posting extremist messages

Shakil told Birmingham Crown Court: 'Your phone was taken off you and there was this evil Saudi woman' who ran the house for single women, known as a maqqa

'YOU ARE HANGING OVER THE GATES OF HELL': TAREENA SHAKIL'S TROUBLED ROUTE TO RADICAL ISLAM Tareena Shakil's father was from Pakistan and her mother was white and from Australia, but only converted to Islam four years ago. Her family were not religious but she was sent to the mosque for religious education between the ages of eight and 12. She attended Victoria Primary School and then De Ferrers High School in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, where she passed eight GCSEs and went on to get two Bs in media and film and a D grade in psychology at Burton College where she did her A-levels. While at college she also worked part-time for Morrisons supermarket and then for the New Look high street fashion chain. Shakil went on to study counselling and psychology at Wolverhampton University from 2009 to 2010 but dropped out of the course after getting married. Her new husband had become jealous of other men on the course and 'it became difficult with the accusations. My marriage was not too good and I decided it was not worth the headache,' she said. After leaving university, she found a job as a rehabilitation support worker in Hinkley, Leicestershire, for a year, working with patients with burn injuries, however, Shakil was soon pregnant with her son and left work to become a fulltime parent. Shakil's father was violent and often in trouble with police, she said, while her older brother followed his father in getting into trouble and was thrown out of school. Her mother ran away from home on one occasion but Shakil added: 'He got her back, he found out where she was and turned up. She was in hospital due to injuries. I was 11 or 12.' She had met her husband, Samim, on a night out with her friends in June 2010. He was married but she didn't find out for five months, when she also discovered that he had two children by two different women. However he got a divorce in January 2011 and by February she had moved into his flat in Moseley Road, Balsall Heath in Birmingham. 'From the beginning it took a rapid downward spiral fuelled by alcohol  on his part not mine- within a week of moving in together,' she said. Shakil was asked by Tim Moloney QC, defending, if the relationship was violent and said: 'There was a lot of violence. He's done various things - very serious and it got worse.' They got married in July but in October 2011, police were called to the house they were sharing after an anonymous caller reported a disturbance. Officers found broken furniture and smashed plates and found Shakil hiding in a cupboard in the bedroom 'visibly shaking and upset' after Samim had allegedly pulled her hair, slapped her and punched her. At the end of 2012, she fell pregnant and the baby was born in August 2013. 'Samim used to kick me out and throw my clothes over the balcony. It wasn't secure to live in that situation so I got a place of my own,' she said. 'Samim's violence was fuelled by alcohol, he would come home paralytic drunk. He might pick up my son and drop him. I can't control him when he's sober, let alone when he's drunk. 'I gave him the option, I said, you need to stop and he said when the baby was born he wasn't going to drink but two weeks after he was back out partying. He'd been saying the same thing for four years.' But even with her own place, her husband would turn up at her flat in Sparkhill, Birmingham. 'I didn't have a peaceful life in Birmingham, he would come knocking on my door,' she said, explaining that she spent much of her time back at home in Burton-on-Trent. At the end of July 2014, her husband left for Yemen to go to his sister's daughter's wedding, with members of the family flying in from America. 'He would say he was getting married again and starting a new life out there and he didn't want to live in England any more. 'Because we had got a child together, I wouldn't want him to start a life there. I have been through a lot with this man.' She said she was also upset that he had ruined her 'chance' of a better life by forcing her to drop out of university and turning down an opportunity to go and work with her grandfather in Australia. 'I thought, you are going to leave me here, broken, just leave me, lost,' Shakil said. With her husband in Yemen, Shakil started to join the campaign to Free Palestine and re-started her Facebook account which she hadn't used since leaving university four years earlier. 'I was always interested in going to live in another country, for no other reason than I just wanted to,' Shakil said. She said she was contacted by a man calling himself Abu T who said he was in 'Sham' she said. 'At the time, I didn't even know where Sham was,' she said. 'He explained what hijra [emigrating] was and staying in the land of the non-believers. He said you can't live where there is not shariah [Islamic law] its haram [forbidden]. 'He said, 'Look sister, while you are in England, you are hanging over the gates of Jahannam [hell]. If you die, the gates will open, that's where you're going.' Advertisement

Trial of runaway mother hears she is one of about SIXTY British women who have gone to join ISIS

The jury which convicted Tareena Shakil of travelling with her child to join ISIS was told that about 60 British females were thought to have gone to Syria.

During her trial at Birmingham Crown Court, Dr Florence Gaub an expert on the subject of conflicts in the Arab world estimated the latest figure for the number of British women who have joined the brutal terror group.

Dr Gaub said evidence suggested the total number of women from Europe, North America and Australia who had gone to the self-declared caliphate was about 600.

A senior analyst for the European Union Institute for Security Studies, Dr Gaub said it was thought that about 5,000 Western 'foreign fighters' - a number including women, although they cannot bear arms for IS - were now in Syria.

That figure makes up roughly a quarter of the 40,000-strong military force which IS was estimated to have, based on data from summer 2014.

She added that half of that figure were classed as foreign fighters, those who were neither Syrian nor Iraqi, and included those who had come from countries like Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

Dr Gaub said all of the information had come from sources including Western military and domestic intelligence services data, and analysis of other sources like media reporting.

Turning to the subject of defections from ISIS, she said somewhere between a third and a half had left to either return home or depart ISIS-occupied territory.

She said: 'Between 1,500 and 2,500 individuals from the European Union, UK and North America are said to have left ISIS territory.'

The jury which convicted Tareena Shakil (pictured back, centre) of travelling with her child to join ISIS was told that about 60 British females were thought to have gone to Syria

The brutal terror group in Syria and Iraq have reported attracted 60 British women to their cause

She added the number of women defectors was thought to be between 80 or 90.

Separately, the Government has estimated 800 Britons have gone into Syria in the past four years, with half still believed to be in the country.

Speaking on a visit to Turkey earlier in January, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the security services had stopped 600 British nationals from entering the war-torn Middle Eastern state trying to join ISIS and other jihadists.
A heterosexual couple who object to marriage vowed to appeal today after losing a legal bid to be allowed to enter a civil partnership.

Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan want to enjoy the same rights as same-sex couples and mark their commitment with a civil union.

The academics, from Hammersmith, West London, who have an eight-month-old baby and do not want to get married, took the case to Londons High Court.

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Charles Keidan, 39, and Rebecca Steinfeld, 34, want to enjoy the same rights as same-sex couples and mark their commitment with a civil union - but they lost their legal bid

The judge, Mrs Justice Andrews, said that although many people may have sympathy with the couple, the Governments refusal of their demand was not unlawful and not in breach of their human rights for private and family life.

The couple were given leave to appeal because the judge said the case raises issues of wider importance.

The couple said they would now launch an appeal against the decision

Dr Steinfeld, 34, said after the ruling: We made this claim because the UK Government is barring us, and many thousands of opposite-sex couples like us, from the choice of forming a civil partnership, and we want this to change.

Personally, we wish to form a civil partnership because that captures the essence of our relationship and values.

Civil partnerships are a modern social institution conferring almost identical legal rights and responsibilities as marriage, but without its history and social expectations.

We dont think there is sufficient justification for stopping us or other opposite-sex couples from forming civil partnerships. Unfortunately the judge has concluded otherwise.

The visiting fellow at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics (LSE) said she and her partner would go to the Court of Appeal on behalf of ourselves and the more than 36,000 people who signed our petition calling for civil partnership equality.

Mr Keidan, 39, added: We believe that opening civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples would complete the circle of full relationship equality that began with a hard won victory for same-sex marriage.

We campaigned for equal marriage and believe that the significance and symbolism of opening marriage to same-sex couples cannot be overstated.

Regrettably, the courts have so far been unable to compel the Government to open civil partnerships to all, so its now time for Parliament to demonstrate its commitment to creating a level playing field for all its citizens by opening up civil partnerships to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples alike.

The couple have been together for more than five years since November 2010 and are engaged.

They claimed the 2004 Civil Partnership Act discriminated against them on human rights and equality grounds.

Its now time for Parliament to demonstrate its commitment to creating a level playing field Charles Keidan

In dismissing their claim for Judicial Review, the judge accepted that many people would sympathise with their view that it was unfair to deny them the same means of formal recognition as same sex couples.

But she said the Government was unconvinced that extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples was a necessary change.

Their counsel Karon Monaghan QC had argued that without the change the couple would be forced to enter into marriage against their consciences or remain without the legal protection and privileges that they and their child need, and to which they believe they should be entitled.

Mrs Justice Andrews said even if their human rights were affected by the denial of a civil partnership, the Government was still making available the alternative means of recognition in marriage which has always existed.

Ministers had decided to wait and see how the extension of marriage to same-sex partners affects civil partnerships before determining what to do about them.

In her judgment, she said that maintaining that difference in the short term is objectively justified.

The judge accepted many people would sympathise with Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld's view that it was unfair to deny them the same means of formal recognition as same sex couples

She added: The Governments decision to wait and see serves the legitimate aim of avoiding the unnecessary disruption and the waste of time and money that plunging into a programme of legislative reform without waiting is likely to produce.

The couples solicitor, Louise Whitfield, said: It is clear that there is unjustified discrimination here in what the judge acknowledged was an important case, but she has set the bar too high.

Tim Loughton, Tory MP for Worthing East and Shoreham, currently has a Private Members Bill going through Parliament, to amend the Civil Partnership Act to remove the clause limiting civil partnerships to same sex couples.
Swedish police have dealt with 5,000 incidents involving migrants since October as they revealed they are concerned the problems are getting worse.

Officers in the country have been called out to nearly 600 assaults in the last three months as well as four rapes, two bomb threats and 450 fights.

Migrants and asylum seekers have also been involved in 194 violent threats, 58 fires and nine robberies, according to data obtained by SvD .

Swedish police have dealt with 5,000 incidents involving migrants since October as they revealed they are concerned the problems are getting worse. Above, migrants wait to board a boat in Canakkale, Turkey which they hope will take them to Lesbos, Greece, on Friday

Dan Eliasson, police commissioner, told SvD an increasing number of officers were needed to deal with the problems.

He said: 'I am concerned about these developments. I fear that there may be even more trouble.'

He added: 'The unrest in asylum accommodation is something that requires more and more of us.

'[The accommodation] is crowded, some people bring with them the baggage of traumatic events. There can be various disagreements between groups.'

Officers in Sweden have been called out to nearly 600 assaults in the last three months as well as four rapes, two bomb threats and 450 fights. Above, migrants queue for a security check after crossing into Serbia on Friday

Volunteers pull a raft packed with refugees and migrants as they arrive on a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday. The Swedish police commissioner said an increasing number of officers were needed to deal with crime problems linked to migrants

A young girl's cries as she is carried through a throng of people following their arrival on Lesbos on Friday

A migrant woman carries a baby wrapped with a thermal blanket as refugees and migrants arrive on a raft on a beach on Lesbos on Friday

A volunteer helps a woman out of the boat that arrived on Lesbos on Friday. The data from Sweden emerged less than a month after a number of German cities saw a wave of sex attacks and mob violence, with the majority of suspects of North African origin

The figures were collected after forces introduced a code to distinguish the incidents that involved asylum seekers or migrants, thelocal.se reported.

Around 80,000 migrants are currently thought to be in or have travelled through Sweden.

The data emerged less than a month after a number of German cities saw a wave of sex attacks and mob violence, with the majority of suspects of North African origin.

More than 800 women claimed they were sexually assaulted or robbed by mobs of young men in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

The murder of social worker Alexandra Mezher (pictured) at a home for unaccompanied refugees in Sweden has shone the spotlight on the countrys controversial open-door immigration policy

Molndal's main shopping centre is a no go zone for most people at night because they fear the armed gangs roaming the streets at night looking for trouble

There have also been complaints of assaults in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin prompting officials to give migrants entering the country instruction manuals telling them not to grope women.

Fourteen cartoons have been released and migrants have been told to look women in the eyes rather than any other part of their body when talking to them.

A picture of a man touching a woman's bottom has a big cross through it.
The families of murder victims Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman have hit out at the creators of the television series 'The People vs. O.J. Simpson' for not consulting them during filming.

Tanya Brown, the sister of Nicole, and Ron Goldman's father and sister, Fred and Kim, hit out at FX producers for taking attention away from their loved ones and placing it on Simpson instead.

Speaking to Dr Phil in an interview due to air on CBS on Monday, Fred Goldman branded the series 'troubling', saying it would replace the facts of the trial for viewers too young to remember it.

Fred and Kim Goldman (left), the father and sister of Ron Goldman who was one of the murder victims at the center of the O.J. Simpson trial, have hit out at a new TV series based on those events

Tanya Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, who died alongside Goldman, also lashed out at producers for not consulting the families during filming, calling the decision 'shameful'

He said: 'A whole generation who never saw this take place is going to see this series and assume that everything is fact and thats going to become the new reality and thats very troubling to me.'

Nicole, O.J. Simpson's ex-wife, and Ron, a male model she was believed to have been dating, were found brutally murdered outside her California condo on June 13, 1994.

Simpson was accused of killing the pair in a jealous rage and put on trial - after leading police on an infamous slow-speed chase - before being acquitted in what was dubbed the 'trial of the century'.

Meanwhile Kim Goldman took issue with the fact that Ron and Nicole play no part in the series before they appear as dead bodies.

Fred Goldman (left) said he finds it 'troubling' that younger viewer who did not see the trial will accept its story as fact, while Kim (right) said directors minimized her brother's role by not featuring him except as a corpse

Jeffrey Toobin, author of the book on which the series was based, insisted that the series is respectful to the victims, adding that he chose to focus on the issue of race - rather than the tragedy of the killings

She accused the show's creators of downplaying the tragedy of their deaths by failing to show the people they were before they were murdered.

She said: 'Im horrified that theyre not depicted in this docu-series and if the only way that theyre being depicted is dead bodies. I want people to know how brutally they lost their lives.'

The TV series, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Simpson, David Schwimmer as Rob Kardashian, and John Travolta as Robert Shapiro, is based on a book by Jeffrey Toobin.

Tanya Brown hit out at the show's creators for not consulting her during production.

She added: 'Jeffrey Toobin, Travolta, Schwimmer, Cuba Gooding, shame on you guys, you should have called the families.'

Brian 'Kato' Kaelin, the surfer living in Simpson's pool house at the time of the killings and an eventual witness for the prosecution, also disputes the way he is portrayed during the series

However, Toobin rejected criticism of his narrative, saying: 'This is not a story about how the victims were unimportant; this is a story about how the process didnt give those victims what they deserve.'

He said the show is a truthful portrayal of events that was made with great respect for the victims.

He added that the mini-series is focused on the importance of race and the justice system and is no way intended to undermine the families who have suffered greatly from the trial.

Meanwhile Brian 'Kato' Kaelin, the surfer living in Simpson's pool house at the time of the killings, also appeared on Dr Phil to dispute how he is represented in the series.

Kaelin was initially called as a prosecution witness to establish a time when Simpson could have been out of his house long enough to kill Brown and Goldman.

In 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson, O.J's ex-wife (left, together), and Ron Goldman, a model assumed to be her boyfriend, were found dead outside her California condo

Simpson was accused of killing the pair in a jealous rage (crime scene, pictured), arrested after leading police on a slow-speed car chase, and then acquitted of their murders after the 'trial of the century'

However, after four days of rambling and inconsistent testimony he was declared a hostile witness and accused of helping the defense.

Members of the Brown family are not the only ones disappointed that they were no consulted during the filming of the series - after Simpson also bashed the producers for not contacting him.

Speaking from jail, where he is serving time for an armed robbery in Las Vegas in 2007, the now-67-year-old Simpson accused directors of 'not having the b***s' to speak to him.

The TV series, due to start on FX next week, sees Cuba Gooding Jr taking on the role O.J. Simpson

Meanwhile John Travolta will play lawyer Robert Shapiro, and David Schwimmer will star as Robert Kardashian, another lawyer and close friend of O.J.

Speaking to the Dailymail.com, a prison friend speaking on condition of anonymity said: 'OJ is mad because he is being ignored.

'He says they have created this soap-opera based on what other people are saying and what has been falsely reported in the papers, but nobody had the b***s to talk to him.

'And he feels it will be just be a bunch of BS because nobody knows what really happened, but OJ. He's also resents that it's a payday for everyone else and it's his story.'

'The People vs. O.J. Simpson' is a ten-part series which debuts on FX on February 2
Three Minnesota women have been awarded $130,000 each in a gender discrimination lawsuit after claiming that a Saudi prince dismissed them from their chauffeur jobs because he did not female drivers.

The plaintiffs, Gretchen Cooper, Barbara Herold and Lisa Boutelle, were among 40 drivers hired in October 2010 to chauffeur Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz, his family and friends while the prince was treated at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

The lawsuit says that the Saudi prince and his large entourage told three limousine companies contracted to provide transportation during his month-long visit that they wanted only male drivers.

Driver bias: Gretchen Cooper (pictured left), and two other female drivers sued Saudi Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz (right) in 2012 claiming gender discrimination after they were fired from their chauffeur jobs

Dignitary: The prince, seen here in 2009, hired 40 drivers to transport him and his entourage while he was treated at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in 2010

In 2012, Cooper, Herold and Boutelle filed a lawsuit against the prince and the limo companies alleging discrimination based on gender, and in November 2015 a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, according to reporting by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The civil complaint states that the owner of three Minnesota limo companies, which were booked to provide transportation for the prince and his posse, hired in all 40 drivers for the duration of the trip, among them only three women.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Jill Gaulding, of the advocacy group Gender Justice, said it later emerged that the only reason her clients were offered the job in the first place was because it was thought to be 'elegant' to have female drivers chauffeur 'ladies and kids' in the prince's train, reported Courthouse News Service.

After the three female drivers and their male colleagues picked up the party from the airport and brought them to the hotel, a witness overheard a man tell a representative of the limo company owner that Prince Abdul-Rahman wanted no women drivers, according to the complaint.

When Gretchen Cooper showed up to work at 8am the next day, she was told to remove her belongings from the limo and was promptly replaced by a male chauffeur.

When the woman demanded an explanation, she was told that the prince wanted 'no women drivers.'

Singled out: Cooper (pictured) and the other two female drivers were dismissed after just one day after being told that the prince wanted 'no female drivers'

Boutelle and Herold were also let go that day in a similar manner after being told by their employers that their hands were tied and were urged not to take their termination personally.

Saudi Arabia is the only Muslim country in the world were women are prohibited from driving.

Ms Cooper said in the lawsuit that she was previously assigned to chauffeur a Saudi princess and received $50 a day in tips alone, along with expensive gifts and free meals.

The woman, who was pregnant at the time, said that the six-week job, which consisted of transporting Princess Nura bint Abdallah bin Muhammad Al Saud al-Kabir and her entourage, allowed her to take nearly a year off to care for her baby daughter, reported the Star Tribune.

So when she was hired to work for Prince Abdul-Rahman in October 2010, she said she was excited about the prospect of earning enough money to launch her own greeting card business.

Other drivers who were hired the ferry the prince and his party earned $100 a day, plus tips, and some were able to secure future jobs.

On Thursday, Judge Joan Erickson awarded Cooper, Herold and Boutelle $100,000 each for mental anguish and suffering, as well as $30,000 for wage loss.

But the women did not receive any punitive damages because the judge concluded that the plaintiffs failed to prove that the defendants acted 'with deliberate disregard and malice.'
El Chapo Guzman's alleged daughter will now be able to sell watches, hats, jewellery and even Christmas decorations with the official El Chapo brand after she was given the trademark for the name by authorities.

Merchandise featuring the infamous drugs barren has become wildly popular since his recent recapture - everything from T-shirts to pinatas are now available to buyers.

But from now on they will need to pay for the right to use the 'El Chapo' brand.

T-shirts and merchandise featuring El Chapo's image have become wildly popular after the drugs baron's recapture earlier this month

More merchandise: Clothing with El Chapo branding are displayed in Mexico City; he was recaptured six months after his spectacular prison break

Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman Salazar, 32, has successfully registered four trademarks with the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), which will allow the family to sell a variety of goods branded with the cartel leader's nickname.

El Chapo Guzman's wife and daughter filed at least 24 applications between 2011 and 2014 to use a variety of the druglord's names including El Chapito, Don Chapo, El Chapo Guzman and Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera - although most of them were rejected.

IMPI wrote back in its rejection letters that granting any requests which included the name Guzman would be against 'good practice and moral order' to Mexican society who have suffered such harm at the hands of the delinquent.

Strangely, though, and for no apparent reason, the government have approved four trademarks for the use of plain 'El Chapo.'

Taken away: El Chapo being taken away by Mexican police officers - he was recaptured in an early morning raid earlier this month

For sale: El Chapo may now be in jail but his image lives on with market traders keen to supply shoppers with products themed on the drugs baron

One of Alejandrina Guzman's trademarks covers leather, animal skins, whips, umbrellas, walking sticks, and saddlery. Another includes precious metals, gemstones, jewelry, and watches.

Even more worrying are the remaining two El Chapo trademarks, which include one for toys, games, gym equipment, and festive decorations, while the last allows her to create publicity services and business management offices in his name.

Guzman, considered by many as the most dangerous criminal leader in the world, is known for his delusions of grandeur and has become a popular character in Mexican culture, gaining celebrity status despite his violent past.

It comes after a silk shirt worn by El Chapo during his meeting with Hollywood actor became an unlikely fashion must-have. The clothing firm behind the shirts El Chapo donned for his audience with the American actor took advantage of their headline-making handshake to use the violent narco as a star salesman.

Los Angeles-based Barabas published the photo of the pair meeting at the Mexican fugitive's jungle hideout on its website under the caption 'Most Wanted' offering customers the chance of a free 'El Chapo' shirt for every Like on Facebook and Instagram.

The picture of Penn and the drugs trafficker wasposted on the site alongside another of a male model wearing the same $128 'Fantasy' Men's button down shirt. The shirt sold out almost immediately.
This is the heart-warming moment a U.S. Army soldier returning home to Ohio from Iraq was reunited with his daughter.

Staff Sergeant Doug Francis of Amanda had an emotional reunion as his loved ones and some of his fellow soldiers from the National Guard gathered at Port Columbus International Airport to welcome him home on Wednesday.

During the special occasion, Francis' daughter, Raven, is seen running and leaping into his arms as they embrace a year after he was sent overseas on deployment, according to WCMH.

Scroll down for video

This is the heart-warming moment U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Doug Francis returning home to Ohio from Iraq was reunited with his daughter on Wednesday

Franics had an emotional reunion as his loved ones and some of his fellow soldiers from the National Guard gathered at Port Columbus International Airport to welcome him home

The emotional reunion was captured on video and shows loved ones holding signs and American flags at the airport before Raven runs and embraces her father as she bursts into tears.

While they are hugging, her father can be heard saying 'you've gotten so big' before she tells him that she has missed him.

As he puts her down he tells her 'you're gonna make me cry' before kissing her on the head.

'I couldn't even say in words how proud I am of him, I'm honored to be his daughter,' Raven told WCMH.

The emotional reunion was captured on video and shows loved ones holding signs and American flags at the airport before his daughter Raven (pictured) runs and embraces her father as she bursts into tears

During the special occasion, Francis' daughter, Raven, is seen leaping into her father's arms as they embrace a year after he was sent overseas on deployment

Francis pictured as he embraces loved ones. His relatives said he has been on several deployments including Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm

Sgt. Francis was the last of his National Guard unit to leave Iraq following his deployment

Francis, who relatives said has been on several deployments including Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, was the last of his National Guard unit to leave Iraq, according to the station.

'You look around this is why I do it. Right here,' he told WCMH. He added, 'it's been a year without... in a really harsh place.'

During his recent deployment, the solider missed his daughter's college graduation but she said that he was there in spirit. She also noted that he is the 'reason I got through college.'

Following the touching moment, Wendy Booth, Francis' cousin, said she wanted to honor him.

'I would like to see him recognized for his amazing courage and huge heart,' she told WCMH.

Francis told the station that for the next month that he has off he plans to spend it with his family.

'You look around this is why I do it. Right here,' he said during the reunion. He added, 'it's been a year without... in a really harsh place'
Hundreds of migrants have set up makeshift camps in a Turkish olive grove after they were cheated by people smugglers.

Families who fled Syria and Iraq with babies and toddlers handed over their savings to traffickers who promised them safe passage to Greece - and the EU.

But when they reached the Turkish coast the smugglers tried to force them onboard a tiny, overcrowded boat at gunpoint to make the treacherous crossing.

Duped: Families who fled Syria and Iraq handed their savings over to smugglers who promised safe passage

Whole families were left stranded after traffickers tried to force them onto a tiny, overcorwded boat at gunpoint

When the families refused to board the craft the traffickers abandoned them with nothing but the clothes they wore and the few scant belongings they had carried.

Many were still wearing life jackets as they pondered their next move, while stranded hundreds of miles from home and with nowhere to go.

The perils of such crossings were highlighted yet again this week when the bodies of 25 migrants, including 10 children, were found off the coast of the Greek island of Samos after their crowded boat capsized.

More than 3,770 died making the crossing last year and 244 have been killed since the start of 2016, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The families stranded in the olive groves near Kadirga in Turkey said the smugglers had shown them photographs of large boats and had promised them safe passage from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos.

Around 400 people  the majority from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan - gathered by roadsides or around makeshift camp fires.

Many of the refugees were still wearing life jackets as they pondered their next move, while stranded in Turkey

The families stranded in the olive groves near Kadirga in Turkey said the smugglers had shown them photographs of large boats

Authorities in Turkey and Greece have warned they cannot cope with the huge numbers of refugees and other migrants seeking to flee war and poverty and make new lives in Europe.

Some 1,500 people risk the Aegean Sea crossing every day, often in overcrowded boats or makeshift dinghies.

In response, Europe has drawn up plans for every migrant entering Greece to be returned to camps in Turkey, where EU countries would accept up to 250,000 documented asylum seekers a year.

If the resettlement programme is agreed, ferries will begin returning migrants  including refugees  from the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios and Kos.

Britain has rejected calls to allow 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees to come to Britain via Europe, but the Government has said it will take in such children from Syria and other war zones.

It has committed to taking a total of 20,000 refugees from Syria by 2020.
Zendaya's stylist breaks down her best ever fashion looks

his month Zendaya was named as an ambassador for CoverGirl, released a new music video featuring a cameo from Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston and was crowned one of the best-dressed stars at the Golden Globes.

The 19-year-old former Disney actress is one of the few stars on the red carpet with absolutely no fear. She wont think twice about wearing a warrior-princess crown or a skirt made of plastic. Her long-time stylist Law Roach, who also works with Arianna Grande and Ruby Rose, tells us: She literally has no fear and thats the important thing. At this point she just wears something because we like it  we dont follow trends but wear the stuff that we like. We do it just to entertain each other.

Her style has certainly evolved from her Disney-friendly denim jackets and baby doll dresses, but she doesn't need to wear nearly-naked dresses to show that she's grown up. Roach says: "No one from Disney ever said 'be careful,' 'not to high,' 'not too short'. Zendaya is conscious about who her core fans are and that is the Disney girl. Shes just real - its not her pretending to be this good girl, its who she is and there is nothing manufactured about it." He said of dressing her in her teens: "I was conscious to make the correct choices, but that doesnt mean we couldnt have fun - we could be fashion-forward in the way a 15-year-old could do it."

Zendaya might be able to experiment with riskier silhouettes now, but it's important to her to look tasteful. Law says of the sheer dresses plaguing the red carpet: "The sheer thing gets really boring."

Roach talks through Zendaya's best looks below...

Zendaya in Marchesa at the Golden Globes, January 2016

"She was invited to sit at Harvey Weinstein's table and so it was fitting for her to wear Marchesa. It was different from everything else on the carpet - not that you can gauge that before. You want to be an individual in a sea of beautiful gowns."

Zendaya in Michael Kors pre-fall 2016 at the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere, December 2015

"I was obsessed with that skirt and where else can you wear a plastic skirt than at the Star Wars premiere? Where else would that have made any sense?"

Zendaya in Rosie Assoulin at Rihanna's Diamond Ball, December 2015

"This is one of my favourite looks ever. Sometimes because of her schedule we decide to go with something really last minute. It's so easy with us, I got it and she wore it the very next day."

Zendaya in Ungaro at the American Music Awards, November 2015

"We have a lot of love for Fausto Puglisi, the creative director for Ungaro. He supported us years ago when she wore Ungaro to the Grammys when she was still unknown. We have a loyalty to him and you'll see Zendaya will wear more of Ungaro because of that. To me this was great because everybody else on that carpet was so naked. It was sheer everywhere and she looked beautiful and sexy, but wasn't showing anything except her legs. The sheer thing gets really boring. I'd never say never, but as of right now it's a sheer dress with underwear showing, how exciting is that?"

Zendaya in fringed Tamara Mellon at Paris Fashion Week, October 2015

"We were in Paris and wanted to pay homage to Josephine Baker in our own little way."

Zendaya in Kenzo at Paris Fashion Week, October 2015

"I love when she wears short hair! We were only there [Paris Fashion Week] for four days so it was such an adrenaline rush. She is like my life-sized Barbie doll. I always credit my career to my mother for letting me be who I was at a young age and play with my sisters and their Barbie dolls. Now that I have a real-life Barbie doll it's like playing dress up."

Zendaya in Fausto Puglisi at the Billboard Music Awards, May 2015

"I wanted to stay true to the brands that stood by us when no-one else would. You will always see Ungaro, Vivienne Westwood and Fausto Puglisi on Zendaya because they supported her when a lot of people weren't interested. They saw it before anyone else." She walked the red carpet with Taylor, so did they plan their outfits together? Law says they all did their own thing: "We got to Taylor's dressing room and she wasn't even dressed yet."

Zendaya in Fausto Puglisi at the Met Gala, May 2015

"Fausto asked her to be his date to the Met and it was a process with that dress - there were sketches and we narrowed down the sketch. He wanted her to look like a modern day warrior princess. She was 18 at the time and we wanted her to stay youthful, but we wanted it to be fashion-forward and have a power to it. She felt like a modern day warrior princess with the metal tiara and the armour on her arms against the soft fabric. Zendaya the warrior princess! No fear, no fear at all."

Zendaya in Vivienne Westwood at the Oscars, February 2015

"Vivienne is a brand that we have a really good relationship with as well. That was last minute too! She didn't get the invite to the Oscars until a couple of days before, which is unheard of. People are preparing for the Oscars for months. The cool thing is that this dress is actually bridal."

Zendaya in Donna Karan at the American Music Awards, November 2013

"She wore a pant suit and really, really long hair, and all these silver and diamond accessories because at that point we were obsessed with Cher and Bianca Jagger. We'd be constantly looking at pictures of Cher and Bianca Jagger so we were in that mode. I was like you are going to be very 70s! When you see something and catch a reference that's where we are together and who we are obsessing with, paying homage to a powerful woman from the past."
Unidentified man believes it would be less dangerous in Somalian capital

Chuka Umunna, pictured, said his constituent 'massively regrets' moving his sons to London

Ministers have been begged to allow two brothers to return to Somalia after they were stabbed in separate attacks in London.

Former Labour leadership hopeful Chuka Umunna said his constituent 'massively regrets' moving his sons to London and believes it would be less dangerous for them to live in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

One of the brothers is living in foster care for 'his own safety' while the other cannot leave hospital as it is judged 'too unsafe' from him to live at home, Mr Umunna said.

The MP for Streatham, in south London, insisted the case is a 'damning indictment' of the violence on the capital's streets.

Mr Umunna told the Commons he has written to ministers asking them to issue the appropriate papers to ensure the two brothers can travel back to Somalia to be with their mother - in line with the family's wishes.

He raised the case during an adjournment debate addressing the issue of gangs and serious youth violence in London.

Mr Umunna said his constituent's youngest son was stabbed on the Tulse Hill estate.

He added: 'In recent weeks, his brother was stabbed on another estate in Streatham, was critically injured, taken to hospital and now cannot leave hospital because it has been deemed too unsafe for him to return home.

'Both those sons are victims of serious youth and gang violence that continues to grip parts of my community.

'This constituent had come to the UK with his sons from Somalia, a country ravaged by lawlessness, extreme violence and civil war because he wanted a better future for his children and for them to be safe.

'He is completely bewildered by what has happened and when I asked him whether he felt his sons would be safer in Mogadishu than in London, he told me it would be less dangerous for his children to live there than here.

A man carries a large fish through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, where an unidentified man said he wished he could move his two children back to from London

Police officers at an estate in Tulse Hill. Chuka Umunna told the Commons how the son of one of his constituent's had been stabbed on a Tulse Hill estate, prompting him to want to return his son to Somalia

'He massively regrets moving them to this capital city of ours. That is a damning indictment of the situation on London's streets.'

Mr Umunna went on: 'I don't want to say any more about the particular case of my Somalia constituents, other than to highlight to the minister that I have written separately, in detail, about the family to ministers.

'And I would ask, I would beg that ministers exercise their discretion in this case to grant my constituent's two sons, in particular, appropriate papers - they do not have them at the moment - so that those sons may travel back to Somalia to be with their mother as the family wishes.
It has never been more important for Christians to stand up for their faith, the head of Ofsted warned today.

Sir Michael Wilshaw said society is becoming increasingly 'secular and materialistic', with 'seemingly ever greater intolerance of other people's beliefs'.

Young people can easily 'have their heads turned and lose sight of what really matters' while in other parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Christians are suffering 'brutal persecution' simply for 'what they believe', he argued.

But schools can help to instil good morals and values such as tolerance and compassion, the Ofsted chief suggested.

Head of Ofsted Sir Michael Wilshaw, pictured talking to students at St Pauls Way Trust School in East London, said it has never been more important for Christians to stand up for their faith

Sir Michael was brought up in a Roman Catholic household in south London in the 1950s and was headteacher of St Bonaventure's Catholic Comprehensive School in Forest Gate, East London, before becoming executive principal of Mossbourne Community Academy in nearby Hackney.

Addressing the Catholic Association of Teachers, Schools and Colleges' annual conference today (Friday), Sir Michael said: 'I was always stimulated by teaching young people, especially those who came from disadvantaged backgrounds.

'I saw it as my duty, both as a teacher and a Christian, to do the best for them and to get the best out of them.

'For me, this was about more than just making sure that they did as well as they could in their exams  important though that was.

'It was about instilling in them the values they could hold onto and live by for the rest of their lives.'

Sir Michael was brought up in a Roman Catholic household in South London and was headteacher at St Bonaventure's Catholic Comprehensive School in Forest Gate, East London

'I HAVE AN EVANGELICAL ZEAL TO DO CHRIST'S WORK ON EARTH' Sir Michael Wilshaw devout faith is known to drive everything he does. Brought up in a Roman Catholic household in South London, Sir Michael has kept hold of his faith throughout his life, once revealing to journalist Peter Wilby that he had an evangelical zeal to do Christs work on Earth. For him, that work was changing the lives of children. Last year, he was named the second most influential Catholic in the country, by journal The Tablet. He was only beaten to the top spot by Bank of England chief Mark Carney. Advertisement

Sir Michael went on: 'It doesn't need me to tell you that we are living in an increasingly secular and materialistic society where young people can so easily have their heads turned and lose sight of what really matters.

'At the same time, we are also living through an era marked by seemingly ever greater intolerance of other people's beliefs, views and ways of living.

'Therefore, it has never been more important for Christians to stand up for their faith and for the Gospel values of love, compassion and tolerance.

'Not just because of what's happening in this country, but in the context of what is happening in the Middle East and other parts of the world, where Christians are suffering brutal persecution for what they believe.'

The chief schools inspector said it is important for Catholic school leaders to inform pupils about other religions, even if their first role is to promote and celebrate their own faith.

Sir Michael, pictured with Rhys Lockyer (left) and King Akingbulu (right) during a visit to Windrush Nursery in Woolwich, said schools must help instil good morals, tolerance and respect

He added: 'When I led a Catholic school in the heart of an overwhelmingly Muslim area of East London, I always made sure my pupils understood and respected the fact that others followed different customs and subscribed to a different set of beliefs.

'We didn't go into any great detail about other world religions, but I saw it as my obligation to teach pupils about the synergies between the great faiths and that all people are equal in the eyes of God.

'It is so important that, as Catholic leaders, we adopt this approach. All of us understand that erecting barriers and pushing others away breeds suspicion, insularity and division. This is certainly what we saw in a number of schools in Birmingham.'

Ofsted is now actively inspecting how well schools are promoting values such as tolerance and respect, a move that came in the wake of the alleged Trojan Horse plot by hardline Islamists to take over some schools in Birmingham.

Erecting barriers and pushing others away breeds insularity and division, which happened in a number of schools in Birmingham, according to the Ofsted chief

A number of secular and faith schools have been failed by the watchdog for failing to promote these values and narrowing the curriculum, Sir Michael said.

'It is perfectly legitimate for individuals and faith groups to hold firm to a particular set of values and beliefs, which may run counter to existing social norms,' he added.

'What is not legitimate is to use these beliefs to condone or even encourage intolerance and discrimination.'
Most interpretations of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution hold that Cruz's mother's citizenship makes him eligible to be president

The Texas senator was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father

Cruz has lost support among Republican voters since Trump began repeating a 'birther' conspiracy about him

Donald Trump told a New Hampshire audience that Ted Cruz is a Canadian 'anchor baby'  hinting that he has a greater claim to citizenship there

Donald Trump returned on Friday to his primary line of attack against presidential primary rival Ted Cruz, saying in New Hampshire that the Texas senator is an 'anchor baby' in the nation of Canada where he was born.

Trump, the GOP front-runner, has made a major issue of a Cruz 'birther' conspiracy in recent weeks, using the uncertainty surrounding Cruz's heritage as a wedge issue to raise doubts among early-state primary voters.

Iowans will cast the nation's first votes on Monday in their local precinct caucuses.

'Ted Cruz may not be a U.S. citizen, right?' he asked supporters in Nashua, N.H.

'But he's an anchor baby  No, Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada. But Canada doesn't accept anchor babies,' he said, drawing laughs.

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HE'S AN ANCHOR BABY! Donald Trump said his main rival, Ted Cruz, is a north-of-the-border 'anchor baby' with a greater claim to citizenship in Canada than in the United States

'PUMMELED': Trump said Cruz took all the heat meant for him on Thursday night in Iowa after he boycotted a Fox News-sponsored debate

'Anchor baby' is a derogatory term referring to children born in the U.S. whose parents are here illegally.

Under most interpretations of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, such babies become American citizens at birth, 'anchoring' their parents and making it practically impossible  and politically distasteful  to deport them.

Trump said Cruz was 'pummeled' Thursday night during a GOP primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa  the first such contest to be Trump-free.

The Donald boycotted the event over concerns about his treatment by Fox News, the debate's main sponsor. Without him on stage, Cruz  who runs second in every national poll  took most of the heat from moderators and lower-ranking contenders.

'You know, they didn't even mention he was born in Canada, right?' Trump jabbed.

'When you're born in Canada, you're not supposed to run for President of the United States. Prime minister of Canada? No problem.'

'It is a problem for him, by the way,' Trump said of Cruz's birthplace in Calgary, Alberta.

'I think that's one of the reasons he's crashing. I think it's one of the reasons he's a nervous wreck, too. He's figured: "What the hell happened?"'

He added: 'How about this? He's a citizen of Canada. And he was a senator from Texas. And he's a citizen of Canada, joint with the U.S. How the hell does that work?'

Cruz held dual citizenship until late in 2014 when he laid the groundwork for a presidential run.

Trump will keep up a blistering pace in the coming days, holding seven separate rallies in Iowa over a three-day period leading up to the all-important Feb. 1 caucuses.

THIS NEVER GETS OLD: Trump commands massive audiences wherever he goes, including New Hampshire just 11 days before the first-in-the-nation primary elections

New Hampshire will vote next, in the first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 9.

Trump urged his Nashua crowd to turn out at the polls for him, despite an Obama-fueled economic malaise.

'I kid when I say this, but you may be feeling badly  you may have lost your job, you may be in a major state of depression.' he said.

'It doesnt matter. Go out and vote. I will get rid of your depression. Youll be happy.'
Stephen Pegram (pictured), 49, of Blackwood, was given a six month jail term - he is already serving a five-years inside

The last five members of the 'cash for crash' gang - who scammed insurance companies out of 800,000 - have been jailed.

The four year scam was centred on a family garage in South Wales and was exposed when footage from the garage's CCTV cameras was uncovered showing a Land Rover being deliberately driven into a forklift truck.

Today the final five conspirators were sentenced by a judge at Newport Crown Court, who described their actions as 'excruciatingly dishonest'.

Nicola Cook, 41, of Hengoed, Stephen Pegram, 49, of Blackwood, Bethan Palmer, 26, of Newport, Nicola Rees, 48, of Bargoed, Caerphilly County, and Stephen Brooks, of Cardiff, were all convicted in connection with the scam.

During the sentencing hearing, prosecutor Christopher Clee QC said they had been involved in making false claims worth 144,000 between 2009 and 2011.

Cook and Pegram were handed prison terms of 12 months and six months respectively, while their three co-defendants were given suspended sentences.

Police at first went to the Yandell's garage to investigate a series of stolen motorbikes - but then saw a CCTV recording of a staged crash (pictured) involving a Land Rover being rammed into a forklift truck

81 people have been convicted over a 'cash for crash' con in which a garage faked accidents in its yards so bogus insurance and compensation claims totalling around 800,000 could be made

The fraud ring cost the insurance industry 763,068 involving 57 cars with 81 people caught up in the scam

The Yandell family submitted bogus insurance claims - even going so far as to remove airbags from cars to make it look as if the crash was genuine

In total, 81 people have now been convicted for their part in the scam - and jailed for a total of 96 years.

A court previously heard the scam revolved around garage business St David's Crash Repair, also known as Easifix, run by the Yandell family.

Last year, Byron Yandell, 32, his father Peter Yandell, 53 and wife Rachel Yandell, 31, along with Gavin Yandell, 31, and Michelle Yandell, 52, were all jailed for between six and two years for the racket.

Their trial was told the family were the 'masterminds' and submitted bogus insurance claims - even going so far as to remove airbags from cars to make it look as if the crash was genuine.

Prosecutor Christopher Clee QC said: 'If all the crash claims were true, the Yandells would have been the unluckiest family in the land.'

Police at first went to the Yandell's garage to investigate a series of stolen motorbikes - but then saw a CCTV recording of a staged crash.

Officers were shocked after discovering there were dozens of people in on the scam too - and found a pattern involving family members and friends who had been involved in fake collisions.

A two-year investigation between Gwent Police and the Insurance Fraud Bureau - called Operation Dino - uncovered the web of bogus insurance claims, and it took another two years before those convicted were all brought to justice in a series of court cases.

Byron Yandell (left) and his father, Peter, (right) were charged last year with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to steal/handling and sentenced to 72 months each in prison

Among those was disgraced Tesco worker Nicola Cook and her husband Jonathan. Mr Cook avoided trial after admitting conspiracy to defraud, but was still handed a 28-month prison sentence.

On Friday, Mrs Cook begged not to be sent to jail - despite a jury returning a guilty verdict on her 38,000 fraud.

In her mitigation, the mother-of-two claimed she was too unwell to go jail and prison would have devastating consequences for her family.

However, Judge Williams rejected suggestions she had been coerced by her husband into the scam.

He added: 'You were motivated by greed - to you it was easy money and both you and your husband profited from it. You have been excruciatingly dishonest.'

Stephen Pegram - who is already serving a five-year jail term - was given further time inside.

Judge Williams said Pegram had been a close friend of the Yandell family and the culpability for his 19,000 fraud was high.

'The appropriate sentence for you is six months, which will run consecutively with your existing prison sentence,' the judge added.

The court also heard former nurse Rees had played a 'lesser' role in the conspiracy - while Palmer had been 'a naive 21-year-old' at the time of her offence.

The pair were handed nine and six-month prison sentences - which were both suspended for two years - as well as having to carry out unpaid work.

Brooks was also given a suspended jail term as well as a three-month curfew.

Judge Daniel Williams said: 'Each of you knew that money was about to be made by falsely claiming involvement in car accidents.

'Each claim involved dishonesty over a long time and thousands upon thousands of pounds were paid out by insurance companies who were blind to your activities.

'The cost to insurance companies was immense and your preparedness to make false claims has spawned an industry.

'The cost of this fraud has been passed on in increased premiums for other motorists.

'Each of you played a significant role in the fraud.'

Rachel Yandell, 31 was charged with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to steal/handling and sentenced to 60 months, while Gavin Yandell, 31, got 36 months in prison

Detective Chief Inspector Richard Williams said he was pleased with the strong message the court had sent out.

He said: 'Hopefully from this day onwards this type of crime will be less difficult to commit.

'This investigation was very complex due to the number of defendants involved - it was a difficult process.

'It not only cost the insurance industry hundreds of thousands but also has probably had a knock on effect to motorists in pushing up their premiums too.

'These latest sentences send out a strong message and should act as deterrent to others.'
A former Wal-Mart employee was awarded more than $31 million in damages after claiming she was wrongly fired because of her gender and in retaliation for complaining about safety conditions.

Maureen McPadden worked for Wal-Mart for 13 years and was was fired in 2012 while working in Wal-Mart's Seabrook pharmacy in New Hampshire for losing her pharmacy key.

The pharmacist claimed that she was fired after reporting safety concerns about co-workers dispensing prescriptions and because of her gender.

A jury has awarded a former Wal-Mart employee $31 million after she claimed she was wrongly fired because of her gender

A jury awarded her most of the money Thursday based on gender discrimination claims.

Wal-Mart denied that it engaged in any form of wrongful conduct.

A spokesman for the company said Friday that the facts do not support the verdict and that it plans to ask the trial judge to review it. He said McPadden had been disciplined before and the lost key led to her dismissal.

The Concord jury deliberated for 2.5 hours before ruling on Wednesday for the plaintiff, McPadden, after a five-day trial, according to her lawyers.

McPadden claimed that Wal-Mart used her loss of a pharmacy key as a pretext for firing her in November 2012, when she was 47.

She said she was fired in retaliation for her raising concerns that customers at the Wal-Mart were getting prescriptions filled improperly because of inadequate staff training, according to Reuters.

McPadden also said her gender played a role, alleging that Wal-Mart later disciplined but didn't fire a male pharmacist in New Hampshire who also lost his pharmacy key.

McPadden's lawyer told Reuters in a phone interview that the jury reached 'a fair and just verdict'.
All three were jailed for a combined 30 years at Manchester Crown Court

The trio also robbed the victim at the hotel, where they celebrated Eid

Three Somali men who gang-raped a white 16-year-old girl in the bathroom of a hotel where they went to celebrate Eid have been jailed for 30 years.

Muhyadeen Osman, Bilal Ahmed and Mowled Yussuf, all now 20, were just teenagers when they attacked the girl at the Victoria Park Hotel in Manchester, regarding her as 'easy prey', the court heard.

The group, then all aged 17, had spent the previous night in the hotel with a number of other men as part of Eid celebrations when one of their friends, who had met the girl on BlackBerry Messenger, brought her round saying she should 'meet his boys.'

Mowled Yussuf, left, and Muhyadeen Osman, all 20, have been jailed after raping a 16-year-old girl

In the run up to the assault the group moved from room to room looking for unlocked doors to hide from a porter.

They eventually got into a bedroom where Yussuf was first to force the girl to perform a sex act on him in the bathroom.

Despite her repeatedly telling the group that she didn't want to have intercourse, she was forced to perform a sex act on Ahmed before he raped her.

Osman then joined in after he had been 'hanging around' outside the door. He then moved her to the bed and raped her himself.

Their victim, now a university student, was left alone as the gang dispersed - only to realise that her mobile phone and cash had been taken from her handbag.

She initially only reported the theft but the day after the attack in 2013 she revealed the extent of her ordeal.

DNA matching the offenders was recovered from the scene and she later picked the men out in identity parades.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the teenager said she no longer felt confident to go out of the house and her education had suffered.

At Manchester Crown Court Yussuf was convicted of rape, oral rape and assault by penetration following a trial was jailed for ten years.

The rape took place at the Victoria Park Hotel in Manchester, pictured, during Eid celebrations

Ahmed, who was convicted of oral rape, was locked up for nine years whilst Osman got 12 years after being convicted of an unrelated robbery in which he mugged an innocent man on the street for his rings and mobile phone was also taken into account.

In dramatic scenes outside the courtroom around 60 members of Manchester's Somalian community protested against the verdicts suggesting the three men were being 'victimised' because of their race, while the victim was a white Brit.

They managed to pile into the public gallery and gasped as the sentences were handed down - while Yussuf flicked a middle finger at the mother of their victim, who was present.

The court heard the girl was on her summer holidays between school and beginning her A-levels when she began talking to a friend of the gang Ibrahim Jama on BlackBerry Messenger.

They exchanged messages and agreed to meet - but as Jama met her at a bus stop shortly before 11am, he soon convinced her to perform a sex act on him in an alleyway.

Prosecuting, Henry Blackshaw said: 'He then made reference to 'his boys' that were at the Victoria Park hotel, so she accompanied him.

'Once in the hotel she was then involved in what was talked about as a game of going to hotel rooms with the group and hiding away from the porter.'

CCTV then captured the group and the girl disappearing into one hotel room for around 30 minutes while the attacks took place.

The trio were found guilty after a trial at Manchester Crown Court, pictured, and jailed for 30 years

The court heard that all three men continue to protest their innocence and other men who had a sexual encounter with the victim on the same day have not been arrested.

On behalf of Osman, Michael Goldwater said: 'What these defendants did wrong is allowing themselves to believe this young lady was willing to perform virtually any sex act on all of them, and failing to make an enquiry about her willingness or indeed to care very much one way or the other.

'These were young, immature men who got carried away.'

But jailing the men, Judge David Hernandez said: 'This was a large group of young men in a hotel and the inference is you all saw her as easy prey.

'She didn't really understand what was on your mind and that is probably because she was a naive and sexually inexperienced and vulnerable young girl.

'When you were running around that hotel she probably saw this as innocent, childish fun, but it all turned sinister when you got her into the bathroom. She found herself in a situation she was totally unable to control.

'She found herself confronted with demands for sexual activity she did not wish to engage in and did not willingly consent. She had no choice and no opportunity to refuse.'

Jama was cleared of conspiracy to commit rape during the trial.
Maine's governor has suggested that citizens should turn vigilante and shoot drug dealers to help solve the state's overdose problems.

Governor Paul LePage suggested that people take matters into their own hands as he discussed increasing current penalties against drug dealers.

LePage said: 'And I'll tell you, 'everybody in Maine, we have constitutional carry, load up and get rid of the drug dealers. Cause folks, they're killing our kids.'

Maine doesn't have the death penalty for any crime, but the Governor insists he would like to make the penalties 'so tough that they don't want to come to me'

His communications director said LePage was exaggerating to make his point and was not advocating any vigilante action, according to WCSH.

LePage talked about the death penalty for drug dealers on a radio program on Tuesday, but wouldn't propose it in Maine this year. He said next year he might bring it up when there is new legislature.

Maine doesn't have the death penalty for any crime, but the Governor insists he would like to make the penalties 'so tough that they don't want to come to me'.

He also said he wants to increase current penalties to allow drug dealers to be charged with murder, if it can be proven that the drugs they sold caused a user's death.

Earlier this month LePage said out-of-state drug dealers were impregnating 'young white girls'.

He later apologized for his remark, calling it a slip of the tongue and saying he didnt mean to inject race into discussion of Maines heroin epidemic, according to the NY Daily News.

There were also efforts to impeach LePage when a legislative committee investigated allegations of misconduct against him.

But lawmakers voted to indefinitely postpone debate on the issue.
A New Jersey man who said he shot three bears on his property to defend himself and his wife has been convicted of illegally killing them.

Robert Ehling, 76, was also found guilty on Thursday of a weapons offense in the 2014 incident and was ordered to pay $4,332 in civil penalties and restitution, the New Jersey Herald reported.

Municipal Court Judge James Devine said the Sparta man's actions on October 10, 2014 were those of a vigilante when he shot the animals on the second-floor deck at the back of his home near Lake Mohawk.

Robert Ehling (pictured at his New Jersey home), 76, was found guilty on Thursday of illegally killing three bears. He said he shot the bears in October 2014 on his property to defend himself and his wife

He admitted in court that he shot a bear and her two cubs (one pictured) on the deck at the back of his home near Lake Mohawk

The judge said there is no indication that even a game warden or police officer would have had the right to shoot the bear and her two cubs that morning.

Ehling claimed he had shot the three bears to defend him and his wife who he said were only separated from the bear by a sliding-glass door, NJ.com reported.

'He looked me right in the face,' Ehling said in court last year as he recalled the incident, according to CBS New York.

'[I] aimed at its head and pulled. Catastrophically, the bear fell.'

On Thursday, Ehling was also found guilty of a weapons offense in the incident and was ordered to pay $4,332 in civil penalties and restitution

Ehling had shot the bear on his back deck and shot both of the cubs while they were on the ground, one near the deck and the other below the deck, Conservation Officer Robert Driscoll during a hearing last November.

Driscoll also said there were no signs the bears had attempted to get into the home, adding there was 'no damage' on the sliding-glass door.

Devine believes Ehling was not being threatened by the bears and said that Ehling 'became the aggressor' during the incident.

He also noted that it was telling how Ehling tried to dispose of the bears' bodies when police first arrived at the scene, as he was spotted leaving a ravine where he had dragged one of the cubs' bodies, according to the New Jersey Herald.

Defense attorney George Dagget said he is going to recommend that his client, (pictured in court last year) appeal the judge's decision

Ehling was found guilty on all charges including three counts of killing a bear out of season along with one count of possessing a loaded firearm for the purpose of killing an animal within 450 feet of another occupied building.

Defense attorney George Dagget said he is going to recommend that his client, who was not present in court, appeal the judge's decision.

'If we had been talking about humans here, there wouldn't have been a case,' Dagget told the New Jersey Herald.
The family of a British man who has gone missing in Amsterdam are appealing for help to find him after he disappeared four days ago.

Richard Cole, 30, from Dursley in Gloucestershire, had been travelling from Copenhagen to Assen via the Dutch city.

His last known location was the Thorbeckeplein area of Amsterdam at about 2am UK time on January 25.

Mr Cole had been to some of the bars in the area before he spoke to his girlfriend, Alicia Marie, on the phone.

Richard Cole, 30, from Dursley in Gloucestershire, had been travelling from Copenhagen to Assen via the Dutch city

He had been to some of the bars in the area before he spoke to his girlfriend, Alicia Marie, on the phone

Police in the Netherlands and Gloucestershire have both appealed for any information to help trace Mr Cole.

A spokesman for Gloucestershire Police said: 'Richard is described as white, around 1m 83cm tall and of slim build.

'He has short, dark-brown hair and could be wearing a shirt, jeans and a black Armani or Superdry jacket.

'Richard is an experienced traveller and his family are concerned for his welfare.'

His mother, Debbie Thornhill, has set up a Facebook page called Help us find Richard Cole.

She wrote on the page: 'Thank you everyone for the support we have been given so far, but there has still been no news of Richard.

'Please keep sharing his photo in the hope that someone in Amsterdam has seen him or knows where he may be.

Richard Cole's last known location was the Thorbeckeplein area of Amsterdam at about 2am UK time on January 25.

Police in the Netherlands and Gloucestershire have both appealed for any information to help trace Mr Cole, who has been described as 'white, around 1m 83cm tall and of slim build with short, dark brown hair'

An appeal by the Dutch Police says there has been 'no trace' of Mr Cole since his last phone call

'Richard is a very special person not only to his family but to all his friends.

'Life would just not be the same without him. Please help us to keep searching for him.'

Mr Cole's girlfriend Alicia Marie told BBC's Victoria Derbyshire she spoke to Mr Cole in the early hours of January 25.

'He had been out with some people that he just met, which is common for Richard - he's really friendly,' she said. 'I just said 'it's late, be careful, please go home, get a cab' and we got off the phone.

'I texted him a picture of his address to show the cab but it never went through. I imagined that he turned off his phone, or his phone died. We just never heard from him.'

An appeal by the Dutch Police says there has been 'no trace' of Mr Cole since his phone call to Miss Marie.
The children of Christopher Sena - who faces 124 sex charges including incest - told Las Vegas prosecutor Stephen Wolfson they they 'do not need protection from our mothers

Four children who suffered incestuous sex attacks and were abused by their father in a trailer for 13 years have pleaded to a Las Vegas district attorney not to prosecute their mothers.

The children of Christopher Sena - who faces 124 charges, including sexual assault of a minor, lewdness with a child, incest, and use of a minor for the production of pornography - told prosecutor Stephen Wolfson they 'do not need protection from our mothers,'

Deborah Sena, and Christopher's ex-wife, Terrie, are behind bars awaiting trial for charges related to his horrifying abuse which is said to have involved at least eight minors.

The accusers, now older than 17, claim the pair were forced into some of their alleged crimes by their father, insisting their father was the only danger to their family.

They now want to make sure he spends the rest of his life behind bars.

'You claim you are representing us, the innocent victims,' they wrote. But you are not. You and your staff have never even asked us what we want.'

According to prosecutors, Christopher set up cameras around the family's trailer home and would film the alleged sex attacks against his children.

Police said he also filmed lewd acts with his dog.

Sena encouraged his children to bring their friends over to the trailer so that he could abuse them, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported.

One woman who says she was sexually abused told investigators that she believes her high school friends were assaulted by Sena.

Neighbors told the Review-Journal that he would seem 'excited' when his sons brought girlfriends over to the house.

Others described the Sena property as the place many neighborhood kids would hang out. Christopher Sena would erect a projector screen in the yard and hold movie nights, they said.

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Deborah Sena, and Christopher's ex-wife, Terrie, are behind bars awaiting trial for charges related to his horrifying abuse - but their children insist they were forced into his 'perverted acts'

According to prosecutors, Christopher (pictured) set up cameras around the family's trailer home and would film the alleged sex attacks against his children

To stop his victims from speaking out about the abuse, he told at least two of them that he would kill them or break their legs if they spoke out, they told police.

Christopher Sena was arrested in September when Deborah, who recently split from him, another woman and a child told a family attorney about the alleged abuse.

The attorney went to police, as is required by law, and a SWAT team stormed the house on September 18 to arrest Sena and seize his recording equipment.

Authorities allegedly found videos showing all three adults engaging in sex acts with children, which led to the arrests of the two mothers.

But the children claim they were victims as well, and their prosecution may actually be pleasing their father.

They wrote in the letter: 'You seem to be trying to help Christopher Sena have the satisfaction of seeing these innocent and abused women serving the prison sentences that only Christopher deserves.

'We beg you, Mr. Wolfson, to release our mothers ... Deborah Sena and Terri Sena are no threat to us or to society. We are certain they will never again allow themselves to be victimized and used by an evil man.'

At least eight minors were involved and some encounters were filmed as part of a child porn operation, police said.

Deborah Sena told police that there was 'fear and intimidation' involved when it came to dealing with her husband Christopher (pictured together in an old photo), whom she split from in August

The children wrote in the letter: They wrote in the letter: 'You seem to be trying to help Christopher Sena (pictrued) have the satisfaction of seeing these innocent and abused women serving the prison sentences that only Christopher deserves'

One alleged victim told authorities that when Sena started abusing her as a child, the two women were not aware of it, but when she was 17, she was forced to engage in sexual activity with them.

That victim started to strike her stomach with a piece of wood, fearful that she would fall pregnant with Sena's child, police said.

Officers seized electronic equipment and allegedly found videos of the abuse

Some of the victims say they were abused for years; one boy said the abuse started when he was three and continued until he was a teen, while another woman said she was abused two or three times a week by Sena for more than a decade.

But according to police, who called it 'one of the most horrific sex rings in memory', he was not the only one carrying out the abuse.

His ex, Terrie Sena, told police she was attracted to young male and female teens, and said it was 'really enjoyable' when one of the boys started to look like Christopher Sena.

But she told authorities that she later felt 'ashamed' and 'dirty'.

Terrie and Christopher Sena had three sons and a daughter together before splitting in 1997. But after they split, Terrie continued to live with her ex and their children, even when he took a new wife.

Authorities also allegedly found footage of Deborah Sena, who left her husband in August, involved in sexual acts with the family dog.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clintonwho is trying to fend off a strong challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuseshas one of the longest education resumes in the presidential race.

Over more the past three decades, shes worked to expand access to early-childhood education, boost academic standards, and improve child healthbut her track record of success is mixed.

In this years presidential contest, Clinton has attracted serious criticism for her education ideas from progressives, who think shes not going far enough, and from the education reform community, which worries that her relationship with teachers unions is way too cozy.

Heres what you need to know:

1. Clinton was a big fan of early-childhood education before it became the it edu-policy.

Clintons been on this one for a while. When she was first lady of Arkansas, she spearheaded an effort to bring a program known as Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youth to the state. As the countrys first lady, she helped champion the creation of Early Head Start (for low-income kids, birth to age 3). And as a U.S. senator from New York in 2007, she introduced the Ready to Learn Act, which would have added a preschool program to what was then a pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. (Her program didnt come to fruition, but there is an early-childhood component to the new Every Student Succeeds Act, the newly-minted ESEA reauthorization.)



She also pitched a universal prekindergarten program as a presidential candidate back in the 2008 campaign, and again in this presidential bid. Getting it over the finish line will be a long shot though, even if she wins the White HouseCongress has rejected a similar proposal from President Barack Obama. More on her record here.

2. Some in the education reform camp are really bothered by her campaign rhetoric, especially when it comes to charter schools.

Clinton has long been a charter supporter; she even said so in 2007 in a speech to the United Federation of

Teachers, to audible jeers . But she made waves earlier this year when she said charter schools dont take the toughest kids (unlike public schools, which have to take everyone). Since then, Clinton seems to be trying to rebuild her relationship with charter champions, even going so far as to say she likes the charter-friendly provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act .

That may not be enough. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is thinking about jumping into the presidential race , in part because he doesnt like what Clinton has been saying about education, the New York Times reports.

3. Clinton voted for the No Child Left Behind Act as a senator, and is now a big ESSA fan. But shes long been skeptical of evaluating teachers based on test scores.

Clinton supported the NCLB law back in 2001, but called for changes to it as a candidate in 2008. She was one of the first presidential candidates to congratulate Congress on passing ESSA. (Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican presidential candidate, is also a fan of the new law.) Clinton may have caught a lucky political break with ESSAs passage; now she wont have to choose between unions and the reform wing of the Democratic party on sticky issues like standardized testing.

ESSA doesnt require teacher evaluation through test scores, but that probably makes Clinton happy. She wasnt in favor of tying individual teacher pay to student outcomes back in the 2008 race, a big edu-difference between her and Obama.

4. Shes been endorsed by the National Education Association and the American Federation of teachers, but not all their members are so thrilled about it.

Clinton got the backing of the AFT back in the 2008 election, but she still didnt get the Democratic nomination. The NEA, with all of its political muscle and money, didnt endorse in the primary. Democrats, of course, then picked Obama as their nominee. And he championed some policies the unions really did not like, including teacher evaluation through test scores.

This time, the unions went in for Clinton early on, and many of their members are none-too-happy about it . They would have rather seen a Sanders endorsement, or at least a longer process, to give the unions time to extract policy promises from Clinton.

5. Shes an unabashed supporter of the Common Core State Standards and was active in the standards movement as far back as the 1980s, when she served as first lady of Arkansas.

In one her earliest campaign appearances, Clinton hugged the common-core standards , which many Republican presidential contenders have been dissing. And she was a fan of high standards long before the common core. As first lady of Arkansas, she worked to expand access to challenging courses. And in the Senate, she introduced a bill to create voluntary math and science standards. (It didnt make it over the finish line.)

BONUS: Want to know who could be working on education and domestic policy during a potential Clinton administration? Get to know the team at the Center for American Progress. Many of the folks there, including vice president of education policy Catherine Brown and CEO Neera Tanden , are former Clinton aides. The AFT may be another hub of would-be Clinton staffers.

Want more? Check out our profiles of other folks who have a shot of winning Iowa: GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders , who is going after the Democratic nod. And look forward to Andrews takeout on mega-real-estate developer Donald Trump, who is seeking the GOP nomination.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
More than 390 people have reported getting sick after a norovirus outbreak in a theater restaurant in Kansas City.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment initially said more than 100 people fell ill after going to the New Theater Restaurant in Overland Park.

But as of today, more than 390 individuals have now reported the illness and four people have laboratory specimens that confirmed norovirus, KDHE said.

KDHE is investigating the source of the illness, which is highly contagious and spreads through food, water or person-to-person contact.

As of today, 390 people are said to have caught the deadly norovirus after an outbreak at a matinee performance at the New Theater Restaurant in Overland Park in Kansas City on January 17

The virus (pictured left) is highly contagious and can be spread through food, water or person-to-person contact. Rob McGraw (right), vice president of sales and marketing for New Theatre Restaurant, said only a few customers have canceled or rescheduled reservations

It is commonly associated with large gatherings of people, and symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, fever and body aches.

The health department said the theater has been fully cooperating with the investigation.

Rob McGraw, vice president of sales and marketing for New Theatre Restaurant, told The Kansas City Star that three employees have been confirmed for norovirus and that those employees served a man who attended the January 17 matinee performance.

That man also has been confirmed to have norovirus. No other employees have fallen ill since the performances, McGraw said.

HOW DEADLY IS THE NOROVIRUS? Norovirus is very contagious and can be caught from an infected person, contaminated food or water, or by touching contaminated surfaces. The virus causes your stomach or intestines or both to get inflamed (acute gastroenteritis). This leads you to have stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea and to throw up. Norovirus is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis in the United States. It can be serious, especially for young children and older adults. Each year, it causes 19-21 million illnesses and contributes to 56,000-71,000 hospitalizations and 570-800 deaths. The sickness can be avoided by washing your hands thoroughly and washing fruit and vegetables, laundry and surfaces thoroughly. Source: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention Advertisement

The department asked that people who have attended performances from January 15 until now take part in a confidential online KDHE survey even if they didn't become ill.

McGraw said while a few customers have canceled or rescheduled reservations, he has also heard from many supportive season ticket holders.

He added that the theater, which holds about 625 people, is sold out nearly through the end of February.

'They say: "We know this is not your fault, and we will continue to come"' McGraw said. 'The theater, the entire theater, is thoroughly cleaned every day.'

The theater has not released any formal statement on their website or Facebook page and it appears that the shows are continuing as normal, with no cancellations scheduled.

The virus also broke out at a Chipotle restaurant in Boston late last year and an outbreak was reported at Maggiano's Little Italy restaurant in Washington yesterday, with 50 people believed to be sick, reported The Seattle Times.

Seattle health officials have closed the restaurant.

The norovirus can be serious, especially for young children and older adults and causes between 570 and 800 deaths a year in America, according to The Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
ISIS chiefs are living in fear of a mystery sniper after it was rumoured three of the evil terror group's leaders had been assassinated within 10 days of each other by a long-range marksman.

The leaders are said to have been picked off one-by-one in Sirte, the Libyan coastal city where Muammar Gaddaffi was born, which the militants took control of last year.

According to unconfirmed social media reports, ISIS fighters are now sweeping the city for the man ordinary Libyans are said to be dubbing 'Daesh hunter'.

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Three ISIS leaders have been picked off by an unknown gunman in the Libyan city of Sirte, pictured in 2011, in just 10 days, according to social media - with the lone assassin being dubbed 'Daaesh hunter' in the press

ISIS fighters are now sweeping the city, which they took control of last year, in an attempt to catch the gunman

The first ISIS leader to lose his life was Hamad Abdel Hady, a Sudanese national who was killed on January 13, according to Libya Prospect.

He is said to have been an official in the sharia court, handing out ISIS' warped and violent sense of justice.

Abu Mohammed Dernawi was killed on January 19 near his home in the city, according to some reports.

The most recent death is rumoured to be that of Abdullah Hamad al Ansari, a high-up commander from southern Libya, who was shot dead as he left the mosque on January 23.

However, this may not be the start of such a campaign against ISIS fighters in the city.

Journalist Daniele Raineri pointed out a similar assassination took place in July, when an ISIS preacher was shot dead.

The terroro group reportedly has up to 3,000 militants in Sirte. Above, a man is shot for 'cursing god'

Thousands of people have fled ISIS rule Sirte to Misrata Above, the men are flogged for drinking alcohol

The reporter also urges caution in believing what could be nothing more than 'wild rumours' on his Twitter account.

Even so, social media is ablaze with reports of rumours of the sniper, who has become somewhat of a hero to those living under the control of the evil terror group, according to the Libya Herald.

The Islamists are not popular in the city, and days after the first assassination a 'photo report' emerged, showing the terror group executing at least three men and whipped another for drinking alcohol.

ISIS reportedly has 3,000 fighters in Sirte and has imposed the strict rules familiar with residents in their defacto capital in Raqqa, Syria.
A Connecticut firefighter and his wife have been arrested for allegedly keeping their five adopted children locked in a bathroom for months as punishment for bad behavior.

George and Nancie Barnes, of Watertown, were taken into custody Thursday on charges of cruelty to persons, unlawful restraint and risk of injury to a minor.

Mr Barnes, 45, and his 47-year-old wife adopted four of the children and were guardians to the fifth.

Police learned of the alleged abuse in mid-December after one of the children complained at school about the mistreatment at the hands of his parents.

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Parents charged: George Barnes (left), a Connecticut firefighter, and his wife, Nancie (right), are accused of keeping their five adopted children, ages 9 to 18, locked up in the bathroom for months as punishment

Investigators determined that the parents would lock their children, ranging in age from 9 to 18, in the bathroom for long stretches of time and force them to stand up and read as punishment.

Nancie and George Barnes used baby monitors to keep an eye on the children and make sure they remained standing, according to police. The kids were also served their meals inside the bathroom.

The Barnes couple allowed their children to attend school during the day and sleep in their beds at night, but they had to be back in the bathroom in the morning, or after they returned home in the afternoon, the station WTNH reported.

For one of the children, the bathroom confinement lasted from September to December, when police learned of the allegations and had the youngsters removed from the Barnes household.

The five adopted kids have been placed in the custody of the Department of Children and Families.

Officials with the DCF said Mr Barnes, a volunteer firefighter and licensed EMT, and his wife, who works as a bookkeeper, had passed criminal and child-welfare checks and were licensed as an adoptive couple, reported the Hartford Courant.

However, this is not the first time that the Barneses have been accused of mistreating the children in their care.

Free: Mr and Mrs Barnes bonded out of jail Friday (pictured) after being arraigned on charges of cruelty to persons, unlawful restraint and risk of injury to a minor

Cruel: Years earlier, Nancie Barnes had allegedly asked the owner of a day care center to withhold snacks from two of her children as punishment for misbehavior

The owner of a local day care center where two of the couples kids were enrolled at one point revealed to NBC New York that about four years ago, Mrs Barnes came to her asking to withhold snacks from her children for misbehaving at home.

Rhonda Lagasse, who runs Watertown Little People, said she contacted the DCF about Nancie Barnes' unusual request and an investigation was conducted, at the conclusion of which the couple withdrew the kids from the day care center.

George and Nancie Barnes were arraigned Friday morning and released from jail after posting $35,000 bond each.

A judge issued orders of protection prohibiting the parents from contacting their children. They are due back in court on February 24.
The U.S. has started exporting crude oil after a 40-year ban was lifted by Congress.

Oil exports were banned in 1975 after a super group of petroleum-rich countries banned sales to America because of its backing for Israel in the Yom Kippur War with Egypt.

But Congress voted to repeal the ban in December in an attempt to boost the U.S. oil industry, as well as helping allies in Europe and Asia become less reliant on supplies from Russia and unstable countries in the Middle East.

The U.S. has started exporting crude oil after a 40-year ban was lifted by Congress (file picture)

Both ConocoPhillips and NuStar Energy announced they had exported U.S. crude oil to Europe on New Year's Eve in what is believed to have been the first sale since the ban was lifted.

CNN Money reported that the shipped oil was pumped from the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas.

The start of U.S. exports has coincided with - and some say is linked to - a plunge in all price to less than $30 a barrel, which has hit the stock market hard.

There is currently an overproduction of oil, but this is likely to slow production in America gradually and eventually lead to prices increasing and leveling out.

Anthony Starkey, manager of energy analysis at Platts Bentek, said: 'Oil oversupply is currently a global issue, and not one confined to the U.S. There is little appetite or need for our oil to flow anywhere else.'

U.S. crude oil was significantly cheaper than Brent oil just a year ago, meaning importers in Asia and Europe may have had a bigger appetite for American exports.

But with the difference in price now just a couple of dollars a barrel, countries and firms are unlikely to be looking to build new infrastructure and pay for shipping costs to accommodate new business with the U.S.

The start of U.S. exports has coincided with - and some say is linked to - a plunge in all price to less than $30 a barrel, which has hit the stock market hard (file picture)

Nilofar Saidi, a crude oil market analyst at ClipperData, told CNN that the 40-year ban means that America does not have all the equipment required to immediately become a big player in the oil export game.

This could easily change - and likely will over time - but the Gulf Coast lacks the gear needed to load supertankers that would be sent back and forth between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The ban was first brought in in 1975, two years after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) placed an embargo on sales to America over its backing of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

The U.S. stopped exporting oil because of a lack of supplies reaching its shores leading to huge queues at gas stations and massive costs to consumers.

Congress lifted the ban as part of a bipartisan deal. The Republicans agreed to allow unprecedented tax incentives for wind and solar power as a compromise with the Democrats, who are in the large part against any increase in drilling.

The Senate, on a 65-33 vote, approved lifting the ban and providing five-year extensions of tax breaks to boost renewable energy development as part of a $1.8trillion government spending and tax relief bill that President Barack Obama quickly signed into law.

Democrats who backed the deal asserted that its provisions encouraging renewable energy were important for combating global climate change.

Opponents of lifting the export ban said the action would harm the environment and could lead to an increase in fiery derailments of crude-carrying trains.
The oldest of the three inmates who escaped from a California jail has been captured after a week on the run.

Bac Duong, 43, was taken into custody seven days after he and two other inmates, 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri and 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, broke out of the Santa Ana facility.

Details of his capture have not yet been released but reports suggest he turned himself him.

He is believed to have been taken into custody outside an auto repair shop owned by his friends.

The owner, who had known Duong for 10 years, told KCAL the inmate spoke to his wife who then called the police.

It comes a day after Nooshafarian Ravaghi, who taught English as a second language to inmates, was arrested for allegedly aiding the escape by giving them tools.

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Bac Duong, 43, was taken into custody seven days after he and two other inmates, 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri and 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, broke out of the Santa Ana facility

Duong was supposed to have been deported to Vietnam in 1998, but never left because his native country didn't want him back. Instead he has stayed in the United States and gradually built up a long record including assault and the attempted murder charge for which he was awaiting trial

He was in custody in the Orange County Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana waiting for his court date when he escaped with Thieu (left) and Nayeri (right) - who has been compared to Hannibal Lecter by a prosecutor dealing with his case. He allegedly cut off a marijuana dispenser's penis and tortured him

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens (left) confirms Duong was taken into custody after turning himself in

It comes a day after Nooshafarian Ravaghi, who taught English as a second language to inmates, was arrested for allegedly helping the escape by giving them tools (mugshot pictured)

Less than two hours before Duong's capture, Lt. Jeff Hallock of the Orange County Sheriff's Department said authorities felt 'very strongly' that Tieu and Nayeri - who has been compared to Hannibal Lecter - were still in the Southern California area.

They were believed to be driving a 2008 white GMC Savana utility van that was reported stolen from South Los Angeles on January 23, the day after the escape.

Duong was supposed to have been deported to Vietnam in 1998, but never left because his native country didn't want him back.

Instead he has stayed in the United States and gradually built up a long record including assault and the attempted murder charge for which he was awaiting trial.

He was in custody in the Orange County Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana waiting for his court date when he escaped with Thieu and Nayeri.

This Internet 'wanted' poster provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows that they have captured one of three violent inmates who last week broke out of their Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, California

Orange County Sheriff agents search the back of an auto shop for escaped inmates in Santa Ana on Friday

Orange County Sheriff's Department Public Information Officer Lt. Jeff Hallock says escaped inmate Bac Duong, marked 'Captured,' left, surrendered in Orange County earlier Friday

Duong, who has now been on the run for four days, came to the United States legally in 1991 but was told he would be sent home seven years later.

The order came shortly after he served time in state prison on a 1997 burglary conviction, state records show.

Immigration officials said they took Duong into custody in 2003 and released him the following year. He continued to check in with authorities as required until 2014, the statement said.

During that time, he also faced a series of charges involving burglary and drug possession and did stints in state prison.

Last year, he was charged with attempted murder and assault in the shooting of a man outside a home in Santa Ana.

Federal officials can't keep immigrants locked up indefinitely while they await deportation. Most must be released after six months, except those accused of posing a terrorist threat or deemed especially dangerous.

For many years, Vietnam did not honor U.S. government requests to repatriate deportees.

Ravaghi, a Lake Forest woman, had some kind of relationship with one of the men, authorities said. The relationship 'developed between the two as a result of initially (what) was a student-teacher relationship', Orange County sheriff's Lt Jeff Hallock said

The vent screen (above) had been cut and removed from the inside of the jail cell where the three men escaped from sometime on Friday, January 22

Above is pictured the jail cell and vent screen that had been cut, near the floor at center rear, inside of the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, California by the three inmates

A cord made of an undetermined fabric that facilitated the escape of three inmates is pictured above inside the central men's jail in California

This undated combo photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows tattoos and other markings on the body of Duong, one of three inmates who escaped on Friday

This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a 2008 White GMC Savana utility van that authorities believe the three escaped inmates had stolen

In 2008, Vietnam agreed to provide travel documents for deportees but only those who entered the U.S. since July 1995.

Duong escaped from the Orange County jail on Friday by sawing through a quarter-inch thick grill on a dormitory wall and climbing through plumbing tunnels to reach an unguarded area of the roof.

There, the three men moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using bed linen.

All three are considered dangerous and were awaiting trial in separate violent crimes.

Authorities have focused their search in the county's sizable Vietnamese-American community, where sheriff's officials say two of the men have ties to gangs.

Tieu had been held at the county jail since 2013, accused of murder and attempted murder.

Nayeri was arrested in 2014 on charges including kidnapping and torture. Authorities said he abducted a marijuana dealer, burned him with a blow torch and cut off his penis because Nayeri thought the man had buried money in the desert.

Ravaghi, (left) was said to have been close to escapee Hossein Nayeri, 37 (right) who is believed to be the mastermind behind the escape plan

According to her website, Ravaghi, who was born in Iran, has authored a multicultural children's book called the 'Noosh Collection'

Authorities allege the three men took the dispensary owner's penis with them 'so that it could never be re-attached'.

They say the owner spent an 'extensive time in the hospital recovering from his injuries.'

Heather Brown, a prosecutor dealing with his case, compared him to movie villain Hannibal Lecter.

'He is sophisticated, incredibly violent and cunning,' Brown told the Orange County Register.

Nayeri was a U.S. Marine with special operations training and a history of mental illness who once told his wife he was 'upset with the world'.

People who knew him told the Register his life fell apart after a 2005 accident in which he drove drunk and rolled a car, an incident that killed his friend in a fiery crash after they had been partying at a casino in Madera County.

Ravaghi, a 44-year-old Lake Forest woman from Rancho Santiago Community College, was arrested on Thursday, and authorities said she had some kind of relationship with one of the men.

Authorities with the Orange County Central Jail stand on the top jail floor in Santa Ana, California, on Tuesday

Hallock said Nayeri attended several of Ravaghi's classes - the pair are both originally from Iran.

'All we know is that there was some type of relationship that developed between the two as a result of initially (what) was a student-teacher relationship and it developed into a close relationship where she then began providing him information,' Hallock told KABC.

'She's denying having brought the tools, but what we do know is she provided Google maps, those types of things, to prepare for the escape,' Hallock said.

The escape of the three men echoed the June 2015 New York prison escape when convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat went on the run for three weeks after breaking free from a maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility.

Ravaghi had worked at the jail for six months, according to CNN.

The 44-year-old worked as a part-time instructor in the inmate education program, Judy Iannaccone, a spokeswoman for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, said.

She began the program in 2014 and passed a background check before her assignment at the jail.

According to her website, Ravaghi, who was born in Iran, has authored a multicultural children's book called the 'Noosh Collection.'

She settled in California in 1997 and holds two master's degrees, one in French literature and the other in education.
Officers also found weapons, food and even ricotta in Calabria stronghold

Italian police say they have arrested two of the country's 'most dangerous fugitives' after raiding a secret underground bunker.

Police said they are now trying to find a network of accomplices they suspect helped 'Ndrangheta clan bosses Giuseppe Crea and Giuseppe Ferraro elude capture for 10 years and 18 years respectively by hiding in the stronghold in southern Calabria.

Crea, 37, faces 22 years in prison for Mafia association; Ferraro, 48, was sentenced to life imprisonment, including for a murder conviction.

An unidentified man, left, being arrested by Italian police after the raid on an underground bunker

Two fugitive 'mobsters', Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, and Giuseppe Crea, 37, were found at the bunker, pictured

A huge cache of weapons was also found in the stronghold in the countryside of southern Calabria, Italy

The two had a dozen firearms, including a Kalashnikov, neatly hung up on a wall, video released by police of the bunker's interior showed.

Also hanging from a wall was a pasta pot. Tomatoes, salad and what looked like a plate heaped with ricotta were on the counter.

Despite it being dug deep into the ground the hideout was furnished with electricity, and the mobsters had a satellite TV and a computer, police said.

Vines and bushes camouflaged the hideout in the province of Reggio Calabria.

Another man arrested in the sting on the bunker, which had food such as tomatoes and ricotta, pictured,

The raid, pictured, was designed to capture two of the country's 'most dangerous' men

Crea had been a fugitive since 2006 when he was convicted of mafia association while Ferrera had been on the run for 18 years after being sentenced to life in prison for murder

An image released by Italian police shows the bunker was furnished and stocked with food and wine

Ferraro is considered one of the last survivors of a decades-long ferocious 'Ndrangheta clan feud that claimed at least 20 lives, according to police.

Among those victims was a mobster whose body was fed to pigs and a nine-year-old boy who was accidentally shot when his grandfather's car was mistakenly fired on, daily Corriere della Sera reported.

Announcing the capture of the pair, Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano noted they were "both on Italy's list of most dangerous fugitives".

Authorities described the two as being clan bosses from 'Ndrangheta territory near Gioia Tauro, a port on the Tyrrhenian coast which, investigators have long maintained, the syndicate frequently uses as a base for activities such as drug and arms trafficking.

Officers are now searching for a network of accomplices who helped hide the mobsters for so long

Italian authorities say they hope the double capture will send a message to organised crime in nearby areas

Police officers went in armed and dressed in camouflage and body armour for the dangerous mission, pictured

Helicopters were also used to ensure no one managed to evade the authorities and escape the bunker

This hideout was in remote farm country. But many of the bunkers discovered by police hunting for other 'Ndrangheta mobsters in Calabria have been found tunnelled under farm buildings or reached through hidden trapped doors leading from kitchens, bedrooms or other rooms in homes.

Fugitive mobsters prefer to stay close to their power bases, where they can count on logistical support and rely on the reluctance of locals to tip police, turning on its head the expression to "being on the run".

After convicted Cosa Nostra chieftain Bernardo Provenzano was captured in 2006 in a farmhouse near Corleone, Sicily, after 43 years as a fugitive, prosecutors said he was able to live on farmland right near his home base because family and friends brought him food and freshly laundered clothes and bedding.

Investigators hope the latest capture will send a message to people in the nearby town of Rizziconi, whose city council was sent packing by the Italian central government because of infiltration by organised crime.

The cocaine-trafficking 'Ndrangheta is one of the world's most powerful criminal organisations.
College students who should be paying attention during a lecture are spending at least one-fifth of their time on their smartphones.

Activities like texting, emailing, checking social media, and surfing the net were the reported activities from participants of a study conducted by the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and published in the Journal of Media Education.

The survey polled 675 students in colleges across 26 states in 2015.

Distraction: Activities like texting, emailing, checking social media, and surfing the net were the reported activities from participants of a study conducted by the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Almost nine out of 10 students said that texting was their biggest distraction, three quarters said that they were checking their phones for the time and email, and 70 percent said that they were checking social media.

'Most of us love technology,' said study author Barney McCoy, an associate professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to Health Day.

'And we want it to benefit us. But technology also affords a view that can be distracting,' he added.

McCoy wants to someday answer the question about how youths can find balance as technology is on the up and up.

'So the question now is, how we balance this out?" he said.

'How can we take in all the constructive dynamic benefits that this technology enables us to have, and then also be disciplined enough to recognize that there is a time and place to put it aside, and pay attention and stay focused?'

The poll numbers show an increase in use of technology since the last time it was measured in 2013.

In 2013, 30 per cent said they checked their device a minimum of 10 times a day back but the number rose to 33 percent by 2015.

Scott Campbell, a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, told Health day he was not surprised.

'Young people turn to digital media as an immediate way to relieve boredom and, sadly, the classroom is one of the environments in which they most commonly experience boredom,' he said.

'Also, young people feel naked when they are cut off from their peer networks. Expectations for being accessible to others, and for having access to digital content, are very high these days. We may not always be thinking about it consciously, but it's there underneath the surface. The need to stay connected,' Campbellsaid.
Two more government buildings operating under Sharia law have been uncovered by MailOnline after it was revealed MPs could be forced to stop drinking alcohol when they move out of the Palace of Westminster.

Plans were revealed for MPs to be rehoused in a temporary chamber in a courtyard in the Department of Health at 79 Whitehall - opposite The Cenotaph - earlier this week.

However, alcohol is banned on the premises because the building was quietly transferred to finance an Islamic bond scheme in 2014.

A Treasury source has now told MailOnline the other two buildings in the bond scheme are Wellington House in Lambeth - a second Department of Health site - and a Department of International Development property at 22-26 Whitehall.

Three government buildings are operated under Sharia law because they were transderred to finance an Islamic bond scheme in 2014

New home? Plans were revealed for MPs to be rehoused in a temporary chamber in a courtyard in the Department of Health at 79 Whitehall (pictured) - opposite The Cenotaph - earlier this week

Under terms of the lease at 79 Whitehall, alcohol is one of the activities banned on the premises, according to The Times.

A Whitehall official told the newspaper: 'It's true. If MPs want to use Richmond House they'd better give up any hopes it will include a bar.'

The three Whitehall buildings were transferred to the 200million Islamic bond scheme, which switched their ownership from British taxpayers to wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen and banks.

George Osborne announced the move in June 2014 as part of an effort to make the UK a global hub for Islamic finance.

But critics say the scheme would waste money and could undermine Britain's financial and legal systems by imposing Sharia law onto government premises.

The bonds  known as Sukuk  are only available for purchase by Islamic investors.

The money raised will be repayable from 2019. But instead of interest, bond-buyers will earn rental income from the Government offices because interest payments are banned in Sharia law.

The Treasury agreed to make the Sukuk fully compliant with Sharia law to ensure investors were not put off investing in the scheme, meaning each of the buildings used to finance the products must meet the terms of Sharia law, including the ban on alcohol.

A Treasury source has now told MailOnline one of the other buildings in the bond scheme is a Department of International Development property at 22-26 Whitehall (pictured)

Wellington House in Lambeth (pictured) was also transferred to the 200million Islamic bond scheme

WHY ARE WHITEHALL BUILDINGS GOVERNED BY SHARIA LAW? In June 2014 George Osborne announced that Britain was launching the first Islamic bond scheme in the non-Muslim world. Three Government buildings in Whitehall were transferred to Islamic bonds, switching the ownership from British taxpayers to wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen and banks. The issue of bonds raised 200million and was the first carried out by a Western country. Osborne said it would turn the UK into 'the western hub of Islamic finance' and the 'undisputed centre of the global financial system.' But critics say the scheme would waste money and could undermine Britain's financial and legal systems by imposing Sharia law onto government premises. The bonds  known as Sukuk  are only available for purchase by Islamic investors. The money raised will be repayable from 2019. But instead of interest, bond-buyers will earn rental income from the three Government offices because interest payments are banned in Sharia law. The Treasury agreed to make the Sukuk fully compliant with Sharia law to ensure investors were not put off investing in the scheme, meaning each of the buildings used to finance the products must meet the terms of Sharia law, including the ban on alcohol. Advertisement

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said he was outraged to discover that parts of Whitehall was being ruled by Islamic law.

'I do find it unbelievable government buildings are governed by Sharia law,' he told MailOnline. 'I dont see the bars as being an essential part of Parliament but its the principle that matters.

'Most of our constituents will be absolutely amazed that the principle could ever have been authorised.'

It is the latest stumbling block encountered by Parliamentary authorities as they search for a new home while 4billion worth of repairs is carried out on the building, which is riddled with asbestos, leaking ceilings and rodents.

A spokeswoman for the joint committee on the Palace of Westminster said: 'The committee is looking at a range of options and no final decision has been taken.

'It is aware that Richmond House is under a bond.'

The Palace of Westminster has dozens of bars and restaurants, where MPs, peers, staff and other passholders can enjoy pints for as little as 2.90.

The cheapest and quickest option for refurbishing the Palace of Westminster would require MPs to temporarily move out of the building for up to six years.

A specially-made chamber built in the courtyard of the Department of Health  just 100 yards down the road from the Palace of Westminster  is the preferred option among MPs.

Remaining close to the palace would be the most convenient option for government ministers, who would continue to work in Whitehall departments and must be held accountable to Parliament.

Moving MPs to a courtyard in the Department of Health is popular with some MPs because it could easily be integrated into the current Parliamentary estate.

It is located next to 1 Parliament Street and Porcullis House, where many MPs' offices are housed, meaning many could go to vote in the temporary chamber without leaving the estate and avoiding security concerns.

Department of Health staff would have to move out of the offices in Richmond House at 79 Whitehall while a temporary chamber is built.

Revamp: Parliament is riddled with asbestos, leaking ceilings and rodents and was described as a 'death trap'

Barred: MPs have been warned that drinking will be banned if they move into the Department of Health site

An independent report commissioned by Parliament estimated that the revamp would cost more than 7bn and take 32 years to complete if politicians did not move out of the building temporarily.

But the costs could be halved to an estimated 3.5billion and take just six years if MPs and peers agree to a temporary new home.

Plans to rehouse MPs in Whitehall was discussed by Labour's Shadow Leader of the Commons at Monday's Parliamentary Labour party meeting.

Mr Bryant told his colleagues that Parliament's Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster had all but ruled out the idea of relocating MPs outside London.

Chris Grayling, the Leader of the Commons and chairs the cross-party committee overseeing the refurbishment plans, is expected to tell Tory MPs of the plans later this week.

Where to relocate roughly 800 peers is proving more difficult.

Similar courtyards in the Treasury or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office could be used as part of the refurbishment, which is expected to begin following the 2020 general election.
Hundreds gathered on Thursday to say goodbye to a fallen police dog, who was shot and killed in the line of duty in Omaha, Nebraska.

Kobus, an eight-year veteran with the Omaha Police Department, was killed after being sent in to a standoff by officers on January 23.

Just days before the funeral Kobus was presented with the U.S. Honor Flag Tuesday: the first police dog ever to receive the honor.

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Police officer Matt McKinney (pictured, right) and his K-9 officer Kobus (left) worked together for eight years

Kobus was killed in the line of duty and so a memorial was held Thursday morning to honor his legacy

Hundreds of mourners and police officers came to Christ Community Church in Omaha to remember Kobus

The Honor Flag is sent around the country as tribute to those who have lost their lives in the line of duty protecting lives, homes and the country.

K-9 handlers from across Nebraska came to show officer Matt McKinney, Kobus's owner, his family and the department their respect.

Kobus, a nine-year-old Belgian Malinois, was scheduled to retire in March.

'Once he was in the cruiser he was ready to work every day. I'm really going to miss him,' Officer McKinney said.

In the memorial service held at Christ Community Church and filmed by KMTV, Patriot Guard Riders held flags and Omaha families came together to mourn the hero dog.

Sergeant Aaron Hansen became emotional, choking back tears as he read a poem for Kobus called 'I Wag My Tail.'

'Shots ring out, but I charge ahead. My partner shouts but for this fight I was bred.

'My life was broad, I did not fail, as I see God, I wag my tail,' Sergeant Hansen read.

Officers who worked with Kobus remembered him as being fiercely loyal and thought of him as another member of the force.

Fallen friend: This image showing Omaha police dog Kobus marks his 'end of watch' as January 23, 2016

The nine-year-old Belgian Malinois was killed just two months before the veteran dog was due to retire

Family: Officer Matt McKinney (second from the left) was not only Kobus's handler but also his owner

'He is another police officer, yeah it was a four-legged one, but he does things that we don't want to do.

'He put himself in danger to save the life of a human,' said K-9 handler Josh England.

Other officers spoke at the service of the difficult decision to send Kobus into the standoff last week, but they knew it was the right call to make.

'He was attempting to do his job until the very end and that came through that night,' one officer said.

Kobus was killed during a 25-hour standoff between a 59-year-old Omaha man and police.

The standoff began when officials tried to serve a warrant ordering the man to undergo a psychiatric evaluation on Friday evening.

The man is accused of firing on police, although no people were injured.
A proposed bill in Arizona would greatly expand eligibility for a school choice program first enacted in 2011.

Legislation proposed in both chambers would allow all public school students to use state funding to switch to a private school or home school through Arizonas education savings account program.

Sound familiar?

If youve been following the passing and implementation of Nevadas sweeping education savings account program , then it should.

Nevada made headlines in June when it became the first state to pass an ESA program which gives parents unprecedented control over how state education dollars are spent on their childrens educationthats open to all public school students, regardless of income or disability status.

However, the idea for education savings accounts originated in Arizona five years ago as a way for school choice advocates to get around a state supreme court decision that deemed traditional vouchers unconstitutional. (Heres an explainer on the difference between vouchers and education savings accounts ).

Initially offered to only students with disabilities, Arizonas program has since been expanded to include several other groups such as students in foster care, on Indian reservations, with parents in the military, and zoned a low-performing schools. However, several Democrat and Republican lawmakers in the state joined together last year to block the program from expanding to include all public school students, according to the Associated Press .

As I wrote for Education Week last year, critics of vouchers see targeting private school choice programs to students with special needs is a savvy way to get a bill passed. From there, proponents can slowly expand the program to include broader swaths of the student population. Its the camels nose under the tent, Kevin Welner, the director of the National Education Policy Center and an education policy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told me.

This most recent bill in Arizona wouldnt open the program up to all public school students immediately. Rather, it would phase in the expansion through school year 2018-19, starting first with students in kindergarten through 5th grade. Additionally, it would maintain a tight capone-half of one percent of the 1.1 million public school studentson the number of students who can participate also through 2019, according to the Associated Press .

Thats a pragmatic way to go about a program like this, says Jonathan Butcher, education director at the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy and advocacy group whose legal arm has defended ESAs in both Arizona and Florida. Lets phase it in over a couple of years so that the agency can keep up with the growth of the program.

Nevadas program, which had no such phase-in period, received over 1,000 applications in the first 10 days of the application period, stirring up concern that there wouldnt be enough private school seats to meet demand as well as significant pushback from private school parents who felt they were unfairly disqualified from the program.

A judge recently put implementation of Nevadas program on hold until lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of education savings accounts are resolved.

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The chilling warnings that caused thousands of young students to be evacuated from classrooms across New South Wales and Victoria on Friday have been revealed.

Schools went into lockdown after a wave of threats hit at least ten schools and one kindergarten, sending parents rushing to gates to pick up their children early.

In NSW, an automated call said there would be a 'bloodbath in 40 minutes', while in Victoria a receptionist was told she 'didn't have much time' and another was told of a bomb in a backpack, according to the Herald Sun.

Parents are pictured collecting their children at St Monica's primary school in Richmond, western Sydney

Helicopter footage showed students massing on fields at Penrith High School in Sydney's west

According to the newspaper, Berwick Chase Primary, Berwick Lodge Primary School, Aitken Creek Primary School, Cowes Primary, Reservoir High, Wonthaggi and Sale were hit with the threats in Victoria; while Penrith High School, Woolooware High School, Lake Illawarra High School, Mona Vale Primary and St Monicas Catholic Primary School were evacuated in NSW, The Daily Telegraph claims.

Police in both states swarmed after the warnings were discovered.

The threats come after a string of similar bomb hoax calls around the world in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Tokyo this week, with 18 schools closed on one day in the UK this week alone.

A Russian Twitter group known as 'Evacuators 2K16' appeared to have claimed credit for a string of hoax calls which led 14 UK schools and six French schools to be evacuated earlier this week.

Threats were reportedly made to schools in Woolooware and Ulladulla, south of Sydney, Richmond and Penrith in the city's west and Mona Vale on the northern beaches

State authorities acknowledged the threats are similar to those made overseas.

Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said in a statement: 'I understand that schools in other states and in other countries have received similar phone calls in the past 24 hours.'

A police spokeswoman also said investigators were aware schools in 'a number of other states and countries' had 'received similar calls'.

Authorities stressed the evacuations on Friday were a 'precaution' and urged parents to call their children's schools if they are concerned.

The news first broke in New South Wales where at least six schools were targeted.

In the Sydney region they included Penrith High School, Woolooware High, Mona Vale Public and St Monica's Primary School in Richmond. South of Sydney, Ulladulla Public School and Lake Illawarra High School also received threats, local media reports said.

NSW police confirmed there were operations underway at various sites across the state

Students march to the oval at Penrith High School after threats were made at the school

On early Friday afternoon Victorian police confirmed evacuations were also underway in the southern state as well after schools received 'threatening phone calls'.

Berwick Chase Primary, Aitken Creek Primary, Wonthaggi Primary and Cowes Primary were each evacuated in Victoria.

The evacuations came just two days after students in both states went back to school after the long summer break.

A Wonthaggi Primary statement was typical of many, saying: 'The kids are doing great... They were praised for doing a great job to sing/stay together.

'We have explained that lots of school had phone calls to say they weren't safe'.

Some school officials said the message appeared pre-recorded.

The Herald Sun quoted Cowes Primary assistant principal Rod McKenzie saying: 'I understand it was a pre-recorded message, a robot or computerised message.'

A police car was spotted outside St Monica's primary school in Parramatta

Investigators have vowed to bring the perpetrator or perpetrators to justice, warning making such threats is considered a serious criminal offence.

'Every effort will be made to identify the person or persons responsible,' police in New South Wales said.

The NSW Education Department said each school is taking 'precautionary measures to ensure the safety of its students'.

A spokesman said: 'No students are in danger. Police are attending at each location also as a precaution.' He said worried parents can contact their child's school.

The Victorian Education Department confirmed a 'number' of schools had received threatening phone calls.

'The safety and wellbeing of our students is always our number one priority, and the Department is taking these incidents very seriously.
There are some dating websites that are all hearts and flowers and couples strolling hand-in-hand into the sunset.

Then there are the ones which  ironically enough  cut through all the saccharine and tells it as it is. 'Rich Men, Horny Women. Find your perfect Sugar Daddy Arrangement,' screams one British site's home page.

Yes this is a dating website that lays its cards on the table: it matches rich, older men with younger, supposedly up-for-it women. It's not a new idea by any means  the phrase Sugar Daddy was coined in the 1920s, after all  but the web has given the phenomenon a modern gloss and a certain cachet.

Richard, a father of three who called himself a sugar daddy, met about two women, known as sugar babies, every month to see 'if they wanted to take it further' (photographed outside court today)

Still think the idea of old men actively seeking out young flesh is a bit yuck? Well tough.

The web is awash with Sugar Daddy matching sites, many of them boasting about how many lithe young students they have on their books  students who openly post that they are willing to offer, well, themselves, in return for gifts, paid university fees, meals out, a monthly 'allowance'. The list can go on.

It's perfectly legal, perfectly acceptable (to many, at least) and perfectly straightforward. While potential 'Daddies' pay a monthly fee (there's often an extra charge if they want the website's name to stay off the credit card statement), 'Sugar Babies', as the women like to call themselves, can generally sign up for free. Everyone wins.

Isn't this just prostitution, you might well ask? No, no, no, chorus the owners of such sites. Rather, they offer empowerment, mutually beneficial set-ups, honesty.

It's an approach that is, according to one UK Sugar Daddy website, 'Safe, Secure and Confidential'. Safe?! Are they serious? Safe for whom exactly, one might ask, given the events of this week, where the darker (not to mention flabbier-than-advertised) underbelly of the Sugar Daddy industry was laid bare.

Millionaire Doug Richard certainly wasn't on safe territory when he put his marriage, his reputation and his business empire on the line in return for the quick thrill of being a bona fide Sugar Daddy and making real his Fifty Shades of Grey fantasies.

In fact his dalliance took him all the way to the Old Bailey, where this week he stood accused of having sex with a 13-year-old girl while her friend, 15, watched.

Richard walked free from court yesterday, having been found not guilty of the charges. Yet his life was still in tatters last night as the sordid details of his online 'addiction'  which saw him indulge in 'sexy chat' and spanking sessions with a child who was slightly built and weighed less than six stone  were laid bare.

Was the girl in question, who cannot be named for legal reasons, safe when she and her mate logged onto the site that promised fun and frolics? Of course she wasn't.

What on earth must his children Talia, 24, Cecely, 22 and Lucas, 19, make of the their father's shocking admissions?

At an age where she should have been playing Minecraft she was hurled into the middle of a very different game, one where there could be no winners. This was the moment where the nudge-nudge-wink-wink world of the Sugar Daddy dating sites toppled into much darker territory

The details of the case  the meeting of the youngster off the train, the exchanged naked pictures; the clandestine hotel sex, after which she cried  were sordid, shocking, shameful.

And Richard was not any random wannabe Christian Grey, but one whose entrepreneurial skills had lead to a seat on the business show Dragons' Den, and influence at the highest levels.

He had been a government adviser, no less. He'd set up a project called Start-up Schools, had the ear of the Prime Minister himself and was always happy to offer his take on what a man needs to get ahead.

'Don't be afraid to break the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable,' he once said. 'Get out there and make noise  break the rules.' Alas, he possibly took his own advice too literally. Signing up for a Sugar Daddy site when you are married with three children of your own is certainly breaking the moral rules, if not the legal ones.

Former Dragons' Den star Doug Richard was found not guilty of child sex offences at the Old Bailey (pictured outside court) - he left the court in tears

It isn't clear whether his wife, the Spanish-born academic and author Carolina Gonzalez-Carvajal, is standing by him, but soon after his arrest their sumptuous Grade II-listed family home went on the market.

Carolina gave a tour for the readers of an upmarket glossy property magazine, trilling about how it was a dream family home, offering a view of Big Ben from the attic window and a kitchen that can easily accommodate 30 people for a dinner party.

What on earth must his children Talia, 24, Cecely, 22 and Lucas, 19, make of the their father's shocking admissions?

And then there are the most obvious victims of this unholy mess. The two Norwich schoolgirls who thought they wanted to be Sugar Babies are from modest homes, and very ordinary backgrounds.

One lives in a semi-detached council house in Norwich, the other in a modest terrace two-and-a-half miles away. They both have parents working in healthcare. Both girls go to the same school. Obviously their parents are stunned and horrified that they managed to become involved with a man like Richard, and a website for Sugar Daddies.

How can a 13 year old access such a site, you might ask? It's terrifyingly easy, as the Mail found out when we posed as a student and logged on. Frankly, it's less hassle than signing up for Ocado  as long as you are prepared to lie about your age. We said we were a 19-year-old undergraduate finding life in the capital a little too expensive.

Before we'd even uploaded a pouting picture  the surest way of getting deluged with replies, unsurprisingly  the messages started coming in. The first was from a man who calls himself Dominantdaddy67. 'Shall we talk?' he asked. On screen, Dominantdaddy sounds like the dream Sugar Daddy. He works in finance in London, earns more than 620K, and has a net worth of 6million. Or so he claims.

He's also married with two children, which wouldn't seem like something you should highlight on a site like this, but no matter. Dominantdaddy is keen to stress his prowess. 'Physically I'm an ex-top flight rugby player with a powerful physique and big chest and arms. I'm cultured in bearing and dominant in outlook. I'm very experienced and discreet. If you've ever fantasised about being on the knee of a real man I'm the one for you.'

Let's not be naive here. We all know that Dominantdaddy67 is more likely to be a plumber with a paunch than a genuine power broker, but you can see why a young impressionable (and broke) girl would be interested enough to engage in chat. And the rest.

The technology entrepreneur quit the popular BBC show after failing to invest a penny in the second series

The worrying question is how many other underage girls might be signed up to these sites. It's not exactly a world where full disclosure is a requirement  can there really be that many kind, caring, considerate, generous men in London with a net worth of millions?

Yet the sites themselves challenge any idea that they should be responsible for vetting applicants. Angela Jacob Bermundo, a spokesman for US website Seeking Arrangement, said it relies its users are to ensure people are over 18.

'It is the responsibility of each member to report anyone they suspect of being underaged ', she said, adding: 'The site is meant for adults. In an alleged incident such as this, you have two people that are intentionally misusing the site and violating our Terms of Use, which every member agrees to uphold when they register for Seeking Arrangement.'

All very well, but this is a firm that has actively gone after the teenage market (albeit its upper end) by targeting university campuses. Every year Seeking Arrangement publishes a list of top universities, crowing about how many members they have in each one. Their marketing is blatant, aspirational even.

Seeking Arrangement, which claims to have an astonishing 2.6million members, was set up in 2006

A relationship with a Sugar Daddy is sold as a career-enhancing prospect. 'College students make up a large portion of Seeking Arrangement,' says their literature. 'These members share a specific goal: graduating debt-free.

Sugar Babies often benefit from the intimate give-and-take of a mentorship by building a professional network of contacts through quality time with their Sugar Daddy.' Who wouldn't want that on their CV, then?

Seeking Arrangement, which claims to have an astonishing 2.6million members, was set up in 2006 in California by a man called Brandon Wade, who admitted he was a 'sort of a Sugar Daddy,' given his marriage to a younger woman.

In 2011, he gave an interview claiming he founded the site because he believed most men want to be Hugh Hefner, the Playboy magnate (and notorious Sugar Daddy). He said: 'I was very geeky and nerdy and I was hoping to create a site where I could help men like me become playboys. I created a website where thousands of men could be Hugh Hefners.'

What of the 'prostitution' claims? He's used to shrugging them off. 'What about the reverse? What about the young girls taking advantage of the wealthy older men?'

The sheer popularity of these sites is staggering, but the unregulated nature of them is terrifying

Depressingly, there is no shortage of wannabe Sugar Babies, of all ages, on the sites we visit. The process of scrolling through all the fresh faces and exposed flesh might be thrilling if you are a bored bloke in a stale marriage. Here, it's hard to say what is more depressing, the single mother who just wants to pay her rent, or 32-year-old 'Fallen Angel', who says she is looking for 'new boobs  if I'm a good girl'.

Or Baby Bunny Wabbit, 28, who says her occupation is 'to please you'. What is she after? 'Someone who is happy to provide a monthly allowance.'
Many of the 6,000 inhabitants of the Calais Jungle are not refugees, according to Britains most senior immigration judge.

Instead they are economic migrants who think the UK a better bet than France, said Mr Justice Bernard McCloskey.

He also said there was no reason for many in the squalid camp to remain there. The forthright comments came in a legal judgment that allowed four Jungle occupants to come to Britain last week. The ruling said the Syrian refugees had a human right to be reunited with family living here legally.

Campaigners claim the case could clear the way for hundreds more to come from the Calais camp.

Many of the 6,000 inhabitants of the Calais Jungle are not refugees, said Mr Justice Bernard McCloskey (pictured)

Instead they are economic migrants who think the UK a better bet than France, said Britains most senior immigration judge

The full immigration tribunal judgment issued yesterday was a damning assessment of the situation in the Jungle. It said: It seems likely that there is no real basis for many of its occupants remaining indefinitely in the Jungle and enduring the conditions that obtain there. Many are probably not refugees in any general sense or in any sense entitled to recognition.

Rather, they are migrant nationals of a number of countries outside the European Union, who, while intending to make a claim for refugee status, decline to make the claim in France due to perceived advantages, correct or otherwise, of doing so in the UK.

The comments won strong applause last night. The judge is absolutely right, said Tory MP David Davies. They are all economic migrants because they have travelled through many safe countries to be there.

There is no reason for them to be there because they could claim asylum anywhere. They perceive that they can get more benefits and work in the UK. Conservative colleague Peter Bone added: Judges dont say these things lightly and he is saying what most people know  that most people there are not genuine refugees.

. A group of migrants storm towards the port of Calais in Northern France during a demonstration

The comments won strong applause last night. The judge is absolutely right, said Tory MP David Davies

Earlier this week, the vice-president of the European Commission said that more than half of all migrants to Europe were motivated by economic reasons

The four Syrians, who cannot be named for legal reasons, arrived in the camp in October after fleeing their countrys civil war.

Mr Justice McCloskey and Judge Mark Ockelton agreed that they were a special case and should be brought across the Channel while their asylum claims are determined. They will live with their three brothers.

GERMANY FACED WITH 'NEW LEVEL OF HATE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST MIGRANTS Anti-migrant tensions in Germany rose to a new level of hate and violence yesterday when a live hand grenade was thrown into a refugee centre. Police said it was just luck that the device failed to detonate at the home in Villingen-Schwenningen in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemberg, where around 200 migrants live. Germany took in nearly 1.1million asylum seekers last year and figures released yesterday showed there were 1,005 attacks on refugee homes there last year  five times more than in 2014. Federal justice minister Heiko Maas said the grenade attack was a new level of hate and violence, adding: We need to  ensure xenophobic crimes are more rapidly solved and punished more severely. Advertisement

The three teenagers, and a 26-year-old with mental health problems, claim to have suffered extreme trauma.

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, one said: Im very glad the case is now going to open the door to so many others to get here safely.

George Gabriel, of the refugee group Citizens UK, said he expected the judgment to extend to 200 or 300 young people and unaccompanied minors in Calais and Dunkirk.

He added: We hope to roll out legal support for them in a matter of days.

Under European asylum rules known as the Dublin Regulation, the teenagers were entitled to seek sanctuary in the UK because of their family links.

Earlier this week, the vice-president of the European Commission said that more than half of all migrants to Europe were motivated by economic reasons. Dutch politician Frans Timmermans said most were from North African countries such as Morocco or Tunisia, where there is no conflict.

George Osbornes new national living wage, due to reach 9 an hour by 2020, could be a magnet that lures more European migrants to Britain, officials fear. Someone sitting in southern Italy or Romania will be thinking that Britain looks a very attractive proposition, a Whitehall source said.

A raft packed with migrants arrives on a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos

George Osbornes new national living wage, due to reach 9 an hour by 2020, could be a magnet that lures more European migrants to Britain, officials fear
Syed Bokhari and his bride Mona Dohle were pictured before they left to spend their honeymoon visiting migrants at the squalid 'Jungle' camp at Calais last year

The romantic picture shows a young couple in love as they pose in the summer sunshine on their wedding day.

Syed Bokhari and his bride Mona Dohle were pictured before they left to spend their honeymoon visiting migrants at the squalid 'Jungle' camp at Calais last year.

They were portrayed in the Communist newspaper Morning Star as an ordinary West London couple who had suddenly been inspired to make the humanitarian trip.

The newly-weds, both 28, said they were proud of setting up an organisation, London2Calais, to collect food and clothes for migrants from the Middle East and Africa who wait in the French port to slip illegally into UK-bound lorries and trains.

Syed said: 'We had stopped in Calais before and spoken to migrants. We decided we could do something.

'We had the idea of doing a convoy. We had a target of raising 500 to take two cars of essential things. Within the first 24 hours we had raised over 2,000.'

The moving story of the honeymooners with hearts of gold appeared on news websites all over the world.

Yet it turns out there is another, more disturbing side to this inspiring tale about Syed  himself a former asylum-seeker born in Karachi, Pakistan  and his pretty German bride, Mona.

He is a former Sussex University student activist who uses the middle name 'Red' to highlight his hard-Left political leanings. Aged 23, he was heavily involved in the Muslim Defence League, which is dedicated to fighting Islamophobia, racism and fascism.

Last December, he was detained under the Terrorism Act 2000 for three hours for questioning by British police working in Calais.

Mona is also a sophisticated political activist who used to be on the editorial board of the German-based Marxist magazine, Theorie21.

A multi-lingual journalist who works for a British financial and investment publishing company, she has complained on social media that she is being watched by Special Branch and was recently quizzed by British border police in Calais when her German passport was temporarily taken from her for examination.

More disturbingly, the two founders of London2Calais have marched with their followers alongside anarchist groups whom French police this week complained had encouraged migrants to riot in Calais

Both she and her husband have publicly blamed Number 10 for the fact that child migrants have died on their journeys to the UK.

Earlier this month, during a protest against Government immigration policy outside St Pancras station's Eurostar terminal, Mona told a crowd of banner-waving London2Calais supporters: 'David Cameron and Theresa May, they're killing people, and that's something we can't accept.'

More disturbingly, I have discovered that the two founders of London2Calais have marched with their followers alongside anarchist groups whom French police this week complained had encouraged migrants to riot in Calais.

The French officers said 300 of the 4,000 migrants, aged between 17 and 25, are under the influence of far-Left activists from Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

Using quasi-military tactics, they have given migrants walkie-talkies to organise themselves and chainsaws to cut through the fencing erected to protect the port and rail terminal from those trying to cross the Channel.

The anarchists, say police, pursue a deliberate 'political agenda', creating militancy among migrants, as they campaign for no borders anywhere in Europe.

Calais' police union spokesman Gilles Debove explained: 'The activists curry favour by putting up shelters and distributing food. But it is done so they can manipulate the migrants.

'These British citizens come to Calais to deliberately incite migrants to break the law and defy the French authorities. They are political agitators.'

And France's Interior Minister, Pierre Brandet, went further: 'The activists push migrants to riot, commit violence against the police and to stop trucks so they can climb in to go to England.

'Behind the plight of these migrants are . . . irresponsible people who exploit the misery of migrants for purposes which are not humanitarian.'

Riot: A refugee dodges tear gas as he runs through the Jungle as migrants clashed with police

It is clear that, increasingly, political demonstrations are inciting the migrants, and there is no doubt London2Calais is politically active. Last autumn, its followers joined a mass-protest rally of 2,000 migrants, anarchists and no-borders campaigners, which caused chaos at the Calais port. Afterwards, Syed boasted (again to the Morning Star) that this type of militancy was 'empowering' the migrants, whom he called 'comrades'.

He added: 'They were not recipients of our aid, but comrades facing a struggle which London2Calais will continue to support by any means necessary.'

Last Saturday, masked political agitators from Britain and across Europe marched through the town with migrants, leading to another chaotic riot.

The protesters waved flags, had fights with local residents, and some painted slogans on the famous statue of General Charles De Gaulle and his wife, Yvonne, which stands in the town.

The couple married in Calais in 1921, two decades before De Gaulle led the struggle against Nazism from exile in Britain after the German occupation of France. Yet members of Calais Migrant Solidarity, an anarchists' group campaigning for no borders, declared him a 'mass murderer, coloniser and chief torturer of Algerians'  even though, as post-war President of France, De Gaulle helped to hand back the French colony of Algeria to its people.

Migrants run for cover as French riot police throw tear gas after hundreds of migrants tried to board trucks bound for Britain near the A16 motorway near the site of the Eurotunnel in Coquelles, near Calais

Two days after this riot, the 'no borders' activists who had orchestrated the demonstration posted the names of 22 Left-wing and anarchist organisations whose supporters were involved.

The list included London2Calais, although Syed and Mona are not thought to have been there.

They were, no doubt, busy on other matters. For just before that latest protest, London2Calais was celebrating a successful legal campaign to bring three migrant children to the UK from the Jungle.

This is expected to open the floodgates to hundreds more young migrants waiting in France to get into Britain. On the Thursday evening before the Calais riot, London2Calais had staged a 'welcome rally' for the three arriving child migrants near St Pancras station.

Supporters waved banners and shouted slogans against the Government as the newcomers stepped off the train.

Last night, I contacted Mona and Syed to ask them to talk about the work of London2Calais. Replying to my email, Mona said the couple did not want to give an interview to this newspaper.

The truth is that London2 Calais's hardline political activity seems a far cry from the image of Syed and Mona when they set up the charity less than six months ago. Then, surrounded by hundreds of donated tins of food in a small London house owned by Syed's mother, they spoke of charity work and humanity.
Tan kidnapped the victims over five years throughout the country

A man has been executed in China for the abduction and trafficking of 22 children over the space of five years.

China's top court, The Supreme's People's Court, announced today that Tan Yongzhi had been 'condemned to death' in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, reports the People's Daily Online.

Tan kidnapped the children between February 2008 and April 2013 from areas that stretched across south-west China's Yunnan Province to the central area of Henan.

Death: Tan Yongzhi has been executed in Zhengzhou, China after he abducted 22 children over five years

Shocking: Child abduction is a problem in China. It's estimated 200,000 children vanish each year (file photo)

According to the report, the court said Tan's actions and the large number of children he abducted seriously damaged children's rights, which is why he was executed.

The authorities have been unable to locate the birth parents of all the abducted children.

The exact date of the sentencing or execution has not been released.

There has always been a heavy penalty for those convicted of abducting a child in China, and the death penalty is still prominent.

The country has intensified its crackdown on trafficking of women and children in recent years.

In 2012, 1,918 abduction cases involving women and children were solved.

The Supreme People's Court said that number declined massively to 858 cases last year  a drop of almost 50 per cent.

Executed: The Supreme's People's Court, announced today that Tan Yongzhi was 'condemned to death'

The amount of people punished for abduction related charges in China declined by more than half, from 2,801 in 2012, to 1,362 in 2015.

Child abduction is a major problem in the country, and finding accurate figures is extremely difficult.

A recent BBC report said that an illegal market in children has developed in the country, and it is estimated that 200,000 children are taken from their parents each year.
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Four miners who have been trapped underground for 36 days have been brought to safety after a rescue operation today in Shandong province, eastern China.

The men have been stuck since the Gypsum mine collapsed on December 25 in the county of Pingyi, the People's Daily Online reports.

Rescuers had been sending them food, drinks and medicine through a small hole drilled into the ground since they were located a month ago.

Rescued today: The first miner is lifted from a collapsed mine in Pingyi, eastern China's Shandong province

Finally free: The men were working extracting Gypsum, a soft sulfate mineral that is widely used in construction

A sight to see: Emergency workers watch as the four miners are rescued after spending 36 days underground in Shandong province

A long time underground: The men spent 36 days in the collapsed mine and were sent food and water through a small hole

The men were working extracting Gypsum, a soft sulfate mineral that is widely used in construction.

Twenty nine men became trapped when the mine collapsed on December 25.

Eleven escaped or were rescued, one was confirmed dead and 13 others were listed as missing.

Four of the missing were found alive 220 metres (720 feet) below the surface by detection cameras on December 30 and were rescued today.

The whereabouts of the other missing men are unknown.

At 9pm Beijing time (1pm GMT), the rescue operation began.

According to China National Radio, the ground is very fragile and so drilling through takes a substantial amount of time.

The rescue teams were able to deliver food, water and medicine to the men through small holes.

The emergency team started the drilling process on January 4, with them only managing to go 25 metres deep after just over 40 hours.

Rescuers used the same type of capsule that was used to rescue 33 miners in Chile who were stuck underground for 69 days in 2010.

Footage from China Central Television shows the first man being brought to the surface while the rescue team claps and cheers.

The men have been transported to hospital for checkups.

Free: Rescuers used the same type of capsule that was used to rescue 33 miners in Chile who were stuck underground for 69 days in 2010

Where the incident occurred: The scene at the collapsed mine in Pingyi County, east China's Shandong province

The rescue effort: Armed police unload wood for tunnel support of the collapsed gypsum mine in Pingyi County

Ma Congbo, the owner of the mine, drowned himself by jumping into a well in an apparent suicide just days after the miners became trapped.

The president of the company that owns the mine was helping rescue efforts at the time, when according to state media, he jumped into the well.

Authorities in China usually hand out harsh punishments, including jail sentences to company management following major work safety disasters.
A Chinese toddler who fell head first onto a crochet needle that pierced her brain has miraculously survived after doctors sucessfully removed the metal object yesterday.

Man Man, who is just under three-years-old, was allegedly playing outside her home in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province when the accident occurred, reports the Peoples Daily Online.

She was immediately rushed to hospital on January 23. After x-rays, doctors discovered the hooked needle had penetrated through her eye socket and lodged into her brain.

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Shocking: Young Man Man fell onto a crochet needle that impaled her head in Nanchang, east China

Impaled: The hooked needle can be seen here pushed into man Man's brain through her eye socket

Man Man's aunt, Ms Yu, said she was playing outdoors and she and her mother were only a few metres away at the time.

When her parents found Man Man with the needle poking out of her face they rang the local newspaper, as they did not know which hospital to take her to.

They were told to go to the emergency department of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, there she was operated on at around 6pm.

The disturbing footage shows Man Man at the hospital with the double-ended crochet needle impaled into her head.

Helpless, the poor child is crying and clearly in pain as doctors try to calm her.

Helpless: It took Man Man's relatives three hours to get her to the hospital before she was seen by a doctor

Recovery: After a difficult operation man man remains in hospital and is being monitored in intensive care

The x-ray is then shown with the thin needle clearly in her brain, it is unclear if it actually went through her eyeball.

After the operation, Man Man can be seen with her eye stitched up and eating in the hospital bed.

According to the Chinese reports, the needle had been stuck in her eye for three hours before she was taken to hospital.

Doctors at the hospital said because the needle has a hook on the end, it made the operation to remove it increasingly difficult.

When she was first taken to hospital it was unclear to them if the needle had gone into her brain.

Man Man still remains in hospital and being monitored under intensive care, it is not clear if her brain was damaged after the accident.

Pierced: X-ray shows clearly where the sharp crochet needle went straight through the little girl's eye socket
When the 18-year-old Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, she was enchanted with her new home.

I rejoice to go into Buckingham Palace, she wrote, my rooms are so high, pleasant and cheerful ... the garden is so large and very pretty. Alas, her delight did not last.

Gilded glory: The White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace is interior design at its most flamboyant

The drains below the fashionable, new, indoor water closets did not drain and Londoners were in the habit of dumping their rubbish against the palace walls.

The chimneys belched smoke and the servants passages were so maze-like that hot water for baths was cold by the time it reached the royal rooms.

Victorias courtiers complained bitterly. Her dresser Frieda Arnold wrote that she had never been so cold in my whole life as I was for two days at the palace.

Prince Albert took matters in hand, building nurseries and a family chapel. But the couple still found their new home sooty, chilly and cramped. Frieda called the atmosphere tomb-like. Anyone looking at the palace today may find this incredible. Cramped? Chilly? Tomb-like? The rooms are splendid.

Victoria moved to the Isle of Wight to escape her prying subjects. Our modern royal family have invited us in with a virtual through-the-keyhole tour.

The Royal Collection Trust, the charity that manages Buckingham Palace, has worked with Google to film a 360-degree tour of seven state rooms.

Make an entrance: The beautifully symmetrical and decorative Grand Staircase at Buckingham Palace

You start in the Grand Entrance, climb the Grand Staircase, then enter the Green Drawing Room, the Throne Room, the Picture Gallery and the Ballroom.

The architect responsible for these sumptuous interiors was John Nash, who was engaged by George IV in 1822 to remodel what the king considered a rather modest pied-a-terre into a palace fit for his court.

George had high ambitions. He once boasted that he wanted to quite eclipse Napoleon, who had been magnificently remodelling much of Paris.

If the rooms on the Google tour look unpatriotically French with their rococo mouldings, swagged curtains and mirrored doors, its because Nash was under orders to out-Napoleon Napoleon.

Mirrored doors and walls are a clever way of making a modest room more palatial. Mirror Works (antiquemirrorglass.com) take on commissions for wardrobes, halls and bathrooms.

For acanthus leaf carvings of the sort Nash installed at the palace, try Andy Thornton (from 49, andythornton.com).

Regal seating: The elegant Lille sofa by Swoon Editions emulates the ones in the Picture Gallery

Nash had flair, but no talent for managing a budget. Parliament had agreed to refurbishing costs of 150,000, but George talked them up to 450,000. In the end, they exceeded 500,000.

A Parliamentary Select Committee accused Nash of inexcusable irregularity and great negligence in the keeping of accounts.

Designers Guild has a smart set of wallpapers and fabrics inspired by the palace. Its linen toile de jouy Buckingham House is based on an engraving of the facade.

The upholstery fabric Royal Promenade is printed with lithograph reproductions of Queen Victoria, Albert and her children on horseback (designersguild.com).

Zoffanys damask wallpapers such as Crivelli and Tours capture something of the look of the Green Drawing Room. Swoon Editions has a sofa  The Laurence (799, swooneditions.com)  like the ones that line the Picture Gallery. Many of the Queens rugs are Axminsters.

Sevres porcelain, marble mantelpieces and gilded picture frames may be the stuff of when-I-marry-a-Prince fantasy, but the richness of colour at the palace, from the scarlet curtains to the yellow silk chairs would warm any home.
As the world struggles to contain the spread of the 'brain-shrinking' Zika virus, and scientists work on a vaccine, a British biotech firm has suggested an alternative way to curb the disease.

Oxitech has been genetically modifying mosquitoes in its lab in Oxford that have been engineered in such a way that means their offspring die before reaching maturity.

Scientists are now planning to release these bugs in Brazil, and potentially other problem areas, in the hope that if the males breed with enough females, the populations will, in theory, be wiped out.

Oxitech has been genetically modifying mosquitoes in its lab in Oxford that have been engineered in such a way that means their offspring die before reaching maturity. Scientists are now planning to release these bugs in Brazil in the hope that if the males breed with enough females, the populations will, in theory, be wiped out

Brazil is the latest country to approve the use of these engineered bugs.

The South American nation has been scrambling to contain the spread of Zika, which has been linked to a recent surge in birth defects including microcephaly - a rare condition in which newborns have smaller than normal heads and their brains do not develop properly.

In a statement, Oxitec said tests that began in April 2015 have shown that the release of genetically modified sterile male mosquitoes succeeded in reducing a variety of disease-transmitting mosquito larvae by 82 per cent by year's end in a neighborhood of the city of Piracicaba.

Piracicaba's city health department confirmed the tests and results.

In a statement, Oxitec said tests that began in April 2015 have shown that the release of genetically modified sterile male mosquitoes succeeded in reducing a variety of disease-transmitting mosquito larvae by 82% by year's end in the city of Piracicaba. Piracicaba's city health department confirmed the tests and results

The Zika virus was first discovered in a monkey in Uganda in 1947 - its name comes from the forest where it was first discovered. The World Health Organisation said Zika is rapidly spreading in the Americas because it is new to the region, people aren't immune to it, and the mosquito that carries it is just about everywhere

The Aedes aegypti mosquito (pictured) is responsible for spreading Zika. It also transmits dengue fever and chikungunya. The genetically modified, male mosquitoes themselves don't spread disease because only the females bite

THE GENETICALLY MODIFIED SOLUTION TO THE ZIKA VIRUS The GM mosquito was created by Oxford-based firm Oxitec. The Oxitec insect can be used to control the Zika mosquito, Aedes aegypti and is a strain of the wild species that contains two additional genes. The Oxitec males, which can't bite, are released to seek out and mate with the wild females. Their offspring inherit the additional genes and die before becoming functional adults. They also inherit a marker that is visible under a special light, making monitoring in the field simple and helping ensure that dengue mosquito control programmes succeed. In several trials, successive releases of the Oxitec males have been shown to reduce substantially the wild population of dengue mosquitoes in the treated area. Advertisement

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is responsible for spreading Zika. It also transmits dengue fever and chikungunya.

The genetically modified, male mosquitoes themselves don't spread disease because only the females bite.

Joseph Conlon, a technical adviser for the American Mosquito Control Association, called the results 'novel and potentially efficacious.'

Conlon said the procedure is not 100 per cent effective, but if it is allowed to proceed to full measure, it will 'reduce the mosquito population below disease transmission levels with minimal effect on the environment.'

He added that the Aedes aegypti 'are notoriously difficult to control by conventional spray methods such as truck or aerial sprays.'

The Brazilian army has been helping in efforts to control the mosquito population by eliminating standing water.

Most of the 3,530 babies the Health Ministry said have been born with microcephaly in the country since October have been concentrated in the country's poorest regions, such as the northeast.

But worries about Zika have prompted residents in wealthier cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to stock up on mosquito repellent.

Fewer than 150 cases of microcephaly were seen in all of 2014.

In Brazil, there has been mounting evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which a newborn's head is smaller than normal (spictured) and the brain may not have developed properly. Brazilian officials noticed a spike in cases of microcephaly in tandem with the outbreak

But what exactly is Zika and what are the risks of travelling to the affected area? Here, we reveal everything you need to know about the virus...

WHAT IS ZIKA?

The Zika (ZEE'-ka) virus was first discovered in a monkey in Uganda in 1947 - its name comes from the Zika forest where it was first discovered.

It is native mainly to tropical Africa, with outbreaks in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. It appeared in Brazil last year and has since been seen in many Latin American countries and Caribbean islands.

HOW IS IT SPREAD?

It is transmitted through bites from the same kind of mosquitoes that can spread other tropical diseases, like dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever.

It is not known to spread from person to person.

Investigators, though, are exploring the possibility that the virus can be passed on through sex - it was found in one man's semen in Tahiti and there's been another report of possible spread of the virus through sex.

An Aedes Aegypti mosquito on human skin in a lab in Cali, Colombia. Scientists there are studying the genetics and biology of this mosquito, which transmits the Zika virus

The World Health Organisation says Zika is rapidly spreading in the Americas because it is new to the region and people are not immune to it. Furthermore, the Aedes aegypti mosquito (pictured) that carries it is just extremely widespread

The World Health Organisation says Zika is rapidly spreading in the Americas because it is new to the region, people aren't immune to it, and the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries it is just about everywhere - including along the southern United States.

Canada and Chile are the only places without this mosquito.

ARE THERE SYMPTOMS?

Experts think most people infected with Zika virus don't get sick.

And those that do usually develop mild symptoms - fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes - which usually last no more than a week.

There is no specific medicine and there hasn't been a vaccine developed for it, which is the case for some other tropical illnesses that cause periodic outbreaks.

GLAXO CONSIDERING USING VACCINE TECHNOLOGY FOR ZIKA GlaxoSmithKline Plc is concluding feasibility studies evaluating whether its vaccine technology is suitable for the Zika virus, a spokeswoman has confirmed. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which typically causes mild fevers and rashes, although about 80 percent of those infected show no symptoms. 'We're concluding our feasibility studies as quickly as we can to see if our vaccine technology platforms might be suitable for working on Zika,' a Glaxo spokeswoman said in an email. She declined to provide details but added that vaccine development typically takes 10 to 15 years. Advertisement

WHY IS IT A CONCERN NOW?

In Brazil, there has been mounting evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which a newborn's head is smaller than normal and the brain may not have developed properly.

Brazilian health officials last October noticed a spike in cases of microcephaly in tandem with the Zika outbreak.

The connection to Zika is still being investigated, and officials note there are many causes of the condition. Nearly 4,000 cases have been recorded.

Meanwhile, doctors have noted increased reports of a nerve condition called Guillain-Barre that can cause paralysis.

But the link to the Zika virus is not clear; other infections can spark the problem, including dengue fever.

CAN THE SPREAD BE STOPPED?

Individuals can protect themselves from mosquito bites by using insect repellents, and wearing long sleeves and long pants - especially during daylight, when the mosquitoes tend to be most active, health officials say.

Eliminating breeding spots and controlling mosquito populations can help prevent the spread of the virus.

HAVE THERE BEEN CASES IN THE US?

Yes, but in tourists. Since 2007 there have been more than two dozen cases diagnosed in the US all travellers who are believed to have caught it overseas.

(Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have each had a recent case that didn't involve a traveler.)

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which typically causes mild fevers and rashes, although about 80 per cent of those infected show no symptoms

21 COUNTRIES THAT ARE AFFECTED The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued initial travel warnings to pregnant women last week, adding eight more places to the list on Friday. The warnings now extend to: Central and South America: Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela Caribbean: Barbados, Saint Martin, Haiti, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe Oceania: Samoa Africa: Cape Verde Advertisement

The kind of mosquito that spreads Zika is found along the southern states, so experts think it's likely the pests may end up spreading the virus there.

But officials also have said Zika infections probably won't be a big problem in the US for a number of reasons, including the more common use of air conditioning and door and window screens.

Recent U.S. outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya - carried by the same mosquito - suggest any Zika outbreaks may be relatively small, said Dr. Lyle Petersen of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WHAT ARE THE TRAVEL ADVISORIES?

US health officials recommend that pregnant women should consider postponing trips to 22 destinations. Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela. In the Caribbean: Barbados, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, St. Martin and Puerto Rico. Also, Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa; and Samoa in the South Pacific.

In Brazil, most of the mothers who had babies with microcephaly were apparently infected during the first trimester, but there is some evidence the birth defect can occur later in the pregnancy, CDC officials say.
Having eight arms may come in handy during a fight, but some octopuses prefer peaceful methods for settling a dispute.

A team of international researchers watched more than 52 hours of underwater footage to study the behaviours of octopuses in the shallow waters of Jervis Bay, Australia.

The observations reveal that these elusive creatures have a much more active social life than previously believed, and researchers suggest they use body language to communicate aggression or passivity.

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A team of international researchers watched more than 52 hours of underwater footage to study the behaviours of octopuses in the shallow waters of Jervis Bay, Australia. The observations reveal that these elusive creatures have a much more active social life than previously believed

THE LANGUAGE OF OCTOPUSES New research has revealed that octopuses may change olour and posture as a way of settling, or engaging in, a dispute. Of the octopuses observed, those which displayed a light body colour in the face of an interaction would be more likely to retreat. The darker octopuses were more often the aggressor, and were also more likely to stand their ground when approached by a pale one. And, if two octopuses approached each other with a similarly dark shade, a brawl could take place. Octopuses also change their posture, standing tall and spreading their 'webs,' as they seek higher ground to appear larger. Advertisement

After a diver alerted an online community of cephalopod enthusiasts of potentially interesting activity in the bay, researchers sought to find out what was going on.

The team from Alaska Pacific University, the University of Sydney, and SUNY Graduate Center, stayed out of sight as the cameras captured recordings of these colour-changing creatures, a species known as Octopus tetricus.

This allowed the researchers to observe 186 octopus interactions, and more than 500 individual actions.

The octopuses studied spent more than seven hours interacting with others.

'We found that octopuses are using body patterns and postures to signal each other during disputes,' says David Scheel of Alaska Pacific University.

It's largely been thought that these behaviours are means of camouflage, New Scientist explains, but the new research suggests they do this to communicate.

Changing colour and posture may be a way of settling, or engaging in, a dispute.

'The postures and patterns can be quite flashy, such as standing very tall, raising the body mantle high above the eyes, and turning very dark,' Scheel said.

'We suspect this behaviour makes the octopus appear as large and conspicuous as it can,' the researcher told New Scientist.

These findings provide new understanding about the interactions of octopuses, who are widely regarded as solitary creatures. The researchers suggest the cephalopods may cross paths more often in areas where food is abundant, and hiding places are not

The team noted that the peacefulness of these interactions was heavily dependent on the body colours of the octopuses.

In one interaction, an octopus with a dark body colour stood up tall as it approached a second octopus, who was pale in colour and remained low to the ground.

On the side facing the darker octopus, pale octopus displayed a high contrast body pattern, though still largely pale, which the researcher indicate is commonly used by cephalopods in response to a threat.

The other side, where it faced no threat, was a uniform, intermediate colour.

'Dark colour appears to be associated with aggression, while paler colours accompany retreat,' Scheel said.

The darker octopuses were also more likely to stand their ground when approached by a pale one.

And, if two octopuses approached each other with a similarly dark shade, a brawl was more likely to take place.

These findings provide new understanding about the interactions of octopuses, who are widely regarded as solitary creatures.
Fewer states are requiring students to study economics, according to a new survey from the Council for Economic Education.

The Council has conducted a biennial survey of states  economics and financial literacy offerings since 1998.

The survey found that Louisiana and Wyoming both dropped a requirement that students take economics in order to graduate between 2014 and 2016.

The news is sunnier for financial literacy: Between 2014 and 2016, Hawaii, Illinois, New York and Rhode Island added financial literacy in their academic standards, while Wyoming and Montana dropped the subject. The number of states requiring a financial literacy course didnt change in the past two years.

Overall, there was less change in state offerings between 2014 and 2016, after years in which more states were adding both economic and financial literacy requirements.

The big picture is that were still not seeing any progress in economic education. In recent years there has been very little real movement, said Nan J. Morrison, the Council for Economic Educations president and CEO. If we want to close the opportunity gap, its essential that we teach economics, as well as personal finance, in schools, and equip our teachers with the tools they need to help students develop these essential, real-world skills.

Twenty states now make economics a graduation requirement, down from 22 in 2014. The number of states requiring personal finances courses has held steady at 17; just five states require that financial literacy be a stand-alone class.

The authors of the survey write that, unsurprisingly, requiring such courses makes them more likely to be taught.

More states include both economics and financial literacy in their standards than require courses: Every states standards include economics, and 45 include financial literacy. Thats an increase in the past decade for both subjects.

Interestingly, the number of states requiring standardized testing in economics has been generally declining since 2002.

The survey also includes pieces from educators and students in Virginia and Rhode Island about the impact of both economics and financial literacy courses.

Late last year, Champlain Colleges Center for Financial Literacy issued a report card on states financial literacy offerings . The Center assigned its top score to just five statesthose that require financial literacy courses. That report card drew from the Center for Economic Educations previous survey. The CEE does not assign grades in its survey.

Infographic source: Council for Economic Education

Related:


A human hankering for eggs may have led to the extinction of a giant dodo-like bird in Australia almost 50,000 years ago.

Scientists have revealed that early humans developed a taste for roasting its huge eggs on their campfires, leading to the bird's demise.

The gigantic 500lb (227kg) flightless bird, known as Genyornis newtoni, stood 7ft (2 metres) tall and laid eggs roughly the size of a cantaloupe melon weighing 3.5lbs - heavier than an ostrich egg.

A large flightless bird, known as Genyornis newtoni (illustrated), laid eggs roughly the size of a cantaloupe melon weighing 3.5lbs. Researchers believe the bird, which roamed the Outback the same time as megafauna including giant lizards and kangaroos, was helped towards extinction by humans eating its eggs

Now, for the first time, researchers have found the first direct evidence our ancestors played in wiping them out.

The giant birds would have roamed the continent with a host of other extinct giants, including a 1,000 lb kangaroo, a two-tonne wombat, and a tortoise the size of a small car.

A TASTE FOR ROASTED EGGS Genyornis newtoni was a gigantic flightless bird with tasty melon-sized eggs Genyornis newtoni was a gigantic flightless bird weighing 500lb (227kg) that stood 7ft (2 metres) tall. Its eggs were equally huge, believed to be the size of a cantaloupe melon and weighing 3.5lbs. Its demise coincides with the human colonisation of Australia, between 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Advertisement

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder examined fragments of burnt egg shells to show humans were collecting and cooking the eggs, which would have caused numbers to plummet.

Ancient humans are thought to have reached Australia between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago. They're arrival coincided with the extinction of the majority of large species, more than 100lbs.

'We consider this the first and only secure evidence that humans were directly preying on now-extinct Australian megafauna,' explained Professor Gifford Miller, a researcher in geological sciences at Boulder and lead author of the study.

'We have documented these characteristically burned Genyornis eggshells at more than 200 sites across the continent.'

The egg fragments were found at 2,000 sites, primarily at sand dunes where the ancient birds nested, and none were found to be younger than about 45,000 years old.

Analysis confirmed the burnt shell fragments from more than 200 sites were caused by very hot campfires rather than wild fires and were no younger than about 47,000 years old.

Professor Miller added: 'We can't come up with a scenario that a wildfire could produce those tremendous gradients in heat.

'We instead argue that the conditions are consistent with early humans harvesting Genyornis eggs, cooking them over fires, and then randomly discarding the eggshell fragments in and around their cooking fires.'

Scientists have debated whether climate change or human hunting lead to the demise of ancient megafauna in Australia and on other continents, including North America.

Analysis of burnt eggshell fragments (selection pictured) indicates that ancient humans were cooking the bird's eggs, rather than them being wiped out by wildfires

The gigantic Genyornis newtoni was like a cross between the stocky extinct dodo of Mauritius (left) and the emu (right), which still lives in Australia today

DETERMINING THE BIRD'S DEMISE Researchers found egg fragments at 2,000 sites, none of which were found to be younger than 45,000 years old. Analysis confirmed the burnt shell fragments from more than 200 sites were caused by very hot camp-fires rather than wild fires and were no younger than about 47,000 years old. This indicates ancient humans were cooking the bird's eggs, rather than them being wiped out by wildfires. Although Australia suffered from continental drying from about 60,000 to 40,000 years ago, it is unlikely that it was strong enough to wipe out the bird and other megafauna, such as giant kangaroos and turtles the size of a car. Advertisement

Professor Miller added that although Australia suffered continental drying from about 60,000 to 40,000 years ago, it likely wasn't strong enough to wipe out the megafauna.

He argued that humans arriving on the northern coast on rafts from Indonesian islands several hundred miles away were to blame.

'We will never know the exact time window humans arrived on the continent,' continued Professor Miller.

'But there is reliable evidence they were widely dispersed across the continent before 47,000 years ago.'

Finding evidence of hunting in Australia is difficult as its megafauna are much older than New World megafauna and fossil bones are easily destroyed by the chemistry of Australian soils.

He added: 'In the Americas, early human predation on the giant animals in clear - stone spear heads are found embedded in mammoth bones, for example.

'The lack of clear evidence regarding human predation on the Australia megafauna had, until now, been used to suggest no human-megafauna interactions occurred, despite evidence that most of the giant animals still roamed Australia when humans colonised the continent.'
In the never-ending game of keeping up with the Joneses, you couldn't go far wrong with a levitating house plant.

A Japanese firm called Hoshinchu is producing kits for customers to produce their own floating versions of tiny house plants called Air Bonsai.

The tiny trees contain spongy balls of moss that contain magnets that sit above a porcelain base that similarly contain magnets which repel those found in the moss.

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A Japanese firm called Hoshinchu is producing kits for customers to produce their own floating versions of tiny house plants, called Air Bonsai (pictured). The tiny trees contain spongy balls of moss that contain magnets that sit above a porcelain base that similarly contain magnets which repel those found in the moss

The firm has already amassed more than 2,000 backers on its Kickstarter page, and has raised almost half a million dollars.

According to Hoshinchu, the kit is made up of two parts - an 'energy base' and the 'little star' which floats a few centimetres above the base.

HOW DO THE TREES 'FLOAT'? The Air Bonsai kit is made up of two parts - an 'energy base' and the 'little star' which floats a few centimetres above the base. The 'stars' are spongy balls of moss 2.3-inches (6cm) across containing magnets weighing around 250 grams. The porcelain base contains magnets and a rotating mechanism and is connected to the mains by an AC adapter. The magnets repel each other to create the illusion of levitation. To plant the trees, customers poke a hole in the ball and add the cutting of the plant or a seedling. The website shows a number of bonsai trees which have been grown for a number of years spinning off the ground. An additional pot is available in the form of a lava stone, instead of the moss ball. Advertisement

The 'stars' are spongy balls of moss that measure 2.3-inches (6cm) across.

These balls contain magnets that weigh around 250 grams, while the porcelain base contains magnets and a rotating mechanism and is connected to the mains by an AC adapter.

In a demo video, producer Hakaru Hoshi passes a piece of cardboard between the base and the floating moss ball to prove its not a hoax.

As part of a do-it-yourself kit, growers transplant their small plant into the star to get it growing.

'You have the mossy "little star" ready for transplanting your favourite plant,' the company explained.

'The "energy base" that conducts magnetic energy makes your plant float.

The porcelain for the 'energy base' is made of traditional Japanese Imari.

'Mass production is achieved through use of moulds for this basic kit.'

To plant, customers poke a hole in the ball and add the cutting of the plant or a seedling.

The website shows a number of bonsai trees which have been grown for a number of years spinning off the ground.

According to Hoshinchu, the kit is made up of two parts - an 'energy base' and the 'little star' which floats a few centimetres above the base (examples pictured). The firm has already amassed more than 2,000 backers on its Kickstarter page, and has raised almost half a million dollars

The 'stars' are spongy balls of moss that measure 2.3-inches (6cm) across. These balls contain magnets that weigh no more than 250grams, while the porcelain base (pictured) contains magnets and a rotating mechanism and is connected to the mains by an AC adapter

An additional pot is available in the form of a lava stone, instead of the moss ball.

'Each Air Bonsai is unique, ranging from elegant flowering plants, bold "matsu" pines, to delightful mosses,' the company continued.

The designs are made on the Japanese island of Kyushu, and customers are invited to create their own 'little star' by growing plants in the material using the kits.

As part of a do-it-yourself kit, growers transplant their small plant into the star to get it growing. They poke a hole in the ball and add their cutting of the plant or a seedling. The website shows a number of bonsai trees which have been grown for a number of years, spinning off the ground

Backers who pledge $200 ($140) or more on the Kickstarter page will receive a basic kit. The kits will be delivered in August this year and contain the base and star, as well as a handmade cushion (pictured)

Backers who pledge $200 ($140) or more on the Kickstarter page will receive a basic kit, which will ship in August.

People putting $10,000 (7,000) or more into the company will enjoy an expenses paid trip to the workshop in Japan as well as their Air Bonsai kit.

However, the company is facing some issue with exporting the plants outside of Japan.

In a statement on the Kickstarter page, it wrote: 'There is just one issue in our hands, we are limited to export and carry any plants outside of Japan.

However, the company is facing some issue with exporting the plants outside of Japan. To solve the problem, it has support from team members in the US who are negotiating with regional bonsai and plant makers

'To solve this matter, we have support from our team members in the US who will negotiate with regional bonsai and plant makers.

'We remind you that the bonsai for our prototypes is just an image.

'The actual plants we will be using to send to you is for example 'matsu', a pine tree from your country.

'We will resolve any issues along the way to make sure we deliver to our backers.'
Men with autism have subtle differences in the connections within their brains and the findings could help determine why people with the disorder exhibit the symptoms that they do.

Scientists used brain scanning techniques to examine the white matter in the brains of adult males suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - a condition that affects around one in 100 people.

They found the bundles of nerves in an area of the brain called the frontal lobe, which is involved in social interaction skills, look different from those without the disorder.

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Researchers used MRI scans to study the brains of adults with autism spectrum disorder and found they have significant differences in the white matter in key regions of the brain involved in language and facial recognition. Red regions in the scans above highlight areas where the differences were found

Specifically the researchers found the connections between nerve cells in an area on the left side of the brain, called the arcuate bundle and responsible for language, were altered compared to healthy adults.

These differences were particularly severe in those who experienced 'delayed echolalia' as part of their autism, where they often repeat words or sentences in a parrot-like way.

Dr Marco Catani, a neuroscientist at King's College London, said the findings could provide new insights into the causes of the condition and how it develops as children mature.

'White matter provides key insights which allow us to paint a precise picture of how different parts of the brain develop during critical periods in childhood,' he said.

WHAT IS AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER? Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can cause a wide range of symptoms, which are often grouped into two main categories. Firstly, problems with social interaction and communication. This includes difficulty understanding and being aware of other people's emotions and feelings and/or problems taking part in, or starting, conversations. Patterns of thought are another key area, namely restricted and repetitive patterns of thought or physical movement, such as hand tapping or twisting, and becoming upset if these set routines are disrupted. It's estimated about 1 in every 100 people in the UK has ASD. More boys are diagnosed with it than girls. There is no 'cure for ASD, but a range of educational and behavioural support schemes can help people with the condition. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

'We found subtle brain differences in men who at a very young age had severe problems with communication and social interaction.

'The differences appear to remain even if they have somehow learned to cope with these difficulties in adult life.'

The researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging technique called Diffusion Tensor Imaging, to compare networks of white matter in 61 adults with autism spectrum disorder and 61 people without.

White matter plays a crucial role in helping to connect different regions of the brain and allowing them to communicate with each other.

The scans also revealed people with autism spectrum disorder had underdeveloped areas of white matter in another part of the brain called the left uncinated bundle.

This plays a significant role in face recognition and emotional processing.

The experts found people with this underdevelopment had suffered problems with facial expressions in childhood.

Dr Catani said, however, further research on women and children with autism could help to reveal further insights into how the changes in the brain develop.

At present it is unclear whether the changes are a result of the problems experienced by the men during adulthood as a result of autism, or if they are the route course of these problems.

But Dr Catani said the study could eventually lead to new ways of diagnosing and treating people with autism.

The research may help scientists better understand why autism symptoms can continue into adulthood. The condition can affect how people interact socially. The film Rain Man saw Dustin Hoffman (pictured right with Tom Cruise in a still from the film) play an autistic character and how he struggled to interact with others

He added: 'It is worth noting that the brain differences are visible only with the special research techniques we now have at our disposal.

'These differences are very subtle and potentially reversible.

'Thanks to neuroimaging studies like this, it may one day be possible to stimulate the development of these faulty brain connections, or to predict how people with autism respond to treatment.'

'Our study did not include women and children, so it would be interesting to explore whether similar differences exist within these groups.

For example, research has shown that women appear more resilient than men when it comes to autism, so it will be important if this is explained biologically in their brain development.'
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With the debris from hundreds of landslides etched on their slopes, these imposing canyons form one of the largest mazes in the solar system.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has captured new images of a vast labyrinth of valleys and plateaus on the red planet.

The region, known as Noctis Laryinthus - or labyrinth of the night - lies on the western edge of the Valles Marineris.

Huge canyons formed by ancient volcanic and tectonic fractures in the surface of Mars create one of the biggest labryinths in the solar system. This image shows a vast 70 mile flat topped flock in the midst of one of these fractures

Vast blocks more than 70 miles (112km) wide create a jumble of paths through fractures up to 4 miles (6km) deep in the Martian surface that stretch for more than 745 miles (1,198km).

In a statement released by Esa, the agency said the labyrinth was the equivalent length of the river Rhine from its source in the Alps to the North Sea.

It added that the maze formed when the Martian crust swelled millions of years ago as a result of tectonic and volcanic activity.

The area, known as the Tharsis region, is home to one of the largest volcanoes in the solar system  Olympus Mons.

Esa said: 'As the crust bulged in the Tharsis province it stretched apart the surrounding terrain, ripping fractures several kilometres deep and leaving blocks  graben  stranded within the resulting trenches.'

This stereoscopic image can help to reveal the size of the dunes as they rise up almost four miles from the canyon floors to the plateaus. The area, known as the Tharsis region, is home to one of the largest volcanoes in the solar system  Olympus Mons

Analysis by scientists at the European Space Agency has revealed how huge dunes of material blown by the martian winds extend like fingers from the base of the fractures to the top. Red and white shows the highest terrain and blues show the lowest (pictured)

In the images captured by the Mars Express probe, a large flat-topped block takes centre stage.

Landslides can be seen cascading down its flanks from the top of the valley floors, while debris litters the base of the steep walls.

Astronauts hoping to navigate a way through this labyrinth would face a difficult task.

Researchers said the dunes (pictured in this aerial image) no longer appear to be active and have become covered in the red dust from the surface of Mars. Studying impact craters on the dunes can help to reveal their age

In some areas, wind has piled up the dust in to huge dune fields that extend like fingers from the plateaus above.

Smaller fractures also litter the surface, where the land was stretched in the ancient past of the planet.

A statement put out by the German Aerospace Centre, which helped to analyse the pictures, said: 'The regular linear structures on the valley slopes visible on the left and right edges of the images can be interpreted as dune crests.

'From the alignment of the crests, it can be deduced that in some places, sand has been transported down the slope, while in other places, uphill transportation of the dune sand has taken place.

'In every case, these surface structures created by the wind are no longer active.

COULD THERE BE FUNGI GROWING ON THE SURFACE OF MARS? After a year-and-a-half long voyage aboard the International Space Station, a group of fungi collected in Antarctica has proven its ability to withstand harsh, Mars-like conditions. More than half of the cells remained intact over the course of the 18-month study, providing new insight for the possibility of life on Mars. These fungal samples, along with lichens from Spain and Austria, have allowed European researchers to assess the survivability and stability of microscopic lifeforms on the red planet. The tiny fungi taken from Antarctica are typically found in the cracks of rocks in this dry, hostile region. Scientists took samples of two species of cryptoendolithic fungi  Cryomyces antarcticus and Cryomyces minteri  from the McMurdo Dry Valleys of the Antarctic Victoria Land. These microorganisms, along with certain lichens, are the only creatures capable of surviving the harsh environment, where even ice and snow are no match against the extreme winds. Researchers placed the fungi in 1.4 cm wide cells on a platform called Expose-E, which simulated Mars and extreme space conditions. Expose-E was developed by the European Space Agency, and sent to the ISS in the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Then, the Antarctic fungi were exposed to the Martian conditions for 18 months: 95 per cent C02, 1.6 per cent argon, 0.05 per cent oxygen, 2.7 per cent nitrogen, and 370 parts per million of H20, all at a pressure of 1,000 pascals. Some samples were exposed to ultra-violet radiation comparable to Mars, higher than 200 nanometres, while others were under lower radiation. After 18 months under such hostile conditions, the researchers found that up to 60 per cent of the cells had survived. After a year-and-a-half long voyage aboard the International Space Station, a group of fungi collected from Antarctica has proven its ability to withstand harsh, Mars-like conditions. More than half of the cells remained intact over the course of the 18-month study, providing new insight for the possibility of life on Mars Advertisement

'This is indicated not only by the consistent covering of red Martian dust - active dunes on Mars would be dark grey in appearance as they generally consist of old volcanic dust - but also the presence of several small impact craters, visible in the lower right edge of the image, for example.

'In the event of a meteorite impact in an active dune, no crater would be left in the fine, loose material as the sand would trickle into the depression that was formed and immediately fill it back up again.

'Furthermore, any depression that was left would quickly be obliterated by sand moved by the wind.'
Earlier this week, the CIA released a glimpse into its own set of 'X-Files,' a small compilation of documents pulled from its expansive UFO collection, dating back to the 1940s.

The agency said that these documents appeal to both skeptics and believers  the Scully's and Mulder's of the world  who seek to prove scientific explanations, or confirm the existence of extraterrestrial activity.

To help amateur alien hunters launch their own investigations, the CIA has released '10 Tips When Investigating a Flying Saucer.'

Unexplained happenings: The CIA recently released files from its archives investigating reports of alien and UFO sightings. The organization said the declassified documents will interest both believers and skeptics

CIA'S 10 TIPS FOR ALIEN HUNTERS 1. Establish a group to investigate and evaluate sightings 2. Determine the objectives of your investigation 3. Consult with experts 4. Create a reporting system to organize incoming cases 5. Eliminate false positives 6. Develop methodology to identify common aircraft and other aerial phenomena often mistaken for UFOs 7. Examine witness documentation 8. Conduct controlled experiments 9. Gather and test physical and forensic evidence 10. Discourage false reporting Advertisement

This release coincides with the return of The X-Files and its beloved characters, Agent Fox Mulder and Agent Dana Scully, after 10 years off the air.

Like Scully, the CIA takes a skeptical approach to these cases of unexplained phenomena.

The U.S. Air Force's UFO investigation program, called Project Blue Book, began operations in the 1940s, but was terminated just over 20 years later.

Now, the agency only pays 'peripheral attention' to UFO sightings, but is offering its expertise to help you continue the search.

'With over 20 years of investigations, from the late 1940s until Project Blue Book's termination in 1968, the CIA and USAF have learned a thing or two about how to investigate a UFO sighting,' the agency writes.

Much of the report comes accounts by Hector Quintanilla, the last chief officer of Project Blue Book.

Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, these 10 historically-supported tips from the CIA can help you add method your investigation, and distinguish between truth and hoax.

1. Establish a group to investigate and evaluate sightings

Agents Scully and Mulder are seen here in a still from season seven of The X-Files, which aired in May 2000

Without an organization, there are no standards by which to evaluate reports of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena, the CIA explains.

Establishing a group will allow for the unified collection of measurable data points, and results from controlled experiments.

2. Determine the objectives of your investigation

Project Blue Book operated under three main objectives: to determine the threat of UFOs to national security, to determine if UFO technology could be harnessed by US researchers, and to explain what caused a person to report such an incident.

For the CIA, the main concern centred on national security, and the potential for UFOs to be advanced Soviet weapons.

3. Consult with experts

In the Project Blue Book investigations, the teams often consulted with an advisory panel, along with astrophysicists, Federal Aviation officials, pilots, the US Weather Bureau, local weather stations, academics, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA, Kodak (for photo analysis), and various laboratories, for physical specimens, the agency writes.

Flying saucer: This picture of an unexplained flying object was taken over Passoria, New Jersey in July 1952

4. Create a reporting system to organize incoming cases

The Air Force developed questionnaires to help narrow down the origins of reported UFOs.

They categorized sightings as: Astronomical, Aircraft, Balloons, Satellites, Other (including reflections, missiles, mirages, birds, and hoaxes), Insufficient Data, and 'Unidentified.'

The agency writes, 'According to Quintanilla, 'a sighting is considered unidentified when a report apparently contains all the data necessary to suggest a valid hypothesis, but its description cannot be correlated with any known object or phenomenon.'

A police officer stands near to his patrol car outside the town of Socorro, New Mexico where a flying saucer was spotted in 1964

Some of the pictures taken at the scene of an incident in Socorro, New Mexico, where a flying saucer was spotted in 1964. No explanation has been offered

5. Eliminate false positives

In order to focus on 'unexplained' cases, investigators should eliminate all known causes to rule out common explanations.

The CIA writes that misidentified aircraft, celestial events, mass hysteria and hallucination, hoaxes, publicity stunts, and misinterpretation of known objects can all be false positives in a UFO report.

6. Develop methodology to identify common aircraft and other aerial phenomena often mistaken for UFOs

Aircraft can be mistaken for a UFO, especially secret military craft. To determine if an alleged UFO sighting was actually a known craft, investigators wrote detailed descriptions of aircraft and astronomical phenomena.

7. Examine witness documentation

'Any photographs, videos, or audio recordings can be immensely helpful in evaluating a reported UFO sighting,' the agency writes.

Unexplained happenings: The CIA recently released files from its archives investigating reports of alien and UFO sightings. The organization said the declassified documents will interest both believers and skeptics

8. Conduct controlled experiments

Through a controlled experiment, scientists can try to replicate the conditions that created the unexplained event or sighting.

9. Gather and test physical and forensic evidence

Researchers can gather materials from the site and put them through lab analysis to determine the origins. In one historical case, soil was collected from the location of a sighting, revealing no extraterrestrial evidence.

10. Discourage false reporting

Education for the military, researchers, and the even public can help to reduce false-positive reports, the agency writes. If people are able to recognize 'unusually illuminated objects,' and natural phenomena in the sky, false reports can be quickly eliminated.

The CIA even tweeted a list of what to do in the event of sighting a possible UFO. It tagged The X-Files, Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in the post (left). Some of the documents do not find an explanation for the reported UFO sightings, but also do not have evidence they happened in the first place
Apple is developing a radical wireless charging system for the iPhone, it has been claimed.

The system would not require users to place the handset on a 'mat', but instead would be able to work over longer distances.

According to Bloomberg, the system could be implemented in 2017.

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The system would not require users to place the handset on a 'mat', but instead would be able to work over longer distances. According to Bloomberg, it could be implemented in 2017.

WHY WOULD APPLE DITCH THE HEADPHONE JACK? Getting rid of the headphone jack would help Apple shrink the iPhone 7's thickness considerably. Its latest smartphone, the Phone 6s, is 7.1 mm (0.27) thick but removing the 3.5mm jack could drop this by a further by one mm (0.04 in). Such a shift would also mean larger, stereo headphones using an internal battery would be able to draw power directly from the iPhone - or other devices, if the change is enforced across the Apple board. Elsewhere, Lightning-based headphones would experience less 'crosstalk', or signal interference. Advertisement

'Apple is exploring cutting-edge technologies that would allow iPhones and iPads to be powered from further away than the charging mats used with current smartphones, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private,' it claims.

'The iPhone maker is looking to overcome technical barriers including loss of power over distance with a decision on implementing the technology still being assessed, they said.'

Apple has previously made a patent application for a system to use an iMac personal computer as a hub for wirelessly recharging at a distance of about 1 meter using a technique called near-field magnetic resonance.

Apple currently uses a similar technique, called induction, to charge its Watch.

The wireless charging is just one of several radical new technologies Apple is expected to introduce.

'Apple is working with its longtime audio chip partner Cirrus Logic to adapt the audio chipset in the iPhone to work with the Lightning port, according to our source,' Fast Company says.

Apple is also believed to be developing a more expensive pair of noise-canceling, Lightning-connected, earphones or headphones, possibly under its Beats brand, the site claims.

Apple is expected to include an adapter with the handset to use older regular 3.5mm headphones.

It is the latest in a long claims have emerged that Apple is set to kill off the headphone socket.

Apple currently uses a similar technique, called induction, to charge its Watch.

In order to shrink the thickness of a future handset, Apple is rumoured to be looking at ways to get rid of the standard 3.5mm headphone port.

Now, more reports suggest the yet-to-be-announced iPhone 7 will feature a single, multipurpose lightning port that will double up as a headphone port as well as charger.

There are rumoured plans to do away with the headphone jack, but now, developments for the iPhone 7 could be taking an even bigger leap  Li-Fi.

A Twitter user has revealed an image to show that the company may be testing Li-Fi technology for the iPhone 7, which would mean data transmission runs on visible light waves, instead of radio.

Li-Fi is reportedly 100 times faster than Wi-Fi, and would be significantly more secure.

This new wireless system hit speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab, and has the potential to revolutionize internet usage. The Li-Fi technology uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz), and transmits messages through binary code

The post tweeted by user @kyoufujibaya, Li-Fi testing is already imminent. May appear in the next iPhone 7 according to iOS code in iOS 9.1 firmware

The post tweeted by user @kyoufujibaya, according to The Huffington Post, reads, Li-Fi testing is already imminent. May appear in the next iPhone 7 according to iOS code in iOS 9.1 firmware.

In an image accompanying the tweet, the developer highlights where the code says, LiFi Capability, indicating that this suggests Li-Fi testing plans for the next wave of iPhones.

Scientists have taken to the streets in recent years to test the capabilities of Li-Fi, and it's recently undergone testing in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia.

This new wireless system hit speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab, and has the potential to revolutionize internet usage.

Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland invented Li-Fi in 2011.

Haas demonstrated that he could transmit more data than a cellular tower by flickering light from a single LED, according to ScienceAlert.

The system works in a similar way to Morse code, using visible light communication (VLC), but operates at speeds that are too high to be detected by the naked eye.

The Li-Fi technology uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz), and transmits messages through binary code, giving it in-lab speeds fast enough to download 18 movies of 1.5 GB each second.

'We are doing a few pilot projects within different industries where we can utilise the VLC (visible light communication) technology,' Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes, UK.

A FASTER, MORE SECURE WI-FI Lab tests have shown that Li-Fi can hit speeds 100 times faster than current Wi-Fi systems. Speed is not the only advantage of Li-Fi. The system uses visible light communication between 400 and 800 terahertz to transmit messages in binary code. Visible light cannot pass through walls, making Li-Fi a much more secure system, and less susceptible to interference. While the system seems promising, it won't likely replace Wi-Fi entirely, at least not anytime soon. Instead, researchers are now looking to retrofit devices with Li-Fi to use the two wireless systems together to optimize speed and security. Advertisement

'Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communications is done through light.

'We are also doing a pilot project with a private client where we are setting up a Li-Fi network to access the Internet in their office space.'

Since the light can't travel through walls, Li-Fi could also be a more secure option down the line, and suffer from less interference from other devices.

The system works in a similar way to Morse code, using visible light communication (VLC), but operates at speeds that are too high to be detected by the naked eye. Since the light can't travel through walls, Li-Fi could also be a more secure option down the line, and suffer from less interference from other devices

The system isn't likely to replace Wi-Fi entirely in the years to come, and ripping out the existing infrastructure isn't feasible.

But the two could be used in partnership to create faster and safer networks.

Instead, researchers are working on retrofitting current devices to be Li-Fi compatible.

PureLifi, a company created by Haas and his team, is offering a 'plug-and-play- application for secure wireless access, ScienceAlert says.

A French tech company called Oledcomm is also working with Li-Fi, and is installing its own system in local hospitals.
A radical new computer program can decode people's thoughts almost in real time, researchers have claimed.

They were able to predict what people are seeing based on the electrical signals coming from electrodes implanted in their brain - and say it could allow 'locked in' patients to communicate.

The decoding happens within milliseconds of someone first seeing the image, and had better than 95 percent accuracy, the scientists said.

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Subjects viewed a random sequence of images of faces and houses and were asked to look for an inverted house like the one at bottom left. The decoding happens within milliseconds of someone first seeing the image, and had better than 95 percent accuracy, the scientists said.

WHAT IS THE TEMPORAL LOBE? Temporal lobes process sensory input and are a common site of epileptic seizures. Situated behind mammals' eyes and ears, the lobes are also involved in Alzheimer's and dementias and appear somewhat more vulnerable than other brain structures to head traumas, he said. Advertisement

'We were trying to understand, first, how the human brain perceives objects in the temporal lobe, and second, how one could use a computer to extract and predict what someone is seeing in real time?' said University of Washington computational neuroscientist Rajesh Rao.

'Clinically, you could think of our result as a proof of concept toward building a communication mechanism for patients who are paralyzed or have had a stroke and are completely locked-in,' he said.

Researchers used electrodes implanted in the temporal lobes of awake patients,.

Further, analysis of patients' neural responses to two categories of visual stimuli  images of faces and houses  enabled the scientists to subsequently predict which images the patients were viewing, and when, with better than 95 percent accuracy.

The research is published today in PLOS Computational Biology.

The study involved seven epilepsy patients receiving care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Each was experiencing epileptic seizures not relieved by medication, said UW Medicine neurosurgeon Jeff Ojemann, so each had undergone surgery in which their brains' temporal lobes were implanted  temporarily, for about a week  with electrodes to try to locate the seizures' focal points.

'They were going to get the electrodes no matter what; we were just giving them additional tasks to do during their hospital stay while they are otherwise just waiting around,' Ojemann said.

Temporal lobes process sensory input and are a common site of epileptic seizures.

Situated behind mammals' eyes and ears, the lobes are also involved in Alzheimer's and dementias and appear somewhat more vulnerable than other brain structures to head traumas, he said.

The subjects, watching a computer monitor, were shown a random sequence of pictures  brief (400 millisecond) flashes of images of human faces and houses, interspersed with blank gray screens. Their task was to watch for an image of an upside-down house. The numbers 1-4 denote electrode placement in temporal lobe, and neural responses of two signal types being measured.

In the experiment, the electrodes from multiple temporal-lobe locations were connected to powerful computational software that extracted two characteristic properties of the brain signal: 'event-related potentials' and 'broadband spectral changes.'

Rao characterized the former as likely arising from 'hundreds of thousands of neurons being co-activated when an image is first presented,' and the latter as 'continued processing after the initial wave of information.'

The subjects, watching a computer monitor, were shown a random sequence of pictures  brief (400 millisecond) flashes of images of human faces and houses, interspersed with blank gray screens. Their task was to watch for an image of an upside-down house.

'We got different responses from different (electrode) locations; some were sensitive to faces and some were sensitive to houses,' Rao said.

THE JAPANESE MACHINE THAT COULD ALLOW TELEPATHIC TALK A 'mind-reading' device that can decipher words from brainwaves without them being spoken has been developed by Japanese scientists, raising the prospect of 'telepathic' communication. Researchers have found the electrical activity in the brain is the same when words are spoken and when they are left unsaid. By looking for the distinct wave forms produced before speaking, the team was able to identify words such as 'goo', 'scissors' and 'par' when spoken in Japanese. Researchers from Japan used technology that measures the electrical activity of the brain to decipher brainwaves that occur before someone speaks (stock picture). They found distinct brainwaves were formed before syllables were spoken Advertisement

The computational software sampled and digitized the brain signals 1,000 times per second to extract their characteristics.

The software also analyzed the data to determine which combination of electrode locations and signal types correlated best with what each subject actually saw.

In that way it yielded highly predictive information.

By training an algorithm on the subjects' responses to the (known) first two-thirds of the images, the researchers could examine the brain signals representing the final third of the images, whose labels were unknown to them, and predict with 96 percent accuracy whether and when (within 20 milliseconds) the subjects were seeing a house, a face or a gray screen.

This accuracy was attained only when event-related potentials and broadband changes were combined for prediction, which suggests they carry complementary information.

'Traditionally scientists have looked at single neurons,' Rao said. 'Our study gives a more global picture, at the level of very large networks of neurons, of how a person who is awake and paying attention perceives a complex visual object.'

The scientists' technique, he said, is a steppingstone for brain mapping, in that it could be used to identify in real time which locations of the brain are sensitive to particular types of information.

'The computational tools that we developed can be applied to studies of motor function, studies of epilepsy, studies of memory.
A missile defense rocket designed to smash incoming missiles out of the sky has been successfully launched from a military base in Central California.

Authorities say a long-range interceptor blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The launch was testing thrusters on the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, which is designed to crash into enemy missiles and destroy them.

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The long-range interceptor blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, and released the kill vehicle, which was maneuvered with thrusters until its fuel was used up.

WHAT'S NEXT Later this year, an interceptor will try to destroy an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) target armed with countermeasures for the first time. A year later, MDA will launch two interceptors against a single ICBM. In 2018, MDA will conduct the first flight, a non-intercept test, of a redesigned version of the interceptors exo-atmospheric kill vehicle. Advertisement

Officials said a target representing a missile was launched from an Air Force plane over the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii.

The Vandenberg interceptor released the kill vehicle, which was maneuvered with thrusters until its fuel was used up.

It purposely didn't intercept the target.

The test involved the ground-based midcourse defense system.

The missile shield system is supposed to protect America from attacks, but it has failed to hit targets in many tests.

Later this year, an interceptor will try to destroy an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) target armed with countermeasures for the first time.

A year later, MDA will launch two interceptors against a single ICBM.

In 2018, MDA will conduct the first flight, a non-intercept test, of a redesigned version of the interceptors exo-atmospheric kill vehicle.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are working on different parts of the redesign. MDA wants to improve the reliability of the kill vehicle, which destroys an incoming warhead by colliding with it.

And in a 2019 test, an interceptor with the redesigned kill vehicle will be programmed to use only two of its three stages, a potential option that could give warfighters more flexibility.

HOW IT WORKS Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles are designed to destroy incoming ballistic threats while they are still in space. The Raytheon-made EKV is designed to destroy incoming ballistic missile threats by directly colliding with them, a concept often described as 'hit to kill.' The EKV has an advanced, multi-color sensor used to detect and discriminate incoming warheads from other objects. The EKV has its own propulsion, communications link, discrimination algorithms, guidance and control system and computers to support target selection and intercept. Raytheon's Exoatomospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is the intercept component of the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) If a threat is detected using one of GMDs multiple land, sea- and space-based sensors, a Ground-Based Interceptor will be launched into space using a three-stage solid rocket booster. Once outside of the Earths atmosphere, operating at the edge of space at hypersonic speeds, the EKVs job begins. The EKV seeks out the target using multi-color sensors, a cutting-edge onboard computer, and a rocket motor used only for steering in space. It hones in on its target, and with pinpoint precision, destroys it using nothing more than the force of a massive collision. No traditional warhead is needed. The Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) is the next-generation, cost-effective solution that will leverage mature, proven components to simplify design and improve reliability. From drawing board to deployment, Raytheon is the only company with the unique technical talent, proven success and infrastructure to deliver a simpler, easier-to-produce next generation kill vehicle with a significant reduction in cost. Advertisement

The latest mission's objective was to observe in-flight performance of redesigned components and gain valuable information on evolving threat classes, Raytheon, who made it, said.

EKVs are designed to destroy incoming ballistic threats while they are still in space.

As part of the MDA test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, a ballistic missile target was launched and purposely not intercepted to demonstrate for maximum maneuvering and data collection.

The successful mission proved the effectiveness of a recent redesign of the EKV thrusters, which provides the control necessary for lethal impact with incoming threats while safely outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

The testing was supported by Raytheon's sea-based X-band radar (SBX) and AN/TPY-2 radar  both play critical roles in supporting the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system.

'This was a remarkable data-collection opportunity,' said Dr. Taylor W. Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems.

'These are among our industry's most complex systems.

'Testing is critically important to ensuring the advancement of reliable kill vehicles for the protection of the U.S. homeland.'

The long-range interceptor blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, and released the kill vehicle, which was manoeuvred with thrusters until its fuel was used up.

Raytheon is simultaneously managing four kill vehicle programs  the EKV, Standard Missile-3 kinetic vehicle, Redesigned Kill Vehicle, and Multi-Object Kill Vehicle.

The Raytheon kill vehicle family has a combined record of more than 30 successful space intercepts.

Backed by decades of kill vehicle technology expertise, the Raytheon-made EKV is designed to destroy incoming ballistic missile threats by directly colliding with them, a concept often described as 'hit to kill.'

The EKV has an advanced, multi-color sensor used to detect and discriminate incoming warheads from other objects.

The EKV has its own propulsion, communications link, discrimination algorithms, guidance and control system and computers to support target selection and intercept.

The EKV is deployed and operational today.
The race to offer the worlds longest non-stop flight is heating up, with Emirates announcing it will claim the title with journeys between the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand.

Using Boeing 777-200LR aircraft, the daily flights between Dubai and Auckland are scheduled to begin on March 1.

The service from Auckland to Dubai has an estimated flight time of 17 hours and 15 minutes (approximately 8,800 miles), which will eclipse the current record holder by 20 minutes. However, that flights reign will be brief.

Emirates said it will use Boeing 777-200LR aircraft, which can carry 266 passengers, on the route

The ultra-long-haul, wide body jets seat as many as 10 passengers in each row in economy class

THE LONGEST FLIGHTS IN THE WORLD Sydney-Dallas, Qantas  8,578 miles, 16 hours and 55 minutes Jeddah-Los Angeles, Saudia  8,332 miles, 16 hours and 40 minutes Johannesburg-Atlanta, Delta Air Lines  8,439 miles, 16 hours and 40 minutes Dubai-Los Angeles, Emirates  8,339 miles, 16 hours and 35 minutes Abu Dhabi-Los Angeles, Etihad Airways  8,390 miles, 16 hours and 30 minutes Doha-Los Angeles, Qatar Airways  8,306 miles, 16 hours and 25 minutes Dallas-Hong Kong, American Airlines  8,123 miles, 16 hours and 20 minutes Dubai-Houston, Emirates  8,168 miles, 16 hours and 20 minutes Abu Dhabi-Dallas, Etihad Airways  8,054 miles, 16 hours and 20 minutes Doha-Houston, Qatar Airways  8,047 miles, 16 hours and 20 minutes

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At the end of March, state-owned Emirates is planning to introduce a 17 hour and 35 minute flight from Dubai to Panama City.

But it looks like that journey will eventually be topped by rival Gulf carrier Qatar Airways.

Earlier this week, Qatar Airways CEO revealed that the state-owned airline is adding two ultra-long-haul routes  Doha to Auckland and Doha to Santiago, Chile.

They will become the longest and second-longest routes with flight times of about 18 hours.

Until these flights get off the ground, the record will still be held by Qantas, which offers a 16 hour and 55 minute journey from Dallas to Sydney.

With its new route to Auckland, Emirates is hoping to lure European travellers, who would fly from destinations such as London or Paris and catch a connecting flight in Dubai.

Passengers who travel from Auckland to Dubai will have to cope with a flight time of 17 hours and 15 minutes

Emirates said its new route will cut journey times between Europe and New Zealand by almost three hours each way

While the Auckland-Dubai flight will claim a record, Emirates said the leg from Dubai to Auckland will clock in at just under 16 hours.

The carrier said its new route will cut journey times between Europe and New Zealand by almost three hours each way.

Emirates' Boeing 777-200LR planes can carry 266 passengers in three classes  eight in first class, 42 in business and 216 in economy.

Emirates' Boeing 777-200LR aircraft have 42 lie-flat seats for passengers in business class (pictured)

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of Emirates Airline and Group, said in a statement: Having just one stop on the long haul to New Zealand will make the journey quicker and more comfortable.

This will be a boon to many business people, tourists, expatriate New Zealanders and other travellers in Europe, parts of Africa and the Middle East.

He said a non-stop service between Dubai and Auckland has been in the airlines sights for some time.

Meanwhile, United Airlines announced this week that it will begin daily non-stop flights between San Francisco and Singapore on June 1.
Staff at a travel company were shocked when their boss marked a successful decade in business - by treating them to a luxury holiday in Barbados.

Generous Helen Bilton, founder of The Group Company, is celebrating her company's ten year anniversary by taking all 32 members of staff on a five-star, three-night all inclusive trip to the exotic island.

Helen had initially told staff at a meeting last year that they would be attending Flamingo Land - but later said the adventure park was shut and revealed everyone would instead be travelling on an 8,000 mile round trip to the Caribbean destination.

Helen Bilton (blue top, front) is celebrating her company's ten year anniversary by taking all the staff on a five-star, three-night all inclusive trip to Barbados

Helen, whose company is based in York, North Yorkshire, said: 'I thought about doing a big party to celebrate the tenth anniversary with suppliers and customers.

'But then I thought the people that really deserve a treat are the people that work hard day in, day out for the business.

'I decided around six months ago to go to Barbados. We have a monthly staff meeting, and a few months ago I asked for ideas.

'Someone suggested hiring out Flamingo Land - so I pretended that's what we were going to do.

Workers at the The Group Company will be looking forward to an all-expenses paid trip to Barbados

'At the next meeting I told them Flamingo Land was closed that day, so we're going to Barbados instead.

'They couldn't believe it. I think they thought I was joking.'

Speaking about the role her staff play at the company, she added: 'Everyone works so hard and I am very grateful for that, so I'm delighted to be able to reward them.'

The company boss at first pretended that she was treating the workforce to a day out at Flamingo Land, which is in North Yorkshire

Teams work to negotiate deals with hotels, selling them on to a customer base of 500 different operators.

The wholesale travel company has enjoyed 50 per cent year-on-year sales growth since the company was founded in February 2006.
The Chicago Teachers Union and the school district could be heading toward an agreement on the outstanding teachers union contract.

Union president Karen Lewis said on Thursday that the union had received a serious offer from the school district, which a 40-member committee will review and discuss on Monday.

While the Union will not release details of the offer without Big Bargaining Team approval, the basic framework calls for economic concessions in exchange for enforceable protections of education quality and job security, Lewis wrote in a statement. If the Union is able to reach a Tentative Agreement, delegates will be apprised of details shortly.

Chicago Schools CEO Forrest Claypool also confirmed late Thursday that the district had made an offer to the union. Claypool did not provide details either, but expressed optimism that the two groups would reach a consensus.

The union contract expired on June 30 last year, and the two sides had been attempting to reach a new labor pact amid a bleak financial outlook for the school district, which faces a budget shortfall this year of $480 million and a $1 billion structural deficit largely tied to obligated pension payments. The district had forecasted possible teacher layoffs this spring without financial assistance from the state.

In December, 88 percent of eligible union members voted to authorize a strike if the union and district did not reach a new labor accord. An agreement would avert a strike.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the talks between the two camps gained momentum in recent days after Republicans in the state capitol proposed that the state take over the financially burdened school district . That proposal has been opposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, state Democrats, and Lewis.

The Chicago school district has put a serious offer on the table that would prevent midyear teacher layoffs, Claypool said in a statement. This offer is a true compromise that requires sacrifices from both sides so that we can protect what is most important: the gains our students are making in their classrooms. We will continue to work around the clock to reach consensus on an agreement that is the best interests of our students, educators and parents.
The pickpocket gangs of Europe are masters of their trade  and they can ruin a holiday.

Most European pickpockets work in groups and use distraction methods to rob unsuspecting tourists at popular attractions.

Here are the five European cities that, according to a 2009 TripAdvisor study, are places to be especially aware of conniving pickpockets - and tips on how to avoid becoming a target.

Barcelona

More than 300 thefts are reported every day in tourist hotspot Barcelona and Las Ramblas (pictured) is where many occur

With its stunning Catalan architecture and immaculate coastline, it is no wonder Barcelona is one of Europes top tourist destinations.

But more than 300 thefts are reported every day in this spectacular city, earning itself the reputation as the pickpocket capital of the world.

You can become a victim anywhere in Barcelona, but thieves particularly target Cathedral Square, Las Ramblas, Plaza Catalunya and Plaza Real.

Paris

Parisian police with bicycles at watch over tourists. The city, one of the world's most-visited, is teeming with pickpockets

Paris is one of the worlds most visited cities, but the tourist attractions which make the city of love famous are teeming with pickpockets.

The Eiffel Tower was closed for a day last year after staff went on strike demanding help to deal with thieves operating around the landmark.

The Louvre, the worlds most visited museum, was closed in 2013 also because of strikes related to pickpockets targeting tourists and employees.

French police launched a major operation targeting pickpocket gangs last year.

Madrid

Plaza Mayor in Madrid is a place where tourists must always keep their belongings secure

WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR The bottleneck Most pickpockets work in teams. Be wary when in crowded areas, keep your passport close and keep it safe. The cover-up Some pickpockets play the role of the lost tourist, extending a map in front of them. They then approach an unsuspecting tourist, and with the map providing a shield, delve into a bag and steal from the tourist. The distraction One of the group of pickpockets distracts the victim, while another leans in to steal possessions. Common rouse's can be asking for directions or asking if they have lost something. The hugger mugger A thief will act the drunken fool outside the pub, hugging people in a clever ploy. Then a quick dip into the trouser pocket and the unsuspecting tourist is passport-less. Key tip: don't put your passport in the back pocket. Advertisement

Madrid, the second Spanish city to make MailOnline Travels top five, is home to the infamous Bosnian clan.

Four women who form the notorious pickpocket gang made a name for themselves in Barcelona  where they robbed thousands of tourists and Metro users  before moving on to Madrid.

In 2013 the gang was banned from all of Madrids underground network, before the ban was overturned on a legal technicality.

Pickpocketing on the Madrid Metro dropped by 40 per cent while the restraining order was in place.

The Metro, the Plaza Mayor and Cibeles Square are prime target areas for Madrids thieves.

Prague

Charles Bridge (pictured), Karlova Street, Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square are often targeted by thieves in Prague

TRIPADVISOR'S FIVE TIPS FOR AVOIDING PICKPOCKETS 1. Never keep your wallet or valuables in your rear pocket, even if it buttons - it's by far the easiest target. 2. Beware of the distraction tactic. Dropping something near you, squirting something on you, or simply jostling you. Be on guard when in crowds, and secure your belongings. 3. Pickpockets often work in pairs or groups and it's not just the usual suspects. Be cautious with any strangers  sometimes people who don't look like they'd be a threat, such as children or the elderly, can be part of larger operations. 4. Stay alert in confined spaces and near passageways. Try to avoid standing near the doorways of trains as groups of pickpockets can rush at you when the doors open. 5. Before you set off on a trip, pare down the contents of your purse or wallet as the smaller the bulge, the less likely pickpockets are to covet it. Advertisement

The pickpockets of Prague commonly target public transport, particularly the routes to and from Prague Castle and other major tourist sites.

Charles Bridge, Karlova Street, Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square are also chosen areas for pickpockets and scam artists.

Unlike most cities renowned for pickpocket gangs, here thieves usually work as individuals.

Rome

Piazza Cavour (pictured) in Rome is where pickpockets sometimes congregate

The British Foreign Office describes pickpocketing as endemic in Rome.

In this spectacular city, pickpockets congregate where the tourists are, in particular around the Vatican, the Spanish Steps and the Colosseum.
She's known for her body confidence in photo shoots.

But on Thursday Jaime King, 36, took an unusual turn as she covered up in a massive coat as she modeled on the streets of New York City.

The beautiful blonde braved the cold as she attempted to nab the perfect pose.

Strike a pose: On Thursday, actress Jaime King, 36, was a sight for sore eyes as she modeled on the streets of New York

The mother to sons James, two, and Leo, six months, was a classic beauty in navy.

She appeared to honour the '80s with a boxy, paneled overcoat layered on top of a black turtleneck.

Jaime added a pair of leather pants and rain boots before accessorizing with white, mirrored shades, earrings and a statement necklace.

American beauty: The mother to sons James, two, and Leo, six months, was a classic beauty in navy

Vintage style: She appeared to honour the '80s with a boxy overcoat layered on top of a black turtleneck

Fashionista: The actress added a pair of leather pants and rain boots before accessorizing with white, mirrored shades, earrings and a statement necklace

For her make-up, the former Hart of Dixie star chose a bold, red lip, in contrast to her dark ensemble.

Jaime's blonde hair was styled in an off-center part, waves cascading down her back.

In her series of shots, 5ft 9in model appeared to pose head on while making the perfect, pouty face.

Long locks: Jaime's blonde hair was styled in an off-center part, waves cascading down her back

Aside from her career as on-screen talent and a mother, Jaime is making waves in the beauty and fashion world.

The stunning blonde partnered with ColourPop cosmetics of an upcoming make-up line, set to launch on the company's site later this spring.

Additionally, she has joined Kristin Nystrom of clothing company Gardner and the Gang for a children's launching in May 2016,

Busy bee! Aside from her career as on-screen talent and a mother, Jaime is making waves in the beauty and fashion world

New venture: The stunning blonde partnered with ColourPop cosmetics of an upcoming make-up line, set to launch on the company's site later this spring
Samantha Armytage debuted a new hairstyle earlier this week as Sunrise took their breakfast television program on the road.

And on Friday, she once again opted for a stylish ponytail complete with quiff, sharing a behind the scenes look of herself in the makeup chair as she got ready for her broadcast in Victoria.

The 38-year-old took to social media to reveal the long process to perfect her voluminous updo.

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Hair raising! Sunrise host Samantha Armytage revealed the process behind her voluminous updo ahead of the Friday morning broadcast of her show in Victoria

The front section of Sam's blonde tresses were backcombed to point straight up, much like Cameron Diaz's character in that infamous scene from the hit comedy film, There's Something About Mary.

The new look is no simple feat, her hair is teased at the crown, then the sides and her tresses finally smoothed down and fastened in a neat pony.

Samantha shared a picture collage of the styling process with her fans, writing alongside it: 'My little pony'.

The star finished her look with a chic black blazer and a subtle pink lip for her Friday morning broadcast.

There's something about Sam: During the styling process Samantha's hair (L) looked similar to Cameron Diaz's (R) in the film There's Something About Mary

Perfectly preened: The 38-year-old also shared a picture of her finished hair

The Sunrise team are currently travelling around Australia and filming on location while the team's Sydney studio receives a makeover.

This week the areas they have visited have included holiday parks in Umina and Narrabeen in New South Wales, and Queenscliff in Victoria.

The team have enjoyed plenty of fun while on their mini road trip, including a race around the Umina Beach Caravan Park on pedal carts.

On Australia Day they did a live cross from a cruise ship in Sydney Harbour, where Samantha and fellow host David 'Kochie' Koch mimicked scenes from Titanic.

Stylish new look: Samantha has been rocking her new hairstyle for some of the week, debuting it on Tuesday morning as the team broadcast live from a cruise ship on Sydney Harbour

Movie moments: Samantha and fellow host David 'Kochie' Koch mimicked scenes from Titanic during the show

The presenter returned to work just last week after a leisurely trip around California during a break over the festive season.

Throughout her American adventure the bubbly blonde kept her followers updated and regularly shared snaps of her holiday..

Samantha travelled to San Francisco and spent a day at Alcatraz Island and posted several images of herself inside a jail cell, admitting to fans she was relishing in the peace and quiet.
She has been dealing with some family fall out of late.

But however traumatised she may have been by her brother dating her boyfriend's ex -fiancee, it didn't stop Kylie Jenner from posting a selfie on Thursday.

Maybe the 18-year-old reality star was in need of a little reassurance from her millions of social media followers.

See Kylie Jenner updates as she copes with messy family drama over Tyga's ex Blac Chyna

Always time for a selfie: Kylie Jenner took to Instagram on Thursday to post a shot to social media

She took to Instagram for the photo, and left the picture uncaptioned.

But her followers did the talking for her with one of them saying: God you are so damn" with an emoticon of a flame to indicate she was hot.

Kylie pushed her waist forward and her hips and bottom back to make her waist look slender for the shot.

In a revealing chat on her website on the same day she seemed to suggest she wanted more alone time, saying: 'I have just gone from one person to the next. I was dating someone for like, three years, 14. 15, 16, and a little bit of 17'

She put her knees slightly pointing in towards each other and her legs apart to show off her slim legs.

The brunette showcased her flat stomach and accentuated her cleavage with a pair of sunglasses perched in her decolletage.

Her pristine home was seen in the background, a colour palette of silver, grey, black and white.

Moving on? Kylie appeared to be reconsidering her romantic status with boyfriend Tyga in the wake of revelations his ex Blac Chyna is now dating her brother Rob - Kylie and Tyga are seen out together near their Calabasas home on Monday night

Kylie's photo was posted in the wake of her taking to her website on Thursday and seeming to insinuate she may be wanting some more time to herself.

She said: 'I feel like I have been in a relationship for six years.

'I have just gone from one person to the next. I was dating someone for like, three years, 14. 15, 16, and a little bit of 17.'

Stirring up drama: Rob, seen in July 2014 has been taking to Instagram to stir up the situation

It is thought she was referring to her ex boyfriend Jaden Smith. She was romantically linked with Will and Jada's son.

Kylie then continued: 'I went into another relationship, 17, 18', which was of course in reference to Tyga - the pair got together aorund October 2014, in the wake of his split with Blac Chyna.

The reality star added: 'I feel like I really need to find myself. And have like a relationship with myself.

Difficult: Kylie has no doubt had a trying week with the revelations her current squeezes ex is now living with her brother - Tyga and Blac Chyna are seen here before they split in 2014

'Because I don't know what it feels like to be by myself. I feel like you have to love yourself before you can love anybody else.

It is no surprise Kylie is questioning her romantic status at the moment after all the drama the family has endured this week.
He has reportedly settled in north London home with girlfriend Louise Ford

She has reportedly made herself at home in Rowan Atkinsons 4.65million cottage in London  just two months after his divorce.

But Louise Ford, 28 years his junior, has somewhere even more impressive to spend the weekends.

He has finally completed his dream home, once derided as a space-age petrol station, after a decade-long planning row with locals.

Rowan Atkinson, right, pictured with his girlfriend of two years Louise Ford, left

The 5million 'space-age petrol station' dream home in Oxfordshire that has been completed after 10 years

The Mr Bean and Blackadder star, 61, began the project with his ex-wife Sunetra Sastry in 2006 but they divorced two months ago after 24 years of marriage.

Now it seems that actress Miss Ford, 32, who has been dating Atkinson for two years, is set to enjoy the high-tech house near the 7th-Century village of Ipsden in Oxfordshire.

Atkinson, who is worth an estimated 71million, bought 1930s Handsmooth House and its 16 acres in 2006 for 2,647,500.

He has since erected a three-storey glass and steel villa, complete with an atrium-style living room, solar panels on the roof and a secret garage in a grassy bank for his fleet of luxury cars.

The 8,000 sq ft structure was designed by US architect Richard Meier, who has helped create museums including the Getty Centre in Los Angeles.

Atkinson presented drawings to planners in person, prompting neighbours to complain that those who approved it were seduced by his fame.

Residents also objected to the fact the hi-tech design would sit on a hill in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Pictured: The 4.65million cottage in North London where Mr Atkinson is said to be living with Miss Ford

In a five-minute appearance before the local planning committee, Atkinson said it would blend into the landscape by harmonising with it.

The council said the design was exceptional contemporary architecture.

Miss Sastry, 54, divorced him in November after 24 years of marriage, reportedly because she was deeply upset at being replaced by a younger woman.

It is believed they had been living apart for 18months. He reportedly bought Miss Sastry a six-bed West London mansion, costing 21million in 2014.

Meanwhile he has been living in a 4.65million three-bedroom cottage in North London and is said to have invited Miss Ford to join him.

The house in Oxfordshire pictured when first bought by Mr Atkinson before it was converted

She stars in Channel 4s Crashing, a sitcom about legal squatters living in a disused east London hospital.

The couple met after they starred together in a West End play in 2012.

She had reportedly been sharing a flat in south London with Sherlock actress and fellow stand-up comic Yasmine Akram, 33, before decamping to Atkinsons London home.

A source told The Sun: Rowan and Louise are both incredibly private people. But this shows they are obviously serious about their relationship.

'Louise is doing really well with her role in Crashing and wants to be in more comedy roles while Rowan has been busy with lots of other projects.

'They work as a couple because theyre both comedy actors and understand each others work.

The actor met his ex-wife Sunetra when she worked as a make-up artist at the BBC in the 1980s. They have two children together, Benjamin, 22, and Lily, 20.
Taryn Manning reportedly got into a messy brawl with her make-up artist.

The 37-year-old star of Orange Is The New Black apparently got into the fight with Holly Hartman, who gave her side of the story to TMZ on Thursday.

Things allegedly escalated to the point where the actress dared the make-up artist to stab her to death, she told the gossip publication.

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Tough times: Taryn Manning reportedly got into a messy brawl with her make-up artist Holly Hartman (pictured together in Beverly Hills in 2011)

Hartman filed for a restraining order against Manning after several alleged brawls including one that happened as recently in November at the Hustle & Flow star's apartment in New York.

It is claimed that Manning whipped her with a wet towel, headbutted her in the face, put her in a headlock and even sprayed Windex in her eyes and mouth according to court documents obtained by TMZ.

Perhaps the most shocking accusation from Hartman was that she claims Manning shouted: 'Pick a knife. I'm wearing a white shirt there will be a lot of blood. You will be famous for killing Taryn Manning.'

There was a slight hiccup in the filing of the restraining order as the documents were filed in Los Angeles but the alleged confrontation happened in New York.

Due to the location issues, the judge denied the restraining order for now according to the site.

See Orange Is The New Black updates as Taryn Manning reportedly fought make-up artist

Not the first time: Back in 2012, the now 37-year-old star was arrested for attacking Hartman but the charges were dropped eventually

Reps for Manning have responded to the allegations with a statement from her counsel released on Thursday night which read: 'The court has already denied the request by Ms. Hartman for a temporary restraining order.

'The application for the order is suspect because Ms. Manning has had no contact with Ms. Hartman in many months due to Ms. Hartman's actions against Ms. Manning which are currently under criminal investigation in multiple jurisdictions.

'These investigations have long predated these entirely fabricated allegations. Ms. Hartman is under investigation for stalking Ms. Manning and for theft and other crimes. It is clear that Ms. Hartman's camp has leaked these allegations which were not available publically to elevate her own position and obscure her own wrong doing.'

In fact TMZ also reported late Thursday that an insider connected to Manning claims she is planning to take legal action against Hartman and that the retraining order was a 'preemptive tactic' that did not quite work out.

This is not the first time allegations have been thrown around like this as back in 2012, Manning was arrested for attacking Hartman but the charges were dropped eventually.

The actress had allegedly punched and kicked the make-up artist after a night of heavy drinking and was charged with assault and obstruction of breathing or blood circulation.

Manning is best known for her work as Tiffany 'Pennsatucky' Doggett in Netflix series Orange Is The New Black.
Paul Kantner, who was a founding member and the guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, has died at the age of 74.

The musician died of multiple organ failure and septic shock on Thursday, his friend and publicist Cynthia Bowman confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle.

According to the publication, Kantner had suffered a heart attack days before his death.

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Tragic loss: Paul Kantner, who was a founding member and the guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, has died at the age of 74. He is pictured here in July 2015

He had allegedly been battling several health problems in recent years, including suffering a heart attack in March 2015.

Jefferson Airplane is best known for the hits Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, and formed in San Francisco in 1965.

He founded the band along with lead singer Marty Balin as they went on to play the three most famous Amerian Rock Festivals: Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969) and Altamont (1969).

Moving and grooving: Kanter - pictured in 1978 - and lead singer Marty Balin founded the band as they went on to play three most famous Amerian Rock Festivals: Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969) and Altamont (1969)

They had a highly successful career as a band together culminating with an induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1996.

Later on while Jefferson Airplane was in the process of disbanding, Kanter and singer Grace Slick broke off to release concept album Blows Against The Empire in 1970, which also happened to be the first use of the name Jefferson Starship.

Despite several line-up changes, Jefferson Starship is still a band today as Kanter continued to tour with the band until his death.

Legendary: Jefferson Airplane was an active band from 1965 to 1972 with reunions in 1989 and 1996. Their biggest hits were Somebody To Love and White Rabbit

Jefferson Airplane is set to receive the 2016 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award just a few weeks from now.

President and CEO of The Recording Academy, Neil Portnow released a statement about Kanter's passing as he wrote: 'Paul was a key architect in the development of what became known as the San Francisco Sound.'

He concluded: 'The music community has lost a true icon, and we share our deepest condolences with Paul's family and friends, and with those who had the privilege of collaborating with him.'

New groove: While Jefferson Airplane was disbanding, Kanter worked on a concept album titled Blows Against The Empire in 1970, which eventually turned into Jefferson Starship

Members of The Doors - who formed the same year - paid their respects to Kantner on the band's official Facebook page on Thursday.

'Our condolences go out to the friends, family and fans of Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane on the news of his passing,' the tribute read

'Music would not be the same without the sounds of The Doors and Jefferson Airplane, which both contributed so heavily to the signature sound of the 60s and 70s. They often shared the same bill. Celebrate them with this article of the bands shows together in England in 1968.'
A top Broadway actor has won the coveted Bill Murray role in a new, musical version of the beloved comedy film Groundhog Day.

The show will star Andy Karl as the grouchy weatherman stuck in his own time warp in the small Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney, where hes gone to cover the quaint local tradition where a bashful rodent predicts how long winter will last.

In the 1993 movie, directed by Harold Ramis, sourpuss Phil Connors wakes to Sonny and Chers Ive Got You Babe blaring out of the clock radio at the same time, on the same day, day after day after day.

BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Top Broadway actor Andy Karl (pictured left) has won the coveted Bill Murray (right) role in a new, musical version of the beloved comedy film Groundhog Day, which will run at the Old Vic

What if there is no tomorrow? Connors wonders in mounting panic. There wasnt one today.

Karl is a big name in New York, having played the title role in the musical Rocky, for which he received a Tony nomination. And he was in the musicals Legally Blonde and 9-5 on Broadway.

I saw Legally Blonde; and last year watched him give a hilarious turn in On The Twentieth Century, in which he appeared with Kristin Chenoweth.

He won the Groundhog Day lead after auditioning on both sides of the Atlantic. In London, he tried out for Matthew Warchus, who will direct the show at the Old Vic (where hes artistic director) in July.

And, over in New York, he saw producer Scott Rudin, who will move the show to Broadway in March next year, and Danny Rubin, who has adapted his film screenplay for the stage.

Karl also met and worked extensively with Tim Minchin, who created the music and lyrics, and with choreographer Peter Darling.

The creative team of Warchus, Minchin and Darling  plus designer Rob Howell, and executive producer Andre Ptaszynski  have collaborated before, on the Royal Shakespeare Company musical Matilda, which is still playing in London and New York and has become an acclaimed, money-making hit with many overseas productions.

The film didnt win any Oscars, yet it has become one of the most popular romcoms of all-time

Groundhog Day has had three workshops, but Karl didnt participate in any of them. Several people, though, have told me that his series of auditions were stunning.

Its a role that has a big shadow over it, because of Bill Murray. But Karl captured the darkness, bleakness and humour of it, someone who witnessed his auditions, told me.

Essentially , Groundhog Day will be trying out at the Old Vic, where it will run for just ten weeks. But if Warchus and his colleagues can get it right, it could reap long-term rewards in the form of royalties for the London theatre. And if it does work, Karls will become a name I wont have to explain again.

The film didnt win any Oscars, yet it has become one of the most popular romcoms of all-time. Rehearsals will begin in London in early May. The part of the weathermans love interest (Andie MacDowell in the film) and other roles are still being cast.

I finally caught up with Daniel Evanss production of Showboat, which has now finished its run at Sheffields Crucible. And I was struck that a show, written nine decades ago can still resonate.

As I wrote here a couple of months back, there are strong rumours that David Ian will transfer the musical, which stars Michael Xavier, Gina Beck, Rebecca Trehearn, Emmanuel Kojo, Lucy Briers, Allan Corduner, Sandra Marvin, Alex Young and Danny Collins (the most amazing dancer Ive seen in ages) to the New London Theatre in April for a healthy run until January 2017. (Not all of the cast will be available to make the move, alas.)

Nothing can be confirmed until producer Ian sorts out rights issues with the heirs of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II.

But lets hope it happens, because its a glorious piece of theatre that breaks your heart one minute, and fills it with joy the next.

SPALL'S ROCKING ON

Rafe Spall heads to Los Angeles in March to film Cameron Crowes TV drama series Roadies, about a major rock tour  though you dont see the band.

You only see the people that work back stage, said Spall, who plays a British guy sent by the record label to crack some skulls because the rockers are spending too much money (echoes of Crowes film Almost Famous, although unlike that one, this is set in the present).

Imogen Poots also stars.

Spall plays an American in the excellent comedy drama The Big Short, which is set during the financial crash in the U.S. in 2008.

The films giving The Revenant and Spotlight a run for their money in the Oscar awards race for best picture.

Rafe Spall heads to Los Angeles in March to film Cameron Crowes TV drama series Roadies, about a major rock tour  though you dont see the band

WATCH OUT FOR...

Sharon D. Clarke, who is superb in director Dominic Cookes production of August Wilsons play Ma Raineys Black Bottom. At the electrifying first preview on Wednesday at the National Theatres Lyttelton stage, Clarke led a cast that included O-T Fagbenle (an absolute revelation), Lucian Msamati, Clint Dyer, Giles Terra, Finbar Lynch, Stuart McQuarrie, Tamara Lawrance and Tunji Lucas, along with John Paul Connolly.

Its set in jazz-age Chicago and concerns a jealous diva and the exploitation of black musicians. And its all pretty damn brilliant.

Matt Corner, who will portray Frankie Valli in the long-running hit Jersey Boys from March 15  around about the time the show celebrates its eighth birthday. Simon Bailey, Declan Egan and Matt Hunt also star at the Piccadilly Theatre.

David Hare, who has written a new play called The Red Barn. Its based on Simenons novel La Main. Award-winning Robert Icke will direct this year at the National Theatre.

Adrian Lester and Charlotte Lucas, who star in the West End debut of Lolita Chakrabartis vital play Red Velvet, in which Lester portrays 19th-century actor Ira Aldridge. It explores how Aldridge was denigrated by critics when he took over from Edmund Kean to play Othello. Director Indhu Rubasingham and Chakrabarti have delved deeper into the text since the play ran at the Tricycle Theatre in North London and St Anns Warehouse in Brooklyn. Its now a rare exploration of race and culture and the most important piece of theatre in London. Its running at the Garrick as part of the Kenneth Branagh season.

Adrian Lester (left) in Red Velvet and O-T Fagbenle (an absolute revelation) in Ma Raineys Black Bottom

Gina McKee and William Postlethwaite, who star in Florian Zellers early play The Mother, which has transferred from the Theatre Royal, Bath, to the Tricycle, where it opened this week to tremendous notices (although my esteemed colleague Quentin Letts was unmoved). Tickets have been flying out the door. Now the play is extending by a week, until March 12. A new batch of tickets will be available from 10am this morning.
The Good Wife

Rating:

Birds Of A Feather

Rating:

Oh, bliss. The Good Wife (More4) is back, savagely witty as ever. If you like your TV drama diamond-hard and dressed to kill in needle-sharp stilettos, there's nothing better.

Never mind that it's buried under a stack of other Freeview stations, on a channel that usually hosts ancient episodes of Come Dine With Me and Embarrassing Bodies. You can't judge a show by the company it keeps.

Imagine a hybrid of Silent Witness and Yes Minister, with powerful women battling evil while the men bicker and squabble over trivia. The Good Wife combines all that with breakneck courtroom scenes and a self-contained story each week.

The Good Wife is back, savagely witty as ever. If you like your TV drama diamond-hard and dressed to kill in needle-sharp stilettos, there's nothing better

Fans feared the series would be past its best following the departure of its coolest, most capable character  Kalinda, the private detective dodging drugs-gang hitmen while seducing lesbian FBI agents.

But the new season kicked off with swaggering confidence, in a sequence that was almost like television ballet: Chicago cops kicked down doors and arrested bad guys, to the pounding beat of Dublin soul band The Hothouse Flowers.

The intro finished with a spectacular flourish, as neon lights snapped on across an empty office in time to the music  and then we were plunged into a chaotic courtroom.

This was the Barn, where a frazzled judge heard a hundred cases a day and prison inmates were crowded into a Perspex pen.

Into this bedlam walked Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies, whose angular face looks like a Picasso drawing.

Last time we saw Alicia, she had just plucked defeat from the jaws of certain victory, as her long campaign to be an official state lawyer collapsed. Now she's touting for the American equivalent of legal aid cases, and disputing wills in the probate courts. That's quite a fall.

To make it worse, her self-obsessed, amoral, serial adulterer of a husband, the man who was jailed for paying prostitutes with taxpayers' money, is running for Vice-President. And she is expected to stand beside him on television and smile sweetly . . . the good wife.

Never mind that it's buried under a stack of other Freeview stations, on a channel that usually hosts ancient episodes of Come Dine With Me and Embarrassing Bodies

One of the great things about this show is its many recurring guest stars, including Matthew Perry from Friends and Broadway legend Nathan Lane, as well as David Hyde Pierce from Frasier.

This time the spotlight was on Michael J. Fox, who plays Louis Canning  the diabolical boss of a law firm that has repeatedly tried to destroy Alicia and is now attempting to woo her.

Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, does not try to hide his illness, but instead makes brilliant, creepy use of it. Alicia calls him 'the devil', but he's more like a malevolent hobgoblin.

Just as good is Alan Cumming as political fixer Eli Gold, who is as camp as Judy Garland in a snow globe. Eli's aggrieved aplomb when Alicia's husband sacked him was worthy of Dame Edith Evans.

But this show is about the female leads, and we got our first glimpse of the character who could replace Kalinda: bargain basement lawyer Lucca Quinn, played by London-born actress Cush Jumbo. Dig out the remote control, track down More4, and set the record button.

STAPLE FOOD OF THE WEEK Inspector Bucket's weakness in Dickensian (BBC1) is for pies. He scoffs them in the Three Cripples, and drools over them in the street. It's an obsession, like FBI Agent Dale Cooper and his cherry pies in Twin Peaks. What is it with detectives and pastry? Advertisement

Strong women are the driving force of the long-running sitcom Birds Of A Feather (ITV), by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. The set-up hasn't changed in a quarter of a century, with Pauline Quirke as the feckless Sharon, sponging off her older sister Tracey (Linda Robson), while their brassy friend Dorian (Lesley Joseph) sticks her nose in.

It is sitcom in the classic mould, from the same school as Only Fools And Horses or Porridge, by two professional writers who can turn a line like a magician flipping a coin over his knuckles.

The three stars know each other so well their timing is practically telepathic  you can bet not a lot of time is wasted on rehearsals.

The jokes ricochet between them. Banished to a squalid bedsit in North London, Sharon started ranting about 'ethnic cleansing of the working class'. 'Any sort of cleansing in here would be welcome,' retorted Dorian.
Pink Mist

by Owen Sheers, Bush Theatre

Rating:

Artfully scripted, cleverly staged, Pink Mist is a poem play about three Army recruits who end up being blown to pieces in 21st-century Afghanistan.

The title takes its name from a terrible euphemism for what happens when a body is entirely obliterated by munitions.

Long before the end, I was shifting in my seat. Yes, I felt uncomfortable about the sacrifices we demand of our soldiers  but also a little fed up with the insistent pacifism of playwright Owen Sheers.

The cast of Pink Mist, pictured, a play about three Army recruits who are 'blown to pieces' in Afghanistan

The two-hour show begins strikingly with a verse monologue by Arthur, one of the three Bristolian recruits.

Phil Dunster is perfect as broad-chested Arthur, who quickly finds a sense of belonging. Arthurs friends, Taff and Hads (Peter Edwards and Alex Stedman), join him in training, then deployment to Afghanistan.

Directors John Retallack and George Mann should almost be hailed as choreographers, for the performance has strong elements of well-drilled dance. Rifles and explosions are mimed. There are almost no props.

A year or so ago, Sheers had a similar but more factual play, The Two Worlds Of Charlie F, which included real Army disabled veterans. Though this production may be slicker, it lacks the emotional restraint of Charlie F (which, paradoxically, was terribly moving).
The Public Advocate for the City of New York and other legal aid groups, as well as 13 parents, have filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights against the Success Academy Charter Schools, claiming that the network is violating the rights of students with disabilities.

The 34-school network is the citys largest, serving 11,000 children in pre-K through high school. About 1,400, or 12.7 percent, are students with individualized education programs. The network has been lauded for its test scoresSuccess Academy schools are among the highest performing schools in the statebut it has also come under fire for allegedly harshly disciplining students with actual or perceived disabilities, with the goal of getting them to withdraw. An October New York Times investigation reported that one charter principal created a got to go list of students; a school spokeswoman said in the article that the list was a mistake and that the principal who created it was disciplined.

The complaint, filed Jan. 20, also alleges that the charter network does not offer students self-contained classrooms or other specialized educational services. Parents in the complaint said that instead of trying to figure out ways to support children with disabilities, school officials suspended some children multiple times.

Pushing out vulnerable students is not how we define success, said Seymour W. James, attorney-in-chief of The Legal Aid Society, one of the groups that joined the complaint.

In an interview, Ann Powell, a spokeswoman for the network, said that the Success Academy schools, often co-located with traditional public schools, dont have enough space to offer self-contained classrooms in all of its schools. Were not that much different from district schools that would be in the same position, she said.

As for the allegations that students with disabilities were being counseled out, Powell said theres no evidence to support that. We retain about 90 percent of our children, collectively, general ed and special ed, Powell said. Thats very hard to do if youre counseling out children.

Other Success Academy Probes Underway

One of the parents involved in the complaint filed Jan. 20 is Fatima Geidi, who was interviewed along with her son last year on the PBS NewsHour. Geidi and her son said that he was repeatedly suspended from Success Academy Upper West, and she eventually withdrew him from the school. Eva Moskowitz, the schools founder and chief executive officer, complained that she was not allowed to respond in the program to Geidis specific allegations , and that Geidis son had behaved violently on several occasions.

The NewsHour eventually issued a clarification saying that Moskowitz should have been allowed to respond to the familys comments. Learning Matters Inc., the company that produced the segment, has been acquired by Education Week, though the Success Academy piece was in the works before the acquisition.

The OCR complaint is just one of the ongoing investigations into the network. The State University of New Yorks Charter Schools Institute, which is the networks authorizer, is launching its own probe into the Success Academies disciplinary practices , the New York Post reported Jan. 18.

In a Jan. 22 speech at a policy breakfast sponsored by New York Law School , Moskowitz defended the schools discipline policies.

Safety is the number one reason why parents want out of the district schools, and we believe our first obligation is for the safety of the children, Moskowitz said. Theres no learning that can occur if we arent able to guarantee that. Parents are often unwilling to believe that their children could be behaving violently, she said.

Moskowitz also dryly noted that any lawyers in the audience looking for a job should get in contact with the networks legal staff.

We are on our 22nd lawsuit, Moskowitz said. As far as I can tell, the lawsuits are going to keep on coming.

Photo: Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy Charter Schools during a charter school rally in March 2015 outside the New York state Capitol in Albany, N.Y. Mike Groll/AP-File
Helen McCrory will return to the National Theatre in June to play Terence Rattigans tortured heroine Hester Collyer in his 1952 drama The Deep Blue Sea

Helen McCrory is about to jump into the Deep without a lifebelt.

The award-winning actress will return to the National Theatre in June to play Terence Rattigans tortured heroine Hester Collyer in his 1952 drama The Deep Blue Sea.

Ive literally just said, Yes! Helen told me yesterday.

She said shes very taken by the role of Hester, wife of Sir William Collyer, a High Court judge, who cheats on her husband by moving into an undesirable flat with Freddie, a former RAF pilot left psychologically damaged by the war.

Helen said Hesters just drowning in it, from the beginning, but whether its from ecstasy or misery I dont know... its what happens to you when youre overwhelmed by love.

I think Hesters very funny, very bright  and whats so interesting about her and Freddie is that she understands completely what shes doing, but shes unable to stop herself.

She has this addiction for him she knows is wrong, the actress told me as we discussed the production.

It reunites her with Carrie Cracknell, who directed her powerful Medea at the National two years ago.

Helen said she felt sympathy for the cuckolded husband, too. I imagine shes come through the war with him.

But she felt a strong aversion to Freddie. Hes so destructive. Hes horrible, I think. He has the cruelty of youth  young people are very cruel, she told me.

You understand, as you get older, that kindness and consideration go a long way in a relationship  and he has neither of those, yet.

Thankfully, Helens own husband, the actor Damian Lewis, was downstairs greeting callers at the front door while we chatted on the phone about the lustful sex that drives Hester into Freddies arms.

Shes eager to discover who will play the two men in Hesters life and whether Sir William will be the same age as, or older than, Hester. It might add another layer if theyre the same age, she suggested.

Hester is one of the major modern classic parts. I saw Penelope Wilton perform it at the Almeida; Blythe Danner doing it in New York and Rachel Weisz in Terence Daviess visually arresting film.

Helen is looking forward to being back at the NT, where she made her professional London debut in Trelawney Of The Wells. The play will run at the Lyttelton in June.

In April, she can also be seen in the third series of the BBCs Peaky Blinders and has filmed new episodes of Penny Dreadful for Sky Atlantic and Neal Street Productions.

ALL THIS ROMPING? IT'S SO EXHAUSTING!

Dominic Cooper didnt know whether to be flattered or insulted when he was first approached about portraying the louche second Earl of Rochester ten years ago.

They said: You simply must play this part!  Cooper recalled.

Whenever someone says that to me, I wonder what theyre insinuating, the dashing actor said, straight-faced, before bursting into laughter.

Cooper, who was in the original company of The History Boys at the National Theatre (he reprised his role of Dakin on Broadway and later on the big screen), read up on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, over the years and enjoyed the tales of his bawdy antics.

Dominic Cooper didnt know whether to be flattered or insulted when he was first approached about portraying the louche second Earl of Rochester ten years ago

Now, hes ready to portray him in Stephen Jeffreys play The Libertine, which will run at the Theatre Royal, Bath, for two weeks from August 31. It will move to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket from September 22 for ten weeks.

By that time, Cooper may well be worn out. He smiled and said that after he did the photographic session for the play  with three actresses in his arms  he felt exhausted.

I like Wilmots outlook on life, he said. He decided that the country had been through enough repression, so he was going to have a good time. He hit the bottle and was constantly rollicking around. As a consequence, he became ill very quickly. But I believe he enjoyed the sensation of trying everything.

Cooper lamented the fact that he hasnt been on stage since he appeared with Helen Mirren in Phedre at the National Theatre back in 2009.

He has been shooting movies and TV dramas (he can be seen now in the second season of Agent Carter, on Fox UK, as playboy inventor Howard Stark opposite Hayley Atwell).

This weekend he goes to New Mexico to work on a new series, Preacher, playing a minister who returns to his rather corrupt, dysfunctional Texas town.

Trace a line from Jessica Chastains spaceship commander Melissa Lewis in The Martian to Sigourney Weavers Ripley in Alien, and its clear that movies with formidable women are director Ridley Scotts (pictured) forte

WHY RIDLEY LOVES STRONG WOMEN

Trace a line from Jessica Chastains spaceship commander Melissa Lewis in The Martian to Sigourney Weavers Ripley in Alien, and its clear that movies with formidable women are director Ridley Scotts forte.

Scott laughed and said he has been surrounded by strong females all his life. I think my mum was a typical strong woman; she brought up three boys and ruled the roost.

Ive been married to strong women; and three out of the four people I work closely with are women, the film-maker (left) said from Sydney, where hes doing pre-production work on Alien: Covenant, which will star Michael Fassbender.

I asked if Noomi Rapace, who was in his film Prometheus (from which Covenant follows), would be working with him in Australia and he said no. Were still casting the main roles, he said.

Hes already got most of the film drawn in his own very detailed storyboards that enable him to visualise every shot before shooting actually begins.

Scott, who studied at art school, said every planned camera shot, from every angle, is included.
Sharni Vinson was one of the many Australian faces that graced the G'Day USA gala on Thursday night.

Held in Los Angeles, the night is designed for guests to enjoy an Aussie themed night with entertainment, food and wine.

The 32-year-old made sure she was the centre of attention as she walked the red carpet, flashing her decolletage in racy all in one jumpsuit complete with a fur stole wrapped around her shoulders.

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Taking the plunge: Sharni Vinson flashed her decolletage in an all-in-one jumpsuit as she walked the G'Day USA red carpet in Los Angeles on Thursday

Sharni's khaki coloured jumpsuit featured thick panels that came up from the waist and over her toned shoulders.

Her slender middle was accentuated by the attire's tight fit, hugging her toned pins.

The former Home And Away star accessorised with a sparkly necklace and a large cocktail ring but it was her makeup that also drew some attention.

The brunette sported a heavy makeup look, including a dark smokey eye, lashing of mascara, layers of bronzer and a nude lip.

Bold beauty: The brunette sported a heavy makeup look, including a dark smokey eye, lashing of mascara, layers of bronzer and a nude lip

Behind the scenes: The Australian actress gave her Instagram followers a sneak peek of herself getting ready, sharing an image earlier on in the day

The Australian actress gave her Instagram followers a sneak peek of herself getting ready, sharing an image earlier on in the day.

Sharni indulged in a red velvet cupcake as she sat in the makeup chair, with Glen Nutley styling her hair.

The celebrity hair stylist expertly weaved the curling tongs around her brunette tresses to give her locks a sultry curl.

She was dressed in a casual outfit, consisting of a plaid shirt and what appears to be tracksuit pants.

Sharni first appeared on the iconic soap Home And Away, where she portrayed the character Cassie Turner for four years.
Ashley Benson showed what a Pretty Little Liar she is on Thursday, as she attended a party in Miami to celebrate her cover of Ocean Drive magazine.

The 26-year-old revealed her slim but curvy figure in a tiny tangerine romper, which was nipped in at her petite waist.

Ashley also flashed her long and slender legs in the strapless orange one-piece, which she paired with beige patent heeled sandals.

Cover girl: Ashley Benson celebrated her Ocean Drive magazine cover at a party in Miami on Thursday

The actress pulled styled her dark blonde hair in a braided updo, and finished off her glamorous look with shiny pink lip gloss and winged black eyeliner.

Ashley is best known for playing Hanna Marin in Pretty Little Liars, which resumed for the second part of its sixth season earlier this month - complete with a new mystery.

The show, which finally revealed the identity of the villainous 'A' in the midseason finale, will end after season seven. It also stars Shay Mitchell, Lucy Hale and Troian Bellisario.

Ashley's role on the popular series has helped her to land parts in movies such as Spring Breakers and Pixels, but even she is not immune to the ridiculous expectations of Hollywood.

Terrific in tangerine: The Pretty Little Liars star showed off her slim but curvy figure in an orange romper

Leggy lady: Ashley also revealed her long and slender legs in the one-piece, which she paired with beige heels

In her interview with Ocean Drive, the gorgeous star revealed: 'I was just told I was too fat for a part. I'm a size two!

'I cried for 30 minutes, but then you have to let it roll off your shoulders or it could cause a serious eating disorder.'

Ashley added: 'A lot of people in this industry hear they need to lose weight more times than they should.

Thrilled: The 26-year-old happily posed beside a giant version of her cover, which she also autographed

Plait's nice: Ashley pulled her dark blonde hair into a braided updo and finished off her look with winged black eyeliner and glossy pink lips

'It does make you stronger, though. Because if you let that affect you, you can't be in this industry - you'd go crazy.'

Ashley also revealed to Ocean Drive that she hates seeing herself being heavily Photoshopped - explaining that she doesn't want fans to perceive her in that way.

'I saw photos from a shoot of myself just the other day and thought, What the hell? That doesn't even look like me! I was so disappointed,' she said. 'I hate to think that girls are like, "She's so skinny! Her skin is so perfect!" I have pimples just like they do.'

Making friends: The actress posed for photos with model Isabela Rangel

Back in 2013, Ashley slammed a Pretty Little Liars season four promo poster for excessively airbrushing an old photo of her and her co-stars.

'Saw this floating around....hope it's not the poster,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Our faces in this were from 4 years ago.....and we all look ridiculous. Way too much photoshop. We all have flaws. No one looks like this. It's not attractive.'

Ashley can next be seen alongside Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon in Elvis & Nixon, which hits cinemas in the US on April 15 and the UK on April 29.
It was the murder that shocked a nation and led to one of the most notorious trials in recent history.

And Kris Jenner has spoken out about her horror she felt that her close friend Nicole Brown had been brutally murdered in her home in Los Angeles back in 1994.

The reality television personality said she still could not believe what had happened as she sat in court during OJ Simpson's trial the following year, where her lawyer ex husband Robert Kardashian was helping to defend her friend's suspected killer.

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'Horrific': Kris Jenner said she was devastated her friend Nicole Brown had been found brutally murdered

The 60-year-old told People: 'It was horrible. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that she had been killed in such a horrific, violent way.'

The 35-year-old, who Kris described as 'beautiful, funny, loyal and passionate,' was found dead at her Los Angeles home after suffering multiple times stab wounds to the head and neck. She also had defensive wounds on her hands.

Her waiter friend Ronald Goldman, 25, had also been killed after being stabbed in the neck, chest and abdomen.

After his dramatic arrest, following a car chase where Simpson sat in the backseat of a friend's vehicle, with a gun pointed to his head, the former NFL star recruited Robert Kardashian to his defence team.

Best friends: Kris and Nicole were extremely close before her brutal murder in 1994

Suspect: OJ Simpson was arrested and put on trial in 1996 for the murder of his ex wife and her friend

Kris, who attended much of the trial, said: 'They were trying to save OJ from going to jail. It was very hard.

'It was excruciating to see how painful it was for the families to hear them go over and over all the details of what had happened.

'I just wanted it to be over so we could all try to pick up the pieces. But it went on for so long. It was very stressful.'

By this point Kris was married to Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner, and was pregnant with their first child Kendall, who is now 20-years-old.

'Very hard': Kris admitted she found it difficult to see her ex husband Robert helping to defend Simpson

Close friends: Robert reactivated his law licence to be part of Simpson's defence team at the trial

Ultimately Simpson was controversially acquired, despite compelling DNA and forensic evidence, a decision which left Kris shocked.

She said: 'We didn't know what the verdict was going to be, I couldn't breathe.

'When the (not guilty verdict) was read, everybody was stunned. I was just numb. And seeing the photos of (Simpson and his defense team) celebrating, it was hard.'

Robert, despite his close friendship with Simpson, remained unconvinced about his innocence. H stated in a 1996 ABC interview: 'I have doubts. The blood evidence is the biggest thorn in my side; that causes me the greatest problems. So I struggle with the blood evidence.'

Members of the family: The Kardashians and the Browns would spend a lot of time with each other

Holiday pals: Simpson and Brown even joined the Jenner family on a holiday to Mexico in 1994

Simpson was later found liable for Brown and Goldman's deaths. He was ordered to pay $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

However that will never fill the hole that was left in the lives of Kris and the loved ones of the victims.

She said: 'Losing her was something that I can never quite get over, but I will always have such love in my heart for Nicole. She is a part of my life that will be there forever.'

The whole affair is the basis of the first series of TV anthology show American Crime Story, in which Selma Blair plays Kris, David Schwimmer portrays Robert and Cuba Gooding Jr plays Simpson.

Drama: The case is featured in the forthcoming American Crime Story which stars John Travolta, David Schwimmer and Cuba Gooding Jr
Laura Carmichael is said to have found love with her Downton Abbey co-star Michael Fox.

In the ITV1 period drama, the actress, 30, portrays aristocratic Lady Edith Crawley, while the actor, 26, plays her lowly illiterate servant Andy Parker - but despite the gulf in class on screen, the couple have reportedly struck up a romance in real-life.

A source told The Sun that Laura and Michael really hit it off during filming last year, and their relationship has now moved beyond friendship.

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Lucky in love: Despite the gulf in social class on screen, Downton Abbey stars Laura Carmichael, 30, and Michael Fox, 26, have struck up a romance off of it

The insider said: 'They started off as mates but quickly realised there was chemistry there and decided to start dating.

'Its very early days still but they are really enjoying each others company. The best part is that since the show ended they have had a lot more time to spend with each other.'

'Before that, most of their time together was at work.'

Blossoming romance: The pair reportedly hit it off during filming last year with their relationship having now moved beyond friendship

Carmichael was a stalwart of the award-winning period drama having starred as Lady Edith Crawley from the very first episode.

Meanwhile, Michael joined the cast for the penultimate series where he played the Crawley family's servant.

Downton came to an end after six wildly successful series in last month.

And Lady Edith, after suffering more than her fair share of heartbreak throughout the duration of the show, finally found herself lucky in love.

All good things... Downton came to an end after six wildy successful series in December last year

Happy ending: In the show's finale, Lady Edith tied the knot to fabulously wealthy Bertie, much to the delight of her parents

Her chequered love life has seen her jilted at the alter by Sir Anthony Strallon, give birth out of wedlock after boyfriend Michael Gregson went missing - presumed dead - in Germany, and be ditched by fiance, the newly minted marquess Bertie Pelham after sister Mary maliciously let slip that Marigold was Edith's illegitimate daughter at the dinning table.

But in the show's final episode she oozed 20s glamour as she tied the knot with the fabulously wealthy Bertie, much to the delight of her parents.

And she finally came clean to her mother-in-law about her illegitimate child Marigold. Mrs Pelham (Patricia Hodge) took the news better than expected and Lady Edith was finally able to move on happily with the rest of her life.

Late to the party: Michael joined the cast for the penultimate series where he played Lady Edith's servant

In a recent The Telegaraph's Stella Magazine, Laura, who attended Bristol Old Vic theatre school, revealed how the opportunity to star in Downton came about.

She said: 'When I left, I didn't even have an agent. There were a couple of really tough years, on several fronts, when I did tempting jobs and wondered when the phone call would come.

'But the (Downton) casting director had seen me in a drama school production and I was asked to audition; all the girls in the waiting room were entirely unlike each other, because we were deliberately chosen on account of our "otherness".'
She is known for her stylish attire as well as her acting talent.

So fans of Diane Kruger will surely not be surprised that the blonde beauty scored a serious fashion hit while attending a Paris fundraiser on Thursday.

The 39 year-old turned heads as she attended the Sidaction dinner as part of Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week at Pavillon d'Armenonville.

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Sexy: Diane Kruger will surely not be surprised that the blonde beauty scored a serious fashion hit while attending a Paris fundraiser on Thursday

The German-born star wowed onlookers in her dynamic choice of outfit, which consisted of a thigh-skimming mini-dress in bright white.

Featuring ruffle detail with an embroidered flower across the chest, it managed to be both sexy and classy without revealing too much.

Also showing off her fantastic figure, the petite number flaunted her arms thanks to its sleeveless design.

Keeping it classy: The German-born star wowed onlookers in her dynamic choice of outfit, which consisted of a thigh-skimming mini-dress in bright white

Demure: The 39 year-old turned heads as she attended the Sidaction dinner as part of Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week at Pavillon d'Armenonville

Clasping a rigid clutch bag, which perfectly synced-up to her dress detail, the screen star deftly turned heads as she enjoyed her turn on the red carpet.

Amping-up the glamour even further, she anchored it all with a pair of black, strappy shoes.

Having styled her hair in a loose lot of relaxed waves, she capped the ensemble with a flash of red lipstick for added effect.

So stylish: Clasping a rigid clutch bag, which perfectly synced-up to her dress detail, the screen star deftly turned heads as she enjoyed her turn on the red carpet

Turning heads: Having styled her hair in a loose lot of relaxed waves, she capped the ensemble with a flash of red lipstick for added effect

Sadly, there wa sno sign of her handsome boyfriend, Joshua Jackson.

Diane and Joshua celebrated their 10-year anniversary, last year - but in recent months have hardly been seen together. The Fathers and Daughters actress spent the holiday season with her grandparents and family, as well as battling flu.

Meanwhile, Joshua has had a hectic few months wrapping up filming on season two of The Affair, before heading on a three week trip to Japan, the Philippines and Dubai, filming a documentary.

Diane's last photo of Joshua on her Instagram account was six weeks ago, where she posted a fun selfie with the actor of the pair sticking their tongues out.

Man about town: French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier kept it simple in a pair of black jeans and matching jumper, which he topped with a leather jacket

Nailed it: British star Suki was certainly one of the best-dressed attendees at the fundraising soiree

So cool: Suki Waterhouse also represented British talent with a classic approach, which impressed

Fortunately, there were plenty of other celebs who helped populate the money-generating bash.

They included French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who kept it simple in a pair of black jeans and matching jumper, which he topped with a leather jacket.

Suki Waterhouse also represented British talent with a classic approach, which impressed.

How to succeed at fashion: The blonde actress was a walking masterclass in classy, modern style

All-black: Juliette Binoche wasn't far behind in her classic style, which saw her step out in a black trouser suit with white piping which maintained her effortless chic

Youthful: The 51 year-old certainly appeared younger than her years at the charity bash

Juliette Binoche wasn't far behind in her classic style, which saw her step out in a black suit with white piping which maintained her effortless chic.

Monica Bellucci was also one of the VIP guests at the annual dinner in the French capital on Thursday night, which aimed to raise funds for vital HIV research.

The 51-year-old Spectre actress made her grand arrival on the red carpet wearing a slinky bodycon number boasting an eye-catching geometric print.

Monica Bellucci was also one of the VIP guests at the annual dinner in the French capital on Thursday night, which aimed to raise funds for vital HIV research

The 51-year-old Spectre actress made her grand arrival on the red carpet wearing a slinky bodycon number boasting an eye-catching geometric print

Keeping the fashion bar high: Olga Kurylenko also looked fantastic in her choice of attire

Now that's a dress that'll impress! The brunette beauty also turned head sin her floor-length choice of attire

Taking the plunge! Marina Hands showed off her decolletage as she posed up a storm for the cameras

Hit or miss? Olga Rudnicka suffered the only real fashion fail of the evening in her olive green ensemble
She may only be 24 years-old.

But British actress Suki Waterhouse proved that she has a fashion sensibility way beyond her years when she attended a star-studded charity fundraiser on Thursday.

The blonde beauty represented British talent with a classic approach to style as she stepped out at the Sidaction dinner as part of Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week at Pavillon d'Armenonville.

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Glam: Suki Waterhouse proved that she has a fashion sensibility way beyond her years when she attended a star-studded charity fundraiser on Thursday

Keeping it classy for the bash, which raises money for HIV care and research, the Hammersmith-born starlet deftly turned heads in her choice of attire.

Proving that less is more, she dazzled in a traditional LBD which also managed to be thoroughly modern.

Featuring capped sleeves and an a-line skirt, the gown also boasted damask lace detail across her decolletage.

Sophisticated: Keeping it classy for the bash, which raises money for HIV care and research, the Hammersmith-born starlet deftly turned heads in her choice of attire

So cool: Suki Waterhouse also represented British talent with a classic approach, which impressed

Complimenting the wardrobe selection, she added plenty of smokey eye make-up for a sexy finish, which certainly had the desired effect.

She added perfectly coiffed hair, which has heavily back-combed and parted in the middle for a Brigitte Bardot-inspired aesthetic.

She capped the look with a silver clutch and matching heels.

Timeless style: The blonde beauty represented British talent with a classic approach to style as she stepped out at the Sidaction dinner as part of Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week at Pavillon d'Armenonville

Cool: Proving that less is more, she dazzled in a traditional LBD which also managed to be thoroughly modern

Not that she was the only super-stylish attendee, of course. Diane Kruger also scored a serious fashion hit while attending the event in her dynamic choice of outfit, which consisted of a thigh-skimming mini-dress in bright white.

Featuring ruffle detail with an embroidered flower across the chest, it managed to be both sexy and classy without revealing too much.

Also showing off her fantastic figure, the petite number flaunted her arms thanks to its sleeveless design.

Looking good: She added perfectly coiffed hair, which has heavily back-combed and parted in the middle for a Brigitte Bardot-inspired aesthetic

Sexy: Diane Kruger will surely not be surprised that the blonde beauty scored a serious fashion hit while attending a Paris fundraiser on Thursday

Keeping it classy: The German-born star wowed onlookers in her dynamic choice of outfit, which consisted of a thigh-skimming mini-dress in bright white

Demure: The 39 year-old turned heads as she attended the Sidaction dinner as part of Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week at Pavillon d'Armenonville

Clasping a rigid clutch bag, which perfectly synced-up to her dress detail, the screen star deftly turned heads as she enjoyed her turn on the red carpet.

Amping-up the glamour even further, she anchored it all with a pair of black, strappy shoes.

Having styled her hair in a loose lot of relaxed waves, she capped the ensemble with a flash of red lipstick for added effect.

So stylish: Clasping a rigid clutch bag, which perfectly synced-up to her dress detail, the screen star deftly turned heads as she enjoyed her turn on the red carpet

Turning heads: Having styled her hair in a loose lot of relaxed waves, she capped the ensemble with a flash of red lipstick for added effect

Sadly, there wa sno sign of her handsome boyfriend, Joshua Jackson.

Diane and Joshua celebrated their 10-year anniversary, last year - but in recent months have hardly been seen together. The Fathers and Daughters actress spent the holiday season with her grandparents and family, as well as battling flu.

Meanwhile, Joshua has had a hectic few months wrapping up filming on season two of The Affair, before heading on a three week trip to Japan, the Philippines and Dubai, filming a documentary.

Diane's last photo of Joshua on her Instagram account was six weeks ago, where she posted a fun selfie with the actor of the pair sticking their tongues out.

Man about town: French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier kept it simple in a pair of black jeans and matching jumper, which he topped with a leather jacket

All-black: Juliette Binoche wasn't far behind in her classic style, which saw her step out in a black trouser suit with white piping which maintained her effortless chic

Youthful: The 51 year-old certainly appeared younger than her years at the charity bash

Fortunately, there were plenty of other celebs who helped populate the money-generating bash.

They included French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who kept it simple in a pair of black jeans and matching jumper, which he topped with a leather jacket.

Juliette Binoche wasn't far behind in her classic style, which saw her step out in a black suit with white piping which maintained her effortless chic.

Monica Bellucci was also one of the VIP guests at the annual dinner in the French capital on Thursday night, which aimed to raise funds for vital HIV research

The 51-year-old Spectre actress made her grand arrival on the red carpet wearing a slinky bodycon number boasting an eye-catching geometric print

Monica Bellucci was also one of the VIP guests at the annual dinner in the French capital on Thursday night, which aimed to raise funds for vital HIV research.

The 51-year-old Spectre actress made her grand arrival on the red carpet wearing a slinky bodycon number boasting an eye-catching geometric print.

Following suit, Olga Kurylenko had also dressed to impress.

Keeping the fashion bar high: Olga Kurylenko also looked fantastic in her choice of attire

Now that's a dress that'll impress! The brunette beauty also turned head sin her floor-length choice of attire

Taking the plunge! Marina Hands showed off her decolletage as she posed up a storm for the cameras

Hit or miss? Olga Rudnicka suffered the only real fashion fail of the evening in her olive green ensemble
Tyga is said to have set his sights on a new home 'far, far away' from girlfriend Kylie Jenner.

The rapper, 26, was previously looking for a property in Calabasas, California, so he could be near his reality star lover, 18.

But TMZ reports the Rack City hitmaker is now shelling out $35,000 a month on renting a new pad just off Sunset Plaza, above The Sunset strip, which happens to be an hour away from Kylie's house.

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Trouble in paradise? Tyga is said to have set his sights on a new home 'far, far away' from girlfriend Kylie Jenner... just hours after the reality star, 18, declared she wanted to be single

Boasting 'jet-liner views of the city', the lavish property features four bedrooms and an infinity pool and is said to have been marketed as a 'sexy bachelor pad'.

This comes after Kylie declared she would like to be single after having a significant other in her life since the tender age of 14.

In the wake of revelations her brother Rob is dating her current squeeze Tyga's ex fiancee Blac Chyna, it seems Kylie has had enough of relationships.

Posting a chat with friend Jordyn Wood on her website on Thursday, star got philosophical about dating and having a man.

See more Kylie Jenner updates as as she declares she wants to be single

'Far, far away': The Rack City hitmaker is now shelling out $35,000 a month on renting a new pad just off Sunset Plaza, above The Sunset strip, which happens to be an hour away from Kylie's house

Moving on? Kylie appears to be reconsidering her romantic status with boyfriend Tyga in the wake of revelations his ex Blac Chyna is now dating her brother Rob

She said: 'I feel like I have been in a relationship for six years.

'I have just gone from one person to the next. I was dating someone for like, three years, 14. 15, 16, and a little bit of 17.'

It is thought she was referring to her ex boyfriend Jaden Smith. She was romantically linked with Will and Jada's son.

See more of the latest news on Kylie Jenner as she says she wants to be single

Moving on? The rapper, 26, was previously looking for a property in Calabasas, California, so he could be near his reality star lover, 18

Still smiling: Tyga didn't seem too perturbed by news of Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian's romance as he put on an energetic display while leaving a friend's house on Thursday night

In a revealing chat on her website she said: 'I have just gone from one person to the next. I was dating someone for like, three years, 14. 15, 16, and a little bit of 17'

Kylie told her friend Jordyn Wood: 'I feel like I really need to find myself. And have like a relationship with myself'

Not enough: It seems a giant rock for her finger wasn't enough to stop the seeds of doubt being sown

Cash money: Tyga had a wad of cash in his pocket as he headed out on Thursday

Kylie then continued: 'I went into another relationship, 17, 18', which was of course in reference to Tyga - the pair got together aorund October 2014, in the wake of his split with Blac Chyna.

The reality star added: 'I feel like I really need to find myself. And have like a relationship with myself.

'Because I don't know what it feels like to be by myself.

'I feel like you have to love yourself before you can love anybody else.

It is no surprise Kylie is questioning her romantic status at the moment after all the drama the family has endured this week.

It was revealed on Sunday her brother Rob was dating Blac Chyna, and the pair have moved in together.

Difficult: She has no doubt had a trying week with the revelations her current squeezes ex is now living with her brother Rob - Tyga and Blac Chyna are seen here before they split in 2014

Stirring up drama: The 28-year-old, seen in July 2014 has been taking to Instagram to stir up the situation

Kylie herself took to Instagram with a few choice posts, which appeared to indicate her dismay, including one, which she took down, which appeared to show Rob as a devil.

Meanwhile her mother Kris, 60, said she had endured a difficult day on Monday, saying she was grateful to received some flowers.

Then it was revealed Khloe wasn't best pleased about the situation either - according to TMZ, the reality star, 31 'hit the roof' when she returned to her property early to find Tyga's ex-girlfriend standing in her kitchen with her brother, 28.

New love: He shared this close up photo of the model on his Instagram on Wednesday morning as if in celebration of their relationship

'#babykardashian': He seems to be dining out on the situation - he broke his social media silence to joke about his new reported girlfriend Blac Chyna having his baby on Tuesday

She ordered Blac Chyna to 'get the hell out' of her home after she found Rob and his new flame surrounded by 'liquor and trash'.

Khloe is said to have thrown her sibling - who has been living at her house for many years - out when she discovered the pair, pushing him to move in with the new lady in his life in spite of her somewhat controversial relationship with his family.

It's claimed that the new couple were surrounded by liquor bottles and trash that was dotted around the room, seemingly because the two had been there for days.

Not talking: Meanwhile Mum Kris has remained tight lipped: she wasn't drawn on how she felt about her son's new lady when she appeared on Hollywood Today LIVE on Tuesday

She needed this: She may have been cool and calm on TV but on Monday she seemed to be struggling, saying on Instagram, 'Had a challenging Monday and just walked in the door to this gorgeousness that put the biggest smile on my face and in my heart. How lucky am I? Your friendship means the world'

A source told the website Khloe boiled over and asked Chyna: 'What the f**k are you doing in my house?'

Blac Chyna - who shares a son, King Cairo, with rapper Tyga is then believed to have bolted for Rob's bedroom.

Meanwhile, putting her thoughts on her relationship aside, Kylie also discussed rumours of sibling rivalry between herself and sister Kim.

'Get the hell out!' It's been reported that Khloe Kardashian booted her brother Rob out of her home after catching him in her kitchen with his new girlfriend

Slammed: Khloe, 31, sent a strong message to her brother during a visit to Kanye West's recording studio with her sisters Kim and Kourtney on Tuesday. 'Never go against THE family,' she wrote next to this snap

In another video on TheKylieJenner.com, she talked to Jordyn about a message she had received which said: 'Watch out Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian could steal your Snapchat crown.'

The brunette scoffed: ' No one is going to steal my Snapchat crown, then added, 'But I don't know she might get a lot of views.'

Qualifying how she felt about Kim she revealed: 'People are always trying to put me and my sister Kim in a competition, or like I'm trying to be Kim or I am trying to steal Kim's throne.

As well as discussing relationships, Kylie also talked about sibling rivalry with sister Kim

Setting the record straight: She said of the pair who are often seen in similar outfits, that she was inspired by her older sister

'I think people forget that me and Kim are sisters, that we are not in a competition, we are completely different people.'

Saying she was setting the 'record straight once and for all' she said her sister was one of her 'biggest inspirations.'

Kylie continued: 'Thats not a secret. I look up to my sister. I dont think thats a weird thing.'

She then added after saying she looked up to her sibling: 'Yeah it's cute, I do wanna be Kim'

Jordyn then chimed in:' My little sister looks up to me and it's like, little sisters look up to their older sisters, it's human nature I think.'

After pondering for a moment Kylie added: 'Yeah it's cute, I do wanna be Kim.'

However, whether she would have changed her stance after seeing Tyga on Khloe's chat show on Wednesday is anyone's guess.

In a dangerous game of F**k, Marry, Kill, Tyga revealed he would like to get frisky with Kim.

Bold move! Tyga admitted that he would 'f**k' Kim Kardashian during his appearance on Kocktails With Khloe on Wednesday night

When asked to choose between sisters Khloe, Kim and Kourtney during the raunchy game, Tyga remarked: 'I'll probably marry Khloe, probably f**k Kim and probably kill Kourtney.'

The 26-year-old was then asked to clarify that by Khloe's best friend Malika Haqq, who was also a guest on the show.

'Yeah for sure. Yeah, y'all know that, y'all know what it is, you know what it is,' Tyga told them seriously.
They have a combined net worth of nearly AUD$10 billion, having found their fortunes through a variety of entrepreneurial pursuits.

As the son of the late media mogul Kerry Packer, James had an exceptional head start in his journey towards being one of Australia's wealthiest people.

Nick Candy, who is married to former Neighbours star Holly Valance, is one-half of the prolific luxury property development firm Candy & Candy, which he started with his brother in 1999.

And the story of Robert Herjavec's rise to riches is nothing short of inspiring, showing just how far a little elbow grease can go.

Now, as the casino mogul, property magnate and self-made millionaire enjoy the G'Day USA gala dinner in Los Angeles on Thursday with their equally impressive lady loves, Daily Mail Australia takes a look at some of the richest couples attending the event.

JAMES PACKER AND MARIAH CAREY

The ultimate power couple: Australian billionaire James Packer is worth a reported $6.3 billion, but his fiancee Mariah Carey has her own million dollar fortune

As a couple who probably need very little introduction, formerly Australia's richest man James Packer and Mariah Carey announced their engagement just over a week ago.

And though the pop diva has bagged the 48-year-old businessman worth a reported AUD$6.3 billion, it's not like she ever needed the extra cash.

The singer and actress is worth a reported $520 million as the best-selling female artist in the history of the Billboard chats, selling over 200 million albums worldwide to-date.

There's that sparkler! James popped the question to his pop princess with a 35-carat blinder worth upwards of AUD$16 million

James popped the question to his lady love with a ring that was incredibly well-suited to her big personality, a 35-carat sparkler reportedly worth upwards of AUD$16 million.

While Mariah continues to record albums, James looks to expand the Crown Resorts and Casinos, having proposed a six-star development in Sydney in addition to the seven locations globally.

The first of its kind in Australia, the resort complex in Bangaroo South will boast 350 luxury hotel rooms and suites right on Sydney Harbour.

Last year, Mariah helped James launch his Studio City casino in Macau at a star-studded bash

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NICK CANDY AND HOLLY VALANCE

Unaware: Former Neighbours star Holly Valance says she had no idea how wealthy her husband, Nick Candy, was when they first met

Holly Valance claims she was unaware of British property magnate Nick Candy's wealth when she first met him.

And despite growing up in a 'wealthy area' in Melbourne, the former Neighbours actress said she was intimidated when she finally found out.

'I rang my mum and said: I dont think I can do this because its just too much!"' she told Daily Mail Australia in 2010.

Worth an estimated AUD$3 billion, Nick and his brother Christian found their fortune in luxury property development, but they come from humble beginnings.

Their first investment was a one bedroom flat which they purchased with a 6,000 loan from their grandmother, renovating the property and selling it for a 50,000 profit 18 months later.

He's in the money! Worth an estimated AUD$3 billion, Nick and his brother Christian found their fortune in luxury property development

The former Neighbours star and Nick married in September 2012 and have one daughter, Luka Violet, who will be three this year.

Holly found fame as Flick on the hit Australian soap, but relocated to London in 2009 after having lived in Los Angeles for seven years.

She currently works intermittently as an actress, having recently starred in the 2015 thriller Red Herring, in which she played lead character Angela.

ROBERT HERJAVEC AND KYM JOHNSON

Building an empire: Robert Herjavec rose to wealth through a series of smart business decisions and a bit of beginner's luck

As a professional ballroom dancer, Kym Johnson met her beau, Croatian-born Canadian businessman Robert Herjavec on the 20th season of Dancing With The Stars when they were paired together.

A recurring star on the entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank, the 53-year-old Robert began his career in film before applying for a sales position at a company called Logiquest.

When they wouldn't hire him, he convinced the company to give him the job by offering to work for six months unpaid, waiting tables after hours to make his rent, which eventually paid off when he was promoted to General Manager.

After being fired by Logiquest, he started his own internet security software company BRAK Systems, which he sold to AT&T for over $30 million in 2000.

Lovers on the dancefloor: Kym Johnson met her beau, Croatian-born Canadian businessman Robert Herjavec on the 20th season of Dancing With The Stars when they were paired together

He then founded Herjavec Group in 2003, a security solutions integrator, reseller and managed service provider, of which he is currently the CEO.

The fast-growing company is Canada's largest IT security provider, and he is currently worth a reported $200 million.

His Australian partner Kym is also entrepreneurial, having recently launched her own dance-based DVD exercise program called 5678 Fitness and is estimated to be worth AUD$1.4 million as of 2015.

The blonde beauty lives between Sydney and Los Angeles due to her commitments on both the US and Australian versions of Dancing With The Stars.
She's one of Australia's most prominent models.

And when Nicole Trunfio stepped out for dinner with her fiance, musician Gary Clark Jr on Thursday night, she looked every inch a high fashion beauty.

The 29-year-old cut a slightly avant garde figure as she walked arm-in-arm with her brooding 31-year-old beau, heading toward the new speakeasy-style West Hollywood bar The Nice Guy.

Putting her best fashion foot forward: Nicole Trunfio cut an avant garde figure in semi-sheer skirt as she steps out for dinner with her fiance Gary Clark Jr in West Hollywood on Thursday

Wearing a black mini skirt with a flowing tulle overlay, Nicole flaunted her trim model pins through the sheer detailing.

Playing with proportions, the brunette beauty draped a semi-sheer black organza jacket with bell sleeves, flashing a glimpse of sideboob and cinching in around her waist with a black round-buckle belt.

Adding real fashion flare, the Elle cover girl donned a pair of Proenza Schouler woven leather sandals, which she purchased on a 'six hour' shopping spree in Melbourne two weeks ago.

Sheer darling: Wearing a black mini skirt with a flowing tulle overlay, Nicole flaunted her trim model pins through the sheer detailing

Playing with proportions: The brunette beauty draped a black organza jacket with bell sleeves over her shoulders, cinching in around her waist with a black round-buckle belt

Fringe effect: Adding real fashion flare, the Elle cover girl donned a pair of Proenza Schouler woven leather sandals

Her hair was styled in loose brown waves, adding a sexy touch with winged eye-liner and bronzed eye-shadow.

Gary meanwhile demonstrated pure blues virtuoso style in a weathered leather burgundy jacket, black skinny jeans and laced ankle boots, and finished his look with a brown felt hat.

The smitten couple announced their engagement in November 2014, welcoming their first son Zion a year later.

The mother-of-one will star in a campaign for Jean Paul Gaultier and supermarket Target, announcing the news on social media in December.

Bronzed beauty: Her hair was styled in loose brown waves, adding a sexy touch with winged eye-liner and bronzed eye-shadow

Troubadour style: Gary meanwhile demonstrated pure blues virtuoso style in a weathered leather burgundy jacket, black skinny jeans and laced ankle boots

Later Nicole told The Daily Telegraph: 'Im excited to be working with Target on the Jean Paul Gaultier collection, and to be working alongside my son Zion in one of our first advertising shoots together.'

An exclusive range of women's, men's, children and homeware products will appear in stores across the country from early 2016.

The 100-piece Jean Paul Gaultier for Target collection will start from just $10 and also include shoes, lingerie and baby and nursery items.
Politicians in Washington state are at odds over when they should be able to come up with a new school funding formula as mandated by the states supreme courtand contempt-of-court fines continue to pile up in the meantime.

The states Senate education committee approved a measure Thursday that calls for a plan by the end of 2018. But House members, along with Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, say the state should have a new formula by 2017.

The states high court, however, already is fining the legislature $100,000 a day until it comes up with a new formula to comply with the courts 2012 McCleary ruling that said the states public schools are entirely way too dependent on local property taxes and that the state must pour millions more dollars into the formula. In the meantime, the fines are going into a special account for education.

Legislators are stumped on finding where to get that money from and coming up with a way to equally distribute it across the state. Most crucial is finding a way to boost teacher pay.

At the beginning of this years session, a bipartisan task force proposed measures in both the House and Senate chambers that would establish an education task force to come up with a funding source to increase teacher pay by the end of 2017. While the full House voted to keep the deadline of 2017 intact, the Senate measure, only approved by its education committee, would put the deadline at the end of 2018.

Theres no reason that we should ever think that a roomful of two or three or four legislators should ever be able to, you know, force the entire legislature to take something without conversation and amendment, said Republican Sen. Joe Fain, according to the Seattle Times.

But Senate Democrats are frustrated. The amended plan makes zero commitment to ... increased state funding for the public schools, at all, said Democratic Sen. Christine Rolfes during a news conference, according to the Seattle Times.

The Senate proposal will be considered by the Senate Ways and Means Committee for further discussion.

Inslee is pushing for the state to come up with a solution by the end of the 2017 session.

That is the date, the IOU if you will, to our children, he said, according to the Seattle Times. So Im hopeful that legislators will take a careful look at this and ultimately be able to fulfill that commitment.
It's widely regarded as one of the style capitals of the world.

And so Ben Stiller, busy promoting fashion-loving film Zoolander 2, was embracing all things Paris on Friday as he filmed another promo during Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week.

Rocking a Breton stripe top and wielding French baguettes, Derek Zoolander was not without his signature Blue Steel pout as he filmed on a barge.

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No pain, no gain: Ben Stiller got back to his character Derek Zoolander for a promo for Zoolander 2 on Friday in Paris

The character, known for his eccentricities as a world-leading yet dimwitted fashion model, threw himself into the outdoor shoot, striking a pose in top-to-toe leather.

He was animated and jumped about the barge, using his outstretched limbs and bold facial expression to capture the perfect image like a true pro.

Derek had his hair spiked up and his designer shades tipped on the end of his nose to complete an edgy look.

Get a loaf of him: The star used all of the French stereotypes to prove that he was in Paris for the shoot

Shooting: The star reprised his role 15 years after the original film and is now promoting the sequel

In 2016, Derek Zoolander modelled for Vogue magazine, Zoolander No. 2 perfume and the new Fiat 500 commercial.

Actor Ben has by now mastered the characteristics of his alter-ego, after revisiting the role 15 years on from the original film.

Promo for the film continues after it premiered in Australia, where he declared Derek 'the father of the duckface' or modern-day selfie pout.

Pout at the BREAD-y! He wore a Breton stripe top and weilded some French loaves

Jump for joy: He used his bold facial expressions to try to get the right shot

'Hello Frants': The actor jumped for joy, holding a souvenir, as the cast were photographed

'This is in-seine': Justin Theroux comically captioned this selfie snapshot of him and Ben by the River Seine

Shooting til late: The shoot seemed to run until late, but that didn't stop Derek

Comeback: The star recently hinted that there could be a third part - but not for another 15 years

He said: 'It sort of feels like the social media was beckoning Derek out of the shadows. I had to educate the younger generation where it comes from, their roots. They don't even know.'

Following the success and fashion-backing of the second part, the actor went on to tease a third installment.

He added to Australian press 'Zoolander 3? In another 15 years, maybe. Well see.'

Their comeback was announced last March when they made a surprise appearance at the Valentino Paris Fashion Week show.

Selfie king: He recently said that he is the king of the selfie, he just didn't know if before social media

Taking a bite: The actor was playful as they captured some more comical shots

When in Paris: He made the best of being in France and snapped himself with the Eiffel Tower

Promo trail is in full swing; Following the photo shoot, Will Ferrell, Stiller and Wilson took part in a press conference ahead of the film's Paris an screening

Having his say: Justin Theroux - who has co-written the sequel to the popular comedy - also put in an appearance

No one has the Blue Steel nailed like Zoolander himself: The actor inadvertently pulled his signature expression as the cast answered questions from the media
She was bundled up with a very large grey scarf that hid her chin and plenty of camo.

But makeup-free Heidi Klum was still hard to miss as she landed in New York on Thursday.

The 42-year-old looked radiant as she strolled through LaGuardia Airport with an older gentleman.

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So fly! Heidi Klum was fresh faced when she return to New York following a promotional tour through Australia on Thursday

No doubt the pair were in a great mood, as they smiled brightly at each other while briskly making their way through the transport hub.

Heidi was at her casual cool best as she wore her bright blonde hair down atop a black leather jacket and long grey scarf.

Making comfort a top priority for her long flight from Australia, Heidi teamed the edgy jacket with a soft pair of camouflage print sweats.

She had a matching tote slung over her elbow and topped off the look with a pair of glossy and cool black trainers.

High spirits: The model and the employee exchanged smiles

Earlier that same day, Heidi raved about her trip to Australia, where she was busy promoting Heidi Klum Intimates and HK Man.

The star expressed her gratitude for the visit on Instagram, posting a snap of herself kicking up her feet in the airplane.

'Thank you Australia for your warm welcome! Had the best time...until next time,' the image was captioned.

Staying up-to-date! The 42-year-old took phone break just before heading out into the city

In addition to her underwear range, the mother-of-four revealed she would be expanding her line to include swimwear.

The collection - consisting of cover ups and swimwear - is set to role out in the Southern Hemisphere in July and in the Northern Hemisphere in October.

The range will be in collaboration with New Zealand-based label Bendon, who also produce swimwear for luxury brands such as Stella McCartney.

'Had the best time': The star expressed her gratitude for the visit on Instagram, captioning a snap of herself kicking up her feet in her airplane on Thursday as 'Thank you Australia for your warm welcome! Had the best time...until next time'

'Most of my career has been spent rolling around on beaches around the world, and I still love it,' she told WWD earlier this month.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, she revealed that her favourite style from the upcoming line is a triangle, 'leopard-inspired' red and white embellished number.

'I'm the guinea pig, I try literally every piece on,' she said.
It may be the end of January, when most of us have cast our resolutions aside already.

But far from falling off the wagon, Zac Efron and Sami Miro are upping the ante on a healthy regime - hitting the gym for a second day running on Thursday in Los Angeles.

The 28-year-old actor and the stylist beauty, also 28, had determination in their step as they got set to work up a sweat.

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Working out: Zac Efron and Sami Miro are upping the ante on a healthy regime - hitting the gym for a second day running on Thursday in Los Angeles

Dressed for the occasion, Zac added shorts over gym leggings with long socks - leaving very little flesh on show.

He kept warm with a camouflage sweatshirt - and showed an appreciation for irony by adding neon yellow trainers.

He covered his head with a baseball hat, as he carried his substantial sports bag over one shoulder.

Abs-fab: The 28-year-old actor and the stylist beauty, also 28, had determination in their step as they got set to work up a sweat

Sami sported a giant kitten on the front of her sweatshirt, as she followed her handsome beau.

Her dark tresses were pulled into an easy topknot, with tendrils loose around her make-up free features.

The couple have been dating for more than a year now, first stepping out as a couple in September of 2014.

Cute: Sami sported a giant kitten on the front of her sweatshirt, as she followed her handsome beau

The High School Musical actor recently told Jimmy Kimmel about the month long vacation the pair took around Asia, where they even got to meet legendary sushi chef Jiro Ono.

'My girlfriend and I are really into food,' explained Efron, who also told him that they got to pose for pictures with the famed Japanese chef and star of acclaimed documentary Jiro Dreams Of Sushi.

Despite showing off his impressive abs a lot, Zac's own most recent screen outing Dirty Grandpa - opposite Robert DeNiro - has failed to win critics over.

Film flop: Despite showing off his impressive abs a lot, Zac's own most recent screen outing Dirty Grandpa - opposite Robert DeNiro - has failed to win critics over

Legend: He shared an image with Robert DeNiro from behind the scene on Dirty Grandpa, on Thursday

He shared an image with the acting legend on Thursday, which he captioned: 'Should've gone in for the kiss #dirtygrandpa.'

He is back on screen alongside Seth Rogen in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising on May 20.

He's also currently filming the Franco brothers' The Disaster Artist, alongside the Baywatch reboot with Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
Kimberley Walsh is set to be wed in the oldest church in Barbados this weekend.

Due to tie the knot with her long-term partner Justin Scott on Saturday, Kimberley was spotted heading inside St James Parish Church to check over the venue after touching down on Monday.

The cosy, antiquated building is romanesque in design and full of tradition Anglican touches; the perfect spot for romantic nuptials.

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PICTURED: Kimberley Walsh and her partner Justin Scott are thought to be getting wed at this antiquated Barbados Church in Holetown on Saturday

A source confirmed to MailOnline on Friday that the mum-of-one, who has brought their one-year-old son Bobby over to the Caribbean too, was seen at the location on Thursday night after rehearsals.

Suited to the 30C and above temperatures at this time of year, the building is made from light, local limestone, complete with mahogany beams.

It features just enough space for friends and family to gather, seating 550 and with 360 other guests available to stand.

The church was built originally in 1628 but has been reconstructed twice in its history and is thought to be among four of the last remaining Anglican churches on the island.

Happy couple: Kimberley was spotted arriving at the venue for a rehearsal on Thursday

Romantic: The oldest church in Barbados, the ceremony will no doubt be steeped in tradition

Romanesque: The venue is steeped with mahogany beams and stain glass windows

Enough room for all: It's expected to hold just enough room for friends and family

Married in the morning: The duo have been together for 13 years now

Bridesmaids thought to be acting in the ceremony are former Girls Aloud bandmates, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and Nicola Roberts.

Previously, The Mirror reported that Kimberley was due to wed outdoors at the luxury Bellevue Plantation.

She obtained the wedding certificate, accompanied by boyfriend Justin, on Tuesday and is now thought to be sharing the big day between the two idyllic locations.

Traditional: Their venue was first built in 1628 but has been rebuilt twice

Getting wed: The duo are expected to share their vows in front of one-year-old son Bobby too

Look of love: The couple arrived in Barbados on Monday ahead of their nuptials

Kimberley and Justin, who have been dating for 13 years, arrived in the Caribbean on Monday with their 18-month-old son, Bobby as they started prep for their nuptials at the plantation.

The island spot, which is said to cost 10,000-a-day to hire, boasts a main house with a host of luxury features including full staff and an array of optional treats including beauty treatments, hairdressing and massage therapy.

The main house on the island contains eight bedrooms, suggesting other guests, including Cheryl and Nicola, will be staying at guest cottages on the idyllic island.

Photographs of the venue revealed stunning views, dreamy white sand beaches with turquoise seas and the grand mansion at the centre of the home.

Exquisite: The main house on the island contains eight bedrooms, suggesting other guests, including Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and Nicola Roberts, will be staying at guest cottages on the idyllic island

Taking care of business: Kimberley and Justin were spied taking care of practicalities on Tuesday as they picked up their marriage certificates at local government offices

Kimberley and Justin were spied taking care of practicalities on Tuesday as they picked up their marriage certificates at local government offices.

The blonde beauty's bridesmaids, Cheryl and Nicola were spotted touching down looking incredibly chic as they nailed jet-set style.

Also arriving on the same Barbados bound flight was Denise Van Outen and her partner Eddie Boxshall, and actress Kara Tointon.

Stunning: The main house on the island contains eight bedrooms, suggesting other guests, including Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and Nicola Roberts, will be staying at guest cottages on the idyllic island

Perfect setting: The duo will no doubt love drinking in the exquisite beach views

Kimberley told HELLO! magazine that she will not be able to look at close pal Cheryl during her big day, as she'll break down in front of the altar.

'I used to be good at keeping up an icy exterior but since I had Bobby, I'm so much more emotional,' she explained. 'I'm slightly worried about the wedding to be honest.

'A few happy tears are fine, but I don't want to spend the whole day sobbing, so I'm going to have to be careful about even looking at Cheryl and my sisters, because they'll definitely cry and that will set me off.'

Luxurious: The house boasts a host of luxury features including lavish dining facilities
She is frequently seen on London's social circuit.

But Hofit Golan continues to defy the British winter by holidaying in the heat of the Maldives - as she proved with another enviable display on Friday.

The Israeli socialite showed off her slim curves in another stunning two-piece as she cavorted on the beaches of the luxurious Hideaway Beach Resort & Spa.

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Life's a beach! Hofit Golan continues to defy the British winter by holidaying in the heat of the Maldives - as she proved with another enviable display on Friday

Clearly enjoying her off-duty break, the TV presenter flaunted her shape - including a taut tummy and ample cleavage - as she splashed around on the shore.

The green and pink number was the perfect choice to draw attention to Hofit's assets as she tread the white sands.

While the famed sun-seeker was seen dipping her toes in the crystal clear waters to cool off, she made sure not to get too carried away in a bid to maintain the preened nature of her sleek blonde tresses.

Good times: Clearly enjoying her off-duty break, the TV presenter flaunted her shape - including a taut tummy and ample cleavage - as she splashed around on the shore

Doing less is more! True to form, the social media star made sure she didn't break too much of a sweat by sitting back and relaxing in a secluded hammock, which was suspended from a palm tree

Strutting her stuff: The Israeli socialite showed off her slim curves in another stunning two-piece as she cavorted on the beaches of the luxurious Hideaway Beach Resort & Spa

True to form, the social media star made sure she didn't break too much of a sweat by sitting back and relaxing in a secluded hammock, which was suspended from a palm tree.

Also ensuring she didn't get sunburn, the blonde also wrapped up in a semi-sheer kaftan.

Kicking back as she rested her legs, she capped her ensemble with a pair of designer sunglasses.

The model has wasted no time boasting to her 86,000 Instagram followers, having shared countless snaps from her idyllic getaway.

Hofit is arguably most well-known for the celebrity company she keeps, though in a previous interview with MailOnline, the stunner was quick to point out that she can't abide many stars because of the egos they carry around, although her close gaggle of gal pals like Kelly and Lindsay can't get enough praise.

Cheeky! The model has wasted no time boasting to her 86,000 Instagram followers, having shared countless snaps from her idyllic getaway

Image-conscious: While the famed sun-seeker was seen dipping her toes in the sea with a pal, she made sure not to get too carried away in a bid to maintain the preened nature of her sleek blonde tresses

She said: 'I don't like to name drop. Friends are friends, even if they happen to be famous or royal.

'But I like low maintenance people - people who have bad energy I walk away from as I dont react well to egos. Kelly Brook was in Cannes with me and shes just a ball of laughs and fun.

'She's so easy going and low maintenance,' she dished.

Taking the plunge: Having sunbathed on the beach, Hofit cooled off with a dip in the hotel resort pool

Cutting a shapely figure: The social media star certainly wasn't feeling shy as she holidayed on the island

Toned: The blonde socialite has clearly been working hard to maintain her impressive beach body
The Mother (Tricycle Theatre)

Rating:

Verdict: Not the Daddy

Jeepers Creepers (Leicester Square Theatre)

Rating:

Verdict: Eye-poppingly awful

French playwright Florian Zeller, who has had huge success with his dementia play The Father, has an earlier piece called The Mother.

Newly arrived in London, it is coolly staged, with enough cryptic elan to fill Kilburns Tricycle Theatre. Yet it lacks the emotional force of its companion play. The subject matter is less urgent.

Gina McKee plays Anne, the mother of the title. She suffers not from dementia, but empty-nest syndrome. Specifically, she misses her 25-year-old son, Nicholas, who has left home and taken up with pretty Elodie (Frances McNamee), also in her 20s.

The Mother is coolly staged, with enough cryptic elan to fill Kilburns Tricycle Theatre. Gina McKee (pictured left) plays Anne, the mother of the title, and William Postlethwaite (right) as The Son, Nicholas

Mother Anne, in her late 40s, is jealous. She has started to drink and take pills.

As with M. Zellers The Father, everything happens in an urban flat, minimalist in design. It has white light, white walls, white furniture, some of which disappears between acts.

The language, translated by Christopher Hampton, is spare and joyless. Some scenes have successive tellings, each subtly different. This unsettling technique makes us question our prejudices about characters. It boosts the playwrights credentials as an objective reporter  so much that we may wonder what he is trying to say.

Anne has an unfaithful husband (Richard Clothier). Do we blame him for seeking comfort elsewhere? Or has his infidelity (he lies that he is off to Leicester for a weekend seminar) sent Anne mad?

In The Father, the declining old man was brilliantly played by Kenneth Cranham. Miss McKee is no Cranham. She lacks his vocal variety, his molten stage presence, that sense of a leathery life nearing its close.

David Boyle plays Marty Feldman in Jeepers Creepers 2 and Rebecca Vaughan his glamorous wife Lauretta

Her voice pinks and creaks so much that she reminded me of Home Secretary Theresa May. One can soon weary of it.

Im afraid that I did not for a moment believe she was the mother of William Postle-thwaites Nicholas.

Im aware of a great void, complains Anne. In The Father, that void demanded our sympathy because it was inescapable illness.

Passive Anne is less clearly a figure worthy of our pity, though I suppose a stronger actress might find a greater degree of pathos.

Monty Python star Terry Jones is listed as director of an inept biographical play about the late comedian Marty Feldman. At 100 minutes, it is possibly 95 too long. Feldman is played by David Boyle, who seemed to forget his opening lines. To open a show with a dry  well, its a certainly a novel approach.

Boyle and the slightly less culpable Rebecca Vaughan, who plays Feldmans glamorous wife Lauretta, bat mirthless, whispery conversation across a small bed on the tiny studio stage of the Leicester Square Theatre.

To fill the longueurs (the audience of about 20 was watching in glacial silence) the actors smoke endless cigarettes, creating a fug which set off my bad chest.

A half-blind man arrived late and sat on top of me. Most exciting moment of the night.Marty Feldman was a prolific comedy writer, a madcap performer and a bold figure in the early Seventies London of the Oz Trial. None of this comes through.
Red Cross says Palestinian hunger striker at 'critical stage'

The life of imprisoned Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq is in danger from his 64-day-old hunger strike, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

"Mr. Qiq has been on hunger strike for more than 60 days and has entered a critical stage, his life being at risk," the ICRC said in a statement.

It called for his Israeli captors and Qiq himself "to find a solution that will avoid any loss of life."

A Palestinian man carries a sign bearing a portrait of Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq, whose life is endangered after a 64-day-old hunger strike Abbas Momani (AFP/File)

The European Union on Wednesday said it was "especially concerned" about his deteriorating health.

Qiq, a 33-year-old father of two and a correspondent for Saudi Arabia's Almajd TV network, was arrested on November 21 at his home in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He is being held under Israel's controversial administrative detention law, which allows the state to hold suspects for renewable six-month periods without trial.

He has been refusing food since November 25 in protest against the "torture and ill treatment that he was subjected to during interrogation", according to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organisation.

He has appealed against his internment but Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to order his release although it said it would follow his health on a daily basis.

Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic security service, says Qiq was arrested for "terror activity" as part of the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Qiq's wife Faihaa says he is being wrongfully detained.

"Mohammed is a Palestinian journalist who was only covering the situation in the West Bank and he was arrested because of it," she told AFP this week.

Qiq was jailed for a month in 2003 and then for 13 months in 2004 for Hamas-related activities.

In 2008, he was sentenced to 16 months on charges linked to his activities on the student council at the West Bank's Birzeit University.
US restates labeling rules on West Bank products

The United States has issued a reminder that products imported from the West Bank or Gaza should not be labeled "made in Israel," the State Department confirmed Thursday.

The guidance was issued last week by US Customs but debate erupted after media reports suggested Washington was hardening its stance against Israeli settlement policy.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the decision to reissue the policy had been taken after complaints that some West Bank products had been mislabeled prior to US import.

Employees work at a factory in the West Bank on November 3, 2015 Menahem Kahana (AFP/File)

"US Customs and Border Protection reissued guidance on their marking requirements," he told reporters. "It in no way supersedes prior rulings or regulations.

"And nor does it impose additional requirements with respect to merchandise imported from the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Israel."

The US Customs statement, visible on the agency's website, restates the terms of 1995 and 1997 laws requiring that goods from Gaza and the West Bank be labeled as such.

"It is not acceptable to mark the aforementioned goods with the words 'Israel,' 'Made in Israel,' 'Occupied Territories-Israel' or any variation thereof," the statement said.

Some Israeli settlers living in the West Bank are known to label products for export as being from Israel, and the European Union recently acted to ban the practice.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly condemned the European move, which Israel feels discriminates against Jewish producers and amounts to a boycott.

The settlements are deemed illegal under international law, and some supporters of the Palestinian claim on the West Bank have demanded a boycott of settler merchandise.

The United States opposes Israel's settlement of the area, but insists its labeling regulations don't discriminate between Israeli and Palestinian producers.

"Our understanding is that there were allegations of mislabeling, around nine or ten complaints," Toner said, explaining why US Customs had reissued its guidance.
US has no plans yet to attack IS forces in Libya: Pentagon

The United States has not decided whether to launch military action in Libya, where the Islamic State group is exploiting political instability to expand its operations, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Thursday.

Washington is "developing options for what we might do in the future," Carter told reporters.

But he added: "We're watching the situation very carefully, and there's a lot going on there right now. But we haven't made any decisions to take military action there."

Heavy black smoke rises from an oil facility in northern Libya's Ras Lanouf region on January 23, 2016, after it caught fire following attacks launched by Islamic State group jihadists

"We're looking to help them (the Libyans) get control over their own country and, of course, the United States will support the Libyan government when it forms," he said.

World powers have urged Libya's warring factions to endorse the unity government formed last week under a UN-brokered deal aimed at ending the political paralysis that has fueled the rise of IS jihadists.

Libya has been in political turmoil and rocked by violence since the ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a 2011 revolution.

It now has two governments and parliaments, with the recognized authorities based in the eastern city of Tobruk and a militia-backed authority in Tripoli.

The internationally recognized parliament on Monday rejected an initial cabinet line-up, in a major setback to peace efforts. A new government is expected to be proposed in 10 days, an official said Tuesday.

The Islamic State jihadists have exploited the turmoil in Libya to expand their influence in the country and launch attacks on key oil facilities.

The group first appeared in the North African nation in 2014 and has since claimed responsibility for beheadings and suicide bombings.

It has established a stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte, Kadhafi's hometown, and is reported to have at least 3,000 fighters in Libya.

The United States, reluctant to extend its 17-month air campaign against the IS group in Iraq and Syria to a third country, has repeatedly stressed the importance of finding cooperative local partners in Libya, and international allies such as France and Italy to help lead any operations there.
Republicans debate as no-show Trump taunts from afar

Republican White House hopefuls jostled for the limelight in the absence of master showman Donald Trump, who snubbed the last debate before the party nomination votes begin and upstaged his rivals with a dueling event.

Trump gambled big when he announced he was boycotting the debate in Des Moines because of a feud with Fox News, plunging the presidential race into uncharted waters just days before Iowa votes on February 1.

Straight out of the gate, the seven debaters turned to "the elephant not in the room" as he was wryly described by Megyn Kelly -- the Fox anchor who Trump accuses of bias against him.

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally raising funds for US military veterans at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa William Edwards (AFP)

Top adversary Ted Cruz used Trump-like language to jokingly belittle himself and rivals -- and take a pot shot at the absentee himself.

"I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz said, looking mischievously at retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

"We've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way," he quipped.

Nationally, Trump keeps soaring. A recent CNN/ORC poll of Republican voters has Trump at 41 percent to 19 percent for Cruz, with more than two-thirds of Republicans saying they believe the billionaire developer will be the party's presidential candidate.

But Trump has a genuine battle on his hands in Iowa with ultra-conservative Cruz who trails by about five percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent Iowa polls.

Cruz, who has won endorsements from key evangelicals and anti-abortion figures who tout his religious values, insists the race against Trump is winnable and has blanketed Iowa with 12,000 volunteers and staff.

All eyes are now on the heartland state, where 12 Republican candidates and three Democratic hopefuls including Hillary Clinton are vying for both bragging rights and momentum as the primary race heads next to New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

- Trumpless -

Trump had taunted Fox and his rivals, saying a main debate without him present would be a "total disaster" with low ratings.

The real estate mogul doubled down, in a game of political chicken, scheduling a rival event for military veterans just a few miles (kilometers) from the venue where his party was showcasing its candidates to Iowa voters.

Even absent, Trump's shadow loomed large -- and he was snatching many of the headlines.

Visibly delighting in the upset caused by his no-show, the tycoon took the stage at his own event about 15 minutes after the main debate began.

"I said I'm not going to do the debate out of respect for myself," he said to cheers from the overflow crowd.

"But I love Iowa. I'm here."

Shortly before the debate Trump told CNN that top Fox officials had called him to apologize. Trump said he was mulling a last-minute appearance, but that his veterans event "took on a life of its own" and he felt compelled to appear there instead.

Adding to the spectacle, rival Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who is languishing in polls, joined Trump at his veterans event, as did low-polling former senator Rick Santorum.

Both won the Iowa caucuses in previous election cycles, but they appeared Thursday as minnows swimming behind the Trump shark.

- Political theater -

Analysts have been riveted by the unexpected drama and disruption to the typical Iowa political playbook. The last major candidate to skip a pre-Iowa caucus debate was Ronald Reagan, in 1980.

"Wow. What a chess game," Iowa State University political science professor Steffen Schmidt declared of the political theater.

With the combustible frontrunner out of their hair, Cruz and his rivals on stage zeroed in on policy.

Cruz sparred over immigration with Senator Marco Rubio, who accused his fellow senator of flip-flopping on the issue to gain support.

"The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign you've been (willing) to do or say anything to get votes," Rubio said, in some of their sharpest exchanges so far.

There were drawn-out debates on foreign policy, and the battle against Islamic State extremists.

The Republicans did train their collective sights on the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie arguing that as a former federal prosecutor, "there is no one on this stage better prepared to prosecute the case against Hillary Clinton than I am."

"The days of the Clintons in public housing are over," he steamed.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whose campaign has struggled to gain traction, recalled the divisive threat by Trump to ban Muslims, saying such irrational moves would create a "toxic" environment in America.

He also hit the frontrunner for his disparaging remarks about women and Hispanics, and for mocking people with disabilities.

"That's not a sign of strength," Bush said.

Straight out of the gate the seven debaters turned to the elephant-not-in-the-room, with top adversary Ted Cruz, pictured, using Trump-like language to humorously belittle himself and rival Republican presidential candidates Jim Watson (AFP)

US election primaries: opinion polls Alain Bommenel, Kun Tian (AFP)

With Donald Trump out of the way Republican presidential candidates launched into spirited debate about foreign policy and tackling the jihadist threat Jim Watson (AFP)
Lawsuit Blames Hollywood Talent Management Cartel for Diversity Woes

You may have heard of a lawsuit against Hollywood's major talent agencies, blaming them for stifling diversity. But discrimination is not the real claim in the lawsuit, The Hollywood Reporter complains.

Bruce Lenhoff, an agent, sued major talent management agencies last year -- his competition -- for poaching his clients. Since filing, he has amended his complaint to allege discrimination results from lack of competition, a conspiracy by a cartel in Hollywood. But some say it's just a way for an antitrust suit to dress up as a case about discrimination, a timely topic in light of the "#OscarsSoWhite" scandal making headlines.

A Tangled Web

A year ago when Lenhoff sued his rivals, there was much less protest about discrimination in Hollywood. Now, with stars like Spike Lee, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith protesting the Oscars because no black actors received nominations for films in 2015 -- part of a greater problem of lack of diversity representation in film they say -- Lenhoff has amended his complaint.

He points to a change in law that allowed talent agencies to receive investments and invest in projects, rather than being independent. Lenhoff complains that, as a result, more money and power are concentrated in fewer hands.The agents then "stockpiled" talent to the detriment of smaller agencies, like Lenhoff's.

This is tied to diversity in hiring because, according to the amended lawsuit, "an increasing number of writers, actors, directors etc., especially in the diversity category, are finding it more difficult to obtain adequate representation." Lenhoff's lawsuit says the work for minorities is being stifled "where they are not the 'marquee' element driving the package."

Hollywood Not Buying It?

The Hollywood Reporter is wary of accepting this view of Lenhoff's suit, saying he is hopping on the diversity bandwagon when what really irks him is that bigger agencies stole clients from his boutique firm. The agent argues that the packaging of deals, including talent, by "uber agencies" makes them a cartel conspiring to get only their own people and projects hired and made. But THR seems unconvinced that he is fighting for any cause but that of his own firm.

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Chinese ship to join Australia-led search for MH370

A Chinese ship is set to join the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370, Australia's deputy prime minister said Friday, as the jet's fate remains a mystery almost two years after it vanished.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will join three other vessels contracted from Dutch firm Fugro -- Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Havila Harmony -- currently scouring the depths of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia where the plane is believed to have crashed after diverting from its flight path.

Carrying 239 passengers and crew, the plane disappeared during a Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight on March 8, 2014.

A mural representing the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 pictured in Shah Alam, Kuala Lumpur Mohd Rasfan (AFP/File)

So far, only a two-metre-long (almost seven-foot) flaperon wing part that washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July has been confirmed to have come from aircraft.

"The ship, offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by Premier Li Keqiang of the People's Republic of China in November 2015, will undertake search operations in the southern Indian Ocean," Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.

"The total value of the contribution by the People's Republic of China, including the ship, is around Aus$20 million (US$14 million)."

Truss said the Chinese vessel would be equipped with a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) long towed sonar system, which searchers will use to take a closer look at the rugged seabed.

Dong Hai Jiu 101 is set to depart Singapore for Australia on Sunday and join the hunt -- which has so far covered 85,000 square kilometres (32,820 square miles) of the 120,000 square kilometres search zone -- in late February, Truss added.

Australian authorities have said that if after the 120,000 square kilometres is scoured and there are no new leads to pinpoint the location of the missing aircraft, the search zone would not be expanded.
China jails three 'civil disobedience' activists

A Chinese court sentenced three activists to prison on Friday for allegedly attempting to start a non-violent civil rights movement, family members and campaign groups said, the latest example of the Communist Party's intensifying crackdown on dissent.

Tang Jingling received a five-year sentence, while Yuan Xinting and Wang Qingying were given three-and-a-half and two-and-a-half-year terms respectively, Amnesty International said in a press release.

The conviction for "inciting subversion of state power" was handed down by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, the London-based group said.

China's Communist party does not tolerate anything it perceives as a potential threat to its rule, and dozens of activists have been imprisoned since President Xi Jinping took office two years ago Mark Ralston (AFP/File)

"This is a ridiculous verdict," said Tang's wife Wang Yanfang, who confirmed the sentences.

"They are not guilty of any crime. They just upheld values of justice," she told AFP.

China's Communist party does not tolerate anything it perceives as a potential threat to its rule, and dozens of activists have been imprisoned since President Xi Jinping took office two years ago.

During the trial, police accused the Guangzhou trio of distributing the books about non-violent resistance and "wilfully incited the subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system".

They added in a statement to prosecutors posted online by the activists' lawyers that the men had rented an office to study, print, and mail several books including one titled "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking about the Fundamentals".

They were also accused of disseminating "From Dictatorship to Democracy" by Gene Sharp, an expert on non-violent social movements.

The books "have been confirmed to have serious political transgressions", police added.

Tang's wife said the defendants were accused of opposing the Communist party and government, but all the evidence was "related to five books".

"In China, even spreading the ideas of non-violent civil disobedience will lead to a criminal prosecution", she said.

A court official declined to comment to AFP.

The trial in July came as China's state security detained or called in for questioning more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists, in what analysts have called one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent in years. Several were formally arrested on subversion charges two weeks ago after being held in secret for six months.

"The sentences for Tang, Yuan, and Wang don't bode well for the more than a dozen human rights lawyers likely to stand trial soon for similar 'subversion' charges," Sophie Richardson, China director for US-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Friday.

"The Chinese government needs to stop equating peaceful criticism with subversion if it is to make any progress towards respecting rights."

Tang, 44, was himself a prominent human rights lawyer who had aided farmers attempting to take local officials accused of illegal land seizures to court.
Emperor Akihito visits Japanese troop shrine in Philippines

Japanese Emperor Akihito offered flowers Friday at a shrine built in the Philippines for Japanese soldiers killed during Japan's brutal World War II occupation of the Southeast Asian nation.

The 82-year-old monarch and his wife, Empress Michiko, bowed twice while laying white bouquets at a table in front of the grey marble shrine, located in the lake town of Caliraya about three hours' drive from Manila.

In a half-hour event aired live in Japan by public broadcaster NHK, the imperial couple spoke and shook hands with former Japanese soldiers as well as relatives of their comrades killed in the Philippines.

Filipina "comfort women", sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII, participate in a protest in front of the Japanese Embassy in Manila to coincide with Japanese Emperor Akihito's visit to the Philippines on January 29, 2016 Noel Celis (AFP)

"You have survived difficult times," Michiko said to one of the the soldiers in attendance.

Akihito, meanwhile, told another: "Take care of yourself, stay well."

The royals are winding up a five-day visit to the Philippines to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic ties as well as to honour those who died during the Japanese occupation.

Akihito has made honouring Japanese and non-Japanese who died in World War II a touchstone of his near three-decade reign -- known as Heisei, or "achieving peace" -- and now in its twilight.

He has previously journeyed to other Pacific battle sites where Japanese troops and civilians made desperate last stands in the name of his father Hirohito.

On Wednesday he bowed his head in sorrow during a sombre ceremony at the Philippines' biggest war cemetery in Manila, vowing later never to forget the many Filipinos killed during the occupation.

Tens of thousands of Philippine and allied US troops died marching to Japanese concentration camps or in confinement during Japan's World War II occupation.

An estimated 100,000 Filipinos also died during the month-long campaign to liberate Manila in 1945, which saw aerial bombings and artillery flatten the city.

Akihito's visit is the first by a Japanese emperor to the Philippines and comes as the two countries strengthen economic and defence ties, partly to counter China's increasingly assertive actions in disputed regional waters.

Japan's perceived failure to properly atone for its wartime actions has been a constant source of friction with China and South Korea.

But the Philippines has been much more accepting, partly because Japan has given billions of dollars in aid.

President Benigno Aquino gave Akihito a red-carpet welcome and hosted a banquet at the presidential palace for him on Wednesday.

"The state visit of their Imperial Majesties... serves to strengthen the friendship between the Filipino and Japanese peoples as both nations mark the completion of six decades of harmonious relationship," presidential spokesman Herminio Coloma said Friday.

But the visit has been marked by small protests by women forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese occupation troops who are demanding a belated apology and compensation.

"The emperor's visit to the shrine is improper. Their soldiers committed many crimes in our country," Isabelita Vinuya, 84, told AFP as she and nine other ex-sex slaves held candles outside the Japanese embassy in Manila on Friday.

Japanese Emperor Akihito and his wife Empress Michiko offer flowers during a visit to a Japanese memorial garden in Caliraya south of Manila on January 29, 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP)
Iran coerces Afghans to fight in Syria: HRW

Iran's Revolutionary Guards has recruited thousands of Afghans, some by coercion, to fight in Syria's war alongside forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

"Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the New York-based HRW.

"Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe."

Syrian pro-government troops hold positions in the Syrian town of Ain al-Hanash near l-Bab in Aleppo's eastern countryside Georges Ourfalian (AFP/File)

Shiite Iran is a staunch supporter of Assad and provides financial and military support to his regime.

Tehran says its Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised of Afghan recruits, are volunteers to defend sacred Shiite sites in Syria and Iraq against Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group.

The brigade, which is backed by the powerful Revolutionary Guards, is named after the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed whose mausoleum near Damascus is venerated by Shiites.

But some reports say the Afghans have been offered residency and a monthly salary to fight for Iran.

The Islamic republic denies having any boots on the ground and insists its commanders and generals act as "military advisers" in Syria and Iraq.

However, funerals are regularly held across Iran for "volunteer" fighters from Iran, Afghanistan, and sometimes Pakistan.

Iran hosts an estimated three million Afghans, many of whom have fled persecution and repeated bouts of armed conflict in their homeland, said HRW.

Only 950,000 have refugee status in Iran and the rest have been deemed unqualified for asylum.

At least two dozen Afghans interviewed by the watchdog said they or their relatives had been recruited or coerced by the Iranian authorities to fight in Syria.

Six of them said Iranian forces had trained them or their relatives in military camps near Tehran and Shiraz in 2015.

Two of the six had joined voluntarily, while the other four said they or their relatives had been coerced or forced to fight.
UN envoy warns of eroding freedoms in S. Korea

A UN envoy on Friday warned of a gradual erosion of the freedom of assembly in South Korea, and cited North Korea as an extreme example of what happens when such tendencies go unchecked.

Wrapping up a week-long visit, UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai praised South Korea's successful transition from military rule to democracy, but also highlighted signs that the country was moving backwards.

"I sense a trend of gradual regression on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association  not a dramatic shutdown of these rights, but a slow, creeping inclination to degrade them," Kiai said.

Maina Kiai, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, speaks during a press conference wrapping up his week-long visit to South Korea in Seoul on January 29, 2016 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP)

"I find that space for exercising the right to peaceful assembly has been shrinking over the past few years," he added.

In particular, he noted cases where government officials had restricted protests by citing the inconvenience they caused or by raising the spectre of the security threat posed by North Korea.

And he expressed concern over police tactics used against demonstrators during rallies.

Last November, more than 60,000 people took to the streets of Seoul to protest the government's push for an unpopular labour reform plan and a controversial scheme to impose state-issued history textbooks in schools.

That protest -- the largest South Korea has seen in nearly a decade -- erupted into violent clashes between demonstrators and police using water cannons and pepper spray.

President Park Geun-hye condemned the rally as an effort to "deny the rule of law," urging strong measures against violent protesters.

But Kiai insisted that gatherings and demonstrations served a critical social role.

"They allow underrepresented groups to amplify their voices," he told a press conference in Seoul.

"Consider the alternatives. DPRK is a glaring example to avoid," he said, using the official acronym for North Korea.

"Protests helped make this country great, and openness has long been a tradition. I would urge both the people and the government of this country to cherish that legacy," Kiai said.

Critics of Park's conservative government say it is promoting a return to the authoritarian rule of her father, the late military strongman Park Chung-Hee.

Referring to some 1,500 demonstrators who were summoned for investigation following the November 14 protest, Kiai said such actions were deterring would-be participants.

"Organisers of peaceful assemblies should not be held liable, under any circumstances, for the criminal actions of others," Kiai said.

The UN envoy will submit a full report on his visit to the UN Human Rights Council in June.

Anti-government protesters run between water cannons towards riot police in Seoul on November 14, 2015 Ed Jones (AFP/File)
New claims of child sex abuse by peacekeepers in C. Africa

New allegations surfaced Friday of child sexual abuse in the Central African Republic involving UN peacekeepers as well as troops serving in a European mission and in France's Sangaris operation.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein described the latest claims to come to light as "extremely serious allegations" and said it was "crucial that these cases are thoroughly and urgently investigated."

The new cases linking EU and French troops are said to date to 2014 but have only been discovered in recent weeks as a result of a UN investigation.

United Nations peacekeepers patrol on January 2, 2016 in Bangui Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

The allegations against UN peacekeepers mostly date back to last year and in a first, the United Nations revealed the nationalities of the troops involved.

They are from Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Niger and Senegal.

There has been a wave of allegations against UN peacekeepers serving in the Central African Republic, but the latest probe brought to light possible crimes committed by European Union (EUFOR) forces.

Two girls said they were raped by EUFOR soldiers, while two others said they were paid to have sexual relations with other EUFOR soldiers, a UN statement said.

The four were aged between 14 and 16 at the time.

Three girls told UN investigators that they believed their abusers were from Georgia.

In Brussels, an EU source said the allegations were "totally unprecedented" for an EU mission.

Some 150 Georgian soldiers were deployed with the EUFOR contingent, which at its peak counted some 700 soldiers sent to Bangui to help restore order.

Reacting to the allegations, EUFOR said in a statement that "the EU takes these allegations very seriously."

Georgia's defence ministry said it would "do everything possible to ensure that those individuals committing such crimes are held responsible."

- Sex for cookies -

UN staff also interviewed two children allegedly abused in 2014 by soldiers from the French Sangaris force.

The girl and boy were aged seven and nine respectively at the time.

"The girl said she had performed oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for a bottle of water and a sachet of cookies.

"Both she and the nine-year-old boy said that other children were abused in a similar fashion in repeated incidents involving several French soldiers," the statement said.

The six cases of alleged abuse by foreign troops took place at a sprawling camp for displaced people at M'Poko, near Bangui's airport.

French soldiers serving in the Sangaris force are already being investigated in France over allegations that they forced children in CAR to perform sexual acts in exchange for food.

On Friday, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian ordered a fresh probe following the latest allegations.

- New claims against UN peacekeepers -

In the latest wave of allegations facing the troubled UN mission in the Central African Republic, eight soldiers and two police were accused of having sex with minors.

Four of the soldiers are from Niger, two from Bangladesh, one from Morocco and one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, along with two police from Senegal.

The latest claims bring to 22 the number of cases of sexual abuse involving peacekeepers from the UN mission in the Central African Republic.

The new cases follow a hard-hitting report released last month that found the United Nations had grossly mishandled allegations of child sex abuse in CAR.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the head of the 10,000-strong MINUSCA force last year over the mounting number of cases, but the allegations have continued to surface.

UN spokesperson Rupert Colville (L) and Interim Director of the UN Information Service in Geneva, Ahmad Fawzi, brief the press on new claims of child abuse by foreign troops in Africa, on January 29, 2016 in Geneva Fabrice Coffrini (AFP)

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said UN human rights staff interviewed two children who were allegedly abused in 2014 by soldiers from the French Sangaris force Fabrice Coffrini (AFP/File)
Bomb kills two police in Egypt's Sinai: ministry

A bomb blast killed two Egyptian police officers and wounded five others in an attack on their armoured vehicle in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday, the interior ministry said.

The vehicle was targeted near a school in the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish, it said in a statement, in the second such attack in recent days.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the region is a stronghold of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

Jihadists have regularly attacked security forces in the peninsula since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 Mohamed El-Sherbeny (AFP/File)

IS claimed a roadside bombing that killed a colonel and three soldiers on the outskirts of El-Arish on Wednesday.

Jihadists have regularly attacked security forces in the peninsula since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

They say their attacks are in retaliation for a government crackdown targeting Morsi supporters that has left hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned.

The authorities say hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed in attacks, mainly in North Sinai, since 2013.
Paris demands 'immediate' release of French, British journalists in Burundi

The French government, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Le Monde newspaper on Friday demanded that Burundi immediately free a French journalist and a British photographer arrested while reporting in the volatile central African nation.

"We were concerned to learn of the arrests of French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy and British photographer Philip Moore," Fabius said in a statement.

"I call on Burundi's authorities to proceed with their immediate release. Diplomatic procedures are underway."

French Foreign minister Laurent Fabius called on Burundi to release an arrested French journalist and British photographer Frederick Florin (AFP/File)

The two men were covering the crisis triggered in April last year by President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a controversial third term in office.

His quest to remain in power sparked weeks of street protests, a failed coup, frequent killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the media, forcing independent outlets to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.

Remy, a correspondent for Le Monde newspaper has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

Moore, a freelance photographer, has frequently worked for AFP, Le Monde and other international publications, winning widespread acclaim for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Le Monde demanded the release of the two men, who it said were arrested on Thursday afternoon while meeting with government opponents.

AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog said the reporters "were arrested while carrying out their mission to inform" and demanded they "be released as soon as possible."

Hoog recalled that AFP's correspondent in Burundi, Esdras Ndikumana, who also worked for Radio France Internationale (RFI), was forced into exile after being arrested and beaten by government forces in August 2015.

"This new serious incident, after that suffered by our correspondent Esdras Ndikumana, indicates the extreme difficulty in reporting on the Burundi situation and the permanent threats to journalists' security," added Hoog.

Le Monde said Remy had entered the country on January 19, and Moore on January 21.

"Both had visas and were only doing their job by meeting all parties involved in the tensions in Burundi," said the paper.

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion Griff Tapper (AFP/File)
Suicide attack kills 4 at mosque in Saudi Shiite region

A suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Shiite-populated eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers, killing four people before worshippers disarmed and tied up his accomplice who had fired on them.

The state Al-Ekhbariya news channel quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying four people died and 18 were wounded.

An initial ministry toll said two people were killed and seven hurt in the attack at the Al-Rida mosque in Mahasen, a neighbourhood in the eastern Al-Ahsa region.

A suicide attack on a mosque during Friday prayers in Shiite-populated eastern Saudi Arabia killed four people Fayez Nureldine (AFP/File)

"We started to pray, and then we were surprised to hear shooting," said Mohammad bin Salman al-Ahmadi, 25, who was slightly injured in the attack.

"We rushed and closed the doors. After that they shot at the door trying to break in. The suicide bomber blew himself up and the door flew open."

Power inside went out, leaving the mosque in darkness and filled with smoke as a second attacker "randomly" shot at worshippers, who tried to hide, Ahmadi said.

"Eventually the worshippers attacked him and took away his gun and took off his suicide belt. We tied him up using our 'shemaghs' and held him till police came," he said, referring to a traditional cloth head covering.

Friday's incident was the latest assault on members of the Sunni-dominated kingdom's Shiite minority, after a string of shootings and bombings claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The interior ministry said two suicide bombers were prevented from entering the mosque by security personnel.

"When security approached to intercept them, one of them responded by blowing himself up at the mosque entrance while an exchange of fire took place with another," it said.

The ministry said the second suspect was injured, and arrested with help from citizens.

"A suicide belt was found in his possession," it said, adding that automatic weapons were also recovered.

- Increased security -

Since deadly attacks claimed by IS last year against Shiite mosques in the kingdom's east, security has been increased and community guards now inspect visitors to houses of worship.

Friday's attack happened in an area largely populated by employees of the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil company, a resident said.

Most of Saudi Arabia's Shiites live in the kingdom's Eastern Province which includes Al-Ahsa, an oasis region where much of the kingdom's oil reserves are located.

A video circulated on social media purportedly showed the aftermath of the attack, where several people lay still on a carpet, surrounded by broken glass.

One man could be seen applying a tourniquet to the thigh of a victim whose white robe was soaked with blood.

"People were so angry," and apprehended one of the alleged suspects themselves, the resident told AFP, asking for anonymity.

"Police started shooting in the air so they could take him away."

Another resident said Mahasen is a mostly Sunni neighbourhood, and the mosque that was attacked "is a house that they turned into a mosque."

IS, a Sunni extremist group, has claimed several deadly attacks against Saudi Shiites, whom the jihadists consider heretics, since late 2014.

Friday's bombing was the first against Eastern Province Shiites since October, when a gunman fired on faithful commemorating Ashura in the Qatif area, killing five before police shot him dead.

Ashura is one of the holiest occasions for the Shiite faith.

In June, four Shiites died preventing a suicide bomber from entering the hall of Al-Anoud mosque in Dammam city.

Days earlier, 21 people were killed in another Shiite mosque bombing in Eastern Province.

Groups claiming affiliation with IS said they carried out those blasts and the Ashura shooting.

During Ashura in 2014, gunmen killed seven Shiite worshippers, including children, in the eastern town of Al-Dalwa. The interior ministry said the suspects had links to IS.

The group has also claimed deadly attacks on Saudi security forces.

Since deadly attacks claimed by IS last year against Shiite mosques in the kingdom's east, security has been increased and community guards now inspect visitors to houses of worship
Curtain falls on Myanmar's army-led parliament

Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi applauded the military-stacked parliament on its final day in office Friday, as one-time enemies welcomed a transition that will loosen the army's 50-year grip on power.

After a de-mob happy last session for sitting MPs, Suu Kyi congratulated her political opponents on "opening the road" for her party, which won a landslide in November elections.

Friday called time on a five-year term of a parliament that has fundamentally changed Myanmar's political landscape, delivered a shot in the arm to the economy and greater freedoms to society.

Chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) Aung San Suu Kyi leaves after last day of parliament's regular session in Naypyidaw on January 29, 2016 Ye Aung Thu (AFP)

"I believe we can all co-operate for our country and people, whether it is outside or inside the parliament," said Suu Kyi, who was held captive for more than 15 years by the army.

Her address to lawmakers from across the political spectrum came at a party at the Naypyidaw parliament that included karaoke for normally po-faced army figures.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmakers will take their seats for the first time on Monday.

The back-slapping mood was in stark contrast to the acrimony and repression that characterised the junta years.

For decades Myanmar was seen as a basket-case run by paranoid generals who sunk the economy, crushed dissent and cut the Southeast Asian nation off from the rest of the world.

But reforms since 2011 steered by President Thein Sein have overhauled the country and culminated in the NLD election victory.

- Songs today, challenges tomorrow -

Suu Kyi faces deep challenges ahead to rebuild a country worn down by war, poverty and still under the influence of a powerful military.

Yet on Friday in a once unthinkable atmosphere of collaboration, MPs took to the stage to belt out farewell songs as more than a thousand lawmakers old and new tucked into a slap-up meal in a grand hall after the closing session.

Outgoing parliament speaker Shwe Mann crooned an English-language school favourite, urging the audience to join him as he sang "dreams may come true".

Other performance highlights included a colourful dance routine by ethnic minority MPs and Myanmar classics sung by uniformed soldiers.

"The Lady", as Suu Kyi is known in Myanmar, did not sing.

President Thein Sein on Thursday hailed the country's democratic progress as a "triumph" for the country's people.

He will remain in his post until the end of March, while the NLD will control the new parliament from February 1.

The military retains huge powers, with a junta-era constitution giving unelected soldiers a quarter of all parliamentary seats as well as key government ministries.

The army-scripted charter also blocks Suu Kyi from becoming president because she married and had children with a foreigner.

The Nobel laureate has vowed to rule "above" the president without revealing who the proxy ruler would be.

Her greatest test will be to work with the army as she keeps her sights on power.

"She has had a lot of obstacles and hurdles put in her path but she has come perhaps to the last one and the prize that she wants so much is within grasp," said Myanmar political analyst Khin Zaw Win.

"But she needs the help of the military," he said.

- Surprise endorsement -

Suu Kyi has already taken that charm offensive to the very top, meeting army chief Min Aung Hlaing on Monday.

She even secured the surprise endorsement of former junta strongman Than Shwe in a meeting following the elections last year.

In a press conference following the day's festivities, Shwe Mann -- who was a top general in Than Shwe's government -- sought to take credit for that encounter.

"Although he has no power today, he still has some deserved influence. I thought a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and senior general Than Shwe would be beneficial, so I arranged for it," he told reporters.

Observers say Suu Kyi and her colleagues will have to learn fast to overcome their relative political inexperience.

Civil wars continue to rage in Myanmar's ethnic minority borderlands, despite a nascent peace process.

Corruption bedevils the country's creaking bureaucracy, while years of neglect also mean many of the nation's 51 million people still struggle to access basic services.

Myanmar's parliamentary members leave after the last day of the parliament's regular session in Naypyidaw on January 29, 2016 Ye Aung Thu (AFP)

Outgoing parliament speaker Shwe Mann crooned an English-language school favourite, urging the audience to join him as he sang "dreams may come true". Ye Aung Thu (AFP)

Performers in traditional dress entertain people during a farewell ceremony at the parliament in Naypyidaw on January 29, 2016 Ye Aung Thu (AFP)
What to Do If Sued for Negligent Hiring

Getting sued is always a pain -- there is really no other way to put it. Even if you have done nothing wrong, you'll need to respond to filings on deadline and submit to questions and spend your time on a complaint. Negligence in hiring suits are no different in this regard.

But they are a little harder than some other claims insofar as you're being blamed for systems you may not have put in place, or which you do not now oversee personally, rather than a negligent action you took. Regardless, if you are responsible for hiring, you should acquaint yourself with the concept of negligence in hiring.

Timber, a Short Story

A trucker in Arkansas who drove for a timber company cost them $7 million in 2011 after he killed someone. The family named the timber company in the wrongful death suit, saying their negligent hiring caused the accident, and the jury agreed. The family was granted relief.

What convinced the jury was evidence that the trucker's driving record was bad and should have set off alarm bells. But he was hired, meaning the company either did not care or did not have a sufficiently rigorous screening process. Either way, it paid for the mistake.

First Steps When Sued

If you find yourself in a similar position, facing a negligent hiring lawsuit, the first thing you should do is get organized. Review the complaint and your internal hiring process, your records of what happened, but don't blow up at employees or even reveal there is a problem. And do not panic.

Before you meet with a lawyer you should have an idea of internal structure -- what should happen, what you thought happened, and what is claimed to have happened. You'll need to be able to explain all of this to counsel, briefly.

Consult With Counsel

It's sometimes hard to do, but it is best to just get organized and keep cool when faced with a lawsuit. Although there are serious consequences, it's just another administrative process that can only be resolved by handling it, ideally with some panache.

Now meet with a lawyer. Let counsel lead and do the heavy lifting but be prepared to assist. Together, you'll get through this, one step at a time.

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Iraq inks $328 mn deal with GE to boost power production

Iraq has signed a $328 million deal with US company General Electric that will boost power output during peak summer months, officials said Friday, although it falls far short of the country's needs.

The deal will make only a small dent in the country's major summer production shortfall, which leaves Iraqis with just a few hours of government-provided power a day while temperatures can hit 50 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit).

Electricity ministry spokesman Musaab al-Mudarris told AFP that the deal, which involves maintenance and improvements on more than 10 power stations in multiple provinces, would add between 700 and 1,000 megawatts to production capacity.

Iraqi protesters wave a hangman's noose and their national flags during a demonstration against corruption and a lack of services, including electricity, in Baghdad's Tahrir Square on August 28, 2015 Haidar Mohammed Ali (AFP/File)

The US embassy in aghdad said he deal was "valued at more than $328 million", and that it "will sustain and increase Iraqs power generation by at least 700 megawatts for the peak summer period".

But Electricity Minister Qassem al-Fahdawi told parliament last year that the summer production shortfall was over 7,500 megawatts, meaning the projected increase under the GE deal is still dwarfed by the scale of the problem.

Fahdawi also said that production is only part of the problem, as Baghdad's grid has a maximum capacity of 3,500 megawatts irrespective of how much is produced.

Anger over poor services and widespread corruption sparked weeks of protests in Baghdad and other areas last year, pushing Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to announce a reform programme.
Critics warn new draft charter will deepen Thai crisis

A new draft charter meant to soothe Thailand's caustic political divisions was unveiled Friday but swiftly shot down by the toppled government who warned it would only deepen the kingdom's crisis.

The draft is the junta's second stab at crafting a new constitution since former army chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha ousted an elected civilian government in May 2014.

Prayut says he was forced into a coup to restore order following months of mass street protests.

Prime Minister of Thailand General Prayut Chan-o-Cha's ruling junta says its new charter as the only way to clip the wings of powerful politicians and expunge corruption Don Emmert (AFP/File)

The junta touts its new charter as the only way to clip the wings of powerful politicians and expunge corruption.

But critics say it is a brazen attempt to limit the influence of billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra whose populist parties have won all elections since 2001, unsettling the Bangkok-centric elite.

The junta's first effort at a charter was voted down by a military-appointed committee late last year, effectively starting the drafting process anew and postponing elections for over a year.

Analysts said that move was engineered to extend the military government's rule over Thailand, which has seen 12 successful army takeovers since absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932 and 20 constitution rewrites.

The next few weeks will be dedicated to gathering feedback on the fresh charter, drafting committee chairman Meechai Ruechupan told reporters.

"We are ready to reasonably adjust the constitution as it will be enforced for the entire nation to benefit the public," he said, launching the document.

-'Lip service to democracy'-

The revised charter contains many of the same controversial points that saw the last draft voted down.

A major sticking point among politicians of all stripes is a provision to allow for the parliament to choose an unelected prime minister to lead the country.

The draft wants to establish a proportional representation voting system, something the junta say will make every ballot count but large parties have balked at that provision fearing they may struggle to make a clear majority.

Critics say other elements are openly anti-democratic, including a provision for a 200-member unelected senate.

In a statement rejecting the draft, the toppled Puea Thai Party said it hoped the junta is "aware of the damage that will occur if the constitution is enacted".

The party, whose leader Yingluck Shinawatra -- Thaksin's sister -- was removed by a court just before the coup and is now on trial warned the document may become "the core cause of crisis in the future".

A finalised version of the charter is due to go to a referendum vote this August.

But political expression or gatherings remain banned in Thailand and it is unclear if opponents will be at all able to discuss their concerns.

"In some sense, the new document gives lip service to democracy while only enshrining a hollow variant of it," Paul Chambers, a Thailand-based academic, told AFP.

Thailand's nearly century-long struggle with democracy has seen 19 charters come and go, with power swinging back and forth between military rulers and quasi-democratic legislatures.

Prayut this week said elections will be held in July 2017, irrespective of the outcome of referendum.

Supporters of the Puea Thai Party, which says it hopes the junta is "aware of the damage that will occur if the constitution is enacted" Pornchai Kittiwongsakul (AFP/File)
Burundi frees two foreign journalists: French ambassador

Two foreign journalists working in volatile Burundi were released without charge Friday, 24 hours after police arrested them in a raid, the French ambassador said.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested on Thursday afternoon during a raid in which 15 others were also held, police said.

Both journalists have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work. Their arrest sparked widespread condemnation from rights groups and diplomats.

French journalist for Le Monde newspaper, Jean Philippe Remy (L) and British freelance photographer Phil Moore are pictured in Bujumbura on January 29, 2016

"They were released, no charges were brought against them," French ambassador Gerrit Van Rossum told AFP, but added they had not been given their equipment and notebooks back.

The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA), who described the journalists as "consummate professionals", said that while their release was "a big relief... the incident bodes ill for our work in Burundi."

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

Moore, 34, has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy, 49, has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.
'Miracle' rescue of four China miners after 36 days underground

Four miners trapped underground for 36 days in a collapsed Chinese gypsum mine were pulled out late Friday, a "miracle" rescue in a country with a poor track record on industrial accidents.

The final operation to save the men trapped more than 200 metres (660 feet) underground took two hours as they were hauled up to the surface one by one in a rescue "capsule", according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The four were among 29 trapped when the mine collapsed on December 25. But the rescue was marred as a local government official said there had been no contact with 13 other missing miners.

Rescuers free a miner trapped underground for 36 days in Pingyi County, eastern China's Shandong province on January 29, 2016

The incident drew comparisons to a 2010 mining accident in Chile, which saw 33 miners trapped underground for 69 days before their rescue.

"It is a miracle," said Zeng Kunyuan on microblog Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.

"I hope they can sit at the dinner table on the eve of Spring Festival!" the posting said, referring to the upcoming Chinese New Year when people return home to have a traditional meal with their families.

Dramatic footage released by CCTV showed rescue crews applauding as the men were brought above ground in China's eastern province of Shandong.

Of the 29 that were trapped, one has been found dead and 11 were rescued the day after the accident. There has been no contact with the remaining 13, however.

"We used life detection equipment to search for them. Unfortunately, we haven't heard from those 13 missing miners," Zhang Shuping, mayor of Linyi city which governs the area was quoted by CCTV as saying.

The four rescued men were shown being wrapped in military blankets, blindfolded to protect their eyes, and put into ambulances. They were named by state media as Zhao Zhicheng, aged 50, Li Qiusheng, 39, Guan Qingji, 58, and Hua Mingxi, 36.

"Thanks," Guan was reported to have said as he was hoisted out clinging to a cable which held him with a series of harnesses strapped to his body.

The four had suffered no major injuries and would soon be able to return home, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Cao Qingde, deputy head of the local hospital where they were being treated, as saying.

- 'New page' -

Rescuers first detected signs of life on December 30. The rescue team managed to contact the miners, the broadcaster reported, and send down food, clothes and lamps through a tunnel.

However, complicated geological conditions made the rescue difficult with crews having to account for the structural instability of the tunnel and falling rocks.

Government officials said this marked China's first rescue of its kind, accomplished by drilling through rock with a large drill head.

"In the rescue history of the People's Republic of China, this has turned a new page," Gao Guangwei of the State Administration of Work Safety told CCTV.

The incident was the latest deadly accident in a country where safety rules are often flouted to cut costs.

Despite the jubilation over the rescue, some online postings called for accountability over the accident.

"Feel so proud of this? Shouldn't it be the time to hold someone accountable?" said one posting.

The mine owner committed suicide by drowning himself at the scene soon after the collapse, Xinhua reported previously.

The cause of the collapse is under investigation, but industrial safety regulations are often evaded in China and corruption enables bosses to pursue profits at the cost of worker safety.

Four officials in Pingyi county, where the mine is located, including the county's party chief and head of government, were removed from their posts in the wake of the incident.

The gypsum pit and other mines in its vicinity were ordered to stop production in October by local authorities because of a risk of sinkholes, but it kept operating secretly, the Beijing Times reported earlier.

Accidents linked to lax industrial safety enforcement saw hundreds of people killed in China last year, including a landslide caused by improper disposal of waste in the southern commercial hub of Shenzhen in December and chemical blasts in the industrial city of Tianjin in August.

Rescuers free four miners who were among 29 trapped when a mine collapsed on December 25 in Pingyi County, eastern China's Shandong province

Four miners trapped underground for 36 days in a collapsed Chinese gypsum mine in eastern Shandong province have been rescued CCTV/AFP (CCTV/AFP)

CCTV footage taken on January 29, 2016 shows rescuers waiting to bring out the trapped miners in Pingyi County, in eastern China's Shandong province CCTV/AFP (CCTV/AFP)
France to probe alleged child sex abuse by its soldiers in CAR

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has ordered a probe into allegations of sexual abuse of children by French soldiers in the Central African Republic, aides said Friday.

The minister instructed French investigators to pursue the probe "as soon as he became aware of documents issued on January 19 by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights", an aide told AFP.

The High Commissioner, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, earlier Friday expressed alarm at new claims of abuse by foreign peacekeepers in the country, including cases involving European Union troops.

A French soldier standing guard as Muslim people wait to seek refuge at the Boali church, in Boali, some 100km north of Bangui Eric Fefferberg (AFP/File)

The allegations relate to 2014 but have only come to light in recent weeks, UN officials said.

French soldiers serving in France's Sangaris force are already being investigated in France over allegations that they forced children in CAR to perform sexual acts in exchange for food.

The accusations revealed in Geneva on Friday mainly concern peacekeepers from Georgia serving as part of the European Union peacekeeping force EUFOR.

Two girls said they were raped and two others said they were paid to have sex with other EUFOR soldiers. The four girls were aged between 14 and 16 at the time of the alleged abuse, according to a UN statement.

The French defence ministry said it had passed on the new information it had received from the United Nations to French investigators to allow them to establish whether they were different allegations from those already made.

"The United Nations and France are cooperating fully in order to shed all the light possible on these very serious allegations," the Le Drian aide said.
Mother who took toddler to Raqqa convicted by UK court

A mother who took her toddler to Syria and joined the Islamic State (IS) group is thought to have become Friday the first British woman to be convicted after returning home.

Tareena Shakil, 26, was found guilty of IS membership and encouraging terrorism in posts on Twitter before leaving Britain.

The court in Birmingham, central England, heard she was radicalised on the Internet and in October 2014 told her family she was going to Turkey for a beach holiday.

An undated photo released by West Midlands Police service and received in London on January 29, 2016, shows Tareena Shakil as she poses for a custody photograph

Instead, she crossed the border into Syria and then went to IS stronghold Raqqa.

"I left to build us all a house in heaven, allah promised us heaven if we sacrifice our worldly life x," she wrote in a message to a relative. "I'm not coming back."

In Raqqa, she was kept in a large house with other single women and posed with her son for a selfie while wearing a black balaclava branded with the IS symbol.

Other pictures found on her phone showed her posing with an AK-47 assault rifle and a hand gun.

However, Shakil found life under IS rules too strict.

In January 2015, after repeatedly looking up "I want to leave ISIS" on the Internet, she and her son travelled by road to the Turkish border.

They ran one kilometre to escape into Turkey, dodging a three-man IS patrol before handing themselves into the Turkish military, she told the court.

She was arrested when police boarded her flight home at London's Heathrow Airport last February.

During her trial, Shakil claimed she only travelled to Syria because she wanted to live under sharia law.
Palestinians again appeal to UN to revive peace process

Palestinian officials are waging a new campaign at the United Nations to revive peace prospects, with the starting point possibly a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, the Palestinian envoy said Friday.

Ambassador Riyad Mansour rejected the suggestion that prospects for progress were slim because of the US election campaign, which could make Washington more reluctant to put pressure on Israel to compromise.

"We will not accept that the year 2016 is a year when we cannot do anything," Mansour told reporters.

Riyad H. Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, addresses the meeting on the situation in the Middle East and Palestine January 26, 2016 at the UN in New York UN Photo/Loey Felipe (United Nations/AFP/File)

"We have to open some doors to keep the hope alive and keep the two-state solution alive."

Mansour said the success of the Iran nuclear deal and progress on the Syrian peace track highlighted the need for a "collective approach" to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ongoing violence on the ground is likely to worsen if nothing is done, he said, adding that the situation in August and September will be "much, much worse than what we see now."

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks since October 1 has killed 25 Israelis, according to an AFP count.

Over the same period, 159 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks and others during clashes and demonstrations.

The Palestinian ambassador recently met with the envoys from the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- to discuss the way forward.

Mansour declined to give details of the talks, including whether the United States, which as Israel's ally has blocked UN action, was open to a Security Council role in reviving the peace process.

The Palestinian envoy suggested that a resolution condemning Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements could be a first step, but he stressed that there should be a broader plan.

This could include the creation of an international support group, the deployment of observers to trouble spots or the convening of an international peace conference.

"The signal has to come from the Security Council," he said.

The United States used its veto in 2011 to block a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements, and it has rejected a UN role in the peace process.
Strike on IS cyber-fighter killed 3 civilians: US Army

An American bombardment that killed an Islamic State group cyber-operative in Syria last August also killed three civilians, the US Army acknowledged on Friday.

The bombing August 24 in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, which killed cyber-combatant Junaid Hussain, was one of four incidents alleged to have caused civilian casualties that the US Central Command said it had closely analyzed.

"It was assessed three civilians in the vicinity of the strikes were killed and five more were injured," said the Central Command, which is in charge of American forces in the Middle East and North Africa.

The US Army acknowledges that a bombardment killing an Islamic State cyber-operative also killed three civilians in Syria

The statement also acknowledged the death of two other civilians in a coalition air strike on September 24 near Sinjar, in northern Iraq, as well as injuries to a total of three civilians in two other attacks.

The five civilians killed would bring to 21 the number of likely civilian victims officially recognized by the coalition since it began launching air strikes against Islamic State militants in August 2014.

"We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes," the Centcom statement said.

The coalition generally acknowledges the civilian victims of its strikes only after lengthy investigations. It has been accused of underestimating their numbers.

Airwars, an NGO based in London, which compares and compiles publicly available information, estimates that actual civilian deaths could number in the hundreds, possibly even exceeding 1,000.

According to some sources, the coalition has begun accepting a greater risk of civilian casualties when bombing attacks look likely to give the coalition a significant advantage.

Junaid Hussain, who was killed in the August attack, used Twitter and social networks to incite IS sympathizers around the world to launch "lone wolf" style attacks.

American officials say he was notably implicated last spring in compiling and circulating a list of 100 American military figures to be killed.
Politico top staff to see post-election shakeup

The top editor and other key staff at Politico will depart the Washington-based media group as it prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary and expand internationally.

One of those departing is Jim VandeHei, CEO and co-founder of the group which has made an impact on political journalism and has since expanded to Europe.

The departures, most of which will come after the 2016 US elections, were announced in a memo to staff Thursday by publisher Robert Allbritton.

Politico's chief political writer Mike Allen, seen here hosting a Politico Playbook Breakfast on November 28, 2012, announced he would be leaving the news organization alongside other key staff Alex Wong (Getty/AFP/File)

Also departing will be chief political writer Mike Allen, chief operating officer Kim Kingsley, executive vice president Danielle Jones and chief revenue officer Roy Schwartz.

"These transitions make perfect sense for the publication, coming a decade (almost to the day) after I recruited them to join this cause," Allbritton said in the memo.

"Jim in particular began signaling to me some years ago that he hoped the next stop in his career would be to once again start a new venture."

Allbritton said he had asked John Harris to take on the title of publisher in addition to editor in chief.

"The goal during this transition is to never lose touch with the magic embedded in the Politico brand," the memo said.

"With this additional role, I am asking him to help lead us once more in building a Politico that will be much bigger than we know today -- one that spans the country, spans oceans, and spans languages."

Harris and VandeHei walked out of Washington Post jobs to launch Politico as a digital media outlet in 2007.

Politico came to prominence on the back of the dramatic fight between then-Senator Barack Obama and former first lady Hillary Clinton for the US presidency.
Diplomats, fighters head delegations to Syria peace talks

The Syrian government and the country's largest mainstream opposition group have announced that they are sending delegations to Geneva, where peace talks are being hosted.

The embattled Syrian regime's delegation is headed by its ambassador to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari, as well as a number of diplomats and lawyers.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Moqdad will oversee the talks from Damascus.

UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, meets representatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Geneva on January 29, 2016 Fabrice Coffrini (AFP)

And opposition figures from a Saudi-backed alliance of groups, including the National Coalition and several armed factions, have announced their delegation.

It will be headed by defected Syrian pilot Asaad al-Zoabi with Mohammed Alloush -- a senior official in the powerful Jaish al-Islam rebel group -- as chief negotiator.

GOVERNMENT

- Bashar al-Jaafari -

Born in Damascus in 1956, Jaafari began his career in Syria's foreign ministry in 1980.

He served in multiple posts, including as Syria's representative in Geneva, until he was appointed as Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations in 2006.

Jaafari served as the regime's chief negotiator in the last round of peace talks in Geneva in early 2014 and headed a government delegation that later met with some opposition groups in Moscow.

In March 2014, US authorities informed Jaafari that he would be restricted to a 40 kilometre (25 mile) travel radius around New York city.

Jaafari has a doctorate in political science from the Sorbonne University in Paris. He is married to an Iranian woman and is fluent in Farsi, French, and English.

- Faisal al-Moqdad -

Syria's deputy foreign minister was born in 1954 in the south of the country.

He holds a doctorate in English literature.

Moqdad first entered the diplomatic fold in 1994 and a year later he joined the Syria team at the UN mission in New York. In 2003, he became Syria's ambassador to the world body.

During the Vienna talks in October, Modqad, who rose the ranks to become deputy foreign minister in 2006, ruled out a transition period in Syria.

A source close to the government said that Moqdad will oversee the Geneva talks from Damascus, due to illness.

OPPOSITION

- Asaad al-Zoabi -

Asaad al-Zoabi was born in 1956 in southern Syria. He joined Syria's air force academy in 1974, then rose through the ranks to become a brigadier general.

He also worked as a military consultant in Yemen for more than two years.

Zoabi defected from the Syrian air force in August 2012 and fled to Jordan. From there, he began serving as a military adviser to rebel groups operating in the southern provinces of Daraa and Quneitra as well as Damascus.

He often appears on television programmes as a military analyst.

- Mohammed Alloush -

Mohammed Alloush was born in 1970 in Douma, now a rebel bastion in the opposition-held Eastern Ghouta area east of Damascus.

Alloush heads the political division of the powerful Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) rebel group.

He is the cousin of slain Jaish al-Islam head Zahran Alloush, killed in an air strike claimed by Syria's government on December 25.

Alloush studied Islamic law for one year in Damascus before moving to the Saudi city of Medina. In 2009, he received a degree in accounting in Beirut, according to a biography provided to AFP by Jaish al-Islam.

Jaish al-Islam, which is opposed to both the government and the Islamic State group, is believed to receive wide backing from Saudi Arabia.
THE source for news of bluegrass and old-time music events in Ireland - and more

Send in news or queries to the Bluegrass Ireland Blog (BIB) by e-mail , please; we can't send a direct reply to a comment on a post. The BIB does not do reviews or accept posts with 'marketing messages'. Thinking of touring in Ireland? Look at the BIB's THINKING OF TOURING IN IRELAND? page.
Italian toddler dies after tourist van crashes in Dominica

ROSEAU, Dominica (AP)  Authorities on the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica say a 16-month-old boy from Italy has died in a car crash that injured several other cruise ship passengers.

Police Superintendent Richmond Valentine says the boy's parents were among the eight people injured in Thursday's crash. He says the parents are expected to recover.

The tourists were passengers aboard the MSC Cruises ship Orchestra. MSC has issued a statement saying a total of five Italians and two Brazilians were injured. The company says the passengers were part of an onshore visit that they independently booked through a third party.
Trump holds his own event as rivals debate

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  As his rivals made their final case to voters ahead of Iowa's kickoff caucuses, Donald Trump was headlining a show of his own.

Just three miles from the site of the final GOP presidential debate before voting begins, Republican front-runner Donald Trump held what amounted to a cross between his typical rally and a fundraising telethon to benefit veterans.

Between his usual talking points about issues like the country's trade imbalance and media camera angles, Trump read out the names of wealthy friends who'd offered major contributions to veterans' cause. Later he announced the event had just cracked raising $6 million. When he announced he'd pledged $1 million himself, the crowd erupted into cheers.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The event  which featured Trump's moneyed friends making $1 million pledges and the online variety act Diamond and Silk on the same stage as wounded veterans and political rivals  was the latest example of how the billionaire businessman and former reality television star, has rewritten the rules of campaigning and turned protocol on its head. Trump decided to boycott the debate due to a feud with debate host Fox News and organized a competing event instead.

Trump opened by telling the students and veterans packed into a 775-seat auditorium at Drake University that he would have preferred to be at the debate, but felt he had little choice.

"You have to stick up for your rights. When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," he said.

In an interview with several reporters aboard his plane at the Des Moines airport before the event, Trump said he'd been in touch with Fox throughout the day.

"The time to change my mind was two days ago," he said. "It's too late. When you look at the lines, what am I going to do? Tell thousands of people that, by the way folks, I'm going to go do the debate? I think it would look bad."

Fox News Channel issued a statement saying Trump had offered to appear at the debate on the condition that Fox contribute $5 million to his charities, which the network said was not possible. Trump's campaign responded with a counter-statement saying that, if "FOX wanted to join in that effort and make a contribution Mr. Trump would have welcomed that."

Trump's decision posed potential risks with just days to go before Iowa's caucuses. While recent polls show him pulling ahead, he remains locked in a close race with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa. And his decision was seen by some voters and local party leaders as a slight to those still making up their minds.

But Trump said he wasn't concerned. While some might take issue, he said: "You're going to have a lot of voters that like that we didn't get pushed around."

About halfway through the event, Trump yielded the stage for Staff Sgt. John Wayne Walding, an Afghanistan war veteran who lost his leg to sniper fire, and who spoke powerfully about his experience overseas and about coping with the aftermath of war at home. Trump was later presented with a ring from a veterans group representing the number of veterans who commit suicide after returning home.

Trump was joined at his event by two of his presidential race rivals  Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum  who briefly spoke. Huckabee praised Trump for bringing them together, saying the three may be competing against each other, "but tonight we are colleagues in unison" for the cause.

Santorum spoke standing slightly to the side of Trump's podium, joking he didn't want his picture taken with the Trump campaign sign.

But in many ways the event was typical Trump. Moments after saying he would skip his usual campaign mainstay of reading off his poll numbers, Trump pivoted to a summary, bragging about his "amazing polls" and leading "by substantial margins in Iowa and every single state."

Later, as he introduced Walding, Trump offered the following: "He should be much more famous than me, 'cause he's a lot much more courageous than I am."

"I'm financially courageous," Trump added, but not so good at the other stuff.

Trump's campaign did not disclose Thursday which groups would receive money raised from the event, but representatives had spent the day reaching out to various groups, in some cases inquiring about their programs and finances. Among those contacted were the Green Beret Foundation, which provides care to veterans, and Fisher House, which provides free or low cost housing to veterans and military families receiving treatment at military medical centers.

Trump launched a website earlier Thursday to collect donations. Contributions collected there were funneled to The Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump's nonprofit charitable organization. The page says: "100 percent of your donations will go directly to Veterans needs."

As for the debate, Trump predicted it would have far fewer viewers without him on the stage.

And his event offered some similar trappings. Reporters covering his event were ushered to a filing room with five long rows of tables, where they watched via closed circuit television.

When it ended, Huckabee sauntered into the filing room to answer reporters' questions, giving it the distinct feel of the post-debate spin room just down the road.

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, left, and Donald Trump, center, laugh as they listen to Mike Huckabee during a campaign event on the campus of Drake University Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A trailer with a sign supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and satellite trucks, are parked on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa,Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, where Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign event. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, center, holds up his photo while greeting supporters after a campaign event on the campus of Drake University Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, left, and Donald Trump, center, laugh as they listen to Mike Huckabee during a campaign event on the campus of Drake University Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Prime minister says Australian vote to decide gay marriage

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP)  Australia's prime minister gave a personal assurance on Friday that his government would legalize gay marriage if a majority of Australians choose marriage equality in a popular vote.

The center-right government has promised to hold a plebiscite on the gay marriage question if the government is re-elected in a vote due this year.

But a number of the government's most conservative lawmakers have recently announced that they might vote down gay marriage against the wishes of a majority of Australians.

FILE - In this Jan. 19, 2016 file photo, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull smiles as he meets with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Turnbull gave a personal assurance on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016 that his government would legalize gay marriage if a majority of Australians choose marriage equality in a popular vote.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who supports gay marriage, said his government would "absolutely" follow the result of the plebiscite.

"If the majority of people voting in the plebiscite vote in favor of it, then same-sex marriage will be legalized," Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW on Friday.

The center-left opposition Labor Party supports gay marriage. But the ruling coalition is bitterly divided on the issue.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a former Roman Catholic trainee priest who opposes gay marriage, had proposed last year that a plebiscite be held after the next election as a way to end the political in-fighting by effectively taking the decision out of lawmakers' hands.

Opponents argue the plebiscite would cost about 160 million Australian dollars ($113 million), and carry no legal weight so the question would still be left to Parliament to decide.

Turnbull had wanted parliament to decide the issue, but after replacing Abbott as prime minister in September he decided to leave that part of government policy unchanged.
Panhandlers win in court over sheriff's office in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP)  A jury at a federal civil trial Thursday awarded $1,500 each to two panhandlers who took one of the nation's largest sheriff's offices to court for violating their constitutional right to ask passers-by for money.

Jurors returned after just four hours of deliberations with a finding that the failure of the Cook County Sheriff's Office to train deputies on panhandler rights led its deputies to order Kim Pindak, 63, and Sam Phillips, 57, to stop begging on Daley Plaza, a busy public square in downtown Chicago. Pindak and Phillips said the deputies' actions violated their free-speech rights under the First Amendment.

The panhandlers' lawyers said securing a finding that departments must ensure staff understand panhandlers' rights  not money  was why they chose to litigate the case for nearly six years. The $3,000 award was also more than they expected to win.

Kim Pindak stands outside Chicagos federal courthouse after the first day of testimony in a civil lawsuit involving him and and other panhandlers Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. He and another panhandler brought a suit that alleges they lost up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from begging in Daley Plaza, a popular public square in the city. The trial that started today is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/Michael Tarm)

"It's wonderful that two people who panhandle to make ends meet can come to court and hold accountable the sheriff of one of the largest counties in the nation," lead plaintiff attorney Adele Nicholas said outside court after the jury's decision.

A lawyer representing the sheriff's department, Anthony Zecchin, referred during closing arguments Thursday to Pindak's talent at chess, alleging several times that his 2010 lawsuit was primarily a money-making scheme.

The attorney told jurors: "You're just pawns being manipulated by Mr. Pindak."

Speaking outside court after the decision, Pindak said he plans to spend most of the $1,500 on necessities, including clothes and shoes.

"And I might get a chess book or two," he said.

The next step, Nicholas said, would be asking the presiding judge in Chicago, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, to issue an injunction ordering Sheriff Tom Dart to train staff properly.

While jurors' decision went against the sheriff's department as a whole, they did find in favor of Sheriff's Deputy Laverne Nance, concluding he didn't violate the men's rights as an individual officer.

A brief statement released by the sheriff's department said that "it strives to treat everyone it encounters with dignity and respect, which it did in this case."

Phillips, who said he started panhandling 10 years ago after losing his job as a butcher, said he can make as much as $8,000 annually begging five hours a day, five days a week. He said he typically holds up a sign that reads, "I'm Just Hungry."

Pindak said he studied pre-med in college for several years in his 20s before mental illness sent his life into a tailspin.

On the witness stand, he told jurors he's occasionally handed a $20 bill but often makes just several dollars a day.

During cross-examination, Zecchin also repeatedly asked Pindak about chess, suggesting his ability to think several moves ahead led him to sue.

Pindak denied that, answering he'd always been good at chess but not at life.

"I'm not a mastermind," he said.

___

Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mtarm

A man panhandles on the street Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A lawsuit brought by panhandlers who say they lose up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from a popular public square in Chicago is set to go to trial. The trial that starts Monday in Chicago federal court is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

A man, right, panhandles on the street Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A lawsuit brought by panhandlers who say they lose up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from a popular public square in Chicago is set to go to trial. The trial that starts Monday in Chicago federal court is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

A man, center, panhandles on the street Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A lawsuit brought by panhandlers who say they lose up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from a popular public square in Chicago is set to go to trial. The trial that starts Monday in Chicago federal court is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
The Latest: Navy commander pleads guilty in bribery case

SAN DIEGO (AP)  4 p.m.

A Navy commander accused of accepting prostitution services, theater tickets and other gifts from a Malaysian contractor in exchange for diverting ships to ports where the businessman's company could submit fake tariffs has pleaded guilty to bribery charges.

Cmdr. Michael Misiewicz entered his plea Thursday at a hearing in federal court in San Diego. Misiewicz is one of the highest ranking Naval officers charged in the case centered on businessman Leonard Francis, nicknamed "Fat Leonard" because of his wide girth.

His defense lawyers said in a statement that Misiewicz regrets his actions.

Misiewicz faces up to 20 years in prison. Only one defendant of the nine named in the case is still fighting the charges.

Prosecutors say Navy officials provided classified information that helped his Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., or GDMA, overbill the Navy by at least $20 million.

___

12 p.m.

A Navy commander accused of accepting prostitution services, theater tickets and other gifts from a Malaysian contractor in exchange for diverting ships to ports where the businessman's company could submit fake tariffs and other fees has decided to plead guilty.

Lawyer Mark Adams says his client, Michael Misiewicz, will enter the plea Thursday at an afternoon hearing in federal court in San Diego.

Seven other defendants have pleaded guilty in the case centered on Leonard Francis, nicknamed "Fat Leonard" because of his wide girth. One defendant has pleaded not guilty.
Iowa's Branstad says security top concern for GOP voters

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  With just days to go until the Iowa caucuses, the state's longtime Republican governor said Thursday that the federal government has failed to assure the American people that they are safe.

Gov. Terry Branstad, who is likely serving out his last term in office, has declined to publicly endorse anyone in this year's crowded Republican field, but he applauded those who have made national security a central theme in their campaign platforms  anyone, that is, except Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

"Security is a big concern  personal security for Americans because of the attacks that have occurred on our own soil, as well as Paris," the six-term governor said in an exclusive interview with Associated Press.

In this Jan. 28, 2016 photo, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office at the Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowas longtime Republican governor sees a national electorate very unhappy with government and financial institutions, but are ultimately most concerned about their nations and their personal security. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and billionaire Donald Trump have all put significant emphasis on the need to root out the Islamic State group from their safe havens in Iraq and Syria. The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on foreign soil, including the deadly attacks in Paris in November, and has inspired a number of lone-wolf attackers to kill in its name.

However, Branstad, who typically favors those with state or federal governing experience, admits that those running for office in 2016 haven't fared as well against those positioning themselves as anti-establishment, Washington outsiders.

"They've not done as well," he said of the more mainstream politicians. "I've been surprised."

Iowans are gearing up for the country's leadoff vote on Feb. 1  a contest that generally sets the tone for later races in the primary season and establishes the momentum for those who may go on to win their party's nominations.

Branstad made headlines last week when he publicly urged Iowans to support candidates other than Cruz, who opposes the federal renewable fuel standard, which requires a minimum amount of petroleum additives such as corn-based ethanol. Iowa leads the nation in ethanol production and is a leader in other renewable energy sources.

Branstad noted that Cruz also opposes an extension for the wind-energy tax credit.

"I want us to have a strong leader who is going to restore respect for America, somebody that's going to continue to improve our economy and create good jobs, and certainly recognize the importance of renewable energy in that process," Branstad said, speaking from his office in the Iowa Capitol.

Branstad appeared to have no hard feelings against Trump, on the other hand, who remarked: "How stupid are the people of Iowa," in response to Republican Ben Carson's brief lead in the polls.

Unlike many Republicans who have spoken out against Trump, Branstad stopped short of declaring the GOP front-runner unfit for the presidency based on his brazen conduct.

Not that he's one to mince words. Four years earlier, Branstad publicly questioned former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich's discipline in the days leading up to the caucuses.

On Trump, Branstad said: "Certainly, I don't agree with a lot of things he has to say. I don't agree with his decision not to participate in the debate."

Trump denounced the Fox News Channel-sponsored Republican debate scheduled for Thursday evening, and declined to participate, in light of what he considered unfair questioning during the network's first debate in August.

"I just think a lot of people just respect a guy who's got the guts to tell people what he really thinks," Branstad said.

Branstad noted that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was attracting good-sized crowds to his events, but wondered if he'd spent enough time in the state. Rubio is in the midst of an uninterrupted nine-day Iowa sprint to the caucuses with about a dozen cities on his itinerary Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Whether a Republican in Congress can make the case that he or she is an outsider in this anti-Washington environment, as Rubio is attempting, is difficult to say, Branstad said.

Overall, Branstad admitted, "it's been an unusual year."
Robert Frank makes brief remarks to mark new retrospective

NEW YORK (AP)  At age 91, Robert Frank is happy to let others talk about his past.

Hundreds gathered at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts on Thursday night to celebrate the opening of a new retrospective for the renowned photographer and filmmaker.

Making a rare public appearance, Frank spoke briefly, saying he was gratified to see so many people turn out. But Frank added that he preferred thinking about the future. That's one reason he left his native Switzerland and settled in the U.S. in 1947.

Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank waves to a packed audience at the opening of the exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. The exhibit is not considered a retrospective, but focuses instead on Frank's output as a book-creator and filmmaker. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

"I'm glad I stayed," he said during a rare public appearance, his voice still bearing the rich accent of the country he left behind. "It's a good thing not to go back in your life."

"You could be free," Frank added about the U.S. "You could become something you couldn't become in Switzerland."

"Robert Frank: Books and Films, 1947-2016," which runs through Feb. 11, was arranged very much in the unpretentious and improvisatory spirit that Frank brought to the visual arts.

Instead of a museum, his work hangs in the lobby and on the eighth floor of the Tisch school. Unframed banners of his pictures and proof sheets from his landmark "The Americans" fill the walls and copies of his books dangle from the ceiling. The exhibit's catalog is designed like a newspaper, featuring essays about Frank and an interview in which he spoke of the bond he felt with the poor and working class people of "The Americans" and other works.

"It was very important that I could put myself in their shoes, so that I could feel something," he said. "It's the same way for me now, maybe even more so. I know that life can be hard."

The retrospective also includes copies of his correspondence and pictures of some famous people he befriended, including Yoko Ono and Allen Ginsberg. Some of Frank's movies, including the Beat classic "Pull My Daisy," will be screened at NYU.

Wearing a camouflage jacket and dark trousers, Frank looked as if he had just arrived from a field assignment. He said that he enjoyed seeing his old pictures if only because they reminded him how long an image could last. The room was filled with photography students and faculty and an audience member asked Frank what advice he might have.

"Keep your eyes open," he responded.

A spectator presents a copy of "The Americans," to photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank for him to sign, at the opening of the exhibition featuring Frank's work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. Frank signed only that one copy of his signature work. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, 91, rests his head in his hand as he speaks to a packed audience at the opening of the exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. The exhibition focuses on Frank's output as a book-creator and filmmaker, and is not considered a retrospective. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank glances at a cluster of photographers at the opening of the exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, left, answers a question with collaborator and publisher Gerhard Steidl, at the opening of the exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, left, and his collaborator and publisher Gerhard Steidl pause to consider a question from the audience at the opening of the exhibition featuring Frank's work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Copies of books by photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank hang from the ceiling at the opening of an exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, center, signs a copy of his signature work, "The Americans," at the opening of an exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. Frank signed only one copy of the book. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

A man takes a cell phone photograph of a wall full of photographs by Robert Frank at the opening of the exhibition featuring his work, "Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016," at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
UN official: Iran, Israel could ratify nuke test ban treaty

VIENNA (AP)  The head of the U.N. nuclear test ban treaty organization says arch-enemies Iran and Israel are "the closest" of the eight holdout nations to ratifying the treaty and assuring the world they will never conduct a nuclear test explosion.

Lassina Zerbo said this week that having Iran and Israel ratify together would "certainly" lead to Egypt's ratification, and pave the way for a nuclear test-free zone in the Middle East.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, known as the CTBT, has 196 member states  183 that have signed the treaty and 164 that have ratified it. But the treaty has not entered into force because it still needs ratification by eight countries that had nuclear power reactors or research reactors when the U.N. General Assembly adopted the treaty in 1996: the United States, China, Iran, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

FILE - In this Sept. 27, 2013 file photo, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo speaks during a news conference during the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters. Lerbo says arch-enemies Iran and Israel are "the closest" of the eight holdout nations to ratifying the treaty and assuring the world they will never conduct a nuclear test explosion.(AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

Zerbo, speaking during a week-long conference marking the 20th anniversary of the treaty being opened for signing, said he doesn't expect immediate results on ratification, but is hoping to visit both Iran and Israel and talk to their leaders because "I think that they're the ones who can unlock what is stopping the CTBT from moving."

In a briefing and an interview, he said that implementation of last summer's deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program  and confirmation from Israeli and international scientists that Tehran can't produce nuclear weapons  would mean "the biggest threat for Israel is gone and over."

Zerbo said the next step should then be to ratify the CTBT, which both Iran and Israel signed in 1996. He called this "a low-hanging fruit," toward the goal of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

"Israel and Iran can make a huge difference for this treaty, and they have nothing to lose ... absolutely nothing," Zerbo said. "Both of them can take leadership and show carte blanche to the world to say we have together decided to ratify the CTBT."

He said ratification by Iran and Israel would help defuse tensions between the countries, build trust, and provide momentum  first for Egypt to ratify the CTBT and then to start negotiations for a nuclear test-free zone in the Middle East.

Zerbo said a nuclear test-free zone is an achievable step toward the much more difficult goal of establishing a nuclear-weapons-free-zone in the Middle East.

"You can't jump and get a weapon-free zone in the Middle East if the CTBT isn't ratified," he said.

Arab nations have been calling for a nuclear-free zone since the mid-1990s but efforts to hold a conference to discuss the possibility have failed. One key issue has been differences with Israel, which is widely believed to have an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons but has avoided confirming or denying their existence.

But if Israel, Iran and Egypt ratify the CTBT, Zerbo said this will put pressure on the United States to ratify as well.

President Barack Obama wants to ratify the treaty, he said, but his hands are tied by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Zerbo said ratification by the three Mideast countries should convince conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate to reconsider their opposition and support the treaty.

Looking at the current world situation and the other holdouts, Zerbo said, China won't ratify before the United States, India won't ratify before China, and Pakistan won't ratify before India  which means U.S. action is also crucial.

North Korea, the only country to test nuclear weapons in the 21st century, is least likely of the eight key countries to ratify the CTBT, he said.

Zerbo said the international community needs to change the way it engages with North Korea, which earlier this month said it exploded a hydrogen bomb in its fourth nuclear test, which has not been confirmed.

"What they need at this point in time is ... maybe a bit of respect and dignity in the dialogue we have with them," he said. "Instead of bang, bang on their head, maybe we have to come to sit with them around the table and say: 'Hey guys, if this is confirmed that it's the fourth test, we don't want this to happen again. How can we work?'"
Rare look at the world of Jordan royals' Circassian guards

AMMAN, Jordan (AP)  Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate.

The Associated Press was recently granted a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the world of the guards, highlighting the success of a minority in a region now awash with sectarian tensions.

Circassians are a mainly Muslim, non-Arab ethnic group that originated on the northeast coast of the Black Sea and in the mountainous Caucasus region, but were dispersed around the Mideast in the mid-19th century after being defeated by the Russians.

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards pose for a photograph outside Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

They have been central to the culture and history of Jordan, where about 100,000 of the world's 3.7 million Circassians live, according to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.

Both the first prime minister in 1923 and the first female lawmaker in 1993 were Circassian. Mayors, ministers, and ambassadors have come from the community, along with leaders of the air force, army and intelligence agency.

Circassian food is popular among Jordanians, including a walnut, garlic and barley dish on offer at a Circassian restaurant in Amman. The iconic black-and-white marble mosque of Abu Darwish, a Circassian noble, tops the capital's skyline.

Today, the Circassian guards' role at the Basman and Raghadan palaces in a royal compound in Amman, like that of their counterparts in London's Buckingham Palace, is largely ceremonial. Actual security for the royals is handled by military units.

In the compound, the 14 guardsmen march under stone arches and pine trees, greeting dignitaries and visitors to King Abdullah II, his brother, regent Prince Feisal, and the heir to the throne, 21-year-old Prince Hussein.

All the guards were hand-picked by Ghazi Bilal Qala, 65, who retired last year after a lifetime protecting the late King Hussein and the current monarch.

"I served here for 42 years and treated the guards like my sons, not simply as staff or anything like that, but sons. No one was ever treated differently, no distinctions were made. Respect is foundational," Qala said.

Chosen from the various Circassian tribes in Jordan, recruits undergo eight months of training in self-defense, security, palace protocol, and military techniques.

Their unique uniform includes 16 decorative rifle cartridges, adorned in silver and black leather and draped across a guard's chest. Traditionally, one cartridge held poison for suicide if captured, or to pour into a slot in their short sword. Another shell held a vial of honey for sustenance.

The guards wear two ceremonial swords: the long "seshweh" blade bearing an Arabic engraving reading "If God helps you, no one can overcome you," and the short "qama" blade, referred to in Arabic as "the scent of death."

"This is a costume of war, of the old days," Qala said.

After Circassians were driven out of their homeland by the Russians, most settled in the Ottoman Empire, where more than 150 years later they live as Turkish, Syrian, Israeli, Iraqi and Jordanian citizens.

Their military skills proved vital to the early Jordanian kingdom.

In 1921, Circassian horsemen offered to protect King Abdullah I, the first in Jordan's Hashemite dynasty of monarchs, who was a native of the Hijaz province of what is now Saudi Arabia and was purported to be a descendant of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Abdullah had a Circassian grandmother, Bezm-i Cihan, according to TE Lawrence's book "Seven Pillars of Wisdsom."

Circassians remained at Abdullah's side throughout the tumultuous birth of the kingdom, facing local revolts and marauders from Saudi Arabia.

This alliance of the Hashemites, the Circassians and Arab tribes became the kingdom, said Amjad Jaimoukha, author of the book "Circassian Culture and Folklore." In 1948 and 1967, Palestinians from what is now Israel and the West Bank were added to Jordan's population, now making up around half the population.

Qala, whose ancestors fled the Caucasus in 1867, said religious devotion to the descendants of the prophet drives Circassian loyalty to the Hashemite dynasty.

"It is the greatest, most incredible honor to serve God by serving the family," he said.

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 28 year-old Circassian guard Sergeant Tariq Fuad Beshto, poses for a photograph outside Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 36 year-old Circassian Warrant Officer, Zaid Hosni Younis, adjusts his 'Hazar' or cylinders on both sides of the chest which were used to hold gunpowder, inside the Circassian Headquarters in Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards stand attention outside King Abdullah II's office in Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 26 year-old Circassian guard Sergeant Ramzi Mohammad Khair Fasha, gets dressed at the Circassian Headquarters in Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards stand in line in front of Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. The guards, descendants of Muslim war refugees from the Caucasus region in what is now Russia, once protected the lives of Jordan's kings. Today, their role at the Basman and Raghadan hillside palaces in a royal compound in Amman is symbolic _ like that of their counterparts in London's Buckingham Palace. Actual security for the royals is handled by military units. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards leave Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. About 100,000 of the world's 3.7 million Circassians live in Jordan, according to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards march inside Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. The guards unique uniform includes 16 decorative rifle cartridges. They are adorned in silver and black leather and draped across a guards chest. Traditionally, one cartridge held poison for suicide if captured, or to pour into a slot in their short sword. Another shell held a vial of honey for sustenance.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards stand attention in Raghadan Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 36 year-old Circassian guard Warrant Officer Janti Wail Bakir, poses for a photograph outside Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 36 year-old Circassian Warrant Officer Zaid Hosni Younis, smokes a cigarette in front of Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards march near Raghadan Palace, in Amman, Jordan. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards pose for a photograph in front of Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Chosen from the various Circassian tribes in Jordan, recruits undergo eight months of training in self-defense, security, palace protocol, and military techniques.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this combo made up of four photographs taken on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, from top row left to bottom row left, Circassian leader Major Ayman Abzakh, Circassian Warrant Officer Janti Wail Bakir, Circassian Sergeant Tariq Fuad Beshto, and Circassian Private Adnan Sami Bjanthala, pose for photographs outside Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, Circassian guards stand in front of Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassians hail from the northeast Black Sea coast and the Caucasus, a mountainous region from which the Circassians were driven after losing a multi-generational war against the Orthodox Christian Russian Empire. Victorious in 1846, the Tsar purged the Muslim mountaineers from what are now the Russian provinces of Karachay-Cherkessia, Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria and Krasnodar Krai. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 45 year-old Circassian guard leader Major Ayman Abzakh, works at the Circassian Headquarters in Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, 22 year-old Circassian guard Private Adnan Sami Bjanthala, poses for a photograph outside Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo, a Circassian guard, reflected in a mirror, leaves the Circassian Headquarters in Basman Palace, in Amman, Jordan. Circassian guards, who have served Jordan's kings since the founding of the monarchy, still adhere to their ancient traditions, such as donning an incongruous cold weather uniform of black wool hats, red capes and leather boots in this desert climate.(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
Honda quarterly profit slips on air-bag recall related costs

TOKYO (AP)  Honda's quarterly profit slipped 19 percent as costs related to air-bag recalls eroded the benefits from growing sales.

Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co. reported Friday an October-December profit of 124.1 billion yen ($1 billion).

Sales for the fiscal third quarter edged up 3.4 percent to 3.617 trillion yen ($30 billion).

Tokyo-based Honda is the biggest customer for Japanese air bag maker Takata Corp., which is behind the massive global recalls spanning nearly all the major automakers, over air bag inflators that can explode.

Nine people in the U.S. and 10 worldwide have been killed because of defective air-bag inflators.

Another death has been reported in a crash in which a Takata air bag exploded, but it's unclear whether that was the cause of death.

More than 20 million vehicles in the U.S. with defective Takata air bags are already under recall and the worldwide total is likely at least double that. And it's possible millions more vehicles will need to be recalled.

Speculation has bubbled in the Japanese media that some kind of bailout by Japanese automakers will be needed to rescue Takata, but that would come only on condition of a managerial change, including the resignation of the top executive. Takata denied the reports.

Honda, which makes the Odyssey minivan, Civic sedan and Asimo humanoid robot, stuck to its forecast for profit to rise 3 percent to 525 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 2016.

For the third quarter, Honda's auto sales jumped nearly 5 percent year-on-year, helped by introducing the Greiz sedan in China. Motorcycle sales slipped by about 3 percent as fewer were sold in Indonesia and China.

Honda acknowledged future costs from class action litigation related to the Takata air bags remained uncertain.

Among the more positive news for the company, Honda began deliveries of its HondaJet corporate aircraft and the leasing of robotic legs called Honda Walking Assist.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's top automaker in global vehicle sales, outselling Volkswagen AG of Germany and U.S. rival General Motors Co., reports earnings Feb. 5. Nissan Motor Co. reports Feb. 10.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama: twitter.com/yurikageyama
28.01.2016Lee Youngjoo has not left her Seoul trade union offices for several weeks. If she does, she is afraid she will be arrested and put in prison like her colleague, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) president, Han Sang-gyun.Instead she eats, sleeps and lives there while her family must travel to the offices to see her, so tells IndustriALL Global Union assistant general secretary Monika Kemperle who met Youngjoo in the KCTU offices last week. Youngjoos fellow trade unionists are also holed up in the offices.Kemperle also visited Han Sang-gyun in prison during the IndustriALL solidarity mission to South Korea. Sang-gyun is accused of organizing illegal rallies and has been indicted with eight charges of the Criminal Code and the law on assembly and demonstration.Sang-gyun became a target after thousands of people took to the streets of Seoul on 14 November protesting against proposed labour reform that would make it easier to fire workers.After the rally, Sang-gyun took refuge in the Jogye Temple until he finally surrendered to police on 10 December.Han remains strong, said Kemperle, who told how ten minutes into their meeting, loud music was played over a speaker making it almost impossible to talk. We were not left alone and our entire conversation was written down and recorded.The KCTU strongly refutes the charges against Sang-gyun:"The police and prosecution jointly attempted to demonize the KCTU as a mob of rioters. Such malicious attempts will not succeed and the KCTU will continue its fight against the government to protect the nation's 20 million workers' basic right to live.The 14 November rally also prompted police to raid the offices of KCTU as well as those of IndustriALL affiliate, the Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU), where they seized computers and other documents.At least 16 trade unionists are being held in detention and more than 400 have been investigated by police in South Korea as the government intensifies its crackdown. Police have reportedly been investigating a total of over 1,000 unionists.In another downward development, a Korean court ruled this month that it was illegal for a teachers union affiliated to the KCTU to defend dismissed workers, therefore criminalizing a fundamental role of unions.While in Korea, Monika Kemperle addressed a rally of 5,000 people in Seoul, organized by KCTU and other trade unions on Saturday 23 January.Desperate attempts by authorities to silence workers will not work. The brave trade unionists in South Korea refuse to be cowered by political persecution. The South Korean government must listen to its people and stop the suppression of democratic freedoms, said Kemperle.
In Mideast wars, hunger grips millions across the region

BEIRUT (AP)  In a Middle East torn apart by war and conflict, fighters are increasingly using food as a weapon.

Millions of people across countries like Syria, Yemen and Iraq are gripped by hunger, struggling to survive with little help from the outside world. Children suffer from severe malnutrition, their parents often having to beg or sell possessions to get basic commodities including water, medicine and fuel.

The biggest humanitarian catastrophe by far is Syria, where a ruinous five-year civil war has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced half the population. All sides in the conflict have used punishing blockades to force submission and surrender from the other side  a tactic that has proved effective particularly for government forces seeking to pacify opposition-held areas around the capital Damascus.

In this Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 photo, a malnourished child lies in a bed waiting to receive treatment at a therapeutic feeding center in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. This child is one of millions of people across countries like Syria, Yemen and Iraq are gripped by hunger, struggling to survive with little help from the outside world. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Since October, Russian airstrikes and the start of yet another winter have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis and led to deaths from starvation in some places.

Humanitarian teams who recently entered a besieged Syrian town witnessed scenes that "haunt the soul," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He accused both the government of President Bashar Assad and the rebels fighting to oust him of using starvation as a weapon, calling it a war crime. Although sieges are an accepted military practice that are often carried out by forces seeking to avoid intense urban conflict, the conduct of forces carrying them out and their behavior toward civilian populations are regulated by international humanitarian law. Past cases include the sieges of Gorazde and Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. The Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, home to 1.8 million people, has also been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade, restricting the flow of many goods into the war-torn Palestinian territory.

The U.N. and aid agencies have struggled with funding shortages and growing impediments to the delivery of humanitarian assistance despite Security Council resolutions insisting on the unconditional delivery of aid across front lines.

In Yemen, the Arab world's most impoverished nation, nearly half of the country's 22 provinces are ranked as one step away from famine conditions.

Here's a look at major areas in the Middle East under siege or suffering starvation:

SYRIA

The United Nations estimates more than 400,000 people are besieged in 15 communities across Syria, roughly half of them in areas controlled by the Islamic State group. In 2014, the U.N. was able to deliver food to about five percent of people in besieged areas, while today estimates show the organization is reaching less than one percent.

In 2015, the World Food Program was forced to reduce the size of the food rations it provides to families inside Syria by up to 25 percent because of a funding shortfall. The agency says it has to raise $25 million every week to meet the basic food needs of people affected by the Syrian conflict.

Some of the hardest hit blockaded areas in Syria are:

Madaya: A town northeast of Damascus with a population of 40,000. The town has been besieged by government and allied militiamen for months and gained international attention after harrowing pictures emerged showing emaciated children. Doctors Without Borders says 28 people have died of starvation in Madaya since September. Two convoys of humanitarian aid were delivered to the town last week. Aid workers who entered described seeing skeletal figures; children who could barely talk or walk, and parents who gave their kids sleeping pills to calm their hunger.

Fouaa and Kfarya: Two Shiite villages in the northern province of Idlib with a combined population of around 20,000. The villages have been blockaded by rebels for more than a year. Pro-government fighters recently evacuated from the villages describe desperate conditions there with scarce food and medicine, saying some residents are eating grass to survive and undergoing surgery without anesthesia. Aid convoys entered the villages simultaneously with the aid to Madaya after months-long negotiations between the government and armed groups.

Deir el-Zour: An estimated 200,000 people living in government-held parts of this city in eastern Syria are besieged by the Islamic State group. The U.N. says most of the residents are women and children facing sharply deteriorating conditions due to the ban on all commercial or humanitarian access, as well as the inability of residents to move outside of the city. While government stocks continue to provide bread, there are severe shortages of food, medicine and basic commodities. Opposition activists say they have documented the death of 27 people from malnutrition. Water is available only once a week for few hours.

YEMEN

The humanitarian situation has dramatically deteriorated, nearly 300 days after the Saudi-led coalition began its air campaign aimed at driving Yemen's Shiite rebels from cities under their control. Coalition naval ships are blockading traffic in Yemen's ports and rebels are besieging several areas, particularly the southern city of Taiz.

Some 14.4 million Yemenis, more than half of the population, are food insecure, an increase of 12 percent in the last eight months, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization said Thursday. In late December, the WFP said 7.8 million of Yemen's 24 million people are in even more dire condition, "facing life-threatening rates of acute malnutrition," up by more than 3 million in less than a year. It said 10 of the country's 22 provinces are in "the grip of severe food insecurity" at the "emergency" level, one step short of famine on the agency's 5-level scale of food security.

In Taiz, with a population of about 250,000, residents have been going hungry for weeks, the WFP said. The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said recently that basic services in Taiz are scarce, including access to water and fuel.

The severe shortage of food, fuel and medicine across Yemen led to an increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition while the destruction of health facilities treating them led to deaths.

Some 3 million children under five years require services to treat or prevent malnutrition, according to a UNICEF report on Jan. 13.

A new report by a U.N. panel of experts, obtained this week by the AP, said civilians in the Arab world's poorest country are suffering under tactics in the conflict that "constitute the prohibited use of starvation as a method of warfare."

IRAQ

Massive population shifts in Iraq due to violence has made it more difficult for millions of people to access food, medicine and safe drinking water. More than 3 million Iraqis are displaced within the country by violence and instability. "They've lost their livelihoods, their jobs, and hunger and the inability to purchase food is a reality in their everyday life," said Marwa Awad, with the World Food Program. In total 8.2 million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance: food, water, shelter or medicine, she said.

Ongoing violence in many of Iraq's provinces that are also home to people who have been uprooted by conflict is of the greatest concern, Awad said. In Anbar, Ninevah and Salahuddin the price of food has risen by as much as 38 percent in the last month, and in some cases the Iraqi government has had to airlift families out of towns and villages besieged by fighting between Iraqi government forces and Islamic State group fighters.

In Ramadi, families who had been held by IS fighters as human shields said they survived for days on just rice and flour.

While conflict in Iraq hasn't led to cases of starvation, Awad said WFP has seen an increase in cases of malnutrition as people eat less to conserve the little food they do have.

SYRIAN REFUGEES IN NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES

According to the U.N. children's agency, malnutrition is a major threat among millions of refugees. A UNICEF report last year showed that almost 2,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and need immediate treatment to survive. It warned that situation could deteriorate even further as malnutrition is linked to such factors as poor hygiene, unsafe drinking water, lack of immunization, diseases and improper infant and young child feeding practices.

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Associated Press writers Susannah George in Baghdad, Maggie Michael in Cairo and Cara Anna at the United Nations contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2014 file photo released by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), shows residents of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, queuing to receive food supplies, in Damascus, Syria. That year, the U.N. was able to deliver food to about five percent of people in besieged areas including Yarmouk, while today estimates show the organization is reaching less than one percent.(UNRWA via AP, File)

In this Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 photo, a Syrian boy walks in Kawergosk refugee camp in northern Iraq carrying a plate with boiled potatoes. According to the U.N. childrens agency, malnutrition is a major threat among millions of refugees, as people eat less to conserve the little food they do have. (AP Photo/Alice Martins)

FILE - In this Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016 file photo, anti-Syrian government activists hold up placards during a sit-in against the ongoing siege imposed on the Syrian town of Madaya in front of the European Union embassy in Beirut. The town has been besieged by government and allied militiamen for months and gained international attention after harrowing pictures emerged showing emaciated children.(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

FILE - In this Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 file photo, people wait to leave the besieged town of Madaya, northwest of Damascus, Syria, where Doctors Without Borders says dozens of people have died of starvation since September. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2014 file photo released by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a resident of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk weeps as she waits to receive humanitarian aid from UNRWA in Damascus, Syria. Over the past two years, the ability of humanitarian groups to deliver aid to Syrians has become increasingly difficult. (UNRWA via AP, File)

In this Jan. 24, 2016 photo, a malnourished child lies in a bed at a therapeutic feeding center in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. Some 3 million children here under five years require services to treat or prevent malnutrition, according to a UNICEF report on Jan. 13. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

In this photo taken on Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, Yemenis carry relief supplies as they walk along a path after Shiite rebels, known as Houthis besieging the city of Taiz, Yemen. Residents have been going hungry for weeks, the WFP said. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik)

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 11, 2014 file photo, Mervat, 31, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press as she holds her 9-month-old daughter Shurouk inside their tent camp for Syrian refugees camp in Kab Elias, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Trapped in her northern Syrian village by fighting, Mervat watched her newborn baby progressively shrink. When they finally escaped to neighboring Lebanon, a nurse told her the girl was starving. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

In this image made from video posted online on Jan. 8, 2016, by Madaya Medical Corps, an emaciated Syrian boy receives treatment at a local field clinic, in Madaya, Syria. The town has been besieged by government and allied militiamen for months ; aid workers who entered described seeing skeletal figures; children who could barely talk or walk, and parents who gave their kids sleeping pills to calm their hunger.(Madaya Medical Corps via AP video)

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 22, 2015 file photo, Syrian refugee Hannan Mohammed, 12, holds a picture of herself and her sister Warda, 5, and the youngest Jawahir, 1, who died after suffering from chronic malnutrition, outside their tent at an informal tented settlement near the Syrian border on the outskirts of Mafraq, Jordan. Jawahir is one of millions of people across countries like Syria, Yemen and Iraq are gripped by hunger, struggling to survive with little help from the outside world. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen, File)

In this Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, a displaced girl waits for donated food at al-Takia camp in Baghdad, Iraq. More than 3 million Iraqis are displaced within the country by violence and instability. Theyve lost their livelihoods, their jobs, and hunger and the inability to purchase food is a reality in their everyday life, said Marwa Awad, with the World Food Program. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

In this Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 photo, old vegetables sit outside a shop in Kawergosk refugee camp in northern Iraq. Massive population shifts in Iraq due to violence has made it more difficult for millions of people to access food, medicine and safe drinking water. (AP Photo/Alice Martins)

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 11, 2014 file photo, an aid worker measures the upper arm circumference of 9-month-old Shurouk as her mother Mervat, 31, holds her inside their tent at a camp for Syrian refugees camp in Kab Elias, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The measurement is an immediate indicator of malnourishment. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

In this image made from video posted online on Jan. 7, 2016, by Qasioun News Agency, an emaciated Syrian man receives treatment at a local field clinic, in Madaya, Syria. The town has been besieged by government and allied militiamen for months and Doctors Without Borders says dozens of people have died of starvation in Madaya since September. (Qasioun News Agency via AP video)

In this Monday, Jan. 25, 2016 photo, a boy walks on the rubble of a house damaged during a clashes between tribal fighters and Shiite militia known as Houthis, in Taiz. A lack of food and shelter is leaving civilians vulnerable in a Middle East torn apart by war and conflict. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik)

In this Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 photo, a doctor touches a malnourished child at a therapeutic feeding center in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. In the Arab worlds most impoverished nation, nearly half of the countrys 22 provinces are ranked as one step away from famine. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)
Croatian government minister resigns days after taking post

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP)  A Croatian government minister has been forced to resign only days after the new center-right Cabinet was formed following weeks of political deadlock.

Veterans Minister Mijo Crnoja stepped down late on Thursday following public scandals and opposition requests for his replacement. Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic says he will name the new minister in coming days.

Crnoja sparked outrage when he announced plans to form a "list of traitors and aggressors" from the 1991-95 war for independence. Media have also reported that Crnoja registered a false address to avoid paying taxes and that he had been jailed for violent behavior.

Crnoja said he was resigning to avoid being a burden.
Judge rules 'affluenza' teen can stay in juvenile facility

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)  The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck won't be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a hearing to determine whether his case will be transferred to adult court, where he could face time behind bars, a judge ruled Friday.

Ethan Couch, 18, was booked into a juvenile detention facility in Fort Worth after he was deported from Mexico on Thursday. Authorities believe he and his mother fled the U.S. last month as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he violated his probation in the 2013 wreck that killed four people.

Prosecutors and the local sheriff wanted Couch moved to an adult jail. But during a brief hearing, Judge Timothy Menikos sided with Couch's attorneys and said the teen would stay at the juvenile center until a Feb. 19 hearing.

This frame grab from a Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 taken from a video provided by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM, shows a hooded Ethan Couch, as he is processed by Mexican immigration agents, in Mexico City. INM said that Couch, who used an "affluenza" defense in a 2013 fatal drunken-driving accident in Texas, was taken to the Mexico City airport from an immigration holding center, ending his month-long stay in Mexico. Couch was escorted onto a commercial plane, en route to Dallas, Thursday morning. (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM via AP)

Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson said her office would do everything it could to hold Couch accountable, but noted she was limited because Couch was sentenced only to 10 years' probation in 2013. The sentence came after a defense expert testified that Couch had been coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents, calling the condition "affluenza."

Wilson urged the public not to focus on Couch or "feed his ego with notoriety."

"Behind every incident are the victims, and this should be their story," she said in a statement Friday.

The then-16-year-old Couch had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit for adult drivers when he swerved off a road near Fort Worth and hit a disabled car, killing its driver and three people helping her.

Among the most severely injured survivors was Sergio Molina, who was paralyzed and can communicate only by blinking his eyes. He was in the bed of Couch's truck, which was carrying eight people.

His brother, Alex Lemus, was at the Friday hearing and said Molina will attend Couch's hearing in February.

"It's very hard to deal with all the changes to Sergio, being in the state that he's in," Lemus said. "Yet it's frustrating because we have to deal with the understanding (that) if my brother was the one driving the vehicle with all these victims, my mother really believes he would have gotten the death penalty in Texas."

Tim McLaughlin, whose 15-year-old son was in the other vehicle but survived, said he also hopes Couch goes to jail because he needs "a wake-up call." Eric Boyles, who lost his wife and daughter in the wreck, was at the hearing but declined an interview request.

Couch's attorney, Scott Brown, said that he doesn't plan to fight transferring the case to adult court, though he wouldn't detail what he planned to argue at the February hearing.

Couch and his mother disappeared in December, after an online video appeared to show Couch at a party where people were drinking. Terms of Couch's probation barred him from drinking or leaving Tarrant County.

Mother and son were apprehended in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Dec. 28, after a call for pizza delivery tipped off authorities to their whereabouts.

Couch initially fought deportation, but he dropped the fight this week. His mother, Tonya Couch, was deported last month and charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon. She was released on bond after being fitted with an electronic ankle GPS monitor.

If Ethan Couch's case is moved to adult court, the judge could order Couch to spend up to 120 days in jail as part of an adult sentence, and then finish the remainder of his 10-year probation. If he violates his probation during that time, he could get up to 10 years in prison for each of the four people killed in the drunken-driving wreck.

If his case remains in juvenile court, prosecutors could ask for a separate hearing to determine whether Couch violated his probation. If a judge rules that he didn't violate his terms, he would go free directly after the hearing and remain on probation until his sentence expires on his 19th birthday in April. If Couch is found to have violated probation, the judge could either sentence him to a state facility operated by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department or leave him on juvenile probation until he turns 19.

If Couch is sentenced to the state facility, a judge would hold another hearing before his birthday to determine whether to transfer him to adult prison for up to 10 years or to adult parole.

Eric Boyles, carries his shoes after clearing security as he arrives for a juvenile court hearing for Ethan Couch in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Boyles lost his wife Hollie Boyles and daughter Shelby Boyles in the 2013 drunk driving accident caused by Ethan Couch. The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck won't be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a court ruling on whether his case is transferred to the adult system, where he could face time behind bars. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

RETRANSMISSION TO CORRECT THAT ISIAH MCLAUGHLIN SURVIVED NOT WAS KILLED - Tim McLaughlin, center, father of Isaiah McLaughlin who survived a 2013 drunk driving accident caused by Ethan Couch, arrives for a juvenile court hearing for Couch in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck won't be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a court ruling on whether his case is transferred to the adult system, where he could face time behind bars. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Tarrant County sheriff deputy Brian Nickelson stands guard outside the juvenile court where Ethan Couch has a detention hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck won't be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a court ruling on whether his case is transferred to the adult system, where he could face time behind bars. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

This frame grab taken from a Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 video provided by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM, shows Ethan Couch, escorted onto a plane by Mexican immigration agents, in Mexico City. INM says it has taken the Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident to the Mexico City airport, to fly him back to Texas to face charges. Couch was placed on a commercial flight to Dallas, Texas. (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM via AP)

Richard Alpert, Assistant Criminal District Attorney for the Tarrant County, pauses to listen to a question while speaking to reporters outside the juvenile court after a detention hearing for Ethan Couch in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck won't be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a court ruling on whether his case is transferred to the adult system, where he could face time behind bars. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Scott Brown, attorney for Ethan Couch, speaks to reporters outside the juvenile court after a detention hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck won't be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a court ruling on whether his case is transferred to the adult system, where he could face time behind bars. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

This frame grab taken from a Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 video provided by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM, shows Ethan Couch, as he is escorted by Mexican immigration agents, upon their arrival to the international airport in Mexico City. INM says it has taken the Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident to the Mexico City airport, to fly him back to Texas to face charges. The institute said Thursday that Couch would be placed on a commercial flight to Dallas, Texas. (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM via AP)

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson speaks with media after Ethan Couch was taken into the Scott D. Moore Juvenile Justice Center on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. The Texas teenager who used an affluenza defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck arrived in Texas following his deportation from Mexico more than a month after he and his mother fled the U.S. as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation. (AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)
Amnesty International: 5 Possible mass graves in Burundi

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)  New satellite images, video footage and witness accounts show that dozens of people killed by Burundian security forces in December were later buried in mass graves, Amnesty International said Friday.

The rights group reported there are five possible mass graves in the Buringa area, on the outskirts of the Burundian capital, Bujumbura.

"The imagery, dating from late December and early January, shows disturbed earth consistent with witness accounts. Witnesses told Amnesty International that the graves were dug on the afternoon of Dec. 11, in the immediate aftermath of the bloodiest day of Burundi's escalating crisis," the group said in a statement.

Witnesses described how police and local officials scoured Nyakabiga and other neighborhoods in Bujumbura to retrieve the bodies of those who were killed and took them to undisclosed locations, according to Amnesty.

Earlier this month, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein also called for an urgent investigation into the alleged existence of mass graves following the violence in December.

Zeid cited "large-scale human rights violations," saying the "increasing number of enforced disappearances, coupled with allegations of secret detention facilities and mass graves is extremely alarming."

Burundi's government dismissed those allegations, saying they were based on false information supplied by the regime's opponents who fled into exile.

Government spokesman Philippe Nzobonariba said the U.N. is free to go to Burundi and investigate the allegations, which he said were intended to portray Burundi as being a dangerous country.

In coordinated attacks, gunmen stormed three military installations in Burundi on Dec. 11. The next day, 28 people were found shot dead in three Bujumbura neighborhoods. An eyewitness told the AP some of the dead had their hands tied behind their backs. Another witness blamed government security forces, saying they went after the victims in door-to-door searches.
For GOP, debate was glimpse of what could have been

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  For the Republican candidates for president, it was a glimpse of what could have been.

Front-runner Donald Trump's boycott of the final debate before the Iowa caucuses created space for his rivals to delve more deeply into their differences on immigration, foreign policy and their approach to governing.

And for some candidates  former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in particular  Trump's absence from the debate stage Thursday night appeared to ease some of the tension created by his sharply personal attacks.

Republican presidential candidates (L-R) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talk after the Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A frequent target of Trump, Bush opened the debate by saying wryly, "I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me."

Iowa voters kick off the 2016 nominating process with Monday's caucuses, and they'll provide the first indication of whether Trump's abrupt decision to skip the debate will have any impact on his standing atop the GOP field. His lead in Iowa had already become more tenuous in recent days, as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pulled in support from conservative and evangelical voters.

Trump's decision to pull out of the debate over a feud with host Fox News was a gamble, particularly so close to the state of voting. But having defied political convention throughout his campaign, it was a risk the real estate mogul was willing to take.

He still looked to steal attention away from his rivals with a competing rally elsewhere in Des Moines, an event he said raised $6 million for military veterans.

"When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," Trump said in explaining his boycott. Broadening his point, he said, "We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if we're being mistreated."

Trump's absence put the spotlight on Cruz, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, as well, who needs a strong showing in Iowa in order to stay in the top tier of candidates.

The two senators were confronted with video clips suggesting they had changed their positions on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans. While each insisted the other had flip-flopped, both denied they had switched their own views on allowing some people in the U.S. illegally to stay.

Cruz accused Rubio of making a "politically advantageous" decision to support a 2013 Senate bill that included a pathway to citizenship, while the Florida senator said his Texas rival was "willing to say or do anything to get votes."

"This is the lie that Ted's campaign is built on," Rubio said. "That he's the most conservative guy."

In a rare standout debate moment for Bush, the former Florida governor sharply sided with Cruz in accusing Rubio of having "cut and run" on the Senate immigration bill.

"He cut and run because it wasn't popular with conservatives," said Bush, who was more consistent in this debate than in previous outings.

Cruz was put on the spot over his opposition to ethanol subsidies that support Iowa's powerful corn industry  a position that has long been considered politically untenable for presidential candidates in the state. The Texas senator cast his position as an effort to keep the government from picking economic winners and losers.

With their White House hopes on the line, the candidates worked hard to present themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats.

Rubio struck an aggressive posture, pledging that as president he would go after terrorists "wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo." Rubio also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the U.S. if there were indications the Muslim religious centers were being used to radicalize terrorists.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul  back on the main debate stage after being downgraded to an undercard event because of low poll numbers earlier this month  warned against closing down mosques. A proponent of a more isolationist foreign policy, Paul also raised concerns about the U.S. getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State group has a stronghold.

The candidates focused some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"She is not qualified to be president of the United States," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.

Christie is part of a crowded field of more mainstream candidates who have struggled to break through in an election year where Trump, and increasingly Cruz, have tapped into voter anger with the political system. Party leaders have grown increasingly anxious for some of the more traditional candidates to step aside to allow one to rise up and challenge for the nomination.

Asked whether the crowded establishment lane was putting Trump in position to win, Bush said: "We're just starting out. The first vote hasn't been counted. Why don't we let the process work?"

Bush also defended the flurry of critical advertisements his well-funded super PAC has launched against Rubio and other rivals.

"It's called politics," Bush said. "That's the way it is. I'm running hard."

Bush and Christie, along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are looking beyond Iowa and hoping New Hampshire's Feb. 9 primary jumpstarts their campaigns. In an election where a lengthy political resume has been a liability, Kasich defended government's ability to tackle big problems.

"We serve you," Kasich said of government officials and voters. "You don't serve us. We listen to you and then we act."

Cruz proudly claimed he was "not the candidate of career politicians in Washington." Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has a small but loyal base in Iowa, said that even though he hasn't been in government, he's made plenty of life-and-death decisions as a doctor.

"I don't think you need to be a politician to tell the truth," he said.

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Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace and Jill Colvin on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and http://twitter.com/colvinj

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump poses with a ring given to him by a group of veterans during a campaign event on the campus of Drake University Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, center, answers a question as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, left, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., right, listen during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., answers a question as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, right, listens during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential candidates (L-R) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talk after the Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Cruz heads to tiny Iowa towns to complete 99-county trek

RINGSTED, Iowa (AP)  For Ted Cruz, the path to victory in Iowa doesn't run through Des Moines or Davenport or other voter-rich parts of this sprawling, largely rural state.

Instead, it goes through out-of-the-way dots on the map like Ringsted  population 422  situated closer to the Minnesota border than to Des Moines, a three-hour drive to the south.

Cruz began his final 14-stop, four-day blitz toward Monday's caucuses with a stop Friday at the 3 Generations Bar & Grill in Ringsted. From there he ventures on to Fenton  population 279  followed by the relatively booming metropolises of Emmetsburg, Wilton and Wapello, each with populations somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, answers a question during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Why is Cruz spending so much time so far away from where most people live?

It's called the "full Grassley," in Iowa caucus-speak.

It refers to longtime Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley's annual trek to all 99 of the state's counties, something he's been doing religiously since 1981. It's no small feat in a state with 56,000 square miles to cover  roughly six times as much as New Hampshire, where the country's second contest is scheduled for Feb. 9.

But completing the "full Grassley" has become the ultimate challenge for many presidential candidates.

The effort can be hit or miss. Covering all of Iowa's 99 counties demands a lot of time and energy, with candidates having to travel hundreds of miles, often to remote areas with small crowds and sparse media coverage.

"I think it's great," said Joy Anderson, 47, who came from nearby Estherville, Iowa, to see Cruz in Ringsted. "He's reaching out to small town America and out here in Iowa. That's what we want."

Some have questioned Cruz's delay in tackling the Iowa challenge, which has ultimately drawn him away from population centers in the final hours leading up to the Feb. 1 contest.

"It's an unneeded distraction for his staff," said longtime Iowa strategist Eric Woolson, who mapped out Michele Bachmann's 99-county tour in 2012 and worked for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's campaign this cycle.

"I would suspect if they could go back and do this again, they would have been more aggressive in getting those counties marked off the list in October, November or even early December."

But Woolson said he didn't think Cruz would be hurt too much by having to wrap it up so late because, as one of the front-runners, he will get coverage no matter where he is.

The Texas senator is embracing an old-school campaigning style in Iowa. Unlike rival Donald Trump, who flies in and out and holds massive rallies drawing thousands, Cruz is content to meet with anywhere from a few dozen people to several hundred. He's visited Pizza Ranches  a trademark Iowa campaign stop  and stopped by small-town diners, coffee shops and church basements that form the fabric of the vast Iowa landscape.

Cruz contrasts his dedication to visiting every corner of the state with Trump's approach.

"What we're doing is what we've been doing from the very beginning," Cruz told reporters before a campaign stop Tuesday at Bogie's Steakhouse in Albia, Iowa  population 3,800. "Doing town halls, doing retail meetings, just looking in the eyes of the men and women across Iowa asking for their support, asking for them to stand with us on caucus night. I believe the only way to win the state of Iowa is to go and ask, one on one, for the support of the grass roots."

Many have tried the "full Grassley" approach and failed.

Walker only got about a third of the way through before his campaign imploded in September. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry  the latter is now campaigning with Cruz  both ended their campaigns before completing it.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum hit up all 99 Iowa counties by September, revisiting the 2012 strategy that earned him a win in Iowa. This time around, being a road warrior hasn't proven as successful for Santorum. He is mired at the bottom of the polls and was relegated to the undercard debate in Des Moines on Thursday night.

But Cruz sees it as a winning strategy.

"I don't believe Iowa can be won from a Manhattan TV studio or a D.C. TV studio," Cruz said Tuesday in a dig at Trump. "It has to be won on the ground."

Cruz is slated to complete his 99th county when he visits Jefferson on Monday afternoon, just hours before the caucuses, when he will see if the strategy paid off.

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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sbauerAP and find more of his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/scott-bauer
White House Brief: Things to know about Donald Trump

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is counting on a strong showing in Monday's Iowa caucuses to prove his convention-busting combination of bluster and unpredictability is a winning formula in the 2016 race for the Republican presidential nomination. Here's a quick look at some things to know about him.

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THE BRIEF

A year ago, the reality television star and billionaire real estate developer was largely dismissed as an attention-seeking showman who had little intention of actually entering the race. But since announcing his candidacy in June at Trump Tower, he has upended the presidential contest as longtime Republican observers look on in awe.

Trump's campaign has been ignited by a series of controversial statements, each seemingly more outrageous than the last. He's said the Mexican government sends criminals across the U.S. border illegally. He's questioned Arizona Sen. John McCain's status as a war hero. He's called for temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country  a religious test derided across the globe. But while critics condemn each successive statement, Trump has won over new fans and remained atop of the GOP field in preference polls, tapping into the angers and frustrations of an electorate deeply concerned about America's place in the world.

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RESUME REVIEW

The son of a New York real estate developer, Trump grew up in an upper-income section of Queens and quickly joined his father's business after graduating from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Lured by the tall buildings and bright lights, Trump moved across the East River and set his sights on Manhattan.

Over the following decades, Trump's reputation grew, not only for his assets but for his made-for-New-York-tabloid exploits. He became a national household name with the success of the hit television show, "The Apprentice," and earned conservative credentials as he questioned whether President Barack Obama was born outside the United States.

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SIGNATURE ISSUE

The campaign promise best associated with Trump is his plan to build a wall along the length of the U.S. Southern border to stop the flow of migrants from Mexico. And, Trump says, he'll make the Mexican government pay for it. Trump has also vowed to deport all of the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. While he says the deportations will be done "humanely," he's advocated using deportation squads that would search door-to-door. Trump says his wall would include a "big beautiful door" so that the "good" immigrants can re-enter the country legally. He has yet to lay out specifics of how the federal government would manage that process.

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DEBATE DIGEST

It began with a simple question: "Is there anyone on stage, and can I see hands, who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge to not run an independent campaign against that person?"

With Trump's raised hand, he stole the show at that first Republican debate and made it clear that he was not playing by the usual rules.

Later in that same debate, he began his showdown with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who confronted Trump over his history of making derogatory comments about women.

Trump responded by denouncing what he called a culture of political correctness. "I don't frankly have time for total political correctness," he said. "And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either."

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MOMENT TO REMEMBER

As rival Ben Carson rose in some Iowa polls in November, Trump delivered an epic takedown of the retired neurosurgeon at one of his campaign rallies. In an effort to cast doubt on one aspect of Carson's life story, Trump dramatically re-enacted a scene from Carson's autobiography, in which he, as a young man, attempted to stab a friend or family member in the stomach. In Carson's telling, the blade is miraculously stopped by the victim's belt.

"So I have a belt ... it's going in because the belt moves this way. It moves this way, it moves that way," Trump said, dramatically acting out the scene.

"How stupid are the people of Iowa?" he later railed. "How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"

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PLEASE FORGET

That time he joked about dating his daughter, if only the two weren't related. A series of derogatory comments aimed at women. Dozens of potentially offensive tweets, including several re-tweets of accounts linked to white supremacists.

Trump's refusal to play by the rules of political correctness has earned him legions of loyal supporters. But his comments have also raised questions among critics about his temperament and whether he has the judgment to be president.

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Singapore firm fined for aiding N. Korean arms shipment

SINGAPORE (AP)  A Singapore court on Friday fined a shipping company nearly $127,000 for wiring money used to transport fighter jets and surface-to-air missile systems from Cuba to North Korea in 2013 in violation of bans on helping Pyongyang build up its weapons programs.

The haul, hidden under heaps of sugar and discovered by Panamanian authorities, was the biggest load of arms and related materials ever to be intercepted on its way to or from the isolated North.

The State Court found that Singapore-registered Chinpo Shipping Company had transferred tens of thousands of dollars for the shipment without conducting due diligence.

Tan Cheng Hoe, director of a Singapore-registered shipping company, Chinpo, arrives at the State Court on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, in Singapore. Chinpo was ordered by the State Court to pay close to $127,000 in fines for wiring money used to transport fighter jets and surface-to-air missile systems from Cuba to North Korea in 2013. The haul, hidden under heaps of sugar and discovered by Panamanian authorities, was the biggest load of arms and related materials ever to be intercepted on its way to or from the isolated North. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

The company had been found guilty last month of contributing to the nuclear-related programs or activities of North Korea and of running a remittance business without a valid license for more than four years.

In delivering the sentence, District Judge Jasvender Kaur said the fine had to act as general deterrence due to "strong public interest in preventing any breaches of United Nations sanctions.

"It conducted no due diligence. Such irresponsible actions must be deterred," the judge said.

Chinpo had wired $72,017 from its Bank of China account to a Panama-based shipping agent in July 2013 for the return passage of the MV Chong Chon Gang through the Panama Canal.

The MV Chong Chon Gang was managed by the North Korean company Ocean Maritime Management, a longtime client of Chinpo.

That month, Panamanian authorities found the ship loaded with arms and related materials weighing 474 tons, including two MiG-21 fighter jets, anti-tank rockets and SA-2 and SA-3 Russian surface-to-air missile systems. The military equipment was hidden under 10,500 tons of sugar in the cargo hold.

Chinpo had applied for a total of 605 outward remittances totaling $40 million from 2009 to 2013 on behalf of North Korean entities.

Chinpo director Tan Cheng Hoe, who also heads associated companies Tonghee Shipping Agency and Great Best Trading, said in court after the sentence: "We were wrongly accused."

When The Associated Press visited Chinpo's listed address last month, another company said it has occupied the premises for more than a year.

Chinpo violated a law based on U.N. sanctions that prohibits the provision of financial services, assets or resources to North Korea that "may be reasonably be used to contribute to the nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related, or other weapons of mass destruction-related programs or activities."

The maximum sentence is a fine of 100,000 Singapore dollars ($70,356) and five years in jail. The licensing law has a maximum penalty of a fine up to 100,000 Singapore dollars ($70,356).

Chinpo was fined 80,000 Singapore dollars ($56,285) for the first charge, and 100,000 Singapore dollars ($70,356) for the second. It must pay by Feb 12.

Defense lawyer Edmond Pereira, who had argued that the company's remittances were contingent to its role as Ocean Maritime Management's general and special agent, said it was too early to comment if his client would file an appeal.
Wary of culture clash, Germans teach refugees their rules

BERLIN (AP)  First impressions are important in any culture, and Germany is keen that even refugees from conservative Muslim countries get it right.

"Men and women say hello and goodbye by shaking hands and looking each other in the eyes," an online brochure earnestly instructs refugees, many of whom come from places where unrelated men and women are not supposed to touch one another. It also addresses more sensitive issues: "In Germany, homosexuals are allowed to show their sexual preference in public."

Guides like this one published by public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk have become staple fare in a flurry of German rulebooks designed to prevent culture clashes between residents and refugees. Belittled at first, the guides have gained significance after a series of robberies and sexual assaults during New Year's celebrations in the western city of Cologne.

Photo provided by Bayerischer Rundfunk shows a picture of the online brochure published by the German public broadcaster telling newcomers in one pen-and-ink cartoon frame how to welcome each other. Such advice is staple fare in a flurry of guides being released in Germany these days in multiple languages, designed to prevent culture clashes between local residents and migrants. (Bayerischer Rundfunk via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Authorities have warned against holding all migrants responsible for the actions of a relatively small group of men, described as being of "Arab or North African" origin. But the attacks have fed a growing debate over how to integrate the more than 1 million asylum seekers who arrived in the Germany last year.

"Germans are strange sometimes," explains another illustrated brochure, produced by a regional branch of the Left Party. "We have quirks, and especially we have rules."

Among those rules, the guide explains, is the need to separate garbage, arrive on time for appointments and refrain from urinating in public. "Trees need only rainwater. For everything else there are rest rooms," it says.

The 30-page brochure, with the English-language title "Germans be like," also explains what's allowed. Women, for example, don't have to wear veils, and fishing is permitted provided one gets a license.

It's easy to see how refugees, many of whom come from conservative societies, could experience culture shock in Germany, a country where beer and pork are on every menu and bare skin is flaunted in public. And there has been little discussion in Germany of the possibility that the new arrivals might have positive things to contribute to German culture, a point not lost on the refugees.

Still, refugees at a communal housing center in Berlin's Wilmersdorf district said they were willing to put aside their judgments.

"Their way of thinking, the way of life is different here," said Addis, who gave only that name because he feared repercussions for his relatives back home in Eritrea if he was identified as having fled. "For example, gay marriage is shocking, but we need to adapt and learn to go with it."

The 35-year-old former social worker said young refugees would find it easier to adapt than older people, and stressed the importance of making German friends.

One of the first to publish rules for refugees last October was Hardheim, a small town about 75 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Frankfurt. At the time, officials were forced to defend themselves against those who declared the guide patronizing, or a waste of public money.

"The guidelines aren't meant to bully anyone but to make it easier for citizens and asylum-seekers to live together," mayor Volker Rohm told the dpa news agency at the time. The town of 4,600 people had taken in about 1,000 refugees, causing some friction.

"Girls and young women feel harassed when approached and asked for their cellphone numbers or Facebook contacts," the guide said. "Please don't do it."

While far-right groups in particular have seized on reports of sexual harassment by newly arrived migrants  not all of them true  Germany as a whole was shaken by the scale and nature of the assaults that took place in Cologne and other cities at New Year.

Almost 1,000 women have filed criminal complaints over what happened in Cologne, more than half alleging sexual assaults. Authorities have identified 35 suspects, of whom 32 are from North Africa, including some asylum-seekers.

Germany's integration czar condemned the attacks, but rejected the idea that the assaults were anything other than criminal behavior.

"This isn't about cultural misunderstanding but about extreme wrongdoing," Aydan Ozoguz said in an email to The Associated Press. "You can't respond to this with integration courses, but only with punishment and if necessary deportation."

Still, Ozoguz said it was right to place a greater emphasis on gender roles both in integration courses and schools, because sexual violence is a feature of German society too.

Among its 14 tips for migrants, Bayrischer Rundfunk noted that "women are to be respected, no matter what they wear," and that "children must not be hit."

Markus Huber, a spokesman for the broadcaster, said the guide was produced in consultation with refugees and had been well received by them. The guides, available in German, English and Arabic, have been viewed more than 1.1 million times since October, he said.

The guide also notes the dire consequences for those who break some rules.

"Conflicts must not be solved with violence," it says, since this may land one in jail and also "have disadvantages in the asylum procedure."

Mohammed, a primary school teacher from the Syrian city of Hama now living in Berlin, said he had no doubt most refugees would accept the rules in Germany, especially given the broken countries many had left behind.

"In Germany there are many rules, but in the end rules help people," said Mohammed, who also feared repercussions for his family if his last name was published. "Some of the rules are difficult but they help people make society."

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Guide for refugees (in English): http://bit.ly/1PNVk7e
James Murdoch becomes chairman of Sky, renewing buyout talk

LONDON (AP)  James Murdoch will become chairman of European broadcaster Sky, a move that will renew speculation that his family's media empire will try to take over the company, in which it already has a stake.

The 43-year-old is the second son of tycoon Rupert Murdoch, whose family assets include The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and the 20th Century Fox movie studios.

James Murdoch will succeed Nicholas Ferguson four years after resigning from what was then known as BSkyB amid the phone-hacking scandal.

FILE - This is a Tuesday, July 19, 2011 file photo of the then Chief executive of News Corporation Europe and Asia, James Murdoch as he arrives at News International headquarters in London. James Murdoch will be taking over as chairman of the board for European broadcaster Sky, a move that will renew speculation that his familys media empire will try to take over the company, in which it already has a stake. (AP Photo/Sang Tan, File)

"James' deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Sky's ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future," said Jeremy Darroch, group CEO.

James Murdoch served as CEO from 2003 to 2007 before holding the position of chairman from 2007 to 2012. But while briefly in charge of British newspapers for Murdoch family interests, he was tainted by the phone-hacking scandal that forced the closure of the tabloid News of the World in 2011.

The scandal shocked Britain and though James Murdoch denied any involvement, the furor provided a setback to the man seen as vying for control of the empire with his siblings.

The outcry that followed the scandal has largely died down since then, following the conclusion of an inquiry into the behavior of the media, and after several attempts to prosecute journalists on bribery and other charges failed to secure any high-profile convictions.

The acquittal of Rebekah Brooks, a protege of Rupert Murdoch, on charges related to phone hacking signaled that James would be restored, said Claire Enders of Enders Analysis and a longtime Murdoch family watcher.

"When she was acquitted, that was the 'go' button," Enders said. "It didn't take more than five minutes for him to get the ... job at Fox."

Once Brooks was re-established to a top spot in Murdoch's media empire in London, it became a question of "why ever not restore James to the top of the business concern that he has been very largely responsible for over 13 years since he joined as CEO," Enders wrote in an email.

James Murdoch became CEO of Twenty-First Century Fox last year after his father began preparing to hand over aspects of his empire to his children. Coming back to Sky shows that his return from exile is now complete, Enders said.

"The fact that he was appointed as Sky CEO at 31 in 2003 showed that his father was confident in him and more so than the other children," Enders said.

But James Murdoch's move will also fan rumors about Sky's future ownership. Shore Capital analyst Roddy Davidson said it is likely to "rekindle speculation regarding 21st Century Fox's plans for its 39 percent stake."

The announcement came as Sky reported first half results in the highly competitive U.K. television and broadband market. Analysts like Charlie Huggins of Hargreaves Lansdown lauded the company for its strongest growth in 10 years in its retail customer base, but noted that profits would be hit as the company absorbed 630 million pounds ($900 million) per year of additional Premier League costs.
In Rigged Justice: 2016

How Weak Enforcement Lets

Corporate Offenders Off Easy, a 12-page booklet, Senator Elizabeth Warren documents corporations that were caught undertaking grossly fraudulent, highly profitable actions, and were made to pay a trivial fraction of those profits in fines  fines become a part of the cost of doing business, not a deterrent to criminal behavior.

Included in the tales of wrongdoing are:

* Education Management Corporation, a private university that defrauded its students about the rate at which its graduates found employment, taking in $11B, mostly in government money, and paying $95m to settle charges of fraud

* Standard & Poors, who fraudulently rated toxic mortgage-backed securities, helping to destroy the planet's economy, bankrupting, sickening, ruining and even killing people in every corner of the earth. The company received an 83% discount on its fines by agreeing to a settlement, never admitted wrongdoing, and faced no criminal charges.

* Novartis, the pharma company that bribed pharmacists to recommend its products while the company was under sanctions for a previous kickback scandal. The company received a 90% discount on its penalties for settling, admitted no wrongdoing, and has had no limits put on its ability to participate in Medicare and other programs

JPMorgan's settlement for giving conflicted advice to its clients over wealth management products was less than 1 percent of annual operating profits. GM paid under 1 percent of company revenue to settle claims on the faulty ignition switch that killed multiple vehicle passengers. For-profit college EDMC ripped off students with false promises of well-paying jobs, and paid below 1 percent of its student loan revenue over the period of violations. Warren further documents how in some settlements, the headline dollar figure looks tough until you read the fine print. A settlement with Graco Children's Products for selling defective car seats yielded $10 million, but $7 million of it went toward developing safety programs, which any responsible manufacturer would do in their normal course of business. The BP civil settlement over the Deepwater Horizon for $20.8 billion sounds massive until you learn that $5 billion could be deducted as an ordinary business expense for tax purposes.

Elizabeth Warren Challenges Clinton, Sanders to Prosecute Corporate Crime Better Than Obama [David Dayen/The Intercept]
Cattle drive draws focus to Florida's cowboy history

KENANSVILLE, Fla. (AP)  Some cowboys had selfie-sticks, and others posted regularly on Facebook while helping to herd more than 400 head of cattle more than 50 miles through central Florida.

Despite their efforts to re-create the life of Florida cowboys from the 19th century by wearing bonnets, suspenders and cowboy hats, and sleeping in sod fields at night, the more than 400 participants who took part in the once-in-a-decade cattle drive through the heart of Florida this week couldn't help but allow for little bits of the 21st century to seep in.

Semi-trailers hauled catered food from campsite to campsite for the weeklong trek. Participants like Doug Yarborough regularly checked his cellphone for messages while on horseback in the middle of fields where there was nothing but cows, sod, palm fronds and cow paddies.

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, riders arrive for lunch during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. Spanish explorers brought horses and Andalusian cattle to the New World in the 16th century, making Florida the nation's oldest cattle-raising state. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

"It's like going back in time, but you get to bring along modern things," said Yarborough, whose family has a ranch in Geneva, near Orlando.

Alexi Gutierrez, who makes and fits horseshoes for living, installed two car seats that can recline and have armrests for comfort at the front of his covered wagon pulled by mules. His friend, Bryce Burnett, also a farrier, teased him that he had forgotten to install cup-holders.

"You can't drink and drive," Gutierrez shot back.

The purpose of the once-a-decade Great Florida Cattle Drive was to draw attention to Florida's deep cowboy history at a time when the state is known more for Disney World fantasies, South Beach flashiness, Panama City Beach spring break rowdiness and Cape Canaveral rocket launches. This week's drive was the third one since 1995. It ends with a celebration at the Kenansville Silver Spurs Arena on Saturday.

"We try to remember the way it used to be and draw attention that the cattle industry was the first industry in America," said Doyle Conner Jr., who is chairman of the cattle drive.

Spanish explorers brought horses and Andalusian cattle to the New World in the 16th century, making Florida the nation's oldest cattle-raising state. Today, Florida's $531 million cattle industry has 1.7 million cattle and calves, and it's the 17th largest in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of Florida's cattle are used for breeding and nursing, and they're typically shipped out West once they get near adulthood.

"You do whatever you can to keep it going," said Linda Ballatine Brown, whose husband's family will have been running a ranch in Osceola County for six generations, if her grandchildren eventually takeover as expected. "It's a tough life. You have to love the land to do it."

Florida's cowboys differ from their more famous Western counterparts in a few ways. They are better known for using whips than ropes, and hence earned the name "crackers" from the sound of a cracking whip. They liked to be called "cow hunters" rather than cowboys since the job often involves searching for cattle in swamps and through sawgrass fields. They're more likely to wear lace-up boots than pull-on boots since Florida's swampy terrain often means wet feet which makes pull-on boots difficult to take off.

Some things never change in cowboy life, whether in the 19th or 21st century, such as the popularity of farriers like Gutierrez and Burnett. Every couple of miles, riders stopped them and asked for help with their horses' feet. Holly Huffman-Pope's horse, Rocky, had an abscess in his hoof, and Burnett cut out the infection so that it would drain.

"We hope he will be able to finish the trip," said Huffman-Pope, who has a ranch in Polk City. "Horses come first. Riders come second."

While there was help for horses, there was no AAA tire-repair service for the dozen or so wagons on the ride that stretched through several ranches and state land in Osceola County. A tire on Malcom Jessup's covered wagon went flat less than a mile from the campsite on the second day of the cattle drive. Jeff Parker rode up on his horse, carrying a red portable power pack to pump air into the tires.

"You don't see this often on a cattle drive," said Parker, referring to the power pack.

But it didn't help since the hole in the tire was too big. After a cellphone call, a mechanic from the local farm stopped by with a replacement tire as more than a dozen cowboys stood around and watched, including Deborah Ritchie, of Jacksonville.

"I just texted my daughter, 'How many cowboys does it take to change a wagon tire?'" said Ritchie, deadpan.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikeschneiderap

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, Richard Claybrooke, center, of Parrish, Fla., sits with his sons Brady, left, 7, and Logan, 10, after stopping for lunch during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. The once-a-decade event was organized to draw attention to Florida's deep cowboy history. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, Chris Helton, 12, of Sandersville, Ga., prepares his horse, Dakota, for the second day of the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. The purpose of the once-a-decade Great Florida Cattle Drive is to draw attention to Floridas deep cowboy history at a time when the state is known more for Disney World fantasies, South Beach flashiness, Panama City Beach spring break rowdiness and Cape Canaveral rocket launches. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, a rider herds cattle during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. Most of Florida's cattle are used for breeding and nursing, and they're typically shipped out West once they get near adulthood. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, farrier Bryce Burnett of Zolfo Springs, Fla., files down the hoof of a horse named Rocky during the second day of the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. Every couple of miles, riders stopped him and asked for help with their horses' feet. Rocky had an abscess in his hoof, and Burnett cut out the infection so that it would drain. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, Laura Jessup of Spencer, Tenn., takes a photo as she waits for her wagon to be fixed during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. The tire on Jessup's covered wagon went flat less than a mile from the campsite on the second day of the cattle drive. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, cowboys lift up a covered wagon to remove a flat tire on Malcolm Jessup's wagon during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. The tire on Jessup's covered wagon went flat less than a mile from the campsite on the second day of the cattle drive. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, Steve Pyle of DeLand, Fla., a veteran attending with the Wounded Warrior Project, relaxes in the back of a covered wagon as he waits for the start of the second day of the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, Ellison Hardee and his daughter Robin, of Chiefland, Fla., saddle their horse, Dilly, during the second day of the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. More than 400 participants took part in the once-in-a-decade cattle drive through the heart of Florida. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, horses drink water from a trough as their riders eat lunch during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. The purpose of the once-a-decade Great Florida Cattle Drive is to draw attention to Floridas deep cowboy history at a time when the state is known more for Disney World fantasies, South Beach flashiness, Panama City Beach spring break rowdiness and Cape Canaveral rocket launches. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, a rider lets his horse drink from a stream as he waits for the start of the second day of the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. The purpose of the once-a-decade Great Florida Cattle Drive is to draw attention to Floridas deep cowboy history at a time when the state is known more for Disney World fantasies, South Beach flashiness, Panama City Beach spring break rowdiness and Cape Canaveral rocket launches. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, storyteller Eric Hoeppner, left, and guitarist Chuck Hardwicke relax at a campsite during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. "We try to remember the way it used to be and draw attention that the cattle industry was the first industry in America," says Doyle Conner Jr., who is chairman of the cattle drive. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 photo, Wendy Wilson of Ocala, Fla., kisses Arcus the horse as she and other riders stop for lunch and to water the horses during the Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016, in Kenansville, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
White House Brief: Things to know about Ben Carson

ATLANTA (AP)  Ben Carson rose from poverty to international fame as pediatric neurosurgeon, yet he's found the path to the White House to be complicated. Carson remains popular among evangelical conservatives who are frustrated by the status quo. He still finds himself trailing more outspoken, bombastic candidates who tap into widespread frustration in conservative circles. Here's a quick look at some things to know about him.

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THE BRIEF

Republican presidential candidate retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson answers a question as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, looks on during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Carson says he never intended to run for president, but was coaxed into it by supporters mesmerized with his personal story.

The only African-American hopeful among major presidential candidates, Carson delighted white conservatives with his withering critiques of President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president.

But he withered himself under the spotlight reserved for front-runners, falling from a brief national lead in late October to almost afterthought status heading into the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus. He's endured questions about the accuracy of his autobiography, struggled to establish foreign policy credentials and watched his campaign inner circle implode.

Still, he's hoping to use his quiet strength among evangelical conservatives to re-energize his campaign with a surprisingly strong finish in Iowa, a state that gave fellow evangelical favorites Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum victories in the last two GOP presidential caucuses.

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RESUME REVIEW

Carson is among the GOP hopefuls to attract support in part because he's never held public office. He's never even sought it.

Carson earned national acclaim during 29 years leading the pediatric neurosurgery unit of Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore. He directed the first surgery to separate twins connected at the back of the head. His career was notable enough to inspire the 2009 movie, "Gifted Hands," with actor Cuba Gooding Jr. depicting Carson.

He went on to become a noted author and inspirational speaker, and gained a national political profile with his 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, where he critiqued what he called the modern welfare state and the nation's overall direction.

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SIGNATURE ISSUE

Carson pitches himself as the antidote to acrimonious politics and a political system he says is consumed by special interests, though he rarely has pointed fingers at specific individuals or entities. "I see myself as a member of 'we the people,' " he said at the outset of his campaign. "I see myself as a logical American who has common sense," he continued, "and I think that's going to resonate with a lot of Americans, regardless of their political party."

Indeed, that outsider's view has helped fuel his campaign, but it's also come with a paucity of policy detail. Combine that with Carson's soft-spoken approach in a campaign dominated by more aggressive candidates like businessman Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Carson finds himself struggling for traction.

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DEBATE DIGEST

Carson is almost a deliberate back-bencher in debates, which he has said often devolve into discussions about "peripheral things that mean nothing to the American people."

But in November, as a front-runner, he suggested China was militarily involved in Syria's civil war. He said, "It's a very complex place. You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there."

The U.S. has released no intelligence that suggests Chinese military engagement in Syria. Carson went on to defend his statement, with his campaign saying he referred only to "longstanding and well-documented security ties to Syria."

But it was the beginning of a weekslong struggle to prove that Carson, the political newcomer, was up to job of commander in chief.

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MOMENT TO REMEMBER

The inner-workings of campaign staffs often are overrated. But Carson's bid has been almost defined by the acrimony between his paid campaign staffers and his longtime business manager, Armstrong Williams.

Days before Christmas, Carson welcomed journalists to his Maryland home  without the knowledge of his top campaign aides  to promise that "every single thing" about his campaign was "on the table," including "personnel."

A week later, his campaign manager, Barry Bennett, and communications director, Doug Watts, resigned. On his way out, Bennett questioned Carson's fitness for the Oval Office and suggested he had become Williams's "script reader."

"No one wants Armstrong Williams anywhere near the Oval Office," Bennett said.

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PLEASE FORGET

Carson lashed out in November at questions about whether he was "offered a full scholarship" to West Point, as he wrote in "Gifted Hands."

He traced the claim to his high school ROTC days, when he recalled that top U.S. military brass "specifically" offered him a scholarship. But West Point cadets don't get scholarships. They receive appointments through an extremely competitive application process; they ultimately pay no tuition.

"What about the West Point thing is false? What is false about it?" he said to reporters in November. Pressed for details on who offered him admission, he said, "I don't remember the names of the people. It's almost 50 years ago."

Hours earlier, he told Fox News, "I guess it could have been more clarified. I told it as I understood it."

___

ONLINE AND SOCIAL MEDIA:

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson

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2 journalists among 17 arrested in Burundi security sweep

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP)  Burundian police say they are holding two foreign journalists who were among 17 people swept up in a military operation.

Le Monde on Friday demanded the immediate release of Jean-Philippe Remy and British photojournalist Philip Edward Moore, who were on assignment for the French newspaper.

Moise Nkurunziza, a deputy spokesman for Burundian police, said Friday that the two were arrested in the capital.

Nkurunziza said Moore was arrested in the Nyakabiga neighborhood while allegedly meeting with armed rebels and that he attempted to flee when the security forces arrived. He said Remy was arrested when he came looking for Moore.
Austrian police: US woman found dead in her flat suffocated

VIENNA (AP)  Austrian police say that a 25-year old American woman whose body was found in her Vienna apartment suffocated.

But they declined to say Friday what led to her suffocation pending continuing investigations and results of toxicological tests expected within the next few days.

U.S. authorities have identified her as Lauren Mann from Colorado.

An apartment building is pictured where a 25-year old woman from Colorado, United States, has been found dead in Vienna, Austria,Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The woman's body was found in her apartment after she did not show up at the home where she worked as an au pair and her employer called police. The cause of her death is under investigation. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

Police and firefighters who forced open her door Tuesday evening found the half-naked body on a mattress in the bedroom. Mann had been working as an au pair, and police were alerted by Mann's employer after she did not show up for work.

Mann graduated in 2012 from the University of Colorado-Boulder's College of Music.

Two candles are placed in in front of an apartment building where a 25-year old woman from Colorado, United States, has been found dead in Vienna, Austria,Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The woman's body was found in her apartment after she did not show up at the home where she worked as an au pair and her employer called police. The cause of her death is under investigation. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

An apartment is sealed by police where a 25-year old woman from Colorado, United States, has been found dead in Vienna, Austria,Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The woman's body was found in her apartment after she did not show up at the home where she worked as an au pair and her employer called police. The cause of her death is under investigation. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

An apartment building is pictured where a 25-year old woman from Colorado, United States, has been found dead in Vienna, Austria,Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The woman's body was found in her apartment after she did not show up at the home where she worked as an au pair and her employer called police. The cause of her death is under investigation. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)
Authorities: 1 escaped inmate caught, 2 likely in San Jose

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)  One of three violent inmates who broke out of a Southern California jail a week ago surrendered Friday, and authorities believe the other two may be 400 miles north in the San Jose area.

Bac Duong, 43, surrendered in Southern California earlier in the day and told investigators he had been with the other two fugitives, 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu and 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, in San Jose on Thursday, Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said. The two may be headed to Fresno, he said.

"If they are watching, we want them to understand that we are pressing forward, and we are coming after them," Hallock said at a news conference, addressing the escapees directly for the first time. "We will take you back into custody."

This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows Bac Duong, one of three inmates who escaped Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, from the county's Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Wednesday that some arrests have been made in the investigation, but the inmates themselves have not been captured. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Duong was taken into custody in Santa Ana, where the trio made their brazen escape on Jan. 22 from the maximum security facility, authorities said.

It's not clear how he got back to Southern California from San Jose, but early Friday Duong contacted a woman he knew at an auto electric repair shop just a few miles away from the jail, authorities and witnesses said.

Lee Tran, whose family owns Auto Electric Rebuilders, said Duong came to the shop looking for Tran's sister, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to surrender.

"He was scared for his life, pretty much," Tran said. "That's why he asked one of our people to turn him in."

Tran said his sister called 911, and Duong stayed outside, smoked a cigarette and waited for police.

"She was crying her head off," said Trach Tran, her father, who was also there. "Everybody was scared."

Lee Tran said his sister's boyfriend knows Duong, and federal authorities had come by to speak with her earlier this week because she might have visited Duong in jail.

Shortly after the late-morning arrest, a team of well-armed officers in protective vests swarmed the business.

Tieu and Nayeri are believed to be still together in a white utility van the fugitives stole a day after the escape, and they could be headed to Fresno where there may be an associate who can help them, Hallock said.

The three men had all been awaiting trial for separate violent crimes at the Central Men's Jail. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in the jail about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The men escaped in the early morning hours after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a four-story jail building.

They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed linen.

It took jail staff 16 hours to realize the three men were missing.

On Thursday, authorities arrested a woman who taught English inside the jail. Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, gave Nayeri a paper copy of a Google Earth map that showed an aerial view of the entire jail compound, Hallock said.

She was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to a felony and was being held pending a court appearance set for Monday. It wasn't clear if she had a lawyer.

Ravaghi and Nayeri also exchanged "personal and close" handwritten letters, but Hallock could not say if the two were romantically involved.

"It wasn't the relationship that you would expect between a teacher and an inmate in a custody setting," he said.

It wasn't clear why Nayeri was allowed to take Ravaghi's class because he spoke fluent English. "Why he was attending that class ... that is very much of a concern for us," Hallock said.

It also wasn't clear why jail deputies, who read all inmate correspondence, didn't flag the letters.

Ravaghi, who was born, like Nayeri, in Iran, was working as a part-time English instructor a local community college district and had taken a sheriff's class on jail rules and how to avoid manipulation by inmates, officials said.

It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968 that holds 900 men.

Tieu is charged with murder and attempted murder in a 2011 gang shooting. Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary.

Duong, a native of Vietnam, has been held since last month on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

After authorities left the shop, the elder Tran said the family was focused on regaining calm and hadn't had time to think about the reward offered by officials for tips leading to the fugitives' capture.

"Right now, we don't even care about that," he said.

Orange County Sheriff agents search for additional suspects as they search the back of a hotel in Santa Ana, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Authorities say they have captured one of three inmates who escaped from a California jail last week while facing charges involving violent crimes. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Department shows Nooshafarin Ravaghi. Ravaghi, 44, who taught English classes at Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., was was arrested Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, on suspicion of helping three inmates escape the lockup. She was arrested nearly a week after the men  one an alleged killer  cut their way out of the jail and rappelled down an outside wall last Friday. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

A wanted sign is displayed for the The reward for information leading to the arrest of the the three escaped inmates from the Orange County Central Men's Jail on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong are believed to be dangerous and all were awaiting trial for separate violent felonies, authorities said. (Paul Rodriguez/The Orange County Register via AP) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

This undated combo photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows tattoos and other markings on the body Bac Duong, one of three inmates who escaped Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, from the county's Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Wednesday that several arrests have been made in the investigation, but the inmates themselves have not been captured. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

CORRECTS DAY TO SATURDAY, JAN. 23- This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a 2008 White GMC Savana utility van that authorities believe three escaped inmates from Orange County, Calif., stole from South Los Angeles on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, following their jailbreak Friday. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Nooshafarian Ravaghi, a 44-year-old woman who taught English as a second language to inmates, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of helping three inmates escape the lockup. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Department shows Hossein Nayeri. Sheriff Sandra Hutchens earlier this week cited Nayeri's troubled and conniving past when she labeled him as "most probably the mastermind" of a stunning jail break that blindsided authorities and has put three inmates on the loose. Nayeri racked up a stunning list of criminal exploits in the decade leading up to his breakout, including a high-speed police chase, a sordid torture case and a flight overseas to avoid capture. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

Orange County Sheriff agents search the back of a hotel for escaped inmates in Santa Ana, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Authorities say they have captured one of three inmates who escaped from a California jail last week while facing charges involving violent crimes. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
White House Brief: Things to know about GOP Sen. Rand Paul

WASHINGTON (AP)  Sen. Rand Paul's populist campaign, based on advocacy of a smaller, less-nosy government, gained popularity at first but he soon faded. The Kentucky senator was among those bumped from the main debate stage because of low polling, but won readmission for the last debate before the Iowa caucuses. A look at the senator:

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THE BRIEF

Paul launched his presidential candidacy early, anchoring his effort in detailed policy positions before Donald Trump jumped in and captured the attention of angry, change-seeking Americans. Paul, though a senator, is no go-along-to-get-along Washington insider. He was elected in the tea party-driven wave of 2010 and tangled often with GOP leaders. But he started to learn the ways of Washington and adapt to them.

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RESUME REVIEW

Paul is an ophthalmologist who has worked at clinics in southwest Kentucky, specializing in eye surgery, and helps to run a free clinic for his poor neighbors. In politics, Paul helped his father, Ron, run against Texas Sen. Phil Gramm in 1984 and on his 1988 presidential campaign, and managed his father's 1996 campaign to return to the House representing a Houston-area district. In Rand Paul's first campaign with his own name on the ballot, running for Senate in Kentucky in 2010, he toppled Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell's choice in the GOP primary by an almost 2-to-1 margin and went on to win the general election by 12 percentage points.

Paul grew up near Houston, the son of an obstetrician father and mother who was a secretary. He was 15 when his father won election to the House in 1978. Rand Paul attended Baylor University, where he was an honors student, but left without a degree when he was accepted into Duke University's School of Medicine. While on a surgical rotation at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta, he met his future wife, Kelley, at a picnic. The couple married in 1990 and moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to be closer to her family. Paul joined a medical practice before opening one of his own, and Kelley Paul is a freelance writer and political consultant. The couple is raising three children in Washington.

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SIGNATURE ISSUE

Paul's career and campaign is centered on the idea of a smaller, less-intrusive government  a platform that appeals to liberals concerned about government operating outside its authority as well as to many conservatives. He controlled the Senate floor in 2013 for almost 13 hours to hold up the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director. Brennan had been President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, and Paul opposed the Obama administration's use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists. He drew support from people across the political spectrum who shared a concern about government overreach, making it seem possible to cobble together a diverse coalition big enough to compete in the race for president.

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DEBATE DIGEST

"If you want boots on the ground, and you want them to be our sons and daughters, you got 14 other choices," he said in a reference to his rivals. "There will always be a Bush or Clinton for you, if you want to go back to war in Iraq. But the thing is, the first war was a mistake. And I'm not sending our sons and our daughters back to Iraq. The war didn't work."

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MOMENT TO REMEMBER

Paul in October embarked on an online event in which he answered hostile questions from Twitter users.

One asked if he's still running for president.

"I dunno," he answered. "I wouldn't be doing this dumbass live streaming if I weren't."

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PLEASE FORGET

Still a year out from Monday's Iowa caucuses, Paul began a series of stumbles that turned into displays of his prickly personality  and raised questions about his credibility as a doctor. Paul said he had heard about "many tragic cases" of children who got vaccines and ended up with "profound mental disorders." That assertion has no basis in medical research. Paul at first blamed the uproar on "inaccuracies" in the media. He later said he believes vaccines are safe and that his own children are immunized. That came after Paul suggested that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the transmission of Ebola sound similar to that of AIDS. Ebola, he said, is easier to contract. Health authorities worldwide have said that Ebola is only transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids.

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Online:

Senate Twitter: http://twitter.com/senrandpaul

Campaign Twitter: http://twitter.com/drrandpaul

Instagram: http://instagram.com/drrandpaul/

Campaign Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/RandPaul

Senate Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/SenatorRandPaul

Senate campaign website: http://www.randpaul2016.com

Political action committee: http://www.randpac.com

Senate website: http://www.paul.senate.gov

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German authorities search homes in Nazi investigation

BERLIN (AP)  German authorities say they've searched the homes of three former SS men believed to have taken part in a World War II massacre in northern France.

Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told The Associated Press on Friday that the homes of the three men, all around 90 years old, were raided this week in Saxony and Lower Saxony. Authorities confiscated documents, photos and other possible evidence.

The three are believed to have been members of the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth," which was responsible for the massacre of 86 men in Ascq, France, in 1944.

Brendel says all three men, whose names he would not release, are believed to have been present for the massacre but deny that they were.
Rights group: Dozens were put in mass graves in Burundi

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP)  Satellite images, video footage and witness accounts show that dozens of people allegedly killed by Burundian security forces in December were later buried in mass graves, Amnesty International reported Friday.

The news came as unrest in Burundi escalated with the arrest of 17 people in a security sweep, including two foreign journalists who were released later Friday.

The rights group reported five possible mass graves in the Buringa area on the outskirts of the capital, Bujumbura, which has been wracked by violence as the security forces go into neighborhoods seen as opposition strongholds. Two journalists on assignment for the French newspaper Le Monde were among 17 people swept up in a military operation Thursday, said Moise Nkurunziza, a deputy spokesman for Burundian police.

Journalists Jean-Philippe Remy of France and British photographer Philip Edward Moore were released on Friday afternoon, Le Monde said.

France, which had called on Burundian authorities to free the journalists, suspended its security defense cooperation activities in Burundi late Friday.

Witnesses described how police and local officials scoured Nyakabiga and other neighborhoods in Bujumbura to retrieve the bodies of those who were killed late last year and took them to undisclosed locations, according to Amnesty International.

"The imagery, dating from late December and early January, shows disturbed earth consistent with witness accounts. Witnesses told Amnesty International that the graves were dug on the afternoon of Dec. 11, in the immediate aftermath of the bloodiest day of Burundi's escalating crisis," the group said.

Earlier this month, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein also called for an urgent investigation into the alleged existence of mass graves following the violence in December. Zeid said the "increasing number of enforced disappearances, coupled with allegations of secret detention facilities and mass graves is extremely alarming."

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Friday the reports of mass graves "underscore the futility of trying to cover up such crimes. Perpetrators of atrocities in Burundi must realize that the international community is watching and those responsible for such horrors will be brought to account."

Burundi's government has dismissed these allegations, saying they are based on false information supplied by the regime's opponents.

In coordinated attacks, gunmen stormed three military installations in Burundi on Dec. 11. The next day, 28 people were found shot dead in three Bujumbura neighborhoods. An witness told The Associated Press that some of the dead had their hands tied behind their backs. Another witness blamed government security forces, saying they went after the victims in door-to-door searches.

President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek re-election to a third term last April touched off street protests that led to a failed coup in May and a rebellion that has left the central African country on the brink of civil war.

The Burundian government has rejected the proposed deployment of African Union peacekeepers in Burundi, saying they will be treated as an invading force.

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White House Brief: Things to know about Ohio's John Kasich

WASHINGTON (AP)  Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the budget expert with the wry humor and regular-guy style, is coming to the starting line of the nomination process  the Iowa caucuses  with one of the biggest compliments a presidential candidate can receive: attack ads against him. Gee, thanks, he might say. But the ads by Jeb Bush and an outside group are signs that Kasich's longshot presidential bid has become a threat to other campaigns vying for the establishment mantle. Here's a look at Kasich:

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THE BRIEF

Republican presidential candidate former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush answers a question as Ohio Gov. John Kasich listens during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Kasich entered the presidential race just 16 days before the first presidential debate in August with no guarantee that he'd qualify for the stage. His could have been one of the shortest presidential bids in history. Instead, the strong-willed and sometimes abrasive governor jumped into the contest with more than a dozen other hopefuls by casting himself as a conservative who bucks his party on occasion and disdained the sport of bashing Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In a year in which outsiders and ideologues rule, Kasich has advocated pragmatism. "Purpose," he said, is "more important than party."

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RESUME REVIEW

Kasich, 63, was raised a Catholic but turned to a more fundamentalist brand of Christianity after his parents were killed by a drunk driver in 1987. He was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, but left the blue-collar town outside Pittsburgh to attend Ohio State University. As a freshman, he requested a meeting with President Richard Nixon, who obliged.

Kasich defeated an incumbent Democrat in 1978 to become the youngest person elected to the Ohio Senate, at age 26. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. House, where he served nine terms. Kasich rose to prominence in 1997, when as House budget chairman, he became the chief architect of a deal that balanced the federal budget for the first time in decades.

A short-lived bid for president in 2000 led Kasich to trade Washington in 2001 for a decade-long stint as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers. In 2010, he narrowly defeated a once-popular Democratic incumbent to become Ohio governor.

Kasich cites his Christian faith for his pragmatic mix of policy positions  favoring income-tax cuts and smaller government while supporting Medicaid expansion under the federal health care law and certain tax increases. That's the focus of the American Future Fund's ad against him in New Hampshire. Says the spot: "John Kasich: Not a conservative. Not even a moderate. An Obama Republican." Kasich says he hasn't abandoned the conservative agenda but redefines it around core American values.

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SIGNATURE ISSUE

Balancing the federal budget. In addition to building the first balanced budget in years while in the House, he went on as Ohio governor to cut, reshape or privatize much of the state government, erasing a projected $8 billion budget gap and seeing employment restored to pre-recession levels. Labor unions, armed with video of Kasich calling a police officer an idiot, prevailed in a 2011 clash, winning repeal of a law he'd signed curtailing collective bargaining rights for public employees. Kasich is a budget wonk  but as such he endured years of litigation, political resistance and media investigations after he privatized Ohio's economic development department, designing the nonprofit JobsOhio to "move at the speed of business."

In March, he announced that Ohio had regained the more than the 406,000 private-sector jobs lost during the recession, a fulfilment of a campaign promise and, as he saw it, a vindication of his effort. Ohio's recovery mirrored national trends. But he said JobsOhio, tax cuts and innovation in government set an example for other states.

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DEBATE DIGEST

Kasich was asked in one debate about his assessment that his rivals' tax and other plans are "crazy." This set off a riff:

"To talk about (how) we're just gonna have a 10 percent tithe and that's how we're gonna fund the government? And we're going to just fix everything with waste, fraud, and abuse? Or that we're just going to be great? Or we're going to ship 10 million people out of this country, leaving their children here in this country and dividing families? Folks, we've got to wake up. We cannot elect somebody that doesn't know how to do the job. You have got to pick somebody who has experience, somebody that has the know-how, the discipline."

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MOMENT TO REMEMBER

"By the way," Kasich said at a September debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, gesturing to the Air Force One backdrop behind the candidates, "I think I actually flew on this plane with Ronald Reagan when I was a congressman, and his goals, and mine, really are pretty much the same. Lift Americans, unify, give hope, grow America, and restore it is to that great, shining city on a hill."

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PLEASE FORGET

Outlining his national security plan in November, Kasich said that as president, he'd set up a government agency with a "mandate" to promote "Judeo-Christian" values and counter propaganda from Islamic militants.

Kasich said the new agency would promote human rights, democracy and the freedoms of speech, religion and association.

But he drew derision for sounding like he wanted to fight Islamic propaganda with taxpayer-funded American propaganda that espouses Judeo-Christian values  possibly violating the First Amendment's freedom of religion guarantees. He clarified that it need not be a new agency, but an upgrade to the existing Voice of America to "engage in the war of ideas" against the Islamic State group.

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ONLINE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnKasich and https://twitter.com/GovernorKasich

Instagram: https://instagram.com/johnkasich/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnkasich

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Spieth falls behind at stormy Singapore Open

SINGAPORE (AP)  Jordan Spieth slipped five shots off the lead at the Singapore Open on Friday when an electrical storm forced second-round play to be abandoned.

Spieth was lurking just one shot off the pace after his opening round at Sentosa Country Club, but suddenly found himself five strokes behind and tied for sixth place after Song Young-han of South Korea capitalized on his early start to beat the arrival of the foul weather and post an 8-under 63 to go to the clubhouse leading at 9 under.

Spieth, teeing off after lunchtime, completed just seven holes of his second round but failed to make up any ground on the new front-runner, remaining at 4 under after struggling with his putter, just as he did in Abu Dhabi last week.

He briefly got to 5 under when he drained a long putt to birdie the par-3 second hole, but gave the shot back with his first bogey of the tournament, on the fifth hole. His flat stick also let him down on the two par-5s on the front nine, which he comfortably birdied in the first round but could only par on Friday.

"Didn't get off to a great start but made a good birdie on No. 2," Spieth said.

"Had a couple of bad putts. Missed a short one on No. 4. On 7 I got a bit unlucky. I had a perfect distance to the hole, the par-5, and just when I hit my second the wind changed. My ball came up just short of the green and, when I went to play my putt, that's when the rain came in hard almost horizontally. My putt came up seven feet short."

Spieth arrived in Southeast Asia already complaining of exhaustion after playing his last five events in five different countries. His hopes of a making a quick getaway back home to the United States, were at risk of being ruined by Singapore's fickle weather, with tournament officials racing against time to finish on Sunday. The second round was still to be completed by 75 players.

While Spieth struggled to get any momentum going in the co-sanctioned Asian and Japan Tour event, Song made the most of the perfect early conditions to charge to the top of the leaderboard with seven birdies and an eagle.
Fox News invited bullshitting fraudster Wayne Simmons to appear on its "news" programs over 100 times posing as a CIA operative. Based on his hawkish proclamations, the Pentagon hired Simmons as a shill analyst to propagandize for them. Now that Simmons has been exposed, arrested, and charged with with multiple counts of fraud, he will never appear on Fox News again, but the lies he told on the network will forever be regarded as gospel truth by fear-addicted Fox TV viewers.

From Rolling Stone:

Simmons claimed to have spent 27 years with the CIA, but Paul Nathanson, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said in a court filing that Simmons "never had any association whatsoever with the CIA." (The CIA declined to comment  as a rule, it never confirms or denies agents  but said it is "working closely with the Justice Department on this matter.") Instead, prosecutors say Simmons spent those 27 years doing just about everything else: He ran a limousine service, a gambling operation and an AIDS-testing clinic; worked for a hot-tub business, a carpeting company and a nightclub; and briefly played defensive back for the New Orleans Saints. Along the way, he accrued criminal convictions, including multiple DUIs, plus charges for weapons possession and assault, and an arrest for attacking a cabdriver in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2007. "Fuck you, you can't do shit to me  do you know who I am?" Simmons told a cop, according to a police report, before insisting that he was CIA, and that the cabbie, who was Pakistani, had a bomb. A police dog found no explosives, and a CIA representative told the cops to take whatever actions they deemed necessary.
White House Brief: Things to Know about Ted Cruz

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tries to position himself as the only consistent conservative in the race for president, railing against the "Washington cartel" while pushing a conservative agenda that appeals to the tea party and evangelical wings of the Republican Party. Here's a quick snapshot of things to know about him.

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THE BRIEF

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio talk after a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Ted Cruz has risen from being almost unknown in Iowa to being one of the front-runners. He won election to the Senate in 2012 as a political rookie in Texas, riding a tea party wave to upset a candidate with decades of experience and deep connections inside the Republican Party. He's proceeded since with the same disregard for the GOP establishment, at times maneuvering quixotically in the Senate to mount an aggressive opposition to President Barack Obama. It's an approach that has annoyed fellow Republicans  Arizona Sen. John McCain famously labeled Cruz as one of the Senate's "wacko birds"  but Cruz is unapologetic. As he likes to tell voters in early voting states, "If you see a candidate who Washington embraces, run and hide."

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RESUME REVIEW

Before his election to the Senate, Cruz had a career centered on practicing law at the highest level. A graduate of Harvard Law School and clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz led a Houston-based firm's Supreme Court practice, taught such litigation at the University of Texas and was charged with representing the state before the high court as its solicitor general. He also served in the George W. Bush administration, at both the Federal Trade Commission and as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department.

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SIGNATURE ISSUE

Cruz became a favorite of tea party conservatives when for 21 hours and 19 minutes in September 2013, he stood in the Senate to urge Congress to cut off money for Obama's health care law. The speech, during which Cruz read the Dr. Seuss classic "Green Eggs and Ham" to his daughters, said to be watching their father at home, was partly behind a 16-day partial government shutdown the next month. Cruz argues he wants to make the 2016 presidential election a referendum on the health care law and his plans to institute a flat tax, rewriting and simplifying the income tax code. Along the way he wants to abolish the IRS and Education Department, undo the Iranian nuclear deal and build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico border.

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DEBATE DIGEST

Cruz was a collegiate debating champion at Princeton, and he has shown flashes of rhetorical flourish during the debates. He got one of the loudest ovations of any debate in October when he skewered questions being asked by the moderators. "How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?" Cruz asked as the crowd roared its approval. It's a clip his campaign now plays at town-hall meetings. But Cruz's aggressive debate strategy backfired when he questioned rival Donald Trump's adherence to liberal "New York values." Trump pivoted by blasting Cruz for not mentioning the bravery of first responders killed in the 9-11 attacks and how the city came together.

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MOMENT TO REMEMBER

Cruz released a parody video the week before Christmas, showing him reading holiday classics to his children like "How Obamacare Stole Christmas" and "Rudolph the Underemployed Reindeer." The video helped Cruz advance his political agenda, showed a sense of humor  if at someone else's expense  and racked up nearly 1.9 million views in five weeks. Cruz has also employed humor with an edge on Twitter. When Trump refused to participate in the last debate before the Iowa caucuses, Cruz posted a link to the song "Brave Sir Robin Ran Away" from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." And when Trump called Cruz "nasty," the senator responded by posting a link to Janet Jackson's music video from her song by that name.

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PLEASE FORGET

Cruz has a lot of enemies who aren't afraid to talk about their distaste for the firebrand senator. But perhaps his harshest critic has been his old college roommate, Craig Mazin, now a Hollywood screenwriter. Mazin was quoted in 2013 as saying, "I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book." Mazin remains active in lambasting Cruz on Twitter. The attacks on Cruz's personality from Mazin and others have become so persistent that Cruz is now trying to use them to his advantage. "If you want someone to grab a beer with," he said in a debate, "I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done and I will get you home."

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ONLINE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/sentedcruz

http://twitter.com/tedcruz

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/cruzforpresident/

http://instagram.com/sentedcruz

Facebook:
Portugal's government hangs tough on ending austerity

LISBON, Portugal (AP)  Portugal's prime minister said Friday he will seek to accommodate European authorities' concerns about his government's spending plan for this year, but won't give up his promise to end austerity in the country.

Antonio Costa told Parliament his government will be "constructive" in talks with the European Commission. At the same time he said he will "stay faithful" to his recent election pledge of switching the government's focus from debt reduction to economic growth and job creation.

European authorities want Portugal to keep cutting spending. The aim is to reduce the debt burden that forced Portugal to ask for a 78 billion-euro ($85 billion) bailout in 2011. In return for the cash which prevented the country's bankruptcy, Portugal had to enact a series of spending cuts and tax increases that weighed on the economy and pushed unemployment sharply higher.

Portugese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, left, is greeted by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at Catshuis residence in The Hague, Netherlands, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Though the bailout ended in 2014, the previous center-right government persevered with the austerity as Portugal is still burdened by high debts. Disillusion with that austerity was a key voter concern in a general election last October.

Following the election, Costa's Socialists were able to form a minority government that relies on support from the Communist Party and radical Left Bloc. They are warning Costa against bowing to Brussels' demands.

Labor groups close to the Communist Party also kept up the political pressure on Costa with their first strike since the government took power. The strike was part of a wider fight to restore labor entitlements scrapped after the bailout.

The walkout organized by the Common Front, an umbrella organization that represents about half the country's more than 600,000 government workers, aimed to demand a quick return to the civil servants' traditional 35-hour working week, down from the current 40 hours. The government has already approved the new working hours, which will be introduced in July, but the Common Front wants the change sooner.
New Hampshire congressman repays $355K to 'family pot'

CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta has repaid $355,000 he was accused of illegally accepting from his parents in 2010, and on Friday he emphasized his more recent accomplishments as he officially began his re-election effort.

For years, the New Hampshire Republican flatly denied the money was an illegal campaign donation from his parents and insisted he and his wife had saved it through years of hard work. He later told the Federal Election Commission that since he was a young child, he contributed to and managed a "family pot" of money that was in his parents' name but that was available to him and his siblings.

Guinta maintains that his only mistake was improperly reporting money that was rightfully his. But in an agreement made public in May, the commission concluded that Guinta broke the law by accepting donations above the legal limit from his parents, fined him $15,000 and ordered him to repay the money.

FILE- In this Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010 file photo Republican 1st District congressional candidate Frank Guinta speaks at a press conference in Londonderry, N.H. Guinta says he has repaid $355,000 that the Federal Election Commission said he took in illegal campaign donations from his parents and confirmed his re-election bid. Guinta announced the repayment in a news release Friday Jan. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Jim Cole/FILE)

Guinta paid the fine last year, and on Friday, announced that he has repaid the $355,000. He also announced his re-election campaign, though he has said for months that he planned to run again.

"This is a complaint from five years ago. Unfortunately, it took a long time to resolve," he said. "I've been upfront with people and said, 'Look, I made a mistake,' and I've apologized for it over the years. The settlement, and the completion of the components of it, I hope put it in the rearview mirror."

According to the FEC, Guinta's family contradicted his claims. His sister said she didn't know the "family pot" existed.

Guinta said his new campaign will focus on job creation and economic growth, and he touted recent successes, including the delay of a widely criticized tax on high-cost employer health insurance plans and the bipartisan task force he created with New Hampshire's other House member, Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, to combat the nation's heroin crisis.

While Guinta says it's been months since voters have raised the issue of his finances with him, he knows his opponents will bring it up. He'll face at least one primary challenger  former University of New Hampshire business dean Dan Innis, who finished second to Guinta in 2014. On the Democratic side, former U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter faces Bedford businessman Shawn O'Connor.

Shea-Porter served for two terms in New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District before Guinta defeated her in 2010. She won in 2012, only to lose to him again in 2014. It's possible they could face each other for a fourth time in 2016.

News of the FEC settlement last spring sparked calls for Guinta's resignation from Democrats and some Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte. The head of the state Republican Party, Jennifer Horn, stopped short of directly urging him to step down, but said he "has clearly been untruthful."

Shea-Porter's campaign manager, Naomi Andrews, on Friday said Guinta should step down "or at least have the decency to admit he was lying."
Trump's absence from debate gives rivals room to talk issues

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Front-runner Donald Trump's boycott of the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses created space for his rivals to delve more deeply into their differences on immigration, foreign policy and their approach to governing.

Iowa voters kick off the 2016 nominating process with Monday's caucuses, and they'll provide the first indication of whether Trump's abrupt decision to skip the debate will have any impact on his standing atop the party's field.

His lead in Iowa had become more tenuous in recent days, as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pulled in support from conservative and evangelical voters.

Republican presidential candidates (L-R) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talk after the Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Trump's decision to pull out of the debate over a feud with host Fox News was a gamble, particularly so close to the state of voting. He tried to steal attention away from his rivals with a competing rally that he said raised $6 million for military veterans.

Trump's absence put the spotlight on Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who needs a strong showing in Iowa in order to stay in the top tier of candidates.

The two senators were confronted with video clips suggesting they had changed their positions on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans. Both denied they had switched their own views on allowing some people in the U.S. illegally to stay.

Cruz accused Rubio of making a "politically advantageous" decision to support a 2013 Senate bill that included a pathway to citizenship, while Rubio said his Texas rival was "willing to say or do anything to get votes."

The candidates worked hard to present themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats.

Rubio pledged that as president he would go after terrorists "wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo." Rubio also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the U.S. if there were indications they were being used to radicalize terrorists.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul warned against closing down mosques. A proponent of a more isolationist foreign policy, Paul also raised concerns about the U.S. getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State group has a stronghold.

The crowded Republican field includes more mainstream candidates who have struggled to break through in an election year where Trump, and increasingly Cruz, have tapped into voter anger with the political system. Party leaders have grown increasingly anxious for some of the more traditional candidates to step aside to allow one to rise up and challenge for the nomination.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said: "We're just starting out. The first vote hasn't been counted. Why don't we let the process work?"

Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are looking beyond Iowa and hoping New Hampshire's Feb. 9 primary jumpstarts their campaigns.

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Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace and Jill Colvin on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and http://twitter.com/colvinj

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., answers a question as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, right, listens during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential candidates (L-R) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talk after the Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
The Latest: Obama, Brazil's Rousseff discuss spread of Zika

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)  The Latest on the Zika virus and fears it could be linked to birth defects (all times local):

0:20 a.m.

The White House says President Barack Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff have discussed their concerns about the spread of the Zika virus.

Boys ride a scooter at a slum in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Brazilian officials still say they believe there's a sharp increase in cases of microcephaly and strongly suspect the Zika virus, which first appeared in the country last year, is to blame. The concern is strong enough that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month warned pregnant women to reconsider visits to areas where Zika is present. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In a telephone conversation Friday, the leaders agreed on the importance of working together to spearhead research and speed development of vaccines and other technologies to control the mosquito-borne virus. They also agreed to prioritize building national, regional and global networks to fight the threat from infectious diseases more broadly.

The Zika virus is spreading rapidly after it was detected last year in Brazil. Investigators are working to figure out whether it's related to seeming increases in the birth defect known as microcephaly or to Guillain-Barre, which can cause temporary paralysis.

In the United States, the head of its infectious disease institute says the U.S. is preparing should the virus spread there.

So far there have been no transmissions of the disease within the United States.

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6:30 p.m.

Colombia and Venezuela says they are both seeing a jump in cases of a rare, sometimes-paralyzing syndrome that may be linked to the Zika virus.

Deputy Health Minister Fernando Ruiz said Friday Colombia has now recorded 41 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome that appear to be linked to Zika. It had detected 12 such cases a week ago.

Colombia says it's had about 16,500 suspected cases of Zika, though only a small fraction have been confirmed by laboratory tests.

The mosquito-borne virus is spreading rapidly after being detected last year in Brazil. Investigators are scrambling to determine if it's related to seeming increases in the birth defect known as microcephaly or to Guillain-Barre, which can leave patients temporarily paralyzed.

Venezuelan Health Minister Luisana Melo said her country's seen 255 cases of Guillain-Barre, apparently as part of its effort to fight Zika, though she did not specify the link or the time frame.

Former Health Minister Jose Oletta says the country normally sees 30 to 40 cases of Guillain-Barre a month and said the large number now indicates that Zika infections are far greater than the roughly 4,500 suspected cases than officials acknowledge.

6 p.m.

The head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease says he doesn't think airports need to screen travelers coming into the United States from Latin American and Carribean countries that have outbreaks of the Zika virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says that isn't necessary for now because the disease is borne by mosquitoes and is not transmitted from one person to another.

Fauci said at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. on Friday that the U.S. is taking the virus "very seriously" and is preparing in case it should spread here.

But he says Americans shouldn't "get overly panicked" since there have been no transmissions of the disease within the United States.

The Zika virus causes only a mild illness in most people. But there's mounting evidence linking it to a birth defect, especially in Brazil.

4:55 p.m.

Canada's chief public health officer says four Canadians have recently returned home from trips abroad with the Zika virus.

Gregory Taylor said Friday that two people from British Columbia, one from Alberta and another from Quebec contracted the virus abroad. He says two have recovered and didn't give details on the other two.

Taylor says there is little to no risk of contracting the virus in Canada since mosquitoes that transmit the virus are not adaptable to the climate.

The World Health Organization says Canada and Chile are the only two countries in the Americas where the virus is not likely to spread.

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4:10 p.m.

Thousands of soldiers, health officials and first responders have been fanning out across the Dominican Republic to fumigate and clean up mosquito-prone areas and educate people about the Zika virus.

The campaign aims to tell people about Zika's symptoms, how to avoid it and how to eliminate areas where it breeds.

The Caribbean country has reported 10 confirmed cases, none of them involving pregnant women. But the military said this week it will assign 100 doctors to help in detecting and treating cases.

Health Minister Altagracia Guzman warned on Friday that half a million people in the Dominican Republic could become infected if no preventive measures are taken.

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12:55 p.m.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff says the federal government has launched a nationwide cleanup operation to eliminate breeding areas of the mosquito that transmits the Zika virus, which researchers in have linked to a rare birth defect.

Rousseff made her remarks at a Friday press conference after she, five state governors and six cabinet members held a videoconference to discuss strategies to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

She says the cleanup operation began Friday at all installations run by the armed forces and at all federal educational, health and other facilities.

She Brazil will lose the war against the insect unless all of society mobilizes to eliminate the pools of stagnant water that serve as the mosquito's breeding grounds.

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12:05 p.m.

Nigeria's Health Ministry is warning citizens against traveling to Latin America because of the Zika virus outbreak, and is especially recommending that pregnant women not go there.

Health Minister Isaac Folorunso Adewole is urging health professionals at all ports of entry to examine anyone coming from Latin America for signs of the Zika virus. Friday's statement says he's urging Nigerians to tell health workers about any cases of unexplained fevers that last more than 48 hours, especially in those with recent travels to Latin America.

While the Zika virus originated in Africa, Adewole says there are no current cases in his country.

Officials from Brazil and international health organizations are trying to determine if a widespread outbreak of the virus there is related to a seemingly sudden upswing in cases of birth defects.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks at the Economic Club of Washington on various topics including the Zika virus, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Army soldiers prepare for a clean up operation against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is a vector for transmitting the Zika virus, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The sticker reads in Portuguese " Beware, this mosquito can kill ". (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks at the Economic Club of Washington on various topics including the Zika virus, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks at the Economic Club of Washington on various topics including the Zika virus, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Latest: Water expert says high Flint readings no surprise

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP)  The latest on Flint's water crisis and efforts to fix the problem of lead in the drinking water (all times local):

7:30 p.m.

A Virginia Tech professor who helped expose the lead problem in Flint's water despite initial skepticism from state regulators says he's not surprised by some high lead readings officials just announced.

Members of the Michigan National Guard load bottled water at a fire station, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 in Flint, Mich. The Michigan Legislature voted Thursday to direct another $28 million to address Flint's water emergency, allocating money for bottled water, medical assessments and other costs in the city struggling with a lead-contaminated supply. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Marc Edwards said the city's water system is still recovering after being without corrosion control for 18 months.

While under state financial management, the city switched its water source to the Flint River but without controlling corrosion. Officials have begun using a chemical to recoat existing pipes and contain the lead.

Flint residents are currently unable to drink unfiltered tap water, and tests have shown high lead levels in some children's blood.

The city has hired Edwards to oversee water testing. He also was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to a committee that will set in place long-term solutions.

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6:30 p.m.

Flint residents are being warned that water samples from more than two dozen city locations have higher lead levels than filters can handle and that further tests are recommended.

Dr. Nicole Lurie of the Department of Health and Human Services said the lead level in some Flint locations has exceeded 150 parts per billion, which is the level for which water filters are graded. She said people with levels over 150 ppb are being notified and their water being retested.

The water was tested by officials before it got to a filter, and she stressed that the results do not mean officials think there's a problem with the filters.

Flint residents have been told to drink only filtered or bottled water because of lead contamination in the city's supply. County health officials had declared a public health emergency Oct. 1, and the next day Gov. Rick Snyder announced $1 million for home water filters.

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3:40 p.m.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are asking Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for documents related to the crisis over lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan.

Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Brenda Lawrence of Michigan have complained that the committee's Republican chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, rejected their request for Snyder to testify at an Oversight hearing next week. Cummings is the panel's senior Democrat, and Lawrence is the senior Democrat on an Interior subcommittee. The two lawmakers say officials must hear from everyone involved to understand how the crisis in Flint occurred and how a similar problem can be prevented.

Lawrence said, "the American people deserve a full accounting of this man-made disaster."

The witness list for the hearing, set for Wednesday on Capitol Hill, includes environmental officials and a former Flint emergency manager.

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2:35 p.m.

A spokesman for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says fresh bottled water placed in a state building in Flint beginning in January 2015 was for both employees and visitors as concerns were rising about the city's water system, but before lead was discovered in it.

Spokesman Dave Murray said Friday that a water cooler was placed on each floor next to public drinking fountains in the building that includes the Department of Health and Human Services.

Murray said he didn't know if workers promoted that it was available, but no signs prohibited the public from drinking water from the cooler.

He also says the water was provided until early summer, and then again in October after a public health emergency was declared. Another state spokesman had earlier said it was provided continuously.

The agency that manages state buildings said Thursday coolers were introduced at the building after Flint flunked some drinking water standards unrelated to lead.

Snyder told WWJ-AM he had "no knowledge of that taking place."

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12:50 p.m.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed into law $28 million in emergency funding to address Flint's lead-contaminated water crisis.

It's the second round of state aid since the fall, when improperly treated water was found to have leached lead from pipes into the city's supply.

The Republican governor signed the measure Friday at a Michigan Press Association meeting in Grand Rapids. He says the funding will provide immediate resources in Flint but is not the end of state assistance.

The money is intended to pay for bottled water, faucet filters, testing kits, additional school nurses, medical treatment and to help the city with unpaid water bills.

There is also funding to hire outside experts to assess whether Flint's water system infrastructure must be replaced or repaired.

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10:20 a.m.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he's still focused on resolving Flint's crisis with lead-tainted drinking water, despite hecklers and other vocal critics.

Snyder told radio station WWJ-AM that he was heckled Thursday night while dining at a restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor.

He says "other things like that have been going on for some time now" and that the criticism makes him "feel terrible," but that he remains focused on resolving the city's problems.

Ann Arbor resident Laura Tanner told The Ann Arbor News that she and a friend gave Snyder an earful at the Old Town Tavern. She says she yelled "How was your water? Was it clean?" at the Republican governor

Protesters have been rallying outside Snyder's residence, saying he didn't act swiftly enough to help Flint residents.

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9:50 a.m.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he wasn't aware that the state offered fresh bottled water for state employees in Flint starting in January 2015, although residents were told that tap water was safe to drink until last fall.

Snyder told WWJ-AM in an interview Friday morning that he had "no knowledge of that taking place." He says his understanding is that the use of bottled water at the state building in Flint was because of warnings by the Flint officials that were issued at the time.

Flint residents are now warned to drink only filtered or bottled water because of lead contamination.

The agency that manages state buildings said Thursday water coolers were introduced at the building after Flint flunked some drinking water standards that weren't related to lead.

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9:30 a.m.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will soon sign into law $28 million in emergency funding to address Flint's lead-contaminated water.

It's the second round of state aid for the city since the crisis was confirmed in the fall.

The Republican governor is expected to sign the measure Friday at a Michigan Press Association meeting in Grand Rapids. He says the funding will provide immediate resources in Flint but is not the end of state assistance.

The money will pay for bottled water, faucet filters, testing kits, additional school nurses, medical treatment and to help the city with unpaid water bills.

There is also funding to hire outside experts to assess whether Flint's water system infrastructure must be replaced or repaired.
European far-right, nationalist parties meet in Milan

MILAN (AP)  Sharing the stage with leaders of other European populist parties, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said Friday that Europe's nationalist parties are ready to step in and clean up when European structures fail under current immigration and monetary policies.

Le Pen spoke at the end of the first meeting of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last summer. The 36-member parliamentary group is the smallest in the European Parliament, but includes some parties gaining strength in the polls in their home countries.

At a news conference, Le Pen along with populist leaders from host Italy, the Netherlands and Austria expressed their common view that Europe's borders must be closed to mass migration from the Middle East and Africa and said that sovereignty over such policies must be restored to nations. They cited both the threat of terrorism and the strain on budgets.

French far right leader Marine Le Pen, left, and Firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders attend the press conference of the second day of a 2-day convention of European nationalists, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The rally is being billed by organizers as the first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last year. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

Outside, several hundred students peacefully protested the presence of a gathering they saw as racist.

"European structures that were poorly constructed are crumbling everywhere," Le Pen said. "But I have to say to European citizens that they have nothing to fear in the end of this ancient world. To the contrary, they can hope for the return of the nations and their freedom."

Also attending the Milan event Thursday and Friday were leaders of nationalist parties from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic.

Le Pen said the parties represented on the stage in Milan "are part of the future" and expressed a conviction that they won't always be relegated to the opposition.

She also said a decision by Italian officials to cover ancient statues depicting nude figures in deference to the visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was "ridiculous."

From left, Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, French far right leader Marine Le Pen and Firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders attend a press conference on the second day of a 2-day convention of European nationalists, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The rally is being billed by organizers as the first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last year. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

French far right leader Marine Le Pen, right, speaks with Northern League party leader Matteo Salvini at the press conference of the second day of a 2-day convention of European nationalists, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The rally is being billed by organizers as the first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last year. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

A protestor holds a flare during a demonstration against the 2-day convention of European nationalists, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The rally is being billed by organizers as the first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last year. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

A protestor holds a flare during a demonstration against the 2-day convention of European nationalists, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The rally is being billed by organizers as the first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last year. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

A protestor holds a flare during a demonstration against the 2-day convention of European nationalists, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. The rally is being billed by organizers as the first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group within the European Parliament, which was formed last year. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Drought threatens malnourished children in Ethiopia

DUBTI, Ethiopia (AP)  Morbid thoughts linger on people's minds here. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set to visit some drought stricken locations in Ethiopia as the government and its humanitarian partners seek additional financial support.

Here, in the Dubti area of Ethiopia's Afar region, one of the hardest-hit regions, the river that runs through is slowly drying up, leaving this normally hot and arid land even worse off. Some worry that children may start dying next.

In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, Mayrem Humeyisu talks about food supply in her neighborhood in a rural village Dubti Woreda, Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

"My child is severely malnourished to the point that he could no more do breast feeding," said Fatuma Hussein, a 30-year-old mother who has spent two months at a local clinic trying to get her child treated for malnutrition. Health officials said her child's condition was serious because the mother had no food left at home and had been sharing the enriched food provided to her weak son with her older children.

"They are asking me to stay at the clinic until my son's condition improves. But I couldn't. If I stay here, the rest of my children will die. If Allah choses to take his life then let it be," she said.

The Ethiopian government and aid agencies say El Nino conditions triggered drought in Ethiopia that has left more than 10 million people food insecure, and it is estimated that there will be at least 400,000 cases of severe malnutrition among children under age 5 in the country soon. Only a third of the $1.2 billion needed for emergency food assistance in the country has been raised.

"I have been here in the country for 19 years and I have seen a lot of droughts. But I have never seen one as serious as this," said John Graham, director of operations in Ethiopia for Save the Children. "Some analysts think the situation is even more severe than the 1984 famine with more people affected this time. But the situation is different. The then government was a big part of the problem whereas the current one has acknowledged the problem early and has put a lot of its own resources. That's why we are not witnessing people dying."

Ethiopia, once known for epic famines, has been trying to shake off the African stereotypes of poverty and scarcity, investing millions of dollars in infrastructure and energy projects that highlight the government's ambition for modernity. Ethiopia's famine in the 1980s was so severe it spawned the 1985 Live Aid concert to raise funds to combat it.

Although the country has since increased capacity to feed itself, the threat of hunger and starvation remains.

The U.N. said this week that El Nino conditions reduced crop yields by 50 to 90 per cent in Ethiopia. In the Afar region, health officials are talking about a catastrophe if aid does not arrive soon.

Kedir Abate, a medical director at the Megenta Clinic in Afar, said 20 to 30 severely malnourished children are brought to the facility each week, with the number of moderately malnourished children rising so fast he fears they could slip into the severely malnourished category soon.

"Both children and pregnant mothers are in a high-risk situation here. The past two months have been the most difficult," he said.

In December, the U.S. government announced it would give $88 million to help feed hungry people in areas experiencing drought, bringing the total number of humanitarian aid provided to the country in 2015 to more than $435 million. Other countries like the U.K. have also given substantial sums.

Yet some say they have yet to receive aid, or enough of it.

"We are getting (nothing) or very little help in this area. I fear that people could start dying if aid doesn't come soon," Sheikh Hamed Dawud, deputy administrator of the Megenta area, said. "Animals are dying and crops have failed. We have nothing left here."

Aid agencies say demand for aid delivery elsewhere in the world means there is less attention given to Ethiopia.

"There is a great deal of strain on the international humanitarian system and on Save the Children's humanitarian work as well," Carolyn Miles, Save the Children's president, told AP by email, citing the Syria crisis.

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, A young Afar boy walks through failed crops and farmland in Magenta area of Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, a malnourished baby lays on her mothers lap at Megenta Kebele clinic in a rural village Dubti Woreda, Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Jan.26, 2016, a farmer shows his failed crops and farmland in the Megenta area of Afar, Ethiopia. The farmer said he has lost 100 percent of his crops. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, Fatuma Hussein, feeds her child Yasin Ahmed at Megenta Kebele clinic in a rural village Dubti Woreda, in Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. Hussein has spent two months at a local clinic trying to get her child treated for malnutrition. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, mothers and their children wait to be called to assess the level of malnutrition and receive food supplements for one week of treatment, at Megenta Kebele clinic in a rural village Dubti Woreda, Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, Momena Abdela feeds her malnourished nephew Abdu Ali at Megenta Kebele clinic in a rural village Dubti Woreda, Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, women wait to get their children examined, at Megenta Kebele clinic in a rural village Dubti Woreda, Afar, Ethiopia. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, Hamed Dawud, Deputy Administrator of the Megenta area inspects failed crops in the Afar region. Morbid thoughts linger on peoples minds in the area. The crops have failed and farm animals have been dying amid severe drought that has left Ethiopia appealing for international help to feed its people. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
In South Africa, top US official sees poached rhino

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa (AP)  A top U.S. official on Friday witnessed the ugly results of a rhino-poaching epidemic in South Africa and denounced the slaughter of the threatened species.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell saw the poached rhino in Kruger National Park, South Africa's biggest wildlife reserve and scene of some of the heaviest killing of rhinos, whose horns are coveted in some parts of Asia, particularly Vietnam.

Park rangers escorted Jewell on a drive through the bush to see the body of the male rhino, estimated to be about 15 years old. It lay on the edge of a dry stream bed, its torso torn open by vultures and other scavengers. Flies buzzed and maggots squirmed. The smell of rotting flesh was pungent. The horns had been hacked off.

Investigators in South Africas Kruger National Park stand on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016 near the carcass of a rhino that was killed by poachers for its horns. South Africa, home to most of the worlds rhinos, is struggling to contain the slaughter of the threatened species. (AP Photo/Christopher Torchia)

"It's a terribly sad scene," said Jewell, who is visiting Africa to discuss ways to combat the illegal wildlife market, estimated to be worth billions of dollars globally.

Rangers were treating it as a crime scene, cordoning the area with tape. They used a metal detector to search for bullets and any other evidence that could be used in an eventual prosecution of suspected poachers, and carved out rhino flesh samples for DNA testing.

Frik Rossouw, a senior investigator, said authorities found the rhino on Wednesday, and believe it had been shot on Tuesday.

"It's horrifying on the ground to see what poachers do to an iconic species of Africa for money that's being generated by an international market," Jewell said.

Jewell, also traveled to Gabon and Kenya this month to liaise on wildlife matters. In South Africa, U.S. initiatives include the donation of night-vision goggles and portable housing for rangers in Kruger.

South Africa, home to most of the world's rhinos, reported 1,175 poached rhinos in 2015, a slight decrease from the previous year. In contrast, poachers killed nine rhinos in South Africa in 2007.

There are 22,000 rhinos in South Africa, said Edna Molewa, the country's environment minister. She accompanied Jewell to see the rhino carcass, saying it was important to erode the "myth" that rhino horn is an effective medicine.

Public relations campaigns in Vietnam have sought to reinforce the message that rhino horn, often consumed in powder form, cannot cure the sick. The horn consists of keratin, the same substance found in human fingernails.

In the fight against elephant poaching, last year the United States announced steps that would lead to an almost total ban on the domestic ivory trade there. China has made similar moves aimed at curbing the mass killing of African elephants.

The knife of a worker at South Africas Kruger National Park rests on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016 on the hoof of a rhino that was killed by poachers several days previously. Workers treat such carcasses as crime scenes, searching for evidence that can be used in any prosecution of suspected poachers and collecting DNA samples from the dead rhino. (AP Photo/Christopher Torchia)
Appeals court revives Holocaust suit against Hungary

WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal appeals court on Friday gave new life to a lawsuit by a group of Holocaust survivors seeking damages from Hungary for its role in the deaths of more than 500,000 Jews during World War II.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said a 1947 peace treaty between the Allied powers and Hungary does not give Hungarian officials immunity from the lawsuit. A federal judge had dismissed the case in 2014, saying it would conflict with the treaty's terms.

The lawsuit filed by 14 survivors, including four living in the United States, accuses the Hungarian government and its national railway of collaborating with the Nazis to transport Jews to death camps and seize their property.

The case now returns to the lower court, which still must consider whether the case can move forward before the survivors exhaust their legal options in Hungary.

In a similar lawsuit against Hungary filed in Chicago, a federal appeals court there ruled last year that survivors and heirs must first pursue legal action in Hungarian courts.

Writing for the court in Washington, Judge Sri Srinivasan rejected Hungary's arguments that the peace treaty offers the only means for Holocaust victims to seek compensation for property taken during the war.

Srinivasan also rejected the government's claims that the case raised political questions that should not be resolved in the courts.

"The wartime wrongs inflicted upon Hungarian Jews by the Hungarian government are unspeakable and undeniable," Srinivasan said. He said federal law allows the victims to pursue claims "involving the taking of the plaintiffs' property in the commission of genocide against Hungarian Jews."

The survivors filed the lawsuit in 2010 with the goal of pursuing a class-action case against Hungary and its railway on behalf of all Hungarian Holocaust survivors and family members of Holocaust victims. The railroad played a key role in the genocide, transporting more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland over a period of two months in 1944.
As Russian food prices spike higher, some winners emerge

PAVLISHCHEVO, Russia (AP)  For Olga Druganina, Russia's economic turmoil has been a great business opportunity.

Four years ago, the former employee at an industrial machines company began to develop her modest farm near Moscow as a business. She started out simply wanting to feed family and friends, but Russian bans on foreign foods and the plunging value of the currency encouraged her to expand and tap the growing national demand for local produce.

First came President Vladimir Putin's sanctions on U.S. and European Union food products in 2014, a response to international sanctions over Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis. Over the last year, the low oil price has brought down the value of the Russian ruble, making imported food more expensive.

In this photo taken Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, farmer Olga Druganina feeds chicken at a farm in the village of Pavlishchevo, some 117 km (73 miles) west of Moscow, Russia. Four years ago, Druganina, a former producer of equipment for a concrete factory, set up a smallholding near Moscow with the aim of feeding her family. Since then, sanctions and the plunging value of the Russian currency have combined to help her build a thriving farm. (AP Photo/Vitnija Saldava)

"It was a little agriculture to supply our family's needs but when it happened that the sanctions appeared, all that gave a push to our farm's development," Druganina says. "We started developing and got a lot of interest from both small shops and chain stores, and in general from people who want to consume healthy food."

Now, as part of a farmers' cooperative selling high-end organic dairy products to moneyed Muscovites, Druganina employs 18 people and keeps more than 450 cows, sheep, goats and even buffaloes. Her products  cheese, milk, and traditional berry-flavored yoghurts  sell at a premium at the LavkaLavka chain of boutique shops across Moscow, a growing presence named after the Russian for "market stall." Its customers include many who would previously have bought now unaffordable or unavailable imported products.

Local food producers like Druganina are the most visible beneficiaries of the Russian government's policy of import substitution, aiming to replace costlier imported goods with home-grown alternatives. While Putin has called for Russia to head toward self-sufficiency in food, this will take years.

At the other end of the market from Druganina, McDonald's is another surprising winner from Russia's refocusing on domestic food.

At a time when sharp food price rises have put Russian family budgets under pressure, the ability to compete on price is key for fast food retailers. Food prices rose 14 percent last year, according to the state statistics agency, at a time when real wages are falling and unemployment rising.

A long-standing policy to source as many ingredients as possible locally has paid off for the U.S. fast-food giant, which says it serves 1.1 million customers a day in Russia. McDonald's opened 59 new restaurants in Russia last year and picked out the country as a high growth market in its 2015 financial results. That's particularly surprising considering the Russian economy shrank 3.7 percent last year and is forecast to remain in recession in 2016.

McDonald's is "definitely benefiting" from having a Russia-based production network for many of its products, says Moscow-based analyst Vladimir Pantyushin of Sberbank, who points out that the company's signature Big Mac is cheaper in Russia than almost anywhere else in the world when compared to local earnings. The Big Mac is also the centerpiece of the localization strategy, with all its ingredients produced in Russia.

It is a surprising turnaround for a company which less than two years ago was under apparent political pressure in Russia. Some of its flagship restaurants were temporarily shut down in Moscow by Russian health watchdogs at a time when Russia was hit with U.S. sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Pantyushin said many Russian consumers are switching to cheaper food products  swapping out beef for chicken, for example  and avoiding imported fruit and vegetables.

"Right now it's maybe even historically the deepest effect on consumption levels since the 1990s," when Russia was in economic chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said. However, modern consumers are not faced with empty shelves and have more choice when looking to cut spending.

"Back then, I remember people were really living on basic staples, like cereals," Pantyushin said. "Meat was expensive but even more importantly, meat was not available in the same quantity that it is now."

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Ellingworth reported from Moscow.

In this photo taken Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, a farm worker makes cakes at a farm in the village of Pavlishchevo, some 117 km (73 miles) west of Moscow, Russia. The farm, which started out as a family smallholding near Moscow, has thrived on providing richer Russians with quality local produce, even as much of the country struggles with ever-rising food prices. (AP Photo/Vitnija Saldava)

In this photo taken Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, a farm worker packs bottles with dairy product at a farm in the village of Pavlishchevo, some 117 km (73 miles) west of Moscow, Russia. The farm, which started out as a family smallholding near Moscow, has thrived on providing richer Russians with quality local produce, even as much of the country struggles with ever-rising food prices. (AP Photo/Vitnija Saldava)

In this photo taken Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, cattle are fed at a farm in the village of Pavlishchevo, some 117 km (73 miles) west of Moscow, Russia. The farm, which started out as a family smallholding near Moscow, has thrived on providing richer Russians with quality local produce, even as much of the country struggles with ever-rising food prices. (AP Photo/Vitnija Saldava)

In this photo taken Friday, April 11, 2014 workers deliver food in a McDonald's restaurant in Moscow, Russia. A long-standing policy to source as many ingredients as possible locally has paid off for the U.S. fast-food giant, which says it serves 1.1 million customers a day in Russia. McDonalds opened 59 new restaurants in Russia last year and picked out the country as a high growth market in its 2015 financial results. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
The Latest: Paralyzed victim to attend Couch's hearing

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)  The Latest on the case of Ethan Couch, the 18-year-old who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal 2013 drunken driving wreck in Texas and was recently deported from Mexico (all times local):

3:15 p.m.

One of the severely injured victims from Ethan Couch's fatal drunken driving wreck plans to attend the next hearing in the case.

This frame grab from a Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 taken from a video provided by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM, shows a hooded Ethan Couch, as he is processed by Mexican immigration agents, in Mexico City. INM said that Couch, who used an "affluenza" defense in a 2013 fatal drunken-driving accident in Texas, was taken to the Mexico City airport from an immigration holding center, ending his month-long stay in Mexico. Couch was escorted onto a commercial plane, en route to Dallas, Thursday morning. (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM via AP)

Couch is known for using an "affluenza" defense during a juvenile trial for the wreck that killed four people in 2013. The 18-year-old was recently deported from Mexico, where authorities believe he fled with is mother while prosecutors investigated whether he violated his probation in the case.

Sergio Molina was paralyzed in the wreck. His brother, Alex Lemus, says "it's very hard to deal with all the changes" to his brother, who can communicate only by blinking his eyes.

But he says Molina will be at a February hearing that will determine whether Couch's case moves to adult court. Lemus says his mother believes that had Molina been driving, "he would have gotten the death penalty in Texas."

Tim McLaughlin, whose 15-year-old son survived the crash, says he also hopes Couch gets locked up. He says Couch needs "a wake-up call."

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11:45 a.m.

A Texas prosecutor handling the case of "affluenza" teenager Ethan Couch says the public shouldn't feed his "ego with notoriety."

Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson said in a statement Friday that the focus shouldn't be on the 18-year-old's "squandered" chances, but rather on the fallout from his drunken-driving crash in 2013 that killed four people.

Wilson says, "behind every incident are the victims."

Wilson says her office will make every effort to hold Couch accountable, but she notes her office is limited by the 10-year probation issued to Couch by a juvenile court judge in the 2013 case.

Authorities believe Couch and his mother fled to Mexico last month as prosecutors investigated whether he violated his probation in the 2013 case. He was deported Thursday.

___

11 a.m.

A judge has agreed to allow "affluenza" teenager Ethan Couch to remain in a juvenile detention facility as he awaits a judge's ruling on transferring his case to the adult system.

Judge Timothy Menikos sided with Couch's attorneys during a court hearing Friday in Fort Worth. Prosecutors had asked that the 18-year-old Couch be moved to an adult jail.

The hearing marks the first time Couch appeared in court since being deported from Mexico on Thursday.

Authorities believe Couch and his mother fled to Mexico in early December, as prosecutors in Texas investigated whether he may have violated his probation in a 2013 drunken-driving wreck that killed four people.

Couch was 16 at the time of the wreck, and the case has been handled so far in juvenile court.

___

10:50 a.m.

"Affluenza" teenager Ethan Couch is in a Texas courtroom to face his first hearing since being deported from Mexico.

The 18-year-old was sentenced to probation for a 2013 drunken-driving wreck that killed four people near Fort Worth. Authorities believe he and his mother fled to Mexico in early December, as prosecutors in Texas investigated whether he may have violated his probation.

A judge is expected to decide during Friday's hearing whether to keep Couch at the juvenile facility where he was taken after arriving back in Texas on Thursday.

The judge also could decide to move Couch to an adult jail to await a February hearing that will determine whether the case is transferred to the adult system, where Couch could face time behind bars.

During the sentencing phase of Couch's 2013 trial, a defense witness argued Couch had been coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents and deemed the condition "affluenza."

___

1:30 a.m.

The Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck is expected to learn whether he'll be moved to an adult jail as he awaits a judge's ruling on transferring his case to the adult system.

A hearing is scheduled Friday for 18-year-old Ethan Couch. He was deported from Mexico on Thursday and taken to a juvenile detention facility in Fort Worth.

Authorities believe Couch and his mother fled to Mexico as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he may have violated his probation in the drunken-driving case. Couch was 16 at the time of the wreck, so the case is being handled for now in juvenile court.

A judge will decide Friday whether to move Couch to an adult jail, keep him at the juvenile facility or to let him go before a February hearing.

This frame grab taken from a Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 video provided by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM, shows Ethan Couch, as he is escorted by Mexican immigration agents, upon their arrival to the international airport in Mexico City. INM says it has taken the Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident to the Mexico City airport, to fly him back to Texas to face charges. The institute said Thursday that Couch would be placed on a commercial flight to Dallas, Texas. (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM via AP)

This frame grab taken from a Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 video provided by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM, shows Ethan Couch, escorted onto a plane by Mexican immigration agents, in Mexico City. INM says it has taken the Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident to the Mexico City airport, to fly him back to Texas to face charges. Couch was placed on a commercial flight to Dallas, Texas. (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, INM via AP)

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson speaks with media after Ethan Couch was taken into the Scott D. Moore Juvenile Justice Center on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. The Texas teenager who used an affluenza defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck arrived in Texas following his deportation from Mexico more than a month after he and his mother fled the U.S. as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation. (AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)

Ethan Couch is driven into the Scott D. Moore Juvenile Justice Center on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas. The Texas teenager who used an affluenza defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck arrived in Texas following his deportation from Mexico more than a month after he and his mother fled the U.S. as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation. (AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)
Wolfsburg signs Brazilian forward Bruno Henrique from Goias

BERLIN (AP)  Wolfsburg has signed Brazilian forward Bruno Henrique from Brazilian side Goias Esporte Club.

The Volkswagen-backed Bundesliga side says the 25-year-old Henrique signed a contract on Friday through June 2019, and will wear No. 16.

Henrique scored seven goals and set up 10 more in the Brazilian league last season.
AP FACT CHECK: GOP claims on health plans, China, economy

WASHINGTON (AP)  Ted Cruz spoke of millions losing health coverage  but more than 16 million people have gained it, shrinking the pool of uninsured like never before. Donald Trump laid roughly the entire U.S. trade deficit at the feet of China, botching the numbers. Chris Christie overlooked pay gains for construction workers in a lunch-pail tale meant to slam President Barack Obama.

Some twisted stories emerged from the latest Republican presidential debate and Donald Trump's competing rally in Iowa.

A look at some of the claims Thursday night and how they compare with the facts:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, answers a question as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., looks on during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

CRUZ: "We have seen now in six years of Obamacare that it has been a disaster. It is the biggest job-killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket. "

THE FACTS: Lost jobs? Since the time Obama signed the health care law in March 2010, the nation's jobless rate has fallen from 9.9 percent to 5 percent. The economy has added more than 13 million jobs over that period.

Lost insurance? The share of Americans without coverage reached a historic low of 9 percent last year, according to the government's National Health Interview Survey. More than 16 million people gained coverage since 2013, just before the law's big coverage expansion got underway.

___

TRUMP: "China this year in trade will make over $500 billion dollars in terms of our trade deficit. $500 billion. That's no partnership, and I'm a free trader. I love free trade. But we have to use our head. And we use political hacks to negotiate with the Chinese."

THE FACTS: Trump should re-check his numbers before conducting a trade negotiation. He could be referring to the total U.S. trade deficit with every country in the world. That totaled about $508 billion in 2014, which actually represents an improvement from the $762 billion deficit reached in 2006, according to the Census Bureau.

But the trade deficit in goods with China was $343 billion in 2014  significantly below what Trump has suggested in multiple statements.

___

MARCO RUBIO: "You cannot destroy ISIS with a military that's being diminished."

CRUZ: Obama has "dramatically degraded our military.

"THE FACTS: The charge that President Barack Obama has starved the Pentagon has become a refrain in the GOP primary campaign, but amounts spent on weapons modernization are about the same as they were when Republican George W. Bush was president.

Any military cuts GOP contenders are complaining about were approved by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The military budget is being squeezed by the insistence of lawmakers in both parties that money be spent on bases and equipment that the Pentagon says it doesn't need.

___

CRUZ on Obama: "He's not arming the Kurds."

THE FACTS: He is. The U.S. has allocated a substantial amount of weapons and other military equipment to help the Kurds fight the Islamic State group, and is sending the aid.

The shipments have not been direct. Rather, under a deal with the Iraqi government, all U.S. weapons sent to help in the fight are delivered to Iraqi officials, and they divide the weapons between Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

It's true the Kurds have complained that the assistance is not enough. But they are getting arms and other equipment from Washington.

___

CHRIS CHRISTIE: "For the 45-year-old construction worker out there, who is having a hard time making things meet, he's lost $4,000 in the last seven years in his income because of this administration."

THE FACTS: There may be some in hard hats who've lost income, but on the whole, construction workers are faring much better than they did when Obama first took office.

The latest federal jobs report showed their average weekly earnings have risen 2.7 percent annually since 2009  much faster than the national average for non-management employees. Their weekly earnings jumped to $1,021 in December, compared with a weekly income of $858 seven years ago.

Certainly not everyone has prospered. Overall, the median household income has dropped since 2009 by $1,268, to $53,657.

___

CRUZ defending his threat to "carpet bomb" Islamic State fighters: "It's what we did in the first Persian Gulf War."

THE FACTS: The U.S. conducted an intensive air war against the Saddam Hussein government in the 1991 war. But to call it "carpet bombing" misses one of the most important characteristics of that air campaign: It marked the first large-scale use of precision-guided missiles and bombs in the history of warfare.

That war also saw the first substantial combat use of the Air Force F-117 stealth fighter, which made it possible for the U.S. to lower risk to pilots flying against enemy air defenses while delivering precision weapons.

The driving force behind developing precision-guided munitions, which today are even more precise than 25 years ago in the Persian Gulf war, was the goal of reducing the risk of killing civilians. It's a goal the U.S. military has embraced under Republican as well as Democratic presidents.

And Cruz has not explained how carpet bombing a terrorism group that is mingled with citizens in areas they control can be done without substantial deaths of innocents.

___

RUBIO: Asked to reconcile his past opposition to granting amnesty for people in the United States illegally and his sponsorship of a bill that would grant those people a path to U.S. citizenship, he said "We're going to keep ISIS out of America" and "enforce our immigration laws."

CRUZ: Asked to reconcile his vocal backing for the same bill (along with his attempt to improve its chances with an amendment), and his current claim to never have supported it, said; "The fact that each amendment didn't fix every problem didn't mean that I supported the rest of the bill."

THE FACTS: About the only thing that was clear in this exchange is that both are squirming over their past immigration positions in a primary season dominated by conservative voters.

For Rubio, there was one fact on the stage that he couldn't escape  fellow candidate Jeb Bush verified that Rubio asked him to support his path-to-citizenship legislation when it was being written in 2013. And Cruz was caught by a video clip of himself on the Senate floor, urging the bill's passage.

Both tried to dismiss their previous statements and emphasize their current stance of wanting to secure the nation's southern border before any other actions are taken to address immigrants living in the country illegally.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Des Moines, Iowa, and Vivian Salama, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.

Chris Christie speaks during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Obama to address Illinois General Assembly next month

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama will return to Springfield, Illinois, the place where his political career began, to mark the ninth anniversary of his entrance into the 2008 presidential race.

Obama plans to address the Illinois General Assembly on Feb. 10, the day after New Hampshire voters go to the polls to begin choosing his successor.

Obama announced in Springfield in February 2007 that he was running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. He was then a first-term U.S. senator.

FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2007 file photo, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., waves to spectators as he arrives to announce his candidacy for president of the United States at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. Obama is returning to Springfield, the place where his political career began, to mark the ninth anniversary of his entrance into the 2008 presidential race,. He plans address to the Illinois General Assembly on Feb. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

An email to members of Obama's alumni association says he'll speak to Illinois lawmakers about "building a better politics."

Obama campaigned on a pledge to change the tone in Washington. He recently said he regretted that the situation hadn't improved, but has worsened.
Is Clinton marriage a rehash or relevant? Voters seem split

WASHINGTON (AP)  It's fair game. It's ancient history.

It's political. It's personal.

Like it or not, the long-running drama of Hillary Clinton's marriage  her husband's infidelity and how she dealt with it  is back as a subtext in this year's presidential race.

FILE - In this Dec. 19, 1998 file photo, First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton watches President Clinton pause as he thanks those Democratic members of the House of Representatives who voted against impeachment. The long-running drama of Hillary Clinton's marriage _ her husband's infidelity and how she dealt with it _ is back as a subtext in this year's presidential race. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The issue has a new, sharper edge this time: Voters are processing old events in an era of heightened concern about sexual assault and after Republican Donald Trump characterized candidate Clinton as an "enabler" of her husband's indiscretions and alleged that she had helped to discredit his accusers.

Both Clintons have tried not to engage, each uttering the identical "I have no response" when questioned separately about the matter.

And plenty of Americans are right there with them on that: Bring up Bill's behavior and Hillary's coping techniques and they suddenly become monosyllabic and start glancing around for the exits.

But Hillary Clinton has plopped the question squarely in Americans' laps not long before the Iowa caucuses Monday open voting in the 2016 campaign.

"I'm going to let the American voters decide what's relevant and what's not relevant," she said when asked about Trump's accusations during a recent Democratic debate.

Interviews with dozens of potential voters around the country reveal strong and opposing views about how  and whether  Clinton should be measured by how she dealt with her husband's behavior.

"The personal stuff is irrelevant," pronounces Brian Brown, a 56-year-old former professor and Democrat from Antrim, New Hampshire, who's having coffee with a friend at Dunkin' Donuts.

"I don't like how she swept it under the rug, but then again, you don't know what goes on behind the scenes," says Jeff Daignault, a 46-year-old independent from Largo, Florida, who's having lunch at a highway rest area.

"Hillary was an accomplice," says Amy Stricker, a 57-year-old conservative from Rochester Hills, Michigan, who's eating a sandwich in Denver, Colorado, on her way to visit family in the state.

Judith Hoffman, a 64-year-attorney from Columbus who plans to vote in Ohio's Republican primary but isn't sure whom she'll support, gives voice to the conflicting impulses that are aswirl.

She thinks the thrice-married Trump, who's known to have had one affair and has hinted at others, is hypocritical for the raising the issue.

She thinks Bill Clinton's past is a distraction from more important matters.

She doesn't respect Hillary Clinton's decision to "put up with" her husband's infidelity.

But she pauses on the question of whether Clinton's handling of her husband's behavior diminishes her standing as an advocate for women.

"I don't know that anyone can be responsible for another person," she says. But then she concludes that her gut reaction to the question is "yes," it does mar Clinton's reputation as a champion of women.

Brad Johnson, a junior at the University of Cincinnati, where he is president of the College Republicans, sees the matter as a character question and thinks he sees hypocrisy.

Clinton is "all about women's rights," he says, yet "she was ruthless of women who accused her husband of rape."

Still, he adds, "my guess is that it doesn't change anybody's mind about her."

Clinton's campaign has rejected the notion that she was actively involved in aggressive efforts by her husband's presidential campaign and the Clinton White House to discredit women who claimed to have had affairs with her husband or to have been sexually assaulted by him.

"These are attempts to draw Hillary Clinton into decades-old allegations through fabrications that are unsubstantiated," campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Wednesday. "Hillary Clinton has spent her whole life standing up for women, and charges to the contrary are grossly unfair and untrue."

Allegations of womanizing, extramarital affairs and abuse have trickled out over the course of Bill Clinton's political life, including a wave of what his campaign referred to as "bimbo eruptions" when he first ran for president in 1992 and still more allegations of misbehavior after investigators in 1997 started looking into Clinton's sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton was impeached over the Lewinsky affair. In 1998, he agreed to an $850,000 settlement with state worker Paula Jones, who had accused Clinton of exposing himself and making indecent propositions when Clinton was governor. The settlement included no apology or admission of guilt.

Clinton also acknowledged in a deposition that he'd had a single sexual encounter with former TV reporter Gennifer Flowers, who claimed they had a 12-year affair while he was Arkansas governor. Among other accusers: Nurse Juanita Broaddrick in 1999 claimed she was raped by then-state Attorney General Clinton at a Little Rock hotel in 1978. Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, claimed Clinton fondled her when she met privately with him at the White House in 1993 to seek a job. Clinton denied the allegations by Broaddrick and Willey.

For much of that tumultuous time, Hillary Clinton stood by her husband publicly and cast his accusers as part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Writings about the Clinton White House years suggest she was more active behind the scenes, helping to drive political and legal strategy to defend her husband during the Lewinsky investigation. Her friend Diane Blair wrote in her diary that Hillary Clinton had called Lewinsky a "narcissistic loony tune." Former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, in his 1999 memoir, recalled Clinton in 1992 saying of one woman who claimed to have been propositioned by her husband, "We have to destroy her story." Three people signed affidavits denying those allegations by Connie Hamzy.

It's no small matter for Clinton, who draws a lopsided share of her support from female voters and for decades has made advocacy for women a big part of her persona. It's especially important as she tries to attract a generation of younger women who only learned about the Clinton presidency in history class and have come of age in a time of different attitudes toward sexual harassment and abuse.

Clinton herself has made the treatment of sexual assault victims a key issue this campaign.

"I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault," Clinton said in one of her campaign ads last year. "Don't let anyone silence your voice. You have a right to be heard and you have a right to believed. We're with you."

When a young woman asked Clinton at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire whether that message also applies to those who accused her husband of sexual impropriety, though, her answer was more convoluted.

"Everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence," she said.

It's tricky territory for her, Republican presidential contender Rand Paul suggested when the matter was raised at the latest GOP debate. "I don't blame Hillary Clinton at all for this," he said, meaning Bill's past. But "she can't be a champion of women's rights at the same time she's got this that is always lurking out there, this type of behavior."

The Clintons' complicated marriage has been parsed and pondered for decades. By the 2008 campaign, it wasn't much of an issue.

But this time, Trump has shown he's willing to toss a match on the kindling: The GOP presidential contender put out an Instagram video that mashed together photos of Hillary and Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky and disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, and ended it with the sarcastic tag line "true defender of women's rights."

Add to that, several of Bill Clinton's old accusers are re-airing their allegations now through Twitter, websites and appearances on conservative media outlets, and suggesting that Hillary Clinton was at least supportive of efforts at the time to discredit them.

Clinton's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, complains about being asked about the Clintons' "personal stuff" when he'd rather focus on issues. But he's also made clear he considers Bill Clinton's past behavior "totally, totally, totally disgraceful and unacceptable."

Many potential voters, too, seem loath to get into the "personal stuff."

Democrat Richard Hoffman, 63, a retired chemist in Littleton, Colorado, thinks it's unfair to lay anything on Hillary Clinton.

"If anything, she was the injured party," he says.

Self-described progressive Rine Kasckow, a junior at the University of Wyoming, says it's time to look forward, not back.

"Why do I care if a woman does or doesn't leave her husband?" she asks. "It's just a ridiculous notion."

But the old Clinton baggage  a suitcase with different contents to different voters  still is a burden to be lugged by the former first lady.

Kay Sherman, a 70-year-old Republican from St. Petersburg, Florida, says she doesn't want to judge Clinton on how she handled a tough situation.

Still, she says, Clinton "could have stood up for women more." Her actions, Sherman says, "kind of said to women, 'It's OK.'"

"It will probably come up in the campaign," says Sherman. "I'd rather it not, though."

___

Associated Press writers Tamara Lush in Terra Ceia, Florida; Ann Sanner in Columbus, Ohio; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Kristen Wyatt in Denver and Emily Swanson in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac

FILE - In this Jan. 26, 1998 file photo, President Clinton emphatically denies having a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky during a White House event. The long-running drama of Hillary Clinton's marriage _ her husband's infidelity and how she dealt with it _ is back as a subtext in this year's presidential race. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson)

FILE - In this Nov. 6, 1996 file image taken from video, Monica Lewinsky embraces President Clinton as he greeted well-wishers at a White House lawn party in Washington Nov. 6, 1996. The long-running drama of Hillary Clinton's marriage _ her husband's infidelity and how she dealt with it _ is back as a subtext in this year's presidential race. (AP Photo/APTV)
The Latest: 2 remaining fugitives likely in San Jose

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)  The Latest on the manhunt for three inmates who escaped from a jail in Orange County, California, a week ago (all times local):

5:15 p.m.

A sheriff's spokesman says the two remaining violent fugitives who broke out of a California jail are believed to be in San Jose and may be headed to Fresno.

A K-9 Orange County agent searches for additional suspects at the back of a hotel in Santa Ana, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Authorities say they have captured one of three inmates who escaped from a California jail last week while facing charges involving violent crimes. The men escaped early Jan. 22 from the Orange County jail after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a five-story jail building. They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed sheets. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock says escaped inmate Bac Duong, who surrendered in Orange County earlier Friday, told investigators he was with the other two fugitives in San Jose on Thursday.

It's not clear how he got back to Southern California to turn himself in.

Hallock says the other two men, Jonathan Tieu and Hossein Nayeri, may now be headed to Fresno in Central California, where there may be associates who can help them.

Authorities had previously said they thought all three men were still in Southern California.

Authorities say the men brazenly broke out of the maximum-security jail a week ago, and one of them stole a white van a day later.

Hallock says the remaining two fugitives are most likely still in that van.

___

1:55 p.m.

Authorities say a violent California inmate walked into a business and said he wanted to surrender before he was arrested by police a week after an elaborate jailbreak with two other prisoners who remain at large.

Lee Tran, an owner of Auto Electric Rebuilders in Santa Ana, says Duong came into the shop Friday looking for Tran's sister, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to turn himself in.

Tran says his sister called 911 and Duong went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for police to arrive.

He says his sister's boyfriend knows Duong and that marshals came by to speak with her earlier this week because she may have visited Duong in jail.

Duong had been held in jail since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts in a gang shooting.

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12:15 p.m.

Authorities say they have captured one of three inmates who escaped from a California jail last week while facing charges involving violent crimes.

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said 43-year-old Bac Duong was arrested Friday by police in Santa Ana, the same city where the trio made their elaborate escape from the county jail.

Hutchens says Duong flagged down a citizen on a street and said he wanted to turn himself in.

The men escaped early Jan. 22 from the Orange County jail after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a five-story jail building.

They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed sheets.

Duong, Jonathan Tieu and Hossein Nayeri had all been awaiting trial for unrelated violent crimes.

They had been held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

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10:40 a.m.

Southern California law enforcement officials believe three men who escaped from the Orange County jail are still in the region.

County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock urged residents Friday to remain on the lookout for a stolen white van that the men are believed to be using.

A woman who taught English as a second language to one of the inmates has been booked as an accessory to the escape.

The sheriff's spokesman says she played a significant role in the escape, including providing the men Google Earth maps of the entire jail complex. Hallock says the two exchanged letters of a personal nature, but he could not say if they were romantically involved.

Hallock says the woman denies providing tools.

A wanted sign is displayed for the The reward for information leading to the arrest of the the three escaped inmates from the Orange County Central Men's Jail on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong are believed to be dangerous and all were awaiting trial for separate violent felonies, authorities said. (Paul Rodriguez/The Orange County Register via AP) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Department shows Nooshafarin Ravaghi. Ravaghi, 44, who taught English classes at Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., was was arrested Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, on suspicion of helping three inmates escape the lockup. She was arrested nearly a week after the men  one an alleged killer  cut their way out of the jail and rappelled down an outside wall last Friday. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

This undated combo photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows tattoos and other markings on the body Bac Duong, one of three inmates who escaped Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, from the county's Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Wednesday that several arrests have been made in the investigation, but the inmates themselves have not been captured. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

CORRECTS DAY TO SATURDAY, JAN. 23- This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a 2008 White GMC Savana utility van that authorities believe three escaped inmates from Orange County, Calif., stole from South Los Angeles on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, following their jailbreak Friday. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Nooshafarian Ravaghi, a 44-year-old woman who taught English as a second language to inmates, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of helping three inmates escape the lockup. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)
Cuba a low-key presence at US-Jamaican security conference

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP)  A delegation from Cuba has taken part for the first time in a Caribbean regional security conference co-hosted by the United States. But officials sought to downplay their participation as the four-day event came to a close Friday in the Jamaican capital.

Maj. Gen. Antony Bertram Anderson of the Jamaica Defense Force, which co-hosted the event with U.S. Southern Command, started a closing news conference by thanking the U.S. for agreeing to invite Cuba for the first time to the annual event and the Cubans for sending a delegation. He noted, however, that their presence was not a focus of attention.

"They were at the table like everybody else," Anderson said. "It was quite a normal thing. It is the first time but it is what it is. They are a regional country."

U.S. Navy Adm. Kurt Tidd, the new commander of Miami-based Southern Command, said Cuba was one of the 18 countries from across the region taking part in discussions of humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and other challenges.

"We share challenges, all of the countries across this region," Tidd said. "Cuba is one of those countries in this region. And so I believe in the future we'll have opportunities to find ways to work together."

Later, Army Col. Lisa Garcia, a Southern Command spokeswoman, said that Jamaica had technically issued the invitation since it was the host country and that Tidd did not mention the Cuban participation in his official closing remarks because "the conference was about more than Cuba; it was about all the Caribbean nations."

The admiral said the subject of the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, did not come up. The base is the oldest U.S. overseas military outpost and the Cubans have long demanded its return. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro restored relations in December 2014 and relations have been improving but the U.S. has said returning Guantanamo is not on the table.
Sudan's president vows to cut gas subsidies

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP)  The Sudanese President says he will not back down from slashing gas subsidies despite fears price hikes could spark mass anti-government demonstrations.

The official Sudanese news agency SUNA quoted President Omar Bashir on Friday reaffirming his commitment to free market reforms, including cuts to state subsidies on cooking gas and petroleum products.

Earlier this week, Sudan's Ministry of Finance announced that the price of cooking gas would increase threefold.
Missing hunter of $2 million treasure followed these clues

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  Santa Fe, New Mexico, antiquities dealer Forrest Fenn wrote in his memoir "The Thrill of the Chase," self-published in 2010, that somewhere high in the Rocky Mountains, he had hidden a small bronze treasure chest containing nearly $2 million in gold coins, jewelry and precious artifacts. Since then, tens of thousands of people have tried in vain to find the bounty, following clues he dropped in a poem as part of the memoir.

In these excerpts, he told treasure hunters where to start looking:

"... Begin it where warm waters halt

FILE - In this March 22, 2013 file photo, Forrest Fenn sits in his home in Santa Fe, N.M. Geese, a few bald eagles and the majesty that is northern New Mexicos landscape. That's all Fenn has spotted as he flies in a chartered helicopter over remote stretches of the Rio Grande, looking for any sign of, Randy Bilyeu a Colorado man who went missing while searching for his hidden treasure. (AP Photo/Jeri Clausing,File)

And take it in the canyon down,

Not far, but too far to walk.

Put in below the home of Brown.

From there it's no place for the meek,

The end is ever drawing nigh;

There'll be no paddle up your creek,

Just heavy loads and water high.

If you've been wise and found the blaze,

Look quickly down, your quest to cease,

But tarry scant with marvel gaze,

Just take the chest and go in peace ..."

This undated photo provided by Forrest Fenn shows an estimated 2 million dollars of gold jewelry and other artifacts that Fenn has hidden for treasures hunters to find. Thousands have set off into the wilds of the West in search for Forrest Fenns cache of gold, jewelry and artifacts. But until now, none of the treasure hunters has been in such a dangerous predicament as Randy Bilyeu, who has gone missing along Rio Grande in northern New Mexico. (Forrest Fenn via AP)

This Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2015 photo provided by Cynthia Meachum shows an areal view of the terrain where a search of treasure hunter Randy Bilyeu, went missing along Rio Grande in northern New Mexico. Thousands have set off into the wilds of the West in search for Fenns cache of gold, jewelry and artifacts. But until now, none of the treasure hunters has been in such a dangerous predicament as Bilyeu. (Cynthia Meachum via AP)
Iran flies unarmed military drone over US aircraft carrier

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and published video of the encounter Friday, the latest in a series of edgy naval incidents between the two countries in the Persian Gulf after the recent nuclear deal.

While the U.S. Navy stressed it knew the drone was unarmed and the flyover didn't interrupt U.S. operations in the war against the Islamic State group, the incident underlined the continued tension over control of waterways crucial to global oil supplies. It follows a rocket test last month by the Islamic Republic near coalition warships and commercial traffic, as well as Iran's brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

Iranian state television and the semi-official Fars news agency, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, published identical images Friday both said came from the drone. The footage, which The Associated Press could not independently verify, purported to show the drone being launched and then hovering over an unidentified aircraft carrier, a targeting bracket briefly passing over a jet parked on the deck below.

This still image made from video broadcast on Iranian State television, friday, Jan. 29, 2016 shows what purports to be drone footage of a U.S. aircraft carrier. Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state media reported Friday. The U.S. Navy said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near a French and American carrier earlier this month, but couldn't confirm it was the same incident.(Iranian State Television via AP) IRAN OUT

The Iranian reports suggested the footage was from Friday. However, Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and "directly over" the USS Harry S. Truman on Jan. 12 as the vessels were in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

He said the Navy launched a helicopter that determined the drone wasn't armed and "posed no danger to the ship" as the carrier wasn't conducting flight operations at the time. His comments implied that had there been active takeoffs and landings of U.S. aircraft, the situation might have changed.

Stephens called the drone's flight "abnormal and unprofessional." He added that the U.S. Navy was "not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet."

The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of Iran's navy, called the drone overflight "a sign of bravery."

It "allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces," he told state television.

State television and the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine also participated in the surveillance operation. When asked about the presence of a submarine, Stephens said: "Iran has several submarines ... for its current exercise," but declined to discuss specifics.

In Washington, U.S. Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Marks stressed America remains ready to use force if necessary.

"We are confident in our force's ability to respond appropriately as the situation dictates and will defend ourselves should that prove necessary," he said.

Iran's navy began a naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer (1.16-million-square-mile) area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a U.S. warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The U.S. Navy later denied its operations were affected.

Iran struck a nuclear deal with world powers, including the U.S., last year to limit its atomic program in exchange for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions. The sanctions ended this month and many average Iranians continue to wait to feel their effect.

Meanwhile, in recent months, Iran has shown footage of underground missile bases on state television and conducted ballistic missile tests criticized by the U.S.

Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Control of that territory, including the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a third of all oil traded by sea passes, has remained a priority for Iran's military and it conducts regular drills in the region.

The U.S. has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test in December near U.S. warships and commercial traffic passing through the strait. Iran denied the test was provocative. The U.S. later released footage showing the rocket fire.

Earlier this month, Iranian forces captured 10 U.S. Navy sailors who entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Gulf. The sailors were released in less than a day, though Iranian state media aired footage of the sailors' capture, angering U.S. politicians.

Past confrontations have been far worse.

In April 1988, the U.S. attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels, including two naval frigates after the near-sinking of the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine, laid amid the Islamic Republic's bloody 1980s war with Iraq.

A few months later, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the strait mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 passengers and crew.

In this latest incident, however, Iran likely wanted to showcase its locally made drones, as well as appease hard-liners suspicious of the nuclear deal, said Joshua Shifrinson, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

"They live in a competitive world and the U.S. might change its mind on the nuclear deal, especially if a different administration comes in," Shifrinson said. "Iran also has other opponents in and around the Gulf, all of which means Iran wants to remind people that just because they cooperated does not mean they're turning belly up and are going to surrender everything."

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jongambrellap .
San Francisco pier shooting suspect seeks case's dismissal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The Mexican national charged with fatally shooting a young San Francisco woman walking on a city pier is seeking dismissal of his criminal case, which added to the national debate over illegal immigration.

Juan Francisco Sanchez-Lopez and his lawyer Matt Gonzalez are expected to ask a judge to drop a second-degree murder charge and related counts, arguing that the judge presiding over a preliminary hearing last year made procedural mistakes.

The judge canceled a hearing scheduled for Friday, saying he wants more time to consider the issue. Attorneys will argue the matter March 24.

CORRECTS LAST NAME TO LOPEZ-SANCHEZ, INSTEAD OF SANCHEZ-LOPEZ - FILE - In this Tuesday, July 7, 2015 file photo, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez walks into court for his arraignment at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. Lopez-Sanchez and his lawyer Matt Gonzalez are expected to ask a judge Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, to drop a second-degree murder charge and related counts, arguing that the judge presiding over a preliminary hearing late last year made procedural mistakes. Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national, is charged with fatally shooting Kate Steinle, while walking on a city pier. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)

Sanchez-Lopez has pleaded not guilty. Gonzalez didn't return a phone call and email inquiry.

Kate Steinle, 32, was walking with her father along the city's popular waterfront on July 1 when she was shot in the back. She died in her father's arms.

Sanchez-Lopez was arrested several hours later a few blocks from the incident. Sanchez-Lopez told police he found a gun on the pier and that it fired accidentally when he picked it up. The gun was the service weapon of a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger, who reported it stolen from his car in late June.

Lopez-Sanchez was in the country illegally when he was released from the San Francisco jail, despite federal immigration authorities requesting he remain in custody for possible deportation. Lopez-Sanchez was previously deported five times to Mexico.

Former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said jailers released Sanchez-Lopez after local prosecutors dropped a marijuana-related charge. Mirkarimi said he was following city policy of non-cooperation with federal immigration officials by releasing Lopez-Sanchez.
Colombia, Venezuela look for Zika links to Guillain-Barre

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Colombia and Venezuela are both reporting a jump in cases of a rare, sometimes paralyzing syndrome that may be linked to the Zika virus.

Colombian Deputy Health Minister Fernando Ruiz said Friday that his country has recorded 41 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome that appear to be linked to Zika infections. It had detected 12 such cases a week ago.

Colombia has said it had about 16,500 suspected cases of Zika, though only a small fraction have been confirmed by laboratory tests.

This 2006 photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a female Aedes aegypti mosquito in the process of acquiring a blood meal from a human host. Scientists believe the species originated in Africa, but came to the Americas on slave ships. It's continued to spread through shipping and airplanes. Now it's found through much of the world. (James Gathany/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via AP)

The mosquito-borne virus is spreading rapidly in the region after being detected last year in Brazil. Investigators are scrambling to determine if the surge is related to seeming increases of the rare birth defect known as microcephaly, which results in babies being born with abnormally small heads, and of Guillain-Barre, which can leave patients temporarily paralyzed.

Venezuelan Health Minister Luisana Melo said Friday that her country has recorded 255 cases of Guillain-Barre, apparently as part of its effort to fight Zika, though she did not specify the link or the time frame.

Former Health Minister Jose Oletta said that figure indicates the number of suspected Zika cases in Venezuela is far more than the government's estimate of roughly 4,500. He has estimated Venezuela could have 400,000 cases.

"Normally, we'd expect 30 or 40 cases of Guillain-Barre a month," said Oletta, who now works with the Network to Defend National Epidemiology. "What this shows is that the minister has the total number of Zika cases wrong."

Zika outbreaks have been reported in several Latin American and Caribbean countries, raising concerns elsewhere about travelers becoming infected.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Friday that he doesn't think U.S. airports need to screen travelers arriving from nations with Zika cases. He said the disease is spread by mosquitoes and is not transmitted from one person to another.

Speaking in Washington, Fauci said the U.S. government is taking the virus "very seriously" and preparing in case it should spread to the United States. He said Americans should not "get overly panicked" since there have been no transmissions of the disease in the U.S.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes sit in a petri dish at the Fiocruz institute in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. The mosquito is a vector for the proliferation of the Zika virus currently spreading throughout Latin America. New figures from Brazil's Health Ministry show that the Zika virus outbreak has not caused as many confirmed cases of a rare brain defect as first feared. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Michigan couple convicted of murder in 5-year-old's death

PORT HURON, Mich. (AP)  A Michigan couple was convicted of murder Friday in the death of a 5-year-old girl who had pneumonia and weighed just 25 pounds when an emergency crew found her last spring.

Andrew Maison and Hilery Maison, his wife and the girl's stepmother, were convicted after a six-day trial in St. Clair County, 60 miles northeast of Detroit.

They were accused of abusing, torturing and starving Mackenzie Maison, who was unresponsive when an emergency crew was called to their home in Port Huron last May.

Medical experts said she was malnourished, sick and far underweight. A younger sister was also malnourished but has doubled her weight in foster care since Mackenzie's death.

"It doesn't change what happened and it doesn't bring back Mackenzie," prosecutor Mona Armstrong told the Port Huron Times Herald (http://bwne.ws/1WSxxZ8 ), referring to the guilty verdicts. "It does serve a measure of justice. But it should never have gotten to this point."

The Maisons face life in prison with no opportunity for parole when they return to court on March 10.

Hilery Maison's attorney, Michael Boucher, told jurors there was no evidence that the couple intended for Mackenzie to die. Police said the Maisons attributed the weight loss to picky eating.
FBI using billboards in fight against Albany corruption

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Each workday, thousands of state workers commute from their suburban neighborhoods to the many state buildings scattered throughout New York's capital city. Based on Albany's remarkable penchant for corruption, odds are that a few of them have a story the feds would like to hear.

That's where the big signs on the highway come in.

Authorities have turned to using digital billboards along the interstate to urge citizens to report crooked politicians, dirty bureaucrats and other bad actors, the latest indication of just how big a problem political corruption has become in Albany.

In this Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, photo, a billboard with a message about reporting public corruption stands along Interstate 90 in Albany, N.Y. Authorities in New York's corruption-plagued capital city are using billboards to urge citizens to report crooked politicians, using a tactic more commonly employed to find missing people or fight drunk driving. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

The signs, which went up earlier this year, are emblazoned with the words "REPORT CORRUPTION," all in capital letters, above the number for a telephone tip line and FBI website. They went up only weeks after the Legislature's two top leaders were convicted of trying to cash in on their positions.

The idea came from the New York Public Corruption Task Force, which includes the FBI, the IRS, the state comptroller and the state attorney general.

"The public plays an integral role in helping law enforcement root out corruption," said Andrew Vale, the FBI's special agent in charge at the Albany division. "Which is why we try to make it easier to come forward and report suspected abuse."

Billboards have long been used to locate fugitives and missing children, or warn about the risks of domestic violence, drunken driving and child abuse. Their use in the fight against corruption, however, is a relatively new idea.

"We got a call from the local field office, and we worked with them to design it," said Matt Duddy, vice president and general manager in the region for Lamar Advertising, which operates the billboards and offered the space for free.

The FBI tried out anti-corruption billboards last year in Kentucky and Connecticut.

Albany, where more than 30 lawmakers have faced criminal charges or left office because of allegations of ethical misconduct, would seem an obvious choice.

Last year, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon and ex-Senate Leader Dean Skelos, R-Long Island, were convicted of corruption. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, was found guilty of taking more than $4 million in bribes. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, was convicted of extorting payments and jobs for his son.

Authorities involved in the effort say the billboards are just one example of an increasingly creative, collaborative effort to address a problem long seen as intractable.

"By cooperating and sharing our diverse expertise and resources, we've created a strong collaboration to fight public corruption," said state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Authorities won't say whether they've seen an uptick in tips since the signs went up, or whether they've led to new investigations. Evidence from other states, however, suggests the signs could yield results: the Police department in Janesville, Wisconsin, reported that calls tripled after the department started putting information about wanted suspects and anti-crime messages on billboards.

In New York, the tip line is 518-431-7200 and the website is tips.fbi.gov.

In this Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, photo, a billboard with a message about reporting public corruption, upper left, stands along Interstate 90 in Albany, N.Y. Authorities in New York's corruption-plagued capital city are using billboards to urge citizens to report crooked politicians, using a tactic more commonly employed to find missing people or fight drunk driving. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

In this Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, photo, a billboard with a message about reporting public corruption, left, stands along Interstate 90 in Albany, N.Y. Authorities in New York's corruption-plagued capital city are using billboards to urge citizens to report crooked politicians, using a tactic more commonly employed to find missing people or fight drunk driving. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
Man carrying two handguns arrested at Disneyland Paris

A man carrying two handguns has been arrested at Disneyland Paris.

The 28-year-old was found with the weapons, ammunition and a copy of the Koran after trying to pass through security at a hotel at the resort, according to reports.

The suspect's partner fled after he was seized and is reportedly still on the run.

Disneyland Paris attracts thousands of British holidaymakers each year

Police arrested a woman at the park, believing her to be the man's partner, but she was later released when they realised they had got the wrong woman, French media reported.

France remains under a state of emergency since the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris in November which killed 130 people.

There are several hotels around Disneyland Paris, which attracts thousands of British holidaymakers each year and is among Europe's most-visited tourist attractions.

The man was stopped by security staff when his bag passed through an X-ray machine at Disneyland Paris's New York Hotel.

He is not known to security services and gave no resistance when he was arrested, according to reports.

Francois Banon, a spokesman for Disneyland Paris, said: " During a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels, weapons were discovered in a guest's luggage through our X-ray machine.

"The police were immediately notified and the individual was arrested. We continue to work closely with the authorities, and the safety and security of our guests and cast members is our utmost priority."

Nobody was hurt in the incident, which happened at the entrance to the four-star New York Hotel.

French newspaper Le Parisien said the man - who is reportedly of European origin - had booked a room for two people and his vehicle had been sealed off.

The park remains open and e mployees at several hotels around the resort said they continued working as normal after the arrest.

Disneyland Paris is about 18 miles east of the French capital and is the most visited theme park in Europe, with almost 10 million visitors in 2014, according to the Global Attractions Attendance Report.

The resort was closed to the public for a number of days after the Paris terror attacks in November.

A guest at the New York Hotel said there was extra security in place following the man's arrest.

Ronan O'Flaithearta, from Galway, Ireland, said on Twitter: "I don't think many people have been briefed about it. There's no panic but extra security everywhere.
Human rights groups condemn PM's clampdown on claims against Iraq veterans

Human rights groups have branded David Cameron's clampdown on law firms pursuing "spurious" claims against Iraq veterans "ill-judged and inappropriate".

In a letter to the Prime Minister, seven organisations warned Mr Cameron not to interfere in the process of investigating allegations against British troops.

The groups acknowledged that many of the claims were "as yet unproven" but they were "extremely serious" and the investigation process should be allowed to run its course.

The Prime Minister has asked the National Security Council to draw up a plan to "stamp out" what he described as an "industry" trying to profit from servicemen through "spurious" claims

The Prime Minister has asked the National Security Council to draw up a plan to "stamp out" what he described as an "industry" trying to profit from servicemen through "spurious" claims.

Proposals for action include measures to curb the use of "no win, no fee" arrangements and accelerate the introduction of a 12-month residence test for eligibility for legal aid.

Law firms which are found to have abused the system could also face tougher penalties under the measures being considered.

In a joint letter Freedom from Torture, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, FIDH, Legal Action Worldwide, Redress and Rights Watch (UK) expressed their "serious concern" about statements by Mr Cameron and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon.

They said the Iraq Historical Allegations Team (Ihat) was investigating serious claims, including of war crimes, and should not come under political pressure.

" While many of these allegations are as yet unproven, they are extremely serious and surely require that you, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and other parts of Government avoid any real or perceived interference with the investigative process," the groups told Mr Cameron.

"To say, as you did, that the 'National Security Council will draw up a plan to stamp out this industry' could be construed as an executive comment on the strength or weakness of any particular allegation."

The groups added that Mr Cameron's claims that service personnel were being "hounded" by lawyers over unfounded claims " ignores the fact that some very serious crimes involving the UK army in Iraq have been exposed, such as the killing of Baha Mousa".

Freedom from Torture's Sonya Sceats said: "It is deeply irresponsible for the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary to publicly denigrate allegations of torture and other serious allegations against British military personnel while formal investigations are still under way.
NHS programme set to fund hand transplants

The NHS is to fund hand transplants for patients in desperate need following injury or serious infection.

A team in Leeds has been given the go-ahead to run the NHS programme and recruit patients who have suffered injury, an accident or sepsis.

Four people are currently in line to receive a hand from a donor, with the first operation as part of the programme expected this year.

Mark Cahill, right, became the first person in the UK to have a hand transplant

The UK's first hand transplant was performed in 2012 on former pub landlord Mark Cahill, who now has major use of his hand and can pick up his grandchildren.

NHS England has spent three years examining the potential for hand transplants and has agreed that Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust will be the UK base.

Consultant plastic surgeon Professor Simon Kay, who operated on Mr Cahill, will run the programme.

He said: "There have been lots of hand transplants around the world but this is the first time a national funding organisation has closely examined the issue, come up with the conclusion that it's worth pursuing and is now going to fund it nationally in one centre."

Surgeons expect to carry out one or two transplants per year but Prof Kay said his team was willing "to do as many as are needed".

He said: "We don't know how many are needed because we haven't been looking for patients. We have four patients waiting, of whom two have been completely evaluated and are on the waiting list. We're looking for donors for them now.

"One other patient is in the process of evaluation and will probably be ready to go forward around June. We have another patient who has been closely evaluated but who has health issues that we're still working on.

"These are the four that have appeared when we weren't open for business. It's unlikely we will do more than one or two per year, but we will meet the need."

Eligible patients have typically lost one or both hands, mostly below the elbow.

They may have suffered injuries caused by a machine or other things, including chainsaws.

The deadly blood infection sepsis is the commonest cause of hand loss, Prof Kay said.

NHS Blood and Transplant will work closely with the team in Leeds to identify possible donors. The initial focus will be on donors in Yorkshire and the North due to the need for a rapid transit of the donor hand. There is a view to expanding the search across the UK.

The main focus is on matching blood group, skin tone and hand size.

The option to choose to donate limbs is not recorded on the NHS Organ Donation Register, so specific permission will be sought from the families of potential donors after their death.

Prof Kay said it was not always the case that hands have to be matched by gender. He personally travels out to see each donor to ensure there is a good match.

"There are quite feminine male hands and masculine female hands," he said.

"Age is kind of a guideline but skin tone is quite important because otherwise they look very odd."

During the six to 12 hour procedure, teams of surgeons work to remove the donor hand while separate teams work on the recipient.

During the attachment, the two bones in the upper arm are put in place with titanium plates and screws.

Surgeons then connect key tendons and muscles, before blood vessels - including the two main arteries in the upper arm - are connected.

Once blood is circulating to the limb, remaining nerves, tendons and muscles are attached.

Prof Kay said: "The hand will be numb straight after the operation, the nerves will not have re-grown.

"But the muscles will work so rehabilitation aims to keep joints mobile and maximise the function of the muscles that are already connected.

"You're waiting for the nerves to regenerate and power the small muscles within the hand, which will recover in about six to nine months."

The feeling in the hand should then come back.

Estimates are that the operation costs 50,000, and after that about 2,000 and 3,000 per year in rehabilitation and immuno-suppressant drug costs.

Mr Cahill, from West Yorkshire, has regained almost complete use of his transplanted hand and can tie his shoelaces and drive a car.

He said: "My experience as a patient and my quality of life since the hand transplant has been fantastic.

"I would like to thank once again the family of the donor who gave their permission for me to have the hand of their relative at such a difficult time for them. It really has transformed my life".

All patients will be carefully screened for psychological and physical suitability.

Around 80 hand transplants have been performed worldwide.

Dr Jonathan Fielden, NHS England's director of specialised commissioning, said: "The NHS is leading the world in offering this cutting-edge procedure, which has been shown to significantly improve the quality of life for patients who meet the strict criteria."

The team in Leeds is hoping it will be able to expand the programme at some point to people without hands caused by congenital abnormalities.
EU offer of benefits 'brake' is 'not good enough', says David Cameron

A proposed "emergency brake" on European Union citizens claiming benefits in the UK has been rejected as "not good enough" by the Prime Minister after talks with senior figures in Brussels.

David Cameron insisted that progress was being made on his reform demands ahead of a crunch summit of EU leaders in February but the proposal on offer "needs more work".

The Prime Minister said he could not be "certain" that a deal would be reached with the 27 other EU leaders at the meeting and stressed that he would only reach an agreement that addressed his concerns.

David Cameron, right, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker before the Brussels EU meeting (AP)

During a hastily-arranged trip to Brussels, Mr Cameron held talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament president Martin Schulz in an effort to keep his reform agenda on track.

Mr Cameron had demanded an outright four-year ban on migrants from other EU countries claiming in-work benefits in the UK but the compromise mechanism proposed would apply across all 28 member states.

Speaking in the Belgian capital he said: " There is now a proposal on the table, it is not good enough, it needs more work but we are making progress."

He added: " At the moment today, you can come to Britain, get instant access to our in-work benefits system which is worth many thousands of pounds to people.

"But also it goes to a deeper issue which is the British people and I want a system where you have to pay in before you get out. We don't want a something for nothing society.

"That's what we are determined to deliver. We've made some progress today, it's not enough, it's going to be hard work. I can't be certain we will get there in February but I will work as hard as I can to deliver a good deal for the British people."

A deal at the February 18-19 summit is seen as vital if Mr Cameron wants to hold an early referendum on EU membership, because an agreement at a later date would make it hard to schedule a vote before the school summer holidays.

But there were signs of trouble in reaching an agreement as Poland's foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski indicated his country would not back the brake mechanism.

"It will not accept a mechanism that denies social benefits to Poles living in the European Union," he said.

It is thought that the proposed measure would be available to all EU states, and be activated when migration levels were deemed high enough to put public services or welfare systems under severe strain.

Migrants from the EU would then be barred from claiming in-work benefits for up to four years.

Crucially, it is believed that the decision on triggering the brake would be in the hands of national governments rather than EU officials.

Czech Europe minister Tomas Prouza said the plan had been discussed during Mr Cameron's visit to Prague earlier this month and he expected the brake on benefits to be applied "as soon as the deal is struck" between the UK and other EU leaders.

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "We think the emergency brake is the right solution because it would allow not only the UK now but also, later on, any other member state to apply this brake when they face the same pressure the UK is facing now.

"That is an important part of the compromise, it would be a tool available for everybody when or if they need it."

Ukip leader Nigel Farage rejected the Prime Minister's claim that access to benefits acts as a draw for migrants coming to the UK.

He said: " The progress isn't very good, is it? We get an emergency brake that we have to ask permission to use.

"The PM is being utterly disingenuous in pretending that migrants are coming to the UK to go on benefits, they don't, they come to Britain because the minimum wage in Britain is nine-times that in Romania.

"Given that between now and the end of this parliament there is a proposal for a massive increase in the minimum wage to a living wage, even if he succeeds in blocking the benefits the pull factors are still there and increasing.

"He will go to the summit in February, like Oliver going up to the table and saying 'please sir, can we have some more concessions?' It's all pretty thin gruel."

Mr Schulz said Mr Cameron would formally table the UK's demands on Monday and the European Parliament president said he was "optimistic" a deal would be struck in February.

He said the talks with the Prime Minister were a " very open-minded exchange of views" and added: "We are now entering a very decisive moment in preparing the referendum."

He said the European Parliament was "strongly committed" to keeping the UK in the EU.

A deal would depend on the "goodwill from all sides" but he acknowledged "the devil is in the detail".

"There are some of the proposals of the UK which are common sense - that we must be more transparent, more democratic, more effective, more competitive," he said.

"It's quite clear there's a lot of people thinking we should also be more social, more responsible, more welfare-oriented - this is also existing in the European Union so we have to look if the two sides are compatible.

"My feeling is yes, and therefore I am optimistic there will be a deal mid-February and then we have to fight for a majority - the UK Government will have to convince UK voters that the deal is a good one."

After the talks, Mr Cameron called Francois Hollande to discuss the state of play in the negotiations.

Number 10 said he told the French president that "a deal in February remained possible if significant progress can be made in the coming days".

A spokeswoman added: "The Prime Minister said that if the deal on the table for February wasn't right, he wouldn't take it - there is no hurry and it is more important to fundamentally reform the UK's relationship with the EU."

Mr Cameron had had "many constructive phone calls and meetings", she said, including calls with his Danish and Swedish counterparts to apologise for cancelling planned talks in their capitals to travel to Brussels.

A ComRes opinion poll for the Daily Mail found voters in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 54% to 36%, with 10% undecided.

ComRes interviewed 1,006 adults by telephone between January 22 and 24.
'Outrage' over decision to keep Cecil Rhodes statue at Oxford college

Furious campaigners have vowed to fight the "outrageous" decision to keep a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes on the front of an Oxford University college.

The governing body of Oriel College said it decided after "careful consideration" to keep the statue despite a campaign by student activists who claimed it represented racism and oppression.

The college said it received an "enormous amount of input" when it consulted on whether to keep the statue, including a petition by campaign group Rhodes Must Fall, signed by more than 2,000 people.

Oriel College, Oxford

The Daily Telegraph reported that donors had threatened to withdraw gifts and bequests worth more than 100 million if it was removed.

But an Oriel spokesman insisted the financial implications were "not even a major factor" in the decision.

In a statement, the group Rhodes Must Fall said: "This recent move is outrageous, dishonest, and cynical.

"This is not over. We will be redoubling our efforts and meeting over the weekend to discuss our next actions." The group added: "The struggle continues."

Ntokozo Qwabe, Rhodes Scholar who has campaigned to remove the statue, wrote on his Facebook page: "The decision by Oriel College to unilaterally reverse its public commitments on Rhodes, without any consultation, basically reminds us that black lives are cheap at Oxford.

"Oriel has basically said: f*** all the black people. Who cares about black lives & the concerns of BME (black and minority ethnic) Oxford students anyways?"

A spokesman for the college said: "The overwhelming message we have received has been in support of the statue remaining in place, for a variety of reasons.

"The college's governing body has decided that the statue should remain in place and that the college will seek to provide a clear historical context to explain why it is there."

Rhodes served as prime minister of the British Empire's Cape Colony, including South Africa, in the early 1890s and has been linked to apartheid-style policies.

A Rhodes legacy fund provides scholarships for overseas students, but some students argue the statue should be taken down because he was a racist.

The Daily Telegraph said 1.5m in donations had already been cancelled, and the college feared more wealthy donors could walk.

College leaders admitted the controversy surrounding the statue had shone a light on the low numbers of black and ethnic minority students admitted, and the issue of discrimination on campus.

A spokesman said: "The campaign to remove Oriel's statue of Rhodes has highlighted other challenges in relation to the experience and representation of black and minority ethnic students and staff at Oxford.

"Oriel takes these very seriously and, as previously announced, is taking substantive steps to address them."

And he said the statue was "an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today".

Oriel College will seek expert opinion on how to give context to the statue and a nearby plaque to Rhodes, which they will also keep in place.

Rhodes was a student at Oxford and a member of Oriel College in the 1870s. He left money to the college on his death in 1902.

Scholarships in his name have so far been awarded to more than 8,000 overseas students.

The college has distanced itself from his views, saying in a statement last month: "Rhodes was also a 19th-century colonialist whose values and world view stand in absolute contrast to the ethos of the scholarship programme today, and to the values of a modern university."

The decision comes after the University of Cape Town last year decided to remove a similar statue of the man, following a student protest.

A spokesman for Oriel College told the Press Association: "The financial implications were absolutely not the overriding consideration - not even a major factor in the decision that was made."

Asked whether Oxford graduate David Cameron backed Oriel's decision, a Downing Street spokesman said: "I think he would welcome the fact that this was the university making a decision.
Dealing on the more recondite aspects of healthcare creeping into our doorsteps. Like how research into chemical weapons protection can also help us "civilians".
David Cameron 'very happy' for EU to investigate Google's 130m tax deal

David Cameron has insisted he would be "very happy" for the European Commission to examine the UK's controversial tax deal with Google.

The Prime Minister again defended the agreement, under which the internet giant handed over 130 million in back taxes covering the last decade, as a "success" and stressed the firm was now subject to tougher rules.

Asked on BBC Radio Scotland about the EU competition commissioner's suggestion that she could consider whether the deal amounted to state subsidy, Mr Cameron said: "I am very happy for the EU to see what role it can play.

Google agreed to pay 130m in back taxes in the UK

"I think the most important thing is to get countries to cooperate and I put this on the agenda at the G8 in Northern Ireland back in 2012 so that we exchange information about who is moving money where and who is paying taxes where."

Mr Cameron, who has been visiting Aberdeen, said his administration had d one more on bolstering international tax arrangements than "almost any government anywhere in the world".

"I would say it (the deal) is a success because previously Google was not paying any tax at all," he said.

"We've achieved this payment and now we want to see these companies pay more in future."

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin defended the deal as a "move in the right direction" but said it was open to the National Audit Office (NAO) to examine it.

"The truth is it's a move in the right direction. There is more for them to pay and I want them to pay more in future," he said.

Appearing on BBC1's Question Time, he said: "We have started to receive tax from Google, which is something that hasn't happened for the 10 years they have so far been established here, so in that position the Chancellor was right to say that it was a move in the right direction.

"Of course I would like to see Google make more payments to the country. I would like to see them employ more people in this country.

"They do employ 3,000 people, top end jobs, they are doing a lot of investment in this country as well, which is actually good for the long-term economic future of the country.

"I believe in a low tax base, I believe in attracting companies here, but I believe when those companies are here they should pay their tax which is rightly collected.

"But companies can and have found ways around paying taxation and we have made a lot of changes to the taxation system that actually will make them pay more over years to come."

The Cabinet minister said he expected the NAO to come under pressure to examine the deal.

"The direct negotiations between HMRC and the company are confidential, but the NAO can do an investigation, can do an audit, and I'm sure they will do," he said.

"I'm sure the pressure will come on them to do it."

He added: "If the NAO decided to do it, it wouldn't be something George could stop."

Mr McLoughlin said a review commissioned by the NAO into five large tax deals, which reported in 2012, found that HMRC had acted reasonably in each case.

Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has indicated she is ready to look into complaints from Labour and the SNP that the settlement breached EU rules.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: "We believe 130 million to be significantly lower than a fair or reasonable assessment of Google's UK turnover and profits would suggest, with experts suggesting that Google has been levied an effective tax rate of around 3%," he said.

"I am therefore requesting an investigation under EU competition law, since we are concerned that, first, the deal is arguably not compliant with state aid rules, creating a favourable treatment for a particular company; second, that if the deal is generalised, it could constitute a serious potential threat to the ability of other EU members to levy taxes in their jurisdiction."

Executives from Google and HMRC bosses are to be grilled on the deal by the PAC on February 11 in the latest of a series of hearings by the influential spending watchdog into multinationals' tax affairs.

Downing Street confirmed that Google had not had to make payments under the new diverted profits tax, introduced by Chancellor George Osborne last year to target companies which artificially shift revenues overseas to avoid paying tax in the UK.

The measure was nicknamed the "Google tax" after Mr Osborne said it was designed to put a stop to technology companies going to "extraordinary lengths to pay little or no tax here".

Critics have accused the internet search giant of shifting billions of pounds worth of profit generated in the UK to low-tax Ireland.

But a Number 10 spokesman said that diverted profits tax was being applied only to those companies which fail to pay corporation tax at the appropriate level. HM Revenue and Customs has said that Google has paid the taxes due, he said.

Asked whether Google had paid the "Google tax", the Downing Street spokesman said: "Companies which divert profits from the UK will either have to change their behaviour and declare the correct amount of profits and pay corporation tax on all those profits, or, if they don't do that, they risk paying a higher amount of diverted profits tax.

"Diverted profits tax is only there to capture tax from those organisations that don't pay corporation tax on their profits in the UK. HMRC have made clear that Google have paid the taxes that they are due to pay."
UK and US 'spied on Israeli air force', say leaked Snowden documents

Secret documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden have revealed details of an 18-year operation by the UK and US to spy on the Israeli air force, according to reports in the Middle Eastern country's media.

The Foreign Office refused to comment on claims in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that the Government's GCHQ eavesdropping agency has been listening in to communications from Israeli drone aircraft after breaking encryption codes.

A senior Israeli intelligence source, speaking anonymously, described the revelation as an "earthquake", telling Yedioth Ahronoth it was "the biggest breach in the history of Israeli intelligence".

The Government's GCHQ agency has been listening to communications from Israeli drone aircraft, according to reports

According to documents obtained by the newspaper, GCHQ worked with the US National Security Agency on the operation codenamed "Anarchist", which was run out of Cyprus and targeted Middle Eastern powers including Israel.

The hacking allowed the UK and US to monitor communications from drones on operations over Gaza and the West Bank as well as intelligence-gathering sorties over Syria and Iran since 1998, said the paper. Also contained in the documents were photographs of missiles and bombs carried by the unmanned aircraft.

Israeli energy minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, sought to play down the significance of the issue.

He told Israel's Army Radio: "I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant. We will now have to look and consider changing the encryption, certainly."
UK men urged to wear condoms after travel to Zika-hit countries

Men in the UK are being urged to wear condoms for a month after returning from any of the 23 countries affected by Zika.

In guidance to health professionals, Public Health England (PHE) said the risk of transmission of the virus through sex was very low but condoms should be used as a precaution.

It said: " Sexual transmission of Zika virus has been recorded in a limited number of cases, and the risk of sexual transmission of Zika virus is thought to be very low.

Pregnant women have been warned to avoid travelling to areas where the Zika virus has been reported

"However, if a female partner is at risk of getting pregnant, or is already pregnant, condom use is advised for a male traveller."

It said men should wear condoms for 28 days after "return from a Zika transmission area" if they experience no symptoms of unexplained fever and rash.

But condoms should be used for six months "following recovery if a clinical illness compatible with Zika virus infection or laboratory confirmed Zika virus infection" has been reported.

PHE added: "This is a precaution and may be revised as more information becomes available."

The body also stressed that the type of mosquito thought to be carrying Zika - Aedes aegypti - was not present in the UK and was unlikely to establish itself due to the UK's low temperatures.

US officials have ruled out a vaccine to protect against Zika in the next few years as concerns continue to mount about the spread of the virus.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced on Thursday that Zika was "spreading explosively" throughout the Americas and "the level of alarm is extremely high".

The WHO has set up an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee to examine Zika and will meet on Monday to decide whether it constitutes a global emergency. The last time a global emergency was declared was for the Ebola virus.

Zika has been linked to thousands of babies being born with underdeveloped brains in Brazil.

Colombia has also seen a rise in the number of patients diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder which can cause paralysis.

The US has said it has two potential candidates for a vaccine for the Zika virus. While clinical trials may be able to begin before the end of this year, there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years.

In Colombia, health minister Alejandro Gaviria has reported a " substantial increase" in the number of people with Zika reported to have Guillain-Barre syndrome, which is rare in the UK.

It is a serious condition of the peripheral nervous system and m ost people (around 60%) develop it after having a viral or bacterial infection.

Experts believe the infection may trigger the immune system to attack nerve roots and peripheral nerves.

The WHO predicts three to four million people will be infected with Zika in the Americas this year.

In a briefing to the WHO's executive board on Thursday, WHO director-general Margaret Chan said the organisation was "deeply concerned".

She said : "Arrival of the virus in some places has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome.

"A causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth malformations and neurological syndromes has not yet been established, but is strongly suspected.

"The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika, from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions."

In the UK, PHE and the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC) issued updated advice for pregnant women on Wednesday

Dr Dipti Patel, director at NaTHNaC, said: "We strongly advise all travellers to avoid mosquito bites and urge pregnant women to consider avoiding travel to areas reporting active Zika transmission.

"If travel to these areas is unavoidable, or they live in areas where Zika virus transmission is occurring, they should take scrupulous insect bite avoidance measures both during daytime and night-time hours."

Since the start of the outbreak in 2015, five UK travellers have been diagnosed with the Zika virus.
Guus Hiddink: Alexandre Pato signing is not a gamble for Chelsea

Chelsea interim boss Guus Hiddink approved the arrival of Alexandre Pato and denied the Brazil international's signing is a gamble.

The 26-year-old former AC Milan forward has signed on loan from Brazilian club Corinthians until the end of the season, with the move being confirmed on Friday night.

Pato said on his new club's website: "I am so happy to sign for Chelsea. It is a dream for me. I am looking forward to meeting and getting to know my new team-mates and cannot wait to play.

Alexandre Pato has joined Chelsea on loan

"I thank Chelsea for their support and hope I can repay this faith to the club and its fans."

Radamel Falcao and Loic Remy have fitness issues and uncertain futures at Chelsea and Hiddink sees Pato as a back-up to Diego Costa.

"It's not a gamble," said Hiddink, who was speaking ahead of Sunday's FA Cup fourth-round tie at MK Dons.

"I said we are short of strikers, of available strikers, so I said let's go for it.

"The green light was mine. Coming on loan makes it possible to have a good view on him, whether he is able to adapt to the high demands of the club and the league."

Pato showed immense promise early in his career, but has been hampered by injuries in recent seasons.

It is uncertain when he will first be available to Hiddink and Chelsea.

The Dutchman described the move as "a brave step" and the success or failure depends on the player.

He added: "I will help him to make that next step, but it's up to him."

New York Red Bulls defender Matt Miazga's move is near completion, too.

"He's an up-and-coming youngster. I've not watched much of him," Hiddink said.

Hiddink was asked about the contribution of Costa, who has six goals in six games after a prior fallow spell under Jose Mourinho, including netting last Sunday's decisive strike in the Premier League win at Arsenal.

"Diego is delivering beyond expectations," Hiddink said.

"He's of huge importance for us. We're depending a lot on him, too much sometimes."

Yet Chelsea could be increasingly reliant on the Brazil-born Spain striker as Remy could be allowed to leave before Monday's transfer deadline, while Falcao (thigh) remains injured.

On Remy, who has a calf problem, Hiddink said: "I don't think being injured now has any influence on (him) staying or going.

"It's a minor injury, so we will see what will happen in the upcoming hours."

Hiddink has called on others to ease the goalscoring pressure on Costa and is poised to start Eden Hazard for the first time in four weeks at stadium:mk.

Hazard, who has not scored for Chelsea since May, has recovered from a groin injury.

Hiddink said: "It might be a big burden on (Costa), which is why I'm saying: 'Hey guys, it's not just Diego who has to deliver the goals.' Other players I like to see deliver as well."

Midfielder Ramires this week left for Chinese Super League side Jiangsu Suning for a fee reported to be in excess of 20million as Chelsea make changes to the squad ahead of Monday's transfer deadline.

There was speculation of England vice-captain Gary Cahill being unsettled, but Hiddink expects the defender, who earlier this season signed a new four-year contract, to stay.

"There was no hint from his side 'can I leave the club?' Nothing," Hiddink added.

"I think the club will have him in the upcoming years."

Chelsea declined to address the prospect of FIFA scrutinising their recruitment of young players, referring to the club's prior statement on the topic.

The Press Association this week revealed Burkina Faso international Bertrand Traore played for their Under-18s side when aged 16, in an apparent breach of FIFA regulations.

The Premier League champions could even face the prospect of being placed under a transfer embargo if found guilty of wrongdoing.

FIFA rules prohibit the international transfer of a minor (an under-18) and the Blues believe Traore was the subject of an option agreement which allowed him to play in friendly games.

Hiddink, who confirmed Traore would be in the squad on Sunday, is preoccupied by on-field matters and admits his caretaker status means he has little input on transfer strategy.

The Dutchman won the 2009 FA Cup during his first caretaker spell in charge and plans to take the competition seriously despite Premier League matches against Watford and Manchester United following in quick succession.

The Blues did not progress beyond the fourth round last season as League One Bradford came from two goals down to win 4-2 at Stamford Bridge in arguably the biggest cup upset in recent history.

"We're not here to pass the time," Hiddink added.
'End of an era' as Great Train Robber Gordon Goody dies in Spain aged 86

The death of Gordon Goody, one of the last surviving members of the Great Train Robbery gang, marks "the end of an era", the son of one of his fellow robbers said.

Goody, 86, died surrounded by friends on Friday morning in Mojacar, a town in the south of Spain where he ran a bar, the local town hall said.

Goody, a hairdresser before the 1963 robbery, was jailed for 30 years for his role in the 1963 heist, one of the most famous in British criminal history which was dubbed the "crime of the century".

Gordon Goody, pictured during the Great Train Robbery trial in 1964

Michael Biggs, son of Ronnie Biggs, one of the most famous of the 15-strong gang, spoke of his sadness at hearing of Goody's death.

He told the Press Association: "I knew that he was ill, but I didn't know how ill he was, I've been away from the country for a few months.

"It is always sad to know someone's passed away and my thoughts are with his family at the moment, and I wish his family all the best.

"It's the end of an era. Now it's all down to the history books."

Asked what his father would say at the news of his fellow gang-member's death, he said: "He would say, 'We can finally all get together for a drink'."

On August 8 1963, a gang masterminded by Bruce Reynolds stopped the Glasgow-Euston overnight mail train as it passed through the Buckinghamshire countryside close to Cheddington.

The train was driven a mile and a half to Bridego Bridge, where the gang unloaded 2,631,684 in used notes - worth around 46 million today.

But they were later captured and 12 were jailed for a total of more than 300 years.

More than one broke out of prison, including Biggs, who spent over 30 years on the run before he finally returned to Britain in 2001 to face arrest.

Reynolds returned in 1968, five years after the crime, and was captured in Torquay and jailed for 25 years.

Goody was sentenced to 30 years but released in 1975, setting up his Spanish bar four years later.

The Mojacar town hall statement said Goody died at 6am, and paid a glowing tribute to him, according to The Local, an English-language news website in Spain.

A spokesman said: " All who knew him were struck by his friendliness, his love for his friends and family and the many pets he rescued from the street.

"He was a complete gentleman, far removed from the image that those who didn't know him might have had from those difficult years that marked a large part of his life.
A&E departments facing extreme pressure, new data shows

A&E departments are facing extreme pressure, while the much-criticised 111 helpline has also seen a surge in patient demand, according to new data.

NHS England said 111 had seen a "huge rise in calls" last weekend - up between 24% and 30% on the same weekend last year - following a cold snap.

Just 79.9% of calls were answered within 60 seconds - against a target of 95%.

The NHS 111 non-emergency helpline has seen a major rise in the number of calls

The number of emergency admissions to English hospitals has also risen compared with last week, while A&E attendances are also up.

Analysis by the BBC has found A&E departments are increasingly struggling.

It comes after several hospitals issued "black alerts" earlier this month over struggles to cope with the influx of patients to A&E.

Dr Cliff Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the NHS was reaching a "critical point" in winter.

He told the BBC: "We were beginning to think this winter would not be as bad as last winter, but the problems we are beginning to see suggest it could end up being worse.

"We have virtually no flu or norovirus - if there was to be an outbreak of either we could see the whole system tip over."

The new analysis shows some NHS trusts have had to take extreme measures to cope with the pressures.

Over the past two weeks, there have been 45 temporary closures of A&E units - up 50% on the same period last year, the BBC reported.

This means ambulances are sent to other hospitals due to the fact wards are full and waiting times are rising.

Among the problems were Coventry University Hospital cancelling all its routine operations on Wednesday and for part of Thursday because of "exceptional" circumstances.

Its chief executive, Andy Hardy, said the week had been "incredibly difficult".

The pressures built during Tuesday when more than 500 patients turned up at A&E, leading to the unprecedented step of cancelling all the routine operations, the BBC reported.

Mr Hardy said the trust had large numbers of patients in the hospital who did not need to be there but could not be discharged because there were "no spaces" in the community.

GPs in north London were also told to try to avoid referring patients to emergency departments in Ealing and Northwick Park because of "very high pressure".

A double-sized ambulance had to park outside Leicester General Infirmary last weekend as A&E staff were struggling to cope with the numbers of patients being brought in.

Bosses even discussed setting up a temporary treatment area in a tent, the BBC said.

In another example, the Royal Cornwall Hospital spent a week on black alert, which led to routine operations being cancelled. This was lifted on Thursday.

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has also spent time on black alert this week after "exceptional numbers of very sick, frail and elderly patients" needed care.

The NHS 111 non-emergency helpline - which has been deeply criticised following the death of a baby from sepsis - is also coming under increasing pressure, NHS England figures suggest.

Richard Barker, interim national director of commissioning operations for NHS England, said: "As planned for, the recent bad weather has brought a sharp increase in A&E attendances and emergency admissions.

"Despite this, A&E performance remains steady.

"The pressures remain very real, however, and we don't expect those to abate in the run-up to spring.

"This is reflected in the huge rise in calls faced by NHS 111 last weekend - up between 24% and 30% on the same weekend last year. Despite this, our frontline staff are doing a remarkable job as they continue to provide high-quality services to patients."

The latest data shows that, across England, there were 338,287 A&E attendances this week at trusts with a major A&E department, up almost 20,000 compared with 318,442 in the previous week.

There were also 94,804 emergency admissions, up on the 90,813 in the previous week.

There were 290,783 calls to 111 in the week ending January 24, a 13% increase on the 257,497 in the previous week.

The figure is up by 20% on the 241,643 calls handled in the same week the previous year.

Some 66,189 calls were received on Sunday January 24, (a 23% on the 53,822 calls received on the previous Sunday).

A spokesman for NHS England said: "The number of people using NHS 111 for their health care needs continues to grow.
Germany tells Russia: don't meddle in sex crime probe

By Tina Bellon

BERLIN, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Germany warned Russia on Wednesday not to make propaganda out of the alleged rape of a German-Russian girl here after Moscow's foreign minister accused Berlin authorities of "sweeping problems under the rug".

The Berlin prosecutor's office is investigating the case of 13-year-old Lisa F., who has told police she was kidnapped about two weeks ago in an east Berlin neighbourhood by migrants, who she says held her for 30 hours and raped her.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Moscow news conference on Tuesday: "It is clear that the girl under no circumstances disappeared for 30 hours voluntarily."

His German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier hit back sharply on Wednesday, saying there was no justification for exploiting the case "for political propaganda and to influence and fuel an already difficult domestic debate over migration."

The case has sparked outrage among Berlin's Russian community and Russian media have reported extensively on it.

About 700 people protested in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office on Saturday holding banners reading "Our children are in danger" and "Today my child, tomorrow yours".

Alleged sex crimes by migrants have rocked Germany and piled pressure on the authorities after over 600 women reported sexual attacks on New Year's Eve, most blamed on asylum seekers. Germany took in a record 1.1 million migrants last year.

Berlin prosecutor's office spokesman Martin Steltner said on Wednesday there was no evidence to support the rape and kidnapping claims made by Lisa F., whose full surname cannot be revealed due to German privacy law.

The investigation found that she had had voluntary sexual contacts with two 20-year-old men before she disappeared, Steltner added, and they were not connected to her absence.

The prosecutor's office is now investigating the men for suspected sexual abuse of a minor.

German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said on Wednesday there was not the slightest reason to doubt the results of the investigation.

He also criticised Russian media, saying that responsible and enlightened citizens would be able to form their own view of the reports.
The family of a man shot and killed by FBI agents on January 26 after participating in the occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge claims footage of the slaying and witness accounts indicate the man was shot while his hands were in the air.

The FBI, which released footage of the killing of Robert LaVoy Finicum last week, said the man was armed and that the footage shows him lowering his hands and reaching for a pocket containing a gun before he was shot.

'What we believe the video shows is that LaVoy was being fired upon before he even got out of the truck,' family wrote in a statement published by the Oregonian.

The truck on the left was the one driven by Finicum and which Sharp claims she was sitting in

Finicum can be seen standing to the left of the white truck wearing a hat and flanked by two FBI officers

Finicum falls to the ground after being hit by FBI gunfire. Officials claimed Finicum was reaching for a pocket containing a gun

In the statement, the family claimed it had reviewed the footage together with two witnesses and that they believe the vehicle Finicum was traveling in was hit by gunfire before he got out.

Of the FBI claim that the video shows Finicum reaching for a pocket, the family wrote:

'Why he lowered his hands and reached for his side at one point is because he had already been shot, and he was reaching toward the area where he had been hit as an involuntary physical reflex.'

'It is our position that he was cornered like a helpless animal, with nowhere else to turn, and executed in cold blood,' the statement concluded.

The statement also alleged that Finicum was denied medical attention.

Victoria Sharp, one of the witnesses cited by Finicum's family, agreed with the view that the man's killing was unjustified even after reviewing video of the event.

'I'm saying that the video does not show that he's reaching for something,' Sharp said Tuesday after a CNN reporter showed her the FBI footage.

Sharp, 18, said she was inside a white truck driven by Finicum that was intercepted by an FBI roadblock after a high-speed pursuit.

Victoria Sharp claims she witnessed Finicum's slaying and that he did not try to reach for his gun

Video released January 28 shows the truck attempting to avoid the roadblock by swerving into the left-hand snowbank, narrowly missing an FBI officer on foot, and getting stuck.

Seconds later, Finicum, 54, can be seen exiting the vehicle and walk around in the snow with his hands in the air.

Then, the aerial video shows Finicum lowering his hands and making repeated motions toward his the left side of his body before he falls to the ground.

Sharp, 18, told Reuters that Finicum was armed, but that she did not see him reaching for his gun before he was shot.

'I'm not sure if [Finicum wore] a hip holster or a leg holster, but I know the gun was holstered and he did not touch it. He had his hands in the air,' she told Reuters before reviewing the FBI video.

'He stepped out, and he started walking, with his hands in the air. And they actually didn't shoot him immediately. It took, I'm guessing, they didn't shoot him for maybe 15 seconds,' she said.

Slain occupier Robert LaVoy Finicum and wife Jeanette in an undated photograph

Robert LaVoy Finicum, 54, was shot dead by FBI on January 26 after a high-speed pursuit

'He started walking out on the snow and he was shouting. He was saying, 'if you're going to shoot me, then just shoot me'.'

In an interview with CNN published Tuesday, a reporter showed Sharp the FBI video and asked for her comment.

'OK, he was running through snow and it does not look like he is reaching to me. He's trying to keep his balance. He's running, I remember it. He didn't reach for anything,' Sharp told CNN after watching the video.

The FBI has not made any comments on Finicum's family's or Sharp's version of events.

The agency has not confirmed that Sharp was actually in the truck driven by Finicum, although it said a woman was present who was not arrested and will not be named.

Finicum was a rancher from Arizona who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI's Portland office told reporters at an January 28 news conference in Burns, Oregon, that, while the video showing Finicum's death was potentially upsetting, it was released 'in the interest of transparency.'

The occupation began when leader Ammon Bundy and at least a dozen followers took over a small cluster of buildings at the refuge on Jan. 2, in a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in the West.

Police and federal agents kept their distance from the site, 30 miles from Burns, a small rural town in Oregon's rural southeast, in an effort to avoid a violent confrontation.

But on January 26, Bundy and his leadership team left the refuge to speak at a community meeting in John Day, Oregon, and were stopped by law enforcement. The stop led to Finicum's fatal shooting and the arrest of Bundy, along with four others.

Reactions to the takeover by Burns residents have ranged from sympathy for two imprisoned local ranchers whose plight began the protest, to dismay at the armed occupation by individuals seen as outsiders.
Croatian minister for war veterans quits after six days

ZAGREB, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Croatia's minister for war veterans, Mijo Crnoja, resigned on Thursday just six days after he was sworn in as part of a new government, following media reports that he had registered himself at a non-existent address in an area with low taxes.

Crnoja said he had done nothing wrong and simply registered at a location where he intended to build a house in the future. But he said he had stepped down because "I don't want to be a burden to the government".

The veteran of Croatia's 1991-95 war was also lambasted in the press for proposing a "registry of national traitors" that would list people accused of acting against national interests during and after the conflict.

In response, a group of artists set up a website letting Croats sign up and share ridiculous ways that they have let down their country.

The new government is made up of an alliance of the conservative HDZ party, which nominated Crnoja, and the small reformist Most (Croatian for "bridge") party.
Colombia's govt to propose tax reforms in second half of year - president

BOGOTA, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Colombia's government will not propose a package of tax reforms to Congress until the second half of the year, as it seeks to avoid crowding lawmakers' agenda during a brief March session, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday.

Santos' governing coalition hopes to increase government revenue and stem tax evasion as the country's economy continues to suffer because of low prices for crude, its largest export and source of foreign exchange.

"The reform will be presented and it will be approved in the second legislature," Santos said after a meeting with business leaders.

Officials had originally said the government aimed to present the reforms to Congress as soon as possible.

The reform will not be presented during the March legislative session because of lawmakers' scheduling concerns, the president added.

"Congress itself has told us this legislature is very short, Congress begins and then immediately lets out for Holy Week," he said. "They have asked us not to crowd Congress with the reform in the first legislature."
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Proofread

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Iran crude exports hit 2-yr high, up more than 20 pct for Jan-Feb

By Osamu Tsukimori and Aaron Sheldrick

TOKYO, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Iran's oil exports are on set to rise more than a fifth in January and February from last year's daily average, data from a source with knowledge of its loading schedules shows, revealing how Tehran is ramping up sales after the lifting of sanctions.

The data is the first sign of a resurgence in crude shipments as the OPEC producer begins to raise output and clears out oil that has built up in offshore storage over the past four years of curtailed participation in world markets.

The market is closely watching the pace of Iran's return to the market after sanctions were removed earlier this month, given a global glut in supplies that has pulled prices down 70 percent since mid-2014. Hopes that other top producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia could cooperate with OPEC to contain production have lifted prices this week.

The Islamic republic's overall exports will total around 1.44 million barrels a day (bpd) in February and about 1.5 million bpd in January, according to the data on Iran's preliminary tanker loading schedules.

Those shipping levels would be more than 20 percent higher than Iran's average daily exports last year, with the loadings this month at the highest since February 2014.

The increased shipments add to an oil surplus that analysts have estimated at around 1 million bpd. Official figures, based on oil arrival data from Iran's buyers, will not be available for January until mid-February and for February until mid-March.

"It was expected that Iran would increase their exports as quickly as possible," said Tony Nunan, a Mitsubishi Corp risk manager. "Physically they can do it because they have so much availability in floating storage."

Much of the nearly 40 million barrels of oil stored by Iran in domestic tankers is condensate - an ultra light grade of crude - shipping sources have said, and the faster the light crude is moved out the quicker the ships can be used for more oil deliveries.

Iran's shipments have surged nearly a quarter over the last four weeks from average tanker loadings of 1.21 million bpd last year following the lifting of sanctions earlier this month, according to the source's data.

Responding to Tehran's compliance with a nuclear deal, the United States and major powers this month revoked sanctions that had cut Iran's oil exports by more than half from their pre-sanctions 2011 peak of around 3 million bpd.

An Iranian source has said the country is targeting India, Asia's fastest-growing oil market, as its main destination for oil, which was backed by the shipping schedules.

India will load more than 300,000 bpd in February, up from 183,000 bpd in January, according to the data.

"Why not? Nothing stops us. Definitely it should go up. It has to go up," said an Indian oil ministry official, speaking to Reuters earlier this month about the end of sanctions on Iran.

After the sanctions were lifted, Iran ordered a 500,000 bpd increase in crude output, of which it hopes 200,000 bpd will go to Europe. But sales to European buyers are likely to be higher only when foreign tanker owners resolve issues over securing insurance for cargoes.

Exports to Asia in February are set to total 1.20 million bpd, holding near to an expected nine-month high of 1.24 million bpd for January.

Iran plans to load 504,000 bpd for top customer China in February, down 5 percent from a six-month high expected in January, according to the source.

Iran is planning to load 303,000 bpd next month for India, up 66 percent from the month before and highest since May 2015.

Shipments to Japan and South Korea are expected to be lower in February after hitting multi-month highs in January.
Singapore slaps S$180,000 fine on N. Korea-linked shipper

SINGAPORE, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Singapore-based Chinpo Shipping Company (Private) Ltd was fined S$180,000 ($125,698) on Friday for facilitating a shipment of arms to North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions.

The Singapore District Court had found Chinpo guilty in December of transferring financial assets or resources that could have been used to contribute to North Korea's weapon programmes. It also found Chinpo guilty for carrying out a remittance business without a license between 2009 and 2013.

Chinpo Shipping was named by a 2014 U.N. report as helping arrange the shipment of Cuban fighter jets and missile parts that were bound for North Korea when they were seized in Panama in 2013.

It was the largest amount of arms and related materiel interdicted to or from North Korea since the U.N. first began imposing economic and commercial sanctions on North Korea in 2006, according to the Singapore District Court.
PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - Jan 29

SOFIA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- Prime Minister Boiko Borisov will dismiss Education Minister Todor Tanev due to planned changes in school progammes that have frustrated many Bulgarians. Borisov has asked the government's junior coalition partner, the Reformist Bloc, to nominate a candidate to replace him. (Capital Daily, Trud, 24 Chasa, Standart, Monitor, Duma, Sega, Telegraph)

CAPITAL DAILY - Bulgaria's Postbank, unit of Greek EFG Eurobank has sold a package of bad consumer loans worth 143.6 million euros ($156.58 million) to debt management company EOS Matrix, the bank said. Commercial banks in Bulgaria are preparing for pending asset quality review and stress tests later this year.
Tokyo ward becomes first area in Japan to regulate Airbnb-type home-sharing

By Junko Fujita

TOKYO, Jan 29 (Reuters) - A local authority in Tokyo started accepting applications on Friday from residents wanting to rent out their homes for short-term lodging through matchmakers such as Airbnb Inc, making it the first in Japan to regulate the practice.

Residents of the southeast Tokyo ward of Ota, home to Haneda Airport, Japan's busiest aviation hub, will be able to rent their personal space to tourists for a minimum of seven days provided they register with the local authority. Matchmakers can then collect revenue from connecting homeowners to guests.

The move comes as the host city of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games suffers a shortage of accommodation after a push to boost tourism brought Japan a record 19 million foreign visitors last year, 1 million shy of the government's end-decade target.

With the pace of hotel construction lagging the influx of tourists, the government is exploring short-term home-sharing which, at present, falls under hospitality regulations. Those rules dictate conditions private homeowners invariably cannot meet, such as providing receptions and separate toilets.

"Providing safe accommodation through regulated home-sharing will be good for visitors as well as locals because the scheme will stimulate business in the area," Ota mayor Tadayoshi Matsubara told reporters earlier this week.

The government has designated Tokyo and Osaka in western Japan as special zones as part of its overall economic growth strategy. That allowed Ota - the biggest of Tokyo's 23 wards - to pass a bylaw on home-sharing late last year.

Under Ota's system, residents register homes with the local authority, which can then inspect the accommodation and monitor homeowners should problems arise, Matsubara said.

Ota will be a test case for Japan. Hotel-starved Osaka city is considering a similar system for this year, a local official said. The city passed a bylaw this month permitting home-sharing, after rejecting it in 2014 due to security concerns.

"Home-sharing could eventually be a threat to our business to a certain extent," said the manager of a hotel in Ota. "But I am not sure if guests would feel comfortable staying where there is no guarantee of security."
Soft-drinks maker AG Barr sees revenue improving in Q4

Jan 29 (Reuters) - AG Barr, the maker of Irn-Bru and Rubicon fizzy drinks, said it expected fourth-quarter revenue growth in excess of 2.5 percent, after a robust performance in the period.

AG Barr now expects revenue for the 53 weeks ending Jan. 30 to be around 257 million pounds ($370.08 million). It reported revenue of 260.9 million pounds last year.
PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Jan 29

MOSCOW, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- Russia could sacrifice its oil production and cut it by 5 percent, according to Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

- Russia could hardly expect any privileges on Iran's market, the daily writes referring to the activity of Iranian business in the West.

- Russia's government could decide on Friday in favour of lifting its export duties on grain, the daily reports.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- Russia could face shortages of modern medicine due to bureaucratic obstacles on the way of foreign pharmaceutical companies.

- Only 12 percent of Russians believe that UK investigators had enough reason to accuse Russia's authorities of involvement in the murder of the former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, according to public opinion surveys.

- Russian airlines have already cut to a minimum the number of their planes in the last ten years level, responding to the country's economic turmoil. But analysts believe the current amount of planes is still excessive, the daily writes.

- Thailand has become the most popular country for winter holidays among Russians after Turkey and Egypt were closed for them. Greece, Bulgaria and Spain could replace Thailand in the summer, the daily reports.

RBC

www.rbc.ru

- The government is considering a possibility to double dividend payments by state companies to up to 50 percent of their revenues. The move, which could also involve oil sector, could help the state to cut its budget deficit, the daily says.

IZVESTIA

www.izvestia.ru

- The number of suicide cases among children has grown by 35 percent in Russia in recent years. About 100.000 children died in 2014 as a result of suicides, the daily says.

- A group of deputies is asking prosecutors to check the activity of Echo of Moscow radio, suggesting the liberal channel is calling for separatism.
US, British spies hacked Israeli air force networks - reports

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The United States and Britain have monitored secret sorties and communications by Israel's air force in a hacking operation dating back to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Israel voiced disappointment at the disclosures, published on Friday in at least two media outlets and which might further strains ties with Washington after years of feuding over strategies on Iran and the Palestinians.

Israel's best-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said the U.S. National Security Agency, which specialises in electronic surveillance, and its British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air force missions against Gaza, Syria and Iran.

The spy operation, codenamed "Anarchist", was run out of a Cyprus base and targeted other Middle East states too, Yedioth said.

Online publication The Intercept, which lists Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald among its associates, ran a similar report, with what it said were hacked pictures of armed Israeli drones taken from cameras aboard the aircraft.

Yedioth said German news-magazine Der Spiegel, whose publication day is Saturday, also planned to run an article based on Snowden's leak.

Israel neither confirms nor denies having armed drones, though one of its senior military officers was quoted as acknowledging them in a secret U.S. diplomatic cable from 2010 that was published by Wikileaks.

The U.S. embassy in Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Snowden allegations.

A British embassy spokeswoman said it did not comment on intelligence matters, and there was no immediate response from the Foreign Office in London.

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, sought to play down the issue but said lessons would be learned.

"I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant," he told Israel's Army Radio. "We will now have to look and consider changing the encryption, certainly."

With the Netanyahu government and Obama administration at loggerheads over U.S.-led nuclear diplomacy with Iran, there have been a series of high-profile media exposes in recent months alleging mutual espionage between the allies.

Israel insists that it ceased such missions since it ran U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s.

Steinitz said Israel was "not surprised" by the hacking described in the latest Snowden leak.

"We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us, also on their friends," he said. "But still, it is disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in the United States."

Yedioth said that the revelations could hurt Israeli drone sales to Germany should Berlin worry about the aircraft networks' security. Steinitz brushed off that possibility.

"Every country carries out its own encryption," he said.
No amount of money can tempt West Ham to sell Payet: Bilic

Jan 29 (Reuters) - West Ham United midfielder Dimitri Payet will not be sold for any amount of money, manager Slaven Bilic said of the France international whose impressive form this campaign has sparked speculations about a possible move to a new club.

"From my point of view there is no money in the world that we would let him go for. He is great to have in the squad and at the club," Bilic told British media.

"In previous seasons we were like a selling club, but we are moving stadium, we are talking and acting like we want to go up as a club, and for me the most important thing regarding that is not to sell your best players.

"Dimitri Payet, for me, no way. He is our player and he is staying."

Payet has scored six goals and registered five assists from 16 Premier League appearances this season, playing a pivotal role for the sixth-placed Hammers.

West Ham are also closing in on a loan deal to sign striker Emmanuel Emenike from Fenerbahce by the end of the January transfer window, Bilic confirmed.

Emenike is currently on loan with UAE side Al Ain, where he has scored seven goals in 11 games so far this season.

"We are still waiting for that, it's a complicated situation," said Bilic.

"At the beginning it looked easy, between two clubs, but then when we had to deal with Fenerbahce, who are a third party. So at one moment it didn't look good, but in last couple of days the deal is looks pretty much alive."
Burundi police detain British, French journalists in raids

NAIROBI, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Burundi police have arrested a British and a French journalist during a sweep for rebels in flashpoint districts of the capital, officials said on Friday, a move likely to further strain tense relations between Bujumbura and Western donors.

Moise Nkurunziza, deputy police spokesman, said the police had picked up British photojournalist Phil Moore and Jean Philippe Remy, a French journalist, during raids in Jabe and Nyakabiga neighbourhoods in Bujumbura on Thursday.

"The police arrested five people including a British national who was a journalist," said Nkurunziza, adding that the Frenchman had then come to ask about his British colleague's whereabouts and was also arrested "for interrogation motives".

Both men had journalist accreditation in Bujumbura, he said.

In a statement on its website, Le Monde demanded the release of both journalists, saying they were its special correspondents in Burundi.

The British Foreign Office said it was "urgently looking into reports" about the detention of a UK national.

Remy is the Africa bureau chief for the French newspaper Le Monde, while Moore, a freelance photographer, has often reported from conflict-prone countries in the region. Both men have won awards for their coverage of sub-Saharan Africa.

Burundi has been in turmoil since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans to run for a third term in office, sparking weeks of street protests by the opposition who said his bid was unconstitutional.

Nkurunziza's government foiled an attempted coup in May, but continued clashes and gun attacks in the central African nation have unnerved a region where memories of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda are still raw.

The United States and European nations have criticised the government's clampdown on free media, including the shuttering of private radio stations.
Tropical Asia braces for Zika as Thailand appears to steer clear

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Rozanna Latiff

BANGKOK/KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Tropical Southeast Asian countries said on Friday they were bracing for the mosquito-borne Zika virus, with Malaysia saying it could "spread quickly" if introduced, but Thailand appeared to be bucking the trend with just a handful of cases a year.

Zika, linked to severe birth defects including babies born with abnormally small heads, is wreaking havoc in Brazil where the government has deployed more than 200,000 troops to eradicate mosquitoes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that the virus was "spreading explosively" and could infect as many as four million people in the Americas.

No treatment or vaccine is available.

In Thailand, where just one case of Zika has been reported so far this year, the likelihood of Zika spreading was low, officials said, partly because of better access to health care and because Thailand was dealing with a smaller area.

"Thailand is a medium-sized country with a good public health system and easy-to-access medical facilities," Amnuay Gajeena, director-general of the Disease Control Department, told Reuters.

Thailand detected its first Zika case in 2012 and has recorded an average of five cases a year, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

Kriengsak Limkittikul, assistant professor at the Department of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University in Bangkok, said there was inadequate information about Zika but that it was "only a matter of time" before more cases were reported.

Thailand has confirmed one case of the virus so far this year. Earlier this month, Taiwan reported one case of Zika infection in a man from northern Thailand.

"NO EVIDENCE OF IMMUNITY"

The WHO said on Sunday the rapid spread of Zika in the Americas was due to a lack of immunity among a population that had not been previously exposed to the virus.

Amnuay said there was "no technical evidence" of widespread immunity in Thailand but individuals exposed to the virus would "of course develop" antibodies as with other viruses.

The Zika virus is spread through the Aedes aegypti mosquito - responsible for dengue, yellow fever and other tropical diseases.

The WHO's Western Pacific Region Office in Manila said as long as Aedes mosquitoes circulated in the region "it can be anticipated that the virus will emerge".

Malaysia's Health Ministry said Zika had not yet been detected. "If it is introduced by an infected Malaysian or by a visitor to Malaysia, it could spread quickly," said Lokman Hakim Sulaiman, Malaysia's Health Ministry deputy director-general.

Neighbouring Singapore has not detected any Zika infections but the government said there was a high risk of transmission if cases were imported to Singapore, a regional travel hub.

In the Western Pacific, Zika was first reported in Micronesia in 2007. It was reported in French Polynesia in October 2013, and since then, a number of Pacific Island countries have reported cases, including New Caledonia, Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa.

In Australia, the foreign ministry's travel advice website said there had been no reported cases of Zika.

The New Zealand Herald reported on Friday that one local man had been admitted to hospital with symptoms linked to the Zika virus. The Ministry of Health said it had received nine Zika notifications this year, the newspaper reported.
Spain's Princess Cristina loses appeal over trial

MADRID, Jan 29 (Reuters) - A court ruled on Friday that the trial of Spain's Princess Cristina on charges of tax fraud must go ahead, in a case that has badly damaged the image of the royal family at a time of economic hardship for many ordinary Spaniards.

The 50-year-old sister of King Felipe is one of 18 people on trial following a six-year investigation into the Noos Foundation, a charity run by her husband Inaki Urdangarin.

Prosecutors say Noos was used to embezzle millions of euros in public funds and that Urdangarin, who is also on trial, exploited his royal connections to win public contracts to stage events through the non-profit organisation.

Cristina de Borbon became the first Spanish royal to sit in the dock when she appeared in court in early January to answer preliminary questions.

She is charged with two counts of being an accessory to tax fraud and, if found guilty, could face up to four years in prison for each charge - a maximum of eight years.

Cristina de Borbon's lawyers had asked judges to drop the criminal charges against her, and the state prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence to back up the accusations.

But the court in Palma de Mallorca, where the trial is being held, said in a statement it was upholding the charges, which were filed by the 'Clean Hands' anti-graft organisation using a Spanish legal instrument known as the 'people's accusation'.

The case has added to public anger in Spain over high-level corruption scandals in business and political circles.
Listing freighter drifts towards France's Atlantic coast

PARIS, Jan 29 (Reuters) - A crippled cargo ship was drifting slowly towards the French Atlantic coast on Friday as rescue teams struggled to board the distressed vessel.

The Modern Express, which was transporting 3,600 tonnes of wood from Owendo in Gabon to France's northern port of Le Havre, listed heavily to one side earlier this week in rough seas and has not recovered to an upright position, leading to the evacuation of the crew by helicopter.

French media reports said the problem may be due to its cargo having shifted.

As of Friday morning, the vessel was less than 300 kilometres from the western port town of La Rochelle, after being estimated at around 370 km from the port on Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the French Atlantic coast authority told Reuters.

The extreme 50-degree incline of the ship as well as difficult sea conditions had so far prevented teams from boarding to proceed with towing operations, but weather was more favourable on Friday, he said.

There was no imminent risk of the ship reaching the coast and no sign that water had entered the vessel or that fuel had leaked out, he said, adding that the French navy had sent a specialised anti-pollution ship as a precaution to join a frigate and three tugboats already at the scene.
Uganda brings maids home from Saudi Arabia after abuse complaints

By Yasin Kakande

KAMPALA, Jan 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ugandan officials are helping to bring back about 24 women working as domestic staff in Saudi Arabia after complaints about abuse that prompted a ban on sending Ugandans as housemaids to the Gulf state, a spokesman said on Friday.

Seven women have returned to Uganda so far this week after the Ugandan Embassy in Saudi Arabia intervened when they left their employers complaining about abuse and mistreatment and moved into Saudi detention centres waiting to go home.

Sheikh Rashid Yahya Ssemuddu, the Ugandan ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the women were staying at a shelter operated by the Saudi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

The Ugandan government last week announced a ban on sending housemaids to Saudi Arabia after a barrage of complaints about workers being treated inhumanely and said the ban would remain until working conditions were "deemed fitting".

Ssemuddu said about 24 Ugandan women were at the shelter, some needing paperwork and airline tickets after complaining they had been held as slaves and their passports taken away.

"We are in daily contact with them and efforts are underway to have the rest of the women return home in the coming few days," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Saudi Embassy in Uganda did not respond to requests for comments.

It is the second time that Uganda had banned the movement of domestic staff to Saudia Arabia after a similar move in 2014.

But the two nations signed a five-year deal last July allowing college graduates to seek jobs as domestic workers and in other fields in oil-rich Saudi Arabia which was seen as a way of addressing high unemployment among young people in Uganda.

At the time Uganda's Labour Minister Muruli Mukasa said the agreement was intended to protect the rights and welfare of immigrant workers by setting a minimum wage and stopping labour companies from taking money off applicants' salaries.

Ssemuddu said the embassy has received word from the Saudi Ministry of Labour that it now wants to schedule a meeting to discuss this bilateral agreement between the two trade partners.

"Our people should remain calm because we have known all the problems and their sources and we are going to deal with them," he said.

Anti-slavery campaigners have called for Ugandan officials to be more vigilant to stop the trafficking of women to the Gulf states, many of whom are targeted by private, unauthorised recruitment agencies.

Rehema Babirye, one of the women who returned this week, said she was deceived by a local recruitment company who promised her a job in sales in Saudi Arabia. Once she arrived she was taken to work as a maid with no days off.

"When I protested and said I wanted to return back to my country I was instead arrested," she said.

Recruitment of workers to travel to Gulf states is a big business in Uganda.

Many recruitment companies require candidates to pay for an airline ticket and visa costing thousands of dollars even though every legislative mandate in the Gulf requires the employer, not the employee, bear the costs of recruitment.

But many then complain that they are held as slaves.
Two killed in mosque bomb and gun attack in Saudi Arabia - SPA

DUBAI, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Two people were killed and seven others were wounded in a bomb and gun attack on a mosque in the east of Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said on Friday.

Saudi authorities prevented two suicide bombers from entering Imam Rida Mosque in Mahasen neigbourhood in al-Ahsa region during Friday prayers, Saudi state news agency SPA reported, citing a statement by the ministry's spokesman.
Italy, Germany share populism as common enemy in Europe - Renzi

BERLIN, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Italy and Germany are united in opposing political populism as they seek to tackle Europe's economic and immigration problems, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday.

"We don't agree on everything naturally," Renzi told reporters following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "But we believe together that fighting unemployment today in Europe means combating populism. We have the same adversary: Populism."

Renzi has repeatedly challenged Germany's insistence on austerity in the European Union as a way of weathering slow growth, urging more state spending. Both countries are also struggling to manage Europe's biggest immigration crisis since World War Two.
Germany considers $5,500 incentive for electric cars

FRANKFURT/BERLIN, Jan 29 (Reuters) - German politicians and auto executives will discuss creating incentives worth up to 5,000 euros ($5,500) to boost sales of electric and hybrid cars, a senior ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday.

Germany has set itself a goal of bringing 1 million electric cars onto its roads by 2020, but has so far made little progress in encouraging drivers to switch from more polluting - but also generally cheaper - diesel and petrol vehicles.

The heads of the three parties in Merkel's ruling coalition have discussed introducing a subsidy for electric car buyers, said Horst Seehofer, head of the Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

He added the government was looking into whether car companies could co-finance the new incentive and that Merkel would discuss the issue with company executives next week.

Asked whether he was backing proposals to introduce an incentive of up to 5,000 euros, Seehofer said: "Bavaria is very much in favour of the buyer's premium."

Seehofer is state premier of Bavaria, the southern German state where carmaker BMW is based.

A spokeswoman for Germany's Economy ministry said: "Talks within the German government are constructive. We are counting on arriving at a good solution to help achieve our goals."

In 2015, 23,500 electric and plug-in vehicles were registered in Germany. Of these, only 12,300 were pure electric cars, according to Stefan Bratzel at the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach.
Burundi keeps seat on security body, complicating peacekeeper plan

By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Burundi kept its seat on the African Union's peace and security council in elections, diplomats said, a move that could complicate plans to send peacekeepers to the troubled country against its will.

The bloc wants to deploy 5,000 peacekeepers in the central African state, where hundreds have died in the worst violence since an ethnically charged civil war ended in 2005.

But President Pierre Nkurunziza - who triggered the crisis by standing for a third term in July elections - has rejected the plan drawn up by the AU council, saying the arrival of any such force would be seen as an invasion.

Burundi kept it place on the security council unopposed in an election of member countries on Thursday, after a lack of rival contenders from its region gave it a clear run.

"There wasn't any other choice but to rubber-stamp Burundi's entry," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Burundi will not be able to vote directly against the peacekeepers - rules bar countries from voting on motions about their own affairs.

But diplomats said it could still use its prominent position to influence debates.

"It has propaganda value for the government," said Liesl Louw-Vaudran, an analyst with the Institute for Security Studies, referring to Burundi's re-election.

African Union leaders are expected to try to persuade President Nkurunziza to accept the force during the AU summit scheduled for the weekend. But diplomats said they were not optimistic that he would change tack.

Nkurunziza won the July election that was boycotted by most of the opposition. Opponents said a third term violated the constitution. Loyalists cited a court that said he could run.

More than 400 people have been killed in protests and crack-downs over the past nine months, raising worries of a return to the kind of conflict that pitted Burundi's Tutsi minority against the Hutu majority in the civil war.
Group said trapped in cellar become focus in Turkey's Kurdish conflict

By Melih Aslan and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the pro-Kurdish opposition traded blame on Friday over the fate of more than 20 people it says have been trapped for a week in a cellar in a southeastern town as fighting rages between security forces and Kurdish militants.

Six of 28 people trapped in the basement of a residential building, under 24-hour curfew, in the town of Cizre have died over the past week and others are seriously wounded, according to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Three members of the HDP, the third biggest party in Turkey's parliament, have gone on hunger strike in protest at a failure to rescue the group, whose fate has become a focal point in the region's worst violence in decades.

"If there had been a sincere effort (to get them out) we would not be talking about six dead people today," HDP deputy Idris Baluken told a news conference in Ankara with two colleagues, all on hunger strike since Wednesday.

"We are talking about the problems of our citizens who for seven days cannot find food, water or drugs, who have died due to blood loss because of the lack of intervention."

The fighting, moving into towns scarred by trenches and barricades, coincides with threats from Islamic State militants over the border in Iraq and Syria. NATO allies eager to see restoration of calm in a volatile area have called for a ceasefire and talks to end the conflict.

Thousands of civilians have been caught up in the fighting between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and security forces that flared after a two-year-old ceasefire collapsed in July.

Baluken said ambulances belonging to the HDP-run municipality in Cizre, near the Syrian border, had tried to reach the group trapped in the cellar on 11 occasions but had been blocked at security force checkpoints.

The building appears to stand on a streetcorner and may lie in the crossfire between military and rebels. Journalists are excluded from the area.

"ALL LIES"

Erdogan rejected the notion that ambulances were being obstructed by the state, blaming the militants and accusing those on hunger strike of being servants of the PKK.

"This is all lies. There are always ambulances there," he told reporters in Istanbul. "They are deliberately not bringing the wounded out," he added.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union all classify the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The PKK says it is fighting for autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish minority.

The Turkish army says more than 600 militants have been killed since security operations began in Cizre last month, and denies accusations it has killed large numbers of civilians.

The fighting has caused extensive damage not just in Cizre but also the town of Silopi, near the Iraqi border, and the ancient Sur district of the main city Diyarbakir, enclosed by Roman-era walls which were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list last year. All have been under curfew since December.

The former mayor of Sur said years of progress towards peace in the region were being undone.

"Decades of military policies against the Kurds have shown only that violence begets more violence," Abdullah Demirbas wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times this week.
With Latam visit, Turkey's Erdogan seeks to bolster trade

By Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz

ANKARA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan heads to Latin America on Sunday with the aim of boosting trade ties as Turkey seeks to diversify away from its traditional export markets in the troubled economies of Europe and the Middle East.

In his first visit to the region in a year, Erdogan will lead a large business delegation to Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

Turkey has been slowly strengthening its relationship with Latin America since the late 1990s, when one of his predecessors, Suleyman Demirel, became the first Turkish president to make an official visit.

The search for new markets has become more important as conflict ravages neighbouring Iraq and Syria, long two of its major trading partners. A diplomatic row with Moscow, which slapped economic sanctions on Turkey after Ankara downed a Russian warplane last year, has exacerbated its woes.

"The fundamental idea behind Erdogan's visit to Latin America is Turkey's push to search for new markets and diversify," said an official from the economy ministry who is helping to prepare for the visit.

"Turkey does a great deal of business with its neighbours but is experiencing difficulties because of rising problems in the Middle East."

Turkey's latest trade data released on Friday showed exports dropped 11 percent in December, suggesting those tensions were taking their toll.

Latin America will not plug the gap any time soon, but it is one of relatively few major emerging market regions which Turkish businesses - actively pushing into new markets in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia in recent years - have by and large failed to tap.

Trade with Latin America was nearly $10 billion in 2014, according to official figures, up from around $1 billion in 2000, but still just a sliver of Turkey's overall commerce.

Central, South America and the Caribbean accounted for just 1.8 percent of Turkish exports in 2014, according to government data. The top Latin American destination for Turkish exports that year was Mexico, although it ranked 45th overall, behind the likes of Malta and Yemen.

Peru was the next biggest destination, in 78th place.

NEW TURKEY, NEW MARKETS

Erdogan, prime minister for more than a decade before winning the first direct election for head of state in 2014, has championed a vision of a "New Turkey" with a bigger diplomatic and trade presence on the world stage.

Turkish companies - in sectors ranging from food to construction - have built a reputation for being at the forefront of investment in challenging markets from Libya and Yemen to Somalia and Kazakhstan.

Major Turkish exports to South America include iron and steel, machinery, autos and vegetable and animal oils. Turkey has also made some inroads with cultural exports, with some of its daytime soap operas becoming hits in Chile.

But its exports still tend to be lower down the value chain than those of some Asian rivals.

"Turkey doesn't have many high-tech exports. This creates a restriction in how much it can expand its markets, but there may be opportunities," Mehmet Yegin of the Ankara-based USAK think tank said of the Latin America trip.
Syrian opposition to go to Geneva as peace talks open

By Tom Miles and Tom Perry

GENEVA/BEIRUT, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Syria's main opposition group agreed to travel to Geneva, where the United Nations on Friday opened peace talks to end the country's five-year-old war, but said it wanted to discuss humanitarian issues before engaging in political negotiations.

On the ground, opponents of President Bashar al-Assad said they were facing a Russian-backed military onslaught, with hundreds of civilians reported to be fleeing as the Syrian army and allied militia tried to capture a suburb of Damascus and finish off rebels defending it.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura had invited the Syrian government and an opposition umbrella group to Geneva for "proximity talks", in which they would meet in separate rooms.

Until the last minute, the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) had refused to go. The group, which includes both armed and political opponents of Assad, had insisted it wanted an end to air strikes and sieges of towns and the release of detainees before talks could start.

Late on Friday, the HNC said it was going to Geneva, having received guarantees that its demands, outlined in a U.N. Security Council resolution last month, would be met, but it made clear its engagement in the process would initially be limited.

"The HNC will go to Geneva tomorrow to discuss these humanitarian issues which will pave the way into the political process of negotiations," spokesman Salim al-Muslat told the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath.

The HNC said it had drawn up a list of 3,000 Syrian women and children in government prisons who should be released.

SUNDAY MEETING

De Mistura opened the talks on Friday by meeting the Syrian government delegation. He said that while he had not yet received formal notice that the HNC would attend, he expected to meet its delegation on Sunday.

"They've raised an important point of their concern, they would like to see a gesture from the government authorities regarding some kind of improvement for the people of Syria during the talks, for instance release of prisoners, or some lifting of sieges," de Mistura said.

But he added this was a human rights point and "not even an issue to negotiate", and had strongly suggested the best way to get such measures implemented would be to start negotiating in Geneva, by proxy or directly.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had made a major push to get the HNC delegation to Geneva, and the group said he had contacted it by phone to urge it to attend.

"Secretary Kerry has been in touch with all of his counterparts, including this morning with (Russian Foreign Minister) Sergei Lavrov ... and with others, trying to find a way, a formula, in which we can urge the delegation or some version of the delegation to show up here," a senior U.S. official said.

The Syrian government delegation, headed by United Nations ambassador Bashar al Jaafari, arrived at the talks on Friday afternoon but made no statement.

Another major force, the Kurds who control much of northeast Syria and have proven one of the few groups capable of winning territory from Islamic State, were excluded from the talks after Turkey demanded they be kept away. The Kurds say their absence means the talks are doomed to fail.

GOVERNMENT MOMENTUM

International diplomacy has so far seen only failures in a 5-year-old multi-sided ethno-sectarian civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes while drawing in regional states and global powers.

De Mistura's two predecessors both quit in apparent frustration after staging failed peace conferences.

Since the last talks collapsed in 2014, Islamic State fighters surged across Syria and Iraq declaring a "caliphate", the United States and its European and Arab allies launched air strikes against them, and Russia joined in last year with a separate air campaign to support Assad.

Moscow's intervention in particular has altered the balance of power on the ground, giving strong momentum to government forces and reversing months of rebel gains.

The Syrian military and allied militia are seeking to build on gains in western Syria, and have turned their focus to opposition-held suburbs southwest of Damascus.

The aim is to crush rebels in the district of Daraya to secure the nearby military airport at Mezzeh, said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with sources on the ground.

Rebels had rejected a government deadline for them to withdraw from the suburb of Mouadamiya - home to 45,000 people - by Friday, said Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for rebel group Alwiyat Seif al-Sham.

More than 500 families had fled, he said. "They are suffering a shortage of food, medicine, milk - there is no power, nothing," he said, adding that 16 barrel bombs had been dropped on Friday.

A Syrian military source denied the use of barrel bombs, which have been widely documented in the war, and accused the opposition of exaggerating the conditions. "There has been progress by the army in the last days, some successes particularly in the Daraya area," the source said.
Chile court orders president's embattled daughter-in-law to stay in country

SANTIAGO, Jan 29 (Reuters) - A Chilean court on Friday ordered President Michelle Bachelet's daughter-in-law to remain in the country and check in monthly with police while authorities investigate her for tax crimes, the latest twist in a case that has already damaged the leader's popularity.

The courts are investigating allegations that Natalia Compagnon issued false tax declarations, misrepresented her income, and issued fraudulent invoices relating to a real estate concern she half-owns.

Intense media coverage of the case in Chile has weakened Bachelet's political standing and raised questions about her judgement at a time when she is struggling to push broad social and economic reforms through a fractious congress.

Bodyguards fended off raucous protestors and press at the courthouse in Rancagua, 50 miles south of capital Santiago, as Compagnon left the building shortly after the decision was handed down. The restrictions she faces are less severe than preventative jail time, a legal option that courts have used during recent high-profile fraud cases.

The investigation of her tax affairs grew out of revelations that Sebastian Davalos, Compagnon's husband and Bachelet's son, used his political connections to get his spouse access to a $10 million dollar loan that she used to turn a quick profit on a land deal.

When the original scandal broke in February 2015, Chile's bank regulator said the loan appeared legal. But claims of influence peddling caused waves in Chile, casting legal scrutiny upon Compagnon and bringing scorn upon Bachelet.

In the immediate wake of Friday's decision, many Chileans took to social media to denounce the measures against Compagnon as too soft.
Germany says rape claim that caused tensions with Russia was disproved

BERLIN, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Police say they have disproved claims by a girl of Russian descent from a poor Berlin suburb that she was kidnapped and raped by migrants, German prosecutors said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the police handling of the case this week and accused Germany of "sweeping problems under the rug".

His German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier accused Russia of exploiting the case for "political propaganda" and to influence a debate about immigration to Germany, which registered 1.1 million new arrivals last year.

Public opinion has swung against Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to welcome people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, particularly since women in Cologne complained of assaults by migrants at New Year celebrations.

In the Berlin case, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office told Reuters that mobile phone location tracking data did not support the girl's account that migrants held her for 30 hours.

The girl's claim that she had been raped was also disproved, the spokesman added.

Her allegations aroused outrage in Berlin's Russian community and Russian media have reported extensively on it.

German media said a family conflict could have prompted the girl to disappear.
Syrian rebel splits deepen after failed 'merger' with al Qaeda arm

By Mariam Karouny

BEIRUT, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The leader of al Qaeda's Syrian wing tried unsuccessfully at a recent meeting to convince rival Islamist factions to merge into one unit, several insurgency sources have told Reuters.

Abu Mohamad al-Golani, head of the Nusra Front, even suggested he was willing to change the name of his group if the others, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham organisation, agreed to the deal, the sources said.

But he made clear that Nusra would not cut its ties with al Qaeda, and its allegiance would remain to Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over as leader after U.S. Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Much was riding on the outcome of the meeting, which the sources said took place about 10 days ago.

Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham are the most powerful groups in northern Syria: when they briefly teamed up with other Islamists last year in an alliance called the Fatah Army, the rebels scored one of their biggest victories by seizing the city of Idlib.

Some rebels believed a merger would create a stronger rival to Islamic State and might attract much-needed military support and recognition from regional and international powers.

But the leaders left without an agreement, and the sources said the atmosphere was tense, with Nusra blaming Ahrar al-Sham for the failure.

A few days later, members of the two groups clashed in the towns of Salqin and Harem in Idlib province, near the border with Turkey. Several fighters were killed on both sides, but other insurgent groups brokered a quick ceasefire.

Jihadi sources, including some from Ahrar al-Sham, say it is only a matter of time before another battle between the two erupts. They say the rift between them is getting deeper, although mediation continues. One restraining factor has been an imminent assault by the Syrian army and its allied forces in northwestern Syria.

"The situation is charged, the failure of initiatives could cause an explosion," said a jihadi in Idlib who is close to the two groups. "What happened just avoided all-out conflict, all-out battle. But it will be hard to tell what will happen in the future."

Outright war between Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham would still further complicate the five-year Syrian conflict, in which rebel groups are mushrooming under different slogans and sometimes fighting each other.

It would come hard on the heels of the United Nations' failure this week to bring rival parties together for peace talks in Geneva, the first attempt in two years to end a war that has killed a quarter of a million people.

LACK OF TRUST

Distrust between Nusra and Ahrar is mutual. Nusra accuses its Islamist rival of being a front for Turkey, addressing not the "interests of Muslims" but the agenda of Ankara in order to be part of a future political deal to rule Syria.

Ahrar presents itself as a Syrian nationalist force, in contrast to al Qaeda's global jihadist ideology. It recently joined a Saudi-backed Syrian opposition council set up to join the U.N. peace talks, although the council is demanding an end to air strikes and blockades by the Syrian government and its allies before it will take part.

Ahrar and other groups are pushing Nusra to cut its ties with al Qaeda as a step towards becoming more fully engaged in the struggle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"The problem is with the Qaeda link and its ideological implications. Nusra insists on its agenda, it doesn't want to manoeuvre at all," said a frustrated Ahrar commander, accusing it of "damaging the revolution".

In the first few weeks after last year's capture of Idlib, the two groups divided responsibilities and territory without problems. But gradually divisions began to surface, as Ahrar and other insurgents became wary of Nusra and accused it of trying to seize power and sidelining them.

"Nusra cannot work with others, they have a dominating project, they do not accept the others," said a fighter from Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib via the Internet.

Some insurgents are suspicious of Nusra's long-term agenda in the region and globally, distrusting its declaration that it has no ambitions outside Lebanon and Syria.

"This declared goal is an interim one. After it wins and establishes itself in Syria, they will move to the next step, which objects to the goal of the revolution," said an Islamist rebel who is allied with Ahrar al-Sham.

"They will join the global jihad and this is against our revolution. Our revolution is limited to Syria."

NO JEANS

On the ground, Nusra imposes strict Islamic rules in villages and towns where it shares power. It has banned women from wearing make-up, showing their hair or wearing tight clothes like jeans, and applied a policy of segregation between the sexes. All these moves have served to assert its dominance, while provoking other groups.

"There is no group on the ground that actually objects to having an Islamic government but the implementation and methods are different," said another Islamist fighter from a group that is allied with Ahrar.

Highlighting the dilemma facing Syrian rebels, a local commander of an Islamist brigade that works closely with Ahrar al-Sham said: "It will be difficult for Nusra to disengage from Qaeda and it will be difficult for us to work with them. The situation is really difficult. Things are complicated and interlocked all together."
Third Zika case confirmed in Illinois - health officials

CHICAGO, Jan 29 (Reuters) - An Illinois male resident who traveled to Colombia is the U.S. state's third case of the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus, health officials said on Friday.

The Illinois Department of Public Health officials said the case was confirmed on Thursday but declined to provide further details.

Earlier this month, department officials reported that two pregnant Illinois residents who recently traveled to countries where the Zika virus was found had tested positive for the virus.
Dutch jets to join bombing of Islamic State targets in Syria

By Thomas Escritt

THE HAGUE, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The Netherlands will broaden its role in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State to include the bombing of IS targets in Syria, the government said on Friday.

A Dutch squadron of six F-16 fighter jets is already stationed in the region, but was hitherto limited to striking Islamic State positions in Iraq.

The aircraft will now be active over Syria until July 1, targeting Islamic State insurgent operations and training camps, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told journalists in The Hague.

Islamic State's bombing and shooting attacks on Paris that killed 130 people in November had already led France and Britain to step up their bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq.

"We have decided to heed the call of our allies for expansion of the operational area of our F-16s to the east of Syria to further weaken ISIS's supply lines and ability to advance," Rutte said, using another acronym for Islamic State.

"Only by taking away ISIS's safe havens in Iraq and Syria can we prevent more attacks."

The Netherlands is also considering providing more military equipment and training to Iraqi soldiers battling the militants. It will fund moderate, armed Syrian opposition groups and assist the reconstruction of schools and hospitals, the statement said.

In a statement on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter welcomed the expanded role for the Netherlands, and said it set a strong example ahead of a planned February gathering in Brussels among members of the U.S.-led military coalition.

Carter met with Dutch Minister of Defense Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and other defense chiefs in Paris last week to discuss the campaign against Islamic State. A joint statement by the ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition "to accelerate and intensify the campaign."

"I am grateful for Minister Hennis-Plasschaert's immediate action following last week's meeting, and for the continuing commitment from the Dutch people to this fight," Carter said in the Friday statement.

Extending the military operation became possible when the Dutch Labour Party, junior partner in the coalition government, said this week it was open to the idea, creating a parliamentary majority for it.

Foreign military interventions are especially sensitive in the Netherlands, which led a disastrous U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1995 during which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces.
Residents of the remote Canadian town of La Loche were visited by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the country's worst mass shooting in a decade.

Having softened frozen cemetery ground with bonfires, residents were preparing to bury their loved ones.

Trudeau's visit comes a week after a shooter killed four people and wounded seven at a home and high school, and a day before funerals were to begin in the aboriginal Saskatchewan town.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lays a wreath at a memorial during a visit to the town of La Loche, Saskatchewan

Trudeau 's visit comes just a week after the country's worst mass shooting in a decade. He met privately with family members of victims and laid flowers at a memorial

Trudeau has pledged to repair relations with Canada's 1.4 million aboriginals who are disproportionately victims of violent crimes and incarceration

'It was an extremely touching visit for me,' Trudeau said.

'We met an extraordinarily resilient community of people here in La Loche.'

The prime minister laid flowers at a makeshift memorial in snow outside the school and met privately with family members of victims.

Trudeau has pledged to repair relations with Canada's 1.4 million aboriginals, who make up 5 per cent of the population but are disproportionately victims of violent crimes and incarceration.

A 17-year-old boy has been charged in the shootings. Local media said the teen had been taunted about his large ears, and during the shootings spared students who had been kind to him.

Two brothers, a teacher and teaching assistant were killed.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry offered Canada his country's prayers.

The PM said he brought several cabinet ministers to see the needs firsthand and his first budget is expected in March or April

'But we also take heart from the knowledge that Canadians are a very brave and resilient people. No gunman can change that and we are very proud to have you as friends.'

La Loche's population is 2,600 with about 90 per cent Metis and Dene. The Dene language is widely spoken in addition to English.

The shooting has sparked debate about how to improve life in communities like La Loche, where the legacy of colonization and an abusive residential school system have fueled high rates of suicide, addiction, and unemployment, despite nearby oil and mining projects.

Residents said a prayer in front of a memorial at La Loche Community School. The shooting has sparked a debate about how to improve life in communities like La Loche

Trudeau said he brought several cabinet ministers to see the needs firsthand and his first budget is expected in March or April.

'It's a big tragic situation right now and it takes this kind of a thing to open our eyes,' said Gilbert Benjamin, a relative of one shooting victim.

'We've been crying for so many years. We are struggling, we need help and nobody seems to look at it.'
How EU offer to Britain's Cameron is shaping up

Jan 29 (Reuters) - A draft EU reform package to help keep Britain in the European Union could be circulated on Monday following meetings between Prime Minister David Cameron and top EU officials. The following are key points of what Reuters has been told by sources close to the negotiations could be the proposal European Council President Donald Tusk will send to EU governments after talks over dinner with Cameron in London on Sunday: THE FORM Negotiators will work through the weekend to craft a single document laying out legislative and other measures responding to Cameron's November demands for reforms so he campaigns to keep Britain in the EU in a referendum by the end of next year. Depending on how Friday's talks in Brussels with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker have gone, and on the Cameron-Tusk meeting, the document could set out in more or less detail a classic EU negotiating text, including blank spaces and alternative wordings in brackets, to be haggled over up to and during a summit chaired by Tusk in Brussels on Feb. 18-19. Nothing is done until everything is. A deal, needing all 28 national leaders' assent, could pave the way for a referendum as early as June. Impasse would probably mean more talks. The EU sees its proposals as legally watertight, safe from challenges in court and not requiring amendments to treaties now - something hard to pull off quickly across all 28 EU states. On some issues, it will offer binding guarantees that treaties will be amended later if that is required to enact proposals. MIGRATION Cameron wants to discourage other Europeans coming to Britain by excluding them from the tax credits, child allowances and other non-contributory social benefits attached to low paid British jobs for at least four years. Without changing EU treaties guaranteeing free movement of labour and barring national discrimination, EU lawyers propose an "emergency brake", limiting those fundamental rights where vital national interests or economic stability are at risk. Legislation would give any state to curb in-work benefits for up to four years - if agreed to the European Council of fellow governments. Normally, Council decisions are by consensus - in effect, unanimity - but easier terms might be negotiated. Allowances for children could also be reduced long term. EU negotiators speak of "indexing" so that workers whose children live in cheaper states than the parent would receive less. EURO ZONE Cameron wants more legal safeguards for Britain's sterling-based economy and big financial industry from a risk of the euro zone countries writing EU rules to suit them. The EU proposes another "emergency brake" where Britain could object in the Council of all EU ministers. How far Britain may block measures and how far it would need allies is unclear yet. London and euro zone leaders all say Britain should not have a blanket veto. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY Cameron wants assurances Britain need not hand more power to Brussels and to enhance the say of nations in the EU. The EU will be proposing a "red card", letting national parliaments acting in concert block EU legislation. How few legislatures could obstruct how much is still being negotiated. Britain wants it made clear that an EU treaty phrase calling for "ever closer union" among peoples does not mean more political integration. The EU will offer a binding decision by the European Council, echoing a reassurance it gave in 2014. COMPETITIVENESS The least contentious area of Cameron's four reform "baskets", calling for less red tape and more economic dynamism has broad backing so a set of declarations will echo EU policy, but with elements to show Britain Brussels is listening. (Reporting by Paul Taylor and Alastair Macdonald; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
As an Indian, one is usually aware about the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts. They are also familiar with the hijacking of IC-814 in December 1999. And it is highly improbable for most Indians to be oblivious of the 2001 attack on parliament or 26/11.

These unfortunate incidents are etched in public memory. But how many of us know that a 9/11-style terrorist attack was carried out by Sikh extremists in the 1980s targeting an Air India Flight?

What happened?

On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was bombed midway in the sky as it was heading towards its destination - Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi.

The flight took off from Montreal in Canada and was scheduled to stopover at the London Heathrow Airport. There were no survivors. All 329 people onboard the aircraft were killed. Majority of them were Canadian by nationality.

Remembering the tragedy, noted writer Khushwant Singh wrote in Outlook (November 15, 2004) that "among the worst (terror strikes) was the blowing up of Air Indias Kanishka (June 23, 1985), which killed all its 329 passengers and crew, including over 30 Sikhs."

The attack was carried out in the name of a religion which keeps open the doors of its gurudwaras to people of all sects and religions. Its a religion which preaches and sanctions the concept of seva or service.

Just like Muslims are becoming victims of Islamist terrorism today, Sikhs too became victims of Khalistani terrorists onboard Air India Kanishka.

Why remember the incident now?

Inderjit Singh Reyat, the "only convicted perpetrator" of the crime as Time Magazine describes him, has been released from a Canadian prison.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, Amarjit Kaur Bhinder, wife of Captain SS Bhinder who happened to be the first officer of Air India Kanishka, said, "Many years have passed. Our loss will never be compensated. If the law of the land is permitting the release I do not have any problem. He has hidden the identity of other culprits."

She added, "After 30 years, I have stopped asking for anything. No justice was done and it will never be done."

In July 2015, The Hindu caught up with Bharatnatyam dancer Lata Pada who lost her husband and two daughters in the air disaster. The news feature said that "neither was the crash recognised as a Canadian tragedy nor did India involve the victims families."

It went on to mention "that were was a perception that it happened outside Canada and most of the people who perished in the attack were of Indian descent. For a long time the families were not involved; only when the planes debris was brought to Canada did the scale of tragedy hit home."

Whats wrong?

Imagine a situation where a government decides to release terrorists who were party to the deadly September 11 attacks. Can you foresee the ensuing furore?

What if the United States government decided against building a memorial to honour those who had perished during 9/11? If it had happened so, it would have merely reflected human insensitivity.

That kind of apathy and disdain for human life is here on show in India. Amarjit Kaur Bhinder had met former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh requesting him to construct a memorial for the victims of Air India Kanishka in the national capital.

No such memorial exists in Delhi till date. Take a representative sample and survey Indians about the fate of Air India Kanishka. Majority of the responses would be overwhelmingly ignorant of the tragedy.

Its ironical that at a time when Inderjit Singh Reyat walks free, most Indians wont object to it because they are simply unaware of the crime he had committed.

Why such apathy?

The fundamental question which is to be asked is: Why has India forgotten about the bombing of Air India Kanishka? Is it because we, as a nation, are suffering from a skewed perception of terror?

Had the response been similar if Air India Kanishka had some form of Pakistani involvement? What would we have done had the attack taken place on our soil instead of airspace? What if majority of the dead were not Canadian nationals but Indian citizens?

There are no easy answers. But one thing which all of us need to realise is that we cannot afford to forget the human lives which were lost as a result of terroristic activities.

Hence, let us at least begin by acknowledging the Air India Kanishka tragedy by building a much needed memorial for the victims.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Canada in April 2015, he had paid homage to the victims at the memorial site in Toronto. Its about time we had one in Delhi.
RICHMOND  Reporters will return to the Senate floor Monday in a new arrangement, Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City announced today.

"On Monday morning it is my expectation, after some significant and fruitful discussions with our friends from the Fourth Estate, that they will be returning to floor of the Senate in a little bit of a reconfigured fashion," Norment said in a speech on the Senate floor.

"We've come to a good mutual resolution," Norment said.

Norment did not immediately spell out the details of the agreement.

Sen. Thomas A. Garrett Jr., R-Buckingham, who had called for restoring reporters' access to the Senate floor, tweeted: "Delighted that the press will be allowed back in the Senate Chamber on Monday! A victory for #transparency and #Virginia."

On Jan. 13, the first day of the General Assembly session, the Senate, in which Republicans hold a 21-19 edge, voted along party lines for a change in Senate rules that removed reporters access from the floor, where journalists have covered the state Senate for decades.

Press tables that had been on opposite sides of the rostrum had been removed. Reporters now had to cover Senate sessions from the gallery above the floor, a vantage point that journalists said makes it harder to hear lawmakers' comments and observe senators interactions and to get copies of floor amendments and vote tallies.

On Jan. 20, a delegation of journalists who cover the state Capitol met with key state senators to discuss the removal of reporters access to the Senate floor.

There was no resolution of the issue at that meeting, which lasted about an hour, but the journalists and senators aired their concerns and characterized it as a productive discussion.

Senators attending the Jan. 20 meeting in a conference room off the Senate chamber included Norment; Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax; Senate Majority Whip William M. Stanley Jr., R-Franklin County; and Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus.

During that meeting the journalists sought a return to work space on the Senate floor. Topics that were discussed also included Republican senators concerns about limited space on the Senate floor and about reporters adherence to long-standing rules governing when journalists can interact with senators on the floor, Stanley said in a phone interview.

Stanley said the discussion also touched on the issue of who should be entitled to credentials permitting access to the floor  traditional, or all types of media, including bloggers.

Jim Nolan, a politics reporter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is president of the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association.

Nolan tweeted that the result is a win for access, open government and freedom of the press.
Three years ago Virginia residents passed a constitutional amendment to limit legalized theft through eminent-domain abuse. The amendment required that property be taken only for a genuinely public purpose. No longer could governments take one persons land and give it to somebody else for economic development. Opponents of the measure issued dark warnings about the terrible consequences that would ensue, but those predictions failed to come true.

Problem solved, right? Not on your life.

Just ask Richard Dwyer. The town of Culpeper has taken a big chunk of his land  and wants to make him sell it for a song.

For many years Dwyer bought up small parcels as a way to prepare for his retirement. Eventually he put together 26 acres, part of which was floodplain and part of which had been zoned for high-density residential development. The zoning would entitle him to build up to 344 units.

In 2006, I had a written offer of $16.1 million for that land, Dwyer told the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, which recounted his story in detail a few days ago. Then Culpeper decided to build a big road, commonly called the inner loop. It confiscated more than five acres of his best property to do it. They took the buildable land and left me with the floodplain, Dwyer told the newspaper. Now hes looking at 152 potential units instead of 344.

Two years ago, Culpeper  based on its own appraisal  decided the land it had taken was worth a little more than $466,000. Dwyers appraiser put the value slightly higher: $3.4 million.

The two parties couldnt reach an agreement. So Culpeper brought in another appraiser who decided the seized land was worth a measly $130,000.

If that sounds familiar, it should. A lowball second appraisal is a common negotiating tactic in eminent-domain disputes. Its called sandbagging. The Virginia Department of Transportation tried to pull the stunt on a Virginia Beach couple a few years ago.

When John and Janet Ramsey didnt accept VDOTs original offer of nearly a quarter-million dollars, VDOT came back with a second appraisal of only $92,000. The couple fought back in court  where VDOT tried to have its initial, higher appraisal squashed so the jury couldnt learn of it. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously against that malicious ploy.

There are even more outlandish examples. In one case, the governments appraisal dropped from $214,000 to just $14,000. Joe Waldo, who specializes in defending property owners from unjust confiscations, says the sandbagging scheme is a way to make property owners knuckle under: If you dont like the governments first offer, maybe youd like a nice swift kick in the teeth, hunh?

Culpeper officials  like their counterparts at VDOT  say theyre just trying to look out for the public. Culpeper Town Manager Chris Hively told the Free Lance-Star that the town has a duty to be the guardian of the taxpayers hard-earned tax dollars. . . . The town cannot squander taxpayers money by paying an amount that grossly exceeds our experts appraisal.

But it can squander taxpayers money on attorneys fees, apparently. The newspaper reports that Culpeper has already spent $425,000 litigating Dwyers case. Its going to spend a lot more before the case is over.

That, too, is not so unusual. In the Ramseys case, VDOT spent as much on lawyers fees trying to get the property at a lower price as it would have spent paying its initial offer. In another case, the state offered $7,000 for a parcel of land next to German School Road in Richmond. The owner asked for $30,000. Rather than accede, the agency fought. A jury awarded the owner nearly twice what she asked: $52,000. And the agency spent another $61,000 in lawyers fees.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution lets the government take private property. But it imposes two conditions. The condemnation must be for public use, and a road certainly qualifies as a public use. But the property also cannot be taken without just compensation. The Supreme Courts infamous ruling in Kelo v. New London drew a red pencil through the first requirement. Since then most states have at least tried to restore the stipulation.

But as Dwyers case and others like it show, state and local governments frequently flout the second stipulation  often with impunity. The General Assembly should put a stop to that. And with lawmakers currently in session, what better time than the present?
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Fourth-year Dentistry students Reem Rostom and Karen McLean each have two young children, husbands, homes and all the pressure and responsibility that come with being in the final stretch of their Dentistry programs.

They are also the driving forces behind the Halifax Dentistry Student Society for Refugees, a group inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis and their own wish to make a significant change.



It started with a course assignment. All third and fourth-year Dentistry students at Dalhousie are required to complete a two-year community service course. Dr. Blaine Cleghorn, the course professor, threw out some ideas to the class, such as volunteering at a food bank or sheltered housing project.



Then, in September, the heart-rending pictures of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, who drowned while crossing the Mediterranean Sea with his family, were seen around the world. It sparked Reem and Karen to do something different, something inspiring, as Karen puts it, for their community service project.



Their initial aim was to raise enough money to sponsor a Syrian family this year. But then the idea evolved. Refugees are from everywhere, says Reem, so they shifted their sights to something broader in scope and more sustainable.



We want to create a continuous cycle of bringing one family to Nova Scotia every year, says Karen.

Connections and contributions



With the help of McInnes Cooper lawyer Hassan Naqvi, who has volunteered his time, Reem and Karen set up an incorporated society with by-laws and signatories. Already they have around 20 members plus many more supporters. Their objective is to involve students from every year of the Dentistry program so that as one class graduates, members from the next fourth-year class are ready to step up and lead the society.



This is another example of the things our amazing students in the Faculty of Dentistry do, says Dr. Ron Bannerman, assistant dean of academics. This project is the result of all their own thinking and their own legwork. The Faculty will do its utmost to support their efforts.



Fundraising is getting underway in earnest, primarily through crowdsourcing and other activities like bake sales. Reem and Karen also hope to forge links with dentistry associations in Atlantic Canada that could help them to raise money.



This years target is $30,000 so that the society can sponsor a family of five for their first year in Halifax, including providing them with food, housing, dental and medical care, and language services, and helping them to adapt to their new home.



We have a multicultural student body, says Karen. We can all put ourselves into another persons shoes, appreciate their struggles, and feel compassion. Faced with the same terrible situation, we would want others to reach out to us. Our plans are all about humanity and helping others in need.
This page may be updated if the event is repeated

Past Event - Saturday, February 12, 2022 This page may be updated if the event is repeated

Free Event

The Adventure Summit is an event celebrating the spirit of outdoor adventure by showcasing the vibrant lifestyle and culture of human powered endeavors through inspiration, education, and experience.

Celebrate Outdoor Culture at the Adventure Summit

Thousands of outdoor enthusiasts will converge on Dayton, Ohio: The Outdoor Adventure Capital of the Midwest for a weekend of outdoor skill, culture and experience. Join them, and see what the excitement is all about!

The Adventure Summit has a rich history of featuring world-class outdoor personalities. From endurance runners to long-distance backpackers and the founding father of mountain biking to polar explorers, our featured personalities each year are sure to inspire and amaze.

Read more about this years event: Celebrate outdoor culture during The Adventure Summit

The Adventure Speaker Series is a production of Five Rivers MetroParks and Wright State University.
New Delhi: Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on Friday said that a Special Investigation Team that was formed to probe into the Pathankot attack is still looking at the possibility of the Jaish-e-Mohammed(JeM) being involved in last month's terror attack in Pathankot, Punjab.

"An SIT had been formed here. They are also investigating. We have to take the matter forward together," Basit said.

He also said that it was difficult to say something about the involvement of JeM at the moment as the national investigation agency is doing its investigation.

"As far as terrorism is concerned, both National Security Advisors are in touch with each other and are trying to take the matter forward," Basit said.

On Sunday, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that the probe team for Islamabad will soon visit the Pathankot Air Force Base in Punjab and vowed to bring the findings from the investigation before all.

Earlier, India had welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan to investigate the antecedents of the terror strike in Pathankot allegedly by JeM, and pledged to extend all help to the latter's special investigation team when it arrives in India.

The attack took place between January 1 and 4, 2016, and claimed the lives of seven persons, including an Indian Army Lt. Colonel.
Thrissur: In a major relief to Congress-led UDF government, Kerala High Court on Friday stayed a Vigilance Court order to register an FIR against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Power Minister Arayadan Mohammed in the solar scam case.

Considering pleas filed by Chandy and Mohammed, Justice P Ubaid observed that the Inquiry Commissioner and Special Judge (Vigilance), Thrissur, acted mechanically without knowing the nature and extent of its powers.

Suspending the Vigilance Court orders for two months, the High Court also directed its administrative section to consider action against the Vigilance Court judge.

"The Vigilance Court suffers jurisdiction errors," the High Court said.

The scam relates to the duping of several persons by the two prime accused -- S Saritha Nair and Radhakrishnan -- who had promised to install solar power panels for them.

In his petition, Chandy said the Vigilance Court proceeded to act upon newspaper reports to pass "the impugned order" and it has "committed a grave error of jurisdiction".

The Vigilance Court judge, who ordered the vigilance director to register an FIR against Chandy and Mohammed and six others in the case, had observed that everyone was equal before law, "be it a village man or a chief minister."

Judge S S Vassan in the order had stated that he was not making any comments on the merits of the case.

"I have to bear in mind Article 14 of the Constitution. Be it a village man or the chief minister, law is equal to all public servants. Therefore the complaint is forwarded to Director VACB (Vigilance and Anti Corruption Bureau) for investigation under sect 156(3) CrPC," the judge had said.

He had directed that the report has to be submitted by April 11, the next hearing of the case.

Read: Solar panel scam: Oommen Chandy denies fresh charges by prime accused

Meanwhile, students and youth activists staged protests in front of the Secretariat and in other parts of the state demanding resignation of Chandy even as police used tear gas shells and water cannons to disperse the agitators. Protests were witnessed in other parts of the state, including Kozhikode and Alappuzha.

The protest march by Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of CPI(M), turned violent here following which police used tear gas shells and batons to chase away the agitators, who gathered in large numbers and pelted stones at the forces, police said.

WATCH: DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam https://t.co/kqng2D80YO  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

The main road in front of the state Secretariat in the heart of the city virtually turned into a battlefield. Many media personnel covering the incident also suffered injuries in the melee. Shops remained shut in the area and vehicles parked on the road were damaged.

The protesters, who raised slogans demanding resignation of Chandy, engaged in a scuffle in front of the district collectorate at Kozhikode. Police used water cannons against the protesters there also.

Read: Solar scam: Kerala court orders FIR against CM Oommen Chandy

Chandy had denied the charges levelled against him and said "he cannot be removed from the post by raising false allegations and disgracing him."

Meanwhile, Saritha S Nair, prime accused in the solar scam, alleged that he had telephoned her mother to influence her not to reveal facts related to the case while she was lodged in jail in 2013.

Read: Solar scam: CM phoned mom asking not to reveal details, says prime accused
A 30-year-old businessman, dealing in construction material, shot himself dead with his licenced pistol after allegedly having a tiff with his wife early on Thursday morning in northeast Delhis Karawal Nagar area, said police.



No suicide note has been recovered from the spot, said police.

The deceased Harender Singh was residing in Shanti Nagars gali no. 2 with his wife and two children, aged five and six.



The police said that on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday Singh returned to his house in Shanti Nagar at about 1.30 am.



He was completely intoxicated. Later he had a quarrel with his wife after which he locked himself in a room.



After few minutes a gunshot was heard from inside the room and his wife rushed inside. She found her husband lying in a pool of blood near the bed, said a police officer investigating the case.



After that his wife went to her neighbours house and woke them up by knocking on their door.



 We didnt hear the gunshot as we were fast asleep. However, around 3 am, his wife knocked our door and told us about the tragic incident, said a neighbour.



A call to the police was made and he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead by the doctors.



Investigating official said that they recovered his licensed gun near his body, which has now been confiscated.



Police added that the couple often had fights over Singhs drinking habits and on Wednesday night the two fought incessantly for an hour before Singh locked himself in the room while his wife went to sleep in another room with their children.



Originally hailing from Uttar Pradeshs Mujjaffarnagar district, Singh belonged to a family of wealthy farmers and was the only child of his parents.



Ten years back he arrived in Delhi, and his father helped him set up his business in Loni border. Even his house was given to him by his father, said a neighbour.

Singhs body was handed over to the family members after autopsy.



A case under relevant sections has been filed at the Karawal Nagar police station and further investigations are on.



A crime team visited the room in which he shot himself and took samples, said the investigating official, adding, His family members are being questioned in connection with the matter.


An 88-year-old man and his 50-year-old daughter were found dead at their house in north Delhis Shastri Nagar on Thursday. Police suspect they were killed over a property dispute.



We had received a call saying that senior citizens had been murdered. When we reached at the spot, the bodies were found with several injury marks on the body. The house was not ransacked and the entry also seems to be friendly, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Madhur Verma.



Kishan Verma had retired as a primary teacher from a government school, while his daughter Rajbala was divorced.



After initial probe, police have found that there was a dispute over the Shastri Nagar property. Kishan had been fighting a case with his elder sons Ajay and Vijay in Tis Hazari court.



On the basis of relatives questioning, police have detained the two men for questioning. Ajay and Vijay run a gold and silver shop from the ground floor of the building.



As there was nothing missing from the house, police say the needle of suspicion points towards their involvement. Kishan and his elder sons frequently had heated arguments over the property, Kishans relative Amit Soni told Deccan Herald.



It is alleged that Kishan was also thrashed on Diwali last year after which he had complained with the local police. The footage of closed-circuit television cameras installed outside the house has been analysed to identify people who visited the house. We hope to nab the killers soon, said another police officer.



The incident came to the fore when Kishans relative Arvind went to the house at around 10.15 am. Arvind had also gone to the house on Wednesday evening because of which he is also under the scanner.



Arvind saw the main door of the house bolted from outside. Inside, Rajbalas body was in the drawing room. Kishan was found dead in his bedroom with the body wrapped in a blanket, Kishans relative Amit added.



Arvind informed police after which Kishan and Rajbala were declared dead on the spot. There were injury marks on their bodies which suggests strangulation. The post-mortem of the bodies was conducted at Bara Hindu Rao Hospital.



A case of murder under Indian Penal Code has been filed over Arvinds statement with Sarai Rohilla police station, Madhur Verma said.


The Verma family had been fighting the property dispute case for the past six years, and Kishans two elder sons were told by Tis Hazari court to pay rent. They paid Rs 3,000 per month for their gold and silver shop on the ground floor of the building.The money was deposited with the court.



On Thursday morning, Kishans elder sons Ajay and Vijay were also present on the ground floor. But they failed to note anything suspicious. The duo and Kishans relative Arvind are being seen as primary suspects.



Arvind, a resident of Saraswati Vihar, has told police that he had met Kishan on Wednesday evening. He is being treated as the last person to see Kishan and Rajbala alive.



Arvind had gone to the house on Thursday morning to give homemade ladoo and halwa to Kishan and Rajbala. He was a regular visitor to the house, Kishans relative Amit Soni told Deccan Herald.



Kishans neighbours had also found the main gates of their houses bolted from outside on Thursday morning. At the same time, Kishans relative Arvind arrived there. He went inside the Verma family house to find the two bodies.



We suspect that Kishan and Rajbala were killed in the wee hours of Thursday. It seems Kishan was killed while he was sleeping. The doors of the neighbours may have been bolted to suggest that the killers were there on Thursday morning, said a police officer.



The exact cause of death will be clear only after police receive the autopsy report. We are also waiting for forensic investigation to culminate, the officer added.



Police are questioning Kishans relatives, neighbours and domestic helps in the neighbourhood. Kishan had been living at the Shastri Nagar house for the past 14-15 years. His wife had died around 10-years-ago. Police also said Kishan was not a registered senior citizen with Sarai Rohilla police.
There is a simmering discontent among a section of bureaucrats in the Home and Health departments of the Delhi government after the minister incharge Satyendar Jain issued directions to officers to move files directly to him, bypassing the secretaries in charge.



A senior Home Department official recently wrote to Jain pointing out that whatever he was trying to do by apparently bypassing Secretaries was not within the accepted interpretation of the Transaction of Business Rules and Allocation of Business Rules, 1993.



The latest of the controversial orders issued by Jain came on January 21 over the working of senior bureaucrats posted in the Health department.



While rearranging the file movement pattern in the department, Jain stipulated that the Principal Secretary/Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) would work as authorised by the Minister in-charge.



This order issued by Jain exposes the trust deficit among the AAP governement and top bureaucrats, who are posted and transferred by the Central government through Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung.



The AAP government often voices its suspicion that some officials tend to create hurdles in implementing Cabinet decisions, thus, slowing down the performace of the Arvind Kejriwal government which is approaching its first anniversary in office on February 14.



Jains directions for the Health department follow his earlier orders this month related to work pattern in the Home department and the Industries department which is under his control.



Earlier, in a communication related to the functioning of the Home department, Jain described a Secretary as a limb of the government and gave the Minister primacy over the bureaucrat.



Officials in the Delhi Secretariat are questioning whether Jain is issuing controversial directions on the advice of the Cabinet or trying to create a fresh clash with Jung.

All work-related orders issued by ministers should be shared with the LG, which is not happening, said an official, who refused to be named.



The minister is trying to create a multi-tier system for file system, which in any case, is being followed in the departments, he said.



In the Home Department, Jain attempted to create four sections head by a deputy secretary. He also enlisted the matters whose files the deputy secretaries should be directly put up before him, without bringing the matter through the principal secretary.



Earlier, the AAP governments actions in the Law department created a similar disquiet when former law Minister Kapil Mishra took on top law department officials by asking them to report to him.



Jain and Mishra have often claimed that the real head of departments are ministers of the elected government and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and not the LG. The courts and President Pranab Mukherjee, however, follow the Constitution which describes the LG of the Union Territory as the head of the capital city.


Municipal employees started the second day of their strike by taking out Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals funeral march in east Delhis Shahdara area on Thursday.

They also demonstrated outside the house of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia demanding funds for the payment of salaries by the corporations.



The day saw multiple protests by several groups of the Municipal Corpoeration of Delhi employees across the city with garbage getting piled up in streetside side-dumps and shutting of almost every school under the North and East Corporations.



The situation is going to get worse as doctors are mulling to join the strike starting Saturday. The MCD employees unions said on Wednesday that they would strike work till Friday, giving three days to the corporations and the city government to bridge the gap and distribute salaries to the staff.



Thousands of the employees including sanitation workers, engineers, teachers and hospital staff went on an indefinite strike demanding timely payment of salaries, clearance of arrears and regularisation of contractual workers.



On Thursday, scores of workers carried out Kejriwals funeral march at around 10.30 am. They also littered garbage outside the East Corporations Shahdara (South) Zones office apart from burning the effigy of Kejriwal.



The employees have not been given salaries for the past four months. We will continue our strike till our demands are met, said Rajender Mewati, general secretary, United Front of MCD Employees. We are going to have a meeting with the doctors associations tomorrow [Friday] and we have been told that they are also thinking to join the ongoing strike, added Mewati.



Though the East Delhi Municipal Corporation claims that the sanitation employees have been given salaries for December. When asked why the civic agency has only released the salaries of safai karamcharis, a senior official said, The sanitation unions comprise the biggest chunk of the total employees unions.



Safai karamcharis, however, said they are yet to receive their salaries. Its all on papers. Salaries have not yet been credited to any (sanitation) workers account. We feel trifurcation of the MCD in 2012 is the cause of North and East Corporations being insolvent today as all the sources of income has gone to South Corporation. So we demand reunification of the three civic agencies, said Mewati.



Both the East and North Corporations are in the red. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation requires over Rs 100 crore per month to pay salaries and other benefits to its over 32,000 employees. The North Corporation too isnt far behind and requires Rs 171 crore per month to pay salaries and other benefits to its over 70,000 employees.



In October, the city saw a similar protest by sanitation workers of the East Corporation alone.


A nearly 30-foot-long whale was washed ashore at the popular Juhu beach in Mumbai.Locals, who spotted the dead mammal last night, informed the police and the forest department.



Carcasses of 38 baleen whales were washed ashore recently near the Tiruchendur beach in Tamil Nadu while more than 250 whales stranded in shallow waters were pushed back into the deep sea.



In June last year, a 42-foot-long blue whale was washed ashore at the Revdanda coast, about 17 kms south of Alibaug in the neighbouring Raigad district.



Forest officials had contacted marine biologists after spotting it when it was still alive and struggling to survive.



However, the whale had later died.
Joining the ongoing stir over the alleged suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, the SC/ST Employees Welfare Association of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) today organised a 'protest day'.



The 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' this morning also continued their relay hunger strike, which they had started yesterday.



The members of the forum have written to President Pranab Mukherjee, visitor of the university, regarding their demand for removal of Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile and seeking that in-charge VC Vipin Srivastava should step down from the post, a representative of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice said.



The JAC, under whose banner the agitation by the students is being led, said a candle light vigil would be organised today, on the eve of the birthday of research scholar Rohith Vemula, who allegedly committed suicide in a hostel room on January 17.



A group of students are also slated to start an indefinite fast in support of their demands today.



The JAC has called for mass hunger strike in universities across the country to express solidarity with the agitation on the HCU campus.



Two batches of students had earlier held indefinite fast at the protest site in HCU. However, they were shifted to hospitals following concerns over their health condition.



The JAC plans to undertake a visit to Delhi in the first week of February to meet the President to press for their demands, the JAC representative said.



The JAC's main demands includes bringing in a 'Rohith Act' to prevent any injustice to the students of marginalised sections in university, and forming a committee to look into the issues of alleged caste and academic biases in the varsities in the last 20 years in the country.



The letter sent to the President was signed by 93 "concerned teachers" and they requested him to ask "Vice-Chancellor and the In-charge Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad (HCU) to step down" from their posts.



The agitating students, meanwhile, held a protest at the administrative block of the university today demanding that in-charge VC Vipin Srivastava to step down.



Several members of the non-teaching staff told Srivastava, who came to the building, that they were not able to work due to closure of offices and were returning home after coming to the university everyday.



The non-teaching staff said that they want to attend their regular work, and that certain demands of the protesting students, like removal of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, were beyond the purview of the VC.



Srivastava, who went back from the administrative building following protest by the students, told the non-teaching staff that he would make efforts to resume office work soon, as per the non-teaching employees.



The in-charge VC had tried to hold talks with the agitating students at their protest site two days back, but returned empty-handed after they raised slogans against him.



Meanwhile, some research labs in the university were functioning today in view of the "urgent nature" of the ongoing projects, as per the JAC.



Recalling that Srivastava was allegedly involved in the suicide of a student Senthil Kumar in 2008, a spokesperson of the 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' claimed that the interim Vice-Chancellor did not get a clean chit in the issue.


For the first time after more than a week of turmoil over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, academic activities today resumed in the Hyderabad Central University even as protests by students in support of their demands, continued.



Academic and administrative activities had come to a stand-still in HCU from January 18, a day after Rohith's suicide, with agitating students spearheading protests seeking justice for him.



"All the departments, schools and centres are open today, and classes were conducted in some of the departments. Research labs are almost open," HCU Registrar M Sudhakar said.



Joining the ongoing stir by agitating students, the SC/ST Employees Welfare Association of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) today organised a 'protest day'.



The 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' this morning also continued their relay hunger strike, which they had started yesterday.



The members of the Forum have written to President Pranab Mukherjee, visitor of the university, regarding their demand for removal of Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, who has gone on indefinite leave, and seeking that acting VC Vipin Srivastava should step down from the post, a representative of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice said.



The letter was signed by 93 "concerned teachers". Recalling that Srivastava was allegedly involved in the suicide of a student Senthil Kumar in 2008, a Forum spokesperson claimed that the interim Vice Chancellor did not get a clean chit in the issue.



A group of students are also slated to start an indefinite fast in support of their demands today. The JAC has called for mass hunger strike in universities across the country to express solidarity with the agitation on the HCU campus. Agitating students today also began a campaign of sending post-cards to the President to highlight the issue.



Two batches of students had earlier held indefinite fast at the protest site in HCU. However, they were shifted to hospitals following concerns over their health condition.



The JAC plans to undertake a visit to Delhi in the first week of February to meet the President to press for their demands, their representative said.



The JAC's main demands include bringing in a 'Rohith Act' to prevent any injustice to the students of marginalised sections in university, and forming a committee to look into the issues of alleged caste and academic biases in the varsities in the last 20 years in the country.



The agitating students, meanwhile, held a protest at the administrative block of the university today demanding that Srivastava step down.



Several members of the non-teaching staff told Srivastava, who came to the building, that they were not able to work due to closure of offices and were returning home after coming to the university everyday.



The non-teaching staff said that they want to attend to their regular work, and that certain demands of the protesting students, like removal of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, were beyond the purview of the VC.



Srivastava, who went back from the administrative building following protest by the students, told the non-teaching staff that he would make efforts to resume office work soon, as per the non-teaching employees.


In a shocking incident, an 80-year-old sick man died in the pilgrim town of Shirdi after he was taken to hospital in the municipal council's waste collection van by its workers, prompting demands for resignation of the state Health Minister.





The visuals of the unidentified man, lying along Pimpalwadi Road in vicinity of the famous Saibaba temple, being bundled into the van were aired by some Marathi news channels today, sparking outrage.



Shirdi Sub-Divisional Officer Kundan Sonawane said the incident was "unfortunate". He has issued orders to suspend the contractual civic workers involved in the incident which occurred yesterday.



A memorandum was submitted in Shirdi police station by human rights activist to take action against the guilty.



In the video clip, the driver of the vehicle is asked if he is aware as to what is being hauled into the truck. "A man," is all he responds and fends off further queries.



The man, who had severe breathing problems and could barely talk, passed away, shortly after he was taken by the truck to a hospital in Shirdi, an official of the Shirdi municipal council said.



"Sawant (Health Minister Deepak Sawant) should resign immediately. Despite the 108 ambulance service in operation, it's shameful that the old man was carted off in a kachra gadi (garbage van)," NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said in Mumbai.



"This is a conspiracy to revive Shiv Sena's ambulance service 'business' by stopping 108 service," he claimed.



Leader of Opposition Radhakrisha Vikhe Patil, who hails from Ahmednagar district where Shirdi is located, said he has asked the local SDO to probe the incident.



"It was wrong on the part of the Shirdi municipal council to indulge in such inhuman behaviour," the Congress leader said.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday urged US companies to invest in the backward and forward linkages of agri business in the state.





Inaugurating the IACC Conclave: Vision 2020 themed, Increasing US India trade to $500 billion, here on Friday, Siddaramaiah said, I invite investments from the US in the backward and forward linkages of agri business, which include mechanisation of farm operations, high yielding seed production, transportation of perishable goods using cold chains, and specially-developed vehicles for taking produce to processing centres and retail outlets, without loss of their quality and texture.



N R Narayana Murthy said the country needs to discover and invent locally to help the Centres ambitious Make in India scheme become successful. For the Modi governments flagship programme to succeed, the country has to invent and discover locally, Murthy said.

He said that a strong collaboration between the US and Indian academia is needed, which will also lay a strong foundation for Indias solid growth in the long-term.



Murthy said this strategy of India will make it a leader in high-tech products and services in the world.


Last week saw the official start of the lifting of crushing western sanctions on the Iranian economy in return for major concessions on the countrys nuclear programme. While this US-Iran thaw has the potential to alter the strategic landscape in West Asia, this relationships biggest test is still to come.



With the Obama administrations time in Washington running out, its too early to assess whether the budding diplomacy between the United States and Iran represents a new era of detente that will outlast the current presidents in both states.



Iran, with the worlds second largest gas reserves and fourth largest oil reserves, has more than 80 million people, a diversified economy and could get up to $100 bn in frozen assets following the relaxation of sanctions. Iran expects to receive about $30 billion of its frozen funds in coming months.



In addition, it will save about 20-30 per cent on its international trade operations, worth as much as $20 b per year. For comparison, oil revenues this year are about $20 b. Foreign investments and loans could easily add another $10-20 b per year.



Yet few are optimistic about the Iranian economy which is in its deepest recession since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and no one expects it to bounce back any time soon. Last month, an IMF report forecast zero growth for the current Iranian year ending on March 20, 2016, and 4-5 per cent growth for next year.



President Rouhanis promise for economic growth next year, which he is making ahead of the crucial election for the Parliament and the Assembly of Experts next month, is also a modest 5 per cent. Iranian economy is anything but normal and it will be years before the structural deficiencies of the decades are rectified.



India has been recalibrating its Iran policy for some time now. New Delhi has signed an air-services agreement with Iran enhancing the number of flights between the two nations and allowing each others airlines to operate to additional destinations. The two sides have also inked a memorandum of understanding that is aimed at increasing bilateral trade to $30 billion from $15 billion.



Plans are afoot for greater maritime cooperation, and Iran has already joined the Indian navys annual initiative, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, which provides a forum for the navies of the Indian Ocean littoral states to engage each other. More significantly, the two nations have decided to hold structured and regular consultations on Afghanistan. Both India and Iran are, however, unlikely to accept an Afghanistan that serves as a springboard for the Pakistan militarys interests.



After years of dilly-dallying under the UPA government, the Modi government decided last year to invest $85.21 million in developing the strategically important Chabahar port in Iran, allowing India to circumvent Pakistan and open up a route to landlocked Afghanistan. Irans Chabahar Port, located 72 km west of Pakistans Gwadar port, holds immense strategic and economic significance for India.



It is already connected to the city of Zaranj in Afghanistans southwestern province of Nimruz and can serve as Indias entry point to Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond. Delhi and Tehran both view Chabahar as critical to developing connectivity with Kabul and as a geopolitical lever vis-a-vis Pakistan. This issue is one of high priority for the Narendra Modi government.



On Irans nuclear aspirations too, India has been making subtle changes in its approach. India has expressed particular disapproval of sanctions by individual countries that restrict other countries investments in Irans energy sector.



Despite existing sanctions, New Delhi is encouraging Indian companies to invest in Iranian energy so that economic connections can underpin a political realignment, not foreclose it. But Indian bureaucracy has been dragging its feet in a swift implementation of economic and trade deals with Iran.



Chinas role



The most significant disruption to this relationship has come in the form of China which is now Irans largest trading partner. China has invested massively in Iran, with more than 100 Chinese companies on the ground and seeking to occupy the space vacated by Western firms that have grown skittish about the mounting international pressure on the country. The partnership with China benefits both sides: Iran evades global isolation by courting China which in turn gains access without any real competition to Irans energy resources.



India has always enforced dutifully any UN measures against Iran, often to the detriment of its energy investments in the country. Yet China, which as a member the Security Council helps shape UN policy toward Iran, has been able to sustain its own energy business in the country without much trouble.



India has been trying to strike a balance between preserving its strategic interests and adhering to its global obligations. Its ability to manoeuvre in Tehran has been limited so far because of Irans inability to find a workable solution with the West on its atomic ambitions.



As Shia-Sunni divide fractures West Asia and as American outreach to Iran begins to reshape the strategic environment of the region, Indian diplomacy will be forced to navigate these tricky waters with diplomatic finesse. The certainties of the past with which New Delhi has lived so far are coming to an end and a new uncertain landscape will challenge Indian foreign policy in the coming years.



New Delhi will have to move away from the ideological trappings of the past where domestic political imperatives continue to constrain Indias options. A thaw in US-Iran relations, heralded by the new nuclear understanding between the two, should alleviate some of Indian concerns and will allow it to push forth with a more purposeful regional engagement.



(The writer is Professor of International Relations, Kings College London)




When in November 2015, Sai Win Myat Oo, a candidate from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, ran for a seat in the Parliament of Shan State, in southern Myanmar, he was confident in his chances of being re-elected. The people of his constituency had consistently voted for the local Shan party in the past.



Yet, he lost to a candidate from the National League for Democracy (NLD), the majority-Bamar party led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, which swept the general election last year, winning some 80 per cent of contested seats in the national Parliament. Apparently, it was the ethnic Wa people of Shan State, many of whom resettled there from northern parts of country in the late 1990s, who cast the decisive votes.



Rumor has it they had received instructions to vote for the NLD from the United Wa State Army  at 30,000-strong, the most powerful rebel group in the country  which is headquartered on Myanmars border with China.



Chinese sources I spoke to in academe and the intelligence services denied that Beijing had anything to do with those directives. But a senior Shan politician and three Myanmar military insiders said they thought it was Chinese influence that had swung the Wa votes in Shan State.



Why would Beijing, which has long backed Myanmars military regime and refused to engage with pro-democracy parties, now support the NLD? One reason is that in recent years it saw the political tide turning in Myanmar.



Another is that it has come to think of Suu Kyi as a consummate pragmatist, and at a time when the Myanmar army, known as the Tatmadaw, was making political and military overtures to the United States and its allies.



But Beijings rapprochement with the NLD now threatens the legitimacy of Myanmars generals on issues they have long considered to be within their exclusive purview: foreign policy, border affairs, national security, federalism. So, while improved relations between China and the incoming NLD government could help quiet unrest in border areas, they could also upset the uneasy balance of power among Myanmars elites in Naypyidaw.



Chinas relations with Myanmar have ebbed under President Thein Sein, down to lows not seen since the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, when anti-Chinese riots broke out and Beijing began backing Communist rebels in Myanmar. Ties had then slowly improved because both Deng Xiaoping and the military-led socialist government in Myanmar maintained a neutral foreign policy.



After a military junta took power in 1988, relations graduated to the level of strategic partnership. That the West promptly marginalised the junta and slapped it with sanctions helped matters along, and for the next two decades political, economic and military cooperation between China and Myanmar deepened. Myanmar offered China natural resources and strategic access to Bay of Bengal, among other things. Beijing provided Myanmar with aid, arms and military training, as well as diplomatic cover.



Relations soured again when the Myanmar government started to liberalise in 2010. In 2011, the now-nominally democratic government in Naypyidaw suspended construction on the massive Chinese-funded Myitsone hydro-power dam project. This was largely in response to local opposition to environmental damage and abusive Chinese business practices.



But Beijing saw the move as another sign that the Myanmar government was trying to move away from its zone of influence. It reviewed its Myanmar policy.



In recent years, the Chinese government has courted opposition groups and critics of the Myanmar government  hosting, sometimes even feting, journalists, civil society leaders and representatives from ethnic groups and political parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior NLD officials.



Suu Kyi, for her part, has adopted positions that are generally accommodating to Chinas

interests, including some that seem to cut agai-nst the NLDs stated policies, such as the importance of public buy-in in major foreign projects.



To the dismay of some NLD voters, she has said little to challenge the Myitsone project, and has come out in support of a controversial Chinese copper mine, even after the police cracked down on protesters opposing it. She has praised Chinas One Belt, One Road initiative, a centrepiece of the foreign policy and development strategy of President Xi Jinping.



Although she once pleaded with the international community, Please use your liberty to promote ours, she has been noticeably quiet about human rights issues in China, including the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.



Chinas border trouble



The Chinese government, meanwhile, seems to have been stirring low-level trouble along the border in order to gain leverage and push its interests, both strategic and economic, in Myanmar. Lately, it has increased its patronage of local ethnic armed groups, especially the United Wa State Army and the Kokang army.



Senior Myanmar officials allege that the Kokang insurgency, also in the north, flared up again in 2015 thanks to armament, logistical support and troops provided by China.



The Tatmadaw is now in an awkward position: Any improvement of relations between Beijing and Naypyidaw under an NLD government would be a double-edged sword. Myanmars generals would surely welcome some respite from ethnic strife in the north, but they hardly want to be seen as outsourcing security issues to an elected civilian government.



Which may explain why Tatmadaw has recently taken to describing its fight against ethnic rebel groups as an effort to defend the countrys integrity and sovereignty, rather than as a simple counterinsurgency campaign. By casting local civil conflicts in broader geopolitical terms, it hopes to establish that it is indispensable.



Several political and military officials in Myanmar and intelligence officers in Yunnan have told me they expect Beijing and the NLD to strike some kind of arrangement after the NLD forms a new government in a few months.



China would press ethnic rebel groups to cooperate with the NLD on a national cease-fire accord, handing Aung San Suu Kyi a victory that has eluded the current government. In exchange, the NLD would yield to important Chinese interests in Myanmar, such as major infrastructure and investment projects.



This leaves the Tatmadaw with few cards to play. It cannot try to undermine Suu Kyis legitimacy or win support from the West by stoking anti-Chinese sentiment  at least not without running the risk of triggering an aggressive response from China in the northeast. (Or else it would have to go all out, and invoke the clauses in 2008 Constitution that entitle the military to take power in the case of a national emergency.)



However much the prospect of greater cooperation between the new NLD government and China irks them, Myanmars generals may nonetheless be willing to accept it  so long as civilian authorities consult them first. So far Aung San Suu Kyi has seemed willing to work with the Tatmadaw; she would do well to continue if she hopes for further rapprochement with the Chinese. Peace between Myanmars Lady and its generals runs through Beijing.




This is an interesting moment in relations between the United States and Israel. Call it a poisonous lull. The vitriol around the Iran nuclear deal has subsided. But someth-ing is rotten in the special bond.





The American ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, was recently dismissed as a little Jew boy by a former aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for saying that two standards seem to apply in the way the law is applied to Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and that too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked.



Shapiro was stating the obvious. Israeli settlers are citizens entitled to the full protection of civil law. The 2.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank are not. Their decades-old limbo places them in a permanent state of vulnerability subject to Israeli military law. Israel, in turn, exercises corrosive dominion; hence the vigilantism.



What was interesting was that Shapiro chose to speak out  a reflection of the acute frustration of the Obama administration with Israeli policies that cement what Secretary of State John Kerry has called a one-state reality. That reality is one in which Israel cannot remain a Jewish and democratic state.



The situation was well-described in a Human Rights Watch report published this month: On the one hand, Israel provides settlers, and in many cases settlement businesses, with land, water infrastructure, resources, and financial incentives to encourage the growth of settlements.



On the other hand, Israel confiscates Palestinian land, forcibly displaces Palestinians, restricts their freedom of movement, precludes them from building in all but 1 per cent of the area of the West Bank under Israeli administrative control, and strictly limits their access to water and electricity.



Its not only within the administration that frustration is running high. The American Jewish community has grown more divided. Increasingly, younger Jews are distancing themselves from Israeli policies seen as unjust, unlawful, immoral or self-defeating.



A right-wing Israeli government, including illiberal ministers contemptuous of the Palestinian national movement, makes it harder to put the case for support of Israel. If Netanyahu is now an Israeli moderate, what does that say about the extent of Israeli Messianic nationalism?



Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of The Jewish Week and a strong supporter of Israel, sent me an article he published recently whose first paragraph reads:



Even as Israel endures daily lone wolf attacks from young Palestinians prepared to die for the cause of spilling Jewish blood, American Jewish leaders confide that generating support for the Jewish state is becoming increasingly difficult these days  even within the Jewish community, and especially among younger people.



Clarity in position



To be pro-Israel is being seen as more and more of a right-wing thing, Amna Farooqi, the president of J Street U, the campus branch of J Street, the liberal pro-Israel, pro-peace Jewish lobbying group, told me. Its false. You can be pro-Israel and progressive, but American Jewish leaders must be transparent on the settlements. You cant say you support two states if you dont take a clear position, for example, against funding activities over the Green Line.



Farooqi, a senior at the University of Maryland, is a Pakistani-American Muslim elected to lead J Street U last summer. Raised in an immigrant family critical of Israel, but also in a neighbourhood  Marylands Montgomery County  that was heavily Jewish, she came gradually to a Zionists belief in Israels right to exist combined with the conviction that you cannot support Israel without grappling with the occupation. Keeping quiet will not help.



When she started college, she initially thought of getting involved with Students for Justice in Palestine, but found there was little interest in engaging people with different views. My talking to people who already believed what I believed was not useful, she said. I wanted to go to Hillel and talk to people who did not believe there was an occupation. Two-state advocacy was easier with J Street. Theres no point sitting in an echo chamber.



Farooqis message, through her own many-layered identity in a time of growing polarisation, is important. The current situation is unsustainable. As United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, remarked this month, It is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.



Palestinian leaders also have a responsibility to curb that hate  to cease incitement, hold elections, overcome divisions and abandon their sterile retreat into victimhood. But nothing can excuse Israels relentless pursuit of the very occupation that undermines it.



Close American tax loopholes that benefit settlers. Label West-Bank products so that consumers can make informed decisions. Pressure businesses, as Human Rights Watch puts it, to comply with their own human rights responsibilities by ceasing settlement-related activities.


Labour Minister P T Parameshwar Naik is learnt to have also got a range forest officer transferred for cracking down on illegal sand mining in Kudligi taluk.





The minister has courted controversy for shunting out a woman deputy superintendent of police for not answering his telephone calls.



The principal chief conservator of forests, in his letter dated November 9, 2015, addressed to the additional secretary, forest, ecology and environment, has explained the circumstances which led to the transfer of Duddagi, a range forest officer at Gudekote, Kudligi taluk. He has also referred to a letter dated October 19, 2015, written by Duddagi to the deputy conservator of forests. The letter bears out the fact that sand and quarry mafia had put pressure on the police for registering a false atrocity case against Duddagi.



Deccan Herald has a copy of the letter in which the PCCF had sought job security for Duddagi. He has been serving in Kamalapura range since December 14.



Superintendent of Police R Chetan said that Anupama Shenoy, the DySP who was transferred at the behest of the minister, has gone on sick leave for 15 days from January 24.



Sonia seeks report



All India Congress Committee chairperson Sonia Gandhi is said to have sought a report from Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on the Naiks transfer fiasco. It is also being said that the controversy may prove costly for the Congress in the upcoming elections to the taluk and zilla panchayat. Several organisations have called for a Kudligi bandh on Saturday to protest the ministers conduct.




Human rights activist Teesta Setalvad said human rights would be protected when youth develop a power to raise voice against injustice in the society.





At an interaction with the students organised by the SDM College of Management, in association with Centre for Integrated Learning and Campus Career Academy here on Friday, she said the youth should question the society if they feel it is wrong.



The Constitution has guaranteed freedom of speech and expression, but an attempt is being made to suppress this right. The suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula has clearly highlighted inequality in education sector. The youth should bring about changes in education system and thereby try to open the eyes of the government. In spite of the UK being a capitalist country, the country has given stress on public education system. In India, the preference is given for the private educational institutions.



Answering to a question posed by a student on choice of food, she said that the diversity in food habits is a part of the plurality of cultures and the right to consume food is guaranteed by the Constitution. It is left to the individual to decide what food he wants to consume and not to consume.



Expressing concern over immoral rowdyism (moral policing) that is rampant in Mangaluru, she said it is a part of violation of human rights wherein a sense of insecurity is created in the minds of youth.



Stating that elections are in the hands of money and corporate forces, she said that the textbooks do not have lessons on social movements in the country.



Even after 70 years of independence, we are till in colonial mindset and the discrimination between male and female children has failed go away from our mindset. About 35 per cent of the people are still reeling under poverty, she felt.
Social activist Teesta Setalvad said there is a need to fight against fascist powers in the country.





Delivering a special lecture at a programme organised by the Citizens Forum for Mangalore Development at School of Social Work, Roshni Nilaya, in Mangaluru on Friday, she said the fascists in India have been misusing religion to spread violence. Consolidation of political power and implementation of the agenda of Divide and Rule are among the multiple motives behind the eruption of communal violence in the country. Through this, religion is being misused by political powers and the masses are being mislead, she claimed.



She said We should not be a religion-based nation. Everybody has an equal share of citizenship. But, there are forces which do not believe in the Constitution.



The social networking sites are being used to spread gossips which in turn flare up communal violence. The mainstream media too is biased about political issues, she charged and alleged that one cannot expect TV channels, owned by business tycoons, to discuss about drought and the problem of poor labourers and farmers, she said.



Teesta charged that the police system has been silent over the violence by the majority. Referring to Babri Masjid demolition, she said 3,000 paramilitary men in Ayodhya were mute spectators to the incident and they allowed it to happen.Even today, several unconstitutional acts are being held in the presence of police which is very sad, she said.



Interacting with the students, she said the teaching of Bhagavad Gita in schools reflects religion-based ideology of the government. Sociological history should be taught in schools and not religious history, she said.



Regarding restriction for the entry of women to temples, she said that a movement should emerge from the masses to put an end to customs, which prevents women from exercising their rights.



Amid all this, it is a good development that the young people have started a revolution in the country. The Union governments move of withdrawing scholarships to research scholars is condemnable. No country has surrendered education to the private sector, she said.



Citizens Forum for Mangalore Development Convener Vidya Dinker was present.
The protest by the 108 Arogya Kavacha ambulance drivers and paramedics has not affected the services of ambulances across the State. The KSRTC drivers, drivers from Nagumagu ambulance and drivers of the Health Department are being pressed into service, Health Minister U T Khader said.





Briefing media persons here on Friday, he said, The government has implemented Arogya Kavacha for the benefit of the common man. The drivers and paramedics serving in the ambulance should be disciplined. The proposal to pay for the overtime work of the ambulance drivers and paramedical staff was accepted. There was a delay in submission of audit report conducted by an outside agency, to the Finance Department. The overtime wages will be released to the protesting drivers and paramedics, if they sign the conditions put forth by the Health Department through the management GVK EMRI. Pending salary, dues and overtime wages have been released for those, who have accepted the conditions put forth by the department. However, it is not right on the part of the drivers and paramedics to continue the protest for the existence of their union, he said.



The union has been demanding to pay overtime wages for the additional hours of work to the workers. The government has accepted it and released Rs 6.6 crore for the payment of additional hours of work. In spite of it, they decided to go ahead with the protest, which cannot be tolerated and hence, I decided withhold the released amount, he said.



The department has asked the GVK EMRI to take an undertaking from its staff that they will be maintain discipline, wear white coat, shoe, maintain the ambulances clean and will not enter Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha to press for their demands, the minister said.



If they continue their agitation and try to disrupt the services, then ESMA will be invoked against them and the government will not hesitate to stop the service and take up recruitment within a month to restart the services, he warned.



We dont want to harm the ambulance drivers and paramedics. However, they should also be disciplined while serving the people, the minister said.



Organ transplant



The minister said that the department will initiate a move to bring in changes in the Organ Transplant Act to make organ transplant easy among the living unrelated donors. There are a few hurdles in the organ transplant process, to the needy, which needs to overcome, he added.



He said a meeting of the heads of all medical colleges in Karnataka will be convened in Bengaluru on February 4, to discuss on the adoption of primary health centres (PHCs) by the medical colleges. Owing to loopholes in the system, Arogya Bandhu scheme (under which the State government partners with private hospitals in the running of primary health centres) has been stopped, he noted.



Yettinahole project will be a setback for BJP in the Zilla and Taluk Panchayat elections. The project was envisaged when the BJP was in power in the state, Khader added.
The Akali Dals organised efforts during Punjab crisis resulted in the rise of extremism and even Naxalites used it to expand their influence, President Pranab Mukherjee writes.





In the second volume of his autobiography Turbulent Years: 1980-1996, he complains, that sadly, the Akali Dal also never took a clear position regarding the hijacking of their movement by separatist elements while its leaders often used provocative language very similar to that used by the militants.



He says the Akali Dal in 1980s was not satisfied with its own Anandpur Sahib Resolution that demanded a high degree of autonomy for Punjab. In 1981, its leader Jathedar Jagdev Singh Talwandi called for an autonomous state Khalistan.



This proposed state of Khalistan would have its own constitution and not be governed by the Indian Constitution. In November 1982, the foremost Akali leader Sant Harcharan Singh Longowal, in a new elucidation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, said that a Sikh religious state with all Punjabi-speaking people within it should be created to preserve Sikh tradition and religion, Mukherjee writes.



Amrik Singh, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and others advocated the use of violence for a break-up of the Indian union and the creation of an independent Khalistan, which they claimed was a historical necessity for the Sikh youth, he says.



Clearly, the Akali Dal was constantly changing goalposts and was not clear about whether it wanted autonomy within the Indian union or an independent state, he recalls.



The Akali Dals organised effort to confront the government with its demands soon resulted in the rise of extremism. Both violent action as well as public incitement to violence became commonplace, he writes.



He says the Golden Temple became a safe haven for extremists while deliberate efforts were made to sow bitterness between the Sikh community and followers of other religions.



Had the Punjab movement been limited to the original demands of the Akali Dal, it may have found an easier resolution. But as it progressed, the establishment of an independent Khalistan emerged as its principal goal. It thus became a movement challenging Indias unity, he writes.
The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre to set up an expert panel within four weeks to examine the grievances of nurses employed by the nursing homes and private hospitals.





A three-judge bench presided over by Justice A R Dave also told Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to act on the recommendations of the panel within six months to ensure that nurses were not exploited in the country.



The court directed the Centre to lay down the criteria for their recruitment after a PIL filed by Trained Nurses Association contended that around 3 lakh nurses were forced to fill a bond at the time of employment and they were not paid even the minimum wages under the National Minimum Wage Act, 1948.



An advocate, representing the Indian Nursing Council, submitted that the practice of forcing nurses to execute bonds has been abolished. Mehta, on his part, agreed the grievances made by the petitioner were genuine and could be addressed.



We expect the Central government would look into the grievances after examination of the matter by an expert panel and act on the recommendation within six months, the bench, also comprising Justices Shiva Kirti Singh and Adarsh K Goel, said, disposing of the PIL.
Serena Williams is on course to match Steffi Graf's major haul in the Australian Open on Saturday, but the German seventh seed Angelique Kerber will be hoping she can prevent the American from emulating her idol while carving her own piece of history.





The 34-year-old world number one is a raging hot favourite to beat the first-time finalist on Rod Laver Arena, a victory that would move the American to 22 Grand Slam singles titles, the same as Graf and a record for the Open era.



Australia's Margaret Court holds the overall record with 24.

Williams had the opportunity to join Graf last year at the US Open, victory at which would have also given her a calendar year Grand Slam, the first since Graf in 1988.



Italy's Roberta Vinci, however, knocked out the world number one in the semifinals, which also ended the American's year.



That loss in New York has obviously resonated in her preparations for Melbourne Park, where she has appeared completely focussed since a testing first round clash with Italy's Camila Giorgi.



She has not dropped a set at all and conceded just 17 games since the Giorgi clash and battered the five-times Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova 6-4 6-1 in the quarterfinals and fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska 6-0, 6-4 in the semifinals.



"I would say this is probably the best slam I've played in a year, and I've won a lot in a year," Williams told reporters on Friday. "Even if I don't win, I really can take away that I've been really consistent and I want to continue that."



Williams and Kerber have met six times, with the American winning five, though Kerber's 6-4 6-4 victory in Cincinnati in 2012 was one she would not forget.



"I thought she played unbelievable in that match," Williams said. "I think from then on out I've been really focused that she's someone that I, and everyone, has to take very seriously."



Kerber will enter her first Grand Slam final with immense confidence, believing a 'nothing to lose' attitude had got her this far.



It was that attitude that helped her overturn a 2-5 second set deficit in her quarterfinal against Victoria Azarenka and gave her a first win over the Belarusian in their seventh match.



"'Nothing to lose' means I can go out there and try to play like I'm playing, without pressure," the 28-year-old said. "I think most will say, 'okay, Serena will win'. But I don't have so much pressure like she has. I know I can lose the match. That's why I'm going out there to try to win it."



Kerber's confidence comes from four years of consistent play, in which she has consolidated a top-10 ranking, won seven tournaments and made the WTA Finals three times.




The sensational kidnapping case, in which a Congress MLA was charged with abduction of an 18-year-old girl, took an interesting twist on Friday when the girl appeared before the Senior SP (SSP) of Patna, Manu Maharaj, and told him that she had married Pankaj, the driver of the legislator.





The girl from Masaurhi admitted that she was having an affair with Pankaj for the last two years. Since my father had finalised my wedding with a probationary officer (PO), I had no option other than to run away from my home with Pankaj, she said.



The girl said the MLA had nothing to do with her elopement, although the FIR lodged by her father on Friday mentioned that the Congress legislator abducted his daughter in a Scorpio.



I dont even know the MLA. I only know Pankaj, his driver, with whom I have wedded now, the girl made it clear that her affair has now culminated in marriage. I was not safe at my parents place, as my father would have got me married to a bank official.



Meanwhile, the Patna SSP said no case would be lodged against the MLA as it appears to be not a case of kidnapping. The JD(U), however, demanded action against the Congress legislator for his role in the elopementcase.
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy got a temporary relief on Friday when the High Court suspended for two months a vigilance court order directing a probe and FIR against him in the solar scam case.





The relief came even as key accused in the case, Saritha S Nair, targeted the chief ministers son with fresh allegations.



The vigilance court had, on Thursday, ordered a probe against Chandy, Power Minister Aryadan Mohammed and others based on a petition by social activist P D Joseph in the wake of Sarithas allegations.



Chandy and Mohammed had approached the Kerala High Court with private petitions challenging the order.



While ordering the suspension, High Court judge P Ubaid slammed the irresponsible action of Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge (Vigilance) in Thrissur S S Vasan.



The vigilance courts hasty order had run into criticism by senior Congress leaders who demanded a probe into a conspiracy. Saritha had told the Sivarajan Commission, which is probing the fraud, that she paid Rs 1.9 crore to Chandy and Rs 40 lakh to Mohammed as bribe.



Finding serious faults in the vigilance court order, the high court averred that the vigilance judge, who said that it is acting as a post office, has not understood the law as well as the powers of the Vigilance Court.

Noting that the complaint filed before the Vigilance Court does not contain the necessary material, the high court observed that the Vigilance Court should not have passed the order. If this order is allowed to stand, that may lead to untoward consequences, the high court said.



The high court said a serious examination is necessary as the matter involves question of law regarding sanction for registration of crime under Prevention of Corruption Act and the nature and extent of the jurisdiction of Vigilance Court.



Reacting to the high court stay, Chandy said truth would prevail and reiterated that the allegations against him were baseless. Right from the beginning, these allegations were being made without even a sheet of paper as evidence. A lobby of bar owners miffed with the governments liquor policy has joined hands with the accused in this shameful conspiracy, he told reporters.



Chandy said the political situation in the state was evolving. The crisis on Thursday was resolved by an unprecedented high court order, he said.



The chief minister reiterated that he had extended no favour to the accused and had come to know of their fraudulent business only after their arrest.



The Congress party, despite voices of criticism from the I faction of the party, rallied behind Chandy after the high court order. Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president V M Sudheeran said in Alappuzha that the opposition CPMs efforts to back conspirators in the case were condemnable.



Meanwhile, Saritha, during her deposition before the judicial commission probing the scam, said on Friday that the chief minister had discussed with her plans for a renewable energy firm with his son, Chandy Oommen, at the helm.



She said the chief ministers son was involved with another woman accused in the solar fraud. She did not disclose the name of the woman but said former Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan was in possession of digital evidence, seized after the womans arrest. Radhakrishnan has denied the charge.
Three Indian sympathisers of Islamic State (IS), including one from Karnataka, were arrested here after they were deported from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on charges of conspiring to carry out terror attacks in India and other countries.





The arrested youths, Adnan Hussain, Mohammad Farhan and Sheikh Azhar Al Islam are from Karnataka, Maharashtra and Jammu & Kashmir respectively. The NIA arrested them late on Friday after intense interrogation, sources said.



They were detained soon after they landed in Delhi on Thursday night. Investigators suspect that these youth, along with their other unknown associates, were involved in a conspiracy to identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train youths in India and other countries to plan and execute terror strikes in India and abroad.



The youth are believed to be part of the Abu Dhabi module of IS, investigators claimed. The NIA has registered a case under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, including those related to organising training camps and for recruiting people for acts of terror. They will be produced before an NIA special court on Saturday.



This is not the first time the UAE is deporting Indians who are suspected to have links with the IS. In September, the UAE had deported four Indians. It had also deported Afsha Jabeen alias Nicky Joseph, who is claimed to have been involved in recruiting youths for IS online.



Indian intelligence agencies has reports of 23 Indians, including some former Indian Mujahideen terrorists, on joining IS. Six of them have been killed in IS-held areas in Iraq and Syria. Security agencies picked up more than a dozen people last week on charges of trying to launch terror strikes.
The Electricite de France is now likely to move fast to secure clearance of Indias nuclear watchdog for the design of the European Pressurized Reactor, as six such reactors are likely to be installed at the proposed nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.





With Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande setting a timeline to start construction of the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant; the EDF and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) are also likely to speed up negotiations for the techno-commercial agreements for the six reactors.



The goal in the next few months is to continue with the work initiated by Areva and NPCIL in April 2015 to secure certification for the EPR reactor in India from the Indian safety authorities and finalise the economic and financial conditions and the technical specifications of the project, supervised by the Indian atomic organization DAE (Department of Atomic Energy), the EDF, which is mostly owned by the French government, said in a statement.



French energy major Areva and NPCIL signed a pre-engineering agreement for the power plant at Jaitapur during Modis visit to Paris in April last year.
The Congress is planning to launch a national campaign against the Modi government for diluting forest laws. The party claims that dilution of laws has snatched away the rights of tribals across the country.





Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will spearhead the year-long campaign against the Centres attempts to weaken UPAs flagship Forest Rights Act (FRA) that had empowered tribal hamlets by giving them rights to sell forest produce.



The FRA campaign will be on the lines of the nationwide protest launched against the amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, which were later shelved by the Modi government. Senior Congress spokesman Jairam Ramesh accused the Modi government of issuing guidelines to privatise degraded forests, diverting forest lands without consent of village councils for various projects and carrying out massive plantation in tribal lands.



These moves have greatly affected the early gains made by the Forest Rights Act in empowering the tribals and even halted the process of implementation in many states, said Ramesh, who played a key role in enacting the law during UPA-I.



Rahul will also commemorate 10 years of another UPA flagship initiative  the rural jobs scheme NREGA  by visitng a village in Anantpur district of Telangana where it was launched by the then prime minister Manmohan Singh.
The new policy on Kannada films requires multiplexes to fix a uniform ticket price and compulsorily screen Kannada films at prime time, twice a day.





The 14-member committee, headed by filmmaker and chairman of the Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy S V Rajendra Singh Babu, is giving final touches to the comprehensive policy that will be valid for five years. The report will be submitted to the State government by February-end.



The panel, which studied Tamil Nadus policy on uniform ticket prices in multiplexes, has suggested fixing an upper limit of Rs 120 per ticket. Currently, multiplexes charge arbitrarily depending on the response to a particular film.



Tickets are particularly expensive on weekends.

Similarly, the panel has also recommended two shows of Kannada films every day in all the multiplexes or 124 shows a year. Neighbouring Maharashtra introduced a similar policy in 2015.



Subsidy



To encourage people to build at least 300 single-screen cinemas across the State to exclusively exhibit Kannada films, the panel suggested a government subsidy of Rs 50 lakh a cinema. These cinemas will have to screen just Kannada films for at least three years. They could be used for screening award-winning Kannada films too, Babu told Deccan Herald.



The biggest complaint from filmmakers today is lack of screens to exhibit their films. If we have 300 cinemas, we can accommodate every film, he said.



Revamping of norms



Besides, the committee has recommended revamping subsidy norms for films to prevent misuse and corruption, welfare measures for film labourers, to hire a professional of international repute to create a comprehensive film city at Mysuru in addition to looking into all aspects of improving the Kannada film industry to make it competitive and provide a level playing field with other language films in the State.



The committee was set up by the State government on the recommendation of Babu during the previous edition of Bengaluru International Film Festival.



Actors Jayamala Ramachandra, Raghavendra Rajkumar, Bharathi Vishnuvardhan, producers Rockline Venkatesh and Muniratna, exhibitor K V Chandrashekhar and director Girish Kasaravalli were also on the panel besides the presidents of the Karnataka Film Chamber and Commerce and the exhibitors association.



The previous committee, headed by V N Subba Rao, had submitted its report in 1994.



Key recommendations



To fix a uniform upper ticket price at Rs 120 in all multiplexes.

To make it compulsory for multiplexes to screen two Kannada films every day.

To encourage building 300 exclusive single-screen cinemas by extending a subsidy to exclusively exhibit Kannada films.

To revamp subsidy norms for films to prevent misuse and corruption.



Multiplex complex



The government is in the process of finalising a multiplex complex at the proposed Bangalore International Convention Centre near Kempegowda International Airport. There will be at least six multiplex screens at the proposed centre.



We have floated tenders and March 31 is the last date. It will have a 6,000-seat convention centre, two hotels, an exhibition centre and open spaces, Vandita Sharma, additional chief secretary Infrastructure Development Department, told Deccan Herald.

The government is willing to provide an additional 5 to 10 acres land to set up a multiplex and shopping centre to make it more viable, she said.






After finding three men guilty of raping and murdering a 21-year-old girl at Kamduni in 2013, the city court judge reserved announcing the quantum of punishment after studying submission of the defence lawyer.





The council of Ansar Ali, one of the defendants, argued in a submission to District and Sessions Judge Sanchita Sarkar that he should be given life term over death sentence quoting precedents. Ansar, along with Saiful Ali, and Aminul Ali, have been found guilty of gang rape and murder under Sections 376(d), 302 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code.



Citing a Supreme Court judgement that allowed a defendents lawyer to argue over the quantum of sentence if it were a choice between life term and capital punishment, Ansars lawyer also submitted several instances where death sentences were commuted to life. Judge Sarkar would study the submission and hear the case again from 11 am onwards on Saturday, after which she would likely pronounce the quantum of punishment.



While Ansar, Saiful and Aminul can be sentenced to death under law, three others  Imanul Islam, Aminul Islam and Bhola Naskar  have been found guilty of gang rape, criminal conspiracy, and causing disappearance of evidence. The latter three are most likely to receive a life term.



Ansars lawyer also argued that his crime is not the rarest of rare cases that qualifies for a death sentence. The court found the six men guilty of gang-raping the 21-year-old girl from Kamduni in North 24 Parganas, around 20 Km from Kolkata, on June 7, 2013.



The men took the girl to an abandoned farmhouse as she was returning home from college, where they raped her, tore her legs up to the navel, slit her throat and dumped her body in a nearby field.



The defendants lawyers stated that they will appeal before the Calcutta High Court and challenge the city sessions courts verdict.



Claiming Ansar to be innocent, his brother Arshad told reporters, My brother has definitely been framed. May be its a political conspiracy or some kind of vendetta, but he didnt kill anybody.



The victims family expressed dissatisfaction with the acquittal of two other accused on Thursday due to lack of evidence.
The High Court on Friday expressed concern over the large number of vacancies in Bengaluru Police.





While hearing a petition, Justice A N Venugopala Gowda observed that the City's population is increasing due to the rapid urbanisation, and so is the crime rate.



The bench asked the Police department as to how they were planning to handle the situation in future, if 25 per cent of posts are lying vacant. The bench said that even if the department promised to fill the posts in the next 9-10 months, there will be many retirements, which again will create vacancies.



Lack of manpower in the department is having adverse effect on society. Due to lack of police personnel, there is a delay in the investigation and the prosecution, which is adding to pendency in various courts.



The court further observed that there is manpower shortage in the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), again delaying investigations.



The bench also observed that B report being filed in most of the cases is also disturbing. There is a lack of co-ordination among the police department, the office of the State Public Prosecutor and the office of the Advocate General, the judge rued.



The affidavit filed by Raghavendra Auradkar, ADGP (Recruitment) stated that the total sanctioned strength in police department in the State is 99,180 while the actual strength is 73,440. So, 25,749 posts lying vacant. The affidavit further stated that in 2015-2016, about 2,442 posts will be filled and in 2016-2017, nearly 1,365 posts will be filled.



The bench said that the court would monitor recruitment process for the time being. The court directed the City Police Commissioner to hold meetings with the Deputy Commissioners of Police of various divisions to discuss the pendency of cases at various police stations, and submit a report in the next hearing on March 9.
The police department has issued an order banning movement of trucks in the central parts of the City between February 1 and 5 for Invest Karnataka 2016, a global investors meet to be held at the Palace Grounds between February 3 and 5.





This overrides the previous decision to ban trucks for 10 days from February 1 to 10.



The police have said the travel and transport for delegates has to be smooth from Kempegowda International Airport to the City centre and within the City when they travel to their hotels and visit different places of tourist interest. To ensure smooth flow of traffic for them, trucks will be banned between 6 am and 10 pm for the five days.



The police have invoked different Sections of the Indian Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and the Karnataka Traffic Control Act, 1960 that empower the police commissioner to take measures for security for a public event like Invest Karnataka.



Lorry Owners and Agents Association president G R Shanmugappa said the order was unacceptable as it would cause losses in lakhs. Nearly 2,500 to 3,000 truck loads of goods come to Bengaluru, while nearly 500 loads go out of City every day.



The loaded lorries which have departed from cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai are on their way to City. How can we stop them? We give 21 days notice when we go on strike, but the police have taken a decision on their own without due notice and without consulting us. This is not acceptable. We will see what happens over the next few days, he said.
The second edition of the Young Chef Olympiad 2016 saw student chefs from across the globe taking part in the first round of the culinary competition that was held in the City on Friday.



The olympiad, hosted by the International Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM), was kick-started on January 28 at Delhi with chefs from 25 countries taking part in the first round.



On Friday, chefs from 12 countries took part in the event held in the City and remaining 13 took part in the event at Mumbai.



The temperature rose by a couple of degrees as all the student chefs cooked up a storm and presented their culinary creations to the judges at the Royal Orchid Hotel on Old Airport Road.



Chefs from Malaysia, Australia, Nepal, Philippines, Mauritius, Mexico, Oman, Cambodia among others participated in the contest.



The student chefs were monitored by an esteemed panel of judges comprising Chef Surjan Singh Jolly, Chef Raymound Pardiwala, Chef Andreas Muller, Chef Sandip Narang, Chef Martin Kindleysides, Chef Zafar Ali and Chef Abhijit Saha.

Director of IIHM Bangalore, Shalini Charles, who was present said, The event is a fabulous opportunity for all our students and will connect young chefs globally, bringing cultures and cuisines together. Hosting the 12 countries has been an exhilarating experience. Discovering new talent and dishes put together by young creative culinary minds from across the world has made this a fantastic day in culinary art on a global level today.



Supported by the Ministry of Tourism, the event will go on till February 1, with finals to be held at Kolkata, followed by the award ceremony. A total of 50 top student-chefs from 50 countries will be fighting it out for the global grand title and a cash prize of $10,000.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and State Congress president G Parameshwara will launch the partys campaign for the byelection to the Hebbal Assembly constituency at Vishwanatha Nagenahalli near Hebbal flyover on Sunday morning.





The two leaders are scheduled to jointly campaign for the party candidate C K Abdul Rahaman Sharief through the day, covering all the nine BBMP wards in the constituency.



A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting chaired by Parameshwara at the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) office on Friday.



KPCC general secretary N S Boseraju said the party had chalked out booth-level plans for the bypoll. Every polling booth in the constituency will be managed by either a legislator or a senior leader.



They will, in turn, report to the ministers in charge of the wards. All the legislators and leaders who have been assigned with specific responsibility have been asked to camp in the constituency till the elections are over, he said.



Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Parameshwara said the party would not tolerate anti-party activities and strict action would be taken against those who work against the party candidate.



There are certain people within the party who want our candidate not to win. The party high command has directed the State unit to take action against such persons without any hesitation, he said.



Several senior leaders of the party, including AlI India Congress Committee secretary Chella Kumar, C K Jaffer Sharief, Cabinet ministers from Bengaluru and Energy Minister D K Shivakumar attended the meeting. Except independent MLC Byrathi Suresh, almost all the leaders who had aspired to contest the bypoll had participated.



Gowda hits back



Elsewhere, countering C K Jaffer Shariefs statement that there were no talks between him and the JD(S), the regional party supremo H D Deve Gowda hit back at the former for yet again breaking his word.



The Congress had finalised Byrathi Sureshs candidature. The selection committee of the Congress too had not sent Rahaman Shariefs name to the high command. Though I had said that JD(S) was in no position to finance a candidate to contest in Hebbal, after realising that there are substantial minority votes in the constituency, I decided to field a Muslim candidate, Gowda said.



We waited till the last minute for Rahaman to join the JD(S), as Jaffer Sharief had met the party State president H D Kumaraswamy in this regard. On an earlier occasion too, Jaffer Sharief had broken his word. After we fielded a Muslim candidate, the Congress announced Rahamans candidature. Jaffer Sharief has done this to split Muslim votes in the constituency, the JD(S) leader said.
The Citys potholes that have claimed lives and crippled motorists, could also be at the centre of another scam. Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike engineers are accused of looting public money using the Python-5000 pothole filling machine.





An investigation by the Technical Vigilance Cell under Commissioner (TVCC) of the BBMP unearthed financial irregularities of Rs 1.43 crore. The scale of the scam could have gone up to Rs 6.05 crore had the bills been cleared and payments made to the contractor.



The pothole filling job was divided into six packages but details provided to the TVCC were of five packages comprising 92 roads in the City. The total length of the road where potholes were filled was 557 km.



Following public outcry against potholes, the BBMP had decided to rope in an agency to fill potholes using the Python-5000 machine. However, after media reports about large-scale irregularities in the work, Mayor B N Manjunath Reddy directed the TVCC to probe it.



The report said bills were claimed even for roads where work was not done and the length of roads mentioned in the bill was also doubtful. Tenders were invited without preparing an estimate of the work, the report said. Because of this, the estimated cost was not fixed, leading to a financial loss to the Palike.



The two firms which bid for the work were PJB Engineers Limited and American Technologies. However, their Evaluation Report is missing from the records.



The Palike engineers did not have records to show whether they entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) or sought any undertaking from the contractor, says the TVCC report.



There were also no records about the office, infrastructure and manpower of the contractors. As all the contracts under the six packages were given to American Technologies and there are no records to show that it has deposited the Line of Credit worth Rs 15 crore to carry out the work, the report said.



The report added that bills were claimed for filling potholes on roads that were already tarred. As the work was carried out by the pothole filling machine, there were no records to show the temperature of the bitumen at the time of filling potholes.



The TVCC has recommended action against executive engineers, assistant executive engineers and assistant engineers for dereliction of duty.
Chasing alleged kickbacks involving Karnataka ministers and officials in awarding electrical contracts in electricity supply companies (Escoms), officials of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) have begun searching houses of the close confidants of politicians who are suspected to have been benefited.





In one such raid, six officials including a woman have been searching the flat of a businessman in Malleswaram in Bengaluru for the last two days. The search operation began on Thursday morning. It is still going on, a source told Deccan Herald.



The officials also took the businessman out to search his other properties and check lockers in a few banks, the source added. He was later brought back to the flat where the search continued.



The businessman with interests in running clubs in casinos in Goa and Sri Lanka is said to be one of the confidants of a senior minister. He is also said to be close to another minister from Bengaluru and a reformed don. Besides casinos, he is said to have business interests in real estate.



It is, however, unclear what was found in his flat. There are unconfirmed reports that around Rs seven crore in cash and a few documents were seized.



Income Tax officials who raided a few electrical contractors in Bengaluru a few days ago had reportedly laid their hands on a document which contained a list of ministers and officials who were bribed in lieu of the contracts awarded.



There were also reports that I-T officials had sent a dossier to the CBDT on ministers whose names were found in a contractors list for further action.



Just the beginning



Another source said that Thursdays raid on the Malleswaram flat is the beginning of several such raids in the coming days as a few ministers and officials are under the I-T scanner.



Efforts to contact CBDT member (Investigation) Sushil Chandra at his office in Delhi didnt yield results as he was busy attending meetings, according to his personal staff.



The CBDT spokesperson, Shefali Shah, refused to comment on a dossier sent on ministers or whether they are under the scanner. We dont comment on any individual cases or speak on raids, she said.
On the strength of a 4-3 comeback victory over the Los Angeles Kings at the Staples Center Wednesday night, the Avalanche entered the all-star break in what would be the Western Conferences first of two wild-card spots  one point ahead of the Nashville Predators and two up on the Minnesota Wild.

Its likely that neither Cam Newton nor Peyton Manning stayed up to watch the nationally televised Avalanche comeback unfold on NBC Sports, but those who tuned in and stuck with it considered it a surprising turnaround after Colorado trailed 2-0 and also 3-2.

Calvin Pickard  temporarily the Avs No. 1 goaltender while Semyon Varlamov was tied up in the Denver District Court trial for his former girlfriends suit against him  was resilient too, finishing with 35 saves.

Avs Mailbag: Pose a question for Terry Frei, Mike Chambers

This was an emotional one, said Avalanche captain Gabe Landeskog, who scored twice against the Kings. Some games arent and some games are, and this definitely was an emotional one, especially coming off of a tough loss (to San Jose). We wanted to bounce back.

Every time you go into a break like this, the last one is always fresh on everybodys mind and you want to build off of that and feel good about yourself during the break.

So at least one mission has been accomplished in the wake of Colorados second consecutive slow start.

Although the Avalanche has played three more games than the Wild, Colorado essentially has played its way back into control of its destiny, and it also doesnt hurt that it likely would win any regulation and overtime win (ROW) tiebreaker.

Barring late injury replacements, Matt Duchene will be the only Avalanche player on the Central Division team at the all-star three-on-three tournament in Nashville Sunday. For the rest, it will be time off before a Monday afternoon practice and a Tuesday night home game against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Many Avalanche players scattered from Los Angeles, while others returned to Denver on the teams chartered flight. Roy testified at the Varlamov trial on Thursday.

Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or @tfrei
Denver-based Frontier Airlines will give a credit for a future flight to pregnant women and their traveling companions if they booked a trip to a place dealing with an outbreak of Zika virus.

To qualify, a customer needs to provide a doctors note, Frontier spokesman Jim Faulkner said. He said that so far, the airline has received only a few calls about the virus.

From Denver International Airport, travelers can fly to Cancun, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. The airline also has routes from other cities to Jamaica and Dominican Republic. The virus has been detected in Mexico and Dominican Republic.

Health officials say most people exposed to Zika suffer only mild symptoms, the risk is far greater for pregnant women. Brazilian officials have linked the mosquito-borne illness to babies born with small or deformed heads.

Among other airlines:

 United Airlines and American Airlines have been giving some passengers going to affected areas the chance to delay their trip or get a refund.

 A JetBlue Airways spokesman said the airline would give refunds or rebook passengers concerned about traveling to areas affected by the virus.

 Delta Air Lines posted a travel advisory on its website that passengers may qualify for a refund or change in itinerary if they contact the airline by Feb. 29.

 Spirit Airlines will refund or rebook customers who are pregnant or traveling with a pregnant woman to the affected regions, a spokesman said.

 Southwest Airlines is sticking to its regular policy of letting customers who cancel ahead of time use their ticket value on another trip.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
To some people, Emily Griffith is just a name on a school in downtown Denver: the Emily Griffith Technical College, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

But to others, shes a visionary whose legacy speaks to one of the most critical issues of modern times.

So many candidates are bashing immigrants now, said Colorado historian Tom Noel. Her approach was completely different. She wanted to take them in, teach them English and give them job skills.

She succeeded despite a growing anti-immigration movement around the country during her era. Between 1900 and 1915, more than 15 million immigrants arrived in America, about the same number that had arrived over the previous four decades.

And World War I fueled a fear of German-Americans, stoked by President Woodrow Wilsons 1915 annual message to Congress, when he warned that some immigrants were creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy who must be crushed out.

But Griffith believed in giving opportunity to the new Americans.

Her message for us today is that immigrants should be educated and valued as citizens, not persecuted or sent back or put in these legal limbos that so many are in today, Noel said.

Since Griffith opened her Opportunity School, more than 2 million have received an education there. Last year, students from 94 countries speaking 72 languages attended the school, which offers more than 500 courses and 40 career-training certificate programs.

Celebrations of the schools centennial will be held throughout the year, kicking off with a party at History Colorado on Feb. 12 to honor Griffith, with scenes from her life woven into theatrical vignettes from the Curious Theatre Company.

As a teacher in the West, she was seeing all the challenges that immigrants faced with language and poverty and the rough conditions, said Emily Dendinger, the theaters playwright in residence who wrote the material. It wasnt just the students who were ignorant but their parents as well. She was discovering what her purpose could be.

As a writer, Dendinger was particularly intrigued by some of the mystery that shrouds Griffiths life, from why she never married to who killed her. After she retired in 1933, she moved with her sister to a cabin near Denver, and they were killed in 1947.

She was slain execution-style, shot in the back of the head while kneeling and left in her own blood, said historian Debra Faulkner in her biography Touching Tomorrow: The Emily Griffith Story.

The murder remains unsolved.

Education crusader

Born shortly after the Civil War, in 1868, Griffith grew into a girl who helped carry the burdens of her family.

Her father, Andew, was an itinerant missionary who made little money, and her mother, Martha, suffered from poor health.

They moved their family of three children from Cincinnati to homestead in Nebraska when Emily was a teenager.

At 16, she got a job as a teacher in a sod schoolhouse on the prairie. Most homesteaders were immigrants, including Germans, Swedes, Bohemians and Norwegians.

She had a one-room schoolhouse, and it was customary for teachers to board around, Faulkner said.

She lived for two weeks at a time with the families of her students, where she saw that most adults struggled, unable to speak English and lacking basic education.

That experience sparked her idea of creating a place where people of all ages could learn the skills they needed to thrive in life  a dream that she carried to Denver when her family moved to Colorado in 1894.

She found work as a substitute teacher and completed studies for teacher certification that allowed her to get a job as a full-time teacher at Central School in Auraria, one of Denvers poorest neighborhoods.

Over time, she rose in the field of education, working as deputy state superintendent of schools in the newly constructed state Capitol and teaching in places where she was most needed, like the Twenty-fourth Street School in Five Points, where she saw the results of poverty  from hunger to crime  manifesting in her students families.

Believing education offered a way out, she also taught night classes for adults, including immigrants from Russia, Bulgaria, China, Japan and Finland.

She also started crusading for something that was revolutionary at the time: a free public school for people of all ages that would offer basic adult education, immigrant education and vocational training.

Traveling the state, talking to mens clubs and womens clubs, she made the economic case that education for people on the lowest rung of the social ladder eventually would lift the entire community.

By May 1916 the Denver school board gave approval, and the Emily Griffith Opportunity School opened four months later at 13th and Welton streets.

Griffith expected about 200 students, but more than 1,400 people showed up to enroll in the first week, including adults who wanted to finish eighth grade, immigrants intent upon passing citizenship tests and young people who wanted to apprentice in trades ranging from automotive mechanics to millinery, cooking and carpentry.

News of her Opportunity School spread around the world, and she received offers from the governments of Russia, Greece, Germany and England to visit their countries and help create similar schools  but she preferred to stay in Denver helping her students.

In 1946, in her retirement years, she attended a party in her honor at the Denver Kiwanis Club where guests included the mayor, bank presidents and attorneys.

As Faulkner writes in Griffiths biography, people such as Frederick Emmerich of the U.S. Department of Immigration gave her high praise.

Were I ever called upon to choose the one person of my acquaintance whom I considered as having rendered the most unselfish and uplifting service toward the welfare of her fellow man, he said, my decision would unhesitatingly be  Emily Griffith.

Faulkner, who spent five years digging through archives to weave together the forgotten history of Griffiths life, believes her legacy is selflessness.

She was one of those rare people who truly lived for others, devoting herself to improving their lives.

Colleen OConnor: coconnor@denverpost.com

Emily Griffith 100th anniversary

The documentary Miss Opportunity: The Life and Times of Emily Griffith, airs at 7 p.m. tonight on Rocky Mountain PBS Colorado Experience.

The Party of the Century, honoring Emily Griffith, will be at History Colorado from 7-11 p.m. Feb. 12. Tickets are $100 each. To order, go to egfoundation.org/partyofthectury

The multimedia exhibit For All Who Wish to Learn will be held on the fifth floor of the Denver Public Library from August through December.

The Emily Griffith Foundation will convene the Touching Tomorrow Symposium on Nov. 11 and 12 to examine the impact of workforce education on the middle class and the American economy.

For more details, visit egfoundation.org
The risk of depression falls during the second decade following a type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes diagnosis, but then rapidly increases, according to Australian researchers.

In this new study, researchers from the School of Psychiatry % Clinical Neurosciences, University of Western Australia, examined if diabetes and the duration of diabetes causes depression in later life, either directly or indirectly.

They conducted a cross-sectional, community study of 5462 men aged between 70 and 89 years. The presence and duration of diabetes was established by self-reported history, use of insulin or drugs that can cause hypoglycemia or fasting glucose levels above 7 mmol/l. No differentiation was made between type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Current depression was identified using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), while men with ever depression were either currently depressed or had reported treatment for past depression.

Diabetes was associated with an increased risk of both ever depression and current depression, but this link was J-shaped. The risk of current depression was higher in the first and third decades of diabetes duration, but lower in the second. These findings were in comparison to older men who did not have diabetes.

However, the strength of the relationship was reduced when factors such as age, education, smoking history and frailty were taken into account.

The researchers suggested that this J-shaped relationship could indicate that patients initially experience mental health benefits from medication and acceptance of their diabetes.

Dr. Dimitry S Davydown, MD, MPH, University of Washington School of Medicine, who wasnt involved in the study, commented: Theres lots of research thats previously found, essentially, that diabetes and depression share a bidirectional relationship, meaning that depression earlier in life raises your risk of a lot of things: not exercising, smoking, and obesity and [factors]that lead to developing diabetes. Conversely, diabetes and diabetes-related complications can raise your risk of developing depression.

Davydow added that a limitation of the study was that depression and diabetes were assessed at a single point in time. This increased the risk of recall bias when participants were asked about prior depression.

The researchers concluded: The introduction of strategies that are effective at decreasing diabetes-related complications may also contribute to decrease the risk of depression among older men.

The study was published online in Maturitas.
Low cognitive function, which is associated with type 2 diabetes and other medical conditions, may be genetically linked to health, according to new research.

An international research team from the UK, US and Germany also predicted that healthy individuals with lower cognitive function and lower educational attainment could be at risk of type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease or high blood pressure.

What is cognitive function?

Cognitive function is the process of perceiving or comprehending ideas. Type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes are associated with cognitive impairment, and while it doesnt mean everyone with diabetes will have lower cognitive ability, the risk is statistically higher compared to someone without diabetes.

Lower cognitive function is also linked with Alzheimers disease, schizophrenia and autism. In some instances, medical conditions can lead to cognitive impairment, but lower cognitive function in early life can indicate an increased risk for several mental and physical conditions in adulthood.

The research team, led by the University of Edinburgh, evaluated data from the UK Biobank of roughly 10,000 people. Their aim was to see if a genetic link could be identified between cognitive function  which has shown signs of heritability in previous studies  and physical and mental illness.

Mental test data, such as reaction time, memory and verbal-numerical reasoning was used to assess the participants cognitive level. This was then compared to 22 health indicators, including type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, blood pressure and Alzheimers; and the results of their total genetic content. Educational attainment was also measured.

Genetic overlap

An overlap was observed between genetic traits related to certain diseases and those that related to thinking skills. Scores on educational attainment also had a significant genetic correlation with 14 out of 22 health-related traits.

The researchers believe that specific genes may contribute to both cognitive and health-related traits, with data collected from previous studies used to confirm the findings.

Co-author Dr. Stuart Ritchie explained to Medical News Today: We found that there are many overlaps: to take one example, genes related to being taller are also related to obtaining a college or university degree. [] People with more genes linked to cardiovascular disease tended to have lower reasoning ability. []

Interestingly, some results were in the opposite direction: people with more genes related to autism (but mostly not with a diagnosis of autism) had a slight tendency towards higher reasoning scores and were more likely to have a degree.

The authors added that other possible interactions could include the use of medication to treat disorders, and while the impact of genetic variants could be associated with health conditions on cognitive ability, cognitive factors could also affect health, by guiding lifestyle choices, for example.

The findings were published in Molecular Psychiatry.
Livalo (market name of pitavastatin) was linked to lower HbA1c levels in people with type 2 diabetes, according to new research.

The study, conducted by researchers at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University in Taoyua, Taiwa, examined the effects of pitavastatin in both statin-naive participants (those who had never undergone any form of statin treatment) and participants who had been prescribed atorvastatin.

Pitavastatin is used to lower high levels of bad low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and increase levels of good high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

How was the study conducted?

The researchers examined data from 340 participants, all of whom had type 2 diabetes. 96 of the participants were treated with pitavastatin; 100 patients who had been prescribed atorvastatin switched to pitavastatin; and 144 participants carried on taking atorvastatin.

They found that participants who had never taken statins before pitavastatin treatment had lower HbA1c levels after six months. In the group that switched from atorvastati, the effect was even more pronounced. Among those with the worst blood glucose control, HbA1c fell from 8.1 per cent to 7.4 per cent, and 9.7 per cent to 9.0 per cent respectively.

A decrement of 0.7 per cent in HbA1c just by changing from one statin to another statin of the same category of potency is cost-effective, Brend Ray-Sea Hsu, MD, PhD, of the department of internal medicine at Chang Gung University in Taoyua, Taiwa, told Endocrine Today. We should consider the effect of different statins on glycemic control and change the statin when it is indicated before we enforce anti-diabetic agents in dyslipidemic patients with poorly-controlled diabetes. Further large-scale trials are warranted to assess the long-term outcomes of different statin treatment in patients with diabetes dyslipidemia.

Diabetes and statin treatment: a controversial topic

Statins are commonly prescribed to people with diabetes because of the higher risk of heart disease associated with the condition. Taken alongside careful blood glucose control management, statin supporters argue that statins cut cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease or heart attack.

However, research shows that only around one per cent of people who take statins will actually benefit in terms of lowering their risk of heart disease. Many people feel that because of this low success rate, and because of the significant body of research that suggests that statin treatment increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, statins should be prescribed on a much less frequent basis than they currently are.

The findings are published in the Journal of Diabetes Investigation.
Apple may have filed an application with the Government of India for the import and sale of refurbished iPhones in India and may subsequently set up a facility to renovate used mobiles

Apple may have filed an application with the Government of India for the import and sale of refurbished iPhones in the country. In addition, it may also be planning to set up a facility in the country that will renovate used mobiles shipped from China. According to a report by the Indian Express, the company has stated in its application, Apple would like to seek the governments approval to import and sell its certified pre-owned iPhones in India; manufacture and sell its certified pre-owned iPhones in India.

As per the Indian Express report, Apple had earlier requested the government to import one lakh used iPhones and 2.5 lakh iPads, to explore the refurbished electrical and electronic equipment market. However, their request was turned down by the Environment Ministry's Technical Review Committee (TRC) who said that it would add to Indias e-waste. It also said that refurbished electrical and electronic equipment had a shorter functional life and became obsolete faster, which would increase e-waste. However, it reasoned that it may allow imports that were less than three years old and could be used for at least five more years.

There is also a fear that relaxation of rules regarding import of refurbished or remanufactured products may amount to transfer of waste from developed to developing countries. But Apple has reportedly claimed in its application that its certified pre-owned (CPO) iPhones were not standard refurbished mobile phones as they are made by the devices original manufacturers. It claims that the phones go through the same standards of quality testing as new devices. Not only that, but they also carry a one-year warranty along with a new serial and IMEI number.

Apple did not elaborate on its business plan or targets, but said that the quantity of devices that would be imported would vary in hundreds of thousands of units on a yearly basis. Regarding the manufacturing of CPO devices, it has stated that the initial scope would be in low hundreds of thousands units on a yearly basis.

Apple may have also filed an application with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion to open its Apple Stores in India. The move comes after the governments liberalisation of Foreign Direct Investment rules on single-brand retail in November. Earlier rules required companies to have a certain percentage of manufacturing in India in order to operate retail outlets.
OnePlus third smartphone, the OnePlus X will be available without an Invite in India soon.

OnePlus has announced that the OnePlus X will be available without an invite. Sadly, this doesnt apply to customers in India just yet. Those interested in purchasing the smartphone in India will have to procure an invite or wait for some time as the invite free offer is expected to hit India soon. The OnePlus blog post reads, Unlike its predecessor, the OnePlus 2 was invite-free approximately four months after its release. With the OnePlus X going invite-free in even less time, this is a trend that we mean to continue. The blog post goes on to say, Its been almost two years since the OnePlus One saw the light of day, firmly putting our fledgling mobile startup on the map. The invite system was integral to our approach at the time, allowing us to scale our operations, while giving fans an engaging way to get involved with the product. One year, some successes, and the occasional bump in the road later, we were able to make the OnePlus One available for purchase without an invite.

The OnePlus X was announced in India towards the end of October 2015. The OnePlus X is priced at Rs. 16,999 and is available on Amazon India. Coming to the specifications of the smartphone, the OnePlus X has a 5-inch AMOLED 1080p display. The smartphone runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop overlaid with the OxygenOS 2.2.0. Under the hood, the smartphone has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset coupled with 3GB RAM. The device has 16GB built-in storage that's expandable to an additional 128GB via a microSD card. It has a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front facing camera. A non-removable 2525mAh battery powers the entire package. If you are in the market to pick up a smartphone under 20K, you can check out our list of the top 10 smartphones under 20K before making your decision.
Samsung is expected to unveil its next generation of flagship phones during the MWC event in Barcelona next month, and here is what we know about devices so far

The Samsung Galaxy S7 is one of the most anticipated smartphones of the year, and for good reason. The Galaxy S series is considered by many to be one of the best Android-powered phones available in the market today. It is also one of the few smartphones can go toe-to-toe with the might of Apples iPhones. Rumours have already begun circulating that Samsung is planning to launch its next generation of flagship devices in a few weeks. Here is what you can expect in the Samsung Galaxy S7.

The wait may be almost over

Back in October, it was reported that Samsung preponed the launch of its upcoming flagship phones to January in order to better compete with the Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. However, newer reports suggest that Samsung may unveil the devices during the World Mobile Congress event scheduled to be held in Barcelona in February.

Twos a company, threes a crowd

It as initially believed that Samsung would launch multiple variants of the Samsung Galaxy S7 together. Earlier this month, a tweet by @evleaks, aka Evan Blass suggested that Samsung would launch the standard Galaxy S7 alongside the S7 Edge and S7 Edge+ variants. However, a recent tweet of his suggested that Samsung may end up up launching only the Galaxy S7 Edge along with the standard Galaxy S7.

Qualcomm or Exynos? Why not both

Samsung is expected to launch two versions of the Galaxy S7 smartphones. One may be powered by Qualcomms new flagship processor, the Snapdragon 820, while the other may be powered by the companys own Exynos 8890 SoC. It was earlier believed that the galaxy S7 would be the first smartphone to be powered by the Snapdragon 820 and that Samsung held the rights to the chipset till April. However, at CES 2016, the Le Pro Max turned out to be the first phone with Snapdragon 820 SoC.

Curves you can touch

The standard Samsung Galaxy S7 is expected to come with a 5.1-inch display, while the curved Galaxy S7 Edge could come with a 5.5-inch display. Both are expected to sport Super AMOLED panels with a QHD resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. In addition, both variants of the phone are expected to sport a pressure sensitive display, similar to 3D Touch found on the Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Samsung has already filed a patent for the technology.

Will 12 be greater than 16?

Samsung was tipped to focus on improving the low-light imaging capabilities of the camera in the Galaxy S7. As such, it was believed that the company would use its new BRITECELL sensor on its upcoming smartphone. Samsung claims that the new sensor can not only take brighter and sharper images in low light conditions, but is also 17% thinner than cameras used in other smartphones. However, reports suggest that Samsung would be using a 12MP camera, which is smaller than that 16MP camera found on the Galaxy S6, however, it might have an aperture of f/1.7, which would aid in low light photography.

What else?

A few days ago, it was reported that the Samsung Galaxy S7 phones may come with a black chassis in order to give the phones a premium look. It is also expected to come with a USB Type-C slot and may be dust and waterproof as well. In addition, all variants of the device may come with dual-SIM slots and Samsung may include a microSD card slot too.
Avingtrans took a chunk of the ailing Rolls-Royce group on Friday, announcing the purchase of its internal pipe manufacturing business and the two related facilities in Nuneaton, UK and Xi'an, China.

The AIM-traded company said the deal was worth 3.5m, which was to be funded by the company's existing debt facilities.

Avingtrans said the new owner of Rolls-Royce's pipe business was Sigma Components, which formed its aerospace division.

"Sigma has developed a strong relationship with Rolls-Royce over a number of years, by supplying components for numerous engine programmes", the company's board said in a statement.

The firm said that, as well as strengthening the group's UK manufacturing footprint, the Chinese facility would complement Avingtrans' existing operations in Chengdu and further enhance Sigma's offering to the aerospace industry in the region.

"Sigma will use the combines capabilities of its UK and Chinese facilities to offer competitive commercial terms to Rolls-Royce, as the XWB programme grows rapidly", the board said.

The plant at Nuneaton employed 132 people, while there were 110 working at the Xi'an facility. Avingtrans said operations would continue at both sites following the deal's completion.

"This acquisition is a key part of our strategy to support Sigma's growth with investment in businesses and technologies that complement our existing capabilities", said Avingtrans CEO Steve McQuillan.

Avingtrans described its existing operations as designing, manufacturing and supplying critical components, modules and associated services to the aerospace, energy and medical sectors.

At 1215 GMT, shares in Avingtrans were up 1.9%, trading at 107p. Rolls-Royce Holdings shares had climbed 0.65% to 545.5p.
Revenues were up significantly at ITM Power in the first half of the year, though the company still had work to do to reduce 'cash- burn' and achieve profitability, it revealed in its half-year report on Friday.

The AIM-traded energy storage and clean fuel company reported total revenues and grant funding of 3.45m during the six months to 31 October 2015 - a 157% increase on the same period a year earlier.

The amount consisted of 0.66m revenues, a 27% increase, as well as 1.37m in grant income and 1.42m in grants received for capital projects.

Its loss from operations improved by 14%, to 3.17m, though its cash burn did increase by 29% to 3.98m.

The company had total cash of 2.6m at period end, down from 6.67m a year earlier.

ITM Power said that at the time of the report on Friday, it had 9.01m of projects under contract, and a further 8.66m of contracts in the final stages of negotiation, making for a total pipeline of 17.67m - up from 11.37m a year earlier.

During the period, ITM Power agreed a strategic siting partnership with Shell to locate three hydrogen refuelling stations on Shell forecourts in the UK. It also launched its first hydrogen refuelling station at the Advanced Manufacturing Park, Rotherham, close to the M1.

ITM Power managed to secure full planning permission for two refuelling sites in London as part of the HyFive project, and submitted planning applications for four more refuelling station locations.

"ITM Power continues to push contracts into final negotiation, which demonstrates the demand for our technology", said CEO Graham Cooley.

"This has been a productive six months for ITM Power, and we have continued to develop our technology, infrastructure and order book", he added.

The company also announced it had raised 2.14m before expenses by way of a firm placing with institutional investors for 14,283,722 new ordinary shares, subject to shareholder approval, at an issue price of 15p per share.

ITM Power was also set to offer up to 24,934,135 new ordinary shares for qualifying shareholders at the issue price, potentially raising a further 3.74m, subject to shareholder approval as part of an open offer.

"The total fundraising from the placing and the open offer will be 5m, and could rise to 5.88m subject to take up under the open offer", the company's board said in a statement.

At 1345 GMT, shares in ITM Power were down 20.51%, trading at 15.5p.
Santanders executive chairman Ana Botin has been snapping up shares in a bid to show confidence in the bank.

It comes after the Spanish bank missed analysts expectations with only a 2.6% rise in annual profits.

The company said on Wednesday that it had put aside an extra 450m to cover an expected increase in PPI claims over the next two years.

Botin purchased a total package of 200,000 shares over the course of Thursday for just over 633,000.

It gives her a total shareholding of 73,133,193 share, representing a 0.508% stake.

The banks shares were up 3.62p (1.24%) to 296p at 1530 GMT.

Top Director Buys

Banco Santander S.A. (BNC)

Director name: Ms Ana Patricia Botin

Amount purchased: 117,162 @ 303.21p

Value: 355,259

Electra Private Equity (ELTA)

Director name: Mr Edward Bramson

Amount purchased: 4,859 @ 3,424.00p

Value: 166,372

Banco Santander S.A. (BNC)

Director name: Ms Ana Patricia Botin

Amount purchased: 29,730 @ 393.00p

Value: 116,839

Banco Santander S.A. (BNC)

Director name: Ms Ana Patricia Botin

Amount purchased: 29,396 @ 302.76p

Value: 88,999

Halfords Group (HFD)

Director name: Mr Jonny Mason

Amount purchased: 25,000 @ 374.99p

Value: 93,748

Halfords Group (HFD)

Director name: Mr Jonny Mason

Amount purchased: 25,000 @ 367.20p

Value: 91,800

FirstGroup (FGP)

Director name: Mr Wolfhart Hauser

Amount purchased: 80,000 @ 92.91p

Value: 74,328

Reconstruction Capital II Ltd. (RC2)

Director name: Mr Mihai Radoi

Amount purchased: 287,500 @  0.22

Value:  62,531

Banco Santander S.A. (BNC)

Director name: Ms Ana Patricia Botin

Amount purchased: 13,712 @ 302.15p

Value: 41,431

Banco Santander S.A. (BNC)

Director name: Ms Ana Patricia Botin

Amount purchased: 10,000 @ 304.74p

Value: 30,474



There were no director sells at the time of publication
The US central bank needs more time to assess the implications of recent volatility in global financial markets on the US economy, a high-ranking official said.

In an interview with Reuters, the president of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas, Robert Kaplan, said the omission from the Feds policy statement on 27 January that economic risks were "balanced" was significant.

"That is significant. And it should be saying to people (that) we are going to take some time here to understand what is going on," he said.

"I need more time to continue to assess that and I plan to take it."
A decision to cut oil output must include all exporting nations and Saudi Arabia had not approached Russia on the subject since November 2015, Russian energy minister Alexander Novak told Bloomberg TV.

Nevertheless, he did not close the door to the possibility of such an agreement.

His remarks initially saw crude oil futures retreat, but by 12:23GMT they were bouncing back slightly and rising by 0.7% to $34.11 per barrel on the ICE.

Were ready to discuss the issue of cutting oil output volumes but not ready for a decision, Novak said.

Were ready to consider the possibility; this should be a consensus. If theres a consensus, it makes sense.

The Russian Federation might adjust its porjections for oil output to remain unchanged in 2016, Novak also said.

There was no set date for any meeting and the last time that one took place "nothing new happened", he added.
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It looked like a routine trip to an outlying island for outgoing Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou, but the political status of Itu Aba meant his recent journey was anything but.

The president lost an election on 16 January, and was set to leave office in May.

Itu Aba, known in Chinese as Taiping, is the largest natural island in the Taiwan archipelago. The key issue was that it was still claimed by both Chinas, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The People's Republic was not so concerned by the visit, it seemed, with Beijing giving Ma's 'one-China' policy its nod of approval. As far as they were concerned, any land claims by Taiwan were land claims by China.

There was a risk that the Philippines and Vietnam would retailiate in some way, sending the South China Sea region on a path to further instability. While either ASEAN member could make high-profile visits to islands they occupied, provoking China, that remained unlikely.

The prospect had the United States concerned enough for its representative in Taipei to issue a denunciation of Ma's "extremely unhelpful" sojourn to Itu Aba on the same day the president's office announced it.

Not only was Ma looking to assert Taiwan's claim to the island in a potentially misinformed parting shot, but he could have been trying to publicly rebut arguments put forward by the Philippines at The Hague.

The Filipinos believe Itu Aba is a rock that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, cannot sustain human life, and therefore any claimant to the island would only be able to claim 12 nautical miles of territorial waters, rather than 200 miles of exclusive economic zone.

Ma's trip was the latest move in the tense area. China had recently been building out rocks and reefs that it claims, creating islands big enough for landing strips. It also recently moved an oil rig into waters claimed by Vietnam. Last time that happened, it sparked fatal anti-China riots.

But China has been brushing off all criticism, saying it believes the US is causing panic as part of a plan to keep the People's Republic at bay. One official told the Economist that the complaints are akin to "smashing the windows of your neighbour's house and then saying, 'We are being threatened'."
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Looking for great things to do this weekend? Here are 10-plus

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Walker Macy designs a new city park on Portage Bay that will open in 2018

The city will use $9 million from WSDOT.





Journal Staff Reporter By LYNN PORTER Journal Staff Reporter

3D model base produced by Mahlum for UW. Diagram by Walker Macy. [enlarge] The south-facing park is expected to be popular, with a terraced lawn shaped like an amphitheater.

The city of Seattle expects to start construction in late 2017 on a 1.65-acre park along Portage Bay on land now occupied by the old Bryant's Marina/UW Police Facilities.

Walker Macy designed the park with a terraced lawn to create an amphitheater-like setting on the water.

The park will have a beach, hand-carry boat launch, piers, bike racks and interpretive elements that celebrate the site's Native American and maritime history. Restrooms and picnic tables may also be added.

We're trying to pack a big punch in a really small site, said Lara Rose, a Walker Macy principal and landscape architect.

A public meeting on the project is set for 6:30 p.m. Feb. 9 at the Bryant Building, 1117 N.E. Boat St. The park is expected to be complete in 2018, said David Graves, a strategic advisor with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

The park will be near University of Washington dorms as well as academic and medical buildings, and two blocks from the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Rose said the south-facing park should be popular because it will get lots of sun and offer people a chance to get in the water. It will become the primary waterfront park for the U District community, she said.

Visitors will arrive by land as well as kayaks and canoes.

Agua Verde Cafe & Paddle Club is next door, and Rose said the city will encourage food trucks to park on Northeast Boat Street near the park.

Interpretive elements will highlight the site's Native American history as well as its past as a Chris-Craft boat manufacturing plant.

The shoreline will be restored with native plants and shallow gravel beach areas to provide refuge for salmon as they migrate upstream.

The project team asked UW students, faculty and staff what they wanted in the park. They said a sustainable place that celebrates the history, Rose said, but the water connection was first and foremost.

On Feb. 3 Seattle's Landmarks Preservation Board will consider nomination of Bryant's Marina/UW Police Facilities as a city landmark, but Graves said a landmark designation will not preclude demolition because of prior agreements about the park between the city, state and federal government.

The park is the result of a deal between the city, UW and the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Graves said the city bought the site between Portage Bay and Northeast Boat Street from the UW using money it got from WSDOT as mitigation for the SR 520 expansion project.

In addition to the 33,000-square-foot, 1922-vintage Bryant Building, the site has a wood-frame storage structure built in the 1940s.

A 2012 environmental assessment prepared by SoundEarth Strategies said the parcel was home to a lumber mill from the early 1900s to about 1950, when it was converted to boat storage. The mill was demolished in 1977.

The report said the site was used for building and repairing boats until the late 1960s, and a marine fuel station operated on the western portion from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. Underground fuel tanks were removed in 1992 and the site was remediated.

Graves said the city will use $2.3 million from the UW to remediate VOCs and metals on the site and $9 million from WSDOT to develop the park.

The UW will continue to operate a nearby marina and is constructing a new police station a few blocks away, Graves said.

He said the city looked at 80 potential sites for the park.

Walker Macy is the landscape architect and prime consultant. The team also includes Aqua Terra Cultural Resource Consultants, cultural resources; BOLA Architecture + Planning, architectural historical resources; dark|light design, lighting design; Grette, environmental permitting; JMB Consulting Group, cost estimating; KPFF Consulting Engineers, marine engineer, structural engineer and survey; Lehrman Cameron Studio, interpretive design; Maul Foster Alongi, environmental remediation; Merit Engineering, geotechnical engineer; Osborne Consulting, civil engineer; Schemata Workshop, architect; Stepherson & Associates Communications, public outreach; and Tres West Engineers, electrical engineer.





Lynn Porter can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272.




Umpqua Valley is recognized as top wine destination

By EMILY HOARD

The News-Review

Photo from www.umpquavalleywineries.org Central Douglas County has over 30 wineries and there are designated wine tour routes.

ROSEBURG, Ore.  Local wine grape growers and wine makers are proud of the attention Umpqua Valley wineries have been receiving recently. Wine Enthusiast Magazine named Southern Oregon one of the 10 Best Wine Travel Destinations of 2016 and local wineries won 28 medals in the 2016 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

Central Douglas County has over 30 wineries and there are designated wine tour routes.

This is the first time Southern Oregon has gotten attention in a big nature, said Earl Jones of Abacela Winery near Winston. It's colossal in terms of what we've seen in the past.

With a total of 7,162 entries, this year's San Francisco competition featured the largest number of American wines in the country.

The fact that our local wineries did so well shows how our wines stack up compared to any other place, and I think that's very significant, said Terry Brandborg, the Umpqua Valley Wine Growers Association board president. We've seen a lot of growth in Umpqua.

He said he hopes the recognition will help wine consumers pay attention to the world class quality of wines from the area.

Brandborg began producing wine in California in 1986 and then moved to Elkton in 2002 to open Brandborg Vineyard and Winery.

He pointed to three significant wine related events in the Umpqua Valley. First, Reustle Prayer Rock Vineyards near Umpqua was named Small Winery of the Year in 2010 in the Riverside International Wine Competition, then Wine Press Northwest named Abacela near Winston the Oregon Winery of the Year in 2013 and tabbed Brandborg Vineyard and Winery for the honor in 2015.

Hopefully that's going to bring more interest to the area, both in wine tourism and from investors who are looking for new places to explore, Brandborg said of the awards. I think the Umpqua Valley is very attractive to new investment in the industry. We have an awful lot to offer.

According to an Oregon Wine Board survey, the winery-related economic impact on Douglas County last year was $44 million. That included the money spent by wine tourists and the amount wineries generated. VisitRoseburg.com showed more than 16,000 views for the wine page and Brandborg said 4,000 people visited the tasting room at his winery last year.

As we recover from the recession and consumer confidence is on the increase, people are willing to spend more money on the higher priced wines, Brandborg said. We're seeing a lot more traffic out and about, so I think it's looking very bright.

Jones, who owns Abacela with his wife Hilda, was excited about Southern Oregon being rated as a top wine destination in the world and mentioning Abacela and Delfino Vineyards of Roseburg.

Jones has been credited for bringing Tempranillo, AlbariAo and other grape varieties to the Pacific Northwest. Tempranillo was growing in California and was used for jug wine, but Jones wanted to find a way to turn it into the fine wine it is today.

I studied the Tempranillo grape in Spain, the mother country, and studied what it needed to produce fine wine.

He said he discovered the Umpqua Valley's climate was just what it needed, as Southern Oregon sits between the 44th and 42nd parallels, the same as northern Spain.

Jones was a professor at Emory University School of Medicine but left to come to Oregon to plant the first Tempranillo of the Pacific Northwest in 1995. He named the winery Abacela, which derives from the Spanish word meaning to plant a grape vine. Since then, Tempranillo has spread all over the U.S.

I'm proud to be the granddad of all that, Jones said.

Abacela's 1998 Tempranillo became the first American wine to compete in a world competition, winning a double gold, first-place medal in the 2001 San Francisco International Wine Competition.

Abacela has been recognized several times since then. Most recently, the Oregon Wine Board awarded the Jones's the Lifetime Achievement Award and Wine Enthusiast Magazine nominated their winery for American Winery of the Year in 2015.

For the past 15 years, Terri and Jim Delfino have owned Delfino Vineyards, which includes a five-star rated bed and breakfast.

We feel like it's a tourist destination in and of itself, said Terri Delfino, a co-chair of Umpqua Valley Wine Growers Association. And we're close to other wineries in the area. You can take off for the day and we freshen it up for you. When you come home, you can just relax and go out again the next day to Crater Lake or the coast, we're really in a good location for tourists to come and visit.

Wine Enthusiast has given Deflino high marks on several of its wines over the past few years.

To see the recognition that we're getting now is really exciting for us, Delfino said. We want people to come here and we want people to go to all of our wineries. We want people to taste all of our Umpqua Valley wines because they're really unique.




The leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition said conflict in the country's largely Kurdish southeast had grown into an international problem, feeding into war in neighbouring Syria, and urged allies to do more to push for a ceasefire. Unrest in the NATO member state, which is negotiating to join the European Union, has turned parts of the southeast into a war zone. Kurdish militants have dug trenches and erected barricades in towns and cities, and the death toll has climbed into the hundreds as the security forces try to flush them out. It is also complicating efforts to stage Syrian peace talks. "The international community should call on both the Turkish government and the PKK for a ceasefire and a return to healthy negotiations, and they must make this call repeatedly," Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament, told Reuters. "Turkey's domestic peace is not an issue for Turkey alone. It is directly related to the resolution of the Syrian conflict and to the migration problem in Europe," he said in an interview on Wednesday in Brussels, where he was participating in a Kurdish conference in the European parliament. Ankara's army, the second largest in NATO, is fighting on two fronts, against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters and the threat from Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, both bordering Turkey. The country has seen a series of bombings, most recently an Istanbul suicide attack that killed ten German tourists. The conflict with the PKK, after the breakdown of a two-and- a-half-year ceasefire, has complicated efforts by a US-led international coalition, of which Turkey is a member, to fight Islamic State. Turkey, the United States and European Union all classify the PKK - which says it is fighting for Kurdish autonomy - as a terrorist organization. But Washington sees the Syrian Kurdish PYD, which has links to the PKK, as a useful ally. Ankara views it as a terrorist group and does not want it making territorial gains that could stoke Kurdish separatism at home. Demirtas described Turkey's opposition to the PYD taking part in Syrian peace talks planned in Geneva as an "emotional reflex", saying the group was vital to the negotiations. Turkey is sheltering more than 2.5 million Syrian migrants, according to UN and government figures, and has agreed with the EU to do more to stop their exodus to Europe. Demirtas, who denies accusations that his party has links to the militants, said the latest military operations had killed around 200 civilians, 70 of them children. Hundreds of thousands of civilians had been affected, many having to leave their homes or shut their businesses. The EU has called for an immediate ceasefire. The government says civilians are not being targeted in the operation and blames the PKK for bringing its campaign, which has killed over 40,000 since 1984, to city centers. President Tayyip Erdogan, who eased some restrictions on Kurdish culture in his early years in power, has vowed to destroy the PKK. Authorities widened a curfew in the region's largest city Diyarbakir on Wednesday. Hundreds, including children and the elderly, fled curfew-bound areas of its historic Sur district as gunfire and blasts resounded.








Sweden said it expects to expel up to 80,000 migrants whose asylum requests will likely be rejected, as another 24 people including children drowned off Greece on Thursday in the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean. As the continent grapples with a record flow of migrants, Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said the mass expulsions of people who arrived in the Scandinavian country last year would require the use of specially chartered aircraft. The deportations would be staggered over several years, Ygeman said. "We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000," he told Swedish media. The country of 9.8 million is among the European Union states with the highest proportion of refugees per capita. Of the 58,800 asylum requests handled by Swedish migration authorities last year, 55 per cent were accepted. Many of those requests were, however, submitted in 2014, before the large migrant flow began. Ygeman said he used the 55 per cent figure to estimate that around half of the 163,000 asylum requests received in 2015 would likely be rejected. Migration minister Morgan Johansson said authorities faced a difficult task in deporting such a large number of migrants, but insisted the rejected applicants would have to return home. "Otherwise, we would basically have free immigration and we can't manage that," he told news agency TT. However, 7,590 people who had their asylum applications rejected last year went underground, and for the period 2010-2015 their number totalled 40,345, according to the migration agency. More than one million people travelled to Europe last year - the majority of them refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan - in the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II. Most cross by boat from Turkey to Greece and the United Nations said Thursday more than 50,000 people have turned up on the EU member's beaches so far this year, while 200 people died making the dangerous journey. Flimsy boats packed with migrants are still arriving on Greek beaches every day, undeterred by Europe's wintry conditions. On Thursday, the bodies of 24 migrants, including 10 children, were discovered off the Greek island of Samos after their boat capsized and 11 others were still missing, the coastguard said, a day after seven other bodies were found near the island of Kos. With the influx showing little sign of abating, many countries - including Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and France - have tightened asylum rules in a bid to discourage new arrivals. Reflecting the mounting tensions, Brussels on Wednesday blasted Greece's handling of the crisis and warned it could face border controls with the EU's passport-free Schengen zone if it does not protect the bloc's frontiers. (See: EU blasts Greece for mishandling refugee crisis). Athens is worried its border with Macedonia will be closed, leaving refugees trapped in the country. After having closed its border for several hours last week, Macedonia again blocked refugees from entering from Greece for several hours overnight. An interior ministry official said that was because 600 people were queuing at Macedonia's northern border to cross into Serbia. Several hours later, the refugees were allowed on their way and the situation returned to normal. Some 3,000 people were on Thursday waiting at the Macedonian border on the Greek side, police there said. Greece is not the only country under fire - Denmark has faced heavy criticism after lawmakers passed a bill this week allowing authorities to seize valuables from refugees in a bid to deter new arrivals. Some have likened the move to the Nazis' confiscation of gold from Jews during the Holocaust, with Human Rights Watch denouncing the Bill as "despicable" (See: Denmark's 'jewellery bill' to confiscate refugees' valuables). Neighbouring Sweden has seen the number of new migrants entering the country plunge since it brought in systematic photo ID checks on travellers on 4 January. Concerns have grown over conditions in Sweden's overcrowded asylum facilities, however - and officials have called for greater security after an employee at a refugee centre for unaccompanied youths was stabbed to death earlier this week. A 15-year-old male allegedly attacked the 22-year-old employee, Alexandra Mezher, at the centre in Molndal on Sweden's west coast. Her death has led to questions about conditions inside some centres, with too few adults and employees to care for the children, many traumatised by war. Sweden took in around 35,400 unaccompanied minors in 2015, nine times more than in 2014. National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson earlier this week requested 4,100 additional officers and support staff to help counter terrorism, deport migrants and police asylum facilities.








The Netherlands floated an idea on Thursday to ferry migrants reaching Greece straight back to Turkey to stop a relentless influx into the European Union as EU officials cited a rise in the numbers of those who would not qualify for asylum. The 28-nation bloc has all but failed to curb or control the influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, more than one million of whom arrived in Europe last year, mainly via Greece and heading towards the EU's biggest economy, Germany. More than 54,500 people have already reached Europe by sea this year, including 50,668 through Greece, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). They keep flowing in despite stormy winter weather making the journey ever more perilous, a fact highlighted by a UNHCR report that 235 migrants were dead or missing already in 2016. On Thursday, 24 drowned when their boat sank off a Greek island close to the Turkish coast. Much of the EU debate on how to handle the influx has focussed on distinguishing people fleeing war, and thus eligible for international protection, from "economic" migrants seeking better lives without being under immediate threat (See: Over 1-mn migrants poured into EU this year). "Indeed we have seen that the numbers of people arriving in Europe who don't have a genuine claim to asylum have been rising slightly," a spokeswoman for the European Commission told a regular news briefing on Thursday. EU nations have grown unnerved by the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II, one that has jeopardised the bloc's Schengen zone of passport-free travel over national borders that has contributed greatly to its vaunted prosperity. In the latest idea for discouraging migrants from flooding into Europe, the head of a party in the Dutch ruling coalition said it was drafting a plan under which those arriving in Greece by sea could be dispatched straight back to Turkey. Diederik Samsom said European countries would have to agree in exchange to take several hundred thousand refugees each year out of nearly 2 million currently in Turkey. The Netherlands now holds the EU's rotating presidency and Samsom said it would seek to push for Europe-wide agreement on the plan. Samsom also said improving conditions for Syrian refugees in Turkey meant it could soon be regarded as a safe country to which asylum-seekers could be returned. Amnesty International quickly denounced the idea as "fundamentally flawed", saying it would deny those arriving the right to have their asylum claims properly considered. "Any resettlement proposal that is conditional on effectively sealing off borders and illegally pushing back tens of thousands of people while denying them access to asylum procedures is morally bankrupt," said Amnesty's John Dalhuisen. "There is no excuse for breaking the law and flouting international obligations in the process." The government of Germany, where more than a million migrants arrived last year alone, on Thursday agreed tighter asylum rules, while Sweden and Finland said they would deport tens of thousands of last year's asylum seekers (Germany's coalition reaches deal to restrict migrant influx) In another example of how wealthy European states are seeking to deter migrants, Denmark's parliament on Tuesday passed measures allowing the confiscation of asylum seekers' valuables to pay for their stay, despite protests from international human rights organisations (Denmark's 'jewellery bill' to confiscate refugees' valuables). The European Commission said on Thursday it was looking into whether Denmark's move was undermining fundamental EU values. While the overall number of arrivals is relatively low compared to the EU's 500 million population, the uneven distribution among member states has put heavy pressure on public and security services in some, as well as fuelled support for anti-foreigner nationalists and populists across the bloc. The EU border agency Frontex said on Thursday the number of Syrians arriving on Greek islands had declined in recent months, while Iraqi arrivals had risen. "The percentage of declared Syrians among all of the migrants landing on the Greek islands has fallen considerably in the last several months," Frontex said, adding that some 39 per cent of those arriving in Greece in December were Syrians, compared to 43 per cent in November and 51 per cent in October. The shifting numbers partly reflect how registration and identification of migrants has improved in Greece over the last quarter, meaning fewer people pass under false nationality. Syrian nationality has been a common answer to the question of origin as people fleeing the devastating civil war in the Middle East country are seen as standing the greatest chance of successful asylum applications in the EU.








Russia weighs Opec proposal for oil production cutbacks

Russia on Thursday said it is considering a proposal by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to cut global oil production by up to 5 per cent to help tackle the market glut and prop up crude prices.

The Russian move follows a new proposal backed by Opec leader Saudi Arabia and an earlier one by Opec members Venezuela and Algeria, and once the two sides come together it would be the first global deal in over a decade to help reduce a market glut of crude.

A five per cent reduction in oil production by Russia, a non-Opec producer and the world's top producer, would represent a 500,000 barrels per day reduction in output and, along with Opec, could immediately reduce surplus global supplies by 1 million bpd.

The move pushed up price of benchmark North Sea Brent futures by as much as 8 per cent to nearly $36 a barrel. Brent was trading at around $34 a barrel at 1940 GMT.

Higher crude prices would be welcomed by oil-rich countries where the steep slide has squeezed budgets and caused political turmoil. Some countries have had to devalue their currencies.

"Indeed, these parameters were proposed, to cut production by each country by up to 5 percent," Novak said when asked if Saudi Arabia had made a proposal to cut output.

"This is a subject for discussions, it's too early to talk about."

Crude prices hit a 12-year low of around $27 a barrel earlier this month, from a high of $115 some 18 months ago, on the back of unchecked Opec production and booming shale gas production in the US.

Opec kept pumping oil to fight for market share against higher-cost shale producers, which pushed down oil prices further.

But cheap oil has caused economic pain in many producer countries, especially in West Asia and South America.

Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia reported a record state budget deficit of around $100 billion pressured by faloling oil prices.

In Russia, the rouble hit an all-time low, street protests have flared in Azerbaijan and investors are concerned about a potential debt default by Opec member Venezuela.

While Saudi Arabia and Opec has repeatedly been calling on non-members to contribute to output cuts, Russia has been shying away from production cuts citing technical issues.

Russia has been saying its fields differ from those in the Gulf and are difficult to shut, but that stance seems to have changed with the state now having control over oil production.

Also, the odds were against Russia since its annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Syria, with the West doing all it could to alienate the country and denying its products market access.

But things have changed now and the oil price issue could unite the various producer groups fighting a market glut.
For the first time ever in a public forum, Cllr Sean McEniff has revealed who he would like to succeed him when he stops his work as a county councillor.

Speaking on Friday week last in the Allingham Arms Hotel at a function to mark his 80th birthday and his 55th consecutive year in politics - a record - Cllr McEniff gave his son-in-law, Peter McIntyre, a ringing public endorsement.

Cllr McEniff surprised some guests when he broke away from a series of thank yous to those who had attended, or offered him support over the years, to nail his colours to the mast on where his council seat might go after his day.

He said he would like it to be known that when his time as a county councillor was run, he would dearly love to see Peter Mac take on that role.

Peter McIntyre, (affectionately known as Peter Mac) is the joint owner of the Allingham Arms Hotel. Married to Seans daughter, Elizabeth, herself a former Bundoran Town Councillor, Peter was working all night at the function and seemed to be taken unawares as he stood listening quietly to the speech, with his hands to the wall of the function room near the entrance doors.

A loud cheer rose in response to Cllr McEniffs comments; Peter McIntyres only discernible reaction was a brief but broad grin. Moments later he was on the move again, collecting glasses and looking after guests.

It was the second time at the celebration event his name had been mentioned. Cllr Ciaran Brogan, Mayor of Donegal, said he only fell out with Sean mcEniff over one thing - the fact that Peter McIntyre, a native of the Burmah in Letterkenny, had left the Cathedral town 30 years ago to spend a few months in Bundoran and never came back. Letterkennys loss was certainly Bundorans gain, Cllr Brogan added.

If Peter is to take up the mantle as suggested by his father-in-law, he may well have plenty of time to think about it. Sean McEniff, speaking in the St John Bosco Centre in Donegal town last year following his election, said its not this election I am worried about, the one in 2019 is more on mind - a clear indication he has no intention of retiring and that he fully intends, if his health allows it, to contest again in 2019.

Peter McIntyre, meanwhile, is no stranger to the world of politics and current affairs. His late father, John MacIntyre, was a much loved and hugely respected editor of the Donegal Peoples Press newspaper.

Peter McIntyre told this newspaper: That was very nice of Sean, but theres a lot of water to flow down the river yet. Ask me that question again, maybe in ten years from now, or longer. That mans going nowhere.
Over 1,000 people have signed an online petition to restore full services at Louth County Hospital.

The signatures were collected on iPetitions.com

- namely on a petition stateing: This petition is calling for the Government of Ireland to restore the full services to the Louth County Hospital in Ireland.

One person who signed the peititon said: Shameful that the politicians - not all of them I hasten to add - but the ones who have done nothing for the people of Dundalk regarding our priceless Louth Hospital, should be sent to lie on trollies and watch our older people suffer and get worse as they lie in corridors in dreadful situations, not because of nurses or doctors but because of past and present governments.

Another wrote: Fantastic hospital and great staff. Thank god they were there when I needed them. It is an out right disgrace that this hospital is not fully operational I got the best of care here.

Meanwhile Sinn Fein Louth TD Gerry Adams has described the visit by the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar to Louth County Hospital on Wednesday as a pre-election stunt that will result in none of the significant health facilities or staff numbers cut by this government restored to Louth County Hospital.

Adams said:As Minister Varadkar visited Dundalk 536 patients lay on hospital trolleys across the state. 31 of these were in Our Lady of Lourdes Drogheda. The first three days of this week were among the highest for trolley numbers in recent months.

Figures released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation show that last year 92,998 people were treated on trolleys in hospitals across this state. This is the highest ever number of patients recorded since the Trolley Watch Campaign began in 2006 and represents an increase of 21% in hospital overcrowding.

It is also a damning indictment of this Fine Gael/Labour Government.

The closure of essential services and downgrading of Louth County hospital contributes every day to the numbers of patients on trolleys in Our Lady of Lourdes.

Government cutbacks have seen the childrens ward, the maternity unit, the gynaecological unit, the Emergency Department and the Acute Medical Services all go. As these and other services were slashed it inevitably impacted on Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

And all the time that they were doing this the bankers were getting 64 billion.

Sinn Fein is committed to creating a universal health care system that will mean no more bills for prescriptions, or bills for visits to the emergency department or to the doctor or for medical procedures.

Our fully costed healthcare system will be free at the point of delivery, based on need and funded by progressive taxation.

Sinn Fein believe that a fair society must include all its citizens. And that all citizens have the right to be treated equally. And central to this is the provision of a wrap around health service from the cradle to the grave.
Sinn Fein deputy Gerry Adams has called on Louth County council to bring the Woodland Park halting site up to the legally required standards so that the evicted familes can return to their homes.

Mr Adams said at the protest at the County Hall on Friday that the familes should have been consulted and treated with respect. He also called on other local Oireachtas members to lobby the Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly to intervene in the ongoing Woodland Park eviction crisis.

I am also concerned that 15 of the 22 families who were evicted from the Woodland Park site are now being threatened with eviction from a carpark beside the KFC, has said.

Louth County Council has a legal obligation to accommodate homeless families. There is an unprecedented housing crisis in Louth. Five thousand people on the waiting list. It is bizarre that the council action has made even more citizens homeless.

No social or affordable housing was built by the Council in 2015. The government did not give any funds but there is available funding for Traveller accommodation.

The solution to this problem is to draw down this funding to refurbish Woodland Park site and other sites if necessary.

The other TDs and senators have been silent on this issue. I am appealing to them to call for Minister Alan Kelly to intervene urgently.

There is also a whispering campaign against the Travellers and Sinn Fein and me in particular. I am told this is coming from Labour and Fine Gael though I have no proof of this. They are saying that Travellers are trying to jump the housing queue and that I support this.

The Travellers dont want rented accommodation. They are not looking to jump any waiting list. They are no threat to other homeless people.

The Travellers want the halting site developed and in time they want accommodation in keeping with their culture. This will not cost the ratepayers of Louth.

Deputy Adams also raised the issue in the Dail. He said the families are very dissatisfied with the approach of the council. The only alternative being proposed by the council is private rented accommodation which many of the families are unhappy with.

The common sense resolution to this issue is to urgently bring the halting site up to health and safety standards so that the families can stay in their homes.

Taoiseach to urge Minister Kelly to use his authority to prevent any further eviction.

Deputy Adams has also stated that some hfamilies have had to sell their mobile homes for small amounts of money because of the councils eviction process. This has added to the trauma for some.

I understand that some of those evicted from the site have had their social welfare payments stopped because they are no longer resident at the addresses they had given to the social welfare department.

So families have suffered the indignity and trauma of eviction by the council and the state has now stopped their welfare payments.
Cancer services campaigners from Donegal have contributed to the design of the new radiotherapy centre in Derry.

Two groups, Donegal Action for Cancer Care and Co-operating for Cancer Care NorthWest have campaigned for a radiotherapy centre in the north west. Cancer campaign groups here have campaigned for enhanced cancer treatment services in Donegal for over ten years.

Radiotherapy project lead, Margaret McIvor, said groups and charities from Donegal have been very supportive. We have had input from them for various things including the design of the building and hopefully we have managed to build those ideas and advice into the design, she said.

The buildings were demolished to find the best site for the centre which will connect to the main hospital and the existing cancer care facility, the Sperrin Suite.

Planning for facilitating patients from Donegal is underway. There are regular meetings with staff in Letterkenny, Galway and Dublin and as the service moves forward there will be team meetings every week so staff here will connect with those meetings where the decisions are made about the patient's treatment pathways.
South Boston's booming, no doubt about that. The city and private developers are together working to add thousands of new apartments, including micro ones geared toward techies, as well as hundreds of hotel rooms and hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space. You might say, in fact, that Southie is changing forever this annum. But there is one site that seems encased in a battle that appears to go all the way back to before the Great Recession.

Basically, it goes like this, per Paul McMorrow of CommonWealth magazine writing in today's Globe:

 The 30,437-square-foot site, called the Sausage Parcel because of its unusual, narrow shape, is owned by Madison Properties, which has had the O.K. to build a hotel of up to 500 rooms since it bought the site from NStar in 2006.

 Then the economy tanked, and Madison couldn't get any financing for the hotel.

 The hotel might not work anyway because the site's so small90 feet at its widest pointand how do you put a ballroom and such in a space like that?

 So Madison went back to the city with plans for a 400-unit apartment tower, plus the financing to pull it off.

 The city, via the Boston Redevelopment Authority, has stuck its fingers in its ears and made that lalalala sound in response to Madison's proposal. It wants a hotel, not an apartment tower. Why? Because the convention center in Southie needs more hotel rooms, including as a justification for any expansion, even though no hotelier can afford to build in the booming neighborhood right now.

Madison's apartment-tower proposal has been with the city for eight months now; and the city appears to be waiting things out in the hopes of a hotel against the odds. How the sausage gets made, people.

 Wanted: A Hotel Near the Convention Center [Globe]

 The Departed: South Boston to Change Forever This Year [Curbed Boston]

 South Boston to Get Hundreds of Manhattan Apartments [Curbed Boston]
Art Reyes III is Director of Training and Leadership Development at Center for Popular Democracy. He along with the Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative and a powerful group of organizers from around the country are working in Flint to be sure undocumented immigrants in Flint are getting the help they need in the midst of the water crisis there. The need is real. Many undocumented people are not getting the information they need and still more are too afraid of being detained to go to water distribution sites. Its a legitimate fear as the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reported to detaining people in grocery stores and other areas around Flint:

Juani Olivares, says there are roughly a thousand undocumented immigrants in Flint  and many have spent years hiding from authorities to avoid deportation. Water was being delivered, she says, and they (immigrants) were not opening the door. Because that is the one rule. Do not open the door. Lets face it, undocumented immigrants arent paranoid: The government really does want to get them. Juani Oliveras works with the Genesee County Hispanic/Latino Collaborative. She says rumors are flying about sporadic raids at grocery stores. Thats another reason why people are not getting the water, she says.

Whats worse is that many of these folks are still boiling water before drinking it because thats what they have been told to do in the past when e. coli contaminated the citys drinking water. In the case of lead contamination, however, its exactly the WRONG thing to do because it concentrates the lead even further.

This past Wednesday, Reyes and other organizers held a training for lead canvassers in Flint, setting the stage for what they hope will become regular daily canvasses until the water issue is resolved.



Art Reyes speaks during the lead canvasser training

I spoke with Reyes after the organizing meeting to get a better understanding of what they are hoping to accomplish. He told me that there is currently no infrastructure in place to do what needs to be done in the undocumented community so they are literally building it as they go. He told me that there are an estimated 1,000 undocumented people in Flint. The goals of his group are fourfold:

First, they want to educate people about the water situation to ensure they know what precautions to take and what things to avoid (like boiling the water.)

Second, they want to make sure people are getting the water, water filters, and other necessary items that they need to stay healthy. The state has already been neglected this marginalized population and the poisoning of Flints drinking water is making things much, much worse.



Organizers from over a dozen organizations and from as far away as Los Angeles and Texas collaborate to begin an extraordinary outreach effort in Flint.

Third, they are collecting stories from people. Unless the stories of those who are impacted are lifted up and heard, there will be nothing to stop this from happening again.

Fourth, they are trying to create a database of undocumented immigrants so that they can continue to work with them as needed until the crisis is over. This one is very difficult. The idea of getting into any database is, of course, the greatest fear of people here without documentation.

Finally, they are working to build a database of partners and volunteers who can help them with their effort.

How can you help? There are several ways. First, you can donate money. The Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative has set up a fundraising page HERE.

Second, you can volunteer your time and resources to the effort. This will be an ongoing project and they will need assistance for the foreseeable future. Spanish-speaking volunteers are in particularly high demand. They also need things like storage and organizing spaces, trainers, printing, and all of the things that go along with a long-term effort like this. Click HERE to volunteer.

Third, you can donate water:

Finally, educate yourself about the issue. A good starting point is this essay by Art Reyes titled, I Grew Up in Flint. Heres Why Governor Snyder Must Resign. .

One of the groups assisting with this effort is a small non-governmental agency (NGO) called Crossing Water. The group is headed up by social worker Michael Hood who has brought together around 150 social workers from around the country along with several hundred other volunteers and donors. They have already put up several billboards around Flint in both English and Spanish letting people know not to boil the water. They have plans for more billboards, including trailer mounted billboards that they can drive around Flint. They are also using donations to pay for public service announcements on television and radio. Theyve created videos on how to properly install and use water filters and teaching new parents not to use tap water to mix with baby formula. They have recruited plumbers to help replace lead-containing plumbing. This single group is making a huge difference.

Please do what you can to help with this important outreach effort. There are literally lives on the line, including the lives of babies and children.
The proposal to add civil rights for LGBT people to Michigans constitution will no longer aim for the 2016 ballots, its organizer announced during a taping of public television showFriday morning.

We are suspending our 2016 campaign, but I can assure you this is not the end of Fair Michigan, said organizer Dana Nessel, best known for arguing against the state of Michigans prohibition on same-sex marriage in a court case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and ultimately legalized it nationally.

Fair Michigan was aiming to prohibit things like housing and employment discrimination based on gender, gender identity, sex or sexual orientation.

Asked why the group was pausing its efforts, Nessel cited finances.

Its a financial issue. Theres no question that its a very expensive proposition to try to get a ballot proposal and particularly one that is a constitutional amendment, Nessel said.
Its been a busy week of news regarding the poisoning of Flints drinking water by the Snyder administration, so much that its simply not possible to post separately about each one. Thats where the news round-ups come. So here is a compilation of the latest news coming out of Flint and Lansing.

Enjoy.

Amid complaints of water, Snyder admin quietly trucked in clean water for its employees

The biggest news of the week is the revelation that, starting January 7th of 2015, state government offices began providing bottled water to its employees working in state buildings in Flint so that they wouldnt have to drink tap water. Progress Michigan released documents yesterday showing that includes a notice sent to Department of Technology, Management & Budget (DTMB) employees:

The City of Flint recently sent out the attached notice regarding violations to the drinking water standards. While the City of Flint states that corrective actions are not necessary, DTMB [] is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink. The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements.

This move came during a time when Flint residents were complaining loudly to anyone who would listen that their water was undrinkable and unusable. While the state did nothing to address the residents complaints, they quietly and without fanfare made sure their own employees were taken care of.

Lonnie Scott, Executive Director of Progress Michigan, released the following statement:

It appears the state wasnt as slow as we first thought in responding the Flint Water Crisis. Sadly, the only response was to protect the Snyder administration from future liability and not to protect the children of Flint from lead poisoning. While residents were being told to relax and not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to limit exposure in its own building. Another day and another example of the Snyder administrations lackluster response to this crisis. Worse yet, this shows that the response was not only late and so far ineffective, but it was also unequal. Governor Snyder needs to explain to the people of Flint why his administration trucked water into a state building while allowing residents to drink unsafe water.

Gov. Snyder extends Flint state of emergency declaration until April 14

In order to keep the flow of funds coming into Flint to deal with their human-made disaster, Gov. Rick Snyder has extended the emergency declaration in Flint until April 14th:

The emergency response in the city of Flint has been critical to ensure every Flint family has access to bottled water, filters, and testing kits, Snyder said in a news release. While these efforts have a big impact in the short term, there is still much more work to be done. Extending this emergency will help us continue these efforts while working on long-term solutions to help Flint recover from this tragedy. Both the House and Senate approved the extension Thursday.

This is sure to be the first of many such extensions given that literally nothing has been done to replace the lead water lines and plumbing components that are leaching lead into residents tap water.

Replacing Flints water lines not on Gov. Snyders agenda for now

Gov. Snyder laid out his plans for resolving the Flint water crisis: saying the immediate plan is to restore the protective coating on the insides of residents water lines:

Under mounting pressure to rip out and replace lead pipes that connect an estimated 15,000 or more customers to main water lines, Gov. Rick Snyder said at a news conference Wednesday that the state first intends to make the existing pipes safe by rebuilding a protective coating between the lead and the water. [] Its a lot of work to take out pipes, to redo all the infrastructure, Snyder said.

It takes even longer when you havent even started three months after first admitting you have a problem and over six months since the problems were made public by Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards and his team.

Only $17 million of the $80 million in federal funds coming to Michigan can be used in Flint

Last week, President Obama announced that the federal government was sending $80 million to Michigan, largely to help deal with the catastrophe in Flint. Were going to have that funding available to you by the end of next week, and that includes $80 million for the state of Michigan, Obama told a gathering of mayors at the White House.

However, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley says the amount for Flint is far less, just $17 million of the $80 million.

[T]here was a pretty big misunderstanding that the federal government was sending $80 million, Calley said in an interview that aired on National Public Radio Thursday morning. And when we really dug into that, what we found is that it wasnt really a grant for that, but what it is is the ability for them to borrow money. And from what we can tell, it looks like $17 million is about as much as we would be allowed to send to Flint. State officials are now talking to federal agencies to see if Michigan can get the rules of the program changed to provide additional aid to Flint. Federal officials did not immediately respond to a message for comment about Calleys remarks.

So, its not really the windfall that it first seemed and, when its all over, Flint will need to pay it all back.

State legislature approves $28 million for Flints water crisis

The Michigan House and Senate both unanimously approved a $28 million supplemental spending bill to support the residents of Flint and sent it to Gov. Rick Snyder to be signed into law. Based on reporting from The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, heres where the money is going:

$2 million for early on health assessments for children ages 0-3. The funding will go to the Genesee County Intermediate School District for testing, service coordinators and psychologists

$675,000 for the Genesee ISD to hire nine nurses, boost parental communications, fund wraparound service coordination and provide students with more fresh fruit and vegetables, which can mitigate the effect of irreversible lead damage.

Zero dollars to replace underground lead services lines damaged by the corrosive Flint River Water

$1.4 million to replace plumbing fixtures in schools, child care centers, foster care and nursing homes

$500,000 for outside experts to conduct an infrastructure integrity study

$4.6 million for the state health department to continue purchasing bottled water, filters and replacement cartridges for Flint residents who still cannot drink their own tap water, less than the $8 million approved by the House

Close to $1 million for the state health department to temporarily expand the Women, Infants and Children special food assistance program by raising the age cap to cover Flint children through age 10, instead of 5

$3 million would go to the Department of Environmental Quality to help Flints water fund stay solvent despite outstanding bills from residents who are not paying for water they cannot drink

$2 million for work being done by the Michigan National Guard

$1.5 million for field operations costs for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services

Still nothing being done to replace lead water lines and lead-containing plumbing components, however.

UPDATE: Gov. Snyder signed the legislation this afternoon at a gathering of the Michigan Press Association in Grand Rapids. No point in wasting a good public relations opportunity with lots of reporters around, I suppose.

Michigan lawmakers propose $400 million in assistance to Flint

U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee are planning to introduce legislation that would send $400 million in federal dollars to Flint to begin replacing vital infrastructure. Additionally, the proposal would fund a new $200 million Center of Excellence on Lead Exposure to research the immediate and long-term needs of children and adults exposed to lead and communicate with the community, according to Sen. Stabenow.

However much money is approved, the state of Michigan would have to match it:

Democratic U.S. Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow plan to offer an amendment to a bipartisan energy policy bill with the goal of jump-starting the process of repairing or replacing lead services lines contributing to the contamination of drinking water in Flint. The amendment would provide up to $400 million in federal emergency funding to the Environmental Protection Agency to help fix Flints water-supply infrastructure, hire new personnel and cover the cost of technical assistance provided by the EPA or its contractors. But the plan may face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Senate, where GOP members are pressured by conservative constituents to rein in the growing national debt. The emergency money, provided through the Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund program, would have to be matched dollar-for-dollar by the State of Michigan  whether its $50 million or $400 million, the lawmakers said.

The proposal is facing a headwind, though, with Republicans like Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas balking at being part of the national response to Flints crisis:

While we all have sympathy for whats happened in Flint, responsibility primarily lies with state and local governments in Michigan, he said. Given that we have $19 trillion in debt, I think its fair to ask, do we want to have the federal government replacing all the infrastructure put in place by cities and states all across the country? Cornyn said at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.

The only surprise here is that he didnt suggest that a tax cut was the solution to the problem.

Effort to recall Governor Snyder fails

The task of recalling Gov. Snyder is a Herculean one, thanks to legislation passed by the Republican-led state legislature in 2012 that requires all petition signatures  nearly 800,000 plus extras for insurance  to be gathered in just 60 days and toughened petition language requirements. That didnt stop Angelo Scott Brown of Detroit and Quincy Murphy of Flint from trying anyway. Scott submitted seven different sets of petition language to the State Board of Canvassers and Quincy submitted one. Yesterday, the Board of Canvassers shot down all eight:

Citizens outraged over the lead contamination of Flints drinking water continue to submit petitions to recall Gov. Rick Snyder, but so far, none has cracked the code of a toughened 2012 state law that requires every stated reason for a proposed recall to be clear and factual. On Thursday, during a meeting at the Lansing Center, the Board of State Canvassers rejected two efforts to start recall petitions against Snyder.

Somewhere in the back halls of the state legislature, Republicans are high-fiving each other at the success of their 2012 anti-recall law.

Gov. Snyders approval ratings are tanking. Big time.

A new EPIC-MRA poll shows that Michiganders are quickly souring on his leadership of our state. 58% gave him a negative job-approval rating and 69% think hes doing a terrible job managing the crisis in Flint (including 49% of Republicans) with only 21% giving him a positive grade. However, only 29% think he should resign.

Given that tea partier Brian Calley would become governor if Snyder resigns, Im inclined to agree that he should stay in office and clean up the mess his administration has created.

His tanking approval numbers are probably why Gov. Snyder got got heckled out of an Ann Arbor restaurant this week. Its probably why there are also Wanted posters popping up around his $2 million condo on Main Street in Ann Arbor.

Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the Flint water crisis, Gov. Snyder wont be invited

The U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the poisoning of Flints drinking water next Wednesday, February 3rd. However, Gov. Snyder will not be invited.

A U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that the panel will hold Congress first hearing on the Flint water crisis next Wednesday, Feb. 3. Gov. Rick Snyder will not be among those invited to testify, however, said the spokesperson, who did not want to be named because public notice of the hearing hadnt yet been sent out. The office of U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence put out a statement Wednesday afternoon saying she was outraged by Snyder not being invited to testify before the committee, saying he played a central role in the crisis. I am deeply disappointed at the majoritys lack of commitment to a thorough and meaningful hearing, said Lawrence, a Southfield Democrat who requested the hearing. A sincere search for truth and justice requires a full review by the entire committee of the decisions and policies of all those involved.

In a related story, House Rep. Gretchen Driskell, the Democratic candidate in Michigans 7th Congressional District, is asking why current MI-07 Congressman, Tim Walberg, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, isnt demanding that Gov. Snyder give testimony. I am disgusted that Congressman Walberg is allowing Gov. Snyder to sit at home while his very own Committee supposedly investigates the government failures that led to the ongoing crisis in Flint, Driskell said. Not only did the poisoning of children happen on Congressman Walbergs watch, but he is now refusing to hold responsible the very politicians directly involved.

Right after graduating college, I drove a cab in the evenings to pay bills while starting out fresh in accounting. I think the roads in Washington are clear by now; I would gladly drive Governor Snyder to the Capitol if he doesnt know the way.

Flint and Detroit activist to testify before the United Nations

Beulah Walker, the chief coordinator of the nonprofit Detroit Water Brigade, will give testimony before a United Nations panel next week on Tuesday, February 2nd:
When Amazon launched Prime Day six months ago, skeptics came out in force to criticize what they considered Jeff Bezos desperate ploy to add members to a club that appeared to be peaking in a saturated domestic market.

Gimmick or not, Prime Day worked. Amazon sold more than 34.4 million items across eight countries where Prime was offered. The company topped 2014 Black Friday totals and forced Walmart and other retailers to respond. Amazon subsequently released a third-quarter earnings report that backed up its initial sales figures with profits that defied just about all prior estimates.

Prime Position

Our focus is to continue to add even more value to this membership for Prime members, said Amazon spokesperson Ana Rigby.

That includes our steady investment in building out our fulfillment center network in order to get items closer to customers, [and] get more items in-stock and delivered as quickly as possible, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Despite all the new members Prime Day reaped, the company still saw a strong growth potential for its Prime program, CFO Brian Olsavsky told analysts during the companys Q3 earnings call in October. It also saw a strong business case for Prime Now, which offers customers one-hour delivery on certain items.

Amazon was making serious efforts to ramp up its ability to fulfill that demand without spiking operating costs too high, he added.

We think its an interesting part of the selection offer for Prime, and its in many ways something that we can do that others cant, he said, because its a natural evolution of our 20-year effort to grow our fulfillment center network  and our scale, quite frankly, makes it possible to even offer this to customers.

Amazon took several bold steps last year to create some space between itself and a growing number of companies aiming to chip away at Amazon Primes mounting influence in the e-commerce space.

The company reported record-breaking sales and member enrollment during the holiday shopping season, with more than 3 million new members signing up for the US$99 per year Prime program during the third week of December. Amazon set a single-day record on Christmas Eve, with the most-ever deliveries. It shipped more than 200 million items for free during the holiday period.

Amazon has been selective about releasing figures related to Amazon Prime. However, the program had an estimated 47 million members who spent an average of $1,200 per person, compared to non-Prime shoppers roughly $600 average, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners reported in October.

Amazon uses Prime as a way of improving loyalty in an environment in which customers can easily switch among e-commerce retailers, said CIRP cofounder Michael Levin.

Prime overcomes a number of barriers that consumers have about e-commerce, including paying for shipping, waiting for goods, and processing returns, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Taking On the Giant

One challenge is that Amazon may be losing money on Prime. Its regarded as the biggest contributor to Amazons shipping costs, noted Nikki Baird, managing partner of RSR Research.

Even though Prime customers buy more  a lot more  it isnt enough at Amazons prices to offset the cost of two-day shipping, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Its understandable that other retailers want the same level of brand loyalty that Prime membership provides for Amazon, said Baird, but I would have to seriously question their sanity if they think that its a profitable way to compete, because all indicators are that its not.

For one select group of retailers, the most direct competition for Amazon Prime is Shoprunner, backed by Kynetic, Alibaba and American Express. The service, which is free for some American Express cardholders, costs US$8.95 per month, or $79 a year for other consumers. It provides two-day free shipping, free return shipping and exclusive member discounts. Like Amazon Prime, consumers can try out the service for 30 days for free.

Shoprunner serves as an e-commerce engine for brands including Cole Haan, Tommy Hilfiger and Rafaella.

Legacy Struggles

Sears and Kmart, which have struggled to fend off competition from rival department stores like Target and Kohls, have been working to reinvent their traditional retail model with the Shop Your Way program, designed to maximize sales among their most frequent customers. It offers free two-day shipping, rewards points, and exclusive discounts through Shop Your Way Max, which provides upgraded benefits for a $39 annual fee.

Sears continues to find new ways to integrate in-store and online shopping by enhancing mobile and online technologies to create new conveniences for Shop Your Way members, said Leena Munjal, SVP of customer experience and integrated retail at Sears Holdings.

The company has worked to integrate its existing department stores and outlets with mobile by offering a service that lets customers pick up, return and exchange purchases while remaining in their vehicles for no extra charge, with a guarantee that the process will take no more than five minutes to complete.

Target Takes Aim

Target, which is widely considered one of Amazons leading competitors, does not have a paid loyalty program like Amazon Prime or Shop Your Way. However, it does offer special benefits through its Red Card customer loyalty program.

Target is focused on providing guests the ability to shop on demand  anywhere, anytime  in stores, online and mobile, said company spokesperson Jamie Bastian.

The program offers 5 percent discounts to all cardholders, free shipping on Target.com purchases, and an extra 30 days for shipping returns. Currently, about 25 percent of Target stores ship Target.com orders, Bastian told the E-Commerce Times. Target also offers a number of programs to make mobile shopping easier for customers.

It has offered in-store order pickup since September 2014 in Minneapolis, and it later rolled out the service nationwide. About 80 percent of all pickup orders are available within an hour, Bastian said. Guests also can use the Ship to Store option to get an item on Target.com that is not sold in stores.

Target in 2013 began collaborating with Facebook to offer a program called Cartwheel, which is available via an app. Customers get personally targeted coupons and special discounts that can be shared with friends on Facebook. The app has 20 million authenticated users, according to Target.

The company is currently offering Instacart grocery service in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago, Bastian said. The pilot program began in September in select Minneapolis area neighborhoods and western suburbs. Target delivers groceries ordered on Target.com within two hours.

Target in 2014 began partnering with a Bay area startup called Curbside.com to offer merchandise pickup in select stores in Chicago, the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, and all San Francisco-area stores, Bastian said.

Nipping at Heels

Several e-commerce competitors and startups have attempted to disrupt Amazon Primes dominant position.

Jet.com originally launched with much fanfare as an e-commerce site that offered similar shipping perks to Amazon.com for a smaller membership fee. However, it later decided to change its model, replacing the $50 membership fee program with a more traditional site that reportedly will subsidize member discounts through sales commissions.

eBay in September launched a program called eBay Plus in Germany, where customers get free expedited shipping and free returns for an annual fee of about $22. The company plans to expand the service to provide exclusive discounts and promotions as well. The program also will allow consumers to sell on the site without fees.

eBay has indicated that it may expand to other countries, but it hasnt announced any specific plans.
Samsung on Monday began a global rollout of the latest versions of its Gear S2 Classic smartwatch, hitting China first.

There are two models in the Gear S2 Classic New Edition line  one with 18K rose gold plating and the other with a platinum finish.

They have ivory and black genuine leather bands, respectively.

The watches new faces feature characters from the Peanuts comic strip, as well as designs created by artists including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Twisting the bezel changes the face.

New apps from CNN and Bloomberg include their own specialized watch face features.

Samsung also has added apps from eBay, ESPN, Uber and Voxer.

Introduced at CES in January, the New Edition line also includes Samsung Pay, NFC technology that soon will be available to users, beginning in the United States.

Samsung didnt indicate pricing for the line.

Fashion Forward

The new designs launched at CES are part of the larger trend towards more bling and enhanced appeal for women that we also saw from Huawei at CES, and from models like the Moto 360 2 and Pebble Time Round earlier this year, remarked Cliff Raskind, a senior research director at Strategy Analytics.

That sensibility is reflected in the premium metal-plated models, campy watch faces, and  leather straps, he told TechNewsWorld.

The larger trend, of course, is that smartwatches are meeting the challenge of adding style and fashion a lot faster than theyre meeting the challenge of practical day-to-day convenience  battery life, comfort, size, Raskind said.

Too Cool for the Real World?

Despite being extremely well made, with an intuitive interface and other good features, the Gear S2, predecessor of the New Edition line, reportedly has connectivity issues and only a limited number of apps for its Tizen OS, according to Kris Carlon, who reviewed it for AndroidPit.

Those arent the only reported problems.

You cant use the Verizon Message+ to respond through the watch. Typing is a joke  cant use Gmail app to look at entire mailbox, only notifications, have to set up the email app to see everything, said Foxy in a comment posted in response to the AndroidPit review.

When using WhatsApp on the Gear S2, the reply icon disappeared and couldnt be retrieved even after the smartphone had been reset, reported Alfred Tang in another comment.

Battery life was five to seven hours instead of the advertised 30 or 48 after the Instagram app was downloaded and used, BlueEyed Apache complained. You can get a good 25+ hours from the battery but only if you use the watch solely for telling time.

However, dropped connections werent a problem for commenter Adeshina Adeniran, who wrote that using the Gear S2 was amazing and fun.

Getting Better All the Time?

Lack of apps is a problem, but with ESPN, Uber and CNN, I think were seeing the big names come in, said Ramon Llamas, a research manager at IDC.

We need to see more local ones, but these are good ones to have, he told TechNewsWorld.

Tizen smartwatch shipments will grow from 1.7 million units shipped in 2015, with 8.2 percent of the market, to 2.5 million in 2019, according to IDC.

Thats a 9.5 percent compound annual growth rate, but it wont be enough. The market share for Tizen smartwatches will slip to 2.8 percent in 2019.

More ecosystem and SDK focus is clearly needed if Tizen is to compete head to head in apps with watchOS, Android Wear, and even Pebbles budding developer ecosystem, said Strategy Analytics Raskind.

Tizen remains much more confined to Samsung, limiting its ecosystem potential, he continued, while Android Wear, watchOS and Pebble OS continue to evolve and gain a following. Attracting more developers to build more Tizen apps will not be an easy task from its current low base.

There might yet be hope, Raskind suggested, because Samsung Electronics new chief, DJ Koh, who took over the role Dec. 1, has the required software chops to address the apps shortfall.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Monday pressed to revive a lawsuit against Cisco Systems for violating human rights in China, in a brief filed with a U.S. Court of Appeals.

Members of Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted in China, originally filed the lawsuit in 2011, but a federal district court in California dismissed it in 2014. The federal appeals court now is considering a challenge to that dismissal.

We applaud the role technology companies play in spreading the benefits of the digital age around the world, the EFF wrote in an amicus brief filed with the appellate court.

We believe it is inappropriate to hold technology companies liable for violations of international law under the [Alien Tort Act] based solely on their provision of general-purpose or dual purpose technologies to governments or others who misuse them to commit human rights violations, the brief states.

The Alien Tort Act allows noncitizens to file lawsuits in U.S. courts for human rights violations.

However, it is also important to ensure that liability is preserved for companies that intentionally build and provide ongoing support for customized technologies that have the clear purpose of facilitating governmental human rights abuses, the brief continues.

Ciscos Complicity

Plaintiffs have presented allegations and evidence in this case that, if substantiated through discovery, would be sufficient to support such liability for Ciscos customization of the Golden Shield (also known as The Great Firewall), the EFF brief notes.

In dismissing the case against Cisco, the federal district court judge said that the Falun Gong victims didnt offer enough support for their claim that Cisco knew the customized features of the Golden Shield, which enabled the identification and apprehension of Falun Gong practitioners, would lead to their torture.

The EFF disputes the courts finding.

Were saying the district court is wrong, because there are allegations in the complaint that Cisco designed and customized its product with the knowledge it would be used for human rights abuses, said Sophia Cope, an EFF staff attorney.

Once Cisco got the contract to work on Golden Shield, they customized features of it to target the Falun Gong specifically, she told TechNewsWorld. We think the facts show that Cisco fully understood, intended and purposely built the Golden Shield to facilitate in the persecution of Falun Gong.

Cisco Did No Wrong

Throughout the proceedings, Cisco has denied any wrongdoing.

We have always maintained that there is no basis for the allegations against Cisco, and there is no merit to the case. We do not customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression. The case was correctly dismissed by the District Court, the company said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Robyn Blum.

Cisco isnt the only U.S. high-tech company accused of helping authoritarian states violate human rights in recent times. Blue Coat, for example, allegedly supplied Web-monitoring software used to squash dissent in Syria.

As it turned out, two individuals and three companies illegally sold Blue Coat products to Syria. The U.S. Commerce Department last year yanked the export licenses of all of those parties.

Chilling Effect

It would be unfortunate to go after a technology provider for the use of their equipment, said Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT Harvest. Its like going after a gun manufacturer when their guns are used to harm people.

The Cisco cases validity rests on how much the company knew when working with the Chinese on the Golden Shield.

To me, it hinges on how complicit was Cisco in helping to design and configure The Great Firewall, Stiennon told TechNewsWorld.

No companys management should do evil or allow evil to be done with their products, he said, but this could have a chilling effect on manufacturers selling to less than lily-white countries.
Brave Software, helmed by Brendan Eich, who cofounded Mozilla and created the JavaScript programming language, on Tuesday released the 0.7 developer version of its Brave browser.

Brave is an open source project that promises to block Internet greed and ugliness, while improving speed and protecting privacy. Basically, it blocks ads containing pixels and cookies that track users and load stuff onto their devices without their knowledge.

Malvertising wont get onto users devices because the project has integrated the EFFs HTTPS Everywhere into the browser.

Brave allows clean ads  that is, ads that dont track users or upload anything onto their devices. It reportedly takes 15 percent of the ad revenue generated.

The browser appears specifically tuned for performance and privacy, and has behind it a unique advertiser component, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

It effectively bypasses Google, so I expect if its successful, Google would most likely buy them and shut them down, he told TechNewsWorld.

Braves Technical Guts

There are separate GitHub repositories for Brave for iOS, Android, and OS X/Windows/Linux.

Brave browsers block initial signaling and analytics scripts that launch programmatic ads, impression-tracking pixels, and ad-click confirmation signals, according to Eich.

User data is kept out of the cloud-based Brave Vault by default.

The ad blocking is a core feature, not an overlay, so the result should be much faster performance, Enderle said. Users dont really care about the benefits of tracking, and they do care about speed.

However, one of the major challenges theyll face is applications, noted Michael Jude, a program manager at Frost & Sullivan.

Many browser-accessible business apps require cookies, he told TechNewsWorld, so there are online apps that wont work with Brave. That might be a major consumer consideration.

Consumers and Ad Blocking

Users in the United States, Germany and France consistently find pop-up ads, video ads, animated banner ads, and all-around banner ads the most annoying formats, according to a survey of 6,000 people Ipsos conducted for Adblock Plus last year.

Users of ad blockers are more likely to be high-value consumers  that is, young and well-off  according to a 2015 study conducted by Sourcepoint and comScore.

Ad blocking arises from audience frustration or dislike for very basic targeting or retargeting based on website visitation, search, or online purchase history, noted Joline McGoldrick, vice president of insights at Millward Brown Digital.

Irrelevant ads are the worst offender and reflects negatively on the brand, she told TechNewsWorld.

Ad blocking cost publishers nearly $22 billion last year, PageFair estimated.

Braves Advertising Plans

Brave will insert ads by default in a few standard-sized spaces discovered through a cloud robot  which itself might be considered programmatic advertising.

Ads will be targeted based on browser-side intent signals phrased in a standard vocabulary, without a persistent user ID or highly reidentifiable code.

That raises the question of whether advertisers whose ads are blocked will be willing to do business with Brave.

Ad blocking will have a marginal impact in the near term  but could become a much bigger issue in 12 months, said Greg Sterling, VP of strategy and insights at the Local Search Association.

A year should give us a much better trajectory of the issue, he told TechNewsWorld.

If consumer adoption of the browser takes off, it could impact online publications in the long term, Millward Browns McGoldrick said. Advertisers are interested in how their media performs among their target. Losing the inputs that let [them] define their target and optimize against it would be an unwelcome development.

Still, whether Brave can reach critical mass is doubtful.

I can see Google aggressively moving to block a browser like this, Enderle said. On the other hand, Eich has an experienced team, so this effort could get really interesting really quickly.
The rise of autonomous war machines is outpacing policies and technological countermeasures, weapons and robotics experts warned last week at theWorld Economic Forum.

Autonomous weaponry potentially is a US$20 billion industry that has taken root in 40 countries, saidBAE Systems Chairman Roger Carr.

He was one of four panelists at the session titled What If: Robots Go to War? The other panelists were Angela Kane, senior fellow at theVienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation; robot ethics expert Alan Winfield; and Stuart Russell, a computer science professor atUC Berkeley.

Lethal autonomous robotics, or LARs, have no emotion or sense of mercy, Carr said.

The panel stressed the need for human operators to oversee LARs, which cant fully comply with laws limiting all-out war.

The next 18 months or so will be critical, warned Kane, because some actors will use the technology irresponsibly and possibly even maliciously.

The First Autonomous Weapon

Whilekiller robots very well may be an existential threat to humanity, autonomous weapons already have been used on a large scale.

The U.S. is believed to be the first country to have launched an autonomous weapon, according to Richard Stiennon, chief research analystIT-Harvest. That weaponized artificial intelligence, Stuxnet, was designed to take down power plants and other large-scale industrial sites.

The only reason we havent seen this yet in the private cybercrimes space is that traditional attacks, such as spearfishing and man in the middle,  are a lot less expensive and take a lot less work, he told TechNewsWorld.

States actively researching or testing autonomous weapons include China, Israel, Russia, South Korea, the UK and the U.S., according to theCampaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Nation-State Involvement

The sophistication of cyberattacks seems to be moving at warp speeds, said Brian Arellanes, CEO ofITSourceTek.

One of the things weve realized, in sitting on different panels and engaging the community, is that there are nation-states that are heavily funding these hacker organizations, he told TechNewsWorld. So its not just one individual operating as a lone wolf anymore, though there remains that threat.

Nation-states increasingly have been turning to hacker collectives to wage war and play spy games.

Its becoming a much more complex landscape, so it makes it harder, especially for private sector companies, to fight these cyberterrorists, said Arellanes.

Its imperative to highlight the potential for bad actors to hack and control LARs and other military equipment.

I cant help but think of William Gibsons novel Neuromancer  where he described all of this in graphic detail, IT-Harvests Stiennon said. its quite amazing that someone who is not a technologist has the imagination to see this coming.
Foursquare on Thursday announced that cofounder Dennis Crowley has assumed a new executive role, and that it has raised US$45 million in a new round of funding led by Union Square Ventures.

Crowley has moved from his perch as CEO into the newly created position of executive chairman, which will let him focus on developing new products. Jeff Glueck, who served as COO for the past year, has taken the CEO helm.

Crowley named Steven Rosenblatt, a four-year veteran of the firm, as president  essentially acting as Gluecks copilot. Rosenblatt will oversee revenue and business-to-business offerings.

With our business maturing and with our enterprise solutions (Places API, Places Insights) and as programmatic advertising platform (Pinpoint) fueling our revenue growth, I felt like now is the right time to put the strongest executives in the companys top leadership positions, Crowley noted on Thursday.

Recent Turnaround

Foursquare has gained enormous traction over the past 18 months, Glueck pointed out, citing new customer agreements with Apple, Twitter and Pinterest, and an additional 100,000 developers tapping its location data.

Foursquare and Swarm have more than 50 million monthly active users, he said, and check-ins are at an all time high.

The company has launched two new B2B platforms  the ad platform Pinpoint, and Place Insights and Places tools for developers  which reported revenue increases of 170 percent and 160 percent respectively in 2015, according to Glueck.

In the midst of all that recent success, theres a downside. The latest round of funding cuts in half the companys valuation of $650 million, compared with its valuation in 2013, during a prior fundraising period, The New York Times reported.

Foursquare has not commented on valuation and will not do so, said spokesperson Sarah Spagnolo.

However, funding from both inside and outside investors, including USV and Morgan Stanley, is proof that our business is strong and showing tremendous momentum, she told the E-Commerce Times.

The company is pursuing growth aggressively, with plans to hire 30 additional employees across sales, engineering and other functions, Spagnolo said.

Practical Move

The shakeup is a classical business school maneuver to put control of Foursquares operations in the hands of some experienced executives who have practical day-to-day management capabilities, observed Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

The decision also suggests that Crowley doesnt have the experience or capacity to effectively handle the CEO role, he told the E-Commerce Times. Theres no shame in that  founding a company and running a business are two different processes with very different skill sets.

King said hed be very surprised if Its likely the new venture capital funders were behind  or even demanded  the change, suggested King.

I see the move as driven by the new investors, said Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Foursquare has good location technology and needs to find another outlet for the tech, as competitors have stunted the growth of the original Foursquare app, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Swarm isnt a particularly compelling product, though, Krewell added.

The company now will focus on monetizing its location data, in particular to help target programmatic advertising via Foursquares Pinpoint ad product, suggested Jay Wilson, research director for social marketing at Gartner.

The challenge will be keeping that data coming in by keeping users engaged, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Thats a big challenge indeed, given the ubiquity of GPS location capabilities  now found on Facebook, Instagram and other apps, Wilson said.

The company also needs to find innovative marketing applications for Swarm and Foursquare, he said, adding that there hasnt been enough interest coming from mid-tier and enterprise marketers on that front, despite the success Foursquare has had on the local, small business level.

That goal could account for the elevation of Jeff Glueck, who served as CMO at Travelocity, Wilson speculated.

Foursquare deserves praise for hanging tough when it came under fire for failing to live up to the industry hype, maintained investor Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures.

Crowley and his team have built a real business that is sustainable, he told the E-Commerce Times, pointing to its location API as the most used in the business.

You can say what you will about Foursquare  and dont bother because it most certainly has already been said and not very nicely, Wilson remarked, but it has survived and is thriving.
WASHINGTON  US-based seed and agro-chemicals company, Monsanto, has filed a lawsuit in California in a bid to prevent glyphosate, the main ingredient in its Roundup herbicide, from being added to the state's list of known carcinogens. Use of Roundup herbicide is widespread in cotton growing.
(Screenshot Facegloria)

Brazilian Evangelical Christians have launched a new site that intends to be a "sin-free" alternative to Facebook called "Facegloria."

It drew more than 100,000 users in its first month of operation, the Irish Mirror reported July 6.

"On Facebook you see a lot of violence and pornography," founder Atilla Barros told Agence France-Presse. "That's why we thought of creating a network where we could talk about God, love and to spread His word.

"We want to be morally and technically better than Facebook."

Three years ago Barros and three other fervent Christians working at the mayor's office in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, near Sao Paulo, decided there was a market for a wholesome version of Facebook.

The mayor of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, near the Brazilian financial capital, helped set up the business with his own savings and it used some $16,000 in start-up money leading to the birth of Facegloria.

Although Brazil is a predominantly Catholic country, it is estimated that more than 40 million of its 202 million people are Evangelicals, and it is from them the site is drawing support.

The Christian Post reported that Facegloria will not allow swear words, and obscene words are banned, while, violent and sexual content is prohibited.

Barros, who designed the website said, "On Facebook there is a lot of violence and pornography, so [we] thought we'd found a network where we could talk about God, love and share your word."

As it is a social media site similar, Facegloria offers Christian language such as an "Amen" button instead of "Like."

The site is open to anyone who wishes to sign up and ascribe to its principles.

Barros has high aims for the site.

"In two years we hope to get to 10 million users in Brazil. In a month we have had 100,000 and in two we are expecting a big increase thanks to a mobile phone app," he told AFP.
WASHINGTON  Automatic braking systems reduce rear-end collisions by almost 40 percent, according to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Many newer models are equipped with forward collision warnings, which sound an alarm if the vehicle gets too close to the one in front of it. But automatic braking systems take the technology one step further, autonomously applying the brakes if the driver doesn't respond quickly enough.

IIHS researchers compiled data from U.S. police reports in 22 states from 2010-14 and found that vehicles equipped with automatic braking were 39 percent less likely to rear-end other vehicles than those without this technology.

That compares to a 23 percent reduction in vehicles outfitted with forward collision warnings alone.

"The success of front-crash prevention represents a big step toward safer roads," said David Zuby, IIHS chief research officer, in a statement. "As this technology becomes more widespread, we can expect to see noticeably fewer rear-end crashes."

Even when automatic braking systems fail to avoid a crash, they are effective in reducing the number of injuries by slowing the speed of impact. The study found that the rate of rear-end crashes with injuries decreased by 42 percent with auto-braking.

Currently, these systems tend to be optional equipment, except on some higher-end luxury vehicles. But, according to IIHS, the technology is becoming more prevalent and may soon be required.

Last September, as reported by Edmunds, IIHS and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reached an agreement with 10 automakers to make auto-braking standard on all models in the near future. In fact, NHTSA says car shoppers should look for such systems when they hit the showroom.

Those manufacturers  Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo  are working to bring the technology to vehicles "as soon as possible," NHTSA said in a statement.

NHTSA said the cost of these systems "varies significantly depending on the type and number of sensors used." But they may add hundreds of dollars to the bottom line.

Edmunds says: In light of this study, consumers shopping for a new vehicle may want to put automatic braking on their priority list.
A primary school principal in the UK has taken parents to task for their choice of attire when visiting the school.Head teacher, Kate Chisholm, made the appeal after noticing that parents were wearing pyjamas when dropping their kids off at the school gates.I have noticed there has been an increasing tendency for parents to escort children to and from school while still wearing their pyjamas and, on occasion, even slippers, read the letter.Could I please ask that when you are escorting your children, you take the time to dress appropriately in day wear that is suitable for the weather conditions.Chisholm said some parents had even worn night time attire when attending school assemblies and meetings.She defended her letter, telling The Daily Mail it was not a judgement but a bid to set good example for the children.If we're to raise standards it's not too much to ask parents to have a wash and get dressed, she said.Chisholm said she had loads of support from the community and people saying it was about time something was done.If I get the parents on board then we often get the children too and in order to get the best chances for the children we have to raise the bar with the parents, she explained.I don't give two hoots how people dress at home, I just think if they're a good role model for their children and want them to get a job and better yourself then they ought to get dressed.
A new pair of reports use international comparisons to show that any school accountability system that fails to take teacher professional development into consideration might be fighting a losing battle.

The studies, commissioned by the National Center on Education and the Economy, a nonprofit that studies education systems around the world, were led by researchers Ben Jensen and Minxuan Zhang. Both researchers presented on their work at a forum hosted by the NCEE here earlier this month. They said their findings boiled down to a single point: School accountability needs to factor in the quality of teacher professional development .

School improvement equals professional learning, said Jensen, the president of the Australia-based think tank Learning First.

The Jensen-led report, titled Beyond PD, looked at teacher professional-learning models in British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore, all high-performing school systems as measured by student achievement on international-comparison tests. In Developing Shanghais Teachers, Zhang, a professor at Shanghai University and director of its Institute of International Comparative Education, focused exclusively on Shanghai.

Not an Add-On

The reports identify some of the commonalities among PD programs in high-performing systems: career-ladder systems for teachers, strong teacher induction, and consistent, high-quality PD that is led by teachers themselves.

For all of these people, professional learning is central to their jobs. It is not an add-on. It is not something done on Friday afternoons or on a few days at the end of the school year, the Jensen report states.

The career-ladder frameworks are used to ensure that more-experienced and knowledgeable teachers help guide and develop younger teachers. In Shanghai, for example, a mentor-teacher is held accountable for how well he or she mentors a new teacher, the teaching practices of the new teacher, and the performance of the new teachers students. If these indicators are not improved, the mentor will miss out on promotion, the Jensen report notes. That kind of instructional accountability runs throughout the system, including principals and other administrators.

In addition, Zhang said at the NCEE forum, Shanghai schools aim to embed PD throughout instruction. Teachers are encouraged to write and reflect so they can figure out why some things work and can share it, he said.

To that end, advanced Shanghai teachers are turned into researchers , using the classroom to develop and test instructional approaches and interventions, the Zhang report shows.

For all these types of models to operate effectively, channels for teacher collaboration are essential, the researchers emphasized.

This is a profound shift for many systems given the efforts to develop precise school performance measures over the past few years, the Jensen report says. It requires faith and trust in the people making professional judgments.

If these types of PD systems show promise in other countries, why arent they more prominent in the United States?

Studies routinely show that educator professional development is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States, but the effectiveness of that PD is far from clear. An August 2015 study by the teacher-training and advocacy group TNTP questioned the impact of PD activities in U.S. schools and criticized districts for overemphasizing workshops and other trainings that teachers often dont find helpful.

"[In the U.S.,] theres a lot of throwing things against the wall and not even checking to see whether they stick, Daniel Weisberg, chief executive officer for TNTP, said in an interview. In these systems in other countries, there clearly is an approach that is much more disciplined about testing impact and both adjusting and holding people accountable based on that.

Uses of Time

Some states and districts, such as Iowa and Baltimore, have implemented career-ladder systems, but there hasnt been a widespread diffusion of the practice, in part due to political and financial barriers.

One major obstacle to implementing collaborative PD models like those cited in the NCEE-funded reports may be time. U.S. teachers spend more time on face-to-face classroom instruction than do their counterparts in the countries studied, according to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Teachers in Singapore, for instance, spend 10 fewer hours per week on such instruction, giving them more time to work together.

In British Columbia, which trails the U.S. only slightly in face-to-face classroom time, professional learning appears to be worked into every nook and cranny of available time in the school day. One case study from the Jensen report offers a glimpse at an elementary school in which the principal acts as the primary substitute teacher so that her faculty could spend time on classroom observation.

At the NCEE forum, Viticia Thames, an education consultant at the World Bank, brought up another concern: If a system requires that effective teachers help develop other effective teachers, shouldnt there be a model for high-quality instruction?

We [in the U.S.] havent really taken the time to develop objective measures of what quality instruction looks like in the same way that has been done in Shanghai and Singapore, Thames said.

While teaching-practice frameworks, such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System , or CLASS, and Charlotte Danielsons Framework for Teaching , do exist, any district that wants to create a system from scratch would need to put in a great deal of time and effort, Thames said.

There is a need to become much clearer about what is and is not good instruction, Jensen said via email. U.S. districts shouldand many dohave clear instructional models. But these should not be so granular that they lead to compliance responses, he added, saying that states and districts need to allow more room for educator expertise.

Panelists at the forum identified additional concerns: If every district or state has its own career-ladder program, how would teachers transition between them if they change districts? What safeguards would there be to ensure that promotion isnt simply the result of favoritism? How does a district make sure that principals understand the vision for professional learning?

Marc Tucker, the president of the NCEE and an opinion blogger for Education Week, said that the difficulties the United States might face in learning from other countries shouldnt be a roadblock to experimentation.

There are examples of things that cost less, produce better, and create more equity, Tucker said. Were damn fools if we dont go and see what theyre doing.
To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
 MINSA

The European Investment Bank has granted a USD 50 million loan to the Republic of Panama for investment in wastewater treatment in Panama City. The countrys Finance Minister, Dulcidio de la Guardia, and EIB Vice-President Roman Escolano signed the loan agreement in Panama today.

The loan will finance the expansion of the Juan Diaz water treatment plant included in the Panamanian Governments 2015-2019 five-year strategic plan, which identifies water as a priority sector and aims to improve the coverage, quality and management of water services. The project will double the existing water treatment capacity of 190 000 m3 and will have a positive impact on the quality of water services and the urban environment.

This loan, the third that the EIB has granted to the Government of Panama, will be provided under the current Latin America mandate, which enables the Bank to support investment aimed at developing economic and social infrastructure.

The EIB has been mounting operations in Latin America since 1993 under mandates granted by the EU Council and European Parliament. During this period, the EU bank has signed contracts relating to 90 projects in the region, mobilising around EUR 7 billion worth of finance. On 1 July 2014 the current external lending mandate came into force for the period 2014-2020, with a limit of around EUR 2.3 billion for operations in Latin America. In certain cases the EIB can also grant loans from its own resources under the Climate Action and Environment Instrument or the Strategic Projects Instrument, for a combined total amount of EUR 2 billion.
European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer today in Athens announced the newly established Investment Team for Greece, to strengthen the EU Banks activities and demonstrate its strong commitment to the countrys economic recovery.

Speaking in Athens President Hoyer said: I am delighted to be here to announce the EIBs new Investment Team for Greece today. It is the first time we have set up such a team, yet another measure of our commitment to Greeces recovery. I am confident that this will strengthen and re-inforce the EIB Groups activities in Greece under the leadership of Nicholas Jennett who will lead a strengthened permanent EIB presence in Greece. Greece has faced challenging times in recent years but the EU bank has been and will continue to be by its side. The EU Bank was here before the crisis erupted, has stayed during difficult times, and even strengthened its commitment since, providing investment in the real economy when it was most needed. The Banks current exposure in Greece represents around 10% of the countrys GDP.

The new Investment Team is part of a special initiative for Greece and marks the first step that the EU bank plans to build on in the coming months through stronger advisory work and strengthened operational capacity on the ground. The purpose of the Athens-based Investment Team is to make a difference by making sure that the EIB can contribute in every way through the EIB Groups financial and technical experience and new operations, enabling the EU bank to play a key part in the revival of the Greek economy. The team will consist of 30 EIB Group officials, about half of whom will be based in the EU Banks Athens office.

Nicholas Jennett Deputy Director General in the EIB is heading the team and is the most senior official working to enhance EIB operations on the ground. He has some 17 years experience at the EIB where most recently he has led the New Products Department,

He said, I am very happy to take the helm of the EIBs Investment Team for Greece at a crucial time for this country when we can make a real difference for the real economy. The new Investment Team for Greece will ensure that the EIBs financial and technical expertise can support sustainable economic recovery in Greece and much needed job creation across the country. We will further bolster financing and help provide technical support for suitable and viable projects, especially in the private sector and SMEs, which are the backbone of the Greek economy, and this will have an even greater impact to boost growth and create quality new jobs.

As part of his visit to Greece, President Hoyer also held meetings with President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the newly-elected leader of the main opposition New Democracy party Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Their discussions focused mainly on the EIB Groups activities in Greece and its future plans in the country.

We are determined to enhance our cooperation with the Hellenic Republic, other European development finance institutions and private investors in further assisting recovery in Greece, President Hoyer added.

Since 2008 the EIB Group provided over EUR 12 billion in loans and guarantees in Greece. Outstanding EIB loans total around EUR 18 billion, approximately 10% of the countrys GDP. In 2015 the EIB Group  the EIB and the European Investment Fund  provided loans and guarantees in Greece totaling EUR 1.4 billion.
By Rod Nickel and Natalie Grover

(Reuters) - Companies and scientists are racing to create a Zika vaccine as concern grows over the mosquito-borne virus that has been linked to severe birth defects and is spreading quickly through the Americas.

Zika is now present in 23 countries and territories in the Americas. Brazil, the hardest-hit country, has reported around 3,700 cases of the devastating birth defect called microcephaly that are strongly suspected to be related to Zika.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), stung by criticism that it reacted too slowly to West Africa's Ebola epidemic, is convening an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response to the spread of the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated an emergency operations centre staffed around the clock to address Zika, agency officials told Reuters.

On Thursday, the WHO forecast that as many as 4 million people in the Americas may become infected by Zika, lending new urgency to research efforts already under way. Vaccine developers made clear that a vaccine for widespread public use is at least months, if not years, away.

The closest prospect may be from a consortium including drugmaker Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc that could have a vaccine ready for emergency use before year-end, according to one of its lead developers. Inovio's share price gained more than 15 percent in Friday trading.

Canadian scientist Gary Kobinger told Reuters on Thursday the first stage of testing on humans could begin as early as August. If successful, the vaccine might be used during a public health emergency by October or November, said Kobinger, who helped develop a trial vaccine for the Ebola virus.

Privately owned vaccine developer Hawaii Biotech Inc said it began a formal programme to test a Zika vaccine last fall as the virus started to gain traction in Brazil, although it has no timetable yet for clinical trials.

"Right now, we are in the pre-clinical stage, as I suspect everyone is," Chief Executive Officer Dr. Elliot Parks told Reuters.

Another private vaccine developer, Boston-based Replikins Ltd, said it was preparing to start animal studies on a Zika vaccine in the next 10 days. Data from the trials on mice and rabbits would likely be out in the next couple of months, Replikins Chairman Samuel Bogoch told Reuters.

"No one has the $500 million on hand to take it (a vaccine) all the way to human trials. Somewhere along the course we hope to have big pockets join us," Bogoch said.

'FIGHT THE MOSQUITO'

Zika had been viewed as a relatively mild illness until Brazilian health officials identified it as a matter of concern for pregnant women. While a direct causal relationship has not been established, scientists strongly suspect a link between Zika and thousands of children born in Brazil with abnormally small heads, brain defects and impaired vision.

There is no treatment for Zika infection. About 80 percent of those infected experience no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

Efforts to combat Zika are focused on protecting people from being bitten and on eradicating mosquitoes, a tough task in many parts of Latin America, where people live in poverty and there are plentiful breeding grounds for the insect.

"We do not have a vaccine for Zika yet. The only thing we can do is fight the mosquito," Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday, reiterating her call for a national eradication effort.

Rousseff said tests for the development of a vaccine would begin next week at the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil's leading biomedical research centres in Sao Paulo.

Zika has hit Brazil just as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5-21, an event that draws hundreds of thousands of athletes, team officials and spectators. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured teams on Friday the Olympics would be safe from Zika, but urged visitors to carefully protect themselves.

U.S. lawmakers have begun to press the Obama administration for details of its response to Zika. At least 31 people in the country have been infected, all of them after travel to affected countries.

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is planning a hearing on Zika "very soon," said Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who called the threat posed by the virus to the United States a "big concern."

"We need to ensure that federal agencies are working closely together and with the international community to stop its rapid spread," added Republican Ron Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he did not expect the United States to be hit hard like other some countries in South America and the Caribbean.

"We prepare for the possibility of a major outbreak but we believe it is unlikely to happen," Fauci said.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Toni Clarke in Washington, Karolos Grohmann in Berlin, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Will Dunham and Lisa Shumaker)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - China is set to join the underwater search for a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet missing for almost two years by providing a sonar-equipped vessel by the end of February, Australia's deputy prime minister Warren Truss said on Friday.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014, sparking one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.

The Chinese vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101 was offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in November and will be deployed to join search operations in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have gone down in March 2014.

At the time, China valued its contribution to the search at A$20 million ($14.2 million).

The Australian-led underwater search is one of the most expensive ever conducted. An initial hunt along a rugged 60,000-sq km (23,000 sq miles) patch of sea floor off the coast of Perth cost A$120 million but yielded no sign of the plane.

The presence of Dong Hai Jiu will take to four the number of vessels scouring a search area that has been expanded to 120,000 square km (46,330 square miles) of ocean floor.

The vessel is expected to leave Singapore for Australia on Jan. 31 and commence operations towards the end of February.

The sonar system onboard Dong Hai Jiu 101 will be operated by Phoenix International Holdings and Hydrospheric Solutions. Both companies have previous experience in the search for MH370.

Earlier this week, Australian authorities said they had lost a deep-water sonar detector that was being used in the search.

A piece of the plane washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean in July 2015 but no further trace has been found.

On Saturday, a piece of suspected plane wreckage was found off the east coast of southern Thailand but aviation experts and Thai officials said it was unlikely to belong to MH370.

(Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Paul Tait)

Relacionados Search for missing Malaysian jet finds second 19th Century shipwreck
By Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has put its military on alert for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch after indications it is preparing for a test firing, two people with direct knowledge of the order told Reuters on Friday.

"Increased activity at North Korea's missile site suggests that there may be a launch in the next few weeks," said one of the sources, both of whom declined to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

Tension rose in East Asia this month after North Korea's fourth nuclear test, this time of what it said was a hydrogen bomb.

A missile test coming so soon after the nuclear test would raise concern that North Korea plans to fit nuclear warheads on its missiles, giving it the capability to launch a strike against rival South Korea, Japan and possibly targets as far away as the U.S. West Coast.

A Japanese Defense Ministry spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Japan's Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani has ordered Aegis destroyers that operate in the Sea of Japan to be ready to target any North Korean projectiles heading for Japan.

The advanced vessels are able to track multiple targets and are armed with SM-3 missiles designed to destroy incoming warheads in space before they re-enter the atmosphere and fall to there targets.

Japan also has Patriot PAC-3 missile batteries around Tokyo and other sites to provide a last line of defence as warheads near the ground.

Rather than a direct attack, however, Japan is more concerned that debris from a missile test could fall on its territory.

(Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Robert Birsel)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed his indignation to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday over "made up accusations" against Russia's leadership by senior officials from the U.S. administration, Russia's Foreign Ministry said.

"It was stressed that the guilt for the deliberate escalation of tension in bilateral relations fully rests with Washington," the ministry said.

A White House spokesman had said that earlier comments by a U.S. Treasury Department official alleging Russian President Vladimir Putin was corrupt were "a reflection of the administration's view".

The Kremlin said earlier on Friday that these comments were outrageous and insulting, aiming to influence Russia's next presidential election.

(Reporting by Katya Golubkova; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Alexander Winning)
Washington, Jan 29 (EFE).- Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush starred in some of the best moments of the Republican debate broadcasted by Fox News, accusing each other of changes over immigration-related issues.

The moderators of the debate showed some videos with past statements from Cruz and Rubio in which both favored an immigration policy with at least a path to the legalization of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Senator Rubio insisted that he has never been supportive of an "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants and said that if he becomes president, he will not "deport 12 million people" but he will not be "handing out citizenship cards" either.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush took the opportunity to criticize Rubio, reminding him that he was one of those who pushed for the immigration reform bill passed by the Senate in 2013 but later "he cut and run" because the initiative "was not popular among conservatives."

In response, Rubio said that Bush was the one who has changed his position on immigration, as the former governor "used to support the path to citizenship" and now he talks about "legalization".

Rubio also had a similar confrontation with Cruz, whose ratings come close on the heels of Donald Trump, the great absentee of the night, in the voting polls prior the Iowa caucus to be held next Monday.

According to Rubio, Cruz has created his campaign around the lie that he is "the most conservative" candidate and "he has been willing to say whatever he can to get elected".

Senator Rand Paul noted that Cruz has an "authenticity" problem because he was for the legalization of undocumented immigrants but "now he says it wasn't so. That isn't true."

Countering the attack from Rubio, Cruz underlined that his rival supported "amnesty" because "he thought it was politically advantageous."

Seven of 12 Republican presidential candidates participated in the main Fox debate at peak hours in which Trump was not present.

Trump snubbed the conservative channel Fox and one of its star presenters Megyn Kelly and held a separate rally, at Drake University in Des Moins in benefit of military veterans.
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.

17:55, 17 OCT 2022
Big bridge grant for Austin Free Access Austin Borough has qualified for a state grant to cover construction of a new bridge near the towns northern gateway. A $518,400 allotment from the Multimodal Transportation Fund will allow...

Deeds filed in Cameron County Free Access Following are real estate transactions filed with the Cameron County Recorder of Deeds: Blair A. Lundberg to Alcohol & Drug Abuse Services, Emporium, $185,000; David Jeffrey Smith to Elk Mountain...

These are the best of times for deer hunters Free Access There has rarely been a better time to be a deer hunter in Pennsylvanias northcentral region. Not only has the whitetail population been steadily rebounding, but the deer are healthier...

DuBois family leaves millions for volunteer orgs Free Access Christmas came early to seven community organizations whose work was important to the late multimillionaire Arthur F. DuBois (shown in the inset) of Coudersport. Some $3.1 million in proceeds from...
Manx volunteer appeals for young girl with brain tumour



Rufa

A Ballaugh woman who's immersed in the on-going refugee crisis is pleading with people on the Island to help in the urgent race to save a child's life.

Ayren-Marie Kelly is fighting to get medical treatment for an 11-year-old girl from Yemen who has a life threatening brain tumour.



Rufa's country has been ravaged by war - she's now in Saudi Arabia but medics there won't help her.

Doctors on the Island helped to assess her medical records so Ayren-Marie and her fellow volunteers could organise potential treatment for her - however the costs could reach 100,000 Euros:

Media

Ayren-Marie Kelly
Re: Fish 'n' Chips



Fresh might have meant fresh in the times of your childhood, but I'm afraid that the term "fresh" when it comes to fish in the UK generally means "fresh frozen", in other words it is frozen shortly after catching for the long transport back to port (often thousands of kilometers).



Even when you eat fish in a "fishing village" there's a very good chance that the fish you eat comes from the other side of the world. Even in the case where a local fishing village still sends out a couple of boats (assuming that they can still find fish to catch), this will never cope with the demand.



The fact that Switzerland is land locked makes no difference at all. If a fish is already frozen, what difference does it make to transport it a couple of more hours? There's a considerable delay before it actually reaches your plate anyway. In the case of Zurich - I understand that fish markets are done only twice a week, rather than daily (I could be wrong about that). Fish isn't delivered daily to supermarkets, so the new deliveries may stay out the back until the older stuff in the front is sold.



This might be disappointing, but it's a simple fact that the oceans, especially around populated places, are almost bare compared to 20-30 years ago. The Atlantic is all but devoid of cod (used to be a popular fish and chips fish), stocks are down to 20% of their former levels and in many places totally collapsed.



The good news is that if you live in a country where fisheries are managed properly, and illegal fishing is strongly patrolled, you might actually get the chance to go to the fish markets and get something that is really fresh. However, even in a famous fish market like Tokyo, the tuna all arrive frozen.

But look on the bright side Brits - there's no shortage of chips... Do the Brits on this thread who say that the fish has to be "fresh" and not frozen really believe that this is what they have been eating when they buy fish and chips in the UK?Fresh might have meant fresh in the times of your childhood, but I'm afraid that the term "fresh" when it comes to fish in the UK generally means "fresh frozen", in other words it is frozen shortly after catching for the long transport back to port (often thousands of kilometers).Even when you eat fish in a "fishing village" there's a very good chance that the fish you eat comes from the other side of the world. Even in the case where a local fishing village still sends out a couple of boats (assuming that they can still find fish to catch), this will never cope with the demand.The fact that Switzerland is land locked makes no difference at all. If a fish is already frozen, what difference does it make to transport it a couple of more hours? There's a considerable delay before it actually reaches your plate anyway. In the case of Zurich - I understand that fish markets are done only twice a week, rather than daily (I could be wrong about that). Fish isn't delivered daily to supermarkets, so the new deliveries may stay out the back until the older stuff in the front is sold.This might be disappointing, but it's a simple fact that the oceans, especially around populated places, are almost bare compared to 20-30 years ago. The Atlantic is all but devoid of cod (used to be a popular fish and chips fish), stocks are down to 20% of their former levels and in many places totally collapsed.The good news is that if you live in a country where fisheries are managed properly, and illegal fishing is strongly patrolled, you might actually get the chance to go to the fish markets and get something that is really fresh. However, even in a famous fish market like Tokyo, the tuna all arrive frozen.But look on the bright side Brits - there's no shortage of chips...

Help: How to get more from searches | How to use tags | Please do not PM me for help on permits, jobs or salaries __________________
Most people will attest that the awards show that really matters is the Oscars: the glitz and glamour (even when overshadowed by a very intense debate about diversity) have made it the be-all and end-all of accolades. And while the Oscars are easily the most publicized awards show, it's far from the most significant.



The Screen Actors Guild may not get the same publicity, but industry insiders know that it sets the tone for awards season--and often acknowledges deserving films overlooked by the Academy. Here's why the SAG awards matter, and why you should make sure to tune in this Sunday.

They're More Diverse



Unless you've been avoiding all news for the past few weeks, you're aware that not single actor of color was nominated for an Oscar. Public outcry has been intense (coupled with the angry hashtag #OscarSoWhite and major stars boycotting the ceremony), and even the head of the academy has expressed her dismay over the shocking lack of diversity in the nominees. The Screen Actors Guild, on the other hand, has consistently shown itself to be more inclusive; Beasts Of No Nation, Straight Outta Compton, and Trumbo all received nods from the SAG awards.

They Embrace The Indies



"Beasts of No Nation": The most shocking Oscars snub? https://t.co/ht6aJIOSEu pic.twitter.com/gSxqlNYvAx  CNN International (@cnni) January 22, 2016

Unless you're a big-budget film with massive star power and a major marketing budget, it's often hard to get the attention of the Oscars (or indeed any big awards show). But the Screen Actors Guild prides itself on seeking out and honoring films that might otherwise escape notice, often at the expense of big-screen successes. That might be the reason why Trumbo and Beasts of No Nation got a host of nominations, while major flicks like The Martian, The Hateful Eight, and Joy all were effectively shut out.

They're Full Of Surprises



If #Daredevil doesn't win the SAG Award for stunt ensemble, they will have been ROBBED https://t.co/HfFuz29UFT pic.twitter.com/xHcBq19un4  Sadie Gennis (@sadiegennis) December 9, 2015

Nobody expected Netflix to make a big splash this awards season, but SAG voters clearly are in tune with the culture of the time (and that means a love for streaming movies and shows). Netflix racked up an impressive number of nominations, with Orange Is The New Black, Daredevil, House of Cards, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Beasts of No Nation, and A Very Murray Christmas all getting nods. Amazon got two nominations for its breakout hit Transparent. Clearly the SAG awards knows that streaming is here to stay.

They Help Predict The Oscars (Sometimes)



Leo leads the pack in our predictions for Best Actor Oscar: https://t.co/9pi1A54s4f pic.twitter.com/pJf9DAq0Yv  FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) January 25, 2016

The SAG awards have long been believed to help determine who will walk away with a prize come Oscar night (despite inevitable mistakes from time to time). This year, however, the awards show has only succeeded in confusing an already large and challenging field of nominees; several Oscar favorites were totally overlooked, while underdogs dismissed by the Academy got numerous nods. Still, if someone wins at the SAG awards, it certainly helps their chances of earning a statue at the Oscars (at least statistically speaking).

The Acting Community Votes



Have you ever wondered who actually chooses the Academy Award winners? Although the membership of the Academy is not available to the public, the statistics on voters is downright depressing if you're looking for some diversity: 94% are white, 77% are male, and 54% are over the age of 60. Even more surprising, only 33% of voters were once nominees or winners themselves; so who is actually determining the movies declared the best in their field, and what are their qualifications?

Since the SAG Award winners are determined by actors and filmmakers themselves, many believe it's actually a better barometer for the best performances of the year. And with all the difficulties the Oscars have been experiencing as of late, maybe the Screen Actors Guild Awards is the show we should be watching to see which films truly rise above the crowd.
Fresh off the controversy surrounding this year's Oscar Nominations, soap opera fans are finding their own reasons to call foul on the Daytime Emmy Awards after the pre-nominations rounds left off some previously believed shoe-ins for awards.

65 performers from the four network soaps--Young and the Restless, Days of Our Lives, Bold and the Beautiful and General Hospital--have received pre-nominations across six categories. But some names that were left off the list are causing some major backlash.

So who were actors that were horribly snubbed? Here are three that we were stunned to find not on the list:

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR: Peter Reckell (Bo Brady, Days of Our Lives)





(Photo Credit: Ben Rose/Getty Images for Cordray Productions)

Why His Omission Is Notable: Reckell returned during the end of the year for the show's 50th anniversary celebration, bringing back his legacy calendar after a few years away. Not only was his return a huge deal for the soup, but his character came back with a vengeance. His determination to return to Salem and reunite with his Fancy Face, Hope, was powerful, and his death was one of the show's most poignant moments.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Karla Mosley (Maya Avant Forrester, The Bold and the Beautiful)





(Photo Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

Why Her Omission Is Notable: The Bold and the Beautiful made headlines with its remarkable transgender storyline, and Mosley did an amazing job of portraying someone who was not only internally conflicted over the big secret that she was transgender, but also experienced acceptance and rejection for her story, including from her own parents. Mosley was considered a shoe-in for a nomination--and likely the win, making her lack of even a pre-nom all the more shocking.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert Scott Wilson (Ben Weston, Days of Our Lives)





(Photo Credit: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Days of Our Lives)

Why His Omission is Notable: Though Wilson's character wasn't given much to do initially, his performance as the Necktie Strangler during the 50th anniversary episodes proved he had some serious acting ability. Not only did fans watch him struggle with the guilt over what he did, only to see him switch moments later to feeling no remorse and being stony silent and resolute that he was doing the right thing, but they saw a total transformation for the character overall.

Do you agree with these actors being snubbed? Who else do you think missed out? Let us know in the comments below.
No lessons have been learned even after three decades of trying to clean the river.

The stand-off between the Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti over the future of six hydroelectric dams on the tributaries of the Ganga River exemplifies the muddled thinking in this government. The environment ministry is supposed to safeguard the environment, or at least ensure that infrastructure and other developmental projects do not lead to irreplaceable environmental damage. The Ministry of Water Resources is tasked with protecting, conserving and maximising the benefits from the countrys water resources. Yet, on a plan that has been placed high on this governments prioritiesthe Ganga Action Plan or the Namami Gange (Obeisance to the Ganga) as it is now calledthe two ministers have had a public spat centred on the trade-off between environment and development.

The renaming of the Ganga Action Plan, launched in 1985 by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, does not reflect a new or more acute understanding of the problem. All along there has been an emphasis on the purity of the river, and the belief amongst Hindus, who consider it a holy river, that it has unique self-cleansing properties. Yet, no waterway or river can remain self-cleansing if you dump unsupportable amounts of waste in it and at the same time restrict its flow. For decades, this is what has been happening to the Ganga.
We, the undersigned teachers and researchers of institutions of higher education in India and independent scholars, appeal to you to intervene with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the Government of India to ensure the constitutional right to life and liberty as well as the freedom to educate, organise, and agitate are upheld in all educational institutions.

The death of Rohith Vemula of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) is a grief that is impossible to bear, made even worse with the revelations that the toxic mix of anti-Dalit, Hindutva-inspired exclusionary politics that took Rohiths life involved at least two ministries of the central government, and a Member of Parliament of the ruling party. This incident also foregrounds the disastrous consequences of the lack of institutional autonomy in higher education, and the resultant lack of accountability of those entrusted to administer themin this case, the vice chancellor and his staff.
Survey reveals how much pocket money Aussie kids are earning

New data reveals gender pay gap reversed when it comes to pocket money.
NEW YORK, Jan. 29, 2016 -- Cohen Veterans Bioscience today announced two new collaborative partnership efforts that will provide critical research tools for understanding the underlying neurobiology and genetics of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) with the goal of accelerating the development of first generation diagnostics and treatments.

For the partnership with the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cohen Veterans Bioscience will contribute funding to support both genotyping of DNA samples to expand knowledge about the genetic influences associated with PTSD and access to extensive genetics expertise available at the Broad Institute. The initiative will include the creation of a PTSD genetics database devoted exclusively to the analysis of tens of thousands of DNA samples collected from more than 30 global research centers. The collaborations share a goal of discovering the first genome wide association for PTSD within a year.

"We look forward to working in partnership with Cohen Veterans Bioscience, leveraging our technologies and the insights of our genomics experts to advance understanding of PTSD, and our ability to diagnose and ultimately treat this debilitating disorder," said Steven Hyman, Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Disease Research at the Broad Institute.

Post-traumatic stress is the most commonly occurring and seriously impairing disorder that occurs after exposure to traumatic events, such as combat, sexual assault, and natural disaster. Among the military, nearly 20 percent of enlisted soldiers -- approximately 300,000 -- who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan have reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression, according to the RAND Corporation.

"Genetic factors are critical in influencing who develops PTSD," says Magali Haas, MD, PhD, CEO & President of Cohen Veterans Bioscience. "Unlike some other neuro-psychiatric diseases, we do not yet know how genetic variants affect a person's risk for developing PTSD. These data can provide a mechanism to more reliably predict the risk of PTSD in different populations and afford an opportunity for preventive interventions. We are proud to partner with a world-leading genetics research institution like the Broad Institute's Stanley Center to advance the science of PTSD."

In another joint venture, Cohen Veterans Bioscience will partner with McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, to establish the Cohen Veterans Bioscience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury Brain & Tissue Collection. The first brain and tissue bank to focus on both PTSD and TBI, this special collection will be maintained at McLean's Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, a national resource for the acquisition, processing, storage, and distribution of postmortem brain tissue to the scientific community, for the purpose of conducting research on the brain.

"This collection is an extraordinary exciting development that will help fill a critical need for the research community worldwide," explains Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer for McLean Hospital and one of the country's leading researchers on trauma. "Thanks to this new resource, we will be able to study the brains of a diverse population--both military and civilians -- who have experienced PTSD and/or TBI in their lifetime with the ultimate goal of identifying better, more effective methods of treating each of these disorders."

According to Ressler, he and his collaborators have a goal of collecting at least 100 brains from affected individuals and will coordinate closely with the recently launched Leahy-Friedman National PTSD Brain Bank to maximize use of these limited resources.

Traumatic brain injuries have become the signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with approximately 20 percent of veterans having reported experiencing a TBI. It is also quite prevalent in the civilian population. Each year at least 2.2 million people suffer from a traumatic brain injury in the United States. Of those, 50,000 die and 280,000 require hospital admission, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The Cohen Bioscience Special Collection will be available to qualified industry and academic center researchers to conduct independent PTSD and TBI research.

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Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Cohen Veterans Bioscience is a 501(c)3 non-profit research organization dedicated to improving the detection and treatment of PTS and TBI and related co-morbidities through cutting-edge research, so the burden of these conditions may be lessened on service members, veterans, and their families. Through the generosity and support of Steven A. Cohen, we are launching translational research initiatives in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. To ensure the future holds improved care for veterans, we seek to assemble high-dimensional biomarker, biosensor, and phenotypic data to build predictive models of disease and accelerate the time to next generation diagnostics and treatments. More information is available at http://www.cohenveteransbioscience.org and on Twitter.

McLean Hospital

McLean Hospital is the largest psychiatric affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a member of Partners HealthCare. In addition to providing a full continuum of psychiatric clinical care, McLean maintains the largest neuroscience and psychiatry research program of any private psychiatric hospital in the United States. McLean's robust research program is backed by more than $40 million in funding from a variety of sources, including foundations, private contributors, National Institute of Health, United States Department of Defense, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. For more information about McLean, visit mcleanhospital.org or follow the hospital on Facebook or Twitter.
The observation in a ferroelectric material of "polar vortices" that appear to be the electrical cousins of magnetic skyrmions holds intriguing possibilities for advanced electronic devices. These polar vortices, which were theoretically predicted more than a decade ago, could also "rewrite our basic understanding of ferroelectrics" according to the researchers who observed them.

A team of scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have recorded the first ever observations of rotating topologies of electrical polarization that are similar to the discrete swirls of magnetism known as "skyrmions." If these smoothly rotating vortex/anti-vortex topologies prove to be electrical skyrmions, they could find potential applications in ultracompact data storage and processing, and could also lead to the production of new states of matter and associated phenomena in ferroic materials.

"It has long been thought that rotating topological structures are confined to magnetic systems and aren't possible in ferroelectric materials, but through the creation of artificial superlattices, we have controlled the various energies of a ferrolectric material to promote competition that lead to such new states of matter and polarization arrangements," says Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Berkeley Lab's Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Technologies and the co-principal investigator for this study. He also holds UC Berkeley's Purnendu Chatterjee Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies.

"Ferroelectric materials such as the materials used in this work

have produced a number of exciting emergent properties over the years, but these smoothly-rotating polar vortex structures really are different," says Lane Martin, a faculty scientist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and Associate Professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who is this study's co-principal investigator. "I think if you surveyed the community many would shake their heads in disbelief at such structures, but it turns out there really is a tendency for vortex states to form in nature even in these polar systems. And, when one looks more broadly, vortex structures can occur across huge length scales - from galaxies and weather systems all the way down to 10s of atoms as in our case."

Ramesh and Martin are the corresponding authors of a Nature paper describing this study in detail. The paper is titled "Observation of Polar Vortices in Oxide Superlattices." The lead researchers on this work are Ajay Yadav, Christopher Nelson, and Anoop Damodaran who also hold joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. (Full list of authors below.)

Ferroic materials display unique electrical or magnetic properties - or both in the case of multiferroics. For example, the electrical field of a ferroelectric material can be polarized in favor of either a positive or negative charge with the application of an external electrical field. In a ferromagnetic material, the application of an external magnetic field aligns the spin of their charged particles, resulting in the material becoming a permanent magnet. In recent years, it was discovered that the application of an external magnetic field can also produce atom-sized cyclones of skyrmions, which act like baryon particles and can be moved coherently over macroscopic distances. These properties make skyrmions excellent candidates for spintronic applications.

"We believe the polar vortices we observed in ferroelectrics, when fully explored, have the potential to be topological states of matter that are similar to magnetic skyrmions," Ramesh says. "The fact that our polar vortices can display emergent behavior in their electronic, optical, magnetic and other properties suggests that heretofore unexplored applications and functionalities could be possible."

Ramesh, Martin and their collaborators worked with what has become a canonical system in the community, ultrafine layered structures built from lead titanate and strontium titante compounds controlled down to a few unit cells each, in which each unit cell is approximately 0.4 nanometers thick. They created superlattices that harbored a three-way competition between elastic, electrostatic and gradient energies within the layers of lead titanate and strontium titanate. This unique three-way competition gives rise to the polar vortices.

"As we tune the period lengths of our superlattices, we can tune the relative importance of these three energy scales," Martin says. "Although rather exotic things can occur if one changes the superlattice period to be both smaller and bigger than we studied here, we really found the 'sweet-spot' in this work that produced these polar vortices which are an entirely new phenomenon."

A combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and X-ray diffraction studies were used observe and characterize the polar vortices. The STEM work was carried out at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, on TEAM 0.5, the world's most powerful transmission electron microscope. The X-ray diffraction work was carried out at the Advanced Photon Source, another DOE Office of Science User Facility, which is hosted by DOE's Argonne National Laboratory.

"Our study is really indicative of how DOE-funded research programs can bring together a diverse range of expertise, including atomically-controlled materials synthesis and cutting-edge research facilities, and materials theory to enable foundational discoveries that really change the way we think about exotic materials and the possibilities for using them," says Ramesh.

"This is just the beginning for the study of polar vortices in ferroelectric materials," Martin says. "We're observing a new state of matter and we have our work cut out for us in mapping and understanding how it evolves. We can imagine adding a magnetic spin component to similar superlattices and thus potentially paving a pathway to fundamentally demonstrate electric-field control of magnetism."

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Other co-authors of the Nature paper were Shang-Lin Hsu, Zijian Hong, James Clarkson, Christian Schlepuetz, Anoop Damodaran, Padraic Shafer, Elke Arenholz, Liv Dedon, Deyang Chen, Ashvin Vishwanath, Andrew Minor, Long-Qing Chen and Jason Scott.

This research was primarily funded by the DOE Office of Science.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
This news release is available in German.

Leipzig. The European Research Council has awarded an ERC Starting Grant to Prof. Nico Eisenhauer, a scientist from the University of Leipzig and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). The grant, which is endowed with EUR 1.5 million over the next 5 years, is awarded to study the effects of European earthworms in North America. As an invasive species, these earthworms are influencing biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in many North-American ecosystems. Prof. Eisenhauer is the first young scientist in the Department of Biosciences, Pharmacy and Psychology at Leipzig University to be awarded this renowned scholarship.

Biological invasions by alien species are considered as being one of the main threats to biodiversity on earth. One of these invasions is taking place under the feet of the inhabitants of the USA and Canada. Apart from a few refuges on the western coast of the USA and in the extreme south, there have been no native species of earthworms in North America for more than 10,000 years (as a result of the glaciation during the last ice age). However, along with the plants they took from the old to the new world, European settlers also brought earthworms to North America starting in the 17th century. "Generally, earthworms are said to have a positive effect on the soil: They plough through the earth and, as a result, improve its aeration, the provision of nutrients and plant growth", explains Nico Eisenhauer. "However, the flora and fauna of the North American forests have adapted to thick organic soil layers which are now being eaten by the earthworms. So far, the effects of exotic earthworm species on eco-systems have not been properly examined in an experiment."

With a powerful combination of observations, field and laboratory experiments, and meta-analyses, the new ECOWORM grant will fund the first systematic study on the impact of earthworms on plant communities and soil food webs. Moreover, to be able to predict the spread and the consequences of the earthworm invasion in North America, the team will use a global change experiment to examine the effects of higher temperatures and reduced summer rainfall on earthworm invasions.

In his capacity as the head of the "Experimental Interaction Ecology" research group, Prof. Nico Eisenhauer researches how biodiversity evolves, which impacts it has on the functioning of complex ecosystems and which protection measures are sensible and needed. The 35-year-old biologist has received numerous awards for his research activities, e.g. the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize and the Emmy Noether Scholarship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2014, Nico Eisenhauer became a professor at Leipzig University and iDiv. Prior to this, he worked at the universities of Jena, Munich, Minnesota, Gottingen and Darmstadt. His special focus is on lab and field experiments examining biodiversity. This also includes the Jena Experiment studying diversity effects on grasslands. Today, Prof. Eisenhauer, as the speaker of the research group in Jena, manages one of the longest-running biodiversity experiments worldwide. Over the last ten years, he has published more than 118 articles and papers in international journals, including numerous publications in leading scientific magazines, such as Nature, Science, Nature Communications, PNAS and Ecology Letters.

The European Research Council (ERC) supports particularly promising young researchers with Starting Grants that provide up to EUR 1.5 million over a period of, at a maximum, five years in order to keep them in Europe in the years after their doctorate and to promote their career in science and research. The scholarship is awarded regardless of subject, nationality or gender. Scientific excellence forms the only criterion for this grant. By securing this funding, Prof. Eisenhauer has succeeded in one of the most strongly contested European application procedures for funding. Only roughly 10 percent of the, in total, 2920 applications submitted were selected for funding in 2015. Since its inception, the ERC has selected 5,000 top researchers from more than 50,000 applications and, as a result, it has supported more than 20,000 publications. The ERC awarded EUR 1.7 billion per annum over four different research subject areas in order to boost the dynamic development, creativity and scientific excellence required to strengthen research in Europe at the frontiers of knowledge.

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Further Information:

Prof. Dr. Nico Eisenhauer

Professor for Experimental Interaction Ecology at the Leipzig University and Head of Experimental Interaction Ecology at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)

Tel.: +49-(0)341-973-167

https://www.idiv.de/en/the-centre/employees/details/eshow/eisenhauer-nico.html

as well as

Carsten Heckmann/ Susann Huster, Leipzig University Press Office

Tel.: +49-(0)341-97-35021, - 35022

http://www.zv.uni-leipzig.de/en/press-office.html

and

Tilo Arnhold, iDiv public relations

Tel.: +49-(0)341-9733-197

https://www.idiv.de/en/press/people.html

Links:

Experimental Interaction Ecology at iDiv:

https://www.idiv.de/research/idiv_core_groups/experimental_interaction_ecology.html

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2014

http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_projects/prizewinners/maier_leibnitz_prize/2014/eisenhauer/index.html

ERC Starting Grants

https://erc.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/funding-schemes/starting-grants

https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/erc_2015_stg_statistics.pdf

About the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)

iDiv is a central facility of the University of Leipzig within the meaning of Section 92 (1) of the Act on Academic Freedom in Higher Education in Saxony (Sachsisches Hochschulfreiheitsgesetz, SachsHSFG). It is run together with the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, as well as in cooperation with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ.

The following non-university research institutions are involved as cooperation partners: the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI BGC), the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (MPI CE), the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA), the Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB), the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) and the Leibniz Institute Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Gorlitz (SMNG). http://www.idiv.de
WASHINGTON (Jan. 29, 2016) -- In laboratory neuronal cultures, an FDA-approved drug used to treat high blood pressure reduced cell damage often linked to Alzheimer's disease, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and the National Institutes of Health.

They say their work, published online Jan. 28 in the journal Alzheimer's Research and Therapy, provides information supporting the potential effect of the drug candesartan -- as well as other Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) for the early treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

"Our findings make sense in many ways," says the study's senior author Juan M. Saavedra, MD, from GUMC's Department of Pharmacology and Physiology. "Hypertension reduces blood flow throughout the body and brain and is a risk factor of Alzheimer's disease. Previous epidemiological studies found that Alzheimer's progression is delayed in hypertensive patients treated with ARBs."

Using neuronal cultures, the researchers explored the action of candesartan on the neurotoxic effects of exposure to excessive glutamate, a demonstrated injury factor in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

The scientists found that candesartan prevented glutamate-induced neuronal death. They conducted in-depth gene analyses of the laboratory results, demonstrating that candesartan prevented neuronal inflammation and many other pathological processes, including alterations in amyloid metabolism, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

The study's first author, Abdel G. Elkahloun, PhD, from the Comparative Genomics and Cancer Genetics Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute, then compared gene expression in the neuronal cultures with published gene databases of autopsy samples from Alzheimer's disease patients. "The correlations were impressive -- the expression of 471 genes that were altered by excess glutamate in our cultures were also altered in brain autopsy samples from patients who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Candesartan normalized expression of these genes in our cultures," Elkahloun says.

"We hypothesize that candesartan, or other members of the ARB group, may not only slow progression of Alzheimer's but also prevent or delay its development," Saavedra says.

The researchers say this work has immediate translational value, supporting testing candesartan, or other ARBs, in controlled clinical studies on patients at early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

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Roman Hafko, PhD, formerly of the National Institute of Mental Health, also contributed to this work and is an author of the paper.

The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health including the National Human Genome Research Institute (MD 20892) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 002762-16). The authors report having no personal financial interests related to the study.

About Georgetown University Medical Center

Georgetown University Medical Center is an internationally recognized academic medical center with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through MedStar Health). GUMC's mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on public service and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis -- or "care of the whole person." The Medical Center includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing & Health Studies, both nationally ranked; Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute; and the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization (BGRO), which accounts for the majority of externally funded research at GUMC including a Clinical Translation and Science Award from the National Institutes of Health.
A James Cook University researcher has found more than three quarters of Australians regard the Great Barrier Reef as part of their national identity and nearly 90 per cent believe it is under threat from climate change.

JCU's Jeremy Goldberg commissioned two professional surveys of around 1,000 people each as part of his PhD, conducted at JCU and CSIRO.

He said the survey's results were surprising. "We expected people to care about the Reef, but the strength of that connection was a revelation."

77 per cent of people felt the Great Barrier Reef was part of their identity as Australians and 43 per cent of people listed it as the most inspiring Australian icon, more than five times the level of Uluru, the second most inspiring icon.

Mr Goldberg said the results produced another surprise too, with a huge number of Australians concerned about the effect of climate change on the Reef.

"89 per cent of people thought climate change was a threat to the Reef and 54 per cent said they would be personally affected if the health of the Great Barrier Reef declined," he said.

"There seems to be a difference between the level of concern the public has for the health of the Reef due to climate change and the level of concern expressed in the media."

It was the first nationally representative poll about the Great Barrier Reef in terms of location, gender, age and other demographic variables. "We sought to have a solid representation of the Australian public, not just Queensland stakeholders or capital cities as other studies have done," said Mr Goldberg.

Mr Goldberg said the connection between people and special places is rarely quantified, and policymakers find it difficult to incorporate human dimensions into decision-making processes.

"We've described the personal concern and connection Australians have with the Great Barrier Reef and discuss how the results may help with its management," he said.

"Now we have a clearer understanding of how deeply people do connect. It seems that people see it as much more than just a Reef, but think of it as part of the culture and protecting the Reef may be part of what it means to be Australian, or that letting it continue to decline would be un-Australian."

The study forms part of a social and economic long-term monitoring program (SELTMP) for the Great Barrier Reef, established by JCU and CSIRO scientists, funded by the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program.

Other key points from the survey:

86% of Australians were proud that the Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage Area, and most agreed that it was the responsibility of all Australians to protect it (81%).

77% were concerned about the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.

44% of Australians have visited the Great Barrier Reef and 8% visited within a year before survey.

Nearly half of the respondents (49%) had never been to the Great Barrier Reef but would like to at some stage.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins say an online "pop quiz" they developed in 2009 shows promising accuracy in predicting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in young women, although not, apparently, in young men.

A description of the quiz and some field test results, published in the Jan. 29, 2016 issue of the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, suggests the self-administered quiz may encourage teenage girls and young women to get laboratory tests for several STIs if their quiz results show them to be at high risk for infection. And if used in clinical settings, the online questions could help physicians assess the need for STI testing of those patients at most risk, the researchers say.

"We test a lot of people who are not infected, and although a tool like this might not predict every single case, we think it can be helpful in rapidly predicting the likelihood of an STI for physicians and patients," says lead author Charlotte Gaydos, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., M.S., professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The quiz is a simple, six-question survey designed to evaluate behaviors linked to STI risk, Gaydos says. It was developed with the help of specialists in adolescent sexual health care and data from previously published research. The questions ask about the number of sex partners, the frequency of use of condoms, and the age and past infection status of a respondent.

The quiz was originally developed by investigators as a supplement to their home STI testing kit campaign, http://www.iwantthekit.org, for teens and young adults whose concerns about STIs were complicated by the desire for privacy and limited access to health care.

(To see a page from the quiz, click here.)

The researchers note that a mobile-friendly version of the site and quiz will be available soon to accommodate frequent users of smart devices.

Since the campaign launch in 2004, says Gaydos, more than 6,500 women and 3,500 men have self-screened in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

For the new study, nearly 3,200 people 14 and older from Maryland and Washington, D.C., and who accessed the kit website were invited to take a mailed or online risk quiz as well as order a free home testing kit. About one-half of those invited to take the quiz took it -- 830 females and 550 males averaging between 20 to 24 years old.

Quizzes were scored on a zero to 10-point scale. Participants were categorized as high risk if they scored eight to 10 points for women and seven to 10 for men; medium risk if they scored five to seven points for women and three to six for men; and low risk if they scored zero to four points for women and zero to two for men. Women were categorized differently, the researchers say, because females tend to have higher rates of STIs than do men.

For the quiz, researchers suspected that the higher the score, the more likely a respondent would be to screen positive for an STI using the home test kit.

Although each question on its own was designed to be predictive of STI status, all questions were weighted differently based on the strength of evidence associating a particular behavior with infection. For example, questions related to condom use and number of sexual partners were weighted higher then questions about age or past positive STI tests.

As part of this research, respondents were mailed a home collection test kit, which included a penile or vaginal and/or rectal swab that could be used, then sent, free of charge, directly to the Gaydos laboratory for detection of chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomonas, the first two caused by bacteria and the third by a parasite. Gaydos says these three infections were chosen because they are easily screened for and treated. Other infections, such as HIV, herpes and syphilis, require blood testing.

Results showed a higher rate of STIs in women compared to men, at 14 percent versus 7 percent, respectively. The quiz was also able to predict that women who scored in the high-risk or medium-risk categories were four times and two times more likely to have an STI, respectively, than those who scored lower. In absolute numbers, 117 women and 39 men had at least one of the three STIs, Gaydos adds.

While the "pop quiz" accurately predicted STI status in women, it did not do so for men. "We are not quite sure why this is, but untruthfulness or the fact that men tend to have lower rates of STIs are possibilities," says Gaydos, who says follow-up research is planned to increase accuracy of the quiz for both men and women.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends all women under 25 be tested for STIs, such as chlamydia and gonorrhea, once a year. A self-risk quiz, such as the one Gaydos' team created, could help clinicians and consumers decide whether or not testing is a priority, she says.

Gaydos cautions that the quiz has serious limitations as a screening tool: It is voluntary, less than one-half of those tested took the quiz, and many respondents may have taken the quiz but did not order a home collection kit (this data was not captured in the research), potentially altering the generalizability of the results.

Gaydos says the home collection kit website averages 20,000 hits a month and is made possible by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the state of Maryland.

Importantly, Gaydos mentions, the site now offers a home-performed HIV test in addition to the STI tests, which started in early January 2016.

She says if further research affirms the value of the quiz and the kit, a properly funded national campaign could be useful to thousands.

An estimated 19 million STI cases are diagnosed annually in the U.S., underscoring a significant need for affordable, quick assessment tools, she says.

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Other Johns Hopkins researchers who contributed to this work included Mary Jett-Goheen, Mathilda Barnes, Laura Dize, Perry Barnes and Yu-Hsiang Hsieh.

This research was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering under grant number U54EB007958 and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under grant number AI068613-01.
An investigation into the molecular mechanisms responsible for the most common type of benign skin lesion may lead to the first nonsurgical treatment for the growths called seborrheic keratoses (SKs), which in addition to being cosmetically unattractive are often worrisome to patients. A paper by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers, published online in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, reports that blocking the action of a specific signaling enzyme leads to the death of cultured SK cells and the breakdown of SK lesions.

"Our paper is the first to show that SKs are dependent on an enzyme called Akt for survival," says Victor Neel, MD, PhD, MGH director of Dermatologic Surgery and lead author of the paper. "Inhibition of this enzyme in SK cells causes rapid cell death while having no effect on normal skin cells. We are confident that this paper heralds the development of an effective, topical treatment for SKs."

Sometimes called "senile warts," "barnacles" or "liver spots," SKs vary in color from tan to black, can be flat or raised, and range in size from quite small to an inch or more across. They become more common with aging; most individuals over 40 are likely to have a few, and some can have hundreds scattered across the torso and face. While SKs have some microscopic features in common with their malignant counterpart squamous cell carcinoma and most have mutations in genes known to be involved in cancer, SKs never become malignant.

Previous research by members of the MGH team identified increased expression in SKs of growth factor receptors and other genes thought to be involved in skin cell differentiation and in skin cancer development. Neel explains, "We still don't know why SKs resist malignant transformation but we think studying SKs will help us identify factors that prevent benign lesions from becoming malignant.

The two genes that are most frequently mutated in SKs -- called PI3K and FGFR3 -- code for proteins that affect the activation of the Akt kinase enzyme, which is known to block several cell-death related pathways. Although previous studies have reported higher levels of activated Akt in SKs than in normal skin, determining the significance of that finding was hampered by the inability to grow SK cells in the laboratory. Through trial and error and a bit of luck, the MGH team identified conditions that permit SK cells to be cultured, opening up an array of opportunities for studying their biology.

Cultured SK cells were exposed to a panel of specific kinase inhibitors, confirming that the development and maintenance of SK cells requires the presence of activated Akt. One particular Akt inhibitor, called A44 (A-443654, produced by Abbvie Pharmaceuticals), was by far the most efficient at inducing the death of cultured SK cells. Small doses of A44 initiated a cell-death program called apoptosis. The researchers also found that applying A44 to intact SK lesions that had been excised from patients' skin and maintained in culture caused the lesions to die through apoptosis.

"Within 48 hours of exposure to A44, the SK lesions from patients completely disintegrated," says co-author Anna Mandinova, MD, PhD, of MGH's Cutaneous Research Biology Center. "This effect was very specific to SK lesions, as A44 was harmless both to normal skin cells and to malignant squamous cell carcinoma cells."

The MGH team is continuing to investigate the potential of A44 and several other compounds in order to identify the best candidate for clinical trials of a topical treatment for SKs. A patent application based on the study findings has been filed, and the team is continuing to pursue what SKs can reveal about the molecular differences between benign and malignant tumors.

"Understanding why SKs never become malignant, even though they have mutations in classic oncogenes, was the primary question we wanted to address when we started studying this skin lesion. Finding a novel inhibitor of SKs was a serendipitous byproduct of that inquiry," says Neel, who is an assistant professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. "We suspect that other, yet-to-be-determined mutations in SKs are incompatible with the mutations that lead to malignancy. For example, p53 is commonly mutated both in sun-damaged skin and in cancers like squamous cell carcinoma but is never mutated in SKs. We hope that pinpointing other mutations underlying SK development will help us understand how they resist becoming malignant, which could inform us of new ways of treating more dangerous tumors."

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Additional co-authors are Kristina Todorova, PhD, Jun Wang, Eunjeong Kwon, PhD, Minjeong Kang, and Sam Lee, PhD, MGH Cutaneous Research Biology Center; and Qingsong Liu and Nathanael Gray, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The study was supported by National Cancer Institute grant CA140615.

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $800 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine. In July 2015, MGH returned to the number one spot on the 2015-16 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
DEWEY BEACH, DELAWARE - The Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO), a five state partnership of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, today released an ambitious and wide-ranging set of information on the vast natural resources and economically-important uses of the Mid-Atlantic Ocean, which contribute to the health and vibrancy of the region's coastal communities. The analytical data included in this release are a significant step forward in improving the scientific basis for regional ocean decision-making.

Over 100 individuals representing the local fishing sector, municipalities, universities, industry and environmental groups, and the public attended a forum to learn about the data and how it will be immediately used.

"Let's focus on this information first, let's get it right, let's take our time with that." stated Secretary David Small of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, who addressed the forum, "If we can coalesce around a fundamentally strong body of information, we can use that data to make strong management decisions together as a region."

Leading ocean scientists and data managers received funding from MARCO to develop these analytical data products in support of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Body (MidA RPB). The body is charged with developing a regional Ocean Action Plan, due later this year. The forum provided an opportunity for the public - including key ocean use stakeholders - to familiarize themselves with the underlying data, analyses and caveats involved with the data products.

"There was a treasure trove of scientific data out there that agencies and universities had been collecting for decades. It's just never been pulled into a single place before. Synthesizing much of this information for MARCO's Ocean Data Portal will help us see where Mid-Atlantic ocean resources are located, human uses are occurring and where we may need to focus our management attention to ensure a healthy and secure ocean ecosystem and economy," said Laura McKay, Program Manager for the Commonwealth of Virginia's Coastal Zone Management Program and MARCO Management Board Chair.

The products presented at the forum include: a synthesis of data related to marine animal distribution; a human use data synthesis depicting the locations of various human activities in the ocean; and a regional ocean assessment that characterizes the uses, resources and features of the Mid-Atlantic Ocean.

Presentations from the event will shortly be available on MARCO's website (http://www.midatlanticocean.org), with much of the data eventually appearing in a mapped format on the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal (http://portal.midatlanticocean.org).

"This is the best ocean science available for the Mid-Atlantic", said Sarah W. Cooksey, Environmental Program Administrator for the State of Delaware's Coastal Programs, who also sits on MARCO's Management Board. "It just needed to be brought together in one place, and MARCO wanted the public - including key ocean users - to have a chance to talk with the data team before considering for inclusion in our Ocean Action Plan. That's what happened here today."

A draft of the Mid-Atlantic's Ocean Action Plan is expected to be released by the Mid-A RPB for public review later in 2016.

Background

In 2010, a Presidential Executive Order established a National Ocean Policy (NOP) to guide the protection, maintenance, and restoration of America's oceans and coasts. The NOP called for the creation of Regional Planning Bodies (RPBs) to coordinate and implement regional ocean planning. The MidA RPB, made up of state, federal, tribal and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council representatives, was formally established in April 2013 to leverage existing efforts underway by states and regional entities, and engage stakeholders and technical experts at every key step.

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About MARCO

Established by the Governors of the five coastal Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia) in 2009, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) is a partnership to address shared regional priorities and provide a collective voice for the region. The five MARCO states focus on four-shared priority areas identified in the Governors Agreement: climate change adaptation, marine habitats, offshore renewable energy and water quality. MARCO also uses regional ocean planning as a means to advance these priorities.

Learn more at: http://www.midatlanticocean.org
Just 1 in 5 children in high-income countries are breastfed to 12 months, whilst only 1 in 3 children in low and middle-income countries are exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months. As a result, millions of children are failing to receive the full benefits provided by breastfeeding. The findings come from the largest and most detailed analysis to quantify levels, trends, and benefits of breastfeeding around the world, published in The Lancet.

New estimates produced for the two-part Series reveal that increasing breastfeeding to near-universal levels for infants and young children could save over 800000 children's lives a year worldwide, equivalent to 13% of all deaths in children under two, and prevent an extra 20000 deaths from breast cancer every year.

Although breastfeeding is one of the most effective preventive health measures for children and mothers regardless of where they live, it has been overlooked as a critical need for the health of the population, say the authors.

"There is a widespread misconception that the benefits of breastfeeding only relate to poor countries. Nothing could be further from the truth", says Series author Professor Cesar Victora from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil. "Our work for this Series clearly shows that breastfeeding saves lives and money in all countries, rich and poor alike. Therefore, the importance of tackling the issue globally is greater than ever." [1]

Analysis of data from 28 systematic reviews and meta-analyses, of which 22 were commissioned specifically for the Series, indicate that breastfeeding not only has multiple health benefits for children and mothers, but it also has dramatic effects on life expectancy (Paper 1, table). For example, in high-income countries breastfeeding reduces the risk of sudden infant deaths by more than a third, while in low-and middle-income countries about half of all diarrhoea episodes and a third of respiratory infections could be avoided by breastfeeding. It also increases intelligence, and might protect against obesity and diabetes in later life. For mothers, longer-duration breastfeeding reduces the risks of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

There is also a strong economic case for investment in promoting breastfeeding. Modelling conducted for the Series estimates that global economic losses of lower cognition from not breastfeeding reached a staggering US$302 billion in 2012, equivalent to 0.49% of world gross national income. In high-income countries alone these losses amounted to US$231.4 billion, equivalent to 0.53% of gross national income (Paper 2, table 2).

Furthermore, the authors calculate that boosting breastfeeding rates for infants below 6 months of age to 90% in the USA, China, and Brazil and to 45% in the UK would cut treatment costs of common childhood illnesses (eg, pneumonia, diarrhoea, and asthma) and save healthcare systems at least US$2.45 billion in the USA, US$29.5 million in the UK, US$223.6 million in China, and US$6.0 million in Brazil.

Yet, worldwide rates of breastfeeding are low, particularly in high-income countries. For example, the UK (<1%), Ireland (2%), and Denmark (3%) have some of the lowest rates of breastfeeding at 12 months in the world (Paper 1, figure 1 and web appendix table 4.2 page 16-17). "Breastfeeding is one of the few positive health behaviours that is more common in poor than richer countries, and within poor countries, is more frequent among poor mothers", explains Professor Victora. "The stark reality is that in the absence of breastfeeding, the rich-poor gap in child survival would be even wider. Our findings should reassure policymakers that a rapid return on investment is realistic and feasible, and won't need a generation to be realised." [1]

The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (BMS) was adopted at the 34th World Health Assembly in 1981 to protect the public from inappropriate marketing strategies, but has been weakly implemented, enforced, and monitored by countries [2]. As a result, aggressive marketing of breastmilk substitutes is undermining efforts to improve breastfeeding rates, with global sales expected to reach a staggering US$70.6 billion by 2019 (Paper 2, figure 2).

"Saturation of markets in high-income countries has caused the industries to rapidly penetrate emerging global markets. Almost all growth in the foreseeable future in sales of standard milk formula (infants <6 months) will be in low-income and middle-income countries, where consumption is currently low," [1] explains Series author Dr Nigel Rollins from the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health at WHO, Geneva. In the Middle East and Africa, for example, per-child consumption of breastmilk substitutes is projected to grow by more than 7% between 2014 and 2019. In high-income countries, growth will be driven by sales of follow-on and toddlers milk that are set to increase by 15% by 2019.

Persistent underinvestment in protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding by governments and international funders has exacerbated the issue. "Currently, breastfeeding promotion focuses on encouraging women to breastfeed without providing the necessary economic and social conditions such as supportive health-care systems, adequate maternity entitlements and workplace interventions, counselling, and education", says Dr Rollins [1].

Countries can significantly improve breastfeeding practices by scaling up known interventions, policies, and programmes identified in the Series. For example, Bangladesh has increased exclusive breastfeeding rates by 13%, which has been attributed to a number of key interventions including 6 months of maternity leave, comprehensive health-worker training, community mobilisation, and media campaigns. In Brazil, the length of breastfeeding increased dramatically from 2.5 months in 1974-75 (one of the shortest in any low-or middle-income country) to 14 months in 2006-07 due to a combination of policy, health service, civil society, and mass media initiatives (See Paper 2, panel 1).

Powerful political commitment and financial investment is needed to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding at all levels -- family, community, workplace, and government, say the authors. Additionally, more needs to be done to regulate the multi-billion dollar breastmilk-substitute industry which undermines breastfeeding as the best feeding practice in early life. The authors point out that the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes could be an effective mechanism if adequate investment is made to ensure its implementation and accountability across all countries.

According to Professor Victora, "There is a widespread misconception that breastmilk can be replaced with artificial products without detrimental consequences. The evidence outlined in the Series, contributed by some of the leading experts in the field, leaves no doubt that the decision not to breastfeed has major long-term negative effects on the health, nutrition and development of children and on women's health."[1]

In an accompanying Comment, Frances Mason from Save the Children UK, Alison McFadden from the University of Dundee, UK, and other leading experts in the field write, "The omission of breastfeeding from the Millennium Development Goals, and the resultant lost opportunities to improve child survival, must not be repeated in the Sustainable Development Goals, for which the indicators will be decided in early 2016. Breastfeeding is too often siloed within agendas on nutrition or infant and young child feeding rather than treated as a key public health approach that can help prevent communicable and non-communicable disease prevention, reduce infant mortality, and lessen inequity...The active and aggressive promotion of BMS by their manufacturers and distributors continues to be a substantial global barrier to breastfeeding. The reach and influence of the BMS industry is growing fast. Global sales of milk formula (including infant formula and follow-on milks) have increased from a value of about US$2 billion in 1987 to about US$40 billion in 2014...Political commitment, investment, and effective international, national, and local leadership are needed to end promotion of products that compete with breastfeeding."

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NOTES TO EDITORS:

The Series was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

[1] Quotes direct from authors and cannot be found in text of Series.

[2] See webappendix paper 2 web annex 5 page 97 and http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/files/State_of_the_Code_by_Country_April2011.pdf
Ancient extinction of giant Australian bird points to humans

The first direct evidence that humans played a substantial role in the extinction of the huge, wondrous beasts inhabiting Australia some 50,000 years ago -- in this case a 500-pound bird -- has been discovered by a University of Colorado Boulder-led team.

The flightless bird, known as Genyornis newtoni, was nearly 7 feet tall and appears to have lived in much of Australia prior to the establishment of humans on the continent 50,000 years ago, said CU-Boulder Professor Gifford Miller. The evidence consists of diagnostic burn patterns on Genyornis eggshell fragments that indicate humans were collecting and cooking its eggs, thereby reducing the birds' reproductive success.

"We consider this the first and only secure evidence that humans were directly preying on now-extinct Australian megafauna," said Miller, associate director of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. "We have documented these characteristically burned Genyornis eggshells at more than 200 sites across the continent."

A paper on the subject appears online Jan. 29, in Nature Communications.

In analyzing unburned Genyornis eggshells from more than 2,000 localities across Australia, primarily from sand dunes where the ancient birds nested, several dating methods helped researchers determine that none were younger than about 45,000 years old. Burned eggshell fragments from more than 200 of those sites, some only partially blackened, suggest pieces were exposed to a wide range of temperatures, said Miller, a professor in CU-Boulder's Department of Geological Sciences.

Optically stimulated luminescence dating, a method used to determine when quartz grains enclosing the eggshells were last exposed to sunlight, limits the time range of burned Genyornis eggshell to between 54,000 and 44,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating indicated the burnt eggshell was no younger than about 47,000 years old.

The blackened fragments were likely burned in transient, human fires -- presumably to cook the eggs -- rather than in wildfires, he said.

Amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -decompose in a predictable fashion inside eggshells over time. In eggshell fragments burned at one end but not the other, there is a tell-tale "gradient" from total amino acid decomposition to minimal amino acid decomposition, he said. Such a gradient could only be produced by a localized heat source, likely an ember, and not from the sustained high heat produced regularly by wildfires on the continent both in the distant past and today.

Miller also said the researchers found many of the burnt Genyornis eggshell fragments in tight clusters less than 10 feet in diameter, with no other eggshell fragments nearby. Some individual fragments from the same clusters had heat gradient differences of nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, conditions virtually impossible to reproduce with natural wildfires there, he said.

"We can't come up with a scenario that a wildfire could produce those tremendous gradients in heat," Miller said. "We instead argue that the conditions are consistent with early humans harvesting Genyornis eggs, cooking them over fires, and then randomly discarding the eggshell fragments in and around their cooking fires."

Another line of evidence for early human predation on Genyornis eggs is the presence of ancient, burned eggshells of emus -- flightless birds weighing only about 100 pounds and which still exist in Australia today -- in the sand dunes. Emu eggshells exhibiting burn patterns similar to Genyornis eggshells first appear on the landscape about 50,000 years ago, signaling they most likely were scorched after humans arrived in Australia, and are found fairly consistently to modern times, Miller said.

The Genyornis eggs are thought to have been roughly the size of a cantaloupe and weighed about 3.5 pounds, Miller said.

Genyornis roamed the Australian outback with an astonishing menagerie of other now-extinct megafauna that included a 1,000-pound kangaroo, a 2-ton wombat, a 25-foot-long-lizard, a 300-pound marsupial lion and a Volkswagen-sized tortoise. More than 85 percent of Australia's mammals, birds and reptiles weighing over 100 pounds went extinct shortly after the arrival of the first humans.

The demise of the ancient megafauna in Australia (and on other continents, including North America) has been hotly debated for more than a century, swaying between human predation, climate change and a combination of both, said Miller. While some still hold fast to the climate change scenario -- specifically the continental drying in Australia from about 60,000 to 40,000 years ago -- neither the rate nor magnitude of that change was as severe as earlier climate shifts in Australia during the Pleistocene epoch, which lacked the punch required to knock off the megafauna, said Miller.

Miller and others suspect Australia's first inhabitants traveled to the northern coast of the continent on rafts launched from Indonesian islands several hundred miles away. "We will never know the exact time window humans arrived on the continent," he said. "But there is reliable evidence they were widely dispersed across the continent before 47,000 years ago."

Evidence of Australia megafauna hunting is very difficult to find, in part because the megafauna there are so much older than New World megafauna and in part because fossil bones are easily destroyed by the chemistry of Australian soils. said Miller.

"In the Americas, early human predation on the giant animals in clear -- stone spear heads are found embedded in mammoth bones, for example," said Miller. "The lack of clear evidence regarding human predation on the Australia megafauna had, until now, been used to suggest no human-megafauna interactions occurred, despite evidence that most of the giant animals still roamed Australia when humans colonized the continent."

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Co-authors on the new study include Research Professor Scott Lehman, doctoral student Christopher Florian and researcher Stephen DeVogel of CU-Boulder; Research Fellow John Magee of the Australian National University; and researchers from seven other Australian institutions. The study was funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Australian Research Council.

Contact:

Gifford Miller

303-492-6962

gmiller@colorado.edu

Jim Scott

CU-Boulder media relations

303-492-3114

jim.scott@colorado.edu
Scientists from the Spanish National Police Corps (CNP) and from the University of Granada (UGR) have developed an IT system based in mathematical algorithms which allows to predict how many and what type of crimes are going to be committed in the next police shift.

It's about using scientific methods for police patrolling, and it's the first time in History that predictive police methods are combined with a mathematical patrolling model.

This breakthrough could allow to better organize police patrolling and districting, which would mean a reduction of the money spent and the number of victims of a crime.

The research has been carried out by Miguel Camacho Collados, police inspector at the Strategic Plannification and Coordination Unit of the Spanish National Police Corps, and researcher at the Statistics and Operations Research Department of the UGR.

Part of this research has been carried out with the collaboration of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the most selective public university of the United States, and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), where Camacho Collados held a Fulbright fellowship last year.

The research is focused on dynamic systems applied to crime models, and it's aimed at influencing in the analysis and development of mathematical and statistical models for identifying temporal patterns for criminal acts.

In just a minute

As its lead author explains, the new system "is based in a mathematical, multi-criteria algorithm that, considering multiple performance attributes (such as workload, the patrolling area or the number of crimes committed in the last police shift), assigns the patrol a certain surveillance area, thus preventing the commission of crimes in the next shift, based on the crime risk prediction for that area".

"The main advance of our work -the UGR researcher continues- is that it strengthens crime prevention, not crime suppression. If we succeed in putting a Police officer in the right place at the right time we will save a lot in human resources and, which is even more important, we will have much less victims".

Miguel Camacho explains that this new IT tool, which is able to stablish the patrolling area and distribute Police officers in just a minute, "can't in any case be a substitute to police experience and intuition. It's a help inspired in 'big data' technology which can be greatly useful in our job".

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Tampa, Fla. (Jan. 29, 2016) - The current issue of Technology and Innovation, Journal of the National Academy of Inventors focuses on old but important issues in health-related environmental research, illuminates new trends, including rewarding patents born of humanitarian vision, and puts continuing arguments, such as those about organic vs. conventional foods and the real value of scientific peer review, under the microscope.

Public hazard and health

In "Asbestos Exposures Associated with Motorcycle Riding and Hiking on Asbestos-Containing Soils: Risk of Asbestos-Related Cancer," researchers focused on the public health hazard posed by asbestos in the soil of the motorcycle riding and hiking trails in the Clear Creek Management Area in California. The researchers, using current EPA models to project cancer risks presented by the asbestos-containing soil, reported that "from limited motorcycle riding on asbestos-containing soils, the maximum lifetime excess risk is approximately 0.18 asbestos-related cancers per million people exposed." According to corresponding author R.P. Nolan of the New York-based International Environmental Research Foundation, "This asbestos exposure is associated with an insignificant increase to the background risk of mesothelioma."

A second public health-related study in the current T&I looked at regulatory science and assessed pro and con arguments for organic foods versus conventional foods using "best available" science concepts and metrics. According to study co-author A. Alan Moghissi, PhD, president of the Institute for Regulatory Science, "certain people and organizations have come to consider exposure to man-made chemicals to be unsafe and unacceptable at any level." However, the authors of "Innovation in Regulatory Science: Assessment of Organic vs. Conventional Food" determined that "there is no scientific reason to support a preference for organic food." The authors pointed out that one issue exacerbating confusion about this topic has been the inability of the scientific community to communicate the fundamentals of toxicology to the public.

Of patents and humanitarian visionaries

In writing about the 2015 Patents for Humanity Awards, authors Edward Elliott and Alex Camarota of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) described the importance of the work being done by the award recipients, all of whom are using their considerable talents to address major world challenges. The competition, administrated by the USPTO, recognized the efforts of inventors who "used their patented technologies to improve the world's living conditions" and demonstrated the "compatibility of strong patent rights and business practices with humanitarian engagement." Awards were given in five broad humanitarian needs categories: medicine; nutrition; sanitation; energy; and living standards.

"Government and universities play a unique role in the innovation ecosystem by conducting basic research long before any commercial applications are identified and exercised," wrote Elliott and Camarota. "This forward thinking approach has spillover effects that reach beyond technological development. The authors note that this "program is meant to recognize projects that are having an impact on people's lives. It is not a program for good intentions or future promise."

The awards ceremony was held at the White House in April, 2015.

Inventors redux

Academic-affiliated inventors described as "serial inventors" are those who represent 10 percent of faculty inventors at their university, yet hold 50 percent of all their university's patents. In a paper titled "Prevalence of Serial Inventors within Academia," co-author Richard Kordal, director of the Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization at Louisiana Tech University, said that in an effort to shed light on university inventors, he and his co-researchers surveyed five major public and private academic research institutions to determine the extent to which serial inventors contribute to the institution's output of inventions. They found identical data on those described as serial inventors at all of the institutions they studied despite institutional geographical diversity and varying research emphases among the surveyed institutions.

"The results of this paper will be of interest to various groups--such as policy makers, technology transfer professionals, economic development officials, and university research administrators," concluded the authors.

Who gets to do independent peer review?

In a study into the role of peer-review review criteria titled "Innovation in Regulatory Science: The Critical Role of Review Criteria in Independent Peer Review," A. Alan Moghissi et al. laid out the elements of the peer review process and the significance of peer review criteria as one of the potential reasons for the shortcomings of peer review, which is a primary tool of regulatory science. "Key elements of peer review include the qualifications of peer-reviewers; their independence, implying that they lack conflicts of interest; the review criteria (questions) provided to the reviewers; and the role of the editor of the journal," wrote the authors, who surveyed 300 key scientific journals on the application of their peer review processes against a background of claims of inadequate peer review and the withdrawal of papers.

The researchers concluded that lack of consideration of review criteria could be the cause of "alleged shortcomings of peer review."

"Despite the existence of a voluminous scientific literature describing the independent review process, there continues to be a problem with how peer review is used in scientific publications," said the authors. The authors conclude by suggesting the creation of an open-access information system that would provide appropriate standardized review criteria for articles, thus addressing this problem.

Editor-in-chief Paul R. Sanberg sums up this issue as "a collection of notable articles, each of which sheds new light on some fascinating and important topics, including environmental research as it impacts public health decision-making, the phenomenon of the serial inventor, and the multifaceted importance of regulatory science."

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The National Academy of Inventors is a 501(c)(3) non-profit member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and non-profit research institutes, with over 3,000 individual inventor members and Fellows spanning more than 200 institutions, and growing rapidly. It was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society. The NAI offices are located in the USF Research Park in Tampa. The NAI edits the multidisciplinary journal, Technology and Innovation, published by Cognizant Communication Corporation (NY). http://www.academyofinventors.org

The editorial offices of Technology and Innovation are located in the USF Research Park, 3702 Spectrum Blvd., Suite 165, Tampa, Florida, 33612 USA. Tel: +1-813-974-1347. Email: tijournal@academyofinventors.org
University of Wyoming scientists have found evidence of continental collisions in Wyoming's Teton Range, similar to those in the Himalayas, dating to as early as 2.68 billion years ago.

The research, published Jan. 22 in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, shows that plate tectonics were operating in what is now western Wyoming long before the collisions that created the Himalayas starting 40 million years ago.

In fact, the remnants of tectonic activity in old rocks exposed in the Tetons point to the world's earliest known continent-continent collision, says Professor Carol Frost of UW's Department of Geology and Geophysics, lead author of the paper.

"While the Himalayas are the prime example of continent-continent collisions that take place due to plate tectonic motion today, our work suggests plate tectonics operated far, far back into the geologic past," Frost says.

The paper's co-authors include fellow UW Department of Geology and Geophysics faculty members Susan Swapp and Ron Frost.

The researchers reached their conclusions by analyzing ancient, exposed granite in the northern Teton Range and comparing it to similar rock in the Himalayas. The rocks were formed from magma produced by what is known as decompression melting, a process that commonly occurs when two continental tectonic plates collide. The dramatically thickened crust extends under gravitational forces, and melting results when deeper crust rises closer to the surface.

While the Tetons are a relatively young mountain range, formed by an uplift along the Teton Fault less than 9 million years ago, the rocks exposed there are some of the oldest found in North America.

The UW scientists found that the mechanisms that formed the granites of the Tetons and the Himalayas are comparable, but that there are significant differences between the rocks of the two regions. That is due to differences in the composition of the continental crust in Wyoming 2.68 billion years ago compared to crustal plates observed today. Specifically, the ancient crust that melted in the Tetons contained less potassium than the more recently melted crust found in the Himalayas.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

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January 29, 2016 - For women undergoing breast cancer surgery, a technique called lipofilling--using the patient's own fat cells to optimize the results of breast reconstruction--does not increase the risk of recurrent breast cancer, reports a study in the February issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

"Our controlled study shows that, used as part of breast reconstruction, lipofilling is a safe procedure that does not increase the risk of recurrent or new breast cancers," comments ASPS member surgeon Dr. Steven J. Kronowitz of Kronowitz Plastic Surgery, Houston (formerly of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center), lead author of the new report.

New Evidence That Lipofilling Is Safe for Breast Reconstruction

Using a plastic surgery database, the researchers analyzed a series of more than 1,000 partial or total mastectomies followed by breast reconstruction with lipofilling. About 30 percent of cases involved risk-reducing mastectomy in women at high genetic risk of breast cancer.

Rates of recurrent or new breast cancers were then compared with a similar group of women who underwent mastectomy followed by breast reconstruction without lipofilling. In the lipofilling procedure, fat obtained by liposuction from one part of the body--for example, the abdomen or thighs--is injected to enhance the appearance of the breast.

For women who underwent mastectomy for breast cancer, overall recurrence rates were similar for reconstruction with versus without lipofilling. The rate of locoregional recurrence (in the breast and surrounding area) was not significantly different between groups: 1.3 percent for women who had lipofilling versus 2.4 percent in those who did not.

Rates of systemic (distant) cancer recurrence were similar as well: 2.4 percent with lipofilling versus 3.6 percent without. None of the women undergoing preventive mastectomy developed initial (primary) breast cancer.

In most patient subgroups, breast cancer recurrence risk was similar with or without lipofilling. The sole exception was women receiving hormone therapy, for whom lipofilling was associated with a small but significant increase in locoregional recurrence risk: 1.4 versus 0.5 percent.

Lipofilling is a fat grafting technique that is increasingly used to optimize the cosmetic results of breast reconstruction. In a 2013 survey, more than 60 percent of ASPS member surgeons said they used fat grafting as part of breast reconstruction.

But some plastic surgeons may still be reluctant to use lipofilling because of concern that it might affect the risk of primary or recurrent breast cancer. The new study of breast cancer recurrence risk associated with lipofilling is the first to use a control group of women who underwent breast reconstruction without lipofilling.

The results show no increase in the risk of locoregional or systemic recurrence in women with breast cancer who undergo breast reconstruction with lipofilling. The study also finds no evidence that lipofilling affects the risk of initial breast cancer for the growing number of high-risk women undergoing "preventive" mastectomy.

"Our results provide new evidence that lipofilling, used as part of breast reconstruction, is a safe procedure that does not increase the risk of recurrent or new breast cancer after mastectomy," Dr. Kronowitz comments. While highlighting the need for further research, the researchers hope their findings will encourage more plastic surgeons to use lipofilling to provide the best possible results of breast reconstruction for their patients undergoing breast cancer surgery.

###

Click here to read "Lipofilling of the Breast Does Not Increase the Risk of Recurrence of Breast Cancer: A Matched Controlled Study."

Article: "Lipofilling of the Breast Does Not Increase the Risk of Recurrence of Breast Cancer: A Matched Controlled Study" (doi: 10.1097/01.prs.0000475741.32563.50)

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is published by Wolters Kluwer.

About Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery

For more than 60 years, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (http://journals.lww.com/plasreconsurg/) has been the one consistently excellent reference for every specialist who uses plastic surgery techniques or works in conjunction with a plastic surgeon. The official journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery brings subscribers up-to-the-minute reports on the latest techniques and follow-up for all areas of plastic and reconstructive surgery, including breast reconstruction, experimental studies, maxillofacial reconstruction, hand and microsurgery, burn repair, and cosmetic surgery, as well as news on medico-legal issues.

About ASPS

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) is the world's largest organization of board-certified plastic surgeons. Representing more than 7,000 Member Surgeons, the Society is recognized as a leading authority and information source on aesthetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. ASPS comprises more than 94 percent of all board-certified plastic surgeons in the United States. Founded in 1931, the Society represents physicians certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery or The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. ASPS advances quality care to plastic surgery patients by encouraging high standards of training, ethics, physician practice and research in plastic surgery. You can learn more and visit the American Society of Plastic Surgeons at http://www.plasticsurgery.org or http://www.facebook.com/PlasticSurgeryASPS and http://www.twitter.com/ASPS_news.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer is a global leader in professional information services. Professionals in the areas of legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance and healthcare rely on Wolters Kluwer's market leading information-enabled tools and software solutions to manage their business efficiently, deliver results to their clients, and succeed in an ever more dynamic world.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2014 annual revenues of 3.7 billion. The group serves customers in over 170 countries, and employs over 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Wolters Kluwer shares are listed on NYSE Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices. Wolters Kluwer has a sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt program. The ADRs are traded on the over-the-counter market in the U.S. (WTKWY).

For more information about our products and organization, visit http://www.wolterskluwerhealth.com, follow @WKHealth or @Wolters_Kluwer on Twitter, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, or follow WoltersKluwerComms on YouTube.
by Eric Ellis



Gulf-based deal adviser Amanda Staveley

News that Gulf-based deal adviser Amanda Staveley has launched a claim for up to 1 billion against Barclays over her role in the banks emergency capital raising in 2008 reopens a sore that now irritates a new generation of leaders at the UK bank.

The Financial Times reported on Friday that Staveleys company, PCP Capital Partners, filed suit in Londons High Court claiming damages because of PCPs role as an investor, as well as an adviser to both Qatari- and Abu Dhabi-based funds, a claim that Barclays says it will fight.

The role of Staveley in the 5.8 billion capital raises has been the subject of intense dispute and speculation over the past seven years.

In May 2013, Euromoney published an exclusive article based on papers seen by the magazine, which revealed for the first time the extent of Staveley and PCPs involvement, and the drawn-out row over the compensation they received.

On April 30, 2009, Staveley and her then business partner, London-based lawyer Craig Eadie, were informed that the sum of 29.5 million had been deposited in her account.

First light

Euromoneys disclosures cast the first light on what happened to 110 million in fees paid by Barclays nominally to Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who had invested 3.5 billion in Barclays, but in reality were fought over by a cast of advisers, associates and family members, of which Staveley was a major beneficiary.

The 29.5 million appeared to be considerably less than Staveley believed she deserved.

However, correspondence seen by Euromoney between the various Barclays players show that Staveleys relations with the Abu Dhabi camp has deteriorated since the capital injection. At one point, just before Christmas 2008, Staveley was given a deadline by her Abu Dhabi interlocutor to accept just 5 million, or nothing at all.

Documents seen by Euromoney revealed the complexity of Mansours investment, involving a series of shelf companies called PCP Gulf Invest 1, 2 and 3 first set up in Staveley and Eadies names, that were then transferred into Abu Dhabis beneficial ownership.

It is possible these vehicles form the basis of Staveleys claim she was an investor as well as an adviser in the capital raise. In that context, the sum claimed of close to 1 billion, which includes interest expenses, should be seen in light of the 3 billion that Sheikh Mansour made from his investments over a two-year period.

The claim is a further headache for new Barclays CEO Jes Staley.

Barclays says in a statement. We believe the claim against Barclays is misconceived and without merit, and Barclays will be vigorously defending it.
The more a population accepts killing as an acceptable response to human suffering, the wider the categories of acceptable euthanasia become  and the more people are killed. Belgium validates that premise. In 2015, a record number of people died by lethal injection. From the Yahoo News story:

Belgium carried out more than 2,000 mercy killings last year, the most since euthanasia was controversially legalised in 2002, the government said Wednesday. There were 2,021 cases in 2015, said a spokeswoman for the governments euthanasia commission which oversees the legislation to ensure it is correctly applied.

This probably doesnt tell the whole story. Nor is it likely that euthanasia rates will remain steady. In the years to come, expect increasing numbers of people with all kinds of problems  terminal, psychiatric, chronic, aging, etc.  to be made dead by doctors.

To illustrate the astonishing number this represents: Belgiums population is about 11 million. If the same rates of euthanasia deaths were conducted in the U.S. (population 330 million), it would amount to 60,000 medicalized killings a year! That would be about 165 a day.

If we dont want to go there tomorrow, we need to stop the assisted suicide movement in its tracks today.

Meanwhile, Canada is fast transforming into a full-fledged culture of death.

That requires authoritarian measures, and so efforts are underway to punish provinces that dont ensure access to euthanasia. From the Ottawa Citizen story:

Provinces that refuse to offer right-to-die medical services should have federal health care subsidies slashed to discourage a repeat of the jurisdictional patchwork that limits legal access to abortion in parts of the country, parliamentarians heard Monday. NDP MP and health critic Murray Rankin, at a hearing of the special joint House-Senate committee on assisted dying, pressed witnesses Abby Hoffman, assistant deputy minister at Health Canada, on whether the government would withhold heath-care transfer payments from provinces and territories that chose not to make physician-assisted death services available. The last line of defence is withholding funding, responded Hoffman. But, there would be a lot of conversation with that jurisdiction long before the point of withholding funds. It is a very long process to turn an alleged violation of a principle into a situation where there are financial penalties.

So if ready access to medicalized killing isnt guaranteed by a province, the federal government will punish that areas sick by restricting its share of the provinces health care costs.

This goes past mere legalization to creating a positive right to access death. And that requires authoritarian coercion of doctors  and in a socialized system  local government entities.

Canada is throwing away the right to call itself free  or moral.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.

Image credit:  xtock / Dollar Photo Club.
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The Chancellor should use The Budget in March to turn the Prime Ministers broadband equality pledge from promise to reality, says the organisation that represents rural businesses.

In its Budget submission, the CLA has urged Government to kick-start delivery of the Universal Service Obligation of at least 10Mbps. The Prime Minister committed in November 2015 to putting this USO in place, following a long-running CLA campaign.

CLA President Ross Murray said: The Prime Ministers commitment to a Universal Service Obligation of 10Mbps was a major victory for the tens of thousands of rural businesses and communities that have been disadvantaged by poor or non-existent broadband for far too long. However we are still waiting for clarity on the framework for the USO and how it will be delivered in practice. We want to see the wheels really set in motion in The Chancellors Budget in March.

Good broadband for every home and business under the new USO will not happen overnight, and many rural community groups and businesses are having to make their own investments out of necessity to get connected. Taking the initiative in this way should be encouraged and we would like to see plans for match funding or tax incentives included in The Budget.

2016 Priority

As we enter a new year we must start by ensuring we have a proper understanding of the scale and importance of rural business to our national economy. There are more than 600,000 rural businesses employing 2.8 million people in England and Wales.

Our main priority for 2016 is to ensure that Government, Ministers and others recognise that these farming and other rural businesses are modern, diverse and innovative. All sectors of the economy are present in our rural communities and these businesses will play a critical role in meeting the challenge of growth, job creation and increased productivity in the months and years ahead.

To achieve this Ministers must ensure that the needs of rural businesses are fully considered as new policy is developed. It is also vitally important that Government at all levels is considering the needs of rural communities when deciding where to invest in critical infrastructure, from broadband to road and rail. Throughout 2016 the CLA will be bringing decision makers and rural businesses together through a range of events around the country throughout the year.

CLA lobbying has been successful in 2015 and we have influenced many of the decisions that will benefit the countryside because of it. The Prime Ministers announcement in November of a Universal Service Obligation of 10 Mbps by the end of this parliament was a particularly importan milestone in a ten year CLA campaign. This commitment serves only to increase our determination to make sure Government and industry stick to this promise and ensure that a fast and reliable connection becomes a reality for every rural home and business.

2016 will be a critical year for farming as we continue to struggle with a perfect storm of poor prices across a range of agricultural commodities and a volatile global marketplace not helped by the strength of sterling. A strong farming sector will always be the necessary foundation of a strong rural economy.

The immediate priority is to ensure that farmers receive their basic support payments as soon as possible. The Rural Payments Agency must deliver on its commitment to have paid the vast majority by the end of January and endeavour to pay everyone as early in the new year as possible.

We will also be looking to the long term with the publication of the 25 year strategy for food and farming early next year. It will be followed by an equally important 25 year strategy for the environment. The CLA is playing a full part in the development of both. It is vital that these strategies provide farmers with the reassurance that they will continue to receive support from Government. This is vital not only to ensure that the industry is resilient in difficult times, but also to ensure we fulfil our potential to lead the world in the quality of our produce and our land management practice.

As the world sets about delivering on the Climate Change commitments made in Paris, the two 25 year strategies must acknowledge the vital role that landowners play in the adaption and mitigation of climate change. Many CLA members are dealing right now with the effects of extreme weather and flooding and we are committed to playing a full and constructive part in ongoing discussions about the future of land use to manage this particular challenge.
New report backs farmers' calls for better waste crime policies
Fayetteville man sentenced in 2020 strip mall parking lot killing

Damarcus Jerome Ray, 22, was sentenced to at least nine years and five months in prison by Cumberland County Judge Claire V. Hill on Oct. 7.
The Guardian newspaper reported in September 2014 that the terms and conditions for signing up for free Wi-Fi in London included a Herod clause requiring the recipient . . . to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity. Nonetheless, people signed up.

The Herod clause showed that few people actually read the long and complex policies they routinely accept as part of doing business.

Similarly, pity the poor employees of most publicly traded companies trying to read and understand the policies that apply to them. Heres an excerpt from a 2015 Related Persons Transactions policy of a Fortune 10 company recognized for its commitment to ethics:

Any employment relationship or transaction with an Executive Officer and any related compensation solely resulting from the employment relationship or transaction if (i) the compensation is required to be reported in XXXXXXXXs proxy statement under Item 402 of the SECs compensation disclosure requirements (generally applicable to named executive officers); or (ii) the related compensation would be reported in XXXXXXXXXs proxy statement under Item 402 of the SECs compensation disclosure requirements if the executive officer were a named executive officer, the Management Development and Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors approved (or recommended that the Board of Directors approve) such compensation, and the executive officer is not an Immediate Family Member of a Related Person.

Policies like this  wreathed in legal jargon, defined terms, acronyms, obtuse statutes, cross-references, regulatory references and the like  are generally written by lawyers for regulators, not for employees.

The approach is short-sighted and defensive. The underlying premise is that the company checks the box for a compliance topic by trying to address all possible permutations of a law or rule in an elaborate policy, usually without any reference to values or purpose. If a breach occurs, the policy is trotted out as proof that the company did its duty and should not be held responsible. Employees that speak English as a second language or do not have high literacy will particularly struggle to understand what is expected from such policies.

Even the U.S. government (not generally known as a paragon of simplicity and clarity in the policy area) has recognized the limits of this approach. In early November 2015, the DOJ announced seven metrics by which it would judge the effectiveness of ethics & compliance programs. The third metric asks are compliance policies clear and in writing? Are they easily understood and translated? Good questions.

Some leading companies, consistent with their commitment to values-based ethics programs, have invested major efforts in clarifying their policies. Their goal is reversing decades of policy proliferation, jargon, and complexity by simplifying their policies and procedures, before the concept was embraced by the regulators. What kind of simplification? Radical. Far-reaching. Values-driven. Employee and business-focused. Or, as Al Rosa, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer for GE put it, compliance moving at the speed of business.

Simplification, if done right, strengthens ethical culture by connecting the underlying values and shared goals for each policy clearly and concisely to its actual requirements. Moreover, it can promote respect for employees and foster trust.

As Eli Lillys Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer Melissa Stapleton Barnes has articulated, Lillys three core values of integrity, excellence, and respect for people underlie their three-year policy review and simplification process. The goal is to increase understanding and, at the same time, transparency and openness.

An essential feature of Lillys effort involves employee review  both by a panel of subject matter experts for all policies and procedures emanating from the simplification process as well as a set of international focus groups. These employee litmus tests have proven to be a powerful tool for employee engagement and policy simplification.

For General Electric, the emphasis has been on encouraging employees to use good judgment, rather than trying to craft a rule for every conceivable situation that might occur. GEs effort looks at operationalizing policies and procedures so that business gets done more efficiently and compliance is embedded in the effort.

LRNs work for Allstate Insurance helped incorporate the companys values into streamlined versions of its policies as part of Allstates effort to update and invigorate its Code of Ethics. Knowing what is expected, why it is expected, and how to meet those expectations can be powerful drivers of employee engagement as well as enhancing a companys compliance.

A global commitment never to compromise integrity in winning business lays the basis for specific guidance prohibiting bribery, kickbacks or improperly obtaining competitors information. Respect for people underlies anti-discrimination, fair labor practices and zero tolerance for harassment or bullying without regard to jurisdiction or location. These values make it easier for employees from different cultures and backgrounds to understand their obligations.

Policy simplification, when done right, is a journey, not a project. Working to incorporate values, engage employees and drive clarity can add value to business while cutting back the jargon jungle.

For more examples and specific guidance, check out my post about policy simplification here.

_____

Susan Frank Divers is a member of LRNs Advisory Services Practice where she advises LRN partners on ethics and compliance programs, communications and training. Mrs. Divers background includes more than thirty years of legal experience in the area of international compliance. Prior to LRN, she served as AECOMs Assistant General Counsel for Global Ethics & Compliance and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer. She resides in Northern Virginia and is a frequent speaker, writer and commentator on ethics and compliance topics in the media.
High-Rise is promising to be one of the British movies not to miss this year as Ben Wheatley makes a welcome return to the director's chair.

High-Rise

Wheatley has already made a splash with movies such as Kill List and Sightseers and High-Rise is his first feature film since A Field in England back in 2013 - almost three years on, it is great to have this filmmaker back.

We have already been treated to one great piece of artwork for the film, and now we have another teaser poster to whet our appetite.

High-Rise is a big screen adaptation of the novel by J.G. Ballard and sees Tom Hiddleston take on the central role of Dr. Robert Laing; the movie will mark the first time that the popular actor has teamed up with the filmmaker.

A wonderful cast has been assembled as Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, and Keeley Hawes are just some of the great names to star alongside Hiddleston.

1975. Two miles west of London, Dr. Robert Laing moves into his new apartment seeking soulless anonymity, only to find that the building's residents have no intention of leaving him alone. Resigned to the complex social dynamics unfolding around him, Laing bites the bullet and becomes neighbourly.

As he struggles to establish his position, Laing's good manners and sanity disintegrate along with the building. The lights go out and the lifts fail but the party goes on. People are the problem. Booze is the currency. Sex is the panacea. Only much later, as he sits on his balcony eating the architect's dog, does Dr. Robert Laing finally feel at home.

High Rise is released 18th March.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Britain's Duke of York visited Camden Market on Wednesday (27.01.16).

Britain's Duke of York

Prince Andrew, the son of Queen Elizabeth, stopped by the Half Hitch Gin micro-distillery in north London to show his support for entrepreneurs.

He also visited ice cream shop Chin Chin Labs, which uses liquid nitrogen to make the tasty treats and was shown around a new co-working space at the nearby Gilgamesh restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Prince is a long-time supporter of business start-ups, having recently unveiled his [email protected] scheme.

He said: "It's dead simple. I felt that venture capital was not investing in early stage activity. It comes out of mitigating risk rather than looking at the individual and the idea, and accepting that the idea may change.

"I called in a few people from the venture capital world - yes, quite a few from Cambridge - the idea was for a member of the Royal Family to be an accelerant. [email protected] is an enabling device to bring small businesses and entrepreneurs in contact with these people. I take no cut.

"It's a subtle difference, but in the US they think work, sleep work, whereas our entrepreneurs go from work to the pub, go to bed at 3am and get up again at 7, and this eat, sleep, play routine means they are all playing off each other."
The page you were looking for does not exist.



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The two major Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)  Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact and EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA)  will give a boost to the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector in Vietnam owing to the advantages associated with it, according to economist Pham Chi Lan, according to Vietnamese media reports.

The two FTAs will lead to a diversified supply and lower import costs for the SME sector by eliminating international trade barriers, Lan said at a conference on TPP and EVFTA, organised in Ha Noi. The FTAs will boost investments in the country, increase the market share of Vietnamese companies globally and enhance the overall quality of Vietnamese textile products.

Vietnamese small and medium companies saw a decrease in market demand in 2015, and some SMEs had to shut down as a result, according to a leading Vietnamese portal. Some SMEs had to reduce their prices in the international market owing to competition from other textile producing countries.

TPP and EVFTA will give a boost to the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector in Vietnam owing to its advantages.#

EVFTA is likely to increase Vietnam's export turnover by 3-6 per cent, as it will eliminate export duties on several items in the next 8-10 years. On the other hand, the implementation of the TPP is likely to increase the country's export by around 30 per cent and improve the country's GDP by around 10 per cent. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Nigeria's House of Representatives has cautioned the Federal Government on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), saying it may weaken the country 's economy and the textile sector in particular, according to media reports.The House said the recent push by EU to further expand the frontiers of its economic relations with Nigeria through the implementation of EPA is being resisted by real sector operators of the country's economy.

Nigeria's House of Representatives has cautioned the Federal Government on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), #

The lawmakers during a debate on the motion titled: Call for caution in the implementation of the EPA between EU and Nigeria, expressed regrets over the collapse of the textile industry due to unhealthy competition by foreign companies and smuggling of textile products through the borders.Following the adoption of the motion, Speaker Yakubu Dogara referred the motion to the joint committee on commerce and industry in view of the fact that the lawmakers did not have the opportunity of seeing it and report back within four weeks.In his lead debate, Segun Adekola called for the intervention of the House to thoroughly examine the terms and conditions of the proposed EPA with EU.While expressing reservation on the recent push by the EU to expand its economic relations with Nigeria through the implementation of the EPA, the lawmaker noted that the policy had been resisted by various operators and stakeholders.Adekola explained that based on the terms of agreement, the EU would offer 15 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) full access to its market and in return, members of ECOWAS would open up 75 per cent of their markets with over 300 million consumers to Europe over a 20-year period.Nigeria has a weak manufacturing base because of infrastructural deficit and environmental factors, and thus is not on the same economic pedestal with any European countries to warrant such a reciprocal trade as envisaged in the trade agreement.The agreement would lead to stunting of the growth of industries in West Africa, with serious economic and employment consequences for Nigeria which controls 60 per cent share of the regional market, he said.On his part, Mojeed Alabi argued that Nigeria would be at disadvantage while the EU nations would take advantage of its vast population.EU Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mitchel Arrion has questioned Nigeria's decision not to sign the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) long after the initiative was formally launched in February 2014, after over 10 years of negotiations.
Switzerland based Uster is introducing the Uster Tester 6 at the Dhaka International Textile & Garment Machinery Exhibition (DTG) which began from January 28, 2016.Pahartali Textile & Hosiery Mills Ltd (PTHM) is supporting Uster in presenting the new Uster Tester 6 and is among the earliest customers for the tester and who has already reported that advantages have exceeded expectations.

Switzerland based Uster is introducing the Uster Tester 6 at the Dhaka International Textile & Garment Machinery Exhibition (DTG) which began from#

At the launch at ITMA in Milan, the new Uster Tester 6 received a very positive feedback, so we are eager to show this latest Uster innovation at more shows, Sivakumar Narayanan, head of marketing within Uster said.Explaining the reasons for adopting the Uster Tester 6, Mahbubul Alam, COO of PTHM said, It was clear from the beginning that our laboratory must be equipped with Uster fibre and yarn testing instruments.The company already uses Uster HVI 1000, Uster AFIS and Uster Autosorter in its quality management regime and we were seeking to replace the Uster Tester 4, installed in 1998, he added.What at first seemed like an upgrade requirement has now opened up a whole new world of yarn testing, Alam observed.The testing speed of 800 metres per minute is already an appreciated improvement but the advantages arising from the Total Testing Center have exceeded our expectation regarding this investment, Alam noted.According to Uster, the Uster Tester 6 is the gateway to the Total Testing Center, in which its precision laboratory data is interpreted by the Uster Quality Expert software.It is then integrated with information from yarn clearers to provide a complete picture of spinning mill operations for the entire production volume, the company also explained.As per Uster, analysis of this data by Uster Quality Expert is the key, examining all quality parameters to guide spinning mills towards fact-based decisions on improvement actions.The scope of these features expands as further Uster instruments are linked to the system, the Swiss company too observed.Innovative extra support for management comes in the form of Assistant Q, an intelligent helper service which has been likened to recruiting a new staff member with 65 years of Uster know-how.Part of the Total Testing Center, Assistant Q simplifies complex issues and takes over repetitive tasks, so managers can concentrate on the wider goals, the company noted.The Uster Tester 6 incorporates a hairiness technology, which combines Sensor HL and Sensor OH and evaluates the vital hairiness parameter at high-speeds.Together with the established Sensor OH, spinners now have a complete hairiness analysis, giving the best possible assurance against quality claims, Uster stated.A number of novel features have also been introduced in the Uster Tester 6 for rapid fault-tracing and quality management, with all designed to minimise downtime and optimise quality in both yarns and fabrics. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The President, His Excellency Major-General (Retd) Jioji Konousi Konrote, is Fijis champion for the awareness campaign to reduce Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs).



The Minister for Health and Medical Services Hon. Jone Usamate had invited the President to become Fijis leading advocate for the elimination of NCDs, which contribute to eighty-percent of deaths in the country.

Following the Presidents acceptance of the honorary position, a team from the Ministry of Health and Medical Services today conducted a presentation to the President, the First Lady and staff of the Office of the President.



Led by the Assistant Minister for Health and Medical Services, Hon. Veena Bhatnagar and the Permanent Secretary Dr. Meciusela Tuicakau, the presentation focused on the causes of NCDs and on how Fiji could change the situation to have a healthier population.



Fijis national advisor on NCDs Dr Isimeli Tukana presented the following statistics:



 Premature deaths are any death that happens below 70 years

 80-percent of deaths in Fiji are caused by NCDs

 NCDs contribute to a lower life expectancy which is currently below 70 years for both male and females

 The three top NCDs are heart attacks, diabetes and stroke

 NCDs also contribute to mental illness, cancers, heart diseases, obesity,

 NCDs make people more prone to accidents and injuries, among other diseases

 The causes of NCDs include but are not limited to: smoking, alcohol and kava abuse, eating junk food, stress and worries, physical inactivity

 NCDs can be overcome through eating healthy meals, drinking clean water, breathing oxygen, moderate physical activity on a daily basis, and having a positive attitude



Dr Tukana said that the overall target is for all Fijians to have a healthy lifestyle. This essentially means changing ones behaviour



He said a major component of the NCD awareness campaign is to promote wellness from the conception stage, or when a child is yet to be born, right through to senior age.



It is anticipated that the President will promote wellness and a healthy lifestyle throughout Fiji, especially in schools and with youth and community groups.
Five of the seven teachers will be teaching in Tuvalu while two will be in Nauru.



Editors note: for more details on this program, email news@govnet.gov.fj

Seven Fijian volunteer teachers will depart Fiji this week and early next week to work in the education sector in Nauru and Tuvalu.The Minister for Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations, Hon. Semi Koroilavesau farewelled the teachers in Suva yesterday and presented them with airline tickets.Initiated in 2012, the Fiji Volunteer Service is a development and friendship assistance scheme for retired workers in regional countries on shared cost basis.Minister Koroilavesau said the Fijian Government supported the development of neighbouring countries, especially to assist in their human resource needs.The Fijian Government acknowledge both the governments of Nauru and Tuvalu for coming forward and identifying their human resource needs in the education sector and we are glad that we could assist through our Senior Volunteer Scheme, Minister Koroilavesau said.We are pleased to note that there are Fijians already working in these Pacific Island Countries and are contributing positively towards enhancing the economic and social life of their host countries.The Fijian Government has come up with initiatives to allow for labour mobility in areas of education, public administration, disaster management, peacekeeping, social protection and environment.Minister Koroilavesau thanked the volunteers for coming forward to serve and urged them to be good ambassadors for Fiji.You have shown your desire to share your knowledge, experiences and teaching skills. You are going to leave behind your families and the comfort of your homes to serve in a country that needs your service. Go that extra mile to help in the education needs for Nauru and Tuvalu.Mr Paulo Coronaqio, one of the volunteer teachers, said they were thankful for the opportunity provided by Government to share their knowledge with children in need of their assistance.
H.E THE PRESIDENT - ADDRESS ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF HARVEST PLAZA





Vinaka Vakalevu, Dhanyavaad, Faieksea and Thank You.

The President and Founder of Christian Mission Fellowship International, Reverend Suliasi Kurulo and your good wife Mere.Dr. Fred Creighton and your good wife FranMembers of the Board of CMFIDistinguished guestsLadies and gentlemen.Ni sa Bula Vinaka, Namaskar, Noaia e Mauri and a very Good Morning.Ladies and Gentlemen, at the outset, please allow me to acknowledge with humble gratitude and appreciation your very kind invitation that my wife and I attend todays celebrations and officiate as we commemorate the official opening of the Christian Mission Fellowship International (CFMI) Harvest Plaza.The Official Opening ceremony of the Harvest Plaza this morning is a joyous and momentous occasion which will undoubtedly be registered in the annals of the Church history as a milestone achievement for the Christian Mission Fellowship International (CFMI). It is indeed a historical occasion for the Church as it brings to fruition the Churchs Vision and ability to provide a wide range of services closer to the people of Khalsa Road, Kinoya and the greater Nasinu area.The opening of this Harvest Plaza complex reflects the commitment of CMFI as not just to spiritual ministry, but also as an Institution committed to the development of Fiji and her people socially and economically. About 20 years ago, this part of the Kings Road was bare and desolate. From a humble beginning since acquiring ownership of this block of land in 1994, the CMFI has transformed the landscape and brought hope and improvements to the lives of many people in this very fast developing and populated suburb of Suva through the many and varied services it is now providing.These includes spiritual mentoring and guidance through the work of the Church, the provision of education services, social services, health and medical services and humanitarian assistance to many residents of this section of the Nasinu- Nausori corridor.I am told that the CMFI Primary School which started here with a small Early Childhood Education Centre has continued to grow until it was re-located along the Khalsa Road when it had to be extended to include a Secondary School. This new learning institution presently has a combined school roll of about 787 students. I believe it prudent that we should understand and accept the positive contribution this school will have on this community and on Fiji as a whole. Generations of young people in this area will be educated in a wholesome and caring manner and friendly environment.Interestingly, following the National Census in 2007, there was the rather odd situation that Nasinu Town, with a very fast growing community of approximately 76,064 persons, had a larger population than Suva City with 74,481 persons and a much larger population than Lautoka City with 43,473 persons. The Nasinu township is continuing to experience a rapid population growth of close to 2 percent per year. It is now the largest and rapidly growing urban area in Fiji.The CMFI is strategically positioned within this area, and is driving quality growth. When a responsible institution like the CMFI undertakes an honest and determined commitment to do ultimate good to a community by extending its services, the resultant outcome would be the emergence of a conglomerate of business enterprises which would further boost employment opportunities, productivity and prosperity. Such a desired outcome not only delivers services directly and efficiently to the people, but more importantly, it inevitably raises their sense of belonging and ownership of the institutionSimilarly, it not only delivers services directly and develops the community, it also raises the standards of living, and at the same time inculcates a sense of pride and achievement for the community. It raises peoples expectations of themselves and their surroundings. It inspires everyone to rise to the challenge of helping and loving ones neighbour, thus enhancing their individual and collective endeavours to better their lot and that of the community in general.CMFI is also working closely with Government through the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, the Ministry of Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation and the National Disaster Management Office of the Ministry of Rural and Maritime Development.The opening of this complex today marks a further extension in the provision of services by the Church. This Harvest Plaza Supermarket which operates on the ground floor also produces quality goods and food thus making them more accessible to people living in the Kinoya and Khalsa Road areas. Members of the public will now have access to services from retail outlets selling stationery and merchandise, musical instruments, hairdressing, cosmetics, clothing to architectural services and a business centre. The new Plaza also has a food court that will serve a variety of Indian, Chinese, Fijian and European dishes six days a week, thus enabling the residents in this vicinity and surrounding areas to have a wider choice of the many different and varied cuisines.The CMFI has truly provided a place where the spirit of community can grow here in Nasinu, a place where people will shop, where neighbours will be able to meet and interact with one another in a friendly and safe public facility. This certainly enhances social cohesion and encourages and promotes a stronger sense of belonging, oneness and ownership.The new complex is also expected to bring significant benefits to the work of CMFI as a Church. The income generated from the business will positively contribute towards assisting the other service delivery arms in particular the Churchs World Mission branch, which supports the work of Fijian missionaries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific.It has been the norm that the Church has to rely on donors and its fundraising drives to financially support the delivery of its services. This new business venture is expected to make the Church more self-reliant. The complex will also create more employment opportunities as there will be a need to engage more people in the different areas of service delivery.I am very pleased to note, acknowledge and highlight the fact that the developments undertaken by the Christian Mission Fellowship International are great examples for Fiji to emulate.CMFI is not only fulfilling a fundamental need for its members to grow spiritually, but it is also fulfilling a key element in Fijis Constitution. The Constitution declares our collective commitment to ensuring the social and economic wellbeing of all Fijians. It provides the framework for us to develop into a modern and prosperous nation.The CMFI now joins a number of other faith-based organisations that contribute to Fijis spiritual development, health and wellness, education and intellectual development, economic development, and humanitarian and social services. This is a holistic approach to life and to the ideals of a faith based community.This entrepreneurial spirit allows CMFI to direct its ministry to the whole personspiritual well-being, physical well-being and material well-being, all in synch and balance for a life well lived.What a wonderful day it will be when all Fijians will be able to live a life of prosperity in a holistic sense. This is a vision that we can see through the CMFI. It is a very encouraging vision that would augur well for Fiji as a Nation.I personally congratulate and wish Reverend Kurulo and CMFI well, and every success in this new business venture. I look forward to following future developments with great interest.With these words, I deem it a great honour and pleasure to declare the new Harvest Plaza open. May God bless us all.
HON PM BAINIMARAMA - REMARKS AT THE RENOVATION OF THE RATU FILIMONE MEMORIAL SCHOOL





Bula vinaka and a good morning to you all.Its a pleasure to be here with you all to wrap up the first week of my Tour of the West. Its been a great week seeing infrastructure, projects and services spread to the Western region. Its been such a productive, rewarding week that I decided this week to extend my tour and stay here in the West for another week.Every Fijian has helped build our economy into what it has become, so every one of you has earned the development my Government has undertaken. You deserve it, and our Constitution demands it  because every Fijian is entitled to equal opportunity and equal attention from my Government.When building a bright future for this region, there is no better investment we can make than in our children. Our Fijian students  who are today in the classroom  will one day be successful farmers, in the halls of Parliament, arguing in the courtroom, serving in our hospitals, and leading Fiji in business. They also will be parents making everyday decisions for their families and contributing members of the community. We need to make sure they are prepared for those responsibilities.When my Government made education free for every Fijian family, we did so because it was the right thing to do, and also as a way to fulfill the right to education that is guaranteed by our Constitution. We put forward great efforts and money to make that happen, because it was something worth sacrificing for. When every Fijian student has the opportunity to reach their full potential, all of Fiji benefits. Talented students make for a talented workforce. And a talented workforce gives a boost to our existing business, and makes Fiji more attractive for new business from all over the world.My Government was not content just to make education free, we also have embarked on a campaign to improve and upgrade our schools. When children learn in a modern, clean environment, they feel appreciated and important. That translates into productivity and a greater interest in their studies.So that is why Im back here in Sorokoba at the Ratu Filimone Memorial School. In 2014, your school requested fencing to stop farm animals from getting on the school grounds and damaging property.Today, I am opening the newly constructed perimeter fence, a covered walkway, an upgraded staff restroom facility and a few other maintenance works to keep your school functioning safely and efficiently. In total, these improvements have cost $65,096  a worthy investment in your 189 students and your teaching staff.The new fencing will keep your school grounds safe and give your students a stronger sense of security as they play and go about their studies. The Ratu Filimone School can also plant and grow their own vegetables  a sustainable and nutritious advantage for your students.The new walkway will also keep you dry on rainy days and allow buses to drop students off right inside the school compound instead of out on the main road. These conveniences will make a big difference for your students. Its one less thing theyll have to worry about, and we want our students focused solely on their studies.And it is a shame that some civil servants in the Ministry of Education failed to ensure that our children receive their text books from day 1 of the new term in the New Year. This is a serious matter. First, it not only deprives children of the books they need, but it infringes on their constitutional right. Second, it undermines the peoples faith in the institution that is charged with guaranteeing that right. And that is why we have launched an investigation into the matter. We want to make sure that this kind of inexcusable failureor anything similarnever happens again. I am happy to announce that we have made special arrangements and therefore all text books should be ready for distribution, at the latest within 4 weeks.Ladies and gentlemen,When our children grow up, they should enjoy a Fiji that is strong, prosperous and proud. We are making that happen every day through our economic policies, infrastructure development and through our search for a new national flag.We are looking for a flag that stands for what we truly are as Fijians. A flag that encapsulates our history, our people and our future. Our current flag has served us proudly, and will be remembered well, but is time Fiji flew a flag that showed the world how we see ourselves and what we believe we can achieve.We have extended the deadline for design submissions until 29 February. In March, we will announce five final designs, and then choose a final flag through national consultations. On Constitution Day, which is 7 September, Fiji will fly our new national flag and say to the world, This is Fiji.I hope you all will make your voices heard in the upcoming months and contribute to this important national effort. In the meantime, study hard, focus on your studies and be the best students and teachers that you can be.Thank you. Vinaka vakalevu
Iulia Vantur's presence in Salman Khan starrer Sultan's shooting location, makes us wonder whether Iulia is a part of Sultan or not. However the answer is an unfortunate, no. Iulia, is not a part of Sultan.

Iulia Vantur, is showing a lot of interest in Salman Khan's work, and the Romanian beauty is seen being present in almost everything that Salman Khan lays his hands on to.

Iulia Vantur Iulia Vantur, was recently spotted on the sets of Salman Khan starrer Sultan. Iulia, was seen sitting behind the monitor. Being Human Iulia Vantur, always wants the best for Salman Khan and will do anything to make the actor feel happy and special. Iulia-Salman Iulia Vantur, generally prefers to travel in an autorikshaw just to avoid the eyes of the paparazi. Iulia Vantur Iulia Vantur, is a beautiful woman from Romania and has managed to win the heart and mind of Salman Khan. Romanian Beauty The Romanian beauty, Iulia Vantur is not a part of Salman Khan starrer Sultan. The actress just came to visit Salman Khan on the sets. Iulia Is Being Human Iulia Vantur, is seen almost on all special occasions of Salman Khan and has been with him for quite some time now.

A source from Bollywoodlife revealed that Iulia Vantur arrived on the sets of Sultan in a blue BMW car and walked straight inside the shooting venue. Iulia, sat right behind the monitor and observed Salman Khan's acting.

That's not all, the source from Bollywoodlife also revealed that Iulia Vantur, monitored every scene, and was also overheard giving some suggestions to the film-makers and Salman Khan.

Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan & Aamir Khan To Play Gays In Next?

So at the look of it, we can assume that Iulia Vantur wants the best for Salman Khan, and will do anything possible to watch him succeed for Sultan. Though it's a little bit donting from her end, she still wishes the best for Salman.

We never know, Iulia Vantur might impress and comvience the film-makers for a cameo role in Sultan as well. If that ever happens, Salman Khan's fans would be on top of the moon watching their star romancing Iulia on-screen again.

Salman Khan's Sister Arpita's Baby Shower Pics Are Too Cute To Be Missed!

It's surprising that Iulia Vantur ventured out in a BMW car. The Romainian beauty, usually takes an autorickshaw to meet Salman Khan, just to stay away from the eyes of the camera persons.

Also, Just a few days back, Salman Khan and Amit Sadh had shot for the first song of Sultan inside a pub in Mumbai. The shoot for the song went on for close to nearly three days.

Sultan, is all set to release during Eid, 2016.

Alia Bhatt & Sidharth Malhotra's Valentine's Day Plans Are Adorable!
When it comes to planning and good choice of scripts, it is obvious that Allu Arjun and Mahesh Babu will cross our minds. Apparently, this time Mahesh is a bit ahead of Bunny in planning his career, and the mega hero is said to be following the Superstar.

According to the sources, Allu Arjun is currently in talks with Tamil director Lingusamy for a bilingual and the project is touted to be a huge budgeted one, just like A R Murugudoss and Mahesh's untitled bilingual film.

This makes one wonder if Allu Arjun is walking in the foot steps of Mahesh Babu. Nevertheless, it is always interesting to see unique combinations shaping up. On the other hand, Bunny is busy wrapping up the shoot of his next outing, Sarrainodu, which is helmed by director Boyapati Srinu.

Co starring Rakul Preet Singh and Catherine Tresa, the film is expected to boost Allu Arjun's mass image further in masses. Also, the pre-release business of the movie is high, making the industry insiders drop their jaws in awe.

Probing into the details of the film, we hear that Bunny is playing the role of a bodyguard to Catherine Tresa, who is donning the role of an MLA. The team is making sure nothing much about the film is spreading out and the high secrecy is indeed keeping us curious. Stay tuned to this space for more updates.
La pubblicazione di contributi, approfondimenti, articoli e in genere di tutte le opere dottrinarie e di commento (ivi comprese le news) presenti su Filodiritto e stata concessa (e richiesta) dai rispettivi autori, titolari di tutti i diritti morali e patrimoniali ai sensi della legge sul diritto d'autore e sui diritti connessi (Legge 633/1941). La riproduzione ed ogni altra forma di diffusione al pubblico delle predette opere (anche in parte), in difetto di autorizzazione dell'autore, e punita a norma degli articoli 171, 171-bis, 171-ter, 174-bis e 174-ter della menzionata Legge 633/1941. E consentito scaricare, prendere visione, estrarre copia o stampare i documenti pubblicati su Filodiritto nella sezione Dottrina per ragioni esclusivamente personali, a scopo informativo-culturale e non commerciale, esclusa ogni modifica o alterazione. Sono parimenti consentite le citazioni a titolo di cronaca, studio, critica o recensione, purche accompagnate dal nome dell'autore dell'articolo e dall'indicazione della fonte, ad esempio: Luca Martini, La discrezionalita del sanitario nella qualificazione di reato perseguibile d'ufficio ai fini dell'obbligo di referto ex. art 365 cod. pen., in "Filodiritto" (https://www.filodiritto.com), con relativo collegamento ipertestuale. Se l'autore non e altrimenti indicato i diritti sono di Inforomatica S.r.l. e la riproduzione e vietata senza il consenso esplicito della stessa. E sempre gradita la comunicazione del testo, telematico o cartaceo, ove e avvenuta la citazione.
The spectre of embezzlement in Chinese banking reared its ugly head for the second time in a week on Thursday after China Citic Bank, a unit of China's largest investment conglomerate Citic Group, said it had uncovered a fraud totalling Rmb969 million ($147 million).

The Beijing-headquartered bank said in a filing with the Shanghai exchange that it is cooperating with a police investigation after two people with knowledge of the matter earlier told FinanceAsia about the matter.

Attention is focused on a branch of Citic Bank in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, which has allegedly long worked with a bill agency in Zhejiang, an eastern coastal province where the grey bill market is massive. The agency generally provides qualified documents and collateral to collect Citic Banks bills on behalf of clients. But last year it allegedly cashed some of the bills and embezzled the proceeds and invested part of them in the countrys once-booming stock market.

The incident at Citic Bank, Chinas ninth largest lender by assets, is the second in one week after a similar fraud allegation of Agricultural Bank of China surfaced last Friday.

Two employees at ABCs Beijing branch allegedly cashed bank acceptance bills worth Rmb3.92 billion ($596 million) and also invested some of the proceeds in the stock market. The embezzled cash was subsequently not returned due to the losses sustained as the market plunged since last summer.

Both cases highlight operational risks at Chinese lenders, where the bill financing business has developed quickly, jumping by 60% to Rmb4.58 trillion in value over the course of 2015, according to the People's Bank of China.

Citic Bank has been conducting comprehensive checks across all branches. One director in charge of bill financing was dispatched to check the Hangzhou branch one month ago, said one Beijing-based person at the bank, referring to the capital of Zhejiang province where the bill-financing business is very active.

Bank acceptance bills, much like bank drafts, are widely used as a form of payment in Chinese commercial transactions. The holder can sell the bill for cash on a secondary market or cash it at a bank  both at a discount to its face value.

In principle, banks should issue bills with a maturity of up to six months based on genuine commercial transactions and make them work much like post-dated checks.

Common practice

But industry insiders say most bills are issued in the form of paper in China because they are less likely to attract government scrutiny than electronic versions.

But the dependence on paper means speculative agents can often cash the same bill at multiple banks, as lenders do not verify the note carefully enough - in particular as they cash bills between themselves to inflate their balance sheets.

In the light of lax internal controls, the banking regulator late last year issued new guidance requiring banks to review the risky business practice in an effort to prevent repeated use of the same bill and bill issuance for fraudulent transactions.

Chinese big-four bank ICBC and two other large lenders China Everbright Bank and Mingsheng Bank told FinanceAsia separately that they havent received any official notice to suspend the bill financing despite the government's tightening of its regulatory approach.

You cannot shut down the whole business due to a few incidents, although each bank could more or less have similar problems. Just the amount involved wouldnt be as big as ABC and Citic Bank, said one [Beijing-based] person in the note department at Everbright Bank.

The suspension will greatly hit the market liquidity. Otherwise there will be no business, no harm, she said.

Shares in Citic Bank ended down 3% and 0.5% in Shanghai and Hong Kong, respectively, on Thursday.
The Labor Department's fiduciary proposal is in the final stages of becoming a rule, having been sent last night to the White House's Office of Budget and Management for review, according to the office's website.

The rule is likely to go into effect in the spring of 2016, ensuring that it's in place before President Obama's tenure ends and a new president comes in who can easily undo it, experts and industry observers say.

It's been a long road for the proposal, which would affect advisors and firms providing certain kinds of retirement advice. The Labor Department made its first attempt to craft a rule in 2010, but met with fierce resistance.

The department came back with a new proposal last year, which has met with fierce opposition and steadfast support in equal measure. Critics have charged the DOL rule would be too costly to implement, create a messy patchwork of rules and ultimately leave small investors in the lurch because it would be too costly for firms to serve them.

Fiduciary advocates, however, have welcomed the rule as a necessary tool to protect investors' savings from unscrupulous brokers. And they are hopeful that the rule will not be watered down.

"My expectation is that the key provisions of the rule will remain intact," Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, told Financial Planning last week.

Kenneth Bentsen, CEO of SIFMA, one of the industry's largest trade and lobbying groups, called on the OMB to carefully review the costs associated with the proposal, both to firms as well as small investors.

"The OMB has a statutory mandate to get this right. To do so, it must fully assess the economic impact of the DOLs rule to ensure it serves the best interest of American investors without making saving harder and causing them undue harm," he said in a statement.

FIRMS PREPARE

Analysts have recently peppered CEOs with questions about how well prepared their firms are for one of the biggest regulatory changes in years. Among those chief executives was Paul Reilly, CEO of Raymond James.

"We've been consistent in that though it is well intended it is not good for clients," Reilly told analysts.

And though he said his firm was looking at various ways to prepare, there were limits to what could be done until the rule details are set in stone.

"We are preparing the best we can, but we are not changing technology or something until we see what the rule says," Reilly said.

Ameriprise CEO Jim Cracchiolo told analysts during an earnings call Thursday that his firm was preparing to make adjustments, particularly around commissions-based business, which is expected to face tighter restrictions under the Labor Department's proposed rule. However, there is a so-called best interest contract exemption, which may allow firms and advisors to conduct commission-based business when providing certain kinds of retirement advice.

"Depending on what they finalize there, that will determine whether a lot of the business that you are doing today can still be done," he said.

While there are still some uncertainties regarding the final rule details, one thing appears to be certain from the viewpoint of chief executives: change is coming.

"If the final rule says you can't do certain business or at certain rates, well then there will have to be adjustments on the part of the advisor and on the part of the firm," Cracchiolo said.

Read more:
OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen strengthened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday. The yen rose to 129.65 against the euro, 170.14 against the pound and 116.89 against the Swiss franc, from yesterday's closing quotes of 129.96, 170.58 and 117.17, respectively. Against the U.S. and the Canadian dollars, the yen advanced to 118.52 and 84.42 from yesterday's closing quotes of 118.80 and 84.68, respectively. If the yen extends its uptrend, it is likely to find resistance around 127.00 against the euro, 165.00 against the pound, 115.00 against the franc, 116.00 against the greenback and 80.00 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Automobile production in Japan decreased at the end of the year after rising in the previous month, figures from the Japan Automobile Manufactures Association showed Friday. Production of vehicle dropped 2.3 percent or by 17,359 units year-over-year to 749,693 units in December. In November, production grew for the first time in seventeen months. Domestic automobile demand plunged 14.5 percent to 369,460 units in December. At the same time, automobile exports climbed 8.1 percent annually to 411,865 units during December. It was the fourth successive monthly gain. Exports to Europe expanded sharply by 57.9 percent in December from last year. Shipment to EU member states jumped by 66.4 percent. Motorcycle production totaled 53,296 units in December, rose by 3.3 percent from the same month of the previous year. Meanwhile, motorcycle exports slid by 0.6 percent to 46,909 units. In the whole year 2015, automobile production fell 5.1 percent to 9,278,238 units compared with the 9,774,665 units total recorded for the previous year. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
29 January 2016

Acacia Mining plc

LSE:ACA

("Acacia" or the "Company")

Contractor Fatality at North Mara

Acacia regrets to announce that Chacha Range, an operator for one of our contractors at North Mara, has passed away as a result of a vehicle accident at the mine. The accident occurred at approximately 3 a.m., when the haul truck he was driving overturned on the haul road to the Gokona deposit. There were no other injuries reported. Investigations into the incident are underway and all relevant authorities have been informed.

Brad Gordon, Acacia's Chief Executive Officer, and his management team express their sincere condolences to the family and colleagues of the deceased.

ENQUIRIES

For further information, please visit our website: http://www.acaciamining.com/ or contact:

Acacia Mining plc +44 (0) 20 7129 7150

Giles Blackham, Investor Relations Manager

Bell Pottinger +44 (0)20 3772 2500

Daniel Thole

About Acacia Mining plc

Acacia Mining plc (LSE:ACA) is Tanzania's largest gold miner and one of the largest producers of gold in Africa. We have three producing mines, all located in north-west Tanzania: Bulyanhulu, Buzwagi, and North Mara and a portfolio of exploration projects in Tanzania, Kenya, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Our approach is focused on strengthening our three core pillars; our business, our people and our relationships, whilst continuing to invest in our future. Our name change from African Barrick Gold to Acacia in November 2014 reflected a new approach to mining, and an ambition to create a leading African Company.

Acacia is a UK public company headquartered in London. We are listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange with a secondary listing on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange. Barrick Gold Corporation is our majority shareholder. Acacia reports in US dollars and in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the European Union, unless otherwise stated in this announcement.
Gothenburg, Sweden, 2016-01-29 08:28 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --Immunicum AB (publ) today reports a significantly improved vaccine cell handling and gives a status update from the ongoing phase II study (MERECA) with the cancer immune primer INTUVAX in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Twelve patients have thus far been included in the study. So far, no serious vaccine-related adverse events have been reported. Immunological data, based on infiltration of CD8 + T cells in the tumors and in healthy tissue, indicate a tumor-specific activation of the immune system in patients treated with INTUVAX. Necessary regulatory approvals have now been obtained to begin recruitment of patients in several European countries.Immunicum today gave a status update from the ongoing phase II study, MERECA (MEtastatic REnal cell CArcinoma) with INTUVAX in patients with newly diagnosed metastatic renal cell cancer (NCT02432846). After approval from the Medical Products Agency, the study was initiated in Sweden already in May 2015. Twelve patients have been included in the study so far and several study-candidates have been identified for screening. No serious vaccine-related adverse events have been reported. Preliminary immunological data regarding the infiltration of CD8 + T cells in primary tumors and in healthy tissue, as well as a comparison between INTUVAX-treated patients and patients in the control group, indicate a tumor-specific activation of the immune system in INTUVAX-treated patients. Efficacy data is still too early to evaluate.In parallel to production transfer to Eufets, a commercial GMP-certified production site in Germany, Immunicum also completed a very important adaptation of the manufacturing process. This work has on the one hand resulted in a delay in the start of the phase II study outside of Sweden but on the other hand generated a product that is ready for immediate use in the hospitals without prior preparation at local pharmacies. By significantly simplified handling of the vaccine cells, INTUVAX can in the future become available for all European clinics. Immunicum is now ready to begin recruitment of patients in several countries outside of Sweden.- Efficacy data in the MERECA study is still too early to evaluate. However, looking at the early analyses that have been done of the tissue samples collected from the surgically removed kidneys, it looks very exciting so far. We see a very distinct tumor-associated infiltration CD8+ T cells in the examined tissue samples from the majority of patients receiving INTUVAX, says Immunicum's Chief Scientific Officer, Alex Karlsson-Parra.- The development of INTUVAX as a direct injectable drug is very important as it makes it possible for more clinics to take part in our studies today while at the same time broadening the market in the future, if further studies show good results. We now begin to treat patients outside of Sweden and expect that patient recruitment will really take off. All 90 patients should be able to include during this year, says Immunicum's CEO Jamal El-Mosleh.MERECA study designImmunicum plans to include a total of 90 patients at 24 European centres in eight countries (Czech Republic, Spain, France, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Sweden, and the UK). INTUVAX is injected in the primary tumor on two occasions before a surgical removal of the kidney along with the primary tumor. Patients will be randomized (randomly distributed) 2:1 between either INTUVAX in combination with sunitinib or sunitinib alone administered about six weeks after surgery. Sunitinib is a standard drug globally for treatment of renal cancer.The study is planned to include 60 % of patients with intermediate risk prognosis and 40 % of patients with high-risk prognosis. Patients will be monitored for 18 months, with the primary objective to evaluate median overall survival in high-risk patients and 18-month survival rate in patients with intermediate risk prognosis. Secondary objectives include evaluation of the proportion of patients showing significant tumor reduction (evaluated by computer tomography/CT), progression free survival, and evaluation of CD8+ T cell infiltration in primary tumors (two separate areas), healthy kidney tissue as well as in any evaluable metastases.After an approved protocol amendment in Sweden, all patients treated with INTUVAX will receive additional treatment with sunitinib starting six weeks after surgery. The corresponding protocol amendment has been sent to relevant local regulatory authorities in Europe. This is a change from the previous plan to allow patients with intermediate risk prognosis to wait for add-on therapy with sunitinib until CT-verified disease progression. The protocol amendment was carried out to better reflect the procedure for standard treatment, according to feedback from several clinics around Europe, and to more quickly take advantage of the potential synergistic effect when INTUVAX is combined with tyrosine kinase inhibitors that can suppress some of the inherent immunosuppression existent in tumors.The MERECA study was preceded by a phase I/II trial (IM-101) in 11 INTUVAX-treated patients with newly diagnosed metastatic renal cell cancer and Immunicum now reports that six of the patients are still alive. The current median overall survival in the phase I/II study has currently exceeded 32 months, compared to 15.2 months based on historical data for standard treatment for the entire patient population and 28.2 months compared to 9.0 months based on historical data for standard treatment for the subgroup with poor prognosis.For further information please contact:Jamal El-Mosleh, CEO, ImmunicumTelephone: +46 (0) 31 41 50 52 jamal.el-mosleh@immunicum.comThe Company's Certified Adviser is Redeye ABTelephone: +46 (0) 8 545 013 31. www.redeye.seAbout INTUVAXINTUVAX is a cancer immune primer, developed for the treatment of solid tumors. Its active ingredient is activated white blood cells, so called dendritic cells, derived from healthy blood donors. Intratumoral injection of these cells is expected to lead to an inflammatory response which in turn leads to tumor-specific activation of the patient's cytotoxic T lymphocytes.About Immunicum AB (publ)Immunicum AB (publ) develops cancer immune primers for the treatment of tumor diseases. A clinical phase II trial with the Company's most advanced product - INTUVAX against kidney cancer - has been initiated. The project portfolio contains additional clinical phase I/II studies in liver cancer and in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST).www.immunicum.com
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BEIJING, Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 360 Security, a mobile antivirus and performance application for Android users, today announced it gained 11 spots on the Google Play download chart to rank as the 6th most popular app to download worldwide in July according to the App Annie Index. A heightened awareness of mobile security among consumers combined with the recent launch of campaigns in Korea, Japan, Thailand, India, Turkey and Germany contributed to this most recent ranking.

360 Security offers consumers an all-in-one utility for virus protection, memory optimization and power saving. According to the App Annie report, the 360 Security app has been gaining popularity globally, when security apps have seen a rise in downloads. Since launching on Google Play two years ago, the 360 Security app has become a top security application among Android users, ranking number one in 90 countries on the Google Play Store's Tools Ranking.

Said Yan Huang, COO of 360 Security: "We have seen an increase in awareness among consumers to take extra steps to protect their mobile devices. Our latest ranking on Google Play further establishes the importance of 360 Security and mobile protection. Furthermore, the continuous improvement of the user experience and our new features increased our popularity. Our user base has increased and we're seeing strong growth across all markets especially in the United States and western countries."

The app is the only all-in-one free speed booster and antivirus app. With one click, users can speed up their devices, or clean up junk files for bigger memory space and longer battery life, while protecting their devices from viruses, malware, adware, ransomware, vulnerabilities or Trojans.

"As an Android user, mobile security is my number one concern. The 360 Security app encompasses everything I was looking for in terms of mobile security," said Ryan Ortiz, a 360 Security app customer. "The app allows my phone to run smoothly and efficiently while eliminating security threats and enhancing battery life."

The 360 Security app currently is available in more than 30 languages for a free download in the Google Play store. To learn more about the 360 Security app or download it today, click here.

Contact:

Jean-Baptiste Carpentier

(+86) 158 1157 3307

jeanbaptiste@mobimagic.com
PRAGUE, January 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

A survey of Prague residents shows an overwhelming demand for the municipality and police to take action against graffiti vandals. Over 80 per cent say that graffiti is a menace and that more should be done to eradicate it.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160127/326586LOGO )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160127/326587 )



The survey conducted among 200 Prague residents and 200 tourists was commissioned from Ipsos by Flow East, a property owner and developer which has repeatedly spoken out against the spray-paint desecration of Prague's historic monuments.

Flow East offers expert help to municipal authorities

'It's not hard to deter these hooligans' says Flow East's James Woolf. 'To start with, you have to remove the graffiti at once. Responsible property owners like Flow East do this a matter of routine; any graffiti on a building of ours is removed before midday. By doing this the graffiti stops since the spray is expensive and the graffitist looks like a fool when he shows off his work to friends, only to find it has disappeared. All owners including public bodies should do the same thing.'

Graffiti costs Prague money

Flow East's survey shows that graffiti arouses surprise and disgust among Prague's 8m annual visitors, who contribute over 100m CZK to the city's economy. 'It's not just a question of civic pride - though that should be enough on its own' says Woolf. 'Graffiti also poses a threat to Prague's most valuable economic resource, tourism.'

Flow East has a wealth of experience in combating graffiti which it is ready to share with the municipal authorities. 'We've learnt from watching other cities' success in dealing with spray-paint and we have taken those measures to solve the problem on our own properties' says Woolf. 'We want to help the authorities tackle this scourge on a city-wide basis. Graffiti is everyone's problem.'

Four-fifths of Prague citizens agree that Prague should do more to combat graffiti.

An overwhelming 81% of Prague inhabitants agree that the city (municipality and police) should do more to fight graffiti, while 69% agree that this phenomenon reduces the overall attractiveness of the capital. To no surprise, 37% of Prague inhabitants even believe that the abundance of graffiti is lowering living standards in the city. Tourists also viewed graffiti as a nuisance; nearly one-third (29%) believe that Prague should do something more to combat it.

About Flow East

Flow East, a long term private investor, owns a portfolio of prime commercial, retail and residential properties in Prague and its surrounding areas totalling over 200,000 m2. The company has been active in the Czech Republic since 1990 and is run by James Woolf, a British citizen with Czech roots.

For more information, please visit http://petice.floweast.com/cz/home.
NIESTETAL (dpa-AFX) - Solar energy equipment supplier SMA Solar Technology Ag (SMTGF.PK) Friday said its Managing Board expects considerable increase in earnings before interest and taxes or EBIT to between 80 million euros and 120 million euros in fiscal 2016. Last year's provisional EBIT is 30 million euros to 33 million euros. The company projects sales of 950 million euros to 1.05 billion euros in 2016. This is compared to last year's provisional sales of 1 billion euros. In 2016, the SMA Managing Board expects the global photovoltaic market to continue growing to 60 GW from last year's 51 GW. As the growth will mainly occur in the regions with the highest price pressure, the company expects a moderate increase in sales of PV inverter technology to 4.9 billion euros from 4.7 billion euros last year. The company further said it considers that it is ideally positioned for the digitalization of the energy industry. In Germany, SMA shares were trading at 45.31 euros, down 6.60 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
After successful conclusion of COP21 in Paris, Senior Adviser of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs for Renewable Energies Jean Ballandras visited National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, on January 27, to explore possible collaboration between the university and France.

NCKU President Huey-Jen Jenny Su extended her warm welcome to Ballandras. The university as a research sector allied with the city and the industry, said President Su, "In a way we are facilitating the transformation of the local industry around the central topic of green energy."

Mr. Ballandras said, "We have plenty of issues in common in the field of renewable energy in terms of revolution and electrical mix to phase out the nuclear energy, develop the renewable energy to limit carbon emission."

French people are facing the same issues, he added, "We are asking ourselves the same questions and expecting same kind of solutions so why not work together to devise interesting solutions that can benefit two countries."

"If you want to replace nuclear energy, you must find huge amount of green resources," he said, "And you cannot find it on land which makes offshore energy significant."

In the university, President Su noted, "We have a research center for energy called RCETS which has established energy research teams by integrating faculties that focus on energy research and opening various energy courses."

The research center has carried out significant alternative energy research and industry-academia cooperation in the past decades.

The core technologies applied in the research areas are solar energy systems, offshore wind power systems, oxy-coal power generation systems, and microalgae biomass systems.

In France, the potential for the development of renewable energy sources is very high, according to Mr. Ballandras. Some technologies that have reached maturity, such as hydro-, wind and solar power, are competing with fossil fuels and nuclear energy in certain regions.

Ballandras also said, "The main purpose of us visiting NCKU is to develop mutual exchanges for the mutual benefits of the two countries and the students."

"French Office in Taipei has developed capacities to help both sides to grow mutual proposition," he added.

Ballandras had been appointed Senior Adviser of the French Foreign Affairs Minister for Renewable Energies in May 2015.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160129005321/en/

Contacts:

National Cheng Kung University

Sonia Chuang, +886-6-275-7575 Ext. 50042

NCKU News Center

sonia20@mail.ncku.edu.tw


EL SEGUNDO (dpa-AFX) - Toy maker Mattel Inc. (MAT) has a considerable global presence, hence foreign exchange continued to be a huge headwind as currencies in many of its key markets weakened even further and had a significant impact on gross margin and on operating income.



The company also sees highly-competitive retail environment in the fourth-quarter. However, Mattel expects improvements with a stabilizing of space and inventory impacts, stronger trade promotion and merchandising support, continued core brand growth, and improved flow-through on its cost initiatives.



Moreover, the company believes that it is largely on track to achieve its full year 2015 outlook. Also, it continues to invest and expand in emerging markets like China with all of its brands.



The company is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter numbers after the bell on Monday, February 1. Wall Street analysts' estimate call for earnings of $0.61 per share on revenue of $1.91 billion for the quarter.



In the last quarter, the company reported a 33% drop in profit, largely hurt by lower sales reflecting weak Barbie doll shipments and a stronger U.S. dollar.



'Our results for the quarter, excluding the significant impact from currency exchange rates, were broadly in line with our expectations at this stage of our turnaround,' said CEO Christopher Sinclair.



Mattel's third-quarter profit dropped to $223.8 million or $0.66 per share from $331.8 million or $0.97 per share last year. Adjusted earnings fell to $0.71 per share from $0.98 per share last year. On average, 14 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.80 per share. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.



Third-quarter sales dropped 11% to $1.79 billion from $2.02 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $1.89 billion for the quarter.



North American gross sales fell 5%, while international gross sales dropped 19% due to strong dollar.



Brand-wise, sales for Mattel Girls & Boys brands declined 15% to $1.12 billion with Barbie sales down 4% in constant currency. Sales for Fisher-Price brands, which includes the Fisher-Price Core, Fisher-Price Friends and Power Wheels brands, declined 1% to $625.3 million.



Third- quarter sales for American Girl brands, which offers American Girl-branded products directly to consumers, slipped 3% to $109.9 million. Construction and Arts & Crafts brands, which includes the MEGA BLOKS and RoseArt brands, dropped to $118.5 million from $123.4 million last year.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de


Exterior view of Grundfos Taiwan.

Grundfos is highlighted as one of the top performing companies in Taiwan's fight to reduce carbon emission.

Environmentally friendly actions are high on the agenda in Taiwan. Water-conservation and reducing carbon emissions are on top of the list. To spur on development, several initiatives supporting and praising green initiatives have been launched these past years. One of which is the Greenhouse Gas Emission and Reduction act, which has some striking environment ambitions, one of which is reducing carbon emission. Taiwanese-based companies play an important part in realising the ambitions, and just recently, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) of Taiwan honoured top performers in Taipei, including Grundfos. Our Taiwanese production company received an inaugural 'Carbon Reduction Action Award' in recognition of its ability to follow through on environmentally friendly initiatives. On top of that, Grundfos was placed among only seven manufacturing companies receiving the Top Excellence Rank connected to the award.

"At Grundfos, we work with sustainable thinking. This is part of our DNA. We continuously seek out ways to improve our products performance, so they are as energy efficient as possible. At the same time, we also set high demands to our own ability to produce in an energy efficient way, so we ourselves can contribute to cutting carbon emission," says John Pien, General Manager of Grundfos' Taiwanese production subsidiary.

He attended the award ceremony, where he met some of Grundfos' key customers, who were also among the carbon cutting companies of Taiwan.

"It is nice to know that some of our key partners are performing well in this respect too. We feel happy to be in business with the best, and we are happy that our energy efficient products can play a part in reducing carbon emission with our partners, too," says John Pien and adds:

"Our customers also conveyed the same appreciation to me, which made me feel so honoured."

In total 34 manufacturing companies were honoured with an award. Grundfos was the only international company among the best and brightest examples from Taiwan.

Further information:

Frank B. Winther

Communications Manager

Grundfos Group Communications

M: +45 21 99 62 40

E: fwinther@grundfos.com (mailto:fwinther@grundfos.com)





This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Grundfos via Globenewswire



HUG#1982275


Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gwd3zh/the_cards_and) has announced the addition of the "The Cards and Payments Industry in Finland: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019" report to their offering.

The 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Finland: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in Finland's cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including check payments, credit transfers, direct debits, payment cards and cash transactions during the review period (2010-2014).

Contactless technology is gaining acceptance among Finnish consumers, and issuers are introducing cards enabled with contactless technology to gain a market share in the cards and payments industry. The latest initiatives in contactless payments include the collective introduction of contactless cards by Euroloan Consumer Finance and Compass Card in August 2015 and the MasterCard Bankkontokort debit card with contactless functionality by Bank of Aland in 2014.

In addition, the Finnish telecommunications company Elisa and convenience store chain R-Kioski began selling pre-loaded near-field communication (NFC) payment stickers in April 2014, featuring MasterCard's PayPass technology. By the end of 2014, there were 2 million contactless cards in Finland. This number is expected to reach 7.9 million by 2019, registering a forecast-period (2015-2019) compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.24%.

Banking penetration is very high in Finland. According to the World Bank's 2014 Global Findex survey, the percentage of the Finnish population aged 15 or above with a bank account reached 100% in 2014. In order to increase banking penetration among the fast-growing immigrant population, the National Discrimination and Equality Tribunal enforced a regulation in July 2014 requiring banks in Finland to accept foreign identity documents as a proof of identity to access and manage accounts in Finland.

This is expected to result in a rise in the total number of bank accounts, and banking products such as debit and credit cards in the country.

To capitalize on the fast-growing mobile payments (m-payments) market, an increasing number of retailers are allowing customers to make payments by mobile phone. Since May 2014, the Finnish hamburger chain Hesburger has allowed customers to make payments and redeem reward points by using the SEQR mobile app, which was developed by the Swedish company Seamless. This service was initially available in 120 restaurants, and was rolled out to 160 more outlets by the end of 2014. Similarly, OP-Pohjola Group launched a mobile wallet app, Pivo, in March 2015.

The wallet uses Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology to emulate a card on an NFC-enabled device to make contactless payments. This service is available for holders of OP-Visa Debit and OP-Visa Electron cards.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Definitions and Methodology

2 Key Facts and Events

3 Executive Summary

4 Payment Instruments

5 E-Commerce

6 Alternative Payments

7 Regulations in the Cards and Payments Industry

8 Analysis of Cards and Payments Industry Drivers

9 Market Segmentation and New Product Launches

10 Payment Cards

11 Debit Cards

12 Credit Cards

13 Charge Cards

14 Commercial Cards

15 Card Issuers

Companies Mentioned

OP-Pohjola Group

Nordea Bank

Danske Bank

SEB Kort

Bank of Aland

Pankkikortti

Visa

MasterCard

Diners Club

American Express

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gwd3zh/the_cards_and

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160129005372/en/

Contacts:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Sector: Cards
CENTENNIAL, COLORADO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- NioCorp Developments Ltd. ("NioCorp" or the "Company") (TSX: NB)(OTCQX: NIOBF)(FRANKFURT: BR3) today announced that it would conduct its 2016 Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders on February 23, 2016 at 10 a.m. Mountain.

The meeting will be held at the offices of Burns, Figa & Will, 6400 S. Fiddlers Green Circle, Suite 1000, Greenwood Village, Colorado. Copies of any documents to be considered, approved, ratified and adopted, or authorized at the Meeting will be available for inspection at the head office of the Company at 7000 South Yosemite Street, Suite 115, Centennial, Colorado, during normal business hours up to February 23, and at the meeting. The Annual General and Special Meeting Notice and Circular can be downloaded here.

The Company also announced that Tony Fulton has resigned from the NioCorp Board of Directors, effective today, as a result of his confirmation this week by the Nebraska Legislature to serve as Nebraska Tax Commissioner. A professional engineer and a NioCorp Board member since February 2013, Mr. Fulton served in the Nebraska Legislature from 2007 to 2013, and was a member of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee. He is the founder and owner of Guardian Angels Homecare, Inc., a business that provides housekeeping, companionship, and health care services for seniors.

"The entire NioCorp family is pleased and proud to see Tony step up yet again to serve the people of Nebraska in an important policymaking and leadership role," said Mark. A. Smith, Executive Chairman and CEO of NioCorp Developments Ltd. "While we will miss the valuable expertise and insights that Tony brought to the NioCorp Board, our loss is definitely Nebraska's gain. We congratulate the Governor for making this strategic appointment, and we look forward to seeing Tony do an outstanding job in promoting economic development for the people of Nebraska."

In NioCorp's shareholder meeting materials for the February 23, 2016 meeting, Tony Fulton is named as standing for re-election as a director. Because of Tony's resignation, he will not be standing for re-election to NioCorp's Board. Before the shareholder meeting, the NioCorp Board of Directors may nominate a suitable person to stand for election, as a director, at the meeting.

Mark Smith

Executive Chairman, CEO and Director

Source: NioCorp Developments, Ltd.

@NioCorp $NB $NIOBF Niobium Scandium ElkCreek

About NioCorp

NioCorp is developing a superalloy materials project in Southeast Nebraska that will produce niobium, scandium, and titanium. Niobium is used to produce superalloys as well as High Strength, Low Alloy ("HSLA") steel, which is a lighter, stronger steel used in automotive, structural, and pipeline applications. Scandium is a superalloy material that can be combined with Aluminum to make alloys with increased strength and improved corrosion resistance. Scandium also is a critical component of advanced solid oxide fuel cells. Titanium is used in various superalloys and is a key component of pigments used in paper, paint and plastics and is also used for aerospace applications, armor and medical implants.

Cautionary Statements

Neither TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

NioCorp Developments, Ltd.

Jim Sims

VP of External Affairs

720-639-4650

jim.sims@niocorp.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Altus Group Limited ("Altus Group") (TSX: AIF), a leading provider of commercial real estate services, software and data solutions, today released results of its 2015 Real Estate Review (the "Review") of the GTA's 2015 new home market. The Review indicates a resilient housing market that includes new record highs for both low and high density residential land sales, strong price increases (especially for low rise homes) and strong sales overall, despite an environment of modestly elevated high rise completions.

In 2015, residential land transactions in the GTA grew by 49%, to a record $4.2 billion. Specifically, low and high density residential oriented investments achieved record highs of $1.7 billion each suggesting, "continued levels of strong industry confidence in the prospects for residential development," according to Altus Group's Vice President and Chief Economist, Peter Norman.

"Altus Group's review of the GTA's commercial and residential real estate markets speaks to a mature market that continues to grow," adds Peter Norman. "While the overall Canadian economy faces headwinds, the GTA economy is picking up steam and this is clearly reflected by the 2015 data on residential land sales, low and high rise new home sales and, of course, in the level of resulting construction."

Peter Norman further states that the low rise sector, in particular, is, "one to watch for 2016 as new development lands come on stream, sales pick up and single-family housing starts continue to recover from a long drought."

Low rise new homes sales continue to rise, up 8% over last year. In 2015, 19,637 low rise sales were recorded, approximately 15% higher than the 10 year average, while the annual sales totals were the third highest over the last decade.

At the end of 2015, the average low rise sale fetched $829,766 up 18% from the same period in 2014. By contrast, the average price for a high rise home in the GTA was $453,083, essentially unchanged from a year earlier.

"It's not surprising, given the continued degree of pent-up demand for low rise homes in the GTA, and the still-tight conditions on residential land, that the new home price index continued to climb in 2015," says Peter Norman. "A widening gap between the growth in low rise home prices and high rise home prices is further evidence of this trend."

While high rise homes remain significantly more affordable, the high rise market saw a slight reduction of 2% in total sales, year over year. Despite this small reduction in total sales, the high rise market still managed to sell 21,658 units in 2015, the fourth highest number of annual sales in the last decade.

"What's most fascinating about the sustained energy of the high rise market is that it was achieved while the industry delivered the second highest number of completions in the last decade," says Peter Norman. Down from last year's 24,426 completions, the market delivered 20,625 high rise units in 2015.

The positive sales results for both low and high rise homes has encouraged ground related land prices to remain level with previous years. In the GTA, low density oriented sites averaged $812,345 per acre in 2015, while medium density or townhouse oriented development sites were down slightly from the record levels in 2014, with a price per acre averaging $1,834,818.

These results were previously released under the REALNET Canada name, whose independent and comprehensive data, analyses and insights on the commercial real estate investment and residential development markets is collected and compiled using a nationally consistent research process established in 1995. Going forward they will be released by Altus Group, powered by a proprietary data platform led by Altus Data Solutions Canada. This team is the formal unification of leading Canadian real estate data companies previously acquired by Altus Group, including REALNET Canada.

About Altus Group Limited

Altus Group Limited is a leading provider of independent advisory services, software, and data solutions to the global commercial real estate industry. All of our five core practices - Research, Valuation and Advisory, ARGUS Software, Property Tax Consulting, Cost Consulting and Project Management, and Geomatics - embody and reflect decades of experience, a broad range of expertise and leading edge technology. Our offerings empower clients to analyze, gain insight and recognize value on their real estate investments. Headquartered in Canada, we have approximately 2,300 employees around the world, with operations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Our clients include some of the world's largest real estate industry participants, spread across a broad variety of sectors. Altus Group pays a quarterly dividend of $0.15 per share and our securities are traded on the TSX under the symbols AIF and AIF.DB.A.

For more information on Altus Group, please visit www.altusgroup.com.

Contacts:

Brandon Communications Inc.

Danny Roth or Nisa Ahsan

416-850-0614

droth@brandoncom.ca / nahsan@brandoncom.ca



Altus Group Limited

Sayla Nordin

Vice President, Corporate Communications

(416) 557-0939

sayla.nordin@altusgroup.com

www.altusgroup.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- BMO Global Asset Management (BMO GAM) today released its ETF Outlook Report for 2016. The report looks at key trends that contributed to the growth of the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) market in 2015 and opportunities and challenges for the year ahead.

According to the report, 2015 was an historic year for the Canadian ETF industry with more than C$16.3 billion in inflows. Assets under management (AUM) reached just under C$90 billion - double the AUM of the industry five years ago.

The report noted that in Canada, equity ETFs accumulated C$9.7 billion in inflows and fixed income ETFs added C$6 billion in inflows. BMO GAM's ETF business led the Canadian ETF industry in net assets for the fifth consecutive year.(i)

"2015 was a record-breaking year for the domestic ETF industry," said Kevin Gopaul, Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, BMO Global Asset Management. "This is particularly impressive given the turbulent markets we experienced. It's clear that investors continue to gravitate towards ETFs, both as core holdings and to position their portfolios strategically to address these periods of volatility."

The Effects of Market Volatility in 2015

The report also examined how ETFs are used to address market volatility as a key theme of 2015.

Advances in Smart Beta ETFs: Smart beta ETFs continue to grow in popularity, as they aid investors to navigate market turbulence. Low volatility ETFs invest in equity markets but with less exposure to market volatility. Multi-factor smart beta ETFs are new to the market, giving more choice to investors.

Fixed Income: Market volatility also impacts fixed income portfolios. Economic news can have divergent impacts-on short-term rates based on current conditions and on long-term rates based on future expectations. The ETF industry has evolved to offer precise portfolios, slicing the credit spectrum and segmenting by maturity.

Currency Effect: Another factor affecting portfolios has been the impact of currency returns. Canadian investors often prefer a hedged exposure; ETFs are now offering both hedged and unhedged listings.

The report concludes by noting that ETFs continue to grow in popularity, through smart beta and currency options, and will be a powerful tool to help reposition portfolios and to maneuver turbulent markets.

"We expect to see the ETF industry continue to grow in the years ahead. We project that by 2021, the global ETF market will double to more than US$6 trillion and the Canadian industry will grow even faster to reach C$250 billion," said Mr. Gopaul.

To view the full report or for more information about ETFs, please visit: www.bmo.com/etfs.

About BMO Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

Established in June 2009, BMO Financial Group's ETF business is a leading ETF provider in Canada. BMO ETFs provide Canadian investors with broader choices and greater access to an innovative portfolio of investment products.

About BMO Financial Group

Established in 1817, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of approximately $642 billion as of October 31, 2015, and close to 47,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

(i)According to Bloomberg data

BMO ETFs are managed and administered by BMO Asset Management Inc., a portfolio manager and investment fund manager and separate legal entity from Bank of Montreal.

Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investments in exchange traded funds. Please read the prospectus before investing. Exchange traded funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.

BMO Global Asset Management is a brand name that comprises of BMO Asset Management Inc., BMO Investments Inc., BMO Asset Management Corp. and BMO's specialized investment management firms.

"BMO (M-bar roundel symbol)" is a registered trade-mark of Bank of Montreal, used under licence.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this news release constitute forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, those identified by the expressions "expect", "intend", "will" and similar expressions to the extent they relate to the Fund, the Manager and/or the Advisor. The forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect the Fund's, the Manager's, and/or the Advisor's current expectations regarding future results or events. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations. Although the Fund, the Manager, and/or the Advisor believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein. The Fund, the Manager and/or the Advisor undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statement or information whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors which affect this information, except as required by law.

Contacts:

Media contacts:

Amanda Robinson

Toronto

416-867-3996

amanda.robinson@bmo.com




HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Agria Corporation (NYSE: GRO) (the "Company" or "Agria") today announced that its board of directors (the "Board") has received a preliminary non-binding proposal letter, dated January 28, 2016, from Mr. Guanglin Lai, executive chairman of the Company, and Brothers Capital Limited, a British Virgin Islands company wholly-owned by Mr. Lai (together with Mr. Lai, the "Buyer Group"), to acquire all of the outstanding ordinary shares of the Company not owned by the Buyer Group, including ordinary shares represented by American depositary shares (the "ADSs", each representing two ordinary shares), for $0.60 in cash per ordinary share, or $1.20 in cash per ADS. A copy of the proposal letter is attached hereto as Exhibit A.

The Board has formed a special committee consisting of three independent and disinterested directors, Lee Joo Hai, Sean Shao and Wah Kwong Tsang (the "Special Committee"), to consider the proposal. The Special Committee has retained Kirkland & Ellis as its U.S. legal counsel and intends to retain an independent financial advisor in due course to assist it in this process.

The Company cautions its shareholders and others considering trading its securities that the Board has just received the proposal letter and neither the Board nor the Special Committee has had an opportunity to carefully review and evaluate the proposal or make any decision with respect to the Company's response to the proposal. There can be no assurance that any definitive offer will be made, that any definitive agreement will be executed relating to the proposed transaction or that this or any other transaction will be approved or consummated. The Company does not undertake any obligation to provide any updates with respect to this or any other transaction, except as required under applicable law.

About Agria Corporation

Agria (NYSE: GRO) is a global agricultural company with three principal business segments: Seed and Grain; Crop Protection, Nutrients and Merchandise; and Rural Services. The Seed and Grain segment is engaged in research and development, production and sale of a broad range of seed products and trading of seed and grain products globally. The Crop Protection, Nutrients and Merchandise segment operates an extensive chain of retail stores that supply farm input materials. The Rural Services segment provides livestock trading, wool trading, irrigation and pumping, real estate agency and other agriservices. For more information about Agria Corporation, please visit www.agriacorp.com.

Safe Harbor Statement:

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements, including the management's commentary, are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "confident" and similar statements. Agria may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Forms 20-F and 6-K, etc., in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Agria's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those risks outlined in Agria's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this announcement unless otherwise stated and Agria does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

Exhibit A

Preliminary Non-binding Proposal to Acquire Agria Corporation

January 28, 2016

The Board of Directors

Agria Corporation

9/F Phase 1 Austin Tower, 22-26A Austin Avenue

Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Dear Members of Board of Directors:

Mr. Guanglin Lai (the "Founder"), executive chairman of the board of directors (the "Board") of Agria Corporation (the "Company"), and Brothers Capital Limited, a British Virgin Islands company wholly owned by the Founder (the "Buyer Group"), are pleased to submit this preliminary non-binding proposal to acquire all of the outstanding ordinary shares (the "Shares") of the Company not already owned by the Buyer Group in a transaction (the "Acquisition") described below.

We believe that our proposed price provides an attractive opportunity to the Company's shareholders. This price represents a premium of 14.3% above the closing price of the Company's ADSs on January 27, 2016.

The terms and conditions upon which we are prepared to pursue the Acquisition are set forth below. We are confident in our ability to consummate an Acquisition as outlined in this letter.

1. Consortium. We will form an acquisition vehicle for the purpose of implementing the Acquisition. Please also note that the Buyer Group is currently interested only in pursuing the Acquisition and is not interested in selling their shares in any other transaction involving the Company.

2. Purchase Price. Our proposed consideration payable for the Shares acquired in the Acquisition is US$1.20 per American Depositary Share of the Company ("ADS", each representing two Shares), or US$0.60 per Share, in cash.

3. Financing. We intend to finance the Acquisition with equity capital. Equity financing will be provided by the Buyer Group in the form of cash and rollover equity in the Company. We are confident that we can timely secure adequate financing to consummate the Acquisition.

4. Due Diligence. The Buyer Group may decide to admit additional members and/or take advantage of third party debt financing, and such parties will require a timely opportunity to conduct customary due diligence on the Company. We would like to ask the Board to accommodate such due diligence request and approve the provision of confidential information relating to the Company and its business to possible sources of equity and debt financing subject to a customary form of confidentiality agreement.

5. Definitive Agreements. We are prepared to negotiate and finalize definitive agreements (the "Definitive Agreements") expeditiously. This proposal is subject to execution of the Definitive Agreements. These documents will include provisions typical for transactions of this type.

6. Confidentiality. The Buyer Group will, as required by law, promptly file a Schedule 13D. We are sure you will agree with us that it is in all of our interests to ensure that our discussions relating to the Acquisition proceed in a confidential manner, unless otherwise required by law, until we have executed the Definitive Agreements or terminated our discussions.

7. Process. We believe that the Acquisition will provide value to the Company's shareholders. We recognize of course that the Board will evaluate the proposed Acquisition independently before it can make its determination whether to endorse it. In considering the proposed Acquisition, you should be aware that we are interested only in acquiring the outstanding Shares that the Buyer Group does not already own, and that the Buyer Group does not intend to sell their stake in the Company to a third party.

8. Advisors. We have engaged Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP as international legal counsel to the Buyer Group. The Buyer Group will engage additional legal, accounting and tax advisors in due course.

9. No Binding Commitment. This letter constitutes only a preliminary indication of our interest, and does not constitute any binding offer, agreement or commitment with respect to an Acquisition. Such a commitment will result only from the execution of Definitive Agreements, and then will be on the terms provided in such documentation.

In closing, each of us would like to express our commitment to working together to bring this Acquisition to a successful and timely conclusion. Should you have any questions regarding this proposal, please do not hesitate to contact any of us. We look forward to speaking with you.

Sincerely,

/s/ Guanglin Lai

Guanglin Lai

Brothers Capital Limited

/s/ Guanglin Lai

By: Guanglin Lai

Title: Director
Bagsvrd, Denmark, 29 January 2016 - Novo Nordisk today announced the headline results from SWITCH 2, the first of two 2x32-weeks randomised, double-blind, cross-over, treat-to-target trials, comparing the safety and efficacy of Tresiba (insulin degludec) and insulin glargine. The overall purpose of the trial was to compare the hypoglycaemia occurrence in people with type 2 diabetes treated with Tresiba or insulin glargine.

In the trial, 721 people with type 2 diabetes were randomised to cross-over treatment with Tresiba and insulin glargine in combination with metformin. The timing of the daily injections of both Tresiba and insulin glargine was randomised equally to take place either in the morning or evening. The primary end-point of the trial was the number of treatment emergent severe or blood glucose confirmed symptomatic hypoglycaemia episodes during the maintenance period (ie after 16 weeks of treatment) in each treatment period.

From a mean baseline of 7.6%, the trial showed non-inferiority in HbA 1c reduction of Tresiba compared to insulin glargine, thus fulfilling the requirements for objectively comparing hypoglycaemia rates between the two treatments. Likewise, the end-of-trial insulin doses were similar at the end of treatment in the two treatment periods.

The observed rate of severe or blood glucose confirmed symptomatic hypoglycemia was 186 events per 100 patient years exposed to Tresiba and 265 events per 100 patient years exposed to insulin glargine during the maintenance period. This reduction was statistically significant, and the trial thus met its primary endpoint by demonstrating a reduction of 30% when people were treated with Tresiba compared to insulin glargine.

The observed rate of severe or blood glucose symptomatic nocturnal confirmed hypoglycaemia in the maintenance period was 55 events per 100 patient years exposed to Tresiba and 94 events per 100 patient years exposed to insulin glargine, corresponding to a 42% reduction with Tresiba compared to insulin glargine and showing statistical significance on this confirmatory secondary end-point.

The confirmatory secondary endpoint of proportions of subjects experiencing severe hypoglycaemia during the maintenance period did not reach statistical significance. However, the supportive end-point, rate of severe hypoglycaemia, showed a 46% reduction with Tresiba in the maintenance period and a statistical significant reduction of 51% with Tresiba in the full treatment period.

In the trial, Tresiba appeared to have a safe and well-tolerated profile. Adverse events were comparable between the two treatment arms. The most common adverse events were nasopharyngitis and upper respiratory tract infections.

"We are excited about these trial results, which in a blinded setting confirm the significant reduction in the risk of hypoglycaemia for Tresiba compared to insulin glargine" says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, executive vice president and chief science officer of Novo Nordisk. "We look forward to reporting the outcome of the SWITCH 1 trial in people with type 1 diabetes and to evaluating the results from both trials".

Novo Nordisk expects to announce headline results of SWITCH 1 later in the first quarter of 2016.

About SWITCH 1 and 2

The two 2x32-weeks randomised, double-blind, cross-over, treat-to-target trials were initiated in January 2014 with purpose of comparing the safety and efficacy of Tresiba and insulin glargine. The overall purpose of the trials is to document the hypoglycaemia profile in type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes respectively, compared to insulin glargine. In SWITCH 1, 501 people with type 1 diabetes were randomised to crossover treatment with Tresiba and insulin glargine in combination with insulin aspart. In SWITCH 2, 721 people with type 2 diabetes were randomised to crossover treatment with Tresiba and insulin glargine in combination with oral antidiabetics.

For further information

Media: Mike Rulis +45 3079 3573 mike@novonordisk.com (mailto:mike@novonordisk.com) Ken Inchausti (US) +1 609 514 8316 kiau@novonordisk.com (mailto:kiau@novonordisk.com)



Investors: Peter Hugreffe Ankersen +45 3075 9085 phak@novonordisk.com (mailto:phak@novonordisk.com) Daniel Bohsen +45 3079 6376 dabo@novonordisk.com (mailto:dabo@novonordisk.com) Melanie Raouzeos +45 3075 3479 mrz@novonordisk.com (mailto:mrz@novonordisk.com) Kasper Veje +45 3079 8519 kpvj@novonordisk.com (mailto:kpvj@novonordisk.com)

Company announcement No 6 / 2016







Company announcement No 6 / 2016 (http://hugin.info/2013/R/1982283/726367.pdf)



This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Novo Nordisk A/S via Globenewswire



HUG#1982283




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has said the Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton cannot be the president of the US as she continues to lie to the American people. 'Hillary Clinton will do anything to gain and hang on to power, anything. Listen, if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago,' the Corporate leader-turned politician said while participating in the GOP undercard presidential debate in Iowa.



Clinton is eyeing to become the first woman president of the US and is most likely to be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. As the former First Lady, she has served as the Secretary of State in the first term of the Obama Administration.



Fiorina said that Clinton continues to lie to the American people. 'It's called the Clinton way. Both Bill and Hillary practice it, the Clinton way. Say whatever you have to say, do whatever you have to say. Lie as long as you can get away with it. Hillary Clinton cannot be the president of this United States,' she said. During the debate, Fiorina lashed out at Clinton on the events surrounding Benghazi. 'When terrorists purposefully attack an American embassy and kill four Americans, including an ambassador, and the next morning you get up and you lie about a videotape that doesn't represent our values, instead of saying the United States of America was purposefully attacked by terrorists, and we will seek retribution, then you are saying to every adversary and every adversary and every terrorist organisation on the planet, it's open season,' she said.



While low on her poll numbers, Fiorina said that she can successfully take on Clinton during the presidential election. 'She is probably more qualified for the big house, honestly,' Fiorina said. 'She has escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo, perhaps Sean Penn should interview her,' she said adding that Clinton needs to be prosecuted. While Mrs Clinton has flown hundreds of thousands of world around the global, I have too..And I know flying is an activity not an accomplishment. While I know that she has held many positions and many titles she has not accomplished much of anything in her life. She has gotten every single foreign policy challenge wrong, Fiorina said.



Climate change is not our most pressing national security threat. Actually it is ISIS, followed closely by Iran, according to Fiorina.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Lytmus, the most accurate technology solution for identifying top performing technical job candidates, today announced the launch of its self-serve Phone Screen solution for technical recruiting. With Lytmus Phone Screen, interviewers and hiring managers can pair-program with job candidates in authentic development spaces that extend far beyond shared editors. The result is a more accurate reflection of candidates' capabilities, which also engages and interests them in a company by screening in a setting that reflects real day-to-day work.

Lytmus was founded to finally create a comprehensive solution that surfaces the best candidates for any position. Lytmus has created a unique virtual machine-based platform that allows the best engineers and computer coders to demonstrate what they know in realistic settings, which provide high-signal data to potential employers. Lytmus also engages candidates by showing them the kinds of tech stacks, technologies and problems they'll work with on the job. This approach is much more compelling, especially to experienced candidates, than brain teasers and white-boards. Designed for small and medium sized businesses as well as groups within large companies, Lytmus' self-serve Phone Screen is a direct and useful tool to help identify optimal engineers and computer coders working on the front-end, back-end, mobile, systems, QA, networking and more.

"Lytmus Phone Screen is ideal for interviewers and hiring managers who want a superior tool to save time, obtain better up-front signals and engage high-quality, hard to convert candidates," said Abhay Parekh, Lytmus CEO and Co-Founder. "Lytmus helps provide organizations with a more objective hiring process that leads to better hires for companies and better jobs for applicants. For job seekers, Lytmus is a fair and empowering way to showcase technical skills and talent in the types of settings they already work in."

Lytmus Phone Screen provides customizable environments that give employers the freedom to ask the right questions for the job. For example, if a company is hiring for a front-end position, they can work with the candidate using Chrome, Sublime and Terminal. It enables them to ask anything from plain Python to full-stack web development questions. Lytmus Phone Screen offers a pre-loaded interview library to help interviewers get the process started quickly and enables them to ask questions that allow valuable skill evaluation before candidates come onsite. From regular data structure and algorithm coding interviews to front-end engineering interviews, Lytmus Phone Screen also allows interviewers to customize and add their own questions.

Lytmus Phone Screen can also run a candidate's code live. Once a candidate has completed a coding assignment, companies are able to run the code, test it, apply new scenarios and see how the candidate updates the code live to accommodate changes. Further, Lytmus Phone Screen delivers a valuable and complete report with a full video recording of the interview, code analysis and the interviewer's notes. The report, and useful basket of metrics, can then be easily added to an applicant tracking system and reviewed so the interviewer or hiring manager is able to easily and objectively rate the candidate before sending results to a hiring committee. With Lytmus Phone Screen, companies can be more confident in a candidate's proven abilities.

Lytmus Phone Screen is offered in three monthly levels: Free, $50 and $100. A free plan provides five phone screen sessions, the $50 plan offers 10 sessions and the $100 plan offers 25 sessions per-month. All plans include: Access to the Lytmus' Virtual Machine, pair-programming, as well as access to the Lytmus interview library and email support.

About Lytmus

Lytmus is revolutionizing the process for sourcing and assessing top technical talent. Powered by a unique virtual machine based platform, Lytmus empowers the best engineers and coders to demonstrate what they know in realistic settings. This shows what they can truly do and provides objective high-signal data to employers. Lytmus is based in San Francisco, CA and is funded by New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners. For more information, please visit Lytmus.io.

Media Contact:

Michael Ingalls

Natron Communications for Lytmus

+1 (917) 494-4909

Email Contact




CLAREMONT, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group Corporation (OTC PINK: KWBT) reported today that it has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Zhongnan Commodity E-Commerce Co., Ltd. Hunan, China. Specifically, the parties have agreed that Kiwa's fertilizer products and agricultural products will be sold on the e-platform of Zhongnan Commodity E-Commerce Company to Zhongnan's customers. In addition, both companies intend to cooperate in the development of agricultural sales through e-business applications. Although no commitments were issued, the parties also discussed a potential equity participation in Kiwa.

"The development of an e-business platform for the sales of Kiwa's fertilizer and agricultural products is an important element of Kiwa's business strategy," said Kiwa's CEO, Jimmy Zhou. "The agreement with Zhongnan gives Kiwa a close working relationship with an important e-commerce business enterprise run by China's largest state-owned agricultural enterprise, China CO-OP Group. This will provide the Company with a solid opportunity to enlarge its share of the fertilizer and agricultural market in China."

About Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group Corporation

We develop, manufacture, distribute and market innovative, cost-effective and eco-friendly bio-technological products for agriculture. Our main product groups are bio-fertilizer, biologically enhanced livestock feed. Our products are designed to enhance the quality of human life by increasing the value, quality and productivity of crops and decreasing the negative environmental impact of chemicals and other wastes. Our businesses include bio-fertilizer and bio-enhanced feed.

Kiwa's strategy is to implement increased visibility for marketing Kiwa's current bio-fertilizer products, together with the development of a "green agriculture" safe food platform in China. Our goal is to build market penetration for our Kiwa brand in China's trillion dollar "green" agricultural produce market.

For more information on Kiwa and its products, please refer to the Company's website at www.kiwabiotech.com or the Company filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, available for free at www.sec.gov.

This press release contains information that constitutes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any such forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results described by the forward-looking statements. Risk factors that could contribute to such differences include those matters more fully disclosed in the Company's reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking information provided herein represents the Company's estimates as of the date of the press release, and subsequent events and developments may cause the Company's estimates to change. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking information in the future. Therefore, this forward-looking information should not be relied upon as representing the Company's estimates of its future financial performance as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group Corporation

Yvonne Wang

yvonne@kiwabiotech.com




CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Eguana Technologies Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EGT)(OTC PINK: STGYF) today announced results for its fiscal year ended September 30, 2015 along with an update and guidance for 2016.

Highlights

-- Revenues for fiscal 2015 totaled $6,007,008, up from $2,284,764 in 2014 -- LG Chem contract and integration completed for tier one battery supply -- Successful product launch of game changing AC Battery -- Marketing agreement with Japanese trading company Itochu to expand global reach -- $250k funding award from AI-EES toward commercial AC Battery development -- Europe volume recovery on plan, demonstration units shipped to multiple customers

Outlook for 2016

-- Accelerated growth in the Hawaiian market driven by regulatory changes to net metering policies and high electricity costs -- Continued channel development for US market -- Volume recovery in Europe driven through multiple channels -- Japan entry through Itochu relationship for small commercial market

Eguana remains well positioned to benefit from the growth in the distributed energy generation markets in the US, Europe, and Japan. Our expectation is to see continued year over year revenue growth. Bi-Direx, recognized across the industry as a leader in its power class, is one of the only power control systems standardized and certified for multiple growth markets. "During the year we made the decision to broaden our customer base, expand our reach, and introduce new product applications to the market. We have successfully achieved these targets," said Eguana CEO Justin Holland. "We have a leadership position in Hawaii with a utility approved product and supply agreement with leading storage company E-Gear LLC, we have integrated and UL certified a product with Primus Power, and we have shipped demonstration units back into the European market with the expectation of multiple product launches this year," Holland added.

About Eguana Technologies Inc.

Eguana Technologies Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EGT) designs and manufactures high performance power controls for residential and commercial energy storage systems. Eguana has more than 15 years' experience delivering grid edge power electronics for fuel cell, photovoltaic and battery applications and delivers proven, durable, high quality solutions from its high capacity manufacturing facilities in Europe and North America.

With thousands of its proprietary energy storage inverters deployed in the European and North American markets, Eguana is the leading supplier of power controls for solar self-consumption, grid services and demand charge applications at the grid edge.

To learn more, visit www.EguanaTech.com or follow us on Twitter @EguanaTech

Forward Looking Information

The reader is advised that some of the information herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning assigned by National Instruments 51-102 and other relevant securities legislation. In particular, we include: statements pertaining to the value of our power controls to the energy storage market and statements concerning the use of proceeds and the Company's ability to obtain necessary approvals from the TSX Venture Exchange.

Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and involves a number of risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements, or future events or developments, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date hereof. Readers are also directed to the Risk Factors section of the Company's most recent audited Financial Statements which may be found on its website or at sedar.com The Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking information contained herein to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Eguana Technologies Inc.

Justin Holland

CEO

+1.416.728.7635

Justin.Holland@EguanaTech.com

www.EguanaTech.com




SALT LAKE CITY, UT--(Marketwired - January 29, 2016) - Predictive Technology Group, Inc. (OTC PINK: PRED), a life sciences technology holding Company, announces moving its Corporate office to Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Corporation's new address is:

Predictive Technology Group, Inc.

2749 Parleys Way, Suite 101

Salt Lake City, Utah 84109

About Predictive Technology Group, Inc.

Predictive Technology Group, Inc. (PRED), through its wholly owned subsidiaries, revolutionizes the treatment of serious and debilitating diseases through the commercialization of novel therapeutics leveraged by proprietary gene-based companion diagnostics. The Company develops and/or acquires proprietary technologies that open windows into the origin of human disease and the role that genes and their related proteins play in diseases' onsets and progressions. PRED's subsidiaries use gene-based information as cornerstones in the development of new diagnostics that assess a person's risk of disease and therapeutic products designed to effectively prevent and/or treat diseases.

For further information about this release, contact Mr. Rich Kaiser, YES INTERNATIONAL, 757-306-6090 and/or yes@yesinternational.com, www.predictivetechnologygroup.com and/or www.predrx.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

To the extent any statements made in this release contain information that is not historical, these statements are essentially forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the difficulty of predicting FDA approvals, acceptance and demand for new vaccines and other pharmaceutical products, the impact of competitive products and pricing, new product development and launch, reliance on key strategic alliances, availability of raw materials, availability of additional intellectual property rights, availability of future financing sources, the regulatory environment and other risks the Company may identify from time to time in the future.

Contact:

Rich Kaiser

YES INTERNATIONAL

757-306-6090
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 --New Colombia Resources, Inc. (OTC PINK: NEWC) ("New Colombia or the 'Company"), a U.S. company with specialty metallurgical coal, raw building materials, medical marijuana, and hemp assets, is pleased to announce the filing of their Work Plan to process aggregates, identified in Colombia as the Plan de Trabajo y Obra (PTO), on January 25, 2016. This 200-page document has File # 2016-14-637 with the Agencia Nacional de Mineria. New Colombia Resources received an approval for their PTO for underground coal mining on December 23, 2014. Due to the challenges in the coal market, they decided to process aggregates to supply raw material to the major road projects in the area. Colombia's building sector is one of the fastest growing in South America and New Colombia's properties are in close proximity to the largest infrastructure projects.

Now that the PTO has been filed, the company will begin negotiations with the road contractors in the area. On December 23, 2015, the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI) announced the approval of the 23 Km that is needed to complete the 1000 Km Ruta del Sol road project, the largest in South America. Work to begin in January 2016. Click to read the article http://www.eltiempo.com/economia/sectores/ruta-del-sol-tras-seis-anos-destraban-tramo/16466312. The mega project is complete except for this stretch which will start with tunnels and bridges that are between 200 meters to 3 Km from New Colombia's mining concession in Guaduas.

The Company is working closely with the agencies involved to accelerate approvals to begin production as soon as possible. They previously submitted their environmental management plan but needed to complete a work plan to include aggregates.

A copy of the PTO is available in Spanish, however a Technical Report with cash flow models, reserve estimates, etc. has been drafted in English by a Qualified Person (QP), as defined by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA). The report will be posted on the company website; some highlights include:

Detailed surface mapping and sampling campaign was carried out on the northern portion of the campaign.

Drone Aerial survey was used to complement historical topographic information

3 Geo-electrical topographies were carried out to infer the thickness of each lithological unit

Samples were taken and analyzed of the different lithology along the area of interest

3D modeling was carried out using Aranz Leapfrog3D software

A mine plan was developed to mine a 200m x 500m area

Mine life was established at 14 years

Average mining rate was established at 225,000 cubic meters per annum

IRR is 53%

In addition to mining, New Colombia Resources is co-founder of Sannabis SAS in Colombia, makers of the Sannabis brand of medical marijuana products. Sannabis enjoys first mover advantage in this sector and will be making updates more frequently. To view or purchase Sannabis products visit www.sannabis.co. Follow Sannabis on Facebook for photos and testimonials at https://www.facebook.com/sannabis.cannamedicinal

New Colombia Resources, Inc.

New Colombia Resources, Inc. is focused on the acquisition and development of high-quality metallurgical coal properties and other available resources in the Republic of Colombia. They expect to have several revenue producing businesses including: metallurgical coal mining and rock quarry aggregates for domestic Colombian highway and railroad building projects. The Company owns 100% of La Tabaquera metallurgical coal mine in Colombia with an estimated 15-17 million tonnes of reserves. They have another pending acquisition for 390 ha and a solicitation contract for 184 ha metallurgical coal concession. New Colombia Resources also holds a significant position in Sannabis SAS, which legally produces medical marijuana products in the Republic of Colombia; visit www.sannabis.co. For more information on the Company visit www.newcolombiaresources.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Forward Looking Statements; This Press Release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. A statement containing works such as "anticipate," "seek," intend," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan," or similar phrases may be deemed "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements might not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include financing, the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations. New Colombia Resources, Inc. does not undertake any duty nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements.

New Colombia Resources, Inc.

John Campo

President/Chairman

(1)-410-236-8200 USA

campo@newcolombiaresources.com

info@newcolombiaresources.com

Sannabis SAS

www.sannabis.co




Washington D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - January 29, 2016) - The Securities and Exchange Commission will hold the third meeting of the Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee on February 2, beginning at 9:30 a.m. EST. The Commission established the advisory committee to provide a formal mechanism through which the Commission can receive advice and recommendations on equity market structure issues.

The meeting will focus on the events of August 24, 2015 and certain issues affecting customers in the current equity market structure.

The meeting will be held at the SEC's headquarters at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C., and is open to the public. It also will be webcast live on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov, and will be archived on the website for later viewing.

Members of the public who wish to provide their views on the matters to be considered by the advisory committee may submit comments electronically or on paper. Please submit comments using one method only. Information that is submitted will become part of the public record of the meeting.

Electronic submissions:

Use of the SEC's Internet submission form or send an e-mail to rule-comments@sec.gov

Paper submissions:

Send paper submissions in triplicate to Brent Fields, Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20549-1090.

All submissions should refer to File Number 265-29, and the file number should be included on the subject line if e-mail is used.

###

Agenda

9:30 a.m. Welcoming Remarks

Chair White, Commissioners, and Director of the Division of Trading and Markets Stephen Luparello

10:00 a.m. Presentation on Market Volatility by SEC staff

10:10 a.m. Presentation and Q&A on Market Volatility

Stacey Cunningham, Chief Operating Officer, NYSE

Hubert De Jesus, Co-Head Market Structure & Electronic Trading, BlackRock

Frank Hatheway, Chief Economist, NASDAQ

Paul O'Donnell, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

11:00 a.m. Committee Discussion on Market Volatility

12:00 p.m. Lunch

1:00 p.m.Presentation on Customer Issues by SEC staff

1:10 p.m. Presentation and Q&A on Customer Issues

Jeffrey Brown, Senior VP-Legislative & Regulatory Affairs, Charles Schwab

Frank Childress, Managing Director, Wells Fargo Advisors

Dennis Dick, Member - Capital Markets Policy Council, CFA Institute

Christine Parlour, Professor of Finance & Accounting, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

2:00 p.m. Committee Discussion on Customer Issues

3:00 p.m. Break

3:15 p.m. Subcommittee Updates

4:15 p.m. Discussion of Next Steps/Adjournment
DALLAS, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Coming off its best year in company history, Pizza Patron today announced that on Monday, February 1, it is re-launching its franchise program after having shuttered it in 2013.

Despite shelving its franchise program and closing approximately 30 percent of its units over the past three years, Pizza Patron was able to achieve positive same store sales and increase overall system-wide sales during this period.

"Over the past three years, our aim has been to create a strong company culture focused on adherence to a tried, true and proven system," said Victor Vazquez, vice president of Business Development for Pizza Patron, Inc. "Our company has never been healthier and our entire system is completely on board with getting it right at our stores."

Vazquez says the company provides franchisees with turnkey development, including assistance in site selection, tenant representation, architectural plans, construction and store launch. Pizza Patron franchisees also benefit from commodity pricing negotiated direct with manufacturers, long-standing relationships with vendor partners and an operating system that has been refined and strengthened over nearly thirty years of business.

"We are committed to expanding our existing footprint in Texas, Arizona and Chicago to start with," said Vazquez. "Exclusivity is available in select markets for qualified developers."

Pizza Patron has more than a decade of franchising experience and a strong core of veteran franchisees. The company is also touting its new standalone model that expands real estate opportunities and is comparable to the top quick service industry models at a fraction of the investment.

"We're looking to add 60 new franchise stores in Houston, and 10 new franchise stores in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area over the next few years. Exclusive market opportunities will also be a top priority," Vazquez said.

Pizza Patron is looking for seasoned restaurateurs with multi-unit experience to develop in major markets. Single store opportunities are available in small markets for qualified owner operators who are solely devoted to their Pizza Patron business and live in the community they serve. For more information on Pizza Patron, or to find the nearest location, visit www.pizzapatron.com.

About Pizza Patron

Since 1986, Pizza Patron has been committed to making its promise of "Mas Pizza. Menos Dinero." a reality for every customer. From the beginning, the brand has been recognized for its 'fresh-dough' pizza, its low prices and its trademark "friendly, bicultural service." In 2007, the company drew international media attention with its PIZZA POR PESOS program when it began accepting Mexican Pesos at all of its restaurants. In 2012, the company's PIZZA POR FAVOR promotion that gave free pizzas to anyone who ordered in Spanish sparked international news coverage and lively debate throughout the U.S. Today, Pizza Patron is the leading Mexican pizza brand in the U.S. and remains dedicated to bringing its unique experience to life with every pizza made, and in every community it serves.

Website - www.pizzapatron.com

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pizzapatron

Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/pizzapatron

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Contact:

Sandy Bell

Phone 972-800-1745

Email Contact




NEW YORK, January 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global baby diaper market is expected to increase from $48.0 billion in 2015, and reach $68.2 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 5.2%. The increasing number of women in workforce, introduction of bio degradable diapers, and increased awareness about personal hygiene and growing population, are some of the factors driving the growth of the global baby diaper market. The emergence of hybrid diapers and presence of untapped markets for baby diapers are expected to give a major boost to the growth of the global baby diaper market in the future. The increasing adoption of G-diapers is expected to boost the growth of the global market, as they have become the preferred choice for mothers, due to their chlorine free and perfume free nature.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150727/756778)

Explore Report with Detailed TOC on "Global Baby Diaper Market" at:https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/baby-diapers-market

Baby diaper in the report, primarily refer to diapers worn byinfants, andchildrenwho experiencebedwetting or are not yettoilet trained. On an average, a baby undergoes diaper change 5 or more times a day. The delayed toilet training of children in developed countries, and growing online purchase of baby diapers are some of the trends witnessed in the global market.

The information and data in the publication "Global Baby Diaper Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022" represent the research and analysis of data from various primary and secondary sources. Top-down approach has been used to calculate the global baby wallet market by product, absorption level, and baby weight range. The market numbers for countries are obtained through bottom-up approach. P&S Market Research analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every value of data presented in this report. The company bases its primary research on discussions with prominent professionals and analysts in the industry, which is followed by informed and detailed online and offline research.

Ask for Sample Pages:https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/baby-diapers-market/report-sample

Among the various products, the disposable diaper segment dominated the global market in 2015 by holding a significant amount of market share. In 2015, Europe was the largest baby diaper market. The market in Middle East & Africa is growing at a rapid pace, due to the rapid increasing urbanization in the region.

Browse Related Research at:https://www.psmarketresearch.com/industry-report/consumer-products

The major companies operating in the global baby diaper market include Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Unicharm Corporation, Kao Corporation, SVENSKA CELLULOSA AKTIEBOLAGET SCA, Bumkins, Fujian Heng Group Co. Ltd., Bummis Inc., and Nobel Hygiene Pvt. Ltd.

GLOBAL BABY DIAPER MARKET SEGMENTATION

By Product

Disposable Diapers

1-part diapers

2-part diapers

Cloth Diapers

1-part diapers

One-piece diaper

Snap-in diaper

2-part diapers

Pocket diaper

Pre-fold diaper

Fitted diaper

Others

Cloth training pant

Cloth swim pant

Bio-degradable diaper

By Absorption Level

High Absorption

Low Absorption

By Baby Weight Range

0-2 Kg

2-4 Kg

3-6 Kg

5-8 Kg

7-13 Kg

9-14 Kg

Over 14 Kg

GEOGRAPHICAL SEGMENTATION

By Region

North America U.S. Canada Rest of North America

Latin America Brazil Mexico Rest of Latin America

Europe Spain Germany Italy U.K. France Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific China India Japan Indonesia Rest of Asia-Pacific

Middle East & Africa Saudi Arabia Nigeria Rest of MEA

&

Browse Upcoming Reports

Baby Food Market -https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/baby-food-market

Baby Shampoo and Conditioners Market -https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/baby-shampoo-and-conditioners-market

Baby Care Products Market -https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/baby-care-products-market

About P&S Market Research

P&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.

As one of the top growing market research agency, we're keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 29, 2016) - DNI METALS INC. (CSE: DNI) (FSE: DG7N) The Corporation's Board of Directors has approved a Private Placement allowing it to complete a non-brokered private placement of up to 10,000,000 Units at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of $500,000.00 (the "Private Placement"). Subject to regulatory approval.

Each unit consists of one Common share and one purchase Warrant. Each warrant entitles the bearer to purchase one Common Share of the company at an exercise price of C$.10 per share for a period of 18 months from the closing Date.

The use of Proceeds of the Private Placement will be for corporate cash flow purposes.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

DNI - TSX Venture

DG7N - Frankfurt

Issued: 29,586,204

For further information, contact:

DNI Metals Inc. - Dan Weir, President & CEO 416-595-1125

DanWeir@dnimetals.com

email ir@dnimetals.com. Also visit www.dnimetals.com

Katrin Tosine

Capital Markets and Investor Relations Advisor

kat@dnimetals.com

647.388.4984

We seek Safe Harbour. This announcement includes forward looking statements. While these statements represent DNI's best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary, including risk factors listed in DNI's Annual Information Form and its MD&As, all of which are available from SEDAR and on its website.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements relate, among other things, to: the anticipated benefits of the Transaction to the Company and shareholders of the Company; the pro forma shareholdings of the Company's shareholders in DNI; execution of the Definitive Agreement, the timing and receipt of the required shareholder, stock exchange and regulatory approvals for the Transaction; the anticipated timing for mailing the management information circular to the shareholders of the Company in respect of the Transaction; the closing of the Transaction; the length of the current market cycle and requirements for an issuer to survive in the current market cycle; future growth potential of DNI and its business; and future mine development plans.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: satisfaction or waiver of all applicable conditions to closing of the Transaction (including receipt of all necessary shareholder, stock exchange and regulatory approvals or consents, and the absence of material changes with respect to the parties and their respective businesses); the synergies expected from the Transaction not being realized; business integration risks; fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets and the market price of the DNI Shares and the Company Shares; fluctuations in spot and forward prices of graphite or certain other commodities; fluctuations in currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar to United States dollar exchange rate); change in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations pressures, cave-ins and flooding); inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability of increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development (including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities); and title to properties. In addition, the failure of a party to comply with the terms of the Definitive Agreement (assuming the Definitive Agreement is entered into) may result in that party being required to pay a non-completion or other fee to the other party, the result of which could have a material adverse effect on the paying party's financial position and results of operations and its ability to fund growth prospects and current operations. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended.

Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.
LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) continues to update its shareholders on the rapid spread of hemp legalization in Vermont, Kansas, Maine, Kentucky, Montana, Missouri, and Hawaii. More and more states are realizing the economical advantages of the hemp plant. Hemp can be used in the manufacturing of thousands of products, thus legalizing hemp farming can increase jobs and provide additional revenue for farmers and the state.

In Vermont, the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote this morning on whether or not to advance marijuana legislation. According to Sen. Dick Sears, the judiciary committee members "penciled" in a date for the proposed rules to take effect on January 1, 2018. "Waiting until then would enable communities, law enforcement, and prevention groups to prepare for the changes," said Sears. The judiciary committee of the Vermont Senate is also drafting language aimed at easing access to supplements for children who need access to certain cannabis-based therapies. Per Sears, the language would be added to marijuana legalization proposals already under consideration at the Statehouse.

In Kansas legislature, the Senate Corrections and Juvenile Justice committee passed two bills this week concerning marijuana. Senate Bill 147 would legalize hemp oil for treating seizure disorders. The other Bill, House Bill 2049, would lower penalties for possession of marijuana.

The House approved the bill with the hemp oil portion last year but because of marijuana's federal status as a Schedule 1 drug, the FDA cannot study it. More interestingly, prior to this past Tuesday's committee meeting, House Bill 2049 had three parts: It lowered marijuana possession penalties, legalized hemp oil treatment for seizure disorders and created a program to research industrial hemp.

In Maine, a new law legalizing industrial hemp cultivation is in effect after the legislature in June 2015 overrode a veto by Gov. Paul LePage. According to Newsmax.com, "The new law authorizes individuals and businesses to engage in the farming, production, and commerce of hemp in Maine, and not just planting crops for research purposes, as is the case in other states such as Kentucky. The new law also allows growers to purchase hemp seeds from any certified seed source, rather than only approved Canadian producers, as originally introduced in the first version of the bill."

In Kentucky, while legislation to legalize recreational and medicinal marijuana is unlikely to be addressed during the current legislative session, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles said he expects 200 farmers to plant more than 4,000 acres this year which is about 4 times as much as in 2015. State officials are encouraging more local companies to use local hemp grown products.

In Montana, officials saw the economic value of legalizing hemp farming, as the state became one of the first states to legalize hemp for industrial purposes, changing the law even before the federal government eased restrictions on its ban with the 2014 Farm Bill. Read more information regarding Montana in an article posted by Newsmax.

In Missouri, legislation is pending in the House of Representatives and in the Senate to expand the state's industrial hemp research program. According to the Missouri House of Representatives, House Bill 1973, House Bill 2038, and Senate Bill 584 all seek to expand efforts to permit the licensed cultivation of industrial hemp. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), founded in 1970, noted in an article, "In 2014, lawmakers passed House Bill 2238 which permitted the Department of Agriculture to license farmers to grow industrial hemp for research purposes. Pending legislation this session seeks to expand this program to stimulate hemp cultivation and commerce."

In Hawaii, state officials are beginning to see industrial hemp is a viable alternative. Lawmakers have introduced a bill that would legalize industrial hemp production in the state. "State reps. Kaniela Ing (D, Kihei, Wailea, Makena) and Cynthia Thielen (R, Kailua, Kaneohe Bay) introduced the bill, which would legalize a crop still considered a controlled substance and outlawed by the federal government." Due to the current exemption to growing hemp that was established under the 2014 Federal Farm Bill, scientists at the University of Hawaii Waimanalo Research Station have been growing hemp for research purposes.

Other states have also started growing hemp, and 33 states have proposed pro-hemp legislation. See yesterday's press release regarding Virginia.

Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) said, "As more states unfold pro hemp legislature, opportunities will abound... especially for Hemp, Inc. and its shareholders. Hemp, Inc. can deploy portable decorticators to more and more farmers as they begin to grow hemp. Our portable decorticators will help process fiber on location without having to ship the hemp stalks to our facility in Spring Hope, North Carolina. This creates revenue for Hemp, Inc. and revenue for the farmers. Any farmer, in any state, interested in Hemp, Inc.'s portable decorticator machine can contact us at info@hempinc.com."

Hemp, Inc. is also in the process of implementing the same portable technology with portable CBD extractors to bring to the farmers to help dramatically increase the ability for CBD production and thus revenue for the American small farm. Any farmer, in any state, interested in Hemp, Inc.'s portable CBD machines can contact us at info@hempinc.com.

Hemp, Inc. and its CEO, Bruce Perlowin are encouraging and supporting the small family farm in an effort to help create a new, clean and green agricultural and industrial revolution. In fact, on March 5, 2016 Perlowin is scheduled to speak at "Industrial Hemp Takes Manhattan" in New York as part of the second panel presentation. "Industrial Hemp Takes Manhattan" is an all day presentation and panel discussion (February 27 and March 5, 2016) on industrial hemp, held at the Great Hall at Cooper Union. The second panel presentation on March 5th, 2016 will cover hemp legislation in New York State; CBD oil production and use; industrial hemp in Colorado and the opening of the new hemp processing plant in North Carolina. In addition to Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc., speakers include New York Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo; Colorado hemp farmer Ryan Loflin and Joel Stanley, who with his brothers created the CBD oil strain Charlotte's Web. For more information on this event, visit http://www.hempnycity.com.

SUBSCRIBE TO HEMP, INC.'S VIDEO UPDATES

"Hemp, Inc. Presents" is capturing the historic, monumental re-creation of the hemp decorticator today as America begins to evolve into a cleaner, green, eco-friendly sustainable environment. What many see as the next American Industrial Revolution is actually the Industrial Hemp Revolution. Join "Hemp, Inc. Presents" and join the hemp revolution.

Watch as Hemp, Inc., the #1 leader in the industrial hemp industry, engages its shareholders and the public through each step in bringing back the hemp decorticator as described in the "Freedom Leaf Magazine" article "The Return of the Hemp Decorticator" by Steve Bloom. Freedom Leaf Magazine, a leading cannabis industry magazine is published by the public company, Freedom Leaf Magazine, Inc. "Hemp, Inc. Presents" is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by visiting www.hempincpresents.com. To subscribe to the "Hemp, Inc. Presents" YouTube channel, visit: http://www.hempincpresents.com.

Subscribers will automatically get an email from YouTube every time a new Hemp, Inc. video update is posted along with suggestions of other similar videos. Stay up-to-date with the progress of Hemp, Inc.'s multipurpose industrial hemp processing plant while being educated on the industrial hemp industry. Our video update views are collectively reaching over a thousand views per week. Stay informed by subscribing to Hemp, Inc.'s video updates. Hemp, Inc. is positioning itself to be the avant-garde of the industrial hemp industry and processing industrial hemp.

HEMP NATION MAGAZINE

HempNationMagazine.com (HNM) is published by Hemp, Inc. and focuses on informing, educating, raising awareness and connecting the public to the powerful world of HEMP. HNM reports on Politics, Industrial Growth, Banking, Distribution, Medical, Lifestyles and Legalization. HNM is your source for all things HEMP and news about this emerging multi-billion dollar industry. For more information on HNM, visitwww.HempNationMagazine.com.

HEMP, INC.'S TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE

Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) seeks to benefit many constituencies from a "Cultural Creative" perspective, thereby not exploiting or endangering any group. CEO of Hemp, Inc., Bruce Perlowin, is positioning the company as a leader in the industrial hemp industry, with a social and environmental mission at its core. Thus, the publicly traded company believes in "up streaming" a portion of its profits back to its originator, in which some cases will one day be the American farmer -- cultivating natural, sustainable products as an interwoven piece of nature. By Hemp, Inc. focusing on comprehensive investment results -- that is, with respect to performance along the interrelated dimensions of people, planet, and profits -- the triple bottom line approach can be an important tool to support its sustainability goal.

SAFE HARBOR ACT

Forward-Looking Statements are included within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements regarding our expected future financial position, results of operations, cash flows, financing plans, business strategy, products and services, competitive positions, growth opportunities, plans and objectives of management for future operations, including words such as "anticipate", "if", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "could", "should", "will", and other similar expressions are forward-looking statements and involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from anticipated results, performance, or achievements. We are under no obligation to (and expressly disclaim any such obligation to) update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Hemp, Inc.

(855) 436-7688

info@hempinc.com

http://www.hempinc.com

ir@hempinc.com




According to the latest research report released by Technavio, the global solid state laser marketis predicted to reach over USD 851 million by 2020.

This report titled 'Global Solid State Laser Market 2016-2020', provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging trends. This market study also presents up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1K0DrFv

"The performance of solid-state lasers is constantly improving with advances in technology. For example, Raytheon's high-energy laser systems use a proprietary solid-state planar waveguide structure to generate high output power in a compact design. This makes these systems suitable for use in military applications. Many OEMs are expected to innovate and launch similar products into the solid state laser market," said Sunil Kumar Singh, one of Technavio's lead industry analysts for embedded systems research.

Some of the other driving forces behind the growth of the global solid state laser market are:

Popular application in the healthcare industry

Demand from automotive industry

Demand in military applications

Popular application in the healthcare industry

The use of solid-state laser technology in dentistry is increasing rapidly as even small-scale dentists are adopting solid-state laser technology for treatment. Solid-state lasers are used in many surgical procedures and can also be used for skin rejuvenation. Nd:YAG solid-state lasers are being used for general surgery and in ophthalmology (for cutting tissues), while ruby solid-state lasers are used in plastic surgery and in dermatology. The overall laser market for medical applications is likely to grow from around USD 350 million in 2014 to more than USD 600 million by 2020.

Demand from automotive industry

The automotive industry uses solid-state laser technology not only for metal cutting and marking but also for roof seams, door welding, three-dimensional cutting for hydro formed parts, and the annealing of components. Laser annealing, in particular, has become a mainstream activity in many industries, especially in the automotive industry. Solid-state lasers are also used for ablation, surface activation, or brazing tasks in the automotive industry. For instance, q-switched high-performance lasers remove metallic coatings quickly and efficiently for optimal welding preparation.

Expansion of the North American automobile industry is also expected to immensely benefit the market. Volvo has chosen South Carolina for its new plant in the US and Fiat Chrysler is looking at expanding its Ohio facility, while General Motors is looking to expand and improve on its assembly units across US and Mexico. Volvo uses the Nd:YAG solid-state laser for welding applications for its C70 and Volvo XC60 models. Therefore, with an increase in the number of automobile manufacturing units, the demand for solid-state lasers is predicted to increase over the next four years.

Demand in military applications

As solid-state lasers can meet high power requirements, these are increasingly being used in military applications. Solid-state lasers are particularly popular in military range finding, using LIDAR techniques. With the emergence of laser weapons, solid-state lasers are being introduced in military arms because of advanced features such as speed, flexibility, precision, and anti-electromagnetic interference. Therefore, the US, Russia, Israel, and other developed countries, have started investing heavily in laser technology, a trend that is anticipated to cause a huge surge in the demand for military-grade solid state lasers during the forecast period.

Browse related reports:

Global Fiber Laser Market 2015-2019

Global Industrial Laser Market 2015-2019

Global Transmission Electron Microscope Market 2015-2019

Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160129005050/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1-630-333-9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com

media@technavio.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- The Executive Director of the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) has issued a notice of hearing against Winter Huang (a.k.a. Dong Huang), Vicky Dancho (a.k.a. Ju Huang) and two B.C. incorporated companies alleging that they perpetrated fraud and distributed securities illegally.

The notice states that Huang was a B.C. resident and a director and controlling mind of Pegasus Pharmaceuticals Group Inc. and Careseng Cancer Institute Inc. Dancho is Huang's sister and resides in Richmond, B.C. Dancho was a director, the CEO, and the President of Careseng Cancer. None of the respondents have ever been registered in B.C. under any capacity.

BCSC staff alleges that between April 2008 and August 2012, Pegasus Pharmaceuticals raised approximately USD$65 million by issuing approximately 1,800 Pegasus Pharmaceuticals bonds in 11 series to investors in Taiwan, purportedly for different business projects under its control. Each bond consisted of an investment certificate and a promissory note. Huang signed the investment certificate and promissory note as Chairman and President of Pegasus Pharmaceuticals. Approximately 800 of the 1,800 promissory notes stated that Careseng Cancer guaranteed repayment of principal at maturity. Dancho signed these promissory notes as a director of the guarantor, Careseng Cancer. Staff maintains that approximately USD$56 million of these distributions breached securities laws concerning prospectus and registration requirements.

Huang is further alleged to have committed fraud by signing promissory notes, guaranteed by Careseng Cancer, on behalf of Pegasus Pharmaceuticals. Dancho is alleged to have committed fraud by signing promissory notes totaling approximately $36.4 million on behalf of Careseng Cancer. Staff contends that Huang and Dancho knew, or ought to have known, that these guarantees were false as Careseng Cancer had no operations, no employees, no revenue, and less than USD $50,000 in assets.

Staff also alleges that between January 2011 and August 2012, Pegasus Pharmaceuticals fraudulently raised approximately USD$15.4 million by selling bonds purportedly for projects in the Republic of Georgia, and USD$11.1 million by selling bonds purportedly related to a project in Dalian, China. Staff contends that only approximately USD $1.4 million was put towards the Georgian projects, and only approximately USD $560,000 was put towards the Dalian project. Instead, Pegasus Pharmaceuticals used the remaining investor funds to make payments to earlier investors, pay commissions to Pegasus Pharmaceuticals bonds sales agents, and for Pegasus Pharmaceuticals' operational costs unrelated to the projects. As director and controlling mind of Pegasus Pharmaceuticals, Huang is also alleged to have perpetrated fraud against investors.

The BCSC urges anyone who has invested with Pegasus Pharmaceuticals Group Inc., or has information about it or any of its associated companies, to contact the BCSC by email at inquiries@bcsc.bc.ca.

BCSC staff acknowledges and appreciates the assistance provided by the Securities and Futures Bureau of Taiwan and the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong during this investigation.

These allegations have not been proven. Counsel for the Executive Director will apply to set dates for a hearing into the allegations before a panel of commissioners on February 23, 2016 at 9:00am.

You may view the notice of hearing on our website www.bcsc.bc.ca by typing Pegasus Pharmaceuticals Group Inc., Careseng Cancer Institute Inc., Winter Huang (Dong Huang), Vicky Dancho (Ju Huang) or 2016 BCSECCOM 25 in the search box. Information regarding disciplinary proceedings can be found in the Enforcement section of the BCSC website.

Please visit the Canadian Securities Administrators' Disciplined Persons List for information relating to persons disciplined by provincial securities regulators, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association (MFDA).

About the British Columbia Securities Commission (www.bcsc.bc.ca)

The British Columbia Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets in British Columbia through the administration of the Securities Act. Our mission is to protect and promote the public interest by fostering:

-- A securities market that is fair and warrants public confidence -- A dynamic and competitive securities industry that provides investment opportunities and access to capital

Learn how to protect yourself and become a more informed investor at www.investright.org.

To view the Chinese version of this press release please click on the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/BCSC0129.pdf

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Richard Gilhooley, Media Relations

604-899-6713

mediarelations@bcsc.bc.ca



Public inquiries:

604-899-6854 or 1-800-373-6393 (toll free)

inquiries@bcsc.bc.ca




ST. PAUL, MN--(Marketwired - January 29, 2016) - Alliance Bank, a privately owned community bank with over $590 million in assets, announced the recent St. Paul promotions of Carla A. Baier to assistant vice president/manager, personal banking; Jonathan M. Chaffee to vice president, SBA lending officer; Jahn Vieve L. Howe to vice president, cash management and Eileen F. Olsen to vice president, commercial and private banking.

Carla Baier, assistant vice president/manager, personal banking, is responsible for managing the personal banking department in St. Paul. Carla has worked at Alliance Bank for the past 13 years, serving in previous roles such as personal banking manager, personal banker, loan documentation assistant and teller. Carla received her BBA from Concordia University, St. Paul.

Jonathan Chaffee, vice president, SBA lending officer, has worked at Alliance Bank for the past 5 years. In his current position, Jon oversees and manages the bank's SBA lending programs. He is responsible for managing new and existing client relationships with small businesses located in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul area. He provides tailored business bank loans that include working capital, term loans, or real estate acquisitions as well as providing a full array of complementary banking services. Jon received a BBA degree in business from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Jahn Vieve Howe, vice president, cash management, has worked at Alliance Bank for 26 years. In her current position, Jahn Vieve is responsible for identifying, analyzing, selling and supporting cash management products and services. Jahn Vieve works closely with clients in St. Paul to help them better manage their cash flow. She is a member of the Minnesota Association for Financial Professionals and serves on the annual conference committee.

Eileen Olsen, vice president, commercial and private banking, has worked at Alliance Bank for the past 27 years. In her current position, Eileen serves as a private banker to assist with both the personal banking and business banking needs of her customers, specializing in mortgage banking. Previously, Eileen was an assistant vice president and officer for Alliance Bank.

About Alliance Bank

Alliance Bank is a privately owned community bank with assets of nearly $550 million. Alliance Bank provides highly integrated commercial, agricultural, private and personal banking services through seven locations throughout Minnesota.

Chartered in 1867, Alliance Bank delivers big bank expertise with community bank service. As a family owned bank, Alliance Bank is committed to remaining independent and providing personal interaction and timely decision making. From basic checking and savings products, to business loans and ag loans, sophisticated cash management and mobile banking services, Alliance Bank offers services to help companies and individuals succeed. Visit www.alliancebanks.com or call 1-888-959-9425 to learn more.

Debra Kosch

Vice President - Marketing

651-229-2873
IRVINE, CA--(Marketwired - January 29, 2016) - SmartBug Media today announced a new educational eBook about sales enablement. Written for business executives and marketing professionals, the free resource illustrates how sales enablement strategies can strengthen the relationship between sales and marketing teams, enhancing company growth and streamlining operations.

SmartBug Media is a HubSpot Diamond Partner, one of a select few marketing agencies in the world to receive this distinction for setting the highest standards for inbound marketing and web design services. Its work helps clients achieve their marketing goals, grow traffic, prove ROI and provide top-notch customer experiences.

Written by SmartBug Associate Aaron Riddle, the Smart Guide to Sales Enablement is a free download and is based on the agency's award winning client work. Sales enablement is a critical component of modern business because it helps automate and refine the marketing and sales cycle -- all while building stronger internal relationships that can strengthen a brand.

"We're excited to share our experience implementing sales enablement strategies with our clients and followers," said SmartBug Marketing Director, Chris Morris. "This eBook is perfect for marketers, sales professionals and business executives who want to improve internal relationships and close the loop between marketing and sales."

The eBook joins other SmartBug publications in the company's knowledge center, covering all sorts of topics about business growth, inbound marketing and web design. SmartBug seeks to help marketers stay current with best practices to find new leads and grow their business.

SmartBug is the highest-rated agency on the HubSpot marketplace and is committed to sharing free educational resources to its thousands of followers and fans. You can access the new growth hacking eBook at: http://www.smartbugmedia.com/smart-guide-to-sales-enablement

About SmartBug Media

For more than seven years, SmartBug Media has been helping businesses increase sales leads, close more customers and enhance the reach of their brands. SmartBug is one of a handful of HubSpot Diamond partners in the world and is the highest rated agency in the history of the HubSpot ecosystem. We also boast the highest ROI documented from any HubSpot partner -- 3,558% and 14,500% ROI on a six-month and three-year campaign.

For a free inbound marketing or web design consultation, or to learn more, visit http://www.smartbugmedia.com/ or call 949-236-6448.

Chris Morris

SmartBug Media

(949) 236-6448 x799

chris@smartbugmedia.com
LA PRAIRIE, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/29/16 -- The management of Vantex Resources Ltd. ("Vantex") (TSX VENTURE: VAX)(FRANKFURT: UD7A)(ALP: VAX) announces the resignation of Robert Bouvier and Charles Beaudry as directors of Vantex.

In replacement, management appointed Ryan Venier as director. Mr. Ryan Venier is a Vancouver based entrepreneur. He has extensive experience providing financial advisory services to a wide range of growth companies in the resource, technology, and real estate industries. He has been involved in numerous successful transactions involving emerging private and public companies where he has facilitated in excess of $100M in equity, and debt offerings.

Simran Gill was also appointed as Vantex new CFO. Mr. Gill is a CFA and a partner with BridgeMark Financial Corp. His previous experience includes over five years acting as a senior consultant with a leading management consulting firm. His focus has been on financial management, and the development of financial models and processes to assist his client in strategic planning. He has worked with clients across North America, Europe, and the Caribbean in wide-ranging sectors, including industrials, telecommunication, financial services, and health care.

Mr. Gill holds a Bachelor of Business Administration Honours degree from Simon Fraser University, as well as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. He is currently a member in good standing at the Vancouver Society of Financial Analysts, and the Bermuda Society of Financial Analysts.

An additional appointment should be announced in the coming days in order to fill the vacant director position.

Management wants to sincerely thank Robert Bouvier and Charles Beaudry for their contribution to the development of Vantex for many years. They provided Vantex with very useful advice and we wish them the best.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Vantex Resources Ltd.

Gilles Laverdiere

CEO

514-830-8236




SLOUGH, England, January 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC ("RB") today announces that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Hypermarcas' Brazilian condom and lubricants business. Hypermarcas is the leading Brazilian condom manufacturer, through its three brands - Jontex, Olla and Lovetex.

The addition of these brands will transform RB's sexual wellbeing category in Brazil, which will benefit from RB's strong innovation, brand equity investment and go-to-market capabilities. It will also materially improve RB's presence in healthcare channels within Brazil. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions and is expected to close during 2016. Net sales of Jontex, Olla and Lovetex in 2014 were R$100m (approximately 17m). The agreement will also see the transfer of approximately 400 employees to RB.

About RB:

RB* is the world's leading consumer health and hygiene company. The company has operations in over 60 countries, with headquarters in London, Dubai and Amsterdam, and sales in most countries across the globe. The company employs approximately c. 37,000 people worldwide. Inspired by a purpose to deliver innovative solutions for healthier lives and happier homes, RB is in the top 20 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. We are the global No 1 or No 2 in the majority of our fast-growing categories, driven by an exceptional focus on innovation. Our health, hygiene and home portfolio is led by our global Powerbrands including Nurofen, Strepsils Gaviscon, Mucinex, Durex, Scholl, Clearasil, Lysol, Dettol, Veet, Harpic, Cillit Bang, Mortein, Finish, Vanish, Calgon, Air Wick, Woolite and French's. Our Powerbrands represent 80% of net revenue.

RB is redefining the world of consumer health and hygiene. Our people and unique culture are at the heart of our success. We have a drive for achievement and a passion to outperform wherever we focus, including sustainability where we are targeting a 1/3 reduction in water impact, 1/3 reduction in carbon and 1/3 of net revenue from more sustainable products. We are proud to be Save the Children's largest global partner, with a new vision to radically reduce one the world's largest killer of under 5s, diarrhoea.

For more information visit http://www.rb.com *RB is the trading name of Reckitt Benckiser group of companies.
AppDirect, a San Francisco, CA-based cloud service commerce, acquired Radialpoint, a Montreal, Canada-based provider of cloud and technical support services for small businesses and consumers.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Founded in 1997, Radialpoint provides technical support software and services for technology vendors and IT help desks to deliver enriched support experiences. Through the acquisition, AppDirect will provide partners with integrated support capabilities that will allow them to sell and support all of their cloud services leveraging Radialpoints technical support platform and expert sales and support staff.

Radialpoints executive team and all 80 employees will join AppDirect maintaining its offices in Montreal. Warren Levitan, Radialpoints President and CEO, will join AppDirects leadership team and will continue to lead Radialpoint as an independent subsidiary of AppDirect

Led by Daniel Saks, President and Co-CEO, and Nicolas Desmarais, Chairman & Co-CEO, AppDirect provides a platform that unites providers, developers and consumers of cloud services into a single ecosystem, facilitating businesses to find, buy, manage, monitor and get support for cloud services from a central location and delivering new opportunities to distribute, sell, and market cloud services. With the acquisition, the company will add Cloud Services Support for Microsoft Office 365, enterprise-grade support for any hardware, software or cloud challenge and consumer technical support.

FinSMEs

28/01/2016
BirdEye, a Sunnyvale, CA-based provider of a Business Reputation and Customer Experience platform, raised $8m in Series A funding.

The round was led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff; Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang; Adsense creator Gokul Rajaram; Twitter Kevin Weil; BranchOut founder Rick Marini; tech writer and media personality Semil Shah; and LinkedIns Ellen Levy. In conjunction with the funding, Ajay Chopra, general partner with Trinity Ventures, joined BirdEyes board of directors while Clara Shih, Hearsay Social CEO and Starbucks board member, joined the advisory board.

The company intends to use the funds to further expand its enterprise platform.

Founded by brothers Naveen & Neeraj Gupta, BirdEye provides a SaaS-based platform which collects customer feedback, ratings and sentiment across every channel, review sites, social media, surveys, to enable CMOs to acquire new customers through intelligent reputation marketing.

It also enables CXOs to retain existing customers using in-moment experience, surveys, customer insights, and competitive benchmarking.

The copany, which also has offices in Dallas, Denver, LA and New Delhi, is used by 10,000+ businesses, from Fortune1000 brands to digital agencies.

FinSMEs

29/01/2016
Goodbox, a Bangalore, India-based conversational m-commerce startup, acquired SmartPocket, a mobile wallet that allows users to digitize their plastic cards.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Co-founded by Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah, who will be both joining the leadership team at Goodbox post acquisition, Bangalore-based SmartPocket provides a mobile app that allows customers to digitize their loyalty cards, an online wallet for customers to keep online payments, place orders with offline partners and store all their virtual cards in a single app.

Led by Abey Zachariah, CEO & Co-founder, Goodbox provides small businesses with an app to become e-commerce ready, via discovery, ordering and payment tools. It allows consumers to buy directly, over messaging, from their stores across multiple categories without having to download multiple apps.

Goodbox had recently announced its Series A funding of $2.5m from Nexus Venture Partners.

FinSMEs

29/01/2016
In 2016, Qiming Venture Partners, one of the most active venture capital firms in China, will continue to believe in healthcare.

As recently said in an interview by Nisa Leung, Managing Partner at Qiming, the healthcare industry  valued in the trillions of Chinese yuan  is an essential factor to grant the quality and dignity of life. But compared with other industries, starting a business in the healthcare industry is more difficult and challenging than any other.

But this has not affected the strategy ogf the Chinese vc firm. Qiming, which currently has four US-dollar and three RMB funds with over US$1.7 billion in assets under management, already dedicates 40% of these resources to investing in healthcare. The same Leung has invested over US$600m (approx. RMB 4 billion) in the sector over the past seven years in nearly 50 companies spanning biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics, healthcare services and information technologies.

Backed companies include insulin provider Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals, lung cancer therapy developer Zai Lab, cochlear implants leader Nurotron Biotechnology, Ebola vaccine developer Tianjin CanSino Biotechnology, and gene sequencing developer/non-invasive DNA prenatal detection company Berry Genomics.

Currently, Leung, responsible for the health care sector at the firm, sits on the board of Gan & Lee Pharmaceutical, Zai Lab, Novast Laboratories, Nurotron, Venus Medtech, Goodwill Information Technology, CanSino and Berry Genomics. She was also investor in Citic Pharmaceutical (acquired by Shanghai Pharmaceutical), OriGene Technologies, Shenogen Pharma Group, Beijing Richen Technology, Beijing Aeonmed, VR Medical, Wuxi Vision, ACEA Biosciences and other healthcare companies on behalf of Qiming.

In the only 2014, Nisa and the Qiming healthcare team made 12 investments in the industry, with an average check amount of US$10m.

In 2016, the firm plans to continue to invest in the sector following a move slowly and surely forward stratefy as Leung calls it. Once a company meets our investment criteria, we will commit our investment without hesitation. We believe we will add more and more global companies to our investment portfolio. she said.

FinSMEs

29/01/2016

UPDATE

29/01/2016: According to a regulatory filing with the SEC, the firm is seeking to raise a new $620m fund.
By Nirupama Rao

I must confess I was only halfway through the movie when I began to tweet about Airlift.

"Airlift" the movie falls completely short in its research on role of @MEAIndia in 1990-91 Gulf War.  Nirupama Rao (@NMenonRao) January 25, 2016

You will have read the oral history transcript of Ambassador KP Fabian who was Joint Secretary (Gulf) at the time of the Kuwait war, which throws a very different light on the role of government in the whole evacuation saga when compared to the treatment of the subject in the film (in fact Fabian is completely AWOL in Airlift).

My critical comments stemmed from the manner in which the MEA was portrayed in the film: bumbling, stereotypical I-am-a-bureaucrat-ergo-I-am-not-born-to-serve-but-tend-to-my-own-interests, and hopelessly out-of-sync with the march of history.

I have no quarrel with fiction but not when it's projection of govt's role is biased and ludicrous. https://t.co/Q3767O4UUA  Nirupama Rao (@NMenonRao) January 25, 2016

Joint Secretary Kohli, who of course comes off as a well-intentioned and helpful official, hardly looks or acts like a joint secretary to the government of India (who is key to policy-making within the government), but is sunk in a morass of files with only his tiffin carrier and cup of tea (whose rim he carefully wipes) as solace.

Of course, he grows in heroic stature as the movie progresses but the system he represents is still shown as rather crass and indifferent. You must visit joint secretaries in South Block to observe the eminence of position and dignity of office that they enjoy. They sit in solitary splendour in impressive offices, not in sections surrounded by files  surely, the film makers could have come up with a more realistic setting.

Not true. Kindly enumerate. Our diplomats are by and large extremely dedicated and conscientious. https://t.co/SgP1v4A7Cu  Nirupama Rao (@NMenonRao) January 25, 2016

To portray the Embassy in Kuwait as having been evacuated of all staff and officers is not correct. Only non-essential staff and of course families would have been evacuated. The ambassador and his core team would have stayed on (as indeed they did as corroborated in ambassador Fabians account). The portrayal of the ambassador in Baghdad is also ridiculous. Ambassador Kamal Bakshi was one of our brightest and most competent diplomats (he served in the office of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) and I cannot imagine him offering the hero a Baghdadi biscuit as consolation with the salvo that there was little he could do to help stranded Indians.

Further, the depiction of the then foreign minister, (IK Gujral) as a person with little time for suffering Indians in Kuwait is totally off the reservation. Gujral, although he went to Baghdad and embraced Saddam, was there with the express purpose of finding a way to effect the evacuation of our nationals in Kuwait and was very much involved with the whole process.

I am totally aware of the fact that this was not a documentary and that a feature film comes with the license to interpret historical events in order to present an interesting and compelling narrative. But I was disappointed with the lack of attention to some crucial details in depiction of the government and its role  surely, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) could have been consulted by the producers for their inputs? That would have made for a much more credible account.

The way Bollywood films go, this was not a bad one at all, but that still does not take away from the fact that the treatment of MEA was deeply troubling. Maybe the ministry needs to be a little more out there in helping craft a better narrative of its achievements! Molto crescendo! Fortissimo! That's advice for the MEA!

The author is former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to the US and China.
Two big things happened in 2012. An indie film called Short Term 12 introduced us to a terrific talent named Brie Larson, who proved that dramatic strength on screen could be done without any help from a films aesthetic tools. And an Austrian film called Michael demonstrated that a story of a person kidnapped in the basement of a house for years can be an extremely disturbing watch. Both the elements combine in director Lenny Abrahamsons Room, and the results are predictably amazing.

In Room a 24 year old woman named Joy (Larson) lives with her five year old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in a tiny shed the child refers to as Room. Seven years ago an unknown man had kidnapped Joy, imprisoned her for the purpose of raping her repeatedly; Jack is the product of one such assault. Jack, however has no idea about all this, and continues to live his life with his mom in Room. The mother tries to keep things as normal as possible, tutoring the child, making sure he never feels like theres something missing from his life. Every time the kidnapper, referred to as Old Nick turns up in Room to assault Joy, she asks the child to sit in a closet and avert his eyes.

Its disturbing to say the least, and even more unsettling to know that the film is based on real life incidents. To watch a series of frightening events knowing that someone out there near your home could be subjected to this kind of torture, and probably much more is heart breaking.

And to watch Joys attempts of shielding Jack from the horrors of the world he is growing up in is gut wrenching. She has no choice but to keep herself from losing it, for the benefit of her child that she did not even plan to have. Every passing moment youre bound to think of ways for Joy and her child to escape this horrid place, and every failed attempt puts you in a gloomier mood.

But Room isnt just about whether they escape the clutches of their kidnapper. There are far more disturbing implications that the film postulates. How would you adapt to the outside world if youve been brought up in totally confined environment? For a child, the place he grew up in would always be his home, and being taken away from such a place, no matter how free he is, would probably be difficult to adjust to.

Director Abrahamson, who has earlier made the terrific Frank understands that the audience is by default way ahead of the characters fate, so he injects the requisite jump from the second to the third act with a hair raising escape scene. Few scenes in recent cinema have had the kind of nerve-wracking tension and a sense of total suspension from the audience that this scene from Room commands.

If Larson proved that she could hold a candle in Short Term 12, she destroys the competition in Room. To call this her performance a breakout would be an understatement because she plays her role with surprising subtlety while still carrying incredibly strong screen presence. Her characters dedication of being a mother and the frustration of not wanting to be one comes across so fluidly Larson makes it look easy. Its only a matter of time until she goes home with an Oscar for this role.

A real disappointment from this years Oscar nominations was the snub of young Tremblay whose performance is so believable its scary. A big credit for that goes to Abrahamson for being able to direct a child actor in such a movie and extracting such a performance without being able to inform the actor the disturbing aspects of the story. If you havent gathered already, Room is a must watch.
Success Quotient is a weekly feature that appears every Friday on Firstpost, which looks at the pains and joys en route to success for a head honcho - whether a CEO, MD or an entrepreneur. The column looks at the ideas that helped launch a company, its highs and lows.

Thanks to the family-owned-business, Aditya Bagri did not have to go through the unenviable drudgery of a job seeker to launch his career. But that does not make his work easy. As the business scenario is a continuously evolving entity new challenges crop up with unique complexities often making strategizing for the 27-year-old director of Bagrrys India Ltd. a tough task to handle.

The firm deals in breakfast cereals and Bagri is the second generation scion of the 50-year-old Bagrrys.

Though the route was clear to him even as he grew up, Bagri says he ensured that he had the required qualifications that would make him apt for the role. Unlike most children who are terrified by numbers and math, Bagri had a passion for them. I was never intimidated by math, he recalls. I like its logical reasoning. Science and economics was part of my school curriculum and I love both the subjects, he says. It was then easy for Bagri to pursue a course of study that would encompass his passion. He chose mathematics and statistics for his degree studies, much to the surprise of friends and fellow classmates. Math is an offbeat choice, he says by way of explanation.

Pursuing an MBA in England and working for few firms before returning home, Bagri says though he had developed professionally, the opportunities were in India and more so at the family firm.

He joined the family business at 23 and since then has been slowly marshalling himself to have a distinct identity of his own. I think the urge to do something of my own is in my DNA, he says.

Food processing business

The family has been into food processing in the last 50 years. Adityas father, Shyam Bagri forayed into FMCG two decades ago. As a flour miller, dad knew that the most nutritive part of the wheat grain is the bran." This encouraged Bagri senior to begin selling wheat bran as a breakfast cereal years back.

Later, oats and then muesli was added to the breakfast range in the early 90s. Were these cereals a part of Bagris breakfast in his growing up years? Not at all, he says honestly. Like other children our age, we were into sandwiches, noodles, pizzas, etc. Children love these options even though we grew up hearing and seeing the healthy options the company made. However, when I turned 17, I found that I weighed more than any normal 17-year-old and decided to do something about it. Besides joining a gym, I made my first healthy food habit by having muesli for breakfast. Once I lost 20 kgs by cutting down on snacking on bread and biscuits, I found the quality of my life was much better. I havent missed my daily morning meal of muesli since then, says Bagri, endorsing the cereal.

The business was a routine topic of discussion at home. Bagri thus had a lot of insights and what to expect when he joined the business. In the last few years, he has focused on distribution, both at the back-end and consumer-end, besides building a marketing team. The senior Bagri's mandate to his son was to make the companys products visible on shop shelves and to ensure it was available everywhere. We strengthened sales and distribution and ensured the products are widely available. The category is growing, he says.

The company has registered a 30 percent year-on-year growth in the last two years, says Bagri. As a category, muesli is the favourite of the alternate breakfast cereal market. Some time ago, the company came out with muesli with pre-blended milk on IndiGo flights which can be had in warm and cold water. It is extending that option to other popular food that people like to munch on when hungry or have meals with colleagues.

Healthy food options

Bagri is coming out with his own distinct QSR (quick service restaurants) segment, under the Bagrry's portfolio. We will be focusing on making nutritive products for a healthy lifestyle. It is run by a distribution team making us the only Indian player of size to have a different product," says Bagri.

The company's chain of outlets will sell ready-to-eat foods called Bagrrys On The Go which include healthy options to processed foods such as burgers, sandwiches, desserts, wraps, muffins  with brans, muesli and oats as ingredients. There are plans to have beverages, snacks, lunch, dinner and snacking options as the idea develops further.

The first quick service restaurant will be located in the Vasant Square Mall at Vasant Kunj, Delhi in the second week of February, 2016. From Delhi-NCR, the company plans to go to other metros. Primarily, these outlets will be inside malls and corporate complexes where people are looking for healthy food options. The space is now dominated by MNCs. We feel that we are the only local player with a pan-India presence and have grown organically. We are a consumer-accepted brand and so I am confident we will do well, says Bagri.

With this new plan in place, the company hope to grow from a turnover of Rs 77 crore at present to Rs 400 crore in 2020. "We hope to touch Rs 100 crore turnover in 2016, said Bagri.

Bagri insists that none of his plans are his own. I have my father for guidance and a competent team which makes all this possible, he says. Next on the agenda is a chocolate crunchy cereal for children and, grain-based products.

He has no time in his schedule to unwind. But he does read fiction and case-studies once he finishes his six-day week.

I love to try out different food. I am a foodie, Bagri insists, even as his trained eye picks out only healthy options from the different cuisine his palate thirsts for.
The RBI governor Raghuram Rajan seems to forget that he is very much a hands on government servant. While it is all right for him to express disgust at industrialists living it off when their group companies are steeped in debt to the banking system, it is not at all kosher for him to express his critical views in a freewheeling manner on matters not impinging on the banking and financial sector that come under his surveillance.

GDP figures are compiled by another department of the GOI. Finance Secretary cannot go public with his views. For that matter defence secretary too cannot. Indeed no government servant can go public while still in service. To say that this gag order is anti-democratic and violative of freedom of expression is wrong. The gag order passes muster under article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution that says freedom of expression can be curbed in the interest of decency or morality among other things.

A government servant may be bursting with bright ideas or criticism of his own employer but he must wait for his post-retirement life to give vent to them or if he cannot bide so much time, he must quit. Else, he must either have the ear of the concerned departmental head or slip in his suggestion down the suggestion box.

CAG is a constitutional office mandated to express fearless opinion on government accounting and finances. RBI guv is not cast in the mould of the CAG. To be sure, he can pull up erring banks. He can chide unputdownable and impulsive borrowers who play ducks and drakes with public money but he should not trespass into other areas not even as a citizen of the country so long as he is a government servant.

There is a view that he is a distinguished economist of impeccable pedigree that gives him the right to go public on any issue under the sun but that misses the woods for trees. If he cannot curb his impulse to speak out on issues not concerning him, he must quit and air his views without restraints on hindrances, breaking free of the government gag order on government servants.

Aamir Khan got the boot because he smugly assayed an act of ventriloquism in reverse ---he put his own views in his wifes mouth. He in his capacity as incredible India brand ambassador ought not to have badmouthed his own country as being intolerant. The Big B at least had the grace and decency to stop endorsing Pepsi cola when an epiphany in the form of a young Rajasthan school girl came and dinned into him that colas were poison. Rajan while not being government of Indias brand ambassador is nevertheless its important functionary and should not go to town with his perceived dissatisfactions on a range of issue in this day and age of instant dissemination across the length and breadth of the globe.

In any case, we dont compile statistics the Chinese way that has gotten them the sobriquet Shanghai stats! Yes there are shortcomings in the way we compile economic statistics but they were never officially manipulated to present a rosier picture of the economy. And to extrapolate the overall economic position on the basis of exports as some critics are doing is stupid. Ours is not an export driven economy but led by the services sector which is still holding its own despite the world wide doom and gloom scenario on the back of the Chinese slump. But that would be going into the merits of statistics compilation whereas we are on the ethics of Rajan speaking out of turn. The Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) is cast partially in an evangelistic role that gives him some leeway in going to town.
New Delhi: The Indian telecom regulator on Wednesday issued its recommendations on valuation and reserve price of spectrum in the 700, 800, 900, 1800, 2,100, 2,300 and 2,500 MHz bands. Given the high base price for the 700 Mhz spectrum and stress on their balance sheets, top telecom players may not bid for the radiowaves in this premium band, says credit rating firm Fitch.

According to an official statement here, the sector regulator recommended that entire available spectrum (2x35 MHz) in the 700 MHz band should be put to auction in the upcoming auction.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has recommended a record base price of Rs 11,485 crore per Mhz for 700 Mhz, which is to be among the radiowaves that are to be auctioned in the forthcoming round of bidding. If all the available frequencies get sold at Trai suggested price then it can alone contribute over Rs 4 lakh crore.

It recommended that spectrum in 700 MHz band should be offered in the block size of 5 MHz (paired). "In case a TSP is able to win more than one block of spectrum in the upcoming auctions, it should be allocated spectrum in contiguous blocks."

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended that the entire available spectrum in 2100 MHz band should be put to auction.

The TRAI had issued a consultation paper on it in November 2015 seeking stakeholders' comments.

"In March 2015, the telcos committed the largest-ever investment of USD 17.7 billion, mainly due to the necessity to retain their expiring spectrum to avoid network disruption. The auction saw aggressive bidding as spectrum offered was limited. We believe that there are far fewer reasons for telcos to invest as much in the 700MHz auction," Fitch said.

The government is likely to go for the next round of telecom spectrum auctions around May-June this year, Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg said here recently.

The industry expressed its satisfaction over the regulator's decision to hold the auction. However, it expressed concerns over the steep pricing of 700 and 2,100 MHz, which will be the much sought after bands.

"We are happy that another round of auction will take place. It will help in removing the supply constraint. But the prices of the 700 and 2,100 MHz are too steep for the industry. We expect most of the activities in these two bands," Rajan S.Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators' Association of India, told IANS.

The TRAI recommended reserve price of Rs.1,595 crore for 700 Mhz and Rs.554 crore for 2100 MHz in the Delhi circle. Both 700 and 2,100 MHz are of utmost importance to the industry stakeholders as these two bands are carriers of third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) telephony.

He said the regulator has indicated that it will put 60 percent more spectrum in auction than the current holding across all the bands.

At present, the total holding of spectrum across all the bands is between 2,700-3,000 MHz.

The authority also recommended that Department of Telecom (DoT), in coordination with defence and the telecom service providers (TSP), should complete the harmonization process in the 1,800 MHz band before upcoming auctions so that the entire spectrum that is made available due to this exercise is placed for bidding.

"The available spectrum must be put to auction in contiguous blocks, preferably in the block of 5 MHz."

The regulator suggested that spectrum in the 2,300 MHz and 2,500 MHz bands should be put to auction in the block size of 10 MHz (unpaired).

Currently, spectrum trading in 2,300 or 2,500 MHz band is permitted in the block size of 20 MHz.

"The authority also recommends that after network synchronisation of all the TDD (time-division duplexing) networks, spectrum trading in 2,300 or 2,500 MHz band should be permitted in the blocks of 10 MHz."

The TRAI recommended that existing provision of a cap of 25 percent of the 'total spectrum assigned' in 700/800/900/1,800/2,100/2,300/2,500 MHz bands and 50 percent within a given band in each of the access service area shall apply for total spectrum holding by each TSP.

IANS & PTI
PARIS Iran agreed on Thursday to buy 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion at list prices, including a dozen A380 superjumbos, after international sanctions were lifted against Tehran this month.

The planemaker said the deal, signed amid a raft of others during a visit by President Hassan Rouhani, was conditional on getting U.S. export licenses because more than 10 percent of Airbus jetliner parts come from the United States.

The order for 73 wide-body and 45 narrow-body jets allows Airbus to steal a march on US rival Boeing (BA.N) as Iran seeks to renovate and expand its worn-out fleet of 225 planes.

The inclusion of A380s - the world's largest jetliner - sends a commercial signal to established carriers in the Gulf, and is a boost for Airbus, which has been struggling to sell them. However, they will not be delivered before end-decade as Iran expands its airports and focuses on urgent needs.

Boeing has so far held back from Iran amid what industry sources and diplomats describe as political and legal concerns, but Iranian officials are urging it to mimic its European rival.

The Airbus deal depends on unraveling a knot of financial issues including whether and how Iran can avoid using the U.S. financial system for the jets, usually priced in dollars.

Deputy transport minister Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan told Reuters the deal would be financed using a mixture of European export credits  which guarantee loans by commercial banks  and lease financing.

In an unusual move, Iran plans to set up a national leasing company with foreign investors invited to take a stake and no automatic restriction on basing it outside Iran.

But problems need to be ironed out on rules for export credit deals amid quibbles over collateral.

The deal was negotiated partly on the sidelines of a major CAPA aviation conference in Tehran this week, where Iran outlined requirements for 400-500 planes and offered flexible new regulations.

"It was the first international platform for Iran to say we are back in business" since implementation of the deal ending sanctions on Jan 17, Bertrand Grabowski, a managing director of DVB Bank, said.

Other models ordered include 45 A320-family jets and 45 longer-haul A330s. Both those sets of orders included current and revamped models and helped lift the catalog value of the deal from earlier estimates of $25 billion.

Iran also ordered 16 long-range A350-1000 twin-engined jets.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Cyril Altmeyer; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Michel Rose, Leigh Thomas)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre filed a 316-page affidavit along with annexures in Supreme Court to justify imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh. President Pranab Mukherjee had earlier asked the government to explain the recommendation of imposing President's Rule in the northeastern state.

Meanwhile, Arunachal Governor J P Rajkhowa has invited constructive suggestions from political parties, civil society, intellectuals and non-governmental organisations for good governance and eradication of corruption from the state.

He also called upon the people to maintain peace and communal harmony in the state, an official communique said on Friday. Taking over the responsibility of the state government, Rajkhowa gave instructions for various measures to check and monitor the financial status of the state.

Interacting with a BJP delegation led by its state President Tai Tagak and National Executive Member Tapir Gao, who called on him yesterday, the governor advised them to not have a feeling of victory or defeat but to work for betterment of the people, society and the state.

The governor assured the delegation that his administration would take all measures to plug loss of revenue from the state.

He informed the delegation that the Chief Secretary has already issued orders to all deputy commissioners to take action against district officials who are missing from the district without prior approval of the competent authority. The delegation apprised the Governor about various problems faced by the government staff and common man, including the irregular payment of salaries to SSA teachers. The delegation also complained about rampant encroachment on government land.

Assuring his best for the welfare of people, Rajkhowa said that steps were already in place and every state, district and constituency would get its due share. "Fair view is taken in all cases and malpractices such as absenteeism in offices, officers and officials not in their places of posting and movement of district heads of department without permission of higher authorities and deputy commissioners will not be accepted," he said.

On being apprised of the encroachment of central government offices, roadside and reserved land, the Governor issued instructions for immediate action against encroachers and initiation of legal action.

He also issued directions for regular payment of salaries to SSA teachers who are rendering service in the interior parts of the state.

Rajkhowa also took note of the irrational creation of independent ADC areas and irregularities in public distribution system as apprised by the BJP delegation, the communique added.

With inputs from PTI
Thrissur: Hours after Kerala High Court stayed his order to register an FIR against Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and power minister Aryadan Mohammed in the 'solar scam', and made strong observations against him, Special Judge S S Vassan on Friday sought permission to take voluntary retirement.

Vassan has sent a request to the High Court Registrar seeking permission to undertake voluntary retirement, court sources told PTI.

The High Court on Friday stayed the vigilance court order directing the registration of an FIR against Chandy and Mohammed and observed that the "judge had acted mechanically without knowing the nature and extent of his powers".

The court had also directed the administrative section to consider action against Vassan observing that "the Vigilance Court suffers jurisdiction errors."

Vassan in his order had also observed that "every one is equal before law, be it a village man or a Chief Minister".

The vigilance court's order was on the basis of a complaint filed by one P D Joseph following the allegations made by solar scam accused Saritha S Nair that a bribe amount of Rs 1.90 crore had been paid to Chandy and Rs 40 lakh to Mohammed for getting favourable decisions for the fraudulent solar company.

The order had kicked up a political storm in the state with CPI(M) led LDF opposition launching agitation demanding Chandy's resignation

PTI
The more populous among Indian states - Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal - are un-smart and will remain so in the times to come. That's official now. I, unfortunately, have the distinction or ignominy of belonging to a state which is not smart. No portion of my state's geographical boundary is going to get anywhere closer to being called so.

For long, first as a student in Delhi and then as a resident, I used to hear "Oye Bihari" hurled at my fellow natives of all hues in a condescending manner. These words are not used any longer, for the simple reason that driven by economic and social compulsions, more and more people from Bihar and Eastern UP have landed in Delhi and eventually outnumbered migrants from other parts of the country, and those claiming to be original inhabitants of Delhi. The latter include Punjabis who made Delhi their home in post- partition days.

Bihari, UPites and Paharis have since become Poorvanchalis. They are now very confident  smart if you please - of themselves. In Delhi we have MLAs, MPs, top officers in various ministries and departments, white and blue-collared employees in private sector. Thus when Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked passionately about `start up India' and `stand up India' for the younger generation, those hailing from Bihar and UP thought they had the potential to be showcased as brand ambassadors, albeit with modifications.

In UP, we have a young chief minister in Akhilesh Yadav. He is advised by his three-time chief minister father Mulayam Singh and uncles who have been ministers. In Bihar, we have a 26-year-old under-matriculate deputy chief minister in Tejashwai Yadav. His brother, Tejpratap, two years older to him, too is a minister. Between them, the two hold six ministries, including the one which was to do preparatory work for sending nominations for the smart city. They have the benefit of having the most experienced administrators at home. Their father Lalu Prasad Yadav is a two-time chief minister and mother Rabri Devi has also been one. Their senior and the boss in government in Bihar, Nitish Kumar, is a five-time chief minister who is known as a good governance man and development messiah. In West Bengal, in Mamata Banerjee we have a fighter chief minister who is connected to grassroots and lakhs of people are always ready to act on any call of her.

Yet all these states failed to make it to the smart category. They didn't qualify in the competition. It pinches us badly but it pains more when we see Orissa, which till the other day was considered as backward as us, topping the list with Bhubaneshwar being designated as city number one in the current or currently proposed list of smart cities. Assam too qualifies with Guwahati getting into the high profile list. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh earlier formed part of BIMARU states along with Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. But two cities of Rajasthan, Jaipur and Udaypur, and three cities of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, Jabalpur and Indore, have qualified. It hurts.

Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Punjab were always considered "developed", so it does not matter to us if they qualified.

During the 2014 parliamentary elections, while covering elections in UP, we got the sense that if there is any place to be in India it was Uttar Pradesh. It was not because it had given so many prime ministers to India but because this state was going to decide the fate of the nation for the next five years. Again while covering assembly elections in Bihar in October-November 2015 we got the sense if there was one place to be in during those months, it was the land of Lalu and Nitish, if not of Ashok and Buddha, because the elections were again going to decide the fate of not just the state but of the nation. In January 2016, both these places are known or talked about only for the wrong reasons.

Perhaps we don't know to make presentations in the designated format as some say. But that's an excuse. In this era we could have outsourced this presentation part, just as our leaders did during election campaign. We failed because we were grossly underprepared for the test and had not even seen or known the syllabus for the test.

But then we were optimistic because PM Modi had constantly been saying India couldn't progress only on the strength of western India, its progress lay in eastern India. He did talk about competitive federalism but we took that easy because, as seasoned Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh often said, it is the duty of the headmaster to pay extra attention to poor students to make them pass. But he didn't tell us that what may happen if the headmaster (the Centre) handed over the entire evaluation process to "outside" experts. Let's see if we make it to the list of 40 in the next round, next year.

One thing is sure, as this writer has come to know, Bihar's capital Patna is not going to be on the list of 98. It has summarily failed in the evaluation process.
A controversial anti-terror bill, passed by Gujarat assembly but twice rejected by the previous UPA government, was returned by President Pranab Mukherjee seeking additional information from the government after which the legislation was withdrawn.

The Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime (GCTOC) Bill, 2015, which has been hanging fire since Narendra Modi, as Gujarat chief minister first introduced it in 2003, was returned by the President to the union home ministry as he sought more inputs related to certain provisions of the bill.

Home ministry will provide the additional inputs to the President after obtaining the same from the Gujarat government, a home ministry official said on Thursday. The home ministry has informed the President after his communication that it was withdrawing the bill and will submit a re-worked bill for his consent.

The Hindu reports that an official close to Home Minister Rajnath Singhs office said the bill was called back at the behest of the State government and it will likely be "reworked".

The controversial bill was sent to the President in September 2015 for his assent.

The bill provides for admissibility of evidence collected through interception of mobile calls of an accused or through confessions made before an investigating officer, in a court of law. The Indian Express details the number of times the bill has gone back and forth since 2003.

In July last year, the Modi government at the Centre had sent back the bill to the Gujarat government asking it to clarify on a few issues raised by the ministry of information and technology (IT). A provision in the bill which allowed the permission to intercept phone conversations and them being admissible as a proof in court.

The Gujarat government had strongly rebutted the objections raised by the IT Ministry.

The central government has given its consent to the provision of extensions of time limit for filing of charge sheet from 90 days to 180 days after consultation with other central ministries.

The Gujarat assembly in March 2015 had passed the stringent bill retaining controversial provisions that had twice earlier led to a previous similar bill being rejected by the President. The bill was first rejected by then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2004, demanding that the clause relating to interception of communication be removed.

It was again rejected when Pratibha Patil was the President. On both the occasions, the then UPA government recommended to the President for rejection of the bill, saying several provisions of the GCTOC were not in conformity of the central law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

With inputs from PTI
Mumbai: Muslim women on Thursday staged a protest demanding entry into a restricted area of the Haji Ali dargah in Mumbai, a stir that came amid a campaign by a group seeking right for female devotees to offer prayers at inner sanctum of Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra.

Several activists belonging to Muslim women groups held placards demanding entry for females into the sanctum sanctorum of the historic dargah, which receives hundreds of devotees everyday. A participant said it was male patriarchy, and not religion, which was imposing restrictions on women.

This is against tenets of Islam. The Constitution has given you equal rights, Islam supports the Constitution, she added. A Muslim womens rights group is locked in a legal battle with trustees of the Haji Ali dargah, which has barred womens entry into mosques mausoleum.

The Bombay High Court is hearing a petition challenging the Haji Ali Trusts decision to ban the entry of women in the sanctum sanctorum of the dargah (grave of a male Muslim saint). On January 18, the HC said it would wait for Supreme Courts ruling on entry of women in Sabarimala temple of Kerala before deciding on the plea related to the dargah.

A bench of Justices V M Kanade and Reveti Mohite-Dere had said both matters involved entry of women in the religious shrines, and hence they would like to see what view the apex court would take on the issue before deciding on the PIL pending before them.

The next HC hearing will take place on February 3. The protest in Mumbai broke out two days after members of a group, Bhumata Brigade, were prevented by police from entering into Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district to break a 400-year-old tradition banning women from entering its sacred sanctum.

After the high-voltage march to the temple by the Bhumata Brigade volunteers, which was foiled mid-way, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis called for a dialogue between temple authorities and activists to find a way out of the row. The popular shrine is dedicated to Lord Shani, who personifies the planet Saturn in Hindu belief.

Women devotees are not permitted on the chauthara (sacred platform) of the temple as per the centuries-led tradition followed at the shrine.

PTI

Links: 'Discrimination cannot be passed off as Islamic'
Kerala's ruling Congress-led UDF government and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday got a reprieve when the Kerala High Court put on hold a lower court order for registering an FIR against him and his cabinet colleague in solar panel scam case. Kerala HC said that the vigilance court acted mechanically without knowing nature and extent of its powers.

The petition of Chandy and state Power Minister Aryadan Mohammed came up before Justice P Ubaid, who put the lower court order on hold for two months.

Saritha Nair, an accused, in the case, alleged that she was told by the CM to "create a company-- Kerala Renewable Energy Cooperative Society Ltd-" involving Chandy Oommen and some other family members and was told to incorporate details about renewable energy resources in its bylaw.

According to her, Chandy Oommen was a partner of an American firm called Starflames Inc and it was suggested that the US-based company could be used for importing solar panel required for the institution to be formed in Kerala.

Nair has on Wednesday levelled bribery allegations against the chief minister. She stated before the inquiry commission that she gave Rs 1.90 crore to a person called Thomas Kuruvilla that was meant for Chandy. She had also alleged that Mohammed also was given Rs 40 lakh.

It was based on this that activist P D Joseph approached the Thrissur Vigilance Court on Wednesday and the judge ordered an FIR to be registered against Chandy and his cabinet colleague.

Saritha on Friday claimed his son Chandy Oommen as the one who was closely involved in it. Saritha made the disclosure on the third day of her deposition before the Solar Judicial commission, and said she met the chief minister many times and not just three times as mentioned by Oommen Chandy before the commission.

She said there was a picture of hers that had come out at a function at Kottayam where she met the chief minister and on that day she was talking about a new company to be formed by his son Chandy Oommen and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy agreed to that.

DYFI and Left protesters held massive demonstrations across Kerala against Chandy on Friday as the Chief Minister turned defiant in the ongoing solar scam.

Chandy had moved petition in High Court seeking quashing of FIR ordered against him by Thrissur court, ANI reported.

Police deployed tear gas to disperse the crowd, CNN-IBN report said. Initially it was just stone pelting, but CNN-IBN reported that protesters are throwing petrol bombs at the police. Situation is getting more violent, reports said.

Speaking to CNN-IBN, Chandy said he was not worried as he has not taken a single penny. "Left and BJP targeting me because they are scared," Chandy told CNN IBN. "People of Kerala are smart, they know the truth."

Congress leader KV Thomas also said that Chandy was heading the probe team of the Solar scam. "Whenever allegations have been leveled against Cong ministers, they have stepped down even when no crime against have been proven. Under Oommen Chandy, we will return to power in Kerala."

Kerala's ruling Congress-led UDF suffered a blow on Thursday as a court ordered an FIR to be filed in the solar panel scam against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who claimed innocence and rejected opposition calls to resign. Chandy is all set to challenge with an appeal in the High Court Friday as the Congress high command in New Delhi comes to grips with the "serious" issue.

DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam pic.twitter.com/9BTtRViuq4  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

WATCH: DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam https://t.co/kqng2D80YO  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters #SolarScam pic.twitter.com/C80qUt7xPG  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

Thursdays court order comes on a petition by an activist after Saritha Nair, one of the main accused, alleged she had paid a bribe of Rs 1.9 crore to the Chief Minister through an aide. In recent days, Chandy has chucked out three official aides after they were named as alleged middlemen in the scam which traces its roots to 2013.

Television channels in Kerala on Wednesday aired the audio of a purported conversation between Congress state general secretary Thampanoor Ravi and Saritha S Nair in which Ravi can be heard tutoring her ahead of her deposition before a judicial commission. In the audio, Ravi, a loyalist of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, can be purportedly heard telling Nair that her statement before the commission should be in line with what Chandy had said. In his statement, Chandy had told the commission that he had met Saritha three times.

"The Chief Ministers resignation would virtually mean acceptance of guilt. His continuation would fuel the Oppositions agitation, Congress insiders told The Indian Express.

And even as Saritha Nair, one of the main accused in the scandal who hurled bribery allegations against the chief minister on Wednesday, threatened on Thursday to prove that Chandy was guilty, the UDF lost a RSP legislator, who said he was disgusted with Chandy's government. Police investigators estimate that around Rs 6 crore has been swindled in this scam.

If there is an iota of substance in the allegation, I will quit public life, Chandy said. After holding discussions with party leaders and legal experts in Kochi, Chandy said he would file an appeal in the High Court on Friday against the order of the Vigilance court in Thrissur, reports The Indian Express.

A court in Thrissur told Kerala's vigilance department to file a First Information Report (FIR) against Chandy on corruption charges in what has come to be known as the "solar scam".

The genesis of the scam goes back to 2013 when a fake solar energy company named Team Solar -- floated by Biju Radhakrishnan and Saritha S. Nair -- duped several influential people of about 70 million rupees by offering to make them business partners. They also allegedly received advance payments by offering to install solar power units . The company used two women to create political contacts with links leading up to the Chief Minister's office. CNN IBN has the lowdown.

An editorial comment in The Hindu says Chandy has no option but to fight his case legally. "By doing so politically, and perhaps by pleading his case to his party in the run-up to Assembly elections a few months from now, he would risk drawing Kerala into a constitutional crisis," says the newspaper.

The BJP is firing on all cylinders after the latest details blew up: "One cannot hope much from the Congress high command because it has looked the other way on corruption. Congress moves from one issue to another (to target BJP) but will somebody from its high command go to Kerala and speak on corruption?," said Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

"The charges against the chief minister and the power minister are of very serious nature and we demand their resignations."

The developments have come at a time when the UDF faces assembly elections only months away. The opposition Left immediately asked Chandy to resign. CPM leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said: "The court has made its intentions clear through the FIR, and Chandy has only one way now to go forward and that is to quit at the earliest."

Chandy maintained in Malappuram that he had a clear conscience. "I have done no wrong. I will face the probe and cooperate with it," he said. Asked if would resign, Chandy shot back: "For what?"

The scam erupted in 2013 when a company, Team Solar, allegedly used two women to weave political contacts and duped several influential people of large sums of money by offering to make them business partners or by setting up solar panels.



Saritha Nair said on Wednesday that the money she paid to Chandy was part of the Rs 7 crore demanded by him. She said she also gave Rs.40 lakh to minister Mohammed. Even as Chandy said he had done no wrong, she said the truth was otherwise.

"After the unbearable tension of carrying all this on my head for the past more than three years, now I feel very relaxed as I am speaking the truth. I will prove through evidence that Chandy is wrong and I am right."

Nair and her live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan were arrested in the scandal in 2013 on charges of cheating numerous investors, who paid money for solar panels. While Saritha Nair is out on bail, Radhakrishnan is in jail after being accused of murdering his first wife.

In Thiruvananthapuram, RSP's Kovoor Kunjumon quit the Kerala assembly, saying he was disgusted with the UDF government, and pledged to rejoin the Left.

The Revolutionary Socialist Party has three legislators. With Kunjumon leaving, the strength of the house has come down to 138 and Chandy now has the support of 72 legislators. The Left commands 66 legislators in the 140-seat house.

Kunjumon said: "For seven months, I am unable to show my face to cashew factory workers (in my constituency) as all the factories are closed.

"Others may not know their feelings, but I know it because I am the son of a cashew factory worker. Along with our supporters, we will form the real RSP and will align with the Left," he said.

Kunjumon was elected to the assembly in 2001, 2006 and 2011 when his party was with the Left. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he joined the UDF.

With inputs from agencies
Riyadh: The Syrian opposition announced on Thursday that they will not attend the Geneva talks aiming to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis, Al Arabiya local news reported.

George Sabra, deputy chief of the Syrian opposition negotiating team, told Al Hadith local channel that the opposition delegation will not go to Geneva, noting that there will not be negotiations without the participation of the opposition. "We will be heading to Geneva shortly after all obstacles are removed," said Sabra.

The opposition attributed the decision to the ongoing airstrikes that are killing civilians and the starvation of innocent people in Syria.

The opposition High Negotiation Committee (HNC) held a meeting yesterday here that ended without a final decision. The HNC released on Tuesday a statement demanding genuine improvements on the ground before starting the negotiations.

The talks were expected to start on Friday.

IANS
Washington: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has pulled into a virtual tie with President Barack Obama in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Florida, but Obama retains a solid lead in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday.

Romney gained ground on Obama over the last month in Ohio and Florida, fiercely contested battleground states that will be critical to deciding the winner of the November 6 presidential election.

The new poll found Romney with 44 percent to Obama's 43 percent in Florida, where Obama led by 7 percentage points in late March. In Ohio, where Obama led by 6 points in late March, Obama had 44 percent to Romney's 42 percent. Both leads were well within the poll's 2.9 percent margin of error.

Obama slightly expanded his lead in Pennsylvania, registering 47 percent to Romney's 39 percent. He led by 3 points in March in Pennsylvania, which has trended toward Democrats in recent presidential elections.

Pollster Peter Brown attributed Romney's improved showing in Ohio and Florida to his triumph in the Republican nominating race and to continued public worries about the pace of the economic recovery.

"First, since he is now the de facto nominee, Romney is no longer being attacked by his fellow Republicans, who are closing ranks behind him," Brown said. "Second, voter optimism about the economy has leveled off, reflecting economic statistics over the past month and the public reaction to them."

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has touted his experience as the head of a private equity firm as evidence that he could do the best job healing the economy.

"What appears to be keeping Romney in the ball game, at least in Florida and Ohio, is the perception he can better fix the economy," Brown said.

Most national polls show a tight race between Romney and Obama in the state-by-state battle for the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House. Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, and Florida, with 29, have helped decide close recent presidential elections.

The poll of 1,169 voters in Florida, 1,130 voters in Ohio and 1,168 voters in Pennsylvania was conducted by telephone land and cell lines from April 25 to May 1.

Reuters
Sydney: A Chinese ship is set to join the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370, Australia's deputy prime minister said on Friday, as the jet's fate remains a mystery almost two years after it vanished.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will join three other vessels contracted from Dutch firm Fugro -- Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Havila Harmony -- currently scouring the depths of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia where the plane is believed to have crashed after diverting from its flight path.

Carrying 239 passengers and crew, the plane disappeared during a Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight on 8 March 2014.

So far, only a two-metre-long (almost seven-foot) flaperon wing part that washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July has been confirmed to have come from aircraft.

"The ship, offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by Premier Li Keqiang of the People's Republic of China in November 2015, will undertake search operations in the southern Indian Ocean," Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.

"The total value of the contribution by the People's Republic of China, including the ship, is around Aus$20 million ($14 million)."

Truss said the Chinese vessel would be equipped with a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) long towed sonar system, which searchers will use to take a closer look at the rugged seabed.

Dong Hai Jiu 101 is set to depart Singapore for Australia on Sunday and join the hunt -- which has so far covered 85,000 square kilometres (32,820 square miles) of the 120,000 square kilometres search zone -- in late February, Truss added.

Australian authorities have said that if after the 120,000 square kilometres is scoured and there are no new leads to pinpoint the location of the missing aircraft, the search zone would not be expanded.

Relatives of those aboard MH370 have bitterly criticised the airline and the Malaysian government for failing to provide answers, while the disappearance has become one of aviation's greatest riddles and spawned numerous conspiracy theories.

AFP
Donald Trumps feud with Fox News came to a head on Thursday when he not only boycotted the Republican debate but also hosted a charity event for military veterans nearby  taunting his rivals and stealing their thunder.

The billionaire Republican frontrunner boycotted the debate in Des Moines, Iowa as part of a simmering feud with the conservative news network that began in August 2015 when he objected to questions asked by moderator and star Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

"When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," the 69-year-old mogul said as he opened his charity event, doubling down on his claim that Fox News  and particularly Kelly  has shown bias against him.

Trump had taunted Fox and his rivals before the main debate, saying it would be a "total disaster" with low ratings.

Trumps war with Fox News has been going on since the first Republican Debate. The channels star anchor Megyn Kelly, who has her own show called The Kelly File, and her two male colleagues moderated the debate, which pulled in a record 24 million viewers. Trump took offense to her tough questions and insinuated that she treated him unfairly because she was menstruating.

"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," Trump told CNN afterward.

But the furore only helped the channel and Kelly. Fox said her first post-debate program pulled in nearly 11 million viewers  its highest ever.

The fight was renewed days before the Republican primaries began in Iowa when Fox News announced the Kelly will be moderating the the channel's second Republican debate again on Thursday.

The billionaire businessman dismissed Kelly as a "third-rate reporter" who is bad at her job and had been "toying" with him. "I don't think she can treat me fairly. And I'm not a big fan of hers," Trump told CNN.

Kelly shot back on her nightly show, arguing that Trump is used to getting his way but can't control the media. She said her network and CEO Roger Ailes had made it clear to Trump for months that they wouldn't change their moderator line-up.

"I'll be there," Kelly said. "The debate will go on with or without Mr. Trump."

Trump's pullout came after Fox News tweaked the Republican front-runner for asking his Twitter followers whether he should debate. The network, in a sarcastically worded statement, said it had learned from a "secret back channel" that the leaders of Iran and Russia planned to treat Trump unfairly if elected.

"A nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings," read the statement from a Fox News representative.

In a more serious statement, a Fox News spokesperson said that capitulating "to politicians' ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats, including the one leveled by Trump's campaign manager" toward Kelly.

"We can't give in to terrorisations toward any of our employees," the statement read. Trump is welcome at the debate "and will be treated fairly ... but he can't dictate the moderators or the questions."

However, on Tuesday night, the real estate mogul, who has previously threatened to boycott debates but later always participated confirmed that his decision not to participate was "pretty close to irrevocable".

"With me, they're dealing with somebody that's a little bit different. They can't toy with me like they toy with everybody else," he said. "Let them have their debate and let's see how they do with the ratings." He added, "Why do I have to make Fox rich?"

Ailes however fully supported his moderator.

"Megyn Kelly is an excellent journalist and the entire network stands behind her," Ailes told The Washington Post. "She will absolutely be on the debate stage on Thursday night."

The squabble continued on Wednesday when the Republican frontrunner tweeted in a customary insult: "I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!"

"What (Trump's) not free to do and what no news organisation would allow, would be for him to... dictate the terms of the debate," Kelly wrote to her more than 1.4 million followers.

The standoff, however, ended after the debate began. Trump opened his charity event stating that Fox had apologised and had invited him once again to participate in the debate. "I say, hasn't it already started?" he mused.

Fox News issued a statement saying its chief, Roger Ailes, had spoken to Trump and "acknowledged his concerns." It added that Trump had offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that Fox News contributes $5 million to his charities, which it refused to do.

With one Republican debate still left for Fox News to host in March 2016, where will Donald Trump take this feud next?

With inputs from AP and AFP
Des Moines, Iowa: 2016 Republican presidential candidates strained to take advantage of a rare opportunity to step out of Donald Trump's shadow in Thursday night's presidential debate, after mocking the front-runner for boycotting the final contest before voting begins.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is locked in a tight contest with Trump in Iowa, opened the debate with a sarcastic impression of the real estate mogul's frequent insults of his opponents.

"I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly," Cruz said, before thanking his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by showing up.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a frequent target of Trump, said with a wry smile, "I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me."

Never one to go quietly, Trump was holding a competing rally elsewhere in Des Moines, an event his campaign said was raising money for military veterans.

"When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," Trump said in explaining he was skipping the debate because he felt Fox News had dealt with him unfairly. "We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if we're being mistreated."

Thursday's debate comes four days before the Iowa caucuses kick off the 2016 nominating contest. Residents will choose among the Republican and Democratic candidates in the first of a series of state-by-state contests to choose delegates to each party's convention.

With their White House hopes on the line, the candidates moved quickly to cast themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats emanating both from abroad and within the United States.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio struck an aggressive posture, pledging that as president, he would go after terrorists "wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, we're sending them to Guantanamo." Rubio also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the US if there were indications that the Muslim religious centers were being used to radicalize terrorists.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul  back on the main debate stage after being downgraded to an undercard event because of low poll numbers earlier this month  warned against closing down mosques. A proponent of a more isolationist foreign policy, Paul also raised concerns about the US getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State has a stronghold.

The candidates largely sidestepped direct confrontations with each other, focusing some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"She is not qualified to be president of the United States," New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said. "What we need is someone on that stage who has been tested who has been through it."

Christie is part of a crowded field of more mainstream candidates who have struggled to break through in an election year where Trump, and increasingly Cruz, have tapped into voter anger with the political system. Party leaders have grown increasingly antsy for some of the more traditional candidates to step aside after the first contests to allow one to rise up and challenge for the nomination.

Asked whether the crowded establishment lane was putting Trump in position to be the nominee, Bush said, "We're just starting out. The first vote hasn't been counted. Why don't we let the process work?"

Trump pulled out of the debate this week, citing unfair treatment from host Fox News. He's feuded with the network for months, particularly anchor and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.

It's unclear whether Trump's unusual move will hurt his standing with Iowa voters. But his absence did give his rivals more time to make their case to voters.

AP
Paris: Five people who were infected with the Zika virus while travelling abroad have returned to France since the beginning of the year, the French health ministry has said.

"None of the patients presented a severe form of the infection," the ministry said in a statement, without naming the regions where the five had been travelling.

The mosquito-borne virus has been linked to serious birth defects, including microcephaly, a condition in which a newborn's brain and skull are abnormally small. Developmental problems often result.

The Zika virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The insect can also carry dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.

"There is no actual risk of transmission of the Zika virus in mainland (France)," the ministry added. "We are not in a period of activity for the Aedes mosquito, the vector of the virus, which falls between May and November."

The World Health Organization (WHO) set an emergency meeting for February 1 on the Zika virus, which it says is spreading "explosively" in the Americas, with three to four million cases expected this year.

France earlier yesterday urged pregnant women not to travel to French overseas territories in South America and the Caribbean, including Martinique and French Guiana where epidemic have been declared.

Guadeloupe and Saint Martin have also each reported one confirmed case.

The health ministry has said that mainland France would be sending medical staff to Martinique and Guiana in the coming days to evaluate the needs of hospitals and doctors.

AFP
Berlin: A 13-year-old Russian-German girl who ignited an international row after saying she was raped by migrants was actually sleeping at a friend's house on the night in question, Berlin prosecutors said Friday.

Authorities in the German capital said their investigation had concluded that the account of the girl's kidnapping and sexual assault this month by three men from "southern countries" had no basis in fact, despite high-level Russian claims to the contrary.

"Using data from her broken mobile phone, we were able to access information about a young German man aged 19  an acquaintance of the 13-year-old girl," prosecutor's office spokesman Martin Steltner told AFP.

"The young girl wanted to hide at his house because she was having problems in school."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had said Moscow initially heard about the incident "not from Germany's official structures but from the Russian-speaking community, then from the family's lawyer."

On Tuesday he tried to lend credence to the girl's allegations by saying that she had disappeared "absolutely for sure" against her will and that details of the incident had "been hidden."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday accused Lavrov of "exploiting" the case of the girl, named as Liza by Russia, and "inflaming" an already heated national debate about migrants.

The incident has exacerbated tensions between Germany and Russia over the conflict in Syria and European Union sanctions imposed on Moscow over Ukraine.

German police last week rejected the teenager's account but nevertheless passed the case to the prosecutor's office.

Berlin prosecutors said there was no evidence that the girl was forced to have sexual relations but opened a probe against at least one man on possible statutory rape charges since she was under the age of consent (14 in Germany).

Steltner said Friday that investigators now believe that the girl had had sex with two men in their 20s, "a Turkish citizen and a German of Turkish origin" who may now be charged with abusing a minor.

AFP
Tehran: Iran flew a surveillance drone over a US aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state television reported on Friday. An American official declined to comment on the claim.

The reported drone overflight comes after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the US in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

The brief report by state television did not say what day the drone flight occurred, nor did it show any of the images of the aircraft carrier reportedly photographed by the drone. A story from the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine closely participated in the surveillance operation.

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill.

The Iranian report did not name the US vessel targeted. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Cmdr Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the US Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, declined to comment on the Iranian report.

"I can say that we are confident in the ability of US naval forces operating in the region to respond appropriately as the situation dictates, and will exercise our right to defend our forces against any threat," Stephens said.

Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began a naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean.

Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a US warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The US Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the US, its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The US has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

AP
WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend a gathering in Rome on Tuesday of countries fighting Islamic State militants and then go on to London the next day for an aid conference on Syria, the State Department said.

Kerry makes the trip as the United Nations is having trouble starting indirect peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition to try to end the nearly five-year civil war in which more than 250,000 people have been killed.

The so-called proximity talks, in which U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura would speak separately to each side in Geneva, were supposed to begin on Monday but were postponed amid uncertainty about whether the opposition would attend.

Syria's opposition High Negotiations Committee would go to Geneva to meet de Mistura, an independent activist said on Friday on behalf of the group, but it would not get involved in negotiations with the Syrian government.

Kerry has pushed hard for the talks to try to end the conflict, which has been intensified by the Islamic State militant group's seizure of swathes of Syrian territory.

Tuesday's meeting in Rome "will review progress to date and discuss ways to further intensify commitments across all lines of effort to degrade and defeat" the militant group, State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

Other nations at the Rome gathering will include Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, Kirby said.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Grant McCool)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Paris: A man carrying two handguns, ammunition and a Quran was arrested Thursday at the Disneyland resort outside Paris, with the city still on edge after a devastating jihadist attack left 130 dead in November.

The man was "detected upon his arrival at the hotel on the Disneyland site where he had a reservation. Hotel security found two handguns, a Koran and ammunition on him," the source said.

Disneyland Paris said the guns were picked up by routine scanning of the man's bags at the hotel entrance.

A police source said preliminary investigations did not point to terrorism, and that the man had said he was carrying the guns because he feared for his safety.

France is on high alert after November's attacks saw gunmen and suicide bombers target cafes, a concert venue and the Stade de France national stadium, leaving 130 dead and hundreds wounded.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the carnage.

In Thursday's incident, police arrested the suspect and secured his vehicle.

They then arrested a woman, believing her to be his girlfriend, but released her after realising they had the wrong person, one of the police sources said.

Papers found on the suspect indicated that he lived in Paris, but no further details were given. His girlfriend was still being sought.

The scene unfolded at the Art Deco-style New York hotel near the theme park, which is situated about 30 kilometres (18 miles) east of the French capital.

"Police were immediately warned and the individual was arrested. We are continuing to work closely with the authorities and the safety of our visitors and employees is our top priority," a spokesman for Disneyland Paris, Francois Banon, said in a statement.

France and Belgium high alert

Disneyland Paris is the most visited theme park in Europe, with 14.8 million visitors in 2015, according to Euro Disney's annual report.

The suspect was the joint manager of a brasserie in Paris's 14th arrondissement, according to a source close to the investigation.

Staff and regulars there expressed astonishment at his arrest.

"For me it's a mistake," a member of the bar staff told AFP by telephone, adding that the phone had been "ringing every two seconds" since the news.

"Honestly, I'm taken aback. It's a joke," added the other co-manager.

The November Paris attack was the second major attack in France in a year, as the country has become a prime target for the jihadist group operating out of Iraq and Syria.

A Belgian court on Thursday cited security concerns as it adjourned the appeal hearing of several people  some linked to key figures in the Paris attacks  against jail terms for recruiting fighters for Syria.

Judicial sources said the decision appeared to reflect concerns about personal protection for the judges as Belgium remains on high alert after the Paris killings, with armed troops patrolling the streets and guarding key buildings and institutions.

In January 2015, a series of attacks in Paris over three days left 17 people dead, including at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

France imposed a three-month state of emergency after the November attacks, which President Francois Hollande hopes to extend for another three months despite fierce opposition from rights activists.

AFP
Geneva: The UN said today that there was no postponement of Syria peace talks due to start on Friday in Switzerland, despite uncertainty around whether the main opposition umbrella group would attend. The UN chief negotiator in the almost five-year-old civil war, Staffan de Mistura, issued a message to the Syrian people saying that the planned discussions "cannot fail".

There is "no postponement from our side," Khawla Mattar, spokeswoman for the UN-mediated talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva due to begin on Friday.

The planned negotiations are part of a UN-backed plan, agreed in November in Vienna, that envisages talks followed by a transitional government, a new constitution, and elections within 18 months.

A source close to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus said its delegation, headed by envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari, would be arriving in Geneva tomorrow as planned. But in Saudi Arabia, the High Negotiations Committee  formed last month in an effort to unite Syria's fractious opposition  was holding a third day of talks and had yet to decide whether to show up.

The Saudi-backed group has asked for "clarifications" after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures.

It also wants assurances from the international community that it will move to end regime attacks on civilians and allow humanitarian aid. Opposition sources said it appeared increasingly unlikely the talks would open as planned.

The roadmap is the most ambitious plan yet to end the conflict which has killed more than 260,000 people and forced millions from their homes. De Mistura said that his video message was "meant to reach every single man, woman, child of Syria, inside Syria and outside, in the refugee camps or where ever you are."

"You must know also that we count on you to raise your voice to say 'khalas' ("stop" in Arabic) to say to everyone who is actually coming from Syria and from abroad to this conference that there are expectations on them to make sure that their vision, their capacity of compromise in discussion for reaching a peaceful solution in Syria is now and they need to produce that," he said.

Officials have said the talks, only the second dialogue between Syrians since the start of the conflict, would run over six months, with the first round expected to last between two and three weeks.

AFP
LeEco (formerly known as Letv) entered India earlier this month by launching LeEco Le Max and Le 1s. Now, a latest report from Reuters is stating that the Chinese company is planning to kick start sale of VR headsets in the country.

LeEcos VR headset which is called as Le 3D Helmet was launched in China in September last year. It comes equipped with a 5.5 inch, 2K resolution screen with a 70 degree field of view. The report said that Atul Jain, India chief operating officer of LeEco did not disclose the price of the VR headset. Along with selling VR headsets in India, LeEco is planning to launch Smart TVs in the country in June quarter.

Moreover, the company is also eyeing to tap the streaming market and gradually roll out Netflix-like streaming service in India. Netflix, the US based popular streaming service forayed in India last month. The report further mentions that the LeEco has already teamed up with ErosNow and YuppTV for providing online content and is in talks with others companies for possible partnerships.
Richard Davis is on the shortlist of the best bankers in the United States. One could even argue that the CEO of US Bancorp (USB -0.27%) currently tops the list, given that the Minneapolis-based bank has outperformed all of its big bank rivals since its formative merger 16 years ago.

This is why I've made a habit of listening to US Bancorp's quarterly conference calls. What follows are the five most interesting points covered by Davis when the $422 billion bank reported fourth-quarter earnings two weeks ago.

1. Record profits

One of the things I appreciate most about Davis and US Bancorp is that you can trust what they say. When Davis writes something in his letter to shareholders, or the bank announces a goal in its annual report, it typically comes to fruition.

Davis has talked repeatedly over the last few years about US Bancorp's momentum coming out of the financial crisis. "We are aligned to make the most of an economic recovery and we have positioned the bank to emerge as an even stronger competitor," he wrote six years ago.

This has since materialized. US Bancorp leads the industry in profitability. It earned $5.9 billion last year. That equates to a 1.44% return on average assets and a 14% return on average common equity. Even Wells Fargo (WFC 0.25%), an elite bank in its own right, lags behind. The California megabank earned 1.32% on its assets last year and 12.7% on its equity.

US Bancorp's performance has been nothing short of extraordinary over the last decade and a half. And there's no reason to think this will change so long as Davis and his team remain at the controls.

2. Balancing expenses and investment

Banking is like ballet. It's a delicate dance between managing expenses, credit risk, and revenue generation. Letting one get out of proportion to the others will lead not only to poor performance through a complete credit cycle, it can also turn existential. This is why more than 17,000 banks have failed in the United States over the past century and a half.

US Bancorp appreciates this better than almost all of its peers. It's one of the most efficient banks in the industry, with an efficiency ratio last year of 53.8%. But unlike other banks, it doesn't allow its focus on efficiency to come at the expense of responsible revenue growth.

This is another theme that comes up regularly in Davis' annual shareholder letters. And he brought it up on the latest call. "While prudent expense management remains a priority for our company, we also continue to focus on revenue growth and innovation, which means investing in those businesses and products that will provide strong returns," said Davis.

Three areas that US Bancorp often cites as examples of this are compliance, innovation, and its lucrative payments business. Avoiding investments in these areas is akin to eating the seed corn. It's a mistake that others in the industry are committing, but Davis has made it clear that his bank won't follow suit.

3. Exposure to macroeconomic issues

Everyone is scared about China's stock market. And its economy. And oil prices. And ISIS. And the migrant crisis in Europe. And probably a lot other things too. But US Bancorp's domestic orientation means it's less exposed to these issues than banks that take deposits and lend money around the world.

"We are a classic American bank," explained Davis.

We primarily do business in the domestic United States, and we're very much a consumer small business payments kind of a company. So despite what's going on in the backdrop around the world with the China reevaluation and what's happening in oil in some of those areas, which we're not immune to, by all intents and purposes, we're not seeing the majority of that on our books or by our customers.

US Bancorp's portfolio of energy loans makes up only 1.2% of its total loan portfolio. That's not insignificant, but the bank is building reserves that can be used to absorb losses from the portfolio, and it's doing so with oil trading at $30 a barrel. It also "stress tests the heck out of those things," said Davis.

I would normally take a bank CEO's comments about credit quality with a grain of salt. But I've read Davis' shareholder letters, and his assertions have always struck me as honest and transparent and, most importantly, they've been affirmed by the bank's performance. He's built up a treasure trove of trust, in other words, that earns him and his bank credibility.

4. Appetite for acquisitions

One of the gravest mistakes that a bank can make is to grow through imprudent acquisitions. If you have any doubt about this, I encourage you to call Bank of America. Its 2008 acquisition of Countrywide Financial has probably cost it two decades' worth of earnings if not more when you factor in opportunity cost.

US Bancorp is committed to avoiding this mistake. Its prudent and disciplined approach to acquisitions is part of the bank's DNA. As Davis' predecessor, Jerry Grundhofer, explained 16 years ago when announcing the merger that spawned the US Bancorp we know today:

Very seldom do two companies that are performing at the high levels of Firstar and US Bancorp converge at the right time to transform their future. The combination of Firstar and US Bancorp will create the nation's 8th largest banking company, which will be strong, nimble and focused on doing the right things, the right way. It is a pre-eminent American franchise.

Grundhofer later articulated the bank's acquisition strategy in his 2004 shareholder letter:

We are very disciplined in our acquisitions, focusing only on those which will enhance revenue growth, create operating scale, build a more profitable business line or strengthen a critical competitive advantage.

Davis picked up this torch and has carried it ever since. In response to an analyst's question about possible additions to its capital markets business, Davis responded by saying:

We'll take the hit from you guys for not having that acquisition but we'll take the benefit years later or months later when we don't have a problem. So what I'd say, our conservatism is every bit exactly what it was before and during the downturn and we're not tempted by anything right now that would otherwise cause us to change that thinking. And that could disappoint a few people but it's always the steady who kind of wins the race.

US Bancorp is always open to well-priced acquisitions that will make it more innovative or add to its crown-jewel payments business, Davis explained. But he's uninterested in exposing his bank to the same type of claims that Bank of America inherited from Countrywide. The statute on those should run by next year, which should be right around the time that US Bancorp will be cleared by regulators to make acquisitions anyhow.

5. CPR framework

The last of Davis' comments that I found particularly notable was also his least original. For the 10 years that he's led US Bancorp, Davis has returned time and again to his mantra of consistent, predictable, and repeatable financial results. That's how he concluded the bank's fourth-quarter call.

"We remain focused on delivering consistent, predictable and repeatable financial results for the benefit of our customers, our employees, our communities and our shareholders," Davis said before signing off.

This should be music to the ears of long-term shareholders. And the melody is enhanced when you consider that Davis has proven through the years to mean what he says.
Xerox (NYSE:XRX) is moving ahead with a plan to split into two companies, agreeing to a deal with Carl Icahn that will hand the activist investor three board seats.

Xerox will create new publicly traded companies to house its copy machines and business services separately. The Norwalk, Conn.-based maker of copiers and printers said executive leadership, as well as the names of the new firms, will be announced at a later date. The separation is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

Icahn, who emerged as a potential activist in Xerox back in November, will receive three seats on the board of directors for the services company. He will also appoint someone to serve as an adviser for the CEO search committee.

The breakup marks the completion of a strategic review that Xerox kicked off in October. A month later, Icahn revealed an initial investment in Xerox and said he would engage in talks with the company to discuss strategic alternatives. CEO Ursula Burns said Xerox had seen value in keeping its businesses together, but according to the Wall Street Journal, Xerox and Icahn ultimately agreed on splitting the company into two pieces.

Icahn has amassed a 9.12% stake in Xerox, making him the largest shareholder ahead of Vanguard. As of December, Icahn Enterprises (NASDAQ:IEP) held an 8.1% stake.

The billionaire investor has been a driving force behind several other recent spinoffs, such as media company Gannett (NYSE:GCI) and e-commerce giant eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY). Icahn also won a bidding war last month to acquire Pep Boys (NYSE:PBY).

Xerox said the new document technology company, which will contain its hardware business, recorded an estimated $11 billion in revenue last year. Xerox said 40,000 people work for the unit. Businesses services, with 104,000 employees, generated 2015 sales of $7 billion.

Also on Friday, Xerox closed the books on a fourth consecutive year of weaker earnings. Through Thursday, the stock was down 33% over the last 52 weeks, pushing Xeroxs market value to less than half its $20 billion in annual sales.
With the Iowa Caucus just four days away, seven Republican candidates took their final message to the main stage at the Fox News/Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) GOP Presidential Primary Debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Thursday.

This is the final debate before voters cast their ballots for the first-in-the-nation caucus.

According to Google, ISIS was the most searched foreign policy topic over the last year and one of the top issues contenders tackled during the debate.

First up, Senator Ted Cruz responding to critics that he talks tough about fighting terrorism with making statements such as carpet bombing ISIS into oblivion. Cruz voted against the Defense Authorization Act three years in a row in opposition of granting President Obama the authorization to enforce his red line in Syria. Cruz however didnt back down from his aggressive rhetoric.

I will apologize to nobody for the vigorousness with which I will fight terrorism, go after ISIS, hunt them down wherever they are, and utterly and completely destroy ISIS, said Ted Cruz. You claim it is tough talk to discuss carpet bombing. It is not tough talk. It is a different, fundamental military strategy than what we've seen from Barack Obama.

Cruz went on to explain that saturation bombing was a tactic used in the first Persian Gulf War that utterly destroyed the enemy.

Taking Cruzs strategy a step further, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said ISIS must be defeated militarily, and that will take overwhelming U.S. force.

Under President Obamas watch says Rubio, the military has been diminished, a tactic that is not helpful in the war on terror.

When I'm president, we are rebuilding the U.S. military because the world is a safer and a better place when America is the strongest military in the world, said Rubio.

Florida Governor, Jeb Bush who has criticized both Rubio and Cruz for their congressional voting records not authorizing military force, says the lessons from history have helped developed his terror plan.

The caliphate of ISIS has to be destroyed, which means we need to arm directly to Kurds, imbed our troops with the Iraqi military, re-engage with the Sunni tribal leaders, said Jeb Bush adding. Have a no fly zone in Syria and create safe zones to deal with the refugees. But, more importantly, to train a Sunni-led force in Syria to take out ISIS with our support.

Senator Rand Paul, who refused to participate in the last GOP debate in South Carolina, suggested a much different approach to combat ISIS. He says while the issue in Syria is a very important one bombing ISIS and Assad simultaneously is a really bad idea.

I've said for several years that arming the allies of ISIS will make the situation worse, that what we really need to do is defeat ISIS. But if you defeat Assad, what you will wind up with is a larger and more powerful ISIS that occupies that space, said Rand Paul. You might -- you may well see an ISIS that takes over all of Syria.

Former Ohio Governor John Kasich says success in the war on terror must include ground forces but he says that doesnt mean the United States should be the policemen of the world.

We want to destroy ISIS, it has to be in the air and on the ground. It has to be with our friends in the Arab world and our friends in Europe, the coalition that we had when we went to the first Gulf War, said Kasich. And then when we win that, and we will win that against ISIS as it settles down, and we should leave.

The topic of ISIS also turned to domestic terror in light of the San Bernardino terror attacks nearly a month ago. Marco Rubio who has advocated closing down mosques and other places where radicalization is occurring, stood by his stance.

Radical Muslims and radical Islam is not just hate talk. It's hate action. They blow people up. Look what they did in San Bernardino, said Rubio adding. We must keep America safe from this threat. And yes, when I am president of the United States, if there is some place in this country where radical jihadists are planning to attack the United States, we will go after them wherever they are, and if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo.
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Kimberly Tucci, the Australian mother whose maternity photos are going viral, announced the birth of her quintuplets on her Facebook page Thursday.

We are very happy to announce the birth of our 5 beautiful babies, born on the 28th of January and just shy of 30 weeks, Tucci wrote on Surprised by Five, where she has blogged about her pregnancy journey.

Birth AnnouncementWe are very happy to announce the birth of our 5 beautiful babies, born on the 28th of January and... Posted by Surprised by Five on Friday, January 29, 2016

Tucci and her husband, Vaughn, who share two daughters and live in Warnbro, Australia, had been trying for a third child, a boy, when they learned they had naturally conceived five children: four girls and one boy. Doctors estimate naturally conceiving quintuplets that is, without IVF or fertility drugs happens only about one in 55 million times.

Erin Hoskins, of Erin Elizabeth Photography, took Tuccis maternity photos, which were set on a western Australian beach. In the snapshots, Tucci dons neutral-colored, flowing gowns as she stands in the sand with waves crashing nearby, while touching her pregnant belly.

Kim has carried her babies all the way into the third trimester and five healthy babies are expected to arrive any day now, Hoskins wrote in the viral status, which she posted Tuesday Jan. 19 These photos were taken at 24 weeks and she could not be more beautiful...her strength just shines through in every image. A true goddess, indeed.

This absolutely stunning woman (or shall I say goddess??) is expecting not one, but FIVE babies. Yes, you read that... Posted by Erin Elizabeth Photography on Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The post had garnered nearly 60,000 likes and about 7,000 shares as of Friday morning.

Tucci wrote in her birth update that she and all five of her newborns were doing well. She also announced their names and birth weight:

Tiffany: 2.6 pounds

Penelope: 2.6 pounds

Beatrix: 2.7 pounds

Allie: 2.6 pounds

Keith: 2.8 pounds

In the Facebook post, Tucci also expressed her appreciation for her medical team as well as her doctor for their love and support during the pregnancy and delivery.

Thank you for giving me an exceptional birth! she wrote.
Brazil is losing the battle against the mosquito spreading the Zika virus, President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday, calling for a national effort to eradicate the insect.

"We do not have a vaccine for Zika yet. The only thing we can do is fight the mosquito," she told reporters during a visit to a command center for the Zika crisis.

The virus has been linked to thousands of cases of babies being born in Brazil with microcephaly - meaning they have abnormally small heads and brains that have not developed properly.

Rousseff said tests for the development of a vaccine will begin next week at the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil's leading biomedical research centers in Sao Paulo.

Experts say it could take years to come up with a vaccine for Zika given the lack of medical knowledge about the virus, though one leading developer said on Thursday that a vaccine for emergency use could be ready before year-end.

Rousseff called on Brazilians to eliminate still water in puddles and open storage tanks in their homes where the insect breeds. On Feb 13, more than 200,000 soldiers will join a nationwide effort to eliminate mosquito infestations.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries Zika also spreads the dengue virus, which infected 1.65 million people in Brazil last year, 863 of whom died, in the country's worst outbreak of the tropical disease.

Brazil eradicated the mosquito in the 1950s using chemicals that are now banned, officials said.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Frances Kerry and Paul Simao)
The more times a paramedic has witnessed or participated in treating cardiac arrest outside the hospital, the greater the next patient's odds of survival, according to a study from Australia.

"Cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death worldwide," said lead author Kylie Dyson of the school of public health and preventive medicine at Monash University in Melbourne.

"Ambulance Victoria attend approximately 5,000 cardiac arrests a year," Dyson said. "Due to the large service area and workforce, individual paramedics only treat around two cardiac arrests a year."

The researchers matched data from a cardiac arrest registry to an ambulance employment database for the years 2003 to 2012 in Victoria, Australia. They tallied each time a paramedic responding to a cardiac arrest had responded in the previous three years to one where resuscitation was attempted.

During the study period, more than 4,000 paramedics worked in the area and there were more than 48,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests, with resuscitation attempts in 44 percent of cases.

Half of the paramedics had been exposed to at least two cardiac arrests per year, while half had less experience; 11 percent of the paramedics had not been exposed to any cardiac arrest cases.

Half of treating paramedics who attempted to resuscitate an out of hospital cardiac arrest victim had responded to at least 11 cardiac arrests outside hospitals over the preceding three years.

About 7 percent of patients treated by paramedics who had experienced six or fewer cardiac arrests over the previous three years survived. That compared to 12 percent of those treated by paramedics who had responded to between seven and 11 cardiac arrests.

When treated by paramedics who had responded to up to 17 previous cardiac arrests or more, 14 to 17 percent of patients survived, according to the results published January 26 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

"Paramedics attend about 5,000 cardiac arrests every year across the state," said Anthony Carlyon, acting general manager for emergency operations for Ambulance Victoria, who was not part of the new study.

"Our cardiac arrest results are very impressive, with our survival rates among the world's best," Carlyon told Reuters Health in a statement. "About 30 percent of people whose heart is in a shockable rhythm survive, which is a 10-fold increase compared to survival rates in 1995."

Following a review, Ambulance Victoria is significantly increasing the number of hours dedicated to training for all paramedics annually, Carlyon added.

Resuscitation skills are complex and difficult to perform, and deteriorate rapidly over time for all professions, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, Dyson said.

"Our study indicates that paramedics may need six-monthly exposure or training to prevent skill decay and improve survival," Dyson told Reuters Health by email. "The results of our study are likely to have implications for other settings and other healthcare professionals as well."

In the Netherlands, paramedics are retrained in cardiac arrest every five years, said Dr. Jocelyn Berdowski of the Academic Medical Center University of Amsterdam.

"Preparing a resuscitation attempt on a real person is very different than practicing on a mannequin," Berdowski, who was not part of the new study, told Reuters Health by email. "My advice would be to take a refresher course (at least) once a year, and train realistic scenarios."

There's no way to increase actual paramedic exposure to cardiac arrest, but organizations could try formal debriefing after every cardiac arrest to ensure that paramedics learn from every case they treat, Dyson said.

"In addition to actual exposure, we could simulate cardiac arrest to give paramedics more opportunity to practice their skills," Dyson said.
A good Samaritan found and returned a stolen bike Thursday that belongs to a California teen with special needs.

ABC 7 reported earlier this week that the bike, which belongs to 13-year-old Damian Jeffries, of Burbank, Calif., had been stolen Saturday evening. Jeffries uses the $5,000 custom-made hand-and-foot bike because he has cerebral palsy, a chronic condition that affects body movement and muscle coordination.

Who would steal a handicapped kids bike? Jeffries told the news station Wednesday.

Surveillance video from Wednesday shows the thief walking through the lobby door of a building on Riverside Drive.

Thursday, abc7.com reported that a good Samaritan who had seen reports of the missing bike noticed it on the side of the road in Silver Lake, a central and northeastern part of Los Angeles thats about 10 miles south of Burbank.

The woman, who wasnt identified by name, reportedly loaded the bike into her vehicles trunk and called police, who then gave the bike back to Jeffries.

Police are still searching for the thief.

Allesha Jeffries, Damian Jeffries mother, previously told abc7.com that the bike helped her son feel more normal. Jeffries was born premature and has struggled with cerebral palsy all his life, but the young boy had defied the odds to enjoy everyday activities like children without the muscle disorder such as bike riding with the help of the device.

"It did make me feel like a normal kid because, like, almost every kid rides a bike or a skateboard, Jeffries told the news station.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Three Canadians who are infected with the Zika virus traveled to Colombia and El Salvador before their illness, a government health spokeswoman said on Friday.

Two are from the province of British Columbia and one is an Alberta resident, said Rebecca Gilman of the Canadian health department.

Gilman could not say when the people traveled or returned to Canada, nor confirm further details about them.

Canadian Health Minister Jane Philpott told reporters on Thursday that none of the cases were caused by transmission of the virus in Canada, and that local transmission should not be of concern to Canadians.

The mosquito-transmitted virus has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil. There is no proven vaccine or treatment. Philpott said the virus has spread through 21 countries.

Three Canadians who are infected with the Zika virus traveled to Colombia and El Salvador before their illness, a government health spokeswoman said on Friday.

Two are from the province of British Columbia and one is an Alberta resident, said Rebecca Gilman of the Canadian health department.

Gilman could not say when the people traveled or returned to Canada, nor confirm further details about them.

Canadian Health Minister Jane Philpott told reporters on Thursday that none of the cases were caused by transmission of the virus in Canada, and that local transmission should not be of concern to Canadians.

The mosquito-transmitted virus has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil. There is no proven vaccine or treatment. Philpott said the virus has spread through 21 countries.
A pregnant New York City woman was diagnosed with the Zika virus after visiting a country plagued by the mosquito-borne illness  the third confirmed case in the Big Apple, city health officials revealed Thursday.

None of the three adults has shown severe symptoms  but the pregnant woman could be at risk of her baby being born with microcephaly, a birth defect that results in a smaller than normal brain and head that health officials think may be linked to the virus.

New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett didnt specify where and when any of the infected had traveled but said New Yorkers must now be extra cautious when planning a trip to areas now struggling to contain the virus  Latin America and the Caribbean.

We can expect more cases because Zika is a widespread infection in many places that people commonly travel, she said at an afternoon press conference in City Hall. This might be a good winter to think about a vacation in the Catskills.

Bassett urged those who do travel to the affected regions to avoid mosquitoes by using repellent containing DEET and wearing protective clothing.

In particular, we want to advise that pregnant women  [and] women who are considering becoming pregnant  consider delaying travel to affected countries until we understand more about this virus infection, Bassett said.

The theory that Zika causes microcephaly was first aired in October when doctors in Brazil noticed more babies born with the devastating condition during an outbreak of the virus in that country.

Click for more from The New York Post.
We all know that youre not supposed to clean your ears with a Q-tip. And yet, people still do it all the time. Surely youve heard the horror stories about a friend of a friend of a friend piercing their eardrum (or maybe you watch Girls and have yet to scrub the memory of Hannahs Q-tip scene out of your head). But do you really know whats at stake? And how bad is it that no matter how many times youre told to stop you know that youre never going to drop the habit?

Here are the ear-cleaning dos, donts, and please-dont-but-if-you-dos you need to know.

OK, so first of all, you dont actually need to clean your ears.

Generally speaking, the ear canal is self-cleaning, Dr. Christopher Chang, an otolaryngologist in Warrenton, Virginia, told SELF. You really dont have to do a whole lot. In certain individuals, earwax can build up in the ear canaland you dont want it to build up to the point where you cant hear. But the majority of folks dont have to do anything.

That said, we know youre cleaning your ears with Q-tips, even though everyone says you shouldnt.

Everyone knows youre not suppose to use them, and yet everyone does it, Chang said. Im not going to get all bent out of shape if someone admits to using Q-tips. You just want to make sure that your ear is safe.

Related: 14 Sneaky Condom Mistakes You Should Never Make

The dangers of sticking a cotton swab into your ear are real. And theres a range of damage you can do.

The most basic issue is that using a Q-tip is probably doing the opposite of what its supposed to do. Your intention is to get earwax out, but youre probably just packing it deeper in there, which can plug up your ear canal and make you feel stuffy or itchy, or can interfere with your hearing. If the ear canal is totally blocked with wax you can get tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ear.

And dont think your doctor isnt going to notice, either. You can actually see the impression of the Q-tip on the earwax, when you look at it with a scope, Chang said. Busted.

The skin inside your ear canal is also really, really sensitive, so scraping around in there with a stick wrapped in cotton can scratch it, which leaves you open to ear infections. If an infection gets really bad you can get swimmers ear, which is when the skin swells up so much that it completely closes the ear canal. Its also really painful.

The worst thing you can do is to pierce the eardrum with the end of the Q-tip, which hurts like hell and can take weeks or months to heal (and thats assuming you dont also get some massive infection).

If you go too far down the ear canal with the swab, you can literally put a Q-tip-sized hole in your eardrum. Chang said that usually when he sees this its because the patient was cleaning her ear, and her boyfriend came into the bathroom, startling her and causing her to jerk her arm. Or she was multitasking and accidentally bumped her elbow into the wall.

The result: very sharp pain and bleeding. Hearing loss is not uncommon. The good news, according to Chang, is that the vast majority of the time the body will heal the hole closed on its own. Depending on how big the hole is, it may close up completely in a week. More severe cases can take a couple months to heal, and in the worst-case scenario, surgery is required. If it happens to you, call a doctor right away and definitely dont put any water in your ear because it could trigger an infection.

Related: The One Thing Hairstylists Wish Youd Stop Doing

So whats the right way to clean your ears?

If theres wax buildup thats bugging you, Chang recommends buying an ear syringe at the drugstore and flushing the ear gently with body-temperature water. (Water is a good enough solvent, and though getting water stuck in your ear is annoying, its really not dangerous, Chang said.) You can also use an ear bulb to suction stuff out, but theyre harder to clean. Hydrogen peroxide and other OTC solutions (like Debrox and Murine) are OK, but they can irritate and dry out your skin. Make sure you follow the directions carefully, and you should probably consult your doctor first.

(Dont even bother with ear candling. Chang is adamant that it doesnt do anything.)

Since no matter what we say, youre going to keep cleaning your ears with cotton swabs, heres how to do it without massacring yourself:

For one thing, be gentle. That soft cotton tip can leave grooves and scratches in the fragile skin. (And your doc will totally notice them and call you out.)

As a rule of thumb, Chang said not to put the swab in so far that you cant see the cotton anymore. The eardrum is only about 2 to 3 cm in from the opening of the ear canal. The first centimeter in is cartilage, which has a little give when you press against it, and the skin is slightly tougher there. After that, the canal is surrounded by bone. Theres no give there, and thats where the eardrum connects, so consider it the danger zone. Conveniently, the cotton head on a Q-tip is about 1 cm long, so stopping there ought to keep you relatively safe.

Of course, this doesnt mean that were condoning cleaning your ears this way. You should probably just leave them be, and go to an ENT if the wax situation is getting out of hand. But if you are going to practice aural penetration, we want you to be safe.

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It's about time. What am I talking about? The new Barbie. Yes, Barbie. Maker Mattel announcing today that the iconic doll will now come in three different body types as well as a variety of skin tones and hairstyles too. Check it out.

You will now be able to get tall, curvy and my personal favorite petite Barbie. Consumers can also buy the original Barbie too.

There will be a plethora of choices with those different shapes, from light skinned to darker, straight hair to curly.

Let me say it again! About time!

In a company statement the Mattel senior vice president and global general manager summed it up this way, We believe we have a responsibility to girls and parents to reflect a broader view of beauty.

Thank you. After decades of promoting unrealistic standards -- where Barbie looked photo shopped and fake even years before airbrushing even existed -- the new dolls will look a lot more like all the rest of us. That is undeniably "real".
Until recently, border security and immigration control were seen as two of the best frontline defenses against not just terrorism, but also threats to global health security such as infectious disease. But in todays global village, where the scale and speed of human migration is unprecedented in all directions, deadly pathogens know no boundaries.

Ultimately, if we want to keep the bugs at bay, we need to stop focusing all our attention on defending borders and instead look at how we can prevent outbreaks in the first place.

To understand how diseases can still pose a threat globally, consider measles, one of the most infectious diseases known to humanity  orders of magnitude more so than Ebola. It is possible to catch measles off someone just by entering the same room, even hours after they have left. Because of this, measles has become, in global health security terms, the proverbial canary in the coalmine.

Whenever and wherever measles outbreaks occur it tells us something is not working. Whether its in Liberia where devastating health systems have left children unvaccinated and vulnerable, or in Disneyland, California, where measles is only rarely fatal yet one-in-eight children are now nevertheless at risk; a measles outbreak is an indication of an underlying problem.

Thats because measles is so infectious it requires an extremely high level of immunization coverage to achieve widespread protection within a community  so-called herd immunity. For many common infectious diseases, around 80% to 85% of the population need to be immunized to prevent their spread.

But with measles, if vaccination coverage drops below 90% it is just a matter of time before an outbreak occurs. So effectively measles raises the bar in terms of the level of immunization required to ensure prevention.

There are a number of reasons why we might fall short of this mark, and why we see outbreaks all over the world. For example, in Sudan the cause is primarily a lack of access of humanitarian aid to people trapped in conflict zones, while in California it is because of anti-vaccine groups whipping-up unfounded fears about the safety of vaccines.

But while any outbreak, no matter how small, is capable of spreading the virus  as we saw just a few years ago when outbreaks in South America were triggered by cases exported from Europe  it is the wider communities with consistently low immunization coverage that help to perpetuate the existence of the virus.

That is why it is mainly in the very poorest and most vulnerable communities where we see the largest outbreaks, places where it is that much harder to ensure that all the pieces are in place to achieve and maintain high levels of immunization coverage.

And that is where we need to concentrate our attention if we want to prevent future outbreaks and make the world safer from infectious disease. Because the parts of the world that are missing out on measles vaccinations and routine immunization are also most likely missing out on other vital health interventions.

It is time for a new approach.

Addressing this is partly about improving health systems, which play a vital role in increasing universal health coverage, boosting access to health interventions and building resilience against public health threats, both in terms of logistics and by simply making people physically less vulnerable.

But this alone wont stop epidemics. For that countries also need better surveillance for rapid detection of public health threats, they need response plans, personnel who are trained to recognize threats and in-country laboratories that are capable of identifying diseases quickly.

The recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa provided clear evidence of this. The collapse of weak health systems may well have helped to exacerbate the outbreak, but it wasnt a lack of shiny new hospitals that allowed things to get out of control. Rather, it was the fact that it took nearly three months before a laboratory diagnosis could be confirmed, coupled with a lack of preparedness and the absence of a suitable response strategy.

So while it is true that a lack of health provision and vital public health services makes it tougher for poor countries to cope with epidemics, it is also true that the absence of these facilities and services creates conditions that are ripe for epidemics to occur in the first place.

By failing to address this reality we are effectively increasing the global health security threat. Ultimately what is needed is a radical shift in perspective; if we are to be successful in making the world safe and secure from the threat of pathogens, then we need to stop thinking of the spread of infectious disease as an invading force and instead see it for what it really is  a need for universal prevention.
It was encouraging to see George Stephanopoulos raise the issue of judicial appointments Sunday on ABC's This Week. "What kind of judges will you appoint? Will they be conservative? What does that mean to you and how will you ensure it?" he asked Donald Trump.

When Trump replied that he would "appoint conservative judges," Stephanopoulos asked for examples. Trump cited Justice Clarence Thomas and noted that Justice Roberts "turned out to be an absolute disaster because he gave us ObamaCare." Trump added that he would "work with people that I respect, conservative people" in selecting judicial nominees.

Because Donald Trump does not have any experience appointing judges, his best approach to the process would indeed be to rely heavily on the recommendations of respected conservatives in the legal community. Other GOP contenders have the legal background to take a more hands on approach.

There is no one right answer, but questioning the presidential candidates about judicial appointments is vitally important. Stephanopoulos did well, going beyond asking Trump what kind of judges he would appoint by prodding him for specific examples. Most importantly, he asked the Republican candidate how he would ensure that his judicial nominees are truly judicial conservatives.

The importance of that last question was emphasized last June with the most activist end of a Supreme Court term in recent memory, made possible by Republican Supreme Court appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

For the second time in three years, Chief Justice Roberts saved ObamaCare by rewriting the statute. At the same time, Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, rubbed salt in what was already deep wounds of conservative disappointment by further involving the government in the marriage business and discovering a cause of action for "disparate impact" discrimination in the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Regardless of your views on ObamaCare, marriage, and disparate impact theories of discrimination, those three decisions in June 2015 should be disturbing because they remind us that there are virtually no limits on the Supreme Court's power to act as "the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast," as Justice Scalia observed in the marriage case.

Over the past 50 years, a Democratic president has never failed to fill a Supreme Court vacancy with an appointee who was and remained a reliable liberal vote on the hot-button issues before the Court.

Roberts and Kennedy  along with retired Justices Stevens, Souter, and O'Connor  make it painfully clear that Republican presidents do not have the same record with respect to conservative appointees.

With several Supreme Court vacancies looming and hundreds of lower court appointments facing the next president, it is of utmost importance that the GOP presidential candidates articulate what procedures they would follow to ensure that the failures of past presidents are not repeated.

What is the best way to identify a nominee who will remain committed to conservative judicial principles and the constitutional limits on government if placed on the federal bench? I believe the core characteristic GOP presidents should look for is the courage and commitment to follow the Constitution and laws where they lead, even when they lead to an inconvenient, uncomfortable or politically incorrect place.

A long judicial record of constitutionalism  something Alito had but Roberts did not  is an important piece of evidence. But it is not the only predictor of judicial courage. That quality can be demonstrated on or off the bench.

Again, there is no single right answer. What's important for now is that we hear from all the GOP hopefuls about how they would approach the challenge of filling judicial vacancies. What specific steps will they take in selecting nominees? What characteristics will they look for? What questions will they ask potential nominees?
Airline passengers inch by me like sardines being shoved into a tiny tin. As always, the endless boarding march reminds me that despite my love of travel, they're spelling them wrong.

These are air-pains.

I turn to an older woman to my left in the middle seat of row 26. "So,where you headed?"

"Honolulu."

"With family?"

"No," she says in a way that suggests she's still convincing herself. "My husband of 33 years died one year ago and I'm remembering him with this trip to Hawaii. I always wanted to go, but he wasn't healthy enough, so I'm doing it alone."

"I'm so sorry," I choke, sounding like a frog with strep.

Soon both the plane and our conversation are off the ground. Between breaks for movies, small naps and smaller snacks, we discuss family, faith and forgiveness. They're lessons more valuable than the price of our tickets.

For nearly four hours Mary and I discover that God doesn't expect us to just look up for answers and inspiration, but to our left and right. And before her lifetime of wisdom slips by me in the jet stream, I ask permission to take notes.

My new friend Mary, 69, from Maryland, was married the first time when she was just 16 years old. Her husband was 17. After five years and three children, the couple divorced but remained remarkably close.

"We were just so young," she says. "And we both made mistakes. But we decided to forgive, no matter what. Christ requires that."

Years later, when her mother died and she was broke and still single, Mary called her former husband and he paid every penny of the services.

No strings. No expectations. No IOU.

"Forgiveness is powerful," she says. "We are close friends to this day."

In her 30s, she met a humble, handsome corporate chef named Louis walking down the sidewalk in Alexandria, Virginia.

"There was something about him," Mary says. "But after my first experience, I knew I wanted to do it different. Take our time."

Thirty years and two children later, Louis fell terminally ill and said a long goodbye.

"I miss him," she whispers. "In fact, I miss him more now than a year ago because I see how much I took for granted." She wipes her eyes and in sweet, almost reverent tones, she describes the empty left side of her bed. "I feel so lost."

I ask what advice she would have for newlyweds who aspire to a 33-year-marriage. "My advice is take your time. Get to know each other, keep getting to know each other even after you're married," she says. "I think young people think it's enough to fall in love."

"And don't get into debt! Louis taught me if you can't pay for it, you don't need it," she added. "He worked as a chef and drove a cab for a lot of years to pay the bills. By the time he retired, he owned rental properties and everything paid for. No debt."

Mary spoke of wisdom and the value of recognizing it in your spouse before they're gone. "I use his wisdom now, but I wish I'd used it so much more when he lived."

After another break, we chat about our faith. Mary is a lifelong Baptist with a deep love of Jesus Christ and a profound understanding of his life, ministry, sacrifice and the role of repentance in returning to live with him again.

"Imagine a world without grace," she preaches. She's troubled by people who believe church attendance alone qualifies them as Christians. "Going to church doesn't make me a disciple. If we really believe, we'll want to be like him."

In the next breath, now turning toward me and speaking passionately, she warns about judging others. "It's not our job. Heavenly Father does the judging," she says. "And the way we forgive and love reflects him."

Then, with a thump and a screech, we're on the ground. As we say goodbye, Mary suggests God puts his children together for a reason. "He's got something for us to learn every day," she says. "We just have to look up."

With a photo and a hug and her permission to write this column, we say goodbye. She admits to being scared about traveling alone to Hawaii and I give her my card and a promise of prayers on her behalf.

Watching her wind her way to a Honolulu-bound plane, I remember how many flights I've wasted buried in my iPhone, iPad and under my closed eyelids.

"I'm grateful I looked up," I say to myself as I walk off. "Even better, I'm glad I looked right and left."
After seven Republican presidential debates over the past five months, including Thursday nights turn in Des Moines, heres what we can say with certainty about Mondays vote in Iowa.

Its anyone guess.

We wont know, until then, whether Donald Trumps debate truancy was a stroke of anti-establishment genius or a self-inflicted wound.

Will the traditional model of preaching to the Hawkeye evangelical base (roughly three-fifths of 2012s GOP caucus-voters) change water to wine for Texas Sen. Cruz? Or, will Trump rewrite the rules with a historic turnout of first-time voters?

Most bothersome to the frontrunners (and the polling profession): is someone in the back of the pack going to spring a surprise and finish in Iowas top three?

One thing we do know: a relatively small number of supporters in Iowa  more people will attend Super Bowl L than vote for the Republican winner  can propel a candidate a long way.

Back in 1976, Jimmy Carter received only 10,764 votes, but ended up in the Oval Office. More Democrats actually voted uncommitted that year (they knew something it took the rest of the nation four years to figure out).

Here are six observations about this final pre-kickoff debate:

1. Life Without The Donald. Like relocating a mountain-climbing expedition to a lower base camp, the seven Republicans on the stage had more oxygen, more room to roam  and fewer bruising avalanches unleashed upon them. But lets be honest: it also wasnt as entertaining.

And thats a good thing.

The debate was arguably more dignified than the six gatherings and refreshingly devoid of condescending put-downs and juvenile mugging at the cameras  the hallmarks of Triumph the Insult Candidate.

2. Cruz, In Control  Maybe Too Controlled. One wonders if, at some point, he missed his frenemy, Trump.

Absent The Donald, Cruz had two challenges  a debate that was more a referendum on him (his consistencies, his electability); and no natural foil with whom to joust. Cruz didnt make any gaffes that would send his campaign into damage-control mode. Thats the good news for his supporters.

Still, without that antagonist, Cruz didnt seem quite the tactically clever, turn-on-a-dime debater hes been in past gatherings. At least he had the good sense to end the whining about too many attack questions with a joke about leaving the stage.

Overall, for Cruz, a break-even night.

3. The Rubio Razzing Fizzled. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio didnt shine, nor did he sour. Overall, he had a good night in this respect: he didnt receive any flak from Dr. Ben Carson, his rival for third place in Iowa; Jeb Bush took one run at his fellow Floridian on immigration consistencies.

Even there, Rubio caught a break as the issue got hacky-sacked between him, Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and finally New Jersey Chris Christie who called on the quarreling senators to stop the Washington bull.

In all, the most telling five minutes of the night as it underscored the GOP candidates troubles in navigating the shoals of conservative primaries and a more centrist national electorate.

Like Cruz, Rubio broke even. Bush had a better night  not coincidentally, free from Trumps scorn and ridicule. Ben Carson? His low-wattage demeanor wasnt much of a factor.

4. Rands Last Stand? As predicted here, Rand Paul was indeed a Trump Mini-Me in attacking Cruz time and again  Paul going after his Senate colleague his record on NSA privacy, immigration, and for not showing up for an audit-the-Federal Reserve.

Fox News Bret Baier asked about the latter in the context of why the younger Paul hasnt embraced his famously libertarian father (liberty voters), the third-place finisher in Iowa in 2012. Its one of many what-ifs to ponder once the primaries are over.

Paul had a good night  unfortunately, the sort of evening he needed five months ago

5. Was Kasich Facing East? Theres limber and then theres Ohios governor  one foot in Iowa, the other 1,300 miles to the east, in New Hampshire.

Kasich preached reform, balancing budgets, an optimistic attitude and the need to come together as a country  good-government, Kumbaya rhetoric tailored for the less conservative, voters-can-crossover electorate back east. By the way, its working just not in Iowa (Kasich has racked up seven New Hampshire newspaper endorsements).

On balance, a good night for Kasich as Iowa is largely irrelevant to his fortunes. The same for Christie, whos also all-in in New Hampshire.

6. Grimace-And-Bear-It Moments. Asked where hed cut federal spending, the entitlement-reforming Christie opted for defunding Planned Parenthood (he and Rubio have tussled over this topic, so this smacked of reassuring pro-life voters). Bush said he had no control over how his super PAC spends its money (no controlling legal authority wasnt Al Gores shining moment).

Surprisingly, the three moderators passed on the biggest gotcha question of em all for any Iowa Republican audience  why the GOP caucus winner rarely makes it to the White House (George W. Bush pulled it off in 2000, otherwise its a rather jarring record of futility these past four decades).

Hard to believe: all the speculation is about to give way to actual voting results.

Harder to believe: these same Republicans (maybe Trump too) will be debating a week from Saturday in New Hampshire.

For debate-viewers Thursday night, it was a respite from Trump but no respite from these debates.


New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie lashed out at Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Thursday, saying her use of a private email server put American intelligence officers at risk, and that she had been motivated by convenience.

"She did it for convenience, for her convenience," Christie said. "She put America's secrets at risk for her convenience. She put American intelligence officers at risk for her convenience.

He added: Hillary Rodham Clinton did that to our country she is not qualified to be president of the United States.

Christie, a former federal prosecutor who has made similar comments about Clinton in the past, argued he would be the best candidate to square off against Clinton in a general election.

Christie is among the seven top-polling Republican candidates on the prime-time stage in Des Moines, Iowa.

Thursdays Fox News/Google debate is the final opportunity candidates will have before the Iowa caucuses Monday.
Tensions between Republican presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio erupted over immigration and more Thursday night during the Fox News/Google debate, as the campaigns tried to put aside their battles with front-runner Donald Trump -- "the elephant not in the room who chose to boycott -- and focus on the issues, and their Democratic rivals.

While the Iowa debate assumed a somewhat more subdued tone without Trump, Cruz and Rubio got into a barbed dispute over amnesty in the second half of the debate.

Rubio accused Cruz of falsely describing himself as the most conservative candidate, and changing his position on immigration.

This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, the Florida senator said. Throughout this campaign, youve been willing to say and do anything in order to get votes.

He said Cruz used to talk about bringing immigrants out of the shadows, and, now, you want to trump Trump on immigration.

The Texas senator flipped the allegation, saying it is Rubio who vowed to fight against amnesty and then reversed course for political expediency.

I like Marco, hes very charming, hes very smooth, Cruz said, before accusing him of siding with donors in the immigration debate.

The exchanges came at the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

For the first time, Trump was not on the debate stage, instead hosting a veterans event nearby in Des Moines. He boycotted the Iowa showdown over complaints about Fox News and co-moderator Megyn Kelly.

His absence gave other candidates more time, though, to engage the issues and each other.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie interjected during the Rubio-Cruz spat to tout his status as a Washington outsider.

"This is why you need to send someone outside of Washington to Washington," he said. "Stop the Washington bull and let's get things done."

Cruz and Rubio also tangled over who would be tougher on the Islamic State, and the rancor even spilled out into tensions between the candidates and the moderators.

At one point, Cruz complained about the moderators urging the candidates to attack each other, and half-jokingly threatened to leave the stage if they asked another mean question.

Rubio mocked those comments, telling the moderators: First of all, Im not leaving the stage no matter what you ask me.

Rubio also questioned Cruz record on supporting the military, moments after Cruz said hed utterly and completely destroy ISIS.

The only budget that Ted has ever voted for was a budget that Rand Paul sponsored that brags about cutting defense spending, Rubio said.

Cruz, though, doubled down on comments that hed carpet bomb the enemy, saying that's what was done in the first Iraq war.

Meanwhile, the candidates dispatched with their Trump comments at the very beginning of the debate.

After Cruz was asked to address the elephant not in the room, he quipped: Im a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly  now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way.

Jeb Bush, who used to take the brunt of Trump's debate attacks, also joked about Trumps absence. I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me. Weve always had such a loving relationship  during these debates and in between.

Bush later sparred as well with Rubio on immigration. Bush said Rubio sponsored the gang of eight bill that allowed for legalization, but then he cut and run because it wasnt popular with conservatives.

The debate marked a particular opportunity for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul  who did not qualify for the recent Fox Business Network debate but returned to the prime-time stage Thursday after making the cut this time.

"It's great to be back," Paul said Thursday.

Paul, despite struggling with low poll numbers, seemed to have plenty of supporters in the audience, as his responses drew applause from the crowd several times. He also took shots at both Cruz and Rubio on their records.

Echoing Cruz' criticism, he said Rubio made a deal with Democrats on immigration and suggested he was weak on border security.

At the same time, Paul suggested Cruz was being disingenuous by claiming he was never for "amnesty." He said Cruz has an "authenticity problem."

Also on stage Thursday night were retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Carsons standout moment seemed to come at the end of the debate, when he used his closing statement to recite the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Please think of our founding fathers as you listen, Carson asked. After reading aloud the Preamble -- including its call for a more perfect union  he said, Folks, its not too late. Enough said.

Kasich pitched himself as a problem-solver, once again pointing to his record as Ohios governor.

At the end of the day, Im an optimist, because Ive seen so many things get accomplished in my lifetime, and we can do it again together, he said.

Four candidates also participated in the earlier, 7 p.m. ET debate: Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum; and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.

Santorum and Huckabee, following the evening debate, attended the veterans event that Trump hosted nearby.

After Trumps rally, Fox News released a statement saying Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes had three brief conversations with the Republican candidate Thursday about possibly appearing at the debate.

Trump offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that FOX News contribute $5 million to his charities, a Fox News spokesperson said. We explained that was not possible and we could not engage in a quid pro quo, nor could any money change hands for any reason. In the last 48 hours, we've kept two issues at the forefront  we would never compromise our journalistic standards and we would always stand by our journalist, Megyn Kelly. We have accomplished those two goals and we are pleased with the outcome.

The polls in the Hawkeye State show essentially a two-man race for first between Trump and Cruz in the final stretch. Rubio has been holding steady in third position, while Carsons numbers have been on a downward course in recent weeks.

After Iowa, the candidates head to New Hampshire, where Trump also leads but several other candidates are jockeying for position behind him.

The debate Thursday was moderated by Fox News anchors Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.
The lower-polling Republican candidates took aim at Hillary Clinton, the media and the GOP establishment at the first of two primary debates Thursday night  with Carly Fiorina launching a fiery attack against the Democratic front-runner.

Fiorina went after Clinton on everything from Benghazi to her email scandal to husband Bill Clinton.

She is trying for the White House, shes probably more qualified for the big house  Shes escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo. Perhaps Sean Penn should interview her. The woman should be prosecuted, Fiorina said.

She even took a swipe at the Clinton marriage, saying of Bill Clinton, If my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago.

While Fiorina was forceful on stage, the surprise of the evening might have been former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, whose unexpected return to the GOP debate stage also grabbed him some much-needed attention on social media.

Gilmore, who only started campaigning in Iowa this week, delivered a one-two Donald Trump punch. Gilmore said he's the only veteran in this race and then criticized Trump for holding a faux veterans fundraiser across town. He also staked out his positions on security and other matters.

The attacks were all part of an aggressive evening debate, preceding the prime-time debate with seven higher-polling candidates.

Rick Santorum also lashed out at the media Thursday for its slim coverage of low-polling candidates like himself -- and extensive coverage of Trump -- during the Fox News/Google evening debate in Iowa.

Santorum took issue with the fact that lower-polling candidates were not given the same amount of air time and said Iowans should vote for someone who would work for them, not entertain them  referring to Trump.

Despite that comment, Santorum later said he would not attack other candidates.

Santorum also objected to the use of the term "undercard" to describe the evening debates, and said all candidates deserve to be heard on "equal footing."

Santorum, alongside Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Gilmore, squared off in Des Moines in search of a game-changing moment.

Fiorina also attacked the media for its coverage of the debates and called for citizens to take our country back.

"The establishment thinks they own this country, the pundits think they own this country, the media thinks they own this country," Fiorina said.

Fiorina defended her record running Hewlett-Packard, which has come under intense scrutiny. She called it a tough time for the technology industry and said she had to make some tough calls.

Huckabee fired off on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders  a presidential contender who calls himself a Democratic socialist.

I honestly dont understand how anybody with (an) IQ above plant life would honestly think that we would be better off if we let the government have all of the private property and that the government would dole out what they thought we should have, he said. Im not feeling the Bern.

Thursdays debate is the final one before Mondays Iowa caucuses.

Two candidates  Santorum and Huckabee -- are themselves past Iowa caucus winners.

But Santorum, who won the caucuses four years ago, has struggled this time around to strike a chord with voters. So has Huckabee, who won the contest in 2008. The crowded Republican race has instead been dominated in the state by Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Instead of sold-out venues, Santorum spent Wednesday chatting up members of the Red Hat Society at Mason City Pizza Ranch. Santorum told reporters at the event he was fine with a smaller crowd.

The next stop, there may be five, he said. And Im okay with that. Well just do whatever we can to get in front of as many people as we can and hopefully make a difference out there.

This was Gilmore's first time on any debate stage in months.

He appeared in the very first evening debate back in August -- but failed to qualify for the next five. He scored 1 percent in a recent Fox News poll, which qualified him for Thursdays first matchup of the evening.

Gilmore had not appeared in Iowa to campaign until a week ago.

Following the debate, Huckabee and Santorum say they'll head to Trumps special event for veterans rally in Des Moines. Trump, who is the GOP frontrunner, said earlier this week he would not attend the Fox News main stage debate.

Gilmore said he would not attend.

Im not going to attend any Donald Trump [event] across town, on any sort of faux veteran sort of issue.
Two hours before Thursday night's Fox News debate, I was in constant conversations with GOP operatives, Fox anchors and other journalists, all asking the same question: Would Donald Trump show up after all?

He didnt, of course, but that shows how crazy the environment has been in Des Moines.

Megyn Kelly, the target of Trumps ire, kicked off the debate by asking Ted Cruz about The Donalds absence. Cruz used some canned humor, describing himself as a maniac, saying everyone else on the stage was stupid and ugly and that Ben Carson was a bad surgeonand now that weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way.

Marco Rubio also took a swipe, saying the election was not about Trump, even though hes the greatest show on earth.

Jeb Bush said everyone else was in the witness protection program when I went after Donald Trump.

Trump was across town at a veterans event, but his spirit hung over the debate hall.

To add to the surreal atmosphere, Fox put out a statement about Trump's claims in the opening minutes of the debate. More on that later.

By far the most confrontational moment came when Kelly played Rubio a series of videos of past comments on immigration and asked whether he had changed his position. Rubios voice grew louder as he said there was no way to deport 12 million illegal immigrants but that first the country needed border enforcement.

Bush backed Rubios previous attempt at an immigration compromise, but then accused the senator of having cut and run.

Then Cruz got the video treatment as Fox aired a series of seemingly conflicting statements on immigration.

Was that all an act? It was pretty convincing, Kelly said.

Cruz insisted he was only trying to fix problems with the 2013 Gang of Eight bill. Moments later he said Rubio chose to stand with Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

This is the lie that Teds campaign has [been] built on, Rubio shot back before Chris Christie threw a jab at both men by saying a governor doesnt engage in parliamentary doubletalk: Stop the Washington bull.

Earlier, Cruz strongly defended himself after a question about whether carpet bombing ISIS was unrealistic, saying the United States has done it before. Rubio countered with a passionate denunciation of ISIS and chided Cruz for supposedly being unwilling to vote for adequate defense spending.

Chris Wallace drew boos with a question to Bush about criticizing his brothers invasion of Iraq. Cruz complained that the previous four questions had been invitations for other candidates to attack him. It is a debate, sir, Wallace said in response.

It was a substantive debate that ranged from terrorism and immigration and ObamaCare to home-state liabilities and scandals. Cruz and Rubio were, as usual, the best debaters on the stage, but spent their time counterpunching. Christie had his moments, and Bush was more forceful than in any previous faceoffwhere has this guy been?

Except for the moderators prodding them into heated exchanges on immigration, the candidates mostly refrained from attacking each other. This may have reflected Trumps absence, but also perhaps a sense that personal assaults could be counterproductive among Iowa voters just days before the caucuses.

Cruz seemed stronger when he and Trump used each other as foils. He didnt find an antagonist on the stage to bring out his college debating skills.



Im tempted to say Cruz was the winner by default, since he is neck and neck with Trump in the Iowa polls and wasnt left bloodied by the debate, as his team feared he might be. But it was an off night for him. Rubio did slightly better, but he too was bruised by the intense back-and-forth on immigration. Christie seemed to overreach when he said as a former prosecutor he could put Hillary Clinton in jail. Perhaps there were no winners.

Or maybe the winner was Trump, by creating an alternative narrative.

Speaking of the Trump melodrama, in the minutes before the debate began, CNN aired an interview that Brianna Keilar conducted on the flight to Des Moinesand it was all about Fox.

In the course of defending his decision not to debate, Trump said a top person at Fox had just called him to apologize and couldnt have been nicer, but it was too late for him to change his mind. He also said this wasnt about Megyn Kelly, although he criticized her again to Keilar.

Fox took the unusual step of putting out a statement during its own debate, saying CEO Roger Ailes had three brief conversations with Trump on Thursday.

We acknowledged his concerns about a satirical observation we made in order to quell the attacks on Megyn Kelly, and prevent her from being smeared any further, the statement said.

Furthermore, Trump offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that FOX News contribute $5 million to his charities. We explained that was not possible and we could not engage in a quid pro quo, nor could any money change hands for any reason. In the last 48 hours, we've kept two issues at the forefront  we would never compromise our journalistic standards and we would always stand by our journalist, Megyn Kelly. We have accomplished those two goals and we are pleased with the outcome.



We got a glimpse here in Iowa of what the campaign would look like had Donald Trump stayed on the sidelines. But it was a brief glimpse, and it looks like no candidate on the stage improved his standing against the front-runner.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are competing fiercely for an Iowa win next week  but for all the attention on the first-in-the-nation caucuses, the key to victory lies more in the battle for delegates.

While an Iowa or New Hampshire win brings headlines and donations, the nominee will ultimately be the candidate who can best navigate that less-visible, more complex delegate game that stretches well beyond early-primary balloting.

The endgame is simple enough. The candidate who gets 1,237 of 2,472 delegates wins the nomination.

However, the process each state uses to award those delegates  including how candidates can claim them at the GOP convention  is a based on a hodgepodge of dizzying rules.

They are rules that must be mastered to win.

The rules of the delegate process matter enormously, The Weekly Standards Jay Cost told Fox News.

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that the nominating process essentially is over after the balloting in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada ends in late February.

Iowa only represents about 1 percent of delegates, said Lisa Boothe, conservative commentator and president of High Noon Strategies.

Still ahead is Super Tuesday when Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas (with 155 delegates) and others vote March 1.

And the contests continue all the way into June. More than half of all delegates are allocated after March 15, with 172 of them at stake in California on June 7 alone, the final 2016 GOP primary day.

All of that means candidates who can at least compete in the early states and keep the campaign donations coming long enough could mount a late-stage surge. With some delegate-heavy states voting later, they offer hope to candidates who struggle out of the gate.

But the rules vary.

Consider, only eight states are winner-take-all, meaning all the delegates go to the plurality winner of that states primary or caucus.

Other states divvy up their delegates proportionally, under different formulas, or award most  but not all  of their delegates to the winner.

Josh Putnam, a University of Georgia political science professor and creator of the website frontloading.blogspot.com which breaks down the delegate game, explained that the state-of-play will largely be determined by polling, fundraising and organization, and endorsements  in turn affecting delegate tallies.

Eleven candidates are not all viable, said Putnam. Trying to assess the impact of the delegates relies on this matrix.

The modern-day nominating process started after the 1968 election, when the McGovern Frazier Commission tried to tie it to voter choices at primaries and caucus, not convention wheeling and dealing.

The Republican National Committee altered the delegate appointment process this year  and shortened the primary season, after arguing that a drawn-out process contributed to Mitt Romney losing in 2012 to President Obama.

The changes essentially focus on primaries in early March, in which delegates will be proportionally allocated based either on the statewide primary/caucus vote or on the combination of the statewide and congressional district votes.

Obama expertly played delegate chess in the 2008 race against Hillary Clinton. Despite Clinton appearing to narrowly win the popular vote in that primary battle, Obama racked up delegates in caucus states  and benefited from Clinton-backing states being penalized for violating party vote rules.

By early June, Obama essentially had enough delegates to win the nomination.

FoxNews.coms Joseph Weber contributed to this report.
The Fox News/Google Republican debate played out not only on Fox News Channel, but also online as voters across the country searched, reacted and commented in real-time to what the candidates were saying.

The graphic below, produced by Google Trends, shows real-time search interest in each candidate. Businessman and front-runner Donald Trump was the leader in that regard, despite (or perhaps because of) his decision not to appear at the debate.

Trump consistently was the most searched candidate throughout the debate. Fighting for second place were Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, with occasional appearances by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

In the early 7 p.m. debate, both former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum saw significant spikes in search interest.

As for what voters wanted to know, the questions were varied and often bizarre.

For former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, voters were interested in his net worth and how much time he has left in office.

Meanwhile for Santorum, many people searching for him seemed to think he has already left the race, with the top trending question being Who did Rick Santorum endorse?

The debate Thursday, with 12.5 million viewers, was the second-highest rated telecast in Fox News history.

Click here for more Google Trends.
The Iowa caucuses will be held Monday, the first-in-the-nation test for the 2016 presidential candidates.

Which begs the question: how does a caucus work?

A caucus -- a type of vote held in several states, and not just Iowa -- is more complex than a simple primary. Rather than checking a box for a specific candidate, caucus-goers on Feb. 1 will dive into a more interactive process.

In the case of the Democratic caucuses, Iowans may be required to give up a few hours or more of their evening. Getting in and out of a caucus venue quickly is not a realistic expectation. That is why good campaigns are measured by their "ground game" -- which involves getting people to caucus sites.

When voters arrive at the caucus site at 7 p.m. local time, they will be asked to congregate in their preferred candidate's corner.

Caucus captains will make speeches and lobby to entice voters over to their side.

Typically, if a campaign's group cannot attract at least 15 percent of the total caucus-goers in the room, the group's members either leave or join one of the other, larger groups.

Eventually, the final tally is divided among the campaigns, once voters are firmly in a corner and all "unviable" candidates are weeded out. The candidate with the most, wins.

The final tally is then forwarded to the state party. This year, the Democrats also are allowing "tele-caucusing" via satellite for military voters, students and other Iowans living abroad who cannot attend the events in person.

The GOP contest is more straightforward.

Voters go to one of the caucus sites beginning at 7 p.m. local time. There, local party precinct captains -- and perhaps in some cases the candidates themselves -- will be allowed to make brief speeches to persuade voters over to their side. Then paper balloting begins.

The results will be handed over to the state party, which will turn them over to the news media.

Voters in the Republican caucus must be registered with the party, and only registered Democrats can vote in that caucus. However, there will be same-day registration available for both parties at the nearly 1,700 caucus sites across the state.
Missouri lawmakers are debating a bill that would allow concealed weapons on college campuses -- drawing sharp criticism from opponents who claim the measure would make places of higher education less safe.

A Senate committee began hearing testimony Wednesday on a bill that would only allow campuses to ban concealed weapons if the school posts armed guards and metal detectors at every entrance to every campus building.

Bill sponsor Sen. Brian Munzlinger, a Republican, said mass shooters can kill many people in the time it takes for police to arrive, arguing that law-abiding citizens with proper training can save lives in that situation.

"If you look at all of the mass shootings, those individuals have targeted gun free zones," Munzlinger told FoxNews.com Thursday.

Under current law, a concealed carry permit does not allow a person to carry concealed firearms into any higher education institution without the consent of the governing body of the institution or a school official.

Munzlinger's bill, "requires the Department of Public Safety to grant an exemption for a higher education institution if the institution can demonstrate the permanent placement of security personnel and electronic weapons screening devices at each entrance to any building on the property, a requirement that security personnel screen each person entering the building for weapons, and a requirement that any weapons found be held by security personnel while the person is in the building."

Munzlinger, however, called armed guards and metal detectors a "very pricey alternative" and "one I hope they dont have to take."

Allowing concealed carry weapons on campuses, "won't stop every instance but it certainly would stop the duration and more people will live," Munzlinger told FoxNews.com.

Munzlinger said the very act of allowing those with concealed permits to carry guns will act act as a deterrant for possible future shootings.

"Maybe your deranged killer or your terrorist wont target those places if they know its not a gun free zone," he said.

Royce Barondes, an associate professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, filed a lawsuit challenging his university's gun ban.

"Common sense tells us that people who commit crimes with guns are not deterred by gun-free zones. In fact, they are attracted to them because they know the law-abiding people there will be unable to defend themselves," the Bukowsky Law Firm, which represents Barondes, writes on its website.

"Royce holds a valid CCW permit, has extensive training in the lawful use and safe handling of firearms, and even teaches Firearms Law at the law school. Disarming him does not make campus safer," the firm argues.

Many school officials, however, remain steadfast in their opposition to allowing guns on campus.

Missouri State University President Clif Smart said binge drinking and mental health crises are more common in college, and adding more guns to that mix would be a bad idea.

In written testimony obtained by FoxNews.com, Smart argued before the Senate committee that the school's senior administrative team regularly does, "table top simulations on active shooter scenarios and other emergencies."

"Unlike the law in some other states, current law in Missouri allows 19 year olds to get a CCW permit," Smart told the committee. "That means that if these bills are passed, we will see a dramatic landscape shift on our campuses."

Among Smart's concerns is the rate of suicide on college campuses.

"Multiple studies have shown that suicide rates increase when access to guns increases," he said. "I am concerned that allowing students to have firearms on campus will increase the already-too-high rate of suicide on college campuses."

Smart also voiced apprehension over allowing guns in places where binge drinking is common.

"About 50 percent of college students binge drink, and studies show that intoxicated people are much more likely to engage in acts of violence than sober people," he noted. "I am worried that adding guns will turn the fist-fights into gun fights."

FoxNews.com's Cristina Corbin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Obama administration plans to require large employers to peel back the curtain on how much they pay men and women in a push to narrow long-standing earning gaps between the genders.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will roll out details of the plan Friday to begin gathering a summary of pay data from employers with 100 or more workers.

The data will be used to identify employers that may be engaging in pay discrimination so that the agency can target its enforcement resources where problems may be likeliest to exist. The proposal would cover more than 63 million U.S. workers, according to the White House.

The plan, which will be open to public comment but wont require legislative approval, is part of a broad effort undertaken by President Obama and federal agencies to close a persistent wage gap between men and women.

Soon after taking office, Obama convened a national task force to address the issue, requesting greater coordination among agencies and more aggressive enforcement efforts.

Despite those efforts, across all professions, women earn about 79 cents for every dollar earned by menonly 2 cents greater than when Mr. Obama took office.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
EXCLUSIVE: The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clintons emails too damaging" to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

The determination was first reported by Fox News, hours before the State Department formally announced Friday that seven email chains, found in 22 documents, will be withheld in full because they, in fact, contain Top Secret information.

The State Department, when first contacted by Fox News about withholding such emails Friday morning, did not dispute the reporting  but did not comment in detail. After a version of this report was first published, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press that the seven email chains would be withheld. The department has since confirmed those details publicly.

The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton's personal server.

Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from "special access programs," or SAP, which is considered beyond Top Secret. A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that "several dozen emails containing classified information were determined to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels."

The State Department is trying to finish its review and public release of thousands of Clinton emails, as the Democratic presidential primary contests get underway in early February.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, there is an exemption that allows for highly sensitive, and in this case classified, material to be withheld in full -- which means nothing would be released in these cases, not even heavily redacted versions, which has been standard practice with the 1,340 such emails made public so far by the State Department.

According to the Justice Department FOIA website, exemption B3 allows a carve-out for both the CIA and NSA to withhold "operational files." Similar provisions also apply to other agencies.

Fox News reported Friday that at least one Clinton email contained information identified as "HCS-O," which is the code for intelligence from human spying.

One source, not authorized to speak on the record, suggested the intelligence agencies are operating on the assumption there are more copies of the Clinton emails out there, and even releasing a partial email would provide enough clues to trace back to the original  which could allow the identification of special access programs intelligence.

There was no comment to Fox News from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or the agency involved. Fox News has chosen not to identify the agency that provided sworn declarations that intelligence beyond Top Secret was found in the Clinton emails.

The State Department was scheduled to release more Clinton emails Friday, while asking a D.C. federal court for an extension.

FBI investigators looking into the emails are focused on the criminal code pertaining to gross negligence in the handling and storage of classified information, and public corruption.

The documents alone in and of themselves set forth a set of compelling, articulable facts that statutes relating to espionage have been violated, a former senior federal law enforcement officer said. The source said the ongoing investigation along the corruption track also stems from her tenure of secretary. These charges would be inseparable from the other charges in as much as there is potential for significant overlap and correlation."

Based on federal regulations, once classified information is spilled onto a personal computer or device, as was the case with Clinton and her aides, the hardware is now considered classified at the highest classification level of the materials received.

While criticized by the Clinton campaign, McCullough, an Obama administration appointee, was relaying the conclusion of two intelligence agencies in his letter to Congress that the information was classified when it hit Clintons server -- and not his own judgment.

Joseph E. Schmitz, a former inspector general of the Department of Defense, called the attacks on McCullough a shoot the watchdog tactic by Clintons campaign.

The developments, taken together, show Clinton finding herself once again at the epicenter of a controversy over incomplete records.

During her time as the first female partner at the Rose Law firm in Arkansas during the mid-1980s, she was known as one of the three amigos and close with partners Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster. Hubbell ended up a convicted felon for his role in the failure of the corrupt Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan which cost taxpayers more than $65 million. Hubbell embezzled more than a half-million dollars from the firm.

Foster killed himself in Washington, D.C., in July 1993. As Clintons partner in the Rose Law firm, he had followed the Clintons into the White House where he served as the Clintons personal lawyer and a White House deputy counsel.

Clintons missing Rose Law billing records for her work for Guaranty during the mid-1980s were the subject of three intense federal investigations over two years. Those records, in the form of a computerized printout of her work performed on behalf of Guaranty, were discovered under mysterious circumstances in the Book Room of the private White House living quarters.

The discovery of those records was announced during a blizzard in January 1996 by attorney David Kendall, who still represents Hillary Clinton. After Clinton testified before a grand jury, prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt she committed perjury or obstruction of justice.

Despite Clintons recent public statements about not knowing how the technology works, at least one email suggests she directed a subordinate to work around the rules. In a June 2011 email to aide Jake Sullivan, she instructed him to take what appeared to be classified talking points, and "turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure."

A State Department spokesman could not say whether such a fax was sent.
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RAMBUNCTIOUS DEBATE SCRAMBLES IOWA RACE

DES MOINES, IOWA  Ted Cruz got a taste of frontrunner status in Thursdays debate and he likely didnt find it too relishing.

Given Donald Trumps decision to skip the Republicans only Iowa debate, the Texas senator found himself not only on the receiving end of more tough questions from moderators, he also became the biggest target on the stage for his rivals.

The good news for Cruz is that in the early going of the debate he took full advantage  and quite effectively  of the opportunity provided by Trumps snub. Aside from being funny about Trumps penchant for insults, Cruz paid plain deference to the demanding caucus-goers of Iowa.

In Cruzs bid to be the consensus conservative choice nationally, his performance was uneven. Aside from overusing his debate device of complaining about the questions, Cruz also found himself too much on the defensive. It was hardly dire, but it was clear evidence of how much harder life is for Cruz outside of Trumps shadow.

As it is every four years, Iowa is proving unpredictable in the closing days before the caucuses. Polls show plenty of entropy in the GOP electorate in Iowa.

Thats cause for both hope and concern for Cruz.

Trumps decision not only to skip the lone Iowa debate but also to leave the state for New Hampshire immediately after doing so will hurt him with Iowa voters who take pride in their place at the front of the line.

That means Trumps voters may decide to rally to Cruzs cause, and he certainly made his case to them on Thursday.

However, it also means that third place Marco Rubio has a chance to move up.

There are a lot more voters up for grabs in Iowa than the parroting parrots of the press would have you think. And while Cruz has been Steady Teddy when it comes to Iowa, the chaos of the race here at this moment will test his status as the early choice of many in the Hawkeye State.

Rubio did not have his best debate performance in Des Moines, especially because his eternal antagonist, Jeb Bush, found a new energy with his own nemesis Trump off the stage. Bush took his pep pills for the debate and managed hit Rubio harder than before.

But Rubio also did himself well. As a young senator, Rubio faces one major obstacle: proving he is ready to be commander in chief. He showed several moments of presidential-level command Thursday.

Obviously, Rubio has plenty of work to do in convincing supporters of Bush, Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., and other lower tier candidates that the is the man for the job. Rubios range is expanding as the stakes go up. He has more to worry about from Bush than before, but Rubio has taken another step forward in uniting a substantial chunk of his party.

But the big question as it relates to Iowa is whether Trump can succeed in remaking the electorate. Trumps coalition relies on importing plenty of independents and Democrats into GOP caucuses and turning out lots of first-time caucus-goers.

Put simply, if turnout looks like past cycles, Trump will have an unhappy start to his 2016 delegate hunt. But if Trump can do what Barack Obama did with Iowa Democrats in 2008, Trump can notch back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire to start February.

We have not seen the kind of change in voter registration numbers that foreshadowed Obamas stunner, but Trumps performance in polls is impossible to ignore. Also impossible to ignore, however, are the intensifying attacks on his record.

Either way, this is an unsettled electorate.

Rubio remains a long shot for a win here, but with this much uncertainty in Iowa, a surprise second-place finish might be in reach.

And for Cruz, both a commanding win and a disappointing finish remain very real possibilities.

IOWA POLL CHECK

Real Clear Politics Average

Iowa GOP caucus  Trump 31.8 percent; Cruz 24.8 percent; Rubio 14 percent; Carson 8 percent

Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.
If theres one message the Republican presidential candidates not named Donald Trump aimed to get across at the final debate before Iowas caucuses, it was this: 50 states still have to vote, and a lot could change when they do.

We're just starting. The first vote hasn't been counted. Why don't we let the process work? Jeb Bush said in Des Moines.

The GOP contenders are barnstorming the Hawkeye State Friday on the heels of the Fox News/Google debate, where Trumps absence put a spotlight on candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio  but also gave the races underdogs a chance to engage on the issues, and even capture airtime that eluded them when the front-runner was onstage.

Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, in particular, were getting high marks Friday from analysts. The former Florida governor was seen as having one of his best debate performances of the campaign -- including pointed criticism of his former protege Rubio -- perhaps benefiting from not having to worry about Trump belittling his every comment. And Paul, after missing the cut in the last debate, returned to the main stage with a firm critique of his rivals alleged inconsistencies on immigration, surveillance and more.

In Iowa, those candidates may simply be too far behind in the polls for a strong debate showing to make much difference.

But the night helped show that few candidates are conceding anything to front-runner Trump, or the other two top-polling candidates, Cruz and Rubio.

Asked Friday if he changed any minds at the debate, Bush said, I hope so.

We had a substantive debate, Bush said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, too, played the role Thursday of disenchanted Washington outsider, scolding the Florida and Texas senators after an immigration spat and quipping that he needed a Washington dictionary to decipher what they were saying.

"This is why you need to send someone outside of Washington to Washington," Christie said. "Stop the Washington bull and let's get things done."

With Trump out of the picture  boycotting the debate over complaints about Fox News, instead hosting a veterans event nearby  Cruz absorbed much of the criticism from the other GOP candidates.

He and Rubio tangled the most, as Rubio tries to make up ground against Cruz in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

In their most heated exchange, Rubio accused Cruz of falsely describing himself as the most conservative candidate, and changing his position on immigration.

This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, the Florida senator said. Throughout this campaign, youve been willing to say and do anything in order to get votes.

He said Cruz used to talk about bringing immigrants out of the shadows, and, now, you want to trump Trump on immigration.

The Texas senator flipped the allegation, saying it is Rubio who vowed to fight against amnesty and then reversed course for political expediency.

I like Marco, hes very charming, hes very smooth, Cruz said, before accusing him of siding with donors in the immigration debate.

Bush later sparred as well with Rubio on immigration. Bush said Rubio sponsored the gang of eight bill that allowed for legalization, but then he cut and run because it wasnt popular with conservatives.

The debate marked a particular opportunity for Paul  who did not qualify for the recent Fox Business Network debate but returned to the prime-time stage Thursday after making the cut this time.

"It's great to be back," Paul said Thursday.

Paul, despite struggling with low poll numbers, seemed to have plenty of supporters in the audience, as his responses drew applause from the crowd several times. He also took shots at both Cruz and Rubio on their records.

Echoing Cruz' criticism, he said Rubio made a deal with Democrats on immigration and suggested he was weak on border security.

At the same time, Paul suggested Cruz was being disingenuous by claiming he was never for "amnesty." He said Cruz has an "authenticity problem."

The debate Thursday, with 12.5 million viewers, was the second-highest rated telecast in Fox News history.

Also on stage Thursday night were retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Carsons standout moment seemed to come at the end of the debate, when he used his closing statement to recite the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Please think of our founding fathers as you listen, Carson asked. After reading aloud the Preamble -- including its call for a more perfect union  he said, Folks, its not too late. Enough said.

The polls in the Hawkeye State show essentially a two-man race for first between Trump and Cruz in the final stretch. Rubio has been holding steady in third position, while Carsons numbers have been on a downward course in recent weeks.

After Iowa, the candidates head to New Hampshire, where Trump also leads but several other candidates are jockeying for position behind him.
Indirect peace talks aimed at resolving Syria's five-year conflict began Friday at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva, without the participation of the main opposition group.

The talks are the first since two rounds of negotiations collapsed in 2014. Syria's conflict has killed more than 250,000 people, displaced millions and sent hundreds of thousands as refugees to Europe.

The first meeting was between the U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura and a government delegation headed by the country's ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Ja'afari. A U.N. spokesman said that he would later meet with other delegates, including civil society representatives.

The main opposition delegation has said it will not participate without an end to the bombardment of civilians by Russian and government forces and a lifting of sieges in rebel-held areas.

The meetings are part of a process outlined in a U.N. resolution last month that envisages an 18-month timetable for a political transition in Syria, including the drafting of a new constitution and elections.

The opposition boycott is a blow to the U.N.'s attempt to bring representatives of President Bashar Assad's government and his opponents together for talks on ending the conflict. On the eve of the talks, de Mistura appealed to Syrians to make concessions and described the talks as "an opportunity not to be missed."

Disputes are ongoing over which opposition parties will attend, with the main opposition group -- known as the Higher Negotiating Committee, or HNC-- coming under criticism for including the militant Army of Islam group that controls wide areas near the Syrian capital, Damascus, and is considered a terrorist organization by the Syrian government and Russia.

Earlier on Friday U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi reflected the sense of chaos and confusion surrounding the beginning of peace negotiations when he told reporters at a briefing that "I don't have a time, I don't have the exact location, and I can't tell you anything about the delegation."

The HNC said it was still waiting for an official response from the United Nations about a list of concerns.

Ahmad Ramadan, a senior official with the Syrian National Coalition, which is part of the HNC, said the opposition will boycott the talks until it receives assurances on the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on lifting the sieges and halting bombardment of civilians in Syria.

"There cannot be any negotiations as long as the humanitarian issues have not been discussed or implemented," he said.

Ramadan said that de Mistura sent a letter on Thursday to the head of the HNC, Riad Hijab, which was deemed unsatisfactory. He and another opposition figure, Khaled Nasser, said the U.N. envoy wrote that the opposition's demands were reasonable and that humanitarian issues should be "above negotiations," but that he was powerless to implement them himself, adding that negotiations were the best way to force everyone to implement those resolutions.

Basma Kodmani, a member of the opposition's negotiating team, said the HNC is now studying whether their delegation will come to Geneva to raise these concerns with the U.N. officials or stay in Saudi Arabia where they can raise them from a distance.

In Syria, the official Tishrin newspaper boasted that the no-show by the Saudi and Turkey-backed opposition in Geneva "reflects the collective flight of terrorist groups backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey from the political table, following their collapses on the battlefield."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the moderate opposition was not attending the talks because Russia continues to bomb opposition-held areas in Syria, and that it is a "betrayal" to the moderate opposition to ask them to attend without a cease-fire.

A Western diplomat in close contact with the SNC said in Geneva that "their (HNC) main message to us has been while we are under sustained attack by Russia and the regime and other states and militants and other groups we cannot justify to Syrians why we are going."

"We tell them the reason to come here is not to hand the Assad regime a propaganda victory," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the opposition.

Opposition figures from outside the HNC are in Geneva, but they were invited as advisers. The HNC is supposed to be the main opposition group in the talks.

But a leading Syrian opposition figure who is not part of the HNC and is currently in Geneva hinted that his team will be part of the talks as a second opposition delegation.

"The presence of three delegations expresses the will of the (U.N.) Security Council who called for a delegation representing all parties of the opposition," former Syrian deputy prime minister, Qadri Jamil, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Jamil added that in their talks with the government the priority will be to allow aid into besieged areas and that all Syrians unite to "fight the terrorism represented by Nusra and Daesh." He was referring to al-Qaida's branch in Syria known as the Nusra Front and using an Arabic acronym to refer to the Islamic State group.

De Mistura said Thursday that Geneva peace talks are an opportunity not to be missed.
For a text that may rewrite the history of mathematics, it looks rather sloppy.

The brown clay tablet, which could fit in the palm of your hand, is scrawled with hasty, highly abbreviated cuneiform characters. And, according to science historian Mathieu Ossendrijver, it proves that the ancient Babylonians used a complex geometrical model that looks like a rudimentary form of integral calculus to calculate the path of Jupiter. Scientists previously thought this mathematical technique was invented in medieval Europe.

"It sounds minute for a layperson, but this geometry is of a very special kind that is not found anywhere else, for instance, in ancient Greek astronomy," Ossendrijver said. "It is an application in astronomy that was totally new. Thus far everybody thought Babylonian scholars only computed with numbers." [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

A sophisticated invention

The tablet has long been in the collection at the British Museum in London, and it was likely created in Babylon (located in modern-day Iraq) between 350 and 50 B.C. Ossendrijver recently deciphered the text, and he described his discovery in an article that's featured on the cover of the journal Science this week.

From his office at Humboldt University here in Berlin, which is decorated with posters of both the Ishtar Gate and the Antikythera mechanism (thought to be the world's oldest known computer), he explained that the tablet plots the apparent decreasing velocity of Jupiter from the planet's first appearance along the horizon, to 60 days later, and then 120 days later. If drawn on a graph, this relationship is represented in the shape of two conjoined trapezoids. The area of each trapezoid describes Jupiter's total displacement (measured in degrees) along the ecliptic, or the path of the sun.

"It's not an actual trapezoid that describes the shape of a field, or some configuration of the planets in space," Ossendrijver told Live Science. "It's a configuration in a mathematical space. It's a highly abstract application."

Ancient Greek mathematicians and astronomers were using geometry around the same time, but only to make calculations involving real, 3D space, such as using circles torepresent the orbits of planets around Earth. Students of math might take it for granted today, but the abstract use of geometry was, until now, unheard of at the time.

"Anyone who has studied physics or a little bit of math is familiar with making graphs  plotting one quantity against time  but actually this had to be invented once," Ossendrijver said.

Current textbooks on the history of math say this invention took place around A.D. 1350. In the mid-14th century, mathematicians at Merton College in England who were referred to as the "Oxford Calculators," and another scholar collaborating with them in Paris, were interested in understanding the velocity and displacement of an object over time. They came up with the Merton mean speed theorem, which holds that the distance a uniformly accelerating body travels in a given interval of time is the same distance it would travel if it were moving at a constant velocity (with that constant velocity being the average of the accelerating body's initial and final velocity). [Images: The World's 11 Most Beautiful Calculations]

But the mean speed theorem now seems to be a reinvention of a lost model; about 1,400 years earlier, it seems the Babylonians had their own technique to make calculations based on this principle.

"When I looked at the text, I was immediately convinced," said Jens Hyrup, an expert in Babylonian mathematics at Roskilde University in Denmark, who was not involved in the new study. "There are words that indisputably point to geometric understanding  not a geometric model of how the planets move, but a geometric technique to make some arithmetic calculations."

Missing piece

To build its collection in the 19th century, the British Museum gathered crates of clay tablets by methods that would not be considered scientifically sound today; namely, buying artifacts that had been dug up around Babylon and Uruk without any archaeological context. Since the 1880s, scholars have been making sense of the astronomical concepts described on many of the tablets. [See Images of Ancient Babylonian Cuneiform Texts]

Four of these astronomical tablets had stumped historians, because they included computations mentioning trapezoids, even though the Babylonians had never been known to use geometry in their astronomical calculations.

The newly deciphered tablet was essentially the missing piece in the puzzle. Last year, a colleague handed Ossendrijver a stack of photographs, including an image of a tablet he had never seen before in the British Museum. In September, Ossendrijver went to London to hold it in his hand and read it himself, confirming what he already suspected the calculations describe.

"Actually, this particular tablet has ugly handwriting," Ossendrijver said. "It's slanted. It's like cursive if it were written very rapidly. It's very abbreviated. He left out everything that is not absolutely necessary to follow the computation."

Jupiter is not even mentioned in the newly deciphered tablet, but the computations it describes were already partly known from the other trapezoid tablets that do mention Jupiter, Ossendrijver said.

Scholar-priests reading the skies

The period between 400 and 200 B.C. might be considered the last period of innovations in Babylonian science, Ossendrijver said, and this is the time the zodiac and the horoscope were invented.

In general, the question of what the ancient Babylonians did with their astronomy is not fully answered, Ossendrijversaid. But they believed everything that happened on Earth was connected to whatever was happening in the sky.

"It was thought that if you are able to predict the motion of Jupiter, you would also be able to predict the price of grain, the weather, the level of the river Euphrates," Ossendrijver said. Part of his work also involves trying to understand the social context of Babylonian astronomers, and learning more about the kind of families and elite clans they belonged to. Certainly, the job description for an astronomer was much different 2,000 years ago.

Before the rise of personal horoscopes, astrology was a state affair. A court astrologer would have been called upon to interpret omens and predict plagues or other events, which could have real-world consequences. For instance, Hyrup said, if the astrologer was certain the king was going to die, the Babylonians could install a proxy king for six months, kill him at the end of his service, and let the original king return to the throne.

"The purpose of all this refined astronomy is astrology," Hyrup said. "They never speak about themselves in a way that suggests that they were pure astronomers or mathematicians; their profession was to be scholar-priests."

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The truth is out there  the CIA is offering a peek into its X-files, shining a spotlight on a series of once-classified UFO documents.

To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, weve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting, explained the agency, in a blog post.

Related: Astronaut Scott Kelly's 'UFO' photo generates extraterrestrial buzz

The UFO documents, which date primarily from the 1940s and 1950s, are among hundreds that the CIA declassified in 1978.

In a nod to Foxs new X-Files series, the agency highlights five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity.

Related: Strange 'ancient face' spotted on Mars rock

We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings, it added.

The Mulder documents include 1952 reports of flying saucers over the then-East Germany, Spain and North Africa, as well as a survey of UFO reports from the same year. The agency also posted a 1952 report of two fiery disks flying over a uranium mine in the then-Belgian Congo and the minutes of a CIA branch chiefs meeting discussing UFOs.

Related: Time to clean up all that space junk, says NASA chief

The report from East Germany details an object resembling a huge frying pan and having a diameter of about 15 meters [49 feet]. The object landed in a forest clearing in Germanys Soviet Zone, according to the report.

A smoke-trailing object over Barcelona and an unusual object emitting a pale green light over the Tunisian city of Sousse are described in the report from Spain and North Africa.

Related: NASA's 'flying saucer' in pictures

Photos posted on the CIA website include an unexplained sighting above Minneapolis in 1960 and another above Sheffield, U.K. two years later. It also posted an image of a UFO investigation in Socorro, N.M.

The Mulder documents include an office memo from 1949, a 1952 memo to the Director of Central Intelligence and a Memorandum for the Record on Flying Saucers, also from 1952. The agency also posted a 1953 document detailing the suggestions of a scientific advisory panel on UFOs and the minutes of an Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) UFO advisory group from the same year.
Boeings new 737 MAX aircraft completed its first test flight Friday.

The plane, which Boeing is touting as a way for airlines to lower operating costs and boost fuel efficiency, took off from Renton, Wash. at 12:46 p.m. ET.

Packed with test equipment, the 737 MAX landed a few miles away at Boeing Field in Seattle almost 3 hours later, according to Airline Reporter.

Related: Japan unveils stealth plane, may combine with next-gen jet

Boasting larger engines and improved aerodynamics compared to its predecessors, the single-aisle airplane will deliver 20 percent lower fuel use compared to the first Next-Generation 737s, which were launched in the 1990s.

And she's up! #737MAX is in the air for first flight. pic.twitter.com/kXaqf45Fjo  Boeing Airplanes (@BoeingAirplanes) January 29, 2016

The Seattle Times reports that the MAX comes in three sizes, seating 126 to 220 passengers.

The 737 MAX is the fourth version of the original 737, according to Reuters, which says that Boeing is expected to deliver its first 737 MAX to customers in 2017.
The pieces of Google's Project Wing drone delivery service are slowly coming together.

A patent published Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Copyright Office describes a "delivery receptacle" used to move a package from a drone to the delivery location.

Flying drones use infrared (IR) beacons to connect with and navigate to the container on the ground. Once the package is deposited, the delivery receptacle moves it to a secure location, "such as into a garage," the patent said.

No further details were revealed, and Google declined to comment to PCMag.

The experimental Google X division in August 2014 unveiled Project Wingthe company's answer to drone-delivery services from rivals like Amazon (pictured) and Walmart. Described at the time as "a delivery system that uses self-flying vehicles," early tests successfully delivered a first aid kit, candy bars, dog treats, and water to Australian farmers.

In November, division leader David Vos said he wants delivery drones in the air by 2017. Google is working with the FAA to set up an "air traffic control system for drones" flying under 500 feet, something NASA and Verizon are also reportedly exploring.

While the drone market is set to expand in the coming years, questions abound over how and when that will happen. Part of the problem is that the FAA is still working on final regulations that will govern how drones will be controlled.

Outside of the U.S., however, drone supervision appears slightly more lax: Researchers at the German Aerospace Center recently landed a small UAV on the roof of a car while both vehicles were traveling at 47 mph. This techniquebasically eliminating landing gearcould be applied in the event of a disaster or during adverse weather conditions, according the Germans.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Jan. 28 with a response from Google.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
Officials in California announced Thursday that a teacher who taught English at a maximum-security jail has been arrested on suspicion of helping the three inmates escape.

Orange County sheriff's officials also said they believe the men may be living in a stolen van.

Lt. Jeff Hallock said Nooshafarin Ravaghi, who taught English as a second language to inmates, may have supplied maps to the men before they cut and climbed their way out of Orange County Central Men's Jail last Friday.

Ravaghi worked for the Rancho Santiago Community College District and taught English as a second language to inmates at the jail for about six months, according to Hallock.

"There was some type of relationship that developed between the two" that was close, Hallock said, but he didn't know whether it was a romance.

Ravaghi denied supplied any tools to the inmates, but investigators suspect she provided Google maps that potentially could have helped the inmates plan their route after fleeing the jail, Hallock told reporters.

Hallock added that the men are believed to be still in California and that one stole a white van on Saturday in South Los Angeles.

About 10 people have been arrested so far in connection with the breakout, according to officials.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trial for various violent crimes before they escaped the jail on Friday.

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Wednesday that investigators believe the trio had "outside help" to facilitate the escape.

Hutchens said the men would have needed powerful cutting tools that would not have been available to them inside to get through thick metal, and investigators are looking into how they could have obtained them.

The jail has revised its headcount procedures following the escape because it took so long to discover the men were missing, something that she finds deeply troubling.

"It's every sheriff's nightmare," Hutchens said.

The men escaped after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof.

They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed sheets.

Hutchens added that one of the inmates, Hossein Nayeri, was probably the mastermind of the escape.

Click for more from FoxLa.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck was returned to Texas on Thursday following his deportation from Mexico. Authorities believe 18-year-old Ethan Couch fled with his mother as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he violated his probation in the 2013 wreck that killed four people.

Here is a timeline of events in the case:

 June 15, 2013: Four people are killed when a pickup truck driven by 16-year-old Ethan Couch swerves off a road in Fort Worth, Texas. Couch's blood-alcohol level is three times the legal limit for driving. The victims are a woman whose vehicle was disabled on the side of the road and three people helping her. Two of the seven passengers in Couch's truck are severely injured.

 Dec. 4, 2013  Couch "admitted his guilt" in juvenile court in four cases of intoxication manslaughter and two cases of intoxication assault, according to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Office.

 Dec. 10, 2013: A defense witness testifies during Couch's sentencing that the teen's wealthy parents coddled him into a sense of irresponsibility, a condition the psychologist termed "affluenza." Couch is later ordered to rehab and sentenced to 10 years' probation, which prosecutors and law enforcement blasted as too weak.

 Feb. 5, 2014  A juvenile court judge sets probation conditions that include barring Couch from driving and from drinking alcohol or using drugs.

 August 2015  Couch's father files for divorce, a year after he and his wife stopped living together as a couple. Fred and Tonya Couch originally married in 1996. They divorced 10 years later, but then remarried in April 2011.

 On or about Dec. 2, 2015  A video surfaces that shows Ethan Couch at a party where alcohol was being served. Drinking alcohol would be a violation of his probation.

 Dec. 3, 2015  Couch is contacted by his probation officer and told to report for a drug test. His mother withdraws $30,000 from her personal account. On or around the same date, mother and son hold a gathering in which they talk about going to Mexico, and Fred Couch tells authorities that Tonya Couch had called to tell him he would never see their son again.

 Dec. 10, 2015  Ethan Couch, who is now 18, misses a mandatory appointment with his probation officer.

 Dec. 11, 2015  A directive to apprehend Couch for a probation violation is issued.

 Dec. 16, 2015  Authorities publicly announce they're investigating whether Couch fled with his mother in an attempt to avoid facing accusations that he may have violated his probation.

 Dec. 28, 2015  Ethan Couch and Tonya Couch are taken into custody in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta, a few days after a call for pizza delivery tipped off authorities to their whereabouts. Texas authorities issue an arrest warrant for Tonya Couch.

 Dec. 30, 2015  Tonya Couch is deported, but a Mexican judge decides to delay Ethan Couch's deportation. Tonya Couch arrives on a flight early the next morning in Los Angeles, where she is taken to jail.

 Jan. 7, 2016  Law enforcement officers accompany Tonya Couch as she is flown back to Texas. She is booked at the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth.

 Jan. 8, 2016  Tonya Couch is arraigned on a charge of hindering the apprehension of a felon. Her bond is set at $1 million.

 Jan. 11, 2016  A judge lowers Tonya Couch's bond to $75,000. She posts the bond the next day and is released to live with another son, after being fitted with an electronic ankle GPS monitor.

 Jan. 17, 2016  Ethan Couch's attorney in Mexico files a document seeking to lift the injunction that has kept him in Mexico.

 Jan. 25, 2016  Ethan Couch formally ratifies his decision to drop an appeal against deportation.

 Jan. 28, 2016  Ethan Couch is deported and flown on a commercial flight from Mexico City to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He is booked at a juvenile detention facility.
At least 179 students and staff members at a southeast Texas middle school received hospital treatment after an apparent carbon monoxide leak, authorities said Thursday.

Beaumont emergency personnel said the children and adults from Marshall Middle School were being treated for non-life threatening injuries. Officials at Baptist Beaumont Hospital, Christus Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth Hospital and Victory Medical Center reported at least 109 patients from the school were treated for exposure to toxic. Officials said none of the patients were admitted.

I saw it on the news, but at the same time I received a text and call from my daughter, Amber Johnson told KHOU.com. She kept me updated that they moved to the gym when they were being observed.

Beaumont Fire-Rescue officials say paramedics were called around 10 a.m. after a student lost consciousness. Numerous students and faculty reported symptoms including nausea and headaches. Officials told KTRK-TV Houston they worked as fast as they could to evacuate more than 800 students and faculty.

Beaumont school district officials say the initial investigation shows there was a leak in a gas boiler. Officials said theyre unsure where the leak started and that state inspectors are expected to check out the boiler to see when it will be safe for everyone to re-enter the school, according to KHOU.com.

Beaumont school district canceled classes for the middle school on Friday.

Beaumont ISD will take as much time as needed to ensure the building is safe for students and staff to return. Parents will be notified through all forms of media and the districts phone messaging system regarding Mondays school schedule, school officials said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The accidental killing of a 12-year-old girl during an eviction earlier this month has led to homicide charges against the girls father.

Donald Meyer, 57, was charged Thursday with criminal homicide and involuntary manslaughter in the Jan. 11 death of his daughter Ciara at their home in Penn Township, Fox 42 reported.

Perry County District Attorney Andrew Bender said Meyer's "extremely reckless actions" led to his daughter death.

Authorities said Meyer pointed a loaded rifle at a constable who had gone to the home to carry out an eviction. The constable, Clark Steele, fired a single shot in return. The bullet traveled through Meyers arm and struck Ciara who was standing behind her father, the station reported.

Perry County Coroner Michael Shalonis said the girl died of a single gunshot wound, according to the station.

Bender said Steele shot at Meyer in self-defense and will not face charges.

Meyer was jailed after the shooting. He is being held without bail.

He was already facing an assault and weapopns charge. His public defender did not immediately return a phone call from the Associated Press seeking comment on the charges.

Fox 42 quoted the district attorney as saying that Meyer was not allowed to own a firearm because of a previous involuntary mental health commitment. Bender said Meyer falsified records in order to buy the guns.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click here for more from Fox 42.
The couple behind the San Bernardino attack and a jihadist group that earlier plotted to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan operated so close to one another in a tight-knit Southern California community that investigators believe there may be a connection, but newly released evidence shows any missing link remains elusive.

Sohiel Omar Kabir, the ringleader of an Islamist terror cell whose Afghanistan plot was disrupted in November, 2012, shared the same violent objectives and lived in the same California community known as The Inland Empire as Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the pair who killed 14 and wounded 22 in a Dec. 2 attack at an Inland, Calif., social services building. But the FBI remains unable to say if the two terror cells were independent, or if there is an as-yet invisible hand responsible for radicalizing them and potentially organizing another attack.

Because these cells operated in such close proximity to one another during the same time period, it seems very likely they crossed paths.  Veryan Khan, TRAC

The focus should be on whether these two terror cells and their members are connected to each other and to other self-starter cells or other lone wolf operatives, said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the U.S.-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. Because these cells operated in such close proximity to one another during the same time period, it seems very likely they crossed paths.

This week, prosecutors made public evidence from the 2012 plot, including 15 hours of audio and video recordings made through wiretaps and an FBI confidential informant, and photographs, as well as hundreds of court records, and transcripts and other documents. But nothing so far establishes a direct connection between Kabir, who last year was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison, and the jihadist couple behind the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

Farook, 28, a restaurant inspector born in the U.S. to a family from Pakistani, and Malik, 29, an immigrant from Pakistan, who entered the U.S. on a fiance visa, were slain during a gunfight with law enforcement several hours after their initial assault at the holiday party. A computer hard drive belonging to the pair remains missing, and their cell phones were damaged to the point that investigators have been unable to recover potentially revealing information. A third person who authorities say previously plotted with Farook, Enrique Marquez, has been charged with providing the rifles the pair used in the massacre.

Before the San Bernardino attack, Marquez reportedly told associates there were terror cells in the area awaiting orders.

He would say stuff like: Theres so much going on. Theres so many sleeper cells, so many people just waiting. When it happens, its going to be big. Watch,  Nick Rodriguez, who frequented a Riverside bar where Marquez drank.

Finding other cells poised to attack could depend on establishing that a common handler is calling the shots. But compartmentalization is a hallmark of terrorist groups command and control structure, which, according to experts, means the two cells could have received their orders from the same source without ever knowing they were on the same team.

Kabir, 37, a naturalized citizen who was born in Afghanistan, and Ralph Deleon, 26, a permanent resident and citizen of the Philippines, were sentenced to identical terms for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to murder U.S. military and government personnel, and in Kabirs case, also for conspiring to provide material support to Al Qaeda. Two other members of the cell pleaded guilty and cooperated with authorities.

Kabirs group, dubbed by prosecutors the "Inland Empire Cell," allegedly received guidance from a local radical imam, who remains unnamed in court records, and encouragement from a brother of one of the men.

Ironically, federal court documents tied to Marquezs case show both he and Farook abruptly halted plans for a dual terror attack in 2012 after Kabirs cabal was arrested. In that assault, Marquez and Farook planned to use pipe bombs and two AR-15 rifles to maximize the number of casualties at Riverside City College, a nearby institution they attended, and on state Route 91, a busy freeway with few exits where motorists are frequently stuck in heavy gridlock.

An FBI spokesman said the agency continues to investigate possible ties between the groups, who practiced shooting at local gun ranges, worshiped at area mosques and boasted of their plans on social media.

Id take C-4 number one but I want to enjoy my targets, DeLeon wrote in one post revealed this week by investigators. Thats why I want to go to the front line.

Another common interest of cells operating in The Inland Empire was their devotion to teachings of the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's "leader of external operations until he was killed in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike. Kabir and his followers listened to many hours of videos and audio recordings from al-Awlaki, according to audio and videotapes obtained by FoxNews.com.

Even from the grave, the power of Anwar al-Awlaki cannot be underestimated, Khan said.

Court records show Kabir was effective at recruiting others, according to his conspirator, Deleon, who compared Kabir to a Mujahideen walking the streets of LA. Deleon spoke of recruiting others into their cell, boasting he had four people who were potentials and was up for recruiting Everyone!

Deleon also claimed Kabir recruited many others before he left for Afghanistan, while Kabir himself boasted contacts within terrorist organizations including the Students  code for Taliban  and the Professors  meaning Al Qaeda.
Iran claimed Friday it flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs as part of an ongoing naval drill, as Iranian TV broadcasted video purportedly showing the incident.



The U.S. Navy confirmed to Fox News that an unarmed Iranian drone flew directly over the USS Harry Truman earlier this month on Jan. 12, but did not say whether it was the same incident.

That happened on the same day Iran captured 10 U.S. Navy sailors accused of "trespassing." It also was less than a week before the U.S. and European nations lifted sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, but months after their initial deal was signed.

A video circulating on social media linked to Iranian news agencies -- purportedly taken from a drone -- shows a birds eye view of an aircraft carrier moving in water, with multiple planes parked on its deck.

Iran Army drone takes footage of US aircraft carrier in Persian Gulf in drill pic.twitter.com/L0QYIItw7I  Sobhan Hassanvand (@Hassanvand) January 29, 2016

The footage later zoomed into a row of fighter jets. There were no identifying marks visible on the carrier.

"I am not in a position to confirm the Iranian video or if the event described in Iranian media reports is the one from Jan. 12, said Commander Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain. As previously noted, we are confident in our ability to respond appropriately as the situation dictates and will defend ourselves should that prove necessary."

Stephens said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and "directly over" the USS Harry S. Truman on Jan. 12 as the vessels were in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

He said the drone "posed no danger to the ship" as the unmanned aircraft was unarmed and the carrier wasn't conducting flight operations at the time.

"It was, however, abnormal and unprofessional," Stephens said.

When the carrier transited the Strait of Hormuz in late December, Iranian missile boats launched unguided rockets 1,500 yards away from the U.S. aircraft carrier. The Navy called the act "highly provocative" at the time.

The captured U.S. Navy sailors had entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s. The sailors were released within a day, though Iranian state media aired footage of the sailors' capture, angering U.S. politicians.

The report by state television said the drone flight occurred on the third day of the naval exercise, suggesting it happened Friday. Later, its website and the semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, published footage it said was of the drone's flight.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of Iran's navy, called the drone overflight "a sign of bravery."

It "allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces," he told state television.

State television and the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine also participated in the surveillance operation. When asked about the submarine report, Stephens said "Iran has several submarines underway for its current exercise," but declined to discuss specifics.

The Iranian report did not name the U.S. vessel filmed by the drone. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Stephens said the drone report would not affect its operations.

"I can say that we are confident in the ability of U.S. naval forces operating in the region to respond appropriately as the situation dictates, and will exercise our right to defend our forces against any threat," he said.

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill at mock targets. Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began the naval drill this week over a 1.16-million-square-mile area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a U.S. warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The U.S. Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck the nuclear deal with world powers including the U.S., its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 1,240 miles of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The U.S. has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied launching rockets, though the U.S. later released footage showing the rocket fire.

The Strait of Hormuz, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran, including a one-day naval battle in 1988.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A plaque bearing the Rev. Martin Luther King's most famous quote recently survived a group of Oregon college students who, incredibly, found the civil rights icon's inspiring words politically incorrect.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," reads the quote from King's landmark 1963 "I have a dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

The moving words had adorned the entrance of the Erb Memorial Union at the University of Oregon in Eugene since 1986, but renovations late last year ignited a debate on the Student Union Board and on campus about the enduring relevance of the message.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream  Martin Luther King Jr.

It was during the remodel when Laurie Woodward, director of the schools student union, posed the question to others on the board, as well as students.

Does the MLK quote represent us today? a student asked the board when the issue arose, according the Daily Emerald.

Apparently, some students believed King's call for all people to be judged equally was not inclusive enough for some.



Diversity is so much more than race," sophomore Mia Ashley toldl the school paper. "Obviously race still plays a big role. But there are people who identify differently in gender and all sorts of things like that.

Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King and a Fox News contributor, said her uncles words still ring true.

The context is the spirit of his message," King said. "Martin Luther King was very inclusive because he loved the human family. It was based on a timeless foundation, so I am glad that they have decided to have the quote displayed.

It was not the first time students at the school had questioned a quote being posted in a public space on campus. In 1985, a quote by former Dean of Administrative Emeritus William C. Jones had occupied the same spot:

-Established by an enlightened state for service and inspiration

-Reverent before its heritage of principle and institution

-Eager in its adventure with idea and deed

-Guardian of the noble in mans aspiration for the humane society

-Leader in the quest for the good life for all men.

The quote irked students back in the 1970s because of its use of Men for all of humankind. Years later, it was taken down in favor of the MLK quote.

The conclusion of the more recent debate had a much better outcome, with the plaque bearing Kings quote set to return to its old home soon.

No changes, its been up since the early 1980s, Woodward told FoxNews.com. [It was] down for renovation and [will be] back up next week.
A Navy commander accused of diverting ships to Asian ports for a Malaysian contractor offering prostitution services and other gifts pleaded guilty to bribery charges Thursday, marking the eighth conviction in the massive scandal.

Michael Misiewicz is one of the highest ranking Naval officers charged in the case, which is centered on businessman Leonard Francis, nicknamed "Fat Leonard" because of his wide girth. Misiewicz pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery of a public official at a hearing in federal court in San Diego.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if sentenced to the maximum amount for both charges.

His defense lawyers said in a statement that Misiewicz regrets his actions from 2011 to 2012. They went on to say that they plan to show at his sentencing hearing this was an "extreme departure from his otherwise distinguished and honorable 30 plus year career."

Only one defendant of the nine named in the case is still fighting the charges. Prosecutors say the investigation is ongoing and there could be more arrests.

Francis has admitted to providing an exhaustive list of gifts in exchange for classified information that helped his Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., or GDMA, overbill the Navy by at least $20 million. He is awaiting sentencing.

Misiewicz accepted theater tickets, prostitution services and other items, according to the criminal complaint. He provided ship routes to Francis and then they moved ships like chess pieces, diverting them to Pacific ports with lax oversight where GDMA submitted fake tariffs and other fees, prosecutors said.

In 2010, Misiewicz caught the world's attention when he made an emotional return as a U.S. Naval commander to his native Cambodia, where he had been rescued as a child from the violence of the Khmer Rouge and adopted by an American woman. His homecoming was widely covered by international media.

A sentencing hearing was set for April 29.

Lt. Commander Todd Malaki, who has pleaded guilty in the same case, and is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.
Two men who escaped a Southern California jail last week are believed to be in Northern California and driving the same van they stole when they made their brazen escape, authorities said Friday.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, are still on the loose, while Bac Duong, 43, is in custody after turning himself in on Friday. Duong broke off from the other two men, went to a Southern California body shop where his friend works and had her call police.

Orange County sheriffs spokesman Jeff Hallock said Duong is in custody and is cooperating with authorities. The two fugitives are believed to be in San Jose and could be on their way to Fresno, Hallock said.

"If they are watching, we want them to understand that we are pressing forward, and we are coming after them," Hallock said at a news conference, addressing the escapees directly for the first time. "We will take you back into custody."

Duong was arrested in Santa Ana, where the trio escaped on Jan. 22 from the maximum security facility, authorities said. Its unclear how he got back to Southern California from San Jose, but Duong contacted a woman he knew at the auto electric repair shop early Friday just a few miles from the jail, authorities and witnesses said.

Two law enforcement sources told Fox News that Duong told police when he was taken into custody that a gang with which he was associated threatened to kill him if he did not surrender.

Lee Tran, whose family owns Auto Electric Rebuilders, said Duong came to the shop looking for Tran's sister, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to surrender.

"He was scared for his life, pretty much," Tran said. "That's why he asked one of our people to turn him in."

Tran said his sister called 911, and Duong stayed outside until authorities came.

"She was crying her head off," said Trach Tran, her father, who was also there. "Everybody was scared."

Lee Tran said his sister's boyfriend knows Duong, and federal authorities had come by to speak with her earlier this week because she might have visited Duong in jail.

All three men had been awaiting trial for separate violent crimes at the Central Mans Jail. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in the jail, 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The men escaped after cutting a hole in a metal grade then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a four-story jail building. They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down a rope made of bed linen. It took 16 hours for staff to realize the men were gone.

On Thursday, authorities arrested a woman who taught English inside the jail. Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, gave Nayeri a paper copy of a Google Earth map that showed an aerial view of the entire jail compound, Hallock said.

She was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to a felony and was being held pending a court appearance set for Monday. It wasn't clear if she had a lawyer.

Ravaghi and Nayeri also exchanged "personal and close" handwritten letters, but Hallock could not say if the two were romantically involved.

"It wasn't the relationship that you would expect between a teacher and an inmate in a custody setting," he said.

Duong, a native of Vietnam, has been held since last month on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968 that holds 900 men.

Tieu is charged with murder and attempted murder in a 2011 gang shooting. Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary.

Fox News' Adam Housley and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A heartless person who ditched a dog that was hit and killed by a car may face criminal charges, Maine police said Friday.

As the story spread across social media, Lewiston police said on Facebook the person had been identified and interviewed. They said the case will be forward to the District Attorneys Office for review and the filing of a formal criminal charge is likely.

The dog, a yellow lab mix, was killed Thursday, three days after being abandoned in the parking lot of an animal shelter in Lewiston that was closed at the time. Surveillance video from the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society shows the dog being let out of a minivan and then giving futile chase as the vehicle drives off.

It is heartbreaking, shelter operator Zach Black told WCSH-TV Friday. The dogs body language, its tail was wagging. It seemed happy just to be outside and then it was chasing the car almost like when you leave your door, yard. Your dog may chase your car wanting to be with you.

Lewiston Police said the publicity about the case generated numerous tips from the public.

Even though the shelter was closed, people were inside. But the dog took off before anyone got outside.

The dog was on the loose until being hit around 8 a.m. Thursday near an off ramp of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge.

We take in abandoned, stray and abused animals and find them new homes and that would have been the outcome we would have liked for this dog, Black told the station.
Ammon Bundy and his followers made ample use of social media and videos to summon armed recruits to join their takeover of a wildlife refuge and to declare their readiness to stand their ground. Now federal authorities are using the occupiers' own words against them.

Two criminal complaints unsealed this week against the 11 protesters under arrest show that FBI agents have carefully scrutinized social media postings, interviews and online talk shows that were broadcast from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge during the siege that began Jan. 2.

As four holdouts continued to occupy the refuge in the snowy high country near Burns, Bundy and several other jailed leaders were due to appear in federal court in Portland on Friday to answer charges they used force or intimidation to prevent government employees from carrying out their duties.

A federal judge said Thursday she will not release any defendants while the occupation continues. Bundy, through his attorney, has repeatedly called on the holdouts to leave peacefully.

The ranchers and other protesters took over the refuge to demand that the federal government turn public lands over to local control. They have complained about what they say are onerous federal rules governing grazing and mining rights across the West.

The criminal complaints detail some of the evidence against the occupiers.

A day after the takeover began, for example, a video posted on a website showed Bundy saying the group planned to stay for several years. He called on people to "come out here and stand," adding: "We need you to bring your arms."

A video posted Jan. 4 showed another defendant, Jon Ritzheimer, saying he was "100 percent willing to lay my life down."

In a video posted a day later, Ritzheimer talked about Robert "LaVoy" Finicum and other occupiers taking up a "defensive posture" at the refuge against a feared FBI raid.

"Right now underneath the tarp right there  LaVoy Finicum is sitting underneath the tarp, and he's not going to let them come through," Ritzheimer said in the video.

That raid never came.

Finicum was killed Tuesday night in a confrontation with the FBI and Oregon State Police on a remote road. Bundy and four others were arrested during the encounter, and more followers were taken into custody by the next day.

At one point there were a couple of dozen ranchers and other protesters holed up at the refuge, but they began clearing out after the arrests and the killing. The last four holdouts have demanded assurances they will not be arrested.

The FBI on Thursday released a video showing Finicum's death, to counter claims he did nothing to provoke his killing.

In the aerial video, Finicum is pulled over in his white truck but then takes off in the vehicle and plows into a snowbank because of a roadblock. He gets out of his truck and has his hands up at first, then reaches toward his jacket pocket at least twice. He is shot and falls to the snow.

The FBI said a loaded handgun was found in the pocket.

An undisclosed number of state troopers involved in the shooting were been placed on leave pending an investigation, which is standard procedure.

The charges against the defendants say the refuge's 16 employees have been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence.

Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The group came to the desert of eastern Oregon in the dead of winter to decry what it calls onerous federal land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.
A Catholic San Francisco high school has suspended 14 students for wearing clothes to an outdoor weekend party meant to mimic a style associated with urban black culture, the schools president said Thursday.

The Rev. Edwin Harris, president of the mostly white St. Ignatius College Preparatory High School, told parents in a letter that the party held Saturday at Sigmund Stern Grove appropriated pervasive negative stereotypes and carried racial overtones and racist implications.

"Regardless of the intent of those who participated, their actions had an adverse effect on the community and on them," Harris said. "We categorically condemn this gathering as it does not represent the Ignatian values or ideals that our school stands for."

The students clothing was not detailed in Harris letter, but Principal Patrick Ruff told the San Francisco Chronicle it was billed as a party for white people who emulate the language, gestures and dress popularized by rap and hip-hop videos.

"It's disheartening and incredibly sad this type of thing exists not just for SI, but for the entire city," Ruff told the paper.

Rupp said the school has strived to educate students on social justice issues and hopes last weekends incident can provide a lasting impression for current and future students.

A similar event during a Minnesota high school's homecoming week celebration in 2009 led a former student to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Red Wing School District. The school board settled the lawsuit for $90,000 in 2012.

The party last weekend in San Francisco drew teenagers from several schools and was not organized by St. Ignatius students, Harris said. School administrators learned about it Tuesday from students who had seen photos on social media, he said.

Thomas OHalloran, an 18-year-old senior, told the San Francisco Chronicle he knew kids were throwing the party and he knew some that regret going to it.

You cant go to a party like that and post pictures on social media and think that nothing is going to happen, he said. Its just weird that this would happen at an institution that tries so hard to promote inclusion.

The suspended St. Ignatius students will be required to meet with members of the school's Black Student Union, and administrators are planning a school-wide assembly to discuss diversity, Harris said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
North Carolina authorities say a woman shot and killed a man who had broken into her home.

The Fayetteville Observer reports (http://bit.ly/1ZZ9M1m) the shooting occurred Friday morning at a home in Robeson County.

Maj. Anthony Thompson is a spokesman for the Robeson County Sheriff's Office. He said the woman had left home to run an errand, and when she returned, she saw an unfamiliar Jeep parked in her driveway.

Thompson said the woman entered the house with her gun, and she confronted a man who was carrying her iPad before she opened fire. The spokesman did not specify the exact circumstances that led her to shoot. No one returned a phone call to the sheriff's office Friday afternoon.

Neither the woman nor the intruder has been identified.

___

Information from: The Fayetteville Observer, http://www.fayobserver.com
A rights group said Friday it had seen evidence indicating possible mass graves in Burundi as unrest escalated with the arrest of 17 people in a security sweep, including two foreign journalists.

Satellite images, video footage and witness accounts show that dozens of people allegedly killed by Burundian security forces in December were later buried in mass graves, Amnesty International reported Friday.

The rights group reported that there are five possible mass graves in the Buringa area, on the outskirts of the capital, Bujumbura, which has been wracked by violence as the security forces go into neighborhoods seen as opposition strongholds. Two journalists on assignment for the French newspaper Le Monde were among 17 people swept up in a military operation Thursday, said Moise Nkurunziza, a deputy spokesman for Burundian police.

Le Monde demanded the immediate release of Jean-Philippe Remy and British photojournalist Philip Edward Moore.

Witnesses described how police and local officials scoured Nyakabiga and other neighborhoods in Bujumbura to retrieve the bodies of those who were killed and took them to undisclosed locations, according to Amnesty International.

"The imagery, dating from late December and early January, shows disturbed earth consistent with witness accounts. Witnesses told Amnesty International that the graves were dug on the afternoon of Dec. 11, in the immediate aftermath of the bloodiest day of Burundi's escalating crisis," the group said.

Earlier this month, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein also called for an urgent investigation into the alleged existence of mass graves following the violence in December. Zeid said at the time that the "increasing number of enforced disappearances, coupled with allegations of secret detention facilities and mass graves is extremely alarming."

Burundi's government dismissed those allegations, saying they were based on false information supplied by the regime's opponents.

In coordinated attacks, gunmen stormed three military installations in Burundi on Dec. 11. The next day, 28 people were found shot dead in three Bujumbura neighborhoods. An eyewitness told the AP some of the dead had their hands tied behind their backs. Another witness blamed government security forces, saying they went after the victims in door-to-door searches.

President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek re-election to a third term last April touched off street protests that led to a failed coup in May and a rebellion that has left the country on the brink of civil war.

The Burundian government has rejected the proposed deployment of African Union peacekeepers in Burundi, saying they will be treated as an invading force.

___

Muhumuza reported from Kampala, Uganda.
An irresponsible security exercise that went awry at a Paris airport Thursday reportedly caused tempers to flare.

FedEx workers at Charles de Gaulle Airport found fake explosive devices inside a package heading to Tunisia from the U.S., according to AFP. Among the faux devices were a pressure cooker filled with nuts and bolts, detonators and other similar explosive devices, said Frederic Petit who represents FedEx employees CGT union.

The staff warned authorities of imminent danger stemming from the devices, according to AFP. Officials arrived with bomb sniffing dogs and X-Ray machines to scope out the apparent danger.

A security source told the news agency the fake devices were on its way to the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia for a training exercise. The source said the delivery of these certain packages isnt uncommon, its just the first time that a package had been opened.

Petit called the exercise irresponsible given the heightened terror alert in Paris from the November attacks in which 130 people were killed by terrorists in the city.
It was retail therapy that would make the most ardent shopaholics head spin, but Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Ferragamo weren't on the list.

Liberated from crippling international sanctions and flush with newly unfrozen assets, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week inked a flurry of lucrative deals with European companies during the first such tour for an Iranian leader since 1999.

In Italy, Rouhani signed some $18 billion worth of deals, including shipbuilding, steel and energy contracts. Next, Rouhani moved on to gay Paris for another staggering round of shopping:

It will give them more money. They could use that money to fund various nefarious ends.  Emma Ashford, Cato Institute

- $24 billion for 118 Airbus planes. Check.

- $400 million for a manufacturing deal with carmaker Peugeot. Check.

- A deal with energy giant Total to buy up to 200,000 barrels of Iranian crude per day. Double check.

The dizzying dealmaking was made possible by the lifting of international sanctions on Iran following an agreement with the West to dismantle much of its suspect nuclear infrastructure.

The flurry of contracts overshadowed a few culture clashes along the way, including the coverup in Rome of statues deemed too immodest for the Iranian guests. One Italian complained of cultural submission, and in France, a lunch meeting was scuttled when the local party refused to give up their beloved wine at the table.

While Iran was spreading around much of its newfound wealth, fears remain that some of the money will be spent further destabilizing the Mideast region. Iran has forces or proxies at work in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and Sunni nations believe Tehran's burgeoning pockets make it an even bigger threat.

It will give them more money," said Emma Ashford, of the Cato Institute. They could use that money to fund various nefarious ends.

Ashford, a supporter of the controversial nuclear deal, and others hope Iran will instead pour the money into the countrys beleaguered economy. She also sees the agreement as an opening for a larger thaw in relations between Washtington and Tehran.

We have to move past problems [with the U.S.] step by step, Rouhani said in Paris. Both sides realize that a better future could benefit both countries.

But while Rouhani's delegation huddled and shook hands with its new economic partners inside restaurants and offices, protesters were outside, calling attention to Iran's troubling human rights record.

A member of Femen, a French-based, largely female protest group known for topless demonstrations against sex trafficking and homophobia, dangled from a Paris bridge in a mock hanging to dramatize human rights abuses. The French-based anti-regime National Council of Resistance of Iran was out in force, too.

How long Iran and its nascent economic clout will be welcome at European power lunches remains to be seen. Despite signing the deal promising transparency and to forgo efforts to pursue nuclear weapons, Iran has in recent weeks sent mixed signals to the west.

Earlier this month, Iran briefly detained 10 U.S. Navy sailors, even publicizing humiliating footage of the Americans being forced to kneel and apologize for straying into Iranian-claimed waters in the Straits of Hormuz. That followed an incident in December in which an Iranian gunship fired rockets within 1,500 yards of a U.S. ship.

On Friday, it was reported that Iran flew an unarmed drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier. Finally, the U.S. this month announced new sanctions against Iran stemming from Iran's October testing of a precision-guided ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, in defiance of a UN ban.
An air mechanic whose cousin joined the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria is suspected of planting a bomb on a Russian passenger plane that exploded over Egypts skies in October, killing all 224 people on board, according to a Reuters report.

Sources familiar with the matter said the EgyptAir mechanic had been detained along with two airport police officers and a baggage handler suspected of assisting in the alleged bomb plot. None of the four have been prosecuted so far, the sources added.

The MetroJet flight crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after taking off from the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31.

To date, Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence that the flight was brought down by terrorism, and a senior security official at MetroJet told Reuters that none of its employees had been arrested or were under suspicion. An Egypt Interior Ministry official also said there have been no arrests.

But after learning that one of its members had a relative that worked at the airport, Islamic State delivered a bomb in a handbag to that person," one of the sources told Reuters, adding the suspect's cousin linked up with ISIS in Syria a year and a half ago.

"He was told to not ask any questions and get the bomb on the plane."

Another source said "two policemen are suspected of playing a role by turning a blind eye to the operation at a security checkpoint. But there is a possibility that they were just not doing their jobs properly."

Egypt says the crash has taken a huge toll on its vital tourism industry, as a government official reported that the country has lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

South Sinai Governor Khaled Fouda was quoted by the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper on Friday as saying that the resort cities of Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada are losing more than $250 each month, according to The Associated Press. He added that hotel occupancy in both cities is less than 20 percent.

Russian suspended all of its flights to Egypt after the crash, while Britain has halted flights to Sharm el-Sheikh.


Mosul Dam in northern Iraq is in moderate danger of breaking down due to months of neglect by the Iraqi government, a U.S. official told Fox News Thursday.

The Islamic State terror group seized the dam in the summer of 2014, but Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters, with coalition air support, took it back within weeks. ISIS militants took all the equipment they could get their hands on putting the dam at risk, according to the official, who adds, they stole everything."

Speaking to journalists in Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland offered concerns about the possibility the Mosul dam could breach if repairs are not made soon posing a grave threat to the surrounding area.

The Iraqi government called for engineering firms to bid on repairs to the dam and an Italian firm won the bid, according to the official who was not aware of any American bids on the project.

Built in the early 1980s, the dam is made largely of earth and situated on soft mineral foundations, which are easily dissolved by water. A report in 2006 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called it "the most dangerous dam in the world" because of its propensity to erode.

The report said the dam's collapse would put Mosul -- Iraq's second-largest city -- under 65 feet of water and kill an estimated half a million people. "If this dam was in the United States, we would have drained the lake behind it," MacFarland said.

Situated on the Tigris River, the dam is the largest in Iraq and the fourth-largest in the Middle East. It once supplied electricity and water to much of the country, but now only operates at partial capacity.

The coalition and Iraqi forces have drafted plans to move civilians to safety should the dam collapse, MacFarland said, warning that "when it goes, it's going to go fast, and that's bad."

Speaking to The Associated Press by phone, Riyadh Izeddin, the director general of the dam, said he had not been informed by the U.S. about any such contingency plan.

"The Americans didn't tell us anything," he said, countering the coalition's assessment that the structure is in serious danger. "There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing seriously wrong with the dam," Izeddin said.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Russian jet sped closely by a U.S. Air Force spy plane "in an unsafe and unprofessional manner" over the Black Sea on Monday, a Defense Department spokeswoman told Fox News.

The Pentagon is investigating the incident which took place in international airspace, Lt. Col. Michelle L. Baldanza added. She said the Russian aircraft was an Su-27 fighter jet.

The Pentagon held a video conference Thursday with Russian military officials to discuss flight safety over Syria "to avoid accidents and unintended confrontation between coalition and Russian forces whenever the two sides operate in close proximity," according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. There was no mention of the "unprofessional" intercept in his statement.

"No specific incident or event prompted today's discussion," Baldanza said.

This is just the latest report of Russian jets buzzing U.S. aircraft in that same region. U.S. officials told Fox News Russian fighter jets intercepted American predator drones at least three times in the first week of Moscow's air campaign over Syria last fall.

Russia claimed its airstrikes targeted Islamic terrorists, but human rights groups said some of the victims were Syrian anti-government rebels with no links to terror.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
U.S and British intelligence cracked the codes of Israeli drones operating in the Middle East and monitored their surveillance feeds for almost 20 years, according to documents leaked by an American whistleblower and published in international media on Friday.

Reports by the German daily Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Intercept said the details emerged from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked millions of documents about U.S. government surveillance in 2013.

The reports said the intelligence agencies were able to watch information that the drones and other aircraft broadcast back to their handlers. The project codenamed "Anarchist" has operated since 1998 and was based near the highest point in Cyprus. Israel was the focus of the program but it also hacked into systems in Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the reports said.

The Intercept report said the hacking granted intelligence agencies a "virtual seat in the cockpit" as Israeli drones hit militant targets. In one instance in 2008, an NSA internal newsletter boasted of the Anarchist program successfully collecting video from the cockpit of an Israeli F-16 fighter, the report said.

There was no official comment on the reports In Israel. However, Israeli Cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz, who has held the post of minister of intelligence affairs, said, "We are not surprised; we know that the Americans spy on every country in the world and on us as well, on their friends."

"It is nevertheless disappointing because among other reasons, we haven't been spying or collecting intelligence or cracking codes in the United States for decades," he told Army Radio.

Britain's Foreign Office said: "We don't comment on intelligence matters."


Marco's Pizza Franchise Announces Expansion Plans for Utah

One of the Fastest-Growing Pizza Franchise Chains in the Nation Is Seeking Entrepreneurs in Utah

TOLEDO, OH - (Marketwired - Jan 28, 2016) - To meet the growing demand for pizza in Utah, Marco's Pizza franchise is seeking to partner with entrepreneurs who want a slice of the action.

The demand for pizza in Utah is growing. Utah's population growth rate continues to outpace that of the nation, making it a great place for Marco's Pizza. Utah is also business-friendly. In 2015, Utah ranked No. 1 in Forbes' Best States for Business list for the second straight year and the fifth time since 2010, making it an excellent region for a Marco's Pizza franchise.

Once customers try Marco's Pizza's Ah!thentic Italian-style pizza -- fresh-made with delectable cheeses, meats and vegetables -- they're hooked. Marco's has prime locations available in Utah for entrepreneurs to start building their franchise restaurants and loyal customer base.

"Our franchisees come from a remarkably wide variety of backgrounds. But there's a common thread among our franchisees -- passion for the Marco's product. Almost half of them were Marco's consumers first. They fell in love with our product," said Cameron Cummins, Chief Development Officer for Marco's Pizza.

Marco's prides itself in making the best pizza money can buy. Pizzas are handmade in the Italian tradition. They use fresh, never-frozen cheeses, make the dough in stores daily and top it with only premium meats and vegetables. Founded in Toledo in 1978, Marco's is the only Top 20 pizza chain started by a native Italian. Marco's has enjoyed stunning growth in recent years and is on pace to open 1,000 restaurants by the end of 2017. The brand's proven business model and sustainable growth have been heralded by the likes of Forbes, Consumer Reports, Entrepreneur, Franchise Times and Nation's Restaurant News.

Why Utah? Why now?

Utah's population of nearly 3 million has a growth rate of 1.7 percent, which is more than twice the national average, according to the Governor's Office of Management and Budget. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently published a study on American eating habits that found on any given day, 13 percent of the entire U.S. population is eating pizza. Looking at just three large Utah cities of Logan, Ogden, and St. George -- which have a combined population of more than 202,000 -- that works out to about 26,000 Utahns feasting on pizza daily, and Marco's is ready to grab a big slice of that market.

Competitors have oversaturated their markets, but Marco's Pizza still has prime locations for franchisees to set up shop -- Utah is one of them.

Marco's Pizza growth outpaces pizza industry

Marco's Pizza has the fastest-growing unit growth, according to Nation's Restaurant News, who named the beloved pizza franchise as part of its Second 100 List -- an analysis of businesses that are smaller but are focusing on growing around the nation.

The publication states that while the pizza industry is mature and growth is limited, Marco's Pizza is the exception. Not only is Marco's growing faster than other pizza franchises, currently on pace to open its 1,000th location in early 2017, Marco's Pizza sales growth also is higher than any other pizza franchise. The publication reports that Marco's Pizza sales growth is tops for system-wide sales in the Second 100 pizza segment.

Marco's Pizza franchise seeks friendly, passionate entrepreneurs in Utah

Marco's Pizza is seeking quality franchisees who are committed to making their franchises places where customers want to buy fresh, delectable pizza -- welcoming, friendly individuals who remember customers' names and are passionate about the Marco's product. The investment required to start a Marco's Pizza franchise is typically about $350,000. The pizza franchise is looking for people who have a net worth of $150,000 and a minimum liquidity of $100,000.

Previous restaurant experience is not necessary to open a Marco's Pizza. The company's team of veteran pizza executives has experience growing brands and is always ready to help franchisees throughout their careers.

At a six-week training at Marco's University, franchisees learn how to make the perfect pizza in the company's state-of-the-art kitchen.

In addition to learning about the product and how it is made, the company helps franchisees learn to manage the business side of the franchise. Franchisees learn how to train staff, manage finances and study market analysis, as well as learn the insurance requirements, leasing issues and marketing savvy needed to be successful.

SOURCE Marco's Pizza

Contact:

Cameron Cummins

Chief Development Officer

ccummins@marcos.com

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Showhomes System Smashes Existing Revenue Barriers with Record 2015 Q4 Growth

Premiere Home Staging Franchise Tallies Highest Ever Annual Earnings as it Surges into 2016

NASHVILLE, TENN. (PRWEB) January 29, 2016 - The Showhomes franchise system, the nations largest and most successful home staging franchise made 2015 a year for the record books, posting the best year of revenue in the brands 29 year history. Showhomes had a 33 percent increase in system-wide revenue when compared with 2014s system-wide revenue.

2015 marked a turning point for Showhomes, said Showhomes Franchise Corporation Chief Operating Officer Matt Kelton. We increased our focus on expanding the unique menu of services we offer that help set our brand apart, from home renovations to our proprietary home manager program. We knew these innovative approaches would resonate with our clients, but the growth weve seen has exceeded even our lofty expectations. And, were perfectly poised to continue that incredible momentum in 2016.

Even after the brands record-breaking year, Showhomes Franchise Corporation remains committed to aggressive expansion in the New Year ahead. The Showhomes system closed 2015 by adding an impressive collection of new franchisees in Boise, Idaho; Santa Fe, NM; Tampa, Fla.; Daytona Beach, Fla.; Mobile, Ala.; La Jolla, Calif., and Houston, Texas.

Several of the brands new franchise locations were opened in 2015 by existing successful franchisees, including Chris and Lisa Gulliver. The Gullivers, franchise owners of Showhomes San Diego, Calif. added Showhomes La Jolla, Calif. to their roster in 2015 and together, the couple set the brands all time revenue record for franchisees.

Franchise owners in the home staging industry are looking for simplicity when it comes to running their business. Our training model is backed by three decades of success, strong infrastructure, a streamlined corporate support system and a growing client base. Our strong financials in 2015 and the driven new franchise owners we signed are already helping us grow once again as we begin 2016, said Kelton.

Much of that growth can be attributed to Showhomes franchise businesses expanding slate of services. The brand now serves home sellers as a one-stop-shop, offering home updates like interior painting and flooring upgrades to help better position a home for sale. Through the program, Showhomes update experts assess a homes individual needs, and provide a customized menu of changes, utilizing Showhomes businesses exclusive color palettes and flooring options to bring a maximum return on investment without the hassle of hiring and communicating with multiple contractors to complete the work.

Showhomes Home Manager program was also in high demand in 2015. The program matches high-end, vacant homes currently on the market with individuals or families who have beautiful furniture, artwork and accessories, but are in need of temporary housing. Acting as professional caretakers, the Home Managers keep the home in show to sell condition, providing both peace of mind to homeowners and staging services at a fraction of the traditional cost.

These unique services are truly resonating with homeowners who are motivated to sell their homes quickly, and for top dollar, and theyre only offered by Showhomes, Kelton said. Thats one big reason why the interest in our services is at an all-time high. Buyers increasingly want a move-in ready house with fresh paint and flooring. We provide that, while also giving sellers a hassle-free and stress-free experience. We take care of everything it takes to put your homes best foot forward, and that has set us apart. We plan to use that differentiation to drive another year of aggressive national growth, as we set the bar even higher in 2016.

About Showhomes

Founded in 1986, the Showhomes franchise system has helped Realtors and homeowners sell more than 25,000 residential properties worth more than $8.5 billion, by transforming high-end vacant houses into fully-furnished, inviting, valued Showhomes homes. Currently serving prominent communities in 18 states, the Showhomes system is a rapidly expanding franchise with nearly 60 offices nationwide. Boasting the expertise of long-time real estate and interior design professionals, Showhomes businesses are a one-stop-shop for home staging, home redesign, One-Day Makeovers for currently occupied homes, and the proprietary Home Manager program  a proven model to get upscale vacant homes sold faster. Many major national media outlets in the U.S. have praised the work of Showhomes businesses and the brand has been prominently featured on Oprah, HGTV and the Travel Channel. For more information or to learn about franchise opportunities, please visit http://www.showhomes.com.

SOURCE Showhomes

Contact:

Lauren Boukas

No Limit Agency

+1 (312) 526-3996

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Uncle Maddios Pizza to Open First Restaurant in Ocala, Florida

Fast-Casual Create-Your-Own Pizza Restaurant Opens Jan. 29

OCALA, FL (PRWEB) January 29, 2016 - Uncle Maddio's Pizza, the create-your-own fast-casual pizza franchise, will open its first location in Ocala, Fla., on Jan. 29. The top pizza franchise will be located at 2606 SW 19th Avenue Road. To introduce the community to Uncle Maddios, the restaurant will host a grand opening party on Saturday, Jan. 30, with free pizza to guests in line from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Uncle Maddios has three other restaurants in Florida with 12 more planned in the North and Central regions.

Uncle Maddios is a next generation pizza restaurant that lets guests build their own pizza exactly how they want it and cooked in fast baked ovens and served to their tables in about six minutes. Guests choose from one of three crusts, including a delicious gluten-free option, and 48 toppings, including six sauces, 27 vegetables and 15 meats. Everything is fresh, from the pizza dough and sauce thats made in-store each day to the wide variety of veggies. For guests looking to expand their pizza horizons, Uncle Maddios also offers signature pizzas ranging from the meaty Big Max to the spicy Jamaican Jerk. Create-your-own salads and Foldwich  sandwiches round out the Italian-inspired menu. The restaurant also offers a selection of craft beers and wine.

The people in Ocala love pizza and there is no place like Uncle Maddios in the area. I know they will enjoy creating their own pizzas with their favorite toppings and having it served to the table fast, said Kim Ragle, Uncle Maddios Ocala franchisee. My family and I call Ocala home and we look forward to sharing Uncle Maddios with our community.

Ragle is a new member of the fast-casual pizza business. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Exercise Physiology and Nursing and is a practicing registered nurse and a mother to two children. She and her husband Ritch are now taking their interest and enthusiasm for business and adding restaurant franchisees to their resumes. While still keeping their current jobs, they will also be able to follow their dream of becoming entrepreneurs and remain active in the Ocala community.

Kim is an excellent example of someone who has a dream to own their own business and found the right opportunity with Uncle Maddios, said Matt Andrew, CEO. We are excited to have her, and the entire Ocala area, join the Uncle Maddios family.

Since launching its aggressive growth plan in 2008, Uncle Maddio's has signed franchise agreements with 67different entities in 18 states. Many of Uncle Maddio's franchisees have previous multi-unit experience with Jimmy John's, Firehouse Subs, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, Burger King, Krystal, Papa John's, Domino's and Golden Corral. Uncle Maddio's is on track to have 250 restaurants open in five years with 1,000 units in development.

For information on Uncle Maddios Pizza, visit http://www.unclemaddios.com. Interested franchisees can visit unclemaddiosfranchise.com or contact Jocelyn Blain at franchising@unclemaddios.com.

About Uncle Maddio's Pizza

With more than 1,350 Pizza Makers making more than 5,000,000 pizzas a year, Uncle Maddio's Pizza is category leader of the create-your-own, fast casual pizza restaurants. Operating 45 locations in 14 states, Uncle Maddio's has more than 250 units in development.Uncle Maddio's pizzas are customizable, made-to-order, and served up fast for about $8. With four pizza sizes, three types of crusts (including gluten free), six sauces and 48 fresh toppings, Uncle Maddio's has the freshest and largest menu in the category. The restaurant's unique fast bake ovens offer the most throughput in the industry and can produce 200 pizzas per hour. Uncle Maddio's also serves Foldwiches and salads. Uncle Maddio's 'Served with Love' philosophy and restaurant is for everyone - children and families, college students, the young and the young at heart - and includes extensive community involvement. Based in Atlanta, the Uncle Maddio's management team has 50 years combined experienced in the fast casual category.http://www.unclemaddios.com.

SOURCE Uncle Maddio's Pizza

Contact:

Ellen Hartman

Hartman Public Relations, LLC

+1 678 399 3335

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Window Worlds MerleFest sponsorship helps fund new Wilkes Community College Health Sciences Center

January 29, 2016 // Franchising.com // NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. - Window World, Americas largest replacement window and exterior remodeling company, signed on as the presenting sponsor of MerleFest, one of the premier music festivals in the country, for 2016. As the primary fundraising event for Wilkes Community College Endowment Corporation (WCCEC), which works to raise funds for Wilkes Community College (WCC), MerleFest, in conjunction with Window World, will aid in improvement efforts for the colleges new health sciences center.

Given their shared home of Wilkes County, North Carolina, the Window World and MerleFest partnership has been a natural fit. 2015 marked the first year Window World participated as the festivals highest level sponsor, and its commitment to serve in this capacity through 2020 solidifies its continued support of WCCEC to provide state-of-the-art resources to students and the community.

The health sciences center, Herring Hall, brings together the colleges curriculum and continuing education health sciences programs, creating an integrated training environment. The new facility will benefit 356 full-time students and 97 continuing-education students this year alone. Additionally, Herring Hall provides WCC with cutting-edge technology, facilitating programs like the Cooperative Learning Simulation Skills Training.

Throughout the year, Window World invests time and resources to assist non-profits across the country, said Window World Chairman and CEO, Tammy Whitworth. With over 200 store locations nationwide, the entire Window World family is committed to supporting local causes. We are overjoyed to do our part to help the WCCEC provide this innovative center to the community.

The WCCEC is currently in a five-year capital campaign, raising funds for Herring Hall. The total project is estimated to cost $6.2 million. As part of the campaigns financial plan, MerleFest will contribute a total of $1.75 million to the project. Window Worlds presenting sponsorship of the festival helps make this a reality.

MerleFest 2016, scheduled for April 28  May 1, will bring nearly 80,000 national and international music enthusiasts to the WCC campus. Known for its unique blend of styles  traditional, bluegrass, old-time, Americana, blues, country and more  MerleFest delivers Music, Moments and Memories. This year, Brandi Carlile, Tim OBrien and Sam Bush are just some of the talented professionals set to perform as part of the festivals elite lineup.

The ongoing success of Wilkes Community College and its students depends on support from community partners. Window World has proven its commitment to WCC and its students time and time again. Its contribution has helped us to incorporate the latest technology into Herring Hall, providing an improved teaching and learning environment for students and faculty, said Allison Phillips, executive director of the Wilkes Community College Endowment Corporation. Additionally, the Window World family has shown tremendous support of MerleFest through participation and volunteerism. We are proud that Window World is such a committed partner and friend to our college.

View the entire MerleFest program at www.MerleFest.org/Lineup. Tickets for the event may be purchased at www.MerleFest.org or by calling 1-800-343-7857.

To learn more about Window World, visit www.WindowWorld.com or call 1-800 NEXT WINDOW.

About Window World

Window World, headquartered in North Wilkesboro, N.C., is Americas largest replacement window and exterior remodeling company, with more than 200 locally-owned offices nationwide. Founded in 1995, the company sells and installs windows, siding, doors and other exterior products, with a total of over 10 million windows sold to date. Window World is an ENERGY STAR partner and its window products have earned the Good Housekeeping Seal for eight consecutive years. Additionally, through its charitable foundation Window World Cares, the Window World family provides funding for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, where it was named New Corporate Partner of the Year in 2010. Since its inception in 2008, the foundation has raised over $5.6 million for St. Jude. Window World, Inc. also supports the Veterans Airlift Command, a non-profit organization that facilitates free air transportation to wounded veterans and their families. To begin your exterior remodeling project today, visit www.WindowWorld.com or call 1-800 NEXT WINDOW. For home improvement and energy efficiency tips, decor ideas and more, following Window World on Facebook and Twitter.

SOURCE Window World

Contacts:

Molly Fresher

Window World, Inc.

336-667-2100

MFresher@WindowWorld.com

Gillian Luce

Reed & Associates Marketing

For Window World, Inc.

757-962-7375

Gillian@ReedandAssociatesMarketing.com

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Worlds Top-Rated Sign Franchise Will Focus On Growth Strategies And Customers In 2016

Signarama wants to be Marketing Partner of Choice for Local Businesses

January 29, 2016 // Franchising.com // West Palm Beach, Florida - Just like everyone else in the new year, Signarama has its own list of resolutions for 2016 and they are sure to further cement the brands standing as the No.1 sign franchise in the world.

Known globally for it extensive array of sign and messaging solutions, Signarama is not only poised to enter new markets but also continue focusing on the many things it can do for its customers. Signarama stores serve as brand-building and visibility experts in their local business communities, delivering multiple products and services that help businesses attract customers and build brand awareness.

As part of that goal, Signarama is continuing to build upon a number of initiatives that were begun in 2015 and contribute to Signarama being ranked No. 71 by Entrepreneur Magazine in its annual Franchise 500 list:

Further leveraging relations with global supply partners to ensure that Signarama offers customers the latest innovations in a fast-changing industry.

Increasing brand refresh promotions and service offerings to help ensure customers brand messaging remains vibrant and visible.

Reinforcing Signaramas message as the Marketing Partner of Choice for local businesses.

Adoption of the Signarama Sign Financing Program as part of the Better Signs to Build Bigger Business initiative.

Continuing to increase Signaramas Internet presence and using it as a tool for lead generation.

Already approaching 900 locations in 62 countries, Signarama is looking to add at least 65 franchise locations in the United States, targeting the Pacific Northwest and Central portions of the country, targeting individual cities across the nation. Globally, Signarama is targeting 70 new stores and hopes to focus that growth in Asia, South America and Europe, including countries such as China, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Scandinavia.

Signarama has recently added two master partners, one in Canada and the other in the United Kingdom. Salim Giga signed a deal to become the Master Franchisee in the UK. He has an extensive background in business and graphic media with his other business, TUK Systems, which is a media and material supplier in Europe and South America. Saleh Al Aroud signed as the Master Franchisee in Canada and uses his international business background to add an additional 40-50 locations across Canada.

Signarama President JT Jim Tatem foresees Signarama growing to 1,500 high-profit, high-sales locations worldwide by 2018. That growth will be fueled by:

Increased staffing to an already strong marketing team.

More research & development funding.

Expanded regional support of franchisees.

Development of additional core-product offerings.

Better equipping master franchisees for additional expansion.

Expanded outside sales teams for individual stores.

Another initiative also promises to add to their growth: Conversions. A number of independent operators have taken the leap to take advantage of all that is offered by The United Franchise Group and Signarama. The company says there are many reasons an independent operator of a sign shop, print shop or other office related company would fare better with Signarama:

Co-Operative Advertising, Training and Support

Brand Recognition

Mass Purchasing Power

Proven Programs

We want to be the source that local businesses turn to when they want to grow with a new look and feel, Tatem said. We can create their image and help them with visual strategies that will help them grow. We want to be the Marketing Partner of Choice for local businesses.

We will always remain true to our core as the premium sign provider, but we also have a focus on digital marketing aspects and have strong partnerships with national media providers to help us with this growth. We are also expanding the equipment found in our stores.

All of these new programs, innovations and upcoming conversions are making 2016 look like a stellar year for the popular chain.

About Signarama

Signarama is part of a successful system of business-to-business franchise brands and development services under the United Franchise Group. As part of the $49-billion-plus worldwide sign market, Signarama has been at the forefront of the sign industry for more than two decades. Approaching 900 locations worldwide, the company expects to have more than 1,200 locations worldwide by the end of 2016. For more information visit www.signarama.com.

SOURCE Signarama

Media Contact:

Rhonda Sanderson

Sanderson & Associates

312-829-4352

Rhonda@sandersonpr.com

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Connected Devices Market to Grow at 5.34% CAGR Driven By Embedded Processors to 2020

Connected devices market report analyze embedded processing is at the heart of the IoT. Local processing capability is provided by microcontroller units (MCUs), hybrid microcontrollers/microprocessors (MCUs/MPUs) or integrated MCU devices, which can provide the real-time embedded processing required for most IoT applications.

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A significant factor that fosters growth in the connected devices market is the high-energy efficiency of products like smart TVs, smart home appliances, smart thermostats, and connected bulbs. Due to the high efficiency of such devices, governments across the globe are encouraging their adoption. This increased adoption of smart devices will result in market growth during the forecast period. The analysts forecast global connected devices market to grow at a CAGR of 5.34% during the period 2016-2020.

Complete report on connected devices market spread across 80 pages, profiling 6 companies and supported with 12 data exhibits is now available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/461245-global-connected-devices-market-2016-2020.html.

The advent of the Open Wi-Fi Movement will spur growth in this connected devices market during the estimated period. OpenWireless.org is a cyber-activist group that seeks to increase internet access by encouraging people and organizations to share their unused data by installing software that will transform their wireless router into a wireless access point. The adoption of this initiative is expected to reduce connectivity-related issues across the globe and will result in the increased adoption of connected devices during the predicted period.

According to the connected devices market report, organizations, industries, and technologists are adopting the IoT concept due to its vast possibilities and numerous advantages. These advantages are also prompting consumers to buy more devices that can connect to each other in a network and share information. Order a Single User License Copy of Global Connected Devices Market 2016-2020 Report at http://www.reportsnreports.com/Purchase.aspx?name=461245.

Product-based Segmentation of the Connected Devices Market - Computing devices, Media players, Wearables, Smartwatch, Smart band, Smart glasses, Smart clothing, Wireless printers, Smart meters, Smart cameras, Connected bulbs, Smart locks, Smart thermostats and Smart home appliances

Connected devices market analysts have estimated the smart locks segment to exhibit the highest market growth rate during the forecast period. Smart locks allow users to control access by using a phone, wireless key fob, or even remotely over the internet.They are also the key components in smart homes, which are growing in number across the globe. The ability of these devices to allow users to control access using their smartphones in an easy and cost-efficient manner will result in this connected devices market segment's impressive growth rate of more than 91% until 2020.

Geographical Segmentation of the Connected Devices Market

Connected devices market research analysts have estimated that the APAC region will account for the largest share of the market by 2020. The increasing construction of smart homes in regions like Japan, China, and South Korea will foster the need for connected devices, such as smart thermostats and smart home appliances, during the forecast period.

Competitive landscape and key vendors

The global connected devices market is highly fragmented due to the presence of numerous small and large vendors. The providers in this market compete on the basis of product price, quality, innovation, service, reputation, distribution, and promotion to gain maximum market shares during the estimated period.

The top vendors analyzed in this connected devices market are Samsung, Apple, Lenovo, LG, Honeywell, and Microsoft.

Other prominent vendors in the market include Pace, Technicolor, Google, Sony, Nintendo, Canon, Epson, HP, Siemens, Pebble, Fitbit, Xiaomi, ODG, Recon Instruments, Vuzix, Whirlpool, Electrolux, Nest Labs, Schneider Electric, Philips, KISI, and August.

Further, the report states that security is a prime concern of consumers when considering buying connected devices.

Explore other new reports on Semiconductor and Electronics Market at http://www.reportsnreports.com/market-research/semiconductor-and-electronics/.

About Us:

ReportsnReports.com is an online market research reports library of 500,000+ in-depth studies of over 5000 micro markets. Call +1 888 391 5441 with your research requirements or email the details at sales@reportsandreports.com and we would be happy to help you find the business intelligence that you need. ReportsnReports.com offers research studies on agriculture, energy and power, automotive, Semiconductor and Electronics, Manufacturing & Construction, chemicals, environment, medical devices, healthcare, food and beverages, water and much more.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/461245-global-connected-devices-market-2016-2020.html

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Source: http://marketersmedia.com/connected-devices-market-to-grow-at-5-34-cagr-driven-by-embedded-processors-to-2020/102206

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New Book on Sonic Branding Solution Exposes Success & Failure

Latest book on sonic branding, THE BRAND AND THE BAND, provides examples of how sonic branding solutions are re-shaping music and brand communication.It's revitalizing the music industry as artists and music professionals help companies create engaging and authentic brands with sound branding strategies.

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A new book by Spanish-St. Lucian author Laura Montarroso, THE BRAND AND THE BAND, has just been launched on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Sonic-Branding-ebook/dp/B015ZEVKLI/

It is a lively, fun-to-read and informative book that explores aspects of a changing music industry and brand marketing. Artists, musicians and music professionals are discovering new avenues in business using their skills and knowhow to help build engaging and authentic brands with sonic branding solutions, which make a sound business.

THE BRAND AND THE BAND - Sonic Branding Examples & Solutions ebook is a guide that can help artists and brands develop successful partnerships. According to the author, it covers "multiple areas in sonic branding and offers new and valuable information for today's music executives, brand managers and artists".

Laura's aim was to outline the huge and growing influence of music in marketing communication and to demonstrate the possibilities and obstacles that brands and bands have when working together.

As Laura says: "I wanted to make the book very real by applying real life sonic branding examples and case studies of successes and failures. The book also demonstrates the difficulties that large and small companies have to overcome when partnering with music executives, artists and bands".

Laura's' book is based on her academic research as well as interviews with leading branding experts and music industry professionals. As she says, it is also spiked with "My personal experiences and insights gained from working within the music publishing sector at a time when technology, music distribution, management and promotion are changing rapidly. Brands and bands are working hard to understand and develop sonic branding solutions, skills, strategies and partnerships."

The book covers the history of sound and music in branding and marketing with many case studies of sonic branding solutions and failures. It discusses the current changes taking place in the music industry and brands' growing desire to add music and sound to their brand identity. A lot of these changes and initiatives are the result of social media and the sharing economy - that too is charted in the study - as are the origins of sound in advertising and the history of the sonic movement.

The book includes examples of the new-age sonic companies skilled in both brand marketing and music. It also explores the latest sonic marketing practices and offers tips and ideas for artists and brands. There are lists and links, resources for help and tutorials including video and other related material.

Readers of this book, including leading figures in the brand and music industries in Spain as well as in the UK, have found it very useful and its suggestions are easy to implement in real time scenarios and projects.

Rodrigo Saenz Messia - CEO of La Nevera Musica summed up the book saying that it is "An exciting addition to one of the most promising fields of communication, where music and marketing are learning to go hand in hand"

Laura became fascinated with the new trends in the music industry, including music branding, synchronisation and licensing, after completing a placement at Peermusic Spain, one of the most recognized music publishers worldwide. This internship was part of her four year full time degree in 'Audio and Music Technology' at the University of the West of England.

Those who purchase "The Brand and the Band" will also receive several bonuses. The Book Buyers' bonuses include a newsletter, case studies and membership.

The book may be read on mobile devices and computers with the complimentary Kindle reader that is available of amazon at:

Sonic Branding Examples, Solutions, Success & Failure

It is available at no cost on Kindle Unlimited and Website - and Bonuses http://TheBrandAndTheBand.com

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TMqtnCXPlo

About The Author

Laura Montarroso Daher Graduated with First degree honours in "Audio and Music Technology" at the University of the West of England, Bristol. While working on her degree, Laura also gained valuable industry experience - producing and recording local bands in Spain and the UK as well as promoting and developing artists' careers.

Laura's passion for music in business and commerce was ignited when working for Peermusic Spain, one of the most recognized independent music publishing companies worldwide. Conducting music searches for film, television and advertising, and proactively developing music campaigns related to the synchronisation side of the business. This sparked her interest in music branding; her research examined the symbiotic relationship of brands and bands.

Laura is originally from Madrid and has travelled to different parts of Europe and the US. She also had the privilege of living in the Uk and the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. This contrast in culture and lifestyle has been essential in her professional and personal development.

More >>> http://bonus.thebrandandtheband.com

For more information about us, please visit http://TheBrandAndTheBand.com

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Address: Calle Melchor Fdz Almagro, Madrid 28029

Phone: +34518808902

Video URL: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015ZEVKLI/

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/new-book-on-sonic-branding-solution-exposes-success-failure/102106

Release ID: 102106

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Lorita Kimble Selected To Open Authority Media Agency Serving The Baltimore Area

KNew Media Group opening to help entrepreneurs in the Baltimore Washington Metro area market create authority positioning for their business. Lorita Kimble was selected after international search.

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Online Media Strategist, Lorita Kimble, was selected to open an authority media agency in Baltimore that will focus on serving the Baltimore Washington DC metro market.

Kimble's agency, KNew Media Group will help entrepreneurs position themselves as an authority in their market using different forms of media.

"I'm trilled to add this division to our online marketing suite and excited to start this new adventure..." said Kimble.

Times are changing and to attract attention to a brand, a business owner needs to not only promote their business, but also to promote themselves as a brand. People are moving away from liking a brand and more onto liking people.

Authority marketing tactics are gaining mainstream appeal, and businesses leaders are talking about it.

John Jantsch, author of best seller Duct Tape Marketing, said in an article for Entrepreneur Magazine, "Building personal brand authority is perhaps the most important element of marketing today for a brand, business, or individual trying to gain an edge. It doesn't matter how big or little an audience you might command, it's all about the right people believing in your point of view or way of doing business. "

A story on Fox News stated, "The simple truth is, if you aren't deliberately, systematically, methodically -- or rapidly and dramatically -- establishing yourself as a celebrity, at least to your clientele and target market, you're asleep at the wheel, ignoring what is fueling the entire economy around you, neglecting development of a measurably valuable asset."

Daniel Newman, a contributor for Forbes Magazine wrote in an June article, "Influencers may be marketing's next 'golden goose,' as people no longer trust ads, but they do trust people. More accurately, they trust a voice of authority.

The demand for authority marketing and position services is growing due to the recent media coverage, and KNew Media Group will service that need.

For more information on Lorita Kimble and KNew Media Group please visit KNewMediaGroup.com or call 443-261-9200.

For more information about us, please visit https://knewmediagroup.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Lorita Kimble

Organization: KNew Media Group

Phone: 443-261-9200

Release ID: 102282

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Ron Rowars Now a Member of Angel Flight

Injury Attorney Ron Rowars has become a volunteer member of Angel Flight Southeast, a non-profit volunteer pilot organization involved in "public benefit flying."

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Stuart, Florida - Ron Rowars, a personal injury attorney in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and pilot of many years, has joined Angel Flight Southeast. Their mission is to "Arrange free flights so children and adults can have access to the far-from-home doctors that can save their lives."

Angel Flight Southeast, Inc. is a non-profit volunteer pilot organization involved in "public benefit flying." They provide a variety of services to the community, but mostly arrange free air transportation by private aircraft to distant medical facilities when commercial service is not available, impractical or simply not affordable.

Angel Flight Southeast serves the state of Florida. They are a member of Air Charity Network, an association of charitable aviation organizations comprised of more than 7,000 pilots who flew more than 22,000 missions for 35,000 passengers nationwide in 2006.

Flights of mercy and compassion, such as the ones provided by Angel Flight Southeast, are known throughout the volunteer pilot community as Angel Flight type flights.

The volunteer pilots use their own aircraft, fuel and time to provide free air transportation to medical facilities for citizens who are financially distressed or otherwise unable to travel on public transportation. Angel Flight Southeast pilots volunteer to fly patients to life-saving medical appointments who reside in Florida, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and the Bahamas.

Pilot Ron Rowars has been practicing law for more than 23 years. He is a former insurance company lawyer who now recovers money for victims of personal injuries, car crashes and workmans compensation claims. In addition to Angel Flight Southeast, he supports many other non-profit organizations. He is also on the board of the Stuart Airshow and provides free flights for kids through the Stuart, Florida chapter 692 of the EAA and their Young Eagles program.

For more information, please call and speak to Ron at (772) 337-1146, or visit his website at www.InjuryandInsuranceLaw.com

For more information about us, please visit http://www.injuryandinsurancelaw.com

Contact Info:

Name: Ron Rowars

Email: RonRowars@aol.com

Organization: Ron Rowars, Trial Attorney

Address: 1908 S.E. Port St. Lucie Blvd., Port St. Lucie,FL

Phone: (772) 337-1146

Release ID: 102246

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I Love ChiChi Expands Range to Become Largest Supplier of ChiChi London Clothing in Poland

I Love ChiChi has now become Polands largest provider of ChiChi brand clothing imported from London, with beautiful dresses and accessories from the high fashion boutique.

Stetin, Zachodnio Pomorskie -- January 28, 2016 (FPRC) -- ChiChi London aims to bring catwalk fashion direct to the high street with their beautiful ranges of Cocktail, Prom, Evening and Maxi Dresses, and has succeeded in doing so throughout the UK, where their products are best sellers both from the boutique itself and online through sites like ASOS. However, these items are still hard to get hold of internationally, meaning European fashionistas are left with a difficult task to secure the dresses. Fortunately, I Love ChiChi has been importing the beautiful dresses to Poland, and has now expanded its range to become the biggest provider of its kind.



The website includes a full range of midi, maxi and formalwear dresses ( sukienki chi chi ) made from the very best quality fabrics with stunning detailing, cut to flatter every shape. The dresses are amazing value, and the new range has arrived just in time for carnival season, with a new range of looks specifically tailored to this decadent, elegant time.



All items on the website are listed with high quality imagery, clear pricing, a wide variety of color and sizing options, and easy and secure payment options. This ensures that not only is the range the biggest, but the easiest and most enjoyable to shop.



A spokesperson for I Love ChiChi explained, "Poland is quickly becoming one of the trendiest countries in the world, and its metropolitan centers have a great hunger for this kind of fashion, which is being under delivered by the designers themselves, who have yet to realise the potential of this amazing market. That's good for us, because it allows us to import the products to Poland and help these enthusiastic fashion lovers find the perfect dress of their dreams. The new range is available to purchase now, and it won't be long until we expand again, so individuals should be sure to bookmark the page and check back regularly for new items."



About I Love ChiChi

I Love ChiChi is the leading online provider of ChiChi clothing in Poland, importing all items from the boutique in London at wholesale prices to offer great prices for fashion conscious women in Eastern Europe. The website is regularly updated with new items from the ChiChi range, and promises stunning high fashion for special occasions. For more information please visit: https://ilovechichi.pl/





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RestorationEze of Chicago Launches Revamped Website Focused on Client Assistance

Providing ample sources of information will help area residents better understand water damage and remediation as well as reduce preventable disasters, publishes restorationeze.com

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Recent census reports place almost 2 million households in the Chicago metropolitan area with more than 250,000 businesses operating in the vicinity of the city. With Illinois ranking among the nation's top ten states for high flooding risk, local residents stand to lose millions to this most common natural disaster in the United States. Additionally, flooding due to burst pipes, sewage backups and similar issues further drive up possible costs for area property owners.

In light of the mounting flood damage potential from both internal and external sources, spokesperson Matt Hudson from RestorationEze of Chicago has launched the company's newly revamped website. Hudson explained, "We established our company to help homeowners navigate the hardships of water damage by creating a nationwide network of licensed, certified and insured industry professionals. Our new website focuses on providing not only water removal and restoration services, but helpful information for area homeowners on a number of topics pertaining to our field."

Among the features of the new company website is a blog sharing team members' knowledge on various aspects of flooding and water damage. Recent topics of discussion include statistics on the likelihood of water damage, development and spread of slow leaks and common loss scenarios of which homeowners should be aware. These posts point out warning signs of potential issues, ramifications of neglecting home plumbing repairs and detail other relevant matters.

The website also lists links to additional resources, including the local chapter of the International Cleaning and Restoration Association; the Restoration Industry Association; the internationally recognized Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification; and the Federal Emergency Management Association. In-depth explanations of processes used to clean and restore homes and businesses following flooding and fire damage are provided as are pieces clarifying the intricacies of insurance claims. Answers to viewer questions have been incorporated into the newly designed website as well.

Concluded Hudson, "Helping local home and business owners recover from the aftermath of natural flooding, sewage backups, fires, plumbing problems and other situations is our business, and we're always on hand for emergency calls. We feel confident the new features of our redesigned website will assist local residents in understanding what to expect if the worst should happen to them; hopefully, we may even be able to help reduce the number of preventable disasters we often see in our area."

About RestorationEze of Chicago:

Devoted to helping area residents overcome the destruction left behind by water events, the team at RestorationEze of Chicago consists of professional restoration companies across the nation who are fully vetted, certified and licensed to work hand-in-hand with clients as well as their insurance companies.

For more information about us, please visit http://restorationeze.com/il/chicago/

Contact Info:

Name: Matt Hudson

Organization: RestorationEze of Chicago

Phone: (312) 257-3861

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/restorationeze-of-chicago-launches-revamped-website-focused-on-client-assistance/102315

Release ID: 102315

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Brian's Guitars Announces an Alternative to One-Of-A-Kind Artist Guitars

Unique guitars can sell in the tens of thousands or even millions, yet every musician can have a great guitar by visiting this website, reports BriansGuitars.com

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On February 1, 2016, the Zac Brown Band begins auctioning off one-of-a-kind guitars that are works of art in an effort to raise money for Brown's charity, Camp Southern Ground. Brown personally used these guitars during his 2015 tour and turned them over to artists to make these masterpieces. Unfortunately, everyone cannot afford to purchase one of these guitars and there will be a limited supply, yet consumers find they can still get a great instrument and save money while doing so by making use of Brian's Guitars.

"We are the consumer's online source for new and used guitars, both electric and acoustic. In addition, to ensure artists have everything they need, our company also offers effects pedals and amps. We serve as an authorized dealer for major guitar manufacturers, including Taylor Acoustics and Don Grosh, with the goal being to pair each client with the perfect guitar for their needs," Brian Giampietro, founder of Brian's Guitars, states.

Guitars are believed to have been around for more than 4,000 years now, and researchers found an iconographic representation of a musical instrument that had many of the essential features of guitars that is more than 3,300 years old. One-of-a-kind guitars remain in hot demand today. In fact, Eric Clapton's Strat guitar once sold for $1 million dollars at an auction in 2005. The Qatar royal family purchased the instrument before donating it to "Reach Out to Asia", a tsunami charity. The guitar was then sold again for a record $2.7 million dollars.

"Although it would be nice for every guitar player to have a one-of-a-kind guitar designed by a major artist such as Zac Brown or Eric Clapton, this isn't feasible. The cost is simply too high for most, yet we ensure every artist has an instrument they love and want to play every day. Thanks to the wide variety of instruments we offer, finding the right fit isn't difficult," Giampietro continues.

Playing guitar teaches patience and discipline, and this is only one of many benefits associated with learning to play this instrument. Individuals who play guitar find that creating music helps to lower their stress level and blood pressure, and learning to play a difficult piece gives an artist a sense of accomplishment. Every musician finds their own style and can emanate it when playing, and playing the guitar is a form of physical exercise. Surprisingly, playing guitar burns is estimated to burn 90 calories an hour.

"Check out our selection of guitars today. Whether you are a brand new player or someone who has been using a guitar for many years now, we will help you find the right instrument and accessories for your needs. Be sure to check out our Website also, as you'll find a great deal of information on what we carry on the site. We can't wait to work with you," Giampietro states.

About Brian's Guitars:

Brian's Guitars offers new and used electric and acoustic guitars, amps and effects pedals and serves as an authorized dealer for major brands, such as Paul Reed Smith, Martin and Victoria Amps. The goal is to pair each customer with the perfect guitar for their needs while striving to have the best customer service in the industry. In addition, the company specializes in brokering customer specs builds with PRS and Bill Nash, along with one-of-a-kind PRS private stock pieces.

For more information about us, please visit http://briansguitars.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Brian Giampietro

Organization: Brian's Guitars

Phone: 203-287-9190

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/brians-guitars-announces-an-alternative-to-one-of-a-kind-artist-guitars/102308

Release ID: 102308

For more information visit r



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LA Yacht Charters Launches Redesigned Multi Media Website

LA Yacht Charters is the number one rated yacht rental provider by customers, and has just launched a new website designed to make it an intuitive experience for visitors.

Newport Beach, CA -- January 29, 2016 (FPRC) -- Taking a yacht out on the beautiful Los Angeles Harbor, or even visiting the stunning Channel Islands, is one of the dream images people have in their heads of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. As such, many people want to make this dream come true as part of a unique holiday experience. LA Yacht Charters specializes in helping people achieve this affordably and in style, and has just redesigned their website to attract even more clients organically through search engines.



The new website is aesthetically pleasing, using high quality imagery of their stunning vessels, easy to read plain English descriptions, and a list of events and occasions catered for in order to help people find all the information they could need. Beneath this presentation is an infrastructure designed to maximize the way the site picks up on people's organic searches online through major search engines, so individuals can find the best provider when undertaking a search.



Individuals will then be led through the site ( http://yachtrentallosangeles.com/newport-beach-yacht-rentals/ ), which features full contact details and an address so individuals can get in touch via email or phone, turning that search into a real dream holiday.



A spokesperson for LA Yacht Charters explained, "LA Yacht Charters is one of the most popular providers of luxury yacht experiences in Orange County, and while we have thrived on personal recommendations for years, we realised that now more people will go to Google than a friend to find what they're looking for. As such, we wanted to make sure our online game was the best it could be, so that individuals who have never heard of us before can discover and choose our services for their cruising needs."



About LA Yacht Charters

LA Yacht Charters offer premium yachts for special occasions, holiday parties, corporate events, and even adventures out to sea to go snorkelling and scuba diving to interact with wild fish. They are the premier provider of yacht rentals in Los Angeles and Orange County. They provide Yacht Rental Los Angeles for a cruise around the stunning Los Angeles Harbor, or to visit the Channel Islands.



For more information please visit: http://yachtrentallosangeles.com



LA Yacht Charters

1000 Bristol St N #17

Newport Beach, CA 92660

949-432-6282





Send an email to Michael Moreno of r

(949) 432-6282

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Travel Agency Wins 2016 Funjet 500 Club Award

Kings Crossing Travel inducted into the 2016 Funjet 500 Club sponsored by The Mark Travel Corporation, distinguishing it above thousands of other travel agencies nationwide.

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The Mark Travel Corporation is pleased and honored to announce the induction of Kings Crossing Travel as a member to the 500 Club in 2016. This elite program, established over 30 years ago, recognizes travel agencies that are top supporters and producers of TMTC's five brands -- Funjet Vacations, TNT Vacations, Blue Sky Tours, Southwest Vacations and United Vacations. As an expert in the products offered through the five brands, Kings Crossing Travel, has access to the best value opportunities at top hotel and resort options in destinations including the U.S., Mexico, Hawaii and the Caribbean.

The 500 Club is a program based on relationships, recognition and rewards for travel agents who have had outstanding sales and service achievements in the last year. 500 Club agents have shown an expertise in working with the brands and the products offered to consumers to ensure an unforgettable vacation experience.

The Mark Travel Corporation was founded by a travel agent and believes that when a customer goes to a 500 Club agency they will receive exceptional service and expertise during their entire vacation experience. "Travel agents are vacation experts. They have experienced the destinations and resorts and will give you the best advice in the industry.

The 500 Club is comprised of travel professionals who are experts in booking our products and should be your first call when planning a vacation," said Mike Going, President of Funjet Vacations. "We are thrilled that Kings Crossing Travel is a part of our exclusive 500 Club Program." said Going. "We are committed to travel agents, and pleased to be able to show our appreciation of their ongoing support."

"We are proud to receive this prestigious award from The Mark Travel Corporation. As a member of the local business community, we offer unique products and expertise that separates us from other Travel Agencies," said Patrick Silverwise, President, Kings Crossing Travel.

About The Mark Travel Corporation: The Mark Travel Corporation was founded in 1974 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A La Macchia Enterprises (LME) company, The Mark Travel Corporation owns and manages several respected vacation brands, including Funjet Vacations, TNT Vacations, Blue Sky Tours, United Vacations, Southwest Vacations and more. For additional information, visit www.marktravel.com.

About Kings Crossing Travel: Kings Crossing Travel is a family owned and operated full service travel agency established in 1978. Serving the Kingwood, Humble, Atascocita and Greater Houston Metro area, they specializing in Honeymoons, Destination Weddings, All-Inclusive Tours, Cruises, Niche Travel and Family Vacations. For additional information call +1 (281) 360-3007, or visit Kings Crossing Travel online.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.4aFunjetVacation.com

Contact Info:

Name: Patrick Silverwise

Email: patrick@kingscrossingtravel.com

Organization: Kings Crossing Travel

Address: PO Box 6747, Kingwood, TX 77325

Phone: +1 281 360 3007

Release ID: 102270

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Upon A Mattress Publishes New Guide To 2016s Best Mattresses For Heavyset Individuals

UponAMattress.com has created a new and helpful guide to the best mattresses for those carrying additional weight, collecting the best examples into a high quality shortlist.

San Francisco, CA -- January 29, 2016 (FPRC) -- The mattress is an essential piece of home furniture, and is a place where people will spend up to a third of their lives seeking rest and recuperation from the stresses and strains of daily life. As a result, getting the right mattress is incredibly important to overall health and wellbeing. Upon A Mattress is a website committed to helping people do just that, and has just published a guide to the best available mattresses for heavy people, capable of standing up to the additional rigors of supporting larger bodies.



The review ( http://uponamattress.com/best-for-heavy-people-reviews/ ) covers the best-selling, best rated by customers, and best for budget options available to consumers looking for something that can stand up to the rigors of additional weight while also providing support and comfort. The individual items are then described in detail, with a guide to their unique features and advantages.



Whats more, the guide goes in depth about what individuals should be looking for when making their purchases, and what factors they bring to the table that may affect which of the three is the best fit for their needs. This empowers people to make their own informed decisions while using the expert insights available on the site ( http://uponamattress.com/best-reviews/ ).



A spokesperson for Upon A Mattress explained, We understand that the needs of different people will vary greatly according to the kind of mattress they prefer, the way in which they sleep and more. Heavier people tend to need a firmer mattress to provide greater support, and we have reflected specific needs like these in our reviews. Members of our team have personally tested the mattresses to attest to their suitability for bigger frames, and we are happy to report that individuals will be well served by any of three shortlisted mattresses in our latest review.



About Upon A Mattress: Upon A Mattress is an invaluable website for anyone seeking high quality information, news and reviews of mattresses. The site features impartial and insightful analyses of the latest product releases designed to help people make informed consumer decisions. The site is regularly updated by a committed team of writers and researchers. For more information please visit: http://uponamattress.com/







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(415) 632 1664

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Parents Are Choosing To Pursue A Zofran Lawsuit For Many Reasons

Parents across the country have chosen to pursue legal action against GlaxoSmithKline - learn more today.

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As news spreads about the rapidly growing Zofran litigation, many questions have been raised, including why parents are pursuing legal action. The answer to that question is simple - the parents involved in each Zofran lawsuit believe that the drug caused a birth defect in their child. Heart defects such as transposition of the greater vessels, atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, cleft palate, cleft lip, kidney defects, and clubfoot have all been noted in the complaints.

Zofran, an anti-nausea medication, is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. The company first put the drug on the market after they earned an approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A marketing campaign was started, advertising the drug as a "safe" and "effective" treatment for morning sickness. However, the medical community and the public were unaware that the drug hadn't been approved as a treatment for this condition. In fact, the FDA approval only covered the drug as a treatment for nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, and anesthesia.

The drug was prescribed to thousands of women "off-label" and GSK allegedly began to receive reports that children had been born with birth defects to women who had taken Zofran. This information didn't slow down their campaign. Nearly every child has required surgical intervention in order to correct their defect and many have been left with visible scarring. Parents frequently state that the defect, and the required treatments, have reduced the child's quality of life and has caused them to suffer considerable emotional and physical pain.

Today, plaintiffs are seeking compensation for their child's pain and suffering, medical expenses, and more. Over 200 lawsuits have been consolidated in MDL 2657. This order, announced by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in October of 2015, moved federally filed Zofran lawsuits to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts under Judge F. Dennis Saylor. Recently, GlaxoSmithKline filed a motion to dismiss all federally filed Zofran lawsuits. Judge Saylor heard arguments from both the plaintiffs and defendant on January 14th, 2015, however, a decision has yet to be announced.

Contact Info:

Name: Michael Monheit

Email: Michael@Monheit.com

Phone: 877-620-8411

Organization: ZofranLegal.com

Source: http://www.prreach.com/pr/22178

Release ID: 102426

For more information visit r



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Home Worthy List Launches To Provide The Ultimate Guide To Home Furnishings and Accessories

HomeWorthyList.com is a new website looking to become the authority in home furnishings, and has started with a comprehensive review of the best toilets available in 2016.

San Francisco, CA -- January 29, 2016 (FPRC) -- Home furnishings are evolving rapidly, as technology and increased home automation are beginning to make homes more comfortable to live in, more pleasant to interact with and more customizable than ever before. Home Worthy List is a website that has just launched to track the latest homeware releases of furnishings and accessories that can add a new dimension to homes. Starting with the fundamentals, they have just launched their first piece of content- a comprehensive comparison review of the best toilets available for comfort, economy and design.



The review of toilets includes a shortlist of the three top performing toilets in the industry, with items shortlisted according to their quality, performance, water saving capability, comfort and visual aesthetic. Each item shortlisted comes with a comprehensive individual review as well as a discussion of its place in the wider market, helping individuals make their own decisions with the best information and insight available.



The editorial is just the first of many that will furnish the site, which has already looked at composting toilets ( http://homeworthylist.com/best-composting-toilet-reviews/ ) and portable camping toilets ( http://homeworthylist.com/best-portable-camping-toilet-reviews/ ) to help people get the best comfort and economy no matter their circumstances.



A spokesperson for Home Worthy List explained, We have launched the site and focused on toilets first and foremost, as these are one of the most important technical innovations of the home in the last hundred years, and their design continues to get more sophisticated as technology advances. The website will eventually expand into new areas, but we wanted to start with this often overlooked element of home design, because its amazing the positive difference a great toilet can make not only to utility bills but to the daily human experience. Home Worthy List is just beginning, and we cant wait to become the authority on home furnishings throughout the year ahead.



About Home Worthy List: Home Worthy List narrow the best valued, top performing and best designed home furnishings into a simplified comparison of different products in the market, helping people understand the options available and make informed consumer decisions, cherry picking from the best the market has to offer. For more information please visit: http://homeworthylist.com/







Send an email to Joe Bragg of r

(415) 632 1664

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Phoenix Trading System William Johnston From Marshall-Sherman Group Launched

Presenting an extremely effective tool for binary options trading, William Johnston from Marshall-Sherman group, has launched his new product - Phoenix Trading Software review for investors all around. The software offers well researched free binary signals helping investors to make profitable trading decisions.

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Binary options trading is a tricky business as it requires quick decisions to be made which can either lead to quick heavy profits or major losses. Even the experienced traders end up losing money at times by making wrong decisions under pressure. Providing a very effective solution to these trading worries, the expert trader and a successful online trading guru, William Johnston, who also represents the Marshal-Sherman group, launched his new and advanced binary trading software named as "Phoenix Trading Software". The software is getting critically acclaimed in various Phoenix Trading Review Posts.

As told, while the software makes things highly simple for the novice traders, it makes life easier for the experienced traders too. The maker, William Johnston, talked about his new product and si, "I tried to consolidate my experience and binary trading strategies into an automated binary trading system which could make the decision making easier for the traders."

"It is not any point and click method of getting easy money. It is a result of well-researched work done over the niche of the trading market. What it does is that it provides accurate market signals to the traders which make it easier for them to just follow these signals and decide whether they wish to make the trade or not", William informed.

The software has been giving highly impressive results since its launch and this is the reason that it has been getting an increasing number of users every day. The makers claim that the software can get an accuracy rate of as high as 90+%.

The maker said that the complete software was created by keeping the end user, i.e trader (experienced as well as beginners), in mind. As told, the aim was to create a software that completely control the trading process. It does that by expertly finding and automating trades for the investors.

Now with the increasing number of users, the software is proving its claims right. Making life easier for the traders all over, it is being worked on continuously by the makers to make it better with each passing day.

For more information about us, please visit http://phoenixtradingreview.com/

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Webinar Streaming Platform EverWebinar Flooded With Positive Reviews On Release

The newly released automated webinar platform, EverWebinar, created to stream pre-recorded webinars as if they were live and help businesses owners or marketers automate their webinar marketing efforts has been welcomed with positive reviews by prominent industry experts.

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The newly released webinar streaming platform EverWebinar has been flooded with a wide range of positive reviews from prominent industry experts and online marketers, including internet marketing specialist Jason Potash.

More information is available at Jason Potash's review is available at http://everwebinar.com.

EverWebinar is an automated webinar streaming platform that allows users to upload pre-recorded versions of their webinars and re-stream them as if they were live by emulating a live webinar experience for viewers. The newly released software includes a scheduling system, a live chat simulator, split testing options and analytics or tracking reports.

The scheduling system allows users to set specific days or times for their webinar to be automatically re-streamed as if they were live. The live chat simulator gives users the opportunity to interact with viewers and download the chat history from previous live versions of the webinar that will appear automatically during the replay to simulate a live streaming experience.

EverWebinar was developed by webinar experts Andy Jenkins & Mike Filsaime and designed to be integrated with their other software, allowing users to quickly convert their live webinars streamed on the Webinar Jam Studio into an automated EverWebinar version. It also allows integration with autoresponders and mailing lists.

The developers, Andy Jenkins and Mike Filsaime, explain that the software is designed to help businesses, marketers and webinar enthusiasts automate their webinar marketing efforts. Mike Filsaime reveals that "automated webinars blend the best of both worlds: high-converting event-driven marketing with hands-free automation". Andy Jenkins concludes that the automation provided by EverWebinar is "the fastest way to ten-fold a business without having to work ten times as hard".

The industry experts have welcomed the newly released EverWebinar software through a wide range of positive reviews. Prominent internet marketing specialist and Jolt Marketing Inc. owner Jason Potash released his own EverWebinar video review, explaining all the features of the newly released software and walking users through a live demo on how to use it.

He concludes that EverWebinar "really takes that live experience of a webinar and allows you to take that into an automated, auto-play webinar format where viewers don't even know they're not watching it live". Jason Potash's video review of EverWebinar is available here

For more information about us, please visit http://EverWebinar.com

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Best Minecraft Server Hosting Value For Money Released

A hosting company has released their new Minecraft hosting service with best price affordability and flawless customer support as their key offers to gamers.

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A new Minecraft hosting server has been released with the primary objective of being the best value for money hosting available combined with excellent support services.

More details are available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1PQXQq_Ess.

Minecraft has been dubbed the world's third most popular computer game ever (after Tetris and Wii Sport) and is available on at least nine different major software platforms, with Microsoft acquiring it and access to its almost 10 million users, in 2014. There are many server hosting companies competing for revenue off its popularity.

According to Minecraft server host reviewer, MC Wizard, it's typical to assume that the larger host companies are the most dependable and reliable. This is not necessarily true however, and as the reviewer has found, what often happens in reality is that the larger hosts offer expensive plan options combined with unreliable support, unlike BisectHosting.

A great hosting service comes down to the following factors: great choice of plans; affordability; great service; and responsive staff. The newly released Minecraft hosting service has a customer favorite 'Live Chat' functionality; which is easy to use, opens up instantly and is ready to go with no waiting and a genuine instant response every time. Some server hosts' support can leave customers waiting for 24 hours or longer for replies but this new service has rapid customer service combined with the live chat facility.

Included features with this hosting company not offered by larger hosting companies (unless for a fee) include: free unlimited slots; free daily backups; free dedicated IP; free modpack installation; free MySQL; control panel for server access without logging on; free full FTP access; free subdomains for each user; and custom JAR support. Some of these features aren't required by all users, but for those that do smaller hosting companies reviewed provide them for the sake of convenience.

The hosting company has servers in six worldwide locations across three continents, so users can select their best location, eliminating latency. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are deployed to prevent the server from crashing, keeping users' information safe. They also avoid over selling their service, so users don't experience lag due to server overcrowding. Free DDoS protection against hacking and attacks is provided.

With the features of genuine 24/7 support from staff that are always available when needed, and the availability of many plan options with great deals this newly released Minecraft hosting service is quickly become a popular choice with gamers.

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More than 300 companies bought group income protection for their employees in 2015, an increase of 20 per cent from 2014.

According to Unum, 300,000 more employees were covered for income protection by the end of 2014 than in 2011, making a total of 2.1m covered.

Peter ODonnell, chief executive of Unum, said there was still room for the market to grow.

Mr ODonnell said: From our own research it appears that the battle for talent is a catalyst in driving this change. The world of work has changed enormously over the last few years.

Developments in technology, attitudes and society have influenced significantly how we work, and also the make-up of the workforce.

Employees expect more than just a competitive salary from their employer, and a third would consider leaving their job due to poor workplace wellbeing.

An effective way for companies to demonstrate they have their employees interests front and centre is a comprehensive benefits package.

Mr ODonnell said this was particularly true for new companies less than five years old that want the best talent to succeed, embrace a fresh approach and take on board new ideas.

Such companies see the value of building a place to work in order to attract the right employees, and realising leadership, culture, working practices and employee benefits are needed to make this happen, he said.

Industries like IT, retail, high tech manufacturing and consultancies where employees are central to the success of the business are particularly attuned to this approach, according to Mr ODonnell.

Mr ODonnell added: The time is right for brokers to discuss employee benefits with their clients and work with them to find the most effective package that suits the needs of their staff, both now and for the future.

Tom Binstead, executive consultant at Kellands (Gloucester), said auto-enrolment may have also been the cause of the surge in sales.

Mr Binstead said: One factor that may not have been considered is the fact that auto-enrolment has focused employers attention on employee benefits.

A lot of employers are looking at pensions so are now considering the wider benefits.
Legal & General-owned platform Cofunds is planning to cut 10 jobs as it uproots its London-based team.

Cofunds has confirmed plans to move its London team to its headquarters in Witham, Essex, which could result in 10 members of staff losing their jobs.

An L&G spokesman said the company is consulting with staff about the proposal, with the restructure resulting in job cuts to both its IT and commercial divisions.

He said: Cofunds plans to centralise all its key roles at its headquarters in Witham. This will enhance business efficiency and service delivery to their customers.

The firm currently has a 35-strong team working in London. Cofunds said it had nothing further to add about the proposal.

Last year it was reported L&G planned to sell-off the platform, but an insider later said an immediate sale was off the cards for the time being. This followed rumours in August that L&G was in talks with AJ Bell about a possible takeover.

L&Gs sale of its self-invested personal pension business Suffolk Life, announced earlier this month, sparked further questions about the future of Cofunds.

Last week, L&G confirmed the closure of its flagship office in Kingswood, which is expected to result in the loss of around 1,400 jobs.

Darius McDermott, managing director at Chelsea Financial Services, told FTAdviser: It is quite clear that Cofunds need to be mindful of their cost base and these two fairly small issues represent the direction of travel in terms saving some money and trimming some extra resource, which were put in place to deal with RDR and the sunset clause.

katherine.denham@ft.com
A man was deprived of his pension for more than two years because the managing director of the company he used to work for didnt know it had a pension scheme.

Royston Muller took his case to the Pensions Ombudsman who upheld his complaint and ordered County Tyre to reinstate the 95-year-olds monthly pension of 80.77.

This would have to be backdated to November 2013 when the payments stopped, Pensions Ombudsman Anthony Arter said.

Mr Arter had been told the managing director of County Tyre bought the company around July 2013 and did not know the company had a pension scheme, having been told by the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority that it had been wound up.

But Mr Arter said the OPRA had also said the trustees had decided to continue to fund pensions out of the employers own resources.

He said: That evidence suggests that the pensions in payment had, effectively, been secured with the employer, and the company became responsible for paying the pensions instead of the pension scheme.

In my judgment, County Tyre has a responsibility to continue to fund Mr Mullers pension.

This is because the scheme booklet says that the scheme pension was payable for life from the date of retirement.

So in effect, a promise was made to pay a pension, which is enforceable.

County Tyre has also been told to pay Mr Muller 1,000 for the distress and inconvenience caused to him by its maladministration.

Mr Muller started work at County Tyre in 1985 and joined the pension scheme.

He retired in 1988 and started receiving his pension.
When he refused to renew Martin Wheatleys contract, the chancellor made his hunt for a new FCA chief sound like a talent show.

George Osborne said he was going to scour the globe for the best individual to lead the Financial Conduct Authority.

As the hunt dragged on into a sixth month, names in the frame from far flung climes such as Australia were mentioned in the press.

Given the chancellors bold statement about a global hunt I felt we should brace ourselves for something different.

It was like when Simon Cowell announced he was widening the age range for X Factor applicants.

Heck, the talent show judge said the contestants would even be allowed to play instruments.

Perhaps, at last, rather then the conveyor belt of identikit fame hungry young men and women in their early 20s or white career regulators, we would get some true talent.

Yet, the winners of the X Factor continued to generally be from the same mould as past winners and I couldnt help but feel the same disappointment when Andrew Bailey was appointed as Mr Wheatleys permanent replacement this week.

I hope Mr Bailey will deliver something different when it comes to regulation but on the surface he doesnt seem particularly different from past holders of Mr Wheatley.

Mr Wheatley, who famously said he would shoot first and ask questions later, joined the FSA - shortly before it was replaced by the FCA - from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, where he had worked for seven years.

Before that he worked for the London Stock Exchange for 18 years.

Mr Bailey is chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority and has given the Bank of England 30 years of service, according to their PR team.

Mr Bailey, who will remain in post at the PRA until his successor has been appointed, has worked in a range of areas in the Bank including as executive director for banking services and chief cashier, head of the Banks special resolution unit, the governors private secretary and head of the international economic analysis division in monetary analysis.

Last year Libertatem director Garry Heath called for a new adviser-only regulator to be carved out of the Financial Conduct Authority as part of the Financial Advice Market Review to dramatically cut the regulatory cost of delivering advice.

What we have got with Mr Bailey is a man with the word bank repeatedly appearing on his CV, who has been involved in policing rather than the working in the industry for three decades and the term advice is nowhere to be seen. What we have got with Mr Bailey is a man with the word bank repeatedly appearing on his CV.

I hope Mr Bailey tries to understand what consumers need and want - financial advice - and creates a regime that encourages well qualified and experienced intermediaries to help more of the general public rather than just high net worths.
The Financial Conduct Authority has rejected a womans application to become chief executive of a stockbroking and advice firm after refusing to meet with the watchdog as she was assessed and approved by the regulator for director roles back in 2007.

Veena Bhandari was refused approval because she declined several invitations to meet the FCA to find out more about her experience.

She had attempted to become chief executive of William Albert Securities Ltd.

After receiving her application, the regulator invited her on two occasions for an interview to assess her competence and capability to perform the role.

On each occasion, William Albert Securities declined the invitation on Ms Bhandaris behalf, arguing it was unjustifiable and the regulator should rely on the assessment made in 2007, when Ms Bhandari was approved to perform other controlled functions.

But in a final notice, the FCA stated that despite ongoing engagement by the supervision team with William Albert Securities concerning supervisory issues, it was not able to make any assessment of Ms Bhandaris competence and capability because she had only limited involvement in the process.

William Albert Securities Ltd and Ms Bhandari have been invited to attend an interview to obtain information about her competence and capability and her previous involvement in the business of WASL, in order to allow the authority to assess her fitness and propriety, it read.

Although that invitation has remained open throughout the authoritys dialogue with William Albert Securities Ltd relating to the application, WASL has consistently refused that invitation on Ms Bhandaris behalf.

The information which the authority hoped to obtain in interview therefore remains outstanding.

Ms Bhandari has already been approved for CF8 and CF1 roles, but the FCA said this does not demonstrate her ability to hold the CF3 roles of chief executive.

CF8 roles involve people being responsible for dividing the relevant compliance responsibilities amongst staff and overseeing the implementation of, and compliance with, appropriate systems and controls.

CF1 approval is for directors of the business responsible for directing the firms affairs, while CF3 approval is for the chief executive function.

This function is having responsibility, alone or jointly with one or more others, under the immediate authority of the governing body for the conduct of the whole of the business.
NO REUSE - submitted pic for use with Farmers Weekly, Livestock, 27 November

Farm incomes are forecast to fall significantly in the year to February, with some sectors down by almost half.

Defras latest farm business income (FBI) forecast covers the year from March 2015 to this February and include last years harvest and the Basic Payment Scheme.

Almost all farming sectors face a fall, with the dairy and pig sectors particularly badly hit.

Figures show average incomes are expected to fall by almost a half on dairy farms in 2015-16 to 46,500 and by 46% on pig farms to 26,500. Cereal farmers are set to see a 24% drop in incomes to 34,000, due to weaker prices driven by plentiful global supplies, declining demand and a stronger pound.

Forecasts of farm business income by type of farm in England Cereals 34,000 (down 24%)

General cropping 43,000 (down 17%)

Pigs 26,500 (down 46%)

Poultry 145,000 (up 14%)

Dairy 46,500 (down 45%)

Grazing livestock (lowland) 20,000 (up 8%)

Grazing livestock (LFA) 21,500 (up 47%)

Mixed 22,500 (up 4%)

See also: Advice on managing cashflow challenge on farms

The only sectors that are seeing substantial rise in income are specialist poultry farms, who are benefiting from reduce input costs and Less-Favoured Area livestock farms, whose estimated 47% rise is mainly due to increased BPS payments for Moorland and Severely Disadvantaged Area (SDA) land.

FBI is the surplus or profit made by a farm business before any unpaid labour is accounted for, so many of these farm businesses will go further into debt once living costs are accounted for.

Falling farm incomes would jeopardise the nations future food supply, warned the NFU. President Meurig Raymond said he was not surprised by the sharp falls in income given the low prices across the industry. He said the severity of the declines should serve as a wake-up call across the UK food industry.

The subsequent cashflow problems this creates for agriculture should be a worry for all in the agri-food sector. Farmers need to be profitable so they can reinvest in the future.

While the short-term focus is on income and cashflow, the longer-term issues involve better management of risk and volatility. Everyone has a role to play in achieving that. There is no quick fix, but we all have responsibility for achieving a better-functioning supply chain. Only then will farmers have the confidence to invest in the future and build resilience.

The solutions are out there  forward contracts, formula pricing, supply chain integration  but these currently characterise a disappointingly small proportion of the food supply chain.

Richard King, partner and head of business research at agribusiness consultant Andersons, urged farmers to continue to make their businesses as resilient as possible, keeping costs down.

Farmers cant control the weather, currency and markets or BPS levels, but they can ensure their business is as resilient as possible.

Even in downturns, opportunities could arise, he said, citing investment deals currently available on agricultural machinery, buildings and infrastructure due to cheaper borrowing rates.

Actual survey results for this time period will be published at the end of October.
FIVE GENERATIONS Five generations of the Leach family are pictured above. This is Minnie Brown Leachs second five generation line. Pictured are Minnie Brown Leach, A.L. Jamison, Julia Leach McGill, John F....

County OKs tax break for company that will purchase spec building Now we know why there was plenty of buzz around Project Bee. Although Project Bee had been identified several months ago as the codename for the Canadian company Niagara Pharmaceutical,...

Open house on public transportation County residents are invited to drive the conversation this week about how future transportation needs can be met in the community. RLS & Associates is hosting open houses Wednesday from...

Cancer Association event to go Over the Edge of AC Hotel The Cancer Association of Spartanburg & Cherokee Counties Inc. announces the return of the popular fundraiser, Over the Edge Upstate  slated for Thursday, November 3, at AC Hotel Spartanburg,...
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Zika virus : Case of Zika virus reported in Cologne

The Zika virus is transferred by mosquitoes from tropical regions. It is mainly spread all over Latin America. Foto: Gustavo Amador

Cologne/Geneva/Rio de Janeiro A case of the Zika virus has reportedly affected a woman from Cologne who had traveled to Haiti.

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World Health Organization (WHO) officials are concerned about the Zika virus which is spreading explosively. Margaret Chan, Director of the WHO has called for a meeting on Monday to decide whether to declare it a public health emergency. The virus is transmitted by mosquitos and there are indications that it is linked to microcephaly, when infants are born with abnormally small heads and damaged brains.

Authorities made known yesterday that a case had been reported in Cologne. It was confirmed by a blood test in a woman who lives in Cologne but had traveled to Haiti. She was brought to a special clinic in Hamburg. According to Robert Koch Institute, the leading German public health institute, it is the second known case in Germany this year. Zika virus cases have also been found in other European countries.

According to the WHO, Brazil has had possibly 1.5 million cases and health officials there are investigating 4180 possible cases of microcephaly. Honduras has reported 1000 cases of the virus. It causes a fever in adults and otherwise appears harmless. However, the large number of suspected microcephaly cases in Brazil caused alarm, and health authorities are now investigating the link between microcephaly and the Zika virus.
Karneval plea : Message to Karneval goers: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Message from city to Karneval goers: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Burkhard Rick (f.l.), Gunter Brodeer, Annerose Heinze, Uwe Pasternak and Sebastian Schuster. Foto: Holger Arndt

BONN City officials release a special message to the public. They ask for harmony and respect amongst all Karneval goers.

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Harmony and respect are at the top of the agenda for this years Karneval. The Mayor of Bonn, police chiefs and Karneval officials have released a special message to the public: All are welcome in our city, which is open to people from around the world. Bonn, with its long tradition of Karneval is a major center of festivities. Here, people have known how to celebrate with a sense of fun and yet peacefully for over 190 years. It must remain this way because it is characteristic of our city.

They went on to express that events in the last weeks have caused for a feeling of loss of assurance amongst Karneval revelers. This is why we want to emphasize that the rules we have about how we get along with each other on a daily basis, also apply during these times of celebration. In Bonn, we have respect for every woman and man. We take care of each other, and are committed to our peaceful co-existence. Three times Alaaf! (If you hear people yelling Alaaf, dont worry, they are not cursing you  it is the cheerful battle cry of Karneval. It is pronounced Ah-lahf.)

In Siegburg, officials have announced that they will have more police on patrol than ever, and this year they will have one central coordination bureau for all police instead of each unit coordinating within their own departments. Director of Operations, Uwe Pasternak said that events in Cologne on New Years Eve had influenced their planning. It can be that police have to work longer shifts, postpone days off, or cancel planned vacations. Police in training will also be assigned to patrols, paired with more experienced policemen and policewomen.

Their concept includes four major points: maintain police presence and visibility, special troops to react quickly to conflict, undercover police and a central control headquarters with the big picture. Social media will also figure in to their plans as they monitor it for any signs or reports of trouble.

The campaign motto for this year, Respect  also at Karneval!
clarajancita at 29-01-2016 12:55 PM (6 years ago) (f)

Few weeks after a Nigerian grandfather Sampson Omogbo and his wife Carolyn, died in a house-fire alongside their 2 year old twin grand children at their home in USA another Nigerian family, 26 year old Jeremiah Owojori, his pregnant wife Ashley, their 5 year old son and seven month old son all died in a tragic fire incident at their home at 201 Coleman Str. in West Monroe, Louisiana, USA. The sad incident took place on Sunday January 24th.

Few weeks after a Nigerian grandfather Sampson Omogbo and his wife Carolyn, died in a house-fire alongside their 2 year old twin grand children at their home in USA another Nigerian family, 26 year old Jeremiah Owojori, his pregnant wife Ashley, their 5 year old son and seven month old son all died in a tragic fire incident at their home at 201 Coleman Str. in West Monroe, Louisiana, USA. The sad incident took place on Sunday January 24th.

Men of the state fire service say bad wiring in their home is most likely the cause of the fire. The Owojori's were all in critical state when men of the state fire service arrived their home and took them to the hospital.



They were all placed on lfe support, where they all eventually died. Jeremiah died yesterday evening. So sad!

Men of the state fire service say bad wiring in their home is most likely the cause of the fire. The Owojori's were all in critical state when men of the state fire service arrived their home and took them to the hospital.They were all placed on lfe support, where they all eventually died. Jeremiah died yesterday evening. So sad!

Post Reply I am a metro reporter on Gistmania, I have been publishing news materials for over 5 years Posted: at 29-01-2016 12:55 PM (6 years ago) | Hero
Microsoft India extends maternity leave to 6 months News oi -GizBot Bureau

Microsoft India has doubled the maternity leave period for its employees to six months and will offer them flexible work arrangements up to two years. The move is aimed at further boosting a healthy and productive work environment as well as emotional upliftment of the company's workforce, Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft currently offers three months of maternity leave. "This (extension) is in addition to Microsoft India's continued support to its women employees by offering them the option of availing unpaid leave up to three months and flexible work arrangements up to two years," it added.

SEE ALSO: In Pictures: Honor 5X launched with Sensible Fingerprint Scanner at Rs 12,999

The new maternity policy will be effective from February 1, and will be applicable on all employees who are currently on maternity leave. Further, Microsoft will also offer two weeks of paternity leave to its employees, it said.

Additionally, to care for adopted children, mothers will be eligible for eight calendar weeks of paid leave, while fathers are eligible for two weeks of paid leave. "We understand how important it is for new mothers to not only be able to spend time with their babies but also be able to transition back to work effectively," Microsoft India Head of Human Resources Rohit Thakur said.

SEE ALSO: How to Remove Your Number from Truecaller?

The enhancements to the maternity benefits are intended to ensure women employees have the time and support they need to embrace this new phase of life, he added. Over the past few months, a number of companies like Flipkart, Mondelez India Foods (formerly Cadbury India), Mumbai-based real estate developer K Raheja Corp, app-based fashion retailer Myntra have restructured their parent policies with many innovative additions.

Source PTI

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US, UK spies hacked Israeli air force networks: Snowden

Iran Press TV

Fri Jan 29, 2016 10:35AM

New leaks by fugitive former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden reveal the United States and Britain monitored Israeli air force's secret flights and communications, reports say.

The leaks point to a hacking operation dating back to 1998, Reuters reported.

Israel voiced disappointment at the disclosures published on Friday in at least two media outlets.

The spy operation, codenamed 'Anarchist,' was run out of a Cyprus base and also targeted other Middle East states.

Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, claimed the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air force drone missions against Gaza, Syria and Iran.

Online publication The Intercept, which lists Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald among its associates, ran a similar report, with what it said were hacked pictures of armed Israeli drones taken from cameras aboard the aircraft.

Israel insists that it ceased such missions since it ran US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s.

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, said Israel was 'not surprised' by the hacking described in the latest Snowden leak. 'We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us, also on their friends,' he said.

'But still, it is disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in the United States,' Reuters quoted him as saying.

Snowden began leaking classified intelligence documents in June 2013, revealing the extent of the NSA's spying activity.

He fled his country to avoid espionage charges and was granted asylum in Russia, where he currently resides.

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China Charges Canadian with Spying

by Ken Bredemeier January 29, 2016

China said Friday it has charged a Canadian national with spying and stealing state secrets.

Kevin Garratt was arrested in August 2014, along with his wife, Julia, who was released after six months in custody although not allowed to leave China. Her husband was indicted in Dandong, a city in northeastern China where the couple operated a coffee shop and conducted Christian aid work for North Koreans.

'During the investigation, authorities found that Kevin Garratt may also be involved in gathering information for Canadian information agencies,' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing.

Garratt's parents said their son was arrested because of his religion, a contention Hua rejected.

'He was indicted because of spying and stealing Chinese state secrets,' Hua said. 'It has nothing to do with his religion.'

Beijing's concept of state secrets can be very broad, while North Korea has often sharply punished Christian proselytizing activities.

Canada said it was concerned about the Garratt indictment and had raised the issue with the Chinese government 'at high levels.' A week ago, Canada accused Chinese hackers of breaking into a key computer network.

News of the indictment reached Ottawa a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior government officials attended a lavish party hosted by China in the Canadian capital to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

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Military Strikes Hit ISIL in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, January 29, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Hasakah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and suppressed an ISIL checkpoint.

-- Near Raqqah, a strike struck an ISIL gas and oil separation plant.

-- Near Manbij, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL building.

-- Near Mar'a, five strikes struck four separate ISIL tactical units, disabled an ISIL vehicle and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Palmyra, a strike struck an ISIL improvised explosives manufacturing area.

Strikes in Iraq

Coalition forces used rocket artillery and fighter-attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft to conduct 14 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Asad, two strikes struck an ISIL staging area and destroyed an ISIL building.

-- Near Huwayjah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL communications facility.

-- Near Ramadi, five strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit, cratered two ISIL-used roads, denied ISIL access to terrain, and destroyed an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL vehicle bomb, an ISIL tactical vehicle and an ISIL bunker.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Hit, a strike damaged an ISIL-used bridge.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is a strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations conducting strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations conducting strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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NATO weighs US call for AWACS planes in Syria

Iran Press TV

Fri Jan 29, 2016 7:0AM

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says the United States has asked the military alliance to assist the US with AWACS surveillance aircraft in the Syria war.

The request is set to raise hackles in Russia which already views NATO's eastward expansion with much indignation and is currently involved in a military campaign against militants in Syria.

The plan further raises the ante in brewing tensions in the region at a time of Syrian military advances against Takfiri militants as the Russian air campaign in the Arab country is proving largely successful.

"We are now looking into that request" to use NATO Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) against Daesh targets in Syria and Iraq, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg told reporters on Thursday.

The "different ways" to provide the support were under consideration, but no decision had been made yet, Stoltenberg added.

NATO is not involved in the Syria war, but a number of alliance members such as the US, France and the UK have been carrying out airstrikes against what they call terrorist targets in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

Syrian leaders have cast scorn on the campaign as largely ineffective, claiming they targeted the country's infrastructure for the most part. Some Iraqi officials also say the airstrikes lack punch and are hardly making a dent in the fight against terrorists.

The NATO chief hinted the request will be considered at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels in early February.

All members of the trans-Atlantic alliance would have to approve such a deployment, said Stoltenberg. "We are going to take this decision as an alliance of 28," he said.

AWACS is a radar system designed to detect aircraft, ships and vehicles at long ranges and control and command the battle space in an air engagement by directing fighter and attack aircraft strikes.

The use of such a complicated system against Daesh and other militants as claimed by the US and NATO is questionable.

Last week, reports said the United States had increased its military presence in Syria and was expanding an airbase in the country's Kurdish-dominated areas.

The Texas-based security analyst Stratfor posted low-resolution satellite imagery, appearing to show the construction work under way at the disused air strip in northern Syria.

The images show the runway near the town of Rmeilan located in the province of Hasakah near the border of Iraq and Turkey being extended from 700 meters (half a mile) to 1.3 kilometers.

A spokesman of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) denied the report but Syrian government officials confirmed that US special forces and experts were setting up an airbase in the country's northeast.

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Pentagon Says Russian Jet Buzzed U.S. Plane Over Black Sea

January 29, 2016

A Russian fighter jet flew close to a U.S. Air Force spy plane 'in an unsafe and unprofessional manner' over the Black Sea on January 25, a U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman said.

The Pentagon is investigating the incident, which took place in international airspace, Lieutenant Colonel Michelle L. Baldanza said on January 28.

The Washington Free Beacon daily, quoting anonymous U.S. defense officials, said the Russian SU-27 fighter jet 'came within 20 feet' of a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft, an electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft, and flew alongside the U.S. plane before performing an 'aggressive banking turn away' that 'disturbed the controllability' of the American plane.

Separately, the Pentagon held a video conference on January 28 with Russian military officials to discuss flight safety over Syria 'to avoid accidents and unintended confrontation between coalition and Russian forces whenever the two sides operate in close proximity,' according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook.

He did not mention the intercept over the Black Sea.

Based on reporting by Fox News, Washington Free Beacon, and TASS

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/pentagon-says-russia- jet-buzzed-us-spy-plane-over-black-sea/27518085.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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In Bid To End Protests, Moldova's Parliament Speaker Offers Referendum On Presidency

January 29, 2016

by Eugen Tomiuc and Alexandru Efotde

Moldova's embattled ruling coalition says it will soon call for a referendum on direct presidential elections, a moderate concession to demonstrators who have held several large antigovernment protests over the past week.

But the coalition rejected a more central demand for early parliamentary elections, and a key protest leader immediately dismissed the referendum proposal as 'way too little.'

The informal compromise offer appeared aimed at relieving pressure from a loose alliance of pro-Russian and pro-European parties that are calling for the brand-new government's resignation and new parliamentary polls in the small, poor former Soviet republic.

Parliament speaker Andrian Candu told a news conference on January 29 in Chisinau that lawmakers will discuss calling the referendum as soon as the legislature reconvenes on February 1.

'We will propose organizing such a referendum during our first session,' Candu said.

Moldova's president has been elected by Parliament since 2001, a decade after the Soviet breakup.

Moldovans and politicians across the spectrum have voiced frustration with the slow and complicated procedure, which has repeatedly brought political life to a standstill.

Protesters accuse Prime Minister Pavel Filip's new government and the parliamentary majority, which favors closer integration with Europe, of being deeply corrupt.

One of their demands has been for a referendum that would introduce direct presidential elections while also reducing the number of seats in parliament from 101 to 71 and strip lawmakers targeted by criminal investigations of immunity.

Socialist Party (PSRM) chief Igor Dodon, one of the three opposition leaders, said the coalition's proposal for a referendum did not go far enough, and vowed to continue protests.

'This is way too little,' Dodon said on his Facebook page. 'We must keep up the pressure until Parliament is dissolved and early elections are called.'

Opinion polls say snap elections would heavily favor two pro-Russian parties -- Dodon's PSRM and Renato Usatii's Our Party (PN), which together could expect to garner some 32 percent of the vote.

Dodon and Usatii have emerged as leaders of the current protests together with Andrei Nastase, the leader of Truth and Dignity (DA), a pro-European party.

They accuse the parliamentary majority and Filip's government of being corrupt and under the control of local tycoon Vlad Plahotniuc.

Lawmakers approved Filip's cabinet during a lightning-fast session last week in an effort to end a three-month-old government hiatus, but their hurry and apparent disregard for procedure sparked angry demonstrations.

Protesters broke into the Parliament building shortly and clashed with riot police before being chased out.

Protests grew over the weekend, with some 15,000 attending a rally in Chisinau on January 24, but seemed to have lost steam in recent days.

One of the reasons may be the criticism vented at pro-European Nastase's joining forces with pro-Russian politicians who want to replace closer EU integration with an economic union with Russia.

The protest leaders offered no common reply to speaker Candu's announcement while attending a larger civic forum held in Chisinau on January 29 to discuss the crisis.

It was not immediately clear whether new protests would be called during the weekend.

The protest leaders only maintained a united front in calling for the arrest and prosecution of billionaire Plahotniuc, a former legislator said to control the ruling Democratic Party, the judiciary, and a private media empire.

Plahotniuc has been a main target of public ire since a massive banking-fraud scandal in 2014 shook Moldova -- one of Europe's poorest countries -- and was at the origins of the current crisis.

RFE/RL's Molodvan Service in Chisinau contributed to this report

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/moldova-candu- offers-presidency-referendum/27519493.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US Will Not Target Haqqanis in Afghanistan

by Ayaz Gul January 29, 2016

The United States military for the first time has categorically stated its counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan are not targeting the Haqqani network of militants, which is fighting alongside the Taliban.

The comment this week by Lieutenant General John "Mick" Nicholson, picked to lead US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has come as a surprise to regional analysts who say it could be signaling a shift in Washington's policy to promote Afghan peace and reconciliation efforts.

"They are not part of that designation right nowThe Haqqanis are principally a focus of the Afghan security forces," Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday when asked wether U.S. forces target the Haqqanis as part of their counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan.

Nicholson went on to explain that the focus of U.S. counterterrorism actions are militants linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State group to prevent them from becoming a threat to the United States. Around 10,000 U.S. forces are stationed in Afghanistan as part of NATO-led Resolute Support mission to train and advise Afghan security forces and conduct counterterrorism operations.

But he reiterated the Haqqani network is "the number one threat" to American forces in the country and a "severe threat" to the Afghan government.

U.S. and Afghan officials have long alleged that Haqqanis together with the Taliban are using their bases in Pakistani border territory for attacks inside Afghanistan.

Nicholson reiterated those concerns in his testimony, saying the United States has not been satisfied that Pakistan has put enough pressure on the Haqqanis to prevent cross-border attacks.

"I view it as a serious problem and this has been one of the principal challenges. It is a sanctuary that our enemies and particularly the Haqqani network have enjoyed inside Pakistan," he said.

The head of Islamabad-based Institute of Strategic Studies, Masood Khan, while commenting on the U.S. general's comments regarding the Haqqani network says principal interlocutors need to "signal flexibility."

Afghan, Pakistani, U.S. and Chinese officials have recently initiated a four-way peace process aimed at resurrecting stated talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban.

The contract group has held two meetings this month while a third is scheduled for February 6 in Islamabad.

"It is absolutely imperative to bring Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. Pakistan believes that the best way to do this is through well-considered incentivization and inducement. Neither coercion nor weak blandishments would work," said Khan.

Nicholson praised the quadrilateral talks as "a great leap forward", saying it should result in a road map for further Afghan peace talks.

"These talks are encouraging; I see reconciliation as the path towards a negotiated settlement that brings about the end of conflict in Afghanistan."

The Haqqani network has carried out some of the most sophisticated guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings in Afghanistan against both local as well as foreign targets.

Lately, it has focused its raids on targets in Kabul. The group's leadership U.S. officials believe has links to the Pakistani spy agency, charges Islamabad denies.

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Foreign Troops in CAR Accused of Sex Abuse

by Fern Robinson January 29, 2016

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday he is 'extremely alarmed' about the allegations that continue to surface in the Central African Republic about the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors by members of foreign military forces.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement most of the alleged crimes took place in 2014, 'but only came to light in recent weeks. '

A joint U.N. team in the CAR recently interviewed four girls who said they had been sexually assaulted and exploited by foreign soldiers.

Victims speak

Two said they were raped by soldiers with the European Union operation, or EUFOR, while two other girls said they were paid to have sex with other EUFOR soldiers. The nationalities of the soldiers were not clear, but three of the four girls believed their abusers were members of the Georgian EUFOR contingent.

At the time of the abuse, the girls were between the ages of 14 and 16.

The U.N. human rights staff also interviewed a young girl and a young boy abused in 2014 when the girl was seven and the boy was nine. The girl said she performed oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for a bottle of water and some cookies. The two children told the U.N. staff other children were similarly abused by French soldiers.

All six cases involved non-U.N. foreign military forces, the statement said.

High Commissioner Zeid said he has notified the European, Georgian and French authorities about the cases. He said he was 'heartened' by their prompt responses and that they have already launched investigations.

Sexual abuse allegations have been a recurring problem for the U.N. mission in CAR. Earlier this month, allegations of sexual abuse of minors by U.N. peacekeepers emerged. At that time, those allegations brought the number of sexual abuse cases involving peacekeepers and international troops in CAR to 26.

Last year, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon fired the head of the 12,000 Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) force over the mounting number of cases.

An independent panel last month described the U.N.'s delayed reaction to investigating and prosecuting its peacekeepers as a 'gross institutional failure.'

UN allegations

While the allegations announced by the High Commissioner for Human Rights involve troops that were not operating under U.N. auspices, a senior U.N. official spoke Friday of five cases in CAR that are currently under investigation involving their peacekeepers.

The allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation were all perpetrated against minors, said Anthony Banbury, who is the Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support.

The accused troops and police come from Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Niger and Senegal.

Two of the cases involve sex with minors, possibly in exchange for money. One case, involving a Moroccan soldier, is an alleged sexual assault. In all, there were six alleged victims.

The alleged incidents date back as far as January 2014, but were only uncovered recently by a U.N. team investigating sexual abuse and exploitation in the CAR.

"The United Nations is doing everything we possibly can to assist the victims, to bring accountability and justice for them, and hopefully to prevent these cases  any such cases  from recurring," a very emotional Banbury told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

He said of the five countries involved, DRC, Niger and Senegal had not responded to U.N. requests for cooperation in investigating the accusations, so the U.N. is conducting its own investigations.

It is up to the peacekeeper's country to investigate and prosecute allegations of misconduct. The United Nations can only send accused troops home.

The United Nations has a stated policy of "zero tolerance" regarding sexual abuse in its peacekeeping missions, but it has had repeated problems with violations, especially in the Central African Republic, where many of the cases are reported.

The United Nations oversees more than 100,000 peacekeepers in 16 missions around the world. In 2014, there were 51 cases of sexual abuse and exploitation. Banbury said numbers are still being confirmed for last year, but that it would likely be 69 cases - the first increase since 2010.

"Twenty-two of those cases are from MINUSCA," he said, using the acronym for the CAR mission.

The U.N. has established a trust fund to help assist and compensate victims of sexual abuse.

Margaret Besheer contributed to this report from the United Nations

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On Eve of Summit, Burundi Reiterates Objection to AU Troops

by Peter Clottey January 29, 2016

On the eve of the African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Burundi has again said it will not accept AU peacekeepers in the country.

On Thursday, Burundi's main opposition coalition CNARED urged the African Union and the international community to send an AU peacekeeping force.

CNARED leader Leonard Nyangoma said a failure by the international community to support the Burundian people would lead to the "resurgence of armed groups" to fight what he called "the aggression of [President] Pierre Nkurunziza."

Burundi had already said any AU peacekeepers in Burundi would be considered an invasion force. Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe said the AU cannot send troops to any member country without the approval of that country.

"It is one thing to ask for AU to send troops; it is another thing for the AU to operationalize that request. What we all know is that the AU is not going to send troops to countries that have not expressed their consent of sending the troops. That was the conclusion of the ministerial meeting of the East African Standby Force. Now, if that was the conclusion of the ministerial meeting, I doubt that the AU Peace and Security Council will do otherwise," he said.

Nyamitwe said Burundi will tell African leaders that Burundi is opened to principled cooperation.

"The matter is not simply saying we want to deploy, but why do you have to deploy in the first place. So we are going to tell the Peace and Security Council how committed to peace and stability we are, what are the steps that we have already undertaken towards peace in Bujumbura," Nyamitwe said.

He said he will tell the African Union that the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza has never opposed any kind of international presence in Bujumbura and Burundi in general.

Nyamitwe referenced his government's acceptance of human rights monitors. Now, he said the African Union and the government will need to sit together to work out the modalities of the deployment of additional monitors.

Erastus Mwencha, the African Union deputy chairman of the African Union Commission, told VOA recently that the job of any government is to protect its citizens. But he said the Burundian government has not shown it can protect all its citizens.

Nyamitwe said Burundi enjoys the support of most members of the African Union as evidenced by Burundi election this week to the AU Peace and Security Council for the next two years.

"It is a demonstration that they recognize that in Burundi there is a legitimate government which has participated fully in peacekeeping in Africa and beyond and is delivering in that area. And they have acknowledged that in re-electing Burundi as one of the 15 member states to spearhead the matter of peace and security on the continent," Nyamitwe said.

Meanwhile, the human rights group Amnesty International said satellite images and witnesses point to possible mass graves in Burundi that appeared after security forces retaliated against rebel gunmen in Bujumbura.

Amnesty's director for East Africa, Muthoni Wanyeki, said Thursday, 'These images suggest a deliberate effort by authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out.'

Amnesty said police and security forces killed dozens of people on December 11 after rebels attacked three military bases in the capital.

Nyamitwe refused to comment on the report.

"I'm not a specialist of satellite imaging. So, I wouldn't like to comment on this one way or the others, and I am not, unfortunately a technology whiz," he said.

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At Least 5 Killed in Saudi Mosque Attack

by Edward Yeranian January 29, 2016

Attackers wearing suicide belts and carrying assault rifles targeted a Shi'ite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayer services, killing five people and wounding 18 others. It was at least the fifth such attack in under a year.

Amateur video shows panic among worshipers inside the Imam Reda Mosque as a bomb goes off, shattering windows, doors and ceiling tiles. Men can be heard shouting religious slogans as the lights go out and the sound of gunshots can be heard.

Eyewitness Mohammed al Ahmed told Saudi TV that worshipers inside the mosque blocked its doors after the attack began, but that one of the terrorists was able to enter after the blast.

He said there was an explosion several minutes after worshipers locked the doors and the lights went off and smoke filled the room, making it difficult to see. He added that a man with an assault rifle began shooting at random, but was wrestled to the ground and disarmed, after being hit with a chair.

Security forces confront attackers

Saudi Security Ministry spokesman Gen. Mansour al Turki told journalists that security forces were able to prevent an even greater tragedy by confronting some of the attackers outside the mosque.

He says security forces traded fire with the attackers, who had assault rifles, outside the building, as they tried to go around them and enter the building.

It was not immediately clear if there were two or three gunmen. Al Arabiya TV reported that security forces arrested two men, while other media reported that one man was arrested and a second blew himself up.

Dubai-based Middle East analyst Theodore Karasik told VOA that the attack Friday in the Saudi Eastern Province "is reminiscent of previous Islamic State attacks targeting Shi'ites." He said that IS has been calling for more such attacks in recent weeks and that this "may be the start of a new wave" in Saudi Arabia. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack as yet.

At least four other such attacks on Shi'ite mosques have taken place inside Saudi Arabia during the past year. Saudi TV reported that security forces have been able to prevent more than a half dozen other attacks.

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Iran Navy successfully test-fires Nour cruise missile

Iran Press TV

Fri Jan 29, 2016 2:20PM

The Iranian Navy has successfully test-fired surface-to-surface cruise missiles with a range of 150 km during large-scale naval exercises in Makran coastal zone, east of the Strait of Hormuz.

In a new move to show off Iran's might, the country's naval forces on Friday test-fired the missiles, dubbed Nour (Light), on the third day of military maneuvers, code-named Velayat 94, across a large swath of territorial waters and high seas in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Indian Ocean.

Speaking to reporters after the test-firing of the Nour missiles, Iranian Navy chief Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told reporters on Friday that the "proud move" by powerful Iranian youths "strikes fears into the heart" of every hostile enemy.

He added that the 150-km range missile has an accurate impact precision, good velocity, high detection power and powerful warhead.

Nour cruise missile could be launched both from sea and surface.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Iran's Navy, Commodore Seyyed Mahmoud Mousavi, said, "The Navy's vessels simultaneously fired surface-to-surface Nour cruise missiles and destroyed pre-determined targets and successfully accomplished this mission."

He told reporters that the upgraded missiles accurately hit the targets.

Iran's Navy started its four-day annual military exercises on Wednesday.

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Iraqi forces inflict more losses on Daesh Takfiri militants

Iran Press TV

Fri Jan 29, 2016 12:35AM

Iraqi government forces, backed by military aircraft, have launched successful clean-up operations against the Daesh terrorist group in some parts of the Arab country, dealing heavy blows to the Takfiri militants.

On Thursday evening, tens of Daesh militants were killed when Iraqi Sukhoi fighter jets carried out precision strikes against terrorists' hideouts in Albu Dhiyab district, which lies north of Anbar's recently-liberated capital city of Ramadi, Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network reported.

Separately, fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, backed by army soldiers and military aircraft, stormed Daesh positions southeast of the town of Tharthar, situated 120 kilometers (some 75 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, killing more than 60 terrorists.

Iraqi Federal Police Forces Commander Lieutenant General Raed Shaker Jawdat also said 24 Daesh militants were killed on Thursday in an operation in the city of Husaybah, which lies seven kilometers (4.5 miles) east of Ramadi.

Four other Daesh members were killed when government forces targeted their hideout east of Ramadi.

Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh Takfiri terrorists launched an offensive in June 2014, and took control of parts of Iraqi territory.

The militants have been committing vicious crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians.

The Iraqi army and fighters from Popular Mobilization Units are engaged in joint military operations to win back militant-held regions.

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Russia Publicly Embraces Talks With OPEC On Oil Output Cuts

January 29, 2016

by RFE/RL

Russia for the first time publicly embraced talking to the OPEC oil cartel about jointly cutting global oil production by up to 5 percent to prop up collapsing oil prices.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on January 28 in St. Petersburg that he is ready for such talks, sending oil prices soaring by as much as 8 percent to $36 a barrel in London trading and buoying stocks on exchanges from New York to Shanghai.

'OPEC countries are currently trying to convene a meeting with the participation of member countries and nonmembers in February,' Novak said. 'The question is being studied by different nations. From our side, we have confirmed the possibility of our participation.'

Novak's remarks follow comments from Russian oil executives earlier this week advocating working with OPEC to try to reduce the glut of oil in world markets and bolster prices.

Novak's public endorsement of cooperation with the oil cartel marks a reversal for Russia, which has previously shunned invitations to coordinate with OPEC. The Kremlin has previously argued that it is futile to try to counter entrenched economic trends like the current oil downturn.

According to Bloomberg News, OPEC delegates said they have no meeting planned with Russia.

In Washington, a White House spokesman said the move was a sign of Russia's economic desperation and 'weakness.'

The Russian ruble recently hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar while its economy by all accounts remains mired in a long recession that started with the plunge in oil prices in 2014.

The economic woes are even more acute in Azerbaijan, which has seen street protests amid the fallout from oil prices that are down by nearly 75 percent from $115 in 2014.

But cutting production also would bring pain, as it would cut into export sales and government revenues in Russia and most other oil-producing countries. For Russia, the world's top producer, a 5 percent output cut would reduce sales by around 500,000 barrels a day.

The loss of revenues from plunging prices is what prompted Russia and other producers to go flat out on production last year, with Russian output reaching an average of 10.73 million barrels per day, the highest level since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

While skepticism still abounds that oil producers who are getting increasingly desperate for sales and revenues will agree to cut production, analysts took Novak's comments as a sign that the possibility is being seriously considered.

'You have to take this seriously now. The key will be if Russia can deliver,' Gary Ross, a veteran OPEC watcher and founder of U.S.-based Pira energy group, told Reuters.

'Unconfirmed reports that Saudi Arabia has offered to cut oil output by up to 5 percent if Russia does the same should be taken seriously, if only because the two countries each produce around 10 million barrels per day. This represents almost 20 percent of global supply,' Julian Jessop, head of commodities research at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-publicly-embraces- talks-with-opec-oil-output-cuts/27518090.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Syrian defense chief in Moscow to discuss military ties

Iran Press TV

Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:10AM

Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij has paid an official visit to Moscow to discuss the results of a Russian aerial campaign against Takfiri terror groups in the Arab country.

Freij met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow late Thursday to exchange views on bilateral military cooperation and other security issues in the Middle East, local media said.

"The results of the operation of the Russian air force in Syria, aimed at the destruction of terrorist groups, were discussed," Freij told reporters following the meeting.

'The meeting was held in a friendly atmosphere and confirmed the mutual intention to further expand comprehensive cooperation between the defense ministries,' the Russian Defense Ministry was quoted as saying.

Moscow has been bombing areas under the control of Daesh and other terrorists in Syria since September 30 upon a request by the Syrian government.

The air raids have helped Syrian armed forces gain the upper hand in the battle ground against extremist groups. Backed by the Russian air cover, Syrian forces have managed to liberate many militant-held areas over the past few months.

The Syrian defense chief's visit came on the eve of UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva due to begin on Friday.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem will lead the Syrian delegation in the talks amid hopes of an agreement to end years of the conflict, but the opposition has said it will not attend the meeting.

Syrian opposition members met for a third day in the Saudi capital Thursday to decide whether to attend the peace talks.

The meeting was supposed to start on January 25, but was put off due to disagreements over who should sit at the negotiating table.

The UN warned on Thursday the negotiations must not fail but the opposition's no-show risks derailing the first attempt in two years to end the five-year-long war which has claimed over 260,000 lives so far.

Shoigu on Thursday separately met the Jordanian army's joint chief of staff, General Mohammed al-Zaben Meshaal, news agencies reported.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it wanted to hold an international meeting on Syria, which would include key players from the West and the Middle East, in Munich next month.

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Syria: UN-sponsored talks get under way; relief agencies amplify calls for access to besieged civilians

29 January 2016  With United Nations-mediated talks on ending the five-year crisis in Syria set to get under way today as scheduled, UN relief agencies and their partners are reiterating their appeal for unhindered access by relief workers to more than four million desperate people spread across 18 besieged areas in the war-torn country.

Speaking to reporters at the regular bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva earlier today, Bettina Luescher, for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said there are an estimated 4.6 million people were besieged in 18 areas.

"WFP is appealing that all humanitarian actors be given access to those areas so that they can deliver life-saving aid," she said, referring to the town of Madaya and the similarly besieged areas of Zabadani, Foah and Kefraya, flagged by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) as being in dire need of food, medical supplies and other aid.

As for the situation in Madaya  the most widely known of Syria's besieged towns, coming to the world's attention after reports of people dying of starvation or being killed trying to flee  she said there was nothing new to report as far as humanitarian access to the more than 40,000 people remaining there.

"It is a very complicated and bureaucratic process, and only a very small number of permissions have been given access to besieged areas, where tens of thousands of families are still waiting for aid," said Ms. Luescher, adding: "This is why putting an end to the fighting is paramount. WFP is talking to all sides, but an agreement has to be made on the ground."

She went on to stress that it is also important to think of all the places which might not be in the headlines today, where men, women and children are desperate and in need of urgent help.

Asked if WFP has considered air-dropping supplies, Ms. Luescher said this was a "very hard thing to pull off," requiring a safe airspace as well as a secured area on the ground, where large packages could land safely. There also had to be people on the ground to distribute those goods. That is not possible under the current situation. Trucks are the safest way to deliver aid at the moment, she explained.

Meanwhile on the political front, as previously announced by the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, the intra-Syrian talks will start today.

According to a statement from his spokesperson, Mr. de Mistura will start by meeting the Government's delegation today, headed by the Permanent Representative of Syria to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari. The Special Envoy will continue meetings with other participants in the talks and with representatives of the civil society subsequently.

At a press conference on 25 January, Mr. de Mistura explained that these will be proximity talks, meaning that the parties will be meeting with him separately.

At that time he said he is under no illusions about the difficulties in ending a war that has killed over 250,000 people, sent over 4 million fleeing the country, displaced 6.5 million internally, and put 13.5 million people inside the country in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

"In terms of vision, things may get faster, things may get slower, I can tell you in advance, don't be surprised," he told reporters. "There will be a lot of posturing, we know that, a lot of walk-outs and walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or because someone has done an attack, and you will see that happening," he said.

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Syrian Peace Talks Start Amid Confusion

by Ken Bredemeier, Luis Ramirez January 29, 2016

United Nations talks aimed at ending the five-year-old Syrian civil war started Friday in Geneva, even though groups fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad boycotted the gathering.

The U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, met first with the Damascus delegation, led by Syria's ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jaafari. A spokeswoman for the U.N. diplomat said he would later meet with other participants in the talks, including civil society representatives affected by the conflict that has killed more than a quarter million people and left millions displaced.

U.N. organizers say they are conducting indirect proximity talks, meetings in separate rooms, aiming to lay the groundwork for negotiations to end the civil war. It is the U.N.'s first attempt at Syrian peace talks in two years.

The United States had urged the Saudi-backed opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee, to accept the 'historic opportunity' to join the talks without preconditions. But the opposition group said it will stay away after its demands for an end to air strikes on civilians and a lifting of the siege in Syria were not met. Representatives of the group, however, did not rule out joining later.

The war pits the Assad government against the rebels - both moderates and militants. Both the government and the moderate opposition have, at the same time, been battling extremists that include Islamic State militants.

The U.N. did not invite the Islamic State group because the U.N. considers IS a terrorist organization. Kurds who control much of northeast Syria are also missing from the talks, at the demand of Turkey, which says they are aligned with Kurdish fighters who have waged a 30-year battle with Ankara for autonomy in southeastern Turkey.

The talks are part of a plan outlined by the U.N. that calls for an 18-month timetable for transition in Syria, including drafting a new constitution and elections.

Confusion over who should represent the opposition, and the opposition's demands for its conditions to be met prior to the start of talks showed how difficult the road to peace will be.

In the final hours before the start of talks Friday, organizers worked to smooth differences enough to get all parties to attend.

De Mistura: 'Talks cannot fail'

In a video message to the Syrian people Thursday night, de Mistura said the talks "cannot fail." He said five years of the conflict have been "too much" and that the Syrian people have had "enough."

Pressure to enter into negotiations is largely external, with the United States, the European Union, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all pushing for a solution.

In the West, that urgency has been fueled by terrorist attacks in Paris and the United States, and by the migrant crisis. Four million people, largely from Syria, are expected to arrive in western Europe this year.

The battles in Syria have intensified since September when Russia began air strikes in support of President Assad, countering the efforts of opposition groups supported by the United States, some members of the European Union, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The complicated backdrop makes the peace process especially difficult.

With Russian support, Assad's forces have made significant gains. Analysts say the government has little incentive to negotiate with an opposition that is weak and fractured.

Nadim Shehadi, Director of the Fares Center at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, is pessimistic.

"We are pressuring the opposition to prove that they are united, coherent, that they have a strong leadership and that they have a vision, and a policy and a certain consensus on what the future will be and I don't think they do, I don't think they will in the near future, and I don't think they can," he said.

The talks had been set to begin last Monday but were delayed to Friday by discussions on who should represent the opposition.

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Turkey Threatens Military Action Against Syrian Kurds

by Dorian Jones, Jamie Dettmer January 28, 2016

Turkey's Security Council announced Thursday that the PYD Syrian Kurdish group and its YPG militia have no future in Syria. Ankara has warned it could intervene militarily.

Observers say Turkey has become alarmed about increasing Russian and U.S. support for the group and militia in their fight against Islamic State.

Ankara accuses the PYD/YPG of being offshoots of the Kurdish rebel group PKK, which Turkish forces are currently battling both domestically and by air in Iraq. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month promised to eradicate the PKK from the region.

The threats should be taken seriously, said political columnist Semih Idiz of Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper.

'Prime Minister [Ahmet] Davutoglu himself has said that if Turkey sees it necessary, it will take the same precautions against the YPG in Syria that it's taking against the PKK in Iraq,' Idiz said. 'So, in a way, Turkey has left the door open to conducting operations against the YPG.'

Observers say Turkey's political leadership is probably feeling emboldened by its success in excluding the PYD from Syrian peace talks scheduled for Friday in Geneva.

Syrian Kurdish gains

But Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Institute in Brussels, said Ankara's hardening stance is also a reaction to recent military gains by the Syrian Kurdish forces, complicated by Turkey's downing of a Russian plane it said had crossed into its airspace.

'There is certainly a degree of unease in Ankara over these attempts by PYD to cross westwards,' Ulgen said. 'But after the downing of the Russian plane, Turkey has limited ability to project power in Syria for fear of provoking a military confrontation with Russia.'

After the downing in November, Russia deployed a sophisticated anti-aircraft missile system in Syria. Moscow is also reportedly seeking to court Syrian Kurdish forces, which are already being supported by U.S. air power in their battle against the Islamic State.

Despite Ankara's threats and its exclusion from the Geneva talks, the PYD remains in a strong position, columnist Idiz said.

'The military situation on the ground is going to determine the final outcome,' he said. 'And the YPG and the PYD are allied with America, and the war on the ground continues. And if the West reduces its backing to the Syrian Kurds, then Russia is going to step in.'

YPG moving west?

There were signs Thursday that YPG leaders were on the brink of defying Ankara and crossing one of Turkey's "red lines" when it comes to the Syrian Kurds  a westward move from Kurdish positions in northeastern Syria.

YPG commanders confirmed to VOA a local Kurdish news report that they had drawn up battle plans to launch a ground offensive west of the Euphrates River to attack the Islamic State-held towns of Jarablus and Manbij, as well as Azaz, which is held by insurgent factions opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkish officials have warned frequently that an en masse trespass west of the Euphrates by Kurdish fighters would invite Turkish retaliation. In December, the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized the October Dam on the Euphrates River, giving them access to the Aleppo countryside.

Some SDF fighters crossed west of the river. For face-saving purposes, the Turks accepted that the SDF fighters who actually crossed were Arabs and Turkmen and not Kurds, prompting some observers to speculate that the Turkish authorities were now prepared to tolerate an inevitable westward advance by YPG fighters to push IS militants out of Jarablus and Manbij, a feat Western and Gulf-backed anti-Assad rebel groups have been unable to do.

YPG commanders say that the goal of the offensive would be to cut IS fighters off from the border with Turkey, severing a logistical route Islamic militants use to ferry in foreign recruits and supplies. IS controls around 100 kilometers of the border between Jarablus and Azaz.

Not just Turkey

Syrian Kurdish forces accuse Turkey of having already made sporadic attacks against them along the border. If YPG forces continue to make military gains, while Turkish forces step up their battle against the PKK across Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, observers warn that the dangers of the internal conflict spreading farther into Syria are likely to grow.

And a YPG ground attack would risk more than Turkish retaliation.

Anti-Assad rebel groups also would most likely react violently in defense of territory they consider inherently Arab, not Kurdish.

In mid-January, Islamic factions favored by Gulf countries clashed with SDF forces around the village of Malkiya in Aleppo's northern countryside, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in London that relies on information from a network of political activists.

On Monday, YPG forces started a bombardment of Jarablus with artillery shelling and mortar fire. "We bombed several military vehicles for IS, a Sharia court and a security center for the terror group. At least 21 terrorists were killed," said YPG spokesman Nuraddin Gaban. He added: "Jarablus is one of our main targets."

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A Botetourt County packaging company is expanding, bringing 50 new jobs to the Roanoke Valley.

Arkay Packaging Corp. will invest $11 million in new equipment at its plant in the EastPark Commerce Center, Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Friday in announcing the plans.

About 200 people currently work at the Botetourt facility. Arkay produces glossy and colorful folding cartons for cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies. Its customers include Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.

Advanced manufacturing is an industry of the future, and growing this sector is vital to building a new Virginia economy, McAuliffe said.

Over the next three years, Arkay will install a new printer, a gluer and other equipment in its 140,000-square-foot plant, moving supplies and other items to a nearby warehouse to make room for the expansion, CEO Mitchell Kaneff said.

Although some of the 50 jobs have been filled, company officials say they are still hiring. The Virginia Jobs Investment Program will provide funding and services to help train the new employees.

The family-owned company is headquartered in Hauppauge, New York, on Long Island and was founded in 1922. Twenty years ago, it moved all of its manufacturing operations to Botetourt County.

The location allows Arkay to distribute its products throughout the East Coast and beyond. About 25 percent of the companys business is international, Kaneff said.

Botetourt has really become established as a global player, and for that we are grateful to companies like Arkay, said Jack Leffel, chairman of the countys board of supervisors.

Fridays announcement marked the fourth expansion for Arkay since it established a printing and folding operation in 1996 at the EastPark industrial complex, in the southern part of the county near the Roanoke County line.

As part of an incentive package, the company will receive $800 per new job through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program. There were no local incentives for the most recent expansion.

In the past, Arkay has met all of the obligations for investment and hiring that were tied to government incentives, county officials have said.

Arkay is just across the street from Capco Machinery Systems, which according to several employees closed its doors abruptly Dec. 31. About 40 employees were told they no longer had jobs at the plant, which manufactured industrial grinders.

At the time, Capco CEO Edward West did not return calls or respond to questions about the closing. Several cars were in the plants parking lot on Friday, and a man who answered the phone said West was in a meeting. He took a message for West, who did not call back.

Arkays expansion comes as other Botetourt companies also have announced plans for growth. Dynax America Corp, also located in EastPark, is currently spending $32 million on an expansion that will create 75 jobs, and Altec Inc. recently acquired additional land for a future expansion at its location in the Botetourt Center at Greenfield industrial park.
RICHMOND  Three of twelve bills advanced to the next round of negotiations in reforming how health care providers may add particular services in a given community on Wednesday.

The debate before a House of Delegates Health, Welfare and Institutions subcommittee put Lynchburgs largest health provider, Centra Health, opposing at least two of its legislators, Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford County, and Del. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, who support broader changes. People lined the small rooms walls by the 5 p.m. start time and spilled into the Capitol building hallway for a meeting that lasted close to three hours.

From my understanding of the process, competition doesnt work perfectly in the medical care system. There are certain dynamics that dont let the free market work as it would in other realms. One of those primarily being that typically those patients with the highest demands will frequently have the lowest ability to pay, Del. Robert Orrock, R-Caroline County, said after saying he is an unabashed capitalist.

The process changes proposed by Byron advanced along with broad reforms she supports arguing a freer market would add competition to improve access and lower costs. The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association said its members need a certificate of public need system to offset costs for required services for patients who cant pay, such as birthing and trauma centers. The group supports administrative efficiency changes and the bill by Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, left in subcommittee.

If 26 past years in this assembly havent taught me anything else, human nature and especially within the political process is resistant to change, and unless we force certain issues to be considered for major change and/or reform, then major change rarely occurs, Orrock said.

Orrock and Garrett voted for the three bills that passed 4-1 with the only Democrat, Del. Matthew James, of Portsmouth, dissenting. Byron is not on the subcommittee.

The three bills give the full committee points of negotiation: reform the application process and other limited changes; limit it for particular services, the bill carried by Del. Chris Peace, R-Henrico, made an exception for imaging services; and broad deregulation, as in the bill by Del. John OBannon, R-Henrico.

OBannon, who also is on the subcommittee, brought a surprise to some in attendance, Wednesday, when he passed out an amendment that would take a three-year sunset down to 18 months.

I didnt hear a single soul that liked the three-year deal on either side of it, so well just accelerate it. Well just go ahead and do it all in 18 months. Hopefully that will be part of the discussion, OBannon said.

Michael Elliot, Centra Health senior vice president and chief operating officer, said he would have to review the amendments before commenting, but he did not know about the change ahead of time.

We have all along not agreed with that timeframe. We have all along agreed with what is represented in Dr. Stolles bill, [HB] 1083. That change from 36 to 18 months is absolutely a surprise. We didnt support the 36 months, and we certainly dont support the 18 months. Thats all there is to it, Elliot said.

The debate over the Byron and Stolle bills lasted more than an hour. Both proposed changes to the application process, agreeing the system is outdated and cumbersome. Stolles bill was written from the report by a work group tasked by last years General Assembly.

Eva Hardy, retired executive vice president of Dominion Resources Inc., who co-chaired the work group with Secretary of Health and Human Resources Bill Hazel, said the same issues came up when she was secretary 30 years ago.

Hopefully, with the right kind of analysis and data gathering, we may be able to do more than what we originally deregulated in this report, Hardy said.

Hazel had asked for three years to gather data.

I would say a significant number of people that have registered in with me really dont think further studying of this is going to make it any better, Garrett said after the meeting.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 28, 2016) - Revelo Resources Corp. ("Revelo" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:RVL) informs that Kinross Minera Chile Limitada ("Kinross" - a subsidiary of Kinross Gold Corp.) has elected to withdraw from the Option and Joint Venture Agreement ("the Agreement") signed in April 2014 relating to Revelo's Las Pampas Project in northern Chile. With its withdrawal from the Agreement, and without having fulfilled the minimum requirements to earn an initial interest, Kinross is returning 100% of the Las Pampas Project properties to Revelo, together with all exploration data collected by Kinross to date. Revelo will review all Kinross data and provide further updates on the project in due course.

Tim Beale, President & CEO of Revelo stated that, "Although unfortunate that Kinross has decided to abandon the Las Pampas Option and JV Agreement, we continue to believe that Las Pampas comprises a series of highly attractive targets, principally for precious metals, and we will strive to find a new partner to continue the exploration and discovery journey there."

ABOUT LAS PAMPAS

The Las Pampas Property is an approximately 50,000 hectare land package located in an exceptional position along the highly prospective Palaeocene mineral belt in northern Chile. The property is centred along strike and approximately 35Km southwest of the multi-million ounce gold and silver mining district at El Penon and related deposits.

Key targets include:

High-grade, low-sulphidation "bonanza"-style gold-silver veins along the Cerritos Trend as evidenced by widespread quartz-vein float, significant pathfinder geochemical anomalies, geophysical anomalies typical of epithermal vein systems, and drill results with anomalous intercepts of gold and silver. The anomalous belt is more than 8Km x 1km in size, and is largely obscured by post-mineral gravels and mud flows, generally <100m thick (and often only a few metres thick).

High-grade, low-sulphidation "bonanza"-style gold-silver veins beneath the eroded remnants of a large silica sinter field at Cerros Bayos that extends over at least 3Km, and which displays low level anomalies in gold, silver and arsenic in rock chip samples, together with linear geophysical features that may represent mineralised feeder systems at depth. The sinter, unusually, has been shown to carry trace amounts of silver minerals including native silver together with the silver sulphide and sulphosalt minerals of argentite, pyrargyrite and proustite.

Disseminated precious metals mineralisation of high-sulphidation type focused principally on a large area of advanced argillic alteration at Cerro Buenos Aires, together with subsidiary outcrops at Cerro Intermedio and Cerro Turmalina, covering a total strike length of approximately 10Km. Detailed hydrothermal alteration mapping, surface geochemistry and CSAMT and HoistEM geophysical data show large volumes of highly anomalous rock with potential for precious metals mineralisation. Very limited drilling to date has cut anomalous gold and silver values.

An extensive area of advanced argillic alteration with "wormy" quartz veining at Cerro Blanco may represent a "lithocap" above a potential porphyry copper target.

Several other target areas, principally prospective for high-grade precious metals veins, also occur on the property. A NI43-101 compliant geological report for Las Pampas, dated December 2014, is available on Revelo's website.

Revelo controls a highly prospective land position along the Paleocene Mineral Belt, with the wholly-owned Magallanes, Las Pampas, Loro, Limbo, Reprado and San Guillermo precious metals properties - totaling around 80,000 Ha. All six properties contain abundant evidence for vein-hosted styles of precious metals mineralization, and all six are located close to and along trend from either producing mines or significant in-ground mineral resources.

ABOUT REVELO

Revelo is building a sustainable exploration business focused on securing prospective land along the prolific mineral belts of northern Chile, and by implementing effective exploration and capital management strategies to grow, advance and de-risk its portfolio to provide shareholders with multiple opportunities for exploration success.

Revelo controls more than 350,000 hectares of 100% owned exploration tenement along proven mineral belts in northern Chile. The portfolio is comprised of 21 high-quality exploration projects prospective for copper, gold and silver including the Montezuma project already under JV agreement with a subsidiary of Newmont Mining. In addition, Revelo retains a 2% royalty interest in the Victoria Project, an important copper-gold-silver exploration project in northern Chile.

Revelo is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX VENTURE:RVL). For more information please visit Revelo's website at www.reveloresources.com.

Dr. Demetrius Pohl, PhD., Certified Professional Geoscientist (CPG), an independent consultant, is the Company's Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosures for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators, and has approved the written disclosure of the technical information contained in this news release.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Timothy J. Beale, President & CEO

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT

This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events or developments that Revelo expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "indicate" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Revelo believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired - Jan. 28, 2016) - Golden Bridge Development Corp. ("Golden Bridge," or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:GBD) announces that the Company has signed a non-binding letter of intent (the "LOI") with CIM Development (Markham) LP ("CIM Development") to acquire an indirect interest in a real estate development project located in the Greater Toronto Area in exchange for common shares ("Common Shares") in the capital of Golden Bridge (the "Transaction"). If completed, the Transaction would result in both a change of business ("Change of Business") for Golden Bridge which would become a "Diversified Industries" company and a reverse take-over ("RTO") within the meaning of the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSX-V"). In conjunction with the Transaction, Golden Bridge intends to apply to list the Common Shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") and intends to apply to delist the Common Shares from the TSX-V.The Company also announces that the letter of intent dated October 15, 2015 between Golden Bridge, LeMine Development Corp., and CIM Development (the "Parties") has been terminated as the parties agreed to not proceed with the intended transaction which was outlined in the Company's press release dated October 16, 2015. None of the Parties have any further obligations or commitments or liabilities for any break-up fees with any of the other Parties whatsoever in accordance with the termination agreement. In addition, it is acknowledged that Golden Bridge and CIM Development are free to solicit and complete any transaction with the same or similar terms and conditions. As a result of the press release of October 16, 2015, trading in the Common Shares on the TSX-V was halted and remains halted.The LOI between Golden Bridge and CIM Development provides that, subject to completion of tax, corporate and securities planning and other conditions, including execution of a definitive agreement, Golden Bridge will acquire an indirect interest in a real estate development project beneficially owned by CIM Development, an Ontario limited partnership based in Richmond Hill. Golden Bridge will acquire an indirect interest valued at $10,000,000 in the "Mackenzie Creek" residential condominium development property located at 5899 Mackenzie Creek Drive, Markham, Ontario, in exchange for the issuance of 40,000,000 Common Shares in the aggregate to be issued at a deemed price of $0.25 per Common Share, all on a post-consolidation basis (see below). More specifically, as currently proposed, Golden Bridge intends to acquire 10,000,000 non-voting, preferred limited partnership units of a new limited partnership to be indirectly owned by CIM Investment & Development LP, Global King Inc. and Shang Titlist Investment Inc. (collectively, the "CIM Group"). The new limited partnership will own CIM Development.All the vendors involved in the Transaction are arm's length parties to Golden Bridge and its officers and directors. CIM Investment & Development LP is a Richmond Hill, Ontario based real estate developer, and Global King Inc. and Shang Titlist Investment Inc. are based in Markham, Ontario and Thornhill, Ontario respectively.In connection with the Transaction, CIM Group has made a refundable deposit of $36,000 to be held in an interest-bearing account. Upon completion of the Transaction, or if there is a termination of the LOI in accordance with its terms, Golden Bridge will immediately repay the deposit to CIM Group.

The LOI contains the usual non-solicitation and exclusivity covenants by the Company which will be in effect for a period of 60 days from January 28, 2016 or until the earlier termination of the LOI. Upon entering into the definitive agreement, a break fee in an aggregate amount of $300,000 will be payable by the Company in the event that it terminates the definitive agreement on the basis that it has received an alternative proposal which the board of directors of the Company determines is a superior proposal.



The Company intends to explore equity financing options in parallel with proceeding towards the completion of the Transaction. An equity financing may be required in order to meet CSE listing requirements.





Post-Transaction Company and Proposed Change of Business



The Company has 18,663,081 Common Shares outstanding at this time, on a non-diluted basis. It is expected that, upon the closing of the Transaction and prior to any potential concurrent financing which may occur as part of the Transaction, the CIM Group and the current shareholders of Golden Bridge will hold, respectively, 91.5% and 8.5% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares of the Company, on a non-diluted basis. At or about the time of the closing of the Transaction, Golden Bridge is proposing to consolidate its issued and outstanding shares on the basis of five pre-consolidation Common Shares for each one post-consolidation Common Share. The proposed consolidation of the Common Shares will be subject to both shareholder and regulatory review.



Following the completion of the Transaction, the board of directors of the Company shall be comprised of seven directors, initially consisting of three directors nominated by Golden Bridge and four directors nominated by the CIM Group. Apart from Mr. Jiubin Feng, who will be appointed as President, CEO and Chairman of the board of directors of the Company, the directors will be determined at a later time. The Company's current President and CEO, Changlin (Charles) Qin, will resign as President and CEO immediately following the completion of the Transaction.



Golden Bridge is currently a Tier 2 Mining Issuer pursuant to the policies of the TSX-V. The current management and the board of directors of Golden Bridge recently considered a number of potential opportunities and strategies to maximize shareholder value in the mineral resource and exploration sector. Due to the difficult economic state of the mineral resource sector and lack of capital available in this industry, Golden Bridge proposes to reposition its business mandate as a "Diversified Industries" issuer focused on two distinct business sectors: resources and real estate. This will permit the Company to pursue and develop business in these various sectors when opportunities arise and will allow the Company to expand its operations more easily and to be in a better position to enhance shareholder value in the future.



As a result of the acquisition of the interest in the real estate development project, Golden Bridge believes it will have the benefit of the skills and talents of an experienced real estate developer in the Greater Toronto Area in an industry which has seen significant growth and development during the past several years and in which there has been available capital from financiers and lenders to carry out such projects.



The shareholders of the Company will also be asked to approve the change of the Company's name to "CIM Development Group Inc.".





Conditions Precedent



The following are some of the conditions precedent for the completion of the Transaction:



Satisfactory completion of due diligence by the CIM Group on the Company;

Satisfactory completion of due diligence by the Company on the Mackenzie Creek real estate project and on CIM Development;

The successful de-listing of the Common Shares from the TSV-V and the successful listing of the Common Shares on the CSE by the Company;

Regulatory approval (including approval of the CSE, but not approval by the TSX-V, unless circumstances change);

The execution of a definitive agreement with respect to the Transaction;

Corporate approval of the Transaction by all parties; and

Approval by the shareholders of Golden Bridge for the Transaction.

In connection with the Transaction, the Company will apply to list its Common Shares on the CSE, which application is subject to the Company meeting the CSE's listing requirements. There is no assurance that the CSE will provide conditional or final approval of the Company's application to list the Common Shares on the CSE. The Company will apply to delist its Common Shares from the TSX-V. De-listing is subject to TSX-V approval and, pursuant to the policies of the TSX-V, to approval of the shareholders of the Company.The Transaction cannot be closed until the required shareholder approval is obtained at a Special Meeting of the Shareholders of Golden Bridge to be called to consider the Transaction. The Company will seek majority approval for the Transaction from disinterested shareholders. Further details regarding the Transaction will be outlined in the Management Information Circular to be prepared for the Special Meeting of shareholders.There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all. Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the Management Information Circular to be prepared in connection with the proposed shareholders' meeting and/or the Filing Statement to be prepared in connection with the CSE listing application, any information released or received with respect to the LOI and the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon.There are no advisory or finders' fees being paid out to any third party for the Transaction.The Company will disseminate additional material information as it becomes known with regard to the Transaction.Golden Bridge was incorporated under the laws of the Province of Ontario and is engaged in mineral resource exploration and development in Canada. The Company is currently classified as a Tier 2 "Mineral Exploration" Issuer Company listed on the TSX-V.This press release contains or refers to forward-looking information, including statements regarding the proposed Transaction, all aspects of the proposed Transaction, the post-Transaction Company the proposed special meeting of shareholders of the Company and any proposed concurrent financing, and is based on current expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement include, but are not limited to, delays in obtaining or failures to obtain required regulatory, board or shareholder approvals, failure of negotiations, unfavourable due diligence by any party to the Transaction, unfavourable independent valuation reports, changes in equity markets, and delays or changes in the development of the real estate projects. Forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company assumes no responsibility to update them or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances other than as required by law.Neither the TSX-V, nor the CSE nor their Regulation Services Providers (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The TSX-V has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the Management Information Circular and/or Filing Statement to be prepared in connection with the Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the securities of Golden Bridge should be considered highly speculative.Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including disinterested shareholder approval and the approval of the CSE but not the acceptance of the TSX-V. The Transaction cannot close until the required shareholder approval is obtained. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all.THIS PRESS RELEASE, REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE CANADIAN LAWS, IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.Mr. Changlin (Charles) Qin, Chief Executive Officer and Director(905) 604-2351
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Prophecy Development Corp. (Prophecy or the Company) (TSX:PCY, OTCQX:PRPCF, Frankfurt:1P2) announces that after a detailed review of the trading volume, costs and administrative requirements related to maintaining the Companys listing on the OTCQX International, it has voluntarily delisted its Common shares from the OTCQX International effective today. Prophecys Common shares continue to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Exchange.

About Prophecy

Prophecy Development Corp. is a Canadian public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that is engaged in developing mining and energy projects in Mongolia, Bolivia and Canada. Further information on Prophecy can be found at www.prophecydev.com.

Prophecy Development Corp.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

JOHN LEE

Executive Chairman

For more information about Prophecy, please contact Investor Relations:

+1.604.563.0699

+1.888.513.6286

ir@prophecydev.com

www.prophecydev.com

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/ProphecyPR01292016.pdfSource: Prophecy Development Corp. (OTCQX:PRPCF, TSX:PCY, FWB:1P2) http://www.prophecydev.com/

Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com

Copyright  2016 Filing Services Canada Inc.
Pasta carbonara, roasted brussels sprouts and smoked almond cream. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Address 211 Glenmore Road Paddington, New South Wales 2021 View map Book online Opening hours Mon 5pm-9pm, Tue 5pm-10pm, Wed-Sat 12 Noon-10pm, Sun 12 Noon-9pm Features Accepts bookings, Licensed, Outdoor seating, Gluten-free options, Vegetarian friendly, Private dining, Degustation, Bar, Family friendly, Romance-first date, Events Prices Moderate (mains $20-$40) Chef Michael Bengtsson Seats 100 Payments eftpos, AMEX, Cash, Visa, Mastercard Phone 02 9331 7389

The genuine Roman carbonara sauce has only four ingredients: eggs, pecorino, pepper and guanciale, or cured pork cheek. I read this, coincidentally, on the very day we head to Vino e Cucina, so I take it as a sign when I see on the menu a spaghetti carbonara listing these exact ingredients. Carbonara is among the guiltiest of pasta pleasures; yet how can I order anything else?

When it comes, there are delicate purple leaves scattered on top, and shavings of translucent prosciutto fat. I wish it was steamy-hot, but the guanciale is chewy and salty, and the egg and cheese coat the pasta to creamy, decadent effect. Sounding almost as much of a heart-stopper is the salt-baked gnocchi with taleggio, gorgonzola, radicchio and hazelnut, but my favourite date is too fond of his arteries for that. He orders the spatchcock with charred leek, spinach verjus and sultanas. It's well-cooked and tasty in the hearty manner of a good bistro meal.

Vino e Cucina is in a terrace house in one of Sydney's most charming urban pockets, Five Ways at Paddington. With its rows of terraces and chi-chi shops with pretty awnings, it has a European feel. At Vino e Cucina there is the feel, more specifically, of Italy. "Buona sera!" rings out as diners enter. The young wait staff come from all corners of Italy  Venice, Rome, Milan  injecting the place with a dolce vita-like energy. "Senora," they say, "some parmesan on your pasta?" as if I don't already have enough cheese.

Pollo spatchcock with charred leeks. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Thank heaven for the menu's delicious-sounding vegetables: broccolini with almonds, chilli and brown butter, for instance, and polenta chips with truffle crema. The grilled corn on the cob with brown butter, sage and grana padano unfortunately falls flat, lacking juiciness and crunch, but the roasted brussels sprouts with smoked almond cream and pomegranate lifts a vegetable of lowly reputation to new and interesting heights.

Vino e Cucina feels as though it has been here for years, a restaurant rusted onto its neighbourhood, humming with the talk and laughter of well-heeled locals eating out with family and friends. I'm surprised to discover it is less than two years old. This terrace previously housed celebrity chef Manu Feildel's L'Etoile. The one-hatted French restaurant closed in early 2014, blamed on a lack of bums on seats.

Vino e Cucina, further down the price scale and more casual, appears to have no such problem. For a start, there are plenty of places to sit: inside amid the busy buzz and clutter of a traditional trattoria provinciale; on the pavement out front beside tubs of red geraniums at alfresco tables with red-chequered tablecloths; or past the salumi bar with its great hanging hunks of cured meat, in the back terrazzo, where herbs grow in old Italian tomato cans. The owners, chef Michael Bengtsson and his wife, Julie Walker-Bengtsson, have plenty of experience in the business, with two other Five Ways eateries, Eat Thai and Tuk Tuk bar.

The entrance to Vino e Cucina's terrace setting. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Vino e Cucina, which simply means wine and food, keeps it real, with its traditional menu and $20 all-you-can-eat "Mad Pizza Night" on Mondays. The extensive wine list does take it up a notch, with sommelier notes on wines sourced across the length and breadth of the boot  Piemonte, Campania, Toscano, Veneto. It's heady shot of Italy in a beautiful part of Sydney.

THE PICKS

Spaghetti carbonara, spatchcock; vanilla bean panna cotta.

THE LOOK

Provincial Italian trattoria.

THE SERVICE

Charming, in that indefatigably Italian way.
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'Man camps' provide basics for workers

By Justin Zamudio

Darkness clouds the fingernail, and pain flares at any attempt to bend the swollen joint near the fingertip.

"I'm pretty sure that top knuckle is broken," said James Pursley, a San Angelo resident who recently returned from his oil field job near Odessa.

Despite withstanding extreme elements during 12-hour shifts of tough manual labor ? during which a dropped pipe might have recently resulted in a broken fingertip ? Pursley doesn't find the work challenging.

What's difficult is spending two weeks away from his family, living in a small trailer with four other men at an oil rig site about 140 miles from home.

Increased oil field activity in West Texas means more men are spending time in temporary housing, including man camps ? housing facilities that serve more as a compound where all living needs are met without leaving the premises.

"Rig life, being camped out there, you miss half of your children's lives," Pursley said. "If you want to work more, it's only longer that you're away from your family.

"That's one reason there is a lot of turnover. Some people just can't handle being away from their family so much."

In a trailer on the Four Corners Ranch near Odessa, living quarters are small and somewhat cramped, Pursley said. The trailer has a small bathroom, a living room with a lounge area and a TV, a small kitchen and table to the side, and three twin-size bunk beds in the bedroom, he said.

Pursley's 6-foot, 230-pound frame doesn't have much wiggle room on the twin mattress. He said seniority wins out when it comes to sleeping on a bottom bunk, which oil field workers find somewhat more comfortable than the top bunks.

During their time off, the rig workers usually travel to Odessa to visit a restaurant or pick up groceries to cook later, Pursley said.

At some man camps, eating arrangements are different. Some have chow halls on their grounds, where a house cook provides all the food for the crew.

One such man camp, outside Mertzon in Irion County, provides lodging for employees of Apache Corp., one of the world's leading independent oil and gas exploration and production companies, Irion County Judge Tom Aiken said.

Another man camp is being established in Irion County, one of several areas northwest of San Angelo that has experienced a surge of traffic because of the incipient oil boom.

"There is one going in in Barnhart. It's nearly finished by now," Aiken said. "They are working on getting water and sewer by" the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Pump Co., a drilling company based out of Valley View, just north of Denton, is setting up a man camp in Barnhart, Aiken said. The company will bus its oil field employees to and from the man camp on two-week rotations from its North Texas headquarters, he said.

RVs are popping up in and around Irion County, too ? a large part of the reason Barnhart's water supply recently went dry, Aiken said.

"The population used to be like 100 a couple of years ago. It's probably at least double that now," he said. "There's lots of RVs and trailers. The water problem was born out of the rapid growth, and tying one water meter with two or three RVs," he said.

At this point Barnhart cannot accommodate more houses or RVs. If another water meter goes in, the town will surpass the TCEQ's allotment, said Jon Nanny, Irion County commissioner and an official with Barnhart's water supply corporation.

"There's another outfit that is wanting to put in a trailer park on 72 acres out there. It can't be done," Nanny said. "We have a 40 gallon a minute well pump, and we have it choked off to 15 right now. We can barely provide enough water for it."

A 14-room hotel in the making in Mertzon will provide more temporary housing to the oil field hot spot, Aiken said. Eateries in the town have experienced a lucrative year, and the Stripes convenience store in Barnhart gets heavy traffic, Nanny said.

The impact from the man camps isn't felt, for better or for worse, because the facilities have their own water trucked in and come equipped with cafeterias.

Some applications for trailer parks have been submitted recently in Tom Green County, Precinct 4 Commissioner Bill Ford said.

Nabors Drilling runs a four-trailer man camp in Southside San Angelo for its technical training center. Also in San Angelo, five hotels worth a combined $23.3 million are in the permit process. Additionally, three apartment complexes worth about $20.3 million total are either built or in the process.

One of them is Depot Flats, a South Central complex that almost resembles a storage unit facility. The 20 units sit on a gated lot on West Avenue L, and each room is 768 square feet. The units come with a closet, garage and kitchen/bedroom living area, owner Mickey Favre said.

"My initial reason I did it is because my employees are getting pushed out of places to live," said Favre, who manages about 65 employees as owner of Ener-Tel and Safe Trip Pilot Cars. "About 30 percent of the occupancy is already going to some of my employees. Their leases were going up so much that they couldn't afford a place to live."

Since Favre hung a banner on the side of the complex providing leasing information several weeks ago, he has gotten about 25 inquiries per day, he said.

A majority of the inquiries are from single oil field service workers seeking short-term leasing.
SHARE Contributed photo George Rodgers married Barbara Jean Dagen in 1995. He says marrying is the best thing heas ever done.

Man has worked same ranch 77 years

By Jerry Lackey

George Hulen Rodgers, who turned 85 this month, has been a cowboy since his eighth birthday. To boot, he has worked on the same McCulloch County ranch most of his life.

George said he is the fifth generation of his family to work on the same ranch. He celebrates 77 years on the ranch this year, but under the third owner.

"My grandfather, Robert Hulen "Bud" Rodgers (April 11, 1878 to Aug. 26, 1962), started working on the Selman ranch in the 1890s and continued into the early 1900s," he said.

The White brothers ? William "Willie," Johnny, Charlie and G. Rollie ? purchased the Selman ranch in 1926 and kept it together until 1979, Rodgers said.

Charlie and Johnny White operated the Selman ranch east of Rochelle, and G. Rollie had the Ford ranch in southwestern McCulloch County near Melvin.

Their parents, W.B. "Bill" and Laura Thompson White, homesteaded their first land purchase in the region when they arrived by covered wagon in 1875. Bill White was a Missourian who rode to Texas on horseback after the Civil War. Laura Thompson was a native of Lockhart.

"I was 8 years old when they officially put me on the payroll in May 1937," Rodgers told Livestock Weekly in 2010. "Every time the cowboys were around, I'd throw such a fit because I wanted to go, and so finally Mr. White told the foreman, ?Put him on the payroll. Maybe that will shut him up.' So he did, and I've been in hog heaven ever since.

"Claude Thompson was the foreman who hired me when I was 8 years old, paying me $10 a month. My father, Martin "Mart" Eldon Rodgers (Sept. 27, 1906 to Jan. 11, 1987), became foreman after Thompson."

The normal mode of transportation in those days was horseback or wagon and team.

"I drove a wagon and team many a mile when I was a kid," Rodgers told Livestock Weekly. "We'd haul cedar posts or put out salt with the wagon.

"Sunday was the only day off. I would saddle my horse and ride to Brady Creek on the south end of the ranch and spend all day fishing," Rodgers told me recently.

Rodgers said he graduated from high school in 1947 and spent a year at Tarleton, where he was in the ROTC. In 1952 he was drafted into the Army's field artillery unit.

Rodgers was first sergeant in charge of a battery of six guns and 235 men. In the 1970s he used that experience as a McCulloch County 4-H leader working with youths on rifle, wildlife, beef and horse projects. He helped train many rifle teams in seven years as an adult leader.

"The 1950s drought had started when I was shipped off to the Korean War," George said. "When I returned two years later, the drought was very intense, and I hardly recognized the country."

Rodgers followed his father, Mart Rodgers, as foreman in 1979. Luther King bought the ranch in 1989, and it became known as the 4K Land & Cattle Co. King's mother, Lyda Francis Hurd King (1917-2004), was the daughter of Frank Vinsim Hurd (1889-1975) and Virginia Francis Welch Hurd (1895-1985), who settled in the East Sweden, Texas, area. His father was John Luther King (1916-2007), from Mason County.

"A good foreman has to have lots of knowledge about all aspects of the ranching business and must be a leader," Rodgers said. "When I was in charge, I'd get up early and sit quietly and think. I'd have everyone's job on the ranch lined out for the day ? what they were going to do and when. I'd have it figured out so that we never had to stop and decide what to do next."

Besides operating the McCulloch County ranch, King operated an investment company in Fort Worth.

The King Ranch consisted of 10,000 acres, which was part of the original 45,000-acre Selman ranch. King acquired several thousand more acres since the first purchase. Every paved road that enters the McCulloch County seat of Brady has a 4K sign on it.

The 4K runs mainly Brangus cattle and uses Charolais and Brangus bulls. They have fall and spring calving cows and retain Brangus or black baldie heifer calves.

Rodgers said his son, Jimmy Rodgers, and two of his grandsons also have worked on the ranch throughout the years.

His first wife, Catherine Alida Vanderven Rodgers, died of cancer Sept. 7, 1990. Besides Jimmy, Catherine and George had three daughters: Deleta Rodgers Brindley, Diane Rodgers Mays and Linda Rodgers Morris.

In 1996 Rodgers married Barbara Jean Dagen.

"Marrying Catherine and Barbara were the best things I ever did," he said.

George said he made a trip to Fort Worth a couple years ago for a visit with Luther King Jr., planning to retire.

"I didn't want to retire, but I told him I couldn't work all day and therefore didn't feel good about being paid for full-time wages," Rodgers said. "Mr. King wrote me a letter a few days later and told me to stay on but work a half day and check things around the ranch from my pickup."

Eighty-five and still proud to just be a McCulloch County cowboy, that's George Rodgers.
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Skeptics doubt output will be rapid

By Alexandra Zavis And Ramin Mostaghim

TEHRAN, Iran  The prospect of Iranian crude oil returning to global markets that are already oversupplied has piled additional pressure on prices that recently fell below $30 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency, a leading industry watchdog, is forecasting that supply could exceed demand by 1.5 million barrels per day in the first half of the year.

Unless something changes, the oil market could drown in oversupply, it warned in a recent report.

Adding to the glut would not seem to be in the interests of a country that is counting on oil profits to help revive an economy crippled by Western sanctions. But Iranian officials say they are less worried about low prices than about reclaiming the market share lost to Saudi Arabia, Russia and other big oil producers.

Iranian crude exports stand at about 1.1 million barrels per day, about half their pre-sanctions level. With the lifting of restrictions aimed at curbing Irans nuclear activities on Jan. 16, the government is vowing to increase output by 500,000 barrels a day within weeks and to add another 500,000 barrels before the year is out.

Its our right to return to the level of production we historically had, Irans oil minister, Bijan Zangeneh, told reporters in November.

But can the country ramp up production that quickly? Many experts are skeptical.

The U.S. governments Energy Information Administration is forecasting that Iran will add about 300,000 additional barrels of crude in 2016 and another 500,000 more in 2017.

No one doubts the potential in Iran. Once the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Islamic Republic sits atop the worlds largest gas reserves and the fourth-biggest petroleum reserves.

Iran was producing an average of 3.7 million barrels of crude a day in 2011, before the start of U.S. and European Union sanctions that limited the countrys ability to export oil and prevented it from importing the latest Western technology and equipment.

Although industry analysts believe it should be possible to bring back some of that production relatively quickly, more investment will be needed to achieve the kind of levels promised by the government, they say.

Were talking about opening oil fields, freshening up infrastructure, putting new capacity in place, new technology in fields, said Julius Walker, a senior energy consultant for JBC Energy GmbH, a Vienna-based research firm. All of this is a question of time and not something that can happen in the very short term.

Irans Oil Ministry has said it hopes to attract $100 billion in foreign investment to modernize the energy sector. That could prove challenging, according to some analysts.

Do people have confidence to put their money to work in Iran? There isnt much of a favorable record so far for foreign investors, said Sadad Ibrahim al-Husseini, a former executive with Saudi Arabias state oil company Aramco. What Ive heard from oil people in general is that the terms (Iran is offering) are not sufficiently attractive.

Iranian analysts dispute that. Reza Zandi, an energy columnist for a reformist Iranian newspaper, said the enthusiasm among investors is evident from the list of visitors received at the Oil Ministry, including high-level delegations from Britain, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Russia and China. Even before the nuclear deal was signed, non-American oil majors like Anglo-Dutch Shell and Italys ENI were courting Iranian partners.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been using a trip to Europe this week to try to woo back old customers and drum up new business. A number of deals have been inked in recent days, including with Greeces biggest oil refiner, Hellenic Petroleum, the Italian oil-field services company Saipem SpA and Italian energy group Ansaldo Energia.

But Iran faces competition from Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq, which have poured oil into Europe, as well as Asia, where Tehran is hoping to sell additional barrels to customers it was able to retain despite the sanctions.

The key to understanding whether or not Iran will be able to market a lot of this crude is to what extent they are going to be willing to discount their crude very aggressively in order to be able to undercut other producers, Walker said.

Saeed Laylaz, a pro-government economist in Iran, said the countrys production costs are low, about $7 per barrel for crude. So even if the price falls to $15 per barrel, Iran can afford to export it, he said.

There are also other inducements that Tehran could offer, including deferred payments or investments in the foreign refineries that will use its crude.

But many foreign oil and services companies are holding back until some of the ambiguity about doing business with Iran is resolved.

Although the United States has lifted the sanctions it imposed on the Islamic Republics nuclear program, companies are wary of running afoul of other restrictions that remain in effect. There is also concern that some sanctions could snap back if Iran doesnt fulfill its commitments under last years deal, or if a Republican president moves into the White House.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

With prices so low, there is no reason to rush in.

Eighteen months ago, a barrel of crude was trading at more than $100, but the price has since plunged to below $27 before rebounding slightly this week.

To be very blunt, it would have been a lot easier to invite investors if there was a big shortfall of supply in the market, if oil prices were pushing $100-plus dollars, and oil companies were anxious to get their hands on reserves, but this is not the case, al-Husseini said. Its probably the worst time possible for Iran to be trying to invite investors.

Some analysts ascribe Irans ambitious targets to political posturing. The country is trying to reassert authority in OPEC after loosing ground to its chief regional rival, Saudi Arabia. The government also needs to reassure its population that the highly anticipated economic dividends of the nuclear deal are on the way.

It remains to be seen whether it will deliver on its promises.



Los Angeles Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim from Tehran.
Associated Press Mei Mei, voiced by Kate Hudson, performs a ribbon dance in a scene from Kung Fu Panda 3.

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By Katie Walsh

A third installment in a franchise isn't always great. But sometimes it can be a comforting guarantee of a good time at the movies, as is the case with "Kung Fu Panda 3."

The first two installments have been met with rapturous reception and box-office success, and this one will no doubt follow in their footsteps  with good reason. The engaging and heartfelt story, coupled with eye-popping animation, makes "Kung Fu Panda 3" a total knockout.

In a prologue, we're introduced to this film's antagonist  a bull by the name of Kai (voiced by J.K. Simmons). He's been banished to the spirit realm by tortoise kung fu master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), but he's on a mission to steal the chi energy of all the kung fu masters in China, thereby becoming the most powerful master. Simultaneously, roly-poly goofy panda and Dragon Warrior, Po (Jack Black), is being promoted to kung fu teacher by his master, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman).

While he struggles with his new role, putting his friends Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Monkey (Jackie Chan) through the paces, there are other changes afoot in Po's life. A mysterious panda, Li (Bryan Cranston), with strangely similar dumpling-eating abilities appears in town. The two pandas discover that Po is Li's long lost son and they have a happy reunion.

The only one who can best Kai will have to be a master of chi, which happens to be a talent of the pandas. So Po and Li set off for the secret panda village for chi, and panda, lessons.

The story is actually rather simple  there's a bad guy they have to face; a panda learns about where he comes from and embraces who he really is. But, the story is sincere and heartfelt, rendered with sweet emotional moments, humor and epic, sweeping action scenes.

With a star-studded voice cast (Black in the lead, with Rogen and Cross on backup) there's no shortage of humor. But the animation is the real standout in the film. The action scenes really move across the screen with a sense of choreographed dynamism and grace. Slow-motion is used to great effect, and the 3-D only helps to enhance the experience.

Gorgeous painterly treatments, referencing traditional Chinese painting and writing, are incorporated into the animation style.

In the panda village, Po discovers a whole new group of fellow pandas, and each stands out for unique traits and personalities. Turns out they're a cozy, playful bunch, who enjoy eating, hugging and rolling. Po embraces this lifestyle wholeheartedly, but realizes that it's the individual aspects of who he is that make him who he is.

That's the main lesson at the core of "Kung Fu Panda 3." Become what makes you you, and the rest is cake. Or dumplings, in this case.

'KUNG FU PANDA 3'

Rated: PG (martial arts action and some mild rude humor)

Running time: 9:50

Directors: Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni

Cast: The voices of Jack Black,

Seth Rogen, Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, David Cross,

Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, J.K. Simmons
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Process may mean less pain, custom care

By Gary Robbins

SAN DIEGO  San Diego-based Illumina said earlier this month that it's embarking on a huge, yearslong attempt to develop a simple blood test that can detect many types of cancer before a person begins to show signs of the disease.

Most of the work will be done through Grail, a new spin-off company that aims to create "liquid biopsies" that screen blood samples for potentially harmful bits of mutated DNA shed by tumors. Grail plans to use Illumina's market-leading DNA sequencing machines to identify and study those mutations.

Illumina said it has lined up more than $100 million in investment money for Grail, which will be located in San Francisco. The financial backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Bezos Expeditions, a venture fund created by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Jay Flatley, chief executive of Illumina, said Grail also intends to launch large-scale clinical trials to evaluate its blood test, an effort that would likely take years and involve hundreds of thousands of patients.

"We expect (that) successful development of a pan-cancer screening test will have a massive impact on global cancer mortality," Flatley said.

Such a test would be known as the "holy grail" of oncology, Illumina said. Cancer kills about 565,000 Americans each year.

Indeed, a growing number of companies have joined the pursuit of this breakthrough  particularly those in San Diego, one of the nation's largest life-science hubs. Biocept, Epic Sciences, Trovagene and Pathway Genomics are some of the San Diego-area businesses working on various types of liquid biopsies.

"We're all fitting into different spots; this is an emerging area," said Mike Nall, president and CEO of Biocept, which uses its liquid biopsy to determine whether patients who have already been diagnosed with cancer might respond to a certain therapy.

"Illumina is much more focused on screening, which is pretty exciting for the whole industry," Nall added. "It will give credence to the idea that genetic mutations found in liquid biopsies can be used in clinical decision-making."

Biocept's board members include Ivor Royston, an oncologist who co-founded San Diego County's first biotech company in the 1980s.

"Aberrant DNA does get shed by tumors. We know that," he said. "But just finding it might not be enough; it might get shut down by a person's immune system and never cause a problem. But I do believe that, in the future, there will be early-detection tests for patients with high risk" of getting certain cancers.

Royston added that he'll be interested to see how things play out with Grail.

"They have a very good group of investors," he said. "Illumina is looking for additional applications for their technology. I would not have predicted that they would have gotten involved in this so early on."

For decades now, tissue biopsies have been used to search for tumors and track their growth. Scientists and physicians describe it as a highly intrusive approach that sometimes can cause more harm than good.

Such biopsies also can fail to reveal all the ways in which DNA has mutated. In turn, that makes it difficult or impossible for doctors to provide patients with the precise drugs or therapies they need.

The liquid-biopsy technology arose just over two years ago, building on the discovery that tumors and even cancerous cells can send their genetic material into a person's bloodstream. Another key impetus: major advances in identifying, profiling and analyzing genes, especially ones that mutate into cancer.

Today, the rapidly growing field's estimated value has climbed to $100 million; analysts said it could vault to $12 billion within a decade if the envisioned potential becomes reality.
Lake View Chiefs feeling sense of urgency to get in playoff chase

The Lake View High School football team hopes to get its first District 2-4A win of the season on the road against Big Spring on Friday night.
Shadow, the Chuck wagon Cat.

San Angelo storyteller Monte Jones enjoyed our recent cat stories so much he is sharing his own.

In 1999, we were living in Colorado City, Monte began. I kept my chuck wagon stored in the old steam laundry building downtown. On a Wednesday morning, I loaded my stuff, hooked up the trailer with the wagon in it and prepared to head for Galveston to perform at the Grand 1894 Opera House kids festival. I drove to Austin the next day to get my daughter, Julie, who was going with me. We headed south late Friday morning and ended up in Houston rush hour traffic during Rodeo Week that afternoon. That's an experience in itself, pulling a chuck wagon through Houston, but somehow we made it safely and got to the hotel in Galveston that evening.

Early Saturday morning, we unloaded the wagon down in the historic district. When I lifted my washtub, there were two little balls of fur which turned out to be kittens who weren't more than 6 weeks old. They had made the journey from Colorado City with no milk from their mama and were still strong enough to crawl and emit teeny little meows. Julie went over to one of the UT Southwest Medical booths and someone gave her two syringes. A kind restaurant gave her a paper cup of milk. We used the syringes as baby bottles and fed the hungry babies.

Julie found someone who wanted to adopt one of the kittens and I definitely wanted to keep the other one because he looked just like Lucy, a cat we had from 1962 until 1978.

He slept with us in the hotel Saturday night and rode in a little box Julie held on the way back to Austin. While in Austin, I bought a kitty bottle and some kitten formula, then the baby and I headed home for Colorado City.

When we walked into our house, the kitten headed straight for our dog, Janie. Janie was half Anatolian and half Great Pyrenees and weighed about 90 pounds.

The kitten may have come close to weighing a pound, but he walked right up to Janie and said "We're going to be friends." Janie agreed, gave the cat a big kiss, lay down and the little blue-gray fur ball curled up on Janie's large fluffy tail and went to sleep. I hadn't named him, but he followed me around like a body guard, so I named him Shadow. We continued to bottle feed him for a while until he graduated to kitten food and grew rapidly. He eventually weighed 14 pounds. He really loved sitting in my lap, especially when I would sing "Me, and my Shadow."

He adapted to San Angelo quite well when we moved here in 2000 and tolerated our other cats, Darth Vader and Ariel. Shadow's kidneys shut down in 2007, right after I got home from surgery in Dallas. He headed up to join Janie and wait for me. I'm sure he and Lucy are now good cat angel friends, and I would imagine God enjoys hearing his tale about his long journey under a tub in a chuck wagon.

His ashes rest under the big patch of Turk's Cap outside my bedroom window. That was his favorite place in the summer. I am so very fortunate and thankful for the time I had with Shadow the chuck wagon Cat.

Rick Smith is a local news and community affairs columnist. Contact Rick at rsmith@gosanangelo.com or 325-659-8248
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By Staff Report

Police arrested a 17-year-old male Wednesday in connection to an armed robbery at a local convenience store.

The teen and another male allegedly threatened a clerk with a handgun and demanded money from the register at the Stripes at 1821 N. Bryant Blvd. at 4:20 a.m. Wednesday, according to an officer complaint report.

The clerk complied and one of the suspects took money while the other one continued to point the gun at the woman, the complaint stated. The two males then fled with the money, according to the complaint.

A witness who arrived at the store during the incident saw two males with bandanas covering their faces and the woman at gunpoint, according to the complaint.

Investigators reviewed video with audio surveillance footage and saw one of the males had tattoos on the back of both of his hands and was wearing a rosary-type necklace, according to the complaint. They also could hear one of the suspects call the other one by name in the surveillance.

Detective Bobby Elrod reviewed the video surveillance and identified one of the suspects as the 17-year-old male. Elrod had dealt with the teen numerous times and was familiar with the teen's physical appearance and tattoos on the back of his hands, according to the complaint. Elrod also recognized that the physical demeanor, gait and the rosary necklace in the video were similar to that of arrested teen, the complaint stated.

Police found the 17-year-old during a traffic stop at West Avenue D and South Abe Street at 4:20 p.m. Wednesday, according to a news release from the San Angelo Police Department. He had been observed as a passenger in the vehicle prior to the stop, the release stated.

He was charged with aggravated robbery and was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail Thursday. The investigation is ongoing.

The Standard-Times does not identify suspects who are minors.
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By Denise Morris of the San Angelo Standard-Times

Potential interstate could increase business growth, tourism and traffic

One of the largest U.S. cities without an interstate, San Angelo may be up for some change.

The Interstate-14 project, in the dream stages for 15 years by the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway Coalition Inc., was approved by Congress in December. Known as "ports to forts," its imaginary lines extend over 1,000 miles across Texas, stretching eastward from Sonora to Fort Polk in Louisana, and northward from Corpus Christi to Fort Hood.

A potential addition to the I-14 system route has been penciled through San Angelo, extending from Brady to Midland roughly along the current State Highway 87 and State Highway 158.

Gary Bushell, consultant for the Highway Coalition, made the presentation via conference call Wednesday to the City of San Angelo Development Corp.

"Some of this is brand new news to us," COSADC President John Bariou said after the presentation, apparently well-received by the city group.

Bushell described plans for the designated Central Texas Corridor, which would begin in West Texas and generally follow U.S. 190 through Killeen, Belton, Bryan-College Station, Huntsville, Livingston, Woodville and Jasper before terminating on State Highway 63 at the Sabine River.

The Texas Department of Transportation, Bushell assured, tries to maintain the existing footprint as much as possible.

"We want to cooperate with the wishes of local people," he said. "TxDOT wants to build roads where local people want roads, and we want to do the same thing."

Phil Neighbors, president of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce, speaks highly of the potential for positive growth from the I-14 project.

"Interstate designations and their construction years later have positive economic consequences for communities along those routes," Neighbors said.

Signs are placed along the roadways designating the future interstate, he said.

"As segments are improved to four-lane divided status, traffic and commerce begin to increase. This 'ports to forts' I-14 proposal would increase the east-west traffic through San Angelo, not only improving access for existing and future businesses, but allowing more through-travelers an opportunity to discover San Angelo."

Neighbors said the north-south improvements in recent years facilitated by the Ports-to-Plains improvements, such as the four-lane divided north from here through the Panhandle, have helped create jobs and commerce in San Angelo, Neighbors said.

"I-14 will also have a great impact on our area  if it is routed through here going northwest to Midland," he said.

The I-14 corridor designation amendment was sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Texas Sen. John Cornyn. It was authored and presented in the U.S. House of Representatives by Texas Congressman Brian Babin of Woodville with support from Congressman Blake Farenthold of Corpus Christi, both members of the House Transportation Committee.

"This major milestone in the improvement of transportation in Texas would not have been possible without the determined support of Sen. Cornyn, Congressman Babin and Congressman Farenthold," said John Thompson, chairman of the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway Coalition.

The Strategic Highway Coalition works toward highway improvements that will improve access between major U.S. Army installations at Fort Bliss, Fort Hood and Fort Polk and the Texas strategic deployment seaports that support them  the Port of Corpus Christi and the Port of Beaumont.

A feasibility study of upgrading the U.S. 190 corridor prepared for the Texas Department of Transportation and completed in 2012 set the stage for designation of future Interstate 14 by Congress. It recognized the benefits of a high-volume east-west highway that would serve a vast section of Texas between Interstate 20 and Interstate 10.
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By Maribel Salazar

In addition to being one of the world's great flying spectacles, the Thunderbirds are the Air Force's most powerful community outreach, recruiting and public relations representatives.

They also are combat pilots. Thursday in San Angelo, Maj. Chris Austin recalled flying the skies over Fallujah in Iraq so soldiers on the ground could rest easily.

"I just orbited overhead for two hours because noise from overhead keeps (attackers) back" from U.S. soldiers, Austin said. "They needed some sleep.

"Sound is extremely powerful."

The sound is sure to be powerful Saturday as thousands of spectators pour into Mathis Field to watch the Thunderbirds and many other planes take to the sky and tour others on display on the ground.

The San Angelo show is the first show of 2008 for the Thunderbirds, and they arrived two days early for some community activities on the ground. Today, the pilots are scheduled to visit hospital patients at Shannon Medical Center and San Angelo Community Medical Center - some of them veterans.

The group also will visit students at Central and Lake View high school. "A lot of kids really believe they can be anything," Austin said, "and they can."

He is living proof of what determination from an early age can do. At age 4, Austin said, he remembers seeing contrails in the sky and telling his father, "Airplane, airplane, airplane!"

Austin, 35, has been in seven combat deployments in his 10 years of service with the Air Force. He is in his second season with the Thunderbirds and flies the left wing in the diamond formation.

"This is probably the greatest honor I've ever had," Austin said.

The Thunderbirds and the air show inherently promote the Air Force and its recruiting efforts. It was an air show that first drew Maj. Kirby Ensser to the Air Force - today, he is the right wing pilot for the Thunderbirds.

Ensser, 32, said he was in his early teens when he first became interested in flying. Born in a town of 1,200 in western Nebraska, Ensser attended an air show in Cheyenne, Wyo., where he first saw the Thunderbirds.

"The opportunity presented itself," Ensser said, "and I saw that and said, 'How do I get to do that?'"

Ensser attended the Air Force Academy from 1994 to 1998, and has flown for nine years. This is his first season with the Thunderbirds.

Both Austin and Ensser said they hope the draw of the air show will remind attendees of the nation's half-million airmen, national guardsmen, and reservists.

"We take very seriously the people we represent," Austin said.
New Ways of Counting Caucus Votes

Voter ID on Trial

Odds and Ends

This was a busy week in politics -- but then, practically every week is. That's whyis offering this new weekly newsletter.We won't cover the presidential campaign -- you can find plenty of that elsewhere. Instead, we aim to share with you the most interesting and important developments in state and local politics.You can sign up for a free subscription here. The political world is anxiously awaiting to see the outcome of actual voting in the presidential campaign, starting with the Iowa caucuses on Monday. Unlike primary elections, which are overseen by states, caucuses are run by state parties and have no automated voting system akin to stepping into a booth. Everyone just hopes state parties have learned their lesson since the last election.Four years ago, the Iowa Republican Party announced on caucus night that Mitt Romney had come out ahead by a whopping eight votes, out of more than 100,000 cast. Subsequent recalculation, though, led the party to announce that Rick Santorum had actually won by 34 votes. The mix-up, which wasn't the only confusing caucus result in 2012, led to the resignation of the state's GOP chair.Since then, state parties around the country have changed their counting procedures.In Iowa, both the Republican and Democratic parties will be using a new app -- developed in partnership with Microsoft -- that lets precinct captains enter vote totals from smartphones. It should be an improvement from the old error-prone touchtone system. But just in case: "Our old dial-in phone system is still in place as a back-up," said Sam Lau, spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party. Each party will also use verification software that flags anomalies, such as the number of votes from a particular precinct increasing tenfold from 2012.In Maine, all the Republican caucuses will be held within a set timeframe this year. Back in 2012, the Maine GOP announced that Romney had won its caucuses before all the counties even had a chance to vote."A local caucus warden will be elected at each of those sites," said Rick Bennett, who chairs the Maine Republican Party. "We have a chief warden managing the entire process, hiring deputy sheriffs and off-duty state police to secure and transport ballots. We're operating essentially under state election laws."At least one state -- Idaho -- has decided against holding a caucus at all this year and will hold a primary instead."From the party perspective, [running a caucus] was logistically very difficult, problematic and costly," said David Johnston, executive director of the Idaho GOP. "It's difficult to do what we're not designed to do. We're designed to encourage people to vote -- not to host an election."A highly-anticipated trial regarding North Carolina's 2013 voter identification law got underway this week in a federal district court in Winston-Salem. Election law experts say it's the biggest test case regarding voting requirements since the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.In the last few years, many Republican-led states have passed laws that restrict voting. The North Carolina law, though, is considered one of the strictest. Aside from ID requirements, the law reduced the number of days for early voting and ended same-day registration. Those provisions were debated before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder last summer, but he has yet to issue a ruling. It's the photo ID requirements that are before his court now.heard arguments about those provisions last summer, but hasn't issued a decision. It's the photo ID requirements that are before his court now.Republican legislators argue the law is necessary to combat voter fraud -- a problem Democrats argue is relatively nonexistent. "If the rationale were to prevent voter fraud, it would focus on absentee ballots," testified Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin's Election Research Center. "The consensus is fraud is more common among mail ballots."The Republican-dominated state also argues that opponents have uncovered "no evidence that any single voter will be unable to vote under the photo ID law." But an analysis by the watchdog group Democracy North Carolina found that turnout was reduced by "at least 30,000 voters" in the 2014 elections when the voter ID law was in full effect.The lawsuit was filed by the NAACP and other groups, who argued at the trial that the law disproportionately affects minorities and that the state hasn't done enough to help residents adapt to the changes. Take Rosanell Eaton: a 94-year-old African-American woman who remembers being forced to recite the preamble of the U.S. Constitution in the Jim Crow era and is one of the lead plaintiffs. To satisy the North Carolina law's requirements, she had to make 10 trips to various Social Security and Department of Motor Vehicle offices to procure an ID.The trial is ongoing.The governor's race in North Carolina is expected to be one of the most competitive gubernatorial elections this year . Certainly the money chase has been close thus far. Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper announced this week that he once again outraised Republican Gov. Pat McCrory during the second half of last year, taking in $2.9 million to the incumbent's $2.6 million. Cooper began this year with $4.9 million in the bank, compared to $4.1 million in the governor's accounts.Pennsylvania is one of two states, along with Illinois, that never managed to pass a budget last year. Not surprisingly, residents are not happy. Nearly 40 percent of Pennsylvanians say that government and politicians are the biggest problems facing the state, according to a Franklin & Marshall College poll released Thursday. More people blame the GOP-controlled legislature than Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf for the budget impasse (52 percent to 32 percent), but no one is looking good. Only a third of those surveyed believe Wolf is doing a good or excellent job, demonstrating a steady decline since polling in August and October, but only 15 percent now give the legislature positive ratings.Texas Republicans added to their already sizable majority in the state House with a special election win on Tuesday. In the runoff, Republican John Lujan narrowly defeated Democrat Tomas Uresti in a San Antonio district that had always been held by Democrats. Democrats will also have to defend a neighboring seat being left vacant by state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon. Amid a battle with cancer, she announced Tuesday that she won't finish her term.
In January 2015, when state officials were telling worried Flint residents their water was safe to drink, they also were arranging for coolers of purified water in Flint's State Office Building so employees wouldn't have to drink from the taps, according to state government emails released Thursday by the liberal group Progress Michigan.A Jan. 7, 2015, notice from the state Department of Technology, Management and Budget, which oversees state office buildings, references a notice about a violation of drinking water standards that had recently been sent out by the city of Flint."While the city of Flint states that corrective actions are not necessary, DTMB is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink," said the notice."The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."State officials could not immediately answer emailed questions about the water purchases, including how long the state continued to buy bottled water for state employees in Flint while telling Flint residents the water was safe to drink. An official said the administration was "looking into these issues."Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said it appears the state was not as slow as initially thought in responding to the Flint drinking water crisis."Sadly, the only response was to protect the Snyder administration from future liability and not to protect the children of Flint," Scott said. "While residents were being told to relax and not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to limit exposure in its own building."After months of downplaying concerns, including warnings from researchers about high lead levels in both the drinking water and in the blood of Flint children, the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder acknowledged around Oct. 1 a problem that is now a full-blown public health crisis garnering international headlines. Michigan DEQ Director Dan Wyant resigned in December after acknowledging officials failed to require the city to use needed corrosion control chemicals when they switched the source of their supply to Lake Huron water treated by Detroit to Flint River water treated at the Flint water treatment plant.The lack of corrosion controls caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures into an unknown number of Flint households beginning in April 2014, when the city began using the Flint River as a temporary cost-cutting move while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager. Flint customers were switched back to Detroit in October, but the potential danger persists because of damage to the water distribution infrastructure.Snyder declared a state of emergency Jan. 5 and a week later called out the Michigan National Guard to help distribute bottled water and water filters in Flint. The state of emergency, which was set to expire next week, was extended Thursday through April 14.Included in the email string obtained by Progress Michigan is an email from Mike Prysby, a district engineer in the DEQ's drinking water division, whose name had surfaced earlier in connection with the Flint drinking water public health crisis.Prysby, who had been forwarded an email from other state officials asking whether he would know more about the safety of Flint's drinking water by March 1, forwarded the email to Stephen Busch, the district supervisor, who on Jan. 22 of this year was suspended without pay for his role in the drinking water catastrophe."Appears certain state departments are concerned with Flint's WQ (water quality)," Prysby said in the email to Busch. "I will return the call ... "On Jan. 23, 2015, the Detroit Free Press ran a story, accompanied by a photo of Flint residents holding up jugs of brown water, that said concerns of city residents ranged from the taste, appearance and odor of the water to unexplained rashes and illnesses, even sick pets. Concerns about lead had not been raised then, though experts now say the color of the water _ and the fact GM had announced it stopped using it because it was too corrosive to metal parts _ should have been a tip-off that metals, including lead, were leaching into the water.The January 2015 Free Press story noted that in August and September, the city issued three advisories to boil Flint water after detecting coliform bacteria.Just before Christmas, residents received notices that state tests indicated higher-than-acceptable levels of trihalomethane, or TTHM, a by-product of the chlorine disinfectants added to the water to kill the bacteria.The article said that despite a recent alert about TTHM levels having exceeded federal guidelines in 2014, city officials maintained the water was safe. The article said that Michigan DEQ officials gave the same assurances at a meeting at Flint City Hall on Jan. 21.Prysby represented the DEQ at that Flint City Hall meeting and told residents the chlorine did its job and cleaned the water of microbial pathogens that can cause disease within days, the article said. That meant the water was safe for healthy people to drink for a short time, Prysby was quoted as saying.The trade-off, Prysby said, was TTHM, possibly a danger for the very young, the very old, or the very sick if they ingest it long-term, he added."But we're talking decades," he said, adding that those who are worried should talk to their doctors.
A member of the Ohio Senate's GOP leadership team is drawing fire after questioning whether his opponent, a woman with young children, could handle being away from home while serving in the state legislature.Sen. Tom Patton, R-Strongsville, a term-limited, pro-labor Republican who is running for a House seat this year, called Jennifer Herold, his primary opponent, "sweetie" and questioned whether she should run for the seat. He made the comments on the Jan. 18 America's Work Force radio show with Ed Ferenc.Patton, the Senate majority floor leader, is facing Herold in the Republican primary for the 7th House District. He told Ferenc it's the first primary challenge he has faced since 2002."The gal that's running against me is a 30-year-old, you know, mom, mother of two infants," Patton said on the show. "I don't know if anybody explained to her you have to spend three nights a week in Columbus. So, how does that work out for you? I waited until I was 48, until my kids were raised, and at least adults, before we took the opportunity to try."Herold, who has children aged 1 and 3, said the decision to run for the House was one she and her family took very seriously."We realize the sacrifice that is involved in holding such a position," she said in a written response. "However, Tom Patton has crossed a line by trying to turn the fact that I am a mother of two children into a negative campaign issue. It's insulting for my opponent to suggest that motherhood is a liability. In fact, my experience as a mom is perhaps my greatest strength."A number of female legislators have children, as do numerous males -- including Gov. John Kasich. Reps. Christie Kuhns, D-Cincinnati, and Christina Hagan, R-Alliance, gave birth to babies this session. Hagan bought her baby daughter to the Statehouse on Tuesday."Do you draw a distinction between whether that representative is a mother or a father who is serving?" Herold said.Rob Frost, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party, defended Patton in an interview on Thursday with Cleveland radio host Bob Frantz."No, these are not sexist or out-of-line comments," Frost said, adding that Herold was " desperate to try to get some attention."As a widower who raised five daughters and a son, Frost said Patton "understands the pressures on parents."Patton did not return a message left with his office. He sent a statement to the "Plain Dealer" of Cleveland saying his comments "appear to have been misunderstood" and that he "used a poor choice of words to express what I know first-hand -- raising young children and working is tough."He added: "I sincerely apologize if my words were misplaced on this matter."Herold also took issue with Patton calling her "sweetie.""Tom, only one man in my life is allowed to call me 'sweetie.' From now on, I respectfully ask you to refer to me as Jen, Jennifer, Ms. Herold, or your opponent."
(TNS)  WASHINGTON  Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced Thursday that he would leave the agency Jan. 20, guaranteeing Republicans will have a majority after President-elect Donald Trump takes office that day.The move makes it easier for Republicans to try to repeal new online traffic rules known as net neutrality, as well as other controversial actions taken by the agency's Democratic majority under President Barack Obama.Wheeler, 70, a Democrat who has served as chairman since late 2013, was widely expected to leave once Trump became president. The president gets to designate the chairman of the FCC, and Trump would pick a Republican to supplant Wheeler to head the commission.But there was a question about whether Wheeler would buck tradition and stay on as a regular commissioner until his five-year term ends in 2018 to try to preserve some of his major policy actions.Such a move would have left the five-member commission, which will have one vacancy next year, deadlocked with two Democrats and two Republicans.That would have kept Republicans from having the votes to reverse Wheeler initiatives.But Wheeler, who has been coy about his future, ended that speculation Thursday by issuing a news release announcing his plans to leave the FCC."This is in keeping with the commitments that I have repeatedly made since March that I would cooperate with the wishes of the new administration to assure a smooth transition and that I would follow the precedent that when the White House changes parties, the chairman resigns regardless of the amount of time left in the term," Wheeler told reporters after the FCC's December meeting, his last on the commission.(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)Under Republican leadership, the FCC is expected to try to weaken the net neutrality regulations, which were enacted by a partisan 3-2 vote in 2015.Urged on by Obama, the FCC classified broadband as a more highly regulated service under Title 2 of the telecommunications law. The classification gave the FCC more authority over broadband providers.It also opened the door for the agency to enact new rules, approved by another partisan 3-2 vote in October, requiring high-speed internet service providers to get customer permission before using or sharing sensitive personal data.Republicans on the commission and in Congress strongly opposed the moves, and both are expected to be early targets of the new FCC chairman.Republicans said they didn't oppose the goals of net neutrality _ to prohibit broadband companies from slowing internet speeds for some content such as video streams, selling faster lanes for delivering data or otherwise discriminating against any legal online material. But they strongly objected to classifying broadband providers for the same type of regulatory oversight as conventional phone companies.Congressional Republicans also could attempt to override the new regulatory classification for broadband providers with legislation, an effort that stalled in 2013 because of a sure Obama veto.Wheeler said Thursday that he hoped any legislation would not enact weaker net neutrality rules that "gutted" the FCC's authority to enforce them.Calling his tenure as chairman "the greatest privilege of my professional career," Wheeler downplayed the partisan divides on that and other key issues under his leadership."The headlines got built around our differences, but the facts are that we accomplished a lot," he said.Wheeler said he tried to make decisions that benefited "the common good" and defended government service in the wake of an election in which Trump was elected promising to "drain the swamp" of Washington."Those who chant that government is the problem are wrong, and their chant is dangerous," Wheeler said."Government isn't some faceless them. It is us. It is we the people who govern ourselves," he said. "Government is where we come together to collectively address common challenges."Wheeler admitted he had "hoped for another outcome" in the election, but said he has had "two good meetings" with Trump's FCC transition staff.No clear candidates to replace Wheeler have emerged, and FCC nominations are typically in the second tier of presidential appointments, after Cabinet members and top White House staff positions.The fifth member of the FCC, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, must leave the commission on Dec. 31 after the Republican-controlled Senate failed to approve her renomination by President Obama before recessing last week. That will give Trump two nominations to make, though one would be a Democrat because only three commissioners can be from the same political party."It has been an honor, a privilege and a wild ride," Rosenworcel said Thursday of her service.Senate Republicans have said Wheeler's failure to formally commit to stepping down from the agency altogether had complicated Democratic efforts to confirm Rosenworcel to a second term.Outgoing Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., of reneging on a deal to confirm Rosenworcel in exchange for Democratic support for the renomination of Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly in 2015.2016 Los Angeles Times , distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(TNS) -- California's bullet train could take longer to build than previously estimated and its ultimate cost is difficult to predict, the head of the high-speed rail authority told state legislators Wednesday, Jan. 27."It may take us a little longer than we said to do this," rail authority Chairman Dan Richard said in testimony to an Assembly transportation committee. He did not elaborate.But Richard also said that a forthcoming update of its business plan for the high-speed link between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area will show a reduction in the estimated cost of $68 billion, despite delays that have slowed construction.The project is more than two years behind the schedule the authority announced in 2012, when it expected to start building 29 miles of rail structures. The work began in July and remains at a slow pace.The oversight hearing was called by Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), who described the bullet train as "one of the most complex projects not only in the state but in the nation's history."Bloom said construction of the rail system will be difficult and full of risks. In a brief interview after the 90-minute hearing, he said he believed the project "is being managed well."The hearing was limited to testimony from three officials, two of whom work for the authority and a third who is chairman of a peer review panel.In a public comment period after the testimony, a series of speakers sharply criticized the project, but their remarks were limited to one minute apiece.Assemblywoman Patty Lopez (D-San Fernando), who was among those in the public comment line, said she had asked rail authority officials to work with her on some of the effects of the project on her working-class community but did not receive any response.Other objections were raised by the Train Riders Assn. of California, farmers and other rural residents. Two labor union officials praised the project.Richard and state rail authority Chief Executive Jeff Morales spent much of their testimony during the hearing attacking an October 2015 Times story that concluded that the state was highly unlikely to complete an initial operating segment from Burbank to Merced by its 2022 deadline or to bring the project in on budget.The Times found that the years remaining before the deadline were not enough to construct 300 miles of track, bore 36 miles of mountain tunnels, build six train stations, erect high-voltage electrical systems and construct a heavy maintenance facility. The story was based on comments by tunnel engineers, construction experts and geologists.The story also reported that the agency's primary consultant, Parsons Brinckerhoff, had submitted a cost estimate in October 2013 that projected a 31% increase in the cost of the initial construction segment and a 5% increase in the cost of the full 500-mile system. The estimate, which was the culmination of a two-year effort by a team of engineers, was not used when the state issued its 2014 business plan several months later.Morales told lawmakers the Parsons Brinckerhoff estimate was just a draft, subject to revision and among other analyses used for the official cost estimate that was made public. A large number of the rail agency's reports and documents are marked "draft" in large letters, including the written testimony that Richard and Morales read from a witness table at Wednesday's hearing."They are hiding behind the draft stamp," Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno) said after the hearing.Morales testified that part of the $9-billion increase reported by The Times was based on construction of more miles of track and longer viaducts, an explanation he did not provide in an interview before the story was published.The full documentation behind the Parsons Brinckerhoff cost estimate has yet to be disclosed. The rail authority had refused to provide the estimate, which was contained in a detailed PowerPoint presentation, under the Public Records Act. The Times subsequently obtained the document from an individual close to the project.Richard also told the committee that The Times had refused to interview the rail agency's own tunneling experts.In fact, The Times made a request to interview the authority's tunnel engineers. Lisa Marie Alley, who was then the press secretary, offered an interview with Lombardi, an Italian subcontractor, and also asked that The Times speak with an outside expert, Anthony Cording.In a July 23, 2015, email, The Times wrote that it would be "happy to talk to the Lombardi people and Cording."The authority subsequently withdrew the offer for the Lombardi interview. The Times independently contacted Cording, who declined to comment publicly.The Times did speak to three of the world's foremost tunneling experts, none of whom are affiliated with the project. They were highly skeptical the tunnels could be bored by the 2022 deadline.Patterson asked Richard whether, as The Times reported Sunday, the rail authority was rethinking its plan to build the first segment between Burbank and Merced. The Times said the authority was considering a plan to build instead from the Bay Area south  a change that would avoid the difficult tunneling of the southern route until much of the system had been completed.Richard did not elaborate on what the authority is considering. He said, "Nobody is going to be left behind no matter what we do."Patterson said testimony by Richard and Morales was ambiguous, adding, "The interest here was to have a show hearing."Louis Thompson, chairman of a peer review panel that was mandated under state law, also testified Wednesday, suggesting the project should have significantly closer oversight by a well-funded and long-term branch of the state government.
Tyson Eckerle was appointed deputy director of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure at the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development by Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday. Eckerle has worked there since 2013 as a zero-emission vehicle infrastructure project manager.Eckerle formerly worked with Energy Independence since 2009, and had served as its executive director since 2011. According to its website, EINow is dedicated to advancing fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and the hydrogen fueling infrastructure required to catalyze a rapid transition to a clean energy and transportation economy.He previously served with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as an environmental manager, among other positions including biologist, recruitment coordinator and environmental planner. Eckerle earned his master's degree in environmental science and management from UC Santa Barbara in 2009. The press release from the governors office stated that the position does not require Senate confirmation.The Brown administration released Executive Order B-16-2012 less than four years ago, which called for the rapid commercialization of zero-emission vehicles. Specific goals for the office are to see that by 2020 the vehicles are used as main public transport, and for the costs of such vehicles to be competitive with and available to the mainstream public. The order further calls for more than 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles to be in use by 2025 and an 80 percent decrease of greenhouse gas emissions from their 1990 levels by 2050.Browns Executive Order states that Californias transportation sector is the biggest contributor to Californias greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for approximately 40 percent of these emissions.
Home  Motorcycles & Bikes  Top 10 Best Motorcycle GPS Trackers Of 2022 Reviews & Buying Guide Motorcycles & Bikes Top 10 Best Motorcycle GPS Trackers Of 2022 Reviews & Buying Guide

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Motorcycles are excellent vehicles for travel and adventure both on and off-road. It is an investment you need to keep safe from those who would love to take that treasure off your hands. Wheel-locking systems may not be enough for those with enough mechanical ability to hot-wire it, and in some cases, one or two people could simply load it onto a truck without unlocking anything.

You dont want to wait months for the police to try to get it back. You want to know where it is right now.

A GPS tracking system is the perfect security investment for your motorcycle, and we have reviews of the best motorcycle GPS trackers here for you.

Top 10 Best Motorcycle GPS Trackers You Should Buy Of 2022 Reviews

1 AMERICALOC GL300W Mini Portable Real-Time GPS Tracker. XW Series

Leta start with this Americaloc mini portable GPS tracker. This is a mid-range GPS tracker both regarding cost and ability. It comes in about the size of a heavy keychain, so if you are looking for something tiny, this is not it. It is detectable by someone who knew what they were looking for but depending on where you attached it to your motorcycle, it may take them a bit of time to identify it.

There are diverse opinions in the reviews about its battery life. It appears that it will last at least 3-4 days, but there are sometimes problems when recharging it. Make sure to follow the instruction guide that comes with this tracker.

You also need to recognize that this service is run by a tech that is not as widespread as most cellphone GPS trackers. While is advertises real-time the reality is that it updates once per minute, thirty, or ten seconds  depending on your setting. This setting will affect battery life, and depending on where it is, the updates may not be entirely accurate. It is not a bad tracker, but you need to have realistic expectations for it.

Pros GPS Tracker for vehicles, people, assets

GPS Tracker for vehicles, people, assets This GPS tracker has the longest battery life version with extended multicarrier coverage. Battery life is measured in weeks.

This GPS tracker has the longest battery life version with extended multicarrier coverage. Battery life is measured in weeks. Alerts: movement, parked, speeding, device on/off, low battery, entering or leaving zones

Alerts: movement, parked, speeding, device on/off, low battery, entering or leaving zones Real-Time Tracking and 1 year of tracking history. Track from any computer, tablet or phone or just download our Android and iPhone APP.

Real-Time Tracking and 1 year of tracking history. Track from any computer, tablet or phone or just download our Android and iPhone APP. Works in the US, Canada, Europe and in almost every country in the world

Works in the US, Canada, Europe and in almost every country in the world 1-minute location updates while moving. Can be configured for location updates every 60, 30 or 10 seconds with no additional cost. Cons Slightly bigger than something described as mini.

Slightly bigger than something described as mini. Sometimes faces battery charging issues

Sometimes faces battery charging issues Behind cellphone GPS technology and occasionally is off a block or so in tracking

Behind cellphone GPS technology and occasionally is off a block or so in tracking No mobile app and website can be buggy

2 Spy Tec STI GL300 Mini Portable Real-Time Personal and Vehicle GPS Tracker

Spy Tecs GL300 GPS is about the same size as the Americaloc, but about half the price. As with most GPS devices, there is a monthly subscription fee that can quickly add up over time. In practice, this GPS seems to function a little more smoothly than others, with many short-term satisfied customers.

For this GPS to work well for you, you need three things. First, you need to be using it in an area covered by T-mobile, or else you may have accuracy problems. Second, you need to be able to recharge it every few days. Finally, this is a short-term solution. The charging cable seems to break down over months, not years, and the customer and tech service can be a pain to deal with. If you are looking for a long-term GPS, you may want to take a pass on Spy Tec.

Pros Perfect for tracking vehicles, people, or assets

Perfect for tracking vehicles, people, or assets Compact size can go anywhere

Compact size can go anywhere Tracks with Google Maps in real-time over the Internet

Tracks with Google Maps in real-time over the Internet Get text or email when a person leaves an area (geo-fencing) Cons Inconsistent customer service

Inconsistent customer service Works primarily in T-mobile coverage areas

Works primarily in T-mobile coverage areas Problems with charging cable

Problems with charging cable Short life span

3 Amcrest AM-GL300 V3 Portable Mini Real-Time GPS Tracker for Vehicles

Here is another low-end GPS tracker for your motorcycle. What makes this one of the best motorcycle GPS trackers is that it works with mobile apps from Google and Apple, so you can track your motorcycle from your phone and not just your computer or a webpage.

It comes with lots of tracking options as well. You can create zones and be alerted if your motorcycle moves outside of it. You can set speed alerts or other proximity alerts, which will be pushed to your phone via text and email. The Amcrest is a solid package for taking care of your needs, and there is no contract required to use it.

How you use it will determine the battery strength, and, like other devices in this low-cost range, the batteries are a weak point, particularly if not re-charged correctly. Also, it relies on 2G coverage and does not connect with all carriers. To get your moneys worth out of this motorcycle GPS tracker, make sure to inquire about coverage in your area and this tracker, and be sure to read the instructions about recharging your GPS.

Pros Works with apps from Google and Apple store

Works with apps from Google and Apple store This GPS device allows you to create zones that you specifically want to monitor, such as your home to you know when your loved one leaves or returns. Set maximum speed alerts and proximity alerts for your vehicles to suit your needs.

This GPS device allows you to create zones that you specifically want to monitor, such as your home to you know when your loved one leaves or returns. Set maximum speed alerts and proximity alerts for your vehicles to suit your needs. Receive text, push and email notifications straight to your personal device.

Receive text, push and email notifications straight to your personal device. Long-lasting  Stay connected with a longer battery life of 10-14 days on a full charge.

Long-lasting  Stay connected with a longer battery life of 10-14 days on a full charge. Access the reports from your GPS device from your PC, Mac or smartphone.

Access the reports from your GPS device from your PC, Mac or smartphone. No contract required Cons GPS Tracker is limited to 2G and will only work in areas where there is 2G coverage.

GPS Tracker is limited to 2G and will only work in areas where there is 2G coverage. Batteries can be faulty leading to short lifespan of the device

4 GPS Tracker  Optimus 2.0

This low-end tracker has a better performance record than some of the others, making it one of the best motorcycle GPS trackers on the market. This GPS has a monthly subscription fee but no contract required and it comes with apps you can use to track your motorcycle from your phone. There is no limit to how much data you can save on the secure databases, and so will update you every 30 seconds while your motorcycle is moving, or you can upgrade it to update you every 10 seconds.

Fortunately, there are only two reported issues from the reviews of this GPS tracker. It is slightly larger than some of the other models, making it a bit more challenging to hide securely. It also sends out false reports occasionally if the cell service is interrupted.

Pros No Contract

No Contract Adjustable position report frequency from 30 Seconds while moving.

Adjustable position report frequency from 30 Seconds while moving. iPhone and Android App

iPhone and Android App Email and Text Message notifications for Movement, Speeding, Leaving or Entering Areas, etc.

Email and Text Message notifications for Movement, Speeding, Leaving or Entering Areas, etc. Unlimited Tracking Data Saved During Service

Unlimited Tracking Data Saved During Service SIM Card and Data Plan all Included

SIM Card and Data Plan all Included Easy to install and use Cons Will occasionally send out false reports if it loses cell service

Will occasionally send out false reports if it loses cell service Slightly larger than other models

Which of the best motorcycle GPS trackers have the best batteries?

5 Trackmate Mini 3G H GPS Tracker for Vehicles

Unlike the previous models of the best motorcycle GPS trackers, the Trackmate does not rely on a rechargeable lithium battery. Instead, it is hardwired directly into the motorcycle battery itself. This has the benefit of preventing the GPS from turning off when the battery dies at inopportune times.

The downside of this setup is that installation is more difficult, and while the device is easily concealable, it also has wires running between it and the battery. This connection can cause your motorcycle battery to run down if you do not monitor it closely, causing both the device and motorcycle to fail to operate.

This is a 3G tracker and has better accuracy than the previous 2G GPS trackers, making this one of the best motorcycle GPS trackers on the market.

Pros On/Off Detection, Speed Indicator, and Live Map Tracking.

On/Off Detection, Speed Indicator, and Live Map Tracking. Numerous alerts such as low-battery, tampering and towing. Historical location reports available.

Numerous alerts such as low-battery, tampering and towing. Historical location reports available. All-Weather Resistant and Waterproof.

All-Weather Resistant and Waterproof. STAY IN TUNE: Unique system Tracks via AT&T and T-Mobile networks, simultaneously.

STAY IN TUNE: Unique system Tracks via AT&T and T-Mobile networks, simultaneously. EASILY CONCEALABLE: 3.4 X 1.75 X 0.50 , 2oz. No visible external light. Cons Can drain the motorcycle battery

Can drain the motorcycle battery Challenging to install since it is hardwired to the motorcycle battery

6 MotoSafety Mwaas1P1 Wired 3G GPS Car Tracker

The MotoSafety Mwaas1P1 is another hardwired GPS tracker that you can use on your motorcycle. It also uses 3G service and, as long as you are in the United States, typically does an excellent job of tracking through mobile apps. It sends detailed reports, particularly useful for tracking teen drivers, such as speeding, hard braking, and curfew notices. You must subscribe to a monthly fee, but there are no contracts.

Overall, this is one of the best motorcycle GPS trackers. There are about 10% of customers though who encounter significant issues trying to get this GPS to function properly. Many of these are being used in cars, rather than motorcycles. However, since this GPS is hardwired into the vehicle system, the fault seems to be a compatibility issue, between the GPS and the vehicle. There are no reports of which vehicles are incompatible or why.

You take a small risk with this GPS that it may not be compatible with your motorcycle. Otherwise, this is one of the best motorcycle GPS trackers.

Pros Monitor driving activity using Google Maps.

Monitor driving activity using Google Maps. Use GPS to review driving routes, set geofences around key locations and know when the vehicle is in use after curfew.

Use GPS to review driving routes, set geofences around key locations and know when the vehicle is in use after curfew. No contracts or cancellation fees.

No contracts or cancellation fees. Track anywhere with free GPS tracking mobile apps with real-time email & text message alerts. Cons Has some issues updating consistently

Has some issues updating consistently Only works in the United States

7 ATian Vehicle Car personal GPS/GSM/GPRS/SMS Tracker

The ATian GPS Tracker is one of the less expensive of the best motorcycle GPS trackers available. It comes with both a Lithium-ion battery and power supply to be installed to the motorcycle battery. Be warned though, that it will drain both rather quickly if you use it continuously. The lithium-ion battery, for example, is only rated up to 29 hours of continuous use, meaning you have to recharge it daily.

This GPS is not waterproof so some kind of external cover may be necessary to keep it working correctly. It comes with a remote control though, to turn it on and off without getting on the motorcycle yourself.

The biggest challenge with this GPS is that they do not provide a SIM card in it. Being foreign made, they have adapted to the global cellular service challenge by forcing you to get your own SIM card for it. This means that, although there is only a minimal service fee for using this GPS, you have to pay a cell service company to use it. With the frequent false alerts reported in the reviews on this GPS, that cell service bill can cost you a pretty penny.

Pros Single Locating

Single Locating Auto track continuously

Auto track continuously Track with limited times upon time interval, Smart track upon time and distance interval

Track with limited times upon time interval, Smart track upon time and distance interval The tracker will update the positions automatically to web server once the vehicle changing driving direction over preset angle value to form a smooth trajectory consistent with the actual road, this function works only in GPRS /GSM mode Cons Drains motorcycle battery

Drains motorcycle battery May often send false alerts

May often send false alerts Requires a SIM card and the additional cost of that cellular service.

Looking for a higher end GPS for your motorcycle?

8 AES RGT90 GPS Tracker

The difference (besides the price) between the AES RGT90 and some of the other best motorcycle GPS trackers that operate with a lithium-ion battery, is that the folks over at AES implemented a sleep mode into their device. That saves you hours and hours of battery use wasted when your motorcycle is simply sitting in your garage. That is how they are able to get 90 days worth of use out of their battery.

The other reason that this GPS tracker costs so much is that it has the broadest range of the best motorcycle GPS trackers  extending all through North America and over 100 other countries as well. By comparison, most other trackers have difficulty even covering the USA alone.

Pros Works Anywhere in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, plus over 100 other countries

Works Anywhere in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, plus over 100 other countries Internal battery Operates GPS tracker up to 90 days on a single charge. Recharges by Micro USB for better convenience. Charge using any USB Charger.

Internal battery Operates GPS tracker up to 90 days on a single charge. Recharges by Micro USB for better convenience. Charge using any USB Charger. Covert, Discrete, Waterproof Magnetic Case

Covert, Discrete, Waterproof Magnetic Case Goes to sleep when the vehicle is parked for 5 minutes or more. Displays the last location before going into Sleep Mode. Access anytime via text.

Goes to sleep when the vehicle is parked for 5 minutes or more. Displays the last location before going into Sleep Mode. Access anytime via text. Track on your phone or on the website. You can also receive GPS coordinates via SMS Text. Cons Phone app is not the easiest to use

Phone app is not the easiest to use Relies on magnetic attachment

What is the best reviewed of the best motorcycle GPS trackers?

9 Goome 3G/WCDMA/GSM/GPS GM36W

The Goome has the least amount of negative reviews of the best motorcycle GPS trackers on the market. It also has the fewest reviews in total, so take that with a grain of salt. Many of the reviews commented that they got more value than they expected from this GPS. It is easy to install and very accurate, and the company offers global service.

The only problem the reviews have reported is that the app associated with this tracker is in Chinese and can be difficult to navigate. Even so, most customers were able to use this GPS quite well directly through SMS communication between their phones and devices.

Pros Support 3G/WCDMA/GSM/ Network

Support 3G/WCDMA/GSM/ Network Waterproof features, level  IP67 will prevent water damage the inter electric components.

Waterproof features, level  IP67 will prevent water damage the inter electric components. Geo-fencing, playback history tracks, speeding alarm, low power &battery alerts, etc.

Geo-fencing, playback history tracks, speeding alarm, low power &battery alerts, etc. OTA Upgrade Program, Anti-theft

OTA Upgrade Program, Anti-theft One year free trial for North America customers Cons App is Chinese and hard to navigate

App is Chinese and hard to navigate Can be difficult to find to purchase

What is the least expensive best motorcycle GPS tracker on the market?

10 MOTOsafety OBD GPS Tracker Device

Here is the least expensive of the best motorcycle GPS trackers you can find. This GPS, like several of the others reviewed, was made with teen drivers in mind. It gives comprehensive reports on driving stats, but it is not meant to be long-lasting.

If you are looking for a short-term GPS tracker, and you are living in the US, this is an inexpensive option for you. If you are looking for a GPS for security reasons, you may want to see another option.

Pros Monitor driving activity using Google Maps.

Monitor driving activity using Google Maps. Get a complete driving report cards that score safe driving habits such as speeding, harsh braking, and rapid acceleration to improve driving habits.

Get a complete driving report cards that score safe driving habits such as speeding, harsh braking, and rapid acceleration to improve driving habits. 3G vehicle tracking coverage that updates every minute in the US, Canada, and Mexico

3G vehicle tracking coverage that updates every minute in the US, Canada, and Mexico Track anywhere with the free GPS tracking mobile apps and real-time email & text message alerts.

Track anywhere with the free GPS tracking mobile apps and real-time email & text message alerts. Use the GPS tracking to review reports such as driving routes, set geofences around key locations (school, home, or friends house) and know when the vehicle is in use after curfew. Cons Inconsistent updating

Inconsistent updating Only works in the US

So, how do these reviews line up?

Best Motorcycle GPS Trackers Buying Guide

Best Value

The MOTOSafety OBD GPS Tracker is the least expensive option if you are looking for a short-term tracker for your motorcycle. It is made for tracking the driving habits of teenage drivers.

The Trackmate is a more expensive device, but it has a lower monthly subscription cost and is hardwired into your motorcycle, so you dont have to worry about recharging the battery.

The ATian GPS tracker is inexpensive as well, but you may end up paying more for your SIM card (not included) usage.

Accuracy

The AES is the most expensive of the best motorcycle GPS trackers but can provide you with some of the best accuracy across the greatest number of countries. The ATian is one of the least expensive devices but can offer service in any country you can get a SIM card to use in it. The Goome GPS also provides excellent service if you can navigate the Chinese app or use SMS to connect to the device.

Durability

How long do the best motorcycle GPS trackers last?

The most durable of these trackers are the ones that are hardwired into your motorcycle battery. The lithium-ion battery is one of the earliest failing points on these devices, and if it doesnt have one, it lasts that much longer. You also want one that is waterproof, to prevent moisture from damaging the electronics.

The Trackmate is a great hardwired GPS that is recommended for motorcycles and is waterproof. It is one of the more durable of the best motorcycle GPS trackers.

There is one exception to the battery rule, and that is the AES RGT90 GPS tracker. This tracker, because of its sleep mode, causes less wear on the battery and ends up lasting much longer than any other GPS with a lithium-ion battery.



Conclusion You can get inexpensive GPS trackers if you are only interested in short-term use. If you want something to last longer, you need to spend a little more money. You also need to be able to install it to your motorcycle battery. It is also important to watch for the subscription costs. The device may be inexpensive, but most subscriptions are around $20 each month. Some may require cell phone contracts (although most do not). Also, the more expensive GPS trackers have better service (3G instead of 2G) and a much wider area of coverage. If youre looking for the best motorcycle GPS trackers, the reviews suggest checking out the AES RGT90 and the Trackmate Mini 3G H GPS Tracker.
Bernie Ecclestone sounds unconvinced after F1's engine manufacturers recently agreed a change of direction for the future.

The F1 supremo had warned that unless significant changes to the controversial current regulations were agreed, he would press ahead with his contentious earlier plans for 'parallel' engine rules.

What the manufacturers - Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Honda - reportedly came up with was a plan to standardise certain parts so that their asking price for customers came down to EUR 12 million per year.

But Ecclestone suggested to the BBC that he is still not happy.

"Until we get an engine that can be build at a lot less cost, yes, there will be trouble ahead," the 85-year-old Briton warned.

According to Red Bull designer Adrian Newey, the obvious solution is for the competitive marques like Mercedes and Ferrari to make important concessions for the good of the sport.

Recalling 1967, when the original Lotus team had exclusive use of the impressive Cosworth engine, Newey said: "Lotus agreed to waive its exclusivity to allow others to use it for the good of the sport.

"Unfortunately, that sort of attitude doesn't seem to exist anymore," he told The Hindu newspaper whilst in India to support his son Harrison at a race.

Newey is therefore expecting Red Bull to endure another painful season in 2016.

"Our hope for 2016 is to just maintain that gap (of 2015) but with Ferrari and Mercedes expected to step up, towards the end of the year we might be further behind than we were last year," he said.

He said that is because F1's new engine-dominated era is fundamentally different to when Red Bull ruled the sport with its aerodynamic superiority.

"With aero and chassis it is out on view, people can see designs, understand and copy," said Newey. "But with the engine formula you can't see your competitor's engine.

"Ferrari improved from 2014 to 2015 but it cost a lot and needed people (to move) from Mercedes."

(GMM)
F1 seems on track for faster tyres in 2017, as Pirelli welcomes the opportunity to meet with disgruntled drivers next week.

Although earlier a supporter of the controversial era of 'show'-inspired high degradation, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone this week backed Alex Wurz, after the GPDA president said drivers are unanimously pushing for "maximum attack" tyres.

Ecclestone told the BBC that drivers were free to attend a meeting at Pirelli's Milan headquarters early next week, to be chaired by the Italian marque's president Marco Tronchetti Provera.

In a statement, F1's official tyre supplier said it is "delighted" to host the meeting.

"Pirelli sees this meeting as being of vital importance in order to further consolidate the close collaboration that got underway last year with the FIA, FOM, and the drivers," it added.

Pirelli cautioned, however, that it must be allowed to do more testing.

The statement added that "these are vital steps towards tyre development that takes into account the future evolution of the cars and added performance, which will be particularly notable in 2017".

(GMM)
Sandia National Laboratories researchers are working on a new design for 200-meter blades that could enable offshore 50MW wind turbines. Sandias work on extreme-scale Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR) is funded by the Department of Energys (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program.

The team is led by the University of Virginia and includes Sandia and researchers from the University of Illinois, the University of Colorado, the Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Corporate advisory partners include Dominion Resources, General Electric Co., Siemens AG and Vestas Wind Systems.

Sandias previous work on 13-MW systems uses 100-meter blades (328 feet) on which the initial SUMR designs are based. While a 50-MW horizontal wind turbine is well beyond the size of any current design, studies show that load alignment can significantly reduce peak stresses and fatigue on the rotor blades. This reduces costs and allows construction of blades big enough for a 50-MW system.

Most current US wind turbines produce power in the 1- to 2-MW range, with blades about 165 feet (50 meters) long, while the largest commercially available turbine is rated at 8 MW with blades 262 feet (80 meters) long.

The US has great offshore wind energy potential, but offshore installations are expensive, so larger turbines are needed to capture that energy at an affordable cost. Conventional upwind blades are expensive to manufacture, deploy and maintain beyond 10-15 MW. They must be stiff, to avoid fatigue and eliminate the risk of tower strikes in strong gusts. Those stiff blades are heavy, and their mass, which is directly related to cost, becomes even more problematic at the extreme scale due to gravity loads and other changes. Todd Griffith, lead blade designer on the project and technical lead for Sandias Offshore Wind Energy Program.

Griffith said the new blades could be more easily and cost-effectively manufactured in segments, avoiding the unprecedented-scale equipment needed for transport and assembly of blades built as single units.

The exascale turbines would be sited downwind, unlike conventional turbines that are configured with the rotor blades upwind of the tower.

SUMRs load-alignment is bio-inspired by the way palm trees move in storms. The lightweight, segmented trunk approximates a series of cylindrical shells that bend in the wind while retaining segment stiffness. This alignment radically reduces the mass required for blade stiffening by reducing the forces on the blades using the palm-tree inspired load-alignment approach.

Segmented turbine blades have a significant advantage in parts of the world at risk for severe storms, such as hurricanes, where offshore turbines must withstand tremendous wind speeds over 200 mph. The blades align themselves to reduce cantilever forces on the blade through a trunnion hinge near the hub that responds to changes in wind speed.

At dangerous wind speeds, the blades are stowed and aligned with the wind direction, reducing the risk of damage. At lower wind speeds, the blades spread out more to maximize energy production, Griffith said.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has set a goal of providing 20% of the nations energy from wind by 2030, as detailed in its recent Wind Vision Report.
The program features dynamic pricinga time-variant ratethat creates incentives for charging when renewable energy is most available. The CPUC decision comes two weeks after a separate CPUC decision to approve a proposal from Southern California Edison to deploy 1,500 charging stations across its territory. ( Earlier post .)

Almost two years after SDG&E proposed its Electric Vehicle Grid-Integration (VGI) pilot project (April 2014), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a modified version of the program, enabling the utility to own and to install 3,500 charging stations at 350 sitesbusinesses and multi-family communities, including in underserved neighborhoods, throughout San Diego and south Orange Counties.

To meet just 10% of California Governor Browns target of 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on state roads by 2025, the San Diego region would need 150,000 EVs on its roads. Currently, the San Diego region has only around 19,000 EVs. Fifty percent of SDG&Es customers live in multi-family communities, without easy access to vehicle charging. SDG&Es initiative is intended to help address gaps such as this in the market and ensure charging is accessible to all customers.

SDG&E will install at least 10% of the chargers in disadvantaged communities. With rates encouraging off-peak charging, vehicles will be efficiently integrated onto the grid, helping to avoid on-peak charging that drives the need to build more power plants and other electric infrastructure.



SDG&Es current standard time-of-use residential charging rates for EVs (EV-TOU). SDG&E residential rates are divided into three tiers, based on usage: baseline; 101 to 130% of baseline; and more than 130% of baseline. The baseline rate is $0.18626/kWh in the summer, $0.17138 in the winter. Tier 2 rates are $0.21198 summer, $0.19504 winter. Tier 3 rates are $0.40896 summer, $0.37627 winter.

Background. SDG&E originally filed its VGI proposal in April 2014, seeking authorization for up to 5,500 charging stations at up to 550 sites. A number of issues were raised during the hearings, some from the community of charging network operators. SDG&E and 16 other parties eventually entered into a Proposed Settlement, based on the original proposal, with a number of modifications agreed to by all. The cost of the original proposal and the PS was about the same, about $103 million.

However, based on his review of all of the evidence that was presented in the evidentiary hearings, the Proposed Settlement, the various pleadings of the parties, and a careful weighing and balancing of all the considerations set forth in the Governors Executive Order and in various statutes, California Administrative Law Judge John S. Wong issued a decision in December 2015 denying the motion of the settling parties to adopt the Proposed Settlement, and also rejecting SDG&Es original VGI proposal due to their cost and size.

Wong proposed an alternative VGI programessentially a scaled down version of SDG&Es VGI proposal, as modified by the Proposed Settlement, with the additional modifications. This is what the CPUC approved.

The 2016 VGI Pilot Program will have a total budget of $45 million instead of $103 million, and will allow SDG&E to deploy and own up to 350 EV site installations, and up to 3500 EV charging stations, during a sign-up period of three years.

Under the alternative VGI terms, Wong estimated that a typical residential ratepayer of SDG&E using 500 kWh per month in the inland and coastal zones would experience an increase of about 18 cents over the first year, or about a 0.02% increase. With the full rollout of 350 site installations and 3,500 charging stations at the end of three years, the increase relative to current rates would be about $2.75 on an annual basis.

Under the VGI pilot program, customers would enter preferences for energy price and quantity (hours) into a mobile phone application or on a website. These preferences would then be used by SDG&Es VGI Service Pricing and Billing system to determine the parameters of the VGI rate, such as the maximum hourly price the EV customer is willing to pay, the duration of time the customer plans to be at the VGI charging facility, and how much energy the EV customer needs. SDG&E would then provide the EV customer with hourly pricing on a day-ahead basis (day-ahead hourly VGI rates).

SDG&E is a regulated public utility that provides energy service to 3.5 million consumers through 1.4 million electric meters and 881,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and southern Orange counties. The utilitys area spans 4,100 square miles.
Intelligent Energy has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with a major drone manufacturer to develop hydrogen fuel cell powered drones. The deal will see the two companies work together in the first quarter of 2016 to develop technological solutions to increase drone flight time. The goal is for the deal to lead to a formal commercial arrangement for the solutions rollout.

Pain points for drones, particularly for commercial use, are known to be short flight times and long periods of downtime due to battery limitations and recharging. At CES earlier this month, Intelligent Energy showcased ultra-light weight fuel cell stacks, which it has developed specifically for the drone market, as well as miniaturized fuel cell stacks that can be embedded into smartphones, laptops and notebooks.

Powering a drone with a hydrogen fuel cell could enable it to fly for hours, as opposed to minutes. Although the exact improvements to flight times will not be known until the production drone is finalized, the expectation is that a fuel cell could more than double or even triple the time a drone could remain airborne. In addition, fuel cells would reduce the downtime significantly as re-fueling takes a matter of minutes.
Achievers

Jason Davis, the pastor of Impact Church in Greensboro, was invited to be on the program at the 48th Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

He delivered the closing remarks and the benediction in front of thousands of attendees, including national media and politicians. He also met with Bernice A. King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the King Center.

To see a video of the benediction, go to the online version of this item at greensboro.com.

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The Barnabas Network, a local nonprofit furniture bank that provides essential household furnishings to local families in need, has added Lindsay Burkart, Ruth Edwards, Henry May and Chuck Wallington as new members to its board of directors.

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Blue Ridge Companies, a High Point-based real estate development and management company, has been selected to provide management services for two communities in Wilmington, Pleasant Grove Village and Village Green.

Pleasant Grove Village is a townhouse community located in southern Wilmington with access to Carolina Beach.

Village Green apartments is located adjacent to UNC-Wilmington.

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SERVPRO, a cleanup and restoration franchise company, ranked fourth on Entrepreneurs Franchise 500 List.

To see the complete list, visit http://www.entrepreneur.com/franchise500.

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Retired Senior Chief Information Systems Technician Brenda Brazzle of High Point was recently recognized for the support she provided for the stand-up of the communications infrastructure for Navy Expeditionary Combat Command in 2006 while assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group Two.

NECC recently celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its establishment.

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Elon University Professor Cynthia Fair co-authored the article International and Interdisciplinary Identification of Health Care Transition Outcomes, published online in November by the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Using multiple surveys over the span of 18 months, Fair and her team sought feedback from health care practitioners and public health experts on the most important criteria that should be used for determining whether a young adult with a chronic illness has successfully transitioned from pediatric to adult medical care.

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Chris Kepley, an associate professor at UNC-Greensboro, Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, was a guest speaker at the 2015 World Fullerene Conference, held Aug. 31-Sept. 2 in China. Kepley was the only American representative.

The event gathered the scientists and business representatives in the field of research and application of fullerenes from all over the world. Sir Harold W. Kroto, the Nobel prize winner in chemistry, was among the speakers at this event.

Kepley is the founder of Kepley Biosystems.

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Charles T. Hagan III, D. Beth Langley and Starling B. Underwood II, all attorneys with Hagan Barrett and Langley, have been recognized as North Carolina Super Lawyers by Super Lawyers Magazine.

Hagan has been named every year since 2012 in the areas of business/corporate law. Langley was honored for her work in employment and labor law for the seventh year in a row. Underwood was heralded as a Rising Star for the third time.

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Erin Molinaro, marketing director for Carruthers and Roth in Greensboro, will serve as treasurer for the Legal Marketing Associations Southeastern Chapters board of directors.

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Ten attorneys at the law firm of Bell, Davis and Pitt have been named among North Carolinas Super Lawyers for 2016.

Those from the Winston-Salem firm include: Daniel C. Bruton, D. Anderson Carmen, John A. Cocklereece Jr., William K. Davis, James R. Fox, Walter W. Pitt Jr., Alan M. Ruley, Robin J. Stinson and Kevin G. Williams.

Five additional firm attorneys, all from the Winston-Salem firm, were recognized as North Carolina Rising Stars for 2016: Colleen L. Byers, Adam T. Duke, Andrew A. Freeman, Mark A. Jones and Michael A. Myers.

Awards

The Knot awarded its Best of Weddings Award for 2016 to BeachPeople Weddings, owned and operated by former Guilford County residents, the Revs. David and Margo Ross Sears.

BeachPeople Weddings offers wedding services to Coastal Carolinas residents.

To determine winners, The Knot assessed almost one million reviews.

Since this was BeachPeople Weddings fourth win at The Knot, the business was also inducted into The Knots Hall of Fame.
GREENSBORO  Guilford County is adding $1.1 million to its risk management fund, an account earmarked to pay outstanding workers compensation claims.

Because there are a lot of workers compensation cases that have some age to them, theres going to be a significant number of payouts in this fiscal year, Mark Payne, Guilford Countys attorney, told the Board of Commissioners last week. In order to keep that fund at a sufficiently high level to hopefully sustain itself, they needed to move some money from the general fund.

The motion, approved unanimously by the board after a closed session at its regular meeting, has a relatively small budgetary effect, Payne said.

In 2015, county employees submitted 265 workers compensation claims, according to Yvonne Moebs, Guilford Countys risk manager. That number, reported to the federal Occupational and Health Safety Administration, includes illnesses or injuries that require medical attention beyond routine first aid, as well as incidents that result in unconsciousness or lost work days.

That means the number is potentially misleading, as not every incident results in a monetary claim. For example, if an employee faints at his or her workstation because of heat exhaustion, the incident must be reported even if the worker doesnt sustain an injury from the fall.

Moebs was hired about eight months ago, in part to manage the backlog of claims. Previously, officials said, the county wasnt communicating well with its employees after claims were filed, and many workers hired attorneys to help navigate that process.

My perception was that there were many open claims that had just been sort of ongoing for almost indefinite periods, said Commissioner Jeff Phillips, the boards chairman. Sometimes its best to make a decision thats somewhat more costly in the moment to avoid the probability of a much more expensive outcome in the long run. Thats the unanimous decision the board reached the other night.

Now when employees get injured, Moebs speaks with them immediately to help determine what kind of care is needed.

We stay in contact throughout the process so they know what to expect and so we can make sure theyre getting the appropriate care to help them return to a normal lifestyle, she said. So everyone wins. The county wins because we have an employee back at work, and we have an individual that can go back to their normal life as a parent or husband or wife.
A police education program for young people is looking for new recruits, holding a drive this week for new members.

Officers came to Greenwich High School Thursday to spread the word about the Explorers, setting up a booth and answering questions about the program. The collaboration with students and the Greenwich Police Department is similar to an internship for high-school students, with some 20 to 30 students taking part every year.

Were really hoping to have a full complement of all the different demographics in Greenwich, said Lt. Kraig Gray of the town police.

The department recently hired one of the Greenwich High School students who went through the Explorer program, Ericka Garcia. In past years, graduating Explorers have gone on to the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Guard and to study criminal justice in college.

They learn all about the career of being a police officer, how we help the community, said Gray.

Town residents between the ages of 14 and 18 are entitled to join. Students are exposed to a range of law-enforcement activities, including visiting the shooting range, exploring boating operations and studying forensics. Field trips around the region are also undertaken. The Explorer students have seen demonstrations of canine searches at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan and toured the New York City Police Museum.

The students also assist police at parades and community events, and the Explorers are given ceremonial duties, as well. The group is supported by the police union, the Silver Shield Association.

More information is available at the departments Community Impact Section at 203-622-3660. The unit also runs a citizens police academy that gives local residents an up-close view of the department.

The youth program is in its 10th year and began with a handful of students.

Robert.Marchant@scni.com
State officials have slashed Greenwichs education funding for this school year by some $380,000, the largest hit to any district in the state as fiscal belt-tightening in Hartford continues to be felt around Connecticut.

Greenwichs Education Cost Sharing grant for the current years operating budget will shrink by about 10 percent to approximately $3 million, school officials learned earlier this month.

ECS appropriations from the state Department of Education for Greenwich had remained flat at about $3.4 million in the previous seven years, and they had not decreased in at least 15 years. The state cut ECS funding by a total of $4.1 million for the current fiscal year, as officials in Hartford aim to close budget deficits.

It is a significant reduction and of concern, said Board of Education Chairman Laura Erickson.

ECS grants are based on student need levels in school districts and municipalities ability to pay for education. As a town with a large property tax base, Greenwich faced a larger ECS decrease than other communities because state administrators saw it as better positioned to absorb funding cuts.

Greenwichs large property tax roll is the main reason why the towns ECS grant each year is a fraction of that paid to cities and many other municipalities (though it gets much more than many towns).

More Information State funding reductions Municipality/District Education cost sharing reduction ECS allocation before reduction Greenwich $ 381,118 $3.4M New Canaan $ 286,542 $1.5M Darien $ 243,857 $1.6M Shelton $ 224,106 $5.7M Glastonbury $ 150,324 $6.8M Trumbull $ 127,997 $3.5M South Windsor $ 124,031 $13.2M Guilford $ 113,389 $3.1M Stonington $ 107,063 $2.1M Monroe $ 106,078 $6.7M See More Collapse

The ECS formula has always treated suburban towns unfairly, in my opinion, state Rep. Livvy Floren said in an email. The number of children on free and reduced lunches or for whom English is not a first language or those with special needs are not accurately factored into the equation, especially in the case of Greenwich and Stamford. One size does not fit all.

A message left with the Department of Education was not returned Thursday.

The lost ECS money represents only about 0.25 percent of the revenue that supports the school districts 2015-16 operating budget. School administrators expect that the town has enough alternative income  the vast majority of which comes from local taxes  to not have to cut the operating budget in response to the ECS drop.

We think well be in good shape, said Jim Hricay, the districts managing director of operations. And were not expecting that our ECS funding will be reduced further.

Other Fairfield County communities also endured sizable ECS cuts. New Canaan lost about $287,000 - the second-largest reduction in the state. Dariens allocation dropped by about $244,000, followed by a decrease of about $224,000 for Shelton.

The town has grappled with other cutbacks from Hartford for the current fiscal year. As part of an approximately $15 million reduction to the states PILOT program, which reimburses towns and cities for tax revenue that they would have received from local institutions were they not tax-exempt, the state lopped more than $880,000 off Greenwichs $900,000 allocation. Like its ECS cut, the PILOT decrease was the largest in the state.

While Greenwich does not rely on state funding in the way that cities like Bridgeport and Hartford do, the disparity between the large amount of tax revenue that the town sends to the state and what it gets back in allocations rankles many local officials, and residents. Greenwich receives a fraction of what state cities and many other muicnicipalities get in state aid.

Certainly were disappointed in the loss of that funding, said First Selectman Peter Tesei. We provide far more to the state than we get in return and this is just another example of us being punished by the state due to their poor fiscal management.

Greenwichs state legislators vowed to push for the restoration of the lost funds. State Sen. L. Scott Frantz said he planned to talk with Ben Barnes, secretary of the state Office of Policy and Management, and possibly Gov. Dannel P. Malloy as well

This pretty much says that the funding priorities for Greenwich are at the absolute bottom of the totem pole for the decision-makers in Hartford, Frantz said. Its just immoral to be cutting ECS money when its been promised.

State Rep. Mike Bocchino, R-150, called for state officials to rethink their austerity measures.

What we need to do is re-evaluate this deficit mitigation and all the budget cuts that have been put forward and make structural changes so we can put the monies back in, said Bocchino, who serves on the General Assemblys committees for higher education and children. Its a terrible thing when you cut education at any level.

State Rep. Fred Camillo, R-151, also advocated for re-evaluating how the state makes cuts.

You have to cut but you need to prioritize those cuts, Camillo said. You dont want to hurt people who are the most vulnerable, and you dont want to do it to education either. Its incumbent upon us to work and try and find a way to get this (ECS) at least flat funded. That means you have to cut somewhere else.

pschott@scni.com; 203-625-4439; twitter: @paulschott
Matt Browns first interview out of college was with Shearson Lehman Brothers, back in 1991. He spent two hours in the interviewers office just talking, never once about business, and they made him an offer.

You have the ability to communicate," they said. "Well teach you the rest."

And while that may have been in 1991 when the dinosaurs still walked the Earth, dont fool yourselves. Communication is still key.

His ability to communicate is why he was able to start four businesses, one while still in high school.

Talking to people, understanding their needs, realizing that the current system may be broken and then finding opportunity is all the result of his ability to communicate.

And after 25 years of that, he has discovered four salient truths that keep surfacing along the way.

1. People will gravitate to bold ideas and those that are willing to try them.

Courage counts for a lot these days, says Brown, now founder and CEO at his 4th company, the CAIS Group, a financial-products platform for wealth managers.

You need courage to start your own house-painting business in high school. And creating that business was how he learned the value of earning his own money.

You need courage to walk away from a secure job after college. After talking with his Shearson clients, he realized there was a need for a small-business financing division. But when Shearson expressed no interest in starting one, Brown left and did just that with company #2.

Related: How Victoria Tsai Turned a Geisha Secret Into a Cosmetics Innovation

Flash forward to the 2007 recession, when Brown began to see a macro trend in the wealth advisory world. Advisors at big firms were subject to onerous regulations and compliance, thanks to the Dodd-Frank Act and so-called Wall Street reforms. They wanted to go out on their own and be independent but were afraid to leave their immediate access to research and investment products, like IPOs, structured products and private equity.

And thats where Brown saw a need. He wanted to create a platform that offered independent advisors the tools, products and services they needed to be competitive on their own.

So CAIS  Capital Integration Systems -- was developed as a place where independent advisors can come and shop for the high-end integrated investment products their clients need and want without having to be employed by a big bank.

His idea was bold but he was confident that advisors would come.

They did. More than $3 billion is transacted over that platform today.

2. Have the conviction to dismiss the cynics.

Of course challenging the establishment in the midst of a recession might not always appear to be a good idea.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundreed, it's just a voice," he says. "Dont listen to it.

Brown started CAIS in 2009, but in addition to the timing, many critics didnt think big-bank wealth advisors would actually take the risk and leave their big-firm security blanket behind.

We were confident because we saw the fragmentation coming," says Brown. "The system was broken back then. Credit and lending had a complete lack of oversight." Wealth managers werent generating returns for clients anymore. Yet those big bank fees were still being imposed. Clients had enough.

It was the perfect time for a new system to enter the arena.

Turns out there is there is great opportunity in crisis, says Brown.

So ignore the cynics.

Related: The Principles One Man Used to Innovate Financial Services

3. Individuals develop ideas and teams execute them.

The poet John Donne said, No man is an island.

But most entrepreneurs are uber, Type-A personalities who need to oversee the purchase of every K-cup for the coffee room. But that becomes stifling and stalls the growth of the business.

Let it go.

Brown knew he couldnt create his vision on his own. If he were going to bring investment products to his platform, his firm needed to have gravitas. Enter Mercer Consulting. Brown partnered with Mercer to perform the proper due diligence on all their products as a disinterested third party.

He brought in Fidelity Investments to offer CAIS clients brokerage and account services.

And most recently Envestnet partnered with CAIS to offer its alternative-investment products on the Envestnet platform. More than 43,000 independent advisors can access CAIS through Envestnets platform.

.So there is absolutely no conflict of interest. CAIS doesnt do its own due diligence, doesnt build or offer its own products, and never touches a client's money. Its just the platform for independent advisors to come get what they need to properly service their high-net-worth clients without having to be an employee of a big bank.

4. You have to have obligation to the ecosystem or the industry youre playing in.

Interconnectivity makes the world a better place, says Brown.

So drop the ego and level playing field as often as you can.

That means listening to your clients. CAIS is constantly asking its advisors what products they want added to the platform "because its not about what we want to offer. It's what our clients want us to offer," says Brown.

And then as long as Mercer approves the product, its added.

And if you can apply your mind to business you can apply it to other things and that same explosive result can happen, says Brown.

So find a cause or a charity. Help to empower people. Feel a responsibility to our society.

Do something.

Even if it means letting a teenager paint your house.

Related: How Entrepreneur Robert Mondavi Changed Wine Forever

Related:

24 Quotes on Success From Oprah Winfrey

After Emotient, Apple Buys Education Startup LearnSprout

Be Hungry or Starve as an Entrepreneur



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
May the best pie win. Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images; Neilson Barnard/Getty Images/2015 Getty Images

The respect joke writes itself here, but Aretha Franklin is apparently launching her own line of desserts and packaged foods to presumably get a piece of frenemy Patti LaBelles burgeoning boxed-pie empire. The internet was full of memes of Aretha scowling after LaBelles Walmart sweet-potato pies became the Tickle Me Elmo of Thanksgiving desserts, but Franklin stresses to Detroits Channel 4 that shes obviously never tried one. She still throws a decent amount of shade, declaring: Ms. Pattis gonna have to move that pie to the side.

Franklins rival brand is still under development with a Phoenix-based food group, so this bake-off isnt on just yet. Aside from a variety of desserts (just a guess, but probably high on that list: vanilla Bundt and caramel-buttercream cakes), Franklin says she plans to market my gumbo, my chili, and my baked chicken and dressing, which will be in a loaf pan, kind of like youve seen with Sara Lee cakes.

[Click on Detroit via CNN]
Huawei has sent out invites for its Mobile World Congress press conference. The event will be held at Barcelona's Montjuic Exhibition Centre on February 21, which is a day before this year's MWC formally begins.

"We invite you to join Richard Yu, Chief Executive Officer, Huawei Consumer Business Group, and other Huawei executives, for the global unveiling of Huaweis newest device at Mobile World Congress 2016," the Chinese company said in the invite. "Come see how Huawei continues to meet the demands of the next generation of mobile innovation."

Sadly, no teasers were included in the invite, making it difficult to speculate about the star of the event. The company's flagship smartphone - the Mate 8 - was showcased at CES this month, and multiple reports have suggested that the upcoming P9 will be unveiled weeks after MWC.

Last year's event saw Huawei unveiling the Watch. We would have placed our bet on its successor, but given the fact that the company just unveiled two new variants of the wearable at CES 2016, a second-gen Huawei Watch also seems unlikely.
Lenovo has plans to launch what it is calling a "more innovative, more attractive" smartphone in the United Sates later this year. This was revealed Chief Executive Yuanqing Yang in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.

 ChinaFotoPress

The said device will be from the Chinese company's Motorola division, Yang revealed. If you recall, Lenovo recently said that going forward, its high-end smartphones will use the Moto branding while budget devices will carry the Vibe brand.

So, given the brands' popularity in the US, it'd be fair to assume that the device - which Yang said will be launched in the month of July - will be from the Moto line-up. Sadly, nothing else was revealed about the handset.

Interestingly, Yang also took a jab at Apple in the interview, saying that iOS has no more room to grow in the US. "Apple already has more than 50% share in the U.S. Can you expect more? I don't think so," he said. "I think Android will take more share."

Via
Samsung's highly anticipated Galaxy S7 smartphone will begin rolling out in Europe on March 11. This was revealed by leakster @ShaiMizrachi, who has provided some credible information in the past.

Mark your calendar: the first European rollout for #GalaxyS7 family starts on 11/3 pic.twitter.com/TdhtJIJ2dD  Shai Mizrachi (@ShaiMizrachi) January 29, 2016

If the date turns out to be correct, it'd be a simultaneous global roll-out for the flagship given that just last week reliable leakster @evleaks revealed the same date for the device's US launch, and not to mention that leaked China Mobile slide from last month that revealed March launch for the Asian country.

For those who aren't already aware, the handset - which has already been the subject of a bucket load of rumors and leaks until now - is expected to be unveiled at this year's Mobile World Congress, which is set for next month (February 22 - February 25).

Source | Via
Popular Android keyboard SwiftKey has been updated for Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

One of the major changes, something users may have been looking forward to, is the inclusion of new emoji, that were added to Android in the latest 6.0.1 update. Of course, the new emoji will only be available to those on the latest version of Android, and updating SwiftKey won't magically add them to your Lollipop or even 6.0 devices.

Other changes include support for inputting currency for Russia, Argentina, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Germany, Canada & Australia, bug fixes, and performance updates.

The update is now available on the Play Store.

Download




Haiti - Justice : Inauguration of the new civil prison for women in Cabaret





Thursday, January 28, Ambassador of the United States in Haiti, Peter F. Mulrean, along with several civil, political, religious and local and of the Minustah, proceeded to the inauguration of the new civilian women's prison located in Cabaret near Ti Tanyenclose to the road leading to Saut d'Eau on National Road #1.



The new civil prison for women in Cabaret was funded by the United States Department of State through the Bureau of International Narcotics Affairs and Enforcement (BINL) to the tune of US $8 million and work performed by the Haitian firm Panexus. This new penitentiary complex of two-story built on an area of 6,144 m2 can accommodate between 250-300 inmates, or five square meters per detained. The work began in August of 2013 and prison should be fully operational in March 2016.



This prison is equipped with classrooms, cells with toilets, a clinic, four watchtowers, bathrooms, a large cafeteria and a solar electrification system.



These facilities go beyond international standards for the area allocated per detained. The building is self-contained and equipped with solar panels and inverters allowing uninterrupted power supply with its own water supply.



The civil prison for women located in Cabaret is much more than women's detention site, as it will provide a safer environment, more humane, focused on the rehabilitation and integration rather than incarceration and storage. With this objective, the jail has space for vocational training, one for exercise, and a hospital supported by the Project "Health Through Walls" of USAID. These features help ensure that inmates are ready to contribute productively to society after release.



"Since my accession to the head of the Ministry of Justice in January 2015, I bear special attention to prison conditions, both in terms of legality and in terms of the living conditions of detainees," said the Minister of Justice of the Republic.



In his speech for the occasion, Ambassador Peter Mulrean declared "The U.S. government is determined to support the respect of human rights for all Haitian citizens, independent of their social status or their political class. This significant investment by INL in a prison is proof. However, the construction of detention centers is not a long term solution to prison overpopulation or temporary detention. Haiti needs more short-term initiatives such as Operation 'Coup de Poing' of the Ministry of Justice, aimed at reducing the number of people in custody. These initiatives also need to be accompanied by long-term reforms to strengthen the Haitian judicial sector. "



The Ambassador also stated "The US government remains commitment to help Haiti to identify ways to reduce overcrowding and to fight against preventive detention." According to Ambassador Mulrean, the Minister of Justice Pierre Richard Casimir, the Director of the National Police of Haiti, Godson Orelus and their team have done an impressive job to increase the number of recruits assigned to the Penitentiary Administration, especially an increased representation of women.



This new prison replaces an outdated facility in Petion-ville that was built for 50 inmates but currently houses 305 people. The Women prison of Cabaret will fill a void as the only detention center for women in Haiti.



Furthermore the Ministry of Justice currently finalizing the construction of civil prisons of Hinche, Fort-Liberte and Petit-Goave



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Elections : OAS Special Mission in Haiti this Sunday





The Special Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) to Haiti will arrive in Port-au-Prince this Sunday, headed by the Chair of the OAS Permanent Council Representative of Antigua and Barbuda, Ronald Sanders.



The Mission will also include Leonidas Rosa Bautista, Permanent Representative to the OAS, former Foreign Minister and Attorney General of Honduras; Sonia Johnny, former Permanent Representative of Saint Lucia to the OAS; Gabriel Bidegain, Principal Political Adviser to the Secretary General of the OAS; and Steven Griner, Director of the Department of Democratic Sustainability and Special Missions of the OAS. They will be supported by Frederic Bolduc, Special Representative of the OAS Secretary General in Haiti.



The Mission, requested by the President of Haiti, Michel Martelly, and established by the Permanent Council in its meeting on Thursday, January 27, https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16441-haiti-flash-martelly-solicits-the-oas-as-mediator-in-the-crisis.html aims to collaborate in reaching an understanding among Haitians, following the recent suspension of the second round of presidential elections https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16394-haiti-flash-elections-of-january-24-are-canceled-update-7h10-pm.html . The Mission will establish a dialogue with the main political and social representatives in Haiti.



The Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, said the solution "must be agreed by Haitians," and asked President Martelly and the President of the Senate Jocelerme Privert that the mechanism of government adopted at the conclusion of the mandate of President Martelly on February 7 be endorsed by the Supreme Court and that it remain in place as short a time as possible.



After its work in Port-au-Prince is concluded, the Mission will present a report to the Permanent Council of the OAS.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center has been a hub of the Hamptons since 1998, with the building dating back even further. The building has been part of Westhampton Beach for over three generations, first opening as a movie theater before the building was later purchased by United Artists and changed to a single-theater movie house. Then, in the mid-1990s, a group of village residents and business owners purchased the theater and started the movement to create a performing arts space.
Published on 2016/01/28 | Source

Actress Kim Ha-neul left to Hawaii for her wedding pictorial shoot. Kim Ha-neul showed up in front of the Gate 3 of the departure room at the Incheon International Airport around at 6:20 PM on January 28th. Her groom-to-be was not seen though. She in comfortable clothing showed up along with her staff members at the airport.

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Kim Ha-neul's agency announced in October last year, "Will tie the knot with a man, with whom she has fallen in love, on the warm spring day of March 19th, 2016" and "The groom-to-be is a businessman who is one year younger than Kim Ha-neul".

Meanwhile, Kim Ha-neul's new movie, "Remember You - Movie" was released on January 7th.
Korean Drama | 2009

 Sitcom

Directed by  Jo Chan-joo ()  Kim Byung-wook ()  Kim Yeong-gi ()

Written by  Jo Seong-hee ()  Lee So-jeong ()  Lee Young-cheol ()

TV Channel/Platform: MBC (MBC)

Airing dates: 2009/09/07~2010/03/19

126 episodes - Mon~Fri 19:45

Synopsis

The story of two sisters.

Two sisters, twenty-two and nine in age, lived all their lives with their father, deep in the country where even electricity is an unaffordable luxury. One day, after a bizarre turn of events, they end up in Seoul. The two sisters encounter a severe case of cultural shock as soon as they hit the city. Building forests, computers, department stores, subways, cell phone To 9-year old Shin-ae, who had never seen these before, Seoul is like a fantasy that can sometimes be difficult to fathom.

Meanwhile, a peculiar family lives at a corner of a residential area in Seongbuk-dong.

Sun-jae is the president of a small food company.

At 72, Sun-jae falls head over heels in love just as his life is slowly winding down. His granddaughter Hae-ri shrieks every morning in the bathroom over her constipation. All the other members of this family have some sort of defect. The most invisible son-in-law in Seongbuk-dong, the EQ-deficient doctor, the perverted female teacher Come to think of it, every man living in this day and age harbors some kind of unique defect.

This is why they shout confidently, "Only those of you who are perfect may throw stones at us!" is a sitcom portraying the uplifting comedic story of two sisters who begin to work at Sun-jae's house as maids and their episodes with members of this family. At the same time, it is a drama of these two girls blossoming into young women as they fall in love.



Starring



Lee Soon-jae (73)

President of a small food company. A typical Korean father figure. Headstrong, ill-tempered, and releases gas freely and loudly. His wife passed away 3 years ago. But he suddenly changes when he begins a passionate relationship with Ja-ok, the Vice Principal of a high school. Of course, he is still the same at home, but he tries pathetically to come across as a courteous, gentle, and dashing man when he is with Ja-ok. Despite the students taunting him whenever he visits Ja-ok's high school, and despite his daughter, Hyeon-gyeong's oppositions, he is excited about marrying her.



Kim Ja-ok (60)

The Vice Principal of a high school. She is dating Sun-jae, who is 12 years older than her. Although she has an elegant and poised manner of speech, her favorite form of punishment is pinching the boys' nipples. For this, she is called "Vice Principal, the Pervert." She has never been married and cries while looking out the window when rain is falling, laughs when she see s a crooked sign, and has abrupt emotional fluctuations. In general, she is like a young girl.



Lee Hyeon-kgyeong (43)

Sun-jae's daughter. P.E. teacher at a high school. She's a tomboy and isn't afraid to speak her mind. Thanks to her forthright personality, she often quarrels with the rest of her family but never holds grudges. But Sun-jae's marriage to Ja-ok is one thing that she absolutely cannot accept. She had never liked Ja-ok and now she has to fight with her over every little thing at home, too. She fumes whenever she sees Sun-jae caring for Ja-ok at the thought of her deceased mother.



Jeong Bo-seok (44)

Hyeon-gyeong's husband. Vice President of a food company. Despite his intelligent looking appearance, he is rather slow and so incapable that it's almost funny. So rather than being respected as a son-in-law, Sun-jae is always out to get him anytime and anywhere. He is a kind and caring husband to Hyeon-gyeong and a good father to his son Jun-hyeok and daughter Hae-ri. But he is afraid that even Hyeon-gyeong is getting fed up with his incompetence. The one thing he has confidence in is that he can come off as a handsome guy if he keeps his mouth closed. He is a bad drunk and is especially bad with numbers.



Lee Ji-hoon (29)

Sun-jae's son. He is a resident surgeon at a hospital. His EQ is low, considering his high IQ. He doesn't care about other people's emotions and is self-centered. On a blind date, if the girl seems to be having health issues, he will ask about her menstrual cycle. As such, he is only interested in himself or his own business and has no consideration for formalities or manners. He runs into Se-gyeong by chance soon after she arrives at Seoul and indirectly helps her come his house has a maid. He keeps running into Se-gyeong in various ways.



Hwang Jeong-eum (23)

A college student going to an unknown school. A typical college student who is bright and can sometimes lie to get her way. Her family lives in Dae-jeon so she lives in a studio on her own with a big dog. She buys a very expensive pair of shoes on impulse and becomes Jun-hyeok's private tutor. She likes to joke around and play pranks on people but when Jun-hyeok rebels aggressively during her lessons, she doesn't back off. She grows closer to Jun-hyeok while quarreling so frequently.



Sin Se-kyeong (21)

She leaves her country life with her younger sister Shin-ae and comes to Seoul. She does her best to take care of Shin-ae. Their life in Seoul begins with Se-gyeong's part time job at a gas station until she finds a job as a maid at Sun-jae's house. She is a caring and optimistic person and keeps her chin up through most hardships. At the same time, she tends to be careless and constantly makes mistakes. Having spent her teens deep in the country, she has no idea how to survive in the real world, but she learns fast with Ji-hoon and Jun-hyeok's help.



Shin Shin-ae (9)

The narrator of the series. Se-gyeong's younger sister. Her mother passed away when she was three and she has spent her whole life in the country. She is amazed by everything she sees in Seoul and is full of questions. Her questions can be direct and objective criticisms of modern civilization. She is mature for her age but she is still a child. There is so much she wants to do, eat, and have. She is mesmerized by the world of high definition TV after her first HDTV experience at Sun-jae's house. Hae-ri, Sun-jae's granddaughter, bullies her all the time but she is too proud to ask for anyone's help.

Source
Published on 2016/01/28 | Source

Actor Song Jae-rim is holding his first domestic fan meeting this year. His fan meeting, "Song Jae-rim's fan meeting 2016  Come over and play" will be held on January 30th.

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Since he was cast as the lead for MBC's mew Wednesday & Thursday drama, "Goodbye Mr. Black", he has been busy getting ready for the drama. Song Jae-rim has prepared the special event to appreciate his fans, who have been sending the unchanging support for him.

His domestic fan meeting last year, which was supposed to be a finale to wrap up his Asia tour, was cancelled due to his busy schedule. Song Jae-rim this time wanted to meet his fans before he gets too busy for the drama schedule.

According to an associate of his, "Song Jae-rim is participating in the overall preparation for his fan meeting. He also prepared hot packs and hot drinks for his fans". Song Jae-rim's first domestic fan meeting "Come over and play" will be held in 'Ground-SYN' of Hyocheon Art Center at 4 PM on January 30th.
le wellbeing initiatives are effective ways to build a fully engaged workplace, they dont go all the way. In fact, it is better to also cultivate a healthy emotional culture at work, Jan Bruce, CEO and co-founder of meQuilibrium, wrote on Forbes.



Physical well-being cannot be the sole priority anymore, because people bring their entire selves to work, emotions and all, she said. Care that addresses both mind and body is crucial. Optimised workforces arent merely healthy. Theyre also whole and fully engaged in their mission.



Bruce listed five trends she sees for 2016 that will push towards a more holistic workplace culture.



Building resilience to stress



Remedies and interventions like deep breathing tackle end-stage manifestations of stress. They manage symptoms, but they cant get at the inner cause, Bruce said. Its a false bargain. The true antidote to stress  is resilience.



To help with this, HR can bring in cognitive behavioural therapy to teach staff how to manage their thoughts and actions when setbacks and adverse conditions arise.



Think about the last time you were stressed. You were late, maybe stuck in traffic. Did your thoughts spiral toward catastrophe? she asked. Or did you take control of the situation by making a phone call, sending a text, making provisions for your tardiness?



A compass to personalised work culture



Instead of creating a map which tells employees what is being offered in terms of physical and mental wellbeing, Bruce says that more employers are moving towards a compass based approach, letting staff chart the course themselves.



Right now, whats in for workplace health is an individualised, compass-model culture of choice, she said. Everyday empowerment is more important than strict guidelines.



When staff members are allowed to make their own decisions, they will become more invested in the outcomes gained. By finding meaning and significance at a firm, employees are more than three times as likely to stay there, Bruce added.



Thriving instead of coping



Its not enough to just get by, to banish the fever or the sniffles and groggily return to your desk, Bruce wrote. This year, its about more than simply healing and regaining a delicate baseline.



HRs focus should be on optimising their employees in a holistic manner including happiness, productivity and health, she added.



With thriving as the new goal, Bruce said that employees were more likely to stay with a firm. This can be through small actions such as being encouraged to take regular breaks  improvements which aim at boosting mental and physical health as well.



Awareness over knowledge



While quantitative values such as output and productivity will always be important, businesses have a new shift towards more qualitative characteristics, Bruce said.



Theres new importance placed on values-based leadership, personal performance, and the capacity for collaboration. Watch for values to become a litmus test for hiring and rewarding people, as opposed to pure technical strength.



Thinking of balance as a verb



While work/life balance isnt anything new, Bruce says that many businesses are changing the way they think of the word.



Balance is not a noun. Its a verb. Its an active, ongoing state, she said. People so often strive for balance  and strive, and strive, and strive some more. But its not an end goal.



Now, HR is realising that balance is more a way of being rather than an end state. Instead of questing for balance, employees should be encouraged to act in a balanced manner every single day.


Qantas is planning a $680,000 overhaul of its workplace safety procedures in response to a staff injury at Canberra Airport.



A contractor from Star Aviation was cleaning an aircraft in 2014 when he fell backwards from a service door and fell 1.5 metres onto a concrete floor at Canberra Airport, sustaining injuries to his spine.



After investigating the incident, WorkSafe ACT alleged the airline had breached its duty of care under the Work Health and Safety Act, Fairfax Media reported.



This decision has resulted in Qantas entering into an enforceable undertaking with WorkSafe ACT to improve its safety practices.



The aviation giant will spend $680,000 to beef up workplace safety policies and procedures, including the purchase of new fall from heights infrastructure for its ACT operations.



Falls are a major cause of death and serious injury in Australian workplaces, and 29 workers died following a fall from heights in 2010  2011, according to data from Safe Work Australia.



In the same year, 7730 claims for serious injury were lodged due to a fall from height, meaning that 21 employees per day lodged a claim for a falls-related injury that required one or more weeks off work, Safe Work Australia stated in a 2013 report.



The cost to employers can be immense, as injuries range in severity and injured employees may also be absent from work for lengthy periods of time.



Breaches of the duty of care by persons conducting a business or undertaking also attract significant penalties, says Michael Tooma, Partner at Norton Rose Fulbright and Head of Occupational, Health, Safety and Security for the firms Australia practice.



In serious cases the penalty is as high as $3m with the potential for personal liability of officers of that company of up to $600K and/or 5 years imprisonment, Tooma told HC Online.



In addition, Tooma says injured workers are also entitled to workers compensation from their employer and may make further claims against other parties involved in the accident.

He says companies should also consider the reputational ramifications associated with such workplace accidents which can negatively impact the business ability to attract customer and future staff.



If these issues are not handled well the reputational impact can be very costly. You will be judged in the Court of public opinion long before you set foot in a court of law, Tooma says.



As part of the enforceable undertaking  a legally binding agreement often used as an alternative to court action Qantas will donate $70,000 to the Snowy Hydro Southcare rescue helicopter.



Qantas has said it will develop an injury and hazard reporting app, complete a university research project related to contractor safety management and standardize workplace induction processes across the entire group, Fairfax Media reported.



Enforceable undertakings are basically an agreement with the regulator that in exchange for an initiative, they will not prosecute for a breach of the Act, Tooma says.



It usually is aimed at addressing the underlying issue that led to the incident but also includes a community based initiative such as a donation to a charitable cause, he says.



These agreements often have multiple benefits, as organisations can spend money on productive uses instead of hefty legal fees.



This usually results in good publicity for them, focused on the improvements made and initiative introduced as part of the enforceable undertaking, Tooma says.



ACT WorkSafe Commissioner Mark McCabe has commended Qantass decision to accept the agreement.



"The great thing about Qantas agreeing to enter into this enforceable undertaking is that rather than go through lengthy court action, they're investing a fair bit of money into health and safety and that's a far better outcome than spending it on lawyers, which is where quite a bit of the money goes," McCabe told Fairfax Media.



Tooma says HR professionals have an important role in ensuring incidents are effectively investigated to identify understand the systemic issues and conditions that permitted them to occur.



Any serious incident will also attract the attention of regulators, as has been the case with the fall of the Qantas cleaning contractor.



Serious incidents are reportable to the regulator and are almost always investigated by them, Tooma says.



HR professionals need to be aware that the key through this process is to cooperate with the regulator while showing that you are on top of the issues such that they dont need to throw the book at you, he says.



McCabe said the three key aspects of enforceable undertakings meant Qantass improvements should benefit the airlines workers, the aviation industry as a whole and the broader community.

"We think this is an excellent example of a good corporate citizen, McCabe said.



Yes, a person was injured but they have improved health and safety and are doing something for the broader community."



A Qantas spokeswoman told Fairfax Media that the airline has implemented various safety measures directly after the accident to ensure similar incidents didnt reoccur.



"At Qantas, safety is always our first priority and we are committed to ensuring that our workplaces are safe at all times, the spokeswoman said.


To the Editor:

Winter weather always creates challenges and changes for our schools. As we meet those challenges and work with alterations, we express our sincere appreciation to everyone for their patience and support as we strive to make decisions that promote safety.

Here is where we are with days missed due to inclement weather:

5 days have been missed,

10 hours missed for Delays/Early Dismissals,

The extended instructional time has allowed us to not make up the 5 days we have missed.

At this time, all the days we have missed have been made up. If we continue the additional 20 minutes, we could have approximately 5 more days that can be used to make up time. If we could possibly be fortunate enough to miss only five days of instructional time, the last day of school would be June 2. If we happen to not miss any more days of school then we could start to reduce the length of the school day. (Please know this is very wishful thinking, with well over a month of winter to go.)

During the winter months when roads become hazardous due to snow and ice, our goal is to transport students to and from school in the safest manner possible. We realize that our buses carry your most treasured possession, and we commit to offer the best and safest travel possible. Our school bus drivers are well trained, dedicated and committed to your childs safety. Our bus drivers rise as early as 5:30 a.m. each morning and do not complete their afternoon routes until 6 p.m. We believe that our bus drivers are a vital link to the education system in Avery County, serving as a role model each day.

To honor bus drivers, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) has designated the month of February as Love the Bus month to express our sincere appreciation to our drivers. According to the American School Bus Council (ASBC) national school buses carry approximately 26 million children safely to and from schools each day. Avery County Schools travels 2,303 miles daily, and transports 1,120 students served by 30 buses and 30 drivers. Transporting students involves teamwork and effort as we strife for efficiency and safety.

In North Carolina, over 700,000 public school students ride in 14,000 yellow buses each day. NCDPI School Support Division Director Ben Matthews said the benefits of school bus transportation are not limited to safety. As more students take the school bus to school, the environmental impacts are significant. Traffic congestion and pollution can be reduced around schools, not to mention the fuel savings for family cars. In this economy, lots of families are looking for ways to trim their fuel budgets, Matthews said. Here are some more facts about school buses and some safety tips:

Fact Sheet: School Bus Safety

The National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Transportation and other authorities agree that school buses are the safest form of transportation for getting children to and from school.

Some 480,000 school buses carry 26 million children  more than half of Americas schoolchildren.

Students are about 50 times more likely to arrive at school alive if they take the bus than if they drive themselves or ride with friends. Students are much safer riding the bus than being driven by a parent, and are about 20 times more likely to arrive to school alive if they take the bus than if a parent drives them.

School buses decrease our dependence on foreign oil through an annual savings of 2.3 billion gallons of fuel.

A 20-mile round-trip school commute saves an approximate $420 annually for each student who rides the bus and an approximate $10.9 billion nationwide.

Large school buses are heavier and distribute crash forces differently than do passenger cars and light trucks. Because of these differences, the crash forces experienced by occupants of buses are much less than that experienced by occupants of passenger cars, light trucks or vans.

Safety features including the color and size of school buses, height, reinforced sides, flashing red lights, cross view mirrors, and crossing and stop sign arms ensure children are protected and secure on and off the bus.

School bus drivers are highly trained professionals in student behavior management, loading and unloading, security and emergency medical procedures.

Drivers participate in pre-employment and random drug/alcohol testing, as well as frequent driving record checks, and submit to background checks and periodic medical exams to keep their Commercial Drivers License (CDL) with a School Bus Endorsement.

The school bus industry operates by a set of safety, security, health and driver qualification guidelines that meet, and in some cases exceed, federal and state laws, and ensure that school buses are the safest mode of transportation for our nations schoolchildren.

Safety tips for students:

Be alert to traffic. Check traffic both ways before existing the bus.

Make eye contact with the bus driver; wait for his/her signal before crossing the street.

Walk in front of the bus; never walk behind the bus to cross the street.

While waiting for the bus, stay in a safe place away from the street.

Before leaving the sidewalk, look for the flashing red lights.

Never go near or under the bus to retrieve something youve dropped.

Safety tips for parents:

Review the safety tips with your child regularly.

Get to know the parents of other riders as well as student riders with your child.

Team up with other parents to get involved and monitor bus stops and bus routes. Voice concerns immediately to your school district.

Attend back to school nights and tour your childs school bus.

Get to know your schools transportation coordinator and your childs bus driver.

Keep phone numbers handy in case the bus is delayed or in the event of an emergency.

Please join me in the campaign to thank our drivers and transportation department for their dedication and diligent work. For ways to participate, visit Love Your Bus web site at www.LoveTheBus.com. Valentines Day, February 14, has been designated as Love Your Bus Day. Educators also may visit www.LoveTheBus.com to download an educators toolkit.

On behalf of Avery County Schools, Thank you, Bus Drivers, Brian King-Director of ACS Transportation, Linda King-Transportation Information Management Specialist, and our Transportation Mechanics, Mike Simerly and Mike Trice for ensuring that our students are safe and cared for as they travel on our buses. We truly appreciate you!

Sincerely,

David Burleson

Superintendent

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By Jessica Lyons

Todd, North Carolina has a longstanding history of caring for its community through service and leadership. The Rev. Brandon Wrencher plans to embody that community care through an initiative hes leading called the Todd Listening Project, which will debut at a Jan. 30 press conference at Blackburns Chapel UMC in Todd.

The press conference is set to begin at 4 p.m., with 70 total available spaces for those interested in attending. To ensure a space, the public can RSVP to [email protected] .

Wrencher and other community leaders are planning to speak at the event to inspire people from the community to express their needs and ideas to improve the community. The event will be catered by F.A.R.M. Cafe from Boone.

So much at the core of this community is relationships and promoting neighborliness in Todd, Wrencher said. Projects and ideas will come out of this, as well, but its about listening to our community.

Over 100 invitations were sent out to local and community partners as a broad invitation to attend the event and discover more about the residents of Todd. The goal is to bring a younger energy back to Todd, something that is often lacking due to economic and migration challenges that the area has faced.

Wrencher said one of his goals is to help people tell their stories, and he hopes a visual project will be created from the responses collected from TLP. Interns from Appalachian State University will be welcome to help complete the project once a plan has been formed. He hopes to be able to create a space where visual profiles can be built from the stories, but the final project will be decided off of the content TLP receives.

Through TLP, Wrencher hopes to provide an outlet for community members to express their needs and create an open path of communication.

In the event of inclement weather, the event will be rescheduled for Feb. 13 with the same time schedule. More information on TLP and the church, also known as the Blackburn House can be found on their website.

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A new Civitas poll shows that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton maintains a strong lead in the Democratic primary race in North Carolina.

The poll asked likely Democratic primary election voters who their current choice is among the Democratic presidential hopefuls. 53 percent said Clinton, while 28 percent said they favored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Fifteen percent said they did not know who they would vote for.

Clinton and Sanders polled far ahead of others on the ballot, including former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley, who received 2 percent in our poll.

The exact text of the relevant question follows. (Totals may not equal 100 percent due to rounding.)

If the Democratic Primary for President were being held today and you had to make a choice, for whom would you vote between? (READ IN ORDER)

2% Martin OMalley

28% Bernie Sanders

53% Hillary Clinton

 Roque Rocky De La Fuente

1% Someone else (Specify)

15% Dont Know

 Refused

The poll surveyed 500 likely Democratic voters, 30 percent on cell phones. The margin of error was plus/minus 4.38 percent. The survey was taken January 13-14 & 16, 2016. Cross tabs can be found here.

Civitas President Francis De Luca will be available for interviews to discuss the poll and issues of the day. To arrange an interview, email Demi Dowdy at [email protected] or call 919.834.2099.

Founded in 2005, the Civitas Institute is a Raleigh, NC-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit policy organization committed to creating a North Carolina whose citizens enjoy liberty and prosperity derived from limited government, personal responsibility and civic engagement. Civitas conducts the only regular live-caller polling of North Carolina voters.

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By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected]

Friends and neighbors came together on Thursday night for the first Business After Hours event of 2016 with the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce, which recognized at the event the recipients of its prestigious Business of the Year Awards.

La Quinta Inn and Suites and owners Justin and Selina Patel played host to the event, which saw a crowd of nearly 250 local entrepreneurs and community leaders.

It was just a slam dunk, said Barbara Armstrong, the chambers director of operations. It was a packed house. We had the most people weve ever had at an After Hours event.

The hotel showed off its recently remodeled property and co-hosted the event with Carolina West Wireless.

Event-goers enjoyed classic southern dishes and a dessert bar catered by Gadabouts, along with craft beer provided by BooneShine Brewing and wines from The Country Vintner.

Country artist C.J. Ballard performed as guests caught up and got to know each other.

Watauga Opportunities

During the fun, the chamber presented its coveted Business of the Year Award to Watauga Opportunities, Inc.  a locally based manufacturing company and nonprofit community rehabilitation program.

WOI manufactures products in medical devices, custom plastic thermoforming and packaging/assembly, according to its website, and its also a nonprofit community rehabilitation program that offers vocational training, job placement, employment opportunities and residential services to adults who have barriers to employment and community inclusion.

WOI is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It generates 45-50 percent of its budget independently, reducing its government subsidies by $2.5 million. Its provided more than $1.34 million in wages over the last decade and has secured more than 1,000 job placements.

Michael Maybee accepted the award on behalf of WOI, the slogan for which is enabling self-reliance through employment.

Rays Weather

The chambers Small Business of the Year recognition was awarded to Rays Weather, the High Countrys go-to resource for forecasts and all things weather in multiple counties.

Although the chamber kept it all a secret from the recipients until the awards were distributed, Rays Weather founder and forecaster Ray Russell knew that something was up.

I would have never thought we were getting it, but I started to figure it out because everyone was making sure I would be there, he said with a laugh. The weirdest thing was that my wife, Rhonda, made sure I had a haircut before we went, and shes never really cared about that before. She made the appointment for me and everything.

Pleasantly surprised by the recognition, Russell said the award is a not a personal achievement but a testament to the company and its employees.

It really speaks more to the people that work here than it does to me, and thats really what its all about, he said. We have great people here and great forecasters that work for us, and this really is a company award.

Now in its 15th year of an incorporated business, Rays Weather began as a hobby when Russell, a professor at ASUs Computer Science Department, first developed an interest in forecasting.

In addition to helpful daily weather forecasts that are specific to each community in the High Country, Rays Weather also operates 85 weather stations and 40 webcams in western North Carolina, southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee. Its expanded coverage area now includes Waynesboro, Virginia and Cherokee, North Carolina, spanning the entire stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Rays Weather team boasts Russell as forecaster and four additional meteorologists, as well as an office manager, a sales leader, a system administrator and a programmer.

Were just trying to provide a needed service to all people across western North Carolina and western Virginia so they can make good decisions about travel, activities and business, Russell said. It amazes me how many people are affected by what we do, and this has been a real humbling experience. Were excited about it.

Boone Chamber

Want to know more or get involved? Visit the chamber online or call 828-264-6644.

More photos from Thursdays After Hours event:

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"University, Inc." is expanding its footprint across Finland. The small Nordic country, once seen as a poster child for education is experiencing the most direct corporate takeover of its universities. Last year, as part of the continuing wave of austerity measures, Prime Minister Juha Sipila told the country's parliament that his coalition government had "decided on a total of 4 billion in cost savings in public finances during this parliamentary term". As a result, Finnish higher education is now more firmly on the neoliberal tracks with little chance of slowing down.

Sipila's National Coalition government also intends to freeze the university index, cut research funding from the Academy of Finland and Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation - and discontinue the compensation paid for pharmacy services to the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland. As part of these savings, approximately 500 million will be axed from universities' funding.

In typical centre-right National Coalition Party fashion, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, Finland's Minister of Education and Culture defended her open letter which she wrote to all Finnish universities setting out her plans; she would like to see a smaller and more efficient higher education sector with fewer universities. This is undergirded by neoliberal thinking. Harking back to Thatcherism, Grahn-Laasonen urged Finnish universities to become the "best in the world" in a certain area - to specialise - and to use resources more efficiently. Are Finnish academics going to achieve this all on their own?

Grahn-Laasonen didn't have much to say about the inevitable job losses which will affect universities the length and breadth of the country. In a sobering and surreal meeting held in its main building, Helsinki University announced that it plans to shed 980 (12.5%) of its employees by the end of 2017 - 570 terminations (between February and May 2016) plus 410 jobs which will remain unfilled as people retire. The terminations will include 295 teaching staff - 75 permanent, 60 retirements and 160 fixed term contracts.

As stipulated by Finnish law those on permanent contracts will have the minimum safety net of one month to find another job. A small number of fixed term staff will be 'allowed' to work out their contracts before they, too are tossed onto the Finnish academic scrap heap. To show their support for those who will lose their jobs, The Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers held a vigil, which took place in front of Helsinki University's main building. They provided candles and pea soup for those who attended.

Finnish universities are being increasingly forced to reinvent themselves as emblems of corporate organization. The worst has yet to come. As the universities become more market-driven they will owe their fate  their ability to lure students, funding, eligibility for grants, and potentially their continued existence  to composite quantitative measures of academic "productivity" (published articles amassed plus grant money garnered plus conferences attended plus students taught). The only goal is to become more competitive. If the unprofessional and embarrassing behaviour of certain academic departments is anything to go by, then I fear that Finnish universities will struggle to survive, let alone thrive in the more competitive, talent driven global environment.

As the Finnish government's cuts take effect, the staff employed in Finnish universities will only be made to feel more and more like slaves in a hyper-corporatized higher education system. Without a major shift in direction, the neoliberals will get their way. As a public policy challenge this was nicely put by Helsinki University Student Union in their appeal to the Finnish government: "Higher education policy should be predictable and reliable instead of being at the mercy of erratic political passions." However, everyone must realise that no amount of pea soup, candlelit vigils or sympathy will bring about the much needed change.

By Dr. Gareth Rice
Although the level of income and well-being remains high in the country, the output has decreased as a result of the global economic downturn, the decline of the electronics and paper industries, and the recession in Russia, the OECD states in its latest economic survey of Finland .

Economic output in Finland is substantially lower than in the rest of the Nordics and the European Union, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The OECD identifies the labour status of young women as one of the underlying problems of the labour markets of Finland, highlighting that labour force participation among mothers with children below six years of age is the lowest in the Nordics  almost 20 percentage points below that of Sweden and Denmark.

The home-care allowance and the associated supplements reduce work incentives, especially for women with low potential earnings, it states.

Mari Kiviniemi (Centre), a deputy secretary-general at the OECD, called attention to the issue at the launch event of the country report in Helsinki on Thursday. The employment rate of mothers with children below three years of age is 51 per cent in Finland, one of the lowest among OECD countries, she said according to Helsingin Sanomat.

OECD's forecast for Finland - GDP to grow by 1.1 per cent in 2016 and by 1.6 per cent in 2017 - Exports to increase by 3.3 per cent in 2016 and by 4.0 per cent in 2017 - Unemployment rate to creep up to 9.7 per cent in 2016 and to 9.8 per cent in 2017 - Gross government debt, as a percentage of GDP, to rise to 62.7 per cent in 2016 and to 65.0 per cent in 2017 Source: OECD

Finland, the OECD recommends, should reduce the combined duration of parental leave and the home-care allowance to encourage female labour market participation.

Alexander Stubb, the Minister of Finance, affirmed in his address at the launch event that he shares the OECD's concerns about the relatively low rate of employment in Finland that  also according to the OECD's analysis  is a consequence of rigid labour markets, inactivity traps and labour skills.

We must integrate more Finns into the labour force in order to be able to maintain our welfare system, Stubb said, according to a bulletin published by the Ministry of Finance.

Stubb also estimated that the country report corroborates the measures laid out by the Finnish Government.

The objective of the measures is clear, he said: To create more jobs in Finland. We want to ensure working and employing are more rewarding than today. That can be achieved by, for example, lowering unit labour costs and encouraging bargaining on wages and other terms and conditions of employment at workplaces.

The Government, he added, must also tear down obstacles to hiring by lengthening probationary employment periods, facilitating part-time employment and adjusting the re-employment obligation associated with personnel reductions. In addition, we must increase the appeal of accepting job offers by lowering labour taxation and reducing the duration of earnings-related unemployment benefits, Stubb stated.

The OECD estimates similarly that unemployment spells in Finland are prolonged because the benefits and activation measures do not encourage a quick return to the labour force. It proposes that Finland raise indirect taxation, lower labour taxation and slash unemployment benefits in order to balance the public economy and spur economic growth.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Mikko Stig  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
We discussed the issue at great length. Russian authorities naturally deny that authorities are responsible for anything like that, he said on Thursday.

Russian authorities have denied their alleged involvement in the flow of asylum seekers across the border between Finland and Russia, Seppo Kolehmainen, the National Police Commissioner, reveals in an interview with Uusi Suomi.

Kolehmainen commented on the issue after sitting down with Viktor Ivanov, the director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, and Sergei Smirnov, the first deputy director of the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), in Moscow.

The main talking point in our discussions was the role of organised crime in all of this, he revealed.

He also revealed that the two countries have agreed to develop a joint system to intervene in the activities of organised crime syndicates on both sides of the border. We'll appoint so-called joint investigation task forces. We'll identify concrete criminal matters and start investigating them together, he said.

We'll take it to a concrete level, to the level of authorities.

Kolehmainen estimated that the agreement is a leap in the right direction for the situation at the eastern border.

The National Police Commissioner said his visit shows that the demands of President Sauli Niinisto for closer Russo-Finnish co-operation have not fallen to deaf ears. He added that the groundwork for his two-day visit was laid during a meeting between Petteri Orpo (NCP), the Minister of the Interior, and his Russian counterpart earlier this week.

Speculation about the alleged involvement of FSB in the flow of asylum seekers has intensified recently in Finland. Petri Sarvamaa (NCP), a Member of the European Parliament, said on Wednesday he believes the flow of asylum seekers across the border is used by FSB as a means to apply pressure on Finland.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Trond H. Trosdahl  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Halloween is coming! Here's when to trick or treat in your town
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Alejandro Beutel bowed his yarmulke-covered head and pressed his hands and forehead into the 2,000-year-old stones of the Western Wall. After slipping a note into one of the cracks, Beutel whispered a prayer and cried.

It's a scene that unfolds daily at the sacred site in the Old City here-except that Beutel is a convert to Islam, the son of a Jewish father and Christian mother. He was one of 11 Muslim activists who visited Israel this month as part of the Muslim Leadership Initiative, a 3-year-old program that brings North American Muslims to Israel to learn about Judaism and the Jewish connection to the Holy Land.

The yearlong program, which is fully covered by scholarships, begins and ends with 12-day seminars in Israel and the West Bank, and includes two retreats in the United States and monthly study sessions in between. Since its founding in 2013, MLI has brought 59 North American Muslims to Israel.

"I have never been able to articulate and understand Jews, Judaism and Zionism, even with Jewish relatives that I have, until I went through MLI," Beutel said.

The brainchild of Imam Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University, the program is co-directed by American-Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish education center in Jerusalem. Among the program's previous participants is Rabia Choudry, a fellow at the New America Foundation who came to national attention for her role in the first season of the NPR podcast "Serial."

Antepli believes MLI will breed a deeper interfaith dialogue than similar efforts that stick to superficial issues while ignoring the elephant in the room-Israel-which, when acknowledged, often leads to screaming matches.

MLI "will force Jews and Muslims to diversify their sources of information about each other rather than relying on the voices pumping fear and suspicion into both communities," Antepli said.

The vehement criticism of the program within the Muslim community is a testament to how controversial that goal is. Muslim activists have described MLI as a vehicle for Israeli propaganda and called for a boycott. Antepli has received death threats. Last year, an MLI cohort was harassed during a visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Participants told JTA they have lost friends and suffered financial consequences due to their involvement in the program. MLI leaders requested that JTA not publish this story until participants had left Israel. Antepli feared that news of their presence "could spark provocations."

"It's pretty confusing," said Khurrum Wahid, a Florida attorney who has defended several high-profile terrorism suspects and whose Muslim empowerment nonprofit, Emerge USA, lost 15 percent of its funding because of his participation in the program. "Before I was regarded as a terrorist, and now suddenly I'm being called a Zionist."

For Antepli and the MLI participants, the hostile reaction merely confirms the urgency of the initiative.

"There's a misunderstanding within our community of what Zionism is-that it's an exclusively prejudiced agenda," said one participant who requested anonymity due to the contention surrounding MLI. "When people hear we're going to speak with Zionists, they hear, 'We're going to meet with the KKK to hear why they hate black people.' That's why this work is so important."

She continued: "I don't think I ever understood how deeply some Jews are attached to this land. The risks and sacrifices we've made to do this really means a lot to our Jewish partners. It creates this sense of trust that we wouldn't have otherwise. That's a really valuable part of this program."

MLI has no illusions that it can create a warm and cozy relationship between Muslims and Jews or solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The objective, MLI leaders say, is to deepen understanding of the Jewish connection to the Holy Land so that Jewish-Muslim dialogue can be more informed.

"It's about getting them to simply understand," Halevi said.

Muslim critics in the United States have charged that MLI aims to turn participants into Zionist advocates or apologists, but the program is a far cry from pro-Israel propaganda.

In one session last week, participants read Israel's Declaration of Independence and discussed why the document's promise of equal rights for all citizens has not yet been realized. In another, they heard from Mohammad Darawshe, co-director of Givat Haviva, which supports Israeli-Palestinian coexistence efforts, who told them that his family had lived in Palestine for generations and that their land was confiscated by Israel.

Some participants said they still view Zionism as racist, privileging Jewish rights over Arab ones. Some even support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, including Antepli, but only in the West Bank, not in Israel proper.

"Even after a year in the program, it has not changed my opinion on the treatment of Palestinians," said Wahid. "Israelis as a people and a state need to prioritize human rights and freedom in order to get to security. They're going about it the other way around."

Several participants noted a recent report from the Center for American Progress, which found that much of the "Islamophobia network" in the United States is funded by American Jews. They believe not only that better relations with the Jewish community can help counter Islamophobia, but that the Muslim community can learn from the Jewish community how best to integrate into American society.

"The Jewish community blazed trails," said Amanda Quraishi, a Muslim activist in Austin, Texas. "We're such a new community in America and have so much to learn from them."

Khaliff Watkins, an interfaith activist in New Jersey, had many Jewish friends as a child but avoided discussing Israel because it was divisive. Before the trip, he didn't understand the Jewish connection to Israel, which he regarded as a "colonialist project."

After the trip, Watkins says he can better understand Israeli Jews who have endured "the trauma of having one's narrative and one's identity not being accepted in the world... and their genuine commitment to humanity and living in peace with others who are not Jewish."
"The Double Life of Laurence Oliphant," by Bart Casey

This book is the improbable tale of a Victorian young man who abandoned a glittering career as an author, war correspondent, diplomat and Member of Parliament to embark on a quest to understand the true meaning of life by finding God and the angels in heaven.

He believed he succeeded in that mission, together with his beautiful young wife, British heiress Alice le Strange, first by pledging his fortune and subservience to a hypnotic prophet from America named Thomas Lake Harris, and then by striking out on their own to carry on the Lord's work by establishing a homeland in Palestine for the displaced Jews fleeing persecution in the 1880s.

Motivating the entire quest was the certain conviction that there was a real God with angels in heaven who were ready to help mankind live in harmony with the spirit world, just as we had before the Fall of Adam and Eve in Eden.

Alice was a young British woman in her 20s, living in Paris, when she met Laurence. He was her next door neighbor and the chief correspondent for The Times of London covering the siege of Paris and the bloody aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war with its barricade- fighting in the streets of Paris between forces loyal to the defeated emperor Louis Napoleon and citizens intent on a new regime.

Laurence was older and dodging bullets in doorways as he filed his stories for his newspaper. They fell deeply in love. Together they gave up their fortunes and free will to embark on a spiritual quest to find the real meaning of life under the guidance of the despotic cult leader Thomas Lake Harris at his commune in America.

Harris cobbled together revelations he imagined were from spirits in Heaven planning for the Second Coming of Christ when they would return to earth and live together with the chosen.

After 14 years, Laurence and Alice broke with Harris who they believed had become a false prophet in love with sex, money and power. With the backing of the British government and Jewish leaders across Europe, they devoted their final years to easing the suffering of Jewish refugees by establishing a home for them in the Holy Land.
After nine years of serving the Jewish students and faculty at UCF, as well as at Valencia and Rollins Colleges, Chabad at University of Central Florida will have a permanent home near the UCF campus.

Rabbi Chaim and Rivkie Lipskier, who live in Oviedo with their five children aged 8, 7, 6, 3, and 1 month, serve as co-directors of Chabad at UCF. They purchased a two-acre lot on Alafaya Trail, next door to University House. The couple plans to build a nearly 15,000 square-foot new home for the Chabad on Campus Center that will serve UCF's 6,000 Jewish students, and replace the current one at 600 Oak Circle, where hundreds of students spill out of the outgrown facilitates during Shabbat dinners and other events.

This dream of finding a permanent home became a reality through a lead grant from philanthropist Morris and Lilain Tabacinic, which was secured with the assistance of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, chairman of the Chabad on Campus International. Additionally, hundreds of donations of all sizes were made by alumni, parents, and community members and the Jewish Capital Alliance provide a generous loan.

Chabad will now be kicking off a three-million dollar building campaign, with plans for a 3,000 square-foot auditorium, student lounges, a library, an industrial kitchen, overnight suites, a synagogue, and other general purpose spaces.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is an organization dedicated to serving the needs of Jews around the world. Chabad of UCF is one of the 230 existing Chabad on Campus as part of the largest network of full-time professionally staffed Jewish campus centers in the world.

Chabad of UCF's impact has long been felt on campus. The center connects with 1300 students and faculty a year 150 to 200 students attend weekly Shabbat meals, 150 a year go to Israel on Chabad's Birthright program, 50 students participate in Sinai Scholars, and advanced Torah study program and a 100 students join the weekly kosher BBQ.

Rachel Altfield a junior from Miami expressed excitement about the new Chabad on Campus Center: "Since I came to UCF, Chabad has been my home away from home. In this community, I have found acceptance, love, and a strong sense of family. I am confident that the new property will give Chabad the ability to reach out to UCF's Jewish community on a larger scale, and to provide them with the same amazing experiences that have made my time at UCF so incredible. I can't wait for the property to be finished!"

"We would like to first of all thank G-d on this momentous occasion," said Rabbi Chaim Lipskier. "The purchase of the property is the first step in a new wonderful chapter of Jewish life at UCF. We outgrew our current location years ago and the new center will allow us to provide expanded programming to reach even more students."

"The Chabad on Campus Center is a place where every single Jewish student can feel at home," said Rivkie Lipskier. "Whether they are coming for a meal or for an advanced Jewish studies class, for services or just to hang out. We look forward to welcoming each student as a member of our family, as we have done for the past nine years."

To learn more about Chabad at UCF please visit http://www.jewishucf.com. To get involved with this project or for a list of dedication opportunities and sponsorship, contact Rabbi Chaim Lipskier at 407-949-8838 X1 or by email rabbi@jewishucf.com.
Join the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando for its Februrary program at the Family History Center (FHC) in North Orlando, 45 East Par Street. The meeting is Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016 from 7 p.m.-9 p.m.

The Family History Center is a great place to do genealogical research, because of its access to numerous databases that are essential to your research. The center has volunteers who are available to help you use these tools, and it's free! The volunteers can also help you overcome the many challenges of finding information from decades or centuries ago.

Volunteers from the Center will give program attendees a tour. Afterwards attendees will use the computers, film viewers, and other resources to research their ancestry. Prior to the program, starting at 6:30 p.m., there will be time to network and to receive free consulting assistance or mentoring from Jewish genealogy experts.

There is plenty of space in the parking lot. People with limited mobility should park in the semi-circle driveway on the south end of the building, near the FHC entrance.
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process a year ago has led to an accelerating war of words over Israeli settlements, with Israel accusing its growing chorus of foreign critics of prejudging the final terms of a peace deal at best-and anti-Semitism at worst.

The battle heated up this week with the release of a report by Human Rights Watch arguing that doing business with West Bank settlements reinforces Israel's presence there and contributes to human rights abuses.

The report comes a day after the European Union, which in November announced new guidelines to label Israeli exports produced in the settlements, declared that any agreement with Israel "must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967."

And the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, while not going nearly as far, decried Israel's seizure of West Bank lands and what he described as a two-tiered justice system.

"Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities; too much vigilantism goes unchecked; and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians," Shapiro said in a speech Monday that otherwise extolled U.S.-Israel closeness.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was infuriated by the remarks, calling them "unacceptable and incorrect." But his wider strategy against the settlement criticism has been to lump such efforts together with the wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, and liken them to the pre-Holocaust boycotts of Jewish businesses in Europe.

"Because bureaucracies or set patterns entrench themselves, and then we get the absurdity of the EU in Brussels, from European soil, labeling the products of Israeli citizens, of Jews," Netanyahu told foreign reporters last week. "And the last time that was done on the soil of Europe was over 70 years ago."

Israel has largely been able to stave off questions about the status of the West Bank as long as it seemed substantially engaged in the peace process. But developments this week seem to confirm warnings last year that the collapse of the peace process, followed by statements from Netanyahu on the eve of his reelection in March that appeared to reject the possibility of Palestinian statehood, would lead the United States and Europe to focus anew on the settlements, if only as a means of keeping open the option for a two-state solution.

The Human Rights Watch report argues plainly that trading with the settlements entrenches Israel in the West Bank and makes businesses a partner in the oppression of the Palestinians. It recommends that businesses "avoid financing, administering or otherwise supporting settlements or settlement-related activities and infrastructure, such as through contracting to purchase settlement-manufactured goods or agricultural produce, to ensure the businesses are not indirectly contributing to and benefiting from such activities."

The report cites an example of how bringing attention to Israeli practices in the West Bank can impede them. Human Rights Watch contacted a factory in a West Bank settlement that its researchers found provided linens for an American retailer and was underpaying its Palestinian laborers.

"During the conversations that followed, the factory agreed to close its operations in Barkan and locate to new facilities inside Israel," the group reported, without naming the parties.

"We are not looking for problems," Human Rights Watch quoted the factory's co-owner as telling the group. "It seems it really bothers people that we're there, so we'll leave."

Centrist and right-wing pro-Israel groups insist that such efforts to target settlements are aimed at setting the terms of a final peace deal. In December, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee posted a lengthy analysis of the European Union's decision on settlement labeling.

"The EU's action-taken outside the context of peace negotiations-is designed to impose Brussels' vision of Israel's future borders," said AIPAC, a prominent pro-Israel lobby. "These commercial attacks against Israel increase the prospect of isolating the Jewish state, while strengthening its most vitriolic critics and slowing the pursuit of peace."

The fight over settlements is also playing out in Congress and state houses. AIPAC has garnered bipartisan support through congressional statements rejecting attempts to single out settlements. And several state-level legislative moves to target BDS explicitly include attempts to distinguish the settlements.

Pro-Israel groups on the left argue that such efforts are mutually self-defeating. Attempts to isolate settlements are a good thing, they say, as they help neutralize the wider BDS movement.

"A more accurate labeling system, as Israel never annexed the West Bank, will allow European residents to make purchases according to ideological considerations," Americans for Peace Now said at the time of the European labeling decision. "This system will help curb efforts to boycott Israel entirely, such as those advocated by the BDS movement."
Khalil Adel Khalil (second from left), 25, of the A-Tur neighborhood in Jerusalem, is brought to Jerusalem's District Court on July 9, 2015. Khalil, who admitted to trying to join the Islamic State terror group in Syria, was sentenced to two years in prison.

While the threat of border clashes with Islamic State terrorists fighting in the Syrian civil war has concerned Israeli leaders for some time now, the recruitment of Israeli Arabs to form their own terror cells or launch lone wolf attacks inside of Israel-akin to the Paris and San Bernardino attacks late in 2015-has recently become a more serious threat for the Jewish state.

"This is a developing threat for Israel, the possibility that [Islamic State] will take advantage of the new recruits to study the Israeli arena and obtain information to be used for promoting terrorist activities in Israel," Daniel Cohen, an expert on cyber-security and a research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank, told JNS.org.

The Israeli government's understanding of that "developing threat" also has significant policy implications for Israel. Member of Knesset Ayoob Kara (Likud), an Israeli Druze who serves as the country's deputy minister of regional cooperation, formerly acted as an intermediary for Arab citizens who had left Israel to fight in Syria or Iraq, offering the fighters reduced jail terms if they agreed to return home and cooperate with Israel's security services. But as the fear of Islamic State-inspired terror cells grows in Israel, that policy has changed.

"I used to work hard to dissuade people from joining ISIS, but now I say that there's no point," Kara said, Reuters reported.

Last month, Israel's Shin Bet security agency revealed that it had arrested five Israeli Arabs, who were residents of Nazareth, for attempting to set up a terror cell. According to the Shin Bet, the group had already started meeting, swore allegiance to Islamic State, and even started training with live arms. Also in December, reports indicated that an Israeli Arab who had previously served in the Israel Defense Forces had joined Islamic State inside Syria.

In October, an Israeli Arab man attempted to paraglide from Israel into Syria to join the fighting there. In July, six Israeli Arabs, including four school teachers, were arrested for supporting and spreading Islamic State ideology.

Despite efforts by the Shin Bet and the Israel Police to combat the Islamic State threat, Israeli security officials believe that several-dozen Israeli Arabs have traveled to Syria to join the fighting there.

"The profile of [Israeli Arabs fighting in Syria] is not homogeneous. Some got radicalized while studying abroad, others were inspired by social media messages," the INSS think tank's Cohen told JNS.org.

"Most of the departing Israeli Arabs to Syria joined the Islamic State and received military training [and] absorbed the ideological indoctrination that accompanies the training. Generally speaking, they became more extreme in their views and perceptions and [gained] upgraded combat skills," he added.

Israel-which is home to approximately 1.75 million Arabs, nearly 21 percent of the country's population-is increasingly concerned by the threat of Israeli Arab fighters returning home from the Syrian conflict, as well as the threat of homegrown Islamic State-inspired Arab terrorists.

"It (Islamic State's influence) is beginning to spread here as well," Israeli Intelligence Ministry Director-General Ram Ben-Barak told Army Radio in late December. "The ISIS scenario we worry about is ISIS cells arising in Israel to carry out terrorist attacks."

According to a recent study conducted by the University of Haifa's Professor Sammy Smooha, an expert on the Arab community in Israel, 17 percent of Israeli Arabs support Islamic State. The level of support increases to 28 percent among those who already felt sympathy with the Islamic Movement in Israel's Northern Branch, an entity that was recently outlawed by the Israeli government due to its incitement over the Temple Mount holy site.

"This is a very telling finding," Smooha told the Jerusalem Post in an interview about the study. "Why? Because all Arab political parties and the Islamic Movement's two factions are against Islamic State, so this means a segment of the Arab public does not agree with the consensus against Islamic State."

The factors of Israeli Arabs' sympathy towards Islamic State, the jihadist group's highly effective recruitment efforts, and social and economic gaps between Israel's Arab and Jewish communities combine to present a unique challenge to Israeli authorities.

In an attempt to improve the social and economic situation of Israeli Arabs, the Israeli government in December passed a NIS 15 billion ($3.84 billion) five-year plan to develop the Israeli Arab community and other minority populations.

The plan was spearheaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, and Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel. It seeks to "advance a systematic and structural economic development plan for the minority sector," the Prime Minister's Office said.

"This is a significant addition designed to assist minority populations and reduce [societal] gaps," Netanyahu said.

At the same time, Israeli Arabs already have the lowest per-capita participation in Islamic State when compared to the Arab populations of European and Arab nations, noted Hillel Frisch, a professor in the departments of Political Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.

"For example, Tunisia has presumably contributed 3,000 [Islamic State] fighters from a population of 10 million. Israeli Arabs number more than one-tenth of that [Tunisian population], but have contributed probably no more than 30 [Islamic State fighters]... Most Israeli Arabs understand both the material and political benefits of participating in the Israeli political system, and the small minority that go violent link up to local Palestinian terrorist organizations," Frisch told JNS.org.

Frisch also characterized Israeli Arabs' attitude on Islamic State as one of ambivalence.

"The [Israeli Arab] leadership has essentially ignored the [Islamic State] issue and focused on the bread-and-butter issues of equality and the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, characterized by bellicose anti-state rhetoric that is even inciting, but on day-to day legislative issues they cooperate with Israeli Zionist members of the Knesset," said Frisch.

Nevertheless, Islamic State has recently stepped up its rhetoric against Israel, signaling the terror group's potential increased prioritization of recruiting Israeli Arabs to either join Islamic State in Syria or launch attacks inside Israel.

In October, an Islamic State fighter appeared in a Hebrew-language video, promising that "soon there will not be one Jew left in Jerusalem."

"We will enter Al-Aqsa mosque as conquerors, using our cars as bombs to strike the Jewish ramparts," the terrorist said in the video, adding, "Do what you will in the meantime until we reach you. Then we will charge you 10-fold for the crimes [that you have committed against the Palestinians]."

In December, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who rarely appears in film or audio clips, recorded a 24-minute tape that included threats against Israel.

"The Jews think we forget about it and got distracted from it," the jihadist leader said. "No, oh Jews. We have not forgotten Palestine and never will."

Mirroring the terror group's efforts in other Western countries, Islamic State has tried to recruit Israeli Arabs using online and social media platforms.

"The tactic is the same like in other countries, by utilizing the Internet and social media for distributing a very affective narrative campaign that calls for immigration to the Islamic State territories. The next step is engaging a one-on-one communication by an Islamic State recruiter in an online private chat that provides anonymity," Cohen told JNS.org.

Yet during the current wave of Palestinian terror in Israel, Islamic State has developed another strategy to appeal to Israeli Arabs.

"A new trend that has started during the latest wave of terror in the streets of Israel [is that] Islamic State has flooded social media platforms with messages tailored to Palestinians and Israeli Arabs," Cohen said.

As such, Israel faces a new challenge in directly combating terrorists' online recruitment of its citizens. Cohen believes that the most effective way to combat this threat is working with the international community to create a legal framework and a global task force.

"Legal infrastructure should be created for this purpose, and agreements should be reached with the larger Internet," Cohen said.

"The technological ability to take practical measures exists, but without assembling an international task force, with a legal framework behind it that will take immediate effective action to remove malware (intrusive software such as viruses), it will be difficult to cope with this phenomenon," he added.

Beyond that, Cohen recommended that Israel consider direct monitoring and engagement with Islamic State recruiters online.

"This is a controversial topic right now, but creation of tools that will monitor and identify potential hazards, on the basis of an analysis of regularly collected big data, will definitely bring results and reduce the number of potential recruitments to Islamic State," he said.
On Tuesday, Feb. 2, at Ohev Shalom at 11:30 a.m., The Orlando Chapter of Hadassah will present a program that is essential to the wellbeing of every person living in this community. No one should miss this presentation. Your safety may depend on it!

In todays stressful and often frightening environment, you may feel overwhelmed about your personal safety when out in public.

Laura Lang, the senior advocate officer of the Orange County Sheriffs Department, will discuss the many dangerous situations you may encounter and how to best protect yourself should you become involved in such a predicament. Lang will also offer methods to avoid such scenarios if possible and will be happy to address any fears you may have or answer any of your questions.

As always, this event is open to all who wish to attend. Nonmembers are also welcome. Reservations are required. Please RSVP to nancyg357@yahoo.com or call Nancy at 407-333-0204. Couvert is $12.
The ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism that has plagued Israel since last fall has also brought to the fore the Palestinians frustration with their own leadership. While Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has been blamed for inciting violence against Israelis, many Palestinians have become disillusioned with the PAs corruption and inability to attain statehood.

As such, Israeli leaders are increasingly concerned that internal Palestinian dissatisfaction could bring about the PAs collapse, resulting in a dangerous political and security vacuum in the West Bank that could lead to even more terrorism and violence.

We must prevent the Palestinian Authority from collapsing if possible, but at the same time, we must prepare in case it happens, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said in a closed-door meeting with top ministers and security officials.

According to a Jan. 4 report by Haaretz, Israels diplomatic-security cabinet held two meetings over the course of 10 days on the possibility of a PA collapse, in light of the freeze in the diplomatic process, the ongoing wave of terror attacks, the economic crisis in the West Bank, and the political crisis within the Palestinian leadership.

The U.S. has also raised questions about the viability of the PA. In December, Secretary of State John Kerry said that there are valid questions as to how long the PA will survive if the current situation continues.

There are some 30,000 Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank, and Israels security officials acknowledge their key role in preventing the situation from spiraling out of control, including, by the way, during the turmoil of three wars with Gaza, said Kerry.

Abbas countered the concerns, saying, No one should dream that [the PA] will collapse.

The Palestinian Authority exists and it is here, Abbas added. It will be followed by a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority is one of our achievements and we wont give it up.

The collapse of the PA would mean chaos, said Mideast expert Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

The PA handles a great deal of the day-to-day governance issues that Israel is very happy not to fulfill, Schanzer told JNS.org. The PA also plays a significant role in minimizing the dangers of Hamas in the West Bank. A full PA collapse would be calamitous from Israels perspective.

Schanzer, however, also downplayed fears that a PA collapse is actually imminent.

Nothing tangible has led to this discussion, from what I can discern, Schanzer said. There was a warning issued by the Prime Ministers Office and some unnamed sources spoke to the media, too. But from what I can tell, the discussion of a PA collapse is one without much basis at this time.

Established by the Oslo Accords peace treaty in 1993 as an interim Palestinian government, the PAwhich has been dominated by the Fatah political party and its parent organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), throughout its existencehas languished in political and economic limbo for the last several years under Abbas. American-brokered peace talks with Israel conducted in 2013-14 crashed, and the Gaza-ruling Hamas terrorist group continues to grow in popularity among Palestinians.

Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and maintains control only in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas has had a tenuous relationship with Israel, maintaining close security ties with the Jewish state out of a shared fear of Hamas, but also seeing Israel take punitive measures such as cutting off tax transfers to the PA in response to Abbass unilateral moves for international recognition of a Palestinian state. During the current wave of terror, Israel has accused Abbas of stoking the violence through his false claims of Israels attempt to change the status quo on the Temple Mount holy site.

The PA lacks legitimacy among most Palestinians. A majority of Palestinians, when polled, believe that the PA is irredeemably corrupt and that it continues to fail to deliver basic services, Schanzer said.

It also makes neither peace nor war, which alienates both sides of the Palestinian political spectrum, he added.

Compounding the problems for the PA is a dire economic situation. Azmi Abdul-Rahman, the official in charge of the PAs financial policies, recently said that the PAs economy has suffered huge losses since the onset of the current terror wave.

According to Abdul-Rahman, the Palestinian economy has lost roughly $1.3 billion, with the hardest-hit areas being Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, and eastern Jerusalem, Maan News Agency reported. Abdul-Rahman blamed decreased tourism, new Israeli security checkpoints, and the cost of medical care for wounded Palestinians as contributing to the losses.

The economy has undoubtedly been the biggest strain on the PA, Schanzer told JNS.org. Since the exit of [former PA prime minister] Salam Fayyad, the PA has lacked the transparency and credibility that made it attractive for donor funds. [Current PA Prime Minister] Rami Hamdallah fails to uphold Fayyads standards, and the perception that the PA is irredeemably corrupt continues to grow.

Perhaps most troublesome for the PA is the lack of a clear successor to Abbas, who has been the subject of many rumors over the past year regarding health issues or an impending resignation.

The PA itself can survive without Abbas, but the Palestinian political elite is in crisis because Abbas has purged the system of all challengers, said Schanzer.

For Israel, then, a PA collapse would at the very least mean a significant degree of uncertainty.

When Abbas is no longer able to govern, there will be a huge vacuum, Schanzer said.
One of the stops on the Jewish Heritage tour is the enamel factory owned by Oskar Schindler.

When the Holocaust Center decided to sponsor a trip centered around European Jewish Heritage July 10-20, they found the ideal travel agent in Oren Lotringer. As the director of Group Operations for Tourico Holidays, America's largest travel wholesaler, he had the right credentials for planning a complex, memorable trip.

More important, perhaps, he has a deep personal interest in the history the group will be exploring.

Like many of his generation, he learned about the Holocaust through books, and occasionally from grandparents who were often hesitant to talk about their "dark past." Over time, he learned that all four of his grandparents escaped through one means of another, but other family members were not so fortunate.

One of his grandfathers escaped into hiding, and eventually learned that he was the sole survivor among twelve siblings. Lotringer was able to look up the family names at Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust Museum, an experience he describes as something that "came upon him like an avalanche".

This tour, he says, will enable group members to "feel, see, touch and personally experience" history in a way that has far deeper meaning that a simple vacation get-away.

The tour, which includes stays in Warsaw, Krakow and Prague, is one that Lotringer calls "an educational experience of a lifetime."

He says that even in the most tragic places of Holocaust history, every location and every experience is meaningful. Beyond that, there will beauty, inspiration and joy-and an opportunity to travel with others who share this uniquely connected history.

Spaces are still available on the tour for a limited time. Information is online at http://www.holocaustedu.org or by calling 407-628-0555.
The husband and children of Dafna Meir grieving at her funeral in Jerusalem the day after her stabbing death in the West Bank, Jan. 18, 2016.

(JTA)-A day after witnessing her mother's brutal murder, Dafna Meir's teenage daughter spoke before hundreds who had come to mourn her.

Dafna Meir, 38, a mother of six, was stabbed to death on Sunday near the entrance of her West Bank home.

"It's hard for me to think we will not laugh together or fight anymore, that you won't accompany me to the IDF induction ceremony, down the aisle, and to the maternity ward," Renana Meir, 17, said at a Jerusalem cemetery, calling her mother her best friend.

Dafna Meir was killed in Otniel, in the Hebron Hills area. She apparently fought her attacker for several minutes in an attempt to protect the three children at home, none of whom were injured in the attack.

Less than 24 hours after Meir's murder, a pregnant Israeli was stabbed in another West Bank settlement. Michal Froman, 30, suffered moderate wounds to her upper body on Monday after being attacked at a clothing warehouse in Tekoa, in Gush Etzion, the Israel Defense Forces said. Froman's apparent attacker was shot by a Tekoa resident, according to the IDF.

Both the alleged assailants are Palestinian teenagers.

In the Froman case, the teen had attempted to flee the scene. He was said to be in serious condition at an Israeli hospital.

In response to the attacks, Israel has temporarily barred all Palestinians from working in West Bank settlements, which have seen a number of deadly incidents since the recent wave of Palestinian terror began last fall. Gush Etzion has been particularly hard hit.

Meir worked as a surgical nurse at a Beersheba hospital. She was married with four biological children and two foster children.

She was buried Monday at the Har Hamenuhot cemetery.

A 16-year-old Palestinian, Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, was arrested Monday in a Palestinian village not far from where Meir was murdered, the IDF said. According to reports, he was given up by local residents and confessed to the killing. Adais' arrest was part of a joint IDF and Shin Bet security service operation.

Renana Meir, the eldest child, had given law enforcement a description of the killer, according to reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy the home of Meir's killer. And on Tuesday, Netanyahu traveled to Otniel to pay a condolence call to Meir's grieving family.

"Whoever wants to see the truth about the roots of the conflict between us and the Palestinians should come to Otniel and see here a wonderful family that only wants coexistence and peace," Netanyahu said. "They should see the young people, inflamed by incitement, who come to murder women here, a mother of six, and in Tekoa, a pregnant woman."

He added, "There is humanity here and the desire for peace and coexistence on one side and boundless hatred on the other."

On Monday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he opposed violence against anyone, regardless of background, and promised to encourage resistance through peaceful means only.

Also Monday, the U.S. State Department in a statement condemned Meir's murder and the subsequent attack on Froman "in the strongest terms."

"We were appalled and deeply saddened by the death of Dafna Meir, a mother of six, who was attacked on Sunday in her own home," said the statement issued by department spokesman John Kirby, who also sent well wishes to Froman. "These horrific incidents underscore the importance of affirmative steps to restore calm, reduce tensions and bring an immediate end to the violence."

The statement came as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, speaking Monday at a Tel Aviv conference organized by the Institute for National Security Studies, accused Israel of having "two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank-one for Jews and one for Palestinians."
It's a highly contested and complicated region, one where the entanglement of history, religion and politics causes most students to shy away from learning more about it. But University of Central Florida freshman Jared Dipsiner isn't daunted by the challenge. He's even taken his interest in the Middle East a step further, making it his responsibility to relay the hard facts to both local and distant communities.

"I feel like the Middle East is, in [some] people's minds, a primitive and barbaric area, but in reality, it's not at all," Dipsiner said. "I want to change people's viewpoint on it."

The 18-year-old real estate and marketing major is the founder of Middle Eastern News, which includes a website, Twitter account and video segments.

Dipsiner said he became intrigued with the Middle East after participating in the Bob Malkin Young Ambassadors Teen Leadership Program, made available to Jewish high schoolers by the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee. His two-week trip to Israel in June 2014 laid the groundwork for Middle Eastern News.

When Dipsiner arrived with his group, they found a nation enmeshed in prayer. Their plane landed in Tel Aviv the day after Hamas members kidnapped three Israeli youths: Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach.

"Living in the United States, most people never experience any sort of hostile environment where their safety could very well be at risk," Dipsiner said.

Amidst the tension and uncertainty, the students learned about the political and economic aspects of the region. Dipsiner said he became more familiar with how Middle Eastern countries work together, or in some cases, how they don't.

After more than two weeks of agonizing searches, security forces discovered the teenagers' bodies in the West Bank and within a week, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge.

By this point, Dipsiner had returned to his home in Sarasota, Fla. He said leaving Israel made him reflect more upon his experience, prompting him to research Middle Eastern history and read more into the daily news.

Dipsiner said he saw the Middle East as a land of beauty, not devastation and ruin. In an effort to show people the whole picture, void of biased or slanted views, he launched his website. Nearly six months later, he created a Middle Eastern News Twitter account, which has attracted over 450 followers from 17 countries.

"Many of my followers aren't from my local area, which I actually like," Dipsiner said. "I think it's great that I'm reaching out to people across the world and not just where I live."

Three months ago, Dipsiner expanded his multimedia project to include a video segment. He's interviewed over 20 students on the UCF campus, providing them with factual information about topics ranging from the Syrian refugee crisis to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Dipsiner then asked his interviewees to share their personal thoughts on camera.

"I didn't have as much user interaction as I wanted, and that's actually why I started the videos," Dipsiner said. "I feel like if I incorporate more people that are in the local area, it just might spring some sort of conversation."

With hopes of reaching a wider audience, Dipsiner recently accepted help from Andrew Max, the Israel engagement coordinator for Central Florida Hillel, a center for Jewish life at UCF.

"What's great about Jared is that his passion leads to action," Max said. "[Middle Eastern News] didn't exist before he got here. Most of the time, you see someone get groomed into this kind of role."

In addition to manning the camera during student interviews, Max meets with Dipsiner twice a week to brainstorm ideas, frame interview questions and discuss logistics.

"Hillel is just here to offer its support," Max said. "This is Jared's project. I'm never telling him what to do. I'm just helping him polish his content."

Even though Middle Eastern News is steadily growing, Max acknowledges that there's still a great deal of work to be done.

"Right now, it's not a perfect project," Max said. "We don't have a grand month-to-month or year-to-year vision of what we're trying to accomplish, but that'll come. Jared's working really hard to make sure that we get there."

Both Max and Dipsiner are looking for a higher degree of student involvement in Middle Eastern News this semester, including people who will help from behind the scenes.

Dima Alshaibi (l) and Heebah Ahmed answer Jared Dipsiner's questions about the Islamic state for one of his videos as part of his Middle Eastern News.

With the introduction of the video segment, Max asked freshman and film major Jesse Slomowitz if he would be interested in assisting with the editing process. He accepted the position.

"Jared is giving people the building blocks to go and form their own opinions," Slomowitz said. "Hopefully it'll teach people to hesitate before jumping to one side so quickly, which is what happens a lot these days."

Slomowitz said Dipsiner's dedication to raising awareness is what drives the site. He brings the information to the students, which is half the battle.

And Dipsiner is ready to get back to work. After nearly a month off from school for winter break, the UCF campus is bustling with students once again.

"I want to educate people," Dipsiner said. "A lot of people hear about what's going on and most of the time, they don't really understand how it all fits together. I'm looking to change that."
WASHINGTON (JTA)Members of the Obama administrations national security team will travel to Israel next week to advance talks on a new U.S. defense assistance package to the country.

A U.S. delegation will be traveling to Jerusalem next week for the next round of talks, a senior administration official said Wednesday in an e-mail to JTA, confirming a report that first appeared in Haaretz.

Israel and the United States are negotiating a memorandum of understanding that would extend for another 10 years the current aid package, due to expire in 2018 and which averages $3 billion a year in assistance.

Israel reportedly hopes to increase the annual amount to $5 billion, while Obama administration officials are said to be offering closer to $4 billion. The negotiations come as President Barack Obama has pledged to maintain a robust defense relationship with Israel in the wake of a nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers that Israel had adamantly opposed.

The official said the deal had yet to be finalized.

While additional work remains to be done, we remain focused on concluding a new MOU that will build on the United States historic and enduring commitment to Israels security, provide maximum benefit to both Israel and the United States and serve as the foundation for the bilateral security relationship well through the next decade, the official said.
I am proud of my son, the father of 16-year-old Morad Adais, of the Palestinian village of Dura, declared this week.

What do you suppose was the occasion for this burst of parental pride? What was it that young Morad did which so pleased his father? An impressive report card? Helping with home repairs? Taking care of younger siblings?

No, what Morad did to bring honor to the Adais family was that he broke into the home of a young Israeli Jewish mother of six and brutally stabbed her to death.

Not that the elder Adais is the exception. On the contrary, his response is the rule in Palestinian society.

Just two weeks ago, the official Facebook page of the Fatah movement posted a large photo of another Palestinian parent expressing pride at the deeds of a murderous child. On Jan. 5, Fatah published a photo of the mother of the late Muhammed Shamasneh. She is smiling broadly and making a V sign with her right hand. The caption under the photo reads: How great you are, O mother of the Martyr.

Shamasneh, 22, was a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed three Jews near the Jerusalem central bus station last Oct. 12, and then was shot by the police. Fatah, which is glorifying Shamasneh, is chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, who is also president of the moderate Palestinian Authority (PA).

The website of Palestinian Media Watch (www.palwatch.org) overflows with examples of pro-terrorism statements by parents of Palestinian terrorists.

Advocates of the Palestinian cause are always telling us that ordinary Palestinians are just like ordinary folks everywhere. They say Palestinian moms and dads have the same concerns as moms and dads in America, Israel, and anyplace else.

Then-president Bill Clinton epitomized this attitude when he met with Israeli parents of terror victims on Dec. 15, 1998, and then traveled to Gaza to meet with Palestinian parents of imprisoned terrorists. The president told reporters: If I had met them in reverse order, I would not have known which ones were Israeli and which Palestinian.

Even back then, the president should have been able to tell the difference. The Israeli parents were the ones mourning the deaths of their innocent children. The Palestinian parents were the ones cheering on their children for murdering the Israeli children.

The problem is not just individual Palestinian parents endorsing their childrens terrorism. The problem is that the official Palestinian leadership actively encourages such attitudes. Consider how the PAs Minister of Womens Affairs, Haifa Al-Agha, recently explained the uniqueness of Palestinian women: The Palestinian womens uniqueness differentiates her from the women of the world, as [only] she receives the news of her sons Martyrdom with cries of joy.

Her statement appeared in the official daily newspaper of the moderate PA, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on Nov. 7, 2015. Such declarations appear in the official PA news media every day. They send a very specific message to the Palestinian public; and its clear that the message has been received, loud and clear.

As much as we wish that the Palestinians were moderate, reasonable people who hate violence and terrorism and would live in peace with Israel if they were just given a state of their own, they keep demonstrating, through their words and deeds, exactly the opposite.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
The rulers of the Arab Gulf states are, it seems, increasingly attentive to what Israel has to say about the balance of power in the region. As a rising Shia Iran faces off against a Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia, the core shared interest between Israels democracy and these conservative theocraciescountering Irans bid to become the dominant power and influence in the Islamic worldhas rarely been as apparent.

Hence the interview given by a senior IDF officer to a Saudi weekly, Elaph, which laid out how Israel analyzes the present wretched state of the Middle East. In the Israeli view, there are, the officer said, four powers that have coalesced in the region. The first power centers on Iran and its allies and proxies, such as the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria, Shia rebels in Yemen and Iraq, and most pertinently for Israel, Hezbollah in Lebanon. The second power contains what the officer called moderate states with whom Israel has a common languageEgypt, Jordan, and the Gulf countries. The third power, one that is obviously waning, is represented in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, now vanquished in its Egyptian heartland but still reigning in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Finally, the fourth power is another non-state actor, the combined forces of jihadi barbarism like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Israels goal in this situation is a modest one. As the IDF officer put it, There is a danger that the strife will reach us as well if the instability in the region continues for a long time. Therefore, we need to take advantage of the opportunity and work together with the moderate states to renew quiet in the region.

The key phrase here, it seems to me, is renew quiet. Foremost for the Israelis, that means counteracting Iran and especially its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, and then minimizing the potential for jihadi terrorists to operate on or near Israeli-controlled territory. A broader strategic vision can also be detected here: ultimately, both Israel and the conservative Arab states share the common interests of neutralizing Iran and eliminating the jihadi groups.

The partnership between Israel and these states is already in operation, at the levels of intelligence sharing andnot for the first timecautious exploration of trade relations. That there is a strong military dimension as well to all this is entirely conceivable. And for the time being, it seems that neither side wants to expand or contract on their public ties with each other; Israel has long had embassies in Cairo and Amman, but that doesnt mean therell be an Israeli ambassador in Riyadh anytime soon, much less a film festival or trade expo.

Theres another factor that has accelerated the formation of this undeclared, look-the-other-way alliance: the shift in American Middle East policy under President Barack Obama. Some readers will remember that back in 1991, the first Bush administration pointedly left Israel out of the coalition to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, so as not to antagonize the Gulf states. Now, frustration with Obama has compelled these very same states to recognize that they have an existential interest in cooperating with Israel.

You might say that the president deserves credit for bringing about a situation, in the wake of the nuclear deal with Iran, that has compelled the Gulf states to grasp the reality and permanence of Israel as never before. Still, the visions and prophecies of a Middle Eastern equivalent of the European Union, much indulged during the Oslo Accords years in the late 1990s, are not now in evidence, and thats welcome. For their own reasons, neither Israel nor the Arab states feel obliged to articulate a sense of what their region should look like in the event that the Iranian threat is overcome.

Indeed, theres a case that doing so would be counterproductiveit would impose political pressures upon a discreet yet strategically vital relationship that above all requires, in the parlance of the IDF officer, the moderate states to remain as moderate states. With the reorientation of American policy towards a rapprochement with Tehran, along with Russias active involvement in the Tehran-Damascus axis, Israel is the nearest reliable, not to say formidable, power that these countries can turn to.

In the present Middle Eastern context, then, the realism and discretion that has always underwritten Israeli foreign policy continues to prevail. That realism presumably extends to recognizing that regimes like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain might eventually succumb to their internal instabilities, already exacerbated by the further collapse of the price of oil.

When you consider the alternatives, the regions architecture could be much worse for Israel than it is currently. Long an anomaly as the only open society in the region, the target of Arab military and economic warfare throughout the latter half of the last century, Israel in this century is now a partner in a regional bloc. To be sure, this is a bloc based upon interests, not common values, and is therefore necessarily limited in scope. But in the present storm, and amidst the appalling human suffering generated by the clash of these rival interests in Syria, its the closest thing we have to progress.

Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org & The Tower Magazine, writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is the author of Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism (Edition Critic, 2014).
It was one of those encounters that had happened to me so many times on book tour in America: the car ride back to my hotel from the Jewish Community Center after a few hours of lecturing, answering questions and signing books. Usually, the drivers in these short rides were enthusiastic volunteers who were fans and /or members of the book committee that had invited me in the first place.

This ride was no different. Slim, pretty, with expensive diamond rings, driving the latest hybrid, my driver spoke to me knowledgeably about my books and about her community. She expected to be book committee chairwoman in the coming year, she said proudly. And she was on her way to Israel in the next two weeksher first visitto see Israeli daycare centers for which she had been actively fundraising.

I smiled at her, grateful for the lift, and the enthusiasm. We talked for a few minutes about the security situation in Israel. And I casually remarked that we were really, really lucky that Netanyahu had been reelected and was in charge to handle the situation, rather than some clueless member of the Israeli Left. At least now they arent able to blow up buses the way they were when Peace Now-ers were in power. You know, I and my family were at the Park Hotel in 2002. Abd El-Basset Oudeh drove from Tul Karem into Netanya because the Oslo Accords prevented Israel from putting up sufficient checkpoints. At least now its one man, one knife, that you can see coming.

I said it completely off the cuff, almost as a sigh, not seeing anything at all controversial in such a statement, the truth of which would be clearly obvious to every average Israeli, who have abandoned the Israeli Left in droves.

She was silent for a moment, then shook her head. He [Netanyahu] shouldnt have come to America. He shouldnt have addressed Congress. It polarized American Jews, politicizing the support for Israel, she said emphatically.

I think its been politicized for a long time, I answered drily. Democrats voted for Obama. Republicans didnt.

That seemed to surprise her. So, Israelis dont like Obama?

They hate his guts.

She shrugged. Yes, I can understand that. What do you think happened to him? She seemed honestly bewildered.

Nothing happened to him. Anyone who did the slightest bit of research understood that he had been a member of an anti-Semitic church for twenty-five years; a church that gave an award to Louis Farrakhan. I could have gone on, and on, and on, listing all the anti-Israel aides and advisors Obama had surrounded himself with pre-election, his Muslim roots, but I figured: why bother? Obama, after almost eight years in office in which hed cozied up to Turkeys Erdogan, snubbed Israel in horrendous ways according to her former Ambassador Michael Oren, refused to fight ISIS, pushed through the horrible nuclear accord with Iran that endangered Israels very existence, had pretty much proved on his own merits where he stood. At least to people like me.

She bristled. If Id had any doubts, her reaction put them to rest. She had been one of the 70 percent of American Jews to vote Democrat and elect Obama. Twice.

You know, American Jews vote for the things that are important to them. Those are not always the same things that are important to Israelis.

I looked surreptitiously at my watch, calculating how much more time we would be locked into this conversation. Too long to say nothing. So I ventured mildly: What is important to you?

Well, womens rights, reproductive rights. The environment. And fighting the evangelicals.

I suddenly remembered something my Harvard-educated son recently told me: Many American Jews will blindly follow any agenda created by the Liberal establishment because it makes them feel virtuous and like part of the in-crowd. So, I said unwisely, my temperature rising, let me get this straight. Youre worried about abortions, climate change and being converted to Christianity? I didnt let her answer. And those things are more vital, more important to you, than whether Israels greatest enemy gets an atom bomb to blow the next six million Jews off the face of the earth?

Obama said he got the best deal possible!

And what do you say about those videos of Planned Parenthood selling baby parts?

They were obviously doctored by the Republicans, she almost shouted, no longer a fan.

Just at that moment, the hotel loomed into view. I thanked her for the ride, opening the door and stepping out as swiftly as possible. Before I closed the door, I turned back and looked at her. Please, I begged her. Dont vote for Hillary.

It was the last straw. Shes better than Trump!

I dont think so, I told her with full confidence.

She rolled her eyes. I rolled mine.

And then the door slammed shut, and she disappeared in one direction, and I in another.

This article was reprinted with permission from the author. Visit her website at http://www.naomiragen.com
Malicious campaigns to intimidate Jewish and other pro-Israel students and faculty into silence are occurring on far too many North American college campuses. Driven by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and its many off-campus enablers, the campaigns are loud and they do not care about appearing extreme. They create chaos and feed off the ensuing controversy to gain attention for their anti-Israel accusations. The goal: to create an atmosphere of political conformity based on an assumption of ill-will against Israel and its supporters. Yet the campaigns will not succeed.

Examples of this radicalism and bullying is rife. At University of California (UC), San Diego in October, the keynote speaker at SJPs national conference was convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who was directly involved in a bombing that killed two Israeli college students. In January, the DePaul University SJP chapter actually held a fundraiser for her. At UC Santa Cruz, a Jewish student senator received an email warning him to abstain from a vote on a BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) resolution because, as a leader of the Jewish Student Union, he had a Jewish agenda. At UCLA, a student was questioned about her Jewish identity and its supposed impact on her objectivity if appointed to a student government committee. Initially told she could not serve, she was later admitted after the issue became very public. At the University of Michigan, anti-Israel activists demanded that a Jewish student senator who expressed disagreement with an anti-Israel protest be subjected to an ethics investigation and removed from his senate position. He was exonerated.

Anti-Semitism was evident when City University of New Yorks (CUNY) SJP chapter announced its participation in a national student tuition hike protest, which SJP tried to hijack, a common tactic of anti-Israel activists. The chapters Facebook page blamed CUNYs Zionist administration for raising student fees and reproduce[ing] settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY through Zionist content of education. At one CUNY demonstration, SJP students chanted, Long live the intifada, justifying the horrific violence in the wave of stabbings and shootings of Jews. This chant was also shouted at UC Berkeley, and NYC SJP declared, We must support those fueling the intifada.

A Louis D. Brandeis Center poll from last year shows that 54 percent of Jewish students reported having been subject to or witnessing anti-Semitism on their campus.

For most Jews, the Star of David on Israels flag speaks to their Jewish identities. The attempt to create campus political uniformity is often accompanied by overt anti-Semitism posing as criticism of Israel. Jewish students experience this as an assault on their identities and civil rights.

SJPs more than 100 campus chapters are propelling this hate speech. They sponsor Israeli Apartheid Week, bring to campus virulently anti-Israel speakers, promote resolutions in student governments calling for anti-Israel divestment, and set up die-ins, mock checkpoints, and apartheid wall displays.

This obsessive hostility toward Israel and its supporters often morphs into explicit anti-Jewish hatred.

While SJP would like us to believe that they are a grassroots movement and that their campaigns spring up from campus activism, the truth is that they are supported by off-campus organizations including the fringe Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). JVP and AFSC jointly run a BDS summer camp, and AMP gives campus activism workshops. AMP and Palestine Legal publish guidebooks offering strategy promoting BDS, and AFSC staff drafts ready-made student government divestment resolutions enabling SJP to lobby student governments. All these groups endorse the global BDS campaign against Israel, which opposes its right to exist.

Another anti-free speech tactic is SJPs disruptions of pro-Israel campus programming.

SJP at State University of New York at Binghamton has a policy calling for engaging in non-violent disruption of Zionist events. Further, this policy proscribes contact with Jews by declaring off limits all interaction with every campus Jewish group SJP deems to be pro-Israelfrom Hillel to Chabad to J Street U.

Disruptions of pro-Israel events have become a regular feature around the country, from the University of Texas to Goucher College to the University of Pittsburgh and others. Palestine Legal advises activists on how to avoid prosecution when disrupting.

This extremist strategy is to make Israel appear so radioactive on campus so as to intimidate Israels supporters into silence. By declaring its goal to end the Zionist influence on our university campuses, SJP makes this clear.

Israels campus detractors, however, will fail. The answer to this long-evident attempt to intimidate and muzzle pro-Israel campus voices is to increase already flourishing pro-Israel programming. The response to hateful disruptions will be more pro-Israel events. University administrators will come to realize that they must provide more oversight to ensure that events are not disrupted.

If SJP and its allies refuse to engage civilly with the wide range of pro-Israel campus voices, we are confident most students will gladly do so regardless or in spite of SJPs hate campaign. This is exactly what SJP is afraid of and why the group attempts to intimidate and silence pro-Israel campus voices.

SJP doesnt know it yet, but it will fail.

Roz Rothstein is CEO, and Yitzhak Santis is senior writer and analyst, for the pro-Israel education and advocacy group StandWithUs.
A New York Times review of a book describing what may be the worlds largest refugee camp, near Kenyas border with Somalia, notes that 60 million people have been displaced throughout the world as a result of conflict and other mass misfortunes.

We can paraphrase Stalin: one person forced from home to a condition of poverty and wandering is a tragedy. Sixty million of them is a statistic.

Other headlines are about a million refugees moving from the Middle East to Europe in 2015, another million projected for 2016, with European governments dithering under the pressure of numbers and highly publicized instances of violence. They are pondering humane acceptance, closing borders, increasing the severity of screening, and funneling the flood to some other country.

The city-sized refugee camp in Kenya is a sad story of international politics. The UN budget for supplying the refugees dropped, and when the more prominent case of Syria took the worlds attention, the budget for Somalias refugees dropped further. Then the camp became even more miserable and unsafe.

The better off have longed walled themselves off from others who threaten them. The Chinese wall is a prime tourist landmark in the country that has become the worlds richest in the absolute size of its economy. Israel has one barrier along its border with Egypt in order to keep out African refugees walking across the Sinai, and two others to ward off violent incursions from Gaza and the West Bank. The wall between Jews and Palestinians on the West Bank twists and turns, and doubles back on itself in an effort to protect Israel and Jewish settlements beyond the line that other countries recognize as Israels border. This barrier is not complete, with some sections delayed by court cases about its route, and other sections put off on account of budget constraints, and assessments that further building is not vital.

People create walls not only against foreigners, but against citizen neighbors viewed as dangerous or undesirable.

Some well to do Latin Americans live behind high walls with broken glass spread across the top, an armed guard at the gate, and shanties leaning against the outside of the wall, using it as part of their own flimsy shelter.

The U.S. has gated communities, guards in the entrances of upscale apartment buildings, and private schools meant to assure ones offspring a better chance than available to the less fortunate majority in public schools.

Virtually all developed countries are bothered, to greater or lesser degree, with the prospect of mass migration. Many of them need more workers to do the things that locals choose to avoid, or where low birth rates have produced a shortage of citizens. Welfare provisions, even if far from providing a comfortable life, provide enough to keep many citizens away from work that is dirty, dangerous, or simply unpleasant. Immigration restrictions or aspirations to expel illegals appear on the political agendas of virtually all well-to-do countries.

Some advocate, and others expect a world war against radical Islam, which is seen as a prominent source of displacement and migration. However, walls are cheaper, with effects more predictable than a major war. Moreover, its unclear who is the enemy when all have allies among Muslim countries that are fighting one another, financing or otherwise aiding different sides in a confusing morass of bloodshed that provokes those who can to leave for better places.

While there have been dramatic attacks by Islamic radicals with tens of casualties in European and American locales, the far greater bloodshed comes from Muslims fighting one another.

The migrants keep coming, politicians keep talking about keeping the mass of refugees out of their country, and create refugee camps in old industrial zones or other down-market locales. Australia puts its unwanted refugees on a distant island, with payment made to the nominal sovereign.

An Italian Jewish woman, who is a novelist and professor, takes on Pope Francis and his comments about the wretched of the world that does not, in her view, show enough concern for terror. She contrasts charismatic Muslim extremists and followers who aspire to impose their culture on host societies, with the history of Jewish migrants who aspired only to develop their own potential .

The Jewish flood that moved westward from the 1880s onward was hardly smaller in relative terms than what is now coming out of Syria and Africa. Employers welcomed the Jews cheap labor, but the better neighborhoods and schools excluded or limited those who acquired the resources to move upward. The Jews had their gangsters, pimps, whores, violent enforcers and petty criminals, especially in their first generations of poverty and limited education, but they did not plot attacks with aspirations to remake any western society.

Beginning with Jeremiah and Babylon, and on to the rabbis who wrote during the Roman era, the theme of Jewish leaders has been to comply with the laws of the ruling power.

The classic Talmudic expression, in Aramaic. The law of the kingdom is your law.

Jews world population may never have reached 20 million, while the Muslims currently have a billion. There are prominent elements that promote aggressive Islamic expansion, with many of the moderates dithering as to how, if at all, to oppose others in their tent.

The Jews horror of the Holocaust is somewhere in the shadows that affect the options for dealing with migrating Muslims.

It isnt pleasant having to decide between norms of humanity and security. There is not a clear picture in the fluid discussions about policy in numerous countries, and the decisions applied to individuals.

The easiest and wisest course for an old man is to avoid predictions, and appreciate retirement on the better side of the barricades.

Comments welcome. Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus), Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, irashark@gmail.com.
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The India-France strategic partnership has been deepened by President Francois Hollandes visit to India as chief guest at our Republic Day celebrations, the fifth time that a French leader has been so honoured. His visit has consolidated gains accomplished in Prime Minister Narendra Modis April visit to France and, indeed, expanded them.

Our relations with the United States-led West have been historically marked by differences on crucial strategic issues, sanctions, technology denial and negative policies in our neighbourhood. France, although a member of the western alliance and the technology denial regimes, and careful about adherence to its international commitments, has, nevertheless, always been supple in dealing with India as part of its independent foreign policy.

France has partnered us in defence, space and nuclear areas for decades. Unlike other European countries, Frances refusal to impose bilateral sanctions after our nuclear tests, its initiative to open a strategic dialogue with us as an alternative to a sanctions approach, its support for civilian nuclear cooperation and NSG exemption, its decision to end sale of advanced weaponry to Pakistan, explains why we attach importance to the relationship.

During Hollandes visit, France reaffirmed its support for Indias UNSC permanent membership and earned our appreciation of the important role it played in moving the process to the stage of text-based negotiations. The joint determination expressed to achieve Indias NSG accession in 2016 is new and important.

Modi has said that he decided to invite Hollande as chief guest after the terrorist attacks in Paris last November. The robustly worded separate joint statement on counter terrorism that has been issued meets all our requirements. It recognises the need to urgently disrupt terrorist networks and financing channels, eliminate terrorist safe havens, training infrastructure and cross-border movement of terrorists, besides underlining the need for all countries to effectively deal with terrorism emanating from their territory or territories under their control. It seeks action against all entities, including States, that sponsor, provide support, active or passive, to terrorist groups or harbour them.

Significantly, Modi and Hollande have asked for decisive actions against the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, and, while condemning the terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur, have called on Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators as well as those of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Hollande has commended Indias stabilising role in South Asia, in particular in Afghanistan, where the two sides noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders posed a grave threat to its peace, security and stability. On Pakistan-linked terrorism and on Afghanistan, India and France have found common language. Given that France will raise the terrorism issue in European instances and in the UN with much greater force than before, this should assist us in dealing with our Pakistan problem.

In the area of defence, unsurprisingly, media attention was riveted on whether the big-ticket Rafale contract would be finalised during the visit. In the event, an MoU on the purchase of 36 Rafales was concluded and clarification given that all aspects of the inter-governmental agreement on their acquisition had been concluded, barring the resolution of some financial issues presumably in the next four weeks. The 2006 Agreement on Defence Cooperation will be extended for another 10 years.

Our desire to forge closer strategic ties with France has, however, not got translated into increased defence procurement from France. The space for it has actually shrunk with the US and Israel emerging as significant defence partners and the continuation of our privileged ties with Russia. The 126 Rafale aircraft contract has got reduced to 36. The French lost the contract of light utility helicopters twice despite decades of reliable service that French-origin helicopters like Cheetah and Chetak have provided. The ambitious air defence SR-SAM joint development and production project with transfer of sensitive technology has been largely abandoned after completion of negotiations. The contract for Airbus 330 Refuelling aircraft remains undecided.

A new impetus has been given to nuclear cooperation with both leaders encouraging the conclusion of techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur, with due consideration to cost viability of the project, economic financing from France, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localisation of manufacturing for large and critical components. That a roadmap for starting the implementation of the project in early 2017 has been agreed indicates concrete progress.

In the area of space, the two implementing arrangements for cooperation in definition studies on a future joint thermal infrared earth observation mission are important as night time monitoring capability is involved.

Hollande sees economic opportunities in an India growing at 7% plus at a time when the global economy is in bad shape, Europe is in crisis, Chinas economy is slowing down and the remaining BRICS countries are facing economic trouble. He recognises the esteem India has for France and the growing affinity between the two countries. Both sides have done well to actively build on their common interests and mutually benefit from this joint effort.

Kanwal Sibal is former foreign secretary. The views expressed are personal.
Capital Bhopal is among three cities from Madhya Pradesh to make it to the list of first 20 Smart Cities in India that will be developed with federal assistance to deliver a better quality of life.

The other two cities are Jabalpur and Indore which got a fairly respectable ranks  seventh and 11th respectively. 20 were picked from a list of 97 cities submitted by the states during a competition last year. All the states were asked to give their choices, which were judged on service levels, infrastructure and track record. To qualify, the states and local administrations had to provide smart answers to a template with 43 questions. The smart heads carried city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment), city extension (greenfield development) and a Pan-city initiative. However, Bhopal picked redevelopment head.

Bhopal mayor Alok Sharma expressed confidence that the redevelopment push would change the face of the city, which would involve solid waste management and intelligent streetlighting as part of the smart city project.

He said the total project cost was proposed to be Rs 3437 crore. Out of which Rs 1,000 crore would come from the central and the state governments and the rest would be generated through the PPP mode.

Detailing finer aspects of the project, Sharma said under the re-densification development, the 359-acre land of Shivaji Nagar would be redeveloped with a fund of Rs 3,000 crore and all the government houses in Shivaji Nagar and Tulsi Nagar area would be razed to give way to a vertical reconstruction. He said the area would have modern and affordable high-rises, equipped with tech-based basic infrastructure facilities apart from Wi-Fi.

The development of this area will generate a revenue of Rs 6,000 crore (through the sale of such houses). This will help expedite other development projects in the city, he said, adding that the total redevelopment would be carried out on 28% of the 34% built land in Shivaji Nagar. The highlights of the project would be smart solid waste disposal system, intelligent street lights, centralized BMC control room, tele-medicine and tele-education, skill development centres and trade facilitation centres.

The smart city project proposal contained suggestions from around 1.14 lakh residents.

A new chapter in development has opened for the capital: Municipal commissioner

Tejaswi Naik, commissioner, Bhopal Municipal Corporation, said that with Bhopals selection in the list of Smart Cities, a new chapter in development has opened for the capital. The next 15-20 years are going to be very important for Bhopal as it will help the city become a global brand. To be included in the first list will help us in attracting more investments from multi-national companies and industries. Naik said that by identifying the strengths of the city, we will create opportunities for college students as well. During seminars, we had taken suggestions from them and by working on them, we will try to generate as many as facilities and an avenues for employment for them as possible. For the residents of the city, solid waste management will be performed smartly. The BMC will also develop a centralised control room that will provide smart solutions to the citizens of Bhopal, Naik added.

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Out of 34 financial advisers representing different ministries and departments who held budget discussions, 50% were women, sources said.

Seventeen women officials held discussions with finance secretary RP Watal along with other senior members in his team, according to sources.

In 2012-13, there were just eight women financial advisers, and in 2014-15 there were 11.

Financial advisers, who typically operate as chief finance officers of their ministries, are responsible for overseeing the budget and expenditure issues, and the financial well being of some of the crucial ministries depends on them. The finance secretary holds meetings with these advisers to understand their demands.

In the ordinary household financial phraseology, all efficient expenditure management needs to be prudent and thrifty... And who is more adept at prudence and thrift than the lady of the house, a senior official noted, adding that even Watal in one of his meetings took note of this fact.

Some of the crucial ministries such as human resources development, home affairs, health and family welfare, urban development, rural development and panchayati raj, telecom, civil aviation and steel among others were represented by women financial advisers.

This is part of the strategy of the current Narendra Modi government and the focus is on pushing more women into well-developed responsible roles, the way it should happen in any matured economy, the official said.

The government is also trying to boost entrepreneurship among women, and as part of the Stand Up India programme, banks have been advised to ensure that each of their branch are able to offer at least one loan to a woman entrepreneur and one to a Dalit or someone who comes under the scheduled caste or tribe. (SC/ST)

If each bank branch provides loans to Dalits, women, and tribals, then in no time, we will have at least 1, 25,000 start ups by women and Dalits, Modi had said.

Meanwhile, the government this year is expected to increase its focus on the social sectors and spruce up its spending for the rural population, especially in the context of two consecutive droughts.

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Rashtrapati Bhavan has many remarkable works of art. Of them one is astonishing. This is a large painting by Polish artist Feliks Topolski.

Its subject is Mahatma Gandhi. No big deal in that! There are countless portraits of that man, some of them being famous such as Jamini Roys seated Gandhi and Nandalal Boses strident pilgrim in Noakhali.

So, what makes Topolskis painting astonishing? This, that it portrays dramatically and magnetically Gandhis assassination by a man holding a smoking gun. A depiction of Gandhis assassination by a celebrated artist has to be of interest. But how does that make it astonishing?

The work is astonishing because Topolski painted it before the assassination. Before?

That is right, and that is what makes the work astonishing. In a stroke of prescience, he painted a possible future assassination of Gandhi well before January 30, 1948. The work, anticipating the event in startling detail, is, in a sense, figurative. There he is, Gandhi, looking all of his 79 years, in fact, more. It is almost as if he has suddenly aged to become something like 89, slumping, with a gnarled right hand raised in an ambiguous gesture that could suggest surprise, forgiveness, an appeal. The assassin too is portrayed with startling clarity, to the front of the stricken figure, facing us.

But the work is important for more than its anticipative, prescient theme. Its saying something that is barely audible, but is impossible to ignore. The dying man is doing something as life ebbs out of him. He is speaking and his raised hand is also part of the message that is being conveyed.

Is Rama on his mind in the painting? I am certain he is.

Watch | Nation pays homage to Mahatma Gandhi on 68th death anniversary





Gandhi became, as Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay has said, an ichhamarani, meeting the end he desired for himself in the ideal that Tulsidas describes in chaupai 10 of the Kishkindhakanda of Sriramacharitamanas: Janma janma muni jatanu karahin / anta Rama kahi avat nahin  sages strive from birth to birth, yet in dying they fail to say Rama. And despite his assassins contesting in court the belief that Gandhi invoked Rama as he fell, that invocation will be immortally linked with Gandhis last moments.

But Rama apart, there has to have been something like the last full sentence spoken by Gandhi. And it has been recorded by Pyarelal as having been spoken something like two minutes before he was shot without any knowledge of imminent death. Referring to his delayed arrival at the prayer ground that evening, Gandhi said in Gujarati to Abha Gandhi and Manu Gandhi, I hate being late. This very ordinary comment, a workaday remark, has no significance beyond its contextual salience. But such is the mystique of men like Gandhi that it has been raised to great metaphorical height by Lanza del Vasto, the Italian philosopher. Vasto imagines Gandhi looking his assassin in the eye and saying, Brother, you are late.

Metaphors are untruths that seek to convey a truth. And so Gandhi telling Godse, in this imaginary line, that he, the assassin, or his act, the assassination, was late in coming is both a fantasy and a verity. Gandhi had done everything in his power to stem the blood-tide of Indias Partition but he could not avert it, could not prevent butchery, rape, abduction, dispossession. He had said words to the effect of Partition over my dead body. Partition had happened and he was not dead. Not for five and a half months after the division. He to be washed into that river of defeat. And on 30 January, 1948, he was drowning but he was late, according to his own time, his own chain-watch, dangling famously and now reproachfully, at his waist.

Different eyes read different meanings into works of ideational art. His up-raised hand in the painting, and his tremulous forefinger can indicate a different thing to each beholder. To me they seem to say Hold it! Dont proclaim me an ichhamaraniI am not going with any sense of fulfilmentI am lateI have missed the boatDont miss yoursBut perhaps that is what was meant to happenthis young man who has just shot me His violence is only a sign of the violence everywhere around usHatred.SpiteIntoleranceHindu and MuslimIndia and PakistanThis way it will never endthis conflictNow it is up to you to change thingsto stop this intolerance in thought and word and deed...Dont you miss the boatdont you be late

That finger addresses us. The assassins smoking gun addresses us too.

Topolski gives us the choice between the signalling hand and the smoking gun.

And then the master artist offers us two extraordinary redemptions.

The first is from the hand, firm, young, confident, rising to hold the dying mans hand as it is about to come down. It says See, Bapu, I am not lateI am right here

The second is another figure, above the prone figures right, which is unquestionably the Mahatma in an after-life, stronger and younger than his 79 years, perhaps, at a 69, moving out of the mortal frame, haloed, and confident that he has been heard, heeded.

Today, on the anniversary of that day, we can and must do better than lament the tragedy of that assassination, tragedy that it was, the greatest that has visited Independent India. We must see the smoking gun for what it is: A sputtering tube of insanity. And we must see the brave and strong hand that has been raised to hold Gandhis.

The hand raised by civil society to warn and check intolerance has without doubt slowed its spread. But the polarisation of our people, which is the psychological co-efficient of Partition, remains high on the divisive agenda. And terror, in all its gruesome versatility, is delighted by the polarisation. The two  fundamentalist terror and fundamentalist intolerance  fulfil each other.

Festivals used to be communal flashpoints. Our collective good sense has made riots over festivals rare. But elections, democracys great festival, load the communal gun. Bihar grabbed it, ejected the cartridges from its muzzle. But we cannot be too vigilant, we cannot be complacent. The steaming mouth is only at one remove from the smoking gun.

The unnamed hand that Topolski shows ready to clasp Gandhis is now supporting more than one mans dream for India. It is supporting India.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is distinguished professor in history and politics, Ashoka University. The views expressed are personal.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is distinguished professor in history and politics, Ashoka University. The views expressed are personal.

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Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from west Delhis Vikaspuri constituency Mahendra Yadav has been arrested by the Delhi Police in a case of rioting, damaging public property and stopping public servants from performing duties.

Yadav was arrested on Friday afternoon along with his supporter, identified as Rohan Pandit, for allegedly obstructing traffic on main Nihal Vihar-Najafgarh road while protesting against the rape of a 3-year-old girl. One protester was arrested and a juvenile apprehended from the protest site on Thursday itself, the police said.

Minutes after Yadavs arrest, senior AAP leaders took to Twitter to slam Delhi Police for their action against the MLA. It is now a crime in Delhi to protest against the rape of a minor when the Police refuses to register an FIR against rape accused (Sic), tweeted a Delhi government spokesperson.

The police allege that Yadav is responsible for inciting violence among the already angered crowd eventually turning the situation into a full-blown riot.

Senior Delhi police officers blamed the AAP leaders and supporters of allegedly politicising the rape case by spreading rumors that the local police had not been registering any case, even as an FIR in connection with the rape was already registered and the accused was arrested by the Nihal Vihar police. Also, medical attention and counseling was provided to the rape survivor who is currently recuperating at Sanjay Gandhi Memorial hospital.

A senior police officer said that Swati Maliwal, chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), too tried to gain some political mileage by visiting the rape survivor and meeting her family at the hospital on Thursday.

Deependra Pathak, joint commissioner of police (southwestern range), said that even as all necessary actions were taken in the rape case, scores of protesters led by AAPs Vikaspuri MLA gathered in Nihal Vihar area and began protesting against the Delhi Police.

Not only did they blocked the traffic, the protesters also damaged some public vehicles and manhandled with the police personnel on duty, preventing them from performing duties. An adult protester and a juvenile were apprehended from the protest spot while the entire protests were videographed by our policemen, said Pathak.

A case under sections 147, 148 (rioting), 186 (Obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 353 (Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) of IPC and section 3 of the prevention of damage to public property act, 1984, was registered at the Nihal Vihar police station, he said . The arrested persons will be produced before a city court and their police remand will be sought.

This is the sixth arrest of an AAP MLA by the Delhi Police. In November 2015, AAPs MLA Akhilesh Tripathi was held in a 2013 case of rioting and criminal intimidation and sent to judicial custody for two days. Surinder Singh, AAPs MLA from Delhi Cantonment, was arrested last August for allegedly assaulting an NDMC employee. He was granted bail later. Former Delhi law minister Jitendra Singh Tomar was held in a fake educational degree case in June last year and Kondli legislator Manoj Kumar was apprehended in July in connection with a land fraud case. AAP MLA Somnath Bharti was arrested in September last year after he surrendered in connection with the attempt to murder and domestic violence case filed by his wife.
More than 200 Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) workers on Friday morning gheraoed Delhis Transport and Rural Development Minister Gopal Rai residence-cum-office in northeast Delhis Babarpur and dumped garbage as their strike entered the third day. The protest outside Rais residence came a day after scores of agitated sanitation workers dumped garbage outside deputy CM Manish Sidodias office in Mayur Vihar, demanding immediate release of funds for their salaries.

While the protests outside the transport ministers residence were on, scores of municipal workers led demonstration at various areas in east Delhi, west Delhi and south Delhi, causing traffic jams during the morning peak hours, causing inconvenience to office-goers, other commuters and residents.

A major obstruction in traffic was reported from east Delhis Laxmi Nagar area where municipal employees dumped a pile of garbage on the main Laxmi Nagar-Mother Dairy traffic intersection and shouted slogans against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and accused Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and other top ministers for not releasing funds for their salaries.

The protesters also burnt Kejriwals effigy and claimed that their protests will continue till the Kejriwal-led Delhi government releases pay the money to municipal workers. Traffic movement, however, was normal in the carriageway from Laxmi Nagat T-point towards ITO.

Similar protests were reported from Shastri Park, Narela, Vasant Kunj and several areas in west Delhi. Over 100 municipal sanitation workers gathered at Shastri Park traffic signal and dumped garbage on the main road. They sat on the main road and blocked traffic for several minutes, causing a bumper-to-bumper traffic on Seelampur-ISBT Kashmere gate route. Similar traffic obstructions were created by the protesters at Vasant Kunj traffic signal due to which the volume of traffic was high from Vasant Kunj towards Mahipalpur.

The workers had on Wednesday carried out massive protests outside Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwals house and Jantar Mantar. The municipal employees had called for a complete municipal shut down on Wednesday due to non-payment of salaries for over three months, bringing services like sanitation, primary health and primary education to a halt.

We have not received our salaries for the past three months and the government is playing a blame game. We will make sure that our plight reaches them even if it is in the form of garbage dumping, Sanjay Gehlot, president of Mazdoor Vikas Samyukta Morcha, said.

The protesters had given the Delhi government and the municipal corporation time till Friday to release their salaries, before they begin dumping garbage onto streets. The municipal corporations have a total employee strength of 1.3 lakh, including teachers, paramedical and administrative staff, engineers and sanitation workers, all of whom are on strike.
The Dr Shakuntala Misra National Rehabilitation University (DSMRU) in Lucknow will start an inclusive school where disabled children will study with other students in a barrier-free environment in the new academic session.

DSMRU will become the only university in the Uttar Pradesh to have such a school, which will start from July 2016, to accept children with special needs from class 6 to 12. Students can later seek admission in the varsity for higher studies.

Disabled and normal students, after passing class 5 examination elsewhere, may seek admission in our special school and study from class 6 to 12. It will be a fully residential intermediate college where disabled children will study, stay in the hostel and eat at the mess, completely free of cost. It will be a unique experiment. No university in the state has done anything like this before, Nishith Rai, vice-chancellor of DSMRU, said.

Rai said it has been observed that children with special needs perform better if they studied in inclusive schools.

They have extraordinary talents that make up for their physical disabilities. We will love to hold hands of these special children at an early stage of their lives, to help them scale newer heights as they grow under the watchful eyes of teachers who cater to their needs, he said.

The university is also all set to establish its Braille press so that visually-impaired children can access the syllabus.

Subject matter and notes will be published in Braille, AP Tewari, academic advisor to the VC and the university spokesperson, told HT.

It will also start a distance learning BEd education programme in Braille. The new academic session will also have a BTech programme, faculty of engineering and technology, for differently-abled students. A centre for mass communication and journalism will also be started.

We want to impart education in different ways - on campus, through distance learning and through affiliation to other colleges. The varsity has an affiliation with five colleges: two in Allahabad, and one each in Mathura, Amethi and Kanpur, Rai said.

DSMRU, the first university of its kind that provides accessible and higher education to differently-abled students, was established by the Viklang Kalyaan Vibhaag of the UP government. It came up through an ordinance on August 29, 2008.

Read more: 25 lakh children with special needs admitted in schools

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After the last two annual Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) conducted for MBA aspirants were marked by delays and errors, students are worried about a repeat this year. The concern has grown because the circulars informing students about the test that will be held in March are yet to reach students.

These circulars are usually out by January first week but last year the circulars were out only in February. Looking at the number of errors that cropped up in the test last year, we are worried something similar will happen this year too, said Jayant Mahale, one of the candidates. He added that most MH-CET candidates have been calling the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) for the past two weeks for information, but to no avail.

Last year, the test was conducted online on two days in four slots and applicants from every slot had a list of complaints and there were demands for a re-test. Only a few of the 57,000-odd applicants had no complaints while everybody else faced problems. Be it unprepared personnel at exam centers or technical glitches, many of us scored low because of the errors, said another candidate on condition of anonymity.

The DTE had received complaints from candidates and many also took to social networking websites to make their complaints public. Candidates were also surprised with some of the questions asked under the logic section of the test. Questions like Choose odd man out between (a)Apple (b)Pear (c)Orange and (d)Litchi left students questioning the mindset of the paper setters.

DTE director S K Mahajan told HT that the circulars will be out within the next ten days. By end of next week or the week after that circulars will be made public. Students will get ample time to register online, he said and added that like last year, candidates will get a week to register online for the examination. Candidates can be assured that the test will be a smooth process this year, he added.

What happened last year

Last year, the MH-CET exams were held on March 14-15 in four different slots and the list of complaints included issues like wrong questions, technical glitches that led to many candidates losing out on 30-45 minutes of the test time, many were unable to tick mark answer boxes as well.

While the DTE canceled retest demands made by students, they put in place a percentile system, so that students from all four slots get equal marks. This process made way for more trouble because even those who had managed to appear for the full paper scored very low marks.

Eventually a PIL was filed at the Bombay high court, but to no avail as retest as well as reevaluation requests were squashed.

Read more: From 2016, Maharashtra will use CET for engineering admissions

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The Delhi government on Thursday defended before the high court its decision to scrap the management quota in nursery admission, stating that private unaided schools did not have absolute autonomy.

It submitted that by way of the notification, it did not prescribe any criteria but had only asked the private schools to adopt criteria which were fair, just and reasonable.

The government said that while private unaided schools had their autonomy, if they misuse it, the state will step in.

The HC was hearing pleas of two associations representing private unaided schools, which have challenged the AAPs January 6 order scrapping 62 criteria, including management quota, in nursery admissions.

During the hearing, Justice Manmohan said as per the procedure under law, the January 6 notification should have been issued by the L-G.

Defending its decision, the government said the L-G worked on aid and advice of the council of ministers and in the present case, the decision was taken by the cabinet.

Delhi government will continue its arguments on Friday.

Brief arguments were submitted on behalf of the private unaided schools which said the statute did not provide the government with powers to govern their functioning, especially with regard to admissions. So the same cannot be done by way of notifications.

The private schools said that parents choose them due to the poor condition of government schools.

The vacuum created by government schools and colleges in not providing top-class education has been filled by the private schools, they said.

The governments January 6 notification has been challenged by Action Committee Unaided Recognised Private Schools and Forum for Promotion of Quality Education for All.

Read more: Nursery admission norms leave many fuming
Shafi Armar, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka suspected to be in the Islamic State-held area in Syria, has emerged as the common link between the terror modules operating in the Gulf and those operating in India.

Three Indians and alleged sympathisers of the Islamic State who were deported from a Gulf country on Thursday and detained by the NIA were also in touch with Shafi Armar, who also uses the alias Yusuf al Hindi, revealed an investigator on the condition of anonymity.

The trio  Sheikh Azhar al Islam Abdul Sattar Sheikh from Jammu and Kashmir, Mohammed Farhan Mohammed Rafiq Shaikh from Mumbra in Mumbai, and Adnan Hussain Mohammed Hussain from Bhatkal  were deported from the United Arab Emirates for allegedly planning to carry out terror strikes in India and abroad, the NIA said on Friday.

The anti-terror agency registered a case against the three and detained them upon their arrival in Delhi. So far, around two dozen Indians have been deported from the Gulf on suspicion of links with the IS.

The three terror suspects were later arrested and will be produced in court on Saturday. The trio wanted to recruit Indians here and abroad for terror strikes, said the investigator.

Read | NIA crackdown reveals arrested Mumbra man is chief of ISIS India wing

Prior to the recent revelation, Shafis name had first appeared as a mentor of a group of 14 suspects called Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind, reportedly working to establish a caliphate in India. The group was busted by the NIA.

Earlier, Shafi had also tried to directly or indirectly stitch together small terror modules in Haridwar (Uttarakhand), Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh) and Malwani in Mumbai, said the investigator.

According to a source, Shafi started off as a member of the Indian Mujahideen and fled from India to Pakistan in early 2009 with other top ranking members of the outfit such as Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, Shahnawaz Alam, Mohammad Sajid and his brother Sultan Armar.

Later, annoyed with the control exerted by the Pakistani spy agency ISI, Shafi and some others formed a splinter group Ansar-ul-Tawhid to fight alongside Taliban in Afghanistan. As the brand of the IS (grew), in June 2014 Shafi and his group moved to Syria, said the investigator.

While his brother Sultan is reported to have been killed in Syria, Shafi has emerged as the chief recruiter for the terror group in India and now also in the Gulf countries.

Read | NIA tracks down IS terror trail in India

Read | NIA arrests 13 suspected ISIS sympathisers for plotting attacks

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Urban waste, poor public transport and lack of reliable electricity are the main issues of contention among 20 cities selected under the Centres smart city project. But only two of them  Pune and Visakhapatnam  will get foreign help in improving infrastructure.

These are the only cities that have been adopted by various countries to have found a place in the top 20 list announced by urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday. France has adopted Pune and the United States the port city of Visakhapatnam.

Read more: Smart cities scheme announced: 20 which made it and those that didnt

The US had also expressed an interest in adopting Prime Minister Narendra Modis parliamentary constituency Varanasi, but not a single city from Uttar Pradesh found a place in the list. France also wanted to adopt Puducherry, which, like a few other shortlisted cities, missed the first tranche.

Apart from France and US, countries such as Germany, China and Sweden had volunteered to adopt Indian cities under the project.

Naidu said some other cities would be covered in the next list to be announced in 2017.

Read more: Govt names 20 cities for smart makeover; Bhubaneswar tops list

Apart from providing money, we will also give consultancy on how to improve urban infrastructure, a French government official had told this correspondent in October.

Most cities selected in the first phase of the project do not have urban infrastructure  public transport, waste disposal, adequate power supply, healthy water supply, broadband connectivity and parking  to match their rising populations.

For instance, Pune has just 500 buses for 37 lakh people while Bhubaneswar has just 125 buses for around nine lakh people.

Read more: Smart cities: Mumbai not on the list, Sena, BJP indulge in blame game

Jaipur can boast of having a good public transport  with 2,350 buses for 66 lakh people  but its waste management, like many other cities, is in shambles.

We will use the money to improve the management of solid waste and water among other things, said Rakesh Sharma, additional commissioner, Jaipur Municipal Corporation.

Read more: Lutyens Delhis on list of 20 for smart city project

In most of the cities like Pune, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Indore, Ludhiana, Kochi and Belagavi (Belgaum), less than half of the municipal solid waste generated is scientifically treated. Plants to treat the generated sewage are still a distant dream.

But the big question that remains is whether the smart city project will change the face of Indian urban landscape. The first leg covers a little over 10% of Indias urban population of 377 million.

(With inputs from state bureaus)
Muslim women staged a protest on Thursday demanding entry into a restricted area of the Haji Ali dargah in Mumbai, days after a group sought rights for female devotees to offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra.

Several activists belonging to Muslim women groups held placards demanding entry for females into the sanctum sanctorum of the historic dargah, which receives hundreds of devotees everyday.

A participant said it was male patriarchy, and not religion, which was imposing restrictions on women.

This is against tenets of Islam. The Constitution has given you equal rights, Islam supports the Constitution, she added.

A Muslim womens rights group is locked in a legal battle with trustees of the Haji Ali dargah, which has barred womens entry into mosques mausoleum.

The Bombay high court is hearing a petition challenging the Haji Ali Trusts decision to ban the entry of women in the sanctum sanctorum of the dargah (grave of a male Muslim saint).

On January 18, the HC said it would wait for the Supreme Courts ruling on entry of women in Sabarimala temple of Kerala before deciding on the plea related to the dargah.

A bench of Justices VM Kanade and Reveti Mohite-Dere had said both matters involved entry of women in religious shrines, and hence they would like to see what view the apex court would take on the issue before deciding on the PIL pending before them. The next HC hearing will take place on February 3.

The protest in Mumbai broke out two days after members of a group, Bhumata Brigade, were prevented by police from entering into Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district to break a 400-year-old tradition banning women from entering its sacred sanctum.

After the high-voltage march to the temple by the Bhumata Brigade volunteers, which was foiled mid-way, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis called for a dialogue between temple authorities and activists to find a way out of the row.

The popular shrine is dedicated to Lord Shani, who personifies the planet Saturn in Hindu belief. Women devotees are not permitted on the chauthara (sacred platform) of the temple according per the centuries-led tradition followed at the shrine.
A Chennai-bound Air India flight crew spotted four mysterious colourful parachutes soon after take-off on Friday morning. This was a third such sighting in a fortnight.

According to the message received by the Mumbai air traffic control (ATC) tower, the Airbus 319 was flying at 6,000 feet and about five nautical miles from Vasai when the cockpit crew spotted the parachutes.

They were yellow, red, green and blue, a senior ATC official, requesting anonymity, said.

About two weeks ago Mumbai Police went on high alert after a Pawan Hans pilot spotted six paragliders close to the Juhu aerodrome.

A few days later an AI flier bound to Mumbai reported a similar sighting. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a probe in the matter. The ATC has informed us about message from the AI crew. We will begin our preliminary investigation, said a senior official.

Read:

Mumbai cops combing city for 6 suspicious paragliders spotted by pilot

One week on, Mumbai Police has no clue about suspicious paragliders

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From according his assent to a spate of ordinances to clearing a decade-plus backlog of mercy petitions, President Pranab Mukherjee has largely acted on the aid and advice of the council of ministers in his 42 months in the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Last year, he decided to make an exception when Gujarats controversial anti-terror bill, Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime (GCTOC) Bill 2015, landed on his table.

The home ministry had recommended that the President grant his assent, but Mukherjee wasnt entirely convinced.

The GCTOC Bill was strikingly similar to the bill that Narendra Modi  then chief minister  had first introduced in the Gujarat assembly in 2003. It was passed but the governor referred the bill to the President.

As a key minister in the Manmohan Singh government, Mukherjee had contributed to the UPA governments decision not to grant the presidential assent. The home ministry made no secret of its concerns at the provisions of the anti-terror bill. It raised one query after the other, right from 2004 when it repealed the Prevention of Terrorism Act enacted by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

In all, according to the Gujarat government, the state was told about the Presidents reservations to grant assent on three occasions: 2004, 2008 and 2009.

In her last communication in June 2009, President Pratibha Patil advised the state to bring its anti-terror law in line with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act that had been made stringent after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. As chief minister, Modi saw the writing on the wall.

Instead, the BJP decided to use the anti-terror bill to build on the perception that the Congress was singling out the Opposition-ruled states and lacked the steely resolve needed to fight terrorism.

Neither Modi nor prominent BJP leaders lost any opportunity to badger the Congress.

I would request the government not to discriminate states. This is not a good thing. Please do not play politics with the security of the people. The Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Act (GUJCOCA) was sent to the Central government, and the government has simply sent it back to the state, senior BJP leader  and now parliamentary minister N Venkaiah Naidu  told the Rajya Sabha during a discussion on the Union budget in 2009.

The Anadiben Patel government revived the bill last year with minor tweaks after Modi moved to Delhis Raisina Hill.

Given how previous Presidents too had concerns about the provisions of the bill, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said he wasnt surprised at the turn of events since it establishes a mindset to brutally curtail civil liberties while ruling in favour of a police state.

He added that some of the provisions reflected the Gujarat model founded upon illegal snooping, detention and police intimidation.
When Narendra Modi visited Varanasi as the prime minister designate on May 17, 2014, residents of the city saw in him a beacon of hope. We will work together to transform Kashi, which is essential to transform India, he announced, evoking a huge round of applause from the crowd.

However, even 21 months after the announcement, the situation here largely remains the same. With its bumpy roads, traffic congestion, age-old drainage system and poor sanitation conditions, it is little wonder that this ancient city -- represented by Prime Minister Modi in the Lok Sabha -- fell way short of finding a place in the list of 20 cities selected for the ambitious Smart City Mission project.

In fact, Varanasi was ranked 96 on the list of 97 cities that competed for inclusion in the first list announced by urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu.

Its such a let-down that Varanasi failed to make it to the list, said Pt Prasad Dixit from Mehmoorganj.

On August 30, 2014, Modi had inked a Kashi-Kyoto partner city agreement with Japanese premier Shinzo Abe -- a deal aimed at developing Varanasi with active help from Japans city of ten thousand shrines. The pact was part of his vision to turn the Prime Ministers constituency into one of the 100 smart cities in the country. Going by the agreement, Kyoto was supposed to provide cooperation in the fields of conservation, modernisation, art, culture and academics.

Read | Smart cities scheme announced: 20 which made it and those that didnt

However, little has been done in that regard until now. The city streets are plagued by open manholes, and road widening projects have met with local resistance. Faced with lack of parking space and few buses, auto-rickshaws and cycle-rickshaws remain the primary mode of transportation for commuters.

Traffic congestion is another problem faced by the public.

At present, the city has 88 community toilets. Though as many as 205 more were supposed to be built with the help of the Japanese International Cooperating Agency, the plan couldnt be carried out due to lack of land. Bio-toilets have been set up in certain areas, but arent being maintained properly.

The drainage system in the old city, developed about 100 years ago, has been unable to keep up with the changing times. Besides this, people in various parts of Varanasi complain of poor and contaminated water supply.

The Kashi-Kyoto agreement had also dwelt on the construction of three solid waste treatment plants outside the city. However, to the administrations credit, construction work on one of these units has already begun.

Suresh Gupta, a resident of Teliabagh, said Modi cannot be blamed for the dismal civic situation in the holy city. The Prime Minister is not responsible for everything. People who think so need to change their mindset. It was Modi who introduced the cleanliness drive. He tried to motivate the people...

Read | Bhubaneshwar tops smart cities list: How the winners were chosen

According to Gupta, Kashi would witness no transformation unless people changed their approach. Bumpy rides are what people have here. Roads are repaired before the visit of the PM, but they return to square one sooner than later, he said, blaming the Nagar Nigam for not maintaining the roads under its jurisdiction.

Traffic jams  which have become a regular feature at Girijaghar intersection, Godaulia, Nai Sadak and Nadesar  are also a major issue that haunts both residents and tourists, said Jagatganj resident Roshan Pandey.

He said local residents also needed to change their mindset on sanitation, and take proactive steps to keep the city clean. When Modi grabbed a spade and started cleaning Assi Ghat on November 8, 2014, several local residents joined him. Some NGOs also came forward to spread awareness on the matter. But people still need to do more. They should start by not dumping polythene and other kinds of waste on the streets, Dixit said.

Despite his disappointment, mayor Ramgopal Mohale believes a lot can be done to rectify the issue. This was a wake-up call to fix the citys infrastructural and sanitation problems, he said, adding: We tried our best to come in the top 20 but in vain. We will look at the reasons that cost Varanasi a position on the list, and ensure that the city tops it next year. Renewed efforts coupled with focused groundwork will certainly get the desired results.

However, Varanasis failure to make the list gave the Opposition a chance to question the Prime Minister. Will PM Modi reveal the reason for Varanasi being kept out of the list of top 20 smart cities? asked Samajwadi Party leader Shatrudra Prakash. If development was the criterion (for Modi being elected as Indias premier), why did the PM fail to ensure the development of his own constituency? The people of Varanasi have received nothing from the Centre in the last 21 months.

Recalling a time when Mohale visited Kyoto to bring hi-tech development to Varanasi, Prakash asked: Will he tell us what happened to his plan, and why his partys government left Varanasi out of the Smart City Project list?

Public suggestions

In October last year, the Varanasi Nagar Nigam had sought suggestions from the public on various issues such as traffic management and sanitation under the Smart City Scheme. Around 20,000 residents offered online suggestions while as many as 1.7 lakh forms were filled. On the basis of these suggestions, a report was prepared and sent to the state urban development department in December  from where it was forwarded to the Union ministry of urban development.

Sources said that while 34% of the suggestions laid emphasis on cleanliness, 28% spoke for proper solid waste management. Quite a few also suggested that the potholed roads in the city be given a complete makeover.

Read

Delhis VIP zone on list of 20 for smart city project

Smart cities: Adopted Pune, Vizag only 2 to benefit from foreign help

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Jailed Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel has written a letter to Gujarat Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki alleging that his party was using the community for its own political gains and if this continues, it wont come to power for another 25 years.

He also warned Solanki that his party would never get back to power in Gujarat, if it does not stop politics in the name of Patel community.

In the letter, written from Surat jail on Thursday and made public by his lawyer on Friday, Hardik wrote, Congress won recent Panchayat polls (in Gujarat) due to our agitation only. I am writing this letter because I have learnt that your party is using Patel community as well as some of our agitation leaders. But, your party has done nothing concrete for us yet.

We will not allow this approach of your party. I request you to stop the politics in the name of our community. Congress is out of power in Gujarat since the last 21 years. If this kind of politics does not stop, you will not come to power for another 25 years, he said.

The quota agitation spearhead also asked Solanki not to be under impression that Patels do not have any other option than voting for Congress.

You might be under the impression that since Patels are unhappy with BJP, we do not have any other choice than to vote for Congress. If you believe so, then it is your mistake. We will find a third option if needed, Hardiks letter said.
Union health minister JP Nadda convened an emergency meeting with his team of medical experts from across the country to discuss the prevention of Zika virus in India, early on Friday morning.

Top researchers from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), including director of Pune-based National Institute of Virology that is screening samples for Zika virus, were also present at the meeting. So far, none of the test samples screened for the virus have returned positive, though the sample group is small.

Read more: Along came a virus: Heres why people are panicking about Zika

The meeting was called after the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday announced it would be holding an emergency meeting next week to decide whether the virus outbreak should be declared an international health emergency or not, given its explosive spread in parts of the world.

Read more: India prepares for Zika virus, health ministry readies testing kits

The meeting is on Zika virus and the preparations that we need to make to prevent the outbreak in India. The number of childbirths that take place every day in India is huge, and since Zika virus is affecting foetuses, it is going to be disastrous for us, said a senior health ministry official.

Read more: Countries with Aedes mosquito, including India, on Zika virus radar

Citing their success in containing Ebola at entry points across the country, the official added the same has been managed with Zika so far. We will be working closely with the aviation and external affairs ministry to check movement of passengers from Zika-affected countries, the official said.

Indias bigger concern is the carrier for Zika virus  the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. The insect is also a carrier for dengue virus that claims hundreds of lives and infects thousands across the country every year. The symptoms of Zika are also the same as for dengue infection  fever, head and body ache, nausea and so on.

The virus was first detected in 1947, and for decades caused mild infections only. However, it has worried experts this time given its adverse congenital affects on foetuses, primarily congenital deformities.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, the Zika virus is now prevalent in more than 20 countries, mostly Central and South America, and babies born to infected mothers have microcephaly, wherein the size of the head is abnormally small causing developmental issues in children.

Meanwhile, Indian Medical Association (IMA) has issued an advisory, asking pregnant women to avoid traveling to countries at risk of mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission. Countries included in the list issued by the Centre for Disease Control are:

 The 14 countries and territories earlier identified in Central and South America and the Caribbean are Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

 Six countries in the Caribbean and South America: Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, and Guyana and the two Cape Verde and Samoa. These break the geographic pattern. Cape Verde is off the coast of Africa while Samoa is in Polynesia.

Watch | All you need to know about the Zika virus

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India and Pakistan have extended a nearly four-decade-old agreement on trans-border train services for three years, the external affairs ministry said on Friday.

The agreement between the two governments on rail communication was extended by mutual consent through diplomatic channels from January 19, 2016 to January 18, 2019, a statement said.

The pact, signed on June 28, 1976, enables trans-border train services for both freight and passenger traffic.

The two sides currently have only two trans-border trains. The Samjhauta Express operates on the Delhi-Lahore route via the Attari-Wagah border crossing and carries both passengers and freight.

The Thar Express links Jodhpur and Karachi via the Munabao-Khokhrapar border crossing and carries only passengers.

The Munabao-Khokhrapar link was destroyed during the 1965 war between the two countries. The service was revived after 41 years in February 2006.

The Samjhauta Express runs twice a week. Nearly 60 people, most of Pakistanis, were killed when the train was bombed in February 2007.
The government swung into action on Friday against the threat posed by Zika and set up a technical committee to formulate guidelines for pregnant women travelling to or from parts of the world affected by the virus.

No Zika case has been reported in the country so far and the governments strategy is meant to prevent the virus being carried from abroad as was done to counter Ebola earlier. All major airports will be asked to put up signboards asking passengers coming from the affected countries in Central as well as South America and the Caribbean to report to a doctor if they experience symptoms such as fever, rashes, conjunctivitis, nausea, headache, bodyache, etc.

The transmission of the virus mostly takes place when the infected person has a fever. India needs to focus on stopping the entry of the virus in the country because of its enormous childbirth rate as Zika affects foetuses the most.

Read | Along came a virus: Heres why people are panicking about Zika

The technical committee should be ready with the guidelines by Saturday, and the airports will have signboards up by next week. We are focusing on pregnant women as the virus seems to be affecting babies inside the womb, Dr Jagdish Prasad, director general health services, told HT.

Union health minister JP Nadda, who convened a high-level emergency meeting with his team of medical experts on Friday morning, also constituted a joint monitoring committee that will review the situation arising out of the spread of Zika in other countries on a weekly basis and advise on steps to be taken.

Read | Not just mosquitoes: 2 cases hint at sexual transmission of Zika

The countrys top medical research body, the Indian Council of Medical Research, has been asked to strengthen six more laboratories to screen samples.

Currently, they have one lab in the National Institute of Virology, and we have asked them to keep six more ready as numbers in India are huge and one lab will not be enough if there is an emergency situation, Dr Prasad said.

The Pune-based National Institute of Virology is already screening samples for Zika virus. So far, none of the samples screened has returned positive.

The high-level meeting was called after the World Health Organization on Thursday announced it would hold an emergency meeting next week to decide whether the virus outbreak should be declared an international health emergency, given that its spreading explosively in parts of the world.

We are focusing on especially strengthening the surveillance system, Nadda said.

Read | Countries with Aedes mosquito, including India, on Zika virus radar

The Aedes Aegypti mosquito which transmits dengue also transmits Zika. Nadda emphasised that there will be increased focus on prevention to control the spread of the Aedes mosquito that breeds in clean water.

The virus was first detected in 1947, and for decades caused only mild infections. However, it has worried experts this time as it is suspected to be causing birth defects in babies.

Once it enters the community then it will be difficult to contain; the best way is to prevent it from coming in like we did in the case of Ebola, said a senior doctor from the department of microbiology, AIIMS.

Watch | All you need to know about the Zika virus

<span itemprop="name" content="Watch | All you need to know about the Zika virus"></span> <span itemprop="description" content="The Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil, has been predicted by the World Health Organization to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika and an estimated 80 percent of people with the virus show no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected."></span> <span itemprop="duration" content="53"></span> <span itemprop="thumbnail" content="http://cfvod.kaltura.com/p/1679921/sp/167992100/thumbnail/entry_id/0_p88s5r5y/version/100002/acv/152"></span> <span itemprop="width" content="640"></span> <span itemprop="height" content="362"></span>

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A Kolkata sessions court on Thursday found six of the eight accused men guilty of gangraping and murdering a 20-year-old women at Kamduni village in West Bengals North 24 Parganas district in 2013. The court is likely to pronounce the quantum of punishment on Friday.

The 20-year-old girl was attacked while she was returning home from college on June 7, 2013. The second-year BA student was forcibly taken inside a factory where she was gangraped and then brutally murdered, sparking widespread outrage across the country.

Her disfigured body, with injury marks all over, was discovered the next morning in a field behind the factory.

The incident had raised a storm in the state, with the villagers, many of them friends and relatives of the victim, floating a platform Kamduni Pratibadi Mancha and seeking speedy justice and capital punishment to the guilty.

Kamduni villagers, infuriated with the brutality, caught hold of one of the key accused, Ansar Ali, and handed him over to the police. Eight more men were arrested by the police subsequently.

They knocked on the doors of top political and constitutional authorities including the president, demanding that the trial be expedited.

Sensing the sensitivity of the case, the Mamata Banerjee government handed it over to the state polices Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which named nine people in its charge sheet.

However, controversies erupted one after another.

There was much hue and cry when two village girls -- Tumpa Koyal and Moushumi Koyal -- the face of the Kamduni protests -- were angrily labeled CPI-M people by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who had to face a demonstration despite an unannounced visit to the victims ramshackle home days after the incident.

Police also drew flak after the victims uncle, a key witness in the case, succumbed to his injuries following a scuffle with security personnel during one of the protests in September 2013.
RJD chief Lalu Prasad has a tough choice to make: should he nominate his wife Rabri Devi or his daughter Misa Bharti as the partys Rajya Sabha candidate?

The first task for the leaders of Bihars grand alliance is to decide on five seats to Rajya Sabha which will get vacant from Bihar following the approaching retirement of Janata Dal (United) MPs: Sharad Yadav, KC Tyagi, Ghulam Rasool Balyavi, RCP Singh and Pawan Verma.

Prasads political legacy seems better served by a decision to draft his daughter Misa to Rajya Sabha. But this would not fulfill his long cherished aim to retrieve a bungalow that he has had to vacate following his conviction in the fodder scam case. But if Rabri comes to Rajya Sabha, the former chief minister can possibly get a spacious bungalow allotted in her name, an RJD insider said.

Since Rabri is a former chief minister, she is entitled to the bigger bungalow that her husband Lalu Prasad has gotten so used to. Of course, Lalu cannot hope to go back to the 25, Tughlak Road bungalow that was his home in Delhi for 13 years before the NDA government forced him out in January last year. Lok Sabha deputy speaker M Thambi Durai moved into this bungalow soon after.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party claims to have the strength to win one seat, the JD(U) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal want a share of two each and the Congress is pressing for one. Apparently, there are problems there.

There is, however, heartburn on the issue among other senior RJD leaders who are also looking to be rehabilitated. State party president Ramchandra Purbe and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh are said to be among the other claimants.

Of the five JD(U) MPs who are completing their terms, Sharad Yadav and possibly Tyagi are likely to be renominated. RCP Singh is being considered for nomination to the Bihar legislative council and Verma can be given a position of the chairperson of some board or commission. Balyavi may have to be left out in the cold, at least for the moment.

Senior Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed is also hopeful of a Rajya Sabha membership on his partys quota.
Political uncertainty in Jammu and Kashmir is set to continue until the weekend when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will hold an internal meeting to discuss government formation while ally BJP waits for her to break the deadlock.

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti would meet party leaders, including legislators, at her Fairview home to decide on continuing the alliance with the BJP.

The venue for Sundays meeting, three weeks after the death of her father, chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, assumes significance too. The family vacated the chief ministers official residence in winter capital Jammu last week, in a move seen to mount pressure on the BJP to give in to the PDPs so-called demands for changes in the terms of agreement.

The BJP was baffled with the delay but remained unwilling to give Mehbooba the advantage after receiving feelers that she wanted to be reassured about several tricky issues, such as abrogation of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or Afspa from two districts, talks with Kashmiri separatists and withdrawal of troops occupying non-military property.

Besides, she wanted Centre-owned projects, including two NHPC power grids, to be transferred to the state government.

Read | J-K impasse: PDP toughens stand, wants concrete assurances from BJP

The BJP was foxed with the PDPs list as Mehbooba has yet to get herself elected as leader of her legislature party, a necessary step to become chief minister.

We are not considering any Plan B. We expect things to become clear after the Sunday meeting between Mehbooba and her legislators, a party leader said.

The party has been reluctant so far to expand the ambit of the alliance agenda it had with Sayeed.

The common minimum programme for governance is for six years. We could complete just eight months before Sayeed died. You need to have a government in place to execute the CMP. We dont know why she is causing this delay, a senior BJP functionary in Delhi said.

PDP sources confirmed that Mehbooba would meet party workers on Sunday and then take a call.

She was keen that the BJP acceded to her demands before the parties shared power again in the state. This time, Mehboobaji is herself discussing government formation with the BJP. Nobody from the party knows the details, said a senior PDP leader, not wishing to be named.

PDP sources said she has asked party workers to start a membership drive, hinting at the eventuality of fresh elections if the alliance failed. This could be a possibility because many PDP leaders, including Srinagar MP Tariq Hamid Karra, were not happy with her father forging an alliance with the BJP.

Nirmal Singh, a state BJP leader who was deputy chief minister in Sayeeds cabinet, refused to speculate on the PDPs reason(s) for the delay.

The PDP is yet to give any indication of government formation. We are yet to hear from them. They have not spoken to us on this. The call about establishing a democratically elected government has to be taken by the PDP as it is the largest party or this has to be done by the states governor, he said.

Read | BJP cold to PDP feelers on Afspa, will wait for Mehboobas Sunday meet
India wants Pakistan to at least register a police report and name the persons and group involved in the Pathankot airbase attack almost a month ago. New Delhi has used back channels to supply Islamabad with evidence and the identities of attackers and conspirators but the pace and urgency of the response on the Pakistan side is growing into a major stumbling block for resumption of the bilateral dialogue.

Top government sources said that there is evidence to indicate that Pakistan enforcement agencies questioned Jaish-e-Mohhamad chief Maulana Masood Azhar for a couple of hours on the Pathankot attack and are still keeping a watch over the radical Islamist. Intelligence reports also indicate that some religious seminaries in southern Punjab and Sialkot have been ostensibly sealed with another 20 persons rounded up and questioned by the police for investigation.

Pakistan has neither shared any part of its ongoing investigation nor has it named the persons behind the attack whose identities were shared by New Delhi.

 Even though the front doors of the seminaries have been sealed, intelligence reports show visual proof of these radical Islamic institutions functioning behind the doors with impunity. We do not know what has come out from interrogation of the 20 detained persons. Not even a zero FIR (which can be registered at any police station on the attack for preliminary investigation) has been registered. How will the Pakistan team come to investigate in India without even registering the case, said a senior government official.

Read | Pakistan seeks concrete evidence: Pathankot going way of 26/11 probe?

Communication intercepts and Pakistan phone numbers shared by India with Islamabad indicate that Pathankot terror group was launched by a senior Jaish operative from Sialkot. The intercepts have also revealed the names of Usman Sarwar of Lahore, Saad Mughal and senior Jaish commander Kashif Jan, both from Karachi and part of the attack.

There is a strong foreboding in the Indian national security establishment that Pakistan will soon ask for a smoking gun from India to start its basic investigations. While New Delhi wants to resume bilateral dialogue after seeing tangible and sincere action by the Nawaz Sharif government against the JeM, there is also recognition of the that these same terrorist groups contribute to the coercive power of the Pakistan state.



Read | ISIs slow probe on Pathankot means Jaish men may be freed

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A top taxman has told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that corruption was a big challenge in the customs & excise department, prompting the PM to direct senior civil servants to come down heavily on officers who step out of line, HT has learnt.

Modi told Central Board of Customs and Excise (CBEC) chairman Najib Shah and top civil servants at a meeting on Wednesday that they should take strict action against officers who do not redress public grievances or are corrupt. The action, the PM said, could include their dismissal.

The meeting was convened to assess the performance of ministries in dealing with public grievances. When Modi noted that the CBEC had quite a few grievances, Shah linked the flood of grievances to instances of corruption within the department.

Modi minced no words.

The PM advised the CBEC  and all departments  to set up a monitoring cell for public grievances at a senior level and take strict action against those who fail to perform.

Complaints of harassment are being received and this continues to be a challenge for the department,revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia told HT.

I personally handled three complaints in last one month which were sent to me by cabinet secretariat and finance ministers office and we took a strict action against those officers, he said.

This isnt the first time that the Prime Minister has sent out a perform or perish message to civil servants.

But government officials said it might not be as easy to sack officers within the existing legal framework that heavily leans in favour of the employees. It could, however, force civil servants to take public grievances lot more seriously than currently.

Besides, it takes far too long. A study by the Central Vigilance Commission last year had revealed that it took an average of eight years to take a disciplinary proceeding against an officer to its logical conclusion.

Several bodies including the Second Administrative Reforms Commission have recommended diluting the protection for employees under the Constitution but there has been no political unanimity on this count.
Two spells of Presidents Rule (PR) in Arunachal Pradesh 36 years apart have a common link  President Pranab Mukherjee.

On Republic Day, Mukherjee gave his assent to PR the Union Cabinet recommended to the frontier state that China claims as its own. It ended the Nabam Tuki-led Congress governments four-year run.

Mukherjee also played a role in Arunachal Pradeshs first brush with PR for 76 days from November 3, 1979.

Mukherjee, then the treasurer of Congress-Indira, was said to have been mastermind of a defection drama that led to the fall of a regional party government headed by Tomo Riba.

It was virtually payback time for Riba, who had become chief minister only six weeks ago by toppling PK Thungons Janata Party government.

Pranabji was definitely in the thick of things at that time. He can be connected to the last PR and the one Arunachal Pradesh is now experiencing, former chief minister Gegong Apang told Hindustan Times from state capital Itanagar on Thursday.

The first PR ended with the installation of Apangs Congress-I government on January 18, 1980. He went on to rule Arunachal Pradesh 19 years at a stretch, adding another 55 months as chief minister from August 3, 2003.

The 66-year-old Apang, now a BJP leader, said there was no alternative to the imposition of PR because of gross financial mismanagement under Tuki.

How could I manage to run the state without overdraft for so long on Rs 27-28 crore from the centre annually? What the state receives today is substantially and proportionately large, and the inability to administer with this money shows the lack of commitment to the people, Apang said.

Meanwhile, Arunachal Pradesh governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa has issued an order for the sealing of the offices of the former chief minister, former ministers, and former parliamentary secretaries as well as their residential offices. He has also asked officials to take into safe custody all government files and documents lying with them.

A Raj Bhavan memorandum further sought imposition of prohibitory order under section 144 of CrPC wherever justified in the public interest while disallowing shutdowns, road blocks and gheraos.

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The telecom secretary Rakesh Garg on Friday was shunted out of the ministry for his inability to manage call drop, delay in rolling out broadband network, Bharat net, and lack of clarity on net neutrality.

The issue of call drop had attracted attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and reference was made twice in his meeting with Garg. Communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was not satisfied with his pace of action on important issues, said a senior official in Sanchar Bhawan that houses the telecom ministry.

Despite repeated assurances by the minister of faster roll out of governments ambitious broadband network project-Bharat Net, Garg was unable to meet the weekly targets, sources said. Despite several attempts Garg could not be reached for comments. He did not respond to the calls at the time of going to print.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday carried out a bureaucratic reshuffle to bring in new officers to head crucial departments such as agriculture, telecom and information technology and moved out others who were unable to match the governments expectations.

A government official suggested the reshuffle, originally necessitated due to some retirements, reflected the governments commitment to closely watch the performance of civil servants too and take corrective steps.

You will also notice that the intention is to post the best man for the job in crucial sectors, even if he or she is not amongst the senior most, the official added.

Read | Perform or perish: Modi government reshuffles top-level bureaucracy

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister told senior officers to act against officers indulging in corruption and those who did not bother to redress public grievances. This action, he added, could include sacking them.

In all, 10 officers were appointed on Friday.

Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer JS Deepak has been appointed as the telecom secretary and replaced Rakesh Garg who will now head the minority affairs department.

Garg, who is two years senior to 1982-batch Deepak, was one of the first few officers to be appointed by the NDA government soon after Modi took charge. Sources said Garg had been asking for a change.

Deepak, who earlier was the IT secretary, will still be reporting to Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad who holds the charge of both the IT and the telecom departments. He shall hand over the reins of the IT department to Aruna Sharma, who is also a 1980 batch officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre.
The Centres ambitious scheme to develop 100 urban centres as smart cities kicked off on Thursday with the government announcing the names of the first batch of 20 cities from amongst the 98 that were chosen in stage one of the scheme through an intra-city competition last August.

Of the 20, nine cities were selected from BJP-ruled states  Gujarat (Surat, Ahmedabad), Rajasthan (Jaipur, Udaipur), Madhya Pradesh (Indore, Bhopal and Jabalpur) and Maharashtra (Solapur, Pune)  while four belonged to Congress-ruled Assam (Guwahati), Kerala (Kochi) and Karnataka (Belgaum and Davangere).

These cities were chosen on the basis of the score that they got on seven indicators, each of which was given different weightage.

Here are the indicators based on which the cities were chosen:

1) Implementation framework which included feasibility and cost effectiveness of the proposals submitted by the cities. It had the highest weightage of 30%.

2) Result orientation was assigned a 20% weightage.

3) Citizen participation, in which extensive consultation with citizens was held while evaluating the city level plans, had a weightage of 16%.

4) For smartness of proposal, a 10% weightage was fixed. While preparing the proposals, cities had to factor in four strategic components: city improvement through retrofitting, city renewal through redevelopment and city extension through Greenfield development. In addition to this, each one of them had to propose a pan-city development by leveraging information technology to improve existing city infrastructure.

5) Strategic plan had a weightage of 10%.

6) Five percent weightage was fixed for vision and goals.

7) Evidence-based city profiling and key performance indicators were given a weightage of 5%.

8) For processes followed each city got a weightage of 4%.

** Bhubaneshwar which made it to the top of the list of 20 cities has proposed to retrofit and redevelop 985 acres centred around the main railway station. They have also proposed an integration of multiple city sub-systems of traffic management and common fare card among others.
The high security terror alert before Republic Day turned four Iranian tourists in Bhubhaneswar into suspected terrorists as local police became alarmed over their odd behaviour and local media added to the terror frenzy.

Odisha police were frenetically tracking the movement of four Iranian nationals, including two women, after one of the men from the group attracted the attention of a policeman at a hotel. When asked to show his identity proof, the man left in a huff, leading to a search operation and increased security around the chief minister.

They were under suspicion because of their strange behaviour while leaving the hotel in Bhubaneswar. But after investigations, it has been clarified that they have no terror links. They are tourists with proper passports and visas, said Odisha special task force (STF) chief, Arun Bothra.

The group was detained at a police station in Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday evening, three nights after police began searching for them. Hours of interrogation later, the STF of Odishas crime branch and Andhra police discovered the Iranians were just tourists who had valid travel documents. The Iranian embassy also confirmed their citizens travel details to India.

The group now plans to continue their journey to Delhi via Bengaluru and Goa, police sources said.

The Iranians had left Delhi on January 5 in a hired car along with a driver and travelled through Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam before arriving in Bhubaneswar on January 25. They reached a hotel near the Bhubaneswar railway station at around 9 pm when police were carrying out a routine verification in view of Republic Day.

A man from the group reportedly went to the counter and asked for two rooms. As he haggled with the receptionist over the price in broken English, the hotel staff were alarmed and called the police who asked to see his passport.

The man allegedly claimed he would get it from his car, but instead left. A policeman who followed the Iranian to the car to check the identify proof, alerted his superiors who ordered a search operation that went on through the night.

Things turned for the worse when a local newspaper picked up the news and claimed five terrorists had escaped the police at a city hotel. Other local media soon followed suit.

The STF was called in to take over the investigation which managed to track the Iranians car heading towards Visakhapatnam. Amid the operation, another group of three Iranian nationals were also detained. They were travelling from Chhattisgarh to Odisha in a hired car and were stopped at Bargarh district, around 450 km from Bhubaneswar. The group however was let go after preliminary inquiries cleared them.
The city railway police have been put on alert after an improvised explosive device (IED) was found in the Mumbai-bound Mahanagri Express in Uttar Pradesh on Friday.

In the backdrop of the recent arrests of two Islamic State (ISIS) sympathisers from the state, the Mumbai railway police have been asked to conduct train checks and frisking of passengers originating from north India.

Officials suspect the handiwork of an ISIS sleeper module existing in Uttar Pradesh with which arrested sympathisers Alim Ahmad (arrested from Lucknow) and Rizwan Ahmad (arrested from Kushinagar) were allegedly associated with.

This is a second official alert issued in Mumbai after the Pathankot terror attack with the police having been asked to keep a tab on movement of passengers and goods in outstation trains.

On January 18, the Hindustan Times had reported of the state governments terror advisory mentioning possibility of a similar kind of attack on local trains.

Officials said a verbal order was issued to all the 17 Government Railway Police (GRP) stations in Mumbai asking them to keep a strict vigil on stations and terminals.

The order also asked the GRP to conduct thorough checks in the trains that come from the north and focus on frisking the luggage of the passengers travelling on these trains, said a GRP officer.

The GRP stations have been asked to increase the vigilance on railway stations and have maximum force on platforms. The bomb squads have also been asked to conduct frequent checks on stations. Stations have been under the cover of the Quick Response Team and railway police commandos since the Republic Day.

After the IED was found in the Mahanagri Express, we have asked all the personnel to be on an alert and increase presence of plain-clothed police on stations. A set of instructions have also been issued for passenger safety, said Madhukar Pandey, GRP commissioner.

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Urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday announced the first list of 20 cities to be developed as Smart Cities, but Mumbai doesnt find its name on the list.

The ouster gave way to another bitter war of words between allies Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The latter said the Senas demand to make city mayor Snehal Ambekar chairman of the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) under the project proved to be a major hurdle.

Chances already appeared bleak after the Sena first opposed the inclusion of the Mumbai civic body under the project and later introduced 14 amendments that weakened the nature of the project itself while passing the proposal in the general body last month.

A senior leader from the BJP, who did not wish to be named said, Apart from the demand for reservation for locals in jobs, the demand for the mayors involvements proved to be the biggest hurdle. It diluted the concept of Smart Cities.

The BJP was forced to be a silent spectator while Sena demanded the amendments on the final day of the deadline to send the proposal to the Union government. Not being a part of the Centres flagship programme would have been a major embarrassment for the BJP. The Sena had opposed the ambitious project saying the Central government wanted direct control over the civic bodies of major cities like Mumbai. For decades, its position as leader of the Mumbai civic body has been the Senas source of power and influence and it did not want the Central governments to intervene. In its mouthpiece Saamna, the Sena had alleged that the formation of an SPV with an independent CEO would have control on the functioning of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The Sena had also objected to raising private equity under the project, one of its main motives.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had said the party will continue to oppose the project if riders to safeguard the autonomy of urban civic bodies were not incorporated into the scheme.

All the amendments were a bid to ensure that corporators retain control of the project.

Rais Shaikh, Samajwadi Party corporator and a member of the standing committee, said, We were sure the Senas amendments would result in the city losing out. It is not surprising. This is a big embarrassment as brand Mumbai has been damaged. Shaikh also said the party has demanded the officer-in-charge of creating the smart city proposal should resign.

Civic officials were also wary of the Senas demand for 85% reservation for Maharashtrians in the 60 lakh jobs created under the project. Civic officials had pointed out that this might derail Mumbais chances as there cannot be reservation in the private sector.

The Sena, however, said the city lost out because of a delay in submission. Rahul Shewale, senior Sena leader and a Member of Parliament, said, Mumbai will definitely get into the second list. We lost out in the first list only because of some delay in submissions.

The major cities from Maharashtra that made it to the Prime Ministers ambitious plan were Pune and Solapur. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will have to refine the policy, meet deficiencies and enter round two in the next few months. Manoj Kotak, BJP group leader in BMC, said, We will ask the municipal commissioner to try and refine the policy and get Mumbai into the second list.

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Rajpura super critical thermal plant owned by Larsen and Toubro is set to have a new owner with Gautam Adanis Adani Power Limited agreeing to pay Rs 3,300 crore upfront for the 1,400 Megawatt (MW) project and to also bear all loans and debts due on the project. In a meeting of top executives, L&T and Adani Power are expected to seal the deal in Mumbai on Friday.

L&T is one of the largest construction and infrastructure development companies in the country with Adani Power Limited being one of the fastest-growing power generation company.

Since commissioning, L&T had been keen to sell its equity in the project. The plant  commissioned around two years ago and set up at a cost of Rs 9,600 crore  has been facing teething problems since its commissioning two years ago and sources said, the taking over of a new owner could take it out of the red.

The major portion of the funds raised from the financial institutions is to be returned.

L&T builds and develops projects. We dont run projects that we build, particularly thermal plants. Talks have been on with major business houses for its sale for long, said a senior executive of L&T hinting that a deal had been inked with the Adanis for handing over its major equity.

The plant is said to be the best super critical plant (these are more efficient) built indigenously and under a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) signed with the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL), it was to supply power to the utility for 25 years.

At one time, L&T considered adding another 700 MW capacity, but considering the lengthy process for clearances it decided to stay with two 700 MW units.

Plant working at only 50% capacity

With Punjab having a problem of plenty in power, the plant has been operating at 50% plant load factor (PLF). It is still to be linked with Mandi Gobindgarh railway station 3-km away. Coal is transported on trucks, leading to 20-25 paise increase in power generation cost per unit. This is borne by the company with PSPCL refusing to pick the tab. The Adanis have the means to deal with all the hurdles that have impeded the plants smooth functioning. The project will run well now, a senior PSPCL officer told HT.

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Haryana vigilance bureau on Friday registered corruption cases against a former minister, a former chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) and two ex-MLAs in the previous Congress regime for allegedly seeking graft in lieu of granting change of land use (CLU) permissions.

The Congressmen have been booked under Sections 7 and 13(1)(d) of the prevention of corruption Act for allegedly seeking gratification and criminal misconduct.

Among those booked, Rao Narender Singh was the health minister in the previous Congress regime headed by Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Vinod Bhayana was the chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) and Naresh Selwal and Jarnail Singh were the MLAs.

Another former MLA, Ram Niwas Ghorela, has been booked for allegedly seeking bribe in lieu of securing funds from the government for an NGO for opening schools under the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan.

Additional director general of police, vigilance bureau, BK Sinha told HT that while case against Rao Narender Singh had been registered at Gurgaon, the case against the remaining four had been registered at Hisar.

In the past, another CPS in the Hooda government Ram Kishan Fauji was booked by the VB on December 4, 2014, for allegedly seeking Rs 5 crore in lieu of getting CLU permission to some people for a piece of land in Gurgaon. Though the Punjab and Haryana high court quashed the lokayukta order for registering a criminal case against Fauji on February 27, 2015, a division bench of the high court stayed its single judge benchs order on December 15, 2015, and posted the matter for further hearing on February 1, 2016.

All these six (including Fauji) were caught on camera in separate sting operations done by one Dharmender Kuhar and a few other workers of opposition party Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). The INLD leaders, including Abhay Chautala and state president Ashok Arora, subsequently had briefed the media in the context along with the compact discs (CDs) and also filed complaints before the lokayukta, Pritam Pal, in September 2013. The lokayukta had recommended criminal cases against all the six.

Also, the lokayukta was urged by the previous government to review his decision, though, he held that there was no provision of review in the Lokayukta Act and sent the case to a special investigation team (SIT) headed by additional director general of police V Kamaraj for investigation and verifying the authenticity of the CDs. Kamaraj recently submitted his report stating that there was enough evidence for registering a criminal case.

The charges

Rao Narender Singh allegedly seeking Rs 30-50 crore in lieu of change of land use permission for 30-acre land

Vinod Bhayana allegedly seeking Rs 2.5 crore to get CLU permission for 4-acre plot in Gurgaon

Naresh Selwal allegedly seeking Rs 10 -12 crore for getting about 3,000 yard land released from Section 6 of acquisition process in Sector 45 in Gurgaon

Jarnail Singh allegedly seeking money (amount not specified) for getting a CLU for a group housing society in Faridabad

Ram Niwas Ghorela allegedly seeking Rs 50 lakh from an NGO for getting Rs 2.5 crore funds to open schools under the Sarv Siksha Abhiyan
Rarely do fruits of success reward an effort in such a bountiful measure. When the city-based Yuvaa theatre group started practising in a deserted and abandoned factory near Lamba Pind Chowk here about a year ago, little did they know that the journey will be taking them to perform at Indias two most prestigious theatre festivals.

Yuvaa will be enacting Jab Sheher Hamara Sota Hai, a two-and-a-half hour play penned by acclaimed artiste, playwright and musician Piyush Mishra, at Bharat Rang Mahotsav 2016, an international theatre festival of India, slated to be held by the National School of Drama in New Delhi on February 4.

Not content with one feather in their cap, the youth group will mark its presence at Asias largest arts festival in Mumbai, that is the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival on February 9.

Jab Sheher Hamara Sota Hai is an adaptation of Shakespeares famed romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet.

Yuvaa is the only theatre group that has been selected to perform at the two festivals from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. There were around 500 entries from all over the world, out of which 80 plays have been selected from Australia, US, China, UK and many other countries.

Director of Yuvaa, professor Ankur Sharma said a panel of 31 national and international film and theatre directors selected the plays for Bharat Rang Mahotsav after examining the video recordings sent by the aspirants.

I think selection for Bharat Rang Mahotsav is an achievement in itself, and I am proud of my team who have done a fantastic job and dedicated the whole year to this group. Small beginnings helped us in achieving success through concerted efforts, said Sharma.

I took permission from Piyush Mishra to perform the play and what can be more exciting than the fact that he himself will be present there during the festival for watching our performance. The turn of events is actually creating butterflies in the stomach, Sharma quipped.

He said Yuvaa got an invitation from Juhi Babbar, curator of Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, to perform there after their selection at Bharat Rang Mahotsav in New Delhi.

Kala Ghoda is a neighbourhood in Mumbai, known as the metro citys art district, which dedicates ten days in a year to the arts festival and around 500 events are performed there. The event dedicated to theatre is known as Naatya Udaan.

Formed in 2007, Yuvaa has already performed multiple shows of 24 plays in Jalandhar and other cities across Punjab. The first play performed by the group was Charandas Chor.

Sharma, who recently came back from Yale University, US, after completing his fellowship there, said reaching this level was not easy for Yuvaa. All team members practised a lot and lived their different characters in a span of one year, which is responsible for the present success, he said.

All of us stayed here for practising all day throughout the year and we frequently ate here as well for saving time. I am proud of the fact that all our actors are amateurs and not professionals, Sharma said.

The theatre group had also presented the same play at Punjab Naatshala, Amritsar, in August 2015.

Catch it live

Yuvaa will perform Jab Sheher Hamara Sota Hai, a play written by Piyush Mishra, at Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall on January 30.
In response to MC public health wing executive engineer BK Dhawans reply in a case pertaining to the allotment of tubewell project worth ` 40 lakh to an ineligible contractor, the complainant has raised objections over the reply.

Pawan Kumar Gupta, director, Envirocure Project Private Limited, Chandigarh, has written to the MC commissioner that the reply is not based on the facts. According to the complaint, RR Builders, which was allotted the work, was ineligible for the contract. The firm worked in the field of supply of labour, it never carried out the works of operation and maintenance, or repair of rewinding of motors, stated Gupta.

The complaint further states that executive engineer BK Dhawan allotted the work, ignoring the central vigilance commission (CVC) guidelines, and did not validate the contractors documents.

In his reply, Dhawan had stated the contractor had earlier executed similar works, and had fulfilled the conditions as laid down by the CVC.

The issue will be taken up in the House meeting on Friday. BJP councillor Saurabh Joshi said, It is a serious issue and should be probed as to how the executive engineer recommended the case of ineligible contractor. Earlier, MC superintending engineer NP Sharma, during an inquiry, had also found Dhawan guilty of misuse of official position and abuse of power, following which a show-cause notice was issued against him.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

The eligibility criteria for receiving a project is that a contractor should either have completed at least three works of similar nature to 40% amount of the tender, or two similar works of 50% of tendered amount or one work of 80% of the tendered work.

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Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju will begin a three-day visit to Behbal Kalan near Kotkapura in Faridkot district from Saturday to inquire into the October 14, 2015, police firing where two Sikh men were killed. Protesters had gathered at the village to protest against incidents of desecration of the bir of Guru Granth Sahib. Organisations like Sikhs for Human Rights, Punjab Human Rights Organisation, and Lawyers For Human Rights International had urged justice Katju to inquire into the incident and have even named it the justice Markandey Katju commission on Behbal Kalan police firing.

Advocate Harpal Singh Cheema from Sikhs for Human Rights said, We have requested residents of nearby villages, including people who were part of the protest that day, to come forward and record their statements. On January 31, justice Katju will collect affidavits from 36 witnesses, including people injured in the police firing and those whose property was damaged. On February 1, more affidavits will be collected and justice Katju will speak to witnesses yet to record their statements.

Cheema added they planned to submit the affidavits collected to the government-appointed commission of justice Zora Singh (retd) that is inquiring into the firing.

If the government-appointed Zora Singh commission does not act on the findings of justice Katju commission, we might file a public interest litigation in the Punjab and Haryana high court based on its findings, he said.
The Punjab industries department has put its official stamp on the plundering of 33 acres of ecologically fragile area for sand quarrying in the proximity of the Sirhind irrigation canal and a related seepage drain at Powat village of Ludhiana district, flouting all norms.

The sloped area, which has already been plundered illegally for sand in the past two years, was officially auctioned on November 30, 2015, as a large quarry, in contradiction to the assurance given by the mining officials against it in the Punjab and Haryana high court.

Avtar Singhs 4-acre farmland is piquantly included in the area demarcated as the quarry, without even his consent. Nobody came to me, forget about taking our consent, I only came to know about this last year and we had to move court, he said.

The documents in possession of HT revealed that the khasra numbers of his land were also included in the sand quarry.

Whistleblower Col Balbir Singh (retd), who is another aggrieved landowner, feared cave-in of his fields adjoining the said quarry and, along with other villagers, had moved the high court. He was instrumental in getting the related documents under the RTI Act to expose the authorities in the court.

Whistleblower Col Balbir Singh (retd) showing soil erosion due to indiscriminate mining at Powat village in Ludhiana district. (Gurminder Singh/HT Photo)

This quarry is defined in total violation of the norms set by the soil conservation, drainage and public works departments, said Col Balbir. If tomorrow, our fields cave in and the passages are flooded, then who will be responsible? he asked. A soil conservation report had even warned against any mining activity on this land, while the drainage department had warned of floods, he added.

Senior mining wing officials, including the state geologist and the Ludhiana industries general manager, had even submitted in the high court that the earlier mining contract at the site in question as awarded to the Punjab State Industries Exports Corporation (PSIEC) was withdrawn.

While the case went in favour of the villager-petitioners on November 17, 2015, the same authorities auctioned the land on November 30, 2015, revealed the documents procured under the RTI Act and in possession of HT.

When contacted, industries g eneral mana g er Mahesh Kumar Khanna admitted that the said area was an officially auctioned quarry. He, however, maintained that certain khasra numbers (pieces of land) that could endanger the adjoining fields had been deleted from the quarry area.

When asked why he did not inform the high court that the industries department was still planning a quarry as the petitioners were against it, he said the court never asked the department about it. We informed the court that the award for quarrying (in Powat) was withdrawn from the PSIEC, he said.

Not in loop

It was in June 2013 that the site appraisal committee headed by then subdivisional magistrate Ghanshyam Thori gave its nod for an official quarry in this ecologically fragile area. The local villagers, including one of the petitioners Col Balbir Singh, told HT that the committee had not consulted them while identifying the area.

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Hitting out at Pakistan, lieutenant general KJ Singh, general officer commanding-in-chief, Western Command, on Thursday, said Pakistan must learn lessons from their past defeats and stop its childish pranks as this would further destroy them.

The army officer, who was addressing a gathering at the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, to commemorate the golden jubilee celebration of the 1965 Indo-Pak war, said, Be it the 1965 war or the Kargil war, Pakistan had been made to bite the dust. But Pakistan doesnt seem to be learning from it. They should stop thinking that that they can break our country. It seems they have become quite used to bearing insults.

Singh said, I am standing in this border city and want my voice to be heard across the border that they (Pakistan) must leave their childish pranks as it will destroy them.

Leave this stupidity

Speaking on the Dinanagar and Pathankot terror attacks, he said, Our country has reached Mars and they are still planning just to enter our home to terrorise us. I suggest them to leave this stupidity.

Appraising the youth and other present on the occasion about Shauryanjali, which contains official records of the martyrs, he said it would make people recall about the Indo-Pak (1965) war. It would be commissioned soon, he said, adding, Last year around 15 books on 1965 war were published. But The Monsoon War: Young Officers Reminisce  1965 India-Pakistan War by Amarinder Singh and Tajinder Shergills history-cum-memoirs of the 1965 Indo-Pak war, which were published towards the end of 2015, are the most comprehensive.

Peoples war

He said the 1965 War was the Peoples war where the army stood up for the nation. The people of Punjab are to be credited for the valour they showed at that hour, he added.

The seminar was conducted jointly by the Panther Division and the Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU). It was an informative and interactive session where the 1965 Indo-Pak war was discussed elaborately.
The Punjab Police have dubbed as factually incorrect Jammu and Kashmir governor NN Vohras conjecture that the Pathankot airbase attack could have been averted had the Dinanagar terror strike case been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

When terrorists attacked the airbase on January 2  the second strike within six months in Punjab it brought under the spotlight the July 27, 2015, terrorist strike.

Three Pakistani fidayeen had stormed Dinanagar police station in Gurdaspur district before they were neutralised by Punjab Police after a 12-hour gun battle. Later, the state government had refused to transfer the investigation to the NIA, taking the plea that the state police had enough professional and technical efficiency.

On the NIAs foundation day in New Delhi on January 19, Vohra had stated that had the Dinanagar case been given immediately to the NIA, it could have identified the routes of infiltration by now and the Pathankot incident would not have happened.

Additional director general of police (ADGP) Rohit Choudhary, the head of the special investigation team (SIT) on the Dinanagar terror attack, had on January 25 sent a detailed report to Punjab Police chief Suresh Arora, listing a series of mechanical and technical evidences generated to pinpoint the routes through which the Dinanagar attack ultras had sneaked in.

Based on the evidence collected (corroborated by a team of experts from the National Technical Research Organisation), it was concluded that the Pakistan-based terrorists entered India after crossing the Ravi River near Mastgarh village, Narot Jaimal Singh police station, Pathankot district, the SIT chief informed the director general of police (DGP), saying that this finding was also communicated to the ministry of home affairs (MHA).

The SIT identified the route based on which the state government had recommended strengthening of deployment of the Border Security Force (BSF) at the Bamiyal sector it would be factually incorrect to conclude that the Dinanagar probe was mishandled, resulting in the Pathankot attack, reads ADGP Choudharys letter, suggesting to the DGP to apprise the J&K governor of the facts.

The ADGPs seven-page communique points out that the Punjab Police also liaised with different security and intelligence agencies such as the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the BSF, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) while carrying out the probe that brought out facts scientifically.

Regarding the GPS and the NVD (night vision device), the CBI was approached for collecting more evidence from foreign nations, while a special team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) examined the NVD which had a marking US government property. The report of the army on disposable rocket launcher (DRL) recovered from the killed ultras had been received.

A detailed scientific analysis and route mapping of the GPS (global positioning system) devices recovered from the three killed terrorists established that the terrorists had entered Dinanagar from Pakistan. This fact has been corroborated by a team of experts from the NTRO, the SIT head has said.

Last year, when the pressure was mounting to hand over the case to the NIA, the Parkash Singh Badal government had told the MHA that the state police were of the view that transferring the case to some other agency, including the NIA, would not only disturb the continuity of the ongoing probe but also jeopardise the sustained and long-term efforts required to be done by the state police to ensure the safety and security of the state.

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CBSE has joined hands with the ministry of urban development to make students an active stakeholder in making India clean.

As part of the Mass pledge campaign - A national student engagement for Swachh Bharat mission, schools have been asked to take part in a range of activities till January 31.

The CBSE additional director has requested to motivate all students to register themselves individually on www.mygov.in and upload pictures of cleanliness activities. Swachhata Ambassador Committee (SAC) may also upload pictures of their monthly cleanliness drives.

Meanwhile, school heads are requested to motivate all students to register themselves individually on www.mygov.in and upload pictures of cleanliness activities.
Ontario premier Kathleen Wynnes scheduled visit to Amritsar as part of her 10-day business trip to India has landed in controversy even before her arrival. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has decided not to honour the Canadian leader with a siropa (robe of honour) during her visit to the Golden Temple on Sunday. Reason: Wynne, a lesbian, is a supporter of same-sex marriages, a practice opposed by the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs.

The SGPCs stand also mirrors the recent anguish of Canadian Sikhs against Wynnes pro-gay policies. Even since joining the premiers office in 2013, her relations with minority ethnic communities, especially Sikhs and Muslims, in Ontario have been strained. Her visit to the Golden Temple is being viewed as an attempt to gain acceptability among the Sikh community back home.

Last year, a large section of Sikhs staged a protest against her move to introduce sex education curriculum which, according to them, was not age-appropriate and promoted same-sex relationships among school students. Muslims and other communities of South-east Asian countries also criticised her for endorsing homosexuality as an acceptable way of life.

Wynne has reached Amritsar. (Gurpreet Singh/HT )

Despite numerous car-flag parades, protests at the provincial councils doorstep and petitions handed over to her government, the curriculum was finally implemented in September. Her government also passed a law to exclude the names of mother and father from all government forms to accommodate same-sex couples.

In 2014, she did not allow turban-wearing Sikhs to ride a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, a decision the Canadian Sikhs called deeply disappointing.

Talking to HT, SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar said, Offering her (Wynne) a siropa would be against Sikh ethics.

Akal Takht jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh said, The SGPCs decision is correct. Coming to the shrine and paying obeisance is everyones right, but while honouring dignitaries, Sikh ethics need to be taken into account.

The Sikhs and other minority communities in Canada are opposed to same-sex marriages. Akal Takht jathedar Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti had issued an edict in 2005 against such marriages and condemned the Canadian governments move to legalise same-sex marriages, adding that this concept had no place in the Sikh religion.

Giani Gurbachan Singh had directed gurdwaras worldwide not to solemnise same-sex marriages.

Sources said Wynne would fly to Amritsar from Delhi on Saturday evening. She will visit the Golden Temple on Sunday morning.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) will soon run a medical college at Shahbad Markanda in Haryana as state health minister Anil Vij met Sikh body chief Avtar Singh Makkar here on Friday and assured him all permissions.

The project, Miri Piri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, had been hanging fire as the college building was lying incomplete for the past nine years owing to alleged roadblocks by the previous Congress government in the state.

After holding a detailed meeting with Makkar, Vij said, It is shocking that the college that the SGPC started building in 2006-07 was not allowed to be completed by the previous Congress government. But now things have been finalised and soon a procedure will be adopted to give the required permissions so that it is made operational.

Vij said they had asked the Sikh body to complete the work and soon a meeting would be called between the state government and SGPC officials in Chandigarh. Vij said it would benefit the people of Haryana who would be able to avail its services besides the students wanting to pursue medical education.

It will be the second medical college to be run by the SGPC, the first being Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences, Amritsar.

Makkar said, The previous Congress government in Haryana did not issue the no objection certificate to the college that led to the delay. But now we are pleased to see the initiative taken by the state health minister, who has assured us that the college will be made operational soon.

An SGPC team would soon visit Haryana and take up the measures required, he added.

Makkar said the SGPC would also open an institute of Sikh martial arts (gatka) at Kurukshetra in Haryana as desired by the Haryana minister.
In a surprising and shocking development, City Beautiful, one of the countrys cleanest city, is not among the 20 cities chosen for the prestigious smart city project by the Union government.

The administration will resend its nomination for the project in April. However, administration officials say even if they have missed the smart city bus this time, they will continue with their initiative to make the city smart.

Sources said Chandigarh lost by 0.27% in the competition and was at the 22nd or 23rd spot.

UT sub-divisional magistrate Danish Ashraf, who is also the nodal officer for the smart city, said: We had put in our best and never expected that we will not figure in the top 20 list of smart cities. Our efforts will not go waste. We followed all norms for citys inclusion in the project. The administration and city residents had contributed a lot for preparing the smart city proposal.

He said before sending the proposal to the Union government, they had held debates, citizen engagement programmes, interdepartment contribution, review of the final proposal and feedback from the city residents. Even the consultant to provide technical assistance was changed. The administration had spent over Rs 1 crore for preparing the smart city proposal, he added.

In December last year, the administration had sent a detailed proposal to the Union government after being selected among the 98 cities for the smart city project. The administration was confident that the city would make it to the first list of 20 cities to be selected for the project. The recent visit of French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made the administration more confident that Chandigarh would be included in the first list of smart cities.

France-UT MoU the hope

The UT administration officials are now relying on the memorandum signed between the French government and the UT. SDM Danish Ashraf said: We will get funds from France for developing the city.

Admns claims

The UT administration claims that even as Chandigarh has not been included in the first list of smart cities, the ministry of urban development has conveyed that the administrations proposal has been accepted. The UT administration will start receiving the grant from the Centre for implementation of the smart city proposal from April 2016. The video-conferencing of the UT administration officials with the cabinet secretary, government of India, and secretary, ministry of urban development, will be held on January 29. The administration will start taking steps in this regard so the grant received from the Centre is utilised.

Why city failed to make the cut

* Despite directions from the Union government to generate funds, the administration and the municipal corporation failed to increase income by increasing water tariff and imposing taxes.

* The city didnt had a political leverage and there was nobody in the government to take up the citys case strongly Besides, the UT administrations proposal may have failed to impress the Union ministry of urban development.

What next

Failed but not dejected, nodal officer for smart city Danish Ashraf said the administration would resend its nomination for inclusion in the smart city project to the Centre. The UT will present its case again and will also seek technical assistance from France. The transit oriented development planned on Vikas Marg as part of the smart city project would be undertaken.
If youre ever in a New York state of mind, consider booking a trip over the next few weeks, as the results of a new study show that January and February are the most affordable months for sleeping in the city.

According to a report from NewYorkHotels.org, visitors can find a double room at a three-star hotel for about $86 in February.

For a little more, travellers can upgrade to a four-star property for about $102 a night.

At the other end of the spectrum, visitors on a budget will want to avoid the months of September and October which are the most expensive months of the year: the average nightly rate is more than double that of February at $200 a night for a three-star room.

Read: When in Florida, dont miss Miami, Tampa Bay, Orlando

Count on spending about $231 during those months if you want to book a room at a four-star hotel.

For the purposes of the report, midtown Manhattan was defined as the area extending between 59th Street down to 23rd Street.

On a day-by-day basis, New Years Eve is the most expensive night of the year, with hotels charging on average $361 and $416 for stays in three and four-star hotels respectively.

Another tip: Hotel rates are highest midweek. Guests who stay from Sunday to Monday, for instance, can save an average of 30% less for their room compared to stays running from Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Read: Dublin is the cheapest airport to fly into

Meanwhile, the latest figures out of the tourism office showed that the Big Apple attracted a record 58.3 million visitors to the city in 2015 -- up 1.8 million from 2014.

Within that number, 46 million visitors hailed from the US, while 12.3 million were international tourists.

The biggest international source markets were the UK, followed by Canada, Brazil and China, which recorded a 14 spike in visits compared to the year before.

Here are the top 10 most expensive days to stay in Manhattan in 2016:

Dec. 31

Oct. 10

Sept. 26

Sept. 29

Sept. 30

Sept. 15

Sept. 28

Sept. 16

Dec. 2

Dec. 5

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The decision to release Inderjit Singh Reyat, lone convict in the Air India bombing of 1985 worst aviation terror attack pre-9/11  has left the victims families upset over not being informed before.

Anil Singh Hanse, whose father, Narendra Singh Hanse, was co-pilot of Flight 182 that exploded mid-air over the Irish Sea, says he got a clue early this month that the Canadian government was going to free Reyat on parole but he never received any confirmation through official channels. Frustrated, Hanse kept on checking with his contacts in the media, only to learn on Wednesday through news channels about the release of a man convicted thrice in the Air India case.

Reyat had served 10 years for the bombing at Tokyos Narita airport that left two baggage handlers dead sometime before the Air India Flight 182 perished in the air. Later, he was given five more years of imprisonment for the second blast after he pleaded guilty of manslaughter. Both blasts were part of a conspiracy blamed on the banned Babbar Khalsa terrorist group seeking revenge for Operation Bluestar and anti-Sikh riots in 1984.

Reyat, known widely as the bomb maker, was convicted for the third time for concealing the identity of a potential suspect who came to be known as Mr X, during the trial, which also led to the acquittal of accused Ripudaman Singh Malik and Babbar Khalsa leader Ajaib Singh Bagri in 2005. This led to his sentencing for lying under oath after being charged with perjury in 2006. In 2010, he was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison. He has now received freedom on parole under certain conditions, including that hed keep away from groups involved in terrorist activities.

Read: Freed, Reyat to stay in a reintegration house till Aug 2018

Hanse, an Australian, now wonders who will monitor Reyat to ensure he does not associate with terrorists again. Reyat supporters celebrating his release makes him sceptical. Even Major Singh Sidhu, former vice-president of Vancouver Sikh Temple, feels the same. He lost his sister and a nephew and a niece in the tragedy. They were heading to India for summer vacation when the tragedy struck.

In a choked voice, he told HT he had nothing to say except that the authorities did not even feel it necessary to inform the families before taking such a big decision. We feel deceived and hurt. The decision reflects very badly on the Canadian government that has always been soft on terrorists, he said. He adds that the decision is political, as those in power have connections with a lobby that supports the ideology of Sikh separatists. Sidhu had joined gurdwara politics to oust fundamentalists from the management.

Similar sentiments echo in the reaction of Renee Sarojini Saklikar, who lost her aunt and uncle in the bombing. She said Rayat was free and she was disappointed to learn about it through the media instead of from the parole board. Saklikar, a noted poet based in Vancouver, has written a book, Children of Air India, dedicated to the 82 children who died in the bombing. Her aunt and uncle were returning from their Canada trip when the bombing happened.
A Canadian man arrested by Chinese authorities in 2014 on charges of spying has been indicted for allegedly gathering and selling Chinas state secrets, official media reported.

Kevin Garratt was indicted on Thursday by a court in the countrys northeast. During the investigation, Chinese authorities also found evidence which implicates Garratt in accepting tasks from Canadian espionage agencies to gather intelligence in China, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing court documents.

Kevin Garratt has been indicted by prosecutors in Dandong city in northeast Chinas Liaoning Province. The case will be tried at the Dandong Intermediate Peoples Court, the report said.

Chinas judicial authorities will handle the case strictly according to law and Kevin Garratts legal rights will be fully guaranteed, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters.

The Canadian foreign ministry spokesperson was quoted by Reuters as saying that Garratts indictment was concerning.

The Reuters report added that the indictment was announced the day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior cabinet ministers attended a lavish party in Ottawa hosted by China to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Garratt and his wife Julia Garratt were arrested in August 2014 from near the China-North Korea border, where they ran a coffee shop. Julia was released but is unable to leave China.

The indictment comes days after a detained Swedish non-profit worker, accused of jeopardising Chinas national security, was expelled. Peter Jesper Dahlin was put on a flight to Sweden after more than three weeks in detention.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, who once led a secretive Maoist commune in south London, was on Friday sentenced to 23 years in prison after being found guilty of rape, child cruelty and falsely imprisoning his daughter.

Balakrishnan, 75, who was born in India and migrated to Britain from Singapore, called himself Comrade Bala. He established the Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in Brixton in 1975 and turned it into a secretive cult.

The daughter escaped from the commune with two other women in October 2013 and told the police that she was regularly beaten by Balakrishnan. The escape sparked a major inquiry that was widely followed in Britain.

On Friday, the daughter waived her legal right to anonymity and publicly identified herself as Katy Morgan-Davies. The 33-year-old called her father a narcissist and a psychopath whose actions were horrible, so dehumanising and degrading.

Balakrishnan has also been accused of brainwashing his followers into thinking that he had God-like powers, besides raping two of his followers. His daughter, from a relationship with follower Sian Davies, spent her life until the age of 30 imprisoned in the commune.

He reportedly lied to his daughter, claiming her father was a dead freedom fighter and that her mother died in childbirth. Her mother, however, was inside the commune with her until she died in 1997 after falling from a window.

As the judge sentenced him in the Southwar Crown Court, a devoted cult member shouted from the public gallery: This is political persecution. Balakrishnans wife, Chanda Pattni, defended her husband, claiming that he had been framed.

Judge Deborah Taylor told Balakrishnan that he was guilty of grave and serious crimes committed over a long period and you have no remorse whatsoever, as he sat impassive in the dock in a blue anorak and listening on a hearing loop.

The judge told him that he had evolved into a largely housebound demagogue or dictator who beat and humiliated his followers. You were ruthless in your exploitation of them.

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An EgyptAir mechanic whose cousin joined Islamic State in Syria is suspected of planting a bomb on a Russian passenger plane that was blown out of Egypts skies in late October, according to sources familiar with the matter.

So far Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence that the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, killing all 224 people on board, was brought down by terrorism.

A senior security official at the airline denied that any of its employees had been arrested or were under suspicion, and an interior ministry official also said there had been no arrests.

But the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, said the mechanic had been detained, along with two airport policemen and a baggage handler suspected of helping him put the bomb on board.

After learning that one of its members had a relative that worked at the airport, Islamic State delivered a bomb in a handbag to that person, said one of the sources, adding the suspects cousin joined Islamic State in Syria a year and a half ago.

He was told to not ask any questions and get the bomb on the plane.

Another source said of the other suspects: Two policemen are suspected of playing a role by turning a blind eye to the operation at a security checkpoint. But there is a possibility that they were just not doing their jobs properly.

None of the four have been prosecuted so far, the sources told Reuters.

The crash has called into question Egypts drive to eradicate Islamist militancy and hurt its tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy. Islamic States Egypt affiliate is waging an insurgency in parts of the Sinai, although mostly far from the tourist resorts along its Red Sea coast.

Russia and Western countries have long said that they believe the flight was brought down by a bomb smuggled on board. Egypt however has so far publicly said it has not found any evidence of foul play.

Any formal charges or official Egyptian confirmation that a bomb brought down the Airbus A321 could potentially expose Egypt to compensation payments to the families of the victims.

The EgyptAir senior security official said state security police had investigated all workers at Sharm el-Sheikh airport without finding any evidence implicating any of them.

The official said state security traced the family connections of all the employees and they were cleared.

Any employee who shows sympathy to militants is prevented from going to work in any airport, he told Reuters.

An interior ministry source also said no one had been arrested in connection with the crash.

We are awaiting results of the investigation.

A photo published in Islamic State magazine Dabiq shows a can of Schweppes Gold soft drink and what appeared to be a detonator and switch on a blue background. (SOCIAL MEDIA)

Islamic States online magazine carried a photo of a Schweppes soft drink can it said was used to make an improvised bomb that brought down the Russian airliner.

The photo showed a can of Schweppes Gold soft drink and what appeared to be a detonator and switch on a blue background, three simple components that if genuine are likely to cause concern for airline safety officials worldwide.
Leicester, a city in the east Midlands that openly told thousands of Indians expelled by Idi Amins regime in Uganda in the early 1970s not to move there, has successfully integrated them over the years and is now hiking the annual budget for Diwali celebrations to over 100,000.

Considered a poster town for multiculturalism in Britain and Europe, the city has one of the largest concentrations of people of Indian  mostly Gujarati  origin. Twinned with Rajkot, it claims to offer the best of Indian cuisine and is home to several Indian banks and other links with India.

Leicester City Council funds annual Diwali celebrations that are reputed to be the largest outside India. The Diwali funding has almost touched one-third of its total budget of 384,500 for cultural events as the festival increases in popularity across faith groups.

The council has now proposed to raise the Diwali budget from 88,000 to 108,000. The plans include dropping 20,000 in funding for Navratri celebrations because it is religious in nature and primarily for one faith group.

In 1972, the council had advised thousands of Indians facing expulsion from Uganda, in a newspaper advertisement, that it is in your own interests and those of your family...(to) not come to Leicester.

The new funding proposals are part of a review of funding for cultural events.

Assistant mayor Piara Singh Clair said: Leicesters packed calendar of events make a huge contribution to life in the city, bringing communities together and helping to make the city an attractive destination for visitors.

He added: This review gives us an opportunity to look again at the events that we support, helping to ensure that we continue to fund festivals that appeal to as many people as possible, that allow the cultural life of the citys diverse communities to flourish, and that help boost the local economy.

More than 27,000 Ugandan Indians had fled in the 1972 resettlement, leaving behind all their possessions, and with only the 50 in hand.
A Los Angeles-bound American Airlines flight which took off from Heathrow airport in London was forced to return a few hours later after a mystery illness struck most of the crew members and some passengers.

When Flight AA109 was airborne near Keflavik in Iceland, flight attendants were seen collapsing in the aisles, sparking fears about contamination in the air conditioning.

One passenger told the Daily Mirror - About 2.5 hours into the flight just as we were passing Iceland we had a tannoy announcement asking for any doctors, nurses or medical professionals on board to report to the boarding doors to assist with unwell passengers.

The lights then came on in the cabin and there was lots of commotion. It was also reported that seven of the crew  13 on board in total I believe  had fallen ill, along with many passengers.

The flight landed at Heathrow airport last evening, five hours after it had left. Passengers were not allowed to disembark while the plane was surrounded by police cars, ambulances and fire crews.

American Airlines confirmed the plane turned round due to a medical emergency.

A statement said American Airlines Flight AA 109, a Boeing 777-300, operating to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) from London Heathrow, is returning to Heathrow due to a medical emergency. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience to their travel plans
Students campaigning for the removal of the statue of colonialist Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) reacted with outrage on Friday after Oriel College in Oxford announced its decision not to take down the sculpture, reportedly under pressure after donors resisted such a move.

The campaign, called Rhodes Must Fall, attracted much publicity and generated intense debate on the uses of history, and Oriel College initially appeared sympathetic to the students demand. The campaign includes current Rhodes Scholars, other students and alumni.

Ntokozo Qwabe, a Rhodes Scholar and part of the campaign, said: The decision by Oriel College to unilaterally reverse its public commitments on Rhodes, without any consultation, basically reminds us that black lives are cheap at Oxford.

The campaign group said in a statement: This is not overOriel College has breached the undertakings it gave to students in its December statementThis recent move is outrageous, dishonest, and cynicalWe will be redoubling our efforts.

The Oxford campaign had demanded the statue be removed since the British businessman and mining magnate in South Africa had views that are now considered racist. It was started in South Africa, where Rhodes statue in the University of Cape Town was taken down.

After receiving hundreds of comments, the college said on Thursday: Over the past few months, there has been intense debate about how Cecil Rhodes is commemorated in Oxford, and particularly about the Rhodes statue on Oriel Colleges High Street frontage.

It added: Following careful consideration, the Colleges Governing Body has decided that the statue should remain in place, and that the College will seek to provide a clear historical context to explain why it is there.

An internal note on the issue detailed how donors were angered by the college appearing sympathetic to the campaign, albeit on the ground that it wanted to improve the experience of black and ethnic minority students. The row endangered the colleges fund-raising, it said.

Rhodes large donation funds the Rhodes Scholarship, which has benefited more than 8,000 students from India and elsewhere. As some donors withdrew or stopped responding, the note mentioned a quote: Is this how we treat our donors?

The college had announced a six-month listening exercise from February 1, but its scope has been changed to a focus on how best to place the statue and plaque in a clear historical context.

The note said: Our alumni do not need many excuses not to give, and for many, this will be such an excuse for years to come. At least one donation of 500,000 donation was cancelled and another for 750,000 and a 100 million legacy were under threat, it added.

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A Saudi prince has slammed Donald Trump after being dragged into the Republican presidential front-runners battle with Fox News, saying he bailed out the businessman twice in the past.

The war of words erupted on Twitter on Thursday after Trump posted a photoshopped image that showed Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal bin Abdulaziz with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

Trump, who has targeted Muslims during his high-voltage campaign, described Al-Waleed as a co-owner of Fox News.

Al-Waleed hit back soon after on Twitter, saying in a tweet that he had bailed out the billionaire invested twice.

Trump:You base your statements on photoshopped pics?I bailed you out twice;a 3rd time,maybe?https://t.co/Raco0mvusp https://t.co/jStBl7Ghia  ?????? ?? ???? (@Alwaleed_Talal) January 28, 2016

The prince, who is chairman of the board of Kingdom Holding Company, an investment holding company, included a link to a news report about him buying Trumps yacht Trump Princess in 1991 after the billionaire was in debt for $900 million.

The news report also said Al-Waleed took a controlling stake in Trumps Plaza Hotel in New York in 1995, when Trump was unable to make loan payments.

This is not the first time Trump and Al-Waleed have faced off on Twitter. After Trump called for a ban on the entry of all Muslims into the US last month, Al-Waleed said the Republican front-runner was a disgrace to his party and should withdraw from the presidential race.

.@realDonaldTrumpYou are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.Withdraw from the U.S presidential race as you will never win.  ?????? ?? ???? (@Alwaleed_Talal) December 11, 2015

Trump has been engaged in a running battle with Fox News for some months and recently pulled out of a debate on the channel that was co-moderated by Megyn Kelly.
As the TV interview with former porn star Sunny Leone continues to engage social media and commentators, academics in Britain flayed its patriarchal and moralistic overtones, saying it highlighted Indias sexual hypocrisy.

The interview has been discussed by students and staff in media studies and other disciplines. Some linked the interview and its underpinning themes with the outrage caused by the gang-rape of a young woman in New Delhi in December 2012.

Heather Bunskell-Evans of the University of Leicester told Hindustan Times that Leone and interviewer Bhupendra Chaubey articulated two generic but competing discourses. The first is a moralistic discourse that has traditionally attributed to women guilt for possessing bodies that men desire, thus allegedly rendering men incapable of responsibility for their actions. The second is that of neo-liberalism.

Read | Prasoon Joshi slams Sunny Leones porn star past, she asks who he is

Chaubey voices the modern-day version of this narrative: in her person she is antithetical to the ideal of the modest Indian Woman; she is singlehandedly responsible for transforming India into the country, according to data recently released by Pornhub, which consumed the most pornography in 2015; she threatens marital relationships because husbands spend more erotic time with her than their wives; she undermines the ordinary womans sexual self-esteem, she said.

According to Sonia Hendy-Isaac of Birmingham City University, the interview is somewhat astounding how a womans sexuality, and her decision to explore this (whether on camera, or otherwise), can still be framed within the notion of the moral temptress.

She added: The treatment of Sunny Leone in this interview reflects both the fear, and the intolerance of any woman empowered by, and through her own body, and her capacity to rationalise both her decisions and her actions; the great tragedy here of course, is as a sexually empowered, rational and intelligent woman, she should have to justify or rationalise it at all. Let alone in such a public  and lets be very clear  morally judgemental manner.

The most interesting aspect of the fear and intolerance seen in the interview, Hendy-Isaac said, was the attempt to create correlation, and empirical evidence of one womans (alleged and unproven) impact on a nations porn viewing habits.

This interview and personal attack, is a precise manifestation of the virgin-whore dichotomy; from a feminist perspective, Im just relieved that Sunny Leone retained her position as someone who need not apologise for her informed decisions, her career(s) and her successes, Hendy-Isaac added.

Linking the interview with the 2012 gang-rape, Bunskell-Evans said: In order to make sense both of this interview and the media response I suggest we look beyond the interviewer and interviewee, and focus on the circulation of competing ideas that inform their views.

With regard to India, the brutal Delhi gang rape and murder in 2012 of a 23-year-old, brings the cultural sexual double standard into sharp and horrific relief. (The womans) killers defended themselves on the basis she was asking for it (hanging out in public with a boy after dark like those shameless Western girls).

Read More

Mastizaade dialogues, scenes made me uncomfortable: Sunny Leone

I was upset and horrified at the end of the interview: Sunny Leone

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Five trucks with goods from India entered Nepal through the Birganj border point on Friday morning, the first such shipment since Madhesi protesters blocked the key trade route in September to protest against the new constitution.

The trucks carrying machinery crossed Miteri Bridge, on which cadres of the United Democratic Madhesi Front have set up temporary tents and bamboo barricades, between 8 and 9 am, when few protesters were present.

Four empty trucks and two jeeps, stranded in Nepal since the blockade began, crossed over to India.

The vehicles entered early morning when the number of protesters on the bridge was very less. But movement of vehicles stopped again after more protesters arrived, Keshavraj Ghimire, chief district officer of Parsa, told Hindustan Times.

Hundreds of trucks with goods are stranded on the highway across the border, waiting for the blockade to end so that they can enter Nepal.

Nearly 70% of trade between India and Nepal takes place through Birganj, and the blockade of the border point resulted in a severe shortage of essential goods and petroleum products.

Though goods were traded through other border points, which were unaffected by the blockade, it wasnt enough to cater to Nepals demands.

The number of protesters at the Birganj border, which has been closed since September 23, has dwindled in the past few weeks due to the cold weather and differences within the UDMF on how to continue the movement to push for changes in the constitution.

Since Saturday, when Nepal passed an amendment to the constitution to address some of the UDMFs demands, goods have been ferried across Miteri Bridge at night using horse-drawn carts.

The UDMF has been protesting against the constitution since August, seeking a package deal for their 11 demands, including fresh demarcation of federal states and proportional representation of Madhesis in all state bodies.

Madhesi parties have rejected the amendments, which seek to increase the number of parliament seats in the Terai region and give more representation to marginalised groups, saying their main demand for demarcation remains unaddressed.

Though the four parties in the UDMF have agreed to continue their protest, there are differences on whether the blockade at the border should be lifted.

Despite Indias repeated denials, Nepal has accused New Delhi of imposing an unofficial blockade to support the Madhesis, who reside in the plains bordering India and share cultural and family ties across the border.

This week, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli told a group of journalists he wouldnt go ahead with a planned visit to India till the blockade is lifted.

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The Zika virus is spreading explosively in the Americas and can infect upto four million people, the WHO warned on Thursday as it issued a warning to all countries, including India, who have the vector of Aedes mosquito that also causes Dengue and Chikungunya.

The Zika virus is caused by the aggressive Aedes aegypti mosquito that also causes Dengue and Chikungunya  both the viral diseases are of great public health concern to tropical countries like India.

The outbreak began in Brazil last year and has now spread to 24 countries in the Americas, causing serious birth defects and other neurological problems like microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with an abnormally small head.

Dr Marcos Espinal, director of communicable diseases and health analysis at WHO, warned that Zika will go everywhere the mosquito is. We should assume that. We should not wait for it to spread.

Zika originated in Africa and also exists in Asia.

Meanwhile, WHO chief Margaret Chan warned that the virus is now spreading explosively, and the global health body expected up to four million cases of the disease.

She also expressed concern over the potential of global spread of the disease, owing to the large geographical spread of the Aedes mosquito.

Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general, WHO, also warned that the virus could spread to other places wherever there is Aedes mosquitoes.

What we have to assume is anywhere where they have the Aedes (mosquitoes), they could have the Zika virus and they should have the tools to be able to look for it, he said.

So, thats part of the reason we are trying to get the information out to countries that have got the vector but may not yet have the virus - look now for the virus, he added.

A government campaign poster informing about Zika virus symptoms at the maternity ward of a hospital in Guatemala City, Guatemala. (REUTERS)

Such is the level of alarm that many American countries like El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador have urged women to postpone pregnancy till 2018.

Complicating matters further, the Olympics in 2016 is to be held in Rio, the epicenter of the virus outbreak.

The concern is also related to lack of immunity of the population that are unexposed to the Zika virus.

Additionally, there are no vaccines, specific treatments, and rapid diagnostic tests, available to combat the virus.

However, many countries that have had the outbreak of a Zika virus, like Colombia, have not yet reported cases of microcephalis and Guillain-Barre syndrome.

There are currently four categories of countries globally: one, countries who have the virus as well as the birth malformations, like Brazil, two, countries only with the virus, like Colombia, three, countries, like India, who have the vector, and four, countries like Chile and Canada who do not have the vector.

A health ministry employee fumigates against Aedes Aegypti mosquito in Nicarcagua. (REUTERS)

Though, Chikungunya and Dengue are much more rampant in many parts of the world than the Zika virus, the possible association between the Aedes mosquito and neurological impairments could bring the spotlight on mosquito-borne diseases globally.

We must use the dengue dynamics as the reference point -where you have the dengue outbreaks in the previous years, where the mosquito Aedes is present, you have a risk of Zika transmission, said Dr Sylvain Aldighieri, WHO.

The Zika virus was first detected in 1947 from a monkey in the Zika forest of Uganda.
Several European countries are prepared to send back migrants, as Finland and Sweden have announced that they will deport tens of thousands of refugees, citing failed immigration policies as the main reason for the decision. The two countries received some of the largest influx of migrants and have struggled to keep up with their immigration policies.

"[...]we would basically have free immigration and we can't manage that," Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson said.

Migrants endanger themselves by making the journey to Europe. Most recently, around 25 dead immigrants, including 10 children, were discovered off the Greek island of Samos. Germany has also reached an agreement on tighter restrictions for asylum seekers, with the sexual assaults in Cologne bringing scrutiny to the country's immigration policy, according to AFP.

With the number of migrants reaching over 1 million last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to a policy that would stem the tide of immigration into the country. Many German towns and cities feel that their resources are being drained by the large number of migrants. Merkel, whose popularity fell after allowing mass immigration, entered discussions with several German heads of state who demand increased funding for German schools, courses and policing, according to Reuters.

"If people are sent home, they will protest. How will they send us home? In big cars? We are not animals," stated Jawad Aref Hashemi, a 43-year-old Afghani refugee, The Exponent Telegram reported.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Cursive writing is no longer being practiced among students in New York and other states and lawmakers would like to change that by making handwriting lessons mandatory in schools.

In Albany, education board members expressed their concerns about the worsening problem in students' penmanship, citing that as kids rely on technology more these days, they don't even know how to sign their names properly.

"Not only is it sad, but it's a security issue," said assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, via New York Post.

Malliotakis related that she was helping students fill out registration forms when she noticed that some printed their names instead of signing. If this keeps up, students might also not be able to properly sign contracts, credit cards and checks in the future.

"Not only does it mean you can't sign a business contract, but it makes you vulnerable to identity theft because anyone can just go ahead and print your name," Malliotakis stated further.

Sen. LeRoy Comrie from Queens advised Malliotakis she would look into the matter.

In Washington, where cursive writing lessons have been replaced with Common Core, state lawmaker Sen. Pam Roach sponsored a bill that would make handwriting classes a requirement for students. The senator said she has been receiving complaints from parents about their children being unable to read letters from their grandparents. "Part of being an American is being able to read cursive writing," said Roach, according to KSAT.

Meanwhile, other states like North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, California, Georgia and Kansas made cursive lessons part of their curriculum this school year, while a school in Ohio made cursive writing part of art classes, according to IJ Review.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new study conducted by researchers from New Mexico State University and Virginia Tech reveals that bedbugs are getting stronger - in particular, they have developed resistance to the neonicotinoid insecticides, also known as neonics. Neonics are the most widely used type of insecticides today and this study suggests that alternative pesticides might need to be developed to effectively combat bedbugs in the future.

The team studied bedbugs gathered from homes in Cincinnati and Michigan and tested their ability to withstand four different neonics: acetamiprid, dinotefuran, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam. Additionally, they applied these neonics to a bed bug colony that was housed by one of the researchers for more than 30 years with no exposure to insecticides as well as a pyrethroid-resistant population from New Jersey that had never been exposed to neonics.

The findings showed that the colony with no insecticide exposure died even when exposed to small amounts of neonics, while the New Jersey bugs held up slightly better. The team found that this resistance stemmed from their "detoxifying enzymes," which are used by bed bugs to fight insecticides and were more abundant in the New Jersey group.

"Elevated levels of detoxifying enzymes induced by other classes of insecticides might affect the performance of newer insecticides," Alvaro Romero, who participated in the research, said in a press release.

Furthermore, the bed bugs collected from Cincinnati and Michigan showed even higher levels of neonic resistance due to the fact that they lived during a time when pyrethroids and neonicotinoids were common in the U.S. market.

"Companies need to be vigilant for hints of declining performance of products that contain neonicotinoids," Romero said. "For example, bed bugs persisting on previously treated surfaces might be an indication of resistance. In these cases, laboratory confirmation of resistance is advised, and if resistance is detected, products with different modes of action need to be considered, along with the use of non-chemical methods."

The findings were published in the Jan. 28 issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology.

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A company in Japan has its sights set on building the world's first farm run by robots.

The organization, Spread, plans to convert its current farm, the Kameoka Plant farm, into the Vegetable Factory by 2017. The current farm uses human labor and produces 21,000 heads of lettuce each day, and it plans on increasing output to 30,000 heads using robots.

The robots look like conveyor belts with arms, TECH Insider reported. They will be used for planting seeds, watering plants and trimming lettuce heads.

The farm will be an indoor facility that grows plants by using LED lights, and the crops will be grown on racks.

"Our mission is to help create a sustainable society where future generations will not have to worry about food security and food safety," spokesperson J.J. Price said. "This means that we will have to make it affordable for everyone and begin to grow staple crops and plant protein to make a real difference."

The company said in a press release that construction will begin in this spring. The project has been estimated to cost over $16 million, and Spread hopes to earn $8 million a year with the farm. They have also said that they anticipate an output of 80,000 heads of lettuce once the farm has been operating for while, according to the Daily Mail.

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The moments after childbirth can be tough with most women feeling sore, tired and very emotional, leaving many searching for solutions to ease the pain, according to the Daily Mail. However, the popular solution for British women as of late is a bizarre one - eating their own placenta. Some women blend it into smoothies, while others have it encapsulated like a vitamin supplement. But are there really any benefits to this strange phenomenon?

Eating your own placenta, also known as placentophagy, is being hailed by many women as a practice that provides them with the hormones, minerals and nutrients that they need after the birth process, making recovery much easier; some claim that it improves breast milk production and protects them against post-natal depression.

Despite these claims, no evidence has yet to be shown that supports the benefits of placentophagy. Last year, a scientific review concluded that there is no proof of any benefits to the practice, and many doctors are warning that it is still not known whether it is even safe for mothers and their babies. Furthermore, some women report depression, excessive production of breast milk and feelings of jitteriness after taking part in the practice.

Still, some women swear by it and are recommending it to other soon-to-be mothers.

"I felt so weak and tired. Just a walk down the street would exhaust me," said Ruth Parfitt, who had her placenta encapsulated after the birth of her second child. "That was really hard with a newborn to look after. We were new parents and were already sleep-deprived. I didn't feel right until six to eight weeks after the birth. When we discovered I was pregnant again in September 2014, I was determined to avoid feeling that way again."

After taking the capsules, she claims that the healing process was accelerated greatly.

"It was a completely different experience. I was up and about much more quickly, my mood was better and I felt really well," she said. "I lost a lot of blood when I had Elvi, too, so my iron was low again. But instead of iron tablets, I took placenta capsules and recovered far more quickly."

There are even "placenta encapsulation specialists" who can help mothers create the pills in the most effective way possible and believe that they help new mothers "recover from birth with the most natural remedy around," The Telegraph reported.

Placentae is reported to possess beneficial hormones including oxytocin, although whether the amount is enough to provide any positive effects still remains to be seen, according to Mirror.

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Billionaire Paul Allen's yacht allegedly hit protected coral reefs in the Cayman Islands. The Microsoft co-founder's yacht, The Tatoosh, allegedly hit protected reefs in the West Bay Replenishment Zone with its anchor and damaged 80 percent of the corals, the Department of Environment in the Cayman Islands reported, according to CNN Money.

The anchor destroyed around 14,000 square feet (1,300 square meters) of reef in the islands' West Bay area.

Allen was not aboard the yacht during the encounter.

A statement from Allen's company, Vulcan, said that the port officials of the area were directing the yacht when the incident occurred.

Were deeply committed to ocean health. Tatoosh acted responsibly, cooperating w/ officials https://t.co/BU671EWGur pic.twitter.com/doRpuasGY4  Vulcan Inc. (@VulcanInc) January 27, 2016

"When its crew was alerted by a diver that her anchor chain may have impacted coral in the area, the crew promptly, and on their own accord, relocated their position to ensure the reef was protected," the statement said, according to the New York Daily News.

"Vulcan and the ship's crew are actively and cooperatively working with local authorities to determine the details of what happened. An investigation by local authorities is ongoing," the statement added.

Scott Slaybaugh, the Deputy Director for the Cayman Islands Department of Environment, noted that the billionaire could face a fine up to $600,000.

"It's not going to depend at all on who's vessel it is, or what assets they have," Slaybaugh said, according to the Telegraph. "It's the value of the reef and that's what we take seriously, so the consequence would be the same for anyone."

In 2015, Allen donated almost $4 million in funding the research in reversing the rapid decline of coral reefs, according to the Vulcan.

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met up with French President Francois Hollande during his visit to Paris and began closing deals between the two nations on Thursday. Rouhani arrived from Italy where he managed to seal deals amounting to almost $18.8 billion. When he set foot in Paris, he met with leading French businessmen.

One of those is oil company Total that agreed purchase crude oil from Iran, according to Agence France-Presse. Airbus Industrie also had an agreement with Iran Air and allowed it to acquire 118 additional aircraft. Signed by Iran Air CEO Farhad Parvaresh, the deal included 73 widebody and 45 single-aisle airliners, according to Business Insider.

There were other deals involving the auto industry, health, agriculture, and construction were signed during the visit in a total of 20 agreements.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with French counterpart President Hollande pic.twitter.com/KeRRinTZgq  Sammy Kibet (@sammy_kibet) January 29, 2016

Rouhani delivered a speech at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales and expressed the toll their country has taken in the recent years. "Our nation has shouldered such a heavy weight through all these years, accepting 3 million migrants without complaining," Rouhani said, according to the Quadrangle Online. "200,000 have swarmed (our borders) what do we do now?"

After their lunch meeting at the Elysee Palace, Hollande held a press conference. "It's a new chapter of our relationship," Hollande said, according to the Associated Press. "I want that relationship to be useful, useful to both countries, useful to the (Middle East) region affected by wars, crises and tragedies."

Hollande also noted the ongoing conflict in Syria where Iran is also involved.

"We must fight terrorism," he said. "We must help the Syrian people so that the Syrian people can build a sustainable future for the country."

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It's the end of an era for Jaguar Land Rover, ending the production line for one of the most loved and enduring road vehicles, the Land Rover Defender. Introduced in 1948 as simply the Land Rover, the Defender has since become as well known as other iconic vehicles like the VW Beetle, Ford Mustang and the original Mini.

The Defender had humble beginnings, starting off as a project in a bid to raise enough cash to restart mainstream car production at Britain's Rover brand, reported CNN. Designed initially for farmers and soldiers in post-war Britain, the development of the vehicle was impeded by a lack of steel and tools required to bend curves into the metal. The result was a durable 4x4 aluminum vehicle with an exceptional resistance to corrosion.

The durability and longevity of the Defender led to it becoming a British icon, used by the police service, coastguard, military, vets and even rock stars. It appeared in the James Bond movie "Skyfall," as well as Tom Cruises' "Edge of Tomorrow." In fact, it was so popular that it was the British Royals vehicle of choice while on state visits, as well as the daily drive of the Queen when she's on holiday in Scotland.

Jim Holder, editorial director of British magazines "Autocar" and "Whatcar" had high praises for the Defender, characterizing it as the a vehicle that "appeal[s] to every level of society," according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

"It's a classless vehicle. Anyone can drive it. You might be a farmer trying to get over the muddiest field or it might be the Queen driving around Windsor. Neither would surprise you if you saw it," he said. "It claims to do everything and to a degree it can do everything."

So why would a vehicle that claims to do it all - and actually do so - need to be discontinued? It turns out legislation and emissions laws played a large part in the development.

Due to stricter measures for new car emissions slated for 2020 meant there were "certain conditions the Defender just won't meet," the company said, according to the BBC.

However, even as one era ends, the company indicates a new one may be beginning: a replacement model for the Defender is in development and is slated to be launched in Dec. 2016.

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The Raiders were left as the odd team out at the owners meetings in Houston, as both the Chargers and Rams were allowed to move to Inglewood, while the Raiders were left to figure out their future. The Raiders are reportedly currently working on a lease with the Oakland Coliseum, but that doesn't mean Oakland will remain the home for the Raiders in 2016 or beyond, as the options of where the Silver and Black will land seems to continue to grow.

The Raiders are now expected to send team officials to visit a potential stadium site in Southern Nevada, according to a memo from UNLV president Len Jessup that was released by Nevada reporter Jon Ralston. The Raiders officials are reportedly expected to meet at the new 42-acre site Friday morning. The Las Vegas Sands plan to publicly announce their support for the new special events stadium in Southern Nevada, and the land UNLV has purchased on Tropicana Avenue is expected to be a prime location, according to UNLV president Len Jessup's memo.

Raiders owner Mark Davis and chairman and chief executive officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation Sheldon Adelson have been discussing the idea of the Raiders moving to Las Vegas for two years, and the potential move is very real, according to Bleacher Reports' Jason Cole. Davis would neither confirm nor deny the potential interest in moving the franchise to Las Vegas, according to Cole.

The Raiders options seem to be continually growing as Las Vegas joins Oakland, San Diego and San Antonio as potential relocation landing spots. The Raiders will need an owners approval vote to relocate to any new city, and it will be interesting to see if this gains any momentum as the Raiders' permanent future location is clearly still in unknown at this time.

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Hype was low earlier this week in Aspen Col., site of the 2016 Winter X Games. The reason? An event promoter's plan for a marijuana vaporizer party has been shut down by police. The event was pegged to occur at Turks, a music club in Snowmass.

Snowmass Village police chief Brian Olson said the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement office must cancel the party, According to the Bristol Courier-Herald. Colorado marijuana laws prohibit smoking marijuana in public. While the event promoter planned it as a private event that would require wristbands, the party would still fall under the category of "public."

Tim Lucca, owner of Turks, was initially excited about the opportunity. "[The event promoter] wanted to rent my patio to do a cannabis vaporizer event for X Games," Lucca told the Aspen Daily News, "I said I'd love to do it, I'd love to bring some X Games action up here."

"There's no way to make the scenario non-public," said Olson, "You can't create a private scenario in there and that's what they were trying to do with the one day membership."

"I don't see [marijuana use] coming into a public place until the state creates a licensing function that allows for a cafe ordinance," Olson continued, referring also to measures that have been proposed in a Denver suburb where a business called iBake Englewood runs a legal smoking lounge.

Colorado Amendment 64, voted on by the people of Colorado in November 2012 allows adults aged 21 and up can grow up to six plants in a confined, private space, and consume weed in a manner similar to alcohol. Despite the successful vote three years ago, controversy continues to surround Colorado Marijuana legislation, according to FOX 31 Denver.

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Donald Trump skipped the Republican debate hosted by Fox News Thursday night in Des Moines, Iowa, but he still dominated online search and social media throughout practically the entire two-hour event.

Far more people performed Google searches for Trump during the debate than for any other candidate, according to data from the search engine, which co-sponsored the event, reported Reuters.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also performed fairly well on Google.

Trump also dominated his rivals on Twitter, where he was mentioned over 140,000 times during the debate and gained more new followers than any other candidate - about 10,750, according to social media monitoring company Brandwatch.

In all, about 36 percent of all Twitter conversations were related to Trump. Cruz trailed in second with 16 percent, followed by Rubio at 13 percent.

When only accounting for the candidates on stage, Cruz was out front with 25 percent of the Twitter conversation. Rubio came next with 20 percent, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took 16 percent.

On Facebook, which only calculated data from candidates who appeared on stage, Cruz stole the show with 41 percent of the conversation. Rubio was next with 18 percent, followed by Paul at 15 percent, Carson at 10 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at eight percent, Bush at five percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at three percent.

But when The Hill asked Facebook what Trump's numbers looked like, a spokesperson said, "If [Trump] had participated and been included in the list, he would have ranked number one with twice as many people talking about him as Cruz."

Trump boycotted the debate after Fox News issued a sarcastic statement mocking him for attempting to have Megyn Kelly removed from the moderator team. While the debate was taking place, Trump was just miles away hosting a fundraiser for veterans at Drake University, where he ended up raising nearly $6 million, which included $1 million of his own money, reported The Daily Caller.

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders by eight points in a new Iowa poll released by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling on Friday, just days before the Feb. 1 caucuses.

Forty-eight percent of Iowans likely to participate in the Democratic caucuses told PPP that they plan to vote for Clinton, while 40 percent named Sanders. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley came in with seven percent.

It's a slight improvement for Clinton from the same poll conducted earlier this month, which showed the former secretary of state with 46 percent to Sanders' 40 percent.

"We've found Hillary Clinton leading in Iowa by 6-8 points on our last two polls," said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. "Bernie Sanders will likely make up some ground from Martin O'Malley voters moving toward him. To pull the upset he will need large numbers of voters who aren't currently registered Democrats to show up on his behalf Monday night."

Most Iowa precincts require a candidate to garner at least 15 percent support. Supporters of candidates who fail to meet that threshold must cast their ballot for another candidate, according to The Washington Times. That could be good news for Sanders, because 57 percent of O'Malley supporters said that they preferred Sanders as a second choice, compared to 27 percent who favored Clinton.

Sanders' success also depends heavily on independent voters showing up and changing their affiliation to Democrat in order to caucus for him. Sixty-two percent of independents said that they support Sanders, while only 23 percent backed Clinton. PPP estimates that independents will comprise about 17 percent of the electorate for Monday's caucuses. Among registered Democrats, Clinton had a 17-point lead over Sanders, 53 percent to 36 percent.

Clinton's supporters were more committed to voting for her, with 88 percent saying they will definitely do so, compared to 74 percent of Sanders' supporters who said the same.

Sanders led in terms of favorability, 74 percent favorable to 14 percent unfavorable. Clinton had a 69 percent favorable to 22 percent unfavorable split, and O'Malley had a 53 percent to 18 percent split.

The survey was conducted from Jan. 26-27 among 851 likely Democratic caucus-goers and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

RealClearPolitics' average of the past five polls in Iowa puts Clinton out front by 2.5 percent. In New Hampshire, Sanders has a 14 percent lead.

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News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Candidates for federal, state, county, township, municipal, and school board offices in Itasca County, Koochiching County, and northern St. Louis County are invited to submit a statement to Hometown Focus sharing their background, qualifications, reasons for running for office, and positions on important issues. Candidates must focus on their own merits and may not speak negatively about specific individuals and groups. Candidate statements are not paid advertisements, nor do they indicate endorsement by Hometown Focus or any of its employees.

Submissions should be no longer than 400 words. Candidate statements will be published in the October 21 and October 28 editions of Hometown Focus to ensure our print subscribers are able to read them before Election Day (Tuesday, November 8). The deadline is one week prior to publication (Friday for the next Fridays edition).

Send your candidate statement and a photo (optional), along with a contact phone number, to tucker@htfnews.us. Statements can also be mailed to or dropped off at 401 6th Ave. N., Virginia, MN 55792. Call 218-741-0106 with questions.

* * * * *

The Celebration of Life service for Dorothy Jalonen that was planned for October 10, 2022, has been postponed due to complications from Hurricane Ian.
As our team of hotel lawyers returns from the Americas Lodging Investment Summit (or ALIS) in Los Angeles, we all noticed a big change. This is the first industry conference since the beginning of the recovery from the Great Recession where we have seen a clear turnaround in hotel investor sentiment that seems to be gaining traction. Unfortunately it is a negative turnaround.

Until now, the discussions have always been about how long the recovery will last (what inning are we in)? And how high values and fundamentals will go before they peak and start down in the next cycle. Not so much this time.

The irony is that hotel industry fundamentals remain sound and continue to improve, although perhaps a bit more slowly. But the downturn in the price of hotel REIT and C-corp stocks (many are about half of their value a year ago) now seems to be shaping an important part of the industry psyche and investment mindset. In this scenario, Wall Street is driving Main Street, instead of the other way around. In other words, the jaundiced perspective of Wall Street is having a real world effect on the hotel industry.

What is happening on Wall Street?

Here is how it works according to one industry analyst:

Wall Street investors became infatuated with hotel REITs and stocks because of record growth rate in RevPAR and other indicators as the industry recovered from the Great Recession.

For decades, an annual RevPAR growth rate of 5% or 6% was remarkable, perhaps record-setting.

For several years in a row, hotel RevPAR growth in many markets has equaled or exceeded the 5% or 6% records, and Wall Street loved it.

Now, that we are back to peak levels (or near there in most markets), growth rates are slowing a bit. And the prospect of a "mere" 4% RevPAR growth rate is freaking out Wall Street investors . . . or at least making them think that they should direct their attention elsewhere where growth rates are more robust.

Plus, New York City is perceived as being symbolic of the entire US. The Manhattan hotel market has been stagnant after leading the US hotel markets for years, and is now struggling with an explosion of supply. And, Manhattan has the worst issue in the country with an Airbnb rooms supply equal to 50% of the available rooms in market. (But have you tried to get a hotel room in Manhattan, or seen what you have to pay?)

Corporate negotiated rates, long the basis for most urban hotel rooms business, have been slow to recover from the Great Recession yet those rates are now starting to exceed peak year levels again

Institutional grade hotel assets are still trading at 4% to 6% Cap Rates, hardly a sign of a declining market

For these, or other reasons, the hotel industry has lost its "preferred darling" status with stock analysts and investors. They have decided that the hotel industry cannot sustain the high levels of growth it has produced in the past few years. They are downgrading the industry's investment potential and re-directing their capital. As a result, stock values of hotel REITs and C corps are down and they are effectively prevented from raising new capital at attractive rates to buy more hotels. Side-lining these companies is starting to significantly affect the buyer-seller balance, and therefore the market prices of hotel properties.

How bad is it? Well the hotel REITs and C corp stocks are down as much as 40-50% (or more) from a year ago. In fact, you can buy hotels at a 30% discount from what it would otherwise cost you if you buy hotel REIT stocks.

What is the real world effect of Wall Street's reassessment of hospitality?

At first blush, one might wonder how the stock market could possibly affect the real world of hotel investment and ownership. Who cares what the price of a stock is when your hotel is profitable, and things are looking to get better?

On closer examination, however, Wall Street is a vast and important source of capital for the hotel industry. It has provided billions of dollars of capital to public REITs and C corps who have been active buyers of hotel properties over the past few years. How often have you heard the complaint that someone couldn't compete to buy a hotel because a hotel REIT had cheaper, immediately available capital and bid up the price?

Well, the REITs no longer have that kind of access to cheap capital when their stock is at half the price it was a year ago. This has effectively removed the REITs as active buyers for major properties.

In addition, Wall Street's concern over the hotel sector has given real estate investors pause. Everyone is starting to rethink their investment in hotels. Are they paying too much? Is it too late in the cycle to be buying?

Everything should be fine but 

At a special session of the Lodging Industry Investment Council (the "think tank" of the hotel industry), David Loeb of RW Baird gave a great presentation on why Wall Street is making a mistake in downgrading hotel investment. RevPAR growth rates have been at record levels for too long and these levels are not sustainable over the long haul. Supply growth remains slower than demand growth. Demand growth continues. RevPAR growth continues with assistance from both the occupancy and the rate side. The hotel stocks and REITs significantly undervalue their assets. And so on. And so forth.

However you come out on the merits, the noteworthy fact here, folks, is that this is a complete turnaround in the investor sentiment. We are now being defensive on whey negative news should not be taken too seriously. This is a complete turnaround in our industry.

No one has been talking about these kinds of concerns until now. This changes the entire dynamic for the industry.

Implications for the industry

Perhaps these developments will prove to be a small blip on the screen and have little significance. But if they are an early indication of a trend, there could be many ramifications.

We will have to see whether a slowdown in REIT investment becomes a precursor of slowing investment by all other investors as well. Perhaps it will be a buying opportunity for other investors who have had difficulty competing with the REITs until now.

If the slowdown in buyer enthusiasm metastasizes, hotel values will peak and even falter. This will create opportunities, but also could precipitate significant declines leading to a broader selloff.

In the good times, the hotel industry tends to be liberal in spending to attract new customers, and maintain a high level of standards for the consumer. If the downturn is imminent, it will be important to control costs early while aggressively continuing to market properties.

The kind of hesitation we are seeing in the market raises the prospect for developers that if you have not already started the entitlement process on your project, it may be too late. We don't know when, but the development window is likely to close sooner rather than later. You cannot assume that you have another three years. (Or you need to be prepared to open in a down market and weather the storm until recovery.)

Early indications suggest that lenders are wary of these developments and at hotel financing that is becoming more difficult to obtain. This raises the prospect of lesser amounts of financing and higher costs. You need to run your own sensitivity analysis on what that will mean to you.

We suggest that the sky is NOT falling, but that was just a drop of rain.

We continue to believe that fundamentals for the hotel industry are solid and very positive.

It does seem ironic that unrealistic and "unfair" expectations of Wall Street should precipitate a downturn in the hotel industry, but that is a possibility.

In any event, hotel owners must consider whether this is the time to sell or if it is already too late. Sellers will need to be realistic in setting their valuation goals, and buyers are likely to be more conservative in their pricing analysis.

Many buyers are likely to delay or forgo hotel purchases. In any event, prices offered are likely to be more conservative. Perhaps this is a healthy rebalancing.

In all events, we hope that we do not "talk ourselves into" a downturn when none is justified by the reality.
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The duo, along with more familiar faces, will be bringing the project on the road

Post Pop Depression, the new collaborative project featuring Josh Homme and Iggy Pop, is to tour the world this Spring.

The duo, along with Arctic Monkey's Matt Helder and frequent Homme partner Dean Fertita, had played possibilities of touring their surprise album - Homme claiming 'almost everyone won't see it, it will be like trying to catch smoke in your hands' - but something has clearly changed, as an extensive road trip has been confirmed.

A slew of North American dates will be followed by a seven-stop European jaunt. As yet, a May 13 visit to London's Royal Albert Hall is the closest date to Irish shores, but with the itinerary completed just two days later, it's fair to speculate whether some festival appearances over the summer might yet spring up.
This week's bumper crop also includes Courtney Barnett, Massive Attack & The Arcs

As traumatised as it is by Everton's League Cup capitulation at the Etihad, Free Music Friday has still managed to assemble a collection of downloads, streams, vids and trailers that will thrill, delight and amaze, and are yours for the price of a mouse-click.

Our resident Toffees fan aside, it's been non-stop booty shaking at HP Central these past 48 hours courtesy of Rihanna and her new ANTI album, which appeared like magic on Thursday at [link]rihanna.tidal.com/redeem/?voucher=ANTI[/link]

Being complete nosey parkers, we'd love to know how much Jay-Z's Tidal streaming service paid RiRi for a record that probably would have sold at least a couple of million copies. Free or not, it's a belter which finds the Barbadian spreading her musical and lyrical wings... and then some!

Whilst almost unbearably poignant, Free Music Friday's favourite thing this week is the soundtrack to the Elliott Smith documentary, Heaven Adores You. It's a treasure trove for fans with over an hour of alternate takes, works in progress, and festival and TV performances. The film itself is an absolute must-see.

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Back in the saddle Britpoppers Cast gift us 'Baby Blue Eyes', the first taster from a new album that's out in March. Newly acquired facial hair aside, it's good to have the Scouse scamps back.

Cian Nugent is letting you try his new Night Fiction album before you buy. The subject of some very tasty reviews, it suggests that 2016 could be a breakthrough year for the Dubliner who, after two mainly instrumental outings, has now fully embraced this singing lark.

To celebrate his new album, The Narrows, which drops courtesy of Yep Roc on March 18, Grant-Lee Phillips has put together a six-track primer drawing on every phase of his 16-year solo career.

Also new and free - but you're welcome to tip! - from Noise Trade is Brooke Waggoner's Sweven EP, which confirms that the Nashville songstress should be waaaaay bigger than she is.

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Completing a very fine Noise Trade hat-trick is a bumper 25-track mixtape looking forward to May's Hangout festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Lizzo, Run The Jewels, Pell, Moon Taxi, Courtney Barnett and Mayer Hawthorne are among the highlights.

This week's hot streaming action continues with a double gem from Lucinda Williams, the country maven whose voice sounds like it's been matured in an oak whiskey barrel; the extremely frisky new one from Canadian electro merchants Junior Boys and Philly psych rockers Dr. Dog whose wig is even more out than usual.

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Of the several attempts to break the internet this week, our favourite is Wiz Khalifa's freestyle turning of Adele's 'Hello' into a stoner anthem - sample lyric: "Open up and let's get high/I am trying to get fried." Performed on Los Angeles' Power 106 radio station, it's already been viewed over a million times on YouTube.

First Wiz Khalifa gets Adele's 'Hello' royally stoned, now Hozier's 'Take Me To Church' is given a frenzied goth kicking by Los Angeles' Vampires Everywhere! The second single to be taken from their Ritual album, it features guest screaming from Chelsea Grin's Alex Koehler. It shouldn't work but amazingly does!

American NPR celebrated its 500th Tiny Desk Concert with an absolute stormer from Dan Auerbach's latest flight of musical fancy, The Arcs. No. 499 was Wolf Alice who do the stripped down thing exceptionally well too.

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Massive Attack have premiered the video for 'Take It There', one of the tunes from their new Ritual Spirit EP. It's directed by Hiro Murai who's previously worked with the likes of Childish Gambino, Chet Faker and Earl Sweatshirt and stars the Oscar-nominated John Hawkes of American Gangster and Lincoln fame. More importantly for Wild Bunch fans it finds Tricky returning to the fold and contributing to a tune that's by turns dangerously dark and deliciously poppy.

We're loving this promo for 'Want What You Want', the first song to be lifted from Hotel On Mars' Don't Feel Like Daylight album, which receives its official February 19 launch in the Grand Social, Dublin. There really aren't enough hurley-brandishing madmen in music videos these days...

A new Animal Collective tune can be bagged by downloading their fancy paintbox App.

We're delighted to make the acquaintance of The Glass Child, AKA Charlotte Erikkson, who's done a bang up job of covering Damien Rice's 'Older Chests'. The 18-year-old Swede also pens a fine tune herself.

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It was superstar tribute time last weekend as Dave Grohl, Robert Trujillo, Dave Lombardo, and Phil Anselmo bashed out a brutal (but in a good way!) version of 'Ace Of Spades' for their old pal Lemmy. The quartet were taking part in the annual Dimebash gathering in Hollywood to honour Pantera's Dimebag Darrell who was shot dead on stage in 2004 by a former marine. Meanwhile, the BBC debuted Lemmy: In His Own Words, a mini-doc drawing on archive interviews with the great man.

The Weeknd, Pharrell Williams, Kobe Bryant, Mark Ronson, John Legend, Questlove, L.A. Reid, his parents Katherine and Joe, and his brothers Jackie and Marlon are among those contributing to Michael Jackson's Journey From Motown To Off The Wall, the new Spike Lee documentary that receives its Showtime premiere on February 5. It focuses on "a rarely examined chapter of Jacksons career as he evolves from the lead singer of Jackson 5 to a solo artist recording what will become his breakthrough, seminal 1979 pop record, Off The Wall."

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The Longitude-bound Father John Misty has shared 'Maybe, Sweet One, You Won't Have Nightmares Tonight', a song he wrote for a Late Show With Stephen Colbert skit, but which was cut short due to time restraints.

Even by his own exalted standards, the wordplay is super dextrous!

Finally, let us pay tribute to Colin Vearncombe, AKA Black, and hard rock bassist and keys man Jimmy Bain who've joined the roll-call of 2016 rock 'n' roll deaths. We're praying for a week where we don't have to pay tribute to legendary musicians we have lost.

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And that, ladies, gentleman, boys and girls, is that for another Free Music Friday. Feel free to hit us up with links @stuartclark and have a cracker of a weekend.
The unemployed mechanic who was arrested and charged in a gruesome triple-slaying in League City in 1983 was transferred this week to the Galveston County jail, where he will await a first court appearance in two weeks.

Jesse Dean Kersh, 58, of Spring was being held Thursday on $150,000 bond on the murder charges.

Kersh was arrested Tuesday at a Spring restaurant and charged with the 1983 murders of Beth Yvette Wilburn, 25, who was then co-owner of Corvette Concepts in League City; her 28-year-old boyfriend, Thomas Earl McGraw Jr., an oil field worker who'd just returned from Bolivia; and 22-year-old James Craig Oatis, an electrician from Houston, who had been hired to install a fluorescent light at the shop.

Kersh was working at the shop as a mechanic at the time of the killings, authorities said.

He was moved Wednesday from the League City jail to Galveston.

Kersh declined a request for comment Thursday through a Galveston County jailer.

He's scheduled to appear Feb. 10 in the 122nd District Court in Galveston.

The case, which startled the then-small Galveston County suburb, had been cold for decades as police, the FBI and Texas Rangers investigated.

Many suspects were considered over the years and ruled out.

Authorities have shared few details about what led to the recent break in the case but have said witness interviews, ballistic reports and DNA testing of material under Wilburn's fingernails all provided clues. Police also said in a probable cause affidavit that a witness had come forward in 2013 and disputed Kersh's assertion that he had never owned a .22-caliber handgun like the one used in the slayings, and in fact said that Hersh had asked for his assistance in manufacturing a silencer.

Investigators also found that some of the bullets recovered from the crime scene had markings that were consistent with being shot through a device like a silencer.

A magistrate judge in La Marque read Kersh the accusations and asked the Spring man if he understood his rights Wednesday. Kersh then declined a court-appointed attorney, according to Galveston County Chief Assistant District Attorney Kevin Petroff. District clerk records indicate that Kersh does not yet appear to have an attorney.

The three victims were slain on the evening of Nov. 2, 1983.

Police said autopsy reports indicated Wilburn had been stabbed 114 times and had four gunshot wounds, McGraw was stabbed 15 times and had seven gunshot wounds and Oatis had 10 gunshot wounds.

Wilburn's business partner, Bob Currie, discovered her bloody body on the office floor after he came to open the shop the next morning.

Kersh, whose only prior convictions were for public intoxication and drunken driving decades ago, has mostly lived in and around the Houston area in recent decades, public records show.

Staff writer Cindy Horswell contributed to this report.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article contained an incorrect spelling of the last name of victim James Craig Oatis. The spelling was based on that used in past news accounts and has been corrected to reflect new information from authorities.
When we hear about human trafficking, many of us think about a problem that exists in the developing world - something that happens primarily outside of U.S. borders.

But while countries such as Syria, Qatar, Sudan and the Central African Republic are the worst transgressors when it comes to slave labor, each year thousands of people are trafficked illegally in the United States - and right in our neighborhoods.

That became even more clear last week, when the madam of the Las Palmas II cantina, a notorious Houston brothel, was sentenced to life in prison for her role in forcing young women and girls into prostitution through an international sex trafficking ring.

The rampant crime of human trafficking is hidden in plain sight. If we don't take action against it, we are complicit.

An estimated 36 million people around the world are trapped by debt bondage, forced labor, indentured servitude, commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking, according to data from Australian-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation. They are forced to work in farm fields, factories, mines, construction sites, restaurants, hotels, retail stores, brothels and private homes. The threat of violence shackles these vulnerable people anywhere slave owners can get away with it.

More than half of these victims are women and girls. A quarter of them are children.

We knowingly and unknowingly support many slavery-tainted businesses. We also use tens of thousands of human slaves right here in our yards, in our fields, in our factories and in the dark underbelly of the sex trade. Human slavery drives a $150 billion industry that creates many of our everyday products.

Recently, the Texas attorney general announced that the state will start a new law enforcement unit focused on human trafficking and transnational organized crime.

The state's focus on the problem and a crackdown from law enforcement is commendable. It will reinforce the efforts by Houston's special advisor to the mayor on human trafficking and by the dozens of committed activists and organizations like Children at Risk, YMCA International and United Against Human Trafficking - to name a few.

But the victims of human trafficking are hard to see, because they come from a segment of our society that is most often invisible - the homeless, foster-care youth and runaways. They are the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

It's time that we all start paying more attention to the crime, the causes, the solutions and the people who are affected.

If more of us take note and spread the word, more people will take action. Together, we'll make more informed purchases. We'll recognize the signs and report trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at (888) 373-7888. We'll rally to change our laws and preclude the growth of this truly heinous human rights violation.

Eventually, as compassion and awareness spread, fewer people will suffer everywhere.

It is time we shed light on those who have fallen through the metaphorical cracks in our everyday line of sight.

Gochman is an artist and activist who grew up in Houston. In 2014, she created Red Sand Project, an international participatory artwork that invites the public to pour red sand into sidewalk cracks and share photos of their work on social media with the hashtag #RedSandProject.
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Aditi Sant Joins Savills Studley Occupier Services Industry Leader Becomes Senior Managing Director of Firms Rapidly Growing Platform

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 01-29-2016 7:01 am

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Tampa, FL (PRWEB) January 25, 2016Savills Studley has appointed Aditi Sant as Senior Managing Director of Occupier Services in its Tampa office, as part of an aggressive recruiting effort designed to continue the growth and expansion of the firms Occupier Services platform.Aditi is a true ace in the industry. Her expertise, drive and commitment to excellence is second-to-none, said Ann Duncan, Executive Vice President and Head of Savills Studleys Occupier Services group. She brings unique end-user experience to the platform and we are confident she will make phenomenal contributions to our team.Savills Studley Occupier Services provides a full range of integrated real estate services and can consistently deliver strategic results on a worldwide basis. Sant will play an important role in providing portfolio optimization and strategic consulting services to clients regionally, nationally, and internationally, as well as lead the team in workplace...

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DaVinciTek is Pleased to Announce That Denise Cappuccio Has Joined the Team As Director, Client Services In this role, Denise will focus on ensuring the firm continues to deliver best in class IT recruiting solutions to exceed client expectations, while

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MORRISTOWN, NJ (PRWEB) January 26, 2016In this role, Denise will focus on ensuring the firm continues to deliver best in class IT recruiting solutions to exceed client expectations, while creating tangible business results. She will develop new business and actively recruit top tier IT talent. Denises efforts will drive outcomes critical to helping organizations keep pace with the new era of information technology.Denise brings a unique blend of capabilities to the team with a diverse background developed throughout her career at AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya. Her experience in human resources, sales enablement and digital marketing offers clients a competitive advantage in the quest for top talent. We are extremely pleased to add Denise to the management team in this key role, said Anthony T. Curlo, DaVinciTeks President and CEO. Denises leadership, executive presence and business acumen will allow DaVinciTek to accelerate its growth mod...

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Goodwill and Interstate Hotels & Resorts Streamline Hospitality Hiring and Recruitment through Innovative Collaboration Goodwill Connects Job Seekers to Opportunities in Hospitality Industry

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Rockville, MD (PRWEB) January 26, 2016Goodwill has joined forces with Interstate Hotels & Resorts to connect qualified candidates with jobs in hospitality, a unique collaboration with the industry. Interstate Hotels & Resorts (http://www.interstatehotels.com), the leading U.S.-based global hotel management company, offers diverse career paths and growth opportunities in the hospitality industry, providing flexibility with full- and part-time opportunities and positions in every area of hotel operations, from guest services and sales to food and beverage and finance.At any given time, there are more than 1,200 job openings at Interstate-managed hotels available in the U.S. Each day, many individuals come to Goodwill looking for help in finding employment and building their careers. To help these individuals succeed in finding a job, Goodwill provides services such as career counseling, computer and job readiness classes, resume and interview preparation, and many ...

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Linda Mack of Mack International a Featured Speaker at the Family Enterprise and Wealth Conference in Chicago, Illinois January 26 The Family Enterprise and Wealth (FEW) VII Conference to be held January 26 at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago will explore

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Chicago, IL. (PRWEB) Jan 25, 2016 (PRWEB) January 26, 2016Linda C. Mack, founder and president of Mack International, the premier retained executive search and strategic consulting firm serving family office and wealth management clients, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming FEW VII Conference. It is scheduled for January 26 in Chicago at the Peninsula Hotel where 50-60 families and advisors are expected to attend from throughout the United States and Canada.The conference, sponsored by John E. Messervey, President of the National Family Business Council, will offer four sessions exploring a variety of diverse topics including developing and maintaining family wealth, trends in investments, cyber security, technological advances, human resources, and honoring the family legacy. Linda Mack will be speaking on how Family Offices can successfully attract and retain top talent in a session entitled, Winning the Race for Talent in your Family Office. The focus of Linda&...

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Resource 1 Announces New Account Executive, Kristen Long Resource 1 is pleased to announce the addition of one of their newest team members, Kristen Long. Resource 1 is an established Information Technology consulting firm.

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 01-29-2016 7:22 am

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Chicago, IL (PRWEB) January 26, 2016Resource 1, an established Information Technology consulting firm, is pleased to announce the addition of one of their newest team members, Kristen Long. Kristen has over 18 years of experience building client relationships for businesses throughout the greater Chicagoland area. This extensive experience has led to her position as an Account Manager on the Enterprise Services division of Resource 1.Throughout each phase of her career, Kristen has earned a reputation for her problem resolution, customer service, and commitment to the growth and success of her clients."Working as an Account Executive for Resource 1 is a great development in my career," says Kristen. "This team has an outstanding reputation for quality that extends back over three decades. I am eager to find solutions for Resource 1s clients and growing their businesses."Kristen has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Olivet Nazarene University. S...

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Security Is Not An Issue With Desktop Version Of ezAccounting 2016 Business Software Halfpricesoft.com continues to support desktop version in ezAccounting 2016 for customer security and peace of mind. Test drive by visiting http://www.halfpricesoft.com.

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 01-29-2016 11:00 am

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Dallas, TX (PRWEB) January 26, 2016Halfpricesoft.com developers are aware of the recent breaches with online security. With this in mind, the team has decided to keep the newest ezAccounting 2016 business software as a desktop version. By keeping all data on a local machine and not the internet, sensitive customer information is not at risk for data breach.The latest EzAccounting 2016 business software remains as a desktop version for customer peace of mind in keeping sensitive data information from being hacked. said Dr. Ge, the founder of halfpricesoft.com.Until the end of January 2016, EzAccounting software will be offered as a bundle version for the 2015 and 2016 versions. It is being offered at $159.00 (regularly $298 per installation). New customers can download and try this software at no cost or no obligation at http://accounting.halfpricesoft.com/accounting-software-download.aspEzAccounting business software is by far one of the easiest and least expensive appli...

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Tara Furiani Joins Account Control Technology Holdings, Inc. as Executive Vice President of Talent Talent Management Guru Will Focus on Building Companys Culture for Continued Expansion

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Dover, Delaware (PRWEB) January 26, 2016Account Control Technology Holdings, Inc. (ACT Holdings) is pleased to announce that Tara Furiani has joined the company as Executive Vice President of Talent. Furiani will oversee all talent management, human resources, training, culture and recruiting functions across the organization and its subsidiaries, which include debt recovery and outsourcing provider Account Control Technology, Inc. (ACT) and business process outsourcing leader Convergent.I'm delighted to welcome Tara Furiani to ACT Holdings, said Nabil Kabbani, CEO. Building our company's culture to attract and retain quality employees is critical to our growth, and Tara's track record of developing successful talent strategies for complex businesses like ours is exemplary.Furiani has more than 16 years of global business experience, including service in financial services, healthcare, technology and other industries. Prior to joining ACT, she was the Chief ...

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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-29 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Greece, Cyprus, Israel agreement of huge economic and geopolitical importance, gov't sources say [02] Cooperation possibilities in energy, construction, technology dominate Deputy FM Mardas' meetings in Tel Aviv and Ramallah [03] New refugees boat tragedy; 26 bodies recovered [04] Ships to remain docked for another 48h due to seamen's strike [01] Greece, Cyprus, Israel agreement of huge economic and geopolitical importance, gov't sources say The tripartite Greece - Cyprus - Israel agreement is considered of special economic and geopolitical importance by government sources. This agreement, which is the result of increasingly frequent contacts last year, is the second, after the tripartite agreement of Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. Government sources said that beneficial partnerships and new development conditions are formed in a number of economic sectors after the signing of this agreement. Greece's role is upgraded as a factor of stability in the region and the same exists and for Cyprus. The energy sector is of great importance as the discovery of hydrocarbon deposits in Eastern Mediterranean creates a new dynamic in the region and can act as a catalyst for stability and cooperation. In this regard, government sources indicate that: It restarts the project of the EastMed gas pipeline, which will connect directly the East Mediterranean gas deposits with European networks. The EastMed is a project of great importance for the economy and energy security. It promotes strategic trilateral energy projects such as the "EuroAsia Interconnector" that connects the three countries for electricity transmission in continental energy markets. It explores the possibility of manufacturing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) transfer stations in Greece, an issue which has been included in the tripartite Greece - Cyprus - Egypt agreement. Following the Paris Agreement for the Climate, the cooperation possibilities in the Renewable Energy Sources technology, which are a dynamically developing sector of the economy concern Greece in particular, will be examined. "Greece and Cyprus will work as members of the EU to ensure financial resources in the energy sector. To accelerate cooperation, a Joint Working Group, composed of the Secretaries General of relevant ministries of the three countries, was established," said government sources. They pointed out that the cooperation also extends to other areas such as tourism, culture, water management, desalination technology and the protection of the marine environment. The cooperation and transfer of knowhow for support and development of startups (start ups) is also of particular importance. They also discussed the regional developments and security issues. "Greece and Cyprus pledge to contribute constructively in the strengthening of the European Union's relations with Israel. They also pledge to contribute to promoting the EU's role on the resumption of meaningful and credible talks between Israel and Palestine," the same government sources stated. [02] Cooperation possibilities in energy, construction, technology dominate Deputy FM Mardas' meetings in Tel Aviv and Ramallah The upgrading of the economic and trade relations as well as the attraction of investments particularly in energy, technology, tourism and construction dominated the meetings of Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas during his visit to Israel and Palestine after the High Cooperation Council of Greece-Israel held in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. On Thursday, Mardas met with the caretaker minister of European issues of Palestine Amal Zatu in Ramallah with whom he discussed the potential of cooperation in the sectors of construction, building and commodities. Zatu, according to an announcement, expressed her pleasure over Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' statements during the signing of the agreements with Israel. Palestine expressed interest in Greece's participation in the construction of one of the industrial zones and requested the offering of knowhow on the development of Palestine's tourism market. Mardas also presented the potential and opportunities that the Greek economy offers to 13 Israeli entrepreneurs. In the context of the meeting held at the Greek Embassy in Tel Aviv, Mardas discussed in detail the potential of the cooperation between Greece and Israel in the trade sector. According to the same announcement, the Israeli businessmen expressed interest in investments in Greece and particularly in the sectors of trade, technology, energy and tourism. Afterwards, Mardas had a meeting with the president of the Commerce Chambers of Israel with whom he discussed the possibility of upgrading the bilateral trade relations. [03] New refugees boat tragedy; 26 bodies recovered Twenty six refugees (10 men, 6 women and 10 children) died when the wooden boat they were on board capsized in the sea region north of Samos island. According to a refugee that was located on a Samos beach, the boat was carrying 40-50 people and 9 of them have been rescued until late Thursday. Two Greek coast guard patrol boats, two Frontex vessels assisted by a SUPER PUMA military helicopter and a warship are currently searching the region for survivors. [04] Ships to remain docked for another 48h due to seamen's strike The Greek Seamen's Federation (PNO) has declared a new 48h strike in all ship categories starting from 06:00 on Friday until 06:00 on Sunday 31 January. Ships involved in the transfer of migrants and refugees are not excluded from the mobilisation. PNO is expected to meet again on Saturday in order to decide on the future of its mobilisations. The federation's general secretary Yiannis Halas speaking to ANA-MPA on the escalation of their mobilisations said that until today there was no answer to their requests from the government. "I estimate that we are heading to a total disaster. I may be pressed from the islanders but I can't do otherwise," he said adding that by no means will he allow that assets of the seamens social security fund to be absorbed by the new single fund. PNO in an announcement demands the withdrawal of the draft law on social security noting that due to the special character of the seamen's profession their fund can't been incorporated in the new single national social security fund. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-29 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Israel examines pipeline to transport natural gas to Europe via Greece [02] St. Valentine's festival on Lesvos on Feb. 14 [03] Farmers escalate mobilisations; Tempi Valley closed from 12:00-18:00 on Friday [01] Israel examines pipeline to transport natural gas to Europe via Greece Israel wants to examine a plan to build a pipeline to transport the country's natural gas to Europe via Greece, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, during a tri-party meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades in Nicosia. Speaking to reporters, after the meeting, the Israeli PM said the plan was "bold", while the Greek PM commenting on the very big importance of exploiting the natural gas reserves of Cyprus and Israel, noted "of course, Greece will be play the role of a bridge for these two countries, which will want to gain direct benefits from exploiting fields through their transport towards Europe via Greece." The three countries agreed to promote common projects in the energy sector and cooperation in other sectors. A joint declaration, adopted by the three leaders, envisages common projects in energy, sea transport, innovation, water technology, transport, tourism, security and commercial partnerships. In the framework of the tri-party meeting, government ministers signed an agreement on management of water resources and agreed to create a sub-water electricity cable linking electricity grids between the three countries. The three leaders also agreed to the set up a special commission to monitor progress of all agreements in order to have specific results in their next meeting, scheduled in the next six months. The Greek Premier underlined that the tri-party meeting "was an important step forward for stability in the wider region" and explained that this step was not directed against third parties. On the contrary, he noted "it sets an example as it proved that we can work together, we can create even more networks linking us and undertake initiatives to exploit the comparative advantages of our region to the benefit of our peoples." "Today, we send a very important message that, by uniting our forces, we can promote prosperity, stability through development of common goals and through exploiting the advantages of our region," Tsipras said. He added that the tri-party formation was "a strategic choice aimed to enhance our countries' capabilities and to contribute to the benefit of our peoples and our region based on the interconnection of several sectors, such as energy, transport, know-how exchange and particularly in new technology, innovation and of course tourism". Tsipras expressed his belief that this strategic choice "can promote regional peace and stability and to highlight as an example the benefits of cooperation in the region based on the principle of good neighborhood". "We plan the immediate implementation of actions and we agreed on the formation of a tri-party commission specialized on energy issues to promote our energy goals," the Greek PM said, adding that discussions also focused on environment, protection and safety of sea environment. [02] St. Valentine's festival on Lesvos on Feb. 14 A two-day festival entitled "Saint Valentine of Mytilene 2016" will take place on Lesvos island on February 13-14 as the holy relics of Saint Valentine are kept in the Church of Metastassis of Virgin Mary in Mytilene. The municipality of Lesvos, the Chamber of Commerce, the Trade Association of the island and the Union of hoteliers invite couples from all around the world to marry in the "capital" city of solidarity and love as well as couples who celebrate their 25,30 and 50-year anniversary to participate in a competition. Guests are entitled to free travel tickets, three-night accommodation, food and guided tours. Religious and cultural events have also been planned on the island for the celebration of St Valentine. For further information those interested can send an e-mail to ethel.genia@hotmail.com or call the municipality of Lesvos. [03] Farmers escalate mobilisations; Tempi Valley closed from 12:00-18:00 on Friday Greek farmers protesting against the government's proposed tax and pension reforms announced they will block the Athens-Thessaloniki motorway Tempi Valley for six hours on Friday , following a decision by the Thessaly farmers' coordination committee . Traffic at Tempi Valley will be interrupted from 12.00 to 18.00 on Friday. Thessaly farmers have invited the representatives of all the farmers blockades across the country to meet at 14:00 at Tempi in order to discuss the situation and to coordinate their actions from now on. However, in order to increase the pressure to the government, the farmers are oriented to gradually increase the blocking hours at Tempi Valley. Moreover, farmers from western Greece have parked their tractors alongside the the motorways of Patras-Pyrgos and Antirrio-Ioannina. Farmers from Ilia region will block Patras-Pyrgos at Kourtesi interchange from 12:00 to 14:00 and will distribute local products to the passing drivers and will brief them on their mobilisations and their requests. Farmers from the prefecture of Etoloakarnania said they will interrupt the traffic on Antirrio-Ioannina national road at Kefalovrysso interchange from 17:00-22:00 on Friday while farmers from Achaia have scheduled to block Patras-Pyrgos motorway at Kato Achaia junction from 18:00-21:00. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Zealands largest gaming studio, which employs around a quarter of the countrys gaming professionals, has confirmed it will soon be closing its doors after ten years operating in Auckland.The cut is just the latest cull from French-owned games developer Gameloft, which shut seven studios worldwide last year, including locations in Tokyo and New York."In order to return to profitability in the second half of 2015, and to past profitability levels in the medium term, Gameloft has initiated an ambitious cost reduction program since the start of the year and in the process closed seven development studios that had become unprofitable," CEO Michel Guillemot said.Up to 160 jobs are expected to go in line with the latest closure and while the news will undoubtedly hit the gaming industry hard, many employers around the country now have the opportunity to attract top talent with a unique and very desirable set of skills."The gaming industry actually requires a lot of highly specialised and highly skilled people that are sought after in a wide range of industries, said Stephen Knightly, chairperson of the New Zealand Game Developers Association."Other New Zealand studios are hiring and there certainly is a shortage of people with good tech and creative skills, he added, pointing out that some developing studios had already reached out to some of the employees with offers of employment.
Conservatives are questioning the Liberals' motivation for repealing two controversial union-related bills after revelations the party repaid the federal government for an offside campaign contribution.

But a top Liberal cabinet minister is dismissing the matter as a campaign "accident" that was quickly rectified.

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A compliance agreement from the commissioner of Canada Elections showed Thursday that Liberals recently ponied up $2,300 to the receiver general related to a union's presence at a September campaign event in Waterloo, Ont.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is shown at a campaign stop in Waterloo, Ont. in September 2015. (Photo: Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

Twenty-three members of the Local 527 branch of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada were paid $100 each to attend the event.

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In a move that was seen at the time as an attempt to woo traditional NDP voters, Justin Trudeau pledged to invest $750 million in skilled trade funding.

Party did not know about arrangement

Under Canada's election rules, only individuals can donate to political parties. Since members were given cash to essentially act as props at the event, the commissioner determined that the union made an ineligible, non-monetary contribution to the Liberals that was no different than a donation.

The commissioner's report noted, however, that Liberals did not know about arrangement.

The news broke not long after Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk announced the Liberals will overturn Bill C-377, which requires unions publicly disclose their spending to the Canada Revenue Agency, including how much is spent on political activities. A second law changing how unions certify and decertify will also be repealed.

Grits just thanking 'union bosses'

Conservative labour critic Gerard Deltell rose in question period Thursday to accuse Liberals of just wanting to thank their "big union bosses," calling it a bad day for democracy.

He pointed to the $2,300 repayment as proof that Liberals want to "reduce accountability."

Mihychuk shot back that the past Tory government's "attacks on the labour movement" were "unwarranted, uncalled for, and undemocratic" and that repealing those laws will bring back fairness and balance.

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"How much does a law cost?"

Alberta Tory MP John Barlow rose to call the minister confused about her priorities.

"It has come to light today that the Liberals received illegal union donations during the election," he said. "And this morning the minister was repaying her union friends. She announced the Liberal government has made it their priority to remove accountability and transparency from government."

Barlow wondered aloud why it was important to "reward union leaders" instead of helping Canadians get back to work.

As he spoke, another Tory MP could be heard saying: "How much does a law cost?"

Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc responds in the House of Commons. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc said the member was confusing a "meritorious" legislative change with an "accident that happened during the campaign"  a statement that sparked shouts from the Tory bench.

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"Let's be very clear. At the very moment that this was brought to our attention, the party followed the law, reimbursed the receiver general, and the appropriate union signed a compliance agreement with the commissioner," LeBlanc said.

"That's something that the members opposite had a very difficult time doing."

Issue a 'complete surprise': labour minister

After question period, a reporter told Mihychuk that it looks "coincidental, a bit quid pro quo" that Canadians found out about a secret donation less than an hour after she announced Bill C-377's repeal.

Mihychuk said she had no idea about this issue.

"It came as a complete surprise. I understand it was in Waterloo and apparently as soon as they found out about it, it was corrected," she said. "So I had no intention of misleading. I didn't know about it at all."

Deltell told reporters the repayment was a "clear indication" Liberals and unions worked together to beat the Tories.

"And today, the Liberal party says thank you to the unions for the help," he said.

With files from The Canadian Press

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How Much Are Federal Politicians Making? (2016) See Gallery
An NDP MP believes 16-year-olds should be given the right to vote, not only to increase engagement, but to ensure politicians are accountable to young people.

Don Davies, who represents the British Columbia riding of Vancouver Kingsway, introduced a private members bill in the House of Commons Thursday. Bill C-213 would amend the Canada Elections Act to lower the voting age from 18 to 16  a change he said would "widen the franchise of this country."

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NDP MP Don Davies speaks in the House of Commons. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

In his short remarks, Davies harkened back to other significant changes to voting rights in Canada. Interestingly, his speech was delivered on the 100th anniversary of Manitoba women winning the right to cast a ballot.

"At one time only men could vote, only men with property," he said. "Women could not vote, First Nations could not vote, and people had to be 21 years of age."

Young voters, Davies said, often work and pay taxes yet "have no representation as to how those tax dollars are spent."

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The MP also suggested lowering the voting age could increase voter turnout, noting studies suggest those who vote early in the democratic process are more likely to continue the habit.

"We know that voter turnout is generally anywhere between 50 per cent and 65 per cent," he said. "This is an important initiative to get young voters engaged in our process."

"They deserve the right to have their say in the future of our country."

The MP pointed out that Austria, Brazil, Scotland, Argentia, and Equador already extend suffrage to those 16 and older.

"I would urge all members of the House to empower young people to get their important voice expressed in the chamber so that their perspective on Canadian life can be fully expressed in our democratic process," he said.

In a statement to media, Davies said the bill is about placing trust in young Canadians.

"They deserve the right to have their say in the future of our country," he said in the release.

Lessons from Scotland?

Last June, 16-year-olds in Scotland won the right to vote in parliamentary elections this year. Sixteen and 17-year-olds were also allowed to vote in Scotlands historic independence referendum in 2014  a decision that boosted turnout by more than 100,000.

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New Brunswick Green Party Leader David Coon also introduced a bill in the provincial legislature last April to lower the provincial voting age to 16.

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New Democrats say a survey on the Liberal party website inviting Canadians to share their federal budget priorities is not what it seems.

Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP's ethics critic, released a statement this week calling out the Liberals for a so-called "consultation survey."

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The online questionnaire includes seven questions on topics ranging from infrastructure to the best way the new government can help the middle class.

But before Canadians can submit their results, they must first divulge personal information, including their name, address, phone number, postal code, email, date of birth, and gender.

And that has led Boulerice to conclude that the governing party is just trying to fill its data bank with information that can be used for future partisan activities and political fundraising.

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"Suggesting that the opinions gathered in this survey will be used in the government budget is misleading," Boulerice said in the release. "If the Liberal Party really wanted to know Canadians' priorities they'd hold pre-budget consultations in Parliament, as is normally done, or use a government and not a partisan website.

"This tactic is misleading and doesn't pass the ethics test."

"Suggesting that the opinions gathered in this survey will be used in the government budget is misleading."

Boulerice ends the statement by saying this was "not the kind of change Canadians asked for."

Finance Minister Bill Morneau is expected to release a budget in March.

Morneau's press secretary, Annie Donolo, told The Huffington Post Canada via email that the minister and his parliamentary secretary are consulting directly with Canadians about the budget.

"These are the most open, accessible pre-budget consultations ever," she said, adding that more than 150,000 Canadians have been reached in person or online.

She said Canadians are encouraged to share their ideas on the government's budget website.

Popular tactic with parties

Political parties often turn to petitions and surveys on their websites to get access to valuable information  typically email addresses  from supporters.

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Just this week, the NDP launched a page asking Canadians to add their email address to a petition demanding "real action" on income inequality.

And Conservatives created a website accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of "siding with (Russian President) Vladimir Putin and (Iranian leader) Ayatollah Khamenei instead of the people of Ukraine and Israel."

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With the Invictus Games fast approaching, Prince Harry spent the morning cheering on hopefuls at day one of three tryouts for the British team in Bath.

Kensington Palace shared a series of photos of the prince happily chatting with the athletes between the trials on Instagram.

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Prince Harry chats with @invictusorlando hopefuls at the UK team trials, following the 200m heats. The trials, which are being run over the next three days at the University of Bath, will see wounded, injured and sick military personnel and veterans compete across 10 sports for one of 100 places available on the UK team. A photo posted by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on Jan 29, 2016 at 2:54am PST

One hundred successful athletes will be selected from the tryouts to represent Britian at the Invictus Games in Orlando, Florida this May.

"The excitement is building not just here but also across the pond. You will be unbelievably amazed by the amount of support there is out there for you," the 31-year-old Prince told the competitors. "You are now or will be ambassadors for the Invictus shirt, and the Invictus spirit. Wherever you go and whatever you do, spread the word."

Prince Harry chats with wheelchair tennis hopefuls competing for one of 100 places in the UK @invictusorlando team. A photo posted by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on Jan 29, 2016 at 4:16am PST

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Prince Harry created the Invictus games, a sporting event similar to the Paralympics, but for wounded, sick and injured servicemen and women, in 2014 after attending a similar event in the United States in 2013.

"These Games have shone a spotlight on the unconquerable character of service men and women and their families and their Invictus spirit," the prince has said of the games.

This year's games will feature teams from 15 nations, including Canada.

During the early morning session, the Prince took a moment to acknowledge the recent passing of his friend and idol, British explorer Henry Worsley who died after developing a serious infection while crossing Antarctica unaided.

"He put his life on the line. This person was raising funds for the Endeavour Fund so people like you can do amazing things and rediscover yourselves. Thanks to him we have huge options for more and more people," the prince told the athletes.

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Harry's older brother William also paid tribute to Worsley in a note posted to the Kensington Palace Twitter feed.

A message from The Duke of Cambridge following the tragic news about Henry Worsley https://t.co/HRyVWpoLRapic.twitter.com/w9ncGg6r5A  Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) January 25, 2016

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OTTAWA  A fight could be brewing in the Senate, pitting the Conservative-dominated chamber against the Trudeau government.

The Liberals tabled legislation Thursday to repeal bills C-525 and C-377, which had been introduced by Conservative MPs and were widely viewed as anti-union. Last April, in the lead-up to the election, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau promised the International Association of Fire Fighters that he would scrap the bills if elected.

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Employment Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk said the laws had resulted "in an unfair playing field for the labour movement."

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer, however, responded that the two bills were "pro-worker" and "pro-union" and said they made labour organizations more democratic.

MaryAnn Mihychuk and Andrew Scheer don't see eye-to-eye on union-related bills. (Photo: CP)

Bill C-525 called for votes on the certification or decertification of union representation in federal workplaces to be held by secret ballot. Instead of automatically establishing a bargaining unit if more than 50 per cent of the workers agree to purchase a membership card, the new law  by raising the threshold for a vote to take place  makes it more difficult to organize. Practically, it also delays the process by forcing the Canada Industrial Relations Board to oversee all votes.

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Bill C-377 created onerous disclosure requirements that force unions to disclose publicly any salaries greater than $100,000 and any disbursements greater than $5,000  including the names and addresses of anyone whose goods or services are purchased. Unions are also forced to provide an estimate of how much time they spend on political activities and lobbying.

Scheer told The Huffington Post Canada that unions should be obliged to reveal how they spend their "forced-union dues" on political activities.

Vote could result in showdown

Former prime minister Stephen Harper called the election early last summer, in part because the party was being bombarded by union-funded negative ads in British Columbia.

Scheer said he didn't know what "strategies" his Senate colleagues would use to get their views heard, but he said the Conservatives in the House would oppose the Liberals' new bill.

Most Tory senators supported bills

Most Conservative senators supported both C-525 and C-377.With a majority in the chamber  45 seats compared with 28 for the Senate Liberals and 10 for independents  a vote could most likely result in a showdown, even if two Tories (senators Diane Bellemare and Nancy Ruth) were to vote with the Liberals again.

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Newfoundland Conservative Sen. Norman Doyle told HuffPost he wasn't sure what would happen.

"Who knows? We haven't talked about it, not yet."

Conservative Sen. Don Plett, seen in 2013, says the public should be allowed to assess C-377 themselves. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

Manitoba Conservative Sen. Don Plett, the party's whip, told HuffPost that he worked hard to pass C-377 and believes it is a "good piece of legislation."

"We will certainly be taking a very close look at [the Liberals' bill], and they are going to have to have some very good reasons for why they want to repeal it [the union legislation]."

Plett said he personally feels that the laws, passed late in the last parliamentary session, should be allowed to stick for a few years so the public can see whether the legislation was good.

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".. to repeal legislation before it has even hardly gone into effect, I just think is not the right move."

"If, in half a dozen or eight years from now, these bills are doing what the Liberals and what some union members are saying they will do, they can be reconsidered at that point. But to repeal legislation before it has even hardly gone into effect, I just think is not the right move.

"Certainly, if they do that, it will get its thorough study in the Senate."

Plett said he expects heated and interesting discussions, but he suggested that the Tories might not subvert the will of the elected House.

"We will not do something out of hand," he told HuffPost. Because Trudeau's Liberals won the election and he is now the prime minister, Plett said, "I need to respect his office, whether I like it or not."

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Since Zika virus started gaining worldwide attention last year, it has spread to more than 23 countries in the Americas according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The organization's director-general Margaret Chan has even said the virus "is now spreading explosively."

The majority of those infected don't experience any symptoms (mild fever, rash and red eyes). But authorities are still issuing warnings, mostly targeted at women who are pregnant or are planning to get pregnant. This is because of the possible link to birth defects in babies.

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So what does all this mean for Canadian women? Here are four facts all pregnant women need to know.

Zika virus is transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito. The type of mosquito that carries Zika is called Aedes aegypti, and it is not in Canada. According to Alberta Health, our climate doesn't suit this particular mosquito.

But there are Canadians with Zika.

"I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that there are three cases in Canadians who have travelled to affected countries that have come back with documented cases of Zika virus," said Health Minister Jane Philpott on Wednesday. Two of those cases are in B.C. and the third is in Alberta.

The WHO says Canada and Chile are the only two countries in the Americas where Zika is unlikely to spread.

One of the main concerns surrounding Zika is the possible link to birth defects.

"In Brazil, there has recently been a significant increase in number of babies born with birth defects (congenital malformations), such as infants born with an abnormally small head and microcephaly (an underdeveloped brain)," the Public Health Agency of Canada states on its website. "The Ministry of Health of Brazil recently identified a possible relationship between Zika virus infection and the increase in the number of microcephaly cases."

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Officials have found 4,180 suspected cases of microcephaly in babies in Brazil since late October (only 270 have been confirmed). This is much more than the number of cases reported in an average year. The worst-hit area is the state of Pernambuca.

According to the WHO, it will take another six to nine months to confirm if Zika is causing the birth defects.

While health organizations agree that a definitive link hasn't yet been made, they still recommend pregnant women (and women thinking of becoming pregnant) take precautions when travelling to regions with the virus.

In El Salvador and Colombia, the governments have even issued an advisory for women in their countries to delay getting pregnant for up to two years.

The Canadian government has issued the following warning to women planning to travel to countries where Zika virus is prevalent:

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"It is recommended that pregnant women and those considering becoming pregnant discuss their travel plans with their health care provider to assess their risk and consider postponing travel to areas where the Zika virus is circulating in the Americas. If travel cannot be postponed then strict mosquito bite prevention measures should be followed to protect themselves against bites."

Those who fit this description, should see their doctor at least six weeks before travel.

Of the top countries visited by Canadians, Mexico ranks second and the Dominican is number six, according to Stats Canada. And both have cases of Zika circulating. In Mexico, for example, there are 18 cases of Zika, in the regions of Chiapas, Nuevo Leon and Jalisco.

For anyone wanting to change travel plans, three Canadian airlines are allowing cancellations and rescheduling due to concerns over Zika.

The world we live in is very interconnected now, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a tropical infectious disease specialist in Toronto, told the Star. Things dont happen in isolation anymore. Infections from the farthest corners of the world can quickly arrive on our doorstep.

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But countries are working on it, and we're about a year away from having one.

"In the area of vaccines, I do know that there has been some work done by some groups looking at the feasibility of a Zika virus vaccine," says the WHO's assistant director Bruce Aylward. "Now something like that, as people know, is going to be a 12-month-plus time frame."

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ASSOCIATED PRESS President Barack Obama talks with Mexicoas President Enrique Pena Nieto as other leaders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries stand for a group photo in Manila, Philippines, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015, ahead of the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. From left, Chileas President Michelle Bachelet, Japanas Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Malaysiaas Prime Minister Najib Razak, President Obama, Mexicoas President Enrique Pena Nieto, New Zealandas Prime Minister John Key, and Peruas President Ollanta Humala Tasso. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The TPP is of immense importance to Canada and, as argued previously, Canada will really have no choice but to follow suit should the Americans ratify the agreement.

However, why this is so is a difficult communications job.

Estimates compiled by the World Bank are that the agreement will increase Canadian GDP by only 1.2 per cent over 15 years.

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The other benefit commonly touted with signings of bilateral trade agreements to which Canada has become accustomed (increased exports through lowering of tariffs and non-tariff barriers) needs an asterisk with the TPP. That is because the benefits Canada receives under this agreement are also granted to all 11 other parties.

Reductions on beef imports by Japan, for example, are shared with major beef exporters that are also part of the TPP -- the U.S., Australia, Mexico and New Zealand. The simultaneous appearance of competition with the new opportunities is going to be new for Canadian exporters and an important point to keep in mind.

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So then, what is the big deal?

For Canada, the TPP is important as insurance against a potential, more radical, future opening of the U.S. market.

The U.S. is and will remain the largest and most important export market for Canada both in direct sales to the U.S. as well as moving goods through the U.S. to other markets. And even though Canada has diversified its trade toward other markets, the volume of growth of exports to the U.S. has still remained fairly consistent in the recent past.

But, in the near term, as growth in emerging markets and China moderates and Canada can no longer ride the commodity supercycle, the importance of the U.S. market, which is growing again, will increase for Canada.

And this is not a bad development.

Canadian exports to the U.S. have been relatively stable and have had a lower overall risk than those in other markets. The U.S. also remains the easiest country for Canadian companies to do business thanks to language, culture and geographic proximity.

All of this underlies the importance of protecting market share in the U.S. as a top Canadian trade priority. And this especially applies to thinking about the TPP.

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Once the Americans joined the TPP negotiations, the agreement morphed from an attempt by New Zealand, Chile and Singapore to create an APEC free trade agreement into an attempt by the U.S. to update the NAFTA and expand it across the Pacific.

A potential expansion of the NAFTA to include nine new members and extend the provisions of the agreement and access to the U.S. market to these countries immediately makes defensive considerations an equal or greater priority than thinking about new market opportunities.

"Should Canada not ratify the agreement now and decide to try and join later, it's doubtful that any of the probably hundreds of exemptions and carve-outs that it currently has would be offered again."

In the short term, the opening of the U.S. market under the TPP does not appear in sectors of importance to Canada and certainly not to Western Canada. On commodities, Canada's geographic advantage should mitigate any potential gains by competitors.

In services, an area of importance for Canada, the U.S. decision not to sign on chapter 12 of the agreement, Temporary Entry of Business Persons, should mitigate any increases in competition from the U.S. agreeing to chapter 10, Cross-Border Trade in Services.

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Though the TPP has arguably not significantly opened the American market to new competition from other TPP countries, the agreement has made an eventual opening easier and more likely.

One of the innovations of TPP, a response to short comings in the NAFTA, has been to create a "living" trade agreement with specific text in the agreement to allow the addition of new members and to require periodic meetings to monitor and update the agreement.

Should the TPP be ratified and should the mood in Washington D.C. toward trade liberalization alter in the future, and should new competitors such as China and Korea join the trade bloc, then the market for over 70 per cent of Canada's exports could suddenly become more difficult, especially if Canada is not part of the agreement. This is a risk that the country simply cannot take.

Worse, should Canada not ratify the agreement now and decide to try and join later, it's doubtful that any of the probably hundreds of exemptions and carve-outs that it currently has would be offered again. In other words, if you don't like this version of the TPP you'll be less happy with what we would get later.

Though it will be a tough argument to sell to the general public and businesses who are looking for tangible immediate gains, the prevention of a hypothetical future threat, or basic insurance, is the reason to get behind the agreement.

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Eyecandy Images via Getty Images Portrait of young thoughtful African American woman, studio shot

Before coming to Toronto, I lived in Zimbabwe where my mother was taken after she was married. I was around nine years old when my father brought another woman into our home to be his second wife. Things were very difficult in our home after that. My mother took my brother and me and we fled back to her country through an illegal entry point.

Despite making it back to her home, our family did not accept my mother after her divorce. They regarded her as a coward and a disgrace, and blamed her for breaking up her marriage. My aunt forced my mother to leave my brother and me at my grandmother's place, without any guarantee that we would see each other again.

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Soon after, I was given to another aunt to work as a babysitter. One of my uncles took my brother to be a shepherd for his cattle.

Living with my Aunt Rose was like living in a cage with a lion. My aunt was the kind of person who looked extremely quiet and humble in front of others, but was a terror behind closed doors. I felt lost, surrounded by brick walls.

From the time I was 10, Aunt Rose's son would rape me at any opportunity. He would taunt me and say that my mother had abandoned me. My aunt's husband also treated me like trash. He refused to even say my name.

He slept with a knife under his pillow and had it in his sock during the day. I can still remember him laughing while he chased me around the house with it. I can't even tell you how many times he got me pregnant and then terminated my pregnancy.

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I was fearful, I was lonely and I wanted nothing more than to be with my mother and brother.

I felt raw and broken.

"I think the way that mental health is made to be a demon in my country, homelessness is made to be a demon in Toronto."

Throughout all of this, I worked hard in school and tried to keep myself focused on my education. Even when hope was scarce, I hoped that my education would be my freedom.

After my secondary school exams, my mother's brother came for me. Through him, I met my mother again for the first time in 16 years. For all those years my mother had continued her unpaid work for her sister. I never did get to see my brother again as he had died some time earlier.

My uncle helped me obtain work, and I began to work two jobs with the hope of buying my mother a house and her own farm.

Many years after I had left her home, my Aunt Rose ended up moving into my home after a job change transferred her to my area. She depended on me financially and opened up wounds from the past. I felt suffocated and began to struggle with my mental health.

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I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, was suicidal, and was admitted into the hospital. My family regarded me as a worthless and dangerous person in need of being chained up. In my country, mental health is not understood as it is in Canada. It is considered dangerous and weak.

My family began to speak out against me and I knew that I had to flee my country in order to be safe.

After leaving my country, I came to Canada as a refugee in search of happiness. It may sound simple, but that is all I want. Happiness.

I have lived in the shelter system since I arrived in Toronto. Even though I worked in a government office in my country, I am not allowed to work in Canada because I am told I have no "status." I go to school and seek support from agencies like Street Haven who provide services for people who need them.

I meet with lawyers and talk about my case to stay in Canada. I volunteer. I also spend a lot of time thinking about my situation and about the women who I live with at the shelters.

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I think the way that mental health is made to be a demon in my country, homelessness is made to be a demon in Toronto. I know that people think anyone who is homeless must be lazy, or on drugs, or drinks too much.

I probably would think it myself if I wasn't living it. I know it is simpler to judge and to answer questions without actually asking them. I know it is easy.

What isn't easy is asking why some people have a house and food and clothing, when others have nothing. It isn't easy to care for people we don't know, or to lessen our share so that someone else can get theirs. It isn't easy to accept that sometimes there is no one to blame and that people don't always make the life they live.

My hope for this year is that it is full of new beginnings, for me and for all of the women who share my understanding of lives that aren't easy. Yes, my hope is for a year of happiness and new beginnings.

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Cabinet minister Patrick McLoughlin has repeated David Cameron's infamous "bunch of migrants" line - and gone even further by claiming "that's what Jeremy Corbyn surrounded himself with".

The Tory Transport Secretary waded into the row on BBC1's Question Time to defend the Prime Minister, just a day after he sparked a widespread backlash for the remarks about the Labour leader's trip to refugee camps in Dunkirk and Calais.

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McLoughlin was unrepentant, insisting that the UK Government was doing more than most to help Syrians in the countries bordering their home nation.

A member of the Question Time audience raised the issue, demanding an apology for the comments.

I thought the Prime Ministers comments at Prime Ministers Question Time were absolutely shameful in terms of how he referred to how he referred to migrants," she said, to applause.

"And I think he just continues to incite hatred and prejudice. And I think he should apologise.

When asked by David Dimbleby if the PM should say sorry for the bunch of migrants line, McLoughlin refused to back down.

He said a bunch of migrants...that's a description of what Jeremy Corbyn surrounded himself with, when he went marching over to Calais

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Labour MP Jess Phillips was visibly shocked at the minister's remark, hitting back "they are people who've faced much more than youll ever face in your life.

Labour MP Jess Phillips

Fellow panellist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown added: You dont believe that. You really don't believe that?

The SNP's Westminster leader Angus Robertson also interjected: "Appalling, appalling.

The reaction on Twitter to McLoughlin's remarks was swift, with many claiming he had further dehumanised the refugees by referring to them as 'what'.

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Harry Potter author JK Rowling was one of many to retweet Times journalist Hugo Rifkind's own take on the Question Time debate.

I find it properly odd that people can discuss refugees without discussing what they're fleeing. #bbcqt  Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) January 28, 2016

according to one of the Tories on BBC QT tonight "a bunch of migrants" is not offensive in any way !  Guinevere (@guinevere_sarge) January 28, 2016

Heading back to Dunkirk tomorrow. Wonder if I will meet a 'bunch of migrants' or instead fellow human beings enduring inhumane conditions  Jenni Yuill (@JenniWeston1) January 28, 2016

But McLoughlin went on to say that the right way to approach the migrant crisis was to help Syrians in the region, rather than create a 'pull factor' of admitting more who had made the perilous journey to Europe.

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"We are a moral nation and we need to fulfil our moral responsibilities," he said, despite being heckled. The minister added that he was "proud to be in a party" that gave 0.7% of its national income to overseas aid.

Jeremy Corbyn at a refugee camp in Dunkirk

We are the second biggest bilateral donor in humanitarian crisis to Syria. Over 1.1bn. Weve sent the Royal Navy to try and turn some of these boats backs to that people dont drown, he said.

He added that the Government would be hosting a special conference in London next week to look at extra help for Syria from the UK, the Germans and other nations.
Jess Phillips has issued a passionate plea for sense on the UK's response to the refugee crisis, asking Brits to "tighten their belts" and "look at what they could offer".

The Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley used her appearance on Thursday night's BBC 'Question Time' to evoke the imagery of British society during wartime, before arguing: "It is always the poorest people in this country who suffer the effects of migration."

Criticising the prime minister, she said: "I bet there aren't any living in Whitney in David Cameron's constituency".

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Responding to those who believe Britain is already doing enough to help refugees, she said: "Of course we should take as many as we can. The way we can afford it is to look at our areas.

"I live in Birmingham and if Birmingham City Council takes a genuine look at what school places are available what housing is available looks wholesale at where we can fit in more and we all tightened our belts a bit and did it - we could take a certain number.

She issued a rallying cry to the country, saying: "I want everyone in every part of this country to look at what they could offer."

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Alibhai-Brown echoed Phillips sentiment and offered her own policy suggestion

Phillips continued: "There are four thousand children who have already settled in Italy and have gone missing and are expected to have been trafficked for sex.

"Imagine they were your children? We should take our share of the 26,000 children in Europe and in the UK that's 3,000."

Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown echoed Phillips' sentiment by arguing that measures employed by countries to manage migrants could be compared to Nazi efforts during the Holocaust.

She said: "This week, we have seen the UK painting the doors of asylum seekers red, putting wristbands on them, and the worst of all, Denmark, suggesting they'll take the few precious bits they (refugees) manage to smuggle out."

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Audience members were quick to interject on the subject, conveying their own experiences of the crisis.

One made the link between the much maligned tax receipt from Google and the apparent lack of resources available to bring more refugees to Britain.

Thursday's 'Question Time' came from Stamford, Lincolnshire

Thursdays edition included Labour's Jess Phillips, Conservative Transport Secretary Patrick McCloughlin, the SNP's Angus Robertson, columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and Conservative Party ad man Moray MacLennan.

Where UK Refugees Come From
More than 800,000 child deaths could be prevented every year if almost every mother breastfed her babies, new research has found.

Universal breastfeeding could also prevent 20,000 deaths from breast cancer each year, according to two new research papers published in the Lancet medical journal.

Worldwide, breastfeeding rates are low and in the UK fewer than 1% of babies are breastfed until the age of 12 months.

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In the UK fewer than 1% of babies are breastfed until the age of 12 months

The researchers analysed data from 28 systematic reviews of previous research, and also outlined other benefits, including: breastfed babies having higher IQs and less risk of infection and less risk of sudden infant death syndrome than those who are breastfed for shorter periods or not at all.

There was also some evidence that breastfeeding may offer protection against diabetes and obesity later in life; and for mums it may reduce the risk of ovarian cancer and type 2 diabetes.

Lead researcher Professor Cesar Victora, from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said: "There is a widespread misconception that breast milk can be replaced with artificial products without detrimental consequences.

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"The evidence, contributed by some of the leading experts in the field, leaves no doubt that the decision not to breastfeed has major long-term negative effects on the health, nutrition and development of children and on women's health."

Siobhan Freegard, founder of video parenting site Channel Mum commented that the UK's low breastfeeding rate isn't due to a lack of knowledge among mums about the benefits of breastfeeding.

"The very low UK breastfeeding rates arent down to a lack of education or lack of will from mums - theyre due to a lack of support and funding," she explained to HuffPost UK Parents.

Mums know breast is best and four in five do try to breastfeed as soon as their baby is born.

"But breastfeeding is a skill that needs to be taught and nurtured. It can take hours to get it right and that means patience and perseverance, especially when new mums and exhausted and in pain.

"However overstretched maternity wards and overworked midwifes simply arent able to provide this kind of care right now, as they care coping with a baby boom and are thousands of midwives short.

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"If we are serious about increasing breastfeeding rates, we need to invest more funds for more midwives to help mums nurse straight after birth and in the early weeks.

"The cost of this would be low in comparison with the long-term health benefits, as show in the Lancet report. It needs a long term view with long term benefits for mothers, babies and the entire NHS."

The new research also suggested incresing the number of breastfed infants aged under six months in the UK to 45% could save the NHS around 20 million.
Passengers on board overcrowded trains from London to Essex ended up wetting themselves on seats after a series of delayed trains saw late night services rammed with commuters.

The trains from Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street, run by train operator c2c, were delayed or cancelled on Thursday evening due to crew members being ill, meaning trains from around 7.30pm were as crowded as rush-hour ones.

Around a dozens services are understood to have been cancelled while others ran with fewer carriages.

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One commuter on the 10.49pm from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness said two men in business suits could not reach the toilets because of the onboard crush and could not hold it in.

When I managed to board it was mayhem. One man by the doors was trying to get through the crush but kept being pushed back, people couldnt move to let him through. In the end he just couldnt hold it, Hannah Fisher told The Evening Standard.

Another chap in a seat got up and tried squeezing past but he couldnt move. When he left that the man next to him said well those trousers will be going to the dry cleaners tomorrow."

Passenger Daniel Capps said his train was so crowded he had to stand all the way to Leigh-On-Sea, Essex at around 11.45pm.

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People at Fenchurch Street also complained of a lack information or announcements as the chaos unfolded.

Fenchurch Street station packed with people wanting to get home and no information or announcements!Awful @c2c_Railpic.twitter.com/ptMaQjIcOO  Ben Thornton (@thornton_b) January 28, 2016

Train operator c2c said the crush was due to crew members falling ill and denied rumours among passengers that there had been a walkout.

People vented their anger at the c2c Twitter account, which politely asked people to stop swearing.

@P5O_OMAR Sorry for the cancellations tonight caused by train drivers being taken ill, also please do not swear when tweeting us.  c2c Rail (@c2c_Rail) January 29, 2016

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The company had to post a raft of individual responses updating people as the problems continued.

@c2c_Rail People standing on the train for an hour at almost midnight after waiting an hour for it. Call that a service? #mickeymouserail  Peter Ellegard (@PeterEllegard) January 28, 2016

@c2c_Rail you lied! 40minutes later still waiting   Fifi_B (@fionabaum) January 28, 2016

A quickly-corrected error in one of the company's tweets on Thursday evening suggested a driver had been kidnapped.

Due to the driver being taken, the 19:56 Shoeburyness - Fenchurch St has been cancelled this evening.  c2c Rail (@c2c_Rail) January 28, 2016

Apologies, the last message should have read taken ill.  c2c Rail (@c2c_Rail) January 28, 2016

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A c2c spokesman told HuffPost UK: "We are very sorry for the disruption caused to our passengers last night, when there was a short-term increase in drivers unable to work because of sickness. We used our contingency drivers to ensure we still ran the last trains and got everyone home."

The company tweeted this morning saying 96% of its trains were on time on Thursday.
The "shocking" level of physical violence teachers are now facing in schools is caused by a lack of parental discipline and mentally unwell children who "are playing out their distress at school", it has been claimed.

Teachers across UK state schools are being subjected to pupils kicking, punching, spitting and even using weapons in school, according to a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

A survey of education staff suggests that 42.8% have had to deal with violent pupils in the last year, including kicking, punching, spitting and even using weapons in school. Others have faced insults, threats, bullying and harassment, The Press Association reports.

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One special needs worker at a Bedfordshire primary school said she had been stabbed in the head with a pencil, while a teacher at a Suffolk secondary academy said they had been "sprayed in the face with deodorant".

In a third case, a support worker at a secondary school in Cheshire said a chair had been thrown that hit her leg.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of ATL, told The Today Programme the level of violence was "shocking" and on the rise.

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Dr Mary Bousted said cuts to children's mental health services had left 'many children now in schools who are not getting the professional help they need'.

She said the two main reasons for it were parents failing to discipline kids or give them "clear boundaries at home" and "the number of children coming with mental health problems who are distressed and disturbed and who are playing out their distress at school".

She also warned it was increasingly difficult for children with problems to see a mental health worker.

"That service has really been cut," Dr Bousted said: "There are many children now in schools who are not getting the professional help they need to deal with the issues they have."

Speaking earlier, she said: "Although the majority of pupils are well-behaved and a pleasure to teach, having to deal with challenging or disruptive behaviour is unfortunately par for the course for education staff.

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"It is shocking that more than four in 10 education professionals have had to deal with physical violence from a pupil in the last year. No member of staff should be subjected to aggressive behaviour, in any form, while doing their job."

A teaching assistant at a Rochdale primary school claimed: "Staff are regularly verbally abused with very little consequences. Occasionally pupils physically attack members of staff, but this rarely leaders to a day's exclusion."

The survey, which questioned 1,250 education staff at UK state schools last autumn, found that 45.5% think that pupils' behaviour has worsened in the past two years.

Karen Leonard, GMB national lead officer for school support staff, said: "GMB is committed to raising awareness of this issue.

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"It is unacceptable to be kicked, punched, spat on or to have school equipment and even furniture thrown at them.

"We have recently launched a national campaign to highlight the problem. "GMB will be challenging schools, academies and local authorities to ensure adequate safeguards are in place to protect our members from such violence."

Of those who said they had faced physical violence, 76.5% said they had experienced pushing and shoving, 37.4% had dealt with punching, 52.4% had faced kicking, 24.1% had dealt with spitting and 2.2% said that pupils had used a weapon, such as a knife.

Around 89.1% of teachers and 90.1% of support workers said they had had to deal with challenging or disruptive behaviour from pupils in the last year. The most common type was verbal abuse - such as insults, threats, swearing, shouting, making accusations and being rude.

Just over half, 52.3%, said they had dealt with bullying - such as pupils isolating a classmate from a friendship group or spreading rumours, while a further 24.2% reported dealing with cyber-bullying and 15.1% had seen homophobic or transphobic bullying.

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Nearly one in four, 24.3%, had seen sexual or racial harassment by pupils.

Given a list of reasons for bad behaviour, 84.5% of those polled said that lack of boundaries at home were to blame.

Many suggested that emotional or behavioural problems were responsible, while school staff also thought that relationship breakdown within a family and a lack of positive role models at home were key reasons for poor conduct.

In addition, 64.4% thought that society becoming less respectful to people on front-line jobs was a reason for negative behaviour.

A Department for Education spokesman said: "Teachers and school staff have a right to feel safe while doing their jobs and violence towards them is completely unacceptable.

"We have taken decisive action to put teachers back in charge of the classroom by giving them the powers they need to tackle poor behaviour and discipline.

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David Cameron insists he is making progress in his renegotiation with Brussels over the UKs relationship with the EU, despite claiming the current proposals are not good enough.

The Prime Minister is in Brussels this afternoon holding talks with European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker over whether the UK can hold back in-work benefits from EU migrants.

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Mr Cameron originally wanted to halt in-work benefits for migrants for four years, but is struggling to convince his EU partners to back the deal.

One proposal believed to be under consideration is a so-called emergency brake, which would allow the UK to stop paying benefits to new migrants if public services were under excessive strain.

However, the UK would have to ask permission from Brussels before using the brake, leading veteran Eurosceptic Tory MP John Redwood to brand the plan a bad joke.

This afternoon, Mr Cameron dismissed the current proposals, and said: We want to end the idea of something for nothing. There is now a proposal on the table, it is not good enough, it needs more work but we are making progress.

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The Prime Minister will have to move fast if he wants to secure a deal before the next European summit on February 18.

If the renegotiation is concluded at the summit, it would pave the way for the in/out referendum to be held in June this year.

A quick referendum could well give the advantage to the Remain campaign, with those wanting the UK to vote to Leave the EU currently split into numerous campaign groups.

Vote Leave  which is headed up by Michael Goves former adviser Dominic Cummings  is believed to be in a state of fracture, with Tory MP Bernard Jenkin reported to be unhappy with the way the group is being run.

Leave.EU  co-founded by Ukip donor Arron Banks  is pitching itself as the anti-establishment group, and is focusing on mobilising an army of activists around the country.

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Leave.EU's spokesman Brian Montieth branded today's negotiations as "pure theatre".

He said: "Jean-Claude Juncker, the president we never voted for, offered the Prime Minister an emergency brake on migrant benefits with his hand on it. People watching the slow-motion car crash in Europe don't want that; they want control of the steering wheel.

"Even if David Cameron gets everything he wants, it's just a four-year waiting list for access to in-work benefits, which the OBR says will have no impact on immigration.

"EU law will still stand above national law, we still won't be allowed to make our own trade deals or cast votes independently on global bodies, and we won't have anything like full control over immigration."
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles while speaking at a rally at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Andrew Harnik/AP

Hillary Clinton is the only candidate running for president of the United States who is up to the job and the idea of Donald Trump in the White House is terrifying, according to a Conservative former British foreign and defence secretary.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who also used to chair parliament's intelligence and security committee which scrutinises the activity of the UK's spy agencies, said the idea of anyone other Clinton having their finger on the button of the United States' nuclear weapons made him "tremble".

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Speaking in central-London on Thursday evening, Sir Malcolm was asked to predict who would be the eventual Republican nominee. "I think you are left with [Ted] Cruz or [Donald] Trump and I am pretty terrified. I'm terrified of each of them," he said. "My guess it's more likely to be Cruz than Trump but I hope it's neither."

"What I can't work out in the case Trump, is his form of craziness, all the stupid remarks he makes, all the offensive remarks he makes, is it just a facade which makes him stand out form all the others? Or is he really as awful as he projects?"

Sir Malcom added: "He seems so incredibly dangerous."

The former Conservative MP, who served as foreign secretary and defence secretary in the 1990s when John Major was prime minister, heaped praise on Clinton who he said was the "only one" of any of the candidates from both parties who he trusted to handle American foreign policy.

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"We have lost sight his evening, as have most of the American public, that the whole point of the primaries is to identify who would make the best president of the United States... the most powerful person in the world, who has control over America's nuclear weapons.

"I tremble when I think what would happen if any of the others [won]," he said. "I don't care whether its a Republican or a Democrat. I am interested in how they are going to deal with the problems of the world."

He added: "The idea of Trump or Cruz or Bernie [Sanders] or any of the others ... makes me think there is something wrong with the American system."

Sir Malcolm also speculated as to how the UK-US "special relationship" would be affected given the public criticism British politicians have made of Trump, particularly if Boris Johnson became British prime minister. He told The Huffington Post: "All I can say is, Trump would make Boris look very conservative, calm, traditional and tranquil.

"Can you imagine Trump-Boris summit? That would be a special relationship more special than any we have ever experienced before and leave the rest of the world very jealous," he joked.

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Recalling a meeting he had with Clinton while she was First Lady and he was foreign secretary, Sir Malcolm added: "I came away that evening a huge fan. I found her combination of charm, but also highly intelligent, thoughtful, sense of humour."

Also speaking at the event in Westminster, hosted by Ladbrokes, Labour peer Lord Wood said a Trump presidency would put "enormous strain" on the UK-US alliance.

The former senior adviser to ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband added: "You should buy a ticket now for the first David Cameron-Trump brush-by in the White House."
One of the last surviving members of the Great Train Robbery, Gordon Goody, has died at the age of 86.

Goody, who was jailed for 30 years for his part in the robbery, died in the south of Spain, where he ran a bar in the town in Majacar.

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The town hall released a statement saying he passed away on Friday morning surrounded by friends. The cause of his death was not revealed.

Gordon Goody has passed away at the age of 86

The Mojacar town hall statement said Goody died at 6am, and paid a glowing tribute to him, according to The Local, an English-language news website in Spain.

A spokesman said: "All who knew him were struck by his friendliness, his love for his friends and family and the many pets he rescued from the street.

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"He was a complete gentleman, far removed from the image that those who didn't know him might have had from those difficult years that marked a large part of his life.

"We will always remember his smile and his big heart that was always open to those around him."

On August 8, 1963, a gang that included Goody and the infamous Ronnie Biggs, stopped the Glasgow-Euston overnight mail train as it passed through the Buckinghamshire countryside.

The train was driven more than a mile away and the gang unloaded 2,631,684 in used notes - worth around 46 million today.

They were later captured and 12 were jailed for a total of more than 300 years.

Train driver Jack Mills was hit over the head and handcuffed during the robbery. He died in 1970.

Goody, who was a hairdresser before the heist, was released from jail in 1975. He set up his Spanish bar four years later.

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More than one of the gang members broke out of prison, including Biggs, who spent over 30 years on the run before he finally returned to Britain in 2001 to face arrest.
The High Court decision to deny heterosexual couple Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan from entering a civil partnership has been described as a "defeat for love and equality".

Steinfeld and Keidan, who are academics, used the words of a human rights activist to sum up their feeling after the denial, adding that they were "deeply disappointed" in the decision.

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During the fight an online petition in favour of expanding civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples gathered more than 36,000 signatures.

Rebecca Steinfeld And Charles Keidan

Using the Change.org website they posted an update after the ruling with a comment from LGBT Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who described it as a "huge disappointment".

"This is a defeat for love and equality. It will be a huge disappointment to the thousands of heterosexual couples who would like to have a civil partnership. The court has rejected the principle that in a democratic society everyone should be equal before the law. It says that opposite-sex couples are not entitled to the same choices as same-sex ones.

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"It cannot be right that same-sex couples have two options, civil partnerships and civil marriages; whereas opposite-sex partners have only one option, marriage. This legal case was always about the simple quest to end discrimination and ensure equality for all. I hope Charles and Rebecca will appeal and that justice will prevail in the end," he said.

Steinfield and Keidan themselves wrote a lengthy response to their supporters, which read: "Were deeply disappointed to share with you the news that our Judicial Review claim has not been successful. We know that you will share our disappointment.

"The Judge ruled against us because she decided that our case did not fall within the ambit of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a right to respect for ones private and family life. The Judge also ruled that the Government is entitled to take its time to decide on the future of civil partnerships in order to avoid costs resulting from changing legislation too soon.

"The Judge did however acknowledge that there will be many people who sympathise with our view that it is unfair that a route to state recognition of their relationship which is open to a same-sex coupleremains unavailable to them because they are heterosexual. But this did not prove, in her judgement, to be sufficient grounds for a ruling in our favour," it read.

Both partners describe themselves as feminists and said they had challenged the legal ban on heterosexual couples entering into civil partnerships as they reject marriage as a patriarchal institution.

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An online fundraiser also raised more than 22,000 towards their legal costs.

A family lawyer commenting on the case, Lauren Evans, Kingsley Napley LLP, told the Huffington Post UK:

"This is a surprising decision and crowd funding for an appeal starts today. The law at the moment clearly discriminates on the grounds of sexuality. Everyone, be they straight, gay or bisexual, should have the same freedom to choose how to define their relationship.

"Parliament needs to step in to correct this hangover from a Government that was unwilling to go all the way first time around with the Civil Partnership Act. Today, by coincidence or fate, the Private Members Bill designed to correct this inequality has its second reading in the House of Commons.

"It has cross-party support from MPs, as well as support from lawyers, academics and a petition with over 36,000 signatures. Steinfeld and Keidans case has turned up the volume of this campaign. Hopefully, regardless of today's judgment, Parliament will now open its ears and eradicate this discrimination forever.

Before the High Court challenge, Steinfeld, 34, said: "We are taking this case because the UK Government is barring us, and many thousands of opposite-sex couples like us, from the choice of forming a civil partnership, and we want this to change.

"Personally, we wish to form a civil partnership because that captures the essence of our relationship and values."

She added: "Civil partnerships are a symmetrical, modern social institution conferring almost identical legal rights and responsibilities as marriage, but without its historical baggage, gendered provisions and social expectations.

"We don't think there is any justification for stopping us or other opposite-sex couples from forming civil partnerships."

Keidan, 39, said: "We believe that opening civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples would complete the circle of full relationship equality that began with the hard-won victory for same-sex marriage.

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Irvine Welsh has blasted the man who precipitated a bitter social media feud between J.K. Rowling and Scottish MP Natalie McGarry as an "anonymous troll coward".

The 'Trainspotting' author, who was born in Edinburgh and is a staunch pro-independence campaigner, lamented the spat that broke out late last night between Unionist Rowling and separatist McGarry.

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He derided the "troll" account's secret owner, saying he "must have wanked himself blind by now" over the furore that broke out after Rowling threatened legal action for being called minsogynst sympathiser.

'Brian Spanner', a prolific tweeter on political affairs in Scotland with a self-admitted history of sending abusive tweets to SNP politicians, was the subject of an argument between Rowling and McGarry on Thursday.

The MP called out Rowling for posting messages in support of Spanner, alleging she "defends abusive misogynist trolls".

After a heated exchange between the pair, McGarry deleted several of her tweets and made her account 'private' - meaning members of the public were barred from accessing her profile.

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Rowling meanwhile issued a strongly worded legal threat to the former SNP MP, who resigned her party whip in November.

"You don't appear to understand how Twitter or defamation works. I'm going to help you out with the latter," the 50-year-old longstanding Edinburgh-resident wrote.

.@NatalieMcGarry You don't appear to understand how Twitter or defamation works. I'm going to help you out with the latter.  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 28, 2016

But in his own intervention the following day, Welsh hit out at Spanner, writing: "The anon[ymous] troll coward whose misogynistic tweets precipitated feud b[etween] JK Rowling and Natalie McGarry must have wanked himself blind by now."

The anon troll coward whose misogynistic tweets precipitated feud btw @jk_rowling & @NatalieMcGarry must have wanked himself blind by now.  Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh) January 29, 2016

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One Twitter user took contention with his phrasing, calling Welsh out for using language similar to that of the 'troll' he was attacking.

@IrvineWelsh@jk_rowling@NatalieMcGarry so you are on here scoring points and using language you criticise someone else of. Cool!  Maureen Johnson (@Maureen56596209) January 29, 2016

Welsh hit back, admitting he had presumed the gender of anonymous tweeter Spanner to be male, correcting himself by substituting the "wanked himself blind" to "frigged herself demented", using a regional term for masturbation.

Okay, assumptive of me as most anon trolls abusing women online are men. '...or frigged herself demented.' Better? https://t.co/cVnKnWVvVU  Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh) January 29, 2016

Spanner retorted by asking whether Welsh would apologise for having taken exception to his own sexually graphic posts.

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I wonder if @IrvineWelsh will choose to apologise for his choice of words? He seemed very concerned about that word earlier.  Brian Spanner QC (@BrianSpanner1) January 29, 2016
Labour MP Jess Phillips has slammed those blaming refugees for jeopardising the safety of women, claiming that there are 'Cologne-style' attacks every week in Birmingham.

The 34-year-old used the issue to highlight the state of violence against women in Britain on Thursday night's BBC Question Time, after an audience member suggested the New Years Day attacks show why mass migration doesn't work.

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"There is violence against women and girls that you are describing, a very similar situation that happened in Cologne, could be described in Broad Street in Birmingham every week, where women are baited and heckled."

The attacks in the German city saw around 1,000 men launch what it believed to have been an "organised attack" against women. German police say the number of criminal complaints filed by women after the events stands at 516.

Labour MP Jess Phillips stuck up for women facing violence in Britain

Phillips, who used to work with victims of domestic violence said: "Now we have to attack what we perceive as patriarchal culture coming into any culture that isn't patriarchal and making sure we tell people not to be like that.

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"We should be careful in this country before we rest on our laurels when two women are murdered every week in this country," she said.

The Labour MP was answering the question: "Maybe an example is Germany of how mass migration doesn't work - don't you think the women in Cologne and a woman who was unfortunately killed in Sweden, don't you think they're scared as well?"

It was widely claimed that perpetrators of the Cologne attacks were refugees from "the Arab or North African region", which heightened public tensions against refugees.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted in the aftermath, and said she would consider making Germanys immigration laws tougher and would look at making it easier to deport immigrants who commit crimes.

Earlier this month a group of German feminists wrote an open letter asking that sexual violence is not attributed to race or ethnicity, amid the race-tensions sweeping the country.

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The women's rights activists wrote: "It is harmful for all of us if feminism is exploited by extremists to incite against certain ethnicities, as is currently being done in the discussion surrounding the incidents in Cologne."

Phillips defended the incoming of migrants throughout the programme, also issuing a passionate plea for sense on the UK's response to the crisis, asking Brits to "tighten their belts" and "look at what they could offer".

The Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley used her appearance on Thursday night's BBC 'Question Time' to evoke the imagery of British society during wartime, before arguing: "It is always the poorest people in this country who suffer the effects of migration."

Criticising the prime minister, she said: "I bet there aren't any living in Whitney in David Cameron's constituency".

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She continued: "There are four thousand children who have already settled in Italy and have gone missing and are expected to have been trafficked for sex.

"Imagine they were your children? We should take our share of the 26,000 children in Europe and in the UK that's 3,000."
Chuka Umunna, former business spokesman of the U.K. opposition Labour Party, speaks during a debate on the fringes of the Labour party's annual conference in Brighton, U.K., on Monday, Sept. 28, 2015. U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn recruited Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and wealth and inequality expert Thomas Piketty to advise his party as he seeks to regain credibility for policies attacked by many academics as potentially disastrous. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images Bloomberg via Getty Images

For some young people the streets of London are more dangerous than Somalia, Chuka Umunna has warned.

In a sobering speech in the Commons on Friday afternoon, the former shadow cabinet minister told MPs about the number of stabbings that take place in his Streatham constituency - including one man who had seen two of his sons fall victim to knife crime.

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"This constituent had come to the UK with his sons from Somalia  a country ravaged by lawlessness, extreme violence and civil war - because he wanted a better future for his children and for them to be safe," Umunna said.

"He is completely bewildered by what has happened. When I asked him whether he felt his sons would be safer in Mogadishu than in London, he told me he felt it would be less dangerous for his children to live there than here - he massively regrets moving them to our capital."

Umunna said it was a "damning indictment of the situation on London's streets" that it was seen as more dangerous than Mogadishu.

He told MPs that, despite efforts from governments of all colours, there was still a "major problem of youth violence and gang culture" in inner city areas.

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Umunna's warning came as figures published last week revealed stabbings rose by almost 10 per cent across England and Wales last year.

Speaking during prime ministers questions last week, David Cameron said the police have done "a huge amount to crack down on knife crime" but he acknowledged "there is still more to do in educating children and young people about the dangers of carrying a knife".

He added: "In so many of these cases, the carrier of the knife ends up the victim of the knife attack so, as well as tough penalties and strong policing, we also need better education."

Umunna used a debate in parliament to raise the case of his constituent who last year saw his younger son stabbed on a housing estate.

"In recent weeks his elder brother was stabbed on another estate in Streatham, was critically injured, taken to Hospital and now cannot leave hospital because it has been deemed too unsafe for him to return home," he said.

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The grandmother who claimed she accidentally washed a 33 million Lotto jackpot winning ticket could face legal action after it was revealed she was not the true winner, it has been suggested.

Lottery operator Camelot announced on Thursday it had received a "valid claim" on the 33 million Lotto jackpot winning ticket bought in Worcester, after days of speculation and hundreds of people reportedly coming forward to claim they had won.

This was particularly bad news for Worcester's Susanne Hinte, 48, who contacted Camelot last Friday to say she had the winning ticket, but had put it through the wash.

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Susanne Hinte

Shula de Jersey, a business crime lawyer at Slater and Gordon, told The Daily Mail intentionally making a fake claim could be "fraud by false representation", which can carry a prison sentence of 10 years.

Ms Hinte claimed her ticket was in her jeans pocket when it was washed. She produced a version of the ticket that only showed the winning numbers, other details supposedly made illegible by water damage.

As people clamoured to claim to be the winners earlier this week, Camelot warned it would act if someone had "intentionally attempted to defraud the National Lottery".

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Doubts of Ms Hinte's claim quickly mounted and people asked why she did not show off her ticket after realising her numbers matched those in the mega jackpot draw.

One neighbour said: "Sue is a clever girl, but claiming to have a ticket with the barcode washed off is a bit much."

SEE ALSO:5 Terrifying Lottery Fails Giving Worcester Motivation To Find Missing Jackpot

The Daily Mail reported she has gone into hiding over the publicity.

Ms Hinte previously claimed she was sick with worry over the damage to the ticket, telling The Times: Ive been a nervous wreck, I havent slept all night.

Since I found it in my jeans pocket, my daughter and I have been drying it out with the hairdryer. You can see 2016 but not the date."

A Camelot spokeswoman said: "With prizes of this size, its perfectly normal to receive lots of claims from people who genuinely think that they may have mislaid or thrown away what they believe was the winning ticket.

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"However, if we believe that somebody has intentionally attempted to defraud The National Lottery, then, just like any other company, we reserve the right to take whatever action we consider is appropriate."

The actual winner, whose claim was validated on Thursday, chose to remain anonymous. A Camelot spokesman said: "We hope they will enjoy their win. It would have been awful if the ticket-holder had missed out on this substantial and life-changing amount."
Ricky Whittle is just one of the many British stars whos swapped soaps for Hollywood, and Hollyoaks fans will be delighted to learn that hes landed a massive new job.

The former soap star will take on the lead role in American Gods, an adaptation of Neil Gaimans novel.

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Yes the haircut is questionable, but Ricky is still as dreamy as ever

Filming is set to start in the spring, and author Neil has shared his joy at the casting, stating that Rickys auditions were remarkable.

The process of taking a world out of the pages of a book, and putting it on to the screen has begun, he says. American Gods is, at its heart, a book about immigrants, and it seems perfectly appropriate that Shadow will, like so much else, be Coming to America.

Im delighted Ricky will get to embody Shadow. Now the fun starts.

This isnt Rickys first huge role Stateside, as shortly after swapping Blighty for Hollywood in 2014, he landed a role in CWs The 100.

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The actor isnt the only British star to succeed in the States, and a number of his fellow Hollyoaks co-stars have landed roles in Game Of Thrones, while EastEnders actor Ben Hardy will star in the upcoming X-Men movie.

Check out the other soap stars whove switched soaps for big budget projects below
A mother who travelled to Syria with her toddler has become the first British woman to be convicted of joining the so-called Islamic State.

Tareena Shakil, 26, was also found guilty of encouraging acts of terror in Twitter posts she made before leaving the UK.

During a two-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, Shakil claimed she only travelled to Syria because of a wish to live under the rule of sharia law.

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Jurors were shown tweets, messages and photographs, including images of the black flag of IS and passages calling on people to "take up arms", and stating her wish to become a "martyr".

The court heard last week that Shakil defended putting her child in a black balaclava bearing the ISIS logo, claiming the boy just "loved wearing hats".

Tareena Shakil

She told the court that images of her child wearing the balaclava did not represented any allegiance to ISIS.

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The former health worker flew from East Midlands Airport to Turkey on October 20 2014, telling friends she was going on a family beach holiday.

But she travelled to Syria with her child and ended up living in the ISIS capital of Raqqa.

Tareena Shakil denied being a member of IS. These are two of the images prosecutors said she sent home of her son: pic.twitter.com/vdYOnPaKFU  Dominic Casciani (@BBCDomC) January 29, 2016

She returned home with her toddler in February 2015, when she was arrested off a flight landing at Heathrow airport.

West Midlands Police's Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale said: Tareena Shakil had self-radicalised by viewing extremist material on the internet, before leaving the UK in October 2014.

Our assessment is that she was not naive; she had absolutely clear intentions when she left the UK, sending tweets encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism here and then taking her young child to join Daesh in Syria.

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Photographs seized from her phone showed Ms Shakil posing with a firearm and wearing a Daesh balaclava. Another showed a rucksack with a Daesh logo and person holding a handgun. These were taken while she was in Syria.

Tareena Shakil wearing a balaclava branded with the ISIS logo

Ms Shakil had already incited others to commit terrorist acts on social media and having spent months living under Daesh, she no doubt presented a real threat on her return to the UK from the country early last year.

Thanks to proactive counter-terrorism policing, we were able to intercept Shakil at the airport and put the necessary measures in place to protect her child from their mothers extremist ideology.

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Tareena Shakil with a firearm; an image recovered from her mobile phone by investigators

It took the jury of six men and six women nine hours and 35 minutes to reach their decision, and when they did it was unanimous.

Judge Melbourne Inman QC told Shakil - who looked stunned by the verdicts - that she would be sentenced on Monday.
Police have said that the Cologne attacks on women are a "million miles away" from scenes in Birmingham centre, following controversial comments made by the city's MP on Question Time last night.

West Midlands Police said on Friday that Birmingham is a "safe, positive and vibrant place" after Jess Phillips compared the violence in Germany on New Year's Eve to that which women face in the city "every week".

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Responding to an audience comment that the incidents in Cologne showed "mass migration doesn't work", Phillips said that in Birmingham's Broad Street, "women are baited and heckled".

Jess Phillips on BBC's Question Time

But West Midlands Police have moved to make a clear distinction between the attacks in Cologne and crime on the streets of Birmingham.

In a statement issued on Friday, Birmingham Police Inspector Gareth Morris said: "Around eight million people visit Broad Street every year  and while one incident of assault is one too many, these figures illustrate that the vast majority of people enjoy their time in Broad Street without incident.

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"Like any city centre we have issues linked to people out drinkingbut the types of attacks reported in Germany are a million miles away from anything my team encounters in Birmingham.

"Birmingham city centre is a safe, positive and vibrant place. We have high-visibility patrols to reassure night-time revellers and street triage teams, together with the ambulance service, charities and community volunteers to support anyone in need of help.

"Together weve achieved some great results, notably a reduction in violent crimes fuelled by alcohol.

"There is certainly nothing to suggest any crime patterns or trends related to immigration and I would invite anyone to come and enjoy a night out in Birmingham and experience what the city has to offer."

The attacks in the German city saw around 1,000 men launch what is believed to have been an "organised attack" against women.

German police say the number of criminal complaints filed by women after the event stands at 516.

On Thursday night, Phillips answered the question: "Maybe an example is Germany of how mass migration doesn't work - don't you think the women in Cologne and a woman who was unfortunately killed in Sweden, don't you think they're scared as well?"

The Labour MP said: "There is violence against women and girls that you are describing, a very similar situation that happened in Cologne, could be described in Broad Street in Birmingham every week, where women are baited and heckled."

She added: "Now we have to attack what we perceive as patriarchal culture coming into any culture that isn't patriarchal and making sure we tell people not to be like that.

"We should be careful in this country before we rest on our laurels when two women are murdered every week in this country."

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British couples trying for a baby have been issued with a warning in light of the recent Zika virus outbreak.

Public Health England has advised men to wear condoms during intercourse for 28 days after returning from Brazil, Mexico or any of the 23 countries where the virus has been detected, if their partner is pregnant or hoping to become pregnant.

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Those who have suffered an unexplained fever while travelling, or have been diagnosed with the virus, should avoid sex without a condom for six months after their return.

Doctors attend to a baby born with microcephaly in Brazil

Public Health England advised: "If a female partner is at risk of getting pregnant, or is already pregnant, condom use is advised for a male traveller for 28 days after his return from a Zika transmission area if he had no symptoms of unexplained fever and rash.

"Condom use is advised for a male traveller for six months following recovery if a clinical illness compatible with Zika virus infection or laboratory confirmed Zika virus infection was reported."

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The news follows a previous warning from the Foreign Office, recommending women who are pregnant, or who are planning on becoming pregnant, to avoid travelling to countries where outbreaks have been confirmed.

The full list of countries is as follows: Barbados, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, US Virgin Islands, and Paraguay.

The Zika virus outbreak in Brazil is suspected to be related to a large increase in the number of babies born with microcephaly - a genetic abnormality that stops the foetus' brain from developing properly and causes babies to be born with an unusually small head.
"Architects and designers have looked to biology for inspiration since the beginning of the science in the early 19th century". This is from the book The Evolution of Design by Philip Steadman, which was first published in 1979 and has been the catalyst to many current discussions on the role science should play within architecture and design. At the time of the book's proposition, the idea was to use biological systems as inspiration for design, thirty five years down later, we are proposing that we move from a point of inspiration to direct application. In other words we are ready to apply science directly into the design process. Especially given how much neuroscience has developed as a field in the last twenty years, giving us a wider understanding of the inner mechanisms of the human brain. Leading to insights on how we perceive the world around us, and how the brain creates our sense of intelligence. This insight has generated a lot of curiosity from across different commercial industries, especially with the rise of "smart" products, causing neuroscience to burst out of its academic and laboratory confinements.

In many respects this makes sense as we strive to make products and services more adaptable human beings. Leading to a significant question, "how do we create 'things' that are better for people?" Technology and neuroscience have propelled us to a new cognitive era, where we expect the inanimate world around us to become more intelligent, meaning it can enter into a dialogue with us, adapt to our individual needs, and enhance our quality of life. Whether it is a wearable that automatically feeds insulin into our body, a running shoe which can respond to our stride, or a hospital that contributes to the healing process of its patients. This is all here and it is being made possible by the understanding and studies conducted by neuroscience.

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Sadly the recent popularisation of neuroscience, has given the industry a reputation of being a marketing gimmick, therefore there is a need for finding honest heuristics and best practices for using neuroscience within commercial industries. There also has to be a purpose, in respect to architecture and design it is to create buildings, spaces, and cities that enhance the wellbeing of its occupiers. We can go as far as to say that we have an ethical obligation to do so given the data and research presented by neuroscience on how the built environment impacts our brain and central nervous system. The research highlights the intrinsic link between ourselves and the built environment. We are in constant communication with our physical world like an elegant and complex feedback loop.

The to and fro between our brain and environmental stimuli shapes and influences every aspect of who we are. From our cognitive abilities and behaviour to motor skills and physicality. For example, attention which is a visual cognitive system, has developed through hundreds of years to help us distinguish importance between different stimuli, decipher a threat, and to help us learn. This system is highly influenced by the built environment; how and what we pay attention to is in part guided by your specific environment. For instance, if you walk into a dimly lit room, your pupils would dilate and your eyes would focus and attend to items that are more lit than those that are not. In turn only the activities and items in those areas would receive your attention and in consequence would influence cognitive mechanisms like decision making and memory.

Neuroscience has also discovered that our brains have the capacity to structurally change through a set of processes called neuroplasticity. This is a fundamental principle to the relationship between neuroscience and architecture, because understanding how our brain adapts and structurally changes due to our physical environment will lead to creating a built environment that is empathetic to the cognitive and wellbeing needs of occupants. Studies have uncovered that exposure to an enriched environment improves performance in hippocampus dependant learning tasks. This is important because how well we learn impacts our calibre of problem solving, idea generation, cognitive flexibility.

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As a depressed and lonely 15-year-old, I bought a copy of Cosmopolitan, and attached to the cover was a novel: Burning Bright, by Helen Dunmore. Except for school set texts, I had never read literary fiction before, and was amazed by how beautiful the prose was, how perceptive the characterisation. The story of 16-year-old Nadine, abandoned by her family to the clutches of sinister older lover Kai, was so well-written it left me captivated. Cosmopolitan may have featured the book partly because its protagonist was a teenage girl; in doing so, they made this teenage girl, and possibly many others, long to be a writer.

Over the next two decades, though I read and loved many other literary novels, Burning Bright remained my favourite book. I composed an ineptly-written five-star review of it, gifted copies of the book to friends and family, and enjoyed working my way through the rest of Dunmore's novels, which were never less than expertly crafted. So last month, when I discovered that Dunmore had a new novel coming out, I asked if I could interview her.

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First, I was sent a copy of her new novel, Exposure. A brilliant spy thriller set in London during the Cold War - the era in which Dunmore grew up - it follows the lives of the Callington family, Simon and Lily and their three children, whose lives change forever when Simon is asked by an old friend to collect a top secret file. Just when you think you know where the plot is going, events take an unexpected turn, and there is a fantastically gripping scene near the end where you hold your breath, hoping goodness prevails. I read the book in one sitting, relishing every carefully chosen word. Dunmore is a poet as well as a novelist, and as with Burning Bright, the prose in Exposure is simple yet exquisitely beautiful.

I can't remember being nervous before an interview before, but as I head down to the Penguin Random House offices, I feel a sense of trepidation. They say never meet your heroes - but it's clear the person who wrote that hadn't met Helen Dunmore. Warm and wise and funny, she is thoughtful and perceptive too: she asks me how my journey was, whether I want to sit in a different seat, and senses that I want to check whether my recorder's working at the start of the interview.

Dunmore would have been eight years old at the time Exposure is set. 'I think you remember a great deal from those years,' she says, 'and I felt I could create an authentic atmosphere. I do remember very vividly, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis; I remember the whole sense of the Cold War. It was so pervasive as an atmosphere when I was growing up, particularly the sense that the bomb was there and the world might end. I wanted to have in Exposure the feeling that all the adult characters have lived through a war and been very affected by it.'

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'We know that Giles has had what they call a "good war", but clearly also was a horrific war,' she continues. 'We know that Lily has come to London as a child refugee and has left behind everything. It was very important to me in terms of Lily's character that when she's growing up, everything that a child should expect from her surroundings is not there. Normally with a little girl in the street, you want to look out for her, people smile... instead of that, there's an atmosphere of dislike or hatred, and even though her parents try to shield her, she becomes aware of it. And I felt that that early experience is formative for Lily and it makes her the woman she is. And it is why, in a very extreme situation when she has to fight for her family, for herself, for her life, she has got resources there. Because in a way, she's been there before - she's been in mortal danger.'

I ask about the older children in the novel, Sally and Paul. Did Dunmore's recollections of her childhood help her write them? 'I think so, yes - and also to create the Sixties atmosphere, which was very different from now. The houses, the cold, the zone of heat around the fire and the stove, the coal... people didn't have that much, and they didn't expect to. They didn't expect to necessarily have a fridge, or a television, certainly not central heating. People walked a lot, people were probably physically more resilient, more robust. [The war is] not that far in the past, and it's shaped the present.'

'I wanted to get that mixture of optimism and almost greyness,' she explains. 'People are trying to build a new society... there's the NHS, free school milk, free orange juice, and there are a lot of stereotypes about women's lives, but yet Lily is a working woman. And then we also have a much more stratified, hierarchical society. We've got an establishment which is very powerful, and really, it's hard to imagine now what a tremendous shock, say, the Profumo affair was. For ordinary people to realise the corruption... things were kept from people, there was no Freedom of Information Act, no social media... it was probably a much less equal society in many ways.'

Three of the characters in Exposure have same sex relationships. Is Dunmore heartened by the rise of gay rights, and the advent of equal marriage? 'Absolutely. One of the things I wanted to show there was the fear that people lived in, because homosexual acts between consenting adults were still illegal. Everything has moved so far in such a short time, and what I wanted to show was how a lot of people had to hide a lot of their identity for one reason or another. At one point, Simon asks Giles, "Acknowledge me. Why can't we do anything in public? Why can't we show any affection or tenderness?" And then he abandons the relationship, because he thinks "I can't live like this".'

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'But for Giles, I wanted to show that it was love,' Dunmore discloses. 'It's a relationship he's never forgotten and has always been important to him. And at a crucial moment, he remembers that it wasn't just a passing fling or a youthful relationship... For me, the exposure is on many levels: bringing things into the light, and stripping things off, so the title is quite many-layered. It's driving the story all the time, the tension, the plot, but it's also "can you live with what is exposed? Can you live with the self that you're seeing?"'

She talks about the heroine, Lily. 'I think that Lily changes a lot during the novel. For me, a novel is ideally a process of transformation for everybody, and Lily does change. She has a lot of barriers: she's quite self-contained, she's not a confider. She has her close friend Erica, whom she loves, but even so, Erica would like her to be a little more open, and her fellow schoolteacher also. Lily is quite guarded: she's learnt to be. Her mother has taught her, before she was ten years old, "You don't speak German. You don't say this, you've got to be this, you've got to close down" and she's done it. Those are formative years, and if you've been a refugee, you've had to escape, you've had fear, you've had parents who are trying not to frighten you but are obviously very frightened themselves, then that's going to mark you. And it's hard for her not to be guarded and keep her secrets, very hard.'

Which character from Exposure does Dunmore identify with the most, and why? 'It has to be Lily,' she confesses. 'Because I felt I was so engaged with her. She was enormously important to me. But also [secret agent] Giles: I felt for Giles a great deal. When you first meet Giles, he's drunken, gross, almost looks like a buffoon... but you get to know him, and I hope that in the intimacy of the novel, you get to understand him, and in the end to feel for him. There are tragic aspects to him, but he's full of vitality, and he's got a very lively mind, so he gives a kind of crackle and a spark to the novel that I wanted. He has got an edge to him, which makes him very enjoyable to write about.'

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Has growing up in the Cold War influenced Dunmore's views on nuclear deterrents? 'I think it probably did do, because certainly when I was younger it seemed to me monstrous and beyond belief that a button could be pressed and millions of lives could be obliterated in that way. But I think what we have seen, more recently perhaps, is the resurgence of horrific agonising ground wars such as we're seeing in Syria now, which I think people thought wouldn't happen so much. For a while, they thought the bomb would deter all that, but that hasn't turned out to be the case - it's turned out that you can have both life-destroying engulfing ground wars, and you can have the fear of nuclear war.'

'So it hasn't worked out quite as people have expected, I don't think,' she muses. 'But I think the fears that people have change in every generation, and probably the fears that people have now are different. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, although I was a child, I can remember so clearly that sense of menace - and everybody was talking about it, the fact that it could happen, America and Russia could go to war, and that would be the end of us. People would talk about four minute warnings, and "what would you do in the four minutes?" and I don't think they do now. Do you think they do?'

Not so much, I say. I have wondered whom I would call if I found out the world was about to end, but it's not specifically with regard to nuclear war. 'No. It isn't that focused on that one thing,' Dunmore agrees. 'Maybe part of that is just we've got used to the idea of such destructive weapons, when before it was horrifically new - there'd never been such a thing before.'

Going back to Exposure, she says 'I very much wanted that sense of menace to be there, and that people feel fragile - they feel the preciousness of their own lives and their own family and their own friends, and what can they do? They can protest in Trafalgar Square in the sunlight, but of course they don't realise they're being watched and photographed and followed up. I wanted to make Erica this activist - "surely we've got to do something, we can't have this, we've got to change things" - whereas Lily, who probably has had more experience of evil, respects Erica, but also thinks "you're not going to change everything".'

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We discuss surveillance in our society. 'Remember [in Exposure] it's not that far on from the Second World War, where people were always being talked to about the risks of opening your mouth,' Dunmore reminds me. 'Enemies could be anywhere, and even a casual little bit of information could be put together as part of a jigsaw puzzle. "Be like Dad, keep Mum," and all that kind of stuff. People were very used to that idea of language being potentially dangerous. People are coding what they say, and they're also assuming different personae.'

Every character in the novel is keeping secrets, aren't they? I ask. 'They all are,' Dunmore confirms. 'Sometimes for good reasons. Even the children are keeping secrets. They've read the newspaper about their father; they hide it. They are listening at doors, listening through the floorboards, as children always do - it's desperately important for them to know what's going on with the adults. They're keeping secrets from their mother, and then they develop their own life that she doesn't really know about.'

We talk about the Callingtons' marriage, where Lily finds it in her heart to forgive Simon. Does Dunmore think people are less forgiving these days, and more willing to give up on marriages? 'Certainly social attitudes have changed completely, and the stigma and the difficulty of divorce. The Divorce Reform Act made a huge difference. Women were financially in such a difficult position, because a lot of women didn't have work that was well paid enough to support a family. Also I think the whole narrative was about 'working at' a marriage. It's interesting going back and looking at magazines from the period and advice columns - the narrative is, "you've made this commitment - it's going to have rough patches, but that's what you've got to work at". I think that's equivocal, because in some cases it led to a great deal of unhappiness, people trapped in marriages where they were not happy, but then sometimes - as with Lily and Simon - they both decide that there's so much there, there's enough love.'

Though our time is up, I could carry on listening to Dunmore all day. And as I walk back through the frosty Pimlico streets to the tube station, I feel warm inside. I wish I could go back 20 years, revisit my depressed 15-year-old self and tell her, "It's all going to be OK, you know. One day you'll be a writer and you'll get to meet the author of your favourite book, and it'll be everything you hope it will. And she'll write a novel that's even better than Burning Bright."

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Ever since I can remember I have been moved by inspiration.

I can trace back the important decisions in my life to the people who have inspired me. And the women who inspire me more than anyone else are the women I have met in the countries where Women for Women International operates.

I have a whole collection of 'most inspirational' women in my heart. One such woman is Fatuma from Rwanda. I remember first seeing her when I arrived in Kigali and she was wearing a bright pink dress and she was dancing and singing with the other women as a way of greeting us. There was something about her that struck me and I wanted to meet her and talk to her. Her story moved me and has inspired me since.

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Fatuma is a Tutsi and was raped by Hutu militia during the Rwandan genocide while she was pregnant. She showed me her scar where militia then cut her belly to kill her baby. I have two daughters and I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to experience something like this. As a result of her rape, Fatuma is HIV positive and has faced so many difficulties since the trauma of what happened to her. She had no real opportunities, and was ostracised by her community. The first time she had access to skills and resources was through the Women for Women International programme. She is now an active member of her community and has slowly come to terms with the horrors of what she experienced.

Fatuma inspires me every day to do what I can to help and to go outside my comfort zone and be brave and bold.

But we are not just launching our #SheInspiresMe campaign to celebrate inspiration but to provide real support to women survivors of war to transform their lives.

I can say confidently that with over twenty brutal armed conflicts across the globe and unprecedented levels of violence against women, there has never been a greater need for this work.

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This is compounded by the gross funding gap that surrounds Global Goal 5 which aims to achieve true gender equality and empower women and girls everywhere. Without additional funding, the ambition to end all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls everywhere will simply not be realised by the 2030 deadline.

This is a crisis which we cannot ignore - because we know that when we invest in women, we inspire change. For more than 20 years our organisation has witnessed the power of what is possible when we work together with women survivors of war to give them the tools they need to transform their lives.

And inspiration is a vital part of the work my colleagues are doing on a daily basis in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and South Sudan. Inspiration gives women the courage and strength to take on new challenges in their lives - like Fatuma from Rwanda who rebuilt her life after suffering the most unimaginable violence. And she in turn will inspire other women in her life and in her community - you can see the ripple effect of inspiration.

And it is that inspiration that the #SheInspiresMe campaign is facilitating - because ultimately we want the campaign to raise funds for women who have suffered the trauma of war, so they can rebuild their lives, and inspire brighter futures for themselves and their families.

What I really love about #SheInspiresMe is that it is a positive campaign. It's about celebrating the fantastic achievements of women all over the world. You can get involved today - please watch this short video and share it with your friends. Join the sisterhood and together we will use the power of our collective voice to support women in war-torn countries.

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Photos by Russell MacLaughlin and Shannon Wild

It's the year 1350, and sailing through the Indian Ocean unforgiving winds have slashed your sails and cruel currents are pulling you into unchartered waters. In the searing heat of morning you drift towards a densely vegetated land, a shelter to recover from moonlit storms. The temptation to explore and the need for fresh water encourage a search party to forage through the unknown.

Madagascar was the land that time forgot, a mirror into the prehistoric. Its separation from Africa 135 million years ago and India 88 million years later created an unparalleled experiment in biodiversity. God-fearing sailors would have been met by aptly named Elephant birds over 10ft tall and weighing 400kg. Their foot-long eggs would have fed an entire crew if they were brave enough to raid a nest. Lemurs the size of Gorillas ruled the canopy, pulling their 200kg bodies amongst thick branches in the search for green leaves and berries, their only predator an oversized mongoose with a bone-crushing bite. Below in humid swampland, pygmy hippopotamuses pulled from the pages of fairy tales wallowed in noisy groups, each standing no taller than a Labrador.

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In isolation, these species flourished and evolved with unique genetic blueprints found nowhere else on the planet. Many of their ancestral counterparts can be identified in Africa and India, but Madagascar was undoubtedly blessed with a remarkable biodiversity that only a force such as mankind could belittle. As man settled on the island, the indigenous fauna was devastated. At least 17 species of Lemur have become extinct, along with the mighty Elephant bird, Malagasy hippopotamus, giant fossa, and the rainforest itself has been decimated. Only 10% of Madagascar's original habitat remains whole in the wake of deforestation for rare timber, agricultural reclamation, and the collection of fuel wood.

This is why it is more crucial than ever to support communities, their economies, and ultimately the precious wildlife and landscape surrounding them, through the simple brilliance of ecotourism. Despite the human impact, Madagascar is still home to 107 species of lemur (20% of the world's primates), Baobab trees straight from a fantastical Disney animation, mysterious Tenrecs that resemble an otter-hedgehog hybrid and the world's smallest species of reptile. In fact, 5% of the world's biodiversity can be found on Madagascar, which is unbelievable considering it accounts for only 0.4 % of the world's land mass.

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Lemurs are definitely the most iconic group of animals on Madagascar and are found nowhere else on earth (apart from small populations that were introduced to the nearby Comoros Islands). The largest living lemur species is the Indri (9kgs) with an enchanting call that will give you goose-bumps each time you hear it. The smallest lemur is the nocturnal Madame Berthe's mouse lemur (30g), which is the smallest species of primate in the world and incredibly difficult to spot. Between these are many weird, wonderful and unbelievably charming species that will mesmerise you endlessly whilst exploring the 1,000 mile long island.

It was an unforgettable experience going out at night in search of the Aye-Aye, Madagascar's most deviant looking lemur. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate and resembles a real life gremlin. Watching it feed under the white light of your head torch, its wiry fur, buck teeth, bat-like ears and elongated fingers caressing insects, you could easily forgive locals for regarding the Aye-Aye as an omen of evil. However, you should remember that no one chooses how they look and leave the Aye-Aye to its midnight feasting on grubs!

At the other end of the lemur scale is the Gray Bamboo Lemur. With their huge eyes, fluffy coat and comically expressions, the words 'I want one' are never far from mind. However, their appeal is actually detrimental to their success as about 28,000 lemurs are kept illegally as pets in Madagascar. Like all primates, lemurs are social animals and being kept alone in a house with humans is usually a recipe for disaster.

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The Verreaux's sifaka, otherwise known as the dancing sifaka, may be the most wonderful species of lemur. When they are on the ground, they travel on two-feet like a human but with the grace of a professional ballerina. If you're able to film this movement in slow-motion the beauty of their passage is exacerbated even further.

Although Madagascar will draw many for the delights of its enchanting Lemurs, there is plenty more that the island offers for both the brave and faint-hearted. As someone who loves reptiles, Madagascar's brightly coloured chameleons, non-venomous snakes and rare tortoises will constantly delight. Furthermore, no trip to Madagascar is complete without a trip to the Avenue of the Baobabs. These ancient trees are most spectacular when viewed at sunrise or sunset, casting spectacular silhouettes against the burning red skies. The island has nearly 5,000km of beaches which rival the beauty of those found on the nearby islands of Reunion and Mauritius. The diving is world-class and never crowded. Finally, if you're lucky, you'll get to witness the only large carnivore on the island - the Fossa. This animal looks like a big cat, but in fact, it's most closely related to a mongoose.

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I've travelled to over 60 countries in my 30 years on earth but none have impacted me quite like Madagascar. I've become spellbound by its distinction but I'm afraid for its future. 30,000 hectares of forest are being cut down each year and, if this rate continues, there will be no forest left within 25 years. Ecotourism is a viable way to make the forests worth more to the local people than turning them into agricultural land. If the Malagasy people can make a good living from guiding tourists through the forests and showing off the besotting animals it hosts, they are far more likely to protect them for many more generations. Let us learn from the mistakes of our forefathers, the bones of the Elephant bird, the museum displays of pygmy hippos. Our world is worth so much more with magical species still swinging from trees, patrolling the grasslands, and swimming through seas.

If you'd like to visit Madagascar, you can book a tour with Encounter Madagascar . I travelled to Madagascar in October (the dry season). The best months to visit are April - November. Things to note are: the roads are poorly maintained so be prepared for a bumpy ride, the accommodation is basic in some of the reserves so don't expect luxury and Air Madagascar has a tendency to change internal flight times at the last minute so always check before you travel.

Read more about Catherine's ecoadventures at http://catherinecapon.com/
Speaking to The Guardian's Owen Jones last week, journalist Peter Oborne described how a "soft apartheid towards Muslims" was emerging in Britain. His assessment of the government's categorisation of good "secular Muslims" and bad "non-violent devout Muslims" was spot on. The compartmentalisation of Muslims was the inevitable outcome of the UK Government's flagship counter-terrorism Prevent strategy, which became statutory under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015.

Ever since its inception in 2006 under Tony Blair, the Prevent programme has been perceived with increasing suspicion by British Muslims. It has also been heavily criticised for its draconian policies, as well as the McCarthyite nature in which it has been implemented. This perception has indeed worsened over the years, and is now gradually becoming mainstream, with numerous non-Muslim academics, journalists and activists publicly criticising the strategy for not only targeting Muslims, but being in breach of their civil rights.

Underpinned by the academically refuted 'conveyor belt theory', the Prevent strategy continues to wreak havoc in Muslim communities by exerting ideology as the main precursor to violent extremism; dismissing foreign policy grievances, socioeconomic deprivation, and psychological instability as contributing factors towards radicalisation. And of course, the neoconservative and anti-extremism mascots of the Prevent programme, such as the Henry Jackson Society, the Quilliam Foundation, and women's rights group Inspire, continue to embarrass themselves in failing to win over grassroots Muslim organisations and leaders to adopt the strategy.

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In all honesty, the time is nigh to call a spade, a spade. Prevent is not in the business of preventing terrorism, that responsibility is being adequately executed by normal policing. Prevent is and always has been about policing ideology - normative Islamic concepts and beliefs rooted in the hearts and minds of Muslims, which the establishment is hell-bent in diminishing. As a result, it is becoming abundantly clear that the British government, which claims to be the champion of freedom and liberty, is more than willing to disregard everything it claims to represent to fulfil this objective.

However, the reality is far from what the mainstream media and David Cameron would like us to believe. The general public, from different sectors which are now bound by law to become state spies, are gradually waking up and speaking out against Prevent. Dubbed by the cheerleaders of the establishment as the "Preventing-Prevent" lobby, a movement which began early last year is gaining momentum, and can no longer be dismissed as one that is being led by "Islamists" and "regressive lefties".

Over the past two weeks, there's been a relentless media onslaught against advocacy group CAGE, think-tank MEND, and members of the National Union of Students (NUS) for opposing Prevent on university campuses. As expected, the media reports from the right-wing press have failed to criticise the actual work carried out by these organisations or their actual points of contention with Prevent. Instead, the media attacks against the aforementioned have been the finest example of unadulterated yellow journalism, illustrated by the typical character assassinations that have sadly become the hallmark of the Islamophobia industry.

For arguments sake, let's ignore everything the so-called Islamists and their "regressive lefty" allies have been spouting about Prevent. Allow me to present, merely 11 examples, of which there are many, describing how Prevent is perceived in society, and hopefully, it will provide the rationale behind why grave concerns exist about Prevent, and the manner in which it is being implemented.

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1. Last week, the Chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque and the future Lord Mayor of the city, Councillor Muhammad Afzal, described Prevent as "racist" and called for its boycott for indiscriminately targeting Muslims.

2. In December 2015, Waltham Forest Council of Mosques, which represents more than 70,000 Muslims, vowed to boycott Prevent, and also described it as a "racist policy" which targets Islam and Muslims.

3. In March 2015, more than 240 leading Muslim organisations, scholars, imams, activists, teachers, doctors and journalists issued a joint statement against the CTS Bill, specifically the statutory standing of Prevent.

4. In July 2015, more than 280 academics and NUS members issued a public statement against Prevent, stating that it would have a "chilling effect on free and open debate and political dissent", adding that "it shifts attention away from grievances that drive individuals towards an ideology that legitimises political violence." The public statement concluded by calling for Prevent's total abolishment.

5. Only last week, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Louise Richardson, argued that "extremists" should be allowed to speak at universities, and banning them from doing so would be a fundamental impingement of free speech.

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6. Former Metropolitan chief superintendent Dal Babu described Prevent as a "toxic brand".

7. Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer, Sir Peter Fahy, stated that Prevent was hampered from the onset due to the Iraq war, and he argued that defining "extremism" was not the responsibility of the police.

8. The 'Keep Mosques Independent' initiative, which is being led by the largest council of mosques from the north of the country, representing hundreds of thousands of British Muslims, recently issued a statement against state interference in madrassas under the Prevent programme.

9. In a unified example of public discontent, imams in east London backed by non-Muslim teachers, community organisations and student unions, claimed that Prevent was spying on Muslim students, which has led to "increasing division and to a breakdown of trust in schools and colleges".

10. MP for Bradford West, Naz Shah, who is also a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee for countering extremism, described in a recent statement that Prevent is perceived by many ordinary Muslims as "toxic".

11. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC, criticised the Home Secretary, Theresa May, late last year for her policies under the Prevent strategy, as he believed they risked extending the "surveillance state" too far.

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All the above examples were taken from within the space of year. Had I taken the time to cite all the concerns flagged about Prevent since 2006, it would have easily numbered in the hundreds. Yet, in contrast, how many Prevent "success stories" are the public aware of? And if there are cases where Prevent has actually disrupted terrorist activity, why is it not being celebrated from the rooftops of Downing Street? Is it because Prevent is being intentionally conflated with the achievements of ordinary policing?

Whatever the case may be, unless the British government removes the neoconservative hawks within its ranks, and starts listening to grassroots Muslim organisations, Muslim youth will continue to be "radicalised" and the already empowering "Preventing-Prevent" lobby will continue to go from strength to strength.
"We are rushing headlong into the robotics revolution without consideration for the many unforeseen problems lying around the corner..."

So said Professor Noel Sharkey, co-founder and chair on the executive board of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, a foundation that was formed towards the end of last year to "promote the responsible design, development, implementation, and policy of robots embedded in our society."

It's an admirable aim. With more and more tasks, skills and industries becoming automated some are concerned that advancing developments in robotics could impact on people's jobs and livelihoods. Furthermore, robots are moving out of industry and into the everyday and an ethical approach to the automation of daily life should be welcome.

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One area of the robot revolution that interests me in particular is robots working in the emergency services and armed services, so much so that we recently covered it in How It Works magazine and examined some fascinating advances in this field.

Imagine the scene after a huge earthquake or natural catastrophe, such as the devastating events in Fukushima or Haiti. An injured victim is buried underneath the wreckage. After some jostling, a spotlight pierces the darkness, the sound of hydraulics and motors approaches, and the rubble is lifted safely clear by a rescuer who isn't even human.

Advances in robotics are making many experts predict a near future where rescue robots will scour disaster zones en masse. But their success depends on the alignment of several disciplines.

First, a robot plunging into danger needs to power itself independently. These often very heavy devices require a lot of electrical power; the more power they have to carry on board, the heavier they are, which requires more power in turn, and so on. The solutions to this energy problem vary greatly. Boston Dynamics' BigDog carries a one-cylinder, two stroke Go-Kart engine (like those used in lawnmowers), which drives 16 hydraulic motors in its legs. By contrast, NASA's Opportunity rover can theoretically keep exploring Mars forever (provided the mechanisms still work) as it recharges itself with a solar panel.

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In the world's foremost robotics competitions, entrants can't be tethered to external power or communications, and in the most rigorous tests, wireless communication is purposefully degraded to give them a chance to prove their self-help skills. While that seems tough, a city struck by a killer earthquake or a forest engulfed in flames will be a much greater challenge. Search and rescue bots will have to go deep into dangerous territory, cut off from human operators with patchy communication signals. It will be making its own decisions about what to do next, using machine learning and other AI algorithms to self-teach.

Pre-programming robots for unpredictable environments is incredibly difficult, but leaving a robot to its own devices would be dangerous. There's a sweet spot to be found, and 'learning to unlearn' certain behaviours can be just as important in the field. Restrict self-learning too much and the simplest obstacle might become a fatal stumbling block, like a flight of stairs or a door handle. Trust a system too much to try new things and it might decide a disaster victim is another piece of rubble and cause more harm.

The other secret to a successful search and rescue operation is sensors, and there are as many kinds as there are environments they have to work in. With feedback from accelerometers or gyroscopes in multiple dimensions, motion sensors give the robot critical information like orientation to the ground - an essential input when scrambling over wreckage. It can also get information about its movements from load-bearing sensors, which measure shifts in weight. The motors - known as actuators - then compensate, moving the body in the opposite direction to keep it upright. For robots that are connected to operators at a home base, visual sensors are crucial too. Cameras - often two of them to provide a sense of depth - can show the operator what's going on in the immediate area.

We can also design robots with sensors for dangers they're likely to encounter in specific environments. Sandia National Laboratories' Gemini-Scout is designed for mining accidents, finding and delivering provisions to survivors. As well as the ability to navigate rocky surfaces, debris, and even water and mud, it has a thermal imager to acquire video, a speaker and microphone for communication, and temperature and gas sensors so it can sense environmental hazards. Its devices are surrounded by explosion-proof casing, so if it's surrounded by explosive substances, the robot's electronics won't spark to trigger blasts.

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After the destruction caused by major disasters, getting from A to B to reach those in need can be difficult, demanding constant shifts in balance and weight that we humans do without thinking. Wheels are of limited use. Designs inspired by quadruped animals like Boston Dynamics' BigDog and Cheetah are also showing promise.

Although humanoid robots seem like a natural choice, the movements required for scrambling over wreckage are hugely complicated. Even standing upright is a demanding task for the robot's processor and motors, as they try to imitate a human's brain and muscles.

Disaster robots got their first real debut when they were sent into the incredibly difficult terrain of the World Trade Center towers following the September 11 attacks. They didn't perform at all well, often getting stuck or breaking, but the test gave engineers a lot of real-world experience to work on the next generation of rescue bots.

However, after spending all that development time and money on a single machine only to have it crushed flat by a falling wall or run out of power at the worst possible moment and be lost forever, the answer might be to not put all your eggs in one basket. The solution for some environments might be an army of rescue robots, working as a team.

A group of robots has several advantages. If there's a lot of thick concrete or metal at the disaster site, communication is likely to be very unreliable, so if the connection is lost with an individual bot, it can be maintained along a chain between those that are still in range. The command will be passed down the line to the unit at the front line. A swarm also allows for a distributed processing model. Each unit has their piece of the puzzle but is also aware of the outlook of every other bot and can take over the decision-making or operator-response should something happen to its nearby fellows. It's a little like having one giant robot body and brain made up of small, fluid elements.

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The members of a robot army don't need to be identical. Several different kinds of bot can be deployed, each with its own talents. Larger, longer-range robots could carry smaller and more specialised devices like snakebots deep into a disaster zone to go to work.

One snakebot model, designed by Japanese robotics professor Satoshi Tadokoro, is nearly eight metres long and propels itself using nylon bristles powered by tiny individual motors. It only moves at a crawl of five centimetres per second, but it can climb 20-degree inclines, turn sharp corners and see what's ahead with its front-mounted camera.

These low-powered snake-inspired robots are built for localised environments, but there's a way round this. Potentially, longer-range models could carry them to the burned out factory or collapsed building and deploy them to map and report back on the environment.

Whatever the shape or size, the search and rescue robots of the future will accompany and assist humans in dangerous conditions, or may even be able to go it alone, leaving their human operators in the safety of the control room.
What's your first thought when you hear of a teacher being attacked at school? That the child is 'bad' and needs to be taught a lesson? That it's the parents' fault for not teaching them right from wrong?

Or that the child could be mentally ill and knows no other way of expressing their anguish and pain?

While the first school of thought maybe more popular, increasingly, many education experts are starting to take the second view.

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Schools across the UK are facing a tsunami of violence with almost 43% of teachers saying they've dealt with aggressive pupils in the last year alone. While it's easy to blame lax parenting, that alone doesn't explain the huge numbers and ferocity of the attacks.

The fresh figures from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers show almost half of teachers believe violence in schools has worsened in the last two years. Of those who faced physical violence, 76.5% said they had experienced pushing and shoving, 37.4% had dealt with punching, 52.4% had faced kicking, 24.1% had dealt with spitting and 2.2% said that pupils had used a weapon, such as a knife.

Now it's true children learn by example - so their actions in school could well be a refection of how they're treated at home. But if a young child believes pulling a knife on a teacher will help her situation, that's not lax parenting but a symptom of something much more serious.

What's abundantly clear is that the current system isn't working. The last few years have seen major cuts to support systems for abused, disabled and mentally ill children. All too often pupils with severe special needs are pushed into unsuitable schools to save money - and simply cannot cope.

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Parents have to fight hard to get children statemented and receive the support they need, against councils unwilling and often unable to provide the extra funds. And if a child's own family is in crisis, there's very little chance they'll even be able to fill in the paperwork.

The result? Ill children unable to cope are thrown into mainstream schools. It's horribly cruel - there's no early intervention to help them, they're written off as stupid or troublemakers, and are condemned to a life without respect or achievement, often before they've left primary school. In a culture where we're promised "every child matters", this is no way for vulnerable youngsters to begin their lives.

If a child feels worthless, neglected or unloved, of course they will react. They are wounded, crying out for attention but have no idea how to ask for it. They will overreact at the slightest provocation - real or imagined - and fight hard to hang onto what little dignity they have.

Often - and especially with hormonal teens - this explodes into anger, violence and troublemaking. But look behind the bravado and you'll find a frightened child trying to put up a shield and make themselves look bigger and tougher to shut out the world.

Blaming a 'lack of boundaries at home' simply doesn't show enough understanding of the problem. We're not talking about children who refuse to go to bed on time or get off the X-Box when their mum asks. This is far deeper than that.

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These kids don't have just a lack of boundaries, often they don't even have a stable home. They may not have enough food, their parent may leave them home alone for days on end to drink or take drugs, they could be being abused by family members or strangers brought to their home.

The sheer levels of violence show we're talking about thousands of children growing up without love, without being parented, with no positive home role models and no sense of self worth. Happy, well adjusted, kids do not attack teachers - but tormented and desperately unhappy ones may.

So what can we do to end it? Clearly teacher and pupil safety comes first. Schools must implement policies to remove children who threaten to harm others.

But permanent exclusion from school isn't the answer. It's our duty as a civilized society to understand what is happening to these children, to help them overcome it and to give them the very best chance in life.

We don't want to see a generation written off, facing years of unemployment, abuse or jail. If every child matters, let's do all we can to break the cycle of violence and help these troubled children.

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But this isn't a job for already-overworked teachers, these children - and often their parents - need intensive specialist support.
Nicola Tree via Getty Images

'Non-whites don't wipe their bums'; refugees are a 'bunch of migrants', 'don't sit next to muslims with a bag'. Not anonymous below the line comments in a tabloid newspaper. These are views expressed to me recently in situations as diverse as a community workshop, the House of Commons or from fellow commuters.

This is why Prevent is a missed opportunity. Britain requires a conversation, not an exercise in finger pointing. We need to both address common fears of 'the other', and promote the best of our abilities to work together. There are extremists in all communities who need to be identified and challenged. A truly inclusive approach would recognise combatting this is a job for us all, not just the government or those targeted alone.

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Tension between communities in Britain is rising: every day and in every way. On all sides of political and religious debates, there are many who are encouraging it. Whether the issue is immigration or radicalisation, heat rather than light dominates public policy. In our conspiracy-obsessed age, the first victim is any semblance of reasoned debate. Britain First memes about rapist refugees angrily rebound around social media. Community meetings resound with allegations that Islam is under attack.

Such views left unchallenged not only exclude and alienate. They can foster a world in which mistreatment of, and even violence against those who are different becomes commonplace. Whether deliberate or not, when the prime minister dismisses refugees, it makes it just that bit easier to turn our backs on them too. Residents regularly tell me that they feel nervous and ill at ease. Jews confide that they now do not wear skull caps in public. Muslim women say they are frightened they will be assaulted for wearing the niqab. White residents worry 'native speakers' are being ignored. To argue about the validity of these concerns is to miss the point. We must address the fact that, across Britain they exist at all.

To do so, we need a national conversation that can separate naive and insensitive conduct from actions motivated by malicious intent. Those who seek to exploit these fears - whether to score points in PMQs or to promote a vicious political agenda - should be held to account for their toxic rhetoric. But those courageous enough to admit their own prejudices - to which we all are prey - shouldn't be written off as clones of Donald Trump, either. We need to engage with the roots of hatred and reasons for fear: both off and online. Whether talking about jihad in the sense of a personal moral struggle, explaining Zionism refers to Israel's right to exist, or demonstrating how insensitive analogies with Nazism are offensive, taking time to make, and listen to, arguments and explanations is as much part of tackling extremism as calling out those who foster hatred.

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Social solidarity isn't supported through bland generalities about tolerance and diversity. It requires real graft, helping to explore and diffuse tensions between cultures as well as imbalances in power. We should say clearly that dumping refugees around the country is insulting to our shared humanity. We should affirm that hate preachers do not, and should not be allowed to represent an entire faith. Crucially, we should make sure there is space to listen what people say for themselves, not drown some voices with angry demands that they disown the worst members of their communities before they can be heard at all.
Thankfully, our government cracked down quickly on these debacles. But the outrageous events of the past week demonstrate all too clearly that rapid improvements are needed to the way Britain treats asylum seekers. Without the media spotlight asylum seekers in Cardiff would still be forced to wear wristbands at all times if they wanted to eat. In Middlesbrough they would still be stigmatised and exposed to additional risk behind red doors.

These cannot be written off as isolated incidents. They expose the underlying failings of the way Britain responds to refugees arriving here. Current government policy does not provide the support that refugees so desperately need, and fails to build the positive relationships we all want to see between refugees and host communities.

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There is a better way. A reformed system would improve the lives of refugees, enable them to contribute more to the UK, improve community relations and save the UK money. The government must make rapid changes in three areas.

First, all asylum seekers need to receive a quick and fair hearing. It's in no-one's interests for this to take many months or even years. There's huge room for improvement. The system ruins the lives of too many who are trapped in poverty and homelessness by slow or incorrect judgements. Almost one in three asylum claims that are rejected are overturned on appeal. Every time a first decision is wrong, the taxpayer pays the price and someone who has survived untold trauma suffers even more.

Second, asylum seekers need sufficient support to enable them to live in dignity during their asylum process. Common sense? We've been going backwards fast. The last few years have seen some terrible indignities introduced into the current system. As a result of the contracts with G4S and others, refugees are too often placed in substandard accommodation and without any thought to building relationships with local people, as we have seen in Middlesbrough.

The level of financial support provided to many asylum seekers has been cut. Research by Refugee Action found that nearly 40% of asylum seekers surveyed could not buy enough food to feed themselves or their families. As it stands, the government's Immigration Bill is set to make this worse, potentially forcing refused asylum seeking families into homelessness, even if they do not believe it is safe or possible for them to return home.

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Finally, the UK must do far better to enable refugees to contribute to our local communities. The lack of access to high-quality English lessons is a huge frustration for refugees. Government funding to help people to enter the UK job market has dried up, making it harder for people to get onto the employment ladder and contribute to our society and economy.

These are extraordinary times. No one chooses to be a refugee. It's the accident of birth that separates 'us' from 'them'. Four years of the brutal war in Syria have left 11 million people with no option but to flee their homes. There appears to be no end in sight to this war and the appalling suffering that comes with it. Long-running conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere are also forcing people to flee.

The British public want their government to step up and do more in response to these crises. There have been some significant steps forward. It's just a few months since the Prime Minister committed to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees. Refugee Action welcomed a group of Syrian refugees to Birmingham this week. A few days ago the government announced that it will take a range of measures to help unaccompanied refugee children, with support from across the political spectrum.
An 11-year-old girl has told the Prime Minister that the same-sex marriage plebiscite is a waste of Australian tax payers' time and money.

Reading the letter she penned to Malcolm Turnbull on The Project on Thursday night, Isabella Mills -- who has two gay parents -- said she "was struggling to see the point" in the plebiscite, set to be held in 2017.

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"That 160 million dollars that you are willing to waste on a pointless plebiscite is totally unnecessary. I mean, the public has already expressed their views and made it quite clear that they want same-sex marriage for Australia," Mills said.

"I may not be the Prime Minister, but even I know that Australians could use that money elsewhere.

"If an 11-year-old girl can see that, why cant you?

The 11-year-old told also the Prime Minister that he would lose support if the plebiscite went ahead, as the parliament have no legal obligation to honour the plebiscite's majority vote.

"All the homeless people you walk past on the streets treasure the few pennies they possess, while you are ready to throw millions of dollars right down the drain," said Mills.

"And you say you want to help our community. You might be fooling the rest of the country but you are not fooling me."

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Also featured on The Project segment was Senator Corey Bernardi, who remained outspoken about his decision to vote against same-sex marriage, even if the Australian public's vote was overwhelmingly in support of marriage equality.

No Australian government and no representative has ever been bound by a plebiscite, he said.

If you want to bind a government, you then should go through the process for a referendum. Which is where I have said in the past, if a majority of people in a majority of states vote in favour of enshrining something in our constitution, then of course parliament is bound by that.

On Wednesday, Senator Eric Abetz also warned he may vote against the plebiscite which Senator Bernardi dubbed a "glorified opinion poll".

Here is Isabella Mills' letter in full:

Dear Mr Malcolm Turnbull,

My name is Isabella. I am an 11-year-old girl and I have gay parents (two Mums).

I am struggling to see a point in the plebiscite that you are holding in 2017. It is a complete waste of time, money, and will most certainly fracture some of the positive views that people have about you. That 160 million dollars that you are willing to waste on a pointless plebiscite is totally unnecessary. I mean, the public has already expressed their views and made it quite clear that they want same-sex marriage for Australia. I may not be the Prime Minister, but even I know that Australian could use that money elsewhere.

If an 11 year old girl can see that, why cant you?
Martin Ollman via Getty Images CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 25: 2016 Australian of the Year David Morrison AO during the Australian of The Year Awards 2016 at Parliament House on January 25, 2016 in Canberra, Australia. (Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

Some war veterans have slammed the appointment of former army boss David Morrison as Australian of the Year, labelling the choice as "sickening" after the former Chief of Army didn't nominate veterans' issues as a priority in his new role.

The ABC reports that anger is mounting among veterans about the appointment after Morrison said nothing about the welfare of veterans in his opening address in his new role.

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The Australian of the Year choice is a political debacle. The decision to appoint David Morrison has been... https://t.co/MDBdTcULFs  Leon Gettler (@leongettler) January 29, 2016

Former soldier Geoff Shafran told the ABC he was shocked to hear General Morrison talk about pushing ahead with a republic as a priority while saying nothing about veterans' welfare.

"When you can get on at an Australia Day speech and discuss the republic and not allude to veterans' issues when he had I think it's 13 soldiers who were actually killed overseas while he was chief of army, it's just turning your back on these people," he told the ABC.

Shafran wants Morrison to step aside as Australian of the Year and has set up an online petition calling for him to step down.

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"It's actually calling for the, essentially the resignation of David Morrison as Australian of the Year, and also for him to relinquish the title of general because he, in my opinion, demonstrated a lack of leadership by not alluding to veterans' issues on his pre-Australia Day speech," he said.

The Defence Force Welfare Association is said to have been inundated with correspondence from veterans who are disappointed with Morrison as the choice for Australian of the Year.

The latest critique of Morrison comes after his former speech writer, Catherine McGregor, this week labelled his appointment as "weak".

She said she felt really sad the board of the National Australia Day Council 'did not have the courage to go with an LGBTI person'.

'I thought it was time ... it was a weak and conventional choice,' she told the Star Observer.

'I think I'll die without seeing a trans Australian of the Year and I think that's terribly sad,' McGregor said.

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Not-for-profit organisation Walking Wounded, which provides psychological support for returned soldiers, has defended Morrison as a choice.

"Following a 40 year career serving for our country, David is a well deserving recipient of the Australian of the Year title," Walking Wounded CEO Brian Freeman said.

"David oversaw some of the worst years our defence personnel have ever endured, and I can guarantee experiences like that aren't quickly forgotten or dismissed.

He said Morrison was committed to the cause of veterans' affairs.

"I have no doubt that David will continue to shine a spotlight on veterans over the coming twelve months in his newly appointed role, as he has done in the years leading up to this recognition."

Morrison made headlines in 2013 when he posted a public video message in response to the rife sexual abuse in the army, telling officers who were demeaning women to get out as the army would no longer tolerate it.

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That stirring video of new Australian of the Year, David Morrison telling male soldiers who demean women: "GET OUT!" pic.twitter.com/mr1IRCeAIU  Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) January 25, 2016

"They (female soldiers) are vital to us maintaining our capability now and into the future," he said.

2016 Australian of the Year is David Morrison AO, recognised for his unwavering commitment to equality & diversity. https://t.co/icBCmVDneQ  AusoftheYearAwards (@ausoftheyear) January 25, 2016

"If that does not suit you then get out. You may find another employer where your attitude and behaviour is acceptable but I doubt it," Morrison said in the video which has gained more than 1.5 million views.
Mike Allen will leave Politico next year, presumably to do penance for asking about Rahm Emanuels vacation. A House panel investigating the Flint water crisis didnt subpoena Rick Snyder -- perhaps he was too busy not doing anything about it. And the government said more than twenty of Hillary Clintons emails contained top secret information, a scandal that will culminate four years from now in a really, REALLY boring Michael Bay film. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, January 29th, 2016:

POLITICO SETS ITSELF ON FIRE IN ULTIMATE ATTEMPT TO WIN MORNING - Michael Calderone, Sam Stein and Grim: "Politico CEO Jim VandeHei and chief White House correspondent Mike Allen will leave the news organization they helped launch nine years ago and built into a politics and policy juggernaut. VandeHei told staff Thursday that he was departing after the election and that Allen, chief operating officer Kim Kingsley, chief revenue officer Roy Schwartz and executive vice president Danielle Jones would also be 'seeking their own new adventures' late this year, confirming an earlier HuffPost report on the shake-up...VandeHei, meanwhile, has expressed interest in moving back to Wisconsin and running for office, a well-placed source said...But rumors of tumult have been rampant for some time, mainly centered on Susan Glasser, whose tenure as top editor began in fall 2014 with significant turnover and who has been expected to leave the top newsroom job and move to Israel after the election. Her husband, New York Times reporter Peter Baker, is in line to become the papers next Jerusalem bureau chief. In a separate memo, Allbritton wrote that Glasser would continue to run the newsroom through the year before joining her husband in the Middle East. He said Glasser will become director of editorial innovation and continue to play a key role in the newsroom from abroad. " [HuffPost]

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Ryan Grim explains to Poynter why every HuffPost story about Donald Trump calls him a liar.

TOP SECRET INFO FOUND IN HILLARY'S EMAILS - This news will serve as some serious methadone for conservatives reeling over the secret Planned Parenthood filmer's indictment. AP: "The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails with material requiring one of the highest levels of classification. The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate. Department officials also said the agency's Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus will investigate whether any of the information was classified at the time of transmission, going to the heart of one of Clinton's primary defenses of her email practices. The State Department will release its next batch of emails from Clinton's time as secretary of state later Friday." [AP]

Clinton campaign responds: "Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is urging the State Department to release all emails from her private server and criticizing the decision to withhold 22 messages classifed as 'top secret.' 'This appears to be over-classification run amok,' Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a lengthy statement. 'We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her emails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year.' "We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails,' he added." [The Hill]

NO RICK SNYDER ON THE HILL - Weird. It's not like Snyder hasn't been talking about Flint every day. Kate Sheppard: "The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, on Feb. 3. But the list of witnesses does not include Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), an omission that some are calling inexcusable. The oversight committee has called a hearing for next Wednesday at 9 a.m. focusing on violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act in Flint. The Flint water crisis came as a result of officials in the Snyder administration telling city officials not to use corrosion treatment after the city began pulling drinking water from the Flint River. The water then corroded the city's pipes, causing lead contamination. State officials dismissed complaints from Flint residents about the water quality for over a year." [HuffPost]

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Haircuts: Jen Bendery, Sam Levine, Jeffrey Young.

DELANEY DOWNER - Fox News host Brett Baier asked Ohio Gov. John Kasich during Thursday night's Republican debate how he'd handle a water crisis like the one in Flint, Michigan. "I don't know all the details of what Rick Snyder has done," Kasich said, referring to Michigan's embattled Republican governor. "I know people who have been fired, people are being held accountable, but the fact is, every single engine of government has to move when you see a crisis like that." It was a curious question for Kasich, since there's currently a water crisis in Ohio that's similar in some ways to the one in Flint. Schools in Sebring, Ohio closed this week over concerns of high lead levels in the town's water, which residents have been told not to drink. [HuffPost]

Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

ADMINISTRATION TO ISSUE NEW SALARY DATA RULES - This is begging for a Donald Trump soundbite. Danielle Paquette and Drew Harwell: "President Obama proposed a new rule Friday that would require every large company in America to report employees' pay based on race and gender, an effort to reduce longstanding pay inequities for women and minorities. The new policy, already drawing criticism from some business leaders, would order companies with at least 100 employees to add salary numbers on a form they already annually submit that reports employees sex, age and job groups. The new pay information would alert the EEOC to companies with significant wage disparities, which could result in hefty fines. During the updated data collection process, officials would not publicly name employers or employees, said Jenny Yang, chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which published the proposed rule with the Department of Labor. If disciplinary action is taken, however, companies found to write discriminatory paychecks could appear in public record." [WaPo]

Listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Adam McKay and Tim Canova on the HuffPost Politics podcast. Coates thinks Bernie Sanders is being super lame about reparations.

TRUMP TRUMPS - Too late to get Steve King or Louie Gohmert's endorsements, unfortunately. Elise Foley: "The 'anchor baby' slur is back in the GOP presidential race, and this time, it's being thrown at one of the candidates. Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Friday that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is an "anchor baby." It was all part of the real estate mogul's repeated riffing on the fact that Cruz was born in Canada. 'Now, Ted Cruz may not be a U.S. citizen. Right? But he's an anchor baby in Canada. No, he's an anchor baby. Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada,' Trump said at an event in New Hampshire, according to ABC News. His insult doesn't make much sense, other than as an excuse to throw out the words "anchor baby." Cruz is definitely a U.S. citizen. He was born in Canada to a U.S. citizen mother, making him an American by birth. He also had dual citizenship with Canada, because the country automatically confers citizenship on people born there." [HuffPost]

TRUMP KEEPS GREAT FRIENDS -- JUST FANTASTIC PEOPLE - Real winners. Christina Wilkie: "Trump did what he's always done when he needs to fund the Donald J. Trump Foundation: He called up a small group of people who do business with him, or who owe him favors, and asked them to pony up Mall developer J.J. Cafaro, who socializes with Trump in Palm Beach, gave Trump's foundation $50,000, prompting Trump to describe Cafaro as 'a fantastic man.' What Trump didn't mention is that Cafaro has pleaded guilty two different times in federal court to charges related to illegal political campaign donations. In 2002, Cafaro pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe then-Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio), part of a deal Cafaro made to avoid jail time. Six years later, he again pleaded guilty to a campaign-related offense -- this time, failing to disclose a $10,000 loan he'd made to his daughter's failed bid for a seat in Congress." [HuffPost]

GOP BASE WARMING TO DONALD - Ariel Edwards-Levy and Natalie Jackson: "The most politically active members of the Republican Party have warmed to Donald Trumps bid for the partys presidential nomination since last summer, according to a new Huffington Post/YouGov poll, which finds 68 percent now think he could win the general election. While most surveys attempt to reflect the entire electorate, this one is the latest in a trio of polls focusing solely on Republican activists: well-informed party stalwarts who've run for or held office, served as party officials, worked on campaigns or volunteered their time before elections. Their views shouldn't be seen as representative of the horserace as a whole, but they provide some insight into the role of GOP political leaders in an election cycle where public opinions have repeatedly flouted the establishment." [HuffPost]

The things we do for love: "A super PAC supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalleys flagging campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination raised only $514,000 in the second half of last year, but $100,000 of that came from Eliot Spitzer and his mother, Anne Spitzer, according to a report filed Friday afternoon with the Federal Election Commission...The Spitzers donations came in late September, three months before it was reported that Eliot Spitzer and his former girlfriend Lis Smith, who is OMalleys deputy campaign manager, broke up." [Politico's Ken Vogel]

BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here's a toddler encountering a baby gorilla.

GUN CONTROL GROUPS UPSET BY VA. GOV - "Gun-safety activists reacted with fury on Friday to a deal Gov. Terry McAuliffe struck with Republicans to recognize most out-of-state concealed-handgun permits, fanning out across the Capitol, placing hundreds of calls and writing to the Democrat who won office two years ago bragging about his 'F' rating from the National Rifle Association...The gun agreement, which still needs the General Assemblys approval, would reverse Democratic Attorney General Mark R. Herrings decision last month to sever the reciprocity rights of gun owners in 25 states with standards looser than Virginias. The deal would require gun-rights groups to give on a couple fronts. The state could take guns away from anyone under a two-year protective order for domestic-violence offenses. And state police would have to attend all gun shows to provide background checks for private sellers who choose to vet potential buyers." [WaPo]

COMFORT FOOD

- Polar bear cub is adorable.

- It's all connecticut: the Sandlerverse.

- Cat stares at fox.

TWITTERAMA

@jamieson: Most of this debate is candidates being invited to walk back reasonable things they did or said

@MEPFuller :We Had A Criminologist And A Psychiatrist Evaluate Bill Clinton's Movie Choices While In Office. You'll Never Believe What They Say About Bi



@GlennThrush: There are so many f---ing reporters in Des Moines right now, it makes me want to be a bartender. There the only ones getting any actual news
On any given day, more than 60,000 children are locked up in our nation's juvenile facilities. Whether it's an urban jail or a rural boot camp, the results are the same. Youth locked up in secure facilities experience more mental problems, achieve a lower level of education, and make less money over their lifetimes. Research also indicates that the detention experience may increase the chances of re-offending.

Many states around the country have passed legislation to move resources away from state-run facilities and into locally operated, community-based programs. This shift in emphasis toward intervention and rehabilitation has made a big difference in the lives of children and their families.

Unfortunately, just as others are scaling back youth incarceration, King County, Washington is ramping up. The County is moving forward on plans to build a new, 112-bed juvenile justice facility. Voters approved funding for it in 2012, but what choice did they have? The current building is old and falling down in places, and King County failed to offer any alternatives.

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It's important to remember that we have the option of not locking kids up. King County could move incarcerated youth into a range of supportive and supervised programs, obviating the need for a big youth jail.

In community-based alternatives, youth are placed in court-ordered supervision appropriate for their individual needs and level of risk. Some may enter home confinement, or house arrest, while others may report to day treatment facilities, returning in the evenings to their families. Other may be placed in specialized shelters or supportive foster care.

While under this supervision, young offenders get help with the root causes of their problems. Some may attend therapy with their families and learn skills that help them cope with stress, build positive relationships, and choose behaviors that don't hurt others or themselves. Many programs also give young people the opportunity to repair harm to victims and give back to their communities.

Research shows these programs are cheaper than jail and more effective in reducing crime and recidivism. While the average cost of a juvenile prison bed is $241 a day, a slot in a community-based program costs less than $75 a day.

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By deciding to build a large, new juvenile justice facility, King County has committed itself to an outmoded approach. The County should follow the lead of the Seattle City Council, which has passed a resolution calling for no youth detention and approved over $600,000 in funding to support alternatives to youth incarceration.
As is is well known, many members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government are strident opponents of a two-state solution and would like to annex at least a major portion of the occupied West Bank.

Until recently, many in the international community assumed that Netanyahu would block such moves and continue his policy of paying lip service to the goal of a two-state solution, while blocking any meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians and allowing the Israeli settler population of the West Bank to slowly but steadily expand.

But recent developments may indicate that Netanyahu has decided to take his foot off the brakes. Construction within the settlements has accelerated significantly while more and more members of the Cabinet are calling for Israel to officially annex the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C. Within the settlements, giant placards are springing up reading, "Sovereignty! Now is the time."

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Under interim agreements signed in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the West Bank was divided into three zones. In Area A, comprising about 18 percent of the land including the major Palestinian cities, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is supposed to run things without Israeli interference -- although the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service frequently mount raids inside this area.

Area B is around 22 percent of the West Bank and is mainly rural. Israel retained security control of the area but the PA is supposed to control civil affairs.

Area C comprises over 60 percent of the territory and is under almost total Israeli military control, including control of all land-related civil matters. That means Israel controls land allocation, planning and construction and infrastructure.

The size of the Palestinian population of Area C is disputed. Right-wing Israeli politicians like Education Minister Naftali Bennett claim there are only 50,000 Palestinians living there and therefore Israel could easily annex the territory and grant them Israeli citizenship without altering significantly the demographic balance within Israel.

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However, the United Nations says there are 300,000 Palestinians living in Area C. Israeli civil rights organizations like B'Tselem put the number at around 200,000. The dispute arises because many Palestinian towns and villages fall partly in Areas A or B and partly in Area C. Area C also holds virtually all of the Israeli settler population of the West Bank - now around 350,000 plus.

For many years, the Israeli authorities have been behaving as if Area C will one day become part of Israel. Obviously, there can be no Palestinian state if it does. The Israeli Civil Administration has methodically blocked virtually all Palestinian construction and attempts at economic development and systematically taken over more and more land and brought it under Israeli control and ownership.

According to B'Tselem:-- 36.5 percent of Area C land is defined by Israel as "state land".-- 63 percent is within settler local and regional councils.-- 20 percent is under examination by the authorities with a view to retaining them as government property.-- 30 percent is defined as "live fire zones." -- 14 percent has been declared nature reserves or national parks.

The Civil Administration almost never grants Palestinians living in Area C building permits, forcing them to build illegally. According to a UN report last September, more than 11,000 demolition orders are currently outstanding in Area C. These orders - which affect an estimated 13,000 Palestinian-owned structures, including homes - are among the over 14,000 demolition orders issued by the Israeli Civil Administration between 1988 and 2014.

Israel's civil administration deputy head Uri Mendes said earlier this month his office is cracking down on illegal Palestinian building and destroying all such structures, save for those that are the subject of legal cases or are protected by a court injunction.

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The EU is fighting back against this policy, providing funds for Palestinians to build even without permits, believing this is crucial for their economic development. Thus, a serious clash is developing on this issue between the Europeans and the Netanyahu government.

The future of the two-state solution is playing out in Area C, which has most of the land of a future Palestinian state. This area should be designated for developing and expanding existing Palestinian communities. They are also crucial for building and locating infrastructure such as waste treatment facilities and industrial zones, which cannot be placed in cities. This land has vital mineral and water resources. To give just one example, Human Rights Watch recently reported that Israel gets 25 percent of its quarrying materials from the West Bank and that 94 of the stone quarried in the West Bank goes to Israel.
Video produced by Lindsey Gomez, article written by Ali Stratton.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- To many, the stage for the Iowa caucuses is already set. The most recent polls show Trump with the highest support, at 32 percent, with Cruz trailing him by seven points at 25 percent.

But two candidates are forecasting a "big surprise" for Monday night, the night Iowa voters gather to pick their candidates.



Minutes after the so-called undercard Republican debate ended in downtown Des Moines Thursday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum both say they are still viable and have a chance at winning the Iowa caucuses. Huckabee and Santorum were pushed to the earlier debate after national polls showed a lack of support for the two.

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"I think that we'll surprise you guys on Monday night; I did it eight years ago, Rick Santorum did it 4 years ago, we'll do it Monday," said Huckabee after Thursday night's debate.

Coincidentally, both candidates have already previously won the Iowa caucus.

In 2008, Huckabee spent nine months trailing in the polls before he beat former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.



Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee answers question from the press in the spin room after Thursday night's Fox News Republican debate. Ali Stratton/Huffington Post

In 2012, Santorum beat Romney by 34 votes.



Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum answers questions from the press in the spin room after Thursday night's Fox News Republican debate. Ali Stratton/Huffington Post

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The question arises of what has changed from the time these candidates won the caucuses to now, as they were placed in the bottom four contenders in Thursday's debate.

Both have answers as to why they aren't performing as well as they have in years past.

Santorum said polls are his biggest barrier, and that they have created an unfair playing field, one that he hopes Iowans will change with their votes come Monday.

"Caucuses are historically very unreliable," Santorum said after the debate Thursday. "The biggest polling firm in North America isn't doing political polling anymore because they say its unreliable," he said, referring to the Gallup organization.

Santorum added that poor performance in the polls can cause voters to lose faith in and doubt the electability of a candidate.

"Last time, numbers popped just a little bit at the end and people said, 'Oh I like him but we're not sure he can win,'" he said. "Why aren't they sure that he can win? Because no one ever talks about Rick Santorum."

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The first time voters will be involved in the process will be Monday night, Huckabee pointed out.

"So far all it's been is pollsters and pundits. Let's let the voters of Iowa give us a real sense of direction for the future," he said.

The former Arkansas governor said the biggest reason for his place on the "undercard" debate stage is his lack of airtime and lack of money to spend.

"Why don't you give me as much airtime on Fox News as you've given Donald Trump in the past year and I would be leading in the polls..." he said. "I don't have the same kind of money to blow it up and I have to depend on a media that presents it all fairly."

Trump left Iowa Thursday night for New Hampshire and said he doesn't plan to return before Monday's caucuses.

Despite individual theories of why each candidate didn't made it to the main debate stage, the two seem to have formed a camaraderie over formerly winning the Iowa caucuses and now being unpopular in the polls.

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"There are two candidates in this race who have a record of actually acting and legislating and leading and taking the bullets for their pro-life positions...and that's Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee," Santorum said.

Both Huckabee and Santorum maintain stringent platforms on abortion and gay marriage.

In the days leading up to caucus night, both candidates plan to continue campaigning, and neither appears to be discouraged.

Huckabee said he anticipates doing well in subsequent primary elections, including states of the SEC primary.

Santorum said he will seize the days leading up to Feb. 1 as an opportunity to gain more votes and that he has a "strong track record of flipping people to (his) side."

"We expect to do exceptionally well...we expect to surprise people here," Santorum said. "We absolutely feel some momentum out there and I think we're going to jump ahead...how far? We'll wait and see."
Donald Trump (R) speaks as Rick Santorm (C) as Mike Huckabee (L) look on during a Trump campaign rally raising funds for US military veterans at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa on January 28, 2016. US Republicans scrambling to win the first contest in the presidential nomination race were gearing for battle at high-profile debate in Iowa, but frontrunner Donald Trump is upending the campaign by defiantly refusing to attend. Trump's gamble has left the presidential race in uncharted waters just days before Iowans vote on February 1, insisting he will not back down in his feud with debate host Fox News.Instead, the billionaire has doubled down, hosting a rogue, rival event for US military veterans at the same time that his own party is showcasing its candidates for president to all-important Iowa voters. / AFP / William EDWARDS (Photo credit should read WILLIAM EDWARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

What Donald Trump has convoluted for expediency or perhaps by ignorance is whether his disregard of the "politically correct" translates to flushing the Constitutionally correct? Without absorbing that the Constitution is the foundation of the United States, it is pointless to claim to be an American, except perhaps by coincidence of birth.

America's Founding Fathers could be accused of being elitists, to a degree; nonetheless, they foresaw a country that would grow as a land for all, even as slavery may have blinded some to the future. Most critically, the Founding Fathers engraved a system of government and rights that would protect it from narcissists who would dismantle the very country they would lead -- as Trump would be President under the banner of "make America great again," but in that simple rhetoric would flush the substance.





(Photo credit: mashable.com)

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Who is the Authentic American?



Is it about birthright or the values we support? If it's a matter of birth, well then only Native Americans can truly claim to be the original or authentic. All the rest of us came here seeking refugee from political or religious persecution. Some were escaping poverty or seeking economic opportunity. Unfortunately, some came here not from their own will but as slaves -- some made the journey but never arrived.

For my part, I came here to be an American as a young boy and then chewed and consumed the nutritious ideology of the Constitution. (See: "Growing Up a Patriot".) When the most unlikely of circumstances brought me to the position of leading the diplomacy of a reborn Bosnia & Herzegovina, I considered the U.S. Constitution as a foundation and America as an ally for the future. Perhaps it may have been a leap too far, but the Founding Fathers were inspired by an Enlightenment born in Europe, influenced by a global perspective and envisioned to prosper and not suffer its diversity -- that is also Bosnia. (See: "Can Bosnia's Army Save the World?")

Which Flag do you think is being honored and which one dishonored here?



(Photo Credit: The New Pittsburgh Courier)

In the America that lives up to its promise, we may not be united by our politics but by the respect for the other. Diversity is not merely to be tolerated but a source of prosperity. The deviant may be the entrepreneur as well as cultural pioneer. Whether you recognize it or not, that is what unites LGBT with Muslim, the Buddhist with Jewish. the Christian with atheist. Those who have sought to broaden the appeal of these American values within our borders and beyond are making America great, Jefferson to Lincoln, Ali to Fonda, Gates to Zuckerberg. (See: "From #"SocialNetwork" Jerk to Model for Social Responsibility Entrepreneur").

Those who seek to narrow America's opportunity and appeal are impostors or worse. There's not the American flag but the Confederate one, which sought to divide and dissolve the United States. The Confederate flag was invader as well as seeking to define members of our American society by race and deny the foundation, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

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Confederate Flag like Black ISIS Flag?

The principles now espoused by ISIS have been cultivated for some time within America's borders, but not by any refugee, immigrant or Muslim. The notion that some are entitled by Divine Authority to wage war, exterminate, enslave and/or deny "unalienable Rights" to others has been employed under various banners.

Even when America has sought to return to the principles upon which it was founded, others have sought to transform this country into one defined by race, religion, or economic class - something distinctly rejected by our Founding Fathers. The most noxious of these mockeries of America have been pursued under the Confederate flag, then and now.

While Americans were murdered in San Bernardino in loyalty to the ISIS flag, many more Americans have been killed under the banner of the Confederate flag, most recently in an African-American church in Charleston.



Photo credit: Daily Beast

Anger?

Some have sought to explain Trump's appeal as being a symptom of anger at Washington. Plainly, this is too kind of a characterization.

Perhaps some Americans are angry at losing jobs to overseas producers or income inequality evidenced by lower employment benefits and real pay. However, the persons most responsible for this downward draft are billionaires like Trump or others who seek to buy US elections via "Super PACs."

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Perhaps some Americans feel vulnerable to the threats of terror or other ultra-nationalists as Vladimir Putin. However, has America ever been more an impregnable fortress than now?

Trump does embody anger though at "the other." He trumpets that "we can no longer afford to be so nice." That summarizes his proposal to ban Muslims from the US and build a wall along America's borders. The fear mongering ignores that more Americans are killed within our borders by white supremacists' inspired terror rather than radical Islam or that the US is enriched by the labor and talents of immigrants, Latin or Asian or European.

What most of Trump's supporters are angry about is that the US populace no longer looks so much as they believed it did in their imagination. There is perhaps more of a tint but then it was the Asian laborer or Latin farm worker or Black slave that always was part of the sweat that built America. It was the Native American that came here first.

What is different now is that all of these constituencies of the ever-present American mosaic are demanding a political voice, sometimes even in their native tongue. It is no coincidence that Trump who questioned Barack Obama's birthright to the Presidency, (how ironic that he has success in employing similar tactic against another wall builder as Ted Cruz), is now leading another crusade of seeking to block the American rights of the other who somehow do not fit the stereotype of who belongs.

Ask Beijing how successful inner and outer walls have been in keeping out the invader or perhaps blocking China's own advance?

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(In effort to project America's strength and exploit Eagle as image, the parody is revealed)

Watch Mashable: "Donald Trump Attacked by bald eagle named 'Uncle Sam', on behalf of America"

A Tragic Parody?

Arianna Huffington recently lamented the mainstreaming of "extremism" via Donald Trump's campaign and media coverage he received as a presumably mainstream candidate. She also correctly pointed out that Adolf Hitler was first elected to power. Unfortunately Donald Trump may not be just leading a dark mood but channeling it from a segment of angry America.

Trump is not leading us back to America's greatness or foundation established by our Founding Fathers. He would dispose of the Bill of Rights with a series of theatrical flushes and fear -- the Second Amendment would eventually be no less prone to being erased than the rights of any who are defined as the other and do not parade in goose step behind the new leader.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH - JANUARY 8: Hundreds of Muslims take friday prayers in congregation grounds as Muslims take part in Biswa Istema, the second largest religious gathering of Muslims in the world, in Tongi 20 km from Dhaka on January 08, 2016. The first phase of three day long Biswa Istema starts today where 3 million people from home and abroad will take part. (Photo by Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The Obama Administration just announced that it will, one more time, reorganize its failing campaign to counter ISIS's message. The large number of agencies involved will be better coordinated; message-making will be localized; and new leadership--the fourth in recent memory--will be installed.

None of this will do any good because the problem is not that the messenger is disorganized, but that he carries the wrong message. Moreover, the reasons for adhering to the wrong message run far and deep and are not easily overcome.

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The basic overarching message the US is sending to the Muslim world comes in two extreme messages. On the one hand, the US claims that Islam is a religion of love and peace and that the terrorists who used it to justify their barbaric acts have usurped it. This is what President George W. Bush stated the day after 9/11. This thesis was echoed after the Paris attacks by Secretary of State John Kerry who holds that "the biggest error we could make would be to blame Muslims for crimes...that their faith utterly rejects".

On the other hand, the leading Republication presidential candidate equates Muslims with terrorists. The National Review's Rich Lowry accused the White House of promoting "a haze of euphemism and cowardice" for avoiding terms like radical Islam.

This is a false debate. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, does contain texts that justify violence such as the Quran's exhortation to "Slay the idolaters where so ever you find them," (9:5) and the Hadith, or saying of the Prophet, that "I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah" (Muslim 1.9.30). And--texts that reject violence such as "There is no compulsion in religion" (2:256) and "And do not take any human being's life - that God willed to be sacred - other than in [the pursuit of] justice" (17:33). Both are revered texts and not outliers or twisted iterations of Islam. Indeed this profound ambiguity is captured in the word "jihad," a term which literally means "struggle," but is interpreted by some as holy war to kill all infidels, and by others as a spiritual struggle towards self-improvement.

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It follows clearly that the best way for those who seek to engage Muslims in a moral dialogue should point to the peaceful interpretation of Islam, but not seem naive, ignorant, or disingenuous by claiming that all of Islam is a religion of love and peace. This thesis is supported by a detailed analysis of public opinion polls that show that most Muslims reject the violent interpretations of Islam. If the US could ally itself with these voices, it would find many allies.

The reason the US does not get it is not accidental. The US's first, second, and third commitments are the promotion of human rights and democracy. However, the same polls show that the same majority of Muslims who reject violence is not in favor of human rights (and not democracy the way we understand it). To put it differently, the US wants to tell Muslims how great the ideas of John Locke and Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson are--but these lines find only relatively few buyers in the Muslim world.

Second, the US firmly believes in separation of church and state. Most Muslims, in both the Jihadists and the violence-abhorring camps, seek more religion in their lives, polls show. Finally, the US equates the good life with one of materialistic affluence, a life not available to most people in countries like Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Bangladesh (among others).


Republican presidential candidate and business mogul Donald Trump speaks at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit Jan. 19, 2016. Andrew Clark/Huffington Post Pollster

DES MOINES, Iowa -- While 11 Republican presidential candidates debated the issues facing the U.S., Donald Trump, the leading GOP candidate, held a benefit for veterans at Drake University that he claimed raised almost $6 million.

"We're actually told we have more cameras than they do by quite a bit," Trump said of the media presence at his event. The fundraiser began simultaneously with the debate of the top seven Republican presidential candidates.

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Trump's refusal to debate his Republican opponents before Monday's Iowa Republican caucus provided an unexpected spark of controversy and more evidence of a growing split within the Republican Party.

Although Trump forwent the debate, candidates present wasted no time jabbing at the business mogul.

"Let me say, I am a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said at the start of the debate, mocking Trump in his absence and kidding retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

But later in the debate after his imitations of Trump, Cruz was the one who felt attacked.

"The last four questions have been Rand, please attack Ted, Jeb, please attack Ted," Cruz said at one point to the debate moderators.

"Gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage," he said.



Texas Sen. Ted Cruz after the GOP debate Jan. 28, 2016 in Des Moines, Iowa. Savannah Hurst/Huffington Post Pollster

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This complaint earned Cruz a jab from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who received audience applause for saying, "Don't worry, I'm not leaving the stage no matter what you ask me."

And although the candidates present at the Iowa Events Center debated long and hard over topics like immigration, foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood and more, it was Trump who still dominated the Internet, as he was the most-searched Republican candidate on Google from the debate's start to its end.

Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to declare Fox News and network personality Megyn Kelly as the primary reasons for skipping the debate, calling Kelly a "lightweight reporter" and the network's statement about his omitting the debate a "disgrace to good broadcasting and journalism."

I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016

The statement put out yesterday by @FoxNews was a disgrace to good broadcasting and journalism. Who would ever say something so nasty & dumb  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016

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Hannah Hopkins, 17, the daughter of a pastor in Texas and a supporter of Cruz, criticized Trump for what she believed was Trump backing down from Kelly.

"I just think it's stupid how he's saying 'I'll face ISIS, I'll face the enemies of the U.S., but he won't even face (Kelly)," she said.

However, Mike Ford from Clive, Iowa, who attended a watch party put on by the Republican Party of Iowa and is a self-identified Trump supporter, said he thinks Trump made the right decision to skip out on the debate.

"I would like Fox to report the news, instead of being the news," Ford said about the drama with Trump and the news network.

Tonight's debate was the final Republican debate until the caucuses on Feb. 1, and television ratings of the debate, which have not been released yet, could foreshadow the results of the caucuses. It remains to be seen if Trump's absence from the debate will affect how many tuned in to see the action live from Des Moines.

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Additionally, The Federalist has reported that while Trump said the money raised from his benefit tonight will go straight to veterans' needs, a disclosure at the bottom of the website he created to hone in donations says all of the proceeds actually go to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, his personal non-profit. It is also reporting that the foundation does not have a history of donating much money to veterans' causes.
It's hard to argue with the basic facts that the United States manages the safest and most effective aviation system in the world. While we all like to complain about delays and customer service, the industry moves more than 800 million passengers every year. Who could screw up that record? It appears our own Congress is attempting to.



The nation that has done an amazing job, however the aerospace world stumbles forward each day without a clear national aviation policy. We are at a critical point in our nation's aviation history and we need to look at where we are headed. We must address -- today -- how air traffic control will move into the 21st century, how we are going to recruit people to become pilots amidst a national pilot shortage and how we can jump start our aircraft manufacturing industry.



Let's start with the recent move in Congress to privatize air traffic control, which is a proposal that is currently in front of the House Transportation Committee. Currently, Air Traffic Control is managed by the FAA, with some airports employing private contractors. However, even these airports are all overseen by an agency- that while sometimes maligned- gets the job done.

News coverage seeks to tell only part of the story: that the real goal of privatization is purportedly to increase efficiency and reduce costs to the taxpayer. In reality, if this measure passes, the taxpayer will be paying in other ways. Along with privatization will come "user fees"--a tax by any other name. There will likely be fees for using air traffic controllers, filing flight plans or simply getting weather reports. Why is it that the major commercial airlines support this effort?

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Airlines support user fees because it will crimp competition from general aviation. Small, general aviation businesses (from flight schools to charter companies) that already struggle to make ends meet, will be forced to pass those (potentially substantial) fees onto customers--who in turn may and likely will fly less frequently. This will cost jobs. The general aviation industry employs a million Americans and generates $200 billion in economic activity annually. The current system is funded by a fuel tax- that everyone pays- and report after report shows that it supports the FAA adequately. Proponents of privatization point to Canada, which turned over air traffic control to a quasi-private-government managed entity. The U.S., however, has about eight times the amount of air traffic as Canada in a far more complex airspace.



Beyond the practical, there are philosophical reasons to oppose privatization. There are responsibilities the Federal Government is uniquely -- and only -- qualified to perform. National defense is at the top of the list. The nation's airspace must be considered part of that national defense -- both military and economic defense -- and no private company or hybrid entity should be overseeing it.



The fight over the national airspace policy is only one challenge that faces an industry that wakes up every morning to a slew of them. We must develop a national policy to recruit, train and keep new pilots. News reports and articles in industry trade publications, including Aviation Week and Airways News, indicate that we are facing the greatest shortage of pilots in history. Many smaller and larger airlines have grounded planes and stopped flying routes because they can't find qualified people to fly the planes.

Any industry that faces a labor shortage must ultimately look to itself for the reasons--but it's time to come together with government to help generate solutions. I assure you that if people walked into a hospital and were told "sorry, there isn't a doctor to help save your life from a heart attack," the voters would be clamoring for immediate action. That's a similar crisis we face now in the air transportation sector. We need to pay pilots better (and regional airlines have been raising wages) and we need to improve the culture at many airlines so pilots aren't afraid every time the price of oil goes up a buck (and eventually oil will only go up). We also need a holistic national policy--possibly tied to STEM education--to bring fresh blood into the system and convince today's youth that aviation offers a good future. Today 96% of pilots are men and just 3% are African Americans. We need to look to change recruiting approaches and focus on diverse communities. This is where we will find tomorrow's aviators.



Finally (not really finally, the list is so long and I only have so much space), the FAA needs to implement a demand from Congress and the President to rewrite regulations involving building and certifying new aircraft. In many ways, America is back in the manufacturing industry, which has been growing after decades of decline. This is not the case in aviation. President Obama directed the FAA to reduce the regulatory burden on those building new planes in 2013 with a December 2015 deadline for the FAA to implement the changes. The FAA missed the deadline. We certainly need strict standards on airplanes, but the current rules are decades old, don't reflect super-fast advancement in technology and arguably prevent manufacturers from deploying new safety features since they are harder to get through the regulators.



There is no question the FAA needs a wakeup call and a clear vison for the future. The Department of Transportation's own Inspector General issued an audit report last week saying that while the agency's operational budget has doubled since 1996, productivity has actually declined. And the IG blamed internal resistance to making changes. This is where the FAA needs to turn to outsiders for help.



Aviation is complex. It needs to go right every time and on every day to keep people safe, get them to where they are going and drive the economy. We need solutions. We need a policy that is deeper and forward looking which relies on more than simply privatizing a key portion of the industry.
Hospice. How do you envision it? It has become more common, it seems. Or maybe it only seems that way because we are becoming the caregivers for our elderly parents.

My father-in-law is now in hospice care and, in a strange way, I feel better about his situation knowing that he'll be allowed to die with dignity.

Let's face it, no matter how you cut it, when you go to a 'senior village' -- or in his case a 'senior high-rise' -- the chances are good you're never moving again.

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It starts out in your own place with total freedom to come and go. Keep up with your friends, invite them over, continue as you always had. But we all know what follows that lovely scenario if you live long enough.

Dad got a nice little efficiency apartment with a full kitchen, not that he cooked in it but, he had a fridge to keep his ice cream in.

The main dining room in the facility was lovely and the food wasn't half bad.

The biggest problem with the building itself was how under elevatored it was. I know that's not a word but, it should be in this case. People age in place waiting for the elevator to arrive.

You have to prove you don't need 'care' in order to get in but when that time comes you are covered. It's civilized in how it is structured, I believe. Our main concern, when dad went for his initial interview, was whether he would pass the test.

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He'd had some scary moments while living in an apartment in our home and we hoped we hadn't waited too long. I wish I'd had a drum to do a rim shot as we watched him answer all the questions with ease and humor.

Once he was settled in we breathed a sigh of relief. There were lots of things to do there and we hoped he would make new friends. Nope. He would eat breakfast, then take three buses to his friend's house, around the corner from our house, and they would drive to the senior center in South Philly they had been going to for years.

Old habits die hard.

This went on for about a year before he had a mental breakdown and was rushed to the hospital. Turned out, he had stopped taking his meds and we never knew. He continued to get them refilled but then stashed them in the bathroom.

After his stay in the hospital, it was determined he needed an aide for, at least, 12 hours a day. We found a very good one who was with him for two years. By the second year, after a couple of falls in the night, we added another aide so he had help 24/7.

His trips on the bus were limited because he couldn't leave without his aide, so his friend, Harry, would come have afternoon coffee with him, almost daily.

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Along with the mental decline came physical limitations. He was losing weight and becoming very frail.

After another trip to the hospital, he needed assisted living.

I orchestrated his move from Massachusetts to Philadelphia when he was 80. He needed to get out of the three-bedroom home he had been rattling around in for 12 years since Mom passed. And we were concerned about his driving late at night after a couple of cocktails.

He was afraid his furniture wouldn't fit in the one-bedroom apartment we'd found for him. I literally drew everything out to scale to assure him it would be fine.

I did it again in 2000 when we bought a triplex so he would have his own apartment in the same building with us.

I believe his comment when he realized he'd be in the efficiency was, "The next time they move me I'll be in a damn breadbox!"

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He ended up loving it.

Getting him into the senior high-rise was difficult but we managed to make everything fit with few deletions.

When the time came for assisted living last spring we were left with only his dresser, TV, nightstand and tons of family photos.

Last week, after another trip to the hospital, the discussion of hospice came up. We learned he could stay where he is and receive hospice care. It was a relief.

My sister-in-law is in LA. She and my husband have had several discussions this past week as things progressed. But, here's the deciding factor, his living will.

We've had a copy since 1988 but hadn't read it since then. Maybe we should have because he could not be more specific and I'm afraid we didn't follow his directives as he might have liked.

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"If the situation should arise in which there is no reasonable expectation of my recovery, from physical or mental disability, I request that I be allowed to die and not be kept alive by artificial means or 'heroic measures.' I do not fear death itself as much as the indignities of deterioration, dependence, and hopeless pain. I, therefore, ask that medication be mercifully administered to me to alleviate suffering even though this may hasten the moment of death.

This request is made after careful consideration. I hope you who care for me will feel morally bound to follow its mandate. I recognize this appears to place a heavy responsibility upon you, but it is with the intention of relieving you of such responsibility and of placing it upon myself in accordance with my strong convictions, that this statement is made."

We hear you now, Dad.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:
As our nation enters in to what is likely to be one of the most exhilarating and discouraging election cycles in recent history, it's going to be easy for Christians to either be enraptured by the fluffy political prose of their favorite candidate or completely discouraged and downcast at the sad state of the American political process. I know we are only just beginning the race for the presidency, but I feel compelled to offer a few reminders to American Christians, no matter where you may find yourself politically.

First, may we be reminded that no politician or political party can offer hope or redemption to our world. Not Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton, despite all of the hype that will emerge around their names. No, the hope for American and indeed the hope for the world is you and me. Or rather, Christ in you and me. The election season is an easy time for followers of Jesus to shirk our responsibility to be the incarnation of Christ in the world and to participate in the delusion that redemption will somehow come from the Empire. But the whole thrust of the Gospel tells us that no king, no president, no party, and no government will ever hold the answer to our worlds greatest injustices. Because hope and redemption has never come from the top down, but from those on the bottom, coming together, empowered by the Spirit to make a tangible impact in their community, culture, and world. Yet as presidential debates and political rallies continue to roar across our nation, promising revival and redemption, may we as followers of Jesus refuse to participate in the mass delusion, but instead, work harder than ever to make the Kingdom of God manifest in our world through one subversive act of love and justice at a time. Because that is our only hope.

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Second, may we refuse to allow the Church to be divided by political party or candidates. During this season, the level of vitriol and ignorance among Christians will be stunning. How many of us (including me) will be inclined to claim that our candidate or party more accurately represents the Gospel or is based on the word of God? Friends, no candidate running for office is interested in upholding Biblical values or representing Christ. And frankly, they shouldn't be. We're not a theocracy and this has never been a Christian nation. Instead, the candidates are interested in one thing: winning. And because of that, each and every one of them is going to claim Christian faith and use Christian language to appeal to the large majority of voting Americans that identify as Christian. But it's all a political game, and we know it. Let us not engage in the heated, pointless banter that we will inevitably be tempted to participate in. We are united by one thing- the Spirit of Jesus- and everything else is peripheral. As we engage in important moral conversations around heated issues, may we engage, not with political talking points, but with our eyes turned upon Christ, and engage in humility and grace, seeking to understand more than we desire to be understood. Our nation and our world will only be healed when we come together and act as the Body of Christ, united in spite of our differences, around a common vision of human flourishing and equality. At this vital point in our nations history, we cannot afford to spend any more time at each others throats. Our world needs us to be different. This is our time to witness to the radical and subversive nature of our faith that calls us not to trust in thrones or powers, but in the potency of self-giving love.

And lastly, may we remember that every "issue" we talk about is not an "issue" but a fellow human being. Whether it's abortion, or immigration, or Medicare, or taxes, all of these issues are connected to real people with real lives and real stories. As we think through our positions on all of these "issues", it would serve us well to heed the advice of the Apostle James who said: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. May we humbled ourselves, beyond our ideological convictions, to hear the stories of the people on every side of these debates. For if we allow ourselves to continue to speak, act, and vote in abstractions, we run the risk of being deceived and doing great harm to a great number of individuals. If we're going to engage in this political process, we must take the responsibility into our own hands to find and listen to the stories of those whose lives are directly impacted by what our government decides to do. We cannot rely on the straw men that the Candidates will construct, nor can we rely on the stories that the media will tell. If we're going to leverage our responsibility as citizens to vote, we must do it with integrity, with our eyes turned always to those whose lives are directly impacted by our votes. Because as followers of Jesus, we've never been called to redeem the political process, but to work for the redemption, healing, and salvation of individual people. The Christian faith is one that values incarnation, and we are called to see Christ in the life of every person that we encounter. When we realize that our votes effect people, and people are the embodiment of Christ, then everything will change. For, in the words of our Savior, "whatever you do to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you also do to me." May that be our singular ethic for those followers of Christ who chose to engage in the political process this year.

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I offer these reminders as much to myself as I do to anyone else. The months ahead will get bumpy and all of us will be tempted to place our faith and hope in politicians and parties instead of in Christ and his vision of the Kingdom of God. But I believe that we can overcome this temptation. That we can do this differently. And if we do, our light and witness will shine forth brightly in the midst of the political haze that will disillusion many in our nation. We have an unprecedented opportunity to share Christ with our world, and it would be a shame if we forfeited it and engaged in the artificial narratives of hope and change that so many in our nation will be enamored by.
Solar panels sit on the roof of the model home at the Pacific Housing Inc. 2500 R Midtown housing development site in Sacramento, California, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013. With a plan for 34 detached single family homes, 2500 R Midtown, will be a net zero energy community. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The fierce counterattack by utilities against the disruptive surge of roof-top solar peaked this month on the West Coast. California's big utilities successfully petitioned for increased "exit fees" for cities or counties leaving the utility to purchase electricity for their residents on the open market -- typically obtaining greener power with equal or lower rates. (Marin County is offering its residents a renewables mix ranging from 50-100 percent, at an average rate $3/month lower than what PG&E, the previous monopoly, would charge.)

The utilities argued that the increase -- in Marin's case a doubling -- was warranted by an established formula, because PG&E had long term power contracts entered into to meet the needs of its former customers. But the PUC denied California's private utilities dramatic increases they sought in fees charged utility customers using rooftop solar.

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But next door, in Nevada, with the highest percentage of solar energy of any state in the union, state regulators were more generous to the state's utilities. First they levied $126 million in exit fees on three casinos seeking to negotiate their own direct power purchases. Then gave Nevada Energy (owned by Warren Buffet) an enormous increase in residential roof-top solar fees, while drastically cutting what the utility pays those customers when they feed electrons back into the grid. More shockingly, these changes were initially retroactive to some 10000+ Nevada households who had already leased solar and were stuck with the costs.

Effectively the new rules make roof-top solar no longer competitive in Nevada, where companies like Solar City had located both training facilities and major investments. (Which the company announced it would have to shut down along with laying off much of its workforce.)

Since Solar City Board member and investor Elon Musk chose to build his battery Gigafactory in Nevada, making him the state's biggest new job creator, and since both Republican Governor Mike Sandoval and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid have made Nevada's renewable energy success a center-piece of their politics, the stunning slap the Nevada PUC took at roof-top solar came out of the blue.

The response was rapid. As more companies announced lay-offs and scale backs, a coalition led by former Republican Governor Mike List launched a ballot measure campaign to reverse the PUC attack on roof-top solar. The Nevada PUC announced it would consider reversing the portion of its fee hike retroactive to existing solar customers. And Nevada Power itself said that it favored grandfathering in existing customers.

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The battle heated up. Wynn casinos sued the PUC over the exit fee. Perhaps heartened by the welcome that Nevada Energy found at the Nevada PUC, California's three investor owned utilities turned up the heat on the roof-top threat, asking the California PUC to reject its own staff recommendations for modest additional fees on roof-top users and instead kill roof-top solar by adopting fees akin to those in Nevada. The Commission, Thursday, by a narrow 3-2 vote rebuffed the utilities, and followed its staff recommendation.

So what's going on? California's utilities long ago embraced renewables. Nevada Energy boasts some of the cheapest solar energy contracts in the nation. Why is this the latest focus for a utility vs. solar struggle that has previously burst out in much more conservative territory like Arizona and Florida?

Utilities don't mind that solar is renewable, zero carbon, and enjoys free fuel -- as long as they own it. But solar is also modular and decentralized, which they hate. They don't want to compete with their own customers. Roof-top threatens both sunk utility investments in centralized fossil power plants (natural gas on the West Coast, coal elsewhere) and their rigid, "big to small -- guaranteed return on capital" business model.

Above a certain scale, roof-top solar will force utilities both to retire expensive central station power plants they want in their rate base, and to transform their business model to accommodate the small generator to large grid electron flow which roof-top solar enables (and requires.)

Examine the utility passion to hold on to old power plants. U.S. electrical demand is flat, not growing. Until electric vehicles usage explodes, it's not likely ever to grow. There is a fundamental national consensus that we need to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned by the electrical sector. A lot of coal plants are going to be shut down, displaced by renewables. But utilities had become very deft over the years at keeping such plants open not just for their intended 40 year life span, but virtually forever. (More than half of the US coal fired units are more than 50 years old, and 30 were built before the Second World War.) So they fight back. And with sufficiently rapid growth of efficiency, demand management, solar and wind, the need for even recently built natural gas plants is going to dwindle.

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The stand-off between the utilities and climate advocates is quite simple; the arithmetic of global warming (and the commitments the U.S. made in Paris) means that power plants the utilities want to profit from of must shut down instead. Roof-top solar accelerates the need for those retirements. This means lower profits.

For society as a whole, this is merely one example of a core climate challenge: cutting emissions requires accelerating the rate at which old, carbon intensive technologies are replaced by new, cleaner ones -- "stranding" not just the coal and oil reserves, but also the power plants, factories, airplane fleets, and refineries they powered. The owners of those facilities don't want them stranded, and fight to keep them operating.

But stranding is not just a problem for fossils. Going forward, clean, renewable energy, even if it is cheaper, is more capital intensive than the coal and oil it displaces. Investors, whether Southern California Edison or a roof-top solar customer, want a guarantee that the productive lifetime of these assets will be long enough to recover the investment. So the tension between the need to provide reasonable certainty to investors in energy facilities, and the simultaneous need to retire and replace them with cleaner technologies faster and faster is real. (Yet another reason for making sure that all new energy infrastructure is zero carbon -- we won't be pressured to strand it prematurely.)

For utilities this transition to new, low carbon electrons can only be managed if they choose to compete in the new marketplace for distributed solar. So far they have mostly refused, bitterly clinging to their old centralized model. But the capo del capi of the private utility world, the Southern Company, has taken a different track. When Georgia opened up its rooftop solar market, Southern launched its own branded roof-top solar platform laying the ground work for the existing utility, taking advantage of their low cost of capital and trusted customer brand, to dominate the roof-top space, rather than ceding it to newcomers like Sunrun or Sungevity. Southern CEO Tom Fanning made it clear in announcing this new venture that Southern had no intention of letting outsiders come into its historic service territory and poach the roof-top business unchallenged.

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How do the independent rooftop solar companies fight back against attacks like those in California and Nevada? Their biggest point of vulnerability is the (most often bogus) argument that current net metering rates force poor customers without solar to subsidize richer customers who install it. Even when, as in California and Nevada, such cross subsidies are insignificant even at current rates, the economic tilt of the rooftop solar market towards the wealthy gives the utilities a powerful edge before regulators. The argument just sounds good that the rich should pay their fair share of the grid.

Roof-top solar, of course, does not have to tilt towards the rich -- since it lowers utility bills. What the poor need to access it is business models for financing low-income homeowners and renters -- and the solar installers need to prioritize putting such business models in place just as badly as the utilities need business models that accommodate distributed renewable generation.

Finally, utility regulators should be midwifing the rooftop revolution, not trying to abort it. Utilities need new rate structures and business models to compete in the roof-top space, and independent solar developers need the right kinds of regulatory support to be able to serve low income as well as upper-middle income communities.
side profile stressed young businessman sitting outside corporate office holding head with hands looking down. Negative human emotion facial expression feelings.

By Fredrick McKissack

There's a reason why young black people call Chicago "Chiraq." It's like a war zone in some neighborhoods. And it's not just gangsters doing the shooting.

A series of high profile shootings of young unarmed black men show the deadly impact of aggressive, sometimes callous and discriminatory police tactics. The latest killing by police involved a young man named Quintinio LeGrier, who called 911 three times asking for an officer to be sent to his address. Police fatally shot LeGrier and a neighbor, community activist Bettie Jones, who opened the door for police.

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These deaths, along with the deaths of teenager Laquan McDonald, along with news last year that Chicago detectives kept a CIA-style secret interrogation center for decades, and one can see why thousands of protestors have taken to the streets.

And now a new report release Monday by the University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Initiative shows the extent of the crisis facing young black men in the Windy City.

Almost half - 47 percent - of young black men from the ages of 20 and 24 were out of school and unemployed in 2014.

For both men and women, age 20 to 24, 41 percent were unemployed and out of school.

Meanwhile, only 7 percent of white men and women in that age group were jobless and out of school. For Latinos, the rate was 19 percent.

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The U.S. spent an estimated three trillion dollars on blowing up and then rebuilding Iraq. Does not fighting institutional racism and decades of neglect warrant an equal effort in order to save a generation of black youth?

The disparity and the high rates for African American youth is mind-bending, but not a total shock to DeAngelo Bester, co-executive director at the Workers Center for Racial Justice. The data confirmed what he has seen in a decade of organizing and activism in Chicago.

"What you're looking at is a multifaceted problem and a lack of will from City Hall, the county, and Springfield," Bester said. "You're seeing the de-industrialization of Chicago, like the rest of the Midwest, and there aren't the kind of well-paying union jobs that there were in the past. Those jobs are gone."

Chirag Mehta, a Chicago-based senior policy advisor at the Center for Community Change, said federal policies that led to trade blocs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have taken a heavy toll on manufacturing cities such as Chicago. NAFTA eliminated tariffs, customs duties and other barriers to make trade easier between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. But it also reinforced the globalization already happening in the American economy.

"Globalization decimated manufacturing in black neighborhoods," Mehta wrote in an email. "There have been great studies done by scholars at UIC that documented the impact of NAFTA on black employment. These neighborhoods have not recovered. There's also general public disinvestment that followed the loss of good jobs, such as closing schools in poor black neighborhoods, which stripped communities of important anchors for development, for example."

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Add to it the large numbers of African Americans involved in the criminal justice system (67 percent of the men admitted daily to the Cook County prison are black), particularly the effects of the farcical, feckless war on drugs that even conservatives have turned against, and the findings cast Chicago's black community as living in a as a Dickensian dystopia.

"We are losing a generation of youth who have no opportunity to work in their neighborhoods," Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Cordova said in a news release in response to the report. "It is a tragedy for those youth and it is a tragedy for the communities they live in and the city as a whole."

The report's writers outlined the long-term effects of unemployment: "increased susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental illness, loss of self-esteem, leading to depression."

Again, it's not surprising that the report demonstrates that low rates of employment are "spatially concentrated in neighborhoods that are also racially segregated."

Indeed, the lowest unemployment rates are on the city's north and northwest side, which are predominately white; the highest unemployment rates are to the south and west, which are predominately black.

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While Chicago's economic growth is lagging with slow employment growth in general, according to the Brookings Institute Metro Monitor, it is still one of the wealthiest in the world, ranking 36 out of 300 metropolitan areas for median Gross Domestic Product. And, according the Chicago Tribune , Chicago ranked "No. 8 among top cities worldwide in the amount of commercial real estate investment attracted by the region."

So there is money flowing in. And there is work. It's just not flowing to the black community. Take construction projects, particularly publicly funded works projects. The construction trades, Bester said, have long been known for their collective antipathy toward blacks and Latinos. When confronted, Bester said, the unions blame contractors; the contractors blame unions.

Even the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called out the obvious racist history of Chicago's construction trades after a protest in September 2012 called by legendary business owner Ed Gardner, the founder of Soft Sheen Products, drew 1,000 people and stopped an infrastructure project. Gardner demanded the action after noticing there were no blacks on a work crew fixing a sidewalk near a strip mall in South Chicago, which has a heavy concentration of African Americans.

"Now that we're investing, who's getting the work and who's working on it?" Emanuel said in a radio interview on WVON-AM in response to the protest. He said there needs to be better training to help young people prepare for these jobs.

But it's not as simple as training, Bester reiterated.

"It's an industry that has been highly exclusionary, with explicit racism and bias. How do we get these young men from the street corner on to a construction site?"

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Bester said his organization is looking at a number of strategies for increasing employment, including offering tax credits to perspective employers--but those credits go with the worker. He also believes money saved in decriminalization ought to go directly to underserved communities.

Chicago's black 20 to 24 year olds fare worse than their racial peers in New York and Los Angeles, as well as nationwide. But that's not to say black youth outside of Chicago are living the dream. Nationally, almost three in 10 African Americans from 20 to 24 were unemployed and out of school in 2014, nearly twice as many as their white peers. The rate for Latinos was 20 percent.

There is no one solution. However, one would be hard-pressed to draw a conclusion that would place the blame on the unemployed rather than a country that is still wrecked by institutional racism, the grip of which gets tighter as globalization has extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of the economy.
There is no denying it: Obama and his PR team are social media mavens.

The State of the Union took place this past month and I was once again impressed by Obama's ability to reach and engage Millennials. I don't own a TV. Like many Millennials, I don't see the point when information should be accessible and in many cases is through streaming and social media. So, I briefed myself on it through a combination of Snapchat (surprisingly, my first source for this event), Washington Post (delivered to my inbox), Facebook posts, and reading the official text on Medium. The transparency and accessibility that might have been impossible a few administrations ago is now the expectation. But it goes beyond that.

Throughout Obama's time in office, the administration has made huge strides in engaging Millennials. I am often asked by talent acquisition professionals, recruiters and organizational leaders how to build relationships with Millennials, especially using today's social media tools. Corporate leaders and organizations can learn a lot from Obama.

Let me break down the top four lessons learned, walking you through the SOTU as a great example.

No. 4: Using Social Media Purposefully

Obama and his team don't just use social media to have a presence. They use it purposefully to provide a window into the inner workings of the administration and to cultivate conversation. For example, after the SOTU, the president sat down with three Youtube stars for interviews (lucky them!). He also made the SOTU speech text available on Medium, a rising publication platform for thought leadership, before the actual event. The strategic use of Medium, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Snapchat is to be envied. Another extremely smart move is the partnership the White House struck with Amazon to stream the SOTU, making it available to anyone post-event for free.

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No. 3: Cultivates Conversation

Another way Obama wins with Millennials is his effort to cultivate conversation. Every touch point, from the SOTU website to each social media channel, is punctuated by a request for the viewer's thoughts. Whereas many leaders' blogs may be closed for comments, Obama's blog on Medium is wide open. For the SOTU address, his blog garnered 1,700 recommendations and 268 comments (and counting). Granted, any good politician's job is to get feedback from their constituents. However, it shouldn't be so different for organizations. The lesson to leaders is to let go of the fear of negative commentary and questions. As we Millennials say, there are always going to be haters. With the exception of any illegal or immoral activity, I expect Obama's biggest fear is not bad conversation, but having no conversation about his efforts. It is then that we descend into obsolescence.

No. 2: Advocate for Change

Throughout his time in office, Obama has appealed to Millennials' appreciation for change. It has been at the forefront of his message. In the SOTU address, he stated:

Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change; who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the "dogmas of the quiet past." Instead we thought anew, and acted anew.

For Millennials who often hear the mantra in their workplaces "It's always been done this way", Obama's consistent advocacy for change is inspiring. Right or wrong from a policy perspective, it cannot be denied that Obama has pursued significant changes.

No. 1: Relatability

Number one on this list is that hands down, Obama is relatable, certainly the most relatable President in my (Millennial-sized) lifetime. Whereas I couldn't relate to the Bush family (despite being from Texas) or Clinton, I can relate to Obama. The reason lies in his ability to reveal intimate moments to the masses, whether through his dance moves, dry humor or allowing Snapchat users to provide an inside look at SOTU.

And for this final one, I'm going to try to make it shorter. I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa.

For those of you who missed the SOTU on Snapchat, here's a few images from a more intimate perspective.

Being a leader is a lonely job. One of the greatest challenges a leader faces is maintaining distance, yet exuding a "one of you" persona so people will follow. That's why we are attracted to shows like Undercover Boss, because we need reassurance that our leaders know what it's like to be one of us, have been there and done that. Obama makes being President look like, not just a tough, incomprehensible job, but an occasionally fun one too -- one that maybe a Gen Z kid somewhere out there wants to be someday.

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As Obama works on his strategies to guide the nation in his final year of office, I encourage you to think of your communication strategies for 2016. You may not be the POTUS, but no matter where you sit in your organization, you have significant impact, especially on younger employees joining your organization. Your ability to connect with today's talent matters. It makes the difference between staying in the organization or leaving and whether to join at all, in the first place.
On January 11th, Representative Dave Brat (R-Va) appeared on Sandy Rios's American Family Radio Network program "Sandy Rios in the Morning" to talk about the Obama administration's immigration policy.

Brat expressed exasperation with Obama's use of scripture--specifically Obama's November, 2015 exhortation to conservatives not to be "scared of [Syrian] widows and orphans." Brat accused Obama of using the Bible and the "Christian tradition" to "bonk Republicans over the head with compassion" and "mock his enemies."

But more significant than the partisan riposte was Brat's reflection on compassion, aimed at fellow Christian conservatives. He challenged Christian conservatives to remember that "our side . . . own[s] the entire tradition" of compassion and that "we need to regain the moral argument where we're so strong." It might be possible to interpret Brat as saying that Christians own compassion, but in context I agree with People for the American Way's Brian Tashman that the "side" to which Brat refers is the one occupied by conservative Christians. This would suggest that the compassion championed by more liberal Christians is either mistaken or not properly Christian at all.

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Who is David Brat? Before he defeated Eric Cantor in the race to represent Virginia's 7th Congressional District in the House of Representatives in 2014, Brat was a Randolph-Macon College economics professor. In addition to a Ph.D. in economics, Brat also holds a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. Thus, Brat represents the complexity of the Tea Party as a movement of fiscal and Christian conservatives, many of whom admire novelist and "philosopher" Ayn Rand.

As Bloomburg Business pointed out in 2014, Brat is an "acolyte" of Rand's, and one sign of his devotion to her work is his former position, touted on his academic webpage, as Director of the BB&T Moral Foundations of Capitalism Program. Moral Foundations of Capitalism is a program that leverages BB&T's financial gifts and conditionality to integrate the books and teachings of Ayn Rand into university programs and curricula.

What is the connection between Brat's insistence that conservative Christians "own" the tradition of Christian compassion and his admiration for the philosophy of Ayn Rand? Rand and Objectivism, the school of thought she founded to affirm the virtue of selfishness, have never been identified with compassion. But in Tough Love: Sexuality, Compassion, and the Christian Right, I show that the theme of compassion does, in fact, run throughout Rand's major works. In addition, Rand and Christian conservatives have more in common than we might think: the form of compassion championed by Ayn Rand survives today in the Christian conservative movement.

As a moralist, Ayn Rand was preoccupied with establishing criteria to guide the dispensing of compassion to those who deserved it. In much of her writing--including in her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged--she disdained what she understood as the incontinent bleeding heart compassion of political and theological liberals.

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Ayn Rand's ideology of laissez-faire capitalism is popular among Christian conservatives. Rand's compassion requires privatizing social welfare, morally vetting those in need, and punishing those who violate "natural" morality. This may be what Representative Brat meant when he pointed out to Sandy Rios that liberal academics have nothing to contribute to conversations about compassion because they have "rejected natural law."
"Hello? Whatcha eatin'?"

"In Clover" is preceded by this audio clip from Disney's animated classic, Bambi. This was the final song recorded during the first chunk of sessions for How Do You Feel Now?, which ultimately became the How Do You Feel? EP. I remember Neal Pogue sending us mixes to approve at 4:30 AM when we had to wake up in a few hours to leave for our first lengthy tour. We had been playing shows as Joywave since early 2010, but this would be our first experience being gone for more than a couple weeks. Accordingly, tracking of our debut full-length album would have to wait.

Right around the time we were ready to break, everything in our studio started to fall apart. The 2013-14 Winter in Rochester was especially long and particularly bitter. Quite a few daily low temperature records were set (even by Western New York standards, it was miserable). Within a few weeks of each other, the ceiling in our bathroom collapsed and the pipe leading from the street to our building broke. There was a solid week during the recording process where we didn't have water and couldn't use the bathroom. Here is a photo of our "jugs". You may hear a whooshing "rain stick" sound around the 0:27 mark of the song. It is not rain. We ended up without heat for a night when our pilot light went out as well.

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The music for "In Clover" came together initially as a demo in the summer of 2013. We get asked to write and produce for other artists quite a bit, but more often than not we become attached to what we create. It's always a shame if the artist doesn't release something you've spent time on. Shouting your art into a black hole isn't as much fun as sharing your creation with the world. In this particular instance, we were developing the song for someone else, but we fell in love with it and decided to keep it. I think it's the only song on the record that came together like that.

Lyrically, the shade of purple on the walls of our control room influenced the subject of "In Clover". We chose the paint based on both name and wishful thinking (the color is called "Success"). It's one of the more direct songs on the record, a four and a half minute conversation trying to convince myself that everything will work itself out after a decade of stagnation.

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Technical Notes:

We were able to add a lot of organic elements once we got it into the studio. The big clap in the song is a phone book dropping in our bathroom with a pair of Earthworks TC30's stereo micing the room.

The drums on the track were actually recorded for another (unused) song, but we bought them into the "In Clover" session and they worked perfectly.

This song has some of my favorite HDYFN guitar tones on it. The big guitar riff part before the last chorus (2:53) is a collection of every guitar/amp you should never put on your record. I think we played an Ibanez 7 string and used a Line 6 Spider amp on that "Insane" setting they have that sounds like motorcycles revving their engines. It's kind of a cock rock riff, so we wanted to make sure our gear selections were appropriately inappropriate.

The vocal that comes in at 3:08 on the song is another personal favorite. We had been listening to a lot of Andre 3000 when we were setting up the studio, and I think that voice kinda came from there. There's actually only a bit of distortion on the track coming from SoundToys' Decapitator plugin. No other effects. Just a crazy delivery.

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Joywave

How Do You Feel Now?

Somebody New Carry Me Tongues (feat. KOPPS) Destruction Now Parade In Clover Fees Like a Lie Traveling at the Speed of Light Nice House Bad Dreams

Listen to HDYFN:

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City of Jerusalem

Israel was founded as a homeland for the Jewish people. But it was also founded to "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants," according to its Declaration of Independence.

Despite Israel's roots as a liberal democracy, within the next week, the Israeli Knesset will vote on a bill designed to stigmatize and harass progressive organizations. Under the pretense of greater "transparency," the bill creates a series of new requirements that target only Israeli groups that criticize Israeli government policy.

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The bill is a brazen attempt to use the tyranny of the majority against civil society organizations critical of the current government's policies. Human rights organizations and other progressive NGOs already fully disclose their funding, rendering the current bill superfluous even by the standards of its supporters. Not a single progressive Zionist is surprised to learn that the bill's provisions somehow avoid applying the same "transparency" requirements to the mechanisms that fund Israel's ultranationalist and settler organizations on the right.

The bill's supporters have tried to compare the measure with a U.S. law that requires lobbyists representing foreign governments to register as foreign agents. The U.S. government cried foul, with State Department Spokesperson John Kirby saying, "They're two different things," and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro voiced concern about the bill.

Israel's bill, in reality, moves Israel closer to the policies of Vladimir Putin's Russia and other authoritarian regimes that clamp down on civil society. No democracy worthy of its name targets only civil society organizations that disagree with the government. With this bill, Israel risks joining the ranks of countries like Russia, China and Iran that stifle voices of opposition and view human rights organizations as foreign agents and threats to be eliminated.

What's happening in Israel is about more than this one piece of legislation, tainted though it may be. Just last week, Ambassador Shapiro called out the government for the two systems of law on the West Bank -- civil for settlers, military for Palestinians. The European Union is taking further steps to differentiate the settlements from sovereign Israel. The Washington Post, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and other mainstream American organizations have weighed in against the legislation and the continued fraying of Israel's democratic institutions.

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And just this week, the extremist group Im Tirtzu launched a new campaign labeling Israel's most prominent writers, artists and performers foreign "plants" because some are affiliated with human rights organizations. Although a recent, similar campaign that named four human rights activists as traitors found silent assent from right-wing politicians, this new assault on free speech and dissent is so outrageous that even the head of Israel's Jewish Home party, which represents settler interests, spoke out against it.

But given the years in which leaders of the governing coalition worked with Im Tirtzu and other well-funded attack dogs to demonize and isolate progressive civil society, their current protests ring hollow.

The relentless right-wing campaign that seeks to silence dissent continues to actively weaken the foundations of Israeli civil society. Those who want to protect Israel's future as a democratic state must speak out against this bill and, more importantly, work to strengthen the hands of those Israelis who seek to defend the great values on which Israel was founded.

The good news is that the ultranationalists are feeling the heat. They are expending enormous political capital on a bill they once thought was a slam-dunk. Even within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, Kulanu Knesset Member Michael Oren -- Israel's former ambassador to the U.S. -- has criticized the bill, saying it might "play exactly into the hands of those elements that are trying to boycott us." Ordinary Israelis are hearing about the war against the human rights community and about the special privileges and dirty tactics of the settler lobby, and they are asking questions and voicing their concerns.

Israel's centrist politicians -- especially those who were once part of the fight for greater equality -- must understand that there is an enormous constituency of Israel's supporters that stands ready to work with them in support of greater equality, democracy, and social and political rights.

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We already see an alarming ebbing of international support for Israel, directly related to 49 years of occupation, continued settlement expansion, and the constant chipping away at democratic institutions that protect minority rights and freedom of conscience.
The United States and European allies are planning to launch surgical air attacks on the Islamic State and affiliated radical militias in Libya. The hope is to ease military pressure on a reconstituted government there and eliminate a new terrorist outpost of the Islamic State.

Although the Islamic State's rise in Libya is more a direct threat to Europe than the US, European countries lack the technical, logistical and intelligence capability to mount prolonged attacks. Hence, the absolute need for US help.

Bombing would be centered on the city of Sirte, once a political stronghold of the assassinated Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi and now the center of Islamic State support, a senior NATO intelligence official told me. Readers may remember that Sirte was the last holdout against rebel forces during the 2011 civil war and is home to Gaddafi's tribe, the Qadhafha.

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It should surprise no one that a marriage of convenience between Gaddafi loyalists and the Islamic State has emerged. The same thing happened in Iraq between Baathist supporters of Saddam Hussein and ISIS. In Syria, to the dismay of Western governments, rebel groups of all sorts are more eager to fight the cruel government of Bashar al-Assad than the pitiless Islamic State.

In Libya, the EU and US plan to hit other terrorist and recalcitrant anti-government groups with the help of ground spotters who will choose the targets, the NATO official said. Italy and France are the biggest promoters of the plan: Italy because Libya has become a jumping off point for thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa seeking to reach European shores; France because of last year's terror attack on Paris.

The limited war strategy envisioned by the US and European allies in Libya is not new. It's been tried with variations in other Middle East conflicts, ranging from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria. In theory, military action is to go hand-in-hand with wider political reconciliation brought about by democratic, competent government. It hasn't happened.

The first application took place in Afghanistan, where US and British forces, including ground troops, battled the Taliban movement for more than a decade. The effort failed to wipe out the Taliban in part because of the endemic corruption of the Afghan government and, after years of training, the unwillingness of Afghan security forces to fight. Moreover, the Taliban enjoyed a rear area in Pakistan that was effectively off-limits to allied ground forces.

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Afghans complained that the US focus on battling the Taliban and its al-Qaeda supporters eclipsed the meticulous nation-building effort needed to put Afghanistan on its feet.

The US applied a similar strategy of foreign military intervention and domestic political reconciliation to Iraq, where the Islamic State occupies a large swathe of territory. Since the summer of 2014, jets from the US and United Kingdom have bombed the Islamic State in support of Iraqi forces. Meanwhile, the central government in Baghdad was supposed to become "inclusive" and reach out to the disgruntled Sunni minority population that supports the Islamic State and other insurgents.

But the Baghdad government is dominated by parties representing the country's Shiite majority and has done little to reconcile with Sunnis. Longer-range prospects for sectarian peace are dim. And despite the bombing campaign, the war to recover territory from the Islamic State has been slow.

In Syria, a variation of the dual strategy is also in progress. The US has been hitting the Islamic State from the air while, it was hoped, "moderate" rebels would unseat the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

That possibility, always a long shot, has run into two inconvenient realities. First, it has always been unclear that there were enough so-called moderates to do the job. In the five years of civil war, the most effective rebel forces have belonged to extremist Islamic groups, of which the Islamic State is only one. In addition, Iran's continuing financial and armed support for Assad, along with Russia's military intervention (by air) on the side of his government, has ensured Assad's survival. The war is in a destructive stalemate.

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Now comes Libya. The United Nations has worked out a deal in which two rival, warring governments agree to put aside their differences, unite and politically pacify the fractious country. To reduce armed opposition, this new government could then invite foreign military action to fight the Islamic States. The foreigners would bomb and end the Islamic State threat.

That's the theory. Unfortunately, internal Libyan political conflicts have already derailed a national unity agreement forged this month. And even if the new government is finally formed, it is no sure thing that Libyan ground forces, even backed by air power, have enough cohesion, discipline and firepower to hold territory now under Islamic State control.
here's an intriguing line in the new Credit Suisse and McKinsey & Co. report on the growing interest among institutional investors for financial products that protect ecosystems, drive sustainable commodity production or reduce carbon emissions.

Among mainstream investors, the report says, "The conservation impact of a product is generally of little importance."

The report, "From Niche to Mainstream: The Building of an Institutional Asset Class," forecasts a private investment opportunity for conservation finance products of $200 billion to $400 billion over the next five years. That's a huge ramp from today's annual private investment of $10 billion or so, though still well short of the estimated $300 billion in private investment needed each year to preserve healthy ecosystems and the clean air, fresh water, and species diversity they generate.

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If not conservation itself, what's driving that interest? According to the report: positive yields, even if small, that are uncorrelated with swings in the broader market. Because natural resources, such as forests or fresh water, are generally independent from macroeconomic factors, the reports suggests, conservation assets are a way to diversify from stocks and bonds.

"In the current environment, investors are looking for an edge to drive excess returns - and many investors are increasingly seeing conservation impact investing as a way to achieve substantial environmental and social impact alongside market-rate financial returns," Credit Suisse's CEO, Tidjane Thiam, writes in the introduction to the report.

Last year's flat market performance, combined with the new year's stock swoon has only accelerated the search for low-risk, diversified assets. "For institutional investors, the risk-return profile of a product outweighs any other characteristics," according to the report. "Low correlation with other asset classes helps ensure a diversification effect. The conservation impact of a product is generally of little importance."

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The report, a follow-on to Credit Suisse's 2014 report, "Moving Beyond Donor Funding Toward an Investor-Driven Approach," argues that conservation financing is ready to move beyond early-stage deals and novel concepts that require concessionary capital and operational support. Attracting large commitments of institutional capital requires mature business models that generate the stable revenues needed to attract mature debt and equity.

The researchers identified "a growing pipeline of in-the-money projects that are ready for scaling." Sustainable agriculture, ecotourism and sustainable seafood, for example, all are outgrowing traditional segments in their markets. The market for FSC-certified forest products is expected to quadruple in the next five years to more than $200 billion.

The new report was timed to the third annual conservation finance conference last week at Credit Suisse's New York offices. (For a recap of last year's conference, see "Making Nature Pay: Bankers Work to Finance Conservation at Scale," and watch the video.)

The report lays out two hypothetical models for aggregating such viable products into large-scale institutional investment vehicles. The first replicates established projects -- say fisheries-management in marine-protected areas -- and finances them across multiple geographies. The second bundles together multiple projects with varying risk-return profiles.

A hypothetical $200 million "Mature Conservation Markets Fund," for example, could invest in 10 to 20 projects in the most mature conservation markets, such as sustainable forestry, sustainable agriculture, and ecotourism. The fund could generate financial returns of 10 to 15 percent from the sale of sustainably harvested timber or cocoa, as well as carbon credits and other "payments for ecosystem service."

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With premium prices for certified sustainable products, the report says, "These are just smart, economically attractive business opportunities waiting for mindful capital infusions and project developers."

The second model builds on the growth of "green bonds" issued by the World Bank and other multilateral finance institutions as well as cities, states and corporations. Most of the bonds have funded energy and other infrastructure, but a small number are funding conservation-related projects as well.

The report proposes an "Ecosystem Green Bond" that would support multiple conservation-related activities within a large-scale ecosystem, such as a system of national parks or marine reserves. The sources of repayment would include cashflow-generating activities, such as user fees. To reduce risk, government or an international finance institution would guarantee full or partial repayment. Coupon payments would be consistent with the issuer's credit rating.

"Iconic ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, require substantial financial resources for their long-term protection," said Fabian Huwyler, Credit Suisse's vice president for sustainability affairs and co-author of the report. "A green bond would be the natural solution to this particular funding challenge."

Over time, the report suggests, conservation investments may become standard fixed-income, venture capital or alternative investments that easily fit in the portfolios of institutional, high-net-worth and even retail investors interested in large-scale, high-impact ecosystem conservation.

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Like everyone else who has heard the news about it, I find the rapid spread of the Zika virus extremely alarming. The newly recognized capacity of this virus, which historically has caused mild, self-limited infections in adults, to induce microcephaly, a terrible birth defect, is nothing less than devastating. To date, Brazil has borne the brunt of this development, with thousands of newborns affected. But the virus has now been identified in at least 20 countries in the Americas. As I write this, the World Health Organization is scrambling to catch up with the global proliferation of this emerging infectious disease, and poised to declare a public health emergency.

As inevitably occurs when a new health threat emerges, this one is generating lots of media attention, with coverage in both the scientific literature and popular press. Predictably, much of that attention is specific to the Zika virus itself, with relatively less addressing the general circumstances that foster our vulnerability to such crises. Both topics matter.

This particular virus was originally identified in Uganda some 70 years ago, first in monkeys, then in people. That likely makes it a zoonosis at the start, a disease transmitted to our species from another. The vector shuttling between the two was the Aedes mosquito, the bite of which transmits the virus. The first human who got Zika, in other words, was likely stung by a mosquito that had drawn blood from an infected monkey not long prior. For the past half century, Zika has generally been limited to Uganda and Tanzania, with isolated outbreaks seen occasionally in other parts of the world.

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That there is no specific treatment for Zika, named after the forest in Uganda where it was first identified, and no vaccine, is because until now the virus has not inspired much global concern, partly because it was not all that serious, and partly no doubt because it was "over there."

Exactly why this infection, in the same family with the viruses that cause yellow fever and dengue fever, is suddenly implicated in an epidemic of birth defects is a work in progress. One likely explanation, for which there is evidence, is an evolutionary change in the virus itself. That may be compounded by exposure of new human populations, with perhaps different genetic vulnerabilities; transmission at a new scale; or other factors yet to be determined. We are currently on the steep part of the learning curve, racing to catch up with current events.

That's a familiar race. We ran it for Ebola, too; and SARS, and MERS. Whatever the next outbreak is, we will likely need to run it again. We keep getting left behind.

For now, practical advice about Zika is limited, and mostly of the "easier said than done" variety. Countries mired in the outbreak are advising against pregnancy. We are all encouraged to avoid mosquito bites. Travel advisories are being issued.

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As we confront Zika, but mostly fail to think beyond it, I am tempted to compare this predicament to its analogy in the space I work in all the time, nutrition. For decades, we have shifted from one nutrient fixation to the next- fat, carbohydrate, sugar, gluten -- and generally been left behind by the big picture. The result has been a flurry of misguided, mono-nutrient activity, and no meaningful improvement in our prevailing vulnerability to the marketing of junk food. We just keep encouraging the invention of new varieties of junk food, and reaping what we sow. At present, we have sown a bumper crop of gluten-free junk.

The situation with emerging infections is much the same. We react to each as if the particular bug is the entire problem, while paying far less attention to fundamentals of public health practice and preparedness that account for vulnerability not just to the last outbreak and the current one, but the next. That same tendency -- the neglect of public health until we have cause to think about panic, outrage, or both -- is on display in Flint, Michigan as well.

The implications of the Zika crisis are not confined to this particular pathogen, for there will be a next, and a next. I am reasonably confident that an acute concentration of resources and ingenuity on Zika will result in a vaccine. Welcome though that will be, perhaps even by some prone to misguided railing against vaccination, it will do nothing to resolve our basic vulnerability.

As the climate changes, and we are past the point of debating the fact of it, the distribution of pathogens is changing too. We have seen this many times already, and are thus forewarned: we will be seeing it again. Whether or not we are forearmed depends on how we react, and allocate resources.

There is, thankfully, ever more attention to how the more than 7 billion of us Homo sapiens are roughing up the planet's remaining pristine places. There is less, however, to the ramifications of it. For one thing, more people in more places inevitably means more encounters with bugs formerly unencountered. For another, the disruptions of ecosystems often circle back to bite us.

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Another issue, relevant to almost every major peril our species now faces, is the very fact that there are more than 7 billion of us, and rising fast. There aren't just humans in ever more places, there are ever more humans in ever greater concentrations everywhere. Whatever else we may be, we are just one, vast Petri dish to our pathogens. Plagues are a product of dense populations and unprecedented population densities will predictably mean new plagues.

And then finally, there is our proclivity to disperse into our competing factions: nations, religions, political parties, and so on. The distinctions between "us" and "them" may matter enormously to us, and them, but to the Zika virus, we are all the same, accommodating species. From the bug's eye view, there is no "over there." In a world of increasing global travel, the bug is right.

In our fantasies, we acknowledge that. The usual scenario is a science fiction adventure in which humanity is attacked by a scourge from without -- an extraterrestrial menace -- and that common threat provides common cause, and unifies us. We overcome our differences to defend our home, and our shared humanity.

From what we know about the universe, the probability of extraterrestrial visitation, hostile or otherwise, seems vanishingly remote- for reasons entirely unrelated to the probability of life on other planets. If interested in the mind-boggling barriers to such inter-stellar concourse, I recommend Lawrence Krauss' book, A Universe from Nothing, as a good place to start.

But the threats to us all, threats blind to the borders of nations, and deaf to the distinctions of ideology, are already here. They have no need to traverse the distance between stars.

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The faults we must overcome for our own security lie not with exotic perils from distant stars, but with dangers evolving right here at home. The faults lie most particularly with ourselves. Ironically, Zika is named after a forest, and one of our great liabilities is the recurrent failure to see the forest through the trees. We react to each new pathogen, while doing little to anticipate the next.

We often fail as well to perceive and prioritize our common humanity. We rally to the defense of it when fighting the threats of science fiction fantasy, but miss the opportunity to do so in the face of real, clear, present, and inevitably recurrent danger.

-fin

Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center; Griffin Hospital

President, American College of Lifestyle Medicine
Brazilian virologist Gubio Soares works at the Science and Health institute in Salvador, Brazil on January 28, 2016. Soares isolated Zika virus for first time in the country, in April 2015. AFP PHOTO / Christophe SIMON / AFP / CHRISTOPHE SIMON (Photo credit should read CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images)

A new disease with an exotic name, Zika virus, is spreading "explosively" around the world. It may be causing babies to be born with shrunken heads and brains. No one has immunity. Experts admit significant uncertainty about how the disease spreads, what symptoms it causes, or just which parts of the population face the greatest danger. And the media is going bonkers. There could not be a more perfect set of conditions for a full blown freak out about a threat that plenty of evidence also suggests may not be that great a threat at all. And that kind of risk reaction can be dangerous all by itself.



I'm no expert in Zika virus or infectious diseases. For the scientific particulars, one great source is Helen Branswell of STAT "Everything You Need to Know About Zika Virus." There is also a solid backgrounder in the New York Times ("Short Answers to Hard Questions About Zika Virus")

The CDC has an information site. So does the World Health Organization (WHO).

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But interestingly, the WHO information site is FAR more measured than the public statements by WHO head Dr. Margaret Chan, who spoke in much more dramatic terms.



"Last year the disease was detected in the Americas, where it is spreading explosively,"

"The level of alarm is extremely high. Arrival of the virus in some cases has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads."

"The possible links have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions."

Dr. Chan's statements, which almost surely will be widely criticized as poor risk communication, set the world press into a Zika frenzy:

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But compare that scary headline with what the BBC story says in the second paragraph:

"Most will not develop symptoms, but the virus, spread by mosquitoes, has been linked to brain defects in babies."

And compare Dr. Chan's alarmist language (speaking about a global threat) with the comments of Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, describing the risk for the United States, where there have been a grand total of 31 recorded cases of an infectious disease that has been around in many tropical areas (that breed the right species of mosquito) for at least eight years.

For the average American who is not traveling this is not something they need to worry about. For people who are pregnant and considering travel to the affected areas, please take this seriously.

Dr. Schuchat also did a wise thing with her risk communication. She all but promised there would be more travel-related cases, rather than trying to over-reassure the public (as the CDC was criticized for in the Ebola crisis). But she said that conditions in the United States make it highly unlikely (not impossible, but highly unlikely) there will be a serious outbreak here.

Perhaps most importantly, compare Dr. Chan's alarm with the actual numbers from Brazil, one of the first places where doctors noticed a spike in microcephaly, the condition of babies born with shrunken heads or malformed brains. Nature reported on an analysis of the actual numbers: Brazil's surge in small-headed babies questioned by report



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It is not known how common microcephaly has become in Brazil's outbreak. About three million babies are born in Brazil each year. Normally, about 150 cases of microcephaly are reported, and Brazil says it is investigating nearly 4,000 cases.

From 150 to 4,000 in one year is a frightening spike on a percentage basis, and certainly cause for alarm. But how much alarm? 4,000 cases of microcephaly out of 3,000,000 babies comes to a risk rate of 0.0013. Tiny. And the study reported by Nature found that, as of Jan. 27, only 270 of the Brazil cases have so far actually been confirmed as microcephaly, and a tenth of the reported cases have so far been discounted as false diagnoses.

So the basic facts about Zika virus at this point suggest that even if the worst case is real, the statistical risk, even where conditions are favorable for the spread of the disease, is probably tiny. But the at this point facts are, well, equivocal, which is why public health authorities are responding with due caution, (even though some, like Dr. Chan, are responding with less than cautious language.) And the very fact that there is uncertainty is just one of several psychological characteristics that make the threat of Zika virus feel much more worrisome than the evidence alone suggests.

New risks freak us out more than the ones we're familiar with. The way we freaked out about West Nile virus, and have now calmed down about it even though it's still around, provides a good analogy. We are much more concerned about risks to babies than risk to adults. Zika scores high on that risk perception factor too. So does the fact that we have no immunity or vaccines, which means we are powerless... we have no sense of control. Not being able to protect ourselves makes any risk scarier. Uncertainty about the nature of the Zika threat adds to the sense of not knowing what we need to know to protect ourselves, and powerlessness.

And the media alarms play a huge magnifying role. The more readily available something is to our awareness, the more space it takes up on our limited radar screen of risk. No matter how measured the stories on Zika virus may be as you get down into the details, (and most are), blaring headlines of "spreading explosively" and "four million possible victims" (thank you, Dr. Chan) are what we hear and read first and, cautious beings that we are, we tend to be overweight the worst case possibilities of any threat and any reassuring caveats down in the story, if we even read that far, do little to disabuse us of our fears.

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Let's be clear, and fair. Nobody is panicking. These worries, even if based more on feelings that an objective look at the evidence, are real, and valid, and entirely reasonable. Better-safe-than-sorry precaution is built into the psychology of how we keep ourselves safe. Given what isn't known, only a fool would suggest there is no need to worry.
Lawrence Jacobs declared in the Huffington Post recently that Obama "now stands as the most consequential second-term president since the Second World War." While Obama has accomplished a lot -- far more than often given credit -- this statement oversells his legacy for one major reason: he leaves the Democratic Party far weaker now than when he was first elected. He was unable to restructure the Democratic Party and build a new majority coalition to support his policies, rendering him perhaps less consequential than many of his supporters or political commentators think.

Obama's 2008 victory had the potential to be very significant. Political scientists describe critical elections as significant realignments of American politics and partisanship. These elections link presidents' personalities to new political coalitions, redefine the political agenda, and remake politics for decades. Franklin Roosevelt's victory in 1936 and Ronald Reagan's 1980 election are examples.

Obama's 2008 election portended the possibilities of a critical realignment. He represented generational change as the first Gen X president. It was the passing of the political torch from the Boomer Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush when he defeated the Silent or Greatest generation candidate John McCain. He was the first non-white president, supposedly the first post-racial one, and his candidacy seemed to bring young people and non-traditional voters into the Democratic Party. His election produced enormous Democratic congressional majorities, and all signs were that he was capable of being a transformative president who would politically restructure the American political landscape.

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Yes the Affordable Care Act passed, as did Dodd-Frank, the stimulus bill, and a host of other important measures he described in his speech. But somewhere along the line the Obama realignment collapsed, dead by 2010. Why? Obama failed to do two things. One, he did not truly restructure American politics. Two, he failed to link his reforms to building a new political coalition to support them and be the basis upon which to build a new and future Democratic Party.

The Affordable Care Act made few changes in the basically free market model for health care. Dodd-Frank failed to make significant Wall Street reforms to prevent future financial bubbles and speculation. Neither of these laws makes transformative changes, and polls suggest they are largely misunderstood or disliked. In terms of foreign policy and the environment, Obama has made some progress, but it not clear the Middle East or the world is safer now than eight years ago or that he has made the progress toward the green economy he promised. And should the Republican Party win the White House and retain Congress, many of Obama's accomplishments by executive action may be undone.

Obama's real legacy may be leaving the Democratic Party far weaker today than when he was elected. The statistics are chilling. In 2009, there were 257 Democratic House and 58 Senate members, today there are 188 and 44. In 2009, there were 4,082 Democratic state legislators, today there are 3,163. In 2009, 55 percent of state legislators were Democrats, today it is only 43 percent. In 2009, Democrats controlled 27 legislatures and 28 governorships, today it is 11 and 18. No matter what the statistics, the Democratic Party is weaker today than in was in 2009.

The collapse of the Democratic Party under Obama is even more glaring given that demographic trends potentially suggest a brighter future for the party. Yet there are signs that Millennials, the most liberal and largest generation in American history, once excited by Obama in 2008, have disengaged. That was certainly the case in 2012, and in 2016 they are supporting Sanders, not Clinton. In a famous 2010 New Yorker cartoon a character exclaims, "Obama has the potential to get a whole new generation disillusioned." Granted part of Obama's problem was Republican intransigence, but he even had problems getting his own party members to follow him.

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Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, arrives for a town hall forum at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. With a week to go until the Iowa caucuses and the Democratic presidential race there in a virtual dead heat, Hillary Clinton and Sanders are mapping out divergent paths toward winning the first votes of the nomination process. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Pool via Bloomberg

Based on my calculations, after Bernie Sanders said his religious beliefs were nondenominational, it took 48 hours for a major news outlet, the Washington Post, to question whether Bernie Sanders could win a general election with his unconventional religious affiliation; being "spiritual" but not a member of an institutionalized religion. The WaPo reasoned that Sanders' perspectives and beliefs "set him apart from the norm in modern American politics."

By such reasoning, we would not have elected an African American president, and a woman would not be leading in many polls to replace him. These days, we might not be served by asking what is within or outside a "norm." You know things are getting strange, in fact, when Nate Silver misses the mark by such a far margin.

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This leads me to question why The Washington Post authors start their piece by asking how Sanders can win if not connected to a denomination, and then end their piece questioning whether Sanders is Jewish enough. Their meandering piece bolsters Hillary Clinton's indulging of Zionists while asking why Sanders seems to be trying to hide his kibbutz. Are the authors writing an article obstensibly about Sanders or about presidential ties to pro-Israel organizations? The confusing focus leads the piece to read as more of the media's assault on Sanders as he grows more likely to be the Democratic nominee.

The truth of the matter is that Sanders is not slightly close to being the first President not performing some sort of American Protestantism. Ulysses Grant was unaffiliated with a religion, as was Rutherford Hayes. Andrew Johnson seems to not have mentioned his religious leanings in any way. Abraham Lincoln was unaffiliated and only spoke of "God" in the most general of terms. In terms of diversity, the U.S. Presidents have ranged from Quaker, to Catholic, to Dutch Reformed (Roosevelt). I grant that the "norm" falls squarely in the Christian camp, but saying that we tend not to elect non-Christians is a bit like saying we tend to elect White guys. This 'norm' does not help us in the case of modern American politics.

Sanders may instead be directly in line with the general American population, or at least those under a certain age. The most reliable information on American religious affiliations has for decades been made available by The Pew Research Center. Their statistics show from 2007 to 2014, the population of Americans identifying as Christian fell from about 78% to 70%. Specifically, "mainline" Protestantism dropped from 18% to 14%. Key to the conversation about whether Sanders is out of the "norm," those claiming to be "unaffiliated" rose from 16% to 22%.

As a college professor often teaching about religion, I can tell you that for years my students have increasingly identified more as "spiritual" and less "religious." Many feel that their worldviews are best characterized by a recognition that life has meaning, that the Universe perhaps has a Creator, and that consciousness or some essence continues beyond death. Beyond that, the range seems to have no bounds.

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What seems clear to me throughout the last two decades of teaching, and talking weekly about religion in college classrooms, is that we would be amiss to equate religious affiliation with ethical behavior. Some of the most ethical people I know, those working for social justice and environmental preservation for example, are not only unaffiliated with organized religion; they are atheists.

My students know this to be true because they themselves express that what one does for an hour or two on Sunday pales in comparison to those causes for which one works in their daily lives. My students often say that doing good works simply for some better afterlife is self-centered, just with delayed gratification. Rather they consider it their responsibility to care for the oppressed as a means of improving this world now and for the next generations.
Japan's most recent and controversial apology to the government of South Korea for sexual slavery committed by its military against "comfort women" during WWII has raised important questions about apologies for crimes and serious human rights violations during armed conflict. What is the proper role of an apology for such massive crimes against humanity? What can apologies do and what should they not be meant to do for survivors and victims?

The latest Japanese apology, which some have seen as part of a strategic geopolitical deal struck between Japan and South Korea, has led to protests among the 46 surviving South Korean victims as well as the victims in other countries occupied by Japan during the war.

After working for 15 years on reparations for victims in over 50 countries, ICTJ has found that many victims feel that an apology unaccompanied by other forms of reparation does not constitute justice, even as material reparations, such as compensation, without a meaningful acknowledgement of responsibility also falls short.

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An estimated 200,000 women in Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army just prior to and during World War II. Japan systematically established an extensive network of "comfort stations" throughout its occupied territories, to which "comfort women" were trafficked and used as sexual slaves. Many of these "comfort women" were barely teenagers when they were enslaved and the surviving few are now of very advanced age and dwindling in numbers.

Various expressions of regret and statements acknowledging the role of the Japanese military in operating the "comfort women" system have been made by different Japanese government officials, but none, including the latest apology, has expressed an unconditional acknowledgment that the Japan as a state was responsible for these violations.

As part of the latest "apology," Japan pledged 1 billion yen ($8.3M) for the creation of a South Korean foundation to support the surviving South Korean victims with medical, nursing, and other support services. South Korea, in turn, pledged to "irreversibly" drop its demand for reparation, end all criticism of Japan on the issue, and remove a memorial constructed by Korean "comfort women" survivors in 2011 in front of Japan's embassy in Seoul.

Rather than fully acknowledge the state's responsibility for initiating the system of "comfort stations" (or brothels) the agreement offers a "heartfelt apology and remorse" but only for the "involvement of Japanese military authorities" in forcing South Korean women into sexual slavery. According to survivors and their advocates, this falls well short of a complete and meaningful apology. It does not recognize Japan's role in establishing and maintaining the system of sexual slavery. It does not accept legal responsibility for the violations. It fails to meet criteria set out in international human rights norms that a public apology must be an "acknowledgement of the facts and acceptance of responsibility."

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In a recent report by the International Center for Transitional Justice, "More Than Words: Apologies as a Form of Reparation," we explain that the most meaningful public apologies clearly acknowledge responsibility for the violations and recognize the continuing pain of survivors and victims' families.

As the report points out, apologies for massive and systematic war crimes and human rights violations should come as a result of consultations with survivors and victims' families about the form, content and timing of an apology that would be most meaningful for them.

This was not the case for Japan and South Korea's "comfort women" survivors. This is certainly not the case for all other survivors across Asia that are not covered by the agreement between the Japanese Prime Minister and South Korean President. Instead, this attempt at an apology appears to have come about through the encouragement of the United States. It was motivated less, if at all, by a desire to render justice to comfort women but by a need to ease tensions between Japan and South Korea (including over territorial disputes and unresolved historical grievances).

The ICTJ report emphasizes that apologies should not end truth seeking nor stifle truth telling by victims. Instead, an apology should encourage a collective reckoning by society of conflict-related crimes or human rights violations carried out in the name of the state. An apology should open up space for accountability rather than close it.

Certainly, apologies should not be used to remove or devalue measures, such as memorials and monuments--especially those established by victims themselves -- to ensure that violations are not forgotten. Memorials built by victims that are strongly supported by society are not for the government of the day, let alone a foreign government responsible for war crimes, to remove. That only adds grave insult to irreparable injury.

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Apologies, too, should not discriminate among victims of the same violations. Indeed, Japan's failure to mention the women victims of its "comfort stations" in China, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and other Asian countries supports the view that the apology was motivated primarily by political expediency rather than a genuine admission of past wrongdoing. By effectively discriminating against some victims, the gesture fulfills neither the spirit nor purpose of an official apology.

Finally, apologies should not be instrumentalized for other purposes that are inconsistent with the "never again" promise that such apologies are meant to signal and symbolize. Here, the apology for past crimes arguably does not reduce present regional security tensions--and may even escalate them. This not only diminishes its significance but turns the apology on its head by devaluing the victims' decades-long demands for justice.

Japan could learn from some recent examples of apologies for violations committed during occupation as part of reparations programs that accompanied a state's unequivocal acknowledgement of responsibility. The UK government apologized in 2013 for the torture and abuse of Kenyans suspected of supporting an anti-colonial movement against British colonial rule in Kenya. The UK funded a memorial and paid compensation to survivors, alongside the apology. In 1991, President Patricio Aylwin of Chile apologized on behalf of the state for violations committed by the Pinochet dictatorship. He made it clear that the state was responsible for the violations and that state agents had committed enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings. He followed up the apology by presenting a draft law to congress creating a reparations program and an institution to implement it -- which was enacted and continues to provide support to victims to this day.

The Japanese government has played a constructive role in promoting reparations as an element of transitional justice in the Rome Treaty that created the International Criminal Court. In 2014, it made a significant financial contribution to the Trust Fund for Victims that was created by the treaty as its reparations mechanism. Japan even asked that the donation be "earmarked for victims of sexual and gender based violence." In other words, despite political, diplomatic and security challenges that have marked Japan's refusal and reluctance to apologize to the "comfort women," it has shown that it recognizes the importance not only of addressing sexual and gender-based violence in armed conflict but the need for reparations to be made to victims.

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High quality 3d render of North Korea with Nuclear Warhead. Clipping path included.MORE LIKE THIS:

Under the Obama administration, U.S. policy toward North Korea largely has devolved into the president sitting in the Oval Office, closing his eyes, and hoping the nuclear monsters will go away. Alas, it hasn't worked. Pyongyang has staged its 4th nuclear test and may well be working on the hydrogen bomb that it falsely claimed to have tested this time.

After the test President Barack Obama seemed to close his eyes and hope that Beijing will make the nuclear monsters go away. Alas, that isn't likely to work either. Without a change in approach, a nuclear North is here to stay. Announced North Korea's Foreign Ministry: "The U.S. should be accustomed to the status of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state whether it likes it or not."

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The administration's frustration in dealing with the DPRK is understandable. Nothing seems to have worked. The latest member of the ruling Kim dynasty is unlikely to abandon his nation's nuclear pretensions. In fact, the latest test came amid evidence of warming ties with the People's Republic of China and reports of a possible invitation to Kim Jong-un to visit Beijing. Evidently Pyongyang cares no more about its ally's than America's opinion on the issue.

North Korea remains the land of no good options. Two decades ago Defense Secretary Ashton Carter helped prepare plans for striking the North's nuclear facilities. However, triggering the Second Korean War would be a poor legacy for President Obama.

Washington is pressing the UN Security Council to approve additional sanctions; the House has passed legislation to impose additional unilateral economic penalties. But the Kims never have let their people's suffering influence policy, the North's economy remains largely isolated except for trade with China, and so far Beijing, though professing to support a "necessary response" by the UN, has refused to apply sufficient pressure to threaten the Kim regime's survival.

If the PRC did so the U.S., its allies South Korea and Japan, and China all might regret getting what they wished for. An abrupt and violent regime collapse could yield civil disorder, factional combat, loose nukes, and refugee tides. The consequences would overflow the DPRK's boundaries.

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That could lead to Chinese military intervention to stabilize a new, pro-PRC government in Pyongyang. Then the Republic of Korea would face a renewed and likely permanent division of the peninsula.

The administration could continue its "close one's eyes and hope for the best" approach. Yet that almost certainly means continued North Korean development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Including eventual development of submarine-launched missiles and hydrogen bombs. Even more could be in store so long as Pyongyang subordinates its people's welfare to weapons development.

The only other alternative? What Beijing has advocated all along: engagement with the North.

Obviously, there's no guarantee that this approach will work either. Nevertheless, it offers what the North most wants--direct contact with America. The Obama administration's insistence that Pyongyang take steps toward denuclearization first is a non-starter. Talking will be necessary before any concessions can be gained.

Negotiations also seem essential to winning greater Chinese support in dealing with the DPRK. In Beijing's view the U.S. is responsible for creating a hostile security environment for the North. Indeed, after recent administration criticism of the PRC's policy toward North Korea, the Chinese Foreign Ministry insisted that China was neither the cause nor the solution to the crisis on the peninsula.

Understandably, the PRC is unlikely to risk its political and economic position in the North as well as the ill consequences of a North Korean implosion if Washington does not do its part. Although Beijing does not want a nuclear North, so far stability appears more important than denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.

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Moreover, negotiations offer the opportunity to resolve subsidiary issues and improve security even short of achieving full denuclearization. There's no particular reason to believe that the Kim regime ever will agree to abandon nuclear weapons which have delivered prestige, deterred attack, and enabled extortion. But there may be opportunities to cap the nuclear program and limit weapons development. Perhaps there are trade-offs to be made between military exercises in the South and advanced positioning of military units in the North. Or something else.

An ongoing dialogue, no matter how limited, offers additional opportunities. If Pyongyang is ever going to talk about human rights, it will do so only after it feels more secure. If there is any hope for evolutionary change within the North, such a process will be advanced by greater cultural and economic cooperation.

Nor should the Obama administration leave the problem for the next president. If so, Pyongyang will be another year along in its nuclear development. China will have spent another year blaming America more than North Korea. South Korea will be another year toward its next presidential election, discouraging action by Seoul.

Moreover, a Republican successor to Obama--certainly as possible as not--would be less inclined to give diplomacy a chance. At least the new GOP president might choose prudence over rhetoric if a negotiating process was underway. However, almost all of the Republican candidates, and all of the leading contenders at present, seem reluctant to appear "weak" by doing anything other than attempting to dictate to America's foes. Which would be a bust in dealing with both the DPRK and China.

North Korea's latest nuclear test is bad news, though hardly a surprise. Indeed, it's probably the inevitable outcome of a policy which continues to confront Pyongyang militarily without engaging it diplomatically. If Washington wants a different result, it will have to employ a different approach. Which means engagement.

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

No one really disputes that Hillary Clinton is the most experienced candidate in the presidential field of either party. She also represents an historic opportunity to demonstrate gender equality. So why then isn't she the walkaway winner?

My "ready for Hillary" bumper sticker has decorated my car for several years. Readily understood by my neighbors as an endorsement of the former Secretary of State, for whom I worked as a U.S. Ambassador, others less known to me apparently understood the sticker as advocating being "ready" for Hillary in the same way that wild-eyed, far-right militia groups are ready (as in lying in wait) for federal agents. Never the master of subtlety, Donald Trump is leaving nothing to chance interpretation selling instead "Hillary for Prison" bumper stickers.

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With the primary season upon us, it is no secret that Hillary's campaign has failed to generate the public support, her resume and her policies favoring greater economic fairness for the middle-class and inclusion of women and minorities should arguably warrant.

What's happening?

Part of the Hillary malaise reflects how the American voter resents being told by pundits and the cognoscenti that they "cannot" vote for the far left or far right -- Bernie is not electable, goes the narrative, and Trump simply cannot be taken seriously.

With apologies to Clint Eastwood for borrowing an old movie title, but dismissing the good (Sanders) and the bad (Trump) in favor of the default choice (Hillary Clinton) is still seeming too electorally ugly.



Can Mrs. Clinton do anything to inspire her campaign? Yes -- but it requires a deeper, more genuine level of empathy and humility than the campaign has thus displayed. Indeed, in terms of empathy, it was not a campaign event, but the Benghazi hearings that House Republicans planned to be her undoing where Secretary Clinton admirably demonstrated immense presidential-level patience, but even more importantly, how heavily the loss of my friend and ambassadorial colleague Chris Stevens still weighs upon her.

In recalling the horrific attack that took Ambassador Stevens' life and that of four other civilian and military members of the diplomatic mission in Libya, Mrs. Clinton revealed her human side. She did not deny that the attack took place on her watch. To the contrary she took ownership of the problem giving the backside of a tough to change Foggy Bottom bureaucracy that too often disregards field advice a good swift kick. She also schooled Congress on its own neglect of the so-called AFRICOM region which left our interests and personnel far too vulnerable. Her retelling of how Chris likely perished in a safe room because of lack of ventilation and her recounting of how she called the crew of my own rescue operation out of Libya in the midst of gunfire and a horrific winter storm at sea were powerful and poignant.

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Hillary demonstrated on the job as it were tremendous knowledge, strength of character and genuine concern for the sacrifice of the Stevens family and diplomats generally. Yet, in the campaign, she is seen as humorless, short-tempered and willing to do anything to be president of the United States.



The last proposition is simply false; and yet, I am betting you have heard more than one version of this personal attack. Without humor? No, but her humor is often subtle. Mrs. Clinton likes a good joke as much as the next person. Asked if her opponents are suffering from some form of political insanity, she is likely to quip: "suffering, no, they seem to be enjoying it." As for being impatient, she knows this to be true, but like Lincoln; she will turn the criticism around asking pardon for the failing since there's no time to waste.

More of that witty, self-deprecating Clinton, together with her own misty-eyed recollection of the Simon & Garfunkel America into which Bernie has wrapped his progressive, but sometimes otherworldly, impracticality, and soon any email blunders will be seen for what they are -- trivial.

Perhaps, however, Mrs. Clinton might try to do what no other candidate in modern time has done, and that is don't pretend to be without flaw. How and why would confession of error help? First, it would illustrate how her positions and ideas have changed over time. A mind not open to change or the ideas of others is not well disposed to govern wisely.



Second, it is reasonable for the people of America to yearn for a presidential candidate who is: believably and actually trustworthy to the core, as selfless as human nature allows, and as experienced and capable as one's life preparation permits. These are qualities much in need at any time, but because right this moment we desperately need to stand up to manifold threats to our economic and national security, they are today indispensable. These threats are real, and as much as many of Mrs. Clinton's natural supporters remain enamored with President Obama and his various achievements, it is a mistake not to see the long road of especially economic fairness that still must be traveled.



Not every action in our immediate national past has lived up to our ideals. Mention of persistent under-employment, stagnant and declining middle income wages, questionable drone usage, and untold administrative difficulty yet to be addressed in the well-intended, but stumbling health care reform should not be blinkered. And as much as Mr. Obama talked common ground, it is hard to say he found much. How will Hillary differ?

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It takes enormous humility to even ask the question, and to see the need for better answer. The same is true of Mrs. Clinton's acceptance after leaving office of substantial speaking fees from high-roller financial entities. Mrs. Clinton needs to square this with her opposition to the unlimited corporate funding of campaigns unleashed by problematic Supreme Court rulings that confuse the protection of free speech with the preservation of wealthy prerogative.



For me, Mrs. Clinton's most egregious failing was initially approving the Iraqi occupation undertaken by George W. Bush. Embarrassingly, I share in that error. Yet, as history has proven, our deployment into Iraq was a deeply mistaken misadventure costing far too much in human life -- both American and Iraqi. In recent years, American presidents have pursued actions that have introduced our sons and daughters in the military into conflicts supporting dictators unworthy of our assistance and reformers unprepared to govern. Soldiers, we are told, are not to reason why. That being the case, presidents must insist on the on-going review of military and nonmilitary options.



Unfortunately, the premature declarations of "mission accomplished" have obscured the need to constantly re-evaluate the purpose of our presence in volatile regions, and thus, destabilized those areas even more.

President Obama has correctly lowered our profile but we remain mired in the near inscrutable, often mindless, bickering among radical fundamentalists whose so-called "religious" instruction doesn't even honor the sacredness of their own lives, let alone those of others. Here a careful line between diplomatic initiative and cowering appeasement must be drawn. In Libya and Egypt, it is far from clear that either Mr. Obama or Secretary Clinton got it right, but as Hillary seeks our continued confidence, it is in her recognition of that shortcoming that is necessary. The pledge to never betray or surrender our lives, liberties and the pursuit of happiness to radical groups that seek by barbaric and indiscriminate violence to impose upon us, and all other free peoples, one, narrow-minded, way of life is essential, but it must be a believable pledge.



Humility might also assist Mrs. Clinton in answering questions from some feminist leaders. This is an area of personal hurt and tragic choice where Mrs. Clinton, in my judgment, should be respectfully given a wide berth to answer or not. As a friend, I would counsel not hiding either the great sadness that attends such unfaithfulness or the justifiable anger at the rightward partisans who saw the entire matter as an opportunity for political advantage. After all, the misguided nature of the independent counsel abetted impeachment effort became belatedly self-evident to all, even the Congress that allowed the very statute to elapse altogether.

If Mrs. Clinton wanted to respond to the very recent complaint that she did not react properly to her husband's bad behavior prior to their arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania, and it is not clear that this complaint deserves a response, honestly explaining how she survived in those dark moments would be a powerful corrective of the specious claims of aloofness or arrogance weighing down her campaign. More than that, it would make Hillary into a teacher to a culture that is too slow to marry and took quick to divorce. Speculating more from intuition than personal knowledge, but I would bet that Mrs. Clinton might say something along the following lines: "first, I made my own promise to love Bill in good times and in bad and in sickness and in health. And while I know even the Bible gives entitlement to a spouse wronged by infidelity, the Bible also tells us of the son who has done unforgivable things, and yet, he is forgiven. I chose this path of mercy and forgiveness. Second, and quite simply, I love Bill. I also know many people in the United States have come to love him as well and for very good reason -- despite his flaws, his public service, including his presidency was working for, and succeeding for, the average American."

With these humanizing answers, there would remain only one final, overarching question: why does she want to be president of the United States?

The answer to this question is easy compared to the personal matters, giving answer is simply this: "despite any rough edges, I have been privileged with a set of experiences that for whatever reason most women of my generation have been denied? In God's providence, however, I was given those experiences in abundance. I believe these experiences -- in the White House as first lady, in the United States Senate, and most recently, as Secretary of State -- were given to me for a purpose larger than myself, and that is to reaffirm the equality of all."

Here Mrs. Clinton could untie what sometimes gets confused -- and that is how voting for a woman to prove the irrelevance of gender isn't a contradiction. The seeming tangle disappears when it is realized that while it is generally foolish to cast one's vote on the basis of gender or race or sexual orientation, the reason why this is foolhardy is that these things tell us little about the qualities of the human person. In a world observant of the civil rights of all, allowing our vote to be influenced by gender or other criteria would be unnecessary.

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The right kinds of food, how much to buy, plus all the other things (coolers!) you probably didn't think about.
After having given a presentation with Speak Up Florida on the topic of the New Jim Crow, I encountered a white man named Gordon who was in the audience. During the presentation I mentioned that I was a writer and Gordon wanted to know if I could write about an incident involving a man named Mario Abraham. Abraham was a Haitian who was living in Palm Beach County, Florida. He was arrested on traffic and theft charges. In jail he suffered a broken neck and died five days later. Witnesses claimed that Abraham was beaten with a broom handle for refusing to leave his jail cell. Doctors believed that Abraham was faking his injuries so he did receive the necessary treatment for his injuries. The officer who was indicted for the beating was acquitted, although Abraham's family did receive a settlement from the police department.

The case is similar to what happened with Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and in fact Gordon himself made the comparison when he was telling me about this incident. What struck me about the conversation was his genuine disgust and anger with how Abraham had been treated. The conversation was also marked by the feeling of how just how little had really changed since the 1980s. In regards to the importance placed on the lives of African people relatively little has changed since the first slaves were brought to North America in 1619. Despite all of the amendments and civil rights law that have been put in place to protect the rights of African people since 1619, there is still a pervasive sense that African American lives simply do not matter.

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My encounter with Gordon was my first time ever hearing about Mario Abraham, although I had done enough research to know that this is not a recent issue. In my book The Black African Crisis in the Age of a Black President, I pointed out that the death of Trayvon Martin was part of the larger history of Black suffering in America that I traced back to the Dred Scott decision when the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, whether free or enslaved, did not have the rights of American citizens. This single decision in my opinion sums up the entire experience of African Americans as a people that have constantly struggled for equal representation under the law. In that same book I go through numerous cases of African people that were killed following the abolition of slavery such as Oscar Grant, Jesse Washington, Sam Hose, and Mary Turner who was killed along with her unborn child. I also stress African people because it's not only African Americans. As Mario Abraham's death demonstrates, immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa have also been victimized as well. The conclusion I wanted to make in that chapter of my book is that African people have been the victims of aggression and violence for a long time, and that Trayvon Martin's death was a continuation of that problem.

The Black Lives Matter movement is a relatively recent movement, but the problem that it seeks to address is one that is as old as America's history. This is something that really does not get addressed as often as it should be, which is one of the reasons why I appreciated my brief discussion with Gordon about the fate of Mario Abraham. It not only informed me about yet another case of an African being unjustly killed without no one really being held accountable for his killing, but it was yet another reminder that this fight for justice is a historical one.

--

Dwayne is the author of several books on the history and experiences of African people, both on the continent and in the diaspora. His books are available through Amazon. You can also follow Dwayne on Facebook.
If you've been paying attention to the news, you've probably seen headlines about the Zika virus outbreak, which began in Brazil and is now spreading to other countries in Latin America. The virus is spread through mosquito bites, and common symptoms of the disease include rash and joint pain. The disease is usually mild and rarely requires hospital treatment.

That is, unless you're a pregnant woman. After the outbreak in Brazil, authorities have reported numerous cases where the virus was linked to severe malformalities in babies whose mothers were infected while pregnant, including microcephaly, which is a condition where the baby is born with an abnormally small head and severe brain damage. As a result, several countries in the region, including Brazil, El Salvador, Jamaica, Colombia and Honduras, have urged women not to get pregnant and advised foreign pregnant women against traveling to the region until further notice. El Salvador's Deputy Health Minister has taken the most extreme stance so far -- urging women in El Salvador to postpone pregnancy until 2018.

Advising pregnant women to not travel to these countries while the outbreak is happening makes perfect sense. This is something that individuals can control -- we can choose to change, postpone or cancel our travel plans to countries where the Zika virus is present, to protect our own health and that of our unborn children. But advising women living in these countries to delay pregnancy is a whole other matter -- because for most of them, decisions related to family planning and their reproductive health are not in their control.

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That is why such advice and recommendations are likely to have little if any real impact, unless they are also accompanied by changes in the availability and affordability of sexual and reproductive health services and contraceptives -- as well as a drastic change in attitudes towards contraception use and family planning. The discussion can also not happen in a void, but must be grounded in a broader debate about the complexities and challenges related to subpar availability of family planning services and contraceptives to both women and men in Latin America.

Not only do women in Latin America lack access to sexual and reproductive health and family planning services and often have no access to contraceptives, many of them also lack the necessary knowledge to be able to control if and when they get pregnant. Latin America and Caribbean has an estimated 1. 2 million unintended pregnancies just among adolescents every year. Nearly half of sexually active young women in the region have an unmet need for contraception -- making it near impossible for them to control their reproductive choices and reliably avoid an unwanted pregnancy. As the region is predominately Roman Catholic, the church's condemnation of contraceptives seems to be quite a contradiction to the recommendation for women to delay pregnancy. So far, the statements made by government officials have also categorically ignored the role and responsibility of men in all of this -- after all, it usually takes two people for a woman to get pregnant. As long as women cannot conceive a baby alone, they should not be expected to bear the responsibility of avoiding unwanted pregnancies alone either.

What's making the situation even worse is the fact that in most of these countries, abortion is either fully illegal or very hard to obtain -- leading women's rights groups to call for changes to existing abortion laws and bans, particularly in the extreme case of El Salvador where abortion is banned even in a case of fetal deformation.

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Releasing reliable and factual information about the Zika virus is absolutely crucial for pregnant women to be able to take necessary precautions to minimize their risk of getting infected, but providing that information is only a tiny part of the efforts that need to be undertaken to protect women and their babies from the disease. Without the tools -- sexual education, family planning services and contraceptives -- telling women to "delay pregnancy" is, in all honesty, total hypocrisy. It's like telling a person standing in the rain to "not get wet" and not give them an umbrella -- despite the fact that you're holding the umbrella in your hand. We know what women need to control their reproductive choices.

We know what women need to decide if, when and with whom to get pregnant. But as long as these things are not made available unplanned and unwanted pregnancies will continue to happen, which should not only be considered a problem because of the Zika virus but in general. Having control over our bodies is not a matter of necessity because of the outbreak -- it's a basic human right that all women should have access to, at all times.

The Zika virus is merely reminding us of the multiple devastating things that can happen when women are stripped of their basic right to control their bodies and reproductive choices.
BY JORDAN ELKIN

The dreaded announcement came over the loud speaker. "Delta Flight 5955 to Chicago O'Hare has been cancelled due to inclement weather. A flight at Gate 4 is currently boarding with limited space available."

I threw my bag over my shoulder and scrambled to the gate, where a line had already formed. The anxiety in the air was palpable, but somehow didn't affect the man standing in front of me. "Buddy! You think we're gonna make it?" I had no idea, but his friendliness gave me a good feeling.

The man was Ramiro Ocasio, and five minutes later we were sitting next to each other in two of the last seats available on the plane. He was on his phone before takeoff, speaking to a friend in his native Spanish. When he hung up, always interested in practicing my language skills, I introduced myself in Spanish and we began chatting.

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As the plane climbed to thirty thousand feet, the story Ramiro proceeded to tell reversed our course and took me below ground to the 59 Street subway station in New York City.

"I had my headphones in, minding my own business, and all of a sudden a crowd of people formed," Ramiro explained. "I ran over and saw an elderly man had fallen onto the tracks. He was crawling and couldn't get up. I wasn't going to watch this man die... so I jumped in. I'm not a strong guy but I somehow threw the man over my shoulder and onto the platform. Then I tried to jump out but couldn't because the platform is higher than you think. My heart was pounding. People were screaming. The train was honking now. I jumped up again and some people grabbed my arms and pulled me up and WHOOOSH, the train went by."

If I was Ramiro, I wouldn't let a cancelled flight give me anxiety either.



Photo Credit: Catherine Lojo

As our plane soared towards its destination, Ramiro's passion and energy made a two hour flight feel like two minutes. While the subway story spoke volumes to his leadership and willingness to sacrifice for others, it was what Ramiro went on to tell me that would have a huge impact on my life.

Ramiro was in the process of forming The Foundation for Education in Honduras (FEIH), a charitable organization that builds and refurbishes primary schools in high-need areas of rural Honduras. For years Ramiro had gone to Honduras over Christmas to complete small projects for poor communities in his home country. One year he told Jon Henes, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP where Ramiro worked as a mail clerk at the time, about his plans and Jon decided to write a check. The next year Jon helped Ramiro collect funds from other coworkers and told Ramiro to bring him results. Ramiro refurbished a school with the money and months later the principal called to tell Ramiro that for the first time in that community, not one student had dropped out of school.

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With proven results of the impact that Ramiro's projects could have on these communities and increased publicity from the subway incident causing more people to reach out to Ramiro than ever before, Jon knew that securing 501(c)(3) status would provide the platform Ramiro needed to take his impact to the next level. They partnered together and formed FEIH, with Kirkland completing the legal work.

I didn't know much about Honduras at the time, but I knew that this incredible person was trying to provide hope to his country and I had to do my part to help. We exchanged contact information and soon I was volunteering with his team on all types of exciting projects, such as building the website, creating marketing materials for donors, and planning fundraisers.

After seeing my work, Jon asked to meet and discuss my involvement in FEIH. He explained that when he was my age he wanted to get involved in various organizations but they wanted only one thing, money. He decided to give me the opportunity that he never had to make an impact and told me that I should join FEIH as the President of the Junior Committee. When I asked what a Junior Committee does, his response was that it was my job to figure that out.

As I set out to work, telling friends, family and coworkers about my involvement in FEIH, they were generous in providing time, money and ideas to the cause, but not before asking the same question -- why Honduras?

I wish it were a harder question to answer and I hope one day FEIH's work will make that the case, but here are just a few facts that demonstrate the need for assistance: Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, more than half of the population lives in poverty, and it's the country with the most attempts by unaccompanied minors to illegally migrate to the United States.

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Education, the single most important factor in changing these statistics, faces challenges of its own. Schools are often rundown and unable to address the students' basic needs. Crumbling infrastructure leads to uncomfortable and unsanitary conditions for students and teachers. When these conditions are accompanied by a lack of basic school supplies, learning becomes virtually impossible.

FEIH is working hard to address these challenges. In less than a year and a half it has partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative in a Commitment to Action to build at least five schools in three years, created a Junior Committee with twenty members across five states and three college campuses to provide leadership opportunities and cultural awareness to students and young professionals in the U.S., and most importantly, cut the ribbon to open its first school on January 16, 2016.



Photo Credit: Catherine Lojo

A dilapidated two-classroom facility was transformed into a six-classroom, six-bathroom school with a playground, running water and electricity. Local materials were used in construction and local laborers, many previously unemployed, were hired for the job. Each student received a backpack with school supplies, a uniform, and shoes made by local artisans.



Photo Credit: Catherine Lojo

I thought it would only be fitting to finish this post where my FEIH journey started -- on a plane. Luckily on Friday January 14, 2016, Delta Flight 575 was not cancelled and I was able to see Honduras and the FEIH ribbon cutting ceremony with my own eyes. While Argentina and Irma (the two Honduran women who sat next to me on the plane) may never have jumped onto a subway track to save a life, the smiles they gave me after learning the reason I joined them on the flight were just as powerful.

Visit here for more information on FEIH.
The escalating crisis in Saudi Arabian-Iranian relations is going to impact many countries in numerous ways. For years Saudi Arabia and Iran's geopolitical rivalry has fuelled bloodshed in many corners of the Islamic world from Lebanon to Afghanistan. However, Riyadh's decision to execute Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr at the start of this month, the Iranian response, and the political fallout have raised the Middle East's sectarian temperatures to the highest level since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Knowing that al-Nimr's killing would meet an angry response from Iran and Shi'ite communities in several continents, what drove Saudi Arabia to carry out his execution? Why have numerous Sunni-ruled states in Africa and the Middle East sided with Riyadh and what are their stakes in this crisis? How may this escalating tension impact the prospects for peace in Syria and Yemen? Which actors in the region have the most to gain or lose from the political and social fallout? Earlier this month, Gulf State Analytics (a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consulting firm) sat down with Middle East expert Cinzia Bianco to discuss these complicated issues.

Below is the interview.

Gulf State Analytics: For many years, human rights organizations have strongly condemned Saudi Arabia's high execution rate, particularly with respect to grossly unfair trials and public beheadings. Yet, no execution in Saudi Arabia has ever exacerbated sectarian strife and geopolitical tension across the Middle East to the extent that the killing of Sheikh Nimr Biqr al-Nimr did. Why did this execution foment so much rage within Shi'ite communities from New York City to Kashmir? What is the significance of al-Nimr's killing?

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Cinzia Bianco: Executions play an integral in role Saudi Arabia's penal code. Many in the kingdom regard them as an acceptable form of punishment for grave crimes. However, the execution of 47 convicts, which Saudi officials announced on January 2, was unique for two reasons.

First, it was the largest number of people executed by Saudi Arabia in a single day since 1980. Second, 43 of them were Sunni terrorists, mostly linked with al-Qaeda, but the other four were Shi'ite dissidents, including the prominent cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr. Riyadh officials thereby equated al-Qaeda militants with Shi'ite dissidents. Many Shi'ite communities across the world view being linked to their most despised enemy, Sunni jihadists, as extremely offensive.

Additionally, many considered al-Nimr to be the moral leader of Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite opposition movement based in the restive Eastern Province, home to the vast majority of the kingdom's Shi'ites. Therefore, the cleric's execution was intended to send a message to the kingdom's Shi'ite minority that subversive dissenters will receive the harshest punishments. To many Shi'ites, this execution symbolizes oppression by Sunni rulers, and it recalls their sect's founding myths and the Shi'ite narrative of being a persecuted group.

Finally, many Iranians deeply respected al-Nimr. Riding this public sentiment, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei immediately responded to the cleric's execution, declaring al-Nimr a shahid (martyr). This declaration significantly fuelled outrage from many Iranians, including the hundreds who stormed Riyadh's diplomatic missions in Tehran and Mashhad in response to the cleric's beheading.

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It is important to note that over the years, Saudi authorities have usually arrested clerics of al-Nimr's standing in Saudi Arabia and sought to pressure them into abandoning their political activism, rather than killing them. Thus, the decision to execute al-Nimr was considered highly provocative. The Saudis had already arrested the cleric in 2012 and sentenced him to death in October 2014. But because the authorities suspended his death sentence then, many hoped that the sentence would be commuted this time as well.

Gulf State Analytics: The crisis in Saudi-Iranian relations has quickly spread to numerous African and Arab nations. Four of Saudi Arabia's fellow GCC states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE), plus Comoros, Djibouti, Jordan, Somalia, and Sudan, took diplomatic actions against Iran. We have also heard pro-Riyadh rhetoric from Egypt and Turkey. What incentives do these Sunni-ruled states have to side with Saudi Arabia rather than to remain neutral?

Cinzia Bianco: Several factors drove the formation of this de facto Sunni alignment against the Islamic Republic. Among all the states which sided with Riyadh, Bahrain is the only one which completely severed relations with Tehran. Manama's decision did not surprise the experts. Bahrain's Sunni leadership has faced continuous turmoil since 2011, when many of the island kingdom's Shi'ite citizens, who comprise the majority of Bahrain's population, took to the streets to protest Al Khalifa's rule. In countering such opposition, Bahrain's leadership has become increasingly reliant on Riyadh's strategic and financial support. Not only has Riyadh pledged USD one billion in aid per year for the next ten years, but Saudi ARAMCO also manages the Abu Safa oilfield, the largest Bahraini field. Such support from Saudi is crucial as Bahrain undergoes economic stagnation, and the government relies on oil revenues for at least 80 percent of the state budget.


The milk goes into everything from Icelandic skyr to kosher Greek yogurt. (Photo: Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images)

By Clint Rainey

That cup of thickly textured Siggi's actually has a fascinating backstory: Refugees from Bhutan, the country sandwiched between China and India, are being trained to work as milkers in New York's dairy heartland. Originally forced to resettle in bleak camps in places like Nepal, they belong to a minority group of some 100,000 who've been kicked out by the Bhutanese government. About 40,000 have entered America in the last five years, and so far 23 (but an important 23!) have picked up dairy jobs through something called the Refugee Milker Training Program. The Times says the state saw it as a strategic move a few years back, beginning in 2014 "out of mutual need": Refugees could get agrarian jobs they were familiar with; farms could get more hands "to fuel the yogurt boom."

Related: 19 Defining Moments in the History of Yogurt



Participants attend courses at Alfred State College to learn to operate milking machinery, and even get help learning to use forks and knives (many of them spent 20 years in refugee camps). The 12-hour shifts they work four days a week provide one of the country's powerhouse dairy regions with a reliable, legal workforce. The Feds now do far fewer raids of these farms in order to detain undocumented Mexican workers -- which, as it turns out, wasn't the most efficient business model. Best of all, the workers also have an advocate: a woman the Times calls "an indefatigable leader in the region" who runs a poverty-fighting nonprofit and reports that they and their families are making themselves at home in the dairy town of Warsaw, which has also considerably diversified its population.

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More from Grub Street:

Also on HuffPost:
DES MOINES, IA - JANUARY 28 : Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to students at Roosevelt High School during a campaign event January 28, 2016 in Des Moines, Iowa. Sanders, who is seeking the nomination for the Democratic Party is on the presidential campaign trail across Iowa ahead of the Iowa Caucus taking place February 1, a week before the New Hampshire Primaries. Joshua Lott for The Washington Post via Getty Images

In a world of American media displaying never-ending coverage of ISIS beheadings, how many politicians say "I'll be damned" if Americans lead the fight against ISIS?

Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate to win the Congressional Award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

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While Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump compete to sound more hawkish, only Bernie Sanders says, "I'll be damned if kids in the state of Vermont -- or taxpayers in the state of Vermont -- have to defend the royal Saudi family, which is worth hundreds of billions of dollars."

When people like Paul Krugman evaluate Bernie Sanders and Clinton, the feasibility of a single-payer program is scrutinized, but money spent funding perpetual wars never seems to be evaluated. In terms of interest alone for both Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown University's Cost of War states, "By 2054, interest costs will themselves be at least $7.9 trillion unless the US changes the way that it pays for the wars."

Remember the war tax you paid to fund Iraq? Of course not.

Many of today's threats to U.S. national security stem from the Bush Administration, and the Democrats who sided with these neocons. Unlike Clinton, who views her Iraq Vote as simply a "mistake," Bernie Sanders possessed enough wisdom to evaluate the same intelligence Clinton now blames for her mistake.

One look at what Bernie Sanders warned in 2002 illustrates his unique status among American politicians. Here's his speech opposing the Iraq War, and ask yourself how much of today's world Sanders was able to foresee:

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Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have, let me give five reasons why I am opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution. One, I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed... Fifth, I am concerned about the problems of so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed and what role will the U.S. play in ensuing a civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists?

Did Hillary Clinton possess the wisdom of Bernie Sanders, at a time America needed a leading Democrat to counter the neocons in Bush's administration?

Clinton might be "wicked smart," like President Obama states, but Bernie Sanders possesses wisdom. Wisdom and intelligence are different, and if you confuse the two, you're stuck with an endless stream of politicians like Hillary Clinton. With Bernie Sanders, America will get someone who makes decisions based upon principle and value system, not political expediency and evolution.

There's a reason The Economist ran a cover with the words, "What does Hillary stand for?"

If you've been in the spotlight for decades, yet people don't know what you stand for, then you might be "wicked smart," but your intelligence doesn't correlate to wisdom.

Furthermore, if you call an Iraq Vote a mistake, then repeat the mistake by advocating the bombing of Libya, the phrase "smart power" is meaningless. As stated in The New Republic, "Benghazi Won't Stick to Hillary Clinton, But the Disastrous Libyan Intervention Should."

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Also, if Hillary Clinton has been around forever, yet 59% of voters find her "not honest and trustworthy," then her experience hasn't correlated to effective leadership. It's never good to read a Washington Post headline titled Hillary Clinton's historical problem with honesty. What's most disturbing is Clinton's Bosnia sniper story; it never happened.

In contrast, Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate in 2016 with positive favorability ratings.

While Paul Krugman and some others feel that Hillary Clinton is "ready" to govern, they fail to mention whether or not she'd govern wisely, or at all, if the FBI declares she jeopardized national security with her private server. In addition, while pundits earnestly debate the feasibility of social programs presented by Bernie Sanders, from free college tuition to single-payer healthcare, very few observers ask how Americans would pay for Hillary Clinton's "neocon" foreign policy.

Has Clinton learned from her Iraq War vote? With all the tragic consequences of Iraq, Libya, and other failed policies, Clinton will still have a "neocon" foreign policy according to one leading historian quoted in The New York Times:

"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama's more realist approach "could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table" if elected president. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he added, "it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."

Remember, Hillary Clinton is supposed to be a Democrat, not a remnant of the Bush administration.

Another New York Times article titled The Next Act of the Neocons explains the type of people who'd advise a future Clinton White House:

Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver's seat of American foreign policy... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration...

If you're a Democrat, and "it's easy to imagine" neoconservatives advising your choice for president, then you're not truly a Democrat. You're a Republican on foreign policy, but enjoy spreading disparaging memes on Facebook representing your viewpoint of socially backwards conservatives.

Finally, how many American politicians do you know who would drive a busload of people in need of affordable medication, into Canada? The following is a C-Span transcript of Bernie Sanders describing his trip across the border in search of medication for his constituents:

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, there is not much I can add to the brilliant remarks made by Senator Dorgan. I think he, in a very comprehensive manner, made clear why the Senate and this country should move to prescription drug reimportation. I think he very ably answered the objections that we know are sure to come and made the case as well as could be made. My State borders Canada. Some years ago, I put together what, in fact, turns out to be the very first bus trip to take constituents over the Canadian border to buy low-cost prescription drugs. All of us have days which are transformative where something happens we will never forget, and that is the day I will never forget. On that day we took a busload of Vermonters, mostly women, many of the women struggling with breast cancer. We went from St. Albans, VT, to Montreal, Canada. I will never forget the look on the faces of those women who were struggling for their lives when they bought breast cancer medicine at 10 percent of the cost they were paying in the State of Vermont. The question is a very simple question: How do you have a drug manufactured by a company, manufactured in the same factory, put in the same bottles, sold in Canada, in some cases for one-tenth the price that same medicine is sold in the United States of America? How possibly can that happen?



Could you possibly imagine Clinton or Trump driving cancer patients across the border, in search of more affordable medication?

The time is now. Today, not tomorrow.

Save the cynicism for never-ending wars, not single-payer healthcare.

Will you ever see another statesman like Bernie Sanders in your lifetime?
You really did it this time... It doesn't matter if it was going away for a boys' weekend on her birthday or drunkenly flirting with her friend at a party, you're going to need to plan one hell of a Valentine's Day weekend to make up for your errant ways. (Note to my husband: if you did either of the above you would no longer be able to walk without assistance.) Luckily you have me - your romantic weekend fairy godmother - to point you in the all the right directions:

Lodging

Don't even think about skimping on accommodations for this trip. Go big or never go home again. B&Bs have thin walls and all the doilies and antiques tend to conjure grandmas instead of romance. Big hotels are noisy and annoying.

Calistoga Ranch



Photo courtesy of Calistoga Ranch

Be a big boy and book the Calistoga Ranch, the crown jewel of wine country lodging. Located in a private canyon over 157 acres, this resort caters to Hollywood and Silicon Valley royalty for its ultra-private accommodations. With only 50 freestanding lodges, even at full capacity you and your lovely will feel like you have the whole place to yourself.

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And let's talk about the rooms... We can't even call them rooms. They are fancy indoor-outdoor lodges.



Photo courtesy of Calistoga Ranch

When I stayed there with my husband (no, my husband didn't f-up; we were celebrating our 5-year anniversary), our lodge was built around two beautiful oak trees. From the outdoor shower and huge soaking tub to the indoor-outdoor fireplace, the lodge was jaw-dropping rustic luxury.

Lucky for you, the Calistoga Ranch put together quite the romantic little package for Valentine's Day. Called the "Rekindle your Romance" package (how fitting; it's like they knew you f'd up!). You get "two nights in a one-bedroom lodge with fireplace and king bed, a bottle of Calistoga Ranch Cabernet and chocolates, two 60-minute in-lodge spa treatments, romantic candlelit dinner for two, and daily breakfast in bed." Boom. All this package is missing is your deep-hearted apologies for you wronging the woman in your life. Package is $1,447 per night. calistogaranch.aubergeresorts.com or 866.484.8829

Wineries



Photo courtesy of Gargiulo Vineyards

Don't expect to wow your lady with visits to the crowded big wineries, where she will have to dodge drunken tourists to get a sip of wine. Make it seem like you did tons of research and spoke with insiders to come up with your itinerary.

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Assuming you are coming from the Bay Area, route your trip through Sonoma to hit a couple good wineries on your way to the Napa.

Viansa



Photo courtesy of Viansa

When you make that magical turn off the highway and rolling hills of vineyards suddenly surround you, you know you won't be far from Viansa. Built on a hilltop, overlooking postcard-worthy wetlands and hills, Viansa serves up some delicious California-centric wines. What makes Viansa a "can't miss" in your apology weekend is the Private Outlook Tasting - a flight of reserve wines served with locally-sourced cheeses in your own private outlook cabana. Tip: Join the wine club and the tasting will be free. Private Outlook Tasting is $75 pp. Reservations are required: www.viansa.com/booking or 800.995.4740 ext.5.

Cuvaison



Photo by Matthew Millman

Visiting the Cuvaison Carneros Tasting Room feels like you're sipping wine at a famous producer's modern abode (without the obnoxious models and actresses milling about). Wall-to-wall windows allow you to enjoy your yummy wine while taking in Cuvaison's vast vineyards. Even if you tasted these wines in a locked closet, you wouldn't want to miss their classic Carneros chardonnay and Diablo Syrah (my favorite red in the world). Tastings are $20 pp. Reservations are required: www.cuvaison.com or 707.942.2455.



Gargiulo Vineyards



Courtesy Gargiulo Vineyards

This is basically the piece de resistance of Napa wineries. Nestled in the exclusive Oakville region of Napa, known for producing some of the finest Cabernet Sauvignon in the world (it's all about the red rock), Gargiulo Vineyards only produces about 900 cases annually of each of its premium wines. Any true wine connoisseur is on the short list (or waiting list) to receive Gargiulo's most sought-after vintages. The tasting experience is as special as the wine - enjoy a yummy food pairing with your flight in the eclectic winery (reclaimed wood flooring from a 1950s Napa gymnasium; chandeliers crafted from wine barrels), stroll through the aisles of deliciously scented wine-filled oak barrels, and learn about what makes the red rock vineyards so unique. Tip: Really impress your lovely lady by purchasing a bottle of the celebrity cult-favorite all-natural face serum Vintner's Daughter. You guessed it -- Vintner Jeff Gargiulo's daughter April created this magical serum from 22 of the most active organic and wild crafted botanicals.

Eats

Wine Country is known for its delicious cuisine as much as its wine. It's tough to go wrong. My only advice is to skip the fancy lunches -- save your time and money and enjoy some of Wine Country's yummiest quick service spots.

Addendum

This is Thomas Keller's version of a boxed lunch shack. Best. Fried. Chicken. Ever. The problem is they are closed until Spring so you are out of luck unless you plan your trip for later in the year, but I had to mention it. http://www.thomaskeller.com/addendum



Oxbow Market

Similar to the Ferry Building in San Francisco, this marketplace is chock full of delicious eats. From the charcuterie at The Fatted Calf to the sushi at Eiko's, you could basically eat here every day for a week and never get bored (you may get fat; but at least you won't be bored). www.oxbowpublicmarket.com.

Red Rock Cafe & Backdoor BBQ

Located in the town of Napa, you and the lady can stroll through the streets - window-shopping (your favorite!) at all the cute boutiques and end up at this BBQ bonanza. Now everyone's happy. Don't miss the ribs and garlic fries. Yum. www.backdoorbbq.com

Lakehouse Restaurant at the Calistoga Ranch

Don't miss the breakfast bonanza - think house-made brioche French toast and huevos rancheros. And, their dinner was so good my husband and I canceled our other dinner reservations and ate there both nights. And honestly, who wants to drive after a day of tasting? My husband and I are just waiting for Executive Chef Bryan Moscatello to go on Top Chef or Iron Chef to kick some ass! http://calistogaranch.aubergeresorts.com/
Bogota, Bogota Capital District, Colombia, South America



Bus rapid transit (BRT) in Bogota, Colombia / Scania.com

"The Paris climate agreement didn't create the commitments we need to limit global warming to a 2 degree Celsius increase," said Laura Tuck, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank at Transforming Transportation, a conference in Washington, D.C. "But it was an awesome achievement. All 190 countries -- everybody -- are in." All countries are now focused on how to achieve a net-zero carbon world by 2050. For Andrew Steer, president of the World Resource Institute (WRI), the success of the Paris climate meeting, and the long-term movement towards the ambitious 2050 goals, signifies the "renaissance of moral imperative around the world."

Tuck and Steer called for undertaking "disruptive approaches" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from the transportation sector, which accounts for the second largest share of energy-related emissions.

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On the goods side, this involves shifting freight transportation from roads to rails and waterways. "Freight logistics for transporting goods needs to be greener." Suresh Prabhu, minister of railways for India, concurred, explaining how India, with the World Bank's help, is investing billions in a new, renewable energy-powered regional rail network to better facilitate the movement of goods.

And urban transportation was described as critical to achieving a sustainable future. This is because more than half of the world's population -- who create 80 percent of global GDP, consume 70 percent of the world's energy, and expend around the same percentage of its GHGs -- are found in cities, and they can either get around in cars on in a more sustainable manner.

While many of the world's largest cities are busy retrofitting themselves with more sustainable transportation networks, it may not be too late to do things the right way the first time around with the world's exploding second-tier cities. "We need to get to those second-tier cities that are growing fast. We need to get to them early and get them to invest in 'live, work, play' environments," said Tuck.

A key part of this strategy in developing countries is to expand street-level connectivity; invest more in public transportation, like bus rapid transit (BRT), subways, and light rail; and create a regulatory environment that enables shared transportation, including mobility on demand services like Uber and Lyft and shared car and bike services.

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In addition to their many environmental benefits, these sustainable sources of urban transportation can be major job creators. Just to use one example, Steer said in Bogota, Colombia, some 40,000 workers are directly involved in keeping their city's BRT system working, with another 55,000 indirectly involved. As Dario Rais Lopes, national secretary of transport and urban mobility for Brazil explained, his government is now forcing all of its 5,600 cities with a population of more than 20,000 to come up with a plan for moving to a BRT system, so imagine the number of jobs there. And then think about all of the jobs related to constructing sustainable transportation infrastructure. In an example from the U.S., complete streets, which provide equally as safe access for pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles, were found to create far more jobs than traditional road construction project.

Copenhagen, Denmark was held up as a model of disruption in urban transportation. Morten Kabell, mayor of technical and government affairs for the city, explained how the city transformed itself from a car-centric city 40 years ago to the Copenhagen of today, where more than 50 percent of the population commutes by bicycle, even from the suburbs, while just 20 percent use public transportation, and the rest drive. Copenhagen has its priorities straight: when snow storms hit, the city actually plows the bike lanes first, before streets for cars. But Kabell added that "Copenhageners aren't so idealistic. They bike because it's the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to get around." And the city has worked hard for decades to disrupt the rein of cars.



Copenhageners biking in winter / My City Way

Kabell explained that Copenhagen, one of the world's richest cities, "had to change in order to set this example. Only a few decades ago, we were both totally car-dependent and on the verge of bankruptcy." City leadership believes going green is what saved the city from financial ruin and ensures its continued success. Today, instead of allowing big box stores only accessible by car, they enable small, local stores for bicyclists. And now Copenhagen is only upping the ante: they are investing $1 billion in wind turbines in the city, with the goal of being totally carbon neutral by 2025.

And if Copenhagen's well-plowed, wintry bike lanes sound disruptive, how about "taxibots," which are autonomous vehicles shared by one of more riders at the same time. Cities could begin to get serious about taxibots, said Jose Viegas, the head of the International Transport Forum (ITF), which just did an intriguing modeling exercise on what these vehicles could mean for Lisbon, Portugal. ITF thinks taxibots would reduce overall car use, eliminate the vast majority of parking spaces, but could also increase total vehicle miles traveled.

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Taxibots study / ITF
"Any musician or artist who can find a way to be free, and then express it--dude, that's what we're all looking for." ~ Jon Butcher

Jon Butcher is a recognized American rock and blues guitarist and songwriter from the Boston music scene whose career has spanned more than thirty years. I caught up with Jon and talked about the songwriters who have inspired him, the difference in writing for himself vs. writing for television and movies, and his newest CD titled 2ROADS EAST.

Jason Landry: Who gave you your first guitar and what was it?

Jon Butcher: My mom. When I was a little boy, Sears Roebuck sold a guitar and amp combination, so when you opened up the guitar case there was a speaker on one side. It was called a Silvertone, made by Danelectro. Those guitars are quite collectible now.

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JL: Do you remember the moment when you knew that this, being a musician, was what you wanted to do for the rest of your life?

JB: In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania there was a club called The Electric Factory. I wasn't old enough to get in at the time, but Jimi Hendrix played there and I snuck around back and listened to the sound check. And that was life changing. That was it--right there. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to be in that room playing guitar on a stage instead of listening at the back door.

JL: In 2014 you covered and recorded a group of Jimi Hendrix songs that you released under the title "Experienced" It's pretty evident that Hendrix' music made a lasting effect on you. Can you pinpoint a few specific things that drew you to his music?

JB: Yeah. Jimi, unlike any other guitar players, had a way of playing and singing where the two things were joined and inner-locked. Up until that point, a guitar player would play chords and sing over the top of the chords that they were playing--and that was that. But Jimi managed to find a way to play lyrically so that his guitar and the lyrics and vocals were weaved into one. And to my knowledge, that was the first time I had ever heard that before.

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JL: So you are more than just a guitar player----you sing and write your own material. What songwriters have inspired you?

JB: That's easy. John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney--they're all terrific songwriters. I've probably been influenced by the same musicians as you have. Great writing is great writing, and those three come to mind right away.

JL: You were recently back in the studio working on a new album. How do you go about your writing process? Do you start with lyrics, or do you start with a lick or riff?

JB: All of it is fair game. I really don't have a particular mode. I find that sometimes a melody will come to me, and I'll grab my iPhone and sing into it. Sometimes I don't know what the lyrics are going to be, so I'll moon, spoon, and june them--I make up words that go long with the melody. I know to go back to that melody and sort it out. So I don't think I have a predisposed method. I really just wait for the muse to strike.

JL: And your new CD is called 2ROADS EAST. How did you come up with the title?

JB: The CD title 2ROADS EAST references my deliverance from bondage (Los Angeles) to the Promised Land (Boston) in 2009. I'd determined that I was leaving L.A. by one road or by another, but was leaving L.A. regardless--a failed marriage/ divorce, the dissolution of my business Electric Factory, the passing of my dog Buck. L.A. and specifically Sylmar, California had begun to represent a chapter that badly needed changing.

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JL: You also write for television and movies, correct? How do you find that writing process? Do you find it similar or different than when you write for your own albums?

JB: That's a good question. It's different because in many of the situations that I have written for movies, you're literally writing to a scene, or you're writing to a requirement. The director may say, look, we need something soft and gentle and blah, blah, blah. And so you cater what you write to the desires of the director or producer. So it's a little different.

JL: When it's just you and your guitar, do you find it harder to write a song with lyrics or an instrumental?

JB: I think they are equal. For me, a successful instrumental is one that doesn't need a lyric to make it work--that somehow the guitar is lyrical and melodic.

JL: Have you ever had any musicians give you any advice or words of wisdom when you were just starting out?

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JB: When I did my first big international tour opening for the J. Geils Band on their Freeze Frame tour, and I was just coming out with my first record. Peter Wolf came into the dressing room before we played the first gig--I was scared to death. We were playing at Cobo Hall, three nights in Detroit. And I was honestly petrified--I didn't know what to think of it. And he came in and gave me the best advice that I've ever heard, he said, "Don't worry about them. Play for yourself. If you're digging it, they will too," as apposed to trying to play to please. That never works. What you really have to do is find what it is that you like and do that, and that will draw people in.

JL: Are there any guitar players that you have played with in the last few years that really amazed you?

JB: Jeff Beck. He's my favorite living guitar player. The guy is an inspiration to me even at this moment. He's free--he plays like he's free. He's not encumbered by what he can't do, or some technique that he hasn't mastered. He's completely free. Any musician or artist who can find a way to be free, and then express it--dude, that's what we're all looking for.

JL: If you weren't a musician you would be_____________________?

JB: A cowboy. Not a real cowboy, but the kind that don't have to work, and just ride around, and get the girl, and play guitar on horseback.

JL: Craziest guitar related story that you can remember.

JB: I remember getting all my gear stolen before a gig once. Somebody drove off with our equipment truck. We were getting ready to load-in at sound check, the roadies went out in the alley and they say, where's the truck?-----GONE.

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JL: With so many things changing in the music industry, what would be your best advice or inspirational message for new musicians that are trying to make a name for themselves?

JB: That's easy--Find your truth. I don't mean that in the esoteric vague sense, I mean literally, find the thing that is true in you. If you're angry, or if you're one of those people who are never angry, find that truth and write music that speaks that, because if you do that, it'll be real and honest. If you don't find your truth, then you're just sort of mouthing it and faking it, and everyone can tell. I find for me that if I'm truthful with the things that I like, and the music that I understand and can embrace, other people will like it.

Jon's newest CD will be available soon in stores, on iTunes, Amazon.com, and on his website: jonbutcher.com
If you think that Donald Trump has been dominating the Republican primary process then you are just not paying attention -- it is, and always has been, all about Marco Rubio.

It is now only a matter of days until the first presidential primary (February 1st) and sure, Donald Trump is still managing to capture most of the media attention. But then again he always would, regardless of his polling numbers. He is an anti-establishment candidate, and his brand of say-anything, do-anything politics is clearly eye-catching if not particularly intelligent. And he certainly can no longer be dismissed in the same way that he was after first announcing his candidacy.

Trump has been polling at almost 40% nationally and 30% in Iowa for months now, and if anything his support is only getting stronger the closer we get to the voting. Trump is a real candidate and his voters are real Republicans. It is just that a closer look at the race indicates something very different, and only one obvious winner - Marco Rubio.

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Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is a former Commissioner for the City of West Miami, a former member of Florida's House of Representatives, and a one-term U.S. Senator. Fresh-faced and only 44 years of age, Rubio has never had much patience for traditional career hierarchies. Four years after first winning his Florida seat Rubio had already forced himself into the position of Majority Leader; and three years later he was Speaker of the House.

Rubio had achieved an entire career's worth of success - though be it at state level - in a frantic seven years. After slowly and deliberately building a reputation as a fiscal conservative - having presumably felt the impact of the Tea Party rolling through the Republican establishment - Rubio boldly challenged former Florida Governor, Charlie Crist, for the Senate seat vacated by Mel Martinez.

Starting as a relative unknown, and heavy underdog, Marco Rubio had the seat wrapped-up from the moment he opened his mouth. He was simply smarter, more articulate and a considerably better public performer than Republican politics had been used to up until that point. The only reasonable - and perhaps fairly obvious - forerunner to Rubio's highbrow and aesthetically pleasing politics has been Barack Obama. And this is no accidental analogy.

Following an impressive 2009 victory over Crist, Rubio began immediately positioning himself for greater things by joining every committee that would have him, including the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; and the much sought after Committee on Foreign Relations. And with only a couple of years of experience under his belt in national politics, Rubio was already being sounded-out by Mitt Romney as a possible running mate in 2012.

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And in eerily familiar tones to Obama's 'Yes We Can' call for a more youthful, progressive politics, Rubio launched his campaign for President with a commencement speech that included: "We've reached a moment now, not just in my career, but the history of our country, where I believe that it needs a Republican Party that is new and vibrant, that understands the future, [and] has an agenda for that future".

Which brings us back to Mondays Primary in Iowa, and a Republican Party that is beginning to panic. The National Review - the magazine founded by the indomitable William F. Buckley, and considered to be the 'Conservative Bible' - in the past week just declared itself "Against Trump" and pulled together a police-line-up of 22 prominent conservatives to support their position.

As personal and vindictive as this might seem, it simply wasn't. The National Review were merely trying to save what they care about: "Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones". With a series of tight Senate elections coming-up in the next four years, they see the spectre of Donald Trump as both ideological suicide for conservatism, and as party suicide for the Republicans (We might now call this the Corbyn Effect in relation to the unalterable tail-spin that the socialist and terrorist sympathiser, Jeremy Corbyn, has forced upon the British Labour Party).

Trump was the easy and obvious target, but he is not alone. Ted Cruz as the other 'anti-establishment' candidate has been suffering from a sudden - and similarly fear driven - assault from people whom he once considered to be friends (many of which are his old Senate colleagues). On the other side of the ledger is an 'establishment' field consisting of Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Marco Rubio himself.

Add to this a collection of increasingly desperate looking stragglers - of which Ben Carson and Rand Paul are the most prominent - and it is easy to see what the National Review are calling for. They want the establishment wing of the party to denounce personal ambition and start thinking about the long-term good of the party. Ideally this would be a trimming of the field so that Trump and Cruz are suddenly balanced-off against one - or two at most - sensible conservatives.

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The theory is simple: at this point voter preferences would narrow-down, the choice between the two Republican factions would become unavoidably stark, and the circus would be over (the polling certainly seems to indicate that in a head-to-head vote the establishment camp would secure a comfortable victory). And sure this is likely to happen - but not as quickly as most conservatives would like.

As it stands, with 11 active candidates, Trump and Cruz are running as a clear first and second in both the national polls, and in the first two primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now this isn't really a problem and it certainly isn't a surprise. Both these states - though Iowa in particular - have a strong evangelical base and a recent history of voting for out-of-the box, and ultimately losing, candidates. In 2008 Iowa nominated Mike Huckabee while John McCain went on to claim the nomination, and in 2012 they opted for Rick Santorum over the eventual winner, Mitt Romney.

The particularly unnerving factor in this election cycle is the presence of a primary calendar that is so heavily front-loaded in favour of Trump and Cruz-type characters, that the establishment candidates are unlikely to get any real traction before the Florida primary on the 15th of March. That represents another month and a half of Trump-Cruz momentum, and potentially another month and a half of establishment vote sharing.

Hence the pressure to clean-house and coordinate an immediate Republican rear-guard action before too many votes have managed to slip away. Marco Rubio is not just the obvious, but also likely the only candidate that could achieve such an early consolidation behind his campaign. Rubio is both a clear third in all national polls (10%) and a clear third in Iowa (12%), with his next closest competitor being his one-time mentor Jeb Bush (5% both nationally and in Iowa).

However, beyond the polling numbers, Rubio has simply shown himself to be a different political animal to the rest of the Republican field. He has quietly dominated the majority of the official debates so far - despite Trump stealing most of the headlines - and has done so intellectually rather than through demagoguery. One of the most down-heartening moments in the race so far came when Donald Trump was asked to explain the 'nuclear triad'.

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The Sarah Palin-esque fumbling and unease spread well beyond Trump, with the entire stage looking at their feet, trying to avoid having the question referred their way. Rubio - reminding voters that some politicians still read books - was the only person to raise his hand and take the question on (the triad refers to the three conventional nuclear payload delivery mechanisms of aerial bombing, missile silos, and submarines).

This has been the theme of the debate season so far. So naturally there has been some push-back. Bush went first: focussing on Rubio's history of missing Senate votes and clearly trying to use his one-time protegee as a kick-start for his own faltering campaign; Rubio was quick off the mark, "Over the last few weeks I listened to Jeb, he said you're modelling your campaign after John McCain... You know how many votes John McCain missed? Jeb, let me tell you, I don't remember you ever complaining about John McCain's vote record. The only reason you're doing it now is because we're running for the same position. Someone convinced you attacking me is going to help you".

This was the beginning of the end, the sense of emasculation and visible unease that set over Bush in this moment has stuck with him ever since. Donald Trump, believing that he could succeed where Bush had failed, quickly relaunched this angle of questioning; yet he did so as part of a scatter-gun, and uniquely vitriolic, attack that included belittling Rubio's household finances and mocking his choice of haircut.

The only surprise here, was that for the first time in Trump's spiteful war on everything, it failed to stick, and Rubio walked away unscathed. Rand Paul's best effort was to accuse Rubio of being too kind to Syrian refugees; naturally Rubio rolled with the punch and doubled down on this point "We've always been a country that's willing to accept people who've been displaced, and I've been open to that".

Chris Christie, who has banked everything on increasingly unlikely victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, went after Rubio for pursuing sensible immigration reform from the Senate floor (the now infamous "Gang of Eight" bill in 2013). Once again, hardly the most compelling criticism. Yet as he laced his attack with a fizzing indignation, and as he snarled-out pejorative claims that Rubio has "never been in a tough race in his life" and is trying "to slime his way to the White House", Christie has simply confirmed the widely held impression from his time as New Jersey Governor - and permanent anchor on his current campaign - that he is an overaggressive and deeply unpleasant human being; effectively, a bully.

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When Ted Cruz decided to follow-up on Christie's immigration related line of attack, Marco Rubio laid a marker down for the rest of the field: "this is an interesting point when you talk about immigration. Ted Cruz, you used to say you supported doubling the number of green cards, now you say that you're against it. You used to support a 500% increase in the number of guest workers, now you say that you're against it. You used to support legalizing people that were here illegally. Now, you say you're against it. You used to say that you were in favour of birthright citizenship. Now, you say that you are against it... That is not consistent conservatism. That is political calculation."

Yet, more telling than his performances against the other Republican's, is the attention that he is getting from Hillary Clinton. As the only viable Democratic candidate, the behaviour of her campaign operates as a barometer for the strengths and weaknesses within the Republican field. So the fact that she is focussing the majority of her attack-ads on Rubio speaks volumes about who she believes will be the nominee and her eventual challenger. Yet even here - and strangely reminiscent of her Republican adversaries - Hillary's attacks have failed to develop any real force; taking on a blunted feel, her most recent attempt asks the generic cliche, "What Is Marco Rubio Hiding?"

This is the state of the field that Marco Rubio has before him. So it is little wonder that he has so far seemed immune from the sort of attacks that have tended to rattle the other candidates. His only weakness - as discussed by serious commentators - is his lack of a 'ground-game'. What this means is that Rubio has not yet developed the sort of street-level person-to-person campaign presence that is now considered important - particularly in evangelical constituencies such as Iowa.

However, this is less indictable than it might seem. Rather than being asleep behind the wheel, Rubio's team are openly talking about a "different kind of campaign" that heavily invests in digital outreach and - perhaps more interestingly - focusses on a nation-wide strategy. For argument sake, let's say he has misjudged this one badly. Well that means despite the self-sabotage he has still managed to considerably out-perform the rest of the establishment in almost every reputable opinion poll. If the opposite is true, then Rubio's campaign is only just warming-up.

Either way, if the worst crime that can be pinned on Rubio is that he has taken a moderate position on immigration and has missed some Senate votes, then the Party might as well crown him their nominee right now. He is, after all, the most palatable conservative of the four major establishment candidates (often expressing the sort of evangelical opinions that would make liberal-leaning voters cringe)

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But more importantly, the traditional Republican machinery has started to creak into life - the children have had their fun, and the adults are now trying to re-establish some order. This goes further than the National Review; there has been a growing crescendo of complaints from the other candidates that Rubio has been receiving preferential treatment - though be it subconscious - from the various debate moderators who they claim have been inappropriately referring to Rubio as if he is already the nominee.

If Rubio achieves an expected third place finish in Iowa then this sort of pressure will become increasingly overt. And once this happens how much longer will an underperforming Bush, a tainted Christy and a non-entity Kasich be able to justify remaining in the race? It seems almost inevitable that the Republican establishment - scared by the spectre of a Trump or Cruz nomination - will soon be publically backing Marco Rubio.
This month, cities along the East Coast saw some of their biggest snowfalls in recent history. On Tuesday, Punxsutawney Phil makes his annual (and usually dismal) prediction. Yes, winter is here for good now.

Luckily, a handful of big events mean you can avoid the wintry mixes and unpredicted below-freezing cold snaps in places that benefit from some of the best wintertime weather. Ditch the shovel for a Sazerac, defrost the bathing suit and add these winter happenings to your calendar.

photo courtesy of International Bear Convergence (IBC)

International Bear Convergence - Palm Springs, CA February 4 - 8, 2016

Bears (and their admirers) come out of hibernation and head to Palm Springs for its beautifully warm climate in early February for IBC. It's no mirage -- these four days are the real deal, with themed pool parties at the see-and-be-seen Hard Rock Hotel pool, top DJs and cabanas by day and nighttime dance parties by night.

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2015 Armeinius Ball photo by Barrett DeLong-Church

Gay Mardi Gras - New Orleans, LA February 4 - 9, 2016

America's party city hosts America's biggest party. While you're grabbing beads, and some other things, you can't help but appreciate the city's vibrant gay culture. It's always there, and it's on full view during Mardi Gras. Look for Krewe of Armeinius Ball (Feb. 6), one of the largest gay troops in the city's krewe (carnival/ball/parade) culture. On Fat Tuesday (Feb. 9), most of the frolicking happens in the French Quarter, where the Bourbon Street Awards, often called "the most famous drag-queen contest in America," takes place outside Oz nightclub. This year's emcees include RuPaul's Drag Race season six winner Bianca del Rio and Oz's own Blanche Debris.

photo courtesy of OUTsider Film & Arts Festival

OUTsider Film & Arts Festival - Austin, TX February 17 - 21, 2016

LGBTQI creativity takes the stage during OUTsider. What other culture embraces individuality, community and zero-boundary thinking the way ours does? These characteristics make for a distinct artistic view that comes to life through visual art, film, theater, choreography, music, literature and performance. Join the Austin festival to revel in the artistic wonder that is LGBTQI creators and audiences.

Winter Party Festival photo by Denis Largeron

Winter Party Festival - Miami Beach, FL March 2 - 7, 2016

Shake off those winter blues at Winter Party in Miami Beach. You'll barely have use for a shirt, let alone a coat, at this South Beach fest. It may seem like just another excuse to party, but this celebration also raises funds to support the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which fights for LGBT rights nationwide. Win-win. Last year's attendance topped 13,000, with people coming from all over the world to enjoy parties on the beach, swanky hotels and Miami's famed nightclubs.
Republican Presidential candidate Texas Senator Ted Cruz gestures during the Republican Presidential debate sponsored by Fox News at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa on January 28, 2016. / AFP / AFP PHOTO / Jim WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump won Thursday night's Republican debate by not participating, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz failed to capitalize on Trump's absence. Meanwhile, it is unlikely that the debate, hosted by Fox News, will have an impact on Monday's Iowa Caucus.

If you missed the first couple minutes of the debate you missed Cruz's best moment. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly asked Cruz about "the elephant not in the room," referring to Trump's absence. "Let me say I'm a maniac and everyone on stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben (Carson), you're a terrible surgeon," Cruz responded. "Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way," he said as the audience laughed.

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The bad news for Cruz was that because Trump wasn't present to take incoming from all the challengers, Cruz became the target of attacks from most of the other candidates. Cruz found himself in a defensive posture, which is a position he clearly hates to be in. That may explain his Trump-like whining answer directed at Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. "Chris, I would note that that the last four questions have been, 'Rand, please attack Ted. Marco, please attack Ted. Chris, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted,'" he complained. "Gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question I may have to leave the stage." Cruz's feeble attempt at humor seemed more like an unforced error.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose answers mostly seemed pre-planned, and whose tone was mostly self-righteous, seized on the Cruz bobble in a subsequent response. "Don't worry, I'm not leaving the stage no matter what you ask me," he said to Wallace, who then said, "Good." Rubio, who trails in recent polls of likely Iowa Caucus goers, clearly targeted Cruz's strong support among evangelical Christian conservatives. "When I'm president, I can tell you this, my faith will not just influence the way I'll govern as president, it will influence the way I live my life," Rubio said. "Because in the end, my goal is not simply to live on this earth for 80 years, but to live an eternity with my creator. And I will always allow my faith to influence everything I do."

But Rubio, who put on a strong performance, found himself extremely vulnerable on the issue of immigration. Moderator Kelly asked Rubio, "Within two years of getting elected you were co-sponsoring legislation to create a path to citizenship, in your words, amnesty. Haven't you already proven that you cannot be trusted on this issue?" Rubio protested, "No, I said I do not support blanket amnesty!" But former Florida Governor Jeb Bush piled on. "I'm kind of confused because he was the sponsor of the Gang of Eight bill that did require a bunch of thresholds but ultimately allowed for citizenship over an extended period of time. I mean, that's a fact. And he asked me to support that. And I -- I supported him because I think people, when you're elected, you need to do things," Bush observed.

Cruz also found himself vulnerable on the immigration issue. Kelly asked him, "When Senator Rubio proposed that bill creating a path to citizenship, you proposed an amendment. It would have allowed for legalization but not citizenship.... Pressed last month on why you supported legalization, you claimed that you didn't. Right?" Cruz strained for an answer, "You know, the amendment you're talking about is one sentence -- it's 38 words...it said anyone here illegally is permanently ineligible for citizenship. It didn't say a word about legalization." But then Kelly noted, "But the bill allowed both. The bill you were amending allowed citizenship and legalization."

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Senator Rand Paul, who had a pretty good night, jumped in on the immigration discussion. "I was there and I saw the debate. I saw Ted Cruz say, 'we'll take citizenship off the table, and then the bill will pass, and I'm for the bill.'" he asserted. "The bill would involve legalization. He can't have it both ways. But what is particularly insulting, though, is that he is the king of saying, 'you're for amnesty.' Everybody's for amnesty except for Ted Cruz." This set up Rubio's best line of the night. "This is the lie that Ted's campaign is built on, and Rand touched upon it -- that he's the most conservative guy, and everyone else is a -- you know, everyone else is a rhino." Rubio said. "The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign, you've been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes."

Meanwhile, a few miles away Donald Trump hosted a fundraiser for the military veterans. Trump told the enthusiastic audience of 1,500 he would rather have been at the debate but he had to stand up for principle. In a surprise, Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who had just finished the "undercard" GOP debate, dropped in on the Trump gathering in support the veterans. Trump claims to have raised about $6 million through the event.

There is no question that by ducking the debate Trump avoided being the target of strong attacks from his opponents, all of whom would have wanted to take down the frontrunner. Instead, Cruz became the target for many attacks and he did not have a very good night. Ironically, Bush had his best debate performance in large part because Trump wasn't there to make him anxious.

This debate, coming just three days before the Iowa Caucus, could have been a pivotal moment for each candidate. Cruz needs to win in Iowa to stop Trump's momentum. Success in the caucus depends on his ability to mobilize his supporters. But Cruz did not help himself with his uneven debate performance, and Trump did not hurt himself by not attending. In fact, Marco Rubio may have helped himself to some of Cruz's supporters. Stay tuned!
Among a rising bellicose chorus there are common and disturbing themes. First is the propensity to advocate bombing any contentious threat into oblivion. The second vital commonality is a total void in personal combat experience by most of these vocal proponents. In fact, few of them have ever served a day in the military. Proportionally, only a tiny minority of Americans have engaged in combat directly.

Thus, failing to comprehend the potentially devastating consequences of the proposed actions, the general public tends to support the most egregious and antagonistic comments. For a large number of them their perception of America's standing in the world is predicated upon the willingness to employ overwhelming military power to resolve any perceived affront.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, presidential candidate Ted Cruz stated, "We will carpet bomb [ISIS] into oblivion. I don't know if sand can glow in the dark, but we're going to find out." Given that in many areas ISIS is intertwined with the civilian populace, carpet bombing would incur massive collateral casualties. More ignorance is displayed by the comment regarding glowing sand as this infers he is prepared to employ nuclear weapons.

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While such proclamations may appeal to testosterone infused voters, it portrays a level of glibness, naivete, or political expediency that should be frightening to anyone with an understanding of the qualitative difference between nuclear and conventional ordnance. Too long forgotten are memories of people who experienced the ravagement of atomic warfare or the fearful lingering aftermath of nuclear confrontation that permeated the ethos of our society in the mid-20th century.

Not to be out maneuvered for truculence, Republican Party frontrunner, Donald Trump, has repeatedly addressed the issue of extensive bombing. In November 2015 in Fort Dodge, Iowa Trump, referring to ISIS, stated his plan was to, "bomb the shit out of them." Consciously disregarding the direct implication of war crimes, he also has inferred that he intentionally would put the families and supporters of ISIS at risk as well. Unschooled in recent military and terrorist engagements, apparently he does not recognize proliferation of willing hostages or families taking pride in the suicidal martyrdom of close relatives.

Like Cruz, Trump's spokesperson displayed her complete ignorance pertaining to nuclear weapons. In a 19 December appearance on The O'Reilly Factor Katrina Pearson stated, "What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you're afraid to use it?" It's doubtful she would make such a policy statement without her boss's approval and again portends institutional vacuity almost beyond comprehension.

As President Obama rightfully acknowledged in the 2016 State of the Union address, ISIS/ISIL does not constitute an existential threat to the United States. He stated that, "...they pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence." About a year ago I published a proposal that would destroy ISIS without extensive American involvement. In short, ISIS is a neighborhood fight, exacerbated, if not created, by our Middle East interventions, but with global implications. Some elements can be contained and eliminated, but the underlying issues are invulnerable to bombs for other forms of physical force.

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It is one thing for politicians pandering for votes from the ill-informed, emotionally driven, right-wing talk radio audience, but another when WONK (Washington policy-maker) publications make similar claims. This happened when Foreign Affairs, on 19 January 2016, reintroduced an article titled Time to Attack Iran. Again, the issues of aerial bombardment and lack of personal experience are concurrent. Noteworthy is that Foreign Affairs is the journalistic instrument of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations and thus assumed to be more thoughtful.

The article was written by Matthew Kroenig and originally published in 2012. He states, "The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran's nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States." The article does address issues both pro and con for attacking Iran but Kroenig's off repeated conclusion is that U.S. air power should be employed sooner rather than later. An example of his technological answer for difficult targets is summed up as follows: "the Natanz facility, which, although it is buried under reinforced concrete and ringed by air defenses, would not survive an attack from the U.S. military's new bunker-busting bomb, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, capable of penetrating up to 200 feet of reinforced concrete."

Despite extensive travel and an illustrious start to his academic career, Kroenig's personal experience level in combat approaches zero. Based on the entire content of his article, we must assume that he has bought into the notion that intense, accurate bombing missions can achieve the objective of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. While the U.S. Air Force currently is the best in the world, there are significant limitations on their capabilities. Securing territory is one of those. Another is accurately and definitively assessing damage to underground targets.

There should be no doubt that if the proposed bombing mission were undertaken, a ground invasion would be essential. Any such operation would be fraught with danger and bear an exorbitant cost. Remember that Iran has a population over 80 million and is three time the size of Iraq. It has a large, formidable military with 545,000 active duty and over 1,800,000 active reservists. It is estimated that they have 1658 tanks, 1,315 armored fighting vehicles, 1474 multiple launch rocket systems and over 2000 other artillery pieces. Any ground fight against that array of forces would be horrific.

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Bombing Iran was ill-conceived in 2012, but intervening events make the proposal anachronistic if not ludicrous. In 2012 Iran had considerable military might but the nuclear proliferation sanctions were in place thus degrading the country's capabilities. Based on Iran's compliance, those sanctions have been lifted and 50 billion dollars in frozen assets released. In addition they are now free to sell oil on the open market. While the US still has sanctions against Iran pertaining to human rights and terrorism, other countries do not. Iran now is viewed as a potential lucrative market, especially in Europe and China. For example, consider the French business incentive with Iranian plans to buy 114 new passenger airplanes from Airbus.

Establishing coalitions currently is a hallmark of modern US intervention. Operations including Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom (Iraq) and Inherent Resolve (ISIS) all were comprised of coalitions designed to incorporate as many countries as possible. Obviously the disincentives for most countries to join in volitional conflict with Iran would be extremely high. A possible exception might be Israel. For them the political cost would be enormous not to mention geographic complications based on their contiguous nations. Kroenig did correctly note the opponents of his bombing proposal stating it could likely trigger a far larger war in a region already plagued by destabilization.

Persia has always been complex and it is wrong to characterize it as a monolith entity. There is considerable internal dissention and it has been described as "a country at war with itself." While hardliners rule Iran today, there are many people, especially younger cohorts, who actually like the US and want more access to Western culture. Eventually they will inherit leadership of the country. The one sure way to stop that from happening is armed intervention against their country. If we force them to choose, they will support the current regime and we will have created new generations of anti-Western zealots.

Importantly, the all-inclusive costs of such an intervention should be considered. Foremost there are the casualties on all sides. Then the fiscal realities would probably make the expenditures for the recent wars pale by comparison. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost 2.4 trillion dollars and with follow-on expenditures the total likely will hit six trillion dollars. Initiating the "military option" for Iran could easily double that figure.

Geopolitically such an attack would be disastrous. Billions of people already believe that America is an obstreperous bully that uses its military and economic power to coerce smaller nations or even invade them. Bombing Iran without active provocation would exacerbate those sentiments with catastrophic implications lasting decades.

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In the cases cited there are common factors. First is the tendency to employ bombing missions to solve intractable problems. Second is the inexperience of those people making the proposals to drop bombs. None of them have ever been in combat nor do they comprehend the real life consequences of those actions. What is worse is that they refuse to listen to advice of experts with combat experience. During the 28 January Republican debate, Ted Cruz doubled down on his carpet bombing proposal. That, despite knowing of Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Paul Selva's congressional testimony stating carpet bombing would never be part of our strategy against ISIS.

There are cogent reasons why nuclear weapons have not been employed since WWII. With the advent of weapons of mass destruction belligerents have deliberately shifted away from wars of annihilation and chosen engaged in limited wars or surrogate conflicts with asymmetric tactics. For half a century Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) successfully prevented the use of nuclear weapons. Iranian Assured Destruction can do the same should their leadership choose to break the treaty and they acquire nuclear weapons. Their most hardline leaders have proven to be quite hostile and aggressive but they are not suicidal.
I was listening to a talk show that I enjoy on satellite radio. It's what I do when driving in the car. Not surprisingly, the topic had to do with the presidential campaign...what doesn't these days? The host made a comment about evangelical Christians which I would qualify, because it is no more fair to lump all evangelicals together than it is to lump all progressives together, and sometimes people can represent both camps.

What he said was something like this: "Why is it some people who claim to be followers of Jesus seem never to have listened to a word he said?" I think what he was getting at was the hard sayings of Jesus, but also the sayings having to do with love.

Sometimes, not always, political folks who say they speak for Christianity manifest very little of what could be called a charitable, or loving, attitude. Certainly some of the harshest language about President Obama has come from those identifying as Christian.

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Although he identifies as Christian, they insist he is not. Some of the most stringent critics of social programs, including affordable health care, say they cannot wait until a new president is in office so that they can do away with the Affordable Care Act.

Some of the most vocal opponents to any kind of laws dealing with registering firearms or strengthening current gun-control laws say they speak from a Christian perspective. At least one commentator has asked when reverence for guns came to equal reverence for God in America? Truth is, there are times when the Gospel can, and should, cause us to have to take a stand on social issues, even though such a stand is unpopular.
If marketing whiz Jeff Hayzlett ruled the world, one of the first orders of business would be to outlaw the words "I can't."

A former chief marketing officer at Kodak, turned consultant and entrepreneur, Hayzlett stands firm that nearly anything can be accomplished in the business world if you put your mind to it. I interviewed Hayzlett recently and found his take on marketing to be both motivating and thought provoking.

Hayzlett's book Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless could vie for shelf space somewhere in between self-help and autobiography, but it belongs in the business section. He offers a glimpse into the blueprint that led him from growing up in South Dakota, to Kodak and to hosting a show on Bloomberg TV, which he then moved to an online platform as the C-Suite Network. He's built a little empire and isn't shy about telling us how he did it - not because he's bragging, but because he believes the rest of us can do it too.

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As with most business books I pick up, I had a healthy amount of skepticism for Hayzlett's. I cracked the first page praying that I wouldn't get assaulted with overwrought corporate platitudes. To the contrary, he offers his opinion bluntly and forcefully, but with the right amount of practicality and encouragement.

For example, he addresses handling adversity in refreshingly non-corporate terms. Hayzlett does not overcome an obstacle, he steamrolls it. Don't accept the norm, he counsels, even suggesting that it's okay to sometimes "be a little pigheaded and irrational." He presses you to do what it takes to keep yourself motivated and pushing. Remember what I said about "I can't?"

The book covers ground you may find in similar works, but Hayzlett offers the lessons with more alacrity. An opening anecdote in the book about profanity is one for the ages.

In a chapter on focus, titled "Kill the Squirrel," he explains that you must relentlessly focus on what drives your business -- and fight off the urge of distraction.

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In another chapter, about staying connected with your customers and employees, titled "Clean Your Own Bathroom," he counsels that you can't expect your people to do the things you want them to do if you won't do them, haven't done them, or don't know them well enough to understand what needs to be done.

And in yet another chapter, on having a servant mentality, titled "Reach Out and Touch Someone," he reminds us that people serve people, not companies. Companies are what people make them, and we should all strive to serve as many people any time we can -- because we can.

The title of the book, which has a little bit of that corporate platitude DNA, makes sense. Think big, act bigger: Make bold plans but then don't be afraid to make them even bolder.

Hayzlett told me that he wrote the book for business leaders, but after selling 300,000 copies since September, he has learned that corporate team members are buying it for their bosses, and his message is resonating across corporate departments. He also said he is humbled to find his book paired with motivational and self-help books on Amazon.com.
Don't boycott our latest Week to Week news quiz; give it a try to see how much you know about what's going on.

Here are some random but real hints: Bob Dole doesn't like him, either; friends spying on friends; bamboo isn't airtight; and the social network paid off. Answers are below the quiz.

1. With frontrunner Donald Trump absent from Thursday night's GOP debate, who emerged as the main target of the candidates on the stage?

a. Sen. Ted Cruz

b. Fox News host Megyn Kelly

c. Democratic billionaire George Soros

d. Walter Gropius

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2. The latest revelations from leaker Edward Snowden show that Israeli military aircraft were hacked by whom?

a. Apple

b. The United States and United Kingdom

c. Iran

d. Russia

3. What did a powerful labor union complain about this week?

a. It wants to be able to distribute political pamphlets to students in public schools

b. Bernie Sanders campaign staffers impersonated the union's members in order to gain access to employee dining halls

c. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has decertified all public employee unions in his proposed 2016-2017 state budget

d. President Obama hasn't done enough to stop the decline of organized labor

4. Who returned to the United States against his will this week?

a. Secretary of State John Kerry

b. Apple tax consultant Ernest Ehrlich

c. "Affluenza" teen Ethan Couch

d. Senator Ted Cruz

5. Thursday marked the 30-year anniversary of what?

a. President Ronald Reagan's first meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

b. The destruction of the space shuttle Challenger

c. The bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon

d. The U.S. invasion of Grenada

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6. What is estimated to reach 4 million people over the next year?

a. The new iPhone 7c

b. A new anti-malarial drug being distributed in Africa by the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation

c. The Zika virus

d. A China-based identity theft ring

7. Who is believed to be preparing for the launch of a space vehicle?

a. North Korea

b. Google

c. Iran

d. Taiwan

8. In the final quarter of 2015, what happened to the U.S. economy?

a. Growth increased to a 3.9 percent annual rate

b. Jobless figures reached their lowest rate since 1982

c. It was overtaken by China as the world's largest economy

d. Growth slowed to a 0.7 percent annual rate

9. Who just became richer than the Koch brothers?

a. Donald Trump

b. Meg Whitman

c. Oprah Winfrey

d. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

10. Next weekend, what two teams will meet in Super Bowl 50?

a. New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings

b. Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers

c. Los Angeles Rams and Frankfurt Galaxy

d. Carolina Panthers and San Fransisco 49ers

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BONUS. Which one of the following is something Maine Governor Paul LePage did not do?

a. Told people to shoot drug dealers

b. Tweeted "Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won't see another black president for generations"

c. Said people with names like "D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty" sell drugs in Maine and "impregnate a young white girl before they leave"

d. Said putting 12-year-olds to work in part-time jobs would instill a healthy work ethic in them

ANSWERS

1. a.

2. b.

3. b.

4. c.

5. b.

6. c.

7. a.

8. d.

9. d (his growing Facebook stock fortune helped him knock the Koch brothers into seventh place on a list of the world's richest people).

10. b.

BONUS. b (that was actually tweeted by Donald Trump).

Want the live news quiz experience? Join us Monday, February 8 in downtown San Francisco for our next live (and lively) Week to Week political roundtable with a news quiz and a social hour at The Commonwealth Club of California. Panelists will include Joe Garofoli and Debra J. Saunders.
Another Upper West Side story from some twenty years ago...

Carrying a sizeable, velvet-mantled scroll in my arms, from its ark in the sanctuary toward a celebration at a nearby student residence, the watchful guard at the Seminary gate, Mr. MacMillan, challenged me:

"Hey! Where'd you get that Torah?"

And then, of course, he wanted to know - "And where're you takin' it?"

Philosophically, these are interesting questions.

I like to tell rabbinical students that the question of where Torah comes from is very much like the question of where babies come from - especially if one means Torah in its broad sense, as not only the consonants on the parchment but also the layers and ages of elaboration that amount to the legacy today.

The question about Torah's origin tends to bring on a similar pall of fluster and mystery, and - as with "Where do babies come from?" - there are different kinds of responses, keyed to differing levels of readiness for different sorts of answers.

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One may start with oblique generalities - "Well, when a God and a people love each other very much, in a very special way..."

But pretty soon the child, actual or metaphoric, comes back wanting to know exactly how the process works. And then, before too long, the adolescent wonders about trying out the generative mechanics oneself.

So...

One story: "The people stood all together beneath the mountain, and, at each and every thundering, divine pronouncement, they set about commenting and expounding and elaborating and expanding, each person perceiving according to unique strengths and capabilities, and everyone optimally able."

A second story: "The people perceived each divine command and, in a flash, they knew - such and such laws are contained within it, such and such strictures, such and such leniencies, such and such rewards and penalties. And at each and every word, they recoiled twelve miles to make room for all that was contained within it, and then they marched forward again twelve miles to receive the next word."

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A third story: "Each word went about and presented itself to each Israelite individually, saying, 'I am this commandment - do you accept me? But before you answer, let me tell you all the details that are contained within me, all the particulars, the nuances, the fine points. Now, do you wish to accept me? And you? And you? Good! Then let me kiss you all upon the mouth.'"

I had the privilege of studying these ancient and medieval Midrashim - these rabbinic narratives of Sinai - with the pioneering Talmudist, Professor David Weiss Halivni, as he crafted his own distinctive account of where Torah came from. He explains the accounts as follows:

The first of the three stories - Sinai as study-hall, the Israelites interpreting creatively - comes from the early centuries of the Common Era, when it was necessary to justify the enterprise of re-inventing Torah, in the wake of Jerusalem's destruction, for a new era and a new reality. "You see" - says this story, in effect - "there never was such a thing as Torah in this world without our being productively involved; our ancestors set about applying their minds and interpreting, from the very first moment of revelation, and so we must do."

The second story came about once that process had presented an almost co-equal rabbinic Torah to go with the scriptural one. The question then became: on what basis believe that such a trove of elaboration could be deemed Torah, along with the scroll? The second narrative's answer was that our ancestors at Sinai knew - in a flash, so great it overwhelmed them, as each and every word exploded upon them - that all of this was packed deep inside that.

And the third account - each commandment listing its own fine print (somewhat like the Genie in the Disney version of Aladdin) and being embraced, with all its provisos and entailed details, by each and every Israelite at the mountain? By the time of that story there was already what we might call a whole library of rabbinic commentary and codification, so canonical that any notion of human involvement in its genesis was theologically uncomfortable. So the story became: Your ancestors had this all spelled out to them at Sinai, and they accepted it.

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It is not accidental that the eighteenth and nineteenth century Hasidic tradition, which recaptured and rekindled the creative genius of Midrash, taking the soaring elaboration of Torah to new spiritual heights, again told a story of Sinai that made abundant room for the human mind and soul. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Horowitz of Ropshitz (1760-1827) said, in the name of his teacher, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rimanov (1745-1815) that what God actually spoke at Sinai was only the first letter Aleph of the word "Anokhi" - "I am." The rest was - well, 'commentary' would be far too pedestrian a word for what those Hasidic sages believed could happen when that reality was realized.

As we come, in our cycle of Torah-reading, to the story of Sinai, I recommend taking some moments for your own response to the challenge - "Hey! Where'd you get that Torah?"

Whatever is involved in your answer - parents, school, teachers, friends, Sinai, the depths of a collective past, the searching of your own soul - you will no doubt have your own distinctive sense of what it means to you to be a recipient of Torah.
The Internal Revenue Code looks kindheartedly on homeowners who sell at a profit. Internal Revenue Code Section 121 allows sellers to avoid taxes on some, and perhaps all, of their gains on sales of principal residences. The exclusion amounts are as much as $500,000 for married couples who file joint returns and $250,000 for those who file singly or who are married but file separately.

Sellers are able to claim exclusions only if they satisfy two key requirements. First, they've owned and lived in the property as a principal residence for periods that aggregate at least two years out of the five-year period that ends on the sale date. Second, they haven't excluded gain on another sale of a principal residence within the two years that precede the sale date. But Section 121 is one of those trains designed to run in only one direction, authorizing a phenomenal break for those with profits and offering no relief for those with losses.

Back in 1997, Congress and President Clinton cut a deal to exclude profits on sales. They flirted with allowing sellers a limited deduction for losses, but dropped the idea. The final version of the 1997 legislation left unchanged the rule that generally bars deductions for losses on sales of things that are considered personal assets, such as principal residences. And contrary to what many owners mistakenly believe, mortgage debts don't enter into the calculation of gain or loss on a sale.

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Note also that the law empowers the IRS to use its own special method to calculate whether a seller actually suffered a loss. It's nowhere as simple as, say, comparing the $650,000 you received when you sold your home with the $700,000 you paid for it in 1996, thereby arriving at a loss of $50,000. You'll need a calculator whenever there's also a tax-deferred gain from a previous home sale before May 7, 1997, when the current rules took effect. Should that be so, you must subtract the deferred gain from your present home's cost to determine its adjusted basis at the time of sale.

Let's say the place that costs $700,000 was actually your fifth home, and four prior sales generated a cumulative profit of $600,000. The meaning of those numbers: You reduce that place's basis downward to $100,000--the difference between the $700,000 cost and the $600,000 postponed profit. Consequently, under the IRS method, the $650,000 sale doesn't cause a loss of $50,000. Rather, it results in a gain of $550,000--the $650,000 sales price minus the $100,000 adjusted basis. Suppose, instead, that the only dwelling you've owned is the one purchased for $700,000 and unloaded for $650,000. The IRS agrees you do have a $50,000 loss, but one that's nondeductible.

The IRS and the courts are adamant in their refusal to make any allowances for extenuating circumstances. For instance, an IRS ruling barred a deduction for a loss caused by a doctor-recommended move from a two-story to a one-story home to allow a child the maximum use of his wheelchair.

It matters not that a homeowner is out of pocket because a job relocation triggered by a layoff, illness, death, divorce, or the like compelled a sudden sale before a home appreciated sufficiently to offset brokerage commissions, legal fees and other expenses involved in buying and selling. Likewise, a loss isn't deductible when you move to take a new job or are transferred to a new location.

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What if your employer reimburses you for the loss? No offset of an otherwise nondeductible loss against the reimbursement, because they're separate transactions. The loss stays nondeductible. Nor is it permissible to include the reimbursement as part of the selling price and avail yourself of the exclusion. The reimbursement counts as income, says the IRS.

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painted, flag, country, nigeria, colorful, nation, pride, power, propaganda, fierce, fist, punch, unity, one, together, fight, determination, revolt, politics, vote, culture, tradition, white background, cutout, closeup, hand, one man only, cutout, studio shot

When I was younger, I used to love watching Nigeria sit under a tree, nursing her wounds with a wet towel. I loved observing her as she breastfed oil to her children, fondling with their hair and watching as the wealthy ones amongst them provide for the less fortunate. In those days, her children sang her praises - Wande Coal's Ololufe, P-Square's African Queen and, with her, everything was 'welly-welly'. She carried the biggest cloak of dignity amongst her siblings. And with her body on the big side, her dark skin gleaming with pride, and her Afro unrelaxed, she was my definition of feminism. But the last time I saw this friend of mine, she was anorexic, her crown had fallen off her head, and was too weak to even tend to her wounds. Her children have failed her. They have broken her. They have disappointed her. Certain people in our father's generation have not only failed their individual democratic parties, but they have failed Nigeria. But my generation - we are going to fix her, attend to her, love her.

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Some leaders consistently turn a blind eye towards electricity and the security of Nigerians. People have to rely on generators because the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has held the electrical power and have refused to share it with others. The less privileged people who cannot afford to pay for the expensive generators have to use lanterns to read in the night. We have cases where a certain "National Security Adviser" thinks it fit to collect money that is allocated to arms in order to fight against terrorists and instead choose to distribute it among his friends. And, according to Information Nigeria, when called on trial, he refused to show up. We have leaders in Nigeria who sponsor the same terrorist group that have burnt Mosques, kidnapped more than 200 girls from school, claim Islam and train suicide bombers. These are the same terrorist we are praying against, these are the same terrorists President Buhari is fighting against.

According to Unesco, "another important area in which Nigeria's leaders have failed woefully as there is no adequate account of government or public money entrusted to them is well accountable to". Because these funds are not accounted for in Nigeria, people have found a way to steal oil. In Sanusi's TEDx talk on Overcoming the fear of Vested Interests, he reported that "there are people in this country that produced pieces of paper and brought to PPPRA and somebody stamped those pieces of paper and said they brought in petroleum products and actually paid them subsidy. And those pieces of paper said I brought 30,000 metric tones on so so ship, and we discovered that the said ship was nowhere near the coast of Nigeria on that date. We have seen vessels that did not even exist - that had been retired - on bills of landing and money has been paid. And you know what? None of them as I speak to you has gone to jail". These are people we trusted. These are people we voted for.

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Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C.Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.

As if Sarah Palin's Ice Capades jacket and shrill babble weren't offensive and silly enough, she then recently surprised no one when she threw her political clout--however miniscule it may be--behind the only other "politician" as curiously odd as she is: Donald Trump. Trump, a reality star known for his business acumen, his parade of wives, (two of three are immigrants) and finally, his inability to display even the tiniest bit of sophistication, restraint, and civility when it comes to women's rights is, like Palin, an embarrassing chapter in the country's political cannon--one written in crayon and big elementary letters.

While Trump has yet to be chosen as the 2016 Republican Presidential nominee, he has already caught the ire of Britain's House of Parliament, who described his sexist, bigoted, and in many cases, curiously stupid platforms as nothing short of dangerous and toxic to global politics. None was more offensive than Trump's proposal to temporarily halt Muslims from entering the U.S. in a downright silly attempt to curb terrorist attacks. If we're to be fair and adhere to such nonsense then we must also temporarily revoke the citizenship of the militia Bundy Brothers, and other violent young white men from the U.S. when they bomb federal buildings or black churches?

One knows they have officially landed on the wrong side of history when former Vice President Dick Cheney, warmonger extraordinaire, interjected some much needed common sense and criticized Trump's ridiculous notion that banning an entire group would improve relations and lessen future terroristic attacks.

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According to CNN, over a half million Britons recently signed a petition to ban the real estate mogul from entering the country, stating that visiting Great Britain "is a privilege not a right." Parliament went as far as debating whether to ban Trump from the UK, our most fierce ally. Europeans are able to see what has disturbingly flown over the heads of so many in the Republican Party, who have mistaken "plain talk" for potentially dangerous rhetoric, and tough diplomacy for obvious and confounding bigotry.

In his 1997 memoir, Trump: The Art of the Comeback he fairly assessed his relationship with women as such: "I don't know why, but I bring out the best and worst in women." His disrespectful rant toward Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and her implied menstrual cycle, as well as his subsequent decision not to participate in the GOP debate ahead of the Iowa caucuses because Kelly (a hard-hitting journalist who questioned his treatment of women) would be the moderator further proved that Trump was woefully out of touch when it comes to American women. Score one for Kelly whose sheer professionalism showed Trump for the dinosaur he is. And while I'd hardly consider Fox News a legitimate news source--what cable network hires Stacey Dash, a "clueless" failed actress to spew idiocy when apparently she isn't out back picking cotton during commercial breaks--even I was appalled when Trump came after Kelly for simply reminding Trump of his own fallacies, and daring to ask tough questions during a televised presidential debate. Last I heard, gathering the candidates on a stage and volleying questions back and forth was a vital part of our country's political process. But perhaps Trump would simply prefer his questions to come from a mediator wearing only a pink tutu and pompoms, bursting through the top of a six-foot cake.

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But Kelly is merely one woman in a long line of Trump targets that dared to stand up to the boisterous billionaire. Rosie O'Donnell found herself on the other end of one of Trumps, ill-advised rants. In fact, Trump called her a pig and a slob prompting Kelly to question if this were the behavior of a presidential candidate. His comments launched a barrage of irate tweets from women who questioned if he could fairly govern over women's rights when he seems to care only for their bra sizes and past suitors. Lest we forget Trump's sexist comments toward Angelina Jolie in 2007 when he said she wasn't pretty and had been with too many men. We're sure Jolie, a famed actress and highly regarded philanthropist lives for Trump's sexist opinions.

For further proof that Trump is anti-feminist see comments he made in a 1991 Esquire piece: "You know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass." And most recently a vile and nonpresidential tweet where Trump, targeting Hillary Clinton, tweeted: "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?" This is stupidity in its most concentrated form.

In the most recent Town and Country magazine, Trump's only daughter, Ivanka, praised her father's laurels, from his shrewd business decisions that have netted him billions, to, wait for it...his role as a feminist. (Insert laugh track). Trump is no more a feminist than Fox News is a legitimate news organization.

Her reasons for hailing Trump as a champion of women's rights: he has hired women for key roles within his organization, including herself. This is called nepotism not feminism. How this so-called inclusive measure helps all American women (and his daughter) and not merely his company's financial bottom line defies logic. And while no one is questioning his daughter's intelligence and capabilities, hiring your daughter hardly qualifies one for honorable positioning between Naomi Wolf and Susan Sontag.

Still need further proof: Ivanka, when asked if her father was a feminist in the February edition of Town and Country, replied, "He 100 percent believes in equality of gender, so yes, absolutely--socially, politically, and economically." Yes, Trump is the pillar of feminist ideology, a candidate who believes in gender neutrality even when he's proclaiming that "Sadly, Heidi Klum, she's no longer a 10." A criticism expected from a man who once headed one of the most archaic institutions in America today: beauty pageants. Perhaps previous queens can be put to use and teach Trump how to graciously wave goodbye as more intelligent and inclusive candidates direct him to exit stage left.
Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, joined by wife Karen, left, addresses supporters at his Iowa caucus victory party Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012, in Johnston, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

As someone who has both crafted and professionally scoffed at headlines in many ways through many elections, I'd like to just reassure everyone, right now, that yes, your instincts are correct: most of the ones you'll see after the Iowa caucus will be absurd and should be ignored.

What specific forms will this absurdity take? Let's go over a few of the more likely possibilities, just so we don't have to bother with them after fact. Keep in mind that many outcomes are possible. The same general rules can be applied to those, as well.

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One of These Two People Is the Next President!

Let's just get this out of the way: the Iowa caucuses are ridiculous. We'd probably be better off dropping stones in heaps like the ancient Athenians. They're also not especially predictive when it comes to general election nominees. New Hampshire is also pretty terrible. In fact, there's been a lot of talk lately about a South Carolina "firewall," where the Republican Party could rein in the crazy that has broken out in the first two contests.

But Iowa in particular is just... infamously bad at picking winners.

John McCain came in 4th the year he won the Republican nomination. That was 21 points behind Mike Huckabee. McCain did win New Hampshire, though--as he had in 2000, when he lost the nomination to future president George W. Bush.

In 1996, eventual GOP nominee Bob Dole beat Pat Buchanan by just three points. Pat Buchanan, people. Then, Buchanan actually won the New Hampshire primary. Surprisingly enough, Dole had won the caucus far more decisively in 1988, when he didn't pick up the nomination.

That year, Vice President George H.W. Bush finished two places and 19 points behind Dole before going on to win the presidency. Like Dole, Bush won the caucus eight years before the nomination, when he edged out Ronald Reagan by about two points. Reagan was, of course, elected president that year.

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Bill Clinton came in fourth--two spots below "uncommitted" and with just 2.8% of the vote--the year that he became president-elect. Between those two events, he also lost the New Hampshire primary to Paul Tsongas. (Tsongas had placed higher than Clinton in Iowa, too.)

Michael Dukakis came in third the year he won the nomination, behind Dick Gephardt and Paul Simon.

Jimmy Carter came in ten points behind "uncommitted" the year he won the presidency.

And, poor ol' George McGovern came in a full 13 points and two positions behind "uncommitted" the year that he won the nomination.

To be fair, the Iowa caucus is not meaningless. It awards a handful of delegates and plays an important role in winnowing crowded fields. But this idea of momentum that will spread far and wide in the coming days is more often than not nothing more than a really silly myth. In real life, voters aren't sitting around saying things like, "Well, Iowa voted for this guy, and they seem pretty together..."

Republicans Can't Stop Trump!

Imagine, for a moment, that it's July. Donald Trump is heading to the Republican National Convention having already secured the nomination. In order to do that, he probably had to win large, winner-take-all windfalls in establishment-friendly states like Ohio, Florida and Arizona. (Note that Florida and Ohio have perfect records of backing nominees since 1976, even though Florida has generally held its contests before a consensus has emerged.) In many other states, Trump had to win bonus delegates by hitting thresholds as high as 50%. It's a little hard, looking back, to believe that his road to 1,237 delegates all started with that handful back in Iowa, but Trump's ground team of "really great people" eventually beat the Republican Party at its own game and emerged victorious.

Sounds to me like there were a lot of places where the Republican Party could have stopped Donald Trump after he won Iowa and/or New Hampshire. Have you ever seen him hit 50 in a national poll? I haven't. A single, strong establishment challenger could erase an early Trump lead in just one or two states.

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Will one emerge?

As always, Ted Cruz makes things more difficult. It is entirely possible that in a three-man race between Trump, Cruz and a third candidate who has won the role of establishment challenger, Trump would secure the nomination or score a plurality that the GOP wouldn't dare deny. It's also entirely possible that no establishment challenger manages to break through in time to stop him. But "entirely possible" and "sure thing" are pretty far apart in this case.

One caveat: if Trump significantly over-performs his polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, this headline would seem to hold more truth.

Hillary in Peril: It's 2008 All Over Again!

Contrary to popular belief, it is not, in fact, 2008. Remember what I said earlier about crowded fields getting narrowed, but momentum not being especially real? This isn't an eight-person race that early contests will whittle down to two. 2008 was. If Bernie Sanders wins Iowa, New Hampshire or both in anything short of blowouts, the headlines will change, but the race won't.

And the unchanging dynamics of this race greatly favor Hillary Clinton. The super delegate and votes-to-delegate advantages that Barack Obama won with Iowa in 2008 are already held by Clinton this round. Clinton's standing in the polls is much better than it was heading into 2008. And two large states haven't been stripped of delegates, as they were then.

What these first two contests will tell us is how Bernie Sanders is doing among his primary demographic. It's no secret that Sanders hasn't had much luck expanding his support beyond a base of white liberals, and New Hampshire and Iowa are two of the five whitest states in the union. So, the first two contests look good for Bernie.

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The following six weeks, not so much. Clinton currently leads among nonwhite voters -- who will be mostly absent from the first two contests -- by a whopping 39 points. In order to show that he can compete with Clinton for the nomination, Sanders wouldn't just have to win the first two states; he'd have to win them by very sizable margins.

When Will Bernie Drop Out?

If long odds were going to keep Bernie Sanders out of this race, he wouldn't be in it to begin with.

The conventional wisdom is that primary campaigns end when the money dries up and, in this case, it's probably right. That isn't going to happen to Bernie Sanders anytime soon. His supporters are a famously loyal bunch. They're probably already writing nasty comments below. If he wins Iowa and/or New Hampshire, they will donate. If he loses Iowa and/or New Hampshire, they will donate. If he devours a kicking, screaming infant on live television, "I just donated another $10 to Bernie Sanders," will trend on Twitter.

Again, don't expect the outcome of the early states to actually change the dynamics of this race by much. Remember that, back in 2008, Clinton continued to win states and accumulate delegates long after it became clear that Obama was the nominee. She even won or came within one point of winning the popular vote, depending on how you count it. There's no reason to believe that Sanders' support won't be just as loyal. Even if he loses one or both of the first two states, he'll continue picking up delegates and would still be expected to win a few contests, like in his home state Vermont and places where Clinton is deeply unpopular, like Alaska and Colorado.

It's All Over: Trump Finishes Third

Actually, if this happens... yeah, he's totally screwed. That probably means that you have to actually run a ground campaign, or that a lot of his supporters just aren't the voting type.
Leading organizations (full disclosure: including mine) have joined together and set their sights on Yum! Brands, which includes Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, as the next big target to commit to purchasing meat and poultry raised with responsible antibiotic use. Eighty-two groups, representing millions of people, yesterday sent a letter to Yum! Brands leadership asking the company to "make a strong, definitive public commitment on antibiotic stewardship in its meat and poultry supply chains."

This is an important and timely request. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year antibiotic resistant bacteria account for at least 2 million serious infections, 23,000 deaths, and $20-35 billion in healthcare costs in this country. Those estimates (which are by CDC's own admission very conservative) are likely to go up as this public health crisis expands. Last year ended with disturbing news about the discovery of a mobile gene in China that was resistant to an antibiotic that has become our last hope for treating people infected with some of the most dangerous superbugs. (It is believed that this resistant gene originated from agricultural use of the antibiotic.) And research published in the first weeks of 2016 shows this gene has spread around much of the globe. This is just the latest in a steady flow of news warning us that antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective against deadly bacteria.

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While antibiotics are certainly overused in human medicine, the most egregious misuse is in food animal production. In the U.S. alone, 32.6 million pounds of antibiotics were sold for use in food animals in 2013 compared to 7.7 million pounds sold for human medicine in 2011 (the most recent data available). Much of this use is to make food animals grow faster and/or to compensate for overcrowded and dirty living conditions. This breeds drug-resistant bacteria, or superbugs, that can end up in our air and water, in our meat and poultry and, ultimately, in us.

Some big players in the food industry (Tyson Foods, Perdue, Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, Costco, Wendy's and Subway) have made announcements, with varying levels of detail, on their plans to produce and/or source meat and poultry raised with limited or no antibiotics.

In fact, Yum! Brands also announced that it would require its chicken suppliers to stop using antibiotics that are "critically important" for human medicine by the end of 2016. But the organizations calling for change note how this is not enough. Steve Roach, Food Safety Program Director at Food Animal Concerns Trust explained the distinction in an email exchange: "While this seems like an important step, the available information suggests that the four classes of drugs affected are used infrequently if at all in chicken production. The policy allows the continued routine use of other drugs important for human medicine including the drugs used most frequently in poultry production."

Market pressure from large companies is undoubtedly an important step to reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics in agriculture and ultimately slow antibiotic resistance. But in order for us to see meaningful reductions in use companies must adhere to two key steps:

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Eliminate routine use of all medically important antibiotics. Come January 2017, under FDA guidelines, antibiotics used for growth promotion will be banned; however, the drugs could still be used on a massive scale for disease prevention. To see meaningful reductions in use, we must stop this practice. All of the groups who signed the letter (including my own) support treatment of any animal that has a diagnosed illness.

Third-party verification. All claims by any company announcing policies limiting antibiotic use must be validated by a legitimate third-party auditor, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to ensure what is being said is actually happening and progress is being made.

Some considered 2015 to be the year of the "foodie" (though I prefer the term: food advocate), because consumer opinions and choices drove companies and policymakers to change the way food is grown and sold. Specifically, companies, large and small, said they were responding to consumer demand when they announced new and improved antibiotic use policies. Consumers, whose power to affect meaningful change is vast, must continue to call for even more change in the marketplace and vote with their wallets by supporting companies who are transparent regarding antibiotic use.

Recognizing the power of consumers, U.S. PIRG, one of the groups that organized the Yum! Brands letter, and its state affiliates are holding events in front of KFC franchises across the country to show that consumers are demanding meat raised without antibiotics. As Bill Wenzel, Antibiotics Program Director at U.S. PIRG, puts it: "Despite these successes, we need to re-double our efforts to counter new threats from superbugs that increasingly diminish the effectiveness of antibiotics. We will continue to ramp up our consumer awareness and advocacy campaigns to ensure that the superbugs don't win."

Industry, consumers, and the government have a role to play in combating superbugs and antibiotic resistance. Lena Brook, Food Policy Advocate at Natural Resources Defense Council was spot on when she said this recently: "We count on our life-saving drugs to work when we need them. No one wants their favorite pizza, taco or fried chicken place to undermine the effectiveness of our antibiotics. Companies like Yum! Brands--which owns some of America's most popular restaurant chains, like KFC--have the power to keep our drugs working by asking their suppliers to end the routine use of antibiotics in animals that are not sick."

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The time is now to truly preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics and slow antibiotic resistance. The frightening news of that mobile gene found in humans and animals around the world that is resistant to the last-resort antibiotic underscores the urgency to take concrete action now. We truly are losing the war against superbugs.
Once again, significant federal change is afoot within U.S. education. The recent signing of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) marks a significant shift away from tight national accountability to greater state-level systems of student outcomes measurement and assessments. Coinciding with this policy shift is the emergence of innovative school models recently showcased at the White House Next Gen High School Summit. This could be a pivotal time for significant education transformation.

With this potential on the horizon, it seems timely to pause and consider possible paths forward that will help all of us in education to better meet students' needs and prepare them for a successful future. As a design partner for comprehensive school change with more than 175 schools, we at New Tech Network have learned how to effectively replicate innovation in every type of community setting. Here are some of the lessons we've learned over the last 19 years:

Schools can meet the needs of all students.

Existing schools inside public districts can change to meet those needs.

Change is best supported through a common vision centered around student success supported by a culture of learning and collaboration

Further, we have come to believe that "connected" learning and "collective" capacity building provide great paths for spreading and sustaining school innovation. School networks can play an important role for teachers, principals and district teams as they learn how to adapt, use data to make changes, and share leadership. Networks can become thriving learning environments for both students and for adults.

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In the Napa Valley Unified School District, district staff have created structures for leader-to-leader and teacher-to-teacher learning to help spread innovation and approaches to problem solving, and it's proving to be effective. While the New Tech school model has anchored the work among many schools, the ongoing connectivity among the teachers and leaders has led to customized innovations and the sharing of new ideas at a high rate. Similar practices are taking place in districts like the Lake Ridge Schools Corporation, near Gary, Indiana, where they created structures for shared vertical learning across a K-12 pathway. Likewise, although with a different vertical approach, the Evergreen School District in San Jose is using two stellar schools, Katherine Smith Elementary and Bulldog Tech at LeyVa, to anchor widespread transformation. And in El Paso, Texas, district leaders are building the foundation for transformative connectivity within their district by helping schools work collaboratively in defining their innovative pathways toward success for all students that are assessed in multiple ways.

These examples of connected learning within districts are key areas of our own research and development activities for New Tech Network. The NTN Demonstration Site program showcases what is possible when schools are empowered in this way. Van Buren New Tech, located in Van Buren, Arkansas, recently became a Demonstration school. Tim McCutchen, principal of VBNT, shared that they wanted to offer their learning to other schools who might benefit from Van Buren's experiences. McCutchen also realized that by becoming a place for shared learning, he and the faculty have become clearer about the needs within their own school. It pushed them to think about how they would help others really see the evidence of success in their practices. He said, "Just like we ask of our students, it's important for a school to be able to show evidence that backs up their claims." Through that push, they began to see data gathering opportunities that went beyond grades and test scores. This, according to Van Buren New Tech math teacher, Jennifer Prado, "opened our eyes to different ways of thinking about how we might assess our progress as a school."

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign a campaign event, on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Who said this? "I am writing in Wall Street, where the money-changers congregate, and where affluence and beggary are seen side by side....It is rightly named--Wall Street--for those who habitually occupy it in quest of riches at the expense of mankind, are walled in from the sympathies of human nature, and their hearts are as fleshless and hard as the paving-stones on which they tread, or the granite and marble buildings which they have erected and dedicated to their idol Gain."

No, it is not Bernie Sanders. Nor is it the presidential candidates of the defunct American Socialist Party of the early twentieth century, Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the preeminent leaders of the abolition movement, penned this prescient critique of finance capitalism in 1840. Never the sanctimonious, bourgeois paternalists caricatured by some scholars, abolitionists linked the emancipation of slaves with other wrongs that afflicted their society. Senator Sanders' brand of socialism is firmly rooted in a long but forgotten history of American democratic radicalism exemplified by the abolition movement. And like the abolitionists, he is often dismissed as too radical and overly idealistic in his views. But the abolitionist vision did succeed in effecting the destruction of slavery.

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Abolitionists were avid critics of the ills of their society, pace their slaveholding opponents, who accused them of shedding tears at the plight of slaves while remaining immune to the travails of the working poor closer to home. William Jay, the president of the New York Anti-Slavery Society and son of founding father John Jay, condemned the criminal prosecution of labor unions in the early American republic. He compared it to the widespread toleration of anti-abolition violence in the north led by "gentlemen of property and standing." Charles Sumner, the antislavery Senator from Massachusetts, denounced the unholy economic alliance between New England's "lords of the loom" who depended on the slave-grown cotton of southern "lords of the lash." Sumner became a leading Radical Republican advocate for black rights during Reconstruction, recently mischaracterized by Hillary Clinton as a punishment for the defeated south. Rather, it was an abolitionist experiment in interracial democracy whose overthrow inaugurated another long racial nightmare in the nation's history.

The north's mercantile and banking elite remained staunchly conservative on the slavery question until the very eve of the Civil War. Abolitionists argued that northern "Money Power" bolstered the "Slave Power." Garrisonians flirted with utopian socialism and even relatively cautious evangelical abolitionists like Lewis Tappan admonished that the "rich would be better off if half or two thirds of their wealth were distributed among their poor fellow men."

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The religious right today is a far cry from the progressive abolitionist evangelicals whose mantle but not ideas they want to adopt. Political abolitionists associated with the Liberty party, a precursor to the antislavery Free Soil and Republican parties, also supported land reform and workingmen's rights. Gerrit Smith, the abolitionist land magnate in upstate New York, was a convert to George Henry Evans's crusade against land monopoly. In 1846 Smith deeded thousands of acres not just to blacks but also to the landless and poor, men and women. One of them was the abolitionist John Brown, who lies buried in the farm given to him at North Elba.

The early labor and abolition movements shared a discourse of oppression. Working-class activists adopted the term wage slavery to describe the abysmal conditions of workers, as slavery remained the benchmark of oppression. But labor leaders such as Evans differed from abolitionists like Garrison and Smith in insisting implausibly that wage slavery was worse than chattel slavery.

This claim especially outraged former slaves and black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. The difference in priorities seems to be replicated in the Sanders' campaign's stress on general economic inequality and Ta-Nehisi Coates' argument for reparations for centuries of enslavement and systematic state sanctioned racial discrimination in law and practice. Like the black abolitionists of yore, Coates insists that any democratic movement should specifically take up the issue of racial redress. Such a debate, however, as in the case of abolition, is possible only in a movement animated by quintessential democratic ideals of equality and fairness.

While Douglass and Garrison formalized the alliance between the working classes and abolition abroad with the formation of the Anti-Slavery League in Britain, they were unable to replicate their success at home. The incorporation of most of the immigrant working class into the southern-leaning Democratic Party, which was staunchly anti-abolitionist, alienated them from abolition and instigated mob violence against blacks. (Everything the reader knows about the ideological nature of the Republican and Democratic parties today can simply be flipped for the mid-nineteenth century.) While immigrants' hostility to abolition was also the result of a process of Americanization through which they sought to accrue the benefits of "whiteness" and hyper-nationalism or demonstrate loyalty to their adopted country, abolitionists deplored nativism in principle and appealed to immigrants to join their movement. In 1841, black abolitionist Charles Remond brought with him an "Address from the People of Ireland, to their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America," composed by Irish abolitionists and signed by the great nationalist Daniel O'Connell, urging immigrants to unite with the abolitionists. When some proslavery Irish American leaders rebuffed the appeal, O'Connell admonished them, "It was not in Ireland you learned this cruelty." Perhaps the rightwing talk show maven, Bill O'Reilly, who has threatened to immigrate to Ireland if Senator Sanders is elected President, should heed O'Connell.

Abolitionists' opponents, southern slaveholders and proslavery ideologues, despised abolition as akin to socialism. According to Senator James Chesnut of South Carolina, "red republicanism" in America had merely "blacked its face." Jefferson Davis, the future President of the Confederacy, described abolition as the first phase of socialism. Senator James Henry Hammond, also of South Carolina, in his famous "Cotton is King" speech recommended an alliance between northern capital and southern reaction to keep their respective "mudsill" classes in check. All such talk was anathema to that antislavery champion of free labor and American democracy, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln vindicated the dignity of labor, "Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." The present crop of big business and xenophobic Republican presidential candidates probably has him turning in his grave. As Lincoln wrote of the nativists of his time, "When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." Perhaps we should take Mr. Trump's admiration for Mr. Putin's strong man tactics at face value.

But one might well ask, which Presidential candidate is un-American here? Before the "red scare" engulfed the country after the First World War and the Cold War that followed the Second, socialism or social democracy was hardly thought of as a subversive, foreign import. Theorists of revolutionary republicanism, the principles on which the United States was founded, had long diagnosed inequality as the greatest threat to representative government. Abolitionists and President Lincoln tied the emancipation of the slaves to the fate of American democracy. Political pundits posit a false equivalence between the extreme right personified by Trump and the democratic vision represented by Mr. Sanders. In fact, Mr. Sanders's campaign for economic and social justice is as American as apple pie. The abolitionists would be proud of him.
Girl (4-6) looking in kitchen fridge

Sarah is three years old. She and her six-year-old brother, Bryce, are inseparable except when its time for him to visit the summer food program that provides meals at a school near his Ohio home for children who otherwise would go hungry. Sarahs too young to make the trip. One morning after Bryce had his fill of food for the day he made a detour before heading home. He walked to the trash cans and began rummaging through food others threw away. Winnie Brewer, the Food Services Supervisor in Marion City Schools, noticed the little boy and tapped him on the shoulder to ask why he was sifting through the garbage. My little sister, he explained. Shes hungry. Bringing her leftover food was the only way he knew to help.

We run into a lot of situations where kids will come and say they have younger siblings at home, Brewer says. They always want to know if they can take something back. After Brewer spoke with Bryce, staff members followed him home with a care package for little Sarah. This was a temporary solution to a huge problem Brewer worries about every day. Until we see that child digging food out of a trash can, it doesnt hit home, Brewer says. Once it does, you know you have to do something.

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Nearly 220,000 Ohio children under six are poor and young children of color are more likely to be poor. More than half (55.5 percent) of Black children, 40.3 percent of Hispanic, and 19.1 percent of White children under six in Ohio are poor; 21 percent of them live in families where at least one parent works full-time year-round; 47 percent have at least one parent working part of the year or part-time; and 32 percent have no employed parent. Nearly one in four Ohio children lacks consistent access to adequate foodthats 653,410 Ohio children of all ages in every corner of the state. Nationally, 15.3 million children were food insecure in 2014. The majority live in families with one or more working adultsbut are still unable to consistently afford enough food to keep the wolves of hunger from their door.

There is no excuse for any child in America to go hungry and malnourished in the richest nation on Earth. Yet child hunger is a widespread, urgent and shameful problem that cannot wait. We all have to do somethingnow. Bryce and Sarah (names were changed to protect their identities) are far from alone as shown in a new Childrens Defense Fund-Ohio searing report calling to end the childhood hunger many thousands of Ohios youngest children suffer every day. Babies, toddlers, and preschoolers suffering hunger and malnutrition face increased odds of negative health outcomes during their years of greatest brain development. Food insecure children under age five are:

Nearly two times more likely to be in fair or poor health;

Nearly two times more likely to experience developmental delays;

Two times as likely to have behavioral problems;

More than twice as likely to be hospitalized;

Two and a half times more likely to have headaches, and

Three times more likely to have stomach aches.

Food insecure children are more likely to be behind in social skills and reading performance in kindergarten. By elementary school they are four times more likely to need mental health counseling. Risks keep accumulating: malnutrition from childhood food insecurity has been linked to adult diseases including diabetes, hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular disease. The stress and anxiety of early childhood hunger also make it harder to learn skills that help later relationship development, school success and workplace productivity.

Babies born to food insecure mothers face tragic odds: they are more likely to be born pre-term and at low birthweight and to struggle with breastfeeding which contributes to increased infant mortality rates. Babies who survive are more likely to struggle with disabilities during childhood and adolescence and face higher risks of chronic disease as adults. School-age food supports of free and reduced price breakfast and lunch are critically important to the health and academic success of older children but young children should not be forced to suffer from lack of food. Not a single parent or grandparent would want our young children or grandchildren rummaging through trash cans seeking food for younger brothers and sisters.
Money tree snapped over with money falling to the ground, US currency

I perform cardiac arrest research and so I understand the heart fairly well. What I don't understand well, from a common sense stand point, is the granting process. There are many issues with the grant submission and funding award process that give me pause. They should give you, the American public who could benefit from increased biomedical research and discoveries, pause as well. Especially when considering where we are today in terms of life expectancy, disease eradication and medical treatments, in large part because of biomedical research. You're welcome!

President Obama understands this, in his last State of the Union address earlier this month, he declared that "Medical research is critical." Though I am extremely biased, I couldn't agree more! But performing biomedical research is difficult, academia can be a rat race of publishing, lecturing, grant-writing, teaching, leaving one to wonder: is it worth it? The funding environment over the recent years would lead one to believe that it is not. And so you then have to ask yourself, "how badly do I want it?". This is a tough question in academic research where on one hand, in the current state, failure is an expected outcome when applying for grants, but on the other hand, you can't succeed in academia without being successful. Rock...meet hard place!

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And here are the top 3 reasons why, though failure is not an option, it is more often than not the outcome:

Mo' money, mo' money: Funding

According to an NPR report earlier this year that analyzed National Institute of Health (NIH) funding data, they stated that "3,400 scientists lost their sustaining grants between 2012 and 2013." Whereas the NIH in the early 2000s could fund 1 in 3 research grant proposals, currently they are only able to fund 1 in 6. The federal budget for biomedical research has been decreasing over the years, down approximately 25 percent in the last decade. In 2015, congress increased funding to the NIH by a laughable 0.5 percent. However, the tide, it may be slowly changing, as the Senate approved a 6 percent increase in funding to the NIH for 2016, 2-billion dollars to be precise, though the House approved a lower amount. This is finally some good news for my research group, and many others, who submit the majority of our grant applications to the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which will receive a $118 million increase, or 4 percent from that appropriation.

So much time spent for such little return: The grant process

Though a 6 percent increase seems substantial, there are many researchers fighting hard for their share of these limited funds. Like many other research groups, my colleagues and I spend an enormous amount of our time writing grants that will more than likely never get funded. Not because they are poorly written, or poorly conceived, or unnecessary, but because the federal government only funds approximately 16% of grants submitted each cycle; most scientific grants, ~85 percent, just don't get funded. Meaning, we are all spending a tremendous amount of time writing grant applications that we know won't get funded, taking away from the time we could be doing other things, like say performing actual research. It is a vicious, cruel cycle and definitely not #whyidoresearch. This constant rejection of our blood, sweat, and tears can take its toll. As an academic researcher who relies on federal funding, you really have to be resilient.

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The in-crowd: Who is and who is not being funded

Complicating matters, most of the researchers who are being funded are those researchers who have been funded in the past -- making it even more difficult for new researchers to be awarded a grant. The average age of a medical researcher when they receive their first R01 grant, one of the keys to the kingdom of a successful federally-funded academic research careers, is 45 years. In 2012, just over 1% of R01 principal investigators were aged less than 37 years. Academic research is not a young person's game currently (not that I think 37 is old, mind you...).

Because of all of this, biomedical researchers in general, and young investigators specifically, are having to think of other avenues for funding such as private foundations, philanthropic institutes, and industry funding. In addition other innovative solutions such as crowdfunding sites like Consano, Experiment, and Instrumentl, are becoming all the rage.
Look at medieval maps of Europe, urges Robert D. Kaplan in the Wall Street Journal (see "Resources" below) and you will be overwhelmed by the dizzying incoherence--all of those empires, kingdoms, confederations, "minor" states, "upper" this and "lower" that. It is a picture of a radically fractured world. Today's Europe is, in effect, returning to such a map. Kaplan's article is called "Europe's New Medieval Map."

The religion story of this week comes not from the north, from Europe, but from the south, from Africa, which shares with "the global South," stories of major Christian growth and energy. Leaders of the Anglican Communion, the third largest Christian "body," suspended, but did not sever, its American arm, the Episcopal Church. The suspensions resulted from disagreements over sexual issues.

Many "Communions," North and South, share such disagreements, fear schisms, and sight what the media calls "breakaway" movements which experiment with an array of structural experiments.

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Some of them cling nominally to vestiges of old coherences like denominations. "Lots of luck," one must say, since that field is crowded. We read that 43,000 "denominations" mark the global Christian world already, and experts question whether the denomination as such, for all the good it did and can and might do, is tied to, not medieval, but early-modern forms.

Did you note that a) the denomination, b) the non-geographical but competitive denomination, c) "the Sunday School" and its kin, and d) "foreign missionary agencies" were very creative responses when "the medieval map" was demonstrating incoherence? These inventions were inspired by what Americans call "separation of church and state," religious freedom, radical individualism, and voluntary gatherings designed to further Christian causes.

While we see visionary and consecrated people serving well through the inherited forms, we can also see their limits.

In the northern world, the "breakaway" church movements, mega-churches, advocacies of post-modern and post-secular theologies, adaptations to pop-cultures, devotion to the passing parade of Christian celebrities, etc., for all their value, strike the map-makers as new "dizzying incoherences." In the southern world, these moves and movements are replicated or issue from the inventiveness of native Christian experimenters who want to give, not take, lessons from the North.

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Where often exported Euro-American churches in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, once provided the appearance of the non-dizzying coherence of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant worlds, today especially Pentecostal and Charismatic movements within, at the edges of, and beyond the imported forms often prevail. Neither those nostalgic for old forms nor utopians who hope for so much from the new have the future to themselves, and contention among them may add to "dizzying" incoherences.

But, "wait a minute," say theologians, historians, and the faithful at large, maybe we are seeing a redrawing not of Kaplan's "Medieval Map," but some sketching of the "Early Christian Map." No. One does not have to be a primitivist who argues for a coherent replica of a united Church in its first centuries, or a generalizer about early Christian unity, now lost.

Any reading of the New Testament and other charters from those early centuries shows tensions, schisms, breakaways, arguments, as vehement and violent as any post-modern or post-secular movements and moments reveal. Yet not a few believers will even see signs of life that are missing in over-coherent Old North Christianity. Still others will see signs of life that are present also in its parts of the globe.

We will not lack signs worthy of sighting any time soon.

Resources:

Kaplan, Robert D. "Europe's New Medieval Map: As the European Union unravels, the continent is reverting to divisions that go back centuries." Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2016, The Saturday Essay.

The communique released to the media on January 14, 2016, by the Anglican Communion Primates to explain their decision to censure the U.S. Episcopal Church appears on the Primates 2016 website: http://www.primates2016.org/articles/2016/01/14/statement-primates-2016/.

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Goodstein, Laurie and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura. "For Now, Anglicans Avert Schism Over Gay Marriage." New York Times, January 15, 2016, Europe.

Jenkins, Philip. "The Church Vanishes, Part Deux." Patheos, October 19, 2014, The Evangelical Channel.

Jacobsen, Douglas. Global Gospel: An Introduction to Christianity on Five Continents. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015. See especially Jacobsen's Chapter 1, "Global Christianity: A Very Short History," and his useful Bibliography.

Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Noll, Mark. The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. Reprint edition. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013.

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Schreiter, Robert J. The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005.

Yong, Amos. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005.

Image: Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, right, demonstrates with others in front of Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, England, Friday, January 15, 2016. They were protesting the decision by religious leaders of the Anglican Communion to bar members of the U.S. Episcopal Church from policy-setting positions for three years as punishment for their acceptance of same-sex marriage. Credit: Frank Augstein / AP Photo.

NOTE: This post originally appeared in Sightings, an online publication of the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School.
Our national habit when talking about rape often ignores the perpetrator's role and puts the onus on the victim. Such emphasis misdirects prevention efforts. Rapists cause rape, yet recent high-profile surveys have focused on victims and ignored perpetrators. The Campus Climate Survey Validation Study (CCSVS), released January 20, 2016 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is commendable for broadening inquiry to question those who cause the harm while also addressing flaws in other surveys such as the 2015 American Association of Universities Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Assault. Even so, the CCSVS report concentrates on victimization rates, which are broadly consistent with data collected over a 30-year period. Many have suggested, at this point, that we are sufficiently aware that sexual assault of college women is a problem; that it is time to move on. Continuing to limit the scope of these surveys to victimization experiences has had the inadvertent effect of casting all college women who have experienced sexual assault -- because they are the vast majority of victims -- as vulnerable, weak, and needing special protective care to participate in campus life.

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Interest in studying sexual assault perpetration dates back to the first (and only) national survey published in 1987, which revealed that 7.7 percent of men disclosed they had attempted or completed oral, anal, or vaginal sex acts on an unwilling woman by using some degree of physical force, threatening bodily harm, and/or by proceeding with a person unable to consent, typically due to alcohol incapacitation. In the intervening years, much has been learned about the predictors) and timing of sexual assault perpetration. These studies are crucial because individual characteristics, peer attitudes, and campus norms that encourage and sustain sexual aggressors, as well as the likelihood of accountability for sexual misconduct, are the only potential points for science-informed, comprehensive campus rape prevention planning and innovation. Campus administrators cannot respond to the White House Task Force's call to protect students by simply knowing rates of victimization.

Despite the inclusion of perpetration in the CCSVS, the level of detail regarding sexual assault perpetration lacks the scientific rigor used to assess victimization experiences. The perpetration data are buried in two paragraphs of a 475-page technical document. The report therein states 2.8 percent of females and 2.9 percent of males disclosed perpetrating at least one act of any type of unwanted sexual contact during the 2014-2015 academic year. Unwanted sexual contact refers to a range of outcomes, some minor, such as nonconsensual touching of a sexual nature including kissing, grabbing, or fondling, even if the victim was fully clothed, and others as severe as attempted and completed rape. However, the survey did not ask about each of these outcomes, rather asking only about how the sexual contact was obtained (e.g., via threats, physical force, or contact with someone who was intoxicated, etc.). Importantly, unless both the outcome and the type of sexual contact are specified, these data do not allow any conclusions about specific experiences of rape or attempted rape. In contrast to questions about victimization, the perpetration question did not include follow-up questions to determine where the incident occurred, who perpetrated it, or other contextual factors (e.g., man or woman; stranger or intimate partner; alcohol present or not).

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Other recent sources of perpetration data are also available. The 2015 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, fielded by the CDC, revealed that 0.6 percent of women and 6.7 percent of men said they had been "made to penetrate" another person. Sexual violence perpetration also was queried in the 2015 Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Survey (ARC3) pilot test and was disclosed by 5.1 percent of men and 1.6 percent of women. In the context of other recent large surveys, the CCSVS stands out because it is the only one that failed to find large gender differentials in sexual violence perpetration. These data raise questions about the nature of sexual violence perpetrated by women, and the experiences of men who report they have been "made to penetrate" another person. These experiences need further study to understand how they are achieved and whether the associated outcomes are similar to experiences of penetration, regardless of gender. Penetration is key, because it is required in legal definitions of rape and attempted rape.
In January, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee released a detailed report of a yearlong investigation into recent outbreaks of serious, often fatal, infections. The infections were linked to procedures with contaminated medical instruments known as duodenoscopes. The damning report reveals critical failures by both the leading manufacturer of these devices and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that likely contributed to avoidable patient illnesses and deaths.

Duodenoscopes are flexible, hollow, lighted tubes that can be passed through the mouth, throat and stomach and into the small intestine. According to the FDA, each year more than half a million people undergo procedures with these scopes for treatment of gallstones or other conditions.

The Seattle Times first broke the news of these outbreaks on Jan. 21, 2015, when it reported that from 2012 to 2014 at least 32 patients at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle had developed serious antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections following duodenoscope procedures. Eleven of those patients died. The infections spread even though the scopes that caused the outbreak purportedly had been cleaned and disinfected according to the device manufacturers' instructions.

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In the several weeks following the Seattle Times story, a flurry of news reports documented similar outbreaks that had occurred at other medical facilities across the country, including at hospitals in Los Angeles, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Most of these reported outbreaks were linked to duodenoscopes sold by medical device manufacturer Olympus, which makes 85 percent of such scopes used in the U.S. News about the outbreaks grew even more troubling in March 2015 when the media reported that Olympus had not obtained the required clearance from the FDA before it began selling the scope model linked to the infections in 2010.



Soon after the Seattle Times expose, Sen. Patty Murray, the leading Democrat on the HELP Committee, launched an investigation. Committee investigators discovered that infections linked to use of the duodenoscopes were more widespread than was reported by the media: From 2012 to 2015, these devices had been linked to at least 25 different outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections in 10 states and three other countries, sickening approximately 250 patients.



Two findings uncovered by committee investigators are particularly troubling. First, by early 2013, Olympus was aware of two independent lab reports finding that its duodenoscope model could harbor and spread bacteria even after cleaning according to the manufacturer's instructions. But Olympus never communicated this information to the FDA and did not alert hospitals, physicians or patients in the U.S. to the risk of infection until February 2015. The Senate report found that Olympus' failure to take action and alert the FDA likely contributed to at least 141 infections in the U.S.

Second, by late 2013, the FDA was aware of serious infections linked to duodenoscopes made by Olympus and at least one other manufacturer after receiving an alert about such infections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The FDA had started investigating how the scopes spread infections. However, it took no action to alert hospitals, doctors or the public to the dangers posed by these medical devices for 17 months. Senate investigators found that during this period, at least 68 patients in seven hospitals in the U.S. became infected with antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" linked to duodenoscope procedures.

The HELP Committee report offers useful recommendations for improving the reporting and monitoring of adverse events related to medical devices. However, the report falls short by not recommending that individuals at Olympus and the FDA be held accountable for the egregious failures that likely contributed to avoidable patient illnesses and deaths.

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Diplomacy works! The emphasis that President Obama, Secretary Kerry and National Security Advisor Rice have placed on diplomacy did not start recently: Obama has made it a hallmark of his Presidency across the board. The historic progress with Cuba -- highlighted on December 17, 2014 and ongoing since then -- has been shown to be entirely the product of diplomatic engagement.

The U.S. work to normalize relations with Cuba is still just beginning. The U.S. certainly cannot rest on its laurels, and the President indicated as much in his recent State of the Union address when he repeated his call to Congress to support the new policy with Cuba. In the ongoing normalization process, Cuba still has major reform steps to take. For the U.S., the agenda is fairly simple: lift the five decade-old trade embargo on the Island and allow Americans the freedom to travel. Simple, and yet, exceedingly difficult. In order to lift the full embargo, congressional action will be needed, but Obama lacks majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. "No way," say the skeptics.

However, difficult is not the same as impossible. Diplomacy, which has proven so critical in other regions, must be harnessed in Cuba, too. Moreover, there is precedent. In early 1977, the nay-sayers outright rejected then-President Jimmy Carter's stated aim to return the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. The skeptics dismissed the odds of pulling together majorities to pass the Torrijos-Carter Treaties on the Hill. And yet nine months after Carter entered the White House, the treaty handing over the Canal passed in the Senate, and enabling legislation cleared the House the following year. One of Carter's secret weapons in proving the skeptics wrong was broad-based and collaborative diplomacy.

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In 1977, every country in the Western Hemisphere was solidly on record favoring the return of the Canal from the U.S. to Panama. Similarly, in the case of U.S.-Cuba relations, that same consensus exists across the Western Hemisphere in support of the breakthrough on December 17, 2014. Moreover, over the years, those same Latin American governments -- leftist and right-wing, pro- or anti-U.S. -- have sided in the annual United Nations vote in favor of ending the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. It is time for the U.S. government to harness that Latin American unanimity to help its efforts to bring both Houses of Congress around. If the Panama model is followed, there are good chances the U.S. legislators will listen.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2013 (the most recent year for which there were complete statistics), U.S. majority-owned affiliates of U.S. multinational enterprises employed 2.46 million people, and sales were $783 billion. It is a two-way street: U.S.-based majority-owned affiliates of Latin American companies had sales of $286.5 billion and employed more than 300 thousand people, the majority of whom are Americans. In this election year, that means up to 309,000 potential voters.

In 1977, the U.S. government worked with U.S. corporate leadership to ensure that every member of Congress was aware of Latin American attitudes towards the Panama Canal issue, including the upside of improved ties if the U.S. did the right thing on the Canal, and the downside of maintaining the status quo. In the 1970s, Congress successfully aligned with the rest of the Western Hemisphere. A similar effort is needed at present to remind U.S. legislators of where the Latin American countries -- the source of investment opportunities and valuable jobs in their own districts -- stand on the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Latin American leaders are overwhelmingly in favor of lifting the U.S. trade and travel bans.

The effort should not come solely from interested U.S. parties in Washington. The Latin American capitals should instruct their embassies in Washington to visit the Hill to make their views known, especially to members who have been hearing only one side of the issue for decades. In 1977, such activism was very new to most Latin American embassies in Washington, and yet it had a major impact in the "education" of the U.S. Congress on the Panama Canal issue. That activism, which proved effective, should be harnessed in Washington and throughout the Western Hemisphere on issues where there is broad-based consensus. Lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba is the next chance for proving that diplomacy works. We should not squander this opportunity.

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Michael Parmly is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer. Parmly served in Cuba as Chief of the Interests Section and is an advisor of the Policy Council of Engage Cuba, a bipartisan organization dedicated to mobilizing American businesses and non-profit groups to support the ongoing U.S.Cuba normalization process.


Americans are slowly, but surely, becoming more familiar with, and fearful of, acts of terror. "Terrorism" dominates the presidential campaign debates with few other policy topics getting such prominence. Yet with all of the front runners' hometown familiarity with one of America's most frequent terror targets (i.e. New York City) - from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders - it's surprising that they don't do more, rhetorically at least, to protect the city's safety. To be fair, however, if you'd ask New Yorkers about potential threats to Manhattan, they too may not know the security risk that looms several miles up the Hudson River.

It's an aging nuclear power plant called Indian Point Energy Center, just 25 miles north of New York City, and while it's eluded presidential candidates, it has moved quickly to the front of New York State's political burner lately as the company's operating licenses, which expired a while ago, are getting a strong rebuke from New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo. He doesn't want a Fukushima-style nuclear disaster happening to New Yorkers.

Cuomo, to his credit, seems serious about safety, ordering a probe last month into the recent, multiple, unexpected and forced shutdowns at the plant. And while the governor is not keen to close all of New York's nuclear power plants, as he transitions the state off carbon-emitting fossil fuels, he has made it clear that he wants this particular nuclear plant shut down due to security concerns.

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New Yorkers, especially those in Manhattan, should take note. Tens of millions of Americans are within the reach and wake of an Indian Point nuclear disaster, which is why New York City councilmembers have come out against Indian Point and are attempting to close it. Evacuation strategies are pointless and impossible, as the roads can't handle the escaping throngs. Emergency responses (e.g. local residents are encouraged to take iodine tablets) are futile. And with the Nuclear Threat Initiative saying this month that we're only making slow progress on preventing nuclear terrorism, with cyber attacks increasing, we must take these warnings seriously, especially in our backyard.

Add to the precariousness of the security situation a new Spectra gas pipeline, approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which will cross Entergy property in proximity to the plant (which is currently storing 1500 tons of radioactive waste) - a move Members of Congress are calling into question given recent successful cyber attacks on local New York infrastructure.

And yet, despite all of that, Indian Point Energy Center continues to operate beyond its license date. The operating permits for the two plants were set to expire in 2013 and 2015 but have been extended until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decides whether or not to renew them. If the licenses are not renewed, the plants will be shut down. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, known for its close ties to the nuclear power industry, seems to accept Entergy's word that certain safety and environmental mitigation measures aren't necessary, while withholding the data on which they base their assertions. Unsurprisingly, local organizations like Hudson Riverkeeper couldn't disagree more with Entergy on this.

This could all be easily avoided. We could keep debating the serious security concerns, as they will continue to compromise the safety of millions of Americans in the NYC area even if the licenses are renewed. Or we could nip this in the bud now, once and for all, and transition the region to something more sustainable and safe. It's totally doable.

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Based on a recent Synapse Energy Economics study, we know that the New York electric power system can be "operated reliably even in the absence of both of the Indian Point Energy Center units as of 2016 as long as 1) a number of anticipated electric system infrastructure improvements are completed across different parts of the New York electric power system," and as "2) anticipated generation supply increases from either new merchant plants or existing resources (currently mothballed or requiring repair) come online".

So let's do this. We've got sufficient capacity to support a reliable electric system without IPEC, and the cost of replacing IPEC - a mere 1-3 percent increase in electricity costs - with new, less dangerous and more renewable energy sources will be outweighed by the health and safety benefits. Besides, if Governor Cuomo is going to reach his 50 percent renewable energy goal by 2030, this is a great place to start.

By exploiting large amounts of untapped energy efficiencies, maximizing surpluses and reserves, expanding renewables and improving generation and transmission, we know we can retire the nuclear plant hovering above Manhattan on the Hudson River (something every New Yorker should be telling NRC to do before the public comment period closes). And we should do everything in our power to transition the bright minds at IPEC into the clean renewable energy sector in New York, which is growing daily. Let's keep them employed - and then some. But most importantly, let's keep this country safe. Every candidate, especially those from Westchester County, should be queuing to close IPEC before disaster strikes. The time is now. Our safety is at stake.
Pity poor Washington. No doubt breaking the hearts of elected and appointed government officials, their staffs and hangers-on, the Open Secrets blog at the Center for Responsive Politics reports that the "influence industry appears to be contracting, and the trend continued in 2015."

But before you shed a single poignant tear, like Iron Eyes Cody in those old "Keep America Beautiful" TV spots, kindly note that the money spent on lobbying merely slipped from $3.24 billion in 2014 to $3.2 billion. That's still an awful lot of lettuce, more than enough to spread the corporate love around big time, cash on the barrelhead for votes, deregulation, tax breaks, insider information and other assorted favors. Nor is it even counting campaign contributions.

Those who are wearing their money belts just a teeny bit tighter include the top 10 spenders of lobbying dollars in our nation's capital. But again, we're only talking about a shift from $323.7 million in 2014 to just under $282 million.

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Coming in at first and second were the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Realtors, followed by the American Medical Association, Boeing and General Electric. For many of the top 10, their big push on Capitol Hill last year was for the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which greases the wheels with loans and credit lines for the overseas purchase of US goods and services.

The bank has been a scourge of right-wing members of Congress, who dislike anything that smacks of the foreign. They blocked the renewal of its charter when it ran out at the end of June. But lo and behold, the fix was in. The lobbyists went into hyperdrive, cash flowed and the bank's charter renewal magically appeared in the highway bill. Abracadabra -- money talks.

In Washington, it not only talks, it bellows like a bull. In fact, despite the slight decrease in spending, overall, the "top lobby firms are riding high," according to the congressional newspaper The Hill, even as they "enter an election year where the 'establishment' is under attack.

"Most of K Street's 20 largest firms by revenue saw their advocacy fees rise in 2015, with some getting an extra boost from the flurry of legislating at the end of the year."

Biggest of all the influence mills is Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, co-founded back in 1945 by former Democratic National Committee Chair Robert Strauss, the godfather of inside the Beltway wheeler-dealers, and the man who famously explained the boom in the lobbying business to journalist Robert Kaiser with these simple words: "There's just so damn much money in it."

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As Bill Moyers and I wrote in September 2014, "Akin Gump handles Beltway business for everyone from Amazon and AT&T to UPS and the US Chamber of Commerce (ah, that champion of the people!), along the way making generous campaign contributions - hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth -- to candidates of both parties."

The Hill reports Akin Gump earned more than $39 million last year, "a nearly 11 percent increase over 2014."

The newspaper continued, "Akin Gump benefitted from a slate of prominent new hires, most recently bringing on former Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.)."

Yes, feel the gusting breeze and hear the rush of the revolving door, so much a staple of Washington and the lobbying trade they should have them on sale at the local Home Depot. It rotates between public service and private profit, scooping up in its swirl the expertise and influence of former officials and putting them in the lucrative service of big business. Republicans and Democrats alike, few are resistant to its spin.

"Members of Congress now make $174,000 a year -- not a bad living," Lee Drutman writes at Vox. "But usually they can at least quintuple that salary by switching over to lobbying once they retire. And many of them do just that."

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Kay Hagan served only a single term in the US Senate but as the Politico Influence blog reported, during that time "... She served on the committees for Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP); Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs; Armed Services; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship. She chaired the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee." Those assignments made her a prime prospect for recruitment.

Yet as intrepid journalist Lee Fang wrote at The Intercept, Akin Gump is "an odd perch" for the former senator who was defeated for re-election in 2014, and not just because the firm's US Chamber of Commerce client spent millions attacking Hagan and supporting her victorious opponent, Thom Tillis.

"After losing her seat, Hagan said in speeches that the biggest problem in America today is the dominance of big money, noting that the wealthy and special interests have come to control the political process through lobbyists and Super PACs. 'We have got to get the obscene money out of politics, and I think that would change politics,' Hagan told the Rotary Club of Greensboro last year."

Getting rid of the money certainly would change politics, but apparently the definition of what an obscene amount is depends on who's receiving what from whom and when. "Coming here feels like a very natural fit," Hagan said in an Akin Gump press release.

Other recently defeated Senate Democrats haven't been thrown into any great moral quandary either. As The Hill reported, last February, "Arkansas's Mark Pryor landed at Venable... while Alaska's Mark Begich went to Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Schreck in April. In May, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu went to Van Ness Feldman and began working for energy clients."

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Young woman smiling in Paris

Before I studied abroad, I had little life experience and a strong dependence on my parents. Like many of the underclassmen that I talked with during a recent study away fair conducted by my college, I knew very little about international issues, global perceptions of Americans or the education systems of other countries. Through the mistakes, friendships and observations I made while studying abroad, I learned countless lessons about both the world and myself.

Below is a list of the ten biggest changes to my life since I studied abroad. Considering it for yourself? Maybe this will help you decide.

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1. I enjoy spending time with myself.

In college, there are few times in which you are actually alone. In fact, "alone time" is a foreign concept to a college student. However, in a country where you don't know a soul, you quickly learn to do things by yourself in order to optimize your time there. While I was in Spain, I found an appreciation for doing things on my own. I learned a lot about myself, and I often pushed myself outside my comfort zone in order to communicate with people.

2. Yes, it does matter what other people think of you.

When visiting another country, each of us is representing Americans as a whole. Whether or not we realize it, people are watching everything we do and say. All of these words and actions are immediately written off as "American." It was hard to get used to being a part of a minority culture rather than the mainstream, but once I did, I learned to minimize my "Americanisms" in an attempt to give a more positive perception of Americans on the world stage.

3. Getting lost helps you find the greatest adventures.

I've heard it said, "if you want to learn about yourself, get lost in an unfamiliar city." My friends and I took this advice to heart during a weekend trip to Madrid. After taking an overnight bus we spent approximately four hours lost and miserably wandering the unfamiliar streets in pursuit of our hostel. Ultimately, we realized the advantage of being lost in such a beautiful city. By simply opening our eyes, we happened upon a beautiful old bookstore, Madrid's equivalent of Broadway, and people with incredible stories (oh, and eventually our hostel).

4. It's not "my way or the highway."

We are the product of our experiences. I have never known this to be more true than when I first found myself sitting in the shade of Seville's Cathedral people-watching with my friends, and I could not find an explanation for a single thing I was seeing people do. Through this and other experiences, I learned understanding when I was abroad, especially with regard to the idea that my way of life is no more or less correct than anyone else's.

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5. Increased fluency in Spanish (yes, mom, I did go to every class).

Between being in class for six hours each weekday, living in a homestay with a Spanish family and befriending (or attempting to befriend) the locals, I got to use A LOT of Spanish during my time abroad. My friends that had little to no familiarity with the language of their host country seemed to make even more notable improvement in language mastery. As a language student, I found this to be particularly rewarding.

6. I did it, so nobody's to blame (or praise) but me.

I always gave my parents credit for my accomplishments, because they also received criticism when I made mistakes. However, while I was abroad, I found myself out from under their watchful eye for the first time. My daily interactions were exclusively with people who had never met my parents, so my actions reflected on me alone. I have integrated this autonomy into my life after returning from study abroad as well, because I have come to enjoy receiving credit for my successes (and even acknowledging my shortcomings).

7. It's okay to not know the answer.

Part of college is finding yourself. Throughout my childhood, I wanted nothing more than to be a teacher. I loved having an answer to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" During my time abroad, however, I realized that I had limited myself by never considering other options. So I sought other opportunities, and through self-examination, many new opportunities became evident. This search led me to find satisfaction in a life that was different than what I had planned.



8. You can call more than one place "home."

Every day since I've returned from my time abroad, I have thought about my semester in Seville. When the time to come home arrived, I had made friendships, created a new routine and found habits that would be quite unnatural for my American self. I left behind a family, as well as four months of memories that I will always treasure. I created a new life there; for this reason, I still feel homesickness for my Spanish life on a relatively regular basis.

9. I am capable of making and coping with changes in my own life.

This one also speaks to the independence that I found while I lived in Europe. Whether it was my personal life, my future or even my education, I had always taken a passive approach in changing what I didn't like. Being surrounded by the unfamiliar for so long forced me to make drastic changes in order to increase my own happiness, whether or not I was prepared to. I was then left to adjust to my new life.

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10. There are some things that will forever be out of my control; I must let them go.
Concept about the modern life

The U.S. Presidential primary debates and the media have thus far given very little attention to climate change. Perhaps that is the for best, since, at least on the Republican side, more coverage in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses would only serve to provide a platform for misinformation from several of the candidates. In 2016 there are very few remaining holdouts regarding climate science, with the recent Paris climate agreement showing unprecedented international consensus, and Exxon admitting that they have in fact understood the science for several decades. The anti-climate constituency seems to have coalesced around paranoid Tea-party conspiracy theorists and religious fundamentalists in the Republican Party (and the candidates who want their vote). Among the outspoken climate denialists running for president are businessman Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and retired neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson.

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Trump's anti-climate stance relates to his taste for paranoid conspiracy-theories, as with his support of the "birther" movement that claimed President Obama was a Muslim born in Africa (a claim that was completely false). Cruz's and Carson's worldview is based more on fundamentalist religious, anti-scientific ideas, which cannot accommodate evolution by natural selection or human-caused climate change. (Carson, in fact, may not even be able to grasp the concept of gravity.)

Such views are prevalent in America. Surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute indicate a major divide in thinking among Americans, based on scientific versus religious worldviews. As reported by CNN, although 6 in 10 Americans stated they believe extreme weather events are related to climate change, "More than a third of Americans see recent extreme weather as a sign that the world is in biblical "end times," and "Thirty-six percent of Americans say that the severity of recent natural disasters indicate that we are at the precipice of Jesus' second coming and the end of the world. The survey found that 15 percent of Americans believe the world will end, as predicated in the book of Revelation, in their lifetime."

This minority of Americans is preventing solutions to climate change from being implemented. Recalcitrance in the U.S. Congress had a real impact on how the Paris Climate Agreement, instead of being a binding, legally enforceable treaty, ended up as an aspirational document that will mostly be implemented by subnational and private sector actors. Until the grip of climate denialism loosens in the House and Senate, the best solution to climate change, a carbon price, is not going anywhere nationally. For these reasons, it is not hyperbole to say that the fate of the world depends on scientific literacy, and reducing the reliance on Biblical scripture in environmental and climate policy decisions.

Progressive elements in the faith community can play a vital role in diminishing the influence of the climate deniers by educating the American public on the difference between scientific and religious understanding of the world, how to tell the difference between facts based on evidence and opinion, and to generate a sense of moral outrage at climate denial.

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Religion's call to moral action, which has been elevated by Pope Francis, can help encourage people to take on personal change and improvement. Religious communities will be an important source of support as extreme weather events increase, and cities face rebuilding after the hurricanes. Groups like Interfaith Power and Light have the unique ability to work within the faith community around climate action, and bridge the gap between science and religion. Religious denominations that accept scientific thinking such as the Jesuits and others can continue to be outspoken about environmental sustainability.

The media will also need to take a stand against climate deniers. Reddit's Science forum has set the benchmark for this and perhaps Huffington Post can do the same. Science communicators who have stepped into the breach include Bill Nye the Science Guy's media work such as his debate with creationists, and Neil deGrasse Tyson's educational efforts such as his Star Talk radio show and Cosmos program that revives the 1980's show hosted by Carl Sagan. Tyson's media appearances and blogs are sometimes provocative, but challenge readers to question their worldviews.

Satire and humor is another weapon to awaken some people who were raised to be anti-science. An excellent example is The Last Testament: A memoir by God by David Javerbaum, a devastating parody of the Bible with the potential to demolish the stereotypical depiction of the "Old Man With A Long White Beard" shooting lightning bolts out of his fingers. The book is gutsy in an age of religious political correctness and/or fear of religious-fundamentalist violence, and the Twitter feed provides the same bite with levity.
And Hillary Clinton shares the blame.



Hillary may have foreign policy experience, but when push came to shove, she showed an extreme lack of judgment on the most important foreign policy decision in a generation. As in 2008 when she was running against Obama, it casts serious doubt on whether she's the Democrats' best presidential nominee.



Hillary voted for the Iraq War either out of rank political opportunism, because as a prospective presidential candidate, she feared that an anti-war vote would make her look weak. If so, she voted to send thousands to their deaths to further her political career.



Or she voted for the war out of a sincere belief in the benefits of American military intervention in the Middle East and the good that could come from regime change. If so, her beliefs showed an extreme lack of foreign policy judgment.



I'm not sure which is worse: voting for a needless and destructive war out of political opportunism or out of poor judgment. In either event, the Iraq War vote remains a big black mark on Hillary's claim that her foreign policy experience makes her the best choice to be Commander in Chief on Day 1.



Hillary has now apologized for her Iraq War vote. But even her apology feels more like political calculation than genuine contrition. A meaningful apology would be directed to the Iraq war vets and Iraqi civilians who lost life or limb, to the American taxpayer for wasting over a trillion dollars, and to the rest of the world for making it less safe.



Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in large part because of her Iraq vote so she must now try to immunize herself with her weak apology in the hopes that 8 years later, Democratic caucus and primary voters have short memories.



Moreover, none of her apologies give any indication of what she learned from her supposedly mistaken vote. Has she learned that using American military power to instigate regime change in the Middle East leads more often than not to chaos, anarchy, increased terrorist threats, refugee crises, and even the destabilization of Europe?



Apparently not.



As Secretary of State, she supported American air power to overthrow the Ghadaffi dictatorship in Libya which has led to anarchy, a new base for ISIS and other extremist jihadist groups, and a refugee crisis.



Secretary of State Clinton supported the overthrow of the oppressive Assad regime in Syria, an effort which has led to a civil war in which hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions turned into refugees, a political crisis in Europe, and the rise of ISIS.



Secretary Clinton supported arming so-called Syrian moderates in the effort to overthrow Assad, despite there being few genuine Syrian moderates not affiliated with one brand or another of Jihadi extremism; and the predictable result has been that many of the American arms have fallen into the hands of ISIS and its ilk.



Now she calls for a no-fly zone in Syria, an idea that has been rejected by President Obama and that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says would require 70,000 troops to enforce. She has not explained what the US would do if Russia violated her proposed no-fly zone. Shooting down Russian planes could lead to World War III, while ignoring Russian violations would just make America look weak and Putin strong.



In short, despite her apologies, Hillary Clinton appears to have learned little from her disastrous vote for the Iraq War. She remains a foreign policy hawk who continues to back discredited policies of regime change in the Middle East.



Bernie was not only right and Hillary wrong about the biggest foreign policy decision of the 21st Century. Bernie had the vision to predict the disastrous consequences of the Iraq invasion that Hillary supported.



After 25 years in the House and Senate, including serving as Chair of the Senate Veterans Affair Committee, Bernie Sanders has as much, or more, foreign policy experience than many recent Presidents before taking office, including John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.



In 2008, Democratic caucus and primary voters rejected the "experienced" Hillary Clinton in favor of Barack Obama, in large part because of Hillary's hawkishness generally and her support of the Iraq War specifically. The same reasons should lead them to reject her again and vote for Bernie Sanders in the contest for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
Like all good things, books have to come to an end, but that doesn't make saying goodbye to your favorite characters any easier--especially if it means spending years praying for a sequel that never comes. Put off the five stages of biblio-grief just a little longer by diving into one of these series instead. Here are the first installments in several brilliant and addictive series that will have you hooked.





My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Female friendship is at the heart of this series by one of Italy's most acclaimed and elusive authors. From their childhoods in a poor neighborhood of Naples to their challenging transitions to adulthood, Lila and Elena's complicated yet profound friendship remains at the center of their emotional lives. The fourth and final installment is coming September 1.

Read the review here



My Struggle: Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Comprised of six novels, My Struggle is a semi-autobiographical chronicle of the author's experiences from childhood to the present day. Whether describing a fight with his father or a quotidian trip to the grocery story, Knausgaard finds a surprising rhythm and beauty in life's struggles that makes this series a hypnotic read.



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The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

This two-novel epic set in medieval England centers around a Gothic cathedral and the pride, love, and greed it inspires in the townspeople affected by its creation. Political, social, and religious upheaval make for a storyline that's fast paced and action packed without sacrificing historical detail.





The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Botswana's premier lady detective Precious Ramotswe navigates her cases and her personal life with wit, wisdom, and a keen moral eye in this long-lasting and bestselling series. Compelling and good-hearted, she never forgets that she is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives."





The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

In this dark and suspenseful crime series from Sweden, a young antisocial genius and an investigative journalist team up to uncover shocking layers of secrets and scandals that permeate all levels of society. While the thrilling plot will leave you breathless, it's Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, who will have you coming back for more.





Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

A time-traveling British nurse finds romance and adventure in eighteenth-century Scotland in this addictive modern classic that spans centuries and continents.

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Read the review here



Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Following the life of Thomas Cromwell from his humble beginnings to his rise as powerful advisor to Henry VIII to his downfall and death, the first two volumes in this projected trilogy have each won the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Deeply researched and stylishly written, Hilary Mantel's series gives a fresh perspective on a much-discussed period of history.





The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Paul Auster turns the mystery genre on its head in this highly original series of novellas. Each story follows an investigation that soon turns into an obsession, making the series as much a psychological thriller as a detective story.





The Magicians by Lev Grossman

With influences ranging from The Chronicles of Narnia to Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy is an enthralling, diabolically crafted coming-of-age tale about magic practiced in the real world--where good and evil aren't black and white and power comes at a terrible price. Dig into this series now before the Syfy adaptation hits the small screen next year.





The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott

In luminous, unsparing prose, Paul Scott records the doomed love affair of a young English woman and a British-educated Indian boy in the waning years of British colonial rule in India. Caught in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence, their story unfolds amidst the era's political upheaval and social change.



The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn

The declining world of the English upper class is satirized in Edward St. Aubyn's bleakly hilarious portrait of the privileged but self-loathing Patrick Melrose. The series charts Patrick's journey from abused child to heroin addict to desperate father and opens a window into the amorality, snobbery, and decadence of the British aristocracy.



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I recall meeting with one of my former colleagues at a University where we were both Professors. We were talking about obesity and how it is viewed culturally in the U.S. vs. some other countries. I began to tell her about this wonderful place called Fiji, where the women dancers, as an example, for the most part, are large, in terms of weight, in comparison to what the U.S. considers the standard of beauty, in terms of size.

She interrupted me, in a very condescending way and stated, leaning forward and placing her hand on my knee, "Oh you mean Fuji." I looked at her thinking to myself, another White person thinking Black people don't travel and need to be schooled about places in the world. I moved back and gave her a look, knowing that I had just experienced a microaggression as described in my book on cultural competency, which promptly led her to remove her hand from my knee. I summarily informed her, albeit politely, that I did not mean Fuji, but Fiji. I then explained to her that Fiji, the place that I had visited with my husband and two children, is an archipelago consisting of 330 plus islands inhabited by people, of primarily African descent, that are referred to as Melanesians.

I corrected her by stating that she, I believed, was referring to the word that perhaps she had heard in relationship to film or the mountain in Japan, that I had also visited. She looked at me with a blank stare of embarrassment at which time I reverted to our previous conversation about obesity and the beauty of Fijian women and the people overall.

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You see Black people do travel, which leads me to my discussion of Fiji. It is a place of warm, gracious, predominantly Black people. We traveled there from Miami and broke up our trip by stopping in Los Angeles before heading to the Airport for our connecting flight, via Fijian airlines. There, we began to see Black people with Afros, waiting to board their flight. We looked at them and they looked at us, noting our differences and our sameness--the reality that we were all Black, but from different places and cultures. Our smiles connected us and when we reached the island of Viti Levu, in Fiji, as we walked around our hotel and ultimately visited one of their villages, we were greeted heartily with the word, Bula (the Fijian word for hello), with the biggest smiles you can imagine.





Before going there, I had a lengthy discussion with my younger brother who, while a Columbia University student, spent much of his time studying abroad in Europe and Africa, and subsequently, continued to be a world traveler. He informed me that the Fijian people were African. He had not traveled to there but read about them and desired to go there. One of my other White, Professor colleagues argued that Fijian people were not African but rather Melanesian. He had not been there either. I listened to both of their positions and decided I would find out. I would go with my family to Fiji and ask the people myself, and so I did.

The Fijian people are very gracious and the gentleman that we met who ran the kids program at the beautiful Sheraton Fiji Resort, where we stayed, was named Moses. Moses organized games and playtime for the children and chatted with us when we picked them up from their activities.

He was delighted to see Black people, from the U.S., and invited us to his village to attend the wedding of one of his family members and to visit the local school. We were thrilled to do so! I asked him if Fijians were of African descent and he laughed and replied "of course!" We went to the village and I had the privilege of sitting with the men, along with my husband and children, during one of their meetings, which was generally not permissible as women do not sit with the men when meeting with the Chief of the Village. But because I was a Professor, I was permitted to do so. It was at that time, that the Chief shared important information with all of us, in Fijian, as translated by Moses, after I asked him where were Fijian people were from originally. He explained that the people of Fiji are indeed of African descent, from East Africa, as they had traveled on ships called druas to Fiji and settled there in their early history.

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Although there are some who consider this to be Fijian lore, I have no doubt regarding the accuracy of their understanding of their history as everything about them appears to indicate that they are of African descent. I valued and appreciated the connection between them and my family during our visit--one group of people of African descent to another. We attended the wedding and participated in our first kava ceremony.

While in Fiji, besides the wonderful time spent getting to know the Fijian people, we enjoyed scenery so beautiful that I couldn't imagine leaving. The water was warm, crystal clear and vividly blue. The food was fresh and delicious including lots of seafood, rice, bread, coconuts, curry, fruit and general deliciousness. The people kept telling us to eat because they thought we were too thin! That was remarkable and enhanced my desire to stay there forever. There wasn't a great deal to do there, but that was the joy of it. We went snorkeling, which was exquisite--the best that I've ever experienced anywhere in the world, and enjoyed an excellent day cruise to visit other islands. On that excursion, we tried kava again with the Fijian people and other guests on board. We also spent a great deal of time in hammocks, I had a wonderful beach massage and we traveled around daily absorbing the loveliness of it all. We marveled at their crafts, particularly their skills with coconuts and masi (Fijian bark cloth) and purchased some hand carved statues and a mask for my collection. My husband and son wore lapas (cloth worn in a skirt-like fashion), as is the custom of the men there. We also took a ride on a shotover jet, which is a very fast jet boat ride and a highlight for our children and us!

Overall, Fiji was a delightful experience. It was one of the few places that I have traveled to and absolutely did not want to leave. I actually tried to figure out if there was a way for me to get a teaching job at the University of the South Pacific, located in Suva, Fiji, when I returned home, so I could go back, but then reality set in. It is a place that I often dream of and think of returning to visit, although it is extremely far away. If you want a travel experience that is unique, aesthetically pleasing and wonderfully relaxing with gracious, happy people, visit Fiji--you won't regret it!

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Below are travel tips, which may be useful for your travel adventures. In my next posts, I will cover several countries in Europe including Spain, Italy, France, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Monaco, The Vatican, and Portugal. So stay tuned!

1.Break up your trip with a stopover for a day or two.

When you are traveling to a place as far away as Fiji (depending on where you reside), it makes sense to stop in another location along the way and spend days there to break up the journey.

2.Go Beyond Your Hotel and Visit With the People.

Try and meet people from the country you are visiting who are willing to show you the real deal, off the tourist path. You will most likely be rewarded with a fabulous cultural experience that you will never forget.

3.Don't Believe Everything You Read in Books or That You Art Told --Go To The People and Ask Them Who They Are.

Truth is often distorted for the benefit of others. We are told that Ancient Egyptians were not African. Likewise, we are told that Fijians are not Africans. Look at the images on the tombs in Egypt and you will know the truth. Ask the Fijians who they are and they will tell you.

My favorite quote from the late, great historian, John Hope Franklin is:

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey;"

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I live by this quote!

4.Take Advantage of Children's Programs Offered At Resort Hotels for a Rest for You and So Your Children Can Meet Other Children from Around the World.



Children from around the world will often be with their parents in places that you travel to throughout the globe. Let your children meet and play with them rather than being by your side at all times. Your children will have a wonderful cultural experience, particularly since in many places those individuals running the programs are from the country you are visiting and you will have time to rest knowing they are having fun. This was the case in Fiji leading to us all being very refreshed when we joined each other for meals and other family activities.
A slightly different version of this article was first published by the IPI Global Observatory here

The first milestone in implementing the Iran nuclear deal has come and gone. As the agreement's proponents expected and opponents denied would happen, Iran has poured cement in its Arak reactor and rendered it unusable. More unexpected was the prisoner exchange that accompanied it, with Iran releasing four Americans and the United States freeing seven Iranians. In addition, Iran captured and then quickly released a group of US Navy personnel whose boats had drifted into Iranian territorial waters--a fact that the US did not contest.

The reactions to these developments from opposing sides were predictable. Supporters of the deal--most world leaders and domestic supporters of US President Barack Obama--saw it as proof of the efficacy of diplomacy in general and the president's policies in particular. Opponents of the deal--most Israelis and members of the US Republican party--saw it as a humiliating capitulation. All Republican candidates vying for nomination for this year's presidential poll declared that things would be very different if they were in power.

However, changes in the Middle East are likely to frustrate any efforts to turn back the clock. The Iran deal is, in fact, part of a broader reshaping of the strategic situation in the region. This will quite likely force Obama to make some decisions he would prefer not to, which might also be difficult for a successor to unravel. It should also be a caution to Israel to resist the attractions of a quasi-alliance with the Sunni countries, led by Saudi Arabia, which seemed to be developing in their unsuccessful united front against the Iran nuclear arms deal last summer. As the Iran-Saudi antagonism is pervading the whole Middle East and beyond, Israel should draw the obvious conclusion that it does not have a dog in that fight. Iran need not be a perpetual enemy of Israel - or the U.S. - and both should look through the bellicose rhetoric that seems largely for domestic Iranian consumption, to see whether Iran's actions are mostly devoted to building up its economy and re-integrating into the world community or, as the Right has predicted, staying a rogue state. Part of this will depend on whether there can be any positive movement in Syria, the (currently) worst flashpoint in intra-Muslim rivalry, and one which affects the whole region.

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Interestingly, I found support for this analysis in a recent article by Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a mainstay of Israeli rightwing strategic thinking, published by the conservative BESA Center at Bar-Ilan University (and originally in Sheldon Adelson's Israeli mouthpiece, Israel Hayom); and someone who I can't remember ever agreeing with on anything. He seems to argue as well for Israel keeping its strategic options open. He is, of course, less sanguine about Iran evolving towards a less bellicose position, but he seems quite certain that Israel should not get involved in the conflicts swirling around it, to which I can only say: Amen. Now if he would only call for Israel to end the Occupation... (I'm not holding my breath).

The other major party in the region's emerging dynamic is Saudi Arabia, which sees Iran as an enemy that has to be restrained at any cost, and is demanding that its allies and friends fall in line. The rhetoric being employed is similar to that of the US after the September 11 terrorist attacks: "You're either with us, or against us."

On January 2nd, the Saudis executed Shia Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, along with 46 others, most of who were accused of having connections to Daesh (also known as the Islamic State). The execution was met with predictable outrage from Shia across the region, especially in Iran. The view from Saudi watchers was that the execution was at least partly to cater to domestic Saudi public opinion. Saudi attitudes towards Daesh tend to be more accommodating than toward Shia, who are seen as near or actual apostates, and as genuinely dangerous. Iranians subsequently attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, giving the Saudis--and later some of its Sunni allies--the opportunity to break diplomatic ties with Iran.

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Domestic pressure may well have been a factor, but the execution also fits the more belligerent attitude of Saudi Arabia's King Salman, who came to the throne in January last year, and quickly made it clear that he intends to have an unprecedented activist foreign policy. The kingdom has come a long way in this respect. Two decades ago it was mostly concerned with the price and supply of oil, and with trying to maintain Arab solidarity and stability. Beginning with the Arab Peace Initiative for Israeli-Palestinian--first issued in 2002 and still on the table--the Saudis have moved to become the political, as well as economic and putative religious leaders of the Sunni Arab world. This position was significantly strengthened by the suppression of the Arab Spring protests, which the Saudis correctly saw as directed against their vision of a conservative, authoritarian, pro-Western, and anti-extremist Arab world.

The Saudi project puts the US--its most important ally--in an increasingly uncomfortable position. It reflects a very different worldview from that of Obama, as exemplified by the Iran deal. Obama readily comprehends that conflicts are solvable--at least in the long run--through compromise. It is becoming increasingly clear that the sector of the Iranian government that supports President Hassan Rouhani's moderate policies shares this worldview. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, views such peacemaking tendencies as dangerous to its vital interests. It is increasingly willing to act on this belief, even at the risk of the US alliance.

So far, it seems the US has blinked first. Immediately after the Iran nuclear deal was concluded, Washington announced a new $1 billion USD arms deal with the Saudis. Other Western allies have followed suit, with Canada more recently selling $15 billion USD worth of arms to the Saudis, despite considerable domestic criticism. The US has also supported the Saudi war in Yemen, which has so far accomplished little other than massive devastation of that country. Washington's criticism of the Saudis over Nimr's execution has also been relatively mute. On the other hand, the US is beginning to recognize that if it wishes to fight Daesh in Syria it cannot get rid of President Bashar Al-Assad for the foreseeable future. This goes against the deepest wishes of the Saudis. In Syria, the US is de facto allied with Iran and Russia.

The US--and especially Obama's domestic critics--will soon have to recognize the emerging fault lines within the country's system of alliances in the Middle East, and that its foreign policy cannot reconcile all of its goals. If Washington considers Iran to be its biggest enemy, this provides Daesh something akin to a pass. On the other hand, if Daesh is seen as the real danger, Obama's pursuit of rapprochement with Iran can be seen as essential.
Assault rifle in caliber .223 with high capacity magazine and silencer.

In the wake of the hundreds of mass shootings over the past couple of decades, the media has been teeming with conversations about mental illness. Newspaper headlines have propagated the notion that gun crime is strongly associated with mental illness, and that people who commit gun crimes suffer from mental illness.

As it turns out, only about 2 to 4 percent of gun crimes are attributable to mental illness (Fazel & Grann, 2006). In making this claim, however, it is important to first distinguish between mass shootings and "everyday" shootings.

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Mass shootings are relatively rare events. A mass shooting involves a perpetrator indiscriminately killing four or more people (not including him- or herself) in a single incident, usually in a single location (Follman, 2012). In mass shootings, mental illness can and often does play a role in the perpetration of violence, but does not explain the full story behind them (e.g. Langman, 2009).

"Everyday" shootings are different from mass shootings. As the name suggests, this type of shooting occurs every day. "Everyday" shootings often involve gang violence, robbery or theft, domestic disputes, other violent crime, or substance abuse. Mental illness plays almost no role in the perpetration of "everyday" gun crime (e.g. Monahan & Arnold, 1996). The conflation of mass shootings and "everyday" shootings is problematic because it masks the differences in underlying causes and factors between the two types of gun crime. Mass shootings and "everyday" shootings are committed by different types of people for different reasons. When discussing the role of mental illness in gun crime, therefore, it is crucial to specify which type of crime is at play.

In his seminal work, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, psychologist Peter Langman discusses the psychological factors involved in school shootings. He offers evidence that individuals who commit mass shootings tend to suffer from mental health issues. First, he notes that depression is highly prevalent among school shooters. Of the ten school shooters he analyzes in the book, nine suffered from depression. These shooters felt like failures in their lives and envied their peers who were happier and more successful than they were.

This envy gradually become anger and rage, which gradually turned to homicidal ideation. Furthermore, many of the shooters Langman analyzes experienced suicidal ideation in addition to homicidal ideation, and some of those who experienced suicidal ideation did in fact kill themselves after the mass shooting. In most of these cases, the suicidal ideation preceded the homicidal ideation. Much scholarly research supports the findings presented in Langman's book.

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However, mental illness does not explain the whole story behind mass shootings. About 1 in 4 people in the United States have a diagnosable mental illness and most of them do not commit mass shootings. One of the principles of modern epidemiology is that one risk factor alone does not lead to a particular outcome, but rather a combination of risk factors together can result in an outcome.

In the case of mass shootings, we must consider mental illness not in isolation but as part of a larger picture. So, what sets those mentally ill individuals who commit mass shootings apart from those mentally ill individuals who do not commit any acts of violence? According to the research, risk factors for gun crime perpetration include the availability of and access to guns; lack of family and community support and validation; substance use and abuse; noncompliance with psychiatric medications; and a preoccupation with violence, weapons, war, and violent video games (Langman, 2009; Meloy et al., 2001; Meloy et al., 2004).

Far more common than mass shootings are "everyday" shootings, in which mental illness plays almost no role. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, of the nearly 120,000 gun homicides that took place between 2001 and 2010, very few were committed by people with mental illness. In fact, research has found that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of gun crime than perpetrators. Perhaps the best-known researchers who have explored this topic are John Monahan and Jean Arnold. In their review of epidemiological studies examining the relationship between gun crime and mental illness, they found that no such relationship exists. Instead, situational factors, such as substance use, interpersonal conflict, and access to guns, are largely responsible for the perpetration of gun crime.

Holding onto the false belief that mental illness drives gun crime has several adverse effects. This belief continues to stigmatize people with mental illness. It has also led to problematic laws and policies, such as the creation of special statuses for the extended detention of prisoners with mental illness, the imposition of a tort liability on psychologists and psychiatrists who do not foresee the violence of their patients, and the creation of a "direct threat" exception to employment protections guaranteed by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

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To turn conversations about gun crime into conversations about mental health and mental illness is to avoid the true issues underlying gun crime. Gun crime should be thought of not as a problem of a select group of individuals, but rather as a problem driven by a combination of situational, social, and cultural factors along with individual factors in rare cases. Programs targeting the situational, social, and cultural factors leading to gun crime rather than the individual factors that contribute to only a small fraction of gun crimes would play a much greater role in ending the gun violence epidemic.
The list of high-profile security breach victims reads like a Who's Who of famous companies: Target, Home Depot, J.P. Morgan, American Airlines, Hilton Hotels, Sony, Neiman Marcus, Staples, Time Warner Cable and (ahem) Ashley Madison. An alphabet soup of government agencies got hacked too: IRS, OPM, NOAA. And all this in just the last couple of years.

Hackers seem to be having a field day breaking into networks and stealing the private information stored there. In fact, a study by insurance giant Munich Re last spring found that nearly 70 percent of businesses had experienced at least one hacking incident in the previous year.

The attacks have coincided with soaring adoption of cloud computing. In a rare justification of the hyperbolic term "revolution," the cloud is altering the way nearly every organization approaches IT. Thus, it's easy to assume that hackers are increasingly targeting cloud infrastructure.

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I don't really know to what extent cloud technology truly is at fault for the headline-grabbing cybercrimes of the last two years. But the attacks have rightfully turned up the heat on a simmering debate over whether data stored in the cloud is less secure than that kept "on premise" -- behind the firewall in an organization's data center. In fact, survey after survey shows that security is the single largest factor hindering faster adoption of cloud computing.

So does the public cloud have a security problem?

I believe it does.

For one thing, it's simple math: Clouds have grown so huge in scale compared with on-premise data centers that it makes sense they'd have a bigger bulls-eye on them. "Cloud attacks are going up simply because that is where the money is," Kevin Curran, senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), told the tech news outlet Computing.

But there's a deeper problem. I'm seeing some situations in the industry right now where speed is taking precedence over security as organizations push applications and data to the cloud. They're moving so fast that they're not always sufficiently sweating all the security details.

That's either because they're bypassing traditional corporate security processes, which were developed in and are more geared to the slower pace of the pre-cloud era, or because they simply lack qualified developers, engineers and other experts who know how to make cloud-based systems secure. Many of the infrastructure technologies that underlie the cloud, such as OpenStack, Docker and Apache Mesos, are relatively new and standardized security methodologies around them are a work in progress.

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In October, U.K.-based telecom giant BT Group went so far as to say it will switch to a different option to deliver cloud services unless OpenStack can address its concerns regarding six areas, including security, according to a report in Light Reading.

Security threats coming from "north-south" -- that is, in and out of the cloud -- are typically protected by the "DMZ," a secure buffer that separates a company's internal network from the Internet and other perimeter devices. However, security at the edge of the cloud is not enough given that 80 percent of traffic stays within the cloud.

This so-called "east-west" traffic within the cloud typically lacks the same level of protection. If someone breaches just one virtual machine or Docker container (a piece of software for application development), the vulnerability can spread like wildfire across the enterprise.

It's important to remember that threats to a company's cloud don't come just from the outside; they also can be vulnerable to insiders.

Disgruntled employees gaining access to confidential data has always been a potential problem for companies, but the cloud makes it worse because it's easier to destroy the entire cloud environment, and quickly, rather than one isolated part of the network. The same goes for unintentional errors caused by network administrators, say the misconfiguration of a firewall.

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Fortunately, new technologies, practices and initiatives are coming along to help double down on cloud security.

A practice known as micro-segmentation is getting increasing attention in many organizations. This helps segment the network limits from an intruder and contain a breach before it harms the entire network. By applying forensics tools, it is then easier to diagnose the impact of post-breach.

Another, even more proactive approach is using software (such as Open vSwitch) to enforce security using policies. This allows every virtual machine in a network to have its own security -- managed at the VM level, rather than at network level. This ultimately means an application can have its own individual security level -- something impossible from a traditional network security perspective.

In addition, the OpenStack has a project, Neutron, working on better cloud security management.
Answer by Susan Athey, Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford GSB; Boards: Expedia, Ripple, on Quora:

This is a great time for economists in tech companies -- the most interesting firms in Silicon Valley are hiring chief economists as well as economic teams at a very rapid clip. Every week, I am contacted to help fill a position, or I hear about a new hire by firms like AirBnb, Netflix, Pandora, Uber, etc. Each tech company, and each chief economist, is different, but there are several main categories.

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First are microeconomic issues involved in pricing and product design. Hal Varian was one of the first tech firm chief economists, and by his account, he worked on the AdWords auction in the early days. At Yahoo! and Microsoft, economists (including myself) worked a lot with online advertising marketplaces.

Personally, I was involved in many aspects of marketplace design for search advertising, from changes in auction design, to the design of metrics and measures that better reflect the platform's long term objectives, to strategy. Generally, technology firms have fairly novel and complex pricing and product design issues. A nice research paper that illustrates some of the issues involved is by Dinerstein, Einav, Levin, and Sundaresan. Here, the way that eBay ranks products in response to a consumer search affects which sellers get more business as well as the extent of price competition. One of my papers (with Denis Nekipelov) models advertiser behavior and looks at the impact of algorithm changes on welfare. Other interesting microeconomic issues arise in the context of on-demand marketplaces like AirBnB and Uber. Former Stanford students Andrey Fradkin (MIT), Chiara Farronato (HBS), and Zoe Cullen (graduating this year) have written interesting research papers that highlight some of the market design issues encountered by tech firms at AirBnB and TaskRabbit, including the role of search frictions for both buyers and sellers; Mike Luca at HBS has analyzed a number of issues with Yelp, and he works closely with them.

Second is corporate strategy. I worked on the Microsoft-Yahoo! search alliance, including understanding the effect of combining the user base and advertising platform. Microeconomists are generally experts at understanding strategy as well as questions about market equilibrium. We can provide a framework for understanding what industry structures may be sustainable, versus not, and think through incentives for acquisitions and vertical integration.

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Third is public policy. Tech firms are interested in issues like broadband access. Simon Wilkie, former chief economist at FCC and professor at USC, works on this issue at Microsoft. Policies around intellectual property, privacy, data security, etc. all have a great role for economic analysis and an understanding of costs and benefits. Many public policy forums include economists and lawyers in decision-making, and economic research can inform these issues as well.

Fourth, and closely related, are direct legal and regulatory challenges -- antitrust/competition policy issues and regulatory investigations. There have been numerous high-profile antitrust investigations against Google in every part of the world; the e-Book case is another big one. In-house economists can directly inform regulators and also help outside economic experts learn about the institutional facts, access data, and become informed.

More junior economists have a wide variety of roles in tech firms. They can take traditional data science roles, be product managers, work in corporate strategy, or on policy teams. They would typically do a lot of empirical work.

In terms of complementing existing non-economist workers, I have found that economists bring some unique skills to the table.

First of all, machine learning or traditional data scientists often don't have a lot of expertise in using observational data or designing experiments to answer business questions. Did an advertising campaign work? What would have happened if we hadn't released the low end version of a product? Should we change the auction design? Machine learning is better at prediction, but less at analyzing "counter-factuals," or what-if questions. (I'm currently doing a lot of research on modifying machine learning methods to make them more suitable for causal inference -- you can search for some of my papers on arxiv.org).

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Secondly, economists are trained to think about equilibrium or feedback effects. There are many decisions in marketplace or platform businesses where the short term and long term effects of a change go in opposite directions. If you stop charging people to post pictures on eBay, conversion rates and customer satisfaction and transaction volume rise -- but that requires sacrificing a large revenue stream. If you tighten your criteria for how well a search ad matches a user query, you lose money in the short run, but in the long run the advertisers should bid more for the increased conversion rates of the ad clicks they do receive. Economists often focus on these types of problems which can be ignored or minimized by engineers.

Overall adding one economist to a team can bring a really valuable alternative perspective, and I'm not at all surprised that all the top tech firms are hiring them!

Economists do face challenges, however. Since they are often in the minority, they have to learn to speak the "native" language (engineering, MBA-speak, legalese), and in tech firms the fact that an idea is well-accepted or standard in economics doesn't get you anywhere. Economists have to make their ideas convincing from first principles, and they also need to learn how to operate in a technical environment to carry out empirical work. For me, that meant learning large-scale computing, engineering platforms and development tools, machine learning, and all of the nitty gritty around developing metrics and A/B testing platforms. It was fascinating, but required a large investment, and not everyone can succeed in that environment. I certainly loved every minute of what I learned, and indeed it sparked not just one but multiple new research agendas for me.

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I am a female activist, from Yemen. This is the first time I'm writing about my personal experiences and life. The reason I summoned the courage to write this is directly related to the only label I opened up my introduction with "Secular Activist", and how much I suffered - as you will read- because of my desire to wear this label proudly and publicly.

Generally, I am a liberal and secular individual that used to live in Yemen, a part of the world where secularism is a sin that the punishment for usually involves medieval torture practices and death sentences. The story of the heroic Saudi blogger [Raif Badawi], who was publicly flogged and sentenced for 10 years in prison, is one of the many examples of the risks associated with being a liberal in a religiously extremist society. In that part of the world women are socially and legally treated as second class citizens, if not worse, meant that to be a freethinking and open-minded woman I had to flee my country, so that I protect myself and find a safer place to live where I wouldn't be threatened, persecuted, or punished for the expression of my thoughts in words or actions. That safer place for me is currently Germany.

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Deciding to stand up for myself and to disrobe the labels of weakness and submission started initially when I realized that being a woman does not mean that I am weak. The challenge this realization put me through was to face the certainty of the imminent domestic and social abuse; which forced me to face a certain type of weakness that I didn't want to admit, the physical one.

I couldn't help, but feel so helpless and weak every time I was severely beaten by the male members of my own family for not meeting their expectations of unquestioned obedience. I was never able to defend myself, and nobody else either took the courage to stand up for me, maybe because getting "disciplined" at the hands of the male family members is widely accepted in a society like Yemen. In such societies, the male is expected to be the guardian and disciplinarian of the women in his family. These roles are not only supported by the inherited traditions, but are also strongly preached in Islamic teachings. One of many examples of such teachings is this verse from the [Quran]:

"Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has favored some more than others and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand." [Surah Al Nisa (the Women), verse 34].

When your religion clearly assigns you such submissive roles, fighting for your rights becomes at conflict with the clear interpretations of devotion to your religion and acceptance of God's will. Such conflict can perhaps explain why many Arab/Muslim women endure abuses and will even rationalize this maltreatment as the righteous way to live.

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This free-will imprisonment of women is lifelong and often inescapable. The woman gets raised within the guardianship of her family; only to leave it when she gets wedded to her next guardian, her husband. This guardianship system only ends when the woman dies, for that even when her marriage ends with divorce or her husband's death, she will go back to live under the guardianship of her family or her husband's family.

My evolving free-thinking brain, and my courage to fight for my basic human rights, stood at odds with this patriarchal system that was designed to imprison and disempower me, and fleeing that part of the world was the only route to hope for a glimpse of light at its end.

The light was there, and my escape journey led me to Germany, a country where despite that as an undocumented immigrant I lack many rights, I still feel freer than when I was in the country that I was born in, and was a citizen of. It is so clear to me now that I made the right decision; I have to admit though, that I had to make it without the clear understanding of what would be my support network in a country that its language, system, and culture are totally foreign to me. I understand now, why so many women, even the ones that are free-thinkers, are afraid to leave their countries and escape to safer havens where they are treated as humans again.

My struggle and expanding awareness of the hardships and barriers that are placed to deny Middle Eastern women their basic rights of freedom and independence, made it so clear to me that the first step I should take as a free woman, would be steps of activism aimed at helping and empowering those abused women. I will support, and fight for establishing organizations with the mission of securing the lives of freethinking and powerful women that are at risk to flee to safer environments, and helping them in making their stories heard across the globe to inspire other women to fight for themselves.
Photo of Jerusalem by Susan Thistlethwaite

"When Jesus approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace!" Luke 19:41

Two weeks ago I stood on the Mount of Olives looking out over Jerusalem and I wept. I did not cry just for Jerusalem, but for the whole region of Israel and Palestine. I was there because my Chicago Theological Seminary colleague, Rabbi Rachel Mikva, and I teach a Study Tour about every two years. This year the whole trip was strikingly different.

The situation is, in short, tense, anxious and unstable. I believe you (and I) are personally involved, not just the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine. The failure to even achieve a peace process, let alone peace with justice, is a flashpoint for the whole world. It is very easy to imagine a major conflict breaking out in that area that could engulf our already tottering world.

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What was especially concerning to me this year is the perception, on the part of almost everyone with whom we met, that the hope for peace and justice is almost nonexistent.

One of the people with whom we met on our tour was Gershom Gorenberg, an author and senior correspondent for the American Prospect. He said to our group that today he is often asked, "What has changed to set off the recent set of attacks by Palestinians?" He said he replies, "The problem is nothing has changed." His most recent article from January 21, 2016, is Washington Discovers Occupation is Not a Good Thing.

No, occupation is not a good thing. It is bad for the faith values of a people to be occupiers, as Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, and our CTS Honorary Degree Recipient from 2015, often says. Even when he was recently attacked by a knife-wielding settler, it was of soul searching that he wrote. It is bad for the people occupied, as Sami Awad, also a 2015 CTS Honorary Degree Recipient, and who heads the Palestinian peace organization Holy Land Trust also argues.

The occupation, in my view, is a physical, spiritual, political and economic catastrophe. It is an accelerating human rights crisis. Access to clean water (our group did not drink the water in the West Bank as it was unsafe to do so), the denial of building permits to Palestinians, and the horrible practice of home demolitions are only a few of the ongoing violations. In addition, it is a Palestinian political catastrophe, as Palestinians themselves are openly contemptuous of their leadership for its corruption and ineptitude.

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There must be peace with justice in this land, and the occupation must end. But how?

Just to further complicate the answer to that question, the accelerated building of settlements only puts more barriers in the way of achieving justice and peace.

U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently said as much in a statement on January 26, 2016. Ban noted, "I am deeply troubled by reports today that the Israeli Government has approved plans for over 150 new homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is combined with its announcement last week declaring 370 acres in the West Bank, south of Jericho, as so-called 'state land'. These provocative acts are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tensions and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead."

Yes, this continued and now even more accelerated building is a major roadblock to peace. Can it be stopped?

Our Study Tour met with Israelis and Palestinians across a wide spectrum, from dedicated political activists to Rabbis for Human Rights, to human rights organizations such as the Israel Religious Action Center to Israeli settlers in the West Bank, to the Palestinian peace organization, Holy Land Trust, to Israeli and Palestinian former enemies, Israeli soldiers and Palestinians who have been jailed, who now work together at Combatants for Peace. Literally no one sees a clear path forward.



We met with Daoud Nassar at Tent of Nations in the West Bank on his farm. Despite the fact that the Nassar family has all the original land registration papers and has cultivated the land throughout the Ottoman, British, Jordanian and Israel governance, in 1991 the government of Israel declared it "state land" as Secretary Ban Ki-Moon describes above. So far, the Nassar family has successfully defended their rights in court but it is an ongoing struggle. They follow a path of nonviolence, and are doing remarkable work teaching nonviolence and environmental sustainability.

But as I stood on the slope of their farm and looked out, I saw the hilltops around the property are covered in settlements. They literally surround it. To even get to the farm you have to climb over boulders and rubble that blocks the road. This little farm is being squeezed out of existence.

What to do?

So many of the people dedicated to peace to whom we spoke in both Israel and Palestine stressed that the situation needs outside pressure for stalled negotiations to be restarted.

Therefore, as an American, I am appealing to every member of Congress and our foreign policy establishment to push again for a settlement freeze as a way to signal a change. External pressure from targeted boycotts and divestment is also needed. I personally do not endorse all the goals of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), especially as I think engagement with progressive elements in Israel is absolutely essential and that Israel is an established state. I do, however, boycott settlement products and have for a while.

That is why President Obama needs to veto the popularly known "Customs Bill" that, as Eyal Press writes in the New York Times in an article called When 'Made in Israel' is a Human Rights Abuse has a provision that, if it becomes law, means "American officials will be obligated to treat the settlements as part of Israel in future trade negotiations." This will make boycotting specifically settlement products more difficult.

Boycotts are a tactic of nonviolence and are part of the ten practices of Just Peace to which I am a contributor. They are especially effective when targeted, specific, and constantly reviewed so that they do not do more harm than good. The aim is to stop the settlement building, and create the space for genuine peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians so that a Just Peace can become reality.

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Jesus laments that humanity does not know 'the things that make for peace.' But the tragedy is that we do know, and we don't do them.
Takeshi Niinami, president of Suntory Holdings Ltd., gestures whilst speaking during a panel session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. World leaders, influential executives, bankers and policy makers attend the 46th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos from Jan. 20 - 23. Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Granted, Davos is a place for debate, not action. However the four days in the Swiss mountains taught global leaders a lesson; if they fail to act on it, there will be trouble ahead.

I worry less about the global economy; a surprisingly large number of business leaders told me in private that they're upbeat about everybody's economic prospects.

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Their real unease is based on the realization that a 'Grand Illusion' has come to an end.

This 'Grand Illusion' was the lingering notion that elites would lead and the mass population would follow. It's the historic model of governance: elites have access to superior information and align their interests with the broader public; and everybody who works hard can become "an elite."



Not anymore. This classic pyramid of influence has been upended, as rising income inequality, high-profile revelations of greed and misbehavior, and the digitalization of media have destroyed the most important underpinning of influence: trust.

The result is a yawning trust divide between the world's elites and the broader population. The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that trust in leading institutions has reached a 15-year-high among the elite or "informed public" group -- those with at least a college education, who are very engaged in media and earn an income in the top 25 percent. However, in the mass population trust levels have barely budged since the Great Recession. On average, the trust gap has reached 12 points; in the U.S., the difference is a massive 19 points. After the economics of inequality, as described by Professor Thomas Piketty in his best-seller, Capital in the Twenty First Century, we now observe the inequality of trust.

In the U.S., the "trust gap" between high income and low income respondents has grown to 31 points; there are double-digit trust gaps in 18 of the 28 countries surveyed. And the problem is set to get worse. In two-thirds of countries surveyed, a majority fears that -- five years from now -- they will not be better off. People who don't believe they have a stake in a country's prosperity, stop trusting their leaders.

These findings go far to explain anti-establishment anger around the world -- which helps drive the popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and the rise of far right and far left parties across Europe.



If nothing is done, brace yourself for more political turmoil, and more resistance to free trade and innovation and immigration reform. There will be political gridlock as people retreat into the echo chambers of self-affirming online communities and television news. The most credible source of information on social networking sites is now "my friends and family."

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How can we end this disconnect, restore trust and re-align the expectations of the elites and mass population?

One of the solutions, surprisingly, is business. A decisive 80 percent of the general public expect that business can do both: improve economic and social conditions, and increase shareholder value. Business is seen as the institution best able to keep up with rapid change -- well ahead of government and even NGOs.



Trust in CEOs has also risen smartly, probably thanks to leaders such as Paul Polman of Unilever and Howard Schultz of Starbucks, who have tackled important issues such as the environment, sustainability and youth unemployment.

During Davos, "trust" was a constant topic of discussion. Many CEOs told me that they "get" the need to close the trust gap; they are searching for solutions -- and partners -- to align their business with the public's values and expectations.

In Davos, these CEOs could meet leaders of the millennial generation, with ideas how to create win-win situations that deliver on business goals, reduce inequality and restore trust. The real work, though, has to start now that Davos is over.
Last Sunday, we saw the first of the elk entering our property.

The lead elk was like a scout, poking through the brush near the Neacoxie Creek.

You could hear the "whoosh" of the herd long before you could really see them, conjuring up visions of the prehistoric world. Would mastodons be next?

Enticed by the large, grassy neighboring lot, the herd emerged from the narrow path and woods by the creek and began staking their positions. At first they stood assembled in a lineup, one after the other taking some kind of preordained position in various corners of the lot. The smaller animals came first out of the woods, and the rows filled out. In a corner of the group, two young bulls frolicked and playfully butted heads. Then from the woods emerged the majestic elders, with mottled skin and huge racks, proud creatures flanked by their harem and offspring.

"What's that one doing?" my wife, the Jersey girl, asked.

Streetside, a circle of elk were crowding around the wooden utility pole. The pole was held upright by metal wires, covered with a protective yellow covering. The elk began chewing on the protective shell. They began pulling at the wires. They gnawed at the wood pole. They scraped and pulled and burrowed.

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"Should I call the power company?" she asked.

"N-no," I said, mesmerized, standing at the window. "I think it's only a guide wire."

Still, the animals kept working, until others in the group folded their legs and settled down like an audience at symphony hall.

Short-circuit

The day before I'd heard Pacific Power's Sheila Holden at the Seaside Downtown Development Association breakfast at the Pig 'N Pancake.

"What can we do at Pacific Power to be a better partner with the community?" Holden asked. "What are some of the things that are important to the people, the businesses in the community? We want to not only make the community better, but the businesses better."

A hand shot up.

"Has there been something done to the substation to cover the top so we don't have another Fourth of July?" Jeff Ter Har asked.

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He was referring to last year, when Seaside's Independence Day celebration was brought to a sudden halt after an outage.

Seaside, Gearhart and parts of Warrenton were without power from about 4:40 p.m. to 10:20 p.m. as Pacific Power crews replaced damaged equipment. A balloon, officials later announced, caused a main substation transformer to short-circuit near Seaside Factory Outlet Center.

"Balloons may seem like small things," Pacific Power Safety Manager Gene Morris said at the time. "But when escaped balloons touch power lines or substations, even the smallest amount of metal content material can conduct electricity."

When a balloon "gets in there in the wrong spot, it just basically short circuits the transmitting of the electricity," Pacific Power spokesman Tom Gauntt added.

"I knew that would come up," Holden said, six months later. "Mylargate. No, we don't cover the tops of our substations."

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Pacific Power even holds events with balloons, Holden confessed. "But they are not Mylar."



Nature on the lines



These seemingly harmless, festive party items cause, according to SafeElectricity.org, "hundreds of thousands" of power outages, including the one in Seaside.

In California, under the "Balloon Law," Mylar balloons have been prohibited since 1990. Even with the ban, foil-lined party balloons cause 100 to 150 outages a year, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. In 2008, a California legislator introduced a bill to ban those, too. Florists and party planners objected, and successfully lobbied for its defeat.

Even kites have been known to bring down power systems.

A New York Times opinion writer in 2013 chronicled outages caused by animals after reading about a squirrel that electrocuted itself on a power line in Tampa, Florida, cutting electricity to 700 customers. He came up with 50 power outages caused by squirrels in 24 states.

In March, an animal about the size of a raccoon got into a substation in southeast Bend and caused fuses to blow, knocking out power to more than 8,600 customers and blacking out homes, stores and traffic lights for three hours.

Twenty-one buildings in Tulsa, Oklahoma, -- including the Oklahoma State University Medical Center -- were affected by a rodent-caused power outage in October, after a rat or mouse crawled into a transformer's switch gear.

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Less than a month ago, a squirrel knocked out power to 1,800 customers in Sunnyside, Washington.
The U.S. is in the firm grasp of winter, and many individuals are trying to dig their way out of the mess left by winter storm Jonas. It's times like these that people tend to dream of hopping on a plane and going somewhere south of the equator. Fantasies of fun at the beach are often wiped away by the harsh realities of their true cost. Fortunately, there are some ways consumers can make that vacation work, without having to pay an arm and a leg. All that's required is a bit of planning and perseverance. Here are 5 tips for how to vacation while on a tight budget.

1. Trade in a hotel room for a hostel. Hostels exist to provide inexpensive food and lodging to travelers, and are extremely popular all around the world. These establishments often provide less privacy, and you may be required to share accommodations with other travelers. As long as you don't mind sharing the space, you can save a significant amount of money. According to one source, the average price of a price of a hostel in Europe comes out to anywhere between $20 and $30 per night. Hotels, on the other hand, will often run you $100+ per night.

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2. Follow travel bloggers and deal hunters on Twitter. Airfare prices fluctuate, and if you want to catch the cheapest deals, you would have to constantly monitor them. A time consuming effort, to say the least. Luckily, there is a litany of travel bloggers who do this as part of their day job, and often tweet out any cheap deals they come across. Even if you don't have a twitter account, consider signing up for one just to follow these individuals. This step can potentially save you hundreds of dollars. Some accounts to follow include @airfarewatchdog and @TheFlightDeal.

3. Be aware of baggage fees, and pack light. Most airlines today will charge their customers baggage fees beginning with the first checked bag. The typical charge for the first bag is around $25, and as much as $150 for a third. Some budget airlines may advertise lower airfare prices, but will cost you a lot when it comes to these fees. Spirit will charge consumers anywhere between $35 and $100 for their carry-on bag. Be aware of these baggage fees when you are choosing between different carriers, and make sure to pick an airline whose total cost (airfare + baggage fees) is lowest.

Pro tip: Some airline branded credit cards offer free baggage waivers. Most of these will, however, also come with an annual fee. You have to weigh that cost against what you'd be paying for travelling with your bags.

4. Take advantage of travel credit cards. Few of us think about the way we pay for things. Cash, credit, debit - a common misconception is that the payment method doesn't matter. In order to optimize every dollar spent, individuals should use reward credit cards to pay for their expenses. A ValuePenguin study found that, given a sample annual budget of $14,400 per year, an individual using travel credit cards can walk away with an extra $263 in their pocket, that they earned through reward points. That's money that can help reduce the cost of your next flight.

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The first interview I ever did on my radio show with Jeffrey Tucker was so compelling and, for want of a better word, important, that he and I immediately decided we would have to do a second, to expand on the themes discussed. I couldn't have expected that the second interview could have been better than the first - but I think it was. The evidence is below, in the transcript of my second interview with Jeffrey Tucker.

ROBIN KOERNER: ... The largest audience figures that Blue Republican Radio has had so far ... was when I interviewed the awesome Jeffrey Tucker. We finished that interview excited about the possibility of continuing on some of the themes that we discussed. I think it's fair to say--and I will invite Jeffrey to disagree with me if I'm wrong there--that he and I see much of what we need to do in the Liberty Movement in the same way, so I'm delighted to say he is back to carry on where we left off last time, a month ago. Jeffrey, welcome back and thank you.

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JEFFREY: It's a pleasure, Robin, thank you so much. You know what? It's interesting that you say that we see things in a similar way because--I'm not sure if I'm right about this but--I tend to think of you as more of a more traditional-classical liberal and I'm an anarchist. However, I don't really see these views--and I hope you agree with me--as antagonistic. I think the difference is a matter of application and probably you're not entirely convinced of the viability of a stateless society where I am. That probably sort of defines the differences, but the spirit of the views I represent, which the core order of society sort of grows out of our associations with each other, that perspective is rooted in the history of liberalism itself. I don't see it as a radical departure, but a kind of organic and gradual outgrowth of that tradition. I don't think it should be severed, if you know what I mean.

ROBIN: Absolutely. Well, I agree obviously with everything you said there. The reason I said I think that we see what we need to be doing in the Liberty Movement in the same way is because underlying, perhaps, our different political positions--my classical liberalism versus your anarchism--we have the same concerns about how to approach our philosophy, how to come to a good philosophy, and what indeed a good and effective philosophy is. Epistemologically then, I think perhaps we're cut from the same cloth.

JEFFREY: Yeah, I think so. It's interesting for me to read in the history of classical liberalism and see the themes that animate my perspective on the world. What was the key insight of liberalism as it grew up in the late middle ages, renaissance, and enlightenment? To me the theme is that there is a sort of self-ordering dynamic to society. That order is not something imposed by a leviathan but rather sort of extends out of our associations and trade--that's the expression "laissez-faire," right? If you let it alone, then everything will work itself out for the common good. I think that is a good way of summarizing the essential liberal insight.

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ROBIN: Absolutely. Now, you ended the show last time, raising a question that sounded a little over-dramatic, but then you pointed out that it certainly wasn't: that it was actually a question that, as a practical matter, we need to answer, which is: "Do we in the Liberty Movement want to improve society or destroy it?"

JEFFREY: [LAUGHS]

ROBIN: And this came out of an hour of discussing the self-falsifying brutalist approach to Libertarianism that you so eloquently conveyed in both the interview that we did and that article that prompted these interviews. Let's just go from there.

JEFFREY: I'm trying to think of a kind of a good way to approach this topic from a fresh perspective, and I keep going back to a beautiful book--I wonder if you've read it. It's 1927 by Ludwig von Mises called Liberalism.

ROBIN: I'm glad you raised it because you mentioned it last time, and I wanted to talk about that again.

JEFFREY: He has this really--and I probably mentioned this last time too--but this last chapter. It's really interesting. He's looking at ways in which the sort of modern leviathan state has distorted society and distorted our outlook on life: how leviathan has created social divisions and made us all annoyed with each other. He actually has a phrase for it; he says that the leviathan has encouraged warfare sociology--I'm going somewhere with this. Here's the deal: because there is so much at stake like imploding outcomes, there's despotism--it lives parasitically off the rest of the social order, turning against each other in a Hunger Games sort of way. What effect does this have on liberalism? Mises answers it this way in the last chapter, he says there's a tendency on the part of public communion in general and even in liberalism to regard itself as a particular party, as a kind of an interest group that favors its interests over somebody else's interests. And he says that this is very wrong. This is a wrong turn for liberalism. In other words, classical liberalism or my more radical Libertarianism shouldn't regard itself as a special interest with a particular slate of demands that come at the expense of somebody else's demands. He says that liberalism has no party; it has no songs or uniforms, no sort of list of demands that it wants for itself, that liberalism is the only political outlook that actually seeks the general good of everyone. It seeks the common wellbeing of all peoples and all places.

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ROBIN: Now surely though, my friends on the left would say that they're trying to do that, but they're trying to use the state as a tool in so doing, were they not?

JEFFREY: Yeah, so this is the problem with the left, right? It's not so much that their ideals are wrong--although they often are--what's really wrong about the left is the means that they use to achieve their ideals, and their means are violent. They always have to resort to the state, meaning aggression on people's lives and property. They never really want to talk about this, or recognize it, or even admit it. But if you're going to the state to ask them--the state apparatus--to achieve your ideals, you're essentially favoring rapping up the use of violence in society and coercion and regimentation. I was just reading this recently - some late nineteenth century classical liberal was talking about the socialists at the time--not the radical Marxists but sort of the more civilized socialists of the U.S. and England--that the problem wasn't especially with the ideals but the means by which they sought to achieve them. I would say that this is the core problem with the left more than anything else. There is a tremendous confusion that bled into the left space at some point in the nineteenth century - I'm not sure entirely when this happened--it came full flower in the progressive era and the New Deal. But just a kind of nonchalant willingness to resort to that political machinery in order to sort of make society conform.

ROBIN: Now, we're going in to a break in just about, I don't know, 20 seconds, so I want to just throw out this question that we can answer in the next segment: Are we in some way not forced to form ourselves into things like parties, a kind of broad interest group, just by virtue of the fact that those who oppose our approach are so formed, and they are so in a democracy?

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JEFFERY: That is a brilliant question, Robin - thank you.

ROBIN: We'll go into the break and we'll discuss when we come back.

[BREAK]

ROBIN: Welcome back to Blue Republican Radio. When we went into the break, I was asking Jeffrey a question. Even though liberalism--classical liberalism--doesn't seek to operate through a party or to form an interest group that fights against other interest groups, are we not--just as a practical matter--in some way forced to do so? Because we operate in a context where such groups do move the political dial and we need to move the political dial, so there's a kind of tension between the fact--and I actually talk about this when I introduce classical liberalism to some of my student groups. For me, what's compelling about classical liberalism is that it actually isn't a political philosophy. It's almost an apolitical philosophy, or a meta-political philosophy. You kind of don't actually have to believe in anything except your immediate experience of liberty - and that can inform your approach to politics in a completely general sense. It doesn't in any way cause you to want to hold tight to an institutionalized party with a certain name, but here we are - pragmatically. There's obviously some benefit to identifying oneself into political groupings and operating with the benefits of so doing in a democracy - when it is a democracy we're trying to influence. What do you think about that, Jeffrey?

JEFFREY: I think that it is inevitable. Of course, it's never going to go away. I would say that there are two big problems with political activism. One is that tends to not be as practical as advertised. Quite often it just doesn't work; it hasn't really worked for a better part of a hundred years. We saw how it worked in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century to some extent, but it's been a long while since it truly worked well for the liberal cause. There are some exceptions that I can name--maybe the repeal of prohibition, some other issues that have led to the liberalization from the top-down through politics, but it's pretty rare. The other problem I really have with it--and this worries me very much--is it quite often leads to despair. People get really, really excited about politics; back their man; throw themselves into it; give money; become passionate about it, almost with a level of religious fervor. And then they find that their man loses, or their man gets elected and betrays them or something happens to demoralize them and then they think, "This whole political thing is just a complete waste of my life;" and they go away through despair. That worries me more than anything. I would say that if you're going to get in to politics, then do so with your eyes wide open to the realities you're confronting--without naivety, really. I think it is actually extremely important, with a real wisdom, that you certainly aren't going to win the whole thing--you might not win anything at all. In fact, the most you might be able to hope from political activity is to prevent the system from becoming worse than it is as fast as it might otherwise have, which is pretty slim pickings as far as victories go.

ROBIN: Okay, but that's not to deny that historically we have seen--going back a thousand years--a trend in the right direction, let's say, in the Anglo tradition.

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JEFFREY: Yeah, I know. There was a gigantic liberal revolution at some point that sort of swept the world, and as many books as I've read about this topic, it's still the cause-and-effect that is unclear. If we could repeat that experience, it'd be a lovely thing. I don't think it's repeatable though; I think we have to find new and creative ways. To me, the most freeing thing that we can do for the world right now is be creative and innovative from a technological point of view. That doesn't mean reforming the system from the top, but rather sort of building it from within and out, making new institutions. I just reread Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and I think everyone should just reread this every few years. If you haven't read it, it's just absolutely brilliant, but he talks about how the Americans claimed their liberty. It wasn't through revolution, it wasn't as if there was despotism, then there was a violent revolution and then we got liberty. That wasn't it at all. He talks about the building of liberty all throughout the colonial period. That it sort of already existed. Very robustly, it was embedded in the culture, embedded in the institutions. It was everywhere! It was part of the practical reality of people's lives. Then, the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent Revolution of the United States comes about because of an intolerance towards impositions. So people were claiming and securing what they already believed that they had and that they had a right to. That's a different kind of conception of how liberty is obtained.

ROBIN: Jeffrey, this is music to my ears! This is what I go around saying to my American friends! I come from Britain. I come from where the history comes from: I come from where the liberty comes from! It's really important to understand, I think, that the so-called American Revolution as you've just said--you've explicitly said--they didn't think that they were being revolutionaries. In a sense they were conservative - they were conserving their birthright. It was already in the culture.

JEFFREY: That's it!

ROBIN: Which goes back to your earlier point, I think. You said that political activism can be so very disappointing, but I think that's because if that's where you--as it were--exert your force, you're exerting your force on the tail rather than the dog. The dog is in the culture, and that wags the political tail. The politics always follows what is mainstreamed, normalized in the culture.

JEFFREY: That's a very important insight. That's gigantic! If we think that politics is the first front that we should face--the thing that we should primarily and even exclusively dedicated to through some sort of ramped up hysteria--I think we're going to fail.

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ROBIN: Absolutely. I think history shows that quite clearly.

JEFFREY: It does. Again, if we go back to Tocqueville here - he describes in such detail the way liberty was embedded in institutions and in peoples. It's very interesting. He talks even about--because I guess in his nineteenth century world there was an impression that the American Puritans were an intolerant, sort of Taliban-ish force (in modern terms)--but he actually marshals a tremendous amount of evidence from the sermons that you hear, even from the most severe Puritan ministers that were basically Lockean in their outlook. It was a beautiful thing that the love of liberty was so pervasive that it took many different forms all throughout American society, and there's a beautiful quote he has somewhere in Democracy in America where he says something like, "I would completely oppose the imposition of only one form of liberty all over the world."

ROBIN: There you go, and that's what the brutalists...

JEFFREY: There should be many, many different expressions of liberty based on time, culture, and people. He's a very interesting guy because he's sort of an aristocratic libertarian in a way, and not an anarchist in any sense, but we have so much to learn from him. There's not an imperialistic liberalism about him at all, or an imperialistic libertarianism, or a top-down central plan--a "we know what's right for society" kind of approach. He really believes that liberty grows out of the embedded experience and belief structure of a people and a particular time and place. Anyway, I think all of this matters for us now. This is not just a history lesson. It really matters for what we're doing today.

ROBIN: Yes. You talked about these ideas, pre-revolution for example, being pervasive in the culture. We can cause these ideas to become pervasive in an incremental way, such that when tyranny strikes (as it kind of is now in this moment of American history), what is in the culture will inform the reaction. It can make the reaction against tyranny one from liberty. I think that is how liberty has stepped up throughout history: political overreach into the culture occurs; there's something good already in the culture; people sense that something they already have is being taken away by tyranny, and then they react.

JEFFREY: That's right. The culture builds real institutions, real relationships and communities.

ROBIN: We'll talk about that when we come back from the break, Jeffrey.

[BREAK]

ROBIN: So when we went into the break there, Jeffrey, you made the point--a very important point--that culture builds real institutions and communities, things that--if I can use your word [from our earlier interview] again--brutalist Libertarians don't spend any time talking about. I think that may indeed make us, as a group of Libertarians, appear alien to those who are just living in mainstream culture.

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JEFFREY: It is certainly right. Here's the thing: what I described as "brutalistic Libertarianism" is a form of Libertarianism, and I don't want to take that away from them. My real hope is not so much to condemn but to elevate, you know? And to draw attention that it really is about more than just your rights to do what you want. It's about more than just the freedom to have no social graces--which I certainly would argue for. That's okay.

ROBIN: Do you actually mean that literally, Jeffrey? Do actual mean that Libertarianism is about more than those things, or do you mean that life is about more than those things?

JEFFREY: Here's the thing--and I don't want to get caught up in definitions like "what is Libertarianism?"--I mean liberty and life. Libertarianism is not much good to us unless it can point to a larger, more beautiful result of a flourishing human life under conditions of liberty. I think we need to broaden our minds and look at that possibility. One reason I think that brutalism exists is because don't believe that liberty can exist anymore. People are despairing as a result of the leviathan state: they think, "I'm never going to be able to exercise my rights really; we're never going to get a free society, so I might as well just take what I can get right now." I think that is a kind of unidealistic way to look at it. It's inconsistent with the dreams and the longings of the old liberal tradition, which really sought the best not just for oneself, but for one's community and for the whole world.

ROBIN: Here's a question, then, that this raises for me: does the liberal tradition itself--or indeed Libertarianism as we currently understand it-- provide the means, the metrics, the paradigm to actually determine what is the good life, what is more beautiful, what is better? Or is that a completely different project that falls outside whatever it is that we do as liberals politically--classical liberals politically? That we're going to do not because our philosophy necessitates it, but if we don't, we're just not going to get anybody else to like us? Which of those is it?

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JEFFREY: I like to go back to Hayek on this. Hayek thought the most important agenda was to create to a space of choice, human volition, and freedom for institutions to develop, and develop the tolerance for a wide diversity of those institutions. That was the essence of the liberal project more than anything else. It wasn't to achieve certain designed and rationalistic ends; it was to create a space and a template--a sort of civilizational template--to allow the full, multifarious flourishing of the best of human life in every way you can imagine that. In Law, Legislation, and Liberty, he actually uses the words, "the good society," which was an interesting phrase for him to use because he's writing--probably at this point--8 to 10 years after Lyndon Johnson imposed what he called the good society, which was just a bunch of welfare programs actually. Hayek sought to take back that term for the liberal cause. A good society is not something you impose through legislation, transfer programs, and redistributions. It is something that emerges out of the decentralized choices of individuals where they are in their time and in their place, doing what is in the best interest of themselves and others in a cooperative way. That's what builds a good society. I just think that is a beautiful image.

ROBIN: Definitely. Some pure Libertarians would say, though, that our responsibility as Libertarians is just to make sure that politically that's allowed, and that we don't have to care too much about what society then does with that freedom. But I think you would say--and correct me again if I'm wrong--that some institutions, some choices taken with freedom are better than others, and make for better lives. Is it important that we, as classical liberals or Libertarians--even anarchists--have anything to say about that even as a political matter?

JEFFREY: I would say that there is a really interesting give-and-take relationship between freedom and the longing for the higher angels of our nature. There's an inter-relationship between these two things: the larger the state grows, the worse we become as people; and then the worse we become as people, the larger the state grows. I think the reverse relationship works there too. It's like, if we can get busy building our own forms of freedom that are based in benevolence, cooperation, creativity, and love, we will become less dependent on centralized forms of impositions and leviathan state control.

ROBIN: Thank you for using the word, "love." I've been trying to introduce the word, "love," into politics since I started on this. One of the ways I understand liberty is that it is the political realization of love because love says "as you wish." To your loved one you say, "As you wish;" you want for him or her what he or she wants for him or herself. A liberal politics does the same thing politically.

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JEFFREY: I think that's right. Robin, all beautiful things in the world extend from love. For me, love is the great creative force; it is the thing that gives birth to new life. It's a creative force in the sense that it takes the existing substance that's around us, merges it and mixes it together and creates something new, surprising, beautiful, exhilarating - and it is the reason we wake up. It is the reason we have hope. It's the reason we look forward to tomorrow, so we can discover new, wonderful things--all of which extend out of love. Without love, all of history is just data: it's boring; it's not creative. A civilization of love is a prosperous, flourishing place. I think it's a beautiful word. I agree that there's a political economy of love.

ROBIN: "Political economy of love." Yeah, wow! Here's a thought then, which speaks to your brutalism idea and my purism or orthodoxy idea. I don't think anybody would ever make, or has made--I might be wrong--a serious attempt to systematize love. To actually write it down what it entails--whatever the axioms of love are and then consequences. Love is necessarily more fluid, more amorphous. I can't remember who said it, but I am reminded of that line: "If the soul speaks, then alas, it is not the soul that speaks." It can't be what's ultimate. Ultimate reality can't be spoken. If that's true--if love is the bottom line--then isn't that the denial of all attempts to dogmatize, or even, frankly, at the bottom line, systematize liberty? Define it even?

JEFFREY: I think that once you feel like you've understood the whole of it, you probably haven't understood its most important thing. It's a mystery. Why do we say the word, "love," with such tenderness? Why do we always have a sense of awe when we just say that word? I think the reason is that--there are several reasons--it's ultimately mysterious, we really can't take it apart, we can't fully understand it. Another reason, too, is that it's very fragile. When it appears before us, when we possess it, when we hold it, when we feel it - we should treasure it, guard it, and protect it because it can shatter so quickly, and in so many ways, I would say that the state (in the 20th century in particular) has shattered our capacity to love. The death, the violence, the imposition, the regimentation, marching around in lockstep to the dictators and the plan...

ROBIN: And by, indeed, taking over most of those human transactions that come out of love - that we, out of love, perform for and on each other. The state has taken them over and eliminated our space to actually realize our love - to be loving towards each other.

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JEFFREY: That's true and really gets us back to the core reason that we wanted to speak, that has to do with this issue of brutalism versus humanitarianism as I conceive it. I really think that it's extremely important for classical liberals, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, left libertarians--I don't care what you call us--people who favor the cause of human liberty--to not just hate. There's a just hate that we have for terrible things in the world, but that doesn't get us all the way. I would like to find ways for us to fall in love with the idea of human liberty, and for that to be our animating driving force. That's not to say that we have a particular agenda that "I know the answers," and, "Here's what we should do;" but I do think that if you're driven by a love for liberty--really--then you start to get creative. Then you can have a benevolent spirit; then we can have civil discussions; then we can have lively, robust, lasting institutions that can build the kind of society that we all long for.

ROBIN: Perhaps we can even go one step further--it's not just about falling in love with liberty, it's about using liberty to fall in love with each other, isn't it?

JEFFREY: That is such a lovely way to put it. I agree with that. In any case, it's a pre-condition. It's something that we shouldn't forget about. We're not just about fists up in the air--that's not enough. Sometimes that's necessary, right? These days there are so many horrors in the world, but you can't go to bed every day with hate in your heart. That's just not going to get us from here to there.

ROBIN: Even for the statists.

JEFFREY: Even for the state.

ROBIN: For those who would use force.

JEFFREY: It's fine to have a passion for justice--I think we all feel that. But the question is: what's the next step? What are the ideals that we're seeking? What are we being called to achieve--not just to oppose but to build? I think it's good for everyone who is liberty-minded to do an examination of conscience in that sense. Like in my case--gosh, Robin, it's a little bit autobiographical but--I fell in love with the idea of innovation, creativity, cooperation, and exchange. Just the magic that's associated with the capacity of human beings to get along and work out their problems for themselves. When this started happening to me, it gave me a really different outlook on life. It is very fun now for me to enter into social spaces and observe what's going on. I'm thrilled; I'm thrilled by so many things that I'm part of. Just the other day--I was getting off the plane--I kind of watched very carefully at the process of deplaning, how people get out and get their luggage from the luggage racks, move in front of each other, defer to those who are disabled, let those who have connecting flights get ahead of them, look down upon those who cut in line. It lasted only 10-15 minutes, and I'm sitting there in my chair, watching this extremely complicated social structure emerge out of this microcosm in just a matter of minutes. I found it just magical and marvelous to observe the capacity of human beings to organize themselves imperfectly but beautifully--even in the absence of stated rules or statutory rules. The rules emerged out of etiquette and manners, and there was like a court in operation at the same time out of a complete diversity of people from everywhere, who had never met each other before. It all happened in the course of minutes, it took place over 10-15 minutes, and then it was over. If you can look at a scene like that and say, "This is beautiful. This is magic. This is lovely. This is how liberty can work." I think that's a great way to look at our project, really. We want a world which that level of spontaneity and informal organization of humanity takes place with compassion, love, and mutual understanding.

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ROBIN: Liberty as a means to allow people and to encourage people to express their higher selves. Higher selves that, by the way, they can access without having any political ideas at all-- just by virtue of their humanity.

JEFFREY: That's exactly it, Robin. Don't you think...? I've begun to realize recently that we have a slightly exaggerated attachment to this idea that there should be some sort of universal political ideology held by everybody that which so happens to be ours. I don't actually believe that really. If we have the right kind of institutions, it shouldn't be necessary to "convert" everyone to every aspect of our belief system.

ROBIN: What we're arguing for here, I think, is essentially a very optimistic--and I would say, true and spiritually accurate-- understanding of what a human being is. In a way, if you're Christian, you might say we're made in God's image. I would probably prefer to say that we all participate in the divine, we all manifest the divine--whatever way you want to put it. It is a very positive view of humanity that has been borne out by what people do when they are given the kind of liberty we're talking about. I see now, Jeffrey, that we're going in to another break, so we will carry on when we come back.

[BREAK]

ROBIN: This has been a very moving hour for me in discussion with Jeffrey Tucker. Jeffrey, in the interview we did before--the first one we did--you said the "purpose of liberty is to serve real people in their real lives." The brutalist paradigm had a very different purpose--if any at all--right?

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JEFFREY: I didn't understand when I wrote my first article; I just assumed that brutalism was made up like any other theory, like, "Oh, to hell with beauty, to hell with accoutrements, to hell with loveliness." Brutalists go, "Here's your damn building." That's not actually true. What happened to the brutalist school of architecture grew out immediately of the World War II experience, which was shocking to all of the artists and creators in the world. So you've got the bombing of Dresden; London's being aerial bombed; you've got Nagasaki and Hiroshima; you've got governments' destroying major monuments of civilization all over the world, so one school of architecture said, "You know what? To hell with it." If you think that civilization and beauty are that dispensable that you just push a button from the air to smash it up to smithereens, we're not going to build it--as kind of a protest. "Here's your damn building. It's not beautiful; it's ghastly. It's just purely functional - destroy it if you want. No great loss." Do you see? In other words, the brutalist architecture school represented a kind of nihilism or absence of hope completely. It was a despairing worldview that they adopted, and I think the ideological brutalism is in the same sort of cap. It's a tendency to look around the world and say, "There's no hope; there's no chance for beauty; there's no chance we're doing anything good at all, so let's just grab the minimum-most that we can, run with it, assert it, and shove it down the world's throat." There's an analogy there. What this story, to me, about the origin of brutalism does: it makes you slightly, a little more sympathetic. This grows out of world experience, grows out of a historical experience that was ghastly. The brutalist architectural school was in a way the victims; this is what emerged.

ROBIN: Jeffrey, this is the end of the show. We're going to have to carry on in a third, I think.

JEFFREY: I'd like to do that very much.
Silhouettes of family

For many Americans, the issue of refugee resettlement is a personal one. When I read the stories, such as the most recent NYT Magazine piece about resettlement, I think of my own great-grandmother who fled anti-Semitism in Russia and arrived in the US shortly after the turn of the century.

The impact of permanently relocating a refugee to a country where she can rebuild her life is not only about safety and survival, but also about how this intervention changes the course of a family's history. This is particularly relevant today as the average amount of time an individual lives as a refugee is 17 years. War and conflict can, and often do, go on for generations.

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A 20-year-old Congolese woman named Sandra Uwiringiyimana, who resettled to the US many years ago, said recently,"I was born into war. My earliest memories are of my family fleeing, of soldiers marching in the streets and attacking my people. My schooling was constantly interrupted because we had to run so often." (You can listen to an account of her refugee story at a UN Security Council session on Children and Armed Conflict here).

Sandra's life before arriving in the US was always characterized to some degree by danger. When peril and persecution mark your weeks, then ambitions, talents, and pursuits are often severely restricted. For people like Sandra, resettlement is not only enabling and life saving, but also a significant inflection point in the family's history.

My family and future generations will always remember my great-grandmother because she represents that new beginning, the moment when her life was finally free from danger. Her children had the opportunity to define their lives with their own intelligence, abilities, and will.

My grandfather's favorite poem was Invictus -- a stark expression of the indomitable nature of the human spirit -- because it best summed up my great grandmother's perseverance in the face of hardship.

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Listening to stories about her played a role in founding RefugePoint, the organization I lead that reaches refugees in the most precarious circumstances with opportunities to resettle and become self-reliant. As of December 2015 we've enabled 31,071 refugees to access resettlement opportunities to the US and other countries over the past decade.

We are now starting to see the arc of family history for those we have helped. A refugee mother and father, who escaped a country where many have been tortured, arrived in the US with their newborn and kept a journal of their time as refugees in Kenya. They told us the writing is for their child, so he will know about the people that gave them an opportunity for a new life. Orphaned children from Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, and Eritrea who were barely teenagers when I first met them are now getting married and having their own children.

Sandra Uwiringiyimana is writing a book about her life that will be published next year by Harper Collins. The future of any children she may have will not be constrained by the kind of persecution that Sandra faced. All those who may come after her will know that she was the one whose survival and arrival in the US was the turning point.

Each of us has in our family one or more figures whose unusual circumstances or accomplishments will be remembered in the collective family consciousness for generations because their lives were pivotal. Like my great-grandmother, they will be the ones whose stories become permanently embedded in their family lore. The US government refugee resettlement program and those of other countries provide uniquely important opportunities for so many whose lives might otherwise be lost.
As a B Corporation, my company is focused on doing well by doing good -- it's part of our company DNA and is how we do business each and every day. While our mission to create cleaner and healthier environments for our employees and clients is deeply embedded in our company culture, we are always looking for new ways to help solve social challenges while continuing to move forward with our business strategies.

You don't have to be a nonprofit in order to make a positive impact on the world. In fact, I strongly believe that a company structured to make a profit while also providing social benefits is exactly what the world needs more of at this time.



As Alan Murray wrote in the introduction to Fortune's Change the World List, "Companies that are making genuine efforts to change the world for the better should be encouraged."

If changing the world for the better is part of your company's 2016 goals, here are 3 ways you can ensure that will happen:

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Get Re-Inspired

The first thing you need to do is re-ignite your passion for what drives you and the mission of your company. By shifting our thinking from how to be in business to why we are in business, we are in fact creating a gigantic shift in priorities -- not only for ourselves, but our companies. One of the best ways to do this is to connect yourself with the social cause you feel most passionate about; chances are it is part of why you created your company's mission. "Cause is so much more powerful than mission," writes Mohan Nair in a piece for Seattle Business. "Causes are realized while missions are given. Causes transform while missions inform. Causes start with an individual." Get involved with a local nonprofit, attend an organization's event or workshop, find a mentor who will support and guide your efforts. Nurturing your social side provides new energy and clarity -- moving you and your business to the next level of creating good.

Create an Employee Volunteer Program

It is important for me that my employees not only become a part of the company's internal mission, but I want their enthusiasm for doing good to carry out into our communities. Creating an employee volunteer program helps align your company's overall mission and values with the interests of your employees and the needs of your community. While there are various ways you can structure such a program, the most effective programs offer different levels of involvement. For example, give employees the day off to volunteer as part of a community-wide day of service, organize volunteer efforts via your internal teams allowing them to volunteer time that is in line with their skills (i.e. your accounting team could provide a day of bookkeeping services for a nonprofit) or allow employees to participate in individual volunteer programs during work hours (i.e. attend a nonprofit board meeting). Knowing that your employees lead very busy lives outside of your company, you want to make sure you have ways for them to participate even if they are time-crunched.

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Hire Well

There are a lot of things to consider when building your team, but to increase your social good in the New Year, you need to find people with the ideal balance of social passion and business experience. How? Clearly communicate your company's core values during the interviewing process and be able to translate those values into behaviors. As the CEO of an eco-friendly cleaning company, I screen dozens of experienced cleaners, but I only hire those whose personal values align with our standards and mission. I am looking for what some call "below the surface competencies", those attributes that go deeper than traditional business acumen and skill-sets -- after all, it's easier to train someone how to do a task than it is to train them to have the same values as your company. A team built on a foundation of shared values will inherently want to work hard towards your company goals.
(Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

By Melissa Dahl

In 2013, a mountain climber named Chad Thomas told The Wall Street Journal that he'd returned a backpack to the outdoor-clothing and -gear retailer REI earlier that year -- a backpack that he had, by the way, originally purchased in 2004. Nine years later, it "was getting old and dirty, and I didn't like it anymore," Thomas told WSJ. (You don't say.) At the time, REI had an unlimited return policy, so the store in San Ramon, California, not only accepted the backpack's return but gave Thomas an additional $17 to match the item's current price.

Later that year, REI curbed its ultra-lenient return policy to one that's more medium-lenient: It now restricts returns to within one year of purchase. But plenty of other stores still use generous policies. Nordstrom, for example, pretty much takes back any item, bought at any time, no questions asked; the department store doesn't even require customers to provide a receipt.

To shoppers, the appeal of lax return policies like these appear obvious. Buy what you want now, while you're already in the store or on its website, and make your final decision later, after you've had a chance to take it home and think on it. To retailers, on the other hand, it would seem that lenient return policies are not such a good business practice, and many in the last decade or so have added restrictions to once-lax policies. Costco, for instance, once used the same indefinite deadline, but in 2012 switched to a 90-day deadline; Sears went from allowing returns within a "reasonable period of time" to a 30- to 90-day return policy, depending on the item purchased.

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It makes a certain amount of sense. Annually, returns cost retailers staggering amounts of money; in 2014, for example, returns cost retailers across the country a total of $280 million. Why make it easier for your customers to take something back? These questions happen to be explored in a new meta-analysis -- in other words, a study of studies -- published recently in the Journal of Retailing. In that paper, researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Texas at Dallas review 21 studies on the effect of lenient return policies on the number of purchases and subsequent returns. Overall, they found that policies tend to increase both purchases and, to a smaller but still significant degree, returns.

But, interestingly, the terms of the policy make a difference, in one surprising way in particular: The longer a store allows its customers to return something after purchasing, the less likely they are to ever actually return it.

Researchers explain this finding with the construal level theory, the idea that when something feels far off -- either in time or physical distance -- it becomes more abstract in your mind. Something closer, on the other hand, is perceived as being more concrete, and either perception changes your subsequent action in different ways. Put another way: If there's a deadline, as any good journalist knows, you take action more quickly. But if a store's return policy dictates that you have a year (or longer) after purchasing to return an unwanted item, then actually bothering with traveling to the store and returning the thing doesn't seem like such an urgent task. "Since they don't feel pressure to take it right back to the store, they kind of sit with it and live with it and say, 'Well it's not that bad,'" Ryan Freling, one of the co-authors of the meta-analysis, told the Washington Post. You'll get around to it. Eventually. As Post writer Sarah Halzack notes, "If you've ever found a blouse lurking in the back of your closet with the tags on it months after you bought it, this is probably a familiar feeling."

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And the longer you own something, well, the more it starts to feel like it's really yours. People tend to prefer items they own over items they don't, something consumer psychologists call the endowment effect. And research Freling and his colleagues examined in their meta-analysis confirms this may apply to the question of return policies, in that customers who shop at stores with lenient return policies tend to rate their purchases as being of higher quality than those who shopped at stores with less lenient policies.

But there's one aspect of making returns that the study authors miss in their analysis, and that is the barrier of social awkwardness. Some people just feel too weird about exchanging or returning a purchase, so they just hang on to it -- even if the item was damaged when they got it. "I'm not 100% sure why this is the case for me, but I've always found it difficult to return items," writes a commenter on a social-anxiety-support message board, highlighted in a post at the Billfold. "It feels like I'm admitting failure or something walking back into the store, telling the cashier why I don't want it. I just can't do it." That person ended up throwing out a package of just-purchased but incorrectly sized air filters, even though the package was still unopened. Another commenter writes, "I do the same thing. I don't know why but I hate returning things as well. Though instead of throwing stuff out I usually just keep it and hope sometime down the road I'll find a use for it."
Co-authored by Kenneth Braswell, the Executive Director of Fathers incorporated (FI), a not-for-profit organization that serves as a leader in the promotion of Responsible Fatherhood and Mentoring. He has over 24 years of community development experience. Mr. Braswell also serves as the Director of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC). The NRFC is a widely recognized national and international resource for fathers, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers.

On Friday, January 8, 2016, the Obama Administration hosted its first ever "White House Dialogue on Men's Health." The event featured U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and White House Cabinet Secretary, Mr. Broderick Johnson. Over 200 men and women with expertise in fatherhood programs, medicine, education, social services, and policy attended the forum to share their perspectives on how to keep men healthy.

African American men live sicker and die sooner than men or women from any other racial / ethnic group in the United States. As Kenneth Braswell, Executive Director of Fathers Incorporated put it: "if you can't stand up or kneel down without making a noise, it's a clear indicator that you need to be mindful of your health." The average life span for African American men is 70 years, compared with 76 years for White men, 76 years for African American women, and 81 years for White women. Unfortunately as Braswell ended; "as old men, people won't care that our socks don't match, they will only care if you are in the room or not."

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Along with the urgency to address the physical health of men, we also discussed issues of mental health. We now know that major depression is the #1 cause of disability in the world. Mr. Braswell highlighted how he and Dr. Sidney Hankerson are partnering to promote mental health in African American churches.

Depression is often a "silent killer" for African American men, because it looks different than depression in women. Men who are depressed, compared to depressed women, may be more likely to describe feeling angry and irritable; abuse alcohol and other drugs; and, have physical complaints such as headaches and back pain. Untreated depression is the #1 risk factor for suicide.

For the first time in our nation's history, Black children have higher rates of suicide than White children. Racism, cultural mistrust, misdiagnosis, and engaging social support networks play a critical role in how Black children process the environment in which they live. As one participant explained: "Men get their signals about manhood as boys at the first instance of crying." Systematically we have to recognize that, so that moving forward we understand that solutions for improving men's mental health will take innovative approaches.



We are closing in on the January 31 deadline to enroll in health coverage in 2016. While African American men are more likely to be exposed to social conditions, such as limited finances, and other socioeconomic inequalities that contribute to health disparities, it is still vitally important that that they are insured. If for no one else, at least for the sake of their families and children.

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Dr. Sidney Hankerson is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. Hire him for a workshop - www.SidneyHankerson.com
Patient Advocates Hope Report will Help State Legislators Make the Grade in 2016

With the recent release of the Americans for Safe Access (ASA) report Medical Marijuana Access in the US: A Patient-Focused Analysis of the Patchwork of State Laws, state lawmakers now have the tools they need to improve medical cannabis programs to truly meet the needs of the patients they are meant to serve.

The report evaluates the array of differing laws across the country from a patient's perspective by using a point system to grade each medical marijuana law on: 1) patients' rights and protection from discrimination, 2) access to medicine, 3) ease of navigation, 4) functionality, and 5) product safety protocols. The report concludes that while many states have important elements helpful to patients, no state has yet established an ideal, comprehensive program.

Letter-grades for all 23 state laws and Washington, D.C.: Alaska (D-), Arizona (B-), California (B+), Colorado (B), Connecticut (C+), Delaware (C), Hawaii (B), Illinois (B+), Maine (B-), Maryland (B), Massachusetts (B), Michigan (D+), Minnesota (C), Montana (D-), Nevada (B), New Hampshire (C), New Jersey (C), New Mexico (B+), New York (C), Oregon (B), Rhode Island (C-), Vermont (D+), Washington (B), and the District of Columbia (C).

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Generally speaking, the legal landscape for medical cannabis patients at the state level continues to improve. Twenty three states and the District of Columbia have now legalized medical cannabis, and seventeen other states have some limited form of medical cannabis laws. More states are adopting some level of legal protections, there have been tremendous advancements in product safety regulations, and state program administrators have demonstrated a commitment to making their medical cannabis programs work best for their states.

One example is California, which passed several new bills in 2015 to enhance the medical cannabis program. One such bill is a potentially life saving measure introduced by Assemblymember Marc Levine which protects medical cannabis patients from being excluded from the organ transplant waiting list. Without this protection, the consequences are likely to be devastating - even fatal -for patients like Tamra Howard. The fifty-one year old mother and grandmother suffers from renal kidney failure. She says, Medical cannabis gives me an appetite and keeps me from being depressed. As a transplant candidate, Tamra was relieved when her advocacy efforts paid off and in July, 2015, Governor Brown approved the measure. Tamra is currently on the transplant list, and able to use her medicine without fear of losing her spot on the list.

The biggest news in medical cannabis trends is the emergence of comprehensive product safety regulations. A number states -- including Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Washington -- have adopted the best practice regulations and standards set forth by the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA). In addition to the AHPA Recommendations for Regulators, states are also incorporating the laboratory testing standards set forth in the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia Cannabis Inflorescence Monograph. These authoritative, expert standards mean states no longer a need to omit these protocols or reinvent the wheel for medical cannabis product safety regulations. This trend is a positive and necessary evolution of a maturing industry.

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This is good news for patients, who are often medically fragile and require access to consistently safe medicine. Marylands comprehensive safety standards mean that Maryland resident Emily Mcardle can look forward to the highest quality medical marijuana for her identical twins Caitlyn and Riley once that program starts. Caitlyn and Riley were both diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Now five, Riley is still non-verbal, has sensory issues, and is unable to attend school. While Caitlyn is in school, she is semi-verbal and also suffers from ADHD and hyperactivity. Both girls have been on numerous medications that have helped with some of their issues, but Emily worries about the lack of long-term testing on these pharmaceuticals, particularly on pediatric patients. With the Natalie M. LaPrade Maryland Medical Cannabis Commissions adoption of new stringent safety regulations, Emily said she is, Extremely interested and excited to try medical cannabis with her girls to see if it can help with sensory issues, sleep and other issues associated with autism and ADHD.

2015 was the first year since the first medical cannabis states were passed that states could move forward with the implementation of their medical cannabis laws without the fear of federal interference thanks to the passage of the Rohrabacher-Farr Medical Marijuana Amendment in December 2014. The report shows that not only are the state programs working more effectively for patients, but are also governed by robust regulations that meet the enforcement guidelines set by many federal agencies including Department of Justice (DOJ). This a great signal for federal lawmakers who are considering supporting legislation like the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States Act (CARERS) of 2015 (S.683) introduced by Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NJ), and Rand Paul (R-KY) and the House companion bill, CARERS Act of 2015 (H.R. 1538) introduced in by Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Don Young (R-AK). Passing the CARERS Act would allow states to continue meeting the needs of the millions of Americans who are helped by medical cannabis and would ensure that programs would not be interrupted by the next administration.

The possibility of losing access, or fearing federal prosecution for taking a medicine your state has given you the right to take, is frightening to patients who are already often dealing with debilitating illnesses. Patients like Jeanne Sauro who has fought hard for her right to take medical cannabis in her home state of Massachusetts. Jeanne, a now medical cannabis activist, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2013. She completed treatment in 2014, and although she survived cancer, the medicines they used to treat her left her with chronic and excruciating bone pain. She began taking cannabis and according to her, The result was miraculous, and the pain disappeared. Thanks to Governor Charlie Baker who pushed to get dispensaries open more quickly in the state in 2015, there are now four dispensaries operating in the state, and Jeanne no longer has to travel to Maine to purchase her medicine illegally. Unfortunately, patients like Jeanne and state programs could lose the gains they have made if protections, like the CARERS Act are not put into place at the federal level.

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ASA hopes that state legislators and regulators will use the report to identify what is working and pinpoint the gaps in service and protections that are important from a patient's standpoint. In addition, the report should drive home for federal lawmakers, like Sen. Chuck Grassley, that state program administrators have demonstrated a commitment to protecting medical cannabis patients, and making their medical cannabis programs work safely and efficiently in accordance with many federal guidelines and regulations. Senator Grassleys support for CARERS is particularly important right now, because the bill must get a hearing in his Senate Judiciary Committee before being adopted by the full body.

If you are interested in moving the CARERS Act forward, please contact Sen. Chuck Grassleys office (202) 224-3744), and ask him to please give the CARERS Act a hearing. Sign and share the petition here.
When former Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci passed away this week, I was surprised to find myself as sad as I was. I was never a Buddy campaign supporter, nor did I have business dealings with him. I was not a fan of his radio talk show, but I admit I sometimes tuned in for fun.

At first, I thought I was sad because a larger-than-life figure from my childhood had died. But after much reflection, I realized it was because Buddy's death marked the end of an era - a time when Providence citizens truly embraced a Mayor's vision for our city and helped turn urban renewal into a cultural renaissance.

Buddy Cianci was a polarizing figure equally loved and hated. There was good Buddy: a charming Mayor of possibilities and then there was bad Buddy, a scandalous figure driven by greed, ego and more bully than buddy. Out of respect to those who mourn him, I will only share my memories of the good Buddy Cianci.

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First off, you didn't meet with Buddy, you experienced Buddy. Whether he was speaking to a crowd, running a meeting, working a room or walking a neighborhood, Buddy was charismatic and commanding like no other. If you lived or worked in Providence during his reign, you couldn't avoid crossing his path. He led the city I love more like a king than a mayor. He was as cunning as he was charming, and smarter than most. To say Buddy was a volatile force of nature would be a huge understatement - he was a powerful ally and a dreaded enemy.

Buddy was always on. I remember a day after reelection, while other winners were off on vacation, Buddy was on TV briefing the media at the site of a hostage crisis. The ink on the ballots was barely dry.

Event after event, year after year, Buddy would be engaged at even the most routine events. Everyone knew: Buddy wouldn't miss the opening of an envelope. Every vote mattered, even future ones. Sitting on stage alongside other dignitaries at high school graduations, Buddy would be the only one to turn his chair toward the valedictorian. He would then hang on to every word of the young speaker and future voter.

Buddy was an ever colorful orator. When thanking a philanthropist, Mary "Happy" White, for donating a playground in the diverse neighborhood of South Providence, he joked about the irony of a "Happy White" playground in the heart of a "Black Neighborhood."

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Unlike most politicians, no subject was taboo for Buddy. A favorite guest of the nationally syndicated Imus in the Morning show, I once stumbled across a live Buddy appearance on a Don Imus visit to Providence. I am paraphrasing from memory, but I recall the conversation to be something like this...

Imus: Mayor, I love your city. You have moved rivers to create a beautiful Waterplace Park. How were you able to do that?

Buddy: Federal grant money.

Imus: How are Federal grants awarded?

Buddy: They are awarded based on a city's population.

Imus: Mayor, what is the population of Providence?

Buddy: It depends upon the size of the grant!

Branding Providence may have been Buddy's greatest achievement and he mastered it. Just as Buddy reinvented himself to resurrect his political career, Providence reimagined itself as a city reborn of art, food, culture, architecture and education. Providence became widely celebrated as the Renaissance City.

Mayors who followed Buddy hoped to rebrand the city in their own image too, but no out-of-state branding firm could manufacture what Buddy instinctively discovered. He awakened an authentic renaissance spirit as genuine as the people who lived here, and the Renaissance City became as charming and dynamic as the fearless leader who championed the brand.

That's why Buddy resonated with voters for decades despite his flaws. He was a real Rhode Islander even if his antics were beyond imagination. Just Buddy being, well, Buddy.

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When Buddy served (and by served I mean as Mayor and not time in a Federal prison), he spoke about his vision of Providence with the passion of a lover. He believed the capital city of the smallest state should be bigger in the eyes of the nation.

So when the Ocean State Theatre needed money for restorations, he provided funding with the proviso that they change the name to the Providence Performance Arts Center. Why? Because great cities have great art centers and Providence deserved one too.

Buddy found money to form a mounted police command in Providence. Why? Because New York City had police on horseback and Providence should too.

Buddy was the face of Providence during an era when the city needed a salesperson most. He spoke at national conventions, smiled from the labels of his pasta sauce jars and drew attention to Providence in ways good and bad. Buddy challenged us to think bigger, act bolder and to believe in our city as much as he did. Join me in remembering the renaissance mayor who never stopped believing in Providence. The good Buddy at his very best, RIP Mayor.
Realizing you need help and learning how to ask for help are crucial skills for a founder.

And while how much money you make at a startup is a way to keep score, a successful life can't be measured only in dollars.

These topics were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere, my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern). The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup - from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward.

Joining me in the Stanford University studio were:

Listen to the full interviews by downloading them from SoundCloud here and here. (And download any of the past shows here.)

Clips from their interviews are below.

Sarah Calhoun has spent two decades building nonprofits and small businesses. She was the 2012 National Women in Business Champion for the Small Business Administration. In 2011, she served as a as a US Delegate to the APEC Women in Business Summit in San Francisco. The same year, President Obama invited her to attend a White House forum on jobs and economic development, and she was named Montana's Entrepreneur of the Year.

Sarah graduated from Gettysburg College with a degree in environmental studies and worked with Outward Bound and the Student Conservation Association. She had no startup experience, but decided to start Red Ants Pants when she couldn't find work pants that fit her properly. Here's how she found her way:

I learned a lot from other people. My pattern maker and this fellow Richard Siberell, (a designer for Patagonia who took her under his wing) were incredibly patient with me explaining the process. I did a lot of reading and research on my own. I asked for help whenever and wherever I could, and that's a big piece that I think is essential.

Steve: Is that hard?

Sarah: Yes.

Steve: Why?

Sarah: I think in general, it's somewhat of a vulnerable topic, when you just admit that you don't know something that you need, and that you need help. ... because it was all new to me, I was comfortable admitting that. ...

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To hear the clip, click here.

In addition to founding Bluefish, Steve Sims is the CEO of the celebrity charity auction platform BLUEcause; a speaker; consultant; and author of the book 7 Ugly Truths. From the time Steve was young, he was on a quest to get rich. Over time, he learned money was not as important as he once thought.

...As you get more successful you get into the trappings. You get the suits. You get the watches. You get the cars. You get the penthouses. You get all of these things because, hey, once I've got those I'm successful.

Then you get it and you walk into your penthouse and you go, "Not much has changed. I'm just on a higher floor now and with a bigger mortgage."

You suddenly start realizing ... once you've got (these things) that it's not all that it's cracked up to be.



(If I could) I would probably just sit my younger self down, pour a whiskey, and go, "Look, it will be fine. Just keep your word and it'll be smooth."

Steve Blank: Would you have listened?

Steve Sims: No. I was young and obnoxious and arrogant. Of course, I never had anything to lose. ...I never had any of those trappings to risk. I went out like a bull in a china shop, "Grab grab grab, get it, get it. I want that deal, I've got to do that. I've got to make sure they're happy."

I made sure things worked for my clients because I knew if I looked after you, it would look after me. Without realizing it there was a little bit of intelligence there ...

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To hear the clip, click here.

--

Like many founders, Sarah is an idealist, but she didn't initially look to doing a startup as a way to realize her dream of making a difference:

When I got into college, I was an environmental studies student and wanted to save the world. ... I looked down upon those marketing majors, who just wanted to make money, and I thought this was the last thing that I would ever do.

...I wanted to make more of an impact as far as doing good in the world, and at that time I didn't see business as an avenue for that. I didn't know much about business. I've still never taken a business course in my life.

To hear the clip, click here.

She had no idea what she was getting into:

There were no work pants that fit women out there on the market. None, whatsoever. As you can imagine, curvy hips do not fit well into square men's pants.

I was fed up with wearing pants that didn't fit, as I realized lots of other women in the industry were. I talked to some companies to try to get them to start a line of work wear for women. No one jumped at it.

One guy said, "If you're serious about it, why don't you start your own business?"

So at the age of 25, I very naively asked myself, "Well, starting a business, how hard can this be?"

To hear the clip, click here.

Sarah's advice for other founders is straightforward:

Be true and be brave.

There's a lot of scary things out there, especially getting into a world or an industry that you don't know and don't have experience in but having a lot of courage and integrity and going into that ...

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We could all afford those things, right? We don't need to take a loan for more courage. We can do that. We just have to trust our gut too. That's a big one, I make all my decisions just based on what feels right which may or may not be advisable to everyone but so far it's worked for us.

To hear the clip, click here.

--

While he kept trying to get a bank job, Steve worked the door at clubs in Hong Kong, throwing parties and events that became the toast of the town. He never planned to start a company:

I started ... with this delusion that I would get to rich people. I started putting on parties and clubs and events. And people would hire me to put on these events with the idea that if I captured enough rich people, that would do it. Without it realizing it, people were saying, "Can you do this? ..." "Do you know people in Monaco?" "Do you know people in London?"

So before it actually became a concept as an industry, I was becoming this international concierge. I was ... flying to Macau and flying up to Japan to ... try and find the coolest places.

Then I would send people there and go, "Oh yeah, you know because of my recommendation, that's $1,000 but if you want me to get you a penthouse and a chauffeur ... then that's 10 grand.



So I was making it up on the fly. And (at the) parties that I would throw, because I was on the door and I like humble people, I would give people a password to get into my club. And one of the passwords was finish this line, "One fish, two fish, red fish..."

So people would walk up to the door, it would be me and another meathead on the door and they would say, "blue fish," and I would let them in.

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And if they didn't and they were too arrogant and would go, "I'm here for the party," we'd say, "I'm sorry. There's no party here. I don't know what you're talking about." And there'd be a line of people getting in and the door would open up and music would barrel out. ...

That's how it started. It was a password.

To hear the clip, click here.

The company quickly acquired some mystique, but not by design:

We launched ... a website and we forgot to put an email on there and a phone number. Everyone was in the media going, "Oh, that's so exclusive. They haven't even got a phone number." We forgot to put it on there!

...No one could contact us and ... this myth suddenly grew ... We didn't have business cards because we thought no one would take us seriously so again people thought we were that exclusive because we didn't even have cards.

To hear the clip, click here.

Like Sarah, Steve's advice to other founders is simple:

Keep your word. ... There is no better asset or title than someone turning round and going, "That Steve, he keeps his word." ...

(Nowadays) I think people feel that it's OK to let someone down and then apologize about it and then try again. I think if you've got someone that keeps their word no matter what, even if you lose money because you priced it wrong, nothing better than your credibility.

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... I held onto that (maxim) from an early stage, and it worked well for me.

To hear the clip, click here.

Listen to my full interviews with Sarah and Steve by downloading them from SoundCloud here and here. (And download any of the past shows here.)

Next on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere: Carmen Medina, former director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency and co-author of Rebels at Work; and Don Burke, Intellipedia Doyen for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111.

Want to be a guest on the show? Entrepreneurship stretches from Main Street to Silicon Valley, from startups to big companies. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey.
Making A Murderer , Netflix's smash documentary series was a revelation, opening my eyes to many things about Steven Avery's case that I did not know before. As one of Brendan Dassey's attorneys, I had reviewed Mr. Avery's trial transcripts and some of the media coverage of his case. But there's a huge difference between reading a trial transcript or an online news article and seeing events unfold on film. Of all the shockers in the film, the most disturbing to me was Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz's press conference on March 2, 2006. I saw, for the first time, how Mr. Kratz destroyed both Mr. Avery's and my client's "presumption of innocence."



On March 2, 2006, the afternoon after Brendan was arrested, Mr. Kratz addressed a throng of reporters whom he had assembled in a press conference that was carried live on many local television and radio stations. Mr. Kratz first issued a warning to viewers and listeners not to let children under age 15 hear what he was about to say. And then he proceeded to narrate Brendan's "confession" over the air. Merely mentioning that Brendan confessed was prejudicial enough, but Mr. Kratz went further. He vouched for the truth of the confession, speaking with certainty with phrases like "we now know what happened" to Teresa Halbach. The release of these gory details coupled with his confidence in their truth all but sewed shut any chance that Brendan or Steven could get a fair trial.

The press conference was such a disturbing spectacle that it traumatized many who heard it, including grown men and reporters like Aaron Keller, the NBC26 Reporter from Green Bay, who told Rolling Stone that "it was the single most shocking thing I ever heard as a human being." Mr. Keller, dubbed the "Silver Fox" for his good looks and thick gray hair by Making a Murderer fans, had to shut himself in the news truck for an hour afterwards to decompress. He told Rolling Stone that he felt the need to reach out to some "decent human beings" who were his loved ones. Keller called his parents.

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Other reporters who covered the conference have told me that they could not sleep or eat for days afterwards and one television producer from near-by Fond du Lac told me that she remembered exactly where she was when she heard the news. It was the kind of indelible memory -- like Kennedy's assassination or the Twin Towers falling on 9-11 - that people still couldn't shake.

What makes Mr. Kratz's conduct especially galling is that he had to know he was breaching both ethical rules governing pre-trial publicity and special rules which expect an even higher duty of prosecutors in criminal cases. He just didn't care.

There's no wiggle room in these rules. Wisconsin Rule of Professional Conduct 3.6(2)(a) prohibits lawyers from making public statements that the lawyer "knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter." Rule 3.6(2)(b) is more specific, prohibiting attorneys in a criminal case, from publicizing "the possibility of a plea of guilty to the offense or the existence of the contents of any confession, admission or statement by the defendant or suspect." The Comments to Rule 3.8 which concern "the special responsibilities of a prosecutor" state that "a prosecutor can, and should, avoid comments which have no legitimate law enforcement purpose and have a substantial likelihood of increasing public opprobrium of the accused."

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Mr. Kratz violated these rules. He knew that the contents of Brendan's confession would be disseminated widely throughout the Manitowoc area, the entire state of Wisconsin, and soon enough to the world via the internet. As Mr. Keller can attest to, the manner in which Mr. Kratz read the contents of the confession only served to add to the trauma of those listening to it. The remarks also inflamed the public's scorn of Avery, Dassey, and the entire Avery family.

There is a special reason why the rules prohibit discussing the "contents of a confession." It is because there is no more powerful piece of evidence in a court of law. Former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once wrote: "No other class of evidence is so profoundly prejudicial... Triers of fact accord confessions such heavy weight in their determination that the introduction of a confession makes the other aspects of a trial in court superfluous and the real trial, for all practical purposes, occurs when the confession is obtained." The reason for this is because most jurors naively think that they would never falsely confess to a crime. They also believe that only an insane person would falsely confess to a murder. When prospective jurors heard Brendan's confession, Brendan's presumption of innocence morphed into an almost irrebuttable presumption of guilt.

In the wake of Mr. Kratz's press conference, few in the media questioned his conduct. They printed the contents of his confession and played clips of the conference on the air over and over again. State and local prosecutors (and former prosecutors turned talk show hosts) were equally mum about the ethics of Mr. Kratz's behavior. It's only now, in the wake of the film's release, that some prosecutors are publicly condemning condemning Mr. Kratz's conduct and some members of the media are second-guessing their decision to blindly follow Mr. Kratz's lead. At the time, however, their silence made them complicit in Mr. Kratz's ethical breaches.

Mr. Kratz has never paid any price for his theft of Brendan and Steven's "presumption of innocence." Apparently, no disciplinary complaints citing misconduct during the press conference were ever filed against Mr. Kratz before the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation. But unless prosecutors like Mr. Kratz face serious sanctions for such rule violations in the future, there will surely be others who will follow in his footsteps.



Disciplining prosecutors, however, may not be enough to curb such abuses. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the United States Supreme Court reversed several convictions due to prejudicial pre-trial publicity. But today, this remedy is disfavored. Instead, courts grant continuances, change venues, bring in juries from other counties, give extended voir dire to lawyers to pick a fair and unbiased jury, or instruct jurors to disregard information gained from outside the courtroom. Studies have shown that these "solutions" do little to erase the taint of prejudicial publicity. Even the most conscientious jurors may be unable to suppress the biasing effects of hearing that a defendant gave a confession, especially one as graphic as the one described by Mr. Kratz.

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(Photo: Zhe Zhu)

By Kathleen Hou

Like your soul, your lips take a battering from cold, cruel winter. They chap, flake, burn, and can feel drier than a week-old baguette. This is partly because they don't have sweat glands, just a small number of oil-producing glands, according to Dr. Heidi Waldorf, the director of laser and cosmetic dermatology at the Mount Sinai Hospital.

But though chapped lips are annoying, they're also one of the easiest beauty problems to solve. Read on for tips from dermatologists about how to prevent and treat chapped lips, and for our recommendations of lip balms that will make your mouth feel like it's summer all year round.

Tip No. 1: Don't be a mouth-breather. Not only is it annoying to anyone you cuddle with, but it can also give you flaky lips. Moisture evaporates faster from your lips when you breathe in and out with your mouth because of the hot air you're expelling.

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Tip No. 2: Don't lick your lips all the time like LL Cool J. Dermatologists agree that the biggest cause of chapped lips is constantly biting or licking them. It's a never-ending cycle, says Dr. Whitney Bowe: Saliva evaporates and dries out your lips, causing you to want to continue licking.

Tip No. 3: Don't do the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge. Topical enhancers like lip "venoms" work by dilating blood vessels, which swell the lips but also dry them out. Also avoid any long-wear lipsticks that include alcohol. As you've learned from American Psycho, alcohol dries out your skin, including your lips.

Tip No. 4: Drinking water won't help you. Unless you are very, very dehydrated, your dry lips have nothing to do with how much you're drinking. They're more likely to be dry for the reasons above. "For your lips to be dry, it would have to come from days of not drinking water. Not because you went to hot yoga," says cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank.

Tip No. 5: Get a humidifier. It doesn't only help your skin but your nose, throat, and lips, too.

Tip No. 6: Don't forget to apply lip balm after eating and drinking water. "You have to reapply it regularly after eat and drinking," says Dr. Waldorf. Water left on the lips from food or drink can also evaporate, adding to dryness.

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Tip No. 7: Look for lip balms that seal in moisture and hydrate. In moisturizer terms, you want a lip balm that is both humectant, which draws in moisture, and occlusive, which seals in moisture, Dr. Bowe explains. Waxes and petroleum jellies are occlusive, while shea butter is a humectant. If your lips are cracked, Dr. Waldorf suggests avoiding balm that contains menthol or camphor, as those can sting.

Kiehl's Lip Balm No. 1, $7 at Saks

This is a nice, semi-splurgey lip balm you could ask your grandma for as a gift without feeling bad that she's wasting her Social Security money on you. It's the OG of luxury lip balms, back when the only options came from a drugstore or the Gap. Years later, it still holds up, feeling more like a lip oil than a balm, with a blend of moisturizing ingredients like squalane and petroleum. Some complain about its beeswax-y scent, but I like that it smells so no-nonsense.

Homeoplasmine, $18.93 at Amazon

Since I'm not fluent in French, I don't know exactly what's in this French drugstore favorite, but I do know that it solves chapped everything -- chapped lips, the cracks you sometimes get on the side of your lips from winter, dry cuticles, and even chapped nipples (the original purpose of this non-sticky balm was for nursing mothers). It's a multipurpose reliever that earns its MVP status backstage at Fashion Week.

Dior Addict Lip Glow, $33 at Saks

If your natural lip color can only be found on a true-crime show, this lip balm is for you. Although the balm is a light pink, it morphs on your lips to create an individual color using what Dior calls "Color Reviver Technology." Some people get a rosy shade, some get more of a pastel pink, but the color is always naturally flushed. A heavy dose of mango butter keeps your lips feeling moisturized but not overly weighed down with gunk.

Chanel Hydra Beauty Nourishing Lip Balm, $50 at Saks

Packaged in a hefty branded tub, this is the only lip balm to go along with your fancy Chanel cotton face wipes. It's scented in Chanel's signature camellia and uses a heavy dose of the oil to moisturize. But it's not just pretty -- the formula is a nice balance between being too heavy or too light, gliding over any cracks and dryness to create a moisturizing base that doesn't rub off with drinks.

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Shiseido Benefiance Full Correction Lip Treatment, $36 at Macy's

This lip oil feels like a lip-balm Snuggie, smothering your lips in moisture. Since it's a little thicker in texture than a traditional balm, it fills in cracks so that your lips no longer double as sandpaper. The oil also acts as a nice barrier to that windchill of 6 degrees (or as Chicagoans call it, that warm breeze) you're currently feeling outside.

Sisley ComfortExtreme Nutritive Lip Balm, $74 at Saks

Think about precisely whom you'll kiss with this lip balm on. Is that person worth it? Because while the mix of sunflower oils and shea butter feels like a cashmere blanket of moisture on your lips, the price of this lip balm may make you more discriminating about who you smack lips with.

La Mer the Lip Balm, $55 at Saks

Does anyone need a La Mer lip balm? I'm sorry to report that this feels really, really good. It may cost more than most people's foundations, but it feels great, covering your lips with a silky sheen of moisture that lasts for hours. The main ingredient is petrolatum, along with a mix of other oils including sesame and eucalyptus, as well as seaweed extracts.

Lancome Absolue Precious Cells Nourishing Lip Balm, $50 at Saks

This lip oil is like if your fanciest face oil got extended to your lips. Can lips look glow-y? If so, this one does the trick with a mix of moisturizing acadia honey, beeswax, and rosehip seed oil. It also contains Vitamin E, which is supposed to help with anti-aging, but honestly, who has time to worry about lip wrinkles?

Clark's Botanical Ultra Rich Lip Balm, $19 at Amazon

This balm feels more like a salve than a paste or balm. It has a viscous texture but is based on shea butter, not formulated with petrolatum. While the texture is unusual, it's a savior when your lips are so dry that it hurts to put anything on them.

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Grown Alchemist Lip Balm Watermelon and Vanilla, $23 at Shen Beauty

This is probably Instagram's best-loved lip balm, since its sleek Impact font and black-and-white packaging make it popular among people who live for prop-designing scenes against marble countertops. Compared to most lip balms, it has a stickier lip-gloss feeling that protects the lips from frigid winds (though also has a tendency to trap stray hairs). And its watermelon-and-vanilla fragrance makes it smell like a specialty cocktail from a fancy speakeasy.

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Credit: Dan Gentile/Thrillist

Although it used to be a staple of any steakhouse table, these days steak sauce is like a condiment hybrid between a T-Rex and the type of bull that hangs out in China shops. It's nearly extinct, but when it does make an appearance, it destroys everything in its path.

At first I thought this might be my post-millennial food-writer myopia, but after some research it's clear that the steak sauce category itself is in serious danger. A.1., the definitive brand, actually took the label "steak sauce" off of its products in 2014 with hopes of reaching a broader target of meats. So how did we get here? I spoke to several experts to find out just exactly how this happened, then ruined a perfectly good 6oz filet mignon. I don't suggest you try it at home.



Credit: Dan Gentile/Thrillist

Meat quality has improved dramatically, says meat guy

Naturally the folks from Certified Angus Beef have an interest in claiming that today's beef is of higher quality than yesteryear, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. When chatting with corporate chef Michael Ollier, he stressed that what was on the table at steakhouses in the '70s doesn't hold a romantic votive candle to what's being served today.

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"More ranchers are raising higher-quality beef, which we can tell because Certified Angus Beef has a much higher acceptance rate of cattle today."

When CAB launched in 1978, it was the first branded beef company in the world, but it's now joined by over 100 others who all set distinct quality benchmarks on their products that simply didn't exist for older generations of cattle. He thinks that the more heavily marbled meat has shifted diners' tastes.

"Before, you were masking something that was inferior, but as people gain a palate for higher-quality beef, they're more hands off and letting the flavors of the beef sing," says Michael. "Or, they're finding more adventurous ways to balance a fatty cut like a ribeye," he says, citing the popularity of sauces like chimichurri.



Credit: Dan Gentile/Thrillist

Chefs look down on it, and diners look up to chefs

John Tesar, the celebrated chef behind modern Dallas steakhouse Knife, doesn't pull any punches when it comes to his distaste for steak sauce. "For an aged steak, it's almost sacrilegious to put sauce on it because you're missing out on the whole process," says John.

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Like Michael, he equated steak sauce with poorer-quality cuts, but added that the crutch was indicative of early philosophies of American cooking. "I worked in French restaurants when I was younger where sauces are the complement," says Tesar. "American sauces are made to add things to a dish or to cover up meat that isn't as good. Steak sauce became a cover-up and not a complement."

The move away from steak sauce also lines up with the trend of chefs as "compositionists" rather than just cooks. There's an increased respect for the plated dish in general, which has also changed the value perception -- diners understand that they're not just paying for the protein, but the preparation. Branding like CAB also plays into this equation, in that it feels more appropriate to douse a generic piece of meat in sauce, but less appropriate when the beef has a name.

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While the Syrian crisis shows no signs of abating, patience with refugees fleeing the conflict is wearing thin in most host countries. Sweden plans to deport up to 80,000 asylum seekers, and Denmark just passed a law allowing authorities to confiscate the valuables of refugees to help defray the cost of their care. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, anti-immigrant feeling in France has intensified. In Germany, one of the most generous asylum-granting nations, anger has mounted following allegations of sexual assault by groups of allegedly North African men in Cologne on New Year's Eve. In the United States, a nation little affected by the refugee crisis, the Republican front-runner has called for a complete ban on Muslim immigrants on grounds of national security. Fear-driven rhetoric and simplistic solutions impede serious consideration of an international problem that is far more extensive, persistent and serious than dealing with the effects of a single crisis.

The Syrian civil war has increased the number of asylum seekers, but the people escaping this one conflict represent a small percentage of those who have fled their homes. They make up less than 8 percent of the world's 60 million refugees and internally displaced people. This staggering number suggests that the current crisis is but a small part of a larger pattern of forced migration that has been going on for decades and will undoubtedly continue for the foreseeable future. Wars, famines and natural disasters cause spikes in the number of migrants, but beneath these blips on the radar lies a far more intractable problem: the gap between the haves and have-nots is increasing. As world population rises and resources decline, more and more people will try to move from poorer to richer areas in search of greater opportunity or merely to survive. Even the most prosperous states, however, have a finite capacity to absorb them.

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Forced migration of so many people does pose a threat to international security but not the one that anti-immigrant groups invoke. The risk of terrorists hiding among migrants is small. Some of the Paris terrorists and one of the San Bernardino shooters were already citizens of the country they attacked. Groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda have had little difficulty moving their operatives across borders or recruiting followers within target countries. Indeed, it is the ill treatment of migrants at their destinations that makes them vulnerable to radicalization, not the fact that they are refugees.

The real danger of migration lies in its destabilizing effect on fragile states and in the violent backlash it provokes. The tiny country of Lebanon has 4.8 million people and 1 million refugees that it can ill afford. The potential for clashes between desperate migrants and over-taxed border guards on the southeastern fringe of Europe is very real. Several states have already put up fences and established checkpoints, and there has been a call to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Physical barriers alone, however, will not stop desperate people with nothing left to lose. If warmer weather and calmer seas bring more waves of refugees, it is not inconceivable that Europe's front line states will use force to stop them entering.
"Done," whispers my sleepy two-year-old. He pulls my pyjama top back across my chest and rolls over on the pillow. He hugs me, and drifts off to sleep. I lay with him in the shadows for a little while. One of the best parts of my day is watching him rest beside me in the quiet black, sated, happy, and secure.

Breastfeeding has given me this gift. This gift of connection. Of love and comfort. My boy and I have done this thousands of times, but still it feels new.

When I think of what my 20-year-old self would think I smile. I never thought I'd breastfeed. And certainly not for as long as I have. But almost 1,000 days in, it has changed me. Softened me. Made me more accepting, patient and calm. I'm proud of women's bodies in a way I wasn't before. I'm proud of my body. Pregnancy changed it. I am in awe of the gift it gave me and the way it continues to nurture my son and keep him healthy and reassured.

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"Breastfeeding has given me this gift. This gift of connection. Of love and comfort. My boy and I have done this thousands of times, but still it feels new."



As I lay in the dark, hugging my little man, my mind wanders to a video I watched earlier of Alyssa Milano defending public breastfeeding to Wendy Williams. Wendy is uncomfortable with breastfeeding. Why? Because "she doesn't need to see that." She says she would take her baby to the car to nurse privately rather than breastfeed in public, and she'd expect others to do the same. But she admits it's her problem, stemming from her own insecurities.

It's an age-old human weakness to fear what we don't understand. And to use our own insecurities as reasoning to turn against those who cause us to question them. But does that make it right?

As a fellow mother, I wonder if Wendy would have served her gender, her child and herself more fully by bearing witness to these insecurities in a less damning manner. And offer support to today's women in their right to feed their children as they see fit, even if she made a different choice herself.

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But Wendy speaks to a wider social sensitivity. On a United Airlines flight in March 2015, Kristen Hilderman nursed her five-month old baby. In response, a flight attendant suggested she cover her baby by throwing a blanket at her, telling her husband to "help her out." Hilderman shared the incident on social media which went viral and, encouragingly, garnered overwhelming support for nursing her child.

Why is society shaming women for nourishing their babies? Has our world become so artificial we can't appreciate the beauty and innocence of a breastfeeding child?

In Syria, a female member of the ISIS Brigade mutilated and killed a mother who breastfed her child in a public space. The mother was nursing her child, under her burqa, trying to provide comfort following her husband being killed. ISIS Twitter accounts reported the woman mutilated the mother before the execution because she violated "public purity."



"Why is society shaming women for nourishing their babies? Has our world become so artificial we can't appreciate the beauty and innocence of a breastfeeding child?"



Public purity. Is this what it has come to?! How "pure" are public spaces, in a nation slaughtering their own people. But it seems ISIS and Western society may have something in common. Are we proud of that?

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We claim to value freedom above anything else. Critics argue it's their "freedom" to sit in a cafe and not catch a glimpse of a mother's breast. But isn't it a baby's freedom to eat when they're hungry, no matter where they are? And a mother's freedom to care for her baby in the best way she knows how? Who's freedom is more valid? These are questions I find myself stunned to ask.

Many imply breastfeeding mothers are somehow getting a kick out of exposing themselves in public. I'm a breastfeeding mother who nurses in public when I need to. But every time I do, it I'm self-conscious, aware of the judgment I may attract.

I'd be lying if I said this doesn't hurt. But something inside me burns with more ferocity than the momentary anxiety caused by a stranger's disapproving glare. I can't deny my son's needs in favor of another's personal insecurities. Can anyone, in all sincerity, argue that I am wrong, when there are women walking around in low-cut tops or hot pants with the full support of modern society, drawing far more attention for far less worthy reasons?

I'm proud of my body. It's the body that enabled me to birth my son into this world, and continues to enable his nourishment and healthy development. The assumption that perhaps I may be utilizing this natural function in order to garner some cheap thrill, shocks me. It's simply not an accusation I ever imagined I'd find myself in defense against.

I try to be discreet, but there are two people involved and babies and toddlers don't always cooperate. They're innocent and follow their instincts without question. They have no idea of the controversy surrounding them having their basic needs met.

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"How can it be more acceptable to throw wrongful accusations and hurtful admonishments at a nursing mother, than it is for that mother to be nursing in the first place?"



How can it be more acceptable to throw wrongful accusations and hurtful admonishments at a nursing mother, than it is for that mother to be nursing in the first place?

It's not a question I'll find any lasting answer to soon. Perhaps it's a deeper routed human assignation to battle and divide than it is to nurture and empower. I hope not. But, given the common reactions breastfeeding elicits, how can I not ask the question? Is this really how we want to treat one another?

So, when Wendy Williams suggests nursing in public is offensive and mothers should sit in the car, I'm grateful she was speaking to an empowered, confident Alyssa Milano. Now my son is a little older I don't want to send him a message that what we're doing is odd. Or abnormal. Nothing could be more natural than a child breastfeeding for hunger, comfort or reassurance. Wendy says she has insecurities. I plan to ensure my son doesn't grow up to have the same ones. And nursing proudly in private, or public, is the best way I know how.
Jocelyne Ndayirorere (third from left) and other women mediators and community members work together to resolve conflict. Photo: UN Women/Bruno Gumyubumwe

Between 1993 and 2005, the civil war in Burundi cost approximately 300,000 lives and left hundreds of thousands displaced. In 2015, strife erupted once again.

The conflict stirs up painful memories for 59-year-old Rose Nyandwi. In 1972, she dropped out of school after her father was killed. Decades later, in 1993, she lost her husband during the Civil War. But she did not let loss consume her.

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The widowed mother of eight children managed to restore balance, a sense of purpose and a feeling of belonging to her community through her work with womens organizations. Today, Ms. Nyandwi is a mediator in the southern province of Makamba with the Women Network for Peace and Dialogue. Since January 2015, the UN Women-supported organization has worked hand-in-hand with national authorities and civil society organizations and communities to prevent violence and conflict.

Victims of conflict trust us to solve their problems in an effective and respectful manner, said Ms. Nyandwi. Our strategy is to build partnerships  to avoid the community thinking we are acting on our own.

Rose Nyandwi is a mediator for the sourthern province of Makamba, Burund. Photo: UN Women/Bruno Gumyubumwe

The network consists of 534 mediators working across all municipalities in Burundi (129 in total).

By their count, women mediators have addressed over 5,000 conflicts at the local level in 2015. They also initiated dialogues in 17 provinces with political actors, security forces and civil society.

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This network was developed in light of the ongoing need for reconciliation, post-civil war. Recently, in the lead-up to the 2015 elections, the incumbent Presidents run for a third terma move contested as unconstitutional by the oppositionsparked a new political and security crisis. Since late April 2015, tensions between the Government and opposition have led to sporadic violence between security forces and protesters in the capital, Bujumbura. This has made the work of women mediators all the more crucial.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently raised alarm bells over new and extremely disturbing patterns of human rights violations. More than 230,000 people have left the country in the last year. Despite calls for internationally mediated dialogue between the Government and the opposition, there has been little progress.

In this tense political context, women mediators have been tackling familial, social and land-related conflicts at the community level, which can easily be politicized and risk destabilizing communities. They have gained the confidence and practical know-how to tackle political and electoral conflicts and increasingly dealt with sensitive issues. The women diffuse tensions, for example, by mediating between security forces and protesters, and advocate for the release of demonstrators and political prisoners.

The mediators promote non-violence and dialogue, and counter rumours and exaggerated fears with verifiable information. This prevents widespread panic, heightened in Burundi since independent media outlets were shut down in May 2015.

For instance, at the beginning of the recent crisis, Ms. Nyandwi travelled across municipalities to raise awareness and dispel unreliable rumourssuch as mass arms distribution or orchestrated plans to kill Tutsi (the minority ethnic group targeted during the countrys civil war).

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We have done a lot to convince youth not to use violence against security forces, said 50-year-old Jocelyne Ndayirorere, a tireless and long-time community leader. Theyve understood our message and today they thank us for our advice. Good relationships between security forces and youth have been maintained. She says dialogue for peace has to start within the household, then spread to the community level, then the national level.

Jocelyne Ndayirorere is a long-time community leader who received conflict prevention and resolution training from UN Women. Photo: UN Women/Bruno Gumyubumwe

Women mediators like her and Ms. Nyandwiwho worked for an association confronting gender-based violencewere chosen for their previous experience in conflict prevention and resolution and have been further trained by UN Women.

When a case is brought to us, all the mediators of the municipality gather to understand and advise the victim and help the victim file a case in court, said Ms. Nyandwi.

Most victims who turn to them for help are women. They report feeling that women mediators will understand them better than traditional figures of conflict-resolution, who are mainly men. These men are now calling upon women mediators to assist them in solving a conflict.

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At the same time, Ms. Nyandwi says not all men support their work: Some peopleincluding perpetrators of violencesee us as [handling] issues that do not concern us. But she says this is slowly changing.
As I contemplated writing a blog with this title I presumed that it had probably already been done. Boy was I right! Google bubbled out dozens of prior examples including a HuffPost blog by Jason Derr in the religion section of Huffington in 2011. Almost all the prior statements, including Derr's, had an ecclesiastical frame of reference. Except one by Buckminster Fuller. In 1970 he wrote a book entitled "I seem to be a verb; the environment and man's future." (1) In it he invokes an evolutionary perspective to mankind's role in the Universe. I resonate with this viewpoint.

As a physician profoundly concerned with mankind's place in the Grand Process of Existence I probe deeply into basic mechanisms. In this regard two adjacent questions emerge: what is life? and what is health? Both are similarly answered with verbs as mechanisms rather than nouns.

Such is a profound philosophic point.

I find its understanding expressed in a paper written by my good friend Richard Strohman who was an elegant professor of biology at Berkeley. In his paper in Nature Biotechnology (2) in 2003 he pinpoints the fundamental issue when he observes that we have subliminally substituted agents for agency. He calls this an "epistemological error of great moment." What this means is that the human mind has a much easier time grasping things than processes. Our cognitive capacity seems focused on commoditizing everything. "Being" is much easier to conceptualize than "becoming."

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The consequence of this is closely aligned in my opinion with money. It is impossible to place a monetary value on process. It is very easy to put a price on product. We fix our attention on the agents rather than the agency. The dynamics inherent in this reality were definitive in the conclusions reached by Schrodinger in his lectures "What is Life?" In them he linked the physical processes of life to the laws of thermodynamics, and particularly the energy exchanges that are implicit. Life is a verb, health is a verb because they depend on energetic interchanges, not on particulate elements such as genes.

I have conformed this perspective into an icon. The familiar depiction of the Tao as intersecting black-and-white halves of the whole I feel is wrong, because it implies the specific separation of the nature/nurture interface.

The clear intersection of the two worlds is undeniable. The two are intimately connected and constantly interconnecting. To me the boundary is very diffuse. The color of that icon is speckled gray, meaning that the two are so inextricably related as to be not separable.

So it is my conclusion that God is a verb, health is a verb, life is a verb. I believe that if we could focus the human cognitive antenna on this way of seeing it would have benefits of cosmic proportion.

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For the first fifteen minutes of my daughter's school day, I read to her in her kindergarten classroom. Since the New Year, her requests have been to read about Martin Luther King Jr., Bessie Smith, and Nelson Mandela.

These are books that she can find right by the front door in her classroom. There has been progress from the days when children were separated by legally enforced segregation. Yet, each time I read one of those children's books I also thought about what was included and what was left out. For example, the book that couples pictures with the words of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech left this out:



"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy."



As well as this:



"There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, 'When will you be satisfied?' We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality."



For too long, the narrative of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life has not reflected his whole self and the radical vision he had for the world. And so on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 18th, I along with 23 other people got arrested while stopping traffic on the Bay Bridge.

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We honored his true legacy, called attention to the ongoing "unspeakable horrors of police brutality," and expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the cities we live in and the treatment of Black people within them. The protest was led by Black.Seed, a Black Queer Liberation collective.



The collective statement of the group read in part:



"Over the last few years, we have seen San Francisco and Oakland destroyed by police murders, rising housing costs, rapid gentrification, and apathetic city officials. Last year, we saw dozens of police murders throughout the Bay Area; since June of 2015 in Oakland alone there have been eight Black men murdered by police. Today Black.Seed celebrates and honors the radical legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."



Each time as I sat with my daughter, I thought about what it means to celebrate his legacy. I nearly cried as I read and reflected on the sacrifices Dr. King and others made so that I might sit with her. I nearly cried, overcome with an underlying sense fear for her and the other little Black children in her classroom.

All of what I do at the Ella Baker Center is oriented toward ending the school-to-prison pipeline. It is oriented toward advancing a Truth and Reinvestment agenda; an agenda that forces us to reckon with how our country's long history of racial injustice has created a criminal justice system that targets black, brown, and poor people, and demands reinvestment in the communities that have been most harmed.

This agenda will result in the cashing of the "bad check" Dr. King described in his speech. He "refused to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation." And yet despite our efforts, I am often afraid that it is not enough; that we are not enough.



At those times, I think about a quote by Audre Lorde that hangs on the wall in my office: "when I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

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Last Friday, I dragged myself to a press screening of Umesh Ghadges porn-com Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3  starring Tusshar Kapoor, Mandana Karimi, and Aftab Shivdasani  at a multiplex in Juhu. It was a morning show and there happened to be a few college students (i.e. not members of the press) at the show as well. They were part of the minority that was chuckling, almost out of politeness, at some of the jokes. As the movie progressed, however, the chuckles reduced in frequency and eventually fell silent. It all became one relentless audio-visual assault: a puke-inducing souffle of female objectification, juvenile wordplay, and appalling misogyny.

On Thursday, against better judgement, I showed up for the press screening of Milap Zaveris Mastizaade, starring Sunny Leone, Kapoor again, and comedian Vir Das. Roughly two hours later, having bolted for the exit as soon as the movie ended, I was dry heaving, physically sick from having endured what felt like an even worse assault on my entire being.

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Perhaps Im being ridiculously dramatic and over-sensitive, but surely I cannot be the only one who felt this way. I heard the college students at the first screening  part of the purported target audience for both these crimes against cinema  grumbling as we all shuffled out of the theatre. At another regular show of the same movie, a critic friend informs me that a guy used the interval to berate his friends  again, all members of the target demographic  loudly for not having heeded his suggestion to watch Airlift instead.

There is very little to choose between Mastizaade and Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3, as they come largely from the same two pre-pubescent minds: those belonging to Mushtaq Sheikh and Zaveri. Both are seasoned Bollywood writers. The former has written films such as Om Shanti Om (2007) and Ra.One (2011); the latter has written dialogues and screenplays for several films since the early 00s, most notably Kaante (2002), Masti (2006), Housefull (2010), Grand Masti (2013), and Ek Villain (2014).

A file photo of Mushtaq Sheikh

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A file photo of Milap Zaveri

Its almost as though theyre the same film (and from what I hear, they actually were). In Kyaa Kool, Kapoor and Shivdasani play two young men who become porn stars in Thailand. In Mastizaade, Kapoor and Das play sex addicts. The former features Iranian model and recent Bigg Boss participant Mandana Karimi, making her objectification debut, while the latter offers current social media darling Sunny Leone in a double role. In both movies, the plots have nearly the same set-up: two horny young men have lots of sex with several unnamed, often Caucasian women (because foreigners have no sanskaar, duh) before they meet the one (because she looks like a foreigner but speaks Hindi and isnt that the dream?) and want to settle down.

There are no words to accurately describe the inanity that Zaveri and Sheikh have tried to pass off as comedy here. In Kyaa Kool, they find humour in a grandmother dying of a heart attack at the age of 69 and a horse letting loose an exothermic fart on Karimis face, which chars it black. In Mastizaade, a gay character (played by comedian Suresh Menon) is portrayed as an unbelievably over-the-top predator who all but molests Tusshar Kapoor in a fit of horniness (this is fiction, after all) and this is supposed to be hilarious because, in Milapverse, homosexuality is a punch line, as opposed to an experience that can be a grim reality for many gay people. In another scene, Das bites a disabled guys crotch whilst punching him on his testicles because, well, I dont know; perhaps one of the writers won a coin toss or something.

Women in these films arent even treated as flesh-and-blood characters  theyre vehicles of tits-and-ass whose sole purpose is to provide titillation and amusement for the audience and motivation for the male characters. In Kya Kool, Claudia Ciesla and Gizelle Thakral play two porn stars in permanent states of arousal. They cannot, it seems, utter a line without touching some part of their bodies, heaving their bosoms, and moaning in the most ridiculous manner possible. Either a) the writers have no idea what female orgasms looks like or b) they think the audience doesnt  Im leaning towards a), frankly. In Mastizaade, Leone plays twin sisters Laila and Lily Lele: one, a saucy seductress, and the other apparently demure and geeky (never mind that her necklines are just as low as her sisters; its just that shes draped either a pallu or a dupatta over herself).

A screen-grab from the 'Mastizaade' trailer featuring Sunny Leone

Sheikh and Zaveri are presumably adults, but their understanding of the female anatomy seems to be decidedly juvenile. In Mastizaade, a woman, subtly named Titli Bubna (Thakral again  how did they even keep track of which set they were on?), appears as a bank manager who seems to have no idea that she has breasts on her person. Thankfully, Das and Kapoor are there to helpfully inform her that the fries she ordered along with her burger are hidden from view under her ample bosom  a part of her own goddamn body. She giggles and thanks them profusely: Oh my god, Im so silly! They nod their heads in agreement and giggle modestly, all the while still staring at her silicone-enhanced cleavage. The soundtrack dutifully adds honking sounds every time we see Thakrals assets, reminding young men everywhere that womens bodies are but playthings for their enjoyment. Phew, good thing theres none of this patriarchy and rape culture nonsense in India otherwise these annoying feminist-types might have begun their caterwauling again.

What is particularly surreal about these pieces of trash masquerading as films is the way theyve been promoted as daring, paradigm-shifting mainstream releases. In an interview to Scroll.in, Mastizaade producer Rangita Pritish Nandy insisted that they had not objectified Leone. She said, Strip a man, nobody notices. Put a willing woman in a bikini and everybody screams murder, implying that the problem lies in our perception. Zaveri has frequently cited the example of Marathi film producer Dada Kondkes raunchy brand of cinema in the 70s and 80s as justification. In all likelihood, the criticism of these films will be dismissed by them and their ilk as language-based elitism and hypocrisy, especially when compared to the raunchiness of American comedies such as American Pie (1999), The Hangover (2009), and 21 Jump Street (2012).

However, juxtapose these films against the aforementioned examples and one realises that theres a massive difference in what Zaveri and co. are doing as opposed to what they think theyre doing. Its incorrect to assume that what Hollywood and even Kondke have done in the past would or should be kosher by todays standards. We do, after all, live in a world that is a lot more sensitive to such things than ever before, thanks to the Internet. The drubbing that films like Entourage (2015) received recently is proof of that.

There is nothing wrong, per se, with the idea of depicting sexuality and nudity on screen. There never has been. Take Kolkata-based filmmaker Q, who has shocked audiences with his daring, explicit Bengali film Gandu (2010) and is currently in Sundance with the sex comedy Brahman Naman  he pushes boundaries, yes, but with visual panache, sophistication, and an acknowledgement of real-world sexual politics. Take Harshavardhan Kulkarnis Hunterrr (2015), which took the trouble to create relatable female characters and derive its humour from situations, not crude wordplay. This is also our cinema and it is doing the same thing, only better.

Herein lies the key difference: in good sex comedies, the jokes can get uncomfortably raunchy but are frequently smarter and usually punch up (i.e. humour is not derived at the expense of groups or communities that have a lower amount of power, such as women, homosexuals, the differently-abled etc.). That aside, many films considered to be good are also inventive with craft and often benefit from good acting. The latter was true, to a certain extent, of Kondkes films as well.

Kyaa Kool and Mastizaade go out of their way to shock and offend, but never in a good way. All the jokes are stale and terrible, the kind you may have laughed at if you were 12 years old, enveloped in regressive ideas that ultimately strengthen the status quo: boys will be boys and everyone will just have to deal with that. Its called adult humour for a reason, for heavens sake. And lets not even talk about craft or acting. Yeesh, is anyone even expecting good acting from the likes of Kapoor, Shivdasani, Karimi, Das, and Leone?

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At the end of the day, after all the excuses have been made and the hype-dust has settled, its quite apparent that these films have been made for one and one reason only: money. Its obvious that the extreme lack of nuance and subtlety that these films possess serve only one purpose: to appeal to what the makers think the lowest common denominators sensibilities are and emulate or better the success of predecessors such as Grand Masti (2013), a similarly awful sex comedy that raked in Rs 100 crore two years ago.

In other words, dear potential audience members (if any of you are reading this), youre being played. Youre being played by the makers of these films  many of whom are well-educated, well-traveled, English-speaking sophisticates; some of whom would probably never watch such films for leisure (Im looking at you, Vir Das)  into parting with your hard-earned money to watch this tripe so that they get richer.

There has never been a better time to call bullshit on this whole charade. Do it. Do it now.

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PUNIT PARANJPE via Getty Images Indian activists take part in a protest against a ban on women entering its inner sanctum of the Haji Ali mosque, in Mumbai on January 28, 2016. A landmark mosque in Mumbai is facing pressure to overturn a ban on women entering its inner sanctum, a move that could set a precedent on gender restrictions to places of worship in the deeply religious country. A Muslim women's rights group is locked in a bitter legal battle with trustees of Mumbai's Haji Ali Dargah, built in the 15th century and popular not only with Muslims but Hindu devotees and sight-seeing tourists. AFP PHOTO / PUNIT PARANJPE / AFP / PUNIT PARANJPE (Photo credit should read PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP/Getty Images)

MUMBAI -- With Muslim women groups protesting in favour of their demand, seeking entry into the inner sanctum of Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai, trustee of the Dargah, Rizwan Merchant on Thursday said that their entry is prohibited in view of their safety which is 'fair and just'.

"A fair and just action has been taken by the trust by not allowing gents and women to mingle together at the inner sanctum of the Dargah for their safety," Merchant told ANI.

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"The issue is unnecessarily blown out of proportion. Our sisters are not prohibited or stopped from visiting the Dargah," he added.

"There is a separate corridor and between the corridor and the Dargah, there is a line of those offertory boxes where devotees come and offer what is required to be offered. Behind that particular portion, an area of nearly 150-200 square-feet has been demarcated only for our sisters," he further said.

A Muslim women's rights group is locked in a bitter legal battle with trustees of the Haji Ali Dargah, which barred women's entry into mosque's mausoleum in 2011.

While defending its ban on women, the trust had reportedly said that it was a "grievous sin" as per Islam for women to be in close proximity of the grave of a male Muslim saint.

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The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) has petitioned the Bombay High Court seeking a ruling that the ban is unconstitutional.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE- In this Nov. 29, 2008, file photo, an Indian soldier takes cover as the Taj Mahal hotel burns during gun battle between Indian military and militants inside the hotel in Mumbai, India. A Pakistani militant leader with a $10 million bounty on his head over his alleged involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks now has a new target: A Bollywood film that imagines him being assassinated. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

ISLAMABAD -- For the second time, four witnesses failed to appear before a Pakistani anti-terrorism court to record their statement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack case, prompting an annoyed judge to re-summon them.

"Four witnesses - both official and private - were to appear in the Anti-Terrorism Court Islamabad which held its hearing at Adiala Jail Rawalpindi yesterday. But they did not appear and no reason was given to the court in this regard," a court official told PTI today.

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"They had also not appeared in a previous hearing. The judge expressed his annoyance and re-summoned them for next hearing," the official said.

The court adjourned the hearing till Wednesday.

Earlier, a prosecution lawyer said that the prosecution would challenge in the Lahore High Court the rejection of its plea by the trial court to form a commission to examine the boat used by Mumbai attackers.

"We are going to challenge the trial court's decision to reject our plea regarding formation of a commission to examine the boat - Al-Fauz - used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks in the Lahore High Court," he said.

He said the prosecution believes that the boat is "case property" and it needs a government commission to examine and endorsement in this respect.

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On January 13 hearing, the court dismissed the plea of the prosecution.

According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi.

It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money.

The multiple attacks in Mumbai killed 166 people.

Pakistani authorities arrested seven Lashkar-e-Taiba members involved in the planning of the attacks including the terrorist group's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack.

Six accused -- Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum -- have been in Adiala Jail for more than six years in connection with planning and executing the Mumbai attack in November, 2008, that left 166 people killed.

Lakhvi, 56, secured bail in December, 2014, and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on April 10, 2015, after the Lahore High Court set aside the government's order to detain him under a public security act.

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A case has been underway against them in the ATC since 2009 for their alleged role in the Mumbai attacks.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui poses for photographers during a photo call for the film Monsoon Shootout at the 66th international film festival, in Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 18, 2013. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddique who was reportedly booked for assaulting a woman over a parking space in their home in Versova, Mumbai denied the charge on Friday afternoon at a press conference.

In January, an FIR case was registered against the Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) actor, by 24-year-old Heena Sheikh, and her family members claiming that Nawazuddin had hit her.

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However, Nawazuddin at the press conference today, claimed that not only was the incident unfortunate and planned, he didnt even know the lady, and had in fact never seen her before.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui opens up about assault charge against him, says it was unfortunate & this was planned pic.twitter.com/ZKtv0WUErz  TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) January 29, 2016

If you carefully look at the notice they (complainants) had shown, it wasn't signed by any of society's members: Nawazuddin Siddiqui  TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) January 29, 2016

I don't know who this complainant Heena Sheikh is, I have never seen her in the society: Nawazuddin Siddiqui  TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) January 29, 2016

He also alleged that the notice had not been signed by any member of the society where he lived, strengthening his suspicion that the entire incident had been planned.

A few days after the FIR was registered, Nawazuddins wife filed a counter charge claiming that Sheikh and her family members forcibly entered their home, and misbehaved with them. Nawazuddin also went to the police station to record his statement, and said that he was doing his job as a responsible citizen.

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LAHORE -- Pakistan's former defence secretaries have warned the government to be extra cautious and stay firm while pursuing a process of normalising ties with India, as they do not see a major shift in Delhi's policy on its ties with Pakistan.

According to the Dawn, former defence secretary retired Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik called for "open and extensive" debate within the country on its relations with India and said that "there has to be a people-driven national vision, not a government-driven."

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Pakistan and India are on the verge of resuming their peace dialogue under the tag of 'Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue'.

Earlier, the talks were delayed following the attack on Pathankot Air Base, but high-level contact between the two countries have given the impression of new momentum in bilateral ties.

However, Malik cautioned that one must not expect tectonic shifts in ties but admitted to chances of improvements caused by expediencies of the international environment.

For Pakistan, "bending is not an option; either forward or backwards. We bend and we get a kick," Malik said.

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Accusing India of playing 'cat and mouse' over ties with Pakistan, he recalled Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aggressive posture towards Pakistan during his election campaign,

In his view, the solution was in the leadership of both the hostile countries ending the "blame game" and approaching the relationship with fresh and open minds.

"The imbalance of size and political clout highly in favour of India begs third party facilitation to veer these two nuclear powers away from confrontational mode. There seems to be no other option," he said.

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President Pranab Mukherjee has sought to scotch long-standing speculation about his aspiring to become interim Prime Minister after Indira Gandhi's assassination and termed these stories as "false and spiteful". Mukherjee also said he was left "shell-shocked and flabbergasted" at his ouster from the Rajiv Gandhi Cabinet.

In the second volume of his memoir, The Turbulent Years: 1980-96, released by Vice President Hamid Ansari, Mukherjee says "Many stories have been circulated that I aspired to be the interim Prime Minister, that I had staked claim and had to be persuaded otherwise.

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"And that this created misgivings in Rajiv Gandhi's mind. These stories are completely false and spiteful."

In the book published by Rupa Publications, the President said getting dropped from Rajiv's Cabinet was "not even peripherally" on his mind.

As it happened, P V Narsimha Rao, too, was on tenterhooks, calling me several times to check if I had received a call.

"I had heard no rumours, nor had anyone in the party ever vaguely hinted at it. As it happened, P V Narsimha Rao, too, was on tenterhooks, calling me several times to check if I had received a call.

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"When I learnt of my ouster from the Cabinet, I was shell-shocked and flabbergasted. I could not believe it. But I composed myself, and sat alongside my wife as she watched the swearing-in ceremony on television," Mukherjee, who later wrote to Urban Development Ministry to allot him a smaller house instead of ministerial allocation, said.

Talking about circumstances that led to his ouster from Rajiv's Cabinet and then from the party, the President admitted to "have sensed Rajiv's growing unhappiness and the hostility of those around him and taken pre-emptive action".

"To the question of why he dropped me from the Cabinet and expelled me from the party, all I can say is that he made mistakes and so did I. He let others influence him and listened to their calumnies against me. I let my frustration overtake my patience," he said.

After his expulsion in April 1986, Mukherjee had formed Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress (RSC). He later returned to the party in 1988.

Talking about the Operation Blue Star in 1984 to flush out terrorists from Golden Temple in Amritsar, Mukherjee recalled that Indira Gandhi "understood the situation well and was clear that there was no other option. Aware that her own life was at risk, she took a conscious decision to go ahead in the best interest of the nation".

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The President wrote that it is easy to say that the military action could have been avoided. However, nobody really knows if any other option would have worked.

Its wounds took a long time to heal and, even today, residual incidents do occur from time to time.

"Such decisions are always taken based on the conditions prevailing at that time. The situation in Punjab was abnormal.

Urgent action was needed to put an end to the indiscriminate killings, the misuse of religious sites for terrorist activities and all efforts to break up the Indian union.

"Intelligence officials and the Army both expressed confidence that they would be able to neutralise the militants in the Golden temple complex without much difficulty. No one anticipated the protracted resistance," he said.

While the Punjab situation was an aberration and a crisis of this nature is unlikely to recur, the lesson for future generations is that fissiparous tendencies have to be resisted at any cost. The Punjab crisis provided external elements an opportunity to take advantage of the disunity within India and sow the seeds of anarchy, Mukherjee said.

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"Its wounds took a long time to heal and, even today, residual incidents do occur from time to time," he said.

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - NOVEMBER 29: A LGBT rights activist holds rainbow flag during Delhi Queer Pride March from Barakhamba Road to Jantar Mantar on November 29, 2015 in New Delhi, India. Organizers said that while the gay pride parade celebrated the gains India's LGBT community has made in recent years, they also wanted to highlight the continuing discrimination it faces. The Delhi Queer Pride Committee also demanded the repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes homosexual acts. (Photo by Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

On 2 February, the Supreme Court will decide whether it wants to rethink its decision of keeping Section 377 in the statute books. The law effectively renders as criminal all lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the transgendered.

When the honourable judges sit down to think about this, they may want to ponder over the plight of a 15 year old boy in Agra who was caught by a neighbour in moments of intimacy with a male friend. Teased about this, he set himself afire earlier this month, sustaining 40% injuries.

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It would be missing the woods for the trees to say that this was a case of social prejudice, and had nothing to do with Section 377. The illegality of homosexuality legitimises social prejudice against it.

Overturning the Delhi High Courts reading down of Section 377, the Supreme Court had in 2013 said that it was the Parliaments job, and not that of the judiciary, to decide the issue. That was an abdication of the Supreme Courts responsibility to safeguard fundamental rights of all citizens. It is not surprising that a majoritarian parliament does not want to decriminalise homosexuality. When one parliamentarian, Shashi Tharoor, brought in a private members bill to read down Section 377, his colleagues jeered loudly at him, wondering if he needed homosexuality decriminalised for himself.

The Supreme Court had in 2013 said that it was the Parliaments job, and not that of the judiciary, to decide the issue. That was an abdication of the Supreme Courts responsibility to safeguard fundamental rights of all citizens.

The Supreme Court recently banned Jallikattu even though the political class favoured it. Striking down the NJAC law for appointment of judges, the Supreme Court expressed concerns over its potential misuse by the political class. Similarly, Section 377 is misused against LGBTs for harassment and extortion. Why do you think it is illegal to be gay in India? was a question put to a 21 year old student at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in a public notice in October last year. The person who put out the notice demanded Rs 5,000 to not out the gay student.

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Supreme contradictions

The Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the IT Act on the grounds that its wording was vague, that it had no due process and was open to arbitrary misuse and harassment, resulting in a chilling effect on free speech. The void of vagueness that plagued 66A is also found in Section 377 of IPC, as Ananth Padmanabhan has argued.

The Supreme Court Of India.

Recognising the transgendered as the third gender in 2014, the Supreme Court judgement acknowledged the role played by Section 377 in their harassment and marginalization. This was in contrast to the 2013 judgement re-criminalising homosexuality, where the Supreme Court did not buy the point about harassment of the LGBT community.

Yet, in its judgement on the rights of the transgendered, the Supreme Court refused to follow the logic and read down 377. The judgement said, A Division Bench of this Court... has already spoken on the constitutionality of Section 377 IPC and, hence, we express no opinion on it since we are in these cases concerned with an altogether different issue pertaining to the constitutional and other legal rights of the transgender community and their gender identity and sexual orientation.

But it is not a different issue. The issue is the same: a majority of society is heterosexual and has decided to declare all sex other than the missionary position between man and woman as illegal, punishable with a fine and up to 10 years in prison. Why should this law be applied to consenting adults, whether in theory or practice? If the parliament were to ban heterosexual sex, would the Supreme Court say it is the parliaments domain? Or would it say it is a violation of fundamental rights?

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A majority of society is heterosexual and has decided to declare all sex other than the missionary position between man and woman as illegal, punishable with a fine and up to 10 years in prison.

Passing the buck

After the Delhi High Court de-criminalised gay sex, Indian society stopped pretending homosexuality didnt exist. When in 2013 the Supreme Court re-criminalised it, a large number of people spoke up against Section 377. Surprisingly, this included many politicians and political parties, with the exception of the Bhartiya Janata Party. Lately, even BJP politicians have spoken up against Section 377.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley, himself a lawyer of repute, recently said the Supreme Court should reconsider its 2013 judgement. The Modi governments current position on Section 377 is to wait for the Supreme Court to decide on the curative petition.

While the Supreme Court judgement said it was the parliaments job to decide on 377, the political class has been urging the Supreme Court to do it. There were very few who had opposed the 2010 de-criminalisation by the Delhi High Court. There is no great public demand for criminalising homosexuality, but there is no great public demand to read down Section 377 either. Thats because the majority is not affected by it, and the parliament has no political incentive to be kind to sexual minorities.

While the Supreme Court judgement said it was the parliaments job to decide on 377, the political class has been urging the Supreme Court to do it.

A gay judge?

Soon after his retirement, Supreme Court judge Vikramjit Sen had advocated scrapping Section 377. Commenting on the NJAC bill that the SC struck down, Justice Madan B Lokur had remarked that the government may not appoint an openly gay judge .

These remarks by SC judges have been in contrast to 2013, when one of the SC judges hearing the case had expressed surprise that eminent writer Vikram Seth was gay. Justice Singhvi had observed, But for this list (presented by lawyers) we would not have known that Vikram Seth was homosexual. I enjoy his work but did not realise he was of different orientation. Ismail Merchant, nobody would know about.

The forthcoming film Aligarh, based on the real life story of an academic who was outed by invading cameras against his wishes, tells you why we dont have more openly gay public figures, including judges. Its because LGBT individuals are forced to live lives of secrecy, fear and shame. As the guardian of the Constitution that gives all Indians fundamental rights of life, dignity and privacy, the Supreme Court must ask itself if it is doing justice to sexual minorities.

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STR via Getty Images Indian Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor attends the '61st Filmfare Awards 2016' ceremony in Mumbai on January 15, 2016. AFP PHOTO / AFP / STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

The government announced the first 20 winners of a nationwide competition to pick cities and towns that will go through a complete makeover. On the list are Bhubaneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat and Kochi. A total investment of Rs 50,802 crore has been proposed in these smart cities over five years.

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Meet Aparna Kumar, the first woman IAS officer to have climbed the highest peak in Antarctica. Kumar successfully climbed the 17,000-feet-high Mount Vinson Massif  the highest peak in the Antarctic sub-continent on 17 January 2016  making her the first woman officer of any All-India Services to have achieved the feat.

At least 160 young Iranians are currently awaiting execution and 73 others have been put to death between 2005 and 2015, said a report from Amnesty International. As the world's leading executioner of offenders under 18 and one of the world's largest users of the death penalty overall, Iran had nearly 700 people executed in the first half of 2015 alone.

Hillary Clinton is in her second race to the White House and at the centre of one of the most sensational and acrimonious US Presidential bids there ever has been. And India-born, New York-based millionaire philanthropist Meera Gandhi is in the thick of the action as part of Hillarys National Finance Committee,Hillblazers.

Jail authorities seem to have a discovered a new way to reward inmates for their good behaviour  by entertaining them with some dance shows. On Republic Day, Vijayapura Central Jail authorities brought in women to perform for the inmates.

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Main News

A fortnight after Foreign Secretary talks between India and Pakistan were postponed in the aftermath of the Pathankot attack, the governments have been unable to find a mutually convenient date" for them to meet, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

A controversial anti-terror Bill, passed by the Gujarat assembly but twice rejected by the previous UPA government, was returned by President Pranab Mukherjee seeking additional information from the government after which the legislation was withdrawn.

Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal will be the BJPs chief ministerial candidate in Assam, the party declared. This comes nearly two months after he was appointed president of Assam BJP in November.

The former Union minister Manish Tewari was made spokesperson of the Congress party. With the appointment of Tewari, AICC will have a total of 28 spokespersons, besides 9 senior spokespersons.

Barely a week after a ruling JD(U) MLA was accused of misbehaving with a woman passenger on a train and another party MLA allegedly freed her gangster husband from police custody, son of an RJD MLA reportedly thrashed a government doctor at a hospital in Gaya district in Bihar.

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Off The Front Page

The Reserve Bank of India said it will soon issue Rs 10 coins to commemorate the occasion of 125th birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar. The coin will carry the year '2015' written in international numerals below the portrait of Ambedkar.

You can now buy only six online train tickets a month from one user ID. The decision was taken as it was suspected that 10% of the users who booked 10 tickets every month  the current limit  might be involved in touting.

Sonam Kapoor will feature in Coldplays next music video, and joining her will be Beyonce. I love Coldplays music and so does the world. It was a huge honour to be a part of the video. Its a great concept and I had a lot of fun shooting for it, said Sonam.

The World Health Organization expects the Zika virus, which is spreading through the Americas, to affect between three million and four million people, a disease expert said. The WHOs director-general said the spread of the mosquito-borne disease had gone from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions.

After women activists intensified their protests seeking entry into Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra, Muslim women groups staged a protest demanding entry into Haji Ali dargah in Mumbai.

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Opinion

Some veteran journalists in India insist that the BJPs deepest, never-stated desire is to be just like the Congress party and that its hero of independent India is Indira Gandhi, writes Dipankar De Sarkar. Over the past few months, the BJP has made strenuous efforts to woo the family of one of the most revered icons of the freedom struggle  Subhas Chandra Bose.

The Talibans newfound willingness to engage in a negotiated power-sharing arrangement is a good sign for the Afghan peace and reconciliation process. India should play a more proactive role. The point is to create a political situation, through sustained negotiations with the armed outfit, in which it is possible for the Taliban to see the virtues of competitive politics as an attractive route to power, says Happymon Jacob in The Hindu.

Many of us, upper middle-class and upper caste, claim in entirely good faith that we grew up in a society that is increasingly caste-less. Rohith Vemulas death shakes that belief to the core and that is why it has caused consternation beyond those wanting to use it to political ends. This is caste at its most lethal in a university in a metropolitan city not in a remote village. And that is why we have tied ourselves in knots to make it not about caste at all, writes Sandip Roy.

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Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos

Israeli photographer Sephi Bergersonhas been shooting Indian weddings since 2007; he first moved to the country in 2002. For his latest wedding assignment, he decided to take an alternative approach by swapping his heavy equipment with an iPhone 6S Plus.

After managing to convince an apprehensive family (with the help of a trusting bride), Bergerson, along with a team of six, including noted French photographer Christophe Viseux, set out for Udaipur in November where the wedding was taking place.

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The mehendi was at the Oberoi Udaivillas, sangeet at the Zanana Mahal of the City Palace, and the wedding and reception at Jagminder, he said in an interview with HuffPost India. It was a huge wedding, and this experiment with the iPhone has never been done before. I had been waiting to do something like this, and knew it was possible with the iPhone 6s camera.

Instead of special lighting, Bergerson claims he mostly worked with the available light. Only for the dance floor did he use a hand-held LED light. The selection and post-production were also completely done on my phone using two apps: Snapseed and Mextures. I also use FaceTune at times, he said.

Calling himself an Apple guy, Bergerson claimed that there are no special tips when it comes to shooting with a phone camera. Photography is a language if you have something to say, your pictures will be interesting, he said. However, he did find it quite a challenge to shoot a full wedding on the phone, although the results received a lot of praise. I am honoured to have gained the familys trust to such an extent that they allowed me to work this way, he said, also adding that a huge advantage was the almost immediate sharing of the pictures that the phone allowed him to do. This is not something to be taken at all for granted.

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Bergerson, who is currently working on his next book based on Kenya, has already won first prize at the latest IPPAWARDS (iPhone photography awards) for this experiment, and plans to conduct many more in the future.

Check out his stunning photos below:

Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos Sephi Bergerson/ Silk Photos

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The Florida Senate and House of Representatives are slightly at odds over legislation that would alter insurance requirements for drivers with ridesharing companies like Uber or Lyft.The Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on Tuesday approved a bill that would create coverage standards for ridesharing company drivers. Originally considered as a mirror of an earlier bill passed by the House, sponsor David Simmons submitted an amendment that requires ride-hail companies or their drivers to carry $125,000 death and dismemberment per person, $250,000 death and bodily injury per incident and $50,000 property damage from the time they log on to the app to the time they log off.This is an increase from levels in the House version of the bill, which sit at $50,000 for death and dismemberment, $100,000 for death and bodily injury per incident and $25,000 property damage.Once drivers have collected a passenger and are on a trip, the insurance requirements increase to $1 million for death, bodily injury and property damage.The levels in the Senate bill are equal to those required of taxicab companies in the state.This will remove the barriers to competition, said Senate President-elect Joe Negron.Insurance companies have largely supported the measure, saying it addresses gaps in insurance coverage that occur when a driver has his or her app turned on but has not yet accepted a ride request.However, the bill is likely to run into issues in the House, where legislators are more concerned with providing lower coverage limits previously agreed to by ridesharing companies.Sometimes the best way to level the playing field is to lower the obligation to the existing companies, said Senator Tom Lee.If the legislation passes, Florida will become one of nearly 30 states to have passed insurance regulations for ridesharing companies.Florida will follow, if not now, then in the near future, Mark Stempler, an attorney for taxicab and limousine companies, told the Tampa Tribune. What those regulations look like is another story.
'Need to Take Clearance From Govt': BCCI President Roger Binny on Whether India Will Travel to Pakistan For Asia Cup
Team Liquid have confirmed their spot at ESL One Manila 2016! The team have consistently secured top three results since their roster change in October of last year, with recent results include winning the Dota 2 Champions League and The Defense. Notable mentions include their performances at the World Cyber Arena and Season 13 of the Star Ladder Star Series. The full Team Liquid line-up can be found below.

Lasse MATUMBAMAN Urpalainen  (Carry)

Adrian FATA- Trinks  (Mid)

Ivan MinD_ContRoL Borislavov  (Offlane)

Jesse Jerax Vainikka  (Support)

Kuro KuroKy Salehi Takhasomi  (Support)

Come April 23-24, Philippines capital city will host premier Dota 2 competition and award US$250,000 in prize money to teams from across the world. Team Liquids all-European roster joins EHOME, arguably the best Chinese Dota 2 around. With those two teams locked in, a further six are set to be decided through regional qualifiers: two from South East Asia, one from the Philippines, one from the United States and one from Europe.
Press Release: Conference on Small Middle-Income Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Joint Statement by Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu and Governor Linah Mohohlo of the Bank of Botswana

Press Release No. 16/32

January 29, 2016

The Governor of the Bank of Botswana, Ms. Linah Mohohlo, and the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Min Zhu, hosted today in Gaborone, Botswana, a regional conference entitled Small Middle-Income Countries in Sub-Saharan AfricaRaising the Bar 1. Delegates included senior officials from a number of countries representatives of the private sector, academia, the Executive Board of the IMF and IMF staff. At the end of the conference, the following statement was issued:

We had a very productive set of discussions on the economic outlook and policy challenges facing small middle-income countries (SMICs) in sub-Saharan Africa. This group of countries has made significant progress in terms of maintaining macroeconomic stability and sustaining high growth over the past two decades. However, a number of challenges have recently emerged and, beyond the importance of maintaining their hard earned gains in terms of economic stability, there is scope to rethink their growth strategies and move forward with bold complementary reforms that could facilitate their transition to high-income status.

For countries that depend heavily on commodity exports, the near-term environment has deteriorated as both global demand and prices have declined. And while some countries have previously built savings that can help them cushion the slowdown, other countries have seen their fiscal positions deteriorate rapidly at a time when external financing conditions have tightened. Notably, the slowdown of the South African economy could also adversely affect the countries in the region.

Participants concluded that, beyond following prudent policies that will help preserve economic stability (a precondition for growth), SMICs should not lose sight of the need to build resilience, adopt more inclusive policies, and foster economic diversification. To this end, reforms should be comprehensive, yet carefully prioritized to unlock these countries productivity growth. In particular, countries should focus on investment projects that generate wide benefits to other sectors of the economy in priority areas (e.g., energy infrastructure) and rationalizing regulations that hinder the development of the private sector, while adopting a smart growth strategy that could take advantage of and/or adequately address global megatrends in technology, climate change, and demographics.

Participants also agreed that, for countries to succeed, growth will have to be inclusive in terms of job creation and, in a number of cases, ensure policies that protect the most vulnerable segments of society. This will likely require courageous reforms to reduce skills mismatches in the labor force through cost-effective training programs, adopting reforms that can lower the cost of doing business and facilitate the hiring of highly-skilled workers, and enhancing the composition and efficiency of government spending.

Ms. Mohohlo noted that: This conference has touched on various policy challenges that SMICs have in commonon the one hand ensuring economic stability and sustaining growth while promoting inclusion and social equity, and on the other hand recalibrating the growth strategy to facilitate the transition to high-income status. We had an excellent opportunity to discuss the lessons and prospects of policies being implemented in several SMICs as well as on other countries that successfully tackled their developmental challenges and have now well-functioning and developed markets. The wide forum in which the conference took place and the related peer-to-peer learning strengthened the dialogue among SMICs and offered novel views on how to tackle these countries challenges.

In closing, Mr. Zhu said The IMF remains closely engaged with SMICs in Sub-Saharan Africa through policy dialogue, technical assistance, and analytical work. The conference has also served as the launch of the book Africa on the Move: Unlocking the Potential of Small-Middle Income Countries, authored by IMF staff in collaboration with officials from SMICs in the region. Looking ahead, our teams will continue to collaborate closely with country authorities as they strengthen the analytical underpinnings of their policies and rethink their growth strategies. We look forward to continuing this dialogue at the time of the IMF Spring Meetings in April.

1 The Small Middle-Income Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa comprise Botswana, Cabo Verde, Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia, Seychelles and Swaziland.
Imperial Valley News Center

IdentityTheft.gov means business!

Washington, DC - Why is it your business if identity theft victims can get free personal recovery plans and other help that makes it easier for them to report and recover from identity theft? Heres an answer: Because its good business  for you, your customers, your employees, and your community.

Identity theft affects millions of people each year. You might see its telltale signs when a customer calls about an unauthorized charge, the IRS contacts you about a suspicious tax form, or an employee is upset, distracted, and spending lots of time on the phone. However it shows itself, identity theft can be financially and emotionally draining, and take time and energy for victims to resolve. Wouldnt it be better if they could be using that time and energy helping your business grow? Thats why an announcement today from the Federal Trade Commission is a big deal, and a good deal, for your business.

The FTC has added new features to IdentityTheft.gov, the governments one-stop resource for reporting and recovering from identity theft. When people use the website to report identity theft, theyll get help including a free, interactive personal recovery plan that:

walks them through each recovery step;

tracks their recovery progress and adapts to their changing situation; and

pre-fills letters and forms they need to help resolve the identity theft with credit bureaus, businesses, debt collectors, and the IRS.

The entire website is available in Spanish, too, at RobodeIdentidad.gov.

What can your business do to help? Spread the news about IdentityTheft.gov.
Californias state organic program

Sacramento, California - The California State Board of Food and Agriculture will bring together federal and state officials as well as organic stakeholders to discuss Californias state organic program (SOP) on Tuesday, February 2, 2016 in Sacramento.

The meeting will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, 1220 N Street  Main Auditorium, Sacramento, CA 95814.



California was one of the first states in the nation to establish standards for organic production. It has evolved into a robust program that includes spot inspections, complaint investigations, sampling, and data collection for the organic community and it remains the only state organic program, said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. As such, Californias SOP enforces production and handling standards while maintaining transparency to provide trust and confidence in the organic label.



Current discussions are underway within the organic community to consider amending Californias organic laws. California is the largest organic agricultural producer in the nation, with $2.2 billion in sales accounting for 40 percent of the nations organic sales. Under existing law, Californias State Organic Program complements the federal National Organic Program with state and county officials verifying organic compliance from production to point of sale.



"As an organic farmer, I am looking forward to hearing perspectives from organic farmers and government agencies on what defines and differentiates Californias organic program from the rest of the nation," said Craig McNamara, president of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture.



Invited speakers include: Miles McEvoy, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service (via teleconference); Rick Jensen, California Department of Food and Agriculture; Brian Leahy, California Department of Pesticide Regulation; Jane Reick, California Department of Public Health; Stacy Carlsen, Marin County Department of Agriculture, Weights & Measures; Melody Meyer, California Organic Products Advisory Committee; Cathy Calfo, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF); Kelly Damewood, CCOF; Philip LaRocca, LaRocca Vineyards; and Thaddeus Barsotti, Farm Fresh to You.

The California State Board of Food and Agriculture advises the governor and the CDFA secretary on agricultural issues and consumer needs. The state board conducts forums that bring together local, state and federal government officials, agricultural representatives and citizens to discuss current issues of concern to California agriculture.

This meeting will be streamed online at: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/LiveMediaStream.html
Imperial County Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Sunbeam Lake RV Resort

Seeley, California - Yesterday, the County of Imperial celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Sunbeam Lake RV Resort in Seeley. District 3 Supervisor Michael Kelley and RV Park Manager Ed McGrew addressed a crowd of 150 resort residents in attendance.

Its wonderful to see the great turnout we received at todays celebration, including the enthusiasm and excitement of the park residents, said Supervisor Kelley. The winter visitors, those we affectionately refer to as Snowbirds, make such a positive impact to the community by spending locally. I am happy to have had the opportunity to welcome and thank them today.

Adding to the celebration was an exhibition of the musical talents of the Seeley Elementary School Band. The Sunbeam Lake RV Resort is a close-knit, sociable community. About 85% of the park is consisted of winter visitors from northern, colder states and Canada. The rest are permanent residents of the county. It is estimated, that there are currently about 600 residents at the RV Resort. Various recreational programs and activities are offered to the residents, including sports, such as softball and pickle ball, exercise activities such as aqua aerobics and line dancing, games, such as Bingo and Shuffleboard, and other clubs and weekly gatherings that are organized among the park residents.

The County of Imperial acquired the leasehold interest in the Sunbeam Lake RV Park in Seeley in August of 2011. Following the Countys acquisition of the RV Park, the County completed some improvements to the property and then hired RVMGMT, LLC. through a property management agreement in order to provide management services for the RV Park and continues to do so under contract with the County of Imperial.

For more information about the Sunbeam Lake RV Resort, please visit their website.
President Obamas National Security Council Meeting on Counter-ISIL

Washington, DC - President Obama today convened his National Security Council to discuss the intensification of our campaign to degrade and destroy ISIL. The President was briefed on ways we and our partners in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL continue to accelerate and integrate the military campaign and diplomatic efforts on all possible fronts, including working with international partners to counter ISILs stated goal of expansion beyond Iraq and Syria.

The President emphasized that the United States will continue to counter ISIL terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary. Noting that ISIL affiliates and other violent extremists attempt to find safe haven in areas with limited or poor governance, the President directed his national security team to continue efforts to strengthen governance and support ongoing counterterrorism efforts in Libya and other countries where ISIL has sought to establish a presence.

Degrading and destroying ISIL will continue to require coordination and cooperation among a wide range of global partners, and the United States is strongly committed to continuing to lead the shared efforts of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.
Nauru's Independence Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I would like to congratulate the people of the Republic of Nauru as you celebrate the 48th anniversary of your nations independence on January 31.

"The United States and Nauru enjoy a warm friendship, strengthened by our cooperation in advancing our shared values and interests. We are working together to protect the environment and oceans, promote sustainable economic development, combat the effects of climate change, and strengthen maritime domain awareness in the Pacific region. The United States looks forward to further deepening its partnership with Nauru.

"We wish all of the people of Nauru a joyous celebration and peace and prosperity over the coming year."
Lettuce Wins on Tabloid's Live Stream as Liz Truss Resigns as UK PM
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Buster Books will now start releasing its children's books under gender neutral titles, after fervent calls for the publishers to change its practices.

It's a decision which comes after several years of campaigning on behalf of parental group 'Let Books Be Books', who have made Buster Books a primary target for change since 2014. The group believes gendered titles such as The Glamorous Girls' Book, Girls Gorgeous World, The Unbeatable Boys' Book, and Boys Only: How to Survive (Almost) Anything, "send out very limiting messages to children about what kinds of things are appropriate for girls or for boys."

Campaigners want to break down the gender divide which sees explicitly labelled books for girls and boys; accompanied by stereotypical "blue covers, with themes of action and adventure, robots, space, trucks and pirates contrast with a riot of pink sparkles, fairies, princesses, flowers and butterflies." Indeed, they claim those division fail to reflect the fact that "real childrens interests are a lot more diverse."

With prominent authors such as Philip Pullman, Carol-Ann Duffy, and Malorie Blackman adding their voices to the campaign, the move had already seen nine publishers agree to the withdrawal of gendered book titles in the future.



Buster Books owner Michael O'Mara had previously hit back at the campaign by claiming gendered books were guaranteed more copies. "The proof is in the pudding," he stated. "Our two best children books ever are The Boys Book and The Girls Book."



However, it seems as if the company may have had a change of heart; releasing a statement on Twitter which simply stated all future titles would be gender neutral.

It was news gladly received by campaigner Tessa Trabue. Buster has one of the highest number of gendered books  we came up with over 70 gendered titles just this morning," she told the Guardian. "So many of their titles just have stereotypes implicit in them."

Still yet to make the change is Igloo Books, another of the largest publishers of gendered books in the UK, with titles such as Cookery Book for Girls and Treasuries-Stories for Boys.
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It has taken a half a decade for Daniel Radcliffe to escape the ghost of Harry Potter  and hes done it by playing a dead man.

A corpse, to be precise, which farts continually, has uncontrollable erections, and allows its co-star, War and Peaces Paul Dano, to ride him over the ocean like a dead human jet ski.

This really, truly happens in Swiss Army Man, the experimental film debut of music video directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Hank (Paul Dano) appears to find himself on a desert island shore and is about to end it all, when Daniel Radcliffes body is washed up.

A love story of sorts ensues, in between Radcliffes out-of-control bodily functions, where they muse on love and friendship, with Radcliffes character Manny slightly hampered by rigor mortis setting in.

No wonder that its first showing at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah prompted headlines such as, Is this the weirdest film to ever show at Sundance? and, Daniel Radcliffes farting corpse prompts walk-outs  apparently in reference to the amount of people leaving the cinema during the screening.

Radcliffe, however, who flew in from New York ahead of the blizzards, doesnt look troubled. Dressed pre-emptively for Utah in a button-down checked shirt, jeans and boots, he probably also foresaw the headlines, because he says: Well, I think the movie is a divisive one. Youll either love it or hate it  and thats fine, because I just found it a joyous experience.

Daniel Radcliffe at the 'Swiss Army Man' film premiere after party, Sundance Film Festival in Utah (Rex)

But is Radcliffe really participating in arthouse Beavis and Butthead? The 26-year-old cheerfully replies that hes known in the industry for liking to do weird stuff, which is why the script was sent to me I guess.

However, his post-Potter portfolio isnt that eclectic  it includes playing Allen Ginsberg in Beat Poet thriller Kill Your Darlings, Igor in Paul McGuigans Victor Frankenstein, as well as resurrecting Hammer horror for The Woman in Black.

But Radcliffes naked turn for stage play Equus at the height of Harry Potter fame has given him a reputation as a risk-taker, and he continues to take advantage of the financial freedom (estimated at around 60m) that Potter has given him.

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Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Show all 23 1 /23 Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Citizen Kane (1941) Long revered as one of the greatest films ever made, Orson Welles' debut  a film following newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane  was just another nominee back in the day, losing out to How Green Was My Valley. RKO Radio Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture The Searchers (1956) The Searchers may be considered John Ford's greatest film, but it was not treated as such back in the 1950s. In fact, the western starring John Wayne failed to earn a single nomination. Around the World in 80 Days turned out to be more the Academy's cup of tea. RKO Radio Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Vertigo (1958) Not only did Alfred Hitchcock never win an Oscar (save for his memorial award in 1968), but neither did any of his films  one of which is Vertigo, a classic that won Sight & Sound's once-a-decade greatest films of all time poll in 2012. If it had been nominated, it would have faced stiff competition in the form of eventual winner All About Eve. Paramount Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture The Graduate (1967) One of the films that kickstarted the New Hollywood Cinema era, The Graduate may have won director Mike Nichols an Oscar, but it ultimately lost out to Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night. United Artists Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic remains one of the most influential pieces of cinema there is. The Academy didn't agree. The Academy nominated Kubrick for Best Director and awarded the visual effects in favour of considering 2001 for Best Picture (it didn't even get nominated). That year's winner was Oliver!, the musical by Carol Reed. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Taxi Driver (1976) Despite Taxi Driver's failure to win the main award, its nomination in four categories showed the Academy had good intentions. That All the President's Men and Network also lost out to eventual winner Rocky shows that, ultimately, it never really stood a chance. Columbia Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now received a grand total of eight nominations, but only went home with two prizes (for cinematography and sound) losing out to drama Kramer vs. Kramer. United Artists Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Raging Bull (1980) Of all the Oscar blows dealt to Martin Scorsese over the decades, none landed harder than Raging Bull losing out to Robert Redford's weepie Ordinary People, an oversight many consider one of the Academy's most egregious. United Artists Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Blade Runner (1982) Another sci-fi classic overlooked by the Oscars was Blade Runner, which didn't even get nominated in the Best Picture category (Gandhi ended up winning). Ridley Scott's The Martian went on to receive seven nominations in 2017  evidence, perhaps, of the Academy taking responsibility for its past errors. United Artists Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing failing to win Best Picture at the 1990 Oscars is one thing  losing out to Driving Miss Daisy is another thing altogether. Universal Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Goodfellas (1990) Having awarded both The Godfather Part I and The Godfather Part II Best Picture in 1972 and 1974 respectively, the Academy seemed destined to appreciate Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. But no  Kevin Costner's directorial debut Dances with Wolves was the most appealing choice for voters. 2012 Getty Images Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Pulp Fiction (1994) New talent on the block Quentin Tarantino's second feature Pulp Fiction won him the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1994  a success he failed to match back on home turf. While he won an Original Screenplay Oscar, his film was beaten by Forrest Gump... Miramax Films Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture The Shawshank Redemption (1994) ...and it wasn't the only one. Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's prison-set novella The Shawshank Redemption also fell victim to Robert Zemeckis' Oscar-friendly Forrest Gump. We don't see that film sitting atop the IMDb top 250 though, do we? Getty Images Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Heat (1995) If Heat was released today, there's no way it wouldn't be a Best Picture frontrunner. That it was completely ignored in favour of Braveheart is a huge travesty. Warner Bros Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Fargo (1996) You may think it was remiss of the Academy to shun Fargo, but it did come pretty close to winning, its chances bolstered somewhat by seven nominations and two wins (Actress for Frances McDormand and Original Screenplay for the Coen Brothers). It lost out to The English Patient. Gramercy Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Saving Private Ryan (1998) Having won Best Director five years previous for Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg was strongly expected to take home the top prizes for his Second World War epic. Cue Shakespeare In Love upsetting everybody. Paramount Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture The Social Network (2010) David Fincher's Facebook drama got shunned in favour of British patriotism in an Oscar two-horse race for the ages that ultimately saw The King's Speech crowned winner. Columbia Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) Lynne Ramsay has directed two films that would have been deserving of Best Picture: You Were Never Really Here and this, We Need to Talk About Kevin. It's easy to see why Hollywood was temporarily more charmed by The Artist, but it's clear which film will stand the test of time. Oscilloscope Laboratories Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) It's almost unthinkable to recall that the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis only scored two Oscar nominations in the cinematography and sound mixing categories, respectively. In the ensuing years, the film has been hailed as one of the greatest of the 2010s, meaning that its no-show at the Oscars will go down as one of the Academy's biggest omissions. Still, it would have had a hard time winning over 12 Years a Slave. CBS Films Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Boyhood (2014) For the 2015 Oscars race, you were either team Birdman or team Boyhood. Richard Linklater's labour of love, shot intermittently over 12 years, ultimately failed to win. Universal Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture American Honey (2016) If there's any justice, Andrea Arnold will one day become an Oscar winner, but in a perfect world, she would have already won for American Honey, a drama deserving of Best Picture if there ever was one. Universal Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Get Out (2017) Horror rarely gets recognised at the Oscars, but Get Out is the closest the genre had come in years. Jordan Peele may have taken home the Best Original Screenplay award, but the stars aligned for Guillermo del Toro's fantasy The Shape of Water instead. Universal Pictures Oscars: 21 great films that never won Best Picture Roma (2018) Roma was strongly expected to become the first ever foreign language film to win Best Picture. It had everything going for it, including a standout festival run and universal acclaim. But then Green Book snatched its trophy away in a late stage awards season twist that still seems too ridiculous to be true. Netflix

Its just projects like this one that give me so much joy, he enthuses, where I turn up on set and really dont know what on Earth is going to happen from one day to the next. Obviously, I knew I was playing a dead person, but theres a lot more to it than that. I dont want to say too much about the plot.

Nor does he, but suffice it to say that Leonardo DiCaprio isnt the only Hollywood star to encounter a bear on screen in 2016.

But being dragged around the woods by Paul Dano, now one of his best friends in real life, in low-budget features isnt the pinnacle of Radcliffes ambition. I would absolutely, definitely do a blockbuster again, he says enthusiastically. Of course I would! It just has to be a good one, a great script.

I dont know where people get this idea from that big movies cant be as much of a challenge as an independent film. They can be really hard work. Harry Potter just got better and better as a franchise and I am still so proud of it. I would definitely do big-budget films again, just give me one worth doing.

Daniel Radcliffe and girlfriend Erin Darke, who have been together for eight years, live together in New York

Indeed, it has recently been suggested that Radcliffe, despite his slightness, could make a good Wolverine, after he posed for Vanity Fair Italia recently, wearing a six pack and a small scowl. He looks a little sheepish for a moment, and then explains:  I had done all this work training for a movie that didnt happen in the end. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, you are never going to look this good again. So I decided to do the shoot, and Im glad I did.

So must be his girlfriend of four years, actress Erin Darke, although he says she still ribbed him for winning last years Rear of the Year. They met on the set of Kill Your Darlings, but Darke has also shared screen time  and a kiss  with Paul Dano in last years Beach Boys retrospective Love and Mercy.

Radcliffe pursued Danos girlfriend Zoe Kazan in 2013s What If, and Dano and Radcliffe share an underwater smooch in their Swiss Army Man bromance. The situation is very confusing, he admits. Sooner or later well all have kissed each other. On screen, anyway.

He and Darke seem happy living together in New York, where, between films, Radcliffe says he gets to indulge in his favourite things  reading books and looking at stuff  at buildings. He feels, he says, like a real New Yorker.

Recently tipped to play Lee Atwater in John Krokidass comedy Young Americans, about a young Karl Rove (George W Bushs former senior advisor), the actor now says the film may not happen.

However, he has always had a keen interest in American politics, because, he maintains, they are so much crazier than British politics. They completely fascinate me. They are so polarised in their beliefs in the US. I dont think that even in the BNP, even in the most right-wing party you could imagine in Britain, that you would have pro-life candidates standing.

There are so many divisions between the candidates over here. Its mesmerising to watch it because to a certain extent, I can stand back. Can he stand back from the row over diversity that is engulfing the Academy Awards?

Its just really good that this conversation is taking place, because it needs to, he replies, having learned diplomacy growing up as Harry Potter. The change has to come from the industry itself, though. Clearly not enough films are being made or written that will lead to nominations for the Academy to consider.

But on the recent death of Alan Rickman he is certainly prepared to speak from the heart. Radcliffe released a tribute to his former co-star and mentor, saying that he would carry the lessons Rickman taught him forever, adding that Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny.

I just feel that it needed to be said, Radcliffe said. He was just such an important man to me, not just as an actor. He came to see everything I ever did, he was an incredible man and friend. Its just a huge loss to all of us.

Self-deprecating and funny  those words could also be applied to the thoroughly decent Daniel Radcliffe, whose own sense of humour will surely see him through the hysteria and the headlines surrounding his latest role.

Swiss Army Man is already known locally as the Dan Radcliffe farting-corpse movie. If anyone can see the magic in that, its the boy who lived through Harry Potter.
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Will Smith has further clarified the reasoning behind his Oscars boycott.

The Concussion actor revealed that he would be joining his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith in not attending this years awards ceremony after the all-white acting nominations were announced earlier this month.

The lack of diversity provoked uproar and Smith stated that the couple would be uncomfortable to stand there and say this is okay.

When I look at it the nominations reflect the Academy, he said on Good Morning America. The Academy reflects the industry, reflects Hollywood and then the industry reflects America.

It reflects a series of challenges that we are having in our country at the moment, theres a regressive slide towards separatism, towards racial and religious disharmony.

#OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Show all 19 1 /19 #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Jada Pinkett-Smith Today is Martin Luther Kings birthday, and I cant help but ask the question: Is it time that people of color recognize how much power and influence we have amassed that we no longer need to ask to be invited anywhere? I ask the question: Have we come to a new time and place where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledge, or respect of any group? - Posted on her Facebook page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Will Smith "The beauty of Hollywood combined with American ideals is the ultimate dream for humanity: the basis of the American concept of anything is possible, with hard work and dedication, no matter your race or religion, creed, none of that matters in America. I think that diversity is the American superpower. That's why we are great. So many different people from so many different places adding their ideas and their inspiration and their influences to this beautiful American gumbo and for me, at its best, Hollywood represents and then creates the imagery for that beauty. But for my part, I think I have to fight for and protect the ideals that make our country and make our Hollywood community great. So when I look at the series of nominations of the Academy, it's not reflecting that beauty." - Quote from ABC News appearance. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Reese Witherspoon "I really appreciated this article in TIME on the lack of racial and gender diversity in this year's Oscar nominations. So disappointed that some of 2015's best films, filmmakers and performances were not recognized... Nothing can diminish the quality of their work, but these filmmakers deserve recognition. As an Academy member, I would love to see a more diverse voting membership." - Posted on her Facebook page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Spike Lee "This whole Academy thing is a misdirection play. We're chasing a guy down the field, he doesn't even have the ball. The other guy's high-stepping in the end zone. It goes further than the Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gatekeepers. We're not in the room. The executives, when they have these greenlight meetings quarterly, they look at the scripts and see who's in it and decide what we're making and what we're not making." - Quote from ABC appearance. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say George Clooney "If you think back 10 years ago, the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated. I would also make the argument, I dont think its a problem of who youre picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films? There should be 20 or 30 or 40 films of the quality that people would consider for the Oscars. By the way, were talking about African Americans. For Hispanics, its even worse. We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it." - Interview with Variety. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Snoop Dogg Somebody was actually like am I gonna watch the motherf***ing Oscars. F*** no. What the f*** am I going to watch that bulls*** for? They aint got no n***** nominated. All these great movies and all this great s*** yall keep stealing from us. F*** you! F*** you! - Posted on his Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Don Cheadle "Yo, Chris. Come check me out at #TheOscars this year. They got me parking cars on G level." - Posted on his Twitter page, directed at host Chris Rock. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Mark Ruffalo I woke up in the morning thinking, what is the right way to do this? Because if you look at Martin Luther Kings legacy, what he was saying was that the good people who dont act are much worse than the wrongdoers who are purposefully not acting and dont know the right way. - Quote from interview with BBC News. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Lupita Nyong'o "I am disappointed by the lack of inclusion in this year's Academy Awards nominations. It has me thinking about unconscious prejudice and what merits prestige in our culture. The awards should not dictate the terms of art in our modern society, but rather be a diverse reflection of the best of what our art has to offer today. I stand with my peers who are calling for change in expanding the stories that are told and recognition of the people who tell them." - Posted on her Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Tyrese Gibson "This is not us saying we're against the Oscars because we're gonna combat racism. We're just saying, 'Yo, this is not cool.' You can't be doing this in 2016 and act as if no one is gonna notice." - Quote from interview with People. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say David Oyelowo The reason why the Oscars are so important is because it is the zenith, it is the epitome, it is the height of celebration of artistic endeavor within the filmmaking community. We grow up aspiring, dreaming, longing to be accepted into that august establishment because it is the height of excellence. I would like to walk away and say it doesnt matter, but it does, because that acknowledgement changes the trajectory of your life, your career, and the culture of the world we live in. This institution doesnt reflect its president and it doesnt reflect this room. I am an Academy member and it doesnt reflect me, and it doesnt reflect this nation." - Speech at gala honoring Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Brie Larson "Thank you @hollywoodreporter for covering this very unique moment in my life! It was wonderful spending time with all of you. Personally, I'm interested in reading their article on #OscarsSoWhite. This is a conversation that deserves attention." - Posted on her Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say How many black films are being produced every year? How are they being distributed? The films that are being made, are the big-time producers thinking outside of the box in terms of how to cast the role? Can you cast a black woman in that role? Can you cast a black man in that role? You can change the Academy, but if there are no black films being produced, what is there to vote for? - Quote from interview with Entertainment Weekly. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Charlotte Rampling "It is racist to whites. One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list. Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted... People will always say: Him, hes less handsome; Him, hes too black; He is too white... someone will always be saying You are too [this or that]... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?" - Quote from interview on Europe 1. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Michael Caine Theres loads of black actors. In the end you can't vote for an actor because he's black. You can't say 'I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good, but he's black, I'll vote for him'. You have to give a good performance and I'm sure people have. I saw Idris Elba (in Beasts Of No Nation).I thought he was wonderful. Be patient. Of course it will come. It took years to get an Oscar, years. - Quote from interview with Radio 4 Today programme. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Steve McQueen "This is exactly like MTV was in the 1980s. Could you imagine now if MTV only showed music videos by a majority of white people, then after 11 oclock it showed a majority of black people? Could you imagine that happening now? Its the same situation happening in the movies. Hopefully, when people look back at this in 20 years, itll be like seeing that David Bowie clip in 1983 [of artist critiquing channel for not featuring black artists]. I dont even want to wait 20 years. Forgive me; Im hoping in 12 months or so we can look back and say this was a watershed moment, and thank God we put that right." Quote from interview with The Guardian. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Julie Delpy "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media. It's funny - women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterwards. It's the hardest to be a woman. Feminism is something people hate above all. Nothing worse than being a woman in this business. I really believe that." Delpy has since clarified these remarks, saying, "I'm very sorry for how I expressed myself. It was never meant to diminish the injustice done to African American artists or to any other people that struggle for equal opportunities and rights; on the contrary. All I was trying to do is to address the issues of inequality of opportunity in the industry for women as well (as I am a woman)." Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Clint Eastwood "I don't know anything about it. All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy, and the majority of them haven't won Oscars. A lot of people are crying, I guess." - Quoted by TMZ. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Ellen Page Its awful, and I think what just happened in regards to the nominations two years in a row is a reflection of the industry itself, and the lack of diversity in all positions. Its so upsetting that were still having this conversation. I dont know what to say other than its so disheartening, and I feel like we all have to be doing what we can to make a change, because were supposed to be telling stories that reflect human experience, and we cant just be showing one group of people." Quote from interview with The Wrap. Getty

Smith has since appeared on The Graham Norton Show to discuss his opinions in more detail.

Quoting a message his grandmother gave him to lead with love and light and only good will come out of it, he emphasised that the thing thats most important is that the spirit of the awards be maintained.

The media creates the us and them but for me there is no us and them, its we, he said. I feel very strongly that there is a regression in America toward separatism and racial and religious exclusion, so for me, its about putting my hand up and reminding my community, the Hollywood community, that we have to lead.

Diversity is Americas superpower  thats what makes it great, and in Hollywood weve got to be pushing that forward even in a time of wider regression.

Will Smith was snubbed at the Oscars for his latest drama Concussion

Many film industry professionals have come out in support of those protesting the lack of diversity, from Spike Lee to Mark Ruffalo.

The Oscars takes place on Sunday 28 February, while The Graham Norton Show airs tonight at 10.35pm on BBC1.
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Oh Rihanna, it was so worth the wait. Even after those endless fumblings with virtual rooms on Samsung devices that we all hoped would lead us to the inner workings of your soul but actually led us to nowhere.

Even after some hapless intern allegedly bodged the Tidal release and third-rate rips appeared online. Even after I woke on Wednesday morning to find you had sent an unlock code to your album that I then could only access on my Samsung phone and had to reset several passwords in order to download the appropriate software. It was so worth it for you and your sweet, sweet voice.

Rihannas dont give a f**k attitude pervades Anti in the best possible way. Shes offered bouncy, relaxed Dancehall tracks that suit her natural Barbadian rhythm down to a T like the surefire Drake collaboration Work released earlier this week, (shes had a No1 with him before with Whats My Name?, so its a safe bet to collaborate again, and boy does it work), but whats exciting is shes tested her own limits. Shes had a stab at an Amy Winehouse-inspired number (Higher) and even a Tame Impala cover (Same Ol Mistakes).

This album shows Rihanna hitting back at anyone who ever said her voice could only do certain things and showing them she can do anything she wants to. Such attitude; no apologies. That same self-assurance is shown in what she chose to leave out of the album as much as what she left in: Kanye had already bragged that he was executive producing Anti at the 2015 Grammys but hes nowhere to be seen on the album.

Rhi Rhi also chose not to include hits written for her by Sia that Sia herself has since claimed back for her own album and she also chose not to include any of last years singles, including Bitch Better Have My Money which fared very well, despite criticisms of the accompanying video. The other early singles: FourFiveSeconds and American Oxygen didnt make the cut either, but they wouldnt have worked here, especially not American Oxygen which was generally regarded as a dud.

The cover art for Rihanna's new album Anti

Theres a really chilled out vibe to the album, no EDM, no massive club tracks, thats not that you couldnt dance along happily to the Dancehall grooves of Work, but when you listen to the album you picture Rhiannas Instagram feed; her on the beach, smoking weed with her girlfriends, not grinding in a club.

So to the music. Album opener Consideration a collaboration with SZA, who features prominently, has a lo fi bass beat and Dancehall riddims. Picture driving in a car, slowly, with the roof down, theres a haze of perfumed smoke in the air. The song sets out her agenda for the album; doing it her own way with surprising lyrics and introducing a relaxed stoner vibe.

Theres something of Lana Del Reys blissed out beach music to it, but without such a disaffected edge. Rih-Rih is more purposeful than that. Theres emotional depth her as well as weird and witty asides, like Let me cover your shit in glitter I can make it gold. Yeah I Said It is a late-night sexy slow jam, with the arresting line I want you to homicide it surely a double meaning, which Im still mulling over. James Joint continues the random musings on drugs and drinking, with jazz piano and befuddled, sexy vocals. Its not the hottest track on the album but it provides a good bridge between the Dance Hall bluster and the slow, slow grooves yet to come.

Higher with talk of whisky, ashtrays, breakups and make ups by 21-year-old artist Bibi Bourelly, who is reported as having written it in just 20 minutes, borders on corny penmanship, and she sings it with the sort strained longing you might expect from X-Factor  and maybe shes planning on using it for her next guest appearance on the show, but its short  just under 2 minutes, which makes you recognise it as an experiment, and it shows off Rihannas vocals in a way weve not heard before.

That Tame Impala cover of New Person, Same Old Mistakes, shortened on Anti to Same Ol Mistakes is a very straightforward one. Shes barely changed the sound, adding a couple of hand claps here and there but keeping the same layered shimmering psychedelic effects. She even kept the synth-pop chorus that crashes around you like breaking waves. Its such a simple cover it could have flopped but Rhis version is incredibly bewitching, if anything its an improvement on the original.

The penultimate track,Love on the Brain is a typical Fifties-style love song, updated with arpeggiated guitars and moody organ. Theres old school soul, made it exciting by Rihannas little woops of delight. This is Rihanna at her most strikingly self-assured and its wondrous.
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People are at the busiest time of their lives at the very end of their twenties because of more personal commitments, growing "life admin" and ever-demanding social media, according to a survey.

Twenty-nine has been identified in a study as the most hectic time for adults, challenging the assumption that the middle-aged are the most harassed and time-pressed age group.

Indeed, while 25-to 34-year-olds were on average the busiest age group, those in their 40s and 50s came fourth - after other younger age groups - for how busy they were.

Nearly twice as many men as women felt social media made their lives too busy (Getty Images)

Ryan Perera, co-founder of delivery app company Henchman, which ran the survey, said: "Time is the most precious thing we have - yet Brits feel increasingly under more pressure for their time now than ever before."

The survey took responses from about 2,000 British adults, with roughly 300 from each age group participating.

The busiest age groups were:

1. 25- to 34-year-olds

2. 35- to 44-year-olds

3. 18- to 24-year-olds

4. 45- to 54-year-olds

5. 55- to 64-year-olds

6. 65 plus-year-olds

Greater family commitments, work patterns and personal administration tasks were the main reasons that respondents gave for feeling overstretched - a factor which seemed to spill over into one's 30s and early 40s, but was not as much of a problem for those in their early 20s.

But social media also came in fifth as a key reason for feeling busy, with Londoners the most insecure about leaving Facebook unattended.

The stress test: Who's under more pressure Show all 3 1 /3 The stress test: Who's under more pressure The stress test: Who's under more pressure 137105.bin FRANTZESCO KANGARIS The stress test: Who's under more pressure 137103.bin DAVID SANDISON The stress test: Who's under more pressure 137104.bin FRANTZESCO KANGARIS

More than one in five citizens in the capital (23 per cent) said they could not go more than a couple of hours off Facebook without feeling out of touch with friends.

Londoners were followed by citizens in Northern Ireland (29 per cent), Wales (26 per cent) and the south-east of England (13 per cent) in feeling the need to keep up-to-date online.

Nor was this felt equally between genders - men were nearly twice as likely as women to blame social media for them feeling busier now than in earlier years, demonstrating either greater social media use among men, or more irritation with it.

Craig Stockwell, head of marketing at Henchman, told The Independent: "A proliferation of people using technology seems to be the main thing taking up time."

Being 29 has also been identified elsewhere as the time when most young people feel they are truly an adult, because they are likely to be considering a mortgage and children.

Yet a record number of young adults are remaining in the parental home rather than purchasing their own houses, and can often only get mortgages with parental support.
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Using drones to deliver packages to our yards has long piqued the interest of some consumers and tech companies as a way to speed a process that can take days to one that happens in minutes. But a new Google patent reveals that before the tech giant makes drone delivery a reality, it wants to solve the problem of how to fly drones safely in yards without endangering pets or other potential obstacles.

Earlier this week Google received a patent for a system in which a hovering drone would lower goods into a cart, which would then transport the package to a safe holding spot, such as in a garage. This would lessen the potential for some backyard calamities.

Unmanned aerial delivery devices may be problematic for delivery to users, the patent authors wrote, citing pets, overhead power lines and ceiling fans as potential obstacles. Conventional aerial delivery device methods do not allow for safe, secure delivery of packages to delivery locations.

The patent addresses the concern that drones may have difficulty finding a safe place to leave a package. It mentions the risk of leaving a package on a front porch, which may be stolen.

The patent calls for a delivery bin at the destination that would transmit its location to the drone. The drone would know exactly where to bring its package, and not have to touch down on the customers land. Google says the drone may drop the package or lower it via a cable, an approach Google has previously demonstrated. The patent says the bin may use a hatch or door to secure the package inside it.

The patent says the motorised bin would then transport the package to a safe location, or drop it in a mail slot. The approach is different from Amazon, a drone delivery competitor who has shown demo videos of drones touching down on a backyard mat after a customer confirms their yard is clear.

Google declined to comment on the patent. Dave Vos, who leads Googles drone efforts, has previously said the company hopes to operate a delivery system by 2017.

Google is not the only one to tackle concerns that the nature of yards and neighborhoods will make drone delivery difficult.

Earlier this month a prominent drone researcher at NASA suggested to The Post that 10-foot-tall mailboxes could be installed for drones to land on. At that height pets and children would be better isolated from potential run-ins. He also suggested that chimneys could be converted into delivery chutes for drone packages.

Disclosure: Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Copyright: Washington Post
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Britain has one of the lowest rates of long-term breastfeeding in the world  and it is costing childrens lives, experts have warned.

A team of researchers from the World Health Organisation and Unicef estimated that 800,000 child deaths a year worldwide would be prevented if breast milk was universally used to feed babies, The Lancet reported.

They found that 0.5 per cent of British children are breastfed for a year, compared to 92 per cent in India, 44 per cent in New Zealand and 27 per cent in the US. About a third of babies in the UK are breastfed for six months, compared to about half of infants in the US and Germany.

Professor Russell Viner, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, told The Daily Mail: The benefits of breastfeeding have been widely publicised, yet its clear that efforts are still falling far too short and the grave reality is that this is costing childrens lives.

Breastfeeding has been shown to help reduce child obesity, rates of diabetes and infections. It is believed to reduce the chance of sudden infant death by more than a third and also may increase the intelligence of the child.

Women who breastfeed also have a lower chance of getting breast cancer. The researchers estimated that 20,000 womens lives could be saved worldwide by breastfeeding.

Dr Martin Ward-Platt, a consultant paediatrician at Newcastles Royal Victoria Infirmary, said: We have to go back to the 1960s to see high rates of breastfeeding across the country.

There was a huge cultural change after the Second World War, when it was thought to be modern, scientific and desirable to use formula feed instead.

Professor Viv Bennett, chief nurse at Public Health England, told the Mail: There is strong evidence which tells us that breastfeeding provides benefits for babies. We recognise however that not all mothers choose, or are able, to breastfeed and infant formula is the only alternative to breast milk for babies under 12 months old.
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The controversial theory that the seeds of Alzheimers disease may have been transmitted between patients during surgical procedures involving the use of donated human tissue has been supported by the discovery of new evidence.

Scientists have found a link between patients who received nerve-tissue grafts several decades ago and the presence of a protein in the brain that is normally seen in the earliest stages of Alzheimers disease.

The study supports findings published last September suggesting that people who had been injected with human growth hormone when they were children were harbouring the same seeds of Alzheimers disease at the time of their death several decades later.

The latest study was carried out on the stored brain samples of eight patients who had undergone tissue grafts in Austria and Switzerland but who had died from another brain disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is now known to have been transmitted during the operation involving nerve tissue taken from human cadavers.

The retrospective analysis of the eight patients found that seven of them, who had died at ages ranging from 28 to 63, had clumps of protein in their brain called amyloid-beta (A-beta). This is seen in the early stages of Alzheimers but is highly unusual in such a relatively young age group.

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Five of the seven patients had also suffered visible damage to the vital blood vessels of the brain caused by the build-up of A-beta protein  an observation that is also highly unusual in such a young age group.

A control group of 21 brains from patients who had died of sporadic CJD indicated that the results were not the result of CJD but likely to be caused by the tissue graft.

Other possible causes have yet to be conclusively eliminated. But scientists suspect that the seeds of the A-beta protein may have been transmitted to the patients at the time they had a surgical graft of the dura mater, a membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord  which at that time came from cadavers, before the practice was stopped in the 1980s.

The findings support the view that it may be possible for certain medical procedures to inadvertently transmit the seeds of Alzheimers disease from one person to another  although there is no suggestion that Alzheimers can be caught by touching or caring for someone with the degenerative brain disease.

The presence of the A-beta pathology in young individuals is highly unusual and suggests a causal relationship to the dural grafts, according to the study by scientists from the University Hospital Zurich and the Medical University of Vienna, led by Herbert Budka of the Institute of Neuropathology in Zurich.

The growing circumstantial evidence for such transmission should prompt a critical re-evaluation of the decontamination procedure for surgical instruments and drugs of biological origin, with the goal to ensure the complete absence of potentially transmissible contaminants.

A study last year found that a small group of people who had been injected when they were children with human growth hormone prepared from human cadavers, and who had died of CJD as a result, also had A-beta protein in their brains.

Professor John Collinge, head of neurodegenerative diseases at University College London, said at the time that the growth hormone findings suggested that there may be another route to developing Alzheimers via contaminated surgical instrument or medical products.

What we need to consider is that in addition to there being sporadic Alzheimers disease and inherited, or familial, Alzheimers disease, there could also be acquired forms of Alzheimers disease, Professor Collinge had said then.

On 29 January, he said the latest findings support the hypothesis that protein seeds leading to Alzheimers disease may be transmissible from one person to another during invasive medical procedures such as tissue grafts and hormone injections. The find is consistent with our own, he said.

The fact that this is a completely different situation that is nothing to do with growth hormone or growth deficiency, but in people who had to have a surgical procedure and we are seeing the same thing is consistent with our hypothesis that this represents transmission of A-beta seeds to these individuals.

He added: If there are risks, one would expect them to be related to surgical procedures involving brain tissue and those are relatively rare procedures. Scientists should be thinking about this and whether it is possible to transmit these proteopathic seeds by medical procedures.

Last September, the Governmentss Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, said: There is no evidence that Alzheimers disease can be transmitted in humans, nor is there any evidence that Alzheimers disease can be transmitted through any medical procedure.
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More than 800,000 children could be prevented from dying worldwide if more women breastfed, a new study has suggested.

The method could also prevent an extra 22,000 deaths from breast cancer a year, according to a report published in 'The Lancet' medical journal.

However, the study highlighted that many women do not breastfeed due to a combination of government policies, weak community support and the tactics of the formula milk industry.

Researchers made their findings by analysing 28 previous studies which showed that breastfeeding has a positive effect on both a mother and her childs life.

Breastfeeding was linked to increased intelligence, and protection against obesity and diabetes later in life.

But researchers warned that despite the positive effects, breastfeeding rates are low  particularly in high-income countries.

The study showed that while 80 per cent of newborns are breastfed worldwide, the figure drops to 37 per cent in low and middle-income nations.

The situation is worse in high-income nations. Fewer than 1 per cent of babies were breastfed up to their first birthday in the UK, while the figure in Ireland was 2 per cent. In Denmark, only 3 per cent of women did so.

Dr Nigel Rollins of the World Health Organisation (WHO), who co-authored the research, stressed that the responsibility to breastfeed should not lie solely with the woman.

Her ability to breastfeed is very much shaped by the support and the environment in which she lives. There is a broader responsibility of governments and society to support women through policies and programmes in the community," The Guardian.

Breastfeeding in public controversies Show all 11 1 /11 Breastfeeding in public controversies Breastfeeding in public controversies A woman has sparked a heated debate among parents after she revealed that she breastfeeds both her and her friend's son. Jessica Colletti, from Pennsylvania, said nursing Charlie Interrante's son seemed like the natural thing to do because she was already breastfeeding her son. Colletti told the Mama Bean parenting blog that she asked permission to nurse Interrantes son when she began looking after him, after they met at a photoshoot for new mothers. Interrante agreed as her son had not taken to formula milk Breastfeeding in public controversies New Hampshire State Rep. Josh Moore said on Facebook that men should be allowed to grab the nipples of breastfeeding mothers if the law banning women exposing their breasts did not pass Breastfeeding in public controversies When Gemma Colley's photo of her son with fake tan on his fake after she breastfeed him went viral, she also saw that no parent is alone when they make a silly mistake. Over 100,000 people liked and 40,000 people shared Ms Colleys photo of her sons sleepy face with fake tan encircling his mouth and nose, after she posted it to the Unmumsy Mum Facebook page Breastfeeding in public controversies A candid image of a mother breastfeeding her young child while using the toilet has divided parents online, as some argue its an honest depiction of parenthood, while others have labelled it disgusting Breastfeeding in public controversies The exclusive Claridges hotel has been widely criticised for asking a woman to cover herself with a ridiculous shroud while breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. Lousie Burns said she burst into tears when staff members at the five-star venue asked her to cover herself and her baby with an oversized napkin in order to avoid causing offence to other guests Breastfeeding in public controversies An Australian cafe has been praised for sticking up for a breastfeeding mother after a customer told her to cover up. Jessica-Anne Allen, owner of Cheese and Biscuits Cafe in Queensland, Australia, has described how she was approached by a male customer in the cafe to complain that he was upset by a woman in the coffee shop breastfeeding her child nearby. The customer asked the cafe owner, 29, to tell the mother to cover up. When Mrs Allen refused to do so, he took matters into his own hands and challenged the woman himself. Staff at the cafe then asked the man to leave Breastfeeding in public controversies A woman who claimed a Primark security guard had forcibly removed her child while she was breastfeeding has admitted to perverting the course of justice. Caroline Starmer sparked a series of headlines after claiming on Facebook that a store guard had taken her nine-month-old daughter Paige away from her. The mother from Leicester then repeated her claims in a number of interviews, before Primark denied the incident and handed CCTV over to the police to show there was no evidence to support the allegations. Appearing in Leicester Crown Court, she admitted the charge of perverting the course of justice by not telling the truth Breastfeeding in public controversies Pope Francis has become an unlikely advocate for public breastfeeding, by encouraging mothers to feed their babies in the Sistine Chapel. During a ceremony in Vatican City on Sunday, the Pope baptised 32 babies and told their mothers: If they are hungry, mothers, feed them, without thinking twice, because they are the most important people here Breastfeeding in public controversies Facebook has changed its community guidelines to allow users to post photos of breastfeeding. The change comes as the wide-ranging #FreeTheNipple online campaign has built pace in its attack against guidelines used by social media websites to regulate nudity  from photos of breastfeeding to topless photos post by singer Rihannas on her now defunct Instagram account. Facebooks Community Standards, which outline what users are allowed to post, never included a outright ban on photos of breastfeeding Breastfeeding in public controversies The manager of a public swimming pool at the Lux Park centre in Liskeardhas been forced to apologise after he told a mother to stop breastfeeding her son by the waterside. 23-year-old Rebecaa Hough of Torpoint, Cornwall, was feeding 10-month-old Max a few steps from the main pool, when the manager told her to carry on in the changing rooms in case the infant was sick into the water. She was also told that she should not to return for half an hour to ensure the milk was fully digested Breastfeeding in public controversies A Conservative MP has claimed allowing women to breastfeed in the House of Commons chamber would expose politicians to tabloid ridicule. Sir Simon Burns, a former transport minister, spoke on what he called a controversial subject in a debate in making Westminster more family-friendly

Categorising the results according to a nations economic status, researchers found that breastfeeding in high-income countries slashed the risk of sudden infant death by more than a third.

Meanwhile, it halved all infant cases of diarrhoea and a third of lung infections in low and middle-income nations.

Lead researcher Professor Cesar Victora, from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said that the evidence leaves no doubt that the decision to breastfeed has major long-term negative effects on the health, nutrition and development of children and on women's health."

He added: There is a widespread misconception that breast milk can be replaced with artificial products without detrimental consequences.

Janet Fyle, from the Royal College of Midwives, said the report "underpins and reinforces why breastfeeding is the most appropriate method of providing nutrition for a baby."

However, women who cannot breastfeed or choose not to must not be made to feel guilty, the National Childbirth Trust told The Independent and stressed that mothers need better support.

Responding to the study, senior policy adviser, NCT, Rosemary Dodds said: "Parents need support whatever their feeding decisions and mothers should not be judged or made to feel guilty however they decide to feed their baby.

"Some women dont find breastfeeding easy, a small minority cant and others dont want to breastfeed their baby which is entirely up to them.

"However we know that in the UK, 80 per cent of mums who stopped breastfeeding in the first few weeks would have liked to continue, but needed more support.

"If mums are given good information and practical help to build confidence during pregnancy and they have the support they need around them in the early days and weeks, then many more will go on to breastfeed for as long as they want."
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A mother who took a photo of her baby son likely saved his life by revealing a cancerous tumour in his eye.

Andrea Temarantz, from the US state of Arizona, took her son to the doctor after she noticed that his eye glowed white when she took photos of him using a camera with a flash, she told ABC News.

Doctors then diagnosed 4-month-old Ryder with retinoblastoma, a form of cancer, in his left eye.

What Ms Temarantzs camera had highlighted was a white tumour in the back of his eye, which reflected the flashs light.

Ms Temarantz warned other parents to alert a doctor if they see a white glow in their childs eye, and said her memory was triggered by a similar case two years ago.

"I didn't pay much attention to it so I don't know what it was but it was clear that it wasn't normal. As Ryder has gotten older I have noticed in every photo his eye is glowing like in this photo. Thankfully I mentioned this at his 4 month checkup," she wrote on Facebook.

Dr David H Abramson, chief of Ophthalmic Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in New York City where the baby is being treated, praised Ms Temarantz for consulting a doctor quickly, as the cancer can be fatal if not caught early.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

He believes that Ryder now has a 99 per cent chance of survival.

Ryder also has Downs Syndrome, meaning he is more prone to leukaemia. Therefore, doctors have decided to deliver chemotherapy directly to the tumour using a thin catheter, rather than subject his entire body to the treatment, his aunt wrote on the familys fundraising page.

Support has since flooded for Temarantz family, with one stranger sending Ryders mother t-shirts for him and his brother reading #CancerSucks and #PrayForRyder.

So yesterday I got my mail and these 2 shirts were in there. I don't even know this lady. I can't believe I had never... Posted by Andrea Temarantz on Sunday, 24 January 2016

I got my mail and these 2 shirts were in there. I don't even know this lady. I can't believe I had never even heard of her awesome shop. It seriously made me cry, she wrote on Facebook.
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More than 12,000 people have joined the Anthony Nolan charity's bone marrow register after a mixed-race cancer patient launched a global appeal to find a suitable match for a stem cell transplant.

The #Match4Lara campaign was launched on 8 January, several weeks after Lara Casalotti, 24, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

Ms Casalotti's Thai-Italian heritage meant she has so far been unable to find a suitable donor. Her family started an online appeal to encourage everyone to sign up to the register.

Henny Braund, chief executive of Anthony Nolan, said the number of people who have signed up to the register was "unprecedented."

Before the start of Ms Casalotti's appeal, the average proportion of BAME [black, Asian and ethnic minority] people joining the register was 14 per cent.

"What is brilliant is that half of the new potential donors are from ethnic minority and BAME backgrounds. This is the highest proportion weve ever seen on the register," said Ms Braund.

Seb Casalotti, Ms Casalotti's brother, said: "Its amazing that people have actually signed up. I didnt expect wed have such a high conversion rate. This isnt just a campaign that people are happy to like and share on social media, people have really gone and joined the register."

"The fact that 50 per cent of those who signed up are mixed race and BAME is really important. I was worried we might not get a high percentage of minorities, but weve ended up getting a disproportionately high number for the UK population."

Laras search for a donor has led to one of the biggest global drives for stem cell donors. Ms Braund said: "Shes captured peoples imagination that they can do something amazing and save lives. The campaign has just struck a chord  particularly among ethnic minorities who have identified with the message and feel like they have a responsibility to help."

The appeal has received support from famous people all around the world. Harry Potter author JK Rowling, photographer Mario Testino, House actor Hugh Laurie and broadcaster Stephen Fry have all tweeted about the campaign and urged people to join the register.

Tulip Siddiq, MP for Laras constituency Hampstead and Kilburn, raised the campaign during Prime Ministers Questions.

Its really heartening to see MPs do something like this. By mentioning Lara during PMQs, Tulip Siddiq made the campaign a national story, said Mr Casalotti.

Bea Cadwallader, one of the Match4Lara volunteers, said: "The reaction has been overwhelming. Within the first 24 hours of the campaign launch so many people got in touch offering their help, some of whom I knew, many of whom I did not.

"The ten-fold increase in registrations that same day crashed the Anthony Nolan website."

Ms Braund said the global outlook of #Match4Lara is "inspirational".

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

"Were a very global community and we work closely together with registers abroad. Were looking for the best possible match. Well be searching the world for a match for Lara."

Professor Stephen Mackinnon, who leads the bone marrow and stem cell program at University College London Hospital, said that a fully matched donor is no longer required for a successful transplant. Parents and some siblings are a 50 per cent [haploidentical] match to the patient and can become donors.

He commented: Previously it was technically difficult to do haploidentical transplants but using a drug called cyclophosphamide post transplant, they became feasible with similar outcomes to fully matched unrelated donor transplants."

Ms Braund commented: "They are having some successes with this treatment, but its still early days."
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Our sleep deprived lives could lead to a rise in getting diabetes, according to a new study.

The study, published in Diabetes Care and conducted by the University of Chicago, found that not sleeping well can increase your risk of developing diabetes, particularly affecting people who work long hours.

People who are tired will eat more because they want to get energy from somewhere. "This could mean consuming sugar or other foods that can spike blood sugar levels, Dr Maarouf, the diabetes education director of the Stark Diabetes Center at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, told WebMD.

She explains: I really push people to eat properly throughout the day and get their blood sugars under control so they sleep better at night. If you get your blood sugar under control, you will get a good night sleep and wake up feeling fabulous with lots of energy.

Author of the study, Dr Josiane Broussard, an assistant research professor at the department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado, said: "In this short-term study, we found that two long nights spent catching up on lost sleep can reverse the negative metabolic effects of four consecutive nights of restricted sleep."

Diabetes occurs when your body doesnt produce enough insulin. A lack of sleep can lead to insulin resistance, which means your body finds it harder to break down sugars. As well as leading to weight gain, when youre tired, theres insulin resistance, which means the body cant break glucose down into energy. If youre tired and insulin cant do its job properly, then sugar levels can build to such a point that the insulin could harm the eyes, kidneys, nerves, and heart.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

However, the study is encouraging, says Dr Broussard: "It shows that young, healthy people who sporadically fail to get sufficient sleep during the work week can reduce their diabetes risk if they catch up on sleep during the weekend."

The University of Chicago study recommends sleeping two nights of extended sleep, or more than 8.5 hours to lower the risk of diabetes.
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Clinical trials for a vaccine for the Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in unborn children, may start by the end of the year, according to US officials.

Health experts in the US have said there are two potential candidates for the testing the vaccine on.

However, opinions on when the vaccine would be ready are conflicting. US officials said that the vaccine would not be ready for several years. But Canadian scientist Gary Kobinger, a lead developer for the vaccine, told Reuters that the first stage of human testing could start in early August  meaning it could be ready by autumn 2016.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said that one option is to base the vaccine on previous research into the West Nile virus, which was not previously developed because of a failure to find a drug company partner.

However, he said that this would not pose an issue for Zika and that officials have already spoken to a few companies able to help advance the development.

Dr Kobinger, who helped to develop a trial vaccine to fight Ebola, said: "The first thing is to be ready for the worst.

"This vaccine is easy to produce. It could be cranked to very high levels in a really short time."

However, he did not say when it would be available widely.

The Zika virus - in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 The Zika virus - in pictures The Zika virus - in pictures A three-month-old, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil. A rise in microcephaly cases is thought to have been caused by the spread of the Zika virus in affected countries Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A mother holds her baby who has microcephaly Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A five-month-old baby, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A pediatric infectologist examines a two-month-old baby, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A baby affected with microcephaly

The race to develop a vaccine comes after the World Health Organisation said it is spreading explosively and warned that the mosquito-borne virus could infect up to four million people in the Americas.

 What is Zika virus?

While it manifests itself as a relatively harmless fever in most cases, it is most feared due to its links to microcephaly  where babies are born with heads which appear to be shrunken due to brain damage.

Since October 2015, it has been linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Like millions of others this weekend, Barney Jones is filling in his tax returns. The forms detailing earnings and expenditure are not for the faint-hearted, and completing them seldom gives satisfaction  even when youve just played a key role in adding an extra 130m to Britains coffers.

The whistleblower who helped to reveal how Google was avoiding paying tax in the UK said that Britain needed to create better incentives to encourage more people to come forward and reveal how multinationals are avoiding paying tax to the Exchequer. His call came along with revelations that the European Commission has been asked to investigate other controversial tax deals HMRC is currently negotiating with multinational companies.

Mr Jones, 37, a former sales executive, handed over tens of thousands of emails to investigators which laid bare how the search engine firm avoided paying tax in the UK.

He readily admits when he handed over the emails three years ago he knew little about tax. He had watched Matt Brittin, his former boss at Google, give evidence to MPs on the Public Accounts Committee with interest but also mounting disquiet. Mr Brittin emphasised to the PAC one reason Google paid so little tax in the UK was that it did so little business here. The bulk of its work was generated through its Dublin headquarters  where corporation tax was lower than in London.

Mr Jones, a father of four and a devout Christian, knew that wasnt true. He had worked in the London office from 2002 to 2006 and had his own view of the large turnover of work that was really going on in the UK. He took the facts to PAC chair Margaret Hodge and then on to Her Majestys Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which took his evidence but wasnt exactly overjoyed by it.

They seemed quite defensive and seemed to be more interested in justifying their position, saying they didnt make the tax laws  they only applied them, he said. They looked at the emails and spoke to me about them and took it away. I only heard from them briefly a few times after that.

When news of Googles 130m settlement broke, he felt a small amount of satisfaction at his part but a stronger feeling of disappointment. On the one hand, I was pleased. I had made my contribution but it was a derisory amount. The reaction from the Chancellor was very disappointing. That figure is pocket change for Google, he said.

Motivated only by a sense of right and wrong and the belief he will one day be held to account by God, Mr Jones said he is not surprised there arent more whistleblowers like him coming forward from multinational giants with controversial tax arrangements.

There really arent any incentives in this country. Unlike in the US where they pay large rewards, the Revenue gave the impression it wasnt something they liked to do and did so infrequently. Not that I did it for any money, but it may be an incentive to other employees, he told The Independent. The other thing that is off-putting is HMRCs attitude. To simply say publicly Weve looked at the tax arrangements and they are OK does not encourage you to approach them.

The taxman needs to be made more accountable, he believes. I think Margaret Hodge did a remarkable job in trying to hold them to account but a lot more needs to be done, he said.

HMRC cannot simply say we just apply the laws, we dont make them. They need to advise MPs better about what is required. They need to make clear what criteria they apply and how they apply it when determining who pays what tax.

The Google deal is one of those the campaign group Tax Justice Network (TJN) formally asked the European Commission to investigate. Its request came as calculations by The Independent suggested Google may owe as much as 700m in UK taxes. The TJN request said it was one of a number of similar deals, it believed.

These tax practices are not only harmful to trade within the European Union, but also harmful to the British public, who have had to suffer severe cuts to public services on the basis that the Government has not been able to raise sufficient revenues, said the TJNs John Christensen. It is our belief the nature of deal announced by the Chancellor suggests that similar deals may have already been reached between the Government and other, unknown companies, or may be in the process of being negotiated.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he welcomed the EU investigation of the deal.

The commissions own anti-tax avoidance proposals, revealed earlier this week, were strongly criticised. Tove Ryding at the European Network on Debt and Development said: The proposals are woefully inadequate to stem the tsunami of scandalous cases of multinational corporations failing to pay their taxes.
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Addressing one of his favourite audiences, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and nine-tenths of the way into his premiership, Tony Blair was at his most vocally impetuous and brimming with the confidence forged by three general election victories. Nuclear power, he announced, was back on the agenda with a vengeance. The CBIs then director-general, Digby Jones, could only agree, saying the prime minister was absolutely right that building a fleet of new nuclear power stations was the way to wean the UK off its dependence on gas imports from the Middle East, Africa and Russia.

A decade on, we still wait. This is the most disappointing vengeance since Bruce Willis pulled on his dirt-ingrained white vest in 1995 to play New York cop John McClane for a third time. Of course, I exaggerate: Die Hard With A Vengeance was a good film that, unlike Hinkley Point C, moved at a brisk pace.

It seems astonishing now but Hinkley Points French owner vowed that the new plant  Hinkleys third since A opened in the 1960s  would be built and generating 7 per cent of the UKs electricity needs by Christmas next year. EDF Energys UK boss, Vincent de Rivaz, made that promise in 2007, before the timetable slipped back first to 2019 and then to 2025.

The last completed British nuclear station was Sizewell B in Suffolk, which opened in 1995, while older plants have stopped generating electricity or are preparing for decommissioning. Hinkley C is supposed to be the catalyst for a new fleet of reactors across the UK.

The plant was delayed by EDFs protracted negotiations with the government over what, in effect, amounts to state aid through a guaranteed minimum price paid for its electricity; legal hurdles at the European Union level, including a challenge from anti-nuclear Austria; and attempts to shore up the funding for the project by selling a one-third stake to the Chinese.

Despite the problems, it was still a bit of a shock to see EDFs board delay a meeting this week in which directors would have made what has been coined a final investment decision on the project. After all these years, EDF still doesnt seem to be fully confident that billions of pounds of investment is worth the risk, and has delayed a decision for at least a month.

Greenpeaces executive director, John Sauven, is surely right when he says this proves the board is rattled though I doubt he will get his wish that this could well signal curtains for Hinkley. I suspect it will still get the green light, and even if it doesnt, the Government will plough on with building reactors elsewhere.

Even if Im wrong, Whitehall needs to prepare as though this is the case, given that cross-party policy for so long has been to bridge our yawning energy gap by building these stations. Maybe the whole plan collapses if EDF pulls out, maybe not.

This is what makes a parliamentary answer to a question by Clive Lewis this month all the more curious. The shadow energy spokesman is a high-flying Corbynista who, after only eight months as an MP, is already joint-fifth favourite to be the next Labour leader. He found that the deployment of officers at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), both to protect sites and materials in transit, will fall from 1,113 this financial year to 931 by 2019-20.

The energy minister Andrea Leadsom (herself a possible contender for the Conservative leadership when David Cameron steps down) responded: As sites move to decommissioning, the numbers of officers will fall, and will conversely increase as any new nuclear facilities come on line.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Lewis took the opportunity to put the boot into George Osborne, saying: The Chancellor promised he would protect the police but now we know they need to be protected from his cuts. Hundreds of the front-line officers who protect sensitive nuclear power stations and radioactive materials are facing the axe, even though these are top terrorist targets.

Forgetting the politics, this is an important discovery because we should be training more of these specialist officers before these new reactors are built. As the CNC puts it, this is a unique force with a unique role. Instead, we seem happy to lose 16.35 per cent of those few who know how to protect nuclear sites.

As the delays lengthen, we have both a risk and an opportunity. Retirements and cuts mean we will lose much accumulated knowledge  better to keep them working and train the extra officers on site because we will need them later if Mr Blairs promise of vengeance is, indeed, fulfilled. This is not going to be a huge cost to the exchequer; indeed, an answer to another of Mr Lewiss questions shows CNC staff costs will rise from 71.3m to 87.2m by 2020, despite fewer deployed officers.

Still, given the rate at which EDF is going, there will be no sites left to protect before Hinkley C starts pumping out electricity.

Twitter.com/@mleftly
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Google still owes the British Government hundreds of millions of pounds in unpaid taxes, according to a new analysis by The Independent.

This week the tech giant, the second most valuable company in the world with a worth of 500bn, agreed to pay 135m into the UK's coffers in back taxes for the years 2005 to 2011.

The deal prompted anger after it emerged Google had agreed to pay Italy 227m (172m) in back taxes for 2009 to 2013 - even though Google's Italian business is a fraction of the size of its UK sales.

Our analysis suggests Google owes the UK six times more than it has agreed to pay.

The UK is one of Google's major markets. It is the only country other than the US which Google considers big enough to report revenues for separately in its financial accounts.

For every 10 Google has made in revenue over the past decade, around 1 has come from the UK.

This week's tax inquiry is focused on the seven years between 2005-2011. During that period Google made $18bn (11bn) in revenue from the UK, according to the annual financial reports the firm files in the US.

During those years, Google's global profit margin ranged from a low of 20 per cent in 2008 to a high of 29 per cent.

Assuming its profit margin in the UK was similar to its global profit margin, that suggests it made nearly 3bn in profit from the UK between 2005-2011.

UK corporation tax between 2005-2011 averaged nearly 29 per cent, which means Google should have paid around 800m in tax.

As this graphic shows, the company only paid 9m.

It was able to do this by using a legal but controversial tax avoidance scheme.

By re-routing the money it paid in the UK to lower tax havens in Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda, Google appeared to make far less from its UK business than its financial filings in the US shows it did.

Its reported revenues in the UK amounted to just 1.2bn between 2005-2011, rather than the 11bn suggested by its US accounts.

The second tactic Google used was to state it made no profit on its UK business.

According to its Companies House filings, Google UK lost 86m between 2005-2011 - a surprising figure given its global business made $25.5bn (16.5bn) in profit during those years, and the UK made up 10-15 per cent of its business.

Some analysts, and Google itself, have argued that most of the company's costs are spent on the coders and designers based in the US, not on the marketing and sales teams who sell ads in the UK.

Therefore, it claims, the bulk of Google's tax bill should be paid in the US.

But without selling ads, Google would have no business. Around 90 per cent of Google's income comes from the ads it sells alongside its services - and the argument is harder to make when it has now paid Italy more than the UK.

Reports this week suggested the firm is also likely to pay French authorities more than it paid the UK.

Google told the The Independent: "After a six-year audit by the tax authority we are paying the amount of tax that HMRC agrees we should pay. Governments make tax law, the tax authorities enforce the law and Google complies with the law.
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A rebel Russian shareholder swept aside the board of the struggling oil explorer JKX Oil & Gas in a move labelled by opponents as a successful act of piracy.

The Moscow-based fund Proxima, which owns 20 per cent of the Russia and Ukraine-focused JKX, launched its campaign in December, complaining of mismanagement after a 90 per cent fall in the shares over the previous five years.

But its assault has been controversial and dogged by claims  denied by all parties  that it was working in concert with two other big investors. Eclairs, controlled by Ukrainian raiders Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov, and Glengary, controlled by the Russian oligarch Alexander Zhukov, together own 38 per cent of JKX.

At an extraordinary meeting, Proxima succeeded in removing chief executive Paul Davies and six other directors, although two  the finance director Cynthia Dubin and non-executive Dipesh Shah  resigned hours before the vote. In their place come energy veteran Tom Reed as chief executive, a new finance chief and chairman, and two representatives of Proxima, including founder Vladimir Tatarchuk.

JKX had tried to bar Eclairs and Glengary from voting at the meeting earlier this week on suspicion of providing false or materially incorrect information. The High Court overturned the decision, but the activist won by a two-to-one majority even without their votes, due to the support of Turkish investor Neptune  which has the same offices in Moscow as Proxima.

One source on the JKX side said big shareholders had won control without paying a premium, at the expense of retail investors, who own more than 20 per cent of JKX. This was a successful act of piracy which no rightminded director would go along with.

Mr Tatarchuk said: We are delighted that all our resolutions were passed... without having to rely on the votes of shareholders that are subject to legal dispute.

JKX shares fell by 2 per cent to 25.75p.
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The Governments counter-terrorism strategy has been blamed for making teachers hypersensitive when it comes to challenges elements of the Muslim faith and teaching evolution.

London headteacher Tom Sherrington said schools could shy away from teaching Charles Darwins seminal scientific theory to avoid provoking a reaction from their pupils with creationist views.

He said the Prevent programme has added to the sense that your treat Muslims as different and the strategy makes any engagement directly questioning the faith position of Muslim students more challenging.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Mr Sherrington - who has run Highbury Grove School in Islington since September 2014 - said schools should be inclusive communities where "science should be promoted as science".

He said: "Students will say they dont believe in the science because its not what they are being told through engagement with their faith. Thats a very sensitive issue for teachers to handle.

"I think it would be awful if teachers said that its just not worth doing. Its easier to keep it sweet, its easier to avoid that conflict... That would be a mistake.

"It would be a big mistake for science teachers to teach evolution any differently, just because of this fear of alienating Muslim students through Prevent approaches."

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA

He said he has come across teachers who have said they were creationists: "For teachers to be questioning the validity of evolution versus the Bible I think is appalling, and shows that they dont really understand science.

"I think its important to be open about what you are going to teach and schools should be saying that they teach evolution as a fact, because it is."

It comes as an investigation by the British Humanist Association in May last year found that only 14 of the 91 schools teaching creationism in the UK had their funding removed despite a pledge by the Government to crack down on them.
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English teenagers are among some of the least educated in the developed world, a report reveals.

Young people aged between 16 and 19 have been found to possess only a basic grasp of maths and English, with nine million people of working age having low literacy or numeracy skills.

The report, conducted by the OECD (the Operation for Economic Co-Operation and Development) found that out of 23 developed nations, English teens had the lowest literacy rates and the second to lowest numeracy rates.

The report summarised that one in five young university students could manage basic tasks but might struggle with anything advanced, like reading instructions on an aspirin bottle.

It concluded: "university teaching gives limited attention to low levels of literacy and numeracy. Graduates with low basic skills gain modest returns from their qualifications and will often not be able to repay their student debts. England has a large university system relative to a poorly skilled pool of potential entrants."

Top 20 universities for teaching in UK Show all 21 1 /21 Top 20 universities for teaching in UK Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 1. Oxford University (93,3%) Getty Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 2. Coventry University (92,7%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 3. Cambridge University (92,4%) Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 4. St. Andrews University (92,3%) Getty Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 5. University of Dundee (91,9%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 6. University of East Anglia (91,5%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 7. University of Bath (91,4%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 8. University of Keele (91,1%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 9. University of Glasgow (91,0%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 10. University of Exeter (90,7%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 11. University of Chichester (90,6%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 12. University of Surrey (90,5%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 13. Durham University (90,2%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 15. Bath Spa University (89,9%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 16. Newcastle University (89,8%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 16. University of Leeds (89,8%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 17. University of Hull (89,6%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 17. St. Mary's Twickenham (89,6%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 18. University of Northampton (89,5%) University of Northampton Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 19. SOAS, University of London (89,4%) Creative Commons Top 20 universities for teaching in UK 20. University of Chester (89,3%) Creative Commons

Based on 2012 data, the report acknowledged that conditions were likely to improve with Michael Goves reforms to keep children in education until the age of 18. The reforms have introduced harder GCSES and some vocational subjects like the nail technician certificate have been ditched.

However, some critics have used this opportunity to call out the government, blaming the failure of educational policies for English children's illiteracy. Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment told The Times that education in England has been blighted by the beliefs of progressive education. The older generation did English and maths in a formal way but progressive beliefs took over and the children's grasp of basic skills declined.

A government spokesperson told The Mirror that "Good English and maths skills are essential to success in later life, and thanks to our reforms thousands more students are leaving education with these vital skills.

South Korea came top of the list for both literacy and numeracy skills.
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The former Dragons Den judge Douglas Richard has been found not guilty of child sex charges.

The 57-year-old, who once advised Prime Minister David Cameron, engaged in sexy chat with a 13-year-old after meeting her on a 'sugar daddy' website and went on to act out his fantasies when she travelled from her home in Norwich to meet him in London.

However, the American millionaire claimed he believed she was an experienced 17-year-old and told jurors he would never knowingly have sex with a child.

The court heard he gave the girl and a friend who came with her to the apartment in the City 60 each in cash. Richard insisted was a gift and not a form of payment.

Richard, of Islington, north London, was found not guilty of three counts of sexual activity with a child, one of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and a charge of paying for sexual services.

He had denied all five charges related to child sexual activity. He left the court in tears.

Additional reporting by the Press Association
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The Austrian daredevil who broke the record for the world highest skydive has claimed the United States intentionally caused the refugee crisis to destabilise Europe.

Felix Baumgartner has also criticised the idiotic refugee policies of several European leaders such as Angela Merkel.

In a lengthy Facebook post, he wrote: "America has destabilized Europe and there are good reasons to believe that was exactly their intention.

"The German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her disastrous 'welcome policy' is now no longer the solution but the problem itself."

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

He expressed his fears about the effect migrants will have on Austrian culture while insisting we should help those in trouble.

By January 2016, over one million migrants have entered the EU over land and sea with Germany having received the highest number of aslyum claims.

Baumgartner wrote: "We will have to ask the question: How far are we willing to give up our identity and our culture and mix it with a totally different religion and ideology."

He added: It is our moral duty to enable the truly vulnerable to help and give them a dignified existence .

"But moral compass may not go as far as we lose our sovereign state and be guided only by feelings.

"The State has the duty to protect the people and to ensure the security in their own country."

In October 2012 - he jumped from a purpose-built hot air balloon to set a new record for the highest skydive of 38,969m falling for a record distance of 36.969m.

These two records were later beaten in 2014 by Google executive Alan Eustace.
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Police have been mocked over a rudimentary e-fit image of a man wanted for questioning that "looks like it was made using Microsoft Paint."

The computer generated picture was circulated by Cheshire Police in the hunt for a suspect seen with a knife in a pub in Macclesfield, according to the Manchester Evening News.

But a serious appeal descended into farce as his apparently drawn-on beard prompted social media users to question how much money was left in constabulary budgets.

Manchester Evening News and Macclesfield Express readers mocked the e-fit on Facebook (Dominic Gibbs/Facebook)

"There's budget cuts, and then there's using snapchat to take a picture of your mate and scribbling on his face. This is Cameron's fault," said Dominic Gibbs on Facebook.

Another commentators, Ed Coley, said: "When you're in charge of a criminal investigation but only have access to Microsoft Paint."

Some Twitter users simply expressed bewilderment and disbelief at the image.

"I genuinely thought this was a joke," said Anna Gough on Facebook. "Looks like the image was made on someone's PC using Paint."

One Twitter user gave the police a possible "lead" - by drawing a similar beard on David Cameron's face.

One Twitter user, @WeahsCousin, said he thought he had caught their culprit (@WeahsCousin/Twitter)

Others suggested a charitable collection to go towards training courses to help police improve their drawing skills.

"Is this a joke? Do we need to sort some kind of collection? I'm sure there's a course people can go on," said Tor Bullock.

Other Facebook users said they were worried about budget cuts to the police (Joanna Tinitankgirl Tierney/Facebook)

The culprit being searched for entered The Park Tavern in Macclesfield on January 12 and sat alone, with AA batteries in a plastic case around his waist.

He was white, in his late 30s, with short black hair, a dark beard and a slim face.

Anyone with information is asked to call Cheshire Police on 101 and quote incident number 835.
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Two Islamists have been jailed for circulating Isis propaganda material in Londons busiest shopping street in an effort to drum up support for the terrorist group.

Ibrahim Anderson, 38, and Shah Jahan Khan, 63, were part of a group who peddled the ideology from a stall outside Topshops flagship branch in Oxford Street.

The pair, both from Luton, denied inviting support for a proscribed organisation but a jury convicted them last week following eight hours of deliberation at the Old Bailey.

Anderson had also denied possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist after instructions on travelling to Syria were found at his home.

Judge Stephen Kramer QC jailed Anderson for three years and Khan for two today, saying their activities could have caused young people to be lured to their deaths in Iraq and Syria.

Mark Seymour, speaking for the prosecution, told jurors the men spent hours speaking to passers-by and distributing a leaflet on the Caliphate in August 2014.

When two passers-by, a doctor and her sister, challenged their extremist views and took photos to pass on to police they were told to go and die, the court heard.

Asmaa and Reem Al-Jufaisha were dismissed as kuffar, meaning disbelievers, after saying they were Shia Muslims from Iraq but they stood their ground and their evidence later helped secure the convictions.

Photos of the leaflets circulated on social media showed them declaring the "dawn of a new era" and calling on Muslims to pledge allegiance and migrate to the new so-called Islamic State.

Anderson, a mechanic with five children, has previous convictions for assault and possession an imitation firearm.

Born as Andrew Anderson, he converted to Islam while serving a jail sentence for robbery in the 1990s, and represented himself as a devoted father to my family in court.

He claimed he only wanted to practise his religion and exercise his freedom of speech, adding: I have been brave enough to come and fight my corner because I know I am innocent and have done nothing wrong.

Khan, a driving instructor, was previously of good character, the court heard.

Additional reporting by PA
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The publicity shot for Jean-Claude LaCotes South African reality series showed him standing before a squad car and dressed in a police-style webbing vest  every inch the officers friend.

Duty Calls, which ran for ten programmes, allowed the handsome TV producer to demonstrate how police dealt with violent criminals and dangerous crime scenes. It was a world of which LaCote had intimate knowledge.

By the time the show was aired, LaCote, 49, a charming but violent conman, had been on the run for several years for the murder of a British businessman on the Belgian coast.

Marcus Mitchell, a successful Surrey businessman and married father-of-three, was shot twice in the head in 1996 after being duped by LaCote into putting up the money for an apparently legitimate business deal to buy aviation parts.

LaCotes publicity shot was re-released in a different context  as part of the launch of Europes first most wanted campaign.

It is some 20 years since LaCote fled the Continent to avoid the consequences for his crime. In the intervening decades, the smooth-talker escaped to Brazil, avoided extradition and, in a brazen escape, walked out of a high-security South Africa prison while awaiting trial for a string of high-profile frauds.

His girlfriend was part of a group of fake police officers who presented false paperwork in 2008 to take him out of jail for an unspecified investigation. It took South African authorities a week to realise that LaCote had gone; and, since then, virtually nothing had been heard of him.

Belgian police, who have been trying to track his movements, said they had learned of the public auction in 2013 of his seven-bedroom Johannesburg home and the Ferrari he once owned. But there is little evidence of his whereabouts with his now-wife, Hilde Van Acker, and their young child.

Three years after they went on the run, LaCote and Van Acker were convicted in their absence in Belgium for the murder of Mr Mitchell. A bag containing about 500,000  some of it Mr Mitchells, some lent by business associates  was missing.

Its the injustice of it, his widow told The Independent. That man and that woman live a life of Riley and they killed my husband and the father of my children. I Google his name regularly in the hope, one day, that it will come up that he is behind bars.

The pair were initially arrested for the murder of 44-year-old Mr Mitchell, whose body was found under a bush by schoolchildren, but they were released as Belgian officers continued their inquiries.

They fled to Brazil and then South Africa to defy all attempts at extradition and continued LaCotes long-practised routine of fleecing wealthy businessmen.

A British court heard that, in 2003, he masterminded a crime to con 1m from Irish airline and shipping entrepreneur Noel Hanley, which was laundered through gold bullion, works of art and a new Ferrari.

Mr Hanley, who was seeking to buy four aeroplanes for a new airline, was put in touch with Roger Wilcox  who turned out to be LaCote  who offered to lend him 1.5m, but required a 1m surety. That was paid into a South African account and duly disappeared.

One of LaCotes accomplices in that scam was convicted in 2007, while LaCote  the alleged mastermind  languished in a South African jail plotting his escape. His trial had not started by the time he walked out.

Mr Mitchells family say that police files opened to them show that LaCote conned Swiss and Canadian businessmen the same way, persuading his victims of his high net worth by using Lear jets and conspicuous wealth.

Belgian police who are hoping for information about LaCote said that Mr Mitchells only crime was that he was a little bit naive. LaCote was a nice speaker with a lot of charm. He could convince anybody, an officer involved in the hunt told The Independent.

Mr Mitchells family  who have not heard anything from Belgian investigators for about five years  believe that LaCote is most likely to be somewhere in Africa.

LaCote is one of 45 European criminals who feature on an EU most-wanted list, launched on 29 January by the Continents police agency Europol. They include Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the 10-strong group of terrorists who killed 130 people in Paris in November last year. One Briton, Derek Ferguson, 51, wanted for a 2007 murder in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, is also on the list.
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An 11-year-old boy who disappeared after leaving his London home is causing police 'increasing concern'.

Abraham Ojo was last seen leaving his home in Tottenham in north London on Thursday morning.

Police in Haringey are growing increasingly worried for his welfare, particularly because Abraham is young and is known to travel extensively on London's bus network.

The boy, who is black and was dressed in a "Puffa" coat when last seen, left his home address at about 8.40 am on Thursday.

He was wearing black school trousers and a red jumper, and was also carrying a red bag.

A police spokesperson told The Independent: "We can't be sure he was headed to school, all we know is that was the last time Abraham was seen."

The police force in Haringey also tweeted Abraham's picture, saying he was a "high-risk missing person."

The official appeal reads: "Given his age, officers are increasingly concerned for his welfare and would urge anyone with information on his whereabouts to call police."

Anyone with information can call 101, or Missing People on 116000 with reference number 16MIS004066.
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Police have released an image taken from CCTV of a man they wish to speak to in connection with the sexual assault of several 12-year-olds on a London bus.

The first assault occurred on 9 December last year, when the alleged attacker got on the 232 bus at Tottenhall Road, North London.

After boarding the bus, he went and stood close to a 12-year-old girl, who then moved.

The suspect then moved closer and began to touch her arm before touching her elsewhere," a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said.

"She moved away again and later got off the bus on Nightingale Road, N22; she reported the incident to police later that day."

According to the police appeal, the suspect remained on the bus and went on to sexually assault two other 12-year-old girls travelling on the same bus.

A further incident occurred on 5 January when a witness reported seeing a man sexually assault a young woman travelling with a small child on the 279 bus. Detectives said they believe the incidents may be linked.

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Detectives from the Roads and Transport Policing Command released the CCTV image of a man they need help identifying in connection with the incidents, in addition to a physical description.

The suspect is described as a clean-shaven white male with very short dark hair.

The Met advises passengers to always report incidents of this nature to the police by calling 101.
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A British woman who has been found guilty of taking her toddler son to join Isis in Syria posed a "real threat" on her return to the UK, according to police.

Tareena Shakil was found guilty of joining the terror group and encouraging acts of terror on social media at Birmingham Crown Court on Friday.

The 26-year-old mother of one left Birmingham to travel to Raqqa in Syria in October 2014 after self-radicalising by viewing extremist material online.

She is believed to be the first woman to be tried in the UK for joining Isis.

In court, Shakil said she had made a mistake and she was only trying to find a better life for her son - but police said she was not naive.

She denied the terrorism charges and said she just wanted to live under Sharia law.

Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale, who leads counter-terrorism measures in the West Midlands, said: Our assessment is that she was not naive; she had absolutely clear intentions when she left the UK, sending tweets encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism here and then taking her young child to join Daesh (Isis) in Syria.

Photographs seized from her phone showed Ms Shakil posing with a firearm and wearing a Daesh balaclava. Another showed a rucksack with a Daesh logo and person holding a handgun. These were taken while she was in Syria.

A deleted picture on Shakil's phone showing her with an AK 47 (PA)

Ms Shakil had already incited others to commit terrorist acts on social media and having spent months living under Daesh, she no doubt presented a real threat on her return to the UK from the country early last year.

Shakil claims her extremist messages on social media and to her family were being monitored by Isis minders and she was unable to criticise the regime.

Her defence team said the former health worker had been groomed by Isis recruiters while she was vulnerable victim of domestic violence whose husband had just left her to go to Yemen.

In pictures: The rise of Isis Show all 74 1 /74 In pictures: The rise of Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters of the Islamic State wave the group's flag from a damaged display of a government fighter jet following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from Islamic State group sit on their tank during a parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from the Islamic State group pray at the Tabqa air base after capturing it from the Syrian government in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from extremist Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping A video uploaded to social networks shows men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road before being allegedly executed by Isis Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Haruna Yukawa after his capture by Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Khalinda Sharaf Ajour, a Yazidi, says two of her daughters were captured by Isis militants Washington Post In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Spokesperson for Isis Vice News via Youtube In pictures: The rise of Isis A pro-Isis leaflet A pro-Isis leaflet handed out on Oxford Street In London Ghaffar Hussain In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Isis Jihadists burn their passports In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A man collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A woman collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid Local civilians queue for aid administered by Isis. Since it declared a caliphate the group has increasingly been delivering services such as healthcare, and distributing aid and free fuel In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces detain men suspected of being militants of the Isis group in Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Mourners carry the coffin of a Shi'ite volunteer from the brigades of peace, who joined the Iraqi army and was killed during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Samarra, during his funeral in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Shiite Turkmen family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, arrives at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi A photograph made from a video by the jihadist affiliated group Furqan Media via their twitter account allegedly showing Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in the territory under the group's control in Iraq and Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Smoke and debris go up in the air as Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul. Images posted online show that Islamic extremists have destroyed at least 10 ancient shrines and Shiite mosques in territory - the city of Mosul and the town of Tal Afar - they have seized in northern Iraq in recent weeks In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq A bulldozer destroys Sunni's Ahmed al-Rifai shrine and tomb in Mahlabiya district outside of Tal Afar In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces celebrate after clashes with followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, in front of his home in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi at his home after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A vehicle burns in front of a home of a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman holds her exhausted son as over 1000 Iraqis who have fled fighting in and around the city of Mosul and Tal Afar wait at a Kurdish checkpoint in the hopes of entering a temporary displacement camp in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees Displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food during the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, at an encampment for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns, in the Khazer area outside Irbil, north Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters travel in a vehicle as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade with a missile in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from an al-Qaida splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from the splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters hold a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A member loyal to the Isis waves an Isis flag in Raqqa In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The United Nations warned that Iraq is at a "crossroads" and appealed for restraint, as a bloody four-day wave of violence killed 195 people. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago, raising fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces hold up a flag of the Isis group they captured during an operation to regain control of Dallah Abbas north of Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Isis fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Isis group, demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony after completing their field training in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Kurdish Peshmerga troops fire a cannon during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Jalawla, Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference Iraqi Prime Minister's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference about the latest military development in Iraq, in the capital Baghdad. Iraqi forces pressed a campaign to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with jihadist-led Sunni militants nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far In pictures: The rise of Isis A police station building destroyed by Isis fighters An exterior view of a police station building destroyed by gunmen in Mosul city, northern Iraq. Iraq's new parliament is expected to convene to start the process of setting up a new government, despite deepening political rifts and an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree inviting the new House of Representatives to meet and form a new government In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Smoke billows from an area controlled by the Isis between the Iraqi towns of Naojul and Tuz Khurmatu, both located north of the capital Baghdad, as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces take part in an operation to repel the Sunni militants In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An elderly Iraqi woman is helped into a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the village of Qaraqush, about 30 kms east of the northern province of Nineveh, cries upon her arrival at a community center in the Kurdish city of Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman, who fled with her family from the northern city of Mosul, prays with a copy of the Quran AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq The body of an Isis militant killed during clashes with Iraqi security forces on the outskirts of the city of Samarra Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi civilians inspect the damage at a market after an air strike by the Iraqi army in central Mosul EPA In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the city AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Shia tribesmen gather in Baghdad to take up arms against Sunni insurgents marching on the capital. Thousands have volunteered to bolster defences AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A van carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces against Jihadist militants. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteered to fight AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters of the Isis group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An Islamist fighter, identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain (R), speaks in this still image taken undated video shot at an unknown location and uploaded to a social media website. Five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals have called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in the new video released by the Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Al-Qaida inspired militants stand with captured Iraqi Army Humvee at a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi Army outside Beiji refinery some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Isis group. While U.S. President Barack Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground, officials said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants attacked Iraq's main oil refinein Baiji as they pressed an offensive that has seen them capture swathes of territory, a manager and a refinery employee said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants from the Isis group parading with their weapons in the northern city of Baiji in the in Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A smoke rises after an attack by Isis militants on the country's largest oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country's main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian border, trying to blunt an offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized some 100 foreign workers In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group stand next to captured vehicles left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. For militant groups, the fight over public perception can be even more important than actual combat, turning military losses into propaganda victories and battlefield successes into powerful tools to build support for the cause In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An injured fighter (C) from the Isis group after a battle with Iraqi soldiers at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis aiming at advancing Iraqi troops at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group taking position at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group inspecting vehicles of the Iraqi army after they were seized at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq One Iraqi captive, a corporal, is reluctant to say the slogan, and has to be shouted at repeatedly before he obeys Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group force captured Iraqi security forces members to the transport In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A major offensive spearheaded by Isis but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein has overrun all of one province and chunks of three others In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and the Syrian town of Al-Hasakah In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis rebels show their flag after seizing an army post AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants waving an Islamist flag after the seizure of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahuddin Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Demonstrators chant slogans as they carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. In the week since it captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work

During her trial, Shakil recounted her daring escape from Isis clutches.

She claimed she bribed a taxi driver with $50 (35) to take her part of the way to the Turkish border which she stole across under the noses of an Isis patrol.

She said: I said stop, threw the money at him, grabbed (my son), grabbed the nappies and just ran across the fields to the border.

Shakil was tried for terror charges including membership of Isis (PA/WMP) (PA/West Midlands Police)

There were three Isis fighters but they had their backs to me. They didn't see me.

During her time in the so-called caliphate, she claims she was held in a mansion - called a Maqqar - with other single women with her phone and internet use being closely monitored.

She said she covered for other women attempting to escape in November before taking her own chance in January 2015 by claiming she needed to run an errand at a local internet cafe.

A veiled woman pointing an AK 47 in a deleted picture on Shakil's phone (PA)

Shakil handed herself into the Turkish military patrol when she was over the border where she was detained for six weeks before being flown back to Britain.

When she arrived home she was questioned by British intelligence officers from MI5.

Giving evidence at Shakils trial, a senior analyst for the European Union Institute for Security Studies - Dr Florence Gaub - said 60 British women are thought to have gone to Syria - around 10 per cent women from Europe, North America and Australia who have joined the group.
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A heterosexual couple wanting to enter into a civil partnership rather than get married have lost a legal challenge at the High Court.

Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, from Hammersmith, west London, argued that they are being discriminated against by not being able to become civil partners  a legally recognised relationship only same-sex couples are eligible to enter under the Civil Partnership Act 2004.

Dr Steinfeld, 34, and Mr Keidan, 39 - academics who have been in a committed relationship since 2010 and have a baby  claimed that the Governments position on civil partnerships is incompatible with equality law.

Mrs Justice Andrews, sitting in Londons High Court, today dismissed their judicial review action.

But, the couple were given permission to take their case to the Court of Appeal because it raises issues of wider importance.

Coincidentally, a private members bill aiming to amend the 2004 Act and extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples today had its second reading in the House of Commons. 

After the ruling, Dr Steinfeld said: We made this claim because the UK Government is barring us, and many thousands of opposite-sex couples like us, from the choice of forming a civil partnership, and we want this to change.

Her partner added: We don't think there is sufficient justification for stopping us or other opposite-sex couples from forming civil partnerships. Unfortunately, the judge has concluded otherwise.

Mr Keidan said it was now time for Parliament to demonstrate its commitment to creating a level playing field for all its citizens by opening up civil partnerships to same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike.

The couple said they would pursue their case at the Court of Appeal on behalf of themselves and the 36,000 people who had signed their petition calling for civil partnership equality.

In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage-EPA1.jpg EPA In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage-EPA.jpg EPA In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage-AFP-Getty.jpg AFP\Getty In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage2-AFP-Gett.jpg AFP\Getty In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage3-AFP-Gett.jpg AFP\Getty In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage1-AFP-Gett.jpg AFP\Getty In pictures: Anti-gay marriage protests in Houses of Parliament Anti-gay-marriage-EPA2.jpg EPA

The 2004 act requires civil partners to be two people of the same sex, while the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act of 2013 made it legal for two people of the same sex to also marry.

The couple argued that the inconsistency between the law on civil partnerships and marriage in this way was incompatible with the Human Rights Act.

Explaining her ruling, Mrs Justice Andrews said she did not accept that the law was incompatible with Articles 14 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which is incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act.

The articles prohibit discrimination and guarantee respect for the right to a family life.

The judge said that the law on civil partnerships had not become incompatible with the ECHR just because same-sex couples now have two routes to achieving legal recognition of their relationship by the state and opposite-sex couples continue to have only one.

She said: By deciding to wait until it is in a better position to evaluate the impact of the 2013 Act on civil partnerships before taking any legislative steps, against a background where there is no consensus either domestically or within Europe as to the appropriate course to take, the Government is acting well within the ambit of discretion afforded to it with regard to the regulation of social matters.

Opposite-sex couples are not disadvantaged by the hiatus, because they can achieve exactly the same recognition of their relationship and the same rights, benefits and protections by getting married, as they always could.

The judge said that Dr Steinfeld and Mr Keidan had deep-rooted and genuine ideological objections to the institution of marriage, based upon what they consider to be its historically patriarchal nature.

She added: The claimants feel that it is unfair that a route to state recognition of their relationship which is open to a same-sex couple with exactly the same deeply held objections to marriage as theirs remains unavailable to them simply because they are heterosexual, despite the fact that same-sex couples who wish to marry can now do so.

No doubt there will be many people who sympathise with that point of view. However, unfairness does not necessarily equate to incompatibility with the Convention.

Additional reporting by the Press Association
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Four out of five people believe that it would be a risk for Britain to leave the EU, according to a poll for The Independent.

ORB found that 82 per cent of the public think that Brexit would pose a risk to the UK  including 58 per cent who see some risk and 23 per cent who see a great deal of risk. Only 18 per cent believe there would be no risk at all.

The findings suggest that the campaign to keep Britain in the EU could profit by highlighting the dangers of a vote to leave in the referendum David Cameron plans to hold this summer. He intends to spell out the possible threat to Britains economic and national security if it left the EU, including its ability to fight terrorism and crime. Supporters of Brexit have already dubbed the In campaign Project Fear the label given to the drive to keep Scotland in the UK in the 2014 referendum on independence.

The survey of 2,000 people, conducted on 27 and 28 January, found that 52 per cent believe Britain should remain in the EU and 48 per cent want it to leave. These figures are unchanged since last month. Women (54 per cent) are more likely to support continued membership than men (50 per cent).

Similarly, women (86 per cent) are more likely than men (78 per cent) to see quitting as posing a risk. Effective communication about the risks of Brexit to a male audience may well just about tip this in favour of a remain vote, said Johnny Heald, managing director of ORB International.

Voters who backed the Conservatives at last years general election split 50-50 on whether the UK should stay in the EU club, and so could decide Mr Camerons fate. Some 83 per cent of them see a risk in Britain departing, in line with the population as a whole. A majority of Ukip voters (54 per cent) acknowledge some risk in leaving, even though 92 per cent of them want the UK to pull out.

Four weeks before the summit of EU leaders at which Mr Cameron hopes to secure a new deal for Britain, he stepped up his drive to win support in other European capitals for his reform demands.

Talks in Prague with his Czech counterpart, Bohuslav Sobotka, focussed on Britain being granted an emergency brake under which EU migration could be halted if pressure on public services became too acute. It is being mooted as an alternative to Mr Camerons call for a four-year ban on migrants receiving in-work benefit.

The proposal has run into fierce opposition in eastern European member states, including the Czech Republic, who have condemned it as discriminatory. Mr Sobotka said: It is very important for us that any solution that is adopted on a European level does not discriminate.

Mr Cameron insisted his four-year demand was still on the table, but said he welcomed alternatives with a similar impact on migration. He added: I am confident that with the help of European partners and with goodwill we will be able to get there and find mutually satisfactory conclusions.

The Prime Minister suffered a setback when Lord Howard of Lympne, the former Tory leader, signalled he was likely to support the Brexit campaign. He said Mr Cameron is not looking very likely to secure a good enough deal to justify remaining in the EU.

In response, Mr Camerons spokeswoman said he was seeking substantial and significant and would really change our relationship and our membership of the EU.

The Leave campaign won celebrity backing from the actor Sir Michael Caine who told BBC Radio 4: I sort of feel certain we should come out.
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Labour's Jess Phillips has compared the hundreds of sex attacks on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve to the harassment of women every weekend in Birmingham city centre.

As part of a debate on BBC Question Time about how many refugees should be allowed into the country, the MP for Birmingham Yardley said the UK should not "rest on its laurels" when at least two are murdered every week within its borders.

Ms Phillips said the experiences of women in Cologne on New Year's Eve could be likened to the intimidation faced by women and girls in one of Birmingham's most popular nightspots.

"A very similar situation to what happened in Cologne could be described on Broad Street in Birmingham, every week, where women are baited and heckled," she said.

Multiple sexual assaults were reported on New Year's Eve in Cologne in Germany (MARKUS BOEHM/AFP/Getty Images)

Media, police and politicians were widely accused of a "cover up" following reports of assaults against women in the German city by men of "north African or Arabic" origin on New Year's Eve.

Attitudes towards migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the country have reportedly hardened since, with 62 per cent of Germans now saying the number of asylum seekers in the country is too high, compared to 53 per cent in November, according to YouGov.

Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Show all 13 1 /13 Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism outside Cologne Cathedral on 5 January after the assaults Oliver Berg/EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism in Cologne following the rash of sex attacks on New Year's Eve Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police initially failed to mention the assaults in report the following morning EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police officers patrol in front of the main station of Cologne, Germany AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station (Reuters) Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police used pepper spray to control supporters of Pegida, Hogesa (Hooligans against Salafists) and other right-wing populist groups as they protested against the New Year's Eve sex attacks on 9 January, 2016 in Cologne, Germany Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use a water cannon during a protest march by supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016 Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use pepper spray against supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Artist Mira Moire protests naked in Cologne against the mass sex attacks on New Year's Eve AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks A demonstrator holds a sign in German that reads 'No violence against women' during a demonstration in the wake of the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, outside the cathedeal in Cologne, Germany, 09 January 2016. EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Counter demonstrators hold up a sign reading "Against sexism, against racism" as they protest against a demonstration of the islamophobic movement PEGIDA at the train station in Cologne, Germany, on January 9, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Demonstration by a womens group on Saturday (AP) AP

Women's rights groups demonstrated in Germany following the attacks, but also said their campaign was being hijacked by far-right, anti-immigration groups such as Pegida, according to The Local.

Ms Phillips, who won her parliamentary seat in the 2015 May election, said that the treatment of women could differ between cultures and must be challenged.

"Now we have to attack what we perceive as patriarchal culture, coming into any culture that isn't patriarchal, and making sure we tell people not to be like that," she said.

Birmingham Broad Street. Rape convictions in the UK dropped in 2014 to 2015. (Google Street View)

Yet she pointed out the need for caution in pointing the finger at one group of people when the issue of abuse against women was widespread across UK society.

"But we should be careful in this country before we rest on our laurels when two women are murdered every week in this country," said Ms Phillips.

Violence against women in the UK remains high even while other violent crime rates are dropping, with 1.4 million suffering domestic abuse from 2014 to 2015, according to a report by the Office for National Statistics.

Rape convictions rates also fell last year. Successful convictions for violence against women, however, were at a record high.
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Town halls leaders have issued a bleak warning over the future of council housing in England, warning that 88,000 homes will be lost to the social housing sector by the end of the decade, forcing thousands into the hands of rip-off private landlords.

According to new estimates from the Local Government Association (LGA), 66,000 council homes in England will be sold to tenants under the Governments Right to Buy scheme.

Because local councils only receive one third of the cash from Right to Buy purchases, they will not have the money to replace the lost social housing, the LGA said. In fact, council finances are in such a dire state that they will be forced to sell a further 22,000 council properties.

The falling number of council homes, which had already dropped from 5m in 1981 to 1.7m in 2014, will see more and more people driven into the private rental centre, leading to a 210m increase in the housing benefit bill. The LGA described the phenomenon as a shift in spending from bricks to benefits.

Labour said the Governments plans for housing were extreme and would cause a huge loss of affordable homes, while Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron warned that Right to Buy was causing the slow death of social housing.

The Government said the LGAs figures were based on speculation and pointed out that more council housing had been built since 2010 than in the previous 13 years.

However, the independent Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) also voiced concern that measures in the new Housing and Planning Bill, which is currently being debated by the House of Lords, would make it very difficult for councils to build homes and warned that its own research indicated that extending Right to Buy to housing associations could lead to the loss of an additional 7,000 council homes a year which may not be replaced.

The Right to Buy scheme helps council and housing association tenants in England buy their home with a discount of up to 103,900, or 77,900 outside London. The policy hits council budgets for house-building, which will also be affected by a proposed 2.2bn reduction in social housing rents. The LGA is calling for 100 per cent of the receipts from Right to Buy sale to go to councils. Currently, they only get one third, with much of the remainder going to the Treasury.

The Government has pledged to build 200,000 starter homes for people entering the property market, but Councillor Peter Box, the LGAs housing spokesman, said ministers needed to recognise that not everyone can afford to buy.

With 68,000 people currently living in temporary accommodation, annual homelessness spending of at least 330 million and more than a million more on council waiting lists, it is clear that only an increase of all types of housing  including those for affordable or social rent  will solve our housing crisis, he said.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. 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Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA UK news in pictures 30 August 2022 Edinburghs waste workers clearing mountains of rubbish at Forrest Road as they return to work following their 11 days of industrial action PA UK news in pictures 29 August 2022 Competitors take part in the World Gravy Wrestling Championships at the Rose 'N' Bowl, in Rossendale, Lancashire PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2022 People from the Emancipated Run Crew who are running the carnival parade all in green to remember the 72 people that died in the Grenfell fire during the Family Day at the Notting Hill Carnival in London, which returned to the streets for the first time on two years, after it was thwarted by the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 27 August 2022 Competitors in the bog section during Rude Health Bog Triathlon at Llanwrtyd Wells, in Wales PA UK news in pictures 26 August 2022 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets patient Rita Thomson after she had a complete hip replacement during a visit to South West London Orthopaedic Centre Getty UK news in pictures 25 August 2022 Finney Harrod receiving his GCSE results at Norwich School, in Norwich, Norfolk PA

This loss of social rented housing risks pushing more families into the private rented sector, driving up housing benefit spending and rents and making it more difficult for families to save the deposit needed for their first house.

New research by Savills estate agents has shown that the average first time buyer now requires a deposit more than double their annual income to get onto the housing ladder. Discounts offered to buyers of the 200,000 starter homes have a knock-on effect on the social housing sector, LGA experts said, because it is funded by allowing developers off the hook on their obligations to fund affordable housing.

Labours shadow housing minister John Healey said the Governments Housing Bill was bad news for young people and families on ordinary incomes who need a decent home.

Its bad news for taxpayers too because it means more people renting privately and housing benefit rising to cover the cost, he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the Governments approach would decimate social housing and rip the heart out of communities.

 Housing Bill - what changes if it goes through

The government has said socially-rented will be replaced, but everyone in the sector knows this is utterly false, he said. The Conservatives try and paint Right to Buy as somehow aspirational but it is actually the slow death of social housing.

A spokesperson for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: The Housing Bill ensures the sale of empty high value council assets will enable receipts to be reinvested in building new homes that better meet local needs as well as supporting home ownership through Right to Buy.
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Winds of more than 100mph were recorded as Storm Gertrude battered large parts of the UK, causing a trail of devastation which left thousands of homes without power, buildings damaged and transport disrupted.

Scotland bore the brunt of the storm, with the Met Office forced to issue a rare red warning for Orkney and Shetland, meaning that winds were so strong as to pose a danger to life. In Edinburgh, a man was taken to hospital with head injuries after being struck by flying debris.

Recommended Read more Schools shut and transport in chaos as Storm Gertrude batters Scotland

Northern Ireland, Wales and northern parts of England also experienced major disruption, as high winds brought down power lines and trees and caused lorries to blow over on motorways. Around 10,000 homes across the country were left without power, with engineers struggling to reconnect many properties in difficult conditions.

In Scotland, winds of 144mph were recorded in the Cairngorm mountain range, while nacreous clouds more often seen in polar regions were also spotted in north eastern areas. Flats had to be evacuated in Clydebank when scaffolding was blown through a roof, while several people were injured on the A96 in Huntly, Aberdeenshire when a lorry was blown onto a car.

Police Scotland responded to reports of storm damage in central Glasgow amid fears that detached masonry may fall on people as they made their way to work. The citys main thoroughfare The Broomielaw was closed off due to an unsafe building, while in Edinburgh a primary school was closed after a wall collapsed.

Around 40 flood warnings were in place for Ayrshire, Tayside, west central Scotland and the Highlands, while in England the Environment Agency said communities must stay alert to the risk of renewed flooding over the weekend. The River Ouse in North Yorkshire and the Severn at Shrewsbury are expected to be particularly high.

Strong winds combined with high tides could lead to large waves and spray especially for the Yorkshire coast and parts of southern and western coasts, said Neil Davies, the agencys national flood duty manager. We advise anyone near coastal paths and promenades to take extra care and to avoid the temptation to go wave watching.

Trains, flights and ferries were cancelled on 29 January and roads and bridges shut by the high winds, with more disruption expected on 30 January as temperatures plummet. A band of rain moving in from the north west may turn into hail and snow on 30 January.
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A Conservative Cabinet minister has defended David Camerons use of the phrase bunch of migrants to describe the refugee camps in northern France.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLouglin told an audience on BBC Question Time that Mr Cameron had simply described Labour leader Jeremy Corbyns visit to the camp at the weekend.

He said 'a bunch of migrants.' That's a description of what Jeremy Corbyn has surrounded himself with when he went marching over to Calais, Mr McLoughlin said.

Recommended Read more Anglea Merkel agrees to tighten German asylum rules

An audience member had accused Mr Cameron of inciting prejudice after he used the dismissive language to refer to the people in camps in northern France.

Labour MP Jess Philips, who was appearing alongside Mr McLoughlin on the programme, criticised the ministers response.

They are people! They are people who've had it much worse than you've ever had it in your life, she said.

The PM has already defended the comments himself, telling Sky News earlier this week: I was making a very clear point that Jeremy Corbyn was meeting with migrants and telling them they could all come to Britain.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

In fact, Labours policy is for the Home Office to consider admitting some people in the camps with connections to Britain, including those who have British passports.

The partys leader Mr Corbyn has also called for the Government to get other EU nations to take their fair share of refugees and migrants in Europe.

The British government has refused to take any refugees who have travelled to Europe, in contrast to Germany, which is expecting a million people this year.

Ministers have previously said that accepting people and providing other assistance  including search and rescue in the Mediterranean Sea  would encourage people to make the journey to Europe.

The Government has refused to take part in UN and EU refugee quotas and is instead taking 4,000 Syrian refugees a year from camps near the Syrian conflict zone.
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The Prime Minister and Defence Secretary have been accused of making ill-judged attacks on Iraq war crimes investigators.

In a letter to David Cameron, signed by seven human rights organisations, he is warned that his dismissal of claims against British forces is damaging to the important ongoing work of the Iraq Historical Allegations Team (Ihat).

In recent weeks, the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, has condemned ambulance chasing lawyers, while Mr Cameron claimed that there is an industry trying to profit from spurious claims lodged against our brave servicemen and women who fought in Iraq.

Recommended Read more Cameron to end lawyers profiting on claims against Iraq war soldiers

In the letter, sent on Wednesday, the human rights groups described his comments as ill-judged and inappropriate. The concerns are being raised by organisations ranging from Human Rights Watch to the International Commission of Jurists. Other signatories include Freedom from Torture, the International Federation for Human Rights, Legal Action Worldwide, Redress, and Rights Watch UK.

Mr Cameron, says the letter, needs to be aware that the extremely serious allegations against British forces require that you, the Ministry of Defence [MoD] and other parts of Government avoid any real or perceived interference with the investigative process. His pledge to protect soldiers from claims ignores the fact that some very serious crimes involving the UK army in Iraq have been exposed... And it ignores the millions of pounds which the MoD has already paid out in compensation to Iraqi civilians.

The signatories urge the PM to allow the investigative process to run its course without further interference or any appearance of interference.

 Blair sorry over Iraq War

A Downing Street spokesperson declined to respond to a request for comment from The Independent.

There has been mounting criticism of the law firms Leigh Day and Public Interest Lawyers by the Government in recent weeks. This has been prompted by reports in The Independent earlier this month that there will be sufficient evidence to justify charging British soldiers in some cases, according to the head of Ihat.
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Cabinet ministers have been summoned individually by David Cameron for loyalty tests to find out whether he can count on their support in the European Union membership referendum.

He set up the meetings to assess the number who are likely to oppose his leadership by campaigning for a Brexit in the vote which Mr Cameron hopes to stage in late June. The Prime Minister aims to secure agreement on reforming Britains relationship with Brussels at a summit of EU leaders in three weeks time  and to have the support of the large majority of his Cabinet as he makes the case for remaining in the 28-nation bloc.

At least three ministers  Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and Chris Grayling, the Commons Leader  are expected to support the Leave campaign, but Mr Cameron is hoping the rest of his senior team will fall in behind him.

He has been calling people in separately to hear their thoughts and how they stand on all of this, and to see where the balance of opinion is among colleagues, a cabinet source told i.

His aim is to win over ministers who are regarded as mildly Eurosceptic, including Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, and Stephen Crabb, the Welsh Secretary.

Speaking in Cardiff yesterday, Mr Crabb said he was not a bought and paid-for member of the EU fan club but expected to support the Remain campaign.

He said: If the Prime Ministers renegotiation is successful and he secures the reforms he has spelled out, then I believe it will be in the UKs best interests to remain in a reformed European Union. A major question mark remains over the stance that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will take over EU membership, although friends expect her to support the Prime Minister.

Speculation is also focusing on the attitude of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. His younger brother, the science minister Jo Johnson, and his father, Stanley Johnson, have backed remaining in the EU this week.
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The main group fighting to pull Britain out of the European Union was in disarray as Tory Eurosceptic MPs clashed with the organisations chief executive and one director announced he was quitting in disgust.

A member of the Vote Leave board told The Independent that he would be tendering his resignation from the organisation within days because he had become disillusioned with the infighting within the organisation. At the same time senior Eurosceptic Tory MPs who helped set up Vote Leave have turned on the campaigns director, Dominic Cummings, and are attempting to force him out of the organisation.

However, a senior Vote Leave source said this was being resisted by some of the organisations major donors who retained confidence in Mr Cummings and Matthew Elliot, who is chief executive of Vote Leaves sister organisation Business for Britain.

Recommended Read more Group advocating UK exit from EU admit it could cost jobs

They added that the on-going dispute was particularly damaging because it was distracting the organisations attention ahead of the key Brussels summit next month which David Cameron hopes will agree a final blueprint for Britains renegotiation.

Bernard Jenkin is said to be leading a revolt at Vote Leave (PA)

We should be preparing our strategy and putting in place a ground campaign, but as it is, were spending our energy fighting each other, they said.

An MP on the board of Vote Leave, who asked not to be named because his resignation was not yet official, said he wanted to do something a bit more positive with his time. I joined up because I thought the campaign was going to be about a positive vision for Britain outside the EU, he said. But that is not the way its turned out. Its just squabbling about who is going to say what and what different people think should be the emphasis of the campaign. It is disorganised and not cohesive in any way.

At the heart of the dispute is a row over Mr Cummingss insistence that Vote Leave should not join forces with the other main Eurosceptic group Leave.EU, which is closely aligned to Ukip.

While Vote Leave has concentrated its campaign on the economic case for Brexit, Leave.EU has focused far more on the issue of immigration. How much should be made of the immigration issue is understood to be one of the causes of friction among senior Vote Leave supporters.

Both groups are fighting to achieve official designation with the Electoral Commission as the main Out campaign group  which would entitle them to public funding of over half a million pounds.

Matthew Elliott of Business for Britain retains donors backing

Senior Tory MPs on the groups board are also understood to be unhappy about what they see as an attempt by Mr Cummings to marginalise them from the campaign.

The group, led by Bernard Jenkin, are understood to have made moves to remove Mr Cummings at a board meeting earlier this week. But, so far, this is being resisted by Vote Leaves major donors, including Peter Cruddas who has given the campaign more than 1m.

This is not over by a long way, said one source close to Mr Cummings. Bernard is trying to mobilise support against Dom but he doesnt have the backing of the donors. Basically, hes unhappy because he thinks that he and people like John Redwood and Bill Cash should be the face of the campaign.

Another board member told The Independent that some Eurosceptic MPs were also unhappy at the acrimonious relationship with Leave.EU.

There is a view among some of us that one way or another the squabbling between Vote Leave and Leave.EU has to stop, he said. There needs to be a common front and both organisations have got to come together. But whether people can stop these squabbles is another matter entirely.

A Vote Leave spokesman said: The board has complete confidence in Matthew and Dominic and there will be no merger with Leave.EU. Mr Jenkin refused to comment, as did Douglas Carswell the Ukip MP also on the board.
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The Government lost over a million pounds on a Ministry of Justice commercial venture that was due to run the Saudi Arabian prison system, an investigation has found.

The National Audit Office, the Governments spending watchdog, said that Just Solutions International (JSi) had costs of 2.1 million and generated an income of 1 million its existence.

JSi, the trading face of the Ministry of Justice, was set up by civil servants in 2012 to bid for commercial contracts abroad using UK state expertise.

Recommended Read more Cameron urged to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia over Yemen fears

In Autumn 2015 Michael Gove, the newly appointed Justice Secretary, wound up the venture and pulled out of contracts in countries with poor human rights records  Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The policy had been instituted by Mr Goves predecessor Chris Grayling. Mr Gove has also cancelled a number of other policies predating his time at the MoJ, including a ban on prisoners being sent books and further cuts to legal aid than those already implemented.

The loss was partly generated because of the decision to terminate the 5.9m deal, the NAO said.

The NAO estimate that JSis costs were approximately 2.1 million from 2012 until its closure, including 239,000 on consultancy services. Therefore JSi made a net loss of approximately 1.1 million in this period, the office said in a summary of its report.

This is due, in part, to the decision to withdraw from prospective arrangements with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The NAO also note that had JSi not been created, NOMS would have committed funding to support wider international engagement with countries to support FCO and wider Government objectives.

Michael Gove cancelled the contract (Getty)

The decision about whether to scrap the contract was reported to be controversial within the Cabinet.

The Foreign Office in particular was said to be worried that cancelling such a contract would have wider diplomatic ramifications for Britains relationship with the country.

Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond is said to have accused Mr Gove of naivety for his opposition to the contract, leading to a robust exchange of views between the two ministers.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Gove played down his role, stressing that the contract had been dropped as part a cross-government review, adding that MoJ resources should be targeted at domestic prison reform.

Amnesty International UKs Government and Political Relations Manager Lucy Wake said: On top of the apparent waste of money, there are a still a host of unanswered questions about this ill-fated project.

It was never clear what human rights safeguards or training were ever going to be built into this murky deal - for example would UK contractors have been actively trying to challenge and prevent human rights violations in countries with notoriously abusive justice systems, not least in Saudi Arabia?

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

Its worrying that ministers appeared to go largely under the radar to set the project it up, even at a time of huge public concern at the UKs overly-cosy relationship with Saudi Arabia.

When details began to trickle out, the UK government was still trying to defend the project even after the blogger Raif Badawi was taken out of a Saudi prison cell and publicly flogged and even as the Saudi authorities carried out dozens of executions.

The last thing the UK should ever have been doing was trying to make money out of overseas justice systems that tolerate secret detention, torture, corporal punishment and executions.

Announcing the decision to drop the bid last year, the Prime Ministers official spokeswoman said:

This bid to provide the additional training to Saudi Arabia has been reviewed and the government has decided that it wont be proceeding with the bid.

The review has been on-going following the decision that was announced earlier in September to close down the Just Solutions International branch of the Ministry of Justice that was providing some of these services.

We will continue to engage and work with the Saudis on human rights issues, political reform and will continue to raise concerns where we have them.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Cameron had been shamed into a U-turn.

Why on earth was it set up in the first place? We should be sending a strong message to repressive regimes that the UK is a beacon for human rights and that this contract bid is unacceptable in the 21st century, and would damage Britain's standing in the world, he said.

The Saudi Arabian justice system makes routine use of crucifixion, beheadings, and lashes.

Amnesty International says the country has executed 175 people over the last year. Crimes punishable by death under Saudis penal code include adultery.

Despite the about-face on the prisons contract, the UK still sells billions of pounds worth of arms to Saudi Arabia.

Between May 2010 and May 2015 the Coalition government licenced almost 4bn in arms to the regime, according to figures obtained by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

Saudi is currently involved in a military operation in Yemen, where a humanitarian disaster is unfolding, according to the United Nations.
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Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had 22 emails on her unsecured personal server that contained "top secret" information which cannot be released, according to the State Department.

The Obama administration confirmed for the first time on Friday that these emails included information that demanded the highest level of classification, according to Associated Press.

Ms Clintons home server account had 37 pages of messages which contained what a key intelligence official called special access programs - material that could point to confidential sources or programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.

The administration would not confirm the substance of the emails or whether Ms Clinton sent any of them herself.

They also did not reveal whether the information was classified at the time of transmission.

Ms Clinton has previously insisted that she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time.

If Ms Clinton or her aides have committed a classification infraction, possible responses include counseling, warnings or other action, State Department officials said.

The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information, State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP.

He said the decision to withhold documents was not unusual, which means they will not even be published online with blackout boxes.

The account was not hacked or compromised, but Ms Clinton did admit using it was a mistake.

It first became known 10 months ago that Ms Clinton had used a person email account linked to a homebrew server for potentially classified information and it has formed a shadow over her campaign.

The issue was raised again this week as Charles I. McCullough, the inspector general for US intelligence agencies, gave examples of information on Ms Clintons account in a letter to Congress, which was seized upon by Republicans.

Fridays discovery comes at an awkward time for the Presidential hopeful as she faces the Iowa caucus on 1 February alongside competitor Bernie Sanders.
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The beacon-red background of the electronic billboards casts a glow on the snow banks beneath them. Overlaid in white writing is one of the pithier statements to emerge from this years madcap Republican nomination contest: Donald Trump is unhinged  Jeb Bush. All thats missing, maybe, is Amen.

But is he? On Thursday night, just days before voters will kick off the process of finally picking a presidential nominee with Mondays Iowa caucuses, Trump pulled his riskiest gambit yet, refusing to participate in a final debate between the Republican candidates because of hurt feelings about one of the moderators and instead held an event that raised $6m for veterans.

It made for a strange split-screen night. For voters who chose to watch the debate, hosted by Fox, it was a chance finally to gauge the rest of the field without the overwhelming presence of The Donald, and for party elders to glimpse who among them might best challenge him down the road. I kind of miss Donald Trump, quipped Jeb Bush, the former Florida Governor. He was a teddy bear to me.

Recommended Read more How the party of Abraham Lincoln could end up with Trump

The Bush billboards, paid for by an outside Super-PAC support group and effectively asking Iowans to come to their senses, have sprung up along highways across the state. Bush made the remark questioning Trumps sanity after the property tycoons call in December for a halt to all Muslim immigration.

Yet the elders of the Republican Party are every bit as exasperated. Trump not only survives every kerfuffle he creates, he thrives on them. He is leading the polls in every state at the front end of the nominating process. Only in Iowa might that lead be at risk: his biggest threat is the one candidate the party establishment likes even less, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Desperate for someone to rise quickly from further down the field and save the day, they are eyeing Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

With every groan and moan about Trump, from the top of the party and from some in the media, there is a degree of cluelessness about his popular appeal. Clearly, he has tapped into something, a fury among rank and file Republicans precisely at the party elite and in particular their failure to do anything more than jabber about illegal immigration, which they see as explaining their lost jobs or depressed wages. The party experienced a mini-rebellion in 2010 when the Tea Party surfaced and sent a wave of new members of Congress all vowing to pull membership to the right, shrink the size of the federal government and cut the Democrats and President Barack Obama down to size. But little changed, making them crosser still.

 Cruz on Trump - I'm a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly.

Maybe we in the journalism business were initially clueless too. How quaint a conversation between this reporter and a Washington Post colleague, at a rally launching the Bush campaign in Miami last June, now seems. We had just received word of a Trump press conference the next day in New York. Could he possibly be declaring for president? We agreed he probably was, before getting back to what we thought more important, reporting on Bush. He would be unstoppable, Trump a mere distraction.

Whos unstoppable now? Some still say Trump got into the race to serve his narcissism and that one day he will step aside again, declaring: Well, that was fun. But he surely understood the power of his run from the very beginning. It was at that first press conference in his own Trump Tower that he branded illegal Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. He knew who he was talking to.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY

Among those laughing  at the elite and us  is Rush Limbaugh, a radio loud-hailer for the right for three decades. Trump is so far outside the formula that has been established for American politics that people who are inside the formula cant comprehend it, he said this week, calling the decision to spurn Thursdays debate in Des Moines one more Trump masterstroke.

That remains to be seen. Nothing in this most tumultuous of election seasons will come clear until the first votes are cast. After Iowa on Monday comes New Hampshire, which holds its primary on 9 February. Soon after that the circus will move to South Carolina and Nevada.

Those terrified of Trump have not given up yet. No fewer than 22 conservative commentators this week offered their own treatise of opprobrium in the pages of their favourite periodical, the National Review. The one-time reality show bully was, they averred, nothing more than a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the [party] in favour of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.

The same forces would similarly like to derail Cruz, who has practised scorched-earth politics since being elected to the US Senate in 2012, against not just Washington but his own party. Not only do they loathe Cruz, they fancy hed be even more of a disaster come the general election.

So to Rubio, the senator from Florida and a one-time protege of Bush. (They cant abide one another today.) He is boyish at 44 and while most of his rivals have adopted the Trump strategy of channeling and thus reinforcing the anger of the electorate he has mostly remained sunny on the trail, though, it is true, a little less so of late.

With Trump absent, Rubio and Cruz became the joint focus of attention at Thursdays debate. They tangled furiously, notably on immigration, each accusing the other of having once favoured giving people living illegally in the country a path to establishing legal residency and then changing their minds when conservatives rebelled at the idea. This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, Rubio exclaimed. That hes the most conservative guy.

It may be Mr Rubios hope that Mr Trump actually prevails here and thus keeps Mr Cruz down in second place. He knows that while he is unlikely to peel many of Mr Trumps supporters away, followers of Mr Cruz could be his if the Texan falters.

But things may not work out so neatly in the longer run. With Mr Trump far ahead in New Hampshire polls, the contest for second place there is more competitive with Mr Cruz, Mr Bush, Governor John Kasich of Ohio, and Mr Rubio all seemingly bunched together for now. And in recent days, Mr Rubio has been clobbered by an avalanche of especially harsh negative advertising spots from all of his rivals. He can only hope that will mean his metal will have been be proved if he fares well here on Monday.

If he can withstand all of that and be the mainstream alternative, thats a pretty powerful position to be in, Doug Gross, who worked for Mr Romney campaign in 2012 told Politico. I think hes in a position potentially to finish a strong third in Iowa, and if he does, he becomes the mainstream Republicans' consensus alternative to Trump and Cruz going into New Hampshire, and that's a strong position to be in. If he's a strong third in Iowa, I really think he's likely going to be our nominee.

But in this election it is hard to distinguish between wisdom and wishful thinking. Maybe Rubio really is the tortoise to watch. And we know that he is the Republican most Democrats fear most. But before any of this can happen, all those who have flocked to Mr Trump, and watched him on Thursday and not the debate, will have to heed what it says up on those billboards. And give a fig.
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The Zika virus, linked to thousands of birth abnormalities in Latin America, could spread rapidly across the globe to parts of Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and potentially southern Europe, a senior World Health Organisation expert has warned.

Dr Anthony Costello, a British paediatrician who is the WHOs head of child health, said scientists were racing to plug gaps in their knowledge about the impact of the illness, which causes only mild symptoms in adults but appears to have devastating effects on unborn children by causing microcephaly, abnormally small heads.

Brazil, one of the worst-hit countries, has announced a nationwide assault on the mosquito responsible for transmitting the virus and President Dilma Rousseff vowed to win this war against the insect.

 Zika Virus

In a sign of the growing concern at Zikas global spread, Public Health England last night advised men to use condoms for at least a month if they had returned from one of the 23 countries in the Americas where the virus is now present if their partner was pregnant, or at risk of becoming so. PHE said the risk of sexual transmission was very low but condoms should be used as a precaution.

As the WHO prepares to decide on Monday whether to declare an international health emergency, experts warned the explosive movement of the virus across the Americas meant it has the potential to spread further.

Dr Costello told The Independent: We are seeing a very rapid spread of the Zika virus across Latin America. One very significant concern is that it seems possible it could move into other parts of the world with vulnerable populations. These are places within the tropical belt and beyond  sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, southern parts of the United States and southern Europe.

He warned that a vaccine may take years to develop, and added that experts dealing with the dramatic rise in Zika cases in Latin America were being hampered by the lack of a commercially available diagnostic test as they try to track and investigate the virus.

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The Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, has warned that her country was losing the battle against the mosquito responsible for spreading Zika, which is suspected of being the cause of a dramatic increase  up to 4,000 cases  in the number of babies born with abnormally small heads. The condition, known as microcephaly, can cause developmental issues and lifelong disability.

With the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro just seven months away, Ms Rousseff demanded a national effort to eradicate the insect. Brazil has said it will deploy 220,000 troops to help to eliminate the Aedes aegypti mosquito from its breeding groups in puddles and standing water.

Dr Costello echoed the concerns of WHOs director general, Dr Margaret Chan, who warned this week that Zika is spreading explosively across the Americas. Since the first cases in Brazil early last year, the virus has spread to 23 countries and territories, prompting epidemiologists to warn of up to four million cases a year across the continent.

Dr Costello, renowned for his work on improving survival rates among newborns in developing countries, told The Independent that medics were concerned that the speed of Zikas spread since its last outbreak on a group of Pacific islands in 2007 means it will jump to other continents.

Speaking from WHOs headquarters in Geneva, he said: It seems possible that the virus could move back into other parts of the world with vulnerable populations, places within the tropical belt and beyond  sub-Saharan Africa, South-east Asia, southern parts of the United States and southern Europe. Some of these places will be better able to deal with that threat than others.

Researchers warned last year that parts of the Italian, French and Spanish Mediterranean coasts are suitable for the survival of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The insect also carries the dengue and chikungunya viruses, both from the same family of microbes as Zika.

The Zika virus - in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 The Zika virus - in pictures The Zika virus - in pictures A three-month-old, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil. A rise in microcephaly cases is thought to have been caused by the spread of the Zika virus in affected countries Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A mother holds her baby who has microcephaly Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A five-month-old baby, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A pediatric infectologist examines a two-month-old baby, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A baby affected with microcephaly

But while surveillance systems and advanced healthcare mean that any outbreak could be rapidly isolated in Europe or the US, experts fear that developing countries in Africa and Asia would be vulnerable. Unlike malaria-carrying mosquitoes, the two Zika-carrying varieties feed in daylight, so the arrival of the virus would require a sea change in prevention habits.

WHO, which was blamed for failing to act quickly in the early stages of the Ebola outbreak, is to meet on Monday to decide whether the Zika outbreak should be declared an international health emergency.

Unlike Ebola, the new virus, first discovered in Uganda in 1947, causes relatively mild symptoms and is not readily transmitted by human-to-human contact. While some might experience a fever and a rash, 75 per cent of sufferers have no symptoms at all.

However, public health experts are concerned by its catastrophic effects on pregnancy and its ability to spark a rare immune response that can leave some adults paralysed.

Scientists have yet to prove conclusively that Zika is the direct cause of the rise in microcephaly cases, saying only that there is strong circumstantial evidence of a link between the two. Doctors want to investigate whether mothers were also infected with dengue or chikungunya to see if a cocktail of viruses is to blame.

Dr Costello said WHO medics were nonetheless operating on the assumption that Zika is the cause and are racing to plug gaps in their knowledge. It is not known what percentage of mothers infected with the virus give birth to children with abnormalities.

The Independent understands that WHO figures suggest there has been at least a 10-fold increase in expected rates of microcephaly in Brazil.

Dr Costello said: A really big issue is establishing the scale of the microcephaly problem and the damage it is doing to babies brains at the most vulnerable point in their development... At the moment, we dont know if a pregnant woman has a 90 per cent or 5 per cent risk of her child developing microcephaly if she is infected.

Among the priorities for those dealing with the virus is a cheap, commercially available diagnostic test in place of time-consuming laboratory tests. A vast effort to eliminate the disease-carrying mosquitoes will be made while the search for a vaccine gets under way.

Dr Costello said the best solution would be a vaccine that could be made available to girls in much the same way as the rubella jab. But he warned that while a vaccine can take just 12 months to develop, the reality may be a wait of years. We have done years of research on a vaccine for dengue but we dont yet have one.

Meanwhile, the senior medic, who will travel to Brazil next month, said countries affected by Zika face a hefty financial burden in caring for thousands of children born with abnormalities.
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It should have been a joyful celebration for both Vanessa Oliveira and Thais Battistot. But like thousands of women across the South American continent, the two Brazilian mothers have had to come to terms with one of the most heartbreaking revelations  that their newborn arrivals have microcephaly.

Throughout their pregnancies, neither women was alerted to the risks of their foetuses developing the abnormality of a smaller head and underdeveloped brain, nor to the risk of associated neurological problems.

I caught Zika sometime in the first four months of my pregnancy, said Oliveira, 36, whose baby Maria Clara is three months old. Nobody had a clue at the time that the red rash on my skin and itching would have such devastating consequences, said the mother-of-two, who has a nine year old daughter.

 Zika Virus

Oliveira, who lives in Sergipe, north-east Brazil, said: The frustrating thing was that I was closely monitored throughout my pregnancy because I suffered from pre-eclampsia, but no doctor spotted the changes in my babys development.

For 25-year-old Thias Battistot, a housewife who lives with her husband in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul in the south of Brazil, the shock of giving birth to a baby with developmental difficulties left her crying for weeks. Emanuelle suffers from a mild form of the disease but it was only diagnosed when she was seven months old, Battistot said. Now 10 months old, Emanuelle has been diagnosed with motor neurone problems.

At first I thought Emanuelle was just a tiny baby but I noticed she wasnt developing like my nephew of the same age, she said. At four months she couldnt sit down properly and was very floppy and didnt move around a lot.

Recommended Read more How the Zika virus affects travellers

Emanuelles deformity is not visible in the circumference of her head, unlike Maria Clara who has suffered the stunted head growth associated with the virus. Instead, Emanuelles illness has affected her co-ordination and neural skills.

Two weeks after her diagnosis the media exploded with the news of the link between the Zika virus and microcephaly, recalled Battistot.

For Oliveira the missed diagnosis is unsurprising as the connection between Zika virus and microcephaly was only discovered in Brazil at the end of last year. She revealed that she had gone through a raft of emotions from shock and anger, through to acceptance and resignation  and now to a determination to fight for the best results for her child.

The Zika virus - in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 The Zika virus - in pictures The Zika virus - in pictures A three-month-old, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil. A rise in microcephaly cases is thought to have been caused by the spread of the Zika virus in affected countries Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A mother holds her baby who has microcephaly Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A five-month-old baby, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A pediatric infectologist examines a two-month-old baby, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil Getty Images The Zika virus - in pictures A baby affected with microcephaly

I spent ages blaming myself, the government and questioning why me, she said. But then I realised that my baby needed me and I couldnt wallow in self-pity. Maria Clara needs constant stimulation and if I neglect this she will suffer.

The two women have joined forces with hundreds of other Brazilian mothers across the country to form a support group, Maes de Anjos Unidas (United Mothers of Angels). Sadly the numbers are growing every day and we are trying to pass on our experiences of how to cope, she said.

Both families have monthly physiotherapy sessions for their babies but are demanding compensation from the government, developmental support for their children in local hospitals, and psychological help for families.

We shouldnt have to be doing this ourselves, declared Oliveira. But as this country hasnt got a clue what its doing we have no choice. You love your child anyway. But now with the intensity of care you have to give, you love your baby three times as much.

Battistot agrees: I cant give up, but Im not prepared to accept it without a fight. This legacy will shame Brazil for years to come but well never allow it to make us ashamed of our children.
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Connecting people to the Internet is not easy in this impoverished farming district of wheat and millet fields, where working camels can be glimpsed along roads that curve through the low-slung Aravalli Hills.

So when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in about a year ago to visit a small computer lab and tout Internet for all, Osama Manzar, director of Indias Digital Empowerment Foundation, was thrilled.

But when Manzar tried Facebooks limited free Internet service, he was bitterly disappointed. The app, called Free Basics, is a pared-down version of Facebook with other services, such as weather reports and job listings.

I feel betrayed  not only betrayed, but upset and angry, Manzar said. He said were going to solve the problem with access and bandwidth. But Facebook is not the Internet.

Zuckerberg launched his sweeping Internet.org initiative in 2013 as a way to provide 4 billion people in the developing world with Web access, which he sees as a basic human right.

But the initiative has hit a major snag in India, where in recent months Free Basics has been embroiled in controversy  with critics saying that the app which provides limited access to the web does a disservice to the poor and violates the principles of net neutrality, which holds that equal access to the Internet should be unfettered to all.

Activists such as Savetheinternet.in, professors from leading universities and tech titans such as Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, have spoken out against it. Another well-known Indian entrepreneur dubbed it poor Internet for poor people.

The debate escalated in recent weeks after Indias telecom regulator suspended Free Basics as it weighs whether such plans are fair, with new rules expected by the end of the month.

Who could possibly be against this? Zuckerberg wondered in a Times of India editorial on Dec. 28. (Getty Images)

A week later, Free Basics was banned in Egypt with little explanation, prompting concern that the backlash could spread to other markets. More recently, Google pulled outof the app in Zambia after a trial period. An estimated 15 million people are now using Free Basics in 37 countries, including 1 million in India.

Its a very important test case for what will be Indias network neutrality regime, said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

Indias debate could impact the way other countries address the question of whether its fair for Internet service providers to price websites differently. The U.S. Federal Communications Commissions rules on net neutrality went into effect only this past June.

Officials at Facebook launched an advertising blitz in recent weeks to counteract the negative publicity. Who could possibly be against this? Zuckerberg wondered in a Times of India editorial on 28 December.

I think weve been a bit surprised by the strong reaction, said Chris Daniels, Facebooks vice president for Internet.org. Fundamentally, the reason for the surprise is that the program is doing good. Its bringing people online who are moving onto the broader Internet.

India, a country of 1.2 billion, has the second highest number of Internet users in the world, but an estimated 80 percent of the population does not have Internet access.

Indias tech-savvy prime minister, Narendra Modi, is trying to combat this with an ambitious Digital India plan to link 250,000 village centers with fiber-optic cable and extend mobile coverage. Hes turned to the Indian tech community as well as Silicon Valley for help, securing an agreement with Google to provide free WiFi in railway stations.

Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Show all 8 1 /8 Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Mark Zuckerberg told a Q&A audience he doesn't like spending on "frivolous" decision and that includes his attire Mark Zuckerbergs signature look The Facebook founder is often seen wearing Adidas flip flops, a gray T-shirt and a hoodie Getty Images Mark Zuckerbergs signature look That's Mark Zuckerberg wearing his signature gray shirt (again) Getty Images Mark Zuckerbergs signature look ...And again Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Zuckerberg showed up for Facebook's IPO wearing his favourite hoodie REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Zuckerberg pictured with his wife, Priscilla, wearing THAT hoodie EPA Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Zuckerberg speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco (in THAT hoodie again) Mark Zuckerbergs signature look Mark Zuckerberg (centre) at the Facebook headquarters as he remotely rings the bell to open the Nasdaq Getty Images

India has130 million Facebook users, second only to the United States, a key market as the social media giant looks to expand beyond the developed world, where its growth has slowed.

If Facebook manages to get another half a billion users in India, thats a valuable set of eyeballs to sell to a political party or corporation, Abraham said.

Facebook has long said that its program is about altruism, not eyeballs.

But it does reap new customers. Those who buy a SIM card from Facebooks local mobile partner, Reliance Communications, are then prompted to pay for additional data. About 40 percent who sign up for Free Basics buy a data plan to move to the wider Web after 30 days, Daniels said. The service is still running despite the suspension. A Reliance spokesman said it is in testing mode and is not being promoted.

The thing people forget about Free Basics is that its intended to be a temporary transition for people to give them a taste of the Internet and sign up. Its a marketing program for the carrier in some sense, said David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect. But, he added: The idea that its some kind of alternative Internet thats a discriminatory gesture to the poor is the prevailing view among the Indian intelligentsia. Its fundamentally misunderstood.

Facebook has pledged to open up the selection process for companies with new applications to outside scrutiny, Daniels said. Thats a response to concerns by many in Indias tech community that Facebooks process put Indias fledgling start-ups at a disadvantage.

The projects proponents say that Indias needs are so great it cant afford to suspend one program that could help.

"I dont think Facebook should control it. The Internet should be for everybody. (Getty Images)

Mahesh Uppal, a telecommunications consultant, notes that more than 10 percent of the country doesnt have mobile phone coverage at all and Indias progress in extending fiber optic cable to village centers is proceeding at a glacial pace. Modi had set a goal of linking all 250,000 by 2016, but only 27,000 have cable so far and 3,200 are ready for use, according to a government report.

In comparison, some 80 percent of Chinas villages are already linked by broadband.

In Alwar district in the northern state of Rajasthan, many remember when Zuckerberg came to visit but fewer know about Free Basics.

Ive heard its free and by Facebook and you dont have to pay for it, said Umer Farukh, 43, a folk musician. But I dont think Facebook should control it. The Internet should be for everybody.

Farukh has only been computer literate for two years, but hes already emailing and using YouTube to post videos and promote his band.

Hes become such a proponent that he has donated space for one of Manzars computer centers  part of a government initiative to build cyber hubs in minority communities  and encouraged the female members of his family to take classes, which is rare in his conservative community.

Farukh says that challenges to connecting India go far beyond data plans and fiber-optic cable or the government broadband that often sputters out. Wages are low and hours are long. Only about half of the women in his state are literate, and about a quarter of the young women in his neighborhood are kept at home and not educated.

This place is very backward, he said. India as a society is lagging far behind in terms of Internet.

In the small nearby community of Roja Ka Baas, ringed by fields of blooming mustard greens, residents are still awaiting the opening of their own planned WiFi center. They are struggling along on cheap mobile phones with slow 2G spectrum until then, they said.

Sakir Khan, 14, said that once the Internet finally arrived in this village, the first thing he would do would be to sign up for Facebook.

Farheen Fatima and Subuhi Parvez contributed to this report.

Copyright: Washington Post
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A man arrested in Disneyland Paris with two guns in his suitcase has reportedly told police he was carrying the weapons because he feared for his safety.

The 28-year-old was on his way into the Hotel New York on Thursday when a compulsory security scan uncovered them in his luggage, with further searches finding ammunition and a Koran.

The arrest sparked fears of another terror plot in France, which is still under a state of emergency following Novembers Paris attacks, but initial investigations do not appear to point to terrorism.

A security checkpoint is set up at the entrance of Disneyland Paris on 28 January 2016 (EPA)

Le Parisien reported that the man told investigators he was armed with the two automatic handguns because he feared for his safety and wanted to protect himself.

Sources said he was a Frenchman born in the Paris suburb of Lagny-sur-Marne and lived in the capitals 14th arrondissement, where he co-owns a brasserie.

Staff and customers interviewed by the AFP news agency on Saturday night were incredulous at news of his arrest.

I think it's a mistake, said a bartender. Honestly, Im completely gobsmackedthis is a joke, said the other co-manager.

 Disneyland Paris: man arrested with guns in bag

Police took him into custody and put up a security cordon around his van, which was towed from a nearby car park after searches were completed.

Officers are still searching for a woman believed to be the mans partner. She was seen by staff at the hotel, where the man had booked a room for two, but disappeared from the scene

Police announced a woman had been detained later on Thursday afternoon but released her hours later after confirming she had been wrongly identified.

The man was not known to the intelligence services or police, except for a minor driving offence, French media reported, and an investigation by the judicial police in Meaux continues.

Francois Banon, the vice president for public affairs at Disneyland Paris, said: During a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels, weapons were discovered in a guests luggage by our x-ray machine.

The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures Show all 25 1 /25 The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Members of the public gather to lay flowers and light candles at La Belle Equipe restaraunt on Rue de Charonne in Paris Getty The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People lay a memorial to honour victims of the Paris terror attacks at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Soccer fans display the colors of the French flag in response to the deadly terrorist attack in Paris, France before the soccer match between the New York Cosmos' and the Ottawa Fury for the North American Soccer League championship at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, USA The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Pakistani Civil society activists shout slogans during a protest against Isis militants near the French consulate for the victims of the 13 November Paris attacks in Karachi, Pakistan The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People gather and view messages written on the ground at Place de la Republique in Paris The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks French flags and a note reading "We will not let you spoil our children's lives" at the site of the attack at the Cafe Belle Equipe on rue de Charonne in the 11th district, in Paris The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A rose is placed beside a bullet hole at La Belle Equipe restaraunt on Rue de Charonne following the terrorist attack in Paris. As France observes three days of national mourning members of the public continue to pay tribute to the victims of deadly attacks The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Bono and band members of U2 pay their respects and place flowers on the pavement near the scene of yesterday's Bataclan Theatre terrorist attack in Paris The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A man kneels as he pays tribute to victims at Place de la Republique near the deadly attack sites in Paris The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Tributes to the victims at the Place de la Republique square in Paris AFP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks An electronic billboard on a canal show solidarity with Paris in Milan EPA The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People lay down flowers and light candles to tribute victims of Friday's attacks in Paris as the Brandenburg gate is illuminated in blue, white and red in the colors of the French flag, in Berlin Reuters The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A man leaves flowers as a tribute following the deadly attacks in Paris, outside the French consulate in Istanbul Reuters The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People take pictures of flowers placed in bullet holes in the window of a Japanese restaurant next to the cafe 'La Belle Equipe' AFP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People gather at a makeshift memorial next to the Bataclan theatre in Paris on November 14, 2015, The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A woman carrying flowers cries in front of the Carillon cafe and the Petit Cambodge restaurant in Paris AP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People gather in front of flowers that were laid outside the French embassy in Rome AP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks People react near the cafe 'La Belle Equipe' at the Rue de Charonne AFP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A young girl places a candle in front of the Carillon cafe in Paris AP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Flowers placed outside the cafe 'La Belle Equipe' at the Rue de Charonne in Paris, the scene for one of the attacks AFP The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A woman is comforted by others outside the Carillon cafe and the Petit Cambodge restaurant in Paris The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks The Brandenbourg Gate featuring French national colors is pictured in Berlin, on November 14, 2015 a day after deadly attacks in Paris The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks Flowers are laid in front of the French embassy in Rome EPA The world mourns Paris attacks - in pictures The world mourns Paris attacks A candle is lit next to flowers outside the French Embassy in Berlin AFP

The police were immediately notified and the individual was arrested. We continue to work closely with the authorities and the safety and security of our guests and cast members is our utmost priority.

The Hotel New York is one of the most expensive in the resort, bordering Lake Disney and within walking distance of the Disney Village dining and shopping area, as well as the railway station and entrances to Walt Disney Studios and Disneyland parks.

Police sources told The Independent compulsory security screenings were introduced in November as part of the continuing state of emergency sparked by Isis Paris attacks.

Isis militants killed 130 people in a series of shootings and suicide bombings across the capital.
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When it comes to the EU referendum, British diplomats serving Queen and country have a duty to be neutral like other civil servants. But in the world of diplomacy, neutrality can be a flexible concept.

With polls showing that those for and against the UKs continued EU membership are evenly matched, UK embassies on the Continent have embarked upon a mission to sign up the countrys expatriate community to vote. And with Britons living in places like Tuscany or the Dordogne among those most likely to be adversely affected by a leave vote, actively helping them to have their say could prove decisive to the end result.

In France, which is thought to be home to up to half a million UK expats, the British embassy has launched a competition to encourage UK citizens to register to vote.

In an innovative scheme, the Paris embassy has tweeted a proposition: anyone who registers and posts a picture of themselves online will be offered the chance to win afternoon tea at the Hotel de Charost, the 18th-century palace that is home to the British ambassador.

Registering online only takes five minutes  the time it takes to make a cup of coffee or eat a croissant, the British embassy said. All we are asking people to do is encourage others to vote by tweeting photos of themselves holding a sign or poster saying #YourVoteMatters to @UKInFrance, it added. The most creative or unusual image will win! They may be on top of a ski slope or walking through the Catacombs of Paris: the possibilities are endless!

Other embassies across Europe, including in Ireland, Germany, Poland, Austria, Denmark and Spain, are also gearing up for the poll which could some as soon as June.

The Madrid embassy will start its campaign to find voters on 1 February.

Interest in the referendum among expats is high, but awareness that they may be able to vote is low, an embassy spokesman told the Financial Times. We want as many expats as possible to know that they may be eligible to have their say.

Britons who have lived abroad for less than 15 years are eligible to vote in the referendum. However only 5 per cent of overseas voters are understood to have registered so far.
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Germany has agreed new laws to tighten rules for incoming refugees.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reached an agreement with her coalition partners on Thursday evening to speed up deportations.

The new measures also include a two-year ban on family reunions for asylum seekers who are granted limited refugee protection, said Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, announcing the deal.

The coalition partners have also agreed that people from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia will not have an automatic right to asylum as these countries have been deemed safe.

The government also announced plans to accept more refugees from the camps in Turkey and Lebanon.

Mr Gabriel told reporters the mood was good between the coalition partners despite weeks of tension over Bavaria based Christian Social Unions leader Horst Seehofer's threat to take the government to court if they do not stem the flow of refugees.

Angela Merkel has been forced to reverse her 'open door' policy towards refugees (AFP/Getty Images)

Ms Merkels open-door policy towards refugees has come under fire in recent weeks following the sex attacks on women in Cologne by suspected refugees on New Years Eve.

German towns and cities have said they are struggling to cope with the influx of 1.1m refugees who have arrived in the country over the past year.

700 people crossed the German border from Austria every day over the past - down from an average of 2,000 people a day earlier this year.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

German officials have warned of a fresh spike in numbers when the weather improves.

Mr Gabriel said the new bill would deter illegal immigration.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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A Spanish policeman has been suspended for five days after refusing to pay a brothel he was trying to visit with colleagues and a member of the countrys national intelligence agency, it has been reported.

According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, all of the men were off-duty and not wearing uniform when they visited the establishment named 'Supermodels' in Noain, northern Spain, in January 2012.

A court document read: The sergeant, who showed signs of having consumed an excessive amount of alcohol, tried to enter without paying, which was prevented by the doorman of the premises.

When asked to pay an entry fee by the brothel's bouncer, the policeman reportedly produced his badge, said he was on a police operation, and threatened to arrest him, saying: I know where you live and if I want to I can put you behind bars this very night.

After repeatedly refusing to pay, the group was confronted by the brothels owner, who eventually called the police.

Spanish police were recently told that they cannot visit strip clubs while on duty and in uniform after a ruling by the countrys supreme court. The decision was handed down following an appeal by a police officer in Toledo who was disciplined for visiting a strip club during a shift. He was suspended without pay for six months.
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The publication by an Israeli right-wing group of a blacklist of 117 artists, writers, performers and intellectuals it linked to those who oppose Israels occupation of the West Bank has prompted warnings by opposition leaders that McCarthyism is making inroads in the Jewish state.

The group, Im Tirtzu, which depicts itself as being at the forefront of advancing Zionist ideology and shares the governments expansionist approach to the West Bank, said it was publishing the list to support efforts by the Culture Minister Miri Regev, of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud party, to pass a bill that would ensure that only cultural bodies loyal to the state will be eligible for government funding.

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Ms Regevs plan has come under sharp criticism from left-wing cultural figures who accuse her of stifling freedom of expression. Im Tirtzu said it wanted to expose to the public the affiliation of her opponents with mole organisations that operate with foreign government funding. It labelled as moles the renowned writers David Grossman and Amos Oz and leading actress Gila Almagor because they serve on the public advisory board of the human rights group BTselem, which monitors Israeli abuses in the Occupied Territories.

Gila Almagor has been labelled a mole for serving on the board of BTselem (Film Magic)

The group also sought to stigmatise the leading playwright Yehoshua Sobol, who serves on the public board of Yesh Din, a group that opposes violence by Jewish settlers and, like BTselem, receives foreign government funding. Some 89 cultural figures were blacklisted by Im Tirtzu for participating last year in an event supporting Breaking the Silence, a doveish army veterans group, which was banned by the Education Minister Naftali Bennett from schools last month on the grounds that it besmirches the name of the army.

The moles in culture campaign is a follow-up to Im Tirtzus release of a video that singled out figures from Breaking the Silence, BTselem and two other human rights groups as foreign moles who encourage Arab stabbing attacks against Israelis.

According to Israels Channel Ten television station, that video was produced for Im Tirtzu by the public relations consultant Moshe Klughaft, a close associate of Mr Bennett who served as campaign manager for his Jewish Home party in last years elections. Im Tirtzus director Matan Peleg told The Independent that Mr Klughaft was not involved in the blacklist. Mr Peleg said his group does not have any connection to the government.

Im Tirtzu's new campaign 'outs' leftist artists and other individuals inlcuding renowned writers David Grossman and Amos Oz

We are fighting against the delegitimisation of the state of Israel and organisations and foreign agents funded by foreign governments, he said. The opposition leader Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union party attacked the blacklist as part of a dirty attempt by McCarthyism to take over Israel. He said: Israeli McCarthyism and the zeros who are leading it will disappear just as they disappeared in the United States. The question is when and how much it will cost us. His party colleague, MP Stav Shaffir, pointed the finger at the government, saying there was complete co-ordination between this fascist organisation and the Minister of Education and the Minister of Culture.

Im Tirtzu is threatening the foundations of the state of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state, she said.

Amid the uproar, Mr Bennett criticised the campaign, writing on Twitter that it was embarrassing, unnecessary and degrading. Later in the day, Ms Regev also voiced objections to the campaign. Remarking on the controversy, the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he opposed the use of the word traitors to describe those who disagree with me. He added: We are a democracy and there are a multitude of opinions. However, he also sharply criticised Breaking the Silence, according to The Times of Israel website.

Novelist Anat Einhar, recipient of the prime minister's award for literature last year and a figure on Im Tirtzu's blacklist for participating in the Breaking the Silence event, told the Independent that Im Tirtzu is targeting independent thought. ''It's a very twisted stance that suppresses any spark of free thought and anything that has something enlightened. These artists are people with a critical interpretation of what is going on around them and it is this very individualism, the idea that you are an individual and not just a subject in a nationalistic society, that is very threatening to Im Tirtzu.''

Ms Einhar added that she thinks that Mr Netanyahu ''is enjoying this. Im Tirtzu are the hunting dogs of Netanyahu's rule. He cannot express himself as they do, he has to be more statesmanlike. But they serve him and there is a complete fit between the messages of fear that Netanyahu projects in order to stay in power and the activities of Im Tirtzu.''
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Eighteen people were killed in Nigeria after suicide bombers evaded the authorities by dressing as women and wearing explosives disguised as babies.

And in a new attack on Friday, a teenage boy detonated himself in a northeastern market town, killing 10 people and injuring 25 others.

The new attacks happened in the same town, Chibok, where more than 200 school girls were abducted from (AFP)

The target of the disguised bombers was the same northeastern town of Chibok from which Boko Haram abducted scores of schoolgirls in April 2014.

Pogu Bitrus, a community leader, said multiple explosions in the town on Wednesday had killed about 18 people - 17 civilians and one soldier.

Colonel Mustapha Ank of the Nigerian army confirmed a hospital worker's discovery that two of the men were wearing hijabs and had disguised the bombs on their backs to look like babies.

Meanwhile, the attack by a teenage boy which killed at least 10 people was a "huge" blast which took place in Gombi town, according to local Red Cross official Maikano Abdullahi.

"I heard a huge explosion coming from the grain section, which is at the edge of the market," said Mustapha Jalo, according to MailOnline.

"Many of us rushed to the scene and we found carnage. People were scattered everywhere.

"I can say over 10 people died in the explosion. I can't give precise number of the injured but there are many."

The rise of Boko Haram Show all 20 1 /20 The rise of Boko Haram The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau delivers a message. Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the mass killings in the north-east Nigerian town of Baga in a video where he warned the massacre was just the tip of the iceberg. As many as 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,700 homes and business were destroyed in the 3 January 2015 attack on the town near Nigeria's border with Cameroon AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People displaced as a result of Boko Haram attacks in the northeast region of Nigeria, are seen near their tents at a faith-based camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in Yola, Adamawa State. Boko Haram says it is building an Islamic state that will revive the glory days of northern Nigeria's medieval Muslim empires, but for those in its territory life is a litany of killings, kidnappings, hunger and economic collapse The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nitsch Eberhard Robert, a German citizen abducted and held hostage by suspected Boko Haram militants, is seen as he arrives at the Yaounde Nsimalen International airport after his release in Yaounde, Cameroon on 21 January 2015 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Officials of the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) visit victims of a bomb blast in Gombe at the Specialist Hospital in Gombe. According to local reports at least six people were killed and 11 wounded after a bomb blast in a marketplace in Nigeria's northeastern state of Gombe on 16 January 2015. Islamist militant group Boko Haram has been blamed for a string of recent attacks in the North East of Nigeria The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People gather at the site of a bomb explosion in a area know to be targeted by the militant group Boko Haram in Kano on 28 November 2014 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People gather to look at a burnt vehicle following a bomb explosion that rocked the busiest roundabout near the crowded Market in Maiduguri, Borno State on 1 July 2014. A truck exploded in a huge fireball killing at least 15 people in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the city repeatedly hit by Boko Haram Islamists The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram President Goodluck Jonathan visits Nigerian Army soldiers fighting Boko Haram Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Displaced people from Baga listen to Goodluck Jonathan after the Boko Haram killings AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan speaking to troops during a visit to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State; most of the region has been overrun by Boko Haram AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Members of the Nigerian military patrolling in Maiduguri, North East Nigeria, close to the scene of attacks by Boko Haram EPA The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Harams leader, Abubakar Shekau, appears in a video in which he warns Cameroon it faces the same fate as Nigeria AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nana Shettima, the wife of Borno Governor, Kashim Shettima (C) weeps as she speaks with school girls from the government secondary school Chibok that were kidnapped by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, and later escaped in Chibok The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram South Africans protest in solidarity against the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria by the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram and what protesters said was the failure of the Nigerian government and international community to rescue them, during a march to the Nigerian Consulate in Johannesburg The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Haram militants have seized the town in north-eastern Nigeria that nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from in April 2014 AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram A soldier stands guard in front of burnt buses after an attack in Abuja. Twin blasts at a bus station packed with morning commuters on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital killed dozens of people, in what appeared to be the latest attack by Boko Haram Islamists, April 2014 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The aftermath of the attack, when Boko Haram fighters in trucks painted in military colours killed 51 people in Konduga in February 2014 AFP/Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau (with papers) in a video grab taken in July 2014 AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Ruins of burnt out houses in the north-eastern settlement of Baga, pictured after Boko Haram attacks in 2013 AP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram A Boko Haram attack in Nigeria, 2013 AFP/Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau, Boko Harams leader AP

Both sets of attacks are blamed on Boko Haram Islamic extremists, who have reportedly turned to suicide bombings on soft targets since troops last year forced them out of towns and villages.

Boko Haram, as the group has been dubbed by other Africans and which means "Western education is forbidden", stepped up attacks outside Nigeria over the past year, including in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

The group has been fighting to overthrow the government since 2009, which it regards as run by non-believers, and create an Islamic state.

The US designated it a terrorist group in 2013 and its current leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged the allegiance of the group's estimated 9,000 fighters to Isis in March last year.

The six-year insurgency has killed some 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.
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At least two people have been killed and seven others injured in a suicide bombing and shooting attack at a mosque in Saudi Arabia.

Shia Muslims were gathering at the Imam Reza Mosque, in the city of Al-Hofuf, for Friday prayers at the time.

The Saudi interior ministry said that two suicide bombers detonated their vests after security guards prevented them entering the buildings.

When security men stopped them, one blew himself up at the entrance of the mosque and there was an exchange of fire with the other, a spokesperson said. He was wounded and arrested wearing an explosive belt.

Footage shared on social media showed the moment of the explosion, which was followed by sounds believed to be gunfire.

The mosque appeared to be full when the blast ripped through the building, blowing out windows, shaking the walls and cutting the electricity.

A separate video claimed to show the surviving gunman being restrained by worshippers, who forced him to lie face-down on the floor as a man appeared to remove a device from around his waist.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP

There have been numerous suicide bombings targeting Shia Muslims in the predominantly Sunni country in the past year.

Isis has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks that followed a similar pattern, using armed militants wearing suicide vests to shoot worshippers before detonating the explosives.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Hours before the biggest push to end the bloody Syrian conflict in two years was due to begin, confusion reigned supreme. The United Nations spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, insisted at a press briefing in Geneva that the peace talks would get under way, but admitted: I cant give you a time, I cant give you a who, where, when.

It set the tone for a chaotic start to the UN-led negotiations. The opposition started the day sticking to a pledge to boycott the event unless the bombing of civilian areas was halted and food allowed to reach besieged towns.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN diplomat charged with bringing an end to a war that has so far defied two major drives to solve it, had insisted that the process should begin. At about 5pm local time, a Syrian government delegation led by its UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari arrived at the UN Palais des Nations for the inaugural meeting. Then Saudi-backed Syrian opposition groups, organised under the banner of the Riyadh-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC), confirmed it would attend to test the seriousness of the other side, following assurances from the UN and from the US Secretary of State, John Kerry.

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The HNCs statement came with a caveat: it would meet Mr de Mistura, but not be involved in negotiations with the Syrian government.

The talks mark the first time that all the external powers invested in the Syrian war have backed a drive to halt the five-year conflict, which has claimed at least 260,000 lives, created millions of refugees and allowed a violent jihadist group to commandeer a swath of territory. However, with a complex web of competing interests and rows over who should attend, participants and observers alike have been deeply pessimistic about the prospects of a breakthrough.

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Thanks to the intervention of the Russian air force, pro-government forces have secured a series of recent gains and put the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, on the front foot. As talks got under way, opposition monitoring groups claimed that air strikes and shelling continued across the country, claiming victims including a six-month-old girl and a 60-year-old woman.

The official opposition has accused the US of caving in to the demands of Syria and its allies by softening its stance on President Assads future role.

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Mr de Mistura himself had sought to lower expectations. Speaking earlier this week, he made clear that the process would begin with proximity talks rather than direct negotiations between warring factions. He had hoped, however, that all sides would at least turn up. In a scathing interview on the eve of the conference, Riad Hijab, who heads the opposition council formed in Saudi Arabia last month, made clear the groups frustrations.

Referring to the Syrian town whose inhabitants were forced to eat weeds and cats after a six-month siege by pro-Assad forces, he said: The United States has been unable to get a can of milk to a starving child in Madaya. Can such an international community accomplish a peaceful transition after five years of criminalities and atrocities by Bashar al-Assad?

The oppositions Western allies had warned that it would be handing the Syrian regime a publicity coup if it allowed the regime to look like the only side willing to negotiate.
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A 19-year-old Israeli woman who refused to do compulsory military service as a protest against the occupation of the Palestinian territories has been released from jail  but could return within days.

Tair Kaminers case has been the subject of fierce debate in Israel, driving calls for reform to laws punishing conscientious objectors, while seeing her labelled as a traitor by others.

Before being sent to prison for 20 days earlier this month, she said her experience volunteering with the Israeli Scouts helping children traumatised by the Israel-Gaza conflict made her unable to accept conscription.

Tair Kaminer - Conscientious Objector Conscientious objector Tair Kaminer does not want to "take part or contribute to hatred and fear" and prefers jail over enforcing the occupation and serving in the Israeli Army. via Israel Social TV -   Posted by Jewish Voice for Peace on Thursday, 14 January 2016

I saw children (in Sderot) growing up in a warzone, Ms Kaminer told Israel Social TV.

I saw the effect on them  the fear and sometimes, the hatred.

I realised I did not want to take part, not to contribute to further hatred and fear and not to take part in the occupation.

Protesters have held regular demonstrations outside her prison and training bases for conscripts, while the Mesarvot campaign group is taking support messages from around the world.

Amnesty International Israel opposed the sentence, which was also raised in the Houses of Parliament, where Caroline Lucas brought an early day motion on 19 January noting MPs concern".

The Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion wrote: With tensions high in Israel, this is a particularly difficult time to be a conscientious objector  (we call) on the Government to request the Israeli authorities to accept the conscientious objection of Israeli citizens who do not wish to bear arms against a civilian population under military occupation.

The statement, supported by 19 MPs from parties including Labour, the Conservatives, Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, called for legal exemptions for conscientious objectors and the immediate and unconditional release of Ms Kaminer and other prisoners of conscience.

Each year the IDF conscripts 18 year olds who have finished school for a period of military service (Getty Images)

Supporters said Ms Kaminer was released on Wednesday and Russia Today filmed her emotional reunion with her parents.

Her father, Micha Kaminer, told the broadcaster: I think it is a stupid move by the government and the military authorities to force people to serve in contradiction to their beliefs.

A girl declares that she has a conscience opposing the occupation and she wants to do an alternative service is being put in jail  thats just outrageous.

Ms Kaminer could be jailed many more times if she continues to refuse conscription, with the next term reportedly starting as soon as Sunday, when she is due to report to a training base.

Each refusal to enlist is normally met with a prison term of up to a month, which is repeated until the IDF grants an official discharge.

Recent cases have seen conscientious objectors jailed up to 10 times, for almost 180 days each.

The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child

Calling military service a political decision, Ms Kaminer previously said that she aspires to peace, quality and security for everyone living in Israel and the Palestinian territories but that compulsory military service was not the way to ensure it.

When I look at all of these children, and the next generation on both sides and the reality in which they grow up, I see only more trauma and pain, she said. Military jail frightens me less than our society losing its humanity.

Military service is compulsory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18, with the exception of groups including Arab Israelis, Orthodox women and anyone unable to serve for medical reasons.

Arutz Sheva reported that police complaints have been launched against Ms Kaminer alleging that she is inciting others to dodge the draft.

The Israeli Embassy in London has not yet responded to The Independents request for a comment.
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US and British intelligence services cracked the codes of Israeli drones operating in the Middle East and monitored their surveillance feeds in an operation dating back to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Israels Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said the US National Security Agency, which specialises in electronic surveillance, and its British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air-force missions against Syria and Iran.

Germanys Der Spiegel news magazine and the online publication The Intercept also published reports which said the spy operation, codenamed Anarchist, was run out of a Cyprus base and also targeted other states, including Egypt and Turkey.

The reports said the intelligence agencies were able to see information that the drones and other aircraft broadcast back to their handlers. The Intercept report said the hacking granted intelligence agencies a virtual seat in the cockpit as Israeli drones hit militant targets. In one instance in 2008, an NSA internal newsletter boasted of the Anarchist programme successfully collecting video from the cockpit of an Israeli F-16 fighter, the report said.

Israel neither confirms nor denies having armed drones, and there was no official comment on the reports in the country. However, Israeli Cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz, who has held the post of minister of intelligence affairs, said: We are not surprised; we know that the Americans spy on every country in the world and on us as well, on their friends.

It is nevertheless disappointing because, among other reasons, we havent been spying or collecting intelligence or cracking codes in the United States for decades, he told Army Radio.

I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it is certainly something that should not happen. We will now have to consider changing the encryption.

Asked for comment, the US and Britain said through spokespeople for their embassies in Israel that they did not publicly discuss intelligence matters.

REUTERS; AP
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Grand Central Terminal in New York City is a railway temple. I cannot think of a better place to begin a journey of discovery, hoping to understand how the railroads made the United States.

As I cross Grand Central's vast main concourse, I gaze upwards to search for Orion, Gemini and Taurus on the painted astronomical ceiling suspended 125 feet above me. From a high walkway that passes behind the station's cathedral windows, I can look down on the miniaturised crowds scurrying towards their allocated track, or gathering around the fine four-faced clock of the information booth.

A recurrent theme in the terminal's lavish decoration is the acorn, borrowed from the crest adopted by the Vanderbilt family. The founder of the dynasty's fortune, Cornelius, left school at 11 and became the second-richest man in American history, through investment in shipping and railroads. When the tracks running north from Grand Central were put into a tunnel, the Vanderbilts created Park Avenue and made a further fortune from constructing some of the world's most exclusive real estate.

The late 19th century in the US produced what Mark Twain dubbed a gilded age. The expansion of the railroads, whose track mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, was the main driver. Andrew Carnegie, born to poor parents in Dunfermline, Scotland, made a fortune investing in rail stocks, and then manufacturing steel rails at a time of frenzied demand.

There were tycoons aplenty, and in the early 20th century many flaunted their wealth in stately homes on Long Island's so-called gold coast. The first rail and ferry connection between Boston and New York produced tracks running the length of Long Island. When a faster route through Connecticut opened, investors scrambled to convert the redundant Long Island Railroad into a line serving new mansions and suburbs.

I take the LIRR to visit Oheka Castle. It's a French chateau built by the financier Otto Hermann Kahn, who had made his fortune merging railroad companies. Once the second-largest private residence in the US, today it is a hotel. There, I try to imagine the crazy profligacy and frenzied partying of the tycoons, captured in F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Nowadays the millionaires' playgrounds have shifted further along the island away from the city to Easthampton and Southampton, whose populations multiply in the summer months. Again, I take the LIRR. I suspect that the wolves of Wall Street more often travel there by helicopter.

Back in Grand Central, beneath the benches in the waiting hall, grooves have been worn into the stone floors by the millions who have passed time there since the station opened a century ago. Many were immigrants  Italians and Irish fleeing hardship and hunger, Eastern European Jews escaping pogroms  recently arrived at Ellis Island and shortly to board trains for the vast American interior.

Just the ticket: New York's Grand Central Terminal (Getty)

I take the New York subway down to Battery Park and a ferry over to Ellis Island. Our boat passes the Statue of Liberty, whose torch is stretched out in welcome to the desperate migrants. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, wrote Emma Lazarus in a poem which since 1903 has been inscribed on a plaque at the statue. In a single year the island processed more than a million entrants.

The Great Hall at Ellis Island is, like Grand Central, a huge space opened at the start of the 20th century. It provided the first glimpse of American architecture for those millions who waited there to be deemed medically fit or unfit for admission. Some of the lucky ones might choose not to take the train from Grand Central, but to settle in Manhattan. Jacob Riis photographed their cramped and insanitary tenements; the title of his book of shocking images gave the English language an enduring phrase: How the other half lives.

Tycoons and immigrants might seem to summarise the inequalities of the US. But that would overlook how often the American dream came true. Many tycoons were immigrants, and Bob Hope from Eltham and Cary Grant from Bristol did well in America too.

I take the train along the banks of the mighty Hudson River to upstate New York, past Schenectady (where Thomas Edison arrived in 1886 to found his machine company which became General Electric) and Rochester (where George Eastman started the Kodak company in 1888). Arriving at Niagara Falls, I have a feel for the vastness of the US, since after a journey equivalent to London to Edinburgh, my progress scarcely registers on the map of the continent.

In the early part of the 19th century, some Americans feared that the country was too big to hold together. It took weeks to travel from Washington to Chicago, and months to San Francisco. Was such a vast country governable, or might it descend into chaos: warring states on the model of Europe? The railroads removed the geographical threat to unity. In 1861, the president-elect, Abraham Lincoln, could travel from his home in Springfield, Illinois, to his inauguration in the capital largely by train. After 1869, San Francisco was just six days away from New York City.

The classical columns of Philadelphia's 30th Street station provide my gateway to considering the foundation of the United States. The Liberty Bell, imported from Whitechapel in London, already hung in the Pennsylvania State House when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence there on 8 July 1776.

Immigrants at Ellis Island (Alamy)

Two hundred and forty years ago an exceptional group that included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and John Adams, committed itself to uplifting and enlightened ideals. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Americans came to view their country as a shining city on a hill with a Manifest Destiny to carry its example ever further afield. Indeed, the ambitious principles of the Declaration, revolutionary in their day, inspire a hundred democracies today.

But the United States were born with a founding flaw: the original sin of slavery. Men might have been created equal but they did not live equally in America. Even Jefferson and the first president, George Washington, owned slaves. The Founding Fathers did not address the fearful contradiction, and it was to tear the United States apart after Lincoln's election in 1860.

The American Civil War was fought to preserve the Union as 11 southern states seceded to form the Confederacy. In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, I stand on the station platform at which Lincoln alighted in November 1863. He was to speak at the dedication of the cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle earlier in the year. In a few words  now known as the Gettysburg Address  he called for a rebirth of freedom. Slavery would not survive victory by the North.

My journey also takes me to Manassas, Virginia. In 1861, Confederate forces had moved to block the railroad between the rival capitals in Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia, and to protect the junction at Manassas. Rebel reinforcements arrived by train, in what became the first railway war. For the duration of the conflict, both sides laid tracks at a frantic pace. After the war's conclusion in 1865, the railway building boom helped to tie the North and South together, physically at least.

The great stations in New York City and Philadelphia remind us that railroads created enormous wealth. But the aeroplane has almost killed off American railroads, as surely as they had once supplanted the canals. The Pennsylvania Railroad's magnificent Neoclassical station in New York was torn down in 1963 as part of a property deal. Yet it was not enough to save the company from financial collapse.

Moving south from Washington, my trains are frequently unpunctual. Some of the stations are derelict. In any case, platforms become something of a rarity down there, and at each stop passengers who are frail or encumbered by luggage have to be helped down the ladder-like steps from the train, adding to the delays.

But the train in America is not quite dead. A massive engineering project between Manhattan and Queens is redirecting the LIRR into a new subterranean terminal at Grand Central (helping passengers who presently are taken unwillingly across town to Penn station). As part of the regeneration of New York after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a stunning new rail terminal, designed by Santiago Calatrava, is nearing completion at the World Trade Center.

It is a present day example of the resilience of the United States. Despite its enduring inequalities, during my journey it seemed to me that Americans are still fired by enviable idealism and enthusiasm. Despite falling painfully short of their founding ideals, they are still inspired by the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address to hope for better, as though their Manifest Destiny might yet overcome their manifold problems.

'Great American Railway Journeys' starts on BBC2 on Monday at 6.30pm

Visiting there

Grand Central Terminal, New York City (001 212 340 2583; grandcentralterminal.com).

Oheka Castle Hotel and Estate, Huntington, Long Island (001 631 659 1400; oheka.com). Double rooms start at $441 (315), room only; mansion tours cost $25 (18).

Ellis Island, New York (001 212 561 4588; libertyellisfoundation.org). Tickets to the museum, including ferry transport from New York, from $18 (13).

Long Island Railroad (mta.info/lirr).

More information

visittheusa.com

amtrak.com
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For 10-year-old Libby Coughlan, every visit from cystic fibrosis nurse Fran Choudhry means one less journey she has to make from her home in Essex to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London.

Libby was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at birth and needs regular intravenous antibiotics and check-ups to monitor her lung function. However, since last April she has been receiving much of her treatment under a GOSH scheme that sees her being treated in her own home in Basildon.

She remains under the care of GOSH but if she feels unwell, Fran or one of her team can normally be with her within 24 hours as part of a scheme designed to pick up low-level problems quickly and prevent expensive, time-consuming and exhausting trips to London.

Since Fran started coming to us at home Libbys health has really improved. GOSH is amazing but to have Fran nearby is brilliant. I can be in touch with her very quickly if Libby is ill, said Libbys mum, Gemma.

Fran is based in Essex three days a week where she works out of Mayflower Community Hospital in Billericay to support around 30 cystic fibrosis patients in the surrounding area. For the rest of the week she is based at GOSH on Badger Ward, where Libby can still be admitted if required.

Our home visits can range from a first visit after diagnosis or a full assessment of a patients needs to carrying out a lung function test, said Fran, who trained as a cystic fibrosis nurse specialist after coming to GOSH in 2013. Its always good to try to see a patient in their home environment when thats possible.

This weeks visit to Libby saw Fran clean her chest port, which is used to administer her antibiotics, and check her chest function using a breathing tube attached to a laptop. The computer has a series of child-friendly animations for Libby to concentrate on while Fran analyses her lungs.

In the past Libby would need to spend two weeks at GOSH every three months to receive IV antibiotics treatment via her chest port, but thanks to training from Fran that has been reduced to one week and Gemma can now administer the final weeks treatment at home.

Its a massive step forward for us, said Gemma. And it means we can work the treatment around school.

The scheme in Essex is just one of more than 80 community outreach schemes that GOSH runs across the country. They offer treatment for dozens of conditions and extend the reach of the hospital well beyond the capital, including a scheme for epilepsy patients led by Professor Helen Cross.

Professor Cross, who is based at GOSH, is one of the countrys leading epilepsy experts and runs an outreach clinic in Glasgow several times a year. She also holds regular video conferences between the four paediatric epilepsy centres across the UK.

She said the scheme was not only cost-effective for the NHS but helped families avoid time-consuming and expensive trips to London. It also helps the joint team at GOSH and Kings College Hospital to share their expertise with doctors in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol.

Elsewhere, there are GOSH-run schemes across the country for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension and paediatric multiple sclerosis. There is also a pioneering scheme to offer life-saving haemodialysis in patients homes across the UK.

Dr Peter Steer, chief executive of GOSH, said: We are rarely the only organisation looking after our children. It is therefore really important that we work with clinicians closer to the childs home to ensure that they get the right support to care for these children with complex and sometimes very rare conditions.

Our aim is always to get a child home and help them and their families return to as normal a life as possible. These partnerships are instrumental in achieving this.

Back in Essex, Fran has just cleaned out Libbys port to stop the build-up of blockages. Its unpleasant for Libby, but she prefers it to happen at home.

I didnt cry this time, she said. I do cry most of the time, but not today. Its better to do it at home.

Treatment: How GOSH goes the extra mile

Childhood MS

GOSH provides UK-wide support for patients suffering from paediatric multiple sclerosis. Every four months doctors from GOSH hold meetings with clinicians from Scotland and Wales to assess specific cases. GOSH has also recruited a specialist childhood MS nurse  a first in the UK.

Pulmonary hypertension

GOSH is the largest centre in Europe treating pulmonary hypertension in children and runs more than 40 clinic days annually in UK cities such as Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol and Southampton. Around 20 children in every million suffer from this progressive condition.

Home haemodialysis

In 2010, GOSH became Europes first childrens hospital to offer a portable haemodialysis service. This has allowed patients with renal failure in Southampton, Dorset and Norfolk to continue their lives while still receiving care from GOSH.

To Give to GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1Mydxqt

To find out more about our appeal and why we're supporting GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1MycZkr
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"Late Summer", Stoke-by-Nayland, by John Northcote Nash. Oil on canvas (Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives). Via the John Constable Twitter account. Just the thing as February comes.

 Quotation of the Week came from Michael Gove, Liberal Hero of the Week, in Justice Questions in the Commons on Tuesday:

Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con): The Secretary of State made his name in the Department for Education as someone who would take on vested interests, but he has gone native in record time as Secretary of State for Justice. That includes hanging on every word that is said by the Howard League for Penal Reformthe NUT of the justice systemand reappointing Nick Hardwick. When will he get back his mojo and put the victims of crime at the heart of what he is doing? Come back Ken Clarke, all is forgiven!

Michael Gove: I am not sure that Labour Members would agree with the suggestion that I have become a sandal-wearing, muesli-munching, vegan vaguester. I think that they would probably say that I am the same red-in-tooth-and-claw blue Tory that I have always been. It is because I am a Conservative that I believe in the rule of law as the foundation stone of our civilisation; it is because I am a Conservative that I believe that evil must be punished; but it is also because I am a Conservative, and a Christian, that I believe in redemption, and I think that the purpose of our prison system and our criminal law is to keep people safe by making people better.

Some colleagues reported Gove as saying "vapester", so I checked with the Justice Secretary. He tells me he meant "vaguester", and apologised that this might be an unacceptable neologism. Definitely not. A very fine word, which I shall use as often as possible.

Gove yesterday suspended cuts to legal aid planned by Chris Grayling, his predecessor. It is not clear where the money for this U-turn is coming from, just as we will believe the new policy of rehabilitation of offenders when it bears fruit, but Gove has made a fine start in his new post.

In so doing, Gove has possibly set up one of the most obscure Top 10s of my series: Most Unceremonious Scrapping of Policies By A Minister of the Same Party. David Allen Green and Adam Wagner invited nominations. So far the only one forthcoming has been Andy Burnham, who succeeded Alan Johnson as Health Secretary in June 2009.

 Martin Robbins in The Guardian yesterday said he used to be opposed to tuition fees until he looked at the evidence. Changing your mind because of the evidence? That sort of thing will never catch on.

 On the subject of Top 10s, a message from the sales department. The Kindle edition of Listellany: A Miscellany of Very British Top 10s from Politics to Pop, is now available for 1.89, less than an Americano Primo in Costa Coffee. The e-book of Tony Blair: Prime Minister, the 2013 edition, has been reduced from 16 to 12.15, which could buy quite a lot of coffee, but there is also a lot of book in there.

 And finally, thanks to Moose Allain for this:

"I've never watched Netflix, I assume it only shows Subbuteo."
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Whether or not Brexit campaigners set much store by the history of 18th-century Austria, they could do with a refresher course in the tale of the disastrous Battle of Karansebes. This was the infamous  and possibly apocryphal  night that the Austrian army, thinking that the Turks had staged an attack (some wine had been taken), took up arms against itself (it was also very dark), before the remnants of the corps fled in a panic. Several days later the Turks walked into Karansebes.

We do not know how much wine is to blame for the current infighting within the Brexit camp, nor would its troops appreciate playing the role of Austrians, but otherwise the parallels leap forward.

Recommended Read more Eurosceptic rivals hold peace talks to mend Out campaign rift

Today it is not just the Turks who worry Vote Leave, Leave.EU and Grassroots Out, but also the Poles, the Greeks and the Syrians too. Yet you would not know it from the campaign so far. Much of the Eurosceptic energy has centred on which of these campaigns will be deemed the official Out group, and so receive 500,000 of funding from the Electoral Commission. It is a muddle, with lances pointed this way and that.

Vote Leave has the establishment credentials, but lacks grassroots passion. There is plenty of steam coming out of Leave.EU, but it is too closely allied to Ukip to fulfil the criteria of a cross-party national movement. The latest to join the fray  Grassroots Out  appears to be trying to split the difference.

None has made a compelling case to take the lead, far less one for removing Britain from the European Union. As we report, there are even suspicions that Grassroots Out could be used by Leave.EU as a spike upon which to finally impale its loathed rivals at Vote Leave.

It may not be the Turks who take advantage of this civil strife. But if the Brexit campaign fails to find some discipline, it gets likelier that one day  not too far from now  citizens of Europe will arrive in Dover to find the skeletons of the Eurosceptics strewn across the border, not altogether unlike the Austrians at Karansebes.
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This week: my life as a photographers model. The chances are that readers wont immediately associate me with Annie Leibovitz or Mario Testino. This isnt surprising as I havent posed for them. I dont say I wouldnt, I only say I havent.

I did, though, once allow Italian Vogue into my house. They arrived  photographer, dresser, make-up artist, set designer  with a rack of clothes they must have borrowed from the Italian punk band Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti. If I say so myself, I looked good in every outfit: mad, bad, dangerous to know. I never found out if they published the photograph  its unsophisticated to ask  but one of them turned up years later on the cover of a Russian edition of one of my novels. No mystery why the Russians liked it. I was Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov and Stavrogin rolled into one. For which reason I liked it too.

But my wife laughed when she saw it. So did my son. So did my mother. Its hurtful to discover that, while youre the hero of The Devils in your own eyes, youre the hero of A Bear Called Paddington in the eyes of others.

Recommended Read more My 10 rules for online debate

Vogue excepted, I have never liked being photographed. I put it down to a bad experience I had with a photographer when I was a small boy, done up in a soldiers uniform identical to my fathers and carrying a ball. A studio portrait, they called this, though the studio was no more than a garage with a rag hanging from the door. The photographer was called Lawrence  Lawrence of Stockport  and he wore a check suit with a revolving bow tie.

Lets have a smile from you, he said, which happened to be a locution I especially disliked. Lets have you dead on the floor, I thought. Things deteriorated from there, with Lawrence of Stockport pulling faces, bursting balloons, spinning his bow tie and finally telling me in a whisper that boys who wont smile go to hell. I smiled at that, but inwardly.

These reminiscences are not random. They come about because I am once again having to find a smile from somewhere and once again failing. Its publication time  every authors witching hour when graves open and the sheeted dead arise to shriek and gibber their disapproval of your living words. With publication comes an obligation to give interviews and with interviews comes the obligation to pose for a new photograph.

Its a mystery to me why they dont just use old ones. I could find them one in which Im the spitting image of the Underground Man. With Tolstoy on the telly, youd think theyd like Dostoevsky on their books pages. But no. I must pose again.

The interviewer finishes with you and the photographer turns up. Hes seen all those other photographs and doesnt like any of them  his way of saying he doesnt like you. He is peevish at having had to wait, at having been given the wrong venue, at being, as he or she sees it, second best to the interviewer.

Whoever has made a television documentary will recognise this power struggle, though in television its the cameraman whos the big cheese and the sound recordist whos the dogsbody. As a rule, cameramen are taller, stronger and better looking than sound recordists, which does little for the sound recordists spirits.

But this isnt a documentary, its a photo-shoot and theres no sound recordist for the person holding the camera to lord it over, only the interviewer whos kept him waiting  but shes gone now, back to a sushi lunch in Canary Wharf  and you, the fancy-pants writer who thinks he looks like Ivan the Terrible and is too grand to smile. So its you he goes for.

There are several ways he does this. The most common is telling you where hes just been and whom hes just been photographing. If it wasnt the White House to shoot the Obamas, it will have been seven Jacobean manors knocked together in the West Country to shoot the Clooneys. (So dont think Im excited to be photographing you!) How are they? you ask, implying that youre close but havent see them in a while, hoping theyve sorted out their problems. Who  the Obamas or the Clooneys? Both, both.

But whats the point of upsetting the photographer further? He has already decided he cant get the shot of you he wants in the venue you are already in, and so leads you around the city looking for light reflected in rain, or crowds, or loneliness, or something that might wipe that look of irritated boredom off your face, before returning to the place you started from, which suits how hes feeling about you, after all.

By which time, cold and tired, you look like shit. The sentence, No, you look great, as he points his camera, is the sign that power has shifted and youre the dogsbody now. You ask not to be photographed from below, or leaning aggressively into the camera, or left profile, so he shoots you from below, leaning aggressively into the camera  he even says, Lets have you looking aggressively into the camera  and left profile. The photographers revenge.

Once, in Spain, a photographer asked me to climb into the boot of his car. In Germany, I was told to run down an alleyway and imagine the Nazis coming after me. In Australia, I was shot underwater with one leg in the air between two synchronised swimmers. So why didnt I refuse? Too well brought up. But at least I didnt flash any of them a smile.

I have said that Ive only enjoyed being photographed once. In fact, its twice. The second time was in Amsterdam. The photographer, who was running late, hung a sheet on a wall outside the hotel, told me to look away and pressed her shutter twice. Best two photographs of me ever. She made me look like Rasputin. Goes to show. You dont need all the palaver. Just know who it is youre photographing.

Howard Jacobsons new novel, Shylock Is My Name, is published by Hogarth next Thursday
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Sometimes in politics, all you need is luck. Jeremy Corbyn has not had much of it in his first four months as Labour leader. To the frustration of his closest allies, events such as the Paris terrorist attacks and the looming decision on the Trident nuclear weapons system, have fixed the spotlight on national security rather than economic issues.

Sticking to his long-held principles on foreign and defence matters has not made it easy to reach out beyond Labours new tribe. But his luck may now be changing. Another article of faith for Mr Corbyn and John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor, may now work to their advantage and finally get them a positive hearing from the public. Both were advocates of tax justice long before it became fashionable. So the Governments sweetheart deal with Google, under which the US tech giant will pay a mere 130m of tax for the last 10 years, is a much-needed gift to Mr Corbyn.

Recommended Read more Geoff wants PM to explain how he can pay same rate of tax as Google

George Osborne played into Labours hands by mishandling the row. A week ago, Google leaked the deal selectively and late at night to try to secure favourable coverage, a foolish move bound to provoke other media outlets into attacking it. In a tweet just after midnight, the Chancellor hailed it as a victory. When the agreement came under fire, the Treasury argued it was not a political decision but one struck by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC); but it couldnt have it both ways.

Conservative MPs who are not among the FOGs (Friends of George) signed up to his campaign to succeed David Cameron, claimed the Chancellor revealed his three weaknesses  being too clever by half, out of touch and lacking political judgement. This cosy deal is toxic for us, one groaned. The timing was awful, as people completed their tax return by the 31 January deadline. (I found my inner peace when I did my tax return, says HMRCs advert. But the Google saga is more likely to make taxpayers blood boil). And Tory MPs saw the danger of alienating the partys natural supporters among small businesses by appearing in thrall to the big multinationals. The small firms know that Google is the tip of an iceberg, with many others like Apple, Starbucks, Amazon, and Facebook, sticking to the letter rather than spirit of the law.

 Jeremy Corbyn asks David Cameron if ordinary people can pay the same rate of tax as Google

Although the Treasury was careful not to brand its Diverted Profits Tax (DPT) a Google tax, I dont remember it complaining about the headlines which called it that. We now have the bizarre spectacle of Google not paying the Google tax, since the 130m payment is outside the DPT. Downing Street and the Treasury denied reports that the back tax amounted to a tiny 3 per cent of Googles UK profits, saying the media was confusing profits with turnover. But they would not disclose any more of the deal and so had to take the attacks on the chin. I suspect that Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, their eyes on the prize of attracting big firms to Britain through low corporation tax, took their eyes off the damage the Google story would do them in the Dog and Duck.

The public will surely be bemused that a company which employs 2,300 people in the UK, generates an estimated 4.6bn of sales here and will build a spanking new London HQ for 5,000 workers, has still not been classed by the Government as having a permanent taxable presence. This means it can route its sales through Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda to keep its tax bill to the minimum. Google is acting within the law, which does not tax profits or sales in any one country but the value added in it, so it is the politicians who need to change the rules.

The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Show all 11 1 /11 The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He called Hezbollah and Hamas friends True. In a speech made to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, Mr Corbyn called representatives from both groups friends after inviting them to Parliament. He later told Channel 4 he wanted both groups, who have factions designated as international terror organisations, to be part of the debate for the Middle East peace process. I use (the word friends) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk, he added. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. Reuters The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy Partly false. David Cameron used this as a line of attack at the Conservative Party conference but appears to have left out all context from Mr Corbyns original remarks. In an 2011 interview on Iranian television, the then-backbencher said the fact the al-Qaeda leader was not put on trial was the tragedy, continuing: The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is haunted by the legacy of his evil great-great-grandfather False. A Daily Express expose revealed that the Labour leaders ancestor, James Sargent, was the despotic master of a Victorian workhouse. Addressing the report at the Labour conference, Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of him before, adding: I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time and having a chat with him about his appalling behaviour. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about pigeon bombs in Parliament This one is true. On 21 May 2004, Mr Corbyn raised an early day motion entitled pigeon bombs, proposing that the House register being appalled but barely surprised that MI5 reportedly proposed to load pigeons with explosives as a weapon. The motion continued: The House believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again. It was not carried. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He rides a Communist bicycle False. A report in The Times referred to Mr Corbyn, known for his cycling, riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle earlier this year. Less thorough journalists might have referred to it as just a bicycle, but no, so we have to conclude that whenever we see somebody on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao, he later joked. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn 'Jeremy Corbyn will appoint a special minister for Jews' False so far. The Sun report in December was allegedly based on a rumour passed to the paper by a Daily Express columnist who has written pieces critical of the Labour leader in the past. The minister did not materialise in his shadow cabinet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn wishes Britain would abolish its Army False. Another gem from The Sun took comments made at a Hiroshima remembrance parade in August 2012 where Mr Corbyn supported Costa Ricas move to abolish it armed forces. Wouldnt it be wonderful if every politician around the worldabolished the army and took pride in the fact that they dont have an army, he added. The caveat that every politician must take the step suggests Mr Corbyn does not support UK disarmament just yet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn stole sandwiches meant for veterans False. The Guido Fawkes blog claimed that the Labour leader took sandwiches meant for veterans at at Battle of Britain memorial service in September but a photo later emerged showing him being handed one by Costa volunteers, who later confirmed they were given to all guests. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He missed the induction into the Queens privy council True. After much speculation about Mr Corbyns republican views and willingness to bow to the monarch, his office confirmed that he did not attend the official induction to the privy council because of a prior engagement, but did not rule out joining the body. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn refuses to sing the national anthem. Partly true. The Labour leader was filmed standing in silence as God Save the Queen was sung at a Battle of Britain remembrance service but will reportedly sing it in future. Mr Corbyn was elusive on the issue in an interview, saying he would show memorials respect in the proper way, but sources said he would sing the anthem at future occasions. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cheese True. The group lists its purpose as the following: To increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers.

Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne will no doubt point to their DPT and their backing for new global rules through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. But instinctively they prefer a competitive advantage to serious action on an EU-wide level, which they are blocking.

This creates an opening for Labour on an issue on which, unlike foreign affairs and defence, the party is united. The Google row, which is far from over as the European Commission and the Commons Public Accounts Committee investigate the deal, will give Labour a platform to make its economic case. It was quick to exploit the controversy this week, and showed that it is learning the art of opposition. To the Corbynistas surprise, they even won plaudits from right-wing newspapers for the first time.

Labour will now be able to remind us that the Conservative Party depends heavily on donations from the financial services sector and to shine a light on the lobbying of the Government  not least by the banks. Being seen as the party representing their rich friends will disrupt the Tories' attempt to hold the centre ground. In contrast, Labours instincts will be in tune with a majority of the public. Yet it will still have to work hard to take its golden opportunity. Labour can't solve the Google problem with the flick of a switch, but could win brownie points by arguing forcefully for a new global tax to replace an antiquated system designed in the 1920s.

Mr Corbyn will need to learn lessons from Ed Milibands populist policies such as an energy price freeze. Labour set out to be both radical and credible, but voters would not give Mr Miliband's ideas a hearing because his party did not first win economic credibility, as the Labour peer Stewart Wood, his former adviser, acknowledged.

But it is the Conservatives who face the biggest challenge on corporate taxation. At the top of Mr Camerons bucket list is fighting inequality, as he returns to the compassionate Conservatism on which he was elected Tory leader 10 years ago. The Prime Minister seems to have forgotten that part of his original pitch was to champion responsible capitalism and take on big business where necessary. The Tories, their Achilles heel exposed by the Google row, would ignore that agenda at their peril.
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The writer of this letter lives in a tent with his two younger brothers. He lost his parents on the journey from Afghanistan and now acts as their sole carer. The writer seeks asylum in the UK as he has extended family there.

Dear David Cameron,



I am currently living in a tent in the Jungle, Calais, France. I am 13 years old and from Afghanistan.



I left my country eight months ago because Afghanistan has been in war from before the day I was born. My life was in danger, my school was bombed and my parents were not allowed to work. It was not a nice life.

Because my school was bombed I could not go to class to learn. This was very difficult because I love learning. My favourite lessons were English and maths. I came first in nearly all of my classes.



David Cameron, I am not just a migrant. I am a child that wants to learn, to play and be safe like your children and all other childern in England.



It's my dream to continue my education. Live in a warm house, be able to take a shower and to eat three meals a day.



Thank you,



Jungle resident.

Children in the Calais camp are encouraged to remain anonymous. You can learn more about the volunteer work being done with children in Calais by Calais Jungle Youth here.

The handwritten, unedited letter appears below:
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What a nonsensical article from Hannah Fearn (Hypnobirthing, placenta pills and the paranoid world of birth fads, 28 January). Full of negativity: childbirth is a dangerous time; most traumatic physical experience.

The NHS encourages pregnant women to attend classes to prepare them for childbirth, knowing that an informed, relaxed woman is more likely to have a better birth experience.

Im pleased to hear the NHS is thinking again about home births. Most women are far more relaxed in familiar and non-medical surroundings, quite safe in the knowledge that medical back-up is there if needed.

Giving birth is for most of us the most wonderful experience, but if sadly it goes wrong we are lucky these days to have excellent medical care available (in our society at least). The best of both worlds; so stop scare-mongering please.

Anne Haywood

Staveley, Cumbria

OK, Im with Hannah Fearn on placenta pills, but how on earth can she describe doulas as a modern fad? Women have had other women with them in childbirth for as long as we have been human beings. Paid doulas may well be a new thing, but we live in a highly commercialised society, where women live far from their mothers, sisters, aunts and old village ladies, so a development like this is natural. There is plenty of evidence that doulas can make a difference to the outcome.

Its also not true to say that non-medically trained people cant know better. Often doctors only see childbirth when something has gone wrong, whereas a doula who has seen hundreds of normal births will have a repertoire of ideas and suggestions.

I used self-hypnosis when my younger son was born 23 years ago, so again this cannot be a very recent fad. I found it helpful but not able to remove all pain. However Im sure it helped me to get in the zone, that place where 40 per cent of mothers get to when they dont need pain relief in labour.

By all means, cry out against fads in labour. Pubic shaving, enemas and episiotomies have all been fads which have caused discomfort or worse to mothers and have been imposed on them by medical professionals. But dont inveigh against actions which actually allow women to take control of their own labour.

Camilla Herrmann

Hoxne, Suffolk

Im six months pregnant and I think Hannah Fearns article is great. I know three women who wanted natural births and ended up with emergency caesarean.

For years women died in childbirth, so although a good birth, ideally without intervention, is appealing, no one should be a hostage to that ideal. Ultimately it needs a safe delivery without unbearable pain.

Name and address not supplied

Hannah Fearn is to be applauded for her healthy scepticism of current pregnancy fashions. However, considering the UK has one of the highest levels of death in labour of all developed nations, I would question the assumption that these trends are in themselves responsible for the ebbing of womens trust in the NHS.

Emily Lambert

London SE18

Penny Joseph states that women have successfully given birth for thousands of years (letter, 29 January). She neglects to state that women have also died while giving birth for thousands of years.

Mother Nature is utterly callous and brutal. Provided those individuals who are well adapted and evolutionarily fit survive long enough to pass on their genes, nature couldnt care less about the less fit individuals who fall by the wayside. Odd-shaped pelvis? Placenta blocking the birth canal? Nature isnt bothered, as it doesnt want those tendencies passed on anyway.

I notice that people who bang on about the natural wonders of childbirth rarely transfer that attitude to appendicitis or toothache (both part of nature).

Helen Clutton

Dorchester, Dorset

How abusive priests were exposed

Much as I admire the team at the Boston Globe who exposed sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and whose investigations are now dramatised in the film Spotlight, I must take issue with Globe journalist Walter Robinson, who told David Usborne: We were still the first paper to break the code on this whole mess (Brought to light, 28 January).

The Globes first story was run in 1993, according to Robinson. In the mid-1980s, the extraordinarily brave reporter Jason Berry and equally courageous Richard Baudouin, editor of The Times of Acadiana, in Lafayette, Louisiana, began reporting on paedophilia by Catholic priests and the Churchs cover-up, calling for the local bishop to be replaced. Local Catholic business people and priests tried to put the paper out of business by organising an advertising boycott. Fortunately they failed.

Meanwhile, the National Catholic Reporter was also reporting on the abuse scandal from 1985 onwards, when other papers across the US ignored what was being said by victims. The Reporter spotted patterns  abuse by priests, cover-ups and denial  and kept digging.

The Globe is a much bigger operation, with bigger resources, and could shout louder. But the smaller organisations, on the case nearly 10 years earlier, deserve as much credit for running with this while they were put under unrelenting pressure. So do the nuns in Louisiana who first blew the whistle when they realised the bishop kept shifting an abusive priest from parish to parish.

Catherine Pepinster

Editor, The Tablet London W6

Benign legacy of empire

Whatever judgements may be made about the British empire (letters, 25, 26, 27 January), its transformation into the Commonwealth of Nations provides some redress for the past and has attracted countries that were not former colonies, and suspended others that fell short of its high ideals.

Its influence may have faded in a changing world, but it is still valued by its members, and it would be tragic if this benign legacy of empire were to be undermined by intemperate rhetoric and a new self-righteous intolerance.

John Eekelaar

Oxford

As a descendant of Guyanese slaves I find it incomprehensible that there is still no UK memorial to the victims of the African slave trade.

As the Holocaust memorial is applauded by Parliament, could it be that a similar memorial for African slaves would be too close for comfort to those whose families entrenched wealth may well stem from that bloody source?

Amanda Baker

Edinburgh

Why cant the fools just vote for us?

Peter Johnson (letter, 28 January) has got it spot on! Labour has almost no chance of winning the next election because of our undemocratic electoral system. Except that this is the very same system under which Labour won three consecutive victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

Or its the fault of the Tory press which brainwashes the electorate. I think Mr Johnson might be surprised to find the proportion of Independent readers who voted for the Tories in 2015. If only we were all as clever as Mr Johnson and could see through this continual drip-feed of anti-Labour comments!

And lastly, Jeremy Corbyn will deserve the votes of most decent people, that is people who think exactly the same as him and Mr Johnson.

In two short paragraphs, Mr Johnson manages to show that particular combination of arrogance, smugness and contempt for fellow citizens who hold different beliefs that so characterises his section of the left.

Andrew Kinder

Kingston, Devon

Do single-sex schools boost girls results?

Since when has The Independent permitted overt sexism from its journalists? In her piece on single-sex education (29 January), Alice Jones describes how I mansplained my views on the benefits of girls and boys being educated together. I wonder what the reaction would have been if a female headteachers views had been dismissed in this way.

She goes on to refer to research from SchoolDash to assert that it is now fairly indisputable that girls educated at all-girls schools do better academically. If she had read to the end of the research piece, she would have found the following: These results dont necessarily mean that single-sex schooling has a positive impact. There are any number of other unmeasured variables.

Richard Cairns, Head Master

Brighton College

To infinity and beyond

Although I have never played Go, I am sure it is an immensely complicated and sophisticated game. I dispute, however, that it has an infinitely greater number of potential moves (report, 28 January), as the board is finite.

Alex Lewis

Lemsford, Hertfordshire
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As the war in Syria approaches its fifth year, the toll it has taken on the countrys women has been particularly brutal.

Four million Syrians have sought refuge abroad, while a further 7.6 million have been displaced internally. Though the refugees reaching European shores are more often than not men, the humanitarian crisis affects far more women.

With men largely either engaged in fighting or prevented from leaving conflict zones, the majority of displaced Syrians are women. Fleeing the war does not mean that they have escaped violence and degradation.

Women must pass through areas controlled by armed groups, negotiating checkpoints where rape and sexual assault are commonplace.

When they arrive in poorly-resourced camps, they face enormous difficulties in accessing basic services - particularly reproductive healthcare.

Displacement also amplifies the economic and security factors that drive early marriage, leaving girls even more vulnerable to this form of abuse, and seeing the rate of child marriage among Syrians in Jordan doubling between 2011 and 2012.

Recommended Read more Accepting refugee children into the UK is a dangerous strategy

Women who remain in conflict areas face their own particular set of threats. UN investigators recently reported that women are increasingly being targeted in kidnappings. Where fighters have failed to defeat their other factions militarily, they have instead abducted their opponents female relatives as a means to blackmail combatants into surrendering.

Much of Syria remains under the control of extremists like Isis and al-Nusra. The atrocities of these groups are well documented, but a more pernicious aspect of life under their rule is the repression that seeps into womens daily life.

Prior to the war, state secularism meant that women enjoyed a degree of personal freedom in their dress, but in extremist-controlled areas they now are forced to cover their faces. Even then women are not permitted to leave their homes without being escorted by a male relative. With thousands of men away fighting, wounded or killed, this sees many women effectively living under house arrest.

An estimated 250,000 Syrians have been killed in the war, the vast majority men. The slaughter has left thousands of women as head of their household, yet even with greater responsibilities falling on Syrian women they remain drastically underrepresented at the top table of diplomatic negotiations. When Syrian opposition groups discussed the peace process in Riyadh, only ten of 108 participants were women.

Talks in which women are underrepresented almost inevitably result in outcomes that do not take account of womens needs. The Riyadh conference recommended the creation of a 34-member High Negotiations Committee, which had only two places for women, and called for womens representation in transitional institutions to be just 25 per cent.

The failure to include women and take them seriously adds further injustice on Syrias women.

Hibaaq Osman is the founder and CEO of Karama, an NGO that seeks to end violence against women and promote womens participation across the Arab region. A member of UN Women's Global Civil Society Advisory Group, she has been named as one of the World's 500 Most Influential Muslims. 
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Will Sarah Palin, Mike Tyson and Hulk Hogan swing it for The Donald? Mr Trump, who has enjoyed a barnstorming (if silly and offensive) campaign, will be hoping so. Strange as it may seem on this side of the Atlantic, such endorsements only add to Mr Trumps appeal as an outsider, a rebel with a cause. As with so many of his apparently off-the-cuff gaffes, there may be more calculation in such Trumpery than meets the eye.

In any case, on 1 February the Republicans and the Democrats of Iowa will be voting for their choice for the nomination for the presidency. Iowa is, numerically, insignificant, but as the first major public election of the 2016 presidential contest, it finds itself once again in the crucible.

Recommended Read more How the party of Abraham Lincoln could end up with Trump

The signs are that this first round of a very long process will be polarising. Mr Trump has suffered little real damage among Republican loyalists for his insults and attacks on the vulnerable, the media and, indeed, Britain. Given his seven-point lead over the next placed candidate, Ted Cruz, it seems Mr Trump will be off to a solid start.

This is a remarkable achievement. Only a few months ago, Mr Trump was written off as a risible contender for leader of the free world, with his ridiculous hair and even more ridiculous policies, if we can dignify them with such a name. Almost out of cussedness, though, his own party has learned to like this authentic voice. He has long since overtaken the former favourite Jeb Bush.

Mr Bush has suffered from his family connections, rather than benefiting from them. Given the demographics of American elections, where the centre ground swing voters are increasingly the Hispanic community, the Republicans might do better to opt for Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, rather than a man who describes Mexicans as rapists.

This points to the problem with caucuses and primaries dominated by party activists: ordinary voters dont get a say. Of course, like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Mr Trump could win the nomination by pandering to the right but, in office, prove a more pragmatic leader than any would predict.

On the Democrat side, there is also some lurching: Iowa will not set Hillary Clinton off to a flying start. Bernie Sanders  virtually a Maoist by US standards  is only a few points behind her. Though most Americans may not have heard of Jeremy Corbyn, his victory in the Labour election potentially prefigures a similar leftist, anti-establishment insurgency.

Studiedly moderate, Ms Clinton seems to present a cautious business as usual brand. With close links to Democrat predecessors as wife, secretary of state and senator, she couldnt be more of a DC insider. Like Jeb Bush, she has a famous name that has proved a wasting asset. Dynastic politics, an inferior variety of establishment politics, is doubly unpopular.

Americans could even wind up with a Trump-Sanders contest. That would make for entertaining coverage, but leave many wondering what they did to end up so disenfranchised. The rest of the world may be a little bemused too.
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Recommended Read more Google has a spiritual obligation to pay as little tax as possible

When we founded the Pirate Party in Iceland in late 2012, none of us thought we would ever gain so much popularity as has been reflected in the polls for almost a year now. Many have asked me why do you think you are so popular?. Of course I can't possibly answer that, but I can reflect on what I hope people like about our work and core policy.

I hope people trust us because we don't take power seriously and have created a political platform where we work according to the circle of power instead of the pyramid of power. We don't have leaders, we rotate responsibility and try to select the most qualified person to take on each task. We have a digital voting system where any registered member can put forward a Pirate Party policy to be voting for or against among his Pirate peers.

I hope people trust us because we want to change the current system hardware through the implementation of a new constitution written by and for the people of Iceland in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008.

This is a crowdsourced, new, constitution, founded on transparency, civil rights and directly democracy. A new constitution that was drafted and given a democratic mandate to pass into law by a national referendum in October 2012. The previous government didn't have the strength to finish the job and the current government is simply ignoring the constitution and hoping it will become forgotten by the people of Iceland.

I hope people trust us because we want open governance on all levels, and open access to policy making. We want to make our democracy open, where people feel they have the right to be part of the co-creation of our society. We want to be the Robin Hood of governments, transferring the power from those at the top to the general public of Iceland. We want to ensure that the nation will be the guardians and owners of our resources. We want to get the best system analysts from around the world to help us reform the bureaucratic systems. We want to make Iceland into a save haven for the freedom of information and expression, and a reversed tax haven.

We will hold a national referendum on the issue of whether Iceland wants to carry on with its EU bid or not. We want most of all to figure out  with the nation of Iceland  how we can strengthen the democratic process.

We are looking into basic income like Finland is, but we hope most of all to draw from the wisdom of the masses in our work and policy implementation.

People in Iceland are sick of corruption and nepotism. The Icelandic Pirate Party will not be able to solve all of the ingrown problems in Iceland but it will certainly be able to offer new hardware, complete with a new set of rules based on how we operate as a collective community.

Birgitta Jonsdottir is founder and leader of Iceland's Pirate Party
Dalata has dipped into its warchest to buy the leases on four hotels in a deal worth 40m.

The Pat McCann-led firm said it agreed terms to take over the leasehold of the Gibson Hotel in Dublin, the Clarion Hotel in Cork, the Clarion in Limerick, and the Croydon Park Hotel in London.

The firm is also taking over the management of the Clarion Hotel in Liffey Valley in Dublin.

The deal copper-fastens Dalata's position as the dominant player in the Irish hotel market. Combined, the hotels add 1,071 bedrooms to its portfolio, which already operates over 6,500 rooms in Ireland alone. It has access to another 130m for more deals as they come up.

In a statement, the company said underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the four hotels where it was taking over the leases is expected to be about 4.1m.

The four leasehold hotels will be rebranded as Clayton Hotels almost immediately, and the group plans to invest 14m over the next two years in refurbishing the hotels in Cork, Limerick and Croydon.

Dalata deputy chief executive and head of business development & finance Dermot Crowley said the company was "very excited about the opportunity to secure the leasehold interests of these four hotels and the contract to manage Clarion Liffey Valley Hotel".

"This transaction gives Dalata a further 960 rooms in the cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick. All three cities are experiencing strong RevPar (revenue per average room) growth in the recovering Irish economy. The transaction also allows us to further grow our portfolio in the UK with the addition of 211 rooms in Croydon.

"The addition of these hotels continues the rapid growth of the Clayton brand in Ireland and the UK where on rebranding we will have 18 Clayton hotels," he said. Dalata believes it can drive revenue RevPar - a key metric for hotel profitability - through its own management style.

Shares in Dalata jumped on the back of the deal, sending the stock up 1.7pc to 4.88 even as the wider market fell sharply.

The shares are up more than 70pc over the past year.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that another referendum on the powers of Oireachtas inquiries should be considered, as the Banking Inquiry came under fire in the Dail.

The Inquiry was branded "a fiasco" and "a waste of time" by Independent TD Shane Ross - as it was not permitted to make findings of fact against any individuals.

The Inquiry's investigative abilities were limited after a proposal to beef up the powers of Oireachtas committees was rejected by the people in 2011.

Now Mr Kenny has said that another referendum should be considered.

Attending an event at the Irish Farmers' Association's Dublin headquarters, he was asked by reporters if the findings of the Inquiry were weak.

"I don't accept that," Mr Kenny said. "I do accept that it was limited and constrained in what the members could do and they did a great deal of work on it."

He added: "It should be considered that we might have a future referendum again on that matter."

Mr Kenny said he hoped such an inquiry will never have to be carried out again.

However, he said that politicians who serve on such committees would have had the "constitutional and legal authority to carry out full and investigative inquiries" if the 2011 referendum had been carried.

"So I think that is an issue I'll reflect on," he added.

Deputy Ross argued in the Dail that the Inquiry was "utterly hamstrung" by its parameters forbidding findings of fact against any individuals.

Bankers are "rejoicing because this report could not find any fault with them," he said.

"The same is true of the developers, the auditors, the consultants and, indeed, individually, the regulators."

He said that Jean-Claude Trichet was "rightly" the "fall guy" but added that his "name is in lights" because "the others could not be touched". He branded the report "a fiasco, a waste of time and very difficult for many of us to accept".

Constraints

Inquiry member and Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty - who refused to sign the final report - blames the "constraints" it was under for analysis he says is lacking in the report.

"This is unacceptable and a fundamental failing," he said.

Another member, John Paul Phelan of Fine Gael, said it was "extremely frustrating" when witnesses gave differing versions of events and the Inquiry didn't have the power to "adjudicate on who was right or wrong".

Labour's Pat Rabbitte said he believes that a parliament that doesn't have the right of inquiry by committee "is a diminished parliament".
The Minister for Finance has said he believes the late Brian Lenihan "was threatened" by former President of the European Central Bank, Jean Claude Trichet, that the ECB would not provide liquidity assistance to Ireland's banks, if the Irish government had burned European bondholders during the financial crisis.

Michael Noonan reiterated he was "not threatened" by Trichet, despite claims by Social Democrats TD Stephen Donnelly that the current finance minister misled the Dail when he said four years ago that no threat was made by the ECB.

"I did see correspondence where (Trichet) did seem to be threatening Brian Lenihan with pulling back emergency liquidity assistance to the banks if the bonds were burned back in 2010," Mr Noonan said.

"I presumed it was that, that caused the (banking) committee of inquiry to say that he threatened, but he didn't threaten me," Mr Noonan added.

The Limerick TD hit back at Deputy Donnelly who called for Mr Noonan's resignation over the matter last Wednesday.

"Stephen Donnelly is a poor attendee in the Dail," Mr Noonan said.

"And, he doesn't attend committees, so, he doesn't have a full picture of what goes on quite frequently," he added.

The Banking Inquiry found that the ECB had explicitly threatened to cut off funding for Irish banks if bondholders were burned.

Moving to clarify his remarks to the Dail four years ago, Mr Noonan said: "What I said in the Dail, I said again when I gave four hours of evidence before the banking inquiry...Mr Trichet did not threaten me."

"If Mr Trichet, as he did say, said 'a bomb will go off in Dublin' - that's a prediction.

"If, on the other hand, if Mr Trichet said that the European Central Bank will make sure that a bomb goes off in Dublin - that's a threat," Mr Noonan added.

"(Trichet) was predicting that, if we burned the bondholders, that the international markets would react in a way which would be of high risk to Ireland, and high risk to the financial services industry in Dublin, and high risk to the ability of the bank to give us ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance), but he made no specific threat to me," he further explained.

Mr Noonan said the department of finance has predicted growth rates significantly lower than what has been assumed by the Central Bank.

He said this would mean there would be money in the government coffers to help the country cope if there was another financial hit.

"We're working on an assumption of growth rates of between 3-3.5pc. That's significantly below what the Central Bank predicted last week, so the forecasts are quiet modest."

"We're not going to spend it all because there could be shocks."

Minister Noonan added: "We know there are some external risks and there are some internal risks. So rather than committing to spend everything, we want to put about a quarter of what's available for a rainy day fund."
Irish children are watching more than four hours of TV and video content per day on average, according to a new study.

The survey of about 300 adults with children aged 14 and under was conducted by Core Media and Ignite Research in November. It found that children aged 14 and under watched an average of 122 minutes of traditional TV per day in Ireland in 2015. However, they were also topping up their daily viewing with an additional two hours of video online via laptops, tablets and smartphones.

This brought their combined total to over four hours a day. According to a recent report by Early Childhood Ireland, the maximum leisure screen time for children over the age of two should be no more than two hours a day.

Although there are several studies showing how much television Irish children consume, this is usually focused exclusively on traditional television consumption. The amount of traditional television consumed by children actually marks a slight decline on the previous year. TV ratings body Television Audience Measurement Ireland found in 2014 that Irish children watched about 150 minutes of TV a day.

However, the inclusion of online viewing means that Irish children are spending more time than previously estimated watching video content.

This further increases at weekends, when children's daily TV and video viewing time jumps to five and-a-half hours.

The survey also shows that 39pc of parents are concerned that their children watch too much TV and video content while just over half would prefer if their children watched less TV and video content. Parents are less enthusiastic about their children watching content online rather than traditional TV content, with just 17pc of parents preferring their children to watch video online.

Nick Fletcher, broadcast director at Core Media, said it has been known "for some time" that television viewing for children exceeds the recommended amount.

He said: "[However], what we didn't know until now is the combined volume of TV and online content that Irish kids are consuming on a daily basis - a total of four hours viewing per day is a hugely worrying statistic."

He added: "One key point that parents made was that online video was suitable as long as it was supervised.

"However, with the high consumption figures we are seeing it is going to be very difficult for parents to monitor everything their children watch online.

This raises the question about whether online publishers should be doing more themselves to monitor children's ability to find inappropriate content.''

Across all age groups YouTube is the most popular platform for viewing online content, with 80pc of parents ranking it the most popular site for their children. Parents had significant concerns about the site however, with 32pc saying YouTube wasn't suitable for their children and a further 42pc saying YouTube's content was too commercial.

The highest-rated show of the year in 2015 for children was The Late Late Toy Show with 390,000 children - a rating of 53.8pc - tuning in.

The research also highlighted gender differences in viewing habits among children. Boys preferred cartoon-based programmes such as 'Scooby Doo' while girls tended to favour live action shows such as 'The Next Step'.
Ireland will "actively engage" in talks on new EU corporate tax laws as long as they don't go any further than international standards.

The European Commission yesterday tabled a raft of proposals to close loopholes allowing multinationals to shave up to 70bn from annual tax bills.

The Department of Finance said it "notes" the publication of the draft laws, which contain "a number of proposals aimed at ensuring fair and efficient taxation within the EU".

The draft rules will have to be approved by all 28 EU governments and examined by the European Parliament before becoming law, in 2018 at the earliest. The move follows the high-profile 'Luxleaks' scandal in 2014, when confidential tax deals between Luxembourg and over 300 multinationals were made public.

The EU proposals build on voluntary standards drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to combat "base erosion and profit shifting" (Beps).

However, the EU's rules go further by introducing a "switchover rule" to curb tax exemptions on dividends and capital gains, and an "exit tax" for companies trying to shift high-value assets like patents to lower tax countries.

The EU also wants to beef up an OECD requirement for countries to share profit and tax information about multinationals operating on their territories, making it mandatory and automatic. "The priority for Ireland is to ensure that the EU approach to implementing Beps and tackling aggressive tax planning is consistent with the consensus reached at the OECD," said a spokesperson for the Department of Finance.

Most important for Ireland will be an "interest limitation" to discourage large groups from shifting profits around via inter-company loans and a "controlled foreign company" rule on how to tax income from subsidiaries outside the EU.

There is also a rule to end "hybrid mismatches" that allow companies to exploit differences in the tax treatment of certain income across countries, and a general anti-abuse clause to catch any tax loopholes that might crop up further down the line. Ireland already has both in place.

The Commission also wants the EU draw up a blacklist of foreign tax havens.

EU tax chief Pierre Moscovici said that he doesn't expect the Government here to have any reservations about the new rules given its enthusiasm for the OECD standards.

"I have had several occasions to emphasise how Ireland is implementing Beps measures now, and the way they're doing it is quite remarkable, and I can't see any reservations arising," Mr Moscovici told reporters in Brussels yesterday.

The rules do not affect Ireland's 12.5pc corporate tax rate - joint second-lowest in the EU, behind Bulgaria and the same as Cyprus - which has come in for criticism in Brussels circles, particularly since the crisis.

"Our idea is certainly not to impose any kind of corporate tax rate at the national level," Mr Moscovici said.

"And we are not going to tell this or that country, you cannot any more have, let's say, 12.5pc - I say that without any purpose - tomorrow," he added.
The new owners of the former Solas Bar on Wexford Street in Dublin have spent 5m on a string of acquisitions.

The 2.4m paid for Solas, now renamed The Jar, was the biggest outlay by Global Village One, a fund backed by Irish firm Kilcullen Kapital Partners.

In Waterford the fund bought the Seanachai Pub & Restaurant and Global Village also acquired a majority stake in two Irish bar-restaurants located in Prague in the Czech Republic.

The largest deal was for the former Solas Bar, inset, where a further 1m was invested in a complete refurbishment. The investment was made in partnership with the Loyola Group, led by Stephen Cooney and Brian O'Malley and is supported by AIB Corporate Banking.

Waterford's Seanachai Pub & Restaurant, meanwhile, has operated since at least 1845 and hosted both Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins.

Kilcullen's chief executive, Colm O'Reilly, said the company's investments are part of "a broader strategy in the hospitality, casual dining and drinks industry sectors."

He added: "The fashionable funds tend to focus on emerging areas such as the technology sector, while in contrast the hospitality sector has been untapped and can be overlooked by traditional providers of capital."

He said they believed this "can result in excellent investor returns".
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan with Fionnan Sheahan, Editor of the Irish Independent, at the Department of Finance, Merrion Street, Dublin. Photo: Damien Eagers

It was nothing to do with formulating Fine Gael economic policy for the General Election. Honest.

But the Minister of Finance admits he was studying Thatcherite policy over the Christmas period.

Michael Noonan has an innocent explanation for 'Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, Volume 2' by Charles Moore being on his bedside table.

The tome was recommended to him as there's a chapter about the negotiations on the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985.

Noonan was Minister for Justice in Garret FitzGerald's government at the time, so he was involved in the process and met Thatcher and then Northern Secretary Tom King.

"I heard there was a lot of material in it where civil servants spoke freely for the first time. I haven't got to that part of the book yet. I'm just coming out of the miner's strike at the moment, having left the Falklands War behind me," he says.

His holiday season was disturbed by a stint in hospital in Dublin after undergoing surgery for fluid in the chest area. Noonan says the consultant described his condition as the "nearest thing to pneumonia".

"I probably laid low longer than I needed to. But I did take the opportunity of having a rest."

The 72-year-old says he has recovered to run again for the General Election.

"I'm feeling good again. I'm up for it."

The Anglo-Irish Agreement is a reminder of Noonan's longevity in politics.

The Limerick TD has been in politics since 1974 when he was elected to Limerick County Council and he has been a TD since May 1981.

The carve-up of the constituency with his running mate Kieran O'Donnell looms and Noonan lists off areas in the city and county where he'll be canvassing.

He has served in government on three occasions as Justice, Industry, Health and more recently Finance Minister. Of course, he also had his ill-fated term as leader of Fine Gael in the 2002 general election.

"I've been up and down. I've had very successful periods and I've had very difficult periods."

He says he prefers to look ahead. This time around, Fine Gael plans to return to government for the first time.

The rising economic fortunes have resulted in comparisons with 1997, but he rejects the notion Fine Gael ministers are influenced by that campaign when Fianna Fail put more emphasis on straightforward tax cuts - akin to his party's blunt pledge to abolish the USC.

"When we talk about '97, among those who were there now, we kind of say to each other, it was one we should have won. But we didn't, you know. And we say, we're not going to let it slip this time."

Part of the plan is the simple message to the voters to keep the recovery going. Noonan is an author of the three-step plan, which the public will be hearing a lot about in the coming weeks.

In a nutshell, it's about creating more jobs, making work pay more and using economic growth for tax cuts and spending increases.

A new element of the equation is a safety net in the event of things not going according to plan. If the economy is actually overheating, the funds will simply be put towards reducing the national debt.

"If there is a shock, externally or internally, we'll have a contingency fund which we will deploy," he says.

Over the course of the next five years, Noonan says there'll be 10bn available for extra spending and tax cuts.

Out of this pot has to come the cost of abolishing the USC and the 10,000 extra public sector workers the Taoiseach promised last week.

Now Noonan is putting a new category on the table. He's planning to set aside a quarter of the extra resources available to the next government into a 'rainy day fund'.

The move means Fine Gael will not be committing every last euro from predicted economic growth into tax cuts and public spending increases.

The measure is aimed at moving away from the economic philosophy of 'what we have, we spend'.

Instead, the party will pledge to set aside up to 2.5bn of funds, which won't be allocated for any specific promises.

Fine Gael's economic plan will set out the details of tax and spending commitments in detail, along with the new fund.

"Our Long Term Economic Plan will leave a quarter of the available fiscal space unallocated as a 'Contingency and Stability Reserve'.

"The reserve will be a fiscal buffer against unexpected shocks, and will be allocated as part of the annual budgetary process to either additional deficit reduction or to additional budgetary measures, consistent with the needs of economic and fiscal stability, and informed by the advice of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council," he said.

Fine Gael's plan will also be targeted at attacking Fianna Fail's past and present economic policies.

Noonan says EU expenditure rules ensure commitments are sustainable by capping the growth of budgetary promises at below the long-term growth of the economy.

He says the rules limit new budgetary commitments to 10-12bn over the five years from 2017 to 2021.

He points out this is half of the budgetary expansion in the last five budgets in the years which preceded the crash introduced by the Fianna Fail-led government.

Fianna Fail has its own rainy day fund, for "any further windfall gains from Corporation Tax and other unexpected revenues".

Fine Gael says its plan isn't about windfalls, which EU rules wouldn't allow to be spent anyway. Instead, they're looking at the basic resources coming from predicted levels of economic growth.

Noonan says part of the problem with the arrival into office in 2011 was that the economy needed a stimulus, but the Coalition had to cut spending and raise taxes.

"If you are trying to do counter-cyclical management of the economy, you need resources to do it. So that is the idea of the fund," he says.

The idea of the buffer is to both avoid pouring more fuel on the fire and have a reserve in place, if needed.

His priority will be to put it into building projects.

"If there is no shock and things are running strongly, I would be prepared if I was there to allocate to the investment in infrastructure."

Noonan says his economic plans are based on an economy growing at between 3 and 3.5pc from 2017 to 2021.

Central Bank projections suggest a growth rate of 4.8pc in 2016 and 4.3pc in 2017.

"Already the Central bank is pitching well above the number we are putting as our average."

"And then of course we have the other rule on expenditure that we are not going to spend more than the average growth rate of the economy over the period.

"So we are being very prudent, very prudent," he says.

The minister says the Coalition has broadened the tax base, so there is no reliance on one sector, such as construction. On top of that are the fiscal rules.

He says the buffer is an extension of these plans.

"We want to get away from the boom and bust model of the economy," he added.

Noonan has put his name forward as Minister for Finance in the next term, but he says this is up to the Taoiseach, if the party is returned.

"All I am saying is I am available to serve again in Finance."

He argues the division of the department into Finance and Public Expenditure should remain in place until the economy has fully recovered.

He wants to see "more competition in the banking sector" and new sources of funds for mortgages and lending to small business.

The other area for improvement is reform of the personal tax system, flowing from the abolition of the USC.

Changes to inheritance taxes and a "more benign" Capital Gains Tax regime for people who invest in start-up businesses are also on the agenda.

Back to his aforementioned period as Minister for Justice in the 1980s. Noonan famously revealed the tapping of journalists' phones by Charlie Haughey's administration.

The recent furore over the accessing of journalists' phones by the Garda watchdog, GSOC, and Garda access of phones, brings back memories of legislation he had to pass in the 1980s.

Although he doesn't feel it's the same, the central issue is around judicial scrutiny.

"I understand the net point at the minute is the judge looks at the decisions retrospectively. Now if he was actively involved in advance - it might be impossible, but there must be some way of doing it that is satisfactory," he recommends.
Clamping down on global corporate tax avoidance has become the rage of late. Outraged politicians from the US and Europe, feeling the pressure from austerity-battered voters, have backed plans to close off loopholes that allow big business to legally wangle their way out of paying their fair share.

The days of loopholes are numbered, said EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici.

Don't count on it.

The suite of measures announced by the EU yesterday, which essentially proposes making elements of the OECD's BEPs project legally binding, have an impressive air about them.

Companies would be deterred from shifting their profits from parent companies to subsidiaries in low or no tax countries; loopholes that allow companies to use dividends or capital gains to skip taxation would be closed; and, in a bid to increase transparency, corporations will have to reveal their taxes, profits, revenues and other financial data to the authorities in all countries where they operate.

There's some understandable uncertainty about what the implications may be for companies as they adjust to the new reality.

Businesses have warned that the measures could hurt competitiveness and deter investment, amid fears that the EU is acting as a lone front-runner, in the words of one commentator, on the BEPs measures.

But what we can say with some certainty is that despite the efforts, this will not end the practice of big business trying hard to find ways to minimise their tax bill.

How could they?

A conservative estimate by the OECD of the amount of untaxed money moved by companies into tax havens is $100bn to $240bn annually.

Research shows that aggressive tax planning costs the EU between 50bn-70bn in lost revenue a year.

There'll always be advisers on the sidelines intent on devising different ways to limit a company's tax exposure.

A case in point is the fact that just this week, Johnson Controls, a US maker of car batteries and heating and ventilation equipment, agreed to buy Irish-based Tyco International in a $16.5bn deal that will ultimately lower the former's tax bill.

By moving its headquarters to Cork, Johnson Controls would become the latest major US company to carry out a so-called 'tax-inversion', in which a US company escapes high Unites States taxes by reincorporating abroad.

Just over a month after the BEPs process was unveiled in October, drugs giant Pfizer struck a record-breaking $160bn deal to buy Allergan that would cut its global tax bill by moving its headquarters to Ireland.

That was the largest inversion deal so far.

Inversions, while entirely legal, are essentially a form of tax avoidance and a two-fingered salute to the tax authorities.

There are positives, however, in the current climate.

Slick accounting practices may continue, but a spotlight has been shone on them.

As a result of years of austerity, tax paid by major corporations is a big political issue.

The EU and OECD measures are welcome, even if their critics argue they fall short and aren't transparent enough.

Big business will likely find it more difficult to shelter profits.

Ireland is keen to highlight the fact that it is fully behind the moves, scrapping the 'Double Irish' and being one of the first to adopt the country-by-country reporting mechanism.

The Irish Tax Institute commented yesterday that change is on the way and that multinationals will be watching the measures very closely.

Perhaps so.

But that doesn't mean they won't be trying to find ways around them.
Lord Francis Maude at the seminar held by UK Trade & Investment in partnership with PwC. Photo: Iain White/Fennell Photography

The UK's Trade and Investment Minister called for calm surrounding the debate on Britain's EU referendum during a visit to Dublin yesterday.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Lord Francis Maude said the issue barely came up when he spoke with investors at a breakfast briefing yesterday organised by accountancy group PwC.

British Prime Minister David Cameron will meet European Council President Donald Tusk in London on Sunday, as officials prepare to reveal details of reform negotiations next week.

The meeting will follow Mr Cameron's talks in Brussels today with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Lord Maude said the sooner the reform package is agreed and Mr Cameron can present it to the British people, "then the sooner we can get on and have it and get it done".

But he said the issue comes up "less than you think" when he's talking to investors.

"I did a breakfast with a bunch of tech companies who are interested in doing stuff in the UK, and it barely came up.

"I don't think it's the most important thing," he said.

"People know that the UK isn't suddenly going to be in the euro, it isn't suddenly going to be in Schengen.

"There are big chunks of what the EU does that Britain isn't part of, and isn't going to be part of, so we just need to be a bit calmer about it all."

Asked if he believed the negative commentary about a potential British exit was overblown, he said he doesn't "hear catastrophe merchants around the place".

"People who argue that it would be catastrophic to leave are probably over stating it. Equally those who claim that it would be a massive liberation are overstating it, because, assuming we need to be part of the single market, you're not suddenly going to lose the burdens and contributions that come with that."

Lord Maude said that if there was a vote to withdraw, it would be "very odd" that given the scale of Britain's economy and its trading relationship with the EU, that there wouldn't be some "sensible arrangement" that would allow Britain to remain in the single market.

Separately, the minister said there needs to be more joint trade missions involving the UK and Ireland.

The first mission, to the Singapore Air Show, took place in 2014 following on from agreement reached in Downing Street in 2012 between Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Mr Cameron.

There are currently no concrete plans for a second, Lord Maude said.
A man checks the Apple Music streaming site using his Apple Inc. iPhone 6s.

What's happening with Apple's tax situation in Ireland?

Apple and Ireland are currently waiting for the European Commission to issue a verdict on whether Apple has paid too little tax in Ireland based over a 10-year period. The verdict is expected in weeks.

What will happen?

We don't know, but Brussels has handed down some key judgments against other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, Belgium has been ordered to recover 700m from over 30 companies adjudged to have received illegal state aid via tax breaks. Separately, Apple has been in a settling mood in other European countries, agreeing to pay 318m to Italian tax authorities to help resolve a tax dispute there.

Why is the focus now shifting to Ireland?

Because this is where Apple's international corporate structure is based and where the bulk of its revenue and profit is initially assessed.

What happens if the decision goes against Apple?

Apple may have to pay Ireland a lot of back taxes, potentially into the billions. The actual case is against Ireland, not Apple. But Apple would clearly be the one hit hardest.

How much money are we talking about?

Estimates range from 200m to over 7bn. For instance, Bloomberg has estimated that some 60bn of gross profit could be counted, resulting in over 7bn to be reclaimed. Other estimates predict much lower sums, arguing that such cases in illegal state aid are typically in the millions, rather than in the billions.

If Ireland stands to gain millions or billions in back taxes, why is it siding with Apple against Brussels?

Because it's worried about its reputation among multinational companies, which employ 200,000 people here and are responsible for the lion's share of Irish exports.

So the Government has said that if the Commission comes down against Apple, it will appeal.

Does Europe have the power to do this?

Probably. It cannot dictate tax rates to Ireland. But it can adjudicate on whether Ireland gave Apple illegal state aid through the form of lower tax arrangements.

This distinction isn't fully accepted by Ireland, which insists that Europe doesn't have the legal competency to probe that far into the workings of our tax arrangements.

Ireland argues, for example, that letters of clarification between the Revenue and Apple are part of everyday tax process and aren't tantamount to government policy.

Such letters are right at the heart of the matter. Apple is adamant that it has done nothing but obey Irish tax law at all times.

Is Apple the only company in Brussels' crosshairs?

No. The Commission has just announced new rules allowing countries to tax multinationals at source. This could have major ramifications for Facebook, which has just announced a 1bn quarterly profit, and Google, which is under pressure after cutting a 165m UK tax deal.
Amarenco has already received planning permission for a project in Waterford. Photo: Getty Images

Energy firm Amarenco Solar is to create 10 jobs after it relocated its international headquarters from Dublin to Cork.

The company, headed by former Bord Gais chief John Mullins, is looking to develop 40 solar power projects around Ireland. It said it will hire staff for business development, administration, and tech support.

The company has already received planning permission for a project in Waterford. It is awaiting planning permission from Cork County Council for six projects in the county.

Mr Mullins was bullish on the business, and expects more growth in the future.

"After the forthcoming General Election, the sector will be expecting the incoming government to sanction supports for Solar PV.

"This will provide great encouragement to the sector and go a long way towards Ireland's commitments in carbon reduction and the avoidance of fines from Europe in 2020", he said.
Sky, the British-based TV and telecoms company, has seen its revenue rise by 5pc in the first six months of its financial year, bringing its total haul in during the period up to 5.17bn (7.5bn).

In the company's interim results released to the Irish Stock Exchange this morning, it was revealed that Sky's EBITDA also grew, rising by 8pc up to 1bn.

In the months stretching from October to the end of December, Sky said that it gained another 337,000 new customers across Ireland and the UK, the highest quarterly customer growth in ten years.

The firm's also reported its highest-ever first-half operating profit. Operating profits rose 12pc up to 747m.

Speaking in the trading update this morning, Sky's group chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, said: "We have had another very strong half as we continue to transform Sky, broadening our business and expanding into new markets and customer segments. This strategy is delivering today and opening up significant growth opportunities for the future. We are pursuing those opportunities with energy and purpose.

"Today's results show that our approach is working and customers are responding in record numbers. Over 337,000 new customers joined Sky in the second quarter and we sold 1.1 million extra paid-for products. This has delivered strong financial performance with revenue growth of 5pc, a 12pc increase in operating profit and 10pc growth in earnings per share," Mr Darroch said.

The interim dividend rose to 12.6p per share.

The company also announced that Nicholas Ferguson CBE is to step down as the firm's chairman and as a director after 12 years on the board.

The role of chairman will be filled by media giant Rupert Murdoch's son, James Murdoch.

Speaking about Mr Ferguson stepping down and Mr Murdoch's appointment, Mr Darroch said: "The entire Board offers its warmest thanks to Nick for his leadership as chairman and the major contribution he has made to Sky over many years.

"We're delighted that James Murdoch has agreed to step into the role of chairman. James' deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Sky's ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future."
In today's world of on-demand services and non-stop connectivity, a seven-hour flight across the Atlantic can feel interminable.

But a new design for a luxury business jet could get you from London to New York in 11 minutes  and from New York to Sydney in half an hour.

The Antipode is a 10-seater aircraft that would be able to travel at 12,427 miles per hour.

The concept is classed as Mach 24  which means it travels 24 times faster than the speed of sound, 12 times faster than Concorde and one Mach number below re-entry speed.

Charles Bombardier, the Canadian inventor, released a concept design last year for the Skreemr, a jet that would be able to fly at Mach 10.

Travelling at 7,673 miles per hour, the 75-seater Skreemr would get from the UK to the east coast the US in around 30 minutes.

"During time-sensitive crises, it would transport highly ranked officials across the globe in a matter of hours."

Charles Bombardier

However, Mr Bombardier confessed his concerns that materials "able to withstand the heat, pressure and structural stress" of the aircraft had not yet been invented.

The sonic boom  the noise made when breaking the sound barrier  would also be a problem and is seen as one of the main contributors to the failure of Concorde.

But Joseph Hazeltine, an aerospace engineer at Wyle, which works with NASA among others, approached Mr Bombardier with a solution to these problems, called "long penetration mode" or LPM.

The idea is that a nozzle on the Antipode's nose would suck in air, creating counter-flowing jets of air over the surface of the plane, which would cool down the aircraft and muffle the sonic boom.

The Antipode would take off using the force of rocket boosters attached to its wings, which would detach from the aircraft at 40,000ft when the jet had reached Mach 5.

The aircrafts onboard computer would then ignite its supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engine and accelerate up to Mach 24 at 40,000ft.

The plane's wings would have enough lift to glide and land on a standard 6,000ft runway, Mr Bombardier said.

Despite the advances made from the Skreemr to the Antipode, several problems remain  not least that a scramjet engine has yet to be developed.

And Mr Bombardier expects that each plane could cost well over $150m (105m) to build.

"The Antipode could be used as business or military aircraft to transport two highly ranked officials across the globe (up to 20,000km) in less than an hour," Mr Bombardier said.

"During time-sensitive crises, it would transport highly ranked officials across the globe in a matter of hours."

The race for speedier air travel has taken off since the Concorde was grounded in 2003.

Airbus recently filed for a patent for a supersonic jet that could cut the flight time from London to New York to one hour, while other aviation companies such as Spike and Aerion are working on similar developments.

Last year, Nasa pledged $2.3m in funding for research into supersonic flight.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Traders work at their desks in front of the German share price index, DAX board, at the stock exchange in Frankfurt. Photo: Reuters

IRISH shares slumped yesterday, as markets across Europe continued to endure the worst start to a year since 2008.

By the close in Dublin the ISEQ Overall Index had dropped 2.01pc, or 127.17 points, to close at 6,214.79.

The index has now fallen more than 8pc in the month so far.

AIB continued to swing wildly on weak volume. The 99pc State-owned lender tumbled 10.7pc to 4.81 a day after rising almost 12pc.

Smurfit Kappa Group fell 4.3pc to hit 20. The paper and packaging giant is down 15pc since New Year's Day.

Building materials giant CRH slid 3.6pc to close at 23.57 in line with its peers across the world on what was a difficult day for the construction-related sector.

Ryanair gave up 3.5pc to reach 13.37. The airline said on Wednesday that the Paris attacks had hit bookings.

There was good news elsewhere on the market, however. Hotels firm Dalata jumped 3.2pc to 4.95 after it signed terms to buy the lease on four hotels.

Bookmaker Paddy Power rose 2.3pc to 135.80 - another all-time high for the firm. The company is seeing strong buying ahead of its merger with UK rival Betfair which will close next week. The new firm will then join the FTSE 100 Index.

There was red ink across Europe yesterday. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 1.6pc while the FTSE 100 was off 1pc. The Cac40 in Paris lose 1.3pc while Germany's Dax Index dropped 2.4pc.

"Risk appetite is still very fragile," said William Hobbs, head of investment strategy at Barclays wealth-management in London. "Right now, it's a matter of guilty till proven innocent in terms of whether or not the world is on the cusp of the next downturn."
A young doctor will be hoping he has the perfect prescription to stay in the Voice of Ireland this weekend.

Junior doctor Emmett Daly, who graduated from UCC in 2012, will fight for his place in the RTE competition as he takes to the Helix this Sunday.

However, the talented 26-year-old, who's a locum in Bon Secours in Glasnevin, has had to overcome huge hurdles in order to take to the stage in DCU.

"The Voice of Ireland really represents two different opportunities for me. As well as the singing, it also represented the chance to overcome a lack of confidence that I've had from when I was very young," he told the Herald.

"I'm on the show to say, 'There's no one face to mental health' and if I can shed any form of light on that, I'd be delighted."

He revealed how he has battled depression and social phobias from the age of 12 and, despite his love of music, he has always found performing in public a huge challenge.

"When I started secondary school, I started a singing class but I dropped out because I couldn't even read in front of my fellow students," he continued.

"Then I went to UCC and it's very proactive about mental health awareness. I did a public speaking workshop for three weeks and entered my first singing competition after that.

He said he felt a particular connection with show judge Bressie, given all his work on the issue of mental health.

He was naturally hoping that he'd be the one that turned around for him during his blind audition.

"I really admire him. I follow his blog A Lust for Life and I think he's fantastic, all the work that he's done in this area," he added.

"I still struggle with issues occasionally and I don't think it's something that you can fully cure but the important thing is not to isolate yourself and also to seek help if you really need it."

Video of the Day

He managed to put all his nerves aside to perform Broken Wings by Mr Mister on the hit RTE competition and he said the experience was amazing.

He was supported at the Helix by his Brazilian boyfriend Daniel Castro and said he's still in touch with some of the people he met on the day.
ANGLO Irish Bank started calling "skittish" customers after the bank had "15 significant withdrawals in three days" following the so-called St Patrick's Day massacre when the bank's share price fell significantly, a trial has heard.

The phone calls were to be made by the Irish bank's corporate funding desk in late March 2008, just days before Anglo was due to post its half-year results, and were revealed in a conference call played to the jury this morning.

Anglo's former Director of Treasury, Matt Cullen, was continuing to give evidence in the trial of former Anglo executives John Bowe (52), from Glasnevin, Dublin, and William McAteer (65), of Greenrath, Tipperary town, Co Tipperary; and former IL&P executives Denis Casey (56), of Raheny, and Peter Fitzpatrick (63), of Malahide, both Dublin.

They have denied conspiring to mislead existing and potential investors, lenders and depositors by engaging in transactions between Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent (IL&P) and Irish Life Assurance to make Anglo appear 7.2bn better off than it was.

In the recording played to the jury, Mr Cullen is heard talking about a proposal to complete a "back to back" transaction with IL&P.

"Look, we will give them half a billion and they will give it back in the name of the asset manager", he is recorded as saying in the conference call which included Mr Bowe and Peter Fitzgerald, Anglo's Director of Corporate and Retail Treasury.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Former Anglo finance director Willie McAteer Former Anglo executive Denis Casey. Pic:Mark Condren Former Anglo Irish head of capital markets John Bowe Former director of finance of Irish Life and Permanent Peter Fitzpatrick. Photo: Courtpix / Facebook

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Mr Cullen also suggests that Anglo CEO David Drumm should call IL&P and tell them that the transaction is appreciated.

Mr Cullen further says that IL&P should be asked if they would do more.

"Only issue from a regulator point of view, and the regulator is more or less, you know, saying I'm not looking", Mr Bowe is recorded as saying.

The conference call which took place on March 25, 2008 was played to the jury just before lunch.

Mr Cullen spent most of the morning going through a series of emails sent amongst Anglo staff between May and September 2008.

The emails contain a series of funding target reports, which were circulated amongst senior Anglo staff, prior to a weekly Friday planning meeting in Drumm's office.

The emails highlight the state of the funding initiatives which staff were asked to explore in reparation for Anglo's year end in September 2008.

The emails and the funding target reports show that from an initial number of 29, there were only three potential funding initiatives by September 16, 2008. The funding initiatives were 6bn from IL&P, some 500 million from Merrill and 200 from 'repo'.

Mr Cullen previously said the executive directors of the bank were aware of the purpose of the IL&P transactions and he assumed the board was also aware.

The scheme involved money being transferred by Anglo to IL&P. It would then be put back on deposit with Anglo by Irish Life Assurance so it would appear in Anglo's accounts as a corporate deposit.

Non-bank, or corporate, deposits have a greater value from the point of view of the market as they were considered "stickier" or more secure, the trial has heard.

The trial continues.
A man ordered his pit bull terrier to attack three gardai before stabbing them, a court has heard.

The vicious attack saw the dog bite a garda's arm "to the bone" after the man shouted "Attack, Chico!" to his pet.

The same officer was left with facial scarring following the attack during which he attempted to restrain the knife-wielding attacker.

Details of the vicious attack were outlined before Dundalk Circuit Court yesterday.

Keith Plummer (40), with an address at Sunhill, Termonfeckin, Co Louth, was jailed for three and a half years for the attack, which occurred last May.

Two gardai were bitten, with one sustaining a serious arm injury from which he has not recovered, and facial scarring.

Plummer, who had a knife, also lunged at the three gardai, injuring them all.

He admitted assault causing harm as well as cultivating cannabis and possession of a knife.

The court heard he ordered the dog to attack after the gardai got into his then home as they executed a search warrant.

When they arrived and tried to get the door open, Plummer shouted that somebody must have "ratted" on him, Judge Michael O'Shea was told.

Outside the house there was a strong smell of cannabis.

When the officers managed to force the door, Plummer produced a knife with a six-inch blade. The first garda went to restrain him and Plummer shouted: "Attack, Chico!"

The dog bit the officer on the arm. The dog's teeth went through to the bone, and he was forced to let go of Plummer to get the dog off him.

Plummer also stabbed the garda, leaving him with a scar on his face and wrist.

The second officer used pepper spray to restrain Plummer, but was bitten on the leg and stabbed in the knee. The third garda was stabbed in the hand and suffered an injury to his Achilles tendon.

All three officers attended counselling. Judge O'Shea said the assaults were vicious and imposed three-and-a-half-year terms for each one.

It is understood the dog was destroyed after the incident.
A hospital has apologised in the High Court to a couple whose baby son died there nine years ago.

Dylan Franks died in the operating theatre in the Midlands Regional, Portlaoise, not long after his birth on March 6, 2007.

His parents, Aidan and Elsie Franks, of Scart, Roscrea, Co Tipperary, settled their action against the HSE over the death of their baby and also for nervous shock.

The terms of the settlement are confidential. Liability was admitted in April 2014.

The court heard a huge distress for the parents was the the fact that, at his inquest, HSE witnesses stated the cause of his death was chronic utero placental insufficiency.

As a result, Dylan's mother thought she was responsible because she had smoked during her pregnancy.

In the apology to court, the hospital accepted responsibility for its failings.

"We wish to express our sincere apologies for the failings which caused Dylan's death," the apology stated.

"The hospital accepts responsibility for these failings which should not have happened".

It also "sincerely regrets the tragic consequences its failings have caused to you both and your family."

Oonagh McCrann SC, for the family, told Mr Justice Kevin Cross a number of opportunities were missed to deliver the baby. He should have been delivered earlier and members of the staff had indicated he was going to be delivered.

Counsel said it was only after the Prime Time programme on baby deaths at the Portlaoise hospital that the Franks began to ask questions.

They sought legal advice and commenced proceedings in February 2014.

The Franks had claimed there was a failure to follow through with the plan arrived at for the delivery of Dylan on February 10, 2007, and a failure to have regard to the clear evidence that Dylan was small. The pregnancy, it was claimed, had been allowed to continue until after term and there was a failure to deliver Dylan prior to March 4.

There was also an alleged failure to recognise foetal distress and an alleged failure to give a full and accurate account to Dylan's parents of what had happened.
TWO of five South Dublin teenagers who allegedly 'lined up' to have sex with a 15-year-old girl at a house party have pleaded not guilty.

The two youths - aged 17 and 16 - are now facing separate trials on charges arising from the alleged incident.

Their three co-accused - two aged 16 and one aged 18 - have yet to decide on pleas and had their cases adjourned.

In one case, the disclosure of evidence relating to "an anonymous letter" to a school has been queried by the defence.

The five youths, who are all charged with defilement, appeared in Tallaght District Court today to indicate how they intended to plead.

They are accused of having sex with the alleged victim individually at an impromptu party at her home in Rathfarnham, while she was drunk.

Judge Bridget Reilly adjourned the 17-year-olds case for the preparation of a book of evidence for his jury trial, which will be held at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

The 16-year-old who is pleading not guilty had his case put back to set a date for hearing in the non-jury Dublin District Court.

The remaining co-accused also had their cases adjourned.

None of the defendants spoke during todays proceedings. Most were accompanied by their parents; one teenagers father was absent and one was in court with his mother and an aunt.

The accused, from Rathfarnham, were all juveniles at the time of the alleged offences on March 14, 2014. The girl was 15 years old at the time.

They are all charged with the defilement of a child under the age of 17.

The DPP had directed that the charges could be dealt with summarily at district court level and another judge accepted jurisdiction.

Today, a solicitor for the 18-year-old said there was outstanding disclosure in the case - an anonymous letter sent to the school.

A garda said the letter was no longer in the possession of the prosecution, explaining: it was just a piece of paper - its been discarded.

The gardai were awaiting statements from school staff in relation to it, he said. Judge Reilly adjourned this case to a date in February.

A State solicitor told Judge Reilly the 17-year-olds case was before the court for a decision on whether to elect for trial by jury.

He wants to go to the circuit court, judge, the defendants solicitor said.

The judge adjourned this case to a date in April for the preparation of the book of evidence.

A barrister for one of the the 16-year-olds said the youth had elected for the district court.

The plea is not guilty and I ask the court to reserve a hearing date, he said.

The judge was told the district court trial would take place in the Criminal Courts of Justice and video link facilities would be required. The barrister estimated it would take three days for his case alone.

The judge adjourned it for mention later to set a hearing date.

The fourth accuseds solicitor said disclosure of prosecution documents had only been received and he needed time to go through it.

The final teenagers lawyer said: I am seeking a short adjournment, a decision hasnt been made.

He said this was due to the complexity of the case. Judge Reilly said the court tried to get juvenile matters done as quickly as possible.

She remanded all the accused on continuing bail.

The boys were brought separately before the judge and left the courtroom with their parents after their cases were finished.

Previously, the court heard that it will be alleged that before the girl had sex with the fourth man she heard a voice outside her bedroom say: "Line up guys."

A garda told the court that it will be alleged that she left her home at 7pm and a bottle of vodka was purchased for her in a local shop.

The garda said the girl drank the bottle and friends brought her home at 8.30pm as she was drunk.

He said it will be alleged that an impromptu house party occurred at the house and the five males had sex with her.

The garda said that the injured party alleges that each of the males had pulled down her leggings and underwear.

It is alleged that they had sex with her individually, that she could not "physically say no" and that she was scared.

A condition of bail is that the accused reside at their home addresses and have no contact, directly or indirectly with the injured party including making reference to her on social media.

The offence of defilement, is contrary to Section 3 (1) of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 2006. In the judge-only district court the offence carries a maximum penalty on conviction of less than one year in prison.

On conviction on indictment in the circuit court, where trials are by judge and jury, the maximum potential sentence is five years.
Sharon Kelly from Co. Offaly pictured leaving the Four Courts after she was awarded 90,000 damages following a High Court judgement. Pic: Courts Collins

A 44-YEAR-old woman who slipped on a bar floor and dislocated her thumb has been awarded 90,000 by a High Court judge.

Mr Justice Anthony Barr said Sharon Kelly's fall was captured on CCTV in the Dublin bar and he was satisfied there was liquid on the parquet flooring in the area she slipped.

Ms Kelly, from Co Offaly, sued Lackabeg Ltd, trading as The Arc CafeBar, Liffey Valley, Fonthill Road, Dublin, as a result of the fall after 1am on May 29, 2011. The company denied her claims.

She had been attending a 30th birthday party and was wearing four-inch heels at the time, the court heard.

The judge said the liquid she slipped on may have come from the wet floor in the ladies toilet or may have been due to patrons spilling their drinks when coming from the bar.

"This area should have been monitored carefully throughout the evening and corrective action taken when drinks were spilt on to the floor," the judge said.

Ms Kelly said while she was crossing the wooden floor area in the Lobby Bar, on her way to the toilets, she slipped and fell.

Lackabeg Ltd denied there was any water or other liquid on the floor surface and said it had a comprehensive cleaning system in operation on the night in question.

Mr Justice Barr said while there was a system in place for dealing with spillages, he was not satisfied it was properly implemented on that night when it was very busy.

It was likely, he said, the staff were so busy serving drinks and collecting empty glasses they were not able to take sufficient care to keep the floor dry and clean.

The judge said a Champions League Final was being shown on a television screen and a two-for-one drinks promotion was available that night.

He was satisfied the bars and the nightclub in the premises were doing a substantial trade that night.

While not jam-packed, it was nevertheless busy, he said.

He also accepted the evidence of two other women that the toilets in the public bar had been in poor condition that night and that complaints had been made to the bar staff about the condition of the toilets.

Ms Kelly, the judge said, had a moderate amount of drink over more than five hours.

The judge said: "People cannot be expected to look at the floor when walking across a bar.

"She was entitled to expect that the floor was dry and it was safe for her to walk across it" .

He also said Ms Kelly was disabled in the weeks and months after the accident and has been left with a diminution in sensation in the tip of the thumb and a reduced pinch grip.
A Nasa image of an asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago in the Caribbean region, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs. REUTERS

The Earth is "long overdue" an asteroid impact which could cause massive destruction or annihilation.

An astronomy conference 'Beyond Earth: Dangers from the Cosmos' will hear from a range of scientists and astronomers in Galway tomorrow. Organiser Brian MacGabhann has warned the planet is facing several "very real dangers".

He said that, while very large asteroids are being monitored, smaller asteroids which could cause massive tsunamis or wipe out cities are not.

He warned it is only a matter of time before one of these smaller asteroids hits Earth.

"The Earth has been bombarded by asteroids -traditionally, it occurs every 2,500 years," he said. "Our last event was around one million years ago, so we are long overdue."

Mr MacGabhann said monitoring of large asteroids, considered 'planet killers', is taking place, with around 97pc tracked. These pose "no imminent threat".

The greater threat is from smaller asteroids, similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor which hit Russia in 2013.

"We don't have any proper monitoring of these. They are relatively small and difficult to track but the results could be very serious," he said.

"The fact is we will be hit - there is no question - it's just a matter of when it happens."

While smaller asteroids would not eradicate life, they would cause major damage.

"If it were to land in the middle of Europe it would wipe out cities, or if it hit the Atlantic it would cause a tsunami larger than anything we've ever seen," he added. "It's very difficult to find a place on Earth that it would not do major damage if it hit."

He said we have the technology to deflect such asteroids if we get enough warning - around a decade.

For information, see www.galwayastronomyclub.ie.
Business / Companies

by Tendai Ruben Mbofana

HARARE - Grain Marketing Board (GMB) workers who were sacked by the parastatal late last year, without receiving any terminal benefits and their outstanding salaries, have lambasted the Minister of Agriculture's silence on their plight.The workers, who consider their dismissals to have been unfair, said that they could not understand why their minister Joseph Made has been so tight-lipped on the issue, and said that they were now pleading with President Robert Mugabe, to intervene in what they termed 'inconsiderate and brazen disregard of rights as workers' by the GMB.'We are witnessing other ministers, such as Saviour Kasukuwere standing with their people, but what perturbs us beyond comprehension is why our own minister Made is so quiet, and yet the GMB is treating us with such disregards, as if we are the wrong-doers, and yet it's the parastatal that still owes us outstanding salaries of over a year, and has not paid us our terminal benefits.'All we are asking for is what is rightfully due to us, nothing more,' bemoaned a representative of the sacked workers.The former GMB workers said that they had served the parastatal and country with unquestioning diligence, loyalty and patriotism, and yet were shocked when they were served with letters of termination of employment notices on 5 August 2015, without any plausible reason from the company.'We are totally opposed to the way we were fired from our jobs by the GMB, as they applied the old Labour Act, and so we consider our sacking as unlawful, and thus calling upon minister Made and His Excellency President Mugabe to intervene in this matter.'The former workers said that they were finding life very difficult without any terminal benefits - as GMB was not remitting any monies the company had been deducting from the employees' salaries for pension, social security, and funeral assurance to the relevant authorities.'Why do we have to suffer because of GMB's own incompetence and dishonesty? It is not us who failed to contribute to the pension and social security funds, but GMB itself, so who is the wrongdoer here?'As if that was not bad enough, we had not been receiving our salaries in full for months, and others for over a year.'Why does it appear as if we are been punished, and yet we served the parastatal and this country well by ensuring food security, but now we are being treated as if we were a plague,' the representative lamented.The over 1000 employees affected by these dismissals countrywide, now face an uncertain future and find life unbearably painful, as they confront numerous challenges.'The primary challenge we now face is hunger, as a result of the lack of proper salaries for nearly two years and any terminal benefits from our former employer.'We can not afford to purchase anything, let alone food for ourselves and our families.'Ironically, we spent years of dedication, commitment and loyalty working at the GMB insuring that the country was food secure, yet we - the sacked workers - now find ourselves food insecure, as we are virtually on the brink of starvation.'The dismissed GMB workers cited accommodation as another of their challenges, as their former employer has instructed them to vacate company houses.'The GMB says we are no longer eligible to dwell there since we are no longer in their employment.'Our employer has said that if we want to continue residing in the houses, we should pay commercial rates.'However, due to the same reason of the lack of financial capacity as a result of lack of proper salaries and terminal benefits, we are unable to either pay commercial rates for our current dwellings nor rent for accommodation elsewhere,' said the dismissed worker representative.They called upon minister Made and President Mugabe to also consider the former workers' children who face a very bleak future as a result of the treatment they received from the GMB, as they can no longer afford to pay school fees for them.'This is so worrisome, as our children are not only our future, but are also the country's future, and a country with an uneducated populace is a doomed country of thieves, prostitutes and drug addicts.'This will be going against the President's own principles for an educated and, therefore, prosperous nation - which has seen Zimbabwe with the highest literacy rate on the African continent, and producing some of the finest minds in the world,' they said.The sacked workers said that they had tried to engage their former employer, having met several times, but to no avail, as GMB refuses to commit to anything, thereby, leaving them with what they described as 'a sense of uncertainty and insecurity'.The dismissed workers said that they hoped that the minister and the President would seriously consider their plight and intervene.
The rule that says religion must underpin the daily life of primary schools has been dropped after 51 years.

Education Minister Jan O'Sullivan deleted Rule 68 yesterday and immediately issued a circular advising schools.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals Network, she described Rule 68 as "a symbol of our past, and not our future", adding: "I'm glad it's gone."

The minister has also asked her officials to identify other rules in the 1965 Rulebook for National Schools that could be rescinded.

In the modern day, the deletion of Rule 68 is likely to have little practical effect, although its continued existence was seen as an obstacle to true inclusivity in schools.

In response, the Bishops' Council for Education said the announcement "does not change the teaching of religious education in Catholic schools".

The abolition of Rule 68 was recommended by the Group on Pluralism and Patronage.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation, which had called for its deletion, welcomed the announcement, as did EQUATE, a children's charity seeking education reform.
All-girls schools may need to allow trousers as part of their uniform, according to new Department of Education guidelines on dealing with transgender students in second-level schools.

For the first time, schools will receive practical advice on how to address the needs of students who identify as transgender - many of whom make the transition in their teenage years.

The guidelines, launched by Education Minister Jan O'Sullivan, also cover issues such as the name and pronoun by which the student wants to be addressed, toilets or changing rooms, PE and sport.

Where schools have a uniform for PE or sports, they are advised a transgender student should be able to wear clothing for their preferred gender.

Skirted swimsuits, baggy shorts or short wetsuits are suggested as options to avoid issues that could develop due to revealing nature of this type of clothing.

The guidelines state that transgender students should feel safe and supported when accessing toilets and changing rooms. They should be able to access facilities that correspond to their gender identity, or a single unisex facility.

The "Being LGBT in School" pack builds on previous resources aimed at supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and was developed in association with the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), the Transgender Equality Network (TENI), school management bodies, teacher unions and the child and family agency, Tusla.

GLEN's director of education Sandra Irwan-Gowran said: "Every classroom in every school has young people who are LGBT. School life for many of these young people is still very difficult, often with serious consequences for the self-esteem and mental health."

Transgender describes people whose gender expression is different from the sex listed on their birth certificate. They often choose to change their first name, and schools are advised to discuss with the student, and parents, where appropriate, how they wish to be addressed.

The new guidelines state that transgender students should be permitted to wear a uniform that is consistent with their identity, adding that all-girls' schools may need to consider allowing trousers while all-boys' schools should consider "a variation in uniform options".
Never mind the mini-drama of who might dance with Michael Lowry in a future coalition. The real drama building up this week is the prospect of grand alliance of the left and who will dance with Sinn Fein. This is not so much because of its former paramilitary association - which is usually the objection of the bigger, more 'bourgeois' parties.

No, in this case, it is reservations by doctrinaire socialists about just how authentically left wing Sinn Fein actually is. And whether, as a nationalist party, it is in fact an impediment to the 'greater socialist project' which rejects flags and tribal borders in its broader proletarian struggle.

It all came out this week at a joint press conference held by the two left groupings - People Before Profit and the Socialist Party (or the Anti-Austerity Alliance).

The meeting revealed common ground but also some key differences.

Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit said he was not averse to aligning with Sinn Fein, or giving it transfers, but Ruth Coppinger of the Socialist Party (SP) said that she was reluctant because Sinn Fein is a "sectarian party" (ouch!) which appeals in Northern Ireland to "only one part of the community", whereas the SP wants to appeal to "the broader working-class community".

This is apparently a long-time source of difference between these two parties of the left. In an interview for Deaglan de Breadun's recent book, 'Power Play: The Rise of Modern Sinn Fein', TD Paul Murphy explained why the Socialist Party has never agreed with the 'Brits Out' line. Protestant fears of a United Ireland were not irrational, said Murphy, and he cited the example of Sri Lanka, where the minority Tamils had apparently oppressed the Sinhalese under British rule but, when the British left, the majority Sinhalese in turn oppressed the Tamils. Avoiding this is true protective socialism, Murphy would say.

Of course, Coppinger and Murphy are right about Sinn Fein's essentially tribal politics, but many who would support such an alliance would consider that to be a rather rarefied reservation, given that what is on offer is the serious prospect of a grand left alignment, and one that would be much more radical than anything a shrunken Labour Party could provide. And it could really shake up the establishment.

As it is, almost all of the left already participate in the Right2Change campaign and Sinn Fein would say that the reluctance of Murphy and Coppinger to fully come on board has as much to do with their electoral rivalry with Sinn Fein in Dublin.

Remember, Murphy pipped Sinn Fein for a Dublin South West seat after it looked like Sinn Fein was wobbling on water charges.

In fairness, there was always going to be differences between all these left-wing elements, given their different historical origins, but if Sinn Fein could put something big together, it'd be hard to see Coppinger and others resisting. After all, they have almost exactly the same policies - for the moment.

And this is possibly the real crux. The harder left see Sinn Fein as a potential sell-out and an eventual bourgeois party, many of whose members would actually share power with Fianna Fail.

Again, it was Coppinger and Paul Murphy who have described Sinn Fein as not a socialist party at all but a populist nationalist one, which in the North has in the past implemented austerity measures. Also, some of the hard left's policies announced this week, such as raising Ireland's much cherished low corporate tax to 15pc, might be a step too far for Sinn Fein.

The blunt reality is that the prospect of being in power on both sides of the border for the centenary of 1916 would be too exciting a prospect for more mainstream Republicans to resist sharing power with, say, Fianna Fail.

After all, they are already sharing power with the DUP in the North, and can thus get their hands on the levers at Stormont. And surely if you can coalesce with Paisley's Unionists, you can coalesce with anyone. There is also the frank reality that Sinn Fein wants to be a mainstream political party, appealing eventually to the middle classes and building a truly national movement that is fresh and non-corrupt and re-ignites the values of the 1916 revolution. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But the left will be thinking of something quite different and would be closer to the ideals of the 1913 Dublin Lockout.

And they are prepared to forgo the broader political participation or imagery of power, for specific, strategic results.

So it's a fascinating dance. Throw in the attention-seeking Brendan Ogle and you've got a further recipe for unpredictability.

However, if such an alliance did happen, it could create a whole new power bloc, which would be a real magnet for protest politics, the hard left and radical nationalists.

It could also draw in left-wing independents such as Tommy Broughan or even John Halligan and Finian McGrath, who are surely out of sorts in the Shane Ross group of Independents.

But as it is, an alliance starring Mary Lou McDonald, Richard Boyd Barrett, Ruth Coppinger and Paul Murphy could be real box-office stuff, and would for the first time create a proper left-right divide in Irish politics.
Tainaiste Joan Burton said talks with Independent Michael Lowry on the formation of the next government would be a red-line issue for the Labour Party.

Ms Burton said she had made it clear "that Michael Lowry would not be an acceptable person in relation to any government that the Labour Party would be part of."

In her strongest comments since the controversy arose over Mr Lowry's potential to be a kingmaker after the election, the Labour Party leader indicated she would rather her party stayed out of government than be propped up by the Tipperary TD.

"So that's that. I suppose Michael Lowry is incredibly delighted with all the front-page coverage he has had for the last week, so I'm sure he feels it will do him no harm in his own re-election attempts," she said.

Her statement is now likely to put the spotlight back on Taoiseach Enda Kenny - who is continuing to be equivocal about a possible role for Mr Lowry. The Fine Gael leader has said he was not "contemplating" working with any Independent TDs - but then also refused to rule them out.

Earlier this week, a High Court judge said Mr Lowry engaged in "a litany of falsification and deception" - including the falsification of a solicitor's files - in his failure to co-operate with the Moriarty Tribunal.

Mr Justice John Hedigan made the comment when he dismissed on all grounds Mr Lowry's challenge to a decision of that tribunal to award him only one-third of his legal costs, a bill he says will run into millions. The Labour Party leader said she read some of the comments made about the Tipperary TD's behaviour in court earlier this week.

"He was also the subject of a debate in the Dail of censure in relation to the findings of Moriarty. Mr Lowry would not be part of any arrangements in relation to any government that the Labour Party would be part of," Ms Burton said.

There is a divide within Fine Gael over whether it should categorically rule out Mr Lowry.

Sources told the Irish Independent the Taoiseach does not want to rule out Mr Lowry for fear that giving a direct answer to that question will lead the media to start asking about other individuals.

However, Leo Varadkar has already said he would not want to work with Mr Lowry in government. The Health Minister said Mr Lowry "has an issue with the law" and that the Government must not return to "parish pump deals".
Taoiseach Enda Kenny visiting Banagher in Co. Offaly to launch a Charter for Rural Ireland. Photo: Rose Mannion

With the big hitters in town, there were certain private expectations amongst local leaders of a big 'pull of money' about to be announced. Or even a medium 'pull of money'.

But the Taoiseach, Environment Minister Alan Kelly and Minister of State Ann Phelan arrived at the Crank House Enterprise Centre in Banagher, Co Offaly with one arm as long as the other.

So no extra cash for rural Ireland then - but plenty of rather vague promises in the form of the grandiosely titled Charter for Rural Ireland they were there to launch.

A charter that might become a 'Framework' and that might actually evolve into something of substance... eventually.

As the Taoiseach all but suggested himself.

"This looks to have been knocked up overnight," said one man in disgust as he flicked through it, observing the rather nondescript photographs and sheer lack of meat on its bones.

Anyone might have thought it was 11th hour, pre-election waffle.

But actually the Irish Farmers' Association has been calling for this since last August - only it was possibly looking for something a bit more specific.

The charter has been put out as "a statement of Government commitment to support the regeneration of rural communities."

It states that the widespread perception that rural is synonymous with decline is wrong. "The positive role for rural areas in the development of the Irish economy is unquestionable," it says.

"However, rural communities involve more than the rural economy and it is important that they provide a nurturing social and cultural environment for their residents."

There is mention of broadband and road refurbishment and Rural Economic Development Zones. But nothing really that has not been already announced before.

Having kept everyone waiting for well over an hour, Mr Kenny arrived in what looked to be rather less than good form. When Ms Phelan suggested that he apply for a grant to get a new sat nav for the car, he shook his head and rather sourly said: "It's not the GPS, it's the clock you gave the IFA."

His prior meeting with the Irish Farmers' Association had run over - they'd discussed everything from the Syrians to the cows.

But he reassured us all that rural Ireland was alive and well - but changing.

People complain about losing their post offices or garda stations, he said.

"But let me tell you at Christmas time, online sales in America were $70bn and $40bn was carried by which company?"

Hmm ... we weren't quite sure we were following his train of thought.

Until he made it clearer: "Why would you send your grandson a present by post when Amazon can deliver it in an hour?"

So a death knell to all post offices then - not much of an election promise, that.

There was no mention of the garda stations.

"You've got to adapt to new ways of doing business," he told them.

And he told them of a 13-mile swathe of countryside near his home parish in Mayo, which had lost 15 schools because the population had dropped away.

"These places have enormous potential for tourism and walkers," he added.

But the picture he had just painted was rather a sad one - a once vibrant community area reduced to a playground for passers-by.

Mr Kelly and Ms Phelan did a little better with their enthusiasm levels for rural Ireland, which they claimed was "in their DNA".

But it is likely that it will take a lot more than this vague charter to satisfy voters when the politicians come knocking on rural doorsteps next week.
Gardai have renewed their appeal for information on a woman who has been missing from her home for almost two weeks.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Gardai at Kilmainham Garda Station on 01 6669700, The Garda Confidential Line, 1800 666111 or any Garda Station.
Swine flu has claimed the lives of four people already this winter and is now the dominant form of virus circulating, it emerged yesterday.

A pregnant mother-of-two is among three patients fighting the swine flu in Wexford General Hospital, prompting public health doctors to urge people to get the flu jab.

The mother is now recovering and responding to treatment after being admitted to intensive care.

Dr Darina O' Flanagan, head of the HSE's Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HSPC), said the current flu vaccine offered protection against swine flu.

This is in contrast to the winter of 2009 when swine flu reached pandemic levels because there was initially no vaccine against it.

Dr O' Flanagan said overall flu levels, including the B strain, were continuing to rise and likely to persist for four to five more weeks.

"If someone got vaccinated now it would take effect in 10 to 14 days," she said.

So far this winter seven deaths have been linked to flu.

A spokesman for Wexford General Hospital said three patients with swine flu had to be admitted, although most who contract the virus do not need to be hospitalised.

"There is no outbreak of flu in Wexford General and no patient has acquired flu in there to date," he said.

It is understood that one of the patients started getting treatment for the flu when admitted last week. A second patient with swine flu was later admitted after being brought by ambulance from Wexford town.

Pregnant women and children under two are particularly at risk from swine flu. In pregnancy the immune system is naturally suppressed, which leaves women at higher risk of developing complications.

The complications can include pneumonia, difficulty breathing and dehydration.

These are more likely to happen from week 27 until the birth and up to two weeks after the baby is born.

The disease watchdog said that 219 patients have been hospitalised with flu so far this winter and 88 of these had swine flu. Eleven patients have ended up in critical care. The HSE provides the flu vaccine free of charge for those in the at-risk groups. Symptoms of swine flu include a sudden fever - a temperature of 38C or above, tiredness, aching muscles, joint pain and headache.
The testing of illicit drugs in clubs would need to be underpinned by quality control, a symposium in Dublin was told. PA

The testing of illicit drugs in clubs would need to be underpinned by quality control, a symposium in Dublin was told yesterday.

It was addressed by Josie Smith, head of substance misuse for Public Health Wales, which tests drugs it is sent anonymously.

She said the proposal for drug testing, which is being looked at here, needs to be carefully investigated first.

There may be a problem with the trust people put in testing kits - with the result that they assume a drug is 'safe'.

She was also worried that fake kits could be sold. The project she oversees has so far tested 4,000 samples and found 305 drugs.

"The drug people believe they are buying is frequently not the one they get," she added when speaking at the 'Help, Not Harm' event.

Drugs Minister Aodhan O Riordain said he was open to examining the proposal but did not yet know enough to support its introduction here.

He said Labour's election manifesto would support supervised injecting centres.
PSNI and paramedics at the murder scene at Broombeg Park in Ballycastle last night

Police have arrested a man on suspicion of murder after the body of a man was found in the seaside town of Ballycastle in Co Antrim.

The victim, named by police as 48-year-old Anthony McErlain, was found dead at a property in Broombeg Park in the Co Antrim town at around 8.30pm.

A 33-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Senior Investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Talbot said: While we are awaiting the results of a post mortem, what is clear is that Mr McErlain suffered a traumatic and frightening death. I initially described this killing as a heinous crime and I stand by that assessment.

"We have arrested one man, a 33 year old, on suspicion of murder and he remains in custody assisting us with our enquiries.

"The investigation team is extremely keen to speak to witnesses or anyone who may have spoken to Mr McErlain over recent days.

"We would especially like to hear from anyone who was in the Broombeg area at any time between 5pm and 8.30pm yesterday and who may have witnessed or overheard an altercation or disturbance, in or around number 4 Broombeg View.

"The investigation team can be contacted on 101. Or if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details they can call the Crimestoppers charity anonymously on 0800 555 111.

The area around the house was cordoned off soon after the grisly discovery and an ambulance remained at the scene late last night. There was also a heavy police presence as officers from CID began their enquiries.

Independent councillor Seamus Blaney said he was shocked to learn of Mr McErlain's violent death.

"He was well known in the town and he was a bit of a drinker but he never did anyone any harm but to himself," he said. "It's very sad to think that he has died in such a way.

"It's a real shock.

"This is a quiet town so people are going to be very upset to wake up to this news."

It is understood Mr McErlain was one of a number of people who escaped from a fire at Glentaisie Drive in the town in September. The blaze started in a one bungalow property, spread to another and also caused smoke damage to two others.

At the time, police said they were investigating the possibility the fire was started deliberately.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein MLA Daithi McKay last night said the community has been shocked by the incident.

"The exact details of the event are still unclear, but it has caused a great deal of concern in the local area," he said. "I would encourage anyone with information on this incident to bring it forward to the PSNI."
Business / Companies

by Wilbert Mukori

Comrade Vince Musewe has jumped ship; he has left the Tsvangirai and Mujuru led coalition project he had tried hard to promote, he has now joined People Democratic Party, led by Tendai Biti."What needs to be done is to move away from the mere analysis of the situation to the application" said Musewe after his announced move."There is lack of general appreciation of what needs to be done.""We need to think before we act, having looked at the country's 42 (political) parties, there is nothing so far in place as better (good) as PDP," he said.After all the months trying in vain to sell the corrupt and incompetent Tsvangirai and Mujuru as quality leaders, he has clearly not yet learned that he cannot make a silk purse from a sower's ear because Tendai Biti is just as corrupt and incompetent. When he jumped into bed with Tsvangirai he had clearly forgotten his on advice "to think before we act".However, it is Musewe's arrogance, Mister-know-it-all attitude, on the economy and how to end the political crisis that should worry us all. Above he said the nation must move away from the mere analysis (on the contrary, Mugabe has stifled all meaningful debate ignorance and fear rule supreme, there is more quality debate in independent media than in parliament; we need to implement the GPA reforms so there free media and freedom of expression and really open up public discussion on everything) and go into the application stage. Yet in the next breath he readily and rightly admits "there is lack of general appreciation of what needs to be done"! There is no one more dangerous than a Mister-know-it-all who is himself confused!If there is lack of appreciation of what one is doing then, surely, one must stop and analysed thoroughly from all possible angles and not plough on heedlessly. One of the contributory factor to Zimbabwe's political and economic mess in 36 years of blundering from pillar to post because no one has dared to stop and carry out a proper evaluation of the problem.The indigenisation law, for example, was passed with no meaningful debate and not even the Zanu PF cronies who were supposed to benefit from by buying the 51% shares have not benefited because would be foreign investors have shied away from the country. Zimbabwe has lost billions of dollars of FDI every year and millions of jobs. Yet this obnoxious law still remains on the statute because Mugabe, Mister-know-it-all, with no regard to what everyone else or the facts on the ground will not repeal the law.If there are free and fair elections we will finally rid ourselves of Mugabe and Zanu PF; the last thing we want is get rid of one Mister-know-it-all only to replace him with another!Mugabe and his Zanu PF cabal have messed up the nation's economy; many of them, like Grace Mugabe, have no clue what is required to fix the economy and the few who know lack the political will and resolve to get the job done. Still anyone who thinks the terrible and dangerous state of Zimbabwe's economy has dampened Mugabe and his Zanu PF colleagues' appetite to remain in power in any way could not be more wrong.If anything the country's worsening economic meltdown has sharpened their hunger to stay in power at all cost hence the dog-eat-dog factional war. They all know that the losers will be forced to join the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans now living in abject poverty. Come the national elections, Zanu PF will be throwing the kitchen sink, anything and everything at the opposition to make sure they win and stay in power."There is too much political consideration and too much patriotism which is not yielding anything," was Musewe's dismissive response to those calling for the implementation of the GPA democratic reforms BEFORE the next elections to ensure Zanu PF does not have the freedom to rig the elections as happened in the past.We are not dealing with some mickey-mouse Al Capone vote rigging operation with a few corrupt Police Officers, Judges, etc.; we are dealing with the Mafia Godfather figure in State House and every State Institution headed by a senior member of the clan.Millions of ordinary Zimbabweans are now living in abject poverty, government is failing to pay civil servant salaries let alone everything else like drugs, etc. And yet the Mafia gang itself is richer than ever from the billions of dollars looted from Marange and other national resources and assets. Zanu PF has the money to bankroll a very elaborate and costly vote rigging scheme.The opposition parties have been shut out of the state institutions and they have no cash or resource to match Zanu PF's. This why no one should contesting any elections until the reforms are implemented; to do so will be a betray of the people who are being denied a free and meaning vote, an exercise in futility and a mockery of democratic elections!In 2013 Tsvangirai and his MDC friends, including Tendai Bite, ignored all advice not to take part in the elections with no reform because they will still win regardless of all Zanu PF vote rigging "shenanigans". We must not make the same mistake they did! Yet this is exactly what Vince Musewe wants us to do!The honey bird will lead you to a bee hive but not always; some for whatever devilish reasons will lead you straight into a pride a lions! Experienced hunters will tell you, never follow a honey bird with a twitchy tail. Vince Musewe wants us to go into the next elections with no GPA reforms implemented for whatever devilish reasons, he is the honey bird with the twitchy tail, ignore him!Free, fair and credible election is not just a democratic right but it is the basic for good and accountable government and our key to ending the economic meltdown. We must demand the GPA reforms BEFORE the next election and keep our eyes firm on that ball!
Gardai are hunting for two gangs behind separate brutal sex assaults on young girls in Tallaght.

The two incidents happened within an hour of each other in the Springfield area of Tallaght on Monday.

The Herald earlier this week reported that a 14-year-old girl, who has learning difficulties, was subjected to a savage rape by a gang of young men between 4pm to 5pm.

It has now emerged that two sisters, who are aged in their late teens, were also sexually assaulted in the same locality of Springfield around an hour after the first attack.

Last night, sources said that gardai were confident that the two incidents were carried out by different groups of perpetrators.

The rape of the 14-year-old schoolgirl happened shortly after 4pm on Monday in a green space close to the Ashgrove apartments, opposite St Mark's GAA Club, on the Cookstown Road.

The traumatised victim has given a detailed statement to a specialist child interviewer, and officers are following a definite line of inquiry in the case.

It is understood that CCTV has played a major part in the investigation, but no arrests have been made.

Horrifying

Before making her statement, the girl was taken to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in the Rotunda Hospital following the horrifying ordeal, where she was treated for her injuries.

"Officers will work tirelessly to track down the perpetrator of this particularly heinous crime.

"It was an extremely serious sexual assault on a vulnerable victim, and investigators are following a definitive line of inquiry," a source said.

Shockingly, gardai in Tallaght became aware of a second sexual assault later on Monday when it was reported to them that two sisters were attacked by a group of men as they walked through Maplewood, which is also in Springfield, at 5.30pm.

daughters

The mother of these two young girls told a local newspaper that her daughters were walking back from the shops on Maplewood Drive when they were attacked by six young males.

"They tried to hold my daughters' hands down by their sides and were groping them and putting their hands down their tops," the woman told the Tallaght Echo.

"They also exposed themselves to my daughters.

"My daughters put up a struggle and managed to get away; one of them broke the heel of her boot in the process.

"They both feel that if they were younger or had not been strong enough to get away that this attack could have gone a lot further."

"My daughters have been left terribly shook up and in shock, but thank God they were able to fight this group off," she added.

As part of their investigations into both crimes, gardai sealed off the scenes in the Springfield area on Monday night and carried out forensic and technical examinations on Tuesday.

Tallaght gardai are investigating both incidents and are appealing for information from the public.

Local Fianna Fail councillor Charlie O'Connor, who is a former resident of the Ashgrove Estate, described how locals were "absolutely appalled" by the incident and appealed for anyone with information to contact gardai.

"It is an extremely shocking thing to happen. I'd like to extend my sympathies to the victim and her family during this traumatic time," he said.

According to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, there was a rise in the number of assaults and sex attacks in the past year.

Rape offences increased by 12.5pc, while sexual assault (not aggravated) offences increased by 15.7pc.

Meanwhile, a total of 2,010 sexual offences were recorded in the State in 2013, representing a drop of 5pc on the 2,116 recorded the previous year.

OFFENCES

The number of such offences recorded in 2013 was, however, over 36pc higher than the recorded number of offences in 2009.

Outgoing CEO of the Rape Crisis Centre Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop has said that the demand on rape crisis centres and sexual assault treatment units had "grown substantially" in recent years.

"We have seen a 36pc increase in Dublin alone at one sexual assault treatment unit," she said. "There are five others in the country."
Terrified gang target Michael Frazer was left in fear for his life when he was sent to Mountjoy Prison to spend a week for non-payment of district court fines.

However, the 35-year-old was given a reprieve when jail bosses decided he be "processed" in the jail and allowed him back out on temporary release - meaning he did not have to spend even one night in custody.

The incident happened on Tuesday when Frazer presented himself to Terenure gardai, who had been looking for him after they obtained a penal warrant for unpaid court fines.

Frazer was then transported to Mountjoy Prison and released within hours, which sources said left him a very relieved man.

"If Frazer had to serve those days in jail, he would have had to be put in a special unit for his own protection and because of the threats surrounding him, he would have had very little time out of his own cell.

"So he was a very happy man when he was granted temporary release," the source said.

It is now standard practice for people who default on court fines not to serve actual jail time.

Surviving

Frazer arrived back in Dublin at Christmas after spending most of last year abroad when he fled to England and Spain after surviving five separate attempts to murder him.

The first attempt on Frazer's life was in March 2014 when he was shot a number of times in a botched hit in the car park of a church in Clondalkin.

The thug who botched the hit is currently in jail for other offences. He is also the chief suspect for the murder of Dean Johnston (21) in 2011, a case which was the subject of a fresh garda appeal earlier this week.

Frazer also survived separate murder attempts in the south inner city, Firhouse, Drimnagh and Islandbridge areas between July and November of 2014 before he finally fled last April.

The south inner city incident happened in July 2014, when gardai intercepted an assassination team in the South Circular Road area and these same mobsters were also arrested by gardai in January of last year dressed in disguises, ready to pounce on their target.

An even more serious attempt on Frazer's life occurred at a pub car park in Firhouse on August 2014 when he was lured to a meeting, but the hitman's gun jammed.

A fortnight after this, Frazer made a panicked call to gardai and said that he saw a man wearing a balaclava standing outside the Drimnagh house he was staying in.

Last January, two heroin addicts from the Ballyfermot area were arrested and questioned about another failed murder attempt on Frazer at Islandbridge.

Frazer, who does not have serious criminal convictions, is no stranger to violence and his family home in Drimnagh has been shot at on a number of occasions.

A grenade was also thrown into it eight years ago.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan is planning to set aside billions from the resources available to the next government to create a 'rainy day fund'.

The move means Fine Gael will not be promising to put all the predicted proceeds of economic growth - not windfall gains - into tax cuts and spending.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Independent, Mr Noonan said: "The reserve will be a fiscal buffer against unexpected shocks." The cash will be allocated in the Budget either to reducing the national deficit or extra spending, depending upon what the economy needs at the time. The Government will also take on board the advice of the Fiscal Advisory Council.

Meanwhile, Mr Noonan says "no direct threat" was made by Jean-Claude Trichet the European Central Bank to prevent the burning of bondholders.
Gardai have described as "baseless" claims by former Justice Minister Alan Shatter that some members of the force used the Pulse system as a "social website" to obtain "gossip".

The Garda Representative Authority (GRA) last night questioned the accuracy of Mr Shatter's claims and called on the Fine Gael TD to provide supporting evidence.

Mr Shatter, who is defending his seat in Dublin-Rathdown, made the controversial remarks during a radio interview.

He alleged that the practice of gardai accessing force database Pulse for social purposes was communicated to him during his tenure as minister.

Mr Shatter added that he asked the then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan to tighten controls surrounding the use of Pulse, which is the garda system used to record incidents of crime.

He also criticised the leaking of Pulse data to the media, citing a case in 2013 involving left wing TD Clare Daly.

Ms Daly was stopped by gardai on suspicion of drink driving - but was later found to be under the limit.

"I thought it was entirely wrong when she was brought to a Garda station when it was wrongly believed - and I emphasise wrongly believed - that she was under the influence of alcohol, that all of that leaked into the papers and became a big issue," Mr Shatter told Pat Kenny on 'Newstalk'.

"What isn't generally known is that I raised that issue with the Garda authorities and I expressed concern as to how that came about. An issue around the Pulse system had already been a matter of concern and I asked what security was maintained on the system to ensure it was only appropriately used.

"I was subsequently advised  that in excess of 150 members of the force had accessed the Pulse system some of them seem to think it was some sort of social website that they could look up for gossip purposes," he added.

GRA president Dermot O'Brien described the comments as "baseless".

"Pulse is used for policing purposes, it is not set up like a system like Facebook, far from it. Mr Shatter, from my knowledge, hasn't furnished any proof so I don't think he should be coming out with these baseless comments," Mr O'Brien said.

"He is talking about gardai have been using resources in their own time. Well, Mr Shatter didn't resource us very well when he was minster," he added.
Three retired public servants effectively "won the Lotto" when they were hired without any competitive process to work on the controversial Eircode project, according to a member of the Dail's spending watchdog.

The consultants earned almost 350,000 between them, with one charging 1,230 a day for his services.

It was revealed at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that one of the consultants, a former ESB employee, was paid 146,000.

Another consultant, a retired Department of Agriculture official, was paid 158,000.

A third consultant, formerly a senior official at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, earned 44,000.

All of the former public servants were handpicked by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources without any tenders being sought for the roles.

The disclosure was branded "an absolute scandal" by PAC member Patrick O'Donovan.

"They won the Lotto," Mr Donovan, pictured, said. "I think it stinks. It absolutely stinks that people get this sort of work from the inside having previously worked on the inside at values in excess of 145,000 and some of them probably in receipt of pensions of that order as well."

The secretary general of the Department of Communications, Mark Griffin, defended the filling of the positions without an open competition, insisting it was "not unusual".

He said there had been a need to move swiftly to fill the roles and that those involved had particular skill sets.

"This was a very large public/private IT project," said Mr Griffin.

"It was absolutely essential once the contract was awarded by Government that we were in a position to deploy the right resources.

"There is a practice in Government departments of using, where necessary, retired public servants."

Amid robust exchanges, Mr Griffin said he took exception to suggestions the three former public servants had "won the Lotto".

The committee heard three other consultancy contracts were also entered into without open tendering.

A private sector company was paid 53,000, a law firm was paid 109,000 and a service contractor seconded from Ervia was paid 200,000.

The hearing was told the cost of setting up Eircode was 20m more than was initially budgeted for in 2009.

Its total cost came in at 38m, Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy told the committee.

It was told that costs for consultants and department staff were not included in the early estimates for the project.

Estimates were also based on a different type of address system than the one that was ultimately introduced.

Mr Griffin defended the new system and insisted its use was growing.

He said An Post was using it as part of its sorting system, and that the Department of Social Protection, the HSE and the Revenue Commissioners had started to use it.
Last night, sources said that gardai were confident that the two incidents were carried out by different groups of perpetrators. Stock picture

Gardai are hunting for two gangs behind separate brutal sex assaults on young girls.

The two incidents happened within an hour of each other in the Springfield area of Tallaght on Monday.

Earlier this week it emerged that a 14-year-old girl, who has learning difficulties, was subjected to a savage rape by a gang of young men.

It has now emerged that two sisters, who are aged in their late teens, were also sexually assaulted in the same locality of Springfield around an hour after the first attack.

Last night, sources said that gardai were confident that the two incidents were carried out by different groups of perpetrators.

The rape of the 14-year-old schoolgirl happened shortly after 4pm on Monday in a green space close to the Ashgrove apartments, opposite St Mark's GAA Club, on the Cookstown Road.

The traumatised victim has given a detailed statement to a specialist child interviewer, and officers are following a definite line of inquiry in the case.

It is understood that CCTV has played a major part in the investigation, but no arrests have been made.

But gardai in Tallaght became aware of a second sexual assault later on Monday when it was reported to them that two sisters were attacked by a group of men as they walked through Maplewood, which is also in Springfield, at 5.30pm.

The mother of these two young girls told a local newspaper that her daughters were walking back from the shops on Maplewood Drive when they were attacked by six young males.

"They tried to hold my daughters' hands down by their sides and were groping them and putting their hands down their tops," the woman told the 'Tallaght Echo'.

"They also exposed themselves to my daughters."

Tallaght gardai are investigating both incidents and are appealing for information from the public.

Local Fianna Fail councillor Charlie O'Connor, who is a former resident of the Ashgrove estate, described how locals were "absolutely appalled" and appealed for anyone with information to contact gardai.

"It is an extremely shocking thing to happen. I'd like to extend my sympathies to the victim and her family during this traumatic time," added Cllr O'Connor.
The DeLorean was the time machine car used in the Back to the Future movies. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

The DeLorean DMC-12, made famous in the 'Back to the Future' trilogy, is set to literally come back to the future.

The car has been out of production for 34 years but is set to be brought back from the dead - although without a flux capacitor.

About 9,000 DMC-12s were sold during their original run and there is thought to be about 6,500 still in existence.

Production of the iconic motor took place in Northern Ireland between 1981 and 1982 in a factory located in Dunmurry, between Lisburn and Belfast.

The DeLorean Motor Company is planning to build about four cars a month, according to CEO, Stephen Wynne, who told local television station KPRC2 in Houston, Texas, of the plans to start production again.

The original company went bankrupt in 1982, but was re-established in 1995 by Wynne.

The new cars will cost around $100,000 when they go on sale in 2017.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny hinted that he may consider holding another referendum to give Oireachtas committees more powers following the Banking Inquiry

One of the more notable revelations from the Banking Inquiry was what the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) told the Government in March 2011. The State had the potential to save as much as 9bn by letting senior debt holders at the six Irish banks take a hit.

In a written submission, the NTMA, advised how "immediate steps" could facilitate burden-sharing.

It was confident that the markets even factored a haircut on the bonds into their calculations.

However, the possible implications with "external authorities" - the European Central Bank - were also weighed up. We had been chillingly warned that if the Government went ahead with a haircut "a bomb would go off in Dublin".

It is hard to conceive of a more inappropriate and hostile threat to a sovereign government from an institution it purports to serve. Without the support of the European Central Bank the country would have gone to the wall.

But without the compliance and acceptance of the harshest possible terms of burden-sharing imposed on the Irish people, the entire euro could have collapsed. The banking crisis and the insistence that private debt be shouldered by ordinary taxpayers who had nothing to do with accruing it has led many in this country to change their attitude towards Brussels. Since the crash, nations on the periphery have felt excluded from the decisions taken at the top table for the first time. The failure to force losses on the senior bondholders to recoup some of the cost of the 64bn bank bailout has been a running sore since Fine Gael and Labour entered government. We now know that the ECB's heavy-handed intervention cost Irish taxpayers billions.

It would be delusional to blame all our woes on the EU. Catastrophic lines of cheap credit and failures of oversight and governance at home massively exacerbated the situation, eventually resulting in a crash. But it should also be remembered that it was Europe's banks that fuelled the debt and the ECB failed to call a halt. Yesterday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny hinted that he may consider holding another referendum to give Oireachtas committees more powers following the Banking Inquiry. He agreed that the inquiry had been "limited and constrained". The inability to adequately examine individuals and make findings of fact against them rendered the Banking Inquiry inadequate for the huge size of the task at hand.

Burghers in Brussels lay down the law again

What's in a name? Would a burger and chips by any other name not smell as sweet? Apparently not, according to EU officials, and thus Irish fast-food chain Supermac's has lost a trademark battle with McDonald's in Europe.

It now finds itself in another bun fight with a different multinational competitor, Burger King, which is making a complaint against the company.

According to Pat McDonagh, CEO of Supermacs: "We got a letter from the Advertising Standards Authority the other day relating to another multinational group objecting to our utilising our Irishness in our adverts."

What is needed is an Irish solution to an Irish problem.

One might be tempted to take such things with a pinch of salt, but when the chips are down the law is the law, and the Burghers in Brussels are not to be trifled with.
There once was a little politician who had a bad temper. Every day in Leinster House he would go off on one.

The Ceann Comhairle gave him a bag of nails, and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence outside.

The first day the irate politician had driven 37 nails into the fence.

Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the politician didn't lose his temper at all. He reported back to the Ceann Comhairle, who suggested that the politician now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the politician was finally able to tell the Ceann Comhairle that all the nails were gone.

The Ceann Comhairle took the politician by the hand and led him to the fence. He said: "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. It won't matter how many times you say you're sorry, the scar still remains."

The little politician then understood how powerful his words were. He looked up at his Ceann Comhairle and said: "I hope you can forgive me, Ceann Comhairle, for the holes I put in you."

"Of course I can," said the Ceann Comhairle.

And they both lived happily ever after.

So the moral of this tale is simple. Forgiveness comes easy for many people, but the scars of the past, they never go away. If you are a politician, watch what you say today, because sometimes the price isn't worth the reward.

Anthony Woods

Ennis, Co Clare

Lessons from Banking Inquiry

Kevin Doyle's analysis of the Banking Inquiry said it all in a nutshell (Irish Independent, January 27). It was a verdict long figured-out by most even before the inquiry's report. The greed of the banks, politicians and developers was all too obvious.

The sad and hurtful finding was how unjustly the EU Commission handled Ireland's bail-out, with the ECB's insistence we pay all the senior bondholders. If everything was properly supervised by the banks and controls observed, there was a possibility of the crisis being averted and no bailout necessary.

Doyle described the real villains of the piece with clarity - "the regulators were worse than a neutered bullock in a field of heifers". Farmers must be flattered seeing their stock-in-trade, often referred to in far coarser lingo, described in such cultured terms and associated with this elitist circle!

James Gleeson

Thurles, Co Tipperary

Now the Banking Inquiry report has been published with much fanfare from the ruling elite, what has been achieved? Nothing, I fear.

The champagne bottles will be popping in the board rooms of the toxic banks. But will there be any consequences for those responsible for all the austerity measures inflicted on us taxpayers?

The inquiry is critical of the Central Bank, the Financial Services Ombudsman, the Department of Finance, and past Taiosigh and Finance Ministers. All of these financial wizards are now enjoying obscene pensions - the fruits of our labours - as is the norm in our lovely little country.

Surely those responsible should have their pensions adjusted to the minimum wage in line with all those citizens they have betrayed.

Mike Mahon

Templeogue, Dublin 6W

Abused are given no voice

Last week we heard of a trial where a man raped a young woman with Down Syndrome.

Then on Wednesday we heard of a young teenager with a learning disability who was a victim of a sex attack in a Dublin park.

We also learnt this week of a girl with a profound disability who was allowed to remain in a foster home for 13 years after warnings that she was being physically and sexually abused.

She lived there from the age of 11 to 31 - that's 20 years of abuse. She has no voice and being profoundly disabled could do nothing to protect herself. The HSE should have protected her.

My heart is sore. Why is there such evil in the world and so much in Ireland? What are we going to do about it? This affects me greatly as I am a mum to a beautiful boy who has a severe-to-profound intellectual and physical disability.

Aisling McNiffe

Straffan, Co Kildare

Saving rural Ireland

Reading the piece by Mandy Johnston (Irish Independent, January 23) headlined 'Ignoring the death of rural Ireland may come back to haunt the Coalition', she asked a simple but very pertinent question: who will save our towns and villages?

As the recovery gathers momentum along the east coast, and the bigger cities and large urban centres continue to grow and expand, the remainder of rural Ireland is dying on its feet as all its young people have emigrated.

The closing down of rural post offices, garda stations, local grocery shops and pubs, government offices, hotels, co-operative head offices and credit unions is having a very disturbing effect on the social fabric of the rest of the country.

While the survival of some towns and villages hangs in the balance we look to civic leaders for guidance. This huge recovery imbalance needs urgent action across the political divide as all parties face the electorate in the upcoming General Election.

This issue must be given priority by the incoming government. A minister for rural Ireland must be appointed to enhance and support the efforts of thousands of selfless people in their local communities, and to draw up progressive policies that will bring back our emigrants to vibrant towns and villages in rural Ireland once again.

Tom Towey

Cloonacool, Co Sligo

Kenny's comedy of errors

Enda Kenny is missing a trick by majoring on the message 'Keep the Recovery Going'.

He should instead be claiming that a re-elected Fine Gael government would keep the country royally entertained for five more years, and be able to point to his track record covering master comical performances, such as the Banking Inquiry, appointments to the IMMA board; cronyism and nepotism; midnight house calls on Garda Commissioners; gardai allegedly spying on other gardai; TDs 'flirting' with each other in the Dail; senate and constitutional reform; Irish Water; Garda whistleblowers, IBRC and Siteserve etc etc. The only problem would be that Fianna Fail have a similar track record.

Roger Blackburn

Naul, Co Dublin
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

A special envoy from the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Katsuyuki Kawai delivered a special message to the African Union chairman President Robert Mugabe on Friday afternoon.Mr Kawai, who was accompanied by Japan's permanent representative to the AU, Ambassador Kazihiro Suzuki, paid a courtesy call on President Mugabe at his hotel in Addis Ababa.Emerging from the meeting, Mr Kawai says he had delivered a special invitation to President Mugabe from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe relating to the 6th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) which Japan will co-host with Kenya.This is the first time the TICAD meeting is going to be held outside Japan.Mr Kawai says they also took the opportunity to discuss President Mugabe's scheduled visit to Japan.Earlier in the day, President Mugabe in his capacity as AU chairman, attended the unveiling ceremony of the new Equatorial Guinea embassy in Addis Ababa.Equatorial Guinea President Teodore Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn also attended the unveiling ceremony.The building was constructed by a Chinese company at a cost of more than US$17 million and took three years to complete.
The fake Bradley Cooper on the left (photo: Instagram) and the real Bradley Cooper on the right (photo: Twitter)

A Bradley Cooper look-a-like had fans fooled at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

If you're blessed to look like Bradley Cooper, you may as well take advantage of it and crash all the A-list parties you can.

That's exactly what The Hangover star's doppelganger has been doing this week as he charmed his way into the after party for the White Girl movie premiere.

However, people started to figure that something wasn't right.

last night chillin with Bradley at Sundance #bradleycooper #Sundance A photo posted by Sean Cassity (@seancass10) on Jan 24, 2016 at 6:05am PST

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Page Six reports that when confronted by security, the fake Bradley yelled, "Youre done for!" and refused to hand over his ID.

In an attempt to prove he was the actual Hollywood star, he "pushed a button on an iPhone and had a picture of The Hangover as his screen saver"... which probably wasn't the smartest move as we doubt the real Bradley Cooper would use that as his screensaver.

A better call would have been a photo of rumoured girlfriend Irina Shayk?

Read More

The real identity of this Bradley Cooper doppelganger has been shrouded in mystery, but his cover has finally been blown thanks to Instagram.

Video of the Day

Instagram user seancass10 posted a selfie of himself with "Bradley" at a party along with the caption: last night chillin with Bradley at Sundance #bradleycooper #Sundance."

After many Instagram comments later, it soon became clear to Sean that he'd been duped by Bradley's look-a-like. It turns out, the real Bradley Cooper isn't even at the festival.

In fairness, the resemblance is uncanny. We would have been fooled too.
Donald Trump has a one-in-five chance of winning the US presidential race, according to a leading UK online bookmaker.

His prospects of becoming president have risen from 12pc 10 days ago, after $157,400 (143,000) was bet on the billionaire, Matchbook betting exchange said yesterday.

Traditional bookmakers give him an even better chance. Paddy Power Plc, for example, offers odds of 3-1, or 25pc, on a Trump victory. Hillary Clinton is 10-11 to win, giving her a 48pc chance of victory.

Whatever about the betting, it was set to be a case of Hamlet without the prince in last night's debate.

The billionaire's move to skip the showdown, which began at 2am Irish time, days before Iowa holds the first nominating contest of the 2016 election, was a calculated risk gamble.

After he said he was boycotting the Fox News-sponsored debate because of a feud with host Megyn Kelly, rivals accused him of being too afraid to face them on stage.

While some of Trump's fans were supportive of his decision, several undecided voters said they were unimpressed.

"I was on Trump's doorstep until this whole thing happened. I was disappointed," said Bryan Moon of West Des Moines, Iowa, who was attending an event for Republican Marco Rubio.

"If this is how he's going to act, that 'I'm taking my ball and going home', then that is just not going to work."

Voter Jill Ruby, another West Des Moines resident at the Rubio event, was equally put out by Trump's decision.

"Are you kidding me, a reporter ticked him off?" she said. "He's a coward. I think it will come back and bite him. That's not how a president acts, you don't just run away."

Although Trump leads polls of Iowa Republicans over US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, many voters remain undecided and were looking to the debate to aid their decision-making.

"It gives people a reason to be disappointed in him and take a look at the other candidates," said Republican strategist Charlie Black.

"It could hurt him with people who might be undecided."

Trump planned to hold a fundraiser for veterans at Drake University in Des Moines at the same time as the Fox debate, according to an invitation circulated by his campaign.

Early yesterday, Trump tweeted: "Wow, two candidates called last night and said they want to go to my event tonight at Drake University." He did not elaborate and there was no word from other candidates about plans to join the front-runner.

Trump's rivals were viewing the debate as a chance to get their own messages across without having to compete with Trump's bomb-throwing rhetoric.

"It gives us more time at the microphone and more time to talk about answers to substantive issues that Iowa voters are demanding right now," said David Kochel, a senior adviser to Republican candidate Jeb Bush.

On the down side, the number of people tuning in could be lower without Trump at centre stage. "It is undeniable that what he's doing is denying his opponents a large audience as they make their final arguments to Iowa voters," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a Republican strategist who advised the party's 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney.

Trump's decision to stage a benefit event to help military veterans instead of participating in the debate was welcomed by some supporters.

Pat Wiltfang (59), of Grinnell, Iowa, a lifelong Republican who had watched all the previous debates, said she was pleased with Trump's decision and would gladly skip this one.

"That's a great move," said Wiltfang, who plans to caucus for Trump. "All it is is just everyone trying to attack."

Campaigning on Wednesday in West Des Moines, Cruz mocked Trump for skipping the debate, calling him a "fragile soul". He renewed his offer to Trump to debate him one-on-one Saturday.

"It's not that he's afraid of me," Cruz told the crowd. "He's afraid of you. He doesn't want to answer questions from the men and women of Iowa about how his record doesn't match what he's selling."

But no one would have been shocked if Trump changed his mind about the debate.

"I've got a $20 bet he'll show up," rival Jeb Bush said. Why? "Because it's in his interests."
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (C) shakes hands with rival candidate Mike Huckabee as fellow candidate Rick Santorum (L) look on during Trump's "Rally to Benefit Veterans," held at the same time as the Republican presidential candidates debate in Des . REUTERS/Aaron P Bernstein

Republican U.S. presidential candidates (L-R) U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Governor Chris Christie, Dr. Ben Carson, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, former Governor Jeb Bush and Governor John Kasich pose together onstage at the start of the debate held by Fox News for the top 2016 U.S. Republican presidential candidates in Des Moines, Iowa January 28, 2016

Republican presidential candidates lost no time in taking advantage of a rare opportunity to step out of front-runner Donald Trump's shadow in the party's last debate before the Iowa caucuses.

The policy-heavy event in Des Moines offered a glimpse of what the Republican contest might have been without the unpredictable billionaire businessman - but the candidates could not resist lampooning Mr Trump for boycotting the final debate before voting kicks off in the 2016 campaign on Monday.

Iowa residents will choose among the Republican and Democratic candidates in the first of a series of state-by-state contests to choose delegates to each party's convention.

Texas senator Ted Cruz, locked in a tight contest with Mr Trump in Iowa, opened the debate with a sarcastic impression of the property mogul's frequent insults of his opponents.

"I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly," Cruz said. "And Ben (Carson), you're a terrible surgeon." Then he thanked his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by turning up.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a frequent Trump target, said: "I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me."

But, never one to go quietly, Mr Trump held a competing rally at Drake University in Des Moines, an event his campaign said was raising money for military veterans.

"When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," Mr Trump said, explaining he was skipping the debate because he felt Fox News had dealt with him unfairly.

"We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if we're being mistreated."

Mr Trump has feuded with Fox News for months, particularly its anchor and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.

Fox News Channel said on Thursday that Mr Trump had demanded a five million-dollar contribution to his charities in order to appear in the debate, which the network rejected.

Fox News said its chairman Roger Ailes, in conversations with Mr Trump, "acknowledged his concerns" about a statement the network had made in the days leading up to the debate.

Mr Trump's absence put the spotlight on Mr Cruz, who is challenging for the lead in Iowa, as well as on Florida senator Marco Rubio, who needs a strong showing in the state to stay competitive.

The two senators engaged in a lengthy debate on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans. Both have been accused of shifting their stances on legalising some of those in the United States covertly, a position opposed by many party voters.

Mr Cruz accused Mr Rubio of making a "politically advantageous" decision to support a 2013 Senate bill that included a pathway to citizenship, while the Florida senator said his rival was "willing to say or do anything to get votes".

In a rare stand-out debate moment for Mr Bush, the former Florida governor sharply sided with Mr Cruz in accusing Mr Rubio of having "cut and run" on the Senate immigration bill, saying: "He cut and ran because it wasn't popular with conservatives."

With their White House hopes on the line, the candidates worked hard to cast themselves as best prepared to be commander in chief and take on terror threats emanating both from abroad and within the United States.

Mr Rubio struck an aggressive posture, pledging that as president he would go after terrorists "wherever they are. And if we capture them alive, we're sending them to Guantanamo".

He also stood by his previous calls for shutting down mosques in the US if there were indications that they were being used to radicalise Muslims.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul, back on the main debate stage after being downgraded to an undercard event because of low poll numbers earlier this month, warned against closing down mosques and also raised concerns about the US getting involved militarily in Syria, where the Islamic State (IS) group has a stronghold.

The candidates largely sidestepped direct confrontations with each other, focusing some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"She is not qualified to be president of the United States," New Jersey governor Chris Christie said. "What we need is someone on that stage who has been tested who has been through it."

Mr Trump's campaign said his Drake University rally raised more than six million dollars (4.2m) million for veterans.

In a statement after the rally, it added that if Fox News "wanted to join in that effort and make a contribution, Mr Trump would have welcomed that".

Before the rally Mr Trump told reporters he had fielded multiple calls from Fox representatives and Mr Ailes during the day.

Fox's statement said Mr Ailes had three brief conversations with Mr Trump on Thursday about possibly appearing at the debate, but "there were not multiple calls placed by Ailes to Trump".
THE US has seen increased activity around a North Korea site suggesting the ability to conduct a space launch in the near future, a US official claimed last night.

"Our concern though is that they do a space-launch but really it's the same technology to develop ICBMs," the official said, referring to inter-continental ballistic missiles.

The official added such a launch could happen within a couple of weeks.

The US said the activity suggested the movement of equipment and propellants which could be used to carry out the launch within "the next few weeks".

Japan's Kyodo news agency also warned that the launch could take place as soon as next week, quoting a government source.

Images

"Japan's analysis on the satellite images over a period of days indicate that North Korea might conduct a long-range missile test within a week," the source said.

The officials did not state exactly where the increased activity took place, though North Korea carries out many of its military tests at a site in Kilju County.

Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the launch did not appear to be "ballistic-missile related".

"The indications are that they are preparing for some kind of launch...could be for a satellite or a space vehicle - there are a lot of guesses. North Korea does this periodically, they move things back and forth... There's nothing to indicate it's ballistic-missile related."

Meanwhile, in Washington yesterday, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation to broaden sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear programme, human rights record and cyber activities.

The committee passed the measure by unanimous voice vote and members said they expected it would be approved by the full Senate and, eventually, signed into law by US President Barack Obama.
BRITISH prime minister David Cameron is being offered an "emergency brake" that would mean EU migrants can be barred from claiming benefits for four years when public services are under strain, it has been claimed.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is set to give details of the proposal when the two men hold talks on Britain's membership renegotiation in Brussels tomorrow, according to Reuters.

It is not clear whether EU officials would need to give permission for the mechanism to be used.

The idea, which Mr Cameron is also thought to have discussed with his Czech counterpart in Prague last week, has apparently gained traction as the British prime minster struggles to finalise a deal in time for a key summit next month.

Mr Cameron cancelled a visit to Copenhagen tomorrow in order to meet Mr Juncker in Brussels, and is due to have a working dinner with European Council president Donald Tusk in Downing Street over the weekend.

Mr Cameron will then fly to Hamburg on February 12, where he will have the opportunity to discuss his plans with German chancellor Angela Merkel as he delivers a speech on EU reform to the annual St Matthew's Day banquet.

Mr Tusk is due to publish "concrete proposals" for dealing with the UK's demands within the next couple of weeks, ahead of a crunch summit on February 18-19 at which Mr Cameron hopes to secure agreement with the 27 other EU leaders on a package of reforms.

Downing Street has denied that the flurry of meetings were an indication of concern within Number 10 that the PM's timetable for an in/out referendum - dubbed 'Brexit' - may be slipping.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has admitted that a referendum this summer will be difficult if no deal is struck at the February summit, and "impossible" if it is not agreed at the following meeting in March.
Police at the New York Hotel where the man was arrested.

A man carrying two handguns was arrested at Disneyland Paris yesterday.

The man (28) was found with the weapons, ammunition and a copy of the Koran after trying to pass through security at a hotel at the resort, according to reports.

The suspect's partner fled after he was seized and was last night reportedly still on the run.

Police said a woman had been arrested at the park but French media reported she was later released.

Francois Banon, a spokesman for Disneyland Paris, said: "During a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels, weapons were discovered in a guest's luggage through our X-ray machine.

"The police were immediately notified and the individual was arrested. We continue to work closely with the authorities, and the safety and security of our guests and cast members is our utmost priority."

France remains under a state of emergency since the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris in November which killed 130 people.

Tourist

There are several hotels around Disneyland Paris, which is among Europe's most-visited tourist attractions.

The man was stopped by security staff when his bag passed through an X-ray machine at Disneyland Paris's New York Hotel, according to reports.

The man, reportedly not known to security services, was also discovered with a copy of the Koran and a box of ammunition, police said.

He gave no resistance when he was arrested, French media reported.

Little is known about the suspect. One police source told the AFP agency the investigation did not point to terrorism, and that the man said he was carrying the weapons for self-protection.

Targets

Local police were last night handling the inquiry, which has not been passed to anti-terrorism investigators.

French President Francois Hollande is seeking to extend the country's three-month state of emergency for another three months, despite opposition from rights groups.

Earlier this week, EU policing agency Europol warned that Isil was planning further attacks, with France and so-called "soft" targets at particular risk.

Earlier bomb disposal experts were seen inspecting a vehicle near the hotel, according to BFM TV, which said the man justified the presence of two pistols in his suitcase by saying he "feared for his safety" and needed to protect himself.

Disneyland Paris remained open after the incident.

The park is situated about 30km east of the French capital and is the most visited theme park in Europe, with about 10 million visitors in 2014.
U.N. mediator for Syria Staffan de Mistura delivers a statement after the opening of the Syrian peace talks at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, January 29, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Peace talks aimed at ending Syria's five-year civil war got off to a chaotic start on Friday, with the main opposition group at first boycotting the session, then later agreeing to meet with UN officials.

The commitment by the group known as the Higher Negotiating Committee (HNC) came just minutes before UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura met with a delegation representing the government of President Bashar Assad.

The developments gave a glimmer of hope that peace efforts in Syria might get off the ground for the first time since two earlier rounds of negotiations collapsed in 2014.

The conflict has killed at least 250,000 people, forced millions to flee the country, and given an opening to the Islamic State group to capture territory in Syria and Iraq. It has drawn in the US and Russia, as well as regional powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The HNC, a Saudi-backed bloc, had previously said it would not participate in the UN-sponsored talks without an end to the bombardment of civilians by Russian and Syrian government forces, a lifting of blockades in rebel-held areas and the release of detainees.

A statement said the opposition decided to take part in the talks after receiving assurances from friendly countries about those humanitarian issues, and that a delegation headed by HNC chief Riad Hijab will leave Saudi Arabia for Geneva on Saturday.

Only once their conditions are met will they negotiate, the statement added.

Mr de Mistura said he had "good reason to believe" the HNC would join the talks on Sunday, but refused to react formally until he got an official notice from its leadership.

"As you can imagine, I have been hearing rumours and information already," he told reporters after meeting with the delegation led by Syria's UN ambassador, Bashar Ja'afari.

"What I will react to - that's why I said I have reasons to believe - I will only react when I get a formal indication of that," Mr de Mistura said, "But that is a good signal."

Speaking almost simultaneously at a hotel across town, HNC member Farah Atassi told reporters its delegation would arrive on Saturday only to talk to UN officials about its demands after receiving some reassurances from the UN, but "not to negotiate".

The decision came after many Western powers and Saudi Arabia - a major backer of the group - had pushed hard for the HNC to attend, diplomats said.

Disputes have arisen over which opposition parties will attend, with the HNC coming under criticism for including the militant Army of Islam group, which controls wide areas near the capital of Damascus, and is considered a terrorist organisation by the Syrian government and Russia.

The largest Kurdish group in Syria, the Democratic Union Party or PYD, is not invited to the talks. Turkey considers the PYD to be a terrorist organisation. Also not invited are the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

Opposition figures from outside the HNC are also in Geneva, but they were invited as advisers.

The meetings, billed as multi-party talks, are part of a process outlined in a UN resolution last month that envisions an 18-month timetable for a political transition in Syria, including the drafting of a new constitution and elections.

Mr de Mistura has decided that these will be "proximity talks", rather than face-to-face sessions, meaning that he plans to keep the delegations in separate rooms and shuttle in between. He has played down expectations by saying he expects them to last for six months.

UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi reflected the chaos and confusion earlier in the day when he told reporters: "I don't have a time, I don't have the exact location, and I can't tell you anything about the delegation."

Meanwhile, the Dutch government said on Friday it plans to join the US-led coalition targeting the Islamic State group in Syria with air strikes.

The Dutch have for months been carrying out air strikes in neighbouring Iraq, but have balked at extending the mission to Syria.

But after requests from the US and France, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's two-party coalition government decided to broaden the mandate to eastern Syria.
News / Local

by Thandeka Moyo

AN 18-year-old man from McDonald Bricks Compound in Bulawayo was yesterday slapped with a 15-year jail term for raping his sister who is in Grade One.The man initially pleaded guilty to rape before regional magistrate Chrispen Mberewere, but later denied violating his sister during mitigation."I didn't rape my sister and I don't agree with the State outline," he said.Passing sentence, magistrate Mberewere bemoaned the increase in sexual abuse of girls by relatives."After considering evidence laid against you by the State, it's clear that the accused raped his own sister. You are therefore sentenced to 15 years imprisonment of which five years are suspended for five years on condition you don't commit a sexual crime within that period," he said.Testifying in camera, the six-year-old girl revealed how her brother would wait for their parents to leave in the mornings and then rape her."My brother called me to his room and I went there. He then undressed me and raped me once. He begged me not to tell our parents," said the girl.Prosecuting, Trust Muduma said between November and December 1 last year, the man called his sister to his room."He would call his sister to his room while their mother was away."The man placed his young sister on his lap. He then removed his clothes and put her on the floor," said Muduma."He raped her once without protection and chased her out of his room."The court heard that this continued for a while until their mother noticed blood stained panties belonging to her daughter."The mother questioned the girl and she opened up and told her that her brother had been engaging in sex with her for some time. She took the child to hospital and made a police report," said Muduma.
Syrian pro-government troops hold positions in the Syrian town of Ain al-Hanash near l-Bab in Aleppos eastern countryside earlier this week as regime forces have recaptured the area from Islamist jihadists. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

The United Nations has admitted that the Assad regime is ignoring three quarters of all its requests to deliver aid in Syria, a key condition emerging for the opposition in advance of peace talks.

Negotiators for the rebels, due to start UN-sponsored peace talks with the regime in Geneva today, have demanded that previous security council resolutions on aid deliveries are followed as a term of taking part.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy who called the talks, said that he had passed on that demand to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

But Stephen O'Brien, the UN's head of humanitarian aid, told the security council that of 113 requests to be allowed to make aid deliveries to "hard to reach" areas last year, only 10pc reached the civilians in need.

"Almost 75pc of requests went unanswered by the government of Syria," he said. "Such inaction is simply unacceptable for a member-state of the United Nations and a signatory of the United Nations charter."

The world's diplomats were heading for Geneva yesterday on the assumption that talks would begin.

Mr de Mistura is not attempting to launch round-the-table negotiations of the sort that failed badly almost exactly two years ago in the same place, the grand UN buildings.

Instead, the two main Syrian delegations will meet in separate rooms, with negotiators shuttling back and forth. The first aim is not to find a political resolution to the five-year war, but to "de-escalate" the violence, with a ceasefire being the most ambitious immediate aim.

The regime, with its backers Russia and Iran, have agreed to attend. However, the opposition, a wide-ranging coalition of Islamist and secular fighting groups on the ground, long-exiled politicians, and regime defectors, is still considering its position. It wants assurances that it will be the only recognised opposition body - the Russians are seeking to have the Kurdish group the PYD registered as part of the opposition delegation. It is also demanding that existing UN resolutions on ending attacks on civilians and allowing aid to besieged areas, the overwhelming majority of which are held by rebels and surrounded by pro-regime forces, be met.

Salem al-Meslet, the spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee, said he had been assured that implementing the resolution was "non-negotiable".

"We are serious about participating in the negotiations, the ones who are hindering the start are those who are bombing and starving civilians," he said.

Recent regime victories in the coastal province of Latakia and the capture of Sheikh Miskin, a town near the Jordanian border in the south, mean it will be negotiating from a position of strength.

A series of international aid groups have claimed that those victories have coincided with a deliberate tightening of siege conditions by the regime, along with intensive Russian bombing from the air.

Recent statements by UN officials have made clear how civilians are being used as a target. Unicef this week said 47 schools were hit over the last year by bombardments of various sorts. Yacoub el-Hillo, the UN's Damascus representative, admitted the extent of the continuing abuses of the civilian population. ( Daily Telegraph London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
If this week's peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the outlook appears bleak - not just for Syria, but for the rest of the world.

Despite years of efforts to bring about peace in Syria, the international community has lacked the political will to facilitate the necessary agreements.

The grisly war lumbers on, unchecked, taking with it countless civilian lives and limbs.

If this continues, we are facing a grim and desolate future.

We need few reminders that the policy failures of the international community are becoming increasingly visible, reflected in the flow of refugees seeking safety and protection in Europe, especially over the past 12 months.

The bottom line is that Syria has endured almost five years of war.

The country is largely destroyed, with cities and infrastructure reduced to debris and rubble. The scale of the destruction is likely to be similar to some nations post-World War II.

For many Syrians who lived in the suburbs of Homs, Aleppo or Kobane, there simply isn't a home to return to, even if the war was to end today.

Entire towns have been levelled. The country will not recover for years, or even decades, and billions will be needed for reconstruction and rehabilitation.

The town of Madaya made international headlines recently as photos emerged of emaciated children in the besieged town, reduced to eating grass and leaves for survival. Some residents died of starvation because food was so scarce.

In a country where barrel bombs and gruesome attacks on civilians are a part of daily life, few see genuine prospects for reform.

More than 200,000 people have been killed as a result of the war.

Over four million Syrians have fled the country and are now eking out a life elsewhere as refugees.

Behind these cold, hard numbers are real people. Children, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers.

The same as you or I, the same as your family or neighbours. They have the same hopes, dreams and ambitions that you or I have for our children and our future.

The devastating effects of the war are not confined to Syria.

The enduring bloodshed is not only the world's biggest humanitarian disaster, it is also the world's biggest geopolitical hazard.

The impact of the crisis is being felt in the region and beyond. The spill-over into neighbouring countries is impossible to miss.

Turkey is now home to 2.5 million Syrian refugees. Lebanon, a tiny country, has welcomed more than one million.

According to the UN, more than 80pc of refugees in Lebanon are paying rent for shelter. More than half of them have accumulated a debt of more than US$400 and this is rising steadily, with no opportunity for formal employment.

The brunt of this is particularly hard to bear given their background - before the war, Syria was a middle-income country with healthcare services and infrastructure. It is hard to go from having so much to having so little.

How on earth can we expect them to continue like this, particularly after five years of conflict, if there is no prospect of peace?

What Syrians want more than anything is to return home in peace.

Assisting those affected by the conflict is essential, but the ultimate goal must be to end the bloody and protracted war.

The leaders of the international community must summon the political will and muscle to broker peace and halt the hostilities.

The peace talks in Geneva are a real and powerful opportunity for the Syrian crisis to be resolved through political negotiation and international diplomacy.

Without peace in Syria, one of the key objectives of the sustainable development goals (SDG)is entirely out of reach: to "promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels."

All other SDGs hinge on this goal - without peace, the other goals cannot possibly be achieved.

Moreover, achieving peace in Syria would undoubtedly have the biggest impact on the refugee crisis unfolding around the world.

The global imperative must be resolving the Syrian crisis and bringing peace to the region.

Peace is cohesive, it is the glue that binds us together. War is the irreconcilable reverse; fracturing families, rupturing communities, shattering entire countries.

In the absence of a peace deal, we are facing the complete destruction of Syria and an escalation in the global refugee crisis.

The time for peace is now.

Brid Kennedy is Regional Director Middle East & Asia with Concern Worldwide
Islamic State militants hope to build a maritime arm to carry out attacks in the Mediterranean, a senior Nato Naval officer has warned.

Islamic State militants hope to build a maritime arm that could carry out attacks in the Mediterranean, a senior Nato Naval officer has warned.

The march of Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) along the Libyan coast has cast an uncomfortable shadow across shipping said Vice-Adml Clive Johnstone.

Expand Close Islamic State militants hope to build a maritime arm to carry out attacks in the Mediterranean, a senior Nato Naval officer has warned. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Islamic State militants hope to build a maritime arm to carry out attacks in the Mediterranean, a senior Nato Naval officer has warned.

The spread of sophisticated Russian and Chinese weapons to armed groups in the region also means there is now the horrible opportunity a cruise liner or container ship could be hit, the commander of Natos maritime command warned.

Libyas collapse into chaos and Isils seizure of the coastal city of Sirte has prompted alarm in Europe, with countries including Britain and Italy considering sending thousands of troops to train local forces.

Vice-Adml Johnstone, a Royal Navy officer, said Isil was quickly changing and had ambitions to mount seaborne operations.

He said: We know they have had ambitions to go off shore, we know they would like to have a maritime arm, just as al Qaeda had a maritime arm.

As the Mediterranean is becoming increasingly militarised, commercial and tourist shipping is coming under threat, he said.

Sophisticated Chinese, Russian and Korean weapons were finding their way to militant groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah. Though he said he did not believe groups were targeting shipping, there was still a risk of a serious incident.

He said: There is a horrible opportunity in the future that a misdirected, untargeted round of a very high quality weapons system will just happen to target a cruise liner, or an oil platform, or a container ship.

The Nato allies must also not allow themselves to be hustled out of the eastern Mediterranean, where the Russian Navy is increasingly active, he said.

He said the growing risks to shipping in the Mediterranean mean he is quietly worried there will be an attack or serious incident.

He said: I think it wont be a planned, horrible mischievous act, I think it will be an act which is almost a mistake, or it will be an act of random terrorism that will suddenly have extraordinary implications for the Western world.

Elsewhere, he said patrols by Russian submarines in the North Atlantic were back up to Cold War levels.

Activity is so high that some Nato members are considering redeploying submarines from the Mediterranean to northern European waters, he said.

Islamic State (Isil)

What is Isil?

An Islamic extremist group controlling territory in Syria and Iraq

What is it called?

In the West, the group is usually known as Isil (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) or Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). In June, the militants said that wanted to simply be called Islamic State in recognition of the self-declared caliphate

What about 'Daesh'?

Daesh is an abreviation Dawlat al-Islamiyah f'al-Iraq wa al-Sham, and is the derogatory name used by many Muslims for Isil. Following the Paris attacks, the French government is now using this term

What are its aims?

A worldwide Islamic caliphate - a religious government - without borders

What terror attacks has it carried out?

Isil has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, the explosion of a plane travelling from Egypt to Russia, and the individual killings of Western hostages, including James Foley and Alan Henning

How is the group funded?

Looting, extortion and the possession of oilfields providing an estimated 1.8m in revenue per day

How much territory does Isil control?

An area of the Middle East that is roughly the size of Belgium

Where is it based?

Isil's HQ is understood to be in the city of Raqqa, Syria

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
SHARE Dr. Ronnie Booth, president of Tri-County Technical College, speaks at the State of Pendleton featuring a Taste of Pendleton event at Tri-County Technical College in Pendleton. Dr. Joanne Avery, superintendent of Anderson County School District 4, speaks at the State of Pendleton featuring a Taste of Pendleton event at Tri-County Technical College in Pendleton. Related Photos State of Pendleton at TCTC

By Mike Eads of the Independent Mail

The future looks bright for Pendleton area schools, public transit and other services.

The Clemson Area Chamber of Commerce moved its annual State of Pendleton luncheon to an evening gathering Thursday at Tri-County Tech's main campus, and added free samples from the The Village Baker, Dyar's Diner, Rick's Pizza Pub and other local eateries. The moves drew a much bigger crowd than in previous years.

"It's amazing what happens when you say 'free food and beer,' " joked Pendleton Mayor Frank Crenshaw.

Crenshaw and Tri-County Tech President Ronnie Booth each showed videos highlighting their respective institutions' successes over the last year. Town employees took turns bragging about the new town website, long overdue renovations to the wastewater treatment plant, improved public services and updates in town planning. Booth, meanwhile, cued up a video full of testimonials from Upstate manufacturing managers praising the quality and quantity of good workers they've been able to recruit from Tri-County.

Anderson School District 4 Superintendent JoAnne Avery touted Pendleton High School's No. 17 overall ranking in the state, and a graduation rate which has climbed from 74.4 percent in 2008 up to 87.9 percent last year. She said plans to open a new career center with Districts 3 and 5 on the Lakeside Middle School property in Anderson have been pushed back to 2019, but even with the delay she said the partnership would still be "a game changer for our students."

Chamber President and CEO David Lane handed out several community awards:

Davie Kirkley, who oversaw the planting of thousands of daffodils around town as part of Pendleton's recently completed 225th anniversary celebrations, received the Pride & Pendleton Award for her volunteerism.

Lou Koppel received the Community Spirit Award on behalf of the Pendleton Area Business Association, and his Art Gallery on Pendleton Square won Business of the Year.

Elevation Dance Company won the New Business of the Year Award.

Follow Michael Eads on Twitter @MikeEads_AIM
India and ASEAN member countries are leaving no stone unturned to strengthen economic ties in 2016. The beginning of 2016 has witnessed several political, economic, business and military policies from the Indian government and various ASEAN member states governments to solidify the relationship between the two.

The Indian government has continued to act in line with its Act East policy to deepen ties with ASEAN. Vice President Hamid Ansari will make trips to Brunei and Thailand in early February to develop Indias ties with the two nations. Meanwhile, the Indian government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Singapores government for the Indian civil aviation sector, and has plans to conduct a joint military exercise with several ASEAN nations in March. The recent policies reflect the changing regional dynamic and deepening of the economic relationship between India and ASEAN.

Vice Presidents Visit to ASEAN countries

Vice President Ansari will undertake a five-day trip to Thailand and Brunei in early February. Ansari will visit Brunei from February 1 to February 3. This is the highest-level bilateral trip by an Indian government official to the country. The Indian Vice President will meet several officials in Brunei, including the Crown Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah. Issues ranging from civil aviation to energy are set to be discussed, and the two governments may also sign MoUs in the health and defense sector.

Ansari will visit Thailand from February 3-5. He will meet Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha in Bangkok, and is set to deliver a talk at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok that will address Indias Partnership with Thailand and ASEAN. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that the visit would further strengthen economic ties between India and Thailand in the coming years. The two countries already cooperate in sectors such as security, defense, education and many others.

India signs MoU for Civil Aviation with Singapore

At the beginning of January 2016, the Indian government approved an MoU between India and Singapore for greater cooperation in civil aviation. The MoU will cover the airports of Jaipur (Rajasthan state) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat state) in India. Singapore will assist with operations and maintenance of these airports contracts. Areas of cooperation will include traffic developments, cargo and repairs. The Airport Authority of India (AAI) will continue to handle other functions at the airports.

The MoU is a watershed development that is reflective of the greater degree of economic cooperation between India and Singapore. It will ensure that India is able to benefit from the technical expertise that Singapore possesses in the civil aviation sector.

Indias Forthcoming Joint Military Exercise with ASEAN

As a part of its Look East policy, India will conduct a joint military exercise from March 2-8 with ASEAN member countries. The exercise will highlight Indias commitment to strengthen its strategic cooperation with ASEAN, and is indicative of the twos intent to ensure regional security, thereby building a stable economic environment for greater participation.

Observations

The latest ASEAN Business Optimism Index by Dun & Bradstreet is a good indicator to analyze the economic relationship between India and ASEAN. For instance, the Indian visit to Thailand in February 2016 is reflective of growing business optimism in Thailand. Almost all business confidence parameters in Thailand increased in the latest index when compared to the last. The booming economic environment in the country has made other Asian countries take notice of the opportunities that Thai markets present. This underlined the possible motive for the upcoming Indian visit, which will seek to capitalize on the business opportunities that Thailand presents.

Meanwhile, Indias MoU with Singapore also bodes well for foreign investors. The latest ASEAN Business Optimism Index marked a decline for a number of business confidence parameters in Singapore. However, the MoU highlights that bilateral agreements will ensure that countries are able to strengthen economic ties despite periods of business pessimism. In addition, the upcoming joint military exercise reflects the commitment that India and ASEAN countries have to build a sustainable and stable future for the region.

The Business Optimism Index, released every quarter by Dun & Bradstreet, is considered a leading economic indicator for turning points in business activity and measuring business sentiment. The Index captures business expectations for the quarter ahead based on six parameters: sales volume, net profit, selling price, new orders, inventory, and employment. Sampling in the Index represents key business sectors including manufacturing, construction, wholesale, transportation, services, finance, mining and agriculture, according to their GDP contribution in each nation. The ASEAN Business Optimism Index for Q1 2016 is out now and available as a complimentary download in the Asia Briefing Bookstore.

Managing Your Accounting and Bookkeeping in India

In this issue of India Briefing Magazine, we spotlight three issues that financial management teams for India should monitor. Firstly, we examine the new Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS) system, which is expected to be a boon for foreign companies in India. We then highlight common filing dates for most companies with operations in India, and lastly examine procedures and regulations for remitting profits from India.

Taking Advantage of Indias FDI Reforms

In this edition of India Briefing Magazine, we explore important amendments to Indias foreign investment policy and outline various options for business establishment, including the creation of wholly owned subsidiaries in sectors that permit 100 percent foreign direct investment. We additionally explore several taxes that apply to wholly owned subsidiary companies, and provide an outlook for what investors can expect to see in India this year.

An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2015 (Second Edition)

Doing Business in India 2015 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in India. As such, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Indian market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to keep up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes. We discuss a range of pertinent issues for foreign businesses, including Indias most recent FDI caps and restrictions, the key taxes applicable to foreign companies, how to conduct a successful audit, and the procedures for obtaining an employment visa.
TVS Motor Company Ltd is currently trading at Rs. 287.4, down by Rs. 4.25 or 1.46% from its previous closing of Rs. 291.65 on the BSE.

The scrip opened at Rs. 293.4 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 295 and Rs. 279.6 respectively. So far 2473328(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 13856.29 crore.

The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 1 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 316.45 on 28-Jan-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 201 on 24-Aug-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 296.3 and Rs. 274.6 respectively.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 57.4 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 28.84 % and 13.76 % respectively.

The stock is currently trading below its 50 DMA.

TVS Motor Company has reported a revenue growth of 11% for the quarter ended December 2015. Total revenue grew from Rs 2,639 Crores in the quarter ended December 2014 to Rs. 2,940 Crores in the quarter under review.On account of the unseasonal heavy rains and floods, the Chennai city and neighboring districts were affected. The company reached out to 3.75 lacs customers and free service camps were conducted. All affected two-wheelers were promptly serviced in the service camps. In addition, company also contributed to the flood relief fund of Govt. of Tamil Nadu. The reported profits are after provision for one off expense of Rs 7.5 Crores consequent to floods in Chennai and a further sum of Rs 10.6 Crores was provided on account of retrospective amendment to Bonus Act. Out of this amount a sum of Rs 5.7 Crores relating to 2014-15 has been shown as exceptional item.Profit Before Tax and before exceptional item grew by 25.1% increasing from Rs.123.7 Crores in the quarter ended December 2014 to Rs. 154.7 Crores during the quarter ended December 2015. Profit Before Tax after exceptional item (PBT) grew by 20.5% increasing from Rs.123.7 Crores in the quarter ended December 2014 to Rs. 149.0 Crores during the quarter ended December 2015.Profit After tax (PAT) increased from Rs.90.2 Crores reported in quarter ended December 2014 to Rs. 107.7 Crores in the quarter ended December 2015, registering a growth of 19.4% over comparable quarter of previous year.Total two-wheeler sales of the company grew by 8% in the quarter ended December 2015, increasing from 6.27 Lakh units in the corresponding quarter of the previous year to 6.76 Lakh units in the quarter ended December 2015. Motorcycle sales grew by 5% increasing from 2.48 Lakh units in the quarter ended December 2014 to 2.60 Lakh units in the quarter ended December 2015. Scooter sales grew by 25% in the quarter ended December 2015 increasing from 1.86 Lakh units recorded in the quarter ended December 2014 to 2.33 Lakh units in the quarter under review. Three wheeler sales during the quarter ended December 2015 is 26,225 units against 28,128 units sold in the corresponding quarter of previous year.During the quarter ended December 2015 the company exported 1.08 Lakh units of two and three wheelers compared to 1.07 Lakh units exported in the corresponding quarter of previous year. The Board at its meeting held on 29th January 2016 declared an interim dividend of Re. 1/- per share (100%) for the year 2015-16 absorbing a sum of Rs. 55.65 Crores, including dividend distribution tax.In January 2016, the company launched two of its motorcycles, TVS Apache RTR 200 and TVS Victor in the premium and executive segment respectively.
News / Local

by Melody Baya

A BULAWAYO man yesterday pleaded with a magistrate to jail his wife for at least a year for allegedly scalding him with cooking oil on the face and chest following a misunderstanding.Clemence Ncube, 40, of Cowdray Park suburb told Western Commonage Magistrate, Abednico Ndebele, that he feared his wife, Miriam Phiri, 25, was going to kill him.He claimed that there was no peace in their home and on Tuesday he sustained burns on the face and chest after his wife allegedly scalded him with boiling cooking oil."Your worship I want my wife to be jailed for at least a year as punishment for the pain I went through as a result of her actions. I fear one day she is going to kill me," said Ncube.Phiri, was not asked to plead to a physical abuse charge, but said prison was not going to be good for her as she was receiving treatment."I'd rather be out of custody and move out of his house," said Phiri.Ndebele remanded her out of custody to February 11 on free bail.Prosecuting, Stewart Madzore, told the court that on January 26 at around 9PM, the couple had a misunderstanding over a phone call Phiri had received the previous night at around 11PM.Phiri allegedly did not answer the phone call and when asked who wanted to talk to her, she did not answer."The accused person boiled some cooking oil in a saucepan and locked the door from inside. She then poured the hot cooking oil on the complainant's face and chest as he was passing by the kitchen," said Madzore.The prosecutor said Ncube sustained burns on the face and chest and was referred to hospital.He said a medical report will be produced in court as evidence.
Hindalco Industries Ltd has informed BSE that under the composite scheme of arrangement between Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited (ABNL), Madura Garments Lifestyle Retail Company Ltd (MGLRCL), and Pantaloons Fashion & Retail Limited (PFRL), the company has been allotted on January 27, 2016, 4,49 crore equity shares of Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Limited aggregating to 5.85%.Stock view:Hindalco Industries Ltd ended at Rs. 70.55, up by Rs. 0.8 or 1.15% from its previous closing of Rs. 69.75 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 70 and touched a high and low of Rs. 71.2 and Rs. 68.85 respectively. A total of 10640646(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 14568.47 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 1 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 161.7 on 23-Feb-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 66.5 on 20-Jan-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 73.5 and Rs. 69.3 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 37.69 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 38.93 % and 23.38 % respectively.The stock traded above its 200 DMA.
Indraprastha Gas Ltd dropped marginally to Rs.560.10 at the closing bell after a Bloomberg report said that the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board dismissed the company plea on exclusivity for Delhi sales.The scrip opened at Rs. 563.2 and touched a high and low of Rs. 567.5 and Rs. 517.55 respectively. A total of 3310019(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 7885.5 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 10 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 607.5 on 11-Jan-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 376 on 09-Jun-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 589.6 and Rs. 548 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 45 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 42.15 % and 12.85 % respectively.The stock traded below its 50 DMA.
Pakistan-based Sukoon, an on-demand marketplace for contractual laborers, announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Crescent Ventures. The TIE Islamabad Angel fund and Dotzero Ventures also participated in the round. While specific financial details were not revealed, the startup did say that the investors have acquired a non-controlling, minority stake in the company. (BS)Hyperlocal delivery startup for medicines and healthcare products, Pluss, has tied up Patanjali Ayurved, the consumer products company, co-founded by Yoga guru Baba Ramdev. (ET)Infosys Ltd has bought a minority stake in Waterline Data Science Inc., a start-up based in Delaware, US, which helps companies make sense of large data sets, for $4 million. (MINT)Delhi-based startup DesignBids, a marketplace for architecture and interior design services, today announced that it has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from the Indian Angel Network. (BS)An extra-curricular activity and hobby class curation start-up, Findurclass.com has raised a fresh round of funding from a set of investors, including members of VentureNursery, Mumbai-based angel backed accelerator programme. (ET)GrabTaxi Holdings Pte. expects to break even in 2016, just four years after its founding, as Southeast Asias largest venture-backed startup broadens its ride-booking services to stay a step ahead of hard-charging Uber Technologies Inc. (MINT)Indian Angel Network, the country's oldest and largest angel investor group, has invested an undisclosed amount in DesignBids, an online marketplace for architecture and interior design services. (ET)Treebo, a Bangalore based tech-enabled chain of reliable hotels has announced the launch of its operations in Pune and Kolkata. The startup will initially launch one property each in these cities, thereby extending their presence to 52 hotels in 11 cities. With Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad already covered, the company has now established presence in all major metros in India. (TOI)An extra-curricular activity and hobby class curation start-up, Findurclass.com has raised a fresh round of funding from a set of investors, including members of VentureNursery, Mumbai-based angel backed accelerator programme. (ET)
Strategic partnership for building warships in India could be in the offing, since discussions with Bharati Defence & Infrastructure is ongoing by an affiliate of Russia's United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) and a UK company, says an ET report.The talks, if firmed up could prove to be instrumental for monetizing Bharati Defence & Infrastructures license which the Indian company might be mulling over.Additionally, a pact betweeen Reliance Defence and USC has also been in the news which reflects the foreign defence contractors' interest in India yet again, as per the report.With an estimated expenditure of $18 billion which could be made by the Indian Navy on warships in future, India stands as the largest importer of defence equipment with an annual budget of over $40 billion, the report said.Additionally, the country frequently requires missiles and armoured vehicles for submarines and aircraft. Domestic manufacturing of the defence equipment required by India, would be a boon to the industry while also buoying PM Modi initiated-Make in India programme, as mentioned in the report.Negotiations over the amount of investment required in the project and the possible share of partners are ongoing. Bharati Defence could also build a subsidiary that would build the warships at two of the six shipbuilding yards owned by the company, as mentioned in the report.
via Salon

Breastfeeding has lifesaving benefits according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"Investing in breastfeeding has a significant impact on the health of women and children and on the economies of both rich and poor countries," said UNICEF Chief of Nutrition Werner Schultink, citing a new series published by the weekly medical journal, The Lancet.

"The (Lancet) series provides crucial evidence for the case that breastfeeding is a cornerstone of children's survival, health, growth and development and contributes to a more prosperous and sustainable future," he said. The study found that breastfeeding saves babies lives, reducing the risk of sudden infant deaths and intestinal diseases, reports Xinhua.

Breastfeeding also benefits countries economically.

The study also highlighted the economic benefits of breastfeeding and called on governments to support mothers with policies such as a minimum of 14-week maternity leave.

It found that countries lost over $500 billion annually because of a loss in cognitive ability which led to reduced earning capacity for people who had not been breastfed as babies.

via Time and Date

In fact, breastfeeding can even help the UN achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNICEF, which contributed to the Lancet series, said the study showed that breastfeeding can help achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs are a set of 17 economic, social and environmental goals all UN member states have agreed to work towards achieving by the year 2030.

"Breastfeeding is the most natural, cost effective, environmentally sound and readily available way we know to provide all children, rich or poor, with the healthiest start in life," said Schultink.

"It's a win-win for all concerned to make it a priority."
Patanjali Ayurved, the home-grown foods-to-FMCG player that recently took on Swiss multinational giant Nestle by launching its own noodle brand, is eating into the market share of another MNC giant, Colgate Palmolive, in the toothpaste segment.

pixshark

Haridwar-based Patanjali Ayurved, run by yoga guru Baba Ramdev, has garnered a 4.5% market share in the toothpaste segment, a report by Kotak Institutional Equities said. In comparison, in the last one year, Colgate Palmolive, the sector leader, has lost its market share by 60 basis points (100 basis points = 1 percentage point) to 57.3%. In an attempt to boost market share, Patanjali Ayurved is beefing up its main toothpaste brand, Danta Kanti, with variants like medicated, advance and junior.

Now Babaji Taking on Adidas

After Colgate's October-December quarter results on Wednesday, several brokerages have flagged competition from Patanjali Ayurved as a threat to MNC giants in the toothpaste segment. Prabhudas Lilladher, a domestic brokerage house, cut Colgate's earnings estimates for the next three years by 4-10% because of the threat from Patanjali Ayurved.

Toothpastes and noodles are not the only segments which excite Patanjali Ayurved as it is also taking on MNCs like Glaxo SmithKline Consumer, Mondelez and Johnson & Johnson by launching its own health food drinks and baby care products.

In a recent report on the Indian consumer segment, Deutsche Bank analysts Manoj Menon and Gaurav Bhatia said that emergence of Patanjali Ayurved as a serious player in the segment as it gains scale and market share, "its competitors, such as Colgate (toothpaste), Britannia, ITC (biscuits, dairy), Dabur (Honey, chywanprash), Nestle (Maggi, packaged foods) etc., will be starting to take notice of the strong growth delivered by Patanjali and its expansion into new categories."

In a report, Edelweiss had said Patanjali's PowerVita will provide competition to all health food drink companies like Mondelez and GSK Consumer. It is also planning to launch products like baby oil, talcum powder, baby soap, shampoo etc.
For the sixth successive year, Hong Kong topped the list of cities which hosted the most number of tourists.

IntoChinaTravel

The city played host to 27.7 million visitors in 2014, marking an increase of 8.2 percent from the previous year.

According to travel analysts Euromonito, the second most visited city in the same period was London, followed by Singapore, Bangkok and Paris in the top five.

Telegraph

Among India cities, capital New Delhi which saw a footfall of 4.69 million tourists lead the charts. The city saw an increase of 28 % which stood at 3.67 million in 2013.

Feel-Planet

New Delhi was closely followed by Mumbai, which saw a footfall of 4.57 million tourists, an increase of 25.6%.

TravelJee

Chennai which was ranked at 47th position hosted 3.8 million visitors from across the world, with an increase of 7.7%.

Mapmyindia

The city of Taj, Agra came fourth with a global ranking of 53. The city was visited by 3.26 million tourists.

Wikimedia

Pink city, Jaipur ranked 63rd on the list with 2.96 million visitors.

NamasteIndiaTrips

At the 98th position stood Kolkata which was visited by 1.85 million tourists.

India Travels

The report cites the combined efforts of a longstanding promotion campaign Incredible India and a weak rupee aiding visits to the country as a whole.

Additionally, the introduction of a new visa-on-arrival process for 46 countries, including the US, Germany and Australia, has helped encourage visitors to India.
Leopards whose skins cost lakhs in the international market are being killed by villagers in Uttarakhand for as little as Rs 2,000 each.

wildlifearticles

This revelation was made by a bunch of poachers in the state's Pauri district after they were arrested for felling seven of the big cats, all for Rs 14,000. Caught by a forest team after a frenetic chase last week, the villagers said they did this for some "easy money".

The district police had seized seven leopard skins from four men who were on their way to Kotdwar to pass on the consignment to a middleman. The seizure is considered the biggest-ever in the state.

It is quite unfortunate that the accused killed the leopards to take off their skin and sell it for a petty sum of Rs 2,000 per pelt," Khati said. "There is a great demand for leopard skin in the international market and the network starts from these villagers. There is a far bigger racket going on."

Ramesh Chand, DFO, said he caught three more people  Sunder Singh, Dinesh Singh and Rajan Kumar  on the basis of information divulged by the villagers.

Sunder Singh of Thalisain village is a shepherd, while Dinesh Singh from the neighbouring Bengali village is a school student. Rajan from Dungri, meanwhile, is someone "who charges money for filling up application forms for clients at the tehsil".

Chand said, "One of the accused, Rajan, killed the leopard by erecting an electric wire around his field. The others just poisoned the carcass of cattle and left it for the leopards to eat. But recovering seven leopard skins from these villages also strengthens the suspicion that villagers may have been involved in this practice for a long time."

The DFO said leopards have become easy prey for villagers because the area is still dense with forests and the big cats are being pushed out of their natural habitat due to settlements. "What this also proves," said Chand, "is that the villager's theory to poison leopards to avenge the killing of their cattle by the big cats is baseless."
Japanese electronics giant Kyocera has begun work on what's apparently set to be the world's biggest floating solar farm. Built on a reservoir in Japan's Chiba, it is said to be big enough to supply enough electricity for as many as 5,000 homes.

Thanks to the shortage of space in the country, this won't be their first floating solar farm. In fact, Japan has had several of them since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The shutdown of the nuclear plants has made Japan rely more on fossil fuel imports.

democraticunderground.com

The Yamakura dam will be using more than 50,000 solar panels covering an area of 180,000 square miles. The biggest on water, but relatively small when compared to land-based plants. Kyocera said it was turning to water because of a scarcity of land for a big enough solar power plant in Japan.

There were reports of India following Japan's footsteps by setting up our own floating solar plants in Kerala, but apart from a few news stories in 2014, nothing has taken shape.

pop.h-cdn.co

It's relatively simple to build a floating farm according to a UK-based solar advisor at the Renewable Energy Association. The main challenge would be to keep the wiring away from the water and put the inverters - that convert the electricity generated into a usable form - on structures that float. However, It is much cheaper to build solar on land than on water.

Kyocera has already built three floating solar farms in Japan, but all of them are much smaller than the current one that's supposed to be completed by 2018.
Follow us on apple s iphone is slumping. what s next

SAN FRANCISCO: The bloom may be off Apple's iPhone, at least for now. So now the pressure is on the iconic Silicon Valley company to come up with its next big thing.

On Tuesday, Apple acknowledged that it's likely to see an uncharacteristic sales decline this spring, amid signs of global economic weakness and slowing overall demand for new smartphones. That drove Apple shares down more than 6.5 percent Wednesday, extending a months-long slide.

It's almost certainly too soon to expect an Apple Car or even some yet-to-be-named, virtual reality iDevice to turn things around. Apple said it wouldn't comment on its plans beyond what its executives said Tuesday. But among some analysts, hope springs eternal for what the next generation of iPhones _ successors to the current 6S and 6S Plus _ might bring.

Tech blogs have hinted at a thinner iPhone 7 with dual cameras and wireless earbuds and minus the familiar headphone jack _ to be released this fall. Other reports suggest Apple might also go back to the future with a 4-inch phone last seen in Apple's 2013 iPhone 5S as a companion to the next generation of bigger-screen iPhones.

Apple faces "a few tough quarters ahead until we get to the build-up around iPhone 7 later this year," said Daniel Ives of FBR Capital Markets, in a research note Wednesday. He suggested the next iPhones will ``turn this ship back into growth waters."

But others warn that even new phones may not be enough to spark the kind of sales frenzy Apple experienced after it launched the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models with 4.7- and 5.5-inch screens in 2014. "We are not seeing any meaningful upgrades" or significant new features, wrote Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang. "It is in our view that iPhone 7 will not sell as well as the iPhone 6."

Apple doesn't have many alternatives for near term growth. Sales of iPads and Mac computers both dipped in the last three months of 2015. In an interview, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said the new Apple Watch had its strongest sales ever in the holiday quarter, but wouldn't provide numbers.

Maestri and other executives say they expect sales of iPads, Macs and Apple Watches to grow in the future. And the company is widely believed to be working on other new products.

While an Apple car isn't expected for several years, CEO Tim Cook may have hinted at another product category Wednesday, when he told analysts he doesn't view virtual reality as a "niche" product.

``It's really cool and has some interesting applications," Cook added, without elaborating. Apple also recently hired virtual reality expert Doug Bowman, a Virginia Tech computer science professor, according to reports last week.

Apple, meanwhile, stressed this week that it's making more money _ nearly $5 billion last quarter _ from a growing stable of online services, from the App Store to Apple Music and Apple Pay. The message seemed aimed at reassuring investors who worry that Apple relies on the iPhone for two-thirds of its revenue, but several analysts said it was a positive sign.

New products and services may not replace the iPhone as Apple's central revenue source, but they could provide the additional growth that investors want, said analyst Walter Piecyk at BTIG Research.

While the next iPhone could help Apple improve this year's sales figures, he added, ``I don't think anyone's expecting the return to hyper-growth that Apple saw in 2015."

Latest Business News
News / Local

by Mashudu Netsianda

A BULAWAYO man masqueraded as a magician and allegedly duped two soldiers of $18,500 after hoodwinking them into believing that he could turn old Z$5 notes into millions of United States dollars, a magistrate has heard.Bulawayo magistrate Gladmore Mushove heard this when Brian Moyo, 26, of Nketa suburb appeared before him facing two counts of fraud.Moyo was allegedly so convincing in his statements such that he would also send pictures of people carrying bundles of US dollar notes to entice the two soldiers, Simon Rambu, 34, and Alaster Anusa, 53, both stationed at 1 Infantry Brigade in Bulawayo.The fake magician allegedly duped more people in Harare using the same modus operandi and the two soldiers were only telephoned by the police in November last year informing them of Moyo's arrest following a tip-off in the capital.Rambu allegedly lost $10,000 while Anusa lost $8,500 to the conman.Moyo, who is being represented by Khulekani Sibanda of Mathonsi Law Chambers, pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was remanded out of custody to February 17 on $300 bail.Prosecuting, Simbarashe Manyiwa, said on April 3 last year, Rambu, received a telephone call from Moyo who indicated to him that he was interested in old Z$5 notes in exchange for thousands of US dollars.Rambu informed, Anusa, his workmate and they phoned Moyo who tricked them into sending money through his Ecocash account under the guise that it was for his bus fare to Bulawayo. "The two men sent Moyo $40 after he had assured them that he would come to Bulawayo to discuss the deal," said Manyiwa.The court heard that Rambu and Anusa waited for Moyo but he did not turn up but instead formulated various excuses.Moyo later phoned the two men and instructed them to deposit more money claiming it was meant to cleanse their $Z5 notes to enable it to multiply into millions of US dollars. He also instructed the complainants to carry out different rituals at their homes as part of the cleansing process.Anusa was prejudiced of $8,500 while Rambu parted with $10,000 and the money was sent to Moyo on different occasions through the Ecocash facility. The two men religiously played into Moyo's hands until November 2015 when they received a phone call from police in Harare informing them of Moyo's arrest following a tip-off. Anusa, in his testimony in court, said he sent Moyo $8,500 between April and September 2015."Moyo would ask me to send varying amounts claiming the money was for transport, diesel and other related issues. At one time he told us that we should check our bags claiming that he had magically filled them with thousands of US dollar notes and for that purported service he asked us to deposit $100 into his Ecocash account," said Anusa.Rambu said he lost $10,000 during the same period."Moyo was so convincing in his statements such that he would also send us pictures of people carrying bundles of US dollar notes to entice us to buy his story," he said.The two soldiers told the court that Moyo claimed that he was being used as a middleman by the "spirits" to collect the money on their behalf. "He would claim that he had helped several people to acquire millions of US dollars through his tricks with the help of spiritual elders. At one stage he claimed that some spiritual elders had visited his home and required money to perform the money changing magic," said Rambu.Sibanda, however, disputed the two soldiers' evidence, arguing that it was fraught with inconsistencies and lies."The complainants are actually now constructing evidence from the dock something which they never mentioned in their statements. My client never met the complainants in the first place as they allege," argued Sibanda.
Follow us on london to new york in 11 minutes presenting the supersonic jet antipode

New Delhi: After the success of aircraft Skreemr, Charles Bombardier has unveiled his next brain child The Antipode. The hypersonic jet claims to cover a distance of 5,566 km (London to New York) in just 11 minutes. The cost of building one Antipode is $150 million.

Antipode has surpassed Skreemr in speed by a huge margin. While the latter reached the hypersonic speed of Mach 10, Antipode can race upto Mach 24. One mach comes close to 1195 km per hour. An aircraft flying at Mach 2 is flying at twice the speed of sound in air.

Affiliated with the Canadian aircraft company, Bombardier Inc, Charles claims that the jet can travel up to 20,000 km in less than an hour carrying 10 people. Last year, he had designed Skreemr which carried 75 passengers at once.

Here's how the jet will work:

1. Antipode will have rocket boosters attached to its wings which will move the plane to a height of 40,000 feet after take off.

2. After this, the supersonic combustion engine will be ignited, shooting the jet up to a speed of Mach 24.



3. To avoid overheating, the jet is designed using NASA's Long Penetration Mode concept. As per this concept, the nozzles on the nose and wings will use the air flowing to cool down the surface of the plane.



Antipode also has an Indian connection. The images have been created by Abhishek Roy, the founder of Lunatic Koncepts, a design lab based in India.

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Follow us on congress using patel community for political gains hardik patel

AHMEDABAD: Jailed Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel has written a letter to Gujarat Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki alleging that his party was using the the community for its own political gains and if this continues, it won't come to power for another 25 years.

He also warned Solanki that his party would never get back to power in Gujarat, if it does not stop politics in the name of Patel community.

In the letter, written from Surat jail yesterday and made public by his lawyer today, Hardik wrote, "Congress won recent Panchayat polls (in Gujarat) due to our agitation only. I am writing this letter because I have learnt that your party is using Patel community as well as some of our agitation leaders. But, your party has done nothing concrete for us yet.

"We will not allow this approach of your party. I request you to stop the politics in the name of our community. Congress is out of power in Gujarat since the last 21 years. If this kind of politics does not stop, you will not come to power for another 25 years," he said.

The quota agitation spearhead also asked Solanki not to be under impression that Patels do not have any other option than voting for Congress.

"You might be under the impression that since Patels are unhappy with BJP, we do not have any other choice than to vote for Congress. If you believe so, then it is your mistake. We will find a third option if needed," Hardik's letter said.

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Follow us on pressure on pakistan to crack down on terror has to be kept up richard verma

New Delhi/Washington: Coming down heavily on Pakistan and its 'terror sponsoring' network, US Ambassador Richard Verma said that the pressure on Islamabad to crack down on terrorism has to be kept up and the US remains strongly engaged with India to tackle the menace which is affecting regional peace.

The envoy said India's engagement with Pakistan was important and that US President Barack Obama was appreciative of PM Narendra Modi's outreach in Lahore last month.

"We have to keep the pressure up, keep the leverage up work with moderate forces, work with Prime Minister Sharif and that's exactly the US President has done, secretary (John) Kerry has done and we will continue to do it," he said yesterday.

Verma also noted that Obama had appreciated decisions by Modi and Sharif to stick to talks despite the Pathankot terror attack.

On reports about the US negotiating a civil nuclear deal with Pakistan similar to the one it had with India, Verma categorically said no such proposal was on the table.

Describing terrorist safe havens in Pakistan, which is home to the Taliban and the Haqqani network, as a major challenge, a top US general nominated to be the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said it is difficult to destroy enemy having sanctuaries like this.

"When an enemy enjoys sanctuary like that, it's very difficult to defeat them," General John "Mick" Nicholson, who has been nominated by the Pentagon as Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during confirmation hearing.

Nicholson said he views the terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan as a serious problem.

"This (terrorist safe havens) has been one of the principal challenges. It's a sanctuary that our enemies, in particular the Haqqani Network, have enjoyed inside Pakistan," he said responding to a question from Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Committee.

Critical of the Af-Pak policy of the Obama Administration, McCain also demanded an immediately halt to US troop withdrawals and eliminate any target date for withdrawal.

Responding to the question, Nicholson said it is difficult to defeat the Taliban and Haqqani network when they enjoy terrorist safe haven, and as such, it is important to "enlist" Pakistan.

"In this case, Pakistan, to go after those sanctuaries, and then the other important piece is to build up the defence capacity of the Afghans so that they can keep that level of violence down to a manageable level," the general said.

Earlier, in a written response to questions, Nicholson asked Pakistan to take persistent action against the Taliban, particularly the Haqqani Network.

"Pakistan's pressure on the Taliban combined with its support to the reconciliation process are mutually reinforcing," he added.

Haqqani network, which is linked to al-Qaeda has also been blamed for several deadly attacks against Western and Indian interests in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul.

With PTI Inputs

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Follow us on uae deports 3 indians for alleged isis activities nia probing details

New Delhi: Three Indians said to be sympathisers of militant group ISIS have been deported to Delhi from the United Arab Emirates after they were accused of plotting a mission to carry out terror attack in India and some other countries.

The three individuals have been identified as Adnan Hussain, Mohammad Farhan, Sheikh Azhar Al Islam. They were detained by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) upon their arrival at the IGI airport last night, official sources said.

The three men belong to Maharashtra, Karnataka and Jammu and Kashmir.

The trio, along with their other unknown associates, were allegedly involved in a conspiracy to identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train Indian citizens in India and other countries for planning and executing terrorist attacks in India and in other friendly countries, the sources said.

The youths are believed to be members of the Abu Dhabi module of the ISIS. The NIA, after registering a case, is questioning the suspects and a formal arrest is expected soon.

Notably, this is not the first instance of UAE deporting Indians on charges of ISIS activities. On September 15, 2015, the UAE had deported four Indians suspected to have links with ISIS. The UAE had also sent back last year a 37-year-old woman Afsha Jabeen alias Nicky Joseph who was allegedly involving in recruiting youths for ISIS.

In January 2015, Salman Mohiuddin of Hyderabad was arrested when he was preparing to board a flight to Dubai on way to Syria via Turkey.

According to Indian intelligence agencies, a total of 23 Indians have so far joined the ISIS, of whom six were reportedly killed in different incidents in Iraq-Syria.

Among the 23 are two absconding members of the banned Indian Mujahideen who had gone from their hideouts in Pakistan.

The dead were identified as Athif Vaseem Mohammad (Adilabad, Telangana), Mohammad Umar Subhan (Bengaluru), Maulana Abdul Kadir Sultan Armar (Bhatkal, Karnataka), Saheem Farooque Tanki (Thane), Faiz Masood (Bengaluru) and Mohammad Sajid alias Bada Sajid (Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh).

Around 150 Indians are under surveillance for their alleged online links with ISIS. As many as 30 other Indians, who were radicalised by ISIS elements, were prevented from travelling to the conflict zone in the Middle-East.

Among those who are currently fighting for ISIS include two youths from Kalyan in the outskirts of Mumbai, an Australia-based Kashmiri, one youth from Telangana, one from Karnataka, one Oman-based Indian and another Singapore-based Indian.

(With PTI inputs)

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Follow us on 26/11 case witnesses fail to appear before pakistani court

Islamabad: For the second time, four witnesses failed to appear before a Pakistani anti-terrorism court to record their statement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack case, prompting an annoyed judge to re-summon them.

"Four witnesses - both official and private - were to appear in the Anti-Terrorism Court Islamabad which held its hearing at Adiala Jail Rawalpindi yesterday. But they did not appear and no reason was given to the court in this regard," a court official told PTI today.

"They had also not appeared in a previous hearing. The judge expressed his annoyance and re-summoned them for next hearing," the official said.

The court adjourned the hearing till Wednesday. Earlier, a prosecution lawyer said that the prosecution would challenge in the Lahore High Court the rejection of its plea by the trial court to form a commission to examine the boat used by Mumbai attackers.

"We are going to challenge the trial court's decision to reject our plea regarding formation of a commission to examine the boat - Al-Fauz - used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks in the Lahore High Court," he said.

He said the prosecution believes that the boat is "case property" and it needs a government commission to examine and endorsement in this respect.

On January 13 hearing, the court dismissed the plea of the prosecution. According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi.

It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money.

The multiple attacks in Mumbai killed 166 people. Pakistani authorities arrested seven Lashkar-e-Taiba members involved in the planning of the attacks including the terrorist group's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack.

Six accused Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum have been in Adiala Jail for more than six years in connection with planning and executing the Mumbai attack in November, 2008, that left 166 people killed.

Lakhvi, 56, secured bail in December, 2014, and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on April 10, 2015, after the Lahore High Court set aside the government's order to detain him under a public security act.

A case has been underway against them in the ATC since 2009 for their alleged role in the Mumbai attacks.

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Follow us on terrorist safe havens inside pakistan poses serious challenge

Washington: Terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan, providing shelter to terrorist outfits like the Taliban and the Haqqani network, is a serious problem, a top US general nominated to be the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said today.

"I view it (terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan) as a serious problem," Gen John "Mick" Nicholson told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing.

If confirmed by the Senate, he would replace Gen John Campbell as Commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan at a time when serious concerns have been raised about the security situation in Afghanistan, where Taliban militants have caused large numbers of casualties and Islamic State affiliates have made some inroads.

"One of the biggest problems has been the sanctuary, particularly for the Haqqani Network, particularly the involvement of the ISI in Pakistan, which in many cases have been supporting the Haqqani Network. Have you seen any progress in this whole problem?" Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Gen Nicholson.

In response, Gen Nicholson said continued presence of the terrorist safe haven has been a major problem.

"This has been one of the principal challenges. It's a sanctuary that our enemies, in particular the Haqqani Network, have enjoyed inside Pakistan," he said.

"I note that the Pakistanis have also suffered significant casualties in the tens of thousands in terms of their security forces and their civilians," he noted.

However, the US is not satisfied that there's adequate pressure put on the Haqqanis, he told the Senators.

The recent operations in northern Waziristan have helped, as well as stationing of additional soldiers in tribal areas.

"Some of this has pushed some fighters into Afghanistan, which has contributed to some of the issues there," he said.

"So, it's a mixed story, and it's one that requires continuous engagement by the Pakistan military. And then, increasingly, we want to encourage the Afghans and the Pakistan military forces to work more closely together against their common enemies," Nicholson said.

Earlier, in a written response to questions, Nicholson asked Pakistan to take persistent action against the Taliban, particularly the Haqqani Network.

"Pakistan's pressure on the Taliban combined with its support to the reconciliation process are mutually reinforcing," he added.

Haqqani network, which is linked to al-Qaeda has also been blamed for several deadly attacks against Western and Indian interests in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul.

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Follow us on world facing zika virus threat warns who india readies testing kits

Geneva/New Delhi: The Zika virus is 'spreading explosively' in the Americas and can infect upto 4 million people, the WHO warned today.

The WHO also issued a warning to all countries, including India, who have the vector of Aedes mosquito that also causes Dengue and Chikungunya.

The outbreak began in Brazil last year and has now spread to 24 countries in the Americas, causing serious birth defects and other neurological problems like microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with an abnormally small head.

WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan said that although there is no definitive proof that the Zika virus is behind the spike in brain defects in Brazil, 'the level of alarm is extremely high'.

Dr Marcos Espinal, Director of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis at WHO, said, "Zika will go everywhere the mosquito is. We should assume that. We should not wait for it to spread."

Zika originated in Africa

The Zika virus is caused by the aggressive Aedes aegypti mosquito that also causes Dengue and Chikungunya - both the viral diseases are of great public health concern to tropical countries like India.

The Zika virus was first discovered in Africa in 1947. But until last year, when it was found in Brazil, it had never been a threat in the Western Hemisphere.

Chan also announced a special meeting next week to decide if they should declare an international health emergency. She also expressed concern over the potential of global spread of the disease, owing to the large geographical spread of the Aedes mosquito.

Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director-General, WHO, also warned that the virus could spread to other places wherever there is Aedes mosquitoes.

"What we have to assume is anywhere where they have the Aedes (mosquitoes), they could have the Zika virus and they should have the tools to be able to look for it," he said.

"So, that's part of the reason we are trying to get the information out to countries that have got the vector but may not yet have the virus - look now for the virus," he added.

Such is the level of alarm that many American countries like El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador have urged women to postpone pregnancy till 2018.

Complicating matters further, the Olympics in 2016 is to be held in Rio, the epicenter of the virus outbreak. The concern is also related to lack of immunity of the population that are unexposed to the Zika virus.

Additionally, there are no vaccines, specific treatments, and rapid diagnostic tests, available to combat the virus.

India prepares for Zika virus

The Union Health Ministry is in the process of getting testing kits for detecting the virus which is spread by the bite of Aedes mosquito.

In the past two weeks, the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune has prepared itself to offer testing for Zika virus detection.

"We are in the process of procuring testing kits for detecting Zika virus. The government is also writing to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to know more about the infection and prepare accordingly," a senior official said.

Reports say the Ministry is also establishing protocols to keep a close watch on any 'sudden rise' in birth defects in any region of the country.

With PTI Inputs

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Follow us on after shahnawaz hussain union min naqvi gets isis threat

New Delhi: BJP leader and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has received a threat letter purportedly sent by terror outfit ISIS.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader's office in the national capital alleged to have received a threat letter from the Islamic State On friday.

The letter arrived at Naqvi's residence in New Delhi area through post.

Intelligence Bureau Director Syed Asif Ibrahim and Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi have been apprised of the matter.

Earlier, another BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain had also received a similar threatening letter from the ISIS
Follow us on kerala hc stays fir against oommen chandy in solar scam

New Delhi: In a major relief to Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, the High Court today granted an interim stay on a vigilance court order directing for an FIR to be registered against him and Power Minister Aryadan Muhammed in connection with solar scam.

The interim stay has been granted for two months.

The court observed that the vigilance court judge seemed unaware of his position as he had called himself just a 'postman' in the order.

Earlier in the day, Chandy and Aryadan had moved appeals in the High Court seeking quashing of the vigilance court directive to register case against them based on the revelations of solar scam accused Saritha S Nair. Chandy in his affidavit told the court that vigilance court had unnecessarily rushed into giving an order.

Nair had alleged Chandy was paid Rs 1.90 crore and Aryadan Rs 40 lakh as bribe in exchange for government favours.

Yesterday, the Thrissur vigilance court had directed the police to file FIR against Chandy and Aryadan on complaint by social activist PD Joseph in solar scam case.
Follow us on nitish to re start his janata darbar from february 1

Patna: After a long break, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is set to resume his popular 'janata durbar' (people's court) from February 1 to listen to the grievances of the people, an official said here on Friday.

The 'janata durbar' was discontinued last year in view of the model code of conduct for the assembly elections and remained suspended through October and November during which polls were held, Atish Chandra, an official at the Chief Minister Office, said.

"He is now likely to hold the first durbar in his third term as chief minister on February 1," Chandra said.

The janata durbar, to be held at Nitish Kumar's official residence here, would be made more transparent and will provide more help to the people, officials said.

Widely seen as the brainchild of Nitish Kumar, the practice started in April 2006, about five months after he first came to power.

There was no past example of any regular programme in Bihar of a chief minister interacting directly with the common man.

It was an instant hit with hundreds of people from the different parts of the state, particularly rural areas, thronging to the chief minister's residence in the hope that their grievances would be personally heard and redressed by the chief minister.

Nitish Kumar did seem to be acting on people's complaints, often immediately ordering the officials concerned, particularly the police, to take action in a matter.

Encouraged by the response to the initiative in the state capital, the chief minister then started to hold similar janata durbars in district headquarters.

A senior ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U) legislator considered close to Nitish Kumar said the people's grievances were an eye-opener for the government.
News / Local

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe's spokesperson George Charamba yesterday claimed the veteran Zanu-PF leader will soon act on a faction of the party known as Generation 40 (G40), before launching into an explosive diatribe subtly directed at Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo.Moyo is believed to be the brains behind the ambitious G40 grouping opposed to Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa succeeding Mugabe.In an unrestrained attack, Charamba said the G40 faction should start worrying about their careers,accusing them of undermining Mugabe and pushing the succession narrative within the governing party."What they have to worry about are their own careers, not me," Charamba said in a radio interview with ZiFM and SFM at State House in Harare on Wednesday."The President is not a character who rushes. He will allow you a very long rope, you go about enjoying meaningless headlines and thinking you are on top of the world, it will take just one afternoon."So watch it, there are many sinister minds that speak in the name of the President, who are in fact successionists' and it won't be long before the headlines give you the story."Charamba repeated claims made by State media columnist Nathaniel Manheru  who in fact is widely reported to be himself  that the G40 was working with axed former Vice-President Joice Mujuru to topple Mugabe."Some have been meeting with the People First (PF), they are still in Zanu-PF, but it won't be long. That's where that prophet or prophetess called Manheru becomes very useful," he said.Charamba, who is believed to have thrown his lot behind Mnangagwa, described the G40 members as "little men with absolutely no iota of history behind them thinking they can one day emerge as leaders of this country"."With their little minds and [they] think baldness is age, it isn't," he said."There is one tragedy of those little fellas, and I call them little fellas, they confuse media skills with social skills. They think they can scale up the political ladder by tweeting without knowing they are tweeting themselves to eternity."Without mentioning names, Charamba, who is also Information, Media and Broadcasting Services ministry secretary, ominously warned the G40 members would come unstuck."(They think) when you manipulate one or two headlines you have a social base for launching your stupid ambition," the presidential spokesperson said."They will come to grief, they will come to grief, get it from me and I am not speaking as a permanent secretary. I am speaking as President Mugabe's Press Secretary."He did not hide his displeasure at the G40 members, whom he accused of discussing Mugabe's tenure yet they were his juniors."Does that make sense to you? And this is exactly what makes me angry and when I point that out, they give you a faction," Charamba thundered."Something must give in now. We can't have this. I have to fend off bad Press from within Zanu-PF, not even MDC, but from within Zanu-PF  24/7 mulling about how to handle bad Press from my own party members."The livid Charamba accused the G40 members of leaking confidential politburo minutes "in their poor English which I know".Charamba derisively referred to the G40  which is reportedly sympathetic to First Lady Grace Mugabe and comprises of Moyo, Zanu-PF commissar Saviour Kasukuwere and Youth minister Patrick Zhuwao, among others  as "God's deputies".In statements full of innuendos, Charamba said the unnamed people were "fools, big fools" for thinking they could manipulate their proximity to the First Family to influence the succession issue.Charamba also hinted there were people who were not too pleased he was working with Mnangagwa."The President is the appointing authority. He has given us two VPs. Who is the guilty party? The one who asks a little civil servant why he is working with this or that VP? Or the one who comes forth and says, hey little civil servant, don't like this VP, like this one'? Is he not substituting the President as the appointing authority?" Charamba queried."In the first place, who says Mugabe won't be there in 2018? And here are these God's deputies who know when Mugabe will die, who can tell who should not be VPs and who should be, who can tell who must succeed Mugabe when they kill him off and, meanwhile, we must accept that they are not ambitious themselves."Charamba once again denied he was Manheru.However, he seemed infuriated after Moyo last week tweeted that Charamba was in fact Manheru, something the Higher Education minister first disclosed 10 years ago."I can assure you, there is no Nobel Prize for guessing who Manheru is and tell those stupid politicians that there is no trophy for guessing who Manheru is, tell them," Charamba said.But as if directly responding to Charamba's tongue-lashing, Moyo yesterday took to the micro-blogging platform Twitter, saying: "There's a silly Shakespearean wordsmith who thinks politics is about clever words and who sees himself as the system when he's a factionalist."Moyo ranted: "George Charamba's media voices are no longer of a civil servant, but of a politician in aid of a desperate faction. That's unacceptable. Some of us with hard lessons on the 2004 tragedy of factions resisted the Mujuru faction not for the other faction, but for President Mugabe."Zanu-PF had two factions. Mujuru's faction was expelled in 2014 and now exists in the media as-PF. Thus, only one faction remains the problem."Repeated efforts to get Moyo to clarify his utterances last night were fruitless as his mobile phone rang unanswered, while Charamba was also not reachable.Political analyst Takura Zhangazha said the verbal showdown between Moyo and Charamba confirmed fears that Zanu-PF factionalism had derailed most government projects."It is a battle to demonstrate political power and will remain in the books for a long time whether a permanent secretary who doubles as spokesperson of the President is powerful than a minister."It is more personal than political and is a clash of egos. Therefore, it is a fight that will be more in the media than reality. So, it is entirely up to Mugabe to act. Charamba is obviously not issuing such statements without political support.If he (Mugabe) coincidentally makes a decision or doesn't, it will show who has the influence."
Follow us on president blames narasimha rao rajiv gandhi for babri demolition

New Delhi: Calling it an act that destroyed India's image as a pluralistic nation, President Pranab Mukherjee, in the second part of his memoirs 'The Turbulent Years, 1980-1996', has written that the 'inability to prevent the demolition of Babri Masjid was one of the biggest failures of then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao'.

"The inability to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid was one of PV (Narasimha Rao)'s biggest failures. He should have entrusted the task of tough negotiations with other political parties to a more senior and seasoned politician familiar with politics in UP - like ND Tiwari," Mukherjee wrote in the book, which was released by Vice President Hamid Ansari at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday.

He also questioned the decision of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to open the site for prayers. "The opening of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple site on 1 February 1986 was perhaps another error of judgement. People felt these actions could have been avoided. People felt these actions could have been avoided."

Mukherjee writes that matters took a 'dramatic turn after the fall of the Babri Masjid'. "Sitaram Kesri created a scene, collapsing into tears and disrupting a Cabinet meeting at which I was present. I had to tell him, 'There is no reason to be melodramatic. All of you were members of the Cabinet and some of you were members of the CCPA. All decisions were taken in the meetings of the Cabinet and CCPA. Responsibility is collective; the onus cannot only be on the Prime Minister or Home Minister'."

"Later, in a private meeting with PV, I did not mince words. I burst out, 'Was there no one who advised you of the dangers? Did you not understand the global repercussions of any damage to the Babri Masjid? At least now take concrete steps to quell communal tensions and assuage the feelings of Muslims through affirmative action'," Mukherjee writes.

"PV looked at me as I said this, and in his characteristic style did not let any emotion cross his face. But I had known and worked with him for several decades. I did not need to read his face. I could feel his sadness and disappointment. I have often wondered later if it was this outburst of mine which finally led to the call I received from him on 17 January 1993, inviting me to join the Cabinet."

Mukherjee calls the demolition an act of 'absolute perfidy, which should make all Indians hang their heads in shame'.

"It was the senseless, wanton destruction of a religious structure, purely to serve political ends. It deeply wounded the sentiments of the Muslim community in India and abroad. It destroyed India's image as a tolerant, pluralistic nation..." the President writes.

"In fact, the Foreign Minister of an important Islamic country later pointed out to me that such damage had not been inflicted on a mosque even in Jerusalem, which has seen religious conflicts for centuries."

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad's campaign to collect bricks from all over the country and take to Ayodhya caused communal tension, he writes.

The period of 1989-91, Mukherjee writes, was a phase dominated by violence and bitter divisions within Indian society. "Insurgency and cross border terrorism broke out in Jammu and Kashmir; the Ram JanmabhoomiMandir-Babri Masjid issue rocked the nation. Finally, a suicide bomber brought Rajiv's life to an abrupt and tragic end on 21 May 1991."
Follow us on president returns gujarat s controversial anti terror bill seeks additional information

New Delhi: A controversial anti-terror bill, passed by Gujarat Assembly but twice rejected by the previous UPA government, was returned by President Pranab Mukherjee seeking additional information from the government after which the legislation was withdrawn.

The Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime (GCTOC) Bill, 2015, which has been hanging fire since Narendra Modi, as Gujarat CM first introduced it in 2003, was returned by the President to the Union Home Ministry as he sought more inputs related to certain provisions of the bill.

"Home Ministry will provide the additional inputs to the President after obtaining the same from the Gujarat government," a Home Ministry official said on Thursday.

The Home Ministry has informed the President after his communication that it was withdrawing the bill and will submit a re-worked bill for his consent. The controversial bill was sent to the President in September 2015 for his assent.

The bill provides for admissibility of evidence collected through interception of mobile calls of an accused or through confessions made before an investigating officer, in a court of law.

In July last year, the Modi government at the centre had sent back the bill to the state government asking it to clarify on certain issues raised by the ministry of information and technology (IT). The IT ministry had objected to the provision in the bill which allows authorisation of interception of telephone conversations and their admissibility as evidence before a court of law.

The Gujarat government had strongly rebutted the objections raised by the IT Ministry. In its reply, the Gujarat government cited the subjects mentioned in the 'concurrent list' under which the centre and the state share the responsibility of formulating criminal law and criminal procedure.

The central government has given its consent to the provision of extensions of time limit for filing of charge sheet from 90 days to 180 days after consultation with other central ministries.

The Gujarat assembly in March 2015 had passed the stringent bill retaining controversial provisions that had twice earlier led to a previous similar bill being rejected by the President. The bill was first rejected by then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2004, demanding that the clause relating to interception of communication be removed.

It was again rejected when Pratibha Patil was the President. On both the occasions, the then UPA government recommended to the President for rejection of the bill, saying several provisions of the GCTOC were not in conformity of the central law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Follow us on telangana cm says beef eating is a non issue

Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today said eating habits depend on availability of food but some political parties are trying to turn beef eating into an issue.

"Beef eating is there everywhere in the world. In China, they eat snakes and frogs too. Whatever they want to eat they will eat. Why there is a fuss about it I don't understand. Political parties are making it an issue and politicising beef eating. It is unfortunate. People will eat whatever is available to them. This is a non-issue," he said.

"It is unfortunate that politics in this country is centering around this issue," Rao added, responding to a question about AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi's remark that if his party lost the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections, beef eating would be banned in the city.

On the campaign by TDP leader and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for Hyderabad civic polls, Rao said it was a "futile" exercise and he should concentrate on his own state.

"Chandrababu Naidu was CM (of united AP) for nine years. Why all the problems (of Hyderabad) I mentioned now were not solved? Why power supply has not improved? He can do a lot of work in his state...campaigning in these elections is irrelevant to him. TDP was in power for 17 years. People do not believe if they say they would develop the city," he said.

Rao expressed confidence that Hyderabad citizens will vote for TRS for the development works his government has undertaken.
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News / Local

by Staff reporter

THREE suspected border jumpers are set to appear today at the High Court seeking to be remanded out of custody on a murder charge in which they are accused of killing their colleague who allegedly forced them to attack armed South African soldiers with stones.According to court papers, the suspects who are brothers, Lungisani Ndhlera (23), Isheunesu Ndhlera (25) and Pardon Ndhlera (25) are accused of causing the death of one Leeroy Mhlanga, who allegedly drowned in the Limpopo River while fleeing from his assailants.Allegations against the trio arose sometime in April 2014, while they were at an illegal crossing point into South Africa along the Limpopo River known as Musheshe when they came across Mhlanga who mobilised them to cross the river and fight South African soldiers after abandoning his cartons of cigarettes across the river.The State alleges the trio resisted the move arguing they could not fight armed soldiers with stones and their refusal prompted a heated argument which resulted in the trio attacking Mhlanga, who later ran into the Limpopo river and drowned.However, in their bail statements, the trio denied the allegations claiming they were not to blame for Mhlanga's death.Pardon said on the day in question he was not at the crossing point but was in a South African hospital where he was being treated of malaria.His brothers said that they were present when the incident occurred but denied the murder charge.Lungisani and Isheunesu said they were part of a group of more than 30 unemployed Zimbabweans who were on their way to South Africa in search of employment on the day in question.They said Mhlanga was the leader of a group from Harare, who were in the business of smuggling cigarettes into South Africa and on that particular day he and his crew had crossed to South Africa, where they abandoned their cartons of cigarettes after being confronted by armed South African soldiers.They said Mhlanga and his group sought to mobilise others to cross the Limpopo River armed with stones, and fight the armed South African soldiers, but his suggestion was turned down prompting Mhlanga and his group to attack Isheunesu instead.Isheunesu said he believed Mhlanga could have drowned while running away from the Zimbabwean police, army and immigration officials, who wanted to rescue him.
The U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Such a Smashing Success That a Sequel Is Coming

By Glenn Greenwald

January 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Intercept " - The immediate aftermath of the NATO bombing of Libya was a time of high gloating. Just as Iraq War advocates pointed to the capture and killing of Saddam Hussein as proof that their war was a success, Libya war advocates pointed to the capture and brutal killing of Muammar el-Qaddafi as proof of their vindication. War advocates such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nicholas Kristof were writing columns celebrating their prescience and mocking war opponents as discredited, and the New York Times published a front-page article declaring: U.S. Tactics in Libya May be a Model for Other Efforts. It was widely expected that Hillary Clinton, one of the leading advocates for and architects of the bombing campaign, would be regarded as a Foreign Policy Visionary for the grand Libya success: We came, we saw, he died, Clinton sociopathically boasted about the mob rape and murder of Qaddafi while guffawing on 60 Minutes.

Since then, Libya  so predictably  has all but completely collapsed, spending years now drowning in instability, anarchy, fractured militia rule, sectarian conflict, and violent extremism. The execution of Saddam Hussein was no vindication of that war nor a sign of improved lives for Iraqis, and the same was true for the mob killing of Qaddafi. As I wrote the day after Qaddafi fled Tripoli and Democratic Party loyalists were prancing around in war victory dances: Im genuinely astounded at the pervasive willingness to view what has happened in Libya as some sort of grand triumph even though virtually none of the information needed to make that assessment is known yet, including: how many civilians have died, how much more bloodshed will there be, what will be needed to stabilize that country, and, most of all, what type of regime will replace Qaddafi?  When foreign powers use military force to help remove a tyrannical regime that has ruled for decades, all sorts of chaos, violence, instability, and suffering  along with a slew of unpredictable outcomes  are inevitable.

But the much bigger question was when (not if, but when) the instability and extremism that predictably followed the NATO bombing would be used to justify a new U.S.-led war  also exactly as happened in Iraq. Back in 2012, I asked the question this way:

How much longer will it be before we hear that military intervention in Libya is (again) necessary, this time to control the anti-US extremists who are now armed and empowered by virtue of the first intervention? U.S. military interventions are most adept at ensuring that future U.S. military interventions will always be necessary.

We now have our answer, from the New York Times:

Worried about a growing threat from the Islamic State in Libya, the United States and its allies are increasing reconnaissance flights and intelligence collecting there and preparing for possible airstrikes and commando raids, senior American policy makers, commanders and intelligence officials said this week.  Its fair to say that were looking to take decisive military action against ISIL in conjunction with the political process in Libya, [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph] Dunford said. The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.

Just as there was no al Qaeda or ISIS to attack in Iraq until the U.S. bombed its government, there was no ISIS in Libya until NATO bombed it. Now the U.S. is about to seize on the effects of its own bombing campaign in Libya to justify an entirely new bombing campaign in that same country. The New York Times editorial page, which supported the original bombing of Libya, yesterday labeled plans for the new bombing campaign deeply troubling, explaining: A new military intervention in Libya would represent a significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent. In particular, this significant escalation is being planned without a meaningful debate in Congress about the merits and risks of a military campaign that is expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops (the original Libya bombing not only took place without Congressional approval, but was ordered by Obama after Congress rejected such authorization).
By Finian Cunningham

January 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " RT " - Europe is on a dangerous, slippery slope of increasing xenophobia and racism engendered by the influx of refugees. Denmarks new confiscation law is a sign of the brooding, baleful climate.

But the real answer to the problem is dealing with Europes support for Washingtons criminal wars.

In other words, citizens of Europe should be addressing the root cause of the problem, not reacting to the symptoms. We should be shaming the villains, not blaming the victims.

We should be demanding legal sanctions and prosecution of government leaders over what are gross violations of international law.

European governments stand accused of war crimes, yet we allow them to get away with mass murder. Then when we incur secondary problems such as the massive displacement of refugees from wars and conflicts  that our governments have fomented  we illogically and cravenly focus on blaming the victims of our governments criminality.

Part of the public shaming of the villains would involve holding those European members of the US-led NATO military alliance accountable to international law. Individual government and military leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against peace. The inculpating evidence is out there. The fact that European governments have waged dubious overseas wars  with impunity  is the real shame and root of the problem.

Wars in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, as well as drone assassinations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, plus covert military operations in Mali, Niger and Ivory Coast have all involved complicity of European member states. Britain and France in particular have been most prominent in carrying out US-led NATO military interventions, both overt and covert, as in Libya and Syria, respectively.

The countless millions of people displaced across Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa are a direct result of European militarism in conjunction with that of Washington. Even the French intervention in Mali and Central Africa Republic are questionable under international law. Both were launched without United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Over the past five years, Libya perhaps represents the most egregious case of illegal war conducted by NATO and its European members, including Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy in addition to Britain and France. Along with the US, these countries violated a UN mandate to bomb Africas most prosperous and stable country into a bloody shambles. Thousands of civilians were killed in the seven-month US-EU blitzkrieg, culminating in the brutal murder of leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Libya was ransacked into a failed state, over-run by illegally armed extremist groups, and it was European governments who authored the descent into barbarism. Where are the calls for justice for these atrocious crimes in so-called civilized, law-abiding, Nobel-prize-winning Europe?

Yet last week, American and European military chiefs were calling for even more military intervention in Libya and Syria. This declaration of military intervention  regardless of its stated purpose of fighting terrorism  is in itself an act of illegal aggression under international law; according to respected war crimes lawyer Christopher Black, speaking to this author. So, where was the public outrage and calls for prosecution over this flagrant bout of more criminality by our European governments and their American ally?

Even where countries have not been directly hit by NATOs military, such as Eritrea, Sudan and Cameroon, refugees coming from such places are doing so largely because of the lawless gateway-to-Europe that Libya was turned into by NATOs destruction.

This week we see the Danish parliament voting into law measures which allow its police to confiscate assets of asylum-seekers worth more than $1,400. The move has caused international controversy out of concern that the Danish authorities are infringing on human rights.

The Danish law is only one in a litany of grim signs that Europe is becoming an increasingly hostile place towards refugees. Countries like Hungary, Slovenia, Poland and Austria are closing their borders. Even formerly more open Germany and Sweden are restricting the intake of refugees and sending many back to where they came from.

On one hand, it is understandable that residents in different countries are alarmed by the surge in the numbers of foreign nationals. Especially when the foreigners are visibly different in color, dress and religious practice. Lets cut to the chase. Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East are of concern for many Europeans.

The spate of sex assaults in German and Swedish cities allegedly carried out by Arab-looking young men has fueled a popular backlash. But there is a danger of hysterical over-reaction that feeds political interests of racist groups. A French magazine cartoon depicting the little Syrian boy who died from drowning as a grown-up sex attacker is a despicably irresponsible incitement.

So too is tarring refugees as terrorist sympathizers. Following the jihadist terror attacks in Paris on November 13, there has been a dramatic rise in anti-Muslim hate assaults reported in Britain and France. The Paris terrorists may have infiltrated with the droves of Syrian refugees into Europe. But surely the real focus should be on why and how these jihadists went to Syria in the first place. And why are millions of people being displaced from that country.

This week it was also reported that asylum-seekers in Britain are being forced to wear brightly colored wristbands in order for them to qualify for food handouts. The visible form of identity has led to the wearers being abused on the streets, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Previously, asylum-seekers in the British town of Middlesbrough had their house doors painted red by a local authority. Again, the discrimination led to attacks by racist thugs.

Whether officially or unofficially, Europe is becoming a racist, xenophobic fortress. Given the continents own history of war, displacement, fascism and genocidal persecution it should be deeply troubling that it is once again on a slippery slope to such nihilistic mentality. It is doubling worrying when we hear apologists for hard-line measures against refugees talking about preserving European blood and culture. Given Europes millennia of migrations, what pure blood is there to talk of apart from malign mythical notions?

To compare Europe to a sinking boat overloaded with teeming migrants is also asinine and irresponsible. Europes intake of one million refugees last year amounts to 0.2 per cent of its total 500 million population. Denmarks intake of 21,300 asylum-seekers last year constitutes less than 0.4 per cent of its national population.

Europes refugee crisis is turning into an irrational, xenophobic panic that is not justified by facts. It is misleading people into dangerous political territory of persecution, racist discrimination and ultimately fascist societies that infringe on all our rights as citizens.

But far more importantly, the misplaced hysteria over refugees is a distraction from the real issue. Which is that European states are complicit in illegal wars of aggression and covert regime-change interventions.

Political leaders like Britains David Cameron and Frances Francois Hollande, as well as Nicolas Sarkozy before him should be prosecuted in an international court for crimes against peace. European citizens not holding their rogue governments to account is the real problem.
Western State Terrorists Slander Putin By Finian Cunningham January 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " SCF " - Washington and London are all-out to demonize Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Only days after a British judge insinuated that Putin had ordered the murder of a former Russian intelligence agent, the BBC and the American Treasury Department were accusing the Russian president of financial corruption. Meanwhile, in the world of hard facts Washington and London are guilty of state terrorism involving the murder of millions of innocent people. We may marvel at the discrepancy. Its called brainwashing. Enough has already been written about the death of Alexander Litvinenko in London 10 years ago to dispel official British claims that the incident had anything to do with Vladimir Putin or anyone else at the Kremlin. Yet the risibly flimsy nature of the so-called British public inquiry did not stop British premier David Cameron mouthing condemnations against Russia. That feeble propaganda stunt failed to gain any credibility, so this week the state-owned BBC aired a program that reveals how the Russian leader is, allegedly, an embezzling tycoon. The BBC features the US Treasury confirming allegations that Putin has become a multi-millionaire through corruption, which, we are told, Washington has known about for many, many years. As with the so-called Litvinenko inquiry, the latest corruption revelations from the BBC are presented without the slightest proof. The central bit of evidence are claims by the BBC that Putin got rich in part from the gifting of a luxury yacht from London-based Russian business magnate Roman Abramovich. Talk about tenuous tale-spinning. And, to boot, Abramovich is quoted by the BBC as dismissing its own threadbare claims as ridiculous. The Kremlin barely responded to any of these claims, and is right not to dignify them by making formal denials. Russias foreign ministry rebuffed the Litvinenko speculation as a bad joke while on the corruption claim Putins spokesman rubbished it as fiction. Nevertheless, it is a disturbing sign of egregious discourtesy to diplomatic norms that Washington and London are openly throwing such slander at the Russian president. It shows a complete breakdown in respect for international law, sovereignty and scruples; not that Washington or London had much scruples to begin with. The astounding irony of all this is that while the American and British authorities are indulged in their baseless allegations against Putin with copious coverage in the Western mainstream media the facts are glaring that both these governments are inculpated by systematic support for international terrorism. Leave aside, for a moment, the illegal wars, regime-change operations and drone assassinations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Pakistan and Somalia since US President Barack Obama was elected in 2008  which have resulted in millions of innocent lives being destroyed. Lets just focus on the events and statements over the past week alone which indict both Washington and London in outrageous war crimes. Last week, while on a tour of Europe, the US defense secretary Ashton Carter called for more military intervention in Iraq and Syria  supposedly to fight against terrorism. Carter said this in the company of other NATO counterparts, including those of Britain and France. The Pentagon chief also went on to admit that hundreds of US commandos are already active in Syria and Iraq. In Carters own glib words, the American government has just self-incriminated. As respected international war crimes lawyer Christopher Black said to this author: In calling for military intervention in sovereign countries, no matter what the alleged purpose is, what Carter and his NATO allies are doing is criminal. They are in effect engaging in aggression which is the most serious violation of international law. The lawyer added: The International Criminal Court in The Hague should be issuing indictments for this latest act of aggression by Washington and its allies towards countries in the Middle East. Of course, the ICC is a political instrument of the Western powers. Nonetheless, the legal case is that Washington is in serious breach of international law from its declaration for increasing military action in Syria and Iraq. Washingtons deluded notion of exceptional impunity was further amplified when Vice President Joe Biden hours later announced that the US was prepared to take military action in Syria if the current Geneva political negotiations turned out a failure. (By failure Biden means failure to achieve regime change via political means.) Biden was speaking during a visit to Turkey where he heaped praise on the Ankara regime as a fellow NATO ally even while Turkish troops have killed hundreds of Kurds in recent weeks as well as invading Iraqi and Syrian territory. The Turkish incursion of Syria near the northern town of Jarabulus appears to be in conjunction with reports last week of American troop takeover of an airfield at Rmeilan in Syrias northeast Hasakah Province. Therefore, Biden is not just endorsing illegal aggression by an ally; Washington is colluding in this aggression. In a related vein, the top US military officer, Marine Corps General Joseph F Dunford Jr, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also out and about in Europe last week, where he told reporters in Paris that Washington and its NATO allies were planning military action in Libya within weeks. There is no functioning government in Libya to even give this planned intervention a fig leaf of legal cover. Remember the US and its NATO allies destroyed the Libyan government when they bombed the North African country for seven months in 2011, resulting in the murder of its leader Muammar Gaddafi and the usurpation of Libya by extremist militias related to the so-called Islamic State (IS) terror network. The IS network, like al-Qaeda and the Mujahideen in Central Asia and the Russian Caucasus, the Contra in Central America and Gladio terrorists in Europe, among many others, is a creation of Western intelligence: the American CIA and British MI6, along with other governmental terrorist-sponsoring agencies in France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. Washingtons systematic relationship with terrorism was revealed this week in the debacle over the Geneva so-called peace talks on Syria. The talks missed their start date on January 25, and were re-scheduled for later this week. The US and Saudi-backed opposition groups are threatening to snub dialogue with the Syrian government. Why? Because the Syrian government and its Russian ally are saying that terrorist groups are not admissible to the negotiating table. Again self-incriminatingly, Washington, along with the Saudi regime, wants to include in the opposition side two groups that are directly implicated as subsidiaries of the IS and al-Qaeda terrorist franchises. They are Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar ash-Sham. Both share fighters, American weapons, Saudi financing and Saudi Wahhabi ideology with the officially listed terrorist groups. Yet Washington wants to have these same groups participate in shaping the political future of Syria. On Monday  the same day that the Geneva talks were slated to begin  Washingtons presumably moderate rebels in Ahrar ash-Sham carried out a no-warning car bombing in the Syrian northern city of Aleppo, killing 23 civilians. US top diplomat John Kerry was in Riyadh two days before the Geneva talks were scheduled in order to give his imprimatur to the Saudi-backed and self-appointed High Negotiating Committee. This committee excludes any peaceful, political Syrian opposition groups who want to sit down to thrash out reforms with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Instead the US, Saudi-backed exiled committee insists that the terrorist militia of Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar ash-Sham (both in reality shell fronts for IS and al-Qaeda) must be the sole opposition in the Geneva talks. Whats more the terrorist opposition are stipulating that if the Syrian and Russian armed forces do not stop their military campaigns immediately then they will not participate in the Geneva talks. In other words, Washington is using diplomacy and politics in an utterly cynical way to pursue regime change because it has lost the criminal covert war it launched in Syria nearly five years ago  a war that has resulted in a quarter million deaths and millions more wounded and made homeless. The criminality does not stop there. While in Riyadh last weekend, US secretary of state John Kerry also reiterated Washingtons support for the Saudi-led military coalition that has been bombing Yemen non-stop for the past 10 months. Kerry repeated Saudi lies justifying its military aggression in Yemen that has resulted in nearly 8,000 deaths. Both Washington and London have supplied warplanes, missiles and logistics for the Saudi slaughter in the Arab worlds poorest country. Not even hospitals and family homes have been spared in the war of aggression on Yemen, where up to 80 per cent of the 24 million total population are being starved of food, water, fuel and medicines owing to a US, British, Saudi military blockade on the entire country. Last week, nine dockworkers were killed in a Saudi air strike on the Red Sea port terminal at Ras Isa, near Hodeida. The crimes of Washington and London are legion, provable and ongoing. And that is apparent in only a narrow time frame over the past week. Extend that by weeks, months, years and decades and we are talking about systematic war crimes involving millions of deaths. Yet these two state-terrorist regimes have the audacity to make a song and dance with slanderous allegations against Russias Vladimir Putin based on their own mischievous lies. How do they get away with such phenomenal distortion? Thats where the goldfish-bowl, brainwashing Western mainstream media rise to the occasion. They are equally complicit in criminality for the lies and omissions they relay on behalf of their masters. But, alas, the decades-long brainwashing spell is waning. Western people are gradually waking up and beginning to see through the arrant nonsense implanted by their rulers. When that happens in full, the people will come after those real culprits, the ones in fancy suits and polished corporate-government offices. So let them slander Putin and whoever. The more slander, the more self-incrimination for their own eventual day of judgement.  Strategic Culture Foundation
9/11: A Wilderness of Mirrors and the Prince of Darkness B y Mark H. Gaffney January 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - In the preface to his 2004 memoir, Center of the Storm, former CIA Director George Tenet describes an odd experience that occurred upon his arrival at the White House very early on the morning of September 12, 2001. It was the day after the worst terrorist attack in US history. Smoke was still rising from the Pentagon across the Potomac, and dust was still swirling over the ruins of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, a scene of total devastation. No surprise that security was extremely tight at the White House. Former CIA Director Tenet says he passed through a cordon of secret service agents brandishing weapons; and fighters were visible high above patrolling the skies over Washington. As Tenet strolled under the portico that leads to the West Wing, he was surprised to encounter one of the godfathers of the neoconservative movement, Richard Perle, then exiting the White House, a man whose reputation preceded him. Tenet writes that as the doors closed behind him we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said Iraq has to pay a price for what happened, yesterday. They bear responsibility. Tenet says he was stunned, as well he should have been. What was Perle talking about? And what was he doing at the White House, anyway, especially on this day? True, the man was head of the Defense Policy Board, a civilian advisory group, but the job conferred no official status. It was not a government post. Perle was not a US official, nor a member of the Bush administration. Yet, in this unprecedented moment of national trauma and sorrow, Perle had access to the White House. How come? Tenet had no answer. The CIA chief had arrived to personally brief the president, as he had done nearly every morning during Bushs first year in office. This was at Bushs own request and was unusual. Seldom had past presidents requested CIA briefings from the director. In previous administrations, presidential intelligence briefings were generally conducted by CIA experts and qualified staffers. Tenets reaction was to think, What is he [Perle] talking about?.Over the months and years to follow, Tenet writes we would carefully examine the potential of a collaborative role for state sponsors. The intelligence then and now, however, showed no evidence of Iraqi complicity. There was no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. Did Perle meet with Bush, that morning? Tenet writes that he never learned the reason for Perles visit. Yet, the director of central intelligence deemed the encounter significant enough that he mentions it on page one of his memoirs. Tenet also goes on to write, Although I didnt realize it that day, Ive since come to think of that brief encounter with Richard Perle as the moment when these two dominant themes in my professional life [i.e., the twin topics of terrorism and Iraq] first intersected. [my emphasis] I had to go back and reread Tenets obscure words. It is no secret that George Tenet perjured himself during the 9/11 Commission hearings. By his third appearance before the commission on July 2, 2004, Tenets lying was so transparent, according to Philip Shenon, who covered the commission for the New York Times, that the commissioners simply stared at one another in disbelief. i A fellow 9/11 researcher, Robert Schopmeyer, who was also in attendance that day, had the same reaction. Schopmeyer was in the audience just a few seats behind Tenet, and he told me later that everyone in the room knew Tenet was lying. Kevin Fenton, still another 9/11 researcher, has concluded that Tenet also lied during his earlier testimony before the Joint House-Senate Inquiry in 2002, the first official 9/11 investigation. ii Over the years, Tenet had cultivated close ties with top Saudi officials, including Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador. According to James Risen, Tenet would slip away from CIA headquarters and travel to Bandars nearby estate in McLean, Virginia for quiet talks. Yet, some CIA officers who handled Saudi issues complained that Tenet would not tell them what he had discussed with Bandar, making it difficult for agency officials to know the nature of any deals their boss was arranging with the Saudis. They would usually find out what Tenet had said to Bandar only much later, and then only from the Saudis. iii In his memoirs Tenet makes no mention of these talks nor his close relationship with Bandar, nor does he mention the potentially incriminating evidence concerning Bandar that turned up during the 2002 Joint Inquiry. The Inquiry learned that Prince Bandars wife, princess Haifa, had funneled tens of thousands of dollars in charitable donations to a Saudi individual in San Diego who aided two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi. iv The two were part of the four-man hijack team that allegedly flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on 9/11. As we know, President Bush later excised the 28 pages of the Joint Inquirys final report that pertain to this funding issue, supposedly in the interest of national security. v But there is little doubt the real reason Bush ordered the material to remain classified was to shield his old friend prince Bandar (Bandar Bush) from further investigation. This blatant interference by the White House so outraged Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and co-chair of the 2002 Joint Inquiry, that Graham called for Bushs impeachment. vi Not that anyone listened. Tenets relationship with prince Bandar and his conspicuous silence about Bandars possible role as a financier of 9/11 terrorism is suspicious. But Tenets own role is even more so. Kevin Ryan concluded that even while hyping the likelihood of an impending Al Qaeda attack, Tenet withheld key intelligence from the FBI that would have prevented it. vii The suppressed intelligence included the whereabouts of these same two men, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, whom Tenet had reason to know were already inside the US preparing for a major terrorist attack that would kill thousands of Americans. Whatever role Tenet may have played as facilitator, it is shocking that on page 162 of his memoirs Tenet confuses the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, indicating that, even years after the event, he remained clueless about what happened there. This suggests that, whatever Tenets role, he remained largely in the dark, what we would expect of a highly compartmentalized and complex false flag operation involving need-to-know and plausible deniability. In his memoirs Tenet aptly refers to his CIA experience as the wilderness of mirrors. The fact that former CIA director Tenet was still confused in 2007 when his memoirs were published about what happened at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is worth pondering. I suspect that Richard Perle was more in the loop than Tenet when the two men met by chance at the White House, that morning. In 1996, Perle (otherwise known as the prince of darkness) and a small group of fellow neoconservatives had produced a policy paper for the recently-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. The title of the paper was, A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm . viii Given Netanyahus far-right views, he was no doubt pleased by its contents. The Clean Break paper did not attract a great deal of attention, at the time, but it is a scary document in retrospect because of what it portended for the Mideast. The paper called for Israel to transcend the Arab-Israeli conflict not through diplomacy, by negotiating a long overdue peace settlement with its Arab neighbors, but by rolling them back. The paper explicitly called for regime change in the case of Iraq, but the rest was couched in language sufficiently vague that it did not set off alarm bells here in the US, though it should have, and probably did in the Arab world. The following year, in 1997, another group of neoconservatives organized the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and in 2000 posted a lengthier and much more detailed policy paper, Rebuilding Americas Defenses, which has been archived on line. ix Richard Perle was not one of the authors but he was closely associated with PNAC. The paper called for new US missile defenses, control of space and cyberspace, and in general for a major modernization and expansion of US military force structure. It noted that new technologies and operational concepts were bringing about a revolution in military affairs. These proposals were anything but defensive. After all, the Cold War was long over. But the authors insisted that a steep investment in the US military was necessary to preserve US Superpower status long into the future. Others coined an expression for the same basket of ideas, full spectrum dominance. x Given the subsequent US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and relentless US attempts to bring about regime change in Syria, attempts that continue as I write, one has to wonder if PNACs intent, all along, was to establish the means for accomplishing the rollback described in the Clean Break document. A much-expanded US military would thus become the vehicle for transcending a number of troublesome (meaning: independent) secular Arab states and also Persian Iran, states that just happened to be Israels neighbors and its main adversaries. At the time, the big problem for the neoconservatives was that the American people would not support such a foreign policy, which amounted to a major expansion of US imperialism. The authors of Rebuilding Americas Defenses acknowledge the problem in their 2000 paper and are quite explicit that the process of [US military] transformation.is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor. xi After the 9/11 attacks, of course, everything became possible. A new set of gangsters The final solution envisaged for Palestine is also painfully evident with hindsight. The neoconservative plan to fight Israels wars gave Israel a free hand with the Palestinians. The Israeli government proceeded to erect a 30-foot high security fence around the West Bank, and transformed the Gaza Strip into the worlds largest concentration camp, after first withdrawing a small number of Israeli settlers. It is no coincidence that such treatment, i.e., herding the Palestinians into the enclosure of Gaza, resembled the treatment of cattle. Credit for the approach, which Zionists refer to as the Iron Wall, goes back to Zeev Jabotinsky, the ideological father of Likud. During the 1930s Jabotinsky, an enthusiastic supporter of Benito Mussolini, gave birth to what is known today as Zionist Revisionism. Its a maximalist ideology, with a fanatical commitment to Greater Israel, and a stark, even apocalyptic, view of human affairs. Revisionists have no concept of win-win, and almost no patience with compromise or reconciliation. They scorn democracy and view history as a charnel house. In their view its us against them. The victor, at the end of the day, is whoever is left standing atop the pile of bodies. Jabotinskys disciples, men like Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, led terrorist raids against the Palestinians and in June 1946 blew up a wing of the King David Hotel, the Jerusalem headquarters of the British Mandate. They also assassinated UN and British officials, including the British Secretary of State Lord Moyne. When news of Moynes murder by Shamirs gunmen reached Prime Minister Winston Churchill, himself a long-time Zionist, Churchill made an emotional statement before the House of Commons. If our dreams for Zionism, he told the House, are to end up in the smoke of assassins pistols and our labors for its future are to produce a new set of gangsters worthy of the Nazis, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained xii The Zionist attacks against Palestinians were not reprisals, nor were they random. The raids always served a purpose. So it was in the case of the April 1948 attack on Der Yasin, a Palestinian village located a few miles west of Jerusalem. The Arabs of Der Yasin had worked out a truce with a nearby orthodox Jewish community, Givat Shaul, but this did not save them. Begins Irgun and additional men from a splinter group known as the Stern gang, led by Shamir, entered the town from opposite ends and began shooting everyone they met with submachine guns. According to various reports, the attackers were surprised to meet fierce resistance as the Arabs defended their homes. The Irgun and Stern gang advanced street by street, tossing grenades into houses where villagers had taken refuge. They also demolished buildings with dynamite. When the fighting ended, the Zionist soldiers looted the town. They also rounded up survivors, women, children and elderly residents, and simply massacred them. Women and girls were raped before being killed. Other villagers were paraded at gunpoint through Jerusalem before being shot. The various estimates of dead ranged to well over 200. However, to this day, we do not know the actual number because the Irgun, while bragging about their deeds, may have inflated the fatality figure to frighten the Palestinians in surrounding villages into fleeing for their lives. Thus, Begin and Shamir used terror in a calculated way, as a tool to traumatize Arabs, in order to implement their political agenda, which was to cleanse Palestine of its native people, paving the way for Jewish settlement. xiii The same pattern was repeated across the length and breadth of the country. By wars end, close to 800,000 Palestinians had been driven out, or killed, or had fled, from some 531 villages and eleven urban neighborhoods. xiv The Palestinian refugees were not allowed to return to their homes or reclaim their property. Those who attempted to do so were often shot. The vacated villages were subsequently razed to make way for new Jewish settlements, though in some cases Arab homes were reoccupied by Jews. The Zionist-friendly US press has made much of Palestinian suicide attacks, but the Zionists own violent policy of dispossession at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is never mentioned. Begin and Shamir not only escaped justice for their crimes, over the years, as Israel moved to the right and both men took small steps toward the center, they gained political respectability and both eventually rose to become prime minister (Begin in 1977 and Shamir in 1983 and 1986). xv In subsequent years, the only departure from Israels continuing shift to the right occurred in the 1990s when prime minister Yitzhak Rabin briefly flirted with peace. I say briefly because on November 4, 1995 Rabin was assassinated by a hard-line Zionist after addressing a large peace rally. Today, the western media often portrays Yitzhak Rabin as a martyr for peace, but this is too generous. Over most of his long career, the military officer and Labor Coalition leader was anything but a moderate. During the 1948 war Rabin played a key role himself in the violent cleansing of Palestine. His troops cleared some 50,000 Palestinians (by Rabins own estimate) from the Arab town of Ramla and drove them into the West Bank. xvi Once, Rabin proposed to wipe out all Egyptian cities located close to the [Suez] canal from the earths surface. xvii As a general Rabin encouraged the most extreme Israeli settlers, the Gush Emunim, even as he cultivated the growth of radical Hamas to undermine Arafats PLO. xviii As a Knesset member, Rabin supported Israels devastating invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and during the first Intifada, while serving as defense minister, he ordered his soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian detainees. xix On some issues Rabin was even more extreme than Begin. For instance, although Begin had allowed a Palestinian autonomy council to meet in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, Rabin insisted on moving the council to Jericho, the smallest and most backward of Palestinian towns. xx Thus, he is responsible for the extremely inconvenient current site of the Palestinian Authoritys administrative offices. Finally, it was during Rabins tenure as defense minister in the 1980s that Israel became deeply involved with drug trafficking in Lebanon. The Israeli military adopted a policy of looking the other way, in return for useful intelligence. xxi But the policy went beyond simply tolerating the drug trade. Drug addiction was encouraged to weaken Arab society and promote political apathy. Rabin coddled Palestinian drug traffickers for similar reasons. Israeli officers were also directly involved in the transshipment of drugs into Israel. xxii Ironically, in 1996 Richard Perle and his fellow neoconservatives were apparently unaware of the extent of Israels involvement in the drug trade, because in their Clean Break paper they cite Lebanese drug trafficking as a justification for rolling back Syria. In the end, it seems that the old warrior Rabin grew tired of breaking the bones of children and resolved to try a new approach. Rabin would attempt to negotiate a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Yet, even though he campaigned and won the 1992 election on a peace platform, many Israelis felt betrayed and refused to support the initiative. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the Shin Bet, Israels FBI/Secret Service, either arranged Rabins murder or allowed it to happen. xxiii In any event, the message was clear enough. Not even a standing prime minister with impeccable credentials would be spared once he deviated from the ideology of Greater Israel. Here, it must be emphasized, Rabins commitment to Israels security was never in question. A lifelong Zionist, Rabin had fought in Israels war of independence, served as defense minister for nine years, and was twice prime minister. He had also served as Israels US ambassador, and even commanded the army during the 1967 Six Day War, the time of Israels greatest military victory. But not even this lifetime of service nor Rabins war hero status was enough to save him. That such a man would be sacrificed at the apex of his career, when he most needed the support of his people, should give us serious pause about the nature of Zionism, and the chances for a genuine Mideast peace settlement. In this context it is noteworthy that current prime minister and leader of Likud Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahus father once served as Jabotinskys personal secretary (in 1940), which, unless I am mistaken, makes Bibi the present-day heir to Zionist Revisionism. Although the US-educated and smooth-talking Bibi hides it well, they say he shares his fathers view of history. Like father like son. On September 11, 2001 we Americans witnessed the calculated use of terror to traumatize our nation in order to impose a neoconservative political agenda that has been a disaster for the whole world, especially the Mideast. In 2016, all of this is clear, or should be with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. But any Americans who read the neoconservative policy papers in the 1990s, understood the extreme ideas that were being expressed, saw the future, and tried to warn the rest of us about what was coming, were no doubt either dismissed as kooks or smeared as anti-semitic. An updated and expanded second edition of Mark H. Gaffneys 2012 book, Black 9/11: Money, Motive and Technology, will be released this year. Mark can be reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net Notes: i Philip Shenon, The Commission (New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2008), p. 360. ii Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots (Walterville, Trineday, 2011), p. 121-2 iii James Risen, State of War (New York, Free Press, 2006), p. 188-9. iv State of War, p. 189; also see Lawrence Wright, The Twenty-Eight Pages, The New Yorker, September 9, 2014. v Final Report of the Joint Inquiry, December 2002, see pages 396-422, posted at http://fas.org/irp/congress/2002_rpt/911rept.pdf vi Senator Bob Graham, Intelligence Matters (New York, Random House, 2004), p. 230, vii Kevin Ryan, CIA Director George Tenet Facilitated 9/11, 9/11 Blogger, July 27, 2014. Posted at http://911blogger.com/news/2014-07-27/cia-director-george-tenet-facilitated-911 viii http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm ix Thomas Donnelly et al, Rebuilding Americas Defenses, PNAC, 1997, posted at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf x For a thorough discussion see F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance (Wiesbaden, edition.Engdahl, 2009). xi Rebuilding Americas Defenses, p. 51. xii Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest (New York, Olive Branch Press, 1989), pp. 59-60. xiii Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford, One World, 2006), p.90. xiv The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. xiii. xv For a good primer see Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall (London, Zed Books, 1984). xvi The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p.169. xvii Israel Shahak, Open Secrets (London, Pluto Press, 1997), pp. 127,162-3 and 120-1. xviii Ibid. xix Ibid. xx Ibid. xxi Israel Shahak, The Real Israeli Interest in Lebanon, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1996, posted at http://www.wrmea.org/1996-july/the-real-israeli-interest-in-lebanon.html xxii Ibid. xxiii For a short but excellent discussion see Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgement (American Free Press, 1994), Appendix Ten, pp.417-420; also see A Mothers Defense, Guela Amir, George Magazine, March 1997.
News / National

by Tendai Rupapa

A Pakistan national allegedly swindled his father-in-law of $198 000 after he had been added as a signatory to his company, Zimbabwe Moulders Pvt Ltd, a steel manufacturing company he jointly owns with three others.The father-in-law, Iqbal Muhammad who is based in Pakistan, agreed with his co-directors who are locally-based to incorporate Irfan Muhammad (44) into the company as a signatory to its Stanbic bank account.According to the arrangement, Irfan was representing Iqbal since he does not stay in the country, the court heard.Irfan (44) who owns Bozlam Investments Pvt Ltd yesterday appeared in court before Mr Elijah Makomo facing theft of trust property charges.He was released on $1 000 bail coupled with some stringent conditions among them surrendering his passport.He is being represented by Mr Patrick Nyeperayi of Costa Madzonga Legal Practitioners. According to the State papers, Zimbabwe Moulders Pvt Ltd has three shareholders who are the directors namely Iqbal, Shahid Mahmood and Abdul Rashid Mahamed who are locally based.The company arrangement was that any one of the signatories can sign to withdraw money. The prosecutor Mr Tapiwa Kasema alleged that on March 12 2012, the company directors added Muhammad as a signatory to its Stanbic bank account as a representative of his father-in-law Iqbal.During the period between April and October 2012, the company exported about 2 250 tonnes of steel to Pakistan worth over $1 200 000.The company first received payment of $484 558-50 which was deposited into their account.On August 15, they received the balance of $199 949-50 through a transfer into their Stanbic bank account, the court heard.On the following day, Irfan withdrew $198 000 from the bank without the knowledge of the directors and converted it to his personal use, the State alleged.On December 2013, Mahmood requested for a statement from the bank and discovered that a withdrawal of $198 000 was made.Investigations pointed to Irfan as the culprit, leading to his arrest but nothing was recovered, the court heard.
The Clintons: We Came, We Stole, Haitians Died By Glen Ford



January 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " BAR " - The Haitian peoples furious resistance to yet another fraudulent presidential election has scuttled U.S. plans to replace Sweet Mickey Martelly with another flunky named the Banana Man. The aborted fraud is a reminder that Secretary of State Clinton was an imperial bully who rigged the previous presidential election in Haiti and stole the country blind, along with her accomplice and husband, Bill. Those chickens may yet come home to roost. The island nation of Haiti is on the verge of finally ejecting the criminal President Michel Sweet Mickey Martelly, the dance hall performer and gangster who was foisted on the Haitian people by the United States through the bullying of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, back in 2011. Martellys term is up, and he is constitutionally required to leave office by February 7. Martelly and his American, French and Canadian backers had hoped to use rigged elections and strong-arm tactics to install another puppet politician, Jovenel The Banana Man Moise, in the presidential palace. The Banana Man  who wants to turn Haiti into a real banana-exporting republic, to the further impoverishment of its small farmers  came in first in an October election that was so blatantly stolen, even the thoroughly corrupt Haitian elite could not endorse the outcome. In fact, virtually no one in Haitian society except the Banana Man and Sweet Mickey and the tens thousands of Haitians who were paid to vote, repeatedly, at different polling places in October, considered the election to be valid. Jude Celestin, the candidate that came in second in the October electoral farce  and who was also cheated of victory by Sweet Mickey Martelly in the election five years ago  refused to go along with the travesty. Celestin said he would not take part in the bogus run-off election that was scheduled for this past Sunday  meaning, the Banana Man would have been the only candidate. But, even the prospect of a one-man contest could not stop the Americans from insisting on going ahead with the run-off. The U.S., which pays for the Haitian elections and, therefore, believes it has the right to decide who wins and who loses, growled that Haiti should go along with the fraudulent process. The Americans were upset that they might have no reliable replacement for their loyal puppet, Sweet Mickey. Plus, the discrediting of the elections would also reflect very badly on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who claims to have brought stability to Haiti when she was at the State Department but, in fact, is culpable for all of the Haitians who were murdered by the Martelly regime. The truth is that Hillary and Bill were the Bonnie and Clyde of Haiti, robbing the country for their own and other corporate criminals benefit. The teams of FBI agents that are now matching Hillarys emails with contributions to the Clinton Foundation are tapping a Mother Lode of corruption that may yet bring her down before Election Day in the United States. If that happens, the Haitian people will deserve some of the credit for saving the U.S. from another period of rule by the Crooked Clintons, in the process of saving Haitis sovereignty and self-respect. The Haitians furious grassroots resistance forced the cancellation of Sundays run-off election; Sweet Mickey is slated to leave office in less than two weeks; and negotiations are underway to form an interim government that would hold clean elections. The struggle now is for Haitis poor majority to make its voice heard above the growling of the U.S. imperialist occupiers and their hired Haitian flunkies  some of whom are real killers, whose names arent funny at all. For Black Agenda Radio, Im Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
My First Take On The Presidential Election By Moon Of Alabama January 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - Say what you will about Donald Trump but he knows how to market himself. Staging a feud with Fox News and abstaining from tonight's Republican candidate debate gives him more media coverage than taking part. He is already the front runner of the Republican candidates. More debating could only endanger that position. Staying away and making a fuzz about it gives him a bigger lead. That Trump knows marketing well gives me some doubt about his real positions. Who owns him? Who pays his campaign? Answers to these questions are likely more revealing than the fascist dog-whistle politics he publicly emphasizes. He seems to favor neither neoconservative nor liberal interventionist foreign policy. That would be welcome change. On the democratic side I do not see a chance for Clinton to win. I believe that the American people have had enough of the Clintons. If she would win the nomination she would lose in the presidential election as many voters would abstain. Her policy record is abysmal. Yes she has experience - of misjudgement and not learning from it. In interior policies she is clearly in the hands of Wall Street and the big banks. Her "liberal" image is all fake. In foreign policy she is "the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes": If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue, [top neocon Robert Kagan] added, its something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else. Sanders is hard to see as president. His domestic policies are somewhat comparable to middle-of-the-road European social-democrats. His foreign policy stand isn't clear. While not an interventionist he supports the colonists in Palestine. The people obviously favor him over Clinton but he will need big money for the big campaign should he get the nomination. To whom would he sell out? The Republican party is coming around in favor of Trump. The party big-wigs believe he has no real positions, that they can manipulate him. That is probably wrong. The Democratic party machine is clearly in favor of Clinton. Would it try to sabotage Sanders if he wins primary after primary? Could they throw in another plausible candidate? My gut instinct say it will be Sanders against Trump with a voter turnout advantage for Sanders. What is your take? ========== The Untruth About Donald Trump


Home Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter You Won't Believe What This US Ambassador Said About al-Qaeda's Syrian Allies By Daniel McAdams January 29, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - Robert Ford was US Ambassador to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of the Syrian government.



Ford assured us that those taking up arms to overthrow the Syrian government were simply moderates and democrats seeking to change Syria's autocratic system. Anyone pointing out the obviously Islamist extremist nature of the rebellion and the foreign funding and backing for the jihadists was written off as an Assad apologist or worse.



Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. Witness this incredible Twitter exchange with then-ex Ambassador Ford:







Then late last year the McClatchy News Service ran an article in which Ambassador Ford admitted that his "moderates" regularly collaborated with ISIS and al-Qaeda to the point where he no longer thought the US government should be arming them.



So those who pointed out that the rebellion in Syria was foreign-driven and jihadist from the start were no longer crazy conspiracy theorists, but were rather conspiracy factists.



Did that stop Ford from pushing radicals, though? Hardly!



As the Syria peace talks are scheduled to begin within days in Geneva, with a main sticking point being whether to admit groups that have allied with al-Qaeda to the negotiating table as potential leaders of "new Syria," it is extremely instructive to recall what Ambassador Ford said about one such group, Ahrar al-Sham, to a BBC interviewer last October.



Ahrar al-Sham, according to experts including those at Stanford University, "was founded by members of Al Qaeda and maintains links to AQs core leadership." The group vigorously rejects the notion of an elected government in Syria after the overthrow of Assad, instead calling for: ...a Divine system prescribed for his Caliph and slaves It is the system where the rule is for the pure Islamic law. Allahs law is complete, and you need only consider the texts and derive rules. Ahrar al-Sham has been reported by Christian rights groups in Syria to have executed Christians in Idlib, Syria, after they captured the town last year. The Christians committed the "crime" of not following Sharia law.



Sounds like a pretty bad group, but nevertheless it still has its Western cheerleaders...including Ambassador Robert Ford!



Here's Ford in an interview with the BBC last October about Ahrar al-Sham (emphasis added): Stephen Sackur BBC: Ok, let me ask bluntly, Ahrar al Sham (The Free Men of Syria) group, one of the most powerful groups you would call moderate, is it really moderate when a group like that proclaims its desire to see Sharia as the driving force of a future Syria.. which clearly makes comments which suggest that Alawites and Christians would find it very difficult to find a place in their Syria. Are these moderate?? You regard this as moderation?



Robert Ford: This is how I define as a moderate in the Syrian context, Stephen; a moderate is a group that accepts there has to be a political negotiation and there has to be a political process after a transition government is set up.. a political process to determine the future permanent government of Syria.. That there must be pluralism in that process and its one that works with other groups/ factions in a pluralistic setting I dont agree at all with Ahrar al Shams desires to set up an Islamic State (in Syria).. but I have to admit that they accept the needs to be a political negotiation.. I have to admit theyre willing to work with other groups and they do on the ground with great effectThis is one of the reasons, theyre strong as they are, as you mentioned Its not a group I ever want my daughter to marry into I dont agree with their vision of societybut I would not call them Jihadis, theyre not looking to impose an Islamic State at sword point Different, theyre therefore, from alQaida Different therefore from the Islamic State..And theyre willing to accept even such things as Parliamentand some kind of government institutions So, yes they want Sharia  but the kind of Sharia they want may in fact, in the end, not look like the kind of Sharia the Islamic State already imposing over most of central and Eastern of Syria Is it any surprise that Syria is in the current disastrous state, where hundreds of thousands have died in a war instigated by those who knew from the beginning would only benefit radical Islamist extremists? Is there no justice for those who push such murder and mayhem on such a grand scale? Today, as civilized people recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is Nuremberg dead? Daniel McAdams Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Pauls retirement. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer. Copyright  2016 by RonPaul Institute. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter For Email Marketing you can trust Donate



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The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), yesterday, said that the $470 million contract awarded by the late President Musa YarAduas administration for the procurement and installation of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) in Lagos and Abuja did not follow due process.

Speaking at an investigative hearing by the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee set up by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, to unravel the circumstances of the award of the contract and the failure of ZTE Corporation to complete the contract, the Director General of BPP, Emeka Ezeh told the Ahmed Yerima-led committee that his office did not issue certificate of no objection in the award.

The contract for the installation of CCTV Cameras in Abuja and Lagos under the National Public Security Communication System project was not processed at the Bureau of Public Procurement prior to award. In other words, the project was not issued a due process certificate of no objection by the BPP.

Considering the purported cost of contract in US$470 million, the contract ought to have been accompanied with a certificate of no objection issued by the BPP, he said.

But the former DG of NigComSat, Ahmed Rufai, said award of the contract was through a presidential approval. He argued that it was not all issues, especially those that had to do with national security, that should pass through the BPP due to its implications.

He also said that in the Procurement Act, the President had discretionary powers to approve procurement without going through the BPP.

In its submission, Chinese telecom giant, ZTE, denied any wrongdoing in the execution of the National Public Security Communication System, NPSCS, project.

ZTENigeria Managing Director, Mr. Had Fuqiang, who said that the company completed the project added that it delivered one of the worlds best Video Surveillance System, VSS, to the Federal Government.

Contrary to public perception, the project was not to merely install cameras but one conceived to deploy comprehensive, reliable, modern and robust National Public Security Communications System, NPSCS, he said.
Former Delta State governor, Chief James Ibori, has expressed shock at a statement credited to the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN, that about 6.9 million was being expected by the federal government as Ibori loot.

The Minister had during an interactive session with the House of Representatives Committee on Justice, on Tuesday, said the Federal Government will soon recover an additional $750 million kept in foreign banks by the late Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha as well as 6.9 million stolen by Ibori.

Mr. Ibori was governor of oil-rich Delta State between 1999 and 2007 and is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence after admitting fraud of nearly 50m. The former governor was convicted by Southwark crown court in London in 2012.

A statement by his media assistant on Thursday, Mr. Tony Eluemunor said: There is no Ibori loot anywhere in the world. Such money, whether in British pounds, American dollars or the Nigerian naira just does not exist. This is because the Ibori London trial is not yet over. It is an incontrovertible fact that the confiscation hearing has not started at all, and remains months away into the future.

This makes it disappointing that a high official of state such as the Attorney-General may have been misled into believing that an Ibori loot not only exists anywhere, but he even put a figure (6.9 million pounds) to it.

With all due respect to the Minister and the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, it is curious that such a misleading statement could have come less than a week that dozens of well-respected foreign media organisations, including the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, The Times of London, The Guardian of London, and a host of Nigerian news outlets reported that the case against Ibori and his associates have become shaky as some operatives of the London Metropolitan Police have been accused of bribery and corruption in the course of their investigations. Thus, at the January 21, 2016 hearing, the prosecution was forced to withdraw its case against one of Iboris counsel, Mr. Bradesh Gohil.

It had charged Gohil of leaking fabricated documents to media organisations and members of (British) Parliament, but Gohil turned the case against the Police, accusing them of misleading the court with tainted evidence from corrupt operatives and of withholding key documents which could have proved police corruption.

The former governors media aide said he was under the assumption that Mr. Malami might have been misquoted and so did not issue a rebuttal immediately, but it was only when he failed to retract the statement after 24 hours that he decided to give Nigerians (including the Minister) the true perspective of the Ibori London trial and state categorically that the so called Ibori Loot, which the AGF saw as a low hanging fruit ripe for plucking must have been a terrible mirage.

This has done nothing though to affect in any way, the high regard Chief Ibori and his Media Office have for President Buhari, his administration and ministers, including the Justice Minister, Mr. Malami. Chief Ibori wishes them well in their stated bid to leave a better Nigeria than they found it.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, said for peace to reign in the world, the global community must develop and implement comprehensive and coordinated counter-extremism strategies at sub-regional, regional and continental levels.

Speaking at the opening of bilateral talks between Nigeria and Kenya, President Buhari warned that radicalization and violent extremism were increasingly taking root across Africa and must be tackled head-on and with brand new strategies.

Buhari, in a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said: The threat posed to national, regional and global peace and security by terrorists has taken an alarming dimension in recent times.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has caused havoc, especially in the North-eastern part of the country  killing, maiming, destroying livelihoods and displacing hapless citizens, majority of who are women and children.

In Kenya, you also face terrorist challenges. Similarly, Iraq and Syria, are facing their own brand of terrorism which has thrown the entire Middle East into turmoil. Terrorism does not respect religion, creed, race or national boundaries. No country is safe from the menace.

This is why the entire global community must work in a concerted manner, particularly in areas of sharing intelligence and pooling resources and finance to confront the scourge. Our armed forces and security services should also be adequately supported and well-motivated to fight terrorism.

It is worth emphasizing that terrorists are continually changing tactics, building alliances, merging and generally getting more sophisticated, all in an attempt to build their capacity to inflict pain and misery on societies.

To win the war on terror therefore, we must respond to this phenomenon by developing new and versatile strategies. Together with our allies, Nigeria and Kenya can successfully tackle these challenges that have traumatized and brought untold suffering to our people.

The need to tackle and defeat terrorism cannot be overemphasized as there can be no development and prosperity in an atmosphere of insecurity and instability.
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Managing Director of the firm  CMC Connect  Yomi Badejo-Okusanya and a bureau de change operator, Kabiru Ibrahim, testified yesterday at the Federal High Court, Abuja in the trial of the spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Olisa Metuh. Badejo-Okusanya revealed how he was given N77 million for a media campaign job by Metuh for former President Goodluck Jonathan. In this piece INFORMATION NIGERIA highlights 6 things to note about the testimony

 The Managing Director of CMC Connect, a Lagos-based firm said he was recruited by Metuh to develop and execute campaigns for ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.

 He noted that his firm was engaged to provide a media campaign and image management job for the PDP and Jonathan.

 He said the N77.5 million was paid to him through Metuhs firm, Destra Investments Limited, in December 2014 and that he started executing the job towards the end of the month.

 He said he was paid before he attended a meeting with Jonathan, ex-Vice President Namadi Sambo, former Senate President David Mark and top government functionaries of the PDP-led government, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

 He said his relationship with the PDP started under its ex-Chairman, Okwesilieze Nwodo, when his company, CMC Connect, had done some work for the PDP under Dr. Nwodo, who was repositioning the PDP as a vehicle for national transformation.

 He said the work, which started in 2010, stopped abruptly when Dr. Nwodo resigned as chairman and their balance wasnt paid. When Metuh became spokesman for the party, they met with him. Metuh promised that he would compensate them and that whenever opportunity arose he would call them, hence the N77m campaign deal.

What do you think???
News / National

by Felex Share

President Robert Mugabe did not give any Cabinet Minister a two-day ultimatum to announce dates for the payment of civil servants' 2015 bonuses, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira said yesterday.She said, while dates and modalities on the payment of the outstanding 13th cheque were expected after her meeting with Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa soon, President Mugabe had never given anyone a deadline on the issue.The private media yesterday claimed that during the first 2016 Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Mugabe had given Ministers Mupfumira and Chinamasa up to today to provide the dates when the bonuses would be paid.Responded Minister Mupfumira: "I think even the President is shocked to read this. The President left the Cabinet meeting early because of other commitments and the issue of bonuses wasn't mentioned in his presence. The issue came as any other business. I'm not aware of the ultimatum.""Cabinet follows an agenda and the issue was not on the agenda but as concerned people we discussed it and came up with a way forward on what we will do."She said contrary to reports by some sections of the media, government had not abandoned they payment of bonuses."We've agreed to meet (with Minister Chinamasa) and see how we will proceed," she said."There's no going back on the issue of bonuses but we're going to stagger because what we can't afford is a once off payment.Minister Chinamasa said he is working on something and our meeting would be to see the possible process of payment.The position remains clear that at some point, we've to give that bonus. We will come up with a way of paying and we're not running away from it neither have we abandoned the idea."In the previous years, government staggered the bonuses due to cash flow challenges and some workers received their 13th cheque as late as January instead of the traditional November.Last month, government had to change pay dates for its workers with the last batch getting their salaries on January 5.Government later met the civil servants' representatives and gave them specific pay dates when their salaries would be paid.Members of the Zimbabwe National Army got their salaries on January 16, those from Zimbabwe Republic Police on January 20 while those in the education got paid on Wednesday.The rest of the civil service will be paid tomorrow.Government has come up with a number of strategies of steering economic growth by reducing the civil service wage bill, which chews up about 83 percent of the revenue.Student teachers and trainees' allowances have been reduced from $329 to $157 while salaries for teachers at private and trust schools have been terminated.All vacant posts have been abolished, bus fare for civil servants has been re-introduced, under-used staff is being redeployed, funding of bridging courses has been scrapped while all members who were abusing various types of leave, tampering with pay sheets and attendance registers have been charged.
Former Political Adviser to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Alhaji Ahmed Gulak, has defied a directive by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum asking the partys National Secretary, Prof. Wale Oladipo to take over as National Chairman.

The governors had after their meeting on Wednesday night, which lasted to the early hours of Thursday, condemned the invasion of the national secretariat by Gulak even as they asked the acting national chairman, Prince Uche Secondus to immediately revert to his original position as deputy national chairman, in accordance with the judgment of an Abuja High Court.

In reaction to the PDPGFs directive, Gulak, who declared himself national chairman of the party, said the governors were misadvised in asking Oladipo to take over the leadership of the party.

This is not only contrary to the Constitution of the PDP 2012 as amended, it is in flagrant contempt of the declarative judgment given by the FCT High Court on the 16th day of December, 2015 which clearly states that under section 47 (6) of the 1st defendants (PDP) constitution, upon the resignation of the former National Chairman of the 1st defendant (PDP) from office, only, the plaintiff (Alhaji Barr. Ahmed Ali Gulak) or any other eligible members of the 1st defendant (PDP) from the North-East zone of Nigeria, where the said Chairman of the 1st defendant (PDP) originated is eligible to be appointed to act in that office pending elections into that office, the former presidential adviser said in a statement on Thursday.

According to Gulak, the National Secretary is precluded by the constitution of our party from chairing the National Executive Committee (NEC), the National Working Committee (NWC) and the caucuses of the party.

He maintained that it is only the National Chairman that can chair these organs.

It is therefore clear that from the statement of the Chairman, PDP Governors Forum that the office of the National Chairman was vacant. And this has been cured by the pronouncement of the FCT High Court, Abuja.

The National Chairman uses this opportunity to appeal to our teeming members nationwide to remain calm and rally round this new leadership so that peace may reign in our party and together we will reposition our party on the path of glory.

The National Chairman of PDP has profound respect for the Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum and all its members, the statement added.
The immediate-past Senate President, David Mark, has declared that he would emerge victorious in the February 20 rerun election for the Benue South Senatorial District on the strength of the support of his constituents and God.

He stated this when two groups  Idoma Dreams and Idoma Young Professionals  paid him a solidarity visit on Wednesday.

Mr. Mark, who has been in the Senate since the return to Democracy in 1999, had his election nullified by the Court of Appeal last year, which ordered the Independent National Electoral Election, INEC, to conduct a fresh election in the district.

His victory in the March 28 National Assembly election was challenged by the candidate of the All Progressive Congress, Comrade Daniel Onjeh, whose chances at the rerun poll have brightened with the recent defection of prominent Idoma politicians from the Peoples Democratic Party to APC.

However, spurred by the visit and uncommon show of brotherhood and solidarity by the groups, Mark said that his victory is sure because of their support.

I am deeply touched by this uncommon solidarity. Let me also remind you that in going about the campaign for me, please always be law-abiding. I need you to be peaceful during the pre-election, Election Day and post-election.

Like I mentioned before, no election is worth injury or loss of life. I crave for a peaceful conduct of election at all times. The choice of representation resides with the people and ultimately God.

I want to thank you for believing in my leadership and understanding that credible representation at the senate is of utmost importance.

By the grace of God, we shall triumph at the rerun election. I will defend the interest of our people at all times, he said.

The former Nigerias number three man assured his visitors that he was irrevocably committed to the development of Benue South and beyond, and would do everything legitimate to improve their lots.

Earlier, leader of the Idoma Dreams, Donald Ogah, said the campaign for the former Senate president had been impressive because our people have seen the need to uphold a credible and quality representation and the good works that he represents.

Mr. Ogah noted that the battle to return Mr. Mark to the senate was not negotiable because he represents Idoma Dreams. This battle is not for you (Mark) but for the survival of Idoma nation.

We would not sit and watch outsiders determine our future and destiny. We have a choice in Senator Mark, he added.
The Kaduna State Government has suspended the Village Head of Goma, Gimi District, Sanga local Government area of the state, Ibrahim Danladi, over alleged possession of Indian hemp.

The suspension of Danladi took immediate effect following his arrest by officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

A statement issued by the Spokesman to Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, Samuel Aruwan, said the traditional ruler was arrested for being in possession of 1.5kg of marijuana.

On January 20, 2016, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency arrested Ibrahim Danladi while he was in possession of 1.5kg of marijuana.

Danladi is the village head of Goma in the Gimi District of Sanga local government area of the state. He admitted to ownership of the illegal drug, and the NDLEA will be charging him as soon as it concludes investigations.

The NDLEA subsequently notified the Kaduna State Security Council of the arrest of the traditional ruler. While deliberating on the matter, the Council recommended his suspension from office pending the conclusion of investigations and possible trial. The government accepted the recommendation, the statement added.
Rights group Amnesty says it has found five possible mass graves near Burundis capital, where security forces are accused of killing scores of people in December. Meanwhile, Burundian police said they had arrested two foreign journalists who were reporting on armed groups. Violence in the country began last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term.

At least 439 people have died and 240,000 have fled abroad, the UN says. African Union (AU) leaders are due to discuss the crisis in Burundi at a summit in Ethiopia. They want Mr Nkurunziza to accept peacekeeping troops to prevent Burundi sliding into ethnic conflict, but analysts say he is unlikely to agree. Amnesty says satellite images show disturbed earth at sites in the Buringa area on the edge of the capital Bujumbura that are consistent with witness reports.

These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out, said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnestys regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. At least 87 people were killed in Decembers crackdown, which came after military bases were attacked by gunmen, but the UN said the true number may be much higher. The UN said it was also analysing satellite images to investigate reports of at least nine mass graves, including one in a military camp said to contain more than 100 bodies.

BBC.
Japaul Oil & Maritime Services Plc  We are a group of company, quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. We have multiple lines of business and huge investment in different sectors of the Nigerian and Middle-East economy ranging from Oil and Gas, Maritime, Shipping, Dredging, Mining, Transportation Logistics, Engineering and Construction and Petroleum Product Marketing & Sales. Our vision is to dominate the sectors of our business operations. In pursuit of our vision, we seek result oriented, competent and experienced personnel to join our dynamic team to drive critical areas of our business to achieve strategic business targets. The following vacancies exist in various subsidiaries in our group:

Job Title: Mining/Technical Sales Manager

Job description

The company is into the business of solid mineral mining and export. The company is part of a group of company operating in about five (5) sectors of the Nigerian economy presently. At the moment, the company in engaged in export of solid minerals to Europe, China, and America. Sequel to potential growth of activities, we therefore require a Technical Sales personnel with the following responsibility:

Intensively engaged in the sourcing of solid mineral from artisans and depots in locations across different of the country, usually, in rural areas and mining sites Coordinate warehousing of sourced materials and all required logistics from start to end Source and liaise with buyers and in collaboration, arrange export of products to specified destinations under agreed terms and conditions of the sales contract inline with INCOTERMS standard Draw up, review and negotiate sales contract with buyers Liaise with all third parties in the transactions which include but not limited to customs, clearing agents, warehouse agents, bank, NEPD, NIPC, inspections agents, etc Ensure compliance with all required statutory laws guiding solid minerals trading in Nigeria, required fees, procedures and guidelines, etc, particularly, ensure proper documentations for export incentives, waivers, discounts, etc Intensively involved in the expansion of the business both for forward and backward integration of operations

The potential candidate must be able to:

Identify different solid minerals physically by texture, compositions and characters Establish and follow logical and scientific procedures for solid mineral quality assurance to mitigate risk of poor quality Interface with and manage the character of artisans and use interpersonal relations to resolve issues that may arise in the course of doing business Be experienced with solid mineral products trading and understands the market and players in the industry

The potential candidate should possess:

HND or BSC in Geology, Mining or relevant Engineering discipline. Knowledge of export processing will be an added advantage Minimum of 8 years intensive cognate experience in production, sales and export of solid mineral in Nigeria is required. Strong leadership skill

Click here to apply
At last, former militant leader, Government Ekpumupolo (aka Tompolo) yesterday agreed to appear before a Federal High Court in Lagos which had ordered his arrest since January 14 this year. He said his lawyers are preparing for his appearance in court for alleged fraud.

Guardian

TWO persons have reportedly died after consuming local gin, popularly known as Ogogoro, in South Ugieda, Etsako West Local Council of Edo State. The incident occurred in Ugieda community on Tuesday.

Daily Trust

The publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Olisa Metuh has been released on bail after nearly two weeks in Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and prison custody.

National Mirror
A middle-aged man suspected to be a member of the Boko Haram sect has been arrested by officers of the 19 Battalion of Nigerian Army in Sapele, Delta State.

The suspect, Bukar Abacha, was arrested shortly after he arrived the popular Hausa quarters in Sapele.

A senior army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that a member of the Arewa community gave the information to Operation Pulo Shield.

The Borno-state born suspect was, thereafter, handed over to the Army Headquarters in Abuja for further interrogation, the senior officer said.

The officer said that the suspect was on the wanted list of the army.

He said that a sensitisation exercise tagged show of force confidence building patrol had been inaugurated.

The exercise is aimed at disarming all acts of criminalities such as, kidnapping, pipeline vandalism, illegal oil bunkering and killing of innocent citizens in the area.

Before the arrest, community leaders informed us that the suspect was looking strange, psychologically imbalance and uncomfortable in their midst that called for his doubt as one of them, he said.

The officer urged the people to give the army necessary intelligent information that would assist to effectively stamp out crime in the society.

He urged residents to report people with questionable character or strange movement of persons in their domains.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the army pasted lists of names, containing 100 wanted Boko Haram suspects in some strategic places in Sapele metropolis. (NAN)
Justice John Tsoho of the Federal High Court, Abuja, Friday rejected a bail application by the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.

Mr. Kanu has been in detention since his arrest last October in Lagos and is currently standing trial on treason charges.

He had earlier been granted bail twice by the courts, but the government refused to release him for security reasons.

Giving grounds for turning down Kanus bail application, the judge held that the accused was a security threat and if released, could jump bail considering the fact that he is a dual national of Nigeria and the United Kingdom.

The IPOB founder was subsequently remanded in prison until his trial.

Earlier, Kanu asked that the lawyer who served as his lead counsel in previous sittings, M. U. Udechukwu, step down for Chucks Muoma.

In a letter he addressed to the court ahead of Fridays hearing on his bail application, the accused asked that there should be a change in his representation because according to him, the person who represented him in previous sittings was different from the person he had instructed.

In his reaction, Mr. Udechukwu said impersonation, a serious offence, could affect his legal profession of almost 20 years and prayed the court to record his apology for the said offence, and that the court should note that he was withdrawing from the case.

Justice Tsoho, who had earlier hesitated to read the letter, regarding it as an issue that should be resolved by the counsels, asked to know the name of the particular counsel he would record for Mr. Kanu.

Mr. Muoma told the court that he and Mr. Ejiofor would take the place of the defendants counsel.

Mr. Udechukwu told the court that his withdrawal would affect the other counsels who came with him.
Senator Dino Melaye, APC, Kogi West, has accused former president Olusegun Obasanjo of introducing corruption into the National Assembly while pursuing a third term ambition.

Obasanjo had written to the leadership of the National Assembly, accusing the lawmakers of greed, graft and insensitivity to the countrys present economic state.

In an interview with The Cable, Senator Dino Melaye described Obasanjos letters as misplaced anger.

I have tremendous respect for President Olusegun Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo. Elder statesman, respected pan-Africanist and committed patriot. The letter I can see is a misplacement of anger. Our leader is mistaking the Eighth National Assembly as the same Senate assembly that defrauded him in 2007.

Those who collected his money and refused to implement the third term agenda. I appeal to Baba that we are not the ones please. After nine years of that bribery saga, the first of its kind, I expect forgiveness to have taken place.

There was the case of bribery introduced by the Obasanjo regime in the desperate attempt to remove Speaker Ghali Umar NaAbba from office then. In fact, there was open display of that bribery money on the floor of the House. That government exposed the National Assembly to corruption and easy money. I hope this is not an attempt to cover up and distract attention from the Halliburton and Siemens corruption allegations.

While I am against corruption anywhere in Nigeria, I will not support accusations based on anger and vindictiveness. The Eighth Senate should also look inwardly and purge herself of all the deliberate misgivings of the past. Nigeria must work and we must support the anti- corruption stance of the Buhari administration, Melaye said.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo in an open letter to the National Assembly had criticized the national assembly over its budget of N4.7bn for the purchase of 469 cars for lawmakers amongst other matters. The Senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye clapped right back at the ex President, stating that the former President exposed the National Assembly to easy money and corruption. This looks like a major political beef brewing? Here is everything you should know about this brewing beef as put together by INFORMATION NIGERIA.

 Obasanjo, in a January 13 letter to Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara, accused the lawmakers of reckless spending and abuse of office, asking them to return to the path of honour.

 Obasanjo noted in his now famous controversial letter that both the legislative and the executive arms of government must accept responsibility for past actions that have virtually brought Nigerias economy on her kneels.

 Obasanjo also asked the lawmakers to open their financial records for external audit.

 Dino Melaye wasted no time replying the outspoken former President as he accused him of introducing corruption into the legislature. He described his letter as a misplacement of anger.

 Melaye, who represents Kogi West, wondered why Obasanjo should mistake the 8th National Assembly as the one that allegedly defrauded him in 2007 by collecting his money and refusing to actualise what he called his Third Term agenda.

 Melaye says he hopes Obasanjos letter was not an attempt to cover up and distract attention from the Halliburton and Siemens corruption allegations.

 He also noted in his reply that Obasanjos regime introduced bribery to the National Assembly in the desperate attempt to remove Speaker Ghali Umar Naabba from office back then.

 Melaye finally noted in his response that though he was against corruption anywhere in Nigeria, he will however not support accusations based on anger and vindictiveness.

 Obasanjo this morning continued from where Melaye left off when he took to Twitter to reply the Senator saying he has no time to trade words with a Body-guard Senator, who abandoned his duty to as a body guard to someone accused of corruption.

What do you think???
News / National

by Staff reporter

FORMER Vice-President Joice Mujuru's yet-to-be-launched People First (PF) outfit has joined other opposition parties in demanding security sector reforms.The party said the reforms were not targetted at individuals, but establishing an institution with "broadly-agreed-upon consensus values of society".PF official Kudzai Mbudzi, told Southern Eye yesterday that those opposing security sector reforms were only doing so to curry favour with powers-that-be and entrench a false belief that advocates for security sector reforms were traitors bent on undermining the institution."The much-propagated security sector reform process and programme is much more than an individual perception of the mere roles and responsibilities as a major-general or a counter intelligence director in the CIO. It has more to do with molding the fundamental concepts and dispositions to engender a critical people-centred military in a modern democracy," he said."It has more to do with some conceptual administrative behavioural change, to enact those normative roles expected of a truly people's security forces in the individual role players and incumbents in the security sector."It's also more to do with the enactment of the normative roles of a true people's security force', as indeed it is about creating a positive and a rich organizational culture within the country's security sector; grounded in positive values, beliefs, history, attitudes; congenial or uncongenial," Mbudzi said.Some top military officials have been unambiguous in their support for the ruling Zanu-PF, much to the anger of opposition parties, who are calling for security sector reforms.Some top government officials have been steadfast in refusing security sector reforms as alien, a move to weaken the security establishment to facilitate an easy regime change agenda.But Mbudzi argued otherwise."PF views, and correctly so, that the security forces, as part of the wider range of other societal institutions, are part of the State administrative apparatus for the governance of Zimbabwean people and cannot be a sacred cow to public reflective scrutiny."So, if security forces openly delve into politics and start issuing political sentimental statements aimed at tilting the political landscape in favour of, or to curry favour with some elements within the ruling elite, then the positive conscience of society starts to raise some alarm bells. And those to-PF are exactly some of the issues to be addressed by any security sector reform process," he argued.
Governors under the umbrella of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have disowned former Special Adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Alhaji Ahmed Gulak, who stormed the national secretariat of the party with his supporters and declared himself the national chairman.

The invasion of the party headquarters by Ahmed Ali Gulak, who reportedly assumed the chairmanship of Peoples Democratic Party is regrettable and condemnable, Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum and governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, said in a communique issued at the end of the PDPGF meeting, late Wednesday night in Abuja.

We take cognizance of the judgment by the court in Abuja which ordered the acting chairman to vacate office for any other person from the North-East zone of Nigeria. Our party constitution has enough provisions for that and the necessary process has been put in motion.

The Forum had also ordered acting National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus to leave office, in line with the judgement of an FCT High Court which last December ordered him to vacate office for any other person from the North-East zone. They asked that the national secretary of the party, Prof Wale Oladipo oversee the affairs of the party for now in line with its constitution.
President Barack Obama weighed in on the Oscar nominations controversy for the first time in an exclusive one-on-one interview with ABC7s David Ono. The President invited Ono to meet in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House on Wednesday. The conversation turned to diversity in the film industry after the second straight year of all-white acting nominations for the Oscars by the Academy.

Obama has often spoken about pushing the country towards a better understanding of its differences with a theme of tolerance and inclusion. Its the same theme Hollywood is grappling with in regards to the Oscars.
The Media Advocacy for Anti-Corruption has alleged a plot by the state government who are determined to rubbish the person of the acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, Per Second News reported.

The plan, being coordinated by the state Commissioner of Information and Communications, Dr Austin Tam-George, is to cast her as corrupt and unfit in order to sway public opinions against the NDDCs boss and hopefully, compel President Muhammadu Buhari from confirming her as substantive MD and as well send the anti-corruption agencies against her, the group said.

According to the pressure group, a source at the ministry of information, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the Rivers government is desperate to taint her, given her impeachable character and time as commissioner. They are of the opinion that if they can sufficiently rubbish her, President Buhari will be forced not to appoint her as the substantive MD of the NDDC. They have also targeted her to be the first point of attack after Governor Wikes victory at the Supreme Court yesterday.

My brother, dont be surprised if you see statements from the PDP Rivers state chapter claiming that the Acting MD of the NDDC sponsored the APC matter at the tribunal through award of fictitious contracts as well as alleging that she appointed 23 aides from Rivers state alone.

The end product is to pitch the other NDDC states against her and ensure that her tenure is characterised by crisis and mistrust, the group said.

These people are not resting about madam (Semenitari). They have hired people to demonstrate every week at the NDDC headquarters in Port Harcourt claiming to be community leaders whose communities have been marginalised since she assumed office.

The wicked one is their plans to release photoshop pictures of her allegedly in compromising situations with men, even women, the group said.
The Senate on Thursday adopted a motion asking the Federal Government to immortalize the late Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Samuel Odulana by naming a national or state monument after him as a mark of honour.

The Senate also resolved to send a delegation to condole the family, people and government of Oyo State over the death of the monarch.

The resolutions were sequel to a motion titled Demise of Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade 1, sponsored by Senator Rilwan Adesoji Akanbi and 16 others.

Akanbi, who represents Oyo South Senatorial District in his lead debate, noted with sadness and great sense of loss, the demise of Olubadan.

Oba Odulana passed away on the 18th of this month in Ibadan at the ripe old age of 101.

Giving a brief citation of the deceaseds biography, the senator said Oba Odulana was born on April 14, 1914 into Ladunni family compound, at Oja-Igbo Ibadan, Oyo State and attended St. Andrews school, Bamigbola in the present Lagelu local government area of the state.

He noted that the Oba Odulana was transferred to St. Peters School, Aremo in January 1929 and completed his middle school education at Mapo Central School in December 1936 before proceeding to various institutions to strengthen his education via correspondence college, a trend that was common at the time.

Akanbi further stated that the deceased had a brief stint with the United African Company as a produce clerk before taking up teaching at the Church Missionary Society Elementary School, Jago in the present Ona Ara local government area in 1938.

He said Oba Odulanas journey to the throne started with his appointment as the Mogaji (Head) of his Ladunni family compound, at Oja-Igbo in 1972 and became the Jagun-Olubadan Land in 1976.

He said the Oba earned an exemplary character award as a result of his hard work and patriotism.
A Gudu Upper Area Court, Abuja, on Thursday ordered the remand of a State Security Services personnel, Yusuf John, for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

Mr. John, 35, was arraigned before the court on a two-count charge bordering on criminal force and assault, offences he denied committing.

The judge, Umar Kagarko, ordered that the defendant be remanded in police custody till January 29, to ascertain the true condition of the victim, allegedly beaten-up by the SSS operative.

The prosecutor, Augustine Urom, had told the court that Irieme Aigberadion, a police sergeant, attached to Lugbe Division, FCT Command, reported the matter at Garki Police Station on Jan.27.

He said the complainant, at about 6 p.m. on the same day, together with his team, went to Lagos Street, Garki, to wash their patrol vehicle.

In the process, he saw the defendant beating one Gift Utti, of Garki 2, a commercial sex worker.

He went to separate him and stop the beating of the sex worker, Mr. Urom said.

The prosecutor also said that Aigberadion introduced himself as a police officer, and showed Mr. John his identity card.

Instead of relenting, John went ahead and assaulted Aigberadion.

He held him by the neck of his shirt and tried to strangle him, Mr. Urom said.

He said Mr. John removed his belt and started beating up the police officer, hitting him on the head and right hand.

The officer is currently at police hospital, Area 1, receiving treatment, he said.

Mr. Urom said that the offences contravened Sections 265 and 248 of the Penal Code.

However, the defense counsel, C.I Nnaemeka, prayed the court to grant the defendant bail.

The prosecutor objected to the bail application on the grounds that the victim was still receiving treatment at the hospital.

Right now, we dont even know the condition of the victim, he told the court. (NAN)
A new open source Microsoft project, Pyjion, improves the Python language's speed by augmenting its stock interpreter with a JIT derived from Microsoft's CoreCLR project.

Python's standard-issue runtime, CPython, only interprets the bytecode of Python apps and does not accelerate by compiling the code in any way. One common method to speed up Python is to replace CPython entirely. PyPy, a popular CPython replacement, employs a JIT compiler to accelerate Python applications.

PyPy provides a hefty speed boost to many applications, but not all of them, and it sometimes even delivers worse performance than CPython. It also doesn't have the best support for CPython extension modules, which are widely used in Python applications like scientific computing; thus, some of the most avid Python users can't leverage PyPy at all.

Pyjion takes a different approach. It adds a JIT API to CPython, so multiple JITs can be plugged directly into CPython. Since CPython is still in use, apps run as normal, including those that rely on extension modules.

Also, Pyjion targets Python 3, where other Python-acceleration projects have largely favored Python 2. PyPy supports Python 3, but only Python 3.2, so many language constructions added since then (such as async/await ) won't work.

Microsoft claims Pyjion's approach is more flexible, since the JIT component is treated a pluggable resource. The choice of a JIT based on CoreCLR isn't meant to be the only option, but rather it serves as a proof-of-concept. According to the documentation on GitHub, Microsoft hopes this will "lead to a proliferation of JIT runtimes for Python, allowing people to choose a JIT that best fits their workload."

Microsoft contributes to existing open source projects via mostly indirect support of its own efforts. Its contributions to the Linux kernel, for instance, were mainly about making Linux a first-class citizen in Azure. But its language work has been slightly more open-ended, and if Pyjion finds traction it'll be one of the biggest contributions Microsoft has made to the ecosystem of a language it previously had no direct hand in.




Inner City Press: maybe you'll know this. There was a meeting of an Arria formula meeting of the Security Council as described as open yesterday on the topic of missing persons. It wasn't webcast. I'm just asking you, from the UN's perspective, is a meeting that's open, you know, broadcast or how is that decided?Spokesman: Well, I you would have to ask the organizers. They would have to request they would have to request the webcast. As far as I know, I don't think Arria formula meetings are webcast. But, obviously, if the organizers of a meeting ask for it to be webcast, then we do whatever we can to do that.Inner City Press: And on the on what was said in the meeting, one of the Council members said on the topic of missing or disappeared persons that there should be provisions that the graves or what were described as mass graves in Burundi be preserved in order to find out who was put in them. And I wanted to know whether the UN team, whether Mr. [Jamal] Benomar's or the Office of Human Rights people or the emerging team there, is this within their mandate? Is anything being done?Spokesman: I'm not aware of exactly what was said, but obviously, it is very important that in any situation, that the proof or evidence of possible crimes be preserved.Today photographs and video about mass graves in Burundi have been released; see Amnesty, here . Tomorrow, the UN Security Council will hear about its own trip to Burundi. What of this new evidence? Watch this site.On January 27, Inner City Press put questions to the UN and US Ambassador Power about the UN's continued use of Burundian troops as peacekeepers, for which the UN's Herve Ladsous gave the country a waiver to continue to get paid for under-equipped troops in the Central African Republic, where they have been accused of rape.The UN Spokesperson answeredInner City Press: On Burundi, given that the government has not responded to, or has blocked, the human rights experts from Geneva, and given the other things said on this podium, what sense does it make for UN peacekeeping to continue to use, and give waivers to Burundian peacekeepers in CAR? Is there a connection between a countrys compliance with the UNs demands, requests, and in fact paying money, which some say doesnt even go to the troops, for service in peacekeeping missions?UN Spokesman Dujarric: Peacekeeping troops, units that serve in peacekeeping missions, undergo various vetting processes that involve the UN and the host country. ?? in cases we have not accepted certain individuals, weve also returned battalions in other cases. This will be continued to be looked at on a rolling basis.Inner City press: Will you confirm that they have a waiver to serve in CAR until April, by Mr. Ladsous, granted on October 1?UN Spokesman: No.At the UN Security Council stakeout, Inner City Press waited -- including through two North Korea questions, and softballs -- then asked if this UN use of Burundian troops makes sense. There has yet to be an answer, although there are indications one might be forthcoming. (More than 24 hours later, no). Here for now is about the US training Burundian troops . Watch this site.Inner City Press asked Ban's spokespeople about the trip on January 20, 21 and 22 - including asking why the UN was not providing a video or at least audio stream of the January 22 press encounters, says it has a "UN Information Center" in Bujumbura, which produced a smiling photo of the French deputy ambassador Alexis Lamek on the tarmac. The UN said it couldn't.Local media in Burundi put online a video in which Lamek spoke at length; afterward a pro-government Burundian media quoted Lamek that "we" take seriously the question of interference by Rwanda to destabilize Burundi and will be working on it.But the four scribes handpicked to accompany the Security Council trip, inlcuding Agence France Presse, it seems, for some reasons didn't cover it. Why? We'll have more on this. Instead, AFP, Reuters and Voice of America (which saw "Liberians" then cited auto-correct) filed near-identical stories with no quotes from opposition figures or attacked journalists. None of the three even tweeted on January 23, other than Reuters as a robot: talk about Old Media.How could "Agence France Presse," handpicked to publicize the UNSC trip co-led by France, not even cover the controversy?We note that the French Mission to the UN said that Lamek was being misrepresented (the same French Mission has tried to shield Lamek from critical Press questions, which here on Vine Lamek has refused to answer even when entirely audible). Later an AFP quote emerged of Lamek saying that any AU force, even the 100 human rights observers, should significantly focus on the Rwandan border.On the evening of January 23 the UN has put up select clips including a mere 16 seconds of French deputy ambassador Lamek, much less than the local Burundian media present at the same press encountered had. If the UN filmed the press encounters, why did it so selectively edit them?More specifically, now, who decided on the edits?Inner City Press, which is the media which on January 22 asked for the live-stream, has asked the UN, publicly on Twitter, here , and in more detail by e-mail to three top UN spokespeople:"having just seen that your Office put online edited video from Burundi, must ask: why did UN edit the footage it has, with no Burundi government speaker, and only 16 seconds of France, penholder in the UNSC on Burundi? Please provide the full footage, in response to this request and, separately, online. Would also still like answers to questions below" on Burundi.And still no answers at all, the next day. Watch this site.The UN spokespeople refused to say, but beyond the pro-government "religious leaders" that they cited, the Council also met with at least some of the concerned members of civil society, and some journalists who inevitably raised the issue of attacks and censorship. This was not mentioned by the UN.We're told that Ambassador Albert Shingiro, who blocks the Press on Twitter, told the scribes that US Power said she would send a strong message to the government of Rwanda." Again, Shingiro blocks the Press on Twitter: some diplomat.One of the four handpicked pass-throughs opined that "the fact that Council members presented Nkurunziza with a largely unified message on the different issues was seen as a positive sign that they had come closer to a common position." So they traveled to Burundi to work on their own issues? We'll have more on this - and on the Council's junket-ending meetings in Addis, if not on Oromo protests, than this we've asked about . Watch this site.On January 22, Inner City Press asked UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq for the UN's response to Pierre Nkurunziza denying the existence of his party's youth militia, and why there was no video or even audio stream of the Security Council's - and Nkurunziza's -- press statements. Video here. Haq replied that "the facilities are difficult," that the UN Spokesperson's Office had reached out to the traveling party for information but hadn't gotten any. The Free UN Coalition for Access calls this a failure.On January 21 Inner City Press in New York learned both of Pierre Nkurunziza plans to parade "community work" for the Security Council members on January 22 and has been provided with a letter promoting same, here On January 22, even after the Council's meeting with Nkurunziza was over, when Inner City Press asked the UN for a read-out there was none, nor any good explanation of why the UN with its country team could not arrange at least an audio stream of the Council's (and Nkurunziza's) press statements.Inner City Press asked the head of the Campaign Against the Third Term (Halte au troisieme mandat) Vital Nshimirimana about the UNSC visit, and why the AU human rights observers are not yet in place. His answers to Inner City Press:"As for the deployment of the AU Human rights observers, I would recall that the same was decided back in June following the June 13, 2015 Johannesburg Summit on Burundi. Initially, the number was to be about 70 observers but the government refused and allowed a narrow team."My thought over the issue is that Nkurunziza has chosen to humiliate everybody in as much as he does not care about any principle or value. So, the AU and other bodies as well choose to deal with him very carefully for he is a man (and a regime) "irrational," likely to commit whatever crime, insult whomever....."With regard to the UNSC visit, I hope this is the very last warning towards a kind of regime likely to commit genocide. They are expected to dually and objectively assess the situation and especially the strength and presence of Imbonerakure, the CNDD-FDD militia.... And this was shown through a huge anti- peacekeeping mission mission to Burundi, MAPROBU rhetoric.Burundians expect the UNSC support the deployment of such a mission in line with the responsibility to protect (Pillar III) since Burundi is no longer able and is unwilling to protect citizens from crimes against humanity (ongoing from April 2015) and genocide (of which dozens of signs suggest that it is likely to happen and some acts are already undertaken).Lastly, the UNSC is expected to talk with Nkurunziza and the AU as well regarding peace talks. They should assess Museveni's performance, after what conclude that he should be assigned AU and UN teams (to enhance his capacity) or change him.... I commend your endeavors to keep the world informed about the Burundi crisis."We'll have more on this -- including in light the UN Deputy Spokesperson's response to Inner City Press that transcripts may be provided.Here are parts of an Inner City Press interview with a journalist attacked by the Nkurunziza government and for that reason anonymous:In English: "It would be better if the Security Council met for example UPRONA leader Nditije Charles, with the non-governmental branch of the UPRONA party) or his Spokesman Thacien Sibomana. The Council should try to meet civil society but there is almost no one left to really speak with now in Bujumbura. All those still in Bujumbura, they can't say anything about the abuses of authorithies. If it was possible, they should ask to meet the young men in prison. They should see themselves how the government abuses those young men, with tortures... Tell them visit to the prisoners in Gitega (those who are accused to attempting a coup d'etat) UN has the right to visit prisoners."Inner City Press note: another source says "the government moved several detainees from the SNR jails. I highly doubt they'd allow a visit to detainees."Tellingly, IWACU reports that bike taxi and motorcycle taxi drivers offered money to protest in favor of Nkurunziza weren't, after the fact, paid: here.



At the January 21 UN noon briefing, Inner City Press asked UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq about the "community works" and meeting(s). Video here, UN transcript here: Inner City Press: I wanted to ask you this just because I'm trying to cover it, and I know that you'd said yesterday that the Special Adviser, Jamal Benomar, is in Burundi in part of the trip. So what I wanted to ask you is, I've seen documents that show that the the the tomorrow, the meeting with the President, [Pierre] Nkurunziza, will involve a demonstration of community work, i.e., people have been asked to go and I don't know if it's to show how happy they are  Gitega and Karuzi. Does the Special Adviser not the Security Council, does the Special Adviser of the Secretary-General believe that this type of of of show is the right one and will they be meeting with UPRONA and other opposition groups or prisoners currently in jail?Deputy Spokesman Haq: Well, we'll be able to provide details of the meetings once they've taken place. As you know, the expectation is for the members of the Council to meet with President Nkurunziza. That hasn't happened so far, but once that's happened, we'll see what the circumstances are and what the views of Mr. Benomar are.This is reminiscent of the type of dog-and-pony show Sri Lanka's then President Mahinda Rajapaksa put on for visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and that Inner City Press accompanied and covered (apparently not to the UN's and its allies' liking - it has been Banned from trips since.) But will the UNSC, unlike Ban, have the fortitude or leverage to reject a dog and pony show? Watch this site.On January 19 at the UN, Inner City Press asked Uruguay's Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Jose Luis Cancela, chairing the Security Council debate on Protection of Civilians, about Burundi and the Council's trip. Video here. On January 21, Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access asked UK Permanent Representative Matthew Rycroft about his stop-over on Addis Ababa, "will you as UK meet with AU before heading to Burundi? About AU's proposed deployment?"Rycroft replied , "Yes! Looking forward to meeting @AU_Chergui today. Will also return to Addis with whole UNSC after Burundi." In Addis , Chergui had filed the Concept of Operation for the MAPROBU peacekeeping mission. We'll have more on this.Burundian civil society has written to Ban seeking the repatriation of the country's peacekeepers. Inner City Press has put the letter from Vital Nshimirimana to Ban online here , and will be asking the UN about it. Watch this site.On December 30 Nkurunziza threatened to have his forces attack peacekeepers proposed for the country.Obtained by Inner City PressLadsous' lack of vetting was criticized in the recently released report into the cover up of peacekeepers' rapes in the Central African Republic. Earlier, Inner City Press exclusive reported on Ladsous in his October 1, 2015 meeting with Burundi's vice president saying that he is "pragmatic" on human rights. On December 16 Inner City Press was banned from questions to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, but learned from the mission MINUSCA that Baratuza was already in Entebbe. Inner City Press asked several Security Council members, then Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric on December17.Dujarric told Inner City Press Baratuza's deployment is suspended and he is being repatriated: "based on the information we've received regarding the Lieutenant Colonel, his deployment has been suspended, and he will be repatriated back to Burundi." Video here. Dujarric told Inner City Press this shows the UN system working - on a day when a report on rapes was issued showing UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous not sufficiently vetting for human rights. We'll have more on this.Amid the escalating killings in Burundi, last weekend's summary executions in neighborhoods opposed to Pierre Nkurunziza's third term stand out. But Burundi Army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza was quoted on December 12 blaming all of the deaths on attempts to steal weapons to free prisoners.Inner City Press had heard that Mr. Baratuza was already in the process of being deployed to the UN Peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) even when he was giving these quotes, issuing statements and speaking to state-owned radio, and so asked MINUSCA's acting spokesperson, Is Gaspard Baratuza of Burundi's army getting a MINUSCA job?On December 16, hours before UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held a rare press conference, MINUSCA's acting spokesperson sent this to Inner City Press:"To: Matthew.Lee [at] InnerCityPress.comFrom: Vladimir MONTEIRO [at] UN.orgDate: Wed, Dec 16, 2015Subject: ICP question: Gaspard Baratuza of Burundi's army getting a MINUSCA-related post?Cc: FUNCA [at] funca.info"No decision related to Lt Col Baratuza's deployment can be taken before we finish looking into the matter. We can confirm that Lt Col Baratuza is in Entebbe but he has not yet deployed to MINUSCA. Regards. VNM"There are some questions about Baratuza, a Colonel in Burundi's Army, being listed by the UN as Lt. Col.Despite multiple follow-up questions by Inner City Press, Mr. Monteiro - previously a spokesperson for the UN electoral mission in Burundi - replied that This is what we can say about this issue.But the UN should have to say more. Inner City Press has repeatedly asked the UN how its Department of Peacekeeping Operations under Herve Ladsous vets those who deploy to UN missions; Inner City Press exclusively reported on an October 1, 2015 meeting in which Ladsous told Burundi's Vice President Joseph Butare that he is pragmatic on human rights.Ban Ki-moon and his spokesman declined to take Inner City Press' questions on December 16, as they did on December 14. Vine here . Watch this site.
EU leaders open divisive summit on energy crisis AP - 4 minutes ago BRUSSELS (AP)  European Union leaders opened a two-day summit Thursday divided on whether, and how, the bloc could impose a gas price cap to contain the fueled by Russian President Vladimir Putin's... $SPX : 3,687.83 (-0.20%) $DOWI : 30,540.97 (+0.39%) $IUXX : 11,098.86 (-0.04%)

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Fewer Americans apply for jobless benefits last week AP - 1 hour ago WASHINGTON (AP)  The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week and remains historically low even as the U.S. economy slows in the midst of decades-high inflation. $SPX : 3,687.83 (-0.20%) $DOWI : 30,540.97 (+0.39%) $IUXX : 11,098.86 (-0.04%)

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News / National

by Staff reporter

Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa is planning to visit France with a view to woo French investment into the economy.Zimbabwe's treasury is facing fiscal pressure due to the declining revenues amid pressure to pay civil service bonuses.French ambassador to Zimbabwe, Laurent Delahousse said the Chinamasa visit to France was investment driven, and minister Chinamasa would get the opportunity to meet with the Paris Club of creditors, with full engagement expected once Zimbabwe has dealt with other multi-lateral creditors.The ambassador said he will meet minister Chinamasa to discuss logistics such as the travel dates as well as times.Delahousse added that he would also move to invite French finance minister Michel Sapin to Zimbabwe.He also said that the recently gazetted indigenisation law amendments have been welcomed by French businesses in the country.
Suburban Philadelphia native Charles Widger earned a B.A. in history from Gettyburg College, and a law degree from Villanova in 1973. Widger worked in the legal world for a while, practicing law in Pennsylvania and serving as an assistant attorney general for the Pennsylvania Department of Justice. Widger later enjoyed much success in another fieldthe world of financeestablishing Brinker Capital, a Berwyn-based investment firm in 1987. Widger also wrote the 2014 New York Times behavioral finance bestseller Personal Benchmark, and is chairman emeritus of the Money Management Institute. Lawyer turned finance star. Nice.

Over in our Campus Cash section, we've written about the relatively small community of law school donors. One member of this cadre whom I've written about before is prominent trial lawyer Thomas R. Kline, who gave a large, $50 million gift to Drexel Law in 2014, renaming the school in his honor. Kline made big money handling catastrophic personal injury cases, and his huge gifts speak to his remarkable success in the legal field.

Related: Think Locally: How This Law School Landed $50 Million from a Donor Who Didn't Go There

While grantseekers working in this space should definitely keep wealthy donors who've made it to the top of the legal field on their radars, guys like Widger, who parlayed his law background into enormous success in another field, are worth keeping an eye on, too.

Don't believe me?

Well, now comes recent news that Widger gave his alma mater Villanova University Law School $25 million. Widger's funds will support the growth of an endowment and also address various efforts including creating an endowed scholars program, an endowed university professorship, and a dean's innovation fund.

An important component for this donation appears to be Villanova Law's commitment to adding business courses and professional development programs. The school hopes that its new centers of excellence, law clinics, and externship program will be a boon. As Widger puts it: "We're going to be making changes to be current and thereby help kids get good jobs and do well... I think that graduating well-qualified lawyers who understand how the intersection of law and business works in this country is of great value."

It's worth noting that many law schools around the country are coping with declining enrollment. Villanova's law school enrolls 492 students, down from 725 in 2011, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. However, the school's applications for the Class of 2016 were up 16 percent this year, compared to a 4 percent decline nationwide, according to the Villanova School of Law dean. As law schools develop new ways to attract students and make sure that their education translates to real world success, it makes sense that donors, too, would play a role in this process. A guy like Widger seems like the right kind of donor for these times.

Widger's $25 million gift, by the way, will rename the school of law the Charles Widger School of Law. Villanova has stayed on Widger's radar on some level through the years. He joined the law school's board of consultors around a decade ago, and chaired it from 2013 and 2015. Past philanthropy by Widger includes a $1 million gift to launch the school's center for entrepreneurship.

Related: Campus Cash: Law Schools
We've been keeping a close eye on new philanthropic support going for work on cybersecurity. It's a crucial issue, and some experts have conjured up terrifying scenarios of how cyber attacks could disrupt U.S. societyand especially our economyin deeply damaging ways. CIA Director John Brennan has said that such attacks pose the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the decade ahead.

The Hewlett Foundation is the dominant funder of work in this area, with an ambitious $65 million initiative that we've written about often. But not many other funders are paying attention to cyber threats. Which is why it was great to hear that a wealthy family was stepping up to fund in this area.

Related: Building a Field: Here's a Case of a Foundation Creating New Knowledge and Expertise

Robert and Renee Belfer, along with their son Lawrence, recently gave a $15 million gift to the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The funds will establish the Cyber Security Project, which "seeks to help create the conceptual arsenal" for strategists to confront cyber threats.

This gift is one of several we've seen in the past year by wealthy individuals worried about rising threats to peace and security. Today's geopolitical instability, with wars ongoing in a number of places and entirely new kinds of threats emerging, is clearly rattling some people in the far upper class.

Related:

I've written about Robert Belfer and his wife Renee before. Belfer took over the reins of his father's oil empire, later took a hit because of shares he held in Enron, and more recently has diversified into other areas. Belfer currently chairs Belfer Management LLC, a private investment firm.

On the charitable end, I've examined the strong health giving of this wealthy couple. Belfer is chair emeritus of of the board at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is vice chair of the board of overseers of Weill Cornell University Medical College, and sits on the board of Dana-Farber Cancer Center, among other involvements. In 2011, the couple gave a $100 million gift establishing the Belfer Research Building at Weill Cornell Medical College. At the Dana Farber Cancer Center, meanwhile, the couple has underwritten the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science.

Related: Three Things to Know About the Health Philanthropy of Robert and Renee Belfer

Apart from health, though, the couple has also been interested in international issues, and the story here is in part personal. Patriarch Arthur Belfer fled Poland in the 1930s and came to the United States to fulfill his American dream. In 1997, the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard was renamed the Robert and Renee Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Belfer received his law degree from Harvard after attending Columbia University.

In discussing this latest gift, the Belfer Center's director said: Two decades ago, his support helped the Center meet the challenge of nuclear security in the post-Cold War world. Today, his gift signals confidence in our ability to serve elected officials, policy makers, and the public they are entrusted to protect with cutting-edge research on one of our eras defining challenges.

The new Cyber Security Project will bring some prominent minds in the space to Cambridge. The effort will be headed up by former Pentagon official Michael Sulmeyer.
At Inside Philanthropy, we've been watching billionaire Jeff Bezos carefully, and for good reason. The Amazon CEO and founder is worth $52.6 billion as of this writing, but so far has been fairly modest with his philanthropy relative to his wealth. Of course, Bezos is only 52 and has plenty of time to give. One area of Bezos's emerging giving is health, where funding has included a $15 million donation to Princeton to create the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics. Who knew? A tech pioneer with an interest in applying pioneering technology to medical research.

As we've reported, however, the biggest philanthropists tapping Amazon wealth to power their giving so far are Jeff Bezos' parents, Jackie and Mike Bezos, who run a very active foundation focused on education.

Related: Forget Jeff Bezos. His Parents, Mike and Jackie, Are the People to Know

Nick Hanauer, who invested early in Amazon, is another philanthropist who is putting his gains to good use through recent giving, as we've reported.

Still, this is a company that has created lots of wealth for anyone lucky enough to get a bunch of shares early on, and so we're on the lookout for other Amazon winners who are turning to philanthropy.

One person on our radar is Jeffrey A. Wilke, who joined Amazon in 1999 and since 2012 has been senior vice president of consumer business. In a recent year, Wilke earned a modest $165,000, according to Business Insider, though according to the outlet, he also owned some 80,000 Amazon shares. Fortune, meanwhile, claimed Wilke owned $20 million in stock in a recent year. Bezos, by the way, pays himself a modest salary, too. Another thing to know about Wilke is that according to at least one source, he's a prospect for next Amazon CEO when Bezos hands over the reins.

Wilke, now only in his late 40s, is a Princeton graduate who earned his MBA and an M.S. in chemical engineering from MIT. His wife, Liesl, a writer and novelist, is also a Princeton graduate. The Wilkes are based in the Seattle area and in 2007, established the Wilke Family Foundation, which held a little over $15 million in assets recently. Another thing worth noting is that grantmaking is on the rise at the foundation; around $450,000 went out of the door in the 2012 fiscal year, while that number increased to $1.3 million in grantmaking in the 2014 fiscal year. That sum may well be higher now.

I've already mentioned how Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos have shown an interest in leveraging technology towards medical research. Well, last year, the Wilkes, along with Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, and the Bay Area Lyme Foundation gave $2.13 million to launch of the Wilke Lyme Disease Project at Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology. These funds initiated the first stage of a three-year study that "will leverage the tools and technologies of systems biology to understand the fundamentals of Lyme, identify biomarkers, and gain insights about the genomics and proteomics of the infecting Borrelia organism."

As Liesl puts it: "it became clear to us as we learned more about Borrelia and other tick-borne diseases that in order to really see the culprits, we have to zoom in, into blood, into cells, into microbiology so complex we ordinary mortals cant grasp it, but computers can and the creative and brilliant minds at ISB can." If you're guessing that there are personal elements here, you'd be right. Liesl has struggled with Lyme for a decade and writes about it on her blog. Apart from their work with lyme, the couple through their Wilke Family Foundation have also supported health outfits such as American Diabetes Association, and International Planned Parenthood Federation.

The couple's education philanthropy so far is highlighted by their support of STEM and scholarships. Recent grantees include computer science education outfit Code.org, which received a $100,000 grant in the most recent fiscal year, MIT, Harvey Mudd Collegea liberal arts school in suburban Los Angeles which focuses in on mathematics and engineeringa science center at Eastside Preparatory School, and Rainier Scholars, which "cultivates the academic potential of young students of color by offering access to educational opportunities & comprehensive support." Liesl also plays a role here as a self-described advocate for Native American rights. She sits on the board of the board of trustees for the American Indian College Fund, which has been supported steadily. The Wilkes have also supported their mutual alma mater, Princeton.

The couple also makes grants to outfits that operate on a global level, especially those that work for literacy. They've given to outfits such as Ethiopia Reads, which "collaborates with "communities to build schools, plant libraries, train educators, boost literacy, and provide youth and families with the tools to improve their lives," and Worldreader.org, whose "mission is to bring digital books to every child and her family, so that they can improve their lives."

This young couple's philanthropy is just getting started and they should be watched for greater giving down the line.

Related: Jeffrey A. Wilke
American International Group unveiled strategic plans this week that are good enough to stave off  for now  demands by activist investor Carl Icahn for the breakup of the insurance giant. But AIG is unlikely to convince critics that it is doing enough to match the underwriting results and return on equity (ROE) by peers such as Travelers Cos. and the newly reconstituted Chubb Group.

Topping the list of short-term remedies offered by New Yorkbased AIG is a promise to return at least $25 billion of capital to shareholders over the next two years and to cut costs by $1.6 billion, also by the end of 2017. AIG will sell off up to 19.9 percent of its mortgage insurance arm, United Guaranty Corp., at an undisclosed date as a first step toward an eventual spin-off. AIG Advisor Group, its independent broker-dealer network, will be sold to private equity firm Lightyear Capital and Canadian pension manager PSP Investments. Though no prices were disclosed by AIG, analysts estimate the two sales could total $1.5 billion. AIG promised other divestitures in subsequent years and a reorganization of the massive company into more transparent business units.

With these actions, AIG has taken another major step in simplifying our organization to a leaner, more profitable insurer, while continuing to return capital to shareholders and improve shareholder returns, asserted CEO Peter Hancock in a written statement announcing the new strategic plan.

This isnt really revolutionary  just a more aggressive response to underperformance, says Meyer Shields, Baltimore-based analyst for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Highlighting the underperformance is a dreadful combined ratio  which measures costs and claims as a proportion of premiums in property and casualty (P&C) insurance. A combined ratio greater than 100 percent indicates a loss in underwriting operations. In the third quarter of 2015, AIG was at 102.7 percent. In the same period, Travelers, ACE and Chubb (before the last two merged into the new Chubb) all reported combined ratios of less than 87 percent. The poor underwriting results are the primary reason for AIGs mediocre operating ROE, which was only 7.1 percent in the first nine months of 2015, compared with the 12 to 15 percent at its three peers.

AIG has targeted a 9 percent ROE by 2017. Shareholders have to wonder why they wouldnt rather invest in Chubb, which is already delivering an ROE in the teens, says Joshua Stirling, a Bostonbased analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Another major concern voiced by Icahn and his allies is that AIGs future profitability will be further compromised unless it cuts down in size enough to shed its designation by the Treasury Department as a systemically important financial institution, or SIFI. AIG is one of three U.S. insurers, also including MetLife and Prudential Insurance Co. of America, in the SIFI category, which requires these insurers to hold additional regulatory capital.

Earlier this January, MetLife announced it would divest substantial parts of its life insurance operations to evade the SIFI label. The move puts further pressure on AIG to follow suit by splitting its P&C and life insurance businesses in two, as demanded by dissident shareholders. But AIG insists such a move would force it to forgo up to a third of the $15 billion in deferred tax benefits gained as a result of the 200809 financial crisis. The insurer also argues that a breakup might endanger the diversification credit it gets from its life insurance operations as a balance to its poor P&C results.

So, while strategically it doesnt make sense to keep the company together, financially it does, says Jay Gelb, a New Yorkbased analyst for Barclays Capital.

AIG has endured more difficult battles than its current jousts with dissidents. It survived the financial crisis, thanks to a record $182 billion government bailout. Under CEO Robert Benmosche, who came out of retirement in 2009 to save the insurer, AIG slashed its $1 trillion precrisis balance sheet almost in half, sold off some of its more valuable assets and eventually repaid the U.S. Treasury along with more than $22 billion in profits to taxpayers. That still leaves AIG as the worlds sixth-largest insurer, with a $68.3 billion market cap. Net income for the first nine months of 2015 was $4.03 billion, a 41.3 percent decline from the $6.87 billion earned in the same period the year before.

Benmosche, who died last year, brought Hancock into the firm in 2010 and groomed him as his successor after stepping down in late 2014. Hancock, now 57, was a banker and derivatives specialist with no previous insurance experience. He has overseen AIG investments in technology, in research and development and in direct marketing. But these are ten-year payback investments that may have taken focus away from basic P&C underwriting. And dramatic improvements in underwriting results will be tough to achieve, especially in a soft P&C market, says Gelb.

This prediction doesnt necessarily mean paralysis. Rather than lopping off its life business and becoming a standalone P&C insurer in one fell swoop, AIG could slowly sell off subsidiaries. If they come to that conclusion, then the most important thing for management and the board is to decide, business by business, what is possible to repair and what should be sold, says Bernsteins Stirling.
As health insurance, IT and tech companies deal with more and more data, the potential for hacks and other cybersecurity breaches is growing.

The technological revolution has finally come to health care, and it is manifesting itself in ways that make tracking and treating disease easier and more efficient. Millions of patients who might not have known how to access their own medical records several years ago can now use a providers online web portal to see test results and communicate with doctors. Sensors can deliver real-time information to physicians about patients heart rate, respiration or blood glucose levels, and individuals can keep track of their own nutrition and physical activity to share with doctors for a more complete picture of their health. Digitization and technology-assisted communication are undoubtedly positive things for health care, but the more they are used, the greater the risk that someone other than doctor and patient will get hold of the data.

Patients personal information is increasingly vulnerable to data breaches, causing trouble for individuals as well as the companies in charge of keeping that data safe. A problem often attributed to retail companies and banks, the threat of a cyberattack that exposes thousands of individuals personal information is also an imminent one for companies operating in the health care industry, from insurance companies to electronic medical records firms and even to operators of trendy health-tracking software and products.

Health care organizations need to control costs, and technology is going to be one way to do that, says Caroline Clouser, executive vice president of the health care segment for insurer Chubb Group. But with that transformation comes new exposures that we havent faced in the past.

These exposures include criminal attacks, in which hackers go out of their way to find and steal information, and situations of negligence in which an employee might damage a hard drive, lose a laptop or make something public that is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or other laws or internal regulations. These hacks and breaches compromise patients, but they also have significant financial implications for companies, which must put resources toward preventing them and, in the event that they happen, spend heavily to manage their reputations, pay any applicable fines or penalties and, in some cases, settle claims by customers.

Among other things, patients whose electronic medical records have been shared publicly may begin to seek indemnification, says Clouser.

With all of the big retail breaches in the headlines  from Target Corp. to eBay  the risk to health care companies and their customers is often understated. In a 2015 study by New Yorkbased audit and advisory firm KPMG, about 80 percent of executives at leading health IT companies said their firms had been compromised by a cyberattack in the previous two years, whereas 3 percent said they werent sure if their computer systems had been compromised. One quarter of respondents admitted that either their firms didnt have the ability to detect breaches in real time, or they werent aware of such capabilities.

Michael Ebert, head of KPMGs health and life sciences cyberpractice, said at the time of the study that he believed actual numbers were likely much higher. Patient information can be worth even more to hackers than credit card numbers, which can be changed quickly once a breach is detected. Its much more difficult to change a name, Social Security number or diagnosis code.

The health care industry has been slow to adopt technology, but now that its plugged in, the innovations are coming so swiftly it has been hard to keep up with the dangers.

Advancements in technology are moving at such a rapid clip, its very difficult for security to keep pace, says Stephen McCarney, vice president of marketing at application protection software firm Arxan Technologies. The Bethesda, Marylandbased company recently completed a survey that found that 86 percent of the top health-related applications on iTunes and the Google Play store had at least two major vulnerabilities: lack of binary protection  meaning the code can be tampered with and potentially reverse-engineered or reprogrammed to do things it wasnt intended to do  and insufficient transport layer protection, which protects network traffic. Arxan also surveyed the creators and users of the apps, who, McCarney says, tended to far overestimate their security. And the real kicker for companies: 80 percent of those who use health care apps said they would change providers if they knew their app was not secure, and 83 percent would switch if they knew a similar provider had a more secure mobile health app.

What this tells me is that even without an attack, security is an increasingly important decision-making factor, McCarney says. Were moving the bar away from just keeping bad guys out, so companies want to look at security as a potential way to gain competitive advantage.

The pain a company feels from a breach may depend on their existing brand loyalty, however. In February 2015, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the second-largest health insurer in the U.S., announced that personal information belonging to up to 80 million customers had been stolen, including names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Analysts predicted at the time that the breach would cost Anthem upwards of $100 million, but the companys stock price barely budged. In a postbreach survey conducted by Wedbush Securities, just 6 percent fewer respondents preferred Anthem BCBS over other insurers than before the breach, accounting for 8 percent who lowered their opinion and 2 percent who were so impressed with how the company handled it that their opinion of Anthem actually improved. Companies with less brand loyalty, such as many electronic medical record managers, might not be so lucky.

I dont think the forgiveness factor would be as positive for EMR companies, says Sarah James, a health care equity research analyst at Wedbush. BCBS has a high brand value, and I believe that helped. It also helped that Anthems response was big and fast. Anthem quickly informed federal authorities of the breach, informed customers and the public in a timely fashion and hired experienced consultants to help sort out the mess.

There are tools that can help combat these risks, such as end-to-end encryption software, which transmits encrypted data that can only be unlocked by someone with a so-called key from the same piece of software. And whereas credit card companies use a common system for processing transactions that is recognized by all of the major players, the permission, or mandate, for this does not currently exist with regard to health information. These types of systems are effective  Apple swears by end-to-end encryption  but very expensive.

Experts say existing privacy regulations, such as HIPAA, may be doing more harm than good, adding complexity and cost that holds the health care industry back from making headway in cybersecurity. Regulators rely heavily on past experience to govern transactions and data transfers that are happening in new, never-before-seen ways, according to Monica Eaton-Cardone, founder and CIO of Dublin, Irelandbased chargeback fraud recovery and loss prevention firm Global Risk Technologies. Regulatory boards are hard-pressed to keep pace with evolution, she says.

Follow Kaitlin Ugolik on Twitter at @kaitlinugolik.
The dog ate my homework was a classic excuse to get out of those pesky equations in high school but the dog ate my underwear? Thats a new one.Pet Insurance Australia (PIA) has revealed that the archives of their insurance practice have shown the top five ingested objects with underwear surprisingly topping the list.Nadia Crighton from PIA said that while the dogs may show a taste for underwear, the results are no laughing matter.For some, its simply a case of disbelief that their companion animal has found themselves in this situation, Crighton said.For other owners, its finding out that Rovers tummy ache was caused from an embarrassing ingestion of a particular under-garment.Seems the most popular variety removed from the stomachs of dogs seems to be g-strings, Crighton continued.However funny or mind boggling this may seem, the risk to the pet, and the cost of surgery can be very large. Luckily, for the dogs and cats on our records they had good insurance, so the financial part of the stress was removed from the ordeal.Socks took second on the list with PIA noting that a Great Dane in the United States was taken to the vets with stomach issues and was later found to have eaten 43 socks unbeknownst to its owner.PIA had a case back in 2015 where a dog had ingested a sewing needle to the tune of around $5000, Crighton said of other outlandish claims.It was a very serious and usual case, but luckily the dog made a full recovery, and the owner had comprehensive pet insurance.Cat owners will also note the third item on the list as string and dental floss can cause problems for our feline friends.Even though the stereotypical image of a cat chasing string is cute, in reality it can spell disaster for a cat owners, Crighton warns.The string can actually become attached to an anchor point, normally being the tongue. The foreign body will then continue down the animals digestive tract. This can bunch and actually saw though the sensitive tissues.So it is really important that if pet owners notice something sticking out of their dog or cats rear-end, like string, do not attempt to pull it out! Seek veterinary advice immediately.Pet owners be warned, if Fido is hanging around the laundry basket, make sure all your items are present and correct.5. Butter (causing pancreatitis)4. Decorative Stones3. String & Dental Floss2. Socks1. Underwear  with the most popular being g-strings
CapitaGreen is a striking, state-of-the-art office tower, rising 40 stories above Singapores Downtown Core.



On 4 November, CapitaGreen officially became home to Lloyds of Londons new expanded specialist underwriting platform in Singapore, which Kent Chaplin, head of the Asia- Pacific business, described as an exciting new chapter for Lloyds.



The Singapore platform is an increasingly important hub for the worlds specialist insurance market, and the move to new, larger premises is testament to the ongoing significant growth Lloyds is experiencing in the region.



Lloyds is now up to 24 syndicates in Singapore, and weve had two new ones just start in the last six months, Lloyds global CEO Inga Beale tells Insurance Business on the eve of the new offices opening. The competitive environment here is very tough, but Lloyds is actually the number one writer of offshore insurance premiums from around the region into our Singapore hub.



Beale shares her excitement at the evergrowing contribution Asia-Pacific is making to the total business the market writes worldwide.



Globally, Lloyds wrote about US$40bn [A$56.17bn] of business last year, and $4.7bn [A$6.6bn] was from Asia-Pacific, she says. Between 2010 and 2014, weve seen 27% premium growth from Asia-Pacific.



Another boost to the markets regional operations this year came from a decision of the regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, allowing Lloyds to subdelegate underwriting authority from Singapore. Chaplin told Insurance Business in July it was expected that the decision to permit Lloyds to delegate that authority to third parties would be a significant contributor of revenue to the market.



And its not just through the rising volume of business written that Asia-Pacific is becoming a bigger part of the Lloyds story, but also through its role in helping to diversify the markets capital base. If the latest Japanese acquisitions go through via MSIG [Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group] and Tokio Marine Kiln, Japanese insurers will be providing 16.5% of the entire capital to Lloyds globally. I think thats a really interesting number and goes to show how much things have changed in Lloyds history from the days of the thousands of individual investors we used to have.



Today 11% of our capital is provided by the individual names and nearly 90% is now corporate capital. Couple this change with the interest from countries that havent traditionally been a big part of Lloyds, and I think its a real transformation and Im pleased with it.



The soft market In September, Lloyds announced its results for H1 2015. Among the highlights was a pre-tax profit of 1.19bn (A$2.54bn), down from 1.65bn (A$3.52bn) for the same period last year, while total GWP was 15.51bn (A$33.1bn), up from a total of 14.48bn (A$30.9bn) reported for

H1 2014.



At the time, Beale said the results demonstrated Lloyds success despite challenging underwriting and investment conditions and predicted that pressure on pricing in insurance would continue. So, what advice would she offer brokers about standing out and surviving in the current climate?



Its a lot easier to do the same old thing that youve always done, she says. When I look at the figures showing a huge insurance gap around the world  and it really is huge [Beale points to Lloyds research highlighting particularly significant underinsurance in 17 countries], to me, that presents an enormous opportunity, and Id encourage any broker to go out, look for the gaps in insurance coverage right now, and seize the opportunity.



She adds: Weve conducted research with risk managers of businesses around the world  so this is also true in mature economies  which shows that less than 10% of the risks they face are covered by insurance. My encouragement to brokers is to work with us to increase awareness, using the studies Lloyds publishes around specific risks.



Emerging risks

Talking about new and emerging risks, like many of her industry counterparts Beale sees huge opportunities around cyber. Weve really got to see a surge in demand for cyber risk insurance, because even though the market grew last year globally to a premium volume of US$2.5bn [A$3.51bn], the majority of buyers are still in the US.



The US Government really wanted transparency around cyber and data breaches  so it put it on the board agenda, which has driven the demand from businesses to buy cover. Outside of the US, we see very little take-up, and particularly in Asia-Pac where there is very little awareness of the real business risks and benefits of cyber risk insurance.



Lloyds also endeavours to drive heightened awareness of exposures around supply chains. I remember, some years ago, being on the underwriting side, wanting to launch the supply chain product, Beale recalls. I think it took about two years for the first policy to be sold. The fundamental reason for this slow take-up was that businesses didnt fully understand the extent of the potential risks given the complexity of globally interconnected supply chains.



Weve got a long way to go, I think, for people to really understand their entire supply chain and how something can break somewhere in the world and have a massive knock-on impact elsewhere. This is one of the hot topics in Lloyds emerging risks list. Were doing a lot more work to create awareness and understanding around supply chain interconnectivity and risk exposures.







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Wal-Mart Stores Inc was ordered by a federal jury in New Hampshire to pay $31.22 million to a pharmacist who claimed she was fired because of her gender and in retaliation for complaining about safety conditions.

The Concord, New Hampshire, jury deliberated for 2-1/2 hours before ruling on Wednesday for the plaintiff, Maureen McPadden, after a five-day trial, her lawyers said.

McPadden claimed that Wal-Mart used her loss of a pharmacy key as a pretext for firing her in November 2012, when she was 47, after more than 13 years at the retailer.

McPadden said she was fired in retaliation for her raising concerns that customers at the Wal-Mart store in Seabrook, New Hampshire, where she worked were getting prescriptions filled improperly because of inadequate staff training.

McPadden also said her gender played a role, alleging that Wal-Mart later disciplined but stopped short of firing a male pharmacist in New Hampshire who also lost his pharmacy key.

According to the jury verdict form, most of the damages award stemmed from McPaddens gender bias claims, including $15 million of punitive damages.

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart said it plans to ask trial Judge Steven McAuliffe to throw out the verdict or reduce the damages award.

The facts do not support this decision, spokesman Randy Hargrove said. We do not tolerate discrimination of any type, and neither that nor any concerns that Ms. McPadden raised about her stores pharmacy played a role in her dismissal.

Lauren Irwin, a lawyer for McPadden, in a phone interview said the jury reached a fair and just verdict.

The case is McPadden v. Wal-Mart Stores East LP, U.S. District Court, District of New Hampshire, No. 14-00475.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler

Topics New Hampshire
News / National

by Staff Reporter

The government has intensified its efforts to lure international airlines so that they introduce direct flights to Victoria Falls as the airport expansion project nears completion.Victoria Falls International Airport project is now 85% complete and the remaining works are expected to be completed by the end of May this year.The Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Development Dr Joram Gumbo toured the Victoria Falls International Airport to assess the progress which has been made towards completion of the outstanding works.Work on the fire station and parallel taxi way is in progress while the refurbishment of the old terminal will be commencing next month.Although the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe has been marketing Victoria Falls on various international platforms, the completion of the airport will make it easier for the government to market the final product to international airlines that have been considering flying directly to the resort town.While Gumbo expressed satisfaction with the progress being made at the airport, he could not be drawn to reveal the time when the entire project will be officially opened.The upgrading of Victoria Falls International Airport will increase its passenger handling capacity from 500 000 passengers to 1.5 million passengers per annum.
Patriot National Inc., a workers compensation outsourcing services firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, announced that it has acquired Mid Atlantic Insurance Services, a wholesale commercial insurance broker and program administrator in Richmond, Virginia. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Mid Atlantic serves 1,200 independent insurance agencies across 38 states and represents approximately 20 property/casualty carriers.

Mid Atlantic will become part of Patriot Underwriters, a Patriot National subsidiary and a program administrator for workers compensation insurance products. Steve Love, president of Mid Atlantic, will report to Paul Halter, executive vice president of Field Operations, Patriot National Inc. and CEO of Patriot Underwriters Inc.

Patriot National will maintain Mid Atlantics Richmond office. Mid Atlantics 18 employees will join Patriot Underwriters as part of the transaction.

Patriot National is an independent national provider of comprehensive outsourcing services within the workers compensation insurance marketplace for insurance companies, employers, local governments and reinsurance captives. Patriot National has approximately 1,200 employees.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Workers' Compensation Virginia
Hijacking smart toasters and refrigerators and hacking corporate ventilation systems are among the new threats envisioned by cyber security experts as an increasing array of items are connected to the internet.

The Internet of Things, a movement that seeks to control everything from factory equipment to traffic lights and household appliances through the web, creates vast opportunities for improved efficiency and convenience. But unless companies address the emerging cyber security risks, the Internet of Things (or IoT) will fail, said Stephen Pattison, the vice president of public affairs at ARM Holdings Plc, the U.K. semiconductor company.

We aint seen nothing yet, Pattison said, speaking on a panel at the Security Innovation Networks U.S./U.K. Global Cybersecurity Innovation Summit in London Tuesday.

IoT is such a nascent area the fact that there have been relatively few cyber attacks targeting industrial control systems or equipment other than computers doesnt mean such systems are necessarily safe.

Wild West

Its the risk to critical infrastructure from internet-enabled industrial control systems, such as those that help run nuclear power plants or chemical factories, that has received the most attention from national security agencies, Alison Vincent, chief technology officer for Ciscos U.K. and Ireland businesses, said. As a result, many of these networks have already been fortified against possible cyber attacks. Instead, consumer devices may pose a greater risk, particularly in terms of privacy and data protection.

Consumer technology is the Wild West, she said.

Paddy Francis, chief technology officer for Airbus Group SEs Defense and Space division, warned of the risks posed by increasingly internet-connected household appliances. The sheer number of these appliances  from coffee makers to refrigerators to televisions  and the relatively weak firewalls of most household wireless networks, could make such mundane items attractive to cyber criminals for use as botnets in so-called denial of service attacks, in which a hacker disables a website by flooding it with specious message traffic.

Francis also worried that cyber-assisted burglary might become increasingly common, with criminals hacking into household networks to extract data from routine items  like smart-metered lighting or heating systems  to determine if the occupant was home, looking for the best time to break in.

Constant Updating

Jeremy Watson, vice dean of engineering sciences at University College London, said even something as simple as allowing a large office buildings facilities team to control the heating and air conditioning systems through a mobile phone app  one often cited use of IoT technology  posed a potential risk. He said, for example, a disgruntled employee with access to the system might use it to cause temperatures in a server room to soar, resulting in computer failure.

Even if such internet-enabled devices were built with good security measures initially, the evolving tactics used by hackers and cyber criminals mean that security protocols need constant updating. Another concern is whether businesses and households would be able to keep on top of this process, Watson said.

What if you have an IoT fridge and it is not being updated, he said. The real question is, how do you get protection by default?

Pattison noted that a number of car companies, such as Tesla Motors Inc., already provide updates of their software automatically over mobile and wireless connections. While thats one solution to the problem, even these automatic patches pose a potential risk as hackers could seek to interfere with the updates or even use a fake update to insert malicious code into a vehicles software. And as automobiles become increasingly autonomous, the risk posed by such hacking increases, he said.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Cyber
Specialist Lloyds underwriter Marketform, which operates Syndicate 2468 at Lloyds, announced that Roberto Murru joined the company as an underwriter in its growing financial lines team led by Ian West.

Fluent in Italian, Murru began his insurance career in 1985 at Generali. He also has worked at both Syndicate 702 (managed by RE Brown) and Brit. In 2011, he joined AmTrust at Lloyds, where he was employed by AG Dore & Others to start and build a financial institutions portfolio.

Roberto is well-regarded in the London market and has a strong and long-standing broker following. With over 20 years experience in underwriting financial institutions, Robertos skills and expertise will complement our existing capability in this space, said Ian West, head of Financial and Professional Lines and Financial Lines Class underwriter.

Murru will work closely with underwriter Beth Whybrow to capitalize on the opportunities we are seeing in the market, added West. I enjoyed working with Roberto many years ago, at a different company, and I am delighted to welcome him to the Financial Lines team at Marketform to be colleagues once again.

West went on to say: Our financial lines offering is broad. We are willing to consider entities of all types, undertaking any activity  both financial and commercial. On this basis, Robertos wealth of knowledge and broad contact base will be invaluable to us as we further extend our underwriting reach to a wider broker and client network.

Martin Reith, chief executive officer of Marketform Managing Agency, commented:

Directors & officers liability, financial institutions errors & omissions and bankers blanket bond continue to be key classes of business for us here at Marketform, and I join Ian in welcoming Roberto to the syndicate.

From Feb. 1, Murru will be underwriting at Marketforms box 106 on Gallery 1 at Lloyds.

Source: Marketform

Topics Excess Surplus Underwriting Lloyd's
Talanx Groups industrial lines insurer, formerly called HDI-Gerling Industrie Versicherung AG, is now operating under the name HDI Global SE.

On Jan. 8, the renaming of HDI-Gerling Industrie Versicherung AG became official, as did the companys conversion to an SE (Societas Europaea), or a European joint-stock company.

The renaming is an important milestone in our more than 100-year history, commented Dr. Christian Hinsch, deputy chairman of the board of management of Talanx AG and chief executive officer of HDI Global SE, commented. Our new name reflects the increasingly international profile of our business. Today we are already generating almost 60 percent of our premium in foreign markets  and the trend is rising.

The company now operates worldwide under the HDI brand. Most primary insurance entities of the Talanx Group in Germany and abroad already use this brand, the company said in a statement. The letters are the abbreviated form of the earlier name Haftpflichtverband der Deutschen Industrie, meaning liability association of German industry, Talanx explained in a statement.

In the context of the renaming, the company has also updated its corporate website and all international websites. The new web address of HDI Global SE is: www.hdi.global.

About HDI Global SE

HDI Global SE handles more than 3,000 international insurance programs worldwide. Its clients include almost all DAX-listed companies and numerous large international corporations, Talanx said.

In addition to HDIs position in the German and broader European market, the company also has operations in more than 130 countries through foreign branch offices, subsidiary and peer companies, and network partners.

The HDI Global Network encompasses the companys own entities as well as partners in more than 130 countries. The premium volume booked by the division in the 2014 financial year totaled roughly EUR 4 billion ($4.3 billion). HDI Global SE employs more than 3,000 staff around the world.

Source: HDI Global SE

Topics Carriers
I cant be the only one who thinks they should bring back the original Law & Order. If NBC did, the shows first case should be one that went on trial this week in a local court in Mineola, New York. A man has been charged with homicide in the death of a police officer who was hit by an SUV.

The twist is that, when the crash happened, the defendant was leaning against the guardrail. He had been driving home from a night of drinking, got involved in a minor accident and was pulled over. The policeman was hit by a different car while investigating the crash. Is the homicide charge justified? Ask Jack McCoy  or really, if you want to be a hard-core L&O fan (and I am), ask Ben Stone.

This case is begging to be ripped from the headlines by TV writers. In real life, the Nassau County district attorney filed charges against James Ryan in the death of police officer Joseph Olivieri. A New York state appeals court had already blessed the charges.

Back in February 2015, the appellate court issued a brief ruling allowing the charges in the October 2012 crash to go forward. The court explained that, according to the grand jury, Ryan caused two collisions while driving under the influence of alcohol. Then, in the immediate aftermath of those collisions, the defendants stopped vehicle was in the eastbound High Occupancy Vehicle lane, facing perpendicular to the direction of traffic. Officer Olivieri, who had gotten out of his vehicle to investigate, was struck and killed when the driver of a sport utility vehicle traveling in the HOV lane did not see him or the defendants stopped car in time to avoid hitting them.

The legal question comes down to whether Olivieris death was a foreseeable consequence of Ryans criminal act of driving under the influence. Between five and 10 minutes elapsed from the time when Ryan stopped after causing two relatively minor collisions to the time when the passing SUV hit Olivieri.

The New York trial court initially dismissed the charges against Ryan in Olivieris death. It said the accident that killed the officer wasnt part of a continuing chain of events set in motion by Ryan.

But the appeals court reversed that decision. It said that, under New York law, it was enough for Ryans act to have contributed to Olivieris death. The defendants actions, the court added, need not be the sole cause of death and, indeed, the defendant need not have committed the fatal act to be liable.

The only relevant legal question, according to the appellate court, was whether it may be reasonably foreseen that the defendants actions would result in the victims death.

As a statement of New York law, the appellate courts ruling cant be contradicted. Claire Kincaid (a graduate of Harvard Law School, where I teach) couldnt have said it better. But the legal rule should also take into account the chain of causation between the defendants act and the death of the officer. Foreseeability is a very loose concept. Its all well and good to say that a reasonable person foresees the probable consequences of his actions. But reciting this legal formula doesnt tell you very much about the real world.

When a court finds reasonable foreseeability, what it really means is that its making a policy judgment to assign liability. Would a person driving under the influence reasonably foresee that he would be pulled over after a fender bender? Well, sure. Would he reasonably foresee that a passing car might hit the police officer investigating the accident? Thats hardly a question susceptible to a reasonable answer. It could happen. Then again, most times it wouldnt. Whos to say what counts as foreseeability?

The New York appellate court was in fact assigning responsibility to a driver under the influence for any bad consequences that might follow. At this moment in history, we treat drunken driving as a moral wrong of the highest order, so its easy to understand what the court was thinking. You take a huge risk if you drive while impaired, according to the court. Whatever consequences flow from that act, expect to be held criminally liable.

It seems to me that the New York appellate court got it wrong, and that the Nassau County prosecutors shouldnt have brought charges. Drunken driving is a bad act, to be sure. Its a horrible tragedy that a police officer like Olivieri shouldve paid the ultimate price while investigating an accident caused by a driver who had too much to drink.

But the truth is that Olivieri couldve been in the exact same situation had the underlying accident been the result of random chance or of poor driving by completely sober drivers. The cars were aligned in a certain configuration. The SUV driver didnt read the situation correctly. None of this happened particularly because the underlying accident resulted from alcohol.

Theres no doubt that Ryan contributed to Olivieris death. But he wouldve contributed to the same extent if the crash hadnt derived from alcohol. For this reason, it was a mistake for the New York courts to hold that Ryan could be criminally liable for the police officers death.

In minute 58 of Law & Order, Ryan would reach a plea bargain with the police. He would get a punishment worse than if hed simply driven drunk, but not as extreme as he wouldve if held responsible for Olivieris death. The trials begun, but theres still time for life to imitate art.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Auto New York Law Enforcement Personal Auto
Legislation filed by a lawmaker in Oklahoma would increase school safety by requiring the use of hazard lights in school zones.

According to the Transportation Research Board, more than 100 children are killed and nearly 25,000 injured every year while walking to and from school. Nearly half of those children are ages 5-7.

House Bill 2470, by state Rep. Ken Walker of Tulsa, requires drivers to engage the motor vehicles vehicular hazard warning lamps upon approaching the school zone and to keep them engaged until exiting the school zone.

Walker, a Republican, cited a recent incident in which a Jenks middle school student was hit by an SUV.

Although the Jenks boy was not hit within a school zone, his case and others show how frequently children are hit by vehicles, Walker said. In 2013, 4-year-old Emmalee Halstead was hit and killed by a car at Park Elementary School in Tulsa in the parking lot. In 2014, a 5-year-old boy was hit during early morning traffic in Tulsa on the way to Mitchell Elementary School. In 2015, a 9-year-old boy was injured by a car at Central Elementary School in Yukon.

This is basically an annual problem, even if it doesnt always occur in a school zone, Walker said. Its human nature that in the morning rush, some drivers are going to be distracted. Getting their attention with hazard lights is a sure-fire way to increase their attention. Parents should be able to drop off and pick up their kids without worrying about these types of accidents.

Source: Oklahoma House of Representatives

Topics Oklahoma
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has lifted a state of emergency in 51 of West Virginias 55 counties following cleanup of the recent winter storm.

Tomblin says the declaration issued last week will continue until Friday evening in Berkeley, Jefferson, Morgan and Preston counties.

The declaration allowed the National Guard to assist in response efforts.

Parts of the state received more than 3 feet of snow from the storm. Roads crews needed several days to clear snow off primary and secondary routes, and public schools remained closed Wednesday in more than a dozen counties.

In Jefferson County, where nearly 41 inches of snow fell in Shepherdstown, schools will remain closed through Friday.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Virginia
A tornado picked up a southbound vehicle on Floridas Turnpike near Fort Lauderdale Wednesday morning and dropped it in the northbound lane as a line of severe storms hit the area, officials said.

They said the storms tossed cars and trucks, knocked down trees and damaged some roofs in south Florida.

Broward Fire Rescue spokesman Mike Jachles said one person was hurt on the turnpike. He didnt know how many vehicles were overturned in the area. The southbound lanes were closed for a time north of Fort Lauderdale.

At least six cars were damaged in the parking lot at the nearby north campus of Broward College, said Coconut Creek police spokesman Henry Cabrera. The college issued an advisory in an email urging students to take precautions shortly before the storm.

Miami television stations showed video of numerous downed trees, downed power lines, and minor roof damage to condominiums and other buildings.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties earlier Wednesday. The agency confirmed later Wednesday evening that the area had been hit by a tornado.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Auto Florida Windstorm Personal Auto
An investigation into whats being called one of the largest cases of workers compensation health care insurance fraud in California Department of Insurance history led to 13 indictments announced today against seven Southern California-based medical professionals.

This is the second wave of indictments against attorneys, doctors and medical providers who ripped off nearly 20 insurance companies by taking kickbacks totaling nearly $500,000 for treatments, including chiropractic, pain management, echo cardiograms and sleep studies resulting in millions of dollars of fraudulent workers comp claims, according to CDI.

These indictments are the result of a joint investigation by the Department of Insurance, FBI, U.S. Attorneys Office and the San Diego District Attorneys Office.

The operation was first announced in November, when federal indictments were handed down to eight defendants including doctors and their associates.

In addition to todays state charges, the U.S. Attorneys Office announced federal indictments against three additional defendants who allegedly recruited individuals to file workers comp claims resulting from on-the-job injuries. The defendants then directed these patients to specific chiropractors who met a pre-determined quota of referring new patients for goods and services such as MRIs and medical equipment, according to CDI.

These providers built an elaborate and illegal kickback and bribery scheme that bought and sold patients  putting profits ahead of patient medical needs, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said in a statement. Workers compensation is designed to protect injured workers and legitimate businesses, not create a fraudulent profit center for providers bent on taking advantage of the system. Fraudulent enterprises like this create a multi-billion-dollar drain on Californias economy.

Topics California Trends Workers' Compensation Fraud
News / Press Release

by CPJ

New York - Ugandan regulators should immediately allow the privately owned radio station Endigyito FM to resume broadcasts, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.Endigyito FM ceased broadcasting after the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) revoked the station's license and confiscated its broadcasting equipment on January 20, one day after the station aired an interview with opposition presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi, an employee of Endigyito FM told CPJ, speaking anonymously to avoid harming continuing negotiations with the UCC. Uganda is scheduled to hold presidential elections on February 18."It is absolutely vital that Ugandan citizens can get information from a range of sources, particularly ahead of elections," said CPJ's Africa Program Coordinator, Sue Valentine. "We call on authorities to renew Endigyito FM's license and return its equipment as soon as possible so the station can resume broadcasts."UCC director Godfrey Mutabaazi initially told reporters that the station's license was suspended because it owed 38 million Ugandan shillings ($11,000) in licensing fees. The station's owner, Nulu Byamukama, said he had paid the outstanding fees in full following the suspension of the station's license, according to reports.On January 28 Mutabaazi told CPJ that the station could not simply resume broadcasting after it paid its fees, that it must apply for a new license. An Endigyito FM employee, again speaking anonymously so as not to jeopardize negotiations, told CPJ that regulators had given the station a series of reasons as to why they could not resume broadcasts, including that the vehicle needed to return the station's broadcasting equipment was being used for a mission in neighboring South Sudan.CPJ has documented several cases of Ugandan journalists' being harassed this month. Police on January 8 released two newspaper editors they had held for 24 hours without allowing them contact with the outside world, according to news reports.
E arrivata lufficialita, dopo una giornata di voci rincorrenti: per il triennio 2018-2021 sara lemittente Sky a godere dei diritti televisivi per trasmettere, in esclusiva assoluta, le partite non solo delle prossime edizioni dellEuropa League ma anche quelle della massima competizione continentale, la Champions. Un pacchetto da favola per il quale la tv satellitare di Rupert Murdoch avrebbe messo sul piatto unofferta giudicata piu congrua di quella presentata dalla concorrente Mediaset. A dare lannuncio dellaffare concluso e stata la stessa Sky che, in un comunicato, ha spiegato che il nuovo format sviluppato dalla UEFA ci consentira di portare ai nostri abbonati un prodotto rivoluzionario per il calcio europeo in Italia. Per la prima volta la UEFA Champions League e la UEFA Europa League saranno insieme in unesclusiva offerta integrata, che permettera agli appassionati di seguire fino a 7 squadre italiane, mai cosi tante prima dora, impegnate nelle sfide con i migliori club europei.

Sky: Rafforzata leadership

Anche il livello tecnico dellofferta sara altissimo ed e ancora lemittente a rivelare i dettagli: Continueremo a fare innovazione, trasmettendo le partite piu importanti anche in 4K HDR. Questofferta senza precedenti rafforza la posizione di Sky come leader della programmazione sportiva in Italia ed e anche un altro passo importante di sostegno al calcio italiano. Insomma, per i prossimi tre anni, sara unegemonia totale quella della satellitare sul calcio europeo, avendo mantenuto il pacchetto Europa League (gia sua esclusiva) e affiancandola a quello ancor piu appetibile della Champions League ad appannaggio Mediaset dal 2015 al 2018.

Sfida Serie A

Ora la sfida fra i due colossi delle trasmissioni sportive si spostera sui diritti televisivi della prossima Serie A, per la quale si e ancora in attesa di un nuovo bando che, come annunciato dal commissario della Lega, Carlo Tavecchio, avra le stesse caratteristiche del precedente, andato pero a vuoto: solo una delle offerte presentate per i cinque pacchetti, infatti, superava la soglia minima richiesta dalla base dasta. Niente di fatto, quindi, anche in virtu della stessa Mediaset che, in sostanza, ha disertato il bando (giudicato inaccettabile) non presentando alcuna offerta. La battaglia, anche in questo caso, sara sulle esclusive: del resto, dopo essersi vista scivolare via una componente importante come la Champions, sulla Serie A Mediaset dara sicuramente battaglia.
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Investors across the globe are increasingly worried about the state of China's economythe worlds second-largest economy after the United Stateswhich has been severely impacted by rising credit levels, a slowdown in its gross domestic product (GDP), and the ongoing trade war with the U.S.

Very few economies have grown at the rate of China's; according to the World Bank, the growth rate of China's economy over the past 30 years has averaged 10% per year. However, China's GDP growth in 2019 was 6.1%, the slowest year since 1990. Accelerating credit growth, the overvaluation of the yuan, and a frothy housing market have contributed to a slowdown in the second-biggest economy in the world.

Key Takeaways Investors across the globe are increasingly worried about the state of China's economy which has been severely impacted by rising credit levels, a slowdown in its gross domestic product (GDP), and the ongoing trade war with the U.S.

China's GDP growth in 2019 was 6.1%, the slowest year since 1990.

Accelerating credit growth, the overvaluation of the yuan, and a frothy housing market have contributed to a slowdown in the second-biggest economy in the world.

If China's troubles persist, there could be significant consequences for foreign trade, financial markets, and economic growth in the U.S. and around the world.

Accelerating Credit Growth

Economists Wei Yao and Claire Huang of Societe Generale consider that much of the growth in China's economy was due to credit expansion. In an attempt to shift from an investment-based to a consumption-based economy and reverse the 25-year trend of slowing economic growth, the Chinese government adopted an accommodative monetary policy. From 2008 to 2018, Chinas overall debt jumped from 164% to 300% of its gross domestic product (GDP). In an attempt to alleviate its supply of debt, China has tried to increase demand by easing restrictions on market entrance for foreign investors. These efforts have achieved little success. Theoretically, when bond markets become more accessible, foreign investor demand should increase. However, there hasn't been any data to support an increased level of investor interest in Chinese bonds.

Overvalued Currency

In addition to its credit woes, China is also facing a currency crisis. Through excessive debt creation and money printing, the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) has created one of the largest money supplies and total banking system assets of any country. An aggressive monetary policy has led to total banking system assets of $40.57 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2019. From 2010 to 2017, the total assets of banking institutions in China increased by over 200%. This has contributed to an overvalued yuan.

Perhaps even more concerning are the statistics about Chinas total social financing (TSF). Total social financing reflects an economy's credit level, taking into account off-balance-sheet financing, or "shadow banking," including initial public offerings, loans from trust companies, and bond sales. At the end of December 2019, China's total outstanding TSF was $36.6 trillion, up 10.7% from the year before. This is an indication that debt growth is accelerating via Chinas shadow banking system.

Frothy Real Estate Market

After the loss of $3.2 trillion during Chinas stock market crash in 2015, the PBOC attempted to encourage potential equity investors. Compared to Americans, the Chinese have historically invested more of their capital in real estate than in the financial markets. The latest stock market crash reinforced that trend; Chinese direct investment in the United States hit a record $15.7 billion in 2015.

At the end of 2017, the median price per square foot for real estate in China was nearly $202, almost 40% higher than the median price per square foot of real estate in the U.S. in 2017, despite the fact that the per-capita income in the U.S. was 700% higher than China in 2017. This housing data indicates that, for a time, the Chinese continued to invest in real estate for their economic growth. Historically, real estate has been the main driver of growth in China's economy, accounting for a large portion of its gross domestic product (GDP). China's efforts to float its housing market, keeping prices rising and continuing development, might have hurt other areas of its economy.

The housing price growth of China is expected to hit a five-year low in 2020, growing just 3.1%. Policymakers have been tightening policies in order to crack down on speculative buying that has been prevalent since 2015. For several years, although income-level lagged, housing prices consistently rose in every major city.

Bottom Line

Chinas economic situation can be difficult to assess. While China has taken steps toward becoming more transparent in its financial sector, its GDP data is known to have been manipulated in the past. Some economists and analysts speculate that official data about Chinese industrial profits are also manipulated and do not reflect the true state of the economy. It's likely that Chinas economy is underperforming compared to government reports. If China's troubles persist, there could be significant consequences for foreign trade, financial markets, and economic growth in the U.S. and around the world.
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Life insurance is a great way to protect your family or leave a legacy. It can cover funeral expenses, medical bills, or long-term costs like mortgage payments while your estate is sorted out. But the path to getting life insurance can vary. If youre young, healthy, and looking for quick coverage, comparing online life insurance quotes is a great place to start. But if youre over 50 or in poor health, you may need to work directly with an agent to figure out the best coverage for your needs.

We evaluated more than 90 life insurance companies based on plan options, premiums, customer service, financial stability, and more. Our list can help you decide which life insurance provider is right for you and your family.
What Is Financial Technology (Fintech)?

Financial technology (better known as Fintech) is used to describe new tech that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. At its core, fintech is utilized to help companies, business owners, and consumers better manage their financial operations, processes, and lives by utilizing specialized software and algorithms that are used on computers and, increasingly, smartphones. Fintech, the word, is a combination of "financial technology."

When fintech emerged in the 21st century, the term was initially applied to the technology employed at the back-end systems of established financial institutions. Since then, however, there has been a shift to more consumer-oriented services and therefore a more consumer-oriented definition. Fintech now includes different sectors and industries such as education, retail banking, fundraising and nonprofit, and investment management, to name a few.

Fintech also includes the development and use of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. While that segment of fintech may see the most headlines, the big money still lies in the traditional global banking industry and its multi-trillion-dollar market capitalization.

Key Takeaways Fintech refers to the integration of technology into offerings by financial services companies in order to improve their use and delivery to consumers.

It primarily works by unbundling offerings by such firms and creating new markets for them.

Startups disrupt incumbents in the finance industry by expanding financial inclusion and using technology to cut down on operational costs.

Fintech funding is on the rise but regulatory problems exist.

Examples of fintech applications include roboadvisors, payments apps, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending apps, investment apps, and crypto apps, among others.

1:03 Fintech

Understanding Fintech

Broadly, the term "financial technology" can apply to any innovation in how people transact business, from the invention of digital money to double-entry bookkeeping. Since the Internet revolution and the mobile Internet/smartphone revolution, however, financial technology has grown explosively. Fintech, which originally referred to the use of computer technology applied to the back office of banks or trading firms, now describes a broad variety of technological interventions into personal and commercial finance.

Fintech now describes a variety of financial activities, such as money transfers, depositing a check with your smartphone, bypassing a bank branch to apply for credit, raising money for a business startup, or managing your investments, generally without the assistance of a person. According to EY's 2017 Fintech Adoption Index, one-third of consumers utilize at least two or more fintech services and those consumers are also increasingly aware of fintech as a part of their daily lives.

Fintech in Practice

The most talked-about (and most funded) fintech startups share the same characteristic: they are designed to be a threat to, challenge, and eventually usurp entrenched traditional financial services providers by being more nimble, serving an underserved segment of the population, or providing faster and/or better service.

For example, Affirm seeks to cut credit card companies out of the online shopping process by offering a way for consumers to secure immediate, short-term loans for purchases. While rates can be high, Affirm claims to offer a way for consumers with poor or no credit a way to both secure credits and also build their credit histories. Similarly, Better Mortgage seeks to streamline the home mortgage process (and obviate traditional mortgage brokers) with a digital-only offering that can reward users with a verified pre-approval letter within 24 hours of applying. GreenSky seeks to link home improvement borrowers with banks by helping consumers avoid entrenched lenders and save on interest by offering zero-interest promotional periods.

For consumers with no or poor credit, Tala offers consumers in the developing world microloans by doing a deep data dig on their smartphones for their transaction history and seemingly unrelated things, such as what mobile games they play. Tala seeks to give such consumers better options than local banks, unregulated lenders, and other microfinance institutions.

In short, if you have ever wondered why some aspect of your financial life was so unpleasant (such as applying for a mortgage with a traditional lender) or felt like it wasn't quite the right fit, fintech probably has (or seeks to have) a solution for you. For example, fintech seeks to answer questions like, "Why is what makes up my FICO score so mysterious, and how it is used to judge my creditworthiness?"

As such, loan originator Upstart wants to make FICO (as well as other lenders both traditional and fintech) obsolete by using different data sets to determine creditworthiness. They include employment history, education, and whether a would-be borrower knows their credit score to decide on whether to underwrite and how to price loans. Similar treatment is given to financial services that range from bridge loans for house flippers (LendingHome) to a digital investment platform that addresses the fact that women live longer and have unique savings requirements, tend to earn less than men, and have different salary curves that can leave less time for savings to grow (Ellevest).

Fintech's Expanding Horizons

Up until now, financial services institutions offered a variety of services under a single umbrella. The scope of these services encompassed a broad range from traditional banking activities to mortgage and trading services. In its most basic form, Fintech unbundles these services into individual offerings. The combination of streamlined offerings with technology enables fintech companies to be more efficient and cut down on costs associated with each transaction.

If one word can describe how many fintech innovations have affected traditional trading, banking, financial advice, and products, it's 'disruption,' like financial products and services that were once the realm of branches, salesmen, and desktops move toward mobile devices or simply democratize away from large, entrenched institutions.

For example, the mobile-only stock trading app Robinhood charges no fees for trades, and peer-to-peer lending sites like Prosper Marketplace, Lending Club, and OnDeck promise to reduce rates by opening up competition for loans to broad market forces. Business loan providers such as Kabbage, Lendio, Accion, and Funding Circle (among others) offer startup and established businesses easy, fast platforms to secure working capital. Oscar, an online insurance startup, received $165 million in funding in March 2018. Such significant funding rounds are not unusual and occur globally for fintech startups.

Entrenched, traditional banks have been paying attention, however, and have invested heavily into becoming more like the companies that seek to disrupt them. For example, investment bank Goldman Sachs launched consumer lending platform Marcus in 2016 and recently expanded its operations to the United Kingdom.

That said, many tech-savvy industry watchers warn that keeping apace of fintech-inspired innovations requires more than just ramped-up tech spending. Rather, competing with lighter-on-their-feet startups requires a significant change in thinking, processes, decision-making, and even overall corporate structure.

Fintech and New Technologies

New technologies, like machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI), predictive behavioral analytics, and data-driven marketing, will take the guesswork and habit out of financial decisions. "Learning" apps will not only learn the habits of users, often hidden to themselves, but will engage users in learning games to make their automatic, unconscious spending and saving decisions better. Fintech is also a keen adaptor of automated customer service technology, utilizing chatbots and AI interfaces to assist customers with basic tasks and also keep down staffing costs. Fintech is also being leveraged to fight fraud by leveraging information about payment history to flag transactions that are outside the norm.

Fintech Landscape

Since the mid 2010s, fintech has exploded, with both startups receiving billions in venture funding (some of which have become unicorns), and incumbent financial firms either snatching up new ventures or building out their own fintech offerings.

North America still produces most of the fintech startups, with Asia a relatively close second, followed by Europe. Some of the most active areas of fintech innovation include or revolve around the following areas (among others):

Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.), digital tokens (e.g., NFTs), and digital cash. These often rely on blockchain technology, which is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that maintains records on a network of computers but has no central ledger. Blockchain also allows for so-called smart contracts, which utilize code to automatically execute contracts between parties such as buyers and sellers.

Open banking, which is a concept that proposes all people should have access to bank data to build applications that create a connected network of financial institutions and third-party providers. An example is the all-in-one money management tool Mint.

Insurtech, which seeks to use technology to simplify and streamline the insurance industry.

Regtech, which seeks to help financial service firms meet industry compliance rules, especially those covering Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer protocols which fight fraud.

Roboadvisors, such as Betterment, utilize algorithms to automate investment advice to lower its cost and increase accessibility.

Unbanked/underbanked services that seek to serve disadvantaged or low-income individuals who are ignored or underserved by traditional banks or mainstream financial services companies. These applications promote financial inclusion.

Cybersecurity. Given the proliferation of cybercrime and the decentralized storage of data, cybersecurity and fintech are intertwined.

Fintech Users

There are four broad categories of users for fintech: 1) B2B for banks and 2) their business clients, as well as 3) B2C for small businesses, and 4) consumers. Trends toward mobile banking, increased information, data, more accurate analytics, and decentralization of access will create opportunities for all four groups to interact in heretofore unprecedented ways.

As for consumers, as with most technology, the younger you are the more likely it will be that you are aware of and can accurately describe what fintech is. The fact is that consumer-oriented fintech is mostly targeted toward millennials given the huge size and rising earning (and inheritance) potential of that much-talked-about segment. Some fintech watchers believe that this focus on millennials has more to do with the size of that marketplace than the ability and interest of Gen Xers and baby boomers in using fintech. Rather, fintech tends to offer little to older consumers because it fails to address their problems.

When it comes to businesses, before the advent and adoption of fintech, a business owner or startup would have gone to a bank to secure financing or startup capital. If they intended to accept credit card payments they would have to establish a relationship with a credit provider and even install infrastructure, such as a landline-connected card reader. Now, with mobile technology, those hurdles are a thing of the past.

Regulation and Fintech

Financial services are among the most heavily regulated sectors in the world. Not surprisingly, regulation has emerged as the number one concern among governments as fintech companies take off.

As technology is integrated into financial services processes, regulatory problems for such companies have multiplied. In some instances, the problems are a function of technology. In others, they are a reflection of the tech industry's impatience to disrupt finance.

For example, automation of processes and digitization of data makes fintech systems vulnerable to attacks from hackers. Recent instances of hacks at credit card companies and banks are illustrations of the ease with which bad actors can gain access to systems and cause irreparable damage. The most important questions for consumers in such cases will pertain to the responsibility for such attacks as well as misuse of personal information and important financial data.

There have also been instances where the collision of a technology culture that believes in a "Move fast and break things" philosophy with the conservative and risk-averse world of finance has produced undesirable results. San Francisco-based insurtech startup Zenefits, which was valued at over a billion dollars in private markets, broke California's insurance laws by allowing unlicensed brokers to sell its products and underwrite insurance policies. The SEC fined the firm $980,000 and they had to pay $7 million to California's Department of Insurance.

Regulation is also a problem in the emerging world of cryptocurrencies. Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a new form of fundraising that allows startups to raise capital directly from lay investors. In most countries, they are unregulated and have become fertile ground for scams and frauds. Regulatory uncertainty for ICOs has also allowed entrepreneurs to slip security tokens disguised as utility tokens past the SEC to avoid fees and compliance costs.



They have established fintech sandboxes to evaluate the implications of technology in the sector. The passing of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a framework for collecting and using personal data, in the EU is another attempt to limit the amount of personal data available to banks. Several countries where ICOs are popular, such as Japan and South Korea, have also taken the lead in developing regulations for such offerings to protect investors.

Because of the diversity of offerings in fintech and the disparate industries it touches, it is difficult to formulate a single and comprehensive approach to these problems. For the most part, governments have used existing regulations and, in some cases, customized them to regulate fintech.

What Are Examples of Fintech? Fintech has been applied to many areas of finance. Here are just a few examples. Roboadvisors are apps or online platforms that optimally invest your money automatically, often for little cost, and are accessible to ordinary individuals.

are apps or online platforms that optimally invest your money automatically, often for little cost, and are accessible to ordinary individuals. Investment apps like Robinhood make it easy to buy and sell stocks, ETFs, and crypto from your mobile device, often with little or no commission.

like Robinhood make it easy to buy and sell stocks, ETFs, and crypto from your mobile device, often with little or no commission. Payments apps like Paypal, Venmo, Block (Square), Zelle, and CashApp make it easy to pay individuals or businesses online and in an instant.

apps like Paypal, Venmo, Block (Square), Zelle, and CashApp make it easy to pay individuals or businesses online and in an instant. Personal finance apps such as Mint, YNAB, and Quicken SimpliFi let you see all of your finances in one place, set budgets, pay bills, and so on.

such as Mint, YNAB, and Quicken SimpliFi let you see all of your finances in one place, set budgets, pay bills, and so on. P2P lending platforms like Prosper, Lending Club, and Upstart allow individuals and small business owners to receive loans from an array of individuals who contribute microloans directly to them.

platforms like Prosper, Lending Club, and Upstart allow individuals and small business owners to receive loans from an array of individuals who contribute microloans directly to them. Crypto apps , including wallets, exchanges, and payments applications allow you to hold and transact in cryptocurrencies and digital tokens like Bitcoin and NFTs.

, including wallets, exchanges, and payments applications allow you to hold and transact in cryptocurrencies and digital tokens like Bitcoin and NFTs. InsurTech is the application of technology specifically to the insurance space. One example would be the use of devices that monitor your driving in order to adjust auto insurance rates.

Does Fintech Only Apply to Banking? No. While banks and startups have created useful fintech applications around basic banking (checking & savings accounts, bank transfers, credit/debit cards, loans), many other fintech areas that have more to do with personal finance, investing, or payments (among others) have grown in popularity.
Most investors have heard of mutual funds, but relatively few understand how these funds really work. This is not surprising; after all, most people are not financial experts, and there are plenty of other things going on in their lives more urgent than the structure of fund companies. But some investors might make better decisions if they understood that mutual fund companies make money by charging them fees, and the size and type of charged fees vary from fund to fund. Mutual funds primarily make money through sales charges that work like commissions and by charging investors a percentage of assets under management (AUM).

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires a fund company to disclose shareholder fees and operating expenses in its fund prospectus. Investors can find this information in the fee table situated near the front of the prospectus. Fees are easily the largest source of revenue for basic mutual fund companies, though some companies may make separate investments of their own. Different kinds of fees include purchase fees, sales charges, or the mutual fund load; deferred sales charges; redemption fees; account fees; and exchange fees.

Key Takeaways Mutual funds make money by charging investors a percentage of assets under management and may also charge a sales commission (load) upon fund purchase or redemption.

Fund fees, called the expense ratio, can range from close to 0% to more than 2% depending on the fund's operating costs and investment style.

Fund fees must be disclosed in its prospectus and made transparent to current or potential investors.

Understanding Mutual Funds

Mutual funds are among the most popular and successful investment vehicles, thanks to their combination of flexibility, low cost, and the chance for high returns. Investing in a mutual fund is different than simply packing money into a savings account or a certificate of deposit (CD) at a bank. When you invest in a mutual fund, you are actually buying shares of stock in a company.

The company you are buying is an investment firm. Mutual funds are in the business of investing in securities, much like Ford is in the business of making cars. The assets for a mutual fund are different, but the ultimate goal of each company is to make money for shareholders.

Shareholders make money in one of three ways. The first way is to see a return from the interest and dividend payments off of the fund's underlying holdings. Investors can also make money based on trades made by management; if a mutual fund earns capital gains from a trade, it is legally obligated to pass on the profits to shareholders. This is known as a capital gains distribution. The last way is through standard asset appreciation, which means the value of the mutual fund shares increases.

Shareholder Fees

Fund companies can attach an assortment of fees to their services and products, but where and how those fees are included makes a difference. Sales charge fees, more commonly referred to as loads, are triggered by the purchase of mutual fund shares by an investor. This means the investor pays an additional percentage, something like 5% usually, on top of the actual price of the share. Fund companies do not typically retain the entire sales charges since a large portion often goes to the brokers and advisors who sold the fund.

There are different kinds of fund loads. The most common is the front-end load, which is immediately deducted from the investment amount before the shares are actually purchased. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) sets an 8.5% cap on front-end loads. For example, a $1,000 investment with a front-end load sends $50 to the broker and $950 to purchase shares of the mutual fund.

There are also back-end loads that can be charged when the shares are sold. The most common of these is called the contingent deferred sales charge (CDSC). This load starts relatively high and tends to decrease over time, usually dropping to zero after a period of seven to 10 years.

Some fund companies charge purchase fees or redemption fees. These sound a lot like sales charges but are actually paid entirely to the fund, not the broker. Purchase fees take place at the time the shares are bought, and redemption fees take place at the time of shares are sold.

In essence, management fees are highly dependent on the success of the fund and the continued trading of new shares by the public. The most successful funds see a lot of new money and tend to be highly liquid; more trading equals more fee income for the company.

Annual Fund Operating Expenses

Mutual fund companies do not operate for free; there are expenses that need to be recouped. These cover costs such as paying the investment advisor, the administrative staff, fund research analysts, distribution fees, and other costs of operation.

Management fees are paid out of the fund's assets rather than charged directly to the shareholders. The SEC requires management fees to be listed as a separate item and not lumped in with the "other" expenses category, so investors can always keep track of which funds are spending the most on management compensation.

Most investors end up hearing about distribution fees, more commonly referred to as 12b-1 fees. Capped at 1% of your fund assets, 12b-1 fees are charged to shareholders to recoup costs associated with marketing the fund and providing shareholder services. A lot of these fund costs are necessary; for example, the SEC requires the printing and distribution of prospectuses to new investors. As the mutual fund space has become more competitive, particularly since the late 1990s, 12b-1 fees have narrowed, and shareholders have become more sensitive to them.

12b-1 fees change from share class to share class. Class A shares tend to impose front-end loads and have lower 12b-1 costs, and some mutual funds reduce the front-end load based on the size of the investment. This is known as "breakpoints" in the industry. The idea is the mutual fund company is willing to sacrifice some revenue on a per-share basis to entice more share purchases. Class B shares and Class C shares tend to have higher annual expenses than Class A shares.

No-Load Funds

Many mutual funds do not have sales charges; they are called no-load funds. This doesn't mean they are free of fees, however. They may still defray marketing and distribution expenses through 12b-1 fees, though the SEC does not let these companies refer to themselves as no-load if 12b-1 expenses exceed 0.25%. Others, such as the Vanguard family of funds, do not have sales charges or 12b-1 fees at all.

No-load funds can still earn revenue from other kinds of fee income, but these companies also tend to reduce costs to compensate for the lack of sales charge income. This often correlates to less active investment management and a more passive investment strategy for the fund.
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News / Press Release

by Jacob Mafume - PDP National Spokesperson

President Robert Mugabe returned home last Friday and despite the usual noises from the state media that he was physically fit, he is showing clear signs that he was a man who is no longer fit to govern the country.On his return, Mugabe flew into a storm where civil servants are not receiving their salaries. It is also not clear when the government will be able to meet its commitment and obligations of paying civil servants their 2015 annual bonuses and whether it will be able to meet its monthly pay dates.Major government hospitals and clinics have run out of essential drugs including ordinary Paracetamol painkillers, while critical surgical operations are being carried out by junior doctors as the bulk of senior doctors cannot work for the pittances that the government is offering.While the health sector is all but paralyzed, there is a deadly typhoid outbreak which has hit Harare and will certainly spread to other towns and will leave a trail of destruction on its wake.This outbreak shows the decay of infrastructure and systems in the country over the last 36 years and is an indictment on Mugabe who will turn 92 in the next four weeks.In a time of such economic turbulence and enormous challenges such as the unfolding devastating drought, Mugabe cannot act as if it's business as usual while the country is on the brink and burning. Yet it is shocking that his response to this calamity has been casual and routine as if all is well.The most hit by Mugabe and his government's non-performance are children of the poor who are going to schools where there are no study materials while the teachers are now engaged in informal trade during schools hours in order to supplement for their paltry salaries.It is also the same poor people who seek medical treatment in dysfunctional hospitals while Mugabe and his cronies fly to Singapore, India and Dubai to get world class treatment.In fact Mugabe over the Christmas holidays Mugabe received an expensive Botox operation to give temporary upliftment to his face by smoothing his facial wrinkles and improving his appearance so that he appears younger and capable of running the country when he clearly can no longer tell his left hand from the right.The economy has been in a free fall with most companies failing to reopen in 2016 due to tough economic and unproductive conditions thereby throwing thousands of workers into to the streets.It is clear that the falling economy and factional fights in Zanu PF have led to senior government officials to engage in corrupt activities and have seen this period as their last chance to loot the country's natural resources resulting in the economy disintegrating under the weight of massive corruption by a coterie of Mugabe bootlickers and zealots.The same heartless Mugabe has forced thousands of families out of their homes after their homes were demolished with the latest being the residents of Nyikavanhu Housing Cooperative who had had their homes demolished by the Harare City Council on the orders of Mugabe who said the houses were an eyesore to international visitors coming into Zimbabwe.The failures of Mugabe in a nation where over 91% of the population are unemployed and vendors are endless and is a clear signal that he is no longer capable of leading Zimbabwe and there sufficient grounds for impeachment as set out section 97 of the Constitution of the country. The challenge remains that none of ZANU PF's cowardly and corrupt parliamentarians would dare move such a motion as they have deified Mugabe.The People's Democratic Party (PDP) therefore maintains that the responsibility to end Mugabe's criminal rule falls on those who are on the receiving end, the ordinary people. It is now time for Zimbabweans to unite and pour into the streets to demand that Mugabe and his failed regime step aside to allow space for Zimbabwe to move forward.Mugabe and his cronies have declared themselves enemies of the people by impoverishing millions of Zimbabweans and thus the public must take corrective measures against them.The (PDP) further hold that Zimbabwe needs a National Transitional Authority (NTA) to manage the transition from Mugabe's criminal rule into another Zimbabwe. It is therefore imperative that dialogue amongst the key democratic opposition forces is crucial so as to form a coalition that can push ZANU PF out of power before the nation slides into complete chaos.Released by;
DES MOINES  Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in an impassioned back-and-forth accused one another of shifting their views on immigration policy during Thursday nights Republican presidential debate in Iowa.

Then New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mocked the U.S. Senators verbal jousting, saying he needed a Washington-to-English converter.

The Republican candidates  most of them, anyway  on Thursday night at the Iowa Events Center participated in what will be the final presidential debate before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the presidential nominating process.

+6 Times the candidates mentioned the noticeably absent Trump during Thursday's debate Although Trump was physically absent from the stage in Des Moines, he still had a clear impact on the night's event.

Missing from the stage in downtown Des Moines was Republican polling front-runner Donald Trump, who skipped the debate over his objection to Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly. Trump instead held a campaign event across town at Drake University.

Most polls on the GOP field in Iowa have showed a close race between Trump and Cruz. Rubio has been a consistent third, but well behind the front-runners.

Perhaps their standing atop the polls  and Trumps absence  fueled the exchange between Cruz and Rubio over immigration policy. Each candidate accused the other of shifting his views over time on immigration policy, particularly on how to treat the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the country illegally.

Were not going to beat Hillary Clinton with someone whos willing to say or do anything to win an election, Rubio said to Cruz.

+2 AP FACT CHECK: GOP claims on carpet bombs, Kurds and economy A look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or don't tell the full story

Cruz countered by noting Rubios work on legislation  which ultimately failed  that would have provided a 13-year path to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally.

Christie said the exchange was an example of why the next president should come from a governors office, not Congress.

Stop the Washington bull and lets get things done, Christie said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also chimed in on the immigration debate, saying he supported Rubios Senate bill and accusing Rubio of eventually bailing on the bill.

I supported (Rubio).  Then he cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess, Bush said. We should have a path to legal status.  I think thats the conservative, consistent, pragmatic response.

Many debate questions focused on foreign policy and national security.

Answering questions on how to address the Middle East terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State, Cruz stood by his campaign remarks that he wants to carpet bomb terrorists and make the sand glow. He said his strategy as president would be to define the enemy, rebuild the military to defeat the enemy, and lift the rules of engagement.

Rand Paul prescribed caution against waging war against both the Islamic State and the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Paul said toppling Assad would leave a void that could be filled by an even larger and stronger Islamic State.

Paul also reiterated his opposition to the bulk collection of data used by government surveillance agencies.

The bulk collection and invasion of privacy did not stop one terrorist attack, Paul said. I dont think we need to give up liberty in the name of a false sense of security.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who has slipped from among the leaders in polling on the race in Iowa, defended his lack of political experience. He said his experience as a surgeon prepared him for taking on big problems and making big decisions.

We need people who think outside of the box and can solve problems, can utilize resources around them, can focus on the problem and solve the problem, Carson said. The American people are terrified.  We dont need more of the same solutions.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich was asked about the water crisis in his neighboring state of Michigan. Kasich said such a crisis requires rapid response from executives.

Every single engine of government has to move when you see a crisis like that, Kasich said. People at home are saying they got a problem, listen to them. Because most of the ime they are absolutely correct.
In a recent interview with Bravo , Cynthia Bailey talks about this week's episode of. Cynthia Bailey shares her thoughts on the issues with Kenya Moore and Kim Fields over her commercial. Check it out below!Cynthia Bailey: I wasnt personally offended or insulted by Kims Beatless Brunch concept and felt her intentions were coming from a good place. However, I understand why some of the other ladies may have felt differently. In my opinion the true definition of natural beauty is defined by more than minimal or no makeup, which is just one of many components. I thought the topic of natural beauty brought up great conversation and a variety of interpretations.CB: As part of the Life Twirls On cast, I got an opportunity to see firsthand how smart, talented, and creative Kenya is as a businesswoman. I was very excited to hear her concept and see her Gone with the Wind fabulous storyboards. I was disappointed that Kenya was not able to twirl over to the meeting.CB: Yes, I was surprised that Kim did not want to co-produce the commercial. As someone who has spent most of her career in front of the camera, I am still learning the protocol for directing and producing.What do you think about Cynthias blog?airs Sunday nights at 8/7c only on Bravo. For International TV ListingsSource/Photo Credit: Bravo
E. Flahavan & Sons has joined up with Source Atlantique as part of their expansion drive into the United States market. This means that more Americans will soon be enjoying the 230-year-old family-owned companys oats, as a creamy Irish porridge for breakfast or as a healthy option throughout the day (see our recipes below).

Flahavans mill has been family-owned and operated for seven generations  over 230 years  from its home in Kilmacthomas, beneath the Comeragh mountains of County Waterford.

Flahavans is the preferred oatmeal brand in Ireland with a 55% share of that market, noted Joe Reich, from Source Atlantique. We are looking forward to bringing the healthy and uniquely creamy taste of Irish oatmeal to the increasingly health-focused US consumer.

The winning qualities of Flahavans oats are the result of a combination of the optimum Irish oat growing conditions and their unique slow milling process of its non-GMO oat grain, all of which is grown within 50 miles of the Flahavans mill.

Oats naturally low in saturated fat, are a good source of soluble fiber and may help reduce the risk of heart disease. They are also a versatile superfood ingredient that can improve the health and taste profiles of favorite recipes.

Here are two unique recipes created by Irish Chef Neven Maguire on behalf of Flahavans.

Baked camembert served with glazed steel-cut oatcakes

Ingredients

(Serves 4-6)

For the oatcakes:

- 100g (3 oz) Flahavans Organic Porridge Oats,

- 100g (3 oz) plain flour

- 50g (2oz) lard or butter, diced

- 1 tsp. salt

- 3-4 tbsp. cold water

- 1 egg

- 1 tbsp. milk

For the cheese:

- 220g (8oz) Camembert in a wooden box, at room temperature

- 1 small garlic clove, cut into wafer-thin slices

- 1/2 tsp. thyme sprigs

- crab apple jelly

- freshly ground black pepper

You can view a video of the method here.

Method

For the oatcakes:

1. Mix the oats and flour in a bowl. Rub in the lard or butter, then add the salt and enough cold water to form a soft dough.

2. Roll out the dough thinly on a flour-dusted work surface.

3. Cut out circles with a 6cm (2 in) straight-sided cutter. This should make about 20 in total.

4. Beat together the egg and milk to form a glaze.

5. Place a batch of the oatcakes in a large frying pan at a medium heat.

6. Immediately brush the tops of the oatcakes in the pan with glaze  it will turn to a shiny coating as they cook. Cook for about 20 minutes turning after about 15min.

7. They can also be baked with the tops glazed in the oven for 12-14 minutes at 180C (350F/Gas mark 4).

8. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool.

For the cheese:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C (400F/Gas mark 6).

2. Remove all the plastic wrapping from the cheese and replace it in the bottom of its wooden box after lining it with parchment paper.

3. Using a small sharp knife make small slashes all over the top of the cheese.

4. Push one of garlic slices into each cut, followed by a thyme sprig and then add a small teaspoon of the crab apple jelly and grind over with black pepper.

5. Bake for 20 minutes until the cheese has slightly melted.

6. Serve with the oatcakes and crab apple jelly.

Quick to cook steel-cut oatmeal with Irish mist, honey and cream

Ingredients

(Serves 3-4)

- 3 cups (900ml) of milk

- 1 cup (130g) of Flahavans Irish Quick to Cook Steel Cut Oatmeal

- Drizzle of honey

- 1 tbsp. cream

- 1 tbsp. Irish Mist Liqueur (or any Irish whiskey)

You can watch a video of the method here.

Cooking and serving instructions

1. Place the oats and milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil.

2. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5-7 minutes until cooked.

3. Place in a bowl and drizzle with honey and cream.

4. Top with the Irish Mist Liqueur.

Flahavans Steel Cut, Quick to Cook Steel Cut and Rolled Oats are currently sold at selected Kings, Albertsons, ShopRite, Wegmans, Shaws, The Fresh Market, Fairway Markets stores and several other retailers and also at mybrands.com and amazon.com.
News / Regional

by Thupeyo Muleya

Government has started installing Closed-Circuit Televisions (CCTVs) at Beitbridge border post to curb corruption, the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Obedingwa Mguni, said yesterday.The Deputy Minister said the CCTVs would be switched on "in a few days' time."He said resorting to video surveillance was part of a raft of measures the government was employing to deal with corruption in order to maximise on revenue collection.Mguni said the installation of the gadgets at the main immigration hall began a week ago and installation on the customs hall is pending."We're behind schedule as the machines should've been up and running by now. They will be switched on in a few days to come and they will be monitored from one central point. There will help us in addressing challenges that are affecting smooth flow of both cargo and human traffic," he said."After Beitbridge we're going to install the same machines at Plumtree border post which is the second busiest inland port of entry in the country. We will also implement the same strategies at Chirundu border post."Mguni said they will soon deploy mobile gold detecting machines at Beitbridge where smuggling of the precious mineral was rife. "We're also in the midst of training more sniffer dogs to deal with the issue of smuggling of minerals and other natural resources such as ivory.You will note that most criminals are now smuggling ivory in powder form hence we've to adapt to all these new tricks," he said.Mguni urged immigration and customs officers and other government workers at the country's borders to shun corruption."Corrupt elements are bleeding our economy and affecting the revenue collection. Government is therefore putting measures in place to fight corruption hence the installation of the CCTVs," he said.The Deputy Minister said the government was finalising the processes of identifying a developer who will upgrade and expand infrastructure at Beitbridge border post to expedite the implementation of the one-stop border post concept between Zimbabwe and South Africa.
A new survey names Limerick city the most affordable place in the world to buy a home, closely followed by Waterford city in joint second place.

The 12th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey placed the Irish cities in the top two spots out of 367 cities throughout nine countries by measuring the citys mean household income against median house prices.

In Limerick, a median household income lies at $56,138 (51,200) while median house prices are currently $101,750 (92,800). This means that a typical person in the city will have to spend just 1.8 times their income if investing in a home.

Waterford, which came in joint second place alongside Decatur, Illinois; Topeka, Kansas; and Elmira, New York, sees the average person also spending just 2.1 times their income on a home. Median income in the city is currently $52,300 (47,700) while their median house price lies at $109,645 (100,000).

Read more: Live in Ireland on the cheap by becoming a property guardian.

Ireland as a whole fared well in the housing affordability survey although the United States was deemed to have the most affordable major metropolitan markets with 75 affordable cities.

Ireland was the most affordable of the nine countries surveyed, however, coming in with a median income multiple of 2.8 in order to purchase a home. This is the third year in a row that Ireland has topped the housing affordability rating and between 2004 and 2015, Ireland has had no severely unaffordable major metropolitan markets.

Read more: Five cheapest places to purchase property in Ireland.

A negative for Irelands rating came in the form of capital city Dublin, however, which ranked much further down the list.

Lying in the middle third in 128th place, the typical person would need 4.5 times their income to purchase a home in Dublin, way above the 3.5 income multiple introduced by the Central Bank in Ireland last year as a requirement for acquiring a mortgage.

Based on figures from the Central Statistics Office in Ireland, Dublins average house price is $288,366 (263,000) with a median household income of $64,690 (59,000).

This makes Dublin a seriously unaffordable area, ranking it with the likes of Las Vegas and Tokyo.Cork was the only other city in Ireland not rated as affordable.

Despite Dublins disappointing ranking, the survey till spells good news for the increasing number of Americans hoping to purchase property in Ireland.

Almost one in six overseas inquiries about Irish property now comes from the US, a percentage buoyed by the current strong dollar. A survey by the Real Estate Alliance (REA) recently showed that inquires from the US increased from almost zero to 16 percent in 2015.

The Irish-based REA will be hosting an exhibition in New York this March featuring thousands of Irish properties with the hope of matching these inquiries with an new Irish home.

Read more: Irish property fair for New York as US buyer numbers soar.

This years affordability survey placed Hong Kong at the bottom of the pile as the most unaffordable city in the world in which to buy a home. Nineteen times the median income is typically needed there with the median house price currently placed at a staggering $5.6m.

In second place as the least affordable city came Sydney, Australia, requiring 12.2 times the median income ($84,600) to purchase a home, followed by Vancouver (10.8 times) and San Jose, California (9.7 times).

The survey was completed by Demographia, rating middle-income housing affordability in Australia, Canada, China (Hong Kong), Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States.
What a pleasure to see the work of one of our Irish Nobel laureates given an invigorating full production on a New York stage. Seamus Heaneys version of Sophocles Antigone is called The Burial at Thebes and its currently being produced by the Irish Repertory Theatre at its temporary home at the DR2 space just off Union Square.

The language of war can be as imprisoning as war itself, Heaney reminds us in a play that is at all times haunted by this dual awareness. In an illuminating note the poet wrote to introduce the text (reprinted in director Charlotte Moores notes) he adds: Early in 2003, the situation that pertains in Sophocles play was being re-enacted in our own world. Just as (King) Creon forced the citizens of Thebes into an either/or situation in relation to Antigone, the Bush administration in the White House was using the same tactics to forward its argument for the war in Iraq.

The enemy in the Iraq war was given the amorphous, catchall name terror and the snare was set. If you dont support the eradication of this tyrant in Iraq and the threat he poses for the free world, you are in the wrong side in the war on terror, Heaney counsels.

By giving the enemy such an ambiguous name the Bush administration gave themselves the scope to shift the goalposts whenever and wherever that became necessary, and thats exactly what they did.

The central conflict in The Burial at Thebes is laid out early on in the play, and its as insuperable as Bushs own unbending worldview.

King Creon has declared that Polyneices, who has attacked Thebes and was killed in the battle, must be denied burial as a traitor to his own city. You are either with me or against me in this, he makes clear.

But Antigone, Polyneices heartbroken sister, asserts that it is her right to bury a family member, and so she vows to defy Creons order. That leaves principle to battle pragmatism, the individual to oppose the state, the family to take precedence over the citizen.

Conflict this intimate, this close to home, between implacably opposed foes, is of course very recognizable to Irish audiences, and so the play, which was originally commissioned to mark the centenary of the Abbey, Irelands national theater, has an added voltage for this director, company and many audience members.

The asymmetric nature of the conflict is also telling. Creon (played by Paul OBrien, who wields his authority with as much detachment as bluster) holds the power, wears the crown and directs the armies. He has no need and feels no need to accommodate any view other than his own.

As Antigone, actress Rebekah Brockman is a thoroughly convincing portrait of courage, compassion and fury, but we learn she will readily reject foe and family alike in pursuit of her high-minded objective.

Ismene, played by Katie Fabel, is Antigones cautious sister, who nevertheless finds herself railroaded and scorned in the standoff between these two foes.

Its clear in production where the poets sympathy lies, having grown up in a time and place where two compelling arguments saw the scales tip in favor, over and over, of the might of the state.

Heaneys Antigone wails at injustice and is prepared to sacrifice her own future to honor the dead. Thats a siren call that many of the poets own generation headed, with equally lethal results.

But his meditation on obstinacy, on overweening male arrogance, that overbearing vanity that will admit no perspective but its own is as timely today as it was in the time of Sophocles.

Its remarkable how nimbly the language moves between court and country, between blank verse and prose, between officialdom and ordinary life, between Greece and Ireland. Heaney shows us what happens when the might of the state bears down on the lonely citizen and buckles when it expects to break.

As Tiresias, the blind prophet, Robert Langdon Lloyd delivers his verdict to the wayward Creon in the plays electrifying final act. Its too late of course. The kings arrogance and vengeance has set his kingdom and country on a disastrous path that will decimate his hearth and happiness.

Director Moore has given us a simultaneously fast moving and meditative production, mindful of both the Irish and American consequences of that most Greek of calamities, hubris.

The Burial at Thebes is playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre until March 6. For tickets and showtimes visit www.irishrep.org.
The CEO of Barnardos is calling for the Minister for Health to set up a Commission of Inquiry into abuse of children with disabilities at a foster home in the south east.

As revealed recently by the Irish Examiner, over Christmas the Dail public accounts committee received a significantly curtailed, 24-page version of a 200-page report into serious allegations of sexual abuse in the south east.

The report is based on claims a single foster care family in the south east, with whom more than 40 vulnerable children and teens with severe intellectual disabilities were placed between 1983 and 2009, abused a number of the individuals in their care.

The then South Eastern Health Board became aware of concerns in 1992, before social workers were told to remove all children in 1995.

However, due to a serious error that continues to have ramifications today, one woman who was mute was accidentally left with the family until 2009, allegedly suffering severe sexual, physical and financial abuse during the period.

Fergus Finlay (pictured) said people should be "hanging their heads in shame" over what happened to the families.

He said what happened to people who were in the care of the State was shocking, and added: "If we cant get to the bottom of it and establish exactly who is accountable and how and why these decisions were made, you can never rest easy in your bed.

"No citizen of Ireland if they read what had happened to these young people could rest easy in their beds that this could happen to anybody in the responsibility of the State."

Speaking earlier on Morning ireland he said: "I want the Minister for Health to investigate. It didnt happen on his watch, it happened well before his time, but he has access to all these files."
Update 2.30pmThe body of Christina Lavin has been located. Gardai wish to thank the public for their assistance in this matter. No further action is required.

Gardai are renewing their appeal for the public's help in tracing the whereabouts of Dublin woman Christina Lavin.
British and US intelligence cracked the codes of Israeli drones operating in the Middle East and monitored their surveillance feeds for almost 20 years, according to documents leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The details emerged from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked millions of documents about US government surveillance in 2013, according to reports by the German daily Der Spiegel and investigative website The Intercept.

The intelligence agencies were able to watch information that the drones and other aircraft broadcast back to their handlers, the reports said.

The project codenamed Anarchist has operated since 1998 and was based near the highest point in Cyprus, according to the reports.

Israel was the focus of the programme but it also hacked into systems in Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the reports said.

The hacking granted intelligence agencies a "virtual seat in the cockpit" as Israeli drones hit militant targets, the Intercept report said.

In one instance in 2008, an NSA internal newsletter boasted of the Anarchist programme successfully collecting video from the cockpit of an Israeli F-16 fighter, the report said.

There was no official comment on the reports in Israel but Israeli cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz, who has held the post of minister of intelligence affairs, said: "We are not surprised; we know that the Americans spy on every country in the world and on us as well, on their friends."

"It is nevertheless disappointing because among other reasons, we haven't been spying or collecting intelligence or cracking codes in the United States for decades," he told Army Radio.
A heterosexual British couple who want to enter into a civil partnership rather than marry have lost a challenge at the UK's High Court.

Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who are both academics and live in Hammersmith, west London, argued that they are being discriminated against.

Dr Steinfeld, 34, and Mr Keidan, 39, who have been in a committed relationship since November 2010 and have an eight-month-old baby, want to secure legal recognition of that relationship through a civil partnership.

But the Civil Partnership Act 2004 stipulates that only same-sex couples are eligible.

The couple claimed the British government's position on civil partnerships is "incompatible with equality law".

Mrs Justice Andrews, sitting in London, dismissed their judicial review action today, but gave them permission to take their case on to the British Court of Appeal because the case raised issues of "wider importance".

After the ruling, Dr Steinfeld said: "We made this claim because the UK Government is barring us, and many thousands of opposite-sex couples like us, from the choice of forming a civil partnership, and we want this to change."

She said: "We don't think there is sufficient justification for stopping us or other opposite-sex couples from forming civil partnerships.

"Unfortunately, the judge has concluded otherwise."

Dr Steinfeld, who was present in court with her partner to hear Mrs Justice Andrews announce her decision, said they wished to go to the Court of Appeal to challenge the judge's decision on behalf of themselves and more than 36,000 people who signed their petition "calling for civil partnership equality".

Mr Keidan said it was "now time for Parliament to demonstrate its commitment to creating a level playing field for all its citizens by opening up civil partnerships to same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike".
Indirect peace talks aimed at resolving Syrias five-year conflict have begun at the UN headquarters in Geneva, without the participation of the main opposition group.

Fridays talks are the first since two rounds of negotiations collapsed in 2014. Syrias conflict has killed more than 250,000 people.
Irelands implementation of new, similar recommendations from the OECD to reduce tax minimisation and avoidance was described as quite remarkable by European taxation commissioner Pierre Moscovici.

An analysis of the tax loopholes in each EU country showed that Ireland was not quite the international delinquent it has often been portrayed as, having fewer loopholes than the EU average, as revealed in the Irish Examiner last week.

The study identified 34 tax measures that allow multinationals pay around 30% less tax than domestic business.

The Netherlands had the most loopholes at 17, followed by Belgium with 16.

Thirteen countries had more than Irelands 10, with Germany and France having eight loopholes and Denmark the fewest at four.

However, the measures were not of equal value and further analysis is being still carried out.

Billions lost every year 2 tax avoidance.Unacceptable.We're acting 2 tackle it https://t.co/QdGNTqlgok #FairTaxation pic.twitter.com/CDxFlFxvHr  European Commission  (@EU_Commission) January 28, 2016

The Dutch government, which holds the current EU presidency, has said it wants to have the package agreed by the end of July, but Government sources said they did not believe this would be possible as each country has a veto.

No two countries tax regimes are the same and the measures would not slot into any countrys system  each would require different modifications and new rules.

Accountants KPMG said it believed that the proposed measures should not undermine and may enhance the attractiveness of Irelands 12.5% corporation tax regime.

It said some of the measures are in line with the Irish regime, some of which have been recently introduced, including increased transparency  introduced in January on foot of the OECD guidelines  the knowledge box devised along the OECDs recommendations, and OECD transfer pricing rules.

Head of tax Conor OBrien, however, picked out interest deductibility as a potential problem.

There is unlikely to be unanimous support for a complete surrender of national sovereignty, he said.

Interest deductibility is seen as one of the major ways of profit shifting to avoid tax.

And accountants BDO said compliance costs will fall more heavily on SMEs than bigger firms.

According to the leftist GUE group MEP Fabio De Masi, a leading member of the Parliaments TAXE committee, the EU proposals are weaker than those agreed at OECD level on interest limitation and will not change this practice much.

There is no suggestion that countries have to change or harmonise their tax rates.

The commission will make proposals on the long-delayed Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and the less ambitious Common Corporate Tax Base in the autumn.

However, this proposal may depend on how much progress they make on the tax avoidance package.

It emerged yesterday Italy believes Google evaded 227m in taxes between 2009 and 2013 and could hit the US internet giant with hefty punitive fines.

Separately, EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said she is ready to investigate Google parent Alphabets 130m (171.1m) tax deal with the UK.
The agreement struck with the EU allowing banks to offload soured loans after buying a government guarantee will not clean up the financial system and revitalise lending as fast as some in the markets had hoped.

Banking shares dropped on the plan, which stops well short of the clean ups organised in Spain and here following the financial crisis.

The uncertainty in the Italian banking system will persist, said Emanuele Vizzini, who manages 3.5bn as chief investment officer at Investitori in Milan.

The deal may help banks to offload part of their bad debt, but for sure doesnt solve the problem, in particular for the weakest banks, which may need recapitalisation.

The ills of the banking sector dogging Mr Renzi not only threaten his reputation for managing the eurozones third- biggest economy, they also jeopardise bank lending and support for the fledgling recovery after a record-long recession.

A rout last week drove shares of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banco Popolare down more than 20% on concerns over their bad loans and capital levels in the absence of a bad-bank agreement.

Mr Renzi saw off a challenge on Wednesday evening, winning a vote of confidence in the senate over the governments rescue of four banks in November.

Forza Italia, the party of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, alleged mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

The deal on the mechanism to help banks dispose of their troubled debt was sealed after a five-hour session late into Tuesday night involving finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan and EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager which capped months of talks.

Banks will be able to bundle their bad loans into securities for sale, while purchasing a state guarantee for the least-risky portion to make the debt more appealing to investors, the Italian treasury has said.

Addressing lawmakers in Rome, Mr Padoan said a government guarantee under the plan will not have any impact on public debt or the deficit.

The agreement is a lot less dramatic than some people were expecting, said John Raymond, an analyst at CreditSights in London.
Opinion / Columnist

Vince Musewe is an economist and author based in Harare. You may contact him on vtmusewe@gmail.com

The Indigenisation Act must go because it is the wrong policy at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.For the umpteenth time, I must repeat myself that indigenisation will not inescapably result in the economic growth and employment creation which we seek. What it has done to date is to discourage investment when we need it most. It also continues to expose the lack of cohesion within government as each one has their own idea of what is the best way forward.For a change I concur with Patrick Chinamasa here that we really do not need a minister of indigenisation masquerading as our economic saviour. Patrick Zhuwao is certainly succeeding in frustrating potential investors and interfering with business common sense and the investment cycle. In my opinion, we should not have a ministry of indigenisation or empowerment at all since this ministry adds no value whatsoever.Let is start at the beginning. Indigenous (for lack of a better word) Zimbabweans do not fully own companies in Zimbabwe thirty six years after independence because of the ZANU (PF) patronage culture and their fear of the emergence of a strong independent business class that would soon challenge their political hegemony by sponsoring opposition parties.The same fears that destroyed a strong white commercial farming community are the very same fears that still exist with regard to the business sector. A strong non-partisan business class is the antithesis of ZANU (PF) hegemony.The counter measures taken by ZANU (PF) to date to stifle the development of a vibrant local business class that cares little about ZANU (PF) politics and is therefore most likely to support a multiparty democracy started a long time ago through patronage and the interference of ZANU (PF) in the private sector to ensure that those who are anti-establishment do not succeed locally. This has afforded them the space to establish a partisan looting machine that has stolen prodigious amounts of our national resources including overpaying cronies within state enterprises under the pretext of indigenisation.The diamond sector remains a clear example of this, so does the recent forced acquisition of by government of Telecel shares, despite the fact that there are existing Zimbabwean owners who could have acquired the required local majority stake.No wonder why so many smart Zimbabweans left the country and are very successful creating and leading huge business entities throughout the world.They voted with their feet because of the lack of economic freedom in their country.We need to repeal these laws post 2018 because there are better instruments and more effective ways to achieve broad based economic empowerment and employment creation without the need to acquiesce to political demands.If we are to achieve internally driven economic growth, we must support the emergence of a strong local business class particularly SME's which can drive economic growth and create massive employment opportunities as is the case in most developed economies.One way to do this is by us insisting on local content which will no doubt create a much more effective knock-on effect of growing locally owned small to medium enterprises which are viable and competitive.Local content will result the development of home grown enterprises which are 100% owned by Zimbabweans. In this scenario foreign investors can own their companies 100% if they wish, but must do business with local companies and thereby create more sustainable value here in Zimbabwe.A simple example is that of the retail sector. If we take the food sector for example, we are importing up to 70% of our food products from South Africa. There is no incentive to buy local goods. Rightly so because they are probably non-existent or more expensive and of poor quality. The same applies to all the other sectors such as mining, transport, manufacturing and energy sectors among others.If we are to promote local content, there will of course be a delay factor from the time we establish the policy to the time locally owned business have built the necessary capacity to produce competitive products. The likes of Chinamasa need to realise that the banning of imports or raw exports overnight by decree does not work as this does not give adequate time for the development of local capacity to replace imports or to add value to exports but rather creates smuggling and corruption opportunities.So we need a phased in approach where we increase the local content requirements over time. But what will be more important is that we make it easy for local companies to emerge and grow their capacity through various mechanisms such as tax incentives, access to cheaper capital, training, innovation, access to markets and some measure of protection from imports but only as we develop the capacity to replace the imports.In agriculture, for example we need to create industrial hubs where large scale mechanised farming works in symbiotic relation with small scale farmers to empower the latter through skills transfers, economies of scale, value add and the creation of a ready markets for their produce. This produce can then find its way into our retail food sector as finished products for example and thereby reduce imports while having a positive impact on incomes and employment levels in that sector. That is true empowerment.For me this is more sustainable approach that actually creates the results we seek over long term than indigenisation which only focuses on ownership and not wealth creation or employment creation for locals.It is fact also that the local ownership of equity does not necessarily result in economic growth and job creation. We have seen this throughout Africa and particularly in South Africa, where black economic empowerment through equity ownership has not resulted in job creation at all, but has resulted in the emergence of a politically connected predatory black capitalist class which behaves in the same manner if not worse than foreign owned conglomerates. It has merely entrenched a predatory coalition of struggle politicians and dubious businessmen contrary to the intended outcomes.I think that our problem is that we have a minister with a tenuous appreciation of how the economy works hidden under exuberant arrogance and the false belief that all solutions lie only within his brains. Nothing can be further from the truth!In the Zimbabwe we want, we shall create a country that embraces the full empowerment and economic freedom of its citizens regardless of race or political loyalty. Only then can we begin to see sustainable economic recovery led by a vibrant non-partisan private sector which is the only engine for growth.
Tankers hauling 2m-barrel cargoes are delivering them at speeds of about 13 knots, compared with a maximum of 15, Paddy Rodgers, chief executive officer of Antwerp-based Euronav, has said.

The slower speeds might result in a voyage that would normally take 40 days instead lasting 48.

Shore-based supplies are getting so big that it is probable the need for storage at sea may soon grow, he said.

The market is contending with a glut of oil thats not going away because Opec is insisting it didnt create the excess and wont tackle it alone.

Countries within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development have a near-record of almost 3bn barrels of oil stockpiled, the International Energy Agency estimates.

Ive not seen a supply-side market like it in terms of the production of oil, said Mr Rodgers, a lawyer who joined international shipping enterprise Euronav two decades ago and is based in London.

His companys VLCCs earned $55,000 (50,589) a day last year, double what they made in 2014, thanks in part to fuel prices that plunged along with crude, he said.

Euronavs shares rose almost 9% at one stage in Brussels yesteday, but theyve dropped 11% this year, giving the company a market capitalisation of 1.78bn.

The primary reason for slower speeds is because the supply of oil is so great that logistics are being strained at the sites where the cargoes are being delivered, Mr Rodgers said.

In China, average waiting times are about a week when normally there would be no delay, he said.

Vessels are having to wait in the Middle East as well, which is also an abnormality.

The current need for slower speeds is the opposite of what would normally happen at times when rates are low and fuel costs high.

In that scenario, a shipping company would be the one seeking to cut speeds when their vessels are returning to loading ports to collect cargoes.

Instead, Euronav ships return back to load ports as fast as possible.

While demand will gain faster than some forecasters anticipate this year because of low oil prices, the increase may not be enough to prevent oil being stored at sea, he said.

Euronav would charge approximately 75 cents per barrel each month for storing, according to the chief executive.

Traders incur additional expenses over and above freight.

Given how far oil prices have plunged, there is not much downside, Mr Rodgers said, and the slump may mean that the International Energy Agencys forecasts for demand growth are too low.

Middle East shipments to the US also appear to be increasing since the nation lifted a ban on exports this year, he said.
Policy and law-makers need to revisit the assumption that it is an appropriate way of communicating on social media networking sites, due to the rise in Irish teenagers using the anonymous social media site Yik Yak.

James OHiggins Norman, director of the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre, located at Dublin City University, called on parents and teachers to educate young people on how to appropriately use all social media, including how to respect others and how to protect themselves.

Yik Yak is a free social messaging app that allows its users to post anonymously and was created in 2013 by American Tyler Droll.

The app is based on the location of the user and any posts can be seen from other users within a 14km radius and is geared towards 17-year-olds upwards.

However, anecdotal evidence points towards a young age profile of users.

The site shows posts that relate specifically to the users given location so many of the posts, or Yaks as they are called, are about a users immediate surroundings, which means a person can get news and events that directly affect them.

The app provides users with a secure outlet to post ideas, feelings, or pose questions that they would otherwise be too shy to ask in person or for fear of being mocked.

Another similar site, Ask.fm, which has been in existence for several years, was widely criticised after several serious cyber-bullying cases were highlighted.

Dr OHiggins Norman said: There is a wider question about why there is this assumption that anonymity online is appropriate.

I think policy and law-makers should revisit this and begin to move towards a situation where online anonymity is done away with.

Yik Yak, like many other social media networks, can be used as a source of good or bad.

However, the fact that people can participate anonymously means that those who wish to use it to harass and bully people are effectively given a free hand.

This is not just a problem with Yik Yak but with all social media networks that allow users to be anonymous.

Dr OHiggins Normans calls were backed by Jim Harding, founder of the anti-bullying group Bully4U, which provides training to both primary and secondary school children and teachers on the dangers of cyber-bullying.

Mr Harding said: What we are hearing on the ground from parents, teenage students, and teachers is all negative. It is heightening the anxiety of students and indeed their parents as its very targeted.

Its a more modern version of Ask.fm.

Whereas before parents felt helpless but now we can see anecdotally, that yes the use of this app is increasing amongst Irish teenagers, but parents are talking to their children about the dangers and they are listening to this advice.

The media is also playing an important role in educating parents and children about associated dangers.

This app has been banned in some colleges in the US due to cyber-bullying complaints, with some high schools forcing to close for a period as a result of bomb threats on the app.

Carlow IT has banned its use, along with other social media sites such as Facebook, due to pressure on its operating systems.

Dr OHiggins Norman added: There have been several reports of extreme cyberbullying on Yik Yak in the USA at second level and also cases of racism, misogyny, and hate speech at university level. This has resulted in many high schools and universities banning use of Yik Yak on campus.

What is particularly worrying about Yik Yak is that the app is location based which means users can anonymously create posts with very specific negative content about other users in their locality. This intensifies the effect on those who are targeted.

There is evidence that use of Yik Yak is increasing among young people in Ireland which is a concern for parents and teachers alike.

There was no comment available from Yik Yak despite several efforts.

Editorial: 12
Emergency stabilisation works have just been completed on the historic structure at the White Star Line building in Cobh, Co Cork.

Known locally as Heartbreak Pier, the iconic landmark was the last point of land contact for passengers who boarded Titanic, from the port then known as Queenstown. However, the piers historic importance runs far deeper. Originally constructed in the mid-19th century, it has been estimated that in excess of one million people used the pier as their departure point to emigration ships.

It is believed the pier will be 150 years old next year.

In recent years, the structure fell into significant disrepair. During recent storms, many pieces of the pier broke away and a structural engineering report stated it was in danger of imminent collapse.

Fortunately, the project team was able to retrieve a number of the pieces and use them to bolster up the structure.

Ownership of the pier was unclear for a number of years. However, after a lengthy process the title owner was identified and it was finally purchased in 2014 by Titanic Experience Cobh Limited.

One of the last photos taken of the Titanic at Cobh. The White Star pier, from which 123 passengers were transferred to the ill-fated liner, had fallen into disrepair in recent years. Urgent repair work has preserved it from further erosion. Picture: Fr FM Browne SJ Collection

A joint venture between Port of Cork, Cork County Council, and Titanic Experience was initiated to stabilise the structure and prevent its demise.

Gillen Joyce, MD of Titanic Experience, said he was delighted with the commitment of the local people to save the pier, and thanked Denis Healy of the Port of Cork and County Council chief executive Tim Lucey CEO for their efforts to preserve it for future generations.

The design of the stabilisation works was the brainchild of marine engineering expert Paul Collins of Malachy Walsh and Partners Consulting Engineers.

Mr Gillen said the pier was in such a fragile state the stabilisation works alone could have caused its collapse.

The design incorporates new steel piles that have been placed alongside the existing old piles that had collapsed. They are visually unobtrusive and do not detract from the overall look of the pier.

New hidden angle connections have been installed to the joints, and new bolts to match existing connections as far as is possible have also been provided. None of the existing connections or bolts has been removed as part of the process.

Mr Gillen said the restructuring works themselves were carried out by a team from L & M Keating Ltd who skillfully tackled it during atrocious weather last month.

The project was managed by Henry Kingston of Port of Cork and by John Forde of Cork County Council. This project was also supported by all of the local councillors, TD David Stanton and Minister Simon Coveney.

We in the Titanic Experience are very grateful to all who helped with phase one of the project, to retain its history and provide a starting point for its preservation for future generations to enjoy.

It will act as a focal point for the emigration story from Cork and Ireland, and will be available to future generations of the diaspora who wish to retrace their family history, Mr Gillen said.

He revealed that plans are being drawn up for the second phase of the project which will transform it into a significant harbour landmark.

It is proposed to go for planning permission in the next few months for a new interactive viewing platform over the existing structure.
Amid claims of favouritism, Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy revealed how then-environment minister Phil Hogan was directly lobbied months before the four-year contract was handed out to the company involved.

Speaking during what was potentially the last leaders questions debate before the election is called, the opposition TD raised further questions about a 90m investment in the same company last November by a private equity firm which weeks earlier received 125m from the national pension reserve fund.

And despite denials by the firm involved, she said the situations raise obvious questions of probity and suggest favouring of the company for Government funds.

Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by Ms Murphy and seen by the Irish Examiner show MKC Communications political lobbyist and former Progressive Democrats official Stephen OByrnes contacted Mr Hogans then private secretary Yvonne Hyland on February 15, 2012.

The email said he was seeking a meeting with Phil as he was doing some work with a Cork-based company called Abtran and its marketing director, Ger Fitzgerald, wanted to meet to get an opportunity of outlining to the minister the activities they undertake.

Four hours later, Ms Hyland confirmed Mr Hogan wanted to meet and a February 27 discussion was arranged with Mr OByrnes and Mr Fitzgerald. A year later, in March 2013, Abtran was awarded the 50m contract to run Irish Waters call centre.

Speaking in the Dail, Ms Murphy said the decision needs to be examined as, despite Abtran being involved in the botched handling of the SUSI student grant scheme and the State property tax scheme, it was given the lucrative contract.

In a separate question to Tanaiste Joan Burton, Ms Murphy said that, in November 2015, a private equity firm called Carlyle Cardinal Ireland invested an undisclosed sum understood to be 90m in Abtran.

Weeks earlier, the private equity firm received 125m from the national pension reserve fund, leading the opposition TD to ask: Do you know what that money is for? Are you concerned about what appears to be favouring of Abtran for Government funds?

Ger Fitzgerald, the Abtran official who met with Mr Hogan, did not respond to calls, while his brother  Abtran CEO Michael Fitzgerald  was also unavailable when contacted.

While an Abtran spokesman confirmed the meeting occurred, he insisted the contracts followed strict public procurement guidelines.

In common with many other companies, Abtran would occasionally request introductory meetings including from time to time, officials and ministers. These meetings would be requested openly and on the record as was done in 2012, he said.

The spokesman described the discussions with Mr Hogan as information meetings needed because this was a reasonably new Government.

He said it had nothing to do with the upcoming Irish Water contract.

The spokesperson further said the investment in November 2015 and financial requirements to continue the Irish Water contract are entirely unconnected and that the private equity deal was very simply on commercial merits.

The Brussels office for Mr Hogan, who is now EU Agriculture Commissioner, said all queries about his time as a minister should be directed to the Department of Environment, which had yet to respond last night.

An Irish Water spokesperson said the contract decision fully complies with public sector procurement guidelines imposed after a thorough Europe-wide public procurement process.
Meanwhile, Labour drugs strategy minister Aodhan O Riordain said the adoption of the Portuguese decriminalisation model will be part of Labours election manifesto.

Mr O Riordain said his brief as junior minister, which also includes new communities, culture, and equality, was too wide and there needed to be a dedicated drugs minister with a much bigger budget.

Mr OBrien said the death of 18-year-old Alex Ryan was a bit of a wake-up call for politicians, who are often focused on the mainstream drugs and take their eye off the ball in relation to the new psychoactive substances, such as 25I-NBOMe, involved in the students death.

Both politicians were at the inaugural conference of drug reform body Help Not Harm. Mr OBrien said politicians need to recognise criminalisation of drug use had not worked.

My own party is opposed to decriminalisation, he told the conference. Since Ive been appointed drugs spokesperson, I am drafting a new drugs policy, which I will be presenting to the ard fheis in April and Im strongly pushing... that the party changes its stance.

Mr OBrien said that criminalisation meant that people were often afraid to ring the emergency services in overdose situations.

He said he had first-hand experience of this through his brother, Martin, who has a heroin addiction.

I have received phone calls in the early hours to say hes overdosed and that I need to come and bring him to the emergency department, said Mr OBrien. :The reason people do that is theyre afraid to call the authorities.

Weve had deaths in Cork, where people have been at parties, where street drugs and heroin were used and people overdosed and theyve been left in the house.

You can either address it from a public health point of view or keep criminalising people and, if you keep criminalising, people will keep on having incidents like we had in Cork.

However, Mr O Riordain said that decriminalisation could not be at the expense of greater investment in treatment and in the paltry state of recovery services.

He said the Labour Party manifesto would pursue the Portuguese model.

Fr Peter McVerry expressed this fear at the conference, saying Portugal had also invested heavily in drug services.

www.helpnotharm.org
Tanaiste Joan Burton attempted to defend Mr Kennys decision to break a commitment to meet with insurance firms to broker a deal by last Tuesday during a Dail debate yesterday.

Speaking in what was potentially the final leaders questions debate before the widely expected general election announcement next week, the Labour leader came under fire from Fianna Fail over claims that the Government is not doing enough for those in need.

Fianna Fail said that, despite saying a deal would be struck to ensure people in OPW flood-protected areas would be compensated after meeting insurance companies on January 12, no follow-on meeting took place as Mr Kenny was unavailable.

Ms Burton said Mr Kenny was unable to attend because he was instead telling foreign politicians and businesses about how Irish people are benefiting from the recovery.

The reason the meeting did not take place was because of his commitments in the UK [to meet British prime minister David Cameron] and Davos [Switzerland, for the world economic forum] helping to promote Ireland, she said.

I dont think anyone would have wished him not to go and defend Ireland.

Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath told the Tanaiste not to treat us like fools.

He said the reality is this issue has not been addressed and asked if another meeting before the election has been planned. He said one area of east Galway has seen 60% of flood-hit homes turned down for insurance.

However, despite the criticism Ms Burton said it is important not to rush into this before very serious analysis is undertaken.

She said that the Department of Finance, the Office of Public Works, and Department of Environment have undertaken a survey of other EU nations in order to find out what additional actions are needed to protect households from floods.

She stressed that the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition has committed to investing 430m in future defences if it is re-elected to power.

Meanwhile, the Dail has approved new measures to elect the next ceann comhairle by secret ballot in a long-called for move that is seen as being key to ensuring greater fairness in the political system.

Under the new rules, TDs will not be confined to party whips and can instead decide privately on who they want in the key position.

However, Independent TD Shane Ross criticised the move.

Why do we need a secret ballot to elect the most important post in the House? he questioned.

Another insider will be elected and secret deals will be done.

A new system of selecting the chairpersons of Oireachtas committees was also agreed.

Under other changes approved, the Taoiseach will now also be required to appear before the Working Group of Committee Chairs twice a year.
Separately, a scheme to help farmers in areas that were most severely affected by the recent floods has been announced by Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney.

Reacting, farming bodies called on assessment and payments to be made quickly as farmers have seen fodder destroyed, land submerged by water, and livestock lost.

Announcing funding for road repairs, Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe said there had been serious damage to the road and rail network. This resulted in serious disruption to daily life in many areas and in some cases, the isolation of small communities and households across the country, he said.

The 106m provision now being made reflects the returns made to date by local authorities. The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport will now have lead responsibility for a works programme to deal with infrastructure repairs in the transport sector.

Mr Donohoe added: My officials are in the process of reviewing estimates received from local authorities regarding damage to roads arising from the recent storms and flooding.

Announcing emergency flood damage relief for farmers who experienced unique and additional difficulties due to the location of their farms, Mr Coveney said the scheme would provide cover for the uninsured direct costs arising where livestock was lost to floods.

Mr Coveney said: While visiting the worst affected areas earlier this month I became aware that in addition to the loss of fodder, a small number of farmers experienced further difficulties on their farms and clearly require some additional assistance. To address these difficulties I have introduced an emergency flood damage relief measure.

IFA flood project chairman Tom Turley said the emergency funding must cover all losses associated with flooding on farms. He said the fund must cater for stock and crop losses, structural damage, and the costs associated with alterative accommodation secured to safeguard animals during flooding.

He encouraged farmers who have experienced losses to apply immediately.

Around 330 farmers have applied for a separate fodder scheme and Mr Turley called on the Department of Agriculture to complete assessments quickly so that payments could be made swiftly.

Irish Creamery Milk Supplier Association president, John Comer, also welcomed the scheme, but said attention must turn to the question of preventive measures.
Detectives are examining the victims activities in Perth, where he lived and worked, and are investigating whether or not he had been laundering money there for a criminal gang.

They are also investigating the possibility that he may have invested some of the money he earned from his construction business in a financial deal involving criminals here.

Detectives have been in contact with associates of his there to see what he was up to, said a garda source. Its expected theyll go out and talk to people.

Senior gardai are investigating why Mr OBrien, if he owed a criminal gang a significant amount of money, or was owed by them, thought it was safe to come back last month. They suspect he was lured home.

He must have been sure he wasnt going to be killed, said the source.

Gardai believe he also was lured from his house in Lealand Road in Clondalkin, West Dublin, on the morning of Friday, January 15, and thought it was safe to meet a particular person.

Senior officers have asked people who returned to premises or property and who thought equipment or a room had been disturbed to contact them.

Gardai also want to find the vehicle that transported Mr OBrien to his death and the vehicle or vehicles subsequently used to disperse his dismembered remains and cutting tools overnight that Friday/into Saturday.

His torso was located in the Grand Canal at Ardclough, Co Kildare, on Saturday, January 16, while other remains, including his severed head, were discovered 27km down the canal at Sallins, Co Kildare, last Sunday and Monday.

Part of a power tool was found north of Sallins, along the Royal Canal, at Maynooth that Monday.
Opinion / Columnist

This government never ceases to amaze me. We have a situation where thousands of aspiring home owners where clearly duped by ZANU(PF) property barons in cahoots with ZANU(PF) youths and the ministry of local government and housing and the reaction by this government is to ban housing cooperatives.That is a ridiculous response that shows a clear lack of appreciation of the dynamics in this sector of the economy. We all know that ZANU (PF) has been allocating stands in peri-urban areas to its supporters in a bit to garner legitimacy and buy votes. As a result thousands of naive residents rushed to buy stands without checking that the necessary approvals where in place. This has happened throughout the city.Now we have a situation where they are being evicted and reallocated stands elsewhere in order to quell what is to me a ticking time bomb. The government then reacts to the results of its own graft by banning co-oops. That is clear stupidity.It is a shame that Zimbabweans never learn. Once more we face a situation where fraud has been committed and people are actually happy to be merely relocated without compensation. Where are they going to get the funds to rebuild and what is going to happen to those who "sold" the stands and took their money in the first place?There is really nothing wrong or illegal for a group of aspiring home owners to come together and pool their resources together for any purpose. This right is enshrined in our constitution.The issue here is the registering, administration and the regulation of such entities. There is no doubt that many citizens have been duped by unscrupulous fraudsters but that does not mean the housing coop model must be banned. That is a lazy and expedient response.Instead we should rather look at putting together a well thought out frame work for the pooling of funds for housing coops. This framework can for example allow registered financial institutions to be the sole administrators of housing coops who will then ensure that the funds are properly administered and that they engage credible property developers and that stands for members are only bought legally.The ownership of property by many is critical for wealth creation, economic growth and stability. The uninformed banning housing coops eliminates the opportunity for many to own their own homes without having to go into debt. That is bad for the economy.In my opinion this is a crisis created by ZANU (PF) and because there are no ethics and accountability in this government. Those who were part of this property scam are now denying that they authorised the allocation of housing stands in the first place. They are all blaming technology claiming that it is easy to create fake documents! What a circus.I encourage our human rights lawyers to get involved here so we can expose monumental fraud committed by ZANU (PF) and its cronies.It's time for change!Vince Musewe is an economist and author based in Harare. You may contact him on vtmusewe@gmail.com
The Tipperary deputy sent a series of letters to the then environment minister following the formation of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

Documents released to the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act show Mr Lowry wanted Mr Hogan to review funding for a community centre in Two-Mile Borris, a village beside a site where the TD had also backed plans for a proposed giant casino.

In one letter to Mr Hogan in January 2012, Mr Lowry highlighted the case of a man with two properties facing penalties for not paying the non-principle private residence charge.

He said the constituents payment of the charge simply slipped his mind and that the owner felt the imposition of the charges was unfair and excessive.

On this basis I am appealing to you to review this case in an early and favourable manner.

In February that year, Mr Lowry made representations to Mr Hogan about the household charge, the predecessor to the property tax.

A Thurles constituent had serious concerns paying the charge on a second home which had been let out, he said.

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She has therefore asked me to contact you to encourage you to review the implementation of this charge for second properties.

In May that year, Mr Lowry contacted the minister about a constituent in Templemore regarding a motor tax bill.

He claimed a family with six children who had bought a Mercedes Vito Van which safely facilitated all the children, were facing a large motor-tax rate.

It is no longer feasible for such families to continue to pay should [sic] high charges on their motor tax given the cuts to wages and the cuts to family supportsOn this basis I am asking you to review the current system of motor tax in place for such rules.

Another letter shows how Mr Lowry asked the minister for assistance for a community centre in North Tipperary, a few miles away from the site for a planned super casino.

He highlighted funding challenges of 1.2m for the Littleton Community Centre in Two-Mile Borris, saying he would appreciate the ministers assistance in addressing challenges.
The cows had been with the herd at the time.

Reports of dogs attacking sheep are quite common and the Irish Farmers Association estimates that around 4,000 sheep are injured or killed in that way every year.

But its highly unusual for dogs to attack fully-grown cows, especially when they are within the protection of the herd.

But thats exactly what happened in Mourneabbey, near Mallow, Co Cork, on Monday last.

John Collins, a vet based in Mallow, said he was called by a dairy farmer to attend to two cows.

One of them had both its ears torn off and the other lost one ear, he said.

The attack caused acute pain and distress. The cartilage of the ears was gone, but they did not lose their hearing.

Mr Collins said he was presented with a mammoth task to patch up both cows which were in calf.

Fortunately, he said, despite the trauma neither had aborted.

Mr Collins put the cows on painkillers and antibiotics.

The vet said he had never come across such an incident before and was especially concerned that the dogs involved in the attack could seriously harm a child.

Mr Collins said the farmer heard a commotion in a shed where the cows were feeding on silage but, by the time he got there, the dogs had fled.

The injuries were certainly consistent with something catching and ripping their ears.

He said the attack had not been carried out by foxes because the farmer had heard dogs barking before he reached the shed.

The dogs were bold enough to attack two cows in the presence of 30 or 40 others.

With that kind of aggression Id be very worried if they attacked a child, Mr Collins said.

Farming organisations, meanwhile, are hoping the introduction of microchipping for dogs, scheduled to come into effect next month, will assist in identifying packs of dogs involved in attacks.

Mr Collins advised: Owners need to keep their pets under control as pets can turn when the pack instinct kicks in.
More than 1,800 items ranging from colonial four-poster beds to delightful paintings will have succumbed to auctioneer Aidan Foleys gavel by close of business this evening.

The Mallow, Co Cork, man said: I will spend over 19 hours in all on the stand. We have a team of 24, with my wife Kay in control of the whole operation.

You have to keep your eye on the ball at all times as, along with up to 500 in attendance at any one time, you have bids live on the internet, bids coming in by phone and pre-sale bids.

One of the items coming under the hammer today is the bed US president Bill Clinton slept in during one of his Irish visits. As serious bidders and many others, just curious, trooped into the Neo-Gothic manor yesterday looking for a bargain, grandmother-of-seven Ann Brennan, who lives in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, turned back the clock to her childhood years. Brought up in Adare village, she recalled: My father, Tom Kilmurray, was the estate carpenter. The Dunravens were brilliant landlords.

We lived in a Dunraven estate house in the village and the manor was our playground as children in the I950s. I used come up here with my sister Mary and brothers, Tom and Patrick, along with our next door neighbours, the Jones  Bobby, Joanie, and Mary.

I must have climbed every tree on the estate. I have lovely memories of this place. I often came back to the hotel for afternoon tea when wed meet up with the Jones to talk of times past. We saw it when the Dunraven family had it, and then Tom Kane bought it and turned into a hotel and now JP McManus is the new lord of the Manor.

Dagmar Huggard and her friend, Valerie Carroll, travelled from Killarney.

Dagmars father-in-law Billy Huggard owned the Butler Arms Hotel in Waterville when it played host to Charlie Chaplin and his family on summer holidays.

Dagmar, anxious for a bargain from the manor, said: I have looked at a number of pictures and prints. There are old Christmas decorations which are gorgeous and I am definitely going to see if I can acquire them.

She recalled some nice memories of the manor. Along with husband, Coleman, a Killarney hotelier, they stayed there to celebrate his 40th birthday. After dinner we had a lovely evening in the piano bar, the pianist was brilliant, she recalled.

Valerie said she would like to visit the new hotel when it opens with her husband. Killarney is the best. But Id like to come here as JP McManus is a great supporter of Kerry and spends a lot of his holidays in South Kerry.

Mary Kelly from Bulgaden was busy chasing a number of items she marked on the catalogue at the previewing on Wednesday. Mary later beamed: I got a lovely headboard for 75, a set of dessert glasses for 42, and a large rug for 100. Mary Connolly also from Bulgaden, who was with her, laughed: I didnt buy anything as Im too busy watching Mary that she doesnt go mad with her husbands credit card.

Even for a skint reporter there was something to match the budget  a small container with the Adare Manor logo costing 15.

Tonight, Mr Foley expects to wrap it up with a healthy sale aggregate.

He said: I conducted the Ashford Castle auctions in 2014 and 2015, and they were very successful. The Adare Manor auction has also gone off very successfully. Theres been great value. In some of the newer stuff, people got top-quality beds for 500 which would have cost 2,000 in a furniture shop.

Some of the lots he sold at Ashford ended up in Argentina. Every item we sell here in Adare has to be gone by midday on Sunday, wherever it ends. The redevelopment of the property begins first thing Monday, he said.
Warm tributes were paid to Leas-Ceann Comhairle Mr Kitt yesterday on what was expected to be his last time to chair Dail proceedings.

It is widely anticipated that Taoiseach Enda Kenny will call an election early next week and dissolve the Dail.

Yesterday, during a discussion on the banking inquiry report, former Labour leader Mr Rabbitte used what is likely to be his last Dail speech to ask the next government to consider legal action against the European Central Bank.

Socialist TD Mr Higgins used his time to ask Finance Minister Michael Noonan to apologise for not explaining to us and the Irish people there and then [in 2011] that he was threatened in this way by a virtual economic and financial dictatorship.

Fianna Fails Michael McGrath, referring to the Galway East TD Mr Kitt, who has been a member of the Oireachtas for over 40 years, said it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge his immense contribution to public service.

Mr McGrath added: He is a public servant of the utmost integrity and I want to acknowledge that.

On behalf of his own party, the Fianna Fail Party, I thank him for decades of service and wish him and his family all the very best in his retirement.

These sentiments were echoed by Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, who thanked him for his courtesy and patience. He was certainly a gentleman, and a patient one at that, she said.

Acknowledging his own time in politics, Mr Rabbitte said: It has been a unique privilege to have been elected to this house by the people of Dublin South-West in six successive general elections. And I would like to thank those people who work with me here and outside.

He also urged the next government to hold another referendum on allowing the Oireachtas to hold full inquiries.

Also stepping down is Fine Gaels Frank Feighan who yesterday spoke of the negatives of public life on RTEs Drive Time.

He said he received abuse while in government and said protest marches to his constituency office, which was also home to his 88-year-old mother, was an invasion of privacy.
Ms Collins, who admitted in court to having had a teenage drugs and heavy drinking problem, is being sued for defamation by Peter Griffiths, of Cual Gara, Teeling St, Ballina, Co Mayo, for what his counsel, Seamus O Tuathail, described as a vicious character attack.

I could have dealt with it in a more temperate way, Ms Collins said of her complaint to the headmaster of St Davids CBS in Artane, Dublin, following a post on the internet by Mr Griffiths of what he had said to the schools Leaving Certificate boys in a talk on cults.

She told counsel John Smith, who appeared with Mr O Tuathail and solicitor Cormac O Ceallaigh, that she had sent the headmaster a link to an online video showing a picture of Mr Griffiths naked, with only a Guy Fawkes mask covering his genitals.

Ms Collins, a Dublin chiropractic clinic director, of The Boulevard, Mount Eustace, Tyrelstown, Dublin 15, told Judge James ODonohue she had written to the school principal as a concerned parent and not to besmirch Mr Griffiths.

She earlier told her counsel, Frank Beatty, that while she did not have a child attending St Davids, she was involved in tutoring children on drugs awareness and felt she had a duty to complain.

In her email, Ms Collins alleged Mr Griffiths talk had centred on Scientology, which counts actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta as members, and accused him of openly and viciously slandering the church. She accused him of being an avid hate campaigner against Scientologists, and hate-mongering against the church and of being under garda surveillance.

The court heard that a teacher from St Davids had asked Mr Griffiths to address school pupils on cults and that it was Mr Griffiths who had posted an audio clip of his talk online, in which warned the boys of the dangers of getting involved with the Church of Scientology which, he said, might destroy their lives.

Mr Griffiths said he had been shocked, horrified, and appalled when he had obtained sight of Ms Collinss allegations in which there was not a grain of truth.

He said her statements had lowered his reputation in the minds of right-thinking people while holding him up to hatred, ridicule, and contempt.

Ms Collins is a daughter of publican Frank Shortt, who was falsely accused by corrupt gardai of allowing drug dealing in the nightclub he owned in Donegal.

In 2007, the Supreme Court more than doubled to 4.6m damages awarded by the High Court to Mr Shortt, who was wrongly convicted in 1995 of allowing the sale of drugs at his Point Inn premises in Quigleys Point, Inishowen, Co Donegal.

He was imprisoned for three years before being cleared.

Judge ODonohue has reserved his judgment on the defamation case which he has heard over several days.

Yesterday, he started hearing a second case in which Ms Collins and fellow Scientologist Michael ODonnell, a marketing consultant of Cherrywood Lawn, Clondalkin, are suing Mr Griffiths and John McGhee, an embalmer, of Armstrong Grove, Clara, Co Offaly, for alleged assault, battery, trespass, and nuisance, which both men deny.
ITS not quite a manifesto but hearing Elaine Howley describe the journey she and her band Altered Hours have been on in the last six or so years is invigorating.

Pain is a strong word but feeling that journey is something I really like. I dont think we like things to float by, we want to feel in them, changed by them, part of the process timewise, I like a good story and I think we like to make this band a story, she says.

She is sitting alongside co-vocalist Cathal Mac Gabhann and guitarist Kevin Terry in their studio off MacCurtain St in Cork. Completed by bassist Patrick Cullen and drummer Nora Lewan, Altered Hours today release their debut album In Heat Not Sorry. Recorded in Berlin, its comprised of 37 minutes and 10 songs of stirring psych-rock.

The group had a couple of singles and EPs under their belt already but found it a little daunting to actually make a full LP.

I have a lot of reverence for albums because they have helped me in my life so much so thats why I find it scary to add to the pile of albums in the world, says Mac Gabhann.

I just have a lot of reverence for the format and the long-play idea and didnt want to imagine that I could just do it whenever I wanted.

I never expected that it would be easy in the first place or that youd be rich or successful or anything, I always visualised the journey of a band to be challenging to a degree, both internally and externally, with the world, with the music industry.

Altered Hours were born in a recession, and like a gang up against it all, they weathered the cuts and setbacks. Moving from counties Limerick and Tipperary, they based themselves in Cork and worked hard.

Theres no real plan, were not trying to get somewhere, says Terry.

They played interesting, smaller venues around the country, honing their live show into a mesmerising, breathless experience.

The formative, challenging environment of their early days is starting to change, they say, though not necessarily all for the better, pointing to the economic upturn coinciding with the closures in Cork of venues like the Camden Palace arts space.

Thats what I love and hate about Ireland. It pushes you. You get squeezed from every angle. I think were entering into a further time of being squeezed and while thats not necessarily comfortable, there is a positive to its, says Howley.

One of the highlights of In Heat Not Sorry is its longest song, Grey On Blue, built around the simple line, In my room I cant decide whether Ive been hypnotised, is the colour grey on blue or grey on grey? before it fades to a repetitive, dreamlike guitar riff.

Meanwhile, on Citadel they reveal what theyre all about: The start of everything, Im waiting for the begin, declares a disillusioned Mac Gabhann.

Were just trying to find our own voice and I think actually that this record was just the first step to us finding our own voice, says Mac Gabhann.

Howley reiterates that this is a journey. Life is just a good story really, and the band is a good story. I hope we can continue to make it interesting, keep pushing, keep writing, get to play, get to experience, he says. If this is only the beginning of the story, then imagine where Altered Hours are going to take us in the years ahead.

Altered Hours release In Heat Not Sorry on Penske/Art for Blind Records today. They launch the album with a BYOB gig in the Kino in Cork tonight. Tickets 14, doors 8pm
The film's giant ape was no doubt based and inspired by the hairy half-hominid bigfoot, who was said to inhabit the forests of the Pacific north-west.

Believers claim that bigfoot's ancestors crossed from Asia to north America, when the continents were joined at the shoulder near what is now the Bering Strait.

Alas, there is no such thing as bigfoot. No data other than material thats clearly been fabricated have ever been presented declared Washington State zoologist John Crane.

But in 1935, while King Kong was terrifying audiences worldwide, anthropologist Ralph von Koenigswald found some fossilised bones and teeth in a traditional Chinese medicine shop. They belonged to an ape-like creature but the enormous molars were not those of any known primate.

He named their owner Gigantopithecus, from the Greek gigas, a giant, and pithekos, an ape. King Kong, apparently, was not an entirely fictional character; he had actually existed.

Since Koenigswalds day, more teeth and bones have come to light in south-east Asia, where they are ground to powder and sold by traditional healers.

Research has confirmed that Gigantopithecus was indeed a member of the great ape family, the one to which we ourselves belong.

There were at least three species, some of whose members were 3m tall and weighed more than a quarter of a tonne. Their arms could span almost 4m. Though not nearly as big as the one seen climbing the Empire State building to rescue the heroine in the greatest horror film of all time, the great ape must have been an impressive sight.

Whether he moved on all fours, or was bipedal, isnt known but walking upright, its been suggested, may have placed excessive stress on knees and ankles.

Despite his fearsome appearance, Gigantopithecus was probably as docile a creature as his surviving relatives, the gorilla and orang-utan, are today. The teeth and jaws are those of a plant eater.

However, why did the big ape become extinct when those other large Asian herbivores, the rhinos and elephants, survived? Primates have huge brains; surely the great ape had the ingenuity to save himself? The question has intrigued scientists.

Now, Herve Bocherens and colleagues at the University of Tubingen think they have the answer. In an article in Live Science, they claim that Gigantopithecus perished when the climate changed 100,000 years ago. He had become too big for his boots.

Isotopes of carbon are formed when cosmic rays bombard the upper atmosphere. During photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Grasses take in more of the carbon-13 isotope than do the leaves of trees.

This isotope doesnt decay with time. The amounts of it present in their tooth enamel, compared to the ubiquitous carbon-12, indicate that the ancient apes were forest dwellers eating leaves rather than grasses.

Nor did they survive on bamboo as giant pandas do today. The isotope ratios found in the teeth of other animals of their time, show that the habitat back then had both forests and open grasslands.

When the climate became cooler and dryer, the forests shrank. The apes, it seems, failed to make the transition from leaf to grass feeding. They had over-stretched themselves; there was insufficient foot to sustain them.

Like those of the giant Irish deer the mastodons and mammoths, which would go to the wall thousands of years later, the lifestyle of the huge primates was no longer viable. They had fallen victim to their grandiose tendencies.

Orang-utans, distant relatives of the giant apes, faced a similar challenge. They too were restricted to a single habitat type but managed to survive adverse climate changes because they had slower metabolism and lower food demands.
IF Fine Gael gets back into government, it seems logical that Leo Varadkar would continue at the Department of Health.

Im an admirer of Leos, but he must be tempted, when he hears of people saying they would like to see him back in Hawkins House, to think: with admirers like that, who needs enemies.

Of all the Cabinet responsibilities, health is the ebola brief. Once youve got it, your Cabinet colleagues behave as if you have a contagion. Even the Taoiseach does.

No job announcement by Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton is complete without the presence of the Taoiseach, and usually the Tanaiste, to keep him company. But when I think of Enda Kenny and hospitals, what comes to mind is the political disaster that was Roscommon, or the failure that was Universal Health Insurance. Im open to correction here, but I cant remember any photos of Kenny at any health-related openings, nor at the launch of any positive health initiatives.

It is habitual to say that nothing positive ever happens in the health service, so why would Kenny go near it and become infected with the HSE-related bad news virus? Well, one answer is that he is the political leader of the country and he could bring about change by showing leadership.

It is my fervent hope that all this will change with our next government; that overall ownership will be taken of health, with a major, collective push to sort it out. Yes, the next minister for health needs a budget, and he needs authority, but he also needs the support of his government colleagues.

As I type this, Im sitting in a cafe. Ive been eavesdropping on the two women sitting beside me, who happen to be discussing this very subject.

One was speaking of her elderly father being on a hospital trolley prior to his death, while the family cared for her mother at home. Despite their best efforts to keep her there and out of institutionalised care, they found it impossible to get equipment, like a commode.

The second woman had just returned from bringing her 90-year-old mother to her weekly hospital appointment to have her warfarin checked. It is difficult to access the clinic and she usually parks nearby, because her mother is so elderly. There are often a number of taxis parked, as well, to ferry the other elderly people. A man came out of the clinic and threatened to call the police if she didnt move her car. She wondered why the warfarin check wasnt carried out at the GP, or in her mothers local pharmacy.

Its all just bananas, really, agreed her friend.

I almost found myself nodding along in agreement, which would have blown my eavesdropping cover.

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These stories get to the heart of our health service and some of the insanity that goes on. They also expose the utter madness of saying you will introduce a super-duper new manner of delivering our health system, as Fine Gael did five years ago, yet not address the basic internal workings of the system, which forever hamper it. It is about joining the dots while using common sense.

Its the daftness of a public health nurse trying to ensure that an elderly patient stays at home. The nurse recommends a bathroom reconfiguration, or tries to get a wheelchair, or occupational therapy appointments. This involves so many points of contact, not just within the HSE, but also at local authority level, that there must be a temptation to give up before you start.

Then, there is the extraordinary level of vested interest and territory-minding in the health services; the incredible situations where people simply do not talk to each other and jealously guard their own patch. I spoke to Junior Minister Kathleen Lynch recently. She has done a valiant job in health, and she spoke of how it took four years to get people from primary care and mental health services together at the one table. She also mentioned a pharmacy in Cork that does warfarin testing. These are small steps and tortuous ones.

There are all sorts of skills shortages within the system, not least of consultants, for instance dermatologists. Why has no-one put a plan in place to start training these up, so that we know we will have them some time, sooner rather than later? It is ridiculous that we have six emergency departments in Dublin. Whats stopping a decision being taken, for instance, on how many vascular or breast units a city this size needs, rather than each hospital insisting on having its own department, thereby diluting resources and not re-structuring services within the new hospital groups in a logical, rather than a self-serving manner?

But in chatting recently to someone who has a really good knowledge of the health service, his explanation of that sort of behaviour was: Well, Vincents and the Mater hate each other, and wouldnt give each other a scrap. They wouldnt even share data. He spoke of hospitals being afraid to advertise consultancy posts, in case they dont get responses or the right calibre of candidate.

He spoke of doctors turning down specialties, for instance in St Vincents Hospital in Dublin, which would once have been the Holy Grail of appointments.

The well-trained medical graduates are heading off to the US and the UK, where they go to the top of their profession. Some people say it is a money thing, but it is also morale. People have been kicked around a lot and simply believe they will be more valued in those places.

There is a doctor shortage in the world and it is hard to get good consultants. Unfortunately, now, many of them think that Ireland is a cold house and they wont come back. Back here, they cant even get an office or a secretary or an operating list.

Of course, he mentions that an off-putting factor for some might be that the HSE commissioned external forensic auditors to review financial arrangements within the St Vincents Healthcare Group. The auditors were to examine the public and private caseload mix and workplans of consultants in the group to ensure that they are within the agreed contractual ratios and in accordance with the contract type.

That throws up yet another health service problem, in relation to the non-policing of the number of hours consultants devote to their public work and to their private patients. The majority behave honourably, but there are a significant few who do not.

So how could you hope to sort all this out, as a single minister, when your colleagues and boss keep you and your Department at arms length, at all times? So it would be a good idea to see Leo back in the same job, but only if the attitude of his colleagues changes and particularly the attitude of the Taoiseach.

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Mexicos immigration institute said that Mr Couch, who used an affluenza defence in a fatal drunken-driving accident, was taken to the Mexico City airport from an immigration holding centre where he had been held.

Mr Couch was detained with his mother Tonya in the resort of Puerto Vallarta in December.

His mother was quickly sent back to the US.

She was released after posting bail.

However, lawyers for Mr Couch filed an appeal against deportation, delaying his return.

The institute said that, upon arrival in Dallas, Mr Couch was  met by US authorities and faces various charges.

Mr Couchs Mexican lawyer, Fernando Benitez, said Mr Couch formally ratified his decision to drop the appeal on Monday.

I gave him several options, but he decided to go to Texas to face whatever charges he faces, Benitez said.

While the appeal had centreed on whether Mr Couch should have been afforded a longer extradition process rather than deportation, in the end the Mexican government simply called it an assisted return.

'Affluenza' teenager Ethan Couch arrives in Texas after being deported from Mexico: https://t.co/7It2VW3eCH  The Associated Press (@AP) January 28, 2016

Ms Couchs arrest affidavit alleges that she and her 18-year-old son fled the state in December as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation in the case of a 2013 wreck that killed four people.

Mother and son were taken into custody later that month in Puerto Vallarta, after a call for pizza delivery tipped off authorities to their whereabouts.

Ms Couch is charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

During Mr Couchs trial, a defence witness said the teenager was coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents, a condition the expert called affluenza.

The condition is not recognised as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its invocation drew widespread ridicule.
Pictures of the plastic figure of a young man using a wheelchair and apparently accompanied by an assistance dog were spotted at the Nuremberg toy fair in Germany and shared on websites devoted to the worlds largest toy firms products.

Lego confirmed that the wheelchair would form part of a set which would go on sale in June.
Opinion / Columnist

A leopard will never change its spots so as a political reject. They say history repeats itself, thus if one is a failed politician today, it's a true reflection of what his/her political life will be in future.Former Mashonaland West legislator, Temba Mliswa was recently in Mutare where he met a group of youths belonging to his Youth Advocacy for Reform and Democracy (Yard). It is reported that Mliswa, the organizer of the consultative debate together with other youths present advocated for a youth-led political party.Mliswa never cease to amaze me. After he lost Mashonaland West seat to Cde Keith Guzah of ZANU-PF in a by election, Mliswa was quick to say he was quitting politics. That decision to give up on politics was the best decision that Mliswa could have ever made in his life time. Life is about making the right decisions. To be very honest, politics is not Temba's game. There are other opportunities that Temba can focus on outside politics. Mliswa proved that politics is not his field after he was rejected by the revolutionary party.When Temba participated in the by election last year, he thought he was more popular than the revolutionary party. In actual fact, Mliswa wrongly thought that his personality would attract the Hurungwe West electorate to vote for him back into parliament. Temba's loss to Cde Guzah mirrored his future political life. His case must save as a lesson to every person that nobody possesses supporters.Temba will never be a proper leader who will rightly stand for the rights of the youths. Youths under Yard must never trust this man. He is like wolf in sheep's clothing. Remember he is one of the dirty dozen who had a surprising secret alliance with a CIA operative. Backing up a person like Mliswa is pointless. Youths must not be fooled by Temba. Temba is desperately looking for donors to fund him. Ever since he was sacked from ZANU-PF, Mliswa is finding surviving skills.Intellectuals' best describes Mliswa as a political turncoat. Could youths really be that stupid as to believe in a reject like Temba Mliswa? What is particularly astonishing is not the fact of forming a youth-led opposition party as this is a sign of democracy, but who exactly will lead that party. One would then wonder if that youth-led political party will be viable under the leadership of a turncoat.But then again, what would one expect from a person who once worked with Americans? The point is Mliswa is being used to effect regime change by these westerners. It is a shame that Temba is now the target. At first it was Morgan Tsvangirai, who never achieved any fruits in the past three consecutive elections. Morgan fell out of favour from the west because of being myopic.Mliswa purports to be the voice of the voiceless while in actual fact he is an aggrieved chap who has been expelled from the party, ZANU PF. The way Mliswa wants to play politics is somehow perplexing as he seems to be hallucinating each time he engages into these consultative debates when given the podium and chance. Temba should therefore be encouraged that politics should make sense, rather than senselessly trying to seek relevance after having been booted from the ruling party.
Sweden is likely to deport up to half of last years record 163,000 asylum seekers, presenting a major challenge to authorities, interior minister Anders Ygeman said.

Between 60,000 and 80,000 people will have to leave, or 45% of the applicants.

Sweden, with a population of 10m, is one of the countries that has borne the brunt of Europes migrant crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and north Africa have moved north to wealthier members of the European Union.

Germany took in an unprecedented 1.1m migrants last year.

Both countries have tightened asylum rules to stem the flow and to force other countries to share the burden.

The Swedish government fears that many people whose applications for asylum are rejected will go into hiding. Police will find them and deport them.

Sweden and Finland plan to deport tens of thousands of migrants https://t.co/ieyvWDrwLS pic.twitter.com/QuIbSjXUIO  AFP News Agency (@AFP) January 28, 2016

Of the 13,000 sent back from Sweden last year, 10,000 went voluntarily and 3,000 were forced.

Over the past few years, Sweden has rejected 45% of claims for asylum, but with last years record influx, the greater numbers are putting an increasing strain on immigration and police authorities.

We have a big challenge ahead of us.

"We will need to use more resources for this and we must have better cooperation between authorities, Mr Ygeman was quoted as saying by daily newspaper Dagens Industri.

Adding to the problem is a backlog of applications.

The Migration Agency says recent arrivals will have to wait between 15 and 24 months to have their applications assessed.

Mr Ygeman said he thought chartered planes would be more widely used and hoped flights could be coordinated with Germany.

Germany deported 20,000 foreigners last year.

Sweden reversed its open-door immigration policy late last year and has introduced border controls and identity checks to stem the flow of asylum seekers.

It is also working on making it more difficult for companies to hire immigrants without proper documents.

This will decrease the incentives to stay in Sweden.

This week, the prime minister, Stefan Lofven, promised more resources for police to deal with the increased workload, because of the refugee situation.

On Tuesday, Swedish officials called for greater security at overcrowded asylum centres, a day after the fatal stabbing of an employee at a refugee centre for unaccompanied youths.

The alleged attacker was a young male residing at a centre for youngsters aged 14 to 17, in Molndal, near Gothenburg, on Swedens west coast.

The employee was 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher, according to Swedish media reports, whose family was originally from Lebanon.

A motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
Asia At Least 30 Trafficking Victims Rescued In Phuket

Dozens of fishermen from Burma are discovered in a small room, allegedly confined there by a trafficking gang led.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand  More than 30 Burmese human trafficking victims were rescued from confinement in a fishing port in Thailands Phuket Province on Thursday with the assistance of the Anti-Human Trafficking Division of Thailand, the Myanmar Association in Thailand (MAT) has confirmed.

The Burmese fishermen were discovered locked inside a small room allegedly by a trafficking gang led by Burmese nationals, MAT director Kyaw Thaung told The Irrawaddy. MAT cooperates with Thai authorities to identify and rescue victims of trafficking.

More than 30 victims were locked inside a small, hot, choking room. They had to eat and relieve themselves in the same place. It was like hell, said Kyaw Thaung. I was shocked to see them.

The trafficking gang is allegedly headed by a Burmese national known as Ko Pett, who escaped arrest, but his wife was detained by authorities.

Most of the victims are in their 20s and 30s and some have been in Thailand for six months. All of the victims held official work permits, according to MAT.

Victims also reported human rights violations and abuse aboard the fishing boats. After returning to land following a fishing trip, some reported being locked inside the small room described by Kyaw Thaung.

Inhumane conditions for Burmese laborers in Southeast Asias seafood and fishing industries have garnered international attention throughout 2015, as recent investigations have exposed abuse in the supply chains of retailers worldwide.

In July, The Irrawaddy reported on a raid of a Bangkok shrimp peeling factory which freed more than 60 Burmese nationals being held captive by another Burmese employment broker who had trafficked them.

More than 500 Burmese men were rescued from Indonesia earlier this year after being trafficked and enslaved on fishing boats.

Translation by Thet Ko Ko.
Asia Canadian in China Charged With Stealing Secrets

Kevin Garratt, a Canadian arrested in China two years ago on suspicion of stealing state secrets has been charged, the Canadian government has confirmed.

TORONTO  A Canadian arrested in China two years ago on suspicion of stealing state secrets has been charged.

The Canadian government confirmed Thursday Kevin Garratt has been indicted. Chinas official Xinhua News Agency Xinhua said Garratt has been charged in Dandong city, Liaoning Province, which neighbors North Korea. The agency reported Chinese authorities found evidence which implicates Garratt in accepting tasks from Canadian espionage agencies to gather intelligence in China.

Garratt and his wife, Julie, were arrested in August 2014 by the state security bureau.

Francois Lasalle, a spokeman for Canadas Global Affairs department, said Canada finds the indictment of Garratt concerning.

The Government of Canada has raised this case with the Chinese Government at high levels, Lasalle said.

He said Canadian consular officials are providing assistance to Kevin and Julia Garratt and they remain in contact with Chinese authorities and the family. He declined further comment.

Simeon Garret has said his parents ran a coffee shop and did Christian aid work for North Koreans and said there must have been a mistake. The couple had worked with North Star Aid, whose website said the British Columbia-registered charity seeks to help North Koreans primarily through providing humanitarian aid. Simeon Garratt has said his parents made no secret of their faith but did not flaunt it in China, where proselytizing is against the law. He has said they worked on getting school supplies, cooking oil and food into North Korea.

The coffee shop, Peters Coffee House, is located within sight of the Friendship Bridge linking China to North Korea. It was known for its North American cuisine and attracted a mix of tourists, students and locals.

The accusations against the couple came about a week after Canada accused a China-sponsored hacker of infiltrating Canadas National Research Council, the countrys top research and development organization. Chinas Foreign Ministry had expressed strong displeasure over the allegation, urging Canada to withdraw the groundless accusation.
Asia Taiwan President Says Visit to Disputed Island was to Promote Peace

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, ignoring US criticism, flew to a disputed island in the South China Sea on Thursday to reaffirm Taipeis sovereignty.

TAIPEI  Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, ignoring US criticism, flew to a disputed island in the South China Sea on Thursday to reaffirm Taipeis sovereignty and said the trip was aimed at promoting peace.

Mas one-day visit to Itu Aba came amid growing international concern over tension in the South China Sea, especially in the wake of Beijings rapid creation of seven man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago.

The United States, Taiwans biggest ally, on Wednesday called Mas trip extremely unhelpful, adding it would not do anything to resolve disputes over the waterway.

But Ma, who steps down in May, said he had told the United States about his trip a few days beforehand.

The US and we [Taiwan], when it comes to the big direction for the South China Sea, are the same, Ma told reporters on his return. We all hope for peace, hope there is no conflict or war.

Beijing on Thursday reiterated that China and Taiwan had a common duty to protect Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea. Beijing, recognized by most of the world as the head of one China, the Peoples Republic of China, deems Taiwan a wayward province to be taken by force if necessary.

Taiwan, which goes by the official name of Republic of China, is recognized by only a handful of countries.

Ma also said his trip was aimed at bringing attention to Taiwans stand. Both China and Taiwan claim most of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims.

The Philippines has launched an arbitration case against China in The Hague which Ma said could result in a ruling affecting Taiwan. The visit was now or never because of the pending ruling that might rule on land formations that could determine economic zone rights for claimants.

Our diplomatic situation is difficult. On the topic of the South China Sea, we want to talk but have nowhere to file our complaint, Ma said. This was the time to go. If I didnt go now, it would have been too late.

Vietnams top official in Taiwan said Hanoi resolutely opposed Mas visit. The Philippine Foreign Ministry said all parties had a shared responsibility to refrain from actions that could increase tensions.

Taiwan has just finished a $100 million port upgrade and built a new lighthouse on Itu Aba, known as Taiping in Taiwan. The island, which lies in the Spratlys, also has an airstrip, a hospital and fresh water.

Given the tensions over the South China Sea, few senior political officials from any of the claimants have visited the contested region in recent years.

Mas visit follows elections won by the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which declined a request by Ma to send a representative along. The DPP said Taiwan had a responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the area.

The claims of both China and Taiwan are based on maps from the late 1940s belonging to the Nationalists, when they ruled all of China. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedongs Communists.

China has appeared unfazed by Taiwans upgrading work on Itu Aba. Military strategists say that is because Itu Aba could fall into Chinas hands should it ever take over Taiwan.

The 46-hectare (114-acre) island supports around 180 people, about 150 of them coastguard personnel.
Burma ANP to Lose State Seat After MP-Elect Conviction

A newly elected lawmaker for the Arakan State legislature will be forced to forfeit his seat after being sentenced to one year in prison.
Burma Burma to Embark On New Chapter As Parliament Convenes

The NLDs domination could lead to a more active Parliament with new policies quickly driven through, but a lack of political pluralism concerns some analysts.

RANGOON  On Monday Burma will convene its first popularly-elected Parliament in more than half a century, a historic moment unthinkable just five years ago in a country locked under decades of military rule.

Burmas powerful army overthrew the last democratically-elected Parliament in 1962. The rule of the junta was characterized by economic mismanagement and the oppression of the countrys citizens.

Elections in 2010, widely criticized as neither free nor fair, ushered in a semi-civilian government backed by the military. President Thein Sein embarked on a series of economic and political reforms, culminating in last years free elections, which Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide.

The oppositions resounding victory has been accepted by the ruling party and the military establishment, which optimists hope will pave the way for a new and peaceful chapter in Burmas often bloody history of war, revolution and crackdowns.

The NLD won 255 seats out of 440 in the Lower House and 135 out of 224 in the Upper House, handing the party the majority it needed to form a government. In contrast, the outgoing ruling party, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), only secured 30 seats in the Lower House and 11 seats in the Upper House.

The NLDs domination could lead to a more active Parliament with new policies quickly driven through, but a lack of political pluralism is a concern, said Khin Zaw Win, director at Tampadipa Institute and a Burma political analyst.

The lack of a strong opposition can weaken the checks and balances that allow a healthy democracy to thrive, he said.

On the one hand, this could strengthen democracy, but on the other, we have a weaker multi-party system. There is a danger when a single party dominates the politics in a democratic system. It could lead to either good or bad results, he told Myanmar Now in an interview.

Speculation Over Presidents Role

There is much speculation about who will be installed as president by the NLD-led government.

The 2008 Constitution bans Suu Kyi from the presidency as her two sons are British nationals, but the popular leader has publicly said she would be above the president and is expected to nominate a loyal aide to the post. Some analysts have also suggested that Article 59 (F) of the Constitution, which blocks her presidency, could be suspended, leading her to take the helm.

If that is to happen, the party would need the cooperation of the military members of the Parliament, which, according to the charter, hold a fixed bloc of 25 percent of seats in both houses of the national Parliament as well as in state and region assemblies.

Any amendment of the Constitution would require the approval of more than 75 percent of MPs, making the military representatives the kingmakers.

In addition, the key ministries of defense, home affairs and border affairs remain under the control of the military. This week, outgoing president Thein Sein has sought to widen these powers by tabling a last-minute proposal to bring the ministry of immigration under the wing of the home affairs ministry.

The continued dominant role of the military in the political landscape means the NLD government will need to make compromises with military leaders. As such, it is in a strong position to make an immediate impact on issues such as healthcare and education, but has less sway over security matters, according to Myat Thu, head of the Yangon School of Political Science.

According to the Constitution, the military holds absolute power regarding the security of the country, he told Myanmar Now.

The military also holds six out of 11 seats on the powerful National Defense and Security Council.

Too Much Power?

On Mondays opening session of the Parliament, the mostly newly-elected MPs will choose a chairman, who will then handle procedures to elect speakers of the two houses of the Parliament.

The speakers play a powerful role as, under the Constitution, they can develop strong policy-making autonomy from the executive branch.

On Jan. 28, Suu Kyi confirmed in a meeting with NLD MPs that her party will choose Win Myint, an NLD MP and former High Court advocate, as Speaker of the Lower House and Mahn Win Khaing Than, an ethnic Karen and NLD MP, as Upper House Speaker.

The latter is a grandson of Mann Ba Khaing, a national hero who was assassinated together with Aung San, founding father of modern Burma and the father of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The two deputy speakers nominated for the Upper House and Lower House would be Aye Thar Aung, a senior leader of the Arakan National Party and a longtime political comrade of Suu Kyi, and T. Khun Myat, a USDP MP and leader of a peoples militia group in northern Shan State, respectively.

Shwe Mann, a powerful former general, USDP lawmaker and former speaker, was credited with breathing life into the last Parliament and ensuring the position served as a counter-balance to executive power.

With such a strong mandate, the NLD can do muchand swiftlyto introduce reforms that help ordinary citizens long mired in poverty, said Tampadipas Khin Zaw Win. He remains concerned however about the emergence of a new authoritarianism.

My personal concerns are about a single person controlling the Parliament and the government. Would the MPs who have to obey this person dare say anything that would go against this persons wishes? he said.

In that case, its the public and the media who have to intervene. I want to see positive changes.

For some people, however, it would be difficult for the NLD to make immediate changes, as it first needs to undo decades of mismanagement and to curb the control of military.

Our people are expecting significant changes. From peace to education and job opportunities, said Zay Yar Linn, a university graduate.

The NLD cannot fulfill our hopes immediately as it has many challenges. If they can do 30 percent more reforms than the previous government, it would mean the NLD has been successful.
Burma On Eve of New Parliament, Incoming Lawmakers Eager to Get to Work

Ahead of the opening of a new Parliament on Feb. 1, The Irrawaddy speaks to five incoming MPs about their expectations and legislative priorities.

RANGOON  Newly elected lawmakers toured Naypyidaws Union Parliament on Wednesday, where they will work for the next five years to enact laws and represent their constituencies.

Burmas second Parliament is scheduled to convene on February 1. Unlike the countrys first Parliamentassembled in 2011 and dominated by the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)the incoming government will be largely shaped by Burmas main opposition party: out of 491 elected MPs in the Upper and Lower houses, 390 are from the National League for Democracy (NLD). The remaining 101 members represent various political entities including ethnic nationality parties and the USDP. In addition, there are 166 seats across both houses reserved for military members.

Womens Development in All Sectors

Newly elected Shwe Shwe Sein Latt won her Upper House seat Pegu No. 3 representing the NLD. She has visited the Parliament and studied the proceedings. I already have a lot of questions Id like to ask even now, she told The Irrawaddy, adding that she has also prepared personally for the role.

Her interests are wide-ranging, but one of the most important and urgent issues she hopes to tackle is the poor water quality in her township, Daik-U, which she reported has been contaminated with lead, arsenic and iron.

My interest is in women and health, women and the environment and women and energy, she said.

As the founder and director of Phan Tee Ein, a grassroots organization that works to rehabilitate women who have suffered from sexual violence, Shwe Shwe Sein Latt plans to put forward womens issues in the Parliament and contribute to womens development in all sectors.

To this end, she said she would partner with other female MPs and encourage men to take an active role in the process, which she hopes will lead to gender-sensitive budgeting to help women and children in the health sector.

If such a position is assigned, Shwe Shwe Sein Latt said she is ready to serve in parliamentary committees and is keen to draft bills and contribute to constitutional amendments.

I am also interested in womens involvement in the peace process, she added.

Describing herself as a family breadwinner rooted in her community, Shwe Shwe Sein Latt said one of the challenges of her new role will be working in Naypyidaw, away from her home.

We dont want to [attend Parliament full-time], she said. We want to get in touch with our voters. Yet she remains confident that she will be able to manage and adapt to the circumstances.

We Have Responsibilities to Fulfill Our Voters Needs

For re-elected ethnic Shan MP Sai Thiha Kyaw representing the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), his main priorities in Parliament center strongly on the amendment of the Constitution, federal and ethnic rights, and equality.

The Lower House MP-elect said the first session of Parliamentwhich runs for several weekswill proceed with the selection of speakers, the president and cabinets. Then, he said, their focus will shift. As we have responsibilities to fulfill our voters needs, we will be submitting proposals and questions related to our constituencies, he explained. There will be discussion on either countrywide issues or ethnics affairs issues.

As for our party, he said of the SNLD, we will continue to work for our constituencies. He looks forward to taking part in discussions on issues of federalism. Our main reason to be in the parliament is to amend the constitution and [to promote] the ethnic groups right to equality.

Since the NLD won most seatsnearly 80 percentSai Thiha Kyaw pointed out that the party will have the power to shape the Parliament according to their interests, and smaller parties like the SNLD will face challenges in gaining influence.

For our ethnic parties, even if we want to amend the constitution, we cant initiate and submit proposals since we are not even 20 percent of the Parliament, he explained, adding that ethnic parties MPs will have to engage in these opportunities as they are introduced by the NLD.

In the upcoming Parliament, he expects that MPs like himself will realistically only be able to focus on general ethnic affairs, rather than large legislative changes.

While Burmas previous Parliament was guided by the policies of the USDP, the upcoming legislature will be heavily influenced by the NLD, which has promised to work toward the development of the country. It has left ethnic party representatives like Sai Thiha Kyaw unsure of their role in this changing political landscape.

For our ethnic people, we need to wait and see whether we have to be the opposition or an alliance, he said.

People Throw Trash Into Rivers. We Rely on Using This Water

Zaw Thein, a newly elected NLD Lower House MP, won his seat in his native Wakema Township in Irrawaddy Division. He said his preparation to enter Parliament includes participation in a capacity building training and study of the Constitution, party policy, budgeting and international affairs.

After his first visit to Parliament, Zaw Thein said he was impressed with and surprised by the efficiency of the legislative body. Its interesting to see that the parliament discussions are systematic, he said, pointing out that time is not wasted in the way that many people assume.

For Zaw Thein, the most urgent issue is environmental. In Irrawaddy Division, in some cities, people throw trash into rivers and streams. That water gets polluted. For us, we rely on using this water. He hopes to consult with academics and legal experts to explore how to prohibit littering and to conserve waterways.

As someone who was educated abroad, his main personal interest is in improving schooling for youth, and he hopes the NLD will assign him to a committee where he can work on educational issues. He envisions enacting legislation around public libraries and to first establish a library in his hometown, then throughout Irrawaddy Division, and later nationwide.

Budgeting is an area Zaw Thein expects will be challenging for new MPs like himself. But he plans to submit questions and proposals to the parliament based on the needs of his constituencyone such request has been for facilities and opportunities that would allow for high school students to take their matriculation exams locally, rather than in nearby towns designated for that purpose.

Our Ultimate Goal: Federalism

Htoo May, an Upper House MP from the Arakan National Party (ANP) was also among those who visited the Parliament on Wednesday. She said she already knows which parliamentary committee she would like to be part of: the drafting committee. Her desire to write bills comes from her interest in rule of law, not unrelated to her top priority of amending the 2008 Constitution.

Everyone, not only NLD MPs, needs to work to amend the Constitution to make it in line with democratic norms within five years, she said, adding that she hopes this will bring about change in our country.

Since whatever we do depends on the constitution, we need to work toward decentralization to share power to reach our ultimate goal: federalism, she explained.

The young Arakan MP described her next priority as revenue sharing from natural resources, so she can improve living conditions in the least developed and poor states like Chin and Arakan. In her opinion, her home states most basic developmental need is access to better transportation infrastructure.

Citing her own inability to access high quality public education in Arakan State, Htoo May said she would also like to develop this sector so people from her area do not need to migrate to Rangoon to go to school.

Peoples high expectations remain the main challenge for incoming MPs, Htoo May thinks. We will try for change, she promised, but said that an open mind will be required of her fellow parliamentary colleagues. When an MP from the majority submits a new bill or proposes to change the current constitution, Id like other MPs, including the military MPs, to vote not by looking at the party but by favoring the benefit of the people.
Burma Premier Reform-Era Parliament Draws to a Close

Friday marks the end of the term for Burmas first Parliament since the start of a democratic transition in 2011.

RANGOON  Friday marked the terms end for Burmas first Parliament since the start of a democratic transition in 2011.

The assembly first convened on Jan. 31, 2011, and over the course of five years it has held a total of 13 sessions and passed 229 laws, including a controversial package known as the Race and Religion Protection Laws.

House assemblies ended on Thursday, and a closing joint session of the Union Parliament convenes for the last time on Friday.

In his final speech as Speaker of the Lower House, Shwe Mann said the Parliament had worked diligently throughout its five-year tenure for the interests of the state and the people.

We have discussed and passed proposals and laws that could help to promote the rule of law, internal peace and national unity without being impeded by party affiliation, political beliefs, race or religion, he said.

Parliaments new session starts on Feb. 1, when the National League for Democracy will take a majority of seats in both houses after its sweeping victory in the Nov. 8 general election.
Burma Purged From USDP Leadership, Outgoing MP Cuts Party Ties

A former senior leader of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, Thura Aung Ko, says he is cutting ties in the partys first high-profile defection.

NAYPYIDAW  At the Union Parliament in Naypyidaw on Friday, one former senior leader of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), Thura Aung Ko, said he was cutting ties in the first high-profile defection from a party on the ropes after its November election defeat.

I have no plan to take in part in politics as a member of the USDP. No more plans, he told media on the sidelines of a largely ceremonial last day of Parliament before most USDP lawmakers make way for incoming parliamentarians from the National League for Democracy (NLD).

Asked by The Irrawaddy if he would be ready to serve NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi, the lawmaker appeared to leave open the possibility.

I will serve for my countrys citizens as an individual, in coordination with any party-organization, said the outgoing chairman of Parliaments Judicial and Legal Affairs Committee.

Sister [Suu Kyi] hasnt spoken yet. But very often she has said: If its necessary to assist the country, just help. Thats all I can say for now, he added.

Along with Union Parliament speaker and USDP chairman Shwe Mann, Thura Aung Ko was among several USDP central committee members who were replaced in August in a party leadership reshuffle ordered by President Thein Sein.

The shakeup at the top of the ruling party was reportedly prompted by a rivalry between Thein Sein and Shwe Mann, the latter being viewed as too close to Suu Kyi and the NLD.

Thura Aung Ko said Friday that the reason for his planned departure from the party was that, following his ouster from the central committee, he no longer had any duties to perform.

Under Burmas former military regime, Thura Aung Ko served as deputy minister for the ministries of Science and Technology, and Religion, from 1997-2010.

He represents Chin States Kanpetlet Township in the Lower House, a seat he lost to San Khin of the NLD on Nov. 8.

The new, NLD-dominated Parliament will convene on Monday of next week.
Burma Senate Panel Approves Burma Ambassador Nominee

A US Senate committee approved President Obamas nominee for Burma ambassador, Scot Marciel, Thursday, though he must still be confirmed by the full Senate.

WASHINGTON  A US Senate committee approved President Barack Obamas nominee to be ambassador to Burma on Thursday, after the administration assured panel members it would not quickly change sanctions policy as the country moves from decades of military rule.

Republican Senator Cory Gardner said he had been concerned that the Obama administration would move too quickly to ease sanctions on Burma before it had made the transition to democratic government.

But Gardner said during Thursdays Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting he had been assured that the sanctions policy had not changed, and that Congress would be fully consulted about any shift.

The Obama administration has continued deep concerns about human rights and other issues in Burma, also known as Myanmar. US officials have said they would watch for the democratic process to move forward before lifting more sanctions, which target more than 100 individuals and businesses and limit US investment in the country.

The 19-member panel approved the nomination of Scot Marciel unanimously by voice vote. He must still be confirmed by the full Senate before taking up his position as ambassador.
Opinion / Columnist

My curiosity was recently upped a few antes by the furore created by the private media over a proposal to honour His Excellency, President Robert Mugabe in recognition of his works in the country and outside. I have neither the desire to be a cat, considering what curiosity did to this feline species, nor for an additional eight lives, seeing how content I am with this one. However, I am genuinely compelled to believe that the purported furore was nothing but a concoction of the private media with the unwitting participation of the usual suspects in the opposition circles.Political rhetoric aside, what could be amiss with honouring the gentle statesman, particularly in the twilight of his life? I seriously doubt the genuineness of the likes of Obert Gutu from the MDC-T who are viciously opposed to anything remotely associated with Zanu PF, from economic policies to social reform agendas, you name it all. These are the quarters querying why the son of Bona, the father of Robert Jr and uncle of Leo should be honoured, despite all that he has done and continues to do for mankind.I am not in the least surprised as Mark the apostle's narrative about the reluctance of some sections of the Nazarene community to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of Man rings to the very core of the current purported furore. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him. Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household." And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.Granted, some streets have been named after him but the man is more than just that. He is in the same league as other revered and living sons of the soil such as Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the founding father of Zambia, Samuel Daniel "Shafiishuna" Nujoma, the first president of Namibia, Joaquim Alberto Chissano, and Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki, the former presidents of Mozambique and South Africa respectively.What distinguished these men from their peers was their commitment, against all odds, to the political, economic and social emancipation of their fellow people.Following independence from Britain, Kaunda increased access to education phenomenally. He revitalised the energy sector with the building of the Kariba Hydro Electric Power Station, milestone developments that were enunciated in the Transitional National Development Plan and the First National Development. A unifier under whose stewardship his country never slipped into civil anarchy, the magnanimity and insight of Dr Kaunda united the seventy two plus tribal and ethnic groups into the strong single entity that Zambia is today.Nujoma is a Namibian revolutionary, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first President of Namibia from 1990 to 2005. He played an important role as leader of the national liberation movement in campaigning for Namibia's independence from South African rule through establishment of the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) culminating in independence in 1990. He brooked no interference in the affairs of other sovereign countries, and in 1998, he came to the defence of the Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila when his rule came under threat from rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda during the Second Congo War. Namibia, together with, Angola and Zimbabwe, became involved in the war on behalf of commitment to the Southern African Development Community (SADC).Chissano participated in the independence of Mozambique as one of the leaders of Frelimo. As president of that country, he negotiated a peace treaty with the rebel force Renamo in 1992, thereby putting an end to sixteen years of civil war. The former chairperson of the African Union (AU) and head of SADC oversaw the significant growth of the economy and eradication of considerable poverty in his country.Mbeki oversaw a fast-growing black middle class with the implementation of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and made South Africa the focal point of African growth. He was the architect of NEPAD whose aim was to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for Africa. He was instrumental in the successful building of economic bridges to BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). His quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe culminated in the establishment of an inclusive Government 20... He mediated in difficult and complex issues on the African continent including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ivory Coast, and some important peace agreements. He oversaw the transition from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU).President Mugabe is an embodiment of the traits of the above-mentioned statesmen. His legacy as a champion of the masses has been cemented as evidenced by the massive investment in human capital development that saw the construction of learning institutions, hospitals, as well as the economic empowerment of the hitherto marginalised black majority. As it stands, the country's literacy rate compares favourably in the globe. Despite spirited attempts to destabilise the country economically and drive a wedge between the country's major tribes, President Mugabe's desire for social integration has never been in doubt. This explains why efforts to trivialise the Unity day through vexatious litigation shall come to nought. But then I digress.He has chaired SADC and the AU and acquitted himself quite well, even during turbulent times. He is the repository of knowledge about world affairs, among a long list of plaudits. My point is that, among enlightened Zimbabweans, whose judgement has not been clouded by partisan interests, the question is not why but how to honour our President. My considered opinion is that, faced with the current challenges, declaring his birth date as a national holiday would be imprudent because the country needs to channel every minute towards productivity.Rather, considering the scholarly exploits of His Excellency, and that of his peers, living and dearly departed, dedicating a library would be a more fitting tribute, lest we set a precedence for future leaders to declare holidays on a whim. Mind you, the days in a year are not infite. I rest my case.
Burma Student Sentenced to Six Months Prison for Mid-2015 Graffiti Protest

A court in Mandalays Amarapura Township sentenced a student activist to six months prison Friday over a graffiti protest at Yadanabon University in 2015.

MANDALAY  A court in Mandalay Divisions Amarapura Township sentenced a student activist to six months in prison on Friday for his role in a graffiti protest on the grounds of Yadanabon University in mid-2015.

Ye Yint Paing Mu was arrested in December for spray-painting messages that called on the government to resign and demanded the release of students and their supporters detained during the nationwide demonstrations against the National Education Law.

He was charged for incitement under Burmas Penal Code and under Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly Law.

I will not submit an appeal because we were just urging the government to amend the education bill and Ive done nothing wrong. I never trust this judicial system which is under the control of the government, said Ye Yint Paing Mu on Friday at the Amarapura court before being taken to Obo Prison where he will serve his prison term.

The student still faces a charge of unlawful assembly to be heard in Mandalays Chan Aye Tharzan Township court.

We wonder why the government is still afraid of the students but freeing criminals under the amnesty. If the government could negotiate with the armed ethnic forces, why cant they talk with the students who are not armed? said Thein Than Oo, Ye Yint Paing Mus lawyer.

If [the government] is sincere about real change in the country, they should think about these detained students before they hand over power to the new government.

Three other students detained in July last year and sentenced for taking part in the same graffiti protest at Yadanabon University were released in December.
Economy MPT Targets Over 90% 3G Coverage by End February

State-owned Myanma Posts and Telecommunications plans to expand its 3G mobile network to cover 90 percent of Burmas population by the end of next month.

RANGOON  State-owned Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) has plans to expand its 3G mobile network to cover 90 percent of Burmas population by the end of next month, increasing the number of subscribers with access to the service by roughly 50 percent.

In an announcement Thursday, the telecoms operator said it hoped the expansion would be completed by the end of February, with an additional 5 percent coverage area added in March. According to the MPT statement, only 60 percent of the population has 3G access currently.

Expanding networks here is our top priority, said Koichi Kawase, chief commercial officer of MPT-KSGM, adding that MPT currently runs the largest 3G network in Burma.

Myo Gyi, a user of multiple telecoms providers in Burma, said extending mobile reach to rural areas by constructing cell towers had been particularly beneficial to the service provided by MPT, which faces increasing competition from rival foreign firms.

Because its been building more towers in rural areas, MPTs network line is good compared with other service providers, he said.

MPT lays claim to the most subscribers nationwide, though two foreign firms, Ooredoo of Qatar and Norways Telenor, have made inroads since they launched mobile services in 2014. The state enterprise had previously enjoyed a monopoly on cellphone service provision in Burma.

After foreign telecoms operators began operating in Burma, MPT sought to strengthen its hold on a majority market share by working with Japanese-owned KDDI, one of the largest telecoms companies in Japan. In July 2014, KDDI and Sumitomo, a trading house, signed a deal to invest some US$2 billion over the next decade to expand MPT services.
Commentary The Military Readies for Burmas New Politics

As Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to lead a National League for Democracy-led governmentat least from abovethe countrys army chief is not sitting idly.

The tenor of President Thein Seins farewell speech to the nation did not come as a big surprise.

As expected, the outgoing head of state took credit for setting the countrys democratic transition in motion, for building peace with ethnic armed groups and, of course, for the violence-free and credible general election last November.

The speech appeared to be well-received by the public. Indeed, to many, the sight of the countrys president signing off was a relief; further proof that the transfer of power to an elected National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government remained on track.

The former general who is in his early 70s continues to lead the defeated Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), but he wont stay long. By all reports, he is looking forward to spending more time with his family.

But the political system he leaves behind is no democratic utopia, liberated from the sway of a military that has commanded political and economic heft for decades.

The army, which has long-planned for the day its formal political vehicle is superseded, will remain a key institution in politics.

This is where Aung San Suu Kyi and her election winning party will have to learn to work collaboratively and negotiate.

The military retains a quarter of parliamentary seats and controls three key ministriesdefense, border and home affairs. An eleventh-hour bid led by the president that would have brought immigration matters under military control was voted down by outgoing lawmakers on Thursday.

Burmas commander-in-chief still holds the keys to power. Hence thus far, Suu Kyi has sought to build a constructive relationship with him.

In Burmas new political era, it is not the USDP but the military who will call the shots. However, the overwhelming mandate in favor of the NLD in last years poll may give the generals pause. After all, it was elected, democratically-minded officials, not the old military-backed establishment, in which the Burmese people so definitively invested their faith.

Ahead of the first day of the new Parliament on Feb. 1, Suu Kyi has appointed the speakers and deputy speakers of the legislature, including an ethnic Karen, a Kachin and an Arakanese.

The Lady herself would harbor hopes of the military consenting to amendment of Article 59(f) of the Constitution, which currently bars her from the presidency, in the not-too distance future. For now, as Suu Kyi prepares to lead the next governmentat least from abovethe powerful army chief is not sitting idly.

Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing recently selected a qualified batch of army officers to sit in the incoming NLD-dominated parliament, including major-generals, brigadier-generals and colonels. In total, 386 non-elected military personnel were appointed or reappointed to the countrys three levels of Parliament.

It is these military MPs, constituting the largest opposition bloc to the NLD in Parliament, who are preparing to take on Suu Kyis party. In contrast, after its stunning electoral defeat in November, the USDP is essentially a spent political force.

Min Aung Hlaing and his cohorts are now preparing for a new battle; not in the conflict-prone hills of the north, but in the nations Parliament.

The sending of more experienced and educated khaki-clad officers to the Parliament is a strong indication the military is preparing to engage in policy and legislative debates with the NLD, in the absence of a more robust opposition force.

According to defense analyst Maung Aung Myoe, the Burmese author of Building the Tatmadawwho also taught at the National Defense Collegeof 26 senior military officers newly appointed to the Lower and Upper houses of Parliament, 22 have masters degrees from the National Defense College.

Writing in the Nikkei Asian Review, the author stressed that military lawmakers graduate education had equipped them with an understanding of not only national security and international affairs but also public administration and economic development, giving them a broad overview and understanding of public policy issues.

In 2009, then ruling Snr-Gen Than Shwe said in an armed forces day speech that democracy in Burma was in a fledgling stage and still requires patient care and attention.

He continued: As a Myanmar proverb puts it, a recently dug well cannot be expected to produce clear water immediately.

Seven years on, the well has still not produced clear water yet. Not yet.
Military From the Archive: Than Shwe-Suu Kyi Meet Intensifies Intrigue During Testing Transition

The Irrawaddy revisits a story from last month on the post-election meeting between ex-junta head Snr-Gen Than Shwe and Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw.

Burmas outgoing Union Parliament Speaker Shwe Mann told the media on Friday that he arranged the post-election meeting between ex-dictator Than Shwe and Aung San Suu Kyi in December. Although he is no longer in power, U Than Shwe is still influential to some extent. So I arranged a meeting for them for the good of the country and the people, Shwe Mann told reporters in Naypyidaw. Here, The Irrawaddy revisits a commentary on the meeting, first published the following morning, Dec. 5.

RANGOON  Rumors swirled in Burmas capital late on Friday after reports of a meeting between ex-junta head Snr-Gen Than Shwe and Aung San Suu Kyi.

The pair met at the militarys headquarters in Naypyidaw on Friday afternoon, according to a report carried by the BBCs Burmese service and other sources close to the matter. Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) has not confirmed or denied the dialogue.

The meeting would seem to indicate that the former strongman still wields some influence as political elites navigate a testing transition period.

Suu Kyi met Than Shwe as early as 1994 when the latter was then chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Subsequent meetings took place on at least two more occasions, in 2000 and 2002, the details of which have remained ambiguous.

Last month, in the wake of the NLDs emphatic victory at the polls on Nov. 8, Suu Kyi met with Than Shwes grandson Nay Shwe Thway Aung in the capitalnews that the NLD chairwoman confirmed last week, without elaborating.

This dialogue was interesting for the fact that Than Shwe had apparently sent his beloved grandson as an envoy of sorts, to congratulate Suu Kyi on her partys success, rather than any figure from the military or ruling party.

The meeting went well and Suu Kyi reportedly conveyed her regards to the ex-dictator, who lives in a lavish residence near Water Fountain Park in Burmas custom built capital.

Shwe Mann is said to have played a key role in brokering the dialogue. After last months election, the Union Parliament Speaker met with Than Shwe, who was rumored to have had some involvement in Shwe Manns sudden ouster as ruling party chairman in August.

Aside from the parliamentary speaker, other influential business tycoons who have strong ties with the former regime also played a role behind the scenes.

Than Shwe is mentally fit, informed sources say, and followed the election closely, which saw the military-backed party he helped form suffer a major defeat. After the result, sources said the ex-dictator and architect of Burmas roadmap to disciplined democracy, played a role in directing the incumbent president and army chief to meet with Suu Kyi and ensure an ordered transition.

Some speculated that the NLD chairwomans confab with Nay Shwe Thway Aung may have prompted President Thein Sein and Army Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing to meet The Lady sooner than expected. The latter pair had been accused in some quarters of unnecessarily stalling.

It is true that Suu Kyis twin meetings with the countrys two most influential figures on Wednesday was a hopeful sign in a political transition that has many observers on edge. All parties pledged to collaborate toward ensuring a smooth transfer of power.

Interestingly, the army chief warmly welcomed Suu Kyi at the reception hall to the Armed Forces headquarters in Naypyidaw, posing for smiles and handshakes for the cameras before leading the opposition leader inside. This gesture alone was important, many said.

Unsurprisingly, Fridays dialogue raises more questions than answers.

Than Shwe is known to be constantly worried about his familys future. He led a ruthless and corrupt regime that garnered worldwide condemnation for its human rights violations, political repression and plundering of the nations resources. Many infamous former generals and politicians were voted out in the recent election.

With the NLD claiming a decisive victory at the polls and an unequivocal mandate, Than Shwe may feel it is time to ensure his exit strategy goes according to plan. Some suspect the ex-dictator may have sought assurances from Suu Kyi that the party would uphold its vow not to seek retribution.

Whether he foresaw the extent of the NLDs election success is unclear.

Than Shwe lost two of his trusted lieutenants in recent times. Former vice president and Than Shwe confidante Tin Aung Myint Oo abruptly stood down in 2012 after reports of personal conflict. Another acolyte, ruling party member Aung Thaung, widely perceived as a political hardliner who was involved in the Depayin massacre in 2003, passed away earlier this year.

Sources close to the high-ranking former generals suggest Shwe Mann has stepped in to ask Than Shwe to lend his influence toward ensuring a smooth handover of power. Interestingly, before meeting Than Shwe, the speaker first met Defense Minister Gen Sein Win who is close to the Than Shwe family. Well-informed sources said that Shwe Mann relayed his respects and offered a reconciliatory message.

The former dictator was ready to play a role, sources said, but some warned that any meeting with Suu Kyi should not be seen as direct intervention in the countrys political affairs.

Fridays meeting may indicate army top brass are still listening to Than Shwe. Until recently, Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing was seen as close to President Thein Sein. But that relationship may be tested now an NLD-led government will take the reins and Thein Sein heads for the exit.

It is too early to definitively predict how the political transition will unfold. One hopes Than Shwes meeting with Suu Kyi is a sign the old guard is ready to cooperate.

With alliances likely to shift under a new government next year, more than a few ruling party figures will be pondering their next move.
Opinion / Letters

Jaclyn Friedman

Dear Sikhumbuzo Moyo,The German song "Die Gedanke sind frei" in English it is translated: "the thoughts are free." "Freedom of speech is the concept of the inherent human right to voice one's opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment." This is the definition from the English dictionary. You will agree with me too that the freedom to express myself is my democratic right that no one can take away from me. Freedom of speech is not a prerogative of any person or group of people or other gender.According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom of expression is the right of every individual to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Again you will agree with me that u Nomazulu Thata has this democratic right to express herself in the manner she finds it fit, just like any other person regardless of the fact that I am a woman."Je suis Charlie Hebdo" Sikhumbuzo and I am privileged to live in a country that allows me to freely express myself in the manner I find it fit. In a nutshell I write what I want. I feel you allowed yourself a lot if you tell me to "Stop it" I feel you are infringing with my basic human rights: freedom to express myself, Sikhumbuzo. It was okay to reply the article, but to tell me to "stop it" nonsensical.I liked the Kalanga expression you quoted quite rightly: proverb "inolobgwa ndeyinokweba" I wonder even today if you meant to reference Mr. Richard Morgan Tsvangirai or Amai Joyce Runaida Mujuru. The proverb is reference of the above two than it is relevant to Zapu, again my opinion and observation. Those two politicians are written about almost every day, banolobgwa, and that proverb fits them.In the same vein may I also tell you a story about Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo? Having signed the Unity agreement with Zanu PF he had a mammoth task of selling the document to his electorate. The people were not happy about the unity agreement so they put him to task, rightly so: "Mdala uthengisile." The eloquent speaking Nkomo said: "kube kambe bengingalithengisa, how much money was I going to get, licake kangaka! (If indeed I was to sell you, how much money was I going to get, thin as you are!")In the same vein, if I wrote and critiqued the Zapu, emblem or Zapu party regalia, what secrets surrounding the party regalia or emblem did I sell to the enemy? Zapu was rejected by the electorate not only in Dotido or Chirumanzi but in Bulawayo itself. The general elections of 2013 and the by-elections of 2015 that sent Zapu packing, the party was decimated in the political landscape of Zimbabwe, predate my article critiquing the ZAPU EMBLEM. I am not a member of the party Zapu and this alone gives me the freedom to express, to critique the Zapu emblem or regalia without fear or favour."Je suis Charlie Hebdo" Sikhumbuzo, I am not beholden of anybody, I am not a bootlicker. I do not express views and opinions congruent with yours or to appease anybody not even the Zapu-main-line-thinking. I am not a subject of any organisation or individual, that I can be told to "stop it" and I align, adhere, submit, obey, and bow before you. Who are you in regards to me?When VP Mnangagwa, in 2014 carelessly commented about, almost insulting, the Gugurahundi victims in Matabeleland and Midlands did you tell him to "Stop it?" When Mnangagwa said Comrade Joshua Nkomo was a traitor, did you tell Mnangagwa to stop it? Evidently it is easier to tell a woman to "stop it" than to tell a man. The man Mnangagwa is feared but not the woman Nomazulu Thata, she is a small fry, will be told to "stop it" and she will stop. Is that so?Critiquing appropriations that I see in the Zapu emblem or regalia does not make me a sell out because I have nothing to sell. I am not privy to the Zapu party secrets. The word "enemy of Zapu" should be made of sterner stuff. I wonder too the wisdom of this secrecy in a world that subscribes transparency and accountability. Can Zapu ever rebrand with those secret codes of conducts?This party regalia or emblem is a 1961 emblem and its weakness in portending male dominance, masculinity is certainly male chauvinistic. Those values have been revised by time adversely, we are living in a digital world and Zapu remained clogged in analogue. Whether you like it or not Sikhumbuzo, progressive countries in the world embraced equal opportunities for both genders and there is no going back.Why is Zapu not using the social media to make themselves known to the electorate? Can Zapu afford to cocoon themselves all in the name of a decent party? It is not the decency that a political party needs but the application of absolute rudeness to fight the rude enemy Zanu. Experience has shown that shouting Zapu and Cd Joshua Nkomo does not produce vote's right inside Bulawayo electorates.Can Zapu come out of the cocoon and take part in debates in the social media together with other stalwarts MDC-T Obert Gutu, Vince Musewe, Wilbert Mukori, Patrick Guramatunhu, Tendai Mbofana, Moses Chamboko, these guys have become brands in their own right, ruthlessly busy already in the 2018 election mode. MP Jonathan Moyo tweets almost every day to different sections in the society and not only Zanu PF members. From those tweets it is evident that some ground-breaking 2018 election preparations are on the way. Is Zapu going to match?That emblem is out of the realm of good sense. It may have served its purpose in the 1960s but surely there is no place for such regalia in 2016. The digital world embraces the gender equalities, the male organs as symbol of the party's prestige long passed its sale by date. Male organs are not a symbol of strength Sikhumbuzo. I can assure you that I will never wear that Zapu T-Shirt again. I will not get rid of it but keep it as it makes a text book case in those gender conferences I attend.A country that has to cope with horrific cases of rape and violence on women and children, reports on rape especially on babies, toddlers, girls young women, women, and grandmothers are now daily occurrence, it would be pertinent to make sociological and psychological study analysis, to find out the link between violence on women and such political party emblems that still uphold the supremacy of men and expose images of sexual nature whereby elevating masculinity as symbols of unquestionable superiority. Sure that is where this Zapu T-shirt will be valuable source for research gender topics.Zapu is cash-strapped, will depend on donor money to make those political strides if ever, which donor-agency will give Zapu funds if they are so obviously insensitive towards gender? Donor funds are always attached to certain conditions and one of them is gender equalities.Your language alone: "stop it" gives you a sense of entitlement towards me; I need to be disciplined by Sikhumbuzo because Zapu is a disciplined party. I am too liberated to be subject to discipline. My pen is liberated to write what it wants. If you can afford to say "stop it" what will stop you from saying "kill her" so that she does not critique our party? But "Je suis Charlie Hebdo"When I die Sikhumbuzo, I will die once, and not many times before my actual death. In the mean time Zapu is not electable in Bulawayo (not even a council seat in their name) in as much as Mnangagwa is not electable in Chirumanzi.Before I pen off I attach a quote, who knows it may give some enlightenment;"A slut is someone, usually a woman, who's stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We're messy. We don't behave. In fact, the original definition of "slut" meant "untidy woman." But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who colour outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line."
Friday, January 29th, 2016 (12:44 pm) - Score 1,969

BTs seemingly endless merry-go-round of senior managerial changes has continued today with the surprise news that Nigel Stagg, CEO of BTWholesale, is to step down from the UK telecoms giant after 36 long years of service. A successor will apparently be announced in due course.

Stagg is a familiar name for BT and indeed over the past 36 years he has held multiple positions within the business, such as being the Director of BT Conferencing, Managing Director of BT Enterprises, Managing Director of Retail Customer Service and Managing Director of BT Business until 2011 when he became CEO of BTWholesale.

Sadly no information on the reason for Staggs departure has been given, although the man himself was keen to say that he has nothing but respect and admiration for the tremendous people in BT and I wish them continued success. It has been a pleasure to work with so many talented people over many years.

Gavin Patterson, BT Groups CEO, said: Nigel has made a terrific contribution over many years. He has brought a wealth of commercial and operational skills and experience to all the roles he has held and he has helped us propel the company forwards. Id like to thank him on behalf of the company and I wish him all the very best for the future.

The future of BTWholesale is a not uncommon topic around these parts and indeed there have previously been hints that BT might like to see the business being folded into their semi-separate Openreach division (here), which raised a few eyebrows.

At the same time Ofcoms on-going strategic review, which is currently trying to decide whether or not to split Openreach from BTs control, may also have a significant impact upon BTWholesales future and so too might the recent merger with EE. Incidentally BT formally completed the merger deal with EE today.

Suffice to say that BT has some big restructuring work to do over the next few years.
Friday, January 29th, 2016 (8:13 am) - Score 1,413

Sky UK has today published the companys latest results to the end of 2015 (calendar), which reveals that the total number of Sky Broadband subscribers in the UK and Ireland increased by +144K in the quarter to total 5.89 million (better than the +133k added in Q3). The operator is now focused on the launch of Sky Q, but where is Sky Mobile?

Broadly speaking Sky could be said to have walked away from 2015 in a fairly positive mood. Similarly Ofcom recently gave them kudos for strong customer service satisfaction (here) and theyve also managed to continue finding growth when others have faced more turbulent waters.

On the other hand Sky Broadband didnt really deliver anything dramatically new in 2015, except for being outspoken in favour of Openreachs split from BT and a few niche FTTP trials (e.g. York and Derbyshire) that the operator almost never mentions.

However 2016 is already shaping up to be a very different year, with Sky planning to launch their own O2 based Sky Mobile platform (quad play bundles) and their new Sky Q (here) proposition. Sadly the only mention we get of Sky Mobile in todays report is this: We are pleased with the progress we are making in our plans to add mobile to our offering. ISPreview.co.uk queried this and was told that it would launch towards the end of 2016.

Meanwhile Sky Q represents somewhat of a branding and product re-do, which among other things will bring in new 4K (Ultra HD) supporting TV kit, a better broadband router (Sky Q Hub), WiFi signal boosting and the ability to wireless stream / share content around the home to watch on other TVs. Todays results also confirm a 9th February 2016 launch, although the proposition will cost extra and that could be a tough sell for an already pricey TV service (see update below).

Sadly theres still no confirmation of whether existing Sky Broadband customers will be offered an upgrade to the new Sky Q Hub, which Sky might wish to do given that their existing Sky Hub kit is now so ridiculously out of date.

Jeremy Darroch, Skys Group CEO, said: We have had another very strong half as we continue to transform Sky, broadening our business and expanding into new markets and customer segments. This strategy is delivering today and opening up significant growth opportunities for the future. We are pursuing those opportunities with energy and purpose. Todays results show that our approach is working and customers are responding in record numbers. Over 337,000 new customers joined Sky in the second quarter and we sold 1.1 million extra paid-for products. This has delivered strong financial performance with revenue growth of 5%, a 12% increase in operating profit and 10% growth in earnings per share. All of our markets are now clearly benefiting from our leadership in content and innovation and being part of the broader Sky. The launch of Sky Q will redefine our top-end TV experience and extend our market-leading portfolio of products to serve the needs of every customer. We have also announced that Nick Ferguson, our Chairman since 2012, will step down from the Sky Board at the end of April after 12 years as a Director. The entire Board offers its warmest thanks to Nick for his leadership as Chairman and the major contribution he has made to Sky over many years. Were delighted that James Murdoch has agreed to step into the role of Chairman. James deep knowledge of the international media industry and his passion for supporting Skys ongoing success will make an even greater contribution to our business in the future.

One other change worth noting is that Sky has announced the forthcoming launch (later this year) of yet another new NOW TV box (NOWTV Smart Box) for their popular video streaming service, although aside from a new User Interface (UI) and adding access to 60 free-to-air live TV channels its not clear what else is changing. The hardware is still using Rokus kit and will sit alongside their basic NOW TV box, which makes us think that it might be based off the more expensive and 4K supporting Roku 4.

Unfortunately Skys results were consolidated and dumbed down following last years merger with Sky Italia (Italy) and Sky Deutschland (Germany), which means that we dont actually get a lot of useful detail on their performance or progress. We did however note that their UK Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) remains unchanged on 47 and Churn now stands at 10.2% (up from 9.8% in Q3 2015).

Finally, revenue during H2 2015 (calendar) for the UK and Ireland stood at 4,072m (up 6% on the same time last year) and operating profit delivered a return of 756m (up 16%) over the same period.

UPDATE 10:20am

We asked about the availability of the new Sky Q router to existing Sky Broadband subscribers and have got a reply. Apparently the Sky Q Hub / Router will be free to Sky Q subscribers, but if the customer isnt ordering Sky Q then they will still be able to purchase a Sky Q router (further information will be available closer to the release date).

UPDATE 10:24am

Sky has just released some early Sky Q pricing details. Apparently the set-up costs for Sky Q will be from just 99 and the typical monthly cost for existing Sky+ customers will be around 12 extra compared with their current Sky+ package For new customers joining Sky, the ongoing monthly cost for Sky Q will start from 42 Sky Q.

Full pricing information:

Sky Q Bundle Sky Q Silver Bundle Monthly Subscription Sky Q Bundle 42 a month for new customers Bundle includes:  Sky TV in 1 room  Stream TV on 1 tablet  Take recordings with you (via the Sky Q app)  Record 3 shows and watch a 4th live (Smart Features)  Store up to 150 hours with 1TB storage on the Sky Q Box  300+ channels including Sky 1, Sky Living, Sky Arts and Sky Atlantic  50+ HD channels  Over 300 Sky Box Sets on demand  3D on demand  Service visits included  Sky Go Extra Sky Q Silver Bundle 54 a month for new customers Bundle includes:  Sky TV in 2 rooms via Sky Q Silver box and Sky Q Mini (viewing in extra rooms available at additional cost)  Stream TV on 2 tablets  Take recordings with you (via the Sky Q app)  Record 4 shows and watch a 5th live (Smart Features)  Store up to 350 hours with 2TB storage on the Sky Q Silver box  300+ channels including Sky 1, Sky Living, Sky Arts and Sky Atlantic  50+ HD channels  Over 300 Sky Box Sets on demand  3D on demand  Service visits included  Sky Go Extra Optional Extras Sky Movies +17 extra a month 11 movies channels and 1000+ movies on demand The biggest box office hits 12 month before online subscription services. Plus enjoy Sky Movies Disney, including the latest releases and all-time classics. Sky Sports +25.50 extra a month 7 dedicated sports channels Including live coverage of the Barclays Premier League, Sky Bet Football League, domestic and international cricket, F1, boxing, golf and many more of the biggest events in sport. Sky Movies AND Sky Sports +34.50 extra a month

Smart Features one off costs:
Comcasts WiFi Pro, a managed Wi-Fi service that supports both employees and guests at business locations, has begun operations. The service features adjustable bandwidth allocation, filter settings and guest access rules.

Mari Silbey at Lightreading suggests that WiFi Pro could be a sign that business services  a category in which cable operators have had middling success  could be gaining more emphasis:

The cable industry is relying on the growth of business services to combat video declines and increasing broadband market saturation. The move into managed WiFi offerings is a natural extension of cable operators existing WiFi hotspot efforts, and for Comcast, its a must-have as the company begins its push into the large enterprise sector.

Silbey points out that Comcast is trying to band with other operators to go after commercial business. That suggests that WiFi Pro could end up as a service offered beyond Comcasts borders by other operators.

Big Companies Jump into OCP

Verizon, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom and Equinix have joined the Open Compute Project (OCP). The Facebook-led initiative enables end-user companies to design their own, no-frills hardware such as servers, network and storage gear, writes James Niccolai at Computerworld. The idea is that the members can design precisely what they need, without differentiation that is not needed and adding disproportionately to the price tag.

The story describes OCP as a way companies could deal with a landscape in which innovation is great, demand is accelerating, and networking concepts are shifting as the cloud, software-defined networks and network functions virtualization (SDN and NFV) and other approaches change users needs. These shifts are driving big end users to seek control, so one approach is OCP, which has already designed two switches for cloud and enterprise use.

Bye Bye Java

The browser world has had no shortage of milestones recently, including the end of support for many versions of Internet Explorer. Another was passed this week as Oracle said that it will retire the Java browser plugin. It wont be missed.

The Verge offered context:

Google removed the technology needed for Java applets in September, and Microsofts latest Windows 10 operating system shipped with its Edge browser six months ago without support for plugins like Java. Mozilla has announced plans to remove support for plugins like Silverlight and Java in Firefox by the end of the year. Oracle is now planning to deprecate the Java browser plugin in its JDK 9 release due in September.

The Verge piece conceded that it is not easy to say when Java will fully fade away. Oracles move, of course, is a big step in that direction.

Apple Pay Coming to BoA, Wells Fargo ATMs

Bank of America and Wells Fargo are working with Apple to integrate Apple Pay into their automated teller machines (ATMs).

The move is still in the speculative stage. Josh Constine at TechCrunch said that engineers at both companies are on multi-month assignments creating the systems. He describes an exchange with Jonathan Velline, Wells Fargos head of ATMs, in which a tacit acknowledgement of the plan was made.

Constine presented the concept as an enhancer to security. Such a system may reduce fraud. A fingerprint scanner could be included and Apple Pay passcodes are more secure than those generally used by debit cards. Card skimming would be addressed:

These devices fit over the front of ATMs as a fake facade, and then steal the information from cards inserted into them. Switching to NFC and mobile phones would prevent this since there would be no card involved.

First to Five (G, That Is)

Stockholm, Sweden and Tallinn, Estonia will be the first cities in which 5G networks will be offered.

TeliaSonera and Ericsson said that they will roll out services in both cities in 2018. NetworkWorld provides a list of what a 5G network will offer. Experts say that 5G wont truly be available until 2020, however. It remains to be seen if the services offered by the companies will be true 5G or simply better than todays LTE networks  with the high-profile moniker attached.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.
Over the past year, machine learning has gone mainstream with a bang. The sudden arrival of machine learning isnt fueled by cheap cloud environments and ever more powerful GPU hardware alone. It is also due to an explosion of open source frameworks designed to abstract away the hardest parts of machine learning and make its techniques available to a broad class of developers.

Here is a bakers dozen of machine learning frameworks, either freshly minted or newly revised within the past year. These tools caught our attention for their provenance, for bringing a novel simplicity to their problem domain, for addressing a specific challenge associated with machine learning, or for all of the above.

[ See InfoWorlds review of the best frameworks for machine learning and deep learning: TensorFlow, Spark MLlib, Scikit-learn, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, and Caffe. | Get a digest of sthe days top tech stories in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ]
Opinion / Religion

Certain Christians decline to become involved in elections for so-called religious motives and even label their aristocrats encompass in politics as second to the mischievous sprite. They vindicate their attitude en route for political affairs by quoting from John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world." Moreover, Philippians 3:20, "For our citizenship is in Heaven." They believe that political doings is not harmonious with our spiritual calling or Christian life.At this instant, I come to an understanding that believers who enter into the political arena are bond to face some eccentric temptations. In spite of this, conversely, I have confidence that Christians can enter politics and remain true to the Lord. After all, the scriptures tell us that God Himself ordained human government for the benefit of Homo sapiens.Let each ambiance be subject unto the higher muscles. For there is no power but God; the authorities are ordained of God (Romans 13:1). Regime must therefore be viewed as a blessing from God. The Old Testament tells us that two of the godliest men in history filled high offices in pagan governments: Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon.Moreover, in the first era after Christ, even though believers could not vote or run for office for the reason that of the political status quo of their day, they were not prohibited to serve as magistrates. The very fact that God has recognized structured civil authority for the welfare of the human race provides us virtuous motive to accomplish that Christians may be involved in politics when given the chance.In this editorial, I will deliberate six imperative subjects approximately which believers should have certain principles, and which should be taken into account as we consider the candidates and encourage disciples to go out and vote. I pray the Lord will use this lesson to help us fulfill our responsibility to both salt and light in the decaying and in sin-darkened society.The six important reasons why Christians must be encourage to participate in politics are; Morality of leaders, Protection from tyranny, Human rights, Criminal justice, The work ethic, and Economic justice.The first most significant matters to weigh as we choose our governmental leaders are their personal moral integrity. I realize that in pluralistic society we do not always have the opportunity to vote for those who love the Lord. Then in addition, on some occasions it would be better to select competent non-believers instead of an incompetent believer. However, we have a right to insist upon certain ideals. We cannot approve of any candidate who scoffs at biblical standards or morality, or who gives evidence of dishonesty or deceitfulness.A person who has low standards of sexual morality, uses profane and foul language, or takes an incredulous view of life may have no principles at all when he reaches office. He would not be a apt president, minister or a Member of Parliament. Yes, Christians should oppose the election of flagrantly immoral or openly godless candidates. The moral integrity of those in public offices is central.It is my orison, we as Christians rise up to the mission and help our folks chose the rightful cream of the crop for our beloved realm South Africa rather than ominous others who do. Stay tweaked for the rest.
With its engineers involved in more than 2,000 open source projects, youd have to agree that open source has more than a foothold at Microsoft these days. Most recently, for example, the browser team made the Chakra JavaScript engine that powers both Edge and Internet Explorer open source, for a very practical reason.

Node, the popular JavaScript runtime, currently works only with Googles V8 JavaScript engine. With Chakra now open source, Microsoft can take the fork of Node that it created to run on Chakra and contribute it back to the project  which means developers who use Node will have the choice of using it with Edge as well as with Chrome, opening up a much bigger market for Microsofts browser technology.

The shift in how enterprises want to do development explains a lot about the open sourcing of .NET and ASP.NET as well. Partly, its to get the community involved  taking advantage of the ideas and expertise of developers who embrace open source projects. Software companies like Fog Creek and Xamarin that have written their own .NET compilers have already replaced those with Microsofts open source Roslyn .NET compiler.

Microsoft also wants to bring these technologies to Linux, in large part because of Azure. Running a cloud platform gives Microsoft an interest in Linux that goes far beyond the open source contributions the Windows Server team has been making to the Linux kernel so that distributions run will on its Hyper-V hypervisor. As of September 2015, more than 20 percent of the virtual machines running on Azure IaaS were Linux, and Microsoft has even persuaded Red Hat to support Azure  in addition to AWS  with its CloudForms cloud management platform.

As we pursue our vision of the fabric and the cloud anywhere, that is as much a story about supporting Linux workloads as it is Windows workloads, says lead architect for Windows Server, Jeffery Snover.

Throughout our organization, each one of the teams now have Linux teams within them, says Snover. We have historically had the group in Windows Server doing Linux support for Hyper-V and they have made fantastic strides there; we have fantastic network support in Technical Preview 4. Theres already a Linux version of the PowerShell Desired State Configuration tool, to make it easier to manage Windows Server and Linux with the same tools.

[Related: How tech giants spread open source programming love]

And so too, says Snover, the .NET team is taking .NET and making it available on Linux.

That suits customers like the FiOS team at Verizon, which is using Linux clusters for Docker containers deployed with Mesos, to run .NET and ASP.NET 5. It makes sense that Microsoft would rather keep Verizon as a customer at least for its development platform and not just so they can sell them tools like Visual Studio. In future, when Windows Server 2016 brings support for Docker, containers and the lighter-weight Nano Server option, Microsoft has hopes of winning them back; thats far more likely if theyve stayed with .NET, even on Linux.

The reasons customers like Verizon give Microsoft for wanting .NET running in containers isnt because they want to move to Linux for its own sake, according to Snover, and it leaves a definite opportunity for Windows Server.

When you pull on that thread, what really motivated them is the desire to have a really lightweight compute environment, and the ability to stand up and restart and scale things very, very agilely, says Snover. This was something they were not able to achieve with a full Windows Server stack and the full .NET stack. They will be able to do that now, with Windows Server, thanks to Nano Server and our container work.

Moving to microservices

.NET itself is changing, as the recent name change for the open source version (from .NET Core 5 and ASP.NET 5 to .NET Core 1.0 and ASP.NET Core 1.0), underlines. .NET Core doesnt cover as much as the full .NET 4.6 framework (it doesnt have the server-side graphics libraries, for instance). The same goes for ASP.NET 4.6 and 5 (which has the Web API but not SignalR, VB or F# support yet). The newer versions dont completely replace the current versions, although theyll get the missing pieces in the future. Theyre also built in a new way, with faster releases and more emphasis on moving forward than on avoiding breaking changes.

Thats the same shift youre seeing across Microsoft. Over the last decade, building Azure has taught the company a lot about the advantages of microservices for what would otherwise be large, monolithic applications. The original service front end managed resources like compute, storage, networking and the core infrastructure components  for the whole worldwide service  in a single app. It was a large and complicated codebase, running in a single data center, and it took up to a month to release an update  after it was finished and tested  which meant it was only updated once a quarter. Plus, the management tools for all the different components were secured by a single certificate.

[Related: 10 products that big tech companies have open-sourced recently]

Rewriting that as around 25 different microservices makes it easier to develop, test and release new features. New features can be flighted to a test system to see how they perform, and releasing updates takes no more than three days  even though the resource providers that manage compute, storage and networking now run in the individual data centre. That improves performance because theres far less latency when, for instance, the compute used in the Azure data centre in Australia is managed by a resource provider running in that same data center rather than in Texas. Putting compute and data together isnt just faster, and easier to scale; it makes things more reliable, because youre not relying on the network between data centers for management. Limiting each microservice to operating in its own area improves security too.

These are the usual advantages of well-designed microservices architectures, and Microsoft is trying to give businesses an easy way to use them with Azure Service Fabric. This is a .NET-based microservices platform (running across a cluster of physical or virtual machines) that it started building as Windows Fabric back in 2003. Azure SQL Database was the first service built on it; now Azure Document DB, Event Hubs, Cortana, Intune, Power BI, Skype for Business, the Azure IoT Suite and all the virtual machines in the Azure core infrastructure are built with Service Fabric.

In the future, Service Fabric will also support Linux, Docker or Java. Service Fabric is available on Azure today, and youll be able to run it on your own servers (or hosted on other cloud providers), as part of the Azure Stack technical preview (which should be a finished product by the end of 2016).

Companies like Verizon might be ahead of the curve, but for new applications designed to take advantage of cloud technologies, containers, microservices and faster, more nimble development is going to be key. Everybody is after the same thing, Microsofts Snover says. They want to be able to develop their apps to be as small and as resource efficient as possible. And associated with small comes agile, secure and fast.
Dorothy Draude Edinburg from Massachusetts was the widow of the late Joseph Edinburg, executive at Boston's Chandler & Farquhar hardware suppliers. She had been a collector of prints and drawings through the 15th to 20th centuries, and of Chinese ceramics from the Tang and Song dynasties. She had donated over 1,500 works to the Art Institute.

Douglas Druick, the museum's president and director, said he would use the funds for further art acquisitions for the Art Institute. He further explained that the Edinburg donation was to specifically go towards additions in holdings of prints and drawings from the Renaissance to 1960 as well as Asian art, an area previous Edinburg bequests had been "transformative" in.

Edinburg was constantly purchasing and donating to the Art Institute during her lifetime. Druick refers to their relationship as a 'partnership'. He said he met her in 1991, and from then on she would continue to factor in the museum's needs in her purchasing of art pieces. He says that her cash donation will allow the museum to boost their strengths, that if she had left her art collection alone to the Art Institute that would have been a considerable addition to it in itself.

Dorothy Draude Edinburg's generous endowment has come soon after that of Chicago collectors Stefan Edlis' and Gael Neeson's, a married couple. The 40 plus collection of modern and contemporary works they donated is esteemed at around $400 million and was the largest art bequest in the history of the Art Institute of Chicago.
SAN FRANCISCOThe Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) today released its 2016 Policy Agenda, which provides a roadmap for legislators looking to understand the legislative consequences of decriminalizing sex work.

During 2015, a whole series of reputable international organizations, including Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, the Lancet, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Global Commission on HIV and the Law developed positions calling for the decriminalization of sex work. These bodies recognized that sex worker rights are human rights; that consenting adults have the right to be free from state criminalization of their sex lives.

Also during 2015, ESPLERP filed a complaint with the United States District Court challenging Californias current anti-prostitution law, Penal Code 647(b), arguing that these laws deprive individuals of the fundamental right to engage in consensual, private sexual activity.

The movement to decriminalize sex work is also gaining traction nationwide. For example, three women legislators in New Hampshire, two Democrats and one Republican, have introduced House Bill 1614 to decriminalize prostitution.

But there is a huge gulf between recognizing a fundamental right and untangling the morass of legislation that impacts sex workers. This is where ESPLERPs Policy Agenda comes in, providing a 14 point guide with practical legislative steps towards enfranchising all aspects of sex work. For example, it recommends repealing moral turpitude laws that criminalize legal types of erotic providers such as exotic dancers, adult film performers, massage parlor staff, and phone sex operators.

History is on our side; 2016 is the year when archaic laws criminalizing sex work will start to be swept aside, said Ina Dewgood, a board member of ESPLERP. But its not enough to announce that sex work is no longer criminalized. Lawmakers need to end discrimination against erotic service providers accessing publicly funded services like the California Victims Compensation Fund. Our Policy Agenda provides them with a roadmap for this and more. They should use it. This is in line with the State Departments 2015 affirmed United Nations Recommendation #86.

The Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) is a diverse community-based coalition advancing sexual privacy rights through litigation, education, and research.
LAS VEGASTo say attendance at Free Speech Coalition's Producers' Meeting at AEE was piss poor would be an understatement. Roughly a dozen of the chairs in Studio 1A were occupieda fact that didn't go unnoticed by FSC Board Chair Jeffrey Douglas.

"I see so many familiar faces in the room," he began, adding, "That's actually regrettable, because the message we have to convey in order to guarantee the survival of the industry has to be communicated, and most of you already know the message, so the information we'll be giving you today, we have to rely on you to pass on to your peers, competitors, everyone in the industry. We will be doing our best to communicate it in every form that we can, but there's nothing like an in-person face-to-face, so we are recruiting you to be our army, to pass on the message, because this is a fight for our survival."

Douglas's first duty, though, was to introduce FSC's new executive director, Eric Paul Leue, a sexual rights activist who most recently has served as director for sexual health and advocacy at Kink.com and who, in 2014, circulated a petition to have Michael Weinstein removed as the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) for various reasons. Leue has also been a member of the Los Angeles Commission on HIV for nearly two years.

But the main thrust of the meeting was to discuss two issues: The upcoming CalOSHA Standards Board meeting on February 18 where a move will be made to adopt new Section 5193.1 to the California Health Code, which would require, among other things, that all adult performers use condoms and other barrier protections during sex scenes, and also the ballot initiative created by AHF's Weinstein which, while incorporating all the restrictions in Section 5193.1, would pose even more onerous requirements on the industry.

Douglas then turned the floor over to attorney Karen Tynan, who has defended several adult companies against AHF-inspired CalOSHA proceedings.

"This new regulation does not endorse the PASS system nor the 14-day testing, but instead relies on condoms for oral, vaginal and anal sex," she summarized. "It relies upon producers to provide vaccinations, testing every three months, various barrier protections, medical surveillance of performers, in that their testing records would be keptI don't know any producer that wants to keep medical records, and under the state and federal guidelines, once you have possession of a medical record, you're required to keep it for 30 years."

Tynan and Douglas urged all adult industry members, particularly performers, to attend the CalOSHA Standards Board meeting and register their opposition to the proposed Health Code changes.

"As California goes, so the West will go," Tynan warned, "and I would rather fight now than to try to slink under the fence and fight later."

"The good point about Feb. 18 is, this is the last possible date where they can decide on this," Leue noted. "So they cannot postpone it; they have to take it up on FEb. 18 or it will be outdated, so to speak, because they only have one year to decide on it after taking up the issue. So if we make it through Feb. 18, and if we bombard them with public comments so their time to meet is incredibly short, if we have enough voices saying no to this, we may possibly sway the vote and they'll have to try all over again."

Douglas then turned the meeting's attention to the Weinstein ballot initiative, and after some background was provided on the California legislature's growing acceptance of the adult industry, due in large part to FSC's lobbying efforts over the years, and Weinstein's attempts to paint the industry as anti-society through his various CalOSHA complaints and sponsored legislation, Douglas charged that if the initiative passes, "You will be financing his lawsuits. You get to pay him for the privilege of suing you, because he gets a percentage of the fines, and the fines get huge."

"If it is passed, people will go out of business, people will be put out of business," he warned. "And if it's challenged, you're talking about five years before an appellate court rules, and there will be carnage during that time... It has to be killed now."

Douglas also made the point that the initiative covers much more material than a cursory reading of it would indicate.

"This is straight out of the initiative. What is covered: 'Anything recorded, streamed or in real time,' video, film, multimedia and 'other representation of adult films'; no idea what the hell that means," he stated, "but it clearly covers a single still image. So if you are an advertising entity, if you are an affiliate program that has a still image that depicts non-barrier-protected sexual activity, you are covered by this and you have liability."

The group was also informed that thanks to recent changes in the law, a committee of the state legislature will be looking at the entire initiative, and it could require changes in the wording before the initiative is placed on the ballot, or could keep it off the ballot entirely. It was also noted that the attorney general's legislative analyst had concluded that the initiative would cost taxpayers "tens of millions of dollars" annually in lost tax revenue.

"We need you to convey the message," Douglas told the assemblage. "We'll do everything we can through social media, billboards, smoke signals; we'll scream ... It requires you to understand that this is an existential crisis. We have to be the army that recruits people to say, 'We can't live with this.' ... The chambers of commerce, all of the groups that would normally not give a rat's ass about the adult industry, and if we caught on fire, wouldn't piss on us to put it out, they do not like this initiative. It is dangerous for their industry as well. It is a dangerous precedent [and] they are ready to fight."

Leue added that he had been networking with several nonprofit, non-adult industry-related organizations which have expressed concerns regarding the Weinstein initiative beyond its threat to industry livelihoods.

"We have these alliances, which is a huge benefit, because political groups listen to these nonprofits," Leue explained. "They say, 'Wait a minute; San Francisco AIDS Foundation is in my district. Wait; they're opposed to this? I need to talk to them and find out why they're opposed to this.' Suddenly we have somebody at the state level who gives a shit, and we've been very systematically going through the ranks, building these partnerships, these coalitions, and rather than going in and saying, 'You have to agree with us,' we said, 'Here are the books; this is what we have to offer and we ask you for your advice to tell us if what we're doing is either right or wrong.' So we gave them the free choice and they came back and said to us, 'You're right.' ... So now what we have is, we have political clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles already distributing internal notes saying, 'Can we as a group vote to oppose this state ballot initiative?', which will give us incredible leverage on the state level."

Douglas proposed that adult producers, performers and other activists sit down for a strategy session on how to oppose the initiative well before the November vote.
MONTREAL, QCameDollars, an award winning affiliate program and subsidiary of Gamma Entertainment, is proud to announce the release of Girlsway's Sharing The Bed 5.

Its important in life that we expect the unexpected. In part five of Sharing The Bed, Sasha Hearts stepsister, Tara Morgan, is nosing around and discovers that her sister is a lesbian. After confronting her, Sasha is surprised that Tara is being so supportive of her, and that she can actually relate. Tara informs her sister that this past semester she met a girl, and thinks she may be a lesbian as well. Tara takes the opportunity to force herself on Sasha, taking their relationship as stepsisters to the next level.

Fans should note that the final chapter of Sharing The Bed is coming out on Girlsway.com on February 14, 2016.

"The storyline for Sharing The Bed is slowly developing into a glorious love story with hot lesbian sex," said Affiliate Manager Derrick G. "New users will instantly be turned into fans of this incredible brand."
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The former No. 2 official for Sen. Chris Larson's campaign for Milwaukee County executive will not be charged criminally for his relationship with a teenager.

Michael Wilder, 30, resigned this week as the political outreach director and deputy manager for Larson's campaign, saying he had a personal matter that deserved his full attention. Wilder, who was paid $5,000 a month, was the third top official to exit Larson's campaign since late November.

Officials confirmed that Wilder was under investigation for his relationship with a teen.

But Kent Lovern, chief deputy district attorney for Milwaukee County, said Friday that his office had decided not to press charges against Wilder, a veteran liberal activist.

"The totality of the facts and circumstances surrounding the situation do not support a criminal prosecution," Lovern said via text.

Wilder could not be reached for comment.

Larson, a Milwaukee Democrat, is challenging County Executive Chris Abele, also a Milwaukee Dem.

The criminal probe of Wilder became public earlier this week when Sherwin Hughes, host of "The Forum" talk show on WNOV-AM (860), discussed a "prominent black leader" who Hughes said was under investigation by authorities for his relationship with a teenager. Hughes did not name the black leader.

Several sources confirmed that he was talking about Wilder. Larson officials said Wilder voluntarily left the campaign on Wednesday.

Late last year, two other Larson staffers -- campaign manager Rick Coelho and field director Maureen Dunn -- left Larson's campaign without explanation.

Insiders said Wilder began work with Larson's campaign around Nov. 23 during the transition in campaign managers.

Campaign records show Wilder was paid less than $200 last year for consulting work. But Kilroy said Wilder was being paid for his staff position through the state Democratic Party, which he said was acting as the campaign's payroll manager.

Kilroy said Wilder was hired as a senior staffer making $5,000 a month. He said the sum is disclosed on state Democratic Party filings.

Previously, Wilder had worked for a handful of liberal groups, including Wisconsin Voices, Wisconsin Jobs Now and Citizen Action of Wisconsin. He also served as legislative assistant to former Milwaukee County Supervisor Eyon Biddle and constituent liaison for then-U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Dem.
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The firm developing an office tower near Milwaukee's downtown lakefront has dropped its lawsuit that was trying to stop construction of a neighboring Westin Hotel.

Two affiliates of Irgens, a firm led by Mark Irgens, filed a motion Thursday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to dismiss the lawsuit.

The suit, filed by 833 Development Partners LLC and 833 Buena Vista Tierra Investors LLC, sought a judge's order to bar construction of the Westin.

It also sought unspecified damages from U.S. Bank, which owns the hotel development site, and JSWD Wisconsin Venture I LLC, a group led by Westin developers Ed Carow and Mark Flaherty.

The dismissal "was the result of a series of positive meetings between representatives of all parties over the past week," according to a statement issued Friday by the hotel's developers.

The hotel's developers and their architect "made sure (Irgens) understood exactly how the two properties would work together," said Nancy Henandez, a spokeswoman for Carow and Flaherty.

The Westin's developers did not make any changes to the hotel's design or placement on the site, Hernandez said.

The $50 million project's construction start is imminent, she said, with an opening in late spring of 2017.

"After finally having the opportunity to review in-depth plans for the proposed Westin Hotel, the 833 East development team believes the project will integrate well within the U.S. Bank complex and has rescinded the lawsuit," an Irgens statement said.

Irgens will continue to address the hotel's construction methods, and their impact on the surrounding properties, as allowed under an easement agreement among the property owners, it said.

Irgens is developing the 17-floor 833 East at 833 E. Michigan St. The 358,000-square-foot office building, anchored by the Godfrey & Kahn law firm, opens in March.

Irgens said his firm supported the Westin proposal but later learned of design changes that would harm 833 East. The lawsuit was "a last resort to protect our interests," Irgens said in a statement when the suit was filed last week.

The Irgens affiliates and U.S. Bank reached an easement agreement in January 2014 when Irgens bought the office development site from the bank.

U.S. Bank's nearby properties include the U.S. Bank Center office tower, 777 E. Wisconsin Ave., the office tower's parking structure and the Westin development site, 550 N. Van Buren St.

The easement says construction activities should not unreasonably interfere with the use of those properties.

The lawsuit said Irgens first learned in fall 2013 about the proposed 220-room Westin, with the hotel and office developers later meeting several times to discuss the projects. Flaherty said the 10-story hotel would be designed to minimize the impact on the office building, the suit says.

But in October, the Westin developers refused to provide a requested update.

Irgens later learned that the hotel's placement on the parcel had changed and would block views and light for more than half of 833 East's occupied floors, the suit said. Also, Irgens discovered plans to drive pilings for the Westin's foundation, which would create noise and vibrations.

Those changes would hurt 833 East's ability to attract tenants, the suit said.

The suit was frivolous, Stephen Kravit, JSWD Wisconsin's attorney, said last week.

The easement negotiated between Irgens and U.S. Bank has nothing to do with the hotel parcel, Kravit said. And anything built there will need pilings driven, a common construction industry practice, he said.

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Karen Johnson Boyd stands in 2006 with some of the many works she donated to the Racine Art Museum. Credit: Nicholsons of Racine

Mary Louise Schumacher Art City An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue. SHARE

Karen Johnson Boyd, a member of the S.C. Johnson family and one of the nation's leading collectors of American craft arts, died of natural causes Friday morning, according to the Racine Art Museum. She was 91.

Boyd has been described as both a staunch and a stealthy philanthropist. She initiated the contemporary craft collection at the Racine Art Museum, which now has one of the largest holdings of such work in the country.

She donated significant collections of ceramics, textiles, glass and metals  1,750 works in all  to RAM since the 1970s. To recognize this core gift, the museum's galleries are named in her honor.

Boyd was listed as the ninth wealthiest person in Wisconsin and 246th nationally on the annual Forbes ranking in 2015.

A native of Racine, Boyd's family established SC Johnson. She was a young girl when her father H.F. Johnson Jr. commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design the company's headquarters and family home, called Wingspread. Some years later, when she was starting a family of her own, she commissioned her own Wright home, where she continued to live throughout her life.

Boyd got her start in art thanks to Olaf Brauner, Boyd's grandfather and a Post-Impressionist painter, according to several news accounts. He was the head of the Cornell University Art Department.

"He taught me how to look at art," she told the Racine Journal Times in 2002.

Boyd began collecting objects as a student at Bennington College in Vermont and didn't distinguish between "fine" and "craft" art forms, according to a profile by RAM executive director Bruce Pepich and curator Lisa Englander for SOFA Expo, a Chicago art fair. She collected painting and photography alongside baskets and ceramics.

Her collecting became more active after seeing two exhibitions at the Johnson Company, "Art USA Now" in 1962 and "Objects: USA" in 1969, according to RAM officials. The first show featured paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Mitchell and Robert Rauschenberg, while the latter was devoted to contemporary craft, including Wendell Castle, Lenore Tawney and Harvey Littleton.

She co-curated a show for the Johnson Company in the 1970s, traveling for two years to 49 countries to locate work that would represent the cultures where SC Johnson did business. The exhibit included work by Mimmo Paladino, Gerhard Richter and Jesus Rafael Soto.

She opened Perimeter Gallery in Chicago in 1982, presenting both contemporary art and craft, emerging and more established artists, including Anthony Caro, Warrington Colescott, Dorothy Dehner, Robert Kushner, David Shapiro, Lia Cook, Sheila Hicks, John Mason, Toshiko Takaezu and Peter Voulkos.

Boyd also donated works to the Art Institute of Chicago; the Cooper Hewitt and Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and others.

For decades, Boyd actively served on the boards and acquisitions committees for many major museums. She received the Wisconsin Governor's Award in Support of the Arts in 1986; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Craft Museum in New York City in 1996; and the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

"Karen has been a wonderful friend to this institution and one of the most extraordinary people I have met in my long tenure at RAM," Pepich said in a statement. "Any museum would be blessed to have a loyal partner like her. This has been a stimulating and rewarding friendship and the artists and the public have benefitted greatly from our collaboration."

Boyd is survived by her husband of nearly 34 years, William B. Boyd and three children, Katherine Nikolina Keland, Karen Henrietta Keland, Harold William Keland; her granddaughter Onnolee Keland; two step daughters Susan Greenwell and Marci Boyd; her sister-in-law Imogene Johnson and cousins, nieces, nephews and other extended family and friends.
When Devorah Shmotkin entertains, it can be a learning experience for some, because she keeps a kosher kitchen.

"In kosher cooking there are guidelines as to what you can and cannot eat," she said. "But when I entertain I like to show people that you can give free rein to your creativity. You can pull recipes and techniques from different ethnic groups, and there are a multitude of kosher products available today."

And since she started cooking as a teen, she's proven this point repeatedly as she cooks for family members and friends for all the Jewish holidays as well as for every Sabbath. For the Sabbath, she makes large meals in advance that are served on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. At any of the gatherings at her Milwaukee home, guests can number 10, 20 or more.

But this year, Shmotkin, who is the principal of Hillel Academy and director of Jewish Beginnings preschool, said she'll be entertaining even more than usual as it is a special year for those of her faith.

She said that every seven years Jews celebrate Hakhel, which is a year in which even more emphasis is put on getting together.

In addition to dining together, celebrating Hakhel is also a time at which there is a show of love, togetherness and support for each other, their faith and beliefs, she said.

Her husband is Rabbi Israel Shmotkin, head of Lubavitch of Wisconsin. The couple have 11 children.

Despite how often and extensively she entertains, she always takes a good amount of time when she plans any event as it's important to her that her dishes not only taste good, but their colors must complement each other. She also likes her dishes to have "little surprise" such as something spicy in them that is not expected.

She recently took time to talk about how she entertains.

Q. What do you love about entertaining?

A. I enjoy the interaction between people. Often people will sit down at our table not knowing one another and leave as friends. The dining room table and good food are often a great catalyst for deep intellectual and sometimes life-altering discussions.

Q. Do you remember the first time you entertained?

A. From the time we were married we always had guests at our Sabbath table. Probably two weeks after we were married we were already entertaining. I made a traditional Sabbath meal.

Q. How did you learn to cook?

A. I learned much from observing my mother and many other outstanding hostesses.

Q. Other than salt and pepper, what are your three favorite spices or seasonings?

A. I use a lot of garlic, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.

Q. What are the different cuisines you specialize in?

A. I always cook kosher and I try many different cuisines.... I also accommodate our guests' food preferences such as vegan, gluten-free, vegetarian and other allergy sensitivities.

Q. What are some of your signature dishes?

A. Challah, which is a special bread for the Sabbath. Also salads and desserts. A salad my grandchildren like is my Israeli salad that has vegetables that are chopped small, oil and salt. Because the vegetables are finely chopped and salt is added, that creates a dressing. Also a hearts of palm salad with avocado, cherry tomatoes, red onion, salt, pepper, lemon juice and mayonnaise.

My favorite desserts are usually something chocolate. I make a puff pastry dessert with a chocolate ganache layer, a nondairy whipped cream layer, berries and toasted nuts. I also serve grilled peaches with crumbled topping, a scoop of nondairy ice cream, and a balsamic reduction over it.

Q. Buffet vs. sit-down dinners? Host cooks everything or potluck?

A. I make everything myself and it is usually sit-down dinners. On rare occasions we will have a buffet dinner. I enjoy the presentation and our home lends itself to sit-down dinners.

Q. Do you have a favorite cookbook or cookbook author you keep returning to?

A. I often will turn to cookbooks by Susie Fishbein, who is an American Orthodox Jewish kosher cookbook author. But I use many different resources including online. I often revamp the recipes to meet our kosher guidelines.

Q. How do you like to dress your table?

A. When entertaining for our Sabbath and holidays, our table has a traditional look; when entertaining other times, I like to experiment with fabrics, flowers, mirrors, candles and many different items to create a unique look.

Q. What are the kitchen utensils you use most?

A. I don't have a particularly well-outfitted kitchen, I don't use many gadgets. Knives, Kitchen Aid and food processor is about as involved as it gets.

The nomination

Wendy Wasserman, Milwaukee, nominated her friend,Devorah Shmotkin, for a Great Host feature, calling her "a very warm and creative host of many dinners, celebrations and community events.

"Her role as principal of Hillel Academy and director of Jewish Beginnings has put her in the spotlight to host many informal and formal events that celebrate Jewish holidays and milestones with families.

"She is very tuned into details, presentation, taste, and always looking for new and exciting recipes to add to her true and traditional dishes. Her warmth and caring for others is exemplified in her home with invitations to many people."

Send your nominations of noteworthy Milwaukee-area hosts to GREAT HOSTS, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Food Section, P.O. Box 371, Milwaukee, WI 53201 or email to nstohs@journalsentinel.com. Be specific, and be sure to include name and daytime contact information both for yourself and your nominee.
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The brothers and cousin of accused terrorism suspect Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab were indicted by a grand jury this week and on Friday pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and other charges stemming from allegations they bought stolen iPhones and sent them overseas.

Nothing in the indictment links them to the case against Al-Jayab, a former Milwaukee man who was arrested earlier this month on charges he lied to authorities about his involvement with terrorist organizations in Syria and about his travel to the country in 2013-'14.

The three men, Younis Mohammed Al-Jayab, 24, and Samer Mohammed Al-Jayab, 19  brothers of Aws Al-Jayab  and their cousin, Ahmed Waleed Mahmood, 22, were accused of multiple counts of buying more than $5,000 worth of stolen goods from undercover federal agents. If convicted, they face up to five years of incarceration and $250,000 in fines on the conspiracy charge and up to 10 years behind bars and additional $250,000 on each of the receiving stolen goods charges.

U.S. Magistrate David Jones ordered the removal of their location monitoring bracelets, saying the men have been compliant with appearances in court and have hired attorneys to represent them.

"I don't believe there is a safety risk," Jones said.

Jones also ordered Mahmood to relinquish his passport. The Al-Jayab brothers are refugees from Iraq, and their attorneys said they do not have passports.

Their case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman. The men are due back in court in March.

The stolen goods investigation started in May 2014 when an informant told the FBI that Younis Mohammed Al-Jayab was buying stolen merchandise and selling it overseas.

At the time, Younis Mohammed Al-Jayab was working at the 27th St. Tobacco store, which more recently has been the target of a nuisance action by the City of Milwaukee, according to the criminal complaint.

Over roughly six months, undercover FBI agents sold Younis Mohammed Al-Jayab, Samer Mohammed Al-Jayab and Mahmood 32 new Apple iPhones, a laptop and a television, together valued at $21,500, the complaint says.

On the same day as their arrest, authorities in Sacramento, Calif., took Aws Al-Jayab into custody on terrorism-related charges.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab is a Palestinian born in Iraq who emigrated from Syria to the United States as a refugee in October 2012, residing in Tucson, Ariz., and Milwaukee.

In early November 2013, Al-Jayab was in Milwaukee and after months of planning, traveled to Chicago, where he bought an airline ticket to Istanbul, Turkey. He then made his way to Syria, according to the complaint.

From November 2013 to January 2014, Al-Jayab reported on social media that he was in Syria fighting with various terrorist organizations, including Ansar al-Islam, a designated foreign terrorist organization since 2004, according to the complaint.

On Dec. 10, 2013, Al-Jayab wrote to an individual not named in the complaint, "Forgive me, I might become a martyr." A week later he told the same person he was "afraid of being imprisoned in America (because) the government is alert for everything, (and) my trip here constitutes a charge," according to the FBI's monitoring of Al-Jayab's communications.

Al-Jayab ultimately returned to the United States on Jan. 23, 2014, and settled in Sacramento, according to the complaint. Authorities say he lied about his overseas travels, claiming he was in Turkey to visit his grandmother and never disclosed that he was in Syria. Authorities also say they have no indication that he had planned any acts of terrorism in the U.S.
Milwaukee County Parks plans a program of tagging and monitoring coyotes found in parks in Wauwatosa and West Allis to better understand their territories and behaviors. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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Coyotes will be trapped, tagged and monitored beginning next month in Wauwatosa and West Allis, Milwaukee County Parks officials announced Thursday.

The work is designed to gain a better understanding of the animals territories and behaviors, said Julia Robson, assistant natural areas coordinator for Milwaukee County Parks.

It will also include public education designed to reduce conflicts between the areas human population and the wild canids.

Through a proactive process, we can address problems before they become a matter of human or pet safety, Robson said. We can coexist with urban coyotes. Not all are problem animals.

Coyotes killed at least two pets in Wauwatosa last year and sightings of the animals are common in the Milwaukee suburbs. This month a resident in Wauwatosa reported being followed to within 30 feet by a coyote.

Such incidents led county and state officials to begin work on a Milwaukee County coyote management plan. The coyote monitoring project is part of the plan, Robson said.

The Milwaukee County effort will include staff with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and researchers with the Urban Canid Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Professor David Drake and graduate student Marcus Mueller will set live traps, place ear tags on trapped coyotes and release them for monitoring. The men have experience in using cable restraints to capture coyotes and red fox in urban environments for the Madison project.

The local trapping will take place on Milwaukee County Parks properties in Wauwatosa and West Allis. According to the plan, coyotes will be fitted with colored ear tags prior to release, allowing for identification of individual animals.

Trapping is expected to start in early February and run through mid-March, said Dianne Robinson, DNR wildlife biologist and educator for Milwaukee County.

Cable restraints allow an animal to be trapped, handled and released unharmed. They pose little risk to pets, but county officials on Thursday reminded the public to adhere to local ordinances and keep pets leashed and on designated trails in county parks.

In addition, it is illegal to tamper with the cable restraints or interfere with the trapping.

The tag and track approach could help identify a problem animal and determine if it needs to be removed, Robson said.

The Milwaukee County project will include public outreach as well as a citizen science component. Area residents are encouraged to submit coyote sightings on a web-based reporting application called iNaturalist. A page called Milwaukee County Coyote Watch has been created on the application.

A public meeting on the trapping and tracking project will be held 6 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22 at Wil-O-Way Underwood, 10602 Underwood Parkway, Wauwatosa. Researchers from the Urban Canid Project will discuss coyote ecology, coyote-human conflict and behavior modification as well as ongoing monitoring and management efforts in Milwaukee County.
Christo Rey Jesuit High School principal Luke Harrison speaks with Mike Klabunde, Gloria Gunderson and Lucy Karaba during an open house at Cristo Rey, a new school in West Allis, in May. Credit: Rick Wood

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This week is National Catholic Schools Week. A week that the National Catholic Educational Association calls the annual celebration of Catholic education in the United States. This week is also National School Choice Week. It exists to raise public awareness of all types of education options for children.

Its no accident that these two weeks coincide.

In the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, nearly 38% of the children in archdiocesan Catholic schools are able to attend because of school choice. So in Wisconsin, as in much of the country, there is a direct correlation between education reform initiatives and the operational capacity of Catholic schools. As a fundraising consultant I know tells his clients, No margin, no mission.

Because of this, Catholics have a responsibility to zealously support and advocate for school choice initiatives that help Catholic schools do what they have done well for generations: provide a high-quality, faith-based education.

The Second Vatican Council explained that, The public power, which has the obligation to protect and defend the rights of citizens, must see to it, in its concern for distributive justice, that public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience the schools they want for their children.

Earlier, Pope Leo XIII, in his 1885 encyclical On Christian Education, recognized the value of Catholic schools to society at large by noting, It is by these schools that good citizens are brought up for the state.

In Wisconsin specifically, the Wisconsin Catholic Conference has supported school choice while noting that the church began teaching needy and vulnerable children in Wisconsin before its statehood.

Catholic schools associated with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee dropped to 109 this school year from 144 a decade ago, and total enrollment decreased by more than 6,000 students. At the same time, the number of students attending via a voucher has more than doubled.

According to a 2013 research brief by the Milwaukee-based Public Policy Forum, 24% of the students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program are Hispanic. Many of those Hispanic students are attending Catholic schools. The academic benefits of a Catholic education have been well-documented.

But the fact that Catholic schools are teaching religion is particularly important when considering a 2013 Gallup poll showing that, nationally, 54% of Hispanics identify as Catholics. Combine that with a 2013 Pew study showing that 30% of all Hispanic children under 18 live in poverty, and it is clear that school choice is a tool that can be used to help the Catholic Church enhance the spiritual life of Catholic families who need a voucher to attend a Catholic school.

On a visit to Tampa, I visited St. Joseph Catholic School, a grade school founded by the Salesian order in 1896. It is now a University of Notre Dame Alliance for Catholic Education Academy and the neighborhood around it is poor and predominantly Hispanic. School was not in session, but a large banner was prominently displayed that read, Our Goals: College. Heaven., a slogan that is the motto of all of Notre Dames ACE academies. Far more than a clever marketing device, the ACE Academy banner succinctly states the temporal and transcendent goals of Catholic education.

By removing financial obstacles, school choice helps children receive an education otherwise unavailable to them, helping them to develop the tools to break the cycle of poverty, and to get on track to both college and heaven.

This should be more than enough for Wisconsin Catholics, and indeed Catholics everywhere, to lead the charge when to comes to school choice policy.

Jason S. Crye is executive director of Hispanics for School Choice and a Purple Wisconsin blogger.
Donald Trumps supporters show their colors during a campaign event at the University of Iowa Field House last Tuesday. Credit: Associated Press

Donald Trump's candidacy is one wholly defined by its contradictions. He is the candidate of strength, but runs shrieking when confronted by the possibility of answering a question from Fox anchor Megyn Kelly. He claims he is the best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton, but spent years supporting her both financially and rhetorically. Trump shouts that he will revive America's economy but his companies have filed for bankruptcy four times.

Yet there is one overriding paradox that colors Trump's run. If his supporters, as their rallying cry so succinctly states, are so serious about "Making America Great Again," why are they so effusive in backing an unserious candidate?

Try to think of the presidents his supporters likely think are great  Lincoln, Reagan, etc.  mocking disabled people, banning specific religions and getting mixed up in juvenile public spats. (It's actually a little known fact that Thomas Jefferson's early drafts of the Declaration of Independence guaranteed the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of not getting schlonged.")

Perhaps the slogan itself provides a window into what really bothers Trump's army. "Make America Great Again" presumes that America is not currently great  that the country has devolved into a place unrecognizable to older Americans, who support Trump at a rate twice that of younger voters.

It's possible these disaffected voters view America as a lost cause. They see gay people getting married and transgender people accepting awards. They are afraid illegal immigrants are stealing jobs. They watch protesters run riot in their own cities to protest legitimate police action. They dread college campus-style political correctness spilling over into their own lives.

When all these things are taken into account, they likely see an America not even worth saving. The Trump candidacy essentially is a funeral for the life they fear now will only exist in history books  and soon, those history books will be written by transgendered Mexicans.

Even Bernie Sanders  a Socialist for goodness sakes  is running a deeply moving ad extolling our country's wonders. As a backdrop, the TV spot uses Simon and Garfunkel's song "America," which is about the journey to find the country's virtues, not mourning their passing.

That's not to say there isn't plenty about which to be cantankerous. One doesn't have to be an avowed member of the religious right to be horrified at the selling of aborted baby parts. But it is disconcerting to see many people of faith being driven into the arms of Trump, a thrice-married supporter of partial-birth abortion with a relationship history that, in the words of Morrissey, might make Caligula blush.

But Trump's people have watched the stature of the office of president shrink before their eyes during the last seven years. They blame a feckless Congress for not having improved their lives in any measurable way. Since they're pretty sure it doesn't matter who they elect to office, why not vote for a pompous windbag who is at least going to keep things entertaining?

As the campaign grinds on, we'll hear more informed candidates talk about what happens in Middle East countries when their leaders are deposed; often, dictatorial megalomaniacs rush in to fill the vacuum when there's an absence of leadership. But with the rise of the Trump nihilists, countries such as Syria and Libya may start to worry about us.

Perhaps relying on people who revel in shoveling dirt on America's grave will be enough to get Trump through a few primary states. But in the long term, it is poison to a party that is typically powered by optimism. Trump's unserious, dyspeptic platform appeals strictly to a shrinking bloc of voters and, if successful, will mean the end of the GOP as a functional party. Republicans need to persuade their disaffected brethren that America's strength isn't in its president, but in the people who elect him.

Christian Schneider is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email cschneider@jrn.com. Twitter: @Schneider_CM
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Making state dangerous

I am a 78-year-old grandmother who legally can be armed to the teeth and sell guns to violent people (if I lie about my guns being lost or stolen) to supplement my income. There is big money in straw buys.

Senate President Mary Lazich and Rep. Rob Brooks want to empower me, after a mere four hours of training, to be able to legally carry a gun into my grandchildrens schools pending school board approval. Also, legislators may pass laws allowing me to take a gun to sporting events on University of Wisconsin campuses. Unfortunately, I do become quite emotional at games. If passed, I will be able to take my gun(s) to any UW campus for discounted senior enrichment classes.

If I rack up three misdemeanors or persuade the court to downgrade a felony charge, I can continue to carry my mini Glock or AR15 (over my shoulder at public events). If my behavior declines into criminal status, I will be charged for a mere misdemeanor even if I join a violent gang for protection from other armed gangs.

If Assembly Bill 142 passes, I have big pockets so I will be able to add to my personal body arsenal. Grandma will be able to conceal carry a switch blade, bowie knife and a hatchet ready for any perceived challenge. Also, current proposed legislation would allow me to arm my 8-year-old granddaughter and take her hunting in fluorescent pink.

Lets get serious. Wisconsins recent gun and other lethal weapons laws jeopardize our families and communities while our police are limited in protecting public safety. The legislators responsible for these current and proposed laws and Gov. Scott Walker are high on gun smoke and the National Rifle Association lobby.

Nancy Moews

Greendale



Stick with Great Place

I think Milwaukee should permanently adopt the slogan A Great Place on a Great Lake and stick with it.

Promote it. Use it. All the great cities in America have slogans that theyve been using forever. When you hear The Windy City, you know its Chicago; when you hear The Big Apple, you know its New York City; when you hear The City by the Bay, you know its San Francisco; when you hear The City of Angels, you know its Los Angeles. And I could go on. Motor City, Crescent City, Music City all memorable names.

Pick a name and stick with it. Stop changing it. Use it, refer to it, let the world know were a Great Place on a Great Lake. Eventually, people will come to identify that slogan with Milwaukee, and thats the way it should be.

David Sikora

Milwaukee



How about this slogan?

Admittedly, I didn't give it much thought when I first read the article about Milwaukee and its less-than-inspiring slogan attempts, but having read one of your readers responses in the Jan. 24 Opinions section, I thought about it more, and with more respect (Great slogan for Milwaukee).

Ive lived in Milwaukee all my 65 years. Having visited both coasts and many places in between during that time, Ive had the opportunity to compare cities. After doing so, I came up with a slogan that I think is ideal, both literally and figuratively.

Milwaukee: At the top of America.

Charlie Radtke

Milwaukee

Please email your letters to jsedit@jrn.com, or mail them to Letters to the editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, P.O. Box 371, Milwaukee, Wis. 53201-0371. Letters are generally limited to 200 words and are subject to editing.
Pedestrians sprint through showers on their way to the Milwaukee Public Market in the Third Ward in May. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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By ,

People in Wisconsin seem to have developed a Simpsons character approach toward driving.

Picture a Montgomery Burns careening toward people walking in a crosswalk, all the while shouting, Out of my way, Im a motorist!

Its funny on a television comedy; but that attitude kills people in real life.

Fifty five people were killed while walking in Wisconsin in 2015, a 22% increase from the previous year. The number of people killed while riding a bicycle went from four to 15. All died after being hit by motor vehicles.

Those numbers may appear small considering the millions of people who walk and bike safely, but we cant ignore an uptick in fatalities that big. Every victim is a person, with family and friends and a future.

As part of its mission, the Wisconsin Bike Fed is intensifying its work to make streets safer for all users, whether on foot on a bicycle or in a car. Its a needed effort.

Instead of putting safety first, we seem to accept 55 deaths of people on foot as the cost of being part of a mobile society, and shrug as if the fatal collisions were unavoidable accidents.

These crashes are avoidable if only people would follow the rules of the road and focus more on sharing the road with more vulnerable users. Slow down. Look for others. Yield to your neighbor.

The message shared by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Wisconsin Bike Fed through the Share and Be Aware program is the law and represents common sense.

Wisconsin statutes require people driving motor vehicles to yield to people walking in crosswalks. That applies in any crosswalk, marked or not. Under the law, the natural extension of the sidewalk across the street is a crosswalk, even without painted lines.

Watch traffic on any urban or suburban street, and its clear that we ignore that law all too often, with deadly consequences.

More than 40 people were killed in crosswalks by people who failed to yield in 2011, 2012 and 2013, according to an analysis of crash reports by Robert Schneider, an assistant professor and traffic safety researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Schneider also found that driver errors accounted for 65% of deaths in crosswalks at intersections.

The idea that most pedestrian fatalities are caused by people dashing into the street simply doesnt match the facts. We drive too fast and ignore the law, and make it dangerous and intimidating for people to engage in the most normal of activity.

Its important for people to walk, says Larry Corsi, Pedestrian/Bicycle Safety Program manager at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Its better for business, better for health.

Corsi oversees the efforts to make Wisconsin streets safer, including the High Visibility Enforcement actions to remind motorists to yield to people walking in Milwaukee and La Crosse last year.

During one such action, police issued 64 failure-to-yield warnings to motorists in the Marquette University area  in one afternoon.

The DOT spent about $160,000 on those special enforcement efforts in 2015 and will spend about the same in 2016. The Bike Fed also will continue its Wisconsin Walks campaign to remind motorists to yield to their neighbors.

Unlike many of our problems, the increasing number of people killed while walking is easy to solve and shouldnt cost a dime.

Slow down and yield to your neighbor.

Tom Held is Share & Be Aware Program ambassador for the Wisconsin Bike Fed.
By of the

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel told a federal judge Friday that prosecutors and investigators should not be able to hang onto material seized in a probe of Gov. Scott Walker's campaign that the state Supreme Court halted last year.

The friend-of-the-court brief the Republican attorney general filed put him squarely on the side of targets of the probe, which was halted last year by the Supreme Court after it concluded nothing illegal had occurred. It prompted a sharply worded response from the attorney for the investigators, who said Schimel had defamed them.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, conducted two probes related to the Republican governor. The first resulted in six convictions of his aides and associates for activities such as campaigning on taxpayer time when Walker was Milwaukee County executive.

The second looked into whether the Republican governor and conservative groups supporting him had illegally worked together in recall elections in 2011 and 2012. That's the investigation that was halted by the state Supreme Court, and the justices have ruled that all material gathered in the probe must be turned over to them.

Cindy Archer, who served as a top aide to Walker, had her home raided as part of the first probe. She sued prosecutors in July in federal court in Milwaukee, alleging Chisholm had engaged in a "continuous campaign of harassment and intimidation" of Walker's supporters.

The prosecution team has asked U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman to allow it to hang onto evidence that was gathered to use to defend against Archer's lawsuit. That would create a conflict with the state Supreme Court ruling requiring the evidence to be turned over to the justices.

Friday's filing by the attorney general says Adelman should not grant the prosecution team's request, saying he shouldn't interfere with a state court ruling.

Prosecutors and investigators have no right to possess the material, Schimel argued.

"The unmistakable goal of this highly unusual request is to permit the investigator defendants to retain many documents that they were never lawfully entitled to possess, given that such documents were seized from citizens that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has found were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing," Schimel and other Department of Justice attorneys wrote in their filing.

Douglas Knott, the attorney for the investigators, questioned the professionalism of Schimel and his aides, noting the Department of Justice had previously declined to get involved in litigation over the matter, citing a conflict of interest. He called Schimel's stance in Friday's filing "partisan and ill informed."

"The statements implying that the investigators were found to have acted in an 'unlawful' or 'illegal' manner are simply false and defamatory," Knott said in a statement "No evidentiary record has ever been made in any court to support that statement, and the attorneys in the AG's office should have the professional insight to understand that."

It is unclear when Adelman might rule on the issue.

Meanwhile, Chisholm and other prosecutors have told the state Supreme Court they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to get involved in the decision to stop the investigation. Prosecutors have maintained state Justices Michael Gableman and David Prosser should not have participated in the case because their campaigns benefited from groups accused of working closely with Walker's campaign
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets supporters during a get out the caucus event at Grand View University on Friday in Des Moines. Credit: Getty Images

By of the

Des Moines, Iowa  With three days to go before the nation's presidential nominating process kicks off, Hillary Clinton spent as much time Friday drawing distinctions between herself and fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders as she did criticizing her GOP opponents.

The former secretary of state claimed the mantle of President Barack Obama and portrayed herself as a pragmatist with progressive values, saying she was the Democrat who could get things done.

"I'm not running on just telling you what I think you want to hear," she told supporters at a rally at Grand View University. "I'm running on what I think I can do."

She gave her 30-minute speech as Iowans prepare to caucus on Monday in the first round of voting nationally. Clinton is leading Sanders in Iowa 46.8% to 44.3%, according to a polling average tabulated by RealClearPolitics.com. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is trailing with 4.3%.

Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, has proved resilient as he has talked about providing tuition-free college and a single-payer health care system.

In contrasting herself with Sanders, Clinton repeatedly praised Obama and the Affordable Care Act, his signature health care law known as Obamacare.

"Before it was called Obamacare, it was called Hillarycare," she said.

She said she was disappointed her health care overhaul failed when she was first lady and was thrilled when Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law.

"We Democrats had been trying to get that done since Harry Truman," she said.

She said she and Sanders both want to establish universal health care, but have different approaches to getting there  and that her way is more attainable.

"I want to build on what we have achieved," she said. "He wants us to start over  with a plan that will be very difficult."

Calling some prescription drug companies "predatory," Clinton said she would end a tax break for drug companies and push to allow Medicare to negotiate with them to lower the government's costs for the health care program for senior citizens. Sanders' plan to create a "Medicare for all" would be almost impossible to get through Congress, she said.

Meanwhile Friday, the Obama administration confirmed for the first time that Clinton's unsecured home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails with material requiring one of the highest levels of classification.

Some of Clinton's backers like her focus on attainable goals.

"We need to have somebody who can manage the country, and we need to have some pragmatism," said Carole Dickey, a retired teacher from Des Moines who plans to caucus for Clinton.

She said Sanders had integrity and was a nice guy, but questioned the wisdom of some of his ideas.

"You can't do all the things he says he's going to do without increasing taxes for taxpayers," she said.

Megan Weisert, a Drake University student, said she would likely caucus for Clinton or O'Malley, but that Sanders "kind of scares me."

"For the point we're at now, I don't think (his plans) could work," she said. "Maybe in the future."

Alan Wilensky said he attended law school with Clinton and traveled from Minneapolis to Iowa so he could volunteer for her campaign. He said he thought her experience in the U.S. Senate and State Department gave her the ability to lead the country.

"Now with the problems so serious, we do not have the luxury of on-the-job training," said Wilensky, a tax attorney.

Clinton's stop in Des Moines came a day after the Republican candidates debated and real estate mogul Donald Trump held an alternate event because of a dispute with debate sponsor Fox News Channel.

The candidates from both parties will be camped out in Iowa for the coming days. Many of them spent Friday far from central Iowa, with Sanders campaigning in the eastern part of the state and the Republicans scattered across Iowa.

In addition to distinguishing herself from Sanders, Clinton took the opportunity to draw sharp lines between her views and those of Republicans. Her voice a little ragged from campaigning, she championed abortion rights and called for raising the minimum wage and guaranteeing women are paid the same as men for the same work.

The GOP candidates won't accept that climate change is happening, she said.

"They're missing out of a great economic opportunity," she said. "Some country is going to be the clean energy superpower. I think it's either going to be China, Germany or us. I want it to be us."

Clinton dismissed Republican economic policies, saying President George W. Bush had regulators take their eyes off Wall Street. "Boy, did we pay for that," she said.

"Are we going to let them have the White House again?" she asked the crowd. "Are we going to let them wreck our economy again?"

The Associated Press contributed to this report
- T. S. Eliot

Thoughts After Lambeth

"The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."
Republican presidential candidates New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (from left), Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas talk after the Republican presidential primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: Associated Press

SHARE Donald Trump laughs as fellow Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum jokes about not being photographed in front of a Trump podium sign at a event in support of veterans at Drake University in Des Moines. Associated Press JS On Politics Loading... Related Coverage MU poll: Clinton-Sanders virtually tied, Trump leading Poll Polls say that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are far ahead of the rest of the pack in Iowa. Who do you think will come out on top? Donald Trump Ted Cruz vote View Results Donald Trump: 69% Ted Cruz: 31% Total Responses: 613

By of the

Des Moines, Iowa  On the strangest and most suspenseful night of the presidential debate season, Donald Trump abandoned the main stage to his GOP opponents, who chided Trump for his absence while jockeying with each other to become his leading rival within the party.

If it were possible to be in two places at once, Trump may have accomplished that feat Thursday.

He staged his own event a few miles away, while his withdrawal had a transformational effect on the main debate sponsored by the network he is warring with, Fox News Channel.

It produced a Republican debate that, minus the brash and flamboyant Trump, was in some ways more sober, more policy-oriented and less colorful than earlier ones.

They wanted me there. They called me a few minutes ago: How about now? Trump claimed about Fox, while crowing that he had stolen the medias attention from the debate.

Were actually told we have more cameras than them by quite a bit, Trump bragged.

Meanwhile, his party rivals were free to focus on each other, reflecting some of the critical battles within the battle for the GOP nomination.

The seven candidates left to debate in prime time without Trump were Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

In Trumps absence, Cruz and Rubio sparred with each other as the two men vied to become the leading alternative to Trump.

And Bush, Christie and Kasich performed with an eye toward the second contest in New Hampshire, where they are fiercely competing to finish second behind the current leader, Trump.

It wont be known until Republican voters caucus here on Monday night whether Trumps jarring maneuver altered the course of a GOP race he has persistently led in national and most state polls.

What was clear was that he had found one more way to consume attention, force others to react to him, and signal to GOP voters that he plays by his own rules.

The first several questions in the debate were about what Fox moderator Megyn Kelly called the elephant not in the room  front-runner Trump.

Cruz chastised Trump for not showing the respect to voters to participate and offered this prepared line about his absence: Im a maniac, everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, and Ben (Carson), youre a terrible surgeon. Now ... weve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way.

Said Bush, tongue in cheek: I kind of miss Donald Trump, he was a real teddy bear to me.

Said Rubio: Hes an entertaining guy; hes the greatest show on earth, but its not about Donald Trump.

The debate featured clashes on foreign policy, civil liberties and immigration.

Fox subjected both Cruz and Rubio to uncomfortable, opposition-research-style videotape of past statements they have made on immigration and pressed both men on apparent inconsistencies in their stands and statements on the issue.

Rubio accused Cruz of hypocrisy on the issue, of being someone who is willing to say or do anything to win an election, and complained, This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on  that hes the most conservative guy and everybody else is a RINO (Republican in Name Only).

Paul joined in, saying Cruz had an authenticity problem, and is always acting as if everybody he knows is not as perfect as him.

Cruz and Bush both accused Rubio of flip-flopping on immigration.

I like Marco, hes very charming, hes very smooth, offered Cruz as a backhanded compliment. He ripped Rubio for siding with Democrats on the issue before changing his position.

He cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess, said Bush, referring to Rubios move to back off in his support for a sweeping immigration overhaul that generated fierce resistance on the right.

Christie used the opportunity to bash both senators Rubio and Cruz for using what he described as Washington doublespeak.

Stop the Washington bull, he roared.

A few minutes away, Trump paid tribute to military veterans, jabbed at his rivals, bragged about his ability to command attention and brought two of his low-polling opponents on stage.

The debate the real estate baron skipped was the seventh one for the GOP candidates and the last one before the Iowa caucuses, which on Monday kick off the first round of voting nationally.

I wanted to be about five minutes away, Trump said of the debate on the other side of Des Moines. But, when youre treated badly, you have to stick up to your rights.

Trump has been locked in a battle with debate sponsor Fox News and one of its moderators, Kelly. He hastily set up his alternate event at Drake University to raise money for veterans and said he declined to cancel it after last-minute talks with the cable network.

Fox has been extremely nice the last number of hours, actually, he told the crowd.

He didnt say who hed talked to at Fox and said he didnt back down because he could not turn his back on veterans.

As he has in the past, he belittled Bush as low-energy, but conceded he didnt know how he was doing in the debate.

Maybe hes doing great right now. Hes probably looking for me, Trump said of Bush, who often contrasts himself with Trump.

For his part, Bush, appearing more fluent and at ease than he has in past debates, went after the absent Trump for creating a toxic atmosphere by bashing women, Hispanics and Muslims, saying that without a more inclusive message, Republicans are never going to win elections.

The prime-time debate was preceded by an undercard debate whose four second-tier contestants (Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina and Jim Gilmore) included the past two GOP winners of the Iowa caucus: Santorum and Huckabee.

Those two attended Trumps event after the early debate.

Trump called the two to the stage, and they each spoke briefly to the crowd. Santorum leaned to the side, saying he was reluctant to have his photo taken with a Trump sign.

Im supporting another candidate for president, Santorum joked.

Trump said he had no idea whether his decision to pass on the debate would help or hurt him in the caucuses. But before the event, his backers made clear they thought hed made the right call.

Rod Treimer, 59, drove 150 miles from his farm in Durant, Iowa, to take in Trump for a fourth time. He said Trumps skipping the debate was not meant as a way to avoid facing his rivals.

Does anybody think hes chicken for anything? He loves the fight, said Treimer. No way is he a chicken.

Wearing a red Make America Great Again stocking cap as he waited in line outside, Treimer said hes supported Trump since the fall because of his understanding of the economy.

He knows who to hire and who to fire because hes been in the business, he said. He understands whats wrong with the country and he knows how to fix it.

Doug Golay of Des Moines plans to caucus for the first time but hasnt decided whom hell support. An independent who hasnt decided whether hell ultimately back a Republican or Democrat for president, he likes what hes seen of Trump.

Hes the one guy out there whos not a politician from the get-go, said Golay, a 54-year-old heating and air conditioning contractor.

Over the years, (politicians) say one thing, they do totally different, he said. Everybodys fed up because the people we hire to speak for us and solve our problems try to twist it over. They dont think they work for us.

He felt Trump made the right move by boycotting the debate  and believed the other candidates believed he had, too.

I think theyre all wishing the same thing, that theyd had the guts to say screw you to the media, he said.
Gov. Scott Walker said Friday his presidential campaign remains $1 million in the red, despite a spurt of fundraising in the final quarter of 2015. Credit: Associated Press

By of the

Madison Scott Walker's former presidential campaign still owes more than $1 million, despite raising $500,000 in the last three months of 2015.

Also Friday, the Republican governor said he's dropping the practice his political operations adopted last year of paying for the travel costs to campaign events for Walker's state security team. Taxpayers will now, as they did before the presidential campaign, foot the costs of both the travel and salaries of the governor's security when he leaves the state for political events.

As of the end of last year, Walker's White House campaign had about $1.2 million in obligations left and about $153,000 in cash that partially offsets those debts.

Though Walker has raised nearly $8 million for his short run, his operation spent the cash faster than he could raise it over the campaign's 71-day life, and he dropped out of the 2016 presidential race in September.

A report filed Friday with federal elections officials shows the resulting burden won't be an easy one, even for the best political fundraiser in state history.

"Governor Walker made substantial progress in addressing financial commitments over the last quarter, and he remains humbled by the outpouring of support from friends across the country who continue to believe in his common sense reform agenda," spokesman Joe Fadness said.

The filings show Walker still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to a number of companies, including fundraising and communications consultants, direct mail companies, and photographers and video producers.

His highest debts include: $317,000 to FLS Connect LLC, a Minnesota-based telemarketing company; $82,000 to a Washington, D.C.-based legal consulting company, Jones Day; $70,000 to SCM Associates, a New Hampshire based direct mail printing company; $59,000 to the Lukens Co., an Arlington-based direct mail printing company; $44,000 in event staging expenses to MMA Events, a Maryland-based company; and $39,000 to an Alexandria-based video production company, Sharp Politics.

Walker also got some help from his state campaign committee, Friends of Scott Walker, which purchased $14,682 of items from the presidential campaign.

And he rented his voter list to Voter Gravity Inc., and Granite Lists LLC, for $20,000 and $15,700.70, respectively.

The governor did make some progress paying off his debts in the wake of his failed presidential bid.

He had owed about $10,500 to the Waukesha County Expo Center, where he officially launched his 2016 campaign in July, but paid that bill in full.

Walker also refunded 152 contributions for a total of $407,546.24.

Walker's presidential campaign took in $2.4 million and $1.2 million during July and August. Those figures dropped off dramatically in September, with $484,521, and October, with $35,279. The campaign still managed to break six figures in individual contributions in November and December, bringing in $127,498 and $151,334, respectively.

Also Friday, Walker's affiliated Unintimidated PAC reported that it took in $3.7 million in itemized receipts in the last half of 2015. The grand majority of that money came from two families: Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein contributed $2.5 million; and Mary and Mike Shannon of Milwaukee contributed another $500,000. Richard Uihlein is CEO of Pleasant Prairie-based Uline Corp. Mike Shannon is the CEO of KSL Capital Partners.

The PAC filed termination papers Friday.

State officials also said Friday that in the future, Walker's political operations will no longer reimburse state taxpayers for his security team's travel expenses.

Walker's political operations have reimbursed state taxpayers $260,000 to cover hotel stays, airfare and other travel expenses last year for his security team. But in the future, taxpayers will have to pay such costs when state troopers accompany Walker on political trips, said Jim Dick, a spokesman for the state Department of Administration.

Walker decided last year to have his political operations pick up some of those costs while he crisscrossed the country and traveled overseas as he explored and launched his presidential campaign.

But Walker is returning to the previous practice as used by other governors of both parties. Democrat Jim Doyle, for instance, brought security along on his travels to political and other events, such as a December 2010 visit to Cancun for a United Nation climate change conference.

The Wisconsin governor was an early favorite in the Republican field after surging in the wake of a January 2015 speech in Iowa, but then began to flounder as real estate mogul Donald Trump surged and Walker had to clarify statements about birthright citizenship and building a wall on Canada's border.

Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Doing Nothing class at Lawrence University garners national attention

The Doing Nothing course meets for one hour every week and is taught by a new professor each week. Students are graded either pass or fail and can't have their phones during the class.
By of the

Calumet County District Attorney Kenneth R. Kratz resigned Monday, nearly three weeks after he came under fire for sending sexually suggestive text messages to a crime victim.

Kratz said in a statement Monday that he had "lost the confidence of the people I represent due primarily to personal issues which have now affected my professional career."

Kratz, who began a medical leave of absence from his job Sept. 20, said he is receiving treatment outside Wisconsin for "these conditions" and will continue to receive treatment after returning to the state. He did not say what he is being treated for.

Kratz said in his statement that he hopes to "repair my reputation and resume my legal career."

Kratz, who had been Calumet County's district attorney since 1992, had been under pressure to resign since it was revealed Sept. 15 that he had sent 30 text messages over three days last fall to Stephanie L. Van Groll while he was prosecuting her ex-boyfriend on domestic violence charges.

Kratz, 50, referred to Van Groll in one text as a "young, hot nymph" and asked in another message if she "likes secret contact with an older married elected DA."

Van Groll, 26, reported the text messages to Kaukauna police, who turned the investigation over to the state Department of Justice.

Officials with the Department of Justice found no evidence of criminal conduct after reviewing the case late last year but forced Kratz to resign as chairman of the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board and report himself to the state Office of Lawyer Regulation, or OLR.

Kratz initially resisted resigning from the victims' rights board and reporting himself to OLR, telling state officials that his texts to Van Groll were "a series of respectful messages."

OLR reviewed the case but did not discipline Kratz, drawing widespread criticism. OLR officials have since said they will reopen their investigation of Kratz in light of similar accusations leveled against him by at least four other women since his texts to Van Groll were revealed.

The victims' rights board also has been criticized for not taking action against Kratz, but board officials said in a statement last week that Kratz wasn't candid with them about the nature of his text messages to Van Groll when he resigned as the board's chairman last year.

The board also has said it has not received a complaint about Kratz, and it said in its statement last week that it doesn't have the authority to consider sexual harassment or gender discrimination cases.

Kratz at first resisted calls to resign as district attorney and said he would run for re-election in 2012 after his text messages to Van Groll were revealed.

He changed his mind and announced through his lawyer last week that he would step down after enduring intense pressure from colleagues, elected officials and victims' advocates.

Had he not resigned, Kratz would likely have been removed from office through a rarely used legal process initiated by Gov. Jim Doyle about a week after news of Kratz's text messages to Van Groll was first reported.
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TeleSur |  

Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, said the U.S. presidential candidate was acting like Hitler, while the world acts as bystanders to the refugee crisis.

Donald Trump is acting like another Adolf Hitler, Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz concentration survivor and Anne Franks stepsister said in a column published by Newsweek Wednesday, as polls show the United States presidential candidate has 41 percent support among Republican voters.

I think (Trump) is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism, wrote Schloss, the co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust U.K. During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.

She added that If Donald Trump became the next president of the U.S. it would be a complete disaster.

Schloss, who was once a Jewish refugee in Amsterdam, further commented on the refugee crisis in Europe as she drew similarities between the the Syrian refugees in Europe and the Jewish ones more than 70 years ago.

I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders, she wrote. It is even harder for todays Syrian refugees who have a very different culture. We were Europeans as well as Jewswe were assimilated.

She also said the United Kingdoms behavior towards Syrian refugees now was similar to the countrys policy towards the Jewish ones more than 70 years ago.

Britain is not taking many refugees from Syria and its a problem. Now, David Camerons government say they might take in 3,000 unaccompanied children who have arrived in Europe, she said, adding: It sounds similar to the Kindertransport.

Schloss was referring to the informal name of a series of refugee efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940.

The Kindertransport was wonderful in one way but on the other hand, most of the children never saw their parents again. It was a terrible thing to separate those parents from their children, she said.

The 86-year-old branded the international community bystanders, adding that the refugee situation today is worse than it was under Hitler because at that time all the Alliesthe U.S., Russia and Britainworked together to combat the terrible threat of Nazism.

She argued that unless world powers work together like they did against Hitler, there will be no solution to the refugee crisis or the world conflicts on the horizon. I remember how upset the world was when the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 and now everybody is building walls again to keep people out. Its absurd.

Schloss is the daughter of Erich Geirginger and Elfriede Geiringer. Her father died in Auschwitz and her motherwho survivedlater remarried Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank.

Local news outlets said Trumps representatives did not respond Schloss comments. His Twitter feed shows he was busy his rowing with Fox News over not attending Thursdays Republican debate.

Trump has been compared to Hitler before but this is one of the most powerful comparisons as it comes from a victim of the Nazi leaders policies.

However, in December last year he was asked if such comparisons give you any pauses at all? during a phone call interview on Good Morning America. His response was: No. What Im doing is no different from FDR.

Via TeleSur

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

New York Daily News: Anne Franks Stepsister Says Donald Trump is acting Like Another Hitler'
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

At the Trumpless GOP debate Thursday evening, the candidates once again promised to bankrupt us with military and intelligence spending and to commit vast war crimes with reckless disregard for the lives of women, children and non-combatant men, of the sort not openly plotted since the demise of the Axis powers in 1943-45.

Sen. Marco Rubio seemed to imply that we dont know where the terrorists are because our intelligence agencies have somehow been insufficiently funded or supported. But the National Intelligence budget rose from $26.6 billion in fiscal year 1997 to $47.5 billion in FY 2008 (Bushs last year), and then rose again to $53.9 bn in FY 2012.

Thats about a 12% increase in Barack Obamas first term and a nearly 200% increase since the late Bill Clinton period.

So Rubios implication that intelligence spending has been gutted is not only false, it is the opposite of reality. Why would more such spending work since Rubio maintains that the vast increases in the past decade and a half havent done the trick?

Moreover, I thought conservatism was about small government and cutting budgets? Why is Rubio saying he wants to be more of a spendthrift than Barack Obama in this sector?

BAIER: Senator Rubio? RUBIO: . . . But I want to be frank about what I stand for. I believe the world is a safer and a better place when America is the strongest power in the world. And I believe only with a strong America will we defeat this radical group, this apocalyptic group called ISIS. Thats why when Im president we are going to rebuild our intelligence capabilities. And theyre going to tell us where the terrorists are. And a rebuilt U.S. military is going to destroy these terrorists. And if we capture any of these ISIS killers alive, they are going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and were going to find out everything they know, because when Im president, unlike Barack Obama, we will keep this country safe.

Moreover, Rubios implication that the US doesnt know where the terrorists are is odd. Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) is different from other terrorist groups precisely in trying to hold recognized territory, so we know exactly where they are.

Finally, heres the tally for keeping America safe on American soil:

# Americans killed by terrorism under last GOP administration: over 3,000

# Americans killed by terrorism under Obama: 88

So by the same argument used in the second Bush term, Obama has done a rather good job of keeping the US safe. (The 88 figure, by the way, includes both radical Muslim and white terrorist attacks).

As for global terrorism, it did go up from 2003. Billmon tweeted in response to Rubio,

Look how low it was in 2003. Then it goes up. Something must've happened then. https://t.co/iR8zaMHqsr  Billmon (@billmon1) January 29, 2016

Terrorism has indeed gone up but note only 3% of global terrorist attacks since 2000 have been in the West: pic.twitter.com/MaEq7NY7eW  Steven Rattner (@SteveRattner) January 29, 2016

His point was that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq appears to have kicked off the rise in terrorist attacks. Rubio promises more such adventurism and war crimes, so the idea that he would reduce terrorism is to say the least implausible.

Senator Rand Paul also let Rubio have it with regard to NSA warrantless snooping, which is clearly unconstitutional:

The bulk collection of your phone data, the invasion of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack. I dont think you have to give up your liberty for a false sense of security. When we look at this bulk collection, the court has looked at this. Even the court declared it to be illegal. If we want to collect the records of terrorists, lets do it the old fashioned way. Lets use the Fourth Amendment. Lets put a name on a warrant, lets ask a judge for it. Lets respect the history of our country. John Adams said that we fought a War for Independence because we wanted to fight against generalized warrants. Lets dont forget that. 

Ben Carson said unintelligible things and added, The American people are terrified. Thats why we have this abnormal situation going on right now.

There isnt any reason for the American people to be terrified except that the Republican presidential candidates have been trying to make them terrified so as to herd them into the voting booth on their side. The US has no major geopolitical adversaries that might attack it (we do have a big nuclear arsenal and the best-equipped military in the world). You are much more likely to die from being struck by lighting than to die of terrorism, and if you were to die of terrorism it would more likely be at the hands of radicalized white people than at the hands of a Muslim radical. I remember the Cuban missile crisis. Now that was scary. Nowadays there isnt any menace like that. Chill, Ben.

Chris Wallace pointed out to Ted Cruz that he keeps voting against the defense budget while demanding bigger defense budgets. Cruz said,

You know, you claim it is tough talk to discuss carpet bombing. It is not tough talk. It is a different, fundamental military strategy than what weve seen from Barack Obama. Barack Obama right now, number one, over seven years, has dramatically degraded our military. You know, just two weeks ago was the 25th anniversary of the first Persian Gulf war. When that war began, we had 8,000 planes. Today, we have about 4,000. When that war began, we had 529 ships. Today, we have 272. You want to know what carpet bombing is? Its what we did in the first Persian Gulf war; 1,100 air attacks a day, saturation bombing that utterly destroyed the enemy. Right now, Barack Obama is launching between 15 and 30 air attacks a day. Hes not arming the Kurds. We need to define the enemy. We need to rebuild the military to defeat the enemy. And we need to be focused and lift the rules of engagement so were not sending our fighting men and women into combat with their arms tied behind their backs.

Cruz is a smart man with Ivy League degrees but he becomes remarkably stupid whenever he talks about military affairs. Carpet bombing failed in the Vietnam War. Intensive bombing could be deployed in the Gulf War because the tanks of the Iraqi Occupation of Kuwait were spread along the Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia out in the desert. We couldnt have carpet bombed the forces in Kuwait City itself without destroying the country we were trying to save.

Daesh doesnt have many tanks and it is ensconced in cities with civilian populations like Mosul. Carpet bombing Mosul (pre-Daesh pop. 2 mn., i.e. Houston) would not harm Daesh but it would kill a lot of Mosulis. I doubt Cruz could find Mosul on a map or tell you who lives there, so why is he speaking in public about carpet bombing it?

By the way, Daesh is what is called Salafi, or hyper-Sunni Muslim. It is the opposite of Shiite Islam. Somehow the candidates seemed to be confused about this:

From Santorum calling Shi'ism "death cult" to Rubio's insults on Shias on national television on debates you wonder who their advisors are.  Arash Karami (@thekarami) January 29, 2016

As for the weapons reductions, the fact is that our planes are twice as good now. And, in 1990 we were still in a cold war with the Soviet Union. We dont have any significant geopolitical rivals at the moment, so why should we maintain an enormous conventional arsenal? The Founding Fathers thought a standing army incompatible with democracy. Cant we at least scale back when we are at peace? (The GWOT is not a conventional war.)

Putting captives at Guantanamo is just a way to try to avoid operating within the US Constitution and the framework of international law. No one would want to do that who isnt a lawless sadist.

Then Rubio said,

ISIS is the most dangerous jihadist group in the history of mankind. ISIS is now found in affiliates in over a dozen countries. ISIS is a group that burns people alive in cages; that sells off little girls as brides. ISIS is a group that wants to trigger an apocalyptic showdown in the city of Dabiq  not the city of Dubuque; I mis-said  mis-said that wrong once (inaudible) time  the city of Dabiq in Syria. They want to trigger an apocalyptic Armageddon showdown. RUBIO: This group needs to be confronted and defeated. They are not going to go away on their own. Theyre not going to turn into stockbrokers overnight or open up a chain of car washes. They need to be defeated militarily, and that will take overwhelming U.S. force. 

It just floors me that US politicians fearmonger in such a strident and extreme manner off of Daesh. It is like 30,000 scruffy fighters with light and medium weaponry and no air capability. While it is brutal and creates horror spectacles, it hasnt yet scaled the heights of brutality of the Khmer Rouge, who polished off a million out of 6 million Cambodians.

I think if Rubio would actually, like, read a book about Middle Eastern history, hed find that there were past radical movements rather more impressive than Daesh (just as there were in Christian Europe).

The overwhelming deployment of US military force in Iraq in 2003-2011 created Daesh in the first place, so why Rubio thinks doing it again will work differently this time is mysterious. But then Rubio is a chickenhawk who has no idea about even recent military history and is just preening in his high heels.

JEB! gave his own prescription:

The caliphate of ISIS has to be destroyed, which means we need to arm directly to Kurds, imbed our troops with the Iraqi military, re engage with the Sunni tribal leaders.

That sounds to me like exactly what Obama is doing. The US helped the Kurds take back Sinjar in Iraq. It helped them defend Kobane. It is embedding US troops with the Kurds in eastern Syria and has a command in Iraq. The US military and intelligence is reaching out to Syrian Sunnis in the northeast and getting them to fight alongside the Kurds. Sunni tribal levies helped retake Ramadi.

JEB! is just advocating the current policy and pretending that he is saying something different. It is weird.

Then he said we should get the lawyers off the back of the US military. I take it he means by that we should toss overboard the Geneva Conventions, which were crafted to prohibit the kind of behavior that made the Nazis notorious during WW II.

Weve been trying to outlaw war crimes since then, but the US Republican Party seems to admire the tactics of the Axis and to regret their having fallen into disrepute.

JEB! also went on about San Bernardino, which was the work of a couple of unbalanced people who shot up their workplace and murdered co-workers, a place of no security significance whatsoever, and they began plotting violence before Daesh even existed. JEB! and the others had nothing to say about Dylann Roof or killigs at Planned Parenthood, which exemplify the kind of terrorism that is much more common in the US than a vague Daesh menace.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump used the poor veterans as camouflage for his inability to share a stage with other egos and was slammed by veterans for this ploy:

The chairman of VoteVets.org was more pointed, saying Trump was a loser,  a third-rate politician, who clearly doesnt understand issues, and is so scared of Megyn Kelly exposing it, that youre looking to use veterans to protect you from facing her questions. Trump has had a rocky relationship with veterans after he made comments about Sen. John McCain, saying he wasnt a hero because he was captured during the Vietnam War.

It was an evening of third-rate politicians who dont understand the issues.

-

Related video:

Fox News: A look at who succeeded, suffered at 7th GOP debate
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan. 29, 2016) - Millrock Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE:MRO) ("Millrock") announces that the company and joint venture partner Teck American Inc. have elected to terminate the joint venture concerning the Estelle project in Alaska. The project has been inactive since 2014 and efforts to attract a third party to the project have been unsuccessful. The claims that comprise the project have been allowed to lapse.

About Millrock Resources Inc.

Millrock Resources Inc. is a premier project generator to the mining industry. In the search for world-class metallic mineral deposits in mineral-rich Alaska, southwest USA, and Mexico, Millrock identifies, packages and operates large-scale projects for joint venture, thereby exposing its shareholders to the benefits of mineral discovery without the usual financial risk taken on by most exploration companies. The company is active in Alaska, British Columbia, the southwest USA and Sonora State, Mexico. Funding for drilling at Millrock's exploration projects primarily comes from its joint venture partners. Business partners of Millrock have included some of the leading names in the mining industry: First Quantum, Teck, Kinross, Vale, Inmet and Altius.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Gregory Beischer, President & CEO

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include without limitation the completion of planned expenditures, the ability to complete exploration programs on schedule and the success of exploration programs.

"NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE."
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan. 28, 2016) - Nevada Copper Corp. (TSX:NCU) ("Nevada Copper") announces the appointment of two new directors, Mr. Evgenij Iorich and Mr. Stephen Gill, as representatives of Pala Investments Ltd. ("Pala"). Messrs. Iorich and Gill are both Portfolio Managers at Pala and will replace each of Mr. Michael Barton and Mr. Philip Clegg, who have resigned from the Board.

Mr. Iorich has over ten years of experience in the natural resources sector. His commodity experience extends across a broad range of bulk commodities, as well as precious and base metals. Mr. Iorich has worked with a number of Pala's portfolio companies on a range of strategic initiatives, M&A opportunities, operational and financial planning and structuring. He is a director of Peninsula Energy and Asian Mineral Resources and, in addition, with his considerable experience in oil and gas, is also a director of Serinus Energy. Prior to joining Pala in 2006, Mr. Iorich was a financial manager at Mechel, the Russian metals and mining company, where his responsibilities included all aspects of budgeting and financial modeling. Mr. Iorich graduated from the University of Zurich with a Masters of Arts degree.

Mr. Gill has been at Pala since 2008, during which time he has been involved in many of Pala's principal investments covering a range of commodities, as well mining services and consumables sectors. Mr. Gill has also supported many of Pala's investee companies in defining and implementing strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Pala, Mr. Gill was at AMEC Plc. (now AMEC Foster Wheeler), an engineering consulting firm, where he advised on a range of natural resources transactions, including the IPO of the Kazakhstan state oil company and CITIC Resources' acquisition of the Karazhanbas oilfield. Mr. Gill also acted as an advisor across a range of private equity transactions, including investments in businesses spanning mining, metals processing, and mining consumables manufacturing industries. Mr. Gill holds an MBA from the IE Business School in Madrid. He also holds an MSc from the University of North Carolina and a BSc from the University of Wales.

Mr. Giulio Bonifacio, President & CEO commented, "On behalf of Nevada Copper's Board of Directors, we welcome Evgenij and Stephen to our Board and look forward to working with them as Nevada Copper moves forward. We also want to wish Mr. Barton and Mr. Clegg much success in their future business endeavours."

NEVADA COPPER CORP.

Giulio T. Bonifacio, President & CEO

We seek safe harbour.
TORONTO, Jan. 29, 2016 /CNW/ - Largo Resources Ltd. ("Largo" or the "Company") is pleased to announce today that (i) it has closed a first tranche of its US$26,500,000 (approximately CDN$39,000,000) non-brokered offering (the "Offering") of Units (as defined below) previously announced in the Company's news release dated January 19, 2016 (the "First Tranche"), and (ii) the Company has signed a binding term sheet with its consortium of existing commercial banks in Brazil (collectively, the "Lenders") for a new debt facility (the "New Facility") and the restructuring of its export credit facilities (the "Export Facilities") for its Maracas Menchen Mine.

Mark Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer for Largo, stated: "We sincerely appreciate the support of both our new and existing shareholders as well as our Lenders, who all remain committed to the on-going success of Largo and its Maracas Menchen Mine. Working together with all of our stakeholders we have been able to push through a challenging few months and are now more confident than ever in the future success of the Maracas Menchen Mine."

Closing of the First Tranche of the Offering

The Company is very pleased to announce that the closing of the First Tranche resulted in gross proceeds to the Company of CDN$13,285,982 from the sale of 75,919,898 units of the Company (the "Units"). The proceeds realized from the First Tranche will be used for ongoing working capital requirements at the Company's Maracas Menchen Mine which is a condition of the Company's restructuring of its existing Export Facilities with the Lenders, and for general corporate and working capital purposes. The remainder of the Offering is expected to close in full on or about February 4, 2016 (the "Second Tranche").

Each Unit was sold at a price of CDN$0.175 and consists of one common share of the Company (each, a "Common Shares"), and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will be exercisable into one Common Share at a price of CDN$0.29 per share for a period of five years from closing of the Offering.

Funds managed by Arias Resource Capital Management LP (the "ARC Funds") purchased an aggregate of 62,176,283 Units in the First Tranche for gross proceeds to the Company of CDN$10,880,849.53. The ARC Funds are a "Control Person" of the Company (as defined in the TSX Venture Exchange Corporate Finance Manual). Prior to the closing of the Offering, the ARC Funds owned approximately 46.30% of the Company's issued and outstanding Common Shares and following closing of the First Tranche, the ARC Funds own approximately 55.98% of the Company's then issued and outstanding Common Shares (or approximately 64.72% of the Company's issued and outstanding Common Shares in the event that the ARC Funds exercised all of the convertible securities held by them). The Company anticipates that the ARC Funds will subscribe for additional Units in the Second Tranche. The shareholders of the Company approved the creation of the ARC Funds as a Control Person of the Company at the annual and special meeting of the shareholders of the Company held on June 27, 2013. The ARC Funds' participation in the Offering was conditional upon several conditions, including the execution and delivery of an amendment to the director nomination agreement entered into on May 22, 2015 pursuant to which Largo will permit the ARC Funds to designate one additional person to be nominated for election to Largo's board of directors by Largo shareholders, including at the next annual meeting of Largo shareholders, for so long as the ARC Funds, whether individually or together, own at least 50% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares. These nomination rights are in addition to the ARC Funds' existing nomination rights more fully set out in the Company's press release issued on May 22, 2015 and, accordingly, assuming the ARC Funds ownership remains equal to or above 50% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares, the ARC Funds will designate four of the seven persons to be nominated for election as directors at the next annual meeting of Largo's shareholders.

In addition, Mr. Mark Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of Largo, subscribed for an aggregate of 2,500,000 Units in the First Tranche.

The Offering was considered and approved by the board of directors of the Company. J. Alberto Arias, a director of Largo who is also the sole director of each of the general partners of the ARC Funds and indirectly controls Arias Resource Capital Management LP, Sam Abraham, a director of Largo and an employee of Arias Resource Capital Management LP, and Mark Smith, President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Largo, each declared a conflict and recused themselves from voting on the Offering. The remaining directors voted unanimously to approve the Offering.

Pursuant to Multilateral Instrument 61-101  Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"), the purchase by the ARC Funds of the Units under the Offering is a "related party transaction". The Company is exempt from the requirements to obtain a formal valuation or minority shareholder approval in connection with the Offering in reliance on section 5.5(g) of MI 61-101, as the Company is in serious financial difficulty and the Company's board of directors, acting in good faith, have all determined that (i) the Company in serious financial difficulty, (ii) the Offering is designed to improve the financial position of the Company, and (iii) the terms of the Offering are reasonable in the circumstances of the Company. In addition, the Company is currently not subject to any court approval under bankruptcy or insolvency law or section 191 of the Canada Business Corporations Act or any equivalent legislation of another jurisdiction and the Company has one or more independent directors in respect of the Offering. The material change report is being filed less than 21 days before the closing of the Offering as the Company requires the consideration it will receive in connection with the Offering immediately for working capital purposes.

Entering into of New Facility and the Restructuring of the Export Facilities

Largo is pleased to announce that, further to its press release dated December 17, 2015, it has entered into a binding term sheet with the Lenders for its New Facility and the restructuring of its Export Facilities. The terms of the New Facility include:

Working capital facility of up to R$104,596,000 (Brazilian reais), disbursed in 11 monthly payments over 2016 (the " Disbursement Date ").

(Brazilian reais), disbursed in 11 monthly payments over 2016 (the " "). Working capital facility of up to R$8,151,000 (Brazilian reais), disbursed in 11 monthly payments over 2016.

(Brazilian reais), disbursed in 11 monthly payments over 2016. Working capital facility in an amount equivalent to the mark-to-market value of the swap contract applicable to one of the Company's Export Facilities.

Margin equal to the Interbank rate (" CDI ") + 5.70% per annum.

") + 5.70% per annum. Two-year grace period on the payment of interest and principal, measured from the Disbursement Date. Quarterly repayment (in arrears) of the New Facility commences after the end of the grace period.

Final maturity 84 months after the Disbursement Date.

Use of proceeds strictly to pay interest and principal falling due under the Company's existing construction debt facility and to pay the swap settlements pertaining to one of the Company's Export Facilities.

The restructuring of the Export Facilities includes the amendment to set forth that the principal and interest installments due for the 12 months after the Disbursement Date shall be payable on the same payment terms of the New Facility. The binding term sheet requires the Company to comply with various amended financial and non-financial covenants during the term of the grace periods. At the completion of the grace period, the Company will be obligated to comply with the covenants set forth in the existing debt facilities.

Mark Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer for Largo, stated: "We believe the Maracas Menchen Mine has now proven its technical merit and will benefit greatly from any increase in Vanadium prices from the current historic lows."

About Largo



Largo (TSX-V: LGO) is a growing strategic mineral company focused on continuing the production of vanadium at its Vanadio de Maracas Menchen Mine.

Vanadium is primarily used as an alloy to strengthen steel and reduce its weight. Vanadium enhanced steels are used in a vast and growing range of products that are used and encountered every day; including, rebar, automobiles, transport infrastructure etc. With consumption increasing at a compound annual growth rate of over 8% for the past several years (Roskill, 2015), vanadium is a bourgeoning commodity which lacks opportunities for investment in the wider market place. As trends in the steel industry now demand increasingly stronger and lighter products for advanced applications, the use of vanadium is expected to continue this growth over the medium and long term.

Largo also has interests in a portfolio of other projects, including: a 100% interest in the Currais Novos Tungsten Tailings Project in Brazil; a 100% interest in the Campo Alegre de Lourdes Iron-Vanadium Project in Brazil; and a 100% interest in the Northern Dancer Tungsten-Molybdenum property in the Yukon Territory, Canada.

Largo is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "LGO".

For more information please refer to Largo's website: www.largoresources.com

Join our mailing list: http://www.largoresources.com/English/about-us/email-alerts/default.aspx

Disclaimer:

This press release contains forward-looking information under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to completion of any financings; Largo's development potential and timetable of its operating, development and exploration assets; Largo's ability to raise additional funds necessary; the future price of vanadium, tungsten and molybdenum; the estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources; conclusions of economic evaluation; the realization of mineral reserve estimates; the timing and amount of estimated future production, development and exploration; costs of future activities; capital and operating expenditures; success of exploration activities; mining or processing issues; currency exchange rates; government regulation of mining operations; and environmental risks. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". All information contained in this news release, other than statements of current and historical fact, is forward looking information. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Largo to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to those risks described in the annual information form of Largo and in its public documents filed on SEDAR from time to time.

Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made. Although management of Largo has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Largo does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Readers should also review the risks and uncertainties sections of Largo's annual and interim MD&As.

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NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE (NOR ITS REGULATORY SERVICE PROVIDER) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE

SOURCE Largo Resources Ltd.
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Business used to be predictable once upon a time. Companies were started in garages and were built up in brick and mortar buildings. The need for sales, marketing and customer service expanded slowly, and was usually fairly predictable. Customers were loyal, the tone of customer interactions was civil and direct marketing took place through the mail. The process was often asynchronous, with companies and customers communicating through the mail, via e-mail or even via catalog order.





Say good-bye to the twentieth century.

Business is a very different creature today. Companies are bought and sold overnight, markets expand and contract, and customers are the equivalent of speed-daters: they sit down with your company for five minutes, ask a few questions, and decide on the spot whether theyre going to stay or move on to the next date. Start-up companies can take off quickly, and trends can turn a small company into a big one overnight, often thanks to social media. Overall, customer support is a very different creature than it was a few decades ago.

Many companies, however, havent gotten the memo yet, and are attempting to serve customers with technologies and equipment better suited to 1991. Smart companies are looking for newer solutions that are as current as customers are. Most of all, these newer solutions need to feature real-time communications, since customers are no longer willing to wait.

French startup Aircall, which offers a software-as-a-service customer support solution, is one of those new players. The company recently announced that it raised a $2.75 million round led by Balderton Capital (News - Alert) (News - Alert), with FundersClub and business angels also participating. According to Tech Crunch (which notes that it was part of the Battlefield competition at Disrupt SF 2015), Aircall intends to reinvent how phone customer support works. Essentially, its an app.

The solution offers phone routing that breaks with tradition. Instead of relying on an ACD, it engages in something called cascading calls. If the first agent logged in is busy, the call goes to the next agent, and so forth. It also makes international calling easy by allowing companies to have phone numbers in different countries, and assign a team to each number. The app also features custom music and messages, click-to-call, call queuing, an IVR, call recording, analytics and integration with high-profile sales and CRM solutions such as Salesforce, Desk.com and Zendesk.

Currently, the Aircall app is available only for iOS, but the company says an Android (News - Alert) (News - Alert) version is coming very soon. While most companies using the Aircall app are relatively small, with just a few agents, it does have some standout larger customers; most notably Uber and Deliveroo. The company notes that more integrations with business software are also coming, and that its planning to take on some companies with larger and broader customer support needs in the near future.

Edited by Rory J. Thompson
The Coastal Commission is why this seascape near Jenner doesn't have offshore oil rigs. | Photo: Don McCullough, some rights reserved

The weeks-long occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge seems to be winding down, but don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. The forces in our society that want to privatize public land haven't given up. And a conflict taking shape in California promises to be more of a threat to public lands than the hapless occupiers in Oregon ever could be.

The privatizers in California differ in a few respects from the Bundy bunch. They're not disenfranchised ideologues drunk on their private misunderstandings of history. It would be hard to be less disenfranchised than these Californians, in fact. Members of the California Coastal Commission, appointed by the Executive Branch of the state government, don't need to break the law to work to deprive Californians of their public lands birthright.

"Some men rob you with a six-gun," Woody Guthrie wrote in his song Pretty Boy Floyd, "and some use a fountain pen." Unlike Bundy and his gang, members of the California Coastal Commission don't need to arm themselves to take our public beaches and estuaries away from us. They just need to sign documents. And the executive branch is looking the other way.

At issue this month is an attempt by the seated Commissioners to oust the Commission's Executive Director, Charles Lester, over what some Commissioners have said are issues of underperformance in Lester's job.

But environmental groups spanning the green spectrum from foundation-funded to grassroots aren't buying it. They claim the problem is that Lester has been too good at his job, protecting California's 1,100 miles of coastline from development projects that would harm wildlife, block public access, and essentially privatize some of the most potentially valuable real estate in the world.

Commission Chair Steve Kinsey asked Lester for his resignation in January. Lester opted not to go quietly. Instead, he asked the Commission to discuss his potential termination during a public hearing at the Commission's next monthly meeting, set for February 10-12 in Morro Bay.

If anything, Lester has been somewhat friendlier to developers than was his late predecessor, the fiercely environmentalist Peter Douglas, whose tenacity in resisting the often short-sighted wishes of the agency's politically appointed Commissioners was the stuff of legend. Despite some minor differences, Lester, like Douglas before him, has been carrying out the express wishes of the state's voters in standing firm against rapacious developments. In 1972, those voters passed by a 55-45 percent margin the ballot initiative, Proposition 20, that established the Coastal Commission, chartered to manage development on the coast with environmental protection and public access at the top of its priorities. The then-temporary body was made permanent by an act of the Legislature four years later.

The 55-45 popular vote establishing the Coastal Commission may not seem like a landslide, until you consider the fact that opponents of the initiative outspent supporters by a factor of more than 100. At the time, the developers of the Sonoma County resort Sea Ranch planned to make more than 10 miles of the Sonoma Coast off-limits to the public, aside from those members of the public willing to shell out to stay at the tony resort. The vote in favor of Prop 20 was a resounding "No" to excluding the public from the Sonoma Coast, or any other part of California's ocean front.

To be clear, much of the development proposed for the California coast is slated for private land. The Coastal Commission's mandate includes much more than just protecting public access to the so-called "public trust" lands between the mean high and low tide lines, designated as our common property by the Coast Act of 1976. Any activity that could conceivably affect the ecosystems and scenic character of the coast, from The Edge's blufftop developments in Malibu to offshore oil rigs and (perhaps someday) wind turbines legally comes under the Coastal Commission's scrutiny.

And that's only fair, as coastal developers often irrevocably change the nature of the landscape surrounding their projects, with impacts ranging from loss of coastal bluff vernal pools to motor oil in runoff slicking up estuarine habitat. If not for the Coastal Commission, widely regarded as one of the strongest environmental protection government agencies in the country, there would be a whole lot more of those unintended consequences along the coast from San Diego to the Smith River.

In short, projects on private land can seriously damage or destroy public trust land. Sometimes that damage comes from environmental degradation; sometimes it comes when coastal property owners deny Californians their legally guaranteed access to those public trust lands. It's the first lesson of ecology: effects cross property lines, whether those effects are an arson fire set by ranchers or a private parking lot whose cars leak oil into a coastal lagoon.

Industry maintains that its unintended consequences are manageable with far less regulation. Industry wants that coastline. Industry didn't stop shelling out cash to get its way with that 100-1 electoral spending binge in 1972. Witness this passage from a recentletterto the Los Angeles Times by former Coastal Commissioner Linda Moulton-Patterson, who supports Charles Lester as Commission director:

The public needs to know about the large amounts of money paid to lobbyists hired by developers to "wine and dine" commissioners and staff in an attempt to influence them to support their proposed projects. An independent executive director is absolutely essential to continue to protect and provide public access for 1,100 miles of our beautiful California coastline.

Another former Commissioner, environmentalist Sara Wan, has been telling press that the attempted ouster of Lester is part of a campaign to make the Commission friendlier to developers. "We know they've been pushing in that direction for a while, and that's what this is all about," said Wan, "taking over control of the Commission and undermining its independence, and eventually turning the coast over to the development and energy industries."

It's easy to point and laugh at a group of would-be paramilitary types spouting mangled misapprehensions of constitutional law as they try to lock us out of land that is our common property. Fewer people ridicule the Newport Beach developers, Malibu celebs, and speculators who would have the Coastal Commission seal off the public from the coast, and develop the coastal bluffs and estuaries that make up the California littoral ecosystem.

But like the sagebrush rebels of whom the Malheur occupiers are just the most recent example, the coast developers are implacable opponents of public access and environmental protection.

That's why California needs a Coastal Commission that's willing to defend the coast just as stubbornly. Actual job performance issues with the Commission's Executive Director are one thing, and would obviously need to be addressed if they actually exist. But in a year when Commissioners have publicly apologized to developers for perceived delays in approving highly controversial projects, the choice to bring up alleged H.R. issues against Lester seems highly dubious.

The main Commissioners driving the attempt to oust Lester are gubernatorial appointees whose terms can be ended with a stroke of Jerry Brown's pen. To date, the governor has refused to comment one way or the other on Lester's future with the Commission. Jerry should take a hint from the events to the north: the FBI eventually did get around to doing something about the privatizers on the Malheur Refuge. California's governor should do likewise.
"Remember" continues to dominate Wednesday and Thursday prime time dramas.

According to the January 28 report from Nielsen Korea, the SBS courtroom series recorded 15.6 percent or 2.1 million nationwide viewers with episode 14. This was an increase of 0.5 percent from its previous episode.

The 14th episode opened with the revelation that Seo Jin Woo (Yoo Seung Ho) was experiencing increased memory loss due to early-onset Alzheimers, a condition that afflicted his deceased father, Seo Jae Hyuk (Jeon Kwang Leol).

Jin Woo failed to show up to a dinner date with former prosecutor Lee In Ah (Park Min Young), after a disturbing meeting with Nam Gyu Man (Nam Goong Min), prompting In Ah to become suspicious of his medical state.

While Jin Woo once possessed a flawless memory, details surrounding key players in the murder case his father was wrongly accused of committing started to evade him.

However, he continued to put pressure on In Ho Group, the conglomerate responsible for framing his father.

Acting prosecutor Hong Moo Suk (Uhm Hyo Seop) resigned amidst bribery and extortion allegations while Suk Joo Il (Lee Won Jung) took the fall for slush fund scandal.

The KBS2 period drama, "The Merchant Gaekju 2015," increased its ratings to 11.8 percent, maintaining its position in second place with double-digits.

MBC's "One More Happy Ending" also experienced an increased audience, as the series introduced the compelling love triangle of Kwon Yeol (Let's Eat 2), Jang Nara (Fated to Love You), and Jung Kyung Ho (Falling for Innocence).

The romantic comedy recorded 6.7 percent as Goo Hae Joon (Kwon Yeol) launched his aggressive pursuit of marriage broker, Han Mi Mo (Jang Nara).

Song Soo Hyuk (Jung Kyung Ho) realized that his feelings for Mi Mo extended beyond her status as a former classmate and Go Dong Mi (Yoo In Na) continued to search for true love.
Korean celebrities often endure hardships that extend well beyond the constraints of their Hollywood counterparts.

Won Bin and Lee Na Young continue to live under the harsh scrutiny of Korean media while experiencing endless harassment from adoring fans since tying the knot with hasty nuptials in May 2015.

According to a January 29 (KST) report by The Korea Herald, large numbers of tourists visit the home of Won Bin's parents, and continuously photograph actor and his wife, while they are on the premises.

Snooping fans were previously a common occurrence for the 38-year-old Hallyu star, but his recent marriage and impending parenthood have led to an onslaught of unauthorized reporters from outlets ranging from broadcast news to tabloid magazines.

The Korea Herald noted that journalists regularly approach the high-profile couple without invitation and attempt to interview citizens residing in the neighborhood of Won's parents.

A lack of fences and security measures like CCTV have enabled the repeated invasion of privacy.

In addition, neighbors who are not acquainted with Won or the couple are asked personal questions that could incriminate the pair.

The article went on to note the primary subjects that are of interest to both reporters and fans. Netizens are curious about the sudden pregnancy of Lee Na Young, whether the birth of their child will be announced to the public and how the couple intends to cBin

Reports regarding the harassment of Won Bin, his family, and his wife follow disturbing accounts of home invasions which plagued Jo In Sung and CNBLUE's Jung Yong Hwa in 2015, during the harvest holiday, Chuseok.

The "It's Okay, That's Love" actor was startled when an obsessed Chinese fan broke into his house while his family members were visiting.

While he did not issue personal statements addressing the matter, the CNBLUe frontman was more forthcoming in expressing his displeasure with stalker fans.

"My parents were so shocked when they came to visit for Chuseok," said Jung, in a social media post, following an incident where uninvited supporters arrived at his house.
Song Jae Rim's new drama "Goodbye Mr. Black" recently began script readings but the actor is taking time out of his drama schedule for his first ever domestic fan meeting.

The fan meeting titled "Come Over And Play" is scheduled for January 30 at the Hyocheon Art Center. The meeting is a do over as Song planned the have the meeting last year as part of his Asia Tour. He had to cancel it due to his busy schedule. Song wants to make good on his promise to meet fans and thank them for his continuing support before he gets even busier.

According to the Korean media outlet OSEN, the actor has been hands-on involved in physically getting ready for the meeting. He is helping to prepare hot packs and drinks for his fans.

Those fans should enjoy his new drama, "Goodbye Mr. Black," which is based on the 1980s manhwa of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the 1844 Dumas novel, "The Count of Monte Cristo." Song's role in the revenge drama is that of Seo Woo Jin, the editor of a small newspaper. Seo is an idealist, a man who believes in the power of the press. He's also described as a man who has never had a romantic relationship. Since he's the second lead, he will face Lee Jin Wook as a romantic rival.

Lee Jin Wook plays the leading male role, a Navy officer who is betrayed, accused of treason and exiled to Australia. His life is destroyed and he can think of nothing but revenge. He acquires and identity and returns home to destroy those who ruined his life.

Moon Chae Won also stars in this drama as the pretend wife of Lee Jin Wook's character.

Song Jae Rim's last drama role was in "Unkind Ladies." He also recently had roles in "The Idle Mermaid" and "Inspiring Generation." His breakout role was playing a bodyguard in the historical drama "The Moon Embracing The Sun." He played a cold-blooded assassin in "Two Weeks."
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As I sat in my hospice interdisciplinary group meeting, reviewing the many patients who have died in the past two weeks as well as our new patients, there was a slight break in the discussion. Being ever the multitasker, I clicked on a New York Times article I had been meaning to read and scanned the first two sentences: When my husband died from cancer last March at age 37, I was so grief-stricken I could barely sleep. One afternoon, I visited his grave  in a field high in the Santa Cruz Mountains, overlooking the Pacific Ocean  and lay on top of it. I slept more soundly than I had in weeks. Suddenly, I felt sharp tears forming and a sob threatening to release itself. I quickly closed the article and came back to the present moment, discussing the complexities of our patients and families.

After the meeting was over, I retreated to my office and closed the door. I reopened this beautiful essay written by Dr. Lucy Kalanithi, whose young physician husband died from lung cancer. His book When Breath Becomes Air has recently been released posthumously. She tells of their life together, his life-changing diagnosis, and the unbearable grief she felt after he died. I found myself with tears streaming down my face, deeply moved.

Working in the field of hospice, we are continually reminded of the fragility of life. We walk down the road of grief, loss, pain, fear, and acceptance with all of our patients every day. We have to maintain an ability to be present while maintaining boundaries in order to continue to provide the compassionate and difficult care that hospice requires. But sometimes, there are certain patients or families that just get to us. Perhaps they remind us of our own loved ones, or of ourselves. Despite understanding that death is a natural part of life, we still fear our own mortality and the mortality of those we hold dearest. As physicians, we serve in the role of healer, held at an arms distance from the other side of the hospital bed. We can easily lull ourselves into the illusion of safety and impermeability. All it takes is to lose one of our own to remind us that the imaginary line between doctor and patient is truly precarious.

No matter how comfortable I am with the idea of death and dying, it still feels like it is very far away for me personally. And I think that is what I felt while reading this article: It hit too close to home. Two students who fell in love the first year of medical school; a husband with a background in English literature who chose to pursue a career in medicine, but still yearned to write; two physicians spending the majority of their waking hours in the pursuit of knowledge and service; a widow who is now left to raise her young daughter alone  With the exception of the last statement, this could be my life described. For a moment, I allowed my thoughts to go to that heartbreaking place of loss, fear, and loneliness: it was nearly unbearable.

It is no wonder we distract ourselves with stuff, with technology and gadgets, with food and alcohol, with self-made drama. Anything would be better than to think about the terrifying possibility that we could lose it all in an instant. And yet, that potential for loss, that recognition that nothing is permanent, is what helps bring meaning to our daily existence. No matter how tightly we squeeze, we cannot hold onto anything forever. It will slip through our fingers, changing shape as it slides away. We can scramble to try to chase after it, or we can relax and appreciate the feeling as it slips and slides across our hands. Either way, it will be gone.

As we start the New Year, I will try to find the moments every day that create meaning. I will not wait to express gratitude, love, or kindness. I will dig in to the moments that feel uncomfortable as they often coincide with opportunities for growth and transformation. This is my promise to myself.

Laura Patel is a hospice and palliative medicine physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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There is no doubt that Zika is causing worldwide hysteria as a rapidly spreading virus with potential of pandemic proportions. The virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also carries both dengue fever and yellow fever.

While a relatively innocuous virus with 80 percent of those affected being asymptomatic, mild symptoms of illness such as fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis are associated. The most worrisome outcome of this virus is the link with microcephaly found in babies born to mothers affected during pregnancy. Microcephaly is a neurologic condition which presents with an abnormally small head, with incomplete brain development to varying degrees. The neurologic sequelae include seizure, developmental delays, hearing or vision loss, and intellectual disability.

The Ministry of Health in Brazil has confirmed the connection of microcephaly and the Zika virus: a staggering 3,893 cases of microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since October, compared to an annual incidence of 160 cases. This virus is unique in the family of the flavivirus for its ability to cross the placenta and affect fetuses.

The CDC has declared over 20 countries affected by Zika, with travel warnings issued. El Salvador, one of the affected countries, has even put out the strong plea urging its citizens to refrain from pregnancy until 2018. WHO anticipates this virus to spread to all the Americas, with potential to spread to warm areas globally where Aedes mosquitoes are distributed. It is no surprise then that this calls for global effort and urgent action.

How do we protect people, particularly pregnant women, from this virus?

President Obama calls to strengthen research efforts towards availability of better diagnostic tests, vaccines, and other therapeutic options. But, is there another way?

The British-based company, Oxitec, seems to think so. Rather than traditional approaches targeted at therapeutics, this company attempts to curb Zika with a primary prevention strategy using a transgenic mosquito model to diminish the overall mosquito population. They have created a genetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquito, OX513A, that under laboratory settings with antibiotic, scientists can keep the mosquito alive.

However, when released in the wild, the gene eventually leads to its demise. The hope is before that, it can mate with wild type female mosquitoes to produce offspring that do not survive adulthood, thus leading to the decline of the population with the next generation. Originally created to combat dengue, efforts have now been turned to applications with Zika. There have been successful field studies where OX513A are released in geographically isolated neighborhoods, such as Moscamed in Brazil. Using a fluorescent marker introduced into OX513A, their genetic fingerprint can be tracked. The results are astounding: CNN reports Oxitec success rates of eliminating up to 99 percent of the target population. Ongoing field trials are occurring as we speak, in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama.

Sounds ideal, but there is the rub: We are releasing a genetically modified, man-made species into the wild to lead to the demise of its own species. The mosquito has been a powerful foe of mankind: from malaria to dengue to yellow fever to West Nile to encephalitis. This strategy is a valiant attempt to solve the problem at its root, but this noble scientific intention is not without consequence.

We dont have long-term data to provide answers on how it affects local ecosystems, food chains, public health, etc. Can OX513A develop resistance to the lethal gene or react with antibiotics used in agriculture? We dont have answers on if it produces changes in clinical outcomes: Does the reduction in wild-type mosquitoes cause a decrease in dengue or Zika? How and who would regulate the release of OX513A on a macrocosmic scale? The FDA has been attempting to review impact of a proposed field trial to take place in the Florida Keys since 2012, with still no environmental assessment available.

The ramifications of this cascade are far-reaching, and perhaps, the making of a sci-fi movie. When we practice medicine, we are guided by four bioethical principles, one of which is nonmaleficence: Do no harm in an attempt to reach a beneficial outcome.

I cant help but ask, do the benefits of public safety outweigh potential long-term risks? How will public response and education affect the acceptance of robo-Franken mosquitoes?

Zika means overgrown in the Luganda language of Uganda, where it was first discovered in 1947. The beautiful irony of this is that perhaps, the potential solution to Zika is hidden in its name.

Trisha Kadakia is an obstetrics-gynecology resident.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Scared about Zika virus? Here are some answers that you need to know.

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Its January 2016. News stories have inspired significant anxiety about Zika virus. Its a scary topic because news about the outbreaks are just unfolding, and this affects an already anxious group: pregnant mamas and expecting families. I want to share with you real-time information and data to try to alleviate anxiety and educate the best I can.

I suspect with time some of this will change. Ive curated the most common questions and answers directly from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) below. The most alarming information coming from these outbreaks are the effects of Zika on pregnant women and their babies.

First things first, Zika virus will only affect an unborn baby who is exposed to Zika in utero if mom is infected while she is pregnant. Meaning, women not pregnant who get Zika can have Zika virus, clear the virus from her bloodstream (typically about one week after illness resolves) and not transmit Zika to future babies. If you are pregnant, there is no question it makes sense to think carefully about travel. That babymoon just cant be the priority if it will put you at risk. Zika is potentially dangerous to a baby during any trimester or pregnancy or at the time of delivery.

Zika virus is unusual in a couple of ways: only 20 percent of people who get it know it  meaning most people infected wont develop any symptoms. Secondly, we dont have a vaccine, and we dont yet have an anti-viral to protect pregnant moms and their babies from side effects. So, unlike infections caused by influenza and polio, or rubella or mumps, we have to change our social determinants of health  basically pregnant moms have to take precautions with where they go and how they expose themselves. Ive found this CDC Q&A extremely helpful.

What is Zika virus disease?

CDC: Zika is a disease caused by Zika virus that is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito. The most common symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes). The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week.

Like mosquitoes all over the world, the mosquitoes that carry the virus and spread it to people breed in open ponds/pools of water. The ones that carry Zika tend to bite and infect primates and humans during the day. These little buggers can get the virus from an infected person and then bite another person and transmit it during outbreaks.

What are the symptoms Of Zika?

CDC: About one in five people infected with Zika will get sick  symptoms from being ill. For people who get sick, the illness is usually mild. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected. The most common symptoms of Zika virus disease are fever, rash, joint pain, or conjunctivitis (red eyes). Symptoms typically begin 2 to 7 days after being bitten by an infected mosquito.

Remember, 80 percent of people who get Zika wont have any symptoms. So heading off to a country with an outbreak and coming home feeling fine doesnt ensure you havent been exposed. This is key in protecting those at risk. We cant make a lot of assumptions of who has it and who doesnt.

How is Zika transmitted?

CDC: Zika is primarily transmitted through the bite of infected Aedes mosquitoes. Aedes mosquitoes, which spread the virus, live in every Western hemisphere country but Canada and Chile. It can also be transmitted from a pregnant mother to her baby during pregnancy or around the time of birth. We do not know how often Zika is transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy or around the time of birth.

Research will likely evolve through these outbreaks. What we know is that unborn babies are at most risk for serious complications. They are dependent on their moms making great decisions during pregnancy. Holy moly, its always a lot of pressure, but this sure is another one for us to bear.

More on who is at risk, what to do if youre planning a trip to Mexico for a babymoon, and ways to prevent getting Zika:

Who is at risk of being infected?

CDC: Anyone who is living in or traveling to an area where Zika virus is found who has not already been infected with Zika virus is at risk for infection, including pregnant women.

In addition, because mosquitoes that live in the US are capable of carrying the Zika virus, it is possible that a traveler could get infected, come home, and spread Zika in areas with mosquitoes. This hasnt happened. However, CDC is working to understand more with studies starting this month. Protecting yourself from mosquito bites if mosquitoes are active where you live now, especially if pregnant, makes sense.

What countries have Zika?

As of today (January 29, 2016) CDC reports, specific areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing are often difficult to determine and are likely to change (increase) over time. Please visit the CDC Travelers Health site for the most updated information.

Heres the current theory: Pregnant women are being bitten by mosquitoes who carry the Zika virus. In turn, the mothers are infected with the Zika virus and transmit it to their unborn fetus, potentially contributing to changes in development of their baby (during any trimester) including how the brain and nervous system grows. Because of the global data of increased cases of Zika concurrent to an increase in rates of microcephaly in the same region, researchers believe Zika may be the cause. This is yet to be officially linked and proven at a cellular or structural level. No one knows why Zika virus could cause this.

CDC: Some infants with possible Zika virus infection have been found to have intracranial calcifications and abnormal eye findings. It is not known if Zika virus infection caused any of these abnormalities.

Zika, microcephaly and poor pregnancy outcomes outside of the U.S.

Microcephaly is a birth defect where a babys head is smaller than expected when compared to babies of the same sex and age (head circumference in these babies is typically at or below 3 percent on the growth curve). Babies with microcephaly often have smaller brains that might not have developed properly. Brazils Health Ministry reported Wednesday it had recorded over 4,180 suspected cases of microcephaly since October, and have confirmed a link to Zika in 270 of 700 of the 4,180 cases they have tested, the Associated Press reported. This led Brazil to announce concerns in 2015.

Dr. Jeffrey Duchin at Chief at King County Public Health advised, Pregnant women can be infected with Zika virus in any trimester. Maternal-fetal transmission of Zika virus has been documented throughout pregnancy, and Zika virus infections have been confirmed in infants with microcephaly. Studies are ongoing to investigate the association of Zika virus infection and fetal loss or microcephaly, including the role of other contributory factors (e.g., prior or concurrent infection with other organisms, nutrition, and environment).

Im pregnant. Should I travel to a country where cases of Zika have been reported?

In my opinion, long story short, no, you should not. Many airlines and cruise companies are offering refunds and allowing for travel changes without penalty. Until more is known, and out of an abundance of caution, CDC recommends special precautions for pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant:

Pregnant women in any trimester should consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing. Pregnant women who do travel to one of these areas should talk to their doctor or other healthcare provider first and strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites during the trip.

Women trying to become pregnant who are thinking about becoming pregnant should consult with their healthcare provider before traveling to these areas and strictly follow steps to prevent mosquito bites during the trip.

What about the 2-year pregnancy ban?

Some countries, where the virus is very prominent, are advising women to avoid becoming pregnant for the next two years while they work to get the virus under control. El Salvador and Columbia among them. This is controversial, of course, because women need great access to affordable pregnancy prevention, family counseling, and support. Abstinence is not being pitched as the method to avoid pregnancy (!) but its unclear how women will take this recommendation. Being told to wait two years to have a baby is simply a horrific mandate to swallow. More research will help clarify this recommendation as time unfolds.

What about future pregnancy?

CDC: If a woman who is not pregnant is bitten by a mosquito and infected with Zika virus, will her future pregnancies be at risk? No. The Zika virus usually remains in the blood of an infected person for about a week. The virus will not cause infections in a baby that is conceived after the virus is cleared from the blood.

So, if youre not pregnant and want to travel to Mexico, you can. Its smart not to plan a pregnancy during or shortly after your travel. Soon-to-be-mamas: Talk with your physician for more if you remain concerned.

Preventing Zika virus

CDC: There is no vaccine to prevent Zika. The best way to prevent diseases spread by mosquitoes is to avoid being bitten. Protect yourself and your family from mosquito bites. Heres a few ideas how:

Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants (these mosquitoes bite during the day).

Stay in places with air conditioning or that use window and door screens to keep mosquitoes outside.

Use Environmental Protection Agency C. All EPA-registered insect repellents are evaluated for safety and effectiveness. Always follow the product label instructions. Reapply insect repellent every few hours. Do not spray repellent on the skin under clothing. If you are also using sunscreen, apply sunscreen before applying insect repellent. It is safe to use EPA-registered insect repellents if pregnant and/or nursing.

If you have a baby or child: Do not use insect repellent on babies younger than 2 months of age. Dress your child in clothing that covers arms and legs, or Cover crib, stroller, and baby carrier with mosquito netting. Do not apply insect repellent onto a childs hands, eyes, mouth, and cut or irritated skin. Adults: Spray insect repellent onto your hands and then apply to a childs face.

Sleep under a mosquito bed net if you are overseas or outside and are not able to protect yourself from mosquito bites.

Zika virus treatment

Remember that 80 percent of people with the virus wont seek treatment because they wont have symptoms. CDC: If someone does come down with symptoms, there is no vaccine or specific medicine to treat Zika virus, but you can treat symptoms:

Get plenty of rest.

Drink fluids to prevent dehydration.

Take medicines such as acetaminophen or paracetamol to reduce fever and pain.

Do not take aspirin or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

If you are taking medicine for another medical condition, talk to your healthcare provider before taking additional medication.

Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician who blogs at Seattle Mama Doc. She is the author of Mama Doc Medicine: Finding Calm and Confidence in Parenting, Child Health, and Work-Life Balance.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Japan Goes to Negative Rates: Is the Fed Next?

(Kitco News) - Gold continues to hold up relatively well in the face of stronger equity and oil prices. The latter likely a temporary situation. It feels disappointing to investors that the gold market is not shooting higher but rather grinding forward. The process before a new bull emerges generally reflects this type of churning chart pattern. Japan surprised the market overnight by taking rates to negative yields. Currency value dislocations are expected to continue. Its plausible, if the U.S. economy continues to stumble, that negative rates may also be Feds tool in the not too distant future. We suggested awhile back that this is a traders market and the recent swings have certainly afforded good short term trading windows. For investors the base case remains bullish. Todays range suggests $1,112 - $1,122. By Peter Hug, Kitco Metals Global Trading Director; phug@kitco.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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Olympic Mountain Rescue volunteers conduct a training with Olympic National Park staff in June 2013 at the park. The volunteers are Tiffany Royal, Steve Leslie, Kevin Koski (in the stretcher) and Ben Cote, with Ranger Sanny Lustig in the red helmet. Contributed photo / Jeremy Johnson

SHARE Olympic Mountain Rescue volunteers Josh Vaughn (left), of Hansville, and Peter Ozimek, of Silverdale, during a 2012 rescue of a snowshoer on Mount Rainie. Contributed photo / Olympic Mountain Rescue

By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON  A small Bremerton-based mountain rescue team is inviting hundreds of its colleagues to the first national mountain rescue conference in Washington in 15 years.

Olympic Mountain Rescue will host the 2016 Mountain Rescue Association Conference in Port Angeles during the second week of June. About 300 mountain rescue volunteers and other emergency responders are expected to attend.

Each year, a mountain rescue group volunteers to host. Last year, it was a group in Estes Park, Colorado.

OMR has been around since 1957. This will be the first time it has hosted the conference, and it will be the first time the conference is held in Washington since 2001, OMR chairman John Myers said.

"We're a small group compared to a lot of other ones that have hosted, but we've got a lot of strong, committed people," he said.

The all-volunteer nonprofit group leads rescues in some of the toughest terrain in the Olympic and Cascade mountains. Last year, OMR went on 25 calls. Recent outings included the rescue of four adults and two hypothermic children on Mount Ellinor. This month, OMR members located the body of well-known Seattle software entrepreneur and philanthropist Doug Walker on Granite Mountain. He apparently had died in an avalanche while snowshoeing.

OMR member Kevin Koski was recognized as a 2013 West Sound Hero by the American Red Cross for helping lead more than 30 OMR missions.

OMR initially planned to host the conference in Bremerton, but Port Angeles was thought to be more attractive to the outdoorsy people who make up mountain rescue groups.

"Port Angeles offers a lot more for people who want to make the trip partly as an outdoor vacation," Myers said. "That's how we're packaging it: Come out for the conference and stay a few more days and go backpacking in the mountains, go on the ferry to B.C. or go out to the coast."

OMR plans to partner with Olympic National Park on several conference events.

The conference will feature instructional courses, field trips, equipment demonstrations and social events.

Special pre-conference outings include a two-day group mountain climb, a human tracking course and a workshop on the use of drones to find lost or injured hikers.

Myers said the conference will offer a rare hands-on training on rescuing injured people from crashed planes. He's rounding up at least three planes for the training.

OMR has 37 members. Rescue groups that typically host conferences have more than two times as many members. The national mountain rescue association had been planning to have the conference in Washington for the past six years. Seattle Mountain Rescue was the natural choice to host, but the group failed to commit after discussing the idea for more than a year.

"It was getting close (to the conference date), so I said I'd see if our group could do it," Myers said. "I knew I couldn't do it myself. At our next meeting, I said, 'I'm not going to do this unless everyone in the room raises their hand to help.' They all did."

Mountain Rescue Conference

What: The Mountain Rescue Association's 2016 conference

When: June 9-12

Where: Red Lion Hotel in Port Angeles

Info: On the conference, go to mraconference2016.com; on Olympic Mountain Rescue, go to olympicmountainrescue.org.
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Rebecca Sonsalia, Bainbridge Island

Vote 'yes' for school environment

As a longtime resident and parent of Bainbridge Island graduates, I voice my appreciation for the continued community support of our school district, which consistently ranks in the Top 10 in Washington. The dedication of parents, teachers, support staff, administration and tremendous community involvement helps make Bainbridge a great place to live and raise a family.

Our population is growing. Much like our own homes, upgrades in schools are required to stay abreast of changing times. Several of the facilities where our children attend classes each day require major improvements, including study space, lunchroom space separate from study space, more efficient traffic flow, revised plumbing, just to name a few. Two of those facilities are Blakely Elementary and the 100 Building at the high school.

All children and staff need a good foundation for education, including the infrastructures. I encourage everyone to please review the details of the proposed bond and vote to support and enhance our educational environment.
Stuff reports:

New Zealand shouldnt rush to sign the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement given its extremely remote chances of passing into law in the United States, according to an American trade analyst and critic of the deal. However, Prime Minister John Key has dismissed the concerns, saying he is confident American politicians will ultimately support the free trade deal. Trade analyst Lori Wallach, who is in New Zealand to speak at a series of anti-TPPA public meetings, said the deal was in a certain amount of political trouble in the United States. One of the big questions in political Washington is why New Zealand is rushing towards both the signing right now but also the notion of passing implementation, given the prospects that the US Congress passes the TPP as it is  ever  is extremely remote. Wallach said the TPPA was dozens of votes short in the House of Representatives, with Democrats concerned about the changes to environmental standards and drug patent changes and Republicans opposed to the carve-out excluding tobacco control measures from the investor state disputes mechanism.

It is true that Republicans complain Australia and NZ negotiators were too tough and got too good a deal in the TPP. But this does not mean they will let TPP die.

First of all the likely vote is in the lame duck Congress, which will mean there will be some retiring Democratic Representatives and Senators who will be able to vote for it as they dont need to worry about the Labor unions trying to get them thrown out if they support it.

But you also have to look at the history of major trade agreements in the US. NAFTA was way more controversial than the TPPA, yet it got ratified by the Congress with a 234-200 vote in the House and 61 to 38 in the Senate.

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Alessandra Tarantino/ AP Photo Pope Francis caresses 12-year-old Glyzelle Palomar, a rescued street child during his meeting with youths in Santo Tomas University in Manila, Philippines, in early 2015. The pope ditched his prepared remarks and spoke off the cuff in his native Spanish to respond to Glyzelle, who wept as she asked Francis why children suffer so much. Palomar, a former street child rescued by a church-run foundation, told him of children who are abandoned or neglected by their parents and end up on the streets using drugs or in prostitution.

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By Bart Jones

Pope Francis has gained fame and admiration for his common-man touch. Eschewing much of the pomp of previous popes, such as the traditional shiny red shoes, Francis wears the same type of simple black clerical shoes he did as archbishop in Buenos Aires  and keeps his commentary down to earth, too.

His first book as pope, "The Name of God is Mercy," follows that same trajectory. While the sharp-witted and erudite Francis, the first Jesuit pope, can philosophize and theologize with the best of them, he speaks and writes in a way the man and woman in the street can understand.

He is a natural storyteller, and this 150-page book  in a question and answer format  is full of anecdotes from his life. He speaks of encounters ministering to prostitutes, prisoners and slum dwellers, while throwing in references to a niece, his grandmother, even a novel.

The book, the result of an interview with veteran Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielli, translated from Italian by Oonagh Stransky, is a thought-provoking read that balances deep theological insights with memorable stories.

Francis' central theme: Mercy, which he calls "God's identity card," is at the core of the Christian message. "Without mercy, without God's forgiveness, the world would not exist; it couldn't exist," Francis says.

The pope tells the story of when he was working as a parish priest in Argentina and met a mother with young children whose husband had left her. With little work available, she turned to prostitution to put food on the table.

One day the woman returned to the parish to thank Francis  then named Jorge Bergoglio  not just for the food the parish provided but for respecting her by always calling her "Senora."

"Experiences like this teach you how important it is to welcome people delicately and not wound their dignity," Francis says.

He takes on what he calls "scholars of the law"  people who get so caught up in rigidly enforcing Church doctrine they fail to show Christian compassion and love. "I will say that there is often a kind of hypocrisy in them, a formal adherence to the law that hides very deep wounds.  These are men who live attached to the letter of the law but who neglect love; men who only know how to close doors and draw boundaries."

He even offers priests advice on how not to turn confessional booths into "torture chambers": Mainly, be good listeners and don't harshly condemn.

For those who may struggle to remain focused during Sunday Mass when a homily edges toward the esoteric  and even for non-Christians  Francis' words will prove to be a welcome antidote of blunt, self-revealing and "real world" wisdom. Sometimes it seems amazing a pope is saying such things.

He readily acknowledges his own moral frailness and there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I attitude. When he visits a prison, as he did in Philadelphia last fall, he feels he could easily be on the other side of the bars.

"I have a very special relationship with people in prisons, deprived of their freedom," Francis says. "I have always been very attached to them, precisely because of my awareness of being a sinner. Every time I go through the gates into a prison to celebrate Mass or for a visit, I always think: Why them and not me? I should be here. I deserve to be here. Their fall could have been mine."
Casey Affleck, center, and Josh Stewart, right, in The Finest Hours.

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By Cary Darling

"The Finest Hours," based on the true story of the valiant 1952 Coast Guard rescue of a sinking oil tanker off the coast of Massachusetts, splits in two much like the wounded vessel at its heart.

There's the film that's set on the sea and much of that is pretty terrific, even if it brings to mind "A Perfect Storm." And then there's film set on land, and that one runs aground.

Chris Pine is Bernie Webber, a young Coast Guardsman whose daily routine is upended when he's tasked with heading up a team to save the 30-plus crew from the Pendleton, a wreck drifting in the storm-tossed waters during a vicious winter nor'easter,

Webber and his equally young cohorts  Richard (Ben Foster), Andy (Kyle Gallner, "American Sniper") and Ervin (John Magaro, "The Big Short")  are the JV squad as the more seasoned sailors have already left to help another ship in distress. But their commanding officer (Eric Bana, whose Southern accent is nearly as much of a disaster as the Pendleton) has no choice but to send them out.

Meanwhile, aboard the Pendleton, the captain and much of the crew have been killed and now it's up to reclusive but knowledgeable chief engineer Ray Sybert (a good Casey Affleck) to take command of what's left and try to keep everyone alive until help arrives.

These scenes provide the film with its most suspenseful and rewarding moments and seem to be the ones where director Craig Gillespie ("Million Dollar Arm," "Lars and the Real Girl") shows the most inspiration.

There's one sequence where orders are being quickly relayed from one crew member to another through the bowels of the ship that is a symphony of movement and tension. The actual rescue is satisfying as the twin stories of the rescuers and the rescued make for thrilling mirrors of each other.

Yet those stories are interrupted to go back to town where Webber's headstrong fiancee Miriam (Holliday Grainger, "The Borgias") waits anxiously for him to return. This is where "The Finest Hours" bogs down as the romantic element is the film's weakest. The one upside here is Rachel Brosnahan (from the "Manhattan" TV series) as a woman whose sailor husband died in a similar storm years prior.

Back at sea, Foster, one of the best actors around today, is totally underutilized and doesn't have much to do. The focus remains on Pine, who comes across as rather stiff, especially in his scenes with Grainger before he heads out on the mission. While there may be similarities in these segments to the '50s charm of Brooklyn, there is little of the romantic electricity of that film.

Along with cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe ("Goosebumps," "Blue Jasmine"), Gillespie plunges the viewer into the heart of the storm while many of the scenes in town glow appealingly as if shot through a scrim of nostalgia and memory. Still, some of the ocean effects and CGI are not as convincing as others and the 3D doesn't add anything. The same goes for the Boston accents, which are notoriously difficult for actors to handle without lapsing into parody.

Ultimately, "The Finest Hours" doesn't sink to the bottom of the ocean, but it can't avoid its own choppy cinematic waters either.
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By Maggie Jones of the Knoxville News Sentinel

After a lot of tough love from one "American Idol" judge, Maryville native Laurel Wright advanced to the next part of the singing competition show's Hollywood Rounds.

Wright and her three group members sang "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees during Thursday's Hollywood Group Rounds, and their performance didn't go so well with judge Harry Connick Jr., who said the group should own their mistakes after some members forgot the words.

Connick Jr. also berated the group for focusing on each other and not the audience.

"This is your audience," said Connick Jr., gesturing to the crowd behind him. "Stand your ground and be a performer."

"Do you really think you deserve that title?" he added, referring to the "American Idol" logo on the floor. "You're on stage. Act like you're on stage."

Wright, 20, along with Nashville's Marshall Cunningham, made it to the next round. The other two group members were sent home.

Hollywood Week began this week on Wednesday with 190 contestants who had made it through earlier regional auditions. When Thursday's Group Rounds began, there were 108 who remained. Many of those were eliminated Thursday when members of several groups were either sent packing or allowed to advance to the next round.

"American Idol's" Hollywood Rounds will continue at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Fox.
MAEERS MIT Institute of Design Admission Test : DAT 2022 https://career.webindia123.com/career/dates_and_events/entrance/fashion/maeers-mit-institute-of-design-mitid-dat.htm Details of MAEERS MIT Institute of Design Admission Test : DAT 2022 2021-11-1 2022-2-28 https://career.webindia123.com/career/images/exams.png India India MAEERS MIT Institute of Design Admission Test : DAT 2022 Design

MAEERS MIT Institute of Design : Design Admission Test 2022

MAEERS MIT Institute of Design Admission Test : DAT 2022 Category : Design Admissions 2022 Published : On November 1, 2021 By Webindia123 Editor

Important Dates

Last date for submission of application form 28th February 2022 Design Aptitude Test (DAT) 3rd April 2022 Result of DAT 20th April 2022 B. Des Studio Test & Interview 3rd to 12th May 2022 B. Des Final list 15th May 2022 M. Des Studio Test & Interview 17th to 24th May 2022 M. Des Final list 25th May 2022 M.Des Management Studio Test & Interview 17th to 24th May 2022 M.Des Management Final List 25th May 2022

Admissions are open for the academic year 2022-24 at MAEERS MIT Institute of Design for its Graduate and Post Graduate Diploma Programs.

Programmes Offered:

Industrial Design

Product Design

Transportation Design

Interior Space & Equipment Design

Retail Design

User Experience Design

Communication Design

Graphic Design

Animation Film Design

Film & Video Design

Immersive Media Design

Transcultural Design (only for M.Des)

Fashion Design

B.Des Fashion Design

B.Des Fashion Communication

Collaborative Programmes

Bachelors Programmes (2+2 years)

BA (Hons) Design for Industry (In collaboration with Northumbria University UK)

BA (Hons) 3D Design (In collaboration with Northumbria University UK)

BA (Hons) Graphic Design (In collaboration with Northumbria University UK)

BA (Hons) Animation (In collaboration with Northumbria University UK)

BA (Hons) Graphic Design ( In collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

BSc (Hons) Product Design and Technology ( In collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

BSc (Hons) Design Engineering ( In collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Transcultural Design

M.Des Transcultural Design

Management Design

Design Management

Fashion Management & Marketing

Intake

B. Des Programme: 200 seats

M. Des Programme: 120 seats3.

B. Des Fashion programmes: 60 seats

M.Des Fashion Management & Marketing : 15 seats

Eligibility :

B. Des Programme

10+2 from any stream.

(HSC, CBSE, ICSE, IB).

M. Des Programme

Graduate in any Disciplines 10+2+3 (minimum).

Registration for DAT (Design Aptitude Test)

Step 1: Register for DAT (www.dat.net.in) Step 2: An automated verification link will be sent to your registered email ID. Activate your account by clicking the link. Step 3 : Provide the required details in the application form. Step 4: Upload the required documents accept the declaration and submit the online application form. Step 5: Proceed to payment option and pay Rs. 3000 for Indian applicants and and Rs. 4500 for NRI, PIO, CIO & Foreign Nationals

Payment Mode

- Online Payment through Net Banking / Credit Card / Debit Card

- Demand Draft in favour of MIT ADT University-MIT Institute of Design, Payable at Pune Step 6: On scrutiny, verification and acceptance of application form, Admit card will be generated and sent to candidates registered email id.

Candidates can also download the Admit Card by login to his/her profile on DAT portal.

Note

Applications are invited through online mode only

The Design Aptitude Test (DAT) is conducted jointly by MIT Institute of Design Pune & Avantika University Ujjain.

The incomplete application forms / not satisfying eligibility criteria will be rejected. The Design Aptitude Test (DAT) fees (Rs. 3,000/) for rejected applications will not be refunded. No official communication will be made regarding rejected application forms.

Admission is on the basis of MITID method of selection, which extends beyond the students previous academic qualifications. The MITID Admission Committee systematically seeks evidence of the perception, attitude, aptitude, achievement and motivation essential for a challenging and satisfying design career. The objective of the tests and the interviews is to ascertain the above qualities.

The admission process is in two phases:

Phase - 1: DAT (Design Aptitude Test) conducted at various centres across the country.

MITID reserves its right to change or cancel any of these centres.

Based on scores obtained from DAT, shortlisted candidates will be called for second phase.

Phase - 2: Studio Test and Personal Interview at MITID campus in Pune.

The second phase of the admission procedure will consist of studio tests followed by personal interviews at Institute in Pune.

The list of shortlisted candidates for the Second Phase will be announced on MITID website.

No separate call letters will be sent to the shortlisted candidates. All those candidates called for the second phase are required to attend the studio tests and interview, which completes the process of selection. The Admission Committee decides the procedures, grades and weightage every year.

The norms for the selection are the sole prerogative of the Admission Committee and the decision of the Admission Committee and the Management in any of the matters concerning the admission process and selection will be final. Any direct or indirect attempt to influence the admission committee or its members, academic office bearers or management will lead to the automatic disqualification of the candidate(s).

More details are available on the institute website

Contact Details Address : Admission Cell:

MAEERs MIT Institute of Design

Rajbaug, Loni Kalbhor, Next to Hadapsar, Pune-412201 Phone : +91-20-30693695,696 Fax : - Mobile : +919763715974 E-mail : Contact I Website : www.mitid.edu.in

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A bald eagle and its nest pictured in April 2011 on Department of Energys Oak Ridge Reservation. (JASON RICHARDS/ORNL)

The bald eagle, the national bird of the United States and a magnificent bird of prey that for decades held a sacred spot on the endangered species list (it was taken off the list in 2007), has an active presence on the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Reservation.

That's based on documentation by scientists in the past few years and a sighting as recent as a week ago.

Kelly Roy, an environmental scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and wildlife management coordinator for the reservation, said he spotted a bald eagle near White Oak Lake last week.

Roy noted that scientists had confirmed two eagle nests in recent years on the 33,500-acre government reservation. One was discovered in 2011 at Poplar Creek to the west of the East Tennessee Technology Park and another in 2013 along Melton Hill Lake about four miles downstream of Clark Center Park. He didn't want to be too specific for fear of public interest creating a disturbance.

Eaglets were successfully fledged from both nests, according to Roy, but he said eagles apparently did not occupy the nest near ETTP in 2015. He also said there had been no recent confirmation of eagles at the Melton Hill nest, but he said an attempt to validate its status will likely be made this summer.

Bald eagles actually have a pretty long history at the government reservation in East Tennessee, which was originally established for work on the World War II Manhattan Project.

Roy said Louis A. Krumholz recorded the presence of bald eagles in the early 1950s as part of ecological studies of the White Oak Creek watershed.

However, there was a long period without any documentation in Oak Ridge, perhaps until the 1990s. The bald eagle population declined across the nation because of the use of the pesticide DDT, and it took a long time  with the help of legislative protections  to bring the numbers back up.

"We had a really long lapse in the record until about 1994," Roy said this week. "For about 30 years, there were very, very few sightings."

Roy said the bald eagles are believed to be year-round residents on the Oak Ridge Reservation, but added, "They can be difficult to find September through November."

He said at least six eaglets successfully fledged from the two Oak Ridge nests between 2011 and 2014.

Meanwhile, on a related front, Roy said the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has tagged golden eagles  outfitting them with transmitters  and tracked them to Cumberland, Anderson and Morgan Counties. "But to our knowledge they have not occurred on the (Oak Ridge Reservation)," he said.

"In conjunction with TWRA, we may establish a golden eagle bait station (on the Oak Ridge Reservation) later this year," he said.

Senior Writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
SHARE John Hill (KNOX COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE)

By News Sentinel Staff

KNOXVILLE  A dispute over pumping gas has ended in one man stabbed and another in jail.

John Hill, 66, of Knoxville, is accused of stabbing Jason Horner, 41, of Maryville, after a physical altercation on how long Horner was taking to pump gas, according to the Knoxville Police Department.

The incident began, according to KPD, when Horner was pumping gas at the Pilot, 2218 Cumberland Ave., shortly before 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Horner told police that Hill accused him of taking too long, and they got into an argument. The spat escalated into a fight, Horner said, and then Hill stabbed him in the neck and stomach with a pocket knife.

Horner was taken to the Unviversity of Tennessee Medical Center for treatment.

Hill was arrested and charged with one count of aggravated assault. He is being on held on a $30,000 bond at a Knox County jail.
Campbell County General Sessions Judge Amanda Sammons (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

JACKSBORO, Tenn.  Without the knowledge of police, prosecutors or the defendant, a Campbell County judge boosted a mother of three's charge from a low-level felony for allegedly failing to buckle up her children to one of the toughest child abuse charges on Tennessee's books, records obtained by the News Sentinel show.

Kristi Leigh Smith, 26, sat in jail two days, first under no bond, then under a $250,000 bond  unaware of any change to the charge she faced or why her bail was so high. Campbell County General Sessions Judge Amanda Sammons then altered a record of the increase in Smith's charge by marking through it with a pen, those records show.

Smith still had no idea Thursday of the judge's actions when she showed up for her first court appearance with no attorney. She did not have a lawyer and was puzzled when a reporter showed her the documents. Attorney Kristi Anderson later stepped in to represent Smith and asked for a delay to prepare a motion to ask Sammons to step down from the case. A Feb. 25 hearing is now set.

Caryville Assistant Police Chief Joseph Hopson stopped Smith's car Jan. 22 on U.S. Highway 25W when he said in a warrant that he saw "a small child unrestrained in the back seat." Hopson alleged Smith's other two children also were not belted in, with one sitting on a passenger's lap. He charged Smith with child neglect  a class E felony, the lowest level felony charge available under Tennessee law. A conviction carries a penalty range of one to two years.

Smith spent the rest of that night in jail with no bond set on the child neglect charge, records show. The following day, according to Campbell County jail records, Sammons phoned the jail and ordered the charge "changed to aggravated child abuse and neglect" and bond set at $250,000. That charge is a class B felony, known as "Haley's Law"  so named in honor of a horrific abuse case in Campbell County several years ago.

The new charge requires a showing of "serious bodily injury," use of a deadly weapon or an "act of abuse, neglect or endangerment (that) was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, or involved the infliction of torture." A conviction carries a penalty range of 15 to 25 years in prison.

Smith said she was informed nearly 24 hours after her arrest via a loudspeaker in the jail that her bond was now set at $250,000. No one told her about the change in her charge.

"I was like what? $250,000?" she said. "I thought they were messing with me."

Two hours later, records show, Sammons again phoned the jail and "stated that she mistook this case for another case and advised that the bond be changed to $10,000." Smith remained unaware of that change until she called her father later that evening. She still could not afford to post the amount.

Smith spent another 24 hours in jail, according to the records, before Sammons appeared to arraign her. Jail records show Sammons then dropped the bond to $500, scribbled through the word "aggravated" but failed to change the Tennessee code citation for aggravated child abuse, and initialed the changes.

"She said I could get out (of jail) for $87.50," Smith said.

Her father paid that tab, and Smith is now free awaiting her next hearing.

A judicial magistrate authorized the original charge of child neglect based on Hopson's account. Magistrates do not hear from defendants and base their charging decisions solely on the legal standard of probable cause.

A General Sessions Court judge is authorized under the law to change a charge only after hearing evidence from both sides in a case and making a determination  in open court and on the record  that the evidence presented supports a change in the charge. Sessions court judges have no authority to determine guilt in felony cases, only misdemeanors.

Sammons has come under fire for various judicial actions, including forcing defendants to pay for court-appointed attorneys whose services they did not use, placing children in the custody of the state Department of Children's Services without any request by the agency to do so and ordering court staff to bar the public from entering her courtroom once she begins court.

Criminal Court Judge Shayne Sexton recently struck down as legally flawed her ruling the poor whose families hire attorneys still must pay a fee for taxpayer-funded legal services. Circuit Judge John McAfee has overturned dozens of her decisions in juvenile matters, over which she also presides.

Sammons has continued to insist she, not Sexton, is correct and this week filed court action challenging McAfee's authority to overturn her Juvenile Court cases.

Related:

Campbell County judges fee order struck down

Campbell County judge charging fee to the poor for legal services they didn't receive

Campbell County judge becomes defendant for failing to sign order
SHARE Rick James Brock (TBI)

By News Sentinel Staff

A Claiborne County fugitive wanted on charges of child rape has been captured by the U.S. Marshals Service in Kentucky, authorities said.

Acting on a tip, marshals located Rick James Brock, 51, of New Tazewell, Tenn., on Thursday at his brother's residence in London, Ky., according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Brock was added to the Tennessee Top 10 Most Wanted list Jan. 4. He faces four counts of rape of a child and four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm.

His brother also is expected to be charged with harboring a fugitive.

More details as they develop online and in Friday's News Sentinel.
A multi-vehicle crash snarls traffic on Interstate 40 East near the Alcoa Highway exit on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. (TDOT)

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By News Sentinel Staff

KNOXVILLE  A driver who slowed on Interstate 40 East near downtown Friday morning, causing a five-vehicle chain collision, has been charged with multiple violations.

The accident near the Alcoa Highway exit closed three lanes of the interstate and snarled traffic for about 45 minutes after the 11:37 a.m. accident.

Jose Alvarengo Nunes, 27, of Honduras, was charged with impeding the flow of traffic, no driver's license and failure to provide proof of insurance, according to Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk.

Nunes, who was driving a 2008 Infinity G37, was eastbound near the center lane when he suddenly slowed and came to a near stop, according to witness statements and KPD's investigation.

The first vehicle behind him swerved into another lane to avoid hitting the Infinity, but the second car in line was unable to avoid the collision, according to DeBusk.

As a result of the contact, three other vehicles were caught up in the crash.

Two drivers were taken to the University of Tennessee Medical with minor injuries.
The main portal at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By Frank Munger of the Knoxville News Sentinel

OAK RIDGE  The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a notice of violation to the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant for shipping Canadian-origin enriched uranium to Jamaica for use in a reactor there.

According to the notice, Y-12 is not allowed to export non-U.S. nuclear materials unless specifically requested in advance and authorized by the NRC. In this case, Y-12 apparently did not have the advance approval of the NRC or permission from the government of Canada.

Asked for a response, Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Production Office at Y-12, said Thursday, "We do not have any comment at this time."

Y-12 is required to prepare a response to the NRC.

The low-enriched uranium was shipped to Jamaica last September for use as fuel in the SLOWPOKE, or Safe Low-Power Kritical Experiment, research reactor. It was part of a celebrated effort to eliminate the use of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, at the reactor and reduce concerns about materials being diverted for use in nuclear weapons.

In a Sept. 22 news release, the NNSA hailed the project for "making the Caribbean region completely free of HEU."

The reactor at the University of the West Indies is used for various experiments, including neutron-activation analysis that bombards materials with neutrons to assess their chemical makeup.

The Obama administration has been promoting reactor conversions around the globe, typically providing new fuels for research reactors that contain less than 20 percent U-235  the cut-off point for weapons-making capability.

NRC records, including the original export license application, indicate Y-12's shipment to Jamaica contained about 6.62 kilograms of uranium, with an enrichment level of 19.95 percent. The enrichment level is the amount of fissionable U-235 in the uranium fuel.

Nick Hilton, chief of the NRC's Enforcement Branch, notified the NNSA's Oak Ridge office in a Jan. 14 letter to Becky Eddy, a federal official at Y-12.

"Based on its review, the NRC has determined that a Severity Level IV violation of NRC requirements occurred," Hilton wrote.

Level IV is a low-level citation, and there was no indication Y-12 will be fined or otherwise penalized.

Earlier reports indicated new fuel for SLOWPOKE would be made in Canada using U.S. uranium. But the fuel apparently included uranium from the U.S. and Canada.
Student Tsion Haileselassie dances during Ronda Mostella's music class in the community school program at Pond Gap Elementary School on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The program hosted a group of educators from Memphis hoping to learn about the community school concept. (ADAM LAU/NEWS SENTINEL)

By MJ Slaby of the Knoxville News Sentinel

As the visitors looked around Pond Gap Elementary's community school program Thursday, they said it was easy to draw parallels with their schools on the other side of the state.

"It looks like it's working," said Daphne Warren, who teaches German at White Station High School in Memphis. "It's a no-brainer."

The two-day visit from about 15 Memphis educators started as an idea from a University of Tennessee student and is the first step to a statewide network of community schools.

There are 12 community schools in Knox County  two supported by UT and the others supported by the Great Schools Partnership. The concept allows schools to become social hubs in the evenings and the summer as well as on weekends. Programming varies from school to school but includes after-school activities and snacks, health clinics and more.

Feroza Freeland, a UT sophomore, started volunteering at Pond Gap's community school last spring through a service-learning class taught by Bob Kronick, a professor of educational psychology and counseling and the director of university-assisted community schools.

Freeland thought the program could be adapted to her hometown of Memphis.

"The whole time, I was thinking we need to do this in Memphis," she said. "This is amazing."

She said she liked the holistic approach and posed the idea of creating the schools in Memphis to Kronick, who said to try it.

In the fall, they met with a group of educators in Memphis. One result of that meeting was the visit to Knoxville, Freeland said.

Warren and Susan Satar, who also teaches at White Station, said it was easy to see a version for high schools, where students also need after-school activities.

On Thursday, the Memphis educators toured Pond Gap. Today they'll meet in a conference to discuss implementation and hear from those who work at the school, including UT students.

"This program runs on students," Kronick said, noting UT students benefit, as does the community. "We make better citizens."

Kronick said various scholars and educators have visited the community schools, but it has yet to be implemented in the same way elsewhere. He said he's optimistic the program can take root in Memphis, especially if it starts small.

"My hidden dream is to have a network," he said.

He believes community schools could succeed across the state in cities as well as rural areas.

Satar and Warren said they plan to take what they learned during the visit back to Memphis and gain more support from leaders to make it a reality.

"This model can be so easily replicated if the right people are on the team," Satar said.
Greg Johnson, KNS columnist.

Greg Johnson Columnist SHARE A recent survey of 600 African American Tennessee voters by the Black Alliance for Educational Options showed 79 percent support parental choice and 64 percent approved of school vouchers. The Tennessee Legislature is considering a voucher bill. (Charts Source: Black Alliance for Educational Options) A recent survey of 600 African American Tennessee voters by the Black Alliance for Educational Options showed 79 percent support parental choice and 64 percent approved of school vouchers. The Tennessee Legislature is considering a voucher bill. (Charts Source: Black Alliance for Educational Options)

Frustration was palpable at the "Stop the Violence" forum held this week in the aftermath of the gang-related shooting death of 15-year-old Fulton High School sophomore Zaevion Dobson. Knoxville's community of color collectively cried for hope, for opportunity, for change. Tennessee's Legislature took an important step toward all three during this National School Choice Week.

Knoxville Republican state Rep. Bill Dunn's Tennessee Choice and Opportunity Scholarship Act passed in the Finance, Ways and Means Committee 11-10, with Knoxville Democratic state Rep. Joe Armstrong voting against opportunity. In essence, Armstrong voted to condemn kids to failing schools in his district.

Green Magnet Math and Science Academy, Lonsdale Elementary School, Sarah Moore Greene Magnet Technology Academy and Vine Middle/Magnet School are "priority schools," according to the Tennessee Department of Education. Priority schools score in the bottom 5 percent of Tennessee schools in performance. Lonsdale has shown some improvement, but true change seems so far off.

Those schools in Knox on the priority schools list are Title I schools, with high concentrations of black students. Dunn's bill is backed by state Rep. John DeBerry Jr., a black Memphis Democrat. Other blacks also support school choice in Tennessee.

The Black Alliance for Educational Options, a pro-voucher advocacy group, surveyed 600 black voters in each state in Alabama, Louisiana, New Jersey and Tennessee. More than 70 percent support school choice in general. More than 60 percent in each state support vouchers/scholarships specifically. In Tennessee, 64 percent want vouchers, only 21 percent were opposed and 15 percent were undecided.

"When we see reading and math scores decline in both 4th and 8th grades in the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), we know that change is needed," BAEO Director of Policy and Research Tiffany Forrester said in a statement. "And when we see 70 percent support for more parent choice options such (as) high-quality traditional public, public charter and scholarship programs, it's a strong indicator that black voters know what they want for their children and are engaged in the education reform process."

Tragically, Armstrong voted for the status quo of failure, consigning kids to schools that simply are not working.

Even more tragically, we've been having this debate about educational opportunity and school choice for decades, with the folks like Armstrong defending institutions at the expense of individuals full of potential. Dunn fights for change.



"These kids are failing," Dunn said on WBIR-TV, Channel 10. "They're on a path to failure, and the purpose of vouchers is to give each child and parent an option to find another path that leads to success."

Dunn's bill empowers kids of all colors. "If a child is considered 'at risk,' you know, in poverty, then they would be eligible to get a voucher so that they could go to another school," he said.

Kids deserve hope. They need change. Dunn's bill delivers.
Mark Harmon, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist.

U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., really needs a cookie. The Knoxville Republican's constituent newsletter this month contained two silly segments about the University of Tennessee and Christmas.

So much bloviating has happened on this matter that it generated a Twitter response, #calmdownhaveacookie. Duncan may need a plateful of warm cookies because his newsletter exclaimed, "[T]he University of Tennessee put out a directive that there should be no holiday activity on campus 'disguised as a Christmas party' and no religious observance in any holiday events."

Duncan suggested a double standard, implying greater sensitivity to Hanukkah, Ramadan or Kwanzaa celebrations. He then exploded, "To say that Christians should not have any gatherings 'disguised as Christmas parties' or do anything with any suggestion of Christ in Christmas or of religious significance has gone too far."

That's quite an extrapolation from one Web posting with party suggestions. The Duncan lie has been followed by loud, false grumblings coming from some state legislators. One very effective reply came from Tyson House, the Episcopal/Lutheran campus ministry.

One of many Christian organizations on campus, Tyson House invited the entire Tennessee state legislative delegation to its advent worship and campus Christmas caroling. None of them showed.

"We worship freely and openly every Sunday evening of the semester, " Misty Anderson, a UT English professor, noted in a column in early December on Huffington Post, "We wanted them to see for themselves that Christmas is just fine at UT and to allay some of their fears. Unfortunately, none of the legislators came. We know they are busy and we welcome any of them to join us any time."

Anderson's column also pointed out that during December UT was performing two Christmas plays, offered UT-themed Christmas ornaments and had Christmas parties at many of the Greek-letter organizations. Strings of lights made the shape of Christmas trees on the tops of buildings. Many offices  including those of the chancellor and the Office for Diversity and Inclusion  had Christmas trees.

Lack of substance, of course, has little to do with how this matter proceeds, as was made clear in a recent legislative luncheon. State Sen. Richard Briggs candidly commented that controversial policies such as Insure Tennessee likely would not come up because 2016 is an election year. Few at the forum supported Insure Tennessee and even fewer saw it getting a vote. Support was palpable, however, for exploiting hot-button issues.

State Rep. Martin Daniel expressed dismay at UT's Diversity Office drifting into gay, lesbian and transgendered concerns, prompting some in the crowd to murmur that those are indeed diversity matters. Daniel and state Rep. Bill Dunn pondered aloud their suspicions of the salaries and tasks associated with a diversity office. State Rep. Eddie Smith already had penned a letter seeking a special legislative committee on this subject.

The dozen legislative luncheon participants included only one African-American and only one woman. Neither they nor any of the 10 white male Republicans took any notice of the obvious irony.

The forum also offered a clue to Duncan's newsletter. The congressman faced a primary challenge in the last election; perhaps he's securing his right flank by tossing around Fox News memes. However, let's not be so cynical. Next time you see him, offer him a cookie. Maybe he'll snap out of it.
SHARE

Having uniformed officers ride Knox County school buses as part of an improved safety program is a good idea, not only in light of the horrific fatal crash over a year ago but also to reassure students and their parents.

The riding officers are part of the response to community questions about safety on the county's school buses following news stories about the wreck on Dec. 2, 2014, that killed two students from Sunnyview Primary School and a teacher's aide. There cannot be too much reassurance about school bus safety.

A Knoxville Police Department investigation into the crash blamed Knox County school bus driver James Davenport for sending and receiving multiple text messages while in communication with a prostitute. Davenport, who died last June, was driving a crowded bus when the vehicle crossed a concrete median and struck another school bus driven by Joe Gallman, who was transporting 57 Sunnyview students. A News Sentinel investigation revealed that Gallman was not licensed to operate a bus by himself. However, authorities did not place any blame for the crash on him.

Officers riding buses periodically will be one of four safety strategies introduced at the beginning of the school year. The others include additional cameras on each bus; additional training for bus drivers, especially on the subject of distracted driving; and a review of the district's transportation department by an independent consultant.

Russ Oaks, the school district's chief operating officer, said putting the officers on the buses is "the point at which we get to see if everything else we are doing is taking effect and to be looking at challenges that the drivers face."

Since so much about school bus safety depends on the knowledge, skills and experience of the drivers, the school system worked with KPD, the Knox County Sheriff's Office and a community volunteer who has a background in transportation safety.

Five school security officers who will begin the safety ride check went through extensive training that included getting a commercial driver's license and a school bus endorsement. Oaks said the list of checks is exhaustive and not all will be used every day, but the list involves items that anyone operating a school bus should know "and really should be second nature to them."

On the subject of drivers, the News Sentinel's public records request after the crash to look at the eligibility of the drivers and complaints against them is still pending. Schools spokeswoman Melissa Tindell said earlier this month that the files are numerous, and it would be several months before they are ready for review. In the interest of reassuring parents that their children are safe on school buses, releasing the files should receive a greater priority.

Meanwhile, the new normal will be uniformed officers riding school buses, and parents and students should not be surprised at this. The program can provide a positive check for the drivers, many of whom are dedicated and conscientious about their work. The key is safety. Parents, teachers, students and all residents have to know that safety is the highest priority.
SHARE

Where are the GOP environmentalists? The Clean Water Act of 1972 was passed in response to Ohio's Cuyahoga River fires. This river caught fire no less than 13 times from 1868 to 1969 because of indiscriminate dumping of chemical and biologic wastes. The nation's declining water quality became front-page news. Tennessee was represented by U.S. Sens. Howard Baker Jr. and Bill Brock. Tennessee's 1st, 2nd and 3rd Districts were represented by U.S. Reps. Jimmy Quillen, John Duncan Sr. and Lamar Baker. Richard Nixon was president. Republicans all, with the fortitude to do what was right for the environment and our citizens.

The votes of U.S. Reps. Phil Roe, John J. Duncan Jr., Chuck Fleischmann and Scott DesJarlais on House Resolution 1644 and Senate Joint Resolution 22 and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker's vote on the S.J. Res. 22 are very disappointing. They appear to be votes of pandering, posturing and political obstinacy rather than a concern for what is prudent to meet our expectation of a clean and safe water supply. It appears the state has abdicated its responsibility of regulation and enforcement by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation as evidenced by the lack of enforcement action against hog farming state Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was forced to act after our state agency failed to regulate and prosecute Holt for dumping an estimated 860,000 gallons of hog fecal material and improper disposal of dead hogs. The EPA has fined Holt, but he refuses to pay, claiming the EPA does not have the authority. Holt has asked Gov. Bill Haslam to file suit against the EPA through the office of the Tennessee Attorney General.

We rely on government to keep us safe. We expect and deserve better from our elected officials. Where are the environmental sanity and the courage to act that Baker et al. demonstrated?

Tim Curbow, Friendsville
The Korean cosmetic industry has grown fast thanks to eager Chinese consumers, but the K-beauty boom has given rise to another booming business in the key market: counterfeits.



Over the past years, Korean cosmetics have become frequent and common targets in the black market as they have gained popularity among fans of Korean dramas and celebrities.



China is by far the largest source of phony cosmetics bearing Korean brand names, though it is nearly impossible to pin down the scale of the problem due to the massive number of goods and the difficulty in detection and authentication.



Counterfeit goods are distributed through various channels, including flea markets, kiosk malls or vendors in China, but online market places have extended their reach beyond its borders.



"Major brands are concerned about knockoffs because they hurt their image and profits, but trade of counterfeit goods remains vibrant despite crackdowns on the practice," said Chung Whan-woo, a China market researcher at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), said.



Calls for the ramping up anti-counterfeit efforts have grown as Korean companies are rapidly expanding their market presence in China for sources of new growth beyond the saturated domestic market.



South Korea's cosmetics exports to China doubled on-year to US$1.08 billion in 2015, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of total global sales, according to the Korea International Trade Association. South Korea is the second-largest cosmetics exporter to China following France.



The problem is especially prevalent in online market places, leaving not only Korean companies and other foreign brands in a losing battle to keep copies of their products off the thriving market.



At Taobao, China's major online shopping place that allows anyone with an ID to set up a shop, several AmorePacific Co.'s cushion pacts, its best-selling item, were listed for lower than the sales price at official stores.



Prices of the Guerisson 9 Complex Cream, a horse oil moisturizing cream, by Korean brand Claire's also varied, with some being sold at half the official price.

Although some of the items were clearly knock-offs, shops were also selling high-quality-looking goods as genuine products.



Several retailers stressed their products are "100 percent authentic," presenting receipts from Korean stores and duty-free stores. Some even share information on how to tell authentic products from fake ones.



In response to the widespread practice, major brands and authorities have sought ways to better trace fake goods produced and distributed at home and abroad.

AmorePacific, South Korea's No. 1 cosmetics maker, has operated an anti-counterfeit team under the Chinese branch to monitor bogus cosmetics and crack down on knockoff stores.



Its investigators buy products sold at cheaper-than-market prices online to gather evidence and track the distribution routes, while visiting knockoff stores bearing its brand names.



Once investigators discover laboratories for fake goods, they contact Chinese law enforcement authorities to raid the factories to show that they are serious about the matter.



In September, AmorePacific raided a factory in Guangzhou to confiscate 47,000 pieces of fake goods and suspended the operation of unauthorized Sulhwasoo, Hera and Laneige stores. The Hera brand had not even officially launched in China.



On Thursday, AmorePacific and Chinese e-commerce Alibaba signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate in monitoring fake cosmetics and suspend their operations.



"Through this MOU, the two companies will step up efforts to crack down on confiscated cosmetics sold online," Kwon Su-jung, intellectual property counsel at AmorePacific, said. "We will take active steps to support healthy growth of the Chinese e-commerce market and protect customers' rights."



Despite all these efforts, brands say it is nearly impossible to stop all bogus products because the counterfeit business is so lucrative to just let it go.



"When authorities ramp up anti-piracy efforts, the counterfeiters stop doing this for a while. But a few months later, they resurface and open up another store," Choi Cheol-seung, an official at the Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), said.



"Although the Chinese government has expressed willingness to curb counterfeit goods, it is nearly impossible to crack down on all products. Even if authorities crack down on some factories and seize items, it's just the tip of an iceberg."



Cosmetic brands worry that replicas not only hurt their image but also pose health risks to consumers as they are directly applied onto their faces, lips and eyes.



"Cosmetic companies go through tough safety tests, but counterfeiters make products in poor condition, mostly imitating designs and formulas," Hong Soo-ji, a public relations official at Tonymoly, said. Tonymoly's fruit-shaped creams have spawned several replicas in China.



While fake goods may be cheaper than the original products, costs of potential health risks may be much bigger than bargain hunters may think.



Last year, British police warned that counterfeit versions of leading brands such as MAC and Benefit have been found with dangerous levels of lead, mercury and even cyanide. Thailand's Food and Drug Administration also issued a warning on fake Korean cosmetics loaded with harmful chemical ingredients.



In response to growing concerns, Korean authorities have also stepped up efforts to trace bogus cosmetics and protect the copyrights of Korean brands.



They say such moves have become more important as a free trade agreement with China has taken into effect last month to facilitate trade between the two nations.



"As more fake cosmetics are sold in the global market under Korean brand names, we have stepped up cooperation with Chinese officials to share cases and help them screen out fake goods," Lee Hyo-jin, an official at Korea Customs Office, said.



Last month, customs office chiefs in South Korea, China and Japan held a tripartite meeting to discuss ways to cooperate intellectual property rights protection and law enforcement at their respective immigration check points.



The KIPO also vowed to help Korean companies to register their products in Chinese customs office to encourage law enforcement officials to crack down on fake items.



The office has established 11 intellectual property monitoring desks in six nations, including China, the United States, Germany and Japan. It plans to open another in Xian to beef up monitoring in inner mainland Chinese cities.



"Having imitated products can be seen as evidence that Korean cosmetics are making names for themselves in the beauty industry, but the problem should be kept under control to a certain level for consumers and the national economy," KIPO official Choi said. (Yonhap)




By Choi Sung-jin

The biggest beneficiaries of cigarette price hikes were foreign tobacco companies, officials said Friday.

Despite the price increase, cigarette imports grew last year, in part because the anti-smoking sentiment did not last long and because some foreign makers conducted low-priced marketing successfully, they said.

According to the Korea Customs Service, cigarette imports last year soared 117.3 percent from 2014 to about 41.7 billion won ($34.56 million). Cigarette imports peaked at $38.7 million in 2011 but fell to $15.9 million in 2014. "In the wake of the tobacco tax increase in the second half of 2014, cigarette imports dropped but turned around to an increase in 2015 as the anti-smoking trend eased," a customs officer said.

The foreign firms' creative marketing also contributed to the growth in imports, selling a 14-cigarette pack at 2,500 won, compared with 4,500 won for a 20-cigarette pack, they said. Imports of the small-pack cigarettes by the five largest foreign tobacco companies rocketed from $5.03 million in 2014 to $24.93 million in 2015. Imports of 20-cigarette packs fell 6.2 percent, from $7.37 million to $6.91 million, over the period.

Electronic cigarette imports grew 33.3 percent to $13.52 million last year, notably slowing from increase rates of 127.9 percent in 2013 and 342 percent in 2014.

"Regular cigarettes and e-cigarettes are substitutes for each other," the customs officer said. "As the import of regular cigarettes surged last year, the growth of e-cigarette imports relatively slowed."
By Kim Jae-won

U.S. private equity fund KKR and local retail giants Shinsegae and GS Retail have shown interest in buying Kim's Club, aiming to take over its lucrative outlet building in southern Seoul, company officials and sources said Friday.

Kim's Club, a retail affiliate of E-Land Group, owns a NewCore Outlet store in Gangnam whose market value is about 500 billion won ($413.8 million). The store draws tens of thousands of shoppers everyday thanks to its location close to Gangnam Express Bus Terminal. Subway Lines No. 3, No. 7 and No. 9 are also easy to access from the store.

Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin posted a photo of Kim's Club Market in Gangnam last week with the comment "I'm spying" on his Instagram page. Market watchers said that he was showing his interest in acquiring Kim's Club with the posting, though Shinsegae denied it.

KKR eyes the supermarket chain to create synergy with Ticket Monster, a local social commerce in which the fund owns a key stake, observers said. KKR lost a bid to buy Home plus, the nation's second-largest discount chain, from U.K. retail giant Tesco last year. Local private equity fund MBK Partners bought 100 percent stake in Homeplus for 7.2 trillion won, the largest acquisition deal ever in Korea.

GS Retail, which runs convenience store chain GS25 and GS Supermarket, also seeks to expand its supermarket unit with the acquisition, market watchers said.

E-Land is seeking to sell the retail unit due to a liquidity crisis. The fashion and retail conglomerate is facing financial problems due to aggressive mergers and acquisitions at home and abroad over the last few years. Credit ratings agencies downgraded the group, citing its high loans to capital ratio.

E-Land has grown in to a mid-sized business conglomerate from a small clothing shop in the neighborhood of Ewha Woman's University in western Seoul thanks to its good quality clothes sold for cheap prices.
By Kim Jae-kyoung

SINGAPORE  A Singapore-registered shipping company has been fined a total of $130,000 for wiring money used to facilitate a shipment of arms from Cuba to North Korea in 2013.

At the State Courts, Friday, District Judge Jasvender Kaur ruled that Chinpo Shipping must pay $56,300 for supporting a shipment of arms-related materials bound for North Korea, which could have been used to contribute to the isolated state's nuclear program.

The prosecution there sought a maximum fine of $70,400.

This is the first-ever case in which a Singaporean firm has been fined for supporting North Korea's arms shipments. Singapore is one of the biggest trading partners for North Korea in Southeast Asia.

The court found that Chinpo, without conducting due diligence, transferred $72,016 to Panama shipping agent C.B. Fenton in July 2013 on behalf of the North Korean entity Ocean Maritime Management (OMM) for the vessel Chong Chon Gang carrying weapons from Cuba to North Korea.

In delivering the sentence, the judge said that the fine had to play a role in restraining any violation of UN sanctions. "It conducted no due diligence. Such irresponsible actions must be deterred," she said.

The weapons included two MiG-21 jet fighters, anti-tank rockets and surface-to-air missile systems, all of which were hidden in the cargo hold under 10,500 tons of sugar.

This was in breach of UN sanctions that restrict trading arms with North Korea because of its nuclear programs.

The judge also ordered the Singapore-based firm to pay the maximum fine of $70,400 for conducting a remittance business without a license

Without a valid license, Chinpo performed a total of 605 remittances totaling more than $40 million between Apr. 2, 2009 and July 3, 2013 on behalf of North Korean entities, which were barred from getting access to the banking system due to UN sanctions.

Chinpo must pay the fine by Feb. 12.
By Yoon Ja-young





Kim Kyung-hee

Those who have been hiding their income or wealth overseas had better think again, as Korea will soon be exchanging financial information with multiple countries, including tax havens. They are advised to voluntarily report it to the government before the end of March to be given a grace period, said Kim Kyung-hee, who is heading the Secretariat of Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiatives at the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

"Back in 2008, the United States took issue with UBS in Switzerland, where U.S. citizens were hiding their accounts. It established the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), according to which financial institutions overseas had to provide the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with information on accounts of U.S. citizens. Other developed economies, which were troubled by tax evaders, also found the measure useful, and it led to the signing of the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (MCAA)," Kim explained.

Korea joined MCAA as well as signing FATCA with the United States. From September, Korea will be exchanging financial information with the United States, while MCAA will take effect next year.

"Previously, the information on accounts was exchanged on request, but now it will be an automatic exchange. From 2017, even countries known as tax havens such as Lichtenstein will be subject to change. There will be nowhere to hide accounts," she said.

Kim is the first female to be a senior director at the finance ministry, known as a male-dominating elitist group. Kim said she wanted to change society.

"Ever since I was a teenager, I was wondering why Korea should be suffering a chronic deficit in its trade with Japan. I came to be interested in economics, and looked for a job where I could make a change. That's why I chose the finance ministry," she said.

At the ministry, she has been building expertise in tax policies. Kim stressed that all Korean residents are supposed to file their worldwide income to the Korean tax authority. For instance, exporters who got money from their business partners overseas should bring the money to Korea. However, they sometimes leave it there and do not report it. That is a violation of the foreign exchange transactions act and the tax code, as well as a criminal act, according to Kim.

Before implementation, the government set a grace period. Those who voluntarily report their hidden income and wealth by March will be given much tolerance. For instance, a Korean resident who has been hiding 1 billion won income in an offshore account since 2012 will be subject to 220 million won tax for the income and 70 million won additional tax for late payment, if he or she reports it to the secretariat by March. Those who miss this chance and later get caught, meanwhile, may be subject to 210 million won in taxes on top of the 290 million won mentioned above, as well as up to a 50 million won fine and up to a two year prison term.

She said that there has been much voluntary disclosure to the secretariat since last October. It is also getting many inquiries from Korean residents overseas wanting to know whether they should be concerned. The secretariat has been holding briefing sessions in a number of countries, including Southeast Asia where many Koreans do business and have assets.
Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, left, current owner of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, holds the Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2013 vintage with Korean artist Lee Ufan who designed its label. This was the first time a Korean artist was involved in the prestigious wine's label design. / Courtesy of Ayoung FBC



By Yun Suh-young

Reputed winery Chateau Mouton Rothschild has collaborated for the first time with a Korean artist in designing the label for its wine.

Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, heir and current owner of the famed winery, visited Seoul for the first time to introduce the wine Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2013 vintage to the Korean press, Thursday, in Seoul, together with artist Lee Ufan, who designed the label.

"We never had a Korean artist participate in the label project before. This is the first time," said Rothschild.

"We wanted to ask Lee Ufan to create a work of art for Mouton. We were particularly touched by the sobriety, contemplation and meditation seen in his works."

Since 1945, Chateau Mouton Rothschild has requested famed artists of the times to design the labels for its wines. Artists well known to us such as Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Juan Miro, Andy Warhol and most recently, Jeff Koons, have designed labels.

Lee, a famed artist in Korea who was the first Korean to list his name along with these artists, said he was honored to participate as he had always been interested in wine.

"Even when I couldn't really distinguish the tastes of wine, I had always been interested in it," said Lee.

"I had been jealous when some of my friends boasted that they designed wine labels. I have had chances to design labels for some wine companies who requested them, but I knew if I waited, I'd have a chance to work with Mouton Rothschild," he said, smiling sheepishly.

This is the first time he has designed a wine label let alone the first time he used a wine color in his work.

"For the past few decades, my works had always been in gray tones. I had never used a wine color for any of my work. This time, I used it especially for the Chateau Mouton Rothschild," said Lee.

He had changed the color from the original orange to wine to more vividly express the depth and aroma of the wine.

"The velvet color is related to life and it is what shamans consider noble," he said.

"Mouton has a unique finishing taste. It's extremely fruity and mysterious. It has a complex flavor that comprises of freshness, power, and softness all at the same time. I wanted to express that."

Lee considers wine and art similar in the sense that they are all based on and inspired by nature.

"Wine and art both use materials from nature and metamorphose them to a whole new level," said Lee.

Meanwhile, Lee, who had been under media spotlight due to some of his work being copied and sold in the art market, remained silent on the issue when the question was raised by one of the reporters.
Yun Dong-ju, second from left in the front row, with his Japanese classmates from Doshisha University at the Uji River in Kyoto in this 1943 photo. This is known to be the last photo of Yun, taken on July 14, about a monthbefore the Japanese military arrested him for allegedly participating in the independence movement. / Yonhap



By Baek Byung-yeul





The cover of Yun Dong-ju's anthology, "Sky, Wind, Star and Poem."

/ Courtesy of Sowadari Publishing

One noticeable move on this month's best-seller chart is patriotic poet Yun Dong-ju's (1917-1945) posthumous poetry collection, "Sky, Wind, Star and Poem."

The anthology, published on Jan. 14 by Sowadari Publishing, placed 15th on Yes24, one of Korea's largest online booksellers, this week. The book is a reprint of the revised edition that was published in 1955 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Yun's death. The first edition was released three years after he died in 1945.

Yun's collection of poetry soared onto the best-seller list in the first week of the year, though it was only sold by subscription. According to another online bookseller, Aladin, 10,000 copies of the book were ordered before it was released.

"Sky, Wind, Star and Poem" is his only anthology and features 31 poems. Born and raised in northern Manchuria, Yun joined Yonhi College, which later became Yonsei University, in 1938. After graduating in 1941, he left for Japan the following year to study literature. In 1943, however, Yun was imprisoned for allegedly participating in the independence movement and died in Fukuoka Prison on Feb. 16, 1945, at the age of 27.

In "Sky, Wind, Star and Poem," Yun delicately describes his inner torment as a colonial man ruled by Japan and his lyric poems show why he is dubbed "one of the most beloved poets in Korea."

Yun is thought to have begun writing poetry at the age of 15. Though his early poems were about his own thoughts, his later work, written in the 1940s, reflects the agony as he lived in his 20s when Japan fell into a stalemate in the long-running Pacific War with the United States.

While in his 20s, Koreans were forced to speak only Japanese, but the young literature student wrote poems in Korean, portraying through his poetry the agony about what could be done for his country.

On the 70th anniversary of his death last year and the 100th anniversary of Yun's birth next year, a film shedding light on Yun's last 10 years will also hit the big screen nationwide on Feb. 18.

Star director Lee Joon-ik directed the film, "DONGJU: The Portrait of a Poet." It was shot in black and white because people are still reminded of Yun through the photographs of him in black and white, according to the director.
The cover of Cho Seong-jin's upcoming live recording / Yonhap



Pianist Cho Seong-jin, winner of the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, will release a live recording of the competition under the label of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute next month. This is Cho's second album following his first released under the Deutsche Grammophon label in November, selling out the record initial 50,000 copies in less than a week.

The coming recording will feature Cho's performances from the preliminary round to the final round, including the prize-winning interpretation of Piano Concerto No.1 in E minor, Etudes Op. 10, Mazurkas, Ballade Op. 38 and Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49.

Meanwhile, Cho, who has signed with the world's most-celebrated classical music record label Deutsche Grammophon, will record Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Chopin's four Ballades with the world-renowned Deutsche Staatskapelle, under the baton of Chung Myung-whun, in April.

Cho, the first Korean pianist to take first place in the Chopin competition, will stage a gala concert with his Chopin competitors at the Seoul Arts Center on Feb. 2.

Prize winners featured are Charles Richard-Hamelin, Kate Liu, Eric Lu, Yike Yang and Drmitry Shishkin.
The government and the ruling party agreed Friday to increase the state housing support for newly married couples as part of efforts to tackle the nation's chronic low birthrate, a lawmaker said.



The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will build a total of 10 apartment units across the country exclusively for newlyweds, Rep. Lee Joo-young of the ruling Saenuri Party told reporters following a meeting with government officials.



South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members, stoking concern that it could cripple the country's growth potential and possibly result in more welfare expenses.



"Ten apartment units exclusively for newly married couples will be developed, an increase from the initial five, to meet the high demand," Land Minister Kang Ho-in said.



According to data by Statistics Korea, some 435,400 babies were born last year, down around 1,000, or 0.2 percent, from a year earlier. It marked the second straight year of on-year decline and was the lowest since 2005, when around 435,000 babies were born.



The government will also push forward with a plan to provide incentives to couples who give birth to more than three children, Lee said.



Asia's fourth-largest economy, the population of which is expected to peak in 2030, has been trying to push up its birthrate to prevent a decline in the national workforce.



(Yonhap)




South Korea and the U.S. agreed Friday to cooperate more closely on the adoption of a strong U.N. sanctions resolution against North Korea following its fourth nuclear test, the Foreign Ministry said.



Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held phone talks earlier in the day to discuss Kerry's trip to Beijing earlier in the week.



During the 20-minute discussion, the two sides shared opinions on Kerry's visit to China and coordinated their responses to North Korea's Jan. 6 nuclear test and the possibility of further provocations from the North, the ministry said in a press release.



Kerry said he told Chinese government officials that Washington places top priority on the North Korean nuclear issue as the recent test poses a major threat to international peace and security, and especially those of the U.S. mainland and its allies, according to the ministry.



He also expressed the U.S.'s firm resolve to do everything it can to protect its allies.



"The two ministers agreed to take more specific steps in cooperation between the U.S. and China as well as coordination between South Korea and the U.S. for the adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution," the ministry said.



Kerry added that the U.S. and China agreed to accelerate bilateral talks at the U.N. and through other channels to adopt a strong resolution.



Kerry's trip, during which he held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other senior officials, underscored the large differences between the two countries over the appropriate level of sanctions on North Korea.



China has been reluctant to push the North too hard out of concerns for its own security interests, including the possibility of an influx of North Korean refugees or a U.S.-allied, unified Korea at its borders.



Its cooperation is critical, however, in drawing tough sanctions from the U.N. Security Council because it is one of five permanent veto-wielding members, along with the U.S., Russia, France and Britain.



On the possibility of a long-range missile launch by the North and other provocations, Yun and Kerry agreed to seek necessary relevant measures, the ministry said.



Yun and Kerry have held three phone conversations since the North's nuclear test. They agreed to continue their close coordination through further talks at the Munich Security Conference next month. (Yonhap)






Daejeon District Court has sentenced a man in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, to eight years' jail for raping his niece.

The man, identified as Kim, 49, was also ordered to spend 80 hours at a class for sexual offenders.

Kim was indicted for raping his niece, 12, identified only as "A," several times in a tent he set up in 2006. He also gave her money after raping her in his car in 2012, police said.

"A" had grown up in an orphanage from the age of two, and Kim took her in 2004.

Police said Kim abused her whenever she refused to have sex with him.

The court said it handed down a heavy sentence because Kim had committed a crime against humanity.
Rotary Korea is holding a Young Leader Summit (YLS) video contest among young people around the world.



It will award 10 winners an all-expenses paid trip to Seoul that includes round trip transportation, accommodation, and meals in addition to $1,000 cash prizes each.

People who want to participate in this convention must be 35 and younger and post an original video that is 3 minutes or shorter that answers one of two questions.



The questions are: How can I be a gift to the world? or What are world issues YLS and RIC should challenge in the future?



Participants can upload this video via YLS Facebook post (http://tiny.cc/YLS2016Contest) with the hashtag "#YLS2016Contest."



The deadline to upload these videos is until Feb. 28, 2016 with the finalists being announced on April 10, 2016.



The winners will attend the YLS one-day conference in Goyang KINTEX Convention Center on May 27 and will have the opportunity to participate in their own workshops and work as volunteers in the Rotary International Convention (RIC) program.



For more information, visit the Facebook webpage or the 2016 RI Convention, Goyang KINTEX, Korea.




By Choi Sung-jin



North Koreans in their 20s and 30s, who lead commercial transactions and economic activities, are emerging as a generation worthy of close observation, Pyongyang watchers here said Friday.



If the international community tightens economic sanctions on the isolationist regime as punishment for its fourth nuclear test, it will be especially worthwhile to watch how this "market generation" responds to the economic situation, the North Korea experts said.



According to North Korean defectors, the market generation, who have grown with the appearance of markets in the mid-1990s, are quite materialistic and tend to make their living by selling things at markets instead of working in offices or factories. Some do not hesitate to engage in smuggling and pay bribes to security officers when caught.



This is also the generation who use IT equipment, such as mobile phones and computers, and are quite positive in consuming foreign culture, including South Korean films and TV dramas, they said.



The National Intelligence Service, in its report to the National Assembly on July 14, also said: "The market generation is more interested in making money than ideology and is less loyal to the communist system than their parents. Their growth may serve as one factor that can change the North Korean system."



The possibility of this generation causing political upheaval that could shake the Kim Jong-un regime is small, however.



Asked how many North Koreans support Kim Jong-un, 69.2 percent of people under 35 answered "more than 50 percent," according to the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. This shows seven out of 10 in the market generation think popular support for the North Korean regime is quite strong, it said.



To the question of how long would the Kim Jong-un regime continue, only 29.3 percent said it would crumble "within a decade," compared with 46.9 percent of respondents aged 55 or older. Up to 52 percent of the market generation also supported the North's nuclear development program while only 18.2 percent opposed it.



"It is true young North Koreans are more market-oriented economically and more freewheeling socially," said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the institute. "However, they do not make efforts to get out of the rigid system and politically are even more conservative than older generations."








Hong Seung-hee, second from left, an activist of the Good Daughters' Federation (GDF), speaks at a recent rally to protest the Dec. 28 Korea-Japan agreement on sexual slavery in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

/ Courtesy of GDF Facebook



Good Daughters' Federation to hold rally on March 1



By Chung Ah-young



Every Wednesday, Hong Seung-hee, 26, known as an activist of "Hyonyeo Yeonhap" or Good Daughters' Federation (GDF), has been attending the weekly rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul after Korea and Japan reached an agreement on wartime sexual slavery on Dec. 28.



Instead of shouting slogans, she portrays herself as a victim, wearing a black-and-white hanbok (traditional Korean dress) or dancing and holding flowers at the rally in a way of expressing the anger and plight of the victims.



The recent demonstration for the former sex slaves is part of her social participation  she has taken part in numerous rallies for various issues such as the Sewol ferry disaster and the government's budget cut for transport facilities for the handicapped.



"The recent Korea-Japan deal over sexual slavery made a concession to power at the cost of human beings," Hong said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. "I always stress that human dignity cannot be conceded."



She said the nation has repeated the same mistakes throughout history by putting other things before people.



"In the same way, the Sewol ferry disaster was caused by an ignorance of human dignity," she said. "All social problems occur by compromising the lives and safety of human beings to other seemingly more important concerns." The Sewol ferry sank in April 2014, taking more than 300 lives.



She began participating in demonstrations against the government's policies because she realized that if there is no participation, there will be no change in society.



"I have been volunteering to help the needy since I was 17," she said. "But there has been no change in politics and society, even though I have tried to serve others." Then, she decided to come out to the world to raise her voice to change society.



Hong launched the GDF on Jan. 6 to oppose the Korea Parent Federation (KPF), a radical conservative association that called for sexual slavery survivors to accept the government's deal.



Hong's calm, peaceful response to radical and aggressive KPF members drew public attention, which swiftly spread through the Internet, creating thousands of supporters on social network services.



"I am pleased to see that a slew of similar groups have joined us to call for the government to withdraw the agreement," she said.



For a "social artist" who tackles issues using art and creativity, rallies are one of the most effective means of social artistry, Hong said.



"This way of expression is very close to the public," she said. "Anyone can join a rally to raise the awareness about social issues. Social issues are our important sources of inspiration."



She teaches social artistry to students at an alternative school that opened last March in Sinchon, Seoul.



"The world is like a stage or screen or a canvas in which I deliver my messages for a better society," she said. "I hope that my work will connect people with other people regardless of whether they have different opinions."



Hong said her aim is to talk to the KPF or other conservative groups that have different opinions and ideas from hers.



"I won't give up communication with people having different interests," she said. "Attempting dialogue with them is important to change society."

In line with the ongoing protest against the deal, she plans to hold a flash mob on March 1, the Independence Movement Day.



"We and other members of similar groups are planning to hold a massive flash mob for the former sex slaves," she said.



Eyeing women's issues



While coming into the spotlight through the GDF, Hong has felt as if she has been consumed as a "product."



"The media coverage that distorted my image as a woman with making a good appearance was like violence to me," she said. "I realized how a woman is treated in this society.



"Many people paid attention to me as a woman, not an activist. I was actually shocked. Few people were interested in my activities."



Hong said that some newspapers, blogs and social media portrayed her as a "protest doll" or a "protesting woman," which denigrates the purpose of her demonstration.



She said this social bias defining women in terms of appearance is prevalent in

Korean society.



"I learned a lot from it," she said. "I am strongly motivated to fight against this social injustice toward women."
Arthur John Patterson, left, was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for stabbing to death Korean student Cho Joong-pil at a Burger King restaurant in 1997. Lee Bok-su, the mother of Cho, a victim of the "Itaewon murder," speaks at the Seoul Central District Court after it found Patterson guilty of the crime. / Yonhap



Patterson sentenced to 20 years

By Lee Kyung-min

A district court sentenced Arthur John Patterson, a U.S. citizen, to 20 years in prison Friday after finding him guilty of the stabbing death of Korean student Cho Joong-pil at a Burger King restaurant in 1997.

The Seoul Central District Court found him guilty of the killing, known as the "Itaewon murder" case here, and said Edward Kun Lee, who was initially indicted but later acquitted, was complicit in the crime.

However, Lee will not face any punishment due to double jeopardy. The victim, Patterson and Lee were the only three people present at the murder scene.

While Patterson and Lee accused each other over the stabbing since the initial investigation, the court determined that Lee's consistent testimony was more credible than that of Patterson.

Patterson changed his testimony during court-organized reconstructions.

"Given the small size of the bathroom, it is highly unlikely that the two could have switched sides to take turns stabbing. With the two constantly accusing each other, it is obvious that one of the two is lying," presiding Judge Shim Gyu-hong said.

"While Lee only had a small amount of blood on his head and shirt, Patterson's head and clothes were covered with a large amount of blood that he was unlikely to have gotten elsewhere," the judge said.

Given that the attacker stabbed the victim nine times in less than 10 seconds, it would have been impossible for that attacker not to be covered with a large amount of blood, according to the ruling.

Immediately after the incident, while Lee left without washing his hands, Patterson, who was covered with a lot of blood, changed his clothes first before leaving the restaurant, it said.

Patterson's lawyer said he will appeal.

Judge Shim also accepted statements provided by Lee as well as their friends who were present at the day of the murder, while dismissing those by Patterson.

"The witnesses' testimonies we have heard all consistently point to Patterson as the one who stabbed the victim," he said.

The judge said harsh punishment was inevitable considering the brutal nature of his crime as well as Patterson's failure to show remorse.

"Patterson killed the victim who was a complete stranger for fun. Such an act had resulted in irrevocable suffering for the victim's family," Shim said.

"The then 22-year-old college student Cho was deprived of happiness and all positive aspects of life that he was entitled to enjoy as a human."

The judge added that Patterson made no effort to provide any compensation or restitution, and had accused Lee since the day of the murder.

After the ruling, the victim's mother Lee Bok-su heaved a heavy sigh. "I think my son will better rest in the ground," she told reporters in front of the courthouse.

The court said his indictment has relevant legal standing, because the 15-year statute of limitations on murder has not expired, and the rule of double jeopardy does not apply in the case. The court also dismissed Patterson's claim that the prosecution was abusing its authority in bringing the indictment, saying although it failed to seek additional written testimony from Patterson, it succeeded in collecting fresh evidence before the indictment.

The prosecution indicted Patterson on Dec. 22, 2011, less than 15 years after the day of the incident on April 3 1997.

Earlier, Patterson had received an 18-month term on charges of destroying evidence and possessing a dangerous weapon.

Lee was found guilty but later freed in a special amnesty.

In 2011, prosecutors charged Patterson with murder, citing fresh evidence. His trial started in September last year following his extradition here from the U.S.
Former Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo speaks to reporters in front of the Seoul Central District Court, Friday, after he was found guilty of having received 30 million won ($27,000) from Sung Wan-jong, a business man who killed himself last year. Lee was sentenced to eight months in prison suspended for two years. / Yonhap



By Jhoo Dong-chan

Former Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo was sentenced to eight months in jail, suspended for two years, after being found guilty of taking bribes from a businessman who committed suicide.

He was also ordered to pay 30 million won ($27,000) in forfeiture.

According to the Seoul Central District Court, Friday, Lee was convicted of accepting 30 million ($27,000) in cash from Sung Woan-jong, the late former chairman of the construction company Keangnam Enterprises, at his election office in 2013

"Evidence including Sung's interview records, and a reporter and his secretaries' testimonies are believed to be authentic," the court said in its ruling.

The court acknowledged the interview record as evidence although it only admitted testimonies at the trial.

"We found that there were detailed circumstances which prove the reliability of Sung's testimony without false interference from others," the court said.

The former prime minister was one of eight high-profile politicians listed on a memo, which Sung left behind before killing himself on April 9, last year.

Lee immediately denied the allegation against him, claiming that he did not know Sung very well and never met him in person but then resigned from the prime minister post on April 27, only two months after taking the position.

The prosecution then indicted Lee without detention in July for accepting a bribe from Sung in April 2013 at Lee's office in Buyeo, South Chungcheong Province, during his campaign in a by-election.

While the prosecution presented evidence such as surveillance camera footage showing Sung's car passing through the Buyeo tollgate and the mobile phone call log between the two, the former prime minister denied such a meeting took place.

Lee said that he will appeal but drop his bid for a parliamentary seat in April.

"I will lodge an appeal to prove my innocence," Lee said after the ruling. "Separate from the ruling, I will not run in the upcoming general election in April."

South Gyeongsang Province Governor Hong Joon-pyo, another figure included on the bribery list of eight, was also indicted without detention in July as well.

He was also accused of receiving 100 million won from the late businessman through a former company executive in June 2011. Two hearings have been held since then.

The other six were: Rep. Hong Moon-jong of the ruling Saenuri Party; Busan Mayor Seo Byung-soo; Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok; presidential Chief of Staff Lee Byung-kee; and two former chiefs of staff, Huh Tae-yeol and Kim Ki-choon.

The six were not indicted. Sung hanged himself before a court hearing over the issuing of an arrest warrant for him on embezzlement charges.
By Jung Min-ho





Rep. Lee Byung-suk

Prosecutors questioned Rep. Lee Byung-suk from the ruling Saenuri Party, Friday, for allegedly taking kickbacks.

According to the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office, Lee appeared at the office at 9:30 a.m. after rejecting the prosecution's request to cooperate with the investigation four times.

The prosecution said the lawmaker who has represented the district of POSCO's headquarters in Pohang since 2000 is suspected of having received 20 million won ($17,000) from three POSCO subcontractors.

In return, investigators suspect, Lee peddled influence to coerce the nation's largest steelmaker to award them business deals worth 1.5 billion won.

The prosecution said the owners of all the subcontracting firms have personal relationships with him.

Lee has denied the allegations, claiming that he just borrowed the money. He has also accused the investigation, which has netted former president Lee Myung-bak's aides, of being politically motivated, ahead of the general election on April 13.

Prosecutors said they will decide whether to indict him without detention after questioning him.

Before his "voluntary cooperation," his party openly requested him to cooperate with the prosecution amid growing public anger over the suspicion.

Prosecutors said they originally planned to ask the National Assembly to allow them to indict Lee if he did not show up.
By Kim Jae-won

A 26-year-old Vietnamese man illegally entered Korea through Incheon International Airport Friday, pretending to be a transfer passenger to Japan, the airport authorities said Friday.

Incheon International Airport Corp. said that he opened a door at an immigration office and left the airport around 8 a.m. He arrived at 5 a.m. from Hanoi on a Korean Air flight, and was supposed to transfer to Narita at 10 a.m.

Police are currently looking for his whereabouts.

Earlier in the day, police said they found two butane canisters in a suspicious white box at the airport.

Police said they received a report around 4:30 p.m. that the box suspected to contain an explosive device was found in a man's bathroom at the airport. Police cordoned off the area, and an explosive ordnance disposal unit checked the bathroom.

A scan from portable digital x-ray equipment showed that the white box, 30 centimeters in length and 25 centimeters wide, contained two butane canisters and a bottle of water, said Chung Sung-chae, the police officer in charge of security at the airport.

Chung also said no explosives or detonators were found inside the box.

He said police were checking security cameras near the bathroom to find out who left the box there.
South Korean combat forces will join a United States-led multinational military exercise to be held next month in Thailand, the Navy said Friday.



Some 440 Navy and Marine soldiers will depart for Thailand on Saturday to join the Cobra Gold exercise, which will run from Feb. 6 through 19.



It is an annual peacekeeping operation exercise, led by the U.S. Pacific Command and the Thailand military.



In this year's gathering, some 7,900 forces will take part from Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia beside the three countries, along with five warships, 24 armored vehicles and 35 airplanes.



China, Britain, Australia and 13 other countries will join as observers.

In 2002, South Korea joined the exercise, which was launched in 1982, as an observer before becoming a full-time member in 2010.



For this year's exercise, South Korea will send the 4,900-ton Cheon Wang Bong amphibious landing ship and eight combat tanks.



After arriving at the Sattahip port, the South Korean team will carry out drills in the fields of command post exercise, humanitarian civil assistance and field training exercise, all aimed at multinational training to resolve a conflict situation, according to the Navy.



"The Cobra Gold exercise is a joint humanitarian drill to get training on what the United Nations forces have done during the Korean War," a Navy official said. "The Navy and the Marine Corps will continue to improve our combat capabilities to prepare against various types of threats and protect our people and interests in any part of the world."



(Yonhap)




By Yi Whan-woo



South Korea, the United States and Japan are using all possible tactical reconnaissance assets, such as an Aegis destroyer and ground-based Green Pine radar, to monitor North Korea's possible launch of a ballistic missile, military officials said Friday.



"The Navy has deployed an Aegis destroyer in the West Sea while the Green Pine radar is fully operational," an official said on condition of anonymity. "The airborne Peace Eye early warning and control aircraft is also keeping a close watch on North Korea."



The move comes after increased activities at North Korea's main long-range rocket launch site in Tongchang-ri, which indicates that the secretive state may be preparing for a rocket launch.



South Korea and other U.S.-led allies suspect North Korea's rocket program is merely a cover for a ballistic missile test.



The authorities did not specify which of South Korea's three radar-equipped Aegis ships  Sejong the Great, Yulgok Yi I and Seoae Ryu Seong-ryong  has been dispatched.



Commissioned in 2008, Sejong the Great, the lead ship of the three KDX-III destroyers, has a SPY1-D radar unit on each side of the ship and can simultaneously track about 1,000 distinct activities within a 500 kilometer radius, providing 360 degree coverage.



In December 2012, the 7,600-ton warship detected North Korea's firing of a long-range rocket 54 seconds after the launch while it was deployed on the West Sea.



It also detected North Korea's previous launch of a long-range rocket in April 2009.



The Green Pine, equipped with a ballistic missile early warning radar system, has a range of more than 500 kilometers.



It detected North Korea's test of a long-range rocket on December 2012 120 seconds after the launch.



The U.S. has been employing a series of reconnaissance satellite systems, including the Defense Support Program (DSP) and the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), to monitor North Korea, according to officials



DSP tracks ballistic missiles by the heat they generate when they were launched, including the heat of the infrared signals from their missile plumes.



SBIRS, which runs over the Korean Peninsula, is capable of tracking a ballistic missile within a geostationary orbit of 35,700 kilometers.



South Korea and the U.S. plan to set up a data-sharing network, titled "Link 16," to share real-time information fed by DSP and SBIRS.



Two of the U.S. spy satellites  KH-11 and KH-12  also have been hovering over North Korea. Both of them can detect objects located as low as 15 centimeters above the ground.



Military sources report Japan has dispatched one of its Aegis destroyers, the Kongo-class JS Kirishima, which carry SM-3 interceptor missiles.



The three allies are bolstering efforts to better detect North Korea's military activities after they all failed to learn about Pyongyang's latest nuclear test on Jan. 6 in advance.




Beijing cautions against Seoul's move



By Yi Whan-woo



The government said Friday that the terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) system will help boost Korea's national security and defense if it is deployed here by the United States.



Seoul and Washington are likely to start negotiations soon over whether to deploy the advanced missile defense system to better counter North Korea's threats.



"We're reviewing the technical elements of THAAD, including its tactical efficiency, on a working-level," defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters. "We've been considering all possible means to defend the country against Pyongyang's nuclear and missile threats."



China expressed concerns about Korea's move.



"We hope that a related nation (South Korea) will deal with the case prudently," the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. "A nation should take security of other countries into account when considering its own security."



Kim's comment came after President Park Geun-hye and Defense Minister Han Min-koo cited the need for THAAD deployment in the wake of the Kim Jong-un regime's latest nuclear test, Jan. 6.



In a New Year's press conference, Jan. 13, Park said the government will consider THAAD deployment for both security and the national interest.



During a media interview, Monday, Han underscored the need for THAAD, saying Seoul has "limited capabilities."



The government move toward allowing the U.S. military to set up THAAD batteries follows China's reluctance to press North Korea for carrying out its fourth nuclear test since 2006.



Officials said the country still maintains the so-called "3-Nos" stance concerning THAAD, underscoring that there have been no consultations between Seoul and Washington, no request made by the U.S. to open dialogue, and no decision made.



The "3-Nos" stance was interpreted as a move to placate Beijing, which opposes THAAD claiming that its long-range radar could be used to monitor Chinese military activities.



China has hinted that it will retaliate with economic measures if THAAD is deployed on South Korean soil.



However, South Korea's stance is apparently changing, an analyst said.



"It's just a matter of time for South Korea to allow the U.S. military to bring in THAAD," said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong University.



"The thing was, Korea needed a clear reason to justify its need for THAAD while not provoking regional powers.



"With North Korea continuing its military aggression and China falling short to demand the punishment of Pyongyang, it is possible that our government judged that now is the right time to discuss THAAD-related issues."



Han pointed out there has been growing signs that indicate North Korea may launch a long-range rocket soon.



Meanwhile, the defense ministry denied a Wall Street Journal report that South Korean and U.S. authorities have been negotiating over deployment of THAAD and will make a related announcement next week.



"It should be noted that the 3-Nos still remain effective," spokesman Kim said.



THAAD is designed to shoot down short, medium and intermediate ballistic missiles at a higher altitude in their terminal phase using a hit-to-kill method by detecting the enemies' missiles with land-based radar that has a maximum range of about 1,800 kilometers.




Cheong Wa Dae, South Korea's presidential office, said Friday that it is closely watching the signs for North Korea's long-range missile launch.



The comments followed a series of media reports that Pyongyang could launch a long-range missile in one week's time at the Dongchang-ri launch site in the country's northwest, citing satellite imagery analyses.



"(The government) is keeping close tabs on (the signs of North Korea's long-range missile launch)," presidential spokesman Jeong Yeon-guk told reporters.



Jeong, however, refused to comment on details of the report briefed at Cheong Wa Dae's National Security Council (NSC).



"It is the principle not to make comments about content related to the NSC," Jeong said, adding that sufficient discussion is under way.



A long-range missile launch, if conducted, would constitute a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions amid international outrage over the North's Jan. 6 nuclear test.



The U.N. Security Council is currently working on a new set of sanctions on Pyongyang, and the U.S. is also working on unilateral sanctions to punish the regime.



(Yonhap)




The government expressed hope on Friday that the National Assembly will pass a pending bill aimed at improving North Korea's dismal human rights situation as soon as possible.



South Korean ruling and opposition lawmakers agreed to approve the bill on the North's human rights on Friday, but it is still pending at a parliamentary committee due to differences of opinions over details, casting cold over the passage.



The bill, first introduced in August 2005, has been languishing in parliament, apparently out of concern its passage could have a negative impact on inter-Korean relations.



The bill calls for efforts to improve the North's human rights situation and setting up a center tasked with investigating the North's human rights situation and relevant archives.



The Unification Ministry voiced a hope that the bill could be passed soon to help resolve the severe human rights violations in North Korea.



"As the protection of human rights is a universal value of mankind, it is natural to make efforts to enhance the North's human rights records," Jeong Joon-hee, a ministry spokesman, told a regular press briefing. "North Korea should also take necessary steps to improve its situation."



A day earlier, North Korea rebuked South Korea for making efforts to pass the bill, calling Seoul's move a confrontational scheme.



"We think that the North's criticism against Seoul's move to pass the bill is not right," Jeong said.



Pyongyang has long been labeled one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The communist regime does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.



In December last year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution for the second consecutive year that calls for referring the North to the International Criminal Court for human rights violations. (Yonhap)




By Rachel Lee



An increasing number of married women in North Korea are reportedly looking for rich men for a living.



North Korean defector-led media New Focus reported Thursday that adultery is not a crime in the North, and such acts of cheating are arranged under mutual consent of wives and husbands. But when those who commit adultery cause any sort of harm to people around them, they are charged with disorderly conduct.



"It has become common for women in North Korea to cheat on their spouses," North Korean defector Kim Hyun-sook said. "More and more married women make that choice for their family due to the threat of poverty."



Kim also said that those women approach rich men on purpose, and their husbands overlook such behavior and tell their spouses instead to take charge of their family finances. Some even encourage their wives to go out and meet rich men, and some even arrange a meeting with them through a third party to pull themselves out of poverty.



"This is not acceptable in South Korea, but many women in the North have no other choice for their livelihood," she said. "The North Korean government should take the blame for this."



North Korean defector Jung Nam-hyuk said: "People in North Korea say that if you are divorced, you are guilty, but those who cheat are innocent."



"Since there still exists a negative perception towards divorced women in the society so even when housewives find out that their husband was having an affair with someone, most of them would just ignore it because they don't want a divorce."



Some women will meet those women having an affair with their husbands to make it clear that cheating can be acceptable but divorce and remarriage is not allowed under any circumstances, Jung said.



"While housewives commit adultery to make money, men take advantage of the situation in that women are afraid of divorce," Kim said. "More people commit arranged adultery and the North's law on disorderly conduct does nothing in these cases."



In South Korea, the Constitutional Court struck down a 62-year-old statute outlawing adultery last year, under which violators faced up to two years in prison.




The ruling Saenuri Party is shaming itself with a factional feud over changes to National Assembly vote rules. Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung virtually blamed President Park Geun-hye for initiating a revision bill in 2012 to toughen requirements for parliamentary votes on contentious bills as ruling party leader. Kim's remark drew a backlash from the pro-Park faction of the Saenuri Party. During a forum at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kim said many ruling party lawmakers were opposed to the National Assembly Act revision at first, but changed their stance after a "person in power," an obvious reference to Park, expressed support for it.



Ironically, the ruling party is now pushing to revise the act again and ease requirements for parliamentary votes because it believes that the 2012 revision initiated by Park was the root cause of the current impasse over labor and economic bills. Park also admitted that the revision had faults, during her New Year national address.



The parliamentary act was introduced with good intentions, particularly to curb frequent acts of violence at the National Assembly. But it is undeniable that the law has contributed to parliamentary failures to pass bills by instituting a higher decision-making quorum and a 330-day evaluation period before the submission of bills.



Now is not the time for the ruling party to be placing blame for the row over Assembly vote rules. The Saenuri Party should first apologize to the people for the fallacies of the revision and focus on finding the best solution with the Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) to avoid the kind of parliamentary paralysis under the 19th National Assembly.



Under the circumstances, an arbitration plan by Assembly Speaker Chung Ui-hwa seems realistic and sensible. Since rival parties have been unable to come to a compromise on their own, they should discuss Chung's plan and swiftly end the Assembly deadlock over the parliamentary act revision.




South's diplomacy is in a mess and needs overhaul



Signs are mounting that North Korea is preparing to launch a long-range missile, following its fourth nuclear test earlier this month.



Kyodo News Agency reported that satellite imagery showed that the reclusive state may be readying to fire a ballistic missile from its northwestern Dongchang-ri launch site. The Ministry of National Defense declined to neither confirm nor deny the report, but just said it was monitoring the site for any signs of a launch.



It would be hardly surprising if Pyongyang launched a missile abruptly, given its surprise nuclear test on Jan. 6, which was conducted without any advance warning, even to its longtime ally China.



Kyodo said the launch could occur within a week, but it's hard to forecast the timing, considering that North Korea has yet to declare a no-sail zone.



The launch would be in direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and pose a grave threat to peace and stability in Northeast Asia. It's like adding fuel to the fire at a time when military tensions have flared up after the nuclear test.



U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Bill Urban urged the North to immediately stop actions and rhetoric that could disturb peace and security in the region.



A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman called for Pyongyang to exercise restraint, saying, ''It should not take radical steps, and should avoid causing a vicious cycle of tension.'' Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe convened a National Security Council meeting to assess the current situation and coordinate responses.



But it's doubtful if these moves will discourage the impoverished state from firing a missile, which might be disguised as a space rocket. More than 20 days have passed since the North's nuclear test, but the Security Council has yet to adopt any effective sanctions. It also might have emboldened Pyongyang that China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi only emphasized dialogue in resolving the North's nuclear issue during his talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Wednesday.



Pyongyang might take this as a signal that it will be okay to fire a long-range missile. But that would be a miscalculation. There is no question that it will result in branding the North as an unpredictable and uncompromising rogue state, isolated from the international community for good.



What is certain is that our diplomacy is in a total mess. President Park Geun-hye and her diplomatic aides have labored to curry favor with Beijing despite Washington's displeasure, but the outcome is what we see now  China's continuous siding with North Korea.



It's evident that Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs will be completed while the two superpowers are shifting the responsibility to each other. And Seoul will suffer the most from this nightmarish scenario.



In the short term, our government must focus on deterring the North's missile provocation by strengthening cooperation with the U.S., China and Japan. From the long-term perspective, however, it will be critical to craft our diplomatic strategies from square one.




By Kim Se-jeong





Shin Ji-yea

Shin Ji-yea, 27, is a resident of Mapo in Seoul, and owns a company called Today Maker.

Her company is an unusual one. She spearheaded a renovation project of an apartment building that is almost 40 years old in the neighborhood of Mangwon-dong and rented the flats at low rates to young entrepreneurs.

The company has so far renovated four flats and rented them to a bookstore owner and an independent artist, who pay 100,000 won monthly rent with a 3 million won deposit.

"I have seen many young people with great business ideas discouraged because they couldn't afford rent for their work spaces. I wanted to help them solve that problem," Shin said during a recent interview with The Korea Times.

The apartment with 104 flats was built in 1971. Old and small, the owners moved out and never came back. Only 30 flats are currently occupied, and most residents are old.

In Seoul, buildings don't usually stay up for 40 years. They're destroyed and rebuilt after 20 or 30 years. The apartment building also faced the threat of demolition, but the attempts failed because it was difficult to find the owners of each flat and construction companies did not see that demolition was economically viable.

Her company makes no money at the moment. So far, she receives subsidies from the city government or companies. "This is a little bit of headache, but I am sure something will work out."

To solve this financial problem, she is thinking of expanding the renovation project.

Shin said the apartment residents welcomed her project. "Old residents say they are happy to see young tenants moving in to such an old place. We hang out together. They bring us food sometimes to share. It has become a sense of community."

Shin is a member of the Green Party Korea and is the party's candidate to be a proportional representative. The Green Party has no seat in the parliament now, but hopes to get one proportional seat in the upcoming general election.

"I think it's time for politics to change. To better help young entrepreneurs, we need to change the system, which we can do only through politics."
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, third from left, shakes hands with CITIC Group Corporation President Chang Zhenming, second from left, after Samsung agreed with the Chinese financial group to expand their mutual partnership focusing on financial businesses, last year. At Lee's right is Samsung Securities CEO Yoon Yong-am, while CITIC Securities President Cheng Boming is seen on the left. / Courtesy of Samsung Corporate Strategy Office



Conglomerate to reduce cross-holding systems



By Kim Yoo-chul



Samsung is accelerating corporate restructuring efforts as the country's most-powerful conglomerate prepares a radical change, putting company vice chairman Lee Jae-yong onto center stage.



After Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee was hospitalized in 2014 due to heart problems, Lee, who is the chairman's only son, has been the group's de facto leader.



Samsung has been unexpectedly busy with corporate changes such as decisions to sell non-core units and to integrate affiliates for productivity.



Now, Vice Chairman Lee is preparing to pay inheritance tax to tighten his control of Samsung affiliates. Late Thursday, the Samsung Corporate Strategy Office said the vice chairman had sold 2.05 percent of his direct holdings in Samsung SDS.



Samsung officially said the vice chairman will use the proceeds to buy shares in Samsung Engineering's rights issue, if the shares are not fully subscribed.



"The sale of the Samsung SDS stake was intended to pay inheritance tax, which is known to be about 5 trillion won in total," a Samsung executive said.



Given Samsung SDS's minority role in the ownership structure of the conglomerate, the latest decision by the junior Lee to will not make a noticeable difference, according to the executive. Lee is the biggest shareholder of Samsung SDS, owning 11.25 percent.



"It seems evident that moves for a power shift are speeding up," another Samsung official said. "Samsung is urged to complete a smoother power succession as quickly as possible."



By selling the holdings, Lee will have some 380 billion won in cash, based on a closing share price of 261,000 won, Jan. 28, with between a 4 and 7 percent discount. With taxes, the vice chairman will have 300 billion won.





Reducing cross-holding systems



On the corporate structure front, Samsung is trying to reduce its cross-holdings after rulings by the country's antitrust regulators.



Korea bans the creation of circular shareholdings through which big conglomerates' founding families keep control over key affiliates with minor stakes.



Firms are given a six-month "grace period" to deal with any issues arising from mergers and acquisitions (M&As).



Samsung said it was well aware of increasing pressure from investors to simplify the complex ownership structure and to "do something more" to boost corporate governance, because these were considered factors constraining the valuations of Samsung affiliates.



Samsung Life Insurance (Samsung Life) decided to buy Samsung Electronics' entire holdings of Samsung Card, making it the biggest shareholder.



"Since 2013, Samsung Group has been keen to separate the group's electronics units and finance units by reducing the number of cross-holdings," the official said. The cross-holding system calls for company "A" to control company "B", while "B" controls company "C" and "C" controls company "D."



"The cross-holding system was effective in providing more influence to group owners with small-stake holdings," the official said. "But this system has a weakness because if one affiliate gets into trouble, then other affiliates will be severely affected."



Analysts say chances are high that Samsung will soon adopt a holding-company system, but the key issue is that the process costs a lot.



"If Samsung lets Samsung C&T transform into a holding firm, then a new finance holding company will be needed to control the group's entire finance affiliates," said Ahn Sang-hee, head of the corporate governance team at Daishin Economic Research Institute. "But it will cost a lot."



Oh Jin-won, an analyst at Hana Financial, said: "I believe Samsung C&T, a de facto holding company, will be controlled by Samsung Electronics and Samsung Life, eventually. It's no surprise to see that the group will adopt a holding company system on finance and electronics."
EXO singer D.O (Do Kyungsoo) is gaining more experience as an actor, and is set to debut as a lead actor in the 2016 romantic film Pure Love, and he revealed that he did not really have a hard time taking on the role.

D.O said that it was easier for him to get into character because of certain similarities he shared with the male lead.

"Acting itself wasn't hard. I rather felt comfortable, because I'm very bad in expressing my feelings in real life," the idol reportedly said during the media briefing for Pure Love held earlier this week, reports The Korea Herald.

Pure Love tells the story of a radio DJ that gets a hold of a letter that was sent more than two decades ago, which then sparks a romance with the lead actress Kim So Hyun.

While D.O was fairly comfortable playing his character, he did have to work on delivering romantic lines more naturally.

"I thought a lot about how to say these lines without making anyone cringe, like when saying 'I will protect you forever,'" D.O confessed.

Pure Love will release next month, and after that D.O should start preparing for his other confirmed movie starring role in 2016, the family drama Older Brother.

---

Mickey is a writer and digital content creator based in Manila. He is a co-founder of ZAVI App and editor of the small business blog IndieMickey. He has also been bitten by the K-Pop fashion bug - follow him on Instagram @mickjami.
The Lamar Fire Department responded to a working structure fire on W. Washington Street, Jan. 20, at approximately 6:39 a.m.

Upon arrival of E-2, the structure was fully involved and the fire was self-ventilated from all sides.

The Prowers County Rural Fire Department was requested for mutual aid in the incident to assist with manpower.

Approximately eight personnel and seven units from Lamar Fire responded to the incident.

A defensive attack was ordered by command at the scene due to its size. The structure presented a possible collapse hazard, but no one was inside. The department cleared and returned to headquarters at 8:38 a.m.

The possible cause of the fire was listed as abandoned or discarded materials and products at the location.
Because I can go only so long without doing media notes...





Tonight at 7 p.m. is the final "Which Way, LA?" show on KCRW. The show is ending, 23 years after the riots that spawned it, but Warren Olney will remain on the air as the host of the nationally syndicated "To the Point" and add other segments on KCRW. More on our earlier post.

Sounds like the final show is going to be about taking stock of LA this far removed from the post-Rodney King riots. D.J. Waldie tweeted that he's a guest along with Kevin Starr, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Christopher Hawthorne and maybe others. It will be online after, but this one you might want to hear live, ya know? Here is a 1993 story about the new WWLA in the New York Times by the late Los Angeles correspondent Robert Reinhold, posted to Facebook by Joel Bellman. Also on the LA Times op-ed page, David Lehrer asks where will we turn for civil discussion? without Warren Olney asking his questions?

This week, Los Angeles radio listeners will lose an extraordinary element of our civic life  a unique vehicle for the exploration of issues that confront this city. In an age when hyperbole, sensationalism, rancor and mindless chatter occupy so much of the airwaves, "Which Way L.A.?"  one of the few on-air havens of serious, rational dialogue on contentious issues  will be gone. Warren Olney, the shows host for the last 23 years, will be ending the broadcast on Thursday. Olney and the program have been a unique keeper of L.A.s historical record  our triumphs, our crises, our travails and our failures. From gang warfare to the 1992 riots, from water shortages to traffic, from government boondoggles to elections analyses  Olney was there, discussing the issues with his guests thoroughly, fairly and civilly. But it isnt simply the chronicling of events that has made "Which Way L.A.?" so special. Even more importantly, the show has been an instrument for people of opposing viewpoints coming together as guests of the show and engaging in a dialogue. By virtue of the shows format and Olneys firm, friendly and thoughtful demeanor, they were compelled to express their views without rancor or bile  a true rarity in our era of partisan bickering.



Also media noted:
This map of the Los Angeles basin and beyond was drawn by Jack H. Moffett and published in 1970. At Los Angeles Magazine, map curator Glen Creason of the Los Angeles Public Library waxes about the beauty of the creation. If you ever take in the maps that are out for display on the bottom level of the Central Library, in the history department, those are Creason's babies.

In this map, it's the mountains and the relationship of the ranges and rivers that make it special. It's also a great reminder of how the land actually lines up here, the physical orientations that you can lose track of staying in the city all the time. The Pacific Ocean is the dominant environmental feature of Los Angeles and the mountain ranges are a close second, but sometimes people forget about both. Creason has a bigger version of the Moffett map with his piece. Excerpt:

Maestro Moffett brings the mountain ranges and hills to life, showing off the dramatic landscape of Los Angeles and its environs. Christopher Isherwood once wrote of the Southlands spectacular geography, An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. This whopper of a map gives a sense of that scale, stretching from Malibu to Laguna, from the Salton Sea to Sylmar, from the Mojave to the Palos Verdes peninsula. It even brings Vegas into focus. Most impressively rendered are the transverse ranges that cross Southern California area from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

Standing tall here are the lengthy Santa Monica Mountains, the beautiful San Gabriels, and the Verdugos, all of which date back at least to the Cenozoic Era when they were thrust up out of the earth. Separating the Los Angeles basin from the Mojave Desert, the San Gabriels are the most impressive range. They boast Mt. San Antonio (aka Mt. Baldy)one of the the most well-known peaks in Southern California. The Verdugo Mountains parallel the southern part of the San Gabriels, and though picturesque, they pose rockslide threats to communities like Tujunga, Sunland, Sun Valley, parts of Los Angeles, and Burbank. The most popular hiking destination are the Santa Monica Mountains. Covering a forty-mile stretch from the Hollywood hills out to Pt. Mugu in Ventura, they slice between the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles basin. Geologists say the westernmost outcropping of these mountains is the Channel Islands out in the blue Pacific. On the other side of the Valley are the Santa Susana Mountains.



Creason is the author of Los Angeles in Maps, the collection of beautiful and revealing maps book that came out in 2010.
  Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013.
Change (

Peace, Love & Unity

) is in the Air Now ! ...
This article appears in the January 29, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Chinas New Silk Road Policy

Is the Solution to the Refugee Crisis!

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

[PDF version of this article]

The author is chairwoman of the German political party Civil Rights Solidarity Movement. Her article is translated from German.

Jan. 23Whereas on the public side of this years World Economic Forum in Davos, the well-heeled Establishment held forth as usual on an eclectic array of topics, and private conversations behind-the-scenes were dominated chiefly by panic over the escalating financial crash of the trans/Atlantic sector, Chinese President Xi Jinping did something much more important: With a spectacular trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, he laid the basis for the integration of Southwest Asia into the New Silk Road, and thereby created the prerequisite for ending the conflict between Shia and Sunni in the region. With the perspective for reconstruction and development offered by China, the concrete opportunity suddenly arises to overcome the refugee crisis by rebuilding the migrants devastated home countries.

But there was also a surprise at Davos: In the panel titled The Future of Europe, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble suddenly advocated a Marshall Plan for the Middle East and Africa. In an inversion of George W. Bushs phrase, he called for a coalition of the willing, that is, of countries that are willing to invest billions in those regions from which the refugees come. And in a further reversal, Schauble agreed with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who was sitting at the same dais, that it would be disgraceful to attempt to turn Europe into a fortress, and that pressure on the external borders of the European Union should rather be reduced by such a development perspective.

World Economic Forum/swiss-image.ch/Valeriano Di Domenico

What are we to make of this? Has Schauble, of all peoplethe super-EU European and the bankers man, the one who demands discipline from Greece, the Troikas spokesman for austeritysuddenly discovered that he has a soft spot for the development of these countries? In any case, Frances King Henry IV believed long ago that, for the sake of a good cause, everyone need not be motivated by the highest ideal; some people wont achieve a goal until they feel their own shirts burning. Because Schauble knows: Without Schengenthe agreement to abolish border controls within the EUthere is no euro, and without the euro there is no EU. Since there is no solidarity in the EU, then its better not to exert pressure, which only makes the failure of the EUs Lisbon Treaty more obvious, but just count on the willing.

Xi Jinping Brings Win-Win Policy to Arab Capitals

But it was Xi Jinping, with his ground-breaking trip to the most populous countries of the Shia and Sunni denominations, who created the opening for such a shift. Before his trip, a Chinese Foreign Ministry position paper on Chinas policy towards the Arab world explicitly referred to the 2,000-year friendship between China and the Arab states from the time of the ancient Silk Road, as the basis for a new model of cooperation for mutual progress. Xi stressed the same principles in his speech to the Arab League in Cairo, in which he emphasized dialogue as the means to settle conflicts and called for respect for the decisions of the peoples of this region, instead of attempting to impose solutions from the outside. All problems, he said, can be overcome only if the happiness of the local people is promoted.

In addition to dozens of agreements with the three countries he visited, worth a total of around $55 billion (!) in the areas of infrastructure, transport, energy, and high technology, as subcomponents of the expansion of the New Silk Road (One Belt, One Road), the Chinese President also advanced the entirely new concept of international relations that his China defends. His arrival was preceded by the publication of an article signed by him in the daily newspapers of the respective countries, in which he referred to the best traditions in the culture of that country, such as the interchanges between the Han dynasty and Alexandria in Egypt 2,000 years ago, and the cooperation of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and President Gamal Abdel Nasser at the Bandung Conference in the struggle against colonialism and hegemony. In his article in an Iranian newspaper, he emphasized the friendly welcome of Chinese emissaries during the Han, Song, and Tang dynasties, as well as the unforgettable journey of the Persian poet Saadi to Kashgar.

A comment in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram by Mohamed Fayez Farahat makes it clear that people in these countries understand the totally new quality of the New Silk Road policy. It is one of the largest and most important projects that has ever been proposed in human history, he wrote. In contrast to projects proposed by the West, which either ended in nothing or projects that unevenly distribute revenues from global economic and financial transactions in favor of economically developed countries, and in contrast to all of the Western attempts at exporting democracy, which have completely failed, the Chinese policy is focused on the broadest inclusion of all regions. Thus it is not oriented toward geopolitics, but toward the economic development of the cooperating states, while also making the financing available. Therefore, the New Silk Road very quickly found willingness to cooperate on the part of 60 nations, the Egyptian journalist wrote.

Chinas proposal for inclusive win-win cooperation of all nations on this Earthon the basis of absolute respect for the sovereignty of all countries and for their chosen political, social, and economic modelswith the aim of overcoming the poverty of all, of cooperation in high-technology areas and of cultural exchanges, emphasizing the high points of one anothers culture, provides a revolutionary model for the cooperation of mankind, which excludes war as a means of conflict resolution.

This new concept of relations among nations embodies the same higher level of coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites, expressed in Nicholas of Cusas work De Pace Fidei (On the Peace of Faith), which he wrote in response to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The idea is that there is a higher plane and a higher truth in the order of Creation, through which differences can be overcome. This thinking is reflected in China in the idea of the mandate of heaven and Confucian philosophy, while in European humanist philosophy, it is expressed in the idea of natural law: that there are natural laws which ultimately are also efficient in the affairs of mankind, and which people must abide by to ensure their continued existence in the long term.

Time Is Running Out

The Chinese model embodies the overcoming of geopolitics, the main cause of two world wars in the Twentieth Century, and the acute danger of a third onethis time the last, because today it would be a thermonuclear world war. Schauble is right when he says that time is running outbut not only with regard to the refugee crisis, the cohesion of the EU, and the continued existence of the Merkel government. William White, the chairman of the Review Committee of the OECD and former chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), also warned dramatically on the eve of the Davos conference, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, that the debt accumulated worldwide over the last eight years is so great that it can no longer be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something. The only question is whether these debts will be written off in an orderly fashion or go under in chaos, he said.

Of course Schauble knows that, as Finance Minister. If he is really serious about the Marshall Plan for Southwest Asia and Africa, then he must immediately initiate the Glass-Steagall two-tier banking system throughout Europe, as the only way to write down the banks toxic paper in an orderly way, and in place of the casino economy, put in place a credit system for development of the real economy, in Southwest Asia and Africa as well as in Germany and the rest of Europe. This is the test of whether his Damascus Road conversion is real.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang has just spoke with Chancellor Merkel by telephone, and according to the Chinese press agency Xinhua, the two reaffirmed their intention to cooperate in the attempt to overcome the Syrian humanitarian crisis. China is holding out its hand, and we must grasp it now, in order to give the Germans confidence once again and give those in in Southwest Asia and Africa an existence and a future.
This article appears in the January 29, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Arabic Daily Hails Zepp-LaRouches

Role in New Silk Road

[PDF version of this article]

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Ittihad in the United Arab Emirates published a column by Mohammed Aref, a science and technology consultant, on Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, congratulating the New Silk Road LadyHelga Zepp-LaRoucheand the Schiller Institute for this new visionary policy.

Mohammed Aref

The column, titled Chinas 51st Century (according to Chinas record of its history), gives a poetic and exciting image of the tour by President Xi to the region and of Chinas emphasis on the New Silk Road and economic development in its policy declaration.

In 1997, Aref was the first Arab journalist to write a full-page review of EIRs first Eurasian Land-Brige Report, in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, of which he was the Scientific Editor.

After debunking the argument that Chinas economy is in decline, Aref states: China is redrawing the map of the world, turning the seven continents into six by making Asia and Europe one continent. Let the world be, for no one can succeed in conquering the world and changing it, as the Chinese saying goes, and as expressed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry Arab Policy Paper which was issued last week, in which is revived the Silk Road, which used to link Chinese with the Arab world for more than 2,000 years. The road of Chinese wisdom is like the a Silk Road which connects the greatest continental Asian-European landmass, and extends to the shores of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans through infrastructure for agriculture, industry, trade, technology, science and culture.

In his concluding paragraph, Aref reports Zepp-LaRouches historic role:

 The Arab-Asian Land-Bridge: The Pulsating Heart of the New Silk Road was the title of my report in a London newspaper in November 1997, and I never imagined then that this project, which was designed by the Schiller Institute, would be adopted by China and that the Chinese President would bring it with him to the Arab region this week. Last September, Beijing celebrated the release of the Chinese translation of the new report, The Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge. In the next month the Arabic translation of the report will be published, and is prepared by Hussein Askary, the Iraqi member of the Schiller Institute, which was established by the German Academician Helga LaRouche, who is called by the Chinese The Silk Road Lady, because she paved the way for the New Silk Road through hundreds of conferences and scientific and political seminars, and she established the concept of the Eurasian Land-Bridge as a war prevention tool, according to the Chinese Scholar Deng Yifan. Helga LaRouche and China are like the woman, about whom the Chinese proverb states: The female always surpasses the male by her calmness, and she becomes fruitful even in her silence. And the other proverb: The Great Country is like the lower part of the river, where the earth of the world meets the female of the world [Daodejing, Chapter 61ed.].

Arefs column is here.
This article appears in the January 29, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Xi Extends Belt and Road to War-Torn Mideast

by William Jones

[PDF version of this article]

Jan. 24On a ground-breaking visit to three major countries in the Middle EastSaudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iranfrom January 19 to 23, President Xi Jinping brought to this war-torn region a message of hope and optimism, through his commitment to revitalize the Middle East by linking Chinas plan for a New Silk Road with these, the countries of the ancient Silk Road. This move now promises to overturn the rules that have hitherto prevailed in the region, long a playground of British financial interests, one which they have used to keep the world destabilized and on the brink of war.

While China has long had interests here, receiving much of its oil and gas from the Middle East, it has kept a low political profile in an area long dominated by Britain and the United States. During the Bush-Obama regimes, the entire region has been subject to a major destabilization that has created chaos and devastation in its wake, with the potential for leading to a new world war. Following on Russian President Putins historic intervention against terrorism begun last Sept. 30, the high-level Chinese intervention has the potential to turn the situation completely around.

In an article published in the UAE newspaper Al-Ittihad, author Mohammed Aref expresses the sense of optimism engendered by the visit. China is redrawing the map of the world, turning the seven continents into six by making Asia and Europe one continent, he wrote. In the article, Aref also notes the key role of the Silk Road Lady, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in spearheading what is now the main thrust of Chinas foreign policy, to which she has given the name, the New Silk Road.

But this New Silk Road, or what the Chinese call the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road, is not simply a project for economic cooperation, but rather is a new paradigm for relations between sovereign nations. The strategic significance of the Silk Road narrative is not lost on the countries visited by the Chinese President. The old Silk Road, dating back 2,000 years, was in many respects a Golden Age for the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia. While Europe was immersed in the Dark Ages, there was a flourishing of culture, art, and science in the great capitals of Central Asia and the Middle East. In fact, it was through Latin translations of Arabic works, often by Jewish scholars in places like Andalusian Spain, that the first glimmerings of the literary and scientific work of the ancient Greeks were made known to the West. In that era, China and the countries of Iran, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula were involved in a great union of trade and cultural exchanges. The message of the Chinese President is that that era can be revived with Twenty-first Century methods.

China Issues Arab Policy Paper

Prior to Xis departure for the Middle East, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued an Arab Policy Paper, the first of its kind, which outlined an agenda for cooperation with the region. The occasion of the publication was the 60th anniversary this year of the establishment of diplomatic relations with an Arab country, Egypt. But the paper would also provide the groundwork for Xis visit.

Over the past 60 years, the paper says, China-Arab friendly cooperation has made historic leaps in breadth and depth. It has become a model of South-South cooperation and gained the following successful experience: Both sides have always respected and treated each other as equals and remain brothers, friends, and partners no matter what happens on the world arena; both sides have insisted on the principle of mutual benefit, win-win, and common development, and have pursued common interest and sustainable development no matter what changes or developments take place on either side; and both sides have promoted dialogue, exchanges, and mutual learning among civilizations, and have always respected each others social system and development path no matter what differences exist in ideology.

It is precisely such a relationship, based on mutual respect, that China has been attempting to build with its neighbors in the One Belt, One Road strategy. The interventionism and unilateralism practiced by the Bush and Obama administrations, dictated by their British game-masters, has caused havoc in the region. Establishing peace requires a new paradigm in international relations, and this is what China is trying to establish.

Xinhua/Ju Peng

In Saudi Arabia, the first stop on his trip, Xi witnessed the signing of fourteen agreements, including agreements on oil production and nuclear energy, and an agreement to work toward a free-trade agreement with the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) by the end of 2016. In Saudi Arabia, President Xi met with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the speaker of the Majlis (Consultative Council), and the head of the GCC.

Suez CanalA Silk Road Hub

The second stop on Xis trip was Egypt. China has increased its cooperation with the country since President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi took power and re-established some order in a situation that was quickly spinning out of control under the Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi. China views Egypt as a major hub on the Belt and Road, with the newly improved and expanded Suez Canal now able to service a much larger amount of expected shipping from the Asia-Pacific region.

In an article published in Al-Ahram, the major Egyptian daily, prior to his visit, President Xi outlined a development perspective: The aspiration of the Arab people for a better life not only provides the momentum for reform, it also lays the foundation for regional stability. By jointly developing the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi wrote, the two sides can link up our respective development strategies, [and] deepen and expand cooperation in energy, trade and investment, infrastructure and high technology. China welcomes Egypt and other Arab countries to get on board the fast train of its development and hopes that our respective development and growth could be well-aligned and mutually reinforcing. The two sides signed 21 trade agreements, including a broad five-year cooperation agreement. These included agreements on cooperation in civil aviation, electricity, higher education and science, media, banking, and trade. China will invest $15 billion in Egypt in infrastructure projects, including a China-Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, which is slated to provide employment to 10,000 Egyptian workers. China will also invest in the construction of a new Egyptian capital city just east of present-day Cairo.

In Cairo, President Xi also gave an important speech to the Arab League in which he underlined the thrust of his policy for the region as a whole. The key to overcoming difficulties is to accelerate development, Xi told the members of the League. Turmoil in the Middle East stems from the lack of development, and the ultimate solution will depend on development, which bears on everyones well-being and dignity. It is a race against time and a struggle between hope and disillusion. Only when young people are able to live a fulfilled life with dignity through development can hope prevail in their heart. Only then will they voluntarily reject violence, extremist ideologies, and terrorism. Xi also reiterated Chinas support for an Israel-Palestine two-state solution and the creation of a viable Palestinian state with its 1967 borders.

President al-Sisi also hosted the Chinese President on a tour of the Luxor Temple, more than 3,400 years old, stressing the relationship of these two ancient cultures. Both presidents viewed performances under the stars at Luxor by both Chinese and Egyptian performers.

Long-Term Agreement With Iran

Finally, President Xi visited Iran, the first head of state to do so in the aftermath of the signing of the P-5 nuclear agreement with Iran, in which China was a key participant. Iran, especially, has its own history as a key country along the ancient Silk Road. Many of the surviving documents and contracts from the old Silk Road period were written in languages stemming from old Persian and much of the culture of the ancient Silk Road was also Persian.

Xinhua/Wang Ye

by the Chinese President published in the Iranian newspapers a day before he arrived, Xi wrote: Over 2,000 years ago during the Western Han Dynasty in China, the Chinese envoy Zhang Qians deputy came to Iran and received a warm welcome. Seven centuries later, during the Tang and Song dynasties, many Iranians came to Chinas Xian and Guangzhou to study, practice medicine, and do business. In the Thirteenth Century, the famous Iranian poet Saadi wrote about his unforgettable travel to Kashgar, Xinjiang. In the Fifteenth Century, a renowned Chinese navigator, Zheng He, from the Ming Dynasty, led seven maritime expeditions, which took him to Hormuz in southern Iran three times.

More recently, China has had a long-standing economic relationship with Iran since 1971, which was not curtailed during the days in which economic sanctions kept other countries away. While 140 countries have now sent delegations to Tehran, eager to cut deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Chinese still maintain something of a special status with Iran. This was particularly stressed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who, in his meeting with the Chinese President, said that Iran still mistrusted the West, but that China was seen as an old friend. The two countries signed an unprecedented 25-year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement coordinating the two nations respective development agendas. They also signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Jointly Promoting the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road.

Iran and China signed seventeen documents for cooperation in economic, industrial, cultural, and judicial fields, including an agreement between Iranian and Chinese nuclear chiefs for peaceful energy cooperation. Others agreements involved environmental cooperation, financing of a bullet train railway, and banking cooperation. President Rouhani called this a new chapter in the two countries relationship.

Xinhua/Pan Chaoyue

The visit of the Chinese President to the Middle East has indeed signaled a new chapter in the history of the Middle East. The historic decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to help Syria fight terrorism, successfully judoed attempts by Obama and the British to launch war in Europe and begin a new round of color revolutions in the Mideast. Now, the visit of the Chinese President has provided the basis for a new paradigm in relations among nations, based on the mutual interests of them all, and a revival of those elements of their cultures which represented a high point for humanity. As the New Silk Road will be traveled more rapidly by high-speed rail than was the ancient road by camel, the great values of cooperation and mutual benefit characteristic of the old Silk Road can be transmitted more rapidly on the new one. If the project is brought to fruition, these nationswhich provided such an important role in the advance of human civilization 2,000 years agocan again make a valuable contribution to the development of mankind on our planet, launching a new Renaissance for humanity.
This article appears in the January 29, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

EDITORIAL

Bertrand Russell Was Wrong; Human Creativity Can Overcome This Crisis!

[PDF version of this article]

Jan. 21You know, those of you who have not become personally totally demoralized, you know that this country and much of the world are in an existential crisis. This is far worse than 2008, and far worse than 1929. In the United States, you would have to go back to the pre-Civil War period, or to the time before our Revolutionary War, to find such a level of threat to our country. Nations including our own could effectively cease to exist before this cruel winter ends.

This is a season of death here. Cut off from hope, cut off from a useful existence, cut off from everything, many of our citizens are simply going out to kill themselves, whether with heroin or firearms.

In the trans-Atlantic area, we have a disaster which has apparently little or no future for mankind. However, in terms of Russia and China, we do have something that could be the answer to the problem. You have to understand that the history of mankind in recent times, has been that Asia has been a different region from the trans-Atlantic area. And it's the trans-Atlantic area, as centered in the British Empire, which is the primary source of all the evil thats hitting now.

The key to understanding this, is the history of the British Empire. The British Empire is the source of evil, whereas you have a different possibility available in terms of Russia and China.

For mankind, there is always an available solution to this kind of problem. Where does it lie?

It lies in human creativity, and yes, you can get there. On certain conditions. In order to get there, you will have to abandon most of the baggage you would like to carry with you. Which is essentially the British Empire, and those parts of the planet which are tied to the British Empire.

Like the current financial system. This financial system is a fake. Its the source of the destruction. You have to get rid of the financial system, and that is the key to the solution.

As soon as we do that, the bleeding will stop!

It is Bertrand Russell who created this, and it was Bertrand Russells influence on the U.S. economy, and related things, which caused this destruction.

This problem goes back to the death of the great genius Gottfried Leibniz at the end of 1716. Leibniz was the key to that entire period of history; his death left a huge gap among our forces. Leibniz was the inspirer of the American Revolution, along with much else. Later, decades after Leibnizs death, it was the genius Alexander Hamilton who came forward to pick up Leibnizs role and effectively found the U.S.A. Only Hamiltons economic principles make sense: forget everything else!

Our crisis today is far worse than what Franklin Roosevelt faced, but the same Hamiltonian principles apply. Those principles can bring about a turnaround and eventual recovery now, as they did then. The problem is that so many of our citizens have become too stupid to grasp them. The stupidity which is manifest in submission to Wall Street, and even more particularly to the FBI system which substantially took power in the United States beginning in 1944, even before Franklin Roosevelts death. It was the introduction of the FBI system which has caused the destruction of the economy of the United States.

Our citizens minds have fallen prey to the evil influence of Londons Lord Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whom Lyndon LaRouche has called the most evil man of the Twentieth Century. Russell devoted his life to making men stupid so that they might be easily controlled, or, as now, killed. His method was to insist on mathematical thinking, which has long been the leading form of abject stupidity worldwide. Beginning in 1900, he succeeded, and progressively destroyed the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. For most of you, this is what you learned in school. If you have children, this is all they are so-called learning, and in a more wretchedly stupid form. This is the stupidity which Albert Einstein, like Lyndon LaRouche, never accepted, and spent most of his life fighting.

Now lets finally get rid of this nonsense. Your life, and a lot more besides, depends on it.
The first bill President Obama signed after taking office in 2009 was designed to help close the pay gap between men and women.

But saying progress has been slow, Obama announced a new plan Friday to try to ensure that women earn the same as men for doing the same job.

The proposal, which doesnt need legislative approval, would require businesses with at least 100 employees to submit annual pay data by gender, race and ethnicity in an effort to find firms that the White House said are unlawfully shortchanging workers.

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The median annual wage for a woman working full time is $39,600, 79% the median wage for a man, the White House said, although some critics said that generalized figure overstates the difference.

The gap has narrowed slightly the last two years, but still is too wide, the White House said.

What kind of example does paying women less set for our sons and daughters? President Obama said in announcing the new requirements at a White House ceremony Friday celebrating the seventh anniversary of his signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. That legislation made it easier for workers to challenge what they view as unfair pay.

The latest federal move comes after California enacted one of the toughest pay equity laws in the nation. The states Fair Pay Act, which took effect Jan. 1, broadened federal laws. California employers now arent allowed to pay a female employee less than a male employee for substantially similar work, even if there are different job titles or work sites.

The new federal rules would help California implement its law by providing pay information that has been unavailable, said state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), who wrote the Fair Pay Act.

Companies will have to come forward with that data, she said. Thats always been a big problem  what can we show? What can we do to identify where the problems are or that the problems even exist?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized the additional federal reporting requirements as too burdensome. The Obama administration plan, expected to be approved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the coming months after public comment and a hearing, would take effect Sept. 30, 2017.

While we strongly support nondiscrimination in compensation, the type of reporting proposed by the administration today would place unnecessary and onerous burdens on employers while providing no meaningful insight as to whether employer pay practices are discriminatory, said Randy Johnson, the chambers senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits.

But Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said the Obama administrations action was a big step forward.

An awful lot of times, people will say there is no income gap. There is, and we know there is, she said. It is extremely important to have that concrete data by occupation and by region of the country. We have been fighting for that for a long time.

The Obama administration plan would expand on a 2014 executive order that the Labor Department collect wage data by gender, race and ethnicity from federal contractors.

Now the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed that all employers with at least 100 workers submit the data across 10 job categories and 12 pay ranges on a form they already are required to submit annually that includes employment data by gender, race and ethnicity.

Specific salaries would not have to be reported and the data would not be made public. The EEOC said it would analyze the information to better focus investigations into unlawful pay practices.

Kristin Michaels, who represents employers in labor litigation, said it was unclear how federal officials would conduct that analysis. She noted that a 2013 report by the National Research Council recommended against using pay ranges and total earnings and suggested measuring compensation based on rates of pay, such as hourly wages.

The continuing problem is you simply cant compare either wage rate to wage rate or earnings to earnings because there are other factors that go into compensation decisions, said Michaels, a partner at the McDermott Will & Emery law firm in Chicago. Its education, its tenure, its potentially additional hours worked when youre taking about salaried employees.

Its going to potentially give a lot of false positives (for wage discrimination) that employers will have to spend the time to disprove, she said.

But Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco group that focuses on womens rights, said the data would make it easier for the government to enforce existing pay laws and also force industries to confront pay discrepancies.

This is a great step for companies to evaluate themselves, she said. Once pay gaps are revealed in black-and-white data, there is an additional incentive for employers to address it.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

shan.li@latimes.com

Puzzanghera reported from Washington and Li from Los Angeles.

Staff writer Evan Halper contributed to this report.
Elon Musk is bringing together more than 1,000 college and high school students this weekend to showcase passenger-compartment designs for a hyperloop high-speed transit system.

Two Los Angeles start-ups are already developing hyperloops, starting with test track construction in the Central Valley and North Las Vegas later this year. Driven by a possible mix of electricity, magnetism and air pressure, levitating hyperloop pods would zip fast enough through above-ground tubes to reach San Francisco from Los Angeles in 30 minutes.

But Musk, who popularized the concept three years ago, wants more people involved.

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Last summer, the billionaires rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. launched a student competition to design and build those pods. It includes design reviews Friday and Saturday at Texas A&M University and culminates with small-scale tests this summer near SpaceX in Hawthorne.

The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition has more than 120 university teams and three high schools vying for runs inside the nearly mile-long, 6-foot-diameter steel-and-concrete tube thats being planned.

Students said they recognized their projects might not be polished, but hope their ideas could still speed up the launch of a commercial hyperloop.

No doubt there might be errors in everybodys design, but its a start, Cal Poly sophomore Wayne Page said. Even if we dont get any benefits, but the companies do, its still something gained by society as a whole. Thats probably the most exciting thing.

More than that, the competition has led hundreds of companies, organizations and, of course, parents to contribute what could easily reach millions of dollars to hyperloop research. SpaceX hasnt tracked teams expenses.

Building demo pods, as many teams hope to do, may cost as much as $100,000. Part of this weekends exercise is about soliciting cash from donors. Expected sponsors include engineering giant Aecom, law firm Cooley and TV network Nickelodeon. Musk is not expected to appear.

Hyperloop proposals call for the pod to be suspended in air to reduce friction and increase speed, but groups are split over whether to achieve that by using a stream of air underneath or pulsating the pod between magnets. The Cal Poly team went with the significantly more affordable though less tested option: air bearings.

Page has spent 100 hours over the last four weeks with 14 others to work out kinks. Theyve tapped Internet crowdfunding, family, school grants and their own bank accounts to fund the Texas trip. Theyre bargain-hunting at every turn, flying ultra-low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines to get there.

Its a similar story at UC Irvine, where 25 students working 40 to 50 hours a week on the hyperloop project have received $10,000 plus lab and office space from the university, free training from software companies such as Ansys and guidance from employees at corporations including Microsoft.

The key technologies Musk proposed for the hyperloop, including solar power and air compression, havent been mixed in such a complex machine before, forcing entrants to think creatively.

In other senior design projects and annual competitions, you can look at last year and say, What can we do better? UC Irvine senior Anthony Cirillo said. We didnt have that here. You cant just go on the Internet and find the answers.

A triple-redundant computer system and a redundant braking system are some of the reasons Irvines design should stand out, Cirillo said. He added that the team wont disband until it produces a working model.

If that means we have to kick up the sponsorship, then we can do that, he said.

At El Segundo High School, five seniors are generating graduate-level work by designing custom intake valves and tubing to corral air slamming the pods nose, said teacher Steven Eno.

The school, parents and neighbors, including employees at a nearby Air Force base, have offered support to the tune of $14,000 and countless hours.

The high-schoolers said theyre nervous about presenting this weekend to judges from Musks companies and academia, but theyre eager to see how they fare compared with universities theyre hoping to attend. At the least, theyve learned team coordination lessons that will long be valuable, said leader Gavin Glynn.

We are trying to be inspiration for other people in engineering classes or engineers in general to do something big and try something they might not have tried: Theres a high school team doing that, imagine what we could do as well, he said.

Chat with me on Twitter @peard33
In the Book of Genesis, God proclaimed, Let there be light, and there was light. In the theater, there are stage hands to do that job, and on a recent morning, a crew had lighted the Ahmanson to a warm glow for the newest deity in residence.

Standing on the mostly bare stage, actor Sean Hayes took a moment to absorb the towering grandeur of his new dominion. And Sean saw that it was good.

It was the actors first time performing at the Ahmanson, where he has the title role in the comedic play An Act of God. To be more precise, he will play himself, possessed by the Almighty, who has come to Los Angeles and inhabited the body of a celebrity to deliver a revised set of the Ten Commandments.

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If the God of the Old Testament was vengeful, Hayes is a humorous deity given to horsing around and making wacky pronouncements  not unlike the flamboyant Jack McFarland, whom he played on NBCs sitcom Will & Grace.

Can we bring the seats all the way to the stage so people can put their drinks and hot dogs here? he randomly asked. A theater manager said he would see what could do about that.

The smartest thing that an actor can do is embrace the thing that made them famous as opposed to run away from it or deny that it happened, Sean Hayes said. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Later, alongside the plays author, David Javerbaum, the actor described the heavenly character he incarnates as very self-righteous, egotistical, sarcastic, sardonic. But he also becomes, through the course of the play, self-aware. Which I love. So there is actually a narrative to the play.

An Act of God, directed by Joe Mantello, opened on Broadway in May with Jim Parsons of CBS The Big Bang Theory in the lead role. Because of his shooting schedule, Parsons couldnt reprise the role in L.A., where opening night is scheduled for Feb. 10. So producers tapped Hayes, who hadnt seen the New York production but loved the script.

I went through five or six pages and said this is some of the best writing Ive read in my life. And oddly, its in my voice. It was bizarre, he said.

In the following weeks, Javerbaum tailored his play to fit both Hayes and L.A., with new topical references and jokes.

The 90-minute comedy is loosely based on Javerbaums 2011 book, The Last Testament: A Memoir by God, as well as the parody Twitter account @TheTweetofGod, in which he tweets in the voice of the Almighty.

You power through it word by word, line by line.  Sean Hayes, on his role in Act of God

My editor said that you should start a Twitter account to help publicize the book, Javerbaum recalled. That was back when people thought that Twitter could do anything to help the Godforsaken publishing industry. I did it, and I found that I enjoyed it.

A former writer for The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Late Show With David Letterman, Javerbaum said he was approached by Broadway producer Jeffrey Finn to turn the material into a stage play.

Hayes delivers Gods new commandments with the help of two winged angels as well as some willing audience participants. For the TV veteran, it meant having to memorize 45 pages of text, most of which is monologue.

I go to a specific spot in my house, every time. It took about five hours to learn each page, he said. You just do it. Its like going to the gym. Its the same muscle. You power through it word by word, line by line.

I actually thought it was easier to memorize this than most scenic work that you do for TV or film.  When you dont have an interruption, theres a flow, so its easier to memorize. Monologues are easier to memorize than dialogue.

Can we bring the seats all the way to the stage so people can put their drinks and hot dogs here? Sean Hayes randomly asked. (Francine Orr/ Los Angeles Times)

Hayes said he isnt religious but was raised a Catholic and as a young student growing up in suburban Chicago had to attend Bible classes on Wednesday nights.

I was buttoned up as a kid, he said. I did what I was told and never broke the rules.

By high school, his clownish side had emerged, and he was performing pratfalls in the school hallways.

Half the people would look at me like I was an idiot. And maybe a quarter of the people thought it was funny. So I would hang out with those people, he said.

Hayes, on Broadway in 2010 in the musical comedy Promises, Promises, said he generally doesnt get offered dramatic roles but doesnt mind.

The smartest thing that an actor can do is embrace the thing that made them famous as opposed to run away from it or deny that it happened, he said. That does a disservice to most actors. To me, it looks like youre ungrateful.

Javerbaum quipped: And yet your sex video you deny.

The actor joked right back: Ive turned a corner. I embrace it. And not only do I embrace it, I promote it.

Javerbaum is Jewish but said he isnt religious. (Ive driven by churches. I havent gone in, he said.) He read the Old Testament, the four Gospels and the Koran in preparation for the play.

He described An Act of God as a comedic conception of the Old Testament God.  Daddy is pretty nuts. Hes pretty vengeful.

Javerbaum studied musical theater at New York University and worked a stint for the Onion satirical newspaper. One of his favorite headlines: Worlds largest metaphor struck by iceberg.

He has two musicals in the hopper, including one based on the life of former Interior Secretary James G. Watt, who resigned in 1983 after he characterized a coal advisory commission as a black ... a woman, two Jews and a cripple.

At one point in the interview, Hayes and Javerbaum wondered aloud what they should do for Oscars night on Feb. 28, which will be a two-performance day.

Is anyone going to go? Hayes asked.

We should do something special, Javerbaum said.

After bouncing around a few ideas, they landed on a conceit that they would write into the play. (Javerbaum asked that it not be revealed.)

The duo are also working on a few script changes for when the play travels to San Francisco for a three-week run at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre Theatre, starting late March.

In their time working together, they appeared to have developed an easy, jokey rapport. Hayes described Javerbaum as an incredibly kind human being, as genuine and salt-of-the-earth as they get.

The actor added: And Im just kidding.
Gobsmacked.

Thats how Carol Burnett said she felt when SAG-AFTRA President Ken Howard called to tell her she was getting the actors guilds Life Achievement Award.

My chum Julie Andrews taught me that word, Burnett said. Isnt that a great word? It sounds like what it is. You are gobsmacked.

FULL COVERAGE: SAG AWARDS 2016

Burnett will receive the prize Saturday evening at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which airs on TBS and TNT. And its very apropos that two queens of comedy  Tina Fey and Amy Poehler  will be giving the award to the legend who has influenced countless contemporary funny ladies.

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For the Record

Jan. 29, 2:52 p.m.: An earlier version of this article and headline incorrectly referred to the Sag Life Achievement Award as Lifetime Achievement. Also, The Carol Burnett Show ended in 78, not 79.

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Her legions of fans are probably gobsmacked as to why it took so long for Burnett to receive the SAG honor. Her rubber-faced blend of physical humor, musicality, zaniness and sweetness has long made her one of Americas best-loved performers.

1 / 10 Leonard Nimoy, left, appeared with Burnett on an episode of The Carol Burnett Show. (CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images) 2 / 10 With The Carol Burnett Show signing off in 1978, Burnett split her time among stage, TV and the big screen, appearing in 1981s The Four Seasons and 1982s Annie. In 1984 Burnett, left, reunited with Vicki Lawrence on the CBS sitcom Mamas Family. (CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images) 3 / 10 Burnett, left, and Vicki Lawrence joke around at a gathering to announce Columbia Houses release of The Carol Burnett Show in a video library form on Oct. 24, 2000. (Kim D. Johnson / Associated Press) 4 / 10 Burnett joined pal Joel Grey at the Music Centers 18th Distinguished Artists Awards Gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where Grey received an award. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 10 Burnett clowns around with fellow voice actors Jim Carrey, left, and Steve Carrell while promoting the 2008 animated film Horton Hears a Who. (Karen Tapia Andersen / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 10 The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honored the star at An Evening with Carol Burnett in 2013. (Richard Shotwell / Invision) 7 / 10 Burnett was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in 2013. (Owen Sweeney / Invision) 8 / 10 Carol Creighton Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1933, and moved to Los Angeles with her grandmother at a young age. She majored in theater arts at UCLA. She is pictured at the Wal-Mart shareholder meeting in Fayetteville, Ark. on June 5, 2015. (Danny Johnston / Associated Press) 9 / 10 Burnett was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award at the SAG Awards on Jan. 30, 2016. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 10 From left, Julie Andrews, Christine Baranski and Carol Burnett perform onstage during Lincoln Centers American Songbook Gala on Feb. 1, 2017, in New York City. (Neilson Barnard / Getty Images)

For the last six decades, the 82-year-old Burnett has kept audiences laughing, first on CBS The Garry Moore Show from 1959-62 and her own brilliant, multi-award-winning 1967-78 CBS comedy-variety series The Carol Burnett Show, which also featured Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner, Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence.

She conquered Broadway (Once Upon a Mattress, Moon Over Miami) and starred in several feature films including 1972s Pete n Tillie, 1978s A Wedding and 1982s Annie.

She became an overnight sensation singing Ken Welchs novelty tune, I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles at Blue Angel nightclub in New York in 1957. Burnett was even invited to perform the song on the The Jack Paar Show and The Ed Sullivan Show in the same week.

Burnett has written three bestsellers including her autobiography, One More Time, and has just completed a book about her TV series. Shes guest starred in countless TV series including Glee and Hawaii Five-0" and demonstrated her dramatic prowess in such TV films as 1979s Friendly Fire.

Last year, several episodes of The Carol Burnett Show, which hadnt been seen since their first broadcast, were released on DVD. The series has its own YouTube channel.

In person, Burnett is as warm, funny and gracious as her TV image. She spoke about the origins of her career and her newest fans.

I had no idea you made your TV debut back in New York in 1955 on The Paul Winchell Show, which starred the famed ventriloquist and his puppets Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff.

I was the girlfriend of Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. I remember I called my grandmother out here to tell her I was going to be on television. Nanny said, say hello to me. Thats when we came up with pulling my ear. The first song I sang [on TV] was Over the Rainbow to Jerry Mahoney.

You go back a long way with Julie Andrews. How did you two meet?

She came with her manager to see me in Once Upon a Mattress. She was doing Camelot at the time. The producer of The Garry Moore Show, Bob Banner, and Lou Wilson, who was Julies manager at the time, said to Julie and me, you girls have got to get to know each other. The four of us went for Chinese after the show. These poor men couldnt get a word in because Julie and I just hit it off immediately.

Then she came on the Garry Moore Show as a guest. Ken Welch, who wrote special material, asked her if there is something you always wanted to do musically. She said I always wanted to be a cowboy, so he wrote a treatment of Big D and we did it as a finale. So Bob Banner said, you girls have chemistry. That is when the idea of teaming us up [for the special Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall] happened. We did three specials.

Lucille Ball was a mentor and a friend. You appeared on her series and she would guest on The Carol Burnett Show.

She came to see me in Mattress the second night after we opened. I remember I made the mistake of peeking through the curtain, and I saw the red hair in the second row. I was as, if not more, nervous than opening night because Lucy was in the audience. Afterward, she came back and sat and talked to me for about 25 minutes.

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She called me Kid. She said, Kid, if you ever need me for anything you call me. About three years later, I was going to do a special for CBS if I could get a top guest. The producer said you should call Lucy. I called her and I said, I know you are busy  I was stuttering  I am doing this special .... She said when do you want me?

Is it true you modeled your variety series after Garry Moores show?

The thing about Garry  and this is what I did with my show because I wanted to emulate him  is that we would be sitting around having a table read on Monday morning for a show on Friday. He might have a punchline or a joke and he would say, Let Carol do this. He was just that way, and that is the way I wanted my show to be  a true rep company. There were many sketches where I supported. Though I had the title, we were all equal in the sketches.

Ive enjoyed watching the DVDs of the so-called lost episodes of The Carol Burnett Show.

Because of all of these [DVDs] and being on YouTube, I am getting fan mail from 10-year-olds on their little lined school paper with the three holes. Its absolutely wonderful.

I go around the country and do Q&As. I have been doing it for like 25 years and Im starting to get [audiences] from 9 to 90, which is fabulous. A year or so ago I was in Texas. A little boy in the second row raised his hand. I said, Hi, whats your name? He said, Andrew. I said, How old are you Andrew? He said, 9. I said, You know who I am? He said, Surprisingly yes!

susan.king@latimes.com

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22nd Screen Actors Guild Awards

Where: TBS

When: 5 p.m. TBS and TNT; 7 p.m. TNT, Saturday
Article 1 :

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2 :
When Walt Disney Studios releases a film called The Finest Hours, an exercise in dour cynicism is not to be expected. What is on offer is an old-fashioned rescue yarn thats so earnest and four-square it might have been made in the 1950s as well as taking place there.

But before scoffers scoff, realize that this tale of nautical derring-do has several things going for it to counteract the inherent obviousness of the material. These include a director who knows his way around this kind of material, special effects work that makes the peril fearfully alive, and a pip of a true story of what is considered as daring a rescue mission as the U.S. Coast Guard ever attempted.

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The director, Craig Gillespie, best known for the woefully underappreciated Lars and the Real Girl, has the ability, as he showed in Disneys Million Dollar Arm, to tell emotional stories without overdoing the sentiment or making us feel foolish for buying into the proceedings.

Before The Finest Hours heads into heavy water, it takes time on shore to introduce us to two of its protagonists, Petty Officer First Class Bernie Webber (Chris Pine, who plays Capt. Kirk in the rebooted Star Trek) and a young woman named Miriam (Holliday Grainger, who played an evil sister in Cinderella) on the night of their blind date in November 1951.

Miriam is a Massachusetts switchboard operator who struck up a phone conversation with Bernie, a Coast Guardsman stationed in Chatham. Just one look and theyre hooked and soon wedding plans, initiated by independent, assertive, modern woman Miriam, are in the offing.

But before Mr. By the Book Bernie can ask his commanding officer for permission to marry, Mother Nature makes quite the bravura appearance in the shape of a Feb. 18, 1952, noreaster so fierce it makes The Perfect Storm look like the shower Gene Kelly danced through in Singin in the Rain.

Out on the Atlantic, a 500-foot oil tanker named the SS Pendleton is hit so hard by the storm, the vessel is ripped in half, one half (the one with the unfortunate captain on it) sinking without a trace and the other half kept afloat, at least temporarily, because of air in the ships ballast tanks.

Left in nominal charge on the Pendleton is chief engineer Raymond Sybert, a squirrely individual nobody much likes but most of the crew respects for his knowledge of the ship.

Strongly played by Casey Affleck in what feels like a warm-up for his breakout role in Kenneth Lonergans Sundance hit Manchester by the Sea, Sybert has an unconventional plan to keep that half from sinking for a few hours. But not everyone onboard is buying into it, and without a working radio its unclear how anyone will even know the Pendleton is in deep trouble.

Meanwhile, back at that Coast Guard station, there is wall-to-wall tension. Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana with a Southern accent) is new to command, and Bernie is struggling with the psychological aftereffects of an unsuccessful rescue attempt he was part of the previous year.

But when his commander decides to send Bernie and three other men (played by Ben Foster, Kyle Gallner and John Magaro) out on a suicidal rescue mission in a 36-foot wooden lifeboat, our man does not hesitate to take on the job. In the Coast Guard they say you have to go out, he says stoically. They dont say you have to come back in.

The heart of The Finest Hours cuts back and forth between Bernie and his crew and Sybert and his men, all desperately trying to stay alive and afloat in ferocious waves (especially effective in the films 3-D version) that would as soon kill you as look at you.

Though the film involved a number of writers (the script was written by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, based on a book of the same name by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias), it is the physical reproduction of that angry storm as shot by cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe that makes the most lasting impression. Production designer Michael Corenblith created a set of the engine room of the Pendleton that was more than 40 feet tall and remarkably detailed.

The scenes of boats coping with all that howling weather were largely filmed in an enormous 80-foot-by-110-foot tank, which held 800,000 gallons of water. The actors were pummeled by rain towers, dump tanks and 200-horsepower fans creating ceaseless wind. The result couldnt be more convincing, and in a film like The Finest Hours, that counts for a lot.

 Kenneth Turan reviews The Finest Hours starring Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, and Ben Foster. Video by Jason H. Neubert.

------------

The Finest Hours

MPAA rating: PG-13, for intense sequences of peril

Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

Playing: In general release

kenneth.turan@latimes.com
In 1996, Scream revived horror on film by revealing the genres tricks and tropes. The spark that ignited the runaway hit came not from the works of maestros such as John Carpenter or Alfred Hitchcock, however, but from an unlikely source: Stephen Sondheims Into the Woods.

I dont even know how many times I saw that show, says Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson, for whom the film was a debut outing. Sondheim ripped those fairy tale stories open, exposed them and had fun with them.

Struck by what he calls self-aware, postmodern, self-reflective writing in the musical, the young screenwriter wondered what if we did that to the horror genre?

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Directed by Wes Craven for Bob Weinsteins then-fledgling Dimension Films, Scream is a slasher movie with the heart of an adult thriller and the affability of a teen comedy. Williamson, who will appear with actor Matthew Lillard at a 20th anniversary screening and Q&A at the Writers Guild Theater on Friday, wrote the genre-bending movie with the intent to bring energy and life back to the horror genre.

The cast, including Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courteney Cox, Rose McGowan and David Arquette, meshed well with Williamsons ideas. Lillard played manic Scream character Stu, who plays audience surrogate in a key scene explaining some of the rules of horror. Theres a very simple formula, exclaims movie expert Randy (Jamie Kennedy). Everybodys a suspect!

The peek behind the curtain was a novel way to re-approach a genre that had fallen prey to cliches as horror was sidelined to direct-to-video status.

We revealed the magic tricks, recalls Williamson, who says that that also opened the film up to criticism from some who thought the tricks should remain trade secrets. But I think we all did know how the tricks were done, the writer says with a laugh. Its not like we were exposing anything unheard of.

The most successful horror films galvanize audiences not merely through provocation but by reflecting the world outside the theater.

I think Scream changed the way we look at horror films, Williamson says, but we were in a self-aware generation. We were looking that way at everything. The films meta-concepts fit right in with the homage-heavy films of directors like Quentin Tarantino, whose 1994 Pulp Fiction, along with Scream, helped define popular American cinema in the 90s.

The self-referential elements were new, and the films killings were intense and bloody, but the screenplay relies on fundamentals borrowed from murder mysteries.

I was always a big mystery thriller guy, Williamson says, and core concepts from vintage mysteries helped him shape the story.

I didnt feel confident as a writer because I was so young and green at the time. I didnt really understand the mistakes you can make with mystery, and I think thats what saved me.

Twenty years later, Williamson has a proud fondness for the film he calls a beautiful lightning-in-a-bottle story, even as he notes that age and experience have affected his approach to horror.

I know I dont lean into it or seek it out the way I used to, he says.

Craven died August 2015 of brain cancer.

That hit hard, says Williamson. You think of your own mortality and your own life. He was such a generous, sweet man, and it all began with him. He was so graceful and generous with me, the way he let me in, in a way in which other directors have never let me in.

With a Scream TV series going into its second season this April on MTV, could the film series go on without Craven?

In 2010, as Scream 4" was in development with Williamson writing once again, ideas were swirling for fifth and sixth films in the series. The potential of those concepts, however, never came to fruition. Now Williamson gently brushes away the idea of making another film.

With Wes gone, he muses, do we need a Scream 5'?

The film is so beautiful where it is in my life. I dont feel the need to go there again.

calendar@latimes.com

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20th-anniversary screening of Scream

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Writers Guild Theater, 135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills

Admission: Free

Info: (323) 782-4508

Note: Q&A with Kevin Williamson after the screening moderated by Matthew Lillard. Open to the public, no RSVP required, seating is first come, first served.
Welcome to the Gold Standard, the newsletter from the Los Angeles Times that helps guide you through the ins and outs of the awards season, leading up to the Oscars. Im Glenn Whipp, The Times awards columnist and your newsletter host. The Big Short got an early leg up on the major guild honors, taking the Producers Guild award for best picture last Saturday. The SAG Awards are this Saturday night. Lets look at how those developments figure into the Oscar races.

PGA a good omen for The Big Short



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The PGA winner has gone on to take the Oscar the last eight years, including the last six, when both the academy and the PGA expanded their best picture slates and adopted a preferential ballot to determine the victor. Thats very good news for Adam McKays anarchic look at the 2008 financial crisis.

Read our Mark Olsens coverage of the evening here. And my analysis of what it means for the best picture race is here.

Big Short producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner accept the PGA Awards honor. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Academy diversity issues continue to dominate headlines

Late last week, film academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced that the academys 51-member board of governors had approved a series of major changes designed to diversify the groups membership.

Times film writer Rebecca Keegan scored the first interview with Boone Isaacs, who called the moves, which could revoke voting privileges from members who have not been active in the industry, the right thing to do. The changes are also designed to double the number of women and minorities in the academy by 2020.

Did racial bias, conscious or not, come into play in Oscar voting?

Thats the question Times reporters Josh Rottenberg, Mark Olsen, Marisa Gerber and I asked scores of members of the academys actors branch, the group that, for two years running, failed to nominate a person of color. Their answers provide an illuminating look at the mindset of Oscar voters, some of whom arent happy with the way the academy has responded to the #OscarsSoWhite outcry. Read the story here.

Follow The Times SAG Awards coverage on Saturday

Just go to latimes.com/SAGawards.

Well have complete coverage, starting with the red carpet beginning at 3 p.m. PST, with the show beginning at 5 p.m. PST.

Lubezki shares his favorite Instagram shots from The Revenant

Lets leave with a few moments of beauty. Sam Adams talked to two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, asking him to comment on some of the still photos he created while shooting The Revenant in Canada and Argentina. If youre not following Lubezki on Instagram, you will be after seeing these shots.

Feedback?

Id love to hear from you. Email me at glenn.whipp@latimes.com.

Cant get enough about awards season? Follow me at @glennwhipp on Twitter
At Peking Tavern, a Chinese gastropub in downtown Los Angeles, theres a section behind the bar devoted exclusively to the most consumed alcohol in the world: baijiu. If youve never heard of it, youre not alone. The spirit is Chinas national drink but has only recently gained traction in America, due in no small part to publicity boosts from global liquor companies with Chinese interests.

Multinational alcohol company Diageo added Shui Jing Fang baijiu to its portfolio five years ago; it comes from Sichuan, where it has been made continuously for more than 600 years. In northern China, the unique flavors of baijiu, which is pronounced BYE-jo and translated literally as white spirit, are steeped in tradition and acceptance. In America, baijius unfamiliar profile is polarizing. Open a bottle and youll smell something akin to Juicy Fruit chewing gum, but savory  the sweet liquor tastes of cherry and pineapple at first, then transforms from fruity to funky, settling on the palate with a smoky, gamey slam.

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The stuff is called Chinese firewater for good reason  the clear liquid, distilled from sorghum and other grains, weighs in at a whopping 50% to 55% alcohol by volume. A dangerous prospect, because it feels smoother than lower alcohol spirits when you knock it back.

There are four broad classifications of baijiu  light, strong, complex and rice  from thousands of regional distilleries. Despite being served in tiny ceramic cups or small stemmed glasses, the Chinese consume this white spirit in large quantities. During a celebratory meal, particularly in business and government circles, someone will order a high-end bottle of baijiu. (It is never served by the glass in China.) Each diner is expected to toast the host, then lower his glass to show humility and respect. Ganbai! is the appropriate toast, said Andrew Chiu, co-owner of Peking Tavern. It means bottoms up!

When you drink baijiu together at a banquet or to close a business deal its like saying, Now we are brothers, says Chiu. Often seen as a luxury item and gifted like vintage Cognac, baijiu is not exclusive to the upper class. In Beijing, where Chiu lived in the 1990s, laborers and factory workers consumed small bottles of cheap, boozy Erguotou baijiu with lunch.

Transplanted Chinese communities in Los Angeles County, which has the largest population of northern Chinese in the U.S., typically consume baijiu in their homes.

Lately, baijiu has become popular in bars and restaurants largely due to the efforts of CNS Imports, a wholesale distribution company that has supplied baijiu brands in America for more than 30 years.

Some baijiu brands have cleaned up their look to attract younger generations, said CNS general manager Shawn Shih recently over lamb pot stickers and Sichuan fish dumplings at Peking Tavern. Hes referring to HKB, a brand of baijiu that he recommends for mixing in cocktails.

Peking Tavern, which opened in a basement on Spring Street in 2013, was one of the first places in the U.S. to offer a wide selection of baijiu. Here, Red Star baijiu, the most popular brand in Beijing, is mixed into drinks and often accompanied by a plate of dragon fries. American Chinese dont realize how much drinking and eating go together, said Chiu. We wanted to offer authentic northern Chinese dishes to accompany baijiu, which accentuates the food.

Theres another reason baijiu manufacturers want to see global baijiu consumption increase. Sales of luxury goods in China remain sluggish after anti-corruption campaigns began in 2012. Jeff Cioletti, author of The Year of Drinking Adventurously, wrote in an email, The [Chinese] governments been cracking down on ostentatious displays of wealth. The high-end baijius often were given as gifts by dignitaries and high-rolling business people as a sign of status. Maotai, a luxury brand of baijiu, has diversified its offerings since the campaign began. But now, no one can be giving expensive gifts anymore so its taken a bit of a hit there, Cioletti added. Thats why theyre doubling down on the U.S. market.

Sampling baijiu cocktails around Los Angeles is easier than ever. Magnolia House in Pasadena recently featured baijiu in a cocktail seminar. Its Siu Yeh (midnight snack) is made with Shui Jing Fang baijiu, Lillet Blanc, amaro Montenegro, angostura and orange bitters, and finished off with an aquavit rinse. Baijiu isnt background noise in this drink. You get sour plum, dried raisin and Twizzlers  oddly enough  all accompanied by an underlying bitter sweetness thats more than pleasant the whole way through, said bar manager Brian Klemm.

Not all drinkers are prepared for baijius unique profile. At Wood and Vine, an upscale bar and restaurant in the heart of Hollywood, a baijiu martini with orange flower water was too much for mainstream palates. We tried an experiment with Shui Jing Fang baijiu, says beverage director Gregory Austin, which the staff and our more adventurous guests really enjoyed. Unfortunately, due to the pungency of Shiu Jing Fang, we had too many of them returned for us to continue to offer it. Hollywood Boulevard is simply not ready for all that intensity of flavor and aroma.

At least the part of the main boulevard so close to the tourist heart of Los Angeles  but venture away from the citys landmarks and the thirst for baijiu, and complexity, seems unquenched.

food@latimes.com

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Sea bass ceviche

Los Angeles is an unusually good place to eat ceviche, from the Guatemalan ceviche at La Cevicheria down on Pico Boulevard, to the Valencia ceviche at smoke.oil.salt, to the ceviche tostadas at the Mariscos Jalisco truck in Boyle Heights. Nobu Matsuhisa made an international reputation with his take on the Nikkei-style ceviches from Peru; you can try a more direct version at Kotosh in Lomita. And then theres the most unlikely great ceviche in town  the fragrant, citrusy Peruvian ceviche from Lonzos in Culver City, a ceviche made more remarkable by the fact that it is served at one of a couple of tables crammed into a bakery foyer.

Ceviche at Lonzos in Culver City. (Jonathan Gold / Los Angeles Times)

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So youre going to have some hot rolls with a dab of the chile sauce aji; you are going to contemplate an order of the lomo saltado; and you may end up with a plate of the cilantro-laced lamb stew. Lonzos Peruvian cooking is unusually good. But you need to find a way to the sea bass ceviche, which is a little expensive but comes with Peruvian corn nuts and boiled giant corn, slivered red onion and a marinating liquid  leche de tigre  so good you understand why it is occasionally served as a beverage on its own.

 Jonathan Gold

Cheers for Seville oranges

Seville oranges. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)

I remember peeling the first one and taking a taste. It was awful, said my friend, Cary. There was a Seville orange tree in his backyard, and he gives me a bag or two full of the fruit every season. A Seville orange, a type of bitter orange, can easily be mistaken for a regular orange with its bright color and sweet fragrance, if a little smaller. But this isnt a fruit you eat out of hand, unless youre a fruit masochist. Still, its magic in the kitchen, in marinades, marmalades and vinaigrettes; its a classic flavoring in cochinita pibil. You wont find the orange at your regular supermarket, though you might find it at the occasional farmers market or Latin grocery  or if youre lucky, someones backyard. But my favorite use is infusing gin.

 Noelle Carter

More cheese, please

Bishops Peak cheese from DTLA Cheese at Grand Central Market. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

When you find that one cheese (or 10) that you cant live without, youll find ways to incorporate it into every meal of the day, including a couple afternoon snacks. Such is the case with the Bishops Peak cheese made by Central Coast Creamery. Its an Alpine-style cows milk cheese made using propionic bacteria, which means it doesnt have the small holes found in other Alpine cheeses. Its aged for seven to eight months before hitting the cheese counter. The result is a cheese with an assertive, nutty flavor that gives way to a buttery texture at room temperature, like a mellow cross between the best Gruyere and an aged Gouda. To bring out a slight sweetness in the cheese, serve it with a sliver of membrillo and some good bread. The cheese is currently only available at DTLA Cheese at Grand Central Market, the Cheese Cave in Claremont and the Patio on Goldfinch in San Diego, but Central Coast Creamery cheese maker Reggie Jones says you can expect to see a lot more Bishops Peak come August and September, due to its production of a new aging space.

 Jenn Harris

Drink this now:

The mango con chile cocktail from Playa Amor in Long Beach. (Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The mango con chile from the new Playa Amor in Long Beach is like the cocktail version of one of those bags of chile-dusted fruit youll find sold on the beach in the middle of an L.A. summer. Thomas Ortega, chef-owner of Amor y Tacos in Cerritos and Ortega 120 in Redondo Beach, has just opened his latest concept, Playa Amor, in the Market shopping center in Long Beach. If youre a tequila drinker, youll want to check out the chefs selection of tequila, as well as the cocktails. The mango con chile, also one of the more popular drinks at Amor y Tacos, is a fruity mix of fresh mango puree, house-made limeade, house-made chamoy, agave, tajin and plenty of Avion blanco tequila. Its served with a piece of chile-dusted mango on a stick and a house-made chile salt rim, which each serve as a palate reboot between sips. The drink tastes even better when sipped alongside an order of Ortegas tater tots covered in mole negro. Despite all the house-made ingredients in the cocktails, Ortega requests that you dont call him, or anyone in his crew, a mixologist.

 Jenn Harris

Cookbook of the week:

If the name of the author of this cookbook sounds familiar, and it probably should, thats because Rouxs father opened one of the most famous restaurants in England. Albert Roux and his brother Michel Roux (Roux Jr.'s uncle) opened Le Gavroche in London and the Waterside Inn in Bray. Le Gavroche was the first restaurant in Britain to earn three Michelin stars, and among the notable chefs who cooked there are Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay. The Roux family legacy has continued unabated, as Roux Jr. has run Le Gavroche since 1991. His new cookbook, published this month, is a tribute to that rich French-Anglo tradition, with 200 recipes featuring dishes from the chefs childhood and long career. (It is Rouxs third cookbook but the first to be published in the U.S.) Thus there are classics, but many of them with a lighter, more modern twist than might have been customary in his fathers and uncles days, and with ingredients that cover more international ground. There are boeuf bourguignon and terrines in aspic (aspic!), but also a simple recipe for baked eggs thats a spin on eggs en cocotte with the addition of corn, paprika and chorizo. Unsurprisingly, theres also a great dessert chapter  Albert and Michel Roux both began as pastry chefs  loaded with clafoutis and souffles and mille-feuilles, as well as fritters and simple peaches and cream. Filled with classic French cooking, but also user-friendly, Rouxs book is eminently approachable. After all, how many cookbooks have recipes for both cockscombs with truffles and beer soup?

 Amy Scattergood

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Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno has been fined $86,625 for a towel being left inside a patient for three months after an abdominal surgery.

The state penalty is the hospitals fourth issued by the California Department of Public Health since 2007.

In the most recent case, state investigators said a patient had to have a second surgery to remove a blue towel that had been left in his abdomen after removal of his bladder and prostate on April 8, 2014.

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According to the state report, the patient had an X-ray after the surgery because of an incorrect scissor count, but it did not show any foreign body because the towel was not visible on an X-ray.

The state said the hospital did not have a procedure in place to count blue towels. According to both the director and manager of surgical services at Community Regional, the towels had never been a countable item in the operating room and were only available for surgeons to dry their hands after scrubbing in, or to drape on a patient, not to ever be used internally.

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The director and manager were quoted in the report as saying the operating room staff was devastated upon hearing of the incident. The director of surgical services said no one recalled the towel going into the body, but the towel was obviously overlooked because what goes in is supposed to come out, and that did not happen in this case.

When hospitals are penalized, the state requires the institution to provide a plan of correction. Community Regional has since ordered that all surgical towels be counted in the operating room.

As a result of this regrettable incident, we completed corrective steps that were approved by the state and included a thorough investigation of our policies, adjustments in our procedures and appropriate training of our staff, said Michelle Von Tersch, vice president of corporate communications for Community Medical Centers.

Community would not comment on whether the operating room nurses and staff were disciplined or whether the surgeon continues to operate at the hospital.

The state does not identify patients because of confidentiality laws, but the patient told investigators he lost 43 pounds within a month of the abdominal surgery at Community Regional. He had no energy, no stamina and said, I felt like I might not live.

At a follow-up visit to the surgeon about two month after the surgery, a scan of his abdomen was ordered and he was told it showed an abdominal mass. The patient said he was frightened that he had cancer.

The patient was referred to another doctor and had surgery on July 7. The towel was discovered during that surgery.

The state said Communitys failure in this case resulted in preventable pain, emotional and psychological suffering, injury and harm.

Under a 2007 law, hospitals are required to self-report errors in cases that could cause serious injury or death. Community was one of eight hospitals in California to be penalized by the state this month. Penalties totaled $483,650.

Community Regional and Saint Agnes Medical Center in Fresno have had four penalties issued since the 2007 law. Fresno Surgical Hospital has had two penalties and Kaiser Permanente-Fresno and Clovis Community Medical Center have each had one.

Penalties carry a fine of $50,000 for the first violation, $75,000 for the second and $100,000 for the third or subsequent violation. After three years, the penalty clock starts over.

In 2012, Community Regional was fined $50,000 for a 2010 incident in which a woman was given a lethal overdose of a blood-thinning drug.

In 2013, the hospital was fined $175,000 for two cases in which patients were harmed, including one in which cardiac surgeon Dr. Pervaiz Chaudhry was said to have left the operating room during an open-heart procedure, leaving a physicians assistant in charge. Chaudhry has filed a $15-million claim against the state for the report, which he says was inaccurate.

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The search continues for three fugitive inmates who, with the help of a jail English teacher, escaped a Santa Ana detention facility last week, sheriffs officials said.

The Orange County Sheriffs Department reported no significant developments overnight, despite media reports of two SWAT raids conducted Thursday night in Westminster and Garden Grove. Sheriffs spokesman Lt. Jeffrey Hallock would not confirm the raids occurred, but said he planned to talk about overnight activity at a news conference at 10 a.m.

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Hallock also planned to provide more details surrounding Nooshafarin Ravaghi, the 44-year-old Lake Forest woman arrested under suspicion of contributing to the mens Jan. 22 escape and providing them with planning tools. Fugitives Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong are believed to be living out of a stolen white 2008 GMC Savana utility van and remain at large.

Details on Ravaghis arrest and her employment at the jail and the Rancho Santiago Community College will be released to the public, Hallock said.

Ravaghi was a part-time English as a second language teacher who was working as a contract employee at the jail for the past six months. Nayeri had been attending one of her classes, and eventually a relationship flourished between the two, Hallock said.

Ravaghi also was a book editor and wrote a series of multicultural books for children called the Noosha Collection.

Authorities believe Ravaghi provided the men with planning and possibly tools, which they used to escape from the Mens Central Jails plumbing system and eventually reach the buildings rooftop.

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Ravaghi told investigators she gave the fugitives maps only. Hallock said she may have allowed the men to look at Google Maps so they could look at the jails roof.

Authorities think the inmates cut through four layers of steel, metal and rebar sometime after 5 a.m. Jan. 22 as they slipped through an extensive network of pipes and an air duct. After reaching the roof, a floor above their dormitory, the men used a makeshift rope of bedsheets and cloth to rappel down the building.

Investigators think the men are still hiding in Southern California and have not split up since the jailbreak.

Ten other people, including members of Tieus gang, have been arrested as part of the escape investigation. Tieu is one of several members of a South Asian gang operating in Orange County and Long Beach and charged in a 2011 murder. He was expected to be retried for the slaying next month, prosecutors said.

Nayeri faces charges in a 2012 torture plot, alleging he and his accomplices kidnapped a man, beat him, burned him with a blowtorch and severed his penis in an attempt to extort $1 million.

Duong was arrested and charged with attempted murder in late 2015, prosecutors said.

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA

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The story of an Orange County jail escape took a dramatic turn Thursday with the arrest of a jail ESL teacher on suspicion of helping with the plot.

Who is Nooshafarin Ravaghi?

Ravaghi taught English-as-a-second-language classes at the jail through a community college inmate education program. She wrote a collection of childrens books about a young girls discovery of her Persian heritage, according to her website.

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Ravaghi had been teaching in the jails since fall 2014 and passed a Sheriffs Department background check, according to a statement released by the Rancho Santiago Community College District. She had been teaching at Mens Central Jail for at least six months.

What do we know about her?

Ravaghi grew up in Tehran and spent much of her youth traveling around the world with her father, according to her personal website. She moved to California in 1997 after studying French literature in Tehran and Paris.

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She earned her graduate degree in education from Cal State Fullerton, the website said, and has taught English, Farsi and French to adults and children in Orange County. She also wrote an eponymous series of multicultural books for children titled The Noosha Collection. The book series aimed to foster tolerance, she wrote on the website.

A former colleague of Ravaghi, who asked not to be identified, described her as a hardworking tutor who rarely interacted with her students outside of the classroom.

She was very kind to the students, a good tutor, but she didnt really socialize with the students. She treated them like a teacher does, the colleague said. She seemed to be very ethical.

The colleague, who hadnt spoken to Ravaghi in about four years, also said the teacher was kind of a loner.

What is she accused of doing?

Orange County sheriffs officials allege she provided one of the escapees with access to Google Maps, which would have allowed him to view the roof of the jail.

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Authorities allege Ravaghi, 44, and that escapee, Hossein Nayeri, 37, became friendly as he attended language courses she taught at Mens Central Jail in Orange County, authorities said.

Nayeri had fled the United States twice to escape prosecution and was awaiting trial connected to a brutal torture plot that left a man burned, bleeding and near death in the Mojave Desert.

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A former Compton school board member was convicted Thursday of sexually assaulting an unconscious 25-year-old man during a trip to San Diego two years ago, authorities said.

The jury deliberated for 30 minutes before finding Skyy DeAnthony Fisher, 32, guilty of one felony count of committing oral copulation on an unconscious or sleeping person, according to Tanya Sierra, public affairs officer with the San Diego County District Attorneys Office.

Fisher, who had been out on $100,000 bail, was taken into custody after the verdict was read.

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He was stunned, as we all were, said Fishers defense attorney, MaryEtta Marks. It was so fast.

Marks said she plans to file a motion for a retrial on grounds that Fishers constitutional rights were violated when the victim secretly recorded Fisher confessing to the crime.

The incident occurred during a road trip to San Diego in 2014. Fisher and a male friend agreed to share a room. Each had a separate bed, but the victim said that when he woke up, he found Fisher sexually assaulting him, according to the warrant.

Fisher pretended to be asleep when the victim confronted him. The two men argued, and the victim punched Fisher in his face.

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The victim reported the incident, and a DNA sample was collected. Later that month, the victim returned to the Police Department to identify Fisher by photo as his attacker.

While the victim was with police, Fisher called him, and the call was recorded. Fisher admitted to [the victim] he didnt know why he orally copulated him, according to the warrant.

A search warrant was issued to collect a DNA sample from Fisher. It was confirmed a few weeks later that the DNA collected on the victim matched Fishers, according to court documents.

In July 2014, U.S. Marshals arrested Fisher at his job in downtown Los Angeles. He was booked at Vista Detention Center in San Diego County.

In the four years that Fisher served on the Compton Unified School Board of Trustees, he had been a controversial figure. City leaders and residents called for his resignation after he used a homophobic slur in a 2012 podcast to refer to Trayvon Martin, the black teen who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a white neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Fla.

He issued an apology and said he would take a 60-day leave of absence to address a range of personal and health-related issues, according to a statement posted on the Compton Unified School Districts website.

However, he returned to his seat on the school board a few weeks after the incident.

After Fisher was arrested in San Diego, community leaders again called for him to step down from his elected position. He refused and served on the school board until last month. He lost his bid for re-election in November.

Fisher faces up to eight years in prison. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Feb. 29.

For more California breaking news, follow @AngelJennings. She can also be reached at angel.jennings@latimes.com.

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An explosion at a construction site rocked the downtown Los Angeles Arts District on Thursday afternoon.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said the blast occurred about 2:45 p.m. at a building that was under construction. There were no known injuries.

A roofing installation that utilized propane and a pot of tar had exploded at the building, located at 130 South Hewitt St., said LAFD spokeswoman Margaret Stewart. Its unclear what immediately triggered the blast.

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The explosion was felt across a wide area of the Civic Center, Little Tokyo and the Arts District, with some likening it to an earthquake.

Black smoke could be seen from the area, and more than 75 firefighters knocked down the fire within 20 minutes. The blaze was confined to the buildings courtyard.

Vid from Arts District explosion site. pic.twitter.com/rU91jt1HX0  Christina Bellantoni (@cbellantoni) January 28, 2016

A woman who lives in an adjacent building said she was on the phone when she heard a boom. She declined to provide her full name.

The whole building was shaking, she said. Soon, she saw flames outside her window.

A security guard at a nearby condo building said the doors of the building vibrated violently, as if a person was pulling on them hard from the other side.

The fire department said the five-story building is under construction. The area has seen a boom of residential and commercial development in recent years.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

For breaking news in Los Angeles, follow @AngelJennings, @MattHjourno and @CBellantoni.

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When Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge left office, he left nothing behind.

Documents kept by LaBonge and his staff members were nowhere to be found, his successor, David Ryu, said after taking office last year. And at a July hearing, Renee Weitzer -- a former LaBonge planning staffer now working for Ryu -- said her old files were gone.

All our files from the past administration have been destroyed, Weitzer told planning staff, according to a video recorded for the law firm of attorney Robert P. Silverstein. So, basically, I have to start from scratch.

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State law restricts what kinds of city documents can be destroyed and when. But city officials say there is no municipal policy that governs what council members do with their files when they leave office. LaBonge says he did nothing wrong.

The absence of such rules has raised questions about whether L.A. is complying with the state law. Now the fate of those files -- reams of documents that LaBonge staff members sought to have destroyed -- has become an issue in a legal battle over a Sherman Oaks development.

Attorneys fighting to overturn the Il Villaggio Toscano project argue the city has failed to turn over all of the city documents that a Superior Court judge ordered them to provide nearly a year and a half ago.

In court filings, they say the missing documents include memos from the office of LaBonge, who was on the council when the controversial development in his Sherman Oaks-to-Silver Lake district was approved.

The city has fired back in court, saying that it provided everything that was required. But Silverstein, one of the attorneys trying to halt the Il Villaggio Toscano, has expressed concern that evidence may have been destroyed when LaBonge left office.

Questions about the missing records were first reported by the Los Feliz Ledger. If evidence was trashed, Silverstein said, it cheats the public out of their ability to prove their case against the city.

His firm is pressing for the court to impose financial penalties and order a schedule for providing the records. It is also asking a judge to set a hearing to decide whether to hold the city in contempt.

More than six months after Ryu took office, some documents were found. Dozens of boxes were turned over this week to Ryu by the city attorneys office, which said one of its lawyers had located the files in city archives and had been reviewing them in connection with a court case.

Those 35 boxes had been marked to be destroyed, said Todd Gaydowski, who oversees city records management. Public records obtained by retired attorneys Michael H. Miller and Stephanie Scher show that a LaBonge staffer asked that several batches of material -- totaling 113 boxes -- be burned. Gaydowski said he was unsure if the other 78 boxes sent there had ultimately been destroyed.

LaBonge said no one had told him to save any records before he left. There were no instructions given to me other than to get out of the office, he said.

LaBonge said he had not gotten rid of files to hinder Ryu or to hide any wrongdoing. The former councilman left office after a bitterly contested race that pitted his former chief of staff against Ryu. That campaign included sharp criticism of LaBonge himself and his actions as a councilman, including how he had spent discretionary money allocated to his council office.

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His former legislative deputy, Lisa Schechter, also said that city departments told them months earlier that they needed to clear out of the office, but didnt mention any rules regarding what to do with files.

California state law generally allows city governments to destroy some city records if lawmakers and the city attorney approve, but not if the documents are unduplicated and less than two years old.

Los Angeles city rules also set forth how long its departments are supposed to hold on to different kinds of records, stating that most must be retained for at least two years. But City Clerk Holly Wolcott said there is no standard way that council members are supposed to handle their files when they leave office.

Miller and Scher, both Los Feliz residents who used to represent Southern California cities as attorneys, said they were appalled at the city practice. Neither is affiliated with Silverstein or his firm.

I cant believe that the second biggest city in the United States of America apparently doesnt do it properly, Miller said.

If a city leaves it up to an elected official to decide what to save, maybe they toss the stuff that might portray them in a less flattering light, said San Francisco-based attorney Karl Olson, who has represented media outlets on public records issues.

Theyre taking the law into their own hands and defeating the constitutional right of access, Olson said.

Ryu introduced a proposal in December to change the city practice, asking for staff recommendations for a standardized transition plan.

His staffers are now reviewing the retrieved documents for confidential information before making them publicly available. Silverstein called for an independent investigation of what was destroyed, saying that even if boxes had been recovered, How do we know those contain everything that had existed?

City Atty. Mike Feuer declined to respond to questions about whether possible destruction of files from the council office could have eliminated evidence in the Il Villaggio Toscano case.

In a legal filing, city lawyers said the Planning Department was the central location for project records and those documents had already been provided. LaBonge said he hadnt sought to archive the documents that were sent out for destruction because important records would be available with other departments or electronically.

Silverstein countered that some records would not be kept electronically, including written notes from city officials or mailed correspondence from developers to LaBonge or his staff. Ryu spokesman Estevan Montemayor said that while some of the missing files could be obtained from other departments, their office had been unable to recover detailed notes that Weitzer had taken.

Silverstein represents a group called Sherman Oaks Residents for a Safe Environment, which contends that the as-yet-unbuilt Il Villaggio Toscano development near the 101 and 405 freeways will expose its residents to a constant plume of dangerous levels of diesel and create nightmarish traffic.

Development company M. David Paul did not respond to a request for comment on the suit. The Il Villaggio Toscano website says it is right for the site and will have measures to address traffic.

Twitter: @LATimesEmily

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Two former Los Angeles police officers who fatally shot an unarmed motorist from behind, on live TV, were fired and now are suing to get their jobs back.

Michael Ayala and Leonardo Ortiz were among about two dozen officers who pulled up behind 51-year-old Brian Beairds mangled Corvette after he crashed in downtown Los Angeles in 2013, ending a long, high-speed pursuit.

As TV news helicopters circled overhead and water from a damaged fire hydrant rained down, adding to the chaos of the scene, Beaird stumbled around the back of his car, turned away from officers and appeared to be trying to flee on foot.

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Thats when Ayala, Ortiz and a third officer opened fire, killing Beaird.

A police disciplinary board found Ayala and Ortiz guilty of misconduct in July, and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck fired them in September, according to lawsuits the officers filed in November. Both called their firing an abuse of discretion by the department.

Neither suit mentions Beairds December 2013 shooting as the reason for the termination or offers any detail about the underlying misconduct charge. LAPD officials declined to comment on the matter because police disciplinary actions are confidential under state law. Michael Stone, the attorney representing Ayala and Ortiz, also declined to comment.

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A law enforcement source familiar with the case, who was not authorized to publicly comment on the matter, said the two officers were fired as a result of the shooting.

About a year after the videotaped shooting  which drew national attention and fueled the ongoing debate over police use of force  Beck issued a rare public rebuke of the officers, calling their actions unjustified.

The City Council, concerned that a civil jury would find the officers had used excessive force, approved a $5-million settlement with Beairds father, who said hed watched his sons death on live TV. That settlement is the largest paid by the city in a police shooting in more than a decade.

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey declined to press criminal charges, however, saying a jury might believe the officers legitimately feared for their lives. They claimed they saw Beaird reach for his waistband, possibly for a gun, as he stumbled out of the car. Beaird did not have a gun, but a police shooting is legal as long as the officers believe the suspect poses a direct threat to them, or others.

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In an interview late last year, Lacey said she stands by her decision not to prosecute because, during the pursuit, which ended after a collision with another vehicle, Beaird had proved to be a threat by endangering many peoples lives and refusing to pull over, despite multiple opportunities.

Times staff writer Joel Rubin contributed to this report.

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Two fugitives who escaped from an Orange County jail last week are now believed to be in the San Jose area and may be headed to Fresno, authorities said Friday.

UPDATE: The three fugitives are back in custody. Officials say the men kidnapped a cab driver and argued over whether to kill him.

The third escapee, Bac Duong, surrendered Friday. Duong had traveled north with the men but later returned alone to Santa Ana, according to Lt. Jeff Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriffs Department.

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Hossein Nayeri, 37, and Jonathan Tieu, 20, remain at large and are believed to be driving, and possibly living, in a white 2008 GMC Savana that was stolen in South Los Angeles the day after the jail break, Hallock said.

Nayeri grew up in the Fresno area and graduated from West Clovis High School, according to court documents and an attorney connected to one of his previous criminal cases.

Tony Botti, a spokesman for the Fresno County Sheriffs Office, said patrol officers have been made aware that Nayeri and Tieu may be in the area and a flier with their mugshots has been distributed. The agency, however, has no information to confirm that either man is in Fresno County, Botti said.

A San Jose police spokesman referred all questions back to the Orange County Sheriffs Department.

Duong, 43, turned himself in to Santa Ana police at 11:21 a.m. in the 1400 block of North Harbor Boulevard after a friend called police, Santa Ana police Sgt. Don Humphrey said.

Television footage showed officers clad in body armor sweeping a business called Auto Electric Builders near the place where Duong surrendered. Moving with their rifles and handguns aimed, the officers could be seen peering into vehicles on the lot.

Tri Nguyen, a friend of the business owner, said Duong walked into the business about 11 a.m. and told Nguyens girlfriend, who worked there, that he wanted to turn himself in. The girlfriend called police, and soon, the business was swarmed by authorities, he said.

Nguyen and his girlfriend had known Duong for many years before he went to jail, Nguyen said.

I feel good for him because he did the right thing, Nguyen said. He doesnt have to run around anymore.

Duong has been cooperating with investigators, but Hallock would not say if he tipped police off to Nayeri and Tieus whereabouts.

We are coming after you  we will take you back into custody, Hallock said, addressing the remaining fugitives directly.

Police believe the men are wearing civilian clothes rather than prison jumpsuits.

The arrest comes after law enforcement made its most public show of force yet in the now weeklong hunt for the fugitives. Armored vehicles and deputies in tactical gear descended on Westminster Avenue on Thursday night, executing a pair of search warrants that were filmed by television news cameras.

The searches, which focused on a residence and a warehouse, did not result in any arrests, Hallock said.

Officials also revealed new details about the relationship between one of the fugitives and an English-language teacher who is accused of aiding in the jail break.

The teacher, 44-year-old Nooshafarin Ravaghi, exchanged handwritten letters with Nayeri, and formed a bond with him that was much closer and much more personal than it should have been, Hallock said.

Ravaghi is being held on suspicion of being an accessory to a brazen jailbreak plot that had left police scrambling to find the three men for the last eight days. She will appear in court on Monday and is currently ineligible for bail, Hallock said.

The teachers arrest came as police continued to hunt frantically for the escapees, all of whom were awaiting trial in violent crimes ranging from torture and kidnapping to murder.

 One of three inmates who escaped from the Central Mens Jail in Santa Ana was arrested Friday, but the other two inmates remain at large.

Duong looked scared and sickly when he entered the Santa Ana auto body shop where he surrendered, witnesses said. Wearing a white shirt and jeans, with his hair shaved into a buzz cut, Duong did not look anything like his picture, on the wanted posters, said Tim Tran, the owner of the auto body shop.

He had rented rooms for about 10 years, until his recent arrest, according to Tri Nguyen.

Duong surrendered as police continued to lean on Vietnamese criminal organizations that operate in the area. Detectives have filed dozens of search warrants and arrested several members of a gang Tieu was affiliated with in recent days.

The trio escaped from the Santa Ana lockup sometime after 5 a.m., cutting through four layers of steel, metal and rebar as they moved through the jails plumbing tunnels and an air duct. They ascended to the roof, one floor above the dormitory area where they had been housed, and used a rope of knotted bed sheets and cloth to rappel down the side of the building.

The escape went undetected for at least 16 hours, and the Orange County Sheriffs Department has come under fire for allowing the escapees to gain such a head start.

As the manhunt entered its eighth day, police seemed to be splitting their focus between Nayeris relationship with Ravaghi and Tieu and Duongs connections to the local Vietnamese community and organized crime.

Hallock said Friday that there is a Vietnamese organized crime element to the escape, but he declined to elaborate. Several people were detained at a home Thursday night during one of the searches, but they were not arrested.

1 / 17 Law enforcement teams converge on the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop on Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana where O.C. jail escapee Bac Duong surrendered on Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 17 Orange County jail escapee Bac Duong on Friday surrendered at an auto shop on Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana, where sheriffs officials are shown. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 17 Officers clad in body armor on Friday sweep a Santa Ana business called Auto Electric Builders, where one of the three Orange County jail escapees surrendered. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 17 Theresa Nguyen, center, called the police at the request of Bac Duong, one of the Orange County jail escapees. Duong turned himself into authorities a week after the jailbreak. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 17 An employee at the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop in Santa Ana looks from the window. One of the three Orange County jail escapees surrendered to authorities at the business on Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 17 Orange County sheriffs personnel take position in a hotel next to the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop in Santa Ana, where jail escapee Bac Duong surrendered on Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 17 Mechanics and employees at the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop in Santa Ana go to a safe place while law enforcement officials search for other jail escapees. Bac Duong, one of the three inmates who escaped, surrendered to authorities at the business on Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 17 Law enforcement teams converge on the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop in Santa Ana after O.C. jail escapee Bac Duong surrendered to officials there Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 17 An Orange County sheriffs K-9 deputy looks for other jail escapees in the parking lot of the Pueblo Motel in Santa Ana. One of the three imates who escaped last week turned himself in to authorities on Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 17 Law enforcement teams converge on the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop in Santa Ana after jail escapee Bac Duong surrendered to authorities there Friday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 17 Orange County Sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock at press conference after Bac Duong turned himself in. The other two escapees are now believed to be in the San Jose area and may be headed to Fresno, authorities said. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 17 Orange County sheriffs deputies search for clues Saturday at the Central Mens Jail in Santa Ana, where three inmates went missing. This appears to be a very sophisticated operation, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said of the escape. (Kevin Warn / Associated Press) 13 / 17 Orange County sheriffs deputies and a search dog look for the escaped inmates early Saturday. (Kevin Warn / Associated Press) 14 / 17 The Central Mens Jail in Santa Ana, built in 1968, houses more than 900 inmates. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 17 Officials from the Orange County Sheriffs Department appealed Monday to the public for any leads on the whereabouts of three dangerous escapees from the Orange County Jail. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 17 The Orange County Sheriffs Department has drawn criticism over the escape of three inmates from its largest lockup. Above, the agencys Raymond Cheung puts up a display before a news conference Tuesday.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 17 An Orange County sheriffs investigator checks the roof of Mens Central Jail in Santa Ana, where three inmates escaped with the help of knotted bedsheets.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Earlier in the week, police arrested several people who either knew the escapees or were members of a street gang that Tieu is affiliated with.

The department has not identified the gang, but court records show that Tieu was a member of the Tiny Rascals -- a large Southeast Asian gang known to operate in Orange County and Long Beach. The gang was charged in a 2011 murder.

Ravaghi, a English-as-a-Second-Language teacher, met Nayeri while teaching a course at the jail.

Police have said she developed a bond with Nayeri that went beyond a student-teacher dynamic. The two had exchanged letters outside of class, some which were mailed from outside the jail, Hallock said.

The correspondence that they had in writing was of a personal nature, he said of the handwritten letters.

Ravaghi has cooperated with police, admitting she allowed the inmates to view a map, possibly a printed Google Earth image of the jail, which would have allowed them to see the roof of the facility. She has denied giving the men the cutting tools they would have needed to actually reach the roof.

Earlier this week, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens described Nayeri as the mastermind of the escape.

Ravaghi began teaching English courses in Orange Countys jails in July 2014, Hallock said. Nayeri speaks English fluently, so it was not clear why he attended the class.

That is our concern. Mr. Nayeri speaks English. ... Why then was he attending that class? It is very much a concern of ours. It leads us to believe she played a significant role in the planning, Hallock said.

If Nayeri had asked Ravaghi to provide him any information, like the maps, she should have notified jail staff immediately. Ravaghi, who taught in the jails as part of the Rancho Santiago Community College Districts inmate education program, had passed a background check and attended a three-hour course warning her that inmates would attempt to manipulate civiliains, Hallock said.

She is no longer employed by the school system, according to a district spokeswoman. Ravaghi was not fired, according to the spokeswoman, who said her assignment at the jail was set to expire Jan. 25.

Ravaghi grew up in Tehran and spent her formative years traveling with her father, according to her personal website. She studied French literature overseas and was fluent in several languages before she moved to California in 1997.

Asked if the relationship between the two was romantic, Hallock said that remains a possibility.

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A former classmate of Ravaghis described her as a sweet, loyal and impressionable girl who didnt have many friends.

She was quiet. She didnt have that many close friends and she never talked about her family much, said Sepideh Safavi, who attended middle school with Ravaghi in Tehran.

Safavi, 46, said other students would bully Ravaghi and tease her. She said she lost contact with the teacher for more than a decade, but reconnected with her on Facebook.

This is a shock. Im still trying to understand whats going on. Its just impossible, Safavi said. I dont know how much she changed after middle school, but from what I know, she was never looking for trouble. She wanted to be helpful.

Ravaghi seemed lonely, she added. Her Facebook posts were never about family. She didnt have siblings and never spoke of her mother, Safavi said.

Ever since she heard about Ravaghis arrest, Safavi said, shes had dreams about her old classmate. She wonders how this could have happened to Nooshin, her nickname for Ravaghi.

Her, of all people? Safavi said. If any of my other friends got caught up in this I would believe it. But her? I cant believe it.

Follow @lacrimes, @JosephSerna, @sarahparvini @JamesQueallyLAT and @newsterrier on Twitter for crime and police news in Southern California.

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Their friendship blossomed under unusual circumstances, officials say.

The teacher, Nooshafarin Ravaghi, had traveled the world, spoke three languages and wrote a collection of childrens books about a young girls discovery of her Persian heritage, according to her website.

The student, Hossein Nayeri, had fled the United States twice to escape prosecution and was awaiting trial in a brutal torture plot that left a man burned, bleeding and near death in the Mojave Desert.

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But in recent months, Ravaghi, 44, and Nayeri, 37, became friendly as he attended language courses she taught at Mens Central Jail in Orange County, authorities said.

At some point, Orange County sheriffs officials allege, Ravaghi provided Nayeri with access to Google Maps, which would have allowed him to view the roof of the jail.

The bond between teacher and student is now at the center of the weeklong manhunt for three men who broke out of the maximum-security jail in Santa Ana.

Ravaghi, who taught English-as-a-second-language classes at the jail through a community college inmate education program, was arrested at 3:30 p.m. Thursday on suspicion that she aided the men in their escape, said Lt. Jeffrey Hallock, an Orange County Sheriffs Department spokesman.

Ravaghi directly contributed to the escape of the three inmates and provided critical planning tools that aided in their preparation for the escape, Hallock said.

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Ravaghi has cooperated with law enforcement, Hallock said, but she has denied giving Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Bac Duong, 43, the cutting tools necessary to burrow into the jails unsecured plumbing tunnels.

We continue to get information from her, Hallock said. We have a certain amount of information she has provided thus far. But again she has denied bringing in any tools to this point. She did provide some tools for planning such as maps.

Ravaghi had been teaching in the jails since fall 2014 and passed a Sheriffs Department background check, according to a statement released by the Rancho Santiago Community College District. She had been teaching at Mens Central Jail for at least six months, Hallock said.

The trio escaped from the Santa Ana lockup sometime after 5 a.m. Jan. 22, cutting through four layers of steel, metal and rebar as they moved through the jails plumbing tunnels and an air duct. They ascended to the roof, one floor above the dormitory area where they had been housed, and used a makeshift rope of knotted bedsheets and cloth to rappel down the side of the building.

Ravaghi grew up in Tehran and spent much of her youth traveling around the world with her father, according to her personal website. She moved to California in 1997 after studying French literature in Tehran and Paris.

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She earned her graduate degree in education from Cal State Fullerton, the website said, and has taught English, Farsi and French to adults and children in Orange County. She also wrote an eponymous series of multicultural books for children, titled The Noosha Collection. The book series aimed to foster tolerance, she wrote on the website.

A former colleague of Ravaghi, who asked not to be identified, described her as a hardworking tutor who rarely interacted with her students outside of the classroom.

She was very kind to the students, a good tutor, but she didnt really socialize with the students. She treated them like a teacher does, the colleague said. She seemed to be very ethical.

The colleague, who hadnt spoken to Ravaghi in about four years, also said the teacher was kind of a loner.

Investigators believe the men have been living out of a van that was stolen in South Los Angeles the day after the escape. A man matching Duongs description stole a white 2008 GMC Savana around 4:40 p.m. Saturday, police said. Duong is believed to have responded to a Craigslist advertisement attempting to sell the vehicle, Hallock said.

Investigators were extremely encouraged by the new leads, he said.

At least 10 other people have been arrested since Wednesday as part of the escape investigation. Some were members of a Vietnamese street gang that Tieu is affiliated with, while others were detained because of probation violations.

The department has not identified the gang, but court records show Tieu was one of several members of the Tiny Rascals  a large South Asian gang known to operate in Orange County and Long Beach  charged in a 2011 murder.

Tieu was set to be retried in that killing next month, prosecutors have said. Duong was charged with attempted murder in a shooting late last year. Nayeri was one of several people charged in the kidnapping and torture of a wealthy marijuana dispensary owner. The victim in that case was taken into the desert, beaten, burned and had his penis severed in an attempt to extort $1 million.

Ravaghis involvement bears some similarities to another jailbreak, at the aging Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., that gained national attention last summer.

Convicted killers Richard Matt and David Sweat sparked a three-week manhunt after they used power tools to cut through steel pipes and plates, break through a brick wall, then remove a secured manhole cover and climb out.

An investigation later revealed that a prison employee who had tutored one of the men as part of an honor program smuggled in hacksaw blades and other tools the men used in their escape.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com Twitter: @MattHJourno | james.queally@latimes.com Twitter: @JamesQueallyLAT | richard.winton@latimes.com Twitter: @lacrimes

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Gov. Jerry Browns plan to give more inmates a chance for early release would probably reduce prosecutors leverage in negotiating plea bargains, legal experts said Thursday.

But it remains far from clear that his proposed ballot measure would result in droves of inmates winning their freedom, they said.

Santa Clara law professor W. David Ball called the proposed revisions very striking, though he cautioned that its effect is still not fully clear. The proposed state constitutional amendment would affect only inmates whose base crime was nonviolent.

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Just because you can get a parole hearing doesnt mean you can be released, said Ball, co-chair of the corrections committee of the American Bar Assn. The incentive for a parole board to release someone is not that great, and the incentive to keep someone in is pretty severe.

The publics insatiable quest for more punishment resulted in sentences becoming unreasonable.  Michael Salerno, UC Hastings law professor

A governor still would be able to override a parole board and block early releases, which Browns predecessors did with regularity. Brown changed the tide. Under his administration, the number of inmates granted parole has risen dramatically, Ball said.

A statewide prosecutors group is expected to oppose the proposal, according to Yuba County Dist. Atty. Patrick McGrath, president of the California District Attorneys Assn. Advocates for juvenile offenders endorse it, and several law professors called the proposal a needed step to reducing mass incarceration.

The most significant provision in Browns proposal allows for a parole hearing after inmates complete their sentences for their base crime, regardless of whether so-called enhancements might have even doubled that term.

California allows for all sorts of sentencing enhancements. Years can be added to a persons sentence if he or she used a gun in a crime or was a gang member or had prior convictions. Sometimes, the years added or the enhancements can exceed the sentence for the crime that brought a defendant to court.

Enhancements have become a very large part of sentencing in California, said Kent Scheidegger, a lawyer for a pro-law enforcement group based in Sacramento.

Browns plan, he added, would be major change.

By permitting early release for someone with consecutive sentences or enhancements, prosecutors would lose some power in the negotiation of pleas with defendants, Ball said.

At least 95% of criminal cases in California are resolved by plea bargain, a negotiation that typically leads to a guilty plea to some crimes in consideration of a prosecutors decision to drop other charges.

Most California prisoners are now ineligible for early release on parole. That means inmates with extremely long sentences have no incentive to try to address the problems that led them to commit crimes in the first place, Ball said.

The proposal also would take away prosecutors power to charge some minors in adult court. A judge would have to make that call, the practice in most states.

Though advocates for juvenile offenders hailed the change, some experts said it would be unlikely to have a major effect. Of about 120,000 arrests of juveniles in 2012, only 604 faced charges directly filed by prosecutors in adult court, according to Ball.

Browns proposal represents a major shift from a measure he signed in 1977 to create fixed sentences for crimes. Subsequent laws expanded those sentences, fueling a ballooning prison population and creating crowding that federal judges are now requiring the state to reduce.

The publics insatiable quest for more punishment resulted in sentences becoming unreasonable, said UC Hastings law professor Michael Salerno, who as a legislative consultant wrote the law that effectively ended indeterminate sentencing.

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said the governors proposal shows how far the pendulum has swung, beginning with recent successful ballot measures to reduce some felonies to misdemeanors and revise the three-strikes sentencing law.

Were back to the future, she said. It is like we periodically try new things in California  many to make the criminal justice system harsher, and we realize it isnt really solving anything. Then we go back to some version of a prior approach.

Former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley described Browns proposal as the road to perdition.

Youre dismantling a system that was carefully put together over time, he said.

Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, agreed. He said he feared the defense bar would even try to use the measure to gut the three-strikes law.

When we have a huge crime problem, we do something about it, he said. And when crime rates drop, people forget about it and we go back to the old fallacies.

Scheidegger predicted most of law enforcement would oppose the measure, though some leaders, including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis, joined Brown in announcing it.

I think it will be a hard fight, Scheidegger said. I dont think defeating it will be easy given the history and the amount of money the other side has.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolan

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolan

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Brown proposes to relax mandatory prison sentences

Follow the action in Sacramento on our Essential Politics news feed
The City of Industry paid tens of millions of dollars to city contractors without keeping track of how the money was spent and what services were provided, according to a state review released Thursday.

City officials charged expensive meals, wine tastings, massages, an iPad and a 65-inch television to city credit cards, the review found, and it called 83% of all charges over the period reviewed questionable. One meal, auditors discovered, cost $560.

Auditors criticized city leaders for failing to provide proper oversight of the citys finances and raised questions about how they spent public money.

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Over an eight-year period, the City Council met for an average of 18 minutes per meeting and unanimously approved without question or scrutiny all resolutions and ordinances but one, according to the review.

From July 1, 2001, to May 14, 2015, not a single invoice for services was questioned before it was approved and accounting controls were effectively nonexistent, auditors said.

This is the most recent in a series of reviews performed by my auditors showing a disturbing pattern of weak fiscal controls in a handful of cities, state Controller Betty Yee said in a statement.

City of Industry officials said the review identified many of the same issues that a new group of city leaders is trying to fix. As part of an ongoing government-reform process, the city has reviewed each of its contracts, hired an independent auditing firm, recalled nearly all fuel and credit cards from city officials and staff and analyzed contractor invoices to make sure the city isnt being improperly charged.

Our city is under new leadership, and the new City Council has made clear their commitment to adopt best practices, increased transparency and reforms to serve our residents, businesses and the regional environment, City Manager Paul Philips said in an emailed statement.

The state report was spurred by a city-commissioned financial review by auditing firm KPMG last summer that found that companies owned by former City of Industry Mayor David Perez and his family were paid $326 million under city contracts over two decades.

The City of Industrys case is also being reviewed by the Los Angeles County district attorneys office, spokeswoman Jane Robison said.

Auditors found that Perezs company, Zerep Management, had reaped huge profits from the city without providing complete documentation, charging six times as much as a competitor for street-cleaning services, and had collected $28 million for vehicle and equipment rentals over 11 years  enough to buy several fleets of vehicles.

After Perez stepped down in 2012, the city  led by then-City Manager Kevin Radecki  terminated its contract with Zerep (Perez spelled backward) and sued the Perez family last year, alleging that its companies fraudulently billed the City of Industry for millions of dollars.

An election in June saw three Perez-backed candidates regain a majority on the council. One of the new councils first acts was to fire the attorney who spearheaded the lawsuit against the Perez family. Radecki, the brother of current Councilman Mark Radecki, stepped down as city manager after stating concerns that the new council would fire him for challenging the Perez familys contracts. The lawsuit has stalled.

The City of Industry, which has about 400 residents and about 2,500 companies, previously was investigated for voter fraud, but no charges were filed. A Times analysis of voter-registration records found that 85% of registered voters live at properties owned by either the city or the Perezes. The citys cozy relationship with the former mayor and his familys companies was described in a 2009 Times investigation.

The state reviewed the citys finances over a two-year period and found multiple discrepancies.

In one instance, Industry officials transferred $92,766 from a city-funded program to combat plastic theft to the Industry Manufacturers Council, a nonprofit group created by the citys business community to promote trade. The business group, though, was not contracted to provide services for the program, auditors found.

Accordingly, the city transferring $92,766 may constitute a gift of public funds, the state review said.

Philips, the city manager, said the business group took an unofficial role in managing the program, in part because the organizations former head, Donald Sachs, used to work for the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, which was a partner in the program. But he could not document where the money went.

In another instance, an employee received annual salaries that ranged from $125,281 to $243,600 for performing the same job functions, leading auditors to speculate that the employee had been overpaid or paid twice. City officials could not explain the salary changes.

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Auditors also found that the city paid $12.3 million to Zerep even though invoices didnt properly describe the work provided.

The Industry Manufacturers Council also reaped $14.7 million in payments for advertising and promotion, but state reviewers could find no documentation of the work performed, if any.

Philips said the city is reviewing many of its operations. Funding for the business group will be limited to its individual programs. Fuel and credit cards are now kept by the city treasurer, who oversees each purchase, and all meals must be itemized and justified in an expense report, Philips said.

frank.shyong@latimes.com

Twitter: @frankshyong

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The FBI released video Thursday that shows Oregon State Police fatally shooting one of the men who occupied an Oregon wildlife refuge. Officials said he was reaching for a handgun that was in a pocket inside his jacket.

The shooting happened Tuesday afternoon during a traffic stop on a rural stretch of Oregon highway, where law enforcement had hoped to peacefully arrest the leaders of the armed group that had occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge since Jan. 2.

As of Thursday evening, four holdouts remain at the refuge, officials and one occupier said.

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In video taken from an aircraft, Robert LaVoy Finicum, 55, can be seen speeding away from law enforcement officials during an initial traffic stop. He then drives his white truck into a snowdrift near a roadblock, nearly hitting a law enforcement officer.

Law enforcement showed great restraint, and when the vehicle took off it just about seriously injured a law enforcement officer as it barreled toward that barricade, Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, said at a Thursday evening news conference where officials released the video.

It shows Finicum getting out of the vehicle and then lifting his hands in the air as Oregon state troopers approached him with their guns drawn. The video, which is shot from a distance, shows him then lowering his hands toward his body, then falling into the snow as he is shot.

On at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket. He did have a loaded 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun in that pocket, Bretzing said.

Bretzing said that because law enforcement officials still had to deal with the other occupants of the vehicle, it took 10 minutes to start giving Finicum medical aid. An official time of death has not been released.

The encounter took place on a remote stretch of U.S. Highway 395 roughly halfway between the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the town of John Day, where Finicum and several other occupiers were headed to attend a community meeting.

Until now, officials had released no information about how Finicum was killed. He wasnt formally identified by government officials until Thursday, though his supporters had confirmed his death to the media. A major-incident investigative team from Deschutes County, Ore., is reviewing the shooting.

The FBIs account of the shooting came almost two full days after two passengers gave their own accounts in videos that were shared widely over social media.

A man named Mark McConnell posted a video on Facebook early Wednesday in which he said that he was driving one of the groups vehicles and that Finicum had been driving the other.

McConnell said that after officials detained him and the other passengers in his vehicle  including Ammon Bundy, one of the leaders of the occupation  Finicum sped away with Bundys brother, Ryan, a woman named Shawna Cox and an 18-year-old girl.

LaVoy is very passionate about this ... about what were doing here.  But he took off, said McConnell, who said he was released after two hours of interrogation. He said he was not among the original occupiers.

At the Thursday news conference, Bretzing said that about 30 seconds after the shooting, officers threw nonlethal explosive devices, known as flash-bangs, to disorient the occupants of Finicums truck. They followed up with less-harmful sponge projectiles that contained capsules similar to pepper spray, Bretzing said.

Ryan Bundy, Shawna Cox and an unidentified woman were then taken out of the vehicle, Bretzing said. Bundy, 43, and Cox, 59, were arrested and charged, and the unidentified woman was released.

Officials found two loaded .223-caliber semiautomatic rifles and a loaded .38 Special revolver in Finicums truck, Bretzing said.

There have been a series of desertions since law enforcement surrounded the federal refuge Wednesday morning.

One of the four remaining occupiers, David Fry, told The Times in a phone interview Thursday afternoon that were willing to leave but wanted assurances from the FBI that they wouldnt be charged.

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Some occupiers have been allowed to pass through the police checkpoints, but others have been arrested and charged with federal intimidation charges for occupying the refuge.

Right now the only thing thats keeping us here is them not being clear with us with whats going on, said Fry, adding that the holdouts have been in periodic contact with two law enforcement negotiators.

Theyre saying three of us can leave and if we leave right now, well be fine, but a fourth member of the group, a man, faces a criminal charge when he departs the compound, Fry said.

Everybodys really skeptical of whats going on there, Fry said.

Fry said that he had spoken with his family. Theyre basically just saying to surrender, its not worth dying for, he said.

Follow @MattDPearce for national news.

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Within an hour of the violence at a homeless encampment known simply as the Jungle, the mayor asked himself whether he might be at least partly to blame.

I cant help but wonder: Did I act too late? an anguished-looking Ed Murray said as he talked with the news media late Wednesday. Its on me in the end.

In a city that prides itself on its compassion but has wrestled with how to respond to its staggering homeless population, the violence that had erupted the night before in the Jungle  two dead, three critically injured  stirred old fears.

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In November, the mayor and King County Executive Dow Constantine declared a state of emergency to deal with Seattles homeless crisis, following the lead of Portland, Ore. The declarations enable the cities to seek aid from the state and federal governments.

On Tuesday, the mayor was preparing to give a televised speech on homelessness  in which he would rally citizens to join him in finally solving the problem  when he learned of the shooting. Murray went on as planned, proposing the city double property taxes on homes to help raise $49 million in additional homeless funding.

Our region is third in the nation, behind only New York and Los Angeles, in providing 8,300 homes for people who were homeless, the mayor said. But this is not enough and we will do more.

But his efforts have been slowed by resistance from residents and business owners over the potential that homeless camps might move to their neighborhoods. Others complained that when the city opened several new tent cities and a camp with one-room houses, officials simultaneously shut down hundreds of small, makeshift camps, limiting any net gain in available space. The closure tactics used in more than 500 camp sweeps last year were also questioned.

My concern, said Tim Harris, director of Real Change, a weekly newspaper that bills itself as the voice of Seattles poor and homeless, is that sweeps of unauthorized encampments are not being conducted with adequate outreach resources or transparency, and that theyre being done in a way that just creates hardship by chasing people around and tossing their stuff.

Worried about an upswing in crime and fleets of aging recreational vehicles parked on their streets, some communities have hired private security firms to patrol their neighborhoods. In one upscale area, Magnolia, with expansive views of Elliott Bay and Puget Sound, unarmed uniformed officers patrol the streets in blue and white Humvees, calling 911 when help is needed.

Although he is critical at times, Harris said he thinks the city is making a sincere effort to resolve the crisis by using such relatively inexpensive tactics as sanctioned encampments and safe RV lots.

The mayors state of emergency is an aggressive campaign to address the issue locally and rally state and federal resources, Harris said. Its not enough on its own, but its probably the most impressive local response anywhere.

According to a one-night count last year by the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, there were more than 10,000 homeless in the county. About a third of them were in transitional housing and another third in shelters. But almost 3,800 were living on Seattle streets  a 21% increase over 2014. Many were counted after being found sleeping in doorways, beneath overpasses, in vehicles and alleys, or simply walking around.

We are involved in a homelessness crisis the like that we have not seen since the Great Depression, Murray said. There is no simple answer.

One of the chief concerns is a sharp rise in deaths on the street. According to a count by a volunteer group, Women in Black, 66 homeless people died here last year. Most were natural deaths, but many were suicides and 11 were homicides.

This is the highest number of calendar-year deaths since we began our vigils 16 years ago  a heartbreaking new record! the group said in a Facebook post.

Unsheltered homeless people are extremely vulnerable to violence and street predators, Harris said, and were seeing more of that as the numbers of people on the street keep going up.

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Officials say Tuesday nights shooting at the Jungle wasnt random, and most likely stemmed from a low-level drug deal.

We have no evidence at this point that they were targeted because they were homeless, Seattle Police Chief Kathleen OToole said.

Police sought at least two people who were seen shooting up the encampment beneath Interstate 5 south of downtown just after 7 p.m. One victim died at the scene and another at Harborview Medical Center. Police identified the dead as James Q. Tran, 33, and Jennine L. Brooks, 45. A hospital representative said the three survivors, a man and two women, were in serious but stable condition from multiple gunshot wounds.

The Jungle has drawn the homeless since at least the 1980s. Some visitors throw down bindles and bedrolls for the night. Others carve out crude living spaces with discarded furniture and salvaged beddings, facing the long siege against freezing weather, hunger and potential violence.

Several of Murrays predecessors vowed to clean it up, but the transients typically moved briefly to other spots, only to return later.

Its homeless whack-a-mole, one worried neighbor told the Seattle Times.

Murray said he shared the frustrations of residents.

I know we are not always getting it right. But the fact is, we are in the midst of a growing national crisis of homelessness, he said. People are dying on our streets. We are working on a complex problem in real time. I ask that you work with us, so that we can create positive change.

Anderson is a special correspondent.

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Ethan Couch was behind the wheel of a pickup truck, reeking of booze when police confronted him. He had no drivers license. Next to him was a passed-out, half-naked girl, and an open vodka bottle lay on the back-seat floor.

Still, as one officer reported, the skinny, blond 15-year-old mouthed off as they questioned him. He said he had taken pre-law classes and knew what police could and couldnt do to him. The officer cautioned him about the perils of drinking and driving, according to court records obtained by the Associated Press.

I spoke with him at some length about the various consequences of his driving and drinking, wrote Fort Worth police officer W.E. Spakes, such as effects on [his] drivers license and his path in life, especially DWI and even killing someone in a DWI.

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Couch left that night in February 2013 with two citations and his mother, Tonya, who was called to the scene. Four months later, he drove drunk into a group of people helping a stranded motorist, killing four.

Long before Couch and his family became notorious for using an affluenza defense in that crash, they had multiple run-ins with the law, often flouting authority or relying on personal wealth to get out of trouble. The incidents, totaling at least 20, included speeding tickets, financial disputes, reckless driving and assault, a review of police and court records shows.

On Thursday, Couch returned to the United States from Mexico, where he and his mother had fled in December after a video surfaced online appearing to show him at a party where people were drinking  a potential violation of the terms of his probation for the fatal accident.

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A psychologist who evaluated Couch in 2013 introduced the affluenza term at trial in reference to Couch being coddled by his wealthy parents. He testified that Couch learned nothing from that first incident, court records show. The teen didnt think he had done anything serious, Dr. G. Dick Miller said, and his mother lied to his father about it.

Couch also kept abusing substances, Miller testified. I think he thought, `I can get away with this. That was what he was taught.

Miller recommended that Couch be separated from his parents, who he said had taught him a system thats 180 degrees from rational. If you hurt someone, say youre sorry. In that family, if you hurt someone, send some money.

Fred Couch  the teens father, who is in the midst of divorcing Ethans mother for the second time  did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Tonya Couch spoke briefly to the AP but declined to discuss the familys most recent problems.

The Couches legal woes date to at least the late 1980s, records show.

Fred Couchs roofing and construction company, Cleburne Sheet Metal, was sued in 1996 over a roughly $100,000 debt. Two plaintiff firms alleged he tried to move assets, and twice attempted to question him and Tonya Couch, court records show. The couple failed to show up for both depositions. A judge sanctioned them and gave them a deadline to pay, which they missed by several weeks.

Three years later, Fred Couch punched a supervisor for a contractor that hired his company after the man told his workers to stop using an unsafe table saw, according to an arrest report. Couch drove off; he later received a few days in jail and two years probation for the assault.

And in 2009, Fred Couch faced accusations that he sexually harassed a female employee, then fired her when she complained. Court records show he denied touching her inappropriately and showing her sex videos, among other things. The case settled on undisclosed terms a year later.

Tonya Couchs encounters with the law include a 2003 reckless driving case in which court records say she intentionally forced a motorist off the road. She pleaded guilty, was fined and got probation, records show.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

In early 2005, she lied about that charge on a form to renew her state nursing license. Regulators found out years later and took action. She failed to show for a 2012 disciplinary hearing and lost the vocational nursing license.

It was just a few months later when a Fort Worth police officer drove by a Dollar General store in Lakeside, a small town on the outskirts of Fort Worth, and saw a black pickup truck parked with its lights on.

Spakes, the officer, found an intoxicated Ethan Couch with the girl. According to court records, Couch told Spakes that hed stopped to urinate and had only one drink, maybe two. Spakes described him as very arrogant, a smart-mouthed kid that had a bit of an attitude with authority, records show.

He has a hard time listening and has come from a family with wealth, and he appears to believe hes privileged and entitled with no responsibility.  W.E. Spakes, Fort Worth police officer

I verbally got onto him trying to get him to see how badly he was messing up, Spakes wrote in a report. He has a hard time listening and has come from a family with wealth, and he appears to believe hes privileged and entitled with no responsibility.

Couch eventually acknowledged his behavior was wrong, Spakes wrote. Yet when a second officer, Lee Risdon of Lakeside police, handed Couch his citations, the teen replied, Thanks for ruining my life  as though it was the fault of the police, according to the report.

A month later, a municipal judge gave Couch six months probation for possessing and consuming alcohol as a minor. The judge also ordered him to complete an alcohol-awareness course and 12 hours of alcohol-related community service by June 19.

Records indicate Couch did not comply and, four days before the deadline, organized a party at the familys second home outside the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson. Members of the crowd played beer pong and drank Miller Lite that some of them stole that night from Wal-Mart, according to an investigators report.

Couch, then 16, and a group of friends later piled into his familys truck and sped down the road. When one told him to slow down, he accelerated and nearly hit a vehicle head-on. He swerved back into his lane and then veered into a ditch, striking the roadside crowd that was helping a disabled driver.

Couchs blood-alcohol content was three times the legal limit, records show. Investigators estimated his speed was around 70 mph in a 40 mph zone. As he walked away from the scene of the crash, Couch told witnesses: Im Ethan Couch, I can get you out of this, according to court testimony.

He was charged with four counts of intoxication manslaughter and two counts of intoxication assault. His parents sent him to a treatment facility in California.

The centers director, Jamison Monroe Jr., told the AP that Couch had no structure, no proper role models and definitely no boundaries when he was growing up.

Couch pleaded guilty to the charges. Then, during the punishment phase of his case, the affluenza defense emerged. Miller, the psychologist, testified that his parents had coddled him: When the rules get tough, the Couches find another way to get it done.

But with treatment, and separation from his family, Miller said he thought Couch could learn to behave in a way thats civil.

Tarrant County juvenile Judge Jean Boyd sentenced Couch to 10 years probation after time in a state-run treatment facility. That decision drew outrage, but juvenile law experts say Texas emphasizes rehabilitating child offenders, in contrast to the states much tougher adult courts.

After sentencing, the family problems continued, records show. Fred Couch was charged in September 2014 with falsely identifying himself as a Lakeside police officer. He told a North Richland Hills, Texas, officer responding to a disturbance that hed witnessed, I have my Lakeside police stuff in the truck, according to a report. He then displayed a shield-style badge. He has a March 18 court hearing.

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"We make war that we may live in peace."

--Aristotle

"I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the

standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that

governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape

the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong."

--Lord Acton

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the

highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all

alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a

particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

--Lord Acton

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry,

Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from

the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the

field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life

so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,

Almighty God! I know not what course others may take;

but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

--Patrick Henry

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine

patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now,

deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we

have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

--Thomas Paine

"The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is,

to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and

in the courts of justice"

--John Adams

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will

within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I

do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often

but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights

of the individual."

--Thomas Jefferson

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of

another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain hima?the idea

is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights."

--Thomas Jefferson

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his

fellow citizens."

--Thomas Jefferson

"The protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require

that force should be interposed to a certain degree."

--Thomas Jefferson

"To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government

as a barrier against foreign foes... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call."

--Thomas Jefferson

"It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually

take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without

inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."

--Thomas Jefferson

"I am ever unwilling that [peace] should be disturbed as long as

the rights and interests of the nations can be preserved. But whensoever hostile aggressions on these

require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are

just friends and brave enemies."

--Thomas Jefferson

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression is

committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another as

his enemy."

--Thomas Jefferson

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against

every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

--Thomas Jefferson

"Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us

by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country

during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to

that all personal and local considerations."

--Thomas Jefferson

"It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country

to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within

its limits."

--Thomas Jefferson

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression

is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another

as his enemy."

--Thomas Jefferson

"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,

and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies may

not leave this in our choice."

--Thomas Jefferson

"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly,

we shall all hang separately."

--Benjamin Franklin

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people

by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent

and sudden usurpations."

--James Madison

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without

it nothing can succeed."

--Abraham Lincoln

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we

fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a

blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted)

in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a

track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?

I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot,

we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time,

or die by suicide."

--Abraham Lincoln

"The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the

support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me."

--Abraham Lincoln

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive

good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement

to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor

diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall

be safe from violence when built."

--Abraham Lincoln

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean

the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and

the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please

with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible

things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective

parties, called by two different and incompatible names -

liberty and tyranny."

--Abraham Lincoln

"If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage

nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage."

--Abraham Lincoln

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points

out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust

and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;

who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause;

who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst,

if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with

those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

--Theodore Roosevelt

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,

even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy

much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that

knows not victory nor defeat."

--Theodore Roosevelt

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth

of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic

state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by

an individual, by a group."

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

"War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.

This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the

timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour,

of our choosing."

--George W. Bush

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies

than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him

that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say

what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really

a good one."

--Abraham Lincoln

"To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge

it by the standards of his time, not ours."

--Mark Twain

"It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best

reveals his character."

--Arthur Schopenhauer

"When men speak ill of thee, live

so as nobody may believe them."

--Plato

"He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center,

and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the

mid-day sun."

--John Milton

"Character consists of what you do on the third

and fourth tries."

--James A. Michener

"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to

give it."

--Abraham Lincoln

"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the

content of their character."

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A man's character is his guardian divinity."

--Heraclitus

"Character develops itself in the stream of life."

--Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Do what you know and perception is converted into character."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so

highly prized as that of character."

--Henry Clay
Thursdays GOP debate was the final forum before the Iowa caucuses on Monday. No candidate stood out far enough to shift the contest. But all tried to take advantage of the absence of front-runner Donald Trump, whose outsized personality has dominated the campaign. What we noticed:

A few jokes about Donald Trump, but he was mostly ignored

The candidates resisted the chance to pile on front-runner Donald Trump, the real estate mogul who skipped the debate over a tiff with Fox News. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is fighting with Trump for supremacy in Iowa, set the tone early with his best attempt at Borscht Belt humor.

"Let me say, I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon," he said to Ben Carson. Now that weve got the Donald Trump portion of the debate out of the way."

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Please, try the veal.

Candidates largely stuck to that theme, with Cruz later jokingly threatening to leave the stage if you guys ask one more mean question.

Marco Rubio: From uplifting future to scary apocalypse

Throughout the campaign, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has vacillated between optimistic face of the next generation to dark, hawkish, Islamic State-killing warrior. On Thursday, he was in full-on warrior mode.

ISIS is the most dangerous jihadist group in the history of mankind, he said, using an alternate name for the group. ISIS is a group that burns people alive in cages, that sells off little girls as brides. ISIS is a group that wants to trigger an apocalyptic showdown in the city of Dabiq.

Even when he talked about faith, charity and American exceptionalism, he looked angry and sounded threatening.

If you do not understand that our Judeo-Christian values are one of the reasons why America is such a special country, he said, you don't understand our history.

Exchanges on immigration were the nights most heated

Trumps favorite issue once again took center stage, even if he didn't. But without him, the tenor changed. Cruz and Rubio were both confronted with video evidence (a nice touch from Fox) that they had significantly altered their positions.

Rubio sweated when asked about his role as co-sponsor of a 2013 immigration overhaul in Congress.

I do not support blanket amnesty, he pleaded, just after the video showed him equating a path to citizenship with blanket amnesty.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush piled on.

He cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, Bush said of Rubio, who withdrew his support for the 2013 bill after it became clear it would ultimately fail in the House.

Rubio and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul then pounced on Cruz for appearing to support the 2013 bill before positioning himself as its chief opponent.

Hes the king of saying, Oh, you're for amnesty, Paul said. But it's a falseness, and that's an authenticity problem.

This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, Rubio said. Hes the most conservative guy and everyone else is a RINO  Republican in name only.

Throughout this campaign, youve been willing to say or do anything to get votes, Rubio accused Cruz.

Jeb Bush and Rand Paul come alive

Bush and Paul have been two of the biggest underachievers in this race. It is probably too late, four days before the Iowa caucuses, to rebuild their lost fortunes. But both men looked more at ease without Trump, who frequently taunted them, and they returned to their core messages.

Bush talked about seeking the cooperation of the Muslim world and remembering that America is a welcoming nation, criticizing Trumps rhetoric in both cases.

Paul, whose low poll numbers kept him out of the last main-stage debate, spoke passionately against the surveillance state and mixed it up a few times with Cruz, his Senate rival.

Wild-card issues broaden the discussion

Puerto Ricos financial problems and the water crisis in Flint, Mich., both got rare cameos in the debate, forcing the candidates to depart from some of their normal talking points.

Bush argued against a Puerto Rico bailout, but said the islands residents should be free to vote in favor of statehood, which he would personally support. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio didnt have much of an answer for Flints water disaster, beyond noting that every single engine of government has to move when you see a crisis like that.
Critics declare a rough night for Ted Cruz

Republican candidates itching for a turn at the spotlight redirected their blows from the absent Donald Trump to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during Thursdays debate, and the attacks kept up Friday morning, with the Des Moines Registers front page declaring a rough night for Cruz.

And former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who was in the undercard debate Thursday, took his turn Friday as well, accusing Cruz of flip-flopping.

When a person changes views time after time and is always moving with the political wind vane, when a person is a thermometer instead of a thermostat, that persons not a leader, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said of Cruz on CNNs New Day. And no, you cant trust them.

Huckabee, who participated in the undercard debate, contended that Cruz changes his opinions based on geography and lacks conviction.

[Cruz] wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal saying [trade] was the greatest thing since toothpaste, Huckabee told CNN. Then he came out when the political wind shifted and said he was against it.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa, one of Cruzs most prominent supporters and one of the most socially conservative members of Congress, told CNN on Friday that the Registers front page came as a surprise  but dismissed it as editorialized.

I had predicted in some of the interviews before the debate that all guns would be pointed at Ted Cruz, he told CNN on Friday. Its a game of political king-of-the-hill, and it was clear Ted Cruz is on top of the hill.

Yet without Trump on stage, candidates piled on Cruz early and kept up their attacks, repeatedly jabbing him over a perceived inability to stick to an opinion.

Fox News showed a video clip of the Texas senator speaking about compromise for the 2013 immigration reform bill that failed in Congress. Moderators questioned whether that was more representative of his views on immigration than his harsher turn of late.

This is the lie Teds campaign is built on, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said in response to the clip. The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign youve been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes.
To the editor: William Goldstein is right about the new rules meant to boost diversity among the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science members. The academy doesnt make movies; its members vote to reward excellence in what is, by its nature, an imperfect and very subjective process. (Id like to thank the Academy...for capitulating to the PC police, Opinion, Jan. 26)

Its not logically possible to superimpose affirmative action on that process without simultaneously devaluing the award.

Unless its very obvious that some of this years nominees were undeserving, then the problem doesnt lie with the awards process or the academy. Any racial imbalance in the various fields eligible for Oscar nomination is the fault of the studios, casting directors and producers.

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In todays news cycle and social media culture, theres never a shortage of outrage. The academy leadership capitulated to one such drummed-up crisis, and in so doing calmed the noise in the short term but devalued the entire organization and its purpose over the long haul.

Andrew Dorfman, Woodland Hills

The writer is a member of the Academys music branch.

..

To the editor: Goldstein argues that if academy members focus on excellence and brilliance, there will be no need to address diversity.

Excellence and brilliance are not abstract qualities; they are standards created by people with values they have learned from diverse life experiences. The Black Is Beautiful movement recognized this truth, understanding that people in Nigeria may make aesthetic judgments using criteria different from those brought to bear by privileged Westerners.

Similarly, the lifestyles and hip-hop music that inspire movies like Straight Outta Compton are more likely to speak to those who have grown up in South L.A. than to academy members more familiar with Beverly Hills gentility and Irving Berlin. A more diverse Academy membership can help to correct this imbalance.

A similar argument could be made about female directors. Since 2009 when Kathryn Bigelow took the prize, no woman has been nominated.

Virginia Wright Wexman, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: I agree with Goldstein that the Oscars should be based on merit, but they are not. Instead, they are based on marketing, public relations, studio power and friendship.

Has he seen the for your consideration ads when the ballots are mailed out?

John Oliver, Hollywood

..

To the editor: Thankfully theres a voice of reason concerning this ugly and irresponsible division over academy ideology and its purpose of recognizing excellence in the industry. I believe its summed up best in Goldsteins final comment where he references Martin Luther King Jr.'s proclamation that we are judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.

He spells out reasonable ways of encouraging diversity and not succumbing to knee-jerk political correctness. Wouldnt it be great if we had this informed objectivity and the ability to distill facts rationally in Washington?

Ron Ramlow, South Pasadena

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
To the editor: Jonah Goldberg does not acknowledge that the main reason conservatives are at odds with each other is because of their incoherent philosophy. (This time, the conservative crackup is real, Opinion, Jan. 26)

They say they are for cutting government spending, except when military funds flow into certain congressional districts. They maintain they want to protect the life of the unborn but remain silent when schoolchildren are victims of mass killings. They speak of fixing the economy by cutting taxes for the wealthy, not the middle class.

And lastly, they boast of their courage but cower from Rush Limbaugh and other talk show hosts.

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This is not a philosophy; it is a hodgepodge of political jargon put forth by people who are out of touch with the electorate.

Mike Lockridge, Mission Viejo

..

To the editor: Goldbergs analysis of the conflicts dividing the Republican Party is spot on. Still, he appears to have overlooked an obvious solution to the problem: Simply allow the party to split.

The two new parties  to be named the Tea Party and the Corporate Party, perhaps  can then spend the next few decades keeping each other out of power, leaving the politically uninteresting task of running the U.S. government to responsible adults.

Jeremy Friesner, Pasadena

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
To the editor: According to the article, kitchen staff members of a pizza chain were forced to give back their overtime wages or lose their jobs. So lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, whos currently in legal battles with Uber and other sharing-economy companies over employment classification, files a lawsuit. (Meet the attorney suing Uber, Lyft, GrubHub and a dozen California tech firms, Jan. 24)

She wins, driving the pizza chain out of business. And of course all of the kitchen staff members lose their jobs.

The article points out that Liss-Riordan doesnt charge an upfront fee. But also as pointed out in the article, class-action lawsuits can lead to hefty payouts to lawyers  and, in some cases, lost jobs for clients.

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Liss-Riordan is also going after Uber over the voluntary agreements it makes with drivers. If Liss-Riordan prevails, that ride-sharing company could be driven out of business, causing Uber drivers to lose their jobs and customers to lose a convenient form of transportation.

But Liss-Riordan will have succeeded in causing more government bureaucratic regulations to be enforced.

Robert H. Biggadike, West Covina

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
The state Senate voted unanimously Thursday to order Southern California Gas Co. to stop using its wells at Aliso Canyon until they have been determined to be safe.

The moratorium would prevent the gas company from injecting gas into the underground storage reservoir until all 115 wells have been inspected. The legislation, which now moves to the Assembly, also would halt any withdrawals of gas from 18 of the wells that, like the leaking one, are among the oldest at the facility.

The legislation would have little immediate effect. Kristine Lloyd, a spokeswoman for the utility, said injections were stopped in late October, as the gas company sought to decrease pressure in the reservoir. The California Public Utilities Commission ordered withdrawals stopped last week.

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Gas company crews have been working for months to plug a leak from a well that dates to 1953. The leak has spewed enormous amounts of methane and forced thousands of Porter Ranch residents to temporarily relocate.

My constituents have been on the receiving end of a natural disaster for the last three months, said state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), sponsor of the legislation. The utility could resume all operations after the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources determines the wells are safe.

The Senates action drew mixed reactions from Porter Ranch residents.

This legislation is a good step but not a total solution as we need a permanent shutdown of the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, said Matt Pakucko, president of the Save Porter Ranch group. As long as this facility remains open, my community will not feel safe in their homes.

The Senates vote came after the utilities commission ordered the owners of all underground gas storage fields in California to conduct immediate checks for leaks in wells, pipelines and compressors used for gas injection and withdrawal.

Also, DOGGR and the utilities commission have given the utility until Monday to turn over records and documents related to the Aliso Canyon field.

A DOGGR representatives said the agency does not intend to give the public access to all of the information it is collecting on the gas companys Aliso Canyon operations.

While we are striving to make public as much information as possible, we cannot release any information related to that investigation until it is concluded, said Teresa Schilling, a spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation, DOGGRs parent agency.

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Schilling said the utility is complying with the agencys orders, including past demands for information.

In the hope of preventing similar leaks in the future, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) announced Thursday that he and Vice President Joe Biden would work together on new federal safety standards for the storage of natural gas. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration within the U.S. Department of Transportation has the authority to regulate such standards.

The Porter Ranch gas leak, the largest in U.S. history, occurred due to negligent operations, Sherman said. But apparently, SoCal Gas complied with the weak state regulations and nonexistent federal regulatory efforts.

alice.walton@latimes.com, paige.stjohn@latimes.com and patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Obama administration officials met in Los Angeles on Friday with Mayor Eric Garcetti, local nonprofits and business owners to discuss ways to encourage immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

To launch forward we must return to our core values as Americans and even in these tough times strive to embrace our role as a nation of immigrants, a nation of dreamers, a nation of hope, Garcetti said on Twitter about the meeting, which was closed to the public.

The 4 1/2-hour meeting in City Hall was part of a multi-city tour by the White Houses Task Force on New Americans, which the administration previewed in a call with reporters Thursday.

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Julie Chavez Rodriguez, senior deputy director in the White House Office of Public Engagement, said Fridays meeting will allow federal officials and members of Garcettis staff to coordinate with local leaders in business, nonprofit and community organizations. It also focused on how the federal government can make it easier for new citizens to integrate into life as Americans, according to the White House.

Starting in California is a perfect kickoff from our perspective.  Julie Chavez Rodriguez, White House Office of Public Engagement

Starting in California is a perfect kickoff from our perspective, she said.

In recent years, California has moved repeatedly to provide rights, benefits and protections to immigrants in the country illegally, including in-state tuition, drivers licenses, rules to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children.

Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose have signed on to participate in the task force, as have cities in 25 other states.

Chavez Rodriguez praised several California efforts, including the partnership between U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Los Angeles Public Library system to create citizenship corners at every branch and hold citizenship classes. She lauded the increased funding for citizenship and naturalization services by the Napa Valley Community Foundation, and the targeting in San Francisco of individuals eligible for naturalization and connecting them with resources.

Garcetti said Step Forward LA, a program created in 2015 that helps people determine whether they are eligible to become citizens and prepares them for the citizenship test, has helped 45,000 people.

He said there are an estimated 350,000 legal permanent residents in Los Angeles alone who are eligible to apply for citizenship but havent. In the greater area, the number soars to 750,000.

This isnt an abstraction for us. It isnt an abstraction for me, Garcetti said.

Joining the White Houses effort is former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who became a U.S. citizen in July. He said he wants people to know there are resources available to assist people starting the process and to help integrate new citizens.

I am excited to vote in my first presidential election, he said.

According to Garcettis office, the more than 40 attendees of the closed-door meeting were scheduled to include Special Assistant to the President for Immigration Policy Felicia Escobar, Chief of the Mayors Office of Immigrant Affairs Linda Lopez, and USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration Director Manuel Pastor.

It was split into two panels, said Garcetti spokesman Connie Llanos. The first was on ways to reach and engage potential new citizens, the second was on how they can be integrated into American culture by learning English, finding jobs and registering to vote.

A huge barrier to folks trying to become citizens is not having access to the right resources and being daunted by the process, Llanos said, adding that White House officials mostly wanted to hear about what is working and not working locally.

Theres a lot of listening that happened from the White Houses perspective, they want to know what these cities are doing, she said. Our Step Forward citizenship campaign is a real model.

Speakers included members of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Refugee Forum of Los Angeles, California Endowment, Univision, Asian Americans Advancing Justice of Los Angeles, and the Youth Policy Institute.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics.

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U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer want Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to review the cause of and response to the natural gas leak at Southern California Gas Co.s Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility.

Next week the California Democrats will try to add an amendment to energy legislation under consideration in the Senate. It would require Moniz to conduct a review and make recommendations about stopping the leak and preventing future ones.

It has been very frustrating to watch this Aliso Canyon crisis unfold -- almost in slow motion -- without any clear remedy, Boxer said in a statement. It is time to put our brightest minds to work to analyze and make recommendations that would not only assist in Aliso Canyon, but would also help us prevent and respond to similar incidents across the country.

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The leak, which began in October, has forced some 3,000 Porter Ranch families from their homes. State officials have halted Southern California Gas Co.s operations, but the leak hasnt been stopped. On Thursday, state lawmakers moved to ban the injection of new gas into 1950s-era wells in Aliso Canyon until experts can certify it is safe.

The California Public Utilities Commission is studying the effects of permanently shutting down the gas field.

Earlier this month, Feinstein and Boxer urged federal agencies in a letter to play a more active role to help California stop the leak.

Responding to questions from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch) on Thursday, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden both committed to push for national gas storage standards. Sherman told The Times later that Obama pledged to follow through.

Though the Department of Transportations Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has the authority to regulate natural gas storage safety standards, it has left regulation of Aliso Canyon and most other storage facilities to the states.

If the amendment is added to the Senate energy bill, and it passes, Monizs six-member task force would have six months to report back to Congress and the president on whether to keep open the Aliso Canyon gas field and similar facilities near populated areas. The task force would include representatives from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Interior. The group would be required to make periodic reports about their findings.

We have a responsibility not only to address this leak, but also to ensure nothing like this ever happens again, Feinstein said in a statement. This amendment, which directs the government to look at the cause of the leak and the response, will provide valuable lessons on how we can keep communities all around the country safe from similar situations.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics

MORE:

Life near the Aliso Canyon gas leak: When its breezy, Im lethargic

As Porter Ranch gas leak lingers, candidates smell a political opportunity

Commission probing permanent closure of Aliso Canyon gas field amid massive leak
The unorthodox political strategy that has kept Donald Trump at the top of the Republican presidential field may have triumphed again with his much-disputed decision not to attend Thursdays televised debate in Iowa.

He was not there to be pierced by video clips employed to great effect against other candidates by the Fox News moderators. He was not there to attract insults from the rest of the pack, and in his absence few were offered. He was not there to step into any sort of quicksand that might have threatened his national lead and his strength in Iowa, where the first votes will be cast in caucuses Monday night.



Without Trump onstage, Republicans saw the contest as they had imagined it long ago, before the New York real estate developer began his lengthy domination of the race. Some candidates responded by faltering and some found momentum.

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, vying for prominence below Trump, got the added stage time each has desired as they battle for the territory below the front-runner. But both appeared churlish at times and may have suffered from an extended fight over immigration, which included video clips in which each man contradicted his more recent statements which he then had to explain from the stage.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who at one time challenged Trump in this outsider year, continued to fade from view, almost comically jolted back into the conversation at one point.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, by contrast, acted like a candidate freed from bondage. He spoke concisely, confidently and occasionally argumentatively, a sharp reversal of his performances in earlier debates when he appeared listless and backed away from conflict, particularly with Trump.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, two other wearers of the establishment mantle, also displayed more of a presence than they had in past debates. Like Bush, however, their audience was less Iowa than New Hampshire, whose Feb. 9 primary each hopes will provide a better opportunity to break out of a tightly knit pack of trailing candidates.

Although he insisted he was staying offstage because of insults from Fox, Trumps decision was a classic front-runners move, calculated to avoid any potential damage he could have done to his own cause with the caucuses so near. Whatever gains he might have made -- and Trump hadnt been the best debater during any of the six previous debates -- were offset Thursday by the trouble he avoided. And in the end, the veterans event he staged to conflict with the debate received the attention he might have wanted anyway.

Trumps departure left Cruz as the preeminent candidate on stage, and the result was not what Cruz might have hoped. Fox anchor Megyn Kelly asked Cruz to square his praise and his criticism of the candidate she called the elephant not in the room. And then he was challenged by moderator Chris Wallace on whether his votes on military issues matched his incendiary rhetoric about fighting ISIS.

He replied by asserting -- incorrectly -- that the United States had carpet-bombed Iraq in the first Gulf War, a tactic he has said he would use against ISIS even though it is considered a war crime. (Although the Persian Gulf war bombing was incessant, it was targeted at military sites and sought to avoid civilian casualties.) Rubio then jumped on Cruz, saying that the Texan hadnt taken action as a senator to rebuild the military.

The only budget that Ted has ever voted for is a budget that Rand Paul sponsored that brags about cutting defense spending, Rubio said, knocking Cruz and the Kentucky senator standing nearby.

A short time later, Cruz tangled with moderator Chris Wallace in a lengthy complaint.

Chris, I would note that that the last four questions have been, Rand, please attack Ted. Marco, please attack Ted. Chris, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted,  he said.

It is a debate, sir, Wallace replied.

Gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question I may have to leave the stage, Cruz said to murmurs from the crowd. He appeared to be joking but the jest nonetheless had a whining tone that probably did not help him.

Among the sharpest condemnations of Cruz came from the moderators. After airing a clip showing Cruz repeatedly talking in favor of some form of legal standing for those in the country without proper papers, Kelly turned to Cruz.

Was that all an act? she asked. It was pretty convincing.

Rubio and Cruz tangled repeatedly on the issue of immigration, with the Florida senator claiming in rather personal terms that his Texas counterpart was misrepresenting his past.

This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, Rubio said of Cruzs insistence that he never backed legal status for undocumented immigrants.

But Rubio too came under fire for his authorship of the Gang of 8" immigration plan, passed by the Senate, that would have provided a path to citizenship for up to 11 million people. He parried with Kelly about whether he was thus supporting amnesty as he had defined it -- she provided a clip as backup.

Throughout, the back-and-forth played to negatives that have haunted both candidates: That Cruz wields ambition, not principle, and will say whatever necessary to win, and that Rubio is far more liberal on immigration than his partys angry base. (Rubio seemed intent on bridging the anger gap, shouting at many points, including when he discussed his religion.)

That the criticisms came from representatives of the average Republican primary voters most popular media outlet added to the potential for injury.

As war raged between the two middle-tier candidates, those below them in national and state polls enjoyed the sight, for the destruction of those above provides their only clear path to victory. Christie, who has taken on the debate role of outsider mocking the ways of the Beltway, got off one of the best lines of the night as the two senators bickered over parliamentary moves in the immigration debate.

I feel like I need a Washington-to-English dictionary converter, right? he said to applause.

Bush added to the moderators questioning of Rubio by saying that his onetime protege had cut and run when it became obvious to him that his immigration policy wasnt popular amongst conservatives  in effect, telling both sides Rubio was disloyal and opportunistic, notes that a super PAC promoting Bush is also hitting in ads.

Bushs demeanor at the debate was wholly in keeping with the candidacy he had promised back in the heady days after his carefully crafted announcement but has not consistently delivered. Asked about his foreign policy and other topics, he ticked off his talking points firmly and sometimes humorously. He even appeared to be standing taller. He seemed to have escaped the spell of the elephant not in the room.

He opened the debate by mocking the absence of his foil, in a way calculated to tell voters he deserved to go one-on-one against Trump.

We always had such a loving relationship in these debates and in between and the tweets, said Bush, who has been hazed for months by Trump as a low-energy loser. And then Bush served up a reminder:

Everybody else was in the witness protection program when I went after him on behalf of what the Republican cause should be: conservative principles, believing in limited government, believing in accountability. Leading by fixing the things that are broken.

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But it was noteworthy that Bushs words came in response to a question implying that by staying in the race, establishment candidates like him were handing the race to Trump. In other words, that time had run out for him in a contest so utterly dominated by a different type of candidate, in a year where candidates like him were disdained.

Bush denied it, of course, and fell back on the truisms uttered by all trailing candidates: That the race has only begun, that the voters will decide all this, and that on Monday a more legitimate winnowing will begin.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

For political news and analysis, follow me on Twitter: @cathleendecker . For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker.

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When budget negotiations were in danger of stalling last year, Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers put off deciding how to spend more than $1 billion in funds collected from the auction of greenhouse gas pollution credits.

At the time, Brown said he expected the differences between his proposal and the Legislatures to be resolved fairly expeditiously in the next few days or weeks.

Seven months later, a deal remains elusive.

Now, with next years budget proposal on the table, advocates and environmentalists remain anxious about what will become of the cache of funds raised through the states cap-and-trade program  created as part of the landmark 2006 law to combat climate change.

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The money has been left unspent in the states Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

By law, it must be used on programs to cut emissions  60% is earmarked to pay for construction of a high-speed rail, affordable housing and other transportation programs. That portion already is being spent.

But the remainder  which totals about $1.6 billion  is waiting for consensus between legislators and the governor on how it should be spent. (The cap-and-trade coffers have been bolstered because the program now applies to transportation fuels, which account for an estimated 40% of Californias carbon emissions.)

In the meantime, environmentalists say, key programs could be at risk. The states electric vehicle rebate program, for example, could run out of funds in April unless Brown and the Legislature sign off on new spending.

We cant hit pause on climate change, and we shouldnt be hitting pause on critical investments and climate change solutions, said Alex Jackson, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

------------

FOR THE RECORD

10:45 a.m.: An earlier version of this article referred to the Natural Resources Defense Fund. The organization is the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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California has positioned itself as a real leader, he said. For us to be squabbling over the precise allocation of needed climate investments really sends the wrong message at a crucial time.

The NRDC is one of dozens of organizations that has signed an open letter urging that a deal on spending the cap-and-trade funds be reached well in advance of this years budget talks.

We cant hit pause on climate change. ... For us to be squabbling over the precise allocation of needed climate investments really sends the wrong message at a crucial time.  Alex Jackson, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Fund

Before the negotiations broke down last year, the Senate sought to place greater focus on helping the communities most affected by pollution. The Assembly had asked for a slew of new programs, including funding for transit passes. Browns plan sought to keep a $500-million reserve in the account.

There is still unfinished work to be done so that no program that can reduce GHG emissions  is left behind, the letter from environmentalists said.

But rather than allocate the leftover money, the Brown administration is focused on developing a long-term plan.

In next years budget, the governor has proposed spending all the discretionary money in the cap-and-trade fund  which is expected to grow to $3.1 billion by June 2017  on a handful of programs to combat emissions like methane and smoke as well as on transit projects and electric vehicle rebates. He also wants to keep a $500-million reserve in the account.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Browns Department of Finance, said that the governor thinks the spending should not be piecemeal, and that the administration sees no reason to spend some now and some later.

Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) agrees. In a statement, she said that cap-and-trade spending should become part of the comprehensive budget process.

In the opposite camp is Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Echo Park), who has introduced legislation calling on his colleagues to hammer out a deal to spend last years money in the coming months.

Waiting a whole year to get almost $1 billion out the door, I think its a lack of leadership from myself as well as the Legislature as a whole, Gomez said.

A spokesman for Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) said he would like to get current-year funding decided as soon as possible.

Some environmental advocates fear that the chances of resolving the issue are narrowing with every passing day. And when it comes to combating climate change, they say, timing matters.

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Theres a huge, huge opportunity to invest these funds  sooner rather than later  in projects that reduce emissions and have multiple benefits for Californians, said Michelle Passero, a senior climate policy adviser for the Nature Conservancy. Global warming keeps marching ahead, and the sooner we make these investments, the sooner we can achieve reductions.

For more on California politics, follow me @cmaiduc

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Here is the weekly road construction report for Hamilton County:

U.S. 27 (I-124) widening from I-24/U.S. 27 interchange to north of the Olgiati Bridge over the Tennessee River, including widening the Olgiati Bridge: Work on this project continues. Beginning on Saturday, January 30, 2016, the ramps from Martin Luther King Boulevard to U.S. 27 North and from U.S. 27 North to Martin Luther King Boulevard will be reduced to one lane. Once this new traffic pattern is in place, motorists entering U.S.

27 North from Martin Luther King Boulevard must use the far right lane. The center lane will no longer access the ramp. The Martin Luther King Boulevard ramps will remain in this configuration until near the end of the project to allow the contractor to construct retaining walls in the area and build the new Martin Luther King Boulevard ramps that are part of the project. The new ramps on Martin Luther King Boulevard will be relocated from their present alignment. During this report period the contractor will be working on weeknights between 7 p.m.-6 a.m. and during the day on Saturday and Sunday. During this work, the contractor will implement temporary lane closures to install raised pavement markers and to work on median barrier rails on the mainline of U.S. 27. They will also have temporary lane closures on U.S. 27 South for line removal, restriping and installing raised pavement markers to shift traffic on the Olgiati Bridge. As the project progresses, there may be short term temporary lane closures for the safety of the traveling public on city streets within the project area. Flaggers will assist with these closures and they will be properly signed in accordance with the Federal Highway Administrations Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. During Phase 1 of the U.S. 27 project, the contractor will be working on the northbound side of U.S. 27 on the bridges. Work will consist of demolishing and reconstructing the outside sections of the bridges along U.S. 27 North. Also on U.S. 27 South, they will be constructing a large retaining wall between the Olgiati Bridge and 6th Street. At least one lane will remain open in each direction on U.S. 27. Also, in order to continue work on the current phase project, TDOT contract crews have disconnected the street lighting within the 1.6 mile project area from the I 24 interchange to south of the Olgiati Bridge. U.S. 27 in the project area will remain without street lighting until new lights are installed and activated during the latter stages of the project. Motorists are advised to use caution as they travel through the construction area, particularly during nighttime hours. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Estimated project completion date is July 2019. For more info, visit the project website http://www.tn.gov/tdot/topic/US27-reconstruction-chattanooga. [Dement Construction Co., LLC/JM/CNP230]

SR 317 (Apison Pike) the grading, drainage and paving on from Old Lee Highway (LM 5.58) to SR-321 (Ooltewah-Ringgold Road) (LM 7.84): Work on this project continues. On the evening of Thursday, January 28, 2016 between 7 p.m.-6 a.m. Apison Pike will be closed near Blue Planet Foods to allow the contractor to install water services adjacent to the new roadway. With excavation depths reaching 10 to 12 feet, a closure is necessary to ensure the safety of employees and the traveling public. During this work, local residents who live within the work area and emergency vehicles will be allowed through. A detour will be posted for all others. Also during this report period, the contractor will be working on storm drains, conduits and grade work. The contractor may have short term lane closures to perform various operations on an as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is May 2017. [Wright Brothers Const. Co. /Pruett/CNN279]

SR-320 (East Brainerd Rd.) grading, drainage, installation of signals, construction of seven retaining walls and paving from east of Graysville Road to east of Bel-Air Road: Work on this project continues. The contractor will have intermittent lane closures during this report period between 9 a.m.-2 p.m. This work may affect either direction of East Brainerd Road or side streets from Graysville Road to Banks Road as the contractor installs road crossings and borings. The contractor may have short-term lane closures to perform various operations on an as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion is June 2017. [Mountain State Contractors, LLC /Pruett/CNN383]

Shepherd Road over SR-153 construction of a rolled steel girder bridge from West Shepherd Rd. to Shaw Avenue in Chattanooga, including grading, drainage and paving: Work on this project continues. The old Shepherd Road Bridge was demolished in November and traffic was switched to a portion of the newly-constructed bridge. Traffic will be maintained and controlled by a temporary signal for the safety of the traveling public until February 2016, when it is scheduled to be opened to two lanes. On Friday the contractor will be completing the concrete pour on the Shepherd Road Bridge that they began on Monday. The work will begin at 10 a.m. and will require that the Shepherd Road Bridge be closed to make room for the concrete trucks. The work should be relatively short in duration because the contractor only has four loads of concrete to pour. SR-153 will remain open during this work. Those wishing to get to the airport from SR-153 South will be able to use the Shepherd Road exit. Those wishing to access the airport from SR-153 North will use the Shallowford Road exit. If weather or unforeseen circumstances prevent this work from occurring, it will be rescheduled for another time during this report period. During the project, there may be intermittent nighttime lane closures as necessary in both directions on SR-153 between 8 p.m.-6 a.m. THP will assist with traffic control as necessary on the project. Estimated project completion is October. [Jones Brothers Contractors, Inc./Micka/CNP105]

SR-317 (Bonny Oaks Drive) improvement of the intersection with Volkswagen Drive (LM 3.85) serving Volkswagen Group of America, including grading, drainage and paving: Work on this project continues. The contractor may have short term lane closures on eastbound Bonny Oaks Drive at Volkswagen Drive to perform various operations on as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is February. [Talley Construction Company, Inc. /Pruett/CNN304]

The tunnel cleaning of the McCallie Tunnel on U.S. 11 (US 64, SR-2), the Stringers Ridge Tunnel on U.S. 127 (SR-8), and the Bachman Tubes on U.S. 41 (U.S. 76, SR-8): The nighttime cleaning operation of McCallie Tunnels, Stringers Ridge Tunnel, and Bachman Tubes occurs normally on Wednesday and Thursday nights during the week with the 3rd Tuesday of the month. There will be no tunnel cleaning this week. Work hours are between 8PM-6AM. Tunnels will be closed during cleaning, and detours will be marked accordingly as each tunnel is cleaned. Contract completion date is June. [Diamond Specialized, Inc./Micka/CNP212]






Burbank police on Thursday recovered a specially modified bike belonging to a 13-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, five days after it was stolen from his garage.

After a whirlwind of media coverage on the theft, the boys mom, Allesha Jeffries, got a phone call Thursday afternoon from police, asking if she was home.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in and around your neighborhood >>

The officers were outside her Burbank apartment complex, asking if she could come down to identify a bike spotted on the side of a road in Silver Lake by a woman who had seen the news the night before.

I ran down there, I opened the door, and Im like, Oh my God, its it, its it, Jeffries said. Its beat up, but its it.

Forensic investigators came by shortly after to pull fingerprints, as the thief remains at large.

Police on Wednesday released surveillance photos of the suspect, who was caught on camera wheeling the bike out of the complex. The bike had been locked up in the garage with the boys wheelchair, scooter and the bike trailer.

The $5,300 Berkel bike, which needs to be repaired, was customized two years ago for 13-year-old Damian DJ Jeffries. It featured a now-missing calf support device that helped straighten Damians right leg, which turns in.

With his moms help, Damian rode the bike a couple times a week  sometimes just to a restaurant down the street. The goal, she said, is for him to be independent enough to ride to and from school on his own.

Before the bike was recovered, Jeffries launched an online crowd-funding campaign, which overnight generated more than $1,300 for a replacement bike. That money will now go toward the bikes repairs.

Friends and strangers shared the familys story on social media, and one local attorney even offered to fully fund a replacement bike.

The outpouring of support has totally outweighed the negative part of this whole thing, Allesha Jeffries said. I dont even know how you begin to thank people.

Finances have been tight, as Jeffries, a single mother who works as a nurse, was unemployed for two years, due to a shoulder injury.

Its been rough, she said, adding that shes been back at work now for about six months. Anybody who has a special needs child knows.

To purchase the bike two years ago, Damian applied for and received two grants, which together came out to $3,500, and raised an additional $1,800 by appealing to family and friends.

While Damian was thrilled to have his bike back, he had some choice words for the person who took it and left it damaged.

Hes a jerk, he really is, Damian said. Hes the lowest of the low.

The man suspected of stealing the bike was described as Caucasian or Hispanic, in his mid-30s, roughly 5 feet 9 and about 170 pounds. He wore a black hooded jacket, a black and white beanie, and dark jeans.

Anyone with information on the suspect is asked to call Burbank Police Det. Aaron Kay at (818) 238-3210. To remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.
The Black Student Union at UC Irvine is calling for the university to dismantle its police force, which the student organization alleges has failed to address safety concerns for black students on campus.

The group sent a letter to UCI administrators Monday demanding that the campus Police Department and any additional paramilitary force presence be abolished in three to six months.

The university does not adhere to black student concerns  regardless of instances of black death and police violence, the letter states. Therefore, our demand does not call for the reform of UCIPD, it calls for the dismantling of this institutions presence in its entirety.

The group said it was not referring to any particular event on campus but to what it believes is anti-black sentiment held by police. The letter points to a perceived increase in police violence around the country since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of white LAPD officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King.

University officials said Thursday that they have no plans to abolish the police force but will continue to encourage dialogue with the Black Student Union.

The UCI Police Department comprises a highly respected team of officers who risk their lives to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff, university officials wrote in a statement. We are proud of them and will continue to support the department.

UCI Police Chief Jorge Cisneros was unavailable for comment Thursday.

BSU also started a petition at Change.org that by Thursday afternoon had garnered 257 signatures in support of dissolving the university police force.

Police presence on campus is a manifestation of anti-black aggression.  UCI Black Student Union

Carmen Vickers, the groups co-chairwoman, said the petition is an effort to encourage people both at UCI and in the rest of the nation to question the actions of police across the United States.

We are trying to provide a framework ... a platform for students and people beyond the university to interrogate the institution of policing, she said.

The Black Student Unions letter accused two educators of interrogating a black student and forcing the student to make a public apology after the student joined five classmates in March in voting to pass a resolution banning the display of national flags, including the American flag, in a student government room.

They were told that if they did not submit a public apology, they would not receive protection against the multitude of death threats and vulgar insults they were receiving day and night from students on UCIs campus and the citizens of Orange County, the letter states.

The group alleges that one student received emails and phone calls in which people threatened to lynch and rape her.

UCI administrators said in their statement that the letter makes false, malicious accusations against several staff members, many of whom worked diligently to address the BSUs earlier demands and advance a safe, comfortable environment for all students. We stand by these dedicated professionals.

The Black Student Union said the police presence on campus is a manifestation of anti-black aggression. This aggression produces the same psychic damage and racial terror that black folks suffer from beyond the university. The university purports to be a safe space, a place for all students to excel academically  but instead, the university engages in a range of practices and policies that reaffirm the message that we, black people, are Americas internal enemies.

The police are emblematic of an endless array of dead black bodies, the death of our loved ones and of our communities.

Paul Gales, a UCI transfer student from West Los Angeles College, said he hadnt read the BSU petition but feels its unfortunate that a campus group wants to abolish the police.

I dont feel that way, said Gales, who identifies as black. I feel completely welcomed.

However, Gales described the diversity among students at his previous and current schools as completely different, saying West Los Angeles College consists predominantly of Latino and black students.UC Irvine, which has more than 30,000 students, has less than 400 who identify as black, according to campus data.

I understand how they would feel this way [at UCI], but getting rid of the police wouldnt be adequate, Gales said.

 Staff writer Alex Chan contributed to this report.

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Costa Mesa police officers would receive raises while paying more toward their pensions under a tentative contract with the city, according to the union that represents the Police Departments rank and file.

Members of the Costa Mesa Police Assn. overwhelmingly approved the proposal last week, but the City Council also must accept it for the pact to take effect.

The contract is tentatively set for council public hearings Feb. 16 and March 1.

If the council signs off on the deal, which would last through 2018, officers would eventually pay 14% of their salaries toward their retirement benefits. But they also would get a 9% raise, according to Nicole Brown, vice president of the police association.

The pension contribution and pay raise would kick in gradually, with three 3% increases spread over the next 12 months, according to the union.

To round out the 14% pension contribution, the contract would revive a 5% contribution that officers had been paying since 2010 until their agreement to do so lapsed in February. Costa Mesa asked police officers to continue paying the 5%, but the association wouldnt agree to it without a full contract in place.

As of Friday, the approximately 125 officers and sergeants represented by the association have been without a contract for 578 days.

This is a new era; ultimately we believe the contract is fair and demonstrates the citys value of our officers, David Sevilla, president of the Costa Mesa Police Assn., said in a statement. If it is approved, it will bring a huge sense of relief for our officers.

The tentative agreement is similar to a contract the police association proposed in March. But Councilman Gary Monahan said both sides have had to compromise to reach this point.

The agreement, for instance, no longer includes cost-of-living raises for officers and makes adjustments to the amount of leave they can take, according to Monahan and the association.

Amid negotiations last year, some council members accused Monahan of dragging his feet to deliberately extend the process.

Monahan denied that. On Friday, he said negotiations were complicated partly because only three of the five council members were allowed to participate.

Any one of us has veto power, he said.

Mayor Steve Mensinger and Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer have been excluded from the process because they are suing the police union.

The lawsuit alleges the association was part of a plot to illegally surveil and intimidate them during the 2012 election season. The union denies the allegations.
Good fences might make good neighbors, but in the case of a recent disagreement between La Canada Elementary School and City Hall over school traffic, a more nuanced approach may be in order.

On Jan. 20 the Public Works and Traffic Commission considered, at the request of the city, the feasibility of prohibiting vehicles from making a right-hand turn from Lasheart Drive onto Salisbury Road on school days, between 1:30 and 3:15 p.m.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in the 818 >>

City traffic engineer Steve Libring also asked commissioners to consider removing the current No Parking restriction on Lasheart south of Salisbury  where cars attempting to access City Hall typically park when the lot is full  during the same hours.

In an interview Monday, Commission Chair Daniel Drugan said he believed city officials requested the changes to accommodate a growing number of City Hall visitors.

As business grows in the city, and things are starting to pick up with the economy, theyre seeing more people come in, he said. He noted the rush coincides with school traffic and the parking restriction on Lasheart. Its difficult for people who do business at City Hall to access it during the day.

But parents and administrators of the LCE community, several of whom turned out Jan. 20 in opposition to the citys recommendations, claim the changes might force more dangerous driving behaviors that could put pedestrians and small children at risk.

La Canada Elementary School Principal Emily Blaney could not attend last weeks meeting but prepared a letter that was read by Mark Evans, La Canada Unifieds chief business and operations officer.

Blaney said shes had several talks with Libring and has consequently made efforts with parents to improve the flow of traffic at drop-off and pick-up times since she came to the helm in July, including bringing on more volunteers to man stations at Encinas Drive and La Canada Boulevard.

Additionally, Blaney wrote, PTA members and carline volunteers regularly communicate with parents, directing them to access Salisbury by way of Loma Vista Drive, west of Lasheart off Foothill Boulevard.

She called Librings past suggestions to parents that they simply arrive closer to dismissal time and make more of an effort to walk children to school impractical.

At this time, for safety and security concerns, it is unwise to encourage more students to walk to school when there is a lack of both sidewalks and crossing guards on the Encinas side of the campus, wrote Blaney.

Annette Dominguez OHair, who coordinates 27 volunteers as LCE carline chair, said the school community is making great efforts to keep cars moving and would appreciate a more collaborative, less unilateral approach to identifying a fix.

She asked why City Hall employees couldnt free up their own lot by parking across Foothill Boulevard, at the recently renovated Caltrans parking lot, during business hours.

We dont have a lot of land here, and we dont have a lot of space, Dominguez OHair said. We can find solutions if we all work together as a team.

Drugan said a committee could be one way to reach consensus. Those talks could become moot, however, if city officials identify an alternative City Hall location, something that has been the subject of closed session council meetings in recent months.

We heard a lot of great commentary. I think its going to help us make a decision to do something if City Hall stays there for the long term, Drugan said of the meeting. "(But) if this becomes more of an issue in the future, were going to have to come together in a committee approach.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo unleashed a wave of deadly violence targeting political opponents in a doomed attempt to cling to power after losing a 2010 election runoff, the International Criminal Courts chief prosecutor said Thursday as the courts landmark first trial of a former head of state got underway.

Nothing would be allowed to defeat Mr. Gbagbo, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told a panel of three judges. If politics failed, violence was seen as politics by other means.

Human rights activists welcomed the trial as a signal that leaders who resort to violence to strengthen their grip on power would be held to account.

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Gbagbo and former youth minister Charles Ble Goude are accused of involvement in atrocities that left 3,000 people dead after the disputed presidential runoff in their West African nation.

As the trial opened, the 70-year-old Gbagbo and Ble Goude, 44, each pleaded not guilty to four charges of crimes against humanity including murder, rape and persecution.

Bensouda said she would call 138 witnesses, including victims of violence and members of Gbagbos inner circle, to testify about his alleged involvement in plotting post-election violence even before the 2010 vote.

She made particular mention of a woman who was arrested during a demonstration by supporters of Gbagbos political rival, current President Alassane Ouattara, and detained at a police headquarters for three days.

During those three dark days she was raped, gang raped at the prefecture of police by armed gendarmes, Bensouda said.

Gbagbo remains popular among some in Ivory Coast. Dozens massed outside the court before the trial, which is expected to last many months. In Abidjan, the capital, about 300 Gbagbo supporters packed into an events hall in the working-class district of Yopougon to watch the trial. Organizers sold shirts featuring Gbagbos smiling face.
There will be no opening ceremony, the guest list remains secret, and strenuous efforts are in place to ensure that rival delegates are never in the same room.

Such are the curious conditions surrounding the Intra-Syrian Talks, the official designation of fresh peace negotiations aimed at ending Syrias almost five-year war  an intractable conflict that has further destabilized the Middle East, morphed into a proxy struggle between regional and world powers and helped trigger a refugee crisis in Europe.

The long-anticipated talks are slated to begin Friday in this Swiss city, under the aegis of Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for Syria.

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The mood could hardly be called optimistic. No one expects a breakthrough. Many fear a collapse  a scenario that seemed possible late Thursday after a Saudi-backed opposition faction, the High Negotiations Committee, said it would not attend.

Riyad Hijab, coordinator of the High Negotiations Committee, accused De Mistura of adopting a Russian and Iranian agenda in comments to Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned news channel.

Moscow and Tehran, both major supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, also back the Syrian peace talks.

In the run-up to the talks, De Mistura and others have hastened to downplay expectations.

Its going to be uphill, De Mistura, a veteran Italian-Swedish diplomat, told reporters this week.

The negotiating sessions have been deemed proximity talks, meaning rival delegations  the Syrian government and the opposition contingent  will be in different rooms while U.N. facilitators engage in a lot of shuttling, De Mistura said.

Organizers are hoping for some semblance of decorum among adversaries who routinely label each other terrorists, murderers and sundry other epithets.

You are not going to have a situation where people are sitting down at the table staring at each other or shouting at each other, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Youre going to have to build some process here.

The United States and Russia are major promoters of the talks, as both nations want the fighting to end, but they are on opposite sides of the politics behind the Syrian conflict.

The Obama administration, which once insisted that Assad must step down at the start of any political transition process, has grudgingly come around to the Russian position that Syrians should have the right to decide whether Assad stays or goes in U.N.-organized elections. When such balloting might take place in the war-ravaged nation remains unclear, but the U.N. says it will take at least 18 months, probably an optimistic projection.

Diplomats say the talks are initially likely to focus on incremental gains, such as instituting local cease-fires and facilitating deliveries of humanitarian goods to besieged areas in Syria.

Much of the pre-talks chatter has focused on a central question: Who will represent the fractured Syrian opposition? This has emerged as a key sticking point.

The opposition encompasses a broad range of Syrians, including hard-core Islamist fighters and secular and peaceful dissidents. Some opposition groups loath each other more than they despise Assad.

The U.N. has declined to identify which opposition figures have been invited to the talks, adding to an overriding sense of mystery.

De Mistura has warned that things might get a bit theatrical  a lot of posturing  a lot of walk-outs and walk-ins  but said he wouldnt take the swagger and rhetoric too seriously.

We should not be impressed, neither depressed, but its likely to happen, De Mistura said of the anticipated shows of bravado. The important thing is that we keep the momentum.

In advance of the talks, the prospective makeup of the opposition delegation became yet another proxy battleground for the different countries supporting the warring sides in the conflict.

Saudi Arabia has put its weight behind the High Negotiations Committee, an umbrella organization of armed groups and political dissidents formed in December in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The coalition includes a number of ultraconservative but powerful Islamist armed factions, including Ahrar al Sham, cofounded by a high Al Qaeda operative; and Jaysh al-Islam (Islams Army), which has been assailed for indiscriminately shelling government-controlled districts and allowing captive civilians to be paraded in cages as human shields against government bombardment.

Both factions have called for the establishment of an Islamic government after Assads departure and have engaged in sectarian rhetoric against the countrys Alawite population, a religious minority of which Assad is a member.

Their cadres also regularly fight alongside Al Nusra Front, Al Qaedas Syria affiliate, which, along with Islamic State, the Al Qaeda breakaway group, has been excluded from the talks.

Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally, has insisted the High Negotiations Committee must be the sole representative of the rebels.

That scenario, however, has proved unacceptable to Russia, whose warplanes have helped turned the tide of the war in Assads favor since their deployment in Syria in September.

Last week, Moscow supplied a list of prospective opposition delegates deemed more palatable to Damascus but who are viewed with suspicion by the Saudi bloc.

Russia also lobbied to include Saleh Muslim, the head of the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, the Syrian Kurdish group whose forces control large areas in the countrys northeast. The PYDs militia has been one of the most effective forces against Islamic State and has worked closely with U.S. forces.

But the prospect of the PYD attending the Geneva talks has angered Turkey, which views the PYD as the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a more than three-decade war against the Turkish state.

On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that the PYD would not participate in the talks.

But even those invited had yet to confirm their attendance less than 24 hours before the talks were set to begin.

Delegates named by Russia also expressed their hesitation to attend.

I am now on the way to Geneva, because my work is there, but I will decide later if I will be attending, said Haytham Manna, co-leader of the Syrian Democratic Council, an opposition group, in a phone interview on Thursday from Lausanne.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @mcdneville
They tried talks. They tried letters. They tried protests. But nothing could stop the deal.

Ecuadors government sold oil exploration rights in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest to a consortium of Chinese state-owned oil companies this week, despite dogged resistance from indigenous groups in the South American country who fear they could lose everything.

Andes Petroleum Ecuador, a consortium of two Chinese state-owned firms  China National Petroleum Corp. and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp.  on Wednesday purchased the rights to explore two oil blocks in the Amazon that cover an area of 500,000 acres, 1.5 times the size of the city of Los Angeles. The deal was worth about $80 million, according to the research firm Energy Intelligence.

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Experts and activists fear that the deal could destroy a pristine rainforest ecosystem and threaten unique, endangered cultures, including two isolated indigenous tribes.

Thats essentially the only Amazon in Ecuador that hasnt been devastated by oil operations, said Adam Zuckerman, environmental and human rights campaigner at the Oakland-based nonprofit Amazon Watch.

The whole northern Amazon has the legacy of Texaco, now owned by Chevron. Andes Petroleum, which is operating in the south, already operated in the north  and because of a legacy of contamination, and quite honestly, ethnocide in the north, the southern population sees this and says, We dont want this.

The oil blocks overlap with the traditional home of the Sapara, an indigenous group with only 300 members, according to Amazon Watch. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] declared the group an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001 for their small numbers and unique, but disappearing language.

The blocks also border Yasuni National Park, a 3,800-square-mile area of jungle which is home to two indigenous tribes, the nomadic Tagaeri and the Taromenane, who have no contact with the outside world. Amazon Watch said the project may exacerbate their vulnerability as oil drilling and infrastructure expands north, east, south and west of them.

Chinas ambassador to Ecuador, Wang Yulin, joined members from the consortium at a signing ceremony Wednesday, according to a statement by the Chinese Embassy in Ecuador.

Outside, a small group of indigenous people gathered in protest. Wearing traditional headdresses, they held signs reading: Chinese firms, get off of my land! and Dont sacrifice the Amazon to petroleum companies!

The government is directly responsible for whatever that happens to our villages, said Jorge Herrera, president of the Confederation of the Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, in a video posted after the signing. The project is illegitimate and illegal. It is against our villages and against nature.

This is a government of double standards and double morality, he said. Consequently, we must respect the constitution. The agreement on Jan. 25 with the Chinese [consortium] Andes Petroleum is unconstitutional and illegitimate.

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The Ecuadorian constitution requires that the government undergo free, prior, and informed consultation with local groups before pushing through sensitive environmental projects. Yet indigenous groups say that the national government has divided and manipulated local communities to fulfill the consultation conditions, and has violently cracked down on opposition to potentially lucrative deals.

Chinas state-run New China News Agency reported the deal Wednesday. Zhao Xinjun, the president of Andes Petroleum Ecuador, said that the consortium has invested $3.5 billion in Ecuador, with cutting-edge technologies and full respect for the countrys environmental regulations, according to the report.

Ecuador produces 540,000 barrels a day of crude oil, its top export. As oil prices continue to fall, the country is seeking loans from Beijing to keep its economy afloat. This month, Ecuador announced that it had signed $7.5 billion in new financing agreements with Beijing, despite already owing China billions of dollars.

The deal sends a message that our country is building up confidence and that companies want to come and invest here despite the low international oil prices, Ecuadorian Minister of Hydrocarbons Carlos Pareja said, according to the state news agency.

Amazon Watch said in a statement that Ecuadors southern Ecuadorian Amazon has a long history of indigenous resistance, project failures, and companies that have abandoned drilling plans. A laundry list of companies, including Arco, Burlington Resources, ConocoPhillips, and CGC all had projects paralyzed, were forced to declare force majuere, and ultimately withdrew from the country due to community opposition.

Chuan Xu in the Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

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Long-awaited Syria peace talks got off to a rocky start Friday, as officials of President Bashar Assads government arrived at United Nations headquarters amid a persistent lack of clarity about who would represent opposition forces.

A Saudi Arabia-backed opposition faction, the High Negotiations Committee, had vowed to stay away from the talks if Damascus did not meet a number of preconditions, including ending bombardment of rebel-held zones and allowing delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas.

The Saudi-based committee, an alliance of Syrian armed rebel groups and political dissidents backed by Riyadh and Washington, said late Friday that its representatives would be in Geneva, but to talk to the U.N., not to the Syrian delegation. U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry issued a statement welcoming the opposition groups decision.

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The U.N. said its Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, met with members of the Syrian government delegation, headed by Bashar Jaafari, Syrias U.N. ambassador, who was seen arriving Friday at the Palais des Nations complex. The Syrian official declined to take questions from the assembled media corps.

De Mistura will continue meetings with other participants in the talks and with representatives of the civil society, the U.N. said in a statement.

De Mistura, during a news conference Friday evening, had expressed some confidence that the Saudi-backed opposition delegation would arrive in the coming days, and negotiations could begin with two sides present.

We are hearing indications in the right direction and we are looking forward to welcoming them here, he said.

The U.N. has not released the invitation list and it was unclear who from the fragmented opposition had received invitations beyond the Saudi-backed committee that was threatening to stay away. Several secular opponents of the Assad government have also reportedly been invited at Russias request.

Refusal to attend the talks by the committee, known as the HNC, would be a direct rebuke to Washington, which has been a major backer of the Syrian opposition and has urged the committee to participate.

This is really a historic opportunity for them to go to Geneva to propose serious, practical ways to implement a cease-fire and other confidence-building measures, Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, told reporters Thursday in Washington. And we still believe they should do so without preconditions.

Asked if Washington was offering any sweeteners to encourage attendance, Toner said: Right now, regardless of sweeteners, we believe that the opportunity thats presented by these talks should be sweetener enough for the HNC to come to the table and talk.

Diplomats and others said a failure of the opposition faction to show up would signal its unwillingness to negotiate an end to the punishing Syrian conflict at a time when the United States, Russia and other major powers are determined to begin some kind of process to end the almost-five-year war.

More than 200,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict, which has also driven more than 4 million refugees out of the country. The refugee crisis has caused social, economic and political strains in neighboring nations as well as in European countries that have taken in multitudes of the refugees.

The war has also spawned the growth of a new generation of Islamic radicals, including the Islamic State group, which has been implicated in attacks in France, Turkey and Lebanon, and the bombing of a Russian civilian jetliner over Egypt.

Russia and Iran, supporters of Assads government, have backed the Geneva talks, as have the United States, Saudi Arabia and other nations assisting the opposition.

The involvement of Russian warplanes in Syria that began Sept. 30 has helped turn the fighting in the governments favor across a number of battlefields, boosting Assads negotiating status in the run-up to Geneva.

Few observers are optimistic that the talks will yield a peace deal any time soon. But the U.S., Russia and other nations are keen to set in motion a procedure that could eventually help facilitate cease-fires, the delivery of humanitarian aid and possibly U.N.-organized elections, once hostilities cease. But thats a long way off, say diplomats and observers.

This is about starting a process; its going to take a long time, said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. No one expects a quick breakthrough in Geneva. But its important to start a process.

Outside the U.N.'s imposing security gates Friday, a gaggle of opposition activists denounced the Syrian government in a plaza bearing a giant sculpture of a broken chair, symbolizing global rejection of land mines and cluster bombs as weapons of war.

One group set up a Siege Soup Kitchen, with activists donning chefs whites and masks depicting world leaders including Assad, President Obama and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Volunteers served up helpings of leaves mixed with water and spices  a reference to food shortages and hunger that have resulted from blockades established primarily by government forces against a number of rebel-held areas in Syria.

Others put up posters disparaging opposition delegates that were selected by Russia, accusing them of being Assads allies, while songs associated with the uprising blared from a nearby speaker.

And there was furious speculation as to if and when the Saudi-based opposition delegation would arrive, and whether its members would begin discussions with the U.N. envoy.

I can say for sure there will be no negotiations today, said Farah Atassi, an opposition activist. The only matter to discuss is the framework under which negotiations can happen.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @mcdneville

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Mexicans feel that President Enrique Pena Nieto's so-called "war on corruption" has been an ultimate failure, now that the Mexican president is half-way through his six-year term. The country still has a huge corruption problem, despire the Mexican government's "best" efforts to contain it.

According to Forbes, things aren't looking good for Mexico, as it has been ranked the 95th most corrupt country in the world as per the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Many events have shed light on the Mexican government's weak spots.

Mexico still has continuing questions over the 43 missing student activists in Ayotzinapa. Many complain that the government is putting little to no effort into conducting investigations.

Even President Nieto himself was not safe from being a person of interest in the country's corruption scandal, with the president's purchase of extragavagant luxury homes under the names of him and his wife Angelica Rivera came to light.

Since Nieto's involvement in the widespread political scandal, his popularity ratings have significantly dropped, with Mexicans becoming even more disillusioned of his political agenda to reform Mexico. In September 2015, Nieto's ratings dropped to 44 percent from 2014's 51 percent.

In order to satisfy public interest about the purchases of the lavish homes, he appointed close friend Virgilio Andrade as Secretary of Public Function and ordered him to conduct an investigation on the possible conflict of interest he was accused of, instead of having a transparent investigation from an independent body. It came as no surprise to many Mexicans when Andrade declared that his boss was "not guilty."

This year did not start well for the 49-year old president, as he refused to have accountability, per The New York Times. The publication talked of the Mexican president "whitewashing scandals."

2015 was also the year when Mexicans took to the streets to protest the ongoing corruption. As far as many Mexicans are concerned, President Nieto is failing his agenda of fighting corruption, as the issues have become somewhat of an Achilles' heel to his administration.

Drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's highly publicized arrest and escape from a maximum security prison also became a source of "embarrassment" for Mexico, as it exposed the country's weak public systems, including the judiciary and the police force. The feared drug lord bought his way to freedom for a second time with a series of bribes.

Analysts say that should President Enrique Pena Nieto not step up to deliver on his promises, Mexico's deep-rooted corruption might impede it from reaching its full potential. Mexico has the 15th largest economy in the world, reports Dallas News.

Irving Huerta, a journalist who co-authored the book "Pena Nieto's White House," which documents the conflict of interest in Mexico, said that President Pena Nieto should work with civil society in order to take "effective steps to make Mexico a more inclusive economy, through institutions that seek justice and competitiveness, with powers that generate real confidence."

According to Irving Huerta, it is in this way, that Mexico will have a chance to finally put an end to corruption.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Muslims in the southern Mexican city of San Cristobal de las Casas are set to meet Pope Francis in three weeks, during his five-day trip to the embattled Central American country in three weeks.

The pontiff will be arriving in what the Tico Times described as "the least Catholic state" in the second-biggest Roman Catholic country in the world. His trip will last from February 12 to 17, where he will deliver a message of hope.

According to National Catholic Reporter (NCR), the Catholic leader will stop at six cities from El Paso to Texas including the embattled Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chiapas, which houses a very small but equally important Muslim population.

Tico Times revealed that upon his arrival to the community, the Pope will be greeted by "a religious mosaic that includes Buddhists, Evangelists and Jews," where the 2010 Census recorded only 58 percent of the population identify with Catholicism.

Aside from the mixed religion, Chiapas is also known as the country's "poorest state." It gained attention internationally after the Zapatista rebellion in 1994, which was sparked after guerrilla leader Subcomandante Marcos rejected the Spanish members of the Murabitun to convert his troops.

Pope Francis confirmed the trip November last year and said that he wishes to enter the U.S.-Mexico border through Ciudad Juarez, Crux Now reported on November 25.

Known for his enigmatic compassion, especially for the underprivileged and the children, Pope Francis has been lauded world-wide as "the People's Pope."

The NCR report revealed how he wishes to continue living up to this title and promised to go to cities that his predecessors St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI never visited.

He also confirmed that he will make a stop at the capital city of Mexico to pray at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

His itinerary during the five-day visit includes a visit to a pediatric hospital in the capital, the youth and the religious in Morelia, and the notorious Cereso state prison, where 20 or more people have died during gang riots in 2009.

According to Crux Now, religious leaders in the country expect the Catholic leader to spread the same message he told thousands of people in Philadelphia in September, where scores of Hispanic immigrants reside.

"You should never be ashamed of your traditions. Do not forget the lessons you learned from your elders, which are something you can bring to enrich the life of this American land," he said.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The chairman of the Senate health committee Thursday said that despite the Food and Drug Administration receiving an extra $1 billion in fees from the generic drug user fee program, the agency has slowed down its pace of approving generic drugs  threatening the programs ability to increase competition and lower the price of drugs for patients.

What matters to the American people are generic drug approval times and the number of approvals, Chairman Lamar Alexander said, which to them mean increased market competition, a reduction in drug shortages, and more, lower-cost drugs available for patients.

Senator Alexander noted that the original goal of the generic drug program  as established in the 1984 Hatch-Waxman amendments  was to approve generic drugs in 180 days.

But, the troubling news is that it is taking longer for the FDA to get drugs through the approval process, and according to a survey of generic drug makers, the median approval times have slowed from 30 to 48 months, Senator Alexander said. According to one estimate, once there are six or more generic competitors, a drug costs about 10 percent of the brand priceso, these slower approval times mean less competition and higher costs for consumers.

To best restrain the growth of drug prices, we must encourage investment in life-saving therapies, avoid unnecessary regulatory burdens that slow down development and drive up costs, and ensure the marketplace remains competitive, Senator Alexander said, noting that  through its innovation agenda  the committee has been working in a bipartisan way for the past year to reduce unnecessary regulatory burden to bring safe drugs and medical devices to patients more quickly.

He continued, At the same time, Sens. Collins and McCaskill, leaders of the Aging Committee, have been examining what improvements may be necessary to ensure that the FDA expedites applications for generic drugs to keep the marketplace competitive, which will help keep drug prices down, and I look forward to working with them on that effort.

Senator Alexander said Thursdays oversight hearing of the 2012 Generic Drug User Fee Amendments  the first since they were enacted to help improve the review process for generic drugs  comes at a critical time for patients, as the amendments are set to be reauthorized next year.

The chairmans full prepared remarks are below:



In December, the president signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act, a bill to fix No Child Left Behind and proof that this committee can work together to tackle very difficult issues.



But a law not properly implemented isnt worth the paper its written on, which is why Im going to be working with Senator Murray to set up a strong oversight process during 2016 to make sure the teachers, governors, chief state school officers, parents and students who counted on us to fix that law see that its implemented properly.



Were here today for a similar purpose: to conduct oversight of the 2012 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety and Innovation Act  specifically the laws Generic Drug User Fee Amendments, which are fees negotiated between the FDA and generic drug makers to give the agency additional resources intended to speed the review of generic drugs.



This is Congress first oversight hearing since these agreements were passed in 2012, and it comes at a critical time for patients:



Despite the FDA receiving nearly $1 billion in user fees since 2012 as a result of these user fee agreements, performance is not living up to Congress or patients expectations, as the number of generic drugs approved per year remains about the same.



The user fee agreements are due to be reauthorized next year, and discussions between the FDA and industry are already underwaymaking now the appropriate time for us to better understand whether or not these 2012 agreements are working to give Americans better access to generic drugs.



The generic drug program, established by the Hatch-Waxman Amendments over 30 years ago, has had great success increasing competition and lowering drug prices.



The program was created to make it easier for generic drugs to enter the market.



Let me quickly explain how this works: Once a drug is approved by the FDA, for example, Lipitor  which is widely used to help lower cholesterol  no other manufacturer can make that drug for a period of time. When that period of time expires, a manufacturer may make a copy of that drug  and we call that a generic drug.



That generic copy must also have FDA approval.



This generic approval process doesnt include full clinical trials, which often are long and expensive, contributing to higher prices for brand drugs.



As a result, more generic drugs in the market creates competition and lowers prices for consumers.



And today, 88 percent of prescription drugs purchased in the United States are generic drugs.



However, in 2012, 26 years after the law first passed, it became clear the generic drug approval program needed an overhaul.



More generic drugs were coming from overseas. Generic drug companies in China and India were inspected much less frequently than American companies, putting American companies at a disadvantage and, more importantly, putting patients at risk.



There was a backlog of 4,700 applications waiting to be reviewed, and the median approval time to get review of a generic drug was 30 months, far surpassing the 180-day timeframe for review as laid out in the Hatch-Waxman amendments in 1984.



Additionally, in 2012, many generic sterile injectable drugs were in shortage, causing doctors and hospitals to scramble to ensure patients were getting the best treatment possible.



To address these problems, Congress passed the first Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (often referred to by its acronym GDUFA or as congressional staff and industry insiders call it  Ga-DOO-Fa) as part of the FDA Safety and Innovation Act.



This built on the success of similar agreements that Congress had previously passed between drug and device manufacturers and their regulators in the FDA.



This user fee agreement was the first agreement between the generic industry and the FDA on how to improve the review process for generic drugs.



With the enactment of these amendments, Congress anticipated:



One: that generic drug facilities abroad would be brought up to the same standards as facilities in the United States; and



Two: that American patients would benefit from faster approval of generic drugs.



These two actions would bring more competition to the market and lower the price of drugs for consumers.



But there are concerns about the implementation of this program.



Some progress has been made on the backlog of applications for generic drugssome progress, but certainly not enough.



In 2012 there was a backlog of 4,700 pending applications and that has now dropped to just over 3,500 applications pending approval, according to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association.



The HHS Inspector General has reported that the FDA is improving its inspections abroad, one of the important goals of the user fee agreements.



But, the troubling news is that it is taking longer for the FDA to get drugs through the approval process, and according to a survey of generic drug makers, the median approval times have slowed from 30 to 48 months.



According to one estimate, once there are six or more generic competitors, a drug costs about 10 percent of the brand priceso, these slower approval times mean less competition and higher costs for consumers.



This slowdown in approval time is despite the fact that the FDA has received nearly $1 billion in user fees since this law was passed  thats funding that is on top of the money that Congress annually provides to the FDA through the appropriations bill.



Thats about $300 million a year, or 20 percent of the total amount that the FDA spent researching, inspecting, and reviewing all drugs  generic and brand name alike  in fiscal year 2015.



I understand that the FDA has met most of the goals laid out in the agreement for industry user fees for regulatory actions, hiring staff, and increasing inspections.



But I look forward to hearing whether these metrics are the most appropriate, given I continue to hear that generic drug approval is too slow from manufacturers and patients.



While industry provides funding according to the agreement, the American taxpayer, through the Congressional appropriations process, provided over 40 percent for the generic drug review program in fiscal year 2014, according to the FDAs financial report.



But the data points that matter to American people are generic drug approval times and the number of approvals, which to them mean increased market competition, a reduction in drug shortages, and more, lower-cost drugs available for patients.



Another issue were hearing a lot about is drug pricing  and here are some points to consider:



One: While the cost of drugs is a legitimate concern for many Americans  its part of an even larger problem of rising health care costs.



Just this week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced in its annual Budget and Economic Outlook that for the first time, federal spending for the major health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, Obamacare) represents the largest fractionmore than 60 percentof the projected growth in mandatory spending in 2016. CBO notes that this spending is partially driven by the increase in per capita health care costs.



Two: While we work to lower the cost of drugs, we need to invest in and incentivize the development of life-saving therapies.



Congress last year added $2 billion in the appropriations process, bringing NIHs total budget in FY2016 up to around $32 billion  but this is still less than whats spent in the private sector.



Members of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America, who only represent a portion of the market, spent over $50 billion in FY2014 alone coming up with new cures and treatments.



The clinical trials required to prove that medicine is safe cost hundreds of millions of dollars, even for the ninety percent of drugs that fail. In addition, the regulatory approval process is lengthy, which also adds costs.



As a result of this effort, biotech and drug companies big and small have done remarkable things to help patients with diseases like HIV, Cystic Fibrosis, and cancer live longer, healthier livesa critical development we do not want to interrupt.



Third: To best restrain the growth of drug prices we must encourage investment in life-saving therapies, avoid unnecessary regulatory burdens that slow down development and drive up costs, and ensure the marketplace remains competitive.



For the past year, this committee  in a bipartisan way has been looking at ways to reduce unnecessary regulatory burden so we can get safe, innovative, life-saving therapies into patients medicine cabinets more quickly.



At the same time, Sens. Collins and McCaskill, leaders of the Aging Committee, have been examining what improvements may be necessary to ensure that the FDA expedites applications for generic drugs to keep the marketplace competitive, which will help keep drug prices down, and I look forward to working with them on that effort.



The generic drug industry really is a remarkable story. Over the last 30 years  generic drugs have gone from a small fraction of the marketplace to 88 percent. Its hard to imagine what the prescription drug market would look like today without generic drugs.



I look forward to hearing from our witness today to learn more about where Congress can help make improvements to the regulatory process and ensure that the FDA has the tools it needs to create a generic drug review system that functions as Congress intended and as American patients and taxpayers deserve.
The words coming out of Donald Trump's mouth have always been viewed as a topic for debate. The business mogul has sparked controversy, even before his campaign period. However, his infamous speech on his anti-Latino rhetoric has prompted legal Hispanic residents to take action.

According to a report with Buzzfeed News, more legal Latino residents are taking steps in becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Many of these legal residents are outraged over Trump's controversial statements, calling Latinos "rapists, drug dealers and criminals."

Earlier last year, the GOP presidential candidate said that Mexico is "sending people that have lots of problems" to America. Despite many of his detractors saying that his statements are nothing but racist, Trump inisisted that he has "nothing against Latinos."

In a report with The Business Insider, Trump also took shots against the Mexican government, saying that they were "forcing their worst people to the United States." He also said that the Mexican government was apparently taking advantage of the U.S. with "bad trade deals."

Many Hispanics who have made their way to the United States to settle down and establish their careers in the country say that coming to the United States "was a dream." Immigration acitivists hope to help naturalize thousands of these Latinos from across three key states -- Nevada, Florida and Colorado.

Several immigration rights groups are currently helping Latinos from across the country in the months-long process of naturalization. Unite Here, for example, has the goal of getting 2,500 Hispanics to be naturalized by the time of the elections, along with registering 10,000 new voters.

Mi Familia Vota is another advocacy group that hopes to help 300 people begin the naturalization process. Executive Director Ben Monterroso said that many of these Latinos said that they want to become U.S. citizens, specifically because they want to vote against Trump.

The website also reported that the Latino vote can prove to be a strong factor in determining who will win the elections, with 1.2 Latinos becoming naturalized citizens.

Many of these Hispanic residents say that they have worked hard to achieve the "American Dream," and they want to prove that their votes to count.

Maria Mendoza, a Mexican woman who has worked for Trump Tower for five years, said that she was out to prove that Latinos are not "second-class citizens." She added that she has the same rights as every other citizen. She, like many Hispanics, is determined to prove that their voices and votes will matter.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
For people who love the outdoors, South America offers various attractions where one can go camping with family or friends.

The Guardian said though the continent is not as famous as Europe and North America when it comes to camping, it still has attractions which people can enjoy the whole year round.

In Colombia, the Tatacoa Desert is a popular destination because travellers can sleep under the stars at night.

The same report advised people to witness the setting of the sun because rock formations in the desert turn pink.

Aside from this, the country also offers camping spots in coastal areas like Palomino or the Andes region, which is rich in coffee.

Ecuador, on the other hand, offers camping in high places. One of the most go-to places here is the Natural Reserve Pasochoa, a 500-hectare park where the Pasochoa volcano stands.

According to EcuaTravelling, travellers will be awed by the beautiful crater and the natural formations of the forest.

The place also has more than 100 species of birds, 200 species of plants and other mammals living in the area.

Brazil camping, as per The Guardian, is also an exciting adventure, with more than 30 camping sites in the country. Different rates for members and non-members are offered.

Beach camping spots in the counter are usually crowded in January and February.

Others can also try the Pousada and Camping Santa Clara, Corumba, Mato Grosso do Sul where they can see the Pantalan -- the largest wetland in the world.

The Guardian said it is also the best place to find wildlife animals like jaguars, caiman and capybara.

For those traveling to Mexico, BBC recommends the Rancho San Nicolas woods, which is a few minutes away from San Cristobal de las Casas town in Chiapas.

Mexican campgrounds are said to be more developed compared to other South American countries. It has short layovers for people wanting to spend a single night camping as well as long stops for travellers who want to climb mountains or swim in lakes.

As for camping essentials, Reserve America said campers should prepare more than their usual bedding, tents, clothes and food.

It noted that there is also a need to bring a first aid kit in case of accidents or emergencies. A pack of matches to start a fire for cooking or keeping people warm during a cold night is also advised.

Tarpaulins can also serve as extra protection for your tent and occupies only a small space when traveling.

Aside from this, a jar of peanut butter can go a long way when camping, since it does not spoil easily.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The New Cuba PAC has risen over $350,000 in a span of seven months.

The Washington-based political action committee, which was formed in May 2015, supports federal candidates in favor of lifting the United States' trade embargo on Cuba, according to NBC News.

Ric Herrero, co-director of the New Cuba PAC, said that by ending the embargo "we would be doing a lot more to help empower people and put them in a better position to demand changes from their own government," the news outlet reported.

Among the contributors who donated the maximum $5,000 allowed include health care mogul and top Jeb Bush supporter, Mike Fernandez; former Secretary of Commerce under George W. Bush, Carlos Gutierrez; President of the Miami Heat, Pat Riley, and tech entrepreneur Manny Medina, NBC News listed. The Marriott International hotels group also contributed to the PAC.

Another prominent name, Eduardo Mestre, also donated $5,000 to the group, NBC News further reported. Mestre's father and uncle owned radio stations in pre-revolutionary Cuba and introduced the first major television network on the Caribbean island.

"I think it's worth noting that over half of them are Cuban-Americans. And that shows the seismic shift the community has experienced in recent years," Herrero added, as reported by NBC News.

James Williams, co-director of the New Cuba PAC, said that the group will continue "to support candidates and elected officials" who are working to lift the embargo, a move which they believe will "ultimately benefit both U.S. citizens and the Cuban people," the news outlet continued.

Fernandez, Gutierrez, Medina, and Public Health Trust Chairman and Miami businessman Joe Arriola were among the 10 signatories of an open letter published in December that called the embargo unsuccessful and urged engagement with Cubans on the island, Miami Herald reported.

According to Williams, the success of the PAC's fundraising efforts is "further proof that Americans from across the political and economic spectrum are continuing to unite in their support for normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations," Miami Herald added.

The Hialeah-based U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, on the other hand, is also committed to raising funds. The group, which opposes lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba, aims to promote a transition to a multi-party democracy, the rule of law, and a free-market system on the island, the news outlet listed. The PAC's mid-year 2015 filing with the Federal Election Commission showed $214,322.40 worth of donations.

The U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC website said that the Castro regime would mainly benefit if the embargo was removed. This condition gives way to Cuba's unconditional transition to democracy, the rule of law, and the free market.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Sao Paulo Carnaval will kick off in a few days, and people are excited for the street parade and parties, which will happen in February.

For those people wanting to try some exciting things at the annual celebration, below is a list of suggested activities:

1. Witness the Sambadrome Carnaval Extravaganza

Travel Channel highlighted that the carnival parade is a must-see in Sao Paulo because of the colourful floats, popular stars and creative presentations of the participants.

The Sambadrome, which started in 1991, features competing samba schools performing a 45-minute presentation. They are judged based on the theme, costume and overall organisation.

2. Listen to the blocos

Blocos are the roving bands in Sao Paulo, which provide great sights to travellers and locals alike.

According to Timeout, the band members are clad in fancy dresses while carrying their drums, port and fans.

Stuff, however, warned the public that blocks can be "rowdy" and thieves and pickpockets tend to mingle with the crowd in an effort to target their victims.

"Don't be surprised if an amorous stranger grabs you for a kiss, or if you see people passing everywhere, before dashing off to the next set of lips," added the same report.

3. Check out the Carnival Balls

Rio Carnaval noted that balls are also popular during the celebration. It noted that these are usually held at the Avenida Club and Bar Brahma where nonstop parties are popular.

For those wanting to join these balls, reservations are needed for guaranteed slots.

4. Enjoy the Carnaval Night Life

According to Carnaval.com, restaurants, bars and shows are also great attractions at night in Sao Paulo.

Most visitors go to various places like Ibirapuera, Downtown, Jardins, Vila Madalena, Pinheiros, Moema, Paraiso, Itaim and Vila Olimpia.

It added that bars in these areas cater to individuals aged 25 to 45 years old.

For great shows to cap the night, Carnaval.com said that people can go to Olimpia, Palace, and Tom Brasil.

5. Meet popular samba groups

It was added in the Rio Carnaval report that the well-known samba groups can be found during the celebration in Sao Paulo. These groups started as early as 1935.

Aside from these famous activities, Stuff said people should also bring costumes, sunblock, an umbrella and a selfie stick to fully enjoy the celebration.

An insect repellent is also necessary this year because of the spread of the zika virus in various South American countries.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio said that he will "defeat Hillary Clinton" and "save America" in his new presidential campaign ad. Despite his current performance in the polls, the Florida Senator is determined to make his final pitch to voters clear.

In a report with New York Times, Marco Rubio is shown to be steadily gaining support in the caucuses. Rubio is focused on campaigning his fight for change following President Barack Obama's two terms in office. In the latest political ad that was first released in The Guardian, Rubio said that the United States was slowly "slipping away."

The United States Junior Senator for Florida declared that the elections all came down to one thing, which was defeating presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He warned that America would suffer "extraordinary consequences" should Clinton come into power.

He added that should he win the vote, he promised to "save America." The presidential candidate said that after seven years of President Obama in office, America was left with what would be some of the greatest challenges this current generation has ever experienced.

Rubio said in his campaign ad that he was asking for the people's votes. He promised that he would make it his personal mission to make the United States, "the single greatest nation in all mankind."

Marco Rubio is currently making his final campaign in Iowa ahead of Monday's caucuses. The political ad will be aired all across Iowa on Thursday. While many Iowans want Donald Trump to win the caucuses on Monday, a Trump victory might prove to work to Rubio's advantage.

The Guardian reports that Rubio has become a more formidable Republican opponent to Hillary Clinton. Rubio added that should be be voted, he vows to "unify the Republican party" and grow the conservative movement.

Rubio also hopes to convince those "people who have not voted for us in a long time," by saying that he has also experienced similar difficulties as the majority of the voters. He cited his own experience growing up in a working-class household and his struggles with financial difficulties as examples.

"I have faced what you are facing, and I am a conservative." he said.

He went on to take a shot at Clinton, saying that this was all about "defeating Hillary Clinton."

"We cannot lose this election," he declared.

He took a shot at his other opponents as well, saying that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were all engaging in "theatrics."

Marco Rubio said that Trump and Cruz's "slideshows" are interesting, but he stressed that this was "serious work."

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Two U.S. senators have blamed the government for the serious abuses suffered by undocumented migrant children in safe houses.

At a congressional hearing, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill accused the Department of Health and Human Services for the unsafe housing of "vulnerable and traumatized minors," which mostly came from Central America. These children were reportedly "abused by their sponsors, or forced to engage in backbreaking labor for little or no pay, while being housed in unsanitary and dangerous conditions," EFE reported (via Fox News Latino).

HHS is in charge of finding safe homes in which to house the children while the justice system determines if they will be allowed to remain in the United States, the news outlet noted.

McCaskill and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman's investigation revealed that the minors were exploited by criminals both sexually and at work, EFE further reported. In the report, the senators said that 13 minors were victims of people smuggling and another 15 could be abused. However, they stressed out that it is impossible to determine the total number of victims because the HHS is unable to follow the cases.

"HHS placed one 16-year-old with a sponsor who claimed to be her cousin. In fact, he was completely unrelated to her and had paid for her to come to the U.S . . . The minor . . . was forced to have sex with her sponsor," said McCaskill, as quoted by EFE.

During the inquiry's six-month course, the government was found to have failed to conduct the most basic checks on the adults entrusted with caring for the minors, Chicago Tribune wrote. The government is said to be swamped with the surge of tens of thousands of children crossing the border to escape violence and economic crisis in Central America.

Plenty of adult sponsors didn't go through extensive background checks, the news outlet continued. Government officials didn't visit homes and at times, didn't know that adult sponsors are in custody of several unrelated children, which is a possible sign of human trafficking.

Majority of the cases indicated by the senators were labor-related. Both McCaskill and Portman, who serves as the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, accused the HHS of having "failed to address systematic deficiencies in their placement process," the news outlet noted.

At the hearing, HHS officials said that the Congress didn't grant them legal authority to conduct follow-ups on the children's status, Chicago Tribune reported. That response angered both Democratic and Republican senators, who complained about the officials' incomplete answers and failure to take full responsibility for the children who suffered abuses.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A traditional Mexican dish is making a mark in Kentucky, as a college in the southeastern state in the U.S. offers a class all about it.

According to Munchies, tacos are all the rage at the University of Kentucky, where an undergraduate course about the Latin American food is now being offered.

The course, called "Taco Literacy: Public Advocacy and Mexican Food in the US South" headed by University of Kentucky assistant professor Steven Alvarez, was created to educate students on the Mexican cuisine that is now becoming popular in Kentucky.

"After going to one of their symposiums, it really hit me that food is important," Alvarez said in an interview with the outlet, adding that the stories behind the cuisine and the connections between the people making it became more 'impactful' than the food itself.

Teaching youth about food also provides an avenue for the university's students to "build more connections with the community and help with public writing."

The Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies department educator also revealed that the program is aimed at bringing a more diverse environment to students who took on writing majors in order to bring them closer to their dreams.

"There is a lot of pressure for our students to go into majors like finance, economics, or medical school, because you can't tell your parents, 'I want to be a writer!'" he told the outlet, noting that those who were not brave enough to follow their dream ended up teaching.

Check out my Spring 2016 course #TacoLiteracy at the #UniversityOfKentucky exploring Mexican foodways in the South. #ukwrd #uky #seeblue #seeazul #mexky A photo posted by @stevenpaulalvarez on Oct 29, 2015 at 11:55am PDT

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the origin of the taco is still unknown, but University of Minnesota history professor Jeffrey Pilcher believes that it came from the silver mines of Mexico.

"My theory is that it dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico, because in those mines the word 'taco' referred to the little charges they would use to excavate the ore," he told the magazine.

Apparently, a 'taco' for a Mexican miner is a piece of paper that they use to wrap around gunpowder, which they later placed into holes that were carved into the rock face, much like a stick of dynamite.

"When you think about it, a chicken taquito with a good hot sauce is really a lot like a stick of dynamite," he added.

According to Pilcher, the first archive that referenced tacos dates back to the end of the 19th century when a variant of the cuisine, known as 'tacos de minero' or the miner's tacos, emerged.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The continued spread of the Zika virus in Latin American countries has sparked panic among people, mostly in pregnant women because of the disease's possible connection to microcephaly in babies.

With no vaccine and cure in sight, doctors have advised women to not get pregnant for a while as precaution. Given that many nations in Latin America are Catholic, access to birth control is restricted and abortion is completely banned. As Zika continues to threaten the region, is it possible that Latin America's view on abortion will change?

"This kind of recommendation that women should avoid pregnancy is not realistic," said Beatriz Galli, a Brazil-based policy advisor for the reproductive health organization Ipas, as reported by Wired. "How can they put all the burden of this situation on the women?"

Majority of Zika incidents are in Brazil, where 270 cases of microcephaly have been confirmed since October 2015, according to PRI. Around 3,500 suspected cases are still being investigated.

Birth control is available in the country, but poor and rural women can still not gain access to contraceptives, Wired wrote. A report estimated that unplanned pregnancies in the country constitute over half of all births in there.

Scientists still haven't confirmed Zika's link to microcephaly, but Brazilian researchers confirmed that the virus can be transferred from the mother's placenta to the fetus, Wired added. Faced with fear and partial information, women will have to think of ways on how to protect themselves and their children.

Brazil's 1940 penal code rules that abortion is illegal, with the exception of rape cases and certain medical conditions, Wired noted.

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that terminating a pregnancy is not a crime when a fetus has anencephaly, a rare condition in which the baby's brain and skull has missing parts, PRI reported. In the midst of the Zika outbreak, powerful women's rights activists in the country are already preparing a new appeal to the Supreme Court to consider giving the right to abortion in the case of microcephaly.

"I'm preparing, I'm studying, I'm organizing arguments analyzing the Supreme Court climate to propose a case," said Debora Diniz, vice chair of the International Women's Health Coalition, as quoted by PRI. "We have everything on hand - we have an epidemic, we have the historical negligence of the Ministry of Health, and we have women's needs on the table."

Brazil's reproductive health rights movement has fought to lengthen the list of those exempted in abortion rules, but they have faced years of roadblocks, the news outlet added. Conservative politicians are currently pushing for a tough new bill that would oblige rape victims to undergo physical exams before being permitted to have an abortion.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Zika Virus might have struck Brazil down, but the country refuses to give up. While the Brazilian government is doing what it can to contain and eliminate the virus in the country, Brazil's doctors are doing what they can to help infants stricken with the disease.

Reuters reports that the victims of the Zika Virus paint many a sad picture. The mosquito-borne disease has left many infants in Brazil with microcephaly, a condition where the infant's brain is not fully developed and has an abnormally small head. So far, Brazil is the country that has been affected the most by the Zika outbreak, with 270 reported cases of the tragic neurological complication.

BBC reports that President Dilma Rousseff is doing what she can to help contain the virus. She has called on society to help in efforts to combat the virus from spreading even further. So far, the Brazilian government said that it will deploy 220,000 troops to eradicate potential breeding grounds of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

Meanwhile, doctors are doing what they can to aid the infants who were born with the Zika virus. Many health experts in the country say that they were caught off guard by the entirety of it all, and that many of them don't necessarily have the resources to stop the mosquito or the virus itself.

So far, there is no cure for the disease. The symptoms of the virus are a mild fever with body aches, which is similar to dengue fever.

In Recife, the city that has been struck the worst by the Zika virus, struggles from the effects of the disease. The city has asked Brazil's federal government for 29 million reais in order to help fund efforts against Zika, but has only received 1.3 million so far.

Many of the infants suffer convulsions and are in need of brain stimulus therapy. Insect repellents are also being widely used, causing a shortage in many areas.

Many child neurologists are seeing little to no improvement each day and they can do very little for now, except alleviate the child's discomforts. Most also suffer from vision problems and badly deformed limbs. Some have trouble breathing.

Even with Brazil's commitment to contain the virus, doctors in the country see the sad scenes every day and many admit that they are helpless to do much in a country where resources are limited and the country's tropical climate makes the mosquitos thrive.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Just recently, the United Nations released the list of the 50 most violent cities in the world. According to The Daily Mail, 21 of them are from Brazil alone. Another 20 are from Latin America, leaving only nine slots left for the rest of the world.

Among the biggest problems in the South American region include drug trafficking and gang wars, political instability, corruption, and poverty, which explains the high homicide rates in the area.

It comes as no surprise, then, that immigrants are fleeing Latin American countries in vast numbers. NPR noted in October that many people from El Salvador were fleeing to the US due to fear of gang violence, hoping for greener pastures on the northern side of the continent.

Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, lead investigator and assistant professor of community health science at UCLA, said that the immigrant numbers were highly impacted by the homicides in Mexico. Think Progress said that it accounts for the decreasing life expectancy of adult men and women. This could help explain the unprecedented number of Mexicans and other Latin American groups showing up at the US border in 2015.

Forbes noted that Mexico, with 21 of its cities listed as among the most violent, contributes about 28 percent of immigrants in the United States in 2013. Numbers rose in the 1980s and steadily increased with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The rest of the immigrant numbers are contributed by Asians -- Indians coming in second, closely followed by Chinese and Filipinos as well as Vietnamese. El Salvadorians and Cubans follow, with the Dominican Republic and Guatemala seeing the most number of migrants after Korea.

San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, is top three on the list of most violent cities, contributing about 61.21 homicides per 100,000. The situation in the country has become so dire that according many El Salvadorians have actually stopped going to school because of the rampant gang violence in the area, per The Guardian. A 19-year-old girl by the name Celia stopped going to school when two gang members threatened to kill her for entering their turf in San Salvador.

She shared, "I live in an area controlled by the Mara Salvatrucha [gang] but my college is in Barrio-18 area and those gangs are arch rivals. On my way to class I was stopped by two men who asked where I was from. I said I was from their area, but they knew I was lying. They said: 'We don't want to see you here again. This is the first and last time, or we will kill you.'"

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Senate and House of Representatives have adopted a conference committee report on Senate Bill 1 which puts into place a framework on how the states appellate judges should be confirmed or rejected under the new constitutional mandate adopted by voters in 2014. The bill is sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown).

Under the constitutional amendment, appellate judges are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the legislature. The voters of Tennessee have the ability to vote to retain or not retain judges at the end of their 8-year terms or, if an appointment is to fill a vacancy, at the next even year August election.

I am thrilled the agreement passed the Senate and House with overwhelming majorities, said Senator Kelsey. The Senate passed it unanimously (33-0) and the House tally was 86-5. I look forward to holding the first ever confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks. We are setting precedent for quality judges in Tennessee for the next hundred years.

Under the agreement, the Senate Judiciary Committee and its House counterpart will each hold a meeting to hear from the appointee. Following the hearing the committee will vote to recommend confirmation or rejection of the appointee to the full Senate. Next, the Senate and House of Representatives will meet in joint session to either confirm or reject the governors appointee.

If both chambers vote to confirm, the appointee is confirmed. If both chambers vote to reject, the appointee is rejected. Also, one chamber may reject the appointee by a two thirds vote.

Governor Bill Haslam on Jan. 7 appointed Judge Roger Page of Jackson to the Tennessee Supreme Court, replacing Justice Gary Wade, who retired in September. Upon being signed into law by Governor Bill Haslam, the process laid out in the bill will be used when lawmakers consider his nomination.
In 1982, the Guatemalan army massacred children and civilians under the dictatorship of then-general Efrain Rios Montt. Thirty-three years later, 49 of the victims were finally laid down to rest in a funeral march, carrying coffins with the remains along the main road of the Huehuetenango State.

The remains were actually exhumed in 2009, but it took a long time to carry out the burial because the Guatemalan government refused to fulfill their responsibility of giving the victims dignity in their final rest, according to the families. TeleSur noted that it was the International Red Cross who finally lent a hand to help with the burial.

Unfortunately, only 49 of the 74 people killed in the community had their bodies recovered. Jose Suasnavar of the Forensic Anthropological Foundation explained, "We've recovered (the remains of) at least 49 individuals, but the problem is that we don't have complete bones ... we have a piece of skull, a piece of a femur, a bit of rib, and so on."

Guatemala has been on the hunt for the military officers who took part in the massacre, some of whom were captured just last June. In a separate report, the massacre back then was called "Operation Sophia," and instead of ending guerrilla warfare like it was supposed to, it wrecked Mayan communities who were believed to have been hiding with the rebel soldiers.

In the first decade of the operation, the army destroyed over 600 villages. 200,000 civilians either disappeared or were killed. In 1999, The National Security Archive noted that the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission determined the operation as "acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people."

Despite the tragedy dating back three decades ago, the wounds are still fresh in the minds of some of the victims' family members as well as the community, who watched the horror first-hand. A survivor shared terror-filled memories of some 300 soldiers barging in to their community on July 27, 1982, "acting like devils who had escaped from hell."

The witness said, "I saw with my own eyes, then a nine-year-old child, the army massacring children, accusing them of being guerillas, cutting off their head and sucking their blood in order to create psychological panic within the community. They raped women in front of their husbands, as punishment, as psychological torture. In a field near here, they played ball with the heads of the dead."

Many of the massacre victims may lay in their final resting place, but for the Mayan community, the horrors of the Guatemalan Civil War is not something that they can erase from their history.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Teen Dies After Drinking Dewshine - Deadly Mixture of Mountain Dew & Racing Fuel

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 29, 2016 06:00 AM EST

Two teens have died after allegedly drinking "Dewshine"; a deadly mixture of Mountain Dew and racing fuel. Police are investigating the incident after they found Logan Stephenson, 16, unresponsive in his home Thursday.

Stephenson's best friend, J.D. Byram died Monday night at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, reports People. The two teenagers are among a group of students who experimented with the cocktail last Wednesday. Both teens were students at Grienbrier High School.

Two other boys were taken to the ER after coming forward saying they were also among the group who drank the bizarre concoction. Dr. Donna Seger, executive director of the Vanderbilt University's Tennessee Poison Center, said they were later released, reports CNN

"This was an unfortunate accident," Seger said. The doctor told CNN the four boys were in a group that purposely mixed the soda with methanol (racing fuel) instead of ethanol. A very small amount of methanol can be toxic, according to Seger. She feels certain that the group of teenagers had no idea of the potential danger of the mixture.

Allegedly, the two boys who died drank far more than the others did, according to Seger. More so, Seger believes that Dewshine is not something new although this is the first case that has been reported. Her staff checked with other poison center but no similar cases were reported.

Although there are cases of methanol infections, this is one is a severe case. The teens ingested almost 100 percent methanol.

"Typically, people don't come up with names for something if it's an isolated event," she said to CNN. "We need to educate people."

Seger's interview with People further explained what the concoction is: it is a mixture of Mountain Dew and methanol in racing fuel. Normally, there is a small amount of methanol in alcoholic drinks, mostly blamed for hangovers. However, to drink pure methanol is deadly.

She further added that methanol is extremely toxic with just a sip or two. Methanol affects the body in cellular level affecting the eyes and can cause a person to go blind. It can cause acid accumulation in the blood.

In Byram's case, he was taken to the hospital after the colour of his skin changed and the boy started having seizures.

Symptoms of methanol poisoning include confusion, dizziness, drowsiness, headaches and the inability to coordinate muscle movements. It can also cause nausea, vomiting, heart and breathing failures, according to CNN.

Authorities are asking anyone with information about the incident to come forward. "You will not be in trouble with law enforcement if you were present at this gathering," the police said, as reported by WKRN. "Our goal is to ensure the safety of our citizens and get medical help for those who may need it."

Authorities are still waiting for the toxicology and autopsy results. The substance is not yet the definitive cause of the boy's death.

Pepsi Co also distributes a non-alcoholic product with the same name.

To understand alcohol metabolism and methanol poisoning, check out the video below:

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Hepatitis C Drug From Merck Approved by FDA

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 29, 2016 05:00 AM EST

Hepatitis C (HCV) is an infection of the liver that causes inflammation. It is spread through contact with the blood of an infected person, and transmission is often via sharing needles, or unsanitary medical procedures and transfusions. According to Healthline, about 3.2 million Americans are affected by hepatitis C.

But there is good news for hepatitis C patients, as the pharmaceutical company, Merck's new once-a-day pill has been given the stamp of approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), The Salt Lake Tribune reports. In fact, the FDA confirmed that Merck may begin marketing the drug called Zepatier for patients who have the liver-affecting virus. Zepatier is a combination of elbasvir and grazoprevir, which combats the drug in a two-punch pattern.

Merck's Zepatier has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of hepatitis C genotype 1, which is the most common type of hepatitis in the U.S., and genotype 4, one of the least common types.

According to ABC News, a clinical trial was done on 1,373 patients with or without liver cirrhosis, for 12 weeks. Results showed that after three months of treatment, 94% of patients with genotype 1 and 97% to 100% of those who had genotype 4 had no detectable hepatitis viruses in their blood, which implied that they had been cured. However, the consumption of Zepatier showed side effects such as fatigue, headache, nausea, and problems with liver function.

In terms of price point, Merck also said that the drug will cost $54,600 for a 12-week treatment program, which they believe all within the range of what is currently the net prices competitors are receiving from clients. This still stands as good news for patients, as an introduction of a new drug will mean a stiffer competition and hopefully lowered prices for hepatitis C drugmakers.

Meanwhile, NPR reports that California has been billed $387.5 million by private health plans because of the high prices of hepatitis C treatments in Medi-Cal from July 2014 to November 2015, covering for 3,624 patients who received such treatments. Charles Bacchi, president of industry trade group California Association of Health Plans is concerned that the high prices of hepatitis C drugs are eating up the budget for a wider array of medical services.

"In order for taxpayers of the state of California to afford to provide people the necessary treatments, we have to have drug pricing society can afford to pay," Bacchi said. Around 237,000 patients in Medi-Cal are affected by hepatitis C. With the arrival of Zepatier, people are hoping for more competitive and affordable hepatitis C drugs in the near future.

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'Affluenza' Teen Ethan Couch Returning to Texas From Mexico

staff@latinoshealth.com By Monica Antonio Jan 29, 2016 06:00 AM EST

'Affluenza' teen Ethan Couch is back in the U.S. after being arrested in Mexico last month. The 18-year-old felon fled to Mexico with his mother Tonya Couch after Ethan broke his 10-year alcohol probation, NBC News reported. The son of millionaire parents Tonya and Fred Couch accidentally killed four people back in 2013 while drunk driving his pickup truck and crashing into an SUV in Forth Worth, Texas, per the New York Post.

NBC News says that Ethan flew back to Dallas, Texas from Mexico on Thursday aboard a commercial flight. According to ABC News, per a statement from Mexico's National Institute of Immigration, Ethan "will be received by United States authorities since he is facing various charges there.

In 2013, at the time of the accident, New York Post reported that the then-16-year-old Ethan was driving 70 miles per hour in a 45-mile zone. NBC News added that Ethan's blood-alcohol level at that time was three times higher than the legal limit. However, to the public's surprise, Ethan's camp claimed that he could not be held accountable for four counts of murder because he was a spoiled brat.

The Associated Press reported that Ethan's camp utilized the "Affluenza" defense. Using a shrink to testify in court, the expert said that Ethan has "Affluenza," which is a condition where kids of wealthy parents fo not know what's right and wrong and have no sense of responsibility for their actions. The expert from Ethan's camp added that this is because the rich parents "coddled and pampered" their children too much. However, the publication said that "Affluenza" is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a real medical or mental condition.

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson told ABC News that Ethan is currently being held in a juvenile detention center and will undergo a detention hearing on Friday.

Chron notes that Ethan's court hearing on Friday, Jan. 29, may result to him moving to an adult prison rather than juvenile jail. Another court hearing will be held on Feb. 19, where the judge will decide if Ethan's jail time will be extended.

"We've reached a great milestone. This is a day we've looked forward to, when we have them both here and back under the jurisdiction here. We're hoping that the day comes for justice for the families and the four victims that were killed," Anderson said as quoted by Chron.

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5 Best Mexican Comfort Food Recipes

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 29, 2016 05:00 AM EST

Nothing comes close to coming home to food made by your mother or grandmother. It's always a gastronomical experience that makes a mark in one's memory, creating a nostalgic yearning for authentic, Mexican dishes that soothe not just one's tummy, but also the soul. Here are some comfort food recipes that you can come back to anytime.

1. Nachos. According to Saveur, the pickled Japalenos that a lot of people have grown to love and be familiar with first gained popularity back in the 1950s, about the same time that nachos became popular. This simple nacho recipe by Saveur involves eight yellow corn tortillas, two cups of Monterey jack cheese, and a jar of pickled jalapenos. For those who want to pack a punch, you can also add chopped tomatoes, ground beef, and even shredded cabbage.

2. Mole de Olla. This beef and veggie mole stew is delightful and filling, and great for a family get together. This recipe from Pati's Mexican Table requires three pounds of beef stew meat or beef shank meat, white onion, fresh mint, ancho chiles, pasilla chiles, ripe tomatoes, tomatillos, sesame seeds, chayote squash, zucchini, green beans, fresh corn, and cilantro. Get the recipe here.

3. Pozole de Frijol. This amazing vegetarian version of the frijole is by Sweet Life, and features dried chilli de Arbol or guajillo chilis, diced tomatoes, pinto beans, hominy, and lime. It only takes 30 minutes to prepare and 20 minutes to cook, so there's time for a lot of family bonding in between. Check out the recipe here.

4. Lime and Avocado-dressed Shredded Beef. It's not Latin if there's no avocado! Here's a recipe by El Paso restaurant owner David Jurado, that features tender shredded brisket salad. All you need it flat-cut beef brisket, jack cheese, lime juice, cilantro, chopped canned chipotle chiles en adobo, scallions, medium tomatoes, warmed corn tortillas, an avocado, and salt and spices to taste. Get the full recipe at Saveur.

5. Mexican Pulled Chicken and Beans. Here's a healthier alternative to pork and beans. This is an easy recipe involving slow-cooked chipotle chicken that is cheap and easy to make. All you need is bone-in chicken thighs, chipotle paste, chopped tomatoes, onions, black beans, kidney beans, iceberg lettuce, cucumber, and a large bag of tortilla chips. Get the full recipe at BBC Good Food.

Bonus recipe: Chilli con Carne. Another great recipe from BBC Good Food, this "Chilli con Carne" only takes 50 minutes and is easy to make. It features lean minced beef, chopped tomatoes, marjoram, tomato puree, red kidney beans, long grain rice, soured cream, and hot chilli powder. Get the full recipe here.

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'Peppa Pig' can be bad for Latino Kids: Parents Unite to ban Show After Colombian Kids Stop Eating Pork Dishes

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 29, 2016 05:14 AM EST

Peppa Pig has won the hearts of little children all across the globe including those from Latin America. But, their parents? Not so.

In fact, some of the parents from Tolima's capital city of Ibague in the central region of Colombia have already had enough of the celebrity swine that they took it to the social media to express their displeasure and disapproval of its show.

According to the Latin Correspondent, Ibague in Tolima, which is one of the several departments or administrative districts comprising the Latin American country, is known for its pork dishes and local traditional cuisine. And, among the favorite dishes in the city is "Lechona", which is one entire pig stuffed with chick peas, rice, onions, and spices, and roasted for up to half a day.

But, now, the kids from the area were said to have been showing a distaste for pork dishes and the parents are blaming it to Peppa Pig. In one instance, children even cried when served with Lechona and parents knew they had to do something about this.

"I stopped my kids from watching the program with that pig (Peppa), until one day at lunch time they started crying when they saw we were serving up Lechona," said one parent who goes by the name Jorge Gonzalez speaking to Actualidad Panamericana.

"Ever since I was small I was told not to 'play with your food', so I was really worried in December when my kids asked me for Peppa Pig toys to play with and weren't interested in cooking." another parent also complained.

The parents from Ibague were also pushing for the ban of Peppa Pig toys in their place and asking for the hit children's program to be cancelled. According to Colonel Carlos Herrera, the head of the Tolima Police Department, they have already received a lot of complaints from parents, but he also explained that their hands are tied regarding the issue.

"We've had to explain on repeated occasions that the sale of these toys isn't breaking the law, that we don't have any control over national television channels."

Peppa Pig is a British TV cartoon series from director and producer Astley Baker Davies. It is now shown in more than 100 countries worldwide since its first broadcast back in May 2004. There were earlier reports that some Muslim groups were also asking for the ban of the show, but as it turns out, the claims were untrue.

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Sprint Corp. has recently reported the company's lower operating losses as well as its increasing shares for the current quarter. While Wall Street commended its growing subscribers that boosted Sprint's stock by 20 percent, experts remained extremely worried about Sprint's financial position.

Fortunately, Sprint Chief Executive Officer Marcelo Claure and Softbank's founder/CEO Masayoshi Son are already discussing an "inside plan" to pull the company out of its death spiral. According to Bloomberg Business, the Bolivian telecom vet and the Japanese billionaire believed that they know how to save the weakening firm.

SoftBank took control of Sprint after the $21.6 billion acquisition in 2013. At the time, Sprint was already in trouble. Luckily, Son announced his intention to merge the company with T-Mobile to challenge Verizon and AT&T.

The merger plan with T-Mobile, however, ran into regulatory objections and failed. That's why, Son bought Claure's company, appointing him as Sprint's CEO.

Seventeen months later, Claure and Son have decided to cut prices by offering iPhones for $1 a month last year. They also replaced most of the old executive team.

According to analysts, however, Sprint's bonds were trading at "distressed levels" and their shares were "at a worst-case scenario basis." Thus, the company announced their plan to eliminate 2,500 jobs, on Monday, bringing total cuts under SoftBank to more than 4,000.

Sprint also added that their plan to cut about $2 billion to $2.5 billion in costs is on track, Reuters noted. But it hasn't helped much. In fact, the stocks of SoftBank and Sprint plummeted to multiyear lows in mid-January. Opportunely, both recovered some with Sprint's report of third-quarter subscriber gains and lower-than-expected losses.

SoftBank has invested more than $22 billion into Sprint, but the company's current value is only $11.8 billion, compared to its $69 billion market value 10 years ago. The company's $2.2 billion in cash is also almost the same as its debt obligations this 2016.

"There is no question that Sprint's management team is finally showing real urgency in taking necessary measures to stop the bleeding," MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said. "They still have a lot of heavy lifting to do."

Amid the current shakeup, Claure and Son insisted that they know how to fix Sprint's ailing business. As a matter of fact, they are supervising the upgrading on Sprint's U.S. wireless network.

Within two years, Claure and Son promised that Sprint's system will handle the increasing demand for data-intensive content, which include watching movies and playing video games on smartphones and tablets. Claure also added that their 2.5GHz spectrum will lure more consumers as they settle to networks with greater data capacity offering the fastest downloads.

"By the end of 2017, we will have a network with the most amount of capacity," Claure said.

Meanwhile, Sprint's competitors Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are also seeking ways to boost their data pipelines. But unlike Sprint, they don't have to worry about where the money's coming from.

Despite having a chance to dominate the U.S. wireless business, Sprint is now No. 4 in essentially a four-player business. And the company hasn't posted an annual profit since 2006.
The final Republican presidential debates started on Thursday evening with Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum sharing the stage just days before the Iowa caucus.

Electability Issues?

Huckabee and Santorum were asked about their electability, as both won the Iowa caucus in 2008 and 2012, respectively, but have not encountered much traction during the 2016 election season so far.

Huckabee said he doesn't think that his message isn't working but simply it's just not getting out. Santorum responded by criticizing that there was no media, namely Fox News, coverage for the four candidates on stage in the hour leading up to the 7 p.m. EST debate. The former Pennsylvania senator said the media has been segregating and taking Iowans out of the electoral process instead have focused on an "entertainer," which he referred to Donald Trump. Santorum, however, said he will not throw mud at anyone on and off stage, and that includes Trump. Huckabee and Santorum are planned to attend an event, hosted by Trump, to raise money and support veterans on Thursday night.

"You have a chance on Monday to put the record straight about who you want. Not who will entertain you, but who will fight for what you believe in," said Santorum.

Fiorina said the people she has seen have not asked her about a "crisis" in the Republican Party, particularly if there's a conservative vs. electability issue, but asked about the issues such as how to defeat the Islamic State militant group and repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

In Gilmore's first opportunity to speak, he acknowledged he's not focusing his campaign effort in Iowa, but starting on New Hampshire, which will hold its primary on Feb. 9, and wants to focus on veterans issues.

Islamic State

Santorum says there is a need for a serious discussion with Americans about Islam, namely the Islamic State militant group. Noting that the Islamic State, also referred to as ISIS, has established a caliphate and allowed people to follow them, Santorum wants to take away their land, return it to its rightful owners and put "boots on the ground" to combat the terror organization.

Huckabee agreed with Santorum. The former Arkansas governor said he wants to get rid of the Islamic State's social media platforms and wage war with them financially and militarily.

Fiorina said she has a message for President Barack Obama, that climate change is not the most pressing security threat, it's the Islamic State and Iran. In response to the remaining prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba, Gilmore said he wants the detention center open.

Wages

In response to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' meeting with a woman earning less than $10,000 in income, Santorum said the solution is to create jobs that have both wages and benefits. He also called for two million jobs back to the U.S. from China.

Huckabee said poverty programs keep people in poverty. "People are poor because they don't know how to get out of the hole," said Huckabee.

Gilmore blamed the media for "manipulating," "shaping" and "framing" the presidential campaign, noting Fiorina received back-to-back questions. Ironically, Gilmore was immediately asked another question about guns. Gilmore acknowledged he is a board member of the National Rifle Association, and as president of the U.S., gun control won't be an issue.

"If gun control comes to the president's desk ... I'll veto it as fast as it takes Hillary Clinton to eliminate her emails," Gilmore said.

Continuing on Democratic presidential front-runner Clinton, Fiorina said the former secretary of state will do anything to gain and hold onto power. Fiorina also took a shot at Bill Clinton. Fiorina said she would have left her husband a long time ago had he committed the same acts as Bill Clinton. Fiorina said the former New York senator has escaped more prosecution than alleged Mexican drug lord "El Chapo." She added that Clinton continues to lie to the American people and has not accomplished anything despite having many titles.

On Planned Parenthood, Fiorina said she will fund for women's health but defund Planned Parenthood.

Gilmore was asked who are his "moderate Muslims" that he gets advice from on combatting radical Islam. Gilmore said he does not want to identify them but met with a group as recent as last week, and called on Muslims to denounce extremism. He also said he does not want to be part of a Republican Party that dehumanizes groups such as Muslims and Hispanics.

Huckabee spoke against government spending, particularly in opposition of providing free college education. He explained that older generations would eventually become affected with such spending.

The debate concluded by nearly 8 p.m. EST, with moderators not asking about education, immigration or emphasized on the health care, as the latest Healthcare.gov open enrollment period is set to conclude on Jan. 31.
Most Americans support Barack Obama's efforts to allow certain undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, even though, on a personal level, they do not seem to trust the president on the issue, a new poll revealed.

When asked generally about the plan to relax immigration rules for some undocumented migrants, 61 percent of Americans expressed support in the poll, which was conducted jointly by Reuters and Ipsos, the newswire revealed. But when Obama was named as the author of the policy, only 54 percent backed the effort.

The survey also revealed a clear split along party lines. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats supported the plan in general terms, a figure that went up by 2 percentage points when Obama's name was attached to it. Among Republicans, on the other hand, 42 percent backed the proposal, a number that dropped to 31 percent when the president was mentioned.

Obama's Program in Hands of Supreme Court

Beyond garnering support from the American people, Obama will soon have to sway the nation's nine Supreme Court justices if he wants the immigration policies to stay in place, USA Today recalled. The president used executive orders to impose the changes, a move challenged legally by a Texas-led coalition of 26 states.

The nation's highest tribunal on Jan. 19 agreed to hear the case this term, and opponents of the program are urging justices to insist that Congress is responsible for crafting the nation's immigration enforcement laws.

"President Obama is not a king, and impatient presidents don't get to change the law," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice, told USA Today. "This executive overreach is both unlawful and unconstitutional," Sekulow insisted.

Supporters: 'Supreme Court Will Advance Common Good'

Immigration activists suggested that the program was originally blocked because the case was heard at lower levels by conservative judges. Supporters expressed optimism that the Supreme Court would allow the new rules to stand.

"We believe the Supreme Court will use common sense to advance the common good. Justice is finally near," insisted Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice.
A secret safe was discovered on the Miami Beach property where the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar once owned a mansion.



CBS News reports that, as the house was demolished, a construction worker named Miguel Mato found the safe hidden away in the concrete foundation of the last wall set to be knocked down. The safe, which weighs 1,325 pounds, is suspected of holding a fortune in stashed cash and jewels.

Mato described to local media the surprise he felt upon finding the safe.

"I pulled the wall down, and when the wall fell, it's actually like a hollow floor. And when the wall fell on the floor, it kind of broke into it and then I saw it. I saw the safe," he said.

Property owner Christian de Berdouare was initially skeptical of Matos discovery.

"I told the owner, 'Look there's a safe,"' Mato said. "And he thought I was messing with him, and I said, 'No there's a safe for real."'

This is actually the second safe to be found on the site. When Escobars Miami mansion was demolished last week, de Berdouare said a floor safe was found and soon went missing. In an effort to keep this from happening again, the newly discovered safe was strapped down to a flatbed truck and moved to a secure location.

As quoted in the BBC, de Berdouare said, "For us, this is the holy grail."

Legally, de Berdouare and his wife, Jennifer Valoppi, are entitled to keep anything discovered on their property.

Meanwhile, as reported by the Miami Herald, Valoppi, a TV journalist, is currently making a documentary film about the mansion and its ties to Escobar, who was shot and killed by Colombian police in 1993.

De Berdouare, the CEO and owner of the Chicken Kitchen restaurant chain, has speculated that the safe might be filled with jewels and precious metals.

"I think that it has gold or diamonds, he said. Who knows?

As reported in Business Insider, de Berdouare had earlier expressed his happiness about razing Escabor's mansion.

"I'm very excited to see the house of the devil disappearing right before our eyes," he said.
The National Park Service is advising that two arrests have been made in connection with the body of Duane Hollenbeck discovered in Chickamauga Battlefield on Dec, 12. Jennifer Demott, from Geneva, N.Y., was arrested and is currently in Catoosa County Jail. Robert Brooks, also from Geneva, N.Y., was arrested a few days later and is currently in Knox County Jail, awaiting extradition to Catoosa County. Both individuals have been charged with felony murder.

During the investigation it was found that Mr. Hollenbeck and Demott knew each other. Mr. Hollenbeck was invited to go on a road trip with Demott and Brooks to the Tennessee/North Georgia area. Visitors who were hiking in the national park on Dec. 12 contacted Catoosa County 911 Dispatch office reporting that they discovered a body adjacent to a trail in Chickamauga Battlefield. Park rangers responded to the scene and an investigation was started.

The body of Mr. Hollenbeck was transported to Atlanta where an autopsy was performed to determine the cause of death. The autopsy report has not been released due to the toxicology report not being finalized. Detectives working this case reported that Mr. Hollenbeck suffered blunt force trauma.

With the cooperation and collaboration of the Fort Oglethorpe Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Catoosa County Coroners Office, New York State Police and the National Park Service, these two individuals were apprehended.

Chief Ranger Todd Roeder stated that even though these types of incidents are rare in this and other national parks, they can occur on public lands. At Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, rangers work every day to ensure that visitors, staff, and volunteers remain safe, said officials.
The United Nations and the Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a workshop on Tuesday for civil society representatives to discuss the development of a truth commission on the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama.

Prensa Latina reports the commission would investigate the incident 26 year ago in which several civilians are believed to have been killed. The group would look to uncover the truth with regard to the identity of the victims, and how many lost their lives.

"For the first time after 26 years there is a government commitment to clarifying the facts related to the Dec. 20, 1989 invasion," said the Foreign Ministry, according to Panamanian newspaper La Prensa (via teleSUR).

In addition to the eventual publication of a "truth report," the investigation intends to pave the way for possible reparations for the victims' families, as well as the discovery of victim grave sites, the erection of public monuments and memorials, and an incorporation of the history into school curriculums.

The paper also cited Panama Vice President Isabel Saint Malo, who said a roadmap to honor the killed civilians was in the works.

Social organizations have suggested the commission consider declaring Dec. 20 a National Day of Reflection.

"This history of the country cannot be erased," a proposal to the commission said last month.

"Dec. 20 should be a day of national mourning to remember the people who died so that future generations know the historic facts regarding the U.S. invasion of Panama."

The U.S. invaded Panama with an army of 27,000 soldiers on Dec. 20, 1989. Dubbed "Operation Just Cause," the mission was supposedly to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega for drug charges.

Noriega was a former American ally and CIA informant, and many believe the operation was an excuse to oust the leader and implement a government supportive to the United States.

The operation resulted in a combined 3,000 military and civilian deaths. The U.S. has not compensated the survivors or families of the victims.
Presidential candidate Marco Rubio, R-Fla., got religious in response to a question at an Iowa town hall appearance on Tuesday.

The Washington Post reports the Florida senator gave a long answer when asked if he would "follow God's word" in his decision-making.

Rubio spoke at length about his Christian beliefs, discussing Jesus and John the Baptist. He talked about his connection with God, and said he yearned to spend "eternity with my creator."

Eventually, Rubio answered the question directly, saying, "I try everyday in everything I do."

With the Iowa caucuses only days away, Rubio has heavily focused on appealing to Christian conservative voters in a state where about 57 percent of Republicans identified as evangelicals or born-again Christians in 2012.

According to recent NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls, Rubio sits firmly in third place coming into the Monday caucuses. Only 18 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers intend to vote for the Florida senator, whereas Republican rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have 32 and 25 percent support respectively.

Cruz is besting Rubio in the Christian right demographic, as well. Front-runner Trump also likely gained traction with that base when he was endorsed by evangelical leader and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.

"I do think it's important for our president to be someone who is influenced by their faith, especially if it's Christianity, because it is a faith that teaches you to care for the less fortunate, to seek peace, to care for one another, even to love your enemy," said Rubio to reporters on Tuesday.

Rubio is a practicing Roman Catholic, although he attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Las Vegas as a child, and goes to Southern Baptist church with his wife. He says he wants to raise his children with Christian values, and not those taught by mass media.

"My wife Jeanette and I are raising four children right now, and we have to work harder than ever to ensure that our children grow up with the values they teach in our church instead of the values they are trying to ram down our throats in the popular culture," he said at a rally in Des Moines on Monday.

When faced with a question regarding religious freedom from an atheist voter in Iowa, Rubio responded that he felt everyone was free to believe what they wanted to believe, but "no one's going to force me to stop talking about God."

Watch video of the exchange below:
The Ohio Senate on Wednesday moved to cut funding for Planned Parenthood within the state.

In a 22-8 vote that fell on party lines, the State Senate passed a bill that aims to strip Planned Parenthood of $1.3 million in state funding, reports Cleveland.com. The vote marked the second time the chamber has passed such a bill this session.

However, because senators amended the bill earlier in the day, the House must authoritize the changes before it can be sent to Republican Gov. John Kasich, who will likely sign it into law. House reps, however, will have to wait weeks to vote on it since the next House meeting is scheduled for Feb. 9.

Under House Bill 294, abortion providers and entities that contract with abortion providers would be blocked from receiving federal and state dollars. Instead, the bill's co-sponsors, Democratic Rep. Bill Patmon and Republican Rep. Margaret Conditt, say the money should be allocated towards community health centers and other agencies.

According to Republican Sen. Shannon Jones, the money will go to clinics that offer more comprehensive health care while an amendment to the bill directs $250,000 toward infant mortality prevention.

"We aren't eliminating money for women and women's health," Jones said. "We're actually enhancing by directing those resources to some of those things we're trying to build in this state."

However, opponents argue that a number of those centers cannot fill the gap to provide women's health-care services offered at Planned Parenthood. Others questioned the capacity of federally qualified health-care centers or pregnancy crisis centers to take on Planned Parenthood clientele, reports The Columbus Dispatch.

"I'm not really sure we have the capacity in those rural communities to pick up the slack, even if it goes to the county health department," said Democratic Sen. Capri Cafaro.

In addition, NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, which fights for women reproductive rights, called the bill a "health care time bomb."

"John Kasich must veto this bill, or he admits he is willing to destroy public health goals in a spiteful attempt to punish Planned Parenthood," NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland said in a statement.
Since the year 2016 began, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids for undocumented immigrant also kicked off. Since then, there had been numerous reports saying that such raids were in breach of constitutional rights, per a report from SPL Center.

The organization revealed that the raids drew fear towards the Latin American community in certain areas like in Atlanta, where it is less likely that people get asylum from courts, the publication reports.

According to the news agency, raids were done at dawn last Jan. 2. Agents barged into the immigrants' homes without presenting legal warrants. Not only that, the news outlet revealed through interviews and after investigations that the immigrants were even deceived by agents.

Apparently, some were shown photos of fake African-American criminals that ICE agents were allegedly looking for, but it turns out that the homeowners are the ones they are after, the publication revealed.

Apart from that, the legal process was reportedly not following proper protocol since the immigrants were detained more than 20 days and made to sign documents that were not fully explained to them. According to the news agency, all these were done even when some immigrants were given rights to stay in the U.S.

"We were treated like criminals. I don't understand why. I had gone to my ICE supervision appointments, and even had an appointment scheduled in a few days," Ana Lizeth, one of the women in the detention centers told the news outlet. "My son has been scared, and cries at night. He is not eating. ... I don't understand why we were taken in a raid, especially in that way."

Meanwhile, caucuses in Iowa are also urging that reform be made in light of the ongoing immigration raids under the Obama administration, QC Online reports. In a 60-people event held at the Rogalski Center in St. Ambrose University last Wednesday, the Bibles, Badges and Business group and the Quad Cities New Ideas Forum revealed that the immigration problem has been long overdue.

Solutions are asked for and the forum us still hopeful even after 30 years had gone by.

"You said earlier 'comprehensive immigration reform, when, not if'? I hope that's true. I've been in this job for 23 years. They've been talking about comprehensive immigration reform my entire career. I'm getting old. I'd like to see some movement," Police Chief Mike Tupper of Marshalltown said as quoted by the news agency.
The recent reports about unaccompanied migrant children from Central America, who are brought to sponsors after entering the U.S. borders, have led the U.S. senate to slam the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), EFE reports.

After a thorough investigation, a couple of legislators announced during a congressional hearing on Thursday regarding the imminent issue that needs to be addressed immediately because of the gravity of the situation, the publication adds.

Apparently, unaccompanied children were even subjected to sexual abuse by the sponsors and the Senate have placed a spotlight on the HHS, stressing that it is the Department's responsibility, the news agency reports.

Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill have recently shed light on the undocumented minors' situation in the US saying that they are now "vulnerable and traumatized minors abused by their sponsors, or forced to engage in backbreaking labor for little or no pay, while being housed in unsanitary and dangerous conditions," McCaskill said as quoted by FOX News Latino.

Furthermore, there are already 13 minors who were smuggled and 15 experienced abuses, the news agency revealed. "HHS placed one 16-year-old with a sponsor who claimed to be her cousin. In fact, he was completely unrelated to her and had paid for her to come to the U.S The minor, was forced to have sex with her sponsor," McCaskill continued.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio urged that the HHS made a mistake that risked the lives of the minors accusing them that they "failed to address systematic deficiencies in their placement process," Portman and McCaskill said as quoted by the news outlet.

Reuters reported that the senators during the hearing urged that the HHS was lacking procedures to protect the minors. "It is intolerable that human trafficking -- modern-day slavery -- could occur in our own backyard," Portman said as quoted by the publication.

With an average of 6,000 unaccompanied minors who come to the U.S. in a year to about 57,496 in 2014 and 33,726 in fiscal 2015, the numbers are reportedly too much for the HHS to handle.

In light of this, the news outlet speculated that the HHS had to act quickly and send these children to sponsors, even without doing their due diligence to look into the sponsors' backgrounds to ensure the safety of the unaccompanied minors.

"But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers," Portman added as quoted by the publication.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos wants to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC from the list of terrorist organizations of the U.S. Santos told the Associated Press that he also wants the existing arrest warrants for FARC leaders suspended.

"If they sign it's because we have a timetable for their disarmament and they have committed themselves to lay down their arms and make this transition to legal life. So I would say yes, I hope that they would be eliminated from the terror list," the Colombian President said.

"Any effort by the United States to allow us to apply transitional justice, for example by suspending the arrest warrants, would help us tremendously. But let's be very clear. If they don't behave, they'll be extradited," he added.

The existing arrest warrants for about 50 FARC leaders was handed back in 2006 after being indicted for producing more than half of the world's cocaine supply. Santos noted that when the peace deal between Colombia and FARCE is sealed, the guerilla group will help in combating the prevalent drug trafficking in the country, per AFP News.

"The FARC, once we sign the peace deal, will start to help the state instead of fighting it in the substitution of illicit crops with legal crops, as well as the elimination of drug trafficking," Santos said.

The Colombian leader added that FARC was one of the "main obstacle" in stopping the illegal production of cocaine. The drug is derived from the coca plant abundant in the forests of Colombia and other Latin American countries.

Santos and the Colombian government have been receiving money from the United States since 1999 under the "Plan Colombia" program. However, drug trafficking is still bad in the region as well as violence due to various drug cartels battling for supremacy.

FARC rebels and Colombia are closer than ever in signing a peace deal to end the conflict that started back in 1964 with the main goal of creating a Marxist regime in the country. In recent months, progression was made from both sides and the final, deciding peace talks are set to be signed on March 23, 2015.

According to VOX, FARC came into great power from the 1980s up to the early 1990s when the drug trade was at its peak in Colombia. More than 200,000 people have already died since 1964, but the peace treaty is set to end 50 years of war and one of history's longest-running conflicts.
"Keeping Up With The Kardashians" star Kris Jenner recently shared a horrific and tragic memory she had in her life -- the time when she lost her best friend Nicole Brown Simpson. The reality remembered the long ordeal of being against her ex-husband Robert Kardashian Sr. during the trial against O.J. Simpson, People reported.

Just before the upcoming FX series "American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson" is released in a few days, Jenner speaks out and recalls what happened during the famed murder trial against O.J., the husband of the late Nicole.

"It was horrible," Jenner told the magazine. "I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that she had been killed in such a horrific, violent way."

The publication further reported that the famous "Momager" to celebrities and her own children, Kim Kardashian West, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian and Robert Kardashian Jr., was in a tough position of having to be on the other side of her ex-husband's defense team.

"We didn't know what the verdict was going to be," Jenner recalled as quoted by the publication. "I couldn't breathe. When the [not guilty verdict] was read, everybody was stunned. I was just numb. And seeing the photos of [O.J. and his defense team] celebrating, it was hard."

As Jenner recalled all the tough experiences her friend Nicole had to deal with without her knowledge, the 60-year-old hoped that the series would shed light on the struggles that women had to deal with in this day and age, People reports.

Speaking about domestic violence, Jenner revealed that she could have saved her friend Nicole from dying that day since it was also the same day that Nicole apparently wanted to tell Jenner what really went on behind closed doors in her home.

Jenner insisted that women should realize that if they were experiencing any struggle, they should tell someone to protect their lives and prevent what happened to Nicole, the publication reports.

The Huffington Post reports that the FX series "American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson," which stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Selma Blair and others will premiere on Feb. 2. The show will be a 10-part miniseries, which will tackle the legal side of the O.J. Simpson trial. Gooding will play O.J., Blair will play Jenner and David Schwimmer will play Jenner's late ex-husband, Robert.
A satanic temple is currently the subject of profuse criticisms in Colombia. While the "Luciferian Seeds of Light Temple" has a legal status under the Colombian law, authorities are looking into the activities that are carried out in the temple.

Catholicism had been the official religion of Colombia since the Spanish colonization until the constitutional reform in 1991. Ever since Catholicism remained the main religion of the nation, the presence of the satanic temple is causing a major commotion among Colombians.

According to Quindio's Governor Carlos Eduardo Osorio and Archbishop Pablo Emiro Salas of nearby Armenia, the satanic cult should recognize that Satanism is prohibited under the national constitution. But cult leader Victor Damian Razo aka Hector Londono Villegas, who built the temple in Montenegro, insisted he's not practicing Satanism, Latin Correspondent noted.

During his interview with Colombian magazine Semana, Rozo explained that his object of worship is Lucifer, the angel expelled from heaven, and not Satan. He also detailed that he built the temple, which reportedly cost $200,000 (400 million Colombian pesos), through the financial help of multiple sponsors abroad.

Rozo further revealed that his first follower was his wife, Yeimi Florez. He also explained why he believed that worshipping Lucifer is an "act of rebellion."

"I can conceive of itself as an act of rebellion, but we have the freedom to discover the reality, the truth," Rozo said. "We are not Satanists. [We] do not worship the devil. [We] worship an angel named Lucifer, which was initially conceived as an angel of light, love and peace."

Rozo also shed some light regarding the four inverted crosses in his temple. While the symbolism of crosses is sacred for the Catholics, he claimed that the inverted crosses denote opposition for them. In addition, he also explained the difference between Satan and Lucifer.

"Satan was conceived in our minds as an angel of God, as a devil, depending on the culture of each country," he said. "The best ally of religions is the devil, without it there would be no religions."

In Christianity, Lucifer was cast out of heaven after organizing a rebellion against the Creator, which led to sin and him becoming Satan. Thus, local publication Cronica del Quindio claimed that Rozo is a liar, saying he is a "pentagram of contradictions."

Rozo's cult doctrines were also questioned especially when claims circulated that he promises wealth and lots of sex to his devotees.

"We are lovers of sex and lust," Rozo said. "When we talk about all that stuff, obviously we do in freedom to choose good or bad, what I do and what not, within a range of constitutionality and respect for others."

Meanwhile, Rozo is expected to host a convention to the parishioners of Beelzebub within the next few months despite the criticisms the cult has received.
Drinking a cup of coffee has always been thought to increase the heartbeat rate. And this is why some health experts are advising people to lessen intake of the world's favorite beverage. However, latest findings reveal that the belief is wrong and asserted that coffee does not cause heart palpitations.

In the new study which was published on Journal of the American Heart Association, it seems that the medical recommendations to refrain from drinking coffee regularly should be reviewed again because experts may just be deterring people from consuming food with caffeine.

"Clinical recommendations advising against the regular consumption of caffeinated products to prevent disturbances of the heart's cardiac rhythm should be reconsidered, as we may unnecessarily be discouraging consumption of items like chocolate, coffee and tea that might actually have cardiovascular benefits," senior author and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) health cardiologist Dr. Gregory Marcus stated in a press release.

The cardiologist further said that their findings regarding faster heartbeats is especially pertinent to the research regarding the link between coffee and palpitations.

"Given our recent work demonstrating that extra heartbeats can be dangerous, this finding is especially relevant," Dr. Marcus said.

The experts carried out the 12-month study by picking around 1, 388 people with normal heartbeats. They were fitted with a device that will monitor their heart rhythms 24 hours everyday. The participants' frequency of coffee, chocolate and tea intake was observed as well.

At the end of the research, it was found that 61 percent of the participants ingested more than one caffeinated food item daily. There were also individuals who consumed much more but there was no significant difference in the heartbeats, regardless of the amount of caffeine consumption.

In summary of their study, Dr. Marcus said, "We found no evidence of a relationship between chronic caffeine consumption and frequency of these extra beats."

Moreover, on MedPage Today report, some cardiologists from the Atlanta VA Medical Center and Emory University looked into the report on the effects of caffeine intake on the heart. After their review, the experts supported the findings.

Dr. Peter W.F. Wilson, professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine said, "Recently published studies, including prospective cohorts, clinical investigations, and meta-analyses, generally show coffee consumption is safe for the heart."

Lastly, Director of Electrophysiology services at the Atlanta VA medical center and professor of Medicine at Emory, Dr. Heather Bloom also stated on MedPage, "Concerning cardiovascular risk factors, there is little evidence that chronic coffee intake consumption raises blood pressure."

The whole research was made possible through the funding and support from the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Joseph Drown Foundation and the National Institute on Aging.
The fourth Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) ended Wednesday as delegates pledged regional unity to focus on the peace process in Colombia and fight the economic crisis and the epidemic caused by the Zika virus. The summit, which was recently held in Ecuador, was hosted by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

According to Correa, 20 resolutions were considered in the private meeting which was held with the heads of state. With every problem that arises in their region, delegates from the 33 member countries have recognized the need to "strengthen unity and make binding agreements that allow members to go through difficult moments."

Latin America and the Caribbean States are presently experiencing tough times. From the Zika outbreak, tumbling oil prices to slowdown of the Chinese economy -- all these only makes it more difficult for the region to guarantee rights, generate jobs or even reduce poverty. However, for Correa, there is still hope. "The will of our people and the unity of the region" is the key, Correa added.

One of the most important issues tackled in the meeting is poverty which is according to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet affects 28 percent of the region. Correa also stressed that this issue might be one of the biggest challenge that CELAC will face.

"Poverty eradication is a moral imperative the region must achieve," said Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino during a press conference after the delegates' meeting.

Regarding the issue, Xinhua reported that Patino urged other delegates to take a step up towards creating a regional financial structure so that the savings of Latin American and Caribbean countries will remain in their territory. By doing so, both regions will be able to finance their own development projects to help reduce poverty.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro seconded the proposal saying that the integration bloc must urgently focus on the economic matter this year.

Correa's counterpart, Danilo Medina, president of the Dominican Republic, noted that the heads of state also agreed to work together to fight the epidemic which is caused by the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne disease transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that their plan to take action against the virus will start next Tuesday, Feb. 2, in Uruguay with the region's ministers of health, as stated in Prensa Latina.

Meanwhile, as stated in Xinhua, the five pillars of "Agenda 2020," which is "reducing poverty and inequality," "infrastructure and connectivity," "education, science, technology and innovation," financing for development" and "environment and climate change" were not established in the common agenda.
Monica Sharell Delk, 35, testified Thursday she stabbed Charles Brown IV, 27, out of fear for her and her childrens lives, but she did not mean to kill him.

Brown died on Jan. 5, 2014 from internal bleeding after being stabbed in the heart by his girlfriend Ms. Delk in her apartment on Grove Street.

The day after the stabbing Ms. Delk sent a text message from her sons phone to her ex-father-in-law. When he came over she used his phone to call the police. The officers who responded to the scene found the victim dead on the kitchen floor. Ms. Delk was there when police arrived. She said she stabbed Brown during an argument.

After being arrested for criminal homicide, Ms. Delk pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

During Thursdays hearing before Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman, she gave her side of the story.

She said she met Brown in August 2013 on the bus. He asked for her name and left her his number. The two started dating, but Ms. Delk told Brown he could not move in with her. Her two young sons lived with her at that time.

In the beginning he was real nice. We talked for hours. He would play gospel music, Ms. Delk said.

But from May to October Browns attitude allegedly began to change. Ms. Delk said he started talking negatively about his job at the chicken plant. He became increasingly belligerent and drama-filled.

I like to be drama free, Ms. Delk said. I didnt really want to hear about no n***** stuff all the time.

By this time Brown was living with Ms. Delk. As their relationship progressed Ms. Delk said he started grabbing and shoving her. On Dec. 6, Brown allegedly accused Ms. Delk of stealing his pressure gun. When she said she did not know what he was talking about, Brown hit her in the face with a cereal bar and threatened to hit her with an AC unit, the defendant said.

He grabbed me and slammed me into the wall.

Ms. Delk said Brown took her sons phones away but she managed to call the police. Brown left but came back the next day, entering the apartment with the key Ms. Delk had given him. She said, though he was very apologetic, she told him to go back home to his family.

This is my home, Brown allegedly said to Ms. Delk. He continued to stay with her.

After that, the victim started to exhibit other strange behavior. Ms. Delk said she would wake up to him standing over her bed. A few times he splashed water on her while she was in a deep sleep. He also began to put a chair up against Ms. Delks bedroom door to keep her sons locked out, she said.

Ms. Delk said he started to act out towards her boys.

If I leave, someones going to die, Brown allegedly said when Ms. Delk asked him to get out of her apartment.

She said he went from being upset some of the time to all the time, and it made her nervous. Through tears she testified, It just wouldve been nice to be able to pick up the phone and call one of his relatives to come get him.

According to Doris Hart, grandmother of Brown who testified prior to Ms. Delk, she raised Brown because his mother died when he was seven and his father was always in jail. Ms. Hart said he was a happy child but a slow learner who did not finish Brainerd High School. He continued to live with her until he was 27. Then Ms. Hart urged him to go out on his own. He had been living with Ms. Delk and at a hotel for a few months before his death, she said.

Ms. Delk testified she progressively became frightened of Brown. She was going to Virginia College at the time and was out on winter break. On New Years Eve, Brown reportedly wanted to sell marijuana in her house, but she would not allow it. Brown, who by now had lost his job, became angry and slapped her three times, saying it was her fault he was unemployed.

She said after that incident he did not want her or her sons going out of the house or looking out the windows. Brown would make advances at her, but she rejected him, Ms. Delk said.

She did not have access to a phone because Brown had allegedly taken her sons phones. Ms. Delk said she kept telling him to go home, but he would not leave.

On the day she killed him, Brown had been ranting and raving all night.

And once again, I had really no sleep at all, Ms. Delk said.

She said, He was really acting out of character. She did not know if he was on drugs or not, but he was acting very, very controlling and very, very hateful towards the defendant and her boys.

At dinnertime, he wanted everyone to come in the kitchen one person at a time to eat. Ms. Delk had a bad feeling. She said she has food allergies and was not feeling well that day, so ate peach yogurt for dinner.

You ungrateful b****, Brown reportedly said.

Ms. Delk said he became extremely angry later that night and started throwing garbage on the floor. She said he was mad because he thought her sons had eaten the peach yogurt, even though he had watched her eat it.

He was really, really angry.

Brown allegedly became physical with her youngest son. Then he grabbed Ms. Delk and she stabbed him, stating she was in fear for her and her sons lives.

She said she did not want him to die, and that she was sorry he did.

According to Dr. Steven Cogswell of the medical examiner's office, the victim could have possibly been saved if he received immediate medical help. But because he had been stabbed in the heart, Dr. Cogswell said it did not take him long to die from internal bleeding.

Brown also had a stab wound in the back, plus another superficial stab wound and a number of abrasions and contusions around his face and neck as if he had been in a struggle.

He had chemical burns on his back that could have been caused by lying on a fabric that was soaked with cleaning agents. According to police, Ms. Delk cleaned up the crime scene.

The defendant testified after she stabbed Brown he continued to fight. She did not think it was that serious. But then he went down, falling on his back.

I couldnt believe what was going on.

Ms. Delk expected him to get back up. She said she stabbed him around nine or 10 at night but did not call the police until the next day.

My mind was somewhere elseI was real tired and didnt feel like doing anythingI couldnt even think straight, she said.

She cleaned up the blood with bleach. When she finally got herself together, she began to look for the phone. Once she found it she had her son show her how to send a text message to her ex-father-in-law. When he came over he told Ms. Delk she needed to call somebody now.

Ms. Delk said she was not planning to hide the body or run. She said she did not hate Brown; she just wanted him to go back home.

According to Ms. Hart, Brown called her every night, including the night before his death. He would tell her, "I need help."

Ms. Hart said she thinks about "him lying there bleeding, and she wouldn't help him."

That testimony caused two women in the courtroom to cry.

Ms. Delk said not a day went by where she did not wish to have Brown come back to his family. She said, Not a day that dont go by that I dont pray for his family.

I just want to rewind, she said, and go our separate ways.
Russia sees a bright future in the Latin America region after the Obama administration failed to push a stronger relationship with the Americas. According to the American Thinker, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the chance and made a deal to supply the Bolivarian Alliance nations with weapons.

When former Argentina President Cristina Kirchner expressed her support over Russia's hostile treatment of Crimea, Putin showed his appreciation by offering to finish the country's current third reactor or nuclear power plant.

The Bolivian Alliance, which Putin has a stronghold, was created after the U.S. supported the creation of free trade area in the Latin America region. However, the Bolivian Alliance sees the free trade agreement as a form of U.S. imperialism.

Putin has also sealed some deals with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela with regard to the countries' naval drills. Working to extend more presence in Cuba has also led Putin relinquishing Cuba's "Soviet-era debt" while establishing a training center for counter-narcotics in Nicaragua.

According to Free Beacon, Jose Cardena, a former official of ex U.S. President George W. Bush, cited Putin's aggressiveness to partner with Cuba on energy talks as a mere "self-congratulating and aggrandizement."

In his statement, he said, "It's his attempt to pretend that Russia can project its operations into the Western Hemisphere -- just like the United States can project its power into Central and Eastern Europe. There's a lot of sizzle and very little steak."

He added, "Latin America is not even in the top 10 of issues of perceived importance by this administration, and countries like Russia, China, and even Iran are certainly exploiting those opportunities."

In another report from Free Beacon, Cuban military personnel even showed their presence on Syrian grounds as their way of supporting Russia's alliance with the Assad regime. The said Cuban forces took the responsibility of providing assistance to Russian forces.

President of IBI Consultants Doug Farah said that Russia's success in courting the Bolivian Alliance has given the country more power over some of the Latin America countries. All of these efforts by President Putin have allowed his country "military access to the hemisphere's ports and airspace."

From 2008 to 2011, the Russian government has sold at least 3,000 surface-to-air missiles in the Latin America region alone. Venezuela has the highest record of these deals, making the country Russia's primary client.
The national spotlight was again shining on Donald Trump Thursday night, despite his absence from the Republican debate.

"I didn't want to be here, I have to be honest. I wanted to be about five minutes away," Trump said to a standing-room-only audience at Drake University. "When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your right. Whether you like it or not, whether it's something we have to do or not, and that's what our country has to do."

Trump hurriedly put a rally together for the evening on Wednesday, after he and Fox News got in a public scuffle over the network's GOP debate, the party's seventh of the election season.

The Republican front-runner took issue with Megyn Kelly moderating the debate, claiming she would treat him unfairly. Fox News issued a tongue-in-cheek statement in response, wryly pointing out that Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin both "intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet him if he becomes president." Trump responded by pulling out of the debate and scheduling a rally less than three miles away.

"Fox has been extremely nice, the last number of hours," Trump said to scattered laughter. "And they've wanted me there, and they said, 'How about now?' They called a few minutes ago -- 'How about now? Can you come over?' I said, 'Hasn't it already started?'"

Trump said he delayed his rally 15 minutes to give viewers a chance to switch over from the debate. He went on to say that his campaign raised over $6 million dollars for veterans in one day. One of the donations, he said, came from "a great builder" from New York: himself. Trump added he had personally donated $1 million.

According to ThinkProgress, Trump's speech was twice interrupted by protesters shouting, "We love veterans; Trump loves war." The candidate didn't skip a beat, dismissing the outbursts by saying he welcomed protests.

"I love the protesters in the big arenas because the cameras never move. They're always on my face," Trump said. Following the second interruption, Trump added, "If we could sit with them for ten minutes, maybe they would understand."

Latino and Black Lives Matter protesters have been ejected for similar actions at previous rallies, sometimes forcefully by Trump's supporters, Mediaite reports. A Muslim woman wearing a hijab staged a silent protest during a South Carolina event two weeks ago and was subsequently escorted out.

Midway through the event Thursday, Trump called former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum -- winners of the 2008 and 2012 Iowa caucuses, respectively -- up to say a few words. Santorum notably stood away from Trump's podium, saying that he didn't want to be photographed next to the candidate's sign.

"I'm supporting another candidate, but that doesn't mean we can't work together when it comes to helping our veterans," Santorum said.

It was a reserved performance for Trump. Aside from taking a jab at fellow GOP candidate Jeb Bush, the real estate mogul stayed on message by focusing on problems facing veterans -- including PTSD, drug abuse, and homelessness -- and thanking donors, some by name.

Admittedly, Trump said he wasn't sure if missing the debate would dissuade Iowa caucus-goers.

"Once this started and it was for our vets there was nothing I could do," Trump said. "I don't know. Is it for me personally a good thing, a bad thing? Will I get more votes? Will I get less votes? Nobody knows. Who the hell knows."

Watch Trump's full speech below.
In January 2016, the Mexicans discovered that the First Ladys mansion was labeled on Google Maps as the Museum of Corruption. The grand house is owned by Angelica Rivera, President Enrique Pena Nietos wife.

According to Latina, the mansion, valued at $7 million, was custom-made for the president and his wife by a prominent contractor who was awarded by the Mexican government with a massive multi-billion contract. Although the first family stays in the house during certain periods of the year, the title remained with the company.

Mexicans are still speculating how the couple could have acquired the luxurious property. When the controversy surfaced, Pena Nieto had an investigation conducted, which involved him, the First Lady and his finance minister, who also purchased a house from the same contractor. The probe, which was led by the government, did not find them guilty of corruption.

Fusion revealed that the mansion is referred to by locals as La Casa Blanca, which translates into The White House. It was the focus of a conflict-of-interest scandal in 2014. The person who tagged the property is still unknown.

The people of Mexico, and Google, apparently, found the investigation results as dubious which may explain why the mansion was tagged as the Museum of Corruption on Google Maps. The label has since been removed, although it served as a short-lived victory for those who continue to believe that there is existing graft and corruption in the current administration.

Social media users shared their excitement after the recent Google Maps discovery.

One user wrote that the Museum of Corruption will be shut down due to fraud and illicit enrichment.

TelesurTV wrote that since Pena Nieto started his term, his administration has been plagued by allegations of corruption. The president has been accused of being involved in shady contracts and nepotism scandals. His luxurious lifestyle has also been the subject of criticism. Aside from the mansion, the politician also flaunted a new luxury jet, valued at $430 million, which is said to be the most expensive and advanced aircraft ever made for a head of state.

More than 60 million Mexicans are living in poverty while the first family continues to enjoy several privileges, which will most likely be ultimately borne by taxpayers. Reportedly, corruption has not declined in Mexico since Pena Nieto began his administration. Mexicans continue to complain about the presidents rich lifestyle while the country continues to lack policies to fight corruption and inequality.
Women's rights advocates denounce the government's recommendations to avoid pregnancy saying the move is irresponsible and unfair to women.

Tarah Demant, Senior Director of the Identity and Discrimination Unit at Amnesty International, said, "You're asking women to make a choice that sounds logical from a health perspective, but it's not a real choice." She also added that asking women not to get pregnant is like "putting women in an impossible place."

According to The Guardian, women's rights advocates also added that most pregnancies recorded in the region are unplanned. In fact, based from a study published in 2014 by Guttmacher Institute, 56 percent of the pregnancies in Latin America and Caribbean States are unintended.

The World Health Organization showed that in Latin America, 18 percent of births are to teenage mothers. That's why most of these Latinas don't have access to contraception and information or other option which can help them terminate pregnancy. Besides, oftentimes emergency contraception is difficult to access, sometimes expensive or even illegal.

"In many rural areas men and women do not have easy access to contraceptives and many pregnancies, especially in teens, are the product of sexual violence and abuse," said Paula Avila-Guillen, an advocacy adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean.

As reported by Time, Health officials from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and other countries which are greatly affected by Zika, have recommended women to postpone their plans of getting pregnant. El Salvador even went further by suggesting their women to avoid pregnancy for at least 2 years. With the fear of spreading Zika virus and increasing cases of babies born with severe brain defects, the health officials came to this desperate resort. According to them, it is the best way for everyone to avoid the worst effects of the virus.

"I believe it's a good way to communicate the risk, to tell people that there could be serious consequences," said Alejandro Gaviria, Colombia's current Minister of Health and Social Protection.

Pan-American Health Organization also added that the decision of avoiding pregnancy still lies in the hands of the women, her partner and the healthcare provider assisting her.

Meanwhile, Mexico has said that there is still no justification for their women to avoid pregnancy. Pablo Kuri, deputy minister for prevention and health promotion, said that "We'll have to see in the future, given the experiences in Central and South America, if these types of recommendations really have any effect."
According to a new report, federal agents may have violated the U.S. Constitution by detaining over 120 undocumented immigrants during the government's mass deportation raids earlier this month.

As previously reported, since Jan. 2, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has apprehended 121 Central American mothers and children in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. In turn, the raids have caused widespread panic within Latino communities, while advocates have argued the government is unfairly targeting Central American families who should be granted refugee status.

On Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights published a report that raises serious legal concerns about the tactics used by federal immigration officials who conducted raids in Georgia. The report also documents the horror stories that some of the detainees endured during the raids.

According to the report, federal agents used "aggressive tactics" and did not have warrants to enter people's homes.

"When law enforcement is entering people's homes without warrants, locking them up and denying them their right to an attorney, we should all be concerned," SPLC attorney Eunice Cho said in a statement sent to Latin Post. "This misguided enforcement strategy is also fueling our nation's mass incarceration problem."

Instead of conducting further raids, the report urges the Obama administration to help the immigrants who have fled ongoing violence in countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

"The United States must address the humanitarian crisis in Central America, not resort to unconstitutional tactics that punish those we are bound by law to protect," the report states.

The civil rights group also states that detained women were not allowed to contact their lawyers until after they were transported to a family detention center in Texas.

One detained mother, named Digna Urias, said officers came to her daughter's home early in the morning, saying her daughter had a problem with her ICE ankle monitor. After her daughter opened the door, Urias and her children were taken away by officers.

"Our family is devastated," Urias said. "This situation has affected us so much; it's not fair that they can treat us like this."

In response, ICE issued a statement Thursday, saying many of those deported had recently crossed the U.S. border illegally and were subject to final removal orders.

"All individuals taken into custody during this targeted operation were subject to a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge," the ICE statement reads, according to The Atlantic-Journal Constitution. "Warrants are issued only in criminal cases; ICE conducted civil immigration enforcement in accordance with a civil order issued by an immigration judge after full due process, and in full compliance with the Fourth Amendment."

ICE also denies restricting detainees' access to legal counsel.
Hillary Clinton on Jan. 28 seemed to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders was an increasingly viable challenger for the Democrats' 2016 White House nomination when she said she was ready to show up for a debate on Feb. 4 in the crucial primary state of New Hampshire.

But the former secretary of state avoided an explicit commitment to three more such encounters, which Sanders has suggested, CNN reported.

Sanders Wants Debates in March, April, May

"We have another (debate) shortly after New Hampshire on the calendar, and I've said we should start looking for dates to get one scheduled. I'm perfectly fine with that," Clinton told the news channel.

"But first things first: We have to agree that we're going to debate in New Hampshire. Both (former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley) and I have agreed, and we're waiting for (Sanders) to decide to join us."

The Vermont senator, meanwhile, had suggested on Jan. 27 that he would only be part of the Granite State event if Clinton, in turn, accepted three additional debates in March, April and May, Politico noted.

"From the beginning of this campaign, Sen. Sanders has called for more debates," the lawmaker's campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said in a statement.

"Secretary Clinton has not. Now she is asking to change the rules to schedule a debate next week that is not sanctioned by the DNC. Why is that? The answer is obvious. The dynamics of the race have changed, and Sen. Sanders has significant momentum."

Sanders Resists Scheduling by 'Whim of the Clinton Campaign'

Part of the discussion surrounding the Feb. 4 debate in New Hampshire, meanwhile, has to do with the fact that the event, to be hosted by the Union Leader newspaper in collaboration with MSNBC, has not been sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), CBS News explained.

Symone Sanders, a spokeswoman for Sanders, had initially argued that candidates risked being barred by the DNC from future encounters if they chose to participate in unofficial debates.

"Sen. Sanders is happy to have more debates but we are not going to schedule them on an ad hoc basis at the whim of the Clinton campaign," Weaver added in his statement.
Colombian authorities allowed a same-sex couple to jointly register a child with the civil registry, a move celebrated by LGBT rights groups as another step toward equal treatment of gay and lesbian citizens in the South American country.

Juliana Gonzalez and her partner Carla, who was only identified by her first name and who is the biological mother of Luciana, will now both be recognized as parents of the 7-month-old baby, El Tiempo reported. The two women have been a couple for 10 years. Marcela Sanchez, the director of the Colombia Diversa group, said it was only fair the government recognize their joint rights.

"These two mothers had presented a custody petition in the past, but it had been denied," Sanchez recounted. "But today, the Civil Registry Office authorized the paperwork."

Registrars Apply Court Ruling

After denying initial requests by the couple, officials changed their response due to a decision handed down by Colombia's Constitutional Court last November, the newspaper explained. In that order, Judge Gloria Stella Ortiz had analyzed the case of a Colombian resident, residing in the United States, who had been unable to inscribe her two children in the birth registries of the cities of Medellin and Itagui.

"The notaries (in Medellin and Itagui) violated the fundamental rights of minors to human dignity, equality and non-discrimination (and) to the recognition of one's judicial personhood," the judge said in the ruling. He added that civil registrars need to "clearly indicate that in the boxes (of the forms) used to indicate the 'father' and 'mother' of a minor, it will be admissible to use the names of two men or two women."

'A Recognition of Our Community, a Message of Respect'

Nevertheless, Gonzalez said it had taken a nine-month battle to persuade authorities to register Luciana with her and her partner's names. But the woman added that she was happy the case had come to a positive conclusion.

"It is a success for children, a recognition of our community, an important social advancement and a message of respect," Gonzalez said.
Vietnam and Laos have elected their new Communist Party leaders. Vietnam's current party boss kept his post for a second term.

New Communist Party chiefs were elected in Vietnam and Laos. Tuoi Tre News reported that the Communist Party of Vietnam re-elected its present leader Nguyen Phu Trong, 71 years old, for another term.

The re-election was made at the 12th Party Central Committee's first meeting in Hanoi. It was officially announced in the Vietnam News Agency website. Trong was voted as the Party's general-secretary.

There were 200 committee members named, 180 official and 20 alternate, on the grand event which aims to form the next Vietnamese government. Members of the Politburo, the ultimate governing party, were also chosen during the congress held on January 20-28. The Politburo handles the government and the party's daily affairs.

Officials, who wished to retain anonymity, said that Nguyen Xuan Phuc was also chosen as member of the Politburo. He is assumed to be the next prime minister to replace Nguyen Tan Dung.

Dung was known for pushing economic reforms during his rule. Yahoo reported that there is a possibility that Trong will continue Dung's reforms. A Vietnamese scholar named Le Hong Hiep said that any person elected to the position would be pushed to enact reforms despite conservative ideologies.

Although Trong has a reputation for being pro-China, he is expected to stand up against the Chinese government to protect Vietnam's territories. If not, he risks being backlashed by the Vietnamese citizens.

According to Hiep, the re-election does not mean political reforms will be carried out soon since the Communist Party aims to monopolize the ruling power. There is not much change expected in Vietnam with the renewed leadership.

Meanwhile, Reuters said that Laos also elected its new Communist Party leader. Bounnhang Vorachit was elected to the post by the central committee which does not include the former party boss and the prime minister. The names of the new members of the politburo were not released.

Laos upholds a similar communist political structure as Vietnam. The two countries are both holding their five-yearly Communist Party congress this week.
The United States on Sunday called for the Haitian government to hold perpetuators of electoral violence accountable for their crimes, saying electoral intimidation and destruction of property were "unacceptable." This was after the elections were postponed due to protesters started burning votes and blocking roads.

Reuters reports that State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner released a statement earlier this week, stating that The United States has taken interest in the events unfolding during the Haiti elections, and "expects that persons responsible for organizing, financing, or participating in electoral intimidation and violence will be held accountable in accordance with Haitian law,"

Political unrest became rampant after accusations of fraud was hurled against the current president, which sparked the protests which caused the voting to be postponed indefinitely. New York Times reports that the protests started during the first round of voting in October last year, when candidates, supporters and Haitian leaders started flinging accusations of fraud at each other.

The United States have pressed to continue the runoff vote despite well-founded fears that the action would result in even more violence in the long run. Gedeon Jean, a human rights lawyer appointed to review the October election, suspected that this push for the continuation of the elections was due to the massive contribution given to the Haitian government to ensue a ""credible, inclusive, and legitimate" election. "The way American diplomats are supporting the election, is it because they don't want to lose that $33 million?" Jean said, in reference to the contribution given by the U.S. government.

However, the rampant violence and fraud allegations resulted in one of the two candidates boycotting the election, effectively rendering the election into a one-person presidential race. In other report from New York Times , opposition candidate Jude Celestin has refused to participate in the election due to the same fraud allegations that sparked violent protests all over the country. The election was postponed indefinitely while Haitian leaders negotiate a resolution to the crisis.The Provisional Electoral Council president, Pierre-Louis Opont said in a news conference that the delay was caused by "too much violence throughout the country," but there have been no further announcement as to when the elections will resume, if at all.

President Michel Martelly will still leave as scheduled on February 4. There is no news of a replacement or the implementation of an interim government after he leaves as of yet.
Supreme Court judge Phillip Tunoi is under judicial investigation for allegedly accepting $2 million, or  1.4 million, bribe. Tunoi is accused of taking the money to rule in favor of Nairobi governor, Dr. Evans Kidero, whose election was challenged by Kabete MP Ferdinand Waititu in 2014.

BBC wrote that Tunoi denied that he received money to rule in favor of Kidero. The Governor, who won in March 2013, also denied he gave bribe money to the judge. Meanwhile, both prominent personalities denied they met the person who is accused of facilitating the bribe.

"I have never taken a bribe in my life; such allegations have never been made against me. The accusations are being used to malign my service to the Judiciary," said Tunoi in a report by the Daily Nation. The judge also denied ever meeting the Governor, saying, "I have never met Kidero physically nor have I spoken to him directly. I have only seen him on television."

According to the Standard Media, the probe will be carried out by a six-member committee headed by Prof Margaret Kobia. They will submit their findings to the commission after seven days. Tunoi claimed that the bribery issue slapped against him are brought by the fierce Judiciary succession wars. He is so confident that there is no truth to this claim, saying he would step down from the bench if proven that he did take the bribe.

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga ordered the probe into the bribe allegation by Geoffrey Kiplagat. However, Tunoi said Kiplagat is just being used by the judges in the lower courts to get him off his position.

Tunoi accused the feud between old judges and magistrates who are serving in the old and new Judiciary, who are now part of the lower level of the totem pole, claiming that they are being discriminated. The judge has been in the Judiciary for 30 months. He became a High Court judge in 1987 and reached the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court in 2011.
SunTrust Mortgage, Inc. announces that Cathy Eakin has joined the SunTrust Mortgage team as a mortgage loan officer serving clients in the Chattanooga area.



Ms. Eakin has more than 40 years of experience in the banking industry and offers more than 26 years of mortgage-specific experience.

"Cathy is committed to fulfilling the needs and homeownership dreams of each client with her knowledge, experience and unparalleled customer service," officials said.



Ms. Eakin is a native of Chattanooga and is active in the local community. She supports the local Chamber of Commerce, Civitan, Women's Council of Realtors, Chattanooga Area Board of Realtors, Habitat for Humanity and is also a member of Brainerd United Methodist Church.



Ms.

Eakin works out of the 6121 Shallowford Road, Ste. 103 location in Chattanooga. She can be reached at 423-954-2909, on her cell phone at 423-902-8563, or at Cathy.Eakin@Suntrust.com.
The General Confederation of the Portuguese Workers, an umbrella organization representing 600,000 government workers in Portugal, staged a 24-hour strike Friday to end quick. Meanwhile the Federacao Nacional dos Sindicatos dos Trabalhadores em Funcoes Publicas e Sociais (FNSTFPS), which is the union for the public sector workers, refused to cancel their strike demanding 35-hour work week.

CNBC reported that the new Socialist government has already approved the 35-hour working week for the civil servants. Current working week is 40 hours. The Common Front demanded that the change must be implemented sooner. The government is working on restoring the pay for the civil servants and bring the four public holidays. There are also moves to increase the lowest pensions and cut tax for low-income earners.

The government believes that these measures will boost consumption that will help better growth for the nation.

Meanwhile, Reuters wrote that the minority Social government, which has been in power for only two months, is getting increasing pressure from its far-left allies. The present government needs the Communist and Left Bloc to approve the bills. These three parties recently ousted in November the former center-right administration, which is austerity-minded.

According to Daily Mail UK, there are analysts who predict that this new government might not last long if the far-left parties pressure them on passing more radical policies and ramp up spending. Meanwhile, the new government is more concerned in moderating budget consolidation and lessening austerity measures. The government has not yet reported the budget bill for 2016.

"Public sector workers will go on strike on Jan. 29 because nothing has changed for us to suspend it. Our central demand is immediate reinstatement of 35 hours," said union leader Ana Avoila.

There will be a meeting on Thursday with the finance minister to tackle this issue. Meanwhile, the political uncertainty and the social problems that is plaguing Portugal could fend investors away, which is a very bad thing after the debt crisis the nation recently suffered.
The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it will ease major trade restrictions with Cuba. This is another attempt by President Barack Obama to bypass the restrictions of the economic embargo set by the US Congress.

The New York Times reported that the new rule, effective on Wednesday, will loosen the restrictions on shipping various products to Cuba, from agricultural equipment to art supplies. The strict current rule requires Cuban companies to pay in advance through another country the American products that they import. The new guidelines will make remove these expensive and inconvenient processes.

According to BCC, the lifting of major trade restrictions mean companies from America can now lend Cuban businesses money. They can also invest money in infrastructure projects. The new rule will make it easier for US movie studios to shoot their films in Cuba.

The US and Cuba ended the more than 50 years of enmity brought by the Cold War-era embargo. They resent restored their relations in 2015.

The restricted items were banned from because the American government doesn't want the Communist-Cuban government to benefit from them, due to the Cold-War era five decades ago. These items are textbooks, sanitation equipment, construction vehicles, and more. Now, the new rule will make it easier for both countries to do business.

Supporters of the easing of trade restrictions said this measure is the best way to improve the Island. In a report by USA Today, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said, "These regulatory changes will... facilitate exports that will help strengthen civil society in Cuba and enhance communications to, from and among the Cuban people."

However, these new rules didn't go smoothly without drawing criticisms. Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio, cticized Obama's new rules, saying it is one-sided and it has no other aim but to empower the Cuban monopolise and enterprises run by its communist-government. It is ironic, however, because Sen. Rubio of Florida is a Cuban-American.
Senegalese officials arrested more than 500 people as part of a security crackdown after the terrorist attacks in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. On Friday, the operations also went around Thies and Dakar, and the police questioned about 900 people for a range of offenses such as counterfeit currency and possession of drugs.

The intelligence service says that due to the following attacks on foreigners in Maku and Burkina Faso, it is apparent that the Senegalese capital Dakar is the next target because of its reputation with expats. The Telegraph reported that while the issue is not related to terrorism, Soro Diop will make sure that Senegal does not fall victim to an attack like its neighboring cities.

The threats come as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed about people since November. The attacks signaled many agencies from the government to do extra measures in deterring terrorist attacks. The government is now more worried because terrorist targets include civilians, as reported by Med Africa.

President Macky Sall of Senegal warned that terrorism and extremism have no place in his country. The Senegalese president underlined that there was peace between Christians and Muslims in the nation and no force or group shall destroy such harmony.

Local news reported that the government already deployed its security forces and is now visible all throughout the capital Dakar. The president said that police carried out these security measures as part of an operation against the threat of terrorism and has been reinforced on all levels.

According to Blasting News, because of the poverty in Senegal, terrorist groups now have an edge to lure unemployed teenagers to fuel domestic terrorism. This makes it harder for the government to identify terrorist living among them.

Security experts say that Senegal's popularity is also what makes them a target of al-Qaeda. The government already asked its people including foreigners to cooperate and be sensitive to what is happening in the region.
A legal secretary working based in Caerphilly has recently been arrested for stealing from her firm's vulnerable clients. The woman was identified as 48-year-old Dianne Spragg and is a mother of two. She was reported to have stolen almost 80,000 from the "mentally incapacitated" clients of Cardiff law firm Geldards, in which she works as a legal secretary. The Cardiff Crown Court detailed how the woman would write cheques to herself in order to fund her online shopping sprees. Despite this, she earned a salary of 20,200 from her position at the company.

The court detailed how the woman would target the accounts of her victims and used their weakeness for her own benefit. The company she works for acts in behalf of the Court of Protection and helps run the financial affairs of individuals incapable of doing so on their own. BBC reports that among her victims include a 76-year-old man with a mental disorder who lost 11,102 to Spragg. Another victim was a scaffolder who lost 37,945. He had previously encountered a serious head injury at work. The court also learned that Spragg collected on behalf of Macmillan Cancer Support, a cancer charity group.

Spragg was defended by her barrister, Adam Sharp. According to Sharp, his client had admitted to the fraud and possession of criminal property charges filed against her. She is said to feel an "overwhelming sense of shame" for what she has done. Spragg admitted to spending the money on clothes, shoes, and furniture. The judge who sentenced her said that what she did was a "gross breach of trust." Judge Thomas Crowther went on to say that the money she stole was used to fund her shopping sprees and not even used to feed children who were starving.

Spragg has been sentenced to spend two and a half years in jail. She had been working as a legal secretary for over 20 years.

The victims of Spragg have all been reimbursed by Geldards.
County Commissioner Tim Boyd said the county's Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority (WWTA) is stunting East Ridge's projected record growth that was suppose to be spurred by the Bass Pro Shop development near Camp Jordan.

Commissioner Boyd has called a public forum on the WWTA issue for Feb. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the East Ridge Community Center by City Hall on Tombras Avenue.

He said a Zaxby's restaurant that was planned near Bass Pro Shop will not be built because it could not get a permit from the WWTA. "They're gone," he said.

Commissioner Boyd said Life Care Center of East Ridge planned a $30 million rebuilding of its campus across the freeway from Bass Pro Shop. He said after Life Care had begun razing old buildings at the site, they were stopped by the WWTA.

He said, "Life Care Center was going to be bigger even than Bass Pro Shop. Now it's down to around $10 million."

John Healy, one of the developers of Jordan Crossing, said he is confident that developments near the new Bass Pro Shop, including Zaxby's, will go forward once Camp Jordan Parkway is widened and gets a better connection to Ringgold Road and the freeway by next year.

He said he was advised that East Ridge has enough capacity in its sewer system to handle effluent from the new developments, but the problem is rainfall that gets into the sewer and causes periodic overflows. He said he believes that the WWTA is working to try to keep the rainwater out of the sewer.

Chris Clem, attorney for the WWTA, said, Zaxby's restaurant has not contacted WWTA concerning a permit. Life Care Center has not come to the WWTA concerning rebuilding of its campus beyond replacing the existing facility, which was approved by the WWTA.

He also said, "East Ridge has had five rainfall events every year since before WWTA took over. The WWTA successfully worked within the permit and moratorium to move forward with Life Care and Bass Pro Shop.

"Any time a new construction project is proposed the engineers must first determine if road access, electrical volume, water capacity and sewer capacity is sufficient for the new construction. This is true for any site anywhere in the country. It is impossible to speculate on what can be approved until engineers see specific plans."

Commissioner Boyd said the WWTA "acts as a policeman, but they don't provide any solutions. Why aren't they telling us how we can capitalize on Bass Pro Shop and the $2 million road that was built to it? Show us a plan on how we can fix this."



He said, "I get more calls and complaints about WWTA than anything else. This is the chance for the public to have their say on the issue."

Commissioner Boyd said, "I get blistered on this all the time. I don't know if the County Commission has any say-so on this, but it is an agency that was formed by county government."

He said the road serving his driveway "is collapsing. I have to straddle a trench to get to my driveway. Why aren't they fixing problems like this."

The commissioner noted that WWTA earlier shut off his service "over a $26 dispute. And I have been a citizen of this community for 30 years."

He said, "I don't have any problems with the water company. I don't have any troubles with EPB."

Commissioner Boyd said he plans to invite WWTA officials and board members to the public meeting.


Dr. William Woolfitt, assistant professor of creative writing at Lee University, has finished his second book, Charles of the Desert, set to be published on Feb. 28 by Paraclete Press.

Dr. Woolfitts second book of poetry tells the story of Charles de Foucauld who experienced a profound spiritual transformation before becoming a missionary to the Tuareg in southern Algeria in 1901. Mr. De Foucauld is best known for writing the Prayer of Abandonment, a common prayer of surrender in Christianity.

According to Dr. Woolfitt, he first learned of Mr. De Foucauld in 1997, during a time of his own spiritual awakening. Nine years later, he began working on the project that would become Charles of the Desert.

I'm delighted and humbled at the publication of Charles of the Desert, said Dr. Woolfitt.

Dr. Woolfitt joined Lee Universitys Department of Language and Literature in fall 2012 where he teaches creative writing and literature. He earned his doctorate in English and his Master of Fine Arts from Pennsylvania State University. He received his masters from Hollins University and his bachelors from Fairmont State College.

Charles of the Desert follows Beauty Strip, Dr. Woolfitts first full-length book of poems, and his chapbooks The Salvagers Arts, co-winner of the Keystone Prize, and The Boy with Fire in His Mouth, winner of the Epiphany Editions contest.

Dr. Woolfitts poems and stories appear in such publications as Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Threepenny Review, Notre Dame Review, New Ohio Review, The Cincinnati Review, Haydens Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, and River Styx, among others.

To purchase Charles of the Desert, visit http://www.paracletepress.com/charles-of-the-desert.
Jan 29, 2016, 1:19pm ET

Nissan Sentra to get more engines; hatchback under consideration

The current model is only available with a single engine option, a 1.8-liter four-cylinder with 130 horsepower.

Nissan has promised to finally offer more engine choices for the Sentra sedan.

The current model is available with one powerplant in the US market, a 1.8-liter naturally-aspirated four-cylinder with 130 horsepower and 128 lb-ft of torque.

The Toyota Corolla is available with two engines ranging from 132 to 140 ponies, while the Honda Civic can now be purchased with a 174-horsepower turbocharged mill. The Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, Kia Forte and Mazda3 can also be configured with higher-output engines for certain packages.

"From a product standpoint, in the future you'll see more engine offerings, and it's full steam ahead," Nissan North America product-planning director Michael Bunce told Wards Auto. "We're fully focused on the segment."

The company is also exploring a potential resurrection of the Sentra hatchback, not seen in the US market for more than 25 years. The proposal is being weighed against potential entries in the compact crossover segment, which is experiencing a higher growth rate than sedans.

Sentra sales were up by 11 percent to around 203,500 units in the US last year, providing a seemingly strong starting point for the 2016 refresh. The company has not yet announced if one or more new engines will arrive before the next-generation model, likely slated for a few years down the road.
Miguel Perez

Miguel Angel Perez

(Courtesy Photo)

Even though Miguel Angel Perez was cleared of robbery and assault charges, he's still headed to state prison.

That's because the Allentown man had a gun on him even though he was convicted of a felony in 2012.

The 24-year-old was sentenced Friday to three to six years in state prison for possessing the gun on March 31, 2015.

Police said Perez forced his way into the apartment of Derek Payne in the 700 block of Laufer Street in Bethlehem. Police found Payne covered in blood after Perez allegedly pistol-whipped him.

But Payne never showed up at Perez's preliminary hearing on June 23.

Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Lewis Fallenstein decided to move ahead with the gun charges and let the robbery and assault charges go.

"We could have gone out and got (Payne) but there were a lot of gray questions regarding the case," Lewis Fallenstein said at the plea hearing Nov. 20. "So I though it was most appropriate to just go forward on the black-and-white law and the firearms offenses."

Judge Craig Dally tacked on two years of probation to follow the state prison time.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Mendon John John Price, the man labeled as the number one enemy downtown, was appointed a public defender by Hamilton County Sessions Court Judge Gary Starnes on Friday.

The Chattanooga Visitors Bureau labeled Price, who is restricted to a wheelchair due to the loss of one leg, as the number one enemy downtown. Price was arrested last Thursday evening outside the Tivoli Theatre on the charge of aggressive panhandling.

Friday morning served as his first appearance in court. The Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center  a ministry of the Presbyterian of East Tennessee  condemned the arrest, which the center stated was a criminalization of poverty. The center also condemned Prices label as an enemy.

We know Mr. Price, who we call John John. We know him as a gentle, respectful and kind person, Mercy Junction said in a recent statement.

Mercy Junction wants the officials responsible for Prices arrest to apologize to him and dismiss the charges against him. They rallied a group of supporters who showed up Friday morning and sat with Price in the courtroom before he went before Judge Starnes.

Judge Starnes said Price would not be taken into custody. He appointed a public defender for the defendant and said Price was entitled to his hearing scheduled for Feb. 4 at 8:30 a.m.

When the judge dismissed Price, one of the supporters wheeled him out of the courtroom.

Thank you for your moral support. Thank you for your moral support, Price said to everyone he passed.








Rajab Gomez arrest

Rajab Gomez

(Courtesy photo)

A robbery suspect from Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem was on the loose, and city police officer Joshua W. Mallabar-Hobson was beginning the process of bringing him to justice.

The officer testified Friday he was on the way to fill out arrest paperwork for Rajab Gomez, who was caught on camera at the South Side casino.

He was leaving the casino headed west on Third Street when the SUV in front of him turned abruptly, shut off its lights and turned into an empty parking lot.

Mallabar-Hobson was suspicious and quickly realized he had reason to be.

The SUV was the one police were looking for. Gomez was inside it.

The 32-year-old Irvington, New Jersey, man was in court Friday arguing police had no reason to follow his car and no reason to search it. He wants the stop and evidence gained from it suppressed.

After police brought him to the station, they found 17 $100 bills in his underwear. That's what was taken from the victim after Gomez allegedly beat him.

"He had blood on his shirt, blood on his face," Mallabar-Hobson said of the victim.

Mallabar-Hobson said police used casino surveillance video to quickly identify Gomez after the 2:38 a.m. robbery on Aug. 13. He said the casino has about 7,400 cameras covering every square inch of the property.

Police traced Gomez back to a gambling area where he was seen swiping his player's card. Gomez's card was linked to his New Jersey driver's license and to the Nissan Murano SUV Gomez was driving.

Defense attorney Joseph Yannuzzi didn't understand how police could link Gomez to the SUV because it wasn't registered in Gomez's name.

Mallabar-Hobson admitted he incorrectly listed Gomez as the owner on the criminal complaint, but said Gomez and the vehicle were linked in Sands' database.

Northampton County Judge Michael Koury didn't rule on Gomez's request because the DVD of the Sands surveillance video wouldn't play properly in court. The attorneys will meet again in front of Koury on Feb. 5, when a Sands representative will be brought in to play the video.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
mama nina's food bethlehem

Bethlehem will debut a new Italian festival called Festa Italiana Memorial Day weekend. This is Italian fare at Mama Nina Foccacheria on Main Street. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

The inaugural Festa Italiana is coming to Bethlehem Memorial Day weekend.

The new Italian food festival will open 5 p.m. Friday, May 27 and the party will continue until 10 p.m. on Main Street and in the Sun Inn Courtyard.

Saturday, the festival runs 11 a.m. until 10 that night, said Emily Krall, marketing and events coordinator for the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.

Our City is gearing up for another festival! Mark your calendars for Bethlehem's FIRST Festa Italiana on May 27th and 28th. Posted by Visit Bethlehem on Friday, January 29, 2016

Organizers are still ironing out the fine details and vendor lists but attendees can expects live music, tons of authentic Italian food, cooking demonstrations and retail booths.

The festival is free and open to the public. Although, tickets will be available to follow a pasta trail and a wine trail, Krall said. Tickets will go on sale later this spring.

"We're very, very excited," she said. "I think it is going to be a great day and a great new festival to add to the city."

The festival hopes to have city Italian restaurants and Seasons Olive Oil and Vinegar Taproom join the trail. Outside vendors will also be participating, Krall said.

A city streetscape project on Main Street led to the 2015 kick off being postponed to 2016.

Organizers initially said the festival would take place June 3-4, 2016. But that's the weekend of the Lehigh Valley Food & Wine Festival.

"Bethlehem has a really great dilemma in that there area a lot of things going on and it is very hard to find a weekend where we aren't going to conflict with someone else," Krall said.

Vendors looking for information can contact Krall at emilyk@lehighvalleychamber.org or 484-280-3024.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
John Scheffler

John Scheffler

(Courtesy Photo)

A Belvidere man linked to as many as 20 burglaries in Williams and Upper Mount Bethel townships was sent to state prison Friday.

John Scheffler, 34, was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison by Northampton County Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden for the crimes in May and June of 2014.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary but was implicated in many more crimes by an accomplice, court records filed by police say.

He was ordered to pay back $47,737 in restitution.

His sentence runs consecutive to time he's serving for burglaries in White and Liberty townships in Warren County. He is eligible for parole Nov. 13, 2017, with a maximum release date of Jan. 10, 2018 in New Jersey, according to online records.

Jessica Christian told police she and Scheffler looked for homes during the day with no car in the driveway to burglarize. They'd see if any doors or windows were open, and if not they'd break a window or door to get in.

She said she was involved in 15 to 20 burglaries with Scheffler.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Male suspect Hilltown.jpg

Hilltown Township police are seeking help identifying this man, wanted for question in a robbery on Thursday of an AT&T Wireless store. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

UPDATE: $5K reward offered in Upper Bucks armed robbery

A man dressed like a security guard and a female accomplice robbed an AT&T Wireless store on Thursday night in Hilltown Township, Bucks County, police report.

Township police responded at 8:30 p.m. to the store at 1699 Bethlehem Pike and found an employee bound, a news release said.

The investigation revealed a light-skinned black or Hispanic man wearing a white button-down shirt, dark trousers, a dark knit cap with a patch and a dark jacket with epaulettes displayed a semiautomatic handgun during the robbery, police said.

"The male's clothing, jacket and cap appear consistent with a security-type uniform," police said.

The woman, who was black, was wearing a black hat with a pattern on the front, a black coat, a pink shirt and distinctive gray boots.

Hilltown Township police are seeking help identifying this woman, wanted for question in a robbery on Thursday of an AT&T Wireless store. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

The pair took "numerous" cellphones and cash and then fled, police said.

The employee wasn't injured, police said.

Police are asking anyone who recognizes the robbers from security camera photos to call police at 215-453-6000 or the department's anonymous tip line at 267-517-9119.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Sonic boom that rocked Jersey caused by Navy testing

Was it a sonic boom? A seismic blast? An earthquake? Whatever it was, it rattled most of the Jersey shore on Thursday afternoon.

Reports of tremors along the shore and as far north as Connecticut began to pour in around 1:30 p.m Thursday, with residents posting on Twitter or calling 911 to ask, "What was that?"

The U.S. Geological Survey reported around 3:15 p.m. posted on its website that the rumblings shaking New Jersey on Thursday afternoon were likely the result of a sonic boom.

The cause of the sensation is still unknown, and many are skeptical since the rumblings were felt numerous times over the course of a half hour. Check back here for updates.

Let's clear this up. A single #SonicBoom cannot then produce 8 different booms sound off over the following 90 minutes. 8-9 booms recorded.  Bourbon_bourbon (@Bourbonbourbon4) January 28, 2016

4:35 p.m. -- While the USGS says it was likely a sonic boom, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, disagrees. They reported from its facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that there has been no indication of sonic boom activity in the New Jersey area, according to Lt. Commander Richlyn Ivey. "There has been no indication of a sonic boom or anything else at this time."

4:12 p.m. -- A public affairs officer with the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., suggested that if there were any Navy jets operating in the area, they would have likely come from the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Maryland. A media representative at that facility is checking to see if they had aircraft operating in the area this afternoon.

4:06 p.m. --NASA said it was not involved in any tests in the Jersey area Thursday, according to spokesperson Allard Beutel, but had received reports of a military aircraft off the coast of Sea Isle City.

3:50 p.m. -- Military officials in New Jersey and Washington said there were no training flights off the coast of New Jersey at the time.

"We are trying to figure out what it possibly could been. We have not for sure identified it," said Wayne Woolley, a spokesman for the Air National Guard in New Jersey. "It's a real mystery."

He said four jets from New Jersey were in the air yesterday afternoon, but "they launched well after" the booms rattled the area.

3:33 p.m. -- McGuire Air Force Base said the boom wasn't them this time.

We have reports of ground shaking in S. Jersey-- currently our training ranges are clear and no MDL aircraft are capable of sonic booms.  JointBaseMDL (@jointbasemdl) January 28, 2016

If there was an inversion this afternoon, sound waves from sonic boom can travel much farther than normal. pic.twitter.com/Fy0pnsPKTm  Meteorologist Dan Skeldon (@DanSkeldonWFMZ) January 28, 2016

We contacted Lamont Doherty Observatory @ Columbia University who confirmed that it was not an earthquake & likely result of a sonic boom.  NWS Mount Holly (@NWS_MountHolly) January 28, 2016

3:15 p.m. -- The USGS has yet to return requests for comment on the activity, but the agency notes that sonic booms are often mistaken for earthquakes. A sonic boom occurs when an aircraft travels faster than the speed of sound, causing a loud explosive noise and sometimes rumbling.

Not an earthquake but a sonic boom in New Jersey: https://t.co/eUr4sB28Wm pic.twitter.com/TQFlkGr633  USGS (@USGS) January 28, 2016

3:00 p.m. -- The shaking has also been reported by an NBC station in Connecticut, which also attributed the event to a sonic boom.

2:00 p.m. -- Some local police stations were reporting the tremors could have been from a seismic blast, but the New Jersey State Police couldn't confirm that.

1:30 p.m. -- Reports of rumblings near the Jersey shore first came out on social media at about 1:30 p.m., with tremors occurring every few minutes for about another hour. Residents in Atlantic, Ocean, Monmouth and Cape May counties seemed to feel most of the shaking. Social media reports indicated that the tremors were felt as far away as Long Island, New York.

Police departments around the state acknowledged the shaking, but could not offer a cause. The New Jersey State Police posted on Twitter that they could not confirm a source for the rumblings.

Toms River police said they started receiving calls about the activity around 2:20 p.m. Ralph Stocco, spokesman for the department, said the local military bases "are not reporting any activity that could be associated with it."

One police department near the shore asked that residents refrain from calling to report the tremors.

We are aware of the tremors. Please only dial 911 if you have an emergency. We will immediately advise the public when we know the cause  Twp of Hamilton PD (@NJHTPD) January 28, 2016

The shaking appeared to have subsided at around 2:40 p.m.

Andy Polhamus may be reached at apolhamus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ajpolhamus. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
There, children are playing with IHH inflatable balls. The Humanitarian Relief Foundation is a Turkish humanitarian organisation, which is an international reference but also known for its more or less hidden relationship with Islamists. In 2012 and 2014, suspicions arose of them delivering weapons to Syria with the help of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Close to the AKP, the party of the president Erdogan  who is another discreet member of the brotherhood , it is the only organisation that was permanently dispatched on site.



Why has the concern about refugees trying to reach Europe been passed on so late in and time and on this scale? These waves of migrants started as soon as the conflict broke out back in 2011. A possible answer can be found here in Edirne. Even though it is said that only little money is needed to survive the journey, crossing the Syrian border still costs more than $100. Connected on their smartphones, they keep themselves informed about the random announcements of border closures. Some photographers in the field since the beginning of the population movements noticed that the first migrants seemed much more destitute, Every time we approached someone in the Jordanian camps, most of the time, this person would be a farmer. Note that they had no access to Internet. The first trips were inside Syria or concerned poor and marginal groups not able to mobilise European consciences.
Tennessee will hold its Presidential Preference Primary on Tuesday, March 1, a month that historically has the potential for snow and ice.

"Many people in Hamilton County will recall the blizzard in March of 93 that left three feet of snow on the ground," said Kerry B. Steelman, administrator of elections for the Hamilton County Election Commission. "The icy weather last week highlights how disruptive such conditions could be on Election Day. As such, I strongly encourage everyone to consider voting early between Feb. 10-23 at one of our four early voting locations."

The locations are:

Brainerd Rec Center

1010 North Moore Road

Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Eastwood Baptist Church

4300 Ooltewah-Ringgold Road

Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

North River Civic Center

1009 Executive Dr., Suite 102

Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Election Commission Office

700 River Terminal Road

Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-7 p.m.

Saturday 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

Since the inception of early voting in 1994, the Hamilton County Election Commission has been consistent in the locations and hours it approves for early voting so as not to confuse voters, said officials. For 2016, the commission had to seek an alternative to the Northgate Mall location due to increased development at the mall. Early Voting will remain in this area; however, it has been relocated from inside Northgate Mall to the North River Civic Center located just off the mall perimeter road between the U.S. Post Office and Northgate Library.

Monday, Feb. 1, is the last day to register to vote in the March 1 Presidential Preference Primary election including the Early Voting period. For more information please visit www.hamiltonelections.gov.




I was out and about yesterday and ended up being marooned in Glasgow and not getting home till late so I missed Shirleys final speech in the House of Lords. She has been a giant of common sense and wisdom and one of my political heroes from the moment I first realised politics was a thing. This is a speech that you have to watch as well as read for all sorts of reasons, the interaction with David Steel being one, so thank goodness the BBC have provided an embeddable version.

She talks about the great institutions of the BBC, the NHS and the EU and how important they are to our national life. Two of them didnt even exist when she was born.

Heaven knows she deserves her retirement at 85 and we all wish her well, but we are so going to miss her regular contributions to the Lords. However, it looks like she will be campaigning in the EU Referendum, which is great news as her contributions were one of the very few high spots of the Scottish Referendum on independence.

The transcript is below:

Let me say right away, to me one of the most important things about this House is that it isnt just a revising chamber  it is more than that. Its a chamber that keeps very close to its heart the fundamental principles of this country and in debate after debate and question after question it flags up the things that are most important to the United Kingdom and explains why this country is in many ways still a unique country.

I will remind everyone of the famous quote by John of Gaunt in Richard II:

This fortress built by Nature for herself. Against infection and the hand of war

What that really says in very few words is that this is a very lucky country. But a lucky country in order to stay lucky and to stay effective has to be well governed. Im going to say one thing about what I think is a lapse of successful government in my first remarks.

That lapse I think is with regard to the special genius of the United Kingdom. That is the genius for great public sector imagination. For the commitment to the idea and ideal of public life.

The Open University, one of those great public sector institutions, which enabled people for the first time, all their lives long, to gain more education, more understanding and more wisdom.

I could add to that others. The first of those great public institutions which is under a great deal of pressure at this time is the BBC. I believe the BBC is one of the great institutions of the United Kingdom and I believe that this is widely recognised around the whole world. I very much hope it will be allowed to flourish and will not be cut down into being a second rate institution.

Another worthy of mention, another hugely admired public institution is of course the National Health Service, and I have to say to my fellow politicians, why cant you get together and propose, regardless of party, ways in which we could sustain the NHS over many years because it is one of the great institutions of the world and one which is based on a commitment to public service which is quite extraordinary.

Having said all that you may ask me why am I retiring? Well, Im retiring partly because my noble friend Lord Steel managed to pass a reform to the House of Lords which allowed someone like me to retire. It has the advantage of me not having to lose my capacities entirely before I leave the House of Lords.

There is one great issue left and it is the reason I am actually retiring. I think the most central political question this country has to answer is the question that will come up later this year, in the shape of the referendum on our relationship to the European Union.

Regardless of your own views you will know that all my life long I have been passionately committed to the idea that the United Kingdom should not only be a part, but a leading part, of the European Union. I believe the future demands that of us. I believe that if we are to actually contribute to the huge issues that confront us, from climate change all the way through to issues like dealing with multinational companies that may wish to take advantage of us, then we can only do so on the basis of a much larger body than our own Parliament, important and significant though that is.

I would conclude by saying this, I believe that we need, in a period of very great tension, very great strain, considerable fragmentation in this world, a commitment by this country and those who are close to us, to try and deal with these most difficult issues.

I commend the Government for having taken some steps towards how one deals with the most vulnerable of the migrants and asylum seekers that come to this country. I believe this country has a very good reputation in that respect. I hope it will agree to take more of the boys and girls currently awash in Europe, with no parents, no help and no assistance because that is an areas in which we are very well placed to assist and help.

I believe this country has a long and great tradition of leadership, increasingly one in which we recognise it is not just national but global. Where we are part of a larger group of human beings seeking a better world and a better life. I think it would be a tragedy if this country gave up that kind of leadership, because that kind of leadership is essential in the modern world and the modern world is totally interconnected one with the other.

So in concluding, I hand over to my colleagues here, careful and very cherished support for the great public institutions I have spoken about which are part of the warp and the weft of this countrys whole being and who texture and quality. And I ask them to think very hard before allowing the United Kingdom to withdraw from what I believe to be its major duty to the world, which is the one it will encounter and then deliver through the European Union.
THE families and friends of two men who died in separate violent incidents in County Limerick last year will have to wait until the middle of next year before the suspects go on trial.

At the Central Criminal Court on Monday, a date of April 24, 2017 was set for the trial of two men who are accused of murdering Shane Murphy in Pallasgreen on April 30, 2015.

Separately, a trial date of July 10, 2017 was set in the case of a father and stepson, who are charged in connection with the fatal shooting of Andrew ODonoghue at Mountfune, Murroe on June 21, last.

Legal sources said, this week, the trial dates were within the timeframe expected given the number of cases that are currently before the Central Criminal Court.

While the venue for the trials will be confirmed nearer the time, it is likely both will be held at the Courts of Criminal Justice in Dublin.

Gerard Hogan, aged 32, of Raheen Square, Ballinacurra Weston and Dylan Hayes, aged 21, who has an address at The Crescent, Kilteragh, Dooradoyle are each accused of murdering Shane Murphy, 26, at a house in The Grove, Pallasgreen.

Mr Murphy, who was from Lee Estate in the city, died after he was stabbed up to 20 times while attending a house party.

The case was formally sent forward for trial last September after the book of evidence was completed and copies served on them.

Separately, Alan McNamara, aged 48, of Mountfune, Murroe is accused of murdering Andrew ODonoghue in Murroe on June 21, last while his stepson  Robert Cusack, aged 26, of Abington, Murroe  is accused of impeding the garda investigation following the murder.

Mr ODonoghue, a 51-year-old father-of-one, died after he was shot near the Road Tramps Motorcycle clubhouse at Mountfune, Murroe shortly before 3pm.

It is alleged he was targeted as a part of a turf war between two rival motorcycle clubs which gardai believe had escalated in the weeks before the fatal shooting.

The case of both men was sent forward for trial on December 22, last, after books of evidence were served on the defendants.
A MAN who daubed anti-Pakistani, expletive-laden graffiti on the outside of a fast food restaurant - an act which a judge deemed to be despicable and outrageous in the extreme - has avoided going to jail.

Mark Hobbs, aged 50, of Herlihys Flats, Lord Edward Street, Kilmallock admitted causing criminal damage at Mega Bites in Kilmallock on September 14, 2014.

However, he had pleaded not guilty to acting in a manner likely to stir up hatred contrary to Section 2 of the Incitement to Hatred Act.

A 'nolle prosequi' was entered at Limerick Circuit Court on Thursday morning in relation to this charge after the court heard that the prosecution was unable to enter evidence.

In relation to the charge of criminal damage, the court heard that on September 14, 2014 Hobbs wrote Pakis out now. perverts s*** c**** and murders in white paint on the door of Mega Bites, a restaurant owned by Pakistani nationals.He had previously threatened to kill the owner of the fast food outlet with a kitchen knife.

Michael Collins, BL,instructed by State Solicitor Aidan Judge, said that when interviewed by gardai, Hobbs said; I think they are anti-English people in relation to the proprietors.

When asked why he thought that, Hobbs, the court heard, replied; Because they are Muslims, arent they?

Michael Collins BL, said that when asked by gardai if he had a problem with their religion, Hobbs replied; No, not at all, but I do have a problem with people abusing 10 and 11 year olds and chopping innocent peoples heads off.

While he said that he didnt know what the proprietors of the fast food outlet had done, he added; Its Muslims I have a problem with.

Mr Collins said Hobbs showed anti-Pakistani sentiment throughout the interview.

All they want to do is take over everywhere. All they want to do is kill us," Hobbs told the gardai.

CCTV footage of the incident - which is said to have occurred shortly before 5am on the date in question - was shown in court. Hobbs could be seen standing outside the premises with his hood pulled up over his head. The footage then shows him pulling down his hood, looking up the street and then applying paint from a large vat to a sponge and daubing it on the front of the premises.

At one stage he is seen standing back on the footpath to assess his work before continuing again to apply the the paint.

The court heard that Hobbs had consumed alcohol on the night in question.

In court, Garda John Curtin of Ballylanders garda station said that Hobbs was identified and arrested.

The court heard that Hobbs had slept most of the day before being questioned and was at one stage heard snoring in the cell.

He has a problem with alcohol. He has informed me he has been to Bruree House and stayed there for a term, said Garda Curtin.

Lorcan Connolly BL, representing the defendant, said his client, who has been living in Ireland for over a decade, was born in the UK.

He suffered a significant setback when his father died. In his own words, he hit the drink badly, said Mr Connolly.

The court heard that Hobbs had not come to the attention of the gardai until aged in his 40s and has been treated for depression.

Mr Connolly said his client was shocked by his behaviour when shown the CCTV footage of the incident.

He accepts that offensive graffiti has no place in Kilmallock or in society, said Mr Connolly, adding that his client offers his apologies to the injured party.

He is a man of strong views in respect of certain matters, he added.

The court heard that Hobbs had previous convictions for matters including intoxication in a public place, engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour, and threatening to kill or cause serious harm.

Under oath, Hobbs apologised to the proprietors - an entirely innocent party - and said he was going through a lot of personal problems at the time of the incident and was having difficulty sleeping.

He said he carried out the offence on the spur of the moment.

I was watching telly - people getting their heads cut off, he said.

As soon as I done it, I thought what have I done that for?, he said.

Ive been trying to make a life for myself. Im doing my best to stay off the drink but its bloody hard - very hard, he said.

Judge Tom O'Donnell said this Friday that Hobbs' actions were outrageous in the extreme and extremely disturbing.

The victim in the case, he said, has embraced Kilmallock and Kilmallock has embraced him.

However, the judge said Hobbs had expressed remorse.

He said there was the person who carried out this despicable act in 2014 and the person in court today, in a much better place, and he must be given credit for dealing with his addictions. Hopefully he'll become a more tolerable person.

Judge O'Donnell imposed a two-year sentence suspended for three years.
THE death has occurred of Limerick hotelier Michael Roche.

Tributes have been paid to the businessman, who will be laid to rest over the weekend in his native Rathkeale.

Mr Roche studied at the Shannon College of Hotel Management, before working for a number of hospitality businesses in Britain and Europe.

Having acquired an entrepreneurial flair from his late father Ned, who ran Deel Dairies, he returned to Ireland, where he ran a hotel in Cork. After this, he also took on a number of coffee shop ventures there.

But he returned to Limerick, where alongside close friends Ronan Brannigan and Rory Smyth - who himself passed away in 2013 - he set up Hamptons Restaurant and undertook the stewardship of the Savoy Hotel on Henry Street.

Limerick's metropolitan mayor Cllr Jerry ODea said: He was an especially kind, warm human being.

Mr Roche is predeceased by his father Ned, brother John and sister Helena. He is deeply regretted by his mother, Moira, son Tarka, brother Edward, sisters Hilary, Moira and Sandra, aunt Nora, Tarkas mum Saskia, brother-in-law Jermey, sister-in-law Esther, nephew Edward, nieces Emma and Nicole, cousins, relatives and his large circle of friends.

Removal is from the family home at Rathkeale this Friday with funeral mass St. Marys Church, Rathkeale at 1.30pm on Saturday.
Move out the way single-story brick homes, one more mega-mansion may be landing in Lincoln Park if a buyer with $10.75 million steps forward. According to a new listing that just hit the market yesterday, developer BGD&C is seeking a buyer for a new custom mansion at 1945 N. Fremont. Nearby Lakeview may lead the city for teardowns, but builders are also demolishing older houses in Lincoln Park at a very fast pace. This new mansion (if a cash-flush buyer comes forward) will span 75', or three city lots. And at $10.75 million, this listing (for an unbuilt home) is now the 8th most expensive in Chicago.

The developer looking to build the mansion is the same one that built the massive mansion at 1955 N. Burling Street, that for a time, held the title as the priciest active listing in Illinois. The Burling Street mansion sold last December for $13.345 million. The listing suggests that this new mansion for Fremont could be up to 14,500-square-feet in size, which would be about 5,000-square-feet shy of its older sibling on Burling.

1945 N Fremont St Chicago, IL 60614 [Redfin]

Lakeview, West Town and North Center Lead City for Teardowns [Curbed Chicago]

Blockbusters archives [Curbed Chicago]
About 30 years ago, I was sitting at a palapa bar in Playa del Carmen waiting for the ferry to Cozumel and thinking, wow, this is really something. Its so beautiful here, so unspoiled, so secret. The time has come to reveal the secrets for Buying Real Estate In Belize.

By 2000, Playa del Carmen was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Today its home to more than 150,000 people. The past two decades in this part of the world have seen an explosion that Ive watched with amazement. If only Id bought a piece of land along this coast 20 years ago when I first started spending time here, Ive thought so many times.

It was that experience that got me interested in international real estate as an investment.

In the years since, Ive invested in property throughout the Central American and Caribbean region including and especially in Belize.

This is a small country that offers diverse choices, so you have to start any conversation about buying real estate in Belize with the question: What are your objectives?

In Belize, you could invest in a condo on the beach, a home in a planned community, a house in a local town, or a piece of land in the country. Each purchase has its advantages and its downsides, so, again, its all about what youre looking to accomplish. Are you shopping for a place to live or for long-term appreciation? Do you intend to use the property full-time yourself or only part-time with the hope of renting it out otherwise?

Buying A Beach Condo

To state the obvious, a beach condo puts you right on the beach but keep in mind that little Belize has a long mainland coast and cayes offshore, meaning lots of beach choices, and not all beaches are created equal. Some beaches in this country are Robinson Crusoe-style. Others are rowdy and noisy with lots of nightlife and tourists. Again, it comes down to what youre looking for. Do you want privacy or company, solitude or parties?

Buying A Home In A Planned Community

A home in a planned community means privacy and security, peace and quiet. Planned communities are relatively new to Belize. Most are being built to North American standards, meaning you wont have the quirkiness of a Belizean home (lights that turn on when you push the switch down, for example) and you wont have Belizean neighbors, either. This could be a plus for you or a minus. Planned communities are outside the towns for the most part, meaning that, while youll be safe and secure behind the guarded gate, youll also be a drive from shopping and restaurants. A drive at night in this country can be an adventure because the roads are basic, often dirt, and almost always unlit.

A home in a planned community also means fees. Monthly HOA fees support the upkeep of community amenities and services. These can range from US$150 to US$200, something to keep in mind when doing your budgeting.

Buying A House In A Local Town

A home in town can be your most convenient option and also your most affordable. The trade-off is that, with rare exceptions, houses in Belizean towns are local Belizean houses. You may have to search for a while to find one that will be comfortable for you.

Not only is a local-style house in town more affordable than a new-built house in a planned community, but it also comes without a monthly HOA fee.

If youre thinking of buying something local in town, understand that zoning doesnt exist in this country. If you buy or rent a nice big house in a nice part of town with a vacant piece of land next door, dont be surprised if, a year later, someone buys that piece of land and builds a disco or a car repair shop. Im not saying that will happen, but it could.

Determining The Price Of Real Estate

How can you know how much you should pay for the kind of property youre interested in buying? You have to compare apples with apples, and thats not easy in this market. You want to consider the cost of a condo or house on a per-square-foot basis, but you also have to pay attention to whats included in the square feet. Its like asking, How much does a bag of groceries cost? It depends whats in the bag.

In Belize somebody might tell you they can build you a house for US$80 per square foot, but you cant let the conversation end there. Ask whats included in those square feet. You might be surprised to learn that that per-square-foot price doesnt include windows, for example, or plumbing or cabinets. You dont expect a house to come with appliances, but most of us dont think of a water heater as an appliance.

Buying For Rental Income Or For Appreciation In Belize

If youre looking for rental income, focus on San Pedro or Placencia. Those are Belizes highest trafficked tourist destinations.

If you are looking for appreciation, focus on Cayo and Corozal. These are the fastest-growing districts in this country.

Building Your Home In Belize

Another option you may be considering is building your own house. In this case you should know about the Central Building Authority (CBA). This is a new government agency, maybe three or four years old. When I arrived in this country, you could build whatever you wanted. Now the CBA is putting some standards in place. Now, for the first time in this country, there is a building code that you need to adhere to.

If Belize is on your radar (as we suggest it should be), heres everything you need to take the first step toward realizing your dreams of a new life in this beautiful, English-speaking Caribbean nation.

One More Thing You Should Know:

One more thing you should know: There are no escrow companies in Belize, and you cant take escrow for granted. Its not typically part of the buying process. You can insist on it, but youll have to set it up. Id recommend doing that through your attorney. If you have a good attorney, this can work. I dont recommend using the sellers attorney, and I really dont recommend using the sellers attorney for escrow!

Jim Hardesty

Belize Insider
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Videos: Chicago Winters Have Made Us Suffer Since Time Immemorial

By Kate Shepherd in News on Jan 28, 2016 9:54PM

Generations of Chicagoans before us have suffered through Chicago winters, and now, thanks to archival footage from British PathA, we can watch them do it. The clips below show residents surviving terrible winter weather from 1933 to 1955.

This first newsreel shows Chicago after a blizzard in 1938. Cars try to navigate the streets and people try not to slip on the icy sidewalks. Not much has changed:

A 1955 newsreel shows how the combination of severe windsof up to 90 mph!and very icy sidewalks can turn sidewalks into ice rinks:

The "worst blizzard for years" covered the Windy City with 10 inches of snow in 1933 and shut it down, according to this 1933 newsreel:

Basically, thank your lucky stars it's a tropical 40 degrees right now!
Michael Moore Asks America To Stop Sending Bottled Water To Flint And 'Revolt'

By Mae Rice in News on Jan 29, 2016 8:37PM



FLINT, MI - JANUARY 17: Justin Roberson (L), age 6, of Flint, Michigan and Mychal Adams, age 1, of Flint wait on a stack of bottled water at a rally where the Rev. Jesse Jackson was speaking about about the water crises at the Heavenly Host Baptist Church January 17, 2016 in Flint, Michigan. U.S. President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency in Michigan, which will free up federal aid to help the city of Flint with lead contaminated drinking water. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder requested emergency and disaster declarations after activating the National Guard to help the American Red Cross distribute water to residents. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

There are thousands of valid reasons to love, hate, and love-hate Michael Moore, but one thing is definitively true: he made a movie about the structural obstacles facing Flint, Michigan long before the citys water crisis that attracted national attention. His documentary on the city, Roger & Me, came out in 1989, and focused on General Motors plant closures throughout the city.

Now, Moore can claim more plausibly than most that he has Flint's interests at heart, and he made some interesting points about the citys current crisiswhich has prompted various levels of government to declare a cascade of emergenciesin a letter to America on his website, in which he advocates for political action over shipments of bottled watera stopgap measure at best.

Moore starts by breaking down the effects of lead poisoning (and booting peppy, can-do spirit out the window). He writes:

The damage is permanent. There is no medicine you can send, no doctor or scientist who has any way to undo the harm done to thousands of babies, toddlers and children (not to mention their parents). They are ruined for life, and someone needs to tell you the truth about that. They will, forever, suffer from various neurological impediments, their IQs will be lowered by at least 20 points, they will not do as well in school and, by the time they reach adolescence, they will exhibit various behavioral problems that will land a number of them in trouble, and some of them in jail.

Ruined for life is a cruel characterization of mentally impaired peoplecome on, Michael!but his point that the damage is done nevertheless feels instructive.

Moore goes on to dissect the specific problems with water bottle donation, though he credits people whove donated water to the city (including Mark Wahlberg and Diddy, who Moore calls Puff Daddy) for their generosity.

Flint has 102,000 residents, each in need of an average of 50 gallons of water a day for cooking, bathing, washing clothes, doing the dishes, and drinking (Im not counting toilet flushes, watering plants or washing the car). But 100,000 bottles of water is enough for just one bottle per person - in other words, just enough to cover brushing ones teeth for one day. You would have to send 200 bottles a day, per person, to cover what the average American (we are Americans in Flint) needs each day. Thats 102,000 citizens times 200 bottles of water - which equals 20.4 million 16oz. bottles of water per day, every day, for the next year or two until this problem is fixed (oh, and well need to find a landfill in Flint big enough for all those hundreds of millions of plastic water bottles, thus degrading the local environment even further). Anybody want to pony up for that? Because THAT is the reality.

Moore closes by arguing that what the city really needs is not bottled water, a stopgap fix at best, but a nonviolent army of people who are willing to... go to bat for the forgotten of Flint. He lays out various political actions this nonviolent army should press for, in his view, as well. The whole thing is worth reading, but the part that feels most illuminating is his interpretation of whats already happened.
President Obama Will Address Illinois Legislature In February

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 29, 2016 7:15PM



Obama shakes hands with supporters at a campaign rally at the Old State Capitol in August 2008. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Now, in the final year of his second term, the President looks forward to addressing the Illinois General Assembly about what we can do, together, to build a better politics-one that reflects our better selves, said Kaelan Richards, regional communications director for the White House, CBS2 reports.

Obama announced his first presidential run at the Capitol on the same date in 2007. It was here, in Springfield, where North, South, East and West come together that I was reminded of the essential decency of the American peoplewhere I came to believe that through this decency, we can build a more hopeful America, said the President, then a state senator.

The speech will come one day after the administration plans to release its final budget proposal, which the President is expected to address. It also comes at the same time Illinois is facing a budget impasse, now in its 8th month. Gov. Bruce Rauner mentioned Obama in his state of the state speech yesterday, speaking of his favorability on term limits and redistricting reform.

A White House official told CNN:

As a state senator, he spent each day in the Illinois State Capitol working in good faith with folks from all walks of life -- Democrats and Republicans and independents representing good people of every ethnicity and faith -- determined to do right by the people of the state he made his home. And as a United States senator from Illinois, he chose the steps of the Old State Capitol, where Abraham Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, to ask Americans to join him in the unfinished business of perfecting our union."

***Update 1:30pm***

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner says he welcomes the President's visit. In a statement released to Rich Miller at Capitol Fax, Rauner said:

I look forward to welcoming President Obama to the State Capitol and hearing him speak about finding common ground between Republicans and Democrats. Despite our political differences, the President and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans. I know we can achieve great things for Illinois by having mutual respect for one another and focusing on bipartisan compromise to achieve whats best for the long-term future of our great state.
Attorney: Cop Who Killed Laquan Can't Get A Fair Trial In Cook County

By Mae Rice in News on Jan 29, 2016 6:10PM



The attorney for the Chicago police officer who fatally shot Laquan McDonald 16 times says the cop cannot get a fair trial in Cook County.

Officer Jason Van Dykes attorney plans to request a change of venue for the officers upcoming homicide trial, arguing that Mayor Rahm Emanuels comments on the case have made it too difficult to find an unbiased jury in Chicago.

Emanuel previously told reporters, "Obviously in this case, Van Dyke violated both the standards of professionalism that come with being a police officer but also basic moral standards that bind our community together.

Though he doesnt have an alternate location in mind, attorney Dan Herbert, who is representing Van Dyke, told reporters he would "have to find a county that is outside the reach of the mayor's comments, the AP reports.

Van Dyke has been indicted for six counts of homicide for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. Dashcam footage of the shooting was released this past November, sparking protests throughout the city.

Herbert previously said that this request is uncommon, and hasnt been done in decades in Cook County, according to NBC.

Van Dyke appeared in court Friday for a status hearing. As he left the hearing, people outside cursed at him and pounded on his vehicle, the AP reported.
As the mosquito-borne Zika virus continues to infect people in a relentless wave, there is a worldwide rush to learn more about the disease.

Although Zika infections are usually mild, when they strike pregnant women, it is possible for the infections to lead to a condition called microcephaly in the women's children, which brings severe, lifelong impairments. Scientists are now working on a vaccine, but it could take years until it is ready for use, and people will continue to get sick in the meantime.

Today (Jan. 28), World Health Organization (WHO) officials predicted that between 3 and 4 million people worldwide would contract Zika virus, although they did not give a time frame for those cases, according to Scientific American. Meanwhile, U.S. officials announced that the United States will "likely" face small outbreaks of the virus, although larger outbreaks are unlikely.

Here's a look at the most commonly asked questions about Zika virus, and the science behind the answers. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

Where did Zika originate?

Researchers first identified Zika virus in rhesus monkeys in Uganda in 1947, during a surveillance project to find yellow fever. A few years later, in 1952, they found the first human cases in Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania, according to the WHO.

Since then, Zika outbreaks have occurred in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific region, the WHO said. Brazil experienced its first outbreak in May 2015.

How did Zika get to South America?

Zika is spread by mosquitos that belong to the genus Aedes, a group that lives on almost every continent. About 80 percent of people infected with Zika virus do not have symptoms, and they can unknowingly spread the virus to other Aedes mosquitoes. This includes people picking up the virus from mosquitoes in one region of the world, traveling, and then spreading it to mosquitos in another region.

Because of such travel, "now, you have the disease being established in new geographic areas," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security.

How do people get Zika?

This image of the Zika virus was taken using a transmission electron microscope. The virus particles are 40 nanometers in diameter, with an outer envelope, and an inner dense core. (Image credit: Cynthia Goldsmith/CDC)

The primary way that people contract Zika virus is from the bites of infected mosquitoes.

Zika may also spread during sexual intercourse, although there are few confirmed cases of this occurring. In one case report, doctors described finding the virus in the sperm of a man in Tahiti in December 2013.

It's also possible that Zika could spread through blood transfusions, Adalja said.

There are no instances, to date, of breast milk transmission, and women in Zika areas should continue breastfeeding, he said.

What symptoms might infected people have?

It's unclear how soon people begin showing symptoms after they are exposed to the virus, but it's likely a few days, according to the WHO. But only about 1 in 5 people with the virus show any symptoms.

Those who become ill may have a fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis (pinkeye), muscle and joint pain, general discomfort and headaches, the WHO says. Symptoms typically last between two and seven days.

There is no treatment, but people who are sick with Zika virus can receive supportive care, such as pain relievers or fluids, if needed, Adalja said.

There are some reports linking Zika to an increasing incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome, he said. This syndrome is an autoimmune disorder in which nerve cells are attacked, which causes weakness. The syndrome is sometimes incited by an infection. But the link is not clear, and researchers are looking into it. [The 9 Deadliest Viruses on Earth]

How might Zika virus affect pregnancies?

If a pregnant woman is infected with Zika virus, there is a chance that she could pass the virus on to her fetus. It's thought that Zika may be wholly or partially responsible for the sudden spike of microcephaly and other disorders seen in some Brazilian newborns.

Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus, one of the species that can carry the Zika virus, begins its blood meal. (Image credit: James Gathany, CDC)

However, there is no direct evidence that Zika causes these disorders.

"This is more of an association," Adalja told Live Science.

"The hypothesis is that when this virus is in the pregnant woman's blood, it crosses the placenta and infects the fetus in utero," he said. "Then, it has a negative effect on the brain development of the fetus, causing the fetus to be born with an abnormally small head, which is called microcephaly."

Microcephaly, "a devastating diagnosis," often leads to shortened life span and multiple developmental and intellectual disabilities, Adalja said.

Zika may also lead to other central nervous system challenges, such as problems with vision and hearing, he said.

Can a fetus become infected throughout the entire pregnancy?

"The greatest risk [of microcephaly occurring] is in the first trimester of pregnancy [when crucial brain development happens], but pregnant women in all trimesters should avoid travel to Zika areas if possible," Adalja said.

How are people tested for Zika?

Currently, people in the United States who have traveled to a region where Zika is being transmitted and who have symptoms of the infection are being tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in coordination with various state health department labs, Adalja said. However, as time goes on, local health departments will likely start testing, and commercial tests will probably become available, he said.

To get tested, people can give blood or tissue samples to researchers, who can then test the specimen for genetic material from the virus. Researchers can also look for antibodies that the body has produced against the virus, but some of the antibody tests are not specific  they may give a positive test result if a person has antibodies to similar mosquito-spread viruses, such as yellow fever, Chikungunya and dengue.

If a pregnant woman is concerned that her fetus might be affected by Zika, she can get an ultrasound or an amniocentesis. The CDC published this flowchart to help pregnant women determine when and how they can get tested.

If Zika is linked to birth defects, why arent more children in Africa and Southeast Asia affected?

The microcephaly seen in some Brazilian babies is likely multifactorial, and could be caused by a whole slew of factors in addition to Zika, such as malnutrition, Adalja said. [7 Ways Pregnant Women Affect Babies]

However, there is also another hypothesis about why there aren't large numbers of children with microcephaly in regions that regularly have Zika infections: Perhaps people in these places got the virus when they were young, and developed antibodies against it, becoming immune to reinfection. It's possible that this immunity in pregnant mothers would protect fetuses, Adalja said.

If a woman gets Zika and then becomes pregnant a few months later, can the virus still affect the fetus?

No, there's no evidence that the virus persists after the acute stage of the illness is gone, Adalja said.

How far along are the vaccine tests?

Vaccines can take several years to develop as they go from concept to needle, Adalja said.

In the meantime, people can protect themselves by taking precautions against mosquitoes. (Wear bug spray and long clothing, avoid going out when mosquitos are active, get rid of standing water where mosquitos lay eggs, use mosquito nets or window screens and stay inside with air conditioning, as mosquitoes prefer humid environments).

The CDC also cautions that pregnant women should postpone travel to places infected with Zika virus. Detailed travel warnings can be found here.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Jeffrey Johnson, associate professor of geosciences at Boise State University, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The next time you're served a flat Coke, impress your friends with volcano jargon. Complain to the waiter that your beverage is "depleted of volatiles." Then, suggest that if the cola were to be heated, its solubility might drop, catalyzing bubble growth, which would result in improved taste and/or a "paroxysmal eruption."

If they're still listening, tell them that this is what occurs in volcanoes. A new article published in the journal Nature recently demonstrated the "critical influence of heat variations in rising magmas"  meaning previously unappreciated temperature changes appear to control the occurrence, and explosivity, of eruptions.

Kaboom

Volcanoes erupt explosively when gas-charged magma reaches Earth's surface. Volcanologists refer to magmatic gases as volatiles because the amount of those gases within the rising magma determines whether a volcano explodes (in a volatile fashion) or effuses lazily.

The formation and growth of gas bubbles are complex processes that fascinate nearly every volcanologist. There are volcanologists who peer inside tiny crystals to measure minuscule amounts of dissolved gas, and there are volcanologists who use spectroscopy  specifically studies of how minerals absorb ultraviolet light  to measure the copious gases billowing from a vent. Experimental volcanologists melt volcano rocks and infuse them with gases. And there are numerical modeling volcanologists, who might never venture into the field but develop sophisticated code to simulate degassing and eruptions. [50 Amazing Volcano Facts ]

But they all consider what happens to a parcel of magma as it rises toward, and breaks apart at, a volcano's vent.

Magma deep within a volcano starts its ascent slowly, but eventually, it accelerates toward the Earth's surface. This happens because as magma rises it escapes from crushing overpressure and bubbles grow. The magma's environment changes dramatically, and so does the character of the molten rock, including  most vitally  the amount of volcanic gas that fuels explosivity.

Let's imagine magma's journey starting about 2 miles, or roughly 3 kilometers, below a volcanic vent. This is approximately the depth of a large volcano's base, and the pressures there are intense: Magma at this depth is subjected to nearly a thousand times the pressure that exists in the atmosphere. As a result, the magma travels through long fractures or sheetlike "dikes," rather than pipelike conduits that prevail near the surface. As the magma flows, the surrounding colder rock is cracked apart several inches, or maybe a couple of feet, allowing the magma to pass through.

At such depths, the magma is an extremely viscous fluid, often (but not always) swimming with crystals, but largely it is devoid of bubbles. The absence of bubbles doesn't mean there is no gas, but that it is mostly tied up, or dissolved, within the magma. At least 1 percent (and potentially as much as 5 percent) of the mass of magma at this depth will be invisible, locked-in gas.

While these gas amounts may not seem too significant, think of, for example, if magma were to fill 1 percent of the mass of a small hot tub's contents. It would contain more than 50 lbs. (roughly 20 kilograms) of gas, which, if expanded catastrophically  as is typical during volcanic eruptions  equates to the energy released by about 50 lbs. of exploding TNT, or about 100 megajoules of energy.

Magma, even when devoid of bubbles, ascends because of buoyancy. Because it is somewhat less dense than the colder rock surrounding it, it kind of floats its way upward.

At first, it may rise sluggishly, but as the magma reaches shallower levels, it can accelerate. Significant changes occur in the melt as the confining pressure diminishes. More bubbles start to appear, and they serve to diminish the overall density of the fluid. As these bubbles expand, the density decreases further. Buoyancy then increases, facilitating a quicker ascent, enhanced bubble creation and expansion. This feedback causes the density to drop and the buoyancy to increase.

This cycle continues until the magma is ripped apart. Those once-invisible bubbles rend the surrounding magma to shreds, and gas, ash and any piece of the volcano in the way is blown out of the crater.

Geologist Richard Sanderson explores the dome rocks and spines of the active Santiaguito dome. (Image credit: Jeffrey Johnson)

Hidden role of heat

Such pressure-controlled degassing has been the standard scientific model for explosive eruptions. But now, Yan Lavallee, Professor within the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Liverpool in England, has introduced a major tweak to that model. In a new paper in the journal Nature entitled "Thermal vesiculation during volcanic eruptions."

Lavallee has demonstrated that while decompressing magma is prone to degas, it further degasses when it heats up. And it probably heats up and degasses a lot more than scientists have thought.

Scientists agree that, for magma to exist in melted form, rather than as a solid rock, it must be hot. On average, magma is approximately 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or around 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Less commonly recognized, however, is that magma can get quite a bit hotter via two processes that exist in most volcano conduits.

Firstly, magma gives off heat when portions of it start to freeze. Just like in water, the freezing produces crystals, and as the crystals form, they give off heat. A cubic centimeter (about 0.06 cubic inches) of "freezing" crystals, like quartz, will heat a kilogram (about 2.2. lbs.) of surrounding magma by 5 degrees C (9 degrees F). That added heat can induce gas to come out of the fluid magma.

Secondly, magma will heat up as it flows through constricted conduits. As viscous fluids are forced through cracks or narrow pipes, the flowing rock releases heat due to friction. Supersticky magma flowing into a crack is sort of like taffy being squeezed through the small-bore needle of a syringe. The taffy would also heat up and become more runny.

Lavallee, who was the lead researcher on the study, and his colleagues, suggest significant heating causes those processes, merging geologists' pre-existing understanding of geophysical constraints with analyses of rock samples and laboratory simulations of the processes.

Image, obtained by a scanning electron microscope, of round bubbles (in black) formed in a rock that was heated and melted during a friction experiment. (Image credit: Yan Lavallee)

Of volcanoes and evidence

Back in 2013, Lavallee scaled the dome of Santiaguito, an active volcano in Guatemala, to search for rocks that bear testament to frictional heating.

The dome's gray surface is a jumbled collection of house-size rock spines, extruded over the last decades, and is  in some places  still extruding. Immense blocks have been squeezed toward the surface as an incredibly sticky, viscous magma. In the process, these rocks broke and cracked before later annealing from continued exposure to the intense heat (around 1000 degrees C) inside the volcano.

Lavallee searched the dome lavas for these healed cracks, which he hypothesized would represent fossil passageways of escaping gas. When he returned to his laboratory, he found his evidence: Under an electron microscope, the textures of these annealed cracks revealed ash shards frozen in place following their transport by currents of hot gas originating on the cracks' margins.

Spectacular laboratory experiments also supported the theory. Lavallee and his colleagues took fist-size rock samples of lava and pushed them together with tremendous force, then rotated one rock sample slowly against another. This generated intense friction and heat  enough to melt rock and release copious, previously locked-in gas.

The last piece of the puzzle ties the whole story together: Lavallee's geophysicist partners studied a nearby portion of Santiaguito's dome, located a quarter mile (about 0.4 km) away from where the samples were collected. This dome was actively erupting when the team visited, and approximately once per hour, the dome surface and its interior would lurch upward, forcing the viscous rock to flow and internally deform.

If you're a topical expert  researcher, business leader, author or innovator  and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, email us here

Viewed from a safe vantage point, the periodic activity was spectacular. Within seconds of an eruption's onset, columns of ash and gas plumes rise to hundreds of meters and eventually reach more than a kilometer high. Incandescent blocks the size of microwave ovens are blown skyward and then crash onto the volcano's flanks, breaking open and cascading downward.

The geophysicists captured the associated, subtle, underground movements at Santiaguito using an array of instruments, including seismometers (which measure movements in the ground) and tiltmeters (which measure the tilting of the Earth's surface). These sensors reveal the depth and magnitude of rock movement  data the researchers used to estimate the amount of gas that accumulates during eruptive cycles.

According to Lavallee's theory, his rock and magma movements can induce temperature gains of hundreds of degrees, promoting volatilization of the previously "flat" magma and subsequent violent degassing. The dome rocks and eruptions at Santiaguito serve as tantalizing evidence of how frictional heating can lead to volcanic explosions.

In most ways, Santiaguito lava and flat cola are horrible analogues. Nonetheless, Santiaguito's behavior offers insight toward understanding vital processes that influence volcanic explosivity at other analogous volcanoes  findings at the Santiaguito volcano laboratory are revealing the dynamics of hazardous, dome volcanoes across the globe.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science .
Humans likely played a role in the extinction of the giant flightless bird (<i>Genyornis newtoni</i>), seen here surprised by the <i>Megalania prisca</i> lizard 50,000 years ago.

The burnt eggshell fragments of an ancient giant bird have helped scientists solve a 50,000-year-old whodunit in Australia.

Before humans arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago, these flightless birds lived across much of the continent. But they mysteriously went extinct shortly thereafter. Now, evidence of human-scorched eggshells suggests that the new arrivals were cooking up the eggs for supper, likely putting a large dent in the birds' reproductive success, a new study shows. Notably, the finding supports the idea that ancient people contributed to the bird's eventual demise, the study authors said.

These weren't your average chicken eggs. The big bird, known as Genyornis newtoni, stood 7 feet tall (2.1 meters) and weighed a whopping 500 lbs. (227 kilograms). Its eggs were also enormous (about the size of cantaloupes) and weighed about 3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg). [Easter Science: 5 Odd Facts About Eggs]

"We consider this the first and only secure evidence that humans were directly preying on now-extinct Australian megafauna," Gifford Miller, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement. "We have documented these characteristically burned Genyornis eggshells at more than 200 sites across the continent."

Walking on eggshells

Initially, scientists were searching for and locating these eggshells to help them date ancient shorelines. But in the process of studying the shells, they found that some of them were burned and clustered together.

Visibly brunt Genyornis eggshells that were burnt by human campfires, rather than natural fires, some 50,000 years ago. (Image credit: Courtesy of University of Colorado)

Over more than 20 years, they collected unburned G. newtoni eggshells from more than 2,000 sites across Australia, mostly from the sand dunes where these ancient birds nested. From 200 of the sites, they also found burned eggshells. Radiocarbon dating can date once-living organisms that lived within the past 50,000 years, but this method was difficult for these shells, as the birds lived right around that cutoff time.

So the researchers relied mostly on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, a technique that examines when the quartz grains in the eggshells were last exposed to sunlight. OSL helped determine that the burned eggshells were between 44,000 and 54,000 years old  "the same time window that the first humans were colonizing Australia," Miller wrote in an email to Live Science.

They also relied on amino acid racemization (AAR). Amino acids, the building blocks that make up proteins, decompose in a predictable fashion over time. The burned eggshells have an interesting gradient of amino-acid decomposition within each fragment that suggests they were burned by a localized heat source, such as an ember.

The gradient does not indicate that the shells were burned by sustained high heat, such as from a wildfire, the researchers said. [10 Extinct Giants That Once Roamed North America]

The researchers suggested that the scorched eggshells were burned in transient, human-made fires, likely to cook the eggs for a prehistoric meal, Miller said.

Moreover, many of the burnt eggshells were found in clusters less than 10 feet (3 m) in diameter, with no other eggshell fragments nearby. Some of the pieces had heat gradient differences of almost 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees Celsius). These gradients would be almost impossible to create in a wildfire setting, Miller said.

"We can't come up with a scenario that a wildfire could produce those tremendous gradients in heat," Miller said. "We instead argue that the conditions are consistent with early humans harvesting Genyornis eggs, cooking them over fires and then randomly discarding the eggshell fragments in and around their cooking fires."

Bye, big bird

Ancient eggshell fragments shown in an Australian sand dune. (Image credit: Courtesy of University of Colorado)

G. newtoni is hardly the only megafauna (animals weighing more than 100 lbs., or 45 kg) that lived about 50,000 years ago in Australia. There was a 1,000-lb. (450 kg) kangaroo, a 2-ton wombat, a 25-foot-long (7.6 m) lizard and a tortoise the size of a Volkswagen.

However, more than 85 percent of the continent's megafauna went extinct not long after humans arrived.

The reasons for these extinctions are hotly debated. Some scientists say humans are to blame, others credit climate change and some say it's likely a mixture of both.

But the continental drying of Australia, from about 60,000 to 40,000 years ago, is likely not the main reason for these animals' extinctions, Miller said. The rate and magnitude of this climate change was as severe as earlier climate shifts, but large megafauna extinctions did not accompany these earlier changes, he said.

"Ours is the first study to show with direct evidence that early humans in Australia also preyed on the now-extinct megafauna," he told Live Science.

The study was published online today (Jan. 29) in the journal Nature Communications (opens in new tab).

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
The possible connection between Zika virus and microcephaly, a potentially fatal condition in infants, is a serious concern for pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant. Women are being told to take all possible measures to prevent mosquito bites, including using some pretty heavy-duty insect repellants.

But generally, pregnant women are bombarded by advice about avoiding chemicals. And some insect repellants  DEET, for example  come with a long list of warnings. Should women really slather on these repellants frequently during pregnancy?

Experts say yes.

If you are pregnant, and you are in an area with serious mosquito-borne diseases, use repellant with high amounts of DEET, and reapply it as often as necessary, said Dana Boyd Barr, professor of exposure science at Emory University.

Zika poses a potentially dire risk to unborn children, and studies, including Barr's own research, have shown that DEET is a fairly harmless chemical, she said. "Really, there's not any strength of evidence indicating that DEET is harmful to a fetus or harmful to a person," Barr said.

There is general consensus that we don't know much about the long-term effects of DEET, Barr acknowledged. And there are limited studies looking specifically at pregnant women. But when facing the possibility of microcephaly, women would risk far more by not using the repellant than by using it. [Zika Virus FAQs: Top Questions Answered]

For women in regions where the virus is spreading, experts are recommending using many precautions in addition to repellants to prevent mosquito bites, including using mosquito netting, staying indoors if possible, fixing torn screens and covering exposed skin with long sleeves and pants.

For most people, Zika virus isn't a serious infection. Only 1 in 5 people show any symptoms and those are usually mild, including skin rash, fever, headache and joint pain. Zika is spread by mosquitoes (specifically, the Aedes species).

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There are no current treatments or vaccines for this virus. Preventing bites remains key.

In one study on DEET, published in 2014 in the journal PLOS One, researchers looked at how DEET may affect mammals. Specifically, the researchers wanted to know whether DEET inhibited the activity of an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase, which is important in the functioning of the nervous system. They found DEET likely slowed down the uptake of one chemical within the nervous system of the insects, but was not a potent acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, and was not toxic to mammals.

In other work, researchers reviewed many studies of DEET safety, according to the findings published in the journal Parasites & Vectorsin 2014. They found only one study, from 2001, in which researchers looked at DEET use during pregnancy.

The women in this study were in Thailand, and already past their first trimester when they took part in a randomized trial of DEET, which was used to prevent malaria. Some of the women used DEET, while others in a control group did not. Their babies were monitored up to six months after birth and the researchers found that DEET made no difference in the babies' weight, height, head or arm size, or neurological performance.

That study and one other study included in the review did show that DEET can cross the placenta. This other study also showed a borderline association between higher levels of DEET in cord blood and larger abdominal circumference at birth, but the researchers noted no differences in the health of the infants.

There are plant-based mosquito repellants, such as oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) and citronella, but these tend to have limited effectiveness because they evaporate quickly. Repellent products containing OLE and its synthetic version, called PMD, are recommended by the CDC, but pure OLE is not because it has not undergone the same rigorous testing. [10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]

The CDC also recommends repellants that contain chemicals called picaridin and IR3535. These repellents are newer than DEET and have not been as extensively studied. A 2013 study in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseasecompared studies that looked at the effectiveness of picaridin, IR3535, DEET and plant-based repellent products against the Aedes species of mosquito and found that products with 20 percent or more DEET provided the best protection.

There is no definitive evidence linking Zika virus to microcephaly. But in Brazil, officials are reporting a dramatic rise in cases of microcephaly in tandem with a Zika virus outbreak. According to Brazil's Ministry of Health, 4,180 cases of suspected microcephaly have been reported in the country since October 2015; in previous years, the country recorded around 150 cases yearly.

"There are some weeks recently where there are more cases of microcephaly in Brazil being reported than in the entire previous year," said Dr. Daniel Lucey, an adjunct professor with Georgetown University Medical Center who specializes in infectious diseases.

Much more research is needed to establish whether the virus actually causes microcephaly, but in the meantime, because the condition is so devastating and brings lifelong effects such as severe cognitive impairment for babies, researchers are advising women to consider putting off becoming pregnant, and avoiding mosquito bites if they do become pregnant.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised pregnant women to avoid travel to Brazil and about two-dozen other countries where the virus is spreading. Lucey said he thought these advisories are very appropriate and reasonable, given what we know and all the questions remaining about Zika.

The CDC is also currently recommending that pregnant women who have traveled to countries with Zika and have Zika-like symptoms within two weeks of their travel get tested for the virus.There are no treatments for Zika, but doctors may want to monitor fetal growth during the pregnancy if evidence of Zika is found. Testing is not done more widely because of the potential for false positives  the antibodies the immune system makes in response to Zika are similar to those made for other related viruses.

Difficulties with testing also mean that no one knows how many pregnant women have been infected. Therefore, even if researchers were sure that the virus can cause microcephaly in some cases, they still wouldn't know the risk of the condition  in other words, how often a Zika infection actually leads to microcephaly.

The only advice right now is to avoid areas where Zika is being transmitted or, if that's not possible, protect yourself as best you can against bites, including using repellants with DEET.

Women who are pregnant and believe they have Zika virus should talk with their doctor.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
There's no doubt that drones' popularity has taken off, and their uses range from simple recreational enjoyment to sophisticated military operations. Over the past year, powerhouse companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook have all announced big plans to integrate different forms of drone technology into their businesses. Meanwhile, recreational drones have proven to be so popular that they've already evolved from novelty to nuisance, prompting the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to require the registration of recreational drones weighing 55 lbs. (25 kilograms) or more.

But in the Arctic and Antarctica, drones face a different roster of challenges, as specially trained and certified scientists test how these autonomous flying machines could help create maps of sea ice in some of the most remote locations on Earth.

Researchers published a report describing their pilot program on Jan. 19 in Eos, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, outlining an April 2015 expedition to East Antarctica's ice shelves onboard the U.S. icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer, to determine just how well drones would handle the harsh polar environment. [See photos from the drone flights in Antarctica and the Arctic]

Guy Williams, a polar oceanographer at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia and the designated drone pilot for the expedition, had previously measured sea-ice thickness in Antarctica using an underwater robotic vehicle. He told Live Science that studying sea ice is valuable for scientists monitoring shifts in Earth's climate, "because what's going on in the ocean and the atmosphere drive sea ice behavior."

Atmospheric and ocean changes can affect sea-ice thickness, balance and drift. The effects of a steady warming trend is especially visible in the Arctic, where scientists have observed unprecedented sea-ice loss and slow recovery in recent years.

Aerial photo above the R/V Nathaniel B Palmer during research voyage NBP1503, in Antarctica. (Image credit: Guy Williams/Alex Fraser/Eva Cougnon, courtesy of the U.S. Antarctic Program and the National Science Foundation.)

But even as Earth warms, the area covered by sea ice is still immense  nearly 5 million square miles (12.3 million square kilometers) was measured in the Arctic in December 2015, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, while Antarctica's sea ice covered more than 7 million square miles (19 million square kilometers) in October 2015  its maximum for the year.

Because sea ice covers so much area, scientists require satellite imagery to evaluate large-scale changes, Williams told Live Science. "But to develop satellite tools, we need to take observations in the field to test satellite products  that's where this new age of robotics comes into play," he added.

Drones could allow scientists in the field to make firsthand observations and measurements of sea-ice coverage, and these robotic fliers are significantly more accessible (and far less expensive) than airplanes or helicopters, which some research groups have previously used to measure Antarctica's sea ice.

"The Australian program won't even allow you to fly helicopters over this region," Williams said. "Drones are the only real option."

Williams, who was the only certified drone pilot on a three-person team, underwent rigorous pilot training beforehand, accruing 15 months of experience flying drones, and receiving certification from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Australia. The National Science Foundation (NSF) required additional reviews before signing off on the expedition, and yet another level of clearance came from the U.S. Antarctic Program, which is still formulating policies and regulations for drone use that protect Antarctica's environment.

This wasn't the first time drones had been used in Antarctica, Williams told Live Science, but scientists running earlier field tests built customized machines that required more specialized attention to inn order to maintain and repair them. "We tried to avoid modification," Williams said. "We try to use what comes off the shelf, so we can readily replace it."

He selected two off-the-shelf drone models: DJI Ltd.'s Phantom 2 Vision+ quadcopter and the eight-rotor Spreading Wings S1000. The researchers launched them in nine test flights over three days. Once testing in Antarctica began, Williams quickly discovered that winds presented a significant obstacle. Williams described a maximum wind speed of about 12 mph (19 km/h) as ideal for drone flights, but the winds in Antarctica rarely dropped below 23 mph (37 km/h), he said.

"We were constantly waiting for the wind [speeds] to drop," Williams said. "We had to be ready to go when the wind dropped and take advantage of that." [Incredible Drone Photos: Contest-Winning Images from Above]

As if the conditions weren't challenging enough, Williams found he couldnt fly the drones in GPS "autopilot" mode, which allows stable, autonomous flight. Williams said he suspected the strong magnetic pull of the South Pole was to blame. Without GPS mode, Williams could still pilot the drone, but he needed to use manual controls almost exclusively, "and that's where the skill level of the pilot requirement increased," Williams said.

Guy Williams launching a Phantom 2 Vision+ quadcopter in the Arctic. (Image credit: Toshi Maki and Guy Williams)

This first mission to Antarctica was only to test the flying capabilities of the drones, and not to participate in the voyage's primary science objective. But based on the success of the test flights, the researchers traveled in late 2015 to the Arctic with the drones they were operating, as part of the science program. "We were collecting the aerial imagery and the surface topography maps in conjunction with an underwater vehicle, plus other sea-ice studies that were occurring on the surface," Williams said.

During the Arctic drone flights, Williams captured thousands of images, using a fixed-wing drone to produce a photo mosaic of a sea-ice field  a process that uses about 500 to 1,000 images to cover an area measuring almost 5,400 square feet (500 square meters), Williams said.

With climate change altering Earth at a rapid pace, it's more critical than ever to track its impact on sea ice near the poles, researchers say. Scientists have already linked shrinking ice in the Arctic to rising global sea levels, and have raised concerns about the implications of ice loss and warming waters for animals that live in the region, from polar bears to plankton. As the planet continues to heat up  as climate data suggest it will  it becomes even more crucial for scientists to monitor changes in sea ice, and to take full advantage of a drone's-eye view.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Mr. Miguel Maldonado Sr., 85, entered into the kingdom of heaven Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in San Antonio, Texas.

He enjoyed working for his lifelong employer, El Metro Transit.

The only thing he loved more than his job was fishing, music and most of all, his family.

He will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him.

The family will receive condolences today, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Joe Jackson North Funeral Chapels, 1410 Jacaman Rd., with a Vigil for the Deceased and Rosary to be recited at 7 p.m.

Funeral Services will be conducted on Saturday morning, Jan. 30, 2016, departing at 8:25 a.m. from Joe Jackson North Funeral Chapels to Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church for a Mass of Christian Burial at 9 a.m.

Pallbearers will be grandsons, Daniel, Brock, Gus, Roberto and Christian Maldonado; Evan Rodriguez, Ricardo, Julio and Mark Guerrero.

Rite of Committal and Interment with Military Honors will follow at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

You may extend your condolences to the family online at www.joejacksonfuneralchapels.com.

Arrangements are under the direction of the funeral service professionals at Joe Jackson North Funeral Chapels, 1410 Jacaman Rd., Laredo, Texas 78041; (956) 722-8850.
A CITIC Bank branch. [Xinhua]

China CITIC Bank, the country's seventh-largest lender, said on Thursday it could lose 969 million yuan (148 million U.S. dollars) due to risks related to bank notes, following a similar incident at another major Chinese bank.

The incident took place at its Lanzhou branch, CITIC Bank said, adding that police have opened an investigation.

"The amount exposed to the risk is 969 million yuan," it said, without giving any details about the incident.

CITIC Bank said it would work with the public security department and institutions involved "to safeguard the security of funds to the greatest extent."

On Jan. 22, the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), one of the country's four largest lenders, said that it could lose over 3.9 billion yuan in what it called a "material risk incident" involving notes held under a resale agreement.

Business magazine Caixin reported that two employees at ABC's Beijing branch were at the center of the scandal, having illegally sold bills of exchange worth 3.915 billion yuan to an agent in the southwestern city of Chongqing, who sold them to another bank.

The bills of exchange work in a similar way to post-dated cheques, which demand one party pay a fixed sum to another in a set period of time, Caixin said.

Incidents related to bank notes range from note fraud to illegally redeeming funds. "Such cases are happening with increasing frequency, highlighting banks' flawed internal controls," said Guo Tianyong, a professor at Central University of Finance and Economics.

Eighty-two percent of the bankers polled in a recent survey said that the lax enforcement of the banking regulations is the main reason behind the increase in such cases.
"There have been too many questions about the extent of contamination caused by this plume and residents are frustrated with the lack of answers from the Navy and Northrop Grumman," Governor Cuomo said. "They are right and today, with Senator Schumer, we are stepping in to conduct our own testing, as well as enable local officials to undergo their own independent analysis. This action will allow us to develop an action plan to ensure that the health and safety of this community is protected.



"New York State's swift move to require testing of the wells and access to vital data on any potential contamination is just what the doctor ordered for the worried residents of Massapequa, Bethpage and South Farmingdale," U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer said. "Kudos to Governor Cuomo and the DEC for stepping up to the plate and delivering just the kind of real information and access to test wells that the Navy and Northrop Grumman had been stonewalling the water districts on. I will work with the Governor, Assemblymember Saladino and the water districts to keep the Navy's-and-Grumman's feet to the fire when it comes to more actively monitoring and remediating this toxic plume that threatens the drinking water of so many Long Islanders."



The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will obtain groundwater samples from monitoring wells installed and maintained by Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy to perform a compound specific isotope analysis (CSIA) of water samples from the Grumman plume. CSIA is a relatively new and highly specialized analysis of the isotopic composition of a chemical.



The Department of Environmental Conservation will collect and test samples from six priority monitoring wells. Additionally, the Massapequa Water District will also be provided the opportunity to sample, so it can conduct its own analysis. State testing will be expanded as warranted and results will be shared with the water districts as soon as they are available.



New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Acting Commissioner Basil Seggos said, "DEC's cutting-edge analysis of the Grumman plume will allow us to better understand and address the nature of contamination. In the future, Northrop Grumman and the Navy also need to be transparent and quickly share any information requested by the water districts."



The Grumman plume is one mile wide and three miles long, extends to depths in excess of 600 feet and emanates from the original 635-acre Grumman facility. The plume impacts some water supply wells in Nassau County, which have since been equipped with treatment systems. Currently, Massapequa Water Districts drinking water wells are not impacted by the plume. In addition, sentinels wells located north of the districts water well have not yet detected contamination.



The Department of Environmental Conservation has worked closely with the Navy and Northrop Grumman to address contamination from the former Grumman/Navy facilities by developing enforceable remedial agreements to address the plume. Pursuant to the agreements, the Navy is actively tracking down and working to remediate hot spots in the plume.



Assemblyman Joseph Saladino said, "I greatly appreciate Governor Cuomo's efforts on behalf of our communities. His motivation to ensure that our water districts receive these samples and the information they need is a huge step in the right direction. I have been working on this issue for years and understand that it is beneficial to work with Governor Cuomo, US Senator Schumer and all of our officials in order to protect the life essential resource that is our drinking water. There is a finite amount of clean water in our aquifer and we will not stand for the contamination to grow. Ultimately the best end result will be for complete hydraulic containment and remediation of these plumes and a guarantee that the responsible parties, and not the taxpayers, will pay for this clean up. This is great news that signals we are moving closer toward getting the plume cleaned up responsibly, ethically and completely."



Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano said, "The public has been kept in the dark about the Northrop Grumman plume for long enough. Its time we got answers about this environmental contamination and what needs to be done to protect the health and safety of our residents. Governor Cuomo and Senator Schumer stood up to make sure that happens, and Im proud to see them fighting alongside us to protect Nassau communities."



Massapequa Water District Superintendent Stanley Carey said, "I thank Governor Cuomo and DEC for granting us access to samples from the plume monitoring wells. We look forward to continuing to work with New York State to protect Massapequa's water wells."
Nature & Weather, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: January 29 2016

With wind chills bringing temperatures into the single digits on Long Island, United Way of Long Island activated its emergency fuel fund, Project Warmth.

Deer Park, NY - January 27, 2016 - With wind chills bringing temperatures into the single digits on Long Island, United Way of Long Island activated its emergency fuel fund, Project Warmth. Project Warmth is Long Islands only non-government, Island-wide emergency fuel fund, serving as a safety net for individuals and families facing energy insecurity and are unable to pay their heating bills. Long Islanders seeking help to keep the heat on in their homes donned winter coats and hats to attend and apply for assistance during United Way of Long Islands Project Warmth Day at the offices of their community partner agency, the Hispanic brotherhood of Rockville Centre in Rockville Centre, NY. Eligible applicants include Long Islanders who are behind in their utility payments, have a low or empty oil tank, have received a disconnection notice, and/or can demonstrate financial hardship.

On Project Warmth Day, Robert G. Keller, President of National Grid Foundation, presented Project Warmth with a gift of $125,000, to continue their support of the program. Keller met with several of the individuals who were applying for a Project Warmth grant, noting that Its incredibly gratifying to be able to see that were helping to make a difference in these peoples lives.

As Project Warmth applicants completed their forms, many of them still wearing their winter coats, Theresa A. Regnante, President and CEO of United Way of Long Island remarked, There are thousands of people who are struggling in this region and in this weather, one can only imagine individuals braving the night in their homes without heat. We thank National Grid Foundation for continuing to support Project Warmth for over the past 15 years. With approximately 1,400 families on Long Island expected to be assisted with funding during the 2015-16 Project Warmth season, Regnante added, This significant contribution will allow United Way of Long Island to bring essential help to families during the winter season. Since 1999, National Grid Foundation has contributed more than $1.34 million to help Long Islanders stay warm through the fund.

There are currently more than 177,000 Long Islanders living below the poverty line. The working poor and seniors living on a fixed income often face unforeseen financial difficulties, forcing them to make compromises like foregoing heat that could be potentially life-threatening. Margarita Grasing, Executive Director of the Hispanic Brotherhood of Rockville Center noted, There is a lot of need on Long Island. There are many who are doing well, but we also have a lot of poverty; people struggling to survive on very little money. Project Warmth makes a big difference for people deciding which bills to pay each month.

Long Islanders like Joan Fennel of Freeport hoped to receive a one-time grant to help pay her home heating costs. Fennel, a single grandmother who was affected by Hurricane Sandy is still reeling from the closure of her storm-torn business and mounting medical issues and is struggling to get current on her living expenses, including her utility payments. Living with her daughter and three young grandchildren, she receives regular termination notices from her utility companies despite her monthly attempts to pay her balances. She states, As a senior citizen on a fixed-income, I need help and Im no longer embarrassed to ask for it. I worked my whole life, but living on Long Island, Im not making the income needed to support life. Im making payments each month, but I just cant keep up. She acknowledged, I am so grateful the support I am receiving through Project Warmth. I feel so much more secure knowing that my family will be warm during the coldest time of the year.

Project Warmth is available during the winter months, generally opening in December, and remains open until the funds are exhausted. For assistance from Project Warmth, contact United Way of Long Islands 2-1-1 service by dialing 2-1-1, calling toll-free at 1-888-774-7633, or visiting their website.

Since its inception, Project Warmth has provided more than $9.8 million in emergency funding to nearly 88,000 children and adults. To support Project Warmth, please make a contribution on United Way of Long Islands website.

About United Way of Long Island

United Way of Long Island advances the common good, creating opportunities for a better life for all by focusing on the three key building blocks of education, financial stability and health. We recruit people and organizations that bring the passion, expertise and resources needed to get things done. LIVE UNITED is a call to action for everyone to become part of the change. United Way of Long Island is part of a worldwide network spanning across 41 countries and territories, including more than 1,200 local organizations in the U.S. For more information about United Way of Long Island, please visit www.UnitedWayLI.org, Facebook United Way of Long Island or Twitter @unitedwayli.

About the National Grid Foundation

The National Grid Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life, economic strength and environmental stewardship in National Grids service territory. The Foundations mission is to create opportunities for solutions to todays educational and environmental challenges. By awarding grants to non-profit organizations, the Foundation inspires and serves as a catalyst to a shared future, ultimately impacting and improving lives of the underserved in our neighborhoods. Since its inception in December 1998, the Foundation has provided nearly $20 million in grants to hundreds of organizations.

About the Hispanic Brotherhood of Rockville Center

The agency, a not-for-profit organization, was established in 1984 by a small group of Hispanic residents in order to assist the fast growing population of immigrants from different Spanish language cultures. As the size of the Hispanic population has grown, so has its original service area. The agency serves four surrounding municipalities: Freeport, Oceanside, Lynbrook and Baldwin under grants from the NYS Division of Housing & Community Renewal, Nassau County Youth Board, Nassau County Department of Senior Citizen Affairs, United Way of Long Island, as well as support from foundations and local churches. The organization provides foreclosure counseling under the New York State Attorney Generals office. For more information about the Hispanic Brotherhood of Rockville Centre, please visit www.hispanicbrotherhood.org.
Tech & Science, Local News, Business & Finance, Community, Charity & Cause, Health & Wellness

By Christian Abbatecola Published: January 29 2016

Columbia Care opened the first licensed medical marijuana dispensary in Suffolk County on the afternoon of January 29th, 2016.

Riverhead, NY - January 29, 2016 - The first Medical Marijuana Dispensary on Long Island, Columbia Care Facility of Riverhead, opened its doors for the first time today, welcoming its first patients shortly after a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The Compassionate Care Act, which was signed into law in the Summer of 2014, took effect just three weeks ago, on January 7th, 2016. In the time since, several distributors have begun seeing patients around New York, and with today's opening ceramony, Long Island. Patients who qualify for medical cannabis can begin the process of receiving treatment by bringing their medical records* to Columbia Care Facility (*Columbia Care of Riverhead is accepting patient by appointment only at this time).

"They need to just bring the medical records from their current doctor that is taking care of their qualifying conditions," said Scott Poretsky, Senior Director of the Suffolk Healthcare Cannabis Alliance. "As long as we have medical records that prove that they are under qualifying condition, the doctor can then make the recommendation that they can apply to the state. I believe it's a $50 fee to apply for the card...and then it takes a week or so to get it."

The list of conditions which currently qualify for a medical marijuana prescription in New York is quite short. Unlike states such as Colorado - where marijuana has been fully legalized - or California - where a wide variety of maladies can qualify a person for a prescription, New York's Medical Marijuana Program has only 10 specific conditions for which a patient can register.

Namely, the program currently applies to individuals suffering from cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Parkinson's Disease, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Neuropathies, Huntington's Disease, and Intractable Spasticity caused by damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord. The conditions were selected after the State was satisfied that marijuana can be used to reduce pain and improve quality of life in afflicted patients following a pilot program originally announced by Governor Cuomo in January 2014.

Though a step in the right direction, Mr. Poretsky believes the current legislation is too limited, preventing those who suffer from other conditions which can be treated by cannabis from receiving the same quality of care.

"The truth is we're the only state that has so many restrictions on conditions, on everything," he said. "The government has no right to refuse clinical data that says that XYZ condition is helped by medical marijuana, to say 'no it's not,' as well as ABC conditions. You know that's the next fight, as well as the fact that many patients can't afford [the current medication]."

The Compassionate Care Act has no provision which would require insurance providers to cover the cost of a marijuana prescription, meaning that most patients will have to pay for their medicine entirely out of pocket.

As of January 28th, only 306 physicians had registered to take part in the NYS Medical Marijuana Program, and 465 patients had been certified by their doctors. Poretsky hopes to raise both of those numbers by persuading more doctors and pharmacists to register, and by connecting patients with practitioners certified to treat their conditions.

"There is still a long way to go," he added. "We need to change the laws in the state, that's my main goal...as well as right now to get the patients that need it in touch with a doctor that can help them and get their medical marijuana."

There is hope for patients suffering from conditions not covered through the current program, as expanding the list of qualifying conditions may not require any additional laws to be passed at all. Under the Compassionate Care Act the Department of Health Commissioner reserves the right to add new qualifying conditions to the program.

"This is a major victory for patients. If the patient and physician agree that a severe debilitating or life-threatening condition should be treated with medical marijuana, it is cruel for government to stand in the way," said Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried of the program when it was signed into law.

Not all involved are dissuaded by the uniquely strict list of conditions presently covered under the Compassionate Care Act, however. Nicholas Vita, the Vice Chairman and CEO of Columbia Care sees a very bright silver lining in tough regulations which went into the act.

"We are actually really encouraged by this law, and we're encouraged by it for one primary reason: it's very methodical, and it has incredibly strict quality controls," Vita said. "Ultimately what matters most is just that, and no other state that I'm aware of has greater [controls]."

Vita believes that while the current legislation may be limiting in terms of who qualifies for medicinal cannabis, it also lays the groundwork for ensuring only high-quality, well regulated, and above all safe medication goes into New York's supply.

All of the marijuana issued through Columbia Care in New York is sourced through the company's own carefully regulated cultivation center in Rochester. Columbia Care also employs independent labs which test its products for both consistency and quality.

"It's a new arm of healthcare... it requires dialogue and discourse," Vita added.

In addition to tight controls over who can distribute and receive medical marijuana, the Compassionate Care Act also restricts how patients can use the medicine. It is still illegal to smoke marijuana in New York State, and the legislation does not provide for it to be infused in other edible goods; only medicinal oils and tinctures can be used.

Mr. Poretsky says that patients who may qualify for the Medical Marijuana Program may learn more by visiting the Suffolk Healthcare Cannabis Alliance's website or Facebook page.

Of course, they can also make an appointment at the new Columbia Care Facility in Riverhead, where patients will find a warm, open environment accented by sleek, modern design. Though the exterior of the facility may look like any other medical building, once inside, it's clear that Columbia Care Facility is anything but ordinary.

Columbia Care's Long Island Facility can be found at 1333 East Main Street in Riverhead. Those who live further west on the Island will be happy to know that a second dispensary also opened up in Lake Success today; it is located on 2001 Marcus Avenue and operated by Bloomfield Industries. Additionally, Columbia Care's NYC Location in Union Square opened up its doors earlier this month, on January 7th.
Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com

Columnists Press Releases
China said on Friday that Indonesia's first high-speed railway (HSR) has not been suspended.

"Media reports that claimed the railway project has been suspended due to a lack of construction license are not true," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the railway, which will link Jakarta with the provincial capital of West Java Bandung, was held on Jan. 21. Both sides attach great importance to the project, Hua said.

"China and Indonesia will push for the smooth construction of the railway to benefit the Indonesian people and use the project as an opportunity to improve bilateral practical cooperation," the spokesperson said.

"The construction of the railway is going smoothly," an anonymous official with China Railway Co. Ltd. said Friday.

Last October, China Railway signed a deal with Indonesian state-owned enterprises to form a joint venture to construct and operate the railway, with the latter to control 60 percent of the stake.

Once completed, the 150-km railway will cut travel time from Jakarta to Bandung from more than three hours at present to less than 40 minutes.
China's National Energy Administration (NEA) said Thursday that 171 people were killed in 45 coal mine gas accidents last year.

The accidents and causalities were down 8.2 percent and 37 percent from 2014, the NEA said in a statement following an inter-ministry meeting on the prevention of gas accidents.

Though the number of accidents has decreased each year, the statement said that there are still too many. More effort is needed in 2016 to avoid major accidents (those with over 30 deaths), reduce those that kill more than 10 and achieve a year-on-year reduction of casualties by over 10 percent.

Last year, China extracted 18 billion cubic meters of coalbed gas, up 5.5 percent from 2014, but only 860 million cubic meters were used, the NEA said. The government plans to increase the latter figure to 920 million cubic meters in 2016.

The NEA vowed to promote industry consolidation, eliminate outmoded production capacity and shut down coal mines that fail to meet safety standards, mired in long-term losses and with no prospect of making profits.
Chinese Ambassador to Botswana Zheng Zhuqiang on Wednesday handed over equipment and uniforms to Botswana's wildlife authority to support the latter's efforts on wildlife protection.

The donated equipment at the value of 1.7 million U.S. dollars were sponsored by the Chinese government for wildlife protection.

"China plays a major role in conserving wildlife and fighting illegal poaching of animals and has pledged to enhance international cooperation and exchanges in the area of wildlife protection," said Zheng, adding that more efforts should be made in supporting African countries including Botswana.

"Working with China will help us attain our results, because they understand the position and challenges we are facing," said Minister of Wildlife, Environment and Tourism Tshekedi Khama.

Khama said the donation came at the right time as the ministry of wildlife has challenges regarding financial capacity to be able to perform their duties as they would like to.

The donated equipment will help the ministry in preparing operations that officers are expected to undertake.
Hassan Rouhani. [File photo]

Iran has launched a push to reengage with the Western world after lifting of sanctions following the successful implementation of the historic nuclear deal. The agreement signed between Iran and five nuclear powers plus Germany last year paved the way for ending the pariah status of the Islamic republic. Now it is poised to reap the rich economic harvest.

The economic diplomacy has taken a driving seat in the ties between Iran and the leading European nations. The first signs of economic resurgence of Iran were visible during President Hassan Rouhani's trip to Europe. He started from Italy where he got a huge welcome. He had wide ranging interactions, including an audience with the Pope. The two sides also inked several agreements worth billions of dollars.

Rouhani said during a press conference at the end of three-day visit to Italy, that the lifting of sanctions had created an environment for win-win cooperation between his country and Europe. Using poetical expression he said, We are leaving the winter in our relations behind and heading into the spring and sunny days that will bring rich dividends for people on the two sides.

After Rome, Rouhani headed towards Paris to once again get a red-carpet reception. France had taken a firm position during nuclear talks but that was past, and now it is keen to do normal business with Tehran. Chiefs of several French companies visited Iran in September to explore their prospects. Some of them are now eager to transact real business as sanctions have been removed and there is no legal or diplomatic bar over dealings with Tehran.

Iran is keen to revamp its airline and interested to buy 114 Airbus planes. Chairman of the Iranian parliament's development commission, Mahdi Hashemi, was reported in media saying that his country may be looking to buy as many as 500 new planes over the coming three year. It is a huge number and can tempt any company to go to any limit for clinching the coveted deal.

Another important sector being immediately revived after lifting of sanctions is transport. French car maker Peugeot was selling at least 400,000 units per year in Iran before the sanctions were imposed. The company will try to recapture the market as early as allowed by the government of Iran.

Rouhani had planned to visit Europe in November but was forced to delay it due to the horrific Paris attacks by the Islamic State. The delay was blessing and added to the importance of the trip, as the president was free of the crippling sanctions that stopped major companies to do business with Iran.

Europe was Iran's largest trading partner before sanctions. And it may not be longer before it regains that status. One of the chief components of trade was oil which was badly hit by the nuclear row. Now the embargoes on importing oil from Iran have been removed after the agreement. Normal trade ties are picking and various other countries are lining up for it. It is expected that the current about 7.6 billion dollars trade with European nations will increase to over 28 billion dollars. The new trade deals will also bring investment and create jobs in Iran.

Rouhani's trip was first to Europe by any head of state since 1999 when reformist Muhammad Khatami visited Italy and Paris. The years under hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were wasted in petty bickering. His penchant for controversial statements was hardly helpful for the country's economy and the people struggling for a better life. The wasted economic potential of Iran should be in multi-billion dollars. Many Iranians are happy that the difficult period is over. The saner elements in the country are keen to forge new ties with world.

Iran after the nuclear deal may not be fully prepared to completely break its links with the past polices. Frankly, it will be hard to disavow everything which it has been espousing for decades. It needs time to come out of its own shadow.

Meanwhile, it would be better if Iranians start thinking in terms of economy. They should try to delink politics and economics. Practically it may not be possible to happen soon. But at least Iran can try to put economy on the top of national priorities, a notch above the political or strategic matters. Once it rises as an economic power, its leaders will have a lot of time and leverage to do politics.

Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Abu Muhammad al Julani, as shown during an interview in December 2015.

The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaedas official branch in Syria, has discussed a possible merger with some of its closest allies, according to well-connected jihadists online.

The news was first reported on Twitter by a user known as Muzamjir al Sham. His tweets drew responses from others, including Abu Ammar al Shami. Jihadists have identified Abu Ammar as a veteran al Qaeda member in Syria.

Abu Ammar offered his summary of the talks in a series of tweets on Jan. 27. Earlier this month, Al Nusrah called together the various factions that make up Jaysh al Fath, a coalition that swept through the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib last year. The al Qaeda branch proposed a full merger, meaning that the groups would fold their operations into a single entity with a unified leadership, according to Abu Ammar.

Two unnamed scholars attended the proceedings as witnesses and to oversee the talks, Abu Ammar explained. After they spoke, the head of each Jaysh al Fath faction addressed their allies.

The final person to speak was Abu Muhammad al Julani, Al Nusrahs emir (or leader).

Julani proposed that a new entity be established and offered to have someone else lead it, according to Abu Ammar.

But Julanis proposal included certain preconditions. For example, the organization would have to ensure the supreme rule of sharia law and protect foreign fighters. If the various constituents agreed to these demands, Abu Ammar claimed, then Al Nusrah would abide by the decisions of the new groups shura [advisory] council.

Julani issued this proposal for the sake of unity, and despite Al Nusrahs concerns about the actions of some of the other parties involved, Abu Ammar wrote. All of the factions in attendance supposedly agreed to the plan except for Ahrar al Shams representatives, who suspended the talks.

According to Abu Ammars account, Ahrar al Sham raised the issue of Al Nusrahs disassociation from al Qaeda. Julani explained the nature of this association and its implications from Al Nusrahs perspective.

Unsatisfied, Ahrar al Sham leader Abu Yahya al Masri insisted on the disassociation, despite all other factions agreeing with Julanis proposal. Another brother in attendance, Abu Bara Marshmarin (Ahrar al Shams former military commander), supposedly agreed with Julanis plan as well.

Abu Ammar argued that Ahrar al Sham needs to take only the final step and approve the merger for it to become final.

It should be noted that this is Abu Ammars version of events, and other attendees may have different views. For instance, Abu Ammar took issue with Muzamjir al Shams characterization of the talks, which is why he decided to publicly discuss the meetings in the first place.

Past disagreements over Al Nusrahs relationship with al Qaeda

This is not the first time that Abu Ammar has disagreed with Muzamjirs version of events. Last year, Abu Ammar took issue with Muzamjirs claims regarding Al Nusrahs relationship with al Qaeda.

On Mar. 4 2015, Muzamjir was cited by Reuters as saying that Al Nusrah was going to disengage from al Qaeda to form a new entity that could receive more assistance from nations opposed to Bashar al Assads regime, including Qatar.

A new entity will see the light soon, which will include Nusra[h] and [Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar] and other small brigades, Muzamjir was quoted as saying. The name of Nusra[h] will be abandoned. It will disengage from al Qaeda. But not all the Nusra[h] emirs agree and that is why the announcement has been delayed.

Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar and some smaller jihadist groups did, in fact, join Al Nusrah months later, in September 2015. But Al Nusrah did not break with al Qaeda, nor did it change its name.

Shortly after Muzamjirs comments were published, Abu Ammar mocked Reuters for citing him as someone who was in the know. As if Muzamjir can succeed in guiding the people, Abu Ammar wrote on a Twitter feed that has since been suspended. (His latest comments were posted on a new feed.)

Abu Ammar blasted the Reuters article as nothing but lies and slander against Al Nusrah, adding that it was a continuation of the media campaign against it! He described Qatar as Americas arm in the region, meaning Al Nusrah wouldnt work with the nation. Al Nusrah Fronts connection to al Qaeda is a Sunni connection of jihad, raising up the word of Allah, and liberating Muslim countries, Abu Ammar tweeted. It is not a political connection that is changed according to changing interests, he insisted.

Al Qaeda and the insurgency against Assad

Al Nusrah Front shares the same goals as Ahrar al Sham and some of the other jihadist groups in Syria. They want to defeat Assad and establish an Islamic state based on sharia law. (The al Qaeda branch views Abu Bakr al Baghdadis Islamic State as illegitimate for various reasons.) But the jihadists have long debated how to achieve these goals.

At first, al Qaeda sought to hide its hand in Syria. For example, al Qaeda did not openly recognize Al Nusrah Front as a branch of the organization until after the relationship became widely known.

Although it was suspected beforehand, Al Nusrahs place within al Qaedas network became undeniable after Abu Muhammad al Julani began to openly war with his former boss, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in 2013. When Baghdadi tried to reclaim command of Al Nusrah, Julani went over Baghdadis head, reaffirming his allegiance directly to Ayman al Zawahiri.

Zawahiri sided with Julani in the ensuing battle, but still chastised him for showing his links to al Qaeda without having our permission or advice. That is, Zawahiri didnt want Julani to expose al Qaedas operations.

Al Qaeda embedded senior operatives in other rebel groups as well, including Jund al Aqsa and Ahrar al Sham. In fact, Zawahiris most trusted advisor in Syria, Abu Khalid al Suri, was a leader in Ahrar al Sham until his death in February 2014. Other al Qaeda veterans have been embedded within Ahrar al Shams ranks as well.

Unlike the Islamic State, al Qaeda and its regional branches often create new brands and organizations to mask their influence. Outside of Syria, this can be seen in the various Ansar al Sharia groups that arose in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen in 2011. Ansar al Dine in Mali was set up by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to serve as a local front for the jihadists cause. And Osama bin Laden instructed the leadership of Shabaab in Somalia to keep their ties to al Qaeda secret. Bin Laden believed that as long as Shabaab did not announce itself as an official al Qaeda group (which it officially did in February 2012) it could garner more support from throughout the Arab world.

Ayman al Zawahiri and his commanders know that the al Qaeda brand name generates extra attention from Western counterterrorism officials and also limits the amount of assistance some regional actors are willing to provide.

This is at least part of the reason there was a dispute over Al Nusrahs overt ties to al Qaeda earlier this month.

When Muzamjir said Al Nusrah was going to break with al Qaeda last year, he explained that it was so the rebels could receive more assistance from Qatar.

Despite Abu Ammars protest on Twitter that Al Nusrah wouldnt work with Qatar, the nation has brokered favorable hostage exchanges for Al Nusrah, thereby generating much needed cash. According to the US Treasury Department, the aforementioned Abu Khalid al Suri received funds from al Qaeda financiers in Qatar. Other senior al Qaeda leaders have said it is permissible to work with countries such as Qatar and Turkey under certain circumstances. And Qatar has provided a permissive environment for jihadist fundraising, including for the groups fighting Assad.

However, some jihadists in Ahrar al Sham and other organizations consider Al Nusrahs clear ties to al Qaeda to be a detriment to the jihad in Syria. If Al Nusrah would publicly distance itself from al Qaeda, they argue, then the jihadists could receive more support from countries throughout the Gulf and elsewhere. Such assistance is seen as even more necessary in light of Assads alliance with Iran and Russia. Both nations have provided crucial support to the Assad regime.

Julani has steadfastly refused to renounce al Qaeda. He has argued that their arrangement is not impeding the jihadists cause in Syria. However, Julani has opened the door for other arrangements. Should a truly Islamic government be established in Syria, then he and other al Qaeda members will be among its first soldiers, Julani explained during an interview in December.

In the talks earlier this month, according to jihadists online, Julani said the new group could issue a blanket statement denying any links with parties outside of Syria. But the statement would not specifically mention al Qaeda. This offer apparently didnt go far enough for some in Ahrar in Sham.

But as the debate showed, the jihadists think there is additional assistance to be garnered if they can just assuage widespread concerns over al Qaedas presence in the anti-Assad insurgency. For this reason, it is a good thing that Julanis proposal fell through, at least initially. Some want to look the other way when it comes to the rebels ties to al Qaeda. And a new entity could provide the cover for its operations that al Qaeda has long sought.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

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Apple is hoping to replicate the success of the iPhone by tapping into another reality.

According to a new report in the Financial Times, Apple is secretly building a team of experts to develop the companys virtual and augmented reality efforts. Apple has reportedly being testing a secret VR headset prototype for months now. To be successful, Apples VR headset would have to rival Facebooks Oculus Rift, HTCs Vive, Samsungs Gear VR, and Microsofts mixed-reality HoloLens.

Apple has already poached experts formerly working on HoloLens to kickstart this secret initiative, according to the report. And just last week, the company brought onboard a top virtual reality researcher and former director of Virginia Techs Center for Human-Computer Interaction.

It remains uncertain whether Apple is developing a VR accessory for iPhones or a fully-integrated headset like Oculus Rift or HoloLens. Apple declined to comment on its VR efforts.

Martyn Williams Attendees at CES ride a virtual rollercoaster with Samsung VR glasses on Jan. 6, 2016.

In terms of virtual reality, uh, no, I dont think its a niche, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during this weeks earnings call. I think it can be  its really cool, and has some interesting applications.

Also recently, Apple acquired Flyby Media, a startup that had been working with Google to let smartphones see the world around them. Cupertinos virtual and augmented reality efforts can be traced back to 2008, however, when Apple first filed a patent for what looked to be a VR headset exclusively for iPhones.

Why this matters: This isnt the first time that Apple has looked into virtual reality. Apples interest in VR and AR dates back to the mid-2000s but back then Steve Jobs thought the technology was immature, according to FT.

The companys efforts into virtual reality technology were reignited by Facebooks purcharse of Oculus Rift in 2014. Now that Microsoft and other smartphone makers like Samsung and HTC are developing their own next-gen headsets, Apple is looking to dive head-first into VR as well.

Apple is reportedly looking to make more high-profile acquisitions in this area, but its altogether possible that the company decides not to release the headset if it cant get it right.

Last year Cook told The New Yorker that the companys greater goal for wearable technology was to create something that isnt obnoxious and that doesnt create a barrier between you and me.
The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council of China has recently released the latest draft of the amended Patent Law on its website for public opinions (the 2015.12 draft).

According to the 5th Plenary Resolution, China places innovation as its primary policy priority. Innovation at the theoretical, institutional and technological levels are highly encouraged by the government. The 4th amendment of the Patent Law is widely considered as a promising opportunity to support technology innovation initiatives in China.

The latest draft was prepared by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and is now submitted to the State Council Legislative Affairs Office for review. A new draft may be available for public comments later this year or early next year.

A major discussion point so far about this draft is the administrative endowment of patents. The dual-track approach of patent enforcement system in China is unique. A patentee is allowed to choose between judicial and administrative remedies for patent enforcement, although in practice few patent owners rely on administrative enforcement approach. One common issue, as patent owners and practitioners have often noted, is that local patent offices do not have enough manpower and always use a mediation approach to resolve disputes.

In this fourth amendment, it seems that the SIPO wishes to significantly add more utility to the administrative enforcement mechanism. It has aroused lots of attention that the 2015.12 draft proposed that in order to combat wilful infringement that disturbs market order such as group infringement and repetitive infringement, patent administrative authorities have the power to issue injunctions, and to confiscate or destroy infringing products and tools for infringement.

There has been some concern that the expansion of administrative enforcement powers may increase the risk of patent trolls. Some people argue that China should centralise its patent enforcement in the hands of judges, rather than allowing patent offices across the country to handle disputes. The final outcome of this debate remains to be seen.

A pleasant surprise is that SIPO proposes that China should allow partial designs to be patentable. The scope of design patent is expanded to partial design of a product from merely the design of a product (Article 2 of 2015.12 draft) This would further promote industrial designs, especially graphical user interface designs.

Besides, as China plans to sign up to the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs, the protection term of a design patent is extended to 15 years as required by the Hague Agreement (Article 42 of 2015.12 draft). In addition, a domestic design patent application is entitled to enjoy priority of six months, which gives foreign and domestic applications equal treatment (Article 29 of 2015.12 draft). But industry experts have been proposing China may follow the US practice, giving a one year grace period to patent applicants, without imposing harsh conditions.

Another pleasant improvement in the 2015.12 draft relates to damages. Punitive damage of up to three times for wilful infringement are introduced in the amendment of the Patent Law. Statutory compensation is significantly increased from Rmb10,000 to Rmb 1 million up to Rmb100,000 to Rmb 5 million (Article 68 of 2015.12 draft), although the lower limit Rmb100,000 is not meant to be a requirement. Considering that in practice the statutory compensation is adopted by a court in most patent infringement cases, the change on statutory compensation may be good news for patentees.

At the same time, some small medium enterprises raise a concern that a statutory damage of Rmb100,000 may be burdensome and even unfair if the scale of infringement is small.

Similar to what we have seen in the China Trademark Law, the proposed amendment also sets a mechanism regarding the burden of proof. After the infringement is concluded, if the patentee tries its best to collect evidence on damages, a court may shift the burden of proof to the infringer to provide evidence such as account books (Article 68 of 2015.12 draft).

SIPO also makes an encouraging change to the idea of the indirect infringement liability in the patent law. This was dropped in 2008 when China amended its patent law. SIPO seems to intend to change this through the new draft. In the 2015.12 draft, any one who knowingly provides raw materials, intermediaries, components or equipment that is specifically designed for infringing a patent, shall bear joint and several liability with an infringer. Besides, anyone inducing others to infringe a patent shall bear joint and several liability with an infringer (Article 62 of 2015.12 draft). This provision expands the scope of indirect infringement and may provide broader protection to patent holders.

A related rule is for online infringement. To combat online patent infringement, the SIPO now proposes that if an internet service provider knows or should know an infringer uses its internet service for patent infringement, but does not timely take any action to stop the infringement, the internet service provider shall bear joint and several liability with the infringer (Article 63 of 2015.12 draft). Similar rules often appear in the copyright law sector. It is a bit surprising that the SIPO wishes to impose contributory liability in the online space in the patent law. We expect some debate will take place.

The 2015.04 draft further regulates standard essential patents (SEPs). For example, if a SEP fails to be disclosed by a patentee during its participation in a national standard formation, that SEP shall be deemed to be licensed to a standard implementer. Both parties could negotiate a royalty afterwards. If the negotiation fails, the parties may request the SIPO to make a determination.

Industry players, patent practitioners and academics should follow the developments closely to make substantial improvements to China's innovation ecosystem.

Li Binxin Wang Ying

AnJie Law Firm26/F, Tower D, Central International Trade Center6A Jianguomenwai Avenue, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022, PR ChinaTel: +86 10 8567 5988Fax: +86 10 8567 5999wuli@anjielaw.comwww.anjielaw.com
This month we take a detour from trade mark issues to cover recent developments in data privacy, a subject that has been the focus of considerable attention from Chinese regulators over the past few years. On September 29 2015, China's National People's Congress promulgated the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law, broadening the scope of protection afforded to citizens' personal information, while also inserting new provisions aimed at combating online fraud, pornography and other illegal online content.

The Amendment is one in a series of recent data privacy-related pronouncements harmonising the country's data privacy requirements across the civil, administrative and criminal spheres. It follows the release in mid-2015 of a draft PRC Network Security Law that would create significant new obligations for businesses in China that collect, process, and use personal information.

Background

As China transitions from a manufacturing to a service economy, Chinese leaders view the internet as a critical tool to provide jobs and spur domestic consumption. In March 2015, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced the country's Internet Plus strategy, under which internet technologies such as big data and cloud computing are to be integrated with manufacturing, business and government to drive economic growth. Top Chinese officials are now considering the shape of the nation's next five-year development plan, which early reports indicate will place "innovation" at the forefront of development.

With the internet seen as a crucial driver of economic growth, Chinese officials are increasingly tasked with ensuring a proper regulatory environment to govern this new online ecosystem. Over the past few years, this has been reflected in the issuance of several laws and regulations establishing baseline protections for the personal information of Chinese citizens. And while China lacks a comprehensive national data privacy regulation, the patchwork of regulations that have emerged since 2011 now include many of the requirements commonly found in other, more developed legal systems, in particular for data relating to online and offline commerce.

Personal information protections expanded

From a data privacy perspective, the most significant aspects of the Amendment are the changes it makes to PRC Criminal Law Article 253. First added in 2011 under the Eighth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law, the previous Article 253 prohibited government employees and employees in certain public-facing industries (such as healthcare or telecommunications) from selling or "illegally providing" citizens' personal information obtained through their employment to third parties. But the Article's imprecise wording gave rise to uncertainty over its scope, in particular with regard to the types of industries covered.

Under the newly amended Article 253, no individual or organisation in any industry is permitted to sell or illegally provide citizens' personal information to a third party in violation of "relevant state regulations". Unlike the previous formulation, this prohibition now applies to all personal information, not only to personal information obtained through employment.

Where personal information is transferred in violation of the law, criminal liability may be assessed against both the provider and the recipient. In addition to the previous punishment of three years or less of criminal detention for "serious" violations, the Amendment now adds a new category of "extremely serious" cases that are subject to three to seven years' imprisonment plus fines. No further information is provided as to what constitutes a "serious" or "extremely serious" offence, though the Amendment does add a provision stating that those parties illegally selling or providing personal information obtained in the course of performing "official duties" will receive a "heavier sentence" under these remedial provisions.

With this new language, Chinese regulators have significantly broadened the scope of Article 253 to leave no doubt that all personal information collected within China must be transferred in accordance with China's relevant laws governing user notice and consent, collection, and scope of use.

New prohibitions for online acts

The Amendment also inserts two new provisions criminalising certain types of online conduct.

Under new Article 286(a), a "network service provider" that has failed to institute legally mandated IT-security mechanisms and refused subsequent orders by the authorities to adopt such measures may be criminally prosecuted where such oversight has resulted in:

transmission of a large volume of illegal information;

disclosure of user information causing serious consequences;

destruction of evidence used in a criminal case, where the circumstances are serious; or

other "serious" circumstances (undefined).

The Amendment also inserts a new Article 287(a) that provides for up to three years' detention and a fine in instances where an individual or organisation uses a data network to:

set up a website or mailing list to conduct fraud, transmit criminal information, or make or sell prohibited or controlled items;

publish information relating to the production or sale of controlled items, such as drugs, guns, pornography or other illegal online content; or

publishes information for committing fraud or other illegal or criminal activities.

Similar penalties are provided for in Article 287(b) for any party that assists the aforementioned acts by providing technical (such as server hosting or web storage) or other assistance.

China's e-commerce market is now the world's largest, and with these new provisions Chinese authorities seem determined to ensure that it develops under the healthy guidance of the state. As China acts to further its Internet Plus ambitions, companies with local operations will want to continue to monitor national regulations for compliance and exercise careful oversight and monitoring of company data collection practices and employee use.

Scott Livingston

SIPS Hong KongLockhart Road No 3Wanchai, Hong KongChinamail@sips.asiaTel: +852 2866 6400Fax: +852 2866 6408
India must put quality control at the centre of its policies on IP filing if it doesnt want to deal with a mess of its own making later
The transfer-of-authority ceremony for Black Sea Rotational Force took place aboard the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Romania, Jan. 22, 2016.

3rd Battalion, 8th Marines replaced Marines from 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment for the next iteration of the six-month deployment. Both units are stationed out of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Kemper Jones, the outgoing commanding officer, highlighted the mission that the oncoming battalion will assume.

Combined Arms Company and some of weapons company brought in tanks, artillery, engineers and the infantry enabling the opportunity to combine those forces and coincide training was a success, said Jones. The Romanian forces were in the middle of the fight participating alongside our mechanized forces throughout our time here.

The oncoming battalion brings approximately 500 Marines and sailors scheduled to conduct two large-scale exercises, five Platinum exercises, as well as numerous military operations working cohesively with several NATO allies.

As Marines, we come to this part of the world to support NATO and show our commitment. We have people here that have fostered relationships for years. We have people that have directly assisted BSRF, said Ansel. Those relationships transcend boundaries that contribute directly to regional security.

Lieutenant Col. Ansel and Sgt. Maj. Brian Alsleben, the oncoming sergeant major, uncased the units colors during the transfer of authority, which Col. James Donnellan, deputy commander for U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa, attended.

The outgoing BSRF rotation conducted 44 military-to-military engagements, four small scale, and five large scale exercises training alongside 17 countries.







Black Sea Rotational Force is a biannual rotation of Marines and sailors that are able to respond to a broad spectrum of military operations in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility. BSRF enables the continuation of regional stability while strengthening and maintaining partnerships with allied nations.

The rotational force of Marines and sailors gives U.S. European Command the continuous capability to integrate with NATO and partner nations in Eastern Europe.
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The two women in Ryan Goslings life have met, but what did they make of each other?

Ryan Gosling must be a very happy man, not solely because hes one of the hottest actors to ever have arrived in Hollywood or that hes dating Eva Mendes but because his mum approves of his girlfriend.

RYAN GOSLING ADMITS SECRET BALLET DANCING PAST

Its no secret that Ryan Gosling is very close to his mum, Donna (altogether now: awww) after all he did take her to the LA Gangster Squad premiere, so it must come as a comfort to him that shes allegedly given his relationship with Eva her support.

A source shared the news with US Weekly saying: Donna and Eva get along really, really well.

Donna wants Ryan to settle down and Eva is all about getting him on that train too, so they're both on the same page.

Is this a hint at babies? Theyd certainly be the most genetically gifted children in the world!

RYAN GOSLING INTERVIEW ON HIS SECRET FANTASY

But the relationship works both ways and having Ryan Goslings family on board has also pleased Eva as the source continued: Eva says thats what sealed the deal with Ryan. Theyre going to make it.

Step aside Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, theres a new power couple in town!

WATCH! The Place Beyond The Pines Ryan Gosling interview

EXCLUSIVE RYAN GOSLING IMAGE  THE HOTTEST YOUVE EVER SEEN HIM

RYAN GOSLINGS HOTTEST EVER LOOKS

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Repair yard Grand Bahama Shipyard Limited (GBSL) is in store for a busy year, with 20 cruise vessels booked for repair, maintenance and overhaul work in 2016. The scope of projects includes propulsion and technical systems overhaul, accommodations and public space upgrades and the addition of attraction facilities onboard.



These vessels are typically booked at least two years in advance to allow for planning and communication between the yard and clients.



The first cruise ship to enter GBSLs dry-dock in 2016 is Holland America Line operated Maasdam, a 55,575 GT vessel laid up for scrubber and ADG installations, overhaul of two thrusters and refit of the port and starboard rudders. Following Maasdam, Holland America Line will return to the yard with an additional two vessels from their fleet, Veendam and Prinsendam.



Several vessels operated by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line will receive overhauls and upgrades in 2016. The 154,407 GT Liberty of the Seas will undergo modifications and additions in late January. Cabins will be added to its deck 12 structure, as well as, the installation of a state of the art waterpark. On the technical side, azipods will be overhauled, major tank conversions will be performed, general repairs undertaken and a scrubber system installed. Similar repairs were executed in 2015 on Navigator of the Seas and Freedom of the Seas. Later in 2016, Jewel of the Seas and Adventure of the Seas will receive the same scope of work. Also operated by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Azamara Journey, will enter dry-dock mid January for a 14-day repair period to include an extensive interior refit.



In 2016 Carnival Cruise Line will have seven vessels docked at GBSL, namely, Carnival Fantasy, Carnival Magic, Carnival Splendor, Carnival Triumph, Carnival Valor, Carnival Sunshine and Carnival Liberty. The yard said significant work is planned for each vessel, including ADG installation on the Magic, Splendor and Valor, plus various accommodations and public space upgrades will be performed on all vessels.



Other notable cruise ships scheduled to receive work at the GBSL yard this year include P&Os Adonia, Norwegian Cruise Lines Norwegian Dawn, Celebrity Cruise Lines Celebrity Summit, Princess Cruise Lines Coral Princess and Mediterranean Shipping Co.s MSC Divina.
A crippled cargo ship was drifting slowly towards the French Atlantic coast on Friday as rescue teams struggled to board the distressed vessel.



The Modern Express, which was transporting 3,600 tonnes of wood from Owendo in Gabon to France's northern port of Le Havre, listed heavily to one side earlier this week in rough seas and has not recovered to an upright position, leading to the evacuation of the crew by helicopter.



French media reports said the problem may be due to its cargo having shifted.



As of Friday morning, the vessel was less than 300 kilometres from the western port town of La Rochelle, after being estimated at around 370 km from the port on Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the French Atlantic coast authority told Reuters.



The extreme 50-degree incline of the ship as well as difficult sea conditions had so far prevented teams from boarding to proceed with towing operations, but weather was more favourable on Friday, he said.



There was no imminent risk of the ship reaching the coast and no sign that water had entered the vessel or that fuel had leaked out, he said, adding that the French navy had sent a specialised anti-pollution ship as a precaution to join a frigate and three tugboats already at the scene.



Reporting by Valerie Parent
Singapore-based Chinpo Shipping Company (Private) Ltd was fined S$180,000 ($125,698) on Friday for facilitating a shipment of arms to North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions.



The Singapore District Court had found Chinpo guilty in December of transferring financial assets or resources that could have been used to contribute to North Korea's nuclear and missile weapon programmes. It also found Chinpo guilty of carrying out a remittance business without a license between 2009 and 2013.



Chinpo Shipping was named in a March 2014 U.N. report as helping to arrange the shipment of Cuban fighter jets and missile parts bound for North Korea, when they were seized in Panama in 2013.



It was the largest amount of arms and related materiel interdicted to or from North Korea since the U.N. first began imposing economic and commercial sanctions on North Korea in 2006, according to the Singapore District Court. It is also the first time that a law under the U.N. has been invoked in Singapore, the court said.



"Singapore is a responsible member of the international community," District Court Judge Jasvender Kaur said. "The company had no due diligence and such irresponsible conduct must be deterred", she said.



Edmond Pereira, a lawyer representing Chinpo Shipping told Reuters the sentencing was too harsh because the company was unaware of the value of the weapons.



"I think that the fines were on the high side because they didn't know how much the weapons were worth," he said. "They were not nuclear weapons and they seemed so old, like antiques that belonged in a museum."



ORGANIZED BY EMBASSIES

The 2014 U.N. report said North Korean embassies in Cuba and Singapore were suspected of organizing the shipment of Cuban fighter jets and missile parts.



Panama seized the Chong Chon Gang ship for smuggling Soviet-era arms, including two MiG-21 jet fighters, under thousands of tons of sugar. After the discovery, Cuba acknowledged it was sending "obsolete" Soviet-era weapons to be repaired in North Korea and returned to Cuba.



Documents seized along with the equipment, addressed to the ship's captain, offered detailed instructions on how to load and conceal the illegal weapons shipment and make a false declaration to customs officers in Panama.



"Load the containers first and load the 10,000 tons of sugar (at the next port) over them so that the containers cannot be seen," said the document, translated from Korean.



The U.N. report said Chinpo Shipping was "co-located" with the North Korean embassy in Singapore. It acted as the agent for a Pyongyang-based company that operated the vessel, and North Korean diplomatic personnel in Cuba arranged the shipping of the concealed cargo, the report said.



A North Korean embassy official in Singapore previously denied his mission had engaged in any wrongdoing.



Reporting by Fathin Ungku and Rujun Shen
On the U.S. Gulf Coast, two well-regarded maritime education providers are expanding to meet growing local demand, while satisfying local employers with quality graduates. The sense of community that they project is both real, and intentional.

Less than 350 miles apart, the ports of Houston and New Orleans handle all manners of marine commerce and cargoes, employ tens of thousands on the waterfront and collectively service an increasingly large percentage of the nations domestic and international marine traffic. As both ports deepen their channels and grow their facilities, the need for qualified mariners, dock workers and marine professionals has become more acute. In response, homegrown talent is emerging in both cities, trained locally and delivered directly to customers that need the help.

In both cities, that sense of community emanates, in part, from local community colleges, already providing a wide menu of marine training, but also expanding to meet new demands. Louisiana-based Delgado Community College is one such facility, having broken ground earlier this year on a new Delgado Maritime and Industrial Training Center. The $7 million state-funded project is expected to be completed by February 2016.

Separately, and located in close proximity to the Houston Ship Channel, the San Jacinto College Maritime Technology and Training Center is getting ready for this months debut. Construction has been ongoing since last Fall. The facility will serve as the site for certificate and associate degree maritime training delivered through U.S. Coast Guard-required and approved course work.

Both expansion projects will augment already robust maritime programs at the schools and increase enrollment and training capabilities. That they operate under the umbrella of a local community college system gives both local ties, measurable commitments to the cities that they serve, and real value to the brown water and inland commerce that thrives just minutes from their doorsteps.



Delgado Community College

Over time, the Maritime, Fire, and Industrial Training Facility at Delgado Community College has earned a national and international reputation for providing quality maritime and industrial firefighting, radar, safety and U.S. Coast Guard-approved training. For more than two decades, Delgados experienced instructors have helped provide training to licensed mariners and industry personnel in the maritime, oil and gas, and safety/homeland security fields.

At Delgado, courses can also be tailored to meet the specific needs of an individual company and the school boasts U.S. Coast Guard-approved training including full mission bridge simulator courses.

The Delgado Training Facility has been a U.S. Coast Guard approved facility since 1978, and is currently certified by such organizations as the International Association of Drilling Contractors and American Red Cross. Training is conducted for more than 8,500 students per year, serving local, regional, national and international companies. More than 90 courses are offered in marine firefighting and radar, industrial safety and emergency preparedness, most of which lead to industry-based certification. Located on 3.3 acres used for classroom, field and simulation training, the fire field contains 10 props used for both marine and industrial firefighting scenarios.

Additional courses include Wheelhouse Proficiency Management and Wheelhouse Z-Drive courses, featuring Louisianas first full mission bridge ship simulator and a second, interconnected bridge simulator to provide unlimited hands-on, realistic training scenarios.

Targeting the inland waterways, Delgado targets training leading to stacked and latticed credentials, from entry-level deckhand positions to top-level captains. Eventually, 300 participants will have trained and obtained one or more industry credential. The program began in May 2014 and continues through 2016.

The soon-to-be-completed (March 2016) Maritime Center of Excellence will include a 23,000 square feet administration/education building and a 1,500 square foot saltwater pool with enclosure for expanded Water Survival, HUET, Able-Bodied Seaman and Lifeboatman training. The state-of-the-art building is intended to create a cutting-edge training facility to meet growing occupational needs of maritime, transportation and safety-related fields, as well as to provide a one-stop shop for licensing and certifications for inland waterways and offshore maritime clients. Delgado regularly reaches out into the local community, providing programs that articulate with secondary schools, four-year universities and industry apprenticeships.

According to Rick Schwab, Senior Director of the Maritime Program at Delgado, the new facility will bring growth. He explains, Numbers have steadily increased over the years, with even higher enrollments expected to coincide with the new building expansion. The new center will have additional classroom space and increased classroom size. This will afford us the opportunity to take in more students at once and to offer a wider variety of training at any given time. In anticipation of this, there are several new programs in development that will be offered in the new building, such as QMED and Engine Resource Management.

Delgados Regina Radosta told MarineNews in December, For inland and coastal credentialed personnel / students, I would say that quality sets us apart from the competition. From course development to information delivery, every step is taken with care and attention to detail. The final result reflects every staff members most important questions: What is the pertinent information the participant will need? What is the best way to impart this information so that the student will retain it and be able to utilize it in the workplace?



San Jacinto College

In the considerable shadow cast by the San Jacinto Memorial, and overlooking the Houston Ship Channel, the San Jacinto College Maritime Technology and Training Center is in its final phase of construction. The facility will serve as the site for certificate and associate degree maritime training delivered through U.S. Coast Guard-required and approved course work. Maritime staff and faculty have already begun moving to the new Maritime Technology and Training Center based in La Porte, Texas.

The San Jacinto College Maritime Technology and Training Center showcases a training dock with lifeboats, davits and fast rescue craft, and a separate industry dock for crew changes. This also allows for vessel specific training for local maritime companies and serves as an aquatic training facility for sea survival and life raft training. 15 classrooms house engineering simulators to train maritime engineers for hydraulic, electric, pump control, motor control, heating and air conditioning, and refrigeration and a multipurpose space for industry conferences and corporate partner meetings has also been created.

The new facility includes three bridge simulators, all donated by the Houston Pilots. These ship control bridges are a part of a 3,748 square-foot simulation suite, complete with instructor stations, debrief classrooms and development stations. A full-mission engine room simulator is planned for the future and will interact and interconnect with the bridge simulators to allow vessel management exercises to accommodate deck and engineering officers and crew at the same time, in the same scenario.

The latest campus expansion, says San Jacintos maritime instructor Captain Amy Arrowood, has been the maritime programs 10 percent annual growth which has outgrown the schools current facilities located on Highway 225. But the maritime aspect of the school straddles both sides of the education equation  both academic and professional training. Arrowood explains, Our maritime program has two sides. We have some students that are getting their associates degree and then we have the professional mariners that come in for endorsements, upgrades and renewals for their licenses and Coast Guard training. Right now, there are 42 students in the credit program actually studying to get their associates degree in Maritime Transportation. And, says Arrowood, this particular degree in Maritime Transportation is geared towards those looking for positions on vessels.

Within the new facility, those programs will benefit from better sized and equipped classrooms, and some of most advanced and latest issue simulators on the market  a Kongsberg full mission bridge simulator, as well as an advanced Transas navigation lab. Here, radar and ECDIS will be taught leveraging the Transas equipment. Three bridge simulators, all capable of being interchanged as tugs, will be available to students. All of those simulators can interact with another within the same exercise.

Even limited to the previous, somewhat cramped spaces, San Jacinto issued a little over a thousand certificates in this past calendar year.

At San Jacinto College, the students in the associates programs are typically new to the industry. And, they serve the full gamut of demographics. Arrowood told MarineNews in December, Id say 85 percent know port, starboard, bow, stern, but that might be the extent of it. If theyre not right out of high school, theyre a year or two out. But we do have some with some prior sea time in some capacity  tanker men, or some military. Weve got three students with prior military from the Navy and the Coast Guard.

Beyond this, San Jacintos industry ties are deep, they are meaningful, and they help to shape the very curriculum that the school delivers daily. Arrowood adds, We work really close with Higman Marine, Buffalo Marine and Harley. Were also really close with the Houston Pilots and G&H Towing. We have an advisory committee that works with us  we meet a couple times a year and they give us guidance and since theyre either sending their mariners  their employees  for training, as well as looking at new talent already studying at the school. Those advisory meetings in turn produce course content that translates into real world skills, as well as more frequent offerings for courses and credentialing classes that are in high demand.

Unlike the maritime academies which focus largely on four-year bachelor degrees, augmented by a Marad-supplied training vessel, Arrowood says that San Jacinto depends on its industry partners for internships. Its not like a maritime academy; we dont have a training ship. So the students go out on commercial vessels for the summer, and then they come back, do the next fall and spring semester, then they go out and do another, their second internship. And then they would graduate in August of that second year.

Captain Arrowood is quick to point out that when the students do graduate, they leave with that associates degree, and 12 Coast Guard-approved course completion certificates. But, theyre not walking out of this program with a license, mostly due to the fact of not having enough sea time. They are typically graduating with about 120 days of sea time. But, in the same breath, she insists, Whats really cool about this program is that its not cookie cutter like the academies, where everyones either a third mate or a third assistant engineer. San Jacinto students therefore work towards a variety of goals, including 100- or 200- ton masters licenses, a tanker man position and some even want to work in the blue water industry  in which case, theyll work towards their AB ticket first.

Arrowood sums up the San Jacinto College philosophy nicely, saying, The students are our clients. But, the ultimate goal is for them to get a job, so thats where it comes back to our advisory committee. Thats how it works. We now have 17 members, but were always looking for new support and new people to come in and help guide us in our program as it grows and expands.

Community College Curriculum for Community Customers

Not everyone who wants to find and train for a career on the waterfront has the time, wherewithal and connections to travel far and wide to get the training that they need. On the U.S. Gulf Coast, increasing numbers of prospective marine employees and students no longer have to make that arduous journey. Aptly serving the communities that support them, Louisiana-based Delgado Community College and Houstons San Jacinto College are both bringing expanded maritime training opportunities to the local waterfront. Leveraging recent, high-tech expansion projects, both schools can now promise that this wont ever change. At the end of the day, isnt that what community is all about?





(As published in the January 2016 edition of Marine News - http://magazines.marinelink.com/Magazines/MaritimeNews)


DP World today announces that, after 23 years with the Group and 11 successful years as Group CEO, Mohammed Sharaf has retired from DP World Group, effective today, to pursue other opportunities.



The Board has commenced a process to identify a permanent successor. Pending that appointment, the Chairman of the Company will carry out the Group CEOs duties and functions on an interim basis.



Mohammed Sharaf, said: I would like to thank His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Sultan bin Sulayem, Chairman of DP World and the DP World Group for giving me the opportunity to be part of the success story of DP World. It has been a very exciting journey and I am confident that the team will continue taking DP World to even greater heights.



The Chairman of DP World, Sultan bin Sulayem, said: I would like to thank Mohammed for his years of dedication and service to the Group. He has been an invaluable part of the success we have achieved and I wish him well for his retirement.



The Group will announce its FY2015 Throughput on 8 February 2016 and its Preliminary Results for the twelve months ended 31 December 2015 on 17 March 2016.
Finnish engineering company, Norsepower today announced that it has received 3 million in investment from a syndicate led by venture capital fund Power Fund III and has installed a second rotor sail on Bores Ro-Ro vessel MS Estraden. Data analysis and verification by NAPA, the leading maritime data analysis, software and services provider, has been fundamental to these developments by proving the effectiveness of Norsepowers technology.



A single Norsepower Rotor Sail was installed on the 9,700 DWT Ro-Ro carrier in early 2015. Although the weather conditions were largely calm over the three-month trial, data analysis from vessel performance monitoring and verification software, ClassNK-NAPA GREEN, demonstrated that the rotor sail delivered clear and significant savings of 2.5%.



Based on this evidence, Bore has ordered a second installation; the first commercial order for a Flettner rotor in shipping. Doubling the rotor sails has now proven to double fuel savings; NAPA recorded a 6.1% reduction in fuel consumption, avoiding 1,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.



Measurement, analytics and third-party verification has helped Norsepower evolve its rotor sail from an innovative system for trial, to a proven and marketable fuel efficiency technology with a clear business case. In addition to the expanded market potential, this evidence has also helped Norsepower increase its enterprise value and secure the future of the business. A syndicate led by Power Fund III, a Clean tech venture fund managed by VNT Management, has invested 3 million to support Norsepowers growth and market expansion.



Tuomas Riski, CEO, Norsepower commented: Since delivering our first proven application with Bore last year, our business has grown from strength to strength. With this significant investment from VNT and our first commercial installation, we have now cemented our position as leaders in the growing wind technology market. Objective data and impartial verification of the fuel savings delivered by the technology has been absolutely critical to this evolution and will remain central to the way in which we work with shipowners and operators.



Jouni Salo, Product Manager, Shipping Solutions, NAPA commented: Independent verification of Norsepowers technology has required a significant and complex analysis process. The operating route of the vessel posed many challenges from differing wind conditions to varying sea depths, all of which impact fuel consumption and had to be accounted for with randomised trialling, robust data collection and advanced statistical modelling. The results, however, have made it all worthwhile. The two-sail installation is delivering the largest fuel saving of any efficiency technology NAPA has measured. We talk figures of Rotor Sails being effective 80% of sailing time, 460kW average propulsion boost and 1.5MW peaking for 10% of time. The fact that NAPA has not only proven this eco-efficiency technology, but also boosted Norsepowers enterprise value through orders and investment really shows the power of big data when applied correctly.



Victoria Stulgis, Senior Associate, Carbon War Room commented: It is great to see Norsepower, Bore and NAPA collaborating to pilot this technology and conduct rigorous data analysis. These first movers are key to demonstrating that efficiency technologies such as wind have proven savings, which can unlock new sources of investment for Flettner rotors and other technologies that can deliver significant efficiency gains.



The Norsepower Rotor Sail Solution is a modernised version of the Flettner rotor - a spinning cylinder that uses the Magnus effect to harness wind power to propel a ship. When the wind conditions are favourable, Norsepower Rotor Sails allow the main engines to be throttled back, saving fuel and reducing emissions while providing the power needed to maintain speed and voyage time. Rotor sails can be used with new vessels or can be retrofitted on existing ships without off-hire costs.
As the cross-hairs of the scope landed on target, Cpl. Ishida, from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces Western Army Infantry Regiment, squeezed the trigger of the .50-caliber machine gun. The tremor from each round firing traveled up his arms and into his body as he kept the machine gun on his target. Smoke from the machine gun floated past and machine gun fire filled the room. He stood up in the machine gun turret smiling as he turned to his fellow soldiers, who stood watching from behind.



United States Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Michael Casey, the battalion master gunner for 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion and simulator operator, worked alongside JGSDF Master Sergeant Fukase to arrange scenario challenges and place targets for the next JGSDF soldier to overcome in the amphibious assault gunner simulator during Exercise Iron Fist 2016 at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, Jan. 26.



Iron Fist is an annual, bilateral amphibious training exercise designed to improve the Marine Corps and JGSDFs ability to plan, communicate and conduct combined amphibious operations, and also conduct bilateral training in advanced marksmanship, amphibious reconnaissance, fire-and-maneuver assaults, staff planning, logistical support, medical knowledge sharing and fire support operations.



Similar to the Marines, JGSDF soldiers began their hands-on training in a simulator, which tests the amphibious assault crews skills working together to overcome various challenges such as engaging moving and stationary targets at unknown distances. The simulator also offers the ability to control variables, such as weather conditions, the amount of ammunition and weapon system failures.



The simulator allows us to develop any scenario for the [JGSDF] soldiers, teaching them the individual, crew and section leader levels, said Casey. It is important for the crew of an amphibious vehicle be able to quickly identify a target, know their weapons capabilities and execute engagements with their weapon systems effectively.



As the JGSDF develops their Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, Japan wishes to continue combined amphibious training for their ground self-defense forces. Exercises like Iron Fist help play a key role in the advancement of Japans amphibious capabilities.



Working with the simulators gives the [JGSDF] soldiers the chance to begin to experiment and learn from different scenarios, said 1st Lt Michael Ragonese, platoon commander, for 1st Platoon, Bravo Co., 3rd Amphibian Assault Battalion. The simulator offers that hands-on appreciation for the capabilities and limitations of the amphibious vehicle.



Since 2006, exercise Iron Fist has offered Marines and JGSDF soldiers the unique opportunity to train and work side-by-side on U.S. soil.



The knowledge shared during exercise Iron Fist will effectively increase the cohesion between the U.S. Marines and the JGSDF soldiers during an amphibious operation, said Ragonese.





More Media
Gold and Silver Price Manipulation: Can It Be Empirically Verified?

Dr Brian Lucey, Dr Jonathan Batten and Dr Maurice Peat have just published some interesting research looking at the thorny issue of whether there is manipulation of gold and silver prices.

In their paper Gold and Silver Manipulation: What Can Be Empirically Verified?, they examine the issue of gold and silver price manipulation, in particular price suppression.

Source: Gold and Silver Manipulation: What Can Be Empirically Verified?  SSRN

Their research, to be found on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) website, is not conclusive:



Do these findings clearly support the notion of price suppression? No. They are at best suggestive, said authors, Brian Lucey of Trinity College in Dublin, Jonathan Battena of Monash University in Australia, and Maurice Peat of the University of Sydney Business School.

The study highlights contract expiration dates as the likely time for price manipulation or suppression. The researchers said they noticed large spikes in returns around the last three days of each month, which is typically when futures and options contracts expire. However they conclude that

it is likely that that the high volatility associated with the abnormal cluster is the driver of the results presented in this study, as opposed to manipulation.

Precious Metal Prices

29 Jan: USD 1,112.90, EUR 1,019.89 and GBP 776.84 per ounce

28 Jan: USD 1,119.00, EUR 1,026.14 and GBP 781.59 per ounce

27 Jan: USD 1,116.50, EUR 1,027.14 and GBP 781.04 per ounce

26 Jan: USD 1,114.70, EUR 1,028.42 and GBP 785.80 per ounce

25 Jan: USD 1,103.70, EUR 1,020.29 and GBP 773.96 per ounce

This update can be found on the GoldCore blog here.

Mark O'Byrne

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In the second reading (1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13), Saint Paul reflects on the theme of charity. This passage is often referred to as the hymn of charity and is one of the most beautiful passages in Saint Pauls Letters. Being faced with the community of Corinth, which was torn by rivalries, Saint Paul tells them that they are Christs body, bound in unity by his Spirit of love. He tells them that love is the only gift that will count at the end of time.

In the Gospel (Luke 4:12-30), the evangelist continues the gospel message of last Sunday where Jesus went to his home town of Nazareth and preached in the Synagogue, telling his townspeople that the prophets passage he read was being fulfilled in their presence. The fact that Jesus is performing miracles elsewhere outside his town enrages his townspeople, who want to be the only ones to benefit from his largesse. Where Jesus preaches a gospel of inclusiveness, with God being for everyone, his townspeople want God for themselves alone. Jesus, however, shows them that God also works outside the realms of his chosen people. In the course of this Mass, let us pray for the grace of charity so that we may discover Christ in our neighbors as we share the joy of love with them.

First Reading: 1:4-5. 17.19.

In the days of Josiah, the word of the Lord was addressed to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you; I have appointed you as prophet to the nations. So now brace yourself for action. Stand up and tell them all I command you. Do not be dismayed at their presence, or in their presence I will make you dismayed. I, for my part, today will make you into a fortified city, a pillar of iron, and a wall of bronze to confront all this land: the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests and the country people. They will fight against you but shall not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you  it is the Lord who speaks.

V/ The word of the Lord.

R/ The word of the Lord.

Comment

The prophet Jeremiah is the second of the Major Prophets of the Bible, the first being Isaiah, the third Ezekiel and the fourth Daniel. Jeremiah lived in the last decades of the kingdom of Judah  a very important period, since it saw the collapse of the Assyrian empire, the rebirth of the Babylonian empire and the complete disappearance of the kingdom of Judah with the deportation of its leading families to Babylon.

The African Bible tells me that Jeremiah lived in Judah when the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 587 BC and deported its inhabitants to Babylon. Jeremiah was well placed to see all these events and was familiar with the conditions in Judah after the deportation. He was born into a priestly family and received his prophetic mission from God round about the year 626 BC, while still a young man. During his long ministry that lasted over forty years, Jeremiah never tired of reminding his people of their covenant obligations and warning the incompetent leaders that their infidelity would bring down Gods anger and punishment on the whole land. Even though he was a peaceful man, Jeremiah was constantly in conflict with his people, kings, priests and false prophets, even suffering imprisonment in the process, but he was not afraid because he knew that he was only doing Gods work.

His warning of impending doom for Judah went largely unheeded until King Nebuchadnezzars forces came storming into Jerusalem in 587 BC. They conquered the Holy City and exiled most of its population to Babylon. Some Church historians believe that Jeremiah stayed back in Jerusalem for a while before being taken to Egypt by force by some Jews, who fled after the assassination of the king the Babylonians had put in place. This tradition holds that Jeremiah was eventually assassinated by his fellow Jews and is therefore thought to be buried on the African continent.

The passage of our meditation is from the first chapter of Jeremiah and it mainly represents Gods call to the prophet. He was called to be a prophet from his mothers womb. He received the divine call to be a seer during the reign of king Josiah (640-609 BC). He had the uncomfortable role of announcing Gods impending punishment on his people, if they did not repent from their sinful ways. The kings, the priests, the false prophets and the population in general do not want to listen to him and even physically harassed him. Fewer prophets in the Bible suffered as much persecution as Jeremiah. He preached in the temple in Jerusalem, denouncing the corrupt forms of worship that the priests were practicing and for this, he was imprisoned. He, however, continued his prophetic work through his secretary, Baruch. He was finally forced into exile in Egypt, where he died.

What does this reading tell me as a Christians living in Cameroon today? It tells me that if Jeremiah were to live in Cameroon today, he would still be as persecuted as he was in his day. Some courageous bishops and ministers of other denominations, who have spoken out against the ills plaguing our country, particularly corruption and embezzlement of public funds, have also been persecuted. Our country stands in dire need of true leaders, like the prophet Jeremiah, both in civil society and in the Church, who love and serve the people God has entrusted to their care. It is not rare either for Church leaders themselves to mistake Church coffers for their own private funds. Let us pray, in the course of this Mass, that God should raise from among our people leaders in church and in civil society who are truly out to serve our people and not wait for our people to serve them, as it is largely the case today. We make our supplication through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Second Reading: 1 Cor 12:13-13:13

Be ambitious for the higher gifts. And I am going to show you a way that is better than any of them. If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all. If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever. Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other peoples sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end. But if there are gifts of prophecy, the time will come when they must fail; or the gift of languages, it will not continue forever; and knowledge  for this, too, the time will come when it must fail. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect; but once perfection comes, all imperfect things will disappear. When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me. Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known. In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.

V/ The word of the Lord.

R/ Thanks be to God.

Comment

Chapter 13 of First Corinthians is definitely one of the most beautiful passages from Saint Pauls letters. It is a wonderful hymn that presents charity in all its splendor. Charity results from love which is to be found in the new order of things established by Christ. It comes from the love of God for us, a love so strong that God sacrificed his Son, Jesus Christ for us (Jn 3:16). Through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Christian can respond to this love by discovering God in his neighbor. He discovers that we are all children of the one Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

In this song of love, Saint Paul is very clear as to what true love is. A Christian without love is a dead Christian. Love should be expressed in concrete acts of charity. Charity is such a wonderful gift that without it all other gifts make no sense. Saint Paul makes this clearer by referring to those gifts which appear to be most exceptional  the gift of tongues; knowledge and heroic actions. But these talents are not the most important thing, according to Saint Paul. To him, some people may preach the Gospel with eloquence, some may have gifts of tongue, some may have the gifts of prophecy or of healing and performing other miracles. However, none of these gifts surpasses love.

Christian love is not selfish because it is always patient and kind and never jealous. It is never rude, and never takes offence unnecessarily. True Christian love is ready to ask for excuse when the other party is hurt; it is ready to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. The Holy Spirit plays an important role in love as it moves us to it. When we love someone God is at work in us, enabling us to love. Without love, we will not be able to make any meaningful contribution to our society.

What lesson do we learn from this reading that can enhance our Christian lives here in Douala? The qualities of love Saint Paul gives in this reading also apply to us, be it in our family or in our Christian community. What is lacking in many of our families today is love, which bonds us together. We may have all the wealth in the world but if we have no love, or if we have no one to love, or no one to love us, our lives remain empty. Love stands high above money, wealth, material goods, or even health.

Let us pray with Saint Thomas Aquinas to be people of charity: Grant, Lord, that I may gladly share what I have with the needy; humbly ask for what I need from him who has, sincerely admit the evil I have done, calmly bear the evil I suffer, not envy my neighbor for his blessings, and thank you unceasingly whenever you hear my prayer. Amen.

Gospel: Luke 4: 21-30.

Jesus began to speak in the synagogue, This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen. And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips. They said, This is Josephs son, surely? But he replied, No doubt you will quote me the saying, Physician, heal yourself and tell me, We have heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own countryside. And he went on, I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country. There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijahs day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elishas time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman. When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.

V/The Gospel of the Lord.

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

Comment

In todays Gospel we see how Jesus, after preaching in the synagogue in Nazareth, is rejected by his own townspeople. Some of them marvel at the gracious words that come out of his mouth, while others are concerned mainly about his background: he is a mere carpenter. They feel hurt that Jesus does not perform miracles in his own town as he does elsewhere. They presume they have a special entitlement and so they demand that he perform miracles to satisfy their vanity, not to change their hearts. Given their lack of faith, Jesus performs no miracle. He works no miracle where there is such an obvious lack of faith. Later on when he meets Herod and the latter demands a miracle of him, he will not perform any (Lk 23: 7-11).

He tells them that his missions is addressed to the whole world, not only to them, his fellow Jews, by using two examples from the Old Testament, which show that one needs to be well disposed before miracles can lead to faith. One is Elijahs miracle at the home of a Sidonian woman (1 Kings 17:9) and the second is Elishas curing of Naaman, the Syrian when he could have cured many of the lepers that lived in Israel (2 Kings 5: 14). By raising the case of the widow and the leper, who are generally rejected by society, Christ clearly tells them that God welcomes them all.

Christ is preaching the inclusive nature of our faith. Our God is not a God of any one people, not even his chosen people; he is a God of all humanity. He welcomes everyone who repents his sins and comes to him. He is the father in the story of the prodigal son, who welcomes back with open arms a son who goes astray but realizing his error, comes running back to his father for forgiveness (Lk 15: 11-32). Christs attitude hurts his people who then try to kill him. But since his hour has not yet come, he withdraws unhurt from the crowd. On other occasions too during his public ministry, people will try unsuccessfully to kill him but God has decreed that he will die on the cross when his hour comes (John 18:32).

Our God is an inclusive God. He rejects no one. We are therefore challenged to seek out and bring back to the fold all those brothers and sisters of our who, for one reason or other, have back-slided in their faith, or those who are not yet in communion with our faith. Christ reaches out to everyone, irrespective of social class, tribe, ethnicity, or color of the skin. We too should imitate him and reach out to our brothers and sisters whose faith has grown lukewarm, or those who have not yet heard the Word. Lets be missionaries to them through acts of kindness and patience. Through our exemplary lifestyle, we can show them the way back to Church.

As we take Christs message of salvation to the world, let us be ready to be persecuted and rejected as Christ is by his people, or as the prophet Jeremiah was, as we heard in the first reading of this day. Let us pray to the Holy Spirit to guide us and protect us as we proclaim Christs word of salvation to the world. Amen.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican leaders in the General Assembly will announce a bipartisan deal on gun policy Friday that would effectively reverse Attorney General Mark R. Herrings move to sever concealed carry reciprocity agreements with more than two dozen states while enacting several gun-safety measures sought by Democratic lawmakers.

The deal, confirmed by McAuliffe's office and the office of House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, would undo Herring's decision last month to end reciprocity agreements with 25 states, a move decried by gun-rights activists.

The deal would require the Virginia State Police to be available at all gun shows to perform background checks for dealers who are not federally licensed. It also would require anyone subject to a permanent protective order to surrender guns in their possession, a measure aimed at removing guns from domestic violence situations.

The deal, which will be formally announced in a news conference Friday and will be enacted through several pieces of legislation, is the first major bipartisan breakthrough of the legislative session.

"I think everyone gave something up and everyone got something," said Howell spokesman Matt Moran.

"The governor believes this is a bipartisan deal that would keep Virginians safe," said McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy.

Coy said Herring's action on concealed carry permits served as a catalyst for the agreement.

Without his leadership, this deal would not have been possible, Coy said.
Podemos proposal to form a government of progress has upset the whole circus surrounding the formation of a new government in Spain.

[Statement by Lucha de Clases]

The ruling class, made up of the bankers and big businessmen, have been shocked and reacted with anger. First of all because the government coalition proposed by the leaders of Podemos, with the Socialist Party [PSOE] and United Left [IU], is a viable proposition from the point of view of parliamentary arithmetic. It would only require the active or passive support of at least some of the Catalan and Basque nationalist MPs. Secondly, because such a proposal has galvanised the hopes and expectations of millions of working class families and youth who are indignant at the corruption and impunity of the rich, the austerity measures imposed by the right wing and its politicians and want to ensure that Rajoys Popular Party is ejected from power.

The ruling class is also fuming because for weeks they attempted to paint Podemos as a radical and anti-system formation which would never negotiate with the PSOE, in an attempt to use this to justify the inevitability of a government based on one or another combination of PP, Citizens and PSOE.

Now the proposal by Podemos has unmasked the real intentions of the PSOE leaders, showing they are not left wing at all, and revealing that it is they who are not interested in forming a government of progress despite all their talk. Previously they had argued that Podemos and its allies had made the right of self-determination for Catalonia a conditio sine qua non for government talks. Podemos and its allied forces have not renounced the demand for a Catalan independence referendum, but have said that this is not a condition for talks with the PSOE, and that they are prepared to listen to any other proposal as long as it means a real and democratic solution to Catalan aspirations.

The proposal by Podemos and its allies

What Pablo Iglesias has proposed is the formation of a plural and proportional government of progress. He has said clearly that Podemos and its allies do not want to be responsible for the eventual continuation of a right-wing government. He has added that as long as a real possibility exists of forming a progressive government, Podemos is prepared to work for it and that it is taking the initiative as PSOE cannot be trusted to do it on its own, having betrayed on many occasions the aspirations of change of working class families. He also said that inasmuch as they are very skeptical of the real intentions of PSOE leaders, the only way to make sure a progressive government is formed is with the direct participation of Podemos and its allies in such a government.

Since PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez demagogically stressed his progressive credentials during the campaign, Pablo Iglesias has outlined a whole series of basic measures which would form the bedrock of a joint government.

These would include a shock program of social emergency (to stop all evictions, to stop all electricity and gas disconnections from families in need; that all unemployed receive a subsidy; that women affected by domestic violence are given alternative accommodation), as well as the repeal of the most important reactionary laws introduced by the Popular Party: the gagging law against democratic rights, the labour counter-reforms and the education counter-reform LOMCE, amongst others. The proposed government would also introduce a progressive taxation reform by increasing taxes on profits and on top earners; the defense of the public sector and an end to cuts; and a program to create secure, decently paid jobs.

Pablo Iglesias added that an eventual PODEMOS-PSOE-IU government could not accept that any members of of its component parties sat in the Administration Boards of big companies and that they should therefore resign. The so-called revolving doors through which former ministers are given lucrative positions in the boards of companies related to the ministries they occupy is one of the methods of political corruption and has become a key campaigning point for Podemos.

The proposal also involves a wide-ranging constitutional reform which would then be put to a referendum, as well as concrete measures to cleanse the state apparatus of corruption.

Regarding the most important issue of the national question, Iglesias said that the government would have to accept the pluri-national character of Spain and to organise a referendum in Catalonia. The victory of En Comu Podem (ECP, Toghether We Can, Podemos allied list in Catalonia), in the general election in Catalonia should be reflected directly in the future government, he said. This would mean the setting up of a new Ministry of Plurinationality in which ECP spokesperson Xavier Domenech would be the minister.

The proportional part of the government proposal would mean that Podemos, United Left and their allies together would have at least the same number of ministers as the PSOE in the government, including the vice president and a ministry for IU. To back up this proposal Pablo Iglesias reminded everyone of the election results: the added votes of Podemos, United Left and the joint allied lists in Galicia, Catalonia and Valencia (over 6 million) are higher than the votes of PSOE (5.5 million). Therefore, in any negotiations, Podemos and its allies would not have a subordinate position but one of an equal to PSOE.

A repetition of the PSOE-IU pact in Andalucia?

Some comrades have drawn a comparison between this proposal and the unfortunate and negative experience of United Left in its participation in the Andalucia PSOE government in 2012-15. But the comparison is mistaken. At that time the leadership of IU in Andalucia acted as a junior partner of that government and therefore accepted responsibility for implementing the policy of cuts in the region which was dictated by the Spanish government.

In reality it would be more precise to compare the current proposal by Podemos with the situation which exists in many of the Local Councils for change, where the local alliances of Podemos, IU and others were the first party in a number of local council seats. That forced the PSOE to allow them to take office, otherwise it would have allowed the right wing to rule those councils. At that time, the leadership of PSOE reluctantly agreed to hand over the local councils to Ada Colau in Barcelona, or Manuela Carmena in Madrid, in order not to damage their own prospects for the general election.

A warning

In this sense, we do support Podemos proposal. However, it is necessary to warn about the limitations such a government would face. First of all we need to stress that we cannot give any trust to the leadership of the Socialist Party, which has close links with the ruling class. The apparatus of PSOE has not reflected, in its policies nor programme, the powerful shift to the left in Spanish society. From the very beginning, Podemos, IU and its allied forces, which have the advantage of being much stronger in terms of social mobilisation than in the parliamentary institutions, would have to use street protests to fight back against any attempt of PSOE leaders to water down or back-track on the government program. Mass mobilisation will also be a must in terms of facing the inevitable onslaught of the ruling class, who will use the mass media, their businesses and institutions, to sabotage the actions of any progressive government.

We must warn, as we have already seen recently in Greece, Argentina and Venezuela, that the bosses and bankers will use blackmail, extortion and boycott to attempt to humiliate and break any government which attempts to bring real change.

Faced with such actions, the only alternative would be to wrest power and the key levers of the economy from this oligarchy of the 1% - which has the same share of wealth as 80% of the population. Only that would allow the democratic and rational planning of the countrys main productive resources so that we can start to address the most pressing social needs of the majority: those of the working families, the unemployed and student youth, the old-age pensioners and the impoverished middle layers.

PSOEs problem

The first one to react to Podemos proposal was acting president Mariano Rajoy, who used it as the perfect excuse to avoid a government formation vote. Knowing that he would be defeated (at least in the first round), he then argued that there was evidence that others wanted to form government in order to decline to face congress first, which would have been normal procedure as the leader of the largest party in the chamber.

Pedro Sanchez, for his part, also attempted to escape the responsibility, attacking Rajoy for dereliction of duty and declaring that he would ask the King, during the second round of consultations, to propose again that Rajoy should attempt to form the government. Clearly, Pedro Sanchez is unsettled as his farce has been exposed. He does not want to form a real government of progress.

The cunning proposal by Podemos leaders has the support of the majority of PSOE voters. According to a poll published by El Pais (and carried out before Pablo Iglesias proposal), 57% of PSOE voters and 72% of those who voted Podemos are in favour of a left-wing coalition government. However, for the pro-bourgeois leadership of PSOE, this is an offer they cannot accept.

Before Podemos proposal, the apparatus of PSOE was split regarding the question of forming a government. The dominant right wing, inspired by former Spanish president Felipe Gonzalez, was in favour of abstaining and thus allowing the continuation of PP in government, either as a minority government or with the support of Citizens. This was argued in order to guarantee the countrys stability, and their preference would be for Rajoy to resign in favour of another PP leader, in order to transmit a certain idea of renewal.

The wing represented by PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez, reflecting the mood of a layer of the apparatus and the ranks of the party, wanted to avoid at all costs being seen as allowing the continuation of the PP in government for two reasons: to prevent a process of PASOK-ization of PSOE, and to satisfy Sanchezs own ambitions of becoming the countrys president. His aim was a government coalition with Citizens which would be backed by Podemos abstention in parliament.

Unfortunately for both wings, Podemos proposal brings the question of a PSOE-Podemos agreement to the fore, and forces the leaders of both wings to explain to their own ranks and voters why they refuse to even sit with Podemos to talk about their proposal.

The weekend following Pablo Iglesias proposal was one of hide-and-seek for Pedro Sanchez. After having said that voters of PSOE and Podemos would not understand it if we would not reach an agreement, he then went on to contact Citizens leader Albert Rivera, instead of contacting Pablo Iglesias. He then tweeted that he had attempted to contact Iglesias but failed. To which Iglesias responded by calling Sanchez directly, which he succeeded in doing without any problem!

PSOE finally reacted officially with a statement in which it denounced Podemos proposal as blackmail and stressed that they would only attempt to form a government if Rajoy failed to do so. Stepping up the pressure, Pablo Iglesias said that if PSOE refused his proposal of a coalition government, Podemos would vote against a minority PSOE government, which would then force early elections.

PSOEs right wing is preparing for the partys Federal Council on January 30th, where they will want to pass a resolution rejecting any agreement with Podemos.

Ruling class mobilisation against Podemos proposal

Since election night on December 20th, the main aim of the ruling class has been to sabotage any possibility of PSOE reaching an agreement with Podemos. Even before this latest proposal by Iglesias, the mass media launched a new campaign of manipulation against Podemos. They invented a report proving that Podemos was being funded by Iran and Venezuela. Then they made up a scandal about an alleged secret visit to Venezuela involving Podemos members, members of the Catalan independence party CUP and people close to ETA, to discuss the breakup of Spain. As a matter of fact, this was no secret meeting but a gathering of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity in december 2014, which was public and widely advertised.

What this scandal revealed is how the secret services conduct surveillance operations on activists carrying out perfectly legal activities and then, at the appropriate time, recordings are leaked to the media. The aim was clear: to embarrass Pedro Sanchez into distancing himself even more sharply from Podemos. The ruling class had a clear aim: to guarantee the continuation of a right-wing government of PP-Citizens, with the acquiescence of PSOE.

After Podemos proposal, the ruling class and its media intensified the campaign. The next day El Pais published a scathing editorial attacking Podemos for making a scene at the opening of the Congress sessions and now using the figure of the King to increase the image of the weakness of Sanchez. Enough of tricks. They did not like the fact that Pablo Iglesias made his proposal directly to the media after his round of consultations with the King, instead of going first to Sanchez himself.

The same editorial in El Pais did not mince its words in appraising Iglesias proposal and telling Sanchez how to respond: ...the situation is not better for Pedro Sanchez, for whom Pablo Iglesias yesterday laid a trap in the form of a coalition government, from which he would do well to escape as soon as possible

In a situation which reminds us that of Greece last summer, or of Portugal in the fall, pressure from the European Union has also been piling up. Id like Spain to get a stable government as soon as possible, insisted president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, a few days ago. The reason why was explained by Eurogroup president Dijsselbloem: Spain will have to present further adjustment. European capital has already said that Spains budget is off-target and is demanding 10bn worth of additional cuts. It is not just an economic question. The formation of a anti-cuts government in Spain would be bad examples for other Southern European countries. However, forming the type of government the ruling class needs is proving very difficult.

Finally, the mobilisation of the Spanish ruling class has also made use of the social agents. The president of BBVA bank, Francisco Gonzalez - who earns 15,500 a day- spoke of the need for a government with the same policies as the previous one and warned that instability is delaying investment decisions. Similar statements were made by Joan Rossell, President of the main bosses organisation CEOE.

The worst part of this campaign has been the lamentable role played by the leaders of the main trade unions CCOO and UGT, who, once again, have emerged from their hiding holes to defend the need for stability in the country, that is, in defence of the regime. They participated in a highly publicised meeting on January 26th with the leaders of the bosses organisation CEOE in order to analyse the current political situation and share the common points < around which they believe agreements can be reached to guarantee the formation of a government (!!).

It is only a question of time for the working class, once it starts to move in a massive way, to brush aside the old bureaucratic leaders.

The plans of the ruling class are clear: they want to force the formation of a PP-Citizens government with the support or acquiescence of PSOE, which would remain in the opposition in order to prevent Podemos and its allies from appearing as the only opposition force. For such a government to have a modicum of authority and allow Citizens to justify their support, they probably will try to push the discredited Rajoy to one side and replace him with another PP leader who is less tainted by all the corruption scandals. Another variant would be a minority PP government with the abstention of both Citizens and PSOE, and then, a few months later, for Rajoy to resign and then Citizens would join the government.

Yet another option would be for both Rajoy and Sanchez to go to congress in turn and be defeated, to then move towards a government as described above but with both leaders having previously resigned.

Whatever the final form of the government, the ruling class wants to avoid early elections which would see Podemos and its allies (perhaps in a joint list with IU) overtake PSOE. The Federal Committee meeting of PSOE on January 30th will shed some more light on the processes.

Meanwhile, the ruling class cannot hide its anger at the apparatuses of both the PP and PSOE who are not doing what they should be doing - putting the particular interests and personal ambitions of their leaders above the general interests of the ruling class. They are particularly worried about the possibility of the Kings authority being damaged by these farcical goings-on.

Combine parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle

While Podemos leadership has made cunning use of its parliamentary tribune to weaken the position of its rivals and explain its own political proposals to a wider layer, they would be making a serious mistake if they were to put all their trust in what Marx described as parliamentary cretinism.

If the proposal of a government of progress is to be taken seriously by the working masses, their families, the youth, the pensioners and other layers, they should accompany it with a call for a mass mobilisation throughout the whole country in support of their proposal. That would put the PSOE leaders under enormous pressure.

Mass meetings in working class neighbourhoods should be called to explain the content of what is being proposed. The lodging of parliamentary initiative 25 on the part of Podemos, which includes opposition to cuts, increasing the minimum wage, emergency measures for families in need, halting evictions, etc, was a very positive step. It should be accompanied by a mass campaign of meetings and rallies to give it maximum publicity.

The only way to break the deadlock to the benefit of the working class is by taking the struggle outside of parliament. A joint call for a national mobilisation issued by the Dignity Marches, the Mareas (Tides - campaigns against cuts and austerity), Podemos, United Left and others would have a powerful response.

The struggle could be organised around a simple platform of four or five points: repeal of the PP labour counter-reform, repeal of the amended article 135 of the Constitution which enshrines austerity; repeal of the undemocratic gagging law (Ley Mordaza); stop all evictions; reverse all cuts in healthcare and education. Agitation around these points should be linked to the proposal for forming a government. Such a campaign should culminate in a march on Madrid.

As we have explained before, if the ruling class finally manages to install a government loyal to their interests in the next few weeks, it will in any case be a weak government which will soon lose its social base of support.

From all this it is important to stress one main conclusion which needs to be drawn: there is no alternative to austerity without breaking with capitalism. What is needed is the nationalisation of big banks and monopolies, under workers control. Armed with a program of social transformation and basing ourselves on the mass organisation and mobilisation of millions in the streets and workplaces, Si Se Puede! (Yes We Can!)

January 27th

Source: Podemos proposal for coalition government unmasks real intentions of ruling class
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Clennon L. King was working as a television news reporter and anchor in Florida when he interviewed a woman about her tabletop book about the oldest city in the United States: St. Augustine. He asked her why there were no photographs of African American people, no mention of the historic visit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and no information on the turbulent 18-month battle there for civil rights.

She told him that "just wasn't the angle."

King - no relation to the slain civil rights - said it seemed as if African Americans and the pivotal battle that directly led to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 "had been wiped from the hard drive of the history of that city."

Now a Boston-based filmmaker, King is bringing his film, "Passage at St. Augustine," to Springfield College as part of its events marking Black History Month.

It will be shown on Thursday, Feb. 4, at 6 p.m. in the Cleveland E. and Phyllis B. Dodge Room of the Flynn Campus Union, 263 Alden St.

Joining him for a panel discussion and question-and-answer session following the screening will be St. Augustine civil rights veteran Mimi Jones of Roxbury, who participated in the 1964 Florida campaign; and Springfield College Professor Martin Dobrow, an expert on King's visit to Springfield College to deliver the commencement address during the '64 St. Augustine Movement.

The screening and program are free and open to the public.

ON SCREEN

Film:

"Passage at St. Augustine"

Where:

Flynn Campus Union at Springfield College, 263 Alden St., Springfield

When:

Thursday, Feb. 4, at 6 p.m.

Cost:

Free

A second experience helped to propel King to make the documentary: An African American woman approached him at a grocery store and told him she was a high school teacher concerned that her school was "watering down" Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, and she thought it was a shame. She had been told it was not celebrated because "he didn't have anything to do with Florida."

Clennon King - whose father was an attorney for the Civil Rights leader - knew better and decided to move forward with the documentary because if the "most valuable assets," children, were being entrusted to schools that did not know about his role in Florida, they would not learn about it there. "I had to do the story," he said.

It took him 13 years, but "I knew I had a special responsibility to move on this," he said.

"I'm excited to be sharing this important civil rights story where people from Massachusetts played a major role," King said. "In the racially-charged atmosphere America now finds itself in, this film is both timely and relevant - giving us a chance to mark history, so as not to repeat it."

In the spring and early summer of 1964, St. Augustine made headline news throughout the world and "proved pivotal in passing the landmark Civil Rights Act of '64," said King said. "The irony is there is little evidence that the campaign ever happened, which is why producing the film was so vital."



The film features several Massachusetts connections to the story including the arrest of a WGBH radio news reporter covering the St. Augustine Movement story and Boston-area college students on spring break participating in the movement.



The film earned The Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking at the 2015 Roxbury International Film Festival.





Passage At St. Augustine 2015 Trailer from AugustineMonica Films on Vimeo.
cheesesteak

A cheesesteak from Pat's King of Steaks.

(Yuri Long / Flickr)

One of Philadephila's most famous restaurants for cheesesteak was rapped for violations the city's health department considers serious.

During an inspection of Pat's King of Steaks in South Philadelphia this month, a city inspector reported witnessing 11 infractions.

The issues included mouse droppings found within the restaurant, a dirty knife in the kitchen and a slimy substance built up on an ice machine.

The violations were found during a surprise inspection, Philly.com reports. Close to 200 businesses were inspected this month in the city.

Co-owner Frank E. Olivieri Jr. told Philly.com each infraction has been corrected.
handgun via MSP.jpg

This is a photo of the loaded gun that Massachusetts State Police officials said was discovered in a car that was stopped after a chase that began in West Bridgewater and ended in Brockton on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Police said they also found about 233 grams of pot inside the vehicle, whose two occupants were arrested.

(Massachusetts State Police)

WEST BRIDGEWATER  Two people were charged with gun and drug crimes after a brief car chase in Plymouth County on Wednesday afternoon.

A State Police trooper witnessed a Chrysler Sebring commit an alleged motor vehicle violation on Route 24 in West Bridgewater, stopping the car as it exited onto Route 123.

The trooper spoke with the driver, then returned to his cruiser to process Kevin A. Green's paperwork. At that point, the 23-year-old Randolph man took off at a high rate of speed and forced other motorists off the road as he crossed into Brockton, police said. Another trooper joined the pursuit, which ended after the Sebring wound up in a snowbank outside a restaurant.

Both Green and his passenger, 19-year-old Atiyana C. Phillips-Lawson of Dorchester, were taken into custody after police said they found them with a loaded 9 mm handgun and about 233 grams of marijuana.

Green and Phillips-Lawson were placed under arrest and brought to the Middleboro barracks for booking. Both were charged with marijuana possession with intent to distribute and unlawful possession of a firearm without a license.

Phillips-Lawson was additionally charged with possession of a large-capacity firearm, while Green was also charged with possession of ammunition without an FID card and seven motor vehicle violations, including negligent driving and operating after a suspension.

The suspects were held without bail pending arraignment in Brockton District Court. It was not immediately known if they have lawyers.
181 Laconia Street 12916.jpg

This home at 181 Laconia St. was the transportation hub for Santana Express and Santana Bus Lines, according to federal prosecutors.

(Stephanie Barry / The Republican)

SPRINGFIELD - The former owner of a rogue transportation company based in Springfield pleaded guilty to "willful violations of safety laws" in federal court on Friday.

Wilking A. Mateo Santana ran a transportation company that shuttled local customers between Springfield, Hartford and New York City out of a modest duplex in Springfield, according to charges made public in U.S. District Court.

Federal transportation watchdogs slapped Santana Express, a related company, with bad safety ratings and yanked the company's license.

"We won't allow the traveling public to be put at risk by unsafe bus operators," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement in 2013. "We will take swift action when we uncover companies that ignore our federal safety regulations."

The safety regulations he violated were not detailed, but regulators said his drivers and vehicles were not in compliance with federal regulations. They said the company used substandard vehicles and employed unqualified drivers.

"Investigators found that Santana Busline failed to ensure that its drivers comply with hours-of-service requirements, allowed unqualified drivers to operate its vehicles in an unsafe manner, failed to conduct periodic vehicle safety inspections, failed to properly maintain and repair vehicles as required by federal regulations and knowingly dispatched vehicles with safety defects," the statement read.

Santana continued to operate unmarked 15-passenger vans and failed to pay civil penalties for at least a year after he had been ordered not to.

The charge is a misdemeanor, and Santana likely may receive one year of probation at his sentencing, set for May 4 before U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni.
2016-03-02 10:00:00

Shane Center Ballroom, 415 E. Lewis, Livingston

Contact: Katie Weaver at 222-4156 or [email protected]

Throughout rural Montana, downtowns, neighborhoods, and communities are being revitalized through the redevelopment of vacant, run down, or underutilized properties. These redevelopment projects have broad impacts in the community, including beautification, increased availability of commercial and residential, and improved property values.

"Extending the productive life of properties with historic value sustains our local culture and it often makes more economic sense to reinvest in existing assets than to develop greenfield projects," said Steve Caldwell, Park County Commissioner.

On March 2, MSU Park County Extension, in collaboration with Park County, the City of Livingston, and Montana Department of Environmental Equality, is hosting a symposium to educate people on tools and programs that available to reduce the barriers of property redevelopment.

The Redevelopment Symposium will feature success stories from rural communities across Montana. Key individuals involved with these projects will give an overview of how their properties were transformed and insight into their process. Information from local, state, and federal programs and agencies about available funding and technical expertise to can support the transformation of vacant or underutilized properties into a valuable reuse will also be shared. This workshop is also an opportunity to connect with and share ideas and resources about potential projects in Livingston and Park County.

"There are many properties in Livingston and Park County that can once again be valuable economic assets," shared Katie Weaver, Park County Economic & Community Development Extension Agent. "The symposium is a great opportunity to learn from others and envision what is possible here."

The symposium is free and open to the public and anyone interested in business, redevelopment, and economic growth. Specifically, this workshop will benefit architects, engineers, bankers, realtors, insurance agents, local business owners, community and nonprofit organizations, economic developers, contractors, city and county staff, elected officials, and developers.

The Livingston/ Park County Redevelopment Symposium will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., March 2, in the Shane Center Ballroom, 415 E. Lewis, Livingston. Seating is limited. RSVP is required by February 23 at http://bit.ly/1OA843z. Lunch will be provided.

For more information contact Katie Weaver at 222-4156 or [email protected].
Small businesses are a critical contributor to Montanas economy. They bring growth and innovation to our communities. They spread good ideas and create new jobs. They can respond and adapt quickly to changing economic climates. They are building blocks for larger companies.

Through our efforts small business owners can get the help they need to start, own, and operate successful small businesses.

Highlights include:

$41.9 million in client financing obtained

1,177 entrepreneurs consulted

$49.7 in sales generated by client businesses

789 jobs created and retained

Full Report: https://t.e2ma.net/message/gudwi/guhvci
United States Senators stood up for what they believed in todayand it wasnt pretty.

During a debate over construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, intended to carry oil from Canada to the United States, the Senate voted on an amendmentjust for show, reallyon whether climate change "is real and not a hoax." Easy questioneveryone said yes, its real. (Well, not everyone. Good job, Senator Roger Wicker, Republican from Mississippi1. You do not believe science.) But then Brian Schatz, Democrat from Hawaii, decided to push the issue. He introduced another amendment adding that human activity was a significant contributor to the aforementioned climate change. And the Senate voted again.

Victoria Tang

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/senators-dont-believe-human-caused-climate-change
McDowell Early College (MEC) has begun its annual recruitment process for new students.

Recently, staff visited each middle school and the Alternative Education Center to deliver information to rising ninth-grade students.

During the presentation, students are familiarized with the early college program and invited to attend Prospective Student Night, which familiarizes students and parents about all things early college.

This years informational meeting will be Tuesday in the McDowell Tech auditorium at 6:30 p.m.

The meeting will allow potential applicants to hear from early college staff, students and parents. It will also allow attendees to ask questions about the program

All rising ninth-graders who currently attend McDowell County Public Schools and their parents are invited to attend this event.

At the end of the informational session, applications will be handed out that need to be filled out and returned to MECC on Monday, Feb. 29.

If the application is mailed it must be postmarked by Feb. 29. No late applications will be accepted. Students will receive a letter of notification by April 15.

Each year, approximately 50 students are selected to attend MEC.

During the 2014-15 school year, McDowell Early College had a 100 percent graduation rate and was honored by the North Carolina Department of Instruction.

Students who are selected to attend McDowell Early College have the opportunity to earn both a high school diploma and an associates degree before graduating high school.

MEC was started to target first-generation college goers. More than 80 percent of the students attending MEC will be the first in their families to earn a college degree.

Some students attend MEC for four years and others finish in five, but every student who graduates from MEC will receive some transferable college credit that will save their families money for college.
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.


Clinical researchers at UCLA have been testing an electronic patch from NeuroSigma, an LA, CA firm, as a potential therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Monarch external trigeminal nerve stimulation (eTNS) device has received European approval to be used to address epilepsy, depression, and recently attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Its powered by a standard 9-volt battery and delivers low current electrical signals into the head to stimulate the trigeminal nerve. In other words its not electroconvulsive therapy you remember from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

The study involved mostly civilians who have gone through very difficult situations, including physical abuse, rape, and auto accidents. While everyone in the group has had difficulties managing their PTSD, the Monarch device helped to control symptoms and led to improvement in sleep, mood, and overall quality of life.

Some details from the study abstract in journal Neuromodulation:

Twelve adults with PTSD and MDD were studied in an eight-week open outpatient trial (age 52.8 [13.7 sd], 8F:4M). Stimulation was applied to the supraorbital and supratrochlear nerves for eight hours each night as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy. Changes in symptoms were monitored using the PTSD Patient Checklist (PCL), Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS-17), Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (QIDS-C), and the Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire (Q-LES-Q). Over the eight weeks, eTNS treatment was associated with significant decreases in PCL (p = 0.003; median decrease of 15 points; effect size d 1.5), HDRS-17 (p < 0.001; 42% response rate, 25% remission; d 2.1), and QIDS-C scores (p < 0.001; d 1.8), as well as an improvement in quality of life (Q-LES-Q, p < 0.01). eTNS was well tolerated with few treatment emergent adverse events. Significant improvements in PTSD and depression severity were achieved in the eight weeks of acute eTNS treatment. This novel approach to wearable brain stimulation may have use as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy in these disorders if efficacy and tolerability are confirmed with additional studies.

Flashbacks: NeuroSigmas Monarch eTNS System for Epilepsy, Depression Cleared in Europe; NeuroSigmas Monarch eTNS, First Non-Drug Treatment for ADHD Approved in Europe

Study in Neuromodulation: Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation for Comorbid Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder

Source: UCLA
Tyto Care, an Israeli firm, has developed a portable device that helps monitor all sorts of health parameters to let doctors diagnose patients remotely. Imagine keeping this device at home and, once a family member gets sick, calling your doctor and performing a basic checkup. This would include performing auscultations just like with a regular stethoscope, but the doctor listening to the sounds at the office; measuring temperature with the thermometer; looking under the tongue using a built-in camera coupled with a tongue depressor; and looking into the ears using an otoscope.

The Tyto device is currently going through the FDA clearance process, hopefully one day offering people the option of staying at home rather than visiting the clinic in most simple health situation.

Tyto Care also has plans for a TytoPro kit, a more advanced version of the device that would interface with existing electronic medical records systems.

Product info page: Tyto

(hat tip: Israel21C)
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is famous for being central during the Manhattan Project that built the first nuclear bombs. It has maintained its focus on nuclear weapons and related technologies, and now its trying to apply its know-how toward helping to kill cancers. Specifically, the investigators at Oak Ridge want to make proton therapy a lot more affordable than it is now.

Proton therapy uses highly energized hydrogen ions to attack tumors. These are spun up inside particle accelerators to near speed-of-light velocities and then released toward a tumor. Because they only damage tissues just where they stop, they cause significantly less damage than X-rays that influence all tissues on the way to the target. But, while proton therapy should be considerably safer, the cost of such systems (about $100 million) is prohibitive for nearly all hospitals.

The Oak Ridge researchers are now working with a team from Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) laboratory in Germany toward using much cheaper lasers to accelerate ions to the necessary energies required for therapy. Theyre running simulations on the powerful Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge that recreate how lasers strip off electrons from hydrogen atoms, leaving positive ions that can be made to accelerate toward a negative charge.

A snippet from an Oak Ridge story about the research:

Because of its various collaborations and diligent work on Titan, the team was able to create some of the most realistic three-dimensional simulations of high power laser interactions with targets that are on the scale of the laser focus. With the calculation power available, the team could use targets at densities close to what is used in experiments. One of the main advances dealt with the creation of plasma caused by laser energy deposited into the target well before the main part of the laser pulse hits the target. This so-called preplasma can be much larger than the initial target, meaning the team has to simulate a much larger volume. These effects are present in experiments as well as in large-scale simulations, so the team is able to offer a much more detailed comparison between simulation and experiment.

Read on at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Alaska Airlines is launching its first major brand change in 25 years.

Global branding and design firm Hornall Anderson created the new image for the Seattle-based airline with the goal of raising its national visibility.

For more than 80 years, the airlines point of difference has been combining outstanding performance with genuine, caring customer service which has resulted in a fiercely loyal following.

However, rapid growth, continual improvement, and a ruthless focus on their customers experience was leaving their brand expression behind, according to the company.

Hornall Anderson worked collaboratively with the airline to understand and define what makes the airline successful, creating a brand strategy that resonates emotionally with both employees and customerswhile also adding focus and direction for decision-making going forward.

advertisement advertisement

Our goal was to proudly show the rest of the world what Alaska passengers have known for a long time: Alaska Airlines is dedicated to understanding flyers, and to giving them the best experience possible, said Euan Fraser, strategy director for Hornall Anderson.

The refreshed visual and verbal expression aims to respect the heritage and personality of the airline while injecting more warmth, energy and confidence into the brand. The elements of the system allow the brand to show up consistently, but with enough flexibility to be organic, approachable, and bold when necessary.

The smiling Eskimo proudly looks ahead, welcoming passengers with warmth, wisdom, and care. His energetic aura reflects Alaskas positive outlook and passion for brightening peoples journeys. And the bold new wordmark confidently signs off everything they do with the trusted Alaska name, explains David Bates, creative director for Hornall Anderson.

The redesign includes the airplane livery and cabin interiors, inflight collateral and food and beverage packaging, airport signage, website and mobile app, updates to the uniforms, and a short film to investigate the meaning behind the face on the tail of their planes.

Hornall Anderson will continue to help the airline extend the brand, says Sangita Woerner, VP of marketing at Alaska Airlines.

More importantly, theyll be our strategic thought partnerensuring that were translating our new brand identity in the most impactful way possible, Woerner adds.
by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, January 28, 2016

All of Toyland is abuzz with big news from Barbie: Mattel says it is expanding its Fashionistas line with three new body types  tall, petite and (cue sighs of What-took-them-so-long from feminists everywhere) curvy. And its adding many new skin tones, eye colors and types of hair to the line, as well as introducing (cue horrified shrieks from fashion fiends) a flat foot.

The toy marketer is launching the line with #TheDollEvolves, a big social media splash, including a video explaining the new look. And while it would be easy to write the move off as too little, too late  the 56-year-old blue-eyed blonde has been watching her sales decline for the last four years  toy experts say thats a little too simplistic.

advertisement advertisement

For one thing, Barbie is first and foremost a fashion doll, explains Jim Silver, CEO/ editor in chief at TTPM, a leading product review site for toys. Shes designed to be one size, so that all the clothes and shoes Mattel make fit her, and to make it easy for kids to change her clothes and shoes. (The dolls primary audience is girls between 3 and 7.) Retooling production for many new sizes is a massive undertaking, he tells Marketing Daily.

But he says there has long been a deeper, more philosophical argument within the El Segundo, Calif.-based toy company about the Barbie-ness of the woman herself. Is she a character in her own right, like a character from a movie? There have been many Batmans, for example, but they have always been Bruce Wayne, and always been Caucasian. There are people who think James Bond has to be played by an English actor. Others argue that Idris Elba, a black Englishman, would make a great Bond.

Those arguments aside, he expects little girls will love the new dolls. We live in a world where people can choose their own avatars and emojis, and it seems strange to walk down the Barbie aisle, with something like 24 feet of white dolls with blue eyes. Thats just not the way people look. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. No one wants to eat at a restaurant with just one thing on the menu.

And there will now be a Barbie banquet: All told, the new line  available online soon and in stores in March  includes 33 dolls, with four body types, seven skin tones, 22 eye colors, and 24 hairstyles, with plenty of clothes and accessories for all.

While Mattel is due to announce its annual results next week, in its most recent quarterly report, it said Barbie sales fell 4%. Shes been losing ground to dolls with more personality and less baggage. Elsa, from Frozen, has been a huge hit, as have Mattels Monster High dolls, which are racially ambiguous, Silver says. (Barbies declines are even more notable given the overall strength of the toy business, which NPD Group says gained 6.7% last year to $19.4 billion.)

Mattel, meanwhile, is literally changing the face of the brand, says Evelyn Mazzocco, SVP and global general manager of Barbie, in the companys release. Barbie has always given girls choices - from her 180 careers, to inspirational roles, to her countless fashions and accessories. These new dolls are more reflective of the world girls see around them - the variety in body type, skin tones and style allows girls to find a doll that speaks to them.
by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, January 28, 2016

Ive written a couple of times recently about my views on the rise of marketing technology and its implication for our industry. Lots of folks have been reacting to it, so Im taking that as a message that I should continue to push forward on this meme.

I believe that the rise of mar tech is going to have an enormous impact on the structure and operation of the digital advertising supply chain. Put simply, it will obliterate the supply chain as we know it today.

That the digital ad supply chain is problematic has been a top-of-mind issue among industry leaders for years. The supply chain is massively complex. It leaks tons of data. It leaks tons of money. It is a patchwork quilt of thousands of companies and different technologies and protocols that has been exploited by fraudsters, bots and zillions of redundant intermediaries for billions of dollars a year.

If that's not enough, the supply chains end product, the consumers digital ad experience, has become so poor that tens of millions of consumers have turned to ad blockers in the last year alone to remove, declutter and de-clog their digital devices of redundant, irrelevant, annoying ads.

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Most of the technology driving digital advertising today is designed to serve the needs of the ad ecosystem -- but not necessarily the needs of marketers. Impressions, cookies, bidding, headers, etc. are bought and sold again and again. These arent necessarily things that explicitly drive sales and ROI for marketers. However, what they do always do is drive revenue for the people that buy and sell and trade things, and for the people making the technology to help them do it.

That is going to change. As Peter Drucker taught us, the purpose of marketing is to create customers: nothing more, nothing less. As more and more companies connect their back-end customer and sales systems to their front-end communication channels, activities that provably create customers will get more resources. Those that dont will be starved.

That level of scrutiny and accountability is going to be applied across all marketing activities, the vast majority of which are now digital, or at least are now all digitally measurable, such as with TV.

That kind of scrutiny will have a clarifying and purifying effect on the digital-ad supply chain. Like gravity on the mighty Mississippi, outcome-based accountability will help marketers dollars find that fast and best path to customer creation, cutting right through the hundreds of dams, dikes and canals that ad-tech companies have constructed along the digital ad supply chain's banks (to mix a metaphor here) to siphon off some of its money and power for their own purposes.

Over time, the hundreds of miles -- and thousands of companies and their little towns and hamlets -- of the meaningless, meandering watercourse that the ad tech supply chain has become, will be bypassed, left fallow to turn into ghost towns as ad-dollar nourishment dries up.

Sound farfetched? I dont think so. What do you think?
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, January 28, 2016

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) conducted a study on how registered voters interact with information about the 2016 presidential race. Their findings further endow digital media with concrete evidence that it is rivaling TV and quickly gaining in overall reach.

Most notably, digital media has reached parity with TV as a primary information source about presidential candidates, and barely loses out to TV as a source for general political issues.

Ad budgets look to mirror this reality in digital and mobile advertising, with increasing focus on developing engaging creative and drilling into granular audience targeting.

Especially among Political Influentials, digital media is a tremendously important medium. Seventy-eight percent of them are particularly dependent on digital media for information about politics.

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Indeed, heavy use of digital skews younger, with 35% of younger voters saying digital is their primary source of candidate information this cycle, compared to 23% of the total sample.

Primary users of online digital media are also more likely to take action after being served a political advertisement, with 71% of this group planning to be politically active, compared to 53% of the total sample.

Hispanic and African-American voters in particular are much more likely to interact with political information through mobile.

Sixty-seven percent of Hispanic and 60% of African-American voters explore political sites on mobile, compared to 49% of the total sample. Hispanic voters also respond better to mobile or digital advertisements, with 87% saying they have taken action after seeing an ad.

What is striking here is the direct positive correlation between an increase in the use of digital and being politically active.

Social media also plays a big role: 31% of registered voters interact with political articles and links shared by friends on social media, 25% have seen a candidate ad and 24% have defriended or unfollowed someone due to the persons political posts.

The IAB study dove deeper into the intricacies of digital engagement this cycle. Candidates who want to reach minorities will have to shift more of their ad budget over to digital, and specifically mobile. The engagement is better and targeting abilities are increasingly robust.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who does well among progressives, but fails to dent Hillary Clintons lead when it comes to minority voters, will surely have his team look at opportunities to improve his campaigns mobile presence.

Republican candidates looking to engage a younger demographic and minority groups hope they have harnessed the digital opportunity as the primary season hits its first test in Iowa next week.

This column was previously published in Red, White & Blog on January 27. 2016.
IBM Interactive Experience (IBM iX), one of the largest global digital agencies, announced plans Thursday to acquire Resource/Ammirati for its creative expertise. The company did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, which should close by the end of the quarter.

The nearly 300-person Resource/Ammirati has a focus in consumer products and retail, which remains core for IBM. The team will join forces with IBM iX, bringing the combined team to 10,000, of which about 1,000 are designers.

Experience is the North Star for business today, Paul Papas, IBM iX global leader, told Media Daily News. He says the two companies share a common vision and passion.

"When our paths crossed with the Resource/Ammirati team, and we started to talk with them about how the world is transforming through digital, and how customer experiences are the next battleground in modern business, it's almost like we had been on a karmic journey that led us to them," he says. "Now we have found our kindred spirit in this space," he says.

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The two teams will not only transform brand experiences, but transform them with the power of iBM Watson, Papas says -- something Resource/Ammirati would not have been able to do before. The potential for that is untapped, and it's only one area the teams will explore together.

IBM Watsons supercomputer offers the company a firm foundation in data and analytics, but the acquisition of Resource/Ammirati gives IBM the design chops and manpower needed to drive large-scale advertising campaigns.

Papas says IBM iX has about 25 studios worldwide that are either open or about to open. The agency will open in four months in San Francisco, co-locating with the Watson group. "They are open collaborative spaces," he says.

Resource/Ammirati will support IBM's strategic expansion globally. Clients span various industries, such as consumer goods, retail and financial services. Companies include Birchbox, DSW, Nationwide, Nestle, Newell Rubbermaid, North American Breweries, Shaw Industries, Sherwin Williams, Toys R Us and White Castle, among others.

Aside from Resource/Ammirati, IBM has made a string of recent acquisition to bolster its marketing cloud.

IBM acquired live streaming company UStream earlier this month and bought Workday consulting firm Meteorix in September. Previously, IBM acquired software provider Silverpop in 2014 in a move that became the basis for the companys personalized email marketing solution IBM Silverpop Engage.
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, January 29, 2016

While the GOP front-runner decided to snub the Fox News/Google debate in Des Moines, Iowa, for another event, seven rivals took the stage. It ended up being a lively, slightly more informative debate than usual. At times, it was even comical.

The topics were varied. There was much debate on immigration reform. The threat of Islamic terrorism and especially the domestic version was a hot topic. Healthcare, energy policy and the military, among others, were also on tap.

Despite an opening line of questioning directed toward Sen. Ted Cruz about Donald Trump and occasional references to the real-estate mogul, there was little attention paid to his absence.

Cruz was Trump for the night.

The Texas Senator embodied the GOP leader with a bit of humor at the outset with: Im a maniac, and everyone on this stage is fat, stupid and ugly. And Ben, youre a terrible surgeon. Now that weve got the Donald Trump portion out of the way. He went on to thank the Iowans who showed up last night.

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Cruz also took the brunt of the attacks from the rest of the field, a position usually reserved for the Donald. Some questions directly prompted other candidates to address his credibility and consistency.

Sen. Marco Rubio took the bait: This is the lie Teds campaign is built on, Rubio began. The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign youve been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes. Not unlike what some candidates may say about Trump.

The Rubio-Cruz brawl inevitably made it back to the Gang of Eight immigration question.

The conversation was interspersed with clips from both Cruzs and Rubios past discussing immigration policy, adding an interesting dimension when both candidates tried to defend their consistent approach to the issue of citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Cruz probably hoped he wouldnt have to play so much defense, particularly in a Trump-less debate. At one point he even threatened to leave the stage if the moderators continued to ask such mean questions.

Among the other candidates, Sen. Rand Paul, who was excluded from the last debate, received rousing cheers from the crowd whenever he spoke, which turned into a semi-chant after his closing statement.

Gov. Chris Christie, with his usual combative stance, ridiculed, as he has done in the past, the Senate floor-like exchanges between Cruz and Rubio, topping it off with jabs at Hillary Clinton whenever he could.

Jeb Bush looked more comfortable without Trump, forcefully attacked Rubios record and adeptly defended his family legacy. But any excitement surrounding Bush is probably too little, too late.

Trump, in turn, believes his supporters will caucus regardless of his absence from last nights debate or not.

On Monday, all the campaigning -- and all the punditry -- will be put to the test.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, January 29, 2016

The Interpublic Group today said it has fired Detroit-based Campbell Ewald CEO Jim Palmer. Agency president Kevin Wertz is taking the helm of the agency effective immediately, the holding company said, in a terse two-sentence release issued this morning.

Palmer was terminated after a racist memo was circulated at the agencys San Antonio office late last year by an unidentified white staffer in the creative department. AgencySpy reported on the memo earlier this week, noting that the creative was fired just recently.

The memo declared that the office would be celebrating Ghetto Day in the SA and were inviting our Big D homebitches to cycle in and pop a freak with us. The racist note continued in the same vein for another paragraph or two and was accompanied by a picture of two African American men.

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It wasnt immediately clear why Palmer did not take swifter action to terminate the person who sent the memo, although it's likely a large part of why he was fired. Also, he failed to quickly inform holding company higher-ups about the misconduct.

An IPG rep said the company had no further comment on the matter.

This story has been updated to correct the name of the Campbell Ewald CEO that IPG terminated. His name is Jim Palmer, not Jim Campbell.
by Sara Guaglione , January 29, 2016

co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei, top political reporter Mike Allen and other key employees will leave the Washington D.C. political news Web site later this year, according to a staff memo written byfounder and publisher Robert Allbritton.

Sources told The Washington Post, New York Times and Huffington Post that there were rumors VandeHei was clashing with Politico ownership -- primarily with Allbritton -- about Politicos expansion, spending, budgets and management strategies.

COO Kim Kingsley, CRO Roy Schwartz and executive vice president for expansion Danielle Jones are also leaving Politico in 2016.VandeHei, Allen and Schwartz will leave after the 2016 presidential election; Kingsley and Jones will leave before the end of summer.

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Politico editor-in-chief John Harris will add the role of publisher to his responsibilities.

Allbritton will take on the title of CEO later this year.

"I have been eager to make the strategic direction of Politico my primary professional focus," Allbritton wrote in the memo.

Susan Glasser, Politicos editor, will continue to run the Washington newsroom until the end of the year before becoming director of innovation. She will continue in the role when she likely moves to Israel to follow her husband, Peter Baker, tapped to become The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief.

Glasser will also launch a weekly foreign-affairs column.

These transitions make perfect sense for the publication, coming a decade (almost to the day) after I recruited them to join this cause, Allbritton wrote in the memo.

Allbritton said VandeHei began signaling to me some years ago that he hoped the next stop in his career would be to once again start a new venture.

In his own staff memo, VandeHei wrote that he caught the entrepreneurial bug a decade ago when we started this place and can't seem to shake it.

VandeHei added that he plans to start a new venture. A source told the New York Times that VandeHei, Allen and Schwartz will work on it together. It will not be a competitor to Politico.

Allbritton wrote that VandeHeis exit has been discussed for nearly a year.

Though the news of the exit of these five influential names in Washington, D.C.s media world shocked the industry, Allbritton used the opportunity as a springboard to announce new opportunities coming soon.

We are about to experience the most exciting, and I expect most enjoyable, period of expansion in 10 years. With our revenue rapidly expanding, I am eager to make robust new investments in editorial quality, in technology, in business talent, and in new markets that we have not yet conquered, he wrote.

In his memo, VandeHei alluded to Allbrittons big ideas for the publication, including a new burst of investment, which he said will be unveiled in the months ahead.

VandeHei added that he is leaving knowing a template for growth has been set, a first-class leadership team assembled and prepared for this transition, and Politico is powerful and durable enough to outlast us all.

The brand has been working on a significant expansion in Europe, where Politico sent a number of personnel in a partnership with German publisher Axel Springer. Politico now has more than 40 journalists in Europe, with bureaus in Brussels, London, Berlin and Paris.

In 2015, Politico added nearly 150 employees, bringing the total headcount to about 500.

VandeHei became CEO in October 2013, following the companys purchase of Capital New York, a politics and media site that Politico used to expand its coverage of statehouse politics by opening bureaus in New Jersey and Florida.

VandeHei and Harris worked at The Washington Post together when they came up with the idea for Politico. When The Washington Post didnt back their venture, they found Allbritton to fund them in 2007. At the time, he was running TV station operator Allbritton Communications in Arlington, Virginia.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, January 29, 2016

Watch manufacturer Multi-Time Machine is seeking to take its dispute with Amazon over search results to the Supreme Court.

Multi-Time Machine, which sells $2,000 watches, says that its trademark is violated when Amazon displays watches by other manufacturers in response to searches for "Multi-Time Machine."

A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument by a 2-1 vote in October, ruling that Amazon's search results pages do not confuse consumers. "The search results page makes clear to anyone who can read English that Amazon carries only the brands that are clearly and explicitly listed on the web page," 9th Circuit Judge Barry Silverman wrote in for the majority.

That ruling upheld a trial judge's decision to grant summary judgment to Amazon. The watchmaker, which doesn't allow its products to be sold on Amazon, is now asking the Supreme Court to hear the case. Multi Time Machine says it should have been able to argue to a jury that consumers were duped by Amazon's use of the brand's trademark.

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"The introductory information of the search display lures the consumer into the false expectation that the displayed products have a connection to MTM's trademark," the company says in a petition filed last week with the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the 9th Circuit ultimately sided with Amazon, that ruling marked a reversal from July, when the judges sided with Multi-Time Machine. In the earlier ruling, Circuit Judges Carlos Bea and Gordon Quist concluded that Amazon potentially infringed trademark by causing so-called "initial interest confusion," which the judges described as confusion that "creates initial interest in a competitor's product."

The battle between Amazon and Multi-Time Machine dates to 2011, when the watch company alleged that Amazon's search engine tricks consumers by returning links to watches made by Luminox and Chase-Durer in response to searches for phrases like "MTM special ops."

The company argued that Amazon's practice differs from that of other e-commerce sites, like Overstock and Buy.com. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Dean Pregerson in the Central District of California sided with Amazon and dismissed the lawsuit, Pregerson ruled that Multi Time didn't present enough evidence to show that Amazon's practices confused consumers.

Multi-Time Machine then appealed to the 9th Circuit. Other Web companies, including Google, Twitter, Pinterest, eBay and Yahoo backed Amazon in the case. Those companies argued that Amazon shouldn't have to face litigation based on "a mere possibility of confusion by an unsophisticated consumer."

The digital rights groups Public Citizen and the Electronic Frontier Foundation also sided with Amazon. Those organizations argued that companies have drawn on the controversial "initial interest confusion" concept to attempt to suppress online speech.
An adult kidney has been transplanted into a child with the help of 3D printing techniques, says a report from Guys and St Thomas in London, UK.

Share on Pinterest Lucy Boucher (right) is the first recipient of a kidney transplant from an adult donor that was supported by 3D printing. Her family is happy to report the surgery was successful.

Image credit: Guys and St Thomas



According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), kidney disease affects around 3.9 million Americans  or 1.7% of the population.

The National Kidney Foundation explains that chronic kidney disease (CKD) includes a number of conditions, and it also has various causes, the most common being diabetes and high blood pressure. If the kidneys fail, a transplant or regular dialysis is needed to keep the patient alive.

Lucy Boucher had heart failure when she was a baby, as a result of an abnormally fast heartbeat, also known as supraventricular tachycardia.

She had surgery for her heart condition, but lack of oxygen had caused kidney failure, which meant she needed dialysis three times a week, potentially for the rest of her life.

Now, experts have been able to carry out a transplant at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, using a kidney donated by her father Chris, with the support of 3D printing technology.

A 3D printer was used to create models of Chris kidney and Lucys abdomen. These enabled surgeons to plan the highly complex operation accurately, in order to minimize the risks.

It was the first time that 3D printing had been used to support kidney transplant surgery from an adult donor to a child recipient.
The decision not to breastfeed harms the long-term health, nutrition and development of children  and the health of women  around the world, conclude leading experts in a new series of papers on breastfeeding published in The Lancet. They also detail how this loss of opportunity damages the global economy. Share on Pinterest The authors say countries should see promoting breastfeeding as an investment that benefits not only their public health, but also their economies. The two-part series is the most detailed analysis of levels, trends and benefits of breastfeeding around the world. By not being exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of their lives, and not continuing to receive their mothers milk for another 6 months, millions of children are being denied the important health benefits of breastfeeding, note the authors. Figures estimated for the series suggest if all countries were to increase breastfeeding for infants and young children to near-universal levels, over 800,000 child deaths (13% of all deaths in the under-2s), 20,000 breast cancer deaths and $302 billion in costs to the global economy could be prevented every year. The authors say that by not doing enough to promote and encourage breastfeeding, the worlds nations  both rich and poor  are overlooking one of the most effective ways of improving health of children and mothers. Cesar Victora, a professor from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and a leading author in the series, says the need to tackle this global issue is greater than ever. She notes: There is a widespread misconception that the benefits of breastfeeding only relate to poor countries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our work for this Series clearly shows that breastfeeding saves lives and money in all countries, rich and poor alike.

Breast milk is a very exquisite personalized medicine The experts say their analyses  comprising 28 systematic reviews of available evidence, 22 of which were prepared for the series  show, for example, that breastfeeding has a significant benefit to life expectancy. In wealthy countries, breastfeeding reduces sudden infant deaths by over a third, and in low and middle-income countries, breastfeeding halves cases of diarrhea and reduces respiratory infections by a third. In a podcast interview for the series, Prof. Victora says while we are only beginning to scratch the surface, a lot of evidence is emerging about the biology of breastfeeding and the components and properties of breast milk. He quotes a colleague who likens breast milk to very exquisite personalized medicine because it reflects the biological interaction between the mother and her child, something that formula will never be able to imitate, he notes. Prof. Victora cites as an example the effect that receiving breast milk has on the development of the microbiome  the trillions of friendly bacteria that live in and on our bodies and play a key role in our health. He says we are also beginning to understand that breast milk has epigenetic effects  that is, it influences the expression of genes that control cell activity and development. And, another recent discovery is that breast milk contains stem cells. There is evidence, the authors note, that breastfeeding increases intelligence and may protect against obesity and diabetes in later life. And for mothers, breastfeeding for longer reduces their risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

Promoting breastfeeding makes economic sense The authors say countries should see promoting breastfeeding as an investment that benefits not only their public health, but also their economies. They estimate that loss to economies due to impact of not breastfeeding on intelligence amounted to $302 billion in 2012, or 0.49% of world gross national income. Prof. Victora and colleagues also calculate that if rates of breastfeeding in babies under 6 months were to increase to 90% in the US, China and Brazil, and to 45% in the UK, they would save these countries $2.45 billion, $223.6 million, $6.0 million and $29.5 million, respectively, due to reductions in treating common childhood illnesses like pneumonia, diarrhea and asthma. This loss of opportunity to boost public and economic health is further highlighted by the fact that worldwide rates of breastfeeding are low, particularly in wealthy countries  for example the UK, Ireland and Denmark have some of the lowest rates of breastfeeding at 12 months in the world (under 1%, 2% and 3%, respectively). Prof. Victora remarks that breastfeeding is one of the few positive health behaviors that is more prevalent in poor countries than in wealthy countries. Also, in poor countries, it is the poorer mothers that practice it more. He notes: The stark reality is that in the absence of breastfeeding, the rich-poor gap in child survival would be even wider. He urges policymakers to take note of this and be reassured that promoting breastfeeding provides a rapid return on investment that takes less than a generation to come to fruition.

Aggressive formula marketing undermines breastfeeding promotion One of the papers also touches on the effects that aggressive marketing of formula or breast milk substitutes is having, despite countries attending the World Health Assembly in 1981 adopting the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes, which the authors note has not been enforced effectively. The multi-billion dollar breast milk substitute industry must be reined in, they urge, or it will continue to undermine breastfeeding as the best feeding practice in early life. The WHO recommend babies start breastfeeding within 1 hour of life, are exclusively breastfed for 6 months. After this, there should be gradual introduction of adequate, safe and properly fed complementary foods with babies continuing to breastfeed for up to 2 years of age or more. The authors note that global sales of breast milk substitutes are expected to reach $70.6 billion by 2019, as co-author Dr. Nigel Rollins, from the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health at the WHO in Geneva, explains: Saturation of markets in high-income countries has caused the industries to rapidly penetrate emerging global markets. Almost all growth in the foreseeable future in sales of standard milk formula (infants <6 months) will be in low-income and middle-income countries, where consumption is currently low." He cites the example of the Middle East and Africa, where estimates show per-child consumption of breast milk substitutes will likely grow by over 7% in the period 2014-2019. And in wealthy nations, growth in breast milk substitutes will be largely driven by sales of follow-on and toddlers milk, which are set to increase by 15% by 2019, he notes.
Since May 2015, Zika virus has been reported to 22 other countries and territories. This rapid spread, coupled with concerns about the neonatal malformations, has raised concerns worldwide. At present, however, many health officials are unable to confirm how serious the situation is.

The World Health Organization (WHO) define a public health emergency of international concern as an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.

After identifying Zika virus infection in some of the mothers of infants with microcephaly, experts have begun to suspect there could be a causal relationship between Zika virus and birth defects and neurological disorders.

While Zika virus itself only typically causes mild illness, the Brazilian health authorities have also reported a significant increase in numbers of cases of microcephaly , a serious neurological condition among newborn infants that is usually rare.

Zika virus has spread rapidly through the Americas. The first case of locally transmitted Zika in the region was reported in May 2015 in Brazil; by the end of the year, local health authorities had estimated that around a million suspected cases had occurred in the country.

The Committee is scheduled to meet on Monday, February 1, when it will decide whether proliferation of Zika virus constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.

The World Health Organization have announced that an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee will be assembled next week to discuss Zika virus and its potential relationship with birth defects and neurological disorders.

The lack of confirmation is due to the fact that concise information about the virus and its potential effects is scarce. In a press briefing on Thursday, members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained the extent of what they know at present about Zika virus.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the CDC, stated that laboratory tests at the organization had strongly suggested a link between Zika infection and poor pregnancy outcomes.

We dont yet know what other outcomes might be associated with Zika infection during pregnancy, and there may be other factors in addition to Zika infection that might have increased risk to the fetus, Dr. Schuchat added. More lab testing and other studies are in progress to learn more about the [] risks of Zika virus infections during pregnancy.

Dr. Schuchat stressed that it is important for people to remember that the situation is rapidly changing, and that as new information concerning the virus comes to light, health organizations may need to update their advice:

At this stage in a relatively new health threat, information evolves quickly, and we expect that the situation will continue to change as we learn more.

For now, the main advice concerns the circumstances of pregnant women. The CDC advise pregnant women to postpone travel to regions affected by the virus  these regions are detailed on their website.

While investigations into Zika virus continue, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are looking to accelerate research into the virus, including diagnostics, therapeutics and potential vaccines.

At the CDC press briefing, Dr. Tony Fauci, director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that they are interested in directing funding toward efforts that are specific to the current threat.

In addition to accelerated research towards diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines [] were calling for basic research to understand Zika virus infection; its replications, its pathogens and transmission, and we are developing animal models, he stated. Were doing study on evolution and emergence of the virus including the identification of factors that affect host range and variance.

Any developments will be shared in order to inform the global health response. It is hoped that further direction on a global level will be provided by the WHO early next week.

The decisions and recommendations of the Emergency Committee and the WHO director-general are due to be made public on the WHOs website.

Learn more about Zika virus, including what symptoms it causes and steps that can be taken to prevent transmission.
The Y chromosome is a symbol of maleness, present only in males and encoding genes important for male reproduction. But a new study has shown that live mouse progeny can be generated with assisted reproduction using germ cells from males which do not have any Y chromosome genes. This discovery adds a new light to discussions on Y chromosome gene function and evolution. It supports the hypothesis that Y chromosome genes can be replaced by that encoded on other chromosomes.

Two years ago, the University of Hawaii (UH) team led by Monika A. Ward, Professor at the Institute for Biogenesis Research, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawai'i, demonstrated that only two genes of the Y chromosome, the testis determinant factor Sry and the spermatogonial proliferation factor Eif2s3y, were needed for male mice to sire offspring with assisted fertilization. Now, the same team, with a collaborating researcher from France, Michael Mitchell (INSERM, Marseille), took a step further and produced males completely devoid of the entire Y chromosome.

In this new study scheduled for online publication in the journal Science on Jan. 29, 2016, Ward and her UH colleagues describe how they generated the "No Y" males, and define the ability of these males to produce gametes and sire offspring.

The UH researchers first replaced the Y chromosome gene Sry with its homologue and direct target encoded on chromosome 11, Sox9. In normal situation, Sry activates Sox9, and this initiates a cascade of molecular events that ultimately allow an XY fetus to develop into a male. The researchers used transgenic technology to activate Sox9 in the absence of Sry.

Next, they replaced the second essential Y chromosome gene, Eif2s3y, with its X chromosome encoded homologue, Eif2s3x. Eif2s3y and Eif2s3x belong to the same gene family and are very similar in sequence. The researchers speculated that these two genes may play similar roles, and it is a global dosage of both that matters. They transgenically overexpressed Eif2s3x, increasing dose of the X gene beyond that provided normally by X and Y. Under these conditions, Eif2s3x took over the function of Eif2s3y in initiating spermatogenesis.

Finally, Ward's team replaced Sry and Eif2s3y simultaneously, and created XOSox9,Eif2s3x males that had no Y chromosome DNA. Mice lacking all Y chromosome genes developed testes populated with male germ cells. Round spermatids were harvested and a technique called round spermatid injection (ROSI) was used to successfully fertilize oocytes. When the developed embryos where transferred to female mouse surrogate mothers, live offspring were born.

The offspring derived from the "No Y" males were healthy and lived for normal life span. The daughters and grandsons of the "No Y" males were fertile and capable of reproducing on its own without further technological intervention. Ward's team produced three consecutive generations of "No Y" males using ROSI showing that males lacking Y chromosome genes can be repeatedly propagated with technical assistance.

"Most of the mouse Y chromosome genes are necessary for development of mature sperm and normal fertilization, both in mice and in humans," Ward said. "However, when it comes to assisted reproduction, we have now shown that in the mouse the Y chromosome contribution is not necessary."

The study provides new important insights into Y chromosome gene function and evolution. It supports the existence of functional redundancy between the Y chromosome genes and their homologues encoded on other chromosomes. "This is good news," Ward said, "because it suggests that there are back-up strategies within genomes, which are normally silent but are capable of taking over under certain circumstances. We revealed two of these strategies by genome manipulation. Whether such alternative pathways would ever be activated without human help, for example in response to environmental changes, is unknown. But it is certainly possible and has already happened for two rodent species which lost their Y chromosomes. "

The development of assisted reproduction technologies (ART) allows bypassing various steps of normal fertilization by using immotile, non-viable, or immature gametes. The newest study as well as Ward's preceding report (Science 2014 Jan 3; 343 (6166: 69-72) support that in the mouse ROSI is a successful and efficient form of ART. In humans, ROSI is considered experimental due to concerns regarding the safety of injecting immature germ cells and other technical difficulties. The researchers hope that the success in mouse studies may spark the re-evaluation of human ROSI for its suitability to become an option for overcoming male infertility in the future.
Using electrodes implanted in the temporal lobes of awake patients, scientists have decoded brain signals at nearly the speed of perception. Further, analysis of patients' neural responses to two categories of visual stimuli - images of faces and houses - enabled the scientists to subsequently predict which images the patients were viewing, and when, with better than 95 percent accuracy.

The research is published in PLOS Computational Biology.

University of Washington computational neuroscientist Rajesh Rao and UW Medicine neurosurgeon Jeff Ojemann, working their student Kai Miller and with colleagues in Southern California and New York, conducted the study.

"We were trying to understand, first, how the human brain perceives objects in the temporal lobe, and second, how one could use a computer to extract and predict what someone is seeing in real time?" explained Rao. He is a UW professor of computer science and engineering, and he directs the National Science Foundation's Center for Sensorimotor Engineering, headquartered at UW.

"Clinically, you could think of our result as a proof of concept toward building a communication mechanism for patients who are paralyzed or have had a stroke and are completely locked-in," he said.

The study involved seven epilepsy patients receiving care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Each was experiencing epileptic seizures not relieved by medication, Ojemann said, so each had undergone surgery in which their brains' temporal lobes were implanted - temporarily, for about a week - with electrodes to try to locate the seizures' focal points.

"They were going to get the electrodes no matter what; we were just giving them additional tasks to do during their hospital stay while they are otherwise just waiting around," Ojemann said.

Temporal lobes process sensory input and are a common site of epileptic seizures. Situated behind mammals' eyes and ears, the lobes are also involved in Alzheimer's and dementias and appear somewhat more vulnerable than other brain structures to head traumas, he said.

In the experiment, the electrodes from multiple temporal-lobe locations were connected to powerful computational software that extracted two characteristic properties of the brain signal: "event-related potentials" and "broadband spectral changes."

Rao characterized the former as likely arising from "hundreds of thousands of neurons being co-activated when an image is first presented," and the latter as "continued processing after the initial wave of information."

The subjects, watching a computer monitor, were shown a random sequence of pictures - brief (400 millisecond) flashes of images of human faces and houses, interspersed with blank gray screens. Their task was to watch for an image of an upside-down house.

"We got different responses from different (electrode) locations; some were sensitive to faces and some were sensitive to houses," Rao said.

The computational software sampled and digitized the brain signals 1,000 times per second to extract their characteristics. The software also analyzed the data to determine which combination of electrode locations and signal types correlated best with what each subject actually saw.

In that way it yielded highly predictive information.

By training an algorithm on the subjects' responses to the (known) first two-thirds of the images, the researchers could examine the brain signals representing the final third of the images, whose labels were unknown to them, and predict with 96 percent accuracy whether and when (within 20 milliseconds) the subjects were seeing a house, a face or a gray screen.

This accuracy was attained only when event-related potentials and broadband changes were combined for prediction, which suggests they carry complementary information.

"Traditionally scientists have looked at single neurons," Rao said. "Our study gives a more global picture, at the level of very large networks of neurons, of how a person who is awake and paying attention perceives a complex visual object."

The scientists' technique, he said, is a steppingstone for brain mapping, in that it could be used to identify in real time which locations of the brain are sensitive to types of information.

Lead author of the study is Kai Miller, a neurosurgery resident and physicist at Stanford University who obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. at the UW. Other collaborators were Dora Hermes, a Stanford postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience, and Gerwin Schalk, a neuroscientist at the Wadsworth Institute in New York.

"The computational tools that we developed can be applied to studies of motor function, studies of epilepsy, studies of memory. The math behind it, as applied to the biological, is fundamental to learning," Ojemann said.
A new paper published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, co-authored by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, calls for ongoing development and regulatory acceptance of adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), a framework for improving chemical hazard assessment by prioritizing modern test methods that reduce animal use.

The paper is a scientific report from a September 2014 workshop titled Adverse Outcome Pathways: From Research to Regulation, which was co-organized by Kristie Sullivan, M.P.H., Physicians Committee director of regulatory testing. Sullivan also chaired a breakout group at the meeting and co-authored the workshop report.

"The new catchphrase for cutting-edge chemical testing among toxicologists is adverse outcome pathways," says Sullivan. "Our goal is to educate health professionals - from clinicians to chemists - about this groundbreaking chemical hazard assessment tool to advance its development and use."

An AOP is an organized collection of existing data on how exposure to a particular chemical may trigger a series of biological changes in the body resulting in illness or injury to an individual (human or animal) or population.

Each AOP outlines a process that includes:

A Molecular Initiating Event (MIE): The initial molecular event that occurs in the body after exposure to a chemical

Key Events (KEs): The progression of events occurring in the body following the MIE, such as cell damage and changes in organ function

Adverse Outcomes (AO): Diseases, extinction of a species

A single chemical may set several AOPs in motion, each ending with different AO - depending on the dose or other factors, like the age or health status of the organism. AOPs may also overlap with each other. This complexity has the potential to better protect people, but also requires building a network of scientific information.

Scientists can then use the AOP to identify specific KEs that are most likely to lead to a particular AO. A chemical can then be tested for these KEs. Defining which KEs to test for allows the scientists to choose the most needed tests, which can increase testing speed, lower costs, and reduce animal testing.

The three-day meeting, which was at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and attended by 120 scientists and viewed remotely by 350 more participants, included a demonstration of the AOP Wiki and Effectopedia and discussions on AOP case studies, AOPs in development, and the process of regulatory acceptance.

AOPs are already gaining traction within the global scientific community. The National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Tox21 program, which uses high throughput screening (robotics), has provided AOP data by screening more than 10,000 chemicals for 60 different tests. NCATS is also developing an online resource called BioPlanet, which is a collection of approximately 2000 human-relevant pathways. The Environmental Protection Agency is also using data from its Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCastTM) robotic testing platform to create AOPs.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which sets chemical testing guidelines worldwide, is developing and recording a network of AOPs using crowdsourced information technology tools including the AOP Wiki and Effectopedia. Physicians Committee scientists have held the secretariat position of the International Council on Animal Protection in OECD Programmes since 2006. Through ICAPO, the Physicians Committee works together with the OECD and other groups to develop and promote the OECD's AOP program to other scientists throughout the globe. Sullivan has led a team of international experts to develop an AOP that will pave the way for regulatory acceptance of nonanimal respiratory sensitization testing methods.

The Physicians Committee and the Human Toxicology Project Consortium also created an AOP Learning Channel on YouTube.

Other meeting presenters and report authors include experts from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Integrated Laboratory Systems Inc., the Environmental Protections Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Dow Chemical Company, and the European Commission.

The meeting concluded with recommendations for increased collaboration--especially in fields outside of toxicology--and for working groups to be established to prioritize and develop AOPs.

Sullivan will present "Introduction to Adverse Outcome Pathways and International Activities Guiding AOP Development," as part of a continuing education program at the Society of Toxicology 55th Annual Meeting, March 13-17 in New Orleans.
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a) age 70 or older

b) stage I breast cancer measuring 2 cm or less (roughly three-fourths of an inch or smaller) that has not spread to the lymph nodes on clinical examination

c) estrogen-receptor-positive tumor status (the most common type of breast cancer)

d) surgical removal of the tumor with lumpectomy and negative surgical margins, meaning no more cancer is observed at the edge of the removed tumor

e) subsequent long-term anti-hormone therapy such as tamoxifen

This finding demonstrates a lack of compliance with or poor awareness of the recommended treatment for what probably is a large number of breast cancer patients, said lead author Quyen D. Chu, MD, MBA, FACS, professor of surgery at Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center, Shreveport. "Why are we as a nation mostly not following a national guideline on breast cancer treatment?" Dr. Chu asked. This guideline applies to a significant proportion of patients.About 30 percent of new diagnoses of invasive breast cancer are in women 70 and older. In 2004 researchers of a multicenter clinical trial, known as the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) 9343 trial, advised that it is reasonable to omit RT in women with certain characteristics that put them at low risk of dying of cancer. Those characteristics were as follows:They based this recommendation on their study finding that no difference existed in the length of overall survival of these elderly lumpectomy patients between those treated with and without postoperative RT plus tamoxifen.Subsequently, organizations including the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American Cancer Society updated their stage I breast cancer treatment guidelines to include when to consider omitting RT. To find out whether clinical practice changed after the CALGB 9343 trial, Dr. Chu and his co-investigators evaluated RT use using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint project of the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) and the American Cancer Society. NCDB captures an estimated 70 percent of newly diagnosed cancer cases in the United States from approximately 1,500 cancer programs accredited by the CoC.From 2.8 million breast cancer cases diagnosed between 1998 and 2012 and listed in the database, the researchers identified 205,860 women at least 70 years old who underwent lumpectomy for treatment of hormone-receptor-positive stage I breast cancer. Approximately 50 percent of the women received their cancer diagnosis before publication of the CALGB criteria (1998 to 2004), and the other half, after publication (2005 to 2012).In the pre-CALGB group 31.2 percent of patients did not undergo RT versus 34.2 percent in the post-CALGB group, a decrease in RT use of 3 percent, the investigators reported. Patients ages 80 and older had the greatest decrease in RT use among the different age groups according to the article. However, Dr. Chu said after the CALGB 9343 trial, 30 percent of patients ages 85 years and older still received RT. Possible side effects of breast RT include breast swelling, pain, skin discoloration or firmness, and shrinkage in the size of the breast.The researchers reported a large variation in RT use depending on demographic, tumor, and other characteristics. Poorer access to cancer care, rather than better adherence to the guideline, may explain some differences observed in RT use, Dr. Chu said. For instance, significant predictors of lowest RT use included residence in the central southeastern states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama) or in a small rural population not near a metropolitan area, or an increased distance between the patient's home and the hospital that reported the cancer. However, insurance status did not influence RT use, he noted.Alternatively, Dr. Chu suggested that some women might have chosen to receive RT to reduce their worries about a recurrence. In the initial CALGB 9343 trial, women who did not receive RT had a 3 percent higher breast cancer recurrence rate over five years compared with those who did undergo RT. Another possible explanation given by Dr. Chu for the apparently low adoption of the guideline is the increasing popularity in the past decade of faster forms of RT, such as brachytherapy.A course of brachytherapy typically takes only five days versus up to six weeks with conventional external beam RT according to Dr. Chu. The newer technique involves implanting radioactive materials (seeds or in catheters) into the breast cavity. Several other predictors of not receiving RT surprised the researchers, Dr. Chu said. Patients were less likely to undergo RT if they did not adhere to long-term anti-hormone therapy and if they had "residual," or remaining, tumor after lumpectomy.Although Dr. Chu said they could only speculate on the possible reasons why these patients tended to not receive RT as experts recommend, further analysis of the study data showed a correlation between advanced age and residual tumor. "Surgeons should try to achieve negative lumpectomy margins for patients who are 85 and older because they are less likely to receive radiation treatment," Dr. Chu suggested.The CALGB 9343 trial results have been confirmed in a 10-year update of that trial and in other recent studies. Dr. Chu said he hopes the message of when to withhold this breast cancer treatment receives better awareness in the community. "Patients often ask a surgeon, do I need this operation? Maybe it's time to ask your doctor, do I need radiation treatment for my breast cancer?" Dr. Chu said.Source: Eurekalert
In 2007, a vast demonstration dubbed 'Family Day' forced the center-left government of Romano Prodi to drop a much less ambitious civil union project - and the rights campaign was cited as one of the reasons the cabinet fell in early 2008.But supporters say Italy has no choice this time but to change. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly slammed the delay and Italian family courts are already green-lighting the adoption of children in some cases.The first Senate debate will focus on potential constitutional issues, to be decided by a vote scheduled for Tuesday, before a week of debate on hundreds of amendments on the table and another to review and vote on each article.A vote is expected mid-February, after which the text will have to go before the lower house of parliament, where negotiations are already underway to try to ensure the bill passes smoothly - avoiding a potential return to the Senate.As it stands, the bill will enable same-sex couples to commit themselves to one another before a state official, to take each others' names and, in certain circumstances, adopt each others' children and inherit residual pension rights."It offers the bare minimum. If it doesn't pass as it stands now, then it might as well not pass at all," said Marco Simon Puccioni, a film director and gay father to twins with his partner of 11 years.For others, it goes too far. "It is unacceptable to think of our children, our grandchildren, being taught that there are different models of families," said Massimo Gandolfini, neurosurgeon and coordinator of Saturday's new 'Family Day' protest.Pope Francis has also weighed into the debate, reminding Catholics this month that the Church rejects all forms of union outside of marriage between a man and a woman.While center-left Renzi says he is confident the bill will pass, there are several sticking points, in particular pension rights and the ability to adopt the biological children of one's partner.Renzi's center-right coalition allies, led by Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, are categorically opposed to adoption of children by a gay spouse, as is the Catholic fringe of the PM's own Democratic Party (PD).Both camps have threatened to call a referendum if the bill passes as is.Meanwhile, left-wing parties in the opposition and the anti-establishment Five Star movement (M5S) - whose support Renzi needs to get the bill through the Senate - are threatening to pull the plug if even one comma of the text is changed.Polls show the country fairly equally divided on civil unions, but strongly opposed to adoptions.The premier, a practicing Catholic who opposed the 2007 bill, has said, "The vote on the article in the bill regarding adoption will be done by secret ballot to allow conscientious objectors free rein."In the run-up, loud media headlines have been warning the adoption issue could affect 100,000 children in Italy. The country's National Statistics Institute instead puts the figure at between 500 and 1,000 youngsters.Some have suggested a form of shared parental authority could be implemented while the child in question is a minor, after which it would be up to him or her to say whether they wish to be adopted by their so-called 'social parent'.But the idea has sent gay rights associations into a frenzy."The Cirinna bill is the first step to narrowing the gap with other countries and righting a delay that does no honor to our country," said Gabriele Piazzoni, national secretary of Arcigay, the country's largest such association.And on social networks, a hashtag by activist and transsexual former member of parliament Vladimir Luxuria has been picking up traction against the secret ballot, reading: #mettetecilafaccia or #showyourface.Source: AFP


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"An increase in the levels of anti-JCV antibodies could signify an increased risk of PML," said study senior author Heinz Wiendl, MD, of the University of Muenster in Germany and member of the American Academy of Neurology. The level of antibodies is a marker for exposure to JCV and therefore the risk for PML.In the study, researchers used a blood test to monitor levels of anti-JCV antibodies over a 15-month period in 525 people in Germany and over two years in 711 people in France. All had multiple sclerosis and were taking natalizumab.They found people converted from being anti-JCV negative to anti-JCV positive at the following annual rates: 10 percent in the German group and nearly 9 percent in the French group. Those rates are much higher than the rate of 1 percent per year for the general population and for people with multiple sclerosis not treated with natalizumab. In the German group, 43 of 339 people who were initially anti-JCV negative tested positive for the antibodies during the study. In the French group, 41 of 243 people who were anti-JCV negative tested positive for the antibodies during the study.In people who were anti-JCV positive already at the beginning of the study, their level of antibodies also rose over time. Treatment with natalizumab was associated with a 13-percent yearly rise in the level of anti-JCV antibodies in the blood. In the German group of 525 people, those considered medium risk of PML grew by seven people, representing 5 percent of the group at the beginning of 15 months, increasing to 6 percent. The high-risk group grew by 14 patients, initially representing 22 percent of the group, increasing to 25 percent."Even though anti-JCV antibodies were present at a higher level, it does not necessarily mean that an individual will get PML," said Adil Javed, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago in Illinois, who wrote a corresponding editorial and is a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "The risk of PML in JCV positive people being treated for multiple sclerosis with natalizumab without prior immunosuppressant therapy is one in 1,000 people. The risk of a multiple sclerosis attack in untreated patients is one in every two people."Wiendl said, "It is important that people with multiple sclerosis taking natalizumab speak with their doctor before making any changes to their treatment. Still, this study shows anti-JCV antibodies may serve as a useful biomarker. Natalizumab did appear to increase the levels of anti-JCV antibodies and this higher level may be associated with a higher risk of PML. The results of this study underscore the need for frequent monitoring of anti-JCV antibodies in people who are being treated with natalizumab for multiple sclerosis."Wiendl noted that the study does not prove that natalizumab causes the virus to replicate at higher rates, leading to higher anti-JCV antibody levels, but that it shows an association.The study was supported by the German Research Foundation, the PML Consortium, the Competence Network for Multiple Sclerosis, the French Ministry of Health, the French MS Society and the European Union.Source: Newswise
On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia announced that it had executed 47 "terrorists," including leading Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr. The execution of Al-Nimr, who was accused of belonging to Al-Qaeda, triggered harsh criticism of Saudi Arabia on behalf of Shi'ite Muslims in several parts of the world.

In India, anti-Saudi protests were organized by Shi'ite Muslims, especially in the northern Indian city of Lucknow. Leading Indian Shi'ite cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawwad gave a video interview to the Shi'ite website HussainiChannel.com. He condemned Saudi Arabia and demanded that it be expelled from the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC). Saudi Arabia currently heads the UNHRC.

In the interview, Kalbe Jawwad also alleged that Israel and the United States have a hand in the execution of Al-Nimr. Jawwad, who is presented in the Indian media as a moderate cleric, argued: "The terrorism that presently exists in the world is there because of them. There is Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Qatar, and Turkey..."



Indian Shi'ite cleric Kalbe Jawwad (on the right)

Following are excerpts from the interview:

"[Nimr Al-Nimr] Protested [Against Terrorism] And Was... [Executed] For That Protest Only; There Is Also The Israeli Hand In It; There Is The U.S. Hand In It"

Interviewer Rizwan Ahmad: "Today one more Islamic cleric was martyred. How long will this continue against our religious leaders and how much longer will the Momineen [faithful Muslims] continue to be martyred? ... We all condemn the way Ayatollah Sheikh Baqar Al-Nimr was martyred it in the strongest terms. We, from our Hussaini channel also, condemn the Saud household..."

Kalbe Jawwad: "[Nimr Al-Nimr] was a very great scholar and provided great services to the religion. And beside religion, the books he wrote, the speeches he gave, and the addresses he delivered were a service for humanity. He raised his voice against terrorism, oppression and the tyranny against minorities that exists there [in Saudi Arabia]...

"He protested [against terrorism] and was given the punishment for that protest only. There is also the Israeli hand in it. There is the U.S. hand in it and other Arab countries, which have unleashed cruelty on minorities and are supporting and sponsoring terrorism, all of them are involved in it. They don't want voices to be raised against terrorism; they falsely say that they are against terrorism but they are not against it. In fact, they are sponsoring it and supporting it. All the weapons that are being provided to all the terrorists or the funding being given to them come solely from these Arabian countries..."

"Arab Countries Want Neither Unity Nor To Bring An End To Terrorism"; "They Are Supporting Them [Terrorists], Providing Weapons To Them Because They Are The Slaves Of The U.S. And Israel"

Kalbe Jawwad: "Therefore, he [Al-Nimr] was killed by being declared a terrorist. But he had always been against terrorism. He always supported peace and wanted unity among Muslims. But these Arab countries want neither unity nor to bring an end to terrorism. They are promoting it more and more. They are supporting them, providing weapons to them because they are the slaves of the U.S. and Israel.

"They [Arab countries] do whatever they [the U.S. and the Israel] say because they don't have their own policies. Their policy is the policy of Israel; their policy is that of the U.S. Their policy is that Muslims should kill each other and finish each other off. This is their policy. And Saudi Arabia and Qatar and all these countries are solely following that policy. They are the slave countries and they don't have any status and whatever the U.S and whatever the Israel want they achieve through them.

"Similarly, you see the massacre that was carried out in Nigeria; people were doing Majlis [a religious congregation of Shi'ites] in the Imambara [Shi'ite place of worship] and were killed. The Saudi ruler Suleiman congratulated them, the Nigeriam government, that they did a good thing by killing them... They have their links with the terrorists. They don't only support but one may say they sponsor terrorists. This is the joke that the one [Saudi Arabia] which sponsors terrorism has been made the chairman of Human Rights [Commission] in the UN. While terrorism is being carried out by Saudi Arabia throughout the world..."

"This Is The Path Of Jews; It Has Been Said In Their Talmud That Only Jews Have The Right To Live And Nobody Else Has The Right To Live; The Jewish Mentality And The Wahhabi Mentality Are One"

Kalbe Jawwad: "And the Wahhabism that they [Saudis] are spreading - through it, terrorism is being spread in the entire world. Wither in India or Pakistan, most of the terrorism is being spread through Wahhabism. Their mentality is that no one has the right to live except them... This is the path of Jews. It has been said in their Talmud that only Jews have the right to live and nobody else has the right to live. The Jewish mentality and the Wahhabi mentality are one; their policy is exactly similar. That is why we say there is no difference between Saudi and Yahudi [Jews]; their policies are one and they are supporter of each other; in fact, Jews are their patron...

"The terrorism that presently exists in the world is there because of them. There is Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Qatar, and Turkey... The problem is that the whole world is not united on it. If [the world] unites, it will expose that they are totally hand in glove with the terrorists...

"And the U.S says that it is bombing the terrorists; this bombing is nothing. In fact, I have come to know that they are supplying weapons in the name of bombing. Turkey is buying their oil; the U.S. is buying their oil. The oil that they are stealing from Iraq is being purchased by Turkey, Jordan, the U.S and all other countries. That says, there is full support [for their actions]."

"The Seed Is Being Supplied From Saudi Arabia, Fertilizer Is Being Supplied From Israel, The U.S. Sends Irrigation Materials, And Pakistan Does The Farming [Of Terrorism]"

Kalbe Jawwad: "And the blood that is being shed, all its responsibility for it rests with the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Pakistan - they all are fully involved in terrorism.

"There is a prominent maulana [cleric] in Delhi - [Abdullah] Bukhari - who said Pakistan is the nursery of terrorism... I say this is quite right. The seed is being supplied from Saudi Arabia, fertilizer is being supplied from Israel, the U.S sends irrigation materials, and Pakistan does the farming... They all should be condemned and our demand is to scrap its [Saudi Arabia's] UN membership immediately and impose sanctions on it... And there are sanctions against Iran, which has been the victim of terrorism for years, but there are no sanctions against Saudi Arabia, which is sponsoring terrorism. Therefore, our demand is that it should be internationally banned; its oil should not be purchased, and all its help and aid and all arms and weapons the U.S is supplying to it should be stopped. If it is not stopped then it means that the U.S. is also in support of terrorism..."

"[Asked why the UN didn't act against the Saudi execution of Al-Nimr] The UN itself is a slave. The UN has no status. The U.S. uses it any way it wants; the European nations use it any way they want... Therefore, I have the maximum complaints against the UN, which never supported any victim, but always supported the oppressors..."

Rizwan Ahmad: "What do you say? How should the protestors protest...?"

Kalbe Jawwad: "They should participate in rallies and raise black flags. It is also very important that they send protest emails to the Saudi embassies and to the international human rights offices and to the United Nations [demanding] that [Saudi Arabia] be removed from the UNHRC... [And the UN] Human Rights [Commission] should set up a committee to go there and look into why were these people [Al-Nimr and others] martyred; what was their crime...?

"And they [the Saudis] alleged that he [Al-Nimr] was from Al-Qaeda when Al-Qaeda itself is killing Shi'ites. What a big joke it is that this Shi'ite cleric belongs to Al-Qaeda while Al-Qaeda is killing Shi'ite clerics. How can a Shi'ite cleric become the member of Al-Qaeda? It is like saying, God forbid, that Allah's messenger [Muhammad] was a Jew. Everyone would ridicule it. Similarly, they say that al-Nimr was from Al-Qaeda..."

Source: Youtube.com/watch?v=LMXi83fe0lo, January 3, 2016
To mark India's Republic Day, MEMRI South Asia Studies Project director Tufail Ahmad wrote an article titled "We the People of India." The article appeared in Hindi in the Dainik Jagran daily on January 26, 2016, and in English on the Satyavijayi website.

The following is the article:

"Republic Day Is A Moment Of Reflection About Who We Are"

"On January 26, India celebrated its 67th Republic Day. French President Francois Hollande was the chief guest at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, in which the French military also took part. This was the first time a foreign military contingent participated in the Republic Day parade.

"This day was first marked as Independence Day in 1930, demanding Purna Swaraj (complete self-rule) from the British colonial rule. In 1950, on this day the people of India gave themselves the Constitution, thereby creating a modern republic.

"As Indians, Republic Day is a moment of reflection about who we are. While Indian classics such as the Vedas, Ramayana and Mahabharata teach us 'who we are,' 'what our identity is,' and 'where we come from,' the Indian Constitution teaches us 'who we want to become' and 'where we are headed to' in our nation's democratic life. The names of the places mentioned in Ramayana and Mahabharata still exist among us. Village republics existed in ancient India, but ideas about equality and liberty of the individual came to us from the Greek philosophy and the European movement of democratic ideas known as the Enlightenment through the British rule."

"The Engine Of Change In The Indian Republic Is Democracy"

"The engine of change in the Indian Republic is democracy, which is reaffirmed every five years by adult Indians through the conscious act of voting. Democracy refers to demokratia - a political system that began during the 5th to 4th centuries BC when demos (the people) of Athens revolted against the dynasties of tyrants and established their own kratos (rule). But as a system of government, democracy did not flourish. Later in the 18th century, the European Enlightenment engendered a flood of egalitarian ideas, resulting in the American and French revolutions. In 1776, the U.S. became the first democracy. Now the number of democracies and semi-democracies has risen among the 193 members of the United Nations.

"Pondering how societies progress, French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that traditional societies were based on consensus originating from similarities of beliefs and identities, but modern societies derived their consensus from differences. Consensus in modern India is derived from diversities and is leveraged by political parties, media and a commentariat of youths active on social media OCo and not by religions and castes as it used to be in the past. While our ancestors identified themselves as members of castes, tribes and religious communities, our youths today view themselves as individuals - in other words, as Indian citizens.

"In political scientist Sunil Khilnani's words, the Indian Republic has 'etched itself into the imagination of Indians in a way that no previous political agency had ever done.' Some countries in the West are religious states, notably the UK, but their societies are predominantly secular with no role for religion in policy-making. India and the U.S. are overwhelmingly religious societies, but the state is secular. 'We the people' - the opening words of the Indian Constitution - are borrowed from the U.S. constitution which begins with the words: 'We the people of the United States.' The Indian Constitution helps us overcome our differences, uniting us in a political consensus."

"Modern India Is A Totally New Country"; "Modern Democracies Are Based On The Enlightenment's Egalitarian Ideas"

"As a system of government, democracy creates new worlds, new hopes for citizens. As a model of politics it empowers citizens with political liberty and equal rights. To illustrate: Saudi Arabia is a theocratic kingdom that serves religion, not people. Contrary to this, Britain is a democracy that empowers its citizens despite being a nominal kingdom. The Indian Republic treats everyone - men or women, upper or lower castes, Hindus or Muslims - as equal citizens. Our youths live in a free society. The Indian Constitution shapes their ideas of what a good society should look like. In times of conflict, our youths look up to the Supreme Court to show them a sense of direction.

"In February 2014, Narendra Modi, now the prime minister, said: 'We are one of the youngest nations.' Modern India is a totally new country; its people are new; their aspirations are new; their attitudes are new. Of 1.25 billion Indians, 50 percent are under 25 years of age; nearly 65 percent Indians are below 35 years of age. This is essentially a new political population, which has grown up in an atmosphere of freedom. It has not witnessed the Partition's emotional scars, or the torments of the Emergency rule. This generation of Indians has grown up in political liberty, which emanates from the Constitution that we began enforcing from January 26, 1950.

"Our youth has witnessed bitter election campaigns, powerful television debates, and quarrelsome parliamentary discussions, but in this process they have understood that our turbulent politics defines the course of our nation's democratic life and shapes India's cohesion. Consequently, the new generation of Indians are subjecting their own ideas to rational criticism on Twitter and Facebook. To outsiders, India might appear as a divided house but our differences themselves are the source of our unity. Indians will retain their identities as Hindus, Muslims, Tamilians, Biharis or others, but democracy is the outstanding factor that defines Indian society's general will generated from differences and protected by the Constitution.

"Modern democracies are based on the Enlightenment's egalitarian ideas. In his book A Revolution of the Mind, Jonathan Israel notes that the Enlightenment was 'quintessentially defined by its insistence on full freedom of thought, expression, and the press, and by identifying democracy as the best form of government.' These values are basic to the Indian Republic. For 1.25 billion Indians to live in happiness and liberty, we must also be willing to defend the republic. It means that we must also defend the rights of all citizens, not just ours.

"Also, the world is in a period of conflict. Large numbers of human beings are dying in the name of Islam in Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In India, the liberty of Indians is secured by our military. We can take our families to watch a movie in a peaceful environment because Indian military safeguards our security like a 24u7 antibiotic. Therefore, Indians must also realize that it is their duty to support the military which defends the Indian Republic."
The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.)

Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email.

EXCLUSIVE: In Letter To ISIS Leaders, Female ISIS Member Expresses Harsh Criticism

On January 27, 2016 a letter titled "A Reminder To The Leaders of The Islamic State" was published on JustPaste.it. It was circulated among pro-ISIS accounts on Telegram. The letter includes criticism focusing mainly on the treatment of widows in the Islamic State, and the insufficient funds provided to needy families living there. In her letter, Al-Muhajirah makes some bold statements. For example, she writes, in a direct challenge to the ISIS leadership: "If someone comes to you who is fit to be a leader, then allow him to lead if you truly hate leadership and want the best for the Caliphate." ISIS members have complained among themsleves in the past, but such criticism is almost never found in such a widely circulated document.

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS In Sinai To Egyptian Muslims: 'Rise Up Against The Regime'; Turn Your Eyes And Swords To Constantinople And Rome

On January 23, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) in Sinai province released a 16-minute video titled "Messages from the Soil of Sinai 2", a sequel to a video released in March 2015. In the new video, posted on the jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam and elsewhere, features a speaker whose face is blurred but who is most likely Abu Osama Al-Masri, a senior commander of ISIS in Sinai. Addressing the Muslims in Egypt, urging them to take up arms against the "tyrants" of the regime and enact Islamic law in the country. He states further that the mujahideen of the current generation should not count on the next generation but set out themselves to retake Palestine, as well as Constantinople and Rome.

In addition to his address, the video includes GoPro camera footage of an ISIS operation in which two policemen were assassinated in El-Arish (presumably the attack carried out in August 25, 2015). It ends with the final statement of a young fighter, Abu Baraa Al-Masri, who carried out a suicide mission at the Galala camp in Suez city (presumably on July 15, 2015).

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Claims Responsibility For Yemen Presidential Palace Bombing, Releases Photo Of Dutch Bomber Abu Haneefa Al-Holandi

On January 28, 2016, the media office of the Islamic State in Aden/Abyan released a statement claiming that one of the "Caliphate's soldiers," Abu Haneefa Al-Holandi ("the Dutchman"), detonated a car bomb inside the presidential palace in Aden, known as Al-Ma'sheeq.

EXCLUSIVE: Pakistani Taliban Commander Vows To Attack Schools, Colleges, Universities For Supplying Human Resources For Democratic System In Pakistan

In a new video, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, the emir of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for the region of Darra Adamkhel and Peshawar, warned of terror attacks on schools, colleges, and universities in Pakistan and calling them foundations of kufr (unbelief).

It should be noted that the parent TTP organization officially denied responsibility for the January 20 attack on Bacha Khan University in Peshawar, but that Mansoor claimed responsibility for it. This means that Khalifa Umar Mansoor has practically split from the TTP. However, this video released by him carries the official logo of the TTP and is produced by Umar Media, the propaganda arm of the TTP.

ISIS Video Features Posthumous Message From Paris Attackers; Shows Attackers Prior To The Operation, Executing Prisoners

The following report is a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.

On January 24, 2016, ISIS's Al-Hayat Media Center released a video titled "Kill Them Wherever You Find Them" (a reference to Koran 2:191), featuring the nine ISIS members who carried out the November 13, 2015 Paris attack and who were all killed during this attack or shortly after it. In the 18-minute video, prerecorded before the attack, the terrorists deliver threatening messages to France and to ISIS's other enemies, and seven of them follow their message with the execution of a prisoner (five of the terrorists behead their victims and two shoot them with a gun).

ISIS Supporter Refutes Edward Snowden's Claim That 'Encrypted' Message In Recent ISIS Video Was 'Fake', Says It Refers To ISIS's Next Attack

Yesterday's Islamic State (ISIS) video, which featured statements by the perpetrators of the November 13, 2015 Paris attacks, included two secret messages. One of these messages, which was both encrypted and decrypted, appeared at the beginning of the video, and detailed the targets for the Paris attacks. The second message, which was encrypted, came at the end of the video, and may include information about ISIS's next target, which the video implied would be the UK.

UK Woman Expresses Desire To Move To Syria

On January 26, 2016, a woman on Twitter expressed her desire to move to Syria, after complaining of harassment in the UK. Her Twitter account follows mainly follows Islamic State (ISIS) members and supporters. In addition to retweeting from ISIS accounts, however, she has also retweeted messages posted by some Jabhat Al-Nusra members and supporters. Fatima shares a lot of videos and images related to Syrian civilian victims of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and occasionally criticizes cultural and political practices in the West. Earlier, on January 16, she, she wrote: "I am sick and tired of being hassled for how I look. This hypocritical kaffir [infidel] land is insulting. May Allah grant us hijrah [immigration to Islamic land] soon."

Al-Shabab Calls For Uprising Against Saudi Royal Family, Welcomes AQIM Attack In Burkina Faso, Calls For More Attacks On Western Interests

In the wake of the January 2, 2016 execution in Saudi Arabia of dozens of Sunni clerics and mujahideen, on January 24, 2016, the general command of the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen, issued a communiqu that included condolences for the executions to the Muslim nation, to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Qassem Al-Rimi, and to mujahideen everywhere.

AQIM Announces On Telegram The Kidnapping Of Swiss Citizen In Mali, Issues Demands

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) announced in a January 26, 2016 video that it had kidnapped a Swiss national, Beatrice Stockly, and issued demands for her release.

The main speaker in the 8-minute video, which was circulated via AQIM Telegram channels and Twitter accounts, is an AQIM fighter who speaks in English. He claims that Stockly, "a Swiss nun who declared war on Islam," was captured by fighters from "AQIM's Sahara region" in Timbuktu in 2012, but was released on the order of its leader, Abu Mus'ab Abd Al-Wadoud. She was captured again in Timbuktu several weeks ago, having violated AQIM's condition for her release, that she refrain from engaging in missionary activity in any Muslim country.

On Its New Website, 'Invite To Islam', Extremist Islamist Pro-ISIS Group Features Lectures By Radical Cleric Jibril, Promotes Al-Awlaki

In November 2014, the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM ) first reported on Invite to Islam, the Birmingham, UK-based organization which appears to have ties to the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS members and supporters frequently circulate memes and graphics produced by the organization, across various social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. In January 2016, the group launched a new website. While its previous website looked comparatively innocuous, the new one does not, and brazenly advertises its support for radicals such as American cleric Musa Jibril and the highly influential late Yemeni-American sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki. It should be noted that although prior to March 2015, Jibril's Internet access and social media use was restricted by his probation requirements, and that since 2014 he has posted no new material online, he remains very popular online on jihadi supporters' social media.

Telegram Account Reposts Document Offering Stabbing Tactics, Bomb Making Instruction For Palestinians Planning On Attacking Jews

On January 26, 2015, a Telegram account posted a document with instructions and tips on stabbing tactics, as well as bomb and poison manufacturing, for those planning to kill Jews. The document was originally published October 2015 by the Ibn Taymiyya Media Center (ITMC) which features news on jihadi groups in Gaza.

Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Releases More Videos In Its 'Call From The Frontlines Of Jihad' Series

The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), an Al-Qaeda affiliate comprising mostly Uyghur fighters, has released two more videos in a series featuring messages from its fighters in Syria. Four videos have been released so far in the series, which is titled "A Call From The Frontlines Of Jihad."

'Red Mosque' Head Maulana Abdul Aziz Says Pakistan's 'Shia-Qadiani-Secular Lobby' Harasses Him Via Legal Cases, Urges Shari'a Rule

The Jamia Hafsa YouTube channel, belonging to the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad and its girls' madrassa Jamia Hafsa, has released a video featuring the controversial radical Pakistani cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz criticizing the "Shia-Qadiani-Secular lobby" in the Pakistani media and politics for harassing him by implicating him in false court cases.

Indian Journalist's Report Warns Of 'Possibility Of Lone-Wolf Attack' In India

Following are excerpts from a report by Indian journalist Bharti Jain warning of the likelihood of lone-wolf terror attacks in India. The report, titled "Possibility of lone-wolf attack has to be reviewed," was published by The Times of India daily on January 21, 2016:



The state of Uttarakhand is not far from New Delhi

"The arrest of four ISIS-inspired operatives from [the northern Indian state of] Uttarakhand marks the transformation of the ISIS from an irritant or a source of worry for the Indian security establishment to a 'real' threat to internal security.

Indian Media Report: ISIS Paying Indian Hackers Upwards Of $10,000 For Each Job

According to an Indian magazine, the Islamic State (ISIS) is luring Indian hackers with top dollar payments to hack into government websites and steal sensitive data.
Manoj Bajpai never leaves a stone unturned to take on a myriad of movies and portray all characters in his signature unique style. The trailer of his upcoming much hyped movie Aligarh proves yet again that he is all set to enthral the audience with another powerful role. Aligarh is based on the real life incident of Dr. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, who was suspended from his job because of his sexual orientation. Siras was a Marathi professor at the Aligarh Muslim University and after successfully appealing his suspension was found dead under suspicious circumstances. While Manoj Bajpai will be seen playing the role of Siras, while Rajkummar Rao will play the role of a journalist. The film was premiered at the 59th BFI London Film Festival and was received with much appreciation. Directed by Hansal Mehta, the movie is all set for a February release. Check out the trailer over here:
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Renate Kvivesen, the principal of the Vikaasen preschool near Trondheim, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that "we don't think it fits our values to host an event where children feel it's important to fit into specific gender roles."

The preschool has children from 0 to 6 years old.

Parents were informed by email that the annual dress-up for carnival, held just ahead of Lent in the Christian calendar, would not be taking place as usual this year after a split decision by the parent-teacher board.

Kvivesen said some parents were disappointed but added "the nature of the celebration has changed in recent years so we felt we needed to look again at the arrangements."

Norwegians are proud of their record in promoting women's rights. Some 40 percent of Norwegian lawmakers are women, including the prime minister and finance minister, while company boardrooms are required to have a female quota of four in every 10.

Still, some are sensitive about letting gender politics affect the upbringing of their children.

One of those who disagreed with the decision to cancel the dress-up was Sarah Askim, a Swiss-born mother of three boys, the youngest of which attends the preschool.

"I appreciate that they try to open the kids' minds," she said. "I am happy if the girls play with cars and the boys play with kitchen stuff. But I won't dress my boys later on with a skirt. I believe at one point we have to admit that there is difference between girls and boys."

While referencing gender-stereotyped costumes, the email to parents also added concern at the commercialization of the holiday. "Not all children experience this day as something positive," it said.

Hilde Noest, who had planned to send her 18-month-old daughter to preschool in a piglet costume, said some might think of Norway as "the crazy equality country," but added the decision would help protect children.

"It's OK if all of the boys want to be Batman and all of the girls want to be princesses," she said. "But maybe some of them feel differently and they should not be made to feel left out."
BAD AXE  Officials stand ready for the next disaster that strikes Huron County: theyre armed with a 450-page book of instructions.

It really looks complicated on paper, but when it actually starts working it flows fairly well, Randy Miller, the countys director of emergency services, told county commissioners Wednesday.

State and local officials have revamped the Huron County Emergency Action Guide, increasing the page count from 200 to 450. The state requires a complete revamp of the document every four years, Miller said. It contains the same information as in years past, just more drawn out, he said.

The guide was put to use in August last year, when a tornado sprinted through Owendale. It outlines what the villages fire department and public works could do, and Miller said the county stepped in by calling DTE Energy and the sheriffs work crew for help cleaning up.

Thats what this document does, Miller said. It is our basic plan of what we do if something should happen.

It also identifies area businesses and organizations signed up to help during disasters. After the Owendale tornado, for example, the villages public works said WalMart and Home Depot donated trash bags, bottled drinks and gloves. Churches provided lunch for workers. Crop Production Services and VitaPlus gave equipment and labor. JP Tree Service felled trees and ground brush.

Tornadoes aside, a more likely threat in the area is flooding. Flooding is the most frequent disaster that occurs in Michigan and will most likely occur in Huron County around the Sebewaing River, Pigeon River and New River watersheds, and the Pinnebog River, the document states.

Flooding and straight line winds are of biggest concern in Huron County according to Miller, who said last August after the tornado in Owendale hit that straight line winds coming off the lake have always been Huron Countys nemesis.

Miller says the emergency action guide helps plan, prevent and recover in response to such disasters.

Developed for use by emergency officials, information in the document is considered exempt from the Freedom of Information Act: Unauthorized possess of this information to the extent that it pertains to a specific vulnerable target could constitute a violation of the Michigan Anti-Terrorism Act, the document states.

Were not hiding anything, but this is not a public knowledge-type document, Miller said. Theres terrorist stuff in here, not that were a prime terrorist target. Its confidential but not top secret.

The guide also plots railroads, the ITC Thumb Loop Transmission Line, rivers and floodplains and existing and proposed wind turbines.
MORON AIR BASE, Spain  Eight months ago, Marine Corps Sgt. Raheem Boyd was in his room on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, when he received a message from a fellow Marine telling him he had discovered suicidal posts on another Lejeune-based Marines Facebook page.

I checked that Marines page and saw one post that looked strange and made me want to investigate further, Boyd said, adding that he recognized the Marine from a previous tour in Okinawa, Japan.

When he drove to the barracks, he found that the Marines on duty were by the Marines room, which was empty. After searching the area, one of the on-duty Marines briefly caught a glimpse of the troubled Marine in his car with an assault rifle as he sped off from the barracks parking lot.

Boyd said he followed and eventually saw his car sitting on the side of the road. "He did not recognize me at first," Boyd said. "It was the first time I had seen him since Okinawa."

Life-or-Death Moment

Boyd said he approached the vehicle and attempted to calm the Marine, telling him that he was there for him and that there is always another way. As they talked, the first police car pulled up and the Marine started to panic.

As more police cars approached with flashing bright red and blue lights dissipating in the darkness, the Marine reached across the seat for the rifle  with the intent to shoot himself, Boyd said. Boyd quickly reached through the window of the car, wrapped his body around the Marine and pushed the rifle away to the floorboard.

I gave just enough time for [the police] to come around and secure the weapon, Boyd said. After the situation de-escalated, I did my best to comfort the Marine and tell him that everything will be all right. He got out of the car and we escorted him to the hospital in an ambulance.

'Me Being a Human'

The events took place not long before Boyd deployed here. He currently serves as a heavy equipment operator with Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Africa.

A lot of Marines were telling me I did a good job and that they wish a lot more Marines would be like me, said Boyd, a Birmingham, Alabama, native. But I feel that wasnt me being a Marine, it was me being a human  being there for someone who needs help. I always fell back on my morals  to always treat others how you would want them to treat you.

Boyds excellence in service did not stop there. During his deployment here, he was meritoriously promoted to sergeant, helped certify more than 40 new black belt recipients, led the units leadership seminars for corporals and  his latest achievement  receiving the American Hero Award for preventing a tragic loss of life.

Sergeant Boyd is above his peers and is very mature. The Marines in his shop always look up to him, said Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Archie Mardis Jr., utilities chief for the Combat Logistics Detachment here. I never have to worry about him. He is the Marine to go to.

Each tragic loss to suicide has far-reaching impact on families, friends and Marines left behind. The Marine Corps had 28 suicides in the first three quarters of 2015. If not for Boyds actions, that number could be 29.
Air Force Gets Its Own Combat Dive Badge After Using the Navy's for Years

Air Force officials said there is a notable distinction between Navy divers and their divers, which was a key reason for...
WASHINGTON  Had it not been for his mom's cooking, Army Staff Sgt. Marc Susa said he might never have joined the Army and he never would have been named the USO-Metro Inter-Service Enlisted Aide of the Year.

As a kid, Susa relished his mom's Filipino cooking, which she prepared at home and at her restaurant. Heavy on seafood and vegetables, he calls it "comfort food."

He planned to follow in her footsteps and open his own restaurant. But first, he'd need to get his feet wet. During high school, he worked part-time at restaurants and became president of the school's home economics club.

After the 9/11 attacks happened, Susa said he wondered how he might best serve his country. When an Army recruiter told Susa that he could enlist as a cook, that sealed the deal, he said.

Susa enlisted in 2003, served in Tikrit, Iraq, from 2005 to 2006 and progressed through the ranks with a military occupational specialty of 92G Culinary Food noncommissioned officer.

In 2009, Susa said he found out about another way he could serve and continue with his culinary passion: become an enlisted aide, or EA.

The part of being an EA that was especially appealing, he said, was the mission of preparing food for a general officer and his family.

Susa's first assignment was with now-retired Army Gens. James Thurman and Charles Campbell, when they were commanders of U.S. Army Forces Command. Now he is an enlisted aide for Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, Army chief information officer, G-6.

Day In The Life

A typical day starts early, he said, arriving by 6 a.m. at the general's quarters at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., now part of Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall.

At that early hour, Susa makes breakfast and also packs a lunch for the general to take with him to work. He then prepares dinner and leaves it in the refrigerator for reheating.

The important thing about food preparation, Susa said, is knowing the food preferences of who you support. So he gets creative and ensures there are a variety of options available.

On certain days, Ferrell entertains guests at home for official social functions, and that means finding out what each person attending likes and knowing who might have certain food allergies.

For a big social function, preparation can start the day before the event, shopping at the commissary for what will be needed. These events are often too big for Susa alone to handle, so he said he invites other EAs over to help with the preparations. In turn, he will help them when they need his assistance.

While food preparation plays a big part of an EA's duties, that's not all there is.

Throughout the day, Susa said he'll walk around inside the house and outside to see if something might be amiss: a broken window, suspicious activity, that sort of thing. Or, there might be a problem with the plumbing. Susa knows who to contact whatever the case might be.

Another very important duty, he said, is ensuring the general's uniform is squared away and all the awards and decorations are where they're supposed to be. "His appearance is a reflection on us."

Sometimes, EAs travel with the general, but that's up to the general to decide, he said. The important thing to do is to get with the general's deputy or aide-de-camp to know the general's schedule ahead of time for planning purposes.

EA of the Year

This past fall, Susa competed in -- and won -- the 13th Annual Army EA of the Year Competition. He competed against other EAs across the nation in a series of areas, from preparing a three-course meal to uniform assembly, leadership and knowledge.

Then on Nov. 19, he was named the USO-Metro Inter-Service Enlisted Aide of the Year after competing against Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard EAs.

The EAs were evaluated on leadership, household management and community service skills. They also participated in a series of events during the completion that included tours of the White House and Capitol.

The Enlisted Aide of the Year award honors the hard work that all EAs do throughout the year, not just the winners and runners up, said Stephanie Lee Krasner, special events manager of USO-Metro, which sponsors the awards banquet.

As part of the awards banquet, USO-Metro invited select EAs and culinary specialists from across the services to prepare a seven-course meal for the attendees.

Ed Manley, founder of the Military Hospitality Alliance, which sponsors the competition, added that to win, the nominees went through a rigorous process, which included being vetted by a board chaired by retired Navy Adm. James Winnefeld. The board also included the spouses of two retired four-star officers and other former EAs.

Who Can Be an EA

Soldiers from any occupational specialty who are in grades E-5 through E-9 are eligible to be EAs, Susa said. Besides that, EA candidates must have really good NCO evaluation reports, pass an enlisted review board and have letters of recommendations from the command.

Once that's accomplished, EA candidates attend an "intensive" food service training and protocol course at the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence at Fort Lee, Virginia, he said.

Personality-wise, to be successful takes someone with high levels of managerial and organizational skills, initiative, honesty, flexibility and good demeanor, he said.

Once an EA completes school, there's one final requirement, he said.

The EA informally meets with a general and his spouse to determine if the EA will be a good fit for them and visa-versa. "There has to be a high level of comfort and trust," he said. "Otherwise, it won't work out."

Not Crossing the Line

There's a fine line between official duties and personal favors, and an EA has to know the difference. The latter, Susa said, are off-limits. For instance, tidying up the dining area and kitchen are official duties since those areas are where official social functions take place, but not cleaning the bedrooms or other personal spaces.

The EA is not a personal servant, he said. The EA's mission is to enable the general to focus on his or her official Army duties and not worry about potential problems at home.

Perceptions are important, and duties need to be on the up and up, he said. "You certainly don't want to get yourself or your boss in trouble."

While duties associated with being an EA are important, there are also important soldiering duties to do, he said. For instance, EAs are expected to do physical fitness training on their own and to keep up with soldiering skills.

Besides that, about 26 Army EAs from around the Military District of Washington get together for one day a month to do mandatory training, NCO leadership development and to compare notes on duties related to EAs.

Culinary Competitions

Susa has participated in not only military culinary competitions, but also civilian ones. He was recently selected as one out of four finalists to compete for the title of American Culinary Federation North East Region Pastry Chef of the Year in February.

In November, he will travel to Erfurt, Germany, to join the U.S. Army Culinary Arts Team for the Culinary Olympics at the Internationale Kochkunst Ausstellung, or International Culinary Art Exhibition, where he will compete against international civilian and military chefs. This will be his second time attending the culinary Olympics. The last time -- in 2012 -- the team won six gold and six silver medals.

Kudos From the General

"Staff Sergeant Susa's enlisted aide skills are absolutely unmatched. In fact, he's been repeatedly recognized," Ferrell said. At Fort Hood, Texas, he was captain of the III Corps culinary team and led the team to a militarywide culinary victory.

In addition, in 2010, he was selected to the U.S Army Culinary Arts Team and in 2012, he served with the USA military team and helped them win 12 gold and silver medals in the International Culinary Olympics, the general said.

"Enlisted aides perform an invaluable, official role for our Army," Ferrell added. "In Staff Sergeant Susa's case, he has also planned and executed major social events for over 3,200 total dignitaries.

"I'm especially proud that Staff Sergeant Susa takes time to mentor enlisted aides -- not only from the Army, but our fellow services as well," he said. "He is a superb example to all. On top of that, he continually volunteers in the community, and he's been involved in supporting events for our wounded warriors as well.

"What is most important to remember about Staff Sergeant Susa is that he is first and foremost an exemplary soldier. He is a consummate, professional NCO, a leader and an expert in his craft. He has also deployed, having served in Iraq, where he trained the Iraqi military on food service operations," Ferrell added.

Susa said he eventually would like to open a restaurant. He said he also wants to write a cookbook for college students that features simple ingredients and fast preparations.
A Russian jet sped closely by a U.S. Air Force spy plane "in an unsafe and unprofessional manner" over the Black Sea on Monday, a Defense Department spokeswoman told Fox News.

The Pentagon is investigating the incident which took place in international airspace, Lt. Col. Michelle L. Baldanza added. She said the Russian aircraft was an Su-27 fighter jet.

The Pentagon held a video conference Thursday with Russian military officials to discuss flight safety over Syria "to avoid accidents and unintended confrontation between coalition and Russian forces whenever the two sides operate in close proximity," according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. There was no mention of the "unprofessional" intercept in his statement.

"No specific incident or event prompted today's discussion," Baldanza said.

This is just the latest report of Russian jets buzzing U.S. aircraft in that same region. U.S. officials told Fox News Russian fighter jets intercepted American Predator drones at least three times in the first week of Moscow's air campaign over Syria last fall.

Russia claimed its airstrikes targeted Islamic terrorists, but human rights groups said some of the victims were Syrian anti-government rebels with no links to terror.

-- Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
On Newsstands Now: Here's Everything You'll Find in CityBeat's Latest Issue

From a Bigfoot hunt to delightfully spooky ghost stories from one of Cincinnati's watering holes, here are the stories you'll find in CityBeat's latest print edition.

By CityBeat Staff Oct 19, 2022

For many of us, Bigfoot is a legend present only on an episode of Ancient Aliens, or perhaps only among the towering, mysterious pines of the Pacific Northwest. However, for CityBeat's latest issue, we went on a hunt for Bigfoot in a place where the massive furball had allegedly been spotted before  Ohio's Pleasant Hill Lake Park...
A judge in Chicago has overturned the demotion and reassignment of a Veterans Affairs Department director who was disciplined for abusing her position by taking a job she forced another official to vacate.

Michele Szary Schroeder, a chief administrative judge with the Merit System Protection Board in Chicago, this week decided in favor of Kimberly Graves, a regional VA director in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to a 41-page ruling released Friday by the board.

Schroeder said the disciplinary action was wrong because the VA failed to punish another senior executive service member for the same conduct in the same controversy

"If Ms. Graves is going to be disciplined for failure to exercise sound judgement by creating the appearance of impropriety, then it would only be reasonable if any other [SES] members  involved in the same situation were disciplined as well," she wrote in her ruling, which was posted to the board's website.

Graves had her senior executive service status dropped to general service and was reassigned to another region as an assistant director by VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson after an investigation into the matter by the VA inspector general.

Gibson also demoted and reassigned Diana Rubens who the IG said had maneuvered herself into the regional directorship of the Philadelphia office after forcing out its previous director.

Both moved into jobs with less responsibility but retained their Senior Executive Service-level salaries. In addition, the VA paid out a total of about $400,000 in relocation costs.

Following the inspector general investigation, the women were demoted from directors to assistant directors, reassigned and reduced from SES employees to general employees -- a move that cost them each about $50,000 in annual salary.

The VA tried to demote the women in October, but the case was dismissed in December on account of a technicality after the department didn't provide them with all the supporting evidence in the allotted period. The VA earlier this month again tried to discipline the women. And again, they appealed the move to the board.

Rubens made her case to an MSPB judge in Philadelphia on Thursday. A decision could come as early as today but no later than Monday.

The VA's decision to demote the women rather than fire them infuriated some members of Congress, including House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Florida, who wanted to see them prosecuted, as well.

Miller's office didn't immediately respond to Military.com's request for comment.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, is waiting for official notification from the board of both cases before commenting, his office said.

The VA inspector general handed over its report on Graves and Rubens to the U.S. Attorney's office for possible criminal charges, but the office declined to press charges and returned the case to VA for potential disciplinary action.

VA Secretary Bob McDonald has said he understands the decision to demote rather than fire was not popular with lawmakers, but that he stands by Gibson's call.

"When he tells me he's gone through the evidence and the evidence does not support firing but supports demotion, I believe him," McDonald told Military.com in an interview earlier this month.

Even so, the secretary acknowledged the board would have the final say on the demotions.

"We'll see," he said. "Both ladies have appealed and we'll see if our calibration of punishment sticks."

In her ruling, Schroeder pointed out that Graves broke no laws by retaining her SES salary when moving into the St. Paul job or by receiving the relocation benefits.

The judge also found it relevant that everyone in Graves' chain of command "completely knew" she was vying for the job as director of the St. Paul regional office and never voiced a concern with it. They also knew she was involved in the process of reassigning her predecessor, Antoine Waller, to the Baltimore office.

"It was not something Ms. Graves hid from them as far as her involvement with [her predecessors] reassignment," she wrote. "They not only endorsed the actions when they happened, but they continue to endorse the actions."

And if no one in the chain of command said, "Wait, this will not look right when they approved her assignment, how can a penalty be imposed against Ms. Graves for not saying that?" she asked.

Schroeder said the VA's reason for disciplining Graves was "failure to exercise sound judgement" in creating an appearance of impropriety by having a role in Wallers reassignment and then taking Waller's position.

But she noted that Acting VA Under Secretary for Benefits Danny Pummill was heavily involved in the job transfers and was in Graves' direct chain of command.

"There was no evidence whatsoever," she wrote, "that at any point Mr. Pummill said, 'Time out everyone, this doesn't look good.' Or to be more articulate, 'Ms. Graves and/or the Agency are creating the appearance of an impropriety because she was the recommending official as to Mr. Waller's reassignment to Baltimore and she is now taking his prior position.'"

The judge also noted that the VA had set a deadline of Dec. 31, 2015, to consider action against Pummill for his part in the matter but, so far, VA has not issued any disciplinary or adverse action against him.

Knowing this, Schroeder said, the VA still went ahead and demoted and reassigned Graves.

If Ms. Graves is going to be disciplined for failure to exercise sound judgement by creating the appearance of impropriety, then it would only be reasonable if any other [SES] members  involved in the same situation were disciplined as well.

Gibson, who demoted Graves and Rubens based on the IG report and its supporting evidence, told Schroeder he believed Pummills failure to advise Graves to take herself out of the transfer process involving Waller was different and not a lack of sound judgement.

The judge disagreed. "I do not see it as different," she wrote.

--Bryant Jordan can be reached at bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bryantjordan.
Every once in a while, I stumble onto some wisdom.

My Army husband and my children had a four-day weekend for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They all got Friday AND Monday off from school and military work.

Yay! Right?

Well ...

For a work-at-home Must-Have Parent, a four-day weekend means that at least two days of my normal workweek were "bring the whole dern family to work" days. In other words, not productive. And definitely not quiet.

On top of that, our beautiful home has an open floor plan and no place for me to have an office. Because where do you put an office when there is just enough bedrooms for the inhabitants and the rest of the house is as open as the Kansas sky?

Normally, this is not really a problem. When everyone is gone for the day, I sit at the peaceful and quiet (and sometimes even clean!) kitchen table, typically getting most of my heavy-concentration work done before everyone gets home.

But by Sunday night of that four-day weekend, I was fantasizing about doors. Big doors. Heavy wooden doors. With locks.

And by Monday, I had posted this on Facebook:

Day 4 of a long weekend: caught myself yelling at the house hunters on "Fixer Upper:" "No! You don't want an open floor plan house! You won't have anywhere to hide from your family!"

Within seconds, friends began to chime in with their own open floor plan remorse.

My friend Erin said this: "... an open floor plan means you can't section off your house according to what is clean and what is not. An open floor plan for me means the entire house looks like I had a massive rave party the night before ... all the time."

And Lily said this: "... you don't have a room to shove all the toys and crap and the basket of laundry into when guests suddenly arrive."

Claire said: "We used to call our open floor plan the 'indoor track.' My favorite place to hide was our walk-in pantry. Privacy and snacks."

Allison added: "Everything needs to be cleaned. Kitchen, dining, living ... the whole space ... because the open floor plan invites everyone to eat at the dining room table and lounge in the living room. I am washing slipcovers and cleaning up stuff from all over. It doesn't matter how gorgeous a kitchen is -- unless it's clean, it's ugly ... and being the most used room of the house, it is rarely clean."

Even though I had only intended to make a joke, I was clearly onto something.

And then my friend Jill explained the whole open floor plan dilemma with this one hilarious comment:

"OMG [people think] 'We need an open floor plan so we can interact with our guests when we are in the kitchen preparing the food for entertaining. We need a master bedroom with a huge suite that has jetted soaking tub large enough for my 6'6" husband and a unique extra room for a man cave.' No -- no, you don't. Because once you have kids, kiss your cocktail party throwing social life goodbye. It won't be in your budget to fill up that tub more than once a month and the man cave? Why should your husband be the only one who gets a place to hide from the kids?"

I realized that the issue we were all alluding to wasn't really about home design -- it was about control, privacy and personal space -- the very things we all lose when we become parents.

For me, the simple solution would have been to tell my husband that I had work to do and ask him to take the kids away from the house for a few hours on Friday and Monday. He would have done it. The weather was great that weekend, and there were tons of things they could have done. Or I could have left and gone by myself to Starbucks or something.

But something in my mom-guilt-addled brain told me that it was wrong for me to want, nay, NEED time away from my family. Rather than choosing to spend a few quality, enjoyable hours with my family after my work was done, I chose to spend all the hours with them, irritated and anxious.

Working at home exacerbated my problem because I was also feeling stressed about not meeting my deadlines. But even if I hadn't been trying to work from home, I likely would have felt exposed and annoyed.

Just like those home buyers on "Fixer Upper" -- I thought I was supposed to want those large open spaces and those times when the whole family is together at once doing ... something. What? Who knows? Most of us probably don't think that far into the fantasy. Maybe playing Twister?

But Twister is only fun for about an hour. And a family movie lasts about 90 minutes. At most, those stretches of awesome family togetherness are apt to continue for no more than three or four hours. The rest of the time, it's very likely that we're going to get on each other's nerves. And you know what?

That. Is. Totally. Normal.

So I've decided that our next house will have nooks, and hiding places and an office. Maybe even a formal living room. Because, as my friend Jessica explained, formal living rooms might be the saddest casualty of the modern design revolution.

Jessica said: "Our parents duped us all. On top of having a constantly clean room, the formal living room was also their secret hiding space. I know I never interrupted a conversation in that room nor did I enter without permission. I would literally stand in the doorway until I was recognized, only to politely ask a civilized question and then excuse myself and leave, never stepping foot in the room."

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A final concept plan for a "re-imagined" Ada village has been revealed, but the Township Board has decided to hold off voting on beginning the process of obtaining bonds for the project until its Feb. 8 meeting.

Final plans for the "community spaces" portion of the plan came with estimated price tags right around the $6 million figure the township planned to spend, but still at issue is parking.

A recent parking study showed adequate parking, but at peak times, 100 percent of village parking is utilized and the 77 parking spaces currently leased from The Community Church are not necessarily permanent, noted Township Planner Jim Ferro.

The Planning Commission has called on the Township Board to give public parking "priority attention." A proposal for a commercial building for the southwest corner of Ada Drive and the relocated Headley Street includes a request for 22 private parking spaces.

"While the building design is very attractive and is appropriately placed on the street corner, the site layout detracts significantly from the goals of the Envision Ada Plan...," said a memo from the planners to the board. A two-level parking structure would cost the township between $6 million and $14 million, according to planners.

Evaluating the cost of providing public parking could change the structure of the proposed bonding issue for the amenities package, and "we recommend that we hold off on the bonding issue until we get this figured out," said Supervisor George Haga. Also in the works is a potential Downtown Development Authority millage proposal. The board agreed to table the resolution to begin the capital improvement bond process.

The amenities plan calls for a community building, an open air market and riverfront park, located in the green spaces between the new Headley Street and M-21 and between the river and Thornapple River Drive.

This area for Ada Village includes both a 135-unit farmers market, a community center and a parking lot.

The plan for the Headley/Fulton space calls for a 9,500-square-foot, two-story community building, a covered 135-stall marketplace with a circular walkway, space for the Rix Robinson memorial stone, and a 50-car parking lot, leaving about a half-acre of green space.

An ice rink is also on the plan. "Unlike Rosa Park Circle with underground pipes, we are envisioning roll-out mats for the flat service that can be flooded," said Pete Lazdins, Progressive ae, who presented the plans. "There is a system in Rapid City, South Dakota and it has been very successful." The community building would serve as a warming center.

Project costs for the Headley green space are estimated between $3.1 million and $3.9 million.

The riverfront green space is to remain "more passive," said Lazdins. "Think of it similar to John Collins Park (in East Grand Rapids). It would be similar in size in terms of length and width."

The plan shows the relocated Carl School House as a welcome center -- a kiosk for event information and public restrooms. Walkways are planned throughout the area.

"There is a 17-foot grade change (to get to the river edge), so we have included a serpentine barrier-free walk," he said. The river edge shows a fishing pier and kayak launch.

Also included are overlooks, a playground, and outdoor amphitheater near the pond that will be restored as part of the project.

Estimated project costs for the riverfront area are between $2.3 and $2.8 million.
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Ann Arbor SPARK has an office inside the McKinley Towne Centre in downtown Ann Arbor

(File photo | The Ann Arbor News)

Ann Arbor-based property owner McKinley has announced another new tenant for its downtown office space as online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade has signed a long-term lease.

Just days after announcing it leased nearly 60,000 square feet of space in the McKinley Towne Centre to supply chain software company LLamasoft, McKinley confirmed Friday it will lease the entire fifth floor of the building to TD Ameritrade.

"We're quite excited about them being in the space," said Ken Polsinelli, McKinley chief real estate officer.

TD Ameritrade moved into its current Ann Arbor offices at 101 N. Main in 2014. The company occupies 9,000 square feet of space on the 8th floor of that building, but that's no longer enough room.

Jones Lang LaSalle senior vice president Neal Warling represented TD Ameritrade in the lease and said the move was necessary for the company's continued growth.

"They've already outgrown the space and now they're taking the entire 5th floor of McKinley Towne Centre," Warling said.

The company began looking for more space about three months ago, Warling said and was very interested in the different spaces available in the building. That was due in large part because of how Google used the space.

"Google's layout is very similar to how they like to set up their space. It was kind of a no-brainer to move in there," Warling said.

Eventually, the firm ended up with more than 23,000 square feet of space. Warling pointed out that it was quite the contrast to the mere 2,500 square feet the company was looking for when it first planned to come to Ann Arbor.

While he didn't have an exact number, Warling said he thinks there are somewhere around 60 employees working out of the offices at 101 N. Main. The company website has job listing for 15 positions available in Ann Arbor as well.

The company will be able to start working on the space on May 1, the day after Google's lease runs out. Warling said the company hopes to be moved into the building in the fall.

"(The move is) Just a matter of how long it take for permitting and construction," Warling said.

For McKinley the deal helps continue the mission of filling the vacant space with businesses and companies that are dedicated to the Ann Arbor community.

Although TD Ameritrade is not Ann Arbor-based, McKinley CEO Albert Berriz said he was very comfortable with having the company in the building because the employees live, work and shop in the community.

"In this particular case, these are all local people. Our thesis is proving out," Berriz said.

Polsinelli said the deal also shows why Ann Arbor is becoming a destination for companies looking to grow in the region.

"They're experiencing tremendous growth in Ann Arbor," Polsinelli said about the deal. "It just demonstrates their commitment to Ann Arbor and success they've experienced in Ann Arbor."

Berriz also pointed out that having top-notch office space so close to the University of Michigan campus, is an advantage for companies like TD Ameritrade.

"All of these people, at the end of the day, want to be next to the University of Michigan," Berriz said. "If you can have a large office presence a mile away from The Diag, that's a huge recruitment tool."

In 2014, Berriz announced he was going to take Google's estimated 85,000 square feet of space to market. Google's lease on the space ends on April 30, 2016 and nearly all of that space has already been leased.

"We have a small amount of space available, just under 4,200 SF. We're in talks to finish out that space," Polsinelli said.

Matt Durr is a business reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at mattdurr@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.
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Recipients gather together during the Champagne Registration of the 106th Annual Chamber of Commerce Meeting at George E. Potter Center in Jackson Thursday, January 22, 2015. (Danielle Duval | MLive.com)

JACKSON, MI -- Some of Jackson County's most influential residents and business owners were honored Thursday night, Jan. 28 at the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce's 107th annual meeting.

The meeting was held at Jackson College's Potter Center, 2111 Emmons Road. Thursday's gathering started with a champagne registration prior to the awards banquet.

See below for a rundown of Thursday night's award winners:

Albert Earle Ambassador of the Year Award: Jenifer Robinson

Brick Award for Substantial Facade and Facilities Improvement: The Pleasant Lake Pub

Brick Award for New Construction: Mortgage 1 and Midstate Title

Reach HIRE: Industrial Steel Treating Company

Citizen of the Year: Mike Hirst

Corporate Citizen of the Year: Michigan Automotive Compressor Inc.

Youth Citizen of the Year: Sikander "Sonny" Khan

Josh Burgett, of Michigan International Speedway, was named the chamber's new chair.

Small Business Person of the Year Award: Garry Applegate, owner of Applegate Heating and Air Conditioning

ATHENA Award: Janice Sweet Fairley
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29.01.2016 LISTEN

Kumawood Most Favorite Icon, Kwadwo Nkansah commonly known as Lil Win has unleashed his anger on Organizers of Kumawood and AKoben Film Festival Awards.

He descended heavily on the CEO Samuel Darko for showing gross disrespect to artists whom he uses to market his awards.

The Kumawood poster disclosed that the CEO of KAFF Awards Samuel Darko has consistently demonstrate that he doesnt respect artists.

Nkansah Liwin says KAFF Awards is based on personal interest of the organizers.

The reasons why I didnt show up at this year KAFF Awards ground was that the CEO after the demo vigil  in Kumasi last year insulted actors and actresses who failed to join the demonstration that very day, so I dont see the reason why I should waste my time and attend a program whose organizer doesnt respect me he stressed

It was annoying for a senior most person like Samdackus to cast insinuation on us all because we couldnt make up to a demonstration against the power crises facing the country , is very unfortunate for him to say those who failed to join the demo vigil should F..K off

Kwadwo Nkansah who won 2015 Most Favorite Actor at KAFF awards still believes that Samuel Darko (Samdackus) must render a public apology to the actors or else they will never patronize his subsequent programs.
As Ghanaians count down to the November 2016 elections, celebrities will be lending their support for the various political parties in the country.

Since the beginning of 2015, a rising number of industry bigwigs have publicly declared or confirmed their political affiliation.

Ghanaian movie star, John Dumelo has been seen for sometime now campaigning for President Mahama and the NDC government.

John Dumelo yesterday had an interaction with his fans on Twitter on what he thinks about Nana Addo becoming president of Ghana.

I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST NANA ADDO BUT I ONLY SEE ONE PERSON BEING SWORN IN COME JANUARY 2017 AND ITS NOT HIM (NANA).

The sudden ambition of some Ghanaian celebrities and players in the showbiz industry to support their favourite political parties is a normal activity in election years.

See the post below
The Hague (AFP) - The high-profile trial of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo opened Thursday five years after post-election violence wracked his nation, with supporters and foes aiming to shed light on the turmoil that left 3,000 dead.

Gbagbo becomes the first ex-head of state to stand in the dock at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, in a case which will test the tribunal's avowed aim to deliver justice to the victims of the world's worst crimes.

Looking relaxed in a dark suit with a light blue shirt, the one-time west African strongman shook hands, smiling, with his defence team.

Prosecutors accuse Gbagbo of devising a plan to cling to power in the world's top cocoa producer after being narrowly defeated by his bitter rival Alassane Ouattara in November 2010 elections.

Gbagbo, 70, and his close ally and former militia leader Charles Ble Goude, 44, will enter pleas to four charges of crimes against humanity, accused of being responsible for a campaign of widescale murders, rapes, and persecution.

Both the prosecutors and defence lawyers vowed on the eve of the trial -- which could last three to four years -- that they will seek to lift the veil on the bloody five-month crisis.

"The purpose of the trial is to uncover the truth through a purely legal process," said ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Wednesday.

Abidjan, one of Africa's most cosmopolitan cities, was turned into a war zone between 2010 to 2011 as clashes flared between the rival forces in a deadly power struggle.

But the international community, including former colonial power France, backed Ouattara as the winner, and Gbagbo was eventually arrested by Ouattara's troops aided by UN and French forces, and extradited to the ICC in 2011.

- 'Historic milestone' -

Gbagbo's defence lawyer, Emmanuel Altit, insisted Wednesday it was "an important trial for Cote d'Ivoire and for Africa" and would help "clarify and understand the tragic events that occurred in that country."

Gbagbo's supporters accuse Paris of plotting to oust him, and charge that Ouattara's camp has not been investigated for also carrying out a string of abuses.

Prosecutor Bensouda said her investigations into other crimes committed during that period were launched last year and "intensifying."

Rights groups say crimes were committed by both sides, and highlight that no charges have yet been brought against the camp of Ouattara -- just elected to a second term as president.

"In village after village in the far west, members of the Republican Forces loyal to Ouattara killed civilians from ethnic groups associated with Gbagbo," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

"The ICC's ongoing investigation into crimes by the Ouattara side remains a critical avenue for victims to see justice," stressed Param-Preet Singh, senior counsel for HRW.

Gbagbo's defence has repeatedly denied there was an organised plan and insists the former trade unionist played a key role in installing a multi-party system in his nation -- a regional powerhouse once held up as a beacon of democracy.

Hundreds of Gbagbo supporters from the country's large diaspora began descending on the new ICC building from before dawn on Thursday.

Draped in orange flags, they played drums and chanted slogans in support of the former president.

"Our dream to see our president walk free starts today," said Marius Boue, who travelled from northern France. "He is truly a man of the Ivorian people."

One of the rally's organisers, Abel Naki, told AFP Gbagbo and been "kidnapped" and "deported" to the ICC.

"It reminds us of the years of slavery and colonisation."

Bitter divisions still mark the Ivory Coast and in the protagonists' strongholds giant screens were being erected to allow Ivorians to follow the proceedings taking place thousands of miles away on a windswept North Sea coastline.

During the course of what will be a lengthy and complex trial, prosecutors intend to present 5,300 elements of proof including hundreds of videos, as well as 138 potential witnesses.

Gbagbo's wife Simone is also wanted for crimes against humanity by the ICC, but she was sentenced to 20 years in an Ivorian jail last year and the government refuses to hand her over.
Nairobi (AFP) - Burundi police said Friday they were holding two respected foreign journalists as they reported on gunmen opposed to the government in the volatile nation.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested on Thursday afternoon, they said.

Both have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work.

"The two foreigners were arrested in the company of armed criminals," the security ministry said in a statement.

Presidential press chief Willy Nyamitwe said the pair were among 17 people arrested by police.

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were also seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

"They have not been charged, we are still at the investigation stage," said police deputy spokesman Moise Nkurunziza.

"If there is no evidence against them, they will be released, of course," he added.

- 'Consummate professionals' -

In a statement Le Monde called for the "immediate release" of the two journalists.

"They both have valid visas and were merely exercising their professional duties by meeting all concerned parties involved in the current tensions in Burundi," Le Monde said.

"The Burundian authorities should immediately release French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy and British photographer Phil Moore, unless there is a credible legal basis for detaining them, and guarantee their safety," said Carina Tertsakian of Human Rights Watch.

"They should ensure that they are not ill-treated in detention and that diplomatic representatives and lawyers can visit them without delay," Tertsakian added.

The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA) said it was "extremely concerned about the arrests of our esteemed and dear colleagues."

Moore has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

"We know them to be consummate professionals and are disturbed by news of their detention while they were doing their jobs in Bujumbura," the FCAEA said in a statement early Friday.

- Burundi to dominate AU talks -

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.

The crisis in Burundi will be top of the agenda this weekend when African leaders meet at their annual summit in Ethiopia, where they are expected to vote on sending 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi, a plan the government has rejected.

Since Nkurunziza won presidential elections in July, clashes between loyalists and the opposition have turned increasingly violent.

The UN has warned that Burundi risks a repeat of the 1993-2005 civil war, with some 400 dead since April and at least 230,000 people fleeing to neighbouring countries.

On Friday, rights group Amnesty International released satellite photos they said "strongly indicate" five mass graves of those killed during battles in the capital in December.

"These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out," Amnesty's regional chief Muthoni Wanyeki said.
Nairobi (AFP) - Two foreign journalists working in Burundi and arrested during a raid were released one day later on Friday, on the eve of a key Africa summit where the troubled nation tops the agenda.

The journalists, Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested on Thursday afternoon during a raid in which 15 others were also held, police said.

Both journalists have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work. Their arrest sparked widespread condemnation from rights groups and diplomats.

"They were released, no charges were brought against them," French ambassador Gerrit Van Rossum told AFP, but added they had not been given their equipment and notebooks back.

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

Despite Burundi's rejection, African leaders are expected to vote at AU headquarters in Ethiopia this weekend on sending 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi, to end months of the violence the journalists were reporting on when arrested.

The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA), who described the reporters as "consummate professionals", said that while their release was "a big relief... the incident bodes ill for our work in Burundi."

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

Moore, 34, has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy, 49, has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

- Mass graves -

The Burundi government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.

AFP and RFI reporter Esdras Ndikumana, 54, was forced to seek refuge in Kenya in August after he was tortured by the SNR in Bujumbura.

While the official theme of the African Union meeting is human rights, leaders from the 54-member bloc will once again confront a string of crises across the continent when they open two-day talks at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital on Saturday.

Leaders, as well as UN chief Ban Ki-moon, are expected to open the summit around 11:00 am (0800 GMT), but Nkurunziza is not expected to attend.

Since he won presidential elections in July, clashes between loyalists and the opposition have turned increasingly violent.

The UN has warned that Burundi risks a repeat of a 1993-2005 civil war, with some 400 dead since April and at least 230,000 people fleeing to neighbouring countries.

On Friday, rights group Amnesty International released satellite photos they said "strongly indicate" five mass graves of those killed during battles in the capital in December.

"These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out," Amnesty's regional chief Muthoni Wanyeki said.
Wa, Jan. 28, GNA - Dr. Edward Mahama, Presidential Candidate of the People's National Convention (PNC), has introduced 'New Beginning', 'New Ideas' and 'New Force' as its campaign message to Ghanaians to maintain peace before, during and after the elections.

He said 'New Beginning' refers to how the PNC government would revolutionalised agriculture on all fronts and using 'New Ideas' to modernise agriculture through the active participation of the youth to make a productive change in the agricultural sector and reduce unemployment.

Dr. Mahama was stating policies and programmes that the PNC government would implement if voted to power in the 2016 general elections, during separate courtesy calls on Alhaji Yakubu Issahaku, Regional Chief Imam, and the Maulvi Masroov Muzzafar Ahmad Shahib at the Ahmaddiya Mission in Wa on Wednesday.

The PNC Presidential Candidate was on a three day 'thank you tour' of Upper West Region, and also to give his message to the Party's supporters towards the forthcoming general election.

Dr. Mahama urged the youth to use their thumb to effect a change of government in this year's elections and help fight corruption to enhance development.

He noted that his year's election was a dangerous one because there has been some disagreement about the voters register while corruption and violence had also characterized the Ghanaian social, economic and political globe.

He entreated Ghanaians to vote out political parties which would splash money on the electorate during campaigns in order to win the elections, saying: 'Let us resist the temptation of monetary gains and vote for prosperity for our children'.

Alhaji Yakubu Issahaku, Upper West Regional Chief Imam, said the concept of peace has become high during this election year because it is the prerequisite for development.

He therefore appealed to political party leaders and their supporters to educate the youth during their campaigns to sustain the prevailing peace before, during, and after the elections.

The Regional Chief Imam expressed concern about the reckless and life risking motor ridding among the youth during the visits of Presidential candidates of the various political parties leaders, which had resulted in the death of several youth in the communities while others also got themselves maimed.

He said death was a mistake beyond human correction and advised the youth to maintain peace for the 2016 to enable them reap the benefits of their labour.

'Every Ghanaian has a special place for Ghana in his or her heart and let us all work for Ghana,' he advised, adding: 'You need good health to be able to contribute your quota towards the development of Ghana'.

Mr. Bernard Mornaah, National Chairman of the PNC, said this year's election was not about National Democratic Congress (NDC) or New Patriotic Party (NPP), but about unemployment among the youth, farmers unable to feed their families, parents unable to pay for their children school fees and retirees incapable to hold brief for their families among others.

He described Dr. Edward Mahama as a visionary leader who came out with the idea of the National Health Insurance Scheme and School Feeding Programme among others, which had been being badly implemented by the government.

He urged Ghanaians to consider the 2016 elections as an issue of ensuring the betterment of Ghana and not that of NDC and NPP.

GNA
28.01.2016 LISTEN

Aflao (V/R), Jan. 28, GNA - Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Trade and Industries says his Ministry is undertaking a thorough evaluation of various interests in the current trade-war between local cement manufacturers and importers.

He said the exercise, with references to price build-ups in other countries, should enable the Ministry pronounce appropriately on the issue.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said this during an interaction with management of Diamond Cement, a cement making company at Aflao, as part of his tour of facilities under the Ministry of Trade and Industries in the Volta Region.

Local cement makers are claiming cement imports from Nigeria and China are flooding the market, thus making their businesses uncompetitive.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said any move by Ghana would be in conformity with international trade practices and sub-regional pacts.

He said in the same vein Ghana, would expect trading partners to obey the international statutes, which would willfully make it difficult for Ghanaian cement producers to export to their countries.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said his ministry expects revenues that make up the shop price of imported cement as provided by the exporters to be transparent.

He said competition should make cement price a little cheaper than it is currently.

Tati Ramarao, General-Manager of Diamond Cement said the company is not afraid of competition but only wants an equal playing field.

He said Dankote Cement transported by road through Aflao to Ghana selling at cheaper prices and other imports had resulted in a drop in production at Diamond Cement, from 5,000 tonnes to 3,000 tonnes per day.

Mr Rao said the irony is that, the company out of social responsibility perspectives, is keeping the same number of workers in the face of dwindling production.

At Kensington Industries, a salt producing company whose operations span seven communities in littoral and lagoon confines of Ketu-South, Dr Spio-Garbrah suggested that companies investing in Ghana should arrange business partnership with community members.

He said this would generate a lot of affinity between the companies and communities in which they operate.

There is a turf war going between the wholly foreign owned salt mining company and the locals.

GNA
Accra, Jan. 28, GNA - Some concerned NDC youths of the Klottey Korley Constituency have petitioned the National Executive body of the party to help halt the unlawful attacks being made on Dr. Zanetor Agyemang Rawlings, the party's parliamentary candidate for the area.

The concerned youths clad in attires embossed with Dr. Zanetor's image besieged the party's headquarters to register their displeasure at the petitioned filed against her at her court.

The petition follows a fresh suit filed at the Accra High court by Nii Armah Ashietey the defeated incumbent Member of Parliament for the Constituency.

Nii Ashietey is asking the court to nullify the candidature of Dr Agyemang Rawlings, as the elected Member of Parliament for the general election in November.

The first suit, filed by four members of the party, sought to challenge the eligibility of Dr. Zanetor Rawlings on the grounds that her name could not be found in the voter's register during the NDC primary, was thrown out by the trial judge for lack of merit.

Mr. Samuel Constant Kwaku, the chairman of the concerned Youths of the Constituency, appealed to the leaders of the party to resolve the issues causing the recent divisions at the constituency.

'We wish to state that we are very aggrieved and are losing our patience over this matter,' he stated.

He said should no action be taken by the executives of the party, they would take legal means to address the matter themselves.

"Hon. Ashietey and his people failed to help the constituency but Dr. Zanetor has already started doing a lot of development, which includes building day care centers for all markets within the constituency, and has been organising free health care screening for over 5000 people, and providing skills training for the youth and many more.

"We will not bow to their  acts to prevent Zanetor from succeeding, we will take all the necessary steps to ensure that evil never prevails,' Mr Kwaku said.

Mr. Kofi Adams, the National organiser of the NDC, received the petition, on behalf of the party, and assured them that the national executives would look into it and address them accordingly.

'As far as the national executives are concerned we have elected a candidate, and that is what we know but we will look into your grievances during our meeting and address them,' he said.

GNA
Agricultural land owners in Nebraska have seen spikes in agricultural land values, causing property taxes to surge in recent years. As a result, our research shows rural Nebraskans now pay up to 40 percent more per person in combined property and income taxes than their urban counterparts.

A bill before the Legislature, LB 958, attempts to address this issue by capping statewide agricultural land assessment growth to 3 percent, thereby preventing future spikes for agricultural property owners. This approach, however, does not address Nebraskas heavy reliance on property taxes and low level of state support for our schools, counties, cities and community colleges. Furthermore, the measure would have unintended consequences similar to those created by other recent proposals to tax agricultural land at a lower rate.

First, the cap would create large shortfalls for schools and other local governments. If the assessment cap had been in effect this year, it would have created a $212 million shortfall for schools and other localities, including a $144 million shortfall for K-12 schools alone. The shortfalls would have had to be addressed by cuts to schools and other local services or through levy increases  which would have wiped out much of the tax reduction from the assessment cap.

Second, the bill would shift property taxes from agricultural land to residential and business properties, causing property taxes for many Nebraska residential and commercial property owners to increase significantly.

Third, the cap would have a disparate impact among agricultural land owners. The largest tax reductions under the cap would go to agricultural land owners who live near urban areas, as property taxes in these areas can be shifted and shared with nearby residential and business properties. Such tax shifts cannot occur in more rural parts of the state, which means property tax levies would either increase, offsetting the property tax reduction for agricultural land owners, or schools and other vital services would need to be cut.

To illustrate how the proposal would work, if the cap had been in place this year, in Lincoln County, where property taxes can be shifted and shared with relatively large amounts of commercial and residential properties, agricultural land owners would have seen their property taxes reduced significantly ($208 per $100,000 of valuation). Property taxes on other property types would have increased about $104 per $100,000 of value.

In contrast, in neighboring McPherson County, where there is relatively little residential and business property, average levies would have had to increase almost 30 cents to avoid cuts. This would have resulted in a tax reduction of about $26 per $100,000 of agricultural land value  less than 13 percent of the tax cut experienced by Lincoln County agricultural land owners. McPherson County residential and business property owners, meanwhile, would have seen their property taxes increase almost $298 per $100,000 of value  nearly three times greater than the tax increase experienced by Lincoln County residential and commercial property owners.

Consequences such as shortfalls, tax shifts and the disparate impact across the state are why the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy wrote in a 2008 report that assessment caps are among the least effective, least equitable, and least efficient strategies available for providing property tax relief.

Finally, there has been some confusion about how the proposal actually will work. Its important to note the cap holds statewide growth of agricultural land to 3 percent but it will not hold assessment growth on each piece of agricultural property to 3 percent. The states Property Tax Administrator projects that if the proposal becomes law, agricultural land valuations in 2016 would increase by 13.6 percent in the northern region of the state and would actually decrease by 2.1 percent in the southern region of the state.

A better approach to reducing property taxes would be to address our low state support for K-12 school and other local governments. Compared to other states, we are the 2nd most reliant on property taxes to fund K-12 schools and 49th in the percent of K-12 funded by the state. We rank 47th in the country in our state support for local governments.

Policy proposals like the assessment cap, which fail to acknowledge the link between property taxes and state support for schools and other localities, will likely just create more issues than they solve.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

Gone are the days when the Luddite advocates of and elitist anoraks in the UP Tradition terrorized the Gold Coast (Ghana) with reckless abandon, in the process killing children and innocent men and women. Nkrumahs political vision and eventually the introduction of the so-called Preventive Detention Act (PDA) saved the neonatal corporate polity from disintegration, instability and anarchy, three serious geopolitical deficits we have seen materialize in Sudan, Northeastern Nigerian, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, South Sudan, Syria, and a few other hot spots across the world.

Even the National Liberation (NLC), a khakistocratic junta the self-styled democrat Busia advised and with whom he reportedly collaborated in the execution of the 1966 coup, saw the immense security implications of the PDA for political stability and quickly appropriated it to contain the social turmoil in the aftermath of the Western-backed coup. It called it the Protective Custody Decree (PCD). What all these mean is that Busia and the khakistocratic junta set the precedent for coup detats in Ghana, a teachable precedent that would eventually come back to haunt him in the form of another orchestrated schadenfreude putschism.

That schadenfreude putschism kicked him out of office for gross incompetence, demagoguery, political ethnocentrism, and autocracy. Now that existential threat to Ghanas national security appears to be no more. This political lemma is not necessarily true. As a matter of fact, the existential threat to the countrys national security is a latent one. It merely is waiting for a critical mass of factors for material expression.

This critical mass of factors likely to throw the country out of the comfortable wreath of relative political stability includes, but not limited to, political corruption; ethnocentrism; armed robbery; sexism as functions of trokosi and witch camps; duopolistic party politics (elective democracy); irresponsible journalism; children studying under trees and teacher absenteeism; underperforming economy; cronyism, nepotism, and other forms of political favoritism; youth unemployment; power outage, politically incorrect partisan insults; mass poverty; official misconduct; gross mismanagement of natural resources and pollution; and so forth. Paying ghost teachers real salaries and neglecting real teachers what are due them are national tragedies.

Those are in fact a composite of visible and invisible threats to Ghanas existence and future. On top of these critical mass of factors is religious fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism now threatens to join the political fray whereby a potential unstable Ghana is further undermined by popular misunderstanding of elective democracy, economic downturn, official avarice, public corruption, power outage, and the culture of ignorance. We specifically have in mind the psychotic apocalyptic auguries of false prophets such as the Reverend Bempahs, fundamentalist characters steeped in their own sanctimonious miasma-styled messianic complexes.

There is no doubt that Ghanas duopolistic dispensation is gradually being partially taken over by the sneaking miasma of political theology, a dangerous and worrying trend in the countrys matrix of political survival if not proactively checked. Judeo-Christian fundamentalism, for instance, is steadily enjoying an ascending gradient in the landscape of Ghanas political economy. It offers itself as a potential if not real threat to the psychology of progressive nationalism. Political Islam or Islamism, on the other hand, is another matter altogether. There has actually been news of a couple or so Ghanaians having been reportedly recruited by and for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

This is great cause for concern. Again, this is serious for all intents and purposes, though no forensic affirmation of the widely publicized claim has as yet been reliably established to assuage public angst. Those who therefore think physical distance is an unbridgeable barrier between ISISs geopolitical locations of martial operation across the Middle East and North Africa and potential recruits far away from these theatres of unconventional warfare need to revise their earlier hypotheses. Telecommunication (social media), technology (internet), transportation engineering, and the near-boundless reach of human psychology have all conspired to make physical distance an irrelevant factor in the material and geopolitical topology of international and human relations.

We have seen terrorists avail themselves of the concept of virtual community in the perpetration of their terrorist acts. Successful deployment of virtual community in acts of terrorism underscores our discursive contestation of the ideas of those who essentially view physical distance as a major factor in the indoctrination of potential recruits. This position does not completely rule out the importance of physical distance as a strategic immanent factor in the character of a determined extremist in the perpetration of terrorist acts. Individuals who are sympathetic to the cause of jihadism need not be perturbed by the psychological formidability of physical distance.

Neither is economics the sole reason individuals turn to Islamic terrorism. Osama bin Laden was not poor. Yet it is a complex question that goes beyond the finite template of human psychology. Here we are directly referring to discursive interrogations based on metaphysics, phenomenology, ontology, eschatology, and nominalism. Again, neither is religious fundamentalism the exclusive province of Islam and Judeo-Christianity. Religious fundamentalism is found in almost every religion including Buddhism, Bahai Faith, Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Mormonism, and Traditional African Religion. Trokosi, ritual murder, witch camps, and sakawa are part and parcel of the political theology of Traditional African Religion.

Nevertheless, economics is probably part of the ideological framology of a terrorist institution such as Boko Haram. In Ghana, too, economics may someday come to play some role in the indoctrination profiles of impressionable minds if the living conditions of the masses are not improved, though it takes more than the government to improve the living conditions of the masses, and if religious fundamentalism continues to gain a foothold in Ghanaian society as we are presently seeing. The economic factor as it relates to terroristic fomentation could be a farfetched possibility but one cannot, as a matter of principle, complacently underestimate that possibility from material actuation.

What no one can possibly refute, if we may add, is the fact that a section of humanity has complexly lost faith in the power of secular politics to improve the human condition. Or simply answer the perennial question: What is the meaning of life? This is a speculative interrogation of the immanent infrastructure, of course a query that does not always, even easily, submit to the scrutiny of scientific empiricism. Millenarianism, messianism, and caliphate are obvious ripostes to the failure of secular politics and economic sociology as transforming ingredients in the material and metaphysical recipe of human existence. The political theology upon which Joseph Konys Judeo-Christian Lords Resistance Army feeds partly derives from Mosaic millenarianism.

All things being equal, the intersection of economics and religious fundamentalism may come to play its part in the instantiation of religious terrorism. Or in pushing certain frustrated persons to architect terrorism. We should understand that coup detats are ideological acts of political terrorism, the latter of which is always a corollary of one grievance or another including economics and official mismanagement of resources. And we clearly see how resource curse and official management of Nigerias oil and gas resources have given birth to economic terrorists in the Niger Delta.

FINAL REMARKS

For some jihadists secularism and materialism are antithetical to teleological aspirations for earthly perfection. Secularism and materialism corrupt human capacity for perfection, that is. But corruptibility is an intrinsic imprint of human nature. That is, corruptibility is a natural consequentialist outcome of that intrinsic imprint. It therefore appears that the intrinsic corruption of mans nature including such acts as jihadism, political corruption, rape, greed, etc., represents a latent and explicit fixture of conditioned reflexing as a creative response to the varied and expressed complexity of the environment with which man, a social human being, interacts.

This is why our society must not look on unconcerned as traditional culture makes adultcentrism and adultism the exclusive standards for assessing the social psychology of inter-generational interactions. It is an open secret that traditional society assigns godly status to adultism and adultcentrism, both of which sometimes stifle the creative expressiveness of youth initiative, cognitive independence, and civic participation in nation-building exercises. Here we are pointing to societal reinforcement of the positive and organizational attributes of the civic impressionability of youth culture, political sensibility, and creative assertiveness.

Society must therefore work hard to address the charactological deficits of our ephebiphobic traditional society. This is also why pedagogical enforcement of epistemic and deontic authority plays such an important role in Youth Studies. Unfortunately, there appears to be no emphatic didactic focus on the development of Youth Studies in the Ghanaian educational system. In other words, Youth Studies is not a subject of study in Ghana. We should seriously look into this matter.

Finally, tackling youth unemployment should be a national priority. This is not to imply that economic imperatives are intrinsic to acts of religious terrorism per se. That is not what we are actually saying. In fact, what we are also saying is that the paradigm of religious terrorism is a dedicated act of psychological or immanent disposition in the case of those who have undergone militant theological indoctrination. Religious terrorism therefore has a metaphysical aspect to it. It is however possible for some to use religious terrorism to advance their political and economic aims.

Perhaps Boko Haram is a teachable example of the intersection of religious banditry and economic imperatives. Quite apart from everything, we want to see the youth learn something from all these goings-on even as we give them hope, namely something to live for, and not allow themselves to be distracted from exercising and taking full charge of their creative possibilities and potentialities.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In the final analysis, more and more people the world over have found a reason to take solace in the purely abstract and utopian framology of existence where secular politics and economic sociology seemed to have grossly failed mankind. Millenarianism, messianism, and desire for the establishment of caliphates are merely three means a section of humanity wants to have in place of secular politics. While economics may play some role in the recruitment and indoctrination of potential terrorists, political Luddites, putschists, and anarchists, we at the same time acknowledge the supreme nature of the philosophical, religious and scientific complexity of the fundamental question of terrorism.

We shall return
London (AFP) - An Oxford University statue of a 19th century white supremacist empire-builder will not be taken down despite a heated campaign by students, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday.

Oriel College, which owns the statue of Cecil Rhodes, has ruled out removing it over fears that it could lose donations worth some 100 million (130 million euros, $140 million) if it did, the newspaper reported.

"Following careful consideration, the college's governing body has decided that the statue should remain in place," the Telegraph quoted Oriel as saying in a statement.

Rhodes gave his name to the territories of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and founded the De Beers diamond company.

The Briton was also a donor to Oriel, one of the 38 colleges which make up Oxford University, and endowed the Rhodes Scholarship, which has helped non-British students like former US president Bill Clinton and ex-Australian prime minister Tony Abbott study at the university.

Many current students objected to the presence of his statue in the heart of the historic city, inspired by the Rhodes Must Fall campaign which prompted the removal of a Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town last year.

"To put someone so literally on a pedestal is to tacitly condone their legacy," Daisy Chandley, one of the Oxford campaign's organisers, said last month.

But others have warned against taking the statue down, saying that to do so would be to rewrite history.

South Africa's last white president, F.W. de Klerk, wrote to Britain's Times newspaper last month calling the plan "folly" and adding: "If the political correctness of today were applied consistently, very few of Oxford's great figures would pass scrutiny."

Oxford's chancellor, Chris Patten, reportedly referred to the row in a speech this month, saying: "Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been".

The Telegraph reported that Oriel College had already seen 1.5 million in donations cancelled due to its ambiguous position on the statue and that some alumni had written in saying they were cutting the college out of their wills.

"The overwhelming message we have received has been in support of the statue remaining in place," Oriel's statement added.

"The college believes the recent debate has underlined that the continuing presence of these historical artefacts is an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today."
Multipro Private Limited, sole agents of Indomie products in Ghana today rewarded three major wholesalers of Indomie for meeting and exceeding 2015 sales targets.

Mavis Serwaa Debrah of Kassan Halleluyah Enterprise at Okaishie, Felicia Banahene of Tonifel Enterprise in Nungua, and Gifty Gyamerah of Geo-Gift Enterprise in Tema Community 1 were rewarded at the event.

Mavis met the highest target of 35,000 cartons of indomie noodles pack every month and she won a brand new Pajero, 2016 model.

Felicia met her 16,000 cartons a month target and also took home a Honda IX35 for a prize, while Gifty took home a brand new Hyundai Elantra for meeting her 14,000 cartons a month target.

Accra Zonal Supervisor of the company, Mavis Yeboah told Adom News 2015 was a tough year for them but they survived because those deserving distributors across the country pushed the limits.

She said, in total, the company has given out about 20 cars to distributors across the country who met targets of between 9,000 cartons and 35,000 cartons a month.

The 35,000 achiever was the one who won the Pajero  between 18,000 and 16,000 achievers got Honda IX35  between 15,000 and 10,000 they got Hyundai Elantra and the 9,000 achievers to Hyundai Accent, she said.

Some sub-distributors also won home appliances like television sets, home theatres, air conditioners, microwave ovens, refrigerators and mobile phones among other things.

Each of the three top winners in Accra said they will make personal use of their cars to enhance the distribution business.

They believe distributing Indomie could be a rewarding part-time job in these days of economic hardship in Ghana.
I have brought you the fantastic perspective of David Russell, a teacher for 30 years in the state of Massachusetts, the state with the best education system in the United States. David worked with us and was a teacher in a local school in Ghana where he also imparted his experience and skills to the teachers during his time. Our volunteer opportunities in Africa provide programs empowering the development of poor communities, particularly women and children.

Today i bring you the concluding part of David Russell's perspective. You can read the previous two articles if you have not, and come back to read this one.

David concludes:

Even if Sachs is rightand I think he isthat "there are practical solutions to almost all of their [poor countries'] problems" and that extreme poverty can be eliminated by 2025, it is not easy to maintain optimism, not for international supporters such as myself, and not, I imagine, for many Africans and Ghanaians themselves. One of my goals in traveling to Ghana was to learn more about how the people there understood their place in the world, what they made of their prospects, and how they persevered.

I asked my students at St. Georges' if they felt more hopeful or worried about their futures. Almost unanimously they chose hopeful. Why was that their overwhelming, immediate response, I asked. Two answers were offered. First was belief in God. Christianity is omnipresent in southern and central Ghanabus drivers offer a prayer that riders join in on before embarking on the journeyand it is a source of strength. The second reason for hope that my students identified is confidence that their hard work and determination to become educated will yield results. They are not, by their description or from my observation, pessimistic or fatalistic. They embody the spirit of the currently popular Ghanaian political slogan, "forward ever, backward never!" I'm going to ask the same question about future orientation to my American students this fall.

My last night in Ghana I sat at a plastic table outside a roadside restaurant in the capital Accra with Agyapong Gyamfi, the Volunteers Manager of Elghana, the organization that placed me in Kumasi and which organizes placement of international volunteers around the country. 30-something and a speaker of several languages, my dark-skinned companion and I spent a few hours enjoying the pleasant evening air and animatedly exchanging thoughts about Ghana, the US, and the world.

As Agyapong spoke of his faith in the people, a boy walked up to us. Perhaps 16, he displayed to us a stack of DVD movies held between his hand and bicep along his forearm. Agyapong gently gestured him away and continued. "He's probably been doing this all day, walking many miles, trying to make a living." A most ordinary pursuit in Ghana, but, as such, noteworthy. I had given a brief post-lunch talk to the assembled students at St. George's the previous day, and in it I had highlighted the "hope, pride, and determination" I had observed among them. I saw it here again in this young entrepreneur.

I don't know when I'll next be called "bruni." I don't know what will become of the people I encountered during July 2008 in Ghana, the people I shared a home and classrooms with and those anonymous ones I interacted with or observed on the streets. I don't know if the yawning chasm between our worlds will ever substantially lessen.

I do know that I cannot know. I do know that all I can do, all that any of us can do, is to try, to summon up our hope, pride, and determination. To live the best we can with love.

One day I was taken to the central market in Kumasi, the largest one in West Africa, by Yvonne and her mother Mercy to buy some kente cloth. In this crowded, bustling maze of hundreds of peddlers, sightings of pale faces are especially rare. As I passed him a young man declared, "white man!" He labeled what he noticed and what we both knew. My presence was not ordinary. On this occasion his phrase was accompanied by a smile and what felt like a measure of respect. "Check you out crossing boundaries like it's nothing!" was, I think, the unspoken commentary.

I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to live as a "bruni" in Ghana for a month.

Note: In commenting on an earlier version of this piece, Mr. Gyamfi pointed out that the actual word is obroni rather than "bruni," but Ive kept the word written as I heard it.

David Russell is a Teacher of over 3 decades of service in the State of Massachusetts, USA. He volunteered in Africa with us as a teacher in Kumasi, Ghana.

Keep following my blog as I bring you the genuine perspectives of many travellers and volunteers I encounter and write about the difference we make and how you too can make a difference in your own little corner to impact the lives of others.
Staff of the Electoral Commission (EC) have resolved to call a nationwide strike on February 22, 2016 to protest poor service conditions.

Joy News has intercepted a copy of a strongly worded resolution passed by the EC Senior Staff Association on behalf of the entire staff detailing a series of actions designed to cripple activities of the Commission.

They are hopeful the strike will put pressure on authorities to address their grievances.

They say "all salary negotiations undertaken with the relevant institutions and authorities since 2012 have yielded no resolution."

Below is the full letter addressed to EC Chair, Charlotte Osei.

RESOLUTION OF THE DIVISIONAL UNION AND THE SENIOR STAFF ASSOCIATION OF ELECTORAL COMMISSION AT A JOINT EMERGENCY MEETING HELD ON TUESDAY, 19THJANUARY, 2016 AT THE HEAD OFFICE, ACCRA

We the undersigned and leaders of the Union and the Senior Staff Association, on behalf of the entire staff,

Having met on Tuesday, 19thJanuary, 2016, at the Head office and dispassionately and thoughtfully considered and dilated our conditions of service in general, but with special emphasis on the low salary levels,

Noting that, all avenues for resolution have been exhausted,

Realizing that all salary negotiations undertaken with the relevant institutions and authorities since 2012 have yielded no resolution,

Realizing that the payments of allowances after every salary negotiation are but only window dressing of the real problem,

Mindful of our economic and social security as employees after retirement,

Determined to build for ourselves and our families through all legal and legitimate means a happy, comfortable and restful future and not depending on families and relations,

Believing that our humble and meek posture in all negotiations have been taken to be a weakness and thus not taken serious,

Pledging to conduct our affairs within the constitutional prescription, and

In the exercise of our constitutional right as employees;

Do hereby resolve and be unequivocally be resolved that;

a) On 8thof February, 2016, the entire staff of the Electoral Commission will raise red flags in all Commission's establishments and vehicles as a sign of our dissatisfaction and aversion of the state of affairs

b) On 15thFebruary, 2016, the entire staff will embark on a sit-down strike, and

c) On 22" February, 2016, a full blown strike will be embarked upon by the entire staff.

We write this to bring to your notice and attention this roadmap of our intended actions.

Thank you.

cc: Deputy Chairman, Operations

Deputy Chairperson, Finance & Administration

All Commission Members

Head Quarters Directors

Regional Directors

Regional Representatives
WHO LEADS CPP TO ELECTION 2016? IT LOOKS LIKE SAMIA NKRUMAH

The question as to who will lead the Convention Peoples Party in the 2016 elections will be decided tomorrow when the party delegates converge at the Ghana International Trade Fair, La in Accra, for the partys presidential primary.

CRUDE DIP WONT AFFECT GHANAS OIL INDUSTRY

The Minister of Petroleum, Emmanuel Kofi Armah Buah, has given an assurance that the drastic drop in the prices of crude oil on the world market will not have adverse effects on investor confidence in Ghanas petroleum industry.

MENINGITIS CLAIMS 50 LIVES

Fifty people have so far died from the outbreak of pneumococcal meningitis, the Health Minister, Alex Segbefia, has said.

COVER-UP IN GHC3.6M BUS BRANDING SCANDAL

There appears to be a deliberate attempt by government to shield some public indicted by the findings of the Attorney Generals report in the Metro Mass Transit Bus branding scandal that recently took the nation by storm.

IVOR FEVER GRIPS CPP

Even before the Convention Peoples Party national delegates could converge to decide on the choice of a candidate for the 2016 presidential poll, the grounds appear to favour Ivor Greenstreet, the immediate past General Secretary of the party.

MP, OWUSU BEMPAH WANTED

The Ashanti Regional police are hunting for the Member of Parliament for Agogo, Kwadwo Baah Agyeman and Ernest Owusu Bempah of the National Democratic Congress over alleged inflammatory remarks.

CRISIS HITS FIRE SERVICE: NO FUEL FOR FIRE TENDERS DUE TO INDEBTEDNESS

The financial crisis facing almost every sector of the Ghanaian economy is now having a telling effect on emergency services in the country to the extent that the Ghana National Fire Service is having challenges purchasing fuel for its fleet of vehicles in the Ashanti Region and some other parts of the country.

RESIDENTS OF NKROFUL ANGRY OVER MASS REBURIAL

Residents of Nkroful in the Sekondi Takoradi Municipality have expressed dismay over the mass reburial of corpses exhumed at the community cemetery last Saturday to pave way for the construction of a 13-kilometre dual-carriage road.

SIX NEW MILLENNIUM CITY SCHOOLS TO PEN  ACCRA MAYOR

The Chief Executive Officer of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije has hinted that out of the number of Millennium City school projects in the country, six have been completed and would soon be inaugurated.

STOP SPREADING WRONG INFORMATION ABOUT MENINGITIS OUTBREAK  DIRECTOR OF HEALTH SERVICES

The Ashanti Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Alexis Beifubah has called on the public to remain clam amid reported cases of pneumococcal meningitis in some districts in the region.

THE AIRLINE BUST: WHOS NEXT?

Euphoria greeted the start of domestic air travel in the country. Many locals, who hitherto saw air travel as a leisure and an expensive endeavor warmed to the idea of travelling by air from Accra to major capitals such as Kumasi, Takoradi, Sunyani and Tamale.

SMES FINANCING FAIR SLATED FOR MARCH

Government has introduced a SMEs financing fair, scheduled to take place between 16th and 17th March his year at the Accra International Conference Centre, to help propel the sectors growth.

GOVERNMENT MISSES INTEREST EXPENSE TARGET

Excessive borrowing is set to push governments interest expenses beyond the planned levels despite a decline in the cost of borrowing, figures from the Finance Ministry has shown.
Government has concluded that the fire that destroyed the Central Medical Stores (CMS) in Tema was a case of arson.

This followed investigations into the cause of the fire which occurred in January last year by the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).

A source has hinted Graphic Online that a total of 10 officials have been indicted in the report by the GNFS and the BNI.

Meanwhile, government will release its official position on the investigations into the fire on Friday.

The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, will issue government's statement following the approval of President John Dramani Mahama.
On Thursday, 28thJanuary the members of the Security Council were briefed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia, Michael Keating, and theSpecial Representative of the African Union Commission Chairperson for Somalia (SRCC),Francisco Madeira, on the situation in Somalia. The members of the Security Council expressed their full support for SRSG Keating and SRCC Madeira as they begin their assignments at a critical time for the future of Somalia. The members of the Security Council also looked forward to the imminent deployment of a new Force Commander for AMISOM.

The members of the Security Council welcomed the decision on an electoral model announced by the Federal Government of Somalia on 27 January. The members of the Security Council commended the Federal Government of Somalia for seeking a consensus on an electoral model for 2016; and commended the leaders of Somalia's existing and emerging federal member states for the serious efforts they made, over several months, to reach a compromise.

The members of the Security Council welcomed the recent inclusive Somali-led discussions on an electoral model. The members of the Security Council underlined that holding a peaceful, transparent electoral process in 2016 will mark a historic step forward for all Somalis, and will be fundamental for the country's continued progress towards democracy and stability. The members of the Security Council welcomed the Government of Somalia's commitment to hold an electoral process in 2016. And in this context, the members of the Security Council recalled Security Council resolution 2232 (2015) which set out their expectation that there shall be no extension of the electoral process timelines in Somalia.

The members of the Security Council recognised that the proposed model requires compromises from all parties and renewed their call for all key actors and institutions in Somalia, including Parliament, to set aside their differences and engage constructively in the political process, without further delay. The members of the Security Council recalled that individuals engaged in any acts which threaten the peace and reconciliation process in Somalia may be listed for targeted measures.

The members of the Security Council reiterated their strong condemnation of recent Al Shabaab attacks and paid tribute to AMISOM and the Somali National Army for their efforts in reducing the threat posed by Al Shabaab. The members of the Security Council underlined the importance of the continuation of offensive operations against Al Shabaab by the Somali National Army and AMISOM, in a well coordinated manner and in line with the qualitative improvements requested in Security Council resolution 2232 (2015), and in full compliance with applicable international law. In that context, the members of the Security Council looked forward to the outcomes of the planned summit level meeting of AMISOM troop contributors. The members of the Security Council stressed the importance of rapidly developing capable and sustainable Somali security forces, including the army and police, that can provide the security and stability necessary for governance and economic development to take hold.

The members of the Security Council welcomed the political and security progress in Somalia since 'the transition' ended in 2012. The members of the Security Council underlined the importance of the electoral process in 2016, completion of the Federal process and the constitutional review process in truly consolidating that progress. The members of the Security Council underlined in particular the need for agreeing the electoral process in a wide-ranging and consultative manner, including with women and across Somali society. The members of the Security Council also noted the importance of adhering to the political roadmap between now and 2020, in particular in order to reach one person one vote elections by 2020.

The members of the Security Council appealed to all those involved in discussions on the electoral process to seize this historic opportunity to deliver more representative governance to the people of Somalia. The members of the Security Council further underlined their determination to play a constructive and active role in the months ahead.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

Nana Kow Ponsi II, Adontehene of Agona Asafo in the Agona East District of the Central Region has called for peace, unity and stability ahead of the November 7, 2016 general elections.

Addressing a durbar organized by the chiefs and people of Bebiaraniha a suburb of Agona Swedru in the Agona West Municipality to mark their centenary anniversary since the establishment of the community recently, Nana Kow Ponsi II stressed the need for the people and Ghanaians as a whole to stay united and to sustain the peace and stability being enjoyed in the country

The Traditional ruler who was the Central Regional Manager if the A. M. E Zion Educational Unit observed with concern the rate at which unity was being neglected in Ghanaians communities leading to various forms of disputes.

" Its sad that communal labour which was used to contribute towards the development of our towns and villages has become a thing of the past. Lack of unity in our homes, churches, communities, groups and clubs, among Nananom, families and the likes has contributed significantly to the poor infrastructure development in the country.

Today, every community look up for the central government for provision of social amenities thus overburden government officials. Let us resort to our old days to better ourselves"

On education, Nana Kow Ponsi II known in private life as Mr. Emmanuel Oscar Oduro encouraged the youth in the community to strive hard to attain height in the educational ladder. He further called on those in leadership positions to assist brilliant but needy students to enable them attain their goals.

The Dean of the Parliamentary Press Corps, Mr. Andrews Edwin Arthur, a native of the town called on the youth to lead exemplary lives to serve as role model for the younger ones. He recounted days when students in the community undertake communal labour to clear filths in the environment to eliminate environmental related diseases disclosing that a healthy community was wealthy.

Mr. Andrews Edwin Arthur popularly known as 'Paa Kwesi' who is also the Managing Editor of The New Independent Newspaper a private newspaper based in Accra lauded parents in the area for investing in the education of their children. He advised students to stick to their books to reciprocate investment made for their education since they would take leadership positions in the near future.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Lucky Group of Companies, Mr. George Gyamfi pledged his support towards the establishment of educational endowments fund to assist brilliant but needy students in the Bebiaraniha community

According to him, his outfit was ready to sponsor students who perform better to enable them to attain height in education.
COLUMBUS  Business owners and professionals swapped cards and mucho gustos Thursday morning at a networking event at the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce office.

Nebraska Public Power District President and CEO Pat Pope said the event, sponsored by NPPD and Centro Hispanos Micro Business Development Program, helps Latino business owners connect with the community and succeed.

We recognize the contributions the immigrant community makes, particularly in entrepreneurship, said Pope.

Kara Asmus, the chamber's workforce coordinator, discussed the local business communitys need for workers and promise of the "good life."

I want to see everyone thrive, said Asmus. And tell your friends to come to Columbus and bring their families because we have jobs here for everyone.

The event was open to anyone interested in networking and building connections with the Latino business community. The crowd included professionals from all walks of life, pastors and rural development professionals to Zumba instructors.

Daniel and Leticia Paniagua own a food truck, La Longchenita, and were two of the six participants in the development program's business classes last fall. The pilot program was developed to teach Latino business owners and entrepreneurs management skills while covering topics such as inventory, business registration and taxes.

Daniel Paniagua said he's always been interested in business, but didnt know much about the work that goes on behind the scenes.

Now I run the business smoother, he said.

Between the long hours business ownership requires and language barriers with the non-Spanish-speaking population, the Paniaguas said they dont have many opportunities to meet other business leaders.

The next networking breakfast will be March 18. The business development program will host another session of classes starting in April and have a home day care training program in March.
There are hawks that accept and support violence in the name of religion. All the same that does not imply that religion promotes war. On the other hand Religion has a very substantial and imposing power to bring peace. But it does not seem to occur to most of us that there is not a single unified entity called religion, or that different religions actually teach different values.

Most people assumes that whatever is labeled religion teaches peace, and that anyone who commits violence in the name of religion must be importing his violent impulses from elsewhere, not deriving them from the teachings of religion. Such assumptions are not facts of the truth, as history teach that the Church inquisition and the crusaders of the Church can be said to be similar to what prevails now in the ideological slants of the "terrorism jihad".

Terrorist attacks occur every single day around the world. Most are barely mentioned by the media, and if they are, they are hidden behind other stories which apparently make better headlines.

A car bomb here, a beheading there, and a few dozen rapes and slaughters over there is usually thought of as being in a country so far away, therefore we just dont care. But we should.

The terrorists immigration into our country is growing, along with the terror attacks which come along with it getting closer home. The recent terrorist incident in Burkina Faso is a clear manifestation of the danger lurking in the unknown. But most of us don't know or see the danger that comes with it or fail to appreciate that the Fulani herdsmen like the unknown are all catalyst to terrorist acts.

If attacks taking place in a far-off country in our sub-region or elsewhere on the continent or in part of the world do not affect us, just think if they ever happens in our own backyard. These people who come to our countries arrive from these places and bring their ideology with them.

Is the freedom of religion so sacred that we are willing to sacrifice our country, our way of life and ultimately our very own freedom on the altar of jihadist ideology and religion in order to protect a doctrine whose believers preach the death and destruction of the rest of us? That is where the irony comes into play.

The ideal of freedom of religion along with political correctness is what dictates that we must be silent and allow others the right to worship as they please. But the practice of religion is like no other. Just think about the "Jihadist" ideological theology it is very clear: kill the unbelievers. And who are those unbelievers? We are.

Does the Holy Book of Islam really contain over a hundred verses prompting and promoting violence?

The theology from which springs their faith contains at least 109 verses that call Jihadists to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding.

A very worrying concern is that, even practitioners of lslam who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter. Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Jihadists ideological theology are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subject to interpretation as anything else in the Islamic theology.

The problem emanating from the hellish scourge could be traced to the context of violent passages that are more ambiguous than might be expected of a perfect book from a loving God.

Interestingly, a good many of contemporary Islamic Practitioners and believers exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's call to arms according to their own moral preconceptions about the so called justifiable violence.

On the other hand, their apologists attach importance to these preferences with tenuous arguments that, glossed over historical facts generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the issue confronting us is not about bad people, but bad ideology.

The disturbing and the unfortunate truth is that, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or abate and even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed.

Muhammad's own martial legateship, along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Holy Book, have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.

In our country, when the nations founding fathers to a great extent desired the freedom to worship as they wished, there were Christians, Animists and Practitioners of Islam whose beliefs differed from what was taught by the colonialists. They did not go to war or commit terrorist attacks against innocent civilians. They simply wanted to be left alone, did not want to be forced to be part of religious groups whose teachings differed from their own. They wanted the freedom to be able to practice their religion. Why allow a few fanatics whose political inclinations and pursuit blur out conscience to truth, resort to a path that has a potential to wreak upon us violence disaster.

Our very existence has been the history of this favorite paradigm of freedom of religion. And when it comes to religious beliefs i.e. - Animists, Traditionalists, Atheist and others they simply want to be able to worship as they please and be left alone without infringing upon anyone elses rights.

There is no comparison, however, between the history of this concept and what is happening today with the "ideological theology" thrust of the jihadists of Islam that their religion cannot coexist with other religions. The over 100 verses in the Quran which call for Disciples of Islam to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule has been the basis for the terrorist groups to act willingly without compassion. Even practitioners of Islam who are seen as not adherents are murdered. A recent case in mind is about an activist who is reported to have murdered his mother who sought to persuade him.

The President and his collaborators action has opened a new frontier for the "jihadist to get to us. His high proclamation that we are allies gives the jihadists the bent to get to us. Now we fall in the category of nonbelievers, and inviting more "Jihadist Disciples" immigrants into the country is like welcoming the enemy to come and destroy our civilization.

Why must we throw in this ridiculous compassion theory now to muddy the waters? As a people our civilization has been uniquely different - we have a unique way of life that is very distinct in all aspects, for our strength as a country has laid and remained in our diversity. It is this platform from which we derive our strength and allow us to accommodate each and everyone irrespective of what your belief is.

We share love, appreciates each other cultural heritage, religious beliefs - that is what make us stronger and unique. We demonstrate compassion coupled with common sense to each other. We must not do anything to undermine these long lived courtesies and principles for the sake of political correctness .
Abene (E/R), Jan. 28, GNA - The chiefs of Kwahu Abene, had denied the nomination and outdooring of a new Kwahumanhene.

They told Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Angwubutoge Awuni, Eastern Regional Commander of Police at a meeting at Abene that there are no such plans.

The meeting was attended by opinion leaders of Abene, seat of the Kwahu Paramount Stool under the leadership of Nana Simpe Owuradu III, Krontihene of Abene.

The search for a new paramount chief for the area has created tension and this month, two vehicles belonging to one of the contestants for the stool were burnt down and several protests were held by a section of the youth.

DCOP Awuni said, there was a rumour that a new paramount chief has been nominated and was to be presented to the King maker of Kwahu Traditional Area without notification of the police hence the dispatch of police personnel to the area to ensure peace and protection of property.

He said despite the denial of the chiefs that there would be no installation of a new chief the police would maintain its presence to guarantee peace.

Chief Superintendent of Police James Sarfo-Peprah, Nkawkaw Police District Commander, advised the youth to desist from any activity that could disturb the peace of the area and warned that, anyone who would breech the law would be dealt with.

GNA
On 19 January 2016, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights informed the EU about allegations of possible sexual exploitation and abuse by some operation personnel of EUFOR RCA, which closed in March 2015.

These alleged incidents appeared to have occurred in Bangui (Central African Republic) in the course of 2014. The EU takes these allegations very seriously. The EU is committed to human rights, protection of victims of sexual abuse and to fighting against impunity. EEAS headquarters immediately offered assistance to the UN High Commissioner and his team, as well as to the States potentially concerned, to cooperate on the follow-up of these alleged wrongdoings. The EU has sent an expert to discuss cooperation modalities in these proceedings with the Office of the High Commissioner. The EEAS is also reviewing any information pertaining to EUFOR RCA that could prove relevant. The EU follows a zero-tolerance policy as regards sexual misconduct or criminal activity. All EU Missions and Operations' documents and instructions include strict rules aimed at preventing such misbehaviour. These documents also aim at ensuring that competent national judiciary authorities effectively investigate any incidents. According to EU missions and operations' rules, responsibility for any investigation, disciplinary or criminal action remains in the hands of the contributing States. The EEAS informed EU Member States and is in contact with troop contributing States concerned for cooperation.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said Friday he was extremely alarmed at continuing allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of minors in the Central African Republic (CAR) by members of foreign military forces. The alleged crimes mostly took place in 2014, but only came to light in recent weeks.

A joint UN team in the CAR recently interviewed a number of girls who said they had been sexually exploited or abused by foreign soldiers. Four of the girls said their abusers were attached to contingents operating as part of the European Union operation (EUFOR / CAR). Two of the girls interviewed said they were raped by EUFOR soldiers, and the two other girls said they were paid to have sexual relationships with other EUFOR soldiers. While the nationalities of some of the soldiers remain unclear, three of the girls said they believed their abusers were members of the Georgian EUFOR contingent. The four girls were aged between 14 and 16 at the time of the alleged abuse. UN human rights staff also interviewed a girl and a boy who were aged 7 and 9 respectively when they were allegedly abused in 2014 by French Sangaris troops. The girl said she had performed oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for a bottle of water and a sachet of cookies. Both she and the nine-year-old boy said that other children were abused in a similar fashion in repeated incidents involving several French soldiers. All six cases involving non-UN foreign military forces took place in, or near, the M'Poko camp for displaced people next to the airport in the capital, Bangui. High Commissioner Zeid last week raised the cases with the European, Georgian and French authorities, as well as with another country on a similar allegation for which additional corroboration is needed. All four authorities have promptly responded to the High Commissioner and stated that they have already begun investigations or referred the cases to relevant judicial authorities in their respective countries. These are extremely serious accusations and it is crucial that these cases are thoroughly and urgently investigated, the High Commissioner said. I am heartened at the initial responses we have received from the countries concerned, as well as from the European Union, which show they take these terrible allegations very seriously. We will continue to closely follow up on these cases, and any others which emerge as the UN team on the ground continues its investigations. Far too many of these crimes continue to go unpunished, with the perpetrators enjoying full impunity. This simply encourages further violations. States have an obligation to investigate, prosecute and ensure that the victims receive the redress to which they are entitled. As more and more cases emerge, implicating more and more national contingents, it is also clear that all foreign military forces, whether UN or non-UN, must employ much stronger and more effective actions to prevent further abuse and exploitation  and not just in CAR. While the cases raised by the High Commissioner relate to non-UN military forces, a number of cases involving UN peacekeepers also came to light during the interviews carried out by the joint UN team. Those cases are being raised separately with the relevant Troop Contributing Countries by UN Peacekeeping (DFS / DPKO), in accordance with the standard policy of UN headquarters in New York.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

THE ASHANTI Regional police are hunting for the Member of Parliament (MP) for Agogo, Kwadwo Baah Agyeman, and Ernest Owusu Bempah of the National Democratic Party (NDP) over alleged inflammatory remarks.

The two personalities allegedly charged the people of Agogo to attack people of Fulani extraction in the area as a form of retaliation for the numerous atrocities that Fulani herdsmen had been causing to Agogo residents over the years.

There have been dangerous clashes in the area which had led to the shooting of a Fulani man and near lynching of a Konkomba native on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

Tension was said to be high, which had eventually led to the clash after the two persons spoke at a press conference on Wednesday during which they purportedly declared war on the Fulani people.

ASP Mohammed Yussif Tanko of the Ashanti Regional Police Public Relations Office told DAILY GUIDE that the police believed that the clashes were sparked by the inciting remarks of the two men.

He said the police were therefore on the heels of Messrs Agyeman and Bempah to explain why they openly charged the people of Agogo to attack the Fulanis, which he claimed had created security problems in the area.

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The police PRO announced that a joint police/military team would be dispatched to Agogo and the surrounding areas soon to help reduce the tension in the communities.

Meanwhile, a man believed to be a Fulani was shot and wounded during a gun battle at Asante Akyem Agogo on Wednesday evening, the police have announced.

The fierce gun battle between some Konkombas and Fulanis was so serious that it also resulted in the killing of cattle numbering about five.

Meanwhile, the Regional Security Council (REGSEC) is investigating whether the MP's purported statement had a link with the gun battle which led to the death of the Fulani.

DCOP Kofi Boakye, the Ashanti Regional Police Commander, has said that the police would not hesitate to apprehend anybody that would create security problems in the region, irrespective of the person's social status.

Addressing the media, he gave countless arrests that the police had made in connection with atrocities committed by Fulani herdsmen.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi


29.01.2016 LISTEN

Members of Parliament (MPs) yesterday urged the government to either take over the running of residential homes for children in the country or adequately resource the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) which duty is to monitor the activities of these orphanages so that the children are well taken care of.

The appeal had come on the heels of a report that 23 children in eight orphanages could not be accounted for.

The MPs made the appeal in Parliament yesterday when they discussed the report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the performance audit report of the Auditor General on the regulation of Residential Homes for Children (RHC), otherwise known as orphanages, by the Department of Social Welfare.

It was established in the PAC report that many of the homes were operating without licences while adoption of children in those homes did not go through the required procedure.

The Member of Parliament for Keta, Richard Quashigah, was worried that the report indicated that 23 children in eight out of the 10 homes visited could not be accounted for, with the home managers explaining that they (children) had been re-united with their families.

The Keta MP said the explanation given by the managers could be suspicious since adoption of children from those homes was on the increase.

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He therefore urged the government to properly look into these matters and verify whether indeed the children re-united with their families or not.

He said children are assets of the state, even though they belong to families, and therefore it is the duty of the government to take these matters concerning the abuse of children very seriously.

The MP for Atwima Nwabiagya North, Benito Owusu-Bio, said it was time government took over the running of these residential homes for children, adding that private persons who run them are doing that for their personal benefits and not for the benefit of the children under their care.

These private persons come to operate these homes under the guise of running NGOs and make money out of that, he said, adding that all private homes must be banned.

The report said the orphanages are required by guidelines for operation in Ghana to prepare and submit annual reports to the Department of Social Welfare in which they are to give information such as name of the residential home, location, postal address, aims and objectives; but most of these homes have failed to do that, which is against the law.

By Thomas Fosu Jnr


London (AFP) - A statue at Oxford University of 19th century British imperialist Cecil Rhodes will not be taken down despite protests, the college at the centre of the dispute said Friday, to the fury of campaigners.

"Following careful consideration, the college's governing body has decided that the statue should remain in place," Oriel College said in a statement.

But it denied newspaper reports that it feared losing donations worth some 100 million (130 million euros, $140 million) if it did take the statue down.

Rhodes -- a white supremacist like many builders of the British empire -- gave his name to the territories of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and founded the De Beers diamond company.

The tycoon was also a donor to Oriel, one of Oxford's 38 colleges, and endowed the Rhodes Scholarship, which has helped non-British students like former US president Bill Clinton and ex-Australian prime minister Tony Abbott study at the prestigious university.

Inspired by the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaign which prompted the removal of the University of Cape Town's Rhodes statue last year, many current students objected to the presence of his statue in the heart of the historic English city.

The "Rhodes Must Fall" group on Friday called Oriel's decision "outrageous, dishonest, and cynical.

"This is not over. We will be redoubling our efforts and meeting over the weekend to discuss our next actions."

Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African 2014 Rhodes Scholar who has campaigned to remove the statue, said on Facebook that the decision "reminds us that black lives are cheap at Oxford".

"Oriel has basically said: Who cares about black lives and the concerns of BME (black and minority ethnic) Oxford students anyways?"

Others have warned against taking the statue down, saying that to do so would be to rewrite history.

- 'Complexity of history' -

South Africa's last white president, F. W. de Klerk, wrote to Britain's Times newspaper last month calling the plan "folly" and adding: "If the political correctness of today were applied consistently, very few of Oxford's great figures would pass scrutiny."

Oriel's statement said that "the overwhelming message we have received has been in support of the statue remaining in place".

"The recent debate has underlined that the continuing presence of these historical artefacts is an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today."

Anti-apartheid veteran Denis Goldberg, who was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela in 1964, said the statue's fate was trivial.

"Reshape your campaign to expose what Rhodes did and how the legacy continues in South Africa today. That's what you must fight," he told BBC radio.

Removing the Cape Town statue "hasn't changed the systemic exploitation.

"The removal of it takes away the right to expose, to debate," he added. "We cut into our right to free speech."

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Oriel had already seen 1.5 million in donations cancelled due to the ambiguity over the statue and that some alumni had cut the college out of their wills.

But an Oriel spokesman insisted: "The financial implications were absolutely not the overriding consideration -- not even a major factor."

The Telegraph welcomed the "rational" decision.

"The past cannot be rewritten. And it is not the responsibility of Oxford students to try," the broadsheet said, criticising "attempts by a self-righteous lobby to purge the university of any blemish of historical bigotry".

"Rhodes stands, hopefully, for a more intellectually curious future."
Al Jazeera Media Network announced the release of its Al Jazeera Arabic news team who were kidnapped in the city of Taiz in Yemen.

Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent, Hamdi Al-Bokari, and his crew, Abdulaziz Al-Sabri and Moneer Al-Sabai, were released on Thursday after disappearing ten days ago. The identity of the kidnappers is still not clear, but the three were tortured psychologically on four different occasions.

Commenting on the release of the Al Jazeera three, Dr Mostefa Souag, Acting Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network, said: We are relieved that our colleagues Hamdi Al-Bokari, Abdulaziz Al-Sabri and Moneer Al-Sabai have been released. They were simply doing their job of reporting the story from the besieged city of Taiz and covering the ongoing events in Yemen.

It is tragic to see that in times of conflict, journalists continue to be targeted. Journalists should be able to do their work freely and without fear of harm, abduction or unlawful arrest.

For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/al-jazeera-crew-yemen-released-kidnappers-160128045635695.html.
Kwame Osafo Amoah presenting the equipment to Nab Akanfella Akanjenya (in smock) at the Kanjarga Community ICT Training Centre

29.01.2016 LISTEN

Airtel Ghana has provided Information Communication Technology (ICT) equipment to the Kanjarga community in the Builsa South District of the Upper East Region to improve ICT skills of the inhabitants.

The donation, undertaken through Airtel's Touching Lives, was in fulfillment of Airtel Ghana's commitment to the community after its centre was nominated to benefit from the programme.

Items presented to the Kanjarga ICT Community Centre included computers, public address system, audio-visual equipment (projector and screen), multi-purpose printer, routers and books to facilitate and improve ICT skills of the youth in the community.

Receiving the items on behalf of the community, Chief of Kanjarga, Nab Akanfella Akanjenya, expressed his gratitude to Airtel for fulfilling its promise to the community.

We are very much grateful to Airtel with this presentation. This is a true reflection of how responsible you are to deliver on your promises.

This will help the youth in this community to gain knowledge in ICT, which we didn't have access to, he said.

Kwame Osafo-Amoah, Northern Ghana Zonal Business Manager Airtel Ghana, during the presentation of the items to the community, stated that at Airtel, we believe in empowering people and creating positive impact in our communities by recognizing and rewarding people who have worked selflessly to make an impact in their communities.

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We will continue to fulfill our social mandate to help individuals and communities to continue with their efforts to create a better world for themselves and others.

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri


Mens retreat this weekend

SCHUYLER -- Listen! Be Attentive, is a retreat for men tonight through Sunday at St. Benedict Center.

This retreat offers many useful tools for attentiveness, explained and practiced during the weekend. Brother Damian Cayetano, OSB, Teresa Monaghen, AO, Father Thomas Leitner, OSB, and a team of consecrated life members will present various aspects of discernment, share life stories and give a chance for personal input and reflection.

The schedule will include silence, Mass, confession, fellowship, brief conferences and spiritual direction with retreat directors.

The retreat is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight and conclude at 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

For more information, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.StBenedictCenter.com.

Bussey, Nore performance set

ALBION -- The Albion Area Arts Council will present a performance by Dawn Bussey and Jill Nore at 3 p.m. Sunday at Zion Lutheran Church, 319 S. 5th St.

For more information, call Paul or Lori Hosford at 402-395-2633.

Parenting event at North Park

COLUMBUS -- North Park Church, located at the corner of 18th Avenue and 38th Street, will offer a free parenting workshop at 6:30 p.m. every Wednesday in February.

This workshop is for all parents -- not just members of North Park Church -- no matter what age their kids are. The sessions will be conducted by Pastor Ryan Young.

Those who plan to attend or have questions can call 402-270-4278.

Mental health event at church

COLUMBUS -- The third in a free mental health series will be held from 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday at Federated Church, 2705 15th St.

The presentation will focus on how anxiety can affect daily living. Jill Colegrove from Colegrove Counseling Center will be the presenter.

All parents, caregivers and youth providers are encouraged to attend. Child care will be provided and bilingual interpretation will be available.

Reconciliation retreat Feb. 5-7

SCHUYLER -- The Gift of Reconciliation will be a weekend retreat held Feb. 5-7 at the St. Benedict Center, led by Prior Fr. Mauritius Wilde, OSB, Ph.D.

The weekend will focus on unresolved conflicts and hanging on to past hurts. There will be time for those attending to examine their conscience and look for ways to accept reconciliation through Jesus Christ. There will also be an opportunity to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation.

The retreat begins at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 5 and ends after lunch on Feb. 7.

For more information, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.StBenedictCenter.com.

Supper, sale at St. Anthony

COLUMBUS -- St. Anthony Church will hold a spaghetti supper and bake sale from 4-8 p.m. Feb. 6 in the church social hall, 1719 6th St.

The meal will include spaghetti with meatballs, garlic bread, lettuce salad, dessert, beverage and coffee, and beer and wine will be available.

Cost is $7.50 for adults, $3 for kids 6-10 years, and free for children five and under.

This fundraiser is sponsored by St. Theresa Sodality, and proceeds will go toward furnishings for the new parish center.

KC breakfast at St. Isidore

COLUMBUS -- The St. Isidore Knights of Columbus Council 12086 will host a French toast and pancake breakfast from 7:30-11 a.m. Feb. 14 in the school cafeteria.

They will also serve scrambled eggs, sausage, fruit and drinks.

The cost is $7 for adults and $4 for kids.

Valentines Day dinner Feb. 14

SCHUYLER -- St. Benedict Center will hold a Valentines Day dinner on Feb. 14.

Married couples are invited for a 5 p.m. Mass at the chapel of St. Benedict Center followed at 6 p.m. by a four-course dinner prepared by Mark and Patty Bosh. Advance reservations and pre-payment are required.

For more information, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.StBenedictCenter.com.

Workshop at St. Benedict

SCHUYLER -- "Finding God in Troubled Times" is a Lenten workshop, led by Fr. Richard Houser, SJ, Ph.D., scheduled for Feb. 26-27 at St. Benedict Center.

Attendees will be invited to reflect on their faith and how suffering hurts or enhances the relationship with God and with Jesus. Participants are encouraged to prepare for the workshop by reflecting on Fr. Hausers book "Finding God in Troubled Times."

The retreat will begin at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26, and close with Mass at 4 p.m. Feb. 27.

For more information, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.StBenedictCenter.com.

Imprisoned pastor returns

BOISE, Idaho (AP)  An American pastor who was imprisoned for nearly four years in Iran has returned home to Boise, Idaho.

Saeed Abedini landed Tuesday afternoon on a private plane. Abedini was one of four Americans released in Iran under a negotiated prisoner exchange on Jan. 16.

The 35-year-old Abedini spent the previous five days with his parents and sister at a secluded retreat in Asheville, North Carolina. His wife, Naghmeh Abedini, and their children originally planned to meet him at the retreat operated by the Rev. Franklin Graham.

Graham's spokesman, Mark DeMoss, told the Idaho Statesman newspaper that the plans had changed, with Abedini returning to Boise to reunite with his family.

The Boise man was detained in Iran for compromising national security, presumably because of Christian proselytizing. He was sentenced in 2013 to eight years in prison.

Couple weds despite storm

LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP)  A Virginia couple wouldn't let the weekend snowstorm ruin their wedding plans.

Michael and Emilee Ellsworth of Lynchburg had planned to be married Saturday at a country club, but blowing snow made travel dangerous for the couple and their guests.

They canceled the wedding at the country club and then made a last-minute decision to have an intimate ceremony at their pastor's home.

Pastor Michael Sherrett says when they posed for pictures outdoors, "it sort of seemed like a warmth there that the Lord gave us from the cold wind."

The couple said the date 1-23 was already engraved on the groom's ring, so there was no turning back.

On Sunday, as the weather cleared, they walked down the aisle at the country club in front of family and friends.

BYU law school investigated

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Law school accreditors are investigating Brigham Young University amid claims that the Mormon church-owned institution violates nondiscrimination standards by expelling students who live in same-sex relationships or leave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before graduation.

The American Bar Association is reviewing a complaint from the activist group FreeBYU.

The group is also appealing a university-wide decision from a different accrediting group, which found no violation on the university's part in similar complaints on the religious-freedom issue.

A BYU spokeswoman says the university responded to a request for information from the bar association a few months ago.

The law school's last accreditation review was during the 2011-2012 school year. The next formal review is scheduled for the 2018-2019 year.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

The excitement which comes with reduced utility tariffs is non-existent. Following the so-called downward review of the previous increases, such excitement should have been prevalent; not so, however, because of the palpable insignificance of the reduction. It is hardly appreciable or even noticeable.

There is also no sincerity in the action: political cynics even think that the crazy hikes were done on purpose so that after a few days of their announcements there would be an insignificant reduction. Government can then lay claim to being a listening one and reap political leverage thereof. In an election year such things can be used by cantankerous and desperate governments such as ours.

Following the hikes in utility tariffs, organised labour hit the streets in a countrywide demonstration which appears to have compelled the government to sit down with representatives of the workers.

We are not amused at the outcome and hereby deny both government and representatives of organised labour the plaudits which they may be wishing for. Government, for propaganda purposes, should be longing for such cheap plaudits after many setbacks on both the economic and political fronts.

The so-called reduction which is restrictive in scope to be enjoyed by households, apart from being insignificant, will have no respectable effect on the domestic bills. Workers who work in industries and private sector who bear the brunt of the domestic bills stand the risk of losing their jobs when their employers scale down production in response to the high tariffs. So what wisdom is there in the so-called reduction?

In any case, at the end of the month the companies or private sector players would appreciate better the seriousness of their plight. Private sector players and industries for that matter know that they are in a dire situation but do not understand the extent of their plight. They would only appreciate this and count their losses when they receive their first post-reduced bills.

It is instructive that Trade and Industry Minister Spio-Garbrah has also expressed concern about the still high tariffs. Although his concern is reaction about how this can affect the fortunes of the NDC in the forthcoming polls, it is still an issue worth the candle.

Anything worth doing must be worth doing well or even very well; that is why we ask that if government seeks to reduce the tariff hikes it should do so significantly and soonest.

The imposition of further taxes on petroleum products is something Ghanaians are worried about because of its all-encompassing repercussion.

With the price of crude oil on the international market at an all-time low in a generation, there is no reason why government would still exploit this option in its craze to harvest more revenue.
The Seychelles Minister for Foreign Affairs and Transport, Mr Joel Morgan, has said the Seychelles Government is committed to improving its institutions and actively tackling issues of income inequality.

Speaking to the Secretary General of the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), the Minister said that the central goal of all engagements was to improve the quality of life for the Seychellois people, which is why the Ministry is keen to engage with institutions like the IDEA.

Seychelles is proud to have moved up in the rankings of the Corruptions Perception Index this week, and we are making strides towards strengthening our national institutions, through an Independent Anti Corruption Commission and a national Human Rights Commission, said the Minister

There is always much to be gained in the pursuit of a vibrant democracy.

Minister Morgan met with Secretary General Mr Yves Leterme in the sidelines of the 28th Executive Council of the African Union in Addis Ababa today.

The IDEA, an intergovernmental organisation specialising in sustainable democracy, has been previously engaged with the Seychelles Electoral Commission and has reached out to explore further engagements with the Government.

As part of his bilateral engagements, Minister Morgan also met with the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Mr Yerzhan Ashikbayev, and the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Georgia, Mr David Jalagania, to discuss growing opportunities for deepening cooperation and trade.

Minister Morgan extended a special thanks to the Georgian Minister for their Government's extension of the visa period for travelling Seychellois, from 30 days visa free entry to one year.

The Minister said it was a reflection of the high esteem and confidence the Georgian authorities had in the Seychellois people.

The Seychelles delegation to the African Union Summit also includes the Permanent Representative to the African Union, Amb. Joseph Nourrice, the Principal Counsellor in the Seychelles Embassy in Addis Ababa, Mrs. Amanda Bernstein, and Third Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Transport, Ms Lorraine Faure.
The Foreign Ministers of the Island States of the African Union met within the margins of the on-going 28th Executive Council of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to consolidate the position of the islands on the African Union programme of work.

The Ministers of Seychelles, Cabo Verde, Sao Tome and Principe and the representatives of Madagascar and Mauritius discussed numerous issues of importance, which included the implementation of Agenda 2063, the SAMOA Pathway, the decisions of COP-21 and the fight against climate change, and the management of African seas and oceans  namely the Blue Economy.

It is important that this informal group keep our positions aligned on these important issues for the benefit of our people, and speak with one voice, said the Seychelles Minister for Foreign Affairs and Transport, Mr. Joel Morgan

We are not many [islands] on the continent and we are spread on both sides of the continent so we always strive to ensure that we make the most of all opportunities to meet. We have learnt from past experience that we are stronger together.

During this session, Seychelles also ceded the Chairmanship of this group to the Foreign Minister of Cabo Verde, Mr. Jorge Tolentino, for the year 2016.

Minister Tolentino made a proposal for the group to engage in deeper discussions on the issues faced by African island states in a more formal setting in the future, and invited his fellow Ministers to attend a stand alone meeting for African islands in Cabo Verde in June 2016.

Other issues discussed included the need for a renewed commitment to the adoption of renewable energy sources over fossil fuels, the rise of natural disasters experienced on the continent, and the candidatures of the island states in key organisations and committees.

The Seychelles delegation, led by Minister Morgan, is currently in Addis Ababa attending the 26th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union, and includes the Permanent Representative to the African Union, Amb. Joseph Nourrice, the Principal Counsellor in the Seychelles Embassy in Addis Ababa, Mrs. Amanda Bernstein, Third Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Transport, Ms. Lorraine Faure, and the Consultant to the Minister, Mr. Raymond St Ange.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

A total of 300 Ghanaian troops serving with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) have been presented with medals in recognition of their service to UN peacekeeping.

A statement by the UN Information Centre in Accra on Tuesday said Eugene Owusu, a Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator, who presided over the medal parade, held at Bentiu, South Sudan, encouraged the peacekeepers to continue to bring hope to the people of South Sudan and to continue to work with the communities to alleviate their suffering.

The situation in South Sudan is difficult at the moment, he said.

The world's youngest country has encountered many challenges since the optimism that first came with independence. It is encouraging that the big guns are silent and that the peace process is broadly holding.

We wish a transitional on national unity government will be formed soon to give the long suffering people of South Sudan the opportunity to rebuild their lives and for many South Sudanese the opportunity to live the life of dignity, Mr Owusu said.

He also advised the peacekeepers to respect the policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, saying the peacekeepers were in South Sudan to protect the population.

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The Secretary-General and the United Nations has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and abuse and I would like to remind you of the importance of the exemplary behavior, he said.

As peacekeepers, we must never forget that we are here to protect and support the people of South Sudan. We are here to support peace and help South Sudan people to live in dignity.

Mr Owusu said: It is our individual and collective duty to safeguard the dignity of the people that we are here to support and protect. Everyone from the senior mission leadership, commanding officers to young soldiers or staff members, must comply with the policy on sexual exploitation and abuse.

UNMISS was established in 2011 with the mandate to protect civilians, monitor and investigate human rights, create the conditions for delivery of humanitarian assistance and offer support for the Implementation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement.

Ghana is currently the eighth largest contributor of military and police personnel to UN peacekeeping with 3,198 currently deployed worldwide.

GNA




The suspects leaving the court

29.01.2016 LISTEN



An Accra Circuit Court has dismissed an application for bail filed by lawyers of three persons that allegedly trailed and robbed one Lydia Horsu, a marketing administrator of the Koala Shopping Centre.

The court, presided over by Aboagye Tandoh, said he was not inclined to grant bail to the accused persons because the application was filed early.

He however said that the court may consider the application at the next adjourned date.

The accused persons are Michael Edoe Ahiataku aka old Soldier, a private security guard; Gilbert Osabutey aka Obolo, shop supervisor and Frederick Sedro Kwame aka Fred, a private security guard.

Two other accomplices-Stanley Obaliko aka Mohammed Sulemana and Okoe Quarcoe, unemployed, are currently on admission at the Police Hospital due to injuries they sustained when a taxi driver knocked them with his car during the robbery.

The police have also intensified the search for two members of the gang currently on the run.

George Asamaney, lawyer for the three, who attempted to secure bail for his clients, stressed that they had been charged with conspiracy.

He argued that the charge preferred against the accused persons was bailable.

Mr. Asamaney indicated that the judge ought to have mercy on the accused persons and admit them to bail because they have well-meaning people in society to stand surety for them but the judge threw out the request.

Chief Supt. Duuti Tuaruka had earlier urged the court to remand the accused persons because further investigations were ongoing.

Three members of the seven-man robbery syndicate are alleged to have trailed and robbed one Lydia Horsu, a marketing administrator of Koala.

Charges

The gang is said to have at about 8am on January 9 this year, conspired and robbed the victim of her Nokia phone worth GH800, a black ladies' bag valued at GH200, a Koala ID card, invoices and GH100.

Sulemana is facing an additional charge of possessing one automatic MAB foreign pistol with no PA151674189, six live 9mm ammunition and five empty cartridges.

Sulemana and Okoe are also standing trial for intentionally and unlawfully causing grievous harm to Lydia.

The three, before trial judge Aboagye Tandoh, denied the charges and were remanded to reappear on January 27, 2016.

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Plot

Prosecuting, Chief Supt. Duuti Tuaruka said on January 6, the three hatched a plan to rob the shopping centre and sought the assistance of the two suspects on the run, who also in turn recruited Sulemana and Okoe to carry out the plan.

He said on January 8, all the accused persons met at the shopping centre at Cantonments in Accra and Obolo, who is the shop advisor, briefed them about the movements of Lydia and they agreed to rob her the following day.

Chief Supt. Tuaruka stated that at about 8am on January 9 Lydia came to the shopping centre at the Cantonments branch but changed her mind and decided to pick only the company's invoices and voucher to audit them and left for the Airport branch of the shop.

The prosecutor said Obolo, who saw Lydia leaving Koala, called Old Soldier and Fred on phone, who in turn alerted Sulemana and Okoe who were on board a BMW motorbike near the centre.

Attack

Chief Supt. Tuaruka disclosed that Sulemana and Okoe trailed Lydia to a section of the road near the American Embassy at Cantonments, adding that Okoe, who was the pillion rider, alighted, pointed a pistol at the lady and ordered her to surrender her handbag to him.

The police officer held that Lydia initially refused to comply and raised an alarm which provoked Okoe to push her to the ground, forcibly snatched the bag from her, shot her twice in her left thigh and calf and sped off.

He said a cabbie, who saw the incident, chased them with his vehicle and knocked them off the motorbike, leading to the arrest of the accused person.

Lydia is currently on admission at the 37 Military Hospital.

[email protected]

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson




The Republic of Cameroon and the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) signed an agreement today to finance the Aquaculture Entrepreneurship Promotion Project (PPEA) that will help to establish over 300 small enterprises in the fish farming sector. Thirty per cent of these enterprises will be managed by women and 50 per cent by young people. In total, the new project is expected to create 1,500 new jobs.

The total cost of the new project is US$3.3 million. The funding includes a $1 million IFAD grant as well as a $2.3 million contribution from the government. The agreement was signed in Rome by Taiga, Minister of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries of the Republic of Cameroon, and by Perin Saint Ange, Associate Vice President of IFAD in charge of Progammes Management Department.

Currently in Cameroon, fish production does not meet domestic demand estimated at 400,000 tonnes due to lack of fishing equipment and qualified fishers. As a consequence, the country imports more than 200,000 tonnes of fish products per year for national consumption.

PPEA will pilot, at a small scale, the implementation of the Sustainable Aquaculture Development Plan for Cameroon. It aims to promote profitable aquaculture enterprises that create jobs in the South, Littoral and Centre regions of the country.

Aquaculture can help to increase the incomes of rural populations, improve their livelihood and reduce poverty in rural areas, said Bernard Mwinyel Hien, IFAD Representative and Country Programme Manager for Cameroon. One of the innovations in this new project is that it applies a business incubator approach that nurtures entrepreneurialism and supports the development of new enterprises.

The project will help to develop partnerships among those involved in the fish farming sector, including the private sector which plays a role in the production, processing and marketing of fish.

Implemented by the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries, the project will also help fishers access adequate training and advisory support services.

Since 1981, IFAD has invested a total of $142.1 million in 10 programmes and projects in Cameroon. This has generated a total investment of $371.0 million, benefiting 578,400 households.
Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

29.01.2016 LISTEN

If you are in Nigeria and you have not done this before, try and do it right away. Just open a Nigerian newspaper near you. Go through its pages to find out how many people were described in that particular edition as credible politicians or honest and selfless Nigerians. You would be shocked to see the number of people that recklessly allowed themselves to be associated with such superb qualities even when they are fully aware that by what most people know about their character and vile history, it might even be considered a generous compliment to dress them up in the very opposites of those terms.

Indeed, these are some of the words and phrases that have been so callously and horribly subjected to the worst kinds of abuses inNigeria with hardly anyone making any attempt to intervene. I wont in the least, therefore, be surprised if I wake up tomorrow to hear that decent people in this country (or even outside the country) have begun to protest and resist any attempt to associate them with those terms any more.

In these parts, we appear to be such exceptional experts in the effective devaluation of all that ought to inspire awe and noble feelings. I can confidently predict that there are now some Nigerians who would, for instance, feel greatly insulted should their dogs be nominated for our countrys National Honours. Especially, since the Obasanjo regime, the National Honours List in this country has sadly distinguished itself by the ease with which people who ought to be in jail star prominently in it.

And as you look at the haggard or even dilapidated and grossly impoverished nature of a country with a long list of illustrious and honest sons and daughters annually honoured for their selfless and invaluable services to their fatherland, you cannot help wondering how indeed their so-called immense contributions to the growth and progress of the their country were not able to leave some bit of positive impact on the same country and its people. Why is a country with such a long and intimidating list of patriotic achievers and nation builders still one of the most backward in the world despite being endowed with enviably abundant natural resources?

Many Nigerians, especially, politicians, do not care about the credibility of their pronouncements before they open their mouths to drop them, especially, before mammoth crowds. It is in Nigeria that a very tall man would not have the slightest hint of restraint telling everyone how incredibly short he is (because of the rich gains such a gross misrepresentation would attract to him at that time) without bothering about the evidence before everybodys eyes which brutally contradicts what he is saying. We live in a country where consequences hardly follow actions, so, people everywhere flaunt their ability to behave anyhow and make wild claims with utmost impunity.

Now, I feel very highly insulted each time I see a public officer, say a Nigerian governor, who virtually everyone seems to agree deserves to head straight to jail once he leaves office due to his mindless plunder of the countrys resources, come out (before an election) to tell the world with sickening brazenness how his party would wage a successful war against corruption if elected into power! By allowing himself the revolting recklessness of uttering such an outstanding blasphemy, the person is only calling all of us fools who are incapable of using our brains. And the mere fact that this same odious fellow would automatically be rewarded with very ecstatic ovations from supposedly rational human beings who constitute his audience and who would also go ahead to give him their votes is one reason most people easily conclude that something is very horribly and disastrously wrong with Nigeria, and that we live in one of the most unserious societies on earth.

In Nigeria, anybody can suddenly become an esteemed and respected anti-corruption crusader. Even if you have a very horrible criminal past, it would not matter. Somebody once boasted to me that the only way to effect lasting, positive change in Nigeria is to become a public officer, acquire boundless wealth by looting the treasury pale, and then with your enormous loot, seek to sanitize the system. Moreover, Nigerians are always interested in the present. The same Nigerians who had called you horrible names while you were busy criminally accumulating humongous wealth would start hailing you once you start attacking the incumbent regime. Soon, you will be crowned an eminent statesman or even the conscience of the nation, celebrated by all.

Even the foreign media which will not tolerate such hideousness in their own land will join their local counterparts to decorate you. And if the current government attempts to investigate the organized banditry you effectively supervised during your tenure, you would just call a press conference and grant lengthy interviews to allege that they are persecuting you because you are exposing their corrupt acts and then promise Nigerians that you would not be deterred by any acts aimed at intimidating you into silence! I can assure you that if you act wisely, you would get eager influential defenders in the media, among opinion moulders and even from some of your more liberal comrades in the human rights community.

You can also always rely on our media to never attempt to remember your past, but to continue to emphasize how you are the hope of the country. They will readily help our nice and easily forgiving and forgetting populace to quickly consign your past to the bin and embrace your new Mr. Clean image.

Former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), late Alao Aka-Bashorun, one of the countrys most principled activists and legal luminaries, once said that if a gang of armed robbers rose in Nigeria and seized power that he knew some of his colleagues who would fall over themselves to serve in that regime and blame patriotism for their abominable choice. Aka-Bashorun made this statement during the heyday of military rule when coups and counter-coups were the countrys worst afflictions, and military adventurists, largely motivated by selfish interests, did not seek the mandate of the people to rule them, but just seized power and imposed themselves on all of us.

I wonder what Mr. Aka-Bashorun would have said today if he were still alive to see overfed and belching thieving public officers addressing mammoth crowds and receiving deafening ovations from the same people whose commonwealth they were busy mindlessly plundering and whose future and that of their children they are zealously mortgaging. One is at loss as to how to categorise a people with such a tragic mindset.

Late Lawrence Anini was once a nationally dreaded Benin-based armed robber. But, were it possible for him to reappear today and use the polluted proceeds of his violent robbery to become a wealthy and influential politician, and is able to get very efficient professionals to duly package him, he can comfortably win an election in Nigeria. Of course, he would very easily get some in our media to describe him as very credible! Indeed, I am now willing to believe that most of those who pen those flowery profiles do not really care to understand the meaning of some of the words they carelessly throw about.

Nigeria may, perhaps, be one of the few countries where a man who once, as the head of an anti-graft agency, investigated some public officers for looting the public treasury, told the world how horribly corrupt they were, and even charged some to court (where some of the cases, however, eventually died quietly) could turn around to collaborate with the same set of people in the same party to seek power. And such a man would not even feel any shame or sense of self-diminishment as he mounts the podium to tell the same audience (that once heard him call those men thieves) that the men were our new messiahs, the most credible (that word again!) politicians in town. How human beings are able to do this without doing untold damage to themselves remains a horrendous mystery? And because this is able to continue to happening is the core reason Nigeria goes nowhere and might remain stuck at a place for a long time to come.

Now, to say that politics in Nigeria is largely about crude self-interests is merely to state (or rather restate) something that has since become all too obvious even to the worst hare-brained fellow out there. It is difficult to see today a Nigerian who is seeking public office whose eyes are not solely glued to the amount of money he is intending to cart away and the influence he is itching to peddle once he assumes office. But what is most heart-shattering is that theres hardly any adult Nigerian who is yet to come to a full realization of this brazen fact; yet this same Nigerians still willingly and eagerly submit themselves as very cheap preys to the crude, unintelligent lies by these politicians that they are in politics to seek their welfare. Rather than look them directly in the face and dismissively call them shameless liars, Nigerians, most pathetically, still largely prefer to loudly demonstrate that they believe them (even when they may not) and troop out en masse to hail them as the new set of messiahs just arrived in town.

Now the matter would not have been so hideous if our elected public officers were content to make do with their already outrageously inflated salaries and allowances. No! They will also massively and heartlessly loot the public treasury under their watch and cart away millions and billions of naira with utmost impunity to ensure that long after they have left office and become professional idlers, they would continue to wallow in limitless luxury serviced with mounds and pyramids of unearned wealth.

But instead of the people from whom they brazenly stole all this money to feel outraged and rejoice at any opportunity to make them face the consequences of their crude thievery, they would go out of their ways and take additional pains to defend and offer them support in their well-earned travails. Not a few would engage in verbal and even physical combats and might end up even wasting their lives to defend and support the right of these public officers to loot the treasury pale. Yet, deep down their hearts, they are fully aware that many of these officers are no better than common thieves out there.

An event that took place a few weeks before the 2015 general elections helped to solidify my doubts about the willingness and ability of the perennially deprived and impoverished Nigerians to participate in the urgent reclamation work this country requires  to rescue it from the hands of resilient leeches who are bent on sucking the very life out of it.

I was in one of the state capitals and what were on virtually everybodys lips at that period were the media reports on some choice structures and juicy investments allegedly belonging to a former governor which were believed to have been acquired with the proceeds of his mindless looting of the state treasury. Opinions were divided on the mind-blowing report. Although some people rose in stout defense of the fellow, what I thought was unimaginable was that some others could go to the sickening extent of openly boasting that what the man was alleged to have stolen was their money, so, why should it be the business of anyone who was not from the state!

One evening, I went to a nearby kiosk to make a purchase, and there, I saw two young men who, judging by their haggard appearance, should belong to the lowest wrung of the countrys social and economic setting  the worst victims of the programme of impoverishment that successive thieving politicians have unleashed on this country. As one of the young men expressed outrage at such mindless stealing by the former governor, the other one barked at him: go back to your state and talk about the stealing taking place there and leave our state alone. It is our money that was stolen and it does not concern you! Just shut your mouth, we are okay with that.

It was difficult to comprehend what I had just heard, but the fellow was dead serious repeating the same words to the other young man, becoming angrier as he spoke and showing clearly that he could initiate a physical combat if the other fellow continued to discuss the matter that did not concern him. With people who reason like this fellow abundantly existing across our country, why should any thieving public officer ever think of exercising any restraint?

Now, when Nigerian leaders advertise their resolve to fight corruption, they usually have in mind some particular corrupt people they are targeting. And while they go all out with undue fanfare to arrest and prosecute them (or just rubbish them with elaborate media trials and sentencing), they surround themselves with even more horribly corrupt fellows  unrepentant criminals who are still neck-deep in their vile but very lucrative career of criminal accumulation, even under the anti-corruption regime.

And what about us  the perennially exploited Nigerians? What is our attitude towards corruption? Indeed, what is very difficult to deny is that when we shout against corruption and the need to punish those involved in it, we, like our leaders, always have a set of people in our minds. And so, when the anti-corruption effort now goes beyond our expectations and starts straying into the camp of our sacred cows, we would immediately discard our loudly advertised revulsion against corruption and rise in solidarity with the looters. We will try to dig up reasons why we think they are rather being persecuted. And politicians always take full advantage of this to shield themselves from the just consequences of their shameless thievery by igniting some fire among us with two prominent inflammable substances, namely, Religion and Ethnicity. But when they gather to steal the nation blind, they do not consider these two intoxicants.

Before I sign off, lets narrow this discussion to the present situation in our country. There are Nigerians today who would eagerly go to any length and might even lay down their lives to defend the Buhari administration, despite the fact that it is becoming obvious that, perhaps, the only difference between the former regime and the current one is, like somebody said recently, the broom, and maybe, a more effective propaganda machinery deployed by the latter. The undisguisable truth is that they are all members of the same decadent and ultra-greedy political class which has held this country down for several decades sucking it to death like unrelenting leeches.

As I opened my laptop bag a few minutes ago, I saw again a copy of the Nigerian Observer of March 23, 2015, which a friend inBenin had helped me to obtain when we learnt that it had republished one of my articles entitled, Is Robert Mugabes Fall Symbolic? As I leafed through the good old Observer, I wondered how such a paper with the enviable history of having helped to groom several reputable journalists in this country since it debuted on May 29, 1968 could have been allowed to so badly depreciate in quality, even under the very watch of the Peoples Comrade, the fire-spitting Governor Adams Oshiomole.

Well, on page 3 of the paper, I saw a full-page advert placed by an association that called itself Change Advocates of Nigeria (CAN) asking us to give our votes to General Muhammadu Buhari, then presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC). The association gave four really tantalizing reasons why we should give our votes to Buhari. Permit me to reproduce three:

1. Vote for a leader who will not appoint any corrupt person in his government.

2. Vote for a leader who will give social welfare package to the unemployed monthly in our nation Nigeria

3. Vote for a leader who matches his words with action for the overall benefit of the people of Nigeria.

That sounded so nice, didnt it? But why am I suddenly having this feeling that these statements sound even more hollow now than they did when they were first uttered? Indeed, how many people who had eagerly swallowed those sweet promises which the APC, its candidates and agents were recklessly throwing about during the campaigns would still be able to view them with even the tiniest bit of seriousness today, given the very demoralizing starting signals the APC regime has already served Nigerians these past few months?

Now, is it possible to find any reasonable person in Nigeria today (even among die-hard APC warriors) who still believes in all sincerity, I mean, deep down his heart of hearts, that President Buhari will not appoint any corrupt person in his government as boldly proclaimed in the Observer advert?

Again, how many APC chieftains would still be able to repeat today the (now clearly fraudulent) assurance Buhari gave Nigerians during the campaigns that he would give social welfare package to the unemployed monthly in our nation Nigeria? And with what we have already seen in the past couple of months since this regime took over in Abuja, who in Nigeria today can confidently say that we now have a leader who matches his words with action for the overall benefit of the people of Nigeria, except, perhaps, the APC megaphone, Mr. Lai Mohammed, and some others of identical mindset.

But these are the very attractive but empty packets the APC boldly waved before Nigerians in order to obtain their votes. Today, the partys credible leaders and the regime they installed are not only by their words and body language distancing themselves from those very marvelous promises which they had clearly made, stressed and repeated on countless forums during the electoral campaigns, they are equally showing that those who believed any of them did so at their own risks. And to thoroughly erase any lingering doubts about their exact intentions and completely remove any further pressure on them to fulfill their campaign promises, the Buhari presidency and the APC came out recently to disown in an unambiguous language the very documents that contained those mouth-watering promises with which they persuaded Nigerians to give them their votes  after the votes had put them in power! Can you beat that?

No doubt, President Buhari and the APC are yet to realize that Nigerians are already feeling that they were deluded into pouring their water into a leaking vessel. Mostly on the social media, the APC foot soldiers are always quick to ask what about Jonathan any time anyone pointed to any of the howling failings of the current regime. Much as former President Goodluck Jonathan deserves to take his fair share of blame for the dilapidated state of this country, the truth is that his regime is now history. Rather than bore us daily with drab tales of the sins of the previous regime, Buhari should motivate the various anti-corruption agencies to go after those who had abused their offices and ensure they are duly prosecuted. Corruption is not combated with countless front-page-grabbing pronouncements which sometimes sound as if they are merely targeted at removing our attention from the obvious lack of clear direction of the current regime. Nigerians want to see concrete actions. Let the looters (in the PDP and APC, the North and South) be thoroughly investigated, tried and jailed if found guilty by duly constituted courts. The APC-led regime should, therefore, shake off its campaign mood (since the elections are over), roll up its sleeves and start fixing the rot it met on ground instead wasting a lot time and resources in endless and debilitating lamentations.

By the way, one had thought that the current regime had announced itself as a healthy alternative to the previous one, so why is this penchant to use the failure of the last regime to justify its own failures? Are we to take it then that the change the APC promised is nothing but the amplification of all the failings of the Jonathan regime? If that is the case (as it is gradually appearing to be), then, indeed, Nigeria has moved from disaster to more, unmitigated disaster. And the fact that many Nigerians are still trapped in the false feelings created by the tantalizing campaign promises the APC was dropping like overripe fruits during the elections (and which the party has long disowned) and so are unable to see through the fog of the continuing propaganda to read the very clear, ominous handwriting on the wall is the real tragedy.

**Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a journalist and writer, writes a weekly column in a Nigerian national newspaper. (www.ugowrite.blogspot.com, [email protected], Twitter: @ugowrite)
Government has rejected accusations by Vice Presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) Dr. Muhammadu Bawumia, that the cocoa sector has seen a nosedive under the current John Mahama administration.

The running mate to NPPs flagbearer Nana Akufo-Addo during visit to some cocoa growing areas in the Western Region, accused government of failing to grow the cocoa sector.

According to the economist, government has scrapped most of the incentives introduced in the sector by the NPP government and urged Ghanaians to vote for Nana Addo and the NPP government to revive the sector.

The cocoa industry itself in Ghana is collapsing. If you look at the cocoa sector in the Ivory Coast and you look at Ghana, there is a clear difference in how the sector is going. Under President Kufuor, the NPP raised cocoa production from 341,000 tonnes to about 700,000 tonnes by 2008. Thanks to the good work of the NPP, cocoa production hit the historic 1 million mark in 2010/2011. This was due to policies like the mass spraying and fertilizer subsidy programmes as well as other policies, he noted.

But in an interview with Citi News, a Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Muntalla Mohammed, said the figures produced by COCOBOD do not support the case of Dr. Bawumia.

He insisted that Dr. Bawumia doesnt know what he is talking about.

He should have been able to tell us that this year, this is the quantity of cocoa that has been produced and if you look at the quantity of the cocoa that has been produced, as compared to the so called 700,000, he would have realized that its not a point that he should make publicly, he argued.

Muntalla Mohammed argued that under the NPP, fertilizers were sold to cocoa farmers and you even need a chit to be able to buy it but under the NDC government such farm inputs are given to farmers for free.

So the farmers know which government has given them so much attention and which government indeed sought their interest. Its not about what Dr. Bawumia is sayingyou dont need any rocket science to tell you that this government has given so much attention and interest in the welfare of cocoa farmers than the NPP, he added.

Cocoa farmers have often accused successive governments of politicizing the support they offer to them.
The Buipewura, Mahama Abdulai Jinapor II, Chief of the Buipe Traditional Area.

29.01.2016 LISTEN

A sub-chief of Mankpang Traditional area of Gonjaland in the Northern Region has dragged Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor to court. Sorowura S. S Gbankulsuso, who is seeking legal redress in a Tamale High Court, claims that Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor has banished his entire family from the Buipe traditional area and continuously maltreats them.

According to him, Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor has been terrorizing his family since he challenged him over the ownership of a parcel of land in the Mankpang Traditional area.

Sorowura S. S Gbankulso claimed the Buipewura has since confiscated his properties in Buipe including a car washing bay, mobile phones sales point, his house and an ongoing storey building project.

The frustrated chief is praying the court to alleviate his familys plight.

He narrated that the Gonjaland Traditional Council, the Buipe Divisional Police Command, authorities of the Central Gonja District Assembly, were aware of his predicament.

Sorowura S. S Gbankulso accused the aforementioned authorities of failing to call Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor to order.

He passionately appealed to human rights advocacy groups to assist him and his family in their pending lawsuit.

The Buipe Traditional area is one of the vibrant economic hubs of the Northern Region where the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) has hinted of a huge transformation.
There was drama at the Kasoa Police Station when the police paraded some suspects of various crimes for identification.

Most of the people who showed up at the identification parade identified Mike Kelson, a suspected notorious robber, as the robber who attacked them in their residences in Kasoa and its surroundings.

Though Kelson had been lined up with other suspects, eight victims separately pointed him out as the leader of the gang which dispossessed them of their money and other valuables.

Among the victims was a woman who said but for providence she would have been raped by Kelson who attacked her in her home at Amanfrom.

Two of the victims who intermittently lifted their hands as a gesture to thank God for the arrest of the suspect claimed he had raped women in their households during the robbery operation.

Victims tell police their story

Briefing the Daily Graphic after the identification parade, the Kasoa District Police Commander, Superintendent of Police Mr Samuel T. Punobyin, said some of the stolen items had been retrieved by the police from the suspects' room.

He said some of the victims included a policeman at Amanfrom, a businessman at Iron City and six other persons from Kasoa.

Mr Punobyin said the businessman, who is popularly referred to as Burger, was attacked on January 16, 2016 at his house at Iron City, a suburb of Amanfrom, near Kasoa.

Mr Punobyin said the businessman identified his backpack said to have been used by Kelson in his operations.

The black bag has a metallic silver skull and metallic thorns on it.

According to the businessman, the gang made away with $4,000 and GH200, as well as four mobile phones.

On the part of the policeman who had filed a complaint with the Amanfrom Police, Mr Punobyin said Kelson and his gang made away with GH5,000 and five mobile phones.

In addition to a laptop, Mr Punobyin said the gang also demanded and took away GH30, which was the only money on his wife and the purse where the money was kept.

Background

Kelson, 25, who is alleged to have recruited robbers to 'terrorise' residents of Amanfrom and Kasoa in the Central Region, was arrested on January 23, 2016 by the Kasoa Police.

The suspect, who had been described by the police as a notorious and dangerous man, was arrested through police intelligence while he was relocating to Tema with his wife and his child.

The police said Kelson's name was put on the police wanted list shortly after he had been released from police custody where he had been for about four years and was standing trial at the Swedru Circuit Court.

According to the police, Kelson was released on June 4, 2015 after the Accra High Court had granted him bail based on a motion filed by his father.

Kelson is said to have been involved in a series of robberies in Kasoa, Amanfrom and the surrounding areas and is suspected to be the leader of a gang of robbers, many of whom have been arrested. Two of his accomplices are said to have been lynched at Kasoa last year.

Police intelligence gathered showed that Kelson recruited robbers from the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and other places whenever he had a robbery operation.

Mr Punobyin said numerous attempts to arrest the suspect and some of his gang members in the past had been unsuccessful.

Items retrieved from Kelson included mobile phones, wax prints, mobile phone cases, a military cap and a bag.
COLUMBUS  Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce hosted a lunch-and-learn event Thursday focused on local sales taxes, with City Administrator Joe Mangiamelli taking questions from attendees.

Columbus has had a voter-approved 1 percent sales tax for 20 years, which generates around $4 million the city spends on infrastructure projects such as upgrading drainage and the levee, improving playground equipment and purchasing new vehicles for city departments.

Columbus also has a half-percent sales tax that has paid for projects such as Lost Creek Parkway, Pawnee Plunge Water Park and improvements to Pawnee Park's Memorial Stadium.

The city council is still deciding which taxes voters will be asked to extend in May and how a ballot question will be presented.

If the 1 percent sales tax doesnt pass, Mangiamelli said the city will have financial problems that could lead to budget cuts. Equipment and supplies for the library and police, fire and street departments could be impacted, he said. Street improvements and other infrastructure projects could also be put on hold.

Everything is getting older and sooner or later it is going to break down, Mangiamelli said.

City Councilman Rich Jablonski said the only consensus so far among council members is that the 1 percent sales tax, set to expire in April 2017, should be extended.

Its been too good for the community, he said.

Mangiamelli said the most likely scenario is the 1 percent sales tax would continue to fund infrastructure and equipment updates. The public would vote on whether to extend the half-percent sales tax to fund special projects, such as the proposed library/cultural arts center and a joint police/fire station.

Robbin Cutsor said she is concerned about how well the public will understand what they are voting for. The initial bond proposal for the new Columbus High School was voted down, which delayed the project before voters approved a more expensive plan.

Several attendees pointed out that another hurdle for the half-percent tax is library officials must show the public it's worth investing in a new space.

Library Director Drew Brookhart gave statistics on how many people use the library to check out books, access the Internet and attend community events. He said a new building would allow the library to extend its services to include more educational and community services and events.

Most communities around Columbus also have local sales taxes around 1 percent to 1.5 percent. K.C. Belitz, president of the chamber of commerce, said he hasnt heard anything from his members suggesting the 1.5 percent sales tax hurts business. The chambers board voted in support of the local sales taxes.

One attendee, library supporter Mimi Ernst, recommended the ballot explicitly state that the 1.5 percent sales tax is not an increase.

Brookhart encouraged people to attend the librarys town hall meeting Feb. 9 to learn more about the proposed project and give their input.

Jablonski encouraged people to get in touch with their city council representatives to give them feedback on the sales tax issue.

The city council will make a decision on the sales taxes and ballot question next month.
Accommodation is one of the basic needs of life. Wherever we go,for whatever purpose, we need a place to stay.Sometimes, the need for accommodation is just one night while at other times it is for longer periods such as weeks and months.Ideally, the more comfortable the hotel ,the more expensive it is. In Ghana , there are many hotels with different styles and facilities. However,due to the current economic trend,many people are placing emphasis on quality for less.Lets see a couple of top hotels in Ghana that have a room or two for less than 500 Ghc.

Ramada Resort, Nungua (Greater Accra Region)

Ramada Resort is one of the biggest resorts located in Accra, Ghana . This luxury resort boasts spacious chalets overlooking the beach. Free WiFi is provided for all guests. All rooms are spacious, sound-proof and en-suite. Each is fitted with ornate bedside lamp shades, gleaming tile floors, wall paintings, an in-room safe and a TV with cable service. Guests enjoy unobstructed views of the surroundings at the balconies. Ramada Resort is close to the Atlantic Ocean and a 25-minute drive from the airport.

2 .Birdrock Hotels , Anomabo (Cape-Coast)

Birdrock Hotels is a high end hotel situated in Anomabo, Cape Coast, Ghana . The hotel offers guests stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean, and boasts an on-site gym. Free WiFi is available all through the premises. Each room is fitted with an air conditioner, ornate lampshades, a flat-screen TV with satellite reception, a Persian rug, a reading table, arm chairs, and designed with an en-suite bathroom.Birdrock hotel is off the Winneba-Cape Coast Road, a 15-minute drive away from Cape Coast Castle, and a 5-minute drive away from Fort William and Anomabo Bus Terminal.

3. Eusbett Hotel ,Sunyani (Brong-Ahafo Region)

Along with an ultra modern gym, this hotel features an outdoor pool, 4 conference halls, an event center and a mini mall. Free WiFi is available within the premises. All rooms are elegant and well decorated. Each room has an air conditioner, a flat screen TV with satellite reception, a telephone, a fridge and an en-suite bathroom. Eusbett Hotel is a 6-minute drive away from Sunyani Airport and a 5-minute drive away from major supermarkets.

4. Bedtime Hotel ,Koforidua (Eastern Region)

Located in Koforidua, Bedtime Hotel boasts luxury accommodation and events facilities for hosting seminars, board meetings and social events. Guests enjoy free access to WiFi and the well equipped fitness centre.The air-conditioned rooms at the hotel have tiled floors and POP ceilings. Each room also features a private bathroom, a flat-screen TV with satellite views, a wardrobe, a work-desk, a bedside lamp, a telephone, and a refrigerator.Bedtime Hotel is a 10-minute walk away from Koforidua Polytechnic and 4 km away from Boti Falls.

5. Axim Beach Resort and Hotel ,Axim (Western Region)

Axim Beach Resort and Hotel is a beach resort situated at Axim, Ghana . Guests enjoy a panoramic view of the ocean from there rooms. Wifi internet access is available.Each room is built like a hut but with a modern touch and a thatched roof. Each room is fitted with a flat screen TV, a refrigerator, tea and coffee making facilities, an intercom telephone, a mini bar and features a terrace that overlooks the surroundings.Each room has an en suite bathroom.

Axim Beach Resort and Hotel is a 48-minute drive from the Stilt Village of Nzulezu and 24 km from Kwame Nkrumah's birthplace (Nkroful).

Credit : Jovago.com
An Accra-based businessman has dragged one Chief Inspector Kingsley Adu of the Legon District Police Command before the Police Intelligence and Professional Standards Bureau (PIPS) for allegedly assaulting him during an arrest.

He has called on the acting Inspector General of Police, John Kudalor, to act on this unfair treatment meted out to him by Chief Inspector Adu on November 30, 2015, at Legon.

The victim, Kwame Amponsah, according to reports, was given a hefty slap by the policeman during an arrest over allegations levelled against him by two Canadians.

In a statement issued in Accra and copied to the Inspector General of Police, the Attorney Generals Department and the Interior Ministry, Mr Amponsah said a person is not guilty until the courts of law prove otherwise. But in his case, the said Chief Inspector took the law into his own hands, brutally assaulted him before finally locking him up.

Without taking the matter to court within the stipulated 24 hours, Mr Amponsah said, the police further accused him of robbery.

I was again not given the chance to inform my lawyers but while in custody, the police invited TV3 Network, a local television station, to capture me for having defrauded some foreign nationals without even going into the case to establish the truth.

He questioned, Can a police officer slap a person in the presence of his subordinates in the name of making an arrest? . On November 30, 2015, the Legon Police stormed the offices of Bar Purity to arrest the director after they claimed the Canadians had lodged a complaint that the company had defrauded them.

National Service Personnel and visitors were also apprehended and detained for several hours before they were set free.

The policeman allegedly moved the directors new Toyota Camry vehicle while the hand brake was on, destroying the gearbox in the process.

Mr Amponsah is calling on the Inspector General of Police to intervene and bring the police officer to book.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

Ghana governments acceptance of Guantanamo Bay ex-detainees has sparked a lot of controversies and generated diverse views and confrontations from both security and political experts.

In recent developments, the founder of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has expressed his disappointment over Hon Nii Amasah Namoales comments on ATV in defense of governments decision in accepting the detainees into the country and citing the African Union and Zimbabwean President Robert Gabriel Mugabe as an example of terrorists who came to Ghana for asylum in the early 70s.

Dr Nduom at a press conference said these African leaders Namoale referred to as terrorists are people who run to different African countries including Ghana for political asylum and not because they were terrorists.

He further explained that these are leaders who fought for the liberation of Africa and cannot be compared to any person in Ghana in the same circumstance.

He called on the privileges committee of parliament to invite Hon. Namoale for interrogation on reasons why he described the Chairperson of the African Union as a terrorist and if possible demand that he apologize to Ghanaians and the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.

He also asked president Mahama to advice the Member of Parliament who doubles as a communication team member for the NDC party to be mindful of how he communicates on radio and television.

Watch Video for full details:
Nairobi (AFP) - Two respected foreign journalists working in volatile Burundi awaited a decision Friday as to whether they faced charges, after appearing in court following their arrest in a police raid.

French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy, Africa bureau chief for French daily Le Monde, and British photojournalist Phil Moore, were arrested on Thursday afternoon during a raid in which 15 others were also held, police said.

Both journalists have covered the region for years winning several awards for their work.

"The two foreigners were arrested in the company of armed criminals," the security ministry said in a statement.

Police said a mortar, a Kalashnikov rifle and pistols were seized in the raid in Nyakabiga, a Bujumbura suburb and anti-government protest hotspot.

"If there is no evidence against them, they will be released, of course," police deputy spokesman Moise Nkurunziza said.

French ambassador Gerrit Van Rossum visited the pair on Friday at the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service (SNR), where they had been questioned. France's foreign minister Laurent Fabius called for their "immediate release."

- 'Consummate professionals' -

In a statement Le Monde demanded the release of the two journalists who are on assignment for the paper.

"They both have valid visas and were merely exercising their professional duties by meeting all concerned parties involved in the current tensions in Burundi," Le Monde said.

"The Burundian authorities should immediately release French journalist Jean-Philippe Remy and British photographer Phil Moore, unless there is a credible legal basis for detaining them, and guarantee their safety," said Carina Tertsakian of Human Rights Watch.

The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA) said it was "extremely concerned about the arrests of our esteemed and dear colleagues."

Moore, 34, has frequently worked for AFP and other international publications, winning widespread recognition for his photographs of conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Libya, Somalia and Syria.

Remy, 49, has won several awards, including the 2013 Prix Bayeux-Calvados for his coverage of the war in Syria.

"We know them to be consummate professionals and are disturbed by news of their detention while they were doing their jobs in Bujumbura," the FCAEA said in a statement early Friday.

- Burundi to dominate AU talks -

Burundi has been in crisis since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term, sparking street protests, a failed coup, regular killings and a nascent rebellion.

The government has cracked down on the press, forcing independent media to shut down and driving some journalists into exile.

AFP and RFI reporter Esdras Ndikumana, 54, was forced to seek refuge in Kenya in August after he was tortured by the SNR in Bujumbura.

The crisis in Burundi will be top of the agenda this weekend when African leaders meet at their annual summit in Ethiopia, where they are expected to vote on sending 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi, a plan the government has rejected.

Since Nkurunziza won presidential elections in July, clashes between loyalists and the opposition have turned increasingly violent.

The UN has warned that Burundi risks a repeat of a 1993-2005 civil war, with some 400 dead since April and at least 230,000 people fleeing to neighbouring countries.

On Friday, rights group Amnesty International released satellite photos they said "strongly indicate" five mass graves of those killed during battles in the capital in December.

"These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out," Amnesty's regional chief Muthoni Wanyeki said.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

Ghanas IMANI Center for Policy and Education (IMANI) has been ranked the most influential think tank in Ghana and the second most influential think tank in Sub-Saharan Africa, for the second year running according to The Lauder Institute of The University of Pennsylvania in its latest publication on the performance of think tanks globally.

The Lauder Institute and its partners monitor and maintain the largest, most comprehensive database of over 6,500 think tanks globally. The performance of IMANI has consolidated its position as the most reliable and tenacious think tank whose activities have shaped policy and enhanced governance and development in Ghana. Globally, IMANI has chalked some successes by ranking high in various areas. It is ranked the topmost Education Policy Think Tank in Africa. IMANI is also the number one African think tank with the Most Innovative Policy Ideas/Proposals. In addition, IMANI leads the African think tanks to watch rankings, twelve of them out of 101 ranked globally.

IMANIs successes have won it the admiration of many. A cross-section of Ghanaians interviewed have expressed satisfaction with the work they do. Key media personalities and opinion leaders have also praised IMANI and shared statements of Imani in my vision of Ghana in the coming years. IMANI has been a game changer in Ghanas civil society, according to Richard Dela Sky, award winning Citi FM broadcast journalist.

Paul Adom-Otchere, one of Ghanas leading broadcasters, says as a think tank, IMANI represents a catalyst in the society and must continue to do what they do without fear or favour.

 Mr Adom-Otchere believes that Ghanaians as a people, we must resource them. Universities and institutions must collaborate with them and provide technical support and expertise. The media must also amplify the voice of IMANI to educate the masses and force change where and when it is needed. They must also be given financial help to enable them do more to enhance policy in Ghana. While praising IMANI for their great performance over the years, he says he expects IMANI to lead the charge to get the freedom of information bill passed into law.

Bernardino Koku Avle, Director of News Programming at Citi FM says IMANI has redefined the way Ghana approaches pressing issues of our time. IMANIs incisive and eclectic approach to research and advocacy have redefined the way we engage with the pressing issues of our time. They show that great impact can be achieved with little resources and innovative leadership in opening up the African public policy space.

Aspiring MP and former host of the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah believes more meaningful results would be achieved if governments and various political actors listened to IMANI. Having seen IMANI work its way to the top in the last 8+ years by tackling real issues with a fact based approach, I have become aware that if our governments and Political actors were to listen more to such Think Thanks, they could achieve more meaningful results in the real areas that matter. In the near future as our politics evolves, I expect to see organisations like IMANI, better attended to by Policy makers. I expect them to become key partners in crafting and assessing national policies and programs and supporting the political class with empirical views and critique.

I trust that increasingly our Political class will listen to views expressed by IMANI and similar real think thanks and factor them into our work to achieve more meaningful results in the lives of our people.

Award winning broadcast journalist, Shamima Muslim Alhassan, admonishes IMANI to continue to be relevant. According to her, IMANIs consistency is key for its survival.

Congratulations to IMANI for the great feat. Its definitely a mark of consistency and continuous relevance which is key to the survival of any CSO. Over the years IMANI has proven its ability to think and speak and influence policy conversations, direction and results. Now in a highly polarized political environment like Ghanas the greatest challenge to IMANI is how to guard its integrity, remain consistent and relevant and not pander to any political interest. I have no doubt IMANI will navigate the nuances remarkably.

For Development and Communications Professional, Nana Yaa Ofori-Atta, IMANI and others who demand critical thinking, consistently challenge assumptions, publicly call out opportunities and challenges based on evidence based research and analysis is an essential commodity. In my opinion, a democracy worth living and fighting for requires institutions, processes, leadership, prioritising targets, access to information, actual accountability, time bound best practice costed and measurable targets connected to a plan that is at the least known, understood and better yet, owned and renewed regularly by a critical section of the population. My assessment of Ghana, of public policy and institutions without which the essential rest  civil society, business community, political parties, security, economic growth, individual freedom and a culture that provides the basis for real meritocracy  cannot deliver is that we fall far short of stretch targets, she says.

Mr. Boakye Agyarko, former Vice President of Bank of America and Director of Policy of the New Patriotic Party says Ghanas prospects for sustainable development rest on the kind of work IMANI does. We now live in a world where decision making is driven by data and solid policy research. If Ghana is to leap frog into the ranks of the developed, it will have to rely heavily on the kind of quality research and analysis done by the likes of IMANI.

Alhassan Suhuyini, ace broadcaster formerly of Radio Gold and currently the parliamentary candidate for Tamale North believes IMANI is misunderstood sometimes. Congratulations to IMANI. I am aware that it is one organisation that has seen many policy battles and been misunderstood sometimes. I will urge them to do all they can to be clear in their communications, credible and non-partisan and above all seek the interest of Ghana. Congratulations. 

IMANI continues to lead the way in policy and education. The team comprising of Franklin Cudjoe, Bright Simons, Kofi B. Bentil, Selorm Branntie and the group of brilliant associate researchers and interns regularly put their shoulders to the wheel in delivering quality analysis.

The works of IMANI are available at http://www.imaniafrica.org/
29.01.2016 LISTEN

The global applaud and euphoria that greeted the multilateral adoption of a framework to combat climate change signed in December 2015 has not worn off. President Barrack Obama described it as "a turning point for the world." And the UN Secretary General hailed it as a monumental triumph. The leadership in both descriptions has continued to exude confidence amongst global actors and practitioners in the search for more sustainable response to the challenges of our more interconnected world.

Global desire and effort to mitigate human destructive activities on the environment is a choice founded on the highest moral grounds. The Climate is a global public goods, and protecting it from destruction feeds on its non-rival and non-excludability nature. Every nation and people is in need of a sustainable climate. No nation or people present rivalry to it and no nation OR people are excluded from its benefits.

Like the global common need to stop the spread of communicable diseases like the Zika Virus or the citizens social contract expectation from their government-needs that calls for collective effort and decision, it is globally expected that such important public goods as the climate be protected by International Law. This is the idea and motivations that had shaped and continue to shape the traditional pursuits of COP21 climate agreement as signed in Paris.

As much applaud and recognition this epochal agreement inspires, a critical insight on the articulations and limitations of International Law opens us up to the jurisdictional, political and economic realities that might lend a picture of Illusion" to the entrepreneurial aims of such a multilateral agreement in the future.

In principle, via the doctrine of Sovereignty, the State enjoys the freedom of consent" over the articulations of International Law. This is not to say that the State contemporarily retains its monopoly on International legal engagement, instead, the argument aims to point out the fact that the binding force of International Law still springs from the consent of the States.

As a legal system with no central enforcement mechanism, International Law relies on the effort of States to manifest as a Law and the State most times is the perpetrator or the facilitator of crimes on the environment. Political and economic interests influence the actions of the State and these choices are expressed through policy. In the absence of a central enforcement mechanism in International Law, the interests that guard a States attitude towards her obligations in International agreement like COP21 are most times driven by Policy and not by a moral obligation to obey the Law. Bearing this in mind, it would be unsustainable to allow unilateral prioritization and definition by States over what constitutes a global public goods.

The Revenge of Westphalia:

Owing to terms like Sovereignty, Non Interference etc., which were lent to the global ordering system by the Peace of Westphalia, the State enjoys the ability to prioritize its international legal obligations and this creates room for free riding. An example is the refusal of a Major environmental Polluter like the United States to ratify the Kyoto Protocol-the agreement to reduce greenhouse gases emissions.

It is important to note that the historical incentives that gave impetus to the peace of Westphalia and which defines legality in International Law and relations today were not based on a wider knowledge of other parts of the world. The decision by Europeans to embrace peace after the Thirty Years War in order to avoid a mutual suicide, and which its principles later shaped the ordering system of governance was a decision prioritized on a limited focus. Its shortsightedness is exposed by the willingness of nations to sign the COP21 agreement but with no real legal incentive to implement the decision.

Westphalinism as a social construct was made without the participation of the global community and the invocation of terms like Sovereignty and noninterference by States (as accepted in the Westphalian Peace treaty of 1648) in their obligations to the dictates of International Law have presented the hardest challenge to the desire for a rule based world. The peace treaty made by Europeans for Europeans and dispersed throughout the world by the forces of exploration has come to hunt the sincere search for global legitimacy in International legal relationship in our time.

Opportunity for Change:

To this effect, there is a need for more participatory re-evaluations of International legal scholarship and the acceptance of realities on ground should help the effort of legal positivism in erecting a more suitable foundation to global interactions that currently relies on the prejudices of the State for effectiveness. It is important that the "Participatory Gap" in the prioritization of International Law be closed and more democracy adopted. Here, Democracy-Striving or Democracy developing approach in International legal scholarship on Public Goods as suggested by Grainne de Burcar makes a lot of sense. According to her: Instead of reliance on effectiveness or efficiency in the search for more sustainable International legal impact -international Law policy should seek to enhance principles such as participation and representation of concerned stakeholders in its effort at global governance.

A call for more participation in the prioritization of Global Public goods presents a fresh opportunity to re-draw the contours of legitimacy in International legal policy, especially by Africans. It presents an opportunity for International legal researchers and practitioners to lend their voice and ink in demand for a more distributive and democratic decision making mechanism over issues of a common concern with the rest of the world.

It is also an opportunity for Africa to lend more insightful, more independent and richer insight on multilateral agreements like climate change-one that is generated in the industrialized nations but its worst impacts are felt more in Africa.

Kenneth Uchenna Obiakor is the Founder and Secretary of Leadership Development Foundation for Civic Literacy ( www.ldfcl.org ) .He wrote in from Owerri, Imo State Nigeria.
29.01.2016 LISTEN

One case of a different strain of meningitis called Meningococcal Meningitis has been recorded in the Greater Accra Region.

The case was reported at the Ridge Hospital in Accra.

Speaking to Citi News, the Acting Medical officer at the hospital, Emmanuel Srofenyo, said his outfit is keenly monitoring the disease to prevent a possible spread in the region.

What we have confirmed is meningococcal not the pneumococcal type.

That is also quite a serious condition but the patient is responding to treatment and the condition is fine now, he added.

The increasing cases of different strain of meningitis have put fear in a lot of Ghanaians because of sporadic nature of the disease.

Over 37 lives have been lost due to the deadly pneumococcal meningitis which was first recorded in the Brong Ahafo region some few weeks ago. So far, the disease has also been recorded in about five regions.

Meanwhile the Ghana Health Service says it is adopting measures to stop the disease and has sought the assitance of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in that regard.

Source: Citifmonline


Dar es Salaam (AFP) - Diplomats in Tanzania criticised Friday a planned election re-run on Zanzibar, urging a "peaceful outcome" and warning of "intimidation and tensions" amid an opposition boycott.

Last year's elections in Tanzania's semi-autonomous islands were scrapped, but diplomats from 15 nations expressed concern that the election commission annulled the vote "without having provided evidence to substantiate its claim that irregularities had taken place."

"We are deeply concerned that the unilateral declaration of a re-run may lead to an escalation of intimidation and tensions," said the statement signed by ambassadors in Tanzania including the European Union and the United States envoys.

The October 25 elections, which were held across Tanzania, were scrapped on Zanzibar after the islands' election commission reported "violations of electoral law", claims dismissed by the opposition.

Zanzibar has experienced sectarian and political tensions in recent years -- including recent grenade explosions -- with the unrest affecting the islands' key tourist industry.

Others who signed the statement were Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

"We regret that an election re-run was announced, while a dialogue between parties was still ongoing," the statement read.

"For the benefit of all Tanzanians, we reaffirm our belief that the current political impasse in Zanzibar would be best addressed through a mutually acceptable and negotiated solution."

The annulment came after opposition Civic United Front (CUF) candidate, Seif Sharif Hamad, declared himself the winner before the results were officially announced. Zanzibar's election commission announced last week that fresh polls would be held on March 20 and the CUF have said it would boycott the vote.

Zanzibar's 500,000 registered voters also cast ballots for Tanzania's national president, and despite the cancellation of the vote on the islands, new Tanzanian President John Magufuli was sworn into office last year.

The diplomats called on Magufuli to "pursue his previous calls for a negotiated solution between parties, so as to ensure a peaceful outcome."

Zanzibar President Ali Mohamed Shien of the long-ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) -- the same party as Magufuli -- remains in power until the polls are held.
Accra, Jan. 28, GNA - A delegation from the Okuapeman Traditional Council, on Thursday informed Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, the Speaker of Parliament and the Leadership of the House, of the death and the upcoming funeral of Oseadeyo Addo Dankwa III, Paramount Chief of the area.

The funeral rites of the late royal king of Akuapem, who died last year at age 85 and reigned for 41 years, would be held at Akropong-Akuapem from February 1 to 8, 2016.

The delegation, made of representatives from the three royal gates-Sekyibea, Nketia and Anogyaa- was led by Okyeame Asirifi, Linguist of Okuapeman.

Nana Asiama Bekoe, Tufuhene of Abiriw and Nifa Division acted as the spokesperson.

Speaker Adjaho paid tribute to the late Okuapehene for living a fulfilled life, saying he brought unity to the Akuapem State.

He announced that the House would recognise the late king with a tribute on the floor of the House in addition to the House being represented during the funeral.

Mr Alban Bagbin, the Majority Leader, said the late Okuapehene's life needs a celebration, and the House would be represented to be part of 'how Ghana will show gratitude to this very respectable chief.

'Together with the Minority, we'll be part of the celebration of this great man.'

The Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Aduna Bingab Nitiwul eulogised the late king on his achievements and his ability in bringing together almost every tribe of Ghana to the area.

GNA
Sekondi, Jan. 29, GNA - The Western Regional Police Command in Sekondi has impounded arms and ammunitions retrieved from some armed robbers and unauthorised arms dealers in the Wassa District of the region.

They are made up of five pump action guns, two Ak 47 pistols loaded with about 50 rounds of ammunitions, one foreign gun and four locally manufactured pistols.

Briefing the media in Sekondi, on Wednesday, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Isaac Quainoo, said the police acting upon a tip-off that some people were illegally dealing in arms and ammunitions at Wassa Asankramang rushed to the scene.

They chanced upon Abubakar Alari holding a bag at the scene, he said, and on suspicion requested to know the contents but he bolted and left the bag behind.

He said the bag contained some locally manufactured pistols, therefore, it aroused their suspicion so they continued with their search to his house, which revealed more of such pistols.

DCOP Quainoo stated that in the process of the investigations the police found other weapons abandoned at illegal mining sites at various locations suspected to have been used in robbery operation.

He said during their investigation, a 20 year old man, Charles Frimpong, travelled from Kumasi to Wassa Asankramang saying he was looking for Alari but upon interrogation, he gave conflicting statements.

The police, therefore, suspected that he was either a dealer or robber and thus arrested him and remanded him in their custody, where he is helping the police in their investigations.

The Regional Commander commended the Watch Dog Committee in the Wassa area for complementing the police in its efforts to combat crime and urged others to emulate the commitment of the committee.

He appealed to the public to feed the Police with information about suspicious people in their areas because their proximity to them make them more privy to the requisite information that the police needed.

He gave the assurance that the identity of informants would not be disclosed in order to bring sanity into the system to enable people to go about their duties peacefully. GNA
POLK  A High Plains Community Schools student died from an apparent case of bacterial meningitis.

Social media posts show parents and staff are on edge after learning a sophomore's death on Thursday may have been caused by the contagious disease.

The Merrick County Attorney's Office has requested that the student's name not be published.

His younger brother attends first grade in the school district, so elementary students and staff could have been exposed to the disease, the district posted Friday in a message on its website.

The school district said the Central District Health Department does not consider the situation to be an outbreak.

According to a health department press release, officials don't believe the student attended extracurricular activities or events recently, but they are taking precautionary measures by identifying those who were in close contact with him.

Antibiotic treatment through Litzenberg Memorial County Hospital in Central City is being offered for those who had close contact with the deceased student.

There are different types of meningitis, which is usually caused by bacteria or viruses, with some types being more contagious than others.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bacterial meningitis cases are usually severe and can be caused by several pathogens.

Some bacteria can spread through the exchange of fluids such as saliva and mucus, but most of the bacteria that causes meningitis is not as contagious as viruses that cause the common cold or flu, according to the CDC.

Symptoms of bacterial meningitis typically develop within three to seven days after exposure.

About 4,100 cases of bacterial meningitis, including 500 deaths, occurred each year in the United States between 2003 and 2007, the CDC reports.

High Plains is referring questions about the local incident to the health department at 308-385-5175.

Both the High Plains and Cross County school districts are taking precautionary measures to protect students and staff.
Accra, Jan. 29, GNA - Recognizing unprecedented momentum towards elimination of malaria in Africa, the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) will present awards tomorrow to 13 African countries that have shown commitment, innovation and progress in the malaria fight.

The 2016 ALMA Awards for Excellence will go to: Botswana, Cape Verde, Eritrea, Namibia, Rwanda, SAo TomA and PrAncipe, South Africa, and Swaziland for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target for malaria.

Liberia, Rwanda and Senegal for Performance in Malaria Control between 2011 and 2015; while Comoros, Guinea and Mali for being the Most Improved in Malaria Control between 2011 and 2015

A statement issued by the 2016 ALMA Awards Committee, which was copied to the Ghana News Agency said Africa has achieved historic progress in the fight against malaria over the past 15 years.

It said since 2000, malaria mortality rates in Africa have fallen by 66 percent among all age groups and by 71 percent among children under five.

It said the annual malaria deaths in Africa have decreased from an estimated 764,000 in 2000 to 395,000 in 2015.

The statement said approximately 663 million cases of malaria have been averted in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 14 years.

According to the World Health Organization, reductions in malaria cases attributable to malaria control activities saved an estimated $ 900 million in case management costs from 2001 to 2014.

'For the first time in history, a malaria-free Africa is in sight,' said Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn of Ethiopia, the current chair of ALMA.

'The success in these 13 countries and elsewhere across the continent demonstrates that strong leadership is our most powerful weapon against this ancient and deadly disease,' he said.

The statement noted that in many African leaders have made fighting malaria a key focus over the past several years, assisted by commitments from donors such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the United States' President's Malaria Initiative, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, and France's multilateral and bilateral contributions.

It said extensive use of effective and low-cost malaria control interventions, including long-lasting insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying, has led to the huge declines in incidence and death.

'Given that malaria-infected mosquitoes in Africa bite indoors and at night, these interventions have been highly effective. Since 2000, more than 1 billion insecticide-treated nets have been distributed in sub-Saharan Africa,' the statement said.

'ALMA is honored to work with these inspiring leaders,' said Joy Phumaphi, the Executive Secretary of ALMA.

'They are saving lives and unlocking human potential as they rid their countries of this horrible scourge. With their renewed commitment and dedicated resources, I am confident Africa can eliminate this disease,' she said.

The statement said but there is still much work to do, about 90 per cent of all global malaria cases and deaths occur in Africa; adding that malaria still kills an African child every two minutes.

It said in 2015, there were an estimated 188 million cases of malaria in Africa; furthermore, millions of Africans are not receiving the lifesaving health care services and tools they need to prevent and treat malaria.

It said the dual threat of insecticide and drug resistance add to the urgency of the problem.

The statement said in Africa, mosquito resistance to insecticides is increasing, and in Southeast Asia, resistance to artemisinin, the most common drug used to treat malaria, is a significant threat.

Typically, ALMA recognizes countries for their antimalarial efforts in a single year. This year, nations are receiving awards for their progress over a period of five years or for their work over the past 15 years to achieve the MDG target.

Two of this year's awardees, Liberia and Guinea, were facing a severe Ebola crisis in 2014 and 2015, making their successes in the area of malaria control all the more remarkable.

ALMA was founded in 2009, the African Leaders Malaria Alliance is a ground breaking coalition of 49 African heads of state and government working across country and regional borders to achieve a malaria-free Africa by 2030.

GNA
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29.01.2016 LISTEN

Most at times when I sit down to listen to some news items on the Ghanaian media I become so sad; The right people we expect to feed us with the happenings within the nation and the world as part of their professional duties are now becoming like the ordinary market men or women who escalate whatever they hears.

In fact some of the media personnel who are regional correspondence have become armed-chair researchers by sitting in their offices and report cases around Ghana without a bit of investigation.

Somewhere last year there was a news item by the TV3 Northern Regional correspondent, linking Bimbilla chieftaincy disputes with konkombas who were far from the clashes and when it was reacted by some konkomba youth, the man again added insults to the injury by saying that konkombas do not have any land in Ghana and so should not complain.

As if our complain about these negative reportage were heeded to, another serious one has been committed by the Starr fms Northern Regional correspondent Mr.Iliasu Tanko on a headline: Bunkrugu Riot: Death toll rises to three,35 houses Burnt, In his report, he pointed out that clashes is between two families; Jamong and the Jafog (Konkomba clans),this story was published by starrfmonline.com and re published on modernGhana.com.

The widely patronized national news portal: Ghanaweb.com also published this story as such without verifying the truth of it; they have thrown the dust into the eyes of the public to believe that Konkomba Clans are fighting.

I want to state categorically that the renewed clashes in Bunkrugu are not related to Konkombas in any way. Jamong and Jafog (Jafouk) families belong to Louk clan of Bimobas and not Konkombas. The fact that the names end in bas does not make the two ethnic groups is the same.

It will always be good if media personnel try to investigate news before publishing to avoid this verbatim all years whenever there is any clash in Northern Region; the hasty publication should be looked at or else you are painting Konkombas black.

Recurrent nature of this negative reportage is making us to believe that some of the media personnel just hate konkombas and so their intention is that there should always be clash in Northern region.

Konkombas once engaged in unavoidable fights in 1980s and 90s and since then we have always preach peace and it is the fact that not only konkomba ethnic group in Northern Region or Ghana fights but almost all ethnic groups fight and I cannot see why anytime there is an incidence of this nature the media is quick to mention konkombas, your hatred for konkombas will not reward you in anyway.

Running down from 1994 till today, media personnel have tried painting konkombas black anytime they report something on conflict in Northern region; we beg you to refrain from this negative reportage about Konkombas.

Ever since Konkombas and Nanumbas engaged in communal conflict in 1994 and 1996,Konkomba educated elites including Konkombas Students Union (KONSU) have always embark on national congresses every year to all konkomba dominated areas across the country to educate every konkomba on the need for peaceful coexistence with their neighbors and this has reduced the number of communal conflicts involving Konkombas but as much as we try to stay off conflicts the media always tries sending us back there.

They have always turned deaf ears to our efforts by always using konkombas to shadow other ethnic groups who still engage in conflicts.

Conflicts retard development and progress and I implore every Ghanaian to avoid conflicts and preach peace.

Areas like Bimbilla,Yendi,Bawku,Nkunya,Alavanyo,Bunkruku,I beg you, see one another as brothers and be ready to pardon one another to give peace a change. For underdevelopment is staring at us, as we cannot enjoy any national cake, Bimbilla for example suffers from Bad road network,unresourced District Hospital etc.

I am a konkomba and hate to hear or see people fighting; so you have to update your minds and recognize Konkombas as peace loving ethnic group in Ghana.

Thank you all and peace be unto you.

Assalamu alaikum.

[email protected]
29.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra January 25th 2015. MTN, the leading telecommunications service provider in Ghana,has received another international award for outstanding people management. The company received the Africa Best Employer Brand 2015 award at the recent Employer Branding Awardsceremony held in Mauritius and hosted by Employer Branding Institute.

This award recognizes top organizations across Africa who have displayed excellence in building strong employer brands and are employers of choice.

Over the years the Employer Branding Institute has carefully researched the Best Employers who:

 Create a culture of Contribution and Innovation at work

 Believe in Consistent Improvement in HR Policy by measuring organizational health and inculcating values that help to achieve the vision

 Are a Social and Equal Opportunity Employer

 Develop and nurture Future Leaders.

This years event, which was the second edition of the awards, attractedover 200 global leaders.

Commenting on the award, the MTN Ghana HR Executive, Mrs.AmmaBenneh-Amponsah, said, MTN thrives on its core values, cultural operating system and HR practicesthatprovide opportunitiesforemployees to freely share ideas, collaborate to get tasks done and ensure accountability. These values have contributed immensely to making MTN an employer of choice and a place for effective career growth and development.

Receiving the award on behalf of MTN Ghana, CEO Ebenezer Asante said, I am excited to receive an award thatis a celebration of the best talent in Human Resources development. This demonstrates the importance MTN attaches to the development of its employees.

Mr. Asante dedicated the award to all MTN Ghana employees and thanked them for immense contributions

MTN Ghana was recently awarded the Investors in People Gold accreditation, joining the top 3% of accredited organizations who believe in realizing the potential of their people.

In addition, MTN was adjudged the Overall Best Organization in Human Resource (HR) Practice, for the second time in a rowat the HR Focus Awards, 2015. Other awards won at the same event include: Best Organization in Recruitment and Selection and Best Practice in HR Information Systems in Ghana.
Ideal Financial Holdings has presented a cheque of over GH20,000 to the Accident Centre of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to support some patients who have not been able to pay their bills.

The beneficiaries of the initiative are five patients who have been treated and discharged but cannot leave the hospital because they couldnt clear their bills.

The patients, some of whom have been discharged as far back as August 2015, expressed their joy upon hearing the news and expressed their gratitude to Ideal Financial Holdings for the support.

Group Chief Executive Officer of Ideal Financial Holdings, Dr. Nii Kotei Dzani, noted such a gesture is part of their corporate culture as a financial conglomerate.

One of our values is caring and each and every day we look for means to care for people who need such care. I am alarmed at how much individuals owe hospitals in this country, he said.

Dr. Dzani added his company is looking at other ways of collaborating with Korle Bu to ensure patients who have been treated and discharged duly go home and not become economic burdens on the hospital.

We appreciate how difficult it is to operate a hospital because you have to acquire equipment, drugs and input regularly. We want to know what you need and see how best we can help, not just as Ideal Financial Holdings, but to draw the general publics attention and lead a campaign to clear hospital bills of under-privileged patients, he added.

Chief Executive Officer of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr. Gilbert Buckle, welcomed Ideal Financial Holdings plans to lead a national campaign on the phenomenon.

Your coming here is timely and a beacon of hope. Anyone of us is at the same risk of coming into the hospital and the hospital must be able to receive you, care for you, without even knowing you. We do not compromise due to the cost of input, quality of medicine and equipment and we will do what we have to do for everybody and anybody who comes in.

Dr. Buckle also impressed on other corporate bodies, the need to swiftly support such social causes.

It costs us more keeping these patients than letting them go so now the practice is: for 24 to 48hours when we establish that this individual cannot pay, we discharge them and let social welfare do due diligence and hope and pray that the individual will be honest and come back and pay, Dr. Buckle added.

He added that the hospital is about establishing a trust fund, to be administered as a separate public entity, to attract donations to support such endeavours. Already Korle Bu has a Critical Care Fund which supports those admitted under intensive care.

We know and believe that there are good people out there who will support us in what we want to do. Due to issues of patient confidentiality, we cannot expose what happens here out there. It infringes on peoples rights to privacy so the best we hope for is when people request to see what is happening and then proceed to support, he concluded.
Ethiopia is the latest country to back the campaign, which aims to accelerate universal energy access in sub-Saharan Africa. They pledged to boost solar energy access in a deal signed with Britain at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa.

An estimated 5 million households in Ethiopia lack regular electricity access. This not only disrupts daily life but is also a barrier to the country's economic growth. Across Africa, outages cost countries 1-2% of their annual GDP.

Speaking from the African Union Summit, Nick Hurd said:

At the current rate, it will be 2080 before everyone in Africa has the access to energy that we take for granted in the UK. Right now, two thirds of Africans have no electricity at all. This not only holds back individuals, but entire nations, and is why we are working in partnership with Africa to rapidly expand the solar energy sector.

In Ethiopia I saw for myself the difference that household solar capability can make to an entire family. Affordable, reliable electricity means children can do their homework after dark, women and girls are safer at night, and families are not forced to rely on expensive and toxic kerosene. And more than that  the mobile payments system, which is core to this solar technology, means people without bank accounts can access finance and build a credit history for the very first time.

More and more countries in Africa are joining the Energy Africa campaign. This new agreement with Ethiopia is another step towards overcoming the barriers stifling the household solar market and transforming the prospects of hundreds of millions of people.

With the support of countries like Ethiopia, the Energy Africa campaign will help achieve universal energy access by 2030.

The time to act is now, and the campaign is building on shifts already underway in the household solar market: the cost of solar power has crashed; battery technology has improved; appliances are more efficient; and crucially, the spread of mobile payment systems means people can pay for their energy with a simple text.

Since the launch of the campaign, African support has continued to grow. Ethiopia joins Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Somalia who have already pledged to join Africa's solar revolution.

The Minister's visit comes after a trip to Northern Ethiopia last month where he saw how humanitarian support from Britain is already helping millions of families get the emergency food they so desperately need to survive.
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KC fish fries begin today

COLUMBUS  St. Anthony Catholic Church will begin hosting its weekly all-you-can-eat fish fries during the Lenten season today.

The fish fries will be held from 5:30-8 p.m. each Friday until March 18 at the Parish Center, located in the lower level of St. Anthony Elementary School, 1719 Sixth St.

The event includes deep-fried and baked fish, along with coleslaw, scalloped potatoes and dessert.

Cost is $9 for adults, $8 for seniors over 60 years, $4 for children ages 5-11 and free for children 4 and under.

The fish fries are sponsored by the St. Anthony Knights of Columbus Council 9264.

Powerlifters fundraiser set

COLUMBUS  The Columbus High School powerlifters will have a fundraiser at Pizza Ranch from 5-8 p.m. Feb. 15.

A percentage of all sales will go to support the CHS powerlifters.

PCHS meeting slated March 6

COLUMBUS -- There will no February program meeting at the Platte County Historical Society.

The next meeting will be at 2 p.m. March 6 in the west building meeting room, 2916 16th St. This will be the society's volunteer recognition day, and Loup Public Power District will present the Loup Canal Project Movie, showing scenes filmed in the 1930s of the building of the Loup Canal and Powerhouses.

The public is welcome to attend. Admission is free to PCHS members and $3 for nonmembers.

Super Bowl drive Feb. 5-6

COLUMBUS -- A Super Bowl Food Drive will be held Feb. 5-6 at Super Saver and Hy-Vee.

All food collected will be donated to the Platte County Food Pantry, Columbus Rescue Mission, Simon House and Salvation Army.

Computer classes in February

COLUMBUS -- Central Community College-Columbus will offer the following computer classes in the Student Center in February:

 Intermediate Word 2010 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Feb. 10 in Room 179.

 Intermediate Excel 2010 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Feb. 24 in Room 176.

Preregistration is required at least a week in advance. The cost, which includes a book, is $105 per class.

For more information or to register, contact Sue Mahlin at 402-562-1409; toll-free at 1-877-222-0780, ext. 1409; or email smahlin@cccneb.edu.

Forklift course at Central CC

COLUMBUS -- A forklift certification training course will be offered from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Feb. 11 in the Student Center, room 176, at Central Community College-Columbus.

The class meets Occupational Safety and Health Administration for powered industrial trucks. It will cover prestart inspections, safety procedures, handling and transporting hazardous materials, and federal regulations.

Participants also will gain driving experience by using the colleges forklift and then will take a driving test. Class size is limited, so preregistration is required to reserve a space.

The cost is $70. Students must be at least 18 years old and have a valid drivers license.

For more information or to preregister, contact Susan Baer at 402-562-1425; toll-free at 1-877-222-0780, ext. 1425; or email sbaer@cccneb.edu.
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business Volumes to increase in Q4: JSW Steel In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Seshagiri Rao, Jt MD and Group CFO, JSW Steel, talked about the company's third quarter earnings and shared his outlook going forward.
business ICICI Bank, Maruti, Airtel likely to be in focus today Stocks that are likely to be in news after their Q3 earnings are ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki India, Glenmark Pharma, Bharti Airtel, State Bank of India, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, Novartis India, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Muthoot Finance, Titan Company.
Climate change may increase farmers' distress in the country, Reserve Bank Executive Director Deepak Mohanty said today.

"There is a problem of farmers' distress where we have seen lots of farmers' suicide taking place and over time it is likely to go up in the light of climate change.

"That is why we have suggested for the universal crop insurance and I am happy to know that the government has launched such a scheme," he told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham banking conclave here.

Mohanty had chaired the committee which submitted a report on financial inclusion to RBI.

"We have said that credit should flow to the sector so as to ensure that farmers are not affected while cultivating their crop," he said.

He said that 45 per cent of credit requirement comes from rural areas and last year, the agriculture credit in the country was to the tune of Rs 8 trillion.

Mohanty also talked of use of technology to achieve the goal of financial inclusion.

"The issue concerning use of technology is important so as to... reach the last mile. It is mobile banking which can help you achieve the goal and hence our report has emphasised on technological upgradation," he said.

Mohanty said he favoured more insurance cover for MSMEs as he believes that existing Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) is not enough.
LINCOLN  Families pushing for state financial help in educating their children outside traditional public schools rallied outside the Capitol on Thursday morning.

Busloads of parochial schoolchildren, along with a handful of kids who are home-schooled or attend public schools, donned yellow scarves and packed the west steps of the statehouse at 10 a.m.

"Your ZIP code should not determine what kind of education you get," Gov. Pete Ricketts, a supporter, told the crowd.

A fifth-grader from Christ Schools Elementary talked about loving her school and her Christian education.

"I am glad there are options when it comes to education in our state," Ellie Volk, her school's student council president, told the crowd. "But our government needs to provide ways though which all families can choose the best program to educate their children  either public or nonpublic."

Some of the hundreds in attendance urged Nebraska to allow charter schools, which receive public funding but operate outside the normal public school system. Others want the state to let families opt out of supporting public schools with their tax dollars if they choose to send their children to private school or teach them at home.

Those parents argue they are paying twice for their children's education.

Attempts to advance those goals have struggled to gain footing in the Legislature.

Members of one legislative committee killed a bill (LB616) last year that would have created a charter school pilot project in Omaha.

Another bill, sponsored by Omaha Sen. Bob Krist, would provide state tax credits for donors who help establish scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools. That measure (LB26) was also introduced last year and remains lodged in the Legislature's Revenue Committee. Krist, who attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic school in Omaha, urged Thursday's crowd to contact committee members and encourage them to advance the bill.

The rally drew impassioned speeches from people who said public schools had failed their children or themselves.

Clarice Jackson of Omaha said while public school worked for her son, it left her daughter essentially illiterate through fourth grade.

That changed when she transferred to a private school, she said.

"We need to quit putting up roadblocks to educational excellence for our children," she said.

Nebraska is one of seven states that have not allowed for some form of charter school under state law.

Thursday's rally took place across the street from the headquarters of the Nebraska State Education Association, the state teachers' union. As children gathered on the Capitol steps, paper lettering appeared in the NSEA windows that spelled out, "PUBLIC $ 4 PUBLIC SCHOOLS."

Opponents of charter schools and similar initiatives argue they hurt public schools by taking away essential funds. Supporters say its an issue of fairness, and that increased competition would force public schools to improve.

After the rally, Ricketts acknowledged school choice advocates are playing "a long-term game."

"We want to make progress on school choice every year," he said. "Our work is never done when it comes to education."
January 29, 2016 Why Long-term Occupations Of Afghanistan Always Fail The U.S. military now plans for a permanent occupation of Afghanistan. A discussion of the historic analogy of the Soviets in Afghanistan shows that this is unlikely to be a successful endeavor. A Pakistani official summed up the Soviet dilemma in Afghanistan as follows: The Soviets can continue to occupy the country, but the can not win over the people. The longer they stay, the more they alienate the people. The more they alienate the people, the longer they must stay. This Russian dilemma is also the Afghan dilemma, and both seem condemned to suffer the consequences. Quoted in Joseph. J.Collins, Afghanistan: The Empire Strikes Out, Perimeters, 1982 The above is an apt description of the current situation in Afghanistan, just replace Soviet with American. Having tried suppression through torture and indiscriminate bombing, massive bribing, escalation via the "surge", COIN and other social science nonsense, the U.S. military is now pushing for a decades long occupation of Afghanistan to facilitate the long-term Afghanization of the conflict: Top U.S. military commanders, who only a few months ago were planning to pull the last American troops out of Afghanistan by years end, are now quietly talking about an American commitment that could keep thousands of troops in the country for decades.

...

[T]here is a broad recognition in the Pentagon that building an effective Afghan army and police force will take a generations commitment, including billions of dollars a year in outside funding and constant support from thousands of foreign advisers on the ground. What weve learned is that you cant really leave, said a senior Pentagon official with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Iraq who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The local forces need air support, intelligence and help with logistics. They are not going to be ready in three years or five years. You have to be there for a very long time. The above quoted paper looked at such a long-term occupation and Afghanization as an exit-option for the Soviets: "Afghanization" might provide a long-term solution, but efforts to carry out such a policy to date have shown little immediate return. This lack of return is not surprising since the Soviets have not generally been successful in developing Soviet-style cadres in Third World countries. Indigenous pro-Soviet movements have been successful, but only when they have drawn on nationalism or on ethnic or tribal affiliation. Soviet prospects for exploiting these unifying factors in Afghanistan are extremely poor. Again replace Soviets with American and the statement holds. The paper concludes with a lecture which the hubristic politicians and generals in Washington DC still have not learned: Afghanistan is proof positive that great power does not insulate its holder from great mistakes. Indeed, having great power tempts the possessor to regard it as invincible whatever the circumstances. Afghanistan vividly demonstrates that even superpowers are at the mercy of religious, ethnic, radical and other such historic forces in their dealings with Third World countries. Armored divisions and unusable ICBMs have rarely overcome the indigenous forces of nationalism and religious faith. Great powers must take this into account in their dealings with Third World countries. There are tides which one dares not to swim against. Afghanistan is a conglomerate of people of various ethnicity, tribal and religious affiliations. There is, besides maybe in sports, no real Afghan nationality on which one could build an overarching structure to rule. The scholars of the 1980s knew this, but their lecture was forgotten. When will it be relearned? Posted by b on January 29, 2016 at 6:24 UTC | Permalink Comments
The Rock School Arts Foundation has announced a multi-media show entitled Perspectives in Portraiture in the Rock School Gallery II for the month of February. This exhibition brings together three artists with a long history in the local arts community. Lance Turner, Frances Hairfield and Kenny Walker bring different techniques and approaches to portraiture that create unforgettable images.

Lance Turner, who now lives in Memphis, has exhibited in group and solo shows in galleries and museums throughout the United States, including the National Ornamental Metals Museum in Memphis, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, the Southern Nevada Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, the Visual Arts Center in Punta Gorda, Florida, the Hickory Museum of Art, the Farmington Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta and the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta.

His work was recently published in issue 118 of New American Paintings. A recent solo show entitled "Lance Turner: Process and Documentation" was included in the Memphis Flyer's Best of 2008 as "one of the most wildly imaginative shows of the year". Lance Turner was born in North Carolina in 1985. He graduated with honors from Memphis College of Art with a bachelors degree in painting and art history and from Savannah College of Art and Design with a Master degree in painting.

Frances Hairfield, also from Morganton, pursued a foundation in fine arts at Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida and then studied drawing and oil painting and hosted Plein Air workshops with William McCullough. Hairfield enrolled at one of the worlds most famous independent art schools, the Art Students League in New York City. There she studied portrait painting with artist Daniel E. Greene and anatomy with Dr. Robert Beverly Hale. For more than eight years, Hairfield assisted Greene with his art school in North Salem, New York and in various locations across the United States, including the inaugural American Portrait Society exhibition held in New York City.

After years away, Hairfield returned to Linville and became sought after as a painter of commissioned portraits, as well as landscape paintings of the mountains. In 2003, Hairfield joined fresco painter Ben Longs team of artists to produce The Sacred Dance of the Muses at CoMMA, and again later to create the fresco Suffer the Children, Come unto Me in the Sloop Chapel in Crossnore.

Also a teacher, Hairfield may be found on the trails in the shadow of Grandfather Mountain hosting summer Plein Air Painting Workshops or teaching at the Collett Street Recreation Center in Morganton.

Kenny Walker, a high school art teacher in Cleveland County, seeks to sensitively render a glow of soft realism in his faces and figures using a special technique with colored pencils. Through facial expressions, distortions or even the lack of expression, he seeks to create a mood that invites a viewers interaction and interpretation.

Walker earned his bachelors degree in art education from Appalachian State University and his Master degree from Northwestern State University. In 2013, he shared the works for his graduate exhibition with the public in the Rock School Gallery I. He has won many awards including the Peoples Choice Award in the Open Art Competitions at the Rock School.

All three artists will inform emerging high school art students from East Burke and Draughn as they study the three artists techniques. The high school students will also display their own artwork from last semester in an art expo and competition in Rock School Gallery I.

Galleries I and II are located on the second floor at right side entrance. Hours of operation are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and on weekends by appointment by calling 828-879-2129.
"The Finest Hours" suffers from the same problem as this season's other 3-D maritime adventure, "In the Heart of the Sea." Though both fact-based adventures of the high seas are told with gripping intensity and eye-popping  if also, at times, seasick-making  visuals, both stories are constrained by landlocked framing devices that weaken the gale-force winds that propel their narratives.

In Ron Howard's "Sea," which was inspired by the true-life shipwreck of the 19th-century whaling ship Essex, the film keeps cutting to "Moby-Dick" author Herman Melville, sitting with a notebook in a boarding house in Nantucket, as he listens to the story that inspired the film. In "The Finest Hours," filmmaker Craig Gillespie ("Lars and the Real Girl") keeps switching between the storm-tossed waters off the coast of Cape Cod, where the main action is set, to the tiny town of Chatham, Massachusetts. Far too much of this otherwise white-knuckle adventure takes place inside the cozy confines of a Coast Guard station office.

Set in the winter of 1952, "The Finest Hours" is loosely inspired by the wreck of the SS Pendleton, a tanker that broke in two during a fierce nor'easter. After the bow of the ship sinks  with the captain and several other crewmembers onboard  the 33 remaining men on the stern struggle to keep the hull afloat, as they await rescue.

In the film, the surviving crew is led by the ship's can-do engineer, played by Casey Affleck as a somewhat antisocial scholar of nautical mechanics. Affleck is the best thing about the film, even if the actions of his character, who fashions a rudimentary tiller with which to steer the hull onto a shoal, have been largely fictionalized.

As Bernie Webber, the captain of the small Coast Guard vessel that attempts to rescue the survivors, Chris Pine makes less of an impression. This is probably historically accurate: The real Webber didn't know what he was doing or where he was going, losing his compass on the way out to sea and eventually piloting his boat by instinct as much as anything. As the film makes clear, luck had a huge role in this story's outcome.

This is not to say that there's no suspense. Webber's efforts to clear a treacherous sandbar, just to reach the open ocean, are depicted with a visceral verisimilitude. And the plight of men on the broken hull, which somehow stays afloat against all odds, is impossible to look away from.

But the movie takes too long to get to the wreck, let alone to the rescue mission. In order to heighten our identification with the character of Webber, the film features an unnecessarily draggy prologue in which he meets his fiancee, Miriam (Holliday Grainger), on a blind date. Even later, with the nor'easter finally in full force, Gillespie constantly cuts back to Miriam on shore. Here she is arguing with Webber's boss (Eric Bana). There she is, running her car into a snowbank, or engaging in any variety of dramatically pointless diversions.

Webber himself is particularly indecisive. Although this is quite probably true to life, seeing as the rescue had all the hallmarks of a suicide mission, the film runs aground every time we are forced to watch Pine's face twist in a torment of impotent uncertainty, which is often.

Somewhere in here, there's a pretty decent movie. "The Finest Hours" is probably the best of a bad bunch of recent releases. But it's a shame that this terrific story's engines keep flooding in the face of wave after wave of narrative inertia.

One other thing: Skip the 3-D version. It's a waste of good technology, in a movie in which the hero himself can hardly see the hand in front of his face.
LINCOLN  Sen. Adam Morfeld's proposal to allow voters to take selfie photos at their voting precincts that display their ballots and how they voted and show the photos on social media bumped into opposition Thursday from the secretary of state's office.

Deputy Secretary of State Neal Erickson told the Legislature's Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee that it would be "bad public policy" to share photos online that "may well influence how others vote" and cautioned that the practice "could be used by partisan activists."

The broader concern is "preventing fraud at the voting booth," Erickson said.

In response, both Morfeld, a Lincoln senator, and Committee Chairman John Murante of Gretna said people have a constitutional right to express themselves and to attempt to influence how others may vote.

"It's no different than orally encouraging people to vote for candidates you support," Morfeld said. "Freedom of expression is a protected fundamental constitutional right."

Asked Murante: "Why should we deter Nebraskans (from) 1st Amendment political speech? Why constrain this?"

It's no different, he said, than "when I go door-to-door to encourage people how to vote."

Morfeld said the bill (LB787) is designed to allow voters to take photos of themselves with their ballots in an effort to "encourage, tech-savvy younger people, and others, to participate in the excitement of the civic process (and) encourage others to do so."

Sen. Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins expressed concern about the possibility of photos that might catch the image of others who may be in the process of voting.

Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha cautioned that Nebraska would be entering "unplowed ground" if it approved the practice.

Bri McLarty, director of voting rights for Nebraskans for Civic Reform, testified in favor of the measure at the public hearing.

A New Hampshire federal court decision this summer ruled that a state ban on ballot selfies violates free speech rights.
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One lender is pulling back on how much it will lend to Chinese citizens in America.



HSBC will no longer provide mortgages to certain Chinese nationals, as more and more endeavour to filter their assets out of the struggling economy  many of whom have been focusing on real estate in New York, Vancouver, and several other hot housing markets around the world.



It will no longer lend to Chinese nationals holding temporary visitor B visas if the potential buyers assets are held in China.



HSBC told Mansion Global, a luxury homes website, about the change last week.



The policy change comes amid growing concern around the influence foreign money has on real estate markets, including those in the United States and Canada.



No new mortgage applications will be accepted, but the applications which have been submitted successfully will not be affected, an HSBC loan officer told the publication on condition of anonymity.



No word yet whether the lender will roll the policy out to other markets. The precedent, however, has now been set and time will tell whether or not HSBC competitors will implement similar restrictions.



It remains to be seen how the change will impact the mortgage market south of the border. However, with many foreign nationals opting to pay cash for their purchases, such a change may do little to curb the influx of foreign funds.




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Moorpark College eyes constructing 4,000-seat amphitheater A 4,000-seat amphitheater at Moorpark College could be Southern California's newest entertainment spotbut such a development would be a long way off. The school is taking the first steps toward...

CSUCI professors working on ion project Cal State Channel Islands faculty members Scott Feister, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science, and Alona Kryshchenko, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics, recently received $112,480 from the National Science Foundation...

Keynote speaker to discuss undocumented college students Award-winning author Javier Zamora will discuss his new memoir, Solito, from noon to 1 p.m. Wed., Oct. 19 on Zoom. The talk is free to students and the community. The...

Cal Lutheran awards scholarships for low- and middle-income students Cal Lutheran University recently received $2.5 million to provide scholarships to accomplished students from low- and middle-income families. The donation from the Camarillo-based TOLD Foundation is the largest that CLU...
Originators have reason for optimism this year, according to one economist who is forecasting strong business prospects.



2016 will be a very strong year for purchases even if rates rise; if they do rise, it wont be significant, Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American Mortgage Solutions, told Mortgage Professional America. Economists have been forecasting rate increases over the last 2-3 years and it hasnt happened; even with the Fed recently raising its rate, mortgage rates have actually gone down.



Recently released stats support Flemings forecast.



Mortgage applications were up 8.8% week-over-week for the week ending January 22, according to the Mortgage Bankers Associations Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey.



Applications are also up year-over-year. And thats the more important indicator of just how strong the market currently is, according to Fleming.



The biggest headline from MBAs survey is that applications are up 22% year-over-year, Fleming said.



Thats good news considering he believes refinance business will dwindle this year.



I do expect refi rates to go down; if rates go up, refinances will drop, Fleming said.



However, he argues increased rates wont have the same impact on purchases.



We survey title agents every quarter and, recently, they said it would take an increase of 5.1% (on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage) to discourage first-time buyers, Fleming said.



And rates have a long way to go to pass the 5% mark.



According to MBAs most recent survey, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages for conforming loans currently sits at 4.02%.



The average rate for jumbo 30-year fixed-rate loans sits at 3.89%.
A combination of patience, perseverance and being open to opportunity has secured Luxe Energy LLC its first acquisition.

The Austin-based company is acquiring approximately 18,000 acres in Reeves and Ward counties from Endeavor Energy Resources LP and Finley Resources Inc.

The undeveloped acreage and producing oil and gas properties are majority operated with high average working interest and contiguous acreage that will allow the company to employ long laterals in its horizontal drilling projects. The acquisition also gives Luxe the opportunity to design, construct and operate midstream infrastructure.

Its a nice core acquisition, said A. Lance Langford of the core Delaware Basin properties. Independently they werent that attractive but together they make a nice block.

The company looked at various basins that fit its focus on oily plays before striking deals with Endeavor and Finley.

If you look across the United States -- we were focusing on oily plays in the U.S. -- the Delaware Basin and Midland Basin are the most economic and prolific basins, Langford, Luxe chief executive officer and president, said by phone from his Austin office.

Because much of the acreage is held by production, the company wont be required to immediately spend a lot of capital on drilling, he said. We can wait until prices improve. When prices improve, we can accelerate our activity.

Company officials are regularly monitoring oil prices and drilling costs as they plan their drilling activity.

We like $60 oil and wed drill at $60 oil. But well assess where costs are. Costs have come down significantly, Langford said. At some point, prices will go up and if costs stay down, which I expect sometime in 2017, activity will rise.

The Midland native said plans right now are to spend this year getting drilling rigs ready and designing midstream infrastructure in preparation to launch activity. Midstream construction could begin when, or just before, drilling begins, he said. Drillin will be comprised of horizontal wells with 10,000 foot laterals and lots of frac stages, he said.

While the company has set aside some funding for drilling, just when the company will drill depends on future acquisitions, Langford said.

We are focused on oily basins. Weve been looking at different basins, but the Delaware and Midland basins, thats our starting point. But dont be surprised if we buy in other basins, he said. There are opportunities in other basins, but the Delaware and Midland are the top tier.

The company has been patiently waiting for low commodity prices to prompt operators to put assets on the market. Oil prices around $30 a barrel has resulted in a distressed market, Langford said.

But theres still a reluctance to sell property at these low prices. Its a matter of necessity for some. Companies with high debts are stressed to where it justifies selling assets. I think were seeing that and will see that, he said.

Prices for Delaware Basin will hold firm because of its potential, Langford said.

I would argue there are still a lot of intervals that are not yet defined in the Delaware. Its a great basin with great economics and big intervals with lots of potential. When you compare the economics of the Delaware with other basins around the U.S., its the best, he said.

He is excited about his companys initial acquisition and about the future not only for Luxe but for his industry.

I feel good about oil prices. These low prices cant sustain. Theyre harmful not just here but in countries across the world. Many countries depend on oil for their revenues, he said.

Luxe was formed in May 2015 with a $500 million private equity funding commitment from NGP Natural Resources XI LP, a Natural Gas Partners private equity fund.

Langford and co-founder Jeff Larson, who serves as chief operating officer, have worked together for more than 24 years, starting at Burlington Resources and then at Brigham Exploration and Statoil. Langford is the son of Al G. Langford, who was Midland Colleges first president and active in the oil and gas industry.
Students at Midland College heard an unusual beeping sound from the public address system at about 10:15 a.m. Thursday, and then a voice crackled across the campus warning of an active shooter.

Fortunately, it was just a drill, but the Midland College Police Department and Midland police worked to make it as realistic as possible in the event of an actual domestic terrorism incident.

Shortly after the PA alert, students phones buzzed as emails and text messages using the Chap Alert text message system told them to take cover in a safe area of their buildings. A second notice told them that a shooter in a green jacket was in the F. Marie Hall Academic Building.

All students on MCs campus were required to participate in the exercise. College officials said they had been informing students for months that a drill would take place Thursday between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., with it concluding by noon, but details were purposefully scant.

Students instead were told that those not near the simulated danger area would evacuate the campus. Those near or in the academic building were told to take cover while law enforcement surveyed the active area.

I think its a good idea because theyre taking action, said Lissette Cantu, an Early College High School student. Im glad were learning these drills and taking action instead of freaking out, causing drama and letting the executor come and find us and let him know where we are and make us an easy target for him.

Although students had been told of the general details of the drill, reactions of students were varied, according to students Gerardo Vazquez and Jocelyn Trejo, who were in the academic building.

That was kind of shocking to me because theyve been going over this the last few weeks, telling us pretty much that this drill was going to happen ... and we still had a few students freaking out a little bit, panicking, said Trejo.

Vazquez said that others in the room were more relaxed, with Vazquez taking advantage of an unexpected nap time.

We were not under threat, and I figured that would be the best way to be quiet, like we were told to do, Vazquez said. No one was talkative. We were taking it seriously. I think you should take a drill seriously. I think it was effective because theres a lot of students ... who wouldnt know how to react to the situation if someone came in with a gun.

The drill is part of MCs mission to maintain the safest campus possible, according to a press release. Midland College President Steve Thomas said that recent shootings in San Bernardino, California, and Paris, France, affirm the necessity for such drills.

Unfortunately, recent events throughout the world ... have made us realize that it is necessary to evaluate Midland Colleges level of preparedness and then take corrective actions that may be needed, Thomas said.

Trejo said that conversations similar to that happened in the classroom. Those conversations included that if the group of students was smaller, they would likely switch to a different room that they could barricade more easily.

You know, they talk about if there was a shooter, everyone needs to jump on them because its better that only one or two of us gets shot than everybody getting taken out one by one, Trejo said. We had that conversation in here and one person was like, I dont know if I would do that. I was a little shocked at first but then I did realize that I dont know how old they were or their life. I know what I would do and what I would want someone to do for me, but my responsibility as a person, as a student or teacher is to make sure everybodys in the rooms under cover.

Follow Cassie on Twitter at @Cassie_Burton51
While use of synthetic cannabinoids spiked across the nation, Midland seems to have bucked that trend.

Last year, there was a 229 percent increase in calls to poison centers as compared to the same time period in 2014, according to a CDC report. Local medical personnel and drug abuse counselors said they have seen little to no K2 use in recent months.

This trend of declining use of synthetic cannabinoid  better known by common brand names such as K2 or spice  could be a national pattern, as well, but there is no available data so far this year to indicate that.

Other cities in Texas might not be seeing the end of its K2 spike, according to a recent Dallas Morning News article. From early December to early January, Dallas Fire-Rescue had an increased number of 911 calls relating to the use of K2, according to the article from earlier this week.

In Midland, synthetics still have some grip on the younger population, said Chad Small, a group counselor at the Palmer Drug Abuse Program.

For a while, I was dealing with quite a bit of (K2 abuse), but recently, I think its been maybe a month or two since Ive had anybody come through my office really struggling with it, Small said. Its slowed way down, but I still see a little bit of it in the high schools. So its still around. It hasnt disappeared.

The surge in K2 use in the area occurred in early 2014, said registered nurse Brandon Kit Bredimus, director of Emergency Services at Midland Memorial Hospital. It was particularly popular with rig hands, though many people from all walks of life used it, he said.

During the peak times, when (oil companies) were hiring a bunch of rig hands, we did see a spike in some of the K2 and some of the synthetics, Bredimus said. When we asked them, Why are you doing this? they would tell us that a lot of the drug screens out there wouldnt test positive for marijuana and synthetics. At least, that was the rumor But I think the other piece was  and this is just anecdotally speaking  is that during the boom, I dont think a lot of places really cared. They were just getting as many people as they could, and it was only when something bad happened that they would get drug tested.

The Reporter-Telegram was unable to get in contact with companies such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger for an update on current drug- screening protocol.

The wane in K2 use hasnt indicated a lull in drug use as a whole in Midland. The ERs psychiatric volume  which is all mental health complaints such as depression, suicide attempts, detox and overdoses  has grown from between 80 and 90 visits per month in 2013 to between 120 and 130 visits per month now, Bredimus said.

Since the economy went down, weve seen an increase in drug usage, but I wouldnt say its a monumental spike, Bredimus said. I dont know if it can be directly correlated, but it feels that way.

The decrease in K2 use could be attributed to more awareness of the negative side effects of the drug, Bredimus said. These side effects can vary from agitation to symptoms of psychosis and can even be life-threatening, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Bredimus thinks the decrease in usage will continue.

Synthetics boomed right before the start of bath salts, but both decreased in popularity due to the side effects and cost, Bredimus wrote in an email. Many of the drug users would tell us it was much cheaper and safer to use regular marijuana, so word spread and we just dont see it much anymore. We also have a large supply of meth in the area, so I think we will continue to not see a big impact from the fad drugs that pop up (Flaka, Salts, etc. ...).

Small thinks this is just part of the cycle of drug abuse he sees every day as a PDAP counselor.

When (the federal government) took out B&L Adult Book store in Odessa (in 2013) and a couple of smoke shops I heard about that got busted where everybody was buying (K2), is when I first saw a huge influx of people suddenly having a problem because thats how the ebb and flow goes in this business, Small said. They make a big heroine bust and suddenly I got people coming in here that got a heroine problem, because youve only got a problem when you run out of dope. I believe that what is around, is being bought and mailed in from overseas, like China. They find distributors online.

Though Small cant confirm the main suppliers are coming from online sources, thats the word on the street, he said.

A quick Google search online shows multiple websites claiming to sell and ship a variety of K2 mixes, with names such as Cloud9 and Bizarro.

Its not anything like it was, but I will say that spice is the absolute worst drug out there that Ive seen as far as its addictiveness, the amount of brain damage it causes, the physical damage it causes, Small said.
DJ Khaled has been everywhere. Whether it has been meeting with the CEO of Snapchat, to hanging with the Kardashians or making appearances on Jimmy Kimmel with Future, the man is making moves and giving out the keys to success all over Los Angeles right now. Last week he stopped in to the Beats 1 studios to hang out with Pharrell and special guest Aziz Ansari to chat on the OTHERtone show, which became dubbed the "ANOTHERtone Show." A few clips emerged right away about Cinnamon Toast crunch, their associated vibes and candles, but now the full interview is available online for everyone to watch and listen.

Pharrell and his co-host Scott Vener dive into each of their guest's musical influences and Aziz dishes on listening to guys like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg as a kid in small town South Carolina growing up. Khaled dives into his past as a DJ, mixing together reggae, dancehall and hip-hop back in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Khaled gets inspired talking about defeating THEY and the love his fans give him every day. He recounts the story of how Pharrell called him after "Hold You Down" was released and the "Happy" producer complimented him on how the track came out.

Khaled drops a major key to Aziz who wants to get into the drop game, saying "if you waiting on somebody, you messing up."

Khaled reveals he has a video game in the works, which he wants to put Aziz in that is going to be "ground breaking."

Then things get a little serious as they talk about the injustices of the justice system and then the trappings of social media.

Khaled opens up about his fear of flying and the panic attacks that have come from it. He hasn't flown in nearly seven years, but he wants to overcome it this year.

Don't play yourself, watch the full video below.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Neil Degrasse Tyson just demolished B.o.B. As Kevin Hart would say, "Nooooo...He wasn't ready." Granted B.o.B never had a chance since he didn't have much to stand on with a round earth underneath his feet. The scientist went on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore responding to the hosts "science emergency defense program" distress signal in response to the recent accusations by B.o.B. that the earth is flat. In response, Tyson went on and dropped some truth bombs of his own and walked out with one of the mic drops of the year because gravity.

The feud began when B.o.B decided to spout out some nonsense on Twitter that the world was flat saying that because he could only see a flat horizon, it must be true. He also posted pictures of the planet looking flat and some diagrams of bogus, pseudoscience.

Tyson then got involved refuting his backwards views on Twitter and this started the feud. As all feuds involving rappers should do, it spilled over to music and B.o.B. launched the first volley, recording the diss and inexplicably anti-Semitic track "Flatline " aimed at the scientist. Then Tyson got his nephew to record a diss track over Drake's Grammy-nominated diss track "Back To Back" right back at B.o.B. filled with science and bars.

Now Tyson is taking this to television with an appearance on The Nightly Show where he drops more truth bombs on the Atlanta rapper with plenty of encouragement from the crowd and the host. Eventually after ethering? B.o.B, he drops the mic and walks out in a blaze of glory and the power of science at his back. Your move B.o.B., but it might be time to just the L and walk away.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON SLAMS FLAT-EARTHER B.O.B Listen, B.o.B, once and for all. The Earth looks flat because: 1) Youre not far enough away at your size, and 2) Your size isnt large enough relative to Earth to notice any curvature at all. -- Neil deGrasse Tyson  Neil deGrasse Tyson responds to rapper B.o.B's claim that the Earth is flat: http://on.cc.com/1Pl1kbm Posted by The Nightly Show on Thursday, January 28, 2016

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
OVO Sound's Majid Jordan has been keeping busy as they prepare to release their self-titled album. The album, due out on February 5th, has 12 tracks on it and Majid Jordan has just dropped another track from the album. "Day and Night" is the sixth track released off the album and it's definitely a good listen.

"Day and Night" has a very smooth, low key vibe to it and it's an ode to the girl with a heart of gold. The snappy chorus features the catchy lyrics, "I love you and you love me/Day and night/Because I treat your body right."

The producing and singing duo previously released the tracks, "Every Step Every Way," "Learn From Each Other," "King City" and "Something About You," off of the upcoming album. They also released the well-known track, "My Love," featuring Drake.

According to Complex, Drake debuted "My Love" on Apple Music's Beats 1 Radio alongside Zane Lowe back in July. The track since then has become a major hit and is played nonstop on the radio stations.

Prior to releasing the six tracks off of their upcoming album, the duo released a 20 minute mix in July. The mix was mostly an instrumental but you caught some really cool vocals from the group.

The album, Majid Jordan, is already available for pre-order and the six tracks previously released are available for purchase now. The album, as previously stated has 12 tracks and only has one feature: Drake. Majid Jordan is the group's first studio album but the second project under OVO Sound. The duo dropped their EP, A Place Like This, in July of 2014. They were also featured on Drake's hit track, "Hold On, We're Going Home," in 2013.

Since then, Majid Jordan has been releasing nothing but gems and fans are beyond excited to hear what this new album has to offer.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Resources for all concerned with culture of authoritarianism in society, banalisation of communalism, (also chauvinism, parochialism and identity politics) rise of the far right in India (and with occasional information on other countries of South Asia and beyond)
We have independently selected these offers and products because we love them and we think you might like them at these prices. E! has affiliate relationships, so we may earn a commission if you buy something through our links. Items are
DO YOU have a Boulevard Aristide-Briand near you? Or do you send your child to school in a Jules-Ferry or a lycee Emile Combes? If so, you are already familiar with key names in the construction of the French Republic.

Between them, these three politicians were responsible for free state schooling, obligatory education for girls and the rock of state neutrality towards religion on which la Republique is built: the principle of laicite.

The term is very much in the news, with a new laicite charter being introduced into schools this autumn alongside classes in morale laique. Presenting the charter, Minister for Education Vincent Peillon explained: Everyone is free to have his own opinions but no one has the right to contest teaching content or miss a class in the name of religious precepts.

Public debate over the Muslim community in France pops up in the news regularly and is nearly always related in one way or another to perceived challenges to this element of the Constitution. Peillons remarks refer also to repeated evangelist pressure to alter class content, in particular regarding the theory of evolution. A recent example was the proposal to swap two Christian holidays with Jewish and Muslim ones: confusing whether France was secular or multi-religious.

Left and Right politicians often unite to initiate laws to protect laicite. Once the source of conflict with the Catholic Right over private education funding, the principle, an important element in the integration process, regularly generates ill feeling these days among extremist sectors of the Muslim community. That is why, a century after the original 1905 law, several new laws have been passed to protect it.

First, a few explanations. Laicite does not translate well. Secularity is close but confusing. Laicite is not easy to define either. It has evolved over two centuries and is evolving still. The concept was born of the Revolution, which guaranteed freedom of conscience to all and first separated State and Church.

Napoleon backtracked, signing a concordat with the Vatican in 1801 that was to poison Church-State relations during the 19th century and put laicite on the back burner for much of it. (For historical reasons, this concordat still applies in Alsace and Moselle.)

Having been suppressed by the Vichy regime (along with liberte, egalite, fraternite  without which laicite could not function), the principle was cast in the constitution of the Fourth Republic in 1946  the State is indivisible, laic, democratic and social  and remains firmly in that of todays Fifth.

To understand the concept is to go a long way towards understanding the French. Maybe it could be defined as their permanent search for a delicate balance between sharing what they all hold in common, the Republic, and catering for diversity.

It is the principle that protects both personal and collective liberty and, as such, is the responsibility of both State and citizen. The indivisibility of the State is the States refusal to recognise any religious or ethnic community. France is one. There are two major dates in the history of laicite: 1881 and 1905. In 1881-82, Minister of Education Jules Ferry decreed school to be publique, gratuite et laique  state-run, free and non-clerical.

Teaching in French to a national programme provided children, whatever their linguistic background or beliefs, with the theoretical possibility of equal opportunity.

It created a framework in which adults could bring no pressure to bear on pupils to adhere to any philosophy, religion or political idea. That remains the basis of the French educational system today.

The 1905 law, engineered by Emile Combes and Aristide Briand, enforced the neutrality of the State and State institutions through the separation of the Churches and the State. Since that date, the State recognises no religion and therefore cannot directly fund any either.

If the same law grants the individual total liberty and privacy regarding beliefs, there is one condition: they must not disturb public order.

Given the repeated trauma that religion has caused in Frances recent history  from the Wars of Religion to the expulsion of the Huguenots and the Dreyfus affair  this means no proselytising and nothing that could be remotely interpreted as such.

It also explains why, in France, religious belief is far more than a private matter. Things spiritual belong to the realm of intimacy. It is extremely unusual to see anyone wearing any conspicuous religious symbol in public. To do so is perceived as a deliberate act, a message to others.

It is unthinkable to ask someone what their religion is and most people will be frankly embarrassed by anyone saying what theirs is. When Nicolas Sarkozy publicly announced he had appointed Frances first Muslim prefect, he sent shockwaves throughout the land.

Knowing this helps in understanding intense French reaction to young girls wearing veils. It is seen not only as an unacceptable way of bringing religion into the public sphere, but also a form of peer pressure on other girls to do the same. Which takes us back to Jules Ferry and neutrality in the classroom.

This insistence on the privacy of beliefs was of course also reinforced after World War II by the fate of Frances Jews under the Vichy regime, and the obligation to publicly show their religion by wearing the yellow star. As a result of the trauma of State responsibility in their deportation and extermination, no statistics may be made regarding peoples religious beliefs, ethnic origin or colour.

All citizens are not only equal, but remain neutral in the eyes of the State.

The mosque debate

The 1905 law was finally well accepted by both Catholic and Protestant churches in France, who benefited financially when the State handed existing buildings and their costly maintenance over to local authorities. But the State cannot fund new religious buildings.

Hence the mosque-building debate and recent legislation allowing local authorities to contribute. For with generous donations from Saudi Arabia and Muslim foundations abroad pouring in, the inherent risk of encouraging fundamentalist movements to develop in France is obvious.

Under the Nicolas Sarkozy government, the training of imams in France to Republican principles was considered.

But the State cannot finance religious education either. The impasse has been paradoxically circumvented by the Catholic University offering courses, and Algerian imams due to work in France being trained in French and laicite at the government-funded Institut Francais in Algiers.

Conspicuous symbols and full-face veils

After a number of potentially inflammatory cases in which some schools were confronted with Muslim girls wearing Islamic headscarves, legislation was passed in 2004 banning the wearing of any conspicuous religious symbol or sign in state schools. Never specifically aimed at the Muslim community (kippas, large crosses and Sikh turbans fall under the same category), the new law, despite fears it would be perceived as discriminatory and arouse further reaction, had the almost immediate effect of calming the situation, though some veiled Muslim girls and turbaned Sikhs found their way to private schools.

But this legislated solely for public schools, not privately run establishments. In March of this year, Fatima Afif, an employee dismissed in 2008 from the privately run Baby Loup creche in the Yvelines for refusing to remove her headscarf, won on appeal for wrongful dismissal on the grounds of religious discrimination.

New legislation is now under consideration to cover pre-school structures and religious symbols in the workplace, none of which are currently covered by law.

When, in late July, a police officer in the town of Trappes stopped a fully veiled young women for an ID check in the middle of Ramadan, he did not know he was unleashing days of rioting. But Cassandra, 22, was not infringing any law on laicite. This time it was the one against dissimulating the face in the public sphere, put into effect by the Sarkozy government in 2011.

Introduced ostensibly as anti-terrorism legislation, many felt its real purpose was more anti-veil. In fact, the number of women in France wearing the niqab is extremely small, and the number of women fined likewise.

Laicite with an adjective

The latest solution of Frances politicians to calm the debate has been to add adjectives. Sarkozy invented laicite positive, in which the government took into account the existence of religious groups in France.

He created a representative Muslim council, through which to address the Muslim community in France. Representative of only a portion of Frances Muslims, many of whom are non-practising, it has created more problems than it has solved.

The Hollande government has coined laicite apaisee, a low-profile approach in which negotiation would replace legislation as the best way of winning over those who regard the principle with suspicion.

True laicistes believe the principle cannot survive any moderating tags. It must exist alone.

Universities oppose campus headscarf ban proposal

In early August, Le Monde published a report signed by members of the Haut Comite de lIntegration (HCI), a body no longer briefed to deal with laicite since the creation of a separate mission last April. It called for a Muslim headscarf ban in universities.

Government replies were swift but hardly in unison. Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls stated evasively that the subject needed to be considered, while Genevieve Fioraso, Minister for Higher Education, warned that we should avoid problems where there are none.

For Gerard Blanchard, president of La Rochelle University, and vice-president of the national CPU, Conference des Presidents dUniversite, laicite is not an issue on his campus or anywhere in France. We have 14% foreign students in La Rochelle, mostly from South East Asia, and we only ask women students to take off their veils in science laboratories, for safety reasons. That has never posed a problem.

The University Presidents Conference has issued a public statement against any specific university ban. For Blanchard, the over-mediatised debate that burst upon us mid-summer is without foundation. He is adamant that he has never had a complaint from a teacher. An environmentalist, he is far more concerned by pressure that could be brought on teachers to introduce non-scientific versions of the origins of the universe into the syllabus. No university teacher should ever have to submit to any pressure on the content of his teaching.

Jean-Loup Salzmann, president of the CPU, and president of Paris XIII, in the heart of Seine- Saint-Denis, one of the most multi-cultural universities in France, firmly believes in laicite, but sees no need for new laws on the campus. His main concern is elsewhere. He is angered by the incongruity of the State promoting laicite on the one hand, while financing the Catholic universities on the other.

Expressing a personal opinion, he said: The main issue for these young Muslim women, who have enough problems coping with family pressure, is to achieve independence and emancipation through their studies, whether they wear a veil or not. An anti-veil law would achieve the opposite of what we want. Many of these women would then not have access to university at all.

How the principle of laicite is applied today

NICOLAS Cadene, chairman of the Observatoire de la Laicite, a watchdog committee created last April by President Francois Hollande to report on how the principle of laicite is applied in France today, spoke to Connexion.

Can you define this difficult concept for our readers?

Laicite is a principle which allows us all to live together. It is not a ban on religion or religious practices. On the contrary, it guarantees believers and non-believers alike the freedom to express themselves, to practise or not to practise a religion as they choose, on condition that public order is not disturbed. The State adopts an attitude of total impartiality towards citizens, who are all equal in the eyes of the State.

Do the current religious bank holidays not favour one religious group?

Christian festivals have, for the majority, become traditional holidays with little religious significance. Still, the State does not want to be seen as favouring one religion over another. In 1905, there was no Muslim population. But I dont think this poses a real problem. Employees can use their RTT (recuperation of unpaid overtime in the form of days off) as they wish. The Stasi Commission (set up by President Jacques Chirac in 2003) went a long way towards identifying issues in the workplace. We shall build on that.

The conspicuous religious symbols ban was seen as directed only at women. Is that not a form of discrimination?

If people set out to present themselves in a way which is obviously a proselytising or a provocative attitude, that is not acceptable. It is not so much what people wear or their physical appearance, as the reason behind the choice. This is one of the subjects we shall be working on.

Islam has no clerical hierarchy. Isnt the laicite legislation trying to apply to individuals a law aimed at an institution? Doesnt the 1905 law need to be adapted?

Not at all. The principle enables us all to live together. But, of course, we must avoid situations in which one group feels stigmatised by the law. That is one of our major subjects of reflexion. But there is no question of adapting the principle to new circumstances. It is one of bringing people to understand that laicite is not a ban on religious practice but a system of personal freedom and helping them to adapt to the principle.

There has been talk in the press over banning the Islamic headscarf at university. [The full-face veil is already banned anywhere in public].

The State has a duty to protect minors from any form of ideological persuasion, hence the headscarf ban in schools. University is a world of adults. But the Republic has a duty to protect its citizens against the dangers of extremism. Some people attribute to laicite powers it simply does not have. There is an urgent need for strong political action, at state and local level, in order to resolve the many problems the threat of extremism has brought to certain sectors of society.

The Observatoire has published its first report, a history and background to the concept. What else has it achieved?

We helped draw up two important documents: the laicite charter and the syllabus for non-religious morality for schools. Both take effect this year. In addition, our report has pinpointed situations needing close attention in public administrations and local authorities (non-Metropolitan France included), as well as in the private sector.

How do you see your work developing?

We need a better definition of laicite that reiterates the States position of neutrality and is more clearly understood by all, in France and at an international level. We are drawing up guidelines for the application of laicite and religious practice in the workplace, and in the wake of the Baby Loup issue [see main article], for pre-school structures. We must show people how to react to situations. Overreaction is one of the major problems we face, when so much could be achieved by negotiation and taking things calmly.
Sarkodie should have been bigger than ...
The African Network for Environmental Sustainability (ANFES) aims to ensure that environmental sustainability research agenda and commercial exploitation of local communities natural resources benefit local communities by responding to their needs and aspirations and by improving their livelihoods opportunities.
The Florida Senate passed a bill Thursday to expand the state's "stand your ground" law to place more burden on prosecutors to prove self-defense wasn't a factor when charging someone with assaulting or killing another person.

The Senate voted 24-12 for the bill on Thursday. If it becomes law, the prosecution would have to prove at a pretrial hearing that a defendant invoking stand your ground wasn't acting in self-defense. Right now the burden of proof is on the defendant.

The Senate also unanimously passed two gun bills. One would outlaw firing a gun in densely populated areas. The other would give judges flexibility in sentencing people for aggravated assault while possessing a gun rather than being forced to issue at least a 10-year sentence.

The House still has to take up the bill.

FL House to take up open carry

A bill allowing licensed gun owners in Florida to openly carry in public is heading to the House floor.

The Judiciary Committee approved Rep. Matt Gaetz's bill Thursday after nearly two hours of debate. The Fort Walton Beach Republican added an amendment that loaded or unloaded guns openly carried have to be holstered.

Rep. Dave Kerner proposed an amendment that would have not allowed open carry and only protect people with concealed weapons permits who display their guns accidentally, but it was voted down. The Florida Sheriff's Association supported Kerner's amendment.

The National Rifle Association and Florida Police Chiefs Association supported Gaetz's amendment and the bill.

Florida is currently one of five states that don't allow people to openly carry guns in some form. The others are South Carolina, New York, Illinois and California.

So far, however, the Florida Senate has declined to vote on the measure.

Death penalty a hot topic

Florida legislators grappling with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision are promising to keep the death penalty in the state.

A top Senate Republican vowed Wednesday that legislators would pass a bill in the next few weeks to comply with a ruling from the nation's highest court. The court earlier this month found that Florida's death penalty procedure is flawed because it allows judges, not juries, to decide death sentences.

Sen. Greg Evers said one sure change is that legislators will change the number of jurors who must agree to recommend the death penalty.

Currently Florida only requires a simple majority of jurors to recommend the death penalty to the judge. Evers said legislators may require a supermajority or a unanimous verdict.

Judges and prosecutors are delaying death penalty cases in the state due to the uncertain legal situation.

School districts may get to use alternative tests

Florida's public schools may get to use alternative tests such as the SAT and ACT for their yearly tests.

A Senate panel voted Tuesday for a bill that would give school districts the option of switching from the Florida Standards Assessment to other standardized tests.

The FSA was first administered last spring and replaced the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. It's based on a new set of school standards that are linked to the national standards called Common Core that some parents oppose.

Sen. Don Gaetz says he sponsored the bill (SB 1360) to offer schools and parents a choice from the current test.

But Education Commissioner Pam Stewart has already questioned the proposal. Stewart has said college admission tests such as the SAT and ACT are not aligned to Florida's standards.



Bill to protect those who rescue people, pets from cars goes to Gov. Scott

A bill now on its way to the governor's desk would make rescuing pets or people by picking a car lock or smashing a car window would be legal.

The Florida Senate passed the bill with a unanimous vote Thursday.

If the governor signs it as expected, anyone would be allowed to break into a car if it's clear a someone's -- or some pet's -- life is in danger.

The good Samaritan would have to first notify law enforcement, but after that point they'd have legal immunity.

The bill's supporters say it's long overdue, especially in a state like Florida, where the heat index regularly soars into the triple digits.

Another bill in the legislature would also make it a crime to level pets locked in a car under certain conditions -- including extreme weather conditions.
On Monday, Feb. 1, the 2016 election really began with the first caucuses in Iowa.

So what is a caucus? Why is Iowa the first?



What is a caucus?

A caucus is a meeting of like-minded people, say members of a political party, to decide policy or, in this case, to select candidates. For instance, groups of lawmakers in Congress with like-minded ideas form caucuses and meet routinely to discuss what bills or lawmakers they will support.

In some states, members of a political party meet and select their candidates for political office  in this case, president.

How does it work?

The caucus rules in Iowa are set by the parties. These presidential candidates are battling for delegates to either the Republican National Convention or the Democratic National Convention. The caucuses are not winner-take-all, either.

And the Republicans do their caucuses differently from the Democrats.

Here's what's the same:

There are 1,681 voting precincts in Iowa.



At 8 p.m. EST (7 p.m. Central), party members will get together at caucus sites.



Each caucus site may have more than one precinct in it  Democrats seem to have more caucus sites than Republicans.

Voting is done at each caucus site.



From here, the details get complicated. So we've tried to break it down more easily.

Republicans Democrats

So, why is Iowa first?

Iowa's prominence in the presidential nomination process is a child of the 60s and 70s. Following the turmoil of the 1968 election, Democrats in Iowa created the modern caucus system. They moved the caucus to January because they wanted to make sure they had enough time to get every delegate a copy of the rules and platform proposals.

But as a result, Sen. George McGovern campaigned heavily in Iowa and got 20 percent of the delegates in 1972, defying experts who said McGovern had no shot. He went on to win the nomination.

Iowa Republicans liked the plan so much that both parties decided to implement the caucuses on the same date in 1976. It's been that way ever since.

The debate over whether the current primary/caucus calendar should stay the same has been going on for years. There have been whole studies on the subject.

Does it affect the course of the election cycle?

To be sure, there's no guarantee of success later on in the campaign if you win early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.

"The early state primaries (Iowa and New Hampshire) are usually better predictors of who will get the Democratic nomination than who will be nominated by the Republicans," said University of South Florida Prof. Susan MacManus. "But then again, this is not your normal election year!"

Consider the last three major elections:

2008: (Final candidates: Barack Obama, John McCain)

Iowa: Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee New Hampshire: Hillary Clinton, John McCain

2000: (Final candidates: Al Gore, George W. Bush)

Iowa: Al Gore, George W. Bush New Hampshire: Al Gore, John McCain

1992: (Final candidates: Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush)

Iowa: Tom Harkin, George H.W. Bush New Hampshire: Sen. Paul Tsongas, George H.W. Bush



"It is true that candidates who do better than expected get a boost going into the next states' primaries, and the opposite happens to those who do worse," MacManus said. "In a way, these early state primaries are all about exceeding expectations -- beating the polls."
Six members of a Virginia family that friends and neighbors called religious and hard-working were killed in an apparent murder-suicide after a failed negotiation, police said Thursday.

Chesapeake police said they believe Cameron Dooley, 26, killed his parents, brother, sister and another relative before killing himself after an hours-long negotiation with officers.

The other dead were identified as Steven Todd Dooley, 50; Lori Dooley, 54; Landon Dooley, 22; and Brooke Dooley, 17. The name of the sixth family member, a woman, was not immediately released.

Steven Todd Dooley, who went by his middle name, retired Nov. 1 after 25 years as a Chesapeake Police Department officer, police spokeswoman Kelly O'Sullivan said. Several neighbors said Todd Dooley's father, the Rev. Allen Dooley, led the nearby Temple Baptist Church before dying in 2010 and leaving behind a large family that was widely viewed as the cornerstone of the neighborhood.

"They were just really good Christian people," neighbor Desiree Darst said in a telephone interview. "I knew them my whole life. We're all in shock."

Police said in a news release that officers responded to a call to check on a person and found Landon Dooley dead inside a house Wednesday afternoon. Their investigation led them to another home a couple of blocks away, where they found an armed man barricaded inside. After negotiating for several hours, police said officers entered the home and found the other five people dead, including the man they had been negotiating with.

The bodies were taken to the medical examiner's office for autopsies, police said. A spokesman for the medical examiner's office did not immediately return a telephone message, but O'Sullivan said all of the victims had been shot with a handgun.

O'Sullivan said Todd Dooley was "very well respected" in the police department. "He was just very easygoing  a nice guy," she said.

He was active with the police department's dive team and marine patrol, which led him to an after-retirement job as a service technician at Lynnhaven Dive Center in Virginia Beach.

"Todd was a good man and a hard worker  a family man and a very religious man," said Blake Hughes, the dive shop's service manager. "It's sort of hard to wrap our brains around what happened."

Hughes said his wife is a nurse, so Dooley talked to him about daughter Brooke's participation in the nursing education program at Deep Creek High School. Dooley never mentioned any problems with any of his children, Hughes said.

Neighbors also said they never had any hint of trouble in the Dooley family.

"The family had a wonderful reputation," said Judith Styron, who has lived in the neighborhood for 21 years.

Timothy Casteen, a retired teacher who lives two doors down from Todd and Lori Dooley's home, said the late Rev. Allen Dooley established a strong family presence in the neighborhood that was carried on by his surviving family members.

"They were people we all looked up to," he said.

Darst said she had many conversations with Cameron Dooley, who helped take care of his grandmother after his grandfather died.

"He was a very nice boy," she said. "I don't understand."
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LUBBOCK - The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, along with its counterparts in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas, will host the High Plains Dairy Conference set for March 1-2 at the Overton Hotel and Conference Center in Lubbock.

The conference center is located at 2322 Mac Davis Lane.

Registration will start bright and early both days at 6:30 a.m. with the first days program ending at 5 p.m. and the March 2 activities culminating at noon, said Dr. Ellen Jordan, AgriLife Extension dairy specialist at Dallas who is chair of the event.

We expect this to be a major regional event with a strong slate of nationally known experts who will be speaking on a number of timely subjects crucial to todays High Plains dairy industry, she said.

Topics and speakers over the course of the two days will include:

- Making genetic progress on low heritability traits, Dr. David Erf, dairy technical services-geneticist, Zoetis, Oakdale, Minnesota.

- Impact and economic evaluation of negative energy balance in transition dairy cattle, Dr. Jessica McArt, assistant professor, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

- Tips for optimizing fertility in dairy cattle, Dr. Todd Bilby, dairy technical services manager, Merck Animal Health, North Richland Hills.

- Whats all the fuss about technology in the dairy world?, Dr. Nancy Charlton, dairy management adviser, Automatic Milking Systems, DeLaval Inc., Bannockburn, Illinois.

- Consequences and costs associated with metritis and mastitis, Dr. Mike Overton, senior consultant in dairy analytics, Elanco Knowledge Solutions, Athens, Georgia.

- Strategies to reduce heat stress in lactating dairy cows, Dr. Robert Collier, professor, University of Arizona, Tucson.

- Bridging the gap between the beef and dairy industries - A packer perspective, Dr. Lily Edwards-Callaway, technical services, JBS USA, Greeley, Colorado.

- How to avoid and survive undercover video investigations, Tiffany Dowell Lashmet, AgriLife Extension agricultural law specialist, Amarillo.

- Worker safety management on dairy farms: Current issues, challenges and solutions, Dr. Dave Douphrate, assistant professor, University of Texas-San Antonio.

- Managing the water you have, Dr. Dana Porter, AgriLife Extension agricultural engineering water management specialist, Lubbock.

- After El Nino, now what? Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, state climatologist, Texas A&M University, College Station.

- World dairy outlook, Mary Ledman, dairy economist, Daily Dairy Report Inc., Libertyville, Illinois.

Also included are two panel discussions, When it happens - Do you have a business continuity plan? and Managing dry lot dairies during extreme weather events.

Registration is $225 for the first registrant and $175 for each additional participant from the same dairy. Registration must be postmarked by Feb. 8. Late registrations will increase to $250 with no discount.

Online registration and other conference information is available at http://www.highplainsdairy.org/ . For more information, call 785-532-7788 or contact Jordan at 972-952-9212, e-jordan2@tamu.edu.
AMARILLO - With 2016 shaping up to be a tough marketing year, producers should attend Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Services Developing This Years Marketing Plan for Feed Grains workshop Feb. 10-11 in Amarillo, according to an AgriLife Extension economist.

At least adequate-to-surplus supplies of all crops in the U.S. and world markets, stagnant ethanol demand, questionable feed demand and a strong dollar are just some of the factors that could make profitable marketing of the 2016 feed-grains crop difficult, said Dr. Steve Amosson, AgriLife Extension economist in Amarillo.

Feed-grain producers need a sharp pencil to get the most production for the least cost, and then they need to do a good job of marketing their crop to have a successful year, Amosson said.

The feed grains workshop, co-sponsored by the Plains Land Bank and Capital Farm Credit, will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center, 6500 W. Amarillo Blvd. The registration fee is $125, which covers the cost associated with instruction, breaks, meals and materials, Amosson said.

The course is limited to 50 participants. To register and pay for this course, go to: https://agriliferegister.tamu.edu/Grain or call 979-845-2604. While this is the preferred method of registration and payment, Amosson said payments will be accepted at the door. However, all registrations must be completed by Feb. 5, either online or by phone. For the registration brochure or more information, contact Kim Garcia at 806-677-5626 orkim.garcia@ag.tamu.edu.

Amosson and Dr. Mark Welch, AgriLife Extension grain marketing specialist in College Station, will be the primary instructors during the workshop, which will dissect the feed-grain market and analyze each of its components.

Segments will cover cost of production, break-evens, crop insurance decisions, seasonal price patterns, anticipated weather, as well as supply, demand and technical factors that will influence the feed grains market for the upcoming year, Amosson said. Additionally, an industry panel will provide their insights.

Based on all the information, well then look at and evaluate marketing strategies that can help manage risk and potentially increase profitability for this years crop, he said. Our objective is simple - to arm participants with the knowledge to make informed marketing decisions. The ultimate goal of this workshop is for the producer to be able to develop a successful marketing plan for the 2016 crop.

Guest speakers for the feed grains workshop will include a panel of area lenders, brokers and grain merchandisers, who will address key issues facing local producers in the upcoming marketing year. In addition, the National Weather Service in Amarillo will provide the weather forecast for the upcoming growing season.
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My mother thought I was nuts, Jerry Seigler said.

Seiglers mom had been a schoolteacher and wanted her daughter to go to college. But influenced by Daphne Davenport Hollingsforth, a Braniff stewardess who spoke at a Plainview High School career day, Seigler had flying on her mind.

She tried the conventional route for awhile, but she knew she wasnt meant to be a teacher and cut more classes at Texas Tech than she, perhaps, should have. Her dad finally told her to go get a job and find out what it was like to earn a paycheck.

It was the chance shed been waiting for. In spite of the fact that she was not tall enough (just a little under the requisite 52) and not old enough (not quite 21, she fudged her age), Seigler was, nevertheless, accepted in a training program for Trans Texas Air Lines stewardesses in 1952.

Now 80 years old, Seigler says the job was everything she expected it to be.

I loved to fly, enjoyed the people - loved everything about it, she said.

Trans Texas was a feeder airline, flying DC-3s, which Seigler describes as the workhorses of World War II, from smaller towns into the Houston airport. They collected passengers, mostly businessmen, from Galveston, San Antonio, Victoria, Harlingen, McAllen and Brownsville.

Flights were very short, so most of the time the pilot flew under 10,000 feet.

We didnt gain a lot of altitude, Seigler said. During the hot months, it was rough a lot of the time. There were people that got airsick.

One particular flight, she remembers, was populated by young soldiers traveling home on leave from boot camp in San Antonio.

There were 21 boys on that flight, she said, and every one of those ol boys got sick.

In those days, instead of air sickness bags, the plane carried ice cream cartons under the seats. Seigler was the only stewardess, and she did her job, collecting the buckets and stacking them near the door, which worked on a hydraulic lift.

When a ground crew member opened the door and saw all those ice cream buckets, He tried to close the door, Seigler said, laughing heartily at the memory.

When Seigler first started working for Trans Texas, the stewardesses wore a uniform consisting of a bolero jacket, pressed and starched white blouse, skirt, cowboy hat and boots. Though the navy-blue leather boots were sharp-looking, they grew uncomfortable during a long day, and the airline soon switched to more comfortable pumps and a traditional stewardess hat.

Seigal, however, hated her hat and ditched it whenever she could.

I wore more hair poofed, she explained, and the hat mashed my hair.

Once a Massachusetts science teacher wrote to the Harlingen Chamber of Commerce and requested a horned toad for a unit on reptiles. The airline saw a publicity opportunity, and the horned toad rode in cargo, unknown to Seigler, who was asked to hand it off to an American Air Line stewardess. The picture of slender, blonde Seigler handing a horned toad to a somewhat repulsed American stewardess was a good one and went front page in a San Antonio newspaper.

But it caused Seigler a lot of worry.

I was out of uniform, she explained. I wasnt wearing my hat, and I was scared to death the chief stewardess would see it.

Larger airlines had advantages over smaller airlines including better pay, more comfortable flights above 10,000 feet and more opportunity to travel. But Seigler enjoyed the smaller airline.

We were like family, more close-knit, she said. The crew members consisting of the pilot and co-pilot, were polite, and the passengers, mostly businessmen, were seldom any trouble. Coffee and lemonade were the only drinks served, and there were no meals to bother with.

The pay was very good for what we did, Seigler said.

Seigler lived in a boardinghouse in Beaumont at first, sharing a bathroom with a truck driver in the room across from hers. Fortunately, she said, he was seldom home during the day. She had no car, so the crew members picked her up on her way to work.

Later she was transferred to Houston, where she shared an apartment with three other stewardesses. One of them had a car and was generous in letting her roommates use it, even leaving the keys in it for their convenience.

Seigler made good friends during her two years as a stewardess. One passenger, a buyer from San Angelo, would go to market and pick out clothes specifically for Seigler, in the days when petite sizes were just coming into being. Before that, Seigler said, her clothes had to be handmade.

Another friend was Gay Vollmert of Colorado, Seiglers training stewardess. When Seigler got sick during some turbulence on her first training flight, she feared she wouldnt be able to realize her dream of being a stewardess. Vollmert advised her not to sit still, that it was better to stand and get her sea legs, and that she would be all right after she rode out that first flight.

She was so sweet to me, Seigler recalls. I had no trouble after that.

The two women kept up with each other through the years, sending Christmas cards and visiting each other in their homes.

In those days, stewardesses were not allowed to marry, which was one of the biggest factors in stewardess turnover. Following the pattern, Seigler married a career military man after two years as a stewardess. Because of his job, she lived all over the United States.

After the couple divorced, Seigler married Dr. Gale Seigler, a family physician in Plainview. They were married 38 years, until his death four years ago this month.

Seigler believes that some of the glamour has gone out of being a stewardess, or flight attendant as they are called now.

Nowadays, everybody has flown, she said. Some of the romance and comfort is gone,

On a trip to Europe, Seigler said, she felt as though they were packed in there like sardines.

However, she adds, They got us there and back safe.

To comment:

gwilliams@hearstnp.com

806.296.1362
Love is in the air! How do I know? Well, lots of businesses are telling us. They are basically telling us that we have a special love in our life, and we need to show that person how much we love them with a Valentines Day gift. Their campaign started right after Christmas with advertisements on television, on the Internet, in newspapers and magazines, and yes, even in emails. Before some stores had cleared their shelves of Christmas stuff, they started setting up large displays promoting their Valentine wares. If their advertising campaign is successful, Americans will spend more than $14 billion again this year on Valentine gifts.

It seems that all of the advertisements have a common message: Your special someone will be disappointed if you dont buy them a gift, and with so much out there to choose from -- candy, flowers, stuffed animals, jewelry, trips to day spas, and trips to far-away romantic islands -- you are sure to find the perfect gift.

Please dont make the mistake of just giving a Valentine card to your sweetheart this year. A card needs to accompany a gift. Thats a new unwritten rule of etiquette, but everybody knows about it; trust me!

Lots of thought should go into selecting the gift. A perfect gift for some people could be a nightmare for others. Case in point  the other day I walked into a store and there hanging almost to the ceiling was a Valentine display of gigantic stuffed bears. I thought about how the guy who buys one of those bears for his girlfriend will get it home, and then where will the girlfriend put the bear when she gets it to her house or dorm room. Im sure the girl would be thrilled that her boyfriend gave her such a huge, expensive gift, but her mother would probably be ready to kill him. Some gifts err on the side of ridiculous, and I think that giant stuffed bear is one of them!

Times have changed! Remember when Valentines Day was just for kids? At least thats what I thought when I was in grade school. I know my parents never exchanged Valentine cards or gifts, and the only Valentine cards I ever received were from classmates. So, I saw Valentines Day as a school event.

A couple of weeks before Feb. 14, the teacher would tell us to bring a shoebox to class, and then we would spend an entire class period covering the box with paper, cutting out red and pink valentines, gluing them to the box, and carefully printing our name on it. The teacher would cut a slit in the box top and we were ready to proudly display our Valentine boxes on a table near the teachers desk; and then wait for the designated day when we could start putting Valentine cards in our classmates boxes.

Finally on Valentines Day, or the school day closest to it, we would have a party hosted by a couple of room-mothers. Each year the room-mothers were usually the same ones, and definitely the refreshments were always the same  red punch and heart-shaped cookies.

The refreshments were good, but the best part of the party was opening our Valentine boxes and reading the cards. With great anticipation, I would pull each card out of its envelope, hoping to find just one with the words I love you, and signed by the boy that I was secretly in love with. It never happened! Oh, how those disappointments of childhood emotionally scarred me for life!

I hope each of you get a special gift on Valentines Day so you will know you are loved, and so the merchants can empty their shelves and start getting ready for the next holiday  St. Patricks Day. Im not expecting a gift on Valentines Day, but if someone is inclined to surprise me, a vacation to Hershey, Pennsylvania, would be nice, or even a couple of Hershey Candy Bars with almonds.

Happy Valentines Day!

(Alice Sawayer is a Licensed Professional Counselor with Central Plains Centers Integrated Healthcare. She provides counseling at Covenant Health Care Center in Plainview. Contact her at alicesawayer@att.net.)
SAN ANTONIO  The JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa held onto the top spot among Bexar County hotels for the tenth month in a row in November, raking in $3.64 million in room rentals, according to data from the Texas comptroller's office.

The resort was in eighth place statewide, down from seventh place in October. The statewide first-place finisher was the Gaylord Texan Grapevine Resort outside Dallas, which collected $7.7 million, followed by the JW Marriott Austin Downtown, with $5.83 million, and the Hilton Americas Houston, with $4.73 million.
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The Houston Health Department has confirmed the region's second case of traveler-acquired Zika virus.

According to health department spokeswoman Kathy Barton, the second case involved a woman returning from Central America. The woman was not pregnant.

READ MORE: Zika virus, already in Houston, poses global health threat

The infection occurred around the same time as a case identified by Harris County Health Department officials in January in a woman returning from El Salvador.

Most people infected with the Zika virus will have no recognizable symptoms, although complications may arise in a small percentage of cases. The virus, which has been spreading rapidly through Central and South America, has been linked with birth defects and neurological problems, although it's not certain the virus causes these conditions.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended pregnant women avoid travel to affected areas. The Houston Health Department will hold a meeting with health providers Friday to talk about Zika virus and steps that can be taken locally to minimize its impact.

The New York times has published a useful q-and-a on Zika virus.
A Salvadoran mother caught in immigration raids earlier this month and being held at a detention center south of San Antonio has had seven seizures since her arrest, activists said.

In an interview earlier this week, after her sixth seizure, Susana Arevalo said the stress of being held at the detention center in Dilley is increasing her seizures. For their part, immigration officials said doctors in the detention center are working to get Arevalos seizures under control.
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SAN ANTONIO A man died Wednesday night after being shot in the head during an apparent robbery of a gaming room in south Bexar County.

Jimmy Nunez, 36, was found dead at about 11 p.m. when Bexar County Sheriffs deputies arrived to the 2700 block of Oak Island Drive.

Witnesses told authorities that two masked men entered the room of a mobile home that had been converted into an eight-liner game room.

Exactly what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting was unclear, but at least one of the suspects opened fire on a man inside, killing him.

The man who was killed was initially believed to have been the manager of the operation, but investigators were later able to rule that out as a possibility. Now, authorities are working to determine exactly what his role at the establishment was.

Numerous witnesses were inside at the time of the incident, but it appears that none of them received any serious injuries.

BCSO conducted a raid on the same block in October of 2015 that resulted in the seizure of 30 8-liners and more than $100,000 worth of methamphetamine.

RELATED: Underground casino raid nets 30 8-liners, $100,000 in meth in south of San Antonio

During that raid, deputies also recovered about $1,500 in cash and $15,000 in stolen property.

"The living room area was set up like a casino that you would see in Las Vegas," BCSO spokesman James Keith said at the time. "There were high-tech surveillance cameras set up around the property."

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
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A South Texas police chief vying for the Republican nomination for sheriff got slapped with a five-year probation sentence for tampering with county records on Thursday.

John Chambers, chief of the Indian Lake Police Department, was convicted on 14 felony counts of tampering with governmental records on Jan. 8, KGBT reported.

An indictment unsealed in February accused Chambers of knowingly making a false entry in a governmental record regarding firearms qualifications for some of his officers.

RELATED: Police: Texas man killed mother with post driver, showed up to relative's house 'covered in blood'

State District Judge Janet Leal sentenced Chambers on Thursday.

Chambers said he plans to continue running for the Republican nomination for sheriff while he appeals the verdict.

"In the meantime, there is no reason why I cannot continue to run for and serve as sheriff because no conviction is final until the appellant process is complete. I am confident I will be vindicated," Chambers said.

RELATED: Key member of Mexico's Gulf Cartel arrested near Texas border

Chambers alleged that the charges against him were fabricated by affiliates with his opponent in the Republican race for Cameron County Sheriff.

"This is a fabrication by [Cameron County District Attorney] Luis Saenz, my opponent in the Republican primary, who is Luis Saenz's investigator; and one of my officers who I was terminating because I walked in and caught him having sexual relations with someone other than his wife in the police department," Chambers told the news station.

Chambers also told The Brownsville Herald that he believes Saenz actively emphasized the case because Chambers spoke to federal authorities about Saenz.

The district attorney's office and Texas Commission on Law Enforcement jointly conducted the investigation into Chambers with the Texas Rangers.

RELATED: 21 alleged members of drug cartel-affiliated Barrio Azteca gang arrested in West Texas

The police chief was previously indicted on felony charges in August 2014 after he allegedly traveled outside of his jurisdiction to retrieve a truck for his wife's security company when a fired employee failed to return it.

Chambers told KGBT that he was in plain clothes while driving his personal vehicle and made no reference to his position while retrieving the truck.

" I would say it's definitely political," Chambers said of the August indictment. "I look forward to the facts of the case coming out in the public light."

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
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Breathe easy, Texans, you can now buy illegal drugs without  drum roll, please  paying state taxes on them.

They're still illegal, though.

RELATED: Texas is prepping to license people to grow, sell marijuana. Here are 10 things you need to know

The Texas Tribune reported Friday that state lawmakers this past session nixed a 26-year-old law that taxed the sale of illegal drugs during a streamlining of the state's tax code.

State law had set the taxation rates at:

$3.50 per each gram of marijuana

$200 for each gram of any other controlled substance

$2,000 on each 50 dosage units

RELATED: 21 alleged members of drug cartel-affiliated Barrio Azteca gang arrested in West Texas

The tax code quirk, as explained by the Tribune's Ross Ramsey, was designed as another way to punish drug dealers.

Dealers could be charged with tax evasion a la Al Capone if they didn't purchase the stamps and slap them on whatever they used to sell drugs in addition to the other drug charges.

As reported by the Tribune, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 that law enforcement would have to choose between charging alleged dealers for tax evasion or drug charges after a man billed for $49,070 in taxes argued that the law constituted double jeopardy.

RELATED: Key member of Mexico's Gulf Cartel arrested near Texas border

State lawmakers have not legalized marijuana or other currently illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin.

However, the Texas Department of Public Safety will soon license dispensaries to sell low-THC cannabis products such as CBD oil for people diagnosed with intractable epilepsy, who suffer from seizures not controlled by traditional drugs.

That's after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in 2015 allowing the licensing process.

RELATED: Police: Central Texas woman stashed pills, marijuana in rectum during DWI arrest

And, a bill to fully legalize adult use of marijuana made it out of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence in May.

But, the bill never came up for a vote on the House floor.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
Alamo Colleges officials call it a reassignment, but it sure sounds like a demotion.

Craig Follins, former president of Northeast Lakeview College, is now a special project administrator. Its hard to say how long he will hold onto this new title because officials just arent talking. Its all confidential, they say. Its none of your business, even though you are paying for Follins salary.

Follins still gets to collect his $205,000 salary  which is what he made as Northeast Lakeview Colleges president  so maybe this is just a lateral reassignment. You know, the kind of reassignment that comes with stern disappointment. As Alamo Colleges Chancellor Bruce Leslie wrote to Follins in an Oct. 29 memorandum, You have again violated expectations set for you and engaged in a pattern of unacceptable behavior.

At that time, Follins contract was to end on Dec. 21, but as Express-News journalist Alia Malik reported, its now 2016 and Follins is still on campus, earning his presidents salary, only for nonpresidential work. His new role has been described as analyzing distance learning and a possible new bond issue.

Maybe if he stays on long enough, we can really hit the jackpot and pay for two presidents at Northeast Lakeview College because clearly the mess there might just merit more than one.

Why is Follins still there? Thats none of your business. What did he do that is so unacceptable? Thats also none of your business.

You see, the separation agreement between Alamo Colleges, which is public, and Follins, who is a public employee, has a privacy clause. Yes, a privacy clause.

It requires any public records request for the separation agreement be referred to the attorney general for an opinion about its release. Alamo Colleges attorney Roxella T. Cavazos has said releasing the agreement would be an invasion of Follins privacy.

You cant make this stuff up.

Alamo Colleges spokesman Mario Muniz said he feels your pain, concerned taxpayer, but the clause in the separation agreement means Alamo Colleges needs to be cautious. This is in the publics interest, he said.

The only thing I can ask is for you to be patient, he said. Its a fair question to ask, and I wish I could give you what you needed.

And later, Im sure once the AG comes back, you will probably have what you need.

So thats a wink and a nod that maybe, just maybe, the public does have a right to know what its paying for here. But it doesnt answer the question of how the privacy clause ended up in the separation agreement in the first place. Shouldnt everyone at this public institution have known better? Or even worse, maybe everyone did know better?

It also paints an awfully confusing picture. Follins was only president at Northeast Lakeview College for 20 months. Just in September, Leslie renewed Follins contract for two more years. Two months later, though, the two sides are singing Breaking up is hard to do.

Thats baffled faculty and staff.

I think we just all question why, said Celita Avila, president of the San Antonio College Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. If what Leslie wrote ... that (Follins) has violated expectations and engaged in a pattern of unacceptable behavior, then why would we choose to employ him in any capacity in the district?

This separation also comes just as Northeast Lakeview moves toward accreditation, a sensitive point Leslie acknowledged in a Nov. 2 memo to faculty staff.

While it may be unsettling to lose a key member of the team as we take the final steps to accreditation, he wrote, I want to assure you the college will have the excellent leadership required to achieve a successful accreditation outcome.

What a disconnect. Alamo Colleges wants your trust. It just doesnt want you to know whats going on.

jbrodesky@express-news.net
Posted on 01/29/2016, 12:21 pm, by mySteinbach

Keystone Agricultural Producers 32nd annual meeting concluded after the passing of 19 resolutions, including a call to the federal government for a universal producer payment security program for all commodities.

As well, delegates passed two resolutions addressing poor rural cell-phone service. Rural Manitobans, said many delegates, pay the same price for cell service as others in the province, but receiver substandard service due to a lack of towers or poor signals.

Delegates also called for Manitoba Hydro upgrades that will meet the needs of modern agriculture  at a reasonable cost. Some used the example of a farmer who couldnt use his welder to fix farm equipment while his children had the computer turned on.

Other resolutions addressed inadequate flood compensation as a result of the 2014 flood, taxes on family farm land transfers, the need for forage research to address soil salinity, and understaffing at Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development.

During the meeting, Dan Mazier was acclaimed as president. A farmer from Justice, he served his first term in the position last year and was vice-president before that. Justin Jenner, a Minnedosa farmer, and Glenn Young, a producer from Cypress River, were acclaimed as vice-presidents.
Yves here. I strongly urge you to read this post in conjunction with Michael Moores article, How Can You Help Flint?, which we also feature in Links.

By James Boyce, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and co-founder of Econ4: Economics for People, the Planet, and the Future. His most recent book is Economics, the Environment and Our Common Wealth. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

The tragic crisis in Flint, Michigan, where residents have been poisoned by lead contamination, is not just about drinking water. And its not just about Flint. Its about race and class, and the stark contradiction between the American dream of equal rights and opportunity for all and the American nightmare of metastasizing inequality of wealth and power.

The link between environmental quality and economic inequality was spelled out more than two decades ago in a memorandum signed by Lawrence Summers, then chief economist of the World Bank, excerpts of which appeared inThe Economist under the provocative title, Let them eat pollution. Starting from the premise that the costs of pollution depend on the forgone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality, Summers concluded that the economic logic of dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

A different logic is supposed to underpin U.S. environmental policies. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act mandates that water quality standards should protect the public health  period. Its aim, as former EPA administrator Douglas Costle once put it, is protection of the health of all Americans. Under the law, clean water is a right, not something to be provided only insofar as justified by the purchasing power of the community in question.

Even when cost-benefit calculations are brought to bear on environmental policy, the EPA uses a single value of a statistical life  currently around $8.7 million  for every person in the country, rather than differentiating across individuals on the basis of income or other attributes.

In practice, however, the role of costs and benefits in shaping public policies often depends on the power of those to whom they accrue. When those on the receiving end are poor, their interests  and their lives  often count for less, much as the Summers memo recommended. And when they are racial and ethnic minorities, the political process often discounts their well-being even more.

So it was that Flint  the city with the second highest poverty rate in the nation(surpassed only by Youngstown, Ohio), where more than half the population is black  wound up with lead in its water supply up to 866 times the legal limit. The levels in some residents homes were high enough for the EPA to classify the water as toxic waste.

The contamination was a result of budget-cutting measures imposed by the citys emergency manager, who was installed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder with power to override the elected city council. To save money, the citys water supply was switched to the heavily polluted Flint River in 2014. At the same time, officials stopped adding treatment chemicals to control corrosion in the systems old lead pipes. When residents complained about the discolored and foul-smelling water coming out of their taps, and researchers found evidence of lead contamination, their concerns were brushed aside by state officials.

Governor Snyder denies that environmental racism has anything to do with the plight of Flints residents. There are still some people who will tell you that the Earth is flat, too.

In a lead editorial, the New York Times accused the governor of depraved indifference toward Flints residents. But the roots of the tragedy go deeper than the failings of individual politicians or officials. What were seeing today in Flint is an outcome of depraved inequalities  inequalities are corroding the body politic nationwide along with the water pipes in Flint.

Flint wasnt always like this. When I lived there as a kid in the early 1950s, its workers earned the highest industrial wages in the nation. The American dream was alive. But in ensuing decades the city was ripped apart by macroeconomic policies that decimated Americas manufacturing industries, the failure to construct a national health system to relieve employers of the soaring costs of private insurance, and the debilitating racial and fiscal politics of metropolitan segregation.

It is only a small step from the emergence of sacrifice zones at the losing end of Americas widening economic and political chasms to the systematic violation of the right to a clean environment that we see in Flint. It is not enough to pass legislation to protect the public health of all Americans. Good laws that are not enforced are no more than good intentions. For a functioning government  even, it turns out, a functioning water system  we need a functioning democracy.

The poisoning of Flint is a symptom of this deeper inequality crisis that affects us all. And its a timely wake-up call as we embark on the 2016 election season.
Australian Accused of Planning to Pack Kangaroo With Bomb ABC

A Single Cell Shines New Light on How Cancers Develop New York Times

Amazons shares plunge as sales, profit miss Wall Street estimates Sydney Morning Herald (EM)

Japan Goes Negative

Bank of Japan Unexpectedly Cuts Interest Rate Below Zero New York Times. The effect on the currency is more important than the effect on domestic depositorsno doubt as intended.

China?

Europe sets out plans to curb corporate tax avoidance Financial Times

Syraqistan

2016

Donald Trump Wanted Vets Kicked Off Fifth Avenue The Daily Beast

Republicans mock Trump over no-show BBC

Fox News will profit from the debate showdown with Trump Yahoo (furzy)

100% of Donors to Black Americans for a Better Future SuperPAC Are White Conservative Men Who Love Ted Cruz Alternet

Susan Sarandon on Clinton: What has she done that were bragging about Daily Mail. Li: It is the Mail but she really excoriates Hillary.

State Department still hasnt sent all Clinton emails for review Politico

Sanders: Hillary Calling For More Debates a Flip-Flop: Clinton Campaign Does Not Run The World Real Clear Politics (rich)

Bernie Sanders just hit back at the Washington Post with the most perfect jab Raw Story. Sanders is a threat to too many high income readers in DC, particularly all those K Street lobbyists.

Sanders surge panics Washington establishment The Hill (furzy)

Paul Krugman Unironically Anoints Himself Arbiter of Seriousness: Only Clinton Supporters Eligible Glenn Greenwald, Intercept. Lambert linked to this in Water Cooler, and this is delicious. Krugman has violated a rule of punditry: you need to maintain the appearance of objectivity to do much (any) good for the cause you are promoting.

How will they try to crush Bernie? failed evolution
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Whole Foods Market donated more than 1 million pounds of food statewide in 2015. This year, Whole Foods is partnering with Florida Organic Growers for its first regionwide Donate Your Dime Campaign. The program consists of Whole Foods giving back 10 cents per bag to customers who re-use their own shopping bags for their purchased groceries. Customers then have the choice to accept it as a discount on their bill or donate the cash back to the store's chosen nonprofit organization or to the Whole Planet Foundation.

Events

Above Board Chamber of Florida will present "Negotiating  How to Come Out on Top" from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb. 8 at the Hilton Naples, 5111 U.S. 41 N. and Feb. 11 at the City Pier, 1300 Hendry St., Fort Myers. Reservations are required at www. aboveboardchamber.com.

The Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce will present a Networking 101 Panel Discussion at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 11 at the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, 25071 Chamber of Commerce Drive. Ticket information: www.BonitaSpringsChamber.com/Events; 239-992-2943

The Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce has scheduled its 2016 Community Business Expo 3 to 7 p.m. March 10 at The Promenade in Bonita Springs. Information: 239- 992-2943; www. BonitaSpringsChamber.com

Development

General contractor Ray Masciana is developing Page Field Center in Fort Myers. The new retail strip, expected to open in March, will house Florida's first full-service Nathan's Famous restaurant, and boasts a hangar-style architecture that pays homage to the aviation history represented by its namesake Page Field Air Park, located directly across U.S. 41. Information: 239-489-3600

To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com.
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WASHINGTON  It's hard to believe that the United States, having resisted the siren song of socialism during its entire 20th-century heyday (the only major democracy to do so), should suddenly succumb to its charms a generation after its intellectual demise. Indeed, the prospect of socialist Bernie Sanders, whatever his current momentum, winning the Democratic nomination remains far-fetched.

The Dems would be risking a November electoral disaster of historic dimensions. Yet there is no denying how far Sanders has pulled his party to the left  and how hard the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, has been racing to catch up.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are dealing with a full-scale riot. The temptation they face is trading in a century of conservatism for Trumpism.

The 2016 presidential race has turned into an epic contest between the ethno-nationalist populism of Donald Trump and traditional conservatism, though in two varieties: the scorched-earth fundamentalist version of Ted Cruz, and a reformist version represented by Marco Rubio (and several so-called establishment candidates)  and articulated most fully by non-candidate Paul Ryan and a cluster of highly productive thinkers and policy wonks dubbed "reformicons."

Trump insists that he's a conservative, but in his pronouncements and policies, conservatism seems more of a rental  a three-story penthouse rental with Central Park-view, to be sure  than an ideological home. Trump protests that Ronald Reagan, too, migrated from left to right. True, but Reagan's transformation occurred in his 40s  not, as with Trump, in his 60s.

In radically different ways, Trump and Sanders are addressing the deep anxiety stemming from the secular stagnation in wages and living standards that has squeezed the middle and working classes for a generation. Sanders locates the villainy in a billionaire class that has rigged both the economic and political system. Trump blames foreigners, most prominently those cunning Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese and Saudis who've been taking merciless advantage of us, in concert with America's own leaders who are, alternatively, stupid and incompetent or bought and corrupt.

Hence Trump's most famous policy recommendations: anti-immigrant, including the forced deportation of 11 million people; anti-trade, with a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods and a 35 percent tariff on U.S. manufacturing moved to Mexico; and anti-Muslim, most notoriously a complete ban on entry into the U.S. Temporarily only, we are assured, except that the ban applies "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on"  a standard so indeterminate as to be meaningless.

Trump has limited concern for the central tenet of American conservatism (and most especially of the tea party movement)  limited government. The most telling example is his wholehearted support for "eminent domain," i.e., the forcible appropriation by government of private property. Trump called it "wonderful."

Trump has not yet called Vladimir Putin wonderful but he has taken a shine to the swaggering mini-czar who seems to run his trains on time. When informed that Putin kills opponents and journalists, Trump's initial reaction was, "Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing also," the kind of moronic what-about-the-Crusades moral equivalence that conservatives have railed against for decades. Although, to be fair, after some prompting, Trump did come out against the killing of journalists.

Cruz is often lumped with Trump in the "anti-establishment" camp. That suited Cruz tactically for a while, but it's fairly meaningless, given that "establishment" can mean anything these days. And given the huge gulf between the political philosophies of the two men. Cruz is a genuine conservative  austere, indeed radical, so much so that he considers mainstream congressional conservatives apostates. And finds Trump not conservative at all, as he is now furiously, belatedly insisting.

My personal preference is for the third ideological alternative, the reform conservatism that locates the source of our problems not in heartless billionaires or crafty foreigners, but in our superannuated, increasingly sclerotic 20th-century welfare-state structures. Their desperate need for reform has been overshadowed by the new populism, but Speaker Ryan is determined to introduce a serious reform agenda in this year's Congress  boring stuff like welfare reform, health care reform, tax reform and institutional congressional reforms such as the return to "regular order."

Paired with a president like Rubio (or Chris Christie or Carly Fiorina, to go long shot), such an agenda would give conservatism its best opportunity since Reagan to become the country's governing philosophy.

Unless the GOP takes the populist leap. In which case, a conservative restoration will be a long time coming.
Deputies will not say at which stations the devices were found, but four gas skimmers were found after a sweep of 94 stations in Lee County.

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By NBC2

A warning to drivers in Southwest Florida: Four illegal gas skimmers were found in Lee County.



Deputies will not say at which stations the devices were found, but four of these gas skimmers were found after a sweep of 94 stations in Lee County, NBC2 reports.



Since March 2015, more than 160 skimmers have been found statewide with an estimated $1,000 swiped from each victim.



Thieves use a homemade device that goes inside credit card readers. Slide your card in and you might as well hand over your wallet. The Lee County Sheriff's Office said if you're skeptical, check the card reader. If it's loose, don't use it.


Dania Maxwell/Staff In this file photo, Principal Tamie Stewart visits each classroom on the first day of school at Parkside Elementary on Monday, August 20, 2012 in Naples, Fla. Stewart was reassigned to the school from Lake Park Elementary. She hopes to raise the overall performance level of the school. Our theme for the year is mission possible, Stewart said.

SHARE Dania Maxwell/Staff In this file photo, Principal Tamie Stewart visits with student Mary Numba on the first day of school at Parkside Elementary on Monday, August 20, 2012 in Naples, Fla. Stewart was reassigned to the school from Lake Park Elementary. She hopes to raise the overall performance level of the school. "Our theme for the year is mission possible," Stewart said.

By Melhor Leonor of the Naples Daily News

When Tamie Stewart arrived at Parkside Elementary as its principal in 2012, she found an F school where most students come from low-income, non-English speaking families, and a high teacher turnover rate  7 out of every 10 teachers that year were new to the school and the profession.

State officials had been brought in to intervene.

"Parkside was a fragile school," Stewart said.

But four years later, Parkside Elementary is projected to receive its second consecutive C from the state for its academic performance; and in the last two year, no teachers at the school have transferred out.

The strides made by Parkside Elementary are in part attributed to Stewart, who was named a finalist for Florida's Principal of the Year award by the state's Department of Education.

"Her colleagues praised her for working closely with her faculty to ensure they have the skills and training necessary to provide rigorous, challenging and well-planned lessons to their students," state officials wrote in announcing Stewart's recognition.

From a professional development conference Friday, Stewart said that she particularly proud of the improvements in the overall atmosphere of the school  a key to its improvement.

"We work and have worked really hard on building a positive school culture where teachers want to stay and work. That's driven our ability to better serve our students," said Stewart, a 30-year educator.

Before arriving at Parkside Elementary, Stewart's experience as a principal was limited to Lake Park Elementary, a school not facing many of the challenges that are staples at Parkside. Parkside is also the first Title I school  a school with a high percentage of low-income students  where Stewart has served as an administrator.

During her time at Parkside, Stewart said she has worked to bring experiences for her students that go beyond the remediation and intervention many of them need. That effort has translated into an after school program called STEM Academies that exposes students to entertaining, hands-on learning about science, technology, engineering and math.

"We said, let's start an after school program that isn't about intervention, but enrichment," she said. "We have written the curriculum ourselves because we wanted to meet the needs of our students. We feel that's been one of our great success stories."

The after school program, Stewart said, has boosted her student's performance in science benchmarks and has fostered more parent involvement with events like STEM Night. Many of the teachers she works with volunteer their time to keep the program running.

"What is so gratifying about this recognition is that I think it does acknowledge everyone at Parkside Elementary," Stewart said.

Florida's Principal of the Year will be named during a ceremony at the Commissioner's Summit for Principals on Feb. 8. The winner will receive a cash prize of $5,000 and $1,000 for their school.

Candidates for the awards are nominated by the superintendent of their respective school districts.
FILE PHOTO -- A boardwalk heads into cypress trees at the Kirby Storter Roadside Park in the Big Cypress National Preserve on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014, in rural Collier County. (David Albers/Staff)

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By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News

In a move that could delay or even kill an oil company's plans for seismic testing in the Big Cypress National Preserve, a skeptical U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson called Friday for the Interior Department to take a more in-depth look at the idea.

Nelson, D-Florida, put the request in a letter sent Friday to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, whose agency already has determined the plans by Texas-based Burnett Oil Co. to look for oil across 110 square miles of the preserve in eastern Collier County would do minimal harm. A final decision is pending.

"If history is any indication, approval of Burnett's request for a massive seismic survey essentially signals a green light for future drilling and fracking," Nelson wrote.

"That's why I strongly urge you to complete an Environmental Impact Statement for Burnett Oil Company's proposed seismic survey, in compliance with the National Park Service's responsibility under the National Environmental Policy Act."

An Environmental Assessment, or EA, released last year found that the tests' effects on wildlife and habitat would be "adverse but short term," but environmental groups have called the plan too risky.

Burnett President Charles Nagel III took issue Friday with Nelson's characterization of the company's plans.

"The seismic permit that Burnett Oil requested does not involve drilling or fracking," Nagel said in a written statement issued by a spokesman. "Burnett has briefed Senator Nelson's office in the past and conveyed the message that this request is for seismic exploration only. If additional clarification is needed, we will be happy to set up another meeting with the senator's office."

Drilling opponent Karen Dwyer applauded Nelson's letter, saying an EIS would give the Interior Department reviewers the evidence they need to deny the seismic testing permit.

"It's what a national preserve deserves and needs," said Dwyer, a co-founder of the Naples-based Stonecrab Alliance that picketed a public hearing in December on the seismic survey plans.

The call for an EIS also makes a play for time: A more in-depth review could delay any decision on the testing plan for years, Nelson said in a statement issued Friday.

In his letter, Nelson said last year's review does not look closely enough at whether endangered species, such as the Florida panther, could escape the tests and fails to consider burrowing animals, such as the gopher tortoise.

Nelson also recommended that Jewell require additional testing of Burnett's survey equipment. Tests last year did not accurately reflect the actual survey locations, scope or duration, Nelson wrote.

Here's how the survey would work:

Off-road vehicles designed with tires to minimize damage would lower steel plates to the ground and vibrate them at spots laid out across 70,000 acres of the 700,000-acre preserve.

The seismic signals would bounce off subsurface geological layers and would be read by geophones at the surface to determine the likelihood of formations that might contain oil or gas.

Two groups of three buggies would work simultaneously in the preserve, covering 2.5 square miles a day, stopping at each survey point for about two minutes each. Vibrations would last less than 30 seconds at each stop.

The federal review predicts that field activities could be accomplished in one dry season, maybe less, and field crews would work around wildlife buffer areas, soft soils or dense woods.

Oil exploration, even drilling, is nothing new in the Big Cypress preserve, where oil companies have drilled 40 wells on 14 pads in Exxon's oil fields. Using a different method of seismic testing, Mobil, Shell and Exxon conducted seismic surveys in the 1970s and 1980s. The most recent seismic tests in the preserve date to 1999.
SHARE Mike Seifert, Project Superintendent for EnviroStruct, is shown as he talks in an interview during a tour Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 at Estero City Hall. The two-floor, about 10,000 square-foot project, has a March 1 target date for completion. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Joe Murrow passes the building that will house City Hall after a tour Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 in Estero, Fla. The two-floor, about 10,000 square-foot project, has a March 1 target date for completion. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Ernesto Perez sparkles drywall using stilts during a tour Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 at Estero City Hall. The two-floor, about 10,000 square-foot project, has a March 1 target date for completion. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Wood that will adorn the council member bench area is shown during a tour Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 at Estero City Hall. The two-floor, about 10,000 square-foot project, has a March 1 target date for completion. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Related Photos Under Construction: Estero City Hall

By Maryann Batlle of the Naples Daily News

Above Estero Councilor Bill Ribble's head, silver central air conditioning ducts snaked and dangled. Twisted electrical wires hung down in bunches. A floor-to-ceiling metal beam stood exposed in the middle of the room.

"This was the section that was really gutted," said Ribble on a recent morning. "They had to take out all the office structures that were in here. This was all offices."

He stood with a contracting crew in a first floor room that will host Estero's public meetings in a couple of months. The room will fit 100 people when the building remodel, expected to cost Estero up to $336,475, is complete, Ribble said.

It takes a little imagination to believe that.

Clanging and banging punctuated conversation. Construction workers carried scrap materials to a dumpster truck in the parking lot. Others put plaster on drywall, swept floors or tended to wires.

About 25 to 30 tradesmen are working seven days a week to remodel Estero's future village hall. They started in December, just before the holiday season.

"It is ambitious. It's fast pace," said Stephen McKenna, vice president of EnviroStruct, the general contracting firm in charge of the remodel. "It's a fast-track schedule."

The target date is "early March," McKenna said.

Ribble, a retired UPS executive who built his career on meeting impossible deadlines, interjected.

"How's this for 'early March'? March 1st," Ribble said. The contractors erupted with laughter. "This is the first time I heard 'early March'."

Being in the post-demolition structure, it is easy to understand how March 1st could come and go in Estero without a village hall debut.

But architect Greg Goertler can already see the finished product. He drew the sketches that are guiding every construction worker's efforts.

While giving a tour through the unpolished hallways, Goertler pointed to empty spaces: This is where filing cabinets will be. Here is a conference room. This is a janitor's closet. A water fountain will go there. This is a bathroom. This hole is a service window. Here is the village manager's office 

The hall's first floor will house the public chamber and the community development department.

Estero's village council, manager, clerk and support staff offices are on the second floor.

And the village is eager to move into those spaces, Ribble said. Its government has lacked a home since forming in early 2015.

Estero's inaugural council meeting last March took place in the high school auditorium. The village then set up a temporary base in rented offices at the fire district's Three Oaks Parkway headquarters.

While there, Estero has hired more staff.

The village council created a community development department to oversee construction projects in Estero. Those added employees had no space in the fire district building. So the village leased more offices in south Estero, a short drive away.

In the new village hall, everyone will finally be under the same roof.

"Which will save a lot of time," Ribble said.

Estero is leasing 7,927 square feet of the three-story Mediterranean building. The location is ideal, Ribble said, because it is within the village's proposed downtown.

Estero has agreed to pay $10,569 a month, a rate of $16 per square foot. The lease is renewable three times for five years. Under the terms, Estero has an option to buy the building for $4 million, Ribble said, but anything can happen.

Though extensive, the remodel is cost effective, said Joe McHarris, a member of Estero's Design Review Board. He first donated his skill set after Ribble recruited him to help find the right building for the village hall. Now McHarris is serving as an unofficial design consultant.

"We didn't spend money where we didn't need it. But we did little things here and there to make sure that it looks appropriate," McHarris said.

Pieces of the village council's donated wood dais lay in stacks on the first floor. They were shrink wrapped and coated in a layer of construction dust.

The crew will clean and assemble them like puzzle pieces. The dais will stand under a U-shaped ceiling rim, which was crafted to match the furniture's curve.

Workers will reinstall the painted doors and door frames removed during demolition. They will stain the two doors that lead to the public chamber to match the council dais, McHarris said.

Some floors will be covered with carpet tile to save money because the material is replaceable in sections, he said.

"But we've added a little bit of a pattern, and we've picked a good color," McHarris said.

The village hall remodel includes work and safety upgrades as well. Employees will use swipe cards for entry once a system is installed. The village hall will have security cameras, McHarris said.

"It is a public building, and we want safety," McHarris said. "We don't think anything would happen, but you plan for that."

The village allotted another $138,868 for "furniture, fixtures and equipment," according to a budget presented to the council earlier this month. Another $80,850 is expected to get the village through the first six months of occupancy and a few one-time expenses, according to the estimate.

His insistence that Estero will be in its village hall from the first day of the lease has earned Ribble comparisons to swoop-haired impresario  and United States presidential hopeful  Donald Trump. One of the men on the EnviroStruct team was among those who helped Trump build a luxury hotel and spa in Doral.

That man met "The Donald's" demands, Ribble said, so Estero's deadline should be no problem.

"When he told me that story, I feel very comfortable that they are going to make it," Ribble said.
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By Jessica Lipscomb of the Naples Daily News

The first week of the month was hunting time. Using a long wire with a sticky mousetrap-type adhesive at the end, investigators say a band of eight thieves would hit up drop boxes at apartment complexes across the country, including Southwest Florida, looking for rent checks.

The scheme wasn't elaborate  using the sticky wire, the members of the theft crew would fish out the checks, wash off the ink with brake fluid and acetone, fill in their own names in the payment line and cash it before anyone caught on.

The suspects burglarized several drop boxes around Southwest Florida during the first week of July 2013, according to investigative documents. The apartments targeted included Peppertree Apartments in Lee County and Bermuda Island Apartments, Laguna Bay Apartments, Waverly Place Apartments, Coral Palm Apartments and Jasmine Cay Apartments in Collier County.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi called the scheme a "low-tech, yet well-coordinated effort to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars."

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced in late November it had made four arrests in the organized theft ring, but eight suspects were arrested in total. The last suspect, Nestor Dominguez-Marquez, who is described in reports as the ringleader, was booked into the Naples Jail Center on Sunday. All eight are being held in Collier County.

Investigators say many of the suspects belong to a Cuban family with ties to Las Vegas and Miami. A cousin and uncle of Dominguez-Marquez were also arrested in the case.

According to an affidavit, the group stole money orders from apartment complexes in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington. One of the suspects, Juan Carlos Carballo-Mendoza, a Las Vegas disc jockey who performs under the name "DJ Cubano," told investigators he was the one who came up with the idea to steal the checks. Carballo-Mendoza is described in reports as an "associate" of the family.

All told, investigators say the group was responsible for the theft of 443 money orders and two cashier's checks totaling $198,895, although the actual figure might be higher because it's suspected that many thefts were not reported to law enforcement.

In some cases, victims didn't keep the stub from their money orders, making it impossible to track. Other victims purchased the money orders in a different city than the one where they live, making it hard for detectives to figure out which jurisdiction would have taken a report.

Reports say special agents were able to identify 38 bank accounts used by the suspects to deposit or cash money orders. In many instances, the suspects wrote their real names and home addresses on the money orders.

"This investigation represents the determination of our agents and partners," said FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen. "The scope of this scam is wide-ranging with multiple suspects, locations and victims."

Those arrested were: Nestor Dominguez-Marquez, 39, of Las Vegas; Jailer Arteaga-Lezcano, 25, of Avon Park, Florida; Nayadi Gallardo-Vega, 28, of Avon Park, Florida; Juan Carballo-Martinez, 55, of Las Vegas; Juan Carlos Carballo-Mendoza, 23, of Las Vegas; Wendy Leon Ruiz, 29, of Homestead, Florida; Antonio Alvarez-Reboredo, 49, of Miami; and Oscar Lezcano-Artiles, 44, of Avon Park, Florida.
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By Arek Sarkissian of the Naples Daily News

TALLAHASSEE  A bill that would allow holders of concealed weapon permits to openly carry handguns is likely dead this session with strong disagreement between the House and Senate over how far the proposal should go.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, said Thursday he will block an amendment to his bill that removes the allowance to openly carry weapons and replace it with language to only forgive accidental display of weapons in public. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, said he would block the proposal if the bill does not include that amendment.

Members of a House committee rejected the amendment Thursday and passed a version of Gaetz's bill on a 12-4 vote. That bill is now headed for the House floor.

Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, said he would consider the failure of the House amendment and may decide to block Gaetz's bill.

"I'll have to consider that in my decision," Diaz de la Portilla said. "I don't know if (the amendment) will face a tough crowd in the Senate but it's obvious it faced a tough crowd in the House."

Diaz de la Portilla said he was concerned the proposed law would create a bad impression on tourists who would see Floridians walking around with handguns.

House Democrats opposed the move to allow open carry and they supported the amendment, which was proposed by state Rep. Dave Kerner, D-Lake Worth. Among House committee members opposed to Kerner's change was powerful Speaker Pro Tem Matt Hudson, R-Naples, who voted "Absolutely not."

Hudson later went on to say the visual presence of handguns would deter criminals.

"I've said this before and I'll say this again: there are bad people in this world and they follow the path of least resistance," Hudson said. "This bill will make sure the defenseless people out there are protected."

The Senate approved three other weapons-related bills Thursday: SB 130 by Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, which would ban someone from firing a weapon in a residential neighborhood unless it was in self-defense; SB 228, by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, which would give judges flexibility in sentencing people for aggravated assault involving a weapon rather than a mandatory 10-year sentence, also passed unanimously; and SB 344 by state Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, which would change the current Stand Your Ground law to place the burden on prosecutors to prove self-defense was not a legitimate claim in charging someone with assault or murder.

All three Senate bills head to the House, where Bradley's bill faces uncertainty. Its companion, sponsored by state Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, died in committee in November. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, has not yet decided if he will allow Bradley's bill to go directly for a floor vote or refer it to committees, said his spokesman, Michael Williams.

Contact Daily News reporter arek.sarkissian@naplesnews.com or 850-559-7620
You are invited to the upcoming Forum workshop, Elder Law Planning | Helping Seniors Find Access, featuring Jill Burzynski, Florida Bar Certified Elder Law Attorney. The event is held on Monday, February 15, 3:30-4:30 PM at Grey Oaks Country Club, Naples. Wine & Cheese will follow the presentation.



RSVP: FamilyWealthPlanning@RaymondJames.com or 239-513-6541



Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Jill Burzynski received her Juris Doctor from Emory University Law School. She served as the President of the Collier County Bar Association in 2003. In 1998 she won the Florida Bar President's Pro Bono Service Award and was honored at the Florida Supreme Court. She was named Women Lawyer of the Year for Collier County in 1998. She is founder and first President of the Legal Aid of Collier County. She is a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and is the Past President of the Life Care Planning Law Firm Association. She is Secretary of the Academy of Florida Elder Law Attorneys. In 2009 she became the only Board Certified Elder Law Attorney in Collier County. Jill gained real insight into the problems that her clients face when her own father was diagnosed with dementia. This life experience has sharpened her focus on ensuring the best care for her clients.
Clonmel town centre supermarket SuperValu closed its doors on Friday amid recriminations on the impact of high rates and parking charges on the business.

Market Place, once the hub of commercial activity in the town centre, has now been described as a 'ghost town' within a t0wn.

The vast majority of shops on the street have closed or moved elsewhere in town, and now the departure of the anchor tenant is seen as the final nail in the coffin.

As shoppers bade a sad goodbye to the former store - originally Superquin before taken over by SuperValu - politicans hit out at the circumstances that saw the shop close with the loss of over forty jobs.

Independent TD Mattie McGrath described the closure of the store as a worrying indicator of the pressures that continue to bear down on the SME sector.

He claimed that the current Commercial Rates system in operation in places such as Clonmel and across the county is unfair and anything but sustainable.

The fact that Tipperary County Council took in 30 million in rates in 2015 alone would suggest that the Council is the only one receiving the benefit from such vast sums, he said.

Deputy McGrath added - When the plans to close SuperValu were announced I made immediate moves to have a more realistic and economically viable commercial rates regime introduced, but I was informed there will be no change until at least 2017.

This is completely unacceptable.

Green Party election candidate Gearoid Fitzgibbon claimed that high rates and parking charges, along with a lack of footfall, were contributing to the town centres demise

The issues affecting Clonmel are similar to those in other parts of the county where the over-supply of edge of town shopping, which benefit from easy access and free parking, squeezes the lifeblood from the town centres, he said.

He said that unless we want our town centres to become ghost towns, local authorities must rebalance the scales in favour of town centres and small locally owned businesses.

This can be done by making rates fairer and reducing parking charges, which are in effect a penalty on centre of town business.

Local Sinn Fein councillor Catherine Carey said the closure was down to the lack of investment and a continued lack of disposable income for workers and unemployed people in the local areas. The outcome, of course, will be that the whole region will suffer further as a result, she stated. Cllr Carey said that it was a disgrace that a retail outlet in Clonmel should have to pay rates on par with those being paid in Dublin.

The affected workers, many of whom had been there for nearly two decades were devastated by the loss of their jobs. Market Place was once a thriving and bustling shopping area and the loss of what was its anchor tenant will have serious repercussions.

A steady stream of customers were arriving at the supermarket last Friday morning where they found shelves with gaps from depleted stock, but a sense of camaraderie among the workers and themselves.

John O'Brien has been shopping at the store since it opened as Superquinn, 17 years ago, and both his sons worked there at different times.

"It was great for a long time, it's sad to see it closing," he said as he went in to do his final grocery shop in Supervalu.

Joan Skelly and her daughter Leslie Kennedy dropped in as part of their morning routine, as many others did. "I think it's a terrible loss to Clonmel," Joan said.

The staff in there were lovely, friendly people." She went on to say the whole Market Place area was becoming "like a ghost town."

"This is very, very sad," Leslie said," we have been shopping here since the beginning. The staff were always lovely and there was never a problem."

Another lady, getting a shopping trolley for her 85 year-old mother, said that her mother only lives around the corner and will miss the shop. She joked that when the family called and her mother wasn't home they would always find her in the supermarket.
Rare and priceless books at Cashels Bolton Library dating back to the 11th century, will deteriorate beyond repair if action is not taken now.

After 20 years of working to maintain the Bolton Library collection, librarians say conditions have reached a crisis point and given the unique nature of the books it would be a crime to allow this - so an agreement has been reached to move all the books to the library at the University of Limerick.

Ken Bergin, Special Collections Librarian at ULs Glucksman Library, and Gobnait ORiordain, Director of Library and Information Services at the university, joined with Dean Gerald Field to announce the move, following an agreement between the Church of Ireland and the university.

Despite efforts over the last 20 years to keep the collection in Cashel, Mr Bergin explained that the only solution for the library now is its relocation to the specialised facilities at UL.

It is expected that all the precious books will be transported to Limerick in the next month.

However everyone involved is committed to bringing a permanent exhibition back to Cashel when the books have been preserved and treated for dampness and possible insect infestation.

As well as saving the books, Mr Bergin says he believes a full cataloguing of the collection will reveal even more treasures than have already been listed.

The collection will always be known as 'The Bolton Library at Cashel' collection and it will remain in the permanent ownership of the Church of Ireland.

Speaking in the library, last week, he said the library contains books that are avaiable to scholars in very few institutions and they need to be available for study, but can't be in their present condition.

Books are like sponges. The humidity level here is 70% to 80%. The books have absorbed so much water they are jammed together and don't slide in and out of the shelves. What is required is a very slow process to dry them out. There is a good chance there is an infestation of beetles and that needs to be treated.

It is impossible to do anything here in these conditions. They need very stable environmental conditions. There was never the capital to keep it going or maintain the library. It's an expensive business.

Mr Bergin, speaking with genuine concern for the books, went on to say that the amount of water the books have absorbed is causing the deterioration of the paper. That has to be stopped before we lose the material, he warned. We can't have that happen with material from the 11th and 12th century.

These books were meant to be read. They're meant to be used. This needs to be turned in to a library where scholars can come and use them again.

If nothing is done they will go beyond repair. Given their unique nature that would be a crime.

He estimated it will take 12 months to dry out the books in a specialised and monitored facility in UL.

He paid tribute to the work of Dean Philip Knowles and Cashel Heritage Centre who did their best to look after the library.

Gobnait O'Riordain emphasised that the university supports the plan to bring a permanent, state-of-the-art exhibition back to Cashel. This would include books from the library, as they are restored, and high-tech displays telling the story of the library and explaining its part in local history.

She explained that while there is no estimated cost for this preservation project, a similar project carried out by the University of Ulster was granted 5 million by the UK government.

For now the cost of transporting the books to Limerick will be covered by the university and as they have the specialised staff and adequate storage facilities that will not be an extra cost to them. They hope to receive funding for the restoration process.

Ms O'Riordain said UL are already getting queries from international scholars about the books and have to turn them away.

Dean Field said there is an expectation that the library exhibition could come back to be housed in the former civic offices in Cashel.

The books in the library are literally invaluable he said, explaining that no insurance company would even quote to insure them, as they are not replaceable. It is really not an option to keep the collection in this building. He added that the agreement with UL has written into it that an exhibition will come back to Cashel.

Hopefully it will generate more interest in the books that are here in this magnificent collection, he said.

He paid tribute to his predecessor, Dean Philip Knowles, who spent so much time fundraising for the upkeep of the library.

Also at the announcement was Director of Services with Tipperary County Council, Sean Keating. The council are supporting this agreement. He said they were anxious to keep an exhibition in Cashel and are prepared to provide a place for that. They are working with other groups to figure out how to do that. It is planned to link the interactive exhibition to the Rock of Cashel to attract tourists.

What Mr Bergin called a new beginningfor the books will begin in the coming weeks with the transport, by a specialised company, of the books, wrapped in acid-free tissue and bubble wrap, to UL. An expert from the University of Ulster has also been consulted for advice. Over 12 months the level of humidity for the books will be brought from 80% to 50%. Insect infestation will be treated by deep freezing.

There are more than 8,000 books in the library but many contain more than one title, so it is estimated there are up to 11,500 titles stored there.

Some of the library's most famous works include fragments from the first printing press of William Caxton in the 1400s; the 1632 account of his time in the 'new world' by Captain John Smith, Governor of Virginia, which includes the stories of Pocahontas; Isaac Newton's 'Principia Mathematica' generally regarded as the greatest work in the history of science; an early edition of Dante's 'Divine Comedy' printed in 1512; it also includes first editions of Machiavelli's 'The Prince' and Cervantes 'Don Quixote' as well as hand-painted manuscripts that date back to before the invention of the printing press and important early volumes on Irish history.

About 450 people visited the Bolton Library, on John Street, last year.

The books in the library were bequeathed to the clergy of the Cashel diocese by Archbishop Theophilus Bolton, Archbishop of Cashel from 1730 to 1744. The books were collected by the archbishop then housed since 1836 in the Chapter House on the grounds of the Cathedral Church on John Street, Cashel.

I know this is difficult, Mr Bergin said, but I can't see any other solution. This is an absolute crisis.
California-based mortgage startup Nexera Holding has reached $100 million in fundings.

Nexera, which was started by former GMAC President Steve Abreu, reached the milestone just six months after it began operations, the company said in an email.

The Emeryville, Calif.-based company describes itself as "a 90% outsourced mortgage bank." Nexera uses on- and off-shore vendors to perform most tasks, which it says allows it to remain consistently priced when funding loans to brokers and consumers.

"This allows us to load balance as rates change without having to carry extra staff in a rising rate environment and have to hire in a rally," Abreu said in the email. "We do not have to change our margins to slow up business or increase business."

The company operates two business lines: newfi and Bluestream lending. Newfi is a direct-to-consumer channel, while Bluestream is Nexera's wholesale division.
General Petr Pavel stressed NATOs commitment to Tunisia and welcomed the opportunity to discuss further practical military cooperation during his visit two-day visit to Tunis (27-28 January 2016). After meeting with Brigadier General Ismail Fathalli, Chief of Staff of the Tunisian Armed Forces and the Tunisian Minister of National Defence, Mr. Farhat Horchani, the Chairman commended Tunisia on its efforts to increase interoperability with NATO and its active participation in the Mediterranean Dialogue.

Speaking with Brigadier General Taoufik Rahomouni, General Pavel expressed NATOs commitment to continue to work together with Tunisia to increase their defence capabilities and to fight terrorism. It is by working with Nations such as Tunisia that NATO has built a broad cooperative security network. Our partnerships play a crucial role in the promotion of international peace and security, said the Chairman.

During his visit, General Pavel had the opportunity of attending a working session with the members of the Monitoring Committee of Peace and Security in the Mediterranean. This inter-service (Army, Air Force, Navy) Committee is tasked with coordinating on security issues. Attending the session allowed for the Chairman to get first-hand insight into the national and regional security challenges.

Tunisian representatives expressed concern about the situation in Libya and the consequences for Tunisia and the North Africa region. They confirmed their interest in further practical military cooperation with NATO.

Tunisia is a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue which was initiated in 1994 by the North Atlantic Council. It currently involves seven non-NATO countries of the Mediterranean region: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
County Sheriff and lead officer's actions ruled unconstitutional by court

'Rules apply to them, too'

'No exception to warrantless entry'

(NaturalNews) More and more, Americans who are guilty of nothing more than noncompliance with the status quo are being targeted by an out-of-control system that bears virtually no resemblance whatsoever to the nation's constitutional founding principles.The latest example of "the system" run amok involves a Missouri home schooling family that has filed suit against a local sheriff and another officer after they forcibly entered the family's home in 2011, used a Taser on the father, pepper spray on the mother and forced their three children into the custody of government social service workers.As reported by, a court has already ruled that the actions of Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White, and one of his officers, Capt. David Glidden, were in violation of the U.S. Constitution - a ruling that resulted in the dismissal of charges of resisting arrest and child endangerment by the parents, Jason and Laura Hagan of New Hampton.The Home School Legal Defense Association(HSLDA) brought the suit on behalf of the parents, and it seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorney's costs and fees. HSLDA is the nation's leading home schooling legal advocate.In an interview with WND, HSLDA senior counsel James Mason said the Fourth Amendment is there to protect individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures."We need to be vigilant," he said. "We need to be willing to stand up for our rights." He added that, at times, authorities need to be reminded the "rules apply to them, too."The suit, filed Nov. 14, alleges that the sheriff and his officer came to the Hagan's home because a social worker was sent to investigate a complaint about a messy home. The social worker wanted to conduct a second inspection but the Hagans refused, prompting the worker to summon White and Glidden.Initially, the complaint states, Glidden demanded to be allowed into the home but was denied permission. At that point, the complaint notes, he pepper-sprayed Jason and then his wife."Glidden then turned to Jason, who was still standing, and shot him in the back with his Taser," the complaint states. After Laura closed the front door, Glidden nevertheless continued to trigger the Taser through the closed door. At that time, Sheriff White joined the fray."Together they forced open the door and found Laura and Jason lying on the floor," said the legal foundation.Both officers "slapped Laura, knocking her glasses off her face," according to the complaint, then threatened to shoot the family dog. The couple's telephone was tossed across a room, Laura was called a "liar," and then both parents were handcuffed, WND reported, citing the complaint.WND then added:"The court will not allow [an] exception to sanction warrantless entry into a private residence by pepper spray and Taser. If the officer had a warrant in hand and such force was necessary, that is a different story, but those are not the facts of this case," the judge said, further ruling that all information gathered by the sheriff and his officer be inadmissible."The state has not offered sufficient, if indeed any, evidence of an exception that would justify a warrantless entry," the judge said, according to WND."The Fourth Amendment strikes a carefully crafted balance between a family's right to privacy and the government's need to enforce the law," said HSLDA in its report, as cited by WND. "In most situations, government agents cannot simply force their way into a home. Instead, they must explain to a neutral magistrate why they need to enter the home, and they must provide real evidence to support that need."This rule applies to all government agents," the report said. "Court after court has agreed that there is no social services exception to the Fourth Amendment."Sources:
Wait, what? We don't even know if man is causing 'climate change'

Excused lawlessness breeds more lawlessness

(NaturalNews) To a liberal  especially a climate change activist  there is no such thing as the rule of law when it comes to. In fact, when the planet is at stake, then anything goes.That's the only way to explain how a jury in one of the country's most liberal, environmentally-conscious sectors of the country, could vote to acquit obvious lawbreakers whose defense was, in essence, acting out of "climate necessity."As noted by, Seattle-area jurors in Snohomish County, Wash., found a group called the "Delta 5" not guilty of obstruction for purposefully blockading an area oil facility in 2014. The website noted further:"The protest and the acquittal were notable as part of a growing wave of anti-oil-gas-and-coal citizen actions that has swept the country in the past few years, and the courtroom in Snohomish County was treated to a master class on why principled lawbreaking is just the tonic needed to cure our government's woeful inaction on warming."The defense? "Climate necessity"  the first use of that term to justify an illegal action in the history of the country. The argument goes that the defendants should not have been held responsible for their obvious violation of the law because, after all, they were only doing what they could to ensure that the planet survives  the rights and privileges of the oil company to freely operate a legal business without impediment, notwithstanding.Oh, the "defense"  such as it is  has been tried before, but it had not made it past a judge ... until now. (Of note:reports that a group of enviro-protestors used the defense successfully in England in 2008.)Next up is Cortlandt, New York. The "Montrose 9" are on trial for disorderly conduct, following the forced shut-down of a construction site along the Algonquin gas pipeline in Westchester County, in November. These people, like those in Washington, have purposefully and proudly broken the law because they have bought into the Left-wing hype that man and, specifically, America, through its industrialization and use of gas and oil, is destroying the planet (hint: there is no proof of this, mind you, but it's liberalism, so intentions count). The next hearing for these alleged lawbreakers is Feb. 3. If they make it past the judge, theirs will become the second trial in two weeks to air the "climate necessity" defense While some may applaud the concept of jury nullification  and agreed, it can be very tempting  it should never be applied to a political ideology or an unproven concept.Evenman-caused climate change was real (and it's not), there are processes for getting laws passed and making the necessary legislative and policy changes to save the world.As noted inreport, a number of the accused in each of the two cases voiced frustration with a government and system of lawmaking that appears unresponsive and stodgy. That makes sense; their pet cause has been given the appropriate short shrift in the policy-making arena, and that has upset them, even to the point of breaking the law.There's actually been a lot of this acceptance of lawbreaking, both in the state of Washington and in the Obama White House . Washington is one of two states, Colorado being the other, where citizens approved ballot measures "legalizing" the sale and use of recreational marijuana. Say what you will about pot, it remains against federal law to use it recreationally.However, there has been silence from the Obama administration's Justice Department  the president once said he has "bigger fish to fry"  and that is telling, given that he has had no trouble going after states whose citizens have passed ballot measures tightening immigration law and banning gay marriage.But it also sets a poor example  one that is obviously spreading. When lawlessness is rewarded, it breeds more lawlessness.Just because you have decided that your pet cause is "worthy" enough to act upon, doesn't give you the right to break laws.If you're someone who agrees with what just happened in Snohomish County, Wash., just remember this: Eventually someone will break a law that youcare about, and that you will want to see them punished for. Imagine your anger and disappointment if the jury decides to let them walk.
The dangers of alpha radiation



The Fukushima disaster

How far can radiation travel?

femtocuries per cubic meter, which is 790 times the normal levels experienced in the state.The radiation is not just limited to air pollution, and there are thought to be 110 sites off the American Pacific Coast that have been contaminated by leaks of radiation into water systems.Alpha radiation is thought to be the least dangerous form of radiation when compared with beta and gamma rays  with even simple clothing stopping the alpha particles from reaching the body. However, alpha particles become extremely dangerous when ingested or inhaled. If you're fortunate and only consume small doses, you may not show any symptoms. However, many people who are exposed suffer radiation sickness including nausea, vomiting, headaches and fatigue.If you ingest large quantities of alpha particles by either drinking contaminated water or breathing polluted air, you are at high risk of developing cancerous cells, with many lung cancer cases being directly related to radioactive air pollution.Following a major earthquake in March 2011, a 15-meter-high tsunami hit Japan, disabling the power supply of the Fukushima plant and damaging the reactors. This caused a nuclear catastrophe, with all three cores melting in the first three days after the tsunami.This accident rated 7 on the INES scale due to the extremely high levels of radioactive releases, and four reactors were totally written off due to the damage. The main concern at the time was stabilizing the remaining three reactors with water  which took approximately two weeks.Apart from the cooling, the other very important ongoing task was to prevent the release of radioactive materials  particularly from contaminated water which leaked from the units. The plant went into an official "cold shutdown condition" in December 2011.But just how far did the radiation travel and could the U.S. be in danger, despite being so far from the source?The distance that radiation can travel depends entirely upon the type of the radiation and its ability to penetrate other materials. According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, alpha and beta particles aren't able to travel particularly far, whereas gamma rays, X-rays and neutrons travel a significant distance and are difficult to block.According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if you live within 50 miles of a normal, functioning nuclear power plant you, will receive an average radiation dose of approximately 0.01 millirem per year, although much of that actually comes in just a few massive doses throughout the year . However, the huge spikes seen in the U.S. caused by Fukushima show that nuclear waste spreads fast and far through the air and ocean currents.The spike reported at the National Conference for Radiation Control is very concerning, showing that time and distance do nothing to stop the spread of radiation from nuclear disasters. Scientists need to closely monitor contamination levels across the Pacific, with the amount of radioactive material appearing on the Pacific Coast on the rise.It is likely that we will see a variety of health problems emerging over the coming years that can be related to this radiation spike from Fukushima.1. ENENews.com 2. Science.HowStuffWorks.com 3. World-Nuclear.org 4. NRC.gov 5. ScienceAlert.com 6. FukushimaWatch.com
(NaturalNews) It isn't as if the current civil war in Syria has not already taken a ravenous toll on the Middle Eastern country's children, but so, too, has a recently administered measles vaccine that the Assad government claims was sabotaged.According to a mid-September report by Britain's Telegraph newspaper , at least 36 children were recently reported to have died "excruciating deaths" after being given what Damascus says were "tainted" vaccines via a United Nations-sponsored program in the rebel-held northern part of the country.The deaths caused UN health officials to suspend the vaccination program, especially following reports that the vaccines were sabotaged. The effort in Syria to provide care for the civil war's victims is a high-profile affair, and the UN vaccination effort was ostensibly premised on a desire to prevent an outbreak of measles.further reported:"It's very bad. The figures of dead go into the 30s. Children are dying very quickly," Daher Zidan, the coordinator of the medical charity UOSSM (Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations), said, as quoted by the news site. "We think it will get worse."A Syrian opposition coalition consisting of rebels controls the area of Idlib province. The coalition had been administering the immunization project."The Syrian interim government's health ministry has instructed a halt to the second round of the measles vaccination campaign, which began [recently]... following several fatalities and injuries among children in vaccination centres in the Idlib countryside," said a coalition statement,reported.The site went on to report that "medical experts" opined that the children's deaths were most likely caused by a contaminated batch of measles vaccine.The vaccination program was being managed and administered by the UN's World Health Organization, which launched the drive to vaccinate 1.6 million Syrian children. At press time,reported, WHO officials were still trying to confirm reports of the deaths and vaccine contamination but had no information on casualty figures.A number of sympathizers with the Syrian opposition had circulated images on social media sites of children allegedly dying from the vaccine. Many of them hinted that perhaps agents working on behalf of the Assad regime had contaminated the vaccines with cyanide.Idlib is one of only a few rebel strongholds -- rebels who are generally backed by Western governments -- but their gains have been thoroughly eclipsed by both the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and al Qaeda's Nusra Front. Most of Syria remains contested three years into the civil war.said the manner in which the children died were consistent with some sort of substance poisoning:"This looks like a deliberate attempt to spike the vaccines," he said.Officials with WHO and the UN, as well as Syrian opposition members, feared that the final death toll would be higher, especially because the region is isolated.Each bottle of measles vaccine reportedly contained 40 doses; medical personnel said they believe that at least two of the bottles may have been tainted."WHO have sent an investigation team to the area and they will be coming back, we hope very very fast, on some answers on how exactly this terrible incident occurred," Simon Ingram, regional chief of communication for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa, told Subsequent reports claimed that at least some of the children were given a muscle relaxer by mistake, which is what caused their deaths.
A new chameleon species scattered with blue spots was recently discovered in the mountains of Tanzania. Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) say this species, subsequently dubbed Kinyongia msuyae, highlights the richness of this biologically important region.

This brown and green chameleon lizard was discovered in four montane forest patches in the Udzungwa Mountains and Southern Highlands, researchers report in their study.

This find ultimately sheds light on a region known as the Makambako Gap, a supposed zoological barrier between the distinct faunas of the Southern Highlands and Eastern Arc Mountains - which is in the Udzungwa Mountains. It follows then the presence of this species suggests there are actually close biological affinities between species of the Southern Highlands.

The discovery of Kinyongia msuyae follows a series of other recent discoveries, demonstrating that Tanzania's Southern Highlands has emerged as somewhat of a hotspot for new species.

For instance, in 2003 WCS researchers stumbled upon the kipunji - a species of primate that turned out to be an entirely new genus - which was a first for Africa since 1923. And in 2012, the WCS found Matilda's horned viper, a new variety of snake.

"Along with our discoveries of the Kipunji, Matilda's horned viper and other reptiles and frogs, this new chameleon really seals the deal as regards the boundary of the Eastern Arcs," Tim Davenport, Director of WCS's Tanzania Program and co-discoverer of the new chameleon, said in a news release. "It is very clear now that the so-called Makambako Gap doesn't exist zoologically, and that the Southern Highlands is every bit as biodiverse and endemic-rich as all other Eastern Arc Mountains. With its own unique fauna and flora the region thus warrants as much protection as we can possibly afford it."

Kinyongia msuyae was named after Charles A. Msuya, a pioneer of Tanzanian herpetology who collected the first known specimen attributable to this species and has spent most of his life studying Tanzania's reptiles and amphibians.

Their study was recently published in the journal Acta Herpetologica.

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-Follow Samantha on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13
In the North Atlantic, commercial fishing vessels are spending a great deal of time in shark hotspots, says a new study. The researchers feel that sharks may be in danger of being overharvested in these areas.

A team from the University of Miami (UM), the Marine Biological Association (MBA), University of Porto (Portugal) and other institutions recently published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It might be necessary to institute quotas on the catch levels for sharks for commercial fishing, the authors noted in the study.

"Our research clearly demonstrates the importance of satellite tagging data for conservation," Neil Hammerschlag at UM said in a release. "The findings both identify the problem as well as provide a path for protecting oceanic sharks."

The study took place from 2005 to 2009, when researchers followed the movements of 100 sharks wearing satellite tags, from six species in the North Atlantic. At the same time, the scientists kept track of 186 Spanish and Portuguese longline fishing vessels equipped with GPS.

Findings included that the sharks and fishing vessels both were present in ocean fronts defined by warm waters and high productivity. These included the North Atlantic Current/Labrador Current Convergence Zone, near Newfoundland; and the Gulf Stream.

"Many studies have tracked sharks, and many studies have tracked fishing vessels, but fine-scale tracking of sharks and fishing vessels together is lacking, even though this should better inform how shark fisheries should be regulated," Professor David Sims of the MBA said in the release.

In the study, about 80 percent of the range for blue and mako sharks, two of the most strongly fished species in the tracking - were in the same range as the fishing vessels. Some sharks remained near longlines for more than 60 percent of when they were being tracked. Blue sharks seem to be vulnerable to possible capture 20 days each month; mako sharks may be at risk 12 days a month.

Each year, scores of millions of sharks in oceans are caught by commercial fishing each year. The researchers propose that quotas or size limits may be necessary going forward.

For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).

-Follow Catherine on Twitter @TreesWhales
Via Reuters: Peru reports first patient carrying the Zika virus. Excerpt:

Peru said Friday a Venezuelan man in Lima, who recently traveled through Colombia, had contracted the mosquito-borne virus Zika, in the Andean country's first confirmed case of the disease that is rapidly spreading across the Americas.

Health Minister Anibal Velasquez said he expected other cases of people who had been infected with Zika abroad to appear in Peru in the coming days.

Peru shares borders with Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff called for war on the virus that has caused severe birth defects in thousands of babies. Zika is also spreading in Colombia and Ecuador.

"It was inevitable that cases of imported Zika would arrive to Peru," Velasquez said at a news conference. "The patient is isolated and we're taking steps to prevent its spread."

The Venezuelan man passed through the northern coastal city of Tumbes before coming to the capital, and health authorities there are bolstering efforts to eradicate mosquitoes, Velasquez said.
McDonalds customers have taken to social media after finding their mozzarella sticks came without cheese.

Twitter users blasted the company with photos confirming the cheese was missing.

"My girl got mozzarella sticks from McDonald's and they gave her them with no cheese @McDonalds y'all slacking," wrote @AntoineFulton.

"@McDonalds I just bought your mozzarella sticks and not one of the three had cheese in the middle. This is pathetic," said @piercenick5.

The company responded to the cheese controversy in a statement to NBC Chicago, explaining that the cheese possibly melted out of the sticks during the cooking process.

"We are aware of a low volume of guest concerns about our Mozzarella Cheese Sticks," spokeswoman Lisa McComb said in an emailed statement. "In these instances, we believe the cheese melted out during the baking process in our kitchens and shouldn't have been served. We apologize to any customers who may have been affected. We are working to fix this in our restaurants."

The Oak Brook-based chain announced its plans to add the snacks to its menus late last year.

More recently, the company announced it will start offering an expanded all-day breakfast menu that adds McGriddle and biscuit sandwiches in 72 restaurants in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
With the election for Cook County States Attorney drawing near, Anita Alvarez squared off against opponents Donna More and Kim Foxx in a radio debate that dealt with police misconduct, criminal justice and questions about the incumbent's handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting.



Alvarez came under fire last November when a dash-cam video showing 17-year-old McDonald being shot and killed by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke was made public. It wasnt until after the video was released that Van Dyke was charged with McDonalds murder, 13 months after the killing took place.



During the debate, Kim Foxx, who worked under Alvarez in the States Attorneys office, pointed to a systemic failure under the current State's Attorney.



The lack of prosecutions, or whats happened in the Laquan McDonald case, is an indicator or a pattern of a lack of prosecutions for this type of misconduct by the states attorneys office and particularly this states attorney, said Foxx, who has received a handful of high profile endorsements including the Cook County Democratic Party.



The embattled Alvarez defended her tenure as states attorney, claiming that she has run her office with integrity.



Ive done a tremendous job as the Cook County state's attorney being an independent professional state's attorney, said Alvarez. I have been tough on crime and I have been smart on crime.



Donna More, a former state and federal prosecutor who has donated over $250,000 to her own campaign, presented herself as an independent alternative to her opponents while promising to overturn certain policies of the Alvarez administration.



"We need a state's attorney who isn't afraid to do what's right, who will use the office as a platform for fighting crime as well as prosecuting crime and who will reverse closed door policies of the incumbent," said More.



"I've run this office professionally with integrity and I make decisions based on facts, the evidence and the law," said Alvarez.



The election for the Democratic nomination for Cook County State's Attorney will be held on March 15.
President Barack Obama will come to Springfield next month to speak to the Illinois General Assembly on the anniversary of the day he first announced his candidacy for president.

Multiple sources confirmed Obama is scheduled to make an address on Feb. 10.

"Nine years after he announced his candidacy for President, Barack Obama will return to the place where his political career began by traveling to Springfield, Illinois," a White House official said in a statement.



Now, in the final year of his second term, the President looks forward to addressing the Illinois General Assembly on February 10th about what we can do, together, to build a better politics  one that reflects our better selves," the statement read.

The address comes amid a historic state budget impasse in Illinois.

Gov. Bruce Rauner said in a statement he looks forward to "hearing [Obama] speak about finding common ground between Republicans and Democrats."

"Despite our political differences, the President and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans," Rauner said in a statement. "I know we can achieve great things for Illinois by having mutual respect for one another and focusing on bipartisan compromise to achieve whats best for the long-term future of our great state.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin stood with Obama in Springfield when he announced his historic run for president.

Working together, we can accomplish great things," Durbin said in a statement. "The promise of hope and change that President Obama brought to Springfield back in 2007 can only become a reality if we are willing to compromise and find common ground.
Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign has received support from 10 members of the Illinois Democratic National Committee.

Among the supporters are State Senate President John Cullerton, former Congressman Jerry Costello and Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts.

These DNC members know Hillary Clinton has the proven toughness to take on the tough fights as President and get real results that matter in peoples lives, a Clinton statement said. "They share Clinton's commitment to raising wages for the middle class, lowering drug and health care costs, helping families save for a secure retirement, and keeping us safe."

Clinton will face U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin OMalley in the Illinois Presidential Primary on March 15.

Recent national polls show Clinton holding a double-digit lead over Sanders.
An attorney for the Chicago police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald plans to seek a change of venue in the case, saying he believes it will be difficult to find an unbiased jury in Cook County.

"We think that at the end of the day were going to present come very compelling evidence to demonstrate that its impossible for my client to get a fair trial in this case," said Attorney Dan Herbert, who is representing Officer Jason Van Dyke.

Herbert has said he was considering requesting the trial be moved out of Cook County in recent months, but on Friday, he revealed the request will be made after the discovery period is finished. He noted previously that a change of venue request is an uncommon one and hasn't been done in Cook County "in decades."

Part of the evidence Herbert plans to show involves comments made by Emanuel criticizing Van Dyke after video of McDonald's shooting became public. Emanuel previously told reporters, "Van Dyke violated both the standards of professionalism that come with being a police officer but also basic moral standards that bind our community together."

"When the mayor of the city in which the pool of jurors that we would draw from has taken such an adamant stance it makes it extremely difficult for us to get a juror in here that is not predisposed to a finding of guilty," Herbert said.

Van Dyke returned to court Friday morning for a status hearing.Cameras were allowed inside and outside the hearing, where protesters also gathered demanding justice for the slain teen.

During the hearing, prosecutors submitted materials from the Independent Police Review Authority to the defense.

"We received a bit of discovery," Herbert said after the hearing. "Thats whats going to continue in this case. Well receive bits and pieces of evidence until we finally receive all the evidence and then thats when we will start aggressively filing motions."

McDonald's family was also in court today. His great uncle, Reverend Marvin Hunter has concerns about the process.

"We are asking the federal prosecutors to sit in the courtroom to ensure that that we get a fair trial," Hunter said.

Van Dyke has been formally indicted on six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct. The first-degree murder charge came on Nov. 24, just hours before city officials made dashcam videos public showing Van Dyke shooting the 17-year-old 16 times as he walked away from police in October of 2014.

The release of the footage ignited citywide outrage, with demonstrators expressing anger that it took officials 13 months to charge the officer, who remained on paid desk duty during that time.

Herbert said in court Friday that he believes the state is "not going to meet their burden" in the case, however.

"This case, its a tragedy," he said. "Its not a murder, its certainly not a murder one. It's a tragedy."

Van Dyke has since been suspended from the police force. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and posted the required $150,000 of a $1.5 million bond to be freed from Cook County jail in November.

Herbert noted that both the officer and his family have since received death threats and Van Dyke is concerned for his family's safety.

"Every time he leaves his house he is fearful," the attorney said. "His life will never be the same again."
More than 40 years ago, a scheduling quirk vaulted Iowa to the front of the presidential nominating process, and ever since most White House hopefuls have devoted enormous time and money to a state that otherwise would get little attention.

HOW IT STARTED

For most of Iowa's history, activists have gathered in the winter to deal with politics, but no one outside the state paid attention until 1972, when Democrats established their caucuses in January. That made the party's presidential preference vote the first in the nation, and candidate George McGovern, encouraged by his campaign manager Gary Hart, took advantage by campaigning in Iowa and finishing a stronger-than-expected second place. McGovern's showing helped propel him to the Democratic nomination, and four years later it did the same for a little-known governor from Georgia, Jimmy Carter.

The Republicans joined Democrats with the early caucus date in 1976. Since then Iowa has drawn more candidate visits and media attention with each campaign.

HOW IT WORKS

The Democratic and Republican parties hold their caucuses at the same time  this year starting at 7 p.m. CST on Feb. 1  at spots in all of Iowa's 99 counties. Caucuses are held in each of the state's 1,681 precincts, but the number of meeting sites is smaller because some precincts share buildings. Democrats will meet at about 1,100 spots and Republicans will gather at nearly 900. Voters from some small precincts meet in homes, but most join in schools, veterans' halls and other large venues.

The parties hold their caucuses simultaneously, but they operate differently.

FOR DEMOCRATS

When Democrats attend a caucus, they break into groups that publicly declare their support for a candidate. If the number of people in any group is fewer than 15 percent of the total, they can either choose not to participate or can join another candidate group. That leads to some intense wooing and sometimes confusion as candidate representatives try to persuade others to join them and prevent their supporters from switching to another top candidate.

The results are the first step in determining delegates who are expected to support candidates at the national convention. A total of 44 delegates to the national convention are at stake. They will be awarded proportionally, based on the statewide vote as well as on the vote in individual congressional districts, to candidates who get at least 15 percent of the vote.

FOR REPUBLICANS

For Republicans, it's a much simpler matter of giving supporters of each candidate a chance to give a brief speech, then privately marking ballots. The ballots are counted, then communicated by a local caucus organizer to the state party using a new smartphone app developed for both parties. A total of 30 delegates to the party's national convention are at stake. They will be awarded proportionally, based on the statewide vote.

WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING

All the candidates hope to win the caucuses, giving them a boost of attention as they shift focus to the New Hampshire primary eight days later. But more than a win, the goal is to exceed expectations. Even if a candidate finishes second or third, he or she can claim a victory by noting they finished near the top and received more support than expected.

It's worth noting that a win in Iowa doesn't necessarily translate into a party nomination. In fact, the last time the ultimate Republican nominee won a contested caucus was 2000, when George W. Bush finished first. The winner of the Democratic caucus has fared better. In the last three contested Democratic nomination races, the Iowa winner became the nominee.

TURNOUT

The Iowa Republican Party chairman, Jeff Kaufmann, said he expects GOP turnout to top the previous record of 120,000 people, set in 2012. Andy McGuire, the Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman, said she also expects a strong turnout, though not as large as the 2008 caucuses, when Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and other candidates drew 240,000 to the party's caucuses.

Even if turnout meets the party's expectations, it's worth noting that only a sliver of Iowa voters will participate in the caucuses. About 1.2 million residents are registered in either the Democratic or Republican party, and another 727,000 voters don't declare a political party. So, even if there is a strong turnout of 300,000 voters, that would mean a turnout of about 15 percent of registered voters. In the 2012 general election, Iowa's 73 percent turnout was among the nation's highest.

IOWA ELECTORATE BREAKDOWN

According to the 2014 Census figures, Iowa has a population of 3.107 million, including 2.7 million whites, 173,594 Hispanics and 101,236 African Americans.

According to the Secretary of States Office in Iowa, there are 2.096 million registered voters as of February 1, of whom 1.937 million are active.

Among the active voters, 586,835 are Democrats, 615,763 are Republicans and another 727,112 have no party affiliation.

Iowa permits residents to register to vote or to change parties on caucus night.

PRETTY WARM FOR IOWA

One factor in turnout is always the weather, which can be awful in February. This year it looks like the parties could catch a break with temperatures expected to remain above freezing for most of the state until the event is over. Look out, though. A snowstorm is forecast to hit the next day, and if the wintry weather arrives earlier than expected, at least some caucus-goers could opt to stay home rather than brave slick roads.
At the Lunch Box 23 food truck in New Haven, Maurice Watson and his sister serve all sorts of sliders.



Anything from burgers to chicken to duck to rabbit, Watson said, We try to change it up every other day.



Watson said he is already paying several city fees to operate outside the Apple store on Broadway.



The permits are between five and six hundred dollars yearly and thats through the fire department, health department, the zoning department, Watson said.



As part of revising the rules for the food truck business, New Haven city officials are considering raising the fees for vendors. Food truck operators like Watson who use metered parking spots may need to pay more than $5,000.



Any increase would be devastating to my business, Watson said.



Deputy Director of Economic Development Stephen Fontana is overseeing the overhaul of the ordinances regulating New Havens 700 food truck and cart vendors.



Our current structure for regulating vendors isnt working, he said.

The city is receiving public health and safety complaints," Fontana said, adding that some are coming from from brick-and-mortar restaurants that have been around for decades.



What were trying to do is come up with a system whereby we can collect resources to provide that amount of enforcement, cleanliness, safety and inspection, Fontana said.



The lunch rush at the Yale Whale ice rink is a sign of how the food truck business is booming in the Elm City.



In the line of vendors cooking a variety of international cuisines, David Casner at D&D Confessions sells American favorites like hot dogs and hamburgers.



If theyre going to use the raising the fees to have better rules and have better enforcement of the rules then Id be ok with it, Casner said.



City officials are meeting on Monday Feb. 8 with food truck vendors to get their feedback, Fontana said.



Mayor Toni Harp and the Board of Alders would need to review any proposed ordinance changes for food trucks.
Via Thomson Reuters: Tropical Asia braces for Zika as Thailand appears to steer clear. Excerpt:

Tropical Southeast Asian countries said on Friday they were bracing for the mosquito-borne Zika virus, with Malaysia saying it could "spread quickly" if introduced, but Thailand appeared to be bucking the trend with just a handful of cases a year.

Zika, linked to severe birth defects including babies born with abnormally small heads, is wreaking havoc in Brazil where the government has deployed more than 200,000 troops to eradicate mosquitoes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that the virus was "spreading explosively" and could infect as many as four million people in the Americas.

No treatment or vaccine is available.

In Thailand, where just one case of Zika has been reported so far this year, the likelihood of Zika spreading was low, officials said, partly because of better access to health care and because Thailand was dealing with a smaller area.

"Thailand is a medium-sized country with a good public health system and easy-to-access medical facilities," Amnuay Gajeena, director-general of the Disease Control Department, told Reuters.

Thailand detected its first Zika case in 2012 and has recorded an average of five cases a year, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

Kriengsak Limkittikul, assistant professor at the Department of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University in Bangkok, said there was inadequate information about Zika but that it was "only a matter of time" before more cases were reported.

Thailand has confirmed one case of the virus so far this year. Earlier this month, Taiwan reported one case of Zika infection in a man from northern Thailand.

"NO EVIDENCE OF IMMUNITY"

The WHO said on Sunday the rapid spread of Zika in the Americas was due to a lack of immunity among a population that had not been previously exposed to the virus.

Amnuay said there was "no technical evidence" of widespread immunity in Thailand but individuals exposed to the virus would "of course develop" antibodies as with other viruses.
Students at Hall High School have started selling and wearing a t-shirt with the mascot's old logo of a Native American to classmates. Critics call it insensitive and racist.

The blue t-shirt shows The Rez is written above the logo, which is short for The Reservation. The group is known as the schools student fan section during games.

"The Rez" has been under fire because of the negative connotation that comes with its name. The release of a new shirt has rekindled the conversation about the group's name; its sparked attention on Twitter.

Lakota hip-hop artist, Frank Waln, who spoke to students last school year about the offensive nature of their former mascot logo, tweeted: I told them that as a native person from an actual Rez, I was offended and angered. None of these kids are native or from a Rez.

I told them that as a native person from an actual Rez, I was offended and angered. None of these kids are native or from a Rez  Frank Waln (@FrankWaln) January 27, 2016

Later, the hip-hop posted: "Americans will fight harder to defend native mascots than they will to defend the lives of actual native ppl (sic) whose land they live on."

This tweet was shared over 1,000 times at the time of this post.

Americans will fight harder to defend native mascots than they will to defend the lives of actual native ppl whose land they live on  Frank Waln (@FrankWaln) January 28, 2016

Some students say there needs to be a conversation about a name change of the group to bring inclusiveness.

A lot of people disagree with the name, a lot of people find it very offensive and racist and have continually gone to them and said this is offensive and we want it changed. Some people arent comfortable going to games and being with them rooting for the school because of it, said student council treasurer, Talia Feldman.

Last year, the high school changed its Warriors Native American mascot logo to a warrior wearing what appears to be a helmet and the letters "HW" for "Hall Warriors".

Some students say the t-shirt shouldnt be worn.

They do wear these shirts to school as a way to exercise their right to free speech, that is their argument around that. Were trying to get around that, said student, Rachel Corcoran-Adams.

School Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Andrew Morrow told NBC Connecticut in a statement:

The West Hartford Public Schools requires that all school-sanctioned and school-funded clubs and organizations respect diverse cultural values and the importance of inclusion. Unfortunately, a small number of students have chosen to selfishly seek attention by deliberately continuing to promote an unofficial student group with a name and imagery that is inappropriate and racially insensitive. This attention-seeking behavior is deliberately designed to provoke the larger student body and the community.

These students do not represent our schools and the overwhelming majority of our caring and compassionate students. Instead of these actions, we would prefer to be highlighting and congratulating the two Hall High School seniors who were identified this week as National Presidential Scholar Candidates. This prestigious award is a testament to their hard work and dedication and we are proud to have them represent both Hall High School and West Hartford.

Students told NBC Connecticut on Thursday said they hope bringing awareness to the situation will help start of a conversation between students and administration.
A Watertown, Connecticut, volunteer firefighter and his wife accused of punishing their five children by making them stand in the bathroom said the Department of Children and Families knew about the treatment, court documents said.

George Barnes, 45, and Nancie Barnes, 47, are facing charges including cruelty to persons, unlawful restraint, and risk of injury to a minor. The couple adopted four of the children and are guardians of a fifth child.

Nancie told police she does not think she has done anything "not acceptable," the court documents read.

A 15-year-old girl was locked in the bathroom from September to mid-December, both George and Nancie told police, according to the court documents.

On Dec. 21, police and the DCF interviewed the 15-year-old victim and her 9-year-old brother about alleged abuse in the house. The 15-year-old victim said she stays in the bathroom when she returns from school and all day on weekends, the court documents said. She told Watertown police she got in "trouble" for reaching out to her biological mom. The victim also told police she was not allowed to sleep with a pillow or talk to the school psychologist, the court documents said.

She told police she was able to leave the house to get a Christmas tree with the family but had to stay in the car. When the girl was allowed to eat with the family, she was not allowed to speak with her siblings because she was a "bad influence," according to court documents.

The 9-year-old victim told police that when the children were in trouble, including his 15-year-old sister, they had to read while standing for 20 minute intervals before they either "earned" a chore or had to do homework, court documents said.

The DCF temporarily removed the children from the house for 96 hours in December.

Both George and Nancie said their therapist and the DCF knew about the displinary action, which they said was necessary to curb the children's attitude and tantrums, according to the court documents.

Baby monitors were used to see if the child was standing when he or she was "supposed to be," police said. Meals were brought to the child during the three months.

All five children, ranging in age from 9 to 18, told police they had been punished various times and would need to stand in the bathroom and read for extended periods of time, Watertown police said.

NBC Connecticut reached out to DCF and the agency released the following statement:

"The parents who were arrested today were licensed by the Department and accordingly received criminal and child welfare background checks prior to obtaining their license and caring for the children. We have high expectations for the families who foster and adopt children from state care, and those expectations are met in in all but the rarest of instances. If the allegations are true, the treatment of the children is completely unacceptable and a violation of the trust we place in foster and adoptive families."

The Barneses appeared in court on Jan. 29, where protective orders were issued. Each was released on a $35,000 bond and they are due back in court on Feb. 24.

The couple or the public defender representing them had no comment on Friday afternoon.
Fourteen students from a mostly white Catholic high school in San Francisco have been suspended for attending an outdoor weekend party where young people wore clothes meant to mimic a style associated with urban black culture, the school's president said Thursday.

The Rev. Edwin Harris, president of St. Ignatius College Preparatory High School, told parents in a letter that the gathering held Saturday at a large city park called Sigmund Stern Grove "appropriated pervasive negative stereotypes" and carried "racial overtones and racist implications."

"Regardless of the intent of those who participated, their actions had an adverse effect on the community and on them," Harris said. "We categorically condemn this gathering as it does not represent the Ignatian values or ideals that our school stands for."

Harris did not elaborate on what students wore and did at the event. But St. Ignatius Principal Patrick Ruff told the San Francisco Chronicle it was billed as a party for white people who emulate the language, gestures and dress popularized by rap and hip-hop videos.

"It's disheartening and incredibly sad this type of thing exists not just for SI, but for the entire city," Ruff told the newspaper.

A similar event during a Minnesota high school's homecoming week celebration in 2009 led a former student to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Red Wing School District. The school board settled the lawsuit for $90,000 in 2012.

The party last weekend in San Francisco drew teenagers from several schools and was not organized by St. Ignatius students, Harris said. School administrators learned about it Tuesday from students who had seen photos on social media, he said.

The suspended St. Ignatius students will be required to meet with members of the school's Black Student Union, and administrators are planning a school-wide assembly to discuss diversity, Harris said.
After going missing early this morning, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons stolen SUV was located by police in Wilmington.

Coons' wife was in for an unpleasant surprise when she left the family car warming up outside their Delaware home and returned to find it was gone.

Police told NBC10 Philadelphia at around 5 p.m. that they located the missing SUV along with another missing vehicle near the intersection of 5th and Cleveland Streets in Wilmington. When police cut off the vehicles, police said six to eight people bailed out of the two vehicles and fled.

The senator and his family are OK, Coons spokesman Sean Coit said. Coons had already left for the day when the theft took place.[[366901811, C]]

Around 7 p.m. a statement from Senator Coons and his wife was posted to the Senator's official twitter account expressing gratitude to the Wilmington Police Department for recovering their stolen SUV and the other stolen vehicle. [[366936031, C]]

The Delaware Democrat's family SUV was stolen from his Wilmington home. Wilmington police spokeswoman Sgt. Andrea Janvier said the black Ford Explorer with at least one Coons sticker on the back was stolen Thursday morning after it was left running with the keys in the ignition.

Janvier said details were broadcast to all units shortly after the incident and then entered into a state system that alerts all jurisdictions in the area.

The senator had a "sweet" sense of humor about the theft. [[366893211, C]]

Police said it's legal in Delaware to warm your car on your own property but they advise against doing it.

No arrests were made in the recovery of the Senator's SUV, and police said it sustained no apparent damage.
U.S and British intelligence cracked the codes of Israeli drones operating in the Middle East and monitored their surveillance feeds for almost 20 years, according to documents leaked by an American whistleblower and published in international media on Friday.

Reports by the German daily Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Intercept said the details emerged from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked millions of documents about U.S. government surveillance in 2013.

The reports said the intelligence agencies were able to watch information that the drones and other aircraft broadcast back to their handlers. The project codenamed "Anarchist" has operated since 1998 and was based near the highest point in Cyprus. Israel was the focus of the program but it also hacked into systems in Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the reports said.

The Intercept report said the hacking granted intelligence agencies a "virtual seat in the cockpit" as Israeli drones hit militant targets. In one instance in 2008, an NSA internal newsletter boasted of the Anarchist program successfully collecting video from the cockpit of an Israeli F-16 fighter, the report said.

In Israel, officials refused to comment on the reports. Local Israeli media, which is subject to military censorship, was permitted to publish accounts of the reports on Friday.


Ethan Couch was behind the wheel of a pickup truck, reeking of booze when police confronted him. He had no driver's license. Next to him was a passed-out, half-naked girl, and an open vodka bottle lay on the backseat floor.

Still, as one officer reported, the skinny, blond 15-year-old mouthed off as they questioned him. He said he had taken pre-law classes and knew what police could and couldn't do to him. The officer cautioned him about the perils of drinking and driving, according to court records obtained by The Associated Press.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

"I spoke with him at some length about the various consequences of his driving and drinking," wrote Fort Worth police officer W.E. Spakes, "such as effects on (his) driver's license and his path in life, especially DWI and even killing someone in a DWI."

Couch left that night in February 2013 with two citations and his mother, Tonya, who was called to the scene. Four months later, he drove drunk into a group of people helping a stranded motorist, killing four.

Long before Couch and his family became notorious for using an "affluenza" defense in that crash, they had multiple run-ins with the law, often flouting authority or relying on personal wealth to get out of trouble. The incidents, totaling at least 20, ranged from speeding tickets and financial disputes to reckless driving and assault, a review of police and court records shows.

On Thursday, Couch returned to the United States from Mexico, where he and his mother had fled in December after a video surfaced online appearing to show him at a party where people were drinking  a potential violation of the terms of his probation for the fatal accident.

A psychologist who evaluated Couch in 2013 introduced the "affluenza" term at trial in reference to Couch being coddled by his wealthy parents. He testified that Couch learned nothing from that first incident, court records show. The teen didn't think he had done anything serious, Dr. G. Dick Miller said, and his mother lied to his father about it.

Couch also kept abusing substances, Miller testified. "I think he thought, 'I can get away with this.'... That was what he was taught."

Miller recommended that Couch be separated from his parents, who he said had "taught him a system that's 180 degrees from rational. If you hurt someone, say you're sorry. In that family, if you hurt someone, send some money."

Fred Couch  the teen's father, who is in the midst of divorcing Ethan's mother for the second time  did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Tonya Couch spoke briefly to the AP, but declined to discuss the family's most recent problems.

The Couches legal woes date to at least the late 1980s, records show.

Fred Couch's roofing and construction company, Cleburne Sheet Metal, was sued in 1996 over a roughly $100,000 debt. Two plaintiff firms alleged he tried to move assets, and twice attempted to question him and Tonya Couch, court records show. The couple failed to show up for both depositions. A judge sanctioned them and gave them a deadline to pay, which they missed by several weeks.

Three years later, Fred Couch punched a supervisor for a contractor that hired his company after the man told his workers to stop using an unsafe table saw, according to an arrest report. Couch drove off; he later received a few days in jail and two years' probation for the assault.

And in 2009, Fred Couch faced accusations that he sexually harassed a female employee, then fired her when she complained. Court records show he denied touching her inappropriately and showing her sex videos, among other things. The case settled on undisclosed terms a year later.

Tonya Couch's encounters with the law include a 2003 reckless driving case in which court records say she intentionally forced a motorist off the road. She pleaded guilty, was fined and got probation, records show.

In early 2005, she lied about that charge on a form to renew her state nursing license. Regulators found out years later and took action. She failed to show for a 2012 disciplinary hearing and lost the vocational nursing license.

It was just a few months later when a Fort Worth police officer drove by a Dollar General store in Lakeside, a small town on the outskirts of Fort Worth, and saw a black pickup truck parked with its lights on.

Spakes, the officer, found an intoxicated Ethan Couch with the girl. According to court records, Couch told Spakes that he'd stopped to urinate and had only one drink, maybe two. Spakes described him as "very arrogant, a smart-mouthed kid that had a bit of an attitude with authority," records show.

"I verbally got onto him trying to get him to see how badly he was messing up," Spakes wrote in a report. "He has a hard time listening and has come from a family with wealth, and he appears to believe he's privileged and entitled with no responsibility."

Couch eventually acknowledged his behavior was wrong, Spakes wrote. Yet when a second officer, Lee Risdon of Lakeside police, handed Couch his citations, the teen replied, "Thanks for ruining my life ... as though it was the fault of the police," according to the report.

A month later, a municipal judge gave Couch six months' probation for possessing and consuming alcohol as a minor. The judge also ordered him to complete an alcohol-awareness course and 12 hours of alcohol-related community service by June 19.

Records indicate Couch did not comply and, four days before the deadline, organized a party at the family's second home outside the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson. Members of the crowd played beer pong and drank Miller Lite that some of them stole that night from Wal-Mart, according to an investigator's report.

Couch, then 16, and a group of friends later piled into his family's truck and sped down the road. When one told him to slow down, he accelerated and nearly hit a vehicle head-on. He swerved back into his lane and then veered into a ditch, striking the roadside crowd that was helping a disabled driver.

Couch's blood-alcohol content was three times the legal limit, records show. Investigators estimated his speed was around 70 mph in a 40 mph zone. As he walked away from the scene of the crash, Couch told witnesses: "I'm Ethan Couch, I can get you out of this," according to court testimony.

He was charged with four counts of intoxication manslaughter and two counts of intoxication assault. His parents sent him to a treatment facility in California.

The center's director, Jamison Monroe Jr., told the AP that Couch "had no structure, no proper role models and definitely no boundaries" when he was growing up.

Couch pleaded guilty to the charges. Then, during the punishment phase of his case, the "affluenza" defense emerged. Miller, the psychologist, testified that his parents had coddled him: "When the rules get tough, the Couches find another way to get it done."

But with treatment, and separation from his family, Miller said he thought Couch could "learn to behave in a way that's civil."

Tarrant County juvenile Judge Jean Boyd sentenced Couch to 10 years' probation after time in a state-run treatment facility. That decision drew outrage, but juvenile law experts say Texas emphasizes rehabilitating child offenders, in contrast to the state's much tougher adult courts.

After sentencing, the family problems continued, records show. Fred Couch was charged in September 2014 with falsely identifying himself as a Lakeside police officer. He told an North Richland Hills officer responding to a disturbance that he'd witnessed, "I have my Lakeside police stuff in the truck," according to a report. He then displayed a shield-style badge. He has a March 18 court hearing.

In early 2015, Tonya Couch was cited after leaving the scene of a minor accident that she caused. Prosecutors later dismissed the case, according to court records.

Ethan Couch faces a Feb. 19 hearing, when a juvenile judge will decide whether his fatal crash case should be transferred to the adult legal system, where probation violations could result in up to 40 years in prison.

The father of one survivor of the drunken-driving crash said he hopes the justice system will finally deliver the kind of "tough love" that Couch's family failed to provide.

"I don't think you're bound by your genetics or even your environment," said Kevin McConnell, whose teenage son Lucas was among those who were hurt. "I think Ethan Couch could find redemption."

Associated Press writer Emily Schmall in Fort Worth contributed to this report.
"Affluenza" teen Ethan Couch faces up to 120 days in jail if a judge rules he violated his probation, but his case is full of legal question marks, including whether he should be considered a juvenile or an adult.

Authorities believe Couch, 18, and his mother fled Texas after an online video appeared to show Couch at a party where people were drinking. Couch had been sentenced to 10 years' probation in juvenile court for the 2013 drunken-driving crash, and the terms prohibit him from drinking or leaving Tarrant County, Texas.

Couch and his mother were apprehended in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Dec. 28, after a call for delivery pizza tipped off authorities to their whereabouts.

The teen has been detained at the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center in North Fort Worth since returning to the U.S.

At a hearing Friday morning, a juvenile court judge ruled that Couch would remain held in a juvenile facility for now, although he could later be transferred to the adult Tarrant County jail.

Criminal defense attorney Scott Palmer joins NBC 5 live to discuss whats next in the case against affluenza teen Ethan Couch after his return to North Texas.

His attorneys released the following statement Thursday afternoon:

"As we previously indicated would happen, Ethan voluntarily returned to the United States today. As required by the Texas Family Code, the 323rd District Court will conduct a brief detention hearing tomorrow concerning Ethans status pending further proceedings in this case. We expect the Judge to order Ethan to remain in the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Facility at this time. Now that Ethan is back in Tarrant County and will be personally present in court at the upcoming hearing on the States Motion to Transfer, we anticipate that the Court will lawfully transfer his probation to an appropriate Tarrant County District Court with adult criminal jurisdiction. Under the law, the transfer will become effective upon Ethans nineteenth birthday in April. We are optimistic that, going forward, Ethan will comply with all court-imposed terms and conditions and that he will successfully complete his term of probation."  Scott Brown and Wm. Reagan Wynn Counsel for Ethan Couch

Another hearing is set for Feb. 19, when a judge will hear arguments about whether Couch should be certified as an adult. That is separate from the question of whether he should be kept in an adult jail for now.

The penalty for allegedly violating his probation, by running to Mexico, is 120 days in jail.

Ethan Couch faces a maximum 120 days in jail for violating his probation, but his future is full of legal question marks.

The question then is, if a judge does sentence him to the full 120 days, when does that sentence begin? Does the time he's been locked up in Mexico for several weeks count toward that sentence?

Prosecutors said they will argue the clock should start on his 19th birthday, which is April 11. His defense attorneys will no doubt argue the 120 days should have started when he was captured in Mexico last month.

If prosecutors get everything they want, Couch would get out of jail in August.

Before he is released, prosecutors said they will ask for strict new conditions of probation in the adult system. That means that when Couch gets out, if he violates probation again as an adult, prosecutors could sentence him to at least 10 years in prison.

Colleen Sheehey-Church, National President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, delivers a statement about Ethan Couch before his Friday morning hearing in Tarrant County.

Couch's mother, Tonya, faces two to 10 years in jail if she is found guilty of hindering apprehension of a felon, by running with her son to Mexico.
Students at South Oak Cliff High School demanded Dallas Independent School District trustees temporarily remove them from the aging facility in order to allow for a major renovation.

"Leaks have gotten so bad that we've upgraded from buckets to trash cans. These problems have drained our students and staff to the max and enough is enough," said senior David Johnson.

Johnson led a large group of students who walked out in protest of the school's condition last year.

The district has spent more than $3 million to make immediate repairs to the 64-year-old facility, but students said they've lost their patience.

"We're kind of fed up, to be honest. We've been neglected for so long, I honestly don't feel like the district takes us seriously," said senior Gianni Alexander, the school's valedictorian. "I'm pretty sure kids will make that sacrifice  that one year sacrifice, two years, whatever it takes  so students of another generation can come and go to a good school."

The issues facing the Marsalis Avenue campus have been well documented. The roof leaks, classrooms are too hot or too cold, and ceiling tiles are crumbling. The district plans to spend nearly $11 million in voter-approved bond funds to make repairs, but that won't cover all of the school's needs.

For that reason, some of the school's alumni took the students' request a step further.

"Bulldoze the whole school and build a totally new one," said Reginald Hill, a 1983 graduate. "It will be good for us. It will be good for the community. It will be good for Oak Cliff."

Next month trustees will vote to distribute more than half of the $1.6 million in bond funding. The group has the flexibility to allocate more money to South Oak Cliff High School.
A North Texas school is shutting down Friday because of a stomach virus.[[366922911,C]]

Sixty-five students at Celeste Elementary in Celeste have come down with the bug. Celeste is located about 15 miles north of Greenville in Hunt County.

Teachers first started noticing signs of the virus Wednesday afternoon. They say when 50 students didn't show up to school today, they knew it had spread.

In addition to the 50 students who never made it to class Thursday, another 15 had to be sent home after developing symptoms.

I just thought it was typical sickness going around, but since they closed the school, I guess its kind of getting serious, parent Vicki Semmler said.

We talked with a couple parents that had taken their kids to the doctor and they said it was just a virus, Celeste ISD Superintendent Brad Connelly said.

Celeste Elementary will be closed Friday after about 65 students came down with a stomach virus. Cleaning crews will spend the day disinfecting the building.

Connelly says custodial and maintenance staff will deep clean the elementary school Friday to try to stop the virus from spreading.

Were trying to do our due diligence and make sure that anything we can do to stop the spread of it from our own kids. We want them to be healthy and at school so thats why we chose to go ahead and stop school tomorrow, Connelly said.

There are 235 students attending the school.

Connelly says the virus has mainly affected pre-k and kindergarten classes, but started to spread to other grades Thursday.

He says he plans to apply for an attendance waiver so they won't have to make up the day later this year.


Kim Richards is returning to reality TV. And this time, she's bringing her daughter Kimberly Jackson along.

E! News has learned that the former "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star and her youngest child will be one of six mother-daughter pairs profiled on Lifetime's new reality series, "The Mother/Daughter Experiment: Celebrity Edition."

The show will premiere March 1 at 10 p.m. on the network, when the six pairs will attempt to repair their broken relationships by airing all their dirty laundry. They'll be under the guidance of therapist Dr. Debbie Magids as they undergo therapy.

Richards and Jackson will work on their bond alongside "The Hills" alum Heidi Pratt and her mother, Darlene Egelhoff, who were estranged for two years and are finally ready to address their problems. Egelhoff blames her daughter's fame-seeking ways and husband Spencer Pratt for the rift, while Pratt feels that her mother betrayed her in the media.

Courtney Stodden, who married 51-year-old Doug Hutchison when she was 16, thinks her mom, Krista Stodden, used her for fame. They're reunited on the show after six months of separation, and Krista will spill a major secret about her relationship with Hutchison--she fell in love with him!

The other three mother/daughter duos include "Bad Girls Club's" Natalie Nunn and her mom, Karen; Shar Jackson (yes, the former Mrs. Kevin Federline) and her daughter, Cassie; and "Hollywood Exes'" Jessica Canseco, who is trying to lay down the law after daughter Josie's recent DUI arrest.

PHOTOS: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills OMG moments

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When the dreamers and prognosticators and inventors of old tried to imagine what, in the future, a portal to other places might look like, they likely never quite envisioned the live cam.

Or if they did it probably looked much like the ol' string between two cans. The live cam is not, let us be clear, a lengthy brass tube that runs from place to place, allowing a viewer to peek inside at one end and see what is happening at the other. The tech is rather more advanced, but so are the ways to experience a live cam.

Ways that go beyond our computer screen. Look to The Annenberg Space for Photography, which has invited Explore.org to create an immersive Pearls of the Planet happening at the Century City center's Skylight Studios.

The theme of the latest Pearls of the Planet, which transports viewers to the far reaches of the natural world, is the Pacific Ocean.

True, the Pacific isn't all that far from Century City -- one suspects a lengthy brass tube could reach from Skylight Studios to the beach -- but the live cam experience goes further into the depths. Visitors will call upon the "colorful kelp beds of the Channel Island of Anacapa" as well as the waves of Hawaii and Alaska.

Will orcas and walruses and jellies make cameos? This is a live cam, so, like life, anything could happen.

And it all happens within the aqua-awesome design of the room, a darkened space that includes a photo booth, giant sea floor imagery, and tucked-away spots in which to commune with whatever is going on in the depths of the Pacific, right then, simultaneously.

Surf cinematographer Mike Prickett is the honoree, by the by, of this Pearls of the Planet go-around. Did you visit the last one that alighted in at Skylight Studios? That ventured into the Arctic?

That's part of Explore.org's mission: To pair people with nature through the modern portal of the live cam. Pair it with a beautiful thematic setting, and you're going beyond dipping a toe in the water, as far as watching a live cam.

Pearls of the Planet is in Century City through March 20, 2016.
A U.S. Navy commander admitted Thursday to accepting cash, prostitutes and other bribes in exchange for giving classified ship schedules to a Malaysian defense contractor at the center of a widespread Navy bribery scandal.

Cmdr. Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, 48, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy and bribery. He is the eighth of nine defendants to plead guilty in the scandal.

In his plea agreement, Misiewicz admitted to providing classified Navy ship schedules and other sensitive information to Leonard Glenn Francis  aka Fat Leonard  who was the CEO of Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA).

The plea says Misiewicz used his position in the Navy to help GDMA get military contracts to provide husbanding services, like fuel, tugboats and trash removal, for Navy ships and submarines in various Pacific ports. With the inside information, Francis was able to overbill the U.S. government by more than $20 million.

In exchange, Francis gave Misiewicz cash and luxury travel so the commander and his family could go to the Philippines, Japan, Kuala Lumpur, Cambodia, Singapore and the U.S. Misiewicz also accepted prostitution services on several occasions, the plea deal says.

To keep his actions a secret, Misiewicz and his co-conspirators used clandestine email accounts that they would delete from time to time.

Commander Misiewicz provided information to a foreign contractor that, in the wrong hands, couldve had a devastating impact on national security, said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy in a statment. By giving in to greed, he put his Navy shipmates and fellow Americans in harms way. This guilty plea is an important step in ensuring that all those who violated their duty of trust to the United States in this affair are held accountable.

Misiewicz faces 20 years in prison at his April 29 sentencing.

Francis himself has pleaded guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges, as have six others embroiled in the affair.

Navy Capt. Daniel Dusek admitted to one count of conspiracy of bribery after he was relieved of command on USS Bonhomme Richard.



U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jose Luis Sanchez accepted a plea deal, in which he said he accepted $100,000 cash, entertainment, travel and prostitutes from Francis for proprietary Navy information.



Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edmond A. Aruffo admitted to his role in the scandal in July 2014. He said he worked for GDMA and used letterhead from several Japanese vendors to send the Navy inflated invoices.

Alex Wisidagama, a GDMA company manager and Francis cousin, admitted in court to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.



Senior Navy criminal investigator John Beliveau II said he used his law enforcement training to help Francis avoid detection. Francis paid him with envelopes of cash and travel to Virginia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.



Commander of Carrier Strike Group 7 on USS Ronald Reagan Rear Admiral Michael Miller received a letter of censure along with Rear Admiral Terry Kraft, who was commanding officer on the same ship, and Rear Admiral David Pimpo, who once served as supply officer of the aircraft carrier. The letter is seen as a career-ending development for the officers.



Navy Lt. Cmdr. Todd Dale Malaki pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery after admitting to taking gifts from GDMA starting in 2006 with a deluxe room at the Grand Hyatt Singapore. He twice accepted envelopes with Singapore dollars equivalent to $1,500 and the services of a prostitute after visiting a karaoke club in Malaysia.

Navy Petty Officer First Class Dan Layug was sentenced to 27 months in prison for accepting cash, travel and a bucket list of video games and gadgets from Francis.

Only one defendant accused in the scandal, former Department of Defense civilian employee Paul Simpkins, is awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty to charges against him.


The insect believed to be linked to the fast-spreading, highly-publicized Zika virus has been detected in San Diego, health officials confirm, but there have not been any local cases of the disease reported.

Dr. Wilma Wooten, of the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA), said the insect  the Aedes aegypti mosquito  has been seen, in small numbers, throughout San Diego County over the past 18 months. The mosquito species, which experts believe transfer the Zika virus, has also been detected in Los Angeles County.

Dr. Wooten told NBC 7 on Thursday that the Department of Environmental Health is tracking the mosquito locally. So far, health officials have not found any of the mosquitos detected in San Diego County to be carrying the Zika virus.

For now, San Diego County health officials are not testing for Zika. Unless someone contracts the disease locally, Dr. Wooten said officials dont plan on testing the Aedes aegypti mosquitos for the virus.

Dr. Wooten said the mosquitos dont travel very far. She said only a small number of the insects have been spotted locally.

Health officials said the mosquito species is not native to California.

The countys website describes the insect as a dark-colored mosquito with white stripes on its legs and back. The mosquito is an aggressive biter both indoors and outdoors, especially during daytime hours. It prefers to lay eggs in small containers such as plant saucers, buckets and watering cans. Aedes aegypti eggs can survive without water for up to several months.

Because of where the mosquitos like to lay eggs, Dr. Wooten said residents should take the time to remove any standing water they may have inside or outside. Its also smart to wear insect repellent, as a precaution, and be on alert for the insects.

Currently, health experts believe the Aedes aegypti mosquito is found predominantly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the Zika virus is spreading explosively, and will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts Monday to decide if the outbreak should be declared an international health emergency.

The disease has been linked to birth defects and neurological problems. Scientists say the Americas could see up to 4 million cases of Zika in the next year.

For more information on Zika, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website here.


Federal, state and local law enforcement say the South Florida streets are safer after several agencies joined forces to take down dozens of dangerous criminals.

A total of 55 arrests were made with allegations ranging from selling drugs and guns to more violent crimes, officials announced at a news conference Thursday in Miami-Dade. Authorities say the crackdown started in Liberty City with only a few suspects but investigative work found a larger crime connection.

Drugs, cash and weapons were also seized as a result of the violence reduction partnership headed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.

"Which strategically focuses all of our resources into specific neighborhoods and communities that are plagued by high levels of crimes. We call these hot spot communities," U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said.

In Miami-Dade, the hot spot communities were identified as Overtown, Liberty City, Little Haiti and Miami Gardens.

"Truly it's only a few individuals in these hot spots that are creating all the havoc," Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez said.

Perez said the arrests are proof the streets will be a little safer. Almost 50 guns were taken off the streets and heroin and cocaine were seized.

"Eight of them qualify for the federal arm career criminal statue, which is the federal three strikes," ATF Special Agent in Charge Carlos Canino said. "Believe me, you have to try hard at being a criminal to reach that level."

From the streets of Miami-Dade to across the United States' southern border, authorities said those arrested were working at high criminal levels.

"Cases today started by focusing and targeting our resources on a couple of individuals who were known to be selling firearms and crack cocaine in the Liberty city area," Ferrer said. "During the investigation these incredible agents and officers discovered a vast network of different drug trafficking organizations and enterprises. And the distributions of theses drugs were so extensive, that we found that some of the suppliers and some of the original sources of the contraband like heroin were coming from Mexico."
Sheriff's officials said Friday that all three escaped inmates were spotted in the San Jose area, likely using the white GMC van that was stolen from South Los Angeles last Saturday.

A manager at the Alameda Motel in San Jose on Friday said he believed all three inmates stayed at his motel on Tuesday and Wednesday, before leaving Thursday morning.

One of them, Bac Duong, 43, of Santa Ana, apparently made it back to the Santa Ana area on his own, and he surrendered to authorities Friday morning, said Orange County Sheriff's Department Lt. Jeff Hallock.

After Duong was captured, sheriff's deputies surrounded a used car dealership near the site of the arrest. Aerial video showed law enforcement officers with guns drawn in the lot, looking into vehicles and large sheds on the Auto Electric Rebuilders property. (Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly named Tripoli Auto Sales as the property.)

It was not immediately clear whether authorities believe the remaining two fugitives are on the lot, but no additional arrests were reported early Friday afternoon.

Duong disappeared from the Central Men's Jail early Jan. 22, along with Jonathan Tieu, 20, of Fountain Valley, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, of Newport Beach.

Duong was taken into custody Friday after he approached someone on a Santa Ana street and asked to contact police, said OC Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. Le Tran told NBC4 News that he saw Duong smoking a cigarette as he waited for authorities to arrest him at the Tran family's Auto Electric Rebuilders shop on Harbor Boulevard. He said he does not know how Duong got to the shop, but that his sister knew Duong and might have visited him while he was in jail.

Duong was arrested at about 11:30 a.m. Friday, Hutchens said. She did not provide details regarding the encounter with the "civilian," but authorities confirmed Duong was located in the 1400 block of North Harbor Boulevard.

Nayeri had been in custody since September 2014, Tieu since October 2013 and Duong since December.

Duong allegedly shot a man Nov. 18, 2015 after an argument on the patio of a Santa Ana home. He was charged with one felony count of attempted murder, one felony count of assault with a firearm, one felony count of first-degree residential burglary, one felony count of shooting at an inhabited dwelling or house, one felony count of assault with a firearm with sentencing enhancements for the personal use of a firearm, personal discharge of a firearm and great bodily injury.

He was being held without bail on an immigration hold pending a possible federal deportation hearing.

Duong also faces sentencing enhancements for a prior strike conviction for first-degree burglary in 1995 in San Diego County, prior prison convictions for second-degree burglary in 2007, reckless evading of a peace officer in 2008 and possession for sale of a controlled substance in 2011. Prior to the escape, Duong was scheduled for a pretrial hearing on Feb. 8.

The arrest comes after news of a teacher at Central Men's Jail in Orange County, who had a "significant role" in the planning of the jailbreak. The 44-year-old Lake Forest woman was arrested Thursday on suspicion of accessory to a felony in helping the inmates escape from lockup in downtown Santa Ana.

She allegedly provided the men with Google Earth maps of the jail complex, according to investigators. One of the escaped inmates, Nayeri, took her class at the Central Men's Jail and developed a relationship with her, said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock.

Hallock said around 10 people have been arrested since the escape a week ago Friday. Several other arrests  for unrelated warrants or probation issues  have also taken place during the manhunt. Hallock said investigators believe the escaped inmates stole a white GMC Savana utility van in the South Los Angeles area on Saturday, and the inmates may be living out of it.

The van has paper license plates from Felix Chevrolet, with plate number 8U66466, although the plates may have been removed and replaced.

The three inmates disappeared after a 5 a.m. body count in the jail, but they were not discovered missing until close to 9 p.m., when the second daily body count was conducted. The made their way to the rooftop, then rappelled down about six stories.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Wednesday she suspects Nayeri was the "mastermind" of the breakout based on his military training in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The search for the escaped inmates has focused heavily on a Vietnamese gang active in Westminster and Garden Grove.

On Tuesday, the Orange County Board of Supervisors quadrupled the reward for information that leads to the inmates' recapture, boosting it to $200,000. The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service pledged the initial $50,000.

Nayeri is accused of participating in an attack, including torture, against a Newport Beach resident who ran a licensed marijuana dispensary in Santa Ana. Tieu faces murder and attempted murder charges in connection with a gang hit. Duong faces an attempted murder charge and was being held without bail on an immigration hold pending a possible federal deportation hearing.

Tip Hotline: 714-628-7085 | Submit a Tip
Via Agencia Brasil: Zika: Brasil esta diante de epidemia que chama a atencao do mundo, diz ministro.[Brazil at focus of epidemic that draws attention of the world, says minister] Edited version of the Google translation:

The Minister of Health, Marcelo Castro, said today (29) that Brazil is facing an epidemic that draws the world's attention, when referring to the advance of Zika virus in the country. The statement comes a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) convened an emergency committee to discuss the matter. During a ceremony of mobilization against the Aedes aegypti mosquito in the ministry building itself, Castro said that ministry workers need to set the example first. "We don't have a vaccine or medicine to fight the virus. What remains is the daily and continuous work of destroying mosquito breeding sites." The minister recalled that the Aedes aegypti is currently circulating in at least 113 countries and has been in Brazil for about 30 years. For him, to end the breeding is a difficult task, but not impossible. "The government is doing its part. There has never been in the history of this country such an effective mobilization," he said. "The fundamental and most necessary part is the participation and mobilization of society."
Donald Trump held court in New Hampshire Friday, while his presidential competitors in both parties hustled through Iowa in a last-minute scramble to win over fence-sitters before the state's crucial caucuses.

Hundreds of voters waited Trump's arrival in Nashua for a rally scheduled the morning after a Fox News debate the Republican front-runner shunned in favor of hosting his own show  an event dedicated to veterans. In Trump's absence, his rivals pummeled each other over health care and immigration in an earnest attempt to show they're the party's best Trump alternative.

Ted Cruz's campaign is aiming to show he will have the cash to go toe-to-toe with the real estate magnate. The Texas senator's campaign announced Friday it started the year with about $19 million in available money, giving him a financial edge over most of his Republican rivals.

Earlier, his campaign said he'd raised almost $47 million in all of last year, and this month he has continued to collect contributions at a healthy clip. All candidates must report their year-end fundraising and spending activities to federal regulators by Sunday night.

Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe announced the cash-on-hand figure during a media breakfast hosted by Bloomberg Politics Friday morning.

Roe added that his organization's figures show there are 9,131 Iowans choosing between Cruz and Donald Trump, 2,807 people choosing between Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and 3,185 deciding between Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

"We know the votes that we need, we know the names, their addresses, their emails," Roe said.

Meanwhile, Trump maintains a commanding lead in New Hampshire polls despite his decision not to follow traditional rules of campaigning in the first primary state. He holds large rallies rather than intimate town halls where voters can ask pointed questions and grab a photograph or handshake.

But most candidates were focused Friday on the first hurdle  Monday's Iowa caucuses. Trump's rivals, Cruz, Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, all planned a full day of campaigning in the state.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders planned to keep the heat on Hillary Clinton, focusing his efforts on rousing a big turnout from his young supporters and other first-time caucus goers.

The battle was also playing out television, where a blitz of last-minute advertisements told the story.

Sanders has a new ad blasting Goldman Sachs  and by extension Clinton, who collected speaking fees from the giant Wall Street bank. A narrator in the 30-second spot says Goldman helped trigger the financial crisis. "How does Wall Street get away with it? Millions in campaign contributions and speaking fees."

Late-breaking commercial messages are even more pointed in the Republican contest.

Cruz began targeting Rubio in one ad, a sign the Texan sees his fellow senator as a strong competitor in Iowa. In recent polls, Cruz and Trump have led, but Rubio has ticked upward in support.

"Rubio betrayed our trust," the Cruz commercial says. It first shows a Rubio 2010 campaign video where the Floridian vows to fight efforts to give "blanket amnesty" to illegal immigrants and then footage of Rubio promoting a "Gang of Eight" Senate bill that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for some.

One more advertising twist: Guess who has been leading in Republican candidate money spent on Iowa media? It's the master of free publicity, Trump, advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG shows. In the four weeks beginning Jan. 5, Trump's campaign has spent $3.4 million, a million more than his next closest spending competitor, Rubio.
A Delaware school district suspended an elementary and middle school music teacher amid allegations that she acted inappropriately with a student.

Neither police nor the Appoquinimink School District in Middletown disclosed the nature of the allegations against violinist Nicole Veneroso, outside of state police  who wouldnt identify Veneroso by name since she isnt charged  saying that the allegations involved a student.

Veneroso began teaching music at Everett Meredith Middle, Silver Lake Elementary and Townsend Elementary schools this past fall, taught private music lessons online and in person; and she also performed with the Audubon Symphony Orchestra and Newark Symphony Orchestra, according to her music website.

On another music teaching page, Veneroso says music is my passion, and I love teaching, because I get to share that with my students.

Appoquinimink superintendent Matt Burrows sent a letter home to parents Wednesday night.

Due to the seriousness of the allegations, Ms. Veneroso was removed from the classroom and law enforcement officials were immediately notified, wrote Burrows. She has been placed on administrative leave and may not enter our premises or have contact with students.

In the letter, the district said it will cooperate with Delaware State Police during the investigation and hoped to hold an information session for parents as well as staff.

Burrows also wanted to alert those who took lessons with Veneroso outside the classroom.

It is our understanding that Ms. Veneroso conducted private lessons in the community, said Burrows. Families who had a child taking classes outside of school are encouraged to take the information under advisement.

An Appoquinimink district spokeswoman didnt immediately return NBC10s calls for comment.

Anyone with concerns should contact the Delaware State Police Youth Aid Division at (302) 365-8469, said the letter.

Veneroso has not been charged. NBC10 reached out to her for comment but have not heard back.
Detectives are searching for a suspect in the murder of a Delaware man inside a New Castle home.

About 10 p.m. Thursday, New Castle County Police were called to a home on the 900 block of Eider Court in the community of Mallard Pointe.

Inside, they found 47-year-old Shawn Spence dead on the first floor. Officials haven't said what injuries Spence suffered, but described them as "significant."

"We received a telephone call to our dispatchers asking for a check on the welfare. They were concerned about someone that lived here. Our officers responded and they found an adult male deceased, Cpl. Tracey Duffy of the New Castle County Police Department said.

Spence did not live in the home, but Gregory Parker did. Investigators issued a murder arrest warrant for the 52-year-old basketball trainer and are currently searching for him.

Neighbors told NBC10 Parker ran basketball clinics and didn't have a car. Attempts to contact him through Facebook and by phone have been unsuccessful.

Parker is the boyfriend of the homeowner, who police haven't identified. That woman works out of town during the week, officials said.

Spence's brother, Jermaine Johnson, asked the person who killed his brother to turn himself in to police.

"Ain't nobody worth killing...Turn yourself in before somebody else finds you," he said.

Parker is described as a bald man with brown eyes standing 6-foot-8 and weighing approximately 225 pounds.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the New Castle County Police Department at 302-573-2800.
It was clear, even before it started, that Thursday night's Republican presidential debate would be dramatically different.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump had voluntarily given up his regular place at center stage. He skipped the debate, preferring to mount a rally across town to punish Fox News Channel for "toying" with him.

The billionaire businessman's absence was addressed early and then his Republican rivals quickly moved on, getting a far better opportunity to shine. Overall, the two-hour affair featured a sober tone focused more on substance than personality.

There were exceptions, of course, as Ted Cruz defended his authenticity and Marco Rubio faced pointed questions on immigration.

But just days before Iowa's leadoff caucuses, there were none of the breakout moments that have sometimes characterized the more colorful debates featuring Trump, battling Cruz for first place in the 2016 primary season's opening contest.

Some takeaways from Thursday's Republican debate:

__

ELEPHANT NOT IN THE ROOM

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to dominate the stage. There is little doubt he helped his rivals by not showing up.

He was mocked early and largely forgotten. Cruz set the tone with a sarcastic impression of his top rival: "I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly," Cruz said. Then he thanked his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by showing up.

"I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me," said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a frequent target of Trump.

Beyond a few playful jabs, the two-hour debate was a Trump-free zone, one of the few such events in the race so far.

__

CRUZ THE FRONT-RUNNER

Cruz fought to make sure he was positioned at center stage in Trump's absence. And he embraced the role of de facto front-runner at the outset, pointing out that he was being attacked by several rivals  even before there were any pointed exchanges.

Cruz later faced sharp questions on immigration, national security and, perhaps most importantly, whether he was trustworthy. Trust is the theme of the fiery conservative's campaign, and several candidates questioned his authenticity.

"Ted, throughout this campaign, you've been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes," Rubio charged.

Cruz fought back by accusing Rubio of bending to the will of donors on immigration.

__

NO AMNESTY FOR RUBIO

Rubio did not help himself among the conservatives who question his position on immigration. The issue is by far his greatest vulnerability as he tries to convince skeptical GOP activists that he doesn't support so-called amnesty.

The debate moderators played a series of video clips highlighting Rubio's apparent shift on the issue, which put the first-term senator on the defensive at the outset of a key exchange.

At best, Rubio may have clouded the issue of whether he had backed off his earlier calls for comprehensive legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship.

But rival Jeb Bush seemed to get the best of him in an exchange in which Bush questioned Rubio's retreat on the issue.

"You shouldn't cut and run," Bush charged.

___

BUSH CLOUDS LANE

Bush repeatedly beat back questions about his long-term viability in the 2016 contest, insisting he has a path to the nomination and would ultimately defeat leading Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"We're just starting. The first vote hasn't been counted. Why don't we let the process work?" Bush said.

Overall, Bush had more success on the debate stage without having to contend with Trump. His strength  and full-steam-ahead approach  was a pointed reminder that the fight for the party's mainstream wing is far from over.

Bush and Rubio are competing with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to win over the GOP's centrist wing. Some party officials hoped Rubio would have emerged as the consensus choice by now.

Bush defended rounds of anti-Rubio attack ads.

"This is beanbag compared to what the Clinton hit machine is going to do to the Republican nominee," Bush said.

___

TRUMP'S COUNTERPROGRAMMING

It was a risky move politically, but Donald Trump helped raise $6 million to benefit veterans at an event three miles away from the debate stage.

Instead of going after his rivals on national television, Trump read out the names of wealthy friends who'd pledged major contributions to veterans' causes. When he announced he'd pledged $1 million himself, the crowd erupted into cheers.

He explained to the Drake University crowd that he had little choice but to skip the debate. Trump admitted he didn't know if the decision would hurt him in the polls, but tried to cast it as a sign of strength.

"You have to stick up for your rights. When you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights," he said.

As for the debate, Trump predicted it would have far fewer viewers without him on the stage. That may be true, but Iowa voters will decide in four days whether Trump hurt his chances in the 2016 race simply to prove a point.
In what is likely a lesson learned from the restaurant industry's outcry over the papal visit, officials with the Democratic National Convention said they want to ensure open communication with area restaurateurs.

The Democratic National Convention Committee CEO announced Thursday that organizers will take part in a Twitter chat on Feb. 16 dedicated to addressing the questions and concerns that members of the restaurant industry have about the July 25-28 convention.

"We're committed to ensuring participation is smooth and communication is open," said DNCC CEO Rev. Leah Daughtry during a press conference at year-old The Olde Bar in Old City where officials discussed finances, volunteer goals and opportunities for local business.

Mayor Jim Kenney brought up Pope Francis' visit on his own, indicating local restaurants are likely to have a much different experience in July compared with the papal weekend.

"Even though we were wonderfully blessed by the pope during his visit, there were some glitches about expectations for the restaurant industry," Kenney said. Pointing out some of the differences between the two national events  like the multiple public stops made by Pope Francis that required heavy security, the mayor, along with Daughtry, said restaurants, bars and other businesses should be prepared. Read more about Kenney's comments on PBJ.com.

For the latest business news check out the Philadelphia Business Journal.

The DNC takes place in Philly from July 25 to 28.
Maryland State Police are shutting down a long-running gun safety program due to ineffectiveness.

The program, part of a landmark gun law passed in 2000, required the agency to create a massive database of firearms shell casings. Though troopers managed to store and meticulously file hundreds of thousands of casings, the system is being scrapped due to outdated technology.

The Responsible Gun Safety Act of 2000 was passed in Maryland with great fanfare, including an appearance by President Bill Clinton at the official bill-signing. The law mandated firearms manufacturers provide state police with a spent bullet casing of every handgun to be sold in Maryland. Those casings would be used to build a sweeping database to help investigators match bullets found at crime scenes with the firearms used to commit the crimes.

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The database never worked as it was intended to work, Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said.

While evidence in the database helped with about two dozen prosecutions over 16 years, the casings never directly led investigators to a firearm used in a crime, Shipley said.

State legislators passed legislation in 2015 authorizing state police to mothball the program. The agency permitted News4 I-Team access to the large state government complex, a former fallout shelter near Baltimore, in which the cache of bullet casings is stored. More than 300,000 casings are neatly filed, barcoded and stored in a series of boxes and cabinets by state police experts.

The agency is uncertain about its future plans for the casings, Shipley said.

Part of the legislation passed to end the program authorized state police to sell these shell casings for scrap and have that money put into the state general fund, he said. We are not doing that immediately, to ensure that were not eliminating a database that may be useful.

The database was utilized by Prince Georges County prosecutors to convict 21-year-old Robert Garner of a 2004 murder in Oxon Hill. Though the casing failed to help investigators locate the firearm used in the homicide, the database was used to connect the defendant to the crime scene. A jury found Garner guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Relatives of the victim, Kelvin Braxton, said jurors appeared persuaded by the shell casing evidence produced by the database. Braxtons sister told the I-Team jurors body language changed after seeing the presentations of the casings.

The jurors kind of had like a wild look on their face  almost to say, Thats all I needed to see, KeMia Braxton said.

She said her family is thankful for the years of work and effort by state police to complete the database.

Shipley said the agency is still well-positioned to solve gun crimes, through the use of DNA and fingerprint databases.

Those databases have been much more efficient in their operation in Maryland, he said. Weve had much more success in their use.
A man who works as a school bus aide was charged with sending lewd photographs of himself to a teenager at a Fairfax County school for students with special needs.

Morrice Stephenson, 24, was arrested Friday after a 16-year-old girl reported he sent her inappropriate photos and explcit text messages, Fairfax County police said.

Administrators at Quander Road School called police when the student reported the incident. Stephen sent three explicit photos to the student in November and December, police said.

Detectives arrested and charged Stephenson, of Alexandria, with two felony counts of soliciting a minor using a communication device. Stephenson turned himself into police and let them inspect his phone, where police found the photos.

Stephenson and the minor are acquaintances, police said.

Stephenson was suspended without pay the day of this arrest, officials at the Alexandria school said. The school is located in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

Bus aides are school employees who help students and ensure safety during bus rides.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 1-866-411-TIPS or 703-691-2131, visit www.fairfaxcrimesolvers.org or send a text message to CRIMES with TIP187 plus your message.
A Virginia Department of Transportation worker and a driver were hurt in northern Virginia Friday afternoon when a pickup truck driver ran off I-66, police say. The VDOT employee had stopped to help the driver of a disabled vehicle.

The VDOT employee and the driver of the disabled vehicle suffered serious injuries, Virginia State Police said.

The VDOT employee stopped near mile marker 51 of I-66 in Fairfax County to help someone with a disabled vehicle on the shoulder of the road. They were standing outside their cars when the pickup truck driver veered off the road, police said.

The pickup slammed into the disabled vehicle first, police said. The pickup then struck the VDOT employee and the other driver.

Police responded about 12:30 p.m.

The VDOT employee, the driver of the disabled vehicle and the driver of the pickup truck also were taken to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The pickup truck suffered serious damage in the crash; the front of the car was crushed, a photo shows.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. Charges against the driver are pending, police said.
The Guardian has what may be the worst news of a bad-news day: Zika virus: Colombia warns of spike in patients with related paralysis disorder. Excerpt:

Colombia has seen a sharp spike in the number of patients diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder that can cause paralysis among people with the Zika virus, the health minister has said.

In the past week we have seen a substantial increase in the number of people reported with Guillain-Barre, said health minister Alejandro Gaviria, referring to a rare syndrome that causes a persons own immune system to damage nerve cells, leading to muscle weakness and sometimes, paralysis.

A week ago only about 15 people infected with Zika were reported with the syndrome. I think that figure now is in the hundreds, he said on Thursday.

Gaviria said one neurologist in the northern coastal city of Cartagena had said he would normally see three cases of Guillain-Barre (GBS) in a year. Now hes seeing three in one day, Gaviria said.

Until now most health alerts in the more than 20 countries where the Zika virus has been detected have concentrated on pregnant women, since the virus can cause microcephaly and brain damage to the foetus. Authorities in several Latin American countries have called on women to delay pregnancy until the outbreak eases.

GBS, however, can affect the wider population. Its our most important concern today, the minister said.
D.C. Council member Jack Evans has been elected chairman of Metro's Board of Directors.

Evans was elected unanimously at Thursday's Metro board meeting.

The board came under scrutiny after a series of safety lapses on the nation's second-largest transit network. Last January, an electrical malfunction caused a train to fill with smoke inside a downtown Washington tunnel, killing one passenger and sickening dozens more.

The board also struggled to find a new general manager for the agency. Paul Wiedefeld took over in November after Metro was under interim leadership for almost all of 2015.

The 16-member board includes appointees from the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and the federal government. Evans was appointed last year.

Evans, a Democrat, has prioritized securing more federal funding for Metro.
A woman who taught English classes at Orange County's Central Men's Jail was arrested Thursday for allegedly helping three inmates escape from the lockup last week, a jailbreak that prompted a massive manhunt throughout Southern California.

Ravaghi Nooshafarin has been teaching English-as-a-second-language classes at the jail since July 2015, according to Orange County Sheriff's Department Lt. Jeff Hallock. She came to the United States after studying in Tehran and Paris. She earned her master's degree in education from Cal State Fullerton, college officials said.

One of the escaped inmates, Hossein Nayeri, 37, of Newport Beach, took her class and developed a relationship with Ravaghi, according to Hallock. Working for the Rancho Santigo Community College district led Noosha, as she is called, to teach English as a second-language class at the Santa Ana Jail. Nayeri took her class.

The exact nature of her alleged assistance was still being investigated, but she is believed to have provided information such as Google maps to Nayeri, the alleged mastermind of the Jan. 22 escape.

Hallock said Ravaghi, a 44-year-old Lake Forest resident who works for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, denied providing Nayeri with any tools used in the escape. It's not immediately clear if she has an attorney.

Hallock said investigators also believe the escaped inmates stole a white GMC Savana utility van from a "private party" on Saturday in the South Los Angeles area, and the inmates may be living out of it.

The van has paper license plates from Felix Chevrolet, with the plate number 8U66466, although the plates may have been removed and replaced, authorities said.

Hallock said around 10 people have been arrested in connection with the escape so far, and several other arrests for unrelated warrants or probation issues have also been made during the manhunt.

The news comes as a rooftop view from the Orange County Jail shows the dramatic six-story drop to the ground that the three inmates took during their escape last week, leading to a manhunt that entered its sixth day Thursday. The inmates somehow made their way to the roof, cut through razor wire surrounding its edge, then rappelled down to the ground, authorities said. The fugitives had a 16-hour head-start Friday when they fled the high-security lockup in Santa Ana.

In addition to Nayeri, the other two escapees were identified as Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Bac Duong, 43. They were awaiting trials for unrelated violent crimes when they vanished from a dormitory they shared with about 65 other men at the jail. Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens called the escape "every sheriff's nightmare during a news conference Wednesday when she announced five arrests were made in connection with the investigation.

She declined to provide details about the arrests, but said more are possible in the next few days.

Around 30 warrants have been served since the escape was discovered. Those warrants were served and homes and used to search for electronic devices, such as computers and phones.

The men are believed to have escaped shortly after a 5 a.m. physical body count, one of two that take place each day at the jail. The disappearance wasn't discovered until about 9 p.m., during the second daily head count, which was to have started at 8 p.m. but was delayed by an altercation possibly staged to help delay discovery of the escape, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

Authorities were continuing to investigate whether other inmates had a hand in the escape, notably through the altercation that delayed the 8 p.m. body count.

The men cut through a steel grate, half-inch steel bars and plumbing tunnels early Friday before making their way to an unsecured part of the jail's roof and using makeshift ropes to rappel several floors to the ground.

Nayeri, of Newport Beach, was in custody on kidnapping and torture charges for the abduction of a marijuana clinic owner who Nayeri allegedly drove to the desert and burned with a blowtorch. The victim, his attackers thought he had stashed money in the desert, was also sexually mutilated, prosecutors said.

Nayeri fled the United States to Iran. Authorities do not have extradition agreements with Iran, where Nayeri has family, so investigators used a ruse to get him to the Czech Republic, which is more cooperative with the U.S. for extraditing fugitives, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. Nayeri was arrested in Prague while changing flights from Iran to Spain to visit family, Murphy said.

Tieu, of Fountain Valley, faces murder and attempted murder charges in connection with a gang hit, prosecutors said, and Bac Duong, of Santa Ana, faces an attempted murder charge and was being held without bail on an immigration hold pending a possible federal deportation hearing.

Duong was ordered deported from the United States in 1998, but remained in the country. His appeal was dismissed and Duong was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2003, but later released on an order of supervision. He complied with that order until August 2014, according to ICE, which lodged a detainer against him following his Orange County arrest and sought notification before his release.

Robert Kovacik and City News Service contributed to this report.
Thanks to Greg Folkers for sending the link to this ahead-of-print report in Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases: Zika Virus: Emergence and Emergency. The author, Stephen Higgs, is editor of the journal and president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene. Excerpt:

As with any blood-borne pathogen, transmission via contaminated blood, for example by transfusion is always a possibility (Musso, et al. 2014), however, another relatively new discovery related to ZIKV is the capacity for sexual transmission (Foy, et al. 2011) probably due to survival of the virus in semen (Musso, et al. 2015). Although in 2014 Besnard (Besnard, et al. 2014) reported perinatal transmission from mothers to newborns, nobody was prepared for what is happening since ZIKV was introduced into Brazil in May of 2015.

Predictably, the virus has spread to neighboring countries in the region and there have been travel-related cases in several countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. Recent new adult consequences of ZIKV infection have included Guillain-Barre syndrome (Oehler, et al. 2014), however, the tragedy of Zika in Brazil, is a hitherto unseen phenomenon of newborns being delivered with microcephaly  reduced brain size  apparently as a result of their mothers being infected during pregnancy. Almost 4000 cases have been recorded with over 40 deaths.

As with all mosquito-borne disease, people living in or visiting an area with ongoing transmission are advised to minimize the risk of exposure to infected mosquitoes, for example by using an appropriate repellant, dressing in long pants and long sleeves, and staying indoors at times when mosquitoes are most actively feeding. At a community level, reducing habitats which are conducive to mosquito breeding is important.

Organized mosquito control efforts using traditional adulticides and larvicides is also important, but new approaches with genetically engineered mosquitoes for example, the release of insects with a dominant lethal gene (RIDL) is being implemented in Brazil (Alphey, et al. 2010).

What is new for ZIKV is that as a result of the growing epidemic and the severity of cases, several countries including Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Jamaica have recommended that women avoid becoming pregnant  with El Salvador's recommendation lasting until 2018.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended postponing travel to areas with ongoing transmission and is updating travel advisories as the epidemic spreads.

The World Health Organization has stated that the virus will spread across the Americas except for Canada and Chile. This may be true if ZIKV continues to be transmitted only by the currently known vector species, but it is possible that as it is introduced into new areas, then new vector species may become involved. Even Canada and Chile may not be safe.

New diagnostic kits are under development, and there are calls for increased research and efforts to produce new vaccines. Clearly there is much to learn and much to do, but I fear that we will still be left with the question, What's next?
A man stabbed his ex-wife to death Wednesday evening in Norton, Massachusetts, before crashing his pickup truck on I-495 and seriously injuring another woman, prosecutors say.

According to the Bristol County District Attorney's Office, 35-year-old Martin McDonald of Weymouth stabbed 34-year-old Julie Meede at an apartment on Holmes Street in Norton. Police were called to the scene just before 7:30 p.m. and found Meede unresponsive.

The victim was taken to Sturdy Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead.

About a minute after the stabbing was reported, state police learned of a serious crash on I-495. Police say McDonald was driving his Dodge Ram southbound when it crossed the median and slammed into a Nissan.

The 30-year-old Smithfield, Rhode Island, woman who was driving the other vehicle was taken to Rhode Island Hospital with serious injuries.

McDonald will be arraigned for murder Thursday morning in Attleboro District Court. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.
Gov. Dannel Malloy proposed Connecticut become the first state to raise the age limit of a youthful offender in order to reform the state's criminal justice system



What Im trying to do, because I can give you the statistics that show that this will make us safer is to prevent people from becoming permanent criminals because of basically how they are treated on minor offenses" said Malloy during a press conference at a church in Hartford.



At the heart of the proposals is a plan to raise the age of a youthful offender in Connecticut from 17 to 20 by July 2019. Under the governor's proposal, the age would increase each year up to 2019.



Connecticut would become the first state in the nation to take such a step.



Malloy said there's data that backing the idea of a higher age limit.



We know that the human mind has not reached its full point of maturation until age 25, the governor said.



Malloy added that other areas of society and law accept that some behaviors and products should only be participated in by people of certain ages like the smoking age of 18 and the drinking age of 21.



"Lets extend that to youthful offenders or young offenders with the hope that thats the springboard to avoiding a life of crime, Malloy said.



The other significant part of the governor's announcement was to eliminate bail for misdemeanors.



Judges would maintain discretion on a case-by-case basis but for such cases, bail would no longer exist under the governor's proposal.



The motivation behind the idea is that bail, for many people in Connecticut, is a burdensome requirement that could cripple someone's home and professional lives.



People make $20,000 bail with as little as $250 dollars and generally not more than $2,000, so in essence, well have 550 people in jail for a lack of 2,000," he said.



In a statement, Drew Bloom with the Bail Association of Connecticut wrote:



"The proposals announced today should be made part of the review process that the Governor recently requested the State Sentencing Commission to conduct. Bail reform will have broad ranging impact on many segments of society and comprehensive changes in this area should be carefully vetted so as to avoid serious unintended consequences."
Big stars like Casey Affleck and Chris Pine were in Boston Thursday for the premiere of "The Finest Hours," based on an incredible true story that took place in New England.

The film is about a dramatic Coast Guard rescue off the coast of Chatham, Massachusetts.

Chris Pine plays Bernie Webber, a Coast Guard captain sent on a suicide mission.

His goal is to bring back the crew of an oil tanker, split in two off the coast of Cape Cod, in 1952. Casey Affleck plays the captain of that lost crew, and Thursday night, both actors were at the Loews Theater for the movie's hometown premiere, as was the co-author of the best selling book that inspired the movie.

"People talk about superhero films," said writer Casey Sherman. "This is a movie about superheros. They don't wear capes, they don't wear tights, they wear hand-me-down foul-weather gear from World War Two."

Affleck said he was proud the film was shot in Quincy and in Chatham.

For the Letty Tucci, the daughter of one of the survivors of the SS Pendleton, seeing The Finest Hours will be a surreal experience.

Meanwhile, for a family in Maine, seeing the film will be a surreal experience.

"We never expected a movie to be made of it," said Letty Tucci, daughter of one of the survivors of the SS Pendleton.

Tucci's father, Fred Brown, was a mechanic on the tanker.

"It was an extremely dangerous mission, but had it not been for [the Coast Guard], my dad would have never come home," she said.

Tucci, and her nieces Jennifer White and Caroline West, remember him telling the stories of the storm: seeing the 40-foot waves crash into the ship, feeling it rip the tanker in two, seeing eight officers getting carried off into the waters on the bow, floating away.

"These guys, as brave as they were, joined hands on that ship and prayed," said Tucci.

"The Finest Hours" was made by Disney, so it's appropriate for the whole family. It opens in theaters Friday.
Manchester, New Hampshire Police are investigating two separate shootings they responded to on Tuesday night.

Police say they responded to a shooting incident at 8:50 p.m. and 9:55 p.m. in two different areas of Manchester.

The incidents do not appear to be related.

The first shooting occurred at Town Suites, 686 Huse Road and involved a 42-year-old Boston, Massachusetts resident who told police he was visiting a female friend at the hotel.

An argument broke out which lead to a physical altercation with another male.

The second male sustained serious, but non-life threatening injures to his neck.

Police are asking for the public's help in locating the two parties involved in the incident.

Marcus Cherry, 37, from Manchester, New Hampshire is wanted on two counts of First Degree Assault and one count of Felon in Possession of a Firearm.

Cherry is considered armed and dangerous.

The second person wanted is Ariel Dupuis, 25, of Manchester, New Hampshire and is wanted on a warrant for heroin possession.

The second incident occurred at an apartment located at 545 Pine Street.

A 27-year-old victim told police she was shot in the arm after several men entered the unlocked apartment.

She explained she was visiting the person who lives in the apartment but did not know the man who shot her.

The woman sustained non-life threatening injuries and was transported to a local hospital.

The woman described the suspects as African-American males.

She told police they entered through the rear apartment door and began stealing items from the apartment.

One man shot her in the arm and all the suspects fled after the gun was discharged.

Police are actively seeking the suspects.
A tool kit of terror - including large knives and several guns - was confiscated as evidence, along with wads of cash, during overnight raids of several homes in Massachusetts.

Federal authorities said they charged 56 leaders, members and associates of the violent MS-13 gang in a series of overnight raids in Boston, Chelsea, Somerville, Everett, Revere and Lynn.

Law enforcement said they had taken 37 of them into custody as of late Friday morning. More than 400 officers were involved in making the arrests in Chelsea, East Boston, Everett, Lynn, Revere and Somerville. Some of the indicted defendants were already in custody on federal, state or immigration charges.

"It's a good day for the city," Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said.

The suspects face federal racketeering, drug trafficking and gun charges. Among those arrested was the head of the East Coast MS-13 program.

"Today's operation had considerable impact," FBI Special Agent in Charge Harold Shaw said. "Approximately one-third of MS-13's membership here in Massachusetts was or will be taken off the streets."

The gang is notoriously violent and known for using machetes to kill victims. According to court documents, in 2012, MS-13 became the first and remains the only street gang to be designated by the U.S. government as a "transnational criminal organization." It is an international gang with over 6,000 members in the U.S. and over 30,000 members internationally, mainly in El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

"This is a very violent gang," Massachusetts State Police Lt. Col. Frank Hughes said. "In my 30 years of law enforcement, I've never seen a more violent gang out there. These are very very violent individuals. The violence is unspeakable."

The FBI's Shaw said aspiring gang members "must kill and be beaten" before being allowed to join.

"This is an organized gang that engages in murder and attempted murder using machetes, knives and chains, they also engage in drug trafficking, illegal possession of firearms, robbery and obstructing of justice," said U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

"Equally disturbing are their tactics of targeting middle and high school age students to commit the most violent acts on behalf of the gang, knowing they'll face less severe penalties because of their age," Shaw added.

One woman told necn her brother was among the suspects arrested in the early-morning raid.

"He's a nice kid, he just had a baby, he has a wife, he's working. He's responsible, all he does is work," she said. "He's a good kid. He's my brother, I love him, and whatever the charges are, it's not right."

During the course of the investigation, it is alleged that MS-13 actively recruited prospective members inside local high schools with significant immigrant populations from Central America, including Chelsea High School, East Boston High School and Everett High School.

Prospective members were typically 14 or 15 years old.

Friday, necn reached out to the community and visited the YMCA in Lynn to see how teens there are staying off the streets.

Some were practicing Kaya, a traditional Cambodian dance, others were making their own music, swimming, playing basketball, and working out.

"There's plenty for teens and other youth to be engaged in," said Audrey Jimenez, the Executive Director of the Lynn YMCA.

Jimenez says she makes it her mission to keep kids, especially at-risk teens engaged, not idle.

"The children are learning when to be appropriate, the right things to do, to be respectful and honest and caring," said Jimenez.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said the indictment released Friday contains a RICO conspiracy charge referencing five murders in East Boston and Chelsea. Two of the victims were 15 years old and one was 16.

"It's terrible," Evans said. "We're talking about 15, 16 year olds who should be going to school and living a full life."

Law enforcement officials say they are concerned that the arrests could lead to additional violence in the short term, and they will be keeping an eye out for that.

"Today, we dismantled quite a number of individuals associated with MS-13, including most if not all of its leadership. So there will be a vacuum there," Ortiz said. "Other, younger members may be vulnerable by other rival gangs."

Shaw noted that the investigation continues. "It's not stopping with this."

"Rest assured that we will be watching," Ortiz added.

The following are charged with one count of racketeering influenced corrupt organization (RICO) conspiracy:

Oscar Noe Recinos-Garcia, a/k/a Psycho, 22, of Somerville

Juilo Esau Avalos-Alvarado, a/k/a Violento, 23, of Chelsea

German Hernandez-Escobar, a/k/a Terible, 28, of Medford

Noe Salvador Perez-Vasquez, a/k/a Crazy, 25, of Somerville

Santos Portillo-Andrade, a/k/a Flaco, 31, of Everett

Herzzon Sandoval, a/k/a Casper, 34, of Cambridge

Edwin Guzman, a/k/a Playa, 30, of East Boston

Jose Hernandez-Miguel, a/k/a Muerto, 27, of East Boston

Edgar Pleitez, a/k/a Cadejo, 26, of East Boston

Christian Alvarado, a/k/a Catracho, 26, of Everett

Cesar Martinez, a/k/a Cheche, 35, of East Boston

First and last name unknown, a/k/a Caballo, of Everett

Erick Argueta Larios, a/k/a Lobo, 31, of Cambridge

Luis Solis-Vasquez, a/k/a Brujo, 25, of Everett

Jose Miguel-Hernandez, a/k/a Smiley, a/k/a Danger, 20, of Somerville (deported)

Carlos Melara, a/k/a Chuchito, a/k/a Criminal,19, of East Boston

Joel Martinez, a/k/a Animal, 20, of East Boston

Jose Rene Andrade, a/k/a Triste, a/k/a Innocente, 24, of Somerville

Hector Enamorado, a/k/a Vida Loca, 37, of Chelsea

Henry Santos-Gomez, a/k/a Renegado, a/k/a Pino, 30, of Revere

Rafael Leoner-Aguirre, a/k/a Tremendo, 20, of Chelsea

Hector Ramires, a/k/a Cuervo, 22, of Chelsea

Daniel Menjivar, a/k/a Rocoa, a/k/a Sitiko, 19, of Chelsea

Angel Pineda, a/k/a Bravo, a/k/a Jose Lopez, 20, of Chelsea

Jose Vasquez, a/k/a Little Crazy, 22, of Somerville

David Lopez, a/k/a Cilindro, a/k/a Villano, of New Jersey

Bryan Galicia-Barillas, a/k/a Chucky, 18, of Chelsea

Domingo Tizol, a/k/a Chapin, 21, of Chelsea

First and last name unknown, a/k/a Violento, of Arizona

Oscar Duran, a/k/a Demente, 24, of East Boston

Edwin Gonzalez, a/k/a Sangriento, 20, of East Boston

Henry Josue Parada Martinez, a/k/a Street Danger, 20, of East Boston

Josue Morales, a/k/a Gallito, 20, of Chelsea

Kevin Ayala, a/k/a Blancito, 22, of Chelsea

Mario Aguilar Ramos, 19, of Somerville

Rutilio Portillo, a/k/a Pantera, 32, of Everett

Edwin Diaz, a/k/a Demente, 18, of East Boston

Marvin Melgar, a/k/a Ninja 21, of Chelsea

Jairo Perez, a/k/a Seco, 24, of Chelsea

Jose Adan Martinez Castro, a/k/a Chucky, 26, of Richmond, Virginia

The following are charged with drug trafficking conspiracy:

Ramiro Guerra, a/k/a Camello, 42, of East Boston

Manuel Martinez, a/k/a Gordo, 44, East Boston or Stoneham

Alex Alvarenga, 42, of Saugus

Manuel Flores, a/k/a Manny, 41, of East Boston

Heiner Yovani Gomez, a/k/a Fiero, 31, of Chelsea

First and last name unknown, a/k/a The Columbian" (unknown address)

Carlos Lovato, 32, of Chelsea

First and last name unknown, a/k/a Migue (unknown address)

Luis (last name and address unknown)

The following have been charged with immigration violations and/or fraudulent document charges:
Two law enforcement officers who shot and killed a drug suspect during a raid in December will not face criminal charges, Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan announced Thursday.

Vermont State Police Trooper Matt Cannon and Agent Timothy Hoffman of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration together fired 13 rounds during the December 22 raid on Elmwood Avenue in Burlington which was meant to gather evidence of suspected drug and crack cocaine dealing by Kenneth Stephens, 56, of Burlington.

The raid ended with Stephens dead. He was struck by seven rounds, including one to the head, Donovan said.

A portion of the raid was recorded on a body camera worn by a Burlington Police Department officer. A few minutes of that recording, which documented frantic moments outside the apartment where the raid took place, were released to Vermont media outlets late Thursday afternoon.

WARNING: The video below contains content that some viewers may consider to be graphic.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT. No criminal charges will be filed against officers who killed a suspected drug dealer in Burlington, Vermont.

"Prior to any shots being fired, Mr. Stephens yelled, 'Who wants to die?'" Donovan told reporters, describing one of the several threats to police he said Stephens issued.

The original plan was for officers to take Stephens into custody outside his apartment, then search inside the home, Donovan revealed. However, when that plan could not come together, a team of armored officers used a battering ram to smash their way into the apartment, Donovan said, reading from his detailed investigative report into the raid at a morning press conference.

Before a line of officers got inside, Donovan said Stephens was taunting law enforcement and urging them to smash his stubborn door harder with the battering ram. When they got inside, Cannon and Hoffman found Stephens pointing a muzzleloader rifle right at them, Donovan said. What they could not have known is Stephens weapon lacked a primer; it was incapable of being fired.

Prior to the encounter, officers warned each other about Stephens' long criminal record, which included past illegal gun possession, involvement in a past homicide, and significant amounts of federal prison time served, Donovan said.

Separately, Donovan said friends of Stephens told investigators after the shooting that he had previously remarked he would never return to jail and that he told a fellow inmate during a recent incarceration that he was "going to go out shooting," and that officers would have to kill him because he would not return to jail.

Because of the threats against officers involved in the raid, Donovan announced he will not criminally charge Cannon or Hoffman, legally justifying their actions against Stephens, who tests showed was high on several drugs including cocaine and heroin at the time of the shooting.

In the hail of gunfire, Donovan said three bullets ended up leaving the confines of Stephens' apartment. One went through the wall and ended up in an outside electrical box. Two others also went through the wall, flew across a driveway, and entered a neighboring apartment.

"I thought someone was lighting off fireworks in my driveway," neighbor Nick Cioffi told necn on December 23, describing the sound of the gunfire. "It was loud and something hit the house, and there was a mess inside."

Cioffi said the day after the shooting that he was playing guitar on his couch next door when those shots erupted. One stray bullet landed in the canvas of a painting on his wall, and the other on the very sofa where he was sitting. The bullets did not cause any injuries to Cioffi or anyone else in the apartment.

However, Donovan said the stray bullets were not a major focus of his probe, because he was primarily concerned with the death of Kenneth Stephens and not secondary legal examinations such as whether or not a charge of reckless endangerment might have been warranted. Donovan said his office considers the case closed when it comes to Cannon and Hoffman's involvement in Stephens' death.

"Nobody is minimizing a bullet entering another person's home," Donovan said. "It's an incredibly scary thing to happen. We were lucky that nobody was injured."

Regarding the stray bullets, Chief Brandon del Pozo of the Burlington Police Department said he can sympathize with neighborhood concerns, but urged the public to "nest that concern among the wider concern of living among violent felons that are destroying their community [through drug dealing], and at least sympathize with the officers who face death literally to remove those people from their community."

Del Pozo also said of the stray bullets, "I urge the citizens to not just see this as an isolated risk that they undertook, but as the end sequence of events of a risk that they were bearing as long as Mr. Stephens lived next door."

Del Pozo promised that his department will learn from this case, as it strives to keep officers, suspects, and the public safe during police operations.

Eric Miller, the U.S. Attorney for Vermont, said he has been in touch with DEA officials, who have told him the administration will fully review the way the raid was carried out.

Donovan also told reporters he met with the father of Kenneth Stephens, who asked for privacy from the media.

"A father lost a son. People lost a friend," Donovan said, recounting how Stephens' death had an impact on people who knew the man killed in the raid. "No one is being cavalier about this."
Did this title get your attention? I hope so. I intended for it to be provocatively absurd for reasons that will become apparent by the end of the post. I also intended for it to call attention to a fundamental assumption that seems to undergird the thinking of even some of the most intelligent individuals with regard to economic growth and climate change mitigation. Namely, that growth in overall consumption can and in fact must continue, and that we merely have to transition away from fossil fuel use in order to halt and begin to remediate the effects of carbon dioxide on the global climate. Alright, Ive already said a mouthful. Allow me to then take a step back and unpack what I just stated by sketching out some basic parameters: Our world population is projected to grow at about three quarters of a percent per year between now and the year 2050, at which time the earth is expected to be home to some 9.8 billion people. United Nations The U.S. population is projected to grow slightly faster than the global rate to about 438 million by the year 2050. Most of that growth is expected to come from new immigrants and their offspring. Pew Research Center Globally aggregated GDP growth in recent decades has been around 3% per year . For all practical purposes we can consider healthy U.S.GDP growth to be in that same 2-3% per year range. This is the rate of growth that is generally considered optimal in order to balance inflation and employment.



The proverbial tin can about to be kicked down the road

Anyone old enough to be reading this likely has vivid recollections of what it felt like during the so-called Great Recession of 2008. There was grave uncertainty then as to whether the nation and the world would slip into another depression which, given the realities of our nuclear armed, militia-riddled, drug cartel-influenced, post-9/11 world, likely prompted visions of a very dystopian future. Indeed, the requirement of stable GDP growth is taken to be almost as indispensable for us modern humans as are the requirements of air, water, food, and shelter. Without it, economic chaos and social unrest are feared to almost certainly follow.



But something has to fuel this growing world economy on which weve come to rely. Whether its fossil fuels, alternative energy, or nuclear power, we need something. And we need more than just a replacement of the amount of energy used today; we need an ever-increasing supply of it! Now, some economists will tell you that economic growth is not inextricably tied to growth in energy use at all. They will argue that the right combination of efficiency gains, innovation, and specialization can produce an ever-growing economy without necessarily requiring an ever-increasing supply of energy. Having said that, however, I must also say that I cant help but think of such pronouncements as belonging to the realm of hubris, belief, and wishful thinking. It doesnt take much digging to find more sober and scientifically based assessments of this proposition. See, for instance, Energetic Limits to Economic Growth (Bioscience, Volume 61, issue 1), Can Economic Growth Last? (a nice blog post by U of C, San Diego physicist, Tom Murphy), or Economists Are Blind to the Limits of Growth (an op-ed piece by Bloomberg View columnist and physicist, Mark Buchanan).





We humans have gotten ourselves, and the entire planet, into quite a pickle, havent we? Weve got exponential population growth. Weve got a world economic system perched precariously in unstable equilibrium  propped up on a foundation of steady growth in consumption above and beyond that which is commensurate with our increasing population. Weve got built-in expectations that everyones standard of living will continue to rise. Weve got a thirst for energy that just cant be quenched. AND, on top of all this, weve somehow got to find a way to start reducing our total carbon dioxide emissions.



So it is that some of the top climate scientists of our time  Dr. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT, Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University, and Dr. Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research  signed a letter advocating nuclear energy as an appropriately scalable solution to the prescient demand for huge amounts of energy. You can find a copy of the letter on the New York Times blog, Dot Earth, by Andrew Revkin. The letter is addressed To those influencing environmental policy but opposed to nuclear power. Ive pulled out some of the highlights:





"[W]e are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems. We appreciate your organizations concern about global warming, and your advocacy of renewable energy. But continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanitys ability to avoid dangerous climate change."



"Global demand for energy is growing rapidly and must continue to grow to provide the needs of developing economies. At the same time, the need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions is becoming ever clearer."

"While it may be theoretically possible to stabilize the climate without nuclear power, in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power."

Okay, youve got the gist. Now let me break it down a little bit further, adding commentary as I do.

"[O]pposition to nuclear power threatens humanitys ability to avoid dangerous climate change."

Whats interesting is that there are a number of variables to the climate change equation which these scientists seem to be taking as constant, or nearly so. Population, consumption, and energy needs will continue to grow, it is assumed; the only choice we have available to us is what energy source(s) we will rely on. But why isnt opposition to discussing the attainment of zero population growth considered a threat to humanitys ability to avoid dangerous climate change? Why isnt opposition to decreasing global per capita consumption considered a threat to humanitys ability to avoid dangerous climate change? Why isnt opposition to decreasing our global average per capita energy usage considered a threat to humanitys ability to avoid dangerous climate change?

"Global demand for energy is growing rapidly and must continue to grow to provide the needs of developing economies." Notice the implicit assumption here. The ability to provide energy for the needs of developing economies will not be offset by reductions in energy use by developed (overdeveloped?) countries; it will be in addition to the growing energy needs of even the developed countries.



"While it may be theoretically possible to stabilize the climate without nuclear power, in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power." Notice the implicit assumptions regarding the nature of the real world and what is considered to be credible. In the real world we just keep reproducing like mice in a cage until we overrun the earths capacity. Arriving at zero population growth (ZPG) is not considered credible. In the real world we behave like addicts who need more and more stuff in order to be content. That we might actually be able to live in contentment is not considered credible. In the real world we could never imagine voluntarily scaling back our own consumption so that others with a lower standard of living might be able to live in improved circumstances. In other words, it is not credible that we would begin to look at our fellow human beings as family and behave accordingly. Can you picture sitting down for a Thanksgiving gathering wherein some of you feast on the lions share of the food and drink even as your brother or mother or cousin goes hungry? No, we dont treat family that way.

I get where Caldeira, Emanuel, Hansen, and Wigley are coming from. Discussion of reining in population growth is often considered a non-starter  a conversation that by its very nature is seen as likely to impinge on our cherished freedom to choose the size of our family. Talk of limiting consumption, likewise, is considered anathema to our way of life. Furthermore, the possibility of a healthy economy that is stable and without GDP growth would seem to fly in the face of everything we believe in and value about our capitalist system: that it is good, that it is just, that it is our engine of progress, and that it is the means by which we solve our problems.
The world has been flooded in recent years with books about spaceflight, particularly centered on the Apollo era. Those who adore the golden age of space exploration are very well provisioned for their intellectual journeys into the past. But such is not the case, until now, for the formative years of space exploration i.e., pre NASA.



Amy Shira Teitel is well known on social media for tireless promotion of the golden age of space exploration. She produced terrific video coverage of some highlight moments attached to the New Horizons flyby last summer. And now she has made a valuable and highly engaging debut as an author with her first book.



Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA (304 pp., hardcover, Bloomsbury Signa, New York, 2016, $27, ISBN 9781472911179), will be an exhilarating read for those who are entranced by the early days of spaceflight.



Teitel begins the story in Germany in 1930 and winds through the years of the Second World War, describing the exploits of German engineers, the V2, Wernher von Braun, and the infancy of rocket propulsion for exploration rather than terror. She deftly describes the establishment of the Alamagordo Army Air Field, early postwar experiments with rocketry, and the transformation of new goals in the early days of the Cold War.



She examines in detail the early days of test pilot rocket plane flights, describing significant moments in the careers of Chuck Yeager, Scott Crossfield, and others. This is a book that weaves themes nicely into an entertaining narrative.



The book winds its way through geopolitics as the story leans into the establishment of a space agency that would become NASA and the original dreams of pushing ever higher and ever faster.



Space exploration fans will want to enjoy this book, a significant prequel to the well-known stories of Apollo that followed.



A wonderful read!





Follow Dave Eicher on Twitter, and please check his Author Page on Facebook.




Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Some clouds this morning will give way to generally sunny skies for the afternoon. High 64F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 41F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Halaven (eribulin mesylate), a type of chemotherapy, for the treatment of liposarcoma (a specific type of soft tissue sarcoma) that cannot be removed by surgery (unresectable) or is advanced (metastatic). This treatment is approved for patients who received prior chemotherapy that contained an anthracycline drug.

"Halaven is the first drug approved for patients with liposarcoma that has demonstrated an improvement in survival time," said Richard Pazdur, M.D., director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "The clinical trial data the FDA reviewed indicates that Halaven increased overall survival by approximately seven months, offering patients a clinically meaningful drug."

Soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is a disease in which cancer cells form in the soft tissues of the body, including the muscles, tendons, fat, blood vessels, lymph vessels, nerves and tissues around joints. Liposarcoma is a specific type of STS that occurs in fat cells. STS can form almost anywhere in the body, but is most common in the head, neck, arms, legs, trunk and abdomen. In 2014, an estimated 12,000 cases of STS were diagnosed in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The efficacy and safety of Halaven were evaluated in 143 clinical trial participants with advanced liposarcoma that was unresectable or had spread to nearby lymph nodes (locally advanced) or other parts of the body (metastatic), and who had been treated with chemotherapy. Participants were treated with either Halaven or another chemotherapy drug called dacarbazine until their disease spread or until they were no longer able to tolerate the side effects of treatment. The study was designed to measure the length of time from the start of treatment until a patient's death (overall survival). The median overall survival for patients with liposarcoma receiving Halaven was 15.6 months compared to 8.4 months for those who received dacarbazine.

Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

The most common side effects among participants treated with Halaven were fatigue, nausea, hair loss (alopecia), constipation, certain nerve damage causing weakness or numbness in the hands and feet (peripheral neuropathy), abdominal pain and fever (pyrexia). Halaven may also cause low levels of infection-fighting white blood cells (neutropenia) or decreased levels of potassium or calcium.

Serious side effects from treatment with Halaven may include a decrease in white blood cell count, which can increase the risk of serious infections that could lead to death; numbness, tingling or burning in the hands and feet (neuropathy); harm to a developing fetus; as well as changes in heartbeat (QTc prolongation), that may also lead to death.

The FDA granted the Halaven application priority review status , intended to facilitate and expedite the development and review of certain drugs in light of their potential to benefit patients with serious or life-threatening conditions. Halaven also received orphan drug designation , which provides incentives such as tax credits, user fee waivers, and eligibility for exclusivity to assist and encourage the development of drugs for rare diseases.

Halaven is marketed by Eisai based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
Three Case Western Reserve University faculty members have received funding to further develop emerging technologies aimed at malaria, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia.

The funding is provided by the National Center for Accelerated Innovation, established by Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The center supports new products and technologies related to priority targets set by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

The recipients are Brian T. Grimberg, PhD, assistant professor of international health; Miklos Gratzl, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering; and Umut Gurkan, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Grimberg and his team will improve the sensitivity and portability of a malaria diagnostic device that allows high-sensitivity magneto-optical detection of malaria pigment (hemozoin crystals) in the blood, thereby avoiding staining and microscope-based examination of patient blood. The original, laboratory-based device is highly accurate but large, not easily portable, and requires a computer to read and interpret information about a patient's blood sample. Grimberg's project will create a more rugged, field-ready device that eliminates expensive and bulky equipment and test the prototype on human samples in Peru as part of the World Health Organization-device approval process.

"More than three billion people live with the threat of malaria throughout the world," said Grimberg. "While improvements in terms of morbidity, mortality, and transmission have been achieved in the past five years, malaria parasites continue to evade elimination. Current malaria diagnosis methods are slow, expensive, and sometimes inaccurate. Our portable device will cost 51 cents per diagnosis compared to $3.18 for microscopy when including all costs and labor and allow for onsite detection of malaria."

Gratzl and his team will develop and clinically test a device for diagnosing cystic fibrosis in newborns at two weeks of age, compared to current testing of diagnostic value which can only begin at the age of three months or later.

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

"Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that leads to the secretion of abnormally thick mucus," said Gratzl. "This causes obstructions in the airways and recurring pneumonia. If treatment begins after the presentation of symptoms, which typically occurs about three months of age or later, irreversible damage has already occurred. Our diagnostic technology will make it possible to begin treatment shortly after birth." Currently, the most widely used test for cystic fibrosis measures chloride in sweat at the age of three months or later. The reason for the delay is that the volume of sweat required is larger than what can be obtained from a newborn. The Gratzl team's technology requires only two microliters of sweat, which can be obtained from two-week-old babies.

Gurkan and his team will test new technology in Ghana to diagnose sickle cell disease onsite. HemeChip is a mobile device capable of detecting a number of genetic blood disorders including sickle cell disease in a much more efficient fashion than conventional tests. The device will enable a $2-per-screening test that takes 10 minutes to run.

"Although sickle cell newborn screening is standard in this country, very few infants are tested in Africa because of the expense and lack of trained personnel to carry out conventional tests," said Gurkan. "This new mobile technology is an easy to use, cost-effective tool with worldwide applicability, potentially saving many lives."

The World Health Organization estimates that 70 percent of deaths attributable to sickle cell disease in Africa could be prevented with early detection and medical intervention. Over six million people alone in West and Central Africa have the disease. There are approximately 20 million births every year in sub-Saharan Africa.
An innovative pre-registration Masters programme in podiatry, which has been developed at the University of Salford has been launched, the first to be introduced in the UK.

The course has been approved by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the College of Podiatry.

Dr Anita Williams, from the School of Health Sciences, led the programme development, internal approval process and approval with the HCPC.

Dr Williams said:

The rationale for this development has been the number of students joining the BSc (Hons) programme, who already have a degree or higher degree in related science subjects. These students apply to Podiatry to gain the professional qualification in order to register with the HCPC but then add another BSc degree qualification to their CV. The Masters programme allows these students to build on their first honours degree, by developing advanced scholarship and the application of this into practice.

The new programme allows students to gain the standards of proficiencies required to obtain HCPC registration, while gaining an MSc in Podiatry.

Dr Jane McAdam, Director of Prosthetics & Orthotics and Podiatry, led the consultation with Heads of NHS Podiatry Services NW, Health Education North West and the College of Podiatry approval process.

Dr McAdam said:

There are clear benefits to the pre-registration MSc Podiatry programme. The consultation with heads of NHS podiatry services in the North West revealed that they are supportive of this development. They felt that an MSc qualification, together with the professional practice qualification, would increase students employability and position them better for career development and promotion, potentially in leadership roles. The programme ensures that the University of Salford is providing a unique programme and hence being attractive to potential students from across the UK and the international market.

The MSc students will be aligned with the Schools Foot Ankle and Knee research group, which is led by Salfords Professor Chris Nester.

Professor Nester said:

I am delighted with this new pathway that links undergraduate and postgraduate studies to our research  and the MSc cohort is an excellent platform from which to build wider links between research outcomes and curriculum. This will allow us to improve succession planning for new graduates wishing to work towards PhD studies and, longer-term, bolster the number of podiatrists with a PhD and research qualification.

The programme received approval in September 2015, just in time for three students to commence their first year.

Osman Abdulrahman, Sarah Bailey and Tarun Paul attend the same clinics and lectures as students on the BSc programme, with the Masters level studies being driven by the assessments and tutorials.

Programme Lead Dr Anita Williams added:

The students have become socially integrated into the larger cohort of BSc students and have formed friendships outside of their small group.

The three postgraduate students have just completed their first semester and, having passed their pre-clinical assessment, are now able to treat patients in the Schools Podiatry Clinic.

Sarah said:
After Varisu, Actor Vijay in Discussion for His Second Telugu Film With This Director, Say Reports
VIVA CUENCA!

My mission in publishing this blog is first to provide a living history of my settlement and life in Cuenca, and to provide myself and the reader with a journal account delineating my reasons for why I have chosen to settle in Cuenca. Second, the posts are my way of staying in contact with family and friends back in the states, and to provide them with an understanding of a country and culture that most North Americans have little knowledge and awareness. Third, the blog is open to one and all who wish to compare and contrast the experiences of expat bloggers living in Cuenca, so that you can determine whether or not from your perspective Cuenca is an appropriate move for you. Fourth, my blog provides another example of how expats view and interpret life in Cuenca. Ecuadorians and Cuencanos who may read this blog are especially invited to post comments that may enhance all expats understanding and appreciation of Cuneca and its people, or to correct any misinterpretations in my assumptions and perceptions of Cuencano culture. Finally, I hope I can convey the feeling of love and appreciation that grows within me each passing day for this heavenly city nestled in the Andes and its very special people.


Members of the Midstate community and beyond have begun rallying around an Upper Allen Township family of seven whose home was destroyed in a fire Wednesday.

Around 4 p.m. a fire broke out in the kitchen of a home in the first block of Hemlock Drive where Toshia Rowland and Dan Krout lived with their five children.

It took more than three hours for fire fighters to clear the blaze and family friend Brandy Runshaw said the home appeared to be a total loss.

Seeing her friends lose everything spurred Runshaw to rally support by creating a Go Fund Me account aimed at raising $10,000, www.gofundme.com/p5esspek, and collect non-monetary donations.

The boys were taken out in diapers yesterday whenever the fire happened, Runshaw said. Toshia, from what I understand was in flip flops. They literally left the house with the clothes that they had on and for the babies that was nothing.

She said even the lone vehicle the family was using for transportation may have been damaged in the fire as it was parked in the garage at the time.

The response, she said, has been overwhelming.

Its been really, really amazing to see that its starting to touch people from all over, not just our area, Toshia told me that whenever I talked to you to let everyone know how thankful they are because they did not expect this in any way, shape or form.

Donations can be dropped off at the Upper Allen Fire Department, 104 Gettysburg Pike in Mechanicsburg, or by contacting Runshaw through the Go Fund Me page.

Some of the requested donations are:

Little girls clothing size 8, 4 and 2-3

Little boys clothing size 2-3 and 3-6 months

Little girls shoes sizes 13-1, 9 and 8

Little boy shoes size 5

Womens medium tops and size 3 pants

Mens medium tops and 28/30 pants

Similac Advanced formula

Diapers size 2 and 3t

Gift cards

Toiletries

Household items

Donations have come from as far away as Germany and the story gained national attention when it was discovered that rock group Poisons front man Bret Michaels grew up in the home.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Toshia Rowland, Dan Krout and their children, Michaels said in a written statement encouraging people to donate to the Go Fund Me account. Thank you as well to all the first responders including fire & rescue, emergency medical technicians and police who responded in the record snowfall. I want to reach out to the family and see how I can help. No doubt as a child I had a lot of great memories of my parents, sisters and friends in that house. It was sad to see the damage the fire had done, but most important Im glad that the family are ok from what I understand. As a community we can help them with a place to stay, clothes, food, toys and living essentials until they are back on their feet.

Runshaw said Michaels has helped amplify the message to help her friends.

The American Red Cross provided emergency money for food and supplies but spokesman Dan Tobin said the family did not need assistance with emergency housing.

At this point they are starting over from square one with five kids, Runshaw said. They have nothing and thats my family. I cant let that be the case.
The nations third-largest cable company on Thursday voiced opposition to Nexstar Broadcasting Groups proposed acquisition of Richmond-based Media General Inc., arguing it will lead to higher costs for cable customers.

Atlanta-based Cox Communications Inc. says it will oppose the merger as Nexstar and Media General seek Federal Communications Commission approval.

Nexstar should not be allowed to become a larger company, which would force more cable TV/satellite companies and ultimately customers to pay higher fees for retransmission consent, Cox Communications said in statement, which also urged the public to contact the FCC.

Media General and Nexstar, based in Irving, Texas, announced a deal on Wednesday in which Nexstar will acquire Media General for $4.6 billion including debt.

If approved by the companies shareholders and federal regulators, the acquisition will create a broadcasting and digital media giant named Nexstar Media Group Inc. The company will own or operate 171 television stations in 100 markets across the nation.

The deal is part of a broader trend in the broadcasting industry in which television station companies have been merging, in part to gain leverage in their negotiations over the retransmission fees that cable and satellite companies pay to carry the broadcasters signals.

Cox has 6 million residential and business cable customers in 18 states, including parts of Virginia.

The company is currently involved in negotiations with Nexstar over retransmission fees. Cox said in a statement that Nexstar wants it to pay three times the current price of its retransmissions fees, or Nexstar will remove its signal from the Cox Communications lineup on Friday, Cox said.

We think what they are asking for right now is unreasonable, said Todd Smith, a Cox spokesman.

If Nexstar removes its signal, it would affect Cox customers in Roanoke, where Nexstar owns the Fox-affiliated WFXR (Channel 27) station and the CW-affiliated WWCW (Channel 21), Smith said. It also would affect customers in Las Vegas, Phoenix and parts of Florida, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.

A spokesman for Media General said the company had no comment. Nexstar did not respond to a request for comment.
First look - JMS returns to Thor as the Thunder God prepares to battle Thanos in Death Notes special

Thor visits Thanos' past and future with a host of all-star creators
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Olatunji confirms title defence

Yearwood made the statement to Newsday after performing at the second day of the Soca in bSquare. The event has become a signature Carnival event for telecommunications company, Blink/Bmobile.

Even though the telecommunications company reduced its sponsorship to several Carnival events this year due to the economic recession, its acting senior manager of commercial marketing, Lorraine Steele said in an interview that this was one event the company decided to keep.

The company as with any other company in this economy, we looked at certain budgets and so on and we did some reviewing.

However, bSquare we realised is our signature event and the people of Port-of-Spain and the people who visit during this week really do look forward to bSquare. Although Steele wished not to state how much was spent on the event, she said, We view bSquare as a gift to the people and, as the national telecommunications provider, we support Carnival. The company, she said, therefore took the decision that the company would have bSquare running not for its usual week but over a three-day period running from the 27 to the 29.

The company included pan side, Brimblers into this years line-up of performers much to the delight of the crowds.

A female member of the audience who wished not to be identified said, she was happy that the telecommunications company kept the event because it provided a sense of stress relief for workers in and around the countrys capital.

It gives the general public the opportunity to get an hours break from work and sometimes you need that stress-reliever.

I am glad they did not cut it, she said.

Performers including 5Star Akil, Shal Marshall, Rikki Jai and Olatunji-scheduled to contend for the coveted International Soca Monarch title had hundreds of people swaying and dancing in Woodford Square, Port-of-Spain.

Yesterdays event which began at 11 am started with the sounds of Brimblers Steel Orchestra.

The pan side delivered a 45-minute set, playing songs such as Merchants Um Ba Ya Oh and the Carpenters Close to You.

Soca artiste Lil Bits was the first to hit the bSquare stage, followed by 5Star Akil, then Rikki Jai with his 2016 hit Leh We Fete and a number of his other hits. Shal Marshall and GBM Nutron then delighted the crowd and the event closed off with Olatunji. Rikki Jai told Newsday his hit, Leh We Fete is gaining traction on the airwaves and in the fetes and he is going to go all out at the finals of the Soca Monarch.

I began my career in soca music with Sumintra, Show me your motion, Pumpin, Wine on a bumsee. I have a good history in soca and in 2016 I made a more concerted effort to rebrand myself because for the last couple of years having won the Chuntney Soca Monarch so many times, I felt the public simply knew me as Rikki Jai the chutney artiste. So 2016s Leh We Fete was a calculated move to rebrand Rikki Jai the soca star, he said.
Used car dealers demand meeting

Gopee-Scoon made this disclosure in response to continued calls by the TT Automotive Dealers Association (TTADA) for a rescinding of a policy which revises the age of foreign used cars from six to four years.

Speaking with reporters as TTADA members staged a protest outside of Tower D of the Portof- Spain International Waterfront Centre, TTADA president Visham Babwah called for a meeting between Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, Gopee-Scoon and the Association. Saying he felt very insulted following a meeting last week with Gopee-Scoon on this issue, Babwah claimed there was no need to change the policy on foreign used car imports because the original policy was due to expire in 2018. He declared, It was wrong under the last administration, and it is wrong under this administration. While TTADA did not want to be headstrong, and understands the challenges facing the Government, Babwah said, This is our first step.

We intend to march forward if the Government does not meet us halfway. Hinting a middle ground could be reached if the Government has meaningful dialogue with the industry, Babwah said TTADA plans to hold its own consultation with stakeholders and the public on this issue, sometime after Carnival.

Stating there are 450 to 500 foreign used car dealers in the country, Babwah said the industry directly and indirectly employs 10,000 persons, who would be adversely affected by this policy.

Association vice-president Rhondell Feeles said the Government should note that the industry gives middle and lower class consumers the opportunity to purchase a vehicle.

How dare you put the vehicles out of their range! Feeles declared.

He said in the current economic circumstances when people are being urged to spend less, not everyone in times like this can go to a brand new firm, and get a vehicle. Responding to TTADAs concerns, Gopee-Scoon confirmed she met last Friday with TTADA and others after the Cabinet decision to revise the age on foreign used car imports was taken. Saying lengthy discussions took place at that meeting, the Minister said, From all reports and direct interventions with dealers and the population at large, the policy has been an accepted one.
Litter wardens retrenched

The litter wardens received their letters on Wednesday and took the matter to the National Union of Government and Federated Workers, (NUGFW).

Newsday understands that litter wardens attached to the Tunapuna Regional Corporation are the only ones, yet to receive their letters of termination.

One of the disgruntled litter wardens who was terminated contacted Newsday yesterday and said the letter stated that although they have been terminated, they will be paid for attending court, but their jobs will no longer continue to exist until the restructuring is completed.

The litter warden said that he has been employed for the last ten years, and never thought that his job will be terminated at this time when the country is in a recession.

He said it is now difficult to secure employment, and he is unsure how he will be able to meet his financial needs.

Yesterday, Carl St Rose, Deputy Director of Industrial Relations at the NUGFW led some of the displaced litter wardens in a protest outside Kent House in Maraval hoping to meet with Minister of Local Government, Franklyn Khan.

However, Khan was attending Cabinet and could not meet with the litter wardens who said they will continue their action until they meet with the Minister to explain their circumstances.

They are hoping to have an audience with Minister Khan so they can voice their opinion and ask that the restructuring takes place within a reasonable time frame and their jobs be returned to them.

The litter wardens added that it is frightening to lose jobs at this time, and they are hoping that good sense will prevail, and they are even reassigned other duties.

They added while they are aware that the country is facing a recession, they are also hoping that on humanitarian grounds they are re-employed so they can take care of their families in these trying times.
Highway contractors to meet with OAS

Ashby said their next move would be dependent on the outcome of the meeting.

We are waiting in good faith , we have adopted a spirit of compromise, and we are waiting, Ashby told Newsday yesterday. He said the contractors were also expected to meet with NIDCO today, [Friday], but this was also dependant on the meeting with OAS
City to act against landowners

Morean told the council that several requests were made to the corporations administration in the past, and he made another plea yesterday given the fact that the Aedes Aegypti mosquitos, found in Trinidad and Tobago, were carriers of the dengue, chikungunya and zika viruses. The empty and unkept lots with overgrown weeds, he said, are havens and breeding grounds for the mosquitoes.

He reminded that the city corporation has the authority to take legal action against the owners of the land, but they will have to first be given public notice in the daily newspapers.

Other corporations, he said, have been doing it. He noted that Brazil has engaged its army to assist in the extermination of the mosquitoes in that country because of the zika viru supposed debilitating effects on many new borns.

No case of the zika virus has been confirmed in TT, but medical officers have warned of its pending arrival. Tim Kee also announced that Morean, councillor for St Anns River North, has been appointed to head the youth and sport committee of the City Council.
The Hit That Killed Mobster

Was Ordered by His Own Son
(Newser)  Since the birth of baby Pablo last Friday, the hillside village of Ostana in northern Italy has rejoiced over the arrival of its 85th residentand a remarkable arrival he is. After seeing its population drop dramatically from more than 1,000 a century ago, not a single child has been born in Ostana since 1987, though the population has actually grown slightly from its lowest point of just five permanent residents in the '80s, reports The Local. To celebrate the addition of Pablito, the townperched in the shadow of the 12,600-foot Monte Visois throwing a party Saturday and has even erected a model stork with a blue bundle in its beak, reports La Stampa.

The couple, Spaniard Jose Berdugo Vallelago and his wife Silvia Rovere, from nearby Verzuolo, had actually been on the verge of moving to the tropical French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean a few years ago, but Ostana offered Vallelago a job running the local mountain refuge, and the family stayed. Baby Pablo is their third child after Clara, who is 6, and Alice, who is 4. He was born in a hospital in nearby Turin. Ostana's situation is echoed in other small towns across Italy, which find themselves battling dramatic population declines as people move to larger cities for work, reports the BBC. It points to some nontraditional moves those towns are taking: In Sellia, the mayor has "banned" villagers from falling ill. (See how this town is trying to convince its fertile residents to make more babies.)
(Newser)  Ohio state Sen. Tom Patton is a term-limited Republican who's now going after an Ohio House seat, and he's running against a real "sweetie." At least, that's what the 62-year-old called his chief Republican opponent in a radio interview last week, but it's a separate comment he made about Jennifer Herold that has drawn the most fire. In a Jan. 18 interview with Ed Ferenc on the America's Work Force radio show, he questioned why Herold is running while being a young mother, reports the Columbus Dispatch. "The gal that's running against me is a 30-year-old, you know, mom, mother of 2 infants," he said. "I don't know if anybody explained to her you have to spend three nights a week in Columbus. So, how does that work out for you? I waited until I was 48, 'til my kids were raised, and at least adults."

Herold, who has 1-year-old and 3-year-old sons, took to Facebook with a lengthy response in which she asked whether the current legislators with children, mothers and fathers alike, are "all unfit to serve." She added: "Tom, only one man in my life is allowed to call me 'sweetie.' From now on, I respectfully ask you to refer to me as Jen, Jennifer, Ms. Herold, or your opponent." Cleveland.com reports Patton has followed up with his own statement in which he "sincerely" apologizes and says his comments were "misunderstood." He notes that "millions of women" balance work and family every day, including his own daughters: "I used a poor choice of words to express what I know first-handraising young children and working is tough." The two will face off in the March 15 GOP primary. (Read more sexism stories.)
(Newser)  In what it said was an effort to address inaccurate and "inflammatory" reports, the FBI released a video of the shooting of Oregon militia spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum Thursday night. The video, taken from law enforcement helicopters on Tuesday, shows Finicum speeding away from police in a white truck and almost running down an FBI agent before getting stuck in a snowbank as he tries to avoid a roadblock, the Oregonian reports. The rancher then leaves the truck and can be seen raising and lowering his arms before he's shot by a man the FBI says is a state trooper, reports Reuters.

The FBI says that "on at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket," where he had a loaded semi-automatic handgun, though the footage isn't clear enough to confirm the movements, Reuters notes. In the early days of the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Finicum told reporters he would never go to jail. Militia leader Ammon Bundy has urged remaining occupiers to go home. There are believed to be four protesters still there, and one of them says they will all leave peacefully if charges against one man are dropped, the New York Times reports. "If they're not willing to do that, we're all just kind of willing to stay here and see what happens," holdout David Fry said in a video posted online. (Read more Oregon stories.)
(Newser)  Ten years before Making a Murderer fans started debating Steven Avery's case at just about every water cooler in the country, Monica Davey was just another reporter covering Avery's arrest on suspicion of the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wis. The news came just as Avery was pursuing a $36 million civil lawsuit against a former prosecutor and sheriff, having recently been acquitted of a sexual assault for which he spent 18 years in prison. "There are 36 million reasons why they should be doing this to him," Davey quoted Avery's brother as saying in a 2005 New York Times article. It caught the eye of two graduate student filmmakers, who would spend the next decade creating Making a Murderer. The series has forced Manitowoc to relive its darkest history and has left the county transformed, Davey writes at the Times following a return visit.

While the county tourism office used to field calls about jogging paths and beaches, callers now question why the office would want to draw visitors to such a town. The local police and sheriff's departments, city hall, and even the Manitowoc County Historical Society are forced to listen to "yelling, cussing, and swearing," says an official. As for Manitowoc residents, "the talkative, curious people I had come upon a decade earlier  avoided any talk about Making a Murderer, or simply spotted my notebook and walked away," writes Davey. One, however, said she was fearful of a rally in support of Avery, scheduled for Friday, per WBAY. Even Avery's mother, who ardently defends her son, says the calls for interviews are overwhelming. "I'm too old for this," she says. "It's too much." Read Davey's full piece here. (Read more Making a Murderer stories.)
(Newser)  Think the Flint water crisis is bad? It's only "the tip of the iceberg," says Erin Brockovich. During an appearance on The Late Show on Thursday, the environmental activist explained lead-laced water has also been found in Sebring, Ohio; Louisiana; and possibly Wisconsin. "I can tell you for certain this is a national crisis that we're not getting ready to facethis crisis is already here," she said, per WNEM. She explained America's use of chloramines during the water-treatment process is an issue: It's "very acidic  Our infrastructure is very old. And it's causing all the iron and the lead ... and the copper and everything in these pipes to leach out."

The Daily Beast reports Brockovich actually helped expose the water crisis in Flint after residents reached out to her a year ago. Flint is just one of "hundreds of cities, towns, and community water systems that are failing," she wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 20, 2015. "So much for local control," she added. "Everyone is responsible from the top down." In a post on Thursday, Brockovichwho highlights other water issues across the countrywrites that "our systems are in an emergency state of disrepair. Water [managers] no longer make the choice to serve quality water without calling their banker or Wall Street first." "Flint is the shot heard around the world, she adds. "We cannot stop fighting now." (Read more Erin Brockovich stories.)
(Newser)  The locals in the island community of Oban, New Zealand, are used to living with sharks in the general vicinity. But ever since businesses started offering shark cage-diving experiences in 2007, they say the animals have turned aggressive and begun attacking boats, reports the Guardian. Consider this quote from a 72-year-old lifelong resident who rarely recalls seeing a shark up close as a kid. Now "we see them all the time and not just one, sometimes three or four surrounding our boats," he says. "We are being targeted, and it's only a matter of time before they get someone." As a result, islanders have petitioned government officials to shut down the shark operations, reports Radio New Zealand. Its like Jaws anonymous out there, says one local fisherman.

Oban is located on Stewart Island, which is home to just 380 people but a popular destination for touristsespecially those curious to see sharks. Companies under permit from the Department of Conservation lure the fish within a few miles of shore using baited hooks or buckets of chum, then lower tourists down in cages from their boats to see them firsthand. One such company was caught violating its permit by continuing a dive when a shark was agitated, reports stuff.co.nz. "No other shark cage-diving operations operate this close to a tourist resort that is involved with the sea," says the owner of a fishing charter business. One dive operator, however, says that the fears are overblown and that the criticisms have been going on for years. "We've probably become immune to it." (These rare sharks were flocking to Long Island.)
(Newser)  It's not too strange to hear about a diabetic undergoing a pancreas transplant. What's unusual here is that the transplant was necessitated by the UK patient's extreme fear of needlesthe first time that's happened anywhere in the world, the BBC reports. Sue York, 55, has had Type 1 diabetes since she was 7, but her needle phobia had made dealing with her disease a living hell. Before the transplant, it would often take York up to 20 minutes to inject herself with insulin, an "impossible" process that would typically leave her shaking and vomiting, she tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire program. Things only got worse in 2012, when the UK's DMV required diabetic drivers to check their blood sugar levels every time before driving, as well as every two hours once behind the wheel. "It was just  too many invasions into the flesh," York says.

Diabetes.co.uk notes that there can be varying reasons for such needle fright, including childhood trauma of some sort, and that it can become a permanent fear. In York's case, she tried different types of therapy to get over her phobia, but ultimately she decided to fight to get on the transplant listan effort that took more than two years and several panel appearances to justify. She received the transplant at the Manchester Royal Infirmary and now say she feels "incredible," while doctors assert the surgery has doubled her life expectancy. "No longer am I struggling to walk up a flight of stairs," she tells the BBC. "No longer is my skin yellow or grey. No longer do I look constantly exhausted." (These people had needles actually stuck in their bodiesfor decades.)
Watching all the negativity flying around the stage at the Democratic Town Hall Forum the other night, something struck me.

Why, after watching Hillary and Bernie go after each others left-liberal throats, would anyone ever want to vote for either one of them?

They had nothing but rotten things to say about the other.

Hillarys too cozy with Wall Street.

Bernies too soft on the NRA and naive about negotiating with Iran.

Hillarys insufficiently progressive and takes obscene speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.

Bernies expensive progressive ideas will never make it in the real world.

Etc. Etc.

The Democrat debate got so dirty that Hillary has had to call her pet attack dog David Brock in from the kennel and let him off his leash.

Brock is the nasty former right-wing hit man whose pro-Clinton super PAC has sent out emails equating Bernie Sanders with dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

His PAC has also attacked Bernie for not including enough people of color in his nice feel-good TV ad featuring Paul Simons song America.

Somebody actually counted the blacks and Latinos in the video and declared that Bernie was insufficiently diversity-minded.

Now the dirty dogs in Brocks pack are running ads calling for Sanders to release his medical records.

The Republicans presidential finger-pointers are just as negative, thanks mostly to attacker-in-chief Donald Trump.

Actually, since there are more attackers and attackees, and since the attacks are constant and usually more personal, and since Trump is mixed up in all of it, the GOP negativity is much more self-harmful.

Its been hard to keep track of whos been hitting whom in the Republican primary brawl, but here are just some helpful headlines from the Internet:

Trump: Ted Cruz flip-flopped on birthright citizenship

New Ted Cruz ad attacks Donald Trumps New York Values

Bush: Rubio, Cruz are followers, not leaders on Syria

Carson questions authenticity of Trumps faith

Rubio hits Trumps debate theatrics

Trump hits Cruz on loans, citizenship: Did he borrow unreported loans from Canadian banks?

Trump, Rubio and evangelicals target Cruz as Iowa caucus nears

Kasich super PAC attacks Trump immigration plan

Carly Fiorina repeats after girl: Donald Trumps a moron

Christie on Trump skipping GOP debate: Leaders have got to show up

Pro-Bush super PAC hammers Rubio for credit card controversy

Rand Paul: Trump is a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag

Rand Paul must have hired a new writer, probably a sophomore in high school. But whats going on is not funny.

Were all being played for suckers.

After we hear months of this nonstop Republican-on-Republican bashing, were supposed to forget about it and vote for one of these bums to be our next president?

They dont like each other, for both good reasons and stupid reasons. But I bet half of the GOP candidates wont have the stomach to vote for the nominee in the fall.

If you believe all their negative ads and what the candidates say about each other and their ideas, it makes sense. Theres not a damn person worth voting for.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan and a political consultant. He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Email him at Reagan@caglecartoons.com.
(Newser)  German authorities raided the homes of three elderly men whom they suspect played a role in a massacre on French soil while members of the Nazi SS during WWII, NBC News reports. According to the AP, the menall around the age of 90may have been involved in the 1944 killing of 86 people in Ascq, France. The men deny they were there. The raids took place this week, with investigators looking for "old documents, photos, and personal handwritten notes," a prosecutor tells NBC. Authorities confiscated some materials, and the AFP reports officials will be combing those documents for clues.

The menallegedly part of the 12th SS Panzer Division, known as the "Hitler Youth" divisionwere linked to the massacre by "recent eyewitness accounts," NBC reports. No charges have been filed, and authorities are not releasing the men's names. Even if enough evidence is found to charge the men, they may be too old to stand trial. Our aim is to shed light on what happenedit is above all about establishing legal clarity on the Ascq massacre, the aforementioned prosecutor, who is leading the investigation, tells AFP. (A 95-year-old Auschwitz medic will stand trial.)
(Newser)  An EgyptAir mechanic may be responsible for the destruction of a Russian passenger plane that killed 224 people last October when it crashed in the Sinai Peninsula, Reuters reports. The Egyptian government states no one has been arrested in connection with the disaster, and EgyptAir officials deny any of its employees are suspects. But anonymous sources tell Reuters an airline mechanic has been detained after it was discovered his cousin joined ISIS. "After learning that one of its members had a relative that worked at the airport, Islamic State delivered a bomb in a handbag to that person," one source says. "He was told to not ask any questions and get the bomb on the plane."

Sources also tell Reuters two airport policemen and a baggage handler are suspected of helping the mechanic plant the bomb, though it's possible the policemen weren't complicit, just bad at their jobs. An EgyptAir official tells Reuters it investigated every employee and their families and found nothing suspicious. "Any employee who shows sympathy to militants is prevented from going to work in any airport," he says. Meanwhile, the Egyptian government claims there is still no evidence terrorism was involved in the destruction of the plane. ISIS has claimed responsibility. (Read more Islamic State stories.)
Fox-Trump feud has gotten more explosive as the Republican front-runner confirmed that he will skip the upcoming Fox/Google-sponsored GOP debate after clashing with Fox News broadcaster Megyn Kelly who moderated the previous GOP faceoff which Trump participated in.

Trump's refusal to take part in the said debate is pouring a new sense of anarchy that has shaken the Republican Party since the real estate mogul decided to throw the hat into the ring.

In the previous debate, Trump turned berserk over Kelly's sarcastic and mocking comments while live on TV.

"They think they can toy with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump doesn't play games," remarked campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on MSNBC segment "Morning Joe" as quoted in a report by New Britain Herald.

With only a few days before the Iowa caucuses, presidential hopefuls are in a tight race to set the political discussion in their favor. Live TV debates are extremely useful to gain media mileage. As Trump bows out, his rivals are trying to make use of the situation to their political advantage.

"If Donald is afraid to defend his record, it speaks volumes," said Republican rival Ted Cruz as mentioned in a Fox News article.

Other Republicans see Trump's decision as a strategic and tactical blunder as his foolhardy refusal would create dire consequences for his presidential bid.

"His core argument for why he's not doing it is petty. You don't want a president who's petty... If you're the front-runner, it's good to keep adding points, because if you suddenly walk off, you might be surprised how well others start scoring," exclaimed fellow Republican Newt Gingrinch as mentioned by New York Times.
As the world marked the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, US President Barack Obama reinforces the importance of tolerance and peaceful coexistence of diverse religious faiths amid a growing environment filled with anti-Semitism.

Echoing the now famous words of US Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds' "We are all Jews", Obama reminds his audience of the collective responsibility of humanity to reduce, if not erase, the societal tensions across the globe brought about by a surging tide of anti-Semitic views and behaviors.

"When any Jew anywhere is targeted just for being Jewish, we all have to respond ...We are all Jews...We won't entirely erase the scourge of anti-Semitism. But like the righteous we must do everything we can. All of us have a responsibility," spoke Obama as he delivered his speech at a Righteous Among the Nations Award Ceremony as quoted by the International Business Times.

The ceremony marked the first time an incumbent American President delivered an important speech of solidarity with the world's Jews inside the Israeli embassy despite Obama's falling out with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over America's warming relations with Iran over the nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, the President reaffirms America's continuing commitment to defend Israel's security in an increasingly polarized region in war-torn Middle East.

"America's commitment to Israel's security remains now and forever unshakable, and, I've said this before, it would be a fundamental moral failure if America broke that bond," said Obama as mentioned in a report by The New York Times.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day was designated by the United Nations as a fitting tribute for the Jews who died during the Nazi's brutal policy of liquidating European Jewry.

Also, the Righteous Among Nations award is intended to recognize non-Jews' heroic acts to save Jews during the holocaust according to a Haaretz news article.
An American man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by a South Korean court in relation to a murder that was committed in 1997.

Arthur John Patterson, 36, from California, was found guilty on Friday for killing university student, Cho Joong-pil, inside of a bathroom at a Burger King restaurant in Itaweon, Seoul. Patterson, who was the son of a U.S. military contractor, was 17 at the time.

"The court decided on a life sentence, but in view of the defendant's age, of being under 18 at the time, the sentence will be 20 years in prison," Judge Shim Kyu-hong said, according to Reuters via the Washington Post.

Patterson was extradited to Seoul from the U.S.

Yonhap news agency reported that Patterson claimed his accomplice Korean-American Edward Lee was responsible for the murder. Lee had blamed Patterson. Both teenagers were the only people inside of the bathroom during the time of the murder.

The Seoul Central District Court concluded, "There is credibility in statements made by Edward Lee, an accomplice, that (he) witnessed Patterson stabbing the victim. (Lee) incited Patterson to murder (Cho) and led the way into the bathroom (where the incident took place)."

According to the report, Cho, who did not know Patterson and Lee, had sustained multiple knife wounds to his neck. He died on his way to the hospital. Lee was initially convicted of murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Patterson was found guilty of possessing an illegal weapon and tampering with evidence for burning his blood stained clothing. He was sentenced to 18 months but was pardoned.

In 1998, the South Korean Supreme Court exonerated Lee after it decided that the evidence used to prosecute him was not sufficient. The case then focused back on Patterson, who had already left the country by 1999. The case then went unresolved until a 2009 movie titled "The Case of the Itaewon Homicide" pressured prosecutors to reopen the case.

In 2011, Patterson was indicted for murder. Throughout his trial, he had continued to maintain his innocence in the homicide.

"Joong-pil can now rest," the mother of the victim, Ms. Lee, said after the verdict was announced, reported by the New York Times.

She did not forgive either men, stating this month, "I want them both dead. They killed my beloved son just for fun and destroyed my family. And look, they are still shifting the blame to each other."

The murder, which was highly sensational during that time, led to an increase in the disapproval of the U.S. military's presence in South Korea.
New Delhi:

A day after dumping garbage outside Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodias residence, scores of striking municipal sanitation workers today targeted Transport Minister Gopal Rai, demanding immediate release of funds for their salary.

A group of workers and municipal corporation employees staged a protest outside Rais office in Babarpur in east Delhi and dumped garbage there while another group, under the banner of United Front of MCD Employees, put garbage outside his residence in Civil Lines.

We demand Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to pay our salary first and later settle scores with the municipal corporations, Sanjay Gehlot, president of Swatantra Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukt Morcha, said.

He said that the protests will be stepped up and workers will hold a demonstration at Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goels residence in Vivek Vihar if their demands were not met.

The union leader said the workers also blocked the road leading to a traffic jam at Apsara border.

The striking workers had yesterday dumped garbage outside the office and residence of Sisodia.

Sisodia had later accused BJP leaders of the three municipal corporations of instigating the workers to throw garbage outside the ministers residences and offices.

In North Delhi, the zonal offices at Karol Bagh, Civil Lines and Rohini were locked down by the striking employees and workers.

The employees at headquarters of South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) at Civic Centre also boycotted work.

Demanding regular salaries, payment of long pending arrears, regularisation of contract based workers, health cards and unification of three municipal corporations, the workers launched the strike on January 27.

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Washington:

Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump today gained substantial lead in early voting States of Iowa and South Carolina, while his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton has a narrow lead over her nearest rival Bernie Sanders, latest opinion polls show.

According to NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll released today, Trump leads Senator Ted Cruz of Texas with seven points in Iowa.

This is quite a big jump as three weeks ago, Trump, 69, trailed Cruz by four points in this crucial state.

The poll comes days ahead of the first presidential vote is caste in the Iowa Caucus on Monday, which will formally kick off the process to elect the new US President in November.

The second and last four-year term of the US President Barack Obama ends on January 20, 2017.

As per the latest poll, Trump has support of 32 per cent among likely Republican caucus goers.

He is followed by Cruz with 25 per cent and Marco Rubio at 18 per cent.

The polls also show that Trump has a massive 19 point lead over Cruz in New Hampshire while in South Carolina his lead is 16 points.

Trump is positioned to run the house in these first three states, said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

Will it happen? The answer depends on when or if anti-Trump sentiment will coalesce to interrupt his march to the nomination, he said.

According to a Monmouth University Poll released today, Clinton, 68, leads Sanders in Iowa by just five percentage points.

This is a big slump in her popularity given that in December her lead over Sanders was a whopping 22 points.

Support for Sanders has come from those who are new to the process, but the current poll indicates he is also cutting into Clintons lead among die-hard Democratic partisans, said Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray.

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New Delhi:

After, smart watches and smart jeans, a smart underwear has been developed by a Japnese company which monitors a persons posture. The smart underwear gets connected to your smartphone and notifies you whenever the posture goes in wrong posture.

The underwear is enabled with a sensor device which is constituted by knit material and is placed on the backside of shirt to monitor the distortion of posture.

Current product enables to check distortion of posture. But this sensor system is available to monitor the pulse of heart and consuming calorie. Bad condition of body in hot climate will be prospected by this shirt. It has big potential usability applying to hot country, Yoshiyuki Nagai, Gunze Limited, was quoted saying in a report.

The smart garment is made on Fiber technology. In a time where it is said that sitting is the 'new smoking', and brings a thousand diseases, mental and physical, this can be a very revolutionary development.
Washington:

In an unhinged personal attack, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina dug up the extra-marital trysts of Hillary Cintons husband and said the Democratic frontrunner cannot become the US president as she continues to lie to the American people.

Hillary Clinton will do anything to gain and hang on to power, anything, corporate leader-turned politician Fiorina said during the GOP undercard presidential debate in Iowa.

Listen, if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago, the 61-year-old said.

Clinton, 68, is eyeing to become the first woman president of the US and is likely to win Democratic Party nomination. A former First Lady, Clinton served as the Secretary of State in the first term of the Barack Obama administration.

Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard CEO who is struggling to gain traction before voters head to the caucuses, unleashed a series of crowd-pleasing insults at Clinton and said Clinton continues to lie to the American people.

Its called the Clinton way. Both Bill and Hillary practice it, the Clinton way. Say whatever you have to say, do whatever you have to say. Lie as long as you can get away with it. Hillary Clinton cannot be the president of the US, she said.

During the debate, Fiorina lashed out at Clinton on the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya, when militants attacked the US diplomatic compound, killing Ambassador J Christopher Stevens.

When terrorists purposefully attack an American embassy and kill four Americans, including an ambassador, and the next morning you get up and you lie about a videotape that doesnt represent our values, instead of saying the United States of America was purposefully attacked by terrorists, and we will seek retribution, then you are saying to every adversary and every adversary and every terrorist organisation on the planet, its open season, the ex-technology executive said.

That, Mrs Clinton, is what difference it makes, Fiorina said.

While low on her poll numbers, Fiorina said that she can successfully take on Clinton during the presidential election.

So, heres the deal. Hillary Clinton has been climbing the ladder to try and get power and here now she is trying for the White House. She is probably more qualified for the big house, honestly, Fiorina said.

She has escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo, perhaps Sean Penn should interview her, she said adding that Clinton needs to be prosecuted.

While Mrs Clinton has flown hundreds of thousands of world around the global, I have too..And I know flying is an activity not an accomplishment. While I know that she has held many positions and many titles she has not accomplished much of anything in her life. She has gotten every single foreign policy challenge wrong, Fiorina said. PTI LKJ AJR

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Mumbai:

Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan has dismissed dating rumours, saying the possibility of him having an affair with Pope is more than the names that media was suggesting.

The 42-year-old Bang Bang star took to Twitter to share his response.

There are more chances of me having had an affair with the Pope then any of the (Im sure wonderful) women the media has been naming. Thanks but no thanks, Hrithik posted.

There were rumours that Hrithik and Kangana dated though the duo never publicly acknowledged the relationship.

Kangana and Hrithik have worked together in Kites and Krrish 3

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Kolkata:

A 45-year-old labourer was allegedly shot dead today by bike-borne assailants belonging to a rival group, near his home in Kalichak area of West Bengals Malda district, a police official said.

The victim, identified as Iliyas Ali was surrounded by nearly 15 assailants on 10 motorbikes near his home in Khidirbona under Nawada-Jodupur gram panchayat at around 9.30 AM, the official said.

Iliyas was critically injured in the indiscriminate firing and was rushed to Malda Medical College and Hospital where he died, the officer said.

Attributing the killing to a group rivalry, the officer said Iliyas was a follower of Bokul Sheikh, Trinamool Congress president of Nawada-Jodupur, who had been expelled from the party about six months ago.

The assailants belonged to the rival group led by Trinamool Congresss Zakir Sheikh, the officer said.

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New Delhi:

Should Indian Prime Minister or Finance Minister meet industrialists individually?



President Pranab Mukherjee has posed this question in his just released autobiography.He has answered the question himself by stating that his meetings with industrialists, individually or collectively, were very important.



This, the President said, is what he had followed during his tenure as Finance Minister and Commerce Minister unlike V P Singh who was adamant about not having any one-on-one meetings with industrialists.



Mentioning about the period between 1998 and 1991, which was marked by social and political turmoil in the country, Mukherjee cited differences in approach between him and V P Singh, who was appointed as Finance Minister under the Rajiv Gandhi government.



For instance, as Finance Minister, he was adamant about not having any one-on-one meetings with industrialists. My viewwhich I followed during my tenures as the Finance and Commerce Ministerswas that meetings with industrialists, individually or collectively, were very important to get an overall understanding of specific contexts.



In other words, how can a Finance Minister or Prime Minister not meet industrialists?, the President asked in the memoirThe Turbulent Years- 1980-1996.



On much talked about differences between Manmohan Singh and him, Mukherjee said he had no role in Singhs exit as RBI Governor. He, however, said the differences between him and central bank head were nothing more than legitimate exchanges of opinion over professional matters.



I never saw my differences with Dr Singh, on the rare occasions they occurred, as anything other than legitimate exchanges of opinion over professional matters.



Let me add that, contrary to conjecture in some quarters, I had absolutely no role in Dr Manmohan Singhs departure from the RBI, the President said.



Mukherjee said the relationship between the Finance Minister and the Governor of RBI is complex and it is impossible that they be of one mind on all issues.



Singh was RBI Governor between September 16, 1982 and January 14, 1985. Mukherjee was Finance Minister from January 1982 to December 1984.

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New Delhi:

Leading electric two-wheeler maker Hero Electric today unveiled a range of electric vehicles, including scooters and a load carrying tipper, as part of its plans to expand its product portfolio in the country.



While the company launched the electric dumper, which comes with a payload capacity of 250 kg and is priced at Rs 1.75 lakh, the scooters will be introduced in April.



While the tipper has been launched today, the lithium ion battery powered scooters would be launched on April 1. With the citys pollution levels growing at an alarming rate, restorative steps in the form of electric vehicles are the need of the hour, Hero Electric CEO Sohinder Gill told reporters here.



The company is receiving great response for the tipper and is in talks with various entities to sell the vehicle, he added.



The electric tipper, which has a maximum speed of 25 km/h, can cover a distance of 80 km on a single charge. It comes with a hydraulic system to load and unload the materials.



It also plans to introduce another variant of the vehicle with a payload capacity of 500 kg in the next six months, Gill said.



Commenting on the electric scooters price range, which will be powered by lithium ion batteries, Gill said the entry level model Maxi will be priced at Rs 49,500, the Optima model at Rs 54,500 and the high speed Photon model at Rs 88,000.



We are committed to our vision to provide green mobility to the country and look forward to consistent innovation towards developing products for the Indian electric vehicles market, said Naveen Munjal, Managing Director, Hero Group.
New Delhi:

CBIs investigation in an alleged corruption case involving Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals principal secretary Rajendra Kumar has come under the scanner of a special court which said the agency has utterly failed to comply with the mandatory CrPC provision in its probe.

The court also said that it was not informed by the agency about the freezing of bank accounts of a company and CBI had admitted it after one month in its reply filed on a plea by the firm, M/s Laxmi Enterprises, seeking de-freezing of three bank accounts.

Proprietor of M/s Laxmi Enterprises, Dinesh Kumar Gupta, is also the Director of M/s Endeavour System Pvt Ltd (ESPL), a firm which is under probe by CBI in the graft case allegedly involving Kumar.

Special CBI Judge Ajay Kumar Jain also observed that till date, the agency is unable to show even prima facie that the frozen bank accounts of the firm have any direct links with the commission of alleged crime.

Furthermore, there appears to be no compliance of section 102(3) CrPC by CBI in present case. As per the mandate of this section, every police officer acting under sub section (3) shall forthwith report the seizure or attachment of accounts to the magistrate having jurisdiction, the judge noted.

From the record, it is clear that after freezing the account on December 18, 2015, CBI has not informed this court ... CBI first time admitted freezing of the bank account of the applicant firm in its reply dated January 18, 2016 to this application, the court said in its order.

It is surprising that with this application also the CBI has not annexed the letter which it had written to the bank for freezing of account of the applicant firm. CBI does not find it at all necessary to inform the court about the freezing of the present accounts, it said, adding, The CBI, in present case, utterly failed to comply the requirements of sub section (3) of 102 CrPC.

Section 102 of CrPC pertains to power of police officer to seize certain property during the probe.

It directed the bank, where these accounts are maintained by the company, to de-freeze these three accounts subject to furnishing of a bond of Rs one crore along with the requisite security documents to the satisfaction of the court.

It also asked the proprietor of firm to join the probe as and when required by the CBI.

Earlier on January 20, the CBI was directed by the court to return the documents sought by the Delhi government seized during the December 15 last year raids.

At present, 20 per cent profit is being given over and above the MSP of wheat and paddy. But it (50 per cent) cannot be implemented in one go. The Centre has also pointed out one problem in this regard. It fears that it could lead to monocropping, which means production of few crops will go up. Until we start purchasing all crops, we cannot get out of monocropping. It can be implemented step by step, he said.

Regarding the issue of promoting horticulture, he said the state government will open centres of excellence in each district to promote horticulture and floriculture.

We are in talks with Vietnam and Israel for the centres of excellence. We also want to promote ornamental fishing, he said.

Dhankar, who also holds the portfolios of irrigation, animal husbandry and fisheries, said that Haryana was supplying water to Delhi as per its requirement.

But our issue with Delhi is that the water which we get from Delhi is untreated and we have taken up the matter with Kejriwal government and Union Minister Uma Bharti. Untreated water was being supplied to Mewat, Palwal and Faridabad, he said.

On the issue of compensation to cotton growers, he said once the election code of conduct is withdrawn, the state will start distributing compensation to growers who faced crop loss due to whitefly attack last year.

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New Delhi:

Colourful Beating the Retreat ceremony was held at Vijay Chowk on Friday, marking the end of the 67th Republic Day celebrations.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet ministers and government officials attended the event, where melodious tunes of classical instruments were heard for the first time.



15 military bands, 18 pipes and drums from regimental centres and battalions were part of the ceremony this year.



Bands from the State Police and Central Armed Police Force performed at the ceremony for the first time. Indian Navy and Indian Air Force band was also a part of the event.

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New York:

A book on Indias partition and its fatal consequences has won a prestigious USD 5,000 prize in the US.

Nisid Hajaris book Midnights Furies: The Deadly Legacy of Indias Partition won the 2016 William E Colby Award, a statement said.

Midnights Furies, Hajaris first book, covers the 1947 partition of India and the violence that surrounded that event.

Named after the former CIA director, William E Colby, the prize is awarded annually by Norwich University to a first-time author in recognition of a work of fiction or non-fiction that has made a major contribution to the understanding of military history, intelligence operations, or international affairs.

Hajari oversees Asia coverage for Bloomberg View, the editorial page of Bloomberg News. He writes editorials on Asian politics and economics and edits Bloombergs opinion columns and commentary from the region.

I am absolutely thrilled to be named the recipient of the 2016 Colby Award, Hajari said.

To join the company of such distinguished military and historical writers as Jon Meacham and Dexter Filkins is a tremendous honor, and its particularly gratifying that the judges chose to highlight a subject that may be unfamiliar to many American readers.

Carlo DEste, the executive director of the Colby Symposium and the esteemed author of several books on WWII including biographies of Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Winston Churchill, describes Midnights Furies as noteworthy, superbly readable, and very timely.

Winners of the Colby book award receive a USD 5,000 author honorarium provided through a grant from the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation.
Mumbai:

Union Minister Sushma Swaraj today pitched for a separate market for women entrepreneurs to enhance their incomes and advised them to scale up production of commodities they are selling.



If the Centre gets a proper blueprint of production of commodities in large volume, such a market could be developed for thousands of women in the financial capital, she said.



She was interacting with over 1,000 women entrepreneurs belonging to dozens of Mahila Bachat Guts (self-help groups) in Ghatkopar as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis directive to his Ministers to reach out to people on the work done by the NDA Government.



Mahila Bachat Guts need a separate market on the lines of captive market. These women sell their products at single stall that do not fetch proper income and mostly the commodities are unsold. I feel there should be a captive market for these entrepreneurs where they can sell their items conveniently.



These women entrepreneurs need to produce items in bigger volume because a captive market needs production in voluminous quantity.



So you all decide, what kind of work (production) you are apt for or what are you doing. Then we can launch a drive for skill development for production of those items under a single brand which will pave way for expansion of business, Swaraj said.



The Minister is in the city on a two-day visit and slated to interact with 32 groups of businessmen, students, youth, legal and medical professionals, minority community, SMEs, small traders, chartered accountants, teachers and unorganised labourers, among others.



Earlier, she met representatives of small-scale industries and assured them to draw the Finance Ministers attention to problems being faced by them.



The External Affairs Minister was also facilitated by a few people whom she had helped through her Ministry when they were in trouble on foreign soils.

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Mumbai:

Noted actress-politician Hema Malini has expressed her desire to open dance academies in Mumbai and Mathura. I have an aim to open a dance academy here in Mumbai by the end of this year. I would also like to open a dance academy in Mathura...people over there have interest in classical dance forms. We will have trained teachers working under my guidance, Malini told PTI.

We would like to have academy in Mumbai and Mathura. People in Mathura have an interest in dancing. There will be workshops and more, she said. The 67-year-old Seeta Aur Geeta actress feels there is some interest in young people to learn classical dancing.

Today, lot of young people are interested in classical dancing, but they also want to learn Bollywood dance. I feel other artists should also come ahead and do such kind of programme for classical dancing, she said.

Hema feels Bollywood actresses should take up teaching classical dance. Actresses like Madhuri Dixit are known to be classical dancers. But they do not promote classical dancing... they should promote by performing it at shows, she said. Hema wants to promote talented dancers through Jaya-Smriti, a programme in the memory of her mother.

I am grateful to my parents for nurturing my talent. She (mother) wanted me to dance...she instilled it in me. I am trying to do things on her behalf. She was a great art lover and she made me what I am today. Without dance, I would have never been Hema Malini, the veteran actress said.

Jaya Smriti is an event organised by Malini where she encourages young talent. Every year we do this programme, but since two years we couldnt do it. It is to encourage young talented people to learn classical dance forms, she added.

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musings on the mainstream "press corps" and the american discourse
The dedication of a new flagpole held Jan. 23 in Leadingtons Woodlawn Cemetery brought out members of Mineral Area Memorial VFW Post 5741 who sponsored and carried out the ceremony, as well as a delegation of city dignitaries.

Addressing the crowd at the morning dedication was Mayor Dustin Winick who thanked the VFW for the many things it has done for the city through the years. He also expressed his appreciation for the veteran organizations donation of the flagpole, along with the American and POW/MIA flags.

Leading the ceremony was Post Commander Don Barnhouse, who said, On this date in 1973, President Nixon announced that the United States and North Vietnam came to an agreement to end the Vietnam War and bring peace with honor. Thus it is only proper that we assemble on this day to dedicate this flag. We are dedicating it to those men and women who have served in the United States Armed Forces. They are our friends and neighbors who have fought in defense of this country and our preservation of life.

They are worthy of a far greater recognition than mere words or markers, however, the sacrifices they have made shall remain alive in the display of this flag for the generations to come. The flag of our nation is a memorial to them and all that is sacred to each of us. It reflects everything we are and stand for.

We also have the honor of presenting this POW flag in remembrance of those who were captured or went missing in action. As long as this flag flies, they will never be forgotten and will remain in our hearts and prayers. Therefore it gives me great pleasure to present this flag installation to the city of Leadington, Missouri, on behalf of our fellow comrades and the Mineral Area Memorial VFW Post 5741.

The ceremony ended with the crowds recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Pentagon deploys a dozen F-22s to Japan amid rising tension with N. Korea

(NationalSecurity.news) The Air Force has sent 12 F-22s from the 525th Fighter Squadron, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, to Yokota airbase near Tokyo, The Aviationist reported last week, in what appears to be an effort by the Pentagon to bolster U.S. military capacity in the region as tensions rise with North Korea and China.

In addition to the stealth jets, the Pentagon is also sending 14 F-16s from the 18th Aggressor Squadron, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, to take part in a joint training exercise in Japan that had been planned already.

The Aviationist noted that it isnt clear whether the planes are being added to the Air Force Theater Security Package (TSP), but analysts say having them there will lend more stability to the region following Pyongyangs recent nuclear test Jan. 6, and the election of an independence-minded president in Taiwan.

In addition, Chinas aggressive island-building in the South China Sea has also ratcheted up tensions in the region, with several Asian powers including Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, among others, competing for claims and resources.

F-22s  built by Lockheed Martin  are fifth-generation, twin-engine, all-weather strike aircraft have extremely low radar signatures, making them difficult to track. The are often deployed to Japan after the Air Force began rotating fighter aircraft to bases under the Pacific Command in early 2004 as a deterrent to rising threats within that theater of operations.

But, as The Aviationist further notes, most generally the F-22s are sent to Kadena airbase on the island of Okinawa. That is home to the 18th Wing, which is the largest combat wing in the entire Air Force.

As reported by Japan Times, the countrys defense ministry said it was not given prior notice of the deployment of the F-22s. Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani was not concerned, telling the paper in a statement that the aircraft deployment was part of the usual practice of security cooperation between Japan and the United States.

He did, however, mention Pyongyangs nuclear test as a possible reason the Yokota base was chosen.

As North Koreas nuclear test clearly shows, the security environment around our country has become increasingly severe, he said.

The deterrence provided by the U.S. military based on the Japan-U.S. alliance is indispensable for our countrys security.

Albert Goldson, executive director of Indo-Brazilian Associates, LLC, a NYC-based global advisory firm and think tank, confirmed that the F-22 deployment at the Yokota airbase, located in western Tokyo, was indeed strategic.

Geographically this puts the 12 F-22s considerably closer to North Korea, he told NationalSecurity.news in an email.

As part of the officially announced previously scheduled joint training mission, its probable that the exercise will utilize the F-22s stealth capabilities plus intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissanceattributes to probe North Korea defenses and possibly detect how the North Korean defenses respond to military aircraft even when in international airspace, he added.

See also:

The Aviationist

Natural News

Japan Times

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Lifestyle site Thrillist set out to find the most beautiful building in each state and Philip Johnson's New Canaan Glass House got the nod for Connecticut.

Click here for the full list

Started in 1949, Johnson built the glass dwelling on his 47-acre property as his own home. The house is iconic for its glass exterior, leaving a completely exposed interior. Among the first of its kind, New Canaan's Glass House inspired many modern homes.

Johnson was part of a group of architects known in the 1950s as "The Harvard Five." The group also included Johnson M. Johansen, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores and Eliot Noyes. Together, they ushered in a modern architecture movement, and made New Canaan a mid-century modern mecca.

"The Harvard Five was so well known, and well respected that young architects wanted to be here too to work for those architects," New Canaan Historical Society Executive Director Janet Lindstrom told Hearst in 2014. "Even if you go now to look at the telephone directory, you'll see there are really a lot of architects in New Canaan, because it's still a place people know as a hub for it."

Other iconic buildings on Thrillist's list include the Hearst Castle, San Simeon in California, the Capitol building in Washington DC, the Empire State Building and the Breakers mansion in Rhode Island.
Jennifer Kohnke

Hillary Rodham Clinton has not changed since she entered politics many years ago. She remains the same and you can be sure she will continue to do exactly what she has been doing as substantiated in the article by Dan Calabrese below. She is only interested in catering to her own egotistical desires and certainly not interested in working for the people. She will only support the people if there is a personal gain. Those who continue to support her do so for political reasons, discarding morality.

The following is from a column published March 31, 2008 by Dan Calabrese, founder of Northstar Writers Group (www.northstarwriters.com). The story is based on statements by Jerry Zeifman, a Democrat, who was a counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee. He said that he supervised then Hillary Rodham, who got a job working on the investigation of the Watergate scandal, which eventually brought Richard Nixons presidency to an end through resignation.
Brad Loper / McClatchy-Tribune News Service

DANBURY - The citys lawmakers in the Senate and the House of Representatives are calling for a ban on guns while shopping.

In a letter to the Connecticut Food Association, U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Rep. Elizabeth Esty called for a policy that would prevent people from openly carrying firearms in member grocery stores.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I have been with my partner for seven years. We were young when we met, and my boyfriend did not want kids or marriage at the time. I always held out hope that he would change. As the years went by, I stuck to my desire for children and marriage, until recently when something changed within, and all I wanted was to stay with the love of my life. I no longer care about having children with him and just want to live the rest of my life with him. When I told my longtime boyfriend about my epiphany, he said he needs some space to think about what I said. What? I told him what he's wanted to hear all of these years, and now he needs space? What can I say to him? I feel like I've done everything he's asked for now that I am not pushing for children and marriage. -- Not Enough, Scarsdale, New York

DEAR NOT ENOUGH: It sounds like your boyfriend may be prepared to make good on the promise he made to you from the start: namely, that he really isn't into commitment. I was taught years ago to believe people when they tell you things about themselves. It's unfortunate that you were willing to build a life with him despite his lack of interest in a committed relationship or desire to build a family. Because he has been with you for all of these years, it is understandable that you would believe that he intended to stay with you, albeit still following his rules. Your willingness now to acquiesce to his rules as long as you stay together has shaken him. It means that he has to evaluate how real your relationship is for him, and what he wants to do about it.

The good news is that you are soon to find out whether he wants to stick around. If he does come back to you, this time make sure that you create terms that satisfy both his needs and your own.

DEAR HARRIETTE: My boyfriend and I have been dating for six years. I love him so much. I'm actually surprised we lasted this long, considering that I didn't have an example of a successful relationship or marriage. Which brings me to my current problem: I love my boyfriend, and I know for a fact that he's the one for me. However, I don't know if I'm the one for him. My parents' marriage failed terribly. How can I be someone's wife if I've never seen what that is? We've been through so much in life. Together we pulled each other through it. I don't want to lose six years of loyalty, love and commitment because we couldn't have a successful marriage. I know that eventually he will ask me to marry him, but I'm not sure if I can be that wife. I want to be in his life forever; I want us to be able to make it as far as marriage. I'm just so fearful I won't be the wife he hoped for. So far I've just been winging it when it comes to our relationship, and he seems happy. But can you "wing" a marriage? -- Ready but Afraid, Montgomery, Alabama

DEAR READY BUT AFRAID: Have an honest conversation with your boyfriend about your fears. Express your love for him and your desire to learn how to be a successful partner. The reality is that what you two need to do is to figure out how to care for each other. You can set your own roadmap and support each other along the way.

DEAR HARRIETTE: My sisters and I have been thinking of going into business together. We have always talked about how fun it would be to have a family business, and now all of us have reached times in our lives where we are able to make this happen. I hate to be the secret Debbie Downer in all of this excitement, but I am not sure if this business venture will work out. The financial risk isn't horrible, and I don't want to be the only one out of four sisters to bow out of this family business. Also, if it turned out to be a success, I would never hear the end of it! I haven't shared my feelings with my family yet, but I have a 70 percent feeling that this venture isn't going to work. Should I just give some money to maintain family unity? I don't want to ostracize myself from my sisters. -- Sister Biz, Cincinnati

DEAR SISTER BIZ: Think of yourself as being practical. Rather than presenting as Debbie Downer, ask your sisters to have a meeting to discuss the business idea. During this meeting, express your doubts about the viability of the business. Be sure that you have more than your gut instinct to point to your concerns. Do your research so that you can present your concerns as objectively as possible. Ultimately, if your sisters decide to go ahead with the business, you will have to decide what you will do. If you are willing to lose a small amount of money as you show your support, contribute. If you are completely against the whole idea, don't.

Lifestylist and author Harriette Cole is president and creative director of Harriette Cole Media. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
In the five years between 2007 and 2012 there was a 23 percent increase in the number of Litchfield County farms, according to the 2012 U.S. Census of Agriculture. These farms, ranging from several hundred acres to as small as four, are successfully cultivating seasonal vegetables, fruits, pasture-raised cattle, pigs and chickens  plus an emerging range of new nontraditional produce and products, such as hydroponic salad greens, edamame and fresh baby ginger. The total market value of Litchfield County crop and livestock sales in 2012 was more than $46 million.

Customer demand for locally grown food has soared, due in part to the perceived benefits of eating fresh food and knowing your farmer and her or his farming practices. Seasonal farm stands and farmers markets have become regular and celebrated weekly stops for many health-conscious consumers. Indoor winter farmers markets have extended the buying season in towns such as New Milford.
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The state has answered a challenge to its controversial hospital tax by saying it will rule on the constitutionality and legality of the tax as early as the end of May  or as late as November.

The Connecticut Hospital Association and 24 hospitals, including Danbury, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich, filed documents with the state last fall claiming the hospital tax violates state and federal laws as well as the state and federal constitutions.

The filings requested that the state departments of revenue and social services issue declaratory rulings that the tax is invalid and unenforceable, a key step toward a possible legal battle with the state.

The state had 60 days to respond  making the deadline Friday  and did so by issuing a five-page letter signed by the commissioners of both departments.

The states response asks for more time to collect and review evidence from the hospitals. If the hospitals agree to the extension, the state would promise to rule by Nov. 30. If the hospitals decline, the state says it will rule by May 28, according to the commissioners letter.

Hospital association officials confirmed receipt of the response Friday afternoon.

We received the response from DSS/DRS and are reviewing it with counsel," said Michele Sharp, vice president of communications for the CHA.

Fridays state response comes after months of intense feuding over the hospital tax.

The state began collecting the tax in 2012, intending to redistribute the proceeds to the hospitals as a way of drawing down matching federal grants. That year the hospitals paid about $350 million in taxes and received about $400 million in state and federal funds.

But when the state began experiencing severe budget pressures, it started returning less and less to the hospitals. This year, hospitals are projected to owe $556.1 million in taxes but are slated to receive only $164.3 million.

The payout could have been even less. In September, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy slashed the state budget, cutting the amount going to $64 million. In response, the Connecticut Hospital Association started an aggressive PR campaign to reverse the cuts.

The governor countered by shaming health care executives over their multi-million-dollar salaries and the hospitals supposedly high profit margins.

A December budget deal arrived at the $164.3 million figure.

Hospital and CHA officials have said they hope to keep this dispute out of the courts. But if they do so, they wont be the first in the region; their counterparts in New Hampshire fought a similar fight and were able to force a settlement that restored the flow of revenue to the hospitals.

Connecticut hospital officials and advocates have repeatedly said the hospital tax is costing them millions of dollars and forcing hospitals to cut services and staff.

Our goal is fairly simple, Stephen Frayne, the CHAs senior vice president of health policy, said earlier this month. Wed prefer to be taking care of patients rather than have to fight this out in the court system, but we are left with no choice because were being taxed into oblivion.

In response to the original filing, Department of Social Services spokesman David Dearborn cited figures suggesting that state hospitals had more than $900 million in profits last year  although the CHA disputes those figures as grossly misleading.

Dearborn also contended that Medicaid payments to hospitals have increased over the last decade, and that hospitals are seeing fewer patients without coverage because of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Even in an industry that made $916 million last year alone - and one in which there is exorbitant CEO pay - the hospital association is asking Connecticut taxpayers to foot more of the bill, said Dearborn in a statement earlier in January.
TORONTO, Jan. 29, 2016 /CNW/ - The Law Society of Upper Canada presented a degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LLD), to The Honourable George W. Adams, QC, at its Call to the Bar ceremony this morning at Roy Thomson Hall.

Adams is considered a pioneer of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in Canada. The former law professor, award-winning author and former judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has acted as a mediator and facilitator in almost every type of conflict and conducted many public policy facilitations. (Full biography follows.)

Law Society Treasurer Janet E. Minor awarded the honorary LLD to Adams, who then delivered the keynote address to the soon-to-be lawyers, members of the audience and distinguished guests.

The Law Society awards honorary doctorates to distinguished people in recognition of outstanding achievements in the legal profession, the rule of law or the cause of justice.

In her message to the newly called lawyers, Treasurer Minor, noted, "Our democracy is founded on the Rule of Law maintained through an independent judiciary and an independent Bar. You are now a major actor in this enterprise. You have important obligations and responsibilities to your clients with a high standard of integrity, professionalism and competence, to further the administration of justice and access to justice. Addressing access to justice is one of the most important challenges we face."

There were 187 new lawyers called to the Ontario Bar at this morning's ceremony.

Follow us on Twitter @LawsocietyLSUC | #called2016

www.lsuc.on.ca

www.lawsocietygazette.ca

Biography

The Honourable George W. Adams, QC

The Honourable George W. Adams, QC, is a professional mediator. Since establishing his alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practice in 1997, Adams has been called upon to mediate or facilitate a vast range of disputes and public policy issues affecting important and sensitive areas of Canadian life.

Adams earned his BA from McMaster University (1967), his LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School (Bronze Medal; 1970), and an LLM from Harvard Law School (Mackenzie King Travelling Scholarship; 1971).

He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1973 and soon after served as Assistant Deputy Minister of Labour  Ontario (197579) and chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board (197984). He was made Queen's Counsel in 1981.

Adams was appointed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 1991. As a judge, he handled major cases in all areas, including the Commercial List and Divisional Court. Many of his decisions are widely reported.

He resigned as judge of the Superior Court in 1997, in a rare instance of a judge stepping down from the bench, believing he could better serve the Canadian justice system through other means. He established his alternative dispute resolution practice  Adams ADR Services Ltd.  later that year.

A former professor, Adams taught contracts, contract remedies, labour law, international business transactions and dispute resolution as an Associate Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School (197178) and at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law (199091). He was an Adjunct Professor with the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law (200309).

He was awarded the Walter Owen Book Prize in 1987 by the Foundation for Legal Research for the labour law treatise, Canadian Labour Law, published by Canada Law Book. Adams also wrote the book Mediating Justice: Legal Dispute Negotiations (CCH Canadian; 2nd ed., LexisNexis, 2011). The second edition is a comprehensive text that provides a practical and theoretical framework for mediating rights disputes in Canada.

SOURCE The Law Society of Upper Canada

Image with caption: "The Hon. George W. Adams, QC (centre) was conferred with the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa by Law Society Treasurer Janet E. Minor (left) at the Jan. 29th Call to the Bar ceremony at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Law Society Bencher Peter Wardle (pictured) places the ceremonial LLD hood on Mr. Adams. (CNW Group/The Law Society of Upper Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160129_C5825_PHOTO_EN_609179.jpg

Image with caption: "The Hon. George W. Adams, QC (centre), holds the honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree presented to him by The Law Society of Upper Canada at its Jan. 29th Call to the Bar ceremony at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Mr. Adams is congratulated by Law Society CEO Robert G.W. Lapper, QC (left) and Law Society Treasurer Janet E. Minor (right). (CNW Group/The Law Society of Upper Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160129_C5825_PHOTO_EN_609181.jpg

Image with caption: "The Law Society of Upper Canada (CNW Group/The Law Society of Upper Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160129_C5825_PHOTO_EN_609231.jpg

For further information: Media contact: Susan Tonkin, Communications Advisor, Media Relations, at 416-947-7605 or [email protected]
Former Governor of Akwa Ibom State and Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio has denied owning any property in Dubai, United ...

Former Governor of Akwa Ibom State and Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio has denied owning any property in Dubai, United Arab Emirate or any other foreign country.Akpabio in a statement on Friday by his his media assistant, Anietie Ekong, challenged the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to seize any money found in a foreign bank account bearing his name.The Senate Minority Leader was denying reports that accused him of makiing a secret attempt to withdraw $7.2 billion from banks in Dubai, United Arab Emirate, through channels in the Central Bank of Nigeria.It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari had recently signed agreements with the United Arab Emirate on the repatriation of Nigerias stolen funds deposited in that country.This move is believed to have unsettled corrupt, former and serving Nigerians officials, who have unexplained wealth and property there.Stating that the media report against him was sponsored by his political traducers, Akpabio said the government should investigate the source of such money and also prosecute its owner.According to him, We challenge these purveyors of falsehood to publish the full details of the purported $7.2 billion account and we urge the Federal Government of Nigeria to seize such sum and prosecute the owner if it does exist. People should learn to accept the outcome of elections and stop this kind of dangerous propaganda in the name of politics, said Akpabio.
The Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, on Thursday announced the suspension of the Village Head of Goma in Gimi District of Da...

The Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, on Thursday announced the suspension of the Village Head of Goma in Gimi District of Danga Local Government Area, Alhaji Danladi Ibrahim, over a drug-related offence.The monarch was said to be in possession of 1.5kg of marijuana (India hemp) when he was arrested by the operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency on January 20, this year.El-rufai, through his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan, said the suspension was with immediate effect.The statement read, In a dramatic demonstration of its campaign against drugs, the Kaduna State Government has announced the immediate suspension of a traditional ruler who was arrested for a drug-related offence. The statement added that the NDLEA had arrested Danladi on January 20, 2016, while he was in possession of 1.5kg of marijuana.He admitted ownership of the illegal drug, and the NDLEA will be charging him to court as soon as it concludes it investigations.The NDLEA subsequently notified the Kaduna State Security Council of the arrest of the traditional ruler. While deliberating on the matter, the council recommended his suspension from office pending the conclusion of investigations and possible trial. The government accepted the recommendation, the statement added.
Government officials looted N273.9bn from pension funds between 2005 and 2011, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, ...

Government officials looted N273.9bn from pension funds between 2005 and 2011, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said.The minister said this while delivering the Distinguished Guest Lecture of the Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-ife, on Friday, according to statement issued by his Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Segun Adeyemi.Mohammed cited the pension fraud as one of the numerous high profile cases of corruption that had occurred in the country in recent times.He drew a link between corruption and under-development, and noted that corruption had under-developed Nigeria and condemned the citizens into perpetual povertyTo buttress his assertion, the minister listed numerous cases of corruption, including N1.9bn Special Intervention Ebola Fund Scandal; the Police Equipment Funds scandal in which about N774m was diverted; the Dasukigate that has so far revealed that 21 individuals benefitted from the scam to a tune of 54bn; the pension scam, in which top government officials in charge of pension funds in the country looted about N273.9bn from 2005 to 2011 and the fuel subsidy scam, in which Nigeria spent N2.587trn on fuel subsidy in 2011, 900 per cent more than the N245bn that was appropriated for that purpose.He called on the citizens to form coalitions that will galvanise their individual efforts to tackle corruption, saying there was a role for everyone in tackling graft. The minister said once the people were determined to battle corruption, they were assured of victory.
Several students of Obafemi Awolowo University on Friday asked President Muhammadu Buhari administration to probe the activities of the...

Several students of Obafemi Awolowo University on Friday asked President Muhammadu Buhari administration to probe the activities of the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Bamitale Omole.The students passed the message to the President through the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who was at the university.They also bombarded the minister with requests that the Federal Government should ensure decent hostels for students on the campus.The minister was at OAU to deliver the distinguished guest lecture, titled Nexus between corruption and underdevelopment of Nigeria at the Universitys Faculty of Arts.The students had staged series of protest against poor condition of their hostels which led to the closure of the school by the management late last year.Our halls of residence are in bad shape and my colleagues are saying probe Omole (VC) and so on, said one of the students allowed to ask the minister a question.It is not only at the national level that the government should concentrate its fight against corruption, it should come to universities and we welcome President Buharis war against corruption on OAU campus.The entire students present applauded the students, while the minister promised to meet with the VC to discuss the issue of students union leaders under suspension.The minister urged Nigerians to support the government in the fight, saying corruption had already started fighting back.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Otunba Dino Melaye, on Thursday reacted to the letter written by ex-P...

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Otunba Dino Melaye, on Thursday reacted to the letter written by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, describing it as a misplacement of anger.Melaye noted that Obasanjos regime exposed the national assembly to corruption and easy money, Melaye (APC Kogi West), in a statement he specially signed said he expected the former resident to have forgiven all those who defrauded him in 2007, those who collected his money and refused to implement the 3rd term agenda.I have tremendous respect for president Olusegun Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo. Elder statesman, respected pan Africanist and committed patriot. I went through the letter written to all senators and members of the House of Representatives. The letter I can see is a misplacement of anger.Our leader is mistaking the 8th National Assembly as the same Senate Assembly that defrauded him in 2007: Those who collected his money and refused to implement the third term agenda. I appeal to Baba that we are not the ones please. After nine years of that bribery saga, the first of its kind, I expect forgiveness to have taken place.There was the case of bribery introduced by the Obasanjos regime in the desperate attempt to remove Speaker Ghali Umar Naabba from office then. In fact, there was open display of that bribery money on the floor of the house. That government exposed the national assembly to corruption and easy money. I hope this is not in an attempt to cover up and distract attention from the Halliburton and Siemens corruption allegations.While I am against corruption anywhere in Nigeria, I will not support accusations based on anger and vindictiveness. The 8th Senate should also look inwardly and purge herself of all the deliberate misgivings of the past. Nigeria must work and we must support the anti corruption stand of the Muhammadu Buharis Administration. God bless Nigeria.
The Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, paid a visit to the Awujale and Paramount ruler of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, in his p...

The Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, paid a visit to the Awujale and Paramount ruler of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, in his palace in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State on Friday.This visit is coming on the heels of his historic visit to the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi.He arrived the palace around 1:14pm with a retinue of chiefs from Ile-Ife and was welcomed to the palace by Oba Adetona and numerous traditional rulers in Ijebuland.The Oonis visit is believed to be in line with his crusade of promoting unity among Yoruba traditional rulers.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh, said on Friday that the party is on course to reg...

The National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh, said on Friday that the party is on course to regain power in 2019.Metuh, who was released from prison on Thursday, said in Abuja that the PDP has now overcome the initial trauma sparked by its defeat in last years elections.In a veiled reference to the struggle for the leadership of the party by different vested interests, the PDP spokesman said the variance of voices was a reflection of the partys foundation of liberal democracy.He spoke at a meeting of the partys Publicity Directorate with some visiting parliamentarians from the United Kingdom, led by Mark Field, member of Parliament and Chairman of International Office of the Conservative Party, and Colin Bloom, Director of Outreach-BCP.The PDP, according to him, was confronted by serious challenges after losing the elections, culminating in the resignation of its National Chairman, Adamu Muazu.Metuh said every issue would be resolved by the party leadership next week.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia said Nigeria will fully redeem its pledge of $100m for the Multinational J...

President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia said Nigeria will fully redeem its pledge of $100m for the Multinational Joint Task Force.He said he would redeem the pledge in order to enhance the operations of the Task Force against Boko Haram.A statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, quoted the President as speaking at a high-level meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council.Buhari said having already released $21m to the task force in June 2015, Nigeria would remit the balance of $79m very soon.He also assured the Council that Boko Harams capacity to conduct conventional attacks has been heavily degraded.He said, As at now, there is no single Nigerian territory under the control of the insurgents other than their hideouts in Sambisa Forest.Displaced persons are now being resettled in their respective homes.This feat totally accords with our promise to Nigerians to rid the country of terrorism and extremism within few months of our assumption of office.Our efforts are already yielding dividends and we will not relent until the terrorist groups are totally decimated and wiped out of our country and sub-region.The President also reaffirmed Nigerias readiness to support measures to end the conflicts in Burundi and South Sudan, including the proposed deployment of troops by the AU to Burundi.Let me reiterate Nigerias deep commitment to ensuring durable peace, stability and security on our continent.Without peace, there will be no development. It is therefore vital for all of us to join hands in taking appropriate measures to end the conflicts and bring a stop to the incalculable damage being inflicted on innocent citizens in the affected countries, the President told participants at the meeting.
Mr. Smart Ajaja, a Nigerian rights activist, based in the United States of America,  yesterday, said the refusal of former President Go...

Mr. Smart Ajaja, a Nigerian rights activist, based in the United States of America,  yesterday, said the refusal of former President Goodluck Jonathan to probe alleged multi-million dollars allegedly found in one the nations service chiefs, during his tenure was the reason America refused to sell arms to his administration.Ajaja, who gave insight into how some persons he described as very vulnerable Nigerians abroad serve as fronts to looters of the countrys treasury,said the US govt, which uncovered the money, gave Jonathan term upon which he could get its support.He said Jonathan refusal to probe a service chief, who he did not name, resulted to the refusal of American government to sell arms to his government.Ajaja said although some volunteers among the diasporans were willing to assist President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government to further identify some of the looted funds, the government should do a lot more to block movement of physical cash out of the country.The activist noted that the corrupt persons could not have transferred most of the looted monies abroad without help of some diasporans but observed that the Bank Verification Number (BVN) policy introduced by the Cenral Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to a great extent, assited in identifying the looted funds.He urged the federal government to create access to opportunities for the citizens to whip up patriotism and reduce the current incident of terrorism in the country.He said, If the government cant monitor the movement of physical cash out of Nigeria, there is nothing we can do from there because what they do is they have agents they use to transfer these monies out, to put them in banks.They have special banks where they put the money but one good thing about the USA which is lacking here is that every human being is a security agent because they put the country first before any thingHere, we are very unwilling to give information. One, because of sentiment tied to friendship, bond of brotherhood and association as well as ethnic sentiment but until we abandon that and accept competence as the only tribe in Nigeria, we will not move forwardIm in total disagreement that the current war against corruption is one-sided. The political parties are no nations. Nigerians committed fraud against Nigeria and they are being prosecuted as Nigerians so the issue of lopsidedness does not arise. These are alleged criminals and they must be prosecuted to full extent allowed by the lawI have heard some people talk about abuse of human rights. By spiritual, moral and constitutional standards, stealing is a crime and stealing at that level, when you abuse your position, your office, when you rob the nation, you are imprisoning the immediate generation and generations unborn, especially when it is of such high extent.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday at a Federal High Court in Abuja tailored its case to the allegation that the N...

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday at a Federal High Court in Abuja tailored its case to the allegation that the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, used the N400m he allegedly received from the Office of the National Security Adviser in November 2014 to fund the partys presidential campaign.The anti-graft agency on Thursday called as its fifth prosecution witness  the Managing Director of CMC Connect, Mr. Yomi Badejo-Okusanya  whose firm was engaged for a media publicity and image management job for the PDP and its then presidential candidate in the 2015 general elections, former President Goodluck Jonathan.Badejo-Okusanya told the presiding judge, Justice Okon Abang, that he was paid a total of N77.5m through Metuhs firm, Destra Investments Limited, in December 2014 and that he started executing the job towards the end of the month.He said the money he got from Metuhs firm preceded a meeting which he had with Jonathan, the then Vice President, Namadi Sambo, former Senate President David Mark, and a number of other top government functionaries of the then PDP-led government, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.The EFCC had on January 15, 2016 arraigned Metuh and his company on seven counts of fraudulent receipt of N400m from the Office of the NSA in November 2014 and money laundering involving a separate sum of $2m cash transaction.The EFCC alleged that the N400m was part of the proceeds of an unlawful activity of the immediate past NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.).The anti-graft commission also alleged in one of the counts that Metuh and his company allegedly transferred the sum of N21.7m to a former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the PDP, Chief Tony Anenih.Led in evidence by the prosecuting counsel, Mr. Sylvanus Tahir, on Thursday, Badejo-Okusanya said after the meeting with Jonathan and some top government officials, sometimes in November 2014, Metuh called him the following day to inform him that the then President was impressed with his presentation.The witness, who in the introductory part of his testimony, narrated how his relationship with the PDP started with a public relations job which he did for the party under the chairmanship of Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo in 2013, added that Metuh also informed him that he (Metuh) had been given the mandate to coordinate the PDP media campaign.The witness said, My company, CMC Connect, had done some work for the PDP under the chairmanship of Dr. Nwodo, who was desirous of repositioning the PDP as a vehicle for national transformation. A substantial part of that work required communication which is what we deal in.In November 2014, he (Metuh) called asking me where I was. He said I should come down to Abuja to attend a meeting and I obliged. On arrival at Abuja, I went to his house and he drove me to the Presidential Villa where we met a meeting in progress.The meeting was presided over by former President Jonathan. Others who were at the meeting included the then Vice President, Namadi Sambo, the Chairman of the party, Adamu Muazu, the Senate President, David Mark, and presidential communications team, comprising Doyin Okupe, Reuben Abati, Prof. Rufai Alkali, and others. The meeting was on how to go about the last election.In the course of the meeting, Metuh introduced me as a communications consultant and told them that I had worked for the party before. He then asked me to speak.I proceeded to speak very frankly to Mr. President. Without going into the whole details, I said I felt that I should point out to him the critical things he had to do to get the election right.The President asked me a couple of questions and I specifically remember telling him that there was a disconnect between his government and the people. He seemed to take everything in good faith and asked us (me and Chief Metuh) to go.The next evening, Chief Metuh called me. He said it seemed we had impressed the President and that he (Jonathan) had asked him to coordinate the initial campaign plan for the presidential election for the PDP.He said his firm started the job later in December 2014 after receiving the payment of N77.5m in two tranches, with N7.5m transferred to CMC Connects account on December 1, 2014 and the balance of N70m later made on December 15, 2014.The witness said, The first part of the work which we did was to get Nigerians to appreciate the role of the military in the fight against Boko Haram, in general, insurgency.This was leading up to the Armed Forces Remembrance Day and we had insertions in newspapers. Thereafter, this was leading up to the Christmas season, so we had a campaign on TV stations wishing Nigerians Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.We had placements on those stations. We did some of them directly and some we engaged the services of a media brokers. The reason for this was that at that time there was a lot of demand for airtime from various political parties. So, to get the prime time, we needed to go through the media muscle to secure the spots we wanted  the actual time.We did that during the Christmas and New Year season. We also wrote materials which we titled FACTS Speak. The essence of this was to draw attention to some of the achievements of the PDP as a party.Bundles of the documents containing the evidence of publication of the various materials in the newspapers, and certificates of broadcast in the electronic media, invoices and cheque vouchers relating to the media jobs done, were admitted as exhibits.Under cross-examination by the defence counsel, Mr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), the witness confirmed that he was given the job due to his proficiency in image positioning management and his relationship with the PDP.The witness also said there was nothing unusual about the job he did for the party.Also on Thursday, a bureau de change operator, Kabiru Ibrahim, who testified as the sixth prosecution witness, narrated how he was engaged by an employee of a financial service firm, Arms and Resource Management Limited, Nneka Ararume, to change the sum of $1m, which the prosecution alleged was provided in cash by Metuh, to naira.
-- The raccoon that

as he walked to school tested positive for rabies, the child's mother told a television station Friday.

Monali Gavali, the mother of Aryan Gavali, said the animal was rabid, NBC New York reported.

An advisory released by Elmwood Park said a rabid raccoon was recently found in the borough and warned residents to take precautions if they encounter wild animals.

According to police, the child was walking with his mother Wednesday morning when the large raccoon ran across the street and attacked from behind on 16th Avenue, near Boulevard.

The animal bit and scratched the boy before a neighbor managed to kill the raccoon with a painter's pole, borough police Chief Michael Foligno said this week. The boy was treated for "significant" cuts to this face and later released from Hackensack University Medical Center.

Foligno said the department has not received other recent reports of aggressive raccoons in the area.

"The incident in which a school child was attacked by a raccoon is an isolated incident," a statement on the borough's Facebook page said.
strickland2.jpeg

Tanya Reed, left, Carmen Strickland and Keith Strickland talk about Reed's niece and Strickland's sister Lawanda Strickland, who was murdered in 2010, after the arraignment of her accused killer Timothy Simon, Jan. 28, 2016. (Michelle Caffrey | For NJ.com)

CAMDEN -- Keith Strickland didn't think this day would come.

It's been nearly six years since his little sister, Lawanda Strickland, was strangled to death inside her Camden home, and he never believed the man he thought was responsible, Strickland's then-boyfriend Timothy Simon, would be held responsible for her death.

All that changed Thursday when Simon was arraigned on first-degree murder charges in Camden County Superior Court after detectives from the county's Cold Case Squad tracked him to Houston, Texas and arranged for his extradition back to Camden.

"They brought him to justice today," Keith Strickland said after 47-year-old Simon's first court appearance, in which Judge Edward J. McBride Jr. approved Assistant Prosecutor Peter Gallagher's request to set bail at $1 million payable only in full cash.

Gallagher argued Simon's criminal history -- which includes being found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault after he choked and stabbed an ex-girlfriend when he lived in Salem City in 2002 -- and history of evading court orders necessitated the high bail.

In presenting probable cause for the murder charge, Gallagher told McBride that Simon's relationship with Strickland, 31, was fraught with violence and controlling behavior prior to her death on July 10, 2010, when Simon reported finding his girlfriend dead on the couch of the home they shared on Jackson Street in Camden at about 9 a.m.

At the time, Simon's story to police was that the two had fought the previous night at about 9 p.m. over Simon's drinking and Strickland threatened to kick Simon out if he drank again.

Simon said he then lied to Strickland about where he was going and headed to a liquor store to buy a bottle of gin, which he later brought back to their home and hid on top of a cabinet to secretly drink.

When Strickland caught Simon drinking, he said they fought but later reconciled. He said another fight broke out later and he left the home between 2 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. to head to a friend's in Gibbstown. Instead of going into the friend's house, however, he laid in his car and called Strickland but she didn't answer.

Simon told police he then went to another friend's house in Camden, where he slept until morning, and called Strickland again at 7:42 a.m., and again she did not answer, so he went to the Off Broadway Bar and drank four or five beers before he went home and found Strickland dead under a blanket wearing just a tank top and underwear.

She was cold to the touch when first responders arrived, and pronounced dead by the county medical examiner at 11:30 a.m. An autopsy later showed she was killed by manual strangulation. The empty gin bottle was found on top of the kitchen cabinets.

Keith Strickland holds the program from his sister's funeral after the arraignment of her accused killer Timothy Simon on Jan. 28, 2016. (Michelle Caffrey | For NJ.com)

Gallagher said phone records show that Simon -- who was also known for incessantly calling Strickland throughout her work day -- did in fact call Strickland three times between 3:45 and 4 a.m. on July 10, but they also show he called her 11 times between 8:30 p.m. and 12:23 a.m. the previous night.

The investigation into Strickland's death also revealed Simon's history of abuse. At the time of Strickland's death, Simon was facing aggravated assault charges for choking Strickland in March, and Strickland had previously told a friend Simon often choked her during and outside of sex.

Two separate DNA tests, one from the sexual assault kit taken during Strickland's autopsy and another from Strickland's fingernail clippings, matched Simon's. The vaginal swab DNA match came back in April of 2011, but the fingernail sample was matched just three months ago in October of 2015.

Simon's history of violence dates back to at least 2002, when he was charged with crashing into an ex-girlfriend's house in Penns Grove, where he choked and stabbed her with a large knife, according to an AP report. Records show he also pleaded guilty to charges of making terroristic threats and burglary in the past.

On Thursday, Simon showed no emotion in court as Gallagher laid out the details of Strickland's killing, and only spoke to say he understood his rights and that he would be hiring a private attorney.

Carmen Strickland, Lawanda Strickland's sister-in-law, shook her head as Gallagher spoke, and said later that while difficult, it was "a relief" to see Simon finally charged and they praised authorities for making it happen.

"It's been so long I didn't think they would ever catch him," added Strickland's aunt, Tanya Reed.

Despite the time that's passed, they said the loss still stings. Strickland had been "an angel," a mother of two school-aged children -- now being raised by her sister -- who would drop whatever she was doing to help anyone in need.

Without her, Reed said, their family will never be whole again.

"We're missing a piece of the puzzle."

Michelle Caffrey may be reached at mcaffrey@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ShellyCaffrey. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
GLOUCESTER TWP. -- Some students aboard a Gloucester Township Schools bus had to be taken out in stretchers following a collision with another vehicle during the Friday morning commute to school.

The accident, which occurred along Sicklerville Road near the Bryce's Court intersection in front of Village Green Lane, was reported shortly before 8:20 a.m. The bus, which was still filled with at least 20 students more than 40 minutes later, was destined for Ann A. Mullen Middle School, which is only a few blocks from the scene.

Gloucester Township Police Department Sgt. Bryan Bonawitz said the injuries students aboard the bus sustained appear to be minor. Additional information was expected to be released later Friday.

Kemet Uhuru, whose 12-year-old son Rashad was sitting toward the front of the school bus, was not injured during the crash. Uhuru said his son sent him a text message letting him know about the crash and that the majority of those injured were in the back of the bus.

The blue Hyundai Tucson involved in the crash sustained major front-end damage, with its engine department crushed and hood curled back toward the windshield. A neighbor who lives across the street said minors were aboard the Hyundai as well, adding that they were transported from the scene first.

The cause of the accident remains unclear. At least two students required back braces as a result. Others were transported to Kennedy University Hospital or strapped to stretchers after being taken off the bus.

A school administrator declined comment, but said parents had been notified of the accident. The middle school's principal also arrived at the scene. A nurse later went aboard the bus to check on any minor symptoms, with additional check-ups expected to be conducted later in the day at school.

Jessica Beym contributed to this report.

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
Maricel Presilla's Cucharamama in Hoboken is still going exceptionally strong.

Last year, it was madeleines and financiers. This year, Maricel Presilla is teaching herself how to make the perfect dumpling.

And steamed buns. Presilla, a two-time James Beard award-winning chef who has written the book on Latin cuisine, is making steamed buns.

"Everyone has buns now, why can't we have buns?"

Yet when you hear the backstory of the steamed bun sandwich, which has just been introduced at Cucharamama, you realize that Presilla is not creating a steamed bun sandwich simply because everyone else is doing it. Presilla is doing what she always has done as a chef, as a historian, as a traveler. She has created a dish in honor of a special relationship. The steamed bun sandwich has an origin story, and, like all her dishes, is an homage. It's a food memory and a history lesson. Presilla's food is her memoir, the stories of her life.

The steamed bun sandwich is honor of Raul Choy, a longtime bartender. Choy is Chinese and Cuban, and the sandwich, the Baocadito Juan Choy Lao, is named after his grandfather, who remains in Cuba. (Baocadito is a contraction of bao, Asian steamed buns, and bocadito, or "little mouth," a slider-type Latin American sandwich.) These classic steamed buns are filled with Presilla's own marinated bacon and features a signature combination of Andean panca peppers. (The recipe is in her book, Gran Cocina Latina, and a version is also available here.) "This bacon is Latin," Presilla says.

"My bartender, he just flipped." He called his family in Cuba. "You know what, you have a sandwich at the bar."

The combination is perfect. This Cuban-Chinese bao is another global stunner by Presilla, and you'll devour it. Thus the preservation and evolution of cuisine, as defined by one of the nation's most worldly chefs.

Presilla, a Latin American historian and a founding partner of the International Chocolate Awards, is always traveling. Paris, Florence, Ecuador, Peru. The food memories she brings back to us are not the precious experiences of glitzy hotels, but rather the warm, gracious, authentic foods of the populace.

Presilla, ever curious, ever ready to seek out an ancient recipe, seems to get straight to the core of a culture, no artiface. Rustic, nourishing, layered flavors. She reveres the farmers' markets, the grandmothers at the stove.

Which is why she is also working on potato soup.

It's ajiaco, a traditional Colombian soup of potatoes and chicken. When she tells you about it, Presilla's eyes spark and her voice becomes a whisper. This soup, she'll say, showcases the silky elegance of the potato, like a vichyssoise, combined with shredded chicken. Long ago, she bought a special soup pot on one of her travels, made of black clay in the shape of a chicken, back in the days when you could bring such stuff along as a carry-on. That pot is now on display at her other restaurant in town, Zafra.

But now, after a recent trip to Colombia, the potato soup has become a mission. Presilla was trekking to the top of a mountain with a cacao farmer. He wanted to share the view, which was fabulous. But it was raining. And cold. And by the time they reached the top, Presilla was dripping, sopping wet. The soup was the antidote.

"Maybe it wasn't the best ajiaco, but to me, it saved my life."

Cucharamama itself was opened by Presilla and her lovely business partner Clara Chaumont as an homage to South America. Its menu features classic, traditional dishes from Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Brazil. The restaurant is as warm and gracious as its owners, a Latin oasis in the heart of Hoboken. The showpiece in the room is the gorgeous wood-burning oven, hand-crafted by Venezuelan architect and artist Sal Galavis.

Presilla consistently meets her goal; this is rustic, layered, authentic food. But it also is remarkably and consistently seductive. Over the years, I've developed a list of personal favorites. Plump little hand-crafted empanadas ($7 to $9) vibrant with flavor, glistening octopus ($16), white bean soup ($8) with an uplifting lilt of smoked chili pepper, short ribs ($28) braised in cacao, a bold churrasco ($30) and the best caipirinha of your life.

And a roasted organic chicken ($28) straight from the wood-burning stove, with skin so perfectly crisp and meat so perfectly tender and flavorful that it seems a miracle. And I marvel - so many great American chefs are right now seeking this, the holy grail of crisp and tender chicken, months of research and development. Perhaps they should just ask Presilla. Or study the beauty of a hearth.

For dessert, Presilla has an unmatched skill for anything made with dulce de leche, and her mille-feuille cake is a lofty sweet fairytale of a dessert, a treasure and an adventure.

Presilla has cooked at the White House and is a James Beard darling. Her fame and celebrity are well deserved, yet the true gift she offers us is her joy in the potato, the bowl of soup, the perfect dumpling. It uplifts us all.

IF YOU GO

Cucharamama, 233 Clinton St., Hoboken, (201) 420-1700. cucharamama.com

Find Teresa Politano at teresapolitano.com and on Twitter @TeresaPolitano.
Soda, that most innocent of American beverages, now packs a punch, and we can't get enough of it.

Hard -- alcoholic -- soda has the beverage industry in a fizzy tizzy.

"We had 50-plus calls a day over the summer about Not Your Father's Root Beer,'' says Dan Nolan, assistant manager of the Spirits Unlimited store on Route 72 in Manahawkin. "We were getting 90 cases a week, and they would be gone by the end of the day. We had to limit people to one (six-pack) a day.''

Not Your Father's Root Beer, which registered $75 million in sales last year after its launch in June, is the undisputed king of the category, but serious contenders are springing up. There's Best Damn Root Beer and Coney Island Hard Soda and Henry's Hard Soda.

All four hard sodas have serious marketing muscle behind them. Coney Island Hard Soda is made by Coney Island Brewing, owned by Boston Beer (Sam Adams). Not Your Father's Root Beer, from Small Town Brewery, is distributed nationally by Pabst, which has part ownership of Small Town. Best Damn Root Beer, produced by Anheuser-Busch, hit stores last month. Henry's Hard Soda, from MillerCoors, was released this month. There's also Jed's Hard Soda, from F.X. Matt Brewing Co./Saranac.

The hard soda wars have begun, and the wintertime release of Best Damn Root Beer and Henry's Hard Soda is proof the big brewers believe hard soda is not merely a summertime fancy. Not Your Father's, in fact, ranked third in all craft beer sales nationwide from January through November, according to one study.

The big question, of course, is what do they taste like? I sampled eight flavors from the four big names - three root beers, three ginger ales, and two orange sodas. Which ones were the best - and worst?

Here's my report:

ROOT BEER

Best Damn Root Beer (5.5% alcohol by volume). Label: "Ale aged on vanilla beans with natural flavors and caramel color.'' Very fizzy, not a strong root beer taste. My least favorite of all the hard sodas sampled. Call it Stewart's Root Beer Seriously Lite.

Coney Island Hard Root Beer (5.8% ABV). Label: "Hints of vanilla, licorice and birch, caramel color added.'' More of a caramel/syrupy taste, the most complex of the root beers.

Not Your Father's Root Beer (5.9% ABV). Label: "Natural vanilla extract, other natural and artificial flavors and caramel color.'' Not as strong a root beer taste as Coney Island, but overall more pleasing.

Winner: Not Your Father's Root Beer. The most popular hard root beer is also the best.

GINGER ALE

Coney Island Hard Ginger Ale (5.6% ABV). Label: "Ale made with natural flavors and caramel color added,'' plus "exotic African ginger.'' Fizzy, dances on the tongue, goes down easily. But not as gingery as the others; maybe that African ginger is too exotic.

Henry's Hard Ginger Ale (4.2% ABV). Label: "Made with cane sugar,'' a "malt beverage with natural flavors.'' More gingery than Coney Island, light and summery. Who's Henry? Henry Reinhard, the legendary German-American brewer who opened a brewery in Portland, Ore. in 1862.

Not Your Father's Hard Ginger Ale (5.9% ABV). Label: "Beer brewed with natural flavors and caramel color.'' More golden-colored than the others. Tart, puckery. Faintly medicinal taste, but not in a bad way.

Winner: Not Your Father's is more gingery and assertive, but the smoother Henry's would go down best on a steamy summer day, and gets the nod here.

Henry's Hard Orange (Henry's Hard Soda)

ORANGE SODAS

Coney Island Orange Cream Ale (5% ABV). Label: "Ale made with natural flavors and caramel color added,'' an "amalgamation of orange, vanilla and spice.'' Looks more like a ginger ale than orange cream soda. Smooth, pleasing.

Henry's Hard Orange (4.2% ABV) Label: "Malt beverage with natural flavor and certified colors.'' A heavier, more complex and -- obviously alcoholic -- orange soda. My first thought: Henry's should collaborate with boardwalk soft-serve legend Kohr's and make a hard orange version of their creamsicle flavor. For adults only, of course.

What was the best hard soda overall? Check out the gallery above. What's your favorite - and least favorite -- hard soda? Let me know in the comments section below, and don't forget to vote in the poll.

Peter Genovese may be reached at pgenovese@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PeteGenovese or via The Munchmobile @NJ_Munchmobile. Find the Munchmobile on Facebook and Instagram.
Our Lady of Holy Cross College changes name, now 'university'
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House Jan. 6 committee plans to unveil "surprising" details at its next public hearing about the 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol. The session Thursday afternoon is likely to be the last public hearing before midterm elections next month. The panel is expected to include new evidence from the U.S. Secret Service about its actions with Donald Trump that day. Ahead of a report later this year, the panel is summing up its findings. The committee says Trump, after he lost the 2020 presidential election, launched an unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory. They say the result was the deadly mob siege of the Capitol.
A red touring bus traveling the country praising the role of nurses in health care proposals by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made a stop in Council Bluffs Thursday.

Two nurses from Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital took part in the local stop with the traveling group, National Nurses United, the countrys largest union and professional association of registered nurses.

Christie Naberhaus, an ER nurse at Jennie, said she likes Sanders plan for improving the nurse-to-patient ratio by making it a federal law, instead of each state deciding that ratio. Fellow ER nurse, Tracie Kerns supports the Vermont senators proposal for more long-term mental health facilities.

Nurses understand that inequities in socioeconomic factors such as wages, secure and decent housing, reliable healthcare access, educational opportunities, environmental justice, and more, underpin their patients health, said Jean Ross, copresident of the organization. And Sanders is the only presidential candidate whose positions align with nurses on the issues they care about most, she said.

I am on the bus to share with others what I and my coworkers see everyday, said Kris Dixon, a Des Moines-area emergency room nurse who said that she and coworkers often receive patients who delay or forgo needed medical care because they cant afford it. We need Medicare for all. Health care is a right for all.
Letter: City needs to be responsive to seniors' needs

When commenting on the excellent new exercise facility for all older adults recently opened at Finlandia, Gerry Lougheed Jr.

Being responsive to the needs of senior citizens will only become more important as the size of that demographic continues to grow. File photo

When commenting on the excellent new exercise facility for all older adults recently opened at Finlandia, Gerry Lougheed Jr. said that sometimes our seniors are afterthoughts when we design community playgrounds, medical treatment centres or family support programs.



We are pleased this new centre for fitness sets an example for other initiatives related to senior-centred care.



Children home over the holidays remarked at how many older people there were in Sudbury, and were informed that we have the highest percentage of our population in the upper age bracket of any large community in Ontario, if perhaps not the country.



While we may be large in numbers, we have not always been the most vocal or demanding group, but this is changing. It has to change. In health care alone, it is predicted that the number of seniors to visit emergency rooms, will within a few years be one in three. There will an increasing number requiring advanced care either in institutions or at home.



Facilities such as those at the new Finlandia exercise centre, which is open to the public and free of charge, will keep our aging population in better condition for a healthier and happy extended life. Our municipality must also be responsive to the needs of the aging population in providing services to make our city more livable  from better snow removal from bus stops and downtown sidewalks to recreational facilities, bike and walking paths, access to parks, safer crosswalks, etc.



Seniors want to stay in their homes and in the community as long as possible. The cost to do so continues to increase, while, for many, income levels do not. This is a concern to many who fear increased taxation will adversely affect their standard of living. Those of more advanced age have been very fiscally responsible in their own lives and expect our elected representatives to be no less so with respect to municipal funds, but fear otherwise.



The advocacy voice of local older adults is represented by Friendly to Seniors Sudbury and the Sudbury Chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. Those interested in having their concerns represented are invited to attend the next CARP meeting in the room across from the cafeteria at Science North at 12.30 p.m. on Feb. 28.



Hugh Kruzel

Chair, CARP Sudbury Chapter

John Lindsay

Chair, Friendly to Seniors Sudbury
Attention Sudbury cosplayers, Mojoverse at 1264 The Kingsway will be hosting a cosplay social on Feb. 20. Store owners Moe Charette and Joelle Lavoie will open their doors to the Sudbury cosplay community between noon and 5 p.m. on Feb.

Attention Sudbury cosplayers, Mojoverse at 1264 The Kingsway will be hosting a cosplay social on Feb. 20.Store owners Moe Charette and Joelle Lavoie will open their doors to the Sudbury cosplay community between noon and 5 p.m. on Feb. 20, as well as provide food and refreshments.The Sudbury cosplay scene is a little more low key than say Toronto or something, but it's very well done, said Charette. A friend of ours is really good at it and we wanted to create an opportunity for different groups of cosplayers to meet new people.Along with networking and meeting fellow cosplay enthusiasts, Charette says this is an opportunity for Sudbury to really show what it has to offer.It's a good chance to grow the community and give some recognition to what's out there because there are some very talented cosplayers in the city, and there is a cosplay community here, said Charette.The event is free for all to attend, for more information visit the Mojoverse Facebook event page.
$2.3M needed to replace Adanac ski lift

Greater Sudbury is looking at spending $2.3 million to replace the 51-year old ski lift at Adanac, the city-owned ski hill located in New Sudbury.

Greater Sudbury is looking at spending $2.3 million to replace the 51-year old ski lift at Adanac, the city-owned ski hill located in New Sudbury. File photo.

Greater Sudbury is looking at spending $2.3 million to replace the 51-year old ski lift at Adanac, the city-owned ski hill located in New Sudbury.



Meeting on Thursday, members of the finance and administration committee gave conditional approval for the purchase.



Real Carre, the city's director of leisure services, said if the 1955 Poma chair lift currently in use at Adanac isn't replaced, it will have to undergo an assessment next year. Ski lifts have to be assessed every five years.



That will likely result in about $300,000 in mandatory upgrades to keep it operating  about the same amount the city has put aside in each of the last two years to help pay to replace it.



Should we spend $300,000 on a lift that has outlived its usefulness? Carre said Friday.



The city had planned to buy a second-hand lift from a closed hill in Mont-Carmel, Quebec, in 2014, at a total cost of $1.2 million. All the necessary approvals and funding were place, but the deal ultimately fell through.



At the 11th hour, we learned that it had been sold, Carre said.



A total of $605,000 had already been set aside, almost half the initial price. Carre said costs have doubled since 2014 largely because of the drop in the value of the Canadian dollar. It was close to par with the U.S. dollar in 2014, but now is hovering around 70 cents.



That affects Adanac, he said, because the mostly likely place to find a replacement lift is south of the border.



We're challenged by the value of the Canadian dollar, Carre said.



If councillors give final approval next week when budget talks wrap up, the plan is to build the new lift beside the old lift in the 2016-2017 season, so it will be ready for the 2017-2018 season.



The new lift will be able to carry four skiers at a time, as opposed to the two the current one carries. There seemed to be a lot of support on council, Carre said, for buying the new lift.



But I'm always cautious until it receives official approval, he said.
$113K to fund study into rural northern libraries

Ontario Library Service North in Sudbury will receive $113,000 over two years to fund a study that will measure the importance and impact that libraries have in small and rural communities across Northern Ontario.

Ontario Library Service North in Sudbury will receive $113,000 over two years to fund a study that will measure the importance and impact that libraries have in small and rural communities across Northern Ontario. Supplied photo.

Ontario Library Service North in Sudbury will receive $113,000 over two years to fund a study that will measure the importance and impact that libraries have in small and rural communities across Northern Ontario.



This investment is part of the Ontario Libraries Capacity Fund, a $10 million program to help public libraries support strong, vibrant communities and better meet the changing needs of Ontarians.



The fund supports new projects that can be adapted to suit the needs of other communities and have the potential for a positive impact on public libraries across the province and the people they serve.



The provincial government is supporting 10 new projects in public libraries that will improve services for Ontarians.



Ontario Library Service North is an integral part of the fabric of our community, said Sudbury MPP Glenn Thibeault, in a press release.



With support from the provincial government for this project, the library will be able to deliver even more benefits and continue to enrich peoples lives here in Sudbury and across the north.



In todays rapidly changing world, public libraries need to continuously innovate and find new ways to meet the needs of their communities, said Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Michael Coteau.



Im proud we are supporting 10 new projects that will help libraries enhance the vital role they play and ensure their programs are having a positive impact. Libraries across the province will be able to learn from the results and knowledge gained through these initiatives.
Police raid: Gun, heroin, fentanyl seized

Greater Sudbury Police got quite a haul yesterday when they raided a Sudbury home looking for drugs. On Jan. 28, members of the Greater Sudbury Police Service Intelligence Unit executed a search warrant at a Sudbury residence.

A police raid Jan. 28 at a Sudbury resident resulted in four arrests and the seizure of cocaine, heroin, MDMA, fentanyl and a handgun. File photo

Greater Sudbury Police got quite a haul yesterday when they raided a Sudbury home looking for drugs.



On Jan. 28, members of the Greater Sudbury Police Service Intelligence Unit executed a search warrant at a Sudbury residence.



And that search warrant, police said, really bore fruit. GSPS said in a news release officers recovered cocaine, MDMA tablets, heroin and close to 300 fentanyl transdermal patches. Fentanyl is a powerful opioid painkiller and sedative.



Besides the drugs, officers seized a 9mm handgun and stolen property valued over $10,000, the release said. Police estimate the street value of the drugs exceeds $185,000.



Four people were arrested at the scene: two adult males, one adult female and one young person, all from the Greater Sudbury area. All four have been charged with a number of offences under the Controlled Drugs & Substances Act and the Criminal Code of Canada.



They are being held pending a bail hearing scheduled today.
EVANSTON, Ill. -- At 81, renowned experimental dancer, choreographer and writer Simone Forti has no plans to stop moving. In the middle of a Chicago winter, shell be directing a weekend-long creative writing and movement workshop that takes students outdoors to the shores of Lake Michigan.

The two-day workshop at Northwestern University culminates at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1, with the free public program, Thinking with the Body. The event features a student performance of Huddle, Fortis seminal 1961 work included in Charlotte Moormans Avant-Garde Festivals.

Thinking with the Body also includes a conversation with Forti, who will discuss the relationship between dance, language, everyday movement and performance, in an interview with Northwesterns Amanda Jane Graham, Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies.

The event will be held at The GYM, 640 Lincoln Street in Evanston.

Forti is one of several leading visionaries featured in conjunction with The Block Museums Main Gallery Show, A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s, the first major exhibition exploring the art and impact of Moorman, a groundbreaking, rule-bending artist, musician and advocate for the experimental art of her time.

Throughout her career, Forti has explored the potential for dance to serve as an accessible link between thought and language, raising questions such as, how can we develop a natural and intuitive flow between moving and speaking?

Part of what makes Thinking with the Body special is how Forti works with improvisation, said Susy Bielak, associate director of engagement and curator of public practice at Northwesterns Block Museum of Art.

During Mondays program, students will perform Huddle and read writing generated through the weekend workshops. The event is a blend between a lively, multimedia performance and a chance to hear from one of the leading lights of contemporary art, Bielak said.

Fortis weekend workshop features an interdisciplinary mix of students from across campus and Chicago, including those majoring in art, journalism, dance, music theory, earth science and mathematics.

As I expand and sharpen my own practice, it is a great honor to work directly with her, said Toby Altman, doctoral candidate in Northwesterns English department. I also would like to learn from the way she thinks about the body itself: how she stages it as part of -- and as an intervention in --its environment.

Fortis work has evolved over time, but she has consistently used her body as a form of expression. From her early minimalist Dance Constructions through her Animal Movement Studies and Illuminations Studies of Centrifugal Force, to her Logomotion News Animations, she has sought and invented ideas and practices drawing on sources ranging from the news to animal behavior.

In 2005, Forti received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Dance. In 2011, she was honored with a Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts. In 2014 she had a retrospective show at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, Austria.

Parking is available by The GYM and in Northwestern Parking Lots nearby. Allow time for potential construction delays on Sheridan Road.

The interdisciplinary program is co-sponsored by Northwesterns Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences departments of art history, art theory and practice, the School of Communications department of performance studies and dance program; Mellon Dance Studies; and Northwesterns Poetry & Poetics Colloquium.
Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs



Two stalwarts go sleuthing:



"The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine"



'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didnt want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended  and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Heres the test  if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle Easts only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'

Rod Liddle (2018)



Pro-Israel Down Under







Shalom and Welcome to my blog!

I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013

Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page is here









'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011)

Scroll to end for more quotations





Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop?



Balfour and Beyond



Try this for Sizer



'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.

If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

BDS is Antisemitic



The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS



'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.

Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.

[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world  even to demonise as Islamophobic anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

"Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah"



Maps of Mendacity & Mischief



These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946  intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945  and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced  has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today. David Singer (2016)

How They Twist the Truth!



Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...

Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)



Expose The Lies! There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one  the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals cant fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)



Exposing Lies



The "Apartheid" Slur The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas A, B and C was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.

95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.

Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.

Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.

There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area A. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation  and subjugation  by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.

The narratives did not begin in 1948  they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)



Telling the Truth



The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)





A voice of courage & reason



He knows, y'know



An Aussie demo against BDS



On the left, black people are usually allowed to define whats racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews theyre wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic  and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016)

An awkward fact for some!



Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012)

BDS hypocrisy!



Want more?



Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case  aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries  about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: It doesnt matter what we say. The whole world is against us. You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they wont say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)



#Je suis ISRAEL



Aujourdhui, lantisemitisme est masque par lantisionisme. Il faut dire les choses comme elles sont! ["Today, antisemitism wears the mask of anti-Zionism. We must tell things as they are!"] Nicolas Sarkozy (27 May 2015)





Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.

Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)







A nuclear Iran threatens our existence



Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, theres no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who dont share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We cant let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to historys horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)





The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)



My archived Tuesday blogs at Elder of Ziyon



  ,   



Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)









Blog Archive





January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...

The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...

friendsofisraelinitiative.org





[I]ts impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldnt  if only opportunistically  seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can never be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)





What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975)







I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe. Oriana Fallaci









For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar









Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera









Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel









Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse







The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970)









I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola









About Me Daphne Anson I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair. Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html View my complete profile





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Former Raider and Shark Sami Sauiluma is set to ditch the Gold Coast sun for the cold of northern England after deciding to put his NRL career on hold in order to play for Super League club Hull KR.

Signed to the Burleigh Bears in the Intrust Super Cup, Sauiluma had been on a 'train and trial' contract with the Titans but with an opportunity to secure his immediate future in England is now in the process of making the move, Burleigh officials confirming that they are working through the necessary paperwork required to release him.

The 24-year-old made his NRL debut in 2013 with the Raiders and played 15 games for Canberra across the next two seasons and was named at centre in the 2014 NSW Cup Team of the Year.

He joined Cronulla the following season and came off the bench for the Sharks in three games during the middle of the year, including a heart-stopping 23-22 win over the Titans.

He was named in the NSW Cup Team of the Year for the second year in succession and topped the try-scoring tally for the Newtown Jets, Cronulla's feeder team in the NSW Cup.

Hull KR has become something of an Aussie enclave in recent years with Terry Campese, Albert Kelly, Mitch Allgood, Ken Sio, Maurice Blair, Josh Mantellato and Dane Tilse all currently contracted to the club.
A Denver man has logged the fastest Grand Canyon river trip on record, battling blisters and rapids as he paddled his kayak down a 277-mile stretch of the Colorado River in 34 hours and two minutes.

Ben Orkin reached the end of his journey Sunday, exhausted after navigating the water in the dark and swimming part of it when a rapid toppled his kayak. Orkin beat a record set last week by more than an hour and a previous one set by three men in a non-motorized boat in 1983, according to Tom Martin, secretary of the Grand Canyon Historical Society.

"I'm super happy I beat it," Orkin, a 25-year-old certified public accountant, said Monday. "I'm never trying it again."

The unofficial records kept among river rafters started with Maj. John Wesley Powell, who rowed the river in 29 days in 1869.

Most people take their time on the river, stopping to hike within the canyon and camp. But river rafting enthusiasts say doing the trip as quickly as possible is becoming a personal challenge for some.

Orkin and a friend from college, Harrison Rea, attempted an overall speed record last January but fell an hour short. They lost time after Rea's kayak got stuck and cracked, forcing them to repair it on shore.

Orkin launched his latest venture in the dark Saturday from Lees Ferry near the Arizona-Utah border, aiming to beat the 1983 record of 36 hours and 38 minutes that was set when the water was flowing much faster. On his way to the river, he got an email from a fellow kayaker that would make it even harder: Four men just finished the trip in 35 hours and five minutes.

Orkin said he knew within hours that he could beat that time if he kept up his pace of just over 8 miles an hour. He grew up in a family of whitewater river rafters, spent years developing a relationship with the Grand Canyon and trained hundreds of hours for a speed trip.

He was confident about a record run until he hit the Lava Falls Rapid, one of the most challenging on the river. The rapid rolled his kayak and sent him swimming for about half a mile to shore. He emptied the water in his kayak and kept going, he said.

Taking a break otherwise is out of the question, Orkin said. He carried food that was easily accessible and wouldn't upset his stomach, a lighting system and a spreadsheet with the river miles. He launched his kayak based on the time of day he was expected to hit certain rapids.

"The planning is huge; it's a very specialized skill set," Orkin said. "Not only running rapids in the dark, but you have to be comfortable doing so alone and exhausted."

He got a boost from other river rafters who cheered and clapped as he paddled by. But he said he went the last 22 hours of the trip without seeing anyone. And when the river calms about 30 miles after the last rapid, exhaustion set in.

"You have to paddle the hardest you've ever paddled to break the record at that point," he said.

Martin, of the Grand Canyon Historical Society, and others tracked Orkin's progress online, until he lost the GPS device in the water with less than an hour to go. A backup GPS gave him the exact coordinate that signaled the end of his trip at Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border.

Veteran river rafter Craig Wolfson helped greet Orkin as he finished. He and Orkin's father, Arthur Orkin, helped the record-setter off his kayak.

"It's an amazing feat," Wolfson said. "I stood there looking at him and was in awe of what he had accomplished  knowing what I do, having been through the canyon so much and what it takes."
CROWN POINT  Marissa J. McDermott will enter the race for Lake Circuit Court judge.

The 40-year-old wife of Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. stated in a news release she will file her candidacy paperwork in Indianapolis on Monday to appear on the May 3 Democratic Party primary ballot.

Incumbent Lake Circuit Court Judge George C. Paras, a Democrat, is seeking a second six-year term in office.

She has been elected a Hammond precinct committeewoman for 12 years. She graduated from law school at Notre Dame, where she met her future husband and currently runs a private law practice.
LANSING  An investigation by the Lansing Police Department has cleared Sunnybrook Elementary District 171 Superintendent Hughes B. George of any allegations he assaulted a student in a school cafeteria, the village spokesman said Wednesday.

George said an investigation by the Department of Children and Family Services has also cleared him of any wrongdoing.

"The Police Department looked at the video and after reviewing it and speaking with the state's attorney decided to not move forward as their (sic) was not enough evidence for charges to be made, " said Fabian Newman, spokesman for the village of Lansing.

George addressed a large crowd Jan. 25 regarding the allegation he assaulted an eighth-grader on Oct. 5 at the Heritage Middle School lunchroom and pushed the boy across a table.

"The Lansing Police Department rejected the parents' claims of an alleged assault and the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services reports the same concerns as unfounded," George said. "Unfortunately, there continue to be people in this community, including some on this very School Board, who have taken this as an opportunity to retaliate against me, create a hostile work environment for me and intentionally inflict emotional and psychological stress upon me, simply because I have chosen to perform the job of superintendent with honesty and integrity while holding those responsible for educating your children and protecting students to the highest level of accountability."

George implored the board to bring the situation to a quick close and received applause from some in the crowd at the end of his address.

Anna Maldonado has appeared at recent board meetings and said she was speaking on behalf of the parents due to a language barrier.

In December, Maldonado read a statement she said was on behalf of the parents who made the allegations.

Surveillance video from the school lunchroom did not include sound and appeared to show George approach the student with instruction to remove his hoodie.

With George standing close to the student, the student then hands the hoodie in the direction of the superintendent's face, at which time George pushes the hand away. The child did not fall down.

Maldonado said she was speaking for herself on Monday when she referred to the "superintendent putting his hands on a child and shoving him."

She said the safety of her own children is her only agenda and told the School Board to "please do your jobs and protect our children."

After the meeting, George would not identify which School Board members he believes are working against him. He referred to it as a personnel matter.

Prior to George's speech, several mothers of children in the district spoke.

Some were concerned the video reportedly made its way onto YouTube.

One mother said her child appeared in the video and she has contacted an attorney regarding the matter.

A couple of mothers said what they viewed did not look like an assault to them.

George said an investigation is underway to discover who might have put the video on YouTube.
HAMMOND  Retired astronaut Gregory Harbaugh on Thursday recalled the sadness he felt after the Challenger disaster 30 years ago -- but asked a crowd at the Indiana Welcome Center to move beyond the past and instead look to the future.

After Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lifting off in January 1986, Harbaugh went to sit at an airport. Somehow, that place felt like a portal to communicate with the lost crew members and all who were mourning, he said.

"I just sat and watched the pilots go by," he said. "I was shaken. I hurt."

But he and others went back to work with a determination to make the shuttle program better, and he served as an active duty astronaut for 14 years, he said.

NASA marks three disasters this time of year: the loss of three astronauts on Apollo I on Jan. 27, 1967, the death of seven aboard the Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986, and the death of six on the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003.

In all three cases, preventable mistakes were made, said Harbaugh, a four-time spaceflight veteran and Purdue University graduate who worked with NASA from 1978-2001.

NASA employees didn't think it was conceivable that solid rocket booster seals wouldn't hold up on the Challenger or that foam coming off Columbia could leave a hole in the wing big enough to cause the shuttle to break apart on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere, he said.

"These things were unimaginable, but there were people in the systems who imagined them, who had concerns," Harbaugh said.

He said he hoped the legacy of the crews aboard the three vehicles would not be a time of mourning but instead a time for Americans to reaffirm their commitment to exploration. He suggested it should be a time to recommit to preventing similar mistakes in the future.

"Human beings are explorers by definition, by nature, from our very origins," he said. "And America has led that exploration significantly and superbly since we became a space-faring nation."

He said the country is at the very beginning of a deep space rocket system, and he underscored how important it will be for the U.S. to continue to lead the world in space exploration.

Harbaugh said it's also important to inspire children, perhaps to be the first person to walk on Mars.

"That elevates all of us," he said. "It's much bigger than ourselves."

The Challenger Learning Center in Hammond works to educate children and brought Harbaugh, of Chicago, to the Region to help open the NASA Traveling Exhibit: Inspiring the Future: The Legacy of Exploration at the welcome center.

The center sponsored a popular NASA exhibit in 2005 and began discussions several years ago to bring another exhibit to the Region, Executive Director Becky Manis said.

Items in the exhibit came from NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and offer at look at NASA through history, she said.

Kori Howard and her mother, Kathy, of Valparaiso, viewed the exhibit Thursday because Kori has an interest in aviation. Kori is a member of Civil Air Patrol and glider pilot, she said.

Because she's 13, she is required to fly with a pilot sitting behind her, her mother said. A tow plane pulls the glider up, and Kori pilots it down.

"It's an amazing feeling feeling," Kori said. "It's like I'm in another world."

She's excited about getting her pilot's license when she turns 14 and flying solo, she said.

Kathy Howard saw the Challenger disaster on TV when she was in eighth grade, but she doesn't let that affect her support for her daughter, she said.

"You just have to trust God, trust her training, trust her knowledge," she said. "You can't live in a bubble. If you do, you never get to experience life."
GARY  Indiana University Northwests Department of Minority Studies, in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs, invites the campus and community to celebrate Black History Month with a theatrical look at the Black American experience.

Jitney, a play by August Wilson, is being produced by Mass Media 7, headed by Mark Spencer, an IU Northwest alumnus and visiting faculty member who is known for his directorial work at Garys West Side Theatre Guild.

The free play is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Feb. 19 and 20 at Theatre Northwest, 3660 Grant St.

Seating is limited. For tickets, contact Tierra Jackson at (219) 980-6596 or jacksoti@iun.edu.
HAMMOND  A teary St. Casimir principal spoke to parents asking for their understanding, prayer and patience as Hammond police investigate an alleged child molestation incident reported to police Monday.

My daughter goes to this school, too. I know all of you want peace of mind as parents, St. Casimir Principal Lorenza Pastrick said. We have great parents and staff here. I cant, and wont, let any of our children be at risk.

A special Friday morning meeting was held following the child molestation allegations reported Monday, drawing a crowd of more than 150 parents to the Catholic school.

Hammond Police Lt. Richard Hoyda said the incident was reported by the childs mother.

According to the police report, the incident occurred between 7:15 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. Monday. The mother reported the incident to police by telephone at 6:11 that night.

At this point, no one has been identified as the person involved, and the circumstances surrounding the event are unclear.

Pastrick said the investigation is ongoing, and it may take a while to know more about what happened, if anything.

Pastrick sent a letter to parents Wednesday alerting them to the alleged incident. She said police contacted her Tuesday about the molestation complaint made by the family member.

At that time, the child involved was not able to put a name with the face, Pastrick said in the letter. St. Casimir has been cooperating fully with police and in the interest of timely communication, the notice was sent to parents.

Pastrick told parents she would not impede the investigation. She said she wants police to do everything necessary to keep the 460 school children safe and investigate the alleged incident.

Pastrick asked parents not to make knee-jerk reactions about pulling their children from the school, but that she would respect their decisions.

She said officers will be in the building until the investigation is complete. Pastrick said when students, especially younger students, go to the bathroom, teachers would be standing outside at the door.

Teachers will be on high alert, she said, adding that if parents see anything out of the ordinary to report it to police.

I pray we get through this, Pastrick said. We will put cameras on the outside of the building, and now we want to put cameras on the inside of the building. We hope to have that accomplished in a month.

Pastrick planned to meet with a crisis counselor to talk about how to address the incident with children.

Barbara OBlock, superintendent of the Diocese of Gary, who was at the meeting, echoed Pastricks comments and said she supported the principal, her openness with parents and her handling of the alleged incident.

Hammond police Detective Jason Gonzalez was at the school Friday morning and said he will be working with the school during the investigation.

He said there likely will be heightened security at the building.

When something like this happens, it shakes up a school and the community whether its true or not, Gonzalez said. If I cant be here, another officer from the department will be here monitoring the interior and exterior of the building.

Pastrick said there will be more eyes throughout the school, revamped policies and practices, and the school will continue to do criminal background checks on parent volunteers.

Pastrick said social media and the news media are quick to report about problems at the school or anything negative, but didnt report that the school earned an A from the Indiana Department of Education or that it is an Indiana Blue Ribbon school. She also said no one has reported that four of the top 12 Bishop Noll Institute students graduating with distinction in 2016 were St. Casimir School graduates.

The Blue Ribbon Schools Program honors schools that are either high performing or have improved student achievement to high levels, especially among disadvantaged students.
As a family deeply involved in an Oak Park, Illinois, program to welcome diversity in the 1960s, experience says there are two elements needed for success.

Schools, where countless meetings were held, and a random survey of community residents to obtain ideas for achieving lofty goals were both crucial.

A seminar held at multiple locations across the village was, for me, an unforgettable experience. Approximately 30 people  including students, teachers, parents and village and school administrators  gathered at our neighborhood elementary school and separated into groups according to eye color.

At the end of a seven-hour day, the procedure and results of this game playing were revealing and astounding.

Schools should be participants in this sort of community-wide education.

Pat Gray Thomas, Valparaiso
SPRINGFIELD  President Barack Obama will return next month to the place where his political career began to address the Illinois General Assembly.

The presidents Feb. 10 visit comes amid an unprecedented deadlock between his fellow Democrats and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Obama called for creating a better politics, which is expected to be the subject of his speech to lawmakers in his home state.

In his State of the State address Wednesday, Rauner cited the presidents support for changing the way legislative districts are drawn, one of the first-term governors policy priorities.

Rauners office issued a statement Friday welcoming the presidents visit.

Despite our political differences, the President and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans, the statement says. I know we can achieve great things for Illinois by having mutual respect for one another and focusing on bipartisan compromise to achieve whats best for the long-term future of our great state.

The Illinois Senate Democrats took to Twitter to share their thoughts on their former colleagues homecoming.

We look forward to our old friend  coming back to the Capitol next month, the caucus wrote.
CHICAGO  Twenty years ago, Nancy Margraff started doing research on the Internet to find out what killed her father.

He had collapsed while mowing the lawn when she was 6, dying unexpectedly a short time later. She grew up never totally clear what caused his death.

Her web search may have saved the lives of generations of her family.

Margraff's advocacy has led to the creation of a center in Chicago dedicated to treating the rare blood disease that took her father's life, and that was passed on to her, her daughter and two of her grandkids. The genetic disorder is called hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, or HHT.

"The majority of doctors have never heard of it and, if they do, don't know how to treat it," said Margraff's daughter, Kristy Kelly, 45, of the far southeast side of Chicago.

Earlier this month, University of Chicago Medicine was named an HHT Center of Excellence by Cure HHT, the worldwide advocacy group for the disease. The hospital is the only certified treatment center for the disorder in Illinois or Indiana.

HHT, which affects 1 in 5,000 people, causes blood vessels to form abnormally, in many cases leading to skin lesions and nosebleeds. Patients often have nasal complications and anemia. Many of them also have arteriovenous malformations, or AVMs, in their organs, which can be deadly if left untreated. Treatment generally consists of an embolization, a procedure that closes off the blood vessels.

After learning about HHT online, Margraff and Kelly had to travel to the Yale University medical center in New Haven, Conn., one of only two HHT treatment centers at the time. Margraff had had chronic nosebleeds, Kelly migraines and red lesions on her skin. A doctor found that both women had HHT in their lungs. They had to return to Connecticut for treatment over the years.

When it was time for Kelly to get her kids tested for the disease, their pediatrician referred them to the University of Chicago. It turns out doctors there were familiar with HHT. Two of Kelly's three kids were found to have the disease. and now receive their treatment through the Chicago hospital.

Margraff encouraged University of Chicago Medicine to become certified as an HHT treatment center. The hospital applied, earning the accreditation this month. It now has a team of specialists dedicated to treating the disorder.

"I'm really grateful for it. Now they can help other people, too," said Connor Kelly, 13, who has HHT in his lungs (his sister, Megan, 11, has it in her brain). "With University of Chicago being close, people won't have to go to Yale like my mom and grandmother."

Dr. Issam Awad, a University of Chicago Medicine neurosurgeon who is the medical director of the HHT center, said that because many doctors are unaware of the disorder, patients end up getting fragmented treatment.

"So they may receive care for the nosebleed by a doctor in one office and anemia by a doctor in another office and that doctor may not know about the nosebleeds and it may affect the brain also," he said.

Kelly wants to spread awareness of the disease because the vast majority of people who have it  an estimated 90 percent  remain undiagnosed. And when HHT is untreated, it can be deadly.

"It's treatable in the majority of cases," she said. "As long as you continue with your checkups and stay on top of it, you can lead a normal, healthy life."

Like her and her family are doing now.
While most people enjoy a good comedy, their desire to be tickled is usually more in pursuit of a cure for boredom than any physical ailment. Yet there's a growing sentiment among some medical and psychological professionals (if not the pharmaceutical industry) that the old saying "laughter is the best medicine" may, in fact, be rooted in at least as much scientific truth as simple well-wishing.

"Research indicates that laughter reduces our perception of stressful events, promotes relaxation and lowers blood pressure," explains Dr. Carl Hale, a veteran Merrillville neuropsychologist. "Laughter seems to activate the parasympathetic branch of our autonomic nervous system, which is the opposite of our fight or flight' response to stressors. This changes our perception of a stressful situation and gives us the ability to reframe the event more positively and to face it with less anxiety."

Laughter, in other words, appears to trigger a chain reaction of psychological events that allows us to confront perceived obstacles with a greater sense of calm and happiness. Lest anyone dismiss the hard medicinal value of mere happiness, however, Dr. Hale firmly believes that most doctors would agree that a patient with a positive outlook stands a better chance of handling difficult circumstances and responding to treatment than a gloomy Gus.

"People who report a greater level of happiness are generally healthier, both physically and psychologically," he says. "They are more resilient and better able to roll with the punches, which probably strengthens their immune responses on a biochemical level and makes them less susceptible to emotional problems and physical illnesses."

When it comes to the mortar-and-pestle business of seeking out a dose of healthy laughter, some will opt for the self-medication of a classic I Love Lucy episode or a raucous David Sedaris essay. But to Tanaz Bamboat, true life-affirming laughter has less to do with comedy routines or knee-slapping jokes than it does with finding a deep inner happiness, which is why for the better part of the last decade she has practiced and proselytized a discipline called laughter yoga throughout Northwest Indiana (laughteryoga4u.com).

Essentially a casual form of lighthearted group therapy, laughter yoga encourages participants to channel the typical focal points of traditional yogabreathing and concentrationinto the act of laughter rather than physical contortion or meditation. Bamboat insists she doesn't mind the sometimes reflexive skepticism she tends to encounter from those new to the practice, because she too had her doubts in the beginning.

"When I first came to America from India almost twenty years ago, I missed my family and became depressed," she says. "I had always loved to laugh, but I lost it somehow. Then I read an article about Dr. Madan Kataria and the laughter yoga program, which seemed to bring about laughter naturally without any need for jokes or even a sense of humor. At first, it didn't work for meit felt artificial and forced. But once the group got going, it really was contagious. It was all about breathing and getting to those deep belly laughs that just make you feel better in every way."

Bamboat has since led countless group and one-on-one classes, and has spread the word about the potential health benefits of laughter yoga to more than a hundred different groups. Her mission remains the same regardless of whom she's addressingto get more people laughing and feeling better because of it; yoga is simply her method of choice.

"Laughter is the easiest and most economical way to promote mind-body wellness," she says. "Once you lose it, you've lost your soul."

Whether one agrees with the notion of the health benefits of laughter or not, perhaps the biggest upshot, at least to the reader of a piece on the topic such as this one, is the conspicuous lack of pages upon pages of small-print disclaimers and horrific potential side effects immediately following it. At the very least, maybe a healthy guffaw every now and then will prove to be adept at staving off terminal legalese. Dr. Hale, for his part, wouldn't mind seeing a healthy outbreak of laughter cut into his very livelihood.

"In my profession, happy patients aren't patients anymore," he says. "Once people find more happiness and satisfaction, they're out the door."
The Indiana attorney general's office Thursday filed a civil lawsuit seeking nearly $1.4 million plus damages from a former Gary employee accused of misappropriating city funds.

Officials said Monique S. Bowling-Boyd, 43, of Merrillville, used her former position in Gary's Information Technology Department to carry out an elaborate fraud scheme involving nearly 900 iPad Air tablets and other electronics between Jan. 1, 2012, and May 12, 2015.

She has not been criminally charged.

Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias Schneider on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Bowling-Boyd from selling, transferring or concealing any of her financial assets or property.

Bowling-Boyd is set to appear Tuesday for a hearing on the state's request for a preliminary injunction freezing her assets until the case is resolved, according to a news release from the attorney general's office.

What is alleged here is that this individual violated the public trust through a fraud against the city that squandered the taxpayers funds, " Attorney General Greg Zoeller said in a statement. "Most public servants are honest and provide good services, but the audit concluded this defendant exploited the citys purchasing system, misappropriating funds at taxpayers expense. Through this lawsuit, we demand the defendant repay the city.

Bowling-Boyd could not immediately be reached for comment.

*A State Board of Accounts report issued in October said Bowling-Boyd owed the city $1.37 million and the state $29,818 for its investigative costs. The state also is seeking treble damages in the amount of $4.1 million, court costs and attorney's fees.

The alleged fraud occurred in several ways, officials said.

Bowling-Boyd used falsified or duplicate invoices to wrongfully purchase $354,547 in computer equipment that Gary approved for payment, according to the attorney general's office.

She allegedly drew from six city accounts to purchase $936,987 in Apple products that the supplier listed as unpaid, and bought another $28,932 in Apple products that were shipped to her, the release said.

Bowling-Boyd also is accused of purchasing $25,817 in non-Apple products from one supplier and $21,454 from another supplier. None of those items purchased were found in the city's possession, officials said.

Indiana State Police said in May they began investigating Gary city workers after receiving a report of a crime involving Apple products and the city's Department of Information Technology.

The state board began a special audit after state police reported Apple laptops and other computer equipment with serial numbers indicating they belonged to Gary were discovered in Illinois by authorities there, the attorney general's office said.

Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said in October that the city was first to refer the issue to Indiana State Police after a vendor called seeking payment for the purchases. City officials immediately knew something was wrong, because only a few employees, such as the mayor and some code enforcement employees, have iPads, she said.

The city began overhauling its purchasing procedures after learning of the alleged fraud, she said.

The attorney general's office said Thursday that Gary has made "corrective changes to its internal accounting controls and purchasing processes" since the audit was released.

The attorney general's office has jurisdiction to pursue civil actions, but state or federal prosecutors are responsible for filing criminal charges, the news release said.

The state board of accounts said in October its investigation was conducted in conjunction with Indiana State Police, the FBI and the IRS. The results of the investigation were turned over to the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Indiana to consider criminal charges.

*Editor's note: This story has been corrected from an earlier version. Bowling-Boyd owes the city $1.37 million.
Like Mr. Liederman, American gastrotourists, even those who visit Paris regularly and stay at the Ritz or the Bristol, seem more intent on finding the latest $30 three-course bistro in a remote neighborhood than in digging into the world-famous numbered ducks at La Tour dArgent or the saddle of lamb at Taillevent.

Both Mr. Terrail and Ms. Vrinat say that wealthy Parisians who enjoy the culinary traditions, and the ceremony that goes with them, are there on a regular basis. Taillevent tends to attract business people while La Tour dArgent appeals more to tourists. Both restaurateurs report that Russian moguls and South American tycoons can also be counted on to buy an old Bordeaux to drink with dinner. At dinners on a couple of evenings in early November, this reporter saw very few empty tables in either of the restaurants.

Image Mr. Terrails father, Claude, with Jayne Mansfield in 1963. Credit... RDA/Getty Images

There are still plenty of affluent people out there, said Eric Frechon, the executive chef at the Bristols restaurant, which was awarded a third Michelin star in March. Last year was challenging, but things have now picked up, he said. About 90 percent of our customers at lunch are Parisians, and about 70 percent at dinner.

Without three stars, Mr. Terrail is trying some subtle moves to adjust to the economy. Over the last year he has scaled back the days the restaurant is open and reduced the number of seats in its historic sixth-floor dining room with its magical panorama overlooking the Seine, although he said he would increase the seating if the demand were there. He said he had also passed on to customers the savings when the value-added tax, included in restaurant prices, was reduced last year. Lunch went to 65 euros from 75 euros (to about $92 from $106), and a tasting menu at dinner dropped to 160 euros from 180 (to about $227 from $255).

The wine auction, the first such sale in the restaurants history, suggested to some that there was ominous handwriting on the wall  though what was sold, including Cognacs from 1788 and hundred-year-old wines, represented a mere 4 percent of the restaurants astonishing 450,000-bottle cellar.

There were many old, rare bottles, but also a lot of overstock we needed to sell, said Mr. Terrail, who chose the auction items with his sommelier, David Ridgway. And of course Im not complaining about the money. It will permit us to increase the diversity of what we offer, and to take care of some needed repairs.
BERLIN  Among the exhibitions at the fledgling Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1937 was a show of 150 watercolor copies of prehistoric rock paintings and engravings that, the museum noted, had been selected by its director, Alfred H. Barr Jr.

Such works might seemto be the antithesis of modern art. But Barr asserted that there was a connection, noting that the art of the 20th century has already come under the influence of the great tradition of prehistoric mural art. He displayed the watercolors in the museums townhouse on West 53rd Street alongside works by Miro, Arp, Klee and others.

From 1904 to 1935, the watercolors had been painted by assistants working for Leo Frobenius, a German ethnologist, on trips to southern Africa, the Sahara, Scandinavia, France, Spain and Australia. But with advancements in photography, such facsimiles fell out of favor with researchers, and the works were banished to an attic in Frobeniuss former home in Frankfurt after his death in 1938.

They were discovered in the early 2000s by the Frobenius Institute, which Frobenius founded in 1925 in Frankfurt. Now, 100 of the paintings are on display through May 16 in an exhibition here at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Art of Prehistoric Times: Rock Paintings from the Frobenius Collection.
Jean Dubuffet is not necessarily the hottest artist around; in fact, his colorful oil painting Cote Chipote failed to sell at Christies in November, despite a relatively low estimate of $9 million to $12 million.

But the artist and sculptor, who died in 1985, remains one of the most important postwar artists of the 20th century  often grouped with Giacometti and Bacon  and is perhaps best known for founding Art Brut, an early outsider art movement.

Now the Acquavella Gallery has decided to devote both floors of its Upper East Side townhouse  as well as a hardcover catalog  to a monographic show on Dubuffet that will open April 15.

A lot of people dont realize how good he is, said Mark Rosenthal, an independent curator who is organizing the show. Were hoping this will change that.
The objects in Cameron Rowlands remarkable show at Artists Space offer a history lesson and an aesthetic experience, intricately fused. Accompanied by terse explanatory captions, they expose some of the troubling inequities in American society, especially concerning its prisons and their use of compulsory inmate labor. The process of grasping the meaning of this work equally involves looking, reading and feeling but its subject is one of the most urgent of our time.

Mr. Rowland, who was born in Philadelphia in 1988 and earned a B.A. in studio art from Wesleyan University, has been exhibiting for less than five years but has become known for his carefully chosen, sometimes arcane use of existing objects. Bait, Inc., his 2014 solo show at Essex Street Gallery on the Lower East Side, included scavenged materials like copper and car parts that can generate underground economies. An underlying theme was the way investors and government profit from the new workfare programs begun in 1996.

In his Artists Space show, 91020000, Mr. Rowland deals with a not-too-visible economy that is especially dependent on cheap inmate labor. He presents ready-made objects as sculpture but also as charged, disturbing evidence. Much of what we see here has been made by inmates in state prisons  three in New York and one in California  one-third of whose occupants are African-Americans, who enter prison at rates that far exceed their representation in society as a whole.

When you enter Artists Space, youll see several sizable, pristine objects positioned at the edges of the generous space  marginalized, you could say. But their placement establishes instantly that Mr. Rowland is an artist who thinks spatially and sculpturally as well as politically.
Another American corporate icon has decided that breaking up is the thing to do.

Xerox, whose name has long been synonymous with office copiers, has agreed to spin off its services business to its shareholders by the end of the year, separating it from the legacy hardware side, according to a person briefed on the decision.

A large part of the spinoff will incorporate Affiliated Computer Services, the business outsourcing company that Xerox bought for $6.4 billion in 2010, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity before the plan was announced.

The remaining company would be focused on office supply products like copiers, scanners and fax machines, the person said.

The plan is expected to be announced when Xerox reports fourth-quarter financial results on Friday.

Xerox, which was founded in Rochester in 1906, will be joining other big American corporations that have split apart or pared back in recent years, some driven by activist hedge funds seeking to increase returns on their shares.
At least 20 states are re-examining their policies, she said. At issue in all of them is how to value electricity when it flows from customers to utilities, rather than the other way around.

Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare

A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights  a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California  endured for decades. Lincoln Heights  a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California  endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire

Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action

Under so-called net metering, customers receive credits on their bills for the unused energy their panels produce. Most states have such policies, but the amounts vary, with some offering credits near wholesale energy prices and others, like California, offering the retail rate.

Solar advocates and installers say customers should receive the retail rate because the power they generate helps the electrical infrastructure, by lowering strain on the grid or helping reduce the need to buy power at expensive prices in times of high demand.

But some ratepayer advocates and the utilities, which lose out on electricity sales and some of the infrastructure costs that are bundled into retail rates, say that solar customers put an undue burden on nonsolar customers, who must make up that shortfall.

In California, regulators sided mainly with the solar industry and its proponents and generally rejected proposals to reduce the net-metering credit and add a slate of new charges, though it added some new rates and fees.
The Politico co-founder and chief executive, Jim VandeHei, and one of its best-known journalists, Mike Allen, plan to leave the publication after the November presidential election, its owner Robert Allbritton said in a memo to the staff on Thursday. Three other senior executives also plan to leave.

Mr. VandeHei and Mr. Allen will depart after the November presidential election, the memo said. Mr. Allbritton said that he would become chief executive. John Harris, who founded Politico with Mr. VandeHei, will remain as publisher and editor in chief. Susan Glasser, Politicos editor, will continue to run the Washington newsroom through the end of the year, before becoming director of innovation.

Mr. VandeHei, Mr. Allen and Politico did not respond to requests for comment. But three people with knowledge of Politicos operations described tensions in recent weeks, in part over management strategies. In his own memo, Mr. VandeHei said he was leaving to start a new venture. A person briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. VandeHei would start that venture with Mr. Allen and Roy Schwartz, the chief revenue officer who is credited with helping to build Politicos innovative business model. It will not be a competitor to Politico, the person said.

Mr. Schwartz will also leave after the election. The chief operating officer, Kim Kingsley, and the executive vice president for expansion, Danielle Jones, will leave sooner.
Probably more than any city in America, New Orleans loves anise-flavored liqueurs. Yet its had a hard time holding on to them.

It had to live without its beloved absinthe for nearly a century until the famously volatile green elixir became available in the United States again in 2007. Now, just in time for Mardi Gras, it has been given back another treasured licorice liquor: Ojen.

This week, Ojen (pronounced OH-hen) returned to New Orleans shelves and glasses for the first time in years, thanks to the Sazerac Company, the locally based liquor business.
Suffering, embattled nobility and a dash of whimsy. Those emotional currents define this years Oscar-nominated short films, with pain and strife dominating.

Despite the paucity of humor, there is just enough levity in the three-part program of films competing for Academy Awards in the live-action, animation and documentary categories to prevent viewers from succumbing to despair. The heavy stuff is especially concentrated in documentary shorts made for HBO that deal with the Ebola virus, a Pakistani honor killing and the Holocaust. All together, the 15 shorts, being shown in theaters beginning on Friday, demonstrate a level of quality and technical ingenuity comparable to that of the Oscar-nominated feature-length films.

Among the live-action shorts, the most anomalous is Basil Khalil and Eric Duponts abrasively funny Ave Maria, which portrays a quarrelsome family of Israeli settlers whose car breaks down in front of a convent on the West Bank, where the nuns have sworn a vow of silence. Communication is next to impossible. The comedy, which suggests a Middle Eastern answer to Curb Your Enthusiasm, is a lacerating farcical satire of religious extremism.
On Nov. 4, 1995, after addressing a large peace rally in a Tel Aviv square, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel was assassinated by a law student named Yigal Amir. In March of the following year, an official commission of inquiry, headed by the president of the Israeli Supreme Court, documented lapses in security on the night of the killing and intelligence failures in the months before.

According to the report, the Commission was not appointed to investigate the circumstances and causes that led to the creation of the social and political culture of which the murder was an expression, and its findings did not mitigate the need for in-depth soul-searching in Israeli society. Amos Gitais new film, Rabin, the Last Day, is part of that soul-searching. Arriving 20 years after the assassination, it tries both to delve into those incendiary circumstances and causes and to measure, at least implicitly, the lingering effects of Rabins death.

A somewhat ungainly blend of documentary and historical re-enactments, Rabin begins with an interview with Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister and president and Rabins longtime partner and rival in the leadership of the Labor Party. Mr. Peres recalls the polarized, poisonous atmosphere of 1995, as the Israeli right mobilized against the Oslo accords and Rabins negotiations with Yasser Arafats Palestine Liberation Organization. Posters depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform were set on fire at rallies. He was heckled in the Knesset, Israels Parliament, and spat at in public.
There are three good laughs in Mountain Men and two modestly dramatic sections. That averages out to a decent moment every 18 minutes. While it may seem unfair to judge a movie using a calculation, its appropriate for a script that repeatedly falls back on formulas.

Toph, a man-child D.J. and pot dealer with a pregnant girlfriend, turns giddy when his overly serious big-city-lawyer brother, Cooper, returns to their small hometown to attend their mothers wedding. Their father is dead, and over the years the siblings have drifted apart.

After the ceremony, this perfectly mismatched pair sets out on the expected road trip, venturing deep into the forest to check on their old cabin. There they become stranded and begin a trek on foot to reach civilization. Along the hike they crack wise, make confessions and wax pseudo-philosophic.

The comedy takes a solemn turn when one brother is injured, leading the other to deliver the stock lines like Im not leaving you here! (even though the logical decision would be to keep the immobile man in the safe cabin theyd found, while the other goes for help).
JeruZalem is an intriguing variation on the found-footage horror genre, showing virtually the entire story through the perspective of a pair of smart glasses. But, as if losing faith in the gimmick, the directors, the brothers Doron and Yoav Paz, ultimately shackle it to a run-from-the-ghouls climax, and intriguing becomes ordinary.

As the story opens, two young American friends, Rachel (Yael Grobglas) and Sarah (Danielle Jadelyn), embark on a trip to Israel. Sarahs father (Howard Rypp) sends her off with a gift: smart glasses, which become her go-to eyewear once her regular glasses are stolen, and thus our camera.

The point of view is a bit dizzying, at least for nongamers  its basically the perspective of a first-person shooter game. That becomes apropos, because the two end up in the Old City section of Jerusalem, where there are creatures that need shooting: The undead are rising. The women and Kevin (Yon Tumarkin), a young man who befriends them, end up running for their lives through an endless number of dark passages.

The filmmakers leave assorted plot possibilities underexplored  Sarahs anxious father; her grief over a dead brother; the religious intersections of the faiths that call Jerusalem home. Instead, they content themselves with seeing how some familiar horror movie tricks look through smart glasses. Kevin even, preposterously, has to be freed from an asylum as the apocalyptic invasion begins. The more desperate the characters flight becomes, the less interesting the movie grows. It does end with a witty flourish, though  one that makes good use of those glasses. NEIL GENZLINGER
Here, courtesy of an obscure New York City agency, is a window into the unseen, a forum for matters of fallibility and trivia and also for outrages that have managed to become the business of the government.

For now, all of the agencys proceedings are public. But a union representing the citys correction officers is mounting a legal effort to close this unique window, which affords views not only of the sloppy and the absurd, but also of the disheartening and disgraceful.

The agency, the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, or OATH, holds 300,000 hearings a year, about 1,200 every work day, nearly three a minute.

Anyone with a notion to map the vastness of human error could start here and never find an end.

Cases are pleaded by tattoo parlors and funeral parlors accused of some act of wrongdoing peculiar to their trades, and by restaurants and day care centers charged with shortcomings in their crafts.
For just under an hour and a half, Ms. McCray  who, as first lady and chairwoman of the Mayors Fund to Advance New York, has prioritized improving the citys mental health care  fielded questions along with her fellow panelists from the de Blasio administration: Deputy Mayor Richard Buery and Dr. Gary Belkin of the health department.

She also listened as the Council members shared their own stories. Corey Johnson, chairman of the Councils Health Committee, began his questions by describing the family disease of alcoholism and his six years of sobriety. Its not hyperbolic to say it, but I would not be up here today being able to listen to this testimony from you all if I didnt get sober, he said before asking about the role of stigma in hindering mental health treatment.

If we cant talk about a problem, Ms. McCray said, if we cant acknowledge it, we cant tell the stories and we cant do anything about it. And that is one of the reasons why everywhere I go I encourage people to talk about their stories.

She said the plan, which costs $850 million over four years and sprawls across dozens of initiatives and agencies, was only a start. Its intended as a first step, she said. Its intended as a conversation starter. Much of the plan has yet to be put into place, and Ms. McCray stressed the need for data collection so that it may be evaluated in the future.

However, a good number of the 54 initiatives in the plan are already underway, including training police officers to better handle mentally ill people and teaching New Yorkers about so-called mental health first aid. Others are new, including the creation of a city hotline for counseling and a new mental health corps of hundreds of doctors and social workers to work in the citys underserved neighborhoods. All are bundled under the rubric of ThriveNYC.
HACKENSACK, N.J.  A former New York City police officer who the authorities say threw himself in front of a train after fatally stabbing his former girlfriend pleaded not guilty on Thursday to murder.

The former officer, Arthur Lomando, 44, of Centereach, N.Y., was escorted into a courtroom here to enter his plea in the death of Suzanne Bardzell. He did not speak during the 10-minute hearing, according to The Record, a newspaper in northern New Jersey. Judge Susan J. Steele of Superior Court set Mr. Lomandos bail at $5 million.

Ms. Bardzell, 48, was ambushed as she returned to her Midland Park home from work in October 2014, when Mr. Lomando smashed her drivers side window and repeatedly cut her with a machete, the police said. Officers found her dead when they arrived.

Hours after the slaying, he jumped in front of a subway train in the city, the police said. His feet were amputated afterward.
With a growing number of countries throughout the Americas reporting increased transmission of the Zika virus, New York City heath officials announced plans on Thursday to try to prevent the pathogen from establishing a foothold in the city.

Millions of people around the world have been infected with Zika, and in most cases, its effects are mild and not life-threatening. But the disease has caused alarm because of an apparent link to microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with unusually small heads and neurological problems.

At a news conference at City Hall, Dr. Herminia Palacio, the deputy mayor for health and human services, and Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the citys health commissioner, said that at least seven people had received a diagnosis of Zika in New York State, three of them in the city. All had recently returned from countries where the epidemic had been spreading.
The City Council completed a package of bills on Thursday to give its members a raise for the first time since 2006, adopting provisions on outside income and financial disclosures called for by good-government groups while lifting their own pay far above the level recommended by a city commission.

As part of the bills, details of which were unveiled late Thursday, the Council would raise its pay to $148,500 a year, an increase of more than 30 percent over its current base salaries.

The City Council is embarking on unprecedented, substantial reforms that will strengthen New York Citys legislative body, the Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, a Democrat, said in a statement, and help Council members serve the districts they proudly represent.

The bills follow some of the recommendations made by the Quadrennial Advisory Commission, a panel with members chosen by Mayor Bill de Blasio, convened to assess lawmakers salaries. They include recommendations that Council seats be reclassified as full-time jobs, and institute limitations on most forms of outside income. The bills also accept the suggestion of eliminating lulus, the small bonuses given to committee leaders.
A New York City police lieutenant who arrived at a housing project in Brooklyn where a man had been shot by a police officer said he had found the officer, Peter Liang, frozen on a fourth-floor landing. One level above him lay the man, Akai Gurley, mortally wounded and sprawled on the floor, said the lieutenant, Vitaliy Zelikov, who testified on Thursday at Officer Liangs trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

Justice Danny K. Chun interjected, asking the lieutenant to clarify what he meant by frozen. He was standing up and he was staring into space, Lieutenant Zelikov said, staring upward at the fifth floor.

Lieutenant Zelikov was among the first officers to respond to the call at 2724 Linden Boulevard on Nov. 20, 2014, and find a chaotic scene in a stairwell of the Louis H. Pink Houses. Melissa Butler, a companion of Mr. Gurleys and a resident of the building, was hunched over him in a hysterical state as she pressed on his chest, the lieutenant said.

Officer Liang is charged with manslaughter, accused of fatally shooting Mr. Gurley, who was 28, inside the poorly lit stairwell.
MILFORD, Conn.  Lawyers for a teenager charged with fatally stabbing a classmate on the day of their prom are continuing discussions with prosecutors on a potential plea agreement.

The defendant, Christopher Plaskon, 18, appeared in court on Thursday for a pretrial hearing, but the case was continued until February.

Mr. Plaskon is accused of killing Maren Sanchez, 16, in the hallway of Jonathan Law High School in Milford in April 2014. His family and friends told the police that Mr. Plaskon had been upset that Ms. Sanchez had turned down his prom invitation.

Lawyers for both sides said they were discussing a possible agreement that could resolve the case before the of trial. Mr. Plaskon has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, and his lawyers have indicated they were exploring an insanity defense.
Rather than wait for the decision, Mr. Cohen said he expected the Trump Organization to remove both kiosks and replace a 22-foot marble bench that one of the sales counters had displaced. He estimated the work could be done in two to four weeks.

Mr. Trump is always compliant with all rules and regulations, Mr. Cohen said.

He argued that the company believed it was in compliance when it filed plans with the Buildings Department, but not the planning agency, to replace the bench with the kiosks. Civic groups were especially bothered by the loss of the bench, which had been a popular respite for Fifth Avenue shoppers.

Mr. Cohen also said efforts in 2011 to address a violation from 2006 were stymied by bureaucracy.

All of these things are nice, Judge Brand said, but what is before me today is whether or not the space is in compliance.

Mr. Cohen was contrite on this point. It was always our understanding it was in compliance, he said. What I know now is that it was not.

In 1979, when plans were being made final for the 66-story tower, the Trump Organization agreed to build and maintain the atrium and shops as what is known as a privately owned public space. In exchange, Mr. Trump could add roughly 20 stories to the building, about a third of its total height. The additional space, where Mr. Trump has a penthouse, is now worth about $500 million.
In the hours before it, CNN could speak of almost nothing but Trump. It kept flashing footage of the fan-packed rally he had orchestrated just a couple of miles from the debate, to compete with it.

There are thousands who have waited hours throughout the day, the anchor Erin Burnett marveled.

When her colleague Anderson Cooper then interviewed a CNN correspondent at the debate itself, the first question he asked her was about how the debaters were likely to adjust to a Trump-less event.

His shadow is looming large, even though he is not there, Cooper said to the correspondent, then he turned to the networks panel of political analysts, who talked about Trump, Trump, Trump.

And here I am, writing about Trump, Trump, Trump.

Its impossible not to. It would be irresponsible not to, because believe it or not, hate it or love it, hes the Republican campaigns great and sobering lesson to the country, telling us things about its discontents that we didnt properly understand. Hes the campaigns undeniable force of gravity, exerting a pull on everyone and everything around him.

You could feel that pull at the debate, where the toughness with which Kelly grilled Cruz and Rubio on immigration  even showing footage of past remarks that caught them in flips, flops and contradictions  was a clear demonstration of her readiness to put any candidate on the skewer, not just Trump.

You could feel that pull in the fieriness of many candidates manners and the extremes to which they pushed their positions. Trump has set the temperature of the conversation, and its a blistering one that had Rubio pledging over and over to keep Guantanamo Bay open and stuff it full of terrorists.

You could feel that pull above all in the duration and emotionalism of the immigration discussion itself. Its Trumps promised wall and Trumps pledges to deport millions of immigrants that have made this issue so prominent and compelled Republican candidates to take harder lines than they previously had.
In a single year, in case after case, across many sectors of the economy, federal agencies caught big companies breaking the law  defrauding taxpayers, covering up deadly safety problems, even precipitating the financial collapse in 2008  and let them off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist. Often, companies paid meager fines, which some will try to write off as a tax deduction.

The failure to adequately punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country. Justice cannot mean a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but nothing more than a sideways glance at a C.E.O. who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars.

These enforcement failures demean our principles. They also represent missed opportunities to address some of the nations most pressing challenges. Consider just two areas  college affordability and health care  where robust enforcement of current law could help millions of people.

When the Education Management Corporation, the nations second-largest for-profit college, signed up tens of thousands of students by lying about its programs, it saddled them with fraudulent degrees and huge debts. Those debts wrecked lives. Under the law, the government can bar such institutions from receiving more federal student loans. But EDMC just paid a fine and kept right on raking in federal loan money.

When Novartis, a major drug company that was already effectively on federal probation for misconduct, paid kickbacks to pharmacies to push certain drugs, it cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and undermined patient health. Under the law, the government can boot companies that defraud Medicare and Medicaid out of those programs, but when Novartis got caught, it just paid a penalty  one so laughably small that its C.E.O. said afterward that it remains to be seen whether his company would actually consider changing its behavior.
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The problem is not that the people of Iowa are stupid. They are not, by most measurements. Its that Iowa looks nothing like the rest of America. As a result, the winners, more often than not, are nationally unelectable extremists. Who can remember President Rick Santorum or President Mike Huckabee, both previous winners? Or President Uncommitted, who beat Jimmy Carter in 1976? And what to make of the finding that 43 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers this year are self-described socialists, prepared to select a dyspeptic and unelectable senator as their candidate?

Youre supposed to be vetting, Iowa. Youre supposed to be culling out the crazies. Youre supposed to recognize the fraud of Ted Cruz and how Donald Trump is playing you. For all your touted small-town verities, youre not doing your job. Your bull manure detector is broken.

Its time to let other states have a go at it. At least well hear less about corn subsidies and Corinthians II, or is it Two Corinthians? Discuss. No, dont! Stupid, stupid people. Again, thats Trump talking, not me. He uses that word to describe nearly everyone not named Donald J. Trump. Hes presented no governing philosophy, no policy details, nothing resembling even-keeled judgment. Hes running a combustible celebrity feud fest, and you love it.

As a bellwether, the Iowa caucuses are no more predictive than a gasbag on an ethanol high swaying from a bridge in Madison County. As a representative exercise relevant to the concerns of a nation of 322 million people, the caucuses are laughable.

Consider that half of all the babies born last year in the United States were nonwhite. Not in Iowa, of course, one of the whitest states in the nation. On Monday, if the Republican caucus is anything like the 2012 turnout, 99 percent of the attendants will be white. Thats not even the United States of 1816, let alone this year.
The people of Ireland have shown a commendable willingness to strike anachronistic bias from the countrys laws, most emphatically in legalizing gay marriage last year in a referendum approved by three out of five voters. With a general election expected next month, a movement is underway in the rapidly changing nation to target another hurtful social condition by which non-Catholic children are legally denied seats at overcrowded state-financed primary schools, 97 percent of which are controlled by Catholic authorities.

With schools allowed to give preference to Catholics, other families are forced to have their children baptized in the church, linger on school waiting lists or search for scarce alternatives. Only 74 of the nations 3,200 primary schools are run by Educate Together, the main multidenominational alternative, whose Dublin schools are swamped with four applications for every available space.

The public is fast realizing this is an intolerable situation in a country with an increasing immigrant population of non-Catholics and a rising generation of younger nonpracticing Catholics. A poll last month measured almost 85 percent public approval for changing the law so it no longer tolerates religious bias against schoolchildren.

Ireland is changing, there are a lot of young parents and they want something different for their kids, Eoghan Murphy, a Fine Gael member of Parliament, told Politico in calling for school fairness as the first priority of the next government. The Irish education minister, Jan OSullivan of the Labor Party, is similarly calling for reassessment of the law that exempts religious schools from the Constitutions antidiscrimination requirements if the rebuffing of nonbelievers is considered essential to maintain the ethos of the school.
Next months elections in Iran do not bode well for Iranians eager for more political and social freedoms or for the promising new relationship with the West symbolized by the recent deal limiting Irans nuclear program. Even before any ballots are cast, the death-to-America hard-liners who bitterly opposed the deal are stacking the deck against moderates led by President Hassan Rouhani, who signed the agreement and is more open than others in the power structure to further engagement with Western nations as well as expanding rights and freedoms for Iranian citizens.

The hard-liners are in a good position to prevail in the Feb. 26 polls because of political manipulation and a nominating process that gives a small group of people enormous power over who can and cannot run.

On that day, Iranians will vote for a 290-member Parliament and an 88-member Assembly of Experts, which is charged with selecting a new supreme leader when the incumbent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 76 and reportedly ailing, dies. In a sign of heightened interest in electoral politics, some 12,000 Iranians registered to run in the election for Parliament, more than double the 5,405 who registered in 2012. Yet, more than 7,000 of those would-be candidates were disqualified by the Council of Guardians, a 12-member group appointed partly by the supreme leader and partly by the judiciary.

Last week, nine reformist political parties complained that the council had approved only 30 of the 3,000 moderates who registered, and urged top leaders to reverse the disqualifications. Of the 801 candidates who had filed to run for the Assembly of Experts, only 166 were approved.
IOWA is the nations top producer of corn, and nearly half of it ends up as ethanol, thanks to a government mandate that requires ethanol to be mixed into gasoline. The mandate is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to farmers there.

No wonder most Iowans talk it up, as do most of the presidential candidates campaigning there in the lead up to the caucuses.

Ethanol thrives because of the volume-based approach of the mandate, which specifies that a growing percentage of various renewable fuels must be mixed into gasoline every year until 2022.

But that approach has stifled innovation and, if its track record to date is any indication, biofuels will not be a major player in meeting our 2050 targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
In Sojourners, an emotionally fervid and dramatically stolid play by Mfoniso Udofia for the Playwrights Realm, a Nigerian couple embrace and rebuff life in America. Ukpong (Hubert Point-Du Jour) and Abasiama (Chinasa Ogbuagu), joined in an ill-conceived arranged marriage, are student newlyweds in Houston in 1978.

A studious Abasiama sings Nigerian songs to her pregnant belly and tries to make fufu, a cassava paste, out of Bisquick. Her husband would rather groove to Motown and taste American freedom. After Ukpong abandons her, Abasiama tentatively initiates friendships with Moxie (Lakisha Michelle May), a young prostitute, and Disciple (Chinaza Uche), another Nigerian student.
An employee at the Orange County Central Mens Jail was taken into custody on Thursday for aiding the escape of three inmates from the maximum security facility last week. The employee, Nooshafarin Ravaghi, had taught English as a second language at the jail since July. At least one of the escapees, Hossein Nayeri, attended her class, and the two developed some kind of relationship, said Lt. Jeff Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriffs Department. Ms. Ravaghi, 44, provided Google maps and other help for the escape, Mr. Hallock said, but she has denied providing tools used in the escape. The three men cut through metal bars before rappelling from the jails roof using a makeshift rope. Investigators believe the three men may be in a white GMC utility van, which was stolen in Los Angeles on Saturday.
A Navy commander accused of diverting ships to Asian ports for a Malaysian contractor in exchange for prostitution services and other gifts pleaded guilty to bribery charges Thursday. The officer, Michael Misiewicz, is the eighth person convicted in the scandal, which is centered on a businessman, Leonard Francis. Mr. Misiewicz faces up to 20 years in prison at his sentencing in San Diego on April 29. Mr. Francis has admitted to swapping gifts for classified information that helped his Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., overbill the Navy by at least $20 million. He is awaiting sentencing.
At the Cleveland Clinic, which has been unusually proactive in dealing with shortages and allowed a reporter access to personnel making decisions about them, one scarce leukemia drug, daunorubicin, was saved for patients in clinical trials, to avoid making the results invalid by substituting another drug. But when a different drug, methotrexate, was in short supply, pediatricians stopped giving it to all patients who required high doses, including those in research trials. We didnt want to say just because youre on a clinical trial you get an advantage, Dr. Rabi Hanna said.

Patients weight can be taken into account. Obese patients, who researchers found needed up to three times the amount of an antibiotic before surgery than average-size patients, were given only the standard dose at the Cleveland hospital until a shortage subsided.

Some institutions prioritize based on age; others do not. Marc Earl, a Cleveland Clinic pharmacist, said children were not favored over adults during chemotherapy shortages. But at other hospitals, they have been, because of their potentially longer life span or because they sometimes require smaller doses of a drug.

We do play the pediatric card for sure, said Alix Dabb, a pharmacy specialist in pediatric oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Kenneth Cohen, director of pediatric neuro-oncology there, and his colleagues were close to being forced into making very, very hard decisions, he said. The discussions became, Why are two kids more important than one adult?

Ning-Tsu Kuo, a pharmacist at the Cleveland hospitals home infusion pharmacy, said children came first during shortages of nutritional products such as intravenous vitamins and fats for patients who cannot absorb food. The logic was that adults have more reserve. But after one man pleaded not to have his dose cut, Dr. Kuo agreed. When reprimanded by colleagues, she recalled saying: Patients are not equally the same. You need to look case by case.

Downright Scary

Such decisions have real consequences. For some shortages, doctors can soon see the effects of rationing, such as increased pain or nausea when drugs typically used to control symptoms are withheld, or patients who have to undergo invasive surgery to control cancer when anti-tumor medications are delayed.

Studies have associated alternative treatments during drug shortages with higher rates of medication errors, side effects, disease progression and deaths. For example, children with Hodgkins lymphoma who received a substitute to the preferred drug had a higher rate of relapse, researchers found, and adults with a genetic disorder called Fabry disease had decreased kidney function when their medication was cut by two-thirds. One alternative guideline adopted during a shortage of intravenous nitroglycerin was downright scary from a clinical perspective, according to Dr. Nicole Lurie, a senior federal health official.
PRINCETON, Ore.  They arrived last weekend to spread Scripture, song and good cheer to the armed group that had taken over the federal wildlife sanctuary here: a single mother from Kansas and eight of her 10 children, members of a family gospel band who brought their instruments in a Partridge Family-style bus bearing the slogan, Spirit Driven.

Late Tuesday, however, the Sharp Family Band field trip became a nightmare: The eldest daughter, Victoria, 18, was a passenger in one of the vehicles in which Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the brothers who led the occupation, were arrested along with some of their followers. Another protester, LaVoy Finicum, was shot dead in the confrontation, which Victoria said she witnessed.

The rest of the family  Odalis Sharp, 46, and seven children, ages 5 to 17  made it past the police blockade that had snared the Bundys, arriving in the town of John Day, 100 miles north of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where a community meeting had been planned. As the Sharp clan waited to hear if Victoria was alive, they sang gospel songs for a crowd gathered at a senior center  sobbing all the way through.

We were the first vehicle to leave the refuge, said Preston Knodell, 52, of Texas, who had been riding with the Sharps as their armed bodyguard, appointed by a Bundy sympathizer. We made it, they didnt. But Im glad. My mission is not to get shot up with a bunch of kids.
DES MOINES  Following is immediate real-time analysis of the seventh Republican debate. Read additional fact checks here.

With four days until the Iowa caucuses, the top Republican presidential candidates  minus one, Donald J. Trump  gathered here on Thursday for the final debate before the vote. These were the highlights:

 Senator Ted Cruz tweaked Mr. Trump immediately  but a bit indirectly  for his absence. He thanked those on stage for showing Iowans respect and noted his own pledge to visit all 99 counties in the state. And he attempted a Trump impression in his stead: Everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly, Mr. Cruz said, to laughs.

 Senator Marco Rubio assailed Mr. Cruz as someone willing to say or do anything to win an election, arguing the Texas senator had misled the public about his immigration history and accusing him of supporting legal status for undocumented immigrants. This is the lie that Teds campaign is built on, that hes the most conservative guy, Mr. Rubio said. Senator Rand Paul agreed. Thats an authenticity problem, he said of Mr. Cruz. Everybody he knows is not as perfect as him.

 Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, asked about the aggressive attacks his allies have leveled against Mr. Rubio, said he had no control over his super PACs efforts. But, he added, the campaign was not a game of beanbag. Its called politics, and thats the way it is, he said.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, playing the Washington outsider, landed some deft attacks against Hillary Clinton, earning applause for promising that he would never let her get within 10 miles of the White House. Mr. Paul, who is so far behind in the polls that he did not qualify for the last prime-time debate, was aggressive and passionate as he made the case for his brand of libertarian politics, explaining that he was opposed to abortion rights but would leave the issue to the states. Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, was almost as faded a presence as Mr. Trump.

Still, the debate gave Iowa voters a chance to see all seven men one last time before the caucuses. With a good share of Republicans still undecided or open to changing candidates, the lack of scene-stealing by Mr. Trump, who held his own rally across town, could pay some dividends for the candidates here or in New Hampshire, where many of them are competing for second place after Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cruz, who ascended in the Republican race in part thanks to his effective debate performances, found himself absorbing the fiercest attacks yet as he looked to regain lost ground in Iowa. While Mr. Trump had often been a punching bag at past debates as moderates and rivals challenged his policy ideas, Mr. Cruz became the main target this time around, facing skeptical questions from the moderators on immigration, ethanol subsidies and his personal style.

His rivals were even more severe, painting him as a holier-than-thou politician. Ted, you worked for George W. Bushs campaign; you helped design George W. Bushs immigration policies, Mr. Rubio said in a rhetorical torrent. Then, when you got to the Senate, you did an interview with CBS News  it wasnt even part of the video  where you said, on the issue of people that are here illegally, we can reach a compromise.

Yet Mr. Rubio was also a frequent target over his past support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul. Mr. Bush, whose allies have unleashed a multimillion-dollar ad campaign attacking Mr. Rubio over his support for the overhaul, accused him of having cut and run because it wasnt popular among conservatives, I guess.

Mr. Rubio, referring to a book on immigration that Mr. Bush wrote and had just mentioned, quickly returned fire. That is the book where you changed your position on immigration, he said, noting that Mr. Bush had moved from supporting a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants to favoring only a path to legal status.
DES MOINES  American presidential campaigns have never been so thoroughly examined, probed and measured as in this election cycle. And the pollsters and pundits who cover them are about to get a reality check.

The Iowa caucuses on Monday and the New Hampshire primary eight days later will begin to do what polls and pundits cannot: resolve the extraordinary uncertainty within both parties on basic questions about the contest.

The first question involves motivation. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Democrat, and the real estate magnate Donald J. Trump, a Republican, both covet support in Iowa from people who havent participated in caucuses before.
WASHINGTON  The Department of Health and Human Services placed more than a dozen immigrant children in the custody of human traffickers after it failed to conduct background checks of caregivers, according to a Senate report released on Thursday.

Examining how the federal agency processes minors who arrive at the border without a guardian, lawmakers said they found that it had not followed basic practices of child welfare agencies, like making home visits.

The Senates Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened its inquiry after law enforcement officials uncovered a human trafficking ring in Marion, Ohio, last year. At least six children were lured to the United States from Guatemala with the promise of a better life, then were made to work on egg farms. The children, as young as 14, had been in federal custody before being entrusted to the traffickers.

It is intolerable that human trafficking  modern-day slavery  could occur in our own backyard, said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the subcommittee. But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.
BEIJING  Three civil rights advocates were sentenced to prison in southern China on Friday, with the terms ranging from two and a half to five years, after a judge declared them guilty of inciting subversion.

The three had been charged for their roles in promoting peaceful civil disobedience, partly inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the ideas of Gene Sharp, an influential American theorist of nonviolent political movements.

Tang Jingling, Yuan Chaoyang and Wang Qingying were present in the courtroom in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, when the verdicts were announced.

Mr. Tang, a lawyer who had been denied a license to practice, was sentenced to five years; Mr. Yuan, a writer who also used the name Yuan Xinting, received a sentence of three and a half years; and Mr. Wang, a college professor who lost his job because of his political activism, received two and a half years.
BEIJING  A Canadian man who ran a cafe near Chinas border with North Korea will be tried on charges of spying and stealing state secrets, prosecutors announced on Friday, nearly a year and a half after he and his wife were detained by the police.

The man, Kevin Garratt, will be tried in Dandong, a city in Liaoning Province, Xinhua, the official news agency, said on Thursday. It gave no date for the trial.

During the investigation, Chinese authorities also found evidence that implicates Garratt in accepting tasks from Canadian espionage agencies to gather intelligence in China, said Xinhua, citing prosecutors in Dandong.

The case adds another potential strain between Beijing and Western governments, which have expressed concern about the treatment of foreigners in Chinas legal system.
Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, a former military leader, foreign minister and diplomat who was Pakistans public face in international affairs for three decades, died late Monday or early Tuesday in Islamabad. He was 95.

His death was announced by the Aga Khan University. Mr. Yaqub Khan was founding chairman of the universitys board of trustees, serving for 16 years until his retirement in 2001.

Mr. Yaqub Khan had helped facilitate President Richard M. Nixons overture to China in 1972. In the late 1980s, as a United Nations-sanctioned envoy, he helped negotiate the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the windup of the civil war in Nicaragua.

In 1999, William Safire, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist, described him as the most skillful diplomat in the world today.
SYDNEY  A teenager accused of plotting to behead a police officer as part of a holiday terrorist attack also discussed planting explosives on a kangaroo, painting it with an Islamic State symbol and setting it upon the police, prosecutors said on Friday.

The teenager, Sevdet Ramadan Besim, 19, of Hallam, a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria State, on Thursday pleaded not guilty to four terrorism-related charges.

According to a prosecutors summary, Mr. Besim spoke online with a 14-year-old British boy last March about plans to attack and behead a police officer during a military parade.

Mr. Besim and the British teenager, who lived in Blackburn, England, also discussed packing a kangaroo with explosives and letting it loose on the police. All four charges carry the possibility of life in prison.
MOSCOW  The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Thursday dismissed what he called Germanys accusations that Russia was exploiting the mysterious disappearance of a 13-year-old Russian-German girl, who lives in eastern Berlin, to pursue its political aims.

Russias prime state TV station, Channel One, brought up the case last week. The report identified the girl only as Liza and said her 30-hour disappearance had been reported on Jan. 11. Her relatives claimed that she had been kidnapped and raped by three migrants. Instead of opening a criminal case based on the allegations, the police covered them up, a man, identified as the girls uncle, told Russian television.

But Berlin police who investigated the case and examined the girl have rejected her account of being abducted and forced to have sex. State prosecutors are reportedly investigating at least one suspect on possible charges of having sex with the girl, who is under the age of consent, which in Germany is 14. If charges are brought, it is not clear whether they would be statutory rape or child abuse.

The case has riled the Russian-language Internet, with many commentators using it to suggest  sometimes in almost abusive terms  that Germany is failing to act against the dangers posed by hundreds of thousands of new migrants. Last week, several demonstrations were held around Germany by Russian-speaking Germans claiming that they felt unsafe.
GAZA  The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, said Thursday that seven of its members were killed when a tunnel into Israel collapsed as they were working on it.

On Tuesday, the men were repairing an old cross-border tunnel in eastern Gaza that was used for several attacks against Israeli forces during the 50-day war in the summer of 2014, according to the Qassam Brigades of Hamas. Israel said it had destroyed an underground network of more than 30 tunnels in Gaza during that war, but Israeli military officials have been warning in recent weeks that many of them have been restored.

The Qassam Brigades said in a statement that the fighters who died in Tuesdays collapse had taken part in heroic operations during the war, killing and wounding a large number of the enemys soldiers. Four of them lived on the same street in the Daraj Quarter of Gaza City. By Thursday, Hamas had still not recovered all the bodies.

Abu Hassan al-Shobaki, a cousin of one of the men killed, said by telephone that the family was happy and proud and welcomed the news of his death because he was martyred defending Islam and Palestine.
Two of the Americans freed by Iran this month in a prisoner deal have provided new detail about their time in captivity, saying they were told by Iranian interrogators that the United States had abandoned them and that they would never leave. One said he had been accused of plotting armed revolution.

The remarks in recent days by the Americans, Jason Rezaian, 39, The Washington Posts Tehran bureau chief, imprisoned for 18 months, and Matthew Trevithick, 30, a scholar from Hingham, Mass., imprisoned for 41 days, added to the picture that has been emerging about the prisoner ordeal and the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that led to their release less than two weeks ago.

Iran released five Americans, including four dual citizens. The United States released seven people  six dual citizens and one Iranian. The deal was announced on the same day that a nuclear agreement between the big world powers and Iran greatly eased economic sanctions on the country.

In an emotional appearance on Thursday at The Washington Posts new headquarters, televised live by CNN, Mr. Rezaian extolled his bosses and colleagues for their work to free him. He also expressed gratitude to Secretary of State John Kerry, who also made an appearance there, for having helped ensure that Iran allowed Mr. Rezaians wife, an Iranian citizen, to leave the country with him.
The description of the 1880 Republican convention in Tuesday nights American Experience on PBS sure sounds like a possible future for both major parties as they choose their 2016 presidential candidates.

The delegates were about evenly divided between Senator James G. Blaine and the former president, Ulysses S. Grant. The two sides held significantly different visions and were not much interested in compromise or unification. But a third guy who wasnt a candidate gave a speech and changed everything.

As Garfield was delivering his address to the delegates, the programs narration says, he shouted, And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want? From the midst of the crowd came an unexpected answer: We want Garfield.

The speaker, of course, was James A. Garfield, a congressman from Ohio, and on the conventions 36th ballot he became the surprise nominee. Might such high drama await at a 2016 convention? The precedent is there to be followed.
By late November, Ursula M. Burns had finally conceded that the biggest takeover in Xeroxs history was a $6.4 billion mistake, say people close to the company.

A onetime Xerox intern who climbed the ranks all the way to the top to become the first black female chief executive in corporate America  Ms. Burns had been the biggest champion of buying Affiliated Computer Services. The deal, which was announced in 2009, was instrumental in her effort to push the 110-year-old Xerox into significant new business lines.

Yet the technology outsourcing business never fit with Xeroxs core documents operations. So even as Ms. Burns said publicly in October that she thought there was value in keeping the company together, within about a month she and her board were coming to the conclusion that the best move was to break the two apart.

On Friday, Xeroxs fate was sealed, as the company announced plans to spin off its services business, largely consisting of A.C.S., as its own publicly traded company by the end of the year. The remainder of Xerox will include the technology that made the company synonymous with photocopying.
The potential pairing of Mr. Trump and union members could be helped along by a sense that Mr. Trump, unlike more conventional Republicans, has historically enjoyed a cordial relationship with labor on many of his real estate projects.

He has put his fair share into hiring union people, said Richard Sabato, the president of a building and construction trades council in northern New Jersey. Hes done that in Manhattan, in New Jersey.

But that is not always the case. The owners of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas filed objections to a recent vote by roughly 500 of its workers to unionize, and the National Labor Relations Board has found merit to the claims that the hotel violated workers labor rights. (The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)

Mr. Sabato said that his members, who lean Republican but in many cases voted for Mr. Obama, would march behind Mr. Trump on the issue of illegal immigration.

Even more important for many union members has been the issue of economic globalization. Mr. Trump has railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-country trade deal the administration finished negotiating last year. And he has bemoaned the administrations failure to stand up to what he and many union members see as Chinas mercantilist policies.

He has also fulminated against plans by the company that owns Nabisco to shift some production to Mexico  I love Oreos, he said, I will never eat them again  and vowed to impose a punishing tariff on imports of Ford cars unless the company canceled a $2.5 billion investment in plants in that country.

We like that he does not support TPP, that he has taken the position that there should be trade tariffs for a company that moves jobs overseas, said Ryan Leenders, 30, a member of the International Association of Machinists in Washington State. Mr. Leenders, who estimated that one-quarter to one-third of his factorys union workers were Trump supporters, said he voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and wrote in Ron Paul in 2012.
David Granger, who has led Esquire since 1997, will leave the mens magazine on March 31, Hearst Magazines announced on Friday.

Jay Fielden, the editor in chief of Town & Country, will become the new editor in chief of Esquire while remaining at Town & Country as editorial director.

The last 19 years have been the best time ever to be a creative professional, Mr. Granger said in a statement. The explosion of new forms of expression has been breathtaking. Turns out that a print magazine has been the perfect hub from which to experiment with just about all of them.

Mr. Granger, who did not mention any plans for his future, led Esquire to digital success during a tumultuous period in the magazine industry. Esquire earned 16 National Magazine Awards during his 19-year tenure.
Europes current refugee crisis is often presented as a quantity problem: There are simply too many migrants for the European Union to absorb. But this situation is not without historical precedent. Europe has accepted large numbers of immigrants before. The issue this time is political. It has little to do with the absolute numbers of asylum seekers. The problem lies with the European Unions dysfunctional asylum system, which encourages countries to pass refugees on like hot potatoes, and places the burden of registering and processing asylum seekers on a small number of countries on the Unions border.

An intractable gridlock prevents a common response. On the one end of the spectrum stands Germanys chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has stated that the right to political asylum [has] no limits on the number of asylum seekers. On the other extreme are some European leaders who refuse to grant asylum to any claimants, however small the numbers. The only way to eliminate risks, said Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, is to steer away from any decision that could lead to the emergence of a compact Muslim community in Slovakia.

However, unless the European Union arrives at a unified response, the border controls now dividing Schengen countries will remain, leaving a permanent dent in the European construction. But there are ways out of this seemingly desperate situation.

For one, the quota system, proposed by the European Commission, could be made flexible. In 1997, the Yale University legal scholar Peter Schuck proposed a system of tradable refugee quotas. The European Union would still have to agree on the total number of migrants to whom it is willing to grant asylum, and on how they would be distributed among the member states. But the quota market would allow countries such as Slovakia or Hungary, whose leaders refuse to accept any refugees, to bribe others to carry their obligations on their behalf, putting a concrete price tag on the unwillingness of Central Europeans to help.
To the Editor:

Re Helping Veterans Recover, Spending Lavishly on Itself (front page, Jan. 28):

I was saddened to read of the wasteful spending at the Wounded Warrior Project. Its television commercials with scenes of men, women and their families coping with deep emotional pain pull at the heart and purse strings. Now I wonder how employees can live lavishly off a large percentage of the contributions that should be serving people in need.

According to Charity Watch, the Wounded Warrior Project is, in fact, rated C. To stop donating to it is a response that makes sense. But what of the veterans in need? How do we help them?

One thing the Wounded Warrior Project can immediately do is travel economy class or by train and use the savings to make home visits to veterans to see that they are getting what is needed. Another response would be for our candidates, who are battling about which countries to send troops to, to have a public conversation about the price our troops will pay and how they will be helped.

SANDRA HURTES

New York

To the Editor:

I read with disgust your slanted article on the Wounded Warrior Project. The saddest part is that it endeavors to hurt an organization that does so much to help our wounded soldiers.
Another voracious and painfully venomous predator, the nomad jellyfish, entered the Mediterranean in the 1970s. Now they form large swarms every summer, washing up on shores, endangering beachgoers and divers, blocking the water-intake pipes of power and desalinization plants. Swarms have reached the Straits of Sicily and are endangering Atlantic bluefin tuna eggs, threatening a fishery already on the verge of collapse.

Though we cant remove invasive species, we do have the engineering expertise to stem the migration. The Panama Canal, which opened to shipping in 1914, offers an example of what might be accomplished. It operates a series of locks that function like sets of double doors, allowing ships to pass while making it more difficult for alien species to follow. Moreover, the fresh water of Gatun Lake, which forms a major part of the canal complex, provides a 21-mile barrier that impedes the migration of most saltwater species.

The Suez Canal once had its own salinity barrier, known as the Bitter Lakes. Previous expansions and agricultural wastewater dumped into the canal flushed it away, but recreating it could be cost-effective. Installing locks for the Suez Canal, located in a much simpler physical environment than the mountainous Panamanian region, should be easier and less costly than the $3.2 billion the Panama authorities expect to pay for modernized lock equipment.

Scientists and environmentalists have appealed to the European Commission to install locks and salinity barriers in the Suez Canal and have requested an environmental impact assessment. Despite Egypts assurances that the information would be provided by May, European Union officials say they have still not received a definitive report. But in discussions last October conducted by the United Nations Environment Program, the Egyptians reportedly said they would not sign an updated United Nations Mediterranean Action Plan unless language stating that invasive species are coming through the Suez Canal was removed. The MAP draft decision, with the language regarding the Suez Canal in brackets, goes to the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean for review in February.

Observers say that Brussels doesnt want to lean too hard on Egypt because President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is cooperating in dealing with the refugee crisis. Many European Union member states with their own national interests in the Mediterranean see the Suez expansion as a sovereign decision by the Egyptian government and are loath to interfere.

But Egypt and its neighbors are losing sight of the big picture. For Egypt, with its large underemployed population, managing the fishing industry more wisely would employ more people and have greater long-term economic benefits than building expensive canal infrastructure that is vulnerable to a volatile global economy.

So, how can these competing interests be resolved? The problem may require new ideas and neutral leadership. In the mid-2000s, overfishing and environmental degradation was ruining fisheries off California. The Nature Conservancy bought up boats and licenses and leased these back to fishermen willing to employ more sustainable methods and use reporting software to help the NGO develop baseline data on the fishing stocks themselves. The result: Local fishermen are still fishing, and fish stocks are coming back. The program has been copied by several New England fisheries.
BURNS, Ore.  The courthouse is still blocked by concrete bollards. Tires have been slashed. Family members and old friends have argued and refused to speak again. Fights have broken out in church.

The occupation at a wildlife refuge near here by a band of outsiders  11 of them have been arrested and one killed, and four remain in the compound  has turned this patch of small-town America into a community at war with itself. Rather than uniting the hamlet of Burns around a common cause, the rebellion at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by anti-government protesters has exposed divisions among residents, some who support federal regulation of public land and others who bristle at Washingtons sway.

The tumultuous events of the occupation  still not over after 27 days  have left divisions that residents said would not soon heal, even after the drama ends and the worlds attention shifts.

This county is so tore up, it will never be the same  ever, said Jeff Dixson, 68, a wildlife photographer and former truck driver who said he supported many of the occupiers goals, making him unpopular with many neighbors. Theres a lot of people that have told me they aint never going to talk to me again.
Throughout most of 2015, the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder told the residents of Flint, Mich., that their tap water was safe to drink. But emails released on Thursday suggest the state was concerned about its own employees exposure to the citys water as early as January of last year, even arranging for purified water to be provided at a state office building there.

The emails depict an exchange that month between employees of two state departments that expresses concern about the waters safety within the Michigan government long before Mr. Snyder acknowledged to residents in the fall that there was a problem.

The correspondence  between employees of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget  was obtained by a liberal advocacy group, Progress Michigan. The news was reported on Thursday by The Detroit Free Press.

Lonnie Scott, the executive director of Progress Michigan, accused the state government of valuing the well-being of its employees more than that of Flints residents.
WASHINGTON  President Obama will return next month to Springfield, Ill., where he began his campaign to become president, to call for something he has struggled to deliver in Washington: a less divisive politics in America.

Mr. Obama announced his candidacy for president on Feb. 10, 2007 on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield. He will return to the Capitol exactly nine years later and will speak to the Illinois General Assembly, where he once served as a state senator.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Obamas remarks would be about what we can do together as a country to build a better politics and one that reflects our better self.

That is a goal that Mr. Obama talked about in his last State of the Union speech, in January. In those remarks, he challenged Americans to answer the question: How can we make our politics reflect whats best in us, and not whats worst?
WASHINGTON  The State Department on Friday said for the first time that top secret material had been sent through Hillary Clintons private computer server, and that it would not make public 22 of her emails because they contained highly classified information.

The department announced that 18 emails exchanged between Mrs. Clinton and President Obama would also be withheld, citing the longstanding practice of preserving presidential communications for future release. The departments spokesman, John Kirby, said that exchanges did not involve classified information.

The disclosure of the top secret emails, three days before Iowans vote in the first-in-the-nation caucuses, is certain to fuel the political debate over the unclassified computer server that Mrs. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, kept in her home. The State Department released another set of her emails on Friday night in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The top secret emails lent credence to criticism by Mrs. Clintons rivals in the presidential race of her handling of classified information while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. It is against the law for officials to discuss classified information on unclassified networks used for routine business or on private servers, and the F.B.I. is looking into whether such information was mishandled.
But what is a large turnout, and will it happen? The topic is shrouded in mystery to those of us who do not have access to the campaigns detailed voter data. On Thursday, Iowas secretary of state released figures for new voter registrations in January, reporting an increase of 2,100 Democrats and 2,954 Republicans.

The numbers do not sound like a coming wave. But keep in mind that Iowa already has one of the highest levels of voter registration in the land, with 68 percent of eligible voters enrolled. Campaigns are now scrambling to get supporters to show up, and they are no longer focused on registering newbies (who can sign up at their caucus sites).

Anecdotally, I have met many people at Trump and Sanders rallies who have never caucused before and are enthusiastic about turning out. For a better view, I reached out to operatives in both parties. Kevin Geiken, a former deputy director of the Iowa Democratic Party, estimated a Democratic turnout of around 120,000. That suggests a good night for Mrs. Clinton, because the figure is close to the 2004 participation and far below the record-shattering 2008 turnout of 240,000, when Barack Obama swamped her.

A former top Republican state official told me that a turnout around 130,000 would reflect a traditional caucus electorate, good news for Mr. Cruz. The closer we get to 140,000, the more I think Cruz doesnt have the ability to grow his vote, the insider said. Once we got to 150,000 or higher, its an awfully good night for Donald Trump.

Gearing Up for Higher Turnout

Charlie Szold, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, had this to say: Predicting caucus turnout is very, very difficult. We are prepared for substantially higher turnout and have worked with county chairs to make sure we have venues with additional capacity. That does not mean we expect more people, just that we want to be prepared.
WASHINGTON  Katie Beirne Fallon, the top legislative official who helped improve President Obamas dysfunctional relationship with Capitol Hill, will leave the White House in the coming weeks, a departure that reflects shrinking ambitions for lawmaking during Mr. Obamas final year in office.

The exit of Ms. Fallon, who has held the post for two years, means that Mr. Obama is losing a trusted aide in the West Wing whose deep relationships on Capitol Hill helped him prevail in tough fights over trade, federal spending and the Iran nuclear deal. It comes as the president looks toward a modest legislative agenda for the year, circumscribed by the realities of a presidential campaign that has sharply curtailed the congressional calendar and will most likely sap lawmakers appetites for tough votes.

From the moment he tapped Ms. Fallon for the job, Mr. Obama charged her with improving his relations with Capitol Hill, which had grown toxic amid complaints from lawmakers in both political parties that the president was too aloof, and that his staff was unwilling to involve them in big decisions and debates. Ms. Fallon was at one time a senior aide to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have their differences, but when it comes to Katie, theyre united in their admiration and respect, Mr. Obama said in a statement. She came into her role at a time when we needed to build up our relationships with folks in both parties. And from bipartisan budget agreements to protecting a deal that will prevent a nuclear Iran to ensuring the long-stalled Ex-Im and I.M.F. reforms were enacted, we simply could not have made the progress weve made without her.
I dont believe we should allow thousands of violent felons to be released early from prison, nor do I believe we should reduce sentences for violent offenders in the future, Mr. Cotton said in an interview. He said that the criminal justice legislation was being driven by a myth of mass incarceration of low-level, nonviolent offenders in federal prisons, and that most prisoners had already cut their sentences under plea bargains.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

Some senators said Mr. Cornyn and other Republican backers of the legislation may have misread the willingness of their colleagues to embrace the criminal justice movement and had too much faith that others would be swayed by the support of conservatives such as Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Mike Lee of Utah.

John has some work to do, big-time work, to secure enough support to persuade Mr. McConnell to go forward, said one Republican senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party matters.

Mr. Cornyn, who became enthusiastic about the issue after successful changes to the criminal justice system in Texas, where he was a judge for 13 years, said discussions had begun on the staff and senator-to-senator levels to clear up misconceptions. He noted that sentencing provisions in the measure would apply to about 5,000 offenders  far fewer than in earlier sentencing proposals  and that those now serving time would have to reappear before the same judge and prosecutor to win a reduction in time served.

Some people are now realizing for the first time that they may have to vote on this thing, so they need more information, said Mr. Cornyn, who added that he would be asking colleagues what changes might be needed to win their backing.

He said that Mr. McConnell would like to lessen the party divisions before deciding to devote weeks of scarce Senate floor time to the criminal justice proposition.

This is all part of his calculation, and we are trying to work with him and all my colleagues and figure a way to get this done, Mr. Cornyn said. It is not the kiss of death if you dont do this in 2016, but I would like to. I think we have a window here.
DES MOINES  The Republican presidential field banded together on Friday against the man they now see as their common enemy, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, whose perceived front-runner status before the Iowa caucuses appeared to grow even more uncertain just three days before the voting begins.

As candidates spent the day attacking the senator  some of them clearly giddy over being free to unleash on a rival they have never had much affection for  Mr. Cruz responded by sharpening his own attack strategy. He shifted nearly all his negative advertising here from going after Donald J. Trump, who has overtaken him in recent polls, to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

The two freshman senators are locked in a race that is tightening by the day here, with Mr. Rubio gaining on Mr. Cruz in both public polling and internal surveys conducted by both campaigns.
NAIROBI, Kenya  Satellite imagery of the outskirts of Burundis capital supports emerging accounts of graves holding at least 50 people who died during political violence last month, the human rights organization Amnesty International said on Friday.

The report added to the growing evidence of organized atrocities in the country. Observers say they believe the violence was largely carried out by the Burundian government and by pro-government forces, amid immense turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced in April his intention to seek a third term in office.

Separately on Friday, France protested the detention of two journalists working for the newspaper Le Monde  a French correspondent, Jean-Philippe Remy, and a British photographer, Philip Moore  on Thursday in the capital, Bujumbura. The newspaper reported later on Friday that the two men had been released, but had not gotten back their seized cellphones, notebooks, cameras or audio recorders.

The two were arrested while they were interviewing opponents of the government, and the authorities accused the journalists of collaborating with violent rebels, Le Monde said.

The new evidence of mass graves is sure to raise alarm over the situation in Burundi, which was once a part of German East Africa and later became a colony of Belgium. It gained independence in 1962.

The United Nations identified nine mass graves this months that its investigators said contained at least 100 bodies, and it reported that at least 130 people had been killed since December. It also said that the Burundian security forces had engaged in gang rape and other atrocities.

Nearly 100 people were killed on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12, when opposition gunmen attacked military installations around Bujumbura and security forces responded with reprisals and arrests in opposition-stronghold neighborhoods.

More than 30 bodies, mangled and bloated, were strewn through Bujumburas streets on the morning of Dec. 12. Amnesty International, citing witnesses, said that there were up to 53 bodies, and that more could be buried in multiple mass graves at two different sites.

Analysis by Amnesty International on Friday of photographs and videos of the Buringa area of Bujumbura showed patches of recently disturbed earth in areas where, according to witnesses, corpses were transported hours after the recent violence.

One satellite image from December showed what appeared to be a heavily uprooted patch of sandy earth that, in an earlier image in November, did not appear to have been disturbed.

These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces and to prevent the full truth from coming out, Muthoni Wanyeki, the regional director for Amnesty International, said in a statement.

The State Department has said it is deeply alarmed by reports of mass graves and enforced disappearances after the political violence in Burundi.
GENEVA  The United Nations reported on Friday extremely disturbing new accusations of sexual abuse by European peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, adding to a long-running scandal that has reverberated at the highest levels of the world body.

The United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, called for further investigation of reports that members of a European Union peacekeeping contingent had raped two girls and had paid two others for sex. The girls were 14 to 16 at the time.

The acts took place in 2014 and 2015 and involved troops from Georgia and another European country, the girls told investigators. The other country has not been publicly identified.

In addition, United Nations human rights officials reported that a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl said they had been paid by French peacekeepers for oral sex and that they knew of other children who had been repeatedly abused by French troops.
SANTIAGO, Chile  Prosecutors on Friday charged President Michelle Bachelets daughter-in-law, Natalia Compagnon, and 12 others in a corruption case that touches the presidential family and has damaged Ms. Bachelets popularity.

In a court session shown on national television, the prosecutors, Luis Toledo and Sergio Moya, accused Ms. Compagnon and her business partner in the firm Caval, Mauricio Valero, of issuing false invoices in a scheme to avoid paying about $165,000 in taxes. The court ordered Ms. Compagnon not to leave the country and confined several other defendants, including Mr. Valero, to their homes at night.

The defendants in the case include other Caval employees, former bank and municipal officials, a businessman and several lawyers, who were charged with a number of crimes. Five of them, including Mr. Valero, were also accused of bribery. Prosecutors said they were all involved in a speculative land deal that yielded millions of dollars in profit for Caval, with large kickbacks paid to those who facilitated it.

A Chilean magazine, Que Pasa, reported last year that Caval, a small firm started by Ms. Compagnon and Mr. Valero in 2012, had secured a $10 million loan to buy about 270,000 acres of rural land in Machali, south of the capital. At the time, the municipality was considering rezoning the land for urban development, which would greatly increase its value.
BEIJING  The Chinese authorities have ordered a leading womens legal aid center in Beijing to shut down operations, the centers founder said on Friday, another sign of a continuing crackdown on civil society.

As word spread of the closing of the Beijing Zhongze Womens Legal Counseling and Service Center, many womens rights advocates expressed shock. The center was highly symbolic for having been born of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, a moment when China, struggling to be accepted internationally after the 1989 military suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square, loosened controls on civil society activities.

Employees at the center, which is led by Guo Jianmei, a charismatic lawyer, were huddled on Friday afternoon to discuss the order. We have a lot of things to deal with, Ms. Guo said.

No reason was given for the order. A notice on the centers website read: Beijing Zhongze Womens Legal Counseling Service Center (formerly the Center for Womens Law Studies and Legal Services of Peking University) will take a rest from Feb. 1, 2016. Thank you everyone for your attention and constant support for the center in the past!
HONG KONG  What will Hong Kong be like a decade from now?

When his new film Ten Years, which answers that question with five dystopian tales set in 2025, was denounced as a thought virus by the Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times, the Hong Kong director Ng Ka-leung was unfazed.

If anything, the editorial brought mainland Chinese peoples attention to our small production, said Mr. Ng, who is also one of the films two producers.

Ten Years has become a surprise hit across theaters in Hong Kong, tapping into fears in the semiautonomous Chinese territory over the erosion of local culture and civil liberties, fears fed most recently by the disappearance of five people connected to a Hong Kong company that publishes political books banned in the mainland. Since its general release in late December, most showings have been sold out. With a budget of about 500,000 Hong Kong dollars, or about $64,000, the indie production had raked in nearly 5 million Hong Kong dollars by Thursday, Mr. Ng said. On Friday, it received a best film nomination for the Hong Kong Film Awards.

We didnt even spend a dollar on promotion, he said. We initially thought we were only going to show it in private screenings and had never expected such huge demand.
Researchers in the Philippines say that more than 1,000 girls and women in the country were sexually enslaved by the Japanese during World War II. About 70 are still living.

Last month, Japan offered a formal apology and an $8.3 million payment to the Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery. But the Japanese government has offered no official apology or compensation to those from the Philippines and elsewhere.

Image Rechilda Extremadura, the executive director of the League of Filipino Women, an organization of former World War II sex slaves, at the groups office in Quezon City. Credit... Jes Aznar for The New York Times

The Japanese government did something for the women in Korea. Why cant they do something for the women here? said Rechilda Extremadura, the executive director of the League of Filipino Women, an organization of former World War II sex slaves. President Benigno S. Aquino III is kowtowing to Japan so he will not bring up the issue, she said.

She said that as a matter of routine, the Japanese military established comfort stations in garrisons that sexually enslaved Filipino girls and women. But victims in the Philippines have not received the attention given to women in other countries, partly because of poor advocacy by the Philippine government, she said.

So a handful of surviving former comfort women, those who were able, staged several quiet protests this week during a five-day state visit by Emperor Akihito of Japan. The visit, which was to conclude on Saturday, has been draped in the symbolism of the countries often violent shared history.
SEOUL, South Korea  A former prime minister of South Korea was convicted on Friday of receiving illegal political funds from a businessman who later committed suicide.

Lee Wan-koo, the former prime minister, was sentenced to eight months in prison, but the Seoul District Court suspended the sentence, allowing him to remain free. If he commits another crime within two years, he will be forced to serve the term, the court said.

Mr. Lee, 65, a lawmaker affiliated with President Park Geun-hyes governing party, has maintained his innocence and said he would appeal. Mr. Lee had served little more than two months as prime minister under Ms. Park when the scandal forced him to resign last April.

In July, he was indicted on a charge of receiving a shopping bag containing 30 million won, or about $24,900 at current exchange rates, in an illegal campaign donation from the businessman, Sung Wan-jong, in 2013.
LONDON  With time running out if Britain is to schedule an early referendum on European Union membership, Prime Minister David Cameron was fighting with renewed urgency on Friday to win concessions that he hopes will persuade Britons to stay in the bloc.

The most contentious issue is a proposal to restrict welfare payments to non-British citizens of European Union countries, who have the right to live and work in Britain.

Mr. Cameron wants the authority to limit those benefits, which typically supplement the income of people doing low-paid jobs, for European Union migrants who have been in the country for less than four years.

Mr. Cameron scrapped a planned visit to Sweden and Denmark on Friday, heading instead to Brussels for talks with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation bloc, and he will host a dinner in London on Sunday with another top European official, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council.
HUMMEL, Germany  IN the deep stillness of a forest in winter, the sound of footsteps on a carpet of leaves died away. Peter Wohlleben had found what he was looking for: a pair of towering beeches. These trees are friends, he said, craning his neck to look at the leafless crowns, black against a gray sky. You see how the thick branches point away from each other? Thats so they dont block their buddys light.

Before moving on to an elderly beech to show how trees, like people, wrinkle as they age, he added, Sometimes, pairs like this are so interconnected at the roots that when one tree dies, the other one dies, too.

Mr. Wohlleben, 51, is a very tall career forest ranger who, with his ramrod posture and muted green uniform, looks a little like one of the sturdy beeches in the woods he cares for. Yet he is lately something of a sensation as a writer in Germany, a place where the forest has long played an outsize role in the cultural consciousness, in places like fairy tales, 20th-century philosophy, Nazi ideology and the birth of the modern environmental movement.

After the publication in May of Mr. Wohllebens book, a surprise hit titled The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate  Discoveries From a Secret World, the German forest is back in the spotlight. Since it first topped best-seller lists last year, Mr. Wohlleben has been spending more time on the media trail and less on the forest variety, making the case for a popular reimagination of trees, which, he says, contemporary society tends to look at as organic robots designed to produce oxygen and wood.
PARIS  A 28-year-old man who was arrested carrying two guns at a hotel in Disneyland Paris on Thursday has no known links to terrorism but was still being detained by the police, the French authorities said on Friday.

Officials at the prosecutors office in Meaux said in a statement that the investigation, including analysis of the mans telephone records, had not established any link with a terrorist act.

A young woman who had accompanied him to the hotel but fled had been found and questioned, but there was nothing to incriminate her at this stage, according to the statement.

The investigation is being handled by the prosecutor in Meaux, a town about 30 miles east of Paris and near the amusement park. The case has not been transferred to the Paris prosecutors office, which handles terrorism investigations.
LONDON  An outspoken group of students wanted to pull it down, and many alumni wanted it to stay. For months, the authorities at Oxford University have struggled with an awkward dilemma over the fate a statue of Cecil Rhodes, an imperialist benefactor seen by many as an architect of apartheid.

Now, after a vigorous debate, Oriel College, one of 38 largely self-governing colleges at Oxford, has decided it will keep the monument to its famous, if divisive, former student.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the college said that it had received more than 500 comments on the subject and that the overwhelming message we have received has been in support of the statue remaining in place, for a variety of reasons.

Following careful consideration, the statement continued, the colleges Governing Body has decided that the statue should remain in place, and that the college will seek to provide a clear historical context to explain why it is there.
MOSCOW  Statements by two senior American officials that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has enriched himself through corruption are outrageous and insulting, Dmitry S. Peskov, the presidents spokesman, said on Friday.

Adam J. Szubin, the Treasury Departments acting secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, said in an interview broadcast by the BBC this week that Mr. Putin was a picture of corruption, using state funds to enrich his closest friends while disguising his own wealth.

Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, backed up that position, saying that the Treasurys assessment best reflects the administrations view.

Mr. Peskov accused the Obama administration of trying to lay the groundwork to influence the outcome of Russias next presidential election, in 2018, by attacking the Russian leader.
JERUSALEM  The United States and Britain have monitored secret drone flights and communications by the Israeli Air Force in a hacking operation dating to 1998, according to documents attributed to leaks by the former American intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden.

Israel voiced disappointment but no great surprise at the disclosures, published on Friday by The Intercept, an online publication associated with Glenn Greenwald, who has collaborated with Mr. Snowden, and by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

The disclosures raised the possibility of further strained ties between Israel and the United States, but the two close allies have traditionally had an understanding that they spy on each other despite pledging not to.

Israel has said it stopped spying on the United States after it employed the United State Navy analyst Jonathan J. Pollard as an agent in the 1980s. Mr. Pollard was released from a North Carolina prison in November after serving 30 years.
JERUSALEM  There have been fights over books, music, plays, funding for the arts and academic awards. This being Israel, they have been underpinned by fierce rhetorical exchanges about democracy, fascism and zealotry, identity, the future of the state and the fate of Jews.

A new front in the culture wars opens nearly every week, ripple effects of shifts in Israeli demographics, attitudes and politics that are shaking the society.

The latest was an attack on Wednesday by a far-right group on beloved leftist literary icons including Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, writers who have been considered the voice  and conscience  of the state for years. The group, Im Tirtzu, began a poster campaign calling the writers moles in culture, which prompted accusations of McCarthyism and worse, even from many on the right.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several members of his conservative coalition joined the chorus of condemnation over the vilification of such Israeli cultural pillars. But some of those same ministers have been behind many of the other battles. The previous round was the brainchild of Miri Regev, the divisive and conservative minister of culture and sport, who wants to deny state money to institutions that do not express loyalty to the state, including those that show disrespect for the flag, incite racism or violence, or subvert Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia  Two worshipers were killed and seven others were wounded when a suicide bomber and a gunman struck a mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia on Friday, the Interior Ministry said.

The attack was the latest in a series carried out against Shiite mosques in the countrys east, where most Shiites in the predominately Sunni kingdom live.

The Interior Ministry said the attackers targeted the mosque, in Mahasen, during Friday Prayer. One of the attackers blew himself up when approached by security forces, and the other exchanged gunfire with police officers before being wounded and arrested, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

In a video that appeared to have been filmed inside the mosque and that was distributed by Shiite activists, a blast is heard and worshipers chant God is great, followed by gunfire. A second video showed congregants surrounding a man struggling on the mosque carpet and removing a broad belt, presumed to hold explosives, from his waist.
Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy to Syria: Al Salam aleekom (Greetings). My message today is meant to reach every single man, woman, child of Syria, inside Syria and outside, in the refugee camps or wherever you are. You know in the next few days we are planning to launch what we call the Intra-Syrian talks, negotiations, in order to have progress in the context of reaching, finally, stability and peace and dignity back in Syria. You deserve it. Five years of this conflict have been too much. The horror is in front of everyones eyes. You must know also that we count on you to raise your voice to say Khalas (enough), it is enough, to say to everyone who is actually coming from Syria and from abroad to this conference that there are expectations on them to make sure that their vision, their capacity of compromise in discussion for reaching a peaceful solution in Syria is now and they need to produce that. You have seen enough conferences, two of them already taken place. This one cannot fail. Weve heard your voices, we heard when you been telling us so many times wherever we met you, you Syrian people, you women, men and children of Syria saying: enough, khalas, kefaya (enough), enough killing, murdering, torturing, prisons. Enough buildings being destroyed, enough bombing my city where I am, and I do not who is bombing me, I just see bombs coming down, rockets, anything. Enough my brother, my sister being humiliated and becoming a refugee and trying to take a boat and drowning in the Mediterranean when I love my country. Enough when you see your children say I want to go to school and I cannot go to school because you are not allowing me to go because it is too dangerous. All this, we have heard it. Now we need to hear your voice to everyone who is coming to this conference, and saying this conference must be an opportunity not to be missed. We are going not to disappoint you from the UN point of view. You know we will never abandon the Syrian people but we need now you to feel that this time is the right one, we will do all what we can. God willing, Al sallam aleekom.
If you want to run your own numbers, you have to be willing to hand over your credit and debit card login information, so Trim can scan your statements. The companys security explainer is plain-spoken, and the company will let you send in copies of your bills if you still dont want to part with your credentials.

Once Trim performs its analysis, you get a text message with a list of all your recurring charges. You reply with Cancel X, and then the company takes it from there, making the request on your behalf to the service provider. Trim follows up for more information (say, your billing address) if it needs it.

It cant fulfill all requests. LifeLock, Equifax, Xbox Live, SoundCloud, Quicken and Dropbox generally want to hear directly from customers, sometimes because they want more information than Trim is willing to ask of its own customers. For instance, Trim does not ask for or wish to handle Social Security numbers.

Trim does not charge for its service, and the company does not intend to sell any data. Instead, it wants to gather a customer base for a sort of personal finance assistant that could do everything from nudging you to save in the most tax-efficient account to helping you refinance a mortgage or switching you to a better insurance provider. And yes, it may charge a subscription fee for a premium version of this service, presumably one that is transparent and easy to cancel.

I offer no predictions on whether Trim will succeed in that, but its list of least popular companies serves as a good warning for consumers who hate not getting what they are paying for or paying for things that they are not getting.
In a 19th-century stone castle in Yonkers, the ballet choreographer Justin Peck tried something he had never tried before: directing a film. He did not look nervous. Nor did he seem intimidated by his surroundings: the ornate, centuries-old furnishings from Europe; the travel trunks left in the attic by the Ballets Russes choreographer Michel Fokine, who lived and taught in the castle in the 1930s. Gently making suggestions or demonstrating what he had in mind, the 28-year-old Mr. Peck appeared self-assured. If that doesnt work, he said at one point, I have a Plan B.

Both the attitude and the preparedness behind it are characteristic. The film, shot in November, was a small side project, a trailer for The Most Incredible Thing, Mr. Pecks new work for New York City Ballet, where he is resident choreographer and a soloist. If he were a more anxious person, this ballet, which will have its debut at the David H. Koch Theater on Tuesday, Feb. 2, could give him plenty to be anxious about. The cast of 56 dancers, including 11 children from the School of American Ballet, is more than twice as large as any he has handled before. And this is his first attempt at narrative  the kind of story ballet that audiences are said to clamor for and that contemporary choreographers rarely succeed in delivering.

Its an important, perhaps inevitable, test for a choreographer who is now in extreme global demand. In April, San Francisco Ballet will present its first premiere by him. When Miami City Ballet visits New York that month, it will show off one of two Peck creations it has recently commissioned. In July, the august Paris Opera Ballet will add its imprimatur, performing its first Justin Peck premiere only a few months after performing his earlier In Creases. New Peck, old Peck: Everyone seems to want a piece of Peck.

One work that many want is Year of the Rabbit. (Miami City, Dutch National Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet will all perform it in the next few months.) That was the first piece of his that New York City Ballet performed in Manhattan, way back in 2012. Mr. Peck was still in the corps of City Ballet, which he joined in 2007. He has since been promoted, but its his choreographic career that has raced at rabbit speed. The Most Incredible Thing is his 10th work for his home troupe.
By the time the mini-series is over, weve learned what a Ponzi scheme is  pretending to invest peoples money but actually making payouts to exiting investors with new money from incoming investors. Weve seen the Securities and Exchange Commission conduct an investigation into Mr. Madoffs firm  and fail to make the one critical phone call that would have exposed the scheme. Weve watched Mr. Madoff and his key lieutenant, Frank DiPascali Jr., rig each months statements so that they arrive at a predetermined gain.

And though Madoff cant explain whats going through Mr. Madoffs mind during the decades he harbors his secret, we do get to watch him pull it off with an incredible bluster and nerve. He actually rages at the regulators holed up in his office, examining his books  regulators who could expose him if they were to do their jobs right. He threatens to toss big investors who have upset him out of the fund, even though he doesnt have the money to pay them back. We watch him take money from Elie Wiesel, knowing he will even defraud the beloved Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor. Over and over, we see him look people in the eye, lunch with them and laugh with them, even as hes betraying them.

This is never truer than when he is around his family. Though Mr. Madoff was a philanderer, the mini-series correctly portrays him as someone who preferred being with family. His sons, his brother, his niece  and Ruth  all worked at the firm, though in the legitimate part of the business. (The Ponzi scheme was conducted several floors below Mr. Madoffs main office.) They spent much of their free time together.

Indeed, to a large extent, Madoff is about his family as much as it is about him. They are portrayed as his most tragic victims. His sons, Mark and Andrew (played by Tom Lipinski and Danny Deferrari), were the ones who turned him in after he confessed to them that he had been running a Ponzi scheme. Despondent, buried in litigation and obsessed with the scandal, Mark committed suicide on the second anniversary of his fathers arrest. (Andy died of cancer in 2014.)

As for Ruth, she lost virtually everything, including her relationship with her sons when she refused to turn against her husband, as they had done. Although Mr. Ross hints in his book that she may have known about the scheme  he notes that she made several multimillion-dollar withdrawals before Mr. Madoffs confession  the mini-series portrays her as the ur-victim.
Paperback books of particular interest.

THE IMPULSE SOCIETY: America in the Age of Instant Gratification, by Paul Roberts. (Bloomsbury, $18.) The wealth of choices allowing people to hyper-personalize their lives has deteriorated societys shared sense of the common good, Roberts argues here. As he puts it: An economy reoriented to give us what we want, it turns out, isnt the best for delivering what we need.

THE SEVENTH DAY, by Yu Hua. Translated by Allan H. Barr. (Anchor, $16.) In Yus fictional Chinese necropolis, poor citizens who cant pay for their burials roam a hazy, indistinct afterlife, where they reminisce about their life paths and encounter long-dead friends and relatives. The storys central character, a young tutor who died unexpectedly, reunites with his ex-wife and adoptive father over the course of a week.

CROSSING THE BAY OF BENGAL: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants, by Sunil S. Amrith. (Harvard University, $19.95.) Centuries of migration and commerce have shaped this regions cosmopolitan history and identity: As a central thoroughfare between India and China, it was once the thriving heart of an imperial trading economy. Understanding its history offers a key to understanding Asias future.
How might Goldman be liable beyond the $15 million fine? While the firm was improperly advising customers that it had located shares for their transactions, some of those customers were very likely paying for a service the firm wasnt providing.

Costs to borrow shares can be considerable under normal circumstances, but they rocket when there is more demand by investors to short a companys stock than there is stock to borrow. Clients may have to pay 25 percent or more of the trades value to secure the shares.

If Goldman charged borrowing fees when it had not actually located the shares, its customers might well try to recover those costs, said Lewis D. Lowenfels, an expert in securities law in New York and an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University Law School.

Goldman Sachs employees performed inadequate reviews in response to customer requests to locate stocks for short sales, according to the S.E.C.s order, Mr. Lowenfels said. Depending upon the specific factual circumstances, Goldman could incur private damage liabilities to its customers for these actions.

Its unclear how many customers may have been affected by Goldmans failures. The S.E.C. order is silent on that; it noted that the firm was generally able to meet its settlement obligations during the five-and-a-half-year period.

The S.E.C. settlement concerns the provision of locates, said Michael DuVally, a Goldman spokesman, and Goldman does not charge its clients for locates. As is common industry practice, clients are only charged if they establish a short position. The S.E.C. order noted that Goldmans rate of fails to deliver remained low.

This case is not the only one related to securities lending that the S.E.C. has brought against Goldman. In 2010, the regulator sued the firm, saying it had violated Regulation SHO in December 2008 and January 2009 by failing to deliver certain securities or immediately purchase or borrow securities to close out positions properly. The firm paid $225,000 to settle, again neither admitting nor denying the allegations.
Soon after I arrived in America in May 2010, Jewish Family Services found me a place to live, a room in the home of a retired nurse in Springfield, Mass. They also found me a bicycle, a backpack and a job working the second shift at a bakery in Agawam, a small town on the other side of the Connecticut River.

After learning that you couldnt bike on the highway, I figured out a seven-mile route on surface streets that took me an hour. I was always sweaty when I got to the job in the late afternoon, so Id go to the mens room to clean up a little before getting to work. Then I spent the next eight or 10 hours packaging doughnuts and braids, whatever they were making, cleaning the baking sheets or pushing doughnuts out of the oil. I had been in construction in Africa, so it was very different, and it was hot and greasy. But I was meeting people from all over the world  Nepal, Iraq, Myanmar  and was young and happy.

I was born a Congolese Tutsi, and my family escaped war in the Democratic Republic of Congo only to have my father, a cattle farmer, murdered in Burundi. Separated from my family, I fled to Western Tanzania by boat. I waited two years in a refugee camp there for protection in another country. The day I received my letter from the United States, I took pictures holding the American flag with my friends in the camp. My wife, Antoinette, and our 6-month-old boy had already gone to the States with her family, and they moved in with me after I started working. I was grateful just to be where I was and to have a job.

At the end of my bakery shift, I was very tired. It was usually 3 a.m. when I started riding my purple bike back to Springfield. The streets were quiet and empty, and there were dark places without houses, just woods on both sides. I didnt have a light, so I was vigilant. Who might be there? What if I turned the wrong way?
RE: THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND HAITI

Jonathan M. Katz wrote about the thousands of residents of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic who have been driven from their homes by violence and jingoism.

Katz points accurately, and reproachfully, to the politically convenient rationalizations offered by leaders in the Dominican and Haitian governments. Sadly, those excuses mimic ones we hear in the United States about why more cant be done to directly address issues like gun violence or the loss of so many young black lives. We hear too often that to do more might destabilize the situation, but more must be done nonetheless.

I visited in the fall the horrific camps described in the article along with a delegation from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, where I serve as a board member. We went to document human rights violations and to continue to draw attention to the deplorable conditions in the camps. Yet, as organizations like ours carefully detail human rights violations, an equally offensive tragedy unfolds: the failure of humanitarian-aid organizations to address those needs.
Madeleine Hormann was 7 years old when she decided to run away from home and join the circus. But like the best-laid plans of many second graders, hers went awry. Instead, she grew up, moved to Arizona and found work in engineering. It wasnt until middle age that Ms. Hormann  fresh from losing a job and recovering from a broken leg  decided to give her childhood aspirations another shot.

I like to think it was a dream deferred, she said with a grin.

Now, Ms. Hormann, 50, joins a gang of unlikely aerialists every Wednesday afternoon at a cavernous field house along the banks of Newtown Creek in Long Island City. They gather there  mothers, jocks, retirees  for Prime Flying, a trapeze class for people 45 years and older.

Presiding over the students, nearly all of them women, is Suzi Winson, co-founder and self-described ringleader mama of Circus Warehouse, which teaches Prime Flying and similar classes. (One two-hour class costs $65.) Ms. Winson, 53, has enough years in show business that she nearly forgot to mention a stint as a street clown. But it was the wear of decades in ballet that motivated Ms. Winson to get off her tired feet and take up trapeze. Besides, she felt increasingly invisible in an industry enamored of youth.

People our age get pretty marginalized out there in the world, Ms. Winson said. Here, we get to be rock stars.
Herb is 74; why he texted I do not know, possibly because he was on a morphine drip. But at 8:30 he makes an actual call and says he is in the emergency room.

I should take a moment here and clarify. Since St. Vincents Hospital Manhattan closed six years ago, we have not had a hospital in Greenwich Village, but a year and a half ago we did get part of a hospital, a free-standing emergency center affiliated with a whole hospital 70 blocks away. I was very grateful to have it here, too. If you can only have part of a hospital in New York these days, give me the emergency room and let them put the cafeteria on the Upper East Side.

Anyway, I grab the legal papers that identify me as Herbs medical proxy and rush to what Ill call Part of a Hospital Greenwich Village. Herb tells me he had severe abdominal pains in the night, headed to the bathroom and passed out on the floor. Then he got a cab here. Based on my medical training watching 15 seasons of E.R., this sounds like acute appendicitis to me. I am afraid the appendix will burst. I want George Clooney wheeling Herb into an O.R. now.

Part of a Hospital, however, does not do surgery. .

In Herbs case, the emphasis seems to be poking. You can see the challenges in an ad campaign:

Come on in, well poke you and diagnose you and maybe even dose you. Then well transport you 70 blocks out of the neighborhood, where theyll do the actual surgery. Or to any other hospital in New York, though you may only know that if you read our website.

Still, I understand the need for diagnostic tests. Herb gets busy drinking the contrast fluid for a CT scan. Its midafternoon  eight hours after Herbs arrival, which seems like a very long time to me  before we get a diagnosis of appendicitis and are told that a surgeon has accepted Herb as a patient and an ambulance will be transporting him shortly. Herb is given antibiotics, which Im told is the pre-surgical treatment he would be receiving in a hospital. That makes me feel better. Im also relieved, Googling the surgeon, to see hes an experienced colorectal specialist.
Q. Theres a story going around the Internet that Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch colonial ruler of what became New York City, was the father of fun-house mirrors. Is there any truth to it?

A. F.Y.I. does not object to printing fake stories, as long as they are properly identified as such. This one has indeed been making the rounds, including on Wikipedia. Here is a typical Internet example:

Ever since Peter Stuyvesant visited the Palace of Versailles, the world has had a distorted view of itself. Peter was the governor of New Amsterdam  later to be renamed New York City  beginning in 1647. He was visiting France to discuss colonial land agreements. While at Versailles he was awed by the Hall of Mirrors. Peter was determined to bring a similarly amazing showcase to his city. In 1651, he founded Peter Stuyvesants House of Mirrors. He charged one Dutch gulden for admission.

Russell Shorto, the author of The Island at the Center of the World (2004), about Dutch Manhattan, said in an email that the story was news to him.

It is nonsense, Mr. Shorto wrote. I asked Charles Gehring, of the New Netherland Institute, who has been translating the archives of the colony since 1974, if he had heard it before. He had not, and he agreed it was nonsense. I did a quick scan of the records of the colony for the word mirror and only came up with one reference, to settlers including hand mirrors among a batch of gifts to give to Indians.
Every time there is a major infectious disease outbreak that scares us  Ebola in West Africa in 2014, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) on the Arabian Peninsula in 2012 and in South Korea in 2015, and now the Zika virus in South and Central America and the Caribbean  government leaders, the public and the news media demand explanations, guidance and predictions, and often express indignation that not enough was done to prevent it. Today everyone is asking about Zika: How did this crisis happen, and what do we need to do to make it go away? We immediately forget about the outbreak that came before it, and dont plan for the ones we know are on the horizon. Almost no one wants to talk about Ebola or MERS now, or what we have or havent done to try to prevent an ugly recurrence.

When it comes to diseases, we have a very short attention span, and we tend to be reactive, rather than proactive. Instead of devoting ourselves to a comprehensive plan to combat microbial threats, we scramble to respond to the latest one in the headlines. There are lessons from previous infectious disease outbreaks that could and should have left us much better prepared than we are.

First, the mosquito that transmits this disease, the species Aedes aegypti, has never been more numerous or lived in more locations. Think of Aedes aegypti as the Norway rat of mosquitoes; it has evolved to live in close quarters with humans, and the trash that humans create. This is quite different from most other species of mosquitoes, like the ones that transmit West Nile virus, which tend to lay their eggs in marshes, rice fields, ditches, the edges of streams and small, temporary rain pools.

The world has changed dramatically in the past 40 years with regard to increasing the habitat for Aedes aegypti breeding. An explosion of plastic and rubber solid waste now litters virtually all parts of the globe, particularly in the developing world. Non-biodegradable containers, used tires and discarded plastic bags and wrappers  whether in the backyard, a roadside ditch or an abandoned lot  make ideal habitats for these mosquitoes to lay their eggs. All they need is a little rainfall.
The first property the Witnesses put up for sale was 360 Furman Street, which sold for $205 million in 2004. Now a luxury waterfront condo called One Brooklyn Bridge Park, it is home to a penthouse on the market for $32 million, one of the priciest listings in Brooklyn. The Bossert Hotel in Brooklyn Heights, which once hosted the Brooklyn Dodgers, and was used by the Witnesses as residences for staff members and out-of-town guests, sold for $81 million in 2012. It is being turned back into a hotel.

The Witnesses sold three properties in Dumbo, including a former Brillo factory on Water Street, for a total of $30.6 million in 2013; they are on their way to becoming luxury apartments. And six former factories near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge that sold for $375 million, also in 2013, are being renovated into chic offices for tech start-ups and trendy businesses like Etsy, WeWork and the jeweler Alexis Bittar.

The latest wave of offerings, which besides the headquarters, includes a residential building on the promenade in Brooklyn Heights and a massive parking lot in Dumbo, comes as the Brooklyn real estate market has surged. While these are not the last properties the Witnesses hold  there are about a dozen more  they are among the most coveted by developers. Dumbo is now one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn. And developers are swarming.

Everyone in the world will be taking a look at them, said Tucker Reed, the president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a local development corporation. The barrier to entry for a lot of those folks will be how high land values have gone. Im sure they will fetch a very high sales price. Mr. Reed estimated the value of the three properties being marketed as somewhere between $850 million to $1 billion.
The small Dutch city of s-Hertogenbosch, known as Den Bosch, is celebrating the virtual return of its native son Hieronymus Bosch, who died 500 years ago. Although the city doesnt own any of the artists paintings, this year it will present the largest retrospective of Boschs work ever, with all the works on loan from several leading museums. Jheronimus Bosch  Visions of Genius, displaying 20 paintings and 19 drawings, runs from Feb. 13 to May 8 at Het Noordbrabants Museum. Seven other museums in the province of North Brabant will present shows.

In its elegant Baroque center and along its canal system, Den Bosch is pulling out the stops for visitors, with events throughout the year including nightly light shows on the market square, projected 3-D images of diabolical Bosch characters, themed canal tours and rare climbs outside St. Johns Cathedral, covered with fantastical gargoyles and sculptures.
Dr. Mayes found clues about what the two people had been like in life. One was a man who died in his mid- to late 20s. He had a strong right arm that he may have built up through the use of a spear thrower. The other, a woman in her late 30s or early 40s, had teeth that showed signs of having been worn down by stripping fibers for making baskets.

She used her teeth as tools, Dr. Mayes said.

The University of California, for its part, appointed a committee of professors to evaluate the tribes claim. In 2008, they concluded that the skeletons were culturally unidentifiable. The grave contained no objects that might have established a cultural link, and the committee found no compelling evidence that these were ancient relatives of the Kumeyaay people.

Even so, Dr. Bettinger, a member of the committee, said in an interview that he grew concerned that the university would rush a transfer of the skeletons, and that the Kumeyaay would deny access.

So in 2010, he asked the university for permission to study the remains. So did Margaret J. Schoeninger, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, and Tim D. White of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Schoeninger was denied, and Dr. Bettinger and Dr. White say they never received a response.

Instead, the University of California announced that in 2011, the skeletons would be given to the La Posta Band, one of the Kumeyaay bands. Dr. Bettinger, Dr. Schoeninger and Dr. White sued to stop the transfer, arguing that the university had not made an adequate finding about the skeletons.

Dr. Kemp of Washington State, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the scientists, said the university had failed to meet the requirements of the repatriation act. The law hasnt been followed, he said.

But the court arguments didnt directly address the universitys actions or the scientific importance of the skeletons. The University of California argued that the Kumeyaay bands had to be joined in the suit. Because the bands had tribal immunity, the university argued, the scientists couldnt sue them.
GENEVA  The U.N. human rights office says it has turned up six more cases of alleged sexual abuse against children by European troops in Central African Republic, including a 7-year-old girl who said she had to perform sexual acts on soldiers in exchange for water and cookies.

A U.N. team recently interviewed five girls and a boy who claimed their abusers were part of French and European Union military operations in the troubled African country, the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein said.

The sexual abuse allegedly took place in 2014 in or near a camp for displaced people near MPoko airport in CARs capital, Bangui, but only came to light in recent weeks, the latest in a string of similar allegations.

France, Central African Republics former colonial ruler, deployed several thousand troops to the country in late 2013 as violence between Christians and Muslims sent thousands fleeing from their homes. An African Union mission that began in April 2014 was taken over by a U.N. peacekeeping force five months later, while the EU force ended an 11-month mission in March last year.

At a news conference later Friday in New York, the U.N. announced new allegations against U.N. peacekeepers as well. Assistant Secretary-General Anthony Banbury came close to tears as he described four new child sex abuse cases in CAR involving U.N. troops and police from Bangladesh, Congo, Niger and Senegal.

It was the first time the world body had publicly named countries whose U.N. troops are accused, as part of a new policy.

He also announced an allegation of sexual assault against a minor by a member of Moroccos military contingent serving with the earlier AU mission.

For all of 2015, Banbury said, there are likely to be 69 confirmed allegations of sexual abuse or exploitation in the U.N.s 16 peacekeeping missions around the world, including 22 in CAR. Thats up from 51 in 2014, when there were no reported cases in CAR, he said.

In a shift for the world body, Banbury said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will issue a report next month with details of all allegations from 2015, including the names of countries whose troops are accused. The information, including the status of investigations, will be regularly updated online, he said.

Its hard to imagine the outrage that people working for the United Nations in the causes of peace and security feel when these kinds of allegations come to light, Banbury said, his voice breaking.

The U.N. is under pressure to act more quickly after an independent panel last month described the world bodys gross institutional failure in handling similar allegations in CAR against French and other peacekeepers. The panels report said the months-long delay in addressing childrens accounts of abuse had led to even more reported assaults.

The U.N. can report such allegations, but countries themselves are responsible for prosecuting their troops over such crimes. Many do not.

The U.N. rights office said three of the girls said they believed their abusers were members of a Georgian contingent within a European Union force, and another girl was allegedly abused by a soldier from another European country that was not named because additional corroboration is needed in that case.

U.N. staffers interviewed a 7-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy who said they had been abused by troops in the French Sangaris operation. The girl said she had performed oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for a bottle of water and a sachet of cookies, the statement from Zeids office said.

A spokesman for Zeids office said the 7-year-old was the youngest alleged victim so far in any of the CAR cases. The two children said other children were abused in a similar fashion in repeated incidents involving several French soldiers, according to the statement.

Frances U.N. Mission tweeted on Friday: France remains very mobilized in fight against violence and (hash)sexualabuses & against impunity for those responsible.

The EUs foreign affairs service said the European Union was informed of the allegations on Jan. 19 and immediately offered assistance to the U.N. investigators.

The EU takes these allegations very seriously, said the statement.

Georgias Defense Ministry said it received the allegations with great concern, adding that it is our goal to investigate this matter in great detail and in case such grave crimes are proven, perpetrators of such crimes will be brought to justice.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for Zeids office, estimated that troops from something like 10 foreign military contingents in CAR have now been embroiled in sexual misconduct allegations. He said it was difficult to estimate how many individual soldiers might have been involved.

What is abundantly clear in the CAR is that its been rampant, Colville told reporters. What this does show is this is a problem with armies, with the military forces, and for whatever reason not enough is being done to stop this happening  the message doesnt seem to have got through.

He said he was unaware of any convictions so far in any of the cases that have been brought to light.

Banbury said the U.N. was taking new steps to protect against sexual abuse, promote accountability and assist victims. Every single member of peacekeeping forces is now vetted, he said, and those involved in prior misconduct, human rights violations or serious crimes are not allowed to serve.

Other changes include acting within 24 hours of an allegation to collect evidence, including using rape kits and specially trained investigators. The U.N. is also asking troop-contributing countries to conclude their investigations of allegations within six months and report results  and we now proactively suspend payments for personnel who are credibly accused of abuse, Banbury said.

He also urged others to come forward with allegations, saying that people who dont report the information they receive are complicit in the crime.
With people living longer than ever, a UCI doctor says the need for research into Alzheimers disease and other dementias is imperative.

Frank LaFerla, dean of UCIs Ayala School of Biological Sciences, spoke to a packed room at the Newport Beach Central Library on Jan. 25. LaFerla is also director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Alzheimers Disease Center at UCI, one of only 29 Alzheimers centers in the country.

With its aging population, the impacts on Orange County could be especially large, LaFerla said. About 90,000 people in the county are living with Alzheimers, he said.

This is an epidemic that is hitting us here very, very hard, LaFerla said.

Alzheimers disease, a degenerative brain disorder, affects a persons memory, reasoning and judgment, ability to learn and communicate, and eventually prevents them from completing daily activities like getting dressed and eating.

According to the Alzheimers Association, 5.3 million people were living with Alzheimers last year. In California, the number was 590,000 for those 65 and older, and that number is expected to reach 840,000 by 2025.

In the U.S., care for those with the disease cost $226 billion last year. And if nothing changes, that cost is expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2050.

On top of finding funding for Alzheimers and dementia research trials, it can be time-consuming to enroll patients in clinical or research trials, LaFerla said.

UCI is trying to curb that problem by developing a registry of possible trial participants called the UCI Consent to Contact program. Registrants can leave only their contact information, or start a process of data collection with the registry so theyre properly paired with trials, LaFerla said.

UCI has also developed mice that have the same physical symptoms of someone with Alzheimers disease, and about five years ago developed a stem cell bank made of induced pluripotent stem cells. The cells are developed in the lab by harvesting skin or blood cells from adult patients.

Some researchers are even working on a way to identify the disease early through methods like a blood test.

We do think were starting to treat people way too late, LaFerla said. Theres a lot of potential if we can diagnose this population early.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7990 or mnicolai@ocregister.com
IRVINE  The Black Student Union at UCI is demanding the university abolish the schools Police Department and any additional paramilitary force on campus.

Calling the university an anti-black institution, the seven-page letter says the university has failed to address black suffering on its campus.

In response, UCI officials praised the campus police as a highly respected team of officers who risk their lives to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff. We are proud of them.

A year ago, the Black Student Union also called for abolishing the department along with other changes.

University administrators then convened a task force and agreed to many of the demands, including the creation of a black residence hall and a new Black Resource Center with a $200,000-plus budget to pay for a director, staff, programs and student interns.

The university also has elevated the Program in African American Studies to department status.

UCIs administration, staff and faculty are committed to a diverse, inclusive environment, UCI spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said in an e-mail Thursday. Significant progress has been achieved.

Damiyr Davis, 23, a member of the student groups demand team, said the universitys reports of progress are exaggerated.

Their demands either have been delayed or changed from what the group originally requested, Davis said Thursday. The students are concerned that the new Black Resource Center, for example, will cater to non-blacks. The students also complain that UCI did not heed their suggestion of naming the center after Marsha P. Johnson, an African American transgender activist who died in 1992.

It is unclear how many students the Black Student Union represents. Davis said events can draw hundreds, while their meetings usually attracting 15 to 30 students. In the 2015-16 academic year, 719 of 25,256 undergraduate students identified themselves as African American.

Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com
BUJUMBURA, Burundi  Satellite images, video footage and witness accounts show that dozens of people allegedly killed by Burundian security forces in December were later buried in mass graves, Amnesty International reported Friday.

The news came as unrest in Burundi escalated with the arrest of 17 people in a security sweep, including two foreign journalists who were released later Friday.

The rights group reported five possible mass graves in the Buringa area on the outskirts of the capital, Bujumbura, which has been wracked by violence as the security forces go into neighborhoods seen as opposition strongholds. Two journalists on assignment for the French newspaper Le Monde were among 17 people swept up in a military operation Thursday, said Moise Nkurunziza, a deputy spokesman for Burundian police.

Journalists Jean-Philippe Remy of France and British photographer Philip Edward Moore were released on Friday afternoon, Le Monde said.

France, which had called on Burundian authorities to free the journalists, suspended its security defense cooperation activities in Burundi late Friday.

Witnesses described how police and local officials scoured Nyakabiga and other neighborhoods in Bujumbura to retrieve the bodies of those who were killed late last year and took them to undisclosed locations, according to Amnesty International.

The imagery, dating from late December and early January, shows disturbed earth consistent with witness accounts. Witnesses told Amnesty International that the graves were dug on the afternoon of Dec. 11, in the immediate aftermath of the bloodiest day of Burundis escalating crisis, the group said.

Earlier this month, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein also called for an urgent investigation into the alleged existence of mass graves following the violence in December. Zeid said the increasing number of enforced disappearances, coupled with allegations of secret detention facilities and mass graves is extremely alarming.

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Friday the reports of mass graves underscore the futility of trying to cover up such crimes. Perpetrators of atrocities in Burundi must realize that the international community is watching and those responsible for such horrors will be brought to account.

Burundis government has dismissed these allegations, saying they are based on false information supplied by the regimes opponents.

In coordinated attacks, gunmen stormed three military installations in Burundi on Dec. 11. The next day, 28 people were found shot dead in three Bujumbura neighborhoods. An witness told The Associated Press that some of the dead had their hands tied behind their backs. Another witness blamed government security forces, saying they went after the victims in door-to-door searches.

President Pierre Nkurunzizas decision to seek re-election to a third term last April touched off street protests that led to a failed coup in May and a rebellion that has left the central African country on the brink of civil war.

The Burundian government has rejected the proposed deployment of African Union peacekeepers in Burundi, saying they will be treated as an invading force.
Public execution in Saudi Arabia (file photo)

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia on Thursday executed one of its citizens for murder, bringing to 55 the number of convicts put to death this year.





Authorities in the southwestern region of Aseer carried out the death sentence against Owaidhah Al Saadi, the interior ministry said in a statement.





A court found him guilty of shooting dead another Saudi following a dispute, it said.





Most executions in Saudi Arabia are done by beheading with a sword.





The kingdom on January 2 executed 47 people in a single day for terrorism.





According to an AFP tally, Saadi is among eight other locals and foreigners put to death this year.





Last year the kingdom executed 153 people, mostly for drug trafficking or murder, according to an AFP tally.





The number of executions in Saudi Arabia in 2015 was the highest for two decades.





The kingdom practises a strict legal code under which murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape, homosexuality and apostasy are all punishable by death.





Source: Agence France-Presse, January 28, 2016




NEWPORT BEACH  City officials will take another look at how to collect taxes from short-term rentals in the wake of the growing popularity of websites like Airbnb.

Short-term vacation rentals have been a part of Newport Beach for decades, especially in Balboa Island, Corona del Mar and the Balboa Peninsula  and the city has regulated them since 1992.

But with the ease of websites like Airbnb or VRBO, houses and apartments are being rented without a permit and the city isnt collecting bed taxes like they would with hotels, officials say.

In addition, some of the rentals are in out-of-place areas of the city.

Rentals are a part of the culture of some neighborhoods, and they have been for decades, Community Development director Kim Brandt said during a City Council study session Jan. 26. Our primary concern now is commercial use in residential neighborhoods.

Coastal cities have taken wildly different approaches to the issue.

Laguna Beach issued a moratorium on new permits until October. Dana Point changed its regulations in 2013 to allow permits in residential and mixed-use zones. Huntington Beach prohibits short-term rentals and San Clemente is studying the issue. Hotspots like Anaheim have a moratorium in place, while Santa Ana officials bucked the trend and ended their moratorium late last year.

At the study session, Newport council members asked staff to look at beefing up enforcement of its code, and whether it was possible to regulate homesharing. For example: homeowners renting out a room, their couch or an RV parked in their driveway while theyre present.

While the issue of short-term rentals has drawn complaints from some county residents over issues like parking or nose, Newport council members focused instead on how to enforce city code and collect bed taxes due to the city.

They said they hoped to even out the playing field for people using Airbnb to rent out their homes and established hotels or vacation rental companies.

I think we need to be part of the solution for this and (make sure it) fits comfortably in our community, councilman Keith Curry said.

Gary Sherwin, president of Newport Beach and Co., the citys marketing arm, applauded the city for looking to tighten its regulations.

Businesses like Airbnb arent going anywhere. Airbnb  now valued at roughly $25 billion  is the largest lodging provider in the world, with about two million lodging properties available worldwide, Sherwin said.

The genie has been let out of the bottle on the idea of Airbnb and this new concept of online home rentals, Sherwin said. We need to not only regulate it, but create a sense of fairness among all our lodging providers.

Newport Beach has a total of 1,068 active short-term lodging permits, most of which are on the Balboa Peninsula and on Balboa Island. The city has offered the permits since 1992, and in 2004 the city banned permits in single-family neighborhoods.

About 200 permits in single-family neighborhoods were grandfathered in with that ban, and about 91 are still used today.

Last year, Newport Beach made about $2.2 million in bed taxes from short-term rentals, according to the city. Over the past five years, that total has increased 56 percent. Total bed taxes were $24.4 million from all sources.

City staff last year doubled down on citing or issuing permits for properties they found online. Employees issued 23 citations and hired a seasonal employee to find which properties were out of compliance online.

About 250 non-permitted properties were found online, and 131 went on to get the proper permits. The city collected $218,700 in fees and bed taxes, according to a staff report.

Council members also asked staff to see whether a deal with Airbnb would be possible for the collection of taxes. Airbnb has agreed to collect bed taxes and turn them over to the city of San Francisco, and assistant city attorney Michael Torres said hed spoken with representatives earlier to see if a similar deal was possible.

City Manager Dave Kiff said staff would come back to the council in about six months.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7990 or mnicolai@ocregister.com
WASHINGTON  The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clintons unsecured home server contained some of the U.S. governments most closely guarded secrets, censoring 22 emails with material demanding one of the highest levels of classification. The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate.

The State Department will release its next batch of emails from Clintons time as secretary of state later Friday.

But The Associated Press has learned seven email chains are being withheld in full because they contain information deemed to be top secret. The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called special access programs  a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.

Department officials wouldnt describe the substance of the emails, or say if Clinton sent any herself. They also wouldnt disclose if any of the documents reflected information that was classified at the time of transmission, but indicated that the agencys Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus have begun looking into that question.

The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information, State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP, describing the decision to withhold documents in full as not unusual. That means they wont be published online with the rest of the documents, even with blacked-out boxes.

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has insisted she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time. No emails released so far were stamped CLASSIFIED or TOP SECRET, but reviewers previously had designated more than 1,000 messages at lower classification levels for public release. Fridays will be the first at the top secret level.

For those that Clinton only read, and didnt write or forward, she still would have been required to report classification slippages that she recognized. But without classification markings, that may have been difficult, especially if the information was in the public domain.

Kirby said the State Departments focus as part of the Freedom of Information Act review of Clintons emails was on whether they need to be classified today. Questions about their past classification, he said, are being, and will be, handled separately by the State Department.

Possible responses for classification infractions include counseling, warnings or other action, State Department officials said, though they declined to say if these applied to Clinton or senior aides whove since left the department. The officials werent authorized to speak on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Fridays release is coming at an awkward time for Clinton. The Iowa caucus is on Feb. 1, and her main challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is running neck and neck with her in the polls there and leads solidly in New Hampshire. Clinton still holds a strong advantage in national polls.

The emails have been an issue for Clintons campaign since it became known 10 months ago that she exclusively used a nongovernment account linked to a homebrew server while in office. Clinton first called the decision a matter of convenience and then termed it a mistake, even if doing so wasnt expressly forbidden. But the matter could prove more troublesome now that Clintons former agency has confirmed that business conducted over the account included top-secret matters.

Like Clinton, the State Department discounted such a possibility last March. Both also said her account was never hacked or compromised, which security experts assess as unlikely, and that the vast majority of her emails were preserved properly for archiving purposes because she corresponded mainly with government accounts. Theyve backtracked from the archiving claim, while the AP discovered several phishing attempts on her server connected to Russia.

The question of special access programs first surfaced last week, when Charles I. McCullough, the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies, cited examples on Clintons account in a letter to Congress. Republicans pounced on the report, though Clintons campaign insisted none of the exchanges were classified at the time and accused McCullough and GOP lawmakers of selectively leaking materials to damage her presidential hopes.

Kirby confirmed that the denied-in-full emails are among those McCullough recently cited. One of the emails, he said, was among those McCullough identified last summer as possibly containing top secret information.

The AP reported last August that one focused on a forwarded news article about the classified U.S. drone program run by the CIA. Such operations are widely covered and discussed in the public sphere, including by top U.S. officials, and the State Department immediately pushed back against McCulloughs claim. The other concerned North Korean nuclear weapons programs, according to officials.

At the time, several officials from different agencies suggested the disagreement over the drone emails reflected the governments tendency to over-classify material, and the lack of consistent policies across difference agencies about what should and shouldnt be classified.

The FBI also is looking into Clintons email setup, but has said nothing about the nature of its probe. Independent experts say it is highly unlikely that Clinton will be charged with wrongdoing, based on the limited details that have surfaced up to now and the lack of indications that she intended to break any laws.

What I would hope comes out of all of this is a bit of humility and an acknowledgement from Clinton that I made some serious mistakes, said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who regularly handles security clearance matters.

Legal questions aside, its the potential political costs that are probably of more immediate concern for Clinton. She has struggled in surveys measuring her perceived trustworthiness and an active federal investigation, especially one buoyed by evidence that top secret material coursed through her account, could negate one of her main selling points for becoming commander in chief: Her national security resume.
Orange County will soon open a temporary shelter at the unused Santa Ana transit station across from the Civic Center and the hundreds of homeless people who live there.

An agreement this week between county and federal officials allows Orange County to operate a shelter at the terminal for up to five months while the countys $3.3 million purchase of the property is finalized.

The Board of Supervisors is to meet Friday at 3 p.m. at the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana to authorize a lease with OCTA.

County officials say the shelter will open as soon as this weekend; rain is expected late Saturday and Sunday. Theyve not yet said how many people the shelter could serve.

This will provide a small but important amount of relief during the rains, said board Vice Chairwoman Michelle Steel in a statement by county spokeswoman Jean Pasco.

The lease, which calls for the county to pay OCTA $11,615 each month, only allows whats already there: restrooms and shelter from the rain, said Pasco. It does not allow food or other services like medical and counseling to be provided there, and the shelter only will open during rainy weather.

The shelter will be operated by Mercy House, which will set up mattresses and blankets as is done at the armories. Although no meals will be served, water, hot coffee and light snacks will be offered.

The announcement and special meeting come after advocates for the homeless last month presented the Board of Supervisors a petition with nearly 1,600 signatures, including from 259 people who are homeless, that calls for immediate action regarding a plan for up to $500,000 to be spent on emergency homeless shelters during El Nino season. Supervisors authorized a contract bid on Dec. 8, but seven weeks and several inches of rain later, no new beds are available.

The county did not keep its promise to provide those 440 beds, said Madeleine Spencer, an activist with Project Homelessness.

Eve Garro of the American Civil Liberties Unions Dignity for All Project, who joined Spencer in presenting the petition, also questioned why the county outsourced the management of the plan to a private organization  Mercy House  thats unable to authorize the opening of shelters and must seek authorization from cities.

Mercy House has a long history with the county and has managed the temporary shelters at the armories for years. Its executive director, Larry Haynes, said this week that hes close to solidifying two locations, in addition to the terminal, that will provide about 200 beds for homeless people currently living in flood-prone riverbeds in the Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Orange areas. Mercy House also is securing three locations where people can be transported to those shelters and to the armories in Fullerton and Santa Ana, which the county uses as shelters each winter.

Working with several jurisdictions is difficult and takes time, but I think were going to execute a very good plan, Haynes said.

The countys news release announcing the plans for the terminal worked to affirm supervisors commitment to homeless issues in Orange County.

Board Chairwoman Lisa Bartlett said the county is committed to doing all we can to help get people out of the rain and sheltered during the El Nino rainstorms that we know are coming.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer noted the presence of homeless people at the Civic Center and said he and his colleagues have a moral and ethical duty to protect the homeless, and to provide a safe and clean place for our county employees and the citizens who come to the Civic Center for services.

Supervisor Shawn Nelson said supervisors are doing everything we can to help our homeless residents, one step at a time and said the efforts to convert the terminal are one of many in our commitment to that effort.

Supervisor Andrew Do, who directed county staff to work with OCTA and federal lobbyists to find a faster way to use the abandoned terminal, said the shelter at the terminal will help alleviate suffering in the short-term, and Orange County staff are working with Mercy House to begin preparations of the bus terminal site.

The federal Transit Administration gave OCTA money to build the terminal and has authority over how its used; a regional administrator with the FTA notified OCTA this week that using the space as a shelter for up to five months is fine.

The plans for the terminal come the same time the county is preparing to open its first year-round shelter at an Anaheim industrial building purchased last year. The 200-bed shelter could open by the end of the year; county officials hope to eventually open several similar shelters throughout the county.

The county also recently funded a new job that will oversee homeless issues in Orange County in a czar-type role. Supervisors authorized the purchase of the bus terminal, which OCTA stopped using in 2008 rather than renovate it to fit newly designed buses, Dec. 15 and could open permanent homeless services there once the purchase is finalized.

Contact the writer: mcuniff@ocregister.com. Twitter: @meghanncuniff.
Two escaped inmates from the Orange County jail are believed to be in the San Jose area, driving a white van, and were possibly heading to Fresno, authorities said Friday.

Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong escaped from the Orange County Central Jail last Friday. Authorities arrested Duong in Santa Ana after he turned himself in at about 11:30 a.m. today.

Lt. Jeff Hallock on Friday said the men possibly fled to the San Jose area and Duong traveled down to Santa Ana to turn himself in and is cooperating with authorities.

In a message to the other two escapees, Hallock said: We are pressing forward and we are coming after you, and we will take you back into custody.

Hallock said the two are believed to still be together in a white 2008 GMC Savana utility van. Anyone who spots the van is urged to call 911.

Duong, 43, was arrested about 11:50 a.m. after he got in touch with a woman in Santa Ana. He was arrested without incident near the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop at 1421 N. Harbor Blvd.

Duong contacted a civilian on the streets of Santa Ana and stated that he wanted to turn himself in, Hutchens said.

Tri Nguyen, whose father-in-law owns the shop, said Duong walked into the building and told his wife that he wanted to turn himself in. He said his wife seemed scared. She called police.

Nguyen, who has known Duong for 10 years, said hes a good friend of mine, hes a good person. I think he was scared. He just showed up and told my wife.

Other employees at the store also spoke to the throng of media:

The other inmates  Hossein Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu  were not arrested and are still fugitives. After the arrest, investigators conducted a car-by-car search in the Auto Electric Rebuilders parking lot with their guns drawn. They are also searching an adjacent motel.

Duong had been held on an attempted murder charge after a shooting in Santa Ana in November.

Investigators said Duong stole a car on Saturday, and they believe all three inmates were living in the white utility van. That GMC van is still missing.

Stolen Vehicle ACTUAL 2008 White GMC Savana Utility Lic: 8U66466 plates/stickers may have been removed pic.twitter.com/MASIlWnYxe  OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD) January 29, 2016

Duong arrived in the United States from Vietnam in 1991. He initially received a green card, making him a legal permanent resident of the United States.

In 1995, Duong was convicted of burglary in San Diego.

Three years later, a judge ordered that he be removed from the country and returned to Vietnam, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement statement. An appeals board upheld the ruling.

During that time frame, however, Vietnam routinely rejected requests to accept deportees, refusing to issue required travel documents.

Duong was once again placed in ICE custody in 2003, but was released the next year, according to the statement.

Immigration officials are not able to keep people locked up indefinitely, unless they pose a national security risk.

After his 2004 release, and for the next decade, Duong reported on schedule to immigration officials.

In 2008, Vietnam came to an agreement with the United States to issue travel documents for those being deported. The accord, however, pertained only to those who entered the United States after July 12, 1995.

In November, Duong was arrested after police say he shot a 52-year-old man in the chest. He is also facing charges on suspicion of stealing a motorcycle and resisting arrest.

After his latest arrest, ICE officers placed a hold against Duong, asking the Sheriffs Department to notify them before he could be released. As a result, Duong was being held without bail at the time of his escape.

Staff writer Sean Emery contributed to this report.
A law adopted in Denmark this week permits police to seize assets carried by refugees seeking asylum in the country. The move follows similar steps recently taken in Germany and Switzerland to address the record number of migrants arriving in Europe from North Africa and the Middle East.

The goal of the law is to attempt to cover the costs of processing and housing the refugees while their asylum claims are being processed. Items worth more than $1,500 are subject to seizure if they are nonessential and lack sentimental value.

In simple terms, the new law is an attempt to dissuade migrants from coming to Denmark and incentivize them to either stay at home or to make their asylum claim somewhere else.

While the United Nations has condemned the decision, and champions of migrant rights drew expected comparisons to the Nazis treatment of Jews, defenders of the law claim that it tracks similar requirements imposed on Danes who claim welfare assistance from the government.

To many, Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries have served for decades as a role model for the rest of the world when it comes to humanitarian efforts. The new law is being criticized as an abdication of responsibility and a big step back from the open arms historically presented.

No less an international cultural celebrity than Chinese artist Ai Weiwei made his view of the new seizure law known when he ordered his exhibition, Ruptures, at the Faurschou Foundation in Copenhagen, closed immediately.

Frustrations are mounting within Europe as the numbers of refugees arriving each week shows little sign of abating. EU ministers are speaking openly of repealing the Schengen accord, which permits document-free travel within much of the continent. Such a move would effectively seal the border with Greece, which finds itself simultaneously suffering the continued effects of an economic meltdown and the presence of hundreds of thousands of refugees intent on making their way the promised land of Germany and Northern Europe.

Athens quickly voiced its displeasure at the thought of being cut off from the EU brethren and left alone to deal with the unfolding refugee crisis. With asylum seekers arriving every day, Greek authorities, short of opening fire on them, have few options to stem the flow. Unemployment in Greece stands at 25 percent, and the effects of the current economic depression are still clearly visible. For Athens to cope with the asylum seekers, significant financial assistance  as well as logistical assistance  will be required from EU headquarters in Brussels.

For decades, the European Union has prided itself on its ability to find common solutions to common problems, even winning a Nobel Peace Prize not too long ago for serving as a glowing example of what multinational collaboration could look like in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the refugee crisis has revealed Europe as an example of a blame-shifting, name-calling go-it-alone policy vacuum.

At present, there is little sign either that the numbers of new refugees will be declining any time soon or that European leaders will be able to build a consensus around a coordinated reaction that can address the present challenges on a continentwide basis.

While EU officials dither, men, women and children continue to risk their lives to make their way to Europe in the hope of being able to start a new life free of the dangers and threats that they faced in their home countries. Even if Greece is effectively walled off from the rest of Europe, some experts believe that desperate refugees will simply find other routes in, whether by land or by sea. New routes could mean new dangers and higher risks, leading to further casualties.

No matter what walls they try to build across land borders, Europeans have few options when it comes to their maritime border  the Mediterranean Sea. A source of numerous fatalities over the past year, the closing of overland routes will inevitable drive more asylum seekers either into the hands of dodgy human traffickers or into high-risk crossings by boat.

A particularly awkward source of disagreement with Europe is deciding which asylum seekers should be welcomed and which turned away. Many countries are limiting their hospitality to Syrian, Iraqi and Afghani refugees, sending back the many others who sought to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of Chancellor Angela Merkels generous offer of hospitality.

Many would-be migrants from a number of impoverished countries see the recent waves of asylum seekers as encouragement to make their own journeys to seek relative prosperity in Europe. Merkels unilateral open-door policy has started a stampede that may confound and perplex European officials and citizens for some time to come.
Mark Rightmire had his first photograph published in his hometown newspaper in Athens, Ohio, at the age of 12. A graduate of the Visual Communication program at Ohio University, he has been a staff photographer at The Orange County Register for over three decades, documenting the people, places, and landscapes of Orange County. Assignments have also taken him beyond the boarders of O.C. From Auckland, New Zealand to Dublin, Ireland; Disneyland to the Atlantic City Boardwalk; from the French Quarter of New Orleans to Pike Place Market in Seattle; the Stanley Cup Finals in Ottawa and NYC, to the Americas Cup in San Francisco and San Diego. In 2014 he traveled to Russia to cover the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. A love for the outdoors often reflects in his photography.
PARIS  Raul Castro is coming to France for the first-ever state visit of a Cuban president to the land of wine and gastronomy, a trip that could boost French investments and promote stronger economic, cultural and tourist ties between Paris and Havana.

Castro is to arrive Saturday for the private part of his trip ahead of his official visit on Monday and Tuesday, landing only eight months after French Socialist President Francois Hollandes one-day stop in Havana. The two leaders are to have dinner at the Elysee palace on Monday night.

This visit marks a new step in the development of a stronger relationship between the two countries, the French presidency said.

Castros visit also comes two months after the Paris Club of creditor countries forgave $8.5 billion of overdue Cuban interest payments in exchange for Cubas promise to pay off $2.6 billion in loans from developed countries over the next year and a half.

France, to which Cuba owed $4 billion in overdue loans, led the creditors negotiations. The deal was hailed by both sides as an essential step in clearing the path for Cuba to regain access to international credit that had been long unavailable due to the overdue loans.

The U.S. maintains an economic embargo against Cuba and is not among the creditor nations.

France hopes to see some business partnerships flourish in Cuba in tourism, transport and environmental industries in the wake of the normalization of the countrys ties with the U.S.

The agreement at the Paris Club is paving the way for a bilateral agreement with France to be signed Monday, a top French official said Friday.

Cubas remaining debt to France amounts to $390 million (360 million euros). With this new bilateral deal, part of the money would be reinvested in development projects on the island, another French diplomat said.

The two countries are expected to announce the opening of the French Agency of Developments office in Havana. The agency is a specialized financial institution that can make loans to public and private actors to support bilateral development projects.

The two French officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose any details ahead of the visit.

Cubas debt to France has not been honored since the 1980s, when Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and his wife Danielle openly supported the Cuban government.

France has called for the lifting of the U.S. embargo since 1991. Former Cuba President Fidel Castro, brother of Raul, came to Paris on private visit in 1995 and met with Mitterrand at the Elysee palace.

Some commercial deals are expected to be signed on the sidelines of Raul Castros visit.

French companies already working with Cuba  such as Pernod Ricard beverages, the hotel company Accor, the Bouygues construction group and the shipping group CMA CGM  could get new development opportunities.

Castros trip to Paris comes only few days after the visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani  another effort by French government to boost investments in an economy crippled by decades of sanctions until the Tehran nuclear deal last year.
LOS ANGELES  The utility that owns a natural gas well that has leaked uncontrollably for three months knew a devastating blowout was possible because of its age, design and the way it was being operated, according to state records and testimony.

And state regulators were aware of the situation at the largest gas storage field in the West but said they were limited in their ability to stop it.

There are no rules that prevent it or no law that prevents you from doing what they were doing, said Annaliese Anderle, a former inspector and supervisor at the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, which regulates the field.

The blowout near Los Angeles has spewed more than 2 million tons of climate-changing methane and forced thousands of residents to flee their homes amid a sickening stench. Gov. Jerry Brown has declared an emergency.

Southern California Gas Co. has apologized for the ongoing leak and defended its safety practices, though public records and testimony from executives show repeated gas leaks and corrosion in wells it operates that average more than a half-century old.

The blown out well, Sesnon Standard-25, was drilled in 1953 to pump crude oil and found a second career when the field was converted in the 1970s to sto.

In addition to its age, several factors put the well in jeopardy of a blowout, said Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell University engineering professor who worked in the oil and gas industry 25 years and studied the wells records.

The well was built with two outer steel casings that surround and protect an inner steel pipe designed to carry gas in and out of the storage reservoir.

However, SoCalGas was also pushing gas through the casing surrounding that pipe.

The practice was risky because there was no secondary protection for more than a mile of its length, Ingraffea said.

A casing failure allowed the gas to escape from the well and a safety valve that might have been able to stop it was removed in 1979, Ingraffea said. It was not required to be replaced.

The gas company, which is paying to relocate nearly 6,000 families and facing dozens of lawsuits, refused to answer questions about the blown-out well until it is plugged, which could take another month, and its cause investigated.
LOS ANGELES  Californias U.S. senators are seeking a federal investigation into the ongoing leak of natural gas from a utilitys underground storage site that has forced thousands of people to leave nearby Los Angeles neighborhoods.

U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein said Friday that they will introduce an amendment to legislation on the Senate floor that would direct Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to lead a review of the cause and response to the leak at a Southern California Gas Co. facility.

Massive amounts of climate-changing methane have been spewing for more than three months from a well blowout at the Aliso Canyon site. The stench has sickened residents in the Porter Ranch community who have complained of nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and other symptoms.

While public health officials have sought to reassure residents that they dont believe there will be long-term health problems, they also told SoCalGas to pay to relocate people who wanted to move out.

So far, the company has relocated more than 4,500 households and was in the process Thursday of helping move nearly 3,400 others, a spokeswoman said.

Gov. Jerry Brown has declared an emergency. Several state agencies with overlapping authority have been overseeing efforts to plug the leak, which could take another month, and ordering to the gas company to stop the leak and turn over reports about the well that was more than 60 years old.

The amendment would also direct the task force to recommend whether the aging facility and others like it should continue to operate near residential communities.

The California Public Utilities Commission is looking into the impact on energy supplies if the facility is shut down. Aliso Canyon is the largest facility of its kind in the West and capable of holding enough gas to supply all of Southern California.

Boxer said she wanted to put our brightest minds to work on the crisis in the hope of preventing similar blowouts across the country.

It has been very frustrating to watch this Aliso Canyon crisis unfold  almost in slow motion  without any clear remedy, Boxer said in a statement.
The teacher accused of aiding the men who broke out of the Orange County jail had completed a training course in which she was instructed not to have personal contact with inmates and how not to be manipulated by them, Sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock said Friday.

Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, of Lake Forest, will be arraigned Monday and charged with being an accessory in a felony. She is accused of helping Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong escape from the Orange County Central Jail last Friday. Nayeri, a former U.S. Marine who spoke English, took an ESL class taught by Ravaghi in the jail.

Their relationship was much more personal than it should have been, Hallock said. The Sheriffs Department will recommend that her bail be set at $500,000.

Hallock said Ravaghi is accused of providing a printout of a Google map that showed the roof of the jail. Ravaghi and Nayeri may also have had contact via mail, he said.

Its common knowledge that the inmates, especially somebody facing a significant amount of time, are going to use whatever they can and manipulation is a typical tactic they use to get something that they want, Hallock said. Thats something that we discuss in that class that theyre made well aware of going into it. Thats why its important at any time that if they feel like theyre being asked a certain question or information is trying to be gained from them theyre supposed to report that to staff immediately.

Even if he was asking her questions it would have violated our policy.

Hallock said Ravaghi did not report any contact with Nayeri to deputies.

The inmates are still at large. Hallock said investigators believe the fugitives are still in the Southern California area and may be living in a stolen utility van. On Saturday, Duong answered a for-sale advertisement for a white GMC Savanna, took the car for a test drive and didnt return the car, Hallock said. The vans license plate number is 8U66466.

Its very important that we locate this van, Hallock said.

Stolen Vehicle ACTUAL 2008 White GMC Savana Utility Lic: 8U66466 plates/stickers may have been removed pic.twitter.com/MASIlWnYxe  OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD) January 29, 2016

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Investigators believe a Vietnamese gang and other Vietnamese organized crime suspects may be connected to the fugitives.

Ravaghis website says she got a masters degree from Cal State Fullerton in education  teaching English to speakers of other languages. Cal State Fullerton confirmed that Ravaghi earned a degree in education with a certificate for ESL in 2013. She is listed as an ESL teacher at several institutions, including Saddleback College.

Since 2007, Ravaghi also has worked part time with elementary schoolchildren through Professional Tutors of America. Robert Gordon, the Brea-based companys chief executive, said Ravaghi has a reputation of being a good tutor who received positive reviews from the families with whom she worked. Gordon noted that all of his companys tutors go through extensive background checks.

Ravaghi started working at the jail through the Rancho Santiago Community College District Inmate Education Program.

The district released this statement: Ms. Ravaghi began working for the program in fall of 2014 and had undergone a background check by the Sheriffs Department before her part-time assignment began. RSCCD is working closely with the Sheriffs Department to provide whatever information they require.

Anyone who spots the escapees should call 911, authorities said. Anyone with information about their whereabouts can contact the Orange County Sheriffs Department at 714-628-7085.

Staff writers Alma Fausto and Alyssa Duranty contributed to this report.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, a Sikh immigrant, served two-thirds of a nine-year sentence for perjury in one of the deadliest airline attacks in history. (Photo: AP)

Toronto: Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted for the 1985 Air India Kanishka bombing, has been released from a Canadian prison under tough conditions, including one that he will have to live at a halfway house until August 2018 when his perjury sentence will expire.

Halfway houses are meant for reintegration of persons who have been recently released from jail.

Reyat was found guilty of perjury in 2010 after he lied during the trial of two men accused of the bombing that killed all 329 passengers on the plane, in Canadas worst terror attack.

He was sentenced to a record nine years in prison, or seven years and seven months after accounting for time served.

Reyat previously served more than 15 years in prison for making the bombs that were stuffed into two suitcases and planted on planes leaving Vancouver. The bombing of Air India 182 occurred at the same time as the Narita airport bombing in Japan. Investigators believe that the two plots were linked.

Under Canadian law, offenders must be granted statutory release after they have served two-thirds of their sentence.

However, Parole Board of Canada spokesman Patrick Storey said Reyat must abide by several conditions as part of his release, including not possessing any extremist propaganda or any components used to build an explosive device.

He is also not allowed to contact the victims families or anyone who is believed to hold extremist views. He will be monitored by a parole officer and must complete counselling, The Canadian Press reported.

Reyat is set to serve the rest of his sentence, which ends in August 2018, at a halfway house. Storey said he could not disclose the location of the residence due to privacy legislation.

The parole board ruling for Reyats release said a psychologists assessment in 2013 found the mans risk was relatively high for future group-based violence and that he lacked remorse for the bombings.

The loss of life had a profound and long-lasting impact on the families who lost their relatives in these incidents, and had farreaching impact on people around the world, the decision said.

Until recently, you took limited responsibility for your role in this catastrophic disaster, you lied in court and protected others involved.

If Reyat breaches any of the conditions, he can be sent back to prison, Storey said.
LAGUNA BEACH  State Attorney General Kamala Harris held a meet-and-greet in Laguna Beach on Thursday, answering questions about gun control and protecting the environment.

It marked Harris first stop of 2016 in the backyard of Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a fellow Democrat and her top competitor in a bid for the U.S. Senate seat that will soon be vacated by Barbara Boxer.

This is the first open Senate seat in California in a quarter century, Harris said. The stakes are high in this race.

Harris spoke to a crowd of some 100 at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of her career as a prosecutor, citing the work shes done to pursue organized crime. She pledged to work toward reducing school truancy, protecting womens right to choose and keeping boots off the ground overseas.

When asked about her stance on gun safety technology, Harris said she supports both the Second Amendment and reasonable gun control laws, including renewing the ban on assault weapons.

Harris said she couldnt go into detail on an audience members question regarding the embattled director of the state Coastal Commission, since the agency is her client. But she touted her record on protecting the environment, including a recent commitment to investigate whether Exxon Mobil lied about climate change risks.

Ken Wyant, 68, of Irvine said he was impressed with Harris statements on the environment.

I love what I heard, agreed Melissa Thomas, 52, of Balboa Island.

Harris has long been the frontrunner in this race, though her edge has slipped a bit.

In October, the Field Poll had Harris leading with support from 30 percent of decided voters. In January, Harris was at 27 percent while Sanchez, of Orange, trailed with 15 percent.

But 44 percent of those surveyed were still undecided, suggesting millions of votes are up for grabs in the next four months.

While Harris spoke in Laguna Beach, Sanchez was in Santa Ana with the Democratic Party of Orange County, where she was slated to introduce keynote speaker Rep. Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles.

Sanchez spokesman Luis Vizcaino declined to comment on Harris appearance, saying only that the Sanchez team is confident given Sanchezs 19 years in the House.

A lot of people might say thats whats wrong with Congress, Harris told the Register. Theyve been there for years and havent got much done.

Three Republicans are running: Assemblyman Rocky Chavez and former California Republican party chairmen Duf Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro. The Democrats likely will face off in November, with a 15-percentage point edge in voter registration and the top two candidates advancing in June.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.com
PARIS  Europe, whose economic struggles have grown that much greater with recent problems in crucial markets like China and Russia, is rushing to do business with a newly accessible and eager, if still problematic, partner: Iran.

With the lifting of sanctions after its nuclear deal with the West, Tehran has gone shopping this week, bringing its checkbook and a long list of items it had been unable to acquire for years, including jetliners, European cars, pharmaceuticals and metals.

Despite lingering animosities and the United States designation of Iran as a sponsor of terrorist groups, European governments and corporations have made it clear that economic opportunity is going to trump concerns over human rights, security and politics for now.

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, began his shopping spree in Italy, and continued it on Thursday in France.

The Iranian leader was treated to full state honors at one of the French Republics most sanctified spots, Les Invalides, and the red carpet was rolled out for him at meetings with top business leaders. Later in the day, he met with President Francois Hollande at Elysee Palace.

Lest they offend their guest, the French have kept wine off the menu, and the Italians covered up nude statues. So far the courtship has worked swimmingly.

Italian and French business leaders have barely been able to sign the contracts fast enough, even as the Germans look on enviously.

By the end of Thursday morning, less than 24 hours into Rouhanis visit to France, the carmaker Peugeot Citroen had signed a 400 million euro deal ($438 million) with the Iranian carmaker Khodro. The oil company Total said it would sign a deal for between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels a day. Airbus will sell 118 planes to the Iranians.

Even as analysts warn that the Iranian market may not be as easy to access as many here hope, and that it may not be the answer that Europe desires to its economic downturn, the allure is proving nearly irresistible.

Rouhani represents one-stop shopping by himself: The Iranian government controls 80 percent of the countrys economy. And with Irans population of around 80 million, much of it young and eager to spend after years of cheap Chinese goods, Western companies cannot get there fast enough.

Deals and potential deals, signed and promised  for cars, planes, metals, pharmaceuticals  have been cascading. French companies should rush to Iran and not waste any time, said Pierre Gattaz, president of the French employer federation Medef.

As Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Thursday: France is available for Iran. France, he said  with Rouhani at his side at a meeting of the employers federation  is ready to mobilize its companies, its engineers and its technicians, its numerous resources, to contribute to the modernization of your country.

Later, when Hollande received Rouhani, the French leader was noticeably unsmiling after a day marked by human rights protests against the Iranian president in Paris. About 20 agreements were signed in the presence of the two presidents, from pledges to cooperate in health and agriculture to deals for planes, construction work and pharmaceuticals.

Hollande said Syria had been discussed  Irans support for President Bashar Assad has been unwavering while France insists he must go. We spoke of everything, Hollande said. I recalled the attachment of France to human rights, he added, as Rouhani looked on grimly.

Beyond the money, though, Rouhanis European visit has important political and symbolic overtones, experts said.

Signing deals and meeting with Western politicians reinforces his own moderate faction in the face of powerful conservative elements in Iran  mostly because it shows the president taking an active role to turn around his countrys troubled economy.

The logic of Rouhani, to get out of this difficult situation, is the normalization of Irans economic relations with the world, said Fereydoun Khavand, a professor of economics at LUniversite Paris Descartes. He is supported by the middle classes, the urban population.

Rouhani and the 11-odd ministers accompanying him on the state visit to Europe represent the moderate faction, and they want to open up and go to the world, to assure the integration of Iran in the global economy, Khavand added.

Rouhanis trip is a calculated gamble against the conservative elements  that he has the popular will on his side, analysts said.

His opponents say, youve weakened Iran with the nuclear deal, said Thierry Coville, an Iran specialist at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques, a think tank. And he says, my politics of normalization reinforces the role of Iran in the world.

Hes telling the Iranian population that, we are being taken seriously, Coville said. And I think the population is receptive.

To be sure, Rouhanis moderation is relative, and several substantial protests against his visit were mounted in Paris on Thursday to serve as reminders.

A half-dressed woman harnessed herself by rope to a bridge as a reminder that Iran discriminates against women and is a leader in executions by hanging  carrying out at least 830 for last year by Nov. 1, according to Human Rights Watch.

Another Paris rally focused on repression and political prisoners in Iran, where, according to Human Rights Watch, scores of people are held for their affiliation with banned opposition parties, and journalists and bloggers are routinely jailed.

The French and Italian businessmen who greeted Rouhani this week were all smiles, nonetheless, and the politicians who shepherded them were scarcely less benevolent.

France, well-practiced, also maintains excellent relations with Irans archrival Saudi Arabia, itself a leader in human rights violations. Rouhani for his part appeared pleased with his reception, hailing a new relationship with France and saying he wanted to turn the page.
For people living in the ancient city of Babylon, Marduk was their patron god, and thus it is not a surprise that Babylonian astronomers took an interest in tracking the comings and goings of the planet Jupiter, which they regarded as a celestial manifestation of Marduk.

What is perhaps more surprising is the sophistication with which they tracked the planet, judging from inscriptions on a small clay tablet dating to between 350 B.C. and 50 B.C. The tablet, a couple of inches wide and a couple of inches tall, reveals that the Babylonian astronomers employed a sort of precalculus in describing Jupiters motion across the night sky relative to the distant background stars.

Until now, credit for this kind of mathematical technique had gone to Europeans who lived some 15 centuries later.

That is a truly astonishing find, said Mathieu Ossendrijver, a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, who describes his archaeological astronomy discovery in an article published Thursday by the journal Science.

Its a figure that describes a graph of velocity against time, he said. That is a highly modern concept.

Mathematical calculations on four other tablets show that the Babylonians realized that the area under the curve on such a graph represented the distance traveled.

I think its quite a remarkable discovery, said Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, who was not involved with the research. Its really quite clear from the text.

Ancient Babylon, situated in what is now Iraq, south of Baghdad, was a thriving metropolis, a center of trade and science for more than a millennium. Early Babylonian mathematicians who lived between 1800 B.C. and 1600 B.C. had figured out, for example, how to calculate the area of a trapezoid, and even how to divide a trapezoid into two smaller trapezoids of equal area.

For the most part, Babylonians used their mathematical skills for mundane calculations, like figuring out the size of a plot of land. But on some tablets from the later Babylonian period, there appear to be some trapezoid calculations related to astronomical observations.

In the 1950s, an Austrian-American mathematician and science historian, Otto E. Neugebauer, described two of them. Ossendrijver, in his recent research, turned up two more.

But it was not clear what the Babylonian astronomers were calculating.

A year ago, a visitor showed Ossendrijver a stack of photographs of Babylonian tablets that are now held by the British Museum in London. He saw a tablet he had not seen before. This tablet, with impressions of cuneiform script pressed into clay, did not mention trapezoids, but it recorded the motion of Jupiter, and the numbers matched those on the tablets with the trapezoid calculations.

I was certain now it was Jupiter, Ossendrijver said.

When Jupiter first appears in the night sky, it moves at a certain velocity relative to the background stars. Because Jupiter and Earth both constantly move in their orbits, to observers on Earth, Jupiter appears to slow down, and 120 days after it becomes visible, it comes to a standstill and reverses course.

In September, Ossendrijver went to the British Museum, where the tablets were taken in the late 19th century after being excavated. A close-up look of the new tablet confirmed it: The Babylonians were calculating the distance Jupiter traveled in the sky from its appearance to its position 60 days later. Using the technique of splitting a trapezoid into two smaller ones of equal area, they then figured out how long it took Jupiter to travel half that distance.

Ossendrijver said he did not know the astronomical or astrological motivation for these calculations.

But, he said, it shows a level of abstraction and insight into how you deal with motion.

It was an abstract concept not known elsewhere at the time. Ancient Greek astronomers and mathematicians didnt make plots of something against time, Ossendrijver said.

He said that until now, such calculations were not known until the 14th century by scholars in England and France. These mathematicians of the Middle Ages perhaps had seen some as yet unknown texts dating to Babylonian times, or they developed the same techniques independently.

It anticipates integral calculus, Ossendrijver said. This is utterly familiar to any modern physicist or mathematician.
BUENA PARK  A Placentia man was critically injured Friday morning after he tried to elude authorities by driving more than 100 mph before crashing over an embankment and into a brick wall, officials said.

At 2:17 a.m., a California Highway Patrol officer attempted to pull over Phillip Chang, 32, of Placentia because he was driving more than 100 mph in a 2015 Dodge Dart on the westbound 91 east of Knott Avenue, officials said.

Authorities said Chang refused to stop, leading the officer on a pursuit  which reached speeds over 100 mph  before Chang exited at Valley View Street.

Chang returned to the 91, headed eastbound, then made an abrupt turning movement from the middle lane of the freeway toward the Knott Avenue off-ramp, according to a CHP statement.

In doing so, the Dodge Dart struck a Nissan Versa driven by Daniel Anthony Perez, a 22-year-old Buena Park man, but the other driver wasnt injured, authorities said.

The Dodge spun out of control, crashed through a guardrail, rolled down an embankment and crashed against a brick wall.

He was going at least 100 mph when he went off the embankment, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Larry Kurtz.

About 18 OCFA firefighters responded at 2:27 a.m. to extract Chang from the car.

Chang was removed and taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange with critical, life-threatening injuries. On Friday morning, Chang survived surgery but remained in serious condition, CHP Officer Thomas Joy said.

CHP investigators said he was not wearing a seat belt during the pursuit and crash.

He is suspected of being under the influence, but has not been arrested due to his serious injuries, Joy said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or aduranty@ocregister.com
Thousands of longshoremen in New York and New Jersey walked off the job Friday, grinding activity at the busiest ports on the East Coast to a halt and threatening to disrupt the delivery of goods across the region.

The walkout surprised many involved in the operation of the ports, according to officials, and the reasons behind the move were not immediately clear.

News of the work stoppage came in an alert issued by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which acts as a landlord for the ports but does not control daily operations.

Due to the current work stoppage in the port, no new trucks will be allowed to queue on port roadways, the alert said. Do not send trucks to the Port at this time.

Officials with the New York Shipping Association, which runs the ports, could not immediately be reached for comment.

A spokeswoman for the association who spoke to Bloomberg News said the group was trying to understand the reason for what appears to be a walkout and will take every measure available to ensure work resumes.

The International Association of Longshoremen, the union representing port workers, also could not be reached for comment, but a representative of the union told a local radio station that the dispute centered on hiring practices.

Jim McNamara of the International Longshoremans Association told 1010 WINS radio news Friday that the dispute was focused on the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, which was created in 1953 to combat corruption at the ports.

In recent years, the union representing port workers has battled with the commission on a variety of hiring issues.

The ILA and the New York Shipping Association  our employers, its not just the workers, but also the owners of the companies that generate the jobs and generates money for the economy  both sides have been fighting the Waterfront Commission, especially in the last five years, over the right to bring new workers on, the right to operate their ports the way they think they should be operated, McNamara said in the radio interview.

Theyve had enough, they told me theyre taking this action to demonstrate their displeasure, he said.

The commissioners of Waterfront Commission are appointed by the governors of New York and New Jersey.

Work stopped at Port Newark, the Elizabeth-Port Authority Marine Terminal, the Howland Hook Marine Terminal, and the Port Jersey Port Authority Marine Terminal. The only port that remained in operation as of Friday afternoon was in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Together, the ports provide the key gateway to one of the busiest consumer corridors in the world.

Within an hour of the walkout, which took place at 11 a.m., lines of trucks were already beginning to clog roadways and containers were stacking up.

In 2014, the Port of New York and New Jersey handled 3,342,286 cargo containers with some $200 billion in goods.

People familiar with the operation of the port system said there had been brief work stoppages in the past but could not recall a similar mass walkout in recent years.

If the dispute continues for an extended period of time, its effects could be felt along the East Coast.
Palestinian militants from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of Hamas, pray by the bodies of seven Hamas member killed repairing a tunnel during their funeral at a mosque in Gaza City, Friday. Hamas said Thursday that 11 militants were repairing the tunnel to fix damage sustained from heavy rainfall. The tunnel collapsed killing seven, while the rest were rescued, it said. Hamas has built a sophisticated network of tunnels that it has used to penetrate Israel to carry out attacks on civilians and soldiers. Israel destroyed dozens of the tunnels in the war with the militant group in Gaza in 2014.
LOS ANGELES  Federal and local law enforcement officers across Los Angeles County say theyve rescued 12 children being used for sex slavery during a weeklong human trafficking operation that netted nearly 200 arrests.

The Los Angeles Police Department says the operation, announced Thursday, was focused on helping victims of the sex trade. Authorities arrested 198 suspected human traffickers.

The 12 minors who were saved were placed in protective custody and will get help and social services from various agencies.

The investigation also identified six adults as trafficking victims. Police say they received victim services.

Local police and federal agents conducted the operation between Jan. 18 and Saturday.

The LAPD says the operation sends a strong message to the community that human trafficking is not tolerated.
SAN FRANCISCO  San Franciscos iconic Dolores Park is now home to the citys first open-air urinal, the latest move to combat the destructive scourge of public urination in the City by the Bay.

The cement circular urinal is out in the open, though plants and a screen offer some privacy. Its a welcome addition for the park that had just three toilets, which led many to relieve themselves in bushes and on buildings.

Honestly, we were ready to go pee anywhere, San Francisco-resident Aaron Cutler said told KNTV. So any facility is better than none.

The park now features 27 toilets, including the outdoor urinal, thanks to more than $20 million in renovations. They were the parks first upgrades in 60 years. San Francisco Recreation and Park Department spokeswoman Sarah Madland said she wasnt aware of any other cities with such a public urinal.

San Francisco has long, sometimes creative, history of dealing with public urination. In 2002, the city increased the possible fine for the crime up to $500, but that did little to deter it.

Last summer, the city painted close to 30 walls with a repellant paint that makes pee spray back on the offender, said San Francisco Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon.

Solar-powered toilets roll through city streets several afternoons a week. And city crews have inspected 10,000 light posts to make sure they wont fall over from erosion, after a three-story-tall light post corroded by a likely mix of human and dog urine, and weighted down by a large banner, toppled.

Dolores Park has seen an exponential increase in the number of visitors, on a sunny Saturday it can host between 7,000 and 10,000 people. One of the goals of the renovation was to address the littering and public urination issues that were rampant at the park before the renovation, said San Francisco Recreation and Park Department spokeswoman Sarah Madland.

Along with the open-air urinal, attendants are manning 10 public toilets to encourage people to use them. They clean and restock supplies and make sure people dont use drugs or sleep inside the restrooms.

The more options we can give them to relieve themselves the better for the park-goers, San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener said. The better it is for neighbors.
You might think you know everything there is to know about the trial of O.J. Simpson, accused in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

But Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriters behind the FX miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, want to assure you that you certainly dont.

I think people know the big events and the big parts of the story but they dont understand how those things came to happen, Alexander says. They know about the Bronco chase, but they dont really know what was going on inside the Bronco.

They know about O.J. at the Rockingham house but they dont really know what was going on inside, he says.

When a lot of people do biographic stories they treat events as manifest destiny  thats what happened and how it had to happen, Karaszewski says. We try to look at the process and all the different ways the story could have gone, so it makes it into drama again.

So I think for a case thats 20 years old and was lived out in the media it still has a lot of spoilers, he says. We get the continuous response to it: Did that really happen?

And the answer is, Yes, absolutely, that happened, Karaszewski says.

The People v. O.J. Simpson boasts an all-star cast that includes Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J. Simpson, John Travolta and Courtney B. Vance as Simpsons attorneys Robert Shapiro and Johnny Cochran, Sarah Paulson as prosecutor Marcia Clark and David Schwimmer as Simpsons close friend Robert Kardashian.

Ryan Murphy, creator of hit shows such as Glee and American Horror Story, eventually signed on as one of the executive producers and to direct a handful of the 10 episodes that make up the show, but the selection of Alexander and Karaszewski  writing partners behind some of the best biographical movies in recent times  was equally important.

The other producers, Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, got the rights to Jeffrey Toobins book, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, and we got a call from our brand-new TV agent, Alexander says.

The pair had always focused on feature films  their writing credits include Ed Wood and Big Eyes for director Tim Burton and Man on the Moon and The People vs. Larry Flynt with director Milos Forman  but the opportunity to tackle the Simpson story was irresistible on several fronts.

We looked at each other and said, Yeah, were in, Alexander says.

For one thing, the rise of the limited-run television series meant the story could get the room to breathe in all the nuance and detail it required.

Ten hours, this new form that television has, we knew it would give us the epic scope we needed, Karaszewski says.

And the story itself came wrapped in cultural themes that the country still wrestles with today.

When we sold the pitch at Fox we said this is going to open with Rodney King and the L.A. riots because this is going to be a show about race and the police, Alexander says. But there were six or seven other huge ideas that we found so interesting: The beginning of a 24-hour news cycle, the beginning of a celebrity culture, the way in which people became instant celebrities for no apparent reasons  

  gender and class, too, Karaszewski adds.

  public prosecutors versus well-paid defense lawyers, Alexander says.

The pair weave all those topics into The People v. O.J. Simpson and believe in the end that a fuller story is told.

All of these pebbles accumulated into a landscape, Karaszewski says.

Half a dozen scripts were done by the time Murphy joined the project as a producer and director, but Alexander and Karaszewski say his television clout helped get some of the biggest names in the cast to sign on.

Hes got this track record in television, and what he did with Jessica Lange in American Horror Story, it gave a lot of people  like John Travolta, who hadnt done television in a long time  a bit of comfort that they were going to be taken care of, Karaszewski says.

Says Alexander: Our main concern when Ryan joined up was keeping the tone that we had established. With all of our biographical movies there is no genre. Its just a really odd tone that Larry and I like to write in where we mix up a lot of tragedy and comedy and satire and a few jokes here and there.

Adds Karaszewski: Theres an element of absurdity to this. Its torn from life, but its actually bigger than life in a weird sense. Thats one of the reasons we like to do true-life, because theres this mixture of tone, theres this mixture of sadness and humor at the same time.

And life has that  you can laugh in the middle of a funeral.

Another key part was to flesh out the lives of people whod been turned into characters by the relentless media coverage of the time and present them as fully formed individuals.

Our goal was to make these people human beings, and to get it right, Karaszewski says. Its impossible if you were around in 94 and 95 to not have extremely strong opinions about almost every one of these people.

Whether you love them or hate them, whatever you feel, your feelings are very strong, he says. And we wanted to show you the other sides, to show you what they were going through.

So I think people will come away with a better understanding of Chris Darden, of Marcia Clark, of Johnny Cochran. Weve made them into human beings and weve shown what they were going through.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com
I think all of us who are not sexual predators can agree that reducing sexual assaults is a good thing, but how does requiring college students to take an online training course that asks very personal questions about their sexual, drinking and drug habits accomplish this goal? That is what students at the University of Southern California  and many other institutions of higher learning  are asking.

Under the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, all universities that receive federal financial aid (i.e., virtually all of them, including private universities) must implement education and prevention campaigns to combat sexual violence, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. At USC, and hundreds of other campuses, this has taken the form of an online Title IX training course that must be completed before students can register for classes. It also happens to be very intrusive.

We believe youll enjoy the assignment, and that this training is in line with our shared belief that Trojans care for Trojans, read a campuswide email informing students of the mandatory online course. But some did not enjoy many of the invasive questions they were asked to answer. It was just full of super personal questions, Jacob Ellenhorn, a USC student and member of the student government, told Campus Reform.

Among the questions asked was: How many times have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months? The course also asked how many partners students had had within this period, how many times they had used a condom and whether they had been drinking alcohol or using recreational drugs just prior to their sexual encounters.

To USCs credit, the university quickly reversed course in the face of criticism. USC apologizes for any offense or discomfort caused by optional questions included as part of a mandatory online training for students on sexual consent, misconduct and other important issues, USC Senior Vice President for Administration Todd Dickey said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. These questions have been removed from our online training module.

The personal questions were not the only problem. The training course, additionally, informs students that someone cannot give consent if they are drunk. Yet in an example it provides where both a man and a woman are drunk and engage in sex, only the man is blamed for committing sexual assault, Campus Reform notes. Moreover, the course advises students that, if they are accused of sexual assault, they should incriminate themselves by admitting they may have crossed a boundary, even if they do not remember the incident.

This is particularly dangerous since a 2011 directive from the Department of Education forces universities to adjudicate sexual assault cases using a preponderance of the evidence standard, which is looser than the clear and convincing evidence standard many schools previously utilized and could result in false criminal convictions. A number of law professors at the University of Pennsylvania Law School signed an open letter last year criticizing the federal government for exerting improper pressure upon universities to adopt procedures that do not afford fundamental fairness.

Our concerns about fundamental fairness are not academic or theoretical in nature, they wrote, citing the rush to judgment in the Duke Lacrosse case and the University of Virginia fraternity gang-rape hoax published by Rolling Stone magazine. Due process of law is not window dressing; it is the distillation of centuries of experience, and we ignore the lessons of history at our peril.

Sexual assault is a serious crime. It should be dealt with by police and the legal system, not a kangaroo tribunal operated by college administrators.

Violations of privacy, due process and other liberties are the inevitable result of creeping federal intervention in education  and other aspects of our lives. Sexual assault is not to be trivialized, but justice for victims should be pursued through the legal system, not by federal micromanaging or pointless surveys that probe students sex lives.
A few flight attendents and passengers apparently felt dizzy and the plane was met by emergency crews shortly after its landing at Heathrow in London. (Representational image)

London: An American Airlines jet flying flying from London to Los Angeles was forced to turn back after passengers and crew were struck down with a mysterious illness. Flight AA109 was over Keflavik, Iceland, when it was diverted back to Heathrow Airport on Wednesday following an onboard medical emergency.

A few flight attendents and passengers apparently felt dizzy and the plane was met by emergency crews shortly after its landing at Heathrow in London. An American doctor who was traveling on Flight AA109 told the press that many reported a burning smell on board.

The flight attendant had passed out just outside of the business class lavatory and I attended to her first. She awoke after about a minute. Then lost consciousness again before being placed on oxygen. Five other flight attendants and one passenger, an older gentleman who had recently had an aortic valve replacement, all felt ill, Dr Barbara Persons was quoted as saying by MailOnline. Other flight attendants all toward front of plane were dizzy, light headed, had vertigo and were slightly nauseated. Two said they smelled a slight electrical or burning smell, she added.

Meanwhile, one passenger told the Daily Mirror that there was an announcement mid-air which called for medical professionals.
Two weeks ago, the California Supreme Court got it right by unanimously voting that mortgage lenders who agree to get shorted (agree to accept less than the balance owed) in a short sale cannot sue the borrower for the remainder of the uncollected debt as a result of the short sale.

The case at hand involved a San Diego resident, Carol Coker, who was struggling with financing and was unable to make her house payment, according to her San Diego-based attorney, Andrew Stilwell.

Chase filed a notice of default, according to court documents. Coker and Chase Bank eventually agreed to a short sale.

Coker arranged to get her condo sold, and she paid the realty commission and her settlement costs. The property was sold.

Within 90 days, according to Stilwell, Chase started hounding Coker for a deficiency of more than $116,000 (via a collection agency, court records show).

According to Stilwell, Coker agreed in writing as part of the Chase short sale that you remain liable for deficiency balance.

Thats when the sheets of paper hit the fan and the Supreme Court eventually wound up with the case.

Chase Bank declined to comment for my column.

The long and the short of it is that the California Supreme Court decided that borrowers cannot be sued for a deficiency judgment in a short sale, even if they waive their rights as part of Californias anti-deficiency legal protections.

Why should a lender suck you into a short sale and then hit you for a deficiency? pondered W. Michael Hensley, a Laguna Niguel-based real estate and appellate attorney not involved in this case.

Hensleys point is that borrowers typically go through a lot of suffering in losing their homes, both monetarily and emotionally and they should be allowed to get back on their feet without more repercussions.

Banks have you over a barrel, strictly using contracts of adhesion to approve short sales, according to Stilwell. They dont change anything, he said. Stilwell believes banks are inflexible when it comes to trying to negotiate better short-sale terms. It is one-size-fits-all.

If you need to get out because you are struggling to make your house payment, you can always ask family and friends for a temporary financial lifeline. You can ask your lender for a loan modification. This means the lender can temporarily reduce your payment or even forgive some debt. If you have equity, you can sell your home before you get buried in back payments, penalties or a default notice. You can hand over your deed in lieu of foreclosure and get some cash for your keys as part of the negotiation. You can go the short sale route or get foreclosed. You wont get what you dont ask for. Raise your own expectations first.

If you cant stomach dealing with this directly, you should contact a real estate attorney or a real estate broker to help you maneuver through the moribund mortgage maze.

Contact mortgage broker Jeff Lazerson: (949) 334-2424 or jlazerson@mortgage grader.com Twitter: @mortgagegrader_
GENEVA  The main Syrian opposition bloc said Thursday  the day before United Nations-brokered peace talks were to start in Geneva  that it was still not sure whether it would send a delegation, raising new doubts about whether the meetings would be held.

A spokesman for the group said it wanted an assurance from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the Syrian government would lift its sieges of rebel-held towns.

The statement was the latest in a series of maneuvers highlighting the opposition blocs reluctance to take part in talks while its fighters, and the civilians behind their lines, are under mounting pressure from Syrian government forces.

The bloc, known as the High Negotiations Committee, is backed by Saudi Arabia and includes a variety of opposition groups and dissident politicians. But it excludes some major combatants, including the Islamic State militant group and the Nusra Front, an affiliate of al-Qaida.

The committees hesitation suggests that the modest expectations for the talks may have to be lowered further. The oppositions focus now is on getting the sieges lifted, so that it can show some concrete gain from the peace effort.

We are willing to go, we are willing to participate, but at least these humanitarian issues should be solved, Salem al-Meslet, a spokesman for the bloc, said by telephone from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where the committee has been meeting.

The demand from the High Negotiations Committee is meant to put pressure on the government of President Bashar Assad of Syria, through its ally Russia, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council.

Diplomats said Thursday that they expected the bloc to send a small group of leaders to Geneva, if only to meet with the U.N. mediator, Staffan de Mistura  and of course, to broadcast their message to the journalists assembled here.

Meslet said his group would make a final decision only after hearing directly from Ban. At least we want to hear a promise, something to encourage us, he said.

The United Nations has said that 18 towns  with about 400,000 people  are cut off from deliveries of food and medicine. One town, Deir al-Zour, accounts for half of those people; it is besieged by Islamic State militants, with whom there are no negotiations. But by the United Nations reckoning, most of the rest are in towns besieged by government forces.

Ban has warned that using starvation as a weapon is a war crime. The Security Council has called for all the sieges to be lifted in compliance with international law.

The talks were arranged under a binding Security Council resolution that senior U.S. and Russian officials invested a great deal of diplomatic energy into drafting and adopting. U.N. diplomats said the talks would still go ahead on Friday.

The talks are being carefully choreographed to try to avert failure. They are not meant to be face-to-face negotiations, at least to start; instead, government and opposition delegations are to gather in separate rooms at the U.N. compound in Geneva, with de Mistura shuttling between them.

The talks were originally supposed to start Monday, but were delayed by the fractious issue of exactly who would represent the opposition. The Saudi-backed bloc has wanted to be the sole opposition delegation, while Russia and others have insisted on including other dissidents, some of whom are close to the Assad government. Russia also pressed for the inclusion of Syrian Kurdish rebels, but Turkey, an important backer of opposition groups, balked.

De Mistura refused to issue invitations to the Geneva talks until there was agreement on who would take part. He finally sent them on Tuesday, but did not name the recipients publicly, saying those organizational details were too delicate to divulge.

The opposition bloc wrote to both de Mistura and Ban late on Tuesday saying it could not attend any talks until the sieges were lifted and aerial bombardments were stopped. On Wednesday, the group said it would wait for a response from de Mistura before making a final decision.

De Mistura replied first in a telephone call to Riad Hijab, the committees coordinator, and then by email late Wednesday. He wrote that the formal talks would include only two delegations  the opposition blocs and the governments. He said that some of the dissidents backed by Russia would assemble in another room, but that he would merely seek their advice.

Maram Daoud, a member of the Council of Democratic Syria, which is not in the Saudi-backed bloc, said Thursday that his group wanted to take part on an equal footing, but would not join the talks if the Syrian Kurdish rebels were excluded. We are not advisers, Daoud said. We are a coalition, and there are militias on the ground who elected us as a political council to talk.

De Mistura also told the committee that the lifting of sieges under the Security Council resolution would be part of the discussions. And he said that while he had called the planned sessions proximity talks, they could also be called negotiations  a semantic distinction that is important to the bloc, because it wants the talks to address a political transition in Syria, including the exit of Assad, as soon as possible.

De Misturas overtures were not enough to obtain a yes from the Saudi-backed bloc, but neither did they yield a definite no.

We might come, Meslet said. We will send a delegation as soon as we get an answer from Ban Ki-moon.

The secretary-general is unlikely to respond directly to the bloc. His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said Thursday that Staffan di Misturas response to Riad Hijab, both by phone yesterday and in writing last night, constitutes the response also on behalf of the secretary general.

The political risks for Meslets bloc are clear: If it does not take part, the Syrian government can saddle it with the blame for the failure of the peace talks.
California is the first state to impose a bag tax that hits low-income households the hardest and funnels the money directly to large corporations. The Golden State has this dubious distinction thanks to Gov. Jerry Browns signing of Senate Bill 270, passed by Democratic lawmakers in 2014. SB270 bans plastic shopping bags statewide and also imposes a new 10-cent tax on every retail paper bag used at checkout.

SB270 was drafted so that revenue generated by the paper bag tax does not go to public coffers. Instead, money from this regressive tax is handed over to large supermarket chains. So much for bleeding heart progressives in the California Legislature looking out for the least among us.

Fortunately, California voters will have the opportunity later this year to overturn this tax and cruel transfer of wealth. Enough signatures were collected to put a referendum on SB270 on the November 2016 ballot that will let California voters decide whether the nations first statewide plastic-bag prohibition and paper bag tax will take effect next year.

Voter rejection of SB270 would be the best outcome for California taxpayers and the state economy. However, thanks to another SB270-related ballot measure filed late last year, there will likely be a next-best option for California voters. Signatures are now being collected to qualify another 2016 ballot measure  entitled the Environmental Fee Protection Act  that would, if voters uphold SB270, redirect paper bag tax dollars from the bank accounts of supermarket chains to a public fund that supports environmental improvement projects.

As written, SB270 represents an indefensible transfer of wealth from the poor to rich companies. By drafting the law so that paper-bag tax dollars flow to private corporations instead of public coffers, Gov. Brown, then-Sen. Alex Padilla and other bag tax champions were able to turn what could have been an influential opponent, the California Grocers Association, into a well-funded ally in their push for a plastic-bag prohibition and a regressive paper bag tax.

As is often the case, bad ideas hatched in California tend to spread elsewhere. Proponents of banning plastic bags see Californias SB270 as a model take to other states, cities and even countries. England most recently adopted a California-style paper bag tax that robs from the poor and gives to rich supermarket chains. A reverse Robin Hood tax, if you will.

California voters would do well to reject SB270 this November. Doing so would block an annoying new tax that does nothing to reduce litter, while throwing cold water on an odious policy model being spread by nanny-statists across the globe who recognize how its design greases the skids politically for their command-and-control policies.

However, if the bag tax is going to remain on the books, the income it takes from taxpayers should not be shoveled into the bank accounts of deep-pocketed corporations. The Environmental Fee Protection Act, which is expected to qualify for the ballot, will give California voters that choice.

Approval of the Environmental Fee Protection Act would also teach grocers (and other industries) an important lesson: its not smart to lobby for policies that hurt their own customers just because they see a quick and easy way to make a buck by getting in bed with tax hiking politicians.

Patrick Gleason is director of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit taxpayer advocacy and policy research organization founded in 1985 at the request of President Ronald Reagan.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that the inexpensive field drug test kits that police use to test substances found on people are highly unreliable, resulting in arrests  and, sometimes, convictions  of innocent people with harmless substances.

Last year, a Minnesota man spent more than two months in jail because a bag of vitamins in his car was determined to be amphetamines by a police field drug test. A Florida man pulled over for an expired tag in 2009 ended up spending three months in jail  losing his job, his apartment and his car, which the police auctioned off while he was incarcerated  after an officer said the mints the man was chewing tested positive for crack cocaine.

Both men were eventually exonerated by more sophisticated tests at state crime labs.

A 2009 study for the Marijuana Policy Project, False Positives Equal False Justice, detailed numerous examples of candies, over-the-counter medicines, plants, spices and other harmless substances being mistaken for illegal drugs by police field drug tests.

[O]f the 43 substances we tested, 70 percent of the time it gave a false positive. This is just outrageous, Adam Eidinger of Mintwood Media Collective said at a press conference revealing the studys findings at the time. Its not just the marijuana test. Its every single test [that] will provide false positives.

A six-month investigation last year by Fox 13/TV in Tampa Bay, Fla., similarly cast doubt on the accuracy of these tests. We watched as aspirin, cough medicine, coffee and spices like oregano  and even air  tested positive for illegal drugs, reporter Gloria Gomez said.

Among the long list of substances that produce false positives: Oregano, chocolate and loose-leaf tea regularly test positive for marijuana; powdered sugar, deodorant and Tylenol PM have indicated cocaine; Jolly Rancher candies have tested positive for crystal meth; motor oil has been mistaken for heroin and soap has tested positive for the date rape drug GHB.

However cheap and convenient field drug test kits may be for the police, it is not worth the prospect of forcing innocent people to spend thousands of dollars on bail and legal fees, languish in jail for weeks or months or risk losing their jobs, housing and reputations. It is also not worth the expensive lawsuits state and local governments face for false arrests based on the evidence they provide. Law enforcement agencies should eliminate their use immediately to prevent further injustices and needless expenses.
Today, Orange County residents can choose to pay a toll to use the 91 Express Lanes to bypass traffic congestion on the 91. The two Express Lanes handle 49 percent of the peak-direction throughput on the six-lane expressway, even though they represent only 33 percent of the physical lane capacity. These lanes take a simple concept  users pay  and show why it can be so effective. If you want to pay to move into the free-flowing lanes, you can. If you dont use the lanes, you dont pay for them.

Reason Foundations Southern Californias Mobility Plan recommends taking the user-pays concept and applying it to select, jammed surface streets. While surface streets do not carry the traffic volume of freeways, many are often just as congested. Consider that, at most major cross streets, oncoming traffic in a particular direction receives a green traffic light signal less than 50 percent of the time. So streets with those red lights can only handle 50 percent of the capacity that identical roadways without traffic signals could carry.

A managed arterial concept gives drivers the option to safely skip red lights at the areas worst bottlenecks. Drivers would have the option to travel through traditional intersections or use new tolled underpasses to bypass traffic signals. Passenger vehicles would be charged a small toll (likely 10-25 cents) per intersection.

City streets with three lanes in each direction and significant traffic congestion are ideal candidates for these underpasses. One potential managed arterial is Beach Boulevard, between Fountain Valley and Buena Park. Traffic delays are common on the six-lane, heavily congested road. For the section between PCH and the I-405, optional tolled underpasses could be installed at several intersections, including Atlanta, Indianapolis, Adams, Yorktown, Garfield, Ellis, Talbert, Slater, Heil and Edinger avenues. Each underpass would start about a quarter mile before the cross street and end a quarter of a mile after it.

There are several advantages to converting a six-lane arterial like this to a managed arterial instead of widening it to eight lanes. Managed arterials can carry 20,000 more vehicles per day than an eight-lane arterial. Managed arterials fit into the same physical space, meaning additional land doesnt need to be acquired. Finally, construction and maintenance of underpasses can be funded using the toll revenues they would generate, so no new taxes or tax increases are needed to build them.

Combining the ability to skip busy intersections with better stop-light management would make getting around Orange Countys surface streets much speedier. All Orange County traffic lights are synchronized, but many operate in static mode, meaning they dont adjust when the road is backed up. Moving to dynamic, variable synchronization, where the length of green-light signals adjusts in real time to traffic conditions, would reduce traffic delays.

Technology and pricing can help loosen some of the worst bottlenecks in Orange County, which would mean more employment and recreational opportunities for everyone.

Baruch Feigenbaum is a transportation policy analyst at Reason Foundation.
WASHINGTON  Its one thing to attack Donald Trump when hes standing on the presidential debate stage. But what about when hes not?

Its a complicated question for the seven presidential candidates in the seventh prime time Republican presidential debate, who expect a no-show from the front-runner who has eclipsed the contest for months  on the brink of Mondays Iowa caucuses.

Trump has declared that because of what he calls unfair treatment by the network hosting the debate, Fox News Channel, hell have his own event at the very same time about two miles away at Drake University.

His absence puts the rivals in a tough position while opening potential opportunity  do they go after him and give him even more attention? Or ignore him and fill the vacuum with their best possible closing arguments, grabbing attention thats been tough to come by when Trump and his big personality fill the air time?

Also in a delicate spot is the network, which has engaged in a fraught relationship with Trump for months after he tangled with moderator Megyn Kelly in the first debate in August. Fox News Channel has refused to remove Kelly from the question panel and issued a sarcastic statement mocking Trump for demanding they do so. The standoff poses a challenge for the network, which is popular with conservatives, over how it handles its relationship with the GOP presidential front-runner in real time  especially in his absence.

The main debate stage will once again feature Rand Paul, who was bumped to the undercard debate last time. Also appearing: Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Here are some things to watch for during the debate:

TRUMP, OBVIOUSLY

Trumps debate boycott tests whether any word or action by the billionaire can dent his support among a core of conservative voters who want a change in Washington. Trump has predicted that Iowans wont care whether he attends the debate, and even if he did, he wouldnt be talking to the nation anyway. Hed be speaking to Iowans who will caucus Monday, using every moment to win the contest at hand. Being second is terrible, he has said. Another advantage to holding his own event: no moderators or rivals to challenge him.

CRUZ

The Texas senator and national debate champion held his own against Trump in past debates as the two have competed for the lead in Iowa. Without Trump on the stage, does Cruz adopt the posture of the de facto debate leader? That could risk looking presumptuous when a sizable percentage of Iowans say they could change their minds about whom they support. Cruz has been testing some humor, with an edge. Apparently, Megyn Kelly is really, really scary, and Donald is a fragile soul, Cruz said. If she asks him mean questions, I mean, his hair might stand on end.

THE MODERATORS

Look for someone on the panel of moderators to acknowledge the elephant thats not in the room. But whether moderators will spend more time than that on Trump, who has spent months in a spat with Kelly over what he says is unfair treatment, is a delicate question. Late Wednesday, Trump tweeted that it was Foxs mocking press release that inspired him to skip the debate, more so than Kelly. She has been adamant about playing the dispute straight, and has the firm backing of news executives.

THE OTHER CANDIDATES

The debate gives the field-minus-Trump more of a chance to make the most powerful closing arguments possible in the final face to face, televised meeting before the caucuses. Candidates such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is looking past Iowa for a strong finish in next-up New Hampshire, have had little speaking time in past debates. The opportunity also is ripe for Rubio, who is seeking a strong finish in Iowa to claim the establishment mantle if outsiders Trump or Cruz falter. Look, too, for Bush to try to make gains.
SAN FRANCISCO  State regulators launched Thursday into a year of pivotal decisions on Gov. Jerry Browns quest to build two giant tunnels to ferry water from Northern California for central and Southern California, a $17 billion project that would be one of the largest in decades in the state.

Browns administration and the water agencies that are slated  but not yet formally committed  to pay for the two, 35-mile-long tunnels from the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are the projects biggest supporters, and the 2016 calendar is full of federal and state hearings and reviews that are required to start digging.

Brown and big central and Southern California water agencies are the tunnels biggest advocates, while many Northern and central California cities, towns and counties, and environmental and fishing groups oppose them. Supporters and opponents chiefly disagree over whether the project would further harm Northern Californias winding Delta and the San Francisco Bay, the biggest West Coast estuary in the Americas and home to increasingly endangered native fish.

On Thursday, regulators of the State Water Resources Control Board weighed whether it was appropriate to start its upcoming hearings regarding the tunnels when the backers have yet to fully specify the projects design or finish legally required studies of whether the tunnels would hurt the Deltas wildlife, overall habitat and human users.

The regulators said Thursday they would announce a possible decision on the timing issue in the next week or two.

Kenneth Bogdan, attorney for the Department of Water Resources, the main state agency involved in tunnel planning, told regulators that the projects backers hope to have the needed environmental impact review completed in late June.

The similarly named Water Resources Control Board, which is charged with approving or disapproving changes in water intake and water quality with the project, is scheduled to formally start its hearings at least two months earlier, in April.

Bogdan told regulators that the details released so far on the tunnels planned design and operation, and preliminary and past environmental reviews, would be enough for the hearings to start.

Its not just a matter of trust us, Bogdan told the water regulators. We feel there is enough information already.

Saying you dont think your conclusions will change after a full review of any environmental impacts doesnt warm anyones heart, Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the state Water Resources Control Board, responded.

Thomas Berliner, an attorney for water agencies, urged the water board to stick to the planned timeline. Since water agencies are the parties slated to pay for the tunnels, they take their chances as far as moving forward if any of the upcoming environmental reviews ultimately kill the project, he said.

Browns administration, Southern Californias massive Metropolitan Water District, and other backers of the tunnels say the tunnels will provide a more reliable and earthquake-resistant conduit of Delta water to agricultural and urban water customers.

Opponents say they fear the tunnels will take too much of the deltas freshest water, dooming the native species in the Delta and the farms and towns around it. Delta officials and other opponents allege the Brown administration is eager for quick government decisions on the project so as to persuade the large water agencies, which have yet to formally commit to the tunnels or to paying for them, that the project is viable.

The largest bloc of speakers Thursday were opponents to the tunnels.

They urged the water board to make project backers complete their designs and environmental reviews before weighing the water issues involved.

We dont even know what they really want to do, said Osha Meserve, a lawyer for Delta farmers and others opposing the tunnels. They need to present a complete application.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Friday signed into law $28 million more in emergency funding to address Flints lead-contaminated water.

Its the second round of state aid for the city since the crisis was confirmed in the fall, bringing the total allocated to nearly $39 million. The Republican governor said the funding will provide immediate resources in Flint, but is not the end of state assistance.

Improperly treated water leached lead from pipes into drinking water after Flint switched from Detroits water system to the Flint River in 2014 to save money while under state financial management. The switch was supposed to be an interim move until the completion of a new pipeline from Lake Huron.

Flint has reconnected to Detroits system for now.

Its time to stand up and recognize that things could have been done differently, Snyder said before signing the legislation at the annual meeting of the Michigan Press Association in Grand Rapids. Mistakes were made.  Were going to solve them.

The state funding is intended to pay for bottled water, faucet filters, testing kits, additional school nurses, medical treatment and to help the city with unpaid water bills. There also is funding to hire outside experts to assess whether Flints water system infrastructure must be replaced or repaired.

On Thursday, U.S. Senate Democrats proposed up to $400 million in emergency federal aid for Flint  contingent on the state matching the funds dollar for dollar.

An assessment cited in Michigans request for a federal disaster declaration estimated the potential cost of fixing the damage to Flints water distribution infrastructure at $713 million. Snyder and the Republicans who control the state Legislature have said its too early to talk about wholesale replacement of the pipes.

Also Friday, Snyder said he was not aware that the state had been offering bottled water for employees at a state office building in Flint last year while telling other residents that the citys tap water was safe to drink.

The agency that manages state buildings said Thursday water coolers were introduced at the building after Flint flunked some drinking water standards not related to lead.

Snyder told WWJ-AM that he had no knowledge of that taking place.
Since February last year, a host of strangers have been showing up uninvited at Christina Lee and Michael Sabas suburban Atlanta home, for the weirdest reason  theyre all looking for their lost phones!

Much to the young couples surprise, smartphone tracking apps all over the city have been directing phone owners to their house. It all started when an angry family came knocking at their door last February, demanding that Lee and Saba return their stolen phone. The bewildered couple had no idea what they were talking about. Then same thing happened two months later, this time with a group of friends looking for a lost phone.

Soon the problem got worse, with four such visitors showing up within the span of a month. People would call on them morning, noon, and night, all with the same, bizarre question  where the heck is my phone? Of course, Lee and Saba had no clue about the missing phones  some Android, some iPhones  with a variety of carriers. They even developed a standard response: Im sorry you came all this way. This happens a lot.

Photo: Fusion Magazine

The plot thickened last June, when pings from a missing teenage girls phone led the police to their home. The police treated Lee and Saba as suspects and made them sit outside for an hour while they considered issuing a warrant to search the house. According to Saba, when he asked if he could go inside to use the bathroom, a policeman said: Your house is a crime scene and you two are persons of interest.

Needless to say, the couple are now worried sick that all these events might be part of a larger conspiracy, or lead to disastrous consequences.

My biggest fear is that someone dangerous or violent is going to visit our house because of this, Saba said, speaking to Fusion Magazine. If or when that happens, I doubt our polite explanations are gonna go very far. It really drives home how unsafe and fallible some of this technological evidence is.

Michael Saba and Christina Lee (Photo: Fusion Magazine)

A team from Fusion did attempt to contact phone companies and other experts in an attempt to solve the mystery, but they havent been able to crack it yet. Ken Westin, a Security Analyst, informed the magazine that there could be a flaw in the cell tower triangulation, in one of the three towers located near Saba and Lees home. So they tried reaching out to the nearest tower carrier, T-Mobile, but received no response.

Surprisingly, this isnt the first phone-signal mixup in the world. A similar case was reported by Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2013, in which people kept showing up at a man named Wayne Dobsons home looking for their lost phones. But that was solved when Sprint realised that the house was located right in the center of one of its service areas.

But the solution doesnt seem to be as simple in the case of Lee and Saba, because phones with multiple carriers keep pointing to their home. Fusion also tried reaching out to Google and Apples app making services for answers, but they had none to offer. They contacted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency in charge of regulating wireless devices, but the problem didnt fall under their jurisdiction. Don Lekei of Help-My-Tech thought the phones were being located through WiFi or IP address mapping, so resetting the couples router might fix the problem. They tried it, but it didnt work.

Photo: Apple

Jonathan Zdziarski, an iPhone forensic expert, joked that the couples neighbors could be running a stolen racket device. Later, he said WiFi mapping could the the issue, but hed have to take a look at the phones to be sure. That, of course, is impossible because the phones are still missing.

Lee and Saba are undoubtedly frustrated about not having a definite answer or solution to their unusual problem. They now plan to file a complaint with the FCC and their senator. Theyre also hoping for the story to get sufficient media coverage so that something will eventually be done about it. Public pressure is how stuff like this changes, Saba said. It sucks that it happens to us, but I hope our experience will lead it to not happening to anyone else.

Sources: Fusion Magazine, Esquire
The Hangzhou Tourism Commission, the governmental body overseeing tourism for the city of Hangzhou in Chinas Zhejiang Province, has named Development Counsellors International agency of record for the purpose of positioning that city as a tourism destination among North American travelers.

Hangzhou is the capital and largest city in Eastern Chinas Zhejiang Province. The city has boasted tremendous growth in recent years, due in part to a burgeoning tech sector. (The city is home to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.) In September, Hangzhou will become the first Chinese city to host the G20 Summit. The New York Times in January named the city one its 52 Places to Go in 2016.

As AOR, DCI will embark on an integrated travel trade and media campaign for the city throughout North America, for the purpose of raising awareness of Hangzhou and positioning the city as a leading Asia travel destination.

Economic development and tourism marketing agency DCI, which holds offices in New York, Denver, Los Angeles and Toronto, took in more than $9 million in travel and tourism related net fees in 2014, according to ODwyers rankings of PR firms.
New Delhi: AAP's Vikaspuri MLA MahinderYadav was held on Friday under various charges including rioting and assaulting public servant during a protest seeking action against an alleged sexual offender, the sixth lawmaker from the ruling party in Delhi to be arrested.

Police claimed Yadav led a violent protest last evening in Nihal Vihar area in West Delhi following sexual assault on a three-year-old girl and the mob even attacked public vehicles and tried to set a vehicle on fire.

The protesters demanded immediate arrest of the 8-year-old accused alleging that police was not pursuing the case promptly though Joint Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Dependra Pathak today claimed that the alleged culprit was arrested much before the protest. Yadav is the sixth AAP legislator to be arrested. Earlier MLAs Akhilesh Tripathi, Somnath Bharti, Commando Surinder Singh, Manoj Kumar and former law minister Jitender Singh Tomar were arrested on various charges.

"A case was registered last night and the MLA was arrested around 12 noon today under charges of rioting, arson, assault on public servant, wrongful restraint and damage to public property," Pathak said.

He claimed the protesters at Nihal Vihar area even manhandled a police team which had tried to pacify the agitators.

"While the accused was arrested by evening, much before the crowd gathered there, somebody floated a rumour that the police has refused to arrest him, leading to the agitation," said Pathak.

While Yadav has been arrested, several others have been detained at the police station, he said. Reacting to Yadav's arrest, AAP's Delhi Convener Dilip Pandey tweeted, "Delhi Police busy again arresting AAP MLA instead of ensuring Delhi women safety despite multiple warnings from courts."

"MLA Mahendra Yadav arrested, for what? He was there where public was protesting against rape of a girl child? Is it wrong to ask for justice?" he said.

The AAP leader also took a dig at the Centre saying it was not providing funds to Delhi Police to instal CCTV cameras across the city.

"Finance Ministry has no fund for security camera. Delhi still a rape capital. Court slammed (it) multiple times, but who cares. DP (Delhi Police) busy hunting AAP MLAs," he tweeted.
Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO of political news mainstay Politico, will be stepping down from the company, along with four other key staff, as part of a massive shakeup occurring at the popular beltway news site.

The news was first reported Thursday by The Huffington Post.

The New York Times on Thursday reported that chief operating officer Kim Kingsley, chief White House correspondent Mike Allen, chief revenue officer Roy Schwartz and executive vice president Danielle Jones will also be leaving.

Kingsley will depart sometime this summer. Jones will step down before then, according to a Thursday memo from Politico owner and publisher Robert Allbritton. Allen and VandeHei will remain until after the November presidential election. Allen, one of the sites most popular writers, also heads staple newsletter Politicos Playbook.

The New York Times on Thursday cited tensions over recent management strategies and the future of the news organization as reasons for the mass exodus. CNN on Thursday reported that VandeHei clashed with Politico publisher Robert Allbritton over budget issues and expansion efforts.

VandeHei confirmed his depature in a Thursday memo. He said that the change will not be abrupt and that he will remain at the site through the 2016 election. VandeHei also said he soon plans to start a new venture.

Greatness, in a business setting, is not one or two people doing the impossible. Its the right group of people with distinct skills coming together at the right time to bring the right idea to life, VandeHei wrote. "Together, we did this. We created one of the most respected and feared brands in journalism  and one of the few with a business model based on real results, not mythology or hope.

Politico is owned by Albritton Communications. Publisher Robert Allbritton, in a separate Thursday memo posted on the site, wrote that these transitions make perfect sense for the publication, coming a decade (almost to the day) after I recruited them to join this cause.

Allbritton also reported that Politico co-founder John Harris will assume the title of publisher in addition to editor-in-chief.
The OECD Observer online archive takes you on a journey through half a century of public policy and world progress.

Since November 1962, the OECDs experts and leading guests offer insights on the questions facing our member countries with concise and authoritative analysis, and provide our audiences with an excellent opportunity to understand policy debates and consider solutions.

Each edition of the OECD Observer reports on a core theme of the OECDs on-going work, from economics and society through governance, finance, and the environment, and articles are bolstered by tables and graphs.
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Students of various universities and colleges during a protest over Rohith Vemula's suicide at Hyderabad Central University (Photo: PTI)

Hyderabad: Joining the ongoing stir over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, the SC/ST Employees Welfare Association of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on Friday organised a 'protest day'.

The 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' this morning also continued their relay hunger strike, which they had started on Thursday.

Read: HCU suicide: Deal struck with students, says Interim VC

The members of the forum have written to President Pranab Mukherjee, visitor of the university, regarding their demand for removal of Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile and seeking that in-charge VC Vipin Srivastava should step down from the post, a representative of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice said.

The JAC, under whose banner the agitation by the students is being led, said a candle light vigil would be organised on Friday, on the eve of the birthday of research scholar Rohith Vemula, who allegedly committed suicide in a hostel room on January 17.

A group of students are also slated to start an indefinite fast in support of their demands.

The JAC has called for mass hunger strike in universities across the country to express solidarity with the agitation on the HCU campus.

Two batches of students had earlier held indefinite fast at the protest site in HCU. However, they were shifted to hospitals following concerns over their health condition.

The JAC plans to undertake a visit to Delhi in the first week of February to meet the President to press for their demands, the JAC representative said.

The JAC's main demands includes bringing in a 'Rohith Act' to prevent any injustice to the students of marginalized sections in university, and forming a committee to look into the issues of alleged caste and academic biases in the varsities in the last 20 years in the country.

The letter sent to the President was signed by 93 "concerned teachers" and they requested him to ask "Vice-Chancellor and the In-charge Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad (HCU) to step down" from their posts.

The agitating students, meanwhile, held a protest at the administrative block of the university today demanding that in-charge VC Vipin Srivastava to step down.

Several members of the non-teaching staff told Srivastava, who came to the building, that they were not able to work due to closure of offices and were returning home after coming to the university everyday.

The non-teaching staff said that they want to attend their regular work, and that certain demands of the protesting students, like removal of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, were beyond the purview of the VC.

Srivastava, who went back from the administrative building following protest by the students, told the non-teaching staff that he would make efforts to resume office work soon, as per the non-teaching employees.

The in-charge VC had tried to hold talks with the agitating students at their protest site two days back, but returned empty-handed after they raised slogans against him.

Meanwhile, some research labs in the university were functioning today in view of the "urgent nature" of the ongoing projects, as per the JAC.

Recalling that Srivastava was allegedly involved in the suicide of a student Senthil Kumar in 2008, a spokesperson of the 'SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers' claimed that the interim Vice-Chancellor did not get a clean chit in the issue.
The Finest Hours suffers from the same problem as this seasons other 3-D maritime adventure, In the Heart of the Sea. Though both fact-based adventures of the high seas are told with gripping intensity and eye-popping  if at times, seasick-making  visuals, both stories are constrained by landlocked framing devices that weaken the gale-force winds that propel their narratives.

In Ron Howards Sea, which was inspired by the true-life shipwreck of the 19th-century whaling ship Essex, the film keeps cutting to Moby-Dick author Herman Melville, sitting with a notebook in a boarding house in Nantucket, as he listens to the story that inspired the film. In The Finest Hours, filmmaker Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) keeps switching between the storm-tossed waters off the coast of Cape Cod, where the main action is set, to the tiny town of Chatham, Massachusetts, and the cozy confines of a Coast Guard station office.

Set in the winter of 1952, The Finest Hours is loosely inspired by the wreck of the SS Pendleton, a tanker that broke in two during a fierce noreaster. After the bow of the ship sinks  with the captain and several crewmembers on board  the 33 remaining men on the stern struggle to keep the hull afloat, as they await rescue.

In the film, the surviving crew is led by the ships can-do engineer, played by Casey Affleck as a somewhat antisocial scholar of nautical mechanics. Affleck is the best thing about the film, even if the actions of his character, who fashions a rudimentary tiller with which to steer the hull onto a shoal, have been largely fictionalized.

As Bernie Webber, the captain of the small Coast Guard vessel that attempts to rescue the survivors, Chris Pine makes less of an impression. This is probably historically accurate: The real Webber didnt know what he was doing or where he was going, losing his compass on the way out to sea and eventually piloting his boat by instinct as much as anything. As the film makes clear, luck had a huge role in this storys outcome.

This is not to say theres no suspense. Webbers efforts to clear a treacherous sandbar, just to reach open ocean, are depicted with a visceral verisimilitude. And the plight of men on the broken hull, which somehow stays afloat against all odds, is impossible to look away from.

But the movie takes too long to get to the wreck, let alone to the rescue mission. In order to heighten our identification with the character of Webber, the film features an unnecessarily draggy prologue in which he meets his fiancee, Miriam (Holliday Grainger), on a blind date. Even later, with the noreaster finally in full force, Gillespie constantly cuts back to Miriam on shore. Here she is arguing with Webbers boss (Eric Bana). There she is, running her car into a snowbank, or engaging in any variety of dramatically pointless diversions.

Webber himself is particularly indecisive. Although this is probably true to life, seeing as the rescue had all the hallmarks of a suicide mission, the film runs aground every time we are forced to watch Pines face twist in a torment of impotent uncertainty, which is often.

Somewhere in here, theres a pretty decent movie. The Finest Hours is probably the best of a bad bunch of recent releases. But its a shame that this terrific storys engines keep flooding in the face of wave after wave of narrative inertia.

One other thing: Skip the 3-D version. Its a waste of good technology, in a movie in which the hero himself can hardly see the hand in front of his face.

THE FINEST HOURS

Cast: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Holliday Grainger, Eric Bana, Ben Foster, Kyle Gallner, John Magaro

Director: Craig Gillespie

Rating: PG-13 for scenes of intense peril

Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes

Theaters: Aksarben, Alamo Drafthouse, Bluffs 17, Majestic, Midtown, Oakview, Regal, Village Pointe, Westroads
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Some Iowa fast food workers have walked off the job in Des Moines to demand $15-an-hour wages, and they are planning other protests that include a demonstration outside the venue of a Republican presidential debate.

Workers held a strike at 6 a.m. Thursday at a McDonald's in northeast Des Moines. Other events are planned Thursday, ending with a short march through downtown and then rally at the Iowa Events Center, site of a GOP debate.

Wiley King, a Wendy's worker who walked off the job Thursday, says the strike included workers from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Long John Silver's. King says they hope media attention during the Iowa caucuses will help them draw attention to the needs of low-wage workers.

Organizers hope to draw 1,000 people to the rally.
After hours of investigation the Vizag rural police on Thursday said that the Iranians who went missing in Bhubaneswar are tourists and not terrorists.(Representational image)

Bhubaneswar/Visakhapatnam: After hours of investigation the Vizag rural police on Thursday said that the Iranians who went missing in Bhubaneswar are tourists and not terrorists as feared by Odisha and AP governments.The three men and two women  a couple aged below 30 years, a couple of about 50 years and their 17-year-old son  who were travelling in a Delhi registered car were detained by Vizag rural cops near Nakkapalli in the district after the Odisha police alerted their AP counterparts.

SP (Visakha Rural) Dr Koya Praveen said the young couple came to India on December 28 and the older couple along with their son arrived in India on January 12 on tourist visas. After hiring a car from New Delhi they drove to Agra, Bihar, Assam, West Bengal and came to Bhubaneswar on January 25. After staying there overnight the following day they tried to check into another hotel and changed their mind at the last minute.

The Iranian tourists created a flutter in Bhubaneswar on the eve of Republic Day after the citys Hotel Arya Mahal staff reported to the police about the suspicious exit of a man who had come to enquire about rooms. The visitors were said to have left the hotel on being asked to produce passports to book a room.

Following this, the Odisha police sounded an alert and sealed the entry and exit points to the city.

The foreigners drove to Srikakulam and stayed at a roadside dhaba on January 26. The next day they came to Vizag and were intercepted at Vempadu toll gate near Nakkapalle. The Vizag rural police chief said that they examined the passport and visas of the Iranians and found it to be genuine. The confusion was created when one of them left the hotel in Bhubaneswar after the management asked them to produce passports.

The Iranian left the Arya Mahal Hotel not because the staff demanded passports. The Iranian did not like the hotel and its tariff. There was also a communication gap as they were not well versed in English. The hotel did the right thing by alerting the police, said Mr Praveen.

Mr Praveen said they got information from the Odisha police at around 3 pm on Wednesday about the Iranians and the AP detained them at about 7 pm at Nakkapalle on the same day.
Feature

oi-Oneindia

Along with students, teachers at the University of Hyderabad are protesting, demanding justice for Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide at the university campus. Rohith hanged himself on January 17 after being expelled by the authorities of his alma mater.

Both teachers and students are guilty

Talking about prevalence of rampant caste biases in the campus, Bittu said, "I have been teaching in the university for the last two years. I have seen how openly both students and teachers belonging to upper castes practice caste-based discrimination in the campus. People from upper castes verbally abuse Dalits and other backward castes. Here everyone knows everyone's caste. Like in our society, casteism is pervasive and entrenched in the campus. That is how bad the situation is."

Reservation is a derogatory word

Bittu laments that students from reserved categories are made to feel inferior and unequal. Often Dalit and backward caste students are bullied in the campus. "Students confidentiality is not maintained.

Confidentiality is needed to protect students from facing abuse. It is the duty of the authorities and teachers not to share students' information openly. Reservation is a derogatory word in the campus. Students from the reserved categories have to face the ordeal of caste bias every day," the teacher added.

Unfriendly teachers

Even after the tragic death of Rohith, which has once again brought the spotlight on caste and reservation across the country, Bittu says most of the teachers don't understand the plight of students.

"It is sad that caste prejudices exist in our higher educational institutions. It is killing so many students. Unfortunately most of the faculty members are not ready to understand the plight of students belonging to various minorities groups. Most of the teaching staff belongs to the upper caste. However, there are some, especially after the nation-wide protest demanding justice for Rohith, have changed their views. They have become tolerant towards all. However, it is just one-third of them," Bittu added.

Protest is to achieve justice

Bittu, who has been at the forefront of the protest, admits it is not an easy fight. "But we will fight till justice is delivered."

What about those who are saying that protests and strikes are hampering students' careers?

"Suddenly authorities are concerned about the students' future. Recently, water crisis in the campus caused a lot of inconveniences to the students, hampering their classes. Later on students were asked to attend classes on holidays also. Now, when we are fighting for a right cause-to create an inclusive and caste free society--they are using the pretext of students' future as an excuse to stall our agitation," said Bittu.
Udhampur attack: Did police miss a clear warning signal?

Feature

oi-Vicky

There are lessons to be learnt from every terror attack. The case is no different in the Udhampur terror attack too where some glaring errors have been noted by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in its chargesheet that was filed yesterday.

Did the security forces miss a vital clue days prior to the attack? Had this hideout that was busted by the security forces been taken seriously the attack could have been stopped?

The NIA chargesheet that runs into 58 pages speaks of a shed that was found at the Wuyan village in Pulwama district, Jammu and Kashmir. [NIA files chargesheet in Udhampur terror attack case]

The police had found this shed and even seized incriminating material such as GPS sets, 'Made in Pakistan' medicine and night vision devices. However, it appears that it was left at that.

Was this shed a hide out?

In the run up to the Udhampur terror attack in which two BSF personnel were killed, there were several terrorists from Pakistan who had infiltrated into Kashmir. Many were being brought in by the local handlers and kept at safe hideouts and one of them included the one found at the Wuyan hills.

When the NIA questioned the lone captured terrorist, Mohammad Naved, he said that he too had been shifted to this hideout a couple of times. I had visited this hideout a couple of times between June and July 2014. The hideout was finally discovered on July 25th by the police.

The question is now did the police take the case forward after discovering the hideout. The material that was found at the hideout clearly indicate that it was being used for a clandestine activity. Moreover, the Made in Pakistan medicines also did not raise enough concern it appears.

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Story first published: Friday, January 29, 2016, 11:52 [IST]
There is no justification for any act of terrorism, regardless of motivation: Jaishankar

A terrorist's way of masking pain and deriving chemical courage

India

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Jan 29: While in Pathankot, we found that the terrorists had used Mefenamic Acid to beat the pain and battle security forces for over 50 hours, a report from Syria states that the banned amphetamine is a big hit. Amphetamine is being produced in huge quantity in Syria and the ISIS is said to be one the leading traffickers of the drug.

While the drug generates a lot of money that makes it to the coffers of the ISIS, it also helps its fighters mask fear, pain and hunger as a result of which they are able to sustain longer in a battle.

Terrorists and the use of drugs:

Any fidayeen who comes in for a long haul is packed with drugs. While during the Pathankot attack investigators had found the 500 MG Mefenamic Acid, in Syria a big hit with the fighters is the Amphetamine.

This drug has been put on the list of controlled substance by the World Health Organisation in 1986 according to a report in the Times London. Further investigations that were conducted in the aftermath of the Paris attack had found that the terrorists had used the same drug.

The drug is becoming a big hit with the ISIS due to its powerful properties. It masks fear, pain and also hunger. Terrorists cannot sustain such a long haul without the help of such drugs.

Experts have termed this syndrome as "chemical courage."

In the recent past there have been huge seizures of this drug. The Times, London reports that Jordan seized 16,768,684 tablets coming from Syria last year. Seizures increased by only 11 in 2012 to 185 last year. Turkey reported seizing 11 million pills, nearly two tonnes of the drug, near the Syrian border in November. Lebanon seized 15 million pills in April and five tonnes in December. The latter seizure also uncovered a production facility in a remote area close to the Syrian border.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 29, 2016, 10:14 [IST]
Afghan national arrested at Pathankot Cantt railway station

India

oi-PTI

Pathankot, Jan 29: A 25-year-old Afghan national has been arrested and booked for staying in India without proper visa and passport, police said on Friday, Jan 29.

The accused, identified as Najok Mir, son of Wali Mohammad, from Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan, has also been booked for travelling without a ticket and misbehaving with a government servant, they said.

An Apple laptop, two mobile phones without sim cards, two pen drives, a dongle and two diaries have also been recovered from his possession, police said.

He was arrested by Railway Protection Force yesterday for travelling without a ticket and misbehaving with the ticket checker after he got off from a train coming from Jammu at Pathankot Cantt railway station here, police said.

During preliminary investigation, it came to light that the accused had been staying in India without a proper visa and passport, they said.

Initially, the accused gave investigators a wrong name. "He told us that he has lost his visa and passport but he had not lodged any complaint in this regard," a police official said. The Afghan national had come to India on a tourist visa in 2013.

He had stayed in Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh in a mosque and had acted being a deaf and dumb as he did not know the local language, police said.

Then he moved to Bangalore and thereafter, went to Jammu and Kashmir, police said, adding he had also stayed in Delhi where he worked as a labourer.

"The accused understands Hindi and can converse in this language as well," the police official said. He was presented before a local court which sent him in police remand till February 4, the official said.

PTI
Bhumi Desai suicide case: RJ Kunal demanded Rs 25 lakh dowry, taunted wife for previous marriage

India

oi-Preeti

Ahmedabad, Jan 29: A week after popular RJ Kunal Desai's wife Bhumi jumped to her death from 10-storey residential building, a sensational revelation has come to the light.

On Wednesday, Jan 27, Radio Mirchi RJ Kunal (30) surrendered himself to the police, after he was booked for abatement to suicide of his newly-wedded wife. [After returning from honeymoon, popular Radio Jockey's wife commits suicide]

According to media reports, 28-year-old Bhumi's parents have alleged that Kunal provoked their daughter to commit suicide, as he had been harassing her for Rs 25 lakh dowry, to purchase a property in Ahemdabad.

Her parents also claimed that Kunal physically abused Bhumi on Jan 16, during their honeymoon to Bangkok and also taunted her for her previous marriage, that didn't work. The couple had flown to Bangkok on Jan 13 and returned on Jan 18.

As per a report published in Ahmedabad Mirror, Kunal had borrowed Rs 30,000 from Bhumi's father, in order to buy a surprise gift for her on her birthday on Jan 14.

After returning from Thailand, Bhumi had reportedly stopped living at her husband's place and was staying with her parents.

On the basis of her parents' complaint, the police on Wednesday booked Kunal and his parents under IPC sections 306 (Abetment of suicide), 498(c) (domestic violence), 114 (Abettor present when offence is committed), and sections 3 (giving or taking or abetting the giving or taking of dowry) and 7 (Cognizance of offences) of the Dowry Act.

However, Kunal's friends maintain that Kunal was a loving husband and a caring son-in-law, who even took Bhumi's parents to Mount Abu in Rajasthan in Jan first week. Couple also went to Maldives, before heading to Bangkok.

In Jan 2015, during a contest in a radio show hosted by RJ Kunal, Bhumi had won a trip to Dubai. Both met in Dubai for the first time and fell in love, after which they got married on Nov 24, 2015.

Soon after their marriage, the differences cropped up between the duo, that eventually drove Bhumi to take the extreme step of ending her life.

On Jan 21, Bhumi had sent an SMS to Mitesh Soni, her former colleague, around 2 pm, stating that she is going to commit suicide at Sachin Tower near Shyamal Crossroad and then she jumped off the terrace at around 2.30 pm."

After learning about the incident, Mitesh, alongwith Bhumi's family members, rushed to the spot.

OneIndia News
Conduct bypolls in 13 Delhi civic wards within 3 months: HC

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 29: The Delhi High Court today directed the State Election Commission to hold within three months bypolls in 13 wards of civic bodies in the capital saying "filling up the casual vacancies of the councillors of the municipal wards cannot be postponed any longer".

A bench headed by Chief Justice G Rohini directed the Delhi government and others to comply with the constitutional mandate by conducting the by-elections within a timeframe.

"The Government of NCT of Delhi shall make available the manpower sought by the State Election Commission (SEC) as well as the required funds within four weeks from today for conducting the elections for filling up the casual vacancies in terms of the provisions of DMC Act.

"The respondent No.1/SEC shall take the necessary further steps and complete the by-elections to all the casual vacancies existing as on today in the three municipal corporations of Delhi within three months thereafter," the bench said.

It asked that when both the Delhi government and State Election Commission have expressed their willingness to conduct the by-election, then why the polls have been not held till date. "... Though both the SEC and Delhi government expressed their readiness to conduct the by-elections, it is un-understandable as to why the elections could not be conducted to fill up the casual vacancies till date," the bench also comprising Justice Jayant Nath said.

The court's order came on a PIL, filed by 20-year-old law student Sanjana Gahlot, on bad civic condition in her village with drain water overflowing on all streets, filth spread everywhere and the entire village suffering due to foul smell.

Seven wards in South Delhi Municipal Corporation, four in the north and two in the east are currently without councillors. The bench said that except stating that the delimitation of wards is in progress, no justifiable reason could be shown by the SEC and Delhi government for their failure to conduct the elections.

PTI
'Gujarat is a model of growth not of job creation'

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Jan 28: Picking holes in the much-talked about Gujarat model of development, an economics professor from University of California today said the Prime Minister's state has led only a jobless growth and that too at the cost of the state exchequer.

"Gujarat model is a model of growth, but not of job creation...as a very substantial part of its growth is in sectors like petrochemicals, petroleum refineries and pharma, which are highly capital intensive and skill intensive sectors. These sectors do not create jobs for the relatively uneducated and unskilled people, which are an overwhelming majority of our labour force," Pranab Bardhan, professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics, University of California, Berkley, said.

He was addressing the students of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research here. Admitting that under Narendra Modi, Gujarat has done relatively well in the past 15 years or so on the growth chart, he said such a model is not what a country like India needs as Gujarat has not created space for semi-skilled or unskilled labour.

Reeling out data that Gujarat achieved high industrial growth on tax incentives, Bardhan said, "I saw some estimates that capital subsidies far exceed the total agricultural subsidies by seven times.

Here is a situation, where we are subsidising capital in one of the most successful states. What does it do? It encourages capital intensity, it does not encourage job creation." He also said when it comes to subsidising industry, the country as a whole is not better either.

"If you take the country as a whole, the amount of total tax exemptions and tax concessions to the corporate sector far exceed our total budget on food, fertiliser and the NREGA expenditure put together. I heard that there is a proposal to remove some of these tax exemptions in the Budget, which would be a step in the right direction," Bardhan said.

Calling for restructuring capital subsidies, he said it makes sense to take away some of these capital subsidies and restructure into 'wage subsidies'. This will not be for everybody, but only for new hires, apprentices and workers in professional training. While lauding the Skill India programme, he said vocational skilling is the crying need in our country and advocated corporates to follow their German counterparts who offer a good example vocational training.

PTI
India to be open defecation free by 2019: Ram Kripal Yadav

India

oi-PTI

Agartala, Jan 29: Union Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation Ram Kripal Yadav today said the Centre would ensure that the country is open defecation free by 2019 while Tripura and Manipur would achieve the sanitation target by 2017.

"The national average in sanitation is 49 per cent but in Tripura it is already 70.25 per cent, while in Manipur the rate is 74.24 per cent. The NDA government at the Centre has decided to completely stop open defecation in the country by the year 2019," he told reporters here.

Yadav, who is on a two-day visit to Tripura to assess the sanitation programme, held a review meeting with the officials of Manipur and Tripura.

Swachh Bharat campaign: Fadnavis Govt aims to make slums free from open defecation

He also hailed Tripura for its success in supplying drinking water and sanitation. "There is not a single village in Tripura without a source of drinking water," he said.

Yadav said the Narendra Modi government was attaching topmost priority to the overall development of the northeast.

"This is the reason why (central) ministers have been regularly visiting states of north-east. What we aim is to better connectivity, electrification, drinking water supply, infrastructure development and finally, ensure overall development," he added.

PTI
Not all well between Nitish, Lalu; Bihar govt will not run long: Ram Vilas Paswan

Lalu 'super chief minister' in Bihar, Nitish a puppet: BJP

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 29: Citing the Bihar government's decision to withdraw cases against Lalu Prasad, BJP today said it has vindicated its charge that the RJD chief was the "super chief minister" and claimed that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could go to any extent to save his chair.

"Kumar has become a puppet Chief Minister. His silence when the state is seeing a rise in criminal cases and many MLAs of the ruling alliance are accused of crime, is shameful," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

The RJD-JD(U)-Congress alliance's poll slogan 'Bihar me bahar ho', in reality, had become 'Apradhi ki bahar ho' (criminals are having a field day), he said, citing a number of recent cases. A Congress MLA has been accused of kidnapping a minor girl, a JD(U) MLA has threatened a DSP and an RJD legislator has been accused of threatening cops, Sharma alleged.

He also referred to a number of cases of murder, kidnapping and robbery to make his point. Sharma hit out at the Bihar government over its decision to withdraw a vandalism case against Prasad and his two minister sons.

"BJP has been saying that Prasad is the super chief minister in Bihar. It (withdrawal of cases) only vindicates our stand," he said.

A district court in Patna had on Wednesday closed a case against Prasad relating to an FIR registered against him during the last Lok Sabha elections, on a plea of the state government.

It came days after the government sought closure of another case against Lalu and his two sons in connection with a party-sponsored bandh on July 27, last year.

PTI
Toddler who filed 'FIR' against mom gets bicycle, chocolates from MP minister

Madhya Pradesh 'Vyapam' being cleansed of flaws: Minister

India

oi-PTI

Bhopal, Jan 29: Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Minister Umashankar Gupta on Friday, Jan 29 said a slew of measures being implemented by government has almost "cleansed" of "flaws" in the admission and recruitment system of the scam-tainted state Professional Examination Board.

The 'Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal' had been in news for the massive scam, popularly known as 'Vyapam' scam in conducting various examinations and recruitment tests.

Top authorities and some politicians were allegedly involved in the scam. "We have cleansed the MPPEB's admission and recruitment system of faults last year. No complaint or defect has come to us in conduction of recruitment tests last year," Gupta said.

He said the MPPEB's overall system now stands "purged" of flaws. "We have taken a lead in carrying out the recruitment tests online. Last year, we had conducted five online recruitment tests without a blemish," said Gupta, who also holds portfolio of Technical Education and Skill Development.

The minister said the government has announced a reward for invigilators who detect any wrongdoings on part of students appearing for any tests for recruitment or for admission to professional courses.

"And this has paid off.We have felicitated five invigilators with Rs 50,000 each and one with Rs 1 lakh for blowing the lid off irregularities in different recruitment tests conducted last year," Gupta added.

He said the government has been "working hard" to bring in the better procedures to ensure transparency in functioning of the body.

Invigilators Sunil Pandey, Rehmat Ali and Deepak Chourasia, all from Satna district, and Prashant Pandey and Anshul Sarawagi from Bhopal district were rewarded with Rs 50,000 each for catching imposters during forest guard recruitment tests.

Sunil Rakshit from Jabalpur district was rewarded with Rs 1 lakh for detecting dummy candidates at an online written test for appointment of jail constables.

The scale of the scam came to light in 2013, when Indore police arrested 20 people who had come to impersonate candidates for (pre-medical test) PMT 2009.

Subsequently, the Special Task Force uncovered the alleged involvement of several politicians, including former education minister Laxmikant Sharma, bureaucrats, MPPEB officials, racket leaders, middlemen and candidates.

The probe was handed over to the CBI by Supreme Court in July 2015.

PTI
Hansal Mehtas Aligarh, based on the real life of professor Ramchandra Siras of Aligarh University will see Rajkummar Rao essaying the role of a journalist. Raos role is inspired by Deepu Sebastian Edmond, who closely followed Siras case after the latter was ousted from the university for his homosexual orientation. Deepu was, in fact, the last person Siras spoke to before he died in 2010.

About his interactions with Deepu, Rao says, I spoke to Deepu several times and tried to get his accent right. He sent me a few of his interviews and explained to me how he approaches a story. One needs a lot of passion and energy to put forth a story and I learnt this by observing journalists.

Elaborating on his experience of interacting with an actor Deepu said, The incident happened six years ago and my Hindi has gotten better now. Rajkummar spoke to me closer to the filming when I was in Ranchi, so my accent had become Bihari by then. About professor Siras he adds, I never met professor Ramchandra to begin with. I was in Delhi and had just joined a publication. But yes, he opened up quite a bit and we had a certain rapport. He told me stuff that he didnt tell other reporters. We bonded over literature. He was not a person who would confide in you. I was in Aligarh when he died and I was the last person he spoke to.
NIA cracks Bengaluru Church Street blast case, prime accused arrested

India

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Jan 29: The National Investigating Agency has arrested Mohmmad Rafeeq alias Alam Jeb Afridi for his involvement in the Church Street Blast Case, Bengaluru.

Has the Bengaluru Church Street blast case finally been cracked?

An NIA note states that Alam Jeb Afridi, a SIMI cadre, is also an accused in the case relating to the organization of a terrorist training Camp by Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) at Waghamon in Kerala.

He had been absconding for more than five years and a reward of Rs. 3 lakhs had been announced by NIA for any information leading to his arrest. He had been residing in outskirts of Bangalore for nearly 3 years and was working as a mechanic for air conditioners.

During custody, he has confessed to his involvement in the Church Street Blast Case of Bangalore. It is learnt that he wanted to plant bomb inside the Coconut Grove Bar & Restaurant but was deterred by the presence of staff and therefore he planted it outside near the wall.

Video: Is this the man who bombed Church Street, Bengaluru?

He had done so as per his handler who had informed him about the probable visit of an Israeli delegation to the said cafe for dinner that night. In preliminary examination, he had disclosed that his handler had taught him the technique of making the bomb for which he procured the material locally.

It is noteworthy that the kind of IED used in the blast is similar to the ones used in Gandhi Maidan blasts of Patna in October, 2013, Bangalore Guwahati express Train blast in Chennai in May, 2014 and Roorkee blast of Dec, 2014.

As per the available information, Afridi is also suspected to be involved in the Ahmedabad blast cases of 2008. He is considered to be a close associate of several top SIMI leaders who are absconding. He has also admitted his role in committing incident of arson at the Israeli Visa Centre in Bangalore. During search of his residence is Bangalore, the investigators recovered a lot of anti - semitic hate literature.

The forensic examination of the IED used in Bangalore had revealed the use of Ammonium nitrate, Sulphur and Potassium Chlorate in the explosive mixture used in preparation of IED, packed in a iron pipe.

He has also confessed his role in setting fire to Israeli Visa Centre in Bangalore in November, 2015. Alam Jeb Afridi has been remanded to custody of NIA for 10(ten) days by the NIA Special Court at Bangalore for his custodial examination.

OneIndia News
1 BSF man killed, 3 injured in accidental blast in Rajasthan

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Jaipur, Jan 29: One Border Security Force (BSF) trooper was killed on Friday while three others injured when a bomb exploded prematurely during an exercise in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan, an official said.

The accident happened around 1.30 p.m. during an exercise being conducted in Kishangarh field firing range in Jaisalmer, about 650 km from here, BSF Deputy Inspector General Ravi Gandhi said by phone.

"The injured have been brought to hospital in Jodhpur by an air force helicopter," he said.

IANS
Golden intelligence rule: When your cover is blown, you are on your own

Pathankot attack: Pak team to complete probe and then visit India

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Jan 29: The Pakistan team of investigators probing the Pathankot attack will intimate India regarding their visit only after they complete the probe.

A special team was constituted in Pakistan to probe the Pathankot attack and investigations are underway. Pakistan has informed India that the probe is underway and once the same is complete, it would send the same team to India.

Pakistan is said to have told India that the evidence furnished is not sufficient. Pakistan says that it would complete the probe on its soil first before coming to India and investigating the matter further. Pakistan says that the phone numbers that were provided by India are not correct a charge that India vehemently denies.

Serious about probe

The Pakistan team of investigators are currently probing the case against the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the outfit which carried out the Pathankot attack. The team has indicated that it would need at least a month or two to complete the probe. Only once the probe is completed will the team visit India.

India has made it clear that it would give all details to the team from Pakistan. However it also said that they would not be allowed to visit the air base. India says that it has good reason to deny an entry to the air base as sensitive information could be compromised. Pakistan would however write officially to India after it completes its probe indicating the date of visit.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 29, 2016, 10:34 [IST]
Bengaluru: Woman falls off scooter, run over by bus

News flash: Encounter between security forces & militants underway in J&K

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bengaluru, Jan 29: 2 BSF jawans killed during excercise

Get all the latest news updates of the day:

10.40 pm: Due to airfield closure in Vizag on 30th & 31st Jan between 9 AM-12 PM, all civil flights have been rescheduled.

10.35 pm: Encounter between security forces & militants underway in District Kupwara (J&K), one militant killed.

10.25 pm: Three men deported from UAE who were questioned earlier today, have been arrested by NIA. Will be produced in special NIA court tomorrow.

10.00 pm: People should see the 15 years of bad governance in Assam and see the development that BJP ruled states have seen: Nirmala Sitharaman.

9.35 pm: Bills for repealing another 758 have been passed by LS & are awaiting approval of the RS. I repeat, the RS. Again I repeat, the RS: PM Modi.

1827 central laws have been identified for repeal out of which 125 have been repealed, says PM Modi pic.twitter.com/4qm8YnzROh  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

9.25 pm: With this disinvestment, the GoI share in EIL will come down to 59.37%.

First CPSE disinvestment of last quarter this FY started with Engineers India Ltd (EIL) OFS getting oversubscribed 2.54 times.  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

9.15 pm: Rajeev Kumar is the new Commissioner of Police, Kolkata.

9.10 pm: One abandoned baggage found at Bengaluru airport; security teams are verifying the contents of the bag.

9.00 pm: Two men deported from Amsterdam to Delhi airport on charges of carrying fake Visa to Mexico. Both men belong to Punjab.

8.40 pm: Delhi Govt will hold public consultations with the residents of NCR on 6th & 7th Feb to ascertain their views on Odd-Even for vehicles.

8.20 pm: SVS Medical College probe moved to CBCID.

8.10 pm: We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint, says PM Modi.

Creating opportunities for cities and towns is very crucial. Urban areas are the engine of growth: PM Modi  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

8.00 pm: PM's Jan Dhan Yojana has created accounts for much of the excluded population: RBI Governor

7.50 pm: The Finance Minister has indicated he will support the public sector banks with capital infusions as needed: RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan.

One very important contributor to macroeconomic stability is healthy banks: RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan pic.twitter.com/RH7jUJMb82  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

7.40 pm: We look forward to the Government amending the RBI Act to usher in the monetary policy committee, further strengthening the framework: Raghuram Rajan.

7.25 pm: Datta Padsalgikar to be the new Commissioner of Police, Mumbai.

6.57 pm: Hema Malini ji has been trying to get land for her dance school for last 20 years,she is not doing it for profit.Happy she got, says Shabana Azmi.

6.27 pm: 2 BSF jawans killed & 5 injured due to mortar bursting during an exercise at firing range near Jaisalmer.

6.05 pm: Yes we want to see how Yuvraj and Hardik bat, but we can't make them open,top order in form,can't experiment-MS Dhoni on third T20.

5.38 pm: India beat Australia by 27 runs in second T20. Take unassailable 2-0 lead in the three match series.

5.17 pm: Delhi Govt tells the court that the management quota is a racket.

5.15 pm: Ranjeet Yadav (RJD MLA Kunti Yadav's son accused of thrashing a Govt doctor) surrenders at Patna Secretariat PS.

5.10: Beating retreat ceremony begins at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

President Pranab Mukherjee arrives for beating retreat ceremony pic.twitter.com/cETdSeZDds  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

4.37 pm: In its reply in SC, Centre justifies President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh .Centre says Congress Govt there is in a minority.

4.22 pm: MCD is refusing to show its accounts.Why are they running away from it?-Kapil Mishra,Delhi Minister.

4.02 pm: According to that lady she spent a huge amount, what benefit did she get out of us? S: Kerala CM.

3.31 pm: AAP MLA Mahendra Yadav (arrested by Delhi Police for allegedly assaulting Govt official) sent for one day police custody by Delhi Court.

3.26 pm: This entire incident is extremely insulting for Kerala, says Kerala CM Oomen Chandy on Solar Scam.

3.14 pm: Kerala HC puts stay on FIR against Kerala CM Oomen Chandy for 2 months.

1.41 pm: Australia win the toss, decide to bowl first.

1.38 pm: Its an administrative matter and minister( Parmeshwar Naik) has nothing to do with it-Karnataka CM on official transferred.

1.20 pm: We will accept verdict of court and we will take legal procedure- KV Thomas, Cong on solar scam case.

1.01 pm: Sania Mirza/Martina Hingis beat A. Hlavackova/L. Hradecka to win Women's doubles Championship.

1.00 pm: Mumbai metro fare hike issue: Stay extended till February 11 by Bombay HC.

12.59 pm: SC dismisses Centre's plea against Red FM's (Sun TV group) participation in FM phase 3 auction.

12.35 pm: DYFI activists protest in Trivandrum, Police use teargas shells to disperse protesters protesting against SolarScam.

12.20 pm: BJP agitates outside Kerala Secretariat demanding CM's resignation.

11.27 am: Delhi HC directs Delhi Election Commission to conduct elections within 3 months in 13 municipal ward seats lying vacant.

11.03 am: Supreme Court stays criminal proceedings against MS Dhoni in an AP court over his picture in a magazine as God Vishnu.



10.37 am: MCD workers dump garbage outside Delhi Minister Gopal Rai's residence in a protest over non-payment of dues

MCD workers dump garbage outside Delhi Minister Gopal Rai's residence in a protest over non-payment of dues pic.twitter.com/V8MJ8U3Xb5  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

10.12 am: Congress calls for state-wide shutdown in Chhattisgarh against state Govt over increase in property tax

Raipur: Congress calls for state-wide shutdown in Chhattisgarh against state Govt over increase in property tax. pic.twitter.com/I526pYEKHJ  ANI (@ANI_news) January 29, 2016

9.02 am: Madras High Court orders notice to officials seeking to remove encroachments in water bodies, waterways.

8.45 am: 73 girls students of a Govt-run school in Suliapada walk 30kms to meet District collector in Baripada area of Odisha.

8.00 am: Beating Retreat ceremony to be held at Rashtrapati Bhavan today.

OneIndia News
Things are about to get unreal for real estate investors in Coimbatore: watch out for opportunities in Coimbat

Smart Cities Mission:Cab Secy asks cities, states to focus on resource

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 29: Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha today interacted with the municipal commissioners of 97 cities included in the Smart Cities Mission and chief secretaries of all states and Union territories on the implementation of the programme and asked them to focus on resource mobilisation.

Smart City: List of 20 cities to be equipped with modern facilities released

Complimenting the 20 winners of the first round of Smart City Challenge Competition, he said it said was fiercely contested based on comprehensive evaluation criteria.

Highlighting the importance and urgency being accorded by the government to Smart City Mission, Sinha, in a video conference here, stressed that the urban sector has emerged as a major contributor of economic activity.

He said that given the limitations of central and state governments in terms of resources, Mission Cities should focus more on other means of resource mobilization like convergence of various schemes, rationalization of user charges, an Urban Development Ministry spokesperson said.

The Cabinet Secretary said those who could not make it to the first list announced yesterday need not be disappointed as they get two more opportunities to compete in the next few months.

The Municipal Commissioner of Bhubaneshwar, which topped the list of 20 winners, informed the Cabinet Secretary that sustainable urban planning, developing sound economic ecosystem and credible financial planning through city-level infrastructure development fund were the strong points of their proposal.

The Municipal Commissioner of Pune, which came in second, said focus on quality of life in the city, creation of qualitative economic infrastructure as a part of a 15 year master plan and sustainability features were the core strengths of the city's proposal.

Sinha informed the 23 states and Union territories, which were not represented in the first list, that they could participate in fast-track competition by submitting upgraded smart city proposals of one top ranked city in each state and UT by April 15, 2016.

Most of the cities who could not make to the winners list informed the Cabinet Secretary that preparation of the proposals and participation in the competition was a huge learning experience and they were determined to improve upon their proposals by working on the deficiencies.

Some of them admitted to possible inadequacies with respect to certain parameters like implementation frame work, credibility of financing plans and sustainable urban planning.

PTI
Talks with Kerala CM on endosulfan victims failed

India

oi-PTI

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 29: A meeting between Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and opposition leader in the state assembly V S Achuthanandan for discussing issues connected with the compensation to persons affected by aerial spraying of endosulfan pesticide in Kasargod district failed to reach consensus today.

Achuthanandan along with members of Anti-Endosulfan Samara Samithi, who were on an indefinite sit-in dharna before the secretariat demanding disbursement of relief to endosulfan victims, held talks at Chandy's official residence 'Cliff House' here.

The main demand of the protesters was immediate disbursal of the compensation amount to them as directed by the National Human Rights Commission. Samara Smithi General Convener Ambalathara Kunjikrishnan said the "meeting could not reach a consensus on the issue and another talk would be held on February 3".

He said a total of 80 victims, including 40 children, were taking part at the agitation. The government had prepared a list of 5837 victims and out of this 2818 persons received a portion of the compensation, but others had not received any amount, he said. Achuthanandan had inaugurated the dharna on January 26.

After meeting the Chief Minister, Achuthanandan said "it was the irresponsible attitude of Chandy and K P Mohanan, Minister for Agriculture, that led to the failure of the talks" NHRC had in 2010 directed the government to pay compensation to the endosulfan victims. It had directed to pay Rs five lakh each to the families of the deceased, incapacitated and mentally disabled persons.

Meanwhile, government maintained that it had disbursed Rs 150.71 crore to the victims. As per the recommendations of the NHRC, the government had also sanctioned Rs 104.40 crore and Rs 46.31 crore for disbursing monthly pension and other benefits.

Endosulfan, a pesticide, which is not easily degradable, after its spraying several years ago in Kerala, contaminated the soil and water and found its way into the food chain, affecting lower and higher forms of life, including humans.

PTI
Delhi air quality projected to cross 301 by Sat; GRAP stage II comes into effect ahead of Diwali

Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg shunted out to Minority Affairs

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 29: Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg was today shunted out to Minority Affairs Ministry as part of a top-level bureaucratic reshuffle, ten months ahead of his retirement.

J S Deepak has been appointed as the new Secretary, Department of Telecommunications. Deepak, a 1982 batch IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, is at present Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology.

Garg, a 1980 batch IAS officer, has been appointed Secretary in Minority Affairs Ministry in place of Amarendra Sinha, who is holding additional charge of the post, an order issued today by Personnel Ministry said, without mentioning the reason for Garg's exit from the high-profile ministry.

Garg had taken over as Telecom Secretary on July 17, 2014 and he is due to retire in November. Aruna Sharma, at present working in her cadre state -- Madhya Pradesh, has been appointed as Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, in place of Deepak, it said.

As many as 10 new Secretaries have been appointed in various central government ministries and other organisations. Krishan Kumar Jalan, who is Central Provident Fund Commissioner in Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, has been appointed as Ministry of Labour and Employment Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

Shobhana K Pattanayak has been made the new Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, in place of Siraj Hussain, on his superannuation in the end of this month. Avinash K Srivastava, a 1982 batch IAS officer, has been appointed as Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing, the release said.

Srivastava is Special Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare. Vinod Agrawal, Secretary, National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), has been made Secretary, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. Shyam S Agarwal, Secretary of National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), has been appointed as Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

Tribal Affairs Secretary Arun Jha has been appointed new Secretary of NCSC. Agarwal has been given additional charge of NCST for a period of three months or till the appointment of a regular incumbent, it said.

PTI
Delhi air quality projected to cross 301 by Sat; GRAP stage II comes into effect ahead of Diwali

TERI picks 'youth ambassadors' for Swachh Bharat Mission

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 28: TERI has selected a team of 50 "youth ambassadors" from various colleges across the country who will take the NDA government's ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission to local level starting next week.

The Energy and Resources Institute selected the "youth ambassadors" by conducting competitions on the theme 'Strengthening Water and Sanitation in Urban Settings: Inter-University Competition on Water Resources Management'. The final leg of the competition was held in the national capital today.

"These students were selected through regional competitions we held on the theme. They were picked on the basis of their projects and presentations on the issue. The youths will now work with TERI for six months from February 1 onwards, implement best ideas which came up during the competition in their respective areas," Ragini Kumar, associate fellow with TERI, said.

Earlier in the day, the students from various states including West Bengal, Assam, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi and Punjab presented "action-oriented, practicable and community participative proposals to address water and sanitation problems in their regions", TERI said in a statement.

TERI's senior director (sustainable development outreach and youth education) Dr Annapurna Vancheswaran and acting vice chancellor of TERI University Dr Rajiv Seth were among those who attended the event.

PTI
'Intolerance controversy originates due to constipation in peoples mind regarding Modi'

India

oi-Nairita

Mumbai, Jan 29:BJP MP from Ahmedabad East, Paresh Rawal once again ignited the controversy over Intolerance Debate in the country. Questioning people, who have returned their awards, Rawal said that the whole "award wapsi" and "intolerance debate" were "non-issue" and "bogus".

The Bollywood actor, who is known as a strong supporter of Narendra Modi, also claimed, "Where were they when atrocities against the minorities were committed earlier. Wasn't there attacks on freedom of expression earlier?"

"My own movie Oh My God was not screened in a number of cities due to various reasons. The whole issue originates due to the constipation in people's mind regarding Narendra Modi," Rawal added.

While speaking at a function at Nirma university on Wednesday, Jan 27, Rawal also compared PM Modi with Lord Ram.

The actor was quoted as saying that like the stones with Lord Ram's name on them floated on water in Ramayana, Modi's name ensured victory of BJP in 2014 General Elections.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 29, 2016, 12:40 [IST]
Britain, Germany and Norway are co-hosting the event on February 4 with the United Nations and Kuwait. A string of world leaders are expected to attend. (Photo: AFP)

London: A petition launched by Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai urging a Syria donors' conference to give millions of dollars for educational causes had reached over 70,000 signatures.

Addressed to US President Barack Obama, the petition, published on the change.org website, calls for world leaders to commit USD 1.4 billion at the London conference "to make sure all Syrian children affected by the conflict get an education".

Britain, Germany and Norway are co-hosting the event on February 4 with the United Nations and Kuwait. A string of world leaders are expected to attend.

They will discuss how to help 13.5 million people who are either vulnerable or displaced inside Syria, as well as 4.2 million people who have fled to neighbouring countries like Jordan and Lebanon.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said Wednesday that participating countries would be asked to double the amount of money they are giving to tackle the humanitarian crisis.

Last year, UN agencies asked for USD 8.4 billion (7.7 billion euros) from governments worldwide to fund the Syrian aid effort but received only USD 3.3 billion.

Malala now lives in Birmingham, central England, after being shot by the Taliban in her native Pakistan 2012 and is expected to take part in the conference, according to the BBC.
International news brief: Trump rape accuser plans suit under new NY 'survivors' law and more

Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter

Absent Donald Trump overshadows Republican debate

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, Jan 29: Donald Trump was "the elephant not in the room" as one moderator put it, yet the absentee Republican presidential frontrunner holding a rival event nearby overshadowed the party debate before the first nominating contests.

The very first question that Trump's bete noire Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly posed at Thursday night's debate to Ted Cruz, his nearest rival in Iowa four days before the state kicks off the presidential race, was about the real estate mogul.

"Let me say, I'm a maniac," responded the Texas senator channelling Trump's barbs. "And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly and Ben (Carson), you're a terrible surgeon. Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way..."

Florida Senator Marco Rubio said the 2016 presidential campaign is "not about Donald Trump".

"He's an entertaining guy, he's the greatest show on earth," he said suggesting the focus should be on preventing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton from getting to the White House.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who has been increasingly combative with Trump during the debates, joked that he wished Trump was there. He appeared to take a swipe at his rivals on stage for not taking on Trump as aggressively as he has.

"I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me," Bush said. "Everybody else was in the witness protection programme when I went after him."

Cruz, Bush and Rubio were joined on the main debate stage by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Ohio governor John Kasich and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

On the debate eve Trump abruptly pulled out of the debate alleging Kelly had been unfair to him during the first presidential debate last August when she quizzed him about his past derogatory remarks about women.

Amid an escalating feud with Fox News, Trump held a rally just a couple of miles away at Drake University and said he had raised nearly $6 million for veterans in one day.

Not only did Trump stay away from the debate, two of his rivals on the earlier undercard debate - former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, two previous winners of the Iowa caucuses -, attended the billionaire's event.

In an interview with CNN Thursday aboard his private plane, Trump claimed Fox News "apologized" to him for a mocking statement the television network issued two days before the debate.

Trump said that while the network had "been excellent, they've been very nice", as it tried to woo him back into attending the debate, "it's too late".

A Fox News spokesperson acknowledged Roger Ailes, the network's chief executive, had "three brief conversations" with Trump on Thursday.

Trump, he said, offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that FOX News contribute $5 million to his charities, but Fox News declined.

Trump was even a presence at an earlier undercard debate featuring four lower-polling candidates -- Carly Fiorina, Huckabee, Santorum and Jim Gilmore.

Santorum quickly expressed deep frustration with the drama surrounding Trump. "The entire lead-up to this debate was about whether Donald Trump was going to show up to the next debate," he said.

Meanwhile, new polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, which holds the first primary Feb 9, show Donald Trump sitting comfortably atop the rest of the Republican field.

The Iowa Republican contest has gone from a near-tie between Trump and Cruz earlier this week to an average seven-point advantage for Trump.

IANS
An 11 minutes flight from London to New York?

International

oi-Jagriti

London, Jan 29: Charles Bombardier a Canadian engineer has come up with a new idea to minimise travel time between London and New York to 11 minutes.

Charles Bombardier, the person who designed the concept aircraft Skreemr which could travel at Mach 10.

Charles Bombardier is the man behind the concept aircraft Skreemr which could travel at Mach 10, has now unveiled the Antipode, a hypersonic jet that he claims will cover the distance between London and New York in a mind-boggling 11 minutes.

"The Antipode is a supersonic business aircraft concept capable of reaching 16,000 mph. It uses counter flowing jets of air on its leading edges to reduce heat and the sonic shockwave. During time-sensitive crises, it would transport highly ranked officials across the globe in a matter of hours" said his website.

World's longest direct flight: Qatar Airways may start Doha-Auckland flight

"Unlike the Skreemr, the Antipode would be able to take off directly from any airfield by using reusable rocket boosters. These rockets would attach to the wings of the Antipode and provide enough thrust to lift off, climb to 40,000 feet, and reach Mach 5," he added.

The Antipode could be used as business or military aircraft to transport two highly ranked officials across the globe (up to 20,000 km) in less than an hour.

OneIndia News
Will provide financial support to 7 new defence companies if required: Rajnath Singh

Highways within 100 km of LoC, LAC borders wont need green nod: Here is why

Airbase near India-Pakistan border will \"emerge as effective centre for security\": PM at DefExpo 2022

Be cautious while dealing with India: Pakistan ex-defence secs

International

oi-PTI

Islamabad, Jan 29: Pakistan's ex-defence secretaries have warned the government to be careful in dealing with India because they do not see a radical shift in Delhi's policy towards Pakistan.

Former defence secretary retired Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik called for "open and extensive" debate within the country on its relations with India.

Addressing a seminar on 'Impasse in Pak-India ties  Implications for Regional Diplomacy and Strategic Stability', Malik cautioned that no radical shift in ties was expected, although there could be minor improvement caused by expediencies of the international environment.

For Pakistan, "bending is not an option; either forward or backwards. We bend and we get a kick," Malik, who retired as defence secretary in 2014, was quoted as saying by the Dawn today during the seminar organised by the Strategic Vision Institute (SVI).

He recalled Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "belligerent" posture towards Pakistan during his election campaign and said India continued to play "cat and mouse" in ties with Pakistan.

Malik listed a number of measures he expected the government to undertake  both internally and externally  in order to effectively deal with the challenge posed by India: de-linking Pak-Afghan ties from the Pak-India relationship, safeguarding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), tackling political fissures over CPEC, pursuing water security more seriously, and appointing a full-time foreign minister.

Retired Lt Gen Naeem Lodhi, another former defence secretary, echoed Malik when he noted that there was no detente in sight.

In his view, the answer lay in the leadership of both countries ending the "blame game" and approaching the relationship with fresh and open minds, the report said.

"The imbalance of size and political clout highly in favour of India begs third party facilitation to veer these two nuclear powers away from confrontational mode. There seems to be no other option," he said.

The director of Quaid-i-Azam University School of Politics and International Relations, Dr Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, suggested that the countries' leaders "act rationally and thwart the agenda of radicalised transnational terrorist groups for the prosperity of their people".

He warned that "limited war between India and Pakistan could escalate to full scale nuclear war".

PTI
Greece's ex-PM George Papandreou to visit Goa on Feb 3 to attend 'D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas'

International

oi-PTI

Panaji, Jan 29: Former Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou will participate in the upcoming 'D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas' to be held between February 1 and 5 here this year.

"Papandreou would be delivering a lecture on February 3 on 'Inter-cultural dialogue for humanising globalisation'," state Art and Culture department director Prasad Lolienkar told reporters today.

Papandreou served as Prime Minister of Greece between October 2009 and November 2011.

On February 1, the event's inaugural lecture would be delivered by Infosys Foundation in India Chairperson Sudha Murthy, who will speak on the topic 'The Circle of Life'.

Murthy is also a trustee of Infosys Foundation based in US. On February 2, an IITian and toymaker, Prof Arvind Kumar Gupta will deliver a lecture on 'Nurturing Scientific Spirit in Children'.

The speaker is a promoter of scientific theories in children through toys. After the talk by Papandreou on February 3, World Health Organisation (South East Asia Region) regional director Dr Poonam Singh will speak on 'Sustainable Development Goals, Challenges and Opportunities for Health' on February 4.

The lecture series will conclude with a talk by theatre director Richard Schenchner on 'How to Perform in 21st Century' on February 5, Lolienkar said.

PTI
Iranian unrest : Will US and Europe really back protestors?

Know why Iranian president refuses to have lunch with Hollande

International

oi-Jagriti

Paris, Jan 28: Iranian president Hassan Rouhani refused to have lunch with his French counterpart Francois Hollande when after France refused to take wine off the table.

The lunch was scheduled when Hassan Rouhani and an Iranian delegation was visiting Europe on a business trip after economic sanctions were lifted, reported the Telegraph.

The delegation requested to have a halal menu in the lunch in Paris.

Iran requested a similar request to Italy also, which was accepted and the Italians ensured a halal menu without wine.

A $25 billion (22 billion euros) deals were signed between France and Iran during the visit. Under the deal Iran will purchase 73 long-haul and 45 medium-haul Airbus passenger planes to update its ageing fleet.

Pics: French President Francois Hollande arrives on three-day India visit

Rouhani was welcomed to Paris with military honours and national anthems before addressing business leaders.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 29, 2016, 13:23 [IST]
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by  Graham Pierrepoint



Interestingly, while many may not have noticed in recent years due to new trends and tropes taking center stage, the lack of a true Space Opera at the cinema has only really been brought to our attention after the colossal success of 2015s Star Wars : The Force Awakens  and, as The Guardians Week in Geek column recently asked, are we to see a return of the grandiose, big-action, big-drama space adventures of old that ran rampant through theaters in the 1970s and 1980s? As the column discusses, it appears that there is a level of silliness or outer space drama that audiences are only so willing to tolerate  and that the Jedi franchise may be getting a free pass on this  but, ultimately, I believe that there may be a trend that is about to be bucked due to Star Wars recent success. Therefore, I would like to offer the following by way of my own interpretation as to whether or not a Space Opera is back on the menu.

It is true that you dont really notice something until it is absent  and we can say this about much in the way of science fiction. As technology has advanced in the real world, sometimes even to emulate contraptions and concepts brought up in fictional worlds such as those inhabited by the Skywalkers and the various crew members of Star Treks Enterprise and fleet  it has meant that teams of writers and producers have had to bring a new kind of sci-fi to our screens. A new kind which fascinates and inspires us even more. While we are likely to be a fair way off developing the beam teleport Mr Scott was using on Captain Kirk back in the 1960s, we still hunger for something a bit more advanced.

Star Wars, I agree, may have had a little bit of a free pass as far as hype and the franchise demands  however, we only have to look at the success of recent breakout movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Prometheus to see that, while critical reception is varied, people still want to see big, loud adventures in space, with bizarre aliens and technology beyond our years. People still flock to the Internet to discuss Doctor Who in their droves. The Alien franchise is set to see new instalments thanks to their continued popularity. Science fiction has sometimes been looked down upon for being a little too ridiculous, or perhaps even too cheesy for a mainstream audience to appreciate. However, when done well, the genre will still pack out theaters.

Science fiction, or the discussed Space Opera, will continue to do well on well-written characters, great storylines, huge, imaginative worlds, superb cinematography and, of course, a stellar cast front and back of set. That alone, regardless of franchise or branding, will see people flocking to buy tickets  and I for one believe that sci-fis resurgence as a mainstream genre could be just around the corner.
Chinese consumer electronics maker LeEco plans to start selling virtual reality headsets and launch smart TVs in India in the June quarter, months after entering the country with its smartphone range, a company executive said. LeEco's VR headset, Le 3D Helmet, will come equipped with a 5.5-inch, 2K resolution screen with a 70 degree field of view. It was launched in China in September.

Virtual reality (VR) is seen as the next big thing in technology but not many devices are available for sale in India. Oculus, the VR company Facebook Inc bought in 2014, started accepting pre-orders this month for its much-awaited headset, Rift, which is priced at $599.

Atul Jain, India chief operating officer of LeEco, declined to disclose the price of the company's VR device. LeEco, formerly known as LeTV, entered India earlier this month with the launch of two smartphones - Le 1s, priced at 10,999 rupees ($162), and Le Max, priced at 32,999 rupees.

The company, which got more than 300,000 registrations for a flash sale of the phones scheduled for Feb. 2 on e-commerce website Flipkart, said it doesn't expect any supply glitches even if all those registrants convert into customers. "I'm actually expecting a much bigger (registration) number by the time the flash sales begin," Jain said.

The company's China-based rivals, OnePlus and Xiaomi, had faced problems as demand outstripped supply, leading to a delay in deliveries. LeEco sells roughly half a million smartphones in China every month, Jain said. "There is a huge amount of production capacity available."

Founded in 2004, LeEco started selling smartphones in China in April last year and has sold 4 million of them so far, said Jain, who earlier worked at Samsung Electronics. LeEco also plans to gradually bring all its products, including Netflix-like streaming service and electric cars, to India.

The company has already tied up with ErosNow and YuppTV for providing online content and is in talks with others companies for possible partnerships. Jain declined to comment on any partnership talks with RelianceJio, telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, which is building India's biggest 4G telecommunications network.

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Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Start-up managers in Hong Kong are setting up an offshore hedge fund before even thinking about UCITS to reach the European market, according to Karen Watson, Global Head of Fund Operations at Maples Fund Services. Her firm has one of the largest operational offices in Hong Kong to service Asian managers.

Speaking at the latest Opalesque Cayman Roundtable, Watson said, "Our Hong Kong presence provides clients with on the ground resources from time zone and language perspectives. We also have a fully operational office in Singapore which also primarily services Cayman-domiciled funds."

She added that she has also witnessed an influx of start-up managers coming from South and Central America. The reason for this increase is largely due to changing laws within those countries to allow many of these LatAm managers to invest externally. She explained that she is seeing investment in infrastructure-type funds in the private equity space as well as in some hybrid funds.

Jason Allison, a partner in the investment funds group at Walkers agrees with Watson. He is also seeing a growing demand for emerging markets and funds from South and Central America.

Allison says, "Regarding both funds that originate in emerging mark......................

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Opalesque Industry Update - Captive Alternatives, the insurance consultancy that pioneered the Protected Captive business model, announced today the launch of Puerto Rico International Insurer Madison RE, I.I. Madison RE, I.I. was formed to provide an innovative new captive creation and management structure exclusively for CapAlt clients. Our business owners look to us for sound financial advice for protecting their business and their assets, said Mark Jacobs, president and CEO, Captive Alternatives. Establishing captives in Puerto Rico affords them the kind of security and flexibility they are looking for in a near-shore solution. It also allows us to offer clients an alternative solution, as Congress increasingly looks to change the 831 (b) captive rules. The new structure allows CapAlt to quickly and efficiently create new Protected Captives, and provides additional opportunities for larger captives. With the launch of Madison RE, I.I., CapAlt is consolidating operations of all their existing captives under management into Puerto Rico making Madison RE I.I. one of the largest insurance captive managers in the territory of Puerto Rico. CapAlt elected to form Madison RE, I.I. in Puerto Rico because of the efficient, business friendly atmosphere. Domiciled and licensed in Puerto Rico, Madison RE, I.I. is focused on serving U.S. clients seeking efficient and secure risk management solutions. "CapAlts decision to form Madison RE, I.I.s in Puerto Rico is another vote of confidence from an international company with many choices for where to locate their operations, stated Alberto Baco Bague, Secretary of Economic Development and Commerce of Puerto Rico, stated. Puerto Ricos international insurance sector is positioned to be the center of attention for external investment and a spark of innovation to our domestic human capital.
Opalesque Industry Update - Theta Capital Management, the largest independent hedge fund specialist in the Netherlands, has added VR Global Offshore Fund Ltd. to its flagship Legends Fund. VR Global is run by Richard Deitz, supported by a team of nearly 40 people and offices in London, New York, Moscow, and Dubai. The fund predominantly invests in distressed debt and specializes in emerging markets. The Legends Fund, launched in February 2010, allocates to a selection of 10-15 legendary hedge fund managers. This way it offers access to some of the most renowned money managers that are typically closed to new investors. The selection of managers in Legends Fund achieved net returns of over 15% per annum over their average track record of close to 19 years. With the Legends Fund, Theta Capital also aims to reduce operational hurdles for hedge fund investors, producing a daily NAV and facilitating intra-day trading on Euronext Amsterdam. VR Global is the most recent underlying manager to be added to the Legends Funds roster of underlying hedge funds that includes some of the most established hedge fund names such as Lansdowne Developed Markets, Moore Global Investments, Pershing Square and Millennium International. With VR Globals focus on distressed debt, mostly in emerging markets, it adds a further specialisation to the Legends Fund. In Theta Capital Managements view the prospects for VR Globals strategy have been improving recently given important political shifts in countries in which VR historically has been very active, such as Argentina and Venezuela. They believe the unrest in Brazil could well open up another great source of returns as does the general state of credit markets with an increasing number of dislocations. Ruud Smets, Portfolio Manager of the Legends Fund: Deitz deploys a contrarian investment style and typically enters situations at the time of maximum turmoil when other investors flee. It is such orphaned assets that provide the return potential the manager is after. Illustrative of its strategy, the largest contributions to its excellent 2015 returns came from Ukraine, Greece and Argentina, three markets shunned by most investors. This once again showed that theyre able to produce great returns, also in difficult credit markets. They may have a less visible profile than most of the other Legends, they are definitely in the same league and with the majority of its USD 3bln under management being internal capital they are well aligned. We have been invested with VR Global for over more than 12 years and given this long relationship, they have allowed us to build a position in Legend Fund while being closed to new investors."
Reprinted from New York Times

WHILE presidential candidates from both parties feverishly pitch their legislative agendas, voters should also consider what presidents can do without Congress. Agency rules, executive actions and decisions about how vigorously to enforce certain laws will have an impact on every American, without a single new bill introduced in Congress.

The Obama administration has a substantial track record on agency rules and executive actions. It has used these tools to protect retirement savings, expand overtime pay, prohibit discrimination against L.G.B.T. employees who work for the government and federal contractors, and rein in carbon pollution. These accomplishments matter.

Whether the next president will build on them, or reverse them, is a central issue in the 2016 election. But the administration's record on enforcement falls short -- and federal enforcement of laws that already exist has received far too little attention on the campaign trail.

I just released a report examining 20 of the worst federal enforcement failures in 2015. Its conclusion: "Corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct."

In a single year, in case after case, across many sectors of the economy, federal agencies caught big companies breaking the law -- defrauding taxpayers, covering up deadly safety problems, even precipitating the financial collapse in 2008 -- and let them off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist. Often, companies paid meager fines, which some will try to write off as a tax deduction.

The failure to adequately punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country. Justice cannot mean a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but nothing more than a sideways glance at a C.E.O. who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars.

These enforcement failures demean our principles. They also represent missed opportunities to address some of the nation's most pressing challenges. Consider just two areas -- college affordability and health care -- where robust enforcement of current law could help millions of people.

When the Education Management Corporation, the nation's second-largest for-profit college, signed up tens of thousands of students by lying about its programs, it saddled them with fraudulent degrees and huge debts. Those debts wrecked lives. Under the law, the government can bar such institutions from receiving more federal student loans. But EDMC just paid a fine and kept right on raking in federal loan money.

When Novartis, a major drug company that was already effectively on federal probation for misconduct, paid kickbacks to pharmacies to push certain drugs, it cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and undermined patient health. Under the law, the government can boot companies that defraud Medicare and Medicaid out of those programs, but when Novartis got caught, it just paid a penalty -- one so laughably small that its C.E.O. said afterward that it "remains to be seen" whether his company would actually consider changing its behavior.

Enforcement isn't about big government or small government. It's about whether government works and who it works for. Last year, five of the world's biggest banks, including JPMorgan Chase, pleaded guilty to criminal charges that they rigged the price of billions of dollars worth of foreign currencies. No corporation can break the law unless people in that corporation also broke the law, but no one from any of those banks has been charged. While thousands of Americans were rotting in prison for nonviolent drug convictions, JPMorgan Chase was so chastened by pleading guilty to a crime that it awarded Jamie Dimon, its C.E.O., a 35 percent raise.



To be fair, weak enforcement is sometimes a result of limited authority. Despite the company's history of egregious safety failures, for example, the former C.E.O. of Massey Energy was convicted only of a single misdemeanor in the deadly Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 miners in West Virginia in 2010, because federal mining laws are too weak. It's on Congress to stiffen such penalties.

But in many instances, weak enforcement by federal agencies is about the people at the top. Presidents don't control most day-to-day enforcement decisions, but they do nominate the heads of all the agencies, and these choices make all the difference. Strong leaders at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Labor Department have pushed those agencies to forge ahead with powerful initiatives to protect the environment, consumers and workers. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a tiny office charged with oversight of the post-crash bank bailout, has aggressive leaders -- and a far better record of holding banks and executives accountable than its bigger counterparts.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission, suffering under weak leadership, is far behind on issuing congressionally mandated rules to avoid the next financial crisis. It has repeatedly granted waivers so that lawbreaking companies can continue to enjoy special privileges, while the Justice Department has dodged one opportunity after another to impose meaningful accountability on big corporations and their executives.

Each of these government divisions is headed by someone nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The lesson is clear: Personnel is policy.

Legislative agendas matter, but voters should also ask which presidential candidates they trust with the extraordinary power to choose who will fight on the front lines to enforce the laws. The next president can rebuild faith in our institutions by honoring the simple notion that nobody is above the law, but it will happen only if voters demand it.
The remaining armed militants at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge vow that they will continue to fight until the end. The FBI asked the media to leave the area at approximately 7:45 AM PT. The militants have been running a live stream video from the refuge off and on overnight and into the morning after news of the arrest of Ammon Bundy and crew reached them. They have repeatedly made definitive statements that they are prepared to die at the refuge.

While they appear to be scattered around on patrols and at different stations throughout the refuge, one man positioned near the live stream camera could be heard calling his mother, telling her that he loves her and that he believes this is the second American revolution. He noted his wife is there, fighting along with him. He called her a "great American woman." He stopped numerous times to look into the camera and address the people watching the live stream, calling for others to "Get there and get some!" and saying those law enforcement who try to stop them aren't abiding by their oath and are the enemy. He later used even stronger words: "Don't be afraid of those roadblocks, drive up there and shoot them. They are dishonorable." Video of his deadly rant is below.
Relax - I'm not the one coming for your Social Security check. No, I recognize that Social Security benefits are the biggest reason that poverty among our elders has declined over the past eighty years. It's a good program, and there is a balance of $2.7 trillion in the fund from which your benefits are paid.

But where did that money come from, and at what cost? In 1935, the Roosevelt administration needed to act. Given the political and economic environment of the time, getting the program funded at all was a remarkable achievement. But policymakers didn't foresee the damage that would be done by that little tiny payroll tax.

"How will we pay for it?" is the question opponents of any program ask. It's a political approach that has little to do with economics. And it's the wrong question. Every government expenditure is good, bad, or indifferent on its own merits. So is every source of revenue.

Government can raise money in just a few ways:

Print it - increase the money supply by fiat

Borrow it - pump up the deficit and add to the national debt

Tax assets - seize a part of estates, gifts, real estate, and other property

Tax income - take a cut of wages, salaries, dividends, gains, and gift receipts

Tax consumption - grab a percentage of retail sales, imports, or value transfers

How we choose to raise money for government affects the economy. We print or borrow money as a last resort, when all other sources of revenue have fallen short. Taxing assets is a classical way to redistribute wealth, but those with wealth generally have the power to prevent it. Taxing income is a great way to fund government operations, because the money comes from its greatest beneficiaries - who happen also to be those most able to bear the costs.

That leaves only consumption as a viable source of government revenue.

We're familiar with consumption taxes. Sales taxes are applied to many of the goods, and even the services that consumers purchase. The fuel tax at the gas pump is another example, even though we don't see it directly. Other consumption taxes that are even less obvious to us include import tariffs and business fees.

Taxes on consumption raise prices. And economists say that higher prices make people buy less, and demand is reduced. That's not all bad, because a tax on something that's bad for society reduces consumption. Such "sin taxes" are usually applied to things that raise costs to society - things like cigarettes, alcohol, and fossil fuels. But it doesn't make any sense at all to apply a "sin tax" to things that benefit the economy. But that's exactly what we do!

Social Security and Medicare are funded with consumption taxes. Most people think payroll taxes are paid against income, but their impact on the economy tells a different story. Let's look at payroll taxes from two contrasting viewpoints - the worker and the employer.

Workers look at their pay stub and see withholding for Social Security and Medicare equal to 7.65% of their gross earnings. They never see this money. Instead, it's sent to a government fund along with an equal amount from the boss. After it arrives in the fund, it's eventually paid out as a benefits to a retired, disabled, or sick person. And what choice does the worker have? None at all. Nobody decides to accept or decline a job because of these taxes. Nobody decides how hard to work because of these taxes. And nobody decides how to spend money because of these taxes, because the money just isn't there to spend.

What about the employer? The cost of employing a worker is increased by 15.3%! There's 7.65% that must be "paid" to the worker plus 7.65% that is added to what that boss takes back from the worker and sends to the government. Payroll taxes raise the price of labor. Economists say that higher prices reduce demand. And employers have alternatives whenever they face hiring decisions.

Economists call this contrast the "tax incidence." When a tax affects the decisions you make, you've got a case of tax incidence. When a tax is of no consequence, it just doesn't affect your decisions at all. The tax incidence of the payroll taxes falls squarely on employers, not workers.

But it gets worse. Because the cost of labor also bears this "sin tax," its higher price generates some ugly consequences. Higher labor costs reduce labor demand. This directly causes unemployment as employers scramble to minimize their workforce and maximize its efficiency. What choices can they make?

They can invest their money to make their operations more efficient so they can employ fewer people.

They can raise their prices to make up for the extra cost.

They can game the system by manipulating hours and benefits to offset higher labor costs.

They can outsource their labor to Mexico or China.

They can even move their entire operations offshore.

Employers have lots of choices to deal with high labor costs, and they are always bad for workers and often bad for the economy.

So Social Security is good for our elders, but the way we fund their benefits is insane! We raise unemployment rates. We slash labor's bargaining power. We raise the prices of our products. We gut the manufacturing base of our economy. And we chase our capital away to foreign countries. Crazy, isn't it?

Can it be fixed? Sure, but it's a big fix. Stop taxing the employment of labor and replace the lost revenue with revised taxes on income! This isn't a tax increase, but rather a change in the basis on which revenue is generated. Remarkably, such a progressive structure could max out at a marginal rate of only 40%. And it would generate much more robust economic growth, higher per capita income, lower unemployment, higher profits, and lower prices for goods and services produced in America. But it requires throwing out today's tax code and replacing the whole thing.

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Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"You have something special and important here. Somehow you manage to teach and suggest and introduce the reader to concepts in a way that feels inclusive. Like, we're thinking about it together. Partly it might be because the subject, bottom-up, is innately understood by all of us and so it feels like you're stirring up stuff we already know. But also I think it's because you truly are practiced at connection consciousness and so it's natural for you (I'm guessing) to write about it with a desire to include us. As a reader I was learning more because it feels like you're inviting me to think with you."



Tsara Shelton, author
According to sources in the Union health ministry talks are on with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding the same. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: With Zika virus spreading "explosively", the Indian government is considering issuing travel restriction for pregnant women and those "who intend to get pregnant" to postpone travel to the countries affected with the virus. According to sources in the Union health ministry talks are on with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding the same.

Earlier this month the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised pregnant women to postpone travel to 14 Latin American countries because of the virus. Significantly, the UK, European Union, Australia, Canada have all advised pregnant women to reconsider their travel.

"India is likely to issue a travel advisory too considering the spread of the virus. We are discussing it with the MEA," sources in the health ministry disclosed.

The union health minister JP Nadda today set up a technical group comprising senior officials from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) AIIMS, National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) to monitor the situation, in view of the recent cases of Zika Virus being reported from some countries. "Though so far no case has been reported. We are taking all necessary steps to ensure that India is well prepared in case of any eventuality," health minister JP Nadda told this newspaper.

While, the minister has asked the officials to focus on strengthening the surveillance system, a joint monitoring group will soon issue treatment guidelines too. "We are working on the guidelines for the health care providers that may be referred to if needed," Dr Jagdish Prasad, Director-General of Health Services (DGHS) said.

The officials have also been told to pay intense focus on Southern states of India.

The high level meeting was held following the WHO warning which stated that the Zika virus is spreading explosively in the Americas and can infect upto four million people. The International health agency issued a warning to all countries, including India, who have the vector of Aedes mosquito that also causes Dengue and Chikungunya.

The Zika virus is caused by the aggressive Aedes aegypti mosquito that also causes Dengue and Chikungunya  both the viral diseases are of great public health concern to tropical countries like India.

The outbreak began in Brazil last year and has now spread to 24 countries in the Americas, causing serious birth defects and other neurological problems like microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with an abnormally small head.

Dr Marcos Espinal, director of communicable diseases and health analysis at WHO, warned that Zika will go everywhere the mosquito is. We should assume that. We should not wait for it to spread.

Zika originated in Africa and also exists in Asia.

Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general, WHO, also warned that the virus could spread to other places wherever there is Aedes mosquitoes.

What we have to assume is anywhere where they have the Aedes (mosquitoes), they could have the Zika virus and they should have the tools to be able to look for it, he said.
The presence of UN troops in Haiti is to give the impression Haiti is violent and in constant civil strife of its own making.



It is a documented fact that Haiti is one of the least violent nations in the Western Hemisphere. I want human right organizations and investigative journalists to dispute that statement if it is wrong.



Haiti is in constant strife only when the masses, after enduring unspeakable colonially-supported dictatorship and foreign interference, push back and mostly with peaceful civil disobedience. I want human right organizations and investigative journalists to dispute that statement if it is wrong.




Reprinted from Counterpunch

He came, he saw, and he pocketed all the deals that matter. Chinese President Xi Jinping's tour of Southwest Asia -- Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt -- could easily be sold anywhere as your typical Chinese-style win-win.

On the PR arena, Xi did a sterling job polishing China's image as a global power. Beijing scored diplomatically on all counts, obtaining several more layers of energy security (over half of China's oil come from the Persian Gulf) while expanding its export markets and trade relations overall.

In Iran, Xi oversaw the signing of 17 politico-economic agreements alongside Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. Yet another diplomatic coup: Xi was the second leader of a UN Security Council member country to visit Tehran after the nuclear deal struck in Vienna last summer; the first was President Putin, in November. Note the crucial Russia-China-Iran interaction.

To make it absolutely clear, Xi issued a statement just before arriving in Tehran, confirming Beijing's support for Iran to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). That will solidify for good the key strategic partnership trio working for future Eurasia integration.

Of course, this whole process revolves around One Belt, One Road -- the official Chinese denomination of the larger-than-life New Silk Road vision. No other nucleus, apart from Russia-China, offers so much potential in terms of bilateral cooperation; Iran, as much as during the ancient Silk Road uniting imperial China and imperial Persia, is the ultimate hub uniting Asia with Europe.

Xi's high-tech caravan stopped first in Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- the Arab world. Xi's message could not be more crystal-clear: "Instead of looking for a proxy in the Middle East, we promote peace talks; instead of seeking any sphere of influence, we call on all parties to join the circle of friends for the Belt and Road initiative."

As Xi was still in Arab land, Beijing officially issued an "Arab policy paper"; a first, tracing the history of China-Arab world interaction from the ancient Silk Road up to the founding of the Sino-Arab State Cooperation Forum in 2004. And even before addressing the -- fractured -- Arab League in Cairo, Xi emphasized it once again; what matters for China is win-win cooperation all around.

Translation: business, business, business. And no Chinese interference in fractured Middle East politics.

Xi's diplomatic offensive, a spin-off of One Belt, One Road, seeks no less than reconfigure the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) -- for which China is a global champion -- in the context of emerging new financial architecture, centered on the globalization of the yuan.

That includes the push for the yuan to become one of the world's reserve currencies; and mechanisms such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund, much more attuned to the needs of the developing world than the IMF, the World Bank and even the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

A win-win for China as far as the Arab Middle East is concerned implies the pricing of key commodities in yuan -- a long-term but essentially inevitable development. And Beijing is eyeing not only Saudi Arabia but the whole GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) -- which happens to be a de facto financial centre for Africa, where China has a massive presence, with Eastern Africa on top of it being linked to the Maritime Silk Road.

The boom, and its drawbacks

Post-sanctions Iran, already in overdrive, is all about (re)integration into large swathes of the global economy. Yet China was already in Iran even before the lifting of sanctions.

Iran wants to increase its petrochemical output, by 2025, to 180 million tons. Chinese investment will be key. According to a recent report by global energy, metals, and mining research and consultancy Scottish group Wood Mackenzie, Iran may attract as much as $70 billion for its petrochemical projects.

On the alternative energy front, Iran has the capacity to generate 40,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from solar and wind resources. Chinese companies will definitely be on it.
Using terrorist tools, fear and hate

Obviously, it is much easier for angry, tub-thumping demagogues to use fear and hate, those primitive emotional tools, to intensify tribal differences and rile mobs to anger and destruction, than it is to calmly and logically discuss truths, and motivate disparate people to peacefully cooperate and build together.

In the political arena, fear and hate act as a compelling flame, beckoning frightened followers into a disturbing feeding frenzy, regurgitating their own fears for the consumption of others. Leaders arise by encouraging smoldering animosity, fanning these fires, and promising to relieve the burning anxiety and tensions that they, themselves generated. These leaders talk of carpet-bombing the feared and hated, building great walls to keep them out, and forcefully removing those already among us. These things, it is promised, will ease our self-incited distress, and lead us to a shiny, bright world of peace and prosperity. It is a primordial, threadbare fable, beyond belief, embraced by millions of Americans, reinforced by today's right-wing politicians and their media minstrels.

There is an excellent reason for right-wingers to be pushing their terrorist agenda, this is an election year and the Republicans have nothing of substance to offer the American voter. Instead, they promote fear, hate, guns, walls, wars, and phony-baloney voodoo economics, while avoiding discussing their true agenda, cutting Medicare, Social Security, environmental protections and taxes for the rich.

The truly important economic and social issues of our time are being shoved aside by their forced focus on terrorism. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have systems in place to repel and kill terrorists, both at home and abroad, but there are larger issues that affect us all that are not being addressed because of the trumped-up belief that we, and our friends and families, are all about to be murdered by terrorists.

Let's put this into perspective: In the United States, over the past decade, there have been, on average, about 4 killings per year by people identified as Islamic terrorists. Over that time, we were 40 times more likely to be killed by a deer, and even last year, more Americans were killed by gun-toting toddlers, under the age of three, than in the recent San Bernardino attack. America, we have much, much bigger fish to fry.

Fear and hate are also the primary tools of terrorists, used to frighten and control the huddled masses. They make videos of their kills to brag to the outside world and to draw-in supporters. All mass media are complicit with them, as they all promote fear. It is a truly symbiotic relationship, where the terrorists gain wide-spread dissemination of their propaganda and the media revel in the increased viewers/readers/listeners and the added sponsorship income that follows. It's a "win-win." While many studies have shown that Fox News viewers are the most misled of any major news outlet, Fox also seems to outshine all others when it comes to peddling paranoia and hate. One of the main goals of terrorists is to exploit the uncertainty, fear, and suspicion following an attack, and Fox has honed those skills to sharp points. If you watch Fox, be alert to how many opinions the performers put forth that are oozing suspicion, hate, or fear. Even if you happen to agree with what they are selling, ask yourself if Fox's over-the-top, bombastic hype crosses over from legitimate right-wing political propaganda to orchestrated, soft-core terrorism.
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Two sheriff's deputies were justified in their fatal shooting of a 55-year-old woman armed with a knife last year in Aloha, the Washington County District Attorney's Office determined.

Cpl. John McCullough and Deputy Matt Humphrey shot Phyllis Jepsen nine times as she approached them with a hunting knife Oct. 2, Senior Deputy District Attorney Bracken McKey wrote in a letter to the sheriff released Thursday. Authorities had not said how many times she was hit.

A third deputy, Dennis Strange, had first fired less-lethal, 40 mm foam rounds from a launcher weapon at Jepsen, hitting her four times, but they hadn't stopped her, wrote McKey, who reviewed the deputies' actions.

Two days before Jepsen was shot, a sheriff's deputy had taken her to the hospital on a police officer hold because she had made suicidal statements, McKey said. The shooting investigation revealed Jepsen had long struggled with mental illness and suicidal thoughts. She had also exhibited aggressive behavior before with police and hospital staff, according to the letter.

The responding deputies weren't aware of her full history, McKey said, but they knew about her contact with the deputy Sept. 30.

"What they did know was that Ms. Jepsen was aggressive, armed, and noncompliant," McKey wrote. "She posed a threat to officers and civilians in an apartment complex at a busy time of day, and less than lethal force had virtually no impact on her."

>>> Read McKey's letter

A Tualatin police detective who is part of the county's Major Crimes Team investigated the shooting. McKey said that because he found no evidence the involved deputies committed any crimes, the case would not be presented to a grand jury.

McKey's letter provides the first detailed account from authorities about the shooting. In the aftermath, they were tight-lipped and would not describe Jepsen's actions or what led to the use of deadly force.

Deputies first responded to the The Patrician Apartments, 18000 S.W. Shaw St., after Jepsen's daughter-in-law called police at 4:54 p.m. reporting Jepsen was threatening her with a hunting knife, McKey wrote. The daughter-in-law locked herself in a car, while Jepsen stabbed its windows with the knife. Jepsen, McKey wrote, also stabbed herself and was trying to cut her throat.

While the deputies responded to the apartments, they received information about Jepsen's encounter two days earlier with the deputy, a member of the agency's Mental Health Response Team. Police on that day were summoned after Jepsen called two radio stations and made suicidal statements, McKey wrote.

During that call, as the deputy moved a hunting knife away from Jepsen, she tried to grab it, McKey wrote. She was taken to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center on a police hold and released the next day, the letter says.

On Oct. 2, Strange, Humphrey, McCullough and another deputy arrived at the apartments and spotted Jepsen, bleeding and apparently angry, inside a parked pickup at 5:02 p.m. McKey said she stabbed the driver's window with a knife.

The deputies, McKey said, decided that Strange would fire the foam rounds if she was uncooperative when she got out of the truck. The deputies were between 25 and 30 feet from her at that time.

Soon after 5:03 p.m., Jepsen stepped out of the pickup with the knife in her right hand and moved toward the deputies. Less than 30 seconds later, they radioed "shots fired."

Strange had fired from the less-lethal weapon, McKey said, but Jepsen kept moving toward them. Humphrey and McCullough then fired their guns at Jepsen, striking her nine times. Jepsen fell on the ground about 15 feet from the deputies, McKey said. She was taken to OHSU Hospital, where she died.

An autopsy revealed Jepsen had several self-inflicted cuts on her body and two stab wounds on her left abdomen, McKey wrote. Toxicology tests showed she had a blood-alcohol level of nearly .23 percent. She also had marijuana and an anti-psychotic medication in her system.

McKey's letter does not say where Jepsen was shot, but he told The Oregonian/OregonLive that most shots struck her in her torso. One deputy fired a handgun and the other fired a rifle. His letter did not specify how many times the deputies fired.

-- Rebecca Woolington

503-294-4049; @rwoolington
What does it take to get reluctant teens to buckle down and graduate?

High schools that showed remarkable success rely on common approaches -- including building strong relationships, setting high expectations and promoting active learning - while adding their own distinct flourishes, their leaders say.

North Clackamas schools and Beaverton's Sunset High all achieved notably high graduation rates -- and can point to concrete strategies that propelled students who might otherwise have wavered toward their diplomas.

The state revealed Thursday that 74 percent of Oregon's high school class of 2015 earned diplomas. That marked an improvement of 2 percentage points from the previous year and the first substantial increase after five years of stagnation.

Success rates varied widely, however. Sandy High, for example, graduated just 56 percent of its low-income students; at Clackamas High, 86 percent of low-income students earned diplomas.

There are non-negotiable ingredients required to put all students on a path to success, school leaders say.

Freshman year is the most important to get right. Poor attendance or failing grades require immediate fixes, and schools must offer flexible, constructive and personalized solutions. Building a strong, caring relationship between every student and at least one teacher or other adult is essential. Students must own their own learning and be convinced that doing well in high school will matter in life.

Anyone who's raised a teenager knows doing all that well, for hundreds and hundreds of students, without dropping any balls, is a near-impossible assignment.

And Oregon high schools were asked to do that for the class of 2015 deep in a recession. Those students entered high school in fall 2011, when teacher and counselor positions fell more than 10 percent, days and weeks were sliced from many school calendars, and enrollments of low-income and Latino students surged.

Leaders of successful schools say all those factors were challenges. But they say focus, expectations and follow-through by adults, not money, makes the difference for their students.

Personal attention and personalized solutions are essential, they say. But it's obviously not that simple, given the high dropout rates in many tiny Oregon districts where looking out for every student should be easy.

Only half of the 12 seniors in Falls City, about 25 miles west of Salem, graduated on time, the state reported. And the tiny Gaston school district in Washington County, which boasts a nurturing, caring atmosphere, recorded a 46 percent graduation rate and saw 27 of the 65 students in its class of 2015 drop out, the state reported.

"Some students have some major challenges in their lives and sometimes they don't make it. It's not of a result of the school not caring," said Art Houghtaling, principal of Falls City Elementary and a recent teacher at the high school. "What causes it? Honestly, you would have to ask the kids. They feel like getting their education is not a priority in their life at that time."

North Clackamas school district

The sprawling North Clackamas district has nearly 6,000 high school students in three large high schools - Clackamas, Milwaukie and Putnam - and a small alternative school. Half the members of its class of 2015 were low-income, and 17 percent were Latino, black or Native American.

The district graduated 83 percent of its students on time last year, including 77 percent of both low-income and Latino students. Those were among the very best rates in the state for a district with large low-income or Latino enrollments.

The district's results have steadily improved since its goals for its high schools were pared back to three: Get every freshman to earn six credits. Get every student to graduate. And get every student to go to college or some form of post-secondary training.

Superintendent Matt Utterback's list of strategies for reaching those goals is much longer:

Prevent chronic absenteeism. Treat minority students in a culturally affirming manner. Curb out-of-school suspensions. Monitor student grades mid-term and intervene to prevent Ds and Fs.

His district's menu of offerings also helps keep students on track and engaged. It provides summer school so students can make up missing credits. And it offers by far the state's biggest array of hands-on, real-world classes including welding, health occupations, running a deli and firefighting. More than 90 percent of students take at least one career-technical course.

The district's relentless, personalized approach to tracking student attendance, an antidote to chronic absenteeism, has drawn attention for its notable success.

"We don't do it as a hammer," Utterback said. "This is trying to uncover the why. It may have to do with hunger, the student may be homeless, the parents might be getting divorced. Why is this student struggling to get to school? Then we hook them up with what they need."

The district also puts a premium on respecting students' ethnic background and economic circumstances. The training started not with teachers but with bus drivers - the first and last adult affiliated with the school who most students see each day.

Students of color are asked to tell adults what experiences are hurting or helping them, so change can be made, he said. Two results: The schools suspend students less often and they assign more novels with positive images of people of color.

"We have created a culture of care, communicating to kids that we care about them," he said. "When a kid knows you care about them, they are going to perform for you."

Sunset High

In 2013, Beaverton's Sunset High had a respectable overall graduation rate of 80 percent - but about 55 percent of its Latino students earned diplomas.

The school could have looked past its dismal results with that small segment of its students. But Principal John Huelskamp and his teachers did just the opposite.

"We made a decision to say we have 55 percent of our Latino kids graduating on time and that is abysmal. That's embarrassing," Huelskamp said.

They vowed to raise that rate by 5 percentage points each year until it reaches 90 percent. So far, in two years, they've raised it more like 20 percentage points, to 77 percent.

Sunset's approach has echoed North Clackamas'. Sunset educators build strong relationships with every student, provide flexible tutoring and summer school and meet Latino students and parents in their language and on their terms when possible.

The school already had a Spanish-speaking outreach worker. It added a bilingual counselor who built better relationships with Latino students and doggedly tracked their progress toward graduation requirements.

Candor is a hallmark of Sunset's approach. "We regularly bring the hard data to our teachers, our parents, our kids and say, 'Hey, this isn't good enough. What are we going to do about it?'" Huelskamp said.

One lesson learned: Putting seniors missing a freshman algebra or physics credit back into a freshman class doesn't work. Now, upperclassmen who need a math or science credits instead take statistics or Northwest ecology classes populated with other juniors and seniors.

The Beaverton district has provided funding for a large and growing summer school program to get students back on track. Two years ago -- too late to help the class of 2015, but a big lift for the class of 2018 and those who follow -- the district added an intensive summer school course for rising ninth-graders who most need a running start at high school.

The single thing that made the biggest difference for the class of 2015?

"Our emphasis on relationship," Huelskamp said

One small illustration: When Sunset students comes to class, no matter how tardy, teachers agree they'll greet them with one of two messages: "I am glad to see you" or "I am happy you're here."

-- Betsy Hammond
A Clackamas County jury on Thursday found a man guilty of shooting his girlfriend and killing her mother inside their Happy Valley home in 2012.



Twelve jurors deliberated three hours before finding Jason Hogan Jr. guilty of murder, attempted aggravated murder and first-degree assault. He pleaded guilty Tuesday to being a felon in possession of a firearm in the same case. He will be sentenced on Feb. 3 and faces up to life in prison.



Drunk and angry over perceived infidelity, Hogan showed Gina Perrone a .380-caliber handgun in their basement bedroom in August 2012, prosecutors say. He later fired six rounds at Perrone and her 62-year-old mother, Norma Perrone, in the mother's bedroom after the daughter warned her Hogan was armed. He fled the home, but was found two days later in Beaverton by U.S. marshals with the pistol still in his pocket.



Norma Perrone died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Her daughter spent nine days in OHSU Hospital and survived gunshot wounds to her neck, arms and abdomen. The 32-year-old was Hogan's on-and-off girlfriend for 10 years and has a 4-year-old son with him. Court records show Hogan has a criminal history in Oregon dating back to 1999.



Hogan, 36, showed little emotion in Clackamas County Circuit Court as Judge Thomas J. Rastetter read the jury's verdict aloud and asked three times for each of the jurors to raise their hands if they voted guilty. Every time, all 12 raised their hands.



Perrone sat in tears after the verdict was read. She sobbed outside the courtroom after it was cleared.



Since the trial began Tuesday, prosecutors and Hogan's attorney had urged jurors to find the 36-year-old guilty -- but differed on what charges.



Deputy District Attorneys Michael Regan and Alycia Herriott told the jury to convict him of murdering his girlfriend's mother and trying to murder his girlfriend. But defense attorney Russell Barnett III argued it would be more appropriate to find Hogan guilty of first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault.



Hogan didn't testify during his trial, and the defense presented no evidence.



"Mr. Hogan must pay the price for what he has done, but it must be the right price," Barnett said.



He claimed that along with drinking vodka, Hogan didn't sleep after a two-day methamphetamine binge, and that the drugs and alcohol heavily affected his mental state before the shooting.



Barnett pointed out that Perrone, who testified Tuesday, never mentioned any violence before the shooting. She also didn't corroborate Hogan's stepbrother's account, who testified Wednesday that he warned her a month before the shooting that Hogan said he was going to hurt her.



Barnett said Hogan left the Perrones after wounding them because he realized what he had done and panicked. He wouldn't have been found with the unloaded gun still in his pocket days later if he wasn't still in a state of panic, Barnett argued.



"It was a rash act on the part of a drunk, high person," Barnett said. "It does not make it OK, but it's reckless."



Prosecutors presented 21 points of evidence to prove their case that Hogan intentionally harmed the two women.



Regan reminded jurors about Perrone's testimony. She said Hogan showed her the gun before shooting her, grabbed her hand and put her finger on the trigger.



"What is that about if it isn't to intimidate and show you what I intend to do?" Regan said.



He said Hogan told Perrone he wanted them both to die, followed her to Norma Perrone's bedroom holding the gun, pulled the trigger several times at close range after Perrone alerted her mom, and then decided to drive away.



Despite Barnett's assertion of drug abuse and police seizing narcotics from the home, Regan said there was no evidence Hogan used meth before shooting the Perrones.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
Three Oregonians are among 31 cases of Zika virus reported in the United States, but experts say the risk of a large outbreak here is slight.

All of the cases are travel-related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The three people in Oregon traveled to Polynesia, one in 2014 and two in 2015, said Dr. Richard Leman, Oregon public health physician. He does not know whether any of them were pregnant but all recovered, he said.

South of the United States the virus is exploding, with cases from Mexico to Paraguay.

Brazil has been especially hard hit. Health officials fear it may be linked to an epidemic of babies born with shunted heads and an increase of a neurological disorder. There's no treatment or vaccine.

"Until now there's not been a lot of research," said Dr. Mark Slifka, a senior scientist at Oregon Health & Science University. His lab studies viruses similar to Zika, called flaviviruses. They include West Nile, dengue and yellow fever.

The virus first popped up in a monkey in the Zika Forest in Uganda in the late 1940s, thus the name. Before this latest outbreak, people have become infected in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Though first identified in a monkey, the Zika virus also uses mosquitoes as a host. Slifka said if the virus travels from mosquitoes to humans and monkeys and then back again, it's unlikely to gain a strong foothold in the United States.

"You have monkeys in South America but we don't have a monkey population that could keep that cycle going," he said.

West Nile virus has thrived in the United States, including in Oregon, because it lives in birds, giving it a wide population of hosts. Two types of mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus. Only one of them, Aedes aegypti, appears to also be able to carry Zika.

This mosquito thrives in tropical climates. There aren't any in Oregon, Leman said. Though they do exist in the South, the United States has better mosquito control than South America, Slifka said.

"We have window screens and air conditioning and we're able to spray urban areas," Slifka said.

Still, pregnant women need to take care if they plan on traveling to any affected countries. Public health officials advise against it. But if travel is necessary, they should cover up and use mosquito spray. The virus appears to pose a particular threat during the first trimester.

So far, it looks unlikely that people can transmit the virus to others though there was one case of a person infecting their spouse, Slifka said.

"Right now it's mainly spread by mosquitoes," he said. "We have to wait until more is known."

What is known is that these viruses are tiny. They only have 10 genes, Slifka said. They're much less complex than the malaria parasite, for example, which goes through different cycles as it passes from mosquitos to humans and back again.

Zika is also harmless to most people. Only about one in five get symptoms, which are similar dengue fever: rash, joint pain and fever.

But there has been an increase of a rare neurological disorder that physicians in South America fear may be related to Zika. Guillain-Barre syndrome causes a person's immune system to attack nerve cells which can cause muscle weakness and even paralysis. The birth defect, microcephaly, causing the brain to not fully develop in the womb, has mainly affected women in Brazil.

With a world spotlight on Zika, Slifka expects to see a vaccine, just as there was with Ebola. An OHSU start-up, Najit Technologies, Inc., plans a vaccine research program. It has already developed vaccines for West Nile virus, yellow fever and dengue.

-- Lynne Terry
Touring the Oregon State University campus

Corvallis, Oregon--November 1, 2012-- Looking out of Valley Library onto the campus at OSU. Most college campuses have hidden treasures awaiting to be uncovered and Oregon State University in Corvallis is no exception. Jamie Francis/The Oregonian

(Jamie Francis/The Oregonian)

Researchers at Oregon State University say they have stopped the progression of fatal amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS or Lou Gherig's disease, in some types of mice using a new treatment.



ALS is a progressive and rare neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain, resulting in loss of muscle control and paralysis. The typical survival time for a person with ALS is from three to five years, according to the ALS Association. There is no cure or treatment to stop or reverse the disease in humans.



Oregon State University scientists reported that a new therapy stopped the progression of the disease in mice for two years, allowing the mice to reach a full life span, according to a news release published Thursday.



The new treatment involves the compound copper-ATSM, which sends copper to damaged cells and the spinal cord. Copper can help stabilize essential proteins, though experts have warned that copper supplements can be toxic and ineffective for people with ALS, according to the news release.



Mice with ALS used in the study, which had been genetically engineered to carry a human gene, typically would die within two weeks. However, some survived for more than 650 days with the treatment, scientists said.

For some mice the treatment was started and then stopped, leading to the mice to show symptoms of ALS and die within three months. When the treatment was started back up, the health of the mice improved and they lived for up to another year.



"We are shocked at how well this treatment can stop the progression of ALS," Joseph Beckman, lead author on this study and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the College of Science at Oregon State University, said in a statement.



It's unknown if the treatment will work for humans, but scientists are heading toward human clinical trials as quickly as possible. The approach could work for those with genetic history of ALS and those without, Beckman said.



"We have a solid understanding of why the treatment works in the mice, and we predict it should work in both familial and possibly sporadic human patients," Beckman said. "But we won't know until we try."



The findings from the study were published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease. Scientists from Oregon State University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Texas Southwestern, the University of Central Florida and the Pasteur Institute of Montevideo in Uruguay contributed.

A campaign in 2014, dubbed the Ice Bucket Challenge, helped raise awareness of ALS and millions of dollars for research. For more about living with the disease, check out the Oregonian/OregonLive's special report.



--Laura Frazier



lfrazier@oregonian.com

503-294-4035

@frazier_laura
hyatt scheme.JPG

A Hyatt hotel would bring about 600 rooms to the Oregon Convention Center under a deal lead by the regional government Metro.

(Courtesy Metro)

Peak

An earlier start to school year: Portland Public Schools took a lot of heat last year from families who objected to the district's decision to begin the 2015-2016 school year before Labor Day. Families complained that Labor Day was the traditional end to summer in Portland and questioned whether school buildings would be too hot for kids. They also said that the district needs to be consistent in setting its calendar.

The families have a point on that last issue. So they and the rest of the district should welcome the Portland School Board's 6-1 decision this week to once again start the 2016-2017 school year before Labor Day.

The move is somewhat of a surprise, because Superintendent Carole Smith made her own recommendation to begin school before Labor Day despite a calendar committee's proposal to start after Labor Day.

Portland already lags much of the rest of the country in the number of school days a year, and an August start date is the norm in many other states. While shifting the school year earlier won't change the number of days, it does help better prepare high school juniors who are judged against their peers nationally on the Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams they take.

The board's nearly unanimous vote (director Steve Buel was the lone no vote, though he did not strongly oppose it) sends a signal that education comes first. People's vacation or holiday plans should be scheduled around the school year, not the other way around.

Oregonian editorials

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Erik Lukens, Steve Moss

and Len Reed.

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Valley

OCC/Hyatt project settlement: Throughout the years of trying to float a hotel project at the Oregon Convention Center, the regional government Metro had a persistent barb in its side: a group of boutique hoteliers that feared hotel business in Portland's downtown would be hurt by it. The narrative challenging Metro, however, was more high-minded and centered on governance: How could a public agency possibly straddle the public with subsidies to a private developer on unrealistic expectations of more and bigger conventions? Metro eventually won the fight, but not after plenty of court time.

Now, facing a March date in the Oregon Supreme Court, Metro has settled with the Aspen Lodging Group, an affiliate of Provenance Hotels, led by businessman Gordon Sondland. After Metro prevailed on legal challenges twice - first in the Multnomah County Circuit Court and then in the Oregon Court of Appeals - Aspen agreed to accept Metro's "gift" of a parking lot to go away and clear the way for the OCC/Hyatt project.

In one sense, it's everyday lawyer ball: a settlement that removes the onus and expense of another court test and allows a potentially job-building project to move forward. In another, it unmasks the hefty price of doing business -- and shows that even persistent foes will walk when paid enough, in this case with publicly owned property. The parking lot, situated south of the convention center site, was estimated by Aspen to be worth $1.94 million if partially developed, while Metro previously had appraised the parcel to be worth $10 million if fully developed.

The best, if ironic, analysis of the transaction belongs to Sondland, as reported by Luke Hammill of The Oregonian/OregonLive. Sondland said Metro's OCC/Hyatt project would be "a boon to the community" if it performs to Metro's expectations, a scenario in which the settlement could even "pave the way for future hotel development to accommodate even larger events at the convention center."

Who wins here? It's too early to tell.
By David Ignatius

WASHINGTON -- Five years ago, President Obama made a decision that helped topple Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. His policy represented a bet that the democratic surge of the Arab Spring could lead to a stable political transition in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Obama's embrace of the Tahrir Square protesters' demand for Mubarak's immediate departure was idealistic, popular and understandable at the time. But it was arguably among the biggest mistakes of Obama's presidency. And, interestingly, it's an issue where Hillary Clinton was much closer to being right than the president.

Because these events helped shape the Middle East turmoil that has increased year by year since 2011, it's worth reviewing them. This is not just a history lesson: The story bolsters Clinton's case that she analyzed major foreign policy issues correctly during her time as secretary of state. The record suggests that if her advice had been followed, the U.S. might be in a stronger position in the Arab world today.

Clinton sent Obama a prophetic warning in January 2011 as the Egyptian crisis was beginning, which she quotes in "Hard Choices," her 2014 book: "It all may work out fine in 25 years, but I think the period between now and then will be quite rocky for the Egyptian people, for the region, and for us."

Clinton narrates the basic story in her memoir: With protesters occupying Tahrir Square, Obama sent Frank Wisner, a respected former ambassador to Egypt, to meet with Mubarak on Jan. 31, 2011. The message was that Mubarak must pledge not to run again for president and begin a peaceful transition. In a televised speech the next night, Clinton writes, Mubarak "had actually come around to much of what Wisner had asked of him, but it was too little, too late -- both for the crowds in the streets and the team in the Situation Room."

The question then became whether to push Mubarak publicly toward an immediate transition. "Senior Cabinet officials, including me, counseled caution," Clinton recalls. "But other members of the team appealed once again to the president's idealism and argued that events on the ground were moving too quickly for us to wait. He was swayed."

Obama went on television the night of Feb. 1 and said the transition "must begin now." With that, the die was cast: The Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest opposition force in Egypt, had been late to join the uprising but now moved to take advantage of it. Clinton and Wisner continued to urge caution, but Obama chided them for sending "mixed messages" that undercut the White House line. The Tahrir protests escalated, the army refused to intervene, and Mubarak resigned on Feb. 11.

"Those of us who favored the stodgy-sounding 'orderly transition' position were concerned that the only organized forces after Mubarak were the Muslim Brotherhood and the military," Clinton writes. She had that exactly right, as the past five years have demonstrated.

The exuberant protestors in Tahrir Square were irresistible, not just for Obama but for most of the world. But even in the streets, it was obvious that Egypt (with U.S. backing) was taking a risk. "The Egyptian people are making a bet that the Brotherhood won't wreck their new experiment in democracy. But as is always the case with real political change, it's impossible to be sure," I wrote at the time, after watching hundreds of thousands of Egyptian Muslims in celebratory mass prayers in Tahrir Square, "an image that evokes Tehran more than Cairo."

One of history's "what ifs" is what might have happened had Wisner been allowed to continue talking with Mubarak about a gradual change of power. In an interview Thursday, Wisner argued: "We ought to have been calling for an orderly transition, rather than telling Mubarak, 'get out of town, get out of government,' with no strategy for what happens next. We needed a responsible path to stability and evolution, not revolution."

Nobody could have forecast the catastrophic chain of events that followed the Tahrir Square uprising. The coup in the streets led to the election of President Mohamed Morsi; his abuses triggered a counter-coup by the Egyptian military. Emboldened by events in Egypt, Muslim revolutionaries (with U.S. help) toppled a dictator in Libya and are still trying to overthrow one in Syria. And the rulers of Saudi Arabia are still traumatized by America's abandonment of Mubarak.

Many people got Egypt wrong. One of the few people who got the basics right is Clinton. That's a card she should play more effectively in this campaign.

David Ignatius' email address is davidignatiuswashpost.com.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
The last holdouts in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff say they now want pardons for everyone involved before they'll leave the headquarters where they're holed up behind police roadblocks.

"Before we leave, every single one of the people involved in this operation should be pardoned," occupier David Fry said in a feed posted to YouTube just before noon Friday.

With Ammon Bundy and 10 other members of the armed occupation behind bars and most of the rest gone of their own accord, four remain inside the compound.

They are: Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio; Sandy Anderson, 48, of Idaho; her husband, Sean Anderson, 47; and Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada.

The remaining occupiers had been livestreaming the standoff on YouTube or posting periodic videos to detail their preparations to die at the refuge. But they had filed no dispatches for more than 24 hours until Fry broke the silence.

His five-and-a-half-minute video included details of the occupiers' new demands and a diatribe against Hillary Clinton.

He said FBI negotiators have told him that they have no power to clear Sean Anderson of charges related to a felony warrant for his arrest. Records show he has an outstanding bench warrant related to an August 2014 arrest.

"Obviously we can't get outta here scot-free," Fry said in the video. He believes authorities plan to arrest the highest-risk occupiers right away. As for the rest, "they just want to separate us and get us all home so they can pick us off one-by-one."

To avoid that scenario, Fry is demanding pardons for the four remaining occupiers plus everyone who has already left the compound.

The Pacific Patriots Network, a group that has followed the refuge occupation, also spelled out several demands on Friday in a call for support from its members. The network of various patriot groups used strong language in condemning the shooting of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum and the arrest of an occupier they were helping to leave the refuge on Wednesday night.

The network, which plans a protest in Burns on Monday, demands the arrest of the top FBI agent in Oregon and any other law enforcement officers involved with his death, removal of all FBI agents from Harney County and the resignation of several county leaders and Sheriff Dave Ward.

Joseph Rice, a founding member of the network from Grants Pass, said he expects as many 200 people to come to Burns over the weekend.

Yet the network was clear it wants a "peaceful" operation.

"If you have any ill intent," the group's statement continued, "please do not come. We do not need you."

The group asked supporters to come in civilian attire and to follow a "policy of no long guns within the community."

Still, the scene at the refuge headquarters 30 miles south of Burns was unusually inactive Friday morning. In recent days, police vehicles have come and gone, sometimes in convoys containing dozens of vehicles.

There was no visible police presence at a roadblock just beyond the turnoff from Oregon 205 onto Sodhouse Lane, which leads six miles to the refuge headquarters. Still, federal agents leading the effort to end the standoff have said they are working "round-the-clock" to remove the holdouts from the compound.

Meanwhile, those in the community are left to wonder when it will end and debate the details of an FBI video depicting the death of LaVoy Finicum, a spokesman for the occupation who was shot by state police Tuesday when leaders Ammon Bundy, his brother, Ryan Bundy, and Ryan Payne were arrested on their way to a community meeting in John Day.

Ammon Bundy, the son of controversial Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and his followers took over the federal refuge Jan. 2 in protest of longer prison sentences for two local ranchers and federal land management policies.

"I don't know what's going to happen next," Fry said in his video posted at 11:54 a.m., "but I'll try to keep y'all updated."

--Kelly House

khouse@oregonian.com

503-221-8178

@Kelly_M_House
The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office on Thursday confirmed for the first time that Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was the man shot and killed during the traffic stop on U.S. 395 that led to the arrest of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation leaders.

The examiner's office didn't release the results of the autopsy and refused a request by The Oregonian/OregonLive for a copy of the report.

Finicum's family previously confirmed that he had died in the shooting.

The Deschutes County Major Incident Team is investigating the officer-involved shooting. Detectives from police departments in Bend and Redmond and the Oregon State Police also are assisting in the investigation, according to Oregon State Police and the Harney County district attorney.

Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris will review the investigation and make the decision whether the shooting was justified, according to the police statement.

The police agencies reported they anticipate the investigation will last for "several days to weeks."

-- Laura Gunderson

lgunderson@oregonian.com

503-221-8378

@lgunderson
BURNS -- The FBI announced a news conference at 5:30 p.m. to address "the current ongoing situation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge."

Earlier Thursday, four people appeared to be the last holdouts of the armed siege at the federal bird sanctuary that began Jan. 2. The takeover's leaders all have been arrested and one died in a police shooting outside the refuge.

Ammon Bundy, son of controversial Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, led the occupation, demanding release of two local ranchers from federal prison and a transfer of federal land in Harney County to local ranchers, loggers and miners.

Oregonian/OregonLive reporter Kelly House is at the news conference.
As we enter Day 28 of the standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, here are the latest developments:

* And then there were four. After a series of arrests and voluntary departures, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was left in the hands of just four people Thursday night. The live-streams that had colorfully documented the earlier days of the nearly monthlong occupation petered out. As occupiers stopped answering calls from the outside, they apparently kept up negotiations over the terms of their departure. Talks with the FBI were continuing "around the clock," said Greg Bretzing, the special agent in charge in Portland.

* As state troopers trained their guns on Robert "LaVoy" Finicum along a secluded eastern Oregon highway, he reached twice for a pocket that police say contained a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. That's when they fatally shot Finicum, a video released Thursday by the FBI appears to show.

* After spending two nights in a Portland jail, Ammon Bundy, through his lawyers, again urged the handful of holdouts at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to go home and pledged to continue to expose federal injustices through the court system. "Turn yourselves in and do not use physical force,'' Bundy said Thursday in a statement read by lawyer Lissa Casey outside the federal courthouse in Portland. "Use the national platform we have to continue to defend liberty through our constitutional rights.''

* Lisa Bundy, Ammon Bundy's wife, on Thursday urged those remaining at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to follow her husband's wishes and return home to their families. She issued an audio-recorded statement, released through Ammon Bundy's attorney. "I spoke with Ammon's lawyers yesterday and heard from his voice that those were his instructions: He wants people to go home; to go to their families,'' she says in the statement.

* Multnomah County released the mug shots of the three men arrested by federal authorities Wednesday near Burns. The FBI arrested Jason Patrick, 43, of Bonaire, Georgia, at a checkpoint outside the refuge near Burns about 8:40 p.m. Wednesday, authorities said. Duane Leo Ehmer, 45, of Irrigon, Oregon, and Dylan Wade Anderson, 34, of Provo, Utah, were taken into custody by the FBI about 3:30 p.m., an FBI news release said.

* The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office on Thursday confirmed for the first time that Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was the man shot and killed during the traffic stop on U.S. 395 that led to the arrest of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation leaders. The examiner's office didn't release the results of the autopsy and refused a request by The Oregonian/OregonLive for a copy of the report.

* A federal judge made it clear Thursday that she won't release any of the alleged federal conspirators accused in the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as long as the occupation is still active.

* A network of patriot groups from across the Northwest issued a call Thursday morning for supporters to flood into Burns. The request for help came on the heels of the Wednesday night arrest of Jason Patrick, a Georgia roofer who had emerged as a leader among the remaining occupiers of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after the takeover's key planners, including Ammon Bundy and Ryan Payne, were taken into law-enforcement custody.

* The spot where police shot Robert "LaVoy" Finicum and arrested Ammon Bundy differs markedly from the open rangeland that the militants occupied for nearly a month. The showdown played out in a dense forest along a twisting, shadowy and narrow road. A day later, the scene still showed evidence of the shooting: broken glass littered the pavement, and tire tracks on a snowbank indicated that one driver - perhaps Finicum, as a witness claimed - tried to escape by swerving onto the wrong side of the road.

* The 154-year-old law under which Ammon Bundy and others were arrested this week was created to deal with a nation torn apart by war. But it made sense for the armed occupiers who holed up at Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to be charged under the Civil-War era statute, experts say, because like the Confederates, the occupiers rejected federal power.

* Voodoo Doughnut has created a new doughnut featuring a depiction of Oregon occupation leader Ammon Bundy behind bars. A photo of the doughnut, created by "donut artist" Shane Sweeney, popped up on Voodoo Doughnuts' Instagram account on Wednesday. It had received more than 400 likes by 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Follow The Oregonian/OregonLive team from the scene today on Twitter:

Les Zaitz @LesZaitz

Kelly House @Kelly_M_House

Beth Nakamura @bethnakamura

Hashtag: #OregonStandoff
fpsdog.JPG

Security remained heightened at the U.S. District Courthouse in Portland Thursday afternoon as three more defendants facing federal conspiracy charges stemming from the armed takeover of the Mahleur National Wildlife Refuge made their first court appearances. Pictured here is a Federal Protective Services officer with his dog. (Maxine Bernstein|The Oregonian)

A federal judge made it clear Thursday that she won't release any of the alleged federal conspirators accused in the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as long as the occupation is still active.

"So long as that situation is ongoing, I'm not going to release anybody from custody,'' U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman said during the first court appearance for three more people charged in the case.

The continued occupation only increases the defendants' danger to public safety and risk of flight, Beckerman said.

Her remarks in court followed a public statement a couple of hours earlier from jailed protest leader Ammon Bundy for the holdouts to go home. One of his attorneys read Bundy's statement outside the federal courthouse.

The latest federal complaint involved Jason Patrick, 43, of Bonaire, Georgia, Duane Leo Ehmer, 45, of Irrigon, and Dylan Anderson, 34, of Provo, Utah,, all arrested Wednesday by the FBI at checkpoints outside the refuge as they were leaving.

They're among 11 people charged so far with the federal offense of conspiracy to impede federal officers from their official duties through use of force, intimidation or threats.

After siege leaders were arrested Tuesday and occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was fatally shot, the FBI and state police directed all remaining protesters at the bird sanctuary to leave, according to the complaint's affidavit.

Patrick, Ehmer and Anderson remained.

The FBI reviewed video posted on social media Wednesday that showed the remaining occupiers using refuge equipment "to move materials in a defensive position to block the roads," according to the affidavit.

"One individual said the FBI 'is coming to kill us' and 'the media was waiting for a blood bath, now there is going to be one,' '' FBI special agent Katherine Armstrong wrote in the affidavit. "Another individual in the video stated, 'what you gonna do when the militia come after you FBI? '''

The affidavit quotes from an interview Patrick, one of the last leaders of the occupation, gave in an online radio show when he said he arrived Dec. 8 in Harney County. He also posted a photo on Facebook of him standing just outside of the refuge on Jan. 2, the day that armed militants took over the refuge.

Patrick was represented Thursday by Andrew Kohlmetz, a lawyer he retained primarily to negotiate his surrender and "turn himself in,'' but Kohlmetz said Patrick would need a court-appointed lawyer going forward in his case.

On Jan. 8, Ehmer wrote on his Facebook page that he was guarding the eastern entrance to the refuge.

"I will guard everything in my post and quit my post only when properly relieved,'' he wrote, according to the federal affidavit.

A day later, Ehmer posted another photo on his Facebook page, showing him on "guard duty,'' presumably at the main western entrance to the refuge, according to the federal document.

That same day, he shared a link on his page to an online news article headlined "On the front lines of the Oregon standoff" and commented that the photo was of him "and my horse Hellboy,'' the affidavit said.

As for Anderson, known as "Captain Moroni,'' the federal affidavit also highlights videos and photos posted to his Facebook page that show him as a participant in the refuge takeover in early January.

Assistant federal public defender Gerald Needham, representing Anderson, urged the court to release him with GPS monitoring.

Needham argued that Anderson could return to his wife in Utah, under conditions set by the court, such as not allowing him to travel to Oregon except directly to federal court for future appearances and not permitting him to leave Multnomah County when he does so.

Pretrial service officers who reviewed Anderson's background recommended his release, Needham told the court. He has a minor criminal history that largely includes traffic offenses and low-level misdemeanor convictions that are at least 13 years old, his attorney said.

Anderson didn't expect to be taken into custody when he drove out of the refuge in a rental car Wednesday, his lawyer said. "He thought he was free to go,'' Needham said.

While Beckerman made it clear she wasn't about to release anyone while occupiers remained at the refuge, 10 of the 11 defendants in the case are scheduled to return to court Friday afternoon for formal detention hearings.

An 11th defendant, Jon Ritzheimer, 32, of Peoria, Arizona, surrendered earlier in the week in Arizona and is expected to be moved to Portland for his case to be handled in federal court with his alleged co-conspirators.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
Frederick Mauigoa

Frederick Mauigoa displays his Nike The Opening Finals invitation.

(Courtesy of Frederick Mauigoa)

The Oregon State Beavers 2016 recruiting class is tight on scholarships, particularly on the offensive side of the ball.

But the program will certainly find a way to make room it if it means adding 247Sports four-star offensive lineman Frederick Mauigoa, out of Pago Pago (American Samoa).

Far from an Oregon State pipe dream, the 6-foot-4, 290-pound interior offensive lineman is expected in Corvallis this weekend for an official visit and has long considered the Beavers among his leaders, dating back to The Opening Finals this summer.

While Mauigoa has largely been quiet about his recruitment, it appears to be a battle between Washington State and Oregon State, the two programs he is visiting this week:

Visit to WSU was great, now looking forward to OSU.  Frederick Mauigoa (@FMauigoa) January 26, 2016

Already with four-star athlete Christian Wallace and four-star safety Shurod Thompson in the fold, Oregon State's class would be its first since 2010 that has collected four bluechip prospects in one recruiting cycle.

First, the Beavers will have to impress Mauigoa on his official visit.

Of course, the interior lineman was largely an unknown until this summer.

After a strong display at The Opening Regionals, Mauigoa was the first American Samoa-based prospect to earn an invitation to The Opening Finals in Beaverton.

Capitalizing on the big stage, he was named one of the top five offensive line performers on Day 1 and immediately saw his stock rise, moving from a two-star unknown to a four-star talent by week's end.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Authorities searched the streets of Memphis on Thursday for a suspect who was involved in a police chase that led to the fatal shooting of another man who fired at officers.

Law enforcement officers assembled at the scene of the shooting near a church in a south Memphis neighborhood, trying to piece together the circumstances of Wednesday's frantic pursuit and deadly shootout. They cleared the scene Thursday afternoon and reopened streets that had been blocked since the shooting.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation -- the state police agency in charge of the shooting investigation -- says officers in two Memphis Police Department cruisers tried to stop a Chevrolet Impala for a routine traffic violation, but the driver of the car sped away.

Officers started to pursue the car but backed off, bureau spokesman Josh DeVine said. Police continued to watch the car as it drove recklessly through the neighborhood and crashed. The men ran away from the crash scene, and an officer from each police vehicle gave chase on foot, DeVine said.

During the pursuit, one of the men from the Impala opened fire on the officers, DeVine said. The two Memphis officers returned fire, shooting the suspect, he said. DeVine didn't indicate in what part of the body the man was shot.

"The officers were coming under gunfire from one of the suspects," DeVine told reporters Wednesday night. "The officers fired their weapons several times, striking the suspect, who later died."

The second man eluded officers.

DeVine said the state agency was not releasing the name of the dead man yet because relatives needed to be notified.

People who identified themselves as family members of the person who was shot were crying and hugging near the St. Andrew AME Church, where dozens of people were gathered, some screaming expletives at police and reporters. More than two dozen marked and unmarked police cars lined the streets, and people had to walk around the large crime scene to pick up their children at school or get to their homes.

The identities of the officers involved in the shooting have not been released, but DeVine did say that one is white and one is black. The dead man was black.

DeVine said Thursday that authorities seized a drone believed to have been flown by a resident over the crime scene on Wednesday. Police think it may have taken photos or video.

In July, a 19-year-old black man was fatally shot by a white police officer during a fight at a traffic stop in Memphis. The shooting of Darrius Stewart led to peaceful rallies and protests, and calls for the officer, Connor Schilling, to be charged. A grand jury declined to indict Schilling. Federal prosecutors are also investigating that shooting.

-- The Associated Press
Mideast Iran US

In this Friday, Dec. 25, 2015 photo released by the U.S. Navy, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman navigates the Gulf of Oman. Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state television reported Friday. The U.S. Navy said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near a French and American carrier on Jan. 12, but couldn't confirm it was the same incident. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class J. M. Tolbert/ U.S. Navy via AP)

((Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class J. M. Tolbert/ U.S. Navy via AP) )

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state media reported Friday. The U.S. Navy said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near a French and American carrier earlier this month, but couldn't confirm it was the same incident.

The reported overflight by the unmanned aircraft came after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the U.S. in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

The U.S. Navy said it didn't open fire as the drone was unarmed and not threatening the ship's safety, but the incident again highlighted that tensions remain between America and Iran in Gulf waters despite their recent diplomatic detente.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the footage, published by Iranian state television and the semi-official Fars news agency, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard.

Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and "directly over" the USS Harry S. Truman on Jan. 12 as the vessels were in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

He said the Navy launched a helicopter that determined the drone wasn't armed and "posed no danger to the ship" as the carrier wasn't conducting flight operations at the time. His comments implied that had there been active takeoffs and landings of U.S. aircraft, the situation might have changed.

Stephens called the drone's flight "abnormal and unprofessional." He added that the U.S. Navy was "not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet."

The report by state television said the drone flight occurred on the third day of the naval exercise, suggesting it happened Friday.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of Iran's navy, called the drone overflight "a sign of bravery."

It "allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces," he told state television.

State television and the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine also participated in the surveillance operation. When asked about the submarine report, Stephens said "Iran has several submarines underway for its current exercise," but declined to discuss specifics.

The Iranian report did not name the U.S. vessel filmed by the drone. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

In Washington, U.S. Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Marks stressed America remains ready to use force if necessary.

"We are confident in our force's ability to respond appropriately as the situation dictates and will defend ourselves should that prove necessary," he said.

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill at mock targets. Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began the naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer (1.16-million-square-mile) area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a U.S. warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The U.S. Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the U.S., its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The U.S. has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied launching rockets, though the U.S. later released footage showing the rocket fire.

The Strait of Hormuz, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran.

On April 18, 1988, the U.S. attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels, including two naval frigates, in Operation Praying Mantis. That came after the near-sinking of the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine, laid amid the Islamic Republic's bloody 1980s war with Iraq.

A few months later, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the strait mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 passengers and crew onboard. The shoot-down of the jet came shortly after the U.S. vessel reported coming under fire from Iranian speedboats.

More recently, this January, Iranian forces captured 10 U.S. Navy sailors who entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s. The sailors were released within a day, though Iranian state media aired footage of the sailors' capture, angering U.S. politicians.

-- The Associated Press
Crescent Islamic Montessori School

The board of directors at Crescent Islamic Montessori School voted to remove two exterior signs out of concern that the word "Islamic" might make the school a target. (Samantha Swindler/Staff)

Crescent Islamic Montessori School is easy to miss. You might confuse it with Faith Bible Christian School next door, which has several large signs announcing its presence.

Crescent Islamic has none.

The Beaverton school's board of directors recently voted to remove a vinyl banner announcing the school was "now enrolling" and a roughly six-foot wide sign fixed to the front of the building. Each contained a logo of a yellow crescent moon above a blue dome and a single word that sparked concern from parents: "Islamic."

The de-signing came shortly after a radicalized Muslim couple killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California on Dec. 2.

"Parents raised the concern that if we have a big sign that says 'Islamic institution,' are we inviting the backlash?" said board president Ahmed Ebeid.

"It's really because of the nature of the business we're in. No single person would want to hang on his conscience that we didn't do everything we can to protect the children."

Classes at Crescent Islamic are similar to any Montessori-style preschool in America, except here the children also learn Arabic and take time for Islamic prayers. The school has five teachers and about 32 students, ages 3 to 12.

I met with several board members at the school last week. We had a sobering conversation about xenophobia and violence while squeezed into tiny plastic pre-school chairs. Children giggled and played in the adjacent room.

Nadia Hasan, a teacher at Beaverton High School, has a son in the Montessori school. Her mother, Shagufta Hasan, serves on the board.

"When we learned that the shooters in San Bernardino were Muslim, it felt like the landscape was changing," Nadia said. She began lobbying her mom to remove the signs. Even the nearby Bilal Mosque doesn't have exterior signage, she said.

But Shagufta balked; board members had worked hard to raise money for a new building two years ago, and they were proud of their achievement. How can you grow if you can't advertise? Besides, they've never had any threats.

"I was pretty much against the whole thing," Shagufta said.

But the more she thought about it, the more she realized she might be wrong. "Maybe I do live in a bubble," said Shagufta, who has a private family medical practice.

Listening to her daughter's worries changed her mind. What wouldn't you do to protect your kids?

"There's a part of me that wishes I felt some of what my mom felt - like, how can we take down the sign, you are letting people dictate who you are and you're hiding who you are," Nadia said. "I think I'm too busy being a mom to think about that."

By next fall, the school hopes to be back on track with plans to install a permanent, lighted sign in front of the building. They want to be visible to attract new students.

"Unless Trump is winning," Shagufta added. She meant it as a joke, but... that could actually happen.

Given that they removed their signs to draw less attention to themselves, I was surprised the board was willing to talk to me for a story. A sign has no context, Ebeid said. It's four words. It's impersonal. It's a symbol.

But a story? A story is about people. And when we learn about other people, more than anything, we learn how much we have in common.

"Any time there is coverage, hopefully it will be coverage that enhances our relationship with our neighbors," he said.

Do I even need to write this next part? The vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims are not seeking a jihad for ISIS. They are people of faith and peace. Even knowing that, it can be tricky to talk openly about religion. I worried that the hour I spent Googling "Islamic beliefs" before my meeting with the school's board would not save me from making a cultural faux pas.

At one point, Ebeid tried explaining Eid al-Fitr, a celebration that comes at the end of fasting throughout Ramadan. I was raised a New Orleans Catholic, so I replied, "Oh, kind of like a reverse Mardi Gras?"

He looked confused and was surprised to learn Mardi Gras is a religious holiday.

"Forgive my ignorance," he said.

Oh, thank Allah. I laughed, because for the first time in our meeting, I realized maybe I wasn't the only one feeling illiterate about other faiths.

That's one more thing we have in common.
It will be constructed out of 20 trees floating peacefully within the citys harbour.

Famous for their network of canals, the people of the Netherlands definitely know how to make use of winding waterways to the fullest extent. Demonstrating this ingenuity is a new project that will work to increase urban greenspace within the city of Rotterdam. Mothership, an art collective composed of local dutch entrepreneurs and designers, has come up with the idea of creating a floating forest placed in the middle of the city. This spring, the Dobberend Bos (or Bobbing Forest in English) will be constructed, out of 20 trees floating peacefully within the citys harbour.

The team was inspired to create this installation by In Search Of Habitus an art piece by Jorge Bakker. Bakker is known for his works that examine overlooked elements within our surroundings, such as water and wind. Mothership seized this concept and ran with it, initiating a trial run in March 2014 with a single tree. This prototype has since grown into a full-size tree, demonstrating the design to be effective, and the city gave the go ahead for the full project. The floating forest will be sustainably sound, created using pre-existing elements: twenty old sea buoys will carry the trees, all of which have been recycled from the citys tree bank and would have otherwise been destroyed. The innovative project aims to stimulate conversation on how urbanites deal with nature and conversely what nature does with the city dweller.

Source: www.mymodernmet.com
The reported drone overflight comes after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the US in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters. (Photo: AP)

Tehran: Iran flew a surveillance drone over a US aircraft carrier and took "precise" photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill, state television reported on Friday. An American official declined to comment on the claim.

The reported drone overflight comes after a series of naval incidents between Iran and the US in the greater Persian Gulf, including test rocket fire by the Islamic Republic and its brief capture of American sailors who strayed into its territorial waters.

The brief report by state television did not say what day the drone flight occurred, nor did it show any of the images of the aircraft carrier reportedly photographed by the drone. A story from the state-run IRNA news agency said an Iranian light submarine closely participated in the surveillance operation.

Separately, state television said Iran's navy successfully fired surface-to-surface Noor cruise missiles during the drill.

The Iranian report did not name the US vessel targeted. The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is in the Persian Gulf region launching airstrikes and supporting operations against ISIS.

Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the US Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, declined to comment on the Iranian report.

"I can say that we are confident in the ability of U.S. naval forces operating in the region to respond appropriately as the situation dictates, and will exercise our right to defend our forces against any threat," Stephens said.

Iran has announced other military exercises in the past to demonstrate the capabilities of its armed forces.

Iran's navy began a naval drill this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer (1.16-million-square-mile) area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Iran said Wednesday its navy warned a US warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The US Navy later denied its operations were affected by the Iranian drill.

While Iran recently struck a nuclear deal with world powers including the US, its naval forces have continued its maneuvers. Iran has more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of shoreline facing the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The US has criticized some of those maneuvers, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test fire in December near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied launching rockets, though the US later released footage showing the rocket fire.

The Strait of Hormuz, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran, including a one-day naval battle in 1988.

In January, Iranian forces captured 10 US Navy sailors who entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s. The sailors were released within a day, though Iranian state media aired footage of the sailors' capture, angering US politicians.
Alpena Regional Medical Center (ARMC) and MidMichigan Health have signed a definitive agreement which would make ARMC the fifth medical center in the MidMichigan Health system.

Prior to the signing of the agreement on Wednesday, the Alpena County Commissioners approved a resolution to support legislation that will allow ARMC to convert to a nonprofit corporation.

The Michigan legislature also must approve legislation which enables ARMC to convert the county-owned hospital into a Michigan nonprofit corporation. Sen. Jim Stamas and Rep. Peter Pettalia recently introduced legislation to pave the way for the partnership of ARMC and MidMichigan Health. Following adoption of the legislation, the affiliation will have to be approved by the board of commissioners.

Once completed, ARMC would become the second-largest subsidiary of MidMichigan Health.

Joining the MidMichigan Health family is an exciting new chapter for Alpena Regional Medical Center and our region, said Eric Smith, board chairman of ARMC. By partnering with a health care system such as MidMichigan Health, which has such a successful affiliation with University of Michigan Health System, we are ensuring that not only will our hospital remain here for all of our community members, but that we will advance the level of care offered to all of the patients we serve.

In October, the ARMC board of trustees announced that it had entered partnership negotiations with MidMichigan Health following months of evaluating proposals from various health systems. A letter of intent was signed and an extensive due-diligence process was recently completed.

We are confident that we will do outstanding work together in our communities, said Glenn Smith, chair of the MidMichigan Health board of directors. ARMC is a strong organization with a talented team of health care providers, employees and volunteers. Were committed to planning collaboratively with Alpena while strengthening the already high level of service and quality care the patients of Northern Michigan are accustomed to receiving.

The MidMichigan Health board would increase by two members from Alpena. The ARMC board would increase to include the MidMichigan Health president/CEO and a second representative on the ARMC board.

We share a vision with ARMC that includes providing the highest quality of care to each and every patient who comes through our doors, said Diane Postler-Slattery, president and CEO of MidMichigan Health. Together, with our team of exceptional physicians and employees, we are well-positioned and look forward to welcoming Alpena as a member of our health system family.

ARMC is a 139 licensed bed, governmental acute care hospital offering inpatient and outpatient health care services to a broad region, which includes 24 zip codes in Alpena, Alcona, Iosco, Montmorency, Oscoda and Presque Isle counties. ARMC has approximately 1,000 employees, 200 volunteers and about 100 physicians.
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Black Ball Tattoo has been in business for just over 10 years, and the shop celebrated its anniversary last fall with some remodeling and expansion. The studio, located at 3126 N. Jefferson Ave. just off the Circle, offers tattoos, piercings and microdermal implant work.

Midland has been very good to us, said Jonathan Pinfield-Wells, the owner and one of the artists at the studio.

Also known as English Jonny, Pinfield-Wells came to Midland when he was 12. A transplanted Brit, Pinfield-Wells came to the area when work brought his parents to America.

After working for several years in graphic design, the artist changed gears and started applying his talents to skin, rather than canvas or computer screens.

Now its time to renovate.

We took all of the flooring out and added new walls and a new paint scheme, he said. The walls and the floors can all be wiped down. We can get things very clean in here. And we added another room. The new room is a private area for more discreet tattoos and piercings.

Pinfield-Wells said the trend lately has settled in on a few specific tattoos.

Recently weve been seeing a lot of arrows and infinity knots, he said. And believe it or not, paisleys.

The shop does fresh, new artwork, but they are also happy to do tattoo repairs, cover-up and maintenance work.

We fix a lot of other peoples stuff, he said, laughing. For things like laser removal of tattoos, the shop will refer clients to other studios that specialize in the field.

He said that as tattoos become more mainstream, the studio has seen an uptick in new types of clients.

Tattoos are becoming a family thing, he said. We have had whole families come in here and get the same tattoo.

Although he said he is always ready for a new challenge, Pinfield-Wells said he has rules on some types of art as well as placement on the body.

We dont do anything vulgar or disrespectful to religions, he said. And well send you home if you come in here drunk. He said the old days of artists tattooing impaired clients, or doing a tattoo anywhere on a persons body, is not how he runs his business. One thing the artists strive for is finding the right artwork for their clients, and helping them make good choices that wont lead to a lifetime of regret.

One such concern is the subject of facial and neck tattoos. Pinfield-Wells said the shop will do them, but only under certain circumstances.

We do. But its a rarity. Its only something we do on people that are already covered (with tattoos), he said.

But he said the shop tries to steer people away from ink in places that can negatively impact their clients personal futures.

Anytime someone gets a tattoo in a area that might hinder their ability to be socially acceptable, he said. (They) dont think past the decision of how the tattoo might affect them down the road. A lot of the time if theyre young we ask them what theyre going to school for or what their future plans are.

Caring for their clients also means keeping the environment clean and safe.

Studio manager Jeremy Long has been with the shop for nine years. One big part of his job is keeping up with the behind the scenes work necessary to operate a licensed shop.

I am responsible for all of the paperwork and health codes here. Also the on-site training, he said.

We went a step further, Pinfield-Wells said. We use disposable tubes, and dont reuse. And all of our clamps are autoclaved.

Used in a wide variety of fields, the autoclave is a device that heats surgical instruments up to around 250 degrees Fahrenheit, sterilizing the instruments.

Pinfield-Wells said one of the toughest things in his line of work is finding the right talent.

The hardest part is finding good enough artists for apprenticeships. There are a lot of people who want to be an artist, but they may not have the talent to do it, he said. Their heart is in the right place, but they may not have the skills.

Black Ball Tattoo employes two other artists and the boss is very happy with his current staff.

We build each other up. Every other shop you have to pay for your own stuff. Here, we pay for the artists supplies and share customers, he said.

Nick Droomer has been at the studio for eight years, and has been in the field for 12. He said his current line of work is much different than how he used to make a living.

I am a former union iron worker, he said, leaning back to check his work on a client. This is way easier.

Mike Heilig of Sanford was in Droomers chair getting a tattoo of a wolf head on the inside of his left arm. He said he has worked with Droomer several times over the last few years, and he has plans for some more art in the future.

This guys good, Heilig said, as he watched the artist do his stuff. I have three (tattoos) from him so far. They are awesome.

Heilig said all tattoos can sting, but inside the arm is an especially tender spot for ink.

It tingles a little bit, he said, smiling through the experience.

So does Heilig recommend Droomer and Black Ball Tattoo to friends and family?

Hes done a few for a couple of my kids, he said.

When asked what it was like to work for Pinfield-Wells for so long, Droomer laughed.

Aw, hes alright, he said, smiling. Hes a good boss.

Artist Jordan Townsend finished her year-long apprenticeship with Black Ball in October 2015. Along with her drawing and tattooing skills, she is the resident body piercing expert. As of late, she has also added microdermal implant installations to her resume.

When people come in for a tattoo, we ask them what they have in mind and what they want it to say, she said. If a client cant decide on one of the numerous tattoo examples found in the shops tattoo art books, chances are Townsend can draw anything imaginable, free-hand.

We ask them some personal questions and help them narrow it down, she said. Then we go from there.

When it comes to body piercing, Townsend said there is much more to it than finding something shiny and choosing a location. She said that not everything attractive will work for body piercing art.

We have people who come in here all the time with things they want for a piercing, she said. But just because it looks nice and shiny doesnt mean it is suitable. She explained that a lot of jewelry is made of unknown metals, or things that look to be metal that can be just plated plastic, and cannot work for a piercing.

If it doesnt come out of this drawer, we cant do it, she said, opening a large bottom drawer on her rolling tool box. Inside were countless small envelopes, with barbells, posts and hoops of all shapes and sizes.

I provide the jewelry. These are the only things I will use for piercings, she said. She said the stainless steel used to make the dizzying array of piercing-suitable jewelry is put through the autoclave before use.

Everything is sterilized, she added. This is very safe.

Among the artists, the crew has over 26 years in combined experience.

Pinfield-Wells said people are treating their choices in tattoos and artists much more seriously these days.

People are much more educated about what they want, he said.

He added that a good tattoo artist can gain a following, and pull people in from other areas for the artwork.

Some people collect tattoos, he said. If they find an artist they like, they will keep coming back to them. He said the shop has seen clients come in from places like Texas and Arizona.

We have even had people come in from Hawaii, Long added.

Pinfield-Wells said his current crew of artists can offer clients a variety of choices.

Most artists specialize in a certain style or subject matter, whether it be new school, old school, neo traditional or realism. We concentrate on being well rounded in all styles to appeal and be able to please a broader range or customers, he said.

As for the last 10 years, he said he is happy that Midland has been good to him and his shop.

For more information, check them out at www.blackballtattoo.com and look for them on Facebook.
The Clare-Gladwin Regional Education Service District will ask voters to consider a millage request this spring that would help fund its Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs.

Wednesday night, the CGRESD Board of Education unanimously approved placing the 10-year, 1 mill request on the May 3 ballot in Clare and Gladwin counties. The funds generated would support the organizations CTE program, which delivers vocational instruction to juniors and seniors from Clare, Gladwin, Harrison, Beaverton and Farwell each school year.

CGRESD Superintendent Sheryl Presler said the board believes this is a crucial juncture for CTE, which provides courses that have been cut in local school districts. Those courses include construction trades, health occupations, culinary arts, automotive technology, education occupations, digital media and criminal justice.

CTE meets an essential need for our local schools, which for budgetary reasons have been forced to drastically reduce their vocational education programs over the past several years, Presler said. A generation ago, your local high school was able to offer a host of skills-based courses, everything from wood shop to home economics to machine tool to business. Today, those options have largely disappeared, and by leveraging its numerous partnerships, the CTE program has done a good job trying to fill that void. But to maintain what weve got  and to better meet the evolving needs of our students, communities and employers  we need help.

While the majority of Michigan intermediate school districts benefit from dedicated funding for CTE programs through their local tax structure, that has never been the case for students in Clare and Gladwin counties. Administrators are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain current CTE offerings, let alone add in-demand new programs like welding, agri-science and manufacturing.

If you look at your local tax bill, youll see line items for essential services like 911, community transit, programs for the elderly, sanitation pickup and so on, Presler said. What you wont see is funding for Career and Technical Education. CTE funnels trained, experienced workers into a local workforce that needs them, benefiting the local economy and keeping good jobs and good people right here in central Michigan, Presler said.

Passage of the millage would bring about upgrades to CTE programming and equipment, including the restoration of the welding course, which was cut last year. Other near-term millage benefits would include the implementation of programs for agri-science and business management, as well as the provision of a permanent home for the construction trades program, which has seen its classroom relocated at least six times in the past decade.

Beyond providing the actual instruction, Presler said CTEs impact on communities and the local economy is significant.

CTE doesnt just offer kids a marketable skill set immediately out of high school, she said. It also funnels trained, experienced workers into a local workforce that needs them, benefiting the local economy and keeping good jobs and good people right here in central Michigan. Our students graduate high school ready to begin a career in the trades or work at a good job while attending college. Either way, our communities reap the benefits.
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP)  A New Jersey elementary school science class has a new pet after a lizard was discovered in a student's salad after being refrigerated for days.

Riverside Elementary School science teacher Mark Eastburn told NJ.com (http://bit.ly/1nMqTYC ) the 3-inch green anole lizard was found in a bundle of tatsoi greens last week by a kindergartner.

The lizard had been cold and lifeless after being confined in a refrigerator for days, but has since been warmed and lives in a cage in Eastburn's class.

"It's a really fitting mascot for our science lab," he said.

The lizard, dubbed "Green Fruit Loop," came from Florida. Eastburn said green anole lizards live in the southeastern states, from Texas to North Carolina.

"It probably has some moderate adaptation to the cold which is why it made it through," Eastburn said.

The tatsoi had been bought from Whole Earth Center, a natural foods store in Princeton. Mike Atkinson, the store's produce manager, said the greens are cleaned as they're stocked and that the lizard must've been tucked away in a leaf.

"I've been in produce for 17 years and I've never heard of a lizard making it to the customer," Atkinson said.

He said he doesn't think the lizard would have made it in conventional, non-organic box.

"It might normally surprise or freak out conventional shoppers, but the majority of organic shoppers realize that produce is grown on a farm and there's lots of bugs and animals that live on a farm too," Atkinson said.

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Information from: NJ.com, http://www.nj.com
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  Fewer Michigan schoolchildren are getting immunization waivers, a drop that state health officials attribute to a year-old rule that requires parents to first talk with a local health department about the risks of not being vaccinated.

Preliminary numbers released by the state Thursday show nearly 8,000 fewer waivers from the last school year, a 41 percent decline from about 19,100 to 11,200. The kindergarten waiver rate  which was the country's sixth-highest in the 2014-15 academic year  is down to 3.3 percent from 5.2 percent. The percentage of seventh-graders receiving exemptions is 2.8 percent, a decrease from 4.5 percent.

The new rule, sought by Gov. Rick Snyder's administration and approved by lawmakers, took effect last January and was issued amid a concerning rise in whooping cough and measles cases.

It requires parents who want a nonmedical waiver to first be educated by a local health department about the risks of not receiving vaccines and the benefits of vaccination to their child and community. Parents previously could get a philosophical or religious waiver without meeting with a health official.

"By ensuring that parents have the opportunity to address and discuss concerns with their local health department, we're providing parents with knowledge they can use when making a decision about vaccinating their child," Nick Lyon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement.

Dr. Eden Wells, the state's chief medical executive, said the improvement in vaccination coverage rates means more children are being protected from outbreaks and preventable diseases.

All kindergarteners, seventh-graders and students new to a district must be up to date on certain immunizations or have a waiver.

The medical community praised the news and said legislators should not consider rescinding the change. Bills introduced last month would overturn the rule and also prohibit local health departments from keeping unvaccinated students from school except in the case of an epidemic.

"Michigan's recent immunization waiver reforms have made a real difference for thousands of kids but (the bills) threaten that progress," said Marcus Cheatham, president of the Michigan Association of Public Health.

Despite Michigan's high number of waivers, it ranks in the middle of states in the percentage of children who have been immunized. Experts say that is because public health officials are successfully pressuring school districts and child care providers to make sure kids are either vaccinated or have a waiver.

A third category of kids  who do not have all their vaccines but also do not have waivers  is shrinking.

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Online:

House Bills 5126-27: http://1.usa.gov/1nBrv3m

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Follow David Eggert at http://twitter.com/DavidEggert00 . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/david-eggert
Solar scam accused Saritha S. Nair arrives to appear at Solar commission office in Kochi on Friday. (Photo: PTI)

Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Friday suspended for two months the controversial order directing the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau to register an FIR against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and minister Aryaden Muhammed in the solar scam.

Saritha Nair, key accused in the solar scandal, told the Justice G. Sivarajan Commission probing the issue on Friday that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had asked her to form a company with his son Chandy Oommen as a partner.

Read: No police case against Kerala CM in solar scam, says High Court

Claiming that she only had business relationship with Chandy Oommen, Ms Saritha denied a report that she had illicit relationship with the chief ministers son.

Ms Saritha, however, said Chandy Oommen had an affair with another woman accused in the solar case and she had the evidence of the two traveling together to Dubai.

Read: Oommen Chandy is all smiles

But, she declined to reveal the name of the woman and said that former home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishan had collected the evidence of the relationship and used the same as a bargaining chip with the chief minister.

On the third day of her deposition before the commission, Ms Saritha said during her meeting with the chief minister at Kadaplamattom, Oommen Chandy told her about the need for registering a firm as a cooperative society with his son and relatives as partners.

Read: High command backs CM Oommen Chandy

Chandy Oommen, on his part, promised that materials needed for the solar project could be imported from a US-based company, Star Flakes Inc, in which he had partnership.

Ms Saritha also refuted the chief ministers claim that the government had not provided any help to Team Solar Company of Saritha and co-accused Biju Radhakrishnan.

According to her, Team Solar was operating as a franchise of Hyderabad-based Surana Ventures, which had bagged several government projects in the state.

It got government tenders at low rates with the help of electricity minister Aryadan Mohammad. She said that a delay in payment of Rs 35-lakh from ANERT was resolved with the help of the chief minister. She said that the commission could call for the relevant files from ANERT.

Read: CM Oommen Chandy wanted son to be a partner, Saritha S Nair says

Meanwhile, in a reprieve for Oommen Chandy, Kerala High Court stayed the lodging of an FIR against him and another minister in the solar scam case with strictures against the vigilance judge who immediately offered to quit.

Apparently stung by the strong observations against him by the High Court, the Vigilance Judge S.S. Vassan, sought permission for voluntary retirement, about 16 months before his tenure ends. He is due to retire in May, 2017.
A number of area police departments, including the Midland Police Department, have untested sexual assault evidence kits, according to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and Michigan State Police Director Col. Kriste Kibbey Etue.

Schuette and Etue today announced plans to assist departments across the state with the testing and potential investigation of those kits.

According to the Attorney Generals Office, the Midland Police Department has 31 untested sexual assault kits, while the Midland County Sheriffs Office and Coleman Police each have none.

Theres a distinct difference between being untested and uninvestigated, Midland Police Chief Clifford Block said, explaining each of the untested kits in the possession of his department was investigated.

There are various reasons for the sexual assault evidence kits to be untested, such as the suspect in the case could have confessed or the evidence wasnt needed for prosecution, or the victim might have opted not to prosecute or even recanted their story, Block said.

These are all nonactive cases, he said. The oldest of the untested kits goes back 13 years.

Block also said laws regarding how the sexual assault evidence kits are handled recently changed. Rather than waiting for the prosecutors office to request the evidence before sending the kits to a lab for testing, as was the past procedure, now all sexual assault evidence kits are automatically sent for testing.

The number of untested sexual assault kits in Michigan  1,819 in all  was determined after Schuettes office began to survey 82 counties outside Wayne County in September 2015. In the survey, Schuette called on law enforcement officials to provide a count of untested kits in their possession so that state authorities could determine the most effective way to help local authorities process these cases, including testing that could help with unsolved crimes in other jurisdictions.

The counts requested are those of sexual assault victims who were assaulted before Oct. 1, 2014, and were not previously tested for various reasons, which can include that the suspect confessed, pled guilty or was already incarcerated.

Schuette and Etue expect that a closer examination of the untested kits will give them more insight into the status of these cases and how they can best help local authorities.

Other area agencies not having any untested sexual assault kits include the Beaverton Police, Gladwin Police, Saginaw County Sheriffs Office, Saginaw Police, Saginaw Township Police and Tittabawassee Township Police.

The Gladwin County Sheriffs Office has one untested sexual assault kit, the Bay County Sheriffs Office has seven, and the Bay City Department of Public Safety has 41 untested kits.

Tackling untested sexual assault kits involves three basic phases: testing; investigation of the incident; and prosecutions where possible. Schuette and Etue will work together to see that the backlogged kits are processed, using a combination of $1.7 million appropriated by the legislature and grants awarded to the Michigan State Police to ensure justice for victims of sexual assault.

Today, we take another step forward in getting rapists off the streets and ensuring justice for sexual-assault victims. I thank our prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies for working with us to test previously untested sexual assault kits, said Schuette. Experience shows that testing every kit helps law enforcement solve crimes and stop serial rapists.

The Michigan State Police is committed to providing forensic analysis and analytical case support to ensure the best possible evidence is available to solve these crimes and bring justice to the survivors, said Etue.

Michigan victims of sexual violence are encouraged to call the national sexual assault hotline toll-free, 1-800-656-HOPE. All calls are confidential, and will be answered by a local counseling center affiliated with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Assistance is also available online at www.rainn.org.
To the editor:

The recently concluded Paris agreement on climate change has been given great accolades by environmentalists and the liberal media as a consensus of all the nations of the world to reduce what is now being called carbon emissions. Now there is a misnomer if there ever was one which is so typical of the factual misstatements characteristic of those advocating that there is global warming that it is due to human activity. Carbon of course is a solid and, as proven by volcanic eruption, solids in the atmosphere cause cooling of global temperatures rather than warming. If they mean carbon dioxide then call it that.

The agreement comprises a collection of promises to reduce carbon emissions such that global temperatures are not increased by more than 2.0 Centigrade and preferable not more than by 1.50, presumably per century. There are, however, no details on how these lofty goals are to be accomplished. All of these details are to be agreed on in the future. And as we well know, the devil is in the details. Not surprisingly, no mention is made by those celebrating the agreement of the elephant in the room, the $100 billion per year pledge until 2025 and very likely after that.

The Copenhagen meeting failed to reach an agreement because the developed countries, i.e. principally Europe and North America, balked at paying the underdeveloped countries, substantially the rest of the world, for any work in reducing CO2 emissions. Pushed by the Obama administration in the Paris meeting, the developed countries pledged to pay the underdeveloped countries that $100 billion a year for reducing CO2 emissions. But for that pledge there would have been no agreement. And guess who agreed to pay a lion share of that money? You are right, the largest debtor country in the world, the U.S. Thus the Obama administration exposed this country potentially to another trillion dollar liability. But then whats another trillion dollars to this president whose most stellar accomplishment will be that he will have doubled the national debt by the end of his term, which currently stands at $18.9 trillion. Islamic terrorists may constitute a threat to U.S. citizens, but this president, through his lack of fiscal responsibility and his efforts to sidestep the Constitution, is a threat to our countrys constitutional form of government.

If the underdeveloped countries want to start developing their own renewable energy industry let them do it with their own money. With the rampant corruption in many, if not most, underdeveloped countries one might wonder how much of that money will actually go to reducing CO2 emissions.

Of course Obama also pledged to reduce CO2 emissions in this country and has proposed the Clean Power Plan authorizing the EPA to go after fossil fueled power plants. Contrary to allegations in this paper, it has not been Congress that is leading the fight against this plan, although I am sure they will if forced to, but 27 states, thus a majority; and numerous private enterprises have filed suits against the EPA on this plan. The cost of this plan to the states has been predicted as being astronomical but is being totally disregarded by the EPA.

Michigan in 2008 enacted the Michigan Renewable Energy Mandate which requires that Michigan produce 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar. A recent report out of Utah State University determined that Michigan lost $15.1 billion in personal income because of that mandate, and that the mandate is also responsible for a 10 percent increase in unemployment. The Clean Power Plan calls for a 32 percent reduction from 2005 levels of CO2 emissions by 2030 through renewable energy. Given the Michigan results, the costs of this plan are indeed astronomical.

What is most galling is that the EPA is responsible for one of the highest CO2 emissions in the country by requiring that we burn ethanol in our vehicles. Ethanol corrodes engines, delivers less power than what it replaces, costs more and emits more CO2 than the hydrocarbons it replaces. We certainly dont need it to reduce oil imports; we have enough oil to last for decades. Considering the hundreds of millions of gallons of gas burned every day, the ethanol in gas is a major source of what the EPA considers pollution. Thus the EPA as ordered by the Obama administration wants to shut down our fossil fueled power plants which provide needed electricity but at the same time forces us to use a totally unneeded CO2 polluting additive in our vehicles. And not a single environmentalist has objected to that. Talk about hypocrites!

BILL SANDT

Midland
A medical examiners findings, combined with statements to police by the 46-year-old parolee charged in connection with a November homicide, were enough for a Midland County judge to send the case to the next court phase.

District Judge Michael D. Carpenter also bound over two related assault cases against defendant Gregory Allan Rose, 46, on Thursday morning. The hearing was a continuation in preliminary hearings against Rose; the previous two cases were presented two weeks ago.

In total, Rose faces 14 counts in the three cases: open murder, felony murder, second-degree arson, armed robbery, unlawfully driving away a motor vehicle and tampering with an electronic monitored device, as well as two counts each of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, first degree home invasion, assault with the intent to commit great bodily harm less than murder, and assault with a dangerous weapon. An additional count of unlawfully driving away a motor vehicle was dropped by prosecutors.

Midland County Prosecutor J. Dee Brooks and Chief Assistant Prosecutor Geoffrey K. Rettig called a former Lee Township firefighter, a Michigan State Police fire investigator, the longtime boyfriend and neighbor of homicide victim Connie Eileen Pajunen, 67, and a state police detective sergeant to testify.

State Police Detective Sgt. Bill Arndt said he interviewed Rose several times after the arson, and that each time, Rose waived his Miranda rights to give statements.

He confessed to the homicide of Connie Pajunen, Arndt testified, adding among the things Rose told investigators was how he came to the back deck of Pajunens home at 372 S. Castor Road on the afternoon of Nov. 13.

He said he was injured, he had a hurt arm, and just wanted some food and to use a phone, Arndt testified. Rose told Arndt he spoke with Pajunen on the back deck after backing her into a corner so she could not leave. He admitted he had a knife in his left hand ... In his words, she was having none of it, Arndt said, adding Rose said Pajunen was looking over his shoulder. Arndt presumed she was looking toward the home of her boyfriend and neighbor.

When Pajunen tried to escape, Rose stabbed her in the neck, Arndt said he was told by Rose. That portion of Roses story coincided with the autopsy report, which documents a stab wound to the side of Pajunens neck which severed the carotid artery.

In his interviews, Rose told investigators that Pajunen then collapsed and fell on the knife blade, which was at that time in his pocket, Arndt testified. The autopsy found Pajunen also had a 6-inch deep stab wound to her chest, which pierced her heart and a lung, as well as broken ribs. There were other lacerations and stab wounds, Arndt read into the record from the report.

After stabbing Pajunen, Rose said he tried to make a phone call for help, but realized she was dead, panicked and dragged her into the house. He then set fire to newspapers inside the home.

Missing from the home were Pajunens purse, keys, a shotgun and a coin collection, as well as her white 2004 Ford Escape, said her longtime boyfriend and neighbor, Jerry Billington. The burned Ford was later pulled from a lake in Spring Falls, Wisconsin, right where Rose told investigators it would be, Arndt said.

Rose was arrested days later after being involved in a police pursuit in Bear Lake, Minnesota.

Jacob Sira, a former township volunteer firefighter, testified he responded to the fire at Pajunens home, and reached the structure to find it fully engulfed by flame. After the flames were extinguished, Pajunens body was found inside, he said.

State Police Fire Investigator Lenny Jaskulka said Pajunens body was found in the living room between a coffee table and a couch, and it appeared as though she had been moved there. During his investigation, Jaskulka said he found four different points throughout the house where newspapers had been set on fire  atop a mattress in a bedroom, next to a bookcase in the dining room, a living room recliner, and between the coffee table and couch where the victim was positioned.

Attorney Dan Duke of Midland, who was appointed represent Rose, asked no questions of the witnesses on Thursday.

Testimony during the preliminary hearings in the two assault cases included statements from both victims, as well as the woman at the center of a love triangle involving rose.

The victim of the first assault is dating Roses ex-wife, Annette Belonga. He testified that he awoke early on the morning of Nov. 12 at his North Coleman Road home after being struck in the head. The suspect had used a large bolt to strike him, causing cuts on his head and face that required stitches.

Belonga testified that she married Rose in June of 2013, and they divorced in December of 2014.

He knows that were divorced, she said of Rose. He does not want to be divorced. She also testified that her dating relationship with the man who was assaulted began in the summer of 2013.

The victim in the second assault, which occurred between noon and 2 p.m. the next day at a South Castor Road home, said she dated Belongas son at the time. He had received a text message from his mother warning them that Rose had assaulted her boyfriend and taken her truck, and to watch out for him.

Rose indeed was at the property, and the victim encountered him in a pole barn, she testified.

He grabbed a hammer and struck me in the head with it, she said, adding he later told her he was hurt, hungry and was not trying to hurt her. The victim was able to call out to someone in the home as Rose used a knife to threaten her, and he ran away.

Investigators previously stated there was no connection between Pajunen and Rose. During Thursdays hearing, it was stated Pajunens home is roughly across the street from the location of the second assault that occurred just before the fire was reported.

At the conclusion of the hearings, Brooks and Rettig asked for the cases to be bound over. Roses own statements identify himself as the only person with Pajunen when she died, and the autopsy report shows there were multiple wounds including two that were fatal, Brooks said.

He describes it as kind of an accidental stabbing, he said, adding it is a reasonable inference that Rose set fire to the home to cover up his crime.

The court finds this is not credible, Carpenter said of Roses explanation of Pajunens injuries as accidental, and bound over the 14 charges. Carpenter also conducted a circuit court arraignment in each case, and Rose entered a plea of not guilty to each.

The cases will next be set for pretrial conferences in the circuit court.
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - For more than 55 years, the United States and Japan have been security treaty allies. For years, the U.S. Marine Corps and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force have been training together across the Pacific in support of the security treaty for the defense of Japan.

Exercise Iron Fist 2016 is one such opportunity, allowing Japanese soldiers to train with U.S. Marines to enhance their bilateral amphibious capabilities.

Since 2006, Exercise Iron Fist has enabled Japanese soldiers to train with U.S. Marines on American soil to improve the planning, communications and conducting of combined amphibious operations, said U.S. Marine Col. Clay C. Tipton, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. In the short span of a decade, this exercise has allowed our two services to come together and practice amphibious operations at the platoon, company and battalion level.

Exercise Iron Fist is the largest bilateral exercise conducted by I Marine Expeditionary Force. Over the course of this five week training exercise, U.S. Marines and Sailors, and their Japanese counterparts will train sidebyside to hone their skills in a broad spectrum of military tasks, to include combat marksmanship, military planning and fire support operations.

Im proud to be working alongside Col. Goto, Western Army Infantry Regiment commander, Tipton said. The soldiers of the Western Army have a strong reputation and I look forward to seeing them in action.

Japanese soldiers and U.S. service-members of all ranks and jobs will be able to share their skills and abilities with one another, further strengthening not only their respective militaries, but their combined security as allied nations.

I have been looking forward to this opportunity to train with the Marines here for a long time, said JGSDF Col. Yoshiyuki Goto, Western Army Infantry Regiment commander. Marines are very quick to make changes that are necessary to improve the quality of training. I recognize the U.S. Marines speed and flexibility is required for amphibious operations to be successfully completed.

The first few weeks of Iron Fist will be spent aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., honing individual and small unit skills. Following this, training will move to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., to take advantage of the large training facilities to conduct live-fire ranges and company level bilateral attacks. The final phase of training will see Japanese soldiers and U.S. Marines embark on the USS Somerset (LPD 25) and conduct ship-to-shore movements, a Supporting Arms Coordinating Center Exercise (SACCEX) and a battalion level Amphibious Landing Exercise (PHIBLEX).

SACCEX will have our [Japanese] soldiers, and [U.S.] Marines executing an amphibious movement to San Clemente Island, explained Tipton, then executing fires with rotary wing, fixed wing and indirect fire weapons.

PHIBLEX is the culminating training evolution, Tipton added. This is where the previous four weeks of training will pay dividends. Japanese soldiers and U.S. Marines will be coming off the USS Somerset in Amphibious Assault Vehicles and Landing Craft Air Cushions to conduct an amphibious assault, which will transition to a ground operation to secure an inland objective.

This training exercise is designed to not only strengthen the security and relationship between U.S. and Japanese, but to facilitate the establishment of a JGSDF Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade by 2018.

We recognize the capabilities for rapid response, emergency situation, and conflict prevention of an amphibious rapid deployment brigade, said Goto. Using the exceptional training environments on Camp Pendleton, it will really enhance our capabilities to conduct amphibious operations with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Over the course of the next five weeks, the U.S. and Japanese forces seek to learn and share as much as possible with one another, enhancing the readiness and compounded strength our relationship provides.

As security treaty allies, it is important for U.S. Marines and sailors to have working relationships with our Japanese military counterparts to continue honing our amphibious operations core competencies, said Col. Tipton. Credible, ready maritime forces help to preserve peace and prevent conflict.
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan -- During World War II, the way service members loaded cargo onto aircraft was disorganized and lacked today's calculations. This caused problems in one critical aspect of aircraft dynamics: balance. From the need for accurate calculations and specialized handling of cargo has arisen a relatively new job.

The Airmen who perform that critical job are loadmasters. Yokota's 36th Airlift Wing C-130 Hercules loadmasters work daily to deliver airlift priorities to a larger area than any other U.S. base in the world.

Staff Sgt. Noel Jones, 36 AS C-130H loadmaster, explained that loadmasters are extremely specialized aircrew members who make sure that cargo and passengers get airdropped or airlifted safely and in a timely manner.

"If it were possible to outsource all the other positions on a C-130, there would still be loadmasters on board," Jones said. "There are so many variables with the cargo, a computer can't handle it. A loadmaster has to be there."

When Yokota calls on its Airmen to respond to a disaster, loadmasters are there to make sure that relief supplies and refugees are airlifted safely and quickly. According to Senior Airman Andrew Fox, 36 AS C-130H loadmaster instructor, Yokota loadmasters helped evacuate disaster refugees and deliver relief supplies in 2011 during Operation Tomodachi and again in 2013 during Operation Damayan. They did the same in 2015 when an earthquake struck Nepal.

"Yokota has continuously shown the ability to respond quickly to emergencies" Jones said. "We're a small unit but we're capable of responding quickly and effectively if needed."

To stay sharp and ready to respond, Yokota performs regular airlift and airdrop exercises. Recently, Fox accompanied two of Yokota's newest loadmasters on several personnel drops to train them in a realistic setting.

The drops were performed from a C-130H at 9,999 feet over Yokota. During the flight, the cabin shook from turbulence and gravity pressed down as the aircraft banked, but the loadmasters continued to walk around the cabin and do their jobs. They performed scanning duties and made sure everything was ready for the pararescuemen, making sure there were no problems during the flight or the drop.

"There is such a thing as getting your 'air legs,'" Fox said. "It takes situational awareness and it comes with experience. You have to pay attention to what you're trying to accomplish while dealing with turbulence and other obstacles that may arise."

In a combat environment a loadmaster's mission remains the same. The cargo, however, is often the difference.

"One of the best things about being on deployment is getting to bring Soldiers back home," Jones said. "They're out there for a year and when you pick them up they're just so happy. They're talking about their kids and about what they're going to do when they get back. I'm so happy that I can bring these people home."

The job also comes with challenges. As Jones explained, being a loadmaster is like other operational jobs in that they feel the pressure of having to succeed for the sake of the mission. With help from the rest of Team Yokota, they continue to get the job done.

"At the end of the day when you're covered in oil and you just pulled a 16 hour shift, it's pretty easy to go to sleep knowing that you made a difference," Jones said.

According to Jones, as a loadmaster there are times when it seems like the world is at your throat but just like with any other mission-related job they simply have to put their shoulder to the wheel because failure is literally not an option. They press on to do what they need to do to get the mission done.
LAEM CHABANG, Thailand  Military Sealift Commands (MSC) Surge Sealift, Roll-on/Roll-off ship USNS MAJ Stephen W. Pless (T-AK 3007) arrived at the port here to offload essential military equipment in support of Exercise Cobra Gold 2016 (CG-16), Jan. 27.

Thailand and the United States are scheduled to co-host the annual, multilateral Exercise CG-16 in various areas throughout the Kingdom of Thailand Feb. 9-19. This years CG-16 will consist of three primary events: a command post exercise, which includes a senior leader seminar; humanitarian civic assistance projects in Thai communities; and a field training exercise that will build regional relationships.

The Pless was carrying more than 470 items that totaled approximately 2,500 long tons (5.38 million lbs.). The cargo included such items as military vehicles, aircraft and ammunition. A second MSC vessel, USNS 1ST LT Jack Lummus (T-AK 3011), is scheduled to arrive in the coming days to offload additional CG-16 gear.

Phase one of the offload was conducted here then the Pless sailed to the port of Sattahip in Chuk Samet to offload the remainder of gear, Jan. 28. From the ports, all equipment was staged and will be transported to various locations in Thailand.

During the exercise, MSC falls under the Joint Movement Coordination Center (JMCC) and works with various agencies, such as the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC).

The JMCC is the coordination center for all inbound and outbound cargo, said Army Maj. Juan A. Vega, JMCC officer-in-charge for CG-16. This includes sealift, port handling and transportation. Our job is to receive the equipment at the port, and coordinate transportation to its final destination.

According to Vega, the JMCC is a team effort. SDDC is responsible for loading and offloading the ship and all the reception, staging and onward movement and integration of all the gear that is coming off the ship. MSC is responsible for providing the ships that are capable of meeting the sealift requirement.

In addition to providing vessels that deliverer the equipment for CG-16, MSC Far East (MSCFE) is also exercising expeditionary port operations.

At the port of Sattahip, MSCFE stood up a mobile sealift operations center (MSOC), a fly-away communications suite that is staffed by Expeditionary Port Unit 111 (EPU 111), out of Oklahoma City, Okla. The MSOC consists of two shipping containers: one is a storage facility and one is outfitted with a full complement of communications equipment.

The EPU is here to train on port operations for contingency support, said Cmdr. Christopher M. Cassano, MSCFE exercise planner. The EPU would rarely be used during peacetime, but in a contingency operation, when were at a dozen different ports, we have the EPU to exercise control at the port for MSC. Because during phase two operations there would be no port agentwed be responsible for all things in support of the ships.

Concurrently, the USNS Pless is on mission supporting U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) Pacific Pathway 16-1 (PP 16-1), a transportation operation supporting three exercises.

Cobra Gold is the first leg of Pacific Pathway 16-1, said Joseph Peck, traffic manager, USARPAC. We take a single vessel and a single task force and take it to numerous exercises. It saves money, cuts legs off transportation and allows us to bring a bigger force with more capability to the exercises.

The Pless started the PP 16-1 mission at Joint Base LewisMcChord (JBLM) in Tacoma, Wash. She then loaded the aviation task force in Hawaii, then went to Okinawa, Japan and picked up joint-forces gear that supports the exercise, said Peck.

Upon conclusion of CG-16, the Pless will backload the ship at the end of February, and then roll over to South Korea to offload the Army force for Exercise Foal Eagle. She will then swing back to Okinawa to offload Marine Corps equipment, and upload the new Marine gear for Exercise Balikatan. The ship will come back to South Korea to pick up the Army force, and then move to the Philippines to offload for Balikatan. Finally, she will reverse sequence back to JBLM to drop off the remainder of the joint task force.

PP 16-1 consolidates a force on a vessel and keeps it out so it does multiple iterations of loading and offloading a vessel, said Peck. This is a five-and-a-half-month mini deployment to three different countries, which we would have loaded the ship at least five times.

Exercise Cobra Gold, one of the largest multilateral exercises in the Asia-Pacific region and has taken place annually for more than 30 years. CG-16, the 35th version of the military exercise, will bring together more than two dozen nations to address regional and global security challenges and to promote international cooperation and stability within the region.
New Delhi: With the city facing a garbage problem following the strike by MCD sanitation workers, Delhi government on Friday said it will soon announce a plan for lifting the waste as it asserted that it will not let people in the national capital live amid piles of rubbish.

The Arvind Kejriwal government is likely to announce its plan tomorrow for clearing the litter dumped across the national capital even as the strike by sanitation workers entered its third day.

Sources said that Delhi government is planning to take the help of the volunteers of Aam Aadmi Party to clear out the garbage. They also added that a helpline may also be launched to facilitate the lifting of the waste.

"The BJP-led MCD is not capable of clearing the garbage and we will not allow the heaps of garbage in Delhi. We will soon come out with a detailed plan for lifting the piles of waste across the city.

"I want to assure Delhiites that we will not let them live amidst the garbage. The government on its own will make Delhi a clean city. People won't have to face the problem this time due to the strike by sanitation workers," said Delhi Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra.

In October last year, sanitation workers had struck work over non-payment of their salaries.

Mishra accused the BJP-led civic bodies of engaging in 'salary scam' due to which they have not been able to pay the sanitation workers despite Delhi government having released money for that purpose.

"This is a very serious issue. Where is the money given by Delhi government for the payment of salaries of sanitation workers? Delhi Development Authority (DDA) owes around Rs 1,500 crore to the municipal corporations, but mayors are not demanding that money," he claimed.

"The garbage problem will be solved within 24 hours if DDA clears its dues to the corporations. There has been a salary scam in the BJP-led municipal corporations that has surfaced now," he charged.
Theater key: GX = Galaxy 14; NL = Normal Theater; OV = Ovation 14; PR = Princess Theater, LeRoy; ST = Stadium 14

Opens Thursday

Macbeth

113 min.; R (strong violence, sexuality)

Latest film version, with Michael Fassbender murdering his way to Scotland's throne. (NL, Jan. 28 and 30-31 )

Opens Friday

Fifty Shades of Black

91 min.; R (crude sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout)

A college student meets a wealthy man whose sexual practices put a strain on their relationship. (GX, OV, ST)

The Finest Hours

117 min.; 2-D/3-D; PG-13 (intense peril)

The Coast Guard comes to the rescue of two oil tankers destroyed during a blizzard in 1952. (GX, LT, OV, ST)

Jane Got a Gun

98 min.; R (violence, language)

A woman asks her ex-lover for help to save her outlaw husband from a gang out to kill him. (GX, ST)

Kung Fu Panda 3

95 min.; 2-D/3-D; PG (martial arts action, mild rude humor)

This time, Po must face two threats: one supernatural, the other domestic. (GX, LT, OV, ST)

Throne of Blood

110 min.; unrated

A war-hardened general works to fulfill a prophecy that he will become lord of a castle. (NL, Jan. 20 and 22).

Opens Tuesday

The Shop Around the Corner

99 min.; unrated

Two feuding gift shop employees don't realize they're falling in love as each other's anonymous pen pal. (NL, Feb. 2)

Ongoing

The Big Short

130 min.; R (pervasive language, sexuality/nudity)

Four outsiders in the world of high-finance decide to take on the big banks. (ST)

The Boy

98 min.; PG-13 (violence, terror, thematic material

A nanny is shocked that her new family's boy is actually a life-sized doll. (GX, OV, ST)

Brooklyn

111 min.; PG-13 (sexuality, brief strong language)

An Irish immigrant in 1950s Brooklyn falls into a romance with a local as her past catches up with her. (ST)

Carol

118 min.; R (sexuality/nudity, brief language)

An aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman. (ST)

Daddy's Home

96 min; PG-13 (thematic elements, crude/suggestive content, language)

A caring stepdad faces competition for the love of his wife's two kids from their newly returned real father. (GX, ST; PR, starting Fri.)

Dirty Grandpa

1 star 101 min.; R (crude sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, language, drug use)

An uptight young man is tricked into driving his swinging grandfather to Florida for spring break. (GX, LT, OV, ST)

The 5th Wave

112 min.; PG-13 (violence/destruction, sci-fi thematic elements, language, teen partying)

After a series of alien attacks nearly decimate Earth, a young woman tries to save her brother. (GX, LT, OV, ST)

Norm of the North

86 min.; 2-D/3-D; PG (rude humor/action)

Displaced from their Arctic home, a polar bear and three lemming friends wind up in New York. (ST)

The Revenant

3 stars; 156 min.; R (strong frontier combat/violence, gory images, sexual assault, language, nudity)

An 1820s frontiersman goes on a quest for survival after being brutally mauled by a bear and left for dead. (GX, OV, ST)

Ride Along 2

1 stars; 101 min.; PG-13 (violence, sexual content, language, drug material)

Ben heads to Miami with soon-to-be brother-in-law James to bring down a drug dealer. (GX, LT, OV, ST)

Room

118 min.; R (language)

After being held captive for years, a woman and her 5-year-old son finally gain their freedom. (GX)

Spotlight

128 min; R (language, sexual references)

The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the child molestation scandal and cover-up within the local Catholic archdiocese. (ST)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Three stars; 135 min.; 2-D/3-D; PG-13 (sci-fi action violence)

The saga continues, 30 years after the familial revelations of "Return of the Jedi." (GX, OV, ST)

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

144 min.; R (strong combat violence throughout, bloody images, language)

A security team deals with the chaos of an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya. (GX, LT, OV, ST)
NORMAL  Today's cancer patients don't want to become tomorrow's heart patients.

That's why oncologists and cardiologists are collaborating in a nationwide trend whose goals are to continue cancer treatments while minimizing the potential for heart damage that may be caused by chemotherapy and radiation.

The integrated approach is called cardio-oncology and it expanded several months ago when a cardio-oncology program opened at Advocate Heart Institute at Advocate BroMenn Medical Center.

"You want the patient to get the maximum treatments for cancer but you want to make sure that you protect the heart," said Dr. Samir Shah, Advocate cardiologist who opened the program with Dr. Kunal Bodiwala.

"I really like this program," said Dr. Pankaj Kumar, oncologist with Illinois CancerCare, Bloomington. "It helps us to take better care of our patients."

Cardio-oncology has evolved in the past few years.

With advancements in cancer treatments  including chemotherapy and radiation therapy  patients are living longer.

"Survivorship is longer because of the medicines," Shah said.

But for some patients, cancer treatments can damage the heart.

"Not everyone is at high risk for heart complications," Shah said. Considerations include the age of the patient, their previous risk of heart disease, whether they have diabetes and their cancer treatments.

Cancer patients at higher risk for heart damage include those who had heart disease earlier and those who are already at risk of heart disease. Some cancer treatment medicines have a stronger effect on the heart than others, Shah said.

"Some treatments, like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, help the patients to live longer but they cause problems for the cardiovascular system," including congestive heart failure, inflammation of the heart muscle and irregularity of heart rhythm, Kumar said. "Some problems appear immediately. Some might not appear until years later."

For example, some young adults who get radiation to their chest for Hodgkin's lymphoma can have heart attacks 10 years later, Kumar said.

Adriamycin is a commonly used medicine to kill cancer cells in breast cancer patients, but it can have a toxic effect on the heart among some patients, Kumar said.

As treatments are helping cancer patients to live longer, the impact of those treatments on the heart has become a concern.

"We're trying to minimize heart toxicity," Kumar said.

With these dangers, why have the cancer treatments?

Kumar responded by using the example of Paula Kirk of Normal, the first patient to be admitted to Advocate's cardio-oncology program.

"If Mrs. Paula Kirk had shown up 10 years ago with metastatic breast cancer, she wouldn't have lived a long time," Kumar said. "Now, we expect Paula to live a very long time due to the medicines. But we need to do a better job of identifying and minimizing the side effects."

The cardio-oncology program isn't for all cancer patients.

But when an oncologist considers a cancer patient at higher risk for heart disease, the oncologist may refer the patient to Shah and Bodiwala. Both Kumar and Dr. Patrick Gomez at Illinois CancerCare and oncologists at Mid-Illinois Hematology & Oncology have referred patients to the Advocate program.

Shah and Bodiwala conduct a baseline heart study of each patient. If necessary, the patient is prescribed medicine to protect his or her heart, Shah said. The patient follows up with the cardiologist every three months.

"The program is tailored to the patient," Kumar said.

More than 50 patients have been enrolled in the young program, Shah said.

"The program is going very well," Shah said.

"As the population ages, we will see more patients, so we need an integrated approach," Shah said. "You don't want to cure someone's cancer but now they are disabled because their heart is bad."
BLOOMINGTON  Financial records for murder suspect Kirk Zimmerman were turned over to prosecutors who are looking at the documents as potential evidence in his case.

Zimmerman was in court Thursday for a hearing related to two subpoenas issued to Mid-Illini Credit Union and State Farm Bank by the state for Zimmermans accounts.

Defense lawyer John Rogers objected to release of the records, saying the material is not relevant to the murder charges against the Bloomington man, who is accused of first-degree murder in the November 2014 shooting death of his ex-wife, Pamela Zimmerman.

Consistent with an earlier ruling for other bank records, Judge Scott Drazewski denied the defense objection and the documents were handed over to First Assistant States Attorney Adam Ghrist.

The judge also ruled the financial data will be kept under seal to maintain its confidentiality.

Prosecutors also received documents submitted under a subpoena by Sprint and Comcast, and Ghrist said he may have received documents the state requested from Best Buy related to the Zimmerman case.

Kirk Zimmerman, 57, is accused of killing his ex-wife at her east Bloomington office. The 53-year-old victim, an accountant and financial planner, was found Nov. 4, 2014, by Bloomington police who responded to a call from a person concerned about her well-being. She had been shot four times, said authorities.

Thursdays hearing was the first time Kirk Zimmerman has been to court since he posted $200,025 in November and was released from McLean County jail, where he'd been since his arrest on July 21, 2015.

According to records, the bond was paid from retirement accounts held by Kirk Zimmerman and his girlfriend, Kate Arthur.

Since his release, Kirk Zimmerman has been on electronic monitoring and required to stay in his home at 2804 Park Ridge Road unless he is visiting his doctor or his lawyer. Rogers disclosed at an October hearing that Kirk Zimmerman has cancer, but did not offer any details.

A report reviewed by Drazewski on Thursday showed Kirk Zimmerman has complied with conditions of his release.

A March 29 hearing is scheduled to review the status of the case.
Cheers

... to the McLean County Multicultural Leadership Program, for its work teaching and celebrating diversity throughout the community.

The program, which trains and supports community leaders, is taking applications for next year's program. Those chosen dedicate many hours of study and work during the yearlong program, leaving behind a tremendous amount of goodwill and knowledge.

This is a program that is good for the community, employees and businesses.

Cheers

... to Bent Elementary art teacher Amy Wolfe, Friends of the Arts at Illinois State University and other supporters who brought Chicago artist Juan Chavez to Bent last week to work with students on art made of "found" objects.

Art and music are a key foundation to students' growth in a variety of areas. Congratulations to those who recognize that, and connect experts like Chavez to students to help show them the way.

Jeers

... to the state of Illinois for bungling the timetable required to certify ballots for the March primary.

The delay won't postpone the election, but likely will mean people will have fewer days available to cast an early ballot. That's not fair to voters, but that's the way Illinois does business.

Cheers

... to the McLean County Wellness Challenge, through Live Healthy Central Illinois, which makes a good-natured game out of weight loss and better health.

Losing weight and getting in shape isn't always fun. Using a team approach to make it enjoyable is a great way for people to reap the benefits.

Cheers

... to scientists for finding what they believe is the ninth planet in our solar system, an unnamed body that orbits just beyond Pluto. It is about the size of Neptune and orbits the Earth every 15,000 years.

Central Illinois astronomy fans know we already had a ninth planet, Pluto, discovered by Streator native Clyde Tombaugh, until scientists demoted Pluto to "dwarf" status several years ago.

Regardless, the newly discovered planet is another reflection of how much of the great unknown remains just that.

Cheers

... to Illinois Farm Bureau on its 100th anniversary, celebrated in grand style this week at the company's Bloomington headquarters.

IFB and its related companies serve thousands of people while keeping true to the missions outlined when IFB was formed by the consolidation of county bureaus.

Happy birthday, IFB, and many, many more.
While Jan. 22, 1973, marks the U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, Jan. 19 marks Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I am quite sure that Dr. King would have looked at Roe v. Wade with monumental contempt.

Dr. King also knew that God is love and would forgive any fault, providing forgiveness is genuinely asked. Please don't go to your maker without true contrition for your fault.
Air India Flight 671 (Airbus 319 aircraft) took off for Chennai at 9.30am. After taking off from the airports main runway, it took a left turn. About ten minutes later, when the aircraft was at an altitude of 6,000 feet, the pilot informed the ATC that he could see four parachutes flying at a lower altitude.

Mumbai: Pilots of an Air India aircraft spotted four flying objects, allegedly parachutes, in the south of Mumbai on Friday .

Air India Flight 671 (Airbus 319 aircraft) took off for Chennai at 9.30am. After taking off from the airports main runway, it took a left turn. About ten minutes later, when the aircraft was at an altitude of 6,000 feet, the pilot informed the ATC that he could see four parachutes flying at a lower altitude. The parachutes were yellow, red, blue and green in colour and sighted at a distance of 20km from the city airport.

All coastal police stations, namely, Arnala, Virar, Palghar, Satpati, Kelwe Road and Dahanu were alerted by police officials after they came to know about the spotting of parachutes.

The DGCA has ordered a probe into the matter. A senior official from DGCA said, The ATC has informed us about the message from AI crew.

While DGCA officials maintained that no conclusion has been drawn about the identity of these kobjects, a senior ATC official said parachutes are meant for jumping from aircraft but ATCs city radar did not show any other flight in the area at that time, so chances are that the flying objects are not parachutes.
The Gerber baby winner, Isla Welch, is a 7-month old, black-haired cutie, who hails from Troy, Michigan. She is the sixth winner of the annual Gerber Baby Photo Search, and her dad, Grayson Welch, said hearing the news "knocked him off his feet."

He shared the news with his wife Rachael, who was shocked and initially thought he was pulling a prank on her. They took home a cash prize of $50,000, $1,500 worth of Gerber's Children's wear, and of course, as their spokesbaby, Isla has the chance to star in several upcoming Gerber ads.

In September of last year, the dad was simply going through pictures of Isla and her older sister, Nora, on his phone, when he spotted an adorable shot of his youngest baby, with her hair sticking straight up. "I had been taking photos of the kids that day and snapped Isla in a perfect pose while she was horsing around on the living room couch," he shared. Right there, he thought of submitting the photo to Gerber.

Isla, who had 170,000 competitors, was looking straight at the camera, with one hand underneath her smiling, dimpled face, in the winning photo. The news about Isla winning came a few months later when Gerber emailed Grayson.

As for how Gerber chooses a winner every year, senior media marketing manager for Nestle Infant Nutrition, Bernadette Tortorella, told Yahoo Parenting, "This is not a beauty contest. We look for happy and healthy babies who are judged on their visual appeal and expressiveness."

Join us in congratulating our Gerber Spokesbaby for 2016, Isla! Thank you to all who entered #GerberBaby2015PhotoSearch A photo posted by @gerber on Jan 27, 2016 at 12:00pm PST

Isla takes the place of Grace from East Petersburg, Pennsylvania, last year's Gerber baby. As reported by Fox 6 Now, Isla, who loves to read, jump and blow raspberries, will be seen regularly on Gerber's official Facebook and Instagram pages, as the company will share her photos throughout the year.
Pregnant women and the infants who are infected with Zika virus in Latin America face a great danger. The World Health Organization describes the infection as an "explosive pandemic potential."

According to Breitbart, the experts said that Zika virus infection causes microcephaly among infants and the unborn. Microcephaly is a condition wherein the circumference of the head is smaller than normal. Its symptoms include mental retardation, facial distortions, delayed motor and speech function, seizures, hyperactivity and other neurological problems.

In Brazil, there are more than 2,400 cases in 2015 compared to 147 in 2014 while in the U.S., 31 Zika cases confirmed. Puerto Rico verified 19 cases. It is reported that the virus has spread to 20 countries.

"The level of alarm is extremely high as is the level of uncertainty. Questions abound," the head of WHO, said. "We need to get some answers quickly."

Center for Disease Control (CDC) states that Zika virus swells to people through the bites of mosquitoes particularly the Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes that carry the disease. Its symptoms are the same just like the Dengue Fever. These involve fever, joint pain, conjunctivitis (red eyes), rashes, and headache and muscle pains. The treatment of this condition includes frequent drinking of fluids, plenty of rest, medications such as paracetamol and acetaminophen to relieve pains and fever.

WHO warns people that they don't need to travel to get the infection. CDC also released a travel alert, the Level-2 Practiced Enhanced Precautions, for people who will travel in places where Zika virus transmissions are spreading. The center also advised pregnant women to avoid traveling to regions where Zika virus is found to prevent infected while pregnant. Some experts also advised women to postpone their pregnancy plans to inhibit acquiring the infection.

"It's a very personal decision, but at this moment of uncertainty, if families can put off their pregnancy plans, that's what we're recommending," Angela Rocha, the pediatric infectologist at Oswaldo Cruz Hospital in Brazil, suggested.
A large number of sexually active teens never get tested for HIV. Less than one-quarter of sexually active high school students and only one-third of sexually active young adults get tested for HIV, according to a research released by AAP Publications.

About 10,000 teens and young adults are diagnosed with HIV every year. Despite the low number, testing is essential since 44 percent of adolescents with HIV remain undiagnosed, the highest percentage of any age group,

"Teens are in a particularly important period of their lives for HIV testing and prevention," said Michelle Van Handel, a health scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Getting tested early would mean getting young adults ready for a life of safe sex and disease prevention habits.

Published in the journal Pediatrics, the report asked high school students and young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 a variety of questions involving HIV testing. One of the questions was: "Have you ever been tested for HIV? (Without counting tests you have done as part of a blood donation).

Teens do not get tested for HIV due to worries about privacy, according to the Huffington Post. Van Handel explains that young adults do not feel comfortable having an HIV test show up on their parents' health insurance bill.

Generally, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are a problem among many teens and young adults, which is why doctors advise yearly screening. Testing is especially important to high-risk patients such as those with multiple sex partners, gay, bisexual men and people who use injection drugs.

Unfortunately, doctors are also not talking to their young patients about the need to maintain sexual health during primary care visits, Only 43 percent of females and 26 percent of males said that they discussed sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and pregnancy during their primary case visit, according to a study published in Pediatrics in 2003.

"Adolescents are more likely to get tested if their physician recommends it," Van Handel said. It is the doctors' responsibility to make it clear that testing for HIV is a normal part of life.

In December 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that all young people under the age of 21 should be regularly tested for HIV infection. The academy also recommended tests for depression and high cholesterol.
The moon was formed by a violent impact produced by the collision between a proto-planet called Theia and the early Earth approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed. This is the conclusion of a new study performed by UCLA geochemists.

Previous research suggested that the newborn Earth was hit by a Mars size forming planet named Theia. New evidence claims that the rocks that became Earth and the moon were mixed together before they separated. This high-energy impact due to collision between the two planets formed the moon, according to study lead author Edward Young, a geochemist and cosmochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

This high-speed crash occurred approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists used to think that Earth collided with Theia at an angle of 45 degrees or more. However, the new study found evidence that suggests a head-on collision, according to the website Space.

According to the website Science20, a head-on collision was initially proposed in the year 2012 by Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute and separately during the same year by Sarah Stewart, now a professor at UC Davis.

In order to come to this conclusion, scientists analyzed volcanic rocks from the Earth's mantle and moon rocks brought to the Earth the Apollo missions. The research team found a chemical signature left by the giant impact in the rocks' oxygen atoms.

The scientists used state-of-the-art technology in order to make very accurate measurements. According to Professor Young, the study could not find any difference between moon's and Earth's oxygen isotopes.

The fact that oxygen in rocks on our moon and on the Earth shares the same chemical signatures proves that Earth and Theia collided in a head-on impact. Theia was mixes into both the moon and the Earth, according to Young.

The forming planet did not survive the collision and was dispersed evenly between the Earth and moon. Most of the scientists believe that the proto-planet Theia was approximately the same size as the Earth.
Dear sales lady at Dillard's Towne East Mall, This is my teenage daughter who wanted to try on dresses for an upcoming... Posted by Megan Naramore Harris on Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Mothers generally want to protect their kids from harm, pain, disappointments, especially from the hurtful comments of fat shamers. So, imagine what a mother would do if her daughter was all smile while trying a dress, then someone suddenly entered the fitting room and insisted that her daughter should wear a Spanx to look good in a dress.

Well, take the case of Megan Naramore Harris and her 13-year-old daughter Lexi, who went shopping for a prom dress at Dillard's Towne East Mall in Wichita, Kansas. The two was having a great time as they were having a mother-daughter moment -- trying different dresses. But the happy moment was spoiled after the sales lady came and said that the dress would only look good on her daughter if she puts a Spanx underneath.

The irked mother quickly took the matter to Facebook and slammed the sales assistant for her comments. She also protected her daughter's appearance by saying Lexi is "not perfect" but she is a healthy and beautiful individual. And reminded the employee that harsh comment has negative effects on other people.

Since the released of the post, it has been shared more than 50,000 times and garnered more than 300,000 likes. Others netizens even expressed their disappointment and swore never to set foot in the said establishment again. While others were inspired by Megan for protecting her child against the body shamer.

After the post went viral, Dillard's contacted the furious mother and asked for an apology. Hence, Harris thanked the company for the effort and for taking the matter seriously.

The store then released a statement to WJW, explaining about the incident and said, "Our mission is to help people feel good about themselves by enhancing the natural beauty found in all of us," the message reads. "We train our sales associates with the goal of creating a completely positive experience with each visit."
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Hyderabad: The court has decided to hear the case of attack on Akbaruddin Owaisi on a daily basis from February 10. Two witnesses will be examined every day, said the court. Mohammed Pahelwan, Hassan Pahelwan and other accused were produced before the court on Thursday, April 30, 2011.

Akbaruddin Owaisi was attacked in broad daylight while he was on his way to attend a party programme in Chandrayangutta Assembly constituency.

Police registered a case against 12 persons including Mohammed Pahelwan and Hassan Pahelwan. The case was under trial at the Nampally criminal court. After the accused were produced in court on Thursday, the court decided to start daily hearing from February 10. In a recent judgement, the Supreme Court ordered in December 2015, to finish the hearing of the case within six months.
British lighting technicians are currently threatening to go on strike because they havent gotten a pay raise in four years, in a labor dispute that could have big ramifications for Hollywood. The producers of nine big-budget American films that are due to begin filming in the next few months are rushing to settle a deal, and the potentially affected films include Star Wars Ep. 8, in addition to others such as Wonder Woman, The Foreigner and The Mummy. Cinemablend claims the lighting technicians are seeking a 5-8.5% raise and are essentially threatening to hold production hostage if an agreement cant be reached.

This issue coincides with a productive period for the British film industry, thanks to how many Hollywood productions have been filmed there in the last few years. The deal set by the producers will be passed to the 600 members of the union, who will vote on whether to accept it or not. If the deal is accepted, then production for the nine films including Star Wars: Episode VIII will move forward.
While Jerusalem venerates its past, Tel Aviv looks toward the future.

Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world; approximately 3.5 million touristsmany on religious pilgrimagearrive every year to visit centuries old holy sites. On the streets, modestly dressed nuns and rabbis cross paths within the narrow alleys of the Old City engendering an air of conservatism. New buildings are erected in the same white limestone that makes up their ancient counterparts to minimize distinction between the old and the new.

In Tel Aviv, modern hotels are popping up monthly alongside long neglected buildings, and bearded cyclists pass purple-haired German expats huddled around the citys mobile book swaps. Young people, who make up nearly a third of Tel Avivs population, are on different sort of pilgrimagethe quest for startup success. But beyond the surface-level differences, nowhere is the divide more evident, yet the soul more constant, than in the food.

In Jerusalem, even new, trendy spots are content rehashing centuries-old regional dishes in modern formats, and kosher eateries remain the norm. This stands in stark contrast to Tel Avivs farm-to-table, craft cocktail, and fusion movements. Modern Asian, Italian, and North African influences are emerging in chic, hipster-approved eateries, where impeccably tattooed waiters will happily serve you pork smothered in cheese. Heres how to eat your way through both citiesand catch some sites along the way.

At the intersection of Sderot Rothschild and Nahalat Binyamin, work your way through a cluster of trendy food and nightlife spots, including Abraxas, which serves modern takes on Levantine classics, like grape-marinated lamb shawarma in tahini sauce, and after 10 p.m. a DJ spins American hits for casual dancing; and Mizlala, which combines Middle Eastern and global flavors. Dishes include Kubaneh (pictured above)Yemenite Jewish bread shaped like a chefs hatwith a tomato and green chili sauce, and sashimi with soy and silan glaze and eggplant tempura. Just a few doors down, Bindella, a chic Swiss transplant, offers an Israeli twist on modern Italian food including a take on panna cotta with limoncello caviar, candied nuts, and pineapple, which alone is worth the visit. One of the most popular restaurants in Tel Aviv now is the elegant Asian eatery Taizu. From the interiorsgray concrete walls, sleek black tables, and glass sconcesto aesthetically plated Shanghainese dumplings and tuna tartar served in a rice cone, everything is artistic and chic.

Walk along the cobblestone streets of Jaffa, popping into charming storefronts with colorful shutters and passing the port, which has been in operation for more than 3,000 years and is home to the largest city-commissioned works of street art.

The evocative Ilana Goor Museum (pictured above), housed in a former soap factory in Jaffa, serves as the famed Israeli artists private home and an open museum (only her bedroom is private), which showcases her private art collection, comprising everything from ancient pottery to large-scale contemporary sculptures. Stop at Haj Kahil for the famously juicy lamb shawarma and a bottomless basket of laffa (a traditional Middle Eastern flatbread baked in a taboon oven) and a slice of kanefehwispy pastry shreds surrounding a soft white cheese, soaked in syrup, and topped with pistachio.

For the heart and soul of Tel Avivs culinary culture, head to the markets. Levinsky Market, a five-block stretch of gourmet bakeries, spice shops and delicatessens founded by Greek and Turkish immigrants in the late 1920s, is the foundation of Tel Avivs gourmet food scene. Nearly a century later, many of the early family-owned shops, like the 40-year-old Yom Tov Deli (famous for its Turkish cheeses and grape leaves, made by the familys 93-year-old grandfather), are still standing. A wave of trendy new eateries, like the Mediterranean-inspired Halutzim 3, have sprouted into the mix.

Less polished than Levinsky, the Carmel Market is where most of the citys working class shops. Youll find golden mounds of spices followed by piles of plump pomegranates, and the occasional gnarly smells and sights, like whole cow carcasses strung from butcher stands and old men dumping ice buckets of pungent fish onto the ground.

Stop at the Druze Chalabi Family stand near Simtat HaCarmel Road for laffa baked on a hot crescent-shaped stone (pictured above), then smeared with labneh (creamy cheese made from strained yogurt with a distinctive, sour taste), pickled lemons and tabouleh (a salad made of chopped tomatoes, parsley, mint, bulgur and onion), and rolled up into a warm wrap that falls apart in your mouth.

The Yemenite Quarter holds some of the markets best-kept secrets. In a hollowed-out kitchen, an over 100-year-old bakery informally named Syrian Cookies (to find it, ask Moran Broza of Delicious Israel) makes only two things: buttery, biscotti-like cookies and burekastriangular pastries filled with cheese and covered in sesame seeds. The simplicity of each belies the mastery of flavors and textures; you could polish off an entire tray with ease.

In Tel Aviv, if youre looking to start an hours long argument, theres no need to bring up religion or politics; the Tel Avivim fight most passionately over who makes the best hummus.

Though the famed Abu-Hasan/Ali Karavan in Jaffa deserves a visit (be prepared to get there early and wait in line), for me, the conflict ends at Shlomo v Doron. A blend of pureed and whole chickpeas, plus a swirl of Egyptian fava puree and an Earl Grey-boiled egg that melts into creamy, fluffy hummus makes it the clear winner. Top it with steaming shakshukapoached eggs cooked in tomato saucefor a twist, and scoop it up with freshly baked pita or sliced onion, and youll be hooked.

Fatout is a pastry made of thin layers of dough baked in traditional metal pot burners and smothered in butter and honey. Get it at Milky Way, a dollhouse-like cafe decorated with postcards from around the world. Though youll come for the pastry, youll stay for a conversation with the adorable owner, Shim Shom. Grab an early cocktail at the bar in The Norman hotel in the heart of the White City, Tel Avivs UNESCO-protected Bauhaus district. Situated in two restored Bauhaus homes from the 1920s, the buildings structural details and interior design are impeccablefrom the sculptural pewter bar to the Portuguese mosaic floors. Order a French 75 and settle into one of the stately leather armchairs.

The Brown Beach House (pictured above) is spearheading a revival of the otherwise lackluster Tel Aviv waterfront. With sea and city views, the hotel bar offers a Miami Vice feel with long white couches, gauzy curtains and a two-story tall vintage Playboy poster, gazing seductively over young Israelis tossing back martinis.

Across the street, the side entrance to the otherwise uninspiring Imperial Hotel leads to a dimly lit cocktail lounge. Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar serves expertly-mixed libations, like the Thyme to Kill with Tanqueray, Ouzo and St. Germain, shaken with mandarin jam, lime and thyme. The bar fills up fast, so call ahead or plan to get there before 9. The new Poli House opens this May in a restored corner-lot Bauhaus building, overlooking the intersection of Nahalat Binyamin and Allenby Streets on Magen David Square. Locals will be buzzing about the rooftop bar, which promises pumping music and an infinity pool cascading over the edge.



Approaching JerusalemIsraels capital city and greatest tourist attractionyoull be enchanted by a sparkling white skyline and ivy-covered buildings that glisten above the cool desert hills. The facade is impressive, better maintained than Tel Aviv; but come night, the city gets quiet, leaving an air of the sacred and the shaken.

One of the more lively spots is the Alrov Mamilla Avenue shopping strip, where strings of lights link designer boutiques to trendy eateries. Find the entry to the mod-chic Mamilla Hotel and head to the roof for a peaceful, picturesque view of the Old City, Tower of David, and Jaffa Gate, all lit up at night. Stay for dinner to taste what many Tel Aviv chefs call the impossible: haute, kosher food without compromise or blandness. Chef Cobi Bachars winning dish is the bone marrow with Jerusalem artichoke, white truffle, and veal brain. Wash it down with an Israeli-made Cabernet.

The heart of Jerusalem beats in the Old City. The scene is as youd imagine it from the Bible: a girl wearing a white tunic strokes a harp and women dressed in long black robes and pillbox hats pass. Today, the 6,000-year-old walled city is one of the most important destinations for pilgrims of several major religions. But the sites are fascinating for anyone with a penchant for ancient history. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (pictured above), Catholics pay respects at the site of Jesus crucifixion and anoint themselves with the oils above his tomb.

Steps away, Jews pray at the Western Wall (pictured above), the last remaining piece of the Jewish Temple; scribble down a wish or a prayer and tuck it into a crack in the wall (you may dislodge about a handful of other notes in the process; its OK), and its said to go straight to God. And the Dome of the Rock twinkles over East Jerusalem, commemorating the Prophet Muhammads mystical Night Journey.

Between the sites, the windy cobblestone streets are tightly packed with stalls selling rosaries, mezuzahs and Moroccan-made clothing; the paths lead you seamlessly through four quarters occupied by Christians, Muslims, Jews and Armenians. Look beyond the tchotchkes and youll uncover some of the citys best food. In a hidden stone kitchen, a few minutes walk from the Coptic Church, get the Zalatimo familys murtabak. The pastry starts with a wad of filo dough, kneaded pizza-style and stretched out until its paper-thin. It is stuffed with a spongy sheep cheese, folded up like an envelope, and baked in the oven. Once its baked, the murtabak is dressed in simple syrup and powdered sugar. Each lightly crisp bite oozes oily, sweet goodness.

A ten minute walk from the Old City on Artists Colony alleyway, chef Moshe Basson, a monkish figure and Iraqi transplant, riffs on biblical cooking at his restaurant The Eucalyptus. Order the maqluba (pictured above)a Palestinian dish of rice with chicken legs, eggplant and other vegetables that is traditionally flipped upside down to serve. The casserolethink busier paellaends with an almost caramelized layer of meat and rice stuck to the bottom of the pot; thats the best part.

At Yemenite Falafel, there is only one thing on the menu. While there are hundreds of places to get falafel (pictured above) in Jerusalem, this place is the real deal: perfectly crisp outside and fluffy inside, the chickpeas are ground with fresh parsley, and the falafel always comes out hot and fresh. The owners have even been known to give you some fresh falafel balls to crunch on while you are waiting. Plan to go early Friday afternoon; like many places in Jerusalem, it keeps Sabbath, meaning its closed Friday night and Saturday.

Jerusalems (cleaner) equivalent to the Carmel market is Machane Yehuda (pictured above), where more than 250 vendors vie for your attention, new shekels, and taste buds. For 99 Shekels ($25), you can buy a Shuk Bites tasting card in advance, which makes the decisions easier by giving you generous tastings at more than half a dozen of the most popular vendors. Highlights include Hatzaforia, a Georgian bakery where you can get Imeruli (a comforting pizza-like pastry stuffed with spinach and cheese), and Mousseline, an ice cream shop that churns exotic flavors, like basil and saffron.

Not included in the card but a must-visit is Azura. Shabi Sherfler runs the small stand his father, Ezra, opened in the market in 1952. Their signature dish is kubbeh, a semolina dumpling stuffed with beef, and eggplant stuffed with ground beef, cinnamon, and pine nuts. You might think youve had goodeven greatrugelach, but the chocolate rugelach at Marzipan change your world. The secret is the chocolate-to-dough ratio: Where most make it 80 percent dough and 20 percent chocolate, we do the reverse, says Itzik Ozarko, the current owner and son of the bakerys founder. Once its rolled, the cookie is painted with a coconut, vanilla, honey-like glaze that makes the cookie fall apart in your mouth.

The markets eponymous restaurant Machneyuda makes the case that tradition can be still be as compelling, if not more compelling, than anything else. The decor hits that sweet spot between your Jewish grandmothers kitchen and a hipster Williamsburg eaterythink long wooden tables, family photos on the walls and intentionally mismatching floral-printed plates. The staff dance and take shots in the open kitchen to get the crowd going. While youll be hard-pressed to find a dish you dont like, the most engaging is the dessert: a group of servers swarm the table, feverishly flinging caramel, raspberry, and chocolate syrups; catapults of whipped cream; and fragments of apple pie, cornmeal cake, and fresh fruit. Dont be shy about using your hands.

When it starts to wrap up around 2 a.m., the proprietors would love for you to continue the party across the street at the even rowdier Yudale; they own and run that too.

Christina is a beach kid living in Brooklyn and a world traveler on a budget. She writes about food, style, traveland the occasional short story.
There was some expectation in the film world that the next film from Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, her longtime writer and collaborator, would take as its subject the strange case of military deserter Bowe Bergdahl that is now being investigated in the second season of the podcast Serial. Boal has done extensive reporting for the show, but for the moment that project has been put on standby. Instead, the next film from Boal and Bigelow (the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty) will tackle the 1967 race riots in Detroit. The crime drama, as yet untitled, will start shooting this summer, with an eye on a 2017 release date to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the riots. Boal has been researching this film for a year now, and told Deadline that he and Bigelow will come back to the Bergdahl case when theres a resolutionBergdahls trial for desertion has not yet been resolved.

Nobody in Washington predicted that Bowes journey would take so many twists and turns and would continue to be unresolved, Boal said. I certainly didnt see it coming and I was working on this other story at the same time. Its also a very timely tale that deals with systemic racism in a way I think is relevant to contemporary audiences. It felt like the right thing to do to go ahead with the Detroit project.
Perhaps W.B. Belchers Lay Down Your Weary Tune wont turn out to be another High Fidelitythat is, another book that launched a thousand wistful or grateful Thats the book I would have written if Id written a book about what music means to me from legions of heartbroken, music-obsessed guys. In fact, Lay Down Your Weary Tune more closely resembles another Nick Hornby book, Juliet, Naked, about a guy who defines himself by his exhaustively informed fixation on a long-retired musician whose own diminished self and corrosive self-loathing also feature prominently in the book.

As its titleborrowed from a majestic song Bob Dylan wrote in 1963suggests, Lay Down Your Weary Tune is steeped in the folk mythos of Dylan, Woody Guthrie and the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s. The narrator, Jack Wyeth, a sometimes folk musician and failed writer, has built his life around his pre-occupation with enigmatic and elusive folk-rocker Eli Page. Pages musical history and longtime penchant for self-mythologizing bear strong similarities to Dylans, and Wyeth describes the impact Pages music has had on his life in much the same way Dylan himself describes the first time he heard Woody Guthries records in his 2004 memoir Chronicles Vol. 1: When I first heard him it was like a million megaton bomb had dropped. [Guthries songs] had the infinite sweep of humanity in them Woody Guthrie tore everything in his path to pieces. Likewise, Jack Wyeth writes, [S]omewhere Eli Page is singing the blues, and people like me can feel their lives ripping apart at the seams.

Like Dylan, Wyeth befriends his idol in deep decline. Dylan famously visited Guthrie in a hospital in New Jersey where the folk icon lay decimated by Huntingtons Chorea. Dylan began to write his own songs and take up the challenge he heard Guthrie issue to him, through his records, before they even met: Ill be going away, but Im leaving this job in your hands. I know I can count on you.

The fairy tale-like story of Dylan and Guthriethe disciple dutifully sitting at the feet of his dying heromight be the nicest part of the many Dylan myths thats actually true. In his memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, fellow folkie Dave Van Ronk, who portrays his former friend Dylan with no illusions, sentimentality or rectitude, acknowledges that Bob was a genuinely stand-up guy when it came to Guthrie.

Jack Wyeth and Eli Pages relationship proves much more prickly. Once, as an undergraduate managing a campus folk concert, Jack briefly encounters Eli Page as a near-no show who appears just before curtain and captivates the crowdmyth made flesh, just as advertised. But Jacks real involvement with his idol begins years later in his own downward-spiraling life as a failed musician and writer still reeling from an ugly breakup, when Elis manager offers him a gig ghostwriting the folk legends memoirs.

Jack finds Eli living in a dilapidated farmhouse in a riverside upstate New York town, emaciated, irascible, often drunk and utterly unwilling to cooperate with Jack or have any part of the writing project. Whats more, Eli inhabits a startlingly silent house from which he seems to have banished all music and any memory of it. The rest of the town is nearly as unwelcoming to Jack as Eli, although he does strike up a promising friendship with a whip-smart, thoughtful and intriguing young woman named Jenny, who seems to know the painful personal stories Eli refuses to share but guards the old mans secrets as closely as Eli himself.

Aside from a few interest-piquing moments with Jenny, the first 150 pages of the book (dubbed FIRST) are tough-going. Belcher goes to great lengths to establish Jack Wyeth as a non-entityawkward, stilted, and utterly flummoxed by the stand-offish Eli Page. His blunt, sledgehammer-like efforts to get Eli to talk about his life seem more like inserted plot devices to keep Elis story from coming out too soon than the plausible efforts of a guy with journalistic experience whos apparently overmatched by this particular subject. Elis dialogue alternates between monosyllabic mundanities and press conference outtakes from D.A. Pennebakers Dont Look Back that were just as evasive, but not clever enough to make the movie.

At times Belcher seems uncertain about whether he wants to present the warts-and-all, masks-stripped-away, determinedly-dull-as-dirt Eli Page and the still-feisty, laconic genius. As I struggled through this section, I began to wonder if an author living out many a Dylanologists dreamto find a publisher whod give him carte blanche to cram as many Dylan allusions into his book as he has in his headhad blown such a magical opportunity. Much later, it becomes clear that Belcher is constructing a convincing and compelling character (albeit a little too slowly), for whom croaking out Dylanesque, self-mythologizing, faux-evocative nonsense isnt an image-burnishing put-on anymore. After 50 years, its as involuntary and automatic as calling the dog or telling his guest that hes going to take out the trash.

Mutual understanding between Jack and Eli (as well as Jack and Jenny) evolves slowly as the book progresses, but whats remarkable about this book is what an absolute delight to read it becomes after that difficult and overlong first sectionand how quickly the change comes about. All it takes, it seems, is a wonderfully realized scene that ingeniously evokes the song referenced in the novels title to help Belchers book take flight. After weeks of being ignored and angrily put off by his purported writing partner, one morning Jack surreptitiously follows Eli and his dog deep into the woods behind Elis house to a riverside graveyard. Eli catches Jack in the act and advises him to shut up and listen to the sonic landscape at the spot where Eli says he goes each day to collect his thoughts and escape his consuming self-loathing. Jack does, and finds his mind flooded with washes of memory and imagery. He goes back to the farmhouse and starts writing a song to the tune of the Scottish hymn The Water is Widemelodic inspiration for Dylans Lay Down Your Weary Tune, itself a song in part about embracing symphonic sounds in nature. Jack Wyeth comes into focus, and Belchers book becomes wonderfully engrossing and rewarding reading from that moment forward.

In the near-final reckoning of Eli Page, Belcher finds and reveals something well beyond validating grief-on-a-gilded-chair rock star self-pity: For so long, Id wanted to stand in Elis shoes, to live inside his life, to be him in every possible way, but I finally saw what he was trying to show me. Like rushing water, the past had washed over him and pulled him under. Sorrow was too weak a word for what I felt for Eli, pity too short and sweet. Hed spent his entire life pretending to be something he wasnt. I mourned for the Eli Page who never had a chance to exist.

Until I read that paragraph, rock critic Lester Bangss pithy line Dylan faked his whole career seemed both accurate and insightful, and an odd sort of compliment from a writer who clearly recognized how real the impact of Dylans songs has been on his fans, however fake the shifting personas of the man who sang them. But Bangs never made me wonder what remains, 50 years later, of the person who preceded the personas. W.B. Belcher did.

Steve Nathans-Kelly is a writer and editor based in Ithaca, New York.
February! Its the shortest month, which means you have the critical responsibility to squeeze even more hours of streaming content into your daily routine. The good news is, Netflix can help. This month, the worlds Streaming King is bringing a whole new slate of goodies into your household. Along with a much-anticipated Full House reboot, weve got one of the great satirical war films of all time, an overlooked coming-of-age classic, one of the best documentaries of the decade, and a stand-up special from one of Pastes favorite comedians.

Check out our featured recommendations, and read below for the full list of this months new offerings. Happy Leap Year!



Year: 1987

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Available: Feb. 1

Before filling out, rather unfortunately, before our eyes on Law & Order: Criminal Minds, Vincent DOnofrio piled on 70 lbs. for his role as Pvt. Gomer Pyle Lawrence before demonstrating exactly what was his Major Malfunction was to R. Lee Ermeys Gunnery Sgt. Hartman. Stanley Kubricks film is a meat grinder of a reflection on the myriad horrible choices confronted in war. Along with providing an apex for Matthew Modines career, it also makes its case for being one of the best war movies ever made .Scott Wold





Year: 2015

Director: Rick Famuyiwa

Available: Feb. 10

At its core, Dope is a coming-of-age story told from the black geek perspective. Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a brainy high school student whos trying to leave The Bottoms of Inglewood, California. This isnt a straight-up, feel-good comedydrugs and gangs arent easy comic fodderbut Dope satirizes preconceived notions of race and culture. Famuyiwa keeps things entertaining while still posing hard-hitting questions to the characters and audience. Dopes infectious energy, and Famuyiwas tendency to throw genre and stereotypes to the wind, is refreshing. Dope is dope. Christine N. Ziemba





Year: 2016

Director: Hannibal Buress

Available: Feb. 5

Somehow, between Broad City, The Eric Andre Show, his own Comedy Central show and various movie roles (dude steals Daddys Home), Hannibal Buress still finds time for stand-up. His latest special Comedy Camisado hits Netflix the first Friday in February, and despite his ever-increasing fame he still has the same low-key charm that made you dig him in the first place. As funny as Buress is on the screen, hes at his best on stage, and if Comedy Camisado is anything like his previous specials, itll be one of the best of the year.Garrett Martin





Year: 2013

Director: John Maloof & Charlie Siskel

Available: Feb. 27

When Vivian Maier died at the age of 83 in the spring of 2009, those who had known the woman remembered her as a nanny with a humorously stiff gait and a penchant for taking photographs. Since Maiers death, her narrative has been radically rewritten, her striking street photography celebrated in exhibitions from Los Angeles to London. That such a private, peculiar woman could retroactively be recognized as one of the best photographers of the last 50 years is a testament to the untold great art being made under our collective nose.Tim Grierson





Better Call Saul (Season 1)

The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (Season 1)

Mashas Tales (Season 1)

Pokemon: XY (Season 1)

A Picture of You (2014)

Armageddon (1998)

Charlies Angels (2000)

Collateral Damage (2002)

Cruel Intentions (1999)

A Faster Horse (2015)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Game Face (2015)

Jennifer 8 (1992)

Johnny English (2003)

The Little Engine That Could (2011)

Losing Isaiah (1995)

My Side of the Mountain (1969)

Para Elisa (2012)

Pokemon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction (2014)

Scooby-Doo (2002)

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)

Sin City (2005)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Stardust (2007)

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Teen Witch (1989)

Tin Man: Search for the Emerald (2007)

The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom (2011)



Land Before Time: XIV: Journey of the Brave (2016)



I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)



Love (2015)



Care Bears & Cousins (Season 2)

Mad Men (Season 7: Part 2)

Turbo: F.A.S.T. (Season 3)

Hannibal Buress: Comedy Camisado



Lila & Eve (2015)



Dope (2015)

The Girl in the Book (2015)



The Face of Love (2013)



Open Season (2006)

XXY (2007)



Asthma (2015)

Atonement (2007)



The Returned (Season 2)



Cooked (Season 1)

Love (Season 1)



3rd World Cops 2 (2015)



Bare (2015)



Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight! (2015)



Fuller House (Season 1)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)

Theo Von (2016)



Finding Vivian Maier (2013)



Ashes and Embers (1982)
Fresh off an avalanche of best-of-the-year acclaim, Detroit post-punk ambassadors Protomartyr recently embarked on a nationwide tour to hammer out their Android-tight rhythms, menacing chord play and haunting, domesticity-skewering lyrics. Supporting their unforgettable third LP, The Agent Intellect, the foursome started the tour in Columbus, Ohio at Ace of Cups, the former bank turned music venue owned by former Scrawl frontwoman Marcy Mays. Sean Edgar was there to capture the air-tight set in all of its sweaty, overdriven glory. Check out Protomartyr on their current tour before they hit Europe and Barcelonas Primavera Sound Festival.

Sean Edgar

www.seanmedgar.com

Protomartyr

www.protomartyrband.com

www.facebook.com/protomartyr

1 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

2 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

3 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

4 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

5 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

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7 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

8 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

9 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar

10 of 27 Protomartyr Sean Edgar
While Americans silently suffer from bland Kit Kat flavors, Nestle just announced that on February 1st, they will release a Sake flavored Kit Kat in Japan.

The wafers will be coated in white chocolate, with sake powder separating the wafers from the white chocolate. According to NariNari, The candy bar contains .8 percent alcohol and has a light sake aftertaste. There is no indication of whether identification would be required to purchase this flavor, or how many children could get buzzed from eating too much.

Interestingly, this is not Japans most creative Kit Kat flavor. Many people regard Japan as the Kit Kat capital of the world. There are currently Brandy and Orange, Purple Sweet Potato, Hot Japanese Chili, Wasabi and tatter tot flavored Kit Kat bars. Stay classy, Japan.
While films like The Birth of a Nation and Swiss Army Man have been rightfully drawing attention at Sundance Film Festival, the movie mainstays less foofy cousin, Slamdance, has been going on next door. The festival, which has been around since 1995, is noted for its openness to independent, low-budget films and genre pieces; among the directors who first garnered attention at Slamdance are Christopher Nolan, Marc Forster, and Jared Hess.

Today, Slamdance announced the winners of its audience and jury prizes. Some of the notable results:

- The Million Dollar Duck was the big winner of the festival, taking both the audience and jury awards for Best Documentary Feature. The Brian Golden Davis-directed film focuses on wildlife artists who compete in the Federal Duck Stamp Contest, discussing their quest to make the best duck painting and touching on the impact the contest has on nature conservation efforts. According to Deadline, Animal Planet and Lionsgate have already shelled out for the distribution rights to the film.

- Honey Buddies won the audience award for Best Narrative Feature. Alex Simmons film tells the story of a man dumped days before his wedding who doesnt cancel his backpacking honeymoon: he just does the trip with his German best man. Naturally, crazy and intense things happen.

- Driftwood claimed the jury award for Best Narrative Feature. Written, directed, and shot by Paul Taylor, the dialogue-free film depicts a woman who washes up on a beach, is taken in by an older man who conditions her to be his wife, and subsequently rebels against the man.

Check out the full list of award winners at Slamdances website.
In Songs Illustrated, we enlist our favorite comic book artists and cartoonists to translate songs into sequential art.

Black metal pioneers Deafheaven has spent half a decade exploring the contrast between euphoric washes of ethereal noise and relentless tidal waves of barbed metal glory. Blurs of serrated guitar, heart attack percussion and George Clarkes sandpaper rasp have pushed the group into a new space that straddles traditional Scandinavian chaos with something much less definable. That hybrid intensity reached a new apex with 2015s New Bermuda, an album that seamlessly gallops along assaulting guitar lines and tear-jerk adagio piano outros with equal conviction. And dont get us started on the live shows.

In our latest Songs Illustrated, writer and illustrator Becky Cloonan channels eight-and-a-half-minute album closer, Gifts for the Earth, into a visual elegy of haunting beauty with an insidious corewhich couldnt be more appropriate. Cloonan currently co-writes the eerie underside of Batmans stomping grounds in Gotham Academy as well as the cosmic horror slow burn of Southern Cross. Here, she harkens back to the brutal, lonely lament of works like her self-published one-shots Wolves, Demeter and The Mire as well as her stint on writer Brian Woods viking epic, Northlanders.

Deafheaven is currently on tour and Ms. Cloonan is currently prepping her new ongoing Punisher run at Marvel.

More Songs Illustrated

Josh Ritters Henrietta, Indiana by S.M. VidaurriBear in Heavens Demon by Tula LotaySaintsenecas Bad Ideas by Julian DassaiThe Good Lifes How Small We Are by Noah Van SciverNeko Cases Wild Creatures by Emily Carroll
New Delhi: The CBIs investigation into an alleged corruption case involving Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals principal secretary Rajendra Kumar has come under the scanner with a special court saying the agency had utterly failed to comply with the mandatory provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code in its probe.

The court said that it was not informed by the agency about the freezing of bank accounts of a company and the CBI had admitted after one month in its reply filed on a plea by the firm, Laxmi Enterprises, seeking defreezing of three bank accounts.

The proprietor of Laxmi Enterprises, Dinesh Kumar Gupta, is also the director of Endeavour System Pvt Ltd, which is under probe by the CBI in the graft case allegedly involving Mr Kumar.

Special CBI Judge Ajay Kumar Jain observed that till date, the agency is unable to show even prima facie that the frozen accou-nts of the firm have any direct link with the commission of alleged crime.

There appears to be no compliance of section 102(3) CrPC by CBI... every police officer acting under sub section (3) shall forthwith report the seizure or attachment of accounts to the magistrate having jurisdiction, the judge noted.

From the record, it is clear that after freezing the account on December 18, 2015, CBI has not informed this court ... (the) CBI (for the) first time admitted freezing of the bank account of the applicant firm in its reply dated January 18, 2016, to this application, the court said in its order.
January 13, 2017

The older, business generation criticizes my generation for a vague, object-less idealism. We want to change the world, but we have no idea what we would like to change it into. We want to make a difference  we are relatively inarticulate on the difference we would like to make. The criticism fits: we are hankering for some target to aim our rainbow-rays of impact-making sentiment. But the effort to locate the source of this problem in Disney movies and... Read more
Patna: Angered by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to ban sale and consumption of alcohol in Bihar, a man threw a 'chappal' (sandal) at him at a public function in Bakhtiarpur where the Chief Minister had launched a long speech in defense of his decision to impose prohibition in the state.

The incident occurred at a function in honor of freedom fighter Pandit Sheelbhadra Yaji to mark the 20th anniversary of his death. Former Chief Minister of Haryana Bhupendra Singh Hudda was also present on the occasion.

The man who was yet to be identified hurled a chappal at Kumar but missed him by several feet. He was immediately overpowered by the security guards on duty and hauled to the police station.

"The rumors of my backing down on prohibition are not true as all liquor shops in Bihar will be shut down come April 1," he said adding the ban would be imposed in phases with country-liquor shops to be shut down on April 1 followed by all other alcohol shops in the coming days.

Under the new policy, sale of foreign liquors would be made only at government-owned retail shops under strict government rules.

An unperturbed Chief Minister continued his speech as the man was dragged away to the police station, report said.
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
Internet Freedom in Iran Will Benefit From Sanctions Relief

01/29/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Increased foreign investment and access to foreign companies technology products in Iran now that sanctions against Tehran have been lifted will not only aid the countrys ailing economy, it will also give Internet access a vital boost.



A shop in Tehran selling Apple products



Long hampered by government Internet restrictions and hamstrung by sanctions that limited the ability to buy censorship-bypassing software, Iranians will now be able to obtain the tools and services needed for greater Internet access.

The removal of sanctions will be unequivocally positive for Iranian Internet users, Collin Anderson, a researcher on Iranian Internet policy, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Both the human rights community and policy makers have long understood that greater access to information technology empowers the public to bypass governmental controls on expression.

While US companies will still be restricted in their dealings with Iran due to the continuation of most American sanctions against the Islamic Republic, European companies, as well as the foreign affiliates and subsidiaries of US companies, are free to do business with Iran.

One of the immediate benefits will be Iranians access to secure international SSL certificates. These certificates are critical to Internet freedom; they ensure that a users connection to a server is encrypted and thus any content passing over that connection is undecipherable. With activists in Iran imprisoned for their online activities, security is vital.

Previously, Iranians could not purchase international SSL certificates, due to financial sanctions. As a result, they had to buy Iranian national SSL certificates, which allowed state authorities to decrypt the connection and gain access to accounts.

Iranians will also now be able to purchase web hosting services from companies based outside Iran. Without physical access to the servers, state authorities cannot gain access to user accounts, a danger Iranians faced when they could only purchase these services from domestic companies.

In addition, Iranians will now be able to purchase original copies of popular applications, ensuring that they dont inadvertently buy fake copies of software that are designed to allow state authorities backdoor access to accounts.

There are still pitfalls. US companies were allowed to sell personal communications tools to Iran under the General D1 license issued by the US Treasury Department in 2013. However, many companies refused to sell or make their services available to Iranians, for fear of running afoul of US compliance regulations. As a result, many items that were technically permissible were still not available to Iranians.

Erich Ferrari, a legal expert who specializes in U.S. sanctions on Iran, cautions against heady expectations: I dont see anything in terms of the sanctions reliefs legal effect that would suggest it would have immediate and direct benefits for Irans telecommunication industry. Through exemptions in the embargo, OFACs prior statements of licensing policy, and General License D-1, there was already a lot of legal authority from the U.S. side that authorized telecommunications transactions. Also, with the exception of some authorities targeting parties engaged in human rights abuses through the use of information technology, there were no secondary sanctions or designation authorities impacting that particular sector of Irans economy, he said, in remarks to the Campaign.

And Internet researcher Anderson warns, The onus is now on the private sector to reopen their services and platforms to Iranian users.

Nevertheless, with international banking transactions with the Islamic Republic permissible, private sector reluctance to sell to Iran will likely be reduced.

Some technology companies, such as Microsoft, have already resumed email services to Iranians. Apple, Hewlett-Packard (Suisse) Sarl, the Swiss-based subsidiary of the US-based company, and the Hong-Kong-based Lenovo Group are exploring a return to the Iranian market, as well, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The lifting of sanctions has also raised expectations for investment in transforming Irans communications infrastructure-a goal shared not only by activists, but also by many Iranian officials in President Rouhanis administration who believe such an infrastructure upgrade is essential for a modern economy.

On January 21, 2016, Communications and Information Technology Minister Mahmoud Vaezi said, that Iran hoped to see increased investment geared towards increasing the countrys limited Internet bandwidth levels. This would increase Internet speeds in Iran, facilitating professional and commercial communications. It would also benefit the Iranian human rights and activist community, which has long been hampered by slow Internet speeds that impede online information sharing.

Alireza Yari, secretary of the Native Search Engine Guidance Council, said on January 22, 2016, that Iran could collaborate with Google and Yahoo. Previously we had expressed interest in collaborating with domestic search engines in Russia, South Korea and China. But they did not show any interest because Irans domestic market is not attractive to them, he added.

Legal expert Ferrari added that Irans access to billions of dollars of blocked assets would enable the country to import the high-tech equipment necessary to upgrade its communications infrastructure. We may see an indirect impact on the industry-as we will with all Iranian industry-due to the availability of more foreign currency, since Iran will be reintegrated into the global economy and will no longer have its foreign reserves from oil sales tied up in restricted accounts abroad, he noted.

With more foreign currency available, it should allow for greater importation of goods, services, and technology that could further expand and modernize telecommunication infrastructure in Iran. Also, greater interest from foreign investors could lead to investment in the telecommunication sector, which would also further its growth, Ferrari continued.

In recent weeks there has been a growing number of requests from Iranians on social media for major tech companies to move forward with sales to Iran, now that sanctions have been lifted. For example, Farhad Bagheri, who has been a user of the Docker software services in Iran, sent an email to the company requesting a resumption of services. Dockers founder wrote back, We are going to check with our legal tech whether there is any procedure we should follow. Then we will move right away to open the service.

Internet freedom experts cautioned that the lifting of sanctions should not be seen as an opportunity to give Iranian authorities access to online spying technology.

These openings are not opportunities for foreign companies to collaborate with the Iranian government to tighten controls and spying on the publics communications. The US and Europe both maintain longstanding restrictions against the provision of censorship and surveillance equipment to Iran, including Executive Order 13606, TRA 703, and Council Regulation (EU) No 264/2012. These sanctions remain in place, and include extraterritorial sanctions and other punitive mechanism against companies found to have contributed to the Iranian governments violation of human rights, Colin Anderson told the Campaign.
Iran and France Sign Major Trade Deals

01/29/16

Report by VOA; photos by Islamic Republic News Agency



French President Francois Hollande shakes hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Jan. 28, 2016.

(photo by

French President Francois Hollande shakes hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Jan. 28, 2016.(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has signed trade deals with France worth billions of dollars following the lifting of international sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.

"We are ready to turn the page for a new relationship between our two countries," he told a group of French business leaders in Paris after his arrival Thursday in the French capital.

"We are announcing today that we are ready for this and on this trip we bring this message toward all investors, economic bodies, that they are welcome in Iran."







WATCH: Iranian president speaks on bilateral relations with Paris





Business deals

Later Thursday, Rouhani met with French President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace. Some 20 agreements were signed in the presence of the two leaders, including in the areas of health, agriculture and the environment.





Iranian and French Foreign Ministers Javad Zarif (L) and Laurent Fabius sign an agreement with Iranian and French Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Francois Hollande standing behind them in Paris, Jan. 28, 2016.

(photo by

Iranian and French Foreign Ministers Javad Zarif (L) and Laurent Fabius sign an agreement with Iranian and French Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Francois Hollande standing behind them in Paris, Jan. 28, 2016.(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency



Iran Air has agreed to update its aging fleet by purchasing 118 passenger planes from European aircraft maker Airbus, in a deal worth an estimated $25 billion. French sources said the sale, which includes both medium- and long-haul planes, will be finalized once international sanctions against Iran are fully lifted.

Another deal will pave the way for a joint venture between French car manufacturer Peugeot Citroen and the Iranian firm Khodro. Peugeot, which pulled out of Iran in 2012, will modernize a Khodro factory near Tehran. It's expected to produce 200,000 vehicles a year starting in 2017.

Also, the French oil firm Total announced a deal to buy oil from Iran, the first such agreement with a Western oil company following the lifting of sanctions.







Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and French President Francois Hollande applaud the signing of agreements in Paris, Jan. 28, 2016.

(photo by

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and French President Francois Hollande applaud the signing of agreements in Paris, Jan. 28, 2016.(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency



After the meeting with Rouhani, Hollande lauded the new chapter in relations, saying "this relationship can be useful, useful to our two countries, useful to the region, which is marked by war, by crises and therefore by tragedies, and useful to the world."

He said he reminded the Iranian leader that France was "committed to human rights."

Rouhani, for his part, told reporters that Iran and France should share intelligence to fight against "fanaticism, terrorism and extremism."









Protests greet Iranian president

Rouhani's arrival in Paris on Thursday was met by protests, notably over executions in Iran. In one demonstration, a woman dangled from a Paris bridge in a mock hanging, with an Iranian flag painted on her chest.

His visit to France is the first by an Iranian president since 1999 and comes as part of a five-day trip. It included a stop in Rome, where he signed an estimated $18 billion in deals for steel and pipelines.
Washington Post Journalist Welcomed Home After Iran Imprisonment

01/29/16

By Nike Ching, Ken Bredemeier, VOA

Emotional comments from freed reporter Jason Rezaian as he returns to @washingtonpost https://t.co/eW321rjCrp https://t.co/ApqC3U8rL3  CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) January 28, 2016

Freed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian says his Iranian captors told him the newspaper did not exist and no one knew of his predicament.

Rezaian, who was imprisoned by Iran for 545 days, was welcomed home Thursday by his newsroom colleagues and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the Post's new headquarters not far from the White House in downtown Washington.

Rezaian occasionally struggled for composure as he told his story. For much of the 18 months I was in prison, my Iranian interrogators told me The Washington Post did not exist, that no one knew of my plight, that the U.S. government would not lift a finger for my release, the former Tehran bureau chief told a cheering throng. Today I am in this room with the very people who helped prove the Iranians wrong.







Watch: Jason Rezaian's emotional return





The 39-year-old Rezaian said it was "truly humbling" that so many people, including U.S. government officials, journalists and his relatives and friends fought for so long to get Iran to release him. No other country would do so much for an ordinary citizen, and I know that, he said.

Rezaian was accompanied by his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, his brother Ali, and their mother, Mary Rezaian.

An Iranian court convicted him of espionage, but neither the nature of the charges against him nor his sentence was ever publicly disclosed.

"A week ago on Saturday, was one of the days I enjoyed the most as secretary of state, said Kerry, referring to the day when Rezaian was released.

For months, the newspaper and the U.S. government protested his detention, but he was not freed until January 16, the same day the United States and five other world powers implemented an agreement with Tehran curbing its ability to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting sanctions that have hobbled the Iranian economy.

Four other Americans were also released at the same time, while the U.S. freed seven Iranians who had been convicted or accused of violating the trade sanctions.

"This is particularly sweet for everyone for Jason to be home," an emotional Kerry said. "This gnawed at us because we knew the consequences" of his jailing.

'Reporting the truth is not a crime'

To those who try to intimidate or imprison reporters, we need to stand up and say committing journalism and reporting on the truth is not a crime, said Kerry, while voicing concerns over challenges faced by many journalists around the world including those reporting from war zones.

He added the State Department and United States Agency for International Development are sponsoring programs to support independent media in more than 30 countries.





WATCH: Secretary Kerry Comments on Release of Jason Rezaian



As the newspaper officially dedicated its new building, Kerry extolled the virtue of a free and independent media presence in democratic countries.

Kerry said that 71 journalists were killed last year because of their profession and the work they did, with another 200 jailed by repressive governments.

"No government...can clearly call itself great," Kerry said, "if it doesn't allow freedom of expression. A country without a free and independent press has nothing to brag about."
Strategy Abroad for Obama's Last Year

01/29/16

By Robert E. Hunter (Source: LobeLog)

With less than a year left in his presidency, Barack Obama has said he will do all he can for America at home, bypassing Congress if need be with executive orders. He can also act on his own in foreign policy and national security, at least to set the nation on a useful course beyond his own tenure.

Obama can be proud of many foreign policy achievements, but one stands out: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Debate here continues, but for the foreseeable future, a possible Iranian nuclear weapon is no longer a central worry. The next occupant of the Oval Office will be thankful to Obama for what he did. No president who values US national security would even think of abrogating the agreement. It has become a useful baseline for dealing with the Middle East.

But there remains a vast agenda that demands US leadership. Although no one outside the government can give useful advice on every jot and tittle of tactics-and thus none will be advanced here on the most vexing matter, the effort to degrade and destroy the Islamic State (ISIS or IS)-its worth advancing some broader strategic directions.

Stabilizing the Middle East

In the Middle East, any foreign policy strategy must grapple with Syrias future, whether President Bashar al-Assad leaves office in the near future or only much later. Most important, it must set forth concrete measures to ensure the safety and security of all of Syrias confessional groups. No such realistic possibilities have yet been advanced, beyond some general parameters and a process taking place in Vienna. That is nowhere near good enough, and Obama and his team owe it to everyone to lead in developing a coherent set of propositions. The US must also make clear that it will stop being a pawn in the Sunni-Shia civil war.

The administration also finally needs to insist that Saudi Arabia stop fueling the flames of the Islamic State through the flow of inspiration, money, and thus arms to Wahhabi terrorists in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. For some reason, the US has refused to read the riot act to Riyadh. Because Saudi Arabia must sell its oil, it needs us more than we need it. But so long as we dont take a firm position, there is no way to defeat IS and other Islamist terrorists.

Obama also should explore ways of developing a more positive relationship with Iran. That must start with vigorous opposition to all efforts to vitiate the JCPOA, especially when sponsored by countries that depend on us, notably Gulf Arab states and Israel. We should create regular diplomatic linkages with Tehran, not just the episodic (and valuable) efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry. That should include an attempt-provided it is matched by Iran-to reopen formal diplomatic relations.

The administration also needs to start formulating criteria for new security arrangements for the region of the Persian Gulf (and farther west). These should be based on the proposition that, even as each country continues to compete for power and influence, all can have similar interests in stabilizing arms balances, ending conflicts, and avoiding new ones where the likely outcomes are everyones loss.

Getting from here to there is not now possible. But criteria need to be set, conversations started, and some first steps taken. Only the US can lead. In light of some near misses in the last few weeks- notably Irans catch and release of 10 US Navy personnel-there needs to be an Incidents at Sea Agreement for the Persian Gulf, including all the nations that depend on that critical waterway. The US and the Soviet Union managed to do this in 1972, at the height of the Cold War, and that agreement is still in force (with Russia). This should have been done years ago. President Obama needs no ones permission to get this going immediately.

Transforming Europe

In Europe, President Obama needs to reinvigorate relations with the allies. Most of them are worried that the United States cares very little about what happens in Europe. This is most notable in the major downgrading of the attention Washington pays to NATO and its unwillingness to make more than token gestures to help hard-pressed European states deal with the most massive and disruptive flow of refugees and other migrants since the end of World War II. Yet as Obama has himself said, anything useful we want to do in the world would be facilitated by having the support and cooperation of allies and partners in Europe. Every NATO nation sent troops to help in Afghanistan. But we have not reciprocated adequately to help meet Europes pressing needs. It will thus be much more difficult for us to enlist European help elsewhere in the world, including in the Middle East.

President Obama is going to the Hannover Messe (fair) in April to promote the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. It is even more important for him to go to the mid-February Munich Security Conference, which for more than a half-century has been the premier forum where American leaders have demonstrated US leadership and our continuing political and security commitment to the alliance. Secretary of State John Kerry is attending. This is good. What is bad, however, is that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is not currently planning to be in Munich, even though this has been a longstanding tradition and his allied counterparts expect him to be there to point directions for the military side of the alliance.

The Security Conference also needs to be the curtain-raiser, under American tutelage, for NATOs summit in Warsaw in early July. So far, the summit promises to do little to breathe new life into the alliance but rather will focus mainly on the important but not be-all question of Russias activities in Ukraine and bolstering the confidence of NATOs Central European allies. The summit is also poorly timed: it comes near the end of this presidents mandate, when everyone will be looking toward a new administration, and just before the Republican National Convention, ensuring that the summit will get zero media attention over here. At the very least, the US should insist in Warsaw that all remaining barriers to cooperation between NATO and the EU be scrapped-ideally with a US-Canada-EU summit in parallel with NATOs. The alliance needs: a mandate and the means for NATO to consider crises before they reach a critical point, rather than just acting in response; to bring the Middle East squarely onto the US-European security agenda; and to devise practical criteria for Russia to meet in order to revive George H.W. Bushs historically significant grand strategy of pursuing a European whole and free. That is not possible now. But the US and the alliance need to be ready with well-structured ideas for the time when it could be, rather than just improvising on the spot.

Most important, this year President Obama should do what American leaders have historically done so well: to think big and bold. He should build on a centurys worth of creativity in US-European relations and propose a new Atlantic Charter. It should provide an overarching vision, within which to bring together political, economic, strategic, and military elements, while also melding efforts by both public and private sectors. This formula produced success in the Cold War and is just as compelling now.

In sum, without a by-your-leave from Congress, President Obama can provide leadership in many parts of the world, just as he did with Iran, Cuba, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But unless he demands that his administration provide the ideas and unless he breaks some bureaucratic crockery, this will not happen. But if it does, the next president, Republican or Democrat, will be thankful. And so will the nation.



Follow LobeLog on Twitter and Facebook.



About the Author

Robert E. Hunter served as US ambassador to NATO (1993-98) and on the National Security Council staff throughout the Carter administration, first as Director of West European Affairs and then as Director of Middle East Affairs. In the last-named role, he was the White House representative at the Autonomy Talks for the West Bank and Gaza and developer of the Carter Doctrine for the Persian Gulf. He was Senior Advisor to the RAND Corporation from 1998 to 2011, and Director of the Center for Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University, 2011-2012. He has been Chairman of the Council for a Community of Democracies since 2002 and is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.
Peugeot signs key deal with Iran Khodro

01/29/16

Report by Press TV; photos by Islamic Republic News Agency

PSA Peugeot Citron has signed a deal worth 400 million for production of cars in Iran in partnership with Iran Khodro.





2010 file photo: Peugeot 207i manufactured by Iran Khodro





The French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citron said on Thursday that it had signed a binding contract with Iran's leading vehicle manufacturer Iran Khodro to produce a range of cars in the country.

Carlos Tavares, chief executive of PSA, said at a press conference in Paris that the value of the deal stands at 400 million.

Tavares added that the deal "turns the page on the period of international sanctions" and allows the group and Iran Khodro to start a "new chapter in their 30-year relationship", the Financial Times reported.

This came as Iran's President Hassan Rouhani arrived in Paris on the second leg of his European tour that has already taken him to Italy.

Tavares further emphasized that PSA will invest in modernizing platforms, particularly in the main Iran Khodro site near Tehran. The investment will also allow for the export of vehicles to the region, FT further quoted the official as saying.

PSA will beging by producing 200,000 cars a year in a 50:50 joint venture, producing the Peugeot 208, 2008, and 301 models. Vehicle production will start in the second half of 2017, the report added.

Iran was Peugeot's second largest market before the French automaker left the country in breach of contract, idling a massive assembly line which manufactured vehicles from kits of parts.

The company reportedly quit Iran under political pressure following a partnership agreement with General Motors which the US company terminated later.

It now faces a backlash from its abrupt pullout from Iran in 2012.

Last November, Iran Khodro Managing Director Hashem Yekke-Zare said Peugeot had submitted to all conditions demanded by his company for cooperation.

"Setting up a 50-50 joint venture, turning Iran to the regional center of Peugeot exports and transferring technology as well as investment were Iran's conditions for cooperation which the company has accepted," he said then.
Hyderabad: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi today sat for two and half hours in the wee hours along with the students of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) who were on an 18-hour-mass hunger strike. Gandhi who arrived here at 12.10 am spoke to the agitating students and lit candles before Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's picture.

A member of joint action committee for social justice (University of Hyderabad) said Rahul Gandhi will be joining the hunger strike movement from 6 am today. National Students Union of India (NHUI) National president Roji M John said, Rahul Gandhi will sit in the hunger strike from 6 am to 6 pm today.

Rahul Gandhi joins candle light vigil by students of Hyderabad Univ who are demanding Justice for Rohith Vemula pic.twitter.com/r4P4c6Og7D  INC India (@INCIndia) January 29, 2016

Read: Rohith Vemula suicide: HCU interim Vice-Chancellor goes on leave

"Students called for mass hunger strike. Rahul will also sit in the dharna. This hunger strike will be held in all universities of the country," John told reporters.

As the students raised slogans against HRD minister Smrithi Irani and Union Labour Minister Bandarau Dattatre, Rahul intervened and politely told them not to shout 'murdabad'. "Let us not say murdabad to somebody. That will not do justice," he said.

Read: Hyderabad scholar death: Students write postcard protests to President

Three of the students including two research scholars who were earlier suspended, sat on fast unto death demanding the fulfilment of their demands such as sacking and arresting of V-C Appa Rao Podile and dropping of Smrithi Irani and Bandaru Dattaretreya from the cabinet among others.

About 2,000 students organised a candle light march tonight in the campus on Vemula's birthday today. This is Rahul's second visit to Hyderabad since Vemula was found hanging in the varsity's hostel room.

Read: Rohith Vemula's dream alive in University of Hyderabad

The Congress vice-president had visited the University on January 19 following the suicide by the Dalit scholar and met the agitating students and the family members of Vemula.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Saturday called for a bandh of colleges in Telangana in protest against the "politics over dead bodies" done by Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi in the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) over the Rohith Vemula issue.

Read: HCU suicide: ABVP calls for shut down of colleges in Telangana

"ABVP strongly opposes the politicisation being done by Rahul Gandhi in Central University at a time when peaceful atmosphere is returning in the university," ABVP national executive member Kadiam Raju said in a statement.

Gandhi should stop the "politics over dead bodies" and help restore normalcy in the HCU, he said.
The best 2-in-1 laptop 2022: our picks of the best convertible laptops

These are the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now
The DLP-based NEC Display Solutions NP-P502HL ($4,599) delivers the bright, crisp image that its 5,000-lumen rating and native 1080p (1,920-by-1,080)-resolution promise. That by itself should pique your interest if you need a data projector for showing images with fine detail or lots of information in a midsize to large room. You also get the convenience of a 1.7x zoom lens and both vertical and horizontal lens shifts, plus a laser light source designed to last the life of the projector.

A close competitor to the Panasonic PT-EZ580U ($3,975.01 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , the P502HL is also similar to it in some key ways. Both offer a 1.7x zoom, and both are a bit brighter than the Panasonic PT-RZ370U , our Editors' Choice high-resolution data projector. That makes them suitable for somewhat larger rooms, including small auditoriums. The two also offer horizontal and vertical lens shift, so you can move the image up, down, left, or right without needing a digital keystone adjustment to square off the image, which can introduce artifacts.

Between the two, the P502HL offers a larger horizontal lens shift by my measurements and only a slightly smaller vertical shift. The Panasonic PT-EZ580U offers a slightly higher brightness rating, a motorized (rather than manual) focus, zoom, and lens shifts, and a 10-percent-larger screen area with its WUXGA (1,920-by-1,200) resolution, giving it a 16:10 aspect ratio compared with 16:9 for the P502HL.

Setup

At 19 pounds 6 ounces and 5.4 by 18.5 by 14.4 inches (HWD), the P502HL is hefty enough to be a candidate for permanent installation. The 1.7x zoom, combined with the vertical and horizontal lens shift, gives you lots of flexibility for where to position it relative to the screen.

I measured the vertical shift at 49 percent of the screen height up or down from the midpoint, and the horizontal shift at 40 percent of the screen width left or right from the midpoint. Both are significantly different from what NEC shows on its website, with my measurements higher in both cases.

Image inputs on the back of the projector include a VGA port for a computer or component video, two HDMI ports, and a composite video port. In addition, there's a USB Type A port for reading files directly from a USB memory key, an Ethernet HDBaseT port, and a second LAN port strictly for controlling the projector over a network.

One of the P502HL's more unusual features is an Apps menu that gives you a selection of additional choices for image input. These include Miracast for wireless connections; Viewer, for reading files from a USB memory key or the projector's internal memory; and Remote Desktop Connection, which lets you show images from any PC on your network by running an app on that PC, and then using a keyboard and mouse connected to the projector to control the PC. There's also Image Express, which works with an app running on a PC to allow a moderator (or a teacher) to manage up to 50 simultaneous connections and chosoe up to 16 to show on screen at once.

Brightness

As with most single-chip DLP projectors, the P502HL has significantly lower color brightness than white brightness, which means full-color images may not be as bright as you would expect. The difference between the two also complicates brightness comparisons to other projectors, since three-chip LCD models like the Panasonic PT-EZ580U deliver matching levels for the two measurements, while DLP projectors with the same white brightness can have wildly different color brightness levels. (For more on this topic, see Color Brightness: What It Is, Why It Matters.)

See How We Test Projectors

Strictly as a point of reference, using SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) recommendations and assuming a 1.0-gain screen, the P502HL's 5,000-lumen rating should make it bright enough in theater-dark lighting for a 276- to 374-inch image (measured diagonally) at the projector's native 16:9 aspect ratio. With moderate ambient light, the size drops to 183 inches.

For smaller screen sizes, you can lower the image brightness by using one of the projector's two Eco modes, one of the lower brightness preset modes, or both. In addition, for Normal mode, the menus offer a slider for brightness that you can set to any level from 100 (brightest) to 16 (dimmest), with 16 giving you a far lower brightness level than the lowest-level Eco mode. Each step on the slider also lowers energy use, which I measured at a range of 106 to 459 watts, compared with 232 watts for the lowest-power Eco mode. In short, the slider effectively giving you an adjustable Eco mode.

Image Quality

With its multiple lasers and phosphor wheel, the P502HL's light engine delivered excellent color balance in all but the brightest mode in our DisplayMate(Opens in a new window) tests, with neutral grays at all levels from black to white. Even the brightest mode was near excellent, with only a slight tint in the brightest shade of gray. Color quality was also excellent in most modes. Blue and red were a little dark in the brightest mode in my tests, but that's expected for projectors with a difference between color brightness and white brightness. Colors overall were vibrant, eye catching, and well saturated.

More important for most data images, particularly for a high-resolution projector, is the fact that the P502HL did a good job holding detail in my tests. White text on black was crisp and readable at sizes as small as 6 points, and black text on white was even more readable, at 4.5 points.

Video and Audio Quality

Full-motion video is best avoided with the P502HL. Our standard test clips showed unusually obvious judder (the jerkiness inherent in movies filmed at 24 frames per second), along with frequent rainbow artifacts (red-green-blue flashes). Both were much more noticeable, as well as more annoying, than with most projectors. The good news is that the only time I saw the rainbow effect in our data tests was with one image that's designed to bring them out, and even then I had to shift my gaze rapidly back and forth to see any hint of them.

3D and Audio

Unlike most data projectors for large venues, the P502HL offers 3D, with support for HDMI 1.4a 3D formats and both DLP-Link and VESA RF glasses. Unless you're in the tiny minority who needs 3D, however, this won't matter.

One last small plus is that the audio system delivers suitable quality for most data presentations, and the 20-watt mono speaker offers enough volume for a midsize room. If you need stereo, higher volume, or still better quality, you can connect an external sound system to the P502HL's audio-out port.

Conclusion

For a high-brightness, high-resolution projector designed for permanent installation on a tight budget, consider the Acer P7505 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , which keeps costs down in part by leaving out a lens shift, but offers a 2x zoom. Also look at the PT-EZ580U if you need a touch higher brightness or video that's at least watchable. The Panasonic PT-RZ370U delivers still-better video quality, albeit at a lower brightness. The NEC NP-P502HL is not a good choice for video, but it offers a high resolution and bright, high-quality data images.
Remember the guy who managed to buy Google.com for one minute last year?

The researcher, Sanmay Ved, said he was putzing around Google Domains and discovered that Google.com was available for purchase. Naturally, he bought it  for just $12  and owned the iconic domain name for all of one minute. After discovering what happened, Google's security team contacted Ved and offered him an undisclosed reward.

Now, the Web giant has revealed(Opens in a new window) how much it forked over: $6,006.13.

That might seem like a super random figure, but take another look You may notice that the number actually spells out Google, numerically. Clever, huh?

While most would be thrilled to pocket more than $6,000, Ved instead asked that Google donate the money to the Art of Living India Foundation charity. So, the Web giant then doubled the prize amount and donated it to the organization's education program, which runs 404 free schools across 18 states in India.

Meanwhile, Google also this week revealed that it handed out more than $2 million in rewards last year to more than 300 researchers who discovered flaws and bugs within its web properties. The company in June extended its Vulnerability Reward Program to Android, and by year's end, it paid more than $200,000 to researchers for their work on the mobile platform, including its largest single payment of $37,500 to an Android security researcher.

Since launching its Vulnerability Reward Program in 2010, Google has paid out more than $6 million to bug finders.
Three British companies are collaborating to bring automated "pods" to the streets of Greenwich, England, this summer.

Westfield Sportscar, Heathrow Enterprises, and Oxbotica are participating in the GATEway (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) driverless car project(Opens in a new window). Together, they will adapt existing Ultra PODSthe tram-like vehicles operating in Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5to navigate city streets without dedicated tracks.

Each company brings its own expertise to the project: Westfield covers design, manufacturing, and testing of the vehicles; Heathrow Enterprises is responsible for software engineering; and Oxbotica will deploy its autonomous control software.

The current set of Ultra PODS reach a top speed of about 25 mph and can carry up to six passengers, Engadget reported(Opens in a new window).

Set for the U.K. Smart Mobility Living Lab in Greenwich, the 8 million ($11 million) program will trial a series of different use cases for automated vehicles, including driverless shuttles, autonomous valet parking, and automated urban deliveries.

"Demonstrating autonomous pods in public operation around the Greenwich peninsular will be a huge step in determining how this technology interacts with both passengers and pedestrians," Oxbotica CEO Graeme Smith said in a statement.

Greenwich is one of four cities (along with Bristol, Milton Keynes, and Coventry) that won a 19 million competition to host driverless car trials, which aim to test public acceptance.

"If the trials prove successful, we expect these iconic vehicles to become a familiar sight in many cities around the world," said Nick Reed, GATEway technical director.

Britain has been eyeing driverless cars since July 2013, but the ability to test them was limited. In February 2015, the government announced plans to test autonomous vehicles on public roads last summer.
The PCWorld Show is backand its not just a reboot of our long-lost podcast. Whether you want to watch the video version (above), or simply listen to the audio podcast (below), weve got your media needs covered.

This week, executive editor Gordon Mah Ung, staff writer Florence Ion, and editor-in-chief Jon Phillips riff on, argue about, and poke fun at the New England Patriots Surfacegate controversy, the preponderance of leaks surrounding the looming Samsung Galaxy S7, and the outright absurdity of 4-inch smartphones.

Gordon smells conspiracy, Flo gets exacerbated, and Jon can barely hold it together. Check back next week for Episode 2, and heres the link if you want to download the audio podcast directly or stream just the audio version.

You can subscribe to the PCWorld Podcastor leave us a review!right here in iTunes. Or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader at: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:58576703/sounds.rss

To find previous episodes of our audio podcasts, visit PCWorlds podcast page. And you can always send us feedback at send us feedback anything you hear on the show.
Microsoft said Thursday that it sold half as many Lumia smartphones as it did a year ago, and that the trend will continuewhat some might call a virtual death sentence for Microsofts Lumia smartphone line.

In its quarterly earnings call Thursday, Microsoft said that it sold 4.5 million Lumia phones during the fourth calendar quarter, down a whopping 57 percent compared to the 10.5 million sold during the same period a year ago. Phone revenue as a whole declined 53 percent, or $1.2 billion. Even worse, Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood told analysts to expect that its phone revenue would decline a comparable amount in the coming quarter as well.

That means that by the end of March, Microsofts phone business will be worth roughly $636 million in terms of revenue. Thats roughly three times the revenue recorded by Blackberrys hardware division in Novemberand BlackBerry, of course, has basically transitioned into an Android phone company. Like the Black Knight, Microsofts phone business may not be quite dead yet, but how long does it have to go?

Why this matters: Oddly enough, perhaps the easiest pill to swallow is the one that might normally cost an executive his or her head: the recognition that Microsoft spent $7.2 billion in 2013 to buy Nokias device business, and has essentially blown it. But with $102 billion in cash and short-term investments, even $7 billion is a relative drop in the bucket. What has to sting, however, is watching Apple record $18.4 billion in profit alone, primarily by selling iPhones and related services. Microsoft is watching its own opportunity to develop a smartphone ecosystem slowly evaporate, quarter by quarter.

Congratulations on a great quarter

Overall, Microsofts profits declined by 15 percent to $23.8 billion, as profits fell 5 percent to just under $5 billion. (Factoring out currency fluctuations and older one-time charges, Microsofts revenue grew 3 percent, and profits by 20 percent.) The drop in phone revenue dragged down Microsofts overall devices revenue by 26 percent compared with the previous year, despite an all-time high for the Surface tablet business, which recorded $1.35 billion in revenue after the launch of the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book.

Interestingly, not a single Wall Street analyst asked about the future of Microsofts phone business, generally choosing to ask about the state of the overall customer economy or Microsofts continued strength in the cloud or enterprise services. Neither did Hood or chief executive Satya Nadella, besides reporting on the performance of the business unit and its future prospects. In fact, practically every analyst congratulated Microsoft for a strong quarter despite the more sobering aspects.

The Windows Phone space seems eerily quiet. Microsoft isnt booking appointments to show off new devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. The rumor pipeline is also cold, beyond tantalizing whispers of a Surface phone that some hope could be the savior of Microsofts smartphone business. According to AdDuplex, the most popular Windows Phone remains the Lumia 520, released in April 2013.

Analysts, too, are holding out hope that the Surface phone materializes. The phone business appears to be trailing off very quickly, Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an email. I do not think this is a last gasp however, as I do have a degree of confidence in the Surface team to create a differentiated smartphone if they are given as many chances as they had with Surface Pro. I also believe that there is a future in the commercial market for a Windows 10 phone with Continuum.

To be fair, Microsoft has never officially said it plans to discontinue its smartphone business. But Microsofts woes in the smartphone space are well known: a shortage of third-party apps, plus a Windows 10 Mobile operating system seemingly designed for the small, loyal cadre of existing Windows enthusiasts. As Moorhead notes, however, we have yet to see the impact of the Microsoft bridge technology, porting apps written for iOS to the Windows platform.

Ive always been a fan of the Lumia hardware, especially the new Continuum feature, but many of the features that have sold Lumia phones in the past now appear on Android phones and iPhonesin part, where the apps are concerned, because Microsoft put them there.

Microsoft continues to sell Windows Phone overseas, nearing 10-percent penetration in the United Kingdom and other European countries. But in the United States, comScore puts it at 2.8 percent, and fallingand thats for November.

Reputation can buoy or bury a product, and once a brand attracts the stink of failure, thats it. Microsoft hasnt killed the Lumia line. Neither has the press, or retailers. Its the customers that have walked away from Windows Phone, leaving it by the side of the road.

Updated at 7:52 PM with comments from Patrick Moorhead.
A San Bernardino Superior Court jury convicted a Fontana bakery customer on Thursday, Jan. 28, in the 2001 cold case murder of a bakery employee who was brutally raped and killed as she worked alone at night, according to court records.

Gilbert Bernard Sanchezs DNA in a federal database was found in 2006 to match DNA preserved from the scene of Sylvia Galindos killing, a San Bernardino County sheriffs official said in 2007 as detectives reopened the case, interviewed Sanchez and showed his photo to the owners of Marias Panaderia on Merrill Avenue.

They recognized him as a customer, with no known relationship to Galindo, who supported her mother in Mexico with money earned at the bakery and a market. Sheriffs detectives at the time said a motive appeared to be simply violence for violences sake, and said the man beat, raped, robbed and strangled the victim.

Sanchez, who lived blocks from the bakery at the time of the slaying, was serving time in Centinela State Prison in Imperial County on another case when charged with Galindos murder.
Gun violence has plagued San Bernardino long before the Dec. 2 terrorist attack that left 14 dead and 22 wounded, say organizers of a peace march meant to shed light on the issue.

Weve been in a state of terrorism for a very, very long time, said Ipyani Lockert, 35, who on Thursday, Jan. 28, joined more than two dozen residents and faith leaders marching through the streets of San Bernardino.

Inland Congregations United for Change  an organization that includes Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Protestant congregations in the Inland area  held theCommon Ground for Peacewalk as it works to promote Operation Ceasefire, a problem-oriented policing approach that aims to reduce gun violence and youth gang activity.

The program would involve local and county agencies and the community, such as faith leaders and nonprofit organizations, to work with violent offenders and equip them with alternatives to violence.

Lockert, walking along the intersection of Golden and Highland avenues, passed by a street pole memorial adorned with bouquets of flowers.

More than likely a loss of life. You see those a lot in San Bernardino, said Lockert, who was born and raised in the city of San Bernardino.

Lockert said he was affected by violence when his brothers best friend was killed.

Its a blessing to be 35 years old, Lockert said.

San Bernardino police has so far reported four homicides this year. In 2015, there were 44 homicides, police said.

We do have a problem with guns in America and one thing that we kept telling people and even the clergy is that this is not something new to San Bernardino, said Sergio Luna, a community organizer with Inland Congregations United for Change. Weve been talking about gun violence for many years.

In 2005, the interfaith group prayed for an end to violence after 16-year-old Melanie Miers was killed in a drive-by shooting in San Bernardino.

In 2014, the same interfaith group held another prayer vigil after Melanies sister, Michelle Miers, 26, was attacked and slain inside her San Bernardino apartment.

And in 2015, Inland Congregations United for Change held a third vigil after the shooting death of 4-year-old Daniel Munoz in Highland, a neighboring city of San Bernardino.

Activists along the Thursday walk handed out fliers to residents, informing them of their effort to end gun violence.

We want you to be alive and free! the flier read.

Kesha McGee, minister of Life Center Church in San Bernardino, was one of those who participated Thursday and said they plan to hold similar walks throughout the year.

This walk is important because it shows unity . it lets people know that were serious about taking back our community and our streets, McGee said.

Added McGee: After Dec. 2, I think the conversations of violence have reached a bigger scale  Its time for us to wake up.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9462 or amolina@pressenterprise.com
BOSTON  More than 50 members of the MS-13 gang in and around Boston have been indicted on federal racketeering charges, federal authorities announced Friday.

The notoriously violent gang, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, is known for using machetes to kill and injure rival gang members. In 2012, MS-13 became the first and remains the only street gang to be designated by the U.S. government as a transnational criminal organization, according to the indictment.

In all, 56 gang members were indicted on racketeering conspiracy charges, including charges related to murder, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder. Some are also charged with drug trafficking, firearm violations, immigration offenses and fraudulent document charges.

The gang has more than 30,000 members internationally  mainly in El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala  and over 6,000 members in the U.S., the indictment says.

Authorities said 37 of the 56 suspects were in custody Friday morning, some taken in during early morning raids in Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Revere and Somerville.

The indictment alleges that several of those charged are responsible for the murders of at least five people since 2014 and the attempted murder of at least 14 people.It also alleges that MS-13 members in Massachusetts commit robberies and sell cocaine, heroin and marijuana to pay monthly dues to leaders of MS-13 who are imprisoned in El Salvador.

Prosecutors allege that members of MS-13 recruited prospective members  typically 14 or 15 years old  inside local high schools from communities with significant immigrant populations from Central America.
In July 2009, the Wildomar City Council approved the division of the city into five districts for the purpose of electing council members, as mandated by voters in February 2008.

A council election by districts never occurred, however. The citys first council also gave voters a chance to change the system to the at-large, a method voters backed in November 2009.

Nearly seven years later, the city once again will be carved up into districts, a process reluctantly launched by the current council Wednesday night, Jan. 27.

We gave direction to the demographer that was there to go ahead and draw up districts, said Mayor Bridgette Moore, also a member of that first council. He will come back at the Feb. 10 council meeting in the first of three public hearings.

This time, the districting effort is the product of a legal challenge alleging the city is violating the California state Voting Rights Act because it purportedly has never had a Latino elected to the council.

While not true  Moore is of Latino heritage  the council opted not to go to court due to costs. Because of the way the state voting rights act is written, plaintiffs in cases based on the law have received awards of hundreds of thousands of dollars even if they lose.

Its solely because of the legal issue, Moore said of the councils decision. Our choice was: Bankrupt the city or go to districts.

The districts will be done in time for the November election.

When voters in February 2008 approved cityhood for Wildomar, they also chose their first council members at large, but opted to hold future elections by districts.

Moore and her colleagues at that time believed the city of about 30,000 residents was too small to be sliced up into zones and they put the issue back on the ballot.

This time around, because of a change in state law, the city can institute the district system by ordinance rather than having to put the issue on the ballot.

But before it can do that, the city must craft district lines that will be fair to all. The cost for the demographics and legal consultants hired by the city is about $55,000, City Manager Gary Nordquist said.

Residents will have ample opportunity to participate, he said. Its going to be as transparent and open as possible.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9690 or michaelwilliams@pressenterprise.com
Hyderabad: Postcard to president is the new protest trend of University of Hyderabad students to attract the attention of President Pranab Mukherjee on the Rohith Vemula suicide issue.

The students put up posters with the Presid-ents office address and are distributing postcards requesting students to express their grievances and opinions related to Vemulas death.

Hundreds of such postcards will reach the President next week.

Let the President know our demands. We will post the cards on Monday, and they would reach him in three or four days, said one of the students.

The JAC has bought over a thousand postcards and has placed a box to collect the written letters. Hundreds of students have already written on these cards. Hope this will make a difference, said a JAC member.

The students have also planned to meet the President to express their grievances as the central government has not responded to their demands positively.
An 83-year-old woman who has dementia who disappeared from her Lake Elsinore home and was last spotted in Fontana has been found, say Riverside County sheriffs officials.

Donna Jean Ransdell ha last been seen on Summit Avenue in Fontana where she bought food, appeared disoriented and asked directions to Lake Elsinore, according to a sheriffs statement.

She was found safely in Bell Gardens on Thursday night and reunited with her family, according to a sheriffs statement released Friday.
With one fugitive back behind bars, the manhunt for two remaining Orange County jail escapees shifted Friday to Northern California as authorities announced the men likely were hiding out in San Jose and possibly headed to Fresno.

Hossein Nayeri, 37, and Jonathan Tieu, 20, are believed to be driving a stolen white 2008 GMC Savana utility van, according to Sheriffs Capt. Jeff Hallock.

The men escaped sometime after a 5 a.m. headcount on Jan. 22, cutting through barriers, squeezing through plumbing ducts and rappelling off the roof using bed sheets as a rope. They werent discovered missing until after a second headcount around 8 p.m., giving them a head start of several hours.

RELATED: O.C. JAIL ESCAPE: Teacher accused of helping inmates arrested

The third escapee, Bac Duong, 44, was arrested in Santa Ana after he turned himself in around 11:30 a.m. on Friday.

Hallock said the trio apparently fled to the San Jose area in a stolen white van with tinted windows and Duong later traveled back down to Santa Ana to turn himself in. Duong is now cooperating with authorities, he said.

During a news conference, Hallock looked into the cameras and said he had a message for the remaining two escapees: We are pressing forward, were coming after you, and we will take you back into custody.

Hallock said Nayeri and Tieu are believed to still be together.

All three of the escapees are accused of violent crimes: Duong is charged with attempted murder, Tieu is charged with murder and attempted murder, and Nayeris charges, which include torture, aggravated mayhem and two counts of kidnapping, stem from him allegedly kidnapping a marijuana store owner and severing his penis.

On Thursday, Nooshafarin Ravaghi, a 44-year-old teacher from Lake Forest was arrested on suspicion of aiding the men as they planned their escape.

Ravaghi worked part-time as an English as a Second Language Teacher inside the jail and allegedly developed a close relationship with Nayeri, a former U.S. Marine who speaks English but took Ravaghis ESL courses.

Authorities on Friday did not describe the nature of the relationship but said Ravaghi and Nayeri, both originally from Iran, corresponded by mail.

Their relationship was much more personal than it should have been, Hallock said.

Ravaghi is expected to be arraigned Monday on charges of being an accessory to a felony. She is accused of providing Nayeri with a printout of a Google map that showed the roof of the jail.

Some corrections experts this week criticized the Orange County Sheriffs Department for its gap in the number of body counts. The Central Mens Jail conducts two body counts at 5 a.m. and 8 p.m., and three administrative checks throughout the day.

On Friday, the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs joined in the criticism. In a letter addressed to Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, the union said employees voiced concerns that inmate counts were not being properly conducted, but they received pushback from management.

The decision to flaunt such a critical Department procedure calls into question whether other vital Department procedures were ignored, putting the safety of the men and women who work in the Central Mens Jail, the inmates, and the public who depend on us in jeopardy, said union President Tom Dominguez.

Hutchens could not be reached for comment late Friday on the issue, but has previously said that the department is reviewing inmate counts and other jail issues in the wake of the escapes.

As the manhunt continues, authorities said the two men may be planning to head to Fresno, where Nayeri once lived and attended high school .

Nayeri, who is believed to have masterminded the escape, has fled prosecution at least twice before. He spent time in Washington, D.C., after fleeing officials in Madera County, where in 2005 he was in a drunken driving accident in which a passenger in his car was killed.

In 2012, after his initial arrest in the torture and kidnapping case, he jumped bail and fled to Iran. He was re-arrested in 2013 in Prague.

Nayeri served time in the Marines Corps at Camp Pendleton but received a Bad Conduct Discharge in 2001 for being absent without leave, according to military records.

A $200,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest. Anyone with information is urged to call 911 or 714-628-7085.

Staff writer Tony Saavedra contributed to this report.

RELATED STORY

O.C. JAIL ESCAPE: Teacher accused of helping inmates arrested

Check back for more details. The story is developing.
A man walking to a Highland bus stop lost his cellphone to a man who punched him in the face, sheriffs officials say.

The holdup happened at 2:47 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27, near Base Line and Guthrie Street, about a third of a mile southwest of San Gorgonio High School.

The robber initially asked to use the victims phone, investigators said in a written statement. When the victim replied that the phone was switched off and wouldnt work, the man punched him, then warned the man, back up, or I will hit you again.

Deputies say the robber is a 5-foot-7 Hispanic man who is about 25 years old and had a shaved head. He was wearing gray shorts and a black t-shirt with a California emblem on the front.

Anyone with additional information may call deputies at 909-426-9793.
A language teacher who worked in the jail has been arrested in connection with the escape of three inmates, Orange County sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock said Thursday.

Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, of Lake Forest is accused of helping the three inmates escape, aiding them by bringing Google Maps, which Hallock said might be useful because they show the roof of the jail. The three inmates, Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong, rappelled from the roof last Friday when they escaped.

Ravaghi, who teaches English as a second language at the Rancho Community College District, denied bringing cutting tools into the facility, Hallock said.

Hallock said Ravaghi and Nayeri had a student-teacher relationship that developed into a closer relationship. She had been cleared to teach at the jail since July 2015.

Hallock said as many as 10 arrests have been made in connection with the escape, but the three fugitives remain at large. Authorities have not released names of the people arrested because they dont want to hinder the investigation.

Authorities believe the trio stole a utility van Saturday in south Los Angeles.

On Saturday, Duong answered a for-sale advertisement for a white GMC Savanna, took the vehicle for a test drive and never returned, Hallock said. The vans license plate number is 8U66466.

Hallock added that investigators believe the three men remain together in Southern California and may be living out of this vehicle.

Ravaghis website, called The Noosha Collection, says she was born in Iran, has traveled extensively, and speaks English, French, Arabic, Farsi, German and Spanish.

A former middle school classmate, Sepideh Safavi, 46, of Watertown, Mass., described Ravaghi as a shy, smart loner.

Shes the kind of person that people take advantage of, said Safavi. She was always the best kid in the class, the most quiet. I always thought of her as an intellectual, but very naive.

Safavi said she and Ravaghi kept in touch over the years.

This is absolutely unbelievable  of all the people I know, not her, Safavi said. Youre kind, youre sweet, youre good.  Its very strange.

Ravaghis website says she received a masters degree in French literature from the University of Tehran in Iran. She has translated literary articles from French to Farsi.

The website also says she got a masters degree from Cal State Fullerton in education  teaching English to speakers of other languages. Cal State Fullerton confirmed that Ravaghi earned a degree in education with a certificate for ESL in 2013. She is listed as an ESL teacher at several institutions, including Saddleback College.

Staff writers Tony Saavedra, Megan Nicolai, Louis Casiano Jr., Scott Bosco and Scott Schwebke contributed

to this report.

Contact the writer: ksharon@ocregister.com; afausto@ocregister.com
Riverside is enjoying some of the best times in its history, but leadership and long-term planning will help carry the city to even greater success, Mayor Rusty Bailey told hundreds of residents, business people and students at Thursdays State of the City address.

Baileys speech, the last such annual assessment of his four-year term, reflected on recent successes such as an effort to house homeless veterans, and it highlighted new initiatives promoting technology, education and jobs.

More than 1,100 people attended the mayors address at the Riverside Convention Center, the biggest crowd in the events 39-year history.

The event opened with an invocation delivered by religious leaders from local Hindu, Jewish, Christian and Muslim institutions, and Baileys remarks briefly mentioned the Dec. 2 San Bernardino terrorist attack and then thanked Riversides first responders for keeping the city safe.

Recent changes such as two railroad underpass projects, new management at City Hall and planned investments in water and power infrastructure have positioned the city for growth, Bailey said.

We have created an incredible set of circumstances in Riverside, a solid foundation of success from which to launch new initiatives, toward increases in job creation, educational attainment, infrastructure investment, public safety and business expansion, he said.

To keep the city moving forward, Bailey said, the public and private sectors must help train students for well-paying, career-path jobs in technical fields. He cited a projected million unfilled information technology jobs and at least as many vacant health care jobs statewide by 2020.

The city is working with Riverside Community College District to seek a federal grant that would pay for more technical education programs in health care and information technology.

Bailey also announced an entrepreneurship challenge boot camp to be held this spring, in which local high school students will learn business and engineering skills, connect with mentors and compete for a cash prize.

A maker space is also set to open soon at the main library, offering computers, recording equipment, circuit hardware kits and a 3D printer for anyone to use.

The skills and education needed today and in the future are different than in the past, Bailey said. We must take action now to start a jobs renaissance today.

After the speech, UC Riverside student Karen Chi said she liked the plan for the entrepreneurial challenge and would have benefited from it when she was in high school and wasnt sure what she wanted to do.

In high school I would have loved to have a taste of all these different fields, said Chi, a fourth-year political science and administrative affairs major.

William Corr, a resident who is retired after a 27-year Army career, said he loved the support of the veterans (in the speech). It makes me glad Im in Riverside.

What stood out to Megan Rainey, business administrator for the Salvation Armys Riverside Corps, was the theme of inclusion  not just including diversity, but celebrating it. She saw that reflected not only in the speech, but in the interfaith invocation.

Janice Bielman, executive director of Riverside Meals on Wheels, said she appreciated the education initiatives but would have liked to hear more about how the city can look out for its older residents.

Its important that we take care of our youth, she said, but shed like to see Bailey broaden his efforts to make sure that our senior population, those who created this community, be taken care of as well.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9461 or arobinson@pressenterprise.com
A bill designed to add more residencies for doctors in the Inland Empire has passed the California Senate. Sponsored by State Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, the bill would encourage public/private partnerships in building the states physician workforce in areas that are in greatest need.

SB 22 would establish a dedicated fund designed to match private donations with state dollars. A 13-member advisory board would manage the fund, determining where the money would be allocated.

Roth said he expected the areas that would benefit most would be underserved areas in northern California, the Central Valley and the Inland Empire.

Theres a recognition, clearly both in this community and in the state, that we have insufficient numbers of physicians for the number of people that need health care, Roth said.

The Inland region has one of the worst physician shortages in the state, with only 40 doctors per 100,000 people, compared with the government-recommended 60 to 80 doctors.

Roths bill passed the Senate on Wednesday, Jan. 27, on a 39-0 vote. It still must be approved by the Assembly and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The senator said he came up with the idea of encouraging public partnerships during a meeting in his Riverside office with former UC Riverside School of Medicine Dean G. Richard Olds. Most medical residencies are funded through the Medicare program.

I said, Why dont we do a public/private partnership? Roth said. Olds thought it was a good idea, so we pursued it.

Dr. Paul Lyons, senior associate dean of education for UCRs School of Medicine, said the plan was a clever rethinking that allows us to align state health training priorities with private priorities.

I think its a smart idea, Lyons said. There is certainly a very strong unmet physician workforce need that could be partially addressed through a program like this.

In an email, Zarah Sarrafian, CEO of the Riverside University Health System, said the bills proposed fund could make a significant impact.

Senator Roths bill has tremendous potential to help address a growing demand for primary care physicians in underserved communities across California, Sarrafian said.

Riverside University Health System has 470 residents on its Moreno Valley campus.

Roth, who campaigned on funding the UCR School of Medicine when he ran for office, has been an advocate for healthcare in the region and the state. He said California needs to produce or attract 8,000 new physicians by 2030 to meet the healthcare needs of the state.

Hes hoping to establish an initial fund of $4 million to $6 million. The cost of a residency is generally between $120,000 and $150,000 per year, according to UCRs Lyons.

Roth said he recognizes getting Brown to provide funding for the program may be a challenge. But since it would be an annually assessed allocation, he thinks it fits well into the governors strategy.

He doesnt like continuing obligations, Roth said of Brown. This ought to be a perfect candidate for the annual budget process.

Im hoping that with this issue he does recognize we do have a healthcare crisis, he added. Im hopeful we can convince him this year or next year to include a one-time allocation to provide a one-time expenditure.

Roth said hes ready to advocate for that funding the following year and in years after in order to keep the program going.

Contact the writer: mmuckenfuss@pe. com or 951-368-9595
An alternative education school in Moreno Valley went on lock down and sheriffs officials were investigation the cause Thursday, Jan. 28.

The Riverside County Sheriffs Department received a call from staff at the Moreno Valley Regional Learning Center, 13730 Perris Blvd., about 8:30 a.m. asking them for assistance with a situation, said sheriffs Deputy Mike Vasquez.

Based on a rumor circulating among students, they believed there might have been a gun on campus, Vasquez said.

Deputies went to the school, tracked down the source of the rumor and found it to be unsubstantiated. Lock down was lifted shortly before 11 a.m., Vasquez said.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

Contact the writer: psurowski@pressenterprise.com, 951-368-9648, follow him on Twitter at @PeterSurowski and like him on Facebook.
Jayyyyysus. This Zika virus? The World Health Organisation is now estimating that itll affect somewhere between 3 and 4 million people before weve seen the last of it (timeline currently unknown), and have now upped the threat from mild to alarming.

The WHOs General-Director Margaret Chan today addressed the board in Geneva, saying:

The situation today is dramatically different. Last year, the virus was detected in the Americas, where it is now spreading explosively. As of today, cases have been reported in 23 countries and territories in the region. The level of alarm is extremely high.

Although Brazil has seen the worst of the outbreak, several countries outside of the Americas have reported nationals returning home from South America with the disease, including three Britons and one Dane.





Frances Health Ministry has confirmed that five French citizens have been infected by the virus while travelling (although they didnt confirm in which country / countries theyd been travelling in), but assured the public that theres no actual risk of transmission of the Zika virus in mainland [France].

Fairfax is reporting that six people in Australia tested positive for the Zika virus last year, its almost certain all were infected overseas; a spokesperson for the federal health department said that there have never been any locally acquired cases of Zika virus infection reported in Australia.

The Zika virus on its own isnt the key factor here. While theres no vaccine yet available, those infected will experience symptoms similar to dengue fever  including fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise, and headaches  for anywhere from 27 days, and an estimated 80% infected will have no symptoms whatsoever.

However, its the strongly suspected links between the Zika virus and exploding rates of babies being born with in Latin America with microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with an underdeveloped head and may cause brain damage, thats the real worry.

The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika, from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions. The increased incidence of microcephaly is particularly alarming, as it places a heart-breaking burden on families and communities, said Chan.

The Zika virus is primarily being spread through mosquito bites, so anyone travelling to the Americas is urged to take every prevention to avoid being bitten, and the Australian government is urging any women who are pregnant or hoping to become pregnant to avoid travelling to regions affected (full list here).

Also, pack condoms: one person may have caught the virus via sexual transmission, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Whelp.

The WHO has scheduled an Emergency Committee meeting for Monday to get their game plan ready.

Photo: Mario Tama / Getty.
If, like most Pennsylvanians, you're Team Groundhog over Team Peep, then Punxsutawney is a must-visit on Feb. 2 for the official Groundhog Day celebration.

If you're heading up that way for the 130th Groundhog Day celebration, however, there are a few things you should know:

Hotel rooms in Punxsutawney are full. But there may be some spare rooms up in nearby Dubois.

There's something going on all weekend long. Groundhog Day is more than just one day in Punxsutawney, it's a four day celebration. There will be dodge ball tournaments, chainsaw carving, top hat decorating contests and more going on starting on Jan. 30. See a complete list of events here.

There is no parking at Gobbler's Knob. Parking spots at the Knob, where the prediction is made, are only for those who are handicapped. You can choose to either walk the 1.5 mile trek from town to the Knob or catch one of the buses, which start running at 3 a.m. Bus tickets are $5. You can pick the bus up (and get our ticket) from Barclay Square (E. Mahoning St.), Punxsy Plaza (545 W. Mahoning St.) and Wal-Mart (21920 Route 119). Bus fare is $5.

The Knob doesn't have a shelter for the public. There is no shelter at the Knob, although there will be a bonfire starting at 3 a.m.

The Knob can get pretty packed. If you want a good spot to see Phil, you'll want to be lining up at the gates before the 3 a.m. opening.

There is no alcohol allowed on the knob. Chairs are also not allowed.

Groundhog Day festivities are free. Although bring some cash if you want to buy snacks.

There's still more going on after the prediction. After Phil's prediction at around 7:25 a.m. there will be festivities going on in Punxsutawney, including a screening of the movie "Groundhog Day" and an historical hayride tour.
A clay sculpture of Rohith Vemula being created by two alumni of the varsity Anil Xavier and Sandeep at the UoH campus on Friday. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: Let us keep dreaming together, is what Rohith Vemula had posted on Facebook last year on January 30 after thanking all his friends for being with him through tough times and wishing him on his birthday.

Rohith would have turned 27 on Saturday. On Friday, University of Hyderabad students observed his birthday by expressing their anger over the circumstances that forced him to commit suicide on January 17 by conducting a candlelight march in the university at 11pm. Protesting students will also go on a mass hunger strike on Saturday in which hundreds of students are expecting to participate.

On Friday night it was revealed that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will reach Hyderabad to participate in the candlelight rally, stay with them overnight in the university and leave the next day.

On Friday, the JAC for Social Justice, was met by 11 deans from the university for negotiations, but nothing came out of it.

Administrative building blocked, Vice-Chancellor sent back

Students at University of Hyderabad blocked the administrative building on Friday and sent back the interim vice-chancellor, Dr Vipin Srivastava, when he tried to enter the building in the morning.

This has come a day after Dr Srivastava told the media that normalcy would return in the university by Saturday.

Later on Friday the VC met the deans of the university; however the administration did not function the whole day and only two classes were conducted in the university.

Laboratories in the Science department functioned so that PhD scholars could continue their research.

Students posted pamphlets outside the administration building and elsewhere in the university demanding Dr Srivastava to step down.

The SC/ST Faculty Forum of the university too did not let down its guard on Friday. They continued their relay hunger strike as Prof. B. Nageswara Rao of the School of Economics, Mr Bittu Karthik of Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences and Prof. Sriparna of Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies sat on hunger strike on Friday; they were supported by the SC/ST employees union of the university.

Osmania University students on their way to CM office detained

Osmania University students were detained by police when they marched towards Chief Ministers camp office on Friday seeking Telangana CM K. Chandrashekhar Raos intervention to ensure justice is delivered in Rohith Vemulas suicide case.

The protesters alleged that the CM has been mysterious silent on the issue.

The students shouted slogans against Mr Rao for not visiting UoH so far while the ministers and leaders from various parties and other states have already visited the university to express their condolence. National leaders and ministers from other states are visiting UoH to express homage to Rohith Vemula and support his family. However, our Chief Minister is keeping quite on this issue and trying to dilute the ongoing protest, said M. Krishank, one of the student leaders.
After spending two nights in a Portland jail, Ammon Bundy, through his lawyers, again urged the handful of holdouts at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to go home and pledged to continue to expose federal injustices through the court system.

"Turn yourselves in and do not use physical force,'' Bundy said Thursday in a statement read by lawyer Lissa Casey outside the federal courthouse in Portland. "Use the national platform we have to continue to defend liberty through our constitutional rights.''

Bundy, 40, the leader of the Jan. 2 takeover of the federal bird sanctuary outside Burns, was taken into custody Tuesday as federal agents and state police moved in to arrest him and other top supporters as they drove to a community meeting in John Day. Standoff spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, 55, of Arizona, was shot and killed and Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundy's older brother, sustained a minor gunshot wound in the confrontation.

Ammon Bundy said he mourns Finicum's death and misses his wife and six children but will sacrifice his time with them to stand for his cause fighting federal land management policies.

"The world is listening. We will use the criminal discovery process to obtain information and government records,'' he said.

"We never wanted bloodshed,'' he said in his statement.

He urged his followers to push for the release of any police video that captured the shooting of Finicum.

"Questions must be answered,'' he said.

He and other leaders of the refuge had guns only for their protection and "never once pointed them at another individual or had any desire to do so," he said.

Another one of his attorneys, Mike Arnold, said Bundy's protest is entering a second phase, one that will play out through the federal court system.

"He was very clear, phase one of this protest needs to come to an end,'' Arnold said. "Phase two is exercising our due process rights, our right to counsel. Our right to use the power of process to get answers to questions that have been unanswered for years.''

Bundy, in his statement, referenced making his case using "Article III and an Article III judge.'' Article 3 of the Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the federal government, including the Supreme Court and lower courts.

Casey said Bundy respects the federal judicial process as set forth in the Constitution.
Capital Blue store

The Theranos lab is inside the Capital Blue store next to the Giant Foods Store on Marketplace Way in Hampden Township in Cumberland County.

(David Wenner, PennLive)

Capital BlueCross said late Thursday that Theranos has agreed to stop doing blood draws at Capital's retail operation in Cumberland County.



The move comes in a week when the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it had found serious deficiencies at a Theranos lab in California that processes some of the blood drawn at the Capital Blue store in Hampden Township.





A statement from Capital said in part:

"While we support Theranos' vision of providing greater transparency and reduced pricing for lab work, our highest priority at Capital BlueCross is ensuring quality of care for our customers."



"Following the recent news reports and findings of clinical laboratory deficiencies at Theranos' Newark, California laboratory by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Capital has sought and received assurances from Theranos that it is actively remediating the issues noted in the CMS report."



"At this time, Capital has requested and Theranos has agreed to suspend its provision of lab draws in the Capital Blue retail store in Enola until further notice."



Capital's action comes on the same day Walgreens said it has temporarily stopped sending blood samples to the troubled California lab. Theranos also processes blood, including blood collected in Hampden, at a lab in Arizona.



Theranos has said most of the deficiencies at the California lab have already been addressed and it is cooperating with CMS, which gave it ten days to fix the problems or face penalties.





Susquehanna Township-based Capital made national news in June when it entered into a strategic partnership with Theranos, a California start-up that vowed to revolutionize the blood testing industry with tests that require only tiny amounts of blood and cost less.



A Capital executive in late December told PennLive he was aware of no complaints or problems involving Capital members who used Theranos for blood tests.
Edward Garza

Edward Garza

(Lancaster County DA)

A convicted drug dealer was recently denied relief from the Pennsylvania Superior Court which found police did have reason to pat him down after spotting a bulge in his pants caused by packages of heroin, but which he said was caused by a "part of his anatomy."

Edward Roman Garza, 30, it turned out, was not just happy to see the state troopers who pulled him over in East Lampeter Township in 2013. The traffic stop yielded large quantities of heroin and cocaine and saw Garza later sentenced to up to 10 years in state prison, after the bulge in his pants turned out to be a stash of narcotics.

But Garza has since argued that the search itself was illegal, because he told the trooper the bulge was "part of his anatomy," and that the trooper had no reason not to believe him.

The court disagreed, saying the time of night, Garza's criminal history, the fact that he lied about his name and where he was going were all justifiable reasons leading the trooper to fear for his safety and to believe the bulge might be a weapon.

In all, police recovered 75 bundles of heroin and two ounces of cocaine in the stop.

Garza was later convicted at trial and sentenced last year to three to 10 years in state prison.
shutterstock_286281593.jpg

Norfolk Southern Corps. plans to layoff 2,000 employees by 2020 but the railroad titan has not yet said if it will effect its employees in Pennsylvania.

(Shutterstock)

Norfolk Southern Corps. plans to layoff 2,000 employees by 2020 but the railroad titan has not yet said if it will effect any of it's 4,500 employees in Pennsylvania.

The announcement of layoffs comes after Norfolk Southern Corp.'s fourth-quarter profit slid 29 percent. The company's stock has declined 33 percent in the last 12 months, according to the Associated Press.

Norfolk Southern Spokesman Dave Pidgeon said they are not releasing additional information about which facilities -- including the several in central Pennsylvania -- would be impacted by the layoffs. Norfolk plans to lay off 1,200 this year and the rest by 2020.

A diagram of where Norfolk Southern operations is located around Pennsylvania.

Pidgeon said Norfolk Southern has 4,500 employees in Pennsylvania. Approximately 1,000 employees work in the Harrisburg area -- which includes crews at Enola's locomotive shop, Harrisburg's rail yard and Swatara Township's dispatch center.

Norfolk Southern has begun implementing a plan that could achieve annual productivity savings of more than $650 million per year by 2020. In order to meet those financial goals, the company said it expects to improve consistency, reliability and availability.

The plan includes laying off 2,000 employees by 2020, decreasing overtime by 50 percent, consolidating operation regions from three to two and halt or reduce operations in several hump or secondary yards in 2016.

"Our new leadership team has already taken significant steps to improve financial and operational performance," said Norfolk Southern's CEO James A. Squires.

According to Norfolk Southern their other cost-saving plans include:
Pats-philly-cheesesteaks-health-code-violations.jpg

Say it isn't so, Pat! One of Philadelphia's most famous institutions when it comes to the city's signature Philly cheesesteaks has been hit with nearly a dozen health code violations.

(screen shot/6ABC)

Say it isn't so, Pat! One of Philadelphia's most famous institutions when it comes to the city's signature Philly cheesesteaks has been hit with nearly a dozen health code violations, according to 6ABC News.

The station writes that Pat's King of Steaks was visited unannounced by health inspectors on Jan. 14.

Among the 11 health department inspection infractions found at Pat's, there was a dirty knife, mouse droppings and the buildup of biofilm in an ice machine, 6ABC reports.

Pat's co-owner tells the station that the issues were minor problems that were corrected immediately, while the the inspectors were still there.

"I actually think some things that you forget and you don't remember, it's like, it's good in a way, because you learn more," Tom Francano, a 40-year Pat's employee, told 6ABC of the inspection infractions.

No word yet on whether this will have any effect on the 85-year-old restaurant's booming Philly cheesesteak trade.
Brazil Zika Virus

Jaqueline Vieira, left, watches as her 3-month-old son Daniel, who was born with microcephaly, as he undergoes physical therapy at the Altino Ventura foundation in Recife, Brazil, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Brazilian officials still say they believe there's a sharp increase in cases of microcephaly and strongly suspect the Zika virus, which first appeared in the country last year, is to blame. The concern is strong enough that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month warned pregnant women to reconsider visits to areas where Zika is present. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

(Felipe Dana)

Six to eight Pennsylvania residents are being tested for the Zika virus, a mosquito-carried disease linked to a severe birth defect involving a small head and under-developed brain.



All are believed to have picked up the virus outside the United States in one of the South American or Caribbean counties experiencing outbreaks of Zika, according to a panel of Pennsylvania experts who addressed the outbreak Friday. The experts didn't know the exact number of Pennsylvania cases, or how many of them are pregnant and thereby face the greatest threat from Zika. Their samples were sent to a federal lab in Atlanta, and it takes up to two weeks to receive results.



For most people, Zika causes mild flu-like symptoms which go away within about a week, they said.



Still, the panel advised anyone who has traveled to the affected areas and experience symptoms to be tested. They further advised any pregnant woman who has traveled to those areas to notify their doctor. The woman would likely receive ultrasounds aimed at detecting signs of the birth defect, microcephaly, they said.



There is no cure for Zika virus or microcephaly, which likely results in lifelong disability. Nor is there vaccine to prevent Zika infection.



On Friday, the Pennsylvania doctors advised pregnant woman to avoid traveling to any of the 24 countries were outbreaks are occurring. "I think it is a very big deal for pregnant women," Dr. Ray Pontzer, a Pittsburgh area infectious disease specialist, said of the outbreak.



Meanwhile, the experts also predicted growing concern and mosquito monitoring once warmer weather hits Pennsylvania. The outbreak is expected to reach the United States, since the two species of mosquito which carry it live here. One of the species, the Asian tiger mosquito, lives in Pennsylvania, although it's not believed to be the main carrier.



"We're going to double down on our efforts to monitor mosquitoes when spring comes," said Dr. Loren Robinson of the Pennsylvania Department of Health.





The Pennsylvania experts said many things are unknown about Zika virus, which was first found in Africa in 1947, but was only recently linked to microcephaly, possibly as a result of a mutation.



For example, it's unknown what portion of pregnant women bitten by an infected mosquito transfer Zika to their fetus, and what portion end up with a child with microcephaly. Dr. Kurt Barnhart, a Philadelphia-area ob-gyn doctor, said the defect seems to be occurring in only a small portion of Zika infections.



It's also unknown whether the risk of microcephaly is present throughout pregnancy or whether it is limited to say, the first trimester, when birth defect-causing illnesses often strike.



Nor it it known how long the risk of transferring Zika to a fetus exists, although the doctors speaking Friday said they wouldn't expect the risk to last more than three months. As a result of that, they said they would advise a woman who has been in an area affected by the outbreak to wait two or three months before becoming pregnant.



There is growing alarm over the outbreak, with the World Health Organization on Thursday saying Zika is "spreading explosively" throughout the Americas, and calling for an emergency meeting to try to find ways to stop the spread.



In the United States, there are 31 confirmed cases of Zika in 11 states, with all believed to have originated outside the United States. But it has spread as far north as Mexico and is expected to show up in the United States after warm weather arrives and mosquitoes become more active.
The preliminary hearing for a Perry County man charged with homicide in the Jan. 11 shooting death of his daughter during an eviction has been scheduled for next month in Cumberland County.

Donald B. Meyer Jr.

Donald B. Meyer Jr., 57, of Penn Township, will appear Feb. 12 before District Judge Richard S. Dougherty in East Pennsboro Township, court records show.

Meyer, the father of Ciara Meyer, 12, is charged with criminal homicide and involuntary manslaughter in the girl's death.

District Judge Daniel McGuire recused himself from the case because he is friends with members of Ciara's family and with the constable who shot her. As a result, Perry County President Judge Kathy A. Morrow signed an order moving the case to Dougherty's office.

Investigators said Meyer was arguing with Constable Clark Steele about the family's eviction time when Meyer pointed a loaded .223 semi-automatic weapon at the constable's chest. Steele fired a single bullet from his .40 caliber pistol. The bullet hit Meyer, shattering the man's upper left arm before fatally striking Ciara Meyer.

Ciara died from the shot to her heart and lung. Her death was ruled a homicide.

Meyer was arraigned before Dougherty on the homicide charge on Thursday. Dougherty order that Meyer continued being held without bail in the Perry County Prison.

Meyer's attorney, Perry County Public Defender Barbara L. Wevodau, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Questioned by a CBS21 reporter outside the court building Thursday, Meyer vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

"My God, they stole everything from me. Everybody knows I love kids," he is quoted as saying.
Tuesday brings that sacred event in Pennsylvania: Groundhog Day.

Nancy Eshelman

Yes, on that day, a bunch of men in top hats and tuxedos ascend to an icy universe called Gobbler's Knob and determine whether a rodent named Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. What Phil sees, or doesn't see, supposedly determines whether the Northern Hemisphere will endure six more weeks of winter.

All of this happens among throngs of people who have gathered at this dot on the map (at least I think it's on the map) called Punxsutawney (population 5,887).

For several days leading up to the big event, they drink and party, drink and shop, drink and listen to music in what's a boom time for the tiny Jefferson County borough and every motel, hotel and restaurant within 50 miles.

While Phil may have his moment of glory every year, one wonders if he's aware that Pennsylvania's second most popular groundhog is back.

Yes, Gus, the Pennsylvania Lottery's spokesgroundhog, has returned after an absence of several years. Gus was top groundhog at the lottery until 2012, when, like so many state employees, he was downsized. Shown the door. Kicked to the curb.

How he spent those missing years is anybody's guess.

"We'd like to imagine Gus used his well-deserved break to travel around the state and have some fun along the way," Lottery Executive Director Drew Svitko said.

Sounds good, but my guess is he was scouting the competition in Punxsutawney. Probably asking, "What makes this guy No. 1? What's he got that I don't?"

After all, it's hard to go through life with your own bosses calling you No. 2.

Come to think of it, that may have been a homeless Gus living under my deck for a couple of years. I did have a groundhog living there, and despite my best efforts to make his life uncomfortable, he always bested me.

I'd fill up his groundhog hole; he'd dig a new one. I'd put a big old log over his new hole, he'd shove it aside. I paid 18 bucks at the big box home store for a can of smelly stuff that was supposed to chase critters. He stayed; I sneezed.

Then he left, just like he'd come - unannounced. Probably headed down to Middletown to negotiate with the lottery guys.

Gus must have known that people were asking for him.

That's what the big boss said in announcing his comeback.

"In the years since (2012), we have continued to hear from players who told us how much they missed Gus and wanted him to return. Simply stated, Gus is a Pennsylvania Lottery institution," Svitko said in November.

So I hope "the institution" held out for better working conditions, a shortened work week, more vacation.

To usher in the New Year and welcome the returning groundhog, the lottery did offer a new Gus Bucks instant game, with a picture of vest-wearing Gus on every ticket. The $5 instant game offered 10 top prizes of $100,000.

The odds aren't great, but laying odds on that fellow in Punxsutawney wouldn't do too much for you, either.

According to what I read on the Internet (so it's gotta be true, right?) Phil's weather predictions, as of 2015, have proved correct just 39 percent of the time.

So just who should be No. 1? The groundhog who's a marginal prognosticator or the fellow who occasionally offers a winning ticket?

Maybe it's time for a showdown. May the best groundhog win.

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net
woman with a concealed weapon.jpg

By Kaytee Moyer

According to a September 2015 Association of American Universities study, one in four females who spend four years at a college have been sexually assaulted.

Kaytee Moyer (PennLive file)

When will Pennsylvania allow its young women to protect themselves on campus?

It's not as if the Pennsylvania higher education system isn't aware of the problem.

During freshman orientation at any of the Pennsylvania state System of Higher Education universities, students are immediately inundated with information about the realities of sexual assault on college campuses.

As my time at my state university continued, I saw even more attention being given to sexual assault.

There were posters being hung around the buildings telling students where to call if they had been assaulted and more support groups forming to help mend those who had been taken advantage of.

But one important point was always missing from these official discussions on ending campus assaults.

With such a prevalent issue effecting campuses across the nation including Pennsylvania, why doesn't the state System of Higher Education have a uniform policy on whether students are allowed to legally carry a concealed weapon for self-defense?

Right now, weapons policies vary from campus to campus. System officials began debating a unified weapons policy in 2014, but never adopted one. And there are no plans to revive the debate, a spokesman confirmed this week.

The arguments on both sides of the gun debate have been discussed, laid out, and mulled over countless times.

But my constitutional right to defend myself while attending a sexual assault breeding ground does not turn null because of these arguments.

With the threat of sexual assault, it can be frightening to be on a college campus, but one must face the reality of these situations.

Especially as a young female who is unable to physically defend herself against someone larger or stronger, carrying a concealed firearm gives students the peace-of-mind they deserve to know that they are safe.

Pennsylvanians can legally carry a concealed firearm most places in our state, which makes the ban on a college campus even more scary.

Perpetrators know that college campuses are unarmed, therefore the students become the defenseless victims.

When students, especially women, are able to defend themselves and are trained and knowledgeable, they are creating a freer environment on college campuses.

The freedom to explore one's campus, regardless of time of day, and to know it is safe because of the ability to defend one's self against any perpetrator is empowering.

When a victim can't scream loud enough for someone to hear or fight back against a perpetrator twice their size, brandishing and, God-forbid, firing a concealed firearm may be the only way to save themselves from this horrific encounter.

Pennsylvania should take a cue from Utah: Let students carry a concealed firearm for defense at state-funded universities.

A recent Millersville University graduate, Kaytee Moyer, of Camp Hill, is a PennLive Opinion contributor.
shutterstock_cutting taxes.jpg

(Shutterstock)

By George F. Will

WASHINGTON -- Woodrow Wilson, who enjoyed moralizing about the mundane, called paying taxes a "glorious privilege."

George F. Will (PennLive file)

In 1865, when there was a Civil War income tax, one taxpayer shared this sensibility, sort of. Mark Twain said that his tax bill of $36.82 (including a $3.12 fine for filing late) made him feel "important" because the government was paying attention to him.

Today, U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, wants to change the way government pays attention to taxpayers.

Congress is like a Calder mobile: Something jiggled here causes things to wiggle over there.

When conservatives toppled Speaker John Boehner, they inadvertently propelled Brady into the House's most important chairmanship, that of the Ways and Means Committee.

Because revenue bills must originate in the House, Brady now wields Congress' most important gavel, all because the committee's previous chairman, Paul Ryan, now sits in Boehner's chair.

If there is going to be growth-igniting tax reform -- and if there isn't, American politics will sink deeper into distributional strife -- Brady will begin it.

Fortunately, the Houston congressman is focused on this simple arithmetic: Three percent growth is not 1 percent better than 2 percent growth, it is 50 percent better.

If the Obama-era's average annual growth of 2.2 percent becomes the "new normal," over the next 50 years real GDP will grow from today's $16.3 trillion to $48.3 trillion.

If, however, growth averages 3.2 percent, real GDP in 2065 will be $78.6 trillion. At 2.2 percent growth, the cumulative lost wealth would be $521 trillion.

Brady, however, would like to start with the approximately $2 trillion that U.S. corporations have parked overseas.

Having already paid taxes on it where it was earned, the corporations sensibly resist having it taxed again by America's corporate tax, the highest in the industrial world. "[The $2 trillion] won't just naturally fly back to us," Brady says.

Measures should be taken to make it rational for corporations to bring money home. And to make it rational for corporations like Pfizer, which recently moved its headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes, to remain here.

In the last 30 years, Brady says, more and more taxes have been paid by fewer and fewer people. And fewer and fewer businesses have been organized as corporations: Three quarters of job-creating entities are not paying corporate taxes.

"You can't," Brady says, "ask people to make big changes, leapfrogging our global competitors, just to get to average." But making big changes "is why we all came to Congress."

And the benefit that comes from something unfortunate -- the fact that there are so few (perhaps fewer than 40) competitive House seats -- is that members can take risks.

Presidential engagement is necessary for tax reform, and Brady says that will require a new president who understands that "just a little respect goes a long way up here [on Capitol Hill]."

All Republican presidential candidates have tax reform proposals, but only one candidate proposes increasing the cost of government for every American.

Here, at last, Donald Trump actually resembles a Republican.

Unfortunately, it is a Republican from 125 years ago, when the party stood for big government serving crony capitalism with high tariffs.

As Steven R. Weisman demonstrates in his splendid history of American taxation, "The Great Tax Wars," the GOP's tariffs were indirect, hidden sales taxes that crimped consumption by Americans with small incomes.

In 1913, the first year of Wilson's presidency and the year the 16th Amendment and the income tax arrived, the glorious privilege of paying taxes was enjoyed primarily through tariffs: They provided nearly half of federal revenues, with most of the rest coming from tobacco and liquor taxes, which also were hardest on persons of modest means.

Trump, who works himself into a lather because Nabisco is making some Oreo cookies outside the country, is obsessed with America's trade with China.

"We're going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country," says he, aiming to raise the price Americans pay for Apple products that today are assembled in China, which, according to trade attorney Scott Lincicome, makes about $6 by assembling an iPhone from parts (many of which China has imported).

Trump favors a 45 percent tariff to protect customers of Wal-Mart and similar retailers from the onslaught of inexpensive Chinese apparel, appliances and food.

He can explain the glorious privilege of paying taxes-as-tariffs when he makes his next visit to a Wal-Mart, perhaps the one in Secaucus, New Jersey, just seven miles from his Fifth Avenue penthouse.

George Will is a columnist for The Washington Post. His work appears on Mondays on PennLive. Readers may email him at georgewill@washpost.com.
Hyderabad : An effective fee regulatory mechanism involving retired judges to regulate fees in private schools would be in place in Telangana from 2016-17.

Following Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's directions, the department of school education has expedited the process for setting up a fee regulatory committee which will be placed before the Cabinet for approval in March.

The government will introduce a bill in the ensuing budget session in March to accord statutory powers to the committee.

The CM took this issue seriously after several of his ministers and TRS leaders brought to his notice that the major complaint they have been receiving from the public during ongoing GHMC election campaign was about higher schools fees and the need for the government to control it.

Various parents associations have submitted several representations in this regard to IT minister K.T. Rama Rao, Nizamabad MP K. Kavita, city ministers and other TRS leaders during campaigning.

The Chief Minister said on Thursday, I too share the concern raised by parents on this issue. They are angry at too much commercialisation by some schools. There is a need to regulate fees in private schools and our education minister is already on the job. The proposal may come up in the next cabinet meeting .

Deputy CM holding education portfolio, Kadiam Srihari said the government wants to control fees in all the schools, irrespective of their affiliation to CBSE, ICSE boards etc.

When asked about recent SC ruling on Tamil Nadu CBSE schools that TN government can't regulate fees in these schools, he said, We will study the judgement and take a decision accordingly. The parent associations welcomed the CMs statement. "We have been agitating on this issue for over an year," said N. Subramanyam, secretary, Hyderabad Schools Parents Association.
FILE - In this March 8, 1968 file photo, members of the rock group Jefferson Airplane pose for a photograph in San Francisco. From left, Marty Balin, Grace Slick, Spencer Dryden, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jack Casady. Kantner died at a San Francisco hospital on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 after falling ill earlier in the week, former girlfriend and publicist Cynthia Bowman told The Associated Press. (AP Photo)
A major chunk of the total money, around 60 per cent, was spent on building capital assets which are not specifically beneficial for SC or ST students, like construction of hostels or buying computers.

Hyderabad: The University Grants Commission annually allots only 11 per cent of the total money it gets under the SC and ST sub plans on scholarships and fellowships, which directly benefits the students of these marginalised communities.

As per a reply given by UGC to a RTI query, it spent only Rs 107.86 crore for scholarships and fellowships out of the Rs 1047.33 crore in the SC sub-plan in 2012-13 and Rs 35.56 crore of the allotted Rs 507.20 crore of the Tribal sub-plan.

In the preceding year it spent Rs 87.86 crore of Rs 814.50 crore on scholarships and fellowships in the SC sub-plan and Rs 33.53 crore out of Rs 400.61 crore in the Tribal-sub plan.

A major chunk of the total money, around 60 per cent, was spent on building capital assets which are not specifically beneficial for SC or ST students, like construction of hostels or buying computers.

For this reason the UGC has come under fire from Dalit rights organizations.

Mr Paul Divakar, general secretary of National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, which filed the RTI said, This is not an issue which pertains just to the UGC. Ineffective spending and diversion of funds meant for SC and ST development exists in many well known institutions like the IITs, IIMs and ICSSR. This is just another form of discrimination. We have complained about the UGC problem to the minister of HRD, Ms Smriti Irani and head of other government bodies, but to no avail. We are planning to approach the courts now.

When contacted, former UGC chairman Mr Sukhdeo Thorat said, The allocation of money should be increased for fellowships because it helps the students directly and will result in more Dalit scholars pursuing research. What is the point of allocating money meant under the sub-plans if students do not benefit from it directly?
New urgent care, family practice opens in Petoskey

Bay Street Urgent Care and Family Practice opened in Petoskey in early September and has seen high demand for services ever since.
A woman walking past the Nga Tsin Wai village to be demolished as part of a city re-urbanisation plan in Hong Kong. (Photo: AFP)

Hong Kong: A 650-year-old urban walled village in Hong Kong the last of its kind will be destroyed to make way for development in what critics say is another nail in the coffin for the city's cultural heritage.

On a chilly morning, around 20 remaining residents of Nga Tsin Wai, an ancient settlement in the heart of bustling Kowloon, despondently packed their belongings before the wrecking ball arrives in the coming days.

There were once dozens of such villages scattered across what became the urban centre of the city they were built by Chinese clans centuries ago, complete with moats and watchtowers to guard against intruders.

While many walled villages still remain intact on the city's rural outskirts, Nga Tsin Wai is the only one left in the heart of Hong Kong.

The village was built in 1354 and the original walls and battlements have disappeared, leaving a collection of around 50 ramshackle houses, shops and a temple, hemmed in by concrete tower blocks that have grown up around it.

Authorities argue the village is in poor condition and should make way for better quality housing units in an overcrowded city 750 new flats will be built on the site.

Heartbroken residents say it is the only place they call home.

"The village has a long history and we have been here for a long time. But we have been given no choice but to leave," one resident, Kwok Yue-ka, said.

Kwok, a 52-year-old barber, held out until the eviction deadline, unhappy with the government's compensation package. Authorities warned he must leave or risk jail.

Kwok said he received HK$200,000 ($25,665) in compensation and would be moved to temporary housing.

"I have treated this as my only home. I have lived here for 20 years. Now the future is uncertain. I feel frustrated," he said.

History Swept Away

The destruction of historic buildings, old communities and street markets across Hong Kong has drawn widespread criticism in recent years.

The last decade has seen the demolition of the landmark Queen's Pier, built during the British colonial era, swept away for a bypass and harbourfront development.

An entire street in the Wan Chai neighbourhood -- known as "wedding card street" for the abundance of shops selling traditional Chinese wedding invites was demolished to make way for residential development and luxury stores.

The government is under pressure to find space for 400,000 new housing units in the next 10 years to remedy the shortage of affordable homes as property prices have skyrocketed.

But while there is a pressing need for more accommodation, district councillor Paul Zimmerman, an advocate of sustainable urban planning, said Hongkongers were beginning to question the sacrifices made.

"How do you balance the (economic) gains and the impact on individuals? How do you maintain these areas without destroying the local culture?" asks Zimmerman. "We have to take a more careful approach."

'Losing tradition'

The Urban Renewal Authority, overseeing the redevelopment of Nga Tsin Wai walled village, described it as "decrepit" and said only a small number of villagers would be affected.

"The living conditions are poor due to the lack of proper maintenance and sanitation facilities," a spokeswoman said.

She said current residents did not have the legal right to live there because the land is owned by the government, adding that some elements would be preserved, including the village temple.

But campaigners say it is not just about bricks and mortar as the social fabric and way of life of the village disappears.

"Culture is cultivated by people who live there. Without the people the area is dead even if the buildings are splendid," Ho Chi-fung of Grassroots Housing Rights Alliance, a concern group for the housing needs of underprivileged Hong Kong residents, said.

Residents have gradually moved away from the village over the past 20 years and empty houses have been knocked down, but a small community remained, including a Chinese medicine pharmacy, barber shops and handcraft sellers.

"We are losing a tradition. It will only become a money-making project," said a knife-maker, surnamed Fan, who recently moved out, ahead of the demolition.

Another resident in her 40s, surnamed Han, who works as an office clerk, said her family memories would disappear with the final demolition.

Her father ran a home accessories shop in the village in the 1980s, and the family of 10 lived above it.

"A lot will be missed," she said. "The house may be small, but I grew up here."
Novartis has criticised the current state of drug access in the UK after its melanoma combination of Tafinlar and Mekinist launched in the country, but is still unavailable to patients while the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) is closed to new medicines.

NICE guidance on the treatment  which is the first targeted combination treatment for melanoma in the UK  is not expected until the second half of 2016. While Novartis was hoping that the CDF could fund the drug while it awaited full approval, NHS England announced in July that no new medicines will be listed through the CDF until at least April, when a revamped Fund is expected to begin.

While the CDF was not sustainable, it was the only mechanism by which new cancer medicines could get funding between launch and an appraisal by NICE, said Margaret Dean, general manager, Novartis Oncology UK and Ireland. It is unfortunate that the CDF is closed to all new cancer medicines  with no transition mechanism in place. What this means for Tafinlar and Mekinist is that no patients can benefit from July 2015 until April 2016 at the earliest and patients are falling through the gap.

Several drugs were dropped from the CDF last year as the Fund came under increasing financial pressure from skyrocketing prices for new cancer medicines. A National Audit Office investigation concluded that although it has improved access it is not sustainable.

Consultations for a revamped CDF are proposing that it becomes a managed access fund to give early access to those drugs which appear promising but which have uncertain evidence bases. All new cancer drugs would receive a clear yes (baseline commissioning), maybe (CDF funding for time limited period), or no funding decision within 90 days of market authorisation.

The Tafinlar (dabrafenib) and Mekinist (trametinib) combo is a precision treatment that targets patients with a BRAF V600 mutation. Approximately half of all melanoma cases have a BRAF mutation, which can be determined by genetic testing of the tumour.
The latest public dog and pony show, unveiled on Thursday in Delhi, is the selection of 20 cities across the richest 11 states of India for accessing the governments Smart Cities fund. The near-complete exclusion of the poor cow belt states, except Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, can be explained by the need to first push public money to where elections are to be held in 2016  Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Kerala  West Bengal being a surprising exclusion.

But what takes the cake is the inclusion of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), comprising just three per cent of Delhis area, which is directly administered by the Centre. The Central government owns nearly 90 per cent of the 44 sq km it comprises with marginal ownership in and around the prestigious Lutyens zone of power brokers, lobbyists, old-economy business people, big time realtors and other hangers-on of this rarified ecosystem  the Indian equivalent of the Washington DC Beltway.

The NDMC is already a profitable municipality, as indeed it should be. It spends over Rs 3,000 crore every year on serving just 300,000 people  a per capita expense of Rs 1 lakh per resident, per year. Compare this with the average spend in the other three municipalities of Delhi of just Rs 7,300 per capita per year  all currently managed by the Bharatiya Janata Party. More starkly, the average spend for all urban areas, across India, is a shockingly low Rs 1,000 per capita per year.

Why is the selection of NDMC for yet another barrel of pork so disappointing? Three reasons strike out: First, that this should happen days before the reformist budget expected to be presented by the Union minister of finance for 2016-17 is unnerving. The budget is, or should be, about spending public money well and wringing out the maximum public value from it. Allocating subsidies to the rich cannot be part of a pro-poor paradigm. It symbolises all that is wrong with a bureaucracy which is all spin and no heart.

Second, the bane of China style big government has been soft budget constraints and poor accountability. Big budgets lead to profligate spending. Bureaucrats are more interested in shovelling money out of the public door into private pockets and marking up their performance sheets, than in ensuring that the money is spent in areas where growth and poverty reduction can most be impacted.

The casual allocation of Rs 500 crore to the richest local body in India, with the highest per capita income, just so that it can shine even better, speaks of a pernicious tendency in new public financial management to mimic private finance by allocating money where it can be quickly absorbed, rather than risk it where it would create the maximum social and economic value.

Third, it is no ones case that redistribution of wealth can be done by pulling down those who are well off. But Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajans recent diatribe against the lack of public concern about the optics of vulgar displays of wealth strikes a chord.

Lutyens Delhi is the Kohinoor of Delhi. A small self-absorbed bubble of power, privilege and wealth. One acre of land here costs Rs 500 crore and sales happen rarely. Why cant the power elite pay for the privileges they enjoy? Why is it so difficult to convince the 4,000-odd large private property owners  each with a minimum net wealth of at least Rs 100 crore  to pay for retrofitting their beautiful municipality?

Isnt that what participative governance means? Why must poor Trilokpuri in east Delhi comprising the marginalised, poor and the shabbiest of public services pay for keeping Lutyens Delhi shining?

Had Thomas Piketty been part of the Smart City selection committee he would have torn out his hair in a fit of Gaelic rage at the callousness with which public money has been wasted and inequality worsened. What indeed was the selection process which has generated such a warped result?

The allocation instrument is a challenge fund devised by the usual suspects: Fly in, fly out consultants. As expected, on paper, the process appears transparent and efficient. It is a beauty contest. Municipalities send in their proposals seeking Central government funds for up to Rs 500 crore over four years.

But they must match the Central government allocation and also meet the criterion of performance efficiency which includes standard metrics like collection efficiency, proactivity, etc. Nothing wrong with that at all. The killer is that there is no criteria on what impact the project will have on reducing urban poverty or on reducing the depth of deprivation in access to basic public services in poor localities.

Is it any surprise then that the Smart City fund is merely ending up elevating the boats which are already afloat? And how is that so different from the infamous National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) of the United Progressive Alliance, which similarly incentivised the ability to use funds quickly?

Rich states like Tamil Nadu, with average informal wages way above the national average national, quickly pulled out most of the funds, whilst the poor, badly organised states faced an empty treasury by the time they got their act together. As before, the mightiest wins yet again.

Political pork, lazy bureaucrats, the use of public funds for private gain by the elites is all old hat in India and across the developing world. Nothing new in that. The pity is that it neednt be this way. The anguish is that old style cornering of public funds with no regard for ensuring equity, persists like a deep-seeded rot.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of all people, should know the negative feeling generated from being excluded by the establishment. He must have experienced the chagrin of public money being wasted on gilding the lily whilst millions of poor children, like him, had to make do with a subsistence existence. Or is human memory so frail that one quickly forgets the bad times?

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was fond of establishing his humble roots by saying that as a child he studied under the village lamp post. But in the 10 years that he was in power, millions of children continued to study in exactly the same way. The preoccupations of the Delhi Durbar are pretty compelling. That is why they say you can wear a crown in Delhi. But dont sleep easy  it isnt permanent.
Sticks and stones

Will break my bones

And love will break my heart

Thus wounded will

I linger still

And play the jokers part!

From Cursory Rhymes

by Bachchoo

Donald Trump wants to bring jobs back to America and he certainly means call centres. His populist intention goes against the trend of capitalism which profits from low global labour costs and the pronouncements are even against the interests of those who finance the Republican Party which is of the capitalists, by the capitalists and for the capitalists.

Global Capital, including the companies that run the railways in Britain and provide software for computers, find it economical to hire Indians in Indian cities to answer customer queries through call centres.

I am sure there are statistics which reveal the extent to which the call centre industry has boosted the Indian economy. Its also likely that numbers can be put to the social effect this outsourced industry has had on the changing class demographic of India.

One must admire the men and women who, from Mumbai or Bengaluru, on a long and lonely shift, answer the phone to guide me through the problem I am having on my badly behaved computer.

That being said, I had an unenviable experience in the last week with precisely such a problem. My Internet server kept spontaneously switching itself off a second after I repeatedly turned it on. Since it wouldnt stay on-screen for more than that second, I couldnt access the programmes help or find a phone number to call for some.

I had to resort to phoning friends more savvy than me. I dialled the number they gave me and was given several choices of buttons to press. A distinctly American recorded voice told me that it wouldnt take more than 20 minutes to connect me to an adviser. It did take that long  the announcement of delay proved accurate  and left me hoping that this call was free.

The repetitive music was annoying, but I needed the Internet for work and was determined to hang on, despite the possible cost, the waste of time and the mind-numbing choice of Muzak.

Finally, a voice came on and identified himself in a South Indian accent as having some fanciful English name. I cant recall what it was but it could have been Frank, Donald or Constantine. He asked my name. I told him and he replied with a cheery and familiar, How can I help you today, Farrukh? Well, Constantine, I replied and told him what the problem was.

He spent the next 10 minutes guiding me through the steps I should take to uninstall a faulty programme. He kept addressing me by my first name after each instruction. I replied with Yeah, done that! He would say Great Farrukh! tempting me to say thanks, Constantine  but I didnt.

The 20-minute step-by-step remedy failed. Our call had ended with him instructing me to switch off, switch on and access the programme. I did.

The programme did exactly the same thing that it had done before. I was frustrated but determined and tried calling again, this time with a 25-minute wait and the same annoying music.

I eventually got someone who called himself Arian, Adolf or Vladimir or some such. I was tempted to tell him when he asked, that my name was Fauntleroy or Yugashvilli, but thought better of it. We went through a different installation procedure, but that again failed.

I went through this trying game six times. It was on my sixth attempt on the third day that a lady who called herself Daisy or Delilah or something told me that the problem was being caused by some other programme that had spontaneously upgraded itself on my computer. She told me that they had called the other softwarewallahs to complain and ask them to stifle the upgrade that was interfering with my software, but they had accessed a call centre somewhere in India who didnt know what they were talking about.

However, she said if I didnt much use that other programme I should ditch its latest version. I did and it did the trick. I was still on the phone to her and asked her why she and her colleagues didnt use their real names  after all I wouldnt mind if they were called Bhola or Priya or Ramaswamy. She said that Americans and Europeans who called couldnt get their heads or tongues around Sanskritic names which the Hindu parents of her generation favoured  all those Arjathashatrus and Girinandinis! Yes, ok!

The call centre culture has given rise to myriad forms of frustration. One would have thought that nations have been enabled to talk to nations, but it would seem that call centres cant even get sense out of other call centres. A prominent Labour MP wrote in a newspaper diary this week that he was at a British rail station with his infant daughter who urgently needed the lavatory.

The station toilet was padlocked and there was no official about. Instead there was a Help Machine, a phone which connected him to a call centre in Mumbai.

He explained his childs need. The lady who answered, Yasmin or Yakshini, who must have called herself Tracy, asked where he was. He gave her the name of the station in Devon, England. No, she said she was a thousand miles away and couldnt get him a key to the loo!

Come to think of it, even if the call centre operator were in Glasgow or Detroit, she wouldnt have been able to send him that key. And what Mr Trump should consider is that not only are outsourced call centres cheaper for the companies that hire them, the boys and girls from Bengaluru with Indian family life disciplines may, in any event, be better equipped to answer info-tech questions than their American contemporaries.
India just celebrated 66 years of being a Republic based on the Constitution that grants to its citizens, among many other wonderful things, a network of rights  both individual and group. The Constitution recognises the centrality of equality, liberty, fraternity and dignity of the citizen in the making of a democratic India. However, many aspects of life in India do not subscribe to these constitutional tenets. Living in a democracy, citizens have the right, and indeed it is their duty, to invoke constitutional provisions to ensure that these distances are bridged.

It is in this context that I would place the ongoing judicial battle with regard to the ban on entry of women and young girls within the age group of 10 to 50 years to the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala. The recent developments in the Supreme Court, with regard to a petition filed by the Indian Young Lawyers Association and five women lawyers seeking a direction to allow entry of women into the Sabarimala temple without age restriction, is by now very well known.

The court wished to know the basis for the ban and did not take a very sympathetic view of the justification of the ban invoking traditions and respect for the celibate status of the deity at the temple. This raises the question: Whether this ban on the entry of women of a certain age group violates the rights of Indian citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution?

Rights are precious; they, however, acquire life and validity only in the context of a particular society, with its specific history and culture. For instance, many of the rights granted to the Indian citizen under Part III of the Indian Constitution make sense only in context of the caste-based prejudices that are peculiar to Indian society. Another significant fact about rights is that they are never doled out by a magnanimous state to grateful citizens.

On the contrary, citizens have had to fight for their rights and wrest them from the state. This is true for all democracies; every struggle for expansion of rights has resulted in the expansion of democracy. This petition filed to assert the rights of women, irrespective of their age, to enter Sabarimala should be placed in the context of struggles for the widening of the circle of democracy by fulfilling the promises of the Constitution.

In a democracy, the best results are produced when the impetus for change is supported by a large citizen base for the proposed change. In this instance of revoking the ban on womens entry to the Sabarimala shrine, we are yet to see that. Sections of Keralas society, including enlightened intellectuals and writers (some of whom happen to be women, like the poet Sugathakumari) remain unconvinced about the move to revoke the ban on women entering the shrine.

The issue of unequal access to public places of worship is not of limited relevance to Kerala, but has a resonance for the rest of the country as well.

Democracy, by nature is always a work in progress. Societies are by nature dynamic.

A democratic society would be capable of absorbing and reflecting the changes in society, but this process is never smooth sometimes vociferous campaigns have to be undertaken and at other times persistent petitioning does the trick. For instance, in Maharashtra, activists of Ranragini Bhumata Brigade led by Trupti Desai were prevented by police presence and barricades, when they attempted to forcibly enter and worship on the sacred platform at the Shani Shingnapur temple. Whereas in Kerala, we see that the campaign is comparatively muted.

In liberal democratic societies, the legal route is often explored to nudge the process of change. It is this process of dialogue, debate and deliberation that results in democratic change. The questions raised by the current controversy about admission of women to temples such as Sabarimala or Shani Shingnapur should be welcomed as an opportunity for the Indian Republic to introspect, reflect upon and critique its democratic ethos.

I, however, do believe that the legal campaign for constitutionally-guaranteed equality needs to be supplemented with constructive and not shrill engagement with public opinion. It would be useful to demonstrate the dynamic nature of traditions and conventions. After all the practice of Sati and child-marriage were also a part of our traditions. It would most certainly be useful to remind ourselves of the numerous instances when egalitarian and democratic beliefs have been blockaded by cultural and religious practices.

Bold and imaginative campaigners, in alliance with democratic institutions, have ushered in some of the most dramatic changes in the Indian society. Change is, more often than not, painful, especially when it involves existing beliefs and practices. However, liberal-democratic societies are characterised by their willingness to introspect and accept the need for change. In a democracy such as ours, the state and its institutions would be expected to show the path not in isolation, but in tandem with the energies of the people seeking equality and fraternity.

It is not my contention that such battles need not be fought  indeed each of these skirmishes show us again and again the stranglehold of hierarchical social structures. The petitioners in the case of Sabarimala and the activists in the case of the Shani temple, serve a very important purpose, i.e., drawing our attention to the essentially gendered and, hence, inevitably unequal nature of pilgrimages and worship practices.

In this, the Sabarimala or Shani Shingnapur temples are not exceptions. There are, of course, instances of pilgrim sites and ritual positions that were exclusively for women. Shrines such as the caves of Eileithyia on Crete, Greece, dedicated to fertility goddesses allowed only female pilgrims.

Famously, the oracles of Delphi, Greece, were only women. In Kerala, the Pongala at Attukal temple is exclusively celebrated by women. But a crucial difference lies in the fact that in the above instances, men were not excluded because of deep-seated societal taboos and mistrust. Instances of Jewish and medieval Christian pilgrim sites that disallowed or had strict segregation of sexes are to be found, and in many of these instances, the segregation emanated from scepticism about women pilgrims. In fact, the Spanish proverb romera ramera captures these prejudices very well.

Haj, of course, has its own restrictions on women, as also the Haji Ali Dargah where the inner sanctum is now off-limits to women. The discomfort with women asserting their autonomy, with women being in public places as opposed to their rightful place at home, the nervousness vis-a-vis female sexuality  are some of the possible explanations for excluding women from certain pilgrimages and ritual practices.

The Sabarimala pilgrimage is undoubtedly an occasion for men to come together on a largely egalitarian footing; everyone is addressed as swami irrespective of caste, religion or class. However, women find no place in this community. Scholars have noticed the intensity of emotion and unity of purpose that converts the trek to the temple into a unique homosocial experience.

The male camaraderie and bonds formed during the pilgrimage and worship seem to have, in recent years, become a very essential part of defining masculinity in Kerala. Women joining this pilgrimage would pose a threat to this carefully-crafted masculinity of Malayalee men, just as women worshipping Shani on the sacred platform at the Shani Shingnapur temple of Maharashtra might challenge the local construct of masculinity in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.

While the legal process will take its own due course, for campaigners of rights, the legal challenge is only the beginning, for at heart the question is not about this or that shrine and the entry of this or that group of people. The question is of equal access, and this question cannot be limited to access of some women who wish to worship at the Sabari shrine or at the Shani temple.

It has to be linked with access of dalit students to good education, of the poor to quality healthcare, of the old to safe and caring environs, etc. To isolate one instance of hierarchy and prejudice would have limited results, however, to place it in the larger context of marginalisation and mistrust might yield richer and more meaningful rewards.
The dog is expected to make a full recovery from his wound. (Photo: Screen grab)

New York: A brave three-legged Pitbull which helped stop a dangerous home burglary in the US state of Wisconsin is getting extra treats.

15-year-old Levi, injured when a masked man shot at him last week, is expected to make a full recovery from his wound.

His owner, Darcy Cherry said that when an armed robber broke into her home last week, Levi started growling and barking.

The intruder had pointed a gun at Cherry and her boyfriend, Bob Stenzel. The armed man had made the couple get on the ground, then demanded money.

"Not more than a minute after that, the person fired on Levi right in the head," Stenzel told CNN affiliate WISC. The bullet grazed the dog's head and lodged into its left shoulder. The intruder then ran off without stealing anything.

Police said the suspect is still on the loose. This is not Levi's first brush with heroism.

Levi lost his leg during a family hike in 2014. The dog apparently took a fall of the edge of a trail shattering his leg.

Cherry said Levi's action prevented her son, who was following close behind the dog, from being hurt during the incident.

Levi apparently survived a dog-napping two years ago, the report said.

Click here to watch the video:
Sharif was briefed in detail on the January 20 Bacha Khan University attack in Charsadda that killed 21 people mostly students and the investigations made so far. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday chaired a high-level meeting to review security situation in the country and vowed to bring to justice perpetrators of the "heinous" act of killing children in their places of study.

Mr Sharif was briefed in detail on the January 20 Bacha Khan University attack in Charsadda that killed 21 people mostly students and the investigations made so far.

The Prime Minister reaffirmed the government's resolve to continue the war on terror until the last terrorist is eliminated from Pakistan's soil, his office said in a statement.

"Perpetrators and facilitators of the heinous act of killing our innocent children in the places of their studies will be brought to justice," he said.

Wiping out terrorism from the country is the collective resolve of the state of Pakistan, its government and people of the land, Mr Sharif said.

The meeting - that focused on Pakistan's overall security and economic situation - was attended by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan besides other senior officials.

Mr Sharif said that the ongoing military operation 'Zarb-e-Azb' has broken the backbone of terrorists who have resorted to "targeting soft targets out of sheer frustration, but we will not let their evil agenda to succeed".

He also briefed the meeting on his latest visits to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Davos in Switzerland.
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The Pittsburgh Pirates have signed free agent infielder Anderson Feliz to a minor league deal. He spent 2015 in independent ball for Lancaster of the Atlantic League. The Barnstormers announced his signing on their website this morning. Feliz was playing winter ball in Nicaragua this year and left his team a week ago to meet for a tryout with the Pirates in the Dominican Republic.

Feliz is 23 years old and has played pro ball since 2009, spending his first six seasons in the Yankees organization. He topped out at High-A, spending parts of four seasons in the Florida State League. Last year in indy ball, he hit .275/.344/.415 in 92 games. Feliz has spent most of his time at second base, but hes played all three outfield spots, as well as shortstop and third base.

He had a .694 OPS in 324 games while with the Yankees, showing some ability to get on base at times. He was pushed to full-season ball at age 19 back in 2011 and struggled that year with a low average and high strikeout rate. Feliz stole a career high 16 bases that year, with six homers and 52 walks. Since then, he has been on the disabled list eight times, though it looks like a few may have been paper moves/phantom injuries due to roster space, possibly to add a pitcher due to a tired bullpen.

He looks to be minor league depth, possibly at either Bradenton or Altoona. He will probably be used as a utility player, much like Andy Vasquez, who the Pirates didnt resign this off-season after nine years in the system.
you are correct.Some will probably say that if the Europeans won't take the muzzies, then we will have to take them.Well, the Ayatollah-arselicking Obumerrhoid and his fellow arselickers, the Lib DEMS, have already taken in these muzzies, and undoubtedly will try to take in more of them with a plethora of Jihadist arseholes.But not if most of us will try to convince Congress that this type of immigration isI say ****'em. ****'em all. After all,no matter what their degree of innocence is, they arethe followers of the PSYCHO MohahahahahaMAD who, according to their own Islamic Hadiths, PERSONALLY beheaded ~ 20 of his prisoners for rejecting his Islam. And, set himself up as the model for his TRUE muslims to follow !!!Let the muzzies take care of their own Jihad ******* problems instead of having the Europeans, or us, taking care of them.And, in line with the above, the NAZIS who followed the MONUMENTAL ARSEHOLE HITLER which caused us to stop GERMANY with a WAR because of theirall over the place....no matter the fact that not ALL the Germans were maniacal NAZIS.Well, it iswith the ******* JIHADISTS who are causing theSo, just as we had to have a WAR with Germany to stop their, we must stop the Muslims because no matter the innocent muzzies involved, themust be eliminated.
Mountain Pine (AR) Police Chief Chad King (Photo: King Family)

The Mountain Pine (AR) Police Chief is now recovering in a local hospital after being shot multiple times on Wednesday morning.

Chief and commissioned Garland County Deputy Chad King was volunteering to respond to a criminal trespassing call in the 2900 block of Little Blakely Creek Road. When he arrived, he found the suspect in a van that was stuck in the mud. After that, an unknown altercation occurred between the suspect and King. Several minutes passed before he radioed for help.

King is the only full-time municipal police officer working for Mountain Pine Police Department, so other agencies responded for back up, and they found the chief shot multiple times but responsive.

The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

Chief King is now recovering at St. Vincent Hospital in Hot Springs, thankful to still be alive.

Garland County Sheriff Mike McCormick told THV11 that he was able to speak with Chief King and his wife.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department warden Justin Hurst was killed in 2007.

A man convicted in the 2007 shooting death of a Texas game warden in Wharton County was executed Wednesday evening.

James Garrett Freeman, 35, shot and killed Justin Hurst, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, following a 90-minute chase on country roads in the early morning of March 17, 2007, according to court documents. It was Hursts 34th birthday.

Freeman was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and died at 6:30 p.m., according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He declined to give a final statement.

Freeman was first approached by law enforcement after he shot and killed a possum from the side of the road, according to court documents. Another game warden patrolling the area heard the shot, and when he activated his emergency lights, Freeman sped away.

Law enforcement from multiple agencies took part in the high-speed chase before Freeman ran over a set of spikes that officers had set up near a cemetery. Dashboard camera video shows he exited the car shooting at officers with a handgun, returned to his car while officers shot back, then came back out firing an assault rifle.

Hurst came out from cover to fire at Freeman and was shot and killed. Freeman was also hit by several bullets, including one that penetrated his leg, Wharton County District Attorney Ross Kurtz told the Texas Tribune.
Glock is celebrating its 30th anniversary in the U.S.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the introduction of Glock pistols to the U.S. market. Glock Inc. was established in the United States in 1986. Glock pistols are now the sidearm of choice for over 65% of the law enforcement agencies across the U.S., and they are used in more than 50 elite military units worldwide, according to the company.

"When I brought the Glock 17 to America in 1986, I could not have imagined or predicted the success Glock enjoys today," said company founder, Gaston Glock. "Our pistols are the choice of millions for personal and home protection and target shooting."

Glock has launched a year-long 30th Anniversary celebration. The company has commissioned a limited edition of 30 hand-engraved G17 Gen4 pistols to honor groups and organizations that have contributed to the overall success of the company in the U.S.

Glock is celebrating its 30th anniversary in the U.S. with specially engraved G17 Gen4 pistols. Photo: Glock

Each of the 30 pistols has been uniquely engraved by one of five Master Engravers who have been certified by the Firearms Engravers Guild of America (FEGA) to commemorate the relationships cultivated during the company's 30-year history. The exclusive pistols will be presented throughout the year to exceptional individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the success of Glock. The engraved G17 Gen4 pistols carry a limited production serial number and come with a certificate of authenticity signed by Mr. Glock.

To learn more about 30 years of Glock in the United States and how to win one of the limited edition pistols, visit 30th.glock.com.

About Glock, Inc.

Glock is a leading global manufacturer of firearms. In 2016, Glock celebrates its 30th Anniversary in the United States. Renowned for featuring three safeties, Glock pistols offer users of every lifestyle confidence they can rely on. Glock Inc. is based in Smyrna, GA. For more information, visit us.glock.com.
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As part of his middle finger to Fox News for not stabbing Megyn Kelly in the back, Trump is sitting out tonights Republican debate and running counterprogramming. Trump is claiming to be raising money for veterans causes at a hastily tossed together fundraiser for veterans at Drake University during the debate.

But the donations actually go to Trumps foundation, which doesnt have a good record of donating to veterans groups or their causes.

Trumps newly registered veteran donation site claims 100% of your donations will go directly to Veterans needs, but the staff at the conservative Federalist put 1 and 1 together and they didnt get 2.

Theres only one problem: 100% of the money raised on the site goes directly to Donald Trumps personal non-profit foundation, according to a disclosure listed at the bottom of the page, The Federalist staff determined (wisely crediting Federalist staff, lest Donald Trump decide why not when he next ponders killing journalists like his pal Putin).

The Federalists digging revealed that this special donation site was set up by the people who did Donald Trumps campaign domain and Trumps foundation does not have a history of donating to veterans or their causes. In fact, they point out that Forbes found that barely 1% of Trumps foundations donations went to organizations that support veterans.

From the Federalist:



Trumps personal non-profit foundation, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, does not have a history of donating much money to veterans or to veterans causes. According to a recent analysis of the organizations spending history by the Weekly Standard, Trumps non-profit donated more money to the Clinton Foundation than it did to veterans causes.

Noting that Trumps foundation gave only $57,000 to veterans groups, the Federalist quoted from a 2015 analysis done by Forbes :

The Donald J. Trump Foundation has donated $5.5 million to 298 charities between 2009 and 2013 (the most recent year available), according to the non-profits 990 tax forms from those years. Of that, only $57,000 has been donated to seven organizations that directly benefit military veterans or their families, Forbes found. Wounded Warriors was not among the organizations Trumps foundation gave to in that time period.

Forbes also found that Trump, who we estimate is worth $4.5 billion, has not made personal contributions to his foundation during the same time period. We reached out to his spokespeople for comment, but did not hear back before publishing.

If Donald Trump wants to raise money for veterans, why does it need to be funneled through his foundation and how can he possibly claim that 100% of that money is going to veterans, given the costs of running a foundation and the foundations track record with veterans issues.

The Trump campaign hasnt even said which, if any, veterans groups its working with, though they mentioned the Wounded Warrior Project, but that organization has come under new scrutiny for potentially wasting 40% of all donated funds.

We have no way of knowing if the Trump foundation donates a dime of this money to veterans causes, and we wont know until long after the election. Trump could have easily avoided this concern by linking directly to a credible veterans group. Instead, Trump is linking to his own foundation.

Conservatives are upset because they think the money is going to the Clinton foundation, still clinging to their feverish dreams that Donald Trump is a secret Democrat  with the platform of a hardcore conservative. That doesnt make sense, unless Republicans are so far removed from what a political platform and votes actually mean that they dont care about their candidates platform.

The bottom line is that this proves Trumps conservative bonafides  running a scam on veterans is par for the course with conservative heroes.
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Thanks to the efforts of Rachel Maddow, and a new agreement between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democratic voters might get additional primary debates in February, March, April, and May.

With Hillary Clinton agreeing to add more Democratic debates to the schedule, Bernie Sanders suggested that he is willing to do the New Hampshire debate in February.

For weeks, Rachel Maddow pressed both top Democratic presidential candidates and the DNC to add more primary debates to the schedule. Maddow went as far as to call the DNCs debate schedule TV Siberia. It looked like Maddow had delivered a big win for Democratic voters after a new debate was announced for New Hampshire on February 4, which Maddow would co-moderate.

The Bernie Sanders campaign immediately stated that they would not be participating because the debate was not sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). On Wednesday, the Sanders campaign laid out their terms for participating in the New Hampshire debate. Sanders would participate if Clinton would also agree to additional debates in March, April and May.

On Thursday, the Clinton campaign put out a statement that agreed to the additional debates, We are glad that Senator Sanders has changed his mind about a debate next week in New Hampshire. We have always been willing to add additional debates beyond the six that had been scheduled and look forward to starting discussions on scheduling debates in April and May.

Today, during an interview on MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell Reports, Sen. Sanders said that he is moving closer to accepting the February 4 debate, Look, what we have said is, as you know, the DNC has established the rules. The rules were established when Hillary Clinton was 40 or 50 points ahead in the polls. We had nothing to say about it, and they said there will be six debates. Well, the political world has changed a little bit and now it seems that Hillary Clinton would like another debate. You know what, I said, thats fine, I dont mind that. But I want to make sure there are going to be more debates later on. And at least three debates later on and if Hillary Clinton will work with us to agree on a time and a place, sure, I dont have a problem. I like debates.

It looks like Rachel Maddow has helped to crack the DNCs horrible debate schedule and get three additional debates for Democratic primary voters. Clinton wants the New Hampshire debate because she is trailing in the Granite State. Sanders wants debates later in the spring because the debates are his best shot at making up ground on Clinton in the later states.

Adding three more debates is a win-win for everybody, but the biggest winners are the voters. If everything works out, Democratic voters are going to get a primetime weeknight debate just before a critical primary. The future debates wont be buried on weekends or holidays, and voters will get to see their candidates.

None of this would have happened with Rachel Maddow pressing and both campaigns being open to more debates. No matter who wins the nomination, democracy is best served by more debates. Maddow, Clinton, and Sanders all deserve praise for coming together and trying to fix the embarrassing sanctioned debate schedule.
Different people from the revolution's match of the different characters at the standoff. These history inept liberals would have had each of them arrested or shot and we would have the Queen on the one dollar bill rather than Washington.
Russias Vladimir Putin resurrects our saviour Joseph Stalin

Long gone are the years when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev meticulously de-Stalinised Soviet life. In 2015, the Soviet dictators resurrected cult of personality reached new heights. In May, Communist Party officials in Lipetsk erected a new Stalin bust. In July, the tiny village of Khoroshevo opened a museum focused on his military exploits. And in December, communist activists in the central Russian city of Penza opened a Stalin Centre, the goal of which is to popularise and implement the practices that were in use during Stalin times and are still relevant today.None of this was mandated from above  but neither is any of it an accident. Over the past few years, President Vladimir Putin has presided over the rehabilitation of one of the 20th centurys greatest monsters. Bedevilled by the countrys economic decay and fearful of dissent, he has turned to the ghost of Stalin to help to rally the Russian people and to prepare them for the sacrifices that lie ahead.The social compact that framed Putins first two presidential terms (as well as his four years as prime minister) began to crumble some time around the time of his third presidential inauguration in 2012. The unspoken deal between Putin and the Russian people had gone something like this: He would relieve them from the instability and economic crises of the 1990s, and in return, Russians would allow him to run the country as he saw fit. For many years, this was a successful endeavour. The Russian people lived increasingly comfortable lives while Putin consolidated power. But the protests of 2012 and 2013 that followed his fraudulent re-election made it clear that, while many Russians enjoyed their economic success, some were no longer happy to leave politics to Putin.So he changed tack, declaring in every medium he could find that the protesters were sponsored by Americans or inspired by the European Union. With the help of the state-controlled media, the Kremlin found and vilified an ever-growing list of fifth columnists: homosexuals, foreigners, NGOs, and activists. The message to the broader, non-protesting populace was clear: Russia and the Russian way of life were under attack, and Russia must unite around its leader to defend herself.The message was given new urgency in 2014. The annexation of Crimea was sold to the Russian people as a defence of ethnic Russians from bands of homicidal, neo-Nazi Ukrainians. The war in Ukraine  which was blamed on Western meddling  offered further proof that Russia was under threat. American and European sanctions only solidified the case.So Putin asked Russians to tighten their belts for the sake of (pardon the expression) making Russia great again. Many Russians had seen a marked increase in their quality of life, but now they would be asked to give up some of those gains for the countrys greater geopolitical good.In this new social compact, economic growth must be sacrificed to help Russia reassert herself on the world stage.To better make his case, Putin turned to Stalins playbook, looking increasingly to the events of World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. Millions of Russians were killed during the Nazi invasion of 1941, and millions more lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany in Central and Eastern Europe. Nearly every Russian family  Vladimir Putins included  experienced loss, deprivation, disease, and death. It is a visceral, emotional part of the Russian historical fabric.For this, the victory over fascism, the Russian people have been willing to forget and forgive the horrors of Stalins purges, his manufactured famines, his deportations, and his Gulags.Whatever atrocities Stalin committed, it is thought that his great accomplishments cannot be diminished, since Russia won the war under his guidance. Its as though that makes up for his crimes, explains Sergei Chapnin, until recently the editor of the Russian Orthodox Churchs official journal.And, indeed, polling reveals that some 34 per cent of Russians agree that, Whatever flaws and failures are attributed to Stalin, the most important thing is that, under his leadership, Russia was victorious in World War II.This is why the war is the perfect way for Putin to evoke the world view he wants Russians to have  besieged on all sides, with only a great leader to save them. With this lens on history firmly in place, Putin has prepared the way for his own crimes, sins, and wars to be dismissed. All he needs do is maintain the charade that he is fighting for the good of Mother Russia, and Russians will be willing to overlook his failures.
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The State Department is releasing the latest trove of Hillary Clinton emails today, and the Associated Press reports that seven email chains are being withheld entirely from production (as opposed to being produced in redacted form) because they are classified as Top Secret:

The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clintons unsecured home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails with material requiring one of the highest levels of classification.  Department officials also said the agencys Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus will investigate whether any of the information was classified at the time of transmission, going to the heart of one of Clintons primary defenses of her email practices.  But The Associated Press has learned seven email chains are being withheld in full from the Friday release because they contain information deemed to be top secret. The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called special access programs  a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping. The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information, State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP, describing the decision to withhold documents in full as not unusual.

No, it isnt unusual. What is unusual is that these Top Secret documents came from Hillary Clintons home brew server, contrary to federal law and State Department rules.

Hillarys only defense, as best as I can tell, is that none of the emails on her server were stamped classified, Top Secret, or whatever. This could be because those that were stamped were deleted before the emails were turned over to the State Department. In any event, her defense is irrelevant: both the federal law and the State Department regulation relate to documents that are in fact classified, not just those that are so stamped. Federal employees cant circumvent the law by failing to stamp the documents they create or receive. And Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was one of those specifically charged with knowledge of what documents should be, and are, classified.

PAUL adds: Hillary Clinton has argued for months that there is a dispute between the intelligence community and the State Department as to the sensitivity of documents on her server. The State Departments confirmation that documents on her server were Top Secret undercuts this defense.

The comment of State Department flack John Kirby that the documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information represents State throwing in the towel in this dispute, it seems to me, although Kirby does his best to make it seem like an accommodation, rather than a concession.
In New Yorks Observer, John Schindler has a good column summarizing the mind-boggling story of Hillarys Clintons unsecured private server for her official business as Secretary of State. To borrow a question, what difference at this point does it make? Clintons conduct implicates numerous criminal statutes, but the heart of the story is something like this:

Regardless of whether Ms. Clinton was engaged in political corruption, she unquestionably cast aside security as Secretary of State. She cant quite keep her story straight on why that was, and she is at pains to deny that there is any real issue here at all, suggesting that its just another right-wing propaganda ploy. Ms. Clinton is veering hazardously close to her infamous What difference at this point does it make? claim, which she touted about the 2012 Benghazi attack.

Yet, as any seasoned intelligence professional will tell you, it matters a great dealjust not in ways visible to the American public. The communications of Americas top diplomat are closely monitored by dozens of foreign spy services, and anything sent out unencrypted, as Ms. Clintons email was, should be assumed to be read by numerous countries, including some who are not our friends.

John Kerry, her successor at Foggy Bottom, admitted that Russia and China are almost certainly reading his unclassified emails. Bob Gates, Obamas first defense secretary, recently asserted its very likely that Russia, China, and Iran were inside Ms. Clintons homebrew email server. Mr. Gates is a career intelligence officer who served as CIA director, and he simply stated what any espionage professional knows.

Worse, access to Ms. Clintons personal email likely gave foreign spy agencies hints on how to crack into more sensitive information systems.

To take just the Russians: their plus-sized embassy in Washington, D.C. is conveniently located on a hill overlooking the city, with an impressive antenna field on its roof aimed downtown. That is where Ms. Clintons unclassified emails went. The Russians care so much about State Department information theyve been caught planting bugs inside a conference room just down the hall from the Secretary of States office. Of course the SVR got it all, explained a high-ranking former KGB officer to me about EmailGate (the SVR is the post-Soviet successor to the KGBs foreign intelligence arm). I dont know if were as good as we were in my time, he added, but even half-drunk the SVR could get those emails, they probably couldnt believe how easy Hillary made it for them.

Any foreign intelligence service reading Ms. Clintons emails would know a great deal theyre not supposed to about American diplomacy, including classified information: readouts from sensitive meetings, secret U.S. positions on high-stakes negotiations, details of interaction between the State Department and other U.S. agencies including the White House. This would be a veritable intelligence goldmine to our enemies. Worse, access to Ms. Clintons personal email likely gave foreign spy agencies hints on how to crack into more sensitive information systems.
The National Economic Council (NEC) rose from its 65th meeting on Thursday in Abuja, with a resolution to engage two audit firms to conduct forensic audit on 81 government revenue generating agencies.

The approval followed submission of an interim report by the ad hoc committee of NEC, chaired by Gov. Adams Oshiomhole of Edo, to review the management of the Excess Crude Account and remittances into the Federation Account.

The governors of Jigawa, Baderu Abubakar; Anambra, Willie Obiano; Lagos, Akinwumi Ambode; and the Minister for Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, said this in their joint briefing to journalists.

According to Mr. Ambode, 18 core revenue generating agencies, such as NNPC, will be audited by KPMG, an international audit firm, while an indigenous firm, SIAO, will audit other non-core revenue generating agencies.

The governor said that NEC would take further action on the agencies after the firms had completed the forensic auditing.

The Jigawa governor said that the Accountant-General of the Federation reported to council that as at Dec. 31, 2015 the Excess Crude Account stood at $2.26 billion.

The governor said that the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, informed the council of the standing of the bailout funds given to states.

He said that 23 states had benefitted from N10 billion each, Excess Crude Account-backed soft loan, while 28 states benefitted from the presidential bailout for the payment of salaries and gratuities.

Gov. Obiano gave a report concerning some MDAs collecting revenue in foreign currency and remitting in local currency into the Federation Account.

Mr. Obiano said the permanent secretary, Ministry of Finance, reported that besides NNPC, NIMASA and NPA, other agencies involved in such practice were FIRS, Shippers Council, Airport Authority and Nigeria Immigration Service.

Mr. Obiano said that the official reported that the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) had resolved the problem as all account was now under the CBN.

He also said that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who presided at the NEC, reiterated the Federal Governments policy that NNPC and other agencies must present budget for approval before spending in line with the TSA.

Mr. Udoma hinted on the 2016 budget focus of the administration, saying that plans were on to foster macro-economic stability conducive to the grow of the GDP at 4.2 per cent.

He said the budgets objective was to deliver inclusive growth to Nigerians, create sufficient jobs and build an economy less vulnerable to oil price shocks.

According to Mr. Udoma, while the government intends to ensure more revenue drive, it will not increase taxes, but strive to raise the collection of VAT from its 20 per cent level.(NAN)
A Federal High Court in Abuja has turned down a bail request by the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.

The court said on Friday that Mr. Kanu must remain in prison pending his trial for alleged treason.

Mr. Kanu has been in detention since his arrest in October.

The government accuses him of running an underground radio that spreads hate messages in a push for the creation of independent state of Biafra.

He had earlier been granted bail twice by the courts, but the government refused to release him.

More details coming.
At least 10 people were reportedly killed in Adamawa State on Friday in a suicide bomb attack at a busy local market in Gombi town of northern part of the state, locals and security sources confirmed.

Residents said several people were also injured when a teenage suicide bomber struck at busy market.

Gombi was recently recaptured from Boko Haram.

A Red Cross official in the state, Maikano Abdullahi, said, Eight persons were confirmed dead, while 25 others were injured.

A trader, who said he narrowly escaped death, Adamu Gombi, said the attack occurred in the early afternoon.

It was around 12 noon, while we were busy trading at Kasuwar Buhu, a teenage boy detonated the bomb, killing himself and several others.

As I am talking to you now, many lives were lost. I saw about ten corpses and those injured are being evacuated to hospitals, he said.

According to him, during the ensuing confusion and stampede, many people lost their money and other valuables to pilferers.

I saw people lying in the pool of their blood. I saw over five died bodies. There should be more security in areas recaptured from the insurgents, else its like starting the fight all over again, a female trader, Grace David, told aREMIUM TIMES.

Fridays attack was not the first in the area, recently liberated from the insurgents.

The Adamawa State Police Command spokesman, Othman Abubakar, a deputy superintendent of police, confirmed the incident, but did not give casualty details.

The state commissioner of Information, Ahmad Sajoh, called on residents to remain calm, assuring that security operatives were on the top of the situation.

He said the state government would pay the medical bills of the affected victims.

Its unfortunate, but security operatives are on top of the situation, people should be vigilant.

The state government will foot the medical bills of the affected victims, said Mr. Sajoh.
The management of Leadership Holdings Limited, publishers of Leadership newspapers, has returned the N9 million it received from the Presidency through the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria as compensation for the seizure of its publications in 2014.

In a letter dated January 29 and addressed to the General Secretary of NPAN, the company said it decided to return the money after some senior officials had gone behind to direct their organisations to refund the compensation received from the government even though it was agreed that they committed no offence by receiving the compensation.

It specifically alleged that the chairman of Daily Trust newspaper, Kabiru Yusuf, went behind the association and directed his newspaper to refund the money.

The letter entitled Re: Compensation for illegal seizure of newspapers was signed by the Group Managing Director of Leadership Newspapers Group Limited, Mike Okpere.

The letter obtained by PREMIUM TIMES on Friday said, We refer to the above subject matter and enclose herewith a Zenith Bank draft no 08549695 for the sum of N9,000,000.00 (Nine million Naira only) being refund of the compensation paid by the Goodluck Jonathan government for the crude and illegal seizure of our newspapers over a period of 5 days by soldiers from the 6th of June to the 10th of June 2014 through the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN).

It will be recalled that this was the sum paid to all newspapers which incurred losses as a result of the act which was arrived ay when President Jonathan pleaded for an out of court settlement.

It has come to our notice that the chairman of Daily Trust, Malam Kabiru Yusuf who was acting president of NPAN/chairman of the meeting held at Mr. Sam Amukas guest house in Lagos in December 2015 where it was agreed, after a detailed analysis of the situation that NPAN and the newspapers committed no offence by the out of court settlement and therefore had no reason to refund the compensation, has gone behind the associations back and directed the Daily Trust to refund money.

After such a dishonourable act by the one person under whose direction members of the association all agreed that there would be no need to refund the money, it is our view that it is no longer tenable not to refund. This is particularly more discomforting when it is recalled that the decision to agree to the out of court settlement and compensation was taken at the Abuja office of Daily Trust with Kabiru Yusuf in attendance. It is for this reason that we are refunding the N9 million.

But we will like to maintain the general position that neither the NPAN nor newspaper committed any offence. Our chairman has also made it clear that he does not see any situation where LEADERSHIP will be part of any group that will take the current government to court.

Therefore we should be counted out of any future decision to seek redress in court on this same matter. After all it is not the government that asked us to refund, it is the treachery of some of our members.

Kindly be advised accordingly.

Leadership newspaper is owned by Sam Nda-Isaiah, a former presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.

It becomes the second known beneficiary of the compensation given by the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel, to return its share of the money.

The Sun newspaper had earlier in December returned its own share of N9 million.

NPAN had received N120 million from the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan in June 2014 as compensation for the seizure and stoppage circulation of their newspapers by armed soldiers in Abuja and several cities.

Some of the 12 newspapers, which allegedly got the compensation, dissociated themselves from the payments.

The newspapers are African Newspapers of Nigeria (ANN) Plc, publishers of the Tribune titles; Peoples Media Limited, publishers of Peoples Daily; Daily Telegraph Publishing Company Limited, publishers of New Telegraph, Saturday Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and Independent Newspapers Limited, publishers of Daily Independent newspapers.
It starts with a series of questions just to get everyone thinking. And at first the answers are slow in coming; just a lot of smiles, shrugs and nods.

But by the end of the lunch hour Thursday, almost all of the 15 or so participants in the weekly Culture Tables at Linn-Benton Community College have plenty to say.

Asked to relate an interesting cultural tradition, Arafat Aljanbi of Saudi Arabia thinks a moment.

"In my culture, when I came to America, the woman I stayed with, they are interested: 'You can't drive a car?'" she recalls. "No, I can't drive a car. I can in Bahrain, but in my country, I can't."

Culturally, Saudis worry that if women drive alone, someone might "try to do something bad to them," explains Abdulelah Alsahla, who hails from the same country. "They are protected when they don't drive."

Asked about stereotypes Americans face, Truman Templeton rolls his eyes. "Oh, boy. Where do I start?"

He begins rattling off a series: that all are morbidly obese. That they are nosy and want to butt into everyone's business. On the other hand, he says, they're usually perceived as being very friendly.

"Another thing is that we all own shotguns. I personally don't have a shotgun. I know a lot of people who do, but I don't," he adds. "I guess I'm the exception to the rule."

The discussion shifts to how different regions of the United States vary widely in terms of accents, fashions and food preferences. Xuanang Li says in China, one particular city has a language all its own, so different that it was used for coded messages during wartime. That reminds the Americans at the table of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, which in turn prompts a discussion about who can speak which languages.

By now, the list of official Culture Table questions for the day are forgotten, and participants are taking turns coming to the front of the room to write their names in the alphabets of their various countries, and then each other's names, and soon the white board is covered in the circles, swirls and slashes of Chinese, Arabic, Korean, English.

Some of the participants head out at the end of the gathering, but several others continue the conversation, talking animatedly about different regional accents until an instructor next door pokes her head in and apologetically asks everyone to keep it down, just a little; there's testing going on.

It's been an hour's worth of exactly the type of enthusiasm and relationships the weekly Cultural Table discussions are supposed to spark, organizers say.

It all started about a year ago, when Bryan Miyagishima, the community college's librarian, happened to mention he'd heard about groups of students at Chemeketa Community College in Salem would would gather weekly to study each other's languages.

Great idea, he remembers hearing from Jason Kovac, dean of LBCC's Academic Foundations Division. Why don't you get that started here?

Miyagishima worked with Joyce Thompson Graham, the head of the department that oversees English to Speakers of Other Languages, to get Language Tables going in the LBCC library.

They quickly found, however, that students were more interested in simply hearing about one another's cultures than they were in learning just the languages. The Culture Tables were born.

Clare Sobotka, library reference assistant, is the organizer for the Culture Tables this term. Participants gather at noon on Thursdays in Red Cedar Hall. Everyone is welcome.

Student mentors Hadi Alatiq, originally from Saudi Arabia, and Mounir Jamal of Beirut, Lebanon, help lead the questions that prompt the discussions.

The goal of the tables is to strengthen relationships among the students, Alatiq says. It's important to have a connection when you're in a new country because so many things are different.

LBCC has a writing center that offers student help, for instance, but students from Beirut would never even think to ask, Jamal says. In Lebanon, such centers simply don't exist: The attitude is, here's your exam and good luck with that.

Last term, Bruce Clemetsen, vice president of student affairs, says he spoke with some of the community college's Muslim students who had questions about the rhetoric of the American presidential campaign.

"What we learned is they just dont understand our political process. They dont know that its kind of normal for candidates to do all kinds of outlandish statements sometimes, and that they have no power," he says. "No single person is suddenly going to become the president in a couple of weeks and then kick everybody out of the country.

The college is always looking for ways to expand its resources for its overseas students, he adds.

This term, LBCC has 137 foreign students enrolled , not counting students who are taking classes part time, or through degree partnerships with Oregon State University, or who are English language learners from the language school, says Kim Sullivan, international student coordinator.

The Culture Tables are one way of reaching out, she says, although she believes they would be even more effective if more American students took part.

They're fun no matter who shows up, Alatiq says. "It just breaks the ice on a big scale."
President Muhammadu Buhari said Thursday in Nairobi that for peace to reign in the world, the global community must develop and implement comprehensive and coordinated counter-extremism strategies at sub-regional, regional and continental levels.

Speaking at the opening of bilateral talks between Nigeria and Kenya, President Buhari warned that radicalization and violent extremism were increasingly taking root across Africa and must be tackled head-on and with brand new strategies.

The threat posed to national, regional and global peace and security by terrorists has taken an alarming dimension in recent times.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has caused havoc, especially in the North-eastern part of the country  killing, maiming, destroying livelihoods and displacing hapless citizens, majority of who are women and children.

In Kenya, you also face terrorist challenges. Similarly, Iraq and Syria, are facing their own brand of terrorism which has thrown the entire Middle East into turmoil. Terrorism does not respect religion, creed, race or national boundaries. No country is safe from the menace.

This is why the entire global community must work in a concerted manner, particularly in areas of sharing intelligence and pooling resources and finance to confront the scourge. Our armed forces and security services should also be adequately supported and well-motivated to fight terrorism.

It is worth emphasizing that terrorists are continually changing tactics, building alliances, merging and generally getting more sophisticated, all in an attempt to build their capacity to inflict pain and misery on societies.

To win the war on terror therefore, we must respond to this phenomenon by developing new and versatile strategies. Together with our allies, Nigeria and Kenya can successfully tackle these challenges that have traumatized and brought untold suffering to our people.

The need to tackle and defeat terrorism cannot be overemphasized as there can be no development and prosperity in an atmosphere of insecurity and instability.

Our communities must be helped to build resilience against violent extremism. The extremist narrative and ideology by radical elements and militants in our societies must be tackled through a counter-narrative that emphasizes education, moderation and tolerance.

For our efforts to achieve desired results, communities, religious leaders, civil society and educational institutions must be fully involved, President Buhari said.

Later, at the NigeriaKenya Business Forum, President Buhari expressed confidence that the Nigeria-Kenya Business Council and the Kenya-Nigeria Agribusiness Forum will serve as platforms for the promotion of intra African trade.

President Uhuru Kenyatta thanked Mr. Buhari for honouring Kenya with the visit.
A Gudu Upper Area Court, Abuja, on Thursday ordered the remand of a State Security Services personnel, Yusuf John, for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

Mr. John, 35, was docked on a two-count charge bordering on criminal force and assault, offences he denied committing.

The judge, Umar Kagarko, ordered that the defendant be remanded in police custody till January 29, to ascertain the true condition of the victim, allegedly beaten-up by the SSS operative.

The prosecutor, Augustine Urom, had told the court that Irieme Aigberadion, a police sergeant, attached to Lugbe Division, FCT Command, reported the matter at Garki Police Station on Jan.27.

He said the complainant, at about 6 p.m. on the same day, together with his team, went to Lagos Street, Garki, to wash their patrol vehicle.

In the process, he saw the defendant beating one Gift Utti, of Garki 2, a commercial sex worker.

He went to separate him and stop the beating of the sex worker, Mr. Urom said.

The prosecutor also said that Aigberadion introduced himself as a police officer, and showed Mr. John his identity card.

Instead of relenting, John went ahead and assaulted Aigberadion.

He held him by the neck of his shirt and tried to strangle him, Mr. Urom said.

He said Mr. John removed his belt and started beating up the police officer, hitting him on the head and right hand.

The officer is currently at police hospital, Area 1, receiving treatment, he said.

Mr. Urom said that the offences contravened Sections 265 and 248 of the Penal Code.

However, the defense counsel, C.I Nnaemeka, prayed the court to grant the defendant bail.

The prosecutor objected to the bail application on the grounds that the victim was still receiving treatment at the hospital.

Right now, we dont even know the condition of the victim, he told the court. (NAN)
A Political Science lecturer at the Kaduna State University, John Danfulani, suspended for posting an alleged hate speech on social media, has sued the university.

Mr. Danfulani was suspended by the university over a Facebook post the institution considered a hate speech.

Speaking to our reporter on Friday, Mr. Danfulani said he had decided to challenge his suspension by the university authorities.

I have decided to head to court to institute three separate cases on the query and infringement of my fundamental human rights as guaranteed by our constitution, and other global and regional protocols on peoples rights, Mr. Danfulani said.

He also said following an invitation for interrogations by the police, he cut short his foreign trip to meet with the state commissioner of police.

On 24th January, I was told of another letter from KASU telling me that Kaduna State Commissioner of Police has requested the school to release me for an interview at 10am of 25th January, 2016 in their headquarters.

Sequel to that, I terminated my mission and got an available flight back home on 26th January, 2016 to keep faith with CPs invitation.

I called the CP on arrival and told him I will be seeing him at 10am on 29th January, 2016 (today), he said.

Part of the contentious Facebook post said, To them, APC is a religious party. Northern leaders under the party are demigods and crusaders of their ways of life. These people living in dusty villages of Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Kano, Jigawa are quick in calling you Arne or Kafiri (Meaning Pagan) once you express your view on anything their God PMB and his brigade of small angels are doing.

Mr. Danfulani confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that he authored the post, which was widely circulated among Kaduna residents.

In the suspension letter which was signed by the school registrar Talatu A. Kuri, read We refer to our letter of query dated 5th January, 2016, requesting you to explain within 48 hours why disciplinary action will not be taken against you for gross misconduct and confirm that you failed to respond.

In line with S15 (1) 4 of KASU staff Conditions of Service, the Vice Chancellor has suspended you from duty forthwith and will report the matter to Council, it said.
A former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, has challenged the federal government to seize any money found in a foreign bank account bearing his name.

Mr. Akpabio said the government should investigate the source of such money and also prosecute its owner.

Mr. Akpabio, who is the serving senate minority leader, stated this on Friday in a press statement denying a newspaper report that he had made a secret attempt to withdraw $7.2 billion from banks in Dubai, United Arab Emirate, through channels in the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The statement, signed by Mr. Akpabios media assistant, Anietie Ekong, said the former governor does not own any property in Dubai or any other foreign country.

We challenge these purveyors of falsehood to publish the full details of the purported $7.2 billion account and we urge the Federal Government of Nigeria to seize such sum and prosecute the owner if it does exist, the statement said.

Mr. Akpabio said the media report against him was sponsored by his political opponents.

People should learn to accept the outcome of elections and stop this kind of dangerous propaganda in the name of politics, he said.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently signed agreements with the United Arab Emirate on the repatriation of Nigerias stolen funds.

The agreements have reportedly unsettled corrupt, former and serving Nigerians officials, who stashed public funds in that country.
The former Niger Delta warlord, Government Ekpemupolo Tompolo will appear in court at the appropriate time, his media adviser and consultant, Paul Bebenimibo, has said.

Mr. Bebenimibo, who said this in a signed statement issued to journalists on Thursday in Warri, said Tompolos lawyers were fine tuning ways for his appearance in court.

He debunked rumour that Tompolo had acquired speed boats in preparation for war with the Federal Government, adding that the rumour was the handiwork of mischief makers.

He also refuted claim that his boss bombed pipelines because he had a case with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Mr. Bebenimibo said: Tompolo has stated in several occasions that he will appear in court at the appropriate time as his lawyers are working towards that.

He has no reason to bomb pipelines because of his case with the EFCC and he will never wage war against the Federal Government.

He has sworn in 2009 when he accepted the Presidential Amnesty declared by late President Umaru Musa YarAdua and has kept faith with Nigeria.

He has promised to work with the present administration unconditionally and he stands by that declaration.

Mr. Bebenimibo said that the bombing of pipelines was politically motivated.

He alleged that some members of the ruling All Progressives Congress in the region carried out the act.

Before the incident, Tompolo alerted the public that some aggrieved APC members in Bayelsa and Delta want to destroy national assets.

Especially oil pipelines in the Delta Niger as a result of the outcome of the 2015 governorship election in Bayelsa, he said.

The media adviser described Tompolo as a man of peace committed to the development of the Niger Delta region. (NAN)
One of the suspects in the 2010 Independence Day bomb blasts in Abuja, Charles Okah, has embarked on a hunger strike to protest alleged harassment by officials of the Kuje Prison.

Apart from embarking on hunger strike, Mr. Okah, who has been in Kuje Prison since 2010, has threatened to file a suit demanding N5 billion damages from the Federal Government.

The threat is contained in a letter written by his counsel, Timi Okponipere, dated January 21, and addressed to the Minister of Interior, Abdulraman Dambazau.

The legal practitioner alleged that the officer in charge of the Kuje Prison, Musa Tanko, has persistently harassed and intimidated his client.

At the time of writing this letter, our client is as emaciated as a bean pole on account of the hunger strike he has embarked upon, to draw global attention to his plight, the lawyer wrote.

Literarily and figuratively speaking, our client is virtually a dead man. If our client dies in prison custody, the entire world, particularly the Ijaw nation and the Niger Delta where our client hails from, shall rise in unison against President Muhammadu Buharis government, even as we concede the fact that, our clients ordeal began during the tenure of former President Goodluck Jonathan, a fellow Ijaw.

Mr. Okponipere said some prison officials on January 6, at about 7am, gained entry into Mr. Okahs cell and carted away his books, journals and manuscripts.

He said the invasion of his clients cell was based on the orders of the head of the Kuje Prison, Musa Tanko.

According to him, one of the seized manuscripts contained his prison memoirs, consisting of writings, drawings and sketches of his prison journey.

However, he said another manuscript titled Research Study: Security Lapses and Vice in Kuje Prison, carried detailed report exposing security lapses, illicit sex, indiscipline, corruption and other vices thriving such as prison warders involvement in drug trafficking.

Our client was to submit the report to the honourable minister of interior, the national security adviser, NSA, as well as the director general of the State Security Service, SSS, before the unfortunate incident occurred, the lawyer wrote.

Specifically, on January 10, when the honourable minister of interior visited the prison, in company of the director general, State Security Service, SSS, our client approached the minister and conveyed his intention to forward a draft copy of the research study to his (minister) office for necessary action.

Secondly Sir, following our clients bold initiative to approach the minister of interior during his visit to the prison, our client has been kept in solitary confinement within the Prison Service since January 10, 2016 by Mr. Tanko and his officers, ostensibly as a punitive, vindictive and malicious measure, to force our client to back down from his avowed determination to expose the ongoing rot in the prison.

The lawyer insisted that the Kuje Prison boss lacks the power to subject an inmate under his custody to another form of imprisonment without a valid order of a court of competent jurisdiction.

He said that keeping Mr. Okah in solitary confinement is arbitrary, illegal and an arrogant usurpation of the judicial function which must be discouraged by the federal government.

He said the rights of prisoners are guaranteed by both the 1999 Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, to which Nigeria is a signatory.

Mr. Okponipere also accused the prison authority of refusing to convey his client to the National Hospital, Abuja, to keep a long gone surgery appointment to address a terminal condition.

The lawyer, therefore, called for an immediate and unconditional return of all the intellectual properties seized from his client and a discontinuance of solitary confinement.

Mr. Okponipere also seeks an immediate conveyance of Mr. Okah to the National Hospital Abuja to keep a major surgery appointment with his doctors.

Take notice and notice is hereby given that we shall commence an action to enforce our clients fundamental right at the Federal High Court, Abuja if the afore-mentioned demands are not made within 14 days of receipt of this letter.

Take further notice that upon filing the suit, our client shall demand the sum of five billion naira in punitive, exemplary and aggravated damages from the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The letter was copied to President Muhamadu Buhari, the executive secretary, National Human Rights Commission, African Commission on Human and Peoples Right, European Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Olisa Metuh, has issued his first public statement since his release from prison custody Thursday.

Mr. Metuh was freed on bail after over three weeks in detention. He is standing trial for alleged corruption.

In his first public statement since leaving the Kuje prison, Mr. Metuh said the PDP has since overcome the initial trauma that accompanied the electoral setback of the 2015 general elections, and is now poised to regain power at the center in 2019.

Mr. Metuh said the, recent variance of voices from its members is as a result of the partys foundation of liberal democracy, which he described as a mark of strength, adding that the party has adequate internal mechanisms to resolve all issues within its fold.

The comments were contained in his opening remark at a meeting of the partys Publicity Directorate with some visiting parliamentarians from the United Kingdom, led by Mark Field, member of Parliament and Chairman of International Office of the Conservative Party, and Colin Bloom, Director of Outreach-BCP in Abuja on Friday.

He told the visitors that the PDP faced serious challenges soon after it lost in the elections, culminating in the resignation of its National Chairman, a development that created some challenges within the party, but assured that every issue would be resolved by the party leadership by next week.

In his remark, Mr. Field advised the party to ensure that it does not trash its brand in the face of challenges. He noted that while it is common for some party members to demand the removal of leaders after electoral defeat, care must be taken not to jeopardize institutional memory in the party.

Never trash your brand no matter whatever the government of the day is saying about you, he said.

The interaction was attended by PDP publicity staff, social media workers of the party and officials of the International Republican Institute, IRI, who facilitated the visit.
The immediate-past senate president, David Mark, has said he would triumph in the February 20 rerun for the Benue South Senatorial District on the strength of the support of his constituents and God.

Mr. Mark stated this when two groups  Idoma Dreams and Idoma Young Professionals  paid him a solidarity visit on Wednesday.

The Court of Appeal had last year sacked Mr. Mark from the Senate and ordered the Independent National Electoral Election to conduct a fresh election in the district.

His victory in the March 28 National Assembly election was challenged by the candidate of the All Progressive Congress, Daniel Onjeh.

Mr. Mark told members of the groups that he was deeply touched by their visit and the uncommon show of brotherhood and solidarity, stressing that he would be victorious because of their support.

I am deeply touched by this uncommon solidarity. Let me also remind you that in going about the campaign for me, please always be law-abiding. I need you to be peaceful during the pre-election, Election Day and post-election.

Like I mentioned before, no election is worth injury or loss of life. I crave for a peaceful conduct of election at all times. The choice of representation resides with the people and ultimately God.

I want to thank you for believing in my leadership and understanding that credible representation at the senate is of utmost importance.

By the grace of God, we shall triumph at the rerun election. I will defend the interest of our people at all times, he said.

Mr. Mark assured his visitors that he was irrevocably committed to the development of Benue South and beyond, and would do everything legitimate to improve their lots.

Earlier, the leader of the Idoma Dreams, Donald Ogah, said the campaign for the former senate president had been impressive because our people have seen the need to uphold a credible and quality representation and the good works that he represents.

Mr. Ogah noted that the battle to return Mr. Mark to the senate was not negotiable because he represents Idoma Dreams. This battle is not for you (Mark) but for the survival of Idoma nation.

We would not sit and watch outsiders determine our future and destiny. We have a choice in Senator Mark, he added
Police have arraigned a professor and two other persons in Kano, in connection to alleged sexual abuse of several students at a boys college in the state.

The attacks at Hassan Gwarzo Secondary Scollege, sparked outrage in Kano, leading to the closure of the institution.

On Thursday, police arraigned the proprietor of Hassan Gwarzo Secondary School, Ibrahim Ayagi; the school principal, Muhammad Jimo, and two others before Justice Aminu Kabara of Kano High Court 5 on eight-count charges.

The charges border on criminal conspiracy, abetment, negligence, failure to give information, among others.

Mr. Ayagi, a professor of Economics, is standing trial on a one-count charge of gross indecency.

The presiding judge, Aminu Kabara, adjourned the case to 29 February for further hearing.

On Wednesday, Kano State government announced the reopening of the college after three months of closure, following reported assault on students by some unidentified persons last year.

In October 2015, a report aired on a Kano private radio station, Freedom Radio, on a series of sodomy cases in the school, sparked outrage and forced the state government to shut the school and set up an investigation panel.

The state government reached the decision to reopen the school after weekly its Executive Council Meeting on Wednesday, asking the school to inculcate moral teachings in the students, employ enough guards and install CCTV cameras to monitor activities there.

But parents of the victims of the alleged sexual abuse faulted the decision of the state government, saying justice was not done.

A spokesman for the affected parents, Aminu Sheriff, said the school should not be reopened at a time when some of the victims were still in hospital.
What is a political party? By the intensity of internecine conflict among Republicans, you might conclude that it's a church. Sen. Ted Cruz is among the leading voices of a faction that wants to treat the Republican Party as a confession  singing to the choir, denouncing heretics and damning sinners to hell.

This appears to be part conviction and part political calculation on Sen. Cruz's part. He's fully convinced that a Republican can win in 2016 by energizing the base. "The evangelical vote," a Cruz strategist told The Cook Political Report, "is the largest unfished pond of voters  it's a frickin' ocean." Convinced that dispirited white, evangelical voters stayed home in recent elections but can be roused by a sectarian candidate, Cruz barreled into Washington, D.C., in 2013 spitting fire not just at Democrats but at his own party, too. They were all part of the "Washington cartel," he thundered. Republican leaders were not just weak or ineffective  they were treacherous.

A terrible thing happened on the way to Cruz's plan to ride popular outrage with his own party to the Republican presidential nomination: Donald Trump offered an even more attractive brew of misdirected anger and indignation. If the Republican Party is now being hijacked by Trumpkins  and I truly pray that it is not  Sen. Ted Cruz is hardly in a position to protest. He helped stack the tinder for this auto de fe.

This is not to say that Republicans have enjoyed unblemished leadership during the Obama years  but that's not the point. Cruz indicted the Republican House and Senate leadership, and nearly all of his colleagues, for cowardice and cupidity. It was this, and not Cruz's firm conservatism, that alienated fellow senators. It was all a carefully choreographed prelude to his bid for a great swell of white, evangelical Protestants he hopes to inspire to his standard.

So what is a political party for? The Democrats seem to have long since decided that their party is a coalition of interest groups: blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, Asians and unions. For the past few decades, the Republican Party has rejected identity politics in favor of smaller government and more individual liberty, more free enterprise, a strong national defense and traditional values. The party I joined did not seek to vindicate the interests of white people or the native born or Christian conservatives. It was open to all who shared its principles.

Trump represents a total collapse of Republicanism in favor of nativism, protectionism (that worked so well with Smoot-Hawley) and American-style Putinism. If he were nominated, he would be soundly defeated. Trump is viewed more unfavorably than any other candidate, including Hillary Clinton. He peddles identity politics for white people, but even most white people disdain that. For what it's worth, I could not vote for him, for these and many other reasons.

Cruz's strategy is a bit subtler, but also includes polarizing the nation  thus his dig at "New York values." As outlined by National Review's Eliana Johnson, Cruz's theory rests upon belief in the "missing evangelicals." Many pixels have been expended on the subject of voters who stayed home in 2012. When 42.5 percent of eligible voters refrain from voting, millions of African-Americans, Hispanics and others are also on the list of nonvoters.

The case for a wave of previously unmotivated evangelicals flocking to the polls for Cruz is shaky at best. Consider that the last time a Republican won a presidential election (2004), evangelicals comprised 23 percent of the electorate and Bush won 78 percent of their votes. In 2012, they represented 26 percent of voters, and Romney won the same share, 78 percent, but still lost. Besides, the 2012 drop in voter turnout was much less pronounced in the battleground states that really decided the election than in places like Oklahoma, West Virginia and Arkansas, where an evangelical tide would not have changed the outcome.

Or consider the sobering possibility that evangelicals are not all that conservative. Among evangelical voters today, according to an NBC poll, fully 37 percent support Trump, with only 20 percent backing Cruz. As he watched Jerry Falwell Jr. endorse Donald Trump, Sen. Cruz saw his theory circle the drain.

The appeal to groups as groups is the bane of modern politics. The resort to shrill appeals to "base" voters on either side is shredding our national unity. To succeed, the Republican Party will have to win the votes of moderates as well as conservatives in states such as Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada. A conservative can do that with a straightforward pitch to Americans as Americans. Anything less is unworthy  and unlikely to be successful.
( Read 10553 Times)

Delhi: 21 Gun Salute International Vintage Car Rally & Concours Show is not unheard of in Delhi NCR. The 6th edition of this rally will be a glorious stepping stone as several national & international vintage &classic car owners have expressed their desire to be a part of Indias most prestigious vintage car extravaganza.Addressing a Press Conference organized at the TehriGarhwal House New Delhi, Mr. Madan Mohan, Founder & Managing Trustee, 21 Gun Salute Heritage & Cultural Trust said This year the vintage car rally will be organized at a much larger scale, with 125 hand-picked vintage & classic cars and will be grander than all the previous editions. The vision of the event is to bring India forward, as a world-class global motoring tourism destination.We have on board several Indian & International vintage & classic car owners along with esteemed royal families, who will be bringing their prized possessions, to participate in this milestone event. Great food, amazing music and lots and lots of vintage & classic cars/bikes will make this event  a truly magnificent affair to rememberVintage & classic beauties, that are carefully selected from a pool of cars across the globe, mesmerizing musical & dance performance by Indian & International tourism boards at Red Fort on 6th February along with presence of royalty and the great Indian food  takes this event beyond being just a rally.Confirming participation from Germany & U.K. Mr. Madan Mohan said, The 6th edition of 21 Gun Salute International Vintage Car Rally & Concours show is probably the only event, where cars will be coming across boundaries of the Indian subcontinent.We welcome you to experience majestic status, power, identity and incomparable beauty amidst many vintage &classic cars, through this 2-day mega event.Disclosing the details of vintage cars which are going to be showcased exclusively, Mr. Madan Mohan told, Like every year, the 6th edition of 21 Gun Salute will showcase international beauties like MAYBACH SW 38 1937, Horch 780 Cabriolet, 1959, Lister Costin Jaguar, 1933 Jaguar SS1 Coupe, JAGUAR XK 120, Mercedes 630 Murphy, Rolls Royce  Silver Ghost and many more. The rally will be flagged off from historic Red Fort Delhi on the 7th February, 2016 and culminate at Buddh International Circuit, Greater Noida, followed by ceremonial drive & category races.Every year as a tribute to the golden era of the automotive industry, we organize this International Vintage Car Rally & Concours Show & this year, on the 6th of February, 2016 - the display of Vintage/Classic Cars & Concours Show at the Red Fort, will be inaugurated by our Chief Guest Shri Manohar Lal Khattar - Honble Chief Minister of Haryana.Also, showcasing the vast cultural diversity of the country at a global stage, this event serves to be a holistic platform for the growth of Motoring Tourism in India. We have received great support from International Tourism Boards & the Ministry of Tourism; Hon'ble Minister of State, Culture and Tourism (Independent Charge) and Civil Aviation, Dr. Mahesh Sharma will be our Chief Guest for 7th February, 2016 for the flag off ceremony at Red Fort.Besides, showcasing the rich automotive heritage to the world, the rally takes up a social cause too. Previous editions have supported the welfare of spastic and blind children. This year it has added the message of Save the Girl Child. A percentage of the proceedings from this event will be given as a charity for the welfare & education of Girl Child.The vintage drive will witness rare cars dating from prewar era of 1886 to the glorious time of 1965, hailing from the exotic lands of Germany, United Kingdom, and other countries of the world. Most of them will be the unfathomed saloons and convertibles from the imperial houses of Rolls Royce, Stutz, Buick, Ford, Chevrolet, Austin Martin and Bentley. One of the precious automobile on display would be the first car invented by Karl Friedrich Benz, pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz followed by a Quadra cycle by Henry Ford.A brain child of Mr. Madan Mohan - one of the countrys biggest vintage car collector, the 6th edition of the 21 Gun Salute Vintage Car Rally & Concours Show will surely place India as a world-class destination on the global motor tourism map.This event brings together heritage, vintage, a variety of automobiles along with a multicultural fiesta, which is sure to be very interesting and entertaining. So, we invite you to revisit vintage at The 21 Gun Salute Vintage car rally & Concours Show, 2016.
( Read 6163 Times)

The students of IIM Udaipur are all set to create a fantastic event for the upcoming weekend, the annual cultural festival  Bank of Baroda presents Audacity. With a stellar line-up of event including Femina Miss India West-zone audition, performance by Euphoria and a showcase of the local talent in various dance and art events.The IIM Udaipur students have been actively involved in promotion of the fest. As part of the promotion activity, the students organized a plethora of events at the Celebration Mall on the 26th January. The students initially gathered in the main atrium of the mall unknown to the regular shoppers and in an extremely well-coordinated and practiced effort, started with a flash mob. The flash mob was a huge hit with the mall coming to a standstill and all shoppers vying for a vantage point for the performance. The theme of the dance was the gradual transition of Bollywood from the 1960s to present and comprised of famous songs of every superstar of the decade such as Akshay Kumar, Aamir Khan, Shahid Kapoor etc. Following the Flash Mob, the students of IIM Udaipur organized a number of events for the general shoppers at the stall set up in the main atrium. The events were an interesting mix of activities such as mimicry competitions of famous superstars such as Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, etc. The events were targeted for all age groups and everyday shoppers. An event which drew heavy participation was where guys had to mimic girls taking selfies.The other promotion events lined up include, among other things, anArt exhibition and a doodle workshop b renowned artist: Ms. Mamta Singh, a showcase of bike stunts and a Photography workshop by Canon.
Were under no illusions that the high school graduation rate is the only yardstick by which to measure our public schools.

But its not a bad place to start, especially in a state like Oregon, which has:

 First, written into statute that its goal is to ensure that by the year 2025, every adult Oregonian will have either a high school diploma or its equivalent, and;

 Second, consistently run near the back of the national pack in high school graduation rates.

Statewide, the overall news this week was encouraging: The graduation rate for 2015 (the percentage of students who graduated in four years) rose 2 percentage points, from 72 percent to 74 percent.

You cant blame state education officials for modestly celebrating that number: It represents the first notable jump in the rate in five years. But if you look at the number another way, you start to understand why the celebration needs to be restrained: That rate means that more than one in every four students who started high school in the fall of 2011 failed to graduate with the class of 2015.

We still have much work to do, Salam Noor, the Oregon schools chief, told The Oregonian.

Indeed.

In the meantime, some schools in the mid-valley could well help other schools around the state looking to improve their performance: West Albany High School, one of the leaders in the state in terms of graduation rates, clocked in at 98 percent. South Albany High School also beat the state average, with an 86 percent rate.

Harrisburg posted an 87 percent rate, and Scio came in at 85 percent.

But some Linn County schools that have struggled in the past with graduation rates continued to struggle. For example, Lebanon High Schools 2015 graduation rate was 66 percent, below the state average. The schools rate has hovered in the mid-60s for the last decade.

Lebanon school officials say the four-year graduation rate doesnt tell the entire story in that it doesnt include those students who defer a diploma so that they can attend a fifth-year college program. Thats true, but the fact is that even when you add in those students, Lebanons graduation rate clocks in at 71 percent, still below the state average.

To be fair, Lebanon has done good work in improving the graduation numbers for minority students and English Language Learners. Students who identified as Hispanic or Latino, for example, recorded a 72 percent graduation rate last year in Lebanon. Students who qualified as so-called ever English learners, meaning they needed help with English at some point in their schooling, graduated last year at 85 percent. Those are substantial accomplishments.

Rob Hess, Lebanons superintendent of schools, says the goal is to make sure that at least 80 percent of students graduate with a degree in four years. That kind of progress would be welcome in Lebanon.

But it only amounts to the first half of the journey. Were less than 10 years away from 2025, when every adult Oregonian is expected to have a high school diploma. If were still serious about that goal, we need to remember that the hardest part of the journey still lies ahead. (mm)
By PrintWeek Team

All eyes are on the Awards Night of the 12th edition of the PrintWeek Awards to be held at the Grand Hyatt (Santacruz East, Mumbai) on 2 Nov...
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




I find it deplorable that Hillary Clinton on Jan 20, in an interview with the Daily Sun, accused the family of the Benghazi victims of lying about comments she made to them regarding some anti Islamic film video. She promised them that she would find the man responsible and arrest him. They did arrest the man who made the video, even though they knew at the time he was not responsible.

We all know that more than once Hillary and Obama went on national television blaming the attack on a video. Emails prove that she was lying then. Given her history of lying, why should we believe her now?

For the secretary of state to say that she never received or passed on emails marked top secret is another lie because she even had some of the marking removed. From what I understand, they have very strict guidelines dealing with this matter. Did she miss the briefings?

Will she, if elected president, attend the briefings to learn the difference or will she just assume she is the smartest person in the world and we are the dumbest?

I have to think that if she is elected president, this wont be the end of her lies and deceit.

This lady belongs in jail, not the White House.

Jeani West

Sweet Home (Jan. 26)
The campaign for Ann Roe, who is running for Congress against Lyin' Bryan Steil has come out with the best one-liner of this cycle so far: I can't argue...

11 months ago
LONDON, January 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

EntrepreneurCountry Global has a community of 225,000 early adopters and is growing at 15% monthly

EC Global to enable individuals to share in the financial and economic value of their personal data

In a global first, EntrepreneurCountry Global (EC Global) announces that it is recognising an individual's data as property rights of that person inside of the defined perimeter of its community.

EC Global 'Citizenship' will enable the individual inside of EntrepreneurCountry to share in the economic and financial upside of digital applications derived from the use of their data. They will be given the equivalent of a title to their data.

"Entrepreneur Country" is a new virtual, digital country where all constituents of the country create the architecture and operations. The social contract and modes of business have been shattered from the previous era; a new network-based, distributed power, individual-enabled model for business and society must and will emerge. The founders of EntrepreneurCountry believe that the ownership of one's own data is inevitable. Individuals can register to become citizens of this virtual country. 'Citizenship' will enable the individual inside of EntrepreneurCountry to share in the economic and financial upside of digital applications derived from the use of their data.

This new asset class of individual data will enable business models to account comprehensively for the inputs to digital revenues. EntrepreneurCountry Global will release new recommendations for the financial architecture of companies in 1H 2016, and invite corporations to test using that architecture.

EntrepreneurCountry Global today is a community of 225,000 'early adopters' and technology-minded people who are committed to the building of the future around Ecosystem Economics, an investment methodology and operating system pioneered by Ariadne Capital. Ecosystem Economics describes the process for firms of how to build sustainable economics from the analysis of unit economics through to the test piloting of new applications in order to seize market opportunities and become platform firms.

EntrepreneurCountry Global has the support of and works closely with the 'C' suite of leading large enterprises who are committed to re-imagining their industries as ecosystems and developing a leadership position by engaging directly with consumers and valuing their ingenuity, creativity, and networks. EC Global has worked with banks, communications firms, insurance companies, media firms and retailers to design the future of their businesses by enabling them to 'go to EntrepreneurCountry' - tapping into an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, developers, tools developed for them. These leading large enterprises will be able to test pilot new business models optimising for the value of individual data being leveraged in new digital revenue streams through EntrepreneurCountry Global's new Citizenship programme.

More details of EntrepreneurCountry Citizenship will be revealed at the EntrepreneurCountry Forum on the 19th of April. Developers will be specifically invited in a specific #BuildaCountryChallenge session.

EntrepreneurCountry Citizenship has been informally known in the market as Project De Soto after the Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, who gave property rights to farmers and noted in his academic work that their behaviour changed. Specifically, people who had previously not had an ownership stake in their farms took more responsibility for the outcomes of their work once they did.

Commenting on the announcement, Julie Meyer, CEO of Ariadne, said:

"EntrepreneurCountry Global might work with an automotive firm to hypothesise about the future of the car in people' s lives. Can they still make money if no one buys cars, but rents them? If the car as platform is subservient to the smartphone, what is the effect on their firm? With EC Citizenship, an automotive company can also test pilot how the financial accrual of value from the data of car buyers to the car firm will affect the financial performance of the firm."

Amit Pau, Managing Director at Ariadne, commenting further:

"The new EU data privacy law will mean that corporations will need to ensure that they are not abusing consumer data. Currently, they use third party data randomly and for lead generation without the consumer's approval or any incentivisation . As part of the new General Data Protection Regulation GDPR , fines of 4% of revenue will be applied to corporates that abuse consumer data. EntrepreneurCountry Citizenship will enable companies to comply with this directive."

Julie Meyer continued, "A bank today could be interested in test piloting P2P lending. Why shouldn't they do this? They have customers with money and those who need money? This shift to P2P lending within a bank is more powerful if it is considered and evaluated with an understanding of how people's behaviour will change when they own the fundamental asset which drives the applications which drive the development of a consumer profile of them."

About EntrepreneurCountry Global



To collect your passport, become a citizen here: http://www.register.entrepreneurcountryglobal.com/

EntrepreneurCountry Global is open to all. For more details, visit:

More details about how to participate in the EntrepreneurCountry Forum as a delegate or partner here: http://www.entrepreneurcountryglobal.com/entrepreneurcountry-forum

About Julie Meyer, Founder of EntrepreneurCountry Global

http://www.ariadnecapital.com/html/about/the-team.html

About Amit Pau, MD of Ariadne Capital & EntrepreneurCountry Global; Partner, Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund and the Ecosystem Economics Fund I

http://www.ariadnecapital.com/html/about/the-team.html

For media enquiries, contact press@entrepreneurcountry.com, +44(0)20-3021-1641

SOURCE EntrepreneurCountry Global
DUBAI, UAE, January 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Riveria Global Group launches new site to provide search and comparison for buyers, while offering full service marketing for sellers, in two ultra-lucrative markets

A comprehensive new property portal - 3villaz.com - has been launched by leading Dubai-based company, Riveria Global Group, to assist big ticket real estate buyers wanting to investing the highly lucrative Dubai and India markets to find the perfect deal.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160128/326884 )



The site has specifically been created for investors and proposes various options currently available in Dubai and in India -two markets that offer attractive options for good return on investment (RoI).

Since the last decade, the Group has been actively involved in the real estate business in Dubai and Mumbai, and the directors have a clear view of the direction of the real estate industry in both these cities. Currently, there are many good investment options available in both destinations, in various sizes, starting from 100,000 US dollars.

On 3villaz.com buyers can post their requirement and the best options will be suggested to them - rather than them having to do a time consuming search and comparison through hundreds of properties. On the flipside, property owners can post their properties for sale or rent and the team behind 3villaz.com will do all the needed professional marketing.

"If you are looking for fantastic investment options in Dubai or India, 3villaz.com can bring you the best investment options with the return on investment ranging between 5 to 15 per cent per annum," said Dinesh Ramchand, Managing Director of Riveria Global Group Dubai.

"Our company specializes in leasehold and freehold properties. We have a range of investment options including residential, commercial buildings, hotels and hotel apartments, with ready rental income for sale and lease. We also have open land for residential, commercial, mix-use and industrial use, villa complexes, staff and labour accommodation, and warehousing. Landlords, developers, and real estate brokerage companies can also list their real estate inventory for sale or lease and benefit from the extensive reach of the portal across the world."

As well as real estate, Riveria Global has a well-established ATL and BTL advertising division offering a wide range of marketing services to help businesses establish their brand in the market. These include: branding, email marketing, online marketing, outdoor advertising, printing, SEO, SMO, web development, and more. The Group also has an exclusive interior design arm, offering top quality services to residential and commercial clients in Dubai.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

About Riveria Global Group

Riveria Global Group comprises three companies dealing in three different verticals namely: real estate, advertising, and interior design.

The real estate arm deals in commercial and residential properties of Dubai. It helps property owners in selling their properties, offers buyers a variety of property buying options, and assists renters in finding the best deals. Additionally, it offers a variety of investment options to individuals as well as corporate investors.

Riveria Global's advertising division offers various advertising and marketing services which help businesses to establish their brand in the market. It has the expertise in both 'Above the Line' and 'Below the Line' advertising services. Services include: branding, email marketing, online marketing, outdoor advertising, printing, SEO, SMO, web development, and more.

The Group's interior design arm, we offer innovative interior designing services to our clients in Dubai. We help you choose the best designs that will enhance the look of your commercial or residential space. We turn any interior designing idea into a reality.

About http://www.3villaz.com

Operating under Riveria Global's real estate arm, 3villaz.com is a property portal aimed specifically at investors. Officially launched in 2015, it showcases the various investment options currently available in the real estate sectors of both Dubai and India.

It has been created to give big ticket investors across the world access to a wide range of options and up-to-the-minute information in both these markets. For ten years, the Group has been actively involved in the real estate business in Dubai and Mumbai. Currently, there are many great investment options available in both destinations starting from US $100,000.

RESOURCES

Website http://www.riveriaglobal.com and http://www.3villaz.com

http://www.Facebook.com/riveriaglobal

http://www.Twitter.com/riveriaglobal


WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has opened media accreditation for the next launch of a commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. The launch of Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled for Thursday, March 10, during a 30-minute window that opens at approximately 3 a.m. EST.

Cygnus will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. The spacecraft will carry crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory to support the Expedition 47 and 48 crews.

Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at CCAFS and NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center. For media only, the deadline to apply for access to CCAFS is 5 p.m. Feb. 18 for U.S. citizens and Feb. 5 for non-citizens. The deadline to apply for media access to Kennedy is 5 p.m. on March 1 for U.S. citizens and Feb. 22 for non-citizens.

All media accreditation requests for Kennedy must be submitted online at:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

International media are required to upload a scanned copy of their visa and passport or green card when submitting their online accreditation request.

All media representatives must present two forms of unexpired legal, government identification to access Kennedy. One form must include a photo, such as a passport or driver's license. Questions about accreditation should be directed to Jennifer Horner at [email protected] or 321-867-6598.

For other questions or additional information, contact the Kennedy newsroom at 321-867-2468.

This launch is the fifth contracted mission by Orbital ATK under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract and will be followed later this year by an Orbital ATK resupply mission launching from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia.

Science payloads heading to the space station on this launch include:

the second generation of a portable onboard printer to demonstrate 3-D printing;

an instrument for first space-based observations of the chemical composition of meteors entering Earth's atmosphere; and

an experiment to ignite and study a large-scale fire inside an empty Cygnus resupply vehicle after it leaves the space station and before it re-enters Earth's atmosphere to improve understanding of fire growth in microgravity and safeguard future space missions.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has been occupied continuously since November 2000. In that time, more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft have visited the orbiting laboratory. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

For NASA TV schedule and video streaming information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For launch countdown coverage, NASA's launch blog, and more information about the mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/orbitalatk

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


RENO, Nev., Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Move Your Mountain is hosting a story submission contest throughout the month of February, American Heart Month. They are encouraging everyone to share "Stories From Your Heart" and maybe win the grand prize of $1,000.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160128/327099LOGO

The contest is open to anyone who has been impacted by Heart Disease or Congenital Heart Defects. People can submit stories throughout the month of February. The grand prize winning story will be announced March 1st, 2016.

Move Your Mountain is a social fundraising website where people can tell their stories and share them with the world. CEO Brantly Compton stated, "Awareness is the beginning of change. Our hope is that these (heart) stories move you to share with others and greatly increase the awareness of this ongoing battle."

For more information and to enter "Stories From Your Heart", please go to www.MoveYourMountain.org/HeartStories.

About Move Your Mountain:

Move Your Mountain is a nationally trusted online fundraising platform based in Reno, Nevada, founded in 2013. Move Your Mountain was created to help the large number of people who need a place to tell their story and raise support. So, we built a platform that connects people to the heartbeat of their community with unique tools and passionate outreach. Our system is easy to use, nationally trusted, and very effective.

Media Contact:

Jamie Spadafora

Move Your Mountain

775-384-4580

Email

SOURCE Move Your Mountain

Related Links

https://moveyourmountain.org


MARSHALL, Va., Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ProVoice Greetings developed its belief, of including audio as well as visual features as a necessity for a complete business presentation, into the founding principle for creating a company who offer specialized professional audio talent. Compromised of only the highest quality sound recordings in international voice talents, translation services, voicemail and IVR services, ProVoice Greetings services include, but are not limited to radio ads, voice overlay for YouTube, Power Point presentations, training videos, and book readings. ProVoice provides voice actors in English (American and British), Spanish, male and female, as well as male and female French.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160128/326984LOGO

ProVoice Greetings is dedicated to growing their list of outstanding voice talents, which they are demonstrating with the welcomed addition of Mr. Yacine Marwan. Mr. Marwan offers native French male voiceovers with a positive and professional attitude. With extensive experience recording for different projects such as educational, e-learning, corporate, motion design, commercial, presentation, medical and many more, as well as companies like Disneyland, Club Med, BNP Paripas, Lagardere, SNCF, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, to name a few, he feels confident that his voice meets the requirement for a plethora of projects. With the knowledge Mr. Marwarn will be an exceptional asset to both the company and the customers they serve, ProVoice Greetings proudly welcomes Yacine to their team.

For more information, contact ProVoice Greetings at Email or visit us at www.provoicegreetings.com. ProVoice Greetings is a subsidiary of 3rd Wave Consulting Services Inc. www.3rdwavebiz.com

Media Contact:

Jym Alltop

877-679-4284

SOURCE ProVoice Greetings

Related Links

http://www.provoicegreetings.com


CHICAGO, Jan. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- When entrepreneur Terry Kasdan founded Web site development and digital marketing agency atCommunications in 1999, many of the tools he relies on today didn't exist. Smartphones and social media were products of the future. Now he and his clients can't live without them. As technology has evolved over the course of the last two decades, so have firms like atCommunications that create content for it.

Today atCommunications is one of the Midwest's oldest surviving, and thriving, Web design agencies. Since 1999, atCommunications has designed, programmed, managed and promoted more than 1,000 Web sites, CDs, DVDs and mobile applications for clients spanning the spectrum of industries and service sectors  from Fortune 500 companies like McDonald's, Microsoft, Pepsi, Pfizer and State Farm, to small and mid-sized businesses; from multi-national corporations like Experian and Unilever to regional organizations and not-for-profits that serve their communities.

"We believe a unique blend of creativity, technical skills and marketing experience sets atCommunications apart from other Web site developers," says the firm's founder, Terry Kasdan. "Every project we undertake is serviced by a team of award-winning designers, programmers, and digital content producers." Kasdan's advertising agency background gives the firm a perspective that many other Internet service providers do not have. Kasdan, a graduate of the University of Illinois' advertising program, now serves on the college's professional advisory board, sharing real-world insights with faculty and students.

The award-winning nature of the work atCommunications produces, along with the special relationships the firm nurtures with search engines like Google, helps atCommunications generate enormous exposure for its clients' products and services. A decade ago, atCommunications was one of the first agencies in Chicago to be certified by Google in the area of search marketing. The firm recently earned its third American Graphic Design Award presented by Graphic Design USA magazine; it also received a Communicator Award and was named an America Online Editor's Choice. In recent years, a "pet project" of the agency's was spun off and acquired by a venture capital firm.

atCommunications is located in Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb 20 miles north of Chicago. The firm specializes in Web site design and programming; Web and mobile application development; secure e-commerce solutions for businesses with as few as one product to sell and as many as tens of thousands; content management solutions; managed Web site hosting; and search engine optimization and marketing. For more information about atCommunications, LLC, visit www.atCommunications.com.

Media Contact:

Terry Kasdan

800-863-2310

SOURCE atCommunications, LLC

Related Links

http://www.atcommunications.com


Rory Hearne: As part of a debate I took part in on Renuas Flat Tax on the Pat Kenny show on Newstalk, both Pat Kenny and Eddie Hobbs (who made the case for Renua) referred to the situation where if you are paying over 50% of your income on tax then you are working 6 months for Michael Noonan and the next 6 months you are working for yourself. This once more highlights the need for a reshaping of the discussion around tax. Tax is not taken away from you, stolen or a burden  we get our taxes back through the schools our children go to, the roads we drive on, the buses we use, the hospital we go to.







Renua has put its 23% flat tax proposal as the corner stone to its Election Manifesto for the coming General Election.



Analysis of the figures show that it is a policy that will benefit the most higher income earners and wealthy.



The results from Renuas tax calculator (at http://www.renuaireland.com/tax-calculator/) shown in the graphs below highlight that if their flat tax (plus graduated income benefit) was introduced:

A single person on a gross salary of 20,000 will increase their take home pay by 2.4% (451) per annum.





Dr Rory Hearne is a Senior Policy Analyst at TASC. You can follow him on twitter @RoryHearne

Dr Rory Hearne @RoryHearne Rory Hearne is a postdoctoral researcher in the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI), working on the Re-Invest Participatory Action Human Rights and Capability project in relation to social investment with a particular focus on homelessness and water infrastructure. He has a PhD in political and economic geography from Trinity College Dublin. He is also a former policy analyst with TASC and has worked as a policy researcher and community development worker with Barnardos on social housing regeneration and human rights in Dublin's inner city. He was lecturer in human geography in the Department of Geography, Maynooth University and has researched and published extensively in the areas of housing and social housing, political economy, human rights, social movements, and politics. He is author of Public Private Partnerships in Ireland (2011) and co-author of Cherishing All Equally (2016). He is also a regular economic and social analyst on various national media.

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While a single person earning a gross salary of 200000 will increase their take home pay by a massive 42% (45,000 per annum) - from the changes.This change would significantly worsen our already serious problem of income inequality where over half of all income goes to top 20% of earners.In regard to the tax revenue base for public services  the 23% flat tax proposal would decimate public services and usher in another round of austerity budgets.KPMGs supportive analysis of the flat tax, which Renua has drawn on, states that the flat tax would result in an initial shortfall of between four and five billion in tax revenue. While the Revenue have calculated that it would lead to a shortfall of 9bn.Renua and KPMG argue that the shortfall would be made up relatively quickly as a result of the increase in economic activity and spending from the tax cuts which would feedback through increased consumption and employee tax.However, both the IMF and OECD in studies on countries that have implemented the flat tax have found that such an increase in revenue has not been consistently found.Introducing such a flat tax will therefore undermine the (already low) tax base in Ireland (as will other tax cut proposals such as cutting the USC). It is repeating the mistakes of the Celtic Tiger tax cuts that lead to austerity when unreliable taxes such as stamp duty collapsed in the economic crash.So where will the much needed tax revenue to pay for high quality public services and infrastructure come from? Where will we fund the additional nurses, guards, teachers, hospitals, social housing, elderly care, roads, flood defences, schools that we all know needs substantial increase in public spending and investment?Currently we have the lowest investment in capital infrastructure in the history of the state. On the basis of planned cuts to the USC and the current government policies then by 2019 we will end up with the lowest government expenditure in the EU. Renuas proposals would make this crisis situation even worse.It is also worth pointing out that the countries that Renua point to as models for Ireland to follow are Estonia, Latvia and Singapore. Lucinda Creighton writes in their opening introduction to their Manifesto that Renuas aim is for Ireland to become the Hong Kong of Europe. But the graphs below show that Hong Kong is one of the most unequal places in the world. Their levels of inequality are double that of Ireland and worse than the grossly unequal US.As for Estonia and Latvia, these are the two most unequal countries in Europe. These countries follow the free market, laissez faire, economic models which see the top and wealthy gain the most. Hardly the models Ireland wants to follow?It also important to highlight that income tax is only one part of the tax people pay. There are also indirect (consumption or stealth) taxes such as VAT, motor tax, A & E charges, water charges etc. VAT takes in a third of all taxes. And lower income households pay a 5 times higher rate of their gross income on these consumption and stealth charges than those on higher incomes. Lower income households pay between 27 and 18% of their gross income on indirect taxes in contrast to between 5 and 8% of higher incomes. That is why lower income households have opposed the water charges so intensely. Because they are hit much harder by such consumption charges.So we can see that the focus on reducing income tax and USC benefits higher income households more. And they know this.In an Opinion Poll for the Irish Times in September last year  which social class group was most in favour of a cut to the USC? You guessed it  it was the highest social class AB.Which begs the question are the political parties clear that they are shouting loudest in favour of the interests of the top 20% when they argue for these tax cuts?The opinion polls also show that this obsession with tax cuts by Renua (and most of the other political parties) is not what the public is looking for.In fact, the polls show that a majority favour investment in public services rather than cutting taxes. The recent Eurobarometer poll shows that in Ireland peoples main concerns are housing (34%), health and social security (29%) and unemployment (32%)  with tax much less of a concern (9%). While the Behaviour and Attitudes survey commissioned by TASC in June 2015 showed that almost 70% of people felt the government should prioritise investing in public services rather than spending money to cut income taxes.Eurobarometer Survey 2014Of course our tax also goes to pay for Michael Noonans salary (which, as with all politicians - is way too high) but that is not the point. The point is that the argument of tax being stolen from us or taken - or the phrase the tax burden - distorts the truth about tax.The truth is that we get our tax back through public services  when we use a hospital, go to college, drive on a road, take the bus.And that is why rather than cutting taxes  we should be finding ways to fairly raise the taxation base (such as introducing a third higher rate of tax on incomes over 100,000 or a wealth tax on financial assets).Hopefully this truth will see some light during the noise of the election debate.You can listen to the debate on Newstalk here : (The Flat Tax section is after the discussion on maternity services (you can drag the red bar  which is underneath the pat Kenny image on the page - across to skip through that section if you want)
Mortgage brokers are searching for criteria on holiday lets and limited companies, likely caused by the pandemic and the introduction of the stamp duty holiday.

The data comes from Knowledge Bank, which reveals the criteria buy-to-let brokers are researching into on behalf of their landlord clients.

Demand for holiday lets could be on the rise, as landlords look to take advantage of increased demand to take a holiday within the UK.

The top buy-to-let search is lending to limited companies, perhaps boosted by the fact that its currently more cost-effective for landlords to incorporate due to the stamp duty holiday.

Regarding the residential market brokers are typically searching for LTV restrictions, as they look to maximise how much their clients can borrow.
"This model captivates with its extraordinarily rich resonance and its dynamic possibilities," said Paul Badura-Skoda, current holder of the Bosendorfer ring.

Bosendorfer featured its new 280VC Vienna Concert grand piano last week at the 2016 NAMM Show. Built for the 21st century performer, this instrument represents a culmination of the legendary companys rich experience and tradition of piano making, combined with the most sophisticated scientific technologies and computer aided design methods.

Even in the context of the companys enviable 187-year reputation for creating the worlds most sought-after handcrafted pianos, the Bosendorfer 280VC is a game-changer in the world of concert grands. This extraordinary piano features an incomparable sound, wide spectrum of tonal colors, dynamic range and expressiveness ideally suited for modern concert halls and performance venues, as well as for any genre of music, including chamber, classical, contemporary piano concertos, jazz and beyond. Officially introduced in the fall of 2015, the piano has already been heard in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York; Strathmore Hall in Maryland, as well as Viennas Musikverein and Konzerthaus and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.

The result of a comprehensive multi-year development program, the 280VC represents Bosendorfers pursuit of perfection in each and every detail of the piano, from the quality of materials to its hand-crafted construction. The result is an exceptionally versatile and powerful concert stage instrument that meets and exceeds all the expectations and needs of today's performances and venues. Like all of its pianos, Bosendorfer designed the 280VC to achieve the ultimate level of dynamic response and the distinctive Viennese Bosendorfer sound. Using the companys exclusive resonance case principle, this model presents performers with an unparalleled spectrum of diverse tonal colors to express themselves.

For the 280VC, Bosendorfer employed an entirely new construction and design concept. A modification to its action makes it a very accessible instrument that puts the pianist at ease from the first note they play. Also new to the models build are:



Optimized placement of the string section and bridges at the soundboard for even string load, thus supporting the flexibility and effectiveness of the soundboard assembly resulting in improved sustain, projection and dynamics.

A soundboard base with a rim system made of solid beech for a stable 3-dimensional soundboard crown leading to enhanced resonance, dynamic ability and sustain.

A ribbed crown following the exact same ellipsoid segment for a consistent soundboard crown, allowing more flexibility and improved resonating activity.

It is our mission to inspire artists and provide the means to find and express their voice, said Simon Oss, premium piano marketing manager, Yamaha Corporation of America. We have already heard feedback from many of the renowned performers who have had a chance to play the 280VC, and they have told us how inspiring they find the instrument and that they are very excited by all the creative possibilities it opens up for them.

The Bosendorfer 280VC was developed with the close involvement of numerous pianists and music experts who contributed invaluable input for the ultimate refinement of the piano, including Sir Andras Schiff, Paul Badura-Skoda and Aleksandra Mikulska.

I am surprised that improvements are still possible in modern piano building. Without abandoning the legendary qualities...this model captivates with its extraordinarily rich resonance and its dynamic possibilities...absolutely brilliant, said Paul Badura-Skoda, current holder of the Bosendorfer ring.

Congratulations  I have always been a friend of Bosendorfer but with this instrument you will win many new friends, said Sir Andras Schiff, who has already performed on the 280VC throughout Europe and the United States. Sir Andras Schiff is also scheduled to return for a tour of major North American cities in early 2016, performing on the Bosendorfer 280VC.

Pricing and Availability

The Bosendorfer 280 VC concert grand piano (MSRP: $219.999) is now shipping.

For more information, visit http://4wrd.it/BosendorferTour

-END-

About Bosendorfer

Bosendorfer was founded in 1828 in Vienna, Austria and has been the instrument of choice for many of the worlds most famous artists and composers. This limited production, handcrafted instrument remains one of the most sought after instruments for musicians, institutions and piano enthusiasts worldwide.
If you are a new, experienced, or aspiring CDI professional, there is nothing quite like the ACDIS Conference to enhance personal and professional growth, said ACDIS director Brian Murphy.

The Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists (ACDIS), the nations only healthcare community for clinical documentation improvement (CDI) professionals, is pleased to announce the agenda for its 9th annual national conference, to be held May 2326 in Atlanta.

The agenda includes more than 50 sessions presented by the nations foremost CDI experts. The 2016 conference features five tracks covering important topics such as:



Clinical and Coding

Management and Leadership

Quality and Regulatory

CDI Expansion

Innovative CDI

Attendees will enjoy a conference-wide focus on CDI expanding into pediatrics, along with sessions on outpatient CDI/risk-adjusted payment, postacute CDI, readmissions, and medical necessity. They will learn the latest diagnostic criteria for difficult diagnoses like sepsis and respiratory failure, as well as important documentation and coding nuances under ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS. The conference will also offer three special panel discussions, including two with the ACDIS Advisory Board and one with a physician perspective on ICD-10.

In addition, ACDIS welcomes CMS Chief Medical Officer Richard E. Wild, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP, from the Atlanta regional office. Wild will open the conference with a general session, CMS Value-Based Purchasing and the Transformation of Healthcare.

This years keynote speaker Vicki Hess, RN, MS, will kick off the second day with a motivational discussion, Becoming a Champion of Change: Your Checklist for CDI Success. Hess will provide insights to help attendees transform the way they work and bounce back when hit with challenges.

ACDIS will also recognize recipients of the prestigious ACDIS Achievement Awards. The awards were significantly updated and expanded this year to include four categories: CDI Professional of the Year, Recognition of CDI Professional Achievement, Excellence in Provider Engagement, and Rookie of the Year. Winners will be honored with an award and recognition during the conference.

Finally, conference attendees will enjoy breakfast and lunch with admission, complimentary drinks and appetizers at a pre-conference networking reception, and the ability to network face-to-face or via an interactive conference app with more than 1,500 of their peers.

If you are a new, experienced, or aspiring CDI professional, there is nothing quite like the ACDIS Conference to enhance personal and professional growth, said ACDIS director Brian Murphy. The networking is amazing, the energy at this event needs to be seen to be believed, and simply put, you will not find the same depth or breadth of CDI-specific education anywhere else.

About ACDIS

Now in its ninth year, ACDIS is a community of more than 4,800 CDI professionals who share the latest tips, tools, and strategies to implement successful CDI programs and achieve professional growth. ACDIS mission is to serve as the premier healthcare community for CDI specialists, providing a medium for education, professional growth, professional certification, and networking through its annual conference, local chapter outreach efforts, regular webinars, website, and social media outlets.

For more information about ACDIS and its offerings, please visit http://www.acdis.org or call 877-240-6586.

About the annual conference

The annual ACDIS national conference is the nations biggest and best conference dedicated to the unique needs of the CDI profession. The conference offers unparalleled peer-to-peer networking with over 1,500 CDI professionals, and the nations foremost CDI experts present more than 50 diverse sessions on the latest trends and cutting-edge techniques to enhance CDI programs.

For more information, visit http://hcmarketplace.com/9th-annual-acdis-conference or call 877-240-6586.

About the ACDIS Achievement Awards

The ACDIS Achievement Awards are designed to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to the CDI field, who make a difference in the profession, or are outspoken advocates of CDI. For 2016, ACDIS will be recognizing four award recipients:

The CDI Professional of the Year award will honor an individual who stands out as a consummate representative of the best attributes of a CDI professional, and has served at least five years as a CDI professional.

The Recognition of CDI Professional Achievement award will recognize an individual who has made significant achievements as a CDI professional in his or her facility or broader organization.

The Excellence in Provider Engagement award will honor a physician advisor, quality administrator, CDI/coding educator, or other leader who has made a substantive difference within his or her organization, or within the broader CDI/HIM/coding community, through enhancing medical staff understanding, collaboration, and engagement.

The Rookie of the Year award will recognize an individual who has served in the CDI profession less than two years, but has made a significant contribution in that time frame.

For more information, visit http://www.hcpro.com/acdis/contact_us.cfm?email_topic=award or call 877-240-6586.
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Uncle Maddio's founder and CEO Matt Andrew Kim is an excellent example of someone who has a dream to own their own business and found the right opportunity with Uncle Maddios, said Matt Andrew, CEO.

Uncle Maddio's Pizza, the create-your-own fast-casual pizza franchise, will open its first location in Ocala, Fla., on Jan. 29. The top pizza franchise will be located at 2606 SW 19th Avenue Road. To introduce the community to Uncle Maddios, the restaurant will host a grand opening party on Saturday, Jan. 30, with free pizza to guests in line from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Uncle Maddios has three other restaurants in Florida with 12 more planned in the North and Central regions.

Uncle Maddios is a next generation pizza restaurant that lets guests build their own pizza exactly how they want it and cooked in fast baked ovens and served to their tables in about six minutes. Guests choose from one of three crusts, including a delicious gluten-free option, and 48 toppings, including six sauces, 27 vegetables and 15 meats. Everything is fresh, from the pizza dough and sauce thats made in-store each day to the wide variety of veggies. For guests looking to expand their pizza horizons, Uncle Maddios also offers signature pizzas ranging from the meaty Big Max to the spicy Jamaican Jerk. Create-your-own salads and Foldwich  sandwiches round out the Italian-inspired menu. The restaurant also offers a selection of craft beers and wine.

The people in Ocala love pizza and there is no place like Uncle Maddios in the area. I know they will enjoy creating their own pizzas with their favorite toppings and having it served to the table fast, said Kim Ragle, Uncle Maddios Ocala franchisee. My family and I call Ocala home and we look forward to sharing Uncle Maddios with our community.

Ragle is a new member of the fast-casual pizza business. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Exercise Physiology and Nursing and is a practicing registered nurse and a mother to two children. She and her husband Ritch are now taking their interest and enthusiasm for business and adding restaurant franchisees to their resumes. While still keeping their current jobs, they will also be able to follow their dream of becoming entrepreneurs and remain active in the Ocala community.

Kim is an excellent example of someone who has a dream to own their own business and found the right opportunity with Uncle Maddios, said Matt Andrew, CEO. We are excited to have her, and the entire Ocala area, join the Uncle Maddios family.

Since launching its aggressive growth plan in 2008, Uncle Maddio's has signed franchise agreements with 67different entities in 18 states. Many of Uncle Maddio's franchisees have previous multi-unit experience with Jimmy John's, Firehouse Subs, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, Burger King, Krystal, Papa John's, Domino's and Golden Corral. Uncle Maddio's is on track to have 250 restaurants open in five years with 1,000 units in development.

For information on Uncle Maddios Pizza, visit http://www.unclemaddios.com. Interested franchisees can visit unclemaddiosfranchise.com or contact Jocelyn Blain at franchising(at)unclemaddios(dot)com.

About Uncle Maddio's Pizza With more than 1,350 Pizza Makers making more than 5,000,000 pizzas a year, Uncle Maddio's Pizza is category leader of the create-your-own, fast casual pizza restaurants. Operating 45 locations in 14 states, Uncle Maddio's has more than 250 units in development.Uncle Maddio's pizzas are customizable, made-to-order, and served up fast for about $8. With four pizza sizes, three types of crusts (including gluten free), six sauces and 48 fresh toppings, Uncle Maddio's has the freshest and largest menu in the category. The restaurant's unique fast bake ovens offer the most throughput in the industry and can produce 200 pizzas per hour. Uncle Maddio's also serves Foldwiches and salads. Uncle Maddio's 'Served with Love' philosophy and restaurant is for everyone - children and families, college students, the young and the young at heart - and includes extensive community involvement. Based in Atlanta, the Uncle Maddio's management team has 50 years combined experienced in the fast casual category. http://www.unclemaddios.com

Click here for photos: Uncle Maddio's Photos
Benzer Pharmacy is donating drinking water on January 30, 2016. The chain of independent retail and specialty pharmacies is striving to reach beyond store walls to actively improve health and wellness.

Arjun Ajbani, Pharmacy Operations Manager at Benzer Pharmacy in Flint, Michigan, says the pharmacy is giving back to the community that supports the business by providing bottled water to the residents of Flint.

Benzer Pharmacy is stepping up to help with the citys public health crisis over contaminated water, he says.

Located at G-3333 Beecher Rd, Flint, MI 48532, the pharmacy will start giving away drinking water starting Saturday at 2:00 pm.

Residents of Flint, Michigan are invited to the store to collect the bottled water. The pharmacy strives to help everyone achieve good health, he adds.

A federal state of emergency has since been declared and Benzer Pharmacy is joining local agencies, nonprofits and businesses to help the citys residents with clean drinking water.

Whenever there is a need in the community, Benzer Pharmacy strives to step forward and lead the way to a better, happier and healthier tomorrow. Get Better with Benzer!

###

ABOUT BENZER PHARMACY

Benzer Pharmacy is a chain of independent retail and specialty pharmacies. The first Benzer Pharmacy was opened in year 2009. There are currently over 50 locations throughout Florida, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Nevada and Louisiana. The pharmacy is projected to grow rapidly in-order to reach more customers and to make sure their experiences match their expectations.

Benzer Pharmacy earned position 1500 in the 2015 Inc. 5000 list for the fastest growing

private company in America, earned position 39 out of 100 in the 2015 Florida Fast 100 for the fastest-growing private companies in Florida, earned position 67 out of 200 in the 2015 TBBJ 200, Tampa Bays largest private companies, voted favorite pharmacy in the 2015 Best of Fuquay Varina in North Carolina, and achieved PCAB compounding accreditation with Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC). All Benzer Pharmacy medications require a doctor's prescription. For more information: http://www.benzerpharmacy.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BenzerPharmacy

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benzerpharmacy

Instagram : https://instagram.com/benzer_pharmacy
"The Customer-Centric Innovation in Travel Day is a great opportunity to network and share thoughts on transformation." Adrian Hands, eCommerce Manager EMEA, TripAdvisor

One Connected Community (OCC) has invited Wyndham Hotels Group, TripAdvisor, Thomas Cook, Brussels Airlines, Dalziel & Pow, Mubaloo and Rockar Hyundai to discuss the importance of customer-centric innovation on revenues in 2016.

"I am pleased to speak at the Customer-Centric Innovation in Travel Day. It's a great opportunity to network with other stakeholders and share our perspective on digital transformation and customer engagement." Adrian Hands, eCommerce Manager EMEA, TripAdvisor

As the proliferation of mobile devices and innovative business models continue to disrupt and shape the way customers travel, one thing is clear - customer experience matters more than ever.

As customer expectations evolve, hotels and airlines recognize that customer experience is the only way to truly differentiate, and they are not willing to sit back and watch as their customers (and revenues) slowly move to innovative, customer-centric competitors.

In this setting, key travel stakeholders are searching for new ways to create seamless, meaningful and personalized customer experiences across the entire journey.

The goal is to target customers in the moment at every touch point, taking advantage of digital platforms and innovative business models, with personalized content and offers to improve loyalty, direct channel bookings and ancillary revenues.

Those that take advantage of such capabilities stand to gain against competitors that dont.

Similar challenges are faced in other sectors. The digital revolution has brought change to the automotive sector  Rockar Hyundai, identified and embraced the issues to create a world first category defining solution. The concept fuses the convenience and flexibility of ecommerce with a dynamic, customer-centric store experience. A significant leap forward not only for the brand involved but also for the automotive sector overall.

Its an exciting time for travel, but there are significant challenges associated with the innovation models behind engaging customers across the entire journey.

"As seen in retail, you have to create that point of difference. It's not what you sell, but how you sell it. And you can certainly engineer the way that you sell products," says David Dalziel, Creative Director, Dalziel & Pow.

Indeed, now is the time to look at everything from a customer-centric perspective, adds Sarah Weller, Managing Director, Mubaloo. "Any innovation that is not customer-centric in design and simple, will not be adopted."

To win in the customer-centric world and reclaim direct profitable relationships with customers, travel brands must adopt next-generation digital thinking and practices - a move away from the traditional product approach, to a customer journey approach. Its no longer about selling a room or a flight, but selling a personal service.

This requires a considerable investment of time, money and resources as well as a willingness to experiment and make continual improvements.

Indeed, to achieve the personalization vision, hotels and airlines must better manage and integrate data across the organisation, analyse behavioural data throughout the entire journey, and empower all staff (and partners) with the organisation, insight and technology to make meaningful connections.

To help hotels and airlines navigate this complex and rapidly developing shift, OCC have built a unique and highly valuable forum, taking place May 4 in London, to redefine customer experience and reclaim direct, profitable relationships.

Led by Wyndham Hotels Group, TripAdvisor, Thomas Cook and Brussels Airlines, The Customer-Centric Innovation in Travel Day will help you define your customer-first proposition and provide you with a step-by-step guide to plan and execute transformation.

Complacent hotels and airlines will very soon be swept away by more innovative companies. Now is the time to innovate and deliver the perfect travel experience.

About: The Customer-Centric Innovation in Travel Conference

Where: The Millbank Tower, London

When: May 4, 2016

Objective: Create unprecedented, personal customer experiences at every touch point

Website: http://www.oneconnectedcommunity.com/next-event/

George Kiley, Event Director, OCC says: It's a day to listen carefully to, and engage with, hand-picked thought leaders on the innovative technology, process and organisation to drive unprecedented customer experiences and new revenues.

About OCC

We share inspirational stories to highlight how technology and engaging customer experiences make a real difference to the bottom line. We do this by inviting the most influential thought leaders to challenge, transform and define the future of customer experience across our leading conferences and original video content.

Since 2013, every ticket purchased helps to change the lives of Londons young adults who have learning disabilities. Your support helps those who need it the most lead successful, happy and fulfilling lives once they leave school.

For more information contact George Kiley on george(at)oneconnectedcommunity(dot)co(dot)uk

Tel: +44 (0)208 8193122
ShipTrack, an innovative shipment tracking platform designed to provide complete visibility and control of any shipments movement worldwide, announced their participation at the upcoming Cargo Logistics Canada Expo & Conference from February 17 to 18, 2016.

The Cargo Logistics Canada Expo is the largest annual conference that brings together the most diverse group of stakeholders involved in the flow of goods through Canadian supply chains. Cargo types featured will include a wide range of industries such as commodities from the agriculture, food & beverage sectors, consumer products in retail and electronics, equipment related to manufacturing and industry, as well as pharmaceutical and medical products. The conference gives logistics providers, carriers, ports, terminals and other key stakeholders the opportunity to share best practices, access resources for continued professional development and engage with professionals in the industry.

The ShipTrack transportation management platform helps businesses manage deliveries, increase productivity and reduce operational costs. The service supports a broad range of industry verticals moving cargo of any type from Point A to Point B, whether it be sea, air, rail or land. ShipTrack has been designed to make it easier than ever to provide visibility and accurate reporting on any cargo type.

"Logistics is about finding efficiencies," states Brock Gourlay, Senior Vice President of Sales at ShipTrack. "Perhaps no other industry is more focused on this major concept." Gourlay notes, "Stakeholders in the air, sea, rail and road freight sectors are quickly witnessing the benefits of a transportation management solution. Our solution emphasizes efficient collaboration and this has been extremely well-received for people who own, move & handle containerized cargo.

ShipTrack will be exhibiting at booth #620 throughout the duration of the Cargo Logistics Canada Expo & Conference from February 17 to 18, 2016 at the Palais des congres de Montreal located in Montreal, Quebec. Experts will be available onsite to discuss challenges and offer solutions one-on-one, providing attendees the opportunity to discuss their individual logistics requirements.

About ShipTrack

ShipTrack is an innovative logistics management platform that provides complete control and visibility of any shipments movement worldwide. ShipTrack enables vendors all over the world to provide complete visibility and control that their customers demand of their deliveries. ShipTrack is a simple, easy-to-use service that is providing highly accurate shipment tracking to the masses. The shipping system has the potential to benefit companies of all sizes by increasing delivery speed and reliability, improving customer service and retention and streamlining operations. The ShipTrack smartphone app is a real-time shipment tracker that allows for easy management of multiple drivers, deployment of a fully branded web portal, and the collection of valuable reports and business metrics. ShipTrack is for everyone.

About Informa

Cargo Logistics Canada is produced by Informa, the largest publicly-owned organizer of conferences, expositions and training events in the world. Informa operates more than 140 trade and consumer events in over 40 cities across the globe. Each year Informa brings together approximately 1.1 million professionals from every corner of every continent, all looking to meet, network, and do business. Thanks to a range of specialist intelligence and resources available to Informa, Informa is able to provide businesses and individuals with unparalleled knowledge and up-to-the minute information. Informa's goal is to create inspiring marketplaces and opportunities for shared knowledge.
Try BuildIT 2016 Today! BuildIT 2016 includes redesigned reporting and new GD&T functionality featuring the optimization of evaluations using MMC on datums in DRF

BuildIT Software & Solutions Ltd. is pleased to announce the release of BuildIT 2016, a major update to the 3D metrology software. BuildIT 2016 adds many new features and improvements including updates to the UI, redesigned customized reporting, enhancements to process automation capabilities and new GD&T functionality featuring the optimization of evaluations using MMC on datums in DRF.

Watch the video overview.

BuildIT enables quick and easy dimensional inspection of manufactured parts and assemblies for tool building, assembly, alignment, process automation, quality control and reverse engineering. With both numerical and graphical feedback of real-time deviations, BuildIT allows users to position parts with micrometer accuracy for high-precision assembly and alignment applications. Advanced point cloud processing and STL mesh generation features extend the softwares capabilities to reverse engineering applications such as 3D printing, rapid prototyping and CFD analysis.

Key features include CAD-to-part inspection, GD&T analysis, creation of custom automated processes and generation of extensive custom reports. The software interfaces in real-time with a variety of probing and scanning measurement devices from all major hardware vendors, including FARO, Leica, Romer, API, Creaform, Kreon and AICON, enabling the quick and efficient acquisition of dimensional information from a tool or part. BuildIT directly reads 3D CAD files from native (CATIAV4 V5 V6, NX, Parasolid, CREO (Pro/E), Inventor, SolidWorks, AutoCAD) or neutral formats (IGES, STEP, SAT, JT, STL), as well as GD&T, FTA and NX-PMI assembly level data for model based inspection and assembly. In addition, BuildIT imports measured point data from external sources for maximum compatibility.

BuildIT supports DML export, enabling Statistical Process Control (SPC) through DPV, a Siemens PLM product. The ability to perform a statistical analysis of the manufacturing process complements BuildITs core offering by expanding the use of the analysis data into control charts to reduce waste and increase product conformity.

A free trial of the latest version is available for download on the company website.

Download Free Trial

About BuildIT Software & Solutions Ltd.

BuildIT develops and distributes custom and off-the-shelf 3D software solutions that interface with measurement devices for real-time part inspection, tool building, assembly, alignment, measurement process automation, reverse engineering and quality control in advanced manufacturing. A privately-held company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, BuildIT has gained the trust and partnership of many of the worlds largest civil and defense contractors and has been instrumental in global programs such as the JSF F-35. BuildIT is also a Siemens reseller partner, specializing in their PLM software solutions for Quality Management in Manufacturing. For more information about the company or its products, please visit: http://www.builditsoftware.com
International top ups of Digicel mobiles in French Guiana and Movistar numbers in Costa Rica are now available on MobileRecharge.com! Very trustful. Good and friendly-use app to recharge cell phones. It is easy. For me it is the best, I am happy with the service. (Rosa Portuondo on Trustpilot.com)

MobileRecharge.com, the global expat service provider, has recently introduced two more networks to facilitate top ups to mobiles in Costa Rica and French Guiana. Friends and relatives in these countries, who use Movistar Costa Rica and Digicel French Guiana phones are now ready to receive mobile credit from anywhere in the world. The online ordering form is simple and requires no contract, except to register on the website, which is again simple, and free: http://mobilerecharge.com/

To top up a mobile using the Internet also saves a lot of time, because it takes about 1 minute to refill from a computer or on the MobileRecharge app, according to customers on Twitter and some review platforms. Plus, it saves money due to the frequent Bonus promotions and low processing fees.

There are over 97,000 Costa Ricans living abroad. They can now send credit to prepaid mobiles in Costa Rica belonging to Movistar. Other networks that receive mobile credit online are: Claro, Kolbi, FullMovil and Tuyo Costa Rica. The second good news is that Costa Ricans can make great savings if they take advantage of the regular promotions for top ups to Movistar cell phones in Costa Rica. They usually last for a week and bring 100% free extra credit automatically. The rest of the operators in Costa Rica also run Bonus campaigns on MobileRecharge.com from times to times.

In French Guiana, only Digicel mobiles can be recharged from abroad or locally at the moment. The airtime can be sent online in less than 1 minute, using a PC or a tablet, or even a smartphone if the MobileRecharge app has been installed, which, by the way, costs nothing. To be more specific, Digicel has been re-introduced or actually reactivated after a long period of pause and testing. For the moment, this is the only operator ready to facilitate top ups to mobiles in French Guiana. But based on feedback that will be received, MobileRecharge.com will try to add it.

With MobileRecharge.com the credit gets to the destination number instantly. That is one of the reasons evokes by many fans who are loyal to MobileRecharge.com for years.

Many Latino expats use the online top up to spare their parents or grandparents or other older relatives of going out to the store to refill their mobiles.

The service on MobileRecharge.com is also highly used by temporary residents or travelers in Europe to top up their local SIMs. And since there are more than 350 operators available on MobileRecharge.com, chances are big that one should be able to top up his or her local phone online, wherever they are in the world and use the credit according to the local network terms.

Every 2 minutes someone new joins MobileRecharge.com for several reasons that fans mention on review platforms:

-Transactions are 100% safe; the service bears the label "Verified & Certified."

-Paypal payment is accepted besides all major cards, no matter the currency or country of the customer.

-The service is among the easiest to use on the global market.

-There are daily promotions always running on the "Promotions" page, or on the MobileRecharge app.

-MobileRecharge app is available for Spanish or English speakers who want to refill on the go.

-The website is available in several languages: English, Spanish, German, French and Italian.

-All fans meet on Facebook, G+ and Twitter to keep up with the on-going promotions. The expat community on MobileRecharge.com Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MobileRecharge.Fan

-Customer Service is seen as highly supportive; it is available 24/7 in both Spanish and English, and other international languages.

-Video tutorials are available on YouTube for independent users on MobileRecharge.com page.

-Interesting How-to articles and fun stuff is available on their blog as well: http://blog.mobilerecharge.com/

-It is free to open an account on the website, MobileRecharge.com.

MobileRecharge.com is an interactive website designed by KeepCalling, a global telecommunications company registered in 2002 in USA. Presently, KeepCalling provides its services to hundreds of thousands of consumers and businesses, with a focus on customer satisfaction. KeepCalling has been listed by Inc 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies in the USA for 5 consecutive years. In 2015 the company registered a revenue increase of over 200% from 2011 to 2014. MobileRecharge.com is the first brand in history who initiated on November 10, 2015 World Top Up Day to celebrate top up givers worldwide.
Adrian Morgan is a dynamic and thoughtful leader who brings over twenty years of executive level experience turning around our nations most challenged schools. Prior to joining Yardstick, Adrian most recently served as the CEO of Louisianas largest Charter Management Organization, Algiers Charter School Association (ACSA), where he led the organization's transformation, serving over 4,300 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade. During his tenure at ACSA, Adrian successfully renewed six charters, dramatically increased enrollment and removed two schools from the state takeover list. In addition, Adrian led the complete organizational turnaround of ACSA including increasing revenues by over $10 million dollars, securing the award of nine (9) new charters for ACSA, and developing the organizations first five-year strategic plan.

Adrians previous roles include COO of FirstLine Schools, General Manager at 4th Sector Solutions, and VP of Business Development with Edison Learning.

Adrian is one of the most strategic school turnaround leaders in the nation with an endless track record of proven success. Im elated that hes at the helm of our most critical line of business, said Dr. Ebbie Parsons, III, Yardsticks Founder and Managing Partner.

Adrians passion for building a better world for children in need of tremendous support is what attracted him to join Yardstick Learning.

Im thrilled to join the Yardstick team and champion their School Turnaround efforts. We have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us and I couldnt have joined a more capable team of committed leaders to transform the lives of our nations most deserving children, said Morgan.

A certified teacher, Adrian completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Dayton, where he graduated with honors. Adrian also holds masters degrees in education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and in business from the University of Michigan where he earned his MBA.

ABOUT YARDSTICK LEARNING

Yardstick Learning is a leading global strategic management consulting firm operating in eighteen states and six countries providing specialized services to mission-driven organizations. Yardstick Learning is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Alumnus, and a Clinton Global Initiative partner organization. Yardsticks expertise includes Education, Corporate Social Responsibility, Arts and Faith-Based initiatives.
In November 2014, Vaughn filed an application with DOEs Office of Hearings and Appeals (at the D.C. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.) in which it sought an exception that would allow Vaughn to continue the manufacturing of this water heater type. In April of this year, DOE denied Vaughns request and, pursuant to federal law, Vaughn appealed this decision to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The appeal to FERC was supported by NRECA, PJM and the entire electric utility industry (Refer to Case # EXR-14-0003, Court Records: http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/09/f26/EXR-14-0003.pdf, http://energy.gov/oha/downloads/exr-14-0003-matter-vaughn-thermal-corp).

We are pleased to have resolved our differences with the Department of Energy on this important matter, said Kenny Ladd, Vice President of Sales at Vaughn. As a result of our efforts, Vaughn can confidently continue to supply grid-enabled ETS water heating products to our utility partners.

Grid-enabled ETS water heaters are a legislatively mandated category of electric water heater, which has been newly established by Congress to enable electric utilities to maintain and grow their load management and demand response capabilities. In new and existing electric thermal storage (ETS) programs, such water heaters are controlled by the local electric utility to help them manage their peak system loads and reduce operating costs. Electricity supplied during off-peak periods is generally less expensive than during peak periods.

About Vaughn Thermal Corporation - Vaughn Thermal Corporation, Salisbury, MA, is a leading manufacturer of long-life, high-efficiency electric water heaters, HPWHs and thermal storage tanks. The company produces large-capacity, grid-enabled electric thermal storage (ETS) water heaters for utility load-management, renewable storage and demand response (DR) programs across the country. For more information, please visit: http://www.vaughncorp.com
Unrecorded artist Puppet representing an elder man (Cekoroba), late 20th century Mali Gift of Peter and Mary Sue Rosen, 19.2013.4 The new galleries will transform the way we think about, view and engage with African art.

The Newark Museum is preparing for the 2017 reinstallation of the arts of Global Africa collection in the Museums main gallery on the first floor, which coincides with the centennial of the collection. But in the meantime, there are new works to see in the current galleries located on the second floor, including recent acquisitions. The reinstallation is part of a two-year celebration of the Museums collection of African art.

This project builds upon and extends our long history of collecting and exhibiting the arts of Africa, said Steven Kern, CEO and Director of the Newark Museum, who initated 100 Years/African Art last year with the opening of Royals & Regalia: Inside the Palaces of Nigerias Monarchs and Hassan Hajjaj: My Rock Stars. The new galleries will transform the way we think about, view and engage with African art. These acquisitions give visitors a look at what is to come.

The most dramatic addition is a new gallery dedicated to video art, featuring A Land So Far (2010) by artist Zak Ove, which was acquired by the Museum last year. Based on contemporary celebrations of Carnival in Trinidad, Ove combines footage in mirrored frames to create a kaleidoscopic landscape of intertwining masqueraders. The video begins with daytime parades of masked characters dancing through the streets of the city of Port of Spain, accompanied by the sounds of drumming. It then shifts to the nighttime performances in the hills of Paramin where battling blue devils  performers with bodies covered in indigo blue dye  spout streams from lit cans of aerosol, ending with an explosion of flames in the sky.

More new acquisitions are on view in Present Tense, a gallery devoted to the Museums collection of contemporary arts of global Africa. The tight rectangular geometry of Serge Nitegekas abstract painting Fragile Cargo XV, Studio Study V (2015) captures the shapes and sharp lines of shipping crates, seemingly commonplace objects used in human trafficking, economics and movement. They are a metaphor for physical and psychological displacement, which he himself experienced when his family fled from their home in Burundi to Rwanda due to a civil war and then migrated again because of genocide. Personal history is also mined in a group of photographs by Amalia Ramanankirahina from her 2013 series Portraits de Famille (Family Portraits). These haunting images digitally manipulate family photographs from colonial-era Madagascar, shrouding their faces in a symbolic gesture to traditional Malagasy cultural practices. These works are joined by earlier acquisitions of paintings, including Wosene Worke Kosrofs Berkeley III (2003) and Sokey Edorhs Les Gendarmes dAfrique (1996-2006).

Featured elsewhere in the gallery are recent gifts to the collection. A factory print textile collected in Monrovia, Liberia, circa 1969 celebrates the impact of swinging sixties fashion on the continent. This work is part of a larger donation of 25 factory print textiles, an important addition to the Museums internationally known collection of African textiles. It complements one of the first textiles collected by the Museum, an exceptional example of weaving by a Dyula artist from Cote dIvoire acquired by Newark Museum founder John Cotton Dana in 1928, now on view as well. At the entrance to the galleries are another gift to the collection: a group of puppets representing the diversity of characters in Sogo bo, a puppet tradition performed in south-central Mali. Sogo bo  translated as the animals come forth  is inspired by the everyday world and examines the human condition, often in a humorous way, through performances organized and performed by young men in youth associations.

The reinstallation was curated by Christa Clarke, Ph.D., Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa, with the assistance of Curatorial Fellow Kimberli Gant and Research Associate Roger Arnold.

For additional information, follow the Museum on Facebook at facebook.com/newark.museum or Twitter at twitter.com/newarkmuseum; or by visiting http://www.newarkmuseum.org.

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The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania today released its 2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, the most comprehensive ranking of the worlds top think tanks. Simultaneous launch events were held by 107 research organizations across 70 cities in 60 countries worldwide. The report will be translated into more than 20 languages. Last year the Go To Index was downloaded 175, 000 times.

As the premier database and measure of world think tanks, the Go To Index aims to increase the profile, performance and impact of think tanks, and to create a transnational and interdisciplinary network of centers of public policy excellence.

Flows of information for rich policy analysis and research today are often disparate and fractured, which leads to a vital need for resources that highlight the best policy research out there, said James McGann, PhD, director of the University of Pennsylvanias Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program. The independent Index is designed to help users of information and policy analysis identify the leading centers of excellence in public policy research around the world.

The launch of the 2015 Go To Index in Washington D.C. was hosted by the World Bank. A discussion was held on Why Think Tanks Matter: Helping Make People Centered Public Policy & Development a Priority. An afternoon session at the United Nation Headquarters in New York City focused on arms control, trade, development (SDGs) and the Environment (COP21.) The Index was also distributed through a network of global partners, giving institutions a chance to highlight the crucial role they play in building and maintaining civil society in their countries and regions.

The annual report, compiled with assistance from more than 4,700 peer institutions and experts from the print and electronic media, academia, public and private donor institutions, and governments from 143 countries. This peer and expert ranking process is designed to identify the top think tanks in every region of the world and in key policy areas such as economic policy, security policy and health policy:

1. Top Think Tanks in the World

2. Top Think Tanks by Region

3. Top Think Tanks by Area of Research

4. Top Think Tanks by Special Achievement

This years report also includes new Regional Studies categories as well as a Think Tank with the Best Practices (Policies and Procedures) to assure the Quality, Independence and Integrity of its Policy Research category. There is also a Think Tank Innovation feature; a detailed analysis of innovative practices that think tanks are undertaking to generate new frontiers in policy research and influence.

The Brookings Institution ranked first on the Global Think Tank list for the eighth consecutive year. Index reports since 2008 can be found online at http://gotothinktank.com/rankings. Below are highlights of the 2015 rankings:

Top Think Tanks Worldwide (U.S. and non-U.S.)



Brookings Institutions (United States)

Chatham House (United Kingdom)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (United States)

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (United States)

Bruegel (Belgium)

Top Defense and National Security Think Tanks



Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (United States

International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) (United Kingdom)

RAND Corporation (United States)

Brookings Institution (United States)

Chatham House (United Kingdom)

Top Foreign Policy and International Affairs Think Tanks



Chatham House (United Kingdom)

Brookings Institution (United States)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (United States)

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (United States)

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (United States)

The following regional launch partners will be hosting events in close to 70 cities around the world:

List of Global Host and Partners for the 2015 Global Go to Launch and Why Think Tanks Matter Events:

1. Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (Afghanistan)

2. Argentine Council for International Relations (Argentina)

3. Centro de Implementacion de Politicas Publicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC) (Argentina)

4. Australian Institute of International Affairs (Australia)

5. Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Australia)

6. Institute for Economics and Peace (Australia)

7. Security and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University (Australia)

8. Centre for Economic and Social Development (Azerbaijan)

9. Bruegel (Belgium)

10. Fundacao Getulio Vargas (Brazil)

11. Groupe de Recherche et d'Analyse Appliques pour le Developpement (GRAAD-Burkina) (Burkina Faso)

12. The Fraser Institute (Canada)

13. Centro de Estudios Publicos (Chile)

14. Center for China and Globalization (China)

15. Charhar Institute (China)

16. Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University (China)

17. Penn Wharton China Center (PWCC) (China)

18. Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (China)

19. Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche sur les Analyses et politiques Economiques (CERAPE) (Congo)

20. EUROPEUM (Czech Republic)

21. Prague Security Studies Institute (Czech Republic)

22. Fundacion Global Democracia y Desarrollo  FUNGLODE (Dominican Republic)

23. Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs (Egypt)

24. Regional Center for Strategic Studies (Egypt)

25. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Ethiopia)

26. Institute of International and Strategic Relations (France)

27. Ecologic Institute (Germany)

28. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Germany)

29. German Development Institute (Germany)

30. IASS Potsdam (Germany)

31. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Germany)

32. Asociacion de Investigacion y Estudios Sociales (ASIES) (Guatemala)

33. Centro de Estudios Economico-Sociales (CEES) (Guatemala)

34. Development Alternatives (India)

35. Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations (India)

36. Integrated Research and Action for Development IRADe (India)

37. Observer Research Foundation (India)

38. Middle East Research Institute (Iraq)

39. Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) (Ireland)

40. Institute for National Security Studies (Israel)

41. Israel Democracy Institute (Israel)

42. Institute for International Political Studies (Italy)

43. Asian Development Bank Institute (Japan)

44. Japan Institute of International Affairs (Japan)

45. Center for Strategic Studies (Jordan)

46. African Economic Research Consortium (Kenya)

47. Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) (Kenya)

48. National Institute for Strategic Studies of the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan)

49. Latvian Institute of International Affairs (LIIA) (Latvia)

50. American University of Beirut (Lebanon)

51. Carnegie Middle East Center (Lebanon) (TBC)

52. Institute of Strategic and International Studies (Malaysia)

53. Ethos Public Policy Lab (Mexico)

54. Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI) (Mexico)

55. OCP Policy Center (Morocco)

56. Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (Morocco)

57. Development Research and Project Centre (Nigeria)

58. University of Ibadan Think Tank Forum (Nigeria)

59. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (Norway)

60. Alternate Solutions Institute (Pakistan)

61. Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (Pakistan)

62. Sustainable Development Policy Institute (Pakistan)

63. Group for the Analysis of Development- GRADE (Peru)

64. Asian Development Bank (Philippines)

65. Asian Institute of Management Policy Center (Philippines)

66. Philippine Institute for Development Studies (Philippines)

67. Polish Institute of International Affairs (Poland)

68. Al Jazeera Center for Studies (Qatar)

69. Carnegie Moscow Center (Russia)

70. Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Senegal)

71. Asia Competitiveness Institute, Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy (Singapore)

72. Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kwan School of Public Policy (Singapore)

73. Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kwan School of Public Policy (Singapore)

74. Institute of Water Policy Lee Kwan School of Public Policy (Singapore)

75. ACCORD (South Africa)

76. Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (Spain)

77. Fundacion Alternativas (Spain)

78. Timbro (Sweden)

79. Policy Research for Development (REPOA) (Tanzania)

80. Association for Liberal Thinking (Turkey)

81. Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (Turkey)

82. Center for Leadership, Suleyman Demirel University (Turkey)

83. Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research (UAE)

84. Razumkov Centre (Ukraine)

85. Adam Smith Institute (UK)

86. European Council on Foreign Relations (UK)

87. Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo (Uruguay)

88. Asia Society Policy Institute (USA)

89. Brookings Institution (USA)

90. Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (USA)

91. Center for Strategic and International Studies (USA)

92. Chicago Council on Global Affairs (USA)

93. Fels Center of Government (USA)

94. Foreign Policy Research Institute (USA)

95. Hudson Institute (USA)

96. Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

97. Pacific Council on International Policy (USA)

98. Penn Global, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

99. Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

100. Philadelphia Diplomatic Corps (USA)

101. Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy (USA)

102. Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

103. United Nations (USA)

104. Wilson Center (USA)

105. World Bank (USA)

106. CEDICE Libertad (Venezuela)

107. African Capacity Building Foundation (Zimbabwe)

About Penns Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP)

The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the Lauder Institute (University of Pennsylvania) is designed to increase the profile, capacity, and performance of think tanks at the national, regional, and global levels, so they can better serve policymakers and the public. TTCSP conducts research on the relationship between think tanks, politics, and public policy, produces the annual Global Go To Think Tank Index, develops capacity-building resources and programs, supports a global network of close to 7,000 think tanks, and trains future think tank scholars and executives.

Often referred to as the think tanks think tank, TTCSP examines the evolving role and character of public policy research organizations. Over the last 20 years, the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program has laid the foundation for a global initiative that will help bridge the gap between knowledge and policy in critical policy areas such as international peace and security, globalization and governance, international economics, environment, information and society, poverty alleviation, and health. This international collaborative effort is designed to establish regional and international networks of policy institutes and communities that will improve policy making as well as strengthen democratic institutions and civil societies around the world.
(L-R) Laom, contract farmer; Sharon Lam, Double A Marketing Executive; Mandy Tong, Donald Mok, Kamon Changgep, contract farmer; Peony Hung, Marilyn Au and Thirawit Leetavorn, Double A Senior Exec. VP

Double A has recently welcomed the champions of the Joint University Outstanding Marketing Award (JUOMA) 2014-2015 to its integrated pulp and paper mill in Prachinburi, Thailand.

The team is composed of senior students from City University of Hong Kong, namely, Marilyn Au, Peony Hung, Donald Mok and Mandy Tong. They were welcomed by Double A team headed by Mr. Thirawit Leetavorn, Double As Senior Executive Vice President.

During the visit, Double A presented its efficient and sustainable resource utilization management under the concept No Waste is Wasted through a 4D presentation. Double A highlighted how it turns its wastes from pulping process such as barks, oversized wood chips and black liquor into renewable biomass. Electricity from renewable biomass is used throughout Double A mill, while the excess is sold to the local grid.

The students also visited Double As research and development laboratory where it breeds its paper trees. To cap the day off, Double A brought the students to a nearby rice field for a first-hand experience of Paper from KHAN-NA farmed trees project. Through this unique and sustainable approach, the paper trees are grown along the empty ridges that border the rice field, thus creating economic value from unused land, generating additional income for over 1.5 million Thai farmers, and protecting natural forests. The students had the opportunity to plant paper tree saplings which in 3-5 years will provide the farmer with additional income and Double A with sustainable wood.

The mill visit is a comprehensive experience for us to learn about how Double A fully utilize and conserve their energy in the mill and the sophistication and philosophy in making premium quality paper. The KHAN-NA is yet another inspirational practice of gathering raw material which benefits the environment, the farmers and the company, shared Marilyn Au, the team leader.

JUOMA is the leading marketing competition for Hong Kong university students. In 2014-2015, Double A was JUOMAs sole sponsor under the theme Innovation through paper. The all-expense-paid trip to Thailand is part of the grand prize which includes a cash prize worth HK$10,000 and a champions trophy.

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About Double A

Double A is a global leader in premium copy paper and is one of the most advanced fully integrated pulp and paper manufacturers in the world. Double A produces high performance, super smooth Double A paper which is available in more than 130 countries worldwide. Double A copy paper is produced from Farmed Trees grown by over 1.5 million contract farmers in Thailand. Double As pulp and paper production practices set an industry benchmark in environmental responsibility. Double As unique Farmed Trees initiative save precious old growth forests from logging. Trees are planted in open areas between and around rice fields and other crops, thereby maintaining the natural biodiversity. For more information about Double A, please visit http://www.DoubleApaper.com.
UK Contract Research Organisation Fusion Antibodies has recently published an article in the January 2016 edition of European Biopharmaceutical Magazine, discussing why Antibody Humanization is important in the 21st Century.

The technology of monoclonal antibodies was pioneered by Cesar Milstein and Georges Kohler, who in 1975 successfully fused immortal myeloma cell lines with antibody producing B-cells to produce hybridomas. In 1986 the first monoclonal antibody (a complete, unmodified mouse antibody) therapy was approved for use in humans and is one of only four fully murine therapeutic mAbs to be approved for clinical use. Murine antibodies have a short therapeutic half-life because they are recognised by the patient immune system as foreign proteins resulting in a human anti-mouse (HAMA) response. Since 1986 there has been a variety of antibody engineering techniques employed to reduce immunogenicity and the HAMA response (such as chimeric antibodies).

Humanization is a process by which xenogeneic antibody sequences are modified to reduce this immunogenicity and several approaches have been developed since the first approved humanized antibody in 1997 (Daclizumab). Since the 2002 approval of Adalimumab generated by phage display technology and the 2006 approval of Panitumumab there have also been two technologies capable of producing fully human antibodies.

The article discusses these three techniques; CDR grafting, phage display and approaches using transgenic mice to attempt to answer the question: Why do we still need to humanize murine antibodies in the 21st Century?

For the full article please visit Fusion Antibodies website at: https://www.fusionantibodies.com/blog/2016/january/ebr-antibody-humanization-article

About European Biopharmaceutical Review

European Biopharmaceutical Review (EBR) is a quarterly magazine dedicated to the biopharmaceutical industry and biotechnology sector as a whole. EBR provides detailed articles and reviews combined with insightful interviews and opinion pieces. EBR offers the European biopharmaceutical market a dedicated platform for the communication and sharing of information both across Europe and worldwide.

About Fusion Antibodies

Fusion Antibodies; a UK based life science company, with innovative technologies and world-class expert services for antibody drug discovery, are specialists in production of High Quality Humanized Monoclonal Antibodies and Antibody Engineering Projects. With 15+ years of experience in the medical research industry, including two Antibodies in clinical and pre-clinical trials, Fusion Antibodies have extensive experience in accelerating therapeutic drug research towards the clinic.

For more information about the company visit their website at https://www.fusionantibodies.com/
Antonio and the entire Raw Shorts team have built a phenomenal platform which offers a must-have resource to all companies needing to reach their customers and prospects who are mobile, social, and global

New World Angels (NWA) has closed an investment in Raw Shorts, a Florida-based SaaS company that enables users to create customized explainer videos. NWA led the $1.0 million Series A financing round, joined by prior investors in the company, Mosley Ventures (Atlanta) and Accelerated Growth Partners (Miami). Currently housed in Miamis Venture Hive, Raw Shorts will use the funding proceeds to make key hires in product development and marketing.

NWAs investment review process throughout the due diligence period was rigorous but always first rate. We are particularly excited to have Mr. Randy Wood, one of the two Co-Founders of Citrix, joining our board, said Antonio Otalvaro, CEO and Co-Founder of Raw Shorts. Otalvaro believes that in addition to the financial investment, New World Angels sixty strong membership, with backgrounds in a wide range of industries, will provide a breadth and depth of experience that will provide key guidance to his new venture.

Antonio and the entire Raw Shorts team have built a phenomenal platform which offers a must-have resource to all companies needing to reach their customers and prospects who are mobile, social, and global, according to Randy Wood, the New World Angels member who led the investment effort. In addition to an exceptionally talented management team, the capability of the companys product offering to provide scale and mass for its users is absolutely breathtaking. These factors are what initially attracted us to the Raw Shorts investment opportunity.

Im excited to see how rapidly Raw Shorts gets new users on-board, now that it has some runway for the company to take off. Weve been impressed with Antonios accomplishments thus far, building out a very user-friendly tool that produces a high quality explainer video in mere minutes, said Rhys L. Williams, Co-Founder and President of New World Angels.

About New World Angels (NWA):

The New World Angels (NWA) is a group of private investors dedicated to providing equity capital to early-stage entrepreneurial companies based in Florida. With chapters in both Tampa Bay and South Florida, NWA leads or co-invests at levels ranging between $600 thousand and $1.5 million internally, and at significantly higher levels as part of a syndicate. Members of NWA have extensive experience in founding, building, and managing companies in a wide variety of industries. In addition to providing funding, NWA members make their expertise and resource networks available to portfolio companies.

About Raw Shorts:

Raw Shorts helps businesses create explainer, demo, and marketing videos for the web with an easyto-use drag and drop video builder in the cloud. Explainer videos have boomed in popularity as an alternative to static presentations, but many businesses find them difficult and expensive to produce. Raw Shorts solves this problem with a DIY explainer video builder that allows business users to make their own videos without hiring a studio. The Raw Shorts team is led by Antonio Otalvaro, Founder & CEO, and technical Co-Founder George Estrella. The two have worked together for over 10 years on a number of prior startups.
Digital storytelling can help paint a better picture and break down the emotional walls that exist between a healthcare system and patient.

Storytelling is one way to humanize a healthcare brand and evoke consumer loyalty, which is why Smith & Jones published Digital Storytelling Part I, their latest white paper that discusses how to engage patients through an emotional, honest brand story.

Downloadable from Smith & Jones website the white paper provides insight into how Columbia Memorial Health used digital storytelling to change its brand perception, and how your hospital can achieve great outcomes with a compelling narrative.

Hospital marketing can often paint a sterile or vain picture of care services and staff, CEO Mark Shipley said. Digital storytelling can help paint a better picture and break down the emotional walls that exist between a healthcare system and patient.

The white paper is a two part series. Part I outlines the components of an exceptional brand story. Part II will discuss how to define a hospitals brand promise and tell their story across multimedia channels.

Download Digital StorytellingPart I and learn how to:

-Humanize your hospital through an emotional brand promise

-Create a compelling brand narrative

-Inspire audiences to take action and believe in your organization

About Smith & Jones

Smith & Jones is the marketing communications agency exclusively focused on hospitals and health systems that compete with academic medical centers. We imagine an America where healthcare is truly personal, where everyone has local access to a superior customer and clinical experience, and as a result, people live healthier lives. We contribute to that vision by helping our clients create meaningful and desirable healthcare brands, align their internal teams, engage new and existing patients, and drive downstream revenue. Together, we change the outcomes.
We at Lola Red are excited to roll into 2016 with a thrilling and growing portfolio of clients whom we can serve with our unrelenting media relations practice locally, nationally and internationally.

Lola Red, a Minneapolis-based public relations agency, kicks off 2016 with substantial growth, a growing roster of clients and a second office. Since its inception, Lola Red has made a name for itself as the go-to media relations agency for brands looking for a dynamic team of hustlers seeking to exceed expectations.

In the spring of 2015, Boulder-based connected play company Sphero, engaged Lola Red for the launch of the massively popular BB-8 by Sphero app-controlled droid. As the result of strategic media relations launch campaign, Lola Red achieved more than 700 million impressions and secured placements in nearly every national media outlet including: GMA, The Today Show, Forbes, Mashable, The Verge, Vanity Fair, and more. Lola Red will continue its work with Sphero in 2016 as United States public relations agency of record.

On the heels of its success with Sphero, Lola Reds media relations prowess also grabbed the attention of a number of other consumer product companies that have engaged the agency for 2016. These new clients include:



Arta Tequila (Boulder, Colo.)

HERO Health (Brooklyn, N.Y.)

J.R. Watkins (Winona, Minn.)

ROLI (London)

Oskar Blues Brewery (Longmont, Colo.)

75F (Burnsville, Minn.)

We at Lola Red are excited to roll into 2016 with a thrilling and growing portfolio of clients whom we can serve with our unrelenting media relations practice locally, nationally and internationally, says Alexis Walsko, Founder and CEO of Lola Red. We will continue to create and innovate in this quickly changing business while not losing sight of our companys core value: exceptional service to clients and members of the media.

The 20 percent revenue growth and new accounts are supported by the addition of four team members a second office in Boulder, Colorado; the city in which the agency began. Lola Reds Boulder office works closely with its Minneapolis team to deliver strategic campaigns and unprecedented results for its clients.

Lola Red was founded in Boulder, Colo. in 2001 by Alexis Walsko, and continues to thrive by providing exceptional public relations results and service to clients, media and consumers. Whether a client needs hyper-local, regional or national public relations, marketing or consumer activation services, Lola Reds philosophy is to meet and exceed goals. Lola Red serves clients in the retail, health & wellness, fashion & beauty, home, food & beverage, and franchise industries at its headquarters in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis. In 2015, Lola Red got back to its roots and opened a second office in the heart of Boulder Colorado.

For more information, visit http://www.lolared.com or follow @LolaRedPR on Twitter.
Adjustable Executive TaskMate One critical key to a healthy and happy workplace is being able to stand when you want to and sit when you need to.

HealthPostures, one of America's progressive worker mobility designers, announces that it has entered into a dealer agreement with Office Oxygen. The new deal will make it easier for organizational leaders and individual workers, like contractors and freelancers, located in Massachusetts and surrounding areas to get office mobility and pain reducing equipment and accessories.

Office Oxygen leader, Sue Doctoroff Landay, shares that Office Oxygen decided to carry HealthPostures' products, starting with the TaskMate Go line, because, Office Oxygen has a "keen interest in sit-to-stand workstations. " Interest in sit-to-stand workstations is rooted in an Office Oxygen belief that, "one critical key to a healthy and happy workplace is being able to stand when you want to and sit when you need to."

Landay says that, "We only sell products that we believe will make people happier and more productive at work." She continues, "Being able to stand up at your desk is key to feeling healthy and to working effectively because movement promotes blood circulation and oxygen to the brain. In other words, in addition to making you feel better physically, standing helps your mind function better. And yet, sometimes, we need to sit and really focus. I suppose thats why we feel the sit-to-stand desk options are so ideal."

Worker mobility isn't the only reason why Office Oxygen entered into a dealer agreement with HealthPostures. Specifically, Landay shares that, "Another benefit of HealthPostures products is their ease-of-use and price point. We were looking for sit-to-stand monitors that were less expensive than the electric versions, but still really easy to use. If its too hard to re-position from sitting-to-standing-to-sitting, the product wont be used."

Inspiration to start Office Oxygen extends back to the organization's sister company, Trainers Warehouse. As Sue Landay says, "For over 20 years our sister company, Trainers Warehouse, has been developing and selling products that make training and learning more innovative, effective, and fun."

Office Oxygen was launched to help market the company's existing product line to a broader clientele and to broaden the organization's product offerings to add more resources that could breathe new life into the workplace and make work feel a little less like work.

Partnering with HealthPostures is already paying off for Office Oxygen. "HealthPostures has been easy to work with from the get-go," Landay reveals. "Theyve been incredibly responsive in helping us expand this [ergonomics] category of products. Were thrilled to be working with them."

About HealthPostures

Founded in the 1990s, HealthPostures LLC (https://healthpostures.com) has been a leader in the workplace solutions space for more than two decades. The company specializes in the design and manufacturing of workplace solutions. Products that HealthPostures develops may help to relieve back and neck pain, headaches and other musculoskeletal disorders. A primary mission of HealthPostures' is to "strive to provide quality products that will help transform your sedentary life so you have a healthy way to work." Sought after ergonomics equipment, including sit stand products, that HealthPostures designs include surface Taskmates, the TaskMate Go Laptop, dual monitor sit stand work stations and Stance move seat extensions. The company's strong reputation and proven products and accessories continue to attract distributors and resellers like Office Oxygen.

Contact:

HealthPostures LLC

14310 Ewing Avenue South, Suite 100

Burnsville, MN 55306

800-277-1841

https://healthpostures.com

About Office Oxygen

Office Oxygen has been a pioneer in the equipment and innovative business solutions arena for more than 20 years. Aim of the company's products are to reduce worker stress, increase workplace enjoyment and to strengthen teams. The genesis of the family owned business dates back to 1993. Products that Office Oxygen stocks and offers to clients, including small to large organizations, include stress relievers, meeting and facilitation tools, training guides, memory boosters and ergonomics solutions like HealthPostures' TaskMate go products. Office Oxygen services clients in the United States and abroad.

Contact:

Office Oxygen

89 Washington Avenue, Suite K

Natick, MA 01760-3441

800-296-2812

http://www.officeoxygen.com/
Unanet prides itself on maintaining a company culture that attracts and retains the highest quality of employees, joined together as one team. During this time of growth, Unanet has maintained company culture as a key pillar of the organization. Part of this dedication to company culture is Unanets commitment to employees requests through an open door policy, including their desire to give back to the community. Unanet continues to promote a policy of giving back, and is now expanding this policy to include 2 days of leave for each employee to dedicate to charity work.

Unanet promotes a philosophy of corporate social responsibility and is extending this philosophy to include not just company planned charity events and financial contributions to charities, but to include individual charity work by employees. With such rapid growth in the company for the past year, specifically with many employees being hired to work from home outside of the Dulles, VA headquarters, Unanet is adjusting policies. With this new policy change, all employees will be able to participate in local charity work, and will be able to complete this work in their own communities. With this new policy, Unanet is ensuring that as the company grows, its positive impact will continue to grow, as well!

In addition to employee charity work, Unanets philanthropy includes a focus on STEM initiatives with the Childrens Science Museum and Regional Science & Engineering Fairs. Unanet proudly supports the following organizations among many others: Boy Scouts of America, National Capital Area Council; Loudoun County Public Schools; Loudoun County Schools Regional Science & Engineering Fair; So Others Might Eat, serving the homeless and poor in Washington, DC; The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia; Women in Technology.

About Unanet: Unanet is a leading provider of Cloud and On-Premise software for project-based organizations. Unanet delivers skills management, resource planning, budgeting & forecasting, time & expense reporting, billing & revenue recognition, project management analytics and dashboards, and integrated financials with AR, AP, GL and cost pool calculations. Over 1,000 organizations rely on Unanet to maximize staff utilization, reduce administrative costs by 90%, improve invoicing by 10X, and support forward decision-making for improved operations.
Hillside Sedona

Hillside Sedona Shopping Center is celebrating love and all things red during the month of February.

Valentines Day is just around the corner so that has people thinking and favoring the color red, so why not celebrate the color red at Hillside Sedona. With the multitude of boutiques and galleries, the options are unlimited when it comes to red purchases. Places like A Step Up have the latest in foot fashion with red shoes always making a statement. Boutiques like Allie Ollie, Diva and even our newest boutique, Judy Arizona, give guests lots of options when it comes to the color red. Whether its an accent piece like a sweater, a blouse, scarf or perhaps a fancy piece of red jewelry, guests will surely be noticed in their red.

Galleries also have pieces to not only celebrate love but the color red. The James Ratliff Gallery not only has pieces on display that have red as the prominent color in their color scheme, you can also find art pieces that display love and hearts throughout. Stone Creations also has pieces that have the color red prominently displayed within them. Also, nothing screams romance more than strolling through the galleries arm in arm, surrounded by the ultimate red work of art, the red rocks of Sedona.

Guests can easily experience the color red even while they dine. At the Javelina Cantina red sauced enchiladas are always on the menu, The Hudson is serving up red meat with their prime beef dishes. With both of these restaurants guests can enjoy their meals basking not only in the glow of fire pits placed in and around each of their patios, but during the day the beauty of what Sedona is known for in their red rocks.

Conveniently located off of State Route 179 in Sedona, a heavily-trafficked retail area, Hillside Sedona is comprised by longtime tenants which include the James Ratliff Art Gallery, Tea Light Cafe and The Bridge at Sedona wedding and event venue, among other boutiques, a salon and Mooneys Irish Pub.

Hillside Sedona:

In 1986, Shirley Caris developed Hillside Sedona, bringing to it the spirit of nature, artistic qualities and the essence of the town she now called home. An upscale retail shopping center, Hillside Sedona is home to fine art galleries, unique boutiques, a variety of restaurants, locally owned shops and the event venue, The Bridge at Hillside. The popular Northern Arizona destination is filled with sites and attractions that are sources of inspiration to many. In a setting with a view of the Red Rocks that surround the property, Hillside Sedona also is a perfect destination location for photography. http://www.HillsideSedona.net

Media contact:

Christine Holtz

Phoenix Marketing Associates

602-282-0202

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Watching Patient Worthy grow the...level of social media engagement theyre at now is truly incredible. ~ Ken ODonnell, Founder and President of KO Websites

KO Websites, a San Francisco Bay Area based Web Design and Digital Marketing Agency, is thrilled to congratulate Patient Worthy for receiving the PM360 Pharma Choice Gold Award in the Digital - Consumer Website Category. In addition, Patient Worthy is one of three healthcare marketing brands featured on the cover of the magazines January 2016 issue.

Watching Patient Worthy grow the number of disease states featured on their website and the level of social media engagement theyre at now is truly incredible, said Ken ODonnell, Founder and President of KO Websites. KO Websites was contracted to kickstart Patient Worthys digital marketing campaign by executing their PPC, social media, SEO and website changes. In Dec, KO handed over the reins to Patient Worthys new in-house staff. ODonnell continued, Were grateful that our online marketing agency was able to partner with them right from the beginning of their endeavor and wish them nothing but the best as they continue to touch lives affected by rare diseases.

About Patient Worthy

Patient Worthy is an online publication that provides unceasing information to patients, caregivers and advocates of rare disease states. Patient Worthy delivers information, shares stories of those living with these disease states, and offers the latest news. Patient Worthy: Rare Patient News. Well Done. For more information, please visit: http://www.patientworthy.com/

About KO Websites, Inc.

KO Websites specializes in all areas of online marketing. KO Websites supports small and medium size companies by producing and managing all aspects of their digital marketing needs, including promoting their company and brand, improving their inbound lead generation, and managing their PPC advertisement. For more information, please visit: http://www.ko-websites.com/
We are sure it is going to be a useful information resource and a comfortable tool for all people looking for the right wine

The official name is Vino Vinitaly Wine Club (https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/vino-vinitaly-wine-club/id986683781?mt=8) but is know by everyone as VINO: dedicated to the world of Italian wine and promoted by Vinitaly and Veronafiere, this revolutionary App was created to discover and purchase the finest Italian quality wines.

Since debuting at Expo Milano 2015, VINO - Vinitaly Wine Club App has been awarded the Mediastars 1st prize for the best App. The award will be presented in June.

Mediastars is an independent award, now in its twentieth edition, created by some of the most important advertising agencies and production and post-production audio-visual and web factoring companies, which aims to highlight the professionalism of those who technically contribute to the success of an advertising campaign.

The prize includes four areas and VINO - Vinitaly Wine Club has been awarded first place in the one dedicated to Multimedia Communication, Internet and Online Advertising.

Developed by DesignWine and Graffiti, VINO  Vinitaly Wine Club was launched as a "pocket" guide for the more than 1.5 million visitors who visited the VINO A Taste of Italy Pavilion during Expo, where they had the opportunity to taste more than 1,000 Italian wines in the Biblioteca del Vino.

Since then, thousands of active users have been making use of the app every day. Today VINO is recognized as the leading e-commerce App for buying Italian wine. Moreover, it is the most representative and prestigious showcase for Italian quality wineries that have the possibility to make their brand and the excellence of their production known to a large community of Italian wine lovers around the world.

The VINO App is a mobile extension of Vinitaly Wine Club (http://www.vinitalyclub.com) and offers a unique wine experience that not only allows users to buy wine quickly and easily, but also increases and spreads a greater knowledge of Italian wine, which is recognized worldwide as enological heritage. Browsing is simple and based on three key points that characterize an authentic wine tasting:

SHOP: the e-commerce core section entirely dedicated to the sale of wines and guided selections, shipping not only in Italy, but also all over the world. Weekly special offers and a very wide collection of over 600 labels from the 20 regions of Italy.

TASTE: the area dedicated to wine tastings, where the user can give rates and opinions about the tasted wines and share reviews with Vinitaly Wine Clubs community.

EXPLORE: the educational and informative area of the App, which supports the user in choosing the favourite wine, proposing thematic analysis, such as stories of vines and territories, interviews with producers, detailed descriptions of wineries, as well as recipes, tasting articles and curiosities about the world of wine.

"We are very proud of this project and the success achieved with the launch of our VINO App. We are sure it is going to be a useful information resource and a comfortable tool for all people looking for the right wine. Alessandro and Timothy, co-founders of Vinitaly Wine Club.

Download for free our Vino App: an exclusive wine shop in your pocket

About:

Veronafiere is the leading organizer of trade shows in Italy including Vinitaly (http://www.vinitaly.com), the largest wine and spirits fair in the world. During its 49th edition Vinitaly counted some 4,000 exhibitors on a 100,000 square meter area and 150,000 visitors including 2,600 journalists from 46 different countries. The next edition of the fair will take place on 10 - 13 April 2016. The premier event to Vinitaly, OperaWine (http://www.vinitalyinternational.com) Finest Italian Wines: 100 Great Producers, will unite international wine professionals on April 9th in the heart of Verona, offering them the unique opportunity to discover and taste the wines of the 100 Best Italian Producers, as selected by Wine Spectator. Since 1998 Vinitaly International travels to several countries such as Russia, China, USA and Hong Kong thanks to its strategic arm abroad, Vinitaly International. In February 2014 Vinitaly International launched an educational project, the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) with the aim of divulging and broadcasting the excellence and diversity of Italian wine around the globe. VIA has now also organized its very first Certification Course with the aim of creating new Ambassadors of Italian Wine in the World.

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Keeping you updated on important news stories you might have missed!
Clickstop, an Urbana-based company recognized as a Top 100 Workplace in Iowa is continuing to add jobs as it grows rapidly.

Clickstop owns and operates several brands, including its flagship brand, US Cargo Control. That specific division added five new employees in the areas of manufacturing, shipping, and sales.

Grant Noren and Dane Denker have joined the company as Manufacturing Associates, while Heather McVey has been named a Packaging Specialist and Zach Rechkemmer a Shipping Associate.

Kean McBurney, who had previously worked in the shipping department, recently rejoined the company as an intern on the US Cargo Control Sales team.

The Clickstop IT team has also welcomed Ben Heims as a Project Coordinator working with departments across all brands.

Summer Smith has joined the companys Culture and Communications Team as a Community Developer. Also joining the team are Amy Hummel, Britni Graham, and Sarah Watson; all three had previously worked in the marketing and sales areas for the companys US Cargo Control brand. Hummel has been named a Community Producer; while Graham and Watson are working in talent acquisition and engagement.

Clickstop is continuing to hire for various positions throughout the company in 2016. All positions can be reviewed on the Clickstop website Careers page.

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About Clickstop, Inc.

Clickstop is the parent company of a suite of brands based in Urbana, Iowa. Its focus on great workplace culture has landed the company multiple work environment-focused awards including two first place achievements as the Coolest Place to Work. Clickstop brands serves diverse markets that include the moving and cargo control industry, energy efficient insulation products, and home organizing solutions. For more information visit Clickstop.com.
Back to the Roots Co-Founders Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora.

Back to the Roots Raises an Impressive $5M Seed Round

A Massive Mission Draws New Investors

Back to the Roots, a California company pioneering the way people reconnect with food, announced today that it has completed a strategic seed financing round, totaling $5 million. It will also be leaving the round open for investment for thirty days by accredited investors through a crowdfunding campaign on CircleUp led by Agency of Trillions. Previous investors, Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS, John Foraker, founder of Annies, and Nicolas Jammet, co-founder of Sweetgreen, also joining the round.

In a rare mix of private and public equity funding, $3 million of the round is being raised through the San Francisco-based technology company, CircleUp, which has quickly become a leader in the equity-based crowdfunding scene over the past year. "As we looked to raise this seed round, it was clear that we wanted to take a similar approach, and it has been so exciting to be able to bring this opportunity back to our passionate community." said co-founder, Nikhil Arora.

This is the first official round Back to the Roots has raised. It previously raised a $2 million convertible note in June 2015, but prior to that, had bootstrapped the company, using business plan competition prize money, Kickstarter, and bank loans. In fact, its initial funding was just a $5,000 grant, which came from UC Berkeley, the cofounders alma mater, over five years ago.

With the new funding, Back to the Roots has plans for major growth. 2015 already saw it increase from three to eighteen total products, expand from Ready to Grow to Ready to Eat lines, with its new, award-winning 100% stoneground breakfast cereals and Organic Breakfast Toppers, and sign an exclusive national partnership with Sodexo to launch in K-12 schools.

The funding will be used to accelerate product development (10 new products in the pipeline for 2016), expand distribution into retailers and schools, and build the team at its Oakland headquarters. We see an exciting opportunity to Undo Food, and continue to create a food company for this next generation that goes beyond natural/organic and focuses on radical transparency, sustainability, and great design. We want to bring the same level of trust that families feel when they grow their own food, directly to the grocery aisle and ready to eat food, said co-founder, Alejandro Velez.

About Back to the Roots

Back to the Roots is a food company on a mission to Undo Food and reconnect families back to where it comes from through fun, innovative, and delicious Ready to Grow and Ready to Eat products. It was founded in 2009 by then college seniors, Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora, after they discovered how to grow organic, gourmet mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. Since then, Back to the Roots has evolved from urban mushroom farming into a thriving business that has received national acclaim and accolades. Back to the Roots currently sells its products in over 14,000 stores worldwide, including Whole Foods Market, Target, Costco, The Home Depot, Nordstrom, Petco, Cost Plus World Market, Loblaw, Giant Eagle, Wegmans, The Fresh Market, Crate & Barrel, Urban Outfitters, Safeway, Kroger, and Amazon. Nikhil and Alejandro have been honored with several awards recognizing their efforts, including BusinessWeeks Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25, Inc.s 30 Under 30, Inc. 500, Forbes 30 Under 30, and CNNs 10 Next Entrepreneurs to Watch. In addition, Back to the Roots was named a 2013 Martha Stewart Top Ten American Made honoree and recognized by President Obama as Champions of Change.

About CircleUp

CircleUp is an online marketplace for private investing. It provides accredited investors free access to direct investments in high-growth consumer product and retail private companies that were previously difficult to identify and access. For retail and consumer product entrepreneurs, it offers an efficient way to access a network of sophisticated investors as well as value added partners.

Agency of Trillions

Agency of Trillions, a MAYA Company, is a social innovation and creative agency. Funded by Peter Guber and Tony Robbins, Agency of Trillions works with brands and start-ups committed to integrating Made Media and collaborative innovation into their core businesses.

Press Contact: Morgan Oliveira, morgan@groundedpr.com, 415 515 8078
Roger N. Baldwin and Eleanor Roosevelt The winner will be selected by a distinguished jury and will receive a trip to the United States to engage in advocacy and a $25,000 prize.

Human Rights First today announced that nominations are open for the 2016 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award. The 2016 award will go to an individual or organization outside of the United States who has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to human rights advocacy in areas such as human trafficking, religious freedom, LGBT rights, refugee protection, and defense of civil society, among others.

The winner will be selected by a distinguished jury and will receive a trip to the United States to engage in advocacy and a $25,000 prize. Nominations for the 2016 award are due by March 10.

Named in honor of the principal founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and the International League for Human Rights, the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award was established in 1989 and is presented in alternating years by Human Rights First (awarded to international human rights advocates) and the ACLU (awarded to advocates in the United States). This year marks the 27th anniversary of the award. Previous winners of the Baldwin Medal of Liberty include Egyptian activist Kholoud Saber Barakat, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and Guatemalan activist Jesus Tecu Osorio. Additional information about the award, the nomination form, and the full list of past awardees is available on the award webpage.

Nominations can be made by an individual or an organization. Nominees will be judged based on the following criteria:



The nominees work is unique or particularly distinctive;

The nominees work has been effective in advancing human rights in a country other than the United States;

The nominee faces risk or insecurity as a result of their work; and

The nominee would benefit significantly from receiving the Baldwin Award, in the form of enhanced protection, or in any other way.

For further information about the award or the nomination process, please contact Rebecca Sheff at sheffr(at)humanrightsfirst(dot)org or (202) 888-7599.
Three decades after first introducing the world to the value and convenience provided by its trusted team of expert jewelers and watchmakers, Fast-Fix Jewelry and Watch Repairs, the recognized industry leader with more than 150 locations worldwide, is now poised for rapid expansion in 2016. Fast-Fix understands that consumers are not inclined to send jewelry and watches through the mail to be fixed when they can meet face-to-face with a technician. Thats why, even though visits to brick-and-mortar stores are increasingly being replaced by the click of a mouse, Fast-Fix is built to withstand ever-transforming consumer trends, proving that some business is better done in person.

As the worlds largest and most trusted brand in custom jewelry design, and jewelry and watch repair, Fast-Fix has flourished since its founding in 1985. Unlike many other mall-based stores, the brands franchised business model has sparked strong growth and increased client traffic, even during traditionally slower mall sales months.

Now, with new chief executive officer Gerry Weber at the helm, Fast-Fix is perfectly poised for its strongest year of growth ever. Weber brings with him an extensive background in corporate and franchise operations management, and is focused on the brands expansion in the year ahead.

We are an industry that will not be replaced by the Internet, Weber said. Jewelry is personal. We repair everything from engagement rings to high-end watches, and people dont want to send those valued family heirlooms through the mail to someone they never get to meet face to face. As we enter our 30th year, that long-held trust factor continues to fuel our business. Our technicians are industry certified and use only state-of-the-art tools and the highest quality batteries and parts, so when youre dropping off an important watch, ring or family heirloom, you can have confidence that it will be treated properly. Fast-Fix offers that guarantee.

Since its founding Fast-Fix has found a welcome home in bustling malls across America, England and Ireland. Most jewelry and watch repair work is done in-store while the customer waits or shops. When dealing with items that are not only valuable from a monetary standpoint but an emotional one as well, speed, accuracy and trustworthiness are always at the apex of Fast-Fixs daily operations. The brands combination of both inline and kiosk-based stores offers franchisees the flexibility to open in a space that works best for them.

Fast-Fix has grown to more than 150 stores in the U.S., England and Ireland. Each location is independently owned and operated, and all units employ expertly-trained jewelers, watchmakers and watch repair professionals. In addition to repairs, Fast-Fix also sells a wide selection of jewelry, charms and other sought after pieces. With 80 percent of the average stores revenue earned through repair services, Fast-Fix helps boost business for surrounding retailers, too.

The beauty of our business model is that customers can come into the mall, drop off their jewelry or watch, and head off to explore while we get things repaired, on average within one hour. Many times they return with a shopping bag in hand, so we know theyre bringing business to other storefronts in these malls too, Weber said.

The brand is now looking to build on that strong foundation by adding an additional 10 to 20 in-line or kiosk locations in major mall markets across the country in 2016 including metropolitan cities like Charlotte, Kansas City, Chicago, Jacksonville, St. Louis, Boston, Pittsburgh, Raleigh and Seattle.

Fast-Fix is also looking for both multi-unit and single-unit franchisees to help carry the brands expansion plan forward. Driven entrepreneurs with a business or jewelry background are an ideal fit for the industry leading franchise system; an extensive knowledge in jewelry repair isnt necessary.

Strong business acumen is the most important attribute of our successful franchise owners, Weber said. Its all about salesmanship and the ability to reach beyond the four corners of the store to interact with customers, grow your network and gain referrals. We continue to refine our model to make Fast-Fix the best jewelry repair guarantee in the industry, and were using that to build the brand in 2016. We are ready to grow.

ABOUT FAST-FIX JEWELRY AND WATCH REPAIRS

Established in 1985, Fast-Fix Jewelry and Watch Repairs is the worlds largest and most trusted consumer choice for jewelry, watch, eyeglass frame, and smartphone repair services as well as custom jewelry design and personalized engraving services. Fast-Fix has more than 150 locations in the United States, England and Ireland, including more than 100 franchised locations. Each store is staffed with industry certified expert jewelers, watchmakers, watch repair professionals and smartphone technicians who provide high quality, timely services, often in less than one hour.

###
The Showhomes franchise system, the nations largest and most successful home staging franchise made 2015 a year for the record books, posting the best year of revenue in the brands 29 year history. Showhomes had a 33 percent increase in system-wide revenue when compared with 2014s system-wide revenue.

2015 marked a turning point for Showhomes, said Showhomes Franchise Corporation Chief Operating Officer Matt Kelton. We increased our focus on expanding the unique menu of services we offer that help set our brand apart, from home renovations to our proprietary home manager program. We knew these innovative approaches would resonate with our clients, but the growth weve seen has exceeded even our lofty expectations. And, were perfectly poised to continue that incredible momentum in 2016.

Even after the brands record-breaking year, Showhomes Franchise Corporation remains committed to aggressive expansion in the New Year ahead. The Showhomes system closed 2015 by adding an impressive collection of new franchisees in Boise, Idaho; Santa Fe, NM; Tampa, Fla.; Daytona Beach, Fla.; Mobile, Ala.; La Jolla, Calif., and Houston, Texas.

Several of the brands new franchise locations were opened in 2015 by existing successful franchisees, including Chris and Lisa Gulliver. The Gullivers, franchise owners of Showhomes San Diego, Calif. added Showhomes La Jolla, Calif. to their roster in 2015 and together, the couple set the brands all time revenue record for franchisees.

Franchise owners in the home staging industry are looking for simplicity when it comes to running their business. Our training model is backed by three decades of success, strong infrastructure, a streamlined corporate support system and a growing client base. Our strong financials in 2015 and the driven new franchise owners we signed are already helping us grow once again as we begin 2016, said Kelton.

Much of that growth can be attributed to Showhomes franchise businesses expanding slate of services. The brand now serves home sellers as a one-stop-shop, offering home updates like interior painting and flooring upgrades to help better position a home for sale. Through the program, Showhomes update experts assess a homes individual needs, and provide a customized menu of changes, utilizing Showhomes businesses exclusive color palettes and flooring options to bring a maximum return on investment without the hassle of hiring and communicating with multiple contractors to complete the work.

Showhomes Home Manager program was also in high demand in 2015. The program matches high-end, vacant homes currently on the market with individuals or families who have beautiful furniture, artwork and accessories, but are in need of temporary housing. Acting as professional caretakers, the Home Managers keep the home in show to sell condition, providing both peace of mind to homeowners and staging services at a fraction of the traditional cost.

These unique services are truly resonating with homeowners who are motivated to sell their homes quickly, and for top dollar, and theyre only offered by Showhomes, Kelton said. Thats one big reason why the interest in our services is at an all-time high. Buyers increasingly want a move-in ready house with fresh paint and flooring. We provide that, while also giving sellers a hassle-free and stress-free experience. We take care of everything it takes to put your homes best foot forward, and that has set us apart. We plan to use that differentiation to drive another year of aggressive national growth, as we set the bar even higher in 2016.

ABOUT SHOWHOMES

Founded in 1986, the Showhomes franchise system has helped Realtors and homeowners sell more than 25,000 residential properties worth more than $8.5 billion, by transforming high-end vacant houses into fully-furnished, inviting, valued Showhomes homes. Currently serving prominent communities in 18 states, the Showhomes system is a rapidly expanding franchise with nearly 60 offices nationwide. Boasting the expertise of long-time real estate and interior design professionals, Showhomes businesses are a one-stop-shop for home staging, home redesign, One-Day Makeovers for currently occupied homes, and the proprietary Home Manager program  a proven model to get upscale vacant homes sold faster. Many major national media outlets in the U.S. have praised the work of Showhomes businesses and the brand has been prominently featured on Oprah, HGTV and the Travel Channel. For more information or to learn about franchise opportunities, please visit http://www.showhomes.com.
Florida Superior Small Lodging Association Im particularly excited to have Scott Rivelli join the MAC, as his experience in working with Superior Small Lodgings in Broward County and statewide bring a unique perspective and insight that will benefit the destination as a whole.

Scott Rivelli, the Executive Director of the Superior Small Lodging Association (SSL), has been appointed to the Marketing Advisory Committee MAC) of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau (GFLCVB) by the Greater Fort Lauderdale Tourist Development Council.

Mr. Rivelli has been active in tourism in the Greater Fort Lauderdale area for over 20 years, including the management and ownership of the Ocean Inn, a hotel on Hollywood Beach which became an award winning property under his guidance and marketing skills.

The hospitality industry is comprised of many diverse disciplines from hoteliers to restauranteurs, to shopping, attractions and more. Im particularly excited to have Scott Rivelli join the MAC, as his experience in working with Superior Small Lodgings in Broward County and statewide bring a unique perspective and insight that will benefit the destination as a whole, stated Carlos Molinet, Senior Vice President of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Involvement in the tourism industry is pivotal to Rivellis passion to support his community as the premier destination to live, work, play and visit. In addition to his role on the GFLCVB Marketing Advisory Committee his involvement includes:



Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, Board Member 2015 -

Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Board Member 2014 -

Hollywood Travel and Tourism Committee, Co Founder and Co Chair, 2015 -

Leadership Hollywood, Co-Chair , 2013 - 2016

Graduate Leadership Hollywood Class 37 , 2013

Tourism and Entertainment Industry Group, Co Founder and Co-Chair 2013  2015

Broadwalk Information Ambassador Program, Co Founder and Vice-Chair 2013 - 2014

Hollywood Office of Tourism Marketing Advisory Committee, Committee Member 2010 -2013

Rivelli is currently the Executive Director of the Superior Small Lodging Association, an association of over 150 independently owned and managed small properties located throughout Florida. Under his leadership the association has strengthened position in Florida Tourism by working more closely with VisitFlorida, the state tourism agency and Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) throughout the state. He has successfully improved relationships with allied partners and forged new partnerships including aligning SSL with the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association while developing programs that are most important to its membership. In 2016, due to Rivellis expertise, SSL is poised to grow its membership base, DMO affiliation and stature within the state. .

About The Superior Small 2016 Lodging Association

The Superior Small Lodging Association (SSLA) is a non-profit association of independently owned and managed boutique Inns, B&Bs and hotels throughout the State of Florida with fewer than 50 rooms. Established in 1989 to bring brand awareness to the smaller boutique lodgings as an alternative to the large corporate branded hotel chains, the Superior Small Lodging Brand has come to represent a partnership of unique lodging properties offering a high level of service, comfort and cleanliness at competitive rates. Each year our members properties are inspected by an independent inspection company and those that meet specific cleanliness standards are recognized with our White Glove Award for cleanliness. Excellence in quality and service are also recognized. With approximately 150 member properties throughout the State of Florida the success of the Superior Small Lodging program is undisputed and gives prospective guests the comfort of knowing that when they book a Superior Small Lodging property they can be assured of a high standard of excellence.

About Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County

From the seagrass to the sawgrass, Greater Fort Lauderdale, located in Broward County, boasts more than 34,000 lodging accommodations at a variety of hotels, luxury spa resorts, and Superior Small Lodgings reflecting a beach chic vibe. Visitors enjoy 23 miles of Blue Wave certified beaches, discover 300+ miles of inland waterways that run from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Everglades, dine at thousands of restaurants and eateries, get immersed in a thriving arts and culture scene and indulge in top shopping.
If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity.

PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move.
"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne





The Mob takes the Fifth. If youre innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? -- The TOFF *





"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown





"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.  my Dad





"Colt .45s; putting bad guys underground since 1873." -- Unknown





"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers





"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,

A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,

A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset.
My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.  Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
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A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. Cookies are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.Website use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google") to help analyse the use of this website. For this purpose, Google Analytics uses"cookies", which are text files placed on your computer.The information generated by the cookies about your use of this website - standard internet log information (including your IP address) and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form - will be transmitted to and stored by Google including on servers in the United States. Google will anonymize the information sent by removing the last octet of your IP address prior to its storage.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website and compiling reports on website activity.We not use, and not allow any third party to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to this site. Google may transfer the information collected by Google Analytics to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google`s behalf.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.You may refuse the use of Google Analytics cookies by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.Cookies are also used to record if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site, so that you are not asked the question every time you visit the site.You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed.Most browsers allow you to:If you chose to delete cookies, you should be aware that any preferences will be lost. Also, if you block cookies completely many websites (including ours) will not work properly and webcasts will not work at all. For these reasons, we do not recommend turning cookies off when using our webcasting services.
Ruta Sepetys explores forgotten chapters in history in her novels. Between Shades of Gray unearthed the plight of Lithuanians forcibly relocated to Siberian work camps. (Currently Sepetys is an advisor on the film adaptation, tentatively titled Ashes in the Snow.) Out of the Easy unveiled a mystery in 1950s New Orleans. PW spoke with Sepetys about her latest book, Salt to the Sea, which chronicles four teens fleeing Prussia at the end of World War II and culminates in one of historys biggest and least-known maritime disasters, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea.

Many writers hesitate to share details about their works in progress  but not you. Why and how do you involve others in the evolution of your research as you craft your novels?

Since I am looking into underrepresented parts of history, from the time I decide to do a project I am looking for people and ideas that connect me to that story. I can read a non-fiction book, and thats helpful, but it ends there. However, if I can track down a person with a direct connection to the history I can get so much more in terms of memory and sensory details, and that person can often connect me to others. In 2011, when I started working on Salt to the Sea I was looking for people with a direct connection to the Wilhelm Gustloff, and I talked about it to everyone I could.

What made you decide to write about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff?

After I published Between Shades of Gray, my fathers cousin Erika visited from Europe. She knew I was interested in hidden chapters of history, and she asked if I knew about a shipwreck that had more casualties than the Lusitania and the Titanic combined and involved more than 5,000 innocent children. The fact that I knew nothing about it really made me think about what history is preserved and how. She knew about it directly because her family was granted passage on the Wilhelm Gustloff. And then fate intervened and her sister was clipped by a car, and because of the injury they could not board the Gustloff. Erikas mother said to them, Now were all dead but at least were together. Then they were lucky and gained passage on another ship the next morning. Of this my relative Erika said, Sometimes its not where you are but where you arent.

How were booksellers specifically involved in your process of writing Salt to the Sea? How did they help shape your understanding about that period in history?

Booksellers played a large role. I was giving a presentation in Cambridge, Mass., and Carol Stoltz from Porter Square Books was in the audience. She is of Latvian descent and we started talking and became friends. Five months later she sent me an email telling me about a book on the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff called Death in the Baltics by Cathryn J. Prince. I read the advance copy and then contacted the writer, who became a huge research asset and connected me to many people and places. In addition, when I was at a school visit in Tampa the folks from Inkwood Books attended the dinner. When I told them the thread of one of my characters in Salt to the Sea was involved in art forgery they pointed me toward books and resources that helped shape that plot element. My writing is really a team sport. I get so much support and resources from booksellers, teachers, librarians, publishers, readers, and even through social media.

What are you researching now?

I am working on a book set in Spain in the 1950s, during the Franco era. During that time the government stole hundreds of thousands of children from left-wing families who opposed Franco. These children  some of them even newborn babies  were given to families with Franco ties. Im still in the early days on this project but I have traveled to Spain, and my Spanish publisher has helped put me in touch with resources. I attended a meeting of stolen children  now adults  and got to sit in the room with them and hear their stories. It confirmed for me how important family narrative is and how it impacts survival.
Penguin Random House is expanding its former websites Biographile and Word & Film with Signature, a book recommendation-driven website that aims to tie current events with books released by the publisher and other houses.

Featuring essays, interviews, opinion, and illustrated pieces by authors, journalists, and experts, Signature focuses on six main areas: news, culture, issues, interviews, books, and writing. Examples of articles on Signature include 5 Books to Better Understand the Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as Sundance 2016 By the Books.

Kristin Fritz, Signature director, said the company hopes the new website can bridge the gap between readers and authors. Whether the headlines of tomorrow are consumed by a financial crisis, a blockbuster movie, a scientific breakthrough, or an election, there are books steeped in those subjects to further our understanding of it all," she said in a prepared statement.
JANESVILLE, Wis. -- There's a serious buzz surrounding bees these days, and at least one Wisconsin retailer is seeking to build some business out of it.

Blain's Farm and Fleet, based in this city about 60 miles southwest of Milwaukee, is continuing to expand its bee business, selling the critters themselves as well as all the equipment needed to keep them happy and healthy.

The strategy is born from the movement nationally toward knowing more about how our food is produced and what that food contains, a Blain's spokeswoman and beekeeping experts said.

About one-third of all the food Americans eat is directly or indirectly derived from honey bee pollination, according to the American Beekeeping Federation, an Atlanta-based association that represents the interests of beekeepers.

For Blain's, the decision to jump into the bee business is as much about connecting with customers as it is generating sales.

"A lot of people are starting to take notice of how important it is to know where your food comes from," said Kristin Mickelson, PR and events manager for Blain's. "It's not just a trend, it's a way of life for a lot of people."

The company introduced the beekeeping category to its stores three years ago.

"It's been growing," Mickelson said. "It was one of those things where we said, 'Well, we'll give it a shot. We don't know how we'll do.'"

The company started off with a small beekeeping supplies space in a handful of stores. The response was fairly strong and, "We decided to up our game last year," with expanded store areas containing beekeeping supplies and equipment, Mickelson said.

The decision also was spurred in part by the plight of the honeybee, which has been battling population declines for years.

"Obviously, as a company and a business, we want this to continue to grow and we want this to be successful," Mickelson said. "But right now, our main focus is just to get it out in front of the public and have them aware of what it's all about and how important it is."

The company will establish a hive of its own at its corporate headquarters later this year, she said.

"People want to save the bees," said Linda Reynolds, who helps oversee the beekeeping program for the University of Wisconsin Extension in Milwaukee County. "That's what it comes down to."

But taking care of bees is far from simple. A commitment of time and money is needed to be a beekeeper.

Bees need to be cared for and provided with surroundings in which they can thrive. If they don't like their surroundings, they might just leave. And, oh yeah, they can sting.

"There's a lot to learn," Reynolds said. "Beekeeping is not simple. It's not like growing a tomato."

Once someone masters the basics of beekeeping, the rewards can be great.

"There's a lot to be gained from it," Reynolds said. "It's very gratifying when you can get a hive to survive over winter and come into spring strong. It's not easy, but that's what makes it more gratifying."

Along the way, you also can harvest some of your own honey.

For its part, Blain's has beekeeping experts available for its customers who are interested in taking up the hobby, Mickelson said.

"When you first hear about harvesting your own beehive, it maybe sounds a little overwhelming or maybe even a little scary to some people. 'Oh, I don't want to deal with bees,'" she said. "But once you start to learn about this _ what a very intricate and delicate, exciting kind of project that this is _ you really feel like you are doing something good for the bees and for everyone else."
Arguably the nation's most popular river, the mighty Mississippi is the subject for the Figge Art Museum's new exhibit -- "Mississippi River Views from the Muscatine Art Center Collection."

Opening Saturday in the third-floor gallery, the exhibit features more than 60 paintings, drawings, maps and other river-related works from the collection of the Muscatine Art Center, whose Musser Mansion is undergoing mechanical upgrades, according to the Figge.

Beginning with a rare map from 1680 by Nicholaes Visscher, the exhibit includes drawings made on the river by Seth Eastman in the 1830s, and paintings of the river from the 1850s to the present, a recent news release from the museum said.

Also featured are paintings and prints of riverboats, a model of the paddlewheel River Queen and early views of Muscatine, Davenport, Moline and Fort Armstrong. The exhibit runs through June 6, and in addition to the Feb. 4 River Action reading and discussion, the following events are set to complement the artwork:

Saturday, Feb. 6: 2 p.m. opening reception, 3 p.m. talk and tour with Melanie Alexander, director of the Muscatine Art Center, and Tim Schiffer, executive director of the Figge Art Museum.

Feb. 6, 7 and 27: 1:30 p.m. exhibition tours.

Thursday, March 24: At 5:30 p.m., have a cocktail as musician Ellis Kell from River Music Experience shares the history and music of the Mississippi River.

Thursday, March 24: At 7 p.m., authors from the Midwest Writing Center will read selected original works that focus on life along the river.

Saturday, April 2: 10 a.m.-1 p.m., a free family day, open to the public at no charge, with special activities.

Thursday, May 12: At 6:30 p.m., area residents will share their one-minute film entries that explore the beauty, history and politics of the Mississippi River in this region. There will be more details at figgeartmuseum.org beginning Feb. 6.

Thursday, May 26: At 5:30 p.m., Iowa artist Nancy Purington will present a talk called Moonlight on the Mississippi: Futuristic Rhythms, Currency and Change, with images from her new book of the same title. Ms. Purington will sign copies of the book afterward.

The museum will send a call for entries early next month for the digital 60-second films, to be posted on the Figge YouTube page, museum spokeswoman Natalie Dunlop said this week. There will be prizes awarded at the May 12 event (in the lobby), and the public can vote for their favorite, she said.
By Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Britain's warning of possible sanctions on Maldivian individuals is irresponsible, a senior Maldives government official said on Friday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron raised the possibility of sanctions this week after meeting Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldives' first democratically elected president.

Nasheed, who is serving a 13-year sentence on terrorism charges, won permission to travel to Britain for surgery. He was ousted in disputed circumstances in 2012 for ordering the arrest of a judge.

His conviction was condemned by the United Nations, the United States and human rights groups as politically motivated.

The Maldives gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1965.

Nasheed called on Monday called for sanctions against Maldivian government figures, while his international lawyer Amal Clooney warned a militant attack on tourists in the Maldives was highly likely.

Aishath Azima Shakoor, minister for legal affairs at the president's office, said the international pressure was unjustifiable because Nasheed was convicted for a crime under the Maldives' rule of law.

"We think it is highly irresponsible for somebody to call out for sanctions for not releasing a person observing a sentence for the crime he has committed," Shakoor told reporters in Colombo.

"We are a country totally depending on tourism. Calling for sanctions on tourism will definitely be of concern to the government," she said.

Shakoor said she believed Nasheed would return to the Maldives after his medical treatment.

(Reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
University officials announced Thursday that the two-wheeled motorized scooters will not be allowed because of fire-safety concerns.

The school's interim vice president of student affairs Brent Paterson said hoverboards are banned because of concerns about them overheating and catching fire. He also said the scooters could be dangerous if students are riding them in hallways and other public areas.

Students have until Feb. 10 to remove hoverboards from prohibited areas.

University of Illinois' flagship campus banned hoverboards from all campus buildings and facilities in early January. At least 20 U.S. universities also have banned or restricted the devices.

Hoverboards will still be allowed on public sidewalks on Illinois State University's campus.
KEWANEE -- With comments to the effect they didnt want to show a "take it or leave it" attitude, Black Hawk College trustees took approval of a union agreement with the college's support-staff unit off Thursdays agenda.

The tentative contract calls for a 50-cent per hour raise the first year and 32-cent increase the second. Health premiums, however, rise 130 percent for the family cost share and 148 percent for a single employee cost share.

UAW chair Betsy Hall said after the contract is signed, the union would withdraw its unfair labor complaint. She said the union would go with the agreement not because we like it but because we can live with it.

Further, she recommended the trustees approve the contract immediately to send a message to our members that you stand behind this agreement.

Quad City Faculty Senate President Todd Linscott asked the board for a plan that included revenue increases and suggested the college has more deans than it used to and "a lot of duties that could be done by faculty if that was our culture."

Regarding cuts, he said, "we ask it's done in a manner that's fair and balanced. We know cuts are coming, but we ask it be done in a manner that includes all groups."

I think the protocol is for people who are going to be bound by this agreement to vote on it first, said trustee Richard Fiems. Until then its premature.

The elected board votes last. Thats generally the procedure Ive seen in the past, said trustee Joe Swan.

President Bettie Truitt reported bills were passed in both chambers of the legislature restoring MAP grants, but in the space of a few hours earlier Thursday, both Sen. Neil Anderson, R-Rock Island, and Rep. Don Moffitt, R-Gilson, phoned her to report why they voted as they did. Sen. Anderson had voted present. Rep. Moffitt voted no. Both men told her the governor would veto it, and both said they wanted a funding source identified.

Those were the exact words they used, she said. That was the first glimmer of hope for fiscal year 2015. Hopefully, House Bill 4539 and Senate Bill 2349 might have a realistic funding source identified.

She said it was good the legislators called Black Hawk.

They are very frustrated, and they understand the needs of community college, she said. Passing a budget for Black Hawk right now does not solve our problem. Getting a check solves our problem.

Dr. Truitt said changes in state funding have derailed Black Hawks plan to partner with a child care provider and have day care facilities at the college. She said the state even had inspected the space, finding just one issue with steps at an emergency exit. Because the state has lowered subsidies for child care, the plans will be put on hold for now, but the college will keep looking at it.

Black Hawk is due $6 million from the state as of Dec. 31; of that, $1 million is outstanding for building projects from stimulus funds.

Trustee Tim Black, new regional chair for the Illinois Community College Trustees Association, said he wanted to draft a letter to legislators, hoping they might devise a budget that would withstand a gubernatorial veto.

Board president David Emerick said a group will go to Springfield in early May, and he and Dr. Truitt will leave Feb. 7 for a national conference and fit in meetings with U.S. Sens. Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin, as well as Reps. Cheri Bustos, D-East Moline, and Darin LaHood, R-Peoria.

Trustees approved applying to offer a surgical technology certificate and related associate degree to the Illinois Community College Board.

Do we have to build a new building for this? a trustee queried.

Betsey Morthland, dean of health sciences, answered the degree program had been in the works for three years and has a lab in the health science building.

The board also approved staff emeritus status for media production specialist Mike Winter.
BURNS, Ore. (AP)  Video of the fatal police shooting of an Oregon wildlife refuge occupier appears to show the man reaching into his jacket before he fell into the snow. The FBI said the man had a loaded gun in his pocket.

Authorities played the FBI video Thursday amid claims that Robert "LaVoy" Finicum did nothing to provoke officers in the confrontation Tuesday on a remote Oregon high-country road.

Four occupiers remained at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge late Thursday and refused to leave without assurances they wouldn't be arrested. The FBI said it was negotiating with them.

The occupation by ranchers and others began on Jan. 2, and at one point there were a couple of dozen people holed up, demanding that the federal government turn public lands over to local control. But the compound has been emptying out since the arrest of leader Ammon Bundy and 10 others over recent days and with the death of Finicum.

A federal judge said Thursday she will not release any of those arrested while the occupation continues, the Oregonian reported. The judge's comments came shortly after Bundy, through his attorney, repeated his call for the holdouts to leave peacefully.

Bundy and others arrested have another federal court hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon.

The aerial video shows Bundy's vehicle stopped by police. He and an occupier riding with him  Brian Cavalier  were arrested. A white truck driven by Finicum was stopped but took off, with officers in pursuit. The video shows Finicum's vehicle plowing into a snowbank when encountering a roadblock.

A man identified as Finicum gets out of the truck. At first, he has his hands up, but then he appears to reach into his pocket at least twice.

"He did have a loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun in the pocket," said Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge for the FBI in Portland.

Bretzing also said Finicum's truck nearly hit an FBI agent before it got stuck in the snow.

"Actions have consequences," Bretzing said. "The FBI and (Oregon State Police) tried to effect these arrests peacefully."

The FBI posted the video to its YouTube channel (http://bit.ly/209MgEw ).

With Finicum lying in the snow, the video shows the arrest of two other occupiers as they got out of the stuck truck: Ryan Bundy, who is Ammon's brother, and Shawna Cox. Bretzing said another woman was in the truck but was not arrested. He did not identify her.

Bretzing said agents and troopers provided medical assistance to Finicum after they were confident they had addressed any further threats. He said that happened about 10 minutes after the shooting.

Two loaded .223 caliber semi-automatic rifles and a loaded revolver were found in the truck, Bretzing said.

Bundy and his followers were on their way to a meeting in the community of John Day when they encountered the FBI-led operation to apprehend them. The FBI acted amid growing calls that something be done to end the occupation, including from Oregon's governor.

Oregon Public Broadcasting on Thursday spoke with the holdouts and identified them as David Fry, who is from Ohio, husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson of Idaho, and Jeff Banta of Nevada.

All 11 people under arrest have been charged with a felony count of conspiring to impede federal officers from carrying out their duties through force or intimidation. Three of the 11 were arrested Wednesday night when they left the refuge. The charges say the refuge's 16 employees have been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence.

Ammon Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The group came to the desert of eastern Oregon in the dead of winter to decry what it calls onerous federal land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.
Once again those who have been elected as Illinois legislators are stealing from the taxpayers.

As the state enters the seventh month of no budget, more effects of laziness and irresponsibility by those in Springfield are looming. Published reports state that at least 700 hard working people could become unemployed by the end of February.

Thousands of seniors and disabled persons stood to lose transportation, meals, and places to enjoy life if Intouch Services was forced to close because of lack of a budget from Springfield.

Yet the elected persons continue to get a pay check, continue to get per diem and other monetary perks, while doing nothing. This is theft from the taxpayers. Take money and do nothing. Take away income from those who work, while lining your own pockets.

Plus since so many bills are unpaid the interest being paid to vendors climbs, out of taxpayer pockets, not the elected ones who take money they have not earned.

This is an election year, it is time to vote out each and every Illinois senator/representative regardless of party. Fire them. They are stealing from you and everyone else in this state.

And ask your local legislator why a $160 million college has been built in Moline and our Illinois drivers license, because of no funding, is no longer valid ID.

Fire them, they are stealing from your wallet and laughing about it.

Richard Rogers,

Rock Island
We should all be ashamed. We are letting ISIS win; we are so afraid of them, we are losing our rights for "security from a threat that is scarcely worth worrying about.

Last year in the U.S. itself, radical Islamic terrorists killed 19 people. The U.S. has a population of around 319 million people. Based on that, you have a .000000059 chance of being killed by a terrorist.

You are in immensely higher risk every time you climb into your car to go the grocery store. But instead of taking reasonable precautions, our government goes overboard. The latest, and in my opinion saddest example right here in the Quad-Cities is the decision to not allow Illinois drivers licenses as a proper ID to get onto Arsenal Island.

I am blessed to work a part-time job where I get to interact with visitors to the Quad-Cities. Last week a very nice couple, who I would guess were in their middle to late 60s, came down from Chicago to do some eagle watching.

They asked me for directions to get on the Arsenal as they had been informed the Corps of Engineer Visitor Center or along Blunt Road were good places to see the magnificent birds. I asked them if they had any identification besides their Illinois licenses, and not surprisingly, since few of us carry our Social Security cards or have a passport, they did not. So I reluctantly told them they were not going to be able to get onto the island.

The gentleman (who, by the way, was a veteran) was a bit stunned. You mean, he said, Even though I am a U.S. citizen and a veteran I cant visit? I sadly told him that he could not.

This is disgraceful. So will not allowing Illinois drivers licenses decrease the security of the Arsenal so much that there will be a .000000055 chance of someone being killed by a terrorist? That is the logic (I hesitate to call it that).

There are already reasonable security measures in place -- armed guards, locked buildings, and the new process where visitors have to get a pass. I wonder what the brave men who fought the Second World War would think of all this? They faced the enormously tough armed forces of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, but instead of cowering in fear they went out and fought them, and eventually rid the world of that great evil.

We, on the other hand, are living in fear of a raggedy bunch of terrorists who dont hold a candle to the forces the Greatest Generation fought in World War II.

Speaking of the Greatest Generation, I wouldnt doubt this situation has already happened, and if not it surely will happen in the future. A widow, or child, or grandchild of a World War II veteran from Illinois will come to visit their loved ones grave, and they will be turned away, since all they will have for an ID is an Illinois drivers license.

We should all be ashamed.

I would urge you all to contact your congressman and complain about this. This does essentially nothing to make the Arsenal significantly safer and it clearly impinges upon the rights of good citizens of Illinois.
The project is being implemented with no upfront capital investment from Septa, being financed through a 20-year battery services agreement with Constellation.

The ESS will provide 8.75MW of frequency regulation support on the PJM electrical grid and recover energy from regenerative dynamic braking.

Septa signed an agreement in June 2010 with Philadelphia-based smart grid company Viridity Energy and the partnership subsequently secured a $US 900,000 grant from Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority to install an energy storage system at Letterly substation.

The Letterly installation was commissioned in 2012 and is built around a Saft 800kW lithium-ion battery with ABB Envitech power equipment and Viridity VPower energy management software, capturing and storing regenerative braking energy discharged by trains on a five-station stretch of the line.

At the end of 2013 Septa awarded ABB a contract to supply a second Enviline energy storage and recovery system, which is being installed at Griscom substation on the Market - Frankford Line. This installation, which has been funded with the aid of a $US 1.44m grant from the Federal Transit Administration, differs from the Letterly system in that it uses a hybrid storage system, combining supercapacitors with batteries. According to ABB this enables the recovery of more braking energy, generates higher revenues from frequency regulation, and extends the life of the batteries.
Spanish infrastructure manager Adif awarded the ETCS Level 1 contract last August, three months after the line was completed. The contract includes the installation of the traffic management system at a cost of 37.5m, along with a 20-year maintenance package worth 25m.

Alstom will be responsible for the Redondela - Vilagarcia de Arousa section, which is already equipped with Smartlock interlockings, while CAF Signalling will install its Auriga ETCS solution over the existing Quasar S3e interlockings on the Vigo - Redondela stretch.

Siemens will complete the ETCS deployment between Vilagarcia, Santiago and Redondela (with Trackguard Westrace interlockings in use), and the northernmost section of the Ourense - Santiago high-speed rail line where an Alvia train derailed in July 2013.

The introduction of ETCS Level 1 will enable Adif to raise the maximum commercial speed to 220km/h, as the Spanish Asfa train protection system currently in use limits operations to 200km/h. The project will also increase capacity and improve interoperability with the Ourense - Santiago high-speed line.

The A Coruna - Vigo line has proven to be a commercial success for Spain's national train operator Renfe, which recently confirmed the line has carried more than 1 million passengers in its first six months of operation.

Despite the latest developments, the Y-shaped Galicia high-speed network remains operationally isolated from the rest of the Spanish network. The line is equipped with 1668mm-gauge track and 25kV 50Hz electrification, with services operated by Renfe S121 series trains.
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After buying R Cable, Euskaltel is eyeing the opportunity to acquire Telecable in order to build up a large cable company across the northern regions of Spain.





Speaking to El Pais, Alberto Garcia Erauzkin, president of the Basque Country telco , said Telecable, which operates in Asturias, is a clear target, although it's not a priority, as the company has to digest the recent acquisition of R Cable , which operates in Galicia.The acquisition of R Cable was a 1.2 billion operation and means the company now has a 700,000 subs base. If including Telecable subs, the number is nearer one million.It's not our immediate goal, but we're open to the opportunity of buying, said Erauzkin. The announcement is built on what are presumed to be positive results following Euskaltel's public offering last year , although no official figures have been announced.Since the beginning of 2015, the regional cable company has been determined not to miss the boat in the telecom sector, as Spain's major telcos have moved forward with merges such as Vodafone-ONO and Orange-Jazztel.Commenting on the cable TV sector, Erauzkin said that exclusive content, currently managed by the market's largest telcos, will gradually be eliminated by the market's regulator.
Paraguay's Conatel has published the national telecoms plan, aiming to kick-off private DTT deployment this year.





The country's telecom authority has decided to start reorganising the radio-electric spectrum so that DTT and LTE networks have their own frequency-slots. The national plan , the industry's framework from now until 2020, says that the digital TV deployment will start later this year, although the process is not expected to be concluded until 2024.The document calls upon the industry to contribute to the final DTT switchover plan, from setting general rules to planning acquisition, distribution and installation of DTT-ready equipment.Teresa Palacios, Conatel's president, said the first step is to clear the 700Mhz band so that it is free for telecom operators. This frequency is to be clear soon, as we are moving analogue TV stations to other slots. And we're already testing digital TV signals.Paraguay has one of the slowest DTT deployments in Latin America. It started in 2011 , when the country's public network began to broadcast digitally, but still no other companies have moved over to digital technology.
Pay-TV behemoth Sky has recorded its highest ever first-half operating profit, up 12% to 747 million in the first six months of its current financial year.





At the heart of the profit push was strong revenue growth of 5% to 5.7 billion, itself driven by strong demand from customers in particular in the UK and Ireland where the 337,000 new customers represented the highest increase in subs in ten years.Yet perhaps just as significantly, the company announced that Nicholas Ferguson was to step down as chairman and as a director after 12 years on the board to be replaced by controversial media figure James Murdoch.We have had another very strong half as we continue to transform Sky, broadening our business and expanding into new markets and customer segments, commented group chief executive Jeremy Darroch. This strategy is delivering today and opening up significant growth opportunities for the future. We are pursuing those opportunities with energy and purpose ... All of our markets are now clearly benefiting from our leadership in content and innovation and being part of the broader Sky. The launch of Sky Q will redefine our top-end TV experience and extend our market-leading portfolio of products to serve the needs of every customer."We have extended our lead in content with a ground-breaking new long-term deal with Showtime, which complements both Skys original productions and our partnership with HBO to make Sky Atlantic the best destination for world-class drama across Europe. This will bring customers the return of great shows that include Fortitude, Game of Thrones and The Affair alongside new productions such as Vinyl, Billions and The Young Pope.In an associated move Sky announced that its NOW TV over-the-top service is to launch what it calls its most advanced TV box. It will offer access to the Sky pay-TV channels as well as over 60 live free-to-air channels. By the end of the quarter ended 31 December, Sky said that it had over ten million homes connected and promised significant enhancements coming to Sky+.
Alleged gangster may avoid extradition from Austria to Russia  report

MOSCOW, January 29 (RAPSI)  Aslan Gagiyev, alleged leader of a Russia-based criminal organization, may avoid extradition from Austria to Russia, but may be sent to Bulgaria instead, Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday.

According to press-secretary of Vienna Regional Court for Criminal Matters, Austrian authorities granted a permission for Gagiyevs extradition to Bulgaria where he is suspected of documents forgery and use of said documents.

Austria is yet to review Russian extradition request for the second time. In the summer of 2015 extradition request was granted by the Austrian court, but it was later appealed by Gagiyevs defense.

According to Kommersant, Gagiyev seeks to avoid extradition to either country; Bulgarian request has already been appealed.

Georgian-born Aslan Gagiyevs gang has been operating since 2004 and includes 45 members.

Members of the gang are suspected of more than 40 counts of murder in Moscow and North Ossetia. Some of the suspects have already been convicted and are serving long prison terms. Over ten of them have been arrested, and an additional twelve suspects are wanted by Interpol and federal law enforcement agencies.

Three more members, including the gangs leader Aslan Gagiyev were arrested in other foreign states and are to be extradited.

Gagiyev faces life sentence in Russia.
MOSCOW, January 29 (RAPSI)  A court in the Ryazan Region has granted parole for Alexander Margolin who had been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for participation in the riots on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, his lawyer Sergei Panchenko told RAPSI on Friday.

Prosecution has supported a motion for parole. Panchenko will be released from colony in ten days, the lawyer said. He has already served three years in prison.

Over 400 people were arrested and scores were injured in the authorized Bolotnaya Square protest that turned violent in May 2012. Dozens were later charged with inciting mass riots and battery against law enforcement officers.

Riot organizers Leonid Razvozzhayev and Sergei Udaltsov were sentenced to 4.5 years in prison each.

Other defendants in the case received prison terms ranging from suspended sentences to four years. Several defendants were pardoned; one is undergoing compulsory mental treatment.
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A previous article talked about the 2016 real estate trends in the west. This time, the 2016 top trends in the property market in the middle east will be tackled.

According to Dubai Chronicle, JLL has just released "2016 Top Trends for UAE Real Estate." It is the 9th annual report from the world's leading real estate investment firm that assesses and predicts what the company is expecting from the UAE real estate market.

Speaking of the trends in general, JLL CEO Alan Robertson things that in 2016 the UAE real estate will see more challenging conditions as the result of declining oil prices and pressures to the government budgets. On the brighter side, Robertson says that the UAE real estate market is better equipped to face these challenges.

Moreover, according to the Dubai Chronicle, to cope with the oil slump, the government has already begun implementing strategies to reduce dependence on revenue from oil such as cuts on subsidies, reduce spending and proposing the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST). Robertson noted that despite the challenging conditions that the UAE economy and the real estate market are expecting to face, they can also expect to see growth at around 2.7% to the overall economy.

Therefore JLL says that the following trends are expected to prevail in UAE's real estate market in 2016. First is tighter liquidity. According to JLL, banks will be impose tighter regulations on lending that would urge developers to look for other means to come up with funds including joint ventures, refinancing, public private partnerships and co-investment vehicles.

Second, the world will see reduced outflow of capital from the UAE, which means that UAE will cut back on investments in real estate in other countries around the world. Sovereign investors are expected to change investment strategy and result to more selling activities. And since developers will find fund a challenge to obtain, 2016 can expect to see project delays. However on the bright side, this can help reduce the risk of oversupply. This leads to the fourth trend. In 2016, instead of building new building, the focus will shift towards adding value to existing buildings. Moreover, the demand for function buildings will also increase in this year.
You'd feel like you were from a time machine once you get into the apartment that has a 1970s design which is currently for sale with an asking price of $158,000.

The penthouse has an area of 1,877 square feet, located at 7141 North Kedzie Avenue in West Rogers Park, and was built in 1972. Its interior is like the set of one of the Austin Powers movies.

The penthouse has three bedrooms wherein one of it is covered in bright green patterned wallpaper. The two other bedrooms were combined to create a large family room.

One of the two bathrooms is also covered with green wallpaper with a retro pattern. Vintage perfume bottles are displayed in the shelves of the bathroom. The bottles were left there by the owners and were apparently old.

The design of the kitchen is groovy as well as it don a colorful wallpaper combining turquoise, beige and yellow in psychedelic shapes.

In the living room, there is a circular bright green couch which is the centerpiece of the home, Huffington Post reported. Near it is the dining area that has six chairs of the same color with the couch in the living room.

Groovy baby! Austin Powers-style Chicago condo untouched since the 1970s hits the market f https://t.co/y4muJyoD0F pic.twitter.com/bxDOFouF2V  Inforloded (@C002D4E82) January 27, 2016

Vintage perfume bottles are still lined up on the bathroom shelves. Agent Lauri Rosenbloom from Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Starck Real Estate, who is in charge of selling the condo, said the bottles are older and were left there by the owners, even though she's not sure what era they came from. This apartment in Winston Towers has a balcony wherein one can get a view on the building's outdoor pool. The Chicago condo was first listed in 2012 but didn't get interest from anyone. Hence, it was listed back in the market just recently through Agent Lauri Rosenbloom from Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Starck Real Estate and it has attracted interest and was even featured in different websites.

Jump into the 70s with this Austin Powers-style Chicago condo https://t.co/nTtdQgqLwd pic.twitter.com/Owd19Da2vu  Celebrity Angels (@CelebrityAngels) January 27, 2016

"Suddenly, it's all the rage," Rosenbloom told Mail Online. "I've got people who love the wallpaper and the furniture."

The property is being sold "as is" and the interior including the furniture is left untouched.
John Aaroe Group, a real estate brokerage that specializes in high-end property in the greater Los Angeles area, has announced the opening of its new branch office in Downtown Los Angeles that will cater to the needs of the evolving luxury real estate market in the area.

"The towering offices that comprised 'The Wall Street of the West' are becoming swank once again, and new properties along the Figueroa Corridor are furthering the progressive revitalization of downtown, attracting businesses, tourists and new residents alike," said Gus Ruelas, Regional Manager of the Downtown Los Angeles Brand. "With the addition of many skyscrapers for both commercial and residential use, Downtown LA is shaping a skyline to rival any in the world. I'm thrilled to be leading John Aaroe Group's involvement in this exciting time in Downtown LA's rich history."

According to the press release of Aaroe Group in PR NewsWire, Ruelas has joined the ranks of Aaero Group during the expansion of the John Aaroe Group Brand in Pasadena four years ago. With the opening of the new branch office in Los Angeles, Ruelas will assume the newly created role of Vice President/Regional Manager in San Gabriel Valley and Downtown Los Angeles.

"Gus' expanded role reflects our faith in him as a professional, a trend-setter in our industry, and a leading executive who showcases the true integrity, class, and sophisticated style that are hallmarks of the Aaroe brand," said John Aaroe, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of John Aaroe Group. "As we look to provide top-tier service to both our agents and our clients, Gus' innovative approach and keen understanding of the evolving market in the area make him perfectly poised to lead our expansion to the Downtown area and continue our expansion into the San Gabriel Valley."

The expansion of John Aaroe Group in Downtown Los Angeles is the result of the upward trajectory for the venerable group that saw over $2.2 billion in overall sales in 2015. The new office is scheduled to be opened on Jan. 29.
Thanks to a Series B funding round, real estate startup Cadre has just raised $50 million. The online investment portal was co-founded by CEO Ryan Williams, who's worked at Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. Joshua Kushner of Thrive Capital, along with his real estate developer brother Jared Kushner, are investors and strategic advisers.

Cadre initially raised $18.3 million in a Series A round last year, which was led by Thrive And General Catalysts. The company has gotten backing from investors such as Yuri Milner, Goldman Sachs, Founders Fund, Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma, the Ford Foundation, and Khosla Ventures, among many others.

Since 2014, Cadre has been keeping things under wraps, only promoting itself to a selected group of investors like institutions, foundations, endowments and individuals with high net worth.

No one really knows how Cadre works, but are left with only a brief yet vague idea. The New York Post reports:

"While Cadre has been tight-lipped about how it works, the startup bills itself as a matchmaker that ensures clients are paired with the right real estate deals using proprietary software and its own due-diligence staff."

Since real estate is a "high touch" investment, the due diligence on both parties is essential to Cadre's balance of exclusivity and quality, in addition to "a walled-off website" that requires an invitation and vetting for entry, said Williams.

"Pristine sponsorship and great product - that is the mantra we have established," Williams proclaimed. "And we also look to ensure we are confident with the product. The technology platform is an element we bring to complement the investment experience."

Williams also noted that the startup's investors have shelled out "hundreds of millions" of dollars for deals around the country that are being offered by top sponsors on the Cadre platform.

"We needed a platform to connect investors with institutional quality real estate outside the prevailing fund model," Williams noted. "I could more efficiently connect investors to quality investments."
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By R-S Staff

Lithia Motors Inc. is one of three companies that have settled Federal Trade Commission complaints that alleged the auto dealers failed to disclose some of the used cars they sold were subject to unrepaired safety recalls.

Lithia is based in Medford, Oregon, and has more than 100 stores in the West and Midwest. The company operates a Toyota and Chevrolet dealership in Redding, though the FTC statement didn't make clear which individual dealerships its investigators believed had sold cars without making recall fixes.

Vaughn LaTour, general manager of Lithia Chevrolet of Redding, said Friday afternoon the recall issue did not involve any local vehicles sold by his business and that Lithia went along with the settlement, in part, to avoid a court fight.

Additionally, he said, the recall disclosures made good business sense.

"We just decided to go along," he said.

Also settling with the FTC were General Motors Co. and Jim Koons Management, which has 15 dealerships in the mid-Atlantic region. Jim Koons and Lithia are two of the nation's largest used-car dealers.

"Safety is one of the biggest considerations for consumers shopping for a car," Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a news release. "So companies touting the comprehensiveness of their vehicle inspections need to be straight with consumers about safety-related recalls, which can raise major safety concerns."

The FTC's complaint against Lithia cited the company's dealer-backed "60-day/3,000-mile" warranty, noting Lithia said "vehicles are put through an exhaustive 160-checkpoint Quality Assurance Inspection. . . . We inspect everything from the tires and the brakes to suspension, drive train, engine components and even the undercarriage."

The complaint alleges some cars Lithia advertised were subject to unrepaired recalls that involved defects in the key ignition switch and other safety issues.

Under the agreement, which remains in effect for 20 years, the three companies are prohibited from claiming that their used vehicles are safe or have been subject to rigorous inspections unless they are free of unrepaired recalls, or unless the companies disclose the existence of the recalls in close proximity to the inspection claims.

Lithia also has to inform customers by mail that their vehicles may have an open recall if the Lithia Warranty-used vehicle was purchased between July 1, 2013, and the final order date.
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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

A 79-year-old man is suing the City of Anderson over allegations of police brutality after he says an off-duty police officer attacked him in July 2014.

Gerald Lyle Knighten, of Redding, says Anderson Police Sgt. Sean Miller attacked him at the Holiday Market on Placer Street.

"I was hurt. I was humiliated. I was held against my will," said Knighten, who was reached via phone.

Anderson City Attorney Jody Burgess referred questions to lawyer Bruce Kilday with the Sacramento law firm Angelo, Kilday & Kilduff, LLP, which Anderson has retained. He could not be reached for comment.

The suit stems from an incident that happened at about 7 a.m. July 10, 2014.

Knighten had gone to the store to pick up some 2 percent milk for his wife's coffee, he said.

"There was not a car in the parking lot," he said.

When Knighten came out, he noticed "this big redneck truck is 15, 16 inches from my car.

"I couldn't put the bags into my car," he said.

Knighten opened the door, which connected with the truck's fender, though Knighten said he didn't see any damage. But the truck's owner, Anderson Police Sgt. Sean Miller, came over and began yelling that it had been damaged, Knighten said.

"This looked like insurance fraud," Knighten said. So, he wanted to leave. "Then I thought, 'This guy's trying to jack my car.'"

That's when Miller, who identified himself as a police officer, reached into the car and grabbed Knighten's arm, putting him in a hold, Knighten said.

Knighten said Miller accused him of "felony hit and run."

Miller displayed a badge, but Knighten thought it may be fraudulent.

Two witnesses then intervened, according to a Redding Police report.

In the report, one of the victims described the assault as "uncalled for."

But the report also noted that the door of Knighten's car lined up with a chip on Miller's truck. According to that report, Miller told officers he thought Knighten had damaged his truck and was trying to flee. Miller then tried to get Knighten's insurance information and showed his badge, the report states.

"Knighten subsequently started the vehicle and Miller felt Knighten was going to leave the location without exchanging the insurance information," the report states.

So, Miller put Knighten in a "twist lock," the police report states.

Knighten said that Miller dislocated his shoulder.

According to the complaint, Knighten is seeking $1 million in damages. He said the suit is about holding the city responsible as the complaint states Miller faced little castigation for the incident.

"Somebody needs to say something," Knighten said. "Nobody's going to do anything about it unless I sue."
This pickup crashed following a pursuit Thursday night by the California Highway Patrol.

SHARE This pickup crashed at the Travel Inn at North Market Street and Riverside Drive in Redding after being pursued by the California Highway Patrol on Thursday night. The driver fled while a woman passenger was injured.

Authorities arrested a man after they said he ran from a single-vehicle collision near downtown Redding on Thursday night.

The suspect was arrested in the area of California and Center streets after officers discovered he was hiding in a vehicle. The arrest was made just before 10 p.m.

Driving a Ford pickup, the man earlier was being pursued by the California Highway Patrol.

The vehicle chase started in Shasta Lake when officers noticed the pickup matched the identity of a truck that had been reported to law enforcement as "casing" residences in the Lakehead area and they tried to make a traffic stop, Sgt. Matt Larsen said.

Officers pursued the pickup down I-5 before it got off at Pine Grove Avenue, then went down Cascade Boulevard before going over to Lake Boulevard. The pickup traveled down Lake to North Market Street, Larsen said. He said the chase reached speeds of around 100 miles per hour.

The man lost control of the truck around Riverside Drive. The pickup then rolled at least twice before coming to rest near the Travel Inn on North Market Street.

A woman passenger in the truck suffered moderate injuries and was taken to the hospital, Larsen said.

Larsen did not have the identity of the woman.

Traffic was blocked at North Market Street between Riverside Drive and Trinity Street.
Lloyd Pendleton

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By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight

Homelessness and its impact on a community will be addressed on Feb. 11, when Lloyd Pendleton, former director of the Utah Homeless Task Force, visits Redding.

In 2005 Pendleton and his staff drafted a plan to address Utah's chronic homelessness and after 10 years the numbers that population is down by 91 percent due, in part, to an aggressive housing first model.

Pendleton will stress the need for cooperation between multiple agencies in the county, city and private sector when he speaks at "How Utah Implemented 'Housing First' and Reduced Homelessness" in Redding hosted by the Women's Fund of Shasta County, Record Searchlight and Shasta Community Health Center.

"Housing solves homelessness. The answer is simple. Getting there is complicated. There needs to be leadership involved," Pendleton said from his home in Utah.

The housing first model puts the chronically homeless into homes, without requiring a person to take a drug test or putting them on a waiting list. The concept first originated in New York, and even though Pendleton's peers had doubts, it worked over time in Utah.

Pendleton said he has been in talks with California legislators, who are making efforts to address the issue of homelessness. But in the Golden State, there is no homeless czar comparable to what he did in Utah.

Pendleton admits that California and Utah are vastly different in their landscape, but that no community is unique when discussing the homeless issue. Redding doesn't have a large homeless problem compared to places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, Pendleton said.

"The reason why we (in Utah) were successful is that the state took the lead. I spent the last 12 years with resources from the state in organizing homeless service providers, political leaders and we got the county involved. It became a concerted effort," Pendleton said.

It's the same mission statement he's been sharing with communities across the country as Pendleton enters into a post-retirement phase after leaving state employment in June of last year. Now Pendleton conducts forums on what the housing first model can accomplish. Another phrase Pendleton uses is "catching the vision" on the model.

The Women's Fund forum, open to the public free of charge, will take place noon Feb. 11 at the Sequoia Middle School, 1805 Sequoia St., Redding. Pendleton will share his experience housing the homeless of Utah. Attendees can register here.

Denise Yergenson, chairwoman of the Women's Fund, said the forum will get people talking about the issue of homelessness, with an emphasis that efforts being taken will not happen overnight, and require a comprehensive plan. What Redding needs could be as simple as getting the right people in the same room, talking about the same issue, Yergenson said.

Shasta Community Health Center CEO Dean Germano said Pendleton's approach, which succeeded in conservative, rural Utah, appealed to staff in the North State.

Germano says there are a number of drivers in the world of homelessness, ranging from the mentally ill, and those who find themselves in the criminal justice system for abusing substances. Other variables include the economy, which Germano says speaks to the multifaceted nature of homelessness and those who are chronically homeless.

Staff from the Shasta Community Health Center reached out to Pendleton to discuss the housing first approach and what a model like that looks like in various communities. Germano notes the visit from Pendleton is timely, as an independent study looking at Redding's homeless issues and costs associated with the social problem is underway.

Kristen Schreder, a Redding City Council member and Women's Fund founding member, spearheaded the efforts done by HomeBase, the Center for Common Concerns, which assessed the response to the homeless issues in Redding. The consultants are now putting together two additional studies  one that will count the homeless population and another that will assess the economic impact from the homeless issue.

Schreder quotes a chapter from a book on homeless issues, "The cost of doing nothing is not nothing," which she says makes people take special interest in the issue.

"The alternative is having people who are homeless to receive primary care in emergency rooms, service in jails, which is expensive. The consultants will be looking at that cost in the next study," Schreder said.

As a moral issue, the homeless issue can be divisive, said Schreder, who says doing the right thing does not always resonate with the general public. With numbers involved, showing what costs are associated with alternatives to what is currently happening, makes the issue become much clearer.

Schreder said Pendleton's visit will bring an idea of how other communities have dealt with chronic homelessness, and how their plans shaped out over the years.

Pendleton said with Schreder's study, Redding is taking the first steps toward addressing the issue head-on.

"When you start to show people that the homeless issue is present, you can use the economic model and say you're already paying for it," Pendleton said.

If you go

What: Forum featuring Lloyd Pendleton, former director of the Utah Homeless Task Force, who will share his experience housing the homeless of Utah

When: Noon-1:30 p.m., Feb. 11

Where: McLaughlin Auditorium at Sequoia Middle School, 1805 Sequoia St., Redding

Cost: Free

Sponsors: The Womens Fund of the Shasta Regional Community Foundation, Shasta Community Health Center, Record Searchlight
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has long been under attack from self-righteous critics. Now its traditions and procedures are under attack by the academy leadership, which last week capitulated to political correctness.

The #OscarsSoWhite controversy, as it's known on social media, is bedeviled by misinformation. I have read numerous accounts of how 6,200 mostly old white males produced the lily white nominations of 20 actors this year. In fact these nominees were selected by the 1,138 members of the actors branch, which has a larger percentage of African-Americans than other branches, and probably skews younger as well. (The academy doesn't keep statistics on age.)

These same voters in the last few years gave best acting Oscars to Forest Whitaker ("Last King of Scotland"), Mo'Nique ("Precious"), Viola Davis ("The Help"), Lupita Nyong'o ("12 Years a Slave"), and a nomination to Chiwetel Ejiofor ("12 Years a Slave").

Beyond the acting category, it's absurd to pretend that the academy ignores films created by or about people of color. "12 Years a Slave" won three Oscars in 2014. "Selma" was nominated for best picture in 2015. A few months ago, the academy gave Spike Lee an honorary Oscar for his contribution to cinema.

And the academy routinely recognizes socially conscious films. This year, for instance, two films dealing with LGBT themes were nominated: "Carol" and "The Danish Girl."

The academy does not make movies. Critics unhappy with the number of black, Latino or Asian directors and actors must look elsewhere  to the studios and independent producers.

As for what gets nominated, as an academy member it seems to me that we should remain colorblind and reward artistic excellence without regard to race (or class, or creed, or gender).

Why is no one talking about which actors should not have been nominated, so that colleagues of color could have taken their place? Could it be that the current nominees are all worthy? Why is no one talking about the nominations in nonacting branches? Alejandro G. Inarritu, who is Mexican, won a directing Oscar last year and is nominated again this year for "The Revenant." Aren't Mexicans still considered a minority in PC circles?

I certainly count myself among those who value inclusion and believe that our country's demographic diversity is a positive good. But why must the academy perfectly mirror that diversity? It's a meritocracy. The only entrance requirement is excellence in one's chosen field. At least, that was true until last week.

Since 2012, the academy has encouraged its branches to seek qualified artists from diverse backgrounds. Change was occurring naturally. Unfortunately, not fast enough for some. Succumbing to years of pressure, the academy leadership Friday unveiled a radical plan to satisfy the PC mob. With the express goal of doubling the number of female and racially diverse members by 2020, the leadership decided to "supplement the traditional process in which current members sponsor new members by launching an ambitious, global campaign to identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity." The leadership also moved to curtail lifetime voting privileges. "Each new member's voting status will last 10 years, and will be renewed if that new member has been active in motion pictures during that decade."

In case it's not obvious, the point is to purge older (presumably white) members and create something akin to affirmative action for new members.

Since its creation, the academy's focus has been excellence in motion pictures. The new focus, apparently, is diversity, and I'm sure I'm not alone in finding this reconception misguided.

Of course, this matter goes beyond the academy or the arts in general. We must all commit ourselves to creating a society where, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, we are "judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin."

William Goldstein is a longtime academy member who serves on multiple executive committees. He has been a recording artist for Motown and CBS Masterworks and has composed music for films and the concert hall. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
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Ever since Ammon and Ryan Bundy, flanked by a gang of fellow gun-toting, anti-government fanatics, took over a remote federal building in Oregon, they've been itching for an epic battle with the FBI.

On Tuesday, they finally got one. In a shootout on an icy highway, authorities killed one member and then took eight others into custody, including the Bundys. The FBI and Oregon State Police then erected roadblocks to isolate the people still holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

For Ammon Bundy, that was too much. Through his attorney, Mike Arnold, he urged his followers to stand down late Wednesday  and they began to do so.

"Go home and hug your families," Arnold said in the statement. "This fight is ours for now in the courts. Please go home."

Indeed, this situation was never likely to end well. But, luckily, it doesn't seem like it will get any worse. It was past time for the militants to abandon their fruitless mission to make the federal government turn over the refuge and other public land  land that belongs to all Americans  to private ranchers and farmers.

Almost a month into this absurd standoff, both sides had more than made their point. The militia members proved they're serious; they got their martyr, unfortunately. The FBI proved it's cautious and patient, but not infinitely so.

Keeping the standoff going would've only meant more violence, more disruption for the residents of Harney County and more wasted money for Oregon  a figure Gov. Kate Brown put at about $100,000 a week.

"This has been tearing our community apart," a visibly angry Sheriff Dave Ward told reporters early Wednesday. "It's time for everybody in this illegal occupation to move on. It doesn't have to be bloodshed in our community."

The FBI was right to continue offering the militants a way out. A few ventured down to the roadblocks to take it.

And even though the standoff is winding down, the FBI must still do more to limit public fallout from Tuesday's shootout. Citing the ongoing investigation, the agency has refused to identify who was killed, even though reporters and the remaining occupiers have said it was Robert "LaVoy" Finicum.

Already, rumors are circulating online that authorities killed Finicum while he was on his knees with his hands up. The FBI has not responded, again citing the investigation, although a witness has come forward to say Finicum charged at police.

Jason Patrick, who took over as leader after Bundy was arrested and shipped off to Portland, said he wants the FBI to release dash-cam video of the incident  if it exists. That's a good idea. Transparency, along with a serious reality check, is the only way to avoid making what was already a bad situation worse.

The Sacramento Bee
'Reflex responses to Rohith Vemula's suicide are nothing more than band aids that stem the current hemorrhage, but do precious little to the festering wound beneath,' says Vivek Gumaste.

The call for the ouster of University of Hyderabad Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao, the demand for the dismissal of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya (belonging to a backward caste) whose letter ostensibly set in motion the train of events that eventually led to Dalit scholar and PhD student Rohith Vemula committing suicide, the build-up of a compendium of theories that castigate Hinduism (and by proxy the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) as the evil imprimatur of caste discrimination and lash out at everyone and anyone in sight, is not going to solve the issue at hand.

These reflex responses are nothing more than expressions of misplaced egotism that miss the forest for the trees; band aids that stem the current hemorrhage but do precious little to the festering wound beneath; a knee jerk reflex that seeks transient redress for symptoms that mask a more serious malady: The continued ostracisation of Dalits in our society.

The impact that Vemula has in death far surpasses the influence that he wielded in life. In a bizarre and unfortunate fashion, his untimely demise brings to the fore the very issue that he championed in life: The Dalit cause.

In death, he forces all of us, willy nilly, to confront uncomfortable questions that cry out for answers and deficiencies that warrant rectification: What is the status of Dalits in our society today, 67 years after Independence?

Have we even partially succeeded in bettering the lives of this disadvantaged segment of our society? What more needs to be done to usher in a society that is truly egalitarian in practice?

But to inject a degree of clarity to the primordial issue, we need to sift the husk from the grain; we need to analyse and discard the slanted theories doing the rounds; and we need to counter and neutralise the senseless, wild charges and sideline their proponents who have transformed the current tragedy into a jamboree of sorts to extract political advantage.

The holier than thou attitude of the Congress party and its contention that Vemula's death shows the 'anti-Dalit' attitude of the central government and the BJP fails to pass the test of objectivity. In fact a review of past events tells a story to the contrary.

Read this news excerpt: 'Vemula's isn't the first suicide by a Dalit student on the University of Hyderabad campus... Over the last decade a string of suicides have rocked the central varsity highlighting the pronounced discrimination against students from the marginalised sections at UoH, say city educationists. Eight Dalit students committed suicide during this period unable to cope with what has been termed as caste politics.' (Nine student suicides in 10 years. Times of India January 19)

So in a 10 year period during which the Congress party was in power both at the Centre and in Andhra Pradesh no less than eight Dalit students committed suicide at UoH. None of these suicides became a cause celebre. None of them were highlighted to the same extent as Vemula's suicide. They were considered too insignificant to merit a debate.

For the Congress, Dalits become a priority only when the BJP is in power; they come in handy as tools to further their vested interests.

Similar is the case with leftist parties. Vemula was fully cognisant of the stark hypocrisy inherent to the Communist movement. In an article titled, Lal Salaam to Jai Bhim: Why Rohith Vemula left Indian Marxists, (Hindustan Times, January 22), his friend Jashwanth Jessie writes: 'His disillusionment with the Communists happened when he discovered that the boys and girls who had given up faith in god could not bring themselves up to abandon their faith in the caste system. He quit the Students Federation of India after he was discriminated for his caste by the so-called comrades who he hoped would deliver him and his people from this wretched social order.'

When (CPI-M General Secretary) Sitaram Yechury visited the university for a lecture and demanded reservation in the private sector for lower-caste people, Vemula responded with a viral Facebook post in which he asked why the Communist Party of India-Marxist hasn't had a single Dalit politburo member in 51 years.

So we need to take the present concern voiced by the Congress and leftist parties with a ton of salt.

Moreover, to make Hinduism, the BJP and the RSS as the bogeyman in today's battle against caste discrimination is a flight of fantasy that takes a break from objectivity and reality.

There is no denying that caste discrimination has its genesis in the Hindu religion. It is indefensible and a cross of ignominy that Hinduism must perforce bear and acknowledge. But for all its deficiencies and its drawbacks, Hinduism has a robust resilience that is hard to match, a fearless insight that does not balk at confronting and countering the demons in its midst; a propensity for continuous reform.

To bolster this conclusion let us take recourse to history and evaluate the role of other religions in contrast to Hinduism vis-a vis the Dalits.

Muslim rule that lasted close to over a thousand years failed to formulate any official policy to uplift the Dalits testifying to the fact that it was only interested in augmenting its numbers. Likewise during the 200 odd years of Christian British colonial rule, the clergy was busy harvesting Dalit souls for their Christian registry, but made no attempt to eradicate caste inequities by official diktat or moral persuasion.

It was only in 1947 when a predominantly Hindu government came into being that the plight of the Dalits received official acknowledgement. India's affirmative action plan is by far the most ambitious, most comprehensive and the most widespread of any effort to uplift a disadvantaged community in the history of mankind.

I emphasise this point not as a boast but as a testimony to the remorse and repentance of Hinduism that is genuine and sincere. The succour provided to blacks in the United States, or the aid given to aborigines in Australia come no way close to what India has attempted to do.

To brand the RSS as elitist and anti-Dalit flies in the face of evidence. It has encouraged Dalit priests and been critical of temples that bar access to Dalits. Read this news excerpt:

'Following up on its radical call last year to train and appoint Dalits as priests in Hindu temples, the RSS has severely condemned the barring of Dalits from a temple in Orissa recently.'



A year-end editorial in the Sangh weekly Panchjanya termed as unfortunate the discriminatory attitude of temple authorities at the Jagannath temple in Kerdagarh saying it was 'shameful that even in 2006 there are temples where Dalits are disallowed ... Even God will desert the temple that Dalits cannot enter.' (RSS rips into ban on Dalits entering temples. Times of India, January 3, 2007)

To bring about equality and eradicate caste discrimination in Hindu society the RSS has coined the slogan of 'One well, one temple and one crematorium.'

The bitterness of the Dalit towards Hindu society is understandable and totally justified. No one can fault him for that or deprive him of the right to vent his anger. But anger and bitterness are important in the battle against injustice only to a degree.

When anger becomes all-consuming, it becomes a self-destructive monster rather than a constructive urge and proves counterproductive.

What impressed me most about Vemula's letter was the total lack of rancour; it demonstrated exceptional clarity, incisive rationale and emanated a rare sadness for human fraility. He had in him the potential to be a great leader, a Moses who would lead his people out of modern captivity. But alas it was not to be and that is the greatest tragedy of Rohith Vemula's death.

It is a loss not only for his community but for India as a whole for he possessed the right frame of mind to bridge the caste gap with maturity and pragmatism.

If we don't want his sacrifice to be in vain and if we wish to prevent another Vemula from taking his life the central demand of the protest must change. In lieu of individual punition (the law will take its course), one must seek immediate nationwide implementation of the recommendations proposed by the Thorat Committee which was tasked with looking into the allegations of differential treatment of SC/ST students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

The important measures recommended by the committee were:

1. The setting up of an 'Equal Opportunity Office' that would not only address all grievances faced by SC/ST students but also conduct remedial coaching programmes that would help refine English language skills and bolster the academic potential of these students so as to make them fit into the mainstream.

2. A joint committee, comprising of students, residents and faculty that would address the issue 'collectively and together' with 'heart to heart discussions' in order to alleviate the sense of alienation that SC/ST students experience in educational institutions.

Ultimately, however, it falls upon all of us Indians to strive to erase these caste fault lines, if India is to progress as one entity. This is not an option, but an unavoidable mandate.
Usually misconstrued as suicide terrorism, fidayeen attacks are carried out by well-trained terrorists to wreck as much havoc as possible at a selected target, inflicting as many casualties as possible before being killed.

The Indian Army, the Border Security Force, Hindu temples and the people of India, all have been targetted by fidayeen from Pakistan. The latest being the attack at the Pathankot airbase, which lasted more than 96 hours.

IMAGE: A paramilitary trooper keeps a vigil from atop an armoured vehicle in Srinagar in this photograph taken in November 1999. Photograph: Reuters

November 3, 1999: Srinagar

on November 3, 1999, fidayeen attacked the army corps headquarters in Badami Bagh, Srinagar.

The attack took the life of Major Pramod Purshottam, a popular officer.

The major -- the first senior officer of the Indian Army killed in a fidayeen attack -- died while trying to save lives of three journalists who had come to meet him.

Before this, the first-ever such attack took place in Bandipoora in Jammu and Kashmir on a BSF camp in which a deputy inspector general and four security personnel were killed.

February 9, 2001: Srinagar

IMAGE: Soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Dal Lake in the heart of Srinagar in this photograph taken in February 2001. Photograph: Reuters

A police control room was attacked at Batmaloo in Srinagar by Lashkar-e-Tayiba fidayeen.

One policeman was killed and eight others were injured.

Until then, the terrorists had been attacking the Indian Army or the BSF, but never the J&K police/ This time, the fidayeen wanted to send out a message that no one in the security forces was safe.

September 17, 2001: Kupwara

IMAGE: Army personnel during an operation at Cherkote forest near the Pakistan border in Kupwara, September 2001. Photograph: Fayaz Kabli/Reuterss

This fidayeen attack occurred six days after the 9/11 attacks.

This time, the target was the J&K police's elite Special Operations Group. Fidayeen stormed the SOG camp at Handwara in northern Kupwara district around midnight and killed nine policemen.

October 1, 2001: J&K assembly

IMAGE: A policeman searches the site of the car bomb explosion outside the entrance of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly in Srinagar, October 2, 2001. Photograph: Fayaz Kabli/Reuters

A fortnight after the previous attack, on October 1, 2001, the J&K assembly was attacked by Jaish-e-Mohammed fidayeen.

Three fidayeen rammed their SUV into the assembly complex.

Thirty-eight civilians died in the attack.

December 13, 2001: Parliament, New Delhi

IMAGE: Staffers point to a terrorist inside the Parliament complex, December 13, 2001. Photograph: Reuters

Parliament was the next target of the fidayeen on December 13, 2001.

Five fidayeen arrived at India's temple of democracy and fired indiscriminately.

Fourteen security personnel died in the attack, not before killing all the terrorists before they could storm Parliament and hold MPs captive.

After the attack, the Indian and Pakistan armies have a six-month standoff at the border and were close to war.

September 24, 2002: Akshardham Temple, Gandhinagar, Gujarat

IMAGE: Border Security Force personnel patrol the Akshardham temple complex after commandos killed the terrorists, September 24, 2002. Photograph: Kamal Kishore/Reuters

The Akshardham temple was attacked in Gandhinagar by two fidayeen on September 24, 2002.

Thirty-three pilgrims died.

Six Indians were arrested and charged with helping the terrorists, but were acquitted by Supreme Court on May 16, 2014.

March 30, 2002: Raghunath Temple, Jammu

IMAGE: Security personnel outside the Raghunath Temple, Jammu, March 2002. Photograph: Reuters

In the attack, 11 people died and 20 others were injured.

In the same year, on November 24, a fidayeen attack killed 14 devotees and injured 45 people.

November 26, 2008: Mumbai

IMAGE: Soldiers take positions at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, November 29, 2008. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

On November 26, 2008, 10 LeT fidayeen entered Mumbai by sea.

They fired indiscriminately at the Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus and attacked city landmarks like the Taj and Oberoi hotels.

Nine fidayeen were killed. Ajmal Kasab, who was caught alive, was hanged on November 21, 2012.

Pakistan has refused to hand over LeT founder Muhammed Saeed and his henchman Zaki-ur Rehman, masterminds of the attacks.

July 28, 2015: Gurdaspur, Punjab

IMAGE: Policemen take positions next to a police station at Dinanagar, Gurdaspur, July 27, 2015. Photograph: Munish Sharma/Reuters

Punjab came onto the radar of the fidayeen last year.

The fidayeen had targetted Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat and Maharashtra, but not Punjab.

The fidayeen attacked a police station in Gurdaspur. The operation lasted nearly 12 hours.

Three civilians and four policemen were killed in the attack.

January 2, 2016: Pathankot

IMAGE: Security personnel during their operation against the terrorists at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, January 4, 2016. Photograph: PTI

The attack came a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Lahore.

Six fidayeen, dressed in Indian Army uniforms, entered the Indian Air Force's Pathankot base.

The operation lasted more than 96 hours. Seven security personnel were killed.
Bollywood actor Anupam Kher and Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra sparred during a debate over the limits imposed on freedom of speech and were joined in by a politically divided audience at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Speaking against the motion at a session entitled 'Should Freedom of Speech be Absolute?' Kher alleged that a perception of intolerance was being created at festivals like JLF, adding that there should not be an impression that people in the country are living in fear.

"There is a perception of intolerance being created at festivals like these. Freedom of expression comes with a sense of responsibility in every citizen of the country. The rules which you follow at home (freedom of speech), you should follow in the country as well," he said.

The actor, who was selected for the Padma Bhushan, said India is one of the countries with an "expansive freedom of expression".

"Let's not create this impression that we're living in a country, where we have to live in fear and that there is no freedom of expression here and that people are going to come to your home to arrest you and then put you in jail," he said.

Kher said that it was only in this country that one could call the prime minister a coward or a psychopath and get away with it whereas when he went abroad he was "subjected to a lot of checking, where I have to take off my shoes and sometimes even my pants".

Hitting out at Kher for apparently targeting Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Aam Aadmi Party minister Mishra said that prime minister was not the only person who could speak his 'Mann Ki Baat'.

"Can only one man do his 'Mann Ki Baat' in the country? Everybody can do it. Politicians must not tell me what I write on Twitter or Facebook. Those very people who've assumed the position of the country's culture and religion have no knowledge of our 'dharma'," he said.

Mishra said everyone has the right to chant Modi's name without being afraid of being jailed, to which the crowd responded by chanting the prime minister's name.

Vigorously leading the chants was Kher, who was described by fellow panelist Salil Tripathi as a "bad music conductor".

Janata Dal-United MP Pavan K Varma posited that reasonable restrictions were required on freedom of expression, adding that if everybody exercised their right to speak without restraint, democracy would collapse.

Madhu Trehan and Suhel Seth also spoke against the motion stating a danger of fringe elements hijacking the discourse, and cited examples of figures like US politician Donald Trump.

Dalit writer P Sivakami brought forth view that freedom of press is essential to bring forth the narratives of those who have been subjugated by the upper echelons of the society.
Pakistan's ex-defence secretaries have warned the government to be careful in dealing with India because they do not see a radical shift in Delhis policy towards Pakistan.

Former defence secretary Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik (retd) called for open and extensive debate within the country on its relations with India.

Addressing a seminar on 'Impasse in Pak-India ties -- Implications for Regional Diplomacy and Strategic Stability', Malik cautioned that no radical shift in ties was expected, although there could be minor improvement caused by expediencies of the international environment.

For Pakistan, 'bending is not an option; either forward or backwards. We bend and we get a kick,' Malik, who retired as defence secretary in 2014, was quoted as saying by the Dawn on Friday during the seminar organised by the Strategic Vision Institute.

He recalled Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'belligerent' posture towards Pakistan during his election campaign and said India continued to play cat and mouse in ties with Pakistan.

Malik listed a number of measures he expected the government to undertake -- both internally and externally -- in order to effectively deal with the challenge posed by India: de-linking Pak-Afghan ties from the Pak-India relationship, safeguarding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, tackling political fissures over CPEC, pursuing water security more seriously, and appointing a full-time foreign minister.

Lt Gen Naeem Lodhi (retd), another former defence secretary, echoed Malik when he noted that there was no detente in sight.

In his view, the answer lay in the leadership of both countries ending the 'blame game' and approaching the relationship with fresh and open minds, the report said.

"The imbalance of size and political clout highly in favour of India begs third party facilitation to veer these two nuclear powers away from confrontational mode. There seems to be no other option," he said.

The director of Quaid-i-Azam University School of Politics and International Relations, Dr Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, suggested that the countries' leaders 'act rationally and thwart the agenda of radicalised transnational terrorist groups for the prosperity of their people'.

He warned that limited war between India and Pakistan could escalate to full scale nuclear war.
Police question Asma Khatoon and her father following the demise of the three day old, who Asma had called a 'traitor's memory.'

M I Khan reports.

On January 27, Asma Khatoon announced that she would disown her newborn son.

Three days later, the child was found dead in mysterious circumstances in Bihar's Bhojpur district.

Asma is the wife of Mohammad Kalam who had been arrested in November for allegedly spying for Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services.

Local police officers have begun an investigation into the child's death.

"The police have interrogated Asma and her father to know about the cause of the child's death," a district police officer said.

Asma's father told interrogators that the child had died from an illness, but police officers are investigating all possible angles.

"We have sent the child's body for a post-mortem to ascertain the reasons for the death," the police officer added.

The newborn's death raised suspicions of foul play since Asma had announced that she would not raise a traitor's child.

After delivering a baby boy on Wednesday, January 27, at a local government hospital, Asma had said, 'Main gaddar ki nishani puri umar upne saath nahin rakh sakti, main use nahin palungi (I can't keep a traitor's sign with me; I will not raise this child).'

After Kalam was arrested in Uttar Pradesh, Asma had said, 'If my pregnancy wasn't in such an advanced stage, I would have aborted the child.'

She had also demanded the death sentence for her husband and made it clear that she would sever all ties with him.

'I do not want to be known as the wife of a terrorist, a man who worked against the country,' Asma, a resident of Azimabad village in Bihar's Bhojpur district, had said.



Kalam was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force at Meerut railway station.



According to investigators, he relayed information about military establishments and the movement of army units to his Pakistan handlers.

IMAGE: Mohammad Kalam after his arrest. Photograph: PTI
Breaking silence over the FIR registered against him for allegedly assaulting a woman over a parking dispute, Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui said that the whole incident was planned against him.

"I just want to say that it was an unfortunate incident and this was all planned against me," the 41-year-old actor told the media in Mumbai.

In her complaint, the woman pointed out that the Manjhi: The Mountain Man star had refused to accept a notice sent earlier by the society's chairman and secretary to the members over parking space-related complaints.

In this regard, the Badlapur actor said that he never saw the complainant in the society before.

"I don't know who this complainant Heena Sheikh is, I have never seen her in the society," he said, adding "If you carefully look at the notice they (complainants) had shown, it wasn't signed by any of the society's members."

According to media reports, Siddiqui was served a notice by his housing society authorities. He was asked not to park his car at the place, which is given for the two-wheeler parking.

A heated argument began when the 24-year-old woman reportedly found Siddiqui's car at the two wheeler parking and filed a complaint against the actor.

The police quoted the complainant as saying that during the argument, the actor allegedly slapped her.
American Republican candidates -- or most of them -- gathered on-stage in Iowa to tangle, one last time; however, the shadow of the real estate mogul loomed large.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to veterans at Drake University. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

He was called Voldemort and referred to as the elephant not in the room, but one thing was certain. Even though he was absent for the Fox News Republican debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Donald Trumps presence was still very much felt.

In the first question of the night, debate moderator Megyn Kelly -- the primary reason for Trumps absence -- brought up the brash real estate mogul, referring to him as the elephant not in the room.

Trump decided to skip the debate, the last before the Iowa caucuses, after Fox News refused to remove Kelly from the moderating panel. The Republican presidential front-runner has been locked in a very public feud with Kelly since August last year, when she pressed him at the first GOP debate on his disparaging remarks about women and he afterward accused her of having blood pouring out of her wherever.

And it wasnt just Kelly who took potshots at the real estate mogul.

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, taking aim at Trump, said, Let me say, I'm a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon. Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way

Marco Rubio said the 2016 presidential campaign is not about Donald Trump.

Republican presidential candidates (right to left) Jeb Bush, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz participate in the Fox News - Google GOP Debate. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Jeb Bush, who has been increasingly combative with Trump during the debates, joked that he wished Trump was there. He appeared to take a swipe at his rivals on stage for not taking on Trump as aggressively as he has.

I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me, Bush said. Everybody else was in the witness protection program when I went after him.

However, soon the debate turned serious with Cruz Rubio, sparring over immigration reform, with Jeb Bush repeatedly forced to defend his role as an establishment candidate and with Cruz at one point threatening -- it wasnt clear if it was a joke - to walk off the stage if moderator Chris Wallace asked him one more mean question.

Five minute away from the debate centre, Trump supporters gathered at Drake University, where the billionaire businessman was hosting a rival event billed as benefiting veterans.

"I wanted to be about five minutes away (at the GOP debate)... but you have to stick up for your rights. When you're treated badly, you have to stick up to your rights," Trump told a packed auditorium, where he raised USD 6 million for veterans.

"I have to go a step further and say that Fox has been extremely nice in the last number of hours," he said. "They called a few minutes ago. Can you come over? I say, hasn't it already started?" he joked.

Hundreds of Trump supporters were seen waiting for hours to enter the auditorium for the event organised at a short notice after the real estate tycoon had a simmering feud with the conservative Fox News, which hosted the primary debate.

The 69-year-old billionaire, who has been leading national and local polls among the crowded Republican candidates, said he decided to skip the debate because he was treated "very unfairly" by Fox News.

American veterans chant 'Trump' as they wait for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to address them at Drake University. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

At the event, Trump was joined by two other Republican presidential candidates, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who interestingly were the winners of the last two Iowa caucuses.

"Let me be very clear... Rick Santorum, Donald Trump and I may be competitors in a presidential race, but tonight we are colleagues in unison standing here for the... veterans of the United States of America," Huckabee said.

Earlier in an interview to CNN, Trump claimed that Fox News apologised to him. "They called me. They want me there very badly. And by the time they apologised, I said, look, the problem is we now have a big event scheduled for the vets."

However, Fox News in a statement said the network's CEO Roger Ailes had "three brief conversations" with Trump, where he "acknowledged his concerns about a satirical observation we made in order to quell the attacks on (anchor) Megyn Kelly, and prevent her from being smeared any further."

Fox said Trump offered to show up at the debate if the network contributed USD 5 million to his charities.

"In the last 48 hours, we've kept two issues at the forefront -- we would never compromise our journalistic standards and we would always stand by our journalist, Megyn Kelly," the network said.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, a 75-year-old Indian-origin man who ran a secretive extremist Maoist cult in London, was on Friday sentenced to 23 years in jail by a UK court for a string of sexual assaults.

Balakrishnan, known to his followers as Comrade Bala, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in London for six counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape and two counts of actual bodily harm.

He had been convicted following a jury trial in December last year where it emerged that he had kept his daughter in captivity for over 30 years of her life.

The daughter, who was named for the first time on Friday as 33-year-old Katy Morgan-Davies, described her situation as "horrible, dehumanising and degrading".

Morgan-Davies told the BBC, "I felt like a caged bird with clipped wings. The people he looked up to were people like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein -- you couldn't criticise them either in the house. They were his gods and his heroes. These were the sort of people he wanted to emulate".

She had told the court she was beaten and banned from singing nursery rhymes, going to school or making friends.

Sentencing Balakrishnan, the judge said, "You decided to treat her as a project, not a person. You claimed to do it for her to protect her from the outside world, but you created a cruel environment".

The judge also recommended a donation of 500 pounds to Palm Cove Society charity which helped Morgan-Davies escape.

Balakrishnan's wife, Chanda, who had lived with him as part of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought for nearly 30 years had claimed earlier this week that his conviction was a "frame-up".

She had been unaware that her husband had fathered a daughter with his devoted follower Sian Davies and kept her confined in a London flat for years, spending her entire life until the age of 30 effectively imprisoned in the commune ruled by her father.

Balakrishnan had denied charges of rape and told the jury that he was "the focus of competition" between "jealous" women who made sexual advances towards him.

The sentencing ends an over two-year police investigation into a case which Scotland Yard detectives described as "completely unique".

Detective chief superintendent Tom Manson, from the Metropolitan Police's Organised Crime Command, said: "It seems extraordinary that Balakrishnan could command such control over so many people, however all of the victims have told us in great detail that they very much believed his claims of power and greatness and the threats he made to them".

"They all described feelings of fear and being totally controlled him. All of the women have faced huge challenges in adapting to day-to-day life since they left Balakrishnan's control but with the support of a number of charities and professionals are making exceptional progress and their bravery deserves recognition and praise," he said.

Balakrishnan, born in a village of Kerala, lived and grew up in Singapore and Malaysia before moving to the UK in 1963 to study at the London School of Economics. It is there that he met Chanda who he married in 1969, at about the time he began his collective.

Scotland Yard raided the couple's flat in Brixton, south London, in November, 2013 after two followers called a charity seeking help.

"I believe justice has definitely been done. I am very happy with the result and, at the end of the day, he is still my dad," she had said at the end of his trial last month.

A British woman, now 64, said she was inside the cult from 1979 to 1989, and a Malaysian woman who was involved from 1977 to 1992, both told the court Balakrishnan beat, raped and sexually assaulted them.
Pro-Sisi supporter in Tahrir square on 28 January !!

The family on Kasr Al Nil

reminding the people with Jan28

Mrs. Sabah holding banner saying "Remember the Kasr Al-Nile bridge

where they prayed and got shot' {Facebook}

Mrs. Sabah's daughter Sarah holding

a banner "Friday of Rage anniversary'

Ali holding a banner "Friday of Rage

anniversary"

Update:

Ahmed Ali in 2012

                 !*     ...

Posted by Ahmed Yehia on Thursday, January 28, 2016

Updated :

                  #__

Posted by Bassem Gamal on Thursday, January 28, 2016

Activist Ahmed Hegazy in Luxor

'It is still January revolution"

A Pro-Morsi supporter in Tahrir square on 25 January 2016

Many Egyptians commemorated the fifth anniversary of the 28 January 2011 online, the true day of the Egyptian revolution in the 21st century to be precise and honestly, it was different this year.It was different thanks to those tiny yet strong boys and their 1.59-minutes video that was the talk of Egypt in the past 48 hours.Thanks to that campaign against Shady Hussein and Ahmed Malek in the media, most of the 25 January supporters remembered all those unbelievable moments on the 28 January 2011 where the Egyptian people revolted against Mubarak's security forces.People saw the old faces that used the revolution in the 18 days are having a comeback to slam Shady and Ahmed and memories of those days were back.Videos and photos were shared madly like fire as #Jan28 hashtag on twitter was trending for many hours in Egypt. People shared photos and memories of that Friday of rage from all Egypt, from all governorates attacking the ministry of interior reminding it that they have not forgotten .. nor forgiven.The political powers and parties did not commemorate the Day of Rage and its martyrs nor did they organize any related event.Egypt's minister of defense Sobhi Sedky visited Tahrir square only to check the security measures there.Already army units have been protecting it since last week There was only one Pro-Sisi supporter holding a banner in Tahrir square on Thursday congratulating the Egyptian police for its day on 28 January and the police was standing against the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism.Still few blocks away, a small family from Giza stood alone to commemorate the #Jan28 and its martyrs in a silent stand on Kasr Al-Nil bridge which witnessed an epic battle between protesters and security forces.That small family is the family of Sabah "Um Ali" and her children Sara and Ali.I do not know the story of Um Ali but it seems that her family is well known to several prominent activists in Tahrir square.What I knew also that Ali is a young student from Al-Azhar university.I found out that Ali was only 12 years old boy speaking about why he came to Tahrir square in 2012.They were not alone in commemorating the #Jan28 alone in public without any fear.In Cairo, I found out that in the evening suddenly a young man appeared suddenly in downtown Cairo with a duct tape on his tape written on "Down with the military rule" and on his body duct tape written on it stuff related to the condoms incident of Malek and Shady.Ahmed Yehia saw the police arresting that young man.Here is a video of the young man who wrote the names of detainees like Mahinour El-Masry on his body.He was arrested 8.30 PM CLT Thursday.@11:09 PM : The young man's name is Karim Saad El-Dina and he was released thank goodness.By the way, he should not be arrested for breaking the protest law because he was alone.In Luxor, Upper Egypt an activist called Ahmed Hegazy reminded the people in the street that it is still January revolution from his wheeled chair.There is something definitely going this time.This reminds me that Sanaa Seif was not the only protester who reached to Tahrir square. On 25 January 2016, An old Pro-Morsi supporter went to Tahrir square and kept chanting anti-Sisi and anti-State security chants.Video clips show that she was attacked by the Pro-Sisi supporters in Tahrir square. Some news reports say that she was kicked from the square but she was actually arrested and was interrogated by the prosecution on the same day. She is accused of joining a terrorist group and incitement against police and army.According to the MB media, her name is Aisha and she lost her husband and son in the dispersal of Nahda.I have nothing to say more except Happy #Jan28 and glory to its martyrs and injured.
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Fighting flu starts with a shot, and it's time for Texans to get one
The two men found slain Sunday at a Snyder residence suffered "visible cuts and stab wounds" during what has been reported as a home invasion, according to Snyder Police Chief Terry Luecke.

Luecke on Thursday updated the Reporter-News on the investigation into the deaths of Joshua David Hoover, 25, of Snyder, and Benjamyn Leslee Bruns, 29, of Victoria, whose bodies were found at a home in the 2100 block of Avenue Z. At least one of the men had gunshot wounds, Luecke said.

Juan Barron, 24, of Arizona and Snyder resident Nicole Dabney, 28, have been charged with tampering with evidence in connection with the deaths.

The pair are suspected of having "moved and altered" some things, including the bodies, Luecke said. Police also discovered marijuana, one handgun and three knives at the scene, he said.

The investigation began shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday when police were dispatched to Avenue Z to investigate a report of a suspicious vehicle. Officers found a parked vehicle with its engine running, police said in a news release Monday.

At about 9:15 a.m., a man and woman entered the Law Enforcement Center and reported that two people had broken into their home on Avenue Z at about 4 a.m., according to the release.

The woman said "an assault had taken place at that location and two male subjects had been killed," according to police.

Luecke said Thursday that "a struggle ensued" after the alleged home invasion.

The men's bodies have been sent to Lubbock for autopsy.

In addition to the Snyder Police Department's investigation, led by Sgt. Mike Counts, Phil Vandygriff of the Texas Rangers is investigating the deaths.

Some residents have expressed concern about the incident, Luecke said.

"Snyder is a nice little (town). We don't particularly want this type of activity in town (but) you can't predict what people may or may not do," he said.

"I'm confident that this is still a safe place to raise your family."

Twitter: ARN_Titus
Hendrick Health System will return as an in-network provider for people insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas on March 1.

"We are pleased that Hendrick Health System will be participating in many BCBSTX networks in March, allowing our members to have more choices when accessing health care providers in the Greater Abilene area," Shara McClure, Vice President of Network Management, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, wrote in an email. "This new agreement is consistent with BCBSTX's commitment to providing quality, affordable coverage to Texans."

Hendrick officials have yet to make public comment.

Hendrick was dropped from the insurer's network at the end of June 2014 because the two could not agree on reimbursement rates.

The disagreement has been going on for about five years. Throughout the dispute, Hendrick consistently has argued that it only was seeking reimbursement equal to what hospitals of similar size were receiving, while Blue Cross consistently maintained that the hospital was requesting a 40 percent increase in reimbursement for the same volume of services and level of care.

Tim Lancaster, the hospital's chief executive officer, said in 2014 that the hospital last had received a rate increase in 2011, negotiated the year before.

The disagreement, and the failure to craft an agreement by the deadline, ultimately meant that Hendrick patients covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield faced higher out-of-pocket costs to receive care at the hospital and from physicians in the Hendrick Provider Network and the Hendrick Anesthesia Network.

In a 2014 news conference, Hendrick said the situation potentially could affect 10,000 families. Blue Cross Blue Shield officials later released statements saying there were 35,000 BCBSTX members in Taylor County, as many as 75,000 people if looking at the total area potentially served.

In the aftermath, some insurance customers, including the city of Abilene, switched to other providers to give their employees access to care through Hendrick.
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Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong on Friday handed down jail terms of up to five years to the "Guangzhou Three" rights activists for subversion, after they sought to launch a civil disobedience campaign to protect human rights.

The Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court sentenced former rights lawyer Tang Jingling to five years' imprisonment, while fellow activists Wang Qingying and Yuan Xinting were handed sentences of two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half years respectively.

All three had been found guilty of "incitement to subvert state power."

"I think that this sentence by the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party and the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court is an extreme error of judgment that nonetheless recognizes the contribution of Tang Jingling to the democracy movement in China," Tang's lawyer Ge Yongxi told RFA after the verdict and sentencing hearing.

"Tang Jingling has said that he won't be appealing, because he says the judicial system under the Chinese Communist Party has no legitimacy," Ge said. "He said he will appeal to the people of China, and to God, instead."

Tang's wife Wang Yanfang said she respects her husband's decision not to lodge an appeal.

"I respect his choice, because we all know that they are all [three of them] innocent, and the court and the prosecutors know that very well, and yet they still locked them all up for more than a year," Wang said.

"The trial itself wasn't legal; courts should be fair and reasonable places, but they aren't any more," she said. "So really it makes no difference whether they appeal or not; it's meaningless."

Wang said around 10 family members were allowed to attend the sentencing hearing.

Asked how her husband looked after more than a year of separation, she said: "He's much thinner."

Security was tight outside the court building, where a group of supporters tried to evade detention by police and security guards, activists said.

"There were a lot [of supporters]; I saw several dozen," an activist who gave only a nickname Kuang Ma told RFA.

"There were also a lot of police and police vehicles, and they were shooting video of the supporters," she said.

Pure political persecution

Rights activists slammed the verdict as a form of political persecution.

"This is pure political persecution," Guangdong rights activist Jia Pin told RFA. "These guys didn't do anything to break the law."

"And most of their activities were very moderate in nature, like civil disobedience actions to try to get Chinese society to be a bit more progressive, and to push China a bit closer to democracy," he said.

"They aren't just innocent; they also did a lot to help the citizens of this country, using very positive actions," Jia said.

According to the overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network, the courts decision "sends a clear and defiant message from the Xi [Jinping] government that it is determined to punish those exercising and defending human rights."

Tang, who was strip of his license to practice law by the authorities, was detained after he tried to launch a nonviolent civil disobedience movement along with fellow activists, earning him the nickname "China's Gandhi."

According to CHRD, Tang received a longer sentence than the others because of his position as the leader of the movement.

All three men had played a prominent role in press freedom protests centered on the Southern Weekend newspaper in early 2013, as well as taken part in commemorative activities for the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre the following year.

The police charge sheet for Tang mentioned his involvement in "civil disobedience movements," a commemoration of the death of Mao-era dissident Lin Zhao, and a June 4 meditation event.

Also mentioned was his part in a campaign to end China's "hukou" household registration system linking access to education and other public services to a person's town of birth.

Tortured in custody

Both Tang and Wang say they were tortured while initially detained at Baiyun District Detention Center in Guangzhou. All three men are currently being held in the Guangzhou No. 1 Detention Center.

"The verdict comes down amid President Xi Jinpings relentless persecution of human rights lawyers and many other figures in Chinas civil society," CHRD said in a statement on its website.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Beijing to overturn the convictions in a statement issued after the verdict and sentencing on Friday.

"The Chinese government needs to stop equating peaceful criticism with subversion if it is to make any progress towards respecting rights," HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement on the group's website.

"The prosecution of three rights activists on such dubious charges shows how far Beijing needs to go."

HRW said the case had also been marred by multiple procedural violations.

Richardson said the sentences dont bode well for more than a dozen human rights lawyers facing similar charges following a nationwide police operation targeting more than 300 rights lawyers and rights activists.

"The authorities should step in and end these prosecutions now," she said.

Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang have detained a pastor of a major Protestant church after he clashed with the authorities over the demolition of its cross, rights groups said.



Pastor Gu Yuese, also known as Joseph Gu, of the Chongyi Protestant Church in Zhejiang's capital Hangzhou, is incommunicado along with his wife, 10 days after being fired by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which groups churches sanctioned to practice by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



"The pastor was taken into custody [on Thursday] and placed under 'residential surveillance in a designated location,'" the U.S.-based Christian rights group ChinaAid said in a report on its website.



"Additionally, family members believe that the pastors wife, whom they have been unable to contact, was also taken into police custody," it said.



Family members and staff at the Chongyi Church received official notification of Gu's detention, but with no information about his location or that of his wife, Zhou Lianmei.



Major escalation



An employee who answered the phone at the Chongyi Church in Hangzhou on Friday said church members feel powerless to help Gu.



"There are all kinds of rumors flying around, but you need to pay attention to official statements coming out of Chongyi Church. Don't believe anything else," the employee said.



"We can't comment. All we can do is pray, because we don't know what the authorities are doing."



According to ChinaAid, Hangzhou police also searched the couple's home, and the group said it expects a formal arrest to follow.



"His arrest marks a major escalation in the crackdown against those who oppose the forced demolition of crosses, ChinaAid president Bob Fu said in a statement.



"He [is] the highest-ranking national church leader arrested since the Cultural Revolution," Fu said.



'It's complicated'



An official who answered the phone at the Three-Self Patriotic Association in Hangzhou denied that Gu had been criminally detained.



"He hasn't been criminally detained. Who told you that?" the official said. "He is just helping with an investigation, but we don't know any more than that."



A Protestant church member in Hangzhou told RFA that Gu was likely talking to police about "certain financial matters."



"It's complicated," the church member said. "We're not sure what it's about, and I'm not a church leader or a member of the association."



"I am hearing all kinds of rumors but I can't just comment randomly."



Calls to the Zhejiang provincial religious affairs bureau went unconnected during office hours on Friday.



Months-long campaign



A Zhejiang pastor who declined to be named said Gu's detention comes amid a months-long campaign by local authorities to demolish visible crosses from the roofs of churches in and around Wenzhou, known as "China's Jerusalem" because of its large Christian population.



"There are demolitions going on every day now," the pastor said. "They are saying that its because they are illegal structures, and there's nothing we can do about it for now."



"Our phones are all being monitored, and we are all very concerned," the pastor said. "They move in suddenly and we can't resist them, because Christianity preaches nonretaliation."



"This is all politics ... We have tried talking to the government, but they don't have any choice either, because they are under pressure from higher up."



Reported by Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.




Myanmars outgoing speaker of the lower house called the November elections which the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide a peoples victory during his farewell speech at the final session of the outgoing parliament on Friday.



Shwe Mann said he was unhappy about the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Partys (USDP) loss to the NLD in the Nov. 8 general elections, but indicated that the results reflected a triumph of the countrys citizens.



I was sorry that we lost the elections, but as I said before, the people won the elections, so that as one of the people, I also won the elections, he said. Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi also said that it was not a victory for her candidates, but just an election by the people. So, the people won the elections.



Shwe Mann also said he was responsible for arranging a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and 82-year-old former military dictator Than Shwe, who served as head of state from 1992 to 2011, last December in hopes that it would be beneficial to healing political rifts.



Aung San Suu Kyi also had one-on-one meetings with President Thein Sein, military commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and Shwe Mann, who was the first to sit down with her.



I believe [the meeting] paved way for a situation where these meetings would take place, he said.



Later at a press conference, Shwe Mann called Aung San Suu Kyi a visionary leader, when asked about the role that she would play in the new government.



The 70-year-old politician cannot become president because of a constitutional provision barring citizens with foreign spouses or children from seeking the office. Nevertheless, Aung San Suu Kyi has said that she will operate above the president, who will likely be another NLD politician.



Shwe Mann, a de facto ally of Aung San Suu Kyi, said he would consider any position that she might want him to fill in the NLD-led government.



The NLD government must share power with the military which controls a quarter of the seats in parliament and is responsible for leadership appointments at three key security ministries.



The military will remain involved in politics, although its main focus should be security and defense, Shwe Mann said. But when the military believes it should solely focus on the security and defense of the country, then I think it will withdraw from politics.



Myanmars powerful military ruled the nation for five decades before the military-backed USDP came to power in 2011 and began to liberalize politics and society.



Aung San Suu Kyi said that both friends and foes of the NLD could be beneficial to the new government during her farewell speech to outgoing lawmakers, who celebrated on Friday by singing farewell songs, performing ethnic minority dances, and eating a meal together in the grand hall at the parliament building in the capital Naypyidaw.



There is a proverb, she said. First, the greatest possession in the world is having a great friend. Second, the greatest possession is having a great enemy. I would say rivals rather than enemies for our democracy. These rivals or friends could help us sharpen our skills [for a democratic future].



Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Myanmars outgoing President Thein Sein plugged his accomplishments in office and pledged to help the new National League for Democracy government during his final speech to parliament on Thursday in the capital Naypyidaw, while opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi announced her partys nominations for key legislative positions.

Thein Sein, who will step down in late March, urged the countrys political parties to cooperate in the nations interest and outlined the achievements of his government, highlighting the political and economic changes that have taken place since his Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) took office in 2011.

The president stressed his efforts to forge a nationwide peace accord with the countrys armed ethnic groups, boost foreign investment, eliminate censorship, legalize trade unions and free political prisoners.

Even though there were difficulties and challenges, we were able to bring a democratic transformation eventually, he said. I tried everything in my power to balance what should be done and what could be done. Instead of commands and orders, I tried for active participation by the stakeholders.

Thein Sein, a former military officer, went on to say that Myanmar now has a more politically democratic culture following his five years in office.

More political forces with different ideologies can discuss their views and seek solutions through dialogue, he said. Theres no way to deny that we have a democratic political culture. More democratic practices have been nurtured among the people, and we have built stronger political institutions.

Controversial law

Thein Sein delivered his speech the same day as members of the National Assembly passed a controversial law granting former presidents immunity from prosecution for undefined acts committed while they held office. The move prompted a call from London-based Amnesty International to repeal or amend the law.

Current lawmakers, whose term of office ends Friday, will make way for a new legislature dominated by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which will convene Monday and select speakers of the two houses of parliament before electing a new president during the next few weeks.

Deputies in each house plus appointed military members of parliament (MPs) will each nominate a presidential candidate, and vote on the selections, with the winner becoming president and the other two the speakers.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who cannot become president because of a provision in the current constitution that prevents anyone with foreign-born spouses or children from seeking the nations highest office, has said she will occupy a position above the president.

The NLD, which swept general elections last November, has enough votes in parliament to see that its own president is voted in, but still will have to share power with military MPs who hold 25 percent of the legislatures seats.

The NLD will nominate Win Myint, a member of the partys Central Executive Committee, as lower house speaker, Ti Khun Myat, a sitting MP from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, as his deputy, Manh Win Khaing Than, an ethnic Karen MP, as chairman of the upper house and Aye Thar Aung from the Arakan National Party as his deputy, according to NLD spokesman Win Htein.

We are here for national reconciliation, so the stage is set for us to work for a better parliament, Ti Khun Myat said.

Those who were put forward for the positions had not been notified about their nominations in advance, Aye Thar Aung said.

A questionable nomination

Some observers, however, are questioning the nomination of Ti Khun Myat, who has been accused in reports by local media of being involved in the illegal drug trade and having ties to a government-allied militia in his constituency of Kutkai in eastern Myanmars Shan state.

Thar Phone Kyaw, general secretary of the Taang National Liberation Army, said when Ti Khun Myat served in the local Peoples Militia, his troops were involved in producing narcotic drugs for about a decade.

They distributed the drugs in our area, he said. They were a formidable force, and they persuaded and forced the local [ethnic] Taang/Palaung farmers to join in their work and paid them to produce opium.

They made a fortune from drug production, he said. In the western Kutkai region, they had militia camps, and we raided some and seized a lot of arms and opium.

Thar Phone Kyaw speculated that the selection of Ti Khun Myat was the result of the NLDs give-and-take arrangement with Myanmars military, given its power in the National Assembly, or a stunt to create problems for the new government.

This could be a trick by the military to cause problems [because] its quite a risk that the NLD had to take, he said. Theres no way Aung San Suu Kyi or the NLD couldnt have known that Ti Khun Myat was a drug lord.

Khun Sai, former editor-in-chief of the local daily newspaper Shan Herald, said some of his friends had warned him about Ti Khun Myats involvement in illegal activities.

I couldnt believe he was directly involved in the production of narcotic drugs, he told RFA. But we always had information about his followers involvement in drug production. It would be difficult for him to deny that he didnt know what his followers had been doing.

But Khun Sai also pointed out that the MP served had already served as a USDP lawmaker on the Legislative Bills Committee and could be a useful asset for NLD leaders who are striving for national reconciliation.

Challenges remain

While the NLD announced its nominations for key positions in the National Assembly, Shwe Mann, speaker of the outgoing parliament, told lawmakers in the lower house on Thursday that challenges remain for the legislature regarding the implementation of laws it has adopted.

He also said that legislative sessions under the NLD-led government should do a better job of focusing on the interests of the people.

Lawmakers from the countrys various ethnic groups, who also addressed their fellow MPs, stressed the need for further democratic reform and nationwide peace.

Ba Shin, a lawmaker from the Arakan National Party of western Myanmars restive Rakhine state, said it was important to seek peace and form a federal union.

Ye Tun, a lawmaker from Shan National Democratic Party, noted that the new government and people must implement the good laws passed by parliament and realize the countrys democratic goals.



Reported by Tin Aung Khine, Win Ko Ko Lat, Myo Thant Khaing, Hpone Myat and Thiri Min Zin for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane and Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
In a display of cooperation across ethnic lines, Tibetan and Muslim students and their parents came together this week in a public protest to demand better funding for the education of minority groups in northwestern Chinas Qinghai province, Tibetan sources said.



Gathering on Jan. 24 outside government offices in the provincial capital Xining, protesters called especially for an investigation into the activities of the education department head of the Bayan Khar (in Chinese, Hualong) Hui Autonomous County in Qinghais Tsoshar (Haidong) prefecture, a local source told RFAs Tibetan Service.



The protesters were parents and students of Tibetan and Muslim origin belonging to a local school called the Gangjong School, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



They are demanding the right to equal education opportunities as granted by the [ruling Chinese] Communist Party and the government, the source said.



Photos of the protest circulating on social media sites showed protesters carrying a banner reading, We protest against the head of the [county] education department, Ma Trinlung, for suppressing the right to minority education in poverty-stricken areas and for blocking implementation of the nationalities education policy.



Under Mas administration, the standard of spoken and written Tibetan has dramatically declined in each village of Palung county, RFAs source said, using another name for Bayan.



Funds withheld



Founded in 2005 with help from local businesses, the Gangjong School teaches classes to Tibetan and Muslim students in nearby areas, giving instruction in the Tibetan, Chinese, and English languages, among other subjects, Tibetan sources said in postings on social media.



And though Chinas central government later agreed to provide additional support and facilities, the county education department has withheld and misappropriated the promised funds, also belittling the teaching of Tibetan in the school, sources said.



School authorities have gone to Xining many times to appeal, but without success, one source said, adding, So now the parents and students of the Gangjong School have staged a sit-in protest, urging an investigation by higher-ups in the government.



Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to reassert national identity in recent years, with Chinese authorities frequently giving preference to instruction in Mandarin Chinese and closing Tibetan language classes taught outside the state-controlled education system.



Reported by Kunsang Tenzin, Dolkar, and Sonam Lhamo for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.




Russia's Investigative Committee says its probe into the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has been completed.

Vladimir Markin, a committee spokesman, said on January 29 that five detained suspects from Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya had been charged with "committing the contract killing" of Nemtsov as he was walking outside the Kremlin on February 27, 2015.

The suspected mastermind of the killing, Ruslan Mukhudinov, a member of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrovs security forces, remains at large, according to Markin.

On January 21, Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin announced that Nemtsov's murder had been fully solved.

But Nemtsov's daughter, Zhanna Nemtsova, rejected Bastrykin's conclusions, accusing the Investigative Committee of not being "interested in fully solving" the case.

Nemtsov's relatives and lawyers have expressed skepticism about the probe, insisting the killing must have been ordered by high-ranking Russian officials.

Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS


The credit ranging agency Standard and Poor's has downgraded Azerbaijans debt rating by one notch to BB+ in a warning to potential investors that Azerbaijans government bonds are considered speculative "junk."

The ratings agency says it now expects Azerbaijans economy to contract during 2016, despite a devaluation of the currency.

The downgrade, which will make it more expensive for the government in Baku to borrow money by issuing bonds, comes as Azerbaijans economy continues to suffer from falling global oil prices and as the central bank's foreign-currency reserves are dwindling.

Standard and Poor's warned that Azerbaijan depends too much on oil prices, adding that "external risks are increasing, with the central banks foreign-currency reserves declining by two-thirds from their mid-2014 peak."

Azerbaijans currency, the manat, has lost half of its value against the U.S. dollar since January 2015 and about one-third of its value since December 2015.

On January 19, parliament approved a central bank plan aimed at propping up the troubled manat.

The countrys economic problems have led to rare protests recently over worsening economic issues, including the price of bread.

Based on reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg.com, and RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service
Be Like Bill has made its way to Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus -- albeit in adapted form.

The viral meme, typically a black-and-white image of a stick figure named Bill that features a piece of advice, has been characterized by Time magazine as "a way for people to passive-aggressively call out social media behaviors that annoy them."

But one of the first such images to emerge in the Russian-language Twittersphere was that of Peter the Great.

The tsar, who ruled Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries, is known for his forceful -- and sometimes brutal -- adoption of European customs and traditions in Russia.

This meme attempts to compare Peter's appreciation of the West with Russia's current attitude toward Europe.

"This is Peter," reads the caption. "He didn't consider Europe to be a region of Sodom, but went there to learn how to build boats and cities, invited German and Dutch engineers to improve Russia. Peter is smart. Be like Peter."

In Belarus, the meme was deployed to support Paval Dabravolski, a journalist who this week was beaten by police in a Minsk court where he was covering a trial of opposition activists.

The meme features Dabravolski's photograph and reads: "This is Paval. Paval knows that it is dangerous to work as a journalist in Belarus. But he follows the activists and films everything, because a journalist must show the truth. Paval is brave. Be like Paval."

In Ukraine, political parties have embraced the Be Like Bill meme. Fatherland, the party headed by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, used an altered version of the image to push its agenda: "This is Yulia. Yulia understands that this government is leading Ukraine to catastrophe. Yulia demands the resignation of the Cabinet of Ministers. Yulia is smart. Be like Yulia."

At the same time, Ukraine's General Staff appropriated the meme to fight the spread of fake information online.

"This is Mykola," reads the caption. "Mykola read about another betrayal on the Internet. Mykola doesn't repost. He sees that the source is dubious, the information can't be confirmed, and the website isn't well-known. Mykola knows about the information war. Mykola is smart. Be like Mykola."

Another Be Like Bill meme is a sarcastic tribute to Anatoliy Vasserman, a controversial pro-Russian journalist from Ukraine who received Russian citizenship from President Vladimir Putin on January 27.

"This is Anatoliy," the caption reads. "Anatoliy doesn't like Ukraine and considers it to be a misunderstanding. Anatoliy doesn't want to live in Gayrope [a derogatory reference to support for gay rights in Europe] with the junta. Anatoliy likes the Russian world. Anatoliy didn't invite Putin to Ukraine, but moved to Russia and received citizenship. Anatoliy is smart. Be like Anatoliy."
German authorities say a claim of rape by a 13-year-old girl from a Russian immigrant family in Berlin that had caused tensions between Russia and Germany was fabricated.

The girl, who disappeared on January 11 before reappearing the next day, had told police she was kidnapped and raped by what her family said were Middle East migrants.

"It was clear to us from the start that the rape story, as she recounted it to us, could not have been true," Martin Steltner, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Berlin, told RFE/RL.

Steltner said data from the girl's mobile phone showed she had spent the night of her disappearance at the home of a 19-year-old male friend, in an apparent attempt to avoid conflict with her parents over what Steltner described as "school problems."

"We questioned him. We also found some of her belongings there," he said.

Prosecutors found no evidence of sexual crimes.

No charges were lodged against the man, who is now acting as a witness in the ongoing investigation.

Migrant Claims

The case has added to tension between Germany and Russia, whose ties have been strained by Moscow's takeover of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists in a war in eastern Ukraine.

It triggered widespread outrage in Russia after the country's most watched television network, state-run Channel One, gave the rape allegation prominent place in a January 16 report by its Berlin correspondent, Ivan Blagoy.

Blagoy's report quoted the girl's relatives as saying that police had refused to launch criminal proceedings in an attempt to cover up the case, and had pressured the girl to say the sex was consensual.

One of the alleged assailants "barely spoke German," Blagoy quoted the girl's aunt as saying.

The case came to light weeks after authorities in another German city, Cologne, were criticized for what was widely seen as a slow response to a spate of sexual assaults and robberies of women allegedly carried out by Middle Eastern and North African men on New Year's Eve.

In the aftermath of Blagoy's report, Russian immigrant communities in Berlin and other German cities organized rallies to voice their anger. On January 23, some 700 people protested in front of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office, holding banners that read "Our children are in danger" and "Today my child, tomorrow yours."

Kremlin Pressure

The Russian government also began to press the German authorities on the case as the investigation continued.

At a high-profile annual press conference on January 26, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that "the girl certainly did not voluntarily disappear for 30 hours" and called for "truth and justice."

He said he hoped the German authorities would not "attempt to cover up the reality for some domestic, politically correct reason."

His comments prompted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman to warn Moscow not to politicize the case. Lavrov responded by urging the German authorities to disclose all the details of its investigation into the girl's claims.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on January 29 that confusion about the case could have been avoided if German authorities had been more forthcoming about the investigation.

"I would like to say that the situation has been very complicated since the very beginning," Zakharova was quoted by state-run Russian news agency TASS as saying. "We learned about this situation not from our German colleagues, but thanks to the media."

She added that Lavrov and Steinmeier planned to discuss the matter in a telephone call on January 29.

In a short statement issued later in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry did not indicate that the two men discussed the case during the call, which focused on Ukraine and Syria peace efforts.

Berlin's state interior minister, Frank Henkel, praised local authorities for what he called the professionalism with which they handled the investigation amid the media firestorm.

"The new developments clearly expose the propaganda that was linked to this case in the past few days," Henkel said in a January 29 statement.

Henkel added that Germany was a "state based on the rule of law" and that no "political pressure from abroad" would change its "constitutional principles."

Steltner of the Berlin prosecutor's office told RFE/RL earlier this week that two men were under investigation for possible past sexual contact with the girl, which under German law can be prosecuted as child abuse since she is under 14.

Steltner said neither man was a recent migrant; one is a German citizen and the other, a long-term resident, has a Turkish passport.

That investigation is ongoing, Steltner said on January 29.

With reporting by Claire Bigg, dpa, TASS, RIA Novosti, Focus.de, Interfax, AFP, and Reuters
One day after Sweden disclosed plans to deport up to 80,000 migrants, a senior official said Finland expects to expel nearly 20,000 migrants out of the 32,000 who sought asylum there last year.

Interior Ministry Secretary Paivi Nerg said the Nordic nation expects to reject the asylum applications of nearly two-thirds of those who applied in 2015, compared with a 56 percent rejection rate in 2014.

"In previous years around 60 percent [of applicants] received a negative decision but now we have somewhat tightened our criteria for Iraqis, Afghans, and Somalis," she told AFP.

In 2015, Finland made it more difficult for migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia to get asylum, concluding that the security situation had eased in those countries.

About 20,000 of Finland's asylum-seekers in 2015 came from Iraq.

Nerg said two charter flights to deport Iraqis are planned within months. She said the deportations will take place gradually, as immigration authorities process applications.

The ministry will set up separate transit centers for those who leave voluntarily and those who must be forced out, she said.

About 4,000 asylum seekers have already withdrawn their applications, she said.

Swedish officials told Swedish media on January 27 that they expect to deport up to half of last year's record 163,000 asylum seekers. Many of those expulsions also will be forced by the authorities, although they are seeking voluntary compliance.

Finland is currently in negotiations with neighboring Russia to stop migrants from entering Finland via the Arctic region.

After Norway barred migrants from entering the country on its Arctic border crossing with Russia in December, the flow of migrants turned toward Finland.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP
Iranian state TV says the Islamic republic flew a surveillance drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier during a naval exercise.

The report on January 29 said the drone took pictures of the vessel, but did not elaborate.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet, which oversees the Persian Gulf from Bahrain.

The nuclear-powered USS Harry S. Truman is in the Gulf supporting operations against the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

Iran began a naval drill earlier this week over a 3-million-square-kilometer area including parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, and the Indian Ocean.

On January 27, Iran said its navy warned a U.S. warship to leave an area of the naval drill. The U.S. Navy denied being affected.

The warning was the first such incident since 10 U.S. sailors were briefly captured by Iran on January 13 after drifting into Iranian territorial waters.

On January 28, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he was very, very angry that Iran had videotaped the U.S. sailors surrendering.

Based on reporting by AP


The Kremlin has described as outrageous and insulting comments by U.S. officials alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin is corrupt.

A White House spokesman said on January 28 that earlier remarks by a U.S. Treasury Department official alleging Putin is corrupt were a reflection of the administration's view.

"This statement is outrageous and insulting," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call on January 29 with journalists, referring to the White House comment.

"In general, we see that overseas they have started preparing for Russia's presidential election, which is still more than two years away," Peskov said.

"It is clear that negative stuff is being accumulated to be used against the head of our state...to exert pressure and influence the course of the future election campaign."

Adam Szubin, the U.S. Treasurys acting secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, said in an interview with BBC Panorama on January 26 that Putin is a picture of corruption -- secretly wealthy, corrupt, and focused on enriching his friends and political allies.

Based on reporting by TASS, Interfax, and Reuters
More than 70,000 signatures had been gathered by January 28 on a petition launched by Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai that urges a Syria donors conference to give millions of dollars to educational purposes.

The online petition is addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama.

It calls for world leaders to commit to $1.4 billion at the London conference on February 4 in order to make sure all Syrian children affected by the conflict get an education.

Britain, Germany, and Norway are co-hosting the conference along with the United Nations and Kuwait.

They will discuss how to help 13.5 million people who are vulnerable or have been displaced inside Syria, as well as 4.2 million people who have fled to neighboring countries like Jordan and Lebanon.

British Prime Minister David Camerons office says participating countries will be asked to double the amount of money they are contributing to alleviate the humanitarian crisis.

In 2015, UN agencies asked for $8.4 billion from governments around the world but received only $3.3 billion.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters


Moldova's embattled ruling coalition says it will soon call for a referendum on direct presidential elections, a moderate concession to demonstrators who have held several large antigovernment protests over the past week.

But the coalition rejected a more central demand for early parliamentary elections, and a key protest leader immediately dismissed the referendum proposal as "way too little."

The informal compromise offer appeared aimed at relieving pressure from a loose alliance of pro-Russian and pro-European parties that are calling for the brand-new government's resignation and new parliamentary polls in the small, poor former Soviet republic.

Parliament speaker Andrian Candu told a news conference on January 29 in Chisinau that lawmakers will discuss calling the referendum as soon as the legislature reconvenes on February 1.

"We will propose organizing such a referendum during our first session," Candu said.

Moldova's president has been elected by Parliament since 2001, a decade after the Soviet breakup.

Moldovans and politicians across the spectrum have voiced frustration with the slow and complicated procedure, which has repeatedly brought political life to a standstill.

Protesters accuse Prime Minister Pavel Filip's new government and the parliamentary majority, which favors closer integration with Europe, of being deeply corrupt.

One of their demands has been for a referendum that would introduce direct presidential elections while also reducing the number of seats in parliament from 101 to 71 and strip lawmakers targeted by criminal investigations of immunity.

Socialist Party (PSRM) chief Igor Dodon, one of the three opposition leaders, said the coalition's proposal for a referendum did not go far enough, and vowed to continue protests.

"This is way too little," Dodon said on his Facebook page. "We must keep up the pressure until Parliament is dissolved and early elections are called."

Opinion polls say snap elections would heavily favor two pro-Russian parties -- Dodon's PSRM and Renato Usatii's Our Party (PN), which together could expect to garner some 32 percent of the vote.

Dodon and Usatii have emerged as leaders of the current protests together with Andrei Nastase, the leader of Truth and Dignity (DA), a pro-European party.

They accuse the parliamentary majority and Filip's government of being corrupt and under the control of local tycoon Vlad Plahotniuc.

Lawmakers approved Filip's cabinet during a lightning-fast session last week in an effort to end a three-month-old government hiatus, but their hurry and apparent disregard for procedure sparked angry demonstrations.

Protesters broke into the Parliament building shortly and clashed with riot police before being chased out.

Protests grew over the weekend, with some 15,000 attending a rally in Chisinau on January 24, but seemed to have lost steam in recent days.

One of the reasons may be the criticism vented at pro-European Nastase's joining forces with pro-Russian politicians who want to replace closer EU integration with an economic union with Russia.

The protest leaders offered no common reply to speaker Candu's announcement while attending a larger civic forum held in Chisinau on January 29 to discuss the crisis.

It was not immediately clear whether new protests would be called during the weekend.

The protest leaders only maintained a united front in calling for the arrest and prosecution of billionaire Plahotniuc, a former legislator said to control the ruling Democratic Party, the judiciary, and a private media empire.

Plahotniuc has been a main target of public ire since a massive banking-fraud scandal in 2014 shook Moldova -- one of Europe's poorest countries -- and was at the origins of the current crisis.

RFE/RL's Molodvan Service in Chisinau contributed to this report
Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced martial law in four of Ukraine's regions, parts of which are under the control of Russian troops, as Ukrainian forces continue liberating occupied territories in the country's east despite another barrage of air attacks across the country.

Putin said at an online session of the Security Council on October 19 that he signed a decree declaring martial law in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya -- all of which Russia illegally annexed last month.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

He didnt immediately describe the steps that would be taken under martial law but said his order was effective starting at midnight on October 20. His decree gives law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals.

The package of moves, which come nearly eight months into the war launched by the Kremlin in late February, marked the latest escalation by Putin to counter a series of defeats to Ukrainian forces since the start of September.

By extending the decree to regions beyond Ukraine, the move ensures that more Russians, already angered by a military mobilization announced last month, will more deeply feel the consequences of the war in their own lives.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office's head, called Putin's move "a pseudo-legalization of looting of Ukrainians' property."

"This does not change anything for Ukraine: We continue the liberation and deoccupation of our territories," Podolyak tweeted shortly after Putin announced martial law in the four Ukrainian regions.

U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House, said Putin is trying to get Ukraine to give up.

"I think that Vladimir Putin finds himself in an incredible difficult position and what it reflects to me is it seems his only tool available to him is to brutalize the individual citizens in Ukraineto try to intimidate them into capitulating. They are not going to do that," Biden said.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said earlier the declaration of martial law was a desperate tactic and any claim by Russia over the regions was "illegitimate."

Putin's move came as the Russia-installed leader of Ukraine's southern Kherson region said the evacuation has started of tens of thousands of civilians and Moscow-appointed officials in the face of a Ukrainian military advance.

Vladimir Saldo said 50,000-60,000 civilians would leave four towns on the west bank of the Dnieper River in an "organized, gradual displacement" over the next five or six days.

All of the Moscow-installed administration in the city of Kherson would evacuate, too, Saldo said.

Russian television showed footage of a number of people queuing for boats on the Dnieper River bank although it was not immediately clear how many were leaving. The forced transfer or deportation of the civilian population by an occupying power from the territory under its control is considered a war crime.

Saldo's statements came after General Sergei Surovikin, the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, said the situation in the southern city of Kherson is "difficult" and residents facing Ukrainian bombardment are to be evacuated.

WATCH: Ukrainian forces first got their hands on FH70 155-millimeter howitzers courtesy of Italy in May and received training in Estonia. RFE/RL journalists met with a frontline FH70 crew and watched them in action against Russian forces.

"The Russian Army will above all ensure the safe evacuation of the population" of Kherson, Surovikin said.

But Kyiv on October 19 accused Russia of staging a propaganda show in an attempt to "scare" the Kherson residents.

"Russians are trying to scare the people of Kherson with fake messages about the shelling of the city by our army and are also staging a propaganda show with evacuation," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram.

Kherson was the first big city to fall to the Russian forces in February after the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion, but Ukrainian forces have been steadily retaking nearby territory in recent weeks.

They have pushed as far as 30 kilometers south along the Dnieper River, threatening to trap Russian troops.

Meanwhile, fresh explosions were heard in Kyiv and other areas on October 19, with a missile strike hitting a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine.

The coal-fired Burshtyn plant in the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, which supplies electricity to three western regions and to five million consumers, was hit and on fire, according to Svytlana Onysshchuk, the regional governor. There were no casualties in the strike at the plant, which was hit by four missiles nine days earlier as well.

Serhiy Borzov, governor of the Vinnytsya region in western Ukraine, said Russia had also carried out attacks on energy facilities in his region. Russian bombardment also cut power and water in some parts of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhya region on October 19, said Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the southern city located near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant that's been a flashpoint of the nearly eight-month conflict.

A power plant in Kryviy Rih, a city in south-central Ukraine, was also seriously damaged by Russian shelling, leaving villages, towns, and a city district without electricity, the regional governor reported.

Russian forces also targeted Ukraine's southern Mykolayiv region again with kamikaze drones early on October 19.



The Ukrainian military's southern command said in a statement on October 19 that its forces shot down 12 drones overnight.

More than a week of air attacks has destroyed almost one-third of Ukraine's power stations and cut electricity in more than 1,000 settlements.

With Ukraine gaining momentum in the war that is now nearly eight months old, European lawmakers on October 19 recognized the country's "brave" citizens by awarding them the 2022 Sakharov Prize.

"This award is for those Ukrainians fighting on the ground. For those who have been forced to flee. For those who have lost relatives and friends. For all those who stand up and fight for what they believe in. I know that the brave people of Ukraine will not give up and neither will we," European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said in the statement.

The annual prize is named after the Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov and was established in 1988 by the European parliament to honor individuals and organizations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
A Russian fighter jet flew close to a U.S. Air Force spy plane "in an unsafe and unprofessional manner" over the Black Sea on January 25, a U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman said.

The Pentagon is investigating the incident, which took place in international airspace, Lieutenant Colonel Michelle L. Baldanza said on January 28.

The Washington Free Beacon daily, quoting anonymous U.S. defense officials, said the Russian SU-27 fighter jet "came within 20 feet" of a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft, an electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft, and flew alongside the U.S. plane before performing an "aggressive banking turn away" that "disturbed the controllability" of the American plane.

Separately, the Pentagon held a video conference on January 28 with Russian military officials to discuss flight safety over Syria "to avoid accidents and unintended confrontation between coalition and Russian forces whenever the two sides operate in close proximity," according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook.

He did not mention the intercept over the Black Sea.

Based on reporting by Fox News, Washington Free Beacon, and TASS
The international community should thank Russia for forcefully seizing Crimea. The United States seeks the dismemberment of Russia so it can take over its natural resources. And European leaders take their orders from Washington.

These are just a few of the comments Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev made this week in an interview with the mass-circulation tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets.

And Patrushev, it is worth noting, is one of Vladimir Putin's closest confidants.

It's tempting to dismiss the nuttier statements of Kremlin officials as disingenuous and largely designed for domestic consumption.

But a recent report by veteran Kremlin-watcher James Sherr of Chatham House suggests that top Russian officials actually believe much of their own hype.

On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, I'm joined by Sherr and Moscow-based foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov, a columnist at Slon.ru, to discuss how Moscow's world view is driving policy.

Also on the Podcast, James, Vladimir and I look at the current state of play in the diplomacy surrounding the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Enjoy...

Listen to or download the podcast above or subscribe to The Power Vertical Podcast on iTunes.
Representatives of the five Caspian Sea littoral states -- Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan -- finished up their most recent meeting on January 29.

The gathering appeared to be the typical "going nowhere" event, but this time Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Turkmenistan at the same time the special working group was conducting a meeting at the deputy foreign ministers' level. Adding to such suspense as there was, Iran is about to reemerge on world markets and this fact must have altered the routine discussions of the special working group to some extent.

Reports about the January 28 portion of the deputy foreign ministers' meeting seemed to indicate it was business as usual.

My favorite part was the line in nearly every report that the "heads of the delegations expressed the positions of their states regarding the legal status of the Caspian Sea."

Representatives of the five countries have been meeting on the topic for some 20 years. This was the 43rd session of the special working group. It is difficult to believe the positions of the countries are not well-known by this point.

The big issue, as the case has been for more than two decades, is: What is the legal status of the Caspian? If it is a sea, then all five countries map out their territorial waters and exploit the resources as they see fit. If the Caspian is designated as a lake, the so-called condominium approach would be in effect, meaning all the resources of the Caspian, and profits from those resources, would be split equally among the five countries.

In fact, all five have already been developing sites in what would be their territorial waters. The real point of disagreement is over major bilateral projects such as the proposed Trans-Caspian Pipeline (TCP) that would involve shipping Turkmen gas across the bottom of the Caspian to Azerbaijan and then to points farther west.

Turkmen state media (essentially the only kind of media Turkmenistan has) reported the positions of the five countries grew closer during this latest working group session, but that is pretty much what they say every time they meet.

Absent from reports was any mention of whether Iran's position on the Caspian has changed. With some sanctions being lifted on the Islamic republic in connection with Tehran's agreement with world powers on a landmark nuclear deal, Iran is preparing to resume sales of oil and gas on world markets. It is not yet clear what influence that might have on Tehran's position regarding the status of the Caspian Sea, though it is likely Iran will continue to oppose the construction of the TCP, which now more than ever is a competitor project to Iran's own sales of gas.

Russian-Turkmen Tensions

Still, Iran might alter its position on the Caspian if there is any chance that would help draw investors to help develop the Iranian sector. It is also possible that, if Iran successfully reenters the global oil and gas market using other export routes, Tehran might not care so much about affairs in the Caspian Sea.

The presence of Lavrov in Ashgabat while the special working group was meeting there as well seems more than a coincidence, though officially Lavrov was in Turkmenistan to open the new Russian Embassy building.

Russian-Turkmen ties, rarely good, are currently worse than usual due to several issues, the status of the Caspian Sea and Turkmen gas exports among them.

Turkmen and Russian media noted that the status of the Caspian was a topic of discussion when Lavrov met with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.

While Lavrov said the approaches of Russia and Turkmenistan to the status of the Caspian were "close," he offered no details; and it is difficult to see how that is possible. Berdymukhammedov mentioned, as he almost always does during visits by foreign officials, the need for the diversification of energy export routes, particularly from the Caspian region as a means of ensuring global energy security.

Lavrov did not comment directly on that statement, but the Russian foreign minister did mention the possibility of Turkmenistan opening up a transport route with Russia. Berdymukhammedov said the idea had "potential," neglecting to point out there already was a transport route between the two countries that has almost completely closed as ties between Moscow and Ashgabat worsened.

Lavrov also met with Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov, but reports of that meeting -- and of Lavrov's meeting with Berdymukhammedov -- made no mention of Russia's decision to drastically cut imports of Turkmen gas last year and totally cut those imports this year. Turkmenistan's Foreign Ministry has released a series of angry statements about Russia's decision to decrease, then cut, Turkmen gas imports, but the issue seems to have been strategically omitted during Lavrov's visit.


The Washington Post newspaper celebrated the release of its Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian from prison at a ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Rezaian was released from a Tehran jail as part of a prisoner swap last week. He says his Iranian interrogators told him during his 18-month detention that the U.S. government wouldn't "lift a finger" for his release.

But Kerry was working behind the scenes to secure his release along with four other Americans held by Tehran -- winning Rezaian's tearful thanks.

Kerry told dignitaries attending the event in the Post's new headquarters on January 28 that Rezaian's detention weighed heavily on U.S. officials.

"This gnawed at us, because we sensed the wrongfulness and we knew that Jason and others were living the consequences," he said.

After embracing Rezaian, Kerry cited the military, saying that you "never leave a buddy behind."

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
Russia for the first time publicly embraced talking to the OPEC oil cartel about jointly cutting global oil production by up to 5 percent to prop up collapsing oil prices.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on January 28 in St. Petersburg that he is ready for such talks, sending oil prices soaring by as much as 8 percent to $36 a barrel in London trading and buoying stocks on exchanges from New York to Shanghai.

"OPEC countries are currently trying to convene a meeting with the participation of member countries and nonmembers in February," Novak said. "The question is being studied by different nations. From our side, we have confirmed the possibility of our participation."

Novak's remarks follow comments from Russian oil executives earlier this week advocating working with OPEC to try to reduce the glut of oil in world markets and bolster prices.

Novak's public endorsement of cooperation with the oil cartel marks a reversal for Russia, which has previously shunned invitations to coordinate with OPEC. The Kremlin has previously argued that it is futile to try to counter entrenched economic trends like the current oil downturn.

According to Bloomberg News, OPEC delegates said they have no meeting planned with Russia.

In Washington, a White House spokesman said the move was a sign of Russia's economic desperation and "weakness."

The Russian ruble recently hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar while its economy by all accounts remains mired in a long recession that started with the plunge in oil prices in 2014.

The economic woes are even more acute in Azerbaijan, which has seen street protests amid the fallout from oil prices that are down by nearly 75 percent from $115 in 2014.

But cutting production also would bring pain, as it would cut into export sales and government revenues in Russia and most other oil-producing countries. For Russia, the world's top producer, a 5 percent output cut would reduce sales by around 500,000 barrels a day.

The loss of revenues from plunging prices is what prompted Russia and other producers to go flat out on production last year, with Russian output reaching an average of 10.73 million barrels per day, the highest level since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

While skepticism still abounds that oil producers who are getting increasingly desperate for sales and revenues will agree to cut production, analysts took Novak's comments as a sign that the possibility is being seriously considered.

"You have to take this seriously now. The key will be if Russia can deliver," Gary Ross, a veteran OPEC watcher and founder of U.S.-based Pira energy group, told Reuters.

"Unconfirmed reports that Saudi Arabia has offered to cut oil output by up to 5 percent if Russia does the same should be taken seriously, if only because the two countries each produce around 10 million barrels per day. This represents almost 20 percent of global supply," Julian Jessop, head of commodities research at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa
KHUJAND, Tajikistan -- Hundreds of people in Tajikistan are facing fines or even possible jail time for illegal hard-currency exchanges.

The regional prosecutor in the northern region of Sughd said 73 local residents are facing serious criminal charges that could result in lengthy prison sentences.

The prosecutor, Habibullo Vohidov, added a further 253 people were facing lesser charges likely to result in fines or even up to 15 days in jail.

Vohidov said all had violated the countrys hard-currency exchange laws, but he did not disclose any further details.

Vohidov's statement on January 29 comes three days after the head of Tajikistan's National Bank, Jamshed Nurmuhammadzoda, announced that legislation was being considered to introduce jail terms of up to nine years for unauthorized hard-currency exchanges.

Nurmuhammadzoda added that any hard-currency exchanges outside of banks or official financial institutions were illegal.

In December, Tajik authorities shut down all independent currency exchange booths operating across the country, citing the dropping value of the Tajik currency, the somoni.
Georgian UN peacekeepers are among those accused of sexually abusing children in Africa.

The United Nations said allegations have emerged that peacekeepers from Georgia, as well as France and another unnamed country, sexually abused children while deployed in the Central African Republic.

In a statement on January 29, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein said the "extremely serious accusations" needed to be investigated "thoroughly and urgently."

The UN said the alleged crimes, including rapes, mostly committed in 2014, only came to light in recent weeks.

The national authorities concerned, as well as the European Union, the UN added, have been informed and are investigating.

Some 150 Georgian soldiers were deployed in the African nation between February 2014 to March 2015.

Georgia's Defense Ministry said it received the allegations "with great concern," adding that "it is our goal to investigate this matter in great detail and in case such grave crimes are proven, perpetrators of such crimes will be brought to justice."

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
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Throughout Virginia, there are more than 393,000 children under age 6 with working parents. Another 489,000 children between the ages of 6 and 12 have working parents. Every week, many of these children are in some type of child care setting.

Parents want their children to be safe in child care. Particularly for our youngest children and babies, who cannot tell their parents about any safety concerns, it is critical that our public laws promote the safety of children in child care.

Currently, there are 15 bills related to child care pending before the General Assembly (six in the House and nine in the Senate). It is critical that the legislature review these bills and support those measures designed to better meet the needs of children and working parents.

Safety begins with a background check for child care providers so that those with a history of criminal offenses are not in the business of providing child care. Last year the Virginia General Assembly passed a law that requires a fingerprint check for licensed providers and those who are unlicensed who care for children receiving a child care subsidy (effective in 2017). Federal law requires fingerprint checks for all licensed, regulated, and registered providers, which means the fingerprint legislation passed last year is out of compliance. If the law is not fixed, Virginia stands to lose $5 million annually through a reduction in federal child care funds. Aside from the hefty federal penalty, theres an even more important reason to support a uniform background check for child care providers  to promote the safety of children. We urge the General Assembly to support HB500 by Del. Eileen Filler-Corn and SB601 by Sen. Jennifer Wexton, which conform Virginias child care background checks with federal requirements. A fingerprint check is the most effective means to screen out those who may be a risk to children. The Virginia General Assembly should want no less.

Even with fingerprint background checks, there are other areas of concern for childrens safety; current law in Virginia includes 14 categories of child care that are license-exempt. What this means is that many of these categories of care are exempt from health and safety protections for children and have very little or no oversight.

Parents assume that center-based care is subject to licensing. However, some of these exemptions mean that many center-based programs operate outside the licensing system with no minimum training requirements, and no occasional inspection by an outside entity to ensure that children are safe. We urge the General Assembly to support Filler-Corns HB474, and SJ63 by Sen. Emmett Hanger, which would require a review of all 14 categories of license-exempt care and make recommendations to promote childrens safety if appropriate. Many of the 14 exemptions have been in Virginia code for more than 20 years  and no license exemption should occur in Virginias code without periodic review, particularly those exemptions that could potentially endanger the lives of children.

In 2014, Virginia lost three innocent babies in illegally operating child care; as a result, the General Assembly approved legislation in 2015 to create a task force to review criminal and civil penalties applicable to child care providers who circumvent the law. Among the task force recommendations was one to impose a felony charge against child care providers who circumvent the law (i.e., caring for more children than they should without a license) and whose negligence results in the death or serious injury of a child. Current Virginia law allows only for a misdemeanor charge carrying a $2,500 fine for a licensing violation. When a child dies or is seriously injured, and the provider has circumvented the law and acted negligently, a felony should apply. Hopefully, this will be a deterrent for providers to operate illegally. We urge the General Assembly to support SB419 by Sen. Jill Vogel and HB1189 by Del. Daun Hester to impose a felony charge for illegal providers whose negligence leads to child tragedy.

Parents need to work and their children should be safe in child care. The General Assembly can help make that possible.
ELKO  The City of Elko is determining if an art project will be viable for Elkos 100th birthday in 2017.

Catherine Wines of the Arts and Culture Advisory Board proposed a community art project to Elko City Council last month. She pointed to examples such as whats been done in Chicago and Cheyenne, Wyoming, where businesses sponsor an icon to be created, painted and displayed at their business.

What we are proposing is to do some sort of boot, Wines said.

Cowboy boot sculptures found in Cheyenne, for example, stand about 6 feet tall and are colorfully painted.

The boot shape would be made into a large mold, Wines said, and then could be cast for the number of sponsors.

One company in Nebraska would charge $3,500-3,800 for the mold, wand $800-950 for each cast, Wines said.

If we purchase at least 20 then we get the money back from the original mold, she said.

The cost for a business sponsorship would be around $1,500.

We really wanted it to celebrate the centennial and celebrate Elko, Wines said. ... It can be all over town.

Assistant City Manager Scott Wilkinson, however, was concerned about costs.

We dont have enough for even a minimum casting, he said.

City Councilman John Patrick Rice said I think youll get the support you need really quickly.

Wines pledged her own Taber Building to be the first sponsor.

The Council voted unanimously to direct the advisory board to seek sponsorship from at least 10 businesses, and develop a plan for possible approval.
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The watercolor paintings of Zheng Liang Feng combine an expressive freedom with an astonishing amount of detail, whether the subject is a beautiful landscape or an arresting face.

Feng (pronounced Fong), an art professor at Radford University, said that when he conducts workshops hes often asked what the secret is to capturing all that detail. The secret, he confided, is using a Chinese wolf-hair brush, adding that its not really made of wolf hair. But it is a kind of brush he cant find in the United States.

Undeniable talent and extensive training would seem to factor in, too. Feng, 61, was born in Shanghai, China, and started painting when he was 7. He came to Radford in 1986. Though modern watercolor technique in the West is considered to have been perfected first by the British, I try this using Eastern painting skills and philosophy, Feng said.

The Radford University Art Museum is presenting an exhibition of his most recent paintings, The Art of Feng No. 3, which opens Friday. The artwork is for sale.

He created most of the new paintings during a 2015 sabbatical. The shows landscapes depict scenes from the New River Valley, the Blue Ridge Mountains and Smith Mountain Lake, Feng said.

Im from a big city, he said. (Shanghai is the largest city in China, with a population estimated at more than 20 million.) When he was growing up, I dont see many rivers, trees, he said. Now I live in an area surrounded by trees and water.

The designs he finds when studying trees fascinate him. Every tree branch is different. In China, he learned specific techniques for rendering bamboo. The technique is perfect for Western watercolor.

In addition to watercolors, the show holds work in pastel, oil and egg tempera.

He wins so many awards  about 15 to 20 a year, he said  that he finds it too cumbersome to list them all. The show includes a portrait of a Tibetan man, Mountain Man, which won the Joan Ashley Rothermel Memorial Award last year in the International Exhibition of the American Watercolor Society.

Hes a past winner of the Sidewalk Art Show in Roanoke, and has recently won prizes from the National Watercolor Society, the NEWS International Watercolor Exhibition, the Red River Watercolor Society, the Northwest Watercolor Society and the Adirondack National Exhibition of American Watercolors.

Feng signs his work using his initials, Z.L. Feng, and his American colleagues address him by using his last name as if its his first. His wife, Mei Shu, is also a painter who works in watercolor and oil.

Shu has also won awards, and her work has been shown at Roanoke galleries. We were both doing well in the Roanoke and Smith Mountain Lake area, Feng said. Were so lucky to have a local following.

Unlike an oil painting or even acrylic, watercolor is unforgiving of mistakes. The pigment dissolved in water stains the paper when applied with a brush. Though Feng agrees the medium can be unforgiving, its a magic medium. Every piece makes him feel different, he said.

Hes been experimenting with watercolor a long time, and when something spontaneous and unpredictable happens he will sometimes go with it, he said.

But that doesnt mean he can make it work every time. I have so many paintings that are not finished, he said.

Half the proceeds from any works sold through the Art of Feng show benefit the universitys Zheng L. Feng International Art Student Scholarship. Feng noted that he changed the scholarship last year so that its no longer limited to international students.

Hed be delighted if the show raised enough money to start a second scholarship, to help students pursuing an M.F.A. in watercolor at Radford.

On the Arts and Extras blog

The Jacksonville Center for the Arts in Floyd has announced a 2016 concert schedule full of classical and jazz. For more information visit http://blogs.roanoke.com/arts.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced an $11 million, 50-employee expansion at Arkay Packaging in Botetourt Countys East Park business park on Friday, Jan. 29.

The governor flew in to make the announcement at the company that is also celebrating 20 years in the county. It began in New York City 94 years ago.

CEO Mitchell Kaneff said, "My grandfather Max Kaneff began the company in New York City on Hudson Street 94 years ago. We expanded to Botetourt in 1996 after looking at other states including North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas. It has been a good fit."

McAuliffe was effusive in his praise for the company, as well as Botetourt County, for the business environment. The expansion and jobs are already underway. Kaneff asked job seekers to contact Human Resources and Kim Crawford, as hiring is ongoing for the new positions. Secretary of Commerce Maurice Jones was also on hand to promote the success of Arkay Packaging.

Jack Leffel, Botetourt board of supervisors chairman, praised Kaneff and Arkay for their corporate citizenship and the strong foundation they have provided for the past 20 years. Kaneff also praised COO Walter Shiels and Brian Hopkins, VP of corporate operations, for their energy and leadership at the plant.

Packaging from the company is used with Estee Lauder cosmetics, as well as a number of pharmaceuticals. Over 25 percent of the products go overseas, said Kaneff.

"Botetourt is in a great location for shipping," he said.
BLACKSBURG  Virginia State Police set up a mobile command center Friday near the Blacksburg apartment where 13-year-old Nicole Madison Lovell was last seen three days ago, but no new information was released as the search intensifies.

The case is made especially urgent because Lovell requires prescription medication daily for a previous liver transplant, members of her family have said. After three days without medicine, her family said doctors have told them, she may be at risk of liver failure. If shes not found by Saturday, that will be day four.

Lovells uncle, Fred Hawks, said Thursday that it appears the teen left home on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning on her own accord, pushing a dresser in front of her bedroom door and then climbing out a first-floor window.

Hawks added that Lovell has never done anything like that before, and there hadnt been an argument or some other reason she would run away from home.

Blacksburg Police Department spokesman Lt. Mike Albert said investigators are following every lead and havent yet determined if this is a runaway situation. Local, state and federal officers are aiding in the search.

Lovell was active on social media, participating in several teen dating Facebook groups. Her last post was Tuesday morning. Hawks said it appears his nieces phone has been turned off ever since she went missing.

Hawks said his niece attends Blacksburg Middle School and Auburn Baptist Church. He said she has one of those personalities where everybody who meets her just loves her.

Montgomery County schools spokeswoman Brenda Drake said the school is offering Blacksburg Middle students and teachers additional counseling support as the search continues.

Lovell is said to have brown hair and blue eyes is wearing black jeans, a gray-striped shirt and brown and pink boots.
RADFORD  The long cleanup of old toxic waste at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant is going well, an environmental regulator said this week. With the remediation effort about to receive one of its regular permit renewals, residents have a chance to give their own thoughts on the hazardous legacy of the plants decades of munitions-making.

For just more than an hour Wednesday at the Radford Public Library, spokespeople from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality talked with a crowd of about 25 about the cleanup that began in 1989. The immediate issue is the proposed renewal of the Hazardous Waste Management for Corrective Action permit and its enforcement being shifted to the DEQ from the U.S. Environmental Protective Agency.

Such permits are a part of an EPA program designed to investigate and guide the cleanup of any contaminated air, groundwater, surface water or soil, according to the agencys website.

A permit was first issued to the New River Valley propellant-making facility in 1989 and reissued in October 2000.

Originally 80 sites were identified for potential remediation, many originating from World War II or Cold War-era practices, such as pouring toxic chemicals into an unlined pit, which were halted years ago.

Remedies for each site were listed in 2011, including taking no further action for 65 locations.

Under the proposed renewal, 14 sites with remedies in place will be monitored, while one will continue to be investigated, DEQ Hazardous Waste Permit Writer Ashby Scott said Wednesday.

Scott said the cleanup efforts from the decades-old pollutants were moving in a positive direction.

Considering how old that place is youd expect it to be blanketed with poison and its not, Scott said.

Speaking before the meeting, Scott said, Theres actually none thats escaping the site itself  What were seeing is the levels are going down, the controls are actually working. Its protecting human health and safety.

The Corrective Action permit is one of the facilitys multiple state and federal permits that continue to be discussed as the arsenal has been ranked by the DEQ as the states top polluter for numerous years.

Scott said at one point DEQ offered to combine the permits into a single permit, but the facility declined.

Public participation, such as Wednesdays presentation, is a part of the permit creation process. A public hearing to gather comments on the Corrective Action permit will be held on Feb. 10 at the Radford Public Library and other comments can be submitted in writing before Feb. 26 to ashby.scott@deq.virginia.gov.

As has become common in arsenal-related meetings in recent years, a small but very vocal group of critics attended Wednesdays presentation and peppered spokespeople with questions and comments.

Much of the criticism centered on the open burning of waste, which has gone on at the facility since 1941; the possible presence of chromium, lead and other dangerous substances in the neighboring New River and accompanying soils; and past decisions state and federal agencies have made surrounding cleanup efforts.

The focus of Wednesdays meeting, however, was aimed solely at the 14 waste management sites addressed in the Corrective Action permit.

A separate permit for the open burning ground is currently in the process of being renewed. Scott said it would likely be more than a year before that process was complete.

One of the critics concerns that did pertain to the permit being presented dealt with a perceived lack of monitoring of a stretch of land between the burning area and the New River.

Scott said after the presentation that the area will not be ignored because even though activities related to the cleanup process there are finished, the location will still be under the jurisdiction of a separate operating permit.

Its activity will be monitored, probably more highly, he said.

More information on the Corrective Action permit and other permits at the arsenal can be found at www.deq.virginia.gov/ConnectWithDEQ/EnvironmentalInformation/RadfordArmyAmmunitionPlant.aspx#calendar.

Staff writer Mike Gangloff contributed to this story.
COLUMBIA, Mo.  The University of Missouris Board of Curators voted Wednesday to suspend Melissa Click, the assistant professor caught on camera pushing a student journalist and calling for some muscle to remove him from a protest camp in November.

Click is a 1989 graduate of Cave Spring High School in Roanoke County.

The Board of Curators directs the General Counsel, or outside counsel selected by General Counsel, to immediately conduct an investigation and collaborate with the city attorney and promptly report back to the Board so it may determine whether additional discipline is appropriate, a board statement said.

The suspension came a day after the city prosecutors decision to file a misdemeanor assault charge against Click over the incident, but it fell short of state legislators demands that Click be fired.

Mark Schierbecker, the videographer whose camera Click grabbed, called the suspension vindicating but said he was frustrated school administrators did not act more quickly or directly.

The university seems to care more about protecting their own despotic faculty than looking after the welfare of its students, he told The Washington Post on Wednesday night.

But Clicks supporters expressed outrage, claiming the suspension was unprecedented and that the professor was a scapegoat.

Since when do UM  Curators make personnel decisions? tweeted local attorney and small-business owner Carolyn Sullivan. Tired of [double] standards [for] women & witch hunt against Click.

Many Click supporters said she had already paid far too stiff a price for a momentary lapse. The professor was widely criticized for impeding Schierbecker and another journalist, photographer Tim Tai. She also received a flood of angry, often threatening messages.

I have been receiving rape and death threats and am concerned for my safety, Click said in an email to her students.

She also apologized to the two journalists  although Schierbecker did not accept the apology  and resigned a courtesy appointment in Mizzous prestigious School of Journalism.

On Monday, before Clicks suspension, the professors conduct was the subject of an hour-long debate in the State Senate.

Sen. Brian Munzlinger insisted Click should be fired for violating university rules requiring employees not to bring discredit upon the institution, according to the Columbia Tribune.

Were the laughingstock of the country, he added of the viral video.

Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, however, said Clicks critics were using the professor as a distraction from the real issue on campus: racism.

We are reminded as people of color every single day that we are not treated as 100 percent human being, Chappelle-Nadal said. And that is why we are still dealing with it every single day is that we are not being treated equally. This conversation about professor Click is just a cover-up, for real, for saying we dont like black people talking out loud.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican General Assembly leaders will announce a bipartisan deal on gun policy Friday that would effectively reverse Attorney General Mark Herrings move to sever concealed carry reciprocity agreements with more than two dozen states while enacting a handful of gun-safety measures sought by Democratic lawmakers.

The deal, confirmed by McAuliffes office and the office of House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, would undo Herrings decision last month to stop recognizing concealed carry permits issued by 25 states, a move protested by gun-rights advocates who argued it needlessly targeted law-abiding gun owners.

The agreement, expected to be formally announced Friday afternoon, is the first major bipartisan breakthrough of the legislative session. It allows Republicans to say theyve restored and expanded concealed carry rights, while Democrats can say theyre gaining ground on gun restrictions long blocked by the legislature.

The governor believes this is a bipartisan deal that would keep Virginians safe, said McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy.

I think everyone gave something up and everyone got something, said Howell spokesman Matt Moran.

The deal would require the Virginia State Police to be available at all gun shows to perform voluntary background checks for dealers who are not federally licensed. It also would require anyone subject to a permanent protective order to surrender guns in their possession, a policy aimed at removing guns from domestic violence situations.

Though the deal could be viewed as a setback for Herring  often accused by opponents of playing politics with his office, but praised by supporters as a champion of progressive causes  the attorney general said in a statement Thursday that hes encouraged to finally see a bipartisan conversation on reducing gun violence.

If finally enforcing our concealed handgun reciprocity laws helps break the legislative logjam on efforts to expand background checks and force domestic abusers to turn over their guns, then Im glad we could provide some momentum and I hope this is just the first step in enacting sensible gun safety measures, Herring said.

Coy said Herrings decision on concealed carry permits, which some gun-rights activists feared would lead other states to stop recognizing Virginia permits, served as a catalyst for the agreement.

Without his leadership, this deal would not have been possible, Coy said.

McAuliffes deal-making on guns didnt sit well with some of his allies in the gun-control push.

Andy Parker, the father of slain WDBJ (Channel 7) journalist Alison Parker, criticized the governor in a statement circulated by Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group that poured in more than $2.4 million to support Democratic campaigns in last years elections.

Since my daughter, Alison, was killed on live television in August, Ive stood by Gov. McAuliffes side and applauded his leadership on gun safety  and he has been a friend and source of support for me and my family, Parker said. That is why if reports are true that hell put the gun lobby agenda ahead of the safety of Virginians, I am beyond disappointed.

Herring has said his decision to revoke reciprocity with the other states stemmed from a provision of state law meant to prevent Virginia from recognizing out-of-state permits issued under looser rules. The action was scheduled to go into effect Feb. 1.

Under the compromise, Virginia would have to enter into reciprocity agreements with states that require recognition of their own permits before recognizing Virginias permits.

Anyone who has had a Virginia permit revoked could not carry a concealed weapon in Virginia using another states permit.

The legislation making up the concealed-carry portion of the deal was crafted by Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania County.

Senator Reeves and many others have worked diligently to find common ground while protecting Second Amendment rights, said Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County. We think this agreement accomplishes that goal.

Some had warned that the concealed carry decision would cause hardship and confusion near state borders, where residents frequently cross from one state to another.

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, released a statement with Rep. Phil Roe, a Tennessee Republican, saying it was encouraging to see the governor backing off his support for the attorney generals misguided decision.

Put simply, we believe your Second Amendment right does not stop at a state line, the congressmen said.

Individuals under permanent protective orders, which are issued by judges and can last up to two years, would have to sell or transfer guns in their possession within 24 hours. McAuliffe has previously encouraged judges to use their power to remove guns in domestic violence cases, but the deal would make it a legal requirement.

Although the deal stops short of closing the so-called gun show loophole, it would station state police at gun shows as an option for unlicensed sellers who dont have access to the federal database for background checks.

The deal is expected to be officially unveiled Friday afternoon at a news conference featuring leaders from both parties.
Reporters who cover the state Capitol will return to the Senate floor Monday, nearly three weeks after Republicans who control the chamber had consigned them to its gallery.

On Monday morning, it is my expectation, after some significant and fruitful discussions with our friends from the Fourth Estate, that they will be returning to the floor of the Senate in a little bit of a reconfigured fashion, Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment, R-James City County, said Friday on the Senate floor.

Weve come to a good mutual resolution, Norment said.

On Jan. 13, the first day of the General Assembly session, the Senate, in which Republicans hold a 21-19 edge, voted along party lines for a change in Senate rules that removed reporters access from the floor, where journalists have covered the state Senate for decades.

State and national media organizations denounced the surprise move as a blow against public transparency.

To ease movement on the Senate floor, reporters will now have access to six desk chairs, each with a fold-over leaf to support a computer. Previously there were tables on each side of the rostrum that could accommodate four people apiece.

Floor seats for credentialed media will be on a first come, first served basis. If demand for floor seating exceeds availability, each media organization will be limited to one floor seat. Other journalists from the organization could then sit in the gallery.

Reporters will be able to use laptop computers, but will no longer be able to plug them in while working on the Senate floor.

The Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association said in a statement: Denying reporter access to the Virginia Senate floor session was a mistake that could have been avoided; restoring it was the right thing to do.

While the revised floor access arrangement places additional limitations on our members flexibility to cover proceedings, it is workable  and returning is an important step toward ensuring we can do our jobs and provide accurate and timely reporting.

It added: The VCCA will continue to promote media access in the Capitol  and the publics right to know that the people elected to serve Virginia are conducting its business in the best traditions of open and transparent government.

Jim Nolan, a political reporter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is president of the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association.

Sen. Tom Garrett , R-Buckingham County, who had called for restoring reporters access to the Senate floor, issued a statement through his 5th District congressional campaign, hailing the result.

Today, all those who support transparency in government will celebrate a victory for the First Amendment to our Constitution, said Garrett, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the seat. (Rep. Robert Hurt, R-5th is not seeking re-election.)

As a result of my willingness to stand and fight for principles of Constitutional governance, press freedom, and legislative transparency, Republican leadership has allowed the sunshine of a free and open press back into Virginias Senate, Garrett said.

Im proud to have stood on principle in leading this fight, even if it makes me unpopular with the Republican Establishment, Garrett said. This issue is not about right and left  its about right and wrong. Citizens from all sides of the political spectrum can agree that limiting the First Amendment and impeding the flow of information to a free press is wrong.

About three-fourths of states in the U.S. allow reporters on the floor of their Senate and House chambers and many provide seats or desks for them to use, according to The Associated Press.

The press tables that had been on opposite sides of the rostrum were removed before senators voted Jan. 13. Reporters then to had to cover Senate sessions from the gallery above the floor. Journalists said that vantage point made it harder to hear senators comments and observe their interactions and to get copies of floor amendments and vote tallies.

On Jan. 20, a delegation of journalists who cover the state Capitol met with key state senators to discuss the removal of reporters access to the Senate floor.

There was no resolution of the issue at that meeting, which lasted about an hour, but the journalists and senators aired their concerns and characterized it as a productive discussion.

Senators attending the Jan. 20 meeting in a conference room off the Senate chamber included Norment; Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax County; Senate Majority Whip Bill Stanley , R-Franklin County; and Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus.

During that meeting the journalists sought a return to work space on the Senate floor. Topics that were discussed also included Republican senators concerns about limited space on the Senate floor and about reporters adherence to long-standing rules governing when journalists can interact with senators on the floor.

Under the new arrangement, rules of conduct on the Senate floor are more clearly spelled out, as is a graduated set of sanctions on media access to the chamber should reporters violate the rules.
ELKO  A judge has upheld the state demographers lower population estimate for Elko after the City recently appealed it.

Jeff Hardcastle, state demographer, reported a preliminary estimate that Elkos population decreased by 151 people for the 2015 fiscal year. The Citys appeal went through Chief Administrative Law Judge Dena Smith with the Nevada Department of Taxation, said City Manager Curtis Calder.

The City of Elko failed to meet its burden of demonstrating that the Demographer used an incorrect occupancy rate, the judge wrote in her findings Wednesday. The Demographers 2015 population estimate for the City of Elko of 20,714 persons is affirmed.

The City is now faced with a choice.

We can appeal her decision and it would go to the Nevada Tax Commission, Calder said.

Officials are running up against a deadline, as the Governor must sign off on estimates by March 1. The City will decide by next week if it will continue with the appeal, Calder said.

We have some legitimate beef still, he said.

City officials are talking with the Citys attorney this week to determine if it would be worth it to continue with the appeal.

The demographer has a ton of discretion, Calder said.

The City presented evidence for its claim that population has not decreased, including the facts that the school district had an additional 200 more students this year, and residential building permits have increased. The City reviewed thousands of utility records and offered proof of population growth such as road projects, home sales and apartment occupancy.

The judge stated this alternative evidence is not contemplated within the accepted methodology for calculating the estimated populations of Nevadas cities.

The findings stated that Hardcastle recognized an increase in the population attributable to Elkos single family detached, single family attached, mobile home and multi-family home housing units.

However, that increase was offset by a loss of population in the population at daily, weekly, and monthly housing units, the findings stated.

The change represents a decrease of 0.7 percent. Each city within a county receives a portion of that countys tax revenue. The formula incorporates a Citys population increase or decrease relative to the population of other cities within the county.
Obituaries 10-7-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section John F. Keane...

Obituaries 9-30-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section Patricia A. Smith...
Editor:

The report about the drug bust in Carlin in the weekend edition of the Elko Daily Free Press, January 16, was enough to convince me that marijuana should not be legalized in Nevada for recreational use.

The bust occurred, like so many other drug busts on I-80 occur, because of a traffic violation by the drivers. The two men, from states where marijuana is legal, had ignored a yield or stop sign on the freeway!

The police officers who pulled them over could smell marijuana smoke as they got near the car, and the men inside handed over a marijuana pipe. It appears they had just finished smoking it. But they werent just smoking weed. The officers found highly potent marijuana bud in the car. They also found about 11 ounces of high grade marijuana butter, and multiple hits of illegal, addicting drugs, including LSD.

It appears the men were not only users but also dealers in mind-altering and controlling substances. As I looked at the picture of the two men in the paper I couldnt help but feel sorry for these men, in their 20s, with pale faces and long unkempt hair and beards, in a drug life and now on their way to prison.

Marijuana is an entryway drug, and these men are examples of the path that it can lead to. I believe the legalization of marijuana will make our roads more unsafe, bring another way to destroy peoples lives, and open another path for introduction and addiction to dangerous drugs in our communities.

I urge you to consider the examples of marijuana users from Washington and Colorado, and vote against making Nevada another pot state.

Jim Moore

Spring Creek
Editor:

In a previous letter, I stated that the Quran commands husbands to beat their wives: And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them (4:34). Thats the highly respected Arberry translation.

Nearly all the major translations agree. However, in a letter challenging my depth of research, Brianna Thompson skips over a great deal of solid research to find a Muslim scholar, Dr. Ahmad Shafaat, who argues for the translation beat or separate them (from you). Ms. Thompson neglected to tell the reader that even Shafaat says that in the context of verse 4:34, beat is more natural from a linguistic point of view and has the support of a strong consensus among the commentators.

Its shocking to read the article Ms. Thompson used to make her point (http://www.islamicperspectives.com/quran-4-34.htm). Shafaat believes husbands should beat their wives lightly ... respecting the limits set down by the Quran and Hadith. Yet, the beating should provide an energetic demonstration of the anger, frustration and love of the husband. He opines, the beating done within the limits defined by the Quran may indeed bring the husband and wife to some kind of understanding.

Dr. Shafaat helps to make my larger point. He is a Canadian Muslim who wants Islamic sharia law implemented.

Thompson, also, uses the religious scholar Reza Aslan as a source. Aslan is an Islamic apologist who wrote a book attacking Christianity. In his book, "Zealot," he makes the absurd assertion that Jesus was not a man of peace; he was a revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army.

In an excellent critique of the book in the Jewish Review of Books, Allan Nadler questions Aslans simplistic, one-sided and often harshly polemical portrayal of Jesus. He implies that Aslan is not just ignorant but insistently oblivious. He noted that Aslan imagines that Jesus was no less violent than the prophet Mohammad.

Aslans contention that female genital mutilation is not a Muslim problem is false. It is in the hadith, and hadith are second only to the Quran for establishing sharia.

Daniel DuSoleil

Spring Creek
Businessman Donald Trump may not have participated in Thursday evening's Republican debate, but the remaining participants still had plenty of strong words for each other even without the bombastic GOP frontrunner.

Facing off at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa, the next seven top candidates took every opportunity to rip President Barack Obama and likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton - and they got in some good shots at each other along the way.

On the stage were retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ken.

Cruz and Rubio, who figure to be vying for many of the same votes, went head-to-head in a heated exchange over how to fix the immigration system.

And then both in turn were ripped by Christie, who said he needed a "Washington-to-English" dictionary to understand what they just said.

Trump opted not to participate in the debate, ostensibly because of past clashes with one of the Fox News moderators, Megyn Kelly. After the host network refused to accede to Trump's demand that Kelly be removed from the debate, he chose not to attend.

It hasn't hurt him so far in the polls, however. The results of a trio of new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls show the real estate tycoon leading the Republican races in all three early-voting states.

Just four days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the results of a survey of likely Republican caucus-goers show Trump with a 32 percent to 25 percent lead over Cruz. Rubio came in third.

The next Republican debate will be February 6th at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. The next Democratic debate is February 4th in New Hampshire.

The Iowa caucuses kick off the race in earnest on Monday, followed by the New Hampshire primary on February 9th.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Top US Republican presidential aspirants have vowed to take on the dreaded Islamic State if elected in the November elections, underlining that the caliphate of ISIS militant group has to be destroyed.

"Look, the threat we face from ISIS is unprecedented. There has never been a jihadist group like this. They have affiliates in over a dozen countries now," said Senator Marco Rubio while participating in the Fox News-hosted Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday.

"It's hate action. They blow people up. Look what they did in San Bernardino. Look at the attack they inspired in Philadelphia, that the White House still refuses to link to terror, where a guy basically shot a police officer three times," he said. When I am president of the United States, if there is some place in this country where radical jihadists are planning to attack the United States, we will go after them wherever they are, and if we capture them alive, they are going to Guantanamo, Rubio said.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who took the center stage in the absence of Republican front runner Donald Trump, vowed to go after ISIS, hunt them down wherever they are, and utterly and completely destroy the terrorist outfit.

Trump skipped the key Republican debate apparently suspecting that a Fox News moderator, with whom he clashed in the first debate in August, would not treat him fairly.

Fox News insisted on having its anchor Megan Kelly as one of the moderators in Iowa.

Trump's statement that he will ban Muslims from entering the United States if he becomes President had turned controversial.

The caliphate of ISIS has to be destroyed, which means we need to arm the Kurds, imbed our troops with the Iraqi military, and reengage with the Sunni tribal leaders, said Jeb Bush, the former Florida Governor. "Have a no-fly zone in Syria and create safe zones to deal with the refugees. But, more importantly, a Sunni-led force should be trained in Syria to take out ISIS with our support ground and air," he added.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that as Commander-in-Chief, he would take on ISIS by bringing together European and Sunni Arab allies of the US.

Ohio Governor John Kasich said he believes the way to defeat is with troops on the ground. "We want to destroy ISIS, it has to be in the air and on the ground. It has to be with our friends in the Arab world and our friends in Europe, the coalition that we had when we went to the first Gulf War," Kasich said.

Meanwhile, Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton accused Republican presidential aspirants of being Islamophobic.

"Muslim Americans: This is your country, too. Islamophobic rhetoric isn't a tool against terrorism and it has no place in America," she tweeted.

Clinton's campaign said that she has the best comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS. The strategy Clinton outlined hinges on three main elements: Defeating ISIS in Syria, Iraq, and across the Middle East; disrupting and dismantling the growing terrorist infrastructure that facilitates the flow of fighters, financing, arms, and propaganda around the world; and defeat them here at home by foiling plots, disrupting radicalization, and hardening our defenses.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Anais Huerta, whose great-uncle was allegedly murdered by Falangists in 1936.

More information Una familia se ampara en la justicia mexicana para buscar a un represaliado del franquismo

The family of a Spanish union leader believed executed by Falangist forces during Spains 1936-39 Civil War has filed a complaint with the Mexican Attorney Generals Office (PRG) over his disappearance.

The complaint was presented by Anais Huerta, a Mexico-based filmmaker whose great-uncle was allegedly killed by right-wing forces in the northern Spanish city of Valladolid in 1936. She was accompanied by her lawyers and representatives of Amnesty International and other human rights groups.

Felix Llorente Gutierrez was a railroad worker, union leader and member of International Red Aid, a social service organization established by Communist International in the early 20th century.

No one in Spain has investigated crimes committed by the Franco regime, said Huerta in an interview. We learned from other families that similar cases would be dropped so we contacted Amnesty and they told us that this was a good option.

No one in Spain has investigated crimes committed by the Franco regime

In 2010, Buenos Aires Judge Maria Servini de Cubria opened an inquiry into crimes committed during the Civil War (1936-1939) and the subsequent Franco regime (1936-1975) after a group of Spanish families were unsuccessful in seeking justice in Spain.

The Spanish courts told the families that the statute of limitations had run out on many of the charges.

Judge Servini de Cubria issued international arrest warrants for around 20 former officials who served in the Franco dictatorship. She also asked Spanish authorities to allow the exhumation of mass graves where the bodies of victims shot during the Civil War are thought to be buried.

My father began to research the history of his uncle in the 1990s, Huerta said. I started afterwards and found testimonies from wardens of jails in Valladolid and Medina de Campo  where they took Felix  from historians in the area, and from experts in historical memory, she said.

The complaint contains 25 filings that support the Huerta Llorente familys version of what happened to Felix Llorente on the night of August 15, 1936 when the Falange began moving a large number of prisoners held in Medina del Campo. Felix Llorente had been incarcerated for about a month since the start of the Civil War.

The Nationalists controlled Valladolid from the beginning so the Falange did whatever it wanted

Valladolid was not hit as hard by the war as other provinces, according to Huerta.

The Nationalists controlled the area from the beginning so the Falange did whatever it wanted.

Between 40 and 45 people were executed that day, including Felix Llorente.

Esteban Beltran, director of Amnesty International Spain, said the Mexican authorities could either accept Huertas petition, reject it, or, in the extreme, act as if they had not received it and avoid making a decision.

If Mexican prosecutors agree to open an investigation, they can petition the Spanish government for cooperation.

Spain has not cooperated with Argentina, said Beltran. They claim that the Argentinean judge has no jurisdiction here because crimes committed by the Franco regime are already being investigated in Spain.

But Anais Huerta and Amnesty International hope the evidence they have presented  which the family has been gathering for years  will help make the case stick.

English version by Martin Delfin.
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Five citizens killed in Saudi strikes on Capital



SANA'A, Jan. 29 (Saba) - At least five citizens were killed in an initial toll of the Saudi aggression raids on Attan area in Al-Sabeen district of the capital Sana'a on Friday.



The aggression bombardment led to the falling of big stones from Attan Mountain, which destroyed a house in al-Salami neighborhood adjoining the mountain, as well as damage to the nearby houses, a local official explained to Saba.







The official pointed out that the hostile war jets targeted also a factory near Zubairy Street in central of the capital, but the missile exploded in the main street, causing severe damage to citizens' houses and public and private property.



He added that the aggression warplanes continued to target al-Nahdain area in Al-Sabeen district for the fifth time in less than 72 hours, dropping high-explosive bombs on the area.



BA





Saba

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[29/January/2016]
Saudi aggression destroys community college in Bani Hoshish



SANA'A, Jan.29 (Saba) - The Saudi-led coalition warplanes destroyed on Friday the Community College in Bani Hoshish district of Sana'a province.



The hostile war jets waged eight raids on the college in Saref area, which led to destroying it completely, a security official explained to Saba.



The official condemned the continuation of the aggression in targeting the educational, service and vital installation and infrastructure, denouncing the silence of the international community on the aggression crimes against Yemen and Yemenis.



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Saba

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[29/January/2016]
Saudi soldiers killed in Jizan





JIZAN, Jan. 29 (Saba)  A number of Saudi soldiers were killed in bombing targeted a gathering of invaders in Jizan province on Friday.



In a statement to Saba, a military official explained that several Saudi soldiers were killed and some others injured in pounding with missiles and artillery on their gathering in direction of Midi coast.



The official pointed out that a Saudi military vehicle was wracked in the bombing, adding that a Saudi soldier was shot dead in a sniper operation in Kars area.



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[30/January/2016]
EU parliament worries about deteriorating situation in Yemen

BRUSSELS, 29 Jan. (Saba) - The European Union (EU) Parliament has expressed concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen and infrastructure destruction due to the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes.



The parliament pointed out that over 80 percent of the population need urgent humanitarian aid due to the lack of food and water and basic medical services.



Urging to put an immediate end to attacks against medical facilities, the EU parliament demanded all parties to respect the international humanitarian law and avoid targeting civilians or civil installations.



It called for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian organizations to provide assistance and food and medical aid and fuel to those who are in need for help.



In this regard, it called on the EU and other donors to respond to the United Nations humanitarian appeal regarding the financial support for Yemen.



The EU parliament condemned the Saudi-led coalition air strikes, calling on the coalition to suspend its raids immediately and lift the blockade to allow access of humanitarian aid to those in need, and create conditions for dialogue between the parties.



It stressed that the only possible solution in Yemen is political.



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[30/January/2016]
Mikel Urmeneta introducing his new company, Katuki Saguyaki. Jesus Diges (Efe)

There are few visitors to Pamplona who have not taken a picture of a digital clock counting down the days, hours and minutes left until the next Sanfermines, the annual local festivities that incorporate the world-famous Running of the Bulls.

The clock is placed over the door of the flagship store of Spanish firm Kukuxumusu, at one end of Estafeta street, part of the route that the bulls run along each morning for a week every July.

Kukuxumusu is more than just one name or one artist, says the new management

Kukuxumusu, which means fleas kiss in the Basque language, is one of Spains most recognizable brands thanks to its humorous and irreverent drawings, often depicting animals in human-like situations. Its designs, printed on shirts, mugs and all kinds of accessories, also often make reference to popular culture and current affairs.

But now, after a 27-year history, the founder and creative mind behind Kukuxumusu has been fired from his own company.

Mikel Urmeneta says he had a terrible argument with the companys new majority stakeholder, a communications consultant named Ricardo Bermejo, in late 2015.

I ended up ripping the computer right off his desk, Urmeneta says.

Since then, both men have been communicating exclusively by bureaufax.

And it was through a fax message that Urmeneta learned that his contract was being rescinded, although he retains a 33% stake in the company. The other two founders sold their stakes to Bermejo a year and a half ago.

The Kukuxumusu brand has always been closely linked to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. Josu Santesteban (AP)

Undaunted, the former artistic director of Kukuxumusu on Thursday presented his new brand, Katuki Saguyaki, a play on words that he defined as cat food, mouse delicacy.

The name, the logo and the designs that Urmeneta unveiled at the presentation are all reminiscent of the early Kukuxumusu cartoons with most of them focusing on the Sanfermines.

Urmeneta also revealed that he has forged partnerships with Spanish band Estopa, science popularizer Eduard Punset and chef Jose Andres, among others. He has also hired the cartoonists that have been working with him at Kukuxumusu from the beginning.

Kukuxumusus DNA is disappearing, said Urmeneta, adding that the new majority stakeholder bought a new toy without reading the instructions.

Urmeneta has always been the public face of Kukuxumusu. The company enjoyed a golden decade starting in 2000, before going into crisis and being forced to close stores, fire workers and eventually finding a new investor in 2014.

Ricardo Bermejo is a communications consultant whose career is closely linked to the Caja Navarra savings bank. Between 2004 and 2012, when the lender was bought by Caixabank, Bermejos agency received 10 million from Caja Navarra for its communications services.

The new majority stakeholder bought a new toy without reading the instructions

In the meantime, Kukuxumusu has come out with its own press release giving its version of events.

Mikel Urmeneta walked into the offices one day with a threatening and violent attitude towards his partner, the manager and the other company workers, and in their presence issued threats against his partner, insulted the manager and threw a computer against the floor; he demanded the immediate payment of his monthly checks, which were delayed two months due to a temporary lack of liquidity; he put his own payment ahead of his employees paychecks.

The company also says that Urmeneta was fired because he was not being productive enough. Most of his contributions generated significant expenses, minimum income, negative management results and disappointment among team members.

Kukuxumusu will retain ownership of all existing designs, but cannot modify them without consent from their authors. This means that adapting these designs to current affairs, as the brand has always done, will be complicated.

It remains to be seen whether the new management is right when it says that Kukuxumusu is more than just one name or one artist.

English version by Susana Urra.
One of the 122 pieces of the Quimbaya collection on display at the Museum of the Americas in Madrid. BERNARDO PEREZ

More information El Gobierno colombiano rechaza pedir a Espana el tesoro de los quimbaya

Colombias Constitutional Court will decide in the coming months whether the government should be forced to ask Spain to return 122 ancient gold pieces donated to the Spanish monarchy in 1892 by a Colombian president.

The court has heard arguments from lawyer Felipe Rincon, who for the past 10 years has been fighting a legal battle for Spain to return the gold.

The pre-Columbian treasure came from the Quimbaya civilization, which is noted for its intricate gold pieces. The collection is on display at the Museum of the Americas in Madrid.

Colombian President Carlos Holguin (1888-1892) donated the pieces to Maria Christina of Austria, who was then Spanish queen-regent, in 1892.

Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Patti Londono Jaramillo has said that the donation was legal under the countrys laws at the time and that a court ruling would not be able to force Spain to return the treasure.

Any unilateral action taken by a Colombian head of state in 1892 was an official act on behalf of the country

It must be noted that any unilateral action taken by a Colombian head of state [at that time] was an official act on behalf of the Republic of Colombia, she said. It was a legitimate transaction that was protected by the laws.

Cristina Pardo, of the Colombian presidents legal office, has also said that the donation was legal even though many do not consider it so because it was never approved by Congress.

There is no mechanism that would permit Colombia to force Spain to hand over the collection, said Londono Jaramillo, who added that current conventions and treaties addressing ownership of national treasures are not retroactive.

The UNESCO convention went into effect in 1988, which makes it impossible to apply it to a donation that was made in 1892, she explained.

In his arguments before the court, Rincon said that President Holguin purchased the Quimbaya collection with public money so that it could be displayed in Madrid as part of the events to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America.

A year later, Holguin gave it to the queen-regent in gratitude for Spains arbitration in a border dispute between Colombia and Venezuela.

Rincon has the support of Colombias solicitor general and ombudsman, who were also present during the court hearing. Both public officials argued that the treasure is part of Colombias national heritage and must be returned.

Also defending the recovery of the treasure are members of Colombias indigenous communities and various NGOs

There is no doubt that recovering the Quimbaya treasure would represent an act of cultural sovereignty that future generations will appreciate

Fernando Vicario, a Spaniard who is director of culture for the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), said returning the treasure would be a major accomplishment in preserving Ibero-American culture in a world where symbolic items should be considered more important than bureaucratic and legislative issues.

Ricardo Sanchez, dean of humanities at Colombias National University, also sided with Rincons argument that Holguin never asked Congress for permission to give the collection to the queen-regent.

I have the honor of announcing that today I have given her majesty, the queen-regent, gold pieces that are part of the fine collection of Quimbaya antiquities sent by the government as a gift to Spain, President Holguin said at the time.

Many have interpreted his words as meaning that the donation was made without any type of government consultation.

Enrique Gaviria Lievano, former Colombian ambassador to the United Nations and an expert on international issues, asked the court to find a way for the Quimbaya collection to be returned.

One legal remedy, according to Gaviria Lievano, would be to allow the Colombian government to negotiate directly with the Museum of the Americas in Madrid.

There is no doubt that recovering the Quimbaya treasure would represent an act of cultural sovereignty that future generations will appreciate, he wrote in a column for the daily El Tiempo.

English version by Martin Delfin.
Rawlins Cross sails into the Sunrise on new album, tour around the East Coast

Rawlins Cross has been on hiatus before, once for nearly a decade after a successful run during the 1990s as one of Atlantic Canadas most popular modern Celtic bands, but never one that was imposed by an outside force of nature. In the spring of ...
A first-of-its-kind journey along India and Pakistan border

What binds the two most talked about nations - India and Pakistan together? What makes the
Modica, on the island of Sicily. Anel Fernandez

An island to indulge in

Seven nights, 860

Vineyards in La Geria, Lanzarote (Canary Islands). Wilfried Krecichowost

The array of available lodging on the Canary Island of Lanzarote ranges from modest apartments to luxury hotels. For those wishing to indulge themselves, travel agency Halcon Viajes is offering a seven-night package that includes flights, transportation, accommodation at the Hesperia Lanzarote hotel and meals for 860 per person.

Tenerife on foot

Five nights, 890

Trekkers in Tenerife. Angel Yanes

To walk is to open up to the world. It restores to man the happy sense of his existence. The quote is by French writer David Le Breton, and it also sums up the philosophy of the Tenerife Walking Festival. From March 29 to April 2, this event offers guided walks along the islands volcanoes, laurisilva forests and coastal paths. There is a 20 fee for participating in the festival, plus an additional 25 per guided walk. Coinciding with those dates, Logitravel is offering five-night stays at Hotel Melia Jardines del Teide, in Costa Adeje, for 845 per person, all included.

Dolphins in the Azores

Seven nights, 893

Dolphins in the sea off the Azores. Vetta Mienny

Volcanoes, thermal lakes, marine mammals and green scenery are all on display across the nine Portuguese islands that make up the Azores. The islands are connected by boat and provide plenty of opportunities for trekking and whale- and dolphin-watching. Logitravel offers eight-day trips to Sao Miguel, Faial and Terceira that cover flights, accommodation at four-star hotels, half board and a rental car, starting at 893 per person.

Canopy beds in Alentejo

Six nights, 810

A grocery store in Alentejo (Portugal). Giorgio Caracciolo

You dont need to travel far to undertake a great journey. Just a stones throw away from the Spanish province of Badajoz is the Portuguese region of Alentejo, with its enticing old towns and villages. Places such as Alvito, Estremoz, Elvas, Vila Vicosa, Evora, Marvao, Crato, Arraiolos and Beja have converted their medieval palaces, castles and convents into comfortable pousadas, the Portuguese equivalent of Spains paradores, or state-run luxury hotels. The pousada of D. Joao IV in Vila Vicosa is located inside the ladies pantheon at the Royal Convent, while the pousada Rainha Santa Isabel in Estremoz is housed inside the castle that King Denis built for his wife. A six-night stay during Easter (March 21 to 27) costs between 800 and 1,000 per room.

Corsica on the Queen Victoria

Eight days, 839

A cliff on the coast of Bonifacio, at the southern end of Corsica. iStock

Corsica, a French island of craggy outlines and beaches looking out to Tuscany and the Cote dAzur, is one of the stops on an eight-day cruise along the western Mediterranean aboard the Queen Victoria. The Cunard-owned ocean liner will travel between Rome and Barcelona with the departure date set for August 6. Logitravel has an offer ranging between 839 and 1,994 per person, depending on the cabin category. The price includes full board and taxes.

Rural Italy

Seven nights, 980

The Val dOrcia in Tuscany. Carma Casula

Heirs to the country villas of Roman times, the casolare are country homes that have been converted into hotels. They make good base camps for exploring rural Italy, from Umbria to Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. The travel agency Occius proposes a stay in Tuscany that includes accommodation at a casolare in Chianti, around 25 kilometers from Arezzo. Prices start at 680 per person, including flights to Bologna or Pisa and a rental car for seven days. Food and other expenses are not included.

Sicilian circuit

Seven nights, 825

Using Norwegian Airlines routes between Madrid and Catania, the travel agency Bidtravel offers an eight-day circuit on the Italian island of Sicily, starting at 825 per person. The route includes visits to the Greek temples of Syracuse, Cefalu, Palermo, Monreale, Marsala, Agrigento and Mount Etna. Prices include flights, accommodation at three and four-star hotels, guided tours, transportation, full board and taxes.

English version by Susana Urra.
Ahmed Chehl is taken into custody following his extradition from France last year. Samuel Sanchez

The main suspect in a high-profile Madrid murder case, who was arrested last October over 18 years after the incident, was found dead in his jail cell on Friday, prison officials said.

Authorities believe that Ahmed Chehl, 55, committed suicide at the Alcala Meco prison outside the Spanish capital by hanging himself with his own shoelaces.

The case had remained unsolved for nearly two decades until investigators traced the suspect through DNA testing

The Spanish-Moroccan, who was arrested on October 1 by French police in Pierrefontaine-les-Varans  a village in the northeastern Franche-Comte region where he had been living  was extradited to Spain to face charges for the murder of 17-year-old high school student Eva Blanco Puig.

Blanco was raped and stabbed to death as she walked home from a nightclub in Algete (Madrid) on the night of April 20, 1997. Her body was found dumped near a roundabout on the M-100 highway in Algete, 30 kilometers northeast of the capital.

The case, which ignited outrage across Spain, had remained unsolved for nearly two decades until investigators traced the suspect through DNA testing.

Chehl, who was born in Morocco but had Spanish citizenship, left Spain in 1999 and had been living with his wife and children in the quiet French village until his arrest last year.

Eva Blanco.

Authorities said that he had attempted suicide once he was in custody by trying to cut his jugular vein with a small sharp object.

Chehl had been on a suicide watch, but this was lifted on December 16 at the recommendation of psychologists, penitentiary sources said.

Despite the favorable medical evaluation, prison officials assigned another inmate to watch over him. These inmates are part of a support group that works inside the jail to help out troubled prisoners.

However, his guardian was also taken away on January 8 after Chehl received another favorable medical evaluation. The sources added that the suspect had even offered to help out in the inmate support group.

The apparent suicide will be investigated by Spanish National Police, according to authorities, who added that the incident has angered the judge overseeing the Blanco murder case.

For 18 years, Civil Guard authorities chased down more than 100 leads before they were able to connect DNA traces found on Blancos body to Chehl.

Besides murder, he was also facing charges of sexual assault and illegal detention.

English version by Martin Delfin.
















I am back to blogging -- not that life is any less complex, but hopefully, a few minutes will continue to appear here and there to keep going. I turned off all posts in February because I was unable to respond to any; they will reappear, but I don't know how to keep their original dates, so now they are popping up as new! No promises on any regular, weekly features. I have to do those at work! I have, however, have missed the Internet dialogue. Note: 100th Lamb replaces the Blest Atheist blog, which was hijacked in 2009; the posts were transferred here. Click

for an explanation.
How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can? But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death. - Pope Benedict XVI

"This past Wednesday I was in part of the hospital that was devoted to people who have memory problems like my father. The people here may have no idea who I am but they light up at the sight of a collar. People who cannot carry on a conversation click on and join in prayer as if there were little wrong with them, their faces relaxing in this moment of peace amidst the chaos of illness." - Fr. Valencheck

"The priest's life is not his own. He does not live it for himself and his personal fulfillment, but for the salvation of souls." - Fr. Richtsteig

"I am convinced that if we simply follow the liturgical books, say the texts and carry out the gestures properly, in a style continuous with our tradition, the Churchs liturgy has power the capture minds and hearts and transform them. I starting forming this conviction before I became a Catholic through my experience of Novus Ordo Masses done in an entirely Roman traditional style, closely following the books. The late Msgr. Richard Schuler would eventually articulate to me in words what I was experiencing in the church. "Just do what the Council asked do what the Church asks." Why is worship well executed according to the mind of the Church so effective? Christ is the true Actor in the sacred action of the Churchs worship. He makes our hands and voices His own as He raises our petitions and offerings to the Father for His glory and our salvation. Christs Holy Church has determined the way by which we may have this encounter with mystery in the liturgy, be taken up in the sacred action. Pope Benedict addresses this in his highly ignored Sacramentum caritatis. He teaches sacred ministers about ars celebrandi, our purpose and comportment. We must learn to get out of His way. Although we have the right to our Rite celebrated as the Church desires, liturgy is not about me or us or even you in the pews." - Fr. Zuhlsdorf
Syria peace talks start in Geneva on January 29

Progress has been made in the Syrian conflict after the Damascus-hosted consultations with the UN special envoy. Syrian officials have agreed to participate in the political talks to be held in Geneva. Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, sees the talks as an important first step. My job is to be always optimistic, he said after his recent meetings with officials of President Bashar al-Assad's government. However, the talks will get under way against a backdrop of ongoing violence. Syrian forces loyal to Assad have intensified their bombing campaigns, as have Russian warplanes. At the same time, Islamic State militants have not ceased their attacks. The group claimed responsibility for two bombs Tuesday that killed 22 people in Homs, an opposition stronghold. Residents gather at the scene of a twin bomb explosion at a government-run security checkpoint in Homs, Syria, Jan 26, 2016. Once talks start in Geneva, the plan is to keep all parties in separate rooms, with no face-to-face meetings. Analysts think this is a better option than the lack of negotiations. David Butter, a Middle East politics expert at Chatham House in London, said the talks might serve as a needed sign that the world community is doing something to try to stop a seemingly endless and profoundly destabilizing conflict. This is a realistic appraisal of international consensus that we need to have some sort of political process going on  perhaps a recognition of the parties, certainly the opposition parties, that theyre starting to get exhausted with the conflict itself, and it has been so damaging on every level, humanitarian and otherwise, Butter said. Pressure to enter into negotiations is largely external, with the United States, the European Union, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all pushing for a solution. The Syrian talks had been set to begin January 25 but were delayed to Friday by discussions about who should represent the opposition, Voice of Americas Armenian Service reports.
Russian Propaganda in Europe

Recently Russia has been carrying out active propaganda in Europe targeting the refugees. The purpose is provoking the activation of right extremist forces which show their support to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putins European Fascists It has long been known that Russian president Vladimir Putins policies are approved by the European far right nationalist forces. A striking example was the action held at the Italian capital in 2013, during which the Italian National Front movement posted posters with Putin in a military uniform and I am with Putin writing. Interestingly enough, the founder of the movement Adriano Tilgher started his political career with the Neo-Fascist National Avant-Garde movement. Later in 1990s, he was sentenced for his trial to found Mussolinis Fascist Party again. National Front movement is a union of Italian radical far-right forces and, hence, it were the Italian fascists announcing that they support Putin. The Russian president is also very popular among some layers of society in Germany. In particular, it is worth mentioning the warm welcome of the neo-Nazi faction of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania federal parliament to Vladimir Putin who had arrived in Germany to participate in the G8 Summit in 2007. In the letter staring with the words Your Excellence, the neo-Nazis were asking Putin to support the development of democracy in Germany. Putins policy is also approved by the nationalist forces in France. In this case, it is the French National Front with its leader Marie Le Pen, who took the third place in 2012 French presidential elections. I am happy that Putin serves as an example of determination and loyalty to the international law. Ironically, these words belong to Marie Le Pen, leader of the French nationalist forces, who was repeatedly accused of racism and xenophobia. Russian Lies in Europe The migration crisis in Europe is the largest since Second World War. Europe is making enormous efforts to fight the crisis and give shelter to asylum-seekers. In fact, Europe bears quite a large part of the humanitarian consequences of military actions taking place in Near East. Notwithstanding these circumstances, the Russian propaganda machine does not miss any opportunity to arouse discontent on ethnic grounds against refugees in Europe. In this way, Russia is practically boosting the activity of the nationalist forces. This Russian trick became obvious in the information disseminated on January 17, according to which a 13-year old Russian girl was raped by Middle Eastern refugees in Berlin. This information even made the news on the First Russian Channel as a special report. And though it soon turned out that this information was completely false, Russian migrants in Berlin started protests against Arab migrants chanting Berlin is ours. As a result, the German lawyer Martin Lyute appealed to the Prosecutors Office against the reporter of Russian Frist Channel, who, living in Berlin, sowed ethnic hatred by his report. The Russian media never miss any opportunity to exaggerate any incident that takes place on ethnic ground in Europe. An example is the events that took place in the French city of Calais. That city is close to the Eurotunnel and there are constantly numerous migrants there who try to get to Great Britain. Recently there was a fight between refugees and locals there, and the Russian propaganda called this incident a disastrous confrontation on ethnic ground and riots. Lately Russia Today, which is considered Kremlins Western microphone, made a publication according to which a Danish girl has been raped and the police have accused the girl who defended herself and not the rapist. There are many examples of such publications, and in case the incidents are reported by Russian media, they are strongly exaggerated or, as a rule, are obvious lies. The Sad Experience The dissemination of instigating misinformation against the background of the migration crisis in Europe is not the first action by the Russian propaganda machine. In July 2014, the First Russian Channel reported that the Ukrainian soldiers had crucified a three-year old boy in the Ukrainian city of Slavyansk. Later, it was proved that the video was fake. Moreover, it was revealed that the first thing the Ukrainian military units did after entering Slavyansk, was supplying residents with bread and other food. But millions of people watching the TV channel developed a hostile attitude towards the Ukrainian army. And Russians living in Ukraine started to fight against the Ukrainian army, thinking that the latter are going to come and crucify their children as well. The Russia n propaganda machine also worked during the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008. In particular, the Russian sources, on behalf of media and agencies, reported that 1400-1600 people were killed in Tskhinvali as a result of the actions of the Georgian army. In some cases, that number reached 2100 and was called a planned genocide. However, the reality was completely different. According to the data from the Russian Prosecutors Office and Investigation Committee, only 133 people were killed as a result of military actions in Tskhinvali. The international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, recorded that there were only 50-60 victims in Tskhinvali. But in this case as well, the propaganda reached its aim and anti-Georgian sentiments arose in Russia, and, hence, there was public support for war. The examples of Georgia and Ukraine show the degree the Russian propaganda is capable of. Consequently, Europe faces another challenge in conditions of the migration crisis. And it is necessary to realize that the Russian propaganda directed at neo-Nazi pro-Russian forces may have far-reaching goals, leading to disastrous consequences. Vahe Ghukasyan Union of Informed Citizens
Boca Raton, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/29/2016 -- Dr. Vivian Hernandez, M.D., F.A.C.S., board-certified plastic surgeon in Boca Raton, FL, has developed a skincare guide which outlines a daily routine for patients to follow during the winter months. The skincare guide is the latest addition to Dr. Hernandez's library of visual resources for patient education.



During the winter season, our skin can become dry due to cold and changing weather conditions. Realizing the need for an uncomplicated winter skincare guide, Dr. Hernandez designed this easy-to-read guide to educate her patients of the best skincare routines. This winter skincare guide was designed to coordinate with Dr. Hernandez's ongoing branding, following a similar format of color, style and graphics. The guide outlines six simple steps to maintain supple, smooth skin, including the combined use of a cleanser, mask, toner, moisturizer, sunscreen and a facial consultation. The suggested routine emphasizes gentleness and the importance of restoring moisture to the skin during the dry winter months. With these skincare tips, Dr. Hernandez hopes to help patients maintain healthier, more radiant looking skin during the winter season.



Visitors to the doctor's website are encouraged to view, download and share the winter skincare guide on Dr. Hernandez's blog. The blog post and guide is search engine optimized so that all users researching winter skincare tips or routines can easily access it online.



Dr. Hernandez specializes in plastic surgery procedures for the face, such as facelift, neck lift, eyelid, and brow lift surgery. Additionally, the doctor performs a variety of non-surgical minimally invasive treatments such as "liquid lifts" that are performed with injectables and dermal fillers. These products eliminate unsightly lines and wrinkles and restore volume and contour to the face and hands, they include the brand names Juvederm Ultra XC, Juvederm Voluma XC, and Botox, among others. The practice also provides comprehensive skin care services that include consultations and treatments with a certified aesthetician as well as a permanent makeup specialist. In addition, Dr. Hernandez offers a comprehensive line of carefully selected and recommended skin care products.



About Vivian Hernandez, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Dr. Vivian Hernandez, M.D., F.A.C.S., has been a board-certified plastic surgeon for over two decades and specializes in facial rejuvenation. Dr. Hernandez's education and training have included numerous fellowships and residencies that have taken her from New York to Chicago to Miami working in some of the leading hospitals and universities. Combining proven methods with the latest innovations, she is highly regarded by her patients and fellow physicians. The doctor is uniquely positioned to provide numerous options for any person considering facial rejuvenation, from plastic surgery of the face to a complete range of non-surgical procedures.



Dr. Hernandez's practice in Boca Raton reflects the achievements of an accomplished surgeon in an intimate clinical setting; it also represents her commitment to the ultimate in personal attention and individual care. When you come to see Dr. Hernandez, you will be consulting with a world-class surgeon who has your best interest at heart.



For more information about the procedures and treatments offered by Vivian Hernandez, M.D., F.A.C.S., please visit www.drhernandez.com or call (561) 750-8600.



Media Contact:

Aesthetic Brand Marketing  Jennifer Cho

Email: jcho@aestheticbrandmarketing.com

Website: www.aestheticbrandmarketing.com



Vivian Hernandez, M.D., F.A.C.S. - Plastic Surgery of the Face

Location: 4799 N Federal Highway Ste. 4 Boca Raton, Florida 33431

Website: www.drhernandez.com
Victoria, Australia -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/29/2016 -- The property investment market in Australia has been growing for quite some time. There are lots of companies and brokers out there who claim to offer the best service. However, one firm has been going from strength to strength during the last couple of years. The experts at http://arpropertyinvestments.com.au/ work to ensure all their clients get the best deals. Best of all? They even offer an education service that should help to improve ones understanding of the market.



Real estate agents Andrew and Rob started the company to make investments easy. They knew that thousands of Australian people would get involved if they could see the opportunities. After co-founding AR Property Investments, the two started building their brand. Thankfully, they focus their attention on providing high-quality services with genuine care. That is why so many people trust their advice and suggestions. They don't claim to know it all, but they do know how people can improve their life with careful investments.



It's possible to judge the success of the company by reading their testimonials. The team publishes them on their website for the world to see. It's clear they get an amazing response in most instances, and that investors are more than happy with the service provided. We all know how difficult it can be to make the right decision in the investment world. So, it's good to see the Australian people now have a business they can trust.



CEO Andrew Rider has a background in developing commercial and luxurious properties and apartments. His partner, Rob Walker, has an extensive knowledge of the property investment industry. He's also worked as a financial broker and advisor in the past. Those two minds put together help to create the perfect backdrop from which one could start an investment career. They always look after their clients, and nothing makes them happier than seeing average people achieve their goals.



Anyone who would like to find out more about AR Property Investments should visit their website for information. People can also use the contact details listed below. Regardless of the nature of ones query, the team will work hard to alleviate every concern. At the end of the day, the people working for this brand love to make money with their clients. They'll give tips and advice on getting the best results, and they're always available at the end of the phone.



Making the first property investments might seem like a daunting prospect. However, it's the first step on the ladder to financial freedom and security. Don't delay! Get in touch with the team today and find out how they can help.



As licensed Real Estate Agents Andrew & Rob saw the need in this industry for a group that really cares about their clients and works on the principle of: "What would make our clients happy?"



About AR Property Investments

On that basis, they co-founded AR Property Investments and work passionately, going above and beyond, to deliver high quality service, genuine care, and a beautiful end product that they and their clients can be proud of. Andrew Rinder & Rob Walker are the A and R in AR Property Investments.



For all media information contact:

Chris Power,

Unit 35,

22 - 30 Wallace Avenue,

Point Cook,

VIC

3030

Tel: (03) 9395 7355

info.arpi@bigpond.com

http://arpropertyinvestments.com.au/
According to a new study published this week in the journal Nature, globular clusters make new stars by adopting stray cosmic gas and dust.

Stars in clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas.

However, old and massive globular clusters  with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses several hundred thousand times that of the Sun  often harbor multiple populations of stars, indicating that more than one star-forming event occurred during their lifetimes.

Now the new study, led by Dr. Chengyuan Li of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, might explain these puzzling stellar generations.

This study offers new insight on the problem of multiple stellar populations in star clusters, Dr. Li said.

Using data collected by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, Dr. Li and co-authors have for the first time found young populations of stars within globular clusters that have apparently developed courtesy of star-forming gas flowing in from outside of the clusters themselves.

Our study suggests the gaseous fuel for these new stellar populations has an origin that is external to the cluster, rather than internal, the scientists said.

The team used Hubble observations of the globular star clusters NGC 1783 and NGC 1696 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, along with NGC 411 in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Within NGC 1783, for example, they identified an initial population of stars aged 1.4 billion years, along with two newer populations that formed 890 million and 450 million years ago.

What is the most straightforward explanation for these unexpectedly differing stellar ages? Some globular clusters might retain enough gas and dust to crank out multiple generations of stars, but this seems unlikely, said co-author Dr. Licai Deng, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences National Astronomical Observatories.

The most massive stars that form in a globular cluster only live about 10 million years before exploding as supernovae, which blow away the remaining gassy, dusty fuel required for making new stars.

The scientists propose that globular clusters can sweep up stray gas and dust they encounter while moving about their parent galaxies.

_____

Chengyuan Li et al. 2016. Formation of new stellar populations from gas accreted by massive young star clusters. Nature 529, 502-504; doi: 10.1038/nature16493
[NAIROBI] After interacting with many experts, I have established that scientists, researchers and development practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in understanding how policymakers, programme implementers and communities are using research evidence in decision-making.



This emerging interest in a subject commonly referred to as research uptake has gathered momentum and is attracting the attention of communicators, donors, development partners and governments.

I gathered that communication determines how communities  the main partner  and policymakers can effectively use research uptake in targeted interventions. Alberto Leny

Research uptake, an emerging field that is not yet very well understood, continues to be extensively discussed at different forums globally, with Sub-Saharan Africa mostly eliciting particular focus in two areas critical to the lives of the continents population  health and agriculture.



Research uptake professionals are continuing to explore the issues and aspects surrounding it, such as its theoretical conceptualisation, innovative approaches and barriers, its impact, and county-level experiences and lessons.



Earlier this week (25 January), I met Tom Barker, a senior health and nutrition convenor at the UK-headquartered Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the Africa Population Health Research Center (APHRC) in Kenya. He attended this workshop as part of a project team carrying out an independent evaluation of the UK Department for International Development-funded five-year 75 million (about US$106 million) maternal and newborn health programme in Kenya.



The programme is being implemented by partners such as the UNICEF Kenya, the UK-based Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Options, an international organisation that aims to improve global health outcomes. The programmes evaluation is led by Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) and others such as the APHRC, IDS, Great Lakes University of Kisumu in Kenya, and Itad, a UK-based consulting firm that specialises in monitoring and evaluation.

In my discussion with Barker, he concurred that research uptake falls within the context of the programmes evaluation and that communication is crucial in research uptake.Our work has three core components: capacity building in clinical and obstetric care management, health systems strengthening and observing the demand side, notably attendance at clinics, which has improved and seems to be working quite well, Barker explained, illustrating the linkage between research uptake and programme implementation.I gathered that communication determines how communities  the main partner  and policymakers can effectively use research uptake in targeted interventions, whether in health, agriculture, water and sanitation, energy or other areas that touch directly on the lives of the poor and the marginalised.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Two secrets of one of the brain's most enigmatic regions have finally been revealed. In a pair of new studies, scientists from the Gladstone Institutes have discovered a specific neural circuit that controls walking, and they found that input to this circuit is disrupted in Parkinson's disease.

Walking becomes a major challenge for people afflicted by Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's is caused by a depletion of dopamine--an important neurochemical--in the basal ganglia (BG), a brain region involved in fundamental behaviors like movement, learning, reward, and motivation. In Parkinson's, an imbalance arises between two pathways in the BG: the direct or "go" pathway and the indirect or "stop" pathway. Ordinarily, these pathways work together seamlessly to control locomotion, but in Parkinson's the stop pathway overpowers the go pathway, making it difficult to initiate movement. How the imbalance between these two pathways developed remained a mystery--until now.

Correcting an Imbalance in the Brain

Published in Neuron, scientists led by Gladstone associate investigator Anatol Kreitzer, PhD, discovered that dopamine depletion causes a miscommunication between the BG and another region called the thalamus, an area thought to relay sensory information to the brain. This miscommunication results in a loss of input to the go pathway from the thalamus, which consequently disrupts movement. Blocking the connection between the two regions reversed the imbalance between the stop and go pathways and restored normal behavior in a mouse model of Parkinson's.

"This study provides strong evidence for a mechanism by which the stop pathway overcomes the go pathway in Parkinson's disease," says first author Philip Parker, PhD, a former graduate student in Dr. Kreitzer's lab at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "Our findings implicate the thalamus in the development of the disease, an area of the brain that has received relatively little attention in Parkinson's research."

"Several studies have targeted the thalamus with deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson's, but the region's role in the disease was not well established," adds Dr. Kreitzer, who is also an associate professor of physiology and neurology at UCSF. "Our findings finally provide a clear picture of how the thalamus can imbalance neural circuits and suppress movement in this condition."

Discovering How the Brain Controls Walking

In the second study, published in Cell, the scientists discovered that the go and stop pathways from the BG control locomotion by regulating a group of nerve cells in the brainstem that connects the brain to the spinal cord. The researchers revealed that the go pathway selectively activates a type of neuron in the brainstem that releases the neurochemical glutamate, and these neurons are responsible for triggering locomotion.

The scientists used optogenetics--an innovative research tool that uses light to activate or inhibit select cells in the brain--to stimulate either the go or the stop pathway in mice that were running on a tiny treadmill, while recording neural activity in the brainstem. They discovered that the go pathway selectively activated glutamate neurons, causing the mice to move, whereas the stop pathway inhibited these neurons and made the mice stop.

"This is the first time we have been able to demonstrate how the go and stop pathways regulate locomotion," says Tom Roseberry, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Kreitzer. "We show a very precise connection from the basal ganglia to the brainstem that controls movement."

Remarkably, the researchers discovered that the brainstem neurons can overpower the signals from the BG--that is, if glutamate neurons were turned on, the animal moved even if the stop pathway is activated.

"In order to understand why walking is particularly disrupted in Parkinson's disease, we need to map out the circuitry that controls locomotion," says Dr. Kreitzer. "Our study shows that a specific set of neurons in the brainstem are both necessary and sufficient to initiate locomotion. This finding could open the door for new treatment targets to help Parkinson's patients walk more easily."
Permyakov trial: Avetisyans' relatives unable to testify at today's court hearing

The trial of a Russian soldier, charged with the murder of a seven-member family in Armenias Gyumri city, resumed in a Russian military base stationed in Gyumri. During todays court hearing, Lusine Avetisyan, Anahit Koshtoyan and Yegor Adamyan  all relative of the massacred Avetisyan family, were to bear testimony. Lusine Avetisyan and Anahit Koshtoyan, both daughters of the family, today said they felt bad and petitioned the court to publish their pre-trial testimony in which they said they did not believe that Valery Permyakov, the 20-year-old Russia soldier accused of the murder, acted alone. Today the court also heard Karine Avetisyan, one of the neighbours of the killed family. In her testimony, she said that on the day of the killings on January 12, 2015, she heard a loud bang early in the morning, at about 6 am. Thinking it was an earthquake, she went out to the yard but finding nothing strange and extraordinary, she returned home. Then she went to work as usual. Karine learnt about the murder from her sister who telephoned her at the office at about 11 am to tell about the tragedy. At the previous court hearing on January 22, Permyakov pleaded guilty to all charges, including murders, robbery and an attempt to illegally cross the Armenian-Turkish frontier.
In October 2015, the Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risk (COFEPRIS) gave Mexico the registry of the first recombinant vaccine against seasonal influenza in the world and designed to begin marketing in the first quarter of 2016.

For the approval of the drug, called Flublock and originally formulated by the US laboratory Protein Sciences Corporation, Institute of Biotechnology of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) participated in the transfer of analytical information of the vaccine.

The scientific work at the UNAM is led by Dr. Laura Palomares, who explains that for a vaccine to be called recombinant means that instead of taking the original pathogen and multiply it to attenuate its effect, scientists take single gene from it, in this case of the virus strains H1N1 and H3N2 influenza, which codes for hemagglutinin coding and is expressed in organic compounds that have nothing to do with the influenza virus, such as eggs, gluten, gelatin, latex or conservatives.

"Working with the DNA of the virus has several advantages, for example, it does not need to be cultivated and there is no risk for the handlers who make the vaccine or the environment" says the researcher.

The second advantage has to do with having to get vaccinated each year against influenza, and this is because it is a highly changeable virus, so the current vaccine on the market no longer contains the virus that is currently infecting the population. "With the recombinant DNA technique this does not happen because we work with the sequence of virus circulating at this time," explains the specialist.

She adds that the third advantage is that this method shortens production times, since obtaining strains and adapting them can take several months, but a recombinant vaccine can be produced massively in just a few weeks, providing for emergency cases such as the one in 2009 with H1N1 influenza.

Flublock wasdeveloped in the USA by Protein Science Corporation, where it has a sanitary registration. In Mexico it was acquired by the laboratory Liomont and thanks to the collaboration with the Institute of Biotechnology of the UNAM, it obtained registration with COFEPRIS.

Influenza is a highly contagious respiratory disease that enters the body through the mouth, nose and eyes; it is transmitted from person to person through saliva droplets that are expelled by sneezing or coughing, shaking hands, kissing or hugging.

It can also be spread by having contact with items previously contaminated by droplets of saliva from a person sick with influenza, such as tables, computer keyboards, door handles, handrails, telephones, tissues and assorted surfaces.

"With this vaccine, Mexico gains access to state of the art medicines and vaccines," says Dr. Palomares. She adds that she runs the laboratory at the Institute of Biotechnology, which has extensive experience in the characterization of this type of influenza virus proteins.

"The UNAM is very interested in this type of technology, which is very versatile and can be used to create other vaccines, to be available in the country so we can respond quickly to a pandemic, as the one in 2009," emphasizes the researcher. (Agencia ID)
A new clinical study published in the January issue of Gene Therapy reports the promising results of an innovative DNA-based gene therapy that may offer a potential therapeutic option for a disease with unmet medical needs. The study examined the safety and efficacy of gene therapy with a plasmid DNA containing human hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) gene, called VM202, in 52 patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI) at 16 hospitals and research centers in the United States and Korea. VM202 was found to be safe and well tolerated and showed clinical benefits in CLI patients who had no other treatment options. Both ulcer healing and tissue oxygenation improved significantly in patients who were given four series of VM202 injections (spaced 2 weeks apart) in the muscle of the diseased leg.

"These positive results are exciting, and VM202 shows great promise for treating patients with this debilitating disease who often have limited therapeutic options," said Dr. Emerson C. Perin, Director of the Stem Cell Center at the Texas Heart Institute and the principal investigator of the study. "We are looking forward to conducting a phase III trial to better understand the potential of this novel approach, especially in treating non-healing ulcers, which is a serious symptom that often leads to amputation because of the lack of medical therapies available."

In the study, patients treated with high-dose (16 mg total) VM202 showed significantly better ulcer healing than did patients who were treated with placebo injections. In fact, 62% of ulcers treated with high-dose VM202 healed completely compared with only 11% of ulcers treated with placebo. Statistically meaningful results were also seen in tissue oxygenation (TcPO2 levels). Of patients treated with high-dose VM202, 71% showed increased TcPO2 levels, whereas only 33% of control patients showed better tissue oxygenation.

CLI is a serious form of peripheral artery disease (PAD)-a cardiovascular disease caused by narrowing of the peripheral arteries, most commonly in the legs. If not managed properly in the early stages, PAD can progress to CLI where the blood flow in the arteries becomes severely obstructed or blocked by plaque build-up and advanced atherosclerosis. As blood flow to the limb decreases, oxygenation of the tissues also decreases. This restricted blood flow reduces oxygenation of the tissues, which leads to chronic pain, ulcer formation, and possibly gangrene. As the tissue dies, amputation can become a last resort in extreme cases of CLI.

VM202 is a plasmid DNA that contains the human HGF gene that produces two isoforms of HGF proteins that are naturally found in the human body. HGF is a growth factor that induces angiogenesis and acts as a neurotrophic factor. After VM202 is injected into a patient's muscle, it is taken up by a cell and produces the HGF proteins, which are then released from the cell and may induce new blood vessel formation by activating various signaling pathways. In this way, VM202 may provide clinical benefits to CLI patients.

The study was sponsored by ViroMed Co., Ltd., and was supported by a grant from the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (grant no. 10031644). ViroMed is a research and development-focused biopharmaceutical company located in Seoul, Korea. Based on the results from this phase II study, ViroMed received U.S. FDA approval to initiate a phase III study for chronic, non-healing, ischemic foot ulcers in diabetes patients with VM202-PAD. ViroMed is developing new and innovative biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of currently untreatable diseases. VM202 has been developed by ViroMed by using a proprietary vector system and a genetically modified HGF gene.

About VM202-PAD

VM202-PAD is part of a group of therapeutics derived from VM202. When injected into patients, the DNA-based drug, VM202-PAD, produces hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) protein, which induces angiogenesis and acts as a neurotrophic factor, leading to the formation of new microvasculature and the regeneration of nerve cells. The results from a phase I clinical study showed the possibility of VM202-PAD as a new concept drug, and the results have been published (Gene Therapy 2011, 18: 788-794). It is expected that VM202-PAD will ultimately become a new drug in the treatment of peripheral arterial disease.
While world health leaders race to contain the spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in the Americas, researchers at the University of Iowa are reminding doctors in the United States to be on the lookout for two other vector-borne and potentially life-threatening diseases that can be passed from mother to child through the placenta.

Chagas' disease and Leishmaniasis are parasitic diseases found in Mexico, Central America, and South America. In addition, Leishmaniasis also is found in some parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and southern Europe. Blood-sucking insects are blamed for transmitting both diseases.

Now that scientists know the pathogens can also be passed congenitally, global travel and migration have made people in the U.S. vulnerable.

The problem is that most American doctors don't think of parasites from far away places when a sick baby arrives in their office.

That needs to change, says Christine Petersen, associate professor of epidemiology at the UI College of Public Health and corresponding author of the paper "A Mother's Gift: Congenital Transmission of Trypanosoma and Leishmania Species," which appeared online Jan. 28 in PLOS Pathogens.

"Congenital transmission will be the predominant way that kids in the United States get these diseases because we don't have the bug problem," Petersen says. "So, you might have a child going into heart failure or with an enlarged liver and spleen, and the doctors can't figure out what's going on, and the child is on death's doorstep."

Petersen's concern comes at a time when public health and infectious-disease experts are scrambling to understand the impacts of infection with the Zika virus, which has been connected to a neurological disorder cropping up in Brazil that results in babies being born with abnormally small heads. There is neither a vaccine to prevent Zika nor medicine to treat it.

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The newly published paper is a review of previous studies about Chagas' disease and Leishmaniasis and serves as a reminder for U.S. health care workers to remember these diseases when examining sick children whose mothers have come from areas where such illnesses are more common.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 8 million people in Mexico, Central America, and South America have Chagas' disease, and most of them do not know they are infected. In those areas, the triatomine beetles--the so-called "kissing bugs"-- usually pass on the disease. If untreated, the infection can be life threatening. In the acute phase of the disease, a patient can suffer fever, fatigue, body aches, headache, rash, loss of appetite, diarrhea, and vomiting--signs that are also common to other illnesses, which is why doctors often overlook Chagas' disease. But once a patient reaches the chronic phase of the disease, he or she can experience serious cardiac and intestinal complications.

Leishmaniasis, which usually affects the spleen, liver, and bone marrow, is spread by sand flies infected with Leishmania infantum parasites. According to the CDC, the number of cases ranges from 200,000 to 400,000 worldwide.

Dogs, it seems, are a reservoir host for both diseases.

Research involving infected dogs proved that Leishmaniasis could pass across the placenta, something that was considered possible by some medical doctors and veterinarians but not widely accepted. Petersen and other UI researchers were the first to confirm five years ago that Leishmaniasis could be passed congenitally.

Petersen says there are drugs to treat Chagas' disease and Leishmaniasis, but they are somewhat toxic and have significant side effects, especially in children. Most countries where these parasitic diseases are common take preventative measures instead, such as soaking bed nets with insecticides, to deter infected blood-sucking bugs.

The next step for UI researchers is an 18-month vaccine trial on 600 dogs, funded by the Morris Animal Foundation, a nonprofit organization that invests in science to advance animal health. But the researchers' goal is to also prevent the spread of these diseases between animals and people.

"This is a whole new ballgame," Petersen says. "Those who have the disease but aren't sick yet, can we turn the tide for them? If we do find that the vaccine does make the dogs better, then the question is, 'Does it help not passing it on to their puppies?'"
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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

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The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

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STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh

USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens

ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression
Nurse found little Seryozha under the blanket and took him to hospital

I opened the door, it was very dark. I had a flashlight with me. There was a woman lying in bed. I came up to her and saw traces of blood on her cheek. Then I opened the door of the second room. I saw a woman lying in bed, there was a man lying not far from her. I touched them They were both cold. I entered the next room. A wounded man was lying on the floor. I found another woman there with disheveled hair. Her neck was covered in blood. I came up to see what had happened I pulled back the blanket and saw an infant in the mothers hands. I saw that he was still breathing and took him in my arms. He was wearing a shirt. I took off the shirt and saw cuts on his body. Immediately, I called the dispatcher to call the police, because the baby had to be taken to hospital. We were at the hospital at 12.15, recalls the nurse who arrived in the house of the Avetsiyan family upon receiving the report on the tragedy that happened in Armenias Gyumri city last January.
IMRF cites recent reports of would-be rescuers deterred from helping people in distress by concerns about territorial waters. Ceo Bruce Reid said: Great work is being done by professional rescue crews from all over Europe, coordinated by our friends in the Italian and Hellenic Coast Guards, with the assistance too of Search and Rescue (SAR) colleagues in Malta and Turkey.

But we are concerned by reports of less well-prepared responses at sea, by people whose good intentions are undoubted but who may not fully understand the procedures internationally agreed for maritime SAR  procedures which make a well-tried system work efficiently, to save more lives.

The imperative to rescue people in distress at sea  where there is "a reasonable certainty that [they are] threatened by grave and imminent danger", according to the SAR Convention  applies whether in territorial or international waters and regardless of the legal status of the people in distress or the circumstances in which they are found, says Reid. All vessels at sea except warships are obliged to rescue people in distress.

Its important to emphasise that we are talking about people who will die if not rescued, said Reid. This is different to highly important but less immediately urgent humanitarian responses, where lives are not imminently at risk.

And its different to border control issues, too. SAR takes place within that broader context, of course  and the IMRF understands that the overall situation is complex.

But SAR is simple in principle and its procedures are established in international law, Reid added. If people are in distress at sea they must be rescued if possible, and rescue includes being brought to a place of safety. The IMRF urges all concerned to find solutions to the wider issues, and to enable the maritime SAR services to do their lifesaving work.
It is impossible to prove whether the Jones Act is good or bad, any attempts at consultants studies invariable degenerate into preachy Gospel-like statements parroting back talking points from whichever side commissioned the particular economic study. This past week, a lively battle ensued between a group called The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (against) and the American Maritime Partnership (in favour). Like Trump with his media savvy strategies, the AMP, which describes itself as the voice of the domestic maritime industry, has clearly won this battle, as it lashed out hard at the way out-gunned AII, led by former military officers, according to the AMP.

Tanker market observers have grown tired, by now, of the familiar anti Jones Act refrain that says: to figure out the delivered cost of oil moving from Texas to New England by tanker, the buyer must incorporate an extra $6 per barrel of shipping costs. The delivered cost of oil from the same port in Texas to Canada will be far less far less since the shipping costs only adds about $2 per barrel.

This quote, bullet-pointed by opponents of the Jones Act before the tanker boom now in its second year, comes from Forbes, a one-time serious business publication, the only name brand business publication to pick up the AIIs article. Amusingly, the Forbes contributor who cites the AII report, misses the Jones Act start date by 100 years, telling readers Much has changed in the last one hundred years, so it only makes sense to overhaul or at least revisit this relic from the early 19th Century. Such an error is far more egregious than quoting tanker rates from 2013, illustrative of the sloppiness injected into this dialogue.

Further amusement can be found in the august sources referenced in the AII report- trade outlets- with limited editorial oversight when it comes to publication of whatever press release arrives over the transom.

In this latest skirmish, the AMP demanded a retraction of the AIIs assertions, and cited more than a dozen of what it labeled as erroneous claims. Ironically, the AII report  describing a 2013 Congressional report, acknowledges the inability for commentators (from either side) to provide economic clarity on the issue. The U.S. government had said: The ultimate conclusion of the report is that there are too many factors affecting prices and economic trends to attribute a significant blame to the Jones Act and that the effects of modifying the Act are uncertain.

AMP, though bathed in talking points, at least gets the point that this discussion should be shifted beyond the realm of objective $ per ton and $ per day calculations; do not attempt to impose a layer of economics that is so riddled with holes as not to be seaworthy.

The AII report can be found at: http://www.aii.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JonesActFormatted.pdf

The Forbes piece can be found at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brighammccown/2016/01/19/keeping-up-with-the-jones-act-inconsistent-trade-policy-hinders-economic-growth/#42fec5ff71b8

The AMP response can be found at: http://www.americanmaritimepartnership.com/2016/01/27/amp-chairman-fires-back-demands-retraction-of-erroneous-jones-act-report/
The Guidelines were produced by a Cooperation Group on Places of Refuge comprising representatives of EU member states, the European Commission and industry.

They aim at providing practical guidance for the different parties involved in the process of dealing with a ship in need of assistance so as to support a more uniform application of the provisions of the EC VTMIS (Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Information System) Directive, as well as enhancing cooperation amongst all parties involved.

The EU Guidelines do not, however, supersede but rather complement the Guidelines developed at the IMO, ECSA stresses.

Work on the Guidelines began after the MSC Flaminia incident in 2012 (pictured) when fire broke out aboard the containership but the stricken vessel was for weeks refused entry to numerous ports for fear of environmental pollution before Germany finally accepted her.
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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

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Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

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The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

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STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh

USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens

ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression
Press Release

January 29, 2016 Drilon: Economic issues must take center stage in 2016 elections Senate President Franklin M. Drilon today warned of a possible reversal of the country's impressive economic growth if the people elect the wrong leaders in the upcoming May 2016 polls. Drilon made the statement as he urged the voters to make the sustainability of the economy a major issue in the upcoming 2016 elections. "There is a lot at stake for our economy in this upcoming election. All the economic gains we have achieved in the past six years will be put to naught and our people cannot fully benefit from them if our country falls into the hands of the wrong leaders," Drilon stressed. In the report by the National Economic Development Authority, the country's growth domestic product grew by 5.8% in 2015, which, though lower than the 6.1% GDP recorded in 2014, is still among the fastest growing in Asia, next to India, China and Vietnam. Drilon said that he agreed with outgoing Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, who earlier said that "the challenge for next administration is to maintain momentum for reforms." Drilon said that the ability of the country to sustain its economic momentum is mostly due to the reforms implemented by President Aquino all throughout his term, buoyed by the fiscal discipline that was employed by his economic managers. "There is no doubt that the platform of good governance of President Aquino has effectively resulted in a healthy economy and an improved living condition of the Filipino people," Drilon said. He noted that the 5.8% growth in 2015 is a far cry from the 1.1% recorded in 2009. But Drilon said these economic gains are at risk of being reversed if the people elect an inexperienced, ineffective and corrupt leader. "The upcoming election is crucial in the sustainability of these reforms. The election will make or break whatever we have started under the Aquino administration. We must safeguard the reforms we have painstakingly put in place," Drilon said. "Let us not throw away the gains we have made. Let us work together in order that we can sustain the reforms that made our economy robust and attractive to both local and foreign investments," he added. The Senate chief also said that the laws passed by Congress helped lay the foundation for a healthy economy. These include, among others, the Sin Tax Reform Law, the GOCC Governance Act, the Philippine Competition Act, as well as the law that allows the full entry of foreign banks. Drilon then vowed to continue to work on legislation that can further boost the economy. "There's a lot to be done. The major task is not only to sustain our economic growth, but also to make sure that this growth is felt by all of our countrymen," Drilon concluded.
Fremont Police Department / Fremont Police Department

Fremont police are asking for the publics help in reuniting a baby goat with its mother after a school teacher found it wandering around alone on suburban streets Thursday morning.

The teacher was on her way to work when she came upon the wayward animal near the intersection of Lemos Lane and Tirso Street in Fremont. She took it to school, where staffers from the Fremont Police Departments animal services division picked it up.
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is heading to the Bay Area on Feb. 21 for a campaign fundraiser at the Atherton home of a tech entrepreneur.

Clinton will be raising money at the home of Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the CEO of Joyus, a video-driven online shopping site with headquarters in San Francisco. Organizers are focusing on reaching out to young people  Clinton is trailing Democratic challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., among younger voters  and to women in tech.

Cassidy is also the founder of theBoardlist, which is trying to place women into executive positions in the male-dominated tech industry. In an e-mail sent to possible supporters, Cassidy wrote that she hopes the fundraiser will be a forum where Hillary can address issues specific to women and young leaders in the industry.

She asked attendees for potential topics so we can curate specific questions for Secretary Clinton to talk about. ... Whether it (is) discussing job creation to equality in the workplace to broadband and technology adoption among low-income communities, wed love you to join and share your input for this event.

In an attempt to lure younger tech activists to cut loose some cash, organizers are asking for $500 donations for people under 35. The charge is $1,000 for those over 35, and $2,700 for people who want to have a photo taken with the former secretary of state.

It will set donors back $27,000 to be on the host committee  which includes further fundraising responsibilities  but $7,500 for those under 35.

Clinton headlined a fundraiser in early January in San Francisco. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was the draw at a Hillsborough fundraiser this month.

Joe Garofoli is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
In the minutes before he died, handcuffed and pinned on the sidewalk by an Oakland police officer who was pressing a knee into his back, 53-year-old Hernan Jaramillo repeatedly pleaded for help.

I cant breathe! he is heard moaning over and over in footage from a police body camera that the Bay Area News Group obtained and posted on its websites. Theyre killing me.

Jaramillo gasps those words repeatedly for four minutes before he falls silent and dies on July 8, 2013.

According to a lawsuit filed by Jaramillos sister Ana Biocini against the city of Oakland, Jaramillo was visibly limp and seemingly lifeless when officers flipped him over. The Oakland City Council settled the case in closed session on Jan. 19, agreeing to pay $450,000 to Jaramillos family.

A woman can be heard crying in the police video and asking officers to let Jaramillo sit up as he is calling out to her that he cannot get air.

According to the complaint, four or five officers restrained Jaramillo after his sister called police. Biocini had called the police after hearing loud noises coming from Jaramillos bedroom, which led her to believe that an intruder was in the house.

When the police came and found no intruder, they handcuffed Jaramillo  who had been alone in his room  and tried to force him into a patrol car. He struggled and was thrown face down on the ground, the complaint said.

Civil rights attorney John Burris, who represented Biocini in the lawsuit, said the police made a series of egregious mistakes, starting when they tried to put Jaramillo in the car.

They shouldnt have been trying to put the guy in the car in the first place, and then they shouldnt have been pushing him down, Burris said. And then once he was down and said he couldnt breathe, the officers should have lifted the pressure off his back.

According to Burris, police had claimed Jaramillo was acting under the influence at the time he was detained. Burris hired toxicology expert found traces of cocaine in Jaramillos system, though Burris believes the drug did not cause his death.

The shocking details of Jaramillos death have come at a time of intense public debate over police tactics, including restraint. The case eerily parallels that of New York man Eric Garner, who also died wheezing I cant breathe! as an officer pinned him.

I cant breathe! became a refrain of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the country after Garners death in 2014. Last year his family settled a lawsuit for $5.9 million with the city of New York.

In a press release issued shortly after the incident, Oakland police said they had tried to detain Jaramillo for a psychiatric evaluation, but that he resisted.

During the ensuing struggle, the subject and the involved officers went to the ground, the release said. The subject then became unresponsive.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
A 33-year-old man was found dead from a gunshot wound in his Antioch home Thursday afternoon, according to police.

Officers were dispatched to an address in the 1800 block of Periwinkle Way at 1:11 p.m. Thursday after another resident found the victim and called 911.
A 2-year-old girl running after her father to say goodbye was struck and killed in Richmond Thursday after he accidentally hit her as he pulled the car out of the family driveway, police said.

This was just a straight tragic accident by a family member, said Lt. Bisa French, a police spokeswoman.

The car collided with the toddler about 2:20 p.m. on the 300 block on Beck Street, Lt. Andre Hill said. Police initially said the father accidentally backed into the girl, but later reported he was pulling forward when the child was hit.

When officers arrived, they found one of the girls parents was clutching her in their arms, police said.

Investigators and police wept at the scene alongside neighbors trying to make sense of the fatal accident. Kyle Patton, 53, lives nearby and said he saw authorities overcome with emotion.

I cant even put my mind to it, as a father, what happened, he said.

Susana Santos, a neighbor close to the family, said the toddler always liked playing in the front yard. Her mom was inside getting the girl a sweater when she wandered behind the car, said Santos, 57.

Theyre very nice people. They always take care of their kids, she said. Its very sad because he loved her so much.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it will push large employers to disclose employee pay data, an effort to reduce wage discrimination in the workplace.

Companies with more than 100 employees are already required to report data in a form called the EEO-1, which details the number of people that occupy certain job categories by race, gender and ethnicity. The recommendation by the commission would also ask firms to report employees in 12 pay bands, a requirement that could take effect in 2017. The proposal was made in partnership with the Department of Labor.
Bill Hutchinson

Two East Bay men and one woman suspected of kidnapping a teenage girl and forcing her into prostitution were arrested by San Francisco police Thursday, officials said.

San Leandro residents Randall Stovall, 21, and Kheyaira Franklin, 18, were arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, kidnapping, conspiracy, pimping, pandering and child endangerment, police said.
FORT WORTH, Texas  The Texas teenager who used an affluenza defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck arrived at a Texas airport after his deportation from Mexico on Thursday, more than a month after he and his mother fled the U.S. as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

Ethan Couch, 18, arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport late Thursday morning and could be seen walking through the airport escorted by law enforcement. Couch was apprehended with his mother in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Dec. 28, after a call for delivery pizza tipped off authorities to their whereabouts.

Authorities believe Couch and his mother fled Texas in her pickup truck after an online video appeared to show Ethan Couch at a party where people were drinking. Couch had been sentenced to 10 years probation in juvenile court for the 2013 drunken-driving wreck that killed four people and severely injured two others, and the terms prohibit him from drinking or leaving Tarrant County, Texas.

During the trial in that case, a defense witness argued that Couch had been coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents, a condition the expert called affluenza. The condition is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its use drew widespread derision.

Couch initially fought deportation, but his attorneys recently dropped the fight. Uniformed Mexican immigration agents put Couch on a commercial flight from Mexico City to Texas on Thursday morning.

Couchs mother, Tonya Couch, was quickly deported after she and her son were found in Mexico. She is charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon. She was released on bond in early January, after being fitted with an electronic ankle GPS monitor, to the home of another son.

According to an arrest warrant, Tonya Couch is accused of telling her estranged husband, Fred Couch, that he would never see her or their son again before fleeing.

A detention warrant was issued for Ethan Couch in December after he missed a meeting with his probation officer. Investigators said he appeared to have tried to disguise himself by dying his blond hair black and his beard brown when he and his mother were found in Mexico.
BURNS, Ore.  The FBI released video Thursday of the shooting death of a spokesman for the armed occupiers of a wildlife refuge that shows the man reaching into his jacket before he fell into the snow. The FBI said the man had a loaded gun in his pocket.

Authorities showed the video at a news conference to counter claims that the man killed in the Tuesday confrontation on a remote Oregon high country road  Robert Finicum  did nothing to provoke officers.

Release of the video came as four occupiers remaining at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge refused to leave without assurances they wouldnt be arrested. The occupation began nearly a month ago.

During the Tuesday confrontation, the FBI and Oregon State Troopers arrested five main figures in the occupation, including Ammon Bundy, their leader.

The video, shot by the FBI from an airplane, shows Bundys vehicle stopped by police on a road. He and an occupier riding with him  Brian Cavalier  were arrested. A white truck driven by Finicum was stopped but took off, with officers in pursuit. The video shows Finicums vehicle plowing into a snowbank when encountering a roadblock.

A man identified as Finicum gets out of the truck. At first, he has his hands up, but then he reaches into his pocket and he falls into the snow.

On at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket, said Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge for the FBI in Portland.

He did have a loaded 9mm semiautomatic handgun in the pocket, he said.

Bretzing also said Finicums truck nearly hit an FBI agent before it got stuck in the snow.

Actions have consequences, Bretzing said. The FBI and OSP tried to effect these arrests peacefully.

The FBI posted the video to its YouTube channel.

Bretzing said agents and troopers provided medical assistance to Finicum after they were confident that they had addressed any further threats. He said that happened about 10 minutes after the shooting.

Two loaded .223 caliber semiautomatic rifles and a loaded revolver were found in the truck, Bretzing said.

The Oregon State Medical Examiners Office on Thursday confirmed the person shot in the Tuesday confrontation was Finicum, a 54-year-old Arizona rancher.

Bretzing said four occupiers are still holed up at the wildlife refuge. The negotiators continue to work around the clock to talk to those four people in an effort to get them to come out peacefully, he said.
Chris Hardy/SFC

A San Francisco man was found guilty of raping and killing a 28-year-old photographer more than 30 years ago after his previous conviction in the case was overturned, prosecutors said Thursday.

John Davis, 49, was found guilty of first degree murder with special circumstance allegations for killing someone during a rape and a burglary.
The body of a missing San Jose man was recovered Thursday evening in Santa Cruz County nearly a week after a pool of blood and a human ear led authorities to arrest his coworker in the slaying, police said.

Investigators received a tip to search the Jamison Creek Road area near Boulder Creek on Thursday, where they found the body of 28-year-old Kyle Myrick around 4 p.m. A medical examiner arrived on scene and confirmed the body was Myrick, according to a statement by San Jose Police Sgt. Enrique Garcia.

Steve Hlebo, 39, of Los Altos, was arraigned in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Wednesday after he was charged with murdering Myrick, who worked with him at a San Jose motorcycle dealership. He did not enter a plea, according to officials in Santa Clara County District Attorneys Office.

The discovery that led to Hlebos arrest was made on the grounds of his and Myricks workplace at GP Sports, 2020 Camden Ave. In a 5-by-5-foot storage room, authorities found an ear on the floor and blood splattered on the walls, according to court documents. Shocked employees came upon the scene hours after Myrick went missing and immediately called police.

Myrick, 28, was last seen around 2 p.m. Friday at GP Sports. A report from San Jose Detective Sgt. Paul Hamblin and Detective J. Tanner detailed the suspicious circumstances leading up to his disappearance.

Hlebo was tasked with assembling two ATVs in the lot behind the dealership about 1 p.m. on Friday, the report states. A manager sent Myrick out to help, leaving them alone in the lot.

When the supervisor returned around 3 p.m. to check on their progress, he noticed the gate leading to the lot was locked, which was highly unusual, according to the report. Hlebo opened the gate for him, but there was no sign of Myrick and Hlebo said he didnt know where his colleague was.

By 5 p.m., the manager started to worry and returned to the rear lot, finding that Hlebo had locked it again and that Myrick was still nowhere in sight.

The manager noticed that Hlebos white 2002 GMC Sierra pickup was parked at a back door of a building on the company grounds that had been burned in a fire more than a year ago. When the manager asked why the truck was parked there, Hlebo gave a nonsensical answer, according to the detectives report.

The boss suggested Hlebo and a handful of other employees search for Myrick in the vacant building, but Hlebo said he didnt want to because there were ghosts in there, according to the report.

At 6 p.m., the dealerships closing time, a group of employees started looking for Myrick, while Hlebo logged out and left. Using flashlights to search the burned building, they discovered a great deal of fresh blood on the walls and floor and contacted the police, the report reads.

When officers arrived, they determined the blood stains suggested someone had been dragged from the crime scene to where Hlebos truck had been parked. The severed ear was in a pool of blood on the floor.

Investigators suspected Hlebo right away and went to his house in the 700 block of Los Ninos Way in Los Altos.

Police obtained a warrant to search Hlebos truck and home, and to take a DNA sample from the suspect. During the search of the truck, officers found a large amount of blood in the cab.

Hlebo was arrested about 4 a.m. on Saturday.

In an interview with detectives, Hlebo admitted getting into a fight with Myrick, but did not confess to killing him, according to the court documents.

In subsequent interviews with reporters, Hlebo denied involvement in Myricks disappearance. But police interviewed a relative, who informed them that Hlebo admitted killing Myrick, the detectives report says.

Hlebo is scheduled to enter a plea to the charges on Feb. 16.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
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Paul Kantner, who died Thursday at the age of 74, was one of San Franciscos most iconic music figures. The singer and guitarist piloted Jefferson Airplane and later Jefferson Starship through five decades of ups and down, from the Airplanes rise in the mid-60s psychedelic rock era through years of workhorse touring. Here are five songs that defined the bands and the man.

White Rabbit (1967)

One of the songs that defined the Summer of Love, the slow-burning track tips its towering top hat to Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland, while weaving its own narcotic spell.

Somebody to Love (1967)

More for you Jefferson Airplanes Paul Kantner dies at 74

The second single from Jefferson Airplanes breakthrough album, Surrealistic Pillow, this Top-10 anthem caught the underlying anxiety of the sunny Woodstock era as it came crashing into the grim Altamont age.

Wooden Ships (1969)

Kantner harmonizes beautifully with David Crosby and Stephen Stills on this sober folk-rock classic contemplating coming of age under the long shadow of the Vietnam War.

Volunteers (1969)

A live staple throughout Kantners career, this got its most prominent airing at Woodstock. This chaotic, blues-rock rooted track revealed Jefferson Airplanes revolutionary fervor in full.

Miracles (1975)

Recorded under the modified moniker of Jefferson Starship (which would eventually become the Kantner-less Starship of We Built This City fame), this string-laden song helped its accompanying album, Red Octopus, become the best-selling release of the groups career. A light-rock epic.

 Aidin Vaziri
Jefferson Airplane founder Paul Kantner, a giant of the San Francisco rock scene, died Thursday afternoon after suffering a massive heart attack in his sleep two days earlier. He was 74 and surrounded by his three children at the time of his death.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kantner had been rushed to California Pacific Medical Center, where he was revived and placed on life support.

Mr. Kantner was one of the princes of the Summer of Love, a lifelong proponent of free music in the parks, an unrepentant hippie and disruptive force long before that was a popular business strategy.

Bright, witty, acerbic and difficult, Mr. Kantner was a familiar figure puffing Camels and drinking espressos in the mornings outside Caffe Trieste in North Beach. He was the only member of the landmark San Francisco psychedelic rock band still living in the city he loved. He liked to describe San Francisco as 49 square miles surrounded by reality.

I was remembering him at his greatest apex, said Airplane bassist Jack Casady, raising his 12-string guitar over his head  no easy task itself  and looking out over the crowd in Golden Gate Park while the Airplane played. I remembered the hope in the alternative music that was being played out in San Francisco. Those were his shining moments.

The band traced its beginning to a hoot night at a Union Street folk club called the Drinking Gourd where Mr. Kantner met Marty Balin, another disaffected folkie looking to start an electric rock band. The pair recruited the other musicians and the Airplane was formed,

Jefferson Airplane launched the San Francisco 60s rock scene, starting with performances at a converted pizza parlor in Cow Hollow called the Matrix in September 1965. With the hit singles from the bands second album, Surrealistic Pillow  Somebody to Love and White Rabbit  the Airplane exploded from the San Francisco ballrooms to become the most exciting new rock band in the country in summer of 1967, the storied Summer of Love.

In the intervening months, the San Francisco scene burst open. The Airplane appeared at the October 1965 A Tribute to Dr. Strange, a dance/concert at Longshoremans Hall generally cited as ground zero of the new music scene. The Airplane headlined the first concert produced by Bill Graham at the Fillmore Auditorium in January 1966.

Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason gave the band an important review and RCA Victor Records signed the group. Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, the bands first album, was released in 1966.

Vocalist Grace Slick joined the band in 1966 and brought her two hit songs to the second album. She and Mr. Kantner were romantically involved for several years and had a daughter together. They lived for years in a mansion with a panoramic view above the Golden Gate Bridge originally built by a shipping magnate to watch ocean traffic.

The band was a major attraction at the three great rock festivals of the era  Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Altamont. At the height of the bands fame in 1968, the Airplane was featured on the cover of a special issue of Life magazine devoted to the new rock music.

After the bands dissolution in 1972, Mr. Kantner and Slick started recording as Jefferson Starship, a franchise the indefatigable touring musician continued to operate to his death. The current edition performed Thursday night in Milwaukee without Mr. Kantner. His bandmate David Freiberg, a friend since 1963, said the band members knew Mr. Kantner was in the hospital when they left town, but only got word of his death minutes before sound check.

There was nobody like him, said Freiberg. Some people may say, thank goodness, but there has definitely never been anyone like him. I dont know what were going to do without him. I guess keep on playing the songs and deal with life.

He was kind of the backbone of that band, said Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. It was always about Grace and Jack and Jorma (Kaukonen). I dont think he got the credit he deserved. And they were powerful. They could blow the Grateful Dead off the stage at times. We always played really well when we played with the Airplane.

Mr. Kantner was born in San Francisco, the only member of the Airplane native to the city. His mother died when he was 8 and his father packed him off to St. Josephs Military Academy in Belmont and St. Marys College High School in Berkeley, a Catholic boarding school. He entered the University of Santa Clara in 1959, another Jesuit institution, but soon transferred to San Jose State, where he fell under the sway of folk music and shortly thereafter dropped out. Playing South Bay coffee houses, he met another young folk guitarist, Kaukonen, who also eventually would join the Jefferson Airplane.

At the peak of his currency as the rock star bandleader of Jefferson Starship, when the band stormed radio with tracks like Miracles, Jane and Find Your Way Back through the late 70s, Mr. Kantner haunted local clubs and concerts, checking out the bands. He toured and recorded ceaselessly with various editions of bands under the name Jefferson Starship. When he left the band in 1984 over artistic differences, Mr. Kantner exercised his legal rights to retain ownership of the name and the original band continued a few years longer billed as the Starship.

Outspoken, thorny and committed, Mr. Kantner lived his final years in an apartment in North Beach. He held court routinely outside Caffe Trieste or other local watering holes such as Vesuvios, engaging strangers and passers-by who were invariably delighted to banter with the famous rock star.

Mr. Kantner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the band in 1996. He attended the formal induction ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria wearing street clothes. The band is scheduled to receive a lifetime achievement award this year.

Mr. Kantner is survived by three children; sons Gareth and Alexander, and daughter China Isler. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Bay Area author Joel Selvin is the former longtime music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle.
BALTIMORE  When President Obama addressed the annual retreat for House Democratic lawmakers in 2009, the event had the buoyant exuberance of a pep rally as he urged his partys robust majority  then 257 members strong  to help muscle through his economic stimulus plan.

But as Obama spoke at this years retreat Thursday, he stood before a far smaller and less popular audience: 188 Democratic lawmakers in a minority caucus with virtually no chance of moving back into power in the November elections.

More than seven years into his presidency, Obama and House Democrats, led by the onetime speaker Nancy Pelosi, remain steadfastly united against Republicans who have seized control of Congress. Last year, that partnership helped pass new top-line spending limits, block conservative social legislation and defend the presidents nuclear deal with Iran.

The allegiance, however, has come at a steep political cost. The much-diminished House Democratic caucus is no longer able to force through major legislation, as it did when Pelosi used her majority to help a new president stimulate the economy, overhaul health care and impose new rules on financial institutions. That has forced Obama to repeatedly assert his executive authority despite a fractured and sometimes dysfunctional Republican-led Congress, and House Democrats face the prospect of remaining in the minority for years to come.

Some Democrats hold Obama responsible for that, saying their partys lawmakers took the blame for the presidents aggressive and often unpopular agenda to revive the economy and adopt sweeping health care legislation during his first two years in office. And some say Obama showed indifference to the political circumstances of rank-and-file lawmakers and missed an opportunity to seize on the undercurrents of populism and antiestablishment sentiment that began coursing through the electorate after the partisan battle over health care.

The main Democrat nationally, and the only one who could be heard, was silent on the huge structural issues that more and more Americans were facing, said Stanley Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster who blames Obama for Democratic House losses in 2010 and 2014. His silence on those things left the voters without much motivation to vote.

Administration officials reject that critique, noting the historic pattern of losses that a presidents party often sustains in off-year elections and the eight House seats Democrats regained when Obama was on the ballot in 2012.
WASHINGTON  Migrant children in the governments care were placed in U.S. homes and left vulnerable to human trafficking due to sometimes non-existent screening by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a congressional report released Thursday.

The investigation says HHS failed to run background checks on the adults in the sponsors households, failed to visit sponsors homes and failed to realize some sponsors were accumulating multiple unrelated children, which can be a sign of human trafficking.

Lawmakers contend the government weakened its child-protection policies as it was overwhelmed by tens of thousands of children crossing the border. A Senate subcommittee held a hearing Thursday to release the report and examine weaknesses in the departments placement of migrant children.

At the hearing, HHS officials declined to fully answer many of the senators questions, at times saying they did not have the legal authority from Congress to follow up on the children.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the chairman of the panel, says the HHS placement program for migrant children suffers from serious, systemic defects.

The congressional investigation and hearing are in response to a case in Portmans home state of Ohio, where six Guatemalan unaccompanied minors were placed with human traffickers, including sponsors and their associates. Lured to the U.S. with the promise of an education, the teens instead were forced to work up to 12 hours a day on egg farms under threats of death.

Lawmakers from both parties bristled at the officials answers, saying they werent adequate when the lives of children had been endangered.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., criticized the overly legal tenor of many of the officials responses. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., stopped his line of questioning and left the hearing after saying that the witnesses were the definition of noncooperative.
CAPE CANAVERAL  Dozens of educators who competed alongside Christa McAuliffe to become the first teacher in space gathered Thursday to remember the seven astronauts who perished aboard Challenger 30 years ago.

McAuliffes son, Scott, now 39, also took part in the emotionally charged ceremony, held on a bleak, drizzly morning just 6 miles from where his mothers space shuttle blasted off for the final time on Jan. 28, 1986.

Many of the teacher-in-space semifinalists are retired now. They have gray hair. A few limp. But they still believe strongly in what McAuliffe hoped to accomplish aboard Challenger before disaster struck during liftoff.

Its really hard to be back, said William Dillon, 77, a retired teacher who represented California in the competition back in the mid-1980s. He was at Kennedy Space Center for Challengers launch and had gotten to know not only McAuliffe, but also a few of the other astronauts on the doomed flight.

Linda Preston, 61, also retired as a teacher, choked up as the names of the Challenger dead were read during the memorial service. The former space shuttle pilot reciting the names of all 24 astronauts killed in the line of duty over the years, Jon McBride, had to fight back tears.

About 40 of the 113 remaining semifinalists for teacher-in-space traveled to Cape Canaveral for the anniversary commemoration, the biggest gathering ever for a NASA memorial like this.

We felt we all wanted to be part of it, said Connecticut semifinalist David Warner, 63, who still teaches science.

Like so many of his colleagues, Warner wanted to see Kennedys Forever Remembered exhibit that opened last summer. It contains the only piece of Challenger wreckage on public display, a 12-foot section of the left-side body panel complete with the U.S. flag, as well as personal belongings of the Challenger and Columbia crews.

The ceremony was one of several NASA memorials that took place Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere around the country.

At Kennedy, rain moved the ceremony indoors, directly in front of the Forever Remembered exhibit.

Afterward, Scott McAuliffe and other children of the Challenger dead laid a wreath at the outdoor Space Mirror Memorial. Each guest received a rose or carnation to attach to the railing in front of the massive granite mirror.

McAuliffe, who works in education technology in Maine, said having his own two sons there with him  ages 6 and 8  made it easier. Its time, he said, that his children see and learn firsthand all about astronauts and the space program.

Barbara Morgan, an Idaho schoolteacher who served as Christa McAuliffes backup, recalled how Dick Scobee was a deep and poetic thinker, and how pilot Michael Smith let her push the stick during a training jet flight.

The rest of the Challenger crew, remembered fondly by Morgan: Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Gregory Jarvis.

The crowd of about 500 included family members of astronauts killed in all three of NASAs spacecraft tragedies: Challenger; Columbias catastrophic descent on Feb. 1, 2003; and the Apollo 1 fire on Jan. 27, 1967.
SACRAMENTO  The California Legislature moved quickly this week to pass a bill that corrects a mistake in the states historic medical marijuana laws passed last year.

AB21 deletes a provision that lawmakers inadvertently left in the legislation that said cities and counties had to create their own medical marijuana regulations by March 1 or the state would assume the responsibility. Lawmakers did not mean to set a deadline.

The deadline, however, caused local governments to panic at the prospect that they would lose local control of medical marijuana regulation  and many cities simply banned cultivation.

On Thursday, the Assembly passed AB21 in a 65-0 vote after the Senate passed it Monday 35-3. It now heads to Gov. Jerry Brown, who is expected to sign it.

My concern with the March 1 deadline was that these bans were happening without input from communities and stakeholders, said Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, who authored AB21 and parts of last years medical marijuana laws, which are supposed to provide more structure for the states loosely regulated, billion-dollar industry.

Two decades ago, California became the first state to allow for medicinal use of marijuana. However, it was largely unregulated, even as it became a booming industry.

2015 deal

Last year, the Legislature reached a deal with Brown, which was ultimately signed into law, that requires state and local licenses for medical marijuana businesses under the new Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. The bills classify medical marijuana as an agriculture product, meaning cultivators have to abide by the same regulations as farmers when it comes to their use of water, pesticides and other products.

How well California regulates medical marijuana could affect whether voters would support legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults. Proponents of recreational marijuana are collecting signatures for an initiative they hope to put on the November ballot.

Lawmakers and marijuana advocates urged local jurisdictions that passed bans in recent weeks to revisit them after Brown signs AB21 into law. The legislation is an urgency bill and would go into effect as soon as Brown signs it.

Reaction lamented

Aaron Herzberg, a partner at CalCann Holdings Inc., which invests in medical marijuana businesses in the state, said the knee-jerk reaction by cities that have banned marijuana cultivation in response to the deadline undermines the new laws.

You can agree Sacramento is going to regulate this, but if every city says, No, no, no  were not going to do this, its kind of a meaningless law, Herzberg said. Now that cities are no longer under the gun, I am hopeful that cities will adopt a more thoughtful approach.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 by promising to halt the excesses of George W. Bush: torture, needless secrecy, endless wars against undefined enemies. His administration, the Illinois senator vowed, would be the most transparent ever.

Charlie Savages new book Power Wars: Inside Obamas Post-9/11 Presidency serves as a report card as well as an account of legal and political maneuvers and conflicts in the administration of the man whom Savage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, calls the most lawyerly of American presidents.

Obama moved quickly to keep some of his commitments. He prohibited waterboarding and other forms of torture approved by Bushs Justice Department advisers, John Yoo, now back to teaching constitutional law at UC Berkeley, and Jay Bybee, now a Bush-appointed federal appeals court judge. Obama made their previously secret torture memos public, shut down secret CIA prisons abroad, promised to close the Guantanamo Naval Base prison that Bush had opened in hopes of avoiding U.S. court jurisdiction and renounced at least the vocabulary of a perpetual war on terror.

But presidential power and its limits often look different from the inside than the outside. Obamas legal team was much more liberal than Yoo, Bybee or Attorney General John Ashcroft, but some of the newcomers advice had a familiar ring. As Savage observes, a 2010 assessment that drone strikes whose victims included U.S. citizens were a legally justified offshoot of the nations armed conflict with al Qaeda carried more weight because its author, State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, was a former human rights lawyer and Yale Law School dean.

Instead of rethinking basic premises of the national security state, Savage writes, Obama accepted them but sought to find a stronger legal framework for carrying out its policy prescriptions.

So Obama personally approved the National Security Administrations collection of records of everyday domestic phone calls, begun under the Bush administration, but only after the program had been reviewed by his lawyers and deemed legal by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court under the USA Patriot Act. He kept the court rulings secret, as authorized by law, until one was made public in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. (Savage, while not condemning Snowden, invariably refers to his disclosures as leaks, a term I think is better suited for the self-serving, dont-quote-me factoids that trickle out from each administration.)

But the book offers a more complex view of a president who didnt always go as far as his lawyers told him he could. When Obamas top military aides called in 2011 for the bombing of Osama bin Ladens newly discovered hideaway in Pakistan, Savage writes, legal advisers told him an air strike could be justified as necessary and proportionate, even though it would probably kill 50 to 100 people, mostly innocent civilians. Obama demurred, in part because of the prospect of an international backlash, Savage says, and opted for the riskier raid by Navy SEALs. (Later, the book describes a Pentagon lawyers wondrously convoluted rationale, under international law and Muslim precepts, that allowed bin Ladens body to be dumped at sea.)

Nor were Obamas lawyers invariably compliant. When military leaders called in 2011 for an assault on the Islamist group al-Shabab in Somalia, Savage writes, they were fended off by Koh and the Defense Departments top lawyer, Jeh Johnson (now Homeland Security secretary), who said the group, though militant and violent, was not an associated force of al Qaeda and thus could not be attacked without congressional organization.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played a similar role in a 2010 meeting described in the book. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-described Sept. 11 mastermind, in a military commission rather than a civilian court, Clinton resisted, arguing that a military trial would undermine Obamas plan to close Guantanamo. On the other hand, Savage notes, when soldiers in Honduras seized and removed the countrys left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009, Clinton and Koh, her adviser, concluded it had not amounted to a military coup, so U.S. aid to Honduras could continue.

Throughout, Obama is shown as balancing  or perhaps juggling  law and politics, war-making and diplomacy, with results that are hard to categorize. He seeks congressional authorization to attack Syria but not to attack Libya. He loosens formal restrictions on state secrets while withholding photos of Bush-era interrogations, details of phone record-collection, and the legal rationale for a lethal drone strike. He declares a formal end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2014 while maintaining troops to fight the Taliban, al Qaeda and the newly emerging Islamic State.

The presidents back-and-forth record on war and peace, secrecy and transparency has frustrated much of the Democratic left that propelled him to the party's nomination over Clinton in 2008.

The former secretary of state, now the leading Democratic candidate to succeed Obama, is among his foremost defenders, saying he has maintained the nation's values amid harsh realities.

Savage is too much of a journalist  and a superb one  to be judgmental about his subject-in-chief. As a result, his book is sometimes inconclusive about Obamas resolutions of tumultuous disputes, although it gives readers abundant evidence to draw their own conclusions. The authors own conclusion might let the president off the hook a bit, but it was hard for this reader, at least, to dispute.

Obama, Savage writes, had been moving in a direction of wind-down and scale-back, but the world as it was did not cooperate. One way of looking at this is that Obama entrenched the Forever War. Another is that the Forever War ensnared him.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko

Power Wars

Inside Obamas Post-9/11 Presidency

By Charlie Savage

(Little, Brown; 769 pages; $30)